Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass

by Frederick Douglass




Contents

 My Escape from Slavery
 Reconstruction




Douglass, Frederick. “My Escape from Slavery.”
The Century Illustrated Magazine 23, n.s. 1 (Nov. 1881): 125-131.

My Escape from Slavery


In the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly
forty years ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public
what I considered very good reasons for withholding the manner of my
escape. In substance these reasons were, first, that such publication
at any time during the existence of slavery might be used by the master
against the slave, and prevent the future escape of any who might adopt
the same means that I did. The second reason was, if possible, still
more binding to silence: the publication of details would certainly
have put in peril the persons and property of those who assisted.
Murder itself was not more sternly and certainly punished in the State
of Maryland than that of aiding and abetting the escape of a slave.
Many colored men, for no other crime than that of giving aid to a
fugitive slave, have, like Charles T. Torrey, perished in prison. The
abolition of slavery in my native State and throughout the country, and
the lapse of time, render the caution hitherto observed no longer
necessary. But even since the abolition of slavery, I have sometimes
thought it well enough to baffle curiosity by saying that while slavery
existed there were good reasons for not telling the manner of my
escape, and since slavery had ceased to exist, there was no reason for
telling it. I shall now, however, cease to avail myself of this
formula, and, as far as I can, endeavor to satisfy this very natural
curiosity. I should, perhaps, have yielded to that feeling sooner, had
there been anything very heroic or thrilling in the incidents connected
with my escape, for I am sorry to say I have nothing of that sort to
tell; and yet the courage that could risk betrayal and the bravery
which was ready to encounter death, if need be, in pursuit of freedom,
were essential features in the undertaking. My success was due to
address rather than courage, to good luck rather than bravery. My means
of escape were provided for me by the very men who were making laws to
hold and bind me more securely in slavery.

It was the custom in the State of Maryland to require the free colored
people to have what were called free papers. These instruments they
were required to renew very often, and by charging a fee for this
writing, considerable sums from time to time were collected by the
State. In these papers the name, age, color, height, and form of the
freeman were described, together with any scars or other marks upon his
person which could assist in his identification. This device in some
measure defeated itself—since more than one man could be found to
answer the same general description. Hence many slaves could escape by
personating the owner of one set of papers; and this was often done as
follows: A slave, nearly or sufficiently answering the description set
forth in the papers, would borrow or hire them till by means of them he
could escape to a free State, and then, by mail or otherwise, would
return them to the owner. The operation was a hazardous one for the
lender as well as for the borrower. A failure on the part of the
fugitive to send back the papers would imperil his benefactor, and the
discovery of the papers in possession of the wrong man would imperil
both the fugitive and his friend. It was, therefore, an act of supreme
trust on the part of a freeman of color thus to put in jeopardy his own
liberty that another might be free. It was, however, not unfrequently
bravely done, and was seldom discovered. I was not so fortunate as to
resemble any of my free acquaintances sufficiently to answer the
description of their papers. But I had a friend—a sailor—who owned a
sailor’s protection, which answered somewhat the purpose of free
papers—describing his person, and certifying to the fact that he was a
free American sailor. The instrument had at its head the American
eagle, which gave it the appearance at once of an authorized document.
This protection, when in my hands, did not describe its bearer very
accurately. Indeed, it called for a man much darker than myself, and
close examination of it would have caused my arrest at the start.

In order to avoid this fatal scrutiny on the part of railroad
officials, I arranged with Isaac Rolls, a Baltimore hackman, to bring
my baggage to the Philadelphia train just on the moment of starting,
and jumped upon the car myself when the train was in motion. Had I gone
into the station and offered to purchase a ticket, I should have been
instantly and carefully examined, and undoubtedly arrested. In choosing
this plan I considered the jostle of the train, and the natural haste
of the conductor, in a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon
my skill and address in playing the sailor, as described in my
protection, to do the rest. One element in my favor was the kind
feeling which prevailed in Baltimore and other sea-ports at the time,
toward “those who go down to the sea in ships.” “Free trade and
sailors’ rights” just then expressed the sentiment of the country. In
my clothing I was rigged out in sailor style. I had on a red shirt and
a tarpaulin hat, and a black cravat tied in sailor fashion carelessly
and loosely about my neck. My knowledge of ships and sailor’s talk came
much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from
keelson to cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an “old salt.” I was
well on the way to Havre de Grace before the conductor came into the
negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black
passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama. My whole future
depended upon the decision of this conductor. Agitated though I was
while this ceremony was proceeding, still, externally, at least, I was
apparently calm and self-possessed. He went on with his duty—examining
several colored passengers before reaching me. He was somewhat harsh in
tome and peremptory in manner until he reached me, when, strange
enough, and to my surprise and relief, his whole manner changed. Seeing
that I did not readily produce my free papers, as the other colored
persons in the car had done, he said to me, in friendly contrast with
his bearing toward the others:

“I suppose you have your free papers?”

To which I answered:

“No sir; I never carry my free papers to sea with me.”

“But you have something to show that you are a freeman, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered; “I have a paper with the American Eagle on it,
and that will carry me around the world.”

With this I drew from my deep sailor’s pocket my seaman’s protection,
as before described. The merest glance at the paper satisfied him, and
he took my fare and went on about his business. This moment of time was
one of the most anxious I ever experienced. Had the conductor looked
closely at the paper, he could not have failed to discover that it
called for a very different-looking person from myself, and in that
case it would have been his duty to arrest me on the instant, and send
me back to Baltimore from the first station. When he left me with the
assurance that I was all right, though much relieved, I realized that I
was still in great danger: I was still in Maryland, and subject to
arrest at any moment. I saw on the train several persons who would have
known me in any other clothes, and I feared they might recognize me,
even in my sailor “rig,” and report me to the conductor, who would then
subject me to a closer examination, which I knew well would be fatal to
me.

Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice, I felt perhaps quite
as miserable as such a criminal. The train was moving at a very high
rate of speed for that epoch of railroad travel, but to my anxious mind
it was moving far too slowly. Minutes were hours, and hours were days
during this part of my flight. After Maryland, I was to pass through
Delaware—another slave State, where slave-catchers generally awaited
their prey, for it was not in the interior of the State, but on its
borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and active. The
border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones for
the fugitives. The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his
trail in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily than
did mine from the time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia.
The passage of the Susquehanna River at Havre de Grace was at that time
made by ferry-boat, on board of which I met a young colored man by the
name of Nichols, who came very near betraying me. He was a “hand” on
the boat, but, instead of minding his business, he insisted upon
knowing me, and asking me dangerous questions as to where I was going,
when I was coming back, etc. I got away from my old and inconvenient
acquaintance as soon as I could decently do so, and went to another
part of the boat. Once across the river, I encountered a new danger.
Only a few days before, I had been at work on a revenue cutter, in Mr.
Price’s ship-yard in Baltimore, under the care of Captain McGowan. On
the meeting at this point of the two trains, the one going south
stopped on the track just opposite to the one going north, and it so
happened that this Captain McGowan sat at a window where he could see
me very distinctly, and would certainly have recognized me had he
looked at me but for a second. Fortunately, in the hurry of the moment,
he did not see me; and the trains soon passed each other on their
respective ways. But this was not my only hair-breadth escape. A German
blacksmith whom I knew well was on the train with me, and looked at me
very intently, as if he thought he had seen me somewhere before in his
travels. I really believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me. At
any rate, he saw me escaping and held his peace.

The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most, was
Wilmington. Here we left the train and took the steam-boat for
Philadelphia. In making the change here I again apprehended arrest, but
no one disturbed me, and I was soon on the broad and beautiful
Delaware, speeding away to the Quaker City. On reaching Philadelphia in
the afternoon, I inquired of a colored man how I could get on to New
York. He directed me to the William-street depot, and thither I went,
taking the train that night. I reached New York Tuesday morning, having
completed the journey in less than twenty-four hours.

My free life began on the third of September, 1838. On the morning of
the fourth of that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe
journey, I found myself in the big city of New York, a _free man_—one
more added to the mighty throng which, like the confused waves of the
troubled sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway.
Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts
could not be much withdrawn from my strange situation. For the moment,
the dreams of my youth and the hopes of my manhood were completely
fulfilled. The bonds that had held me to “old master” were broken. No
man now had a right to call me his slave or assert mastery over me. I
was in the rough and tumble of an outdoor world, to take my chance with
the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked how I felt when
first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything in my
experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A
new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the
“quick round of blood,” I lived more in that one day than in a year of
my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but
tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching
New York, I said: “I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of
hungry lions.” Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be
depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen
or pencil. During ten or fifteen years I had been, as it were, dragging
a heavy chain which no strength of mine could break; I was not only a
slave, but a slave for life. I might become a husband, a father, an
aged man, but through all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the
grave, I had felt myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to
secure my freedom had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my
fetters the more firmly, and to render my escape more difficult.
Baffled, entangled, and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the
question, May not my condition after all be God’s work, and ordered for
a wise purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in
fact been going on in my mind for a long time, between the clear
consciousness of right and the plausible make-shifts of theology and
superstition. The one held me an abject slave—a prisoner for life,
punished for some transgression in which I had no lot nor part; and the
other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest
was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory brought me
unspeakable joy.

But my gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and
power of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite so
free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness
and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the
street, a few hours after my landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once
known well in slavery. The information received from him alarmed me.
The fugitive in question was known in Baltimore as “Allender’s Jake,”
but in New York he wore the more respectable name of “William Dixon.”
Jake, in law, was the property of Doctor Allender, and Tolly Allender,
the son of the doctor, had once made an effort to recapture _Mr.
Dixon_, but had failed for want of evidence to support his claim. Jake
told me the circumstances of this attempt, and how narrowly he escaped
being sent back to slavery and torture. He told me that New York was
then full of Southerners returning from the Northern watering-places;
that the colored people of New York were not to be trusted; that there
were hired men of my own color who would betray me for a few dollars;
that there were hired men ever on the lookout for fugitives; that I
must trust no man with my secret; that I must not think of going either
upon the wharves or into any colored boarding-house, for all such
places were closely watched; that he was himself unable to help me;
and, in fact, he seemed while speaking to me to fear lest I myself
might be a spy and a betrayer. Under this apprehension, as I suppose,
he showed signs of wishing to be rid of me, and with whitewash brush in
hand, in search of work, he soon disappeared.

This picture, given by poor “Jake,” of New York, was a damper to my
enthusiasm. My little store of money would soon be exhausted, and since
it would be unsafe for me to go on the wharves for work, and I had no
introductions elsewhere, the prospect for me was far from cheerful. I
saw the wisdom of keeping away from the ship-yards, for, if pursued, as
I felt certain I should be, Mr. Auld, my “master,” would naturally seek
me there among the calkers. Every door seemed closed against me. I was
in the midst of an ocean of my fellow-men, and yet a perfect stranger
to every one. I was without home, without acquaintance, without money,
without credit, without work, and without any definite knowledge as to
what course to take, or where to look for succor. In such an extremity,
a man had something besides his new-born freedom to think of. While
wandering about the streets of New York, and lodging at least one night
among the barrels on one of the wharves, I was indeed free—from
slavery, but free from food and shelter as well. I kept my secret to
myself as long as I could, but I was compelled at last to seek some one
who would befriend me without taking advantage of my destitution to
betray me. Such a person I found in a sailor named Stuart, a
warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from his humble home on Centre
street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk, near the Tombs
prison. As he approached me, I ventured a remark to him which at once
enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home to spend the night,
and in the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles, the secretary of
the New York Vigilance Committee, a co-worker with Isaac T. Hopper,
Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Theodore S. Wright, Samuel Cornish, Thomas
Downing, Philip A. Bell, and other true men of their time. All these
(save Mr. Bell, who still lives, and is editor and publisher of a paper
called the “Elevator,” in San Francisco) have finished their work on
earth. Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I felt
comparatively safe. With Mr. Ruggles, on the corner of Lispenard and
Church streets, I was hidden several days, during which time my
intended wife came on from Baltimore at my call, to share the burdens
of life with me. She was a free woman, and came at once on getting the
good news of my safety. We were married by Rev. J. W. C. Pennington,
then a well-known and respected Presbyterian minister. I had no money
with which to pay the marriage fee, but he seemed well pleased with our
thanks.

Mr. Ruggles was the first officer on the “Underground Railroad” whom I
met after coming North, and was, indeed, the only one with whom I had
anything to do till I became such an officer myself. Learning that my
trade was that of a calker, he promptly decided that the best place for
me was in New Bedford, Mass. He told me that many ships for whaling
voyages were fitted out there, and that I might there find work at my
trade and make a good living. So, on the day of the marriage ceremony,
we took our little luggage to the steamer _John W. Richmond_, which, at
that time, was one of the line running between New York and Newport, R.
I. Forty-three years ago colored travelers were not permitted in the
cabin, nor allowed abaft the paddle-wheels of a steam vessel. They were
compelled, whatever the weather might be,—whether cold or hot, wet or
dry,—to spend the night on deck. Unjust as this regulation was, it did
not trouble us much; we had fared much harder before. We arrived at
Newport the next morning, and soon after an old fashioned stage-coach,
with “New Bedford” in large yellow letters on its sides, came down to
the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating
what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen who
were about to take passage on the stage,—Friends William C. Taber and
Joseph Ricketson,—who at once discerned our true situation, and, in a
peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get in.” I
never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on our way
to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers alighted
for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took no
breakfast, and, when asked for our fares, I told the driver I would
make it right with him when we reached New Bedford. I expected some
objection to this on his part, but he made none. When, however, we
reached New Bedford, he took our baggage, including three
music-books,—two of them collections by Dyer, and one by Shaw,—and held
them until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the amount due
for our rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson not only
received me kindly and hospitably, but, on being informed about our
baggage, at once loaned me the two dollars with which to square
accounts with the stage-driver. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a
good old age, and now rest from their labors. I am under many grateful
obligations to them. They not only “took me in when a stranger” and
“fed me when hungry,” but taught me how to make an honest living. Thus,
in a fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in New
Bedford, a citizen of the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Once initiated into my new life of freedom and assured by Mr. Johnson
that I need not fear recapture in that city, a comparatively
unimportant question arose as to the name by which I should be known
thereafter in my new relation as a free man. The name given me by my
dear mother was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus
Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland, dispensed
with the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey.
Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from
the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson;
but in New Bedford I found that the Johnson family was already so
numerous as to cause some confusion in distinguishing them, hence a
change in this name seemed desirable. Nathan Johnson, mine host, placed
great emphasis upon this necessity, and wished me to allow him to
select a name for me. I consented, and he called me by my present
name—the one by which I have been known for three and forty
years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady
of the Lake,” and so pleased was he with its great character that he
wished me to bear his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I
have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and manly
character of Nathan Johnson—black man though he was—he, far more than
I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that,
if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile with a view to my
recapture, Johnson would have shown himself like him of the “stalwart
hand.”

The reader may be surprised at the impressions I had in some way
conceived of the social and material condition of the people at the
North. I had no proper idea of the wealth, refinement, enterprise, and
high civilization of this section of the country. My “Columbian
Orator,” almost my only book, had done nothing to enlighten me
concerning Northern society. I had been taught that slavery was the
bottom fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came naturally
to the conclusion that poverty must be the general condition of the
people of the free States. In the country from which I came, a white
man holding no slaves was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man,
and men of this class were contemptuously called “poor white trash.”
Hence I supposed that, since the non-slave-holders at the South were
ignorant, poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the
North must be in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of
the United States where I should have found a more striking and
gratifying contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in
the condition of the colored people there, than in New Bedford. I was
amazed when Mr. Johnson told me that there was nothing in the laws or
constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from
being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him.
There, too, the black man’s children attended the public schools with
the white man’s children, and apparently without objection from any
quarter. To impress me with my security from recapture and return to
slavery, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave
out of New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their
lives to save me from such a fate.

The fifth day after my arrival, I put on the clothes of a common
laborer, and went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down
Union street I saw a large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev.
Ephraim Peabody, the Unitarian minister. I went to the kitchen door and
asked the privilege of bringing in and putting away this coal. “What
will you charge?” said the lady. “I will leave that to you, madam.”
“You may put it away,” she said. I was not long in accomplishing the
job, when the dear lady put into my hand _two silver half-dollars_. To
understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money,
realizing that I had no master who could take it from me,—_that it was
mine—that my hands were my own_, and could earn more of the precious
coin,—one must have been in some sense himself a slave. My next job was
stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid. Howland’s wharf with a cargo of oil for
New York. I was not only a freeman, but a free working-man, and no
“master” stood ready at the end of the week to seize my hard earnings.

The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being
fitted out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The
sawing this wood was considered a good job. With the help of old Friend
Johnson (blessings on his memory) I got a saw and “buck,” and went at
it. When I went into a store to buy a cord with which to brace up my
saw in the frame, I asked for a “fip’s” worth of cord. The man behind
the counter looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal sharpness,
“You don’t belong about here.” I was alarmed, and thought I had
betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents, called
fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came from the “fi’penny-bit”
blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went to work with my saw and
buck. It was new business to me, but I never did better work, or more
of it, in the same space of time on the plantation for Covey, the
negro-breaker, than I did for myself in these earliest years of my
freedom.

Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three and
forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from race and color
prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches, Rodmans, Arnolds,
Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all classes of its people. The
test of the real civilization of the community came when I applied for
work at my trade, and then my repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so
happened that Mr. Rodney French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen,
distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a
whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and
coppering to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to
Mr. French for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would
employ me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon
reaching the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work, I
was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her unfinished
condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil,
inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my
eyes at the time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to
hardships that made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have
worked at my trade I could have earned two dollars a day, but as a
common laborer I received but one dollar. The difference was of great
importance to me, but if I could not get two dollars, I was glad to get
one; and so I went to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The
consciousness that I was free—no longer a slave—kept me cheerful under
this, and many similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in
New Bedford and elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts. For
instance, though colored children attended the schools, and were
treated kindly by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum refused, till
several years after my residence in that city, to allow any colored
person to attend the lectures delivered in its hall. Not until such men
as Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace
Mann refused to lecture in their course while there was such a
restriction, was it abandoned.

Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to
give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came to
hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from back
yards, worked on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and scoured
their cabins.

I afterward got steady work at the brass-foundry owned by Mr. Richmond.
My duty here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the
flasks in which castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy
work. The articles produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the
busy season the foundry was in operation night and day. I have often
worked two nights and every working day of the week. My foreman, Mr.
Cobb, was a good man, and more than once protected me from abuse that
one or more of the hands was disposed to throw upon me. While in this
situation I had little time for mental improvement. Hard work, night
and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal running like
water, was more favorable to action than thought; yet here I often
nailed a newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while I was
performing the up and down motion of the heavy beam by which the
bellows was inflated and discharged. It was the pursuit of knowledge
under difficulties, and I look back to it now, after so many years,
with some complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so
earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I
certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with
such interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands
found to do. I am glad to be able to say that, during my engagement in
this foundry, no complaint was ever made against me that I did not do
my work, and do it well. The bellows which I worked by main strength
was, after I left, moved by a steam-engine.




Douglass, Frederick. “Reconstruction.”
Atlantic Monthly 18 (1866): 761-765.

Reconstruction


The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may
very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the
already much-worn topic of reconstruction.

Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of a solicitude more
intense, or of aspirations more sincere and ardent. There are the best
of reasons for this profound interest. Questions of vast moment, left
undecided by the last session of Congress, must be manfully grappled
with by this. No political skirmishing will avail. The occasion demands
statesmanship.

Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously
ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent
results,—a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure,—a
strife for empire, as Earl Russell characterized it, of no value to
liberty or civilization,—an attempt to re-establish a Union by force,
which must be the merest mockery of a Union,—an effort to bring under
Federal authority States into which no loyal man from the North may
safely enter, and to bring men into the national councils who
deliberate with daggers and vote with revolvers, and who do not even
conceal their deadly hate of the country that conquered them; or
whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory
over treason, have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all
contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and
equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present
session of Congress. The last session really did nothing which can be
considered final as to these questions. The Civil Rights Bill and the
Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with
the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do
not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the
government is changed from a government by States to something like a
despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal
regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic
will. While there remains such an idea as the right of each State to
control its own local affairs,—an idea, by the way, more deeply rooted
in the minds of men of all sections of the country than perhaps any one
other political idea,—no general assertion of human rights can be of
any practical value. To change the character of the government at this
point is neither possible nor desirable. All that is necessary to be
done is to make the government consistent with itself, and render the
rights of the States compatible with the sacred rights of human nature.

The arm of the Federal government is long, but it is far too short to
protect the rights of individuals in the interior of distant States.
They must have the power to protect themselves, or they will go
unprotected, spite of all the laws the Federal government can put upon
the national statute-book.

Slavery, like all other great systems of wrong, founded in the depths
of human selfishness, and existing for ages, has not neglected its own
conservation. It has steadily exerted an influence upon all around it
favorable to its own continuance. And to-day it is so strong that it
could exist, not only without law, but even against law. Custom,
manners, morals, religion, are all on its side everywhere in the South;
and when you add the ignorance and servility of the ex-slave to the
intelligence and accustomed authority of the master, you have the
conditions, not out of which slavery will again grow, but under which
it is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy it,
unless the Federal government be armed with despotic power, to blot out
State authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road.
This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could. The
true way and the easiest way is to make our government entirely
consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the elective
franchise,—a right and power which will be ever present, and will form
a wall of fire for his protection.

One of the invaluable compensations of the late Rebellion is the highly
instructive disclosure it made of the true source of danger to
republican government. Whatever may be tolerated in monarchical and
despotic governments, no republic is safe that tolerates a privileged
class, or denies to any of its citizens equal rights and equal means to
maintain them. What was theory before the war has been made fact by the
war.

There is cause to be thankful even for rebellion. It is an impressive
teacher, though a stern and terrible one. In both characters it has
come to us, and it was perhaps needed in both. It is an instructor
never a day before its time, for it comes only when all other means of
progress and enlightenment have failed. Whether the oppressed and
despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for
manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the
initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease
of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may
be.

Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly
engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men
can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the
dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come
up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The
yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner
until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were
abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while their
predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell
are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?

It is asked, said Henry Clay, on a memorable occasion, Will slavery
never come to an end? That question, said he, was asked fifty years
ago, and it has been answered by fifty years of unprecedented
prosperity. Spite of the eloquence of the earnest Abolitionists,—poured
out against slavery during thirty years,—even they must confess, that,
in all the probabilities of the case, that system of barbarism would
have continued its horrors far beyond the limits of the nineteenth
century but for the Rebellion, and perhaps only have disappeared at
last in a fiery conflict, even more fierce and bloody than that which
has now been suppressed.

It is no disparagement to truth, that it can only prevail where reason
prevails. War begins where reason ends. The thing worse than rebellion
is the thing that causes rebellion. What that thing is, we have been
taught to our cost. It remains now to be seen whether we have the
needed courage to have that cause entirely removed from the Republic.
At any rate, to this grand work of national regeneration and entire
purification Congress must now address Itself, with full purpose that
the work shall this time be thoroughly done. The deadly upas, root and
branch, leaf and fibre, body and sap, must be utterly destroyed. The
country is evidently not in a condition to listen patiently to pleas
for postponement, however plausible, nor will it permit the
responsibility to be shifted to other shoulders. Authority and power
are here commensurate with the duty imposed. There are no cloud-flung
shadows to obscure the way. Truth shines with brighter light and
intenser heat at every moment, and a country torn and rent and bleeding
implores relief from its distress and agony.

If time was at first needed, Congress has now had time. All the
requisite materials from which to form an intelligent judgment are now
before it. Whether its members look at the origin, the progress, the
termination of the war, or at the mockery of a peace now existing, they
will find only one unbroken chain of argument in favor of a radical
policy of reconstruction. For the omissions of the last session, some
excuses may be allowed. A treacherous President stood in the way; and
it can be easily seen how reluctant good men might be to admit an
apostasy which involved so much of baseness and ingratitude. It was
natural that they should seek to save him by bending to him even when
he leaned to the side of error. But all is changed now. Congress knows
now that it must go on without his aid, and even against his
machinations. The advantage of the present session over the last is
immense. Where that investigated, this has the facts. Where that walked
by faith, this may walk by sight. Where that halted, this must go
forward, and where that failed, this must succeed, giving the country
whole measures where that gave us half-measures, merely as a means of
saving the elections in a few doubtful districts. That Congress saw
what was right, but distrusted the enlightenment of the loyal masses;
but what was forborne in distrust of the people must now be done with a
full knowledge that the people expect and require it. The members go to
Washington fresh from the inspiring presence of the people. In every
considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way,
whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out,
the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically
pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of
expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have
everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a
brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial
suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular
passport to power. The men most bitterly charged with it go to Congress
with the largest majorities, while the timid and doubtful are sent by
lean majorities, or else left at home. The strange controversy between
the President and the Congress, at one time so threatening, is disposed
of by the people. The high reconstructive powers which he so
confidently, ostentatiously, and haughtily claimed, have been
disallowed, denounced, and utterly repudiated; while those claimed by
Congress have been confirmed.

Of the spirit and magnitude of the canvass nothing need be said. The
appeal was to the people, and the verdict was worthy of the tribunal.
Upon an occasion of his own selection, with the advice and approval of
his astute Secretary, soon after the members of the Congress had
returned to their constituents, the President quitted the executive
mansion, sandwiched himself between two recognized heroes,—men whom the
whole country delighted to honor,—and, with all the advantage which
such company could give him, stumped the country from the Atlantic to
the Mississippi, advocating everywhere his policy as against that of
Congress. It was a strange sight, and perhaps the most disgraceful
exhibition ever made by any President; but, as no evil is entirely
unmixed, good has come of this, as from many others. Ambitious,
unscrupulous, energetic, indefatigable, voluble, and plausible,—a
political gladiator, ready for a “set-to” in any crowd,—he is beaten in
his own chosen field, and stands to-day before the country as a
convicted usurper, a political criminal, guilty of a bold and
persistent attempt to possess himself of the legislative powers
solemnly secured to Congress by the Constitution. No vindication could
be more complete, no condemnation could be more absolute and
humiliating. Unless reopened by the sword, as recklessly threatened in
some circles, this question is now closed for all time.

Without attempting to settle here the metaphysical and somewhat
theological question (about which so much has already been said and
written), whether once in the Union means always in the
Union,—agreeably to the formula, Once in grace always in grace,—it is
obvious to common sense that the rebellious States stand to-day, in
point of law, precisely where they stood when, exhausted, beaten,
conquered, they fell powerless at the feet of Federal authority. Their
State governments were overthrown, and the lives and property of the
leaders of the Rebellion were forfeited. In reconstructing the
institutions of these shattered and overthrown States, Congress should
begin with a clean slate, and make clean work of it. Let there be no
hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and
treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate,
one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose
in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were
never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four
millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order,
should now be treated according to their true character, as shams and
impositions, and supplanted by true and legitimate governments, in the
formation of which loyal men, black and white, shall participate.

It is not, however, within the scope of this paper to point out the
precise steps to be taken, and the means to be employed. The people are
less concerned about these than the grand end to be attained. They
demand such a reconstruction as shall put an end to the present
anarchical state of things in the late rebellious States,—where
frightful murders and wholesale massacres are perpetrated in the very
presence of Federal soldiers. This horrible business they require shall
cease. They want a reconstruction such as will protect loyal men, black
and white, in their persons and property; such a one as will cause
Northern industry, Northern capital, and Northern civilization to flow
into the South, and make a man from New England as much at home in
Carolina as elsewhere in the Republic. No Chinese wall can now be
tolerated. The South must be opened to the light of law and liberty,
and this session of Congress is relied upon to accomplish this
important work.

The plain, common-sense way of doing this work, as intimated at the
beginning, is simply to establish in the South one law, one government,
one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the
elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great
measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks,
and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take
the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.

Men denounce the negro for his prominence in this discussion; but it is
no fault of his that in peace as in war, that in conquering Rebel
armies as in reconstructing the rebellious States, the right of the
negro is the true solution of our national troubles. The stern logic of
events, which goes directly to the point, disdaining all concern for
the color or features of men, has determined the interests of the
country as identical with and inseparable from those of the negro.

The policy that emancipated and armed the negro—now seen to have been
wise and proper by the dullest—was not certainly more sternly demanded
than is now the policy of enfranchisement. If with the negro was
success in war, and without him failure, so in peace it will be found
that the nation must fall or flourish with the negro.

Fortunately, the Constitution of the United States knows no distinction
between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any
difference between a citizen of a State and a citizen of the United
States. Citizenship evidently includes all the rights of citizens,
whether State or national. If the Constitution knows none, it is
clearly no part of the duty of a Republican Congress now to institute
one. The mistake of the last session was the attempt to do this very
thing, by a renunciation of its power to secure political rights to any
class of citizens, with the obvious purpose to allow the rebellious
States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens.
This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated
citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the
Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of
each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the
several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal
voter in all the States.



These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves
and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and
service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death
and War. To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have
been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a
veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced
themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the
human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even
illuminating ways. For this reason, and this alone, I venture to write
again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, in
the hope that I may strike here and there a half-tone, newer even if
slighter, up from the heart of my problem and the problems of my people.

Between the sterner flights of logic, I have sought to set some little
alightings of what may be poetry. They are tributes to Beauty, unworthy
to stand alone; yet perversely, in my mind, now at the end, I know not
whether I mean the Thought for the Fancy--or the Fancy for the Thought,
or why the book trails off to playing, rather than standing strong on
unanswering fact. But this is alway--is it not?--the Riddle of Life.

Many of my words appear here transformed from other publications and I
thank the _Atlantic_, the _Independent_, the _Crisis_, and the _Journal
of Race Development_ for letting me use them again.

W.E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS.
New York, 1919.




Contents


CHAPTER                                      PAGE

      POSTSCRIPT                              ix
      _Credo_                                  1

I.    THE SHADOW OF YEARS                      3
      _A Litany at Atlanta_                   14

II.   THE SOULS OF WHITE FOLK                 17
      _The Riddle of the Sphinx_              30

III.  THE HANDS OF ETHIOPIA                   32
      _The Princess of the Hither Isles_      43

IV.   OF WORK AND WEALTH                      47
      _The Second Coming_                     60

V.    "THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE"              63
      _Jesus Christ in Texas_                 70

VI.   OF THE RULING OF MEN                    78
      _The Call_                              93

VII.  THE DAMNATION OF WOMEN                  95
      _Children of the Moon_                 109

VIII. THE IMMORTAL CHILD                     114
      _Almighty Death_                       128

IX.   OF BEAUTY AND DEATH                    130
      _The Prayers of God_                   145

X.    THE COMET                              149
      _A Hymn to the Peoples_                161








_Credo_


I believe in God, who made of one blood all nations that on earth do
dwell. I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers,
varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but
differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the
possibility of infinite development.

Especially do I believe in the Negro Race: in the beauty of its genius,
the sweetness of its soul, and its strength in that meekness which shall
yet inherit this turbulent earth.

I believe in Pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so
deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great
as to despise no man's father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither
to offer bastardy to the weak nor beg wedlock of the strong, knowing
that men may be brothers in Christ, even though they be not
brothers-in-law.

I believe in Service--humble, reverent service, from the blackening of
boots to the whitening of souls; for Work is Heaven, Idleness Hell, and
Wage is the "Well done!" of the Master, who summoned all them that labor
and are heavy laden, making no distinction between the black, sweating
cotton hands of Georgia and the first families of Virginia, since all
distinction not based on deed is devilish and not divine.

I believe in the Devil and his angels, who wantonly work to narrow the
opportunity of struggling human beings, especially if they be black; who
spit in the faces of the fallen, strike them that cannot strike again,
believe the worst and work to prove it, hating the image which their
Maker stamped on a brother's soul.

I believe in the Prince of Peace. I believe that War is Murder. I
believe that armies and navies are at bottom the tinsel and braggadocio
of oppression and wrong, and I believe that the wicked conquest of
weaker and darker nations by nations whiter and stronger but foreshadows
the death of that strength.

I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and
their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to
choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads,
uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom
of beauty and love.

I believe in the Training of Children, black even as white; the leading
out of little souls into the green pastures and beside the still waters,
not for pelf or peace, but for life lit by some large vision of beauty
and goodness and truth; lest we forget, and the sons of the fathers,
like Esau, for mere meat barter their birthright in a mighty nation.

Finally, I believe in Patience--patience with the weakness of the Weak
and the strength of the Strong, the prejudice of the Ignorant and the
ignorance of the Blind; patience with the tardy triumph of Joy and the
mad chastening of Sorrow.




I

THE SHADOW OF YEARS


I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills, five
years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The house was quaint, with
clapboards running up and down, neatly trimmed, and there were five
rooms, a tiny porch, a rosy front yard, and unbelievably delicious
strawberries in the rear. A South Carolinian, lately come to the
Berkshire Hills, owned all this--tall, thin, and black, with golden
earrings, and given to religious trances. We were his transient tenants
for the time.

My own people were part of a great clan. Fully two hundred years before,
Tom Burghardt had come through the western pass from the Hudson with his
Dutch captor, "Coenraet Burghardt," sullen in his slavery and achieving
his freedom by volunteering for the Revolution at a time of sudden
alarm. His wife was a little, black, Bantu woman, who never became
reconciled to this strange land; she clasped her knees and rocked and
crooned:

    "Do bana coba--gene me, gene me!
    Ben d'nuli, ben d'le--"

Tom died about 1787, but of him came many sons, and one, Jack, who
helped in the War of 1812. Of Jack and his wife, Violet, was born a
mighty family, splendidly named: Harlow and Ira, Cloe, Lucinda, Maria,
and Othello! I dimly remember my grandfather, Othello,--or "Uncle
Tallow,"--a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat
stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was
probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. At any rate, grandmother had a
shrewish tongue and often berated him. This grandmother was Sarah--"Aunt
Sally"--a stern, tall, Dutch-African woman, beak-nosed, but
beautiful-eyed and golden-skinned. Ten or more children were theirs, of
whom the youngest was Mary, my mother.

Mother was dark shining bronze, with a tiny ripple in her black hair,
black-eyed, with a heavy, kind face. She gave one the impression of
infinite patience, but a curious determination was concealed in her
softness. The family were small farmers on Egremont Plain, between Great
Barrington and Sheffield, Massachusetts. The bits of land were too small
to support the great families born on them and we were always poor. I
never remember being cold or hungry, but I do remember that shoes and
coal, and sometimes flour, caused mother moments of anxious thought in
winter, and a new suit was an event!

At about the time of my birth economic pressure was transmuting the
family generally from farmers to "hired" help. Some revolted and
migrated westward, others went cityward as cooks and barbers. Mother
worked for some years at house service in Great Barrington, and after a
disappointed love episode with a cousin, who went to California, she met
and married Alfred Du Bois and went to town to live by the golden river
where I was born.

Alfred, my father, must have seemed a splendid vision in that little
valley under the shelter of those mighty hills. He was small and
beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair
chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a
dreamer,--romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making
of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life
that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His
father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a
passionate revolt against the world. He, too, was small, but squarish. I
remember him as I saw him first, in his home in New Bedford,--white hair
close-cropped; a seamed, hard face, but high in tone, with a gray eye
that could twinkle or glare.

Long years before him Louis XIV drove two Huguenots, Jacques and Louis
Du Bois, into wild Ulster County, New York. One of them in the third or
fourth generation had a descendant, Dr. James Du Bois, a gay, rich
bachelor, who made his money in the Bahamas, where he and the Gilberts
had plantations. There he took a beautiful little mulatto slave as his
mistress, and two sons were born: Alexander in 1803 and John, later.
They were fine, straight, clear-eyed boys, white enough to "pass." He
brought them to America and put Alexander in the celebrated Cheshire
School, in Connecticut. Here he often visited him, but one last time,
fell dead. He left no will, and his relations made short shrift of these
sons. They gathered in the property, apprenticed grandfather to a
shoemaker; then dropped him.

Grandfather took his bitter dose like a thoroughbred. Wild as was his
inner revolt against this treatment, he uttered no word against the
thieves and made no plea. He tried his fortunes here and in Haiti,
where, during his short, restless sojourn, my own father was born.
Eventually, grandfather became chief steward on the passenger boat
between New York and New Haven; later he was a small merchant in
Springfield; and finally he retired and ended his days at New Bedford.
Always he held his head high, took no insults, made few friends. He was
not a "Negro"; he was a man! Yet the current was too strong even for
him. Then even more than now a colored man had colored friends or none
at all, lived in a colored world or lived alone. A few fine, strong,
black men gained the heart of this silent, bitter man in New York and
New Haven. If he had scant sympathy with their social clannishness, he
was with them in fighting discrimination. So, when the white
Episcopalians of Trinity Parish, New Haven, showed plainly that they no
longer wanted black Folks as fellow Christians, he led the revolt which
resulted in St. Luke's Parish, and was for years its senior warden. He
lies dead in the Grove Street Cemetery, beside Jehudi Ashmun.

Beneath his sternness was a very human man. Slyly he wrote
poetry,--stilted, pleading things from a soul astray. He loved women in
his masterful way, marrying three beautiful wives in succession and
clinging to each with a certain desperate, even if unsympathetic,
affection. As a father he was, naturally, a failure,--hard, domineering,
unyielding. His four children reacted characteristically: one was until
past middle life a thin spinster, the mental image of her father; one
died; one passed over into the white world and her children's children
are now white, with no knowledge of their Negro blood; the fourth, my
father, bent before grandfather, but did not break--better if he had. He
yielded and flared back, asked forgiveness and forgot why, became the
harshly-held favorite, who ran away and rioted and roamed and loved and
married my brown mother.

So with some circumstance having finally gotten myself born, with a
flood of Negro blood, a strain of French, a bit of Dutch, but, thank
God! no "Anglo-Saxon," I come to the days of my childhood.

They were very happy. Early we moved back to Grandfather Burghardt's
home,--I barely remember its stone fireplace, big kitchen, and
delightful woodshed. Then this house passed to other branches of the
clan and we moved to rented quarters in town,--to one delectable place
"upstairs," with a wide yard full of shrubbery, and a brook; to another
house abutting a railroad, with infinite interests and astonishing
playmates; and finally back to the quiet street on which I was
born,--down a long lane and in a homely, cozy cottage, with a
living-room, a tiny sitting-room, a pantry, and two attic bedrooms. Here
mother and I lived until she died, in 1884, for father early began his
restless wanderings. I last remember urgent letters for us to come to
New Milford, where he had started a barber shop. Later he became a
preacher. But mother no longer trusted his dreams, and he soon faded out
of our lives into silence.

From the age of five until I was sixteen I went to a school on the same
grounds,--down a lane, into a widened yard, with a big choke-cherry tree
and two buildings, wood and brick. Here I got acquainted with my world,
and soon had my criterions of judgment.

Wealth had no particular lure. On the other hand, the shadow of wealth
was about us. That river of my birth was golden because of the woolen
and paper waste that soiled it. The gold was theirs, not ours; but the
gleam and glint was for all. To me it was all in order and I took it
philosophically. I cordially despised the poor Irish and South Germans,
who slaved in the mills, and annexed the rich and well-to-do as my
natural companions. Of such is the kingdom of snobs!

Most of our townfolk were, naturally, the well-to-do, shading downward,
but seldom reaching poverty. As playmate of the children I saw the homes
of nearly every one, except a few immigrant New Yorkers, of whom none of
us approved. The homes I saw impressed me, but did not overwhelm me.
Many were bigger than mine, with newer and shinier things, but they did
not seem to differ in kind. I think I probably surprised my hosts more
than they me, for I was easily at home and perfectly happy and they
looked to me just like ordinary people, while my brown face and frizzled
hair must have seemed strange to them.

Yet I was very much one of them. I was a center and sometimes the leader
of the town gang of boys. We were noisy, but never very bad,--and,
indeed, my mother's quiet influence came in here, as I realize now. She
did not try to make me perfect. To her I was already perfect. She simply
warned me of a few things, especially saloons. In my town the saloon was
the open door to hell. The best families had their drunkards and the
worst had little else.

Very gradually,--I cannot now distinguish the steps, though here and
there I remember a jump or a jolt--but very gradually I found myself
assuming quite placidly that I was different from other children. At
first I think I connected the difference with a manifest ability to get
my lessons rather better than most and to recite with a certain happy,
almost taunting, glibness, which brought frowns here and there. Then,
slowly, I realized that some folks, a few, even several, actually
considered my brown skin a misfortune; once or twice I became painfully
aware that some human beings even thought it a crime. I was not for a
moment daunted,--although, of course, there were some days of secret
tears--rather I was spurred to tireless effort. If they beat me at
anything, I was grimly determined to make them sweat for it! Once I
remember challenging a great, hard farmer-boy to battle, when I knew he
could whip me; and he did. But ever after, he was polite.

As time flew I felt not so much disowned and rejected as rather drawn up
into higher spaces and made part of a mightier mission. At times I
almost pitied my pale companions, who were not of the Lord's anointed
and who saw in their dreams no splendid quests of golden fleeces.

Even in the matter of girls my peculiar phantasy asserted itself.
Naturally, it was in our town voted bad form for boys of twelve and
fourteen to show any evident weakness for girls. We tolerated them
loftily, and now and then they played in our games, when I joined in
quite as naturally as the rest. It was when strangers came, or summer
boarders, or when the oldest girls grew up that my sharp senses noted
little hesitancies in public and searchings for possible public opinion.
Then I flamed! I lifted my chin and strode off to the mountains, where I
viewed the world at my feet and strained my eyes across the shadow of
the hills.

I was graduated from high school at sixteen, and I talked of "Wendell
Phillips." This was my first sweet taste of the world's applause. There
were flowers and upturned faces, music and marching, and there was my
mother's smile. She was lame, then, and a bit drawn, but very happy. It
was her great day and that very year she lay down with a sigh of content
and has not yet awakened. I felt a certain gladness to see her, at last,
at peace, for she had worried all her life. Of my own loss I had then
little realization. That came only with the after-years. Now it was the
choking gladness and solemn feel of wings! At last, I was going beyond
the hills and into the world that beckoned steadily.

There came a little pause,--a singular pause. I was given to understand
that I was almost too young for the world. Harvard was the goal of my
dreams, but my white friends hesitated and my colored friends were
silent. Harvard was a mighty conjure-word in that hill town, and even
the mill owners' sons had aimed lower. Finally it was tactfully
explained that the place for me was in the South among my people. A
scholarship had been already arranged at Fisk, and my summer earnings
would pay the fare. My relatives grumbled, but after a twinge I felt a
strange delight! I forgot, or did not thoroughly realize, the curious
irony by which I was not looked upon as a real citizen of my birth-town,
with a future and a career, and instead was being sent to a far land
among strangers who were regarded as (and in truth were) "mine own
people."

Ah! the wonder of that journey, with its faint spice of adventure, as I
entered the land of slaves; the never-to-be-forgotten marvel of that
first supper at Fisk with the world "colored" and opposite two of the
most beautiful beings God ever revealed to the eyes of seventeen. I
promptly lost my appetite, but I was deliriously happy!

As I peer back through the shadow of my years, seeing not too clearly,
but through the thickening veil of wish and after-thought, I seem to
view my life divided into four distinct parts: the Age of Miracles, the
Days of Disillusion, the Discipline of Work and Play, and the Second
Miracle Age.

The Age of Miracles began with Fisk and ended with Germany. I was
bursting with the joy of living. I seemed to ride in conquering might. I
was captain of my soul and master of fate! I _willed_ to do! It was
done. I _wished!_ The wish came true.

Now and then out of the void flashed the great sword of hate to remind
me of the battle. I remember once, in Nashville, brushing by accident
against a white woman on the street. Politely and eagerly I raised my
hat to apologize. That was thirty-five years ago. From that day to this
I have never knowingly raised my hat to a Southern white woman.

I suspect that beneath all of my seeming triumphs there were many
failures and disappointments, but the realities loomed so large that
they swept away even the memory of other dreams and wishes. Consider,
for a moment, how miraculous it all was to a boy of seventeen, just
escaped from a narrow valley: I willed and lo! my people came dancing
about me,--riotous in color, gay in laughter, full of sympathy, need,
and pleading; darkly delicious girls--"colored" girls--sat beside me and
actually talked to me while I gazed in tongue-tied silence or babbled in
boastful dreams. Boys with my own experiences and out of my own world,
who knew and understood, wrought out with me great remedies. I studied
eagerly under teachers who bent in subtle sympathy, feeling themselves
some shadow of the Veil and lifting it gently that we darker souls might
peer through to other worlds.

I willed and lo! I was walking beneath the elms of Harvard,--the name of
allurement, the college of my youngest, wildest visions! I needed money;
scholarships and prizes fell into my lap,--not all I wanted or strove
for, but all I needed to keep in school. Commencement came and standing
before governor, president, and grave, gowned men, I told them certain
astonishing truths, waving my arms and breathing fast! They applauded
with what now seems to me uncalled-for fervor, but then! I walked home
on pink clouds of glory! I asked for a fellowship and got it. I
announced my plan of studying in Germany, but Harvard had no more
fellowships for me. A friend, however, told me of the Slater Fund and
how the Board was looking for colored men worth educating. No thought of
modest hesitation occurred to me. I rushed at the chance.

The trustees of the Slater Fund excused themselves politely. They
acknowledged that they had in the past looked for colored boys of
ability to educate, but, being unsuccessful, they had stopped searching.
I went at them hammer and tongs! I plied them with testimonials and
mid-year and final marks. I intimated plainly, impudently, that they
were "stalling"! In vain did the chairman, Ex-President Hayes, explain
and excuse. I took no excuses and brushed explanations aside. I wonder
now that he did not brush me aside, too, as a conceited meddler, but
instead he smiled and surrendered.

I crossed the ocean in a trance. Always I seemed to be saying, "It is
not real; I must be dreaming!" I can live it again--the little, Dutch
ship--the blue waters--the smell of new-mown hay--Holland and the Rhine.
I saw the Wartburg and Berlin; I made the Harzreise and climbed the
Brocken; I saw the Hansa towns and the cities and dorfs of South
Germany; I saw the Alps at Berne, the Cathedral at Milan, Florence,
Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Pesth; I looked on the boundaries of Russia;
and I sat in Paris and London.

On mountain and valley, in home and school, I met men and women as I had
never met them before. Slowly they became, not white folks, but folks.
The unity beneath all life clutched me. I was not less fanatically a
Negro, but "Negro" meant a greater, broader sense of humanity and
world-fellowship. I felt myself standing, not against the world, but
simply against American narrowness and color prejudice, with the
greater, finer world at my back urging me on.

I builded great castles in Spain and lived therein. I dreamed and loved
and wandered and sang; then, after two long years, I dropped suddenly
back into "nigger"-hating America!

My Days of Disillusion were not disappointing enough to discourage me. I
was still upheld by that fund of infinite faith, although dimly about me
I saw the shadow of disaster. I began to realize how much of what I had
called Will and Ability was sheer Luck! _Suppose_ my good mother had
preferred a steady income from my child labor rather than bank on the
precarious dividend of my higher training? _Suppose_ that pompous old
village judge, whose dignity we often ruffled and whose apples we stole,
had had his way and sent me while a child to a "reform" school to learn
a "trade"? _Suppose_ Principal Hosmer had been born with no faith in
"darkies," and instead of giving me Greek and Latin had taught me
carpentry and the making of tin pans? _Suppose_ I had missed a Harvard
scholarship? _Suppose_ the Slater Board had then, as now, distinct ideas
as to where the education of Negroes should stop? Suppose _and_ suppose!
As I sat down calmly on flat earth and looked at my life a certain great
fear seized me. Was I the masterful captain or the pawn of laughing
sprites? Who was I to fight a world of color prejudice? I raise my hat
to myself when I remember that, even with these thoughts, I did not
hesitate or waver; but just went doggedly to work, and therein lay
whatever salvation I have achieved.

First came the task of earning a living. I was not nice or hard to
please. I just got down on my knees and begged for work, anything and
anywhere. I wrote to Hampton, Tuskegee, and a dozen other places. They
politely declined, with many regrets. The trustees of a backwoods
Tennessee town considered me, but were eventually afraid. Then,
suddenly, Wilberforce offered to let me teach Latin and Greek at $750 a
year. I was overjoyed!

I did not know anything about Latin and Greek, but I did know of
Wilberforce. The breath of that great name had swept the water and
dropped into southern Ohio, where Southerners had taken their cure at
Tawawa Springs and where white Methodists had planted a school; then
came the little bishop, Daniel Payne, who made it a school of the
African Methodists. This was the school that called me, and when
re-considered offers from Tuskegee and Jefferson City followed, I
refused; I was so thankful for that first offer.

I went to Wilberforce with high ideals. I wanted to help to build a
great university. I was willing to work night as well as day. I taught
Latin, Greek, English, and German. I helped in the discipline, took part
in the social life, begged to be allowed to lecture on sociology, and
began to write books. But I found myself against a stone wall. Nothing
stirred before my impatient pounding! Or if it stirred, it soon slept
again.

Of course, I was too impatient! The snarl of years was not to be undone
in days. I set at solving the problem before I knew it. Wilberforce was
a colored church-school. In it were mingled the problems of
poorly-prepared pupils, an inadequately-equipped plant, the natural
politics of bishoprics, and the provincial reactions of a country town
loaded with traditions. It was my first introduction to a Negro world,
and I was at once marvelously inspired and deeply depressed. I was
inspired with the children,--had I not rubbed against the children of
the world and did I not find here the same eagerness, the same joy of
life, the same brains as in New England, France, and Germany? But, on
the other hand, the ropes and myths and knots and hindrances; the
thundering waves of the white world beyond beating us back; the scalding
breakers of this inner world,--its currents and back eddies--its
meanness and smallness--its sorrow and tragedy--its screaming farce!

In all this I was as one bound hand and foot. Struggle, work, fight as I
would, I seemed to get nowhere and accomplish nothing. I had all the
wild intolerance of youth, and no experience in human tangles. For the
first time in my life I realized that there were limits to my will to
do. The Day of Miracles was past, and a long, gray road of dogged work
lay ahead.

I had, naturally, my triumphs here and there. I defied the bishops in
the matter of public extemporaneous prayer and they yielded. I bearded
the poor, hunted president in his den, and yet was re-elected to my
position. I was slowly winning a way, but quickly losing faith in the
value of the way won. Was this the place to begin my life work? Was this
the work which I was best fitted to do? What business had I, anyhow, to
teach Greek when I had studied men? I grew sure that I had made a
mistake. So I determined to leave Wilberforce and try elsewhere. Thus,
the third period of my life began.

First, in 1896, I married--a slip of a girl, beautifully dark-eyed
and thorough and good as a German housewife. Then I accepted a job to
make a study of Negroes in Philadelphia for the University of
Pennsylvania,--one year at six hundred dollars. How did I dare these
two things? I do not know. Yet they spelled salvation. To remain at
Wilberforce without doing my ideals meant spiritual death. Both my
wife and I were homeless. I dared a home and a temporary job. But it
was a different daring from the days of my first youth. I was ready
to admit that the best of men might fail. I meant still to be captain
of my soul, but I realized that even captains are not omnipotent in
uncharted and angry seas.

I essayed a thorough piece of work in Philadelphia. I labored morning,
noon, and night. Nobody ever reads that fat volume on "The Philadelphia
Negro," but they treat it with respect, and that consoles me. The
colored people of Philadelphia received me with no open arms. They had a
natural dislike to being studied like a strange species. I met again and
in different guise those curious cross-currents and inner social
whirlings of my own people. They set me to groping. I concluded that I
did not know so much as I might about my own people, and when President
Bumstead invited me to Atlanta University the next year to teach
sociology and study the American Negro, I accepted gladly, at a salary
of twelve hundred dollars.

My real life work was done at Atlanta for thirteen years, from my
twenty-ninth to my forty-second birthday. They were years of great
spiritual upturning, of the making and unmaking of ideals, of hard work
and hard play. Here I found myself. I lost most of my mannerisms. I grew
more broadly human, made my closest and most holy friendships, and
studied human beings. I became widely-acquainted with the real condition
of my people. I realized the terrific odds which faced them. At
Wilberforce I was their captious critic. In Philadelphia I was their
cold and scientific investigator, with microscope and probe. It took but
a few years of Atlanta to bring me to hot and indignant defense. I saw
the race-hatred of the whites as I had never dreamed of it
before,--naked and unashamed! The faint discrimination of my hopes and
intangible dislikes paled into nothing before this great, red monster
of cruel oppression. I held back with more difficulty each day my
mounting indignation against injustice and misrepresentation.

With all this came the strengthening and hardening of my own character.
The billows of birth, love, and death swept over me. I saw life through
all its paradox and contradiction of streaming eyes and mad merriment. I
emerged into full manhood, with the ruins of some ideals about me, but
with others planted above the stars; scarred and a bit grim, but hugging
to my soul the divine gift of laughter and withal determined, even unto
stubbornness, to fight the good fight.

At last, forbear and waver as I would, I faced the great Decision. My
life's last and greatest door stood ajar. What with all my dreaming,
studying, and teaching was I going to _do_ in this fierce fight? Despite
all my youthful conceit and bumptiousness, I found developed beneath it
all a reticence and new fear of forwardness, which sprang from searching
criticisms of motive and high ideals of efficiency; but contrary to my
dream of racial solidarity and notwithstanding my deep desire to serve
and follow and think, rather than to lead and inspire and decide, I
found myself suddenly the leader of a great wing of people fighting
against another and greater wing.

Nor could any effort of mine keep this fight from sinking to the
personal plane. Heaven knows I tried. That first meeting of a knot of
enthusiasts, at Niagara Falls, had all the earnestness of self-devotion.
At the second meeting, at Harper's Ferry, it arose to the solemnity of a
holy crusade and yet without and to the cold, hard stare of the world it
seemed merely the envy of fools against a great man, Booker Washington.

Of the movement I was willy-nilly leader. I hated the role. For the
first time I faced criticism and _cared_. Every ideal and habit of my
life was cruelly misjudged. I who had always overstriven to give credit
for good work, who had never consciously stooped to envy was accused by
honest colored people of every sort of small and petty jealousy, while
white people said I was ashamed of my race and wanted to be white! And
this of me, whose one life fanaticism had been belief in my Negro blood!

Away back in the little years of my boyhood I had sold the Springfield
_Republican_ and written for Mr. Fortune's _Globe_. I dreamed of being
an editor myself some day. I am an editor. In the great, slashing days
of college life I dreamed of a strong organization to fight the battles
of the Negro race. The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People is such a body, and it grows daily. In the dark days at
Wilberforce I planned a time when I could speak freely to my people and
of them, interpreting between two worlds. I am speaking now. In the
study at Atlanta I grew to fear lest my radical beliefs should so hurt
the college that either my silence or the institution's ruin would
result. Powers and principalities have not yet curbed my tongue and
Atlanta still lives.

It all came--this new Age of Miracles--because a few persons in 1909
determined to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday properly by calling for the
final emancipation of the American Negro. I came at their call. My
salary even for a year was not assured, but it was the "Voice without
reply." The result has been the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People and _The Crisis_ and this book, which I am finishing
on my Fiftieth Birthday.

Last year I looked death in the face and found its lineaments not
unkind. But it was not my time. Yet in nature some time soon and in the
fullness of days I shall die, quietly, I trust, with my face turned
South and eastward; and, dreaming or dreamless, I shall, I am sure,
enjoy death as I have enjoyed life.





_A Litany at Atlanta_

O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our
ears an-hungered in these fearful days--

_Hear us, good Lord!_

Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery
in Thy Sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy Heaven, O God,
crying:

_We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

We are not better than our fellows, Lord; we are but weak and human men.
When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed,--curse
them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done
to innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home.

_Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!_

And yet, whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed
them in crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched
their mothers and their grandmothers? Who bought and sold their crime
and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity?

_Thou knowest, good God!_

Is this Thy Justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence and
the innocent be crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty?

_Justice, O Judge of men!_

Wherefore do we pray? Is not the God of the Fathers dead? Have not seers
seen in Heaven's halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the
black and rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of
endless dead?

_Awake, Thou that sleepest!_

Thou art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, through
blazing corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men,
of women strong and free--far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy, and
chaste prostitution of this shameful speck of dust!

_Turn again, O Lord; leave us not to perish in our sin!_

From lust of body and lust of blood,--

_Great God, deliver us!_

From lust of power and lust of gold,--

_Great God, deliver us!_

From the leagued lying of despot and of brute,--

_Great God, deliver us!_

A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin
Murder and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack, and cry of
death and fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars where
church spires pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the
greed of greedy men who hide behind the veil of vengeance!

_Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!_

In the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears
and held our leaping hands, but they--did they not wag their heads and
leer and cry with bloody jaws: _Cease from Crime!_ The word was mockery,
for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one.

_Turn again our captivity, O Lord!_

Behold this maimed and broken thing, dear God; it was an humble black
man, who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They
told him: _Work and Rise!_ He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but someone
told how someone said another did--one whom he had never seen nor known.
Yet for that man's crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife
naked to shame, his children to poverty and evil.

_Hear us, O heavenly Father!_

Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long
shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound
in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed
brutes, who do such deeds, high on Thine Altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn
it in hell forever and forever!

_Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!_

Bewildered we are and passion-tossed, mad with the madness of a mobbed
and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy throne,
we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our
stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of
Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this? Tell us the plan; give us the
sign!

_Keep not Thou silent, O God!_

Sit not longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb
suffering. Surely Thou, too, art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless,
heartless thing!

_Ah! Christ of all the Pities!_

Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words! Thou art
still the God of our black fathers and in Thy Soul's Soul sit some soft
darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night.

But whisper--speak--call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to
our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path!

Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and
without, the liar. Whither? To death?

_Amen! Welcome, dark sleep!_

Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup
pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that
clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet
shudder lest we must,--and it is red. Ah! God! It is a red and awful
shape.

_Selah!_

In yonder East trembles a star.

_Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!_

Thy Will, O Lord, be done!

_Kyrie Eleison!_

Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words.

_We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little
children.

_We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

Our voices sink in silence and in night.

_Hear us, good Lord!_

In night, O God of a godless land!

_Amen!_

In silence, O Silent God.

_Selah!_





II

THE SOULS OF WHITE FOLK


High in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human
sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are
that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk.

Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view
them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I
am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their
language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial
composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge
that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of
artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side.
I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know
that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious.
They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to
them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and
strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts
and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my
tired eyes and I see them ever stripped,--ugly, human.

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very
modern thing,--a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The
ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. The Middle Age
regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth
century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great,
Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more
than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden,
emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token,
wonderful!

This assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone is
inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan leads to curious
acts; even the sweeter souls of the dominant world as they discourse
with me on weather, weal, and woe are continually playing above their
actual words an obligato of tune and tone, saying:

"My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the
curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be
brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good Lord that
into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born--white!"

I do not laugh. I am quite straight-faced as I ask soberly:

"But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then
always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to
understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and
ever, Amen!

Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately
to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming
to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing
virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of
our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the
arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who
vicariously leads your mob. Next it appears dampening generous
enthusiasm in what we once counted glorious; to free the slave is
discovered to be tolerable only in so far as it freed his master! Do we
sense somnolent writhings in black Africa or angry groans in India or
triumphant banzais in Japan? "To your tents, O Israel!" These nations
are not white!

After the more comic manifestations and the chilling of generous
enthusiasm come subtler, darker deeds. Everything considered, the title
to the universe claimed by White Folk is faulty. It ought, at least, to
look plausible. How easy, then, by emphasis and omission to make
children believe that every great soul the world ever saw was a white
man's soul; that every great thought the world ever knew was a white
man's thought; that every great deed the world ever did was a white
man's deed; that every great dream the world ever sang was a white man's
dream. In fine, that if from the world were dropped everything that
could not fairly be attributed to White Folk, the world would, if
anything, be even greater, truer, better than now. And if all this be a
lie, is it not a lie in a great cause?

Here it is that the comedy verges to tragedy. The first minor note is
struck, all unconsciously, by those worthy souls in whom consciousness
of high descent brings burning desire to spread the gift abroad,--the
obligation of nobility to the ignoble. Such sense of duty assumes two
things: a real possession of the heritage and its frank appreciation by
the humble-born. So long, then, as humble black folk, voluble with
thanks, receive barrels of old clothes from lordly and generous whites,
there is much mental peace and moral satisfaction. But when the black
man begins to dispute the white man's title to certain alleged bequests
of the Fathers in wage and position, authority and training; and when
his attitude toward charity is sullen anger rather than humble jollity;
when he insists on his human right to swagger and swear and waste,--then
the spell is suddenly broken and the philanthropist is ready to believe
that Negroes are impudent, that the South is right, and that Japan wants
to fight America.

After this the descent to Hell is easy. On the pale, white faces which
the great billows whirl upward to my tower I see again and again, often
and still more often, a writing of human hatred, a deep and passionate
hatred, vast by the very vagueness of its expressions. Down through the
green waters, on the bottom of the world, where men move to and fro, I
have seen a man--an educated gentleman--grow livid with anger because a
little, silent, black woman was sitting by herself in a Pullman car. He
was a white man. I have seen a great, grown man curse a little child,
who had wandered into the wrong waiting-room, searching for its mother:
"Here, you damned black--" He was white. In Central Park I have seen the
upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a tigerish snarl of rage
because black folk rode by in a motor car. He was a white man. We have
seen, you and I, city after city drunk and furious with ungovernable
lust of blood; mad with murder, destroying, killing, and cursing;
torturing human victims because somebody accused of crime happened to be
of the same color as the mob's innocent victims and because that color
was not white! We have seen,--Merciful God! in these wild days and in
the name of Civilization, Justice, and Motherhood,--what have we not
seen, right here in America, of orgy, cruelty, barbarism, and murder
done to men and women of Negro descent.

Up through the foam of green and weltering waters wells this great mass
of hatred, in wilder, fiercer violence, until I look down and know that
today to the millions of my people no misfortune could happen,--of death
and pestilence, failure and defeat--that would not make the hearts of
millions of their fellows beat with fierce, vindictive joy! Do you doubt
it? Ask your own soul what it would say if the next census were to
report that half of black America was dead and the other half dying.

Unfortunate? Unfortunate. But where is the misfortune? Mine? Am I, in my
blackness, the sole sufferer? I suffer. And yet, somehow, above the
suffering, above the shackled anger that beats the bars, above the hurt
that crazes there surges in me a vast pity,--pity for a people
imprisoned and enthralled, hampered and made miserable for such a cause,
for such a phantasy!

Conceive this nation, of all human peoples, engaged in a crusade to
make the "World Safe for Democracy"! Can you imagine the United States
protesting against Turkish atrocities in Armenia, while the Turks are
silent about mobs in Chicago and St. Louis; what is Louvain compared
with Memphis, Waco, Washington, Dyersburg, and Estill Springs? In short,
what is the black man but America's Belgium, and how could America
condemn in Germany that which she commits, just as brutally, within her
own borders?

A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal
imprisons and lowers. Say to men, earnestly and repeatedly: "Honesty is
best, knowledge is power; do unto others as you would be done by." Say
this and act it and the nation must move toward it, if not to it. But
say to a people: "The one virtue is to be white," and the people rush to
the inevitable conclusion, "Kill the 'nigger'!"

Is not this the record of present America? Is not this its headlong
progress? Are we not coming more and more, day by day, to making the
statement "I am white," the one fundamental tenet of our practical
morality? Only when this basic, iron rule is involved is our defense of
right nation-wide and prompt. Murder may swagger, theft may rule and
prostitution may flourish and the nation gives but spasmodic,
intermittent and lukewarm attention. But let the murderer be black or
the thief brown or the violator of womanhood have a drop of Negro blood,
and the righteousness of the indignation sweeps the world. Nor would
this fact make the indignation less justifiable did not we all know that
it was blackness that was condemned and not crime.

In the awful cataclysm of World War, where from beating, slandering, and
murdering us the white world turned temporarily aside to kill each
other, we of the Darker Peoples looked on in mild amaze.

Among some of us, I doubt not, this sudden descent of Europe into hell
brought unbounded surprise; to others, over wide area, it brought the
_Schaden Freude_ of the bitterly hurt; but most of us, I judge, looked
on silently and sorrowfully, in sober thought, seeing sadly the prophecy
of our own souls.

Here is a civilization that has boasted much. Neither Roman nor Arab,
Greek nor Egyptian, Persian nor Mongol ever took himself and his own
perfectness with such disconcerting seriousness as the modern white man.
We whose shame, humiliation, and deep insult his aggrandizement so often
involved were never deceived. We looked at him clearly, with world-old
eyes, and saw simply a human thing, weak and pitiable and cruel, even as
we are and were.

These super-men and world-mastering demi-gods listened, however, to no
low tongues of ours, even when we pointed silently to their feet of
clay. Perhaps we, as folk of simpler soul and more primitive type, have
been most struck in the welter of recent years by the utter failure of
white religion. We have curled our lips in something like contempt as we
have witnessed glib apology and weary explanation. Nothing of the sort
deceived us. A nation's religion is its life, and as such white
Christianity is a miserable failure.

Nor would we be unfair in this criticism: We know that we, too, have
failed, as you have, and have rejected many a Buddha, even as you have
denied Christ; but we acknowledge our human frailty, while you, claiming
super-humanity, scoff endlessly at our shortcomings.

The number of white individuals who are practising with even reasonable
approximation the democracy and unselfishness of Jesus Christ is so
small and unimportant as to be fit subject for jest in Sunday
supplements and in _Punch_, _Life_, _Le Rire_, and _Fliegende Blaetter_.
In her foreign mission work the extraordinary self-deception of white
religion is epitomized: solemnly the white world sends five million
dollars worth of missionary propaganda to Africa each year and in the
same twelve months adds twenty-five million dollars worth of the vilest
gin manufactured. Peace to the augurs of Rome!

We may, however, grant without argument that religious ideals have
always far outrun their very human devotees. Let us, then, turn to more
mundane matters of honor and fairness. The world today is trade. The
world has turned shopkeeper; history is economic history; living is
earning a living. Is it necessary to ask how much of high emprise and
honorable conduct has been found here? Something, to be sure. The
establishment of world credit systems is built on splendid and
realizable faith in fellow-men. But it is, after all, so low and
elementary a step that sometimes it looks merely like honor among
thieves, for the revelations of highway robbery and low cheating in the
business world and in all its great modern centers have raised in the
hearts of all true men in our day an exceeding great cry for revolution
in our basic methods and conceptions of industry and commerce.

We do not, for a moment, forget the robbery of other times and races
when trade was a most uncertain gamble; but was there not a certain
honesty and frankness in the evil that argued a saner morality? There
are more merchants today, surer deliveries, and wider well-being, but
are there not, also, bigger thieves, deeper injustice, and more
calloused selfishness in well-being? Be that as it may,--certainly the
nicer sense of honor that has risen ever and again in groups of
forward-thinking men has been curiously and broadly blunted. Consider
our chiefest industry,--fighting. Laboriously the Middle Ages built its
rules of fairness--equal armament, equal notice, equal conditions. What
do we see today? Machine-guns against assegais; conquest sugared with
religion; mutilation and rape masquerading as culture,--all this, with
vast applause at the superiority of white over black soldiers!

War is horrible! This the dark world knows to its awful cost. But has
it just become horrible, in these last days, when under essentially
equal conditions, equal armament, and equal waste of wealth white men
are fighting white men, with surgeons and nurses hovering near?

Think of the wars through which we have lived in the last decade: in
German Africa, in British Nigeria, in French and Spanish Morocco, in
China, in Persia, in the Balkans, in Tripoli, in Mexico, and in a dozen
lesser places--were not these horrible, too? Mind you, there were for
most of these wars no Red Cross funds.

Behold little Belgium and her pitiable plight, but has the world
forgotten Congo? What Belgium now suffers is not half, not even a tenth,
of what she has done to black Congo since Stanley's great dream of 1880.
Down the dark forests of inmost Africa sailed this modern Sir Galahad,
in the name of "the noble-minded men of several nations," to introduce
commerce and civilization. What came of it? "Rubber and murder, slavery
in its worst form," wrote Glave in 1895.

Harris declares that King Leopold's regime meant the death of twelve
million natives, "but what we who were behind the scenes felt most
keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was
desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life,
the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of
every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck
the chiefs of the people dumb with horror--in a word, a veritable
avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes."

Yet the fields of Belgium laughed, the cities were gay, art and science
flourished; the groans that helped to nourish this civilization fell on
deaf ears because the world round about was doing the same sort of thing
elsewhere on its own account.

As we saw the dead dimly through rifts of battlesmoke and heard faintly
the cursings and accusations of blood brothers, we darker men said: This
is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this _is_
Europe; this seeming Terrible is the real soul of white culture--back of
all culture,--stripped and visible today. This is where the world has
arrived,--these dark and awful depths and not the shining and ineffable
heights of which it boasted. Here is whither the might and energy of
modern humanity has really gone.

But may not the world cry back at us and ask: "What better thing have
you to show? What have you done or would do better than this if you had
today the world rule? Paint with all riot of hateful colors the thin
skin of European culture,--is it not better than any culture that arose
in Africa or Asia?"

It is. Of this there is no doubt and never has been; but why is it
better? Is it better because Europeans are better, nobler, greater, and
more gifted than other folk? It is not. Europe has never produced and
never will in our day bring forth a single human soul who cannot be
matched and over-matched in every line of human endeavor by Asia and
Africa. Run the gamut, if you will, and let us have the Europeans who in
sober truth over-match Nefertari, Mohammed, Rameses and Askia,
Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. If we could scan the calendar of
thousands of lesser men, in like comparison, the result would be the
same; but we cannot do this because of the deliberately educated
ignorance of white schools by which they remember Napoleon and forget
Sonni Ali.

The greatness of Europe has lain in the width of the stage on which she
has played her part, the strength of the foundations on which she has
builded, and a natural, human ability no whit greater (if as great) than
that of other days and races. In other words, the deeper reasons for the
triumph of European civilization lie quite outside and beyond
Europe,--back in the universal struggles of all mankind.

Why, then, is Europe great? Because of the foundations which the mighty
past have furnished her to build upon: the iron trade of ancient, black
Africa, the religion and empire-building of yellow Asia, the art and
science of the "dago" Mediterranean shore, east, south, and west, as
well as north. And where she has builded securely upon this great past
and learned from it she has gone forward to greater and more splendid
human triumph; but where she has ignored this past and forgotten and
sneered at it, she has shown the cloven hoof of poor, crucified
humanity,--she has played, like other empires gone, the world fool!

If, then, European triumphs in culture have been greater, so, too, may
her failures have been greater. How great a failure and a failure in
what does the World War betoken? Was it national jealousy of the sort of
the seventeenth century? But Europe has done more to break down national
barriers than any preceding culture. Was it fear of the balance of power
in Europe? Hardly, save in the half-Asiatic problems of the Balkans.
What, then, does Hauptmann mean when he says: "Our jealous enemies
forged an iron ring about our breasts and we knew our breasts had to
expand,--that we had to split asunder this ring or else we had to cease
breathing. But Germany will not cease to breathe and so it came to pass
that the iron ring was forced apart."

Whither is this expansion? What is that breath of life, thought to be so
indispensable to a great European nation? Manifestly it is expansion
overseas; it is colonial aggrandizement which explains, and alone
adequately explains, the World War. How many of us today fully realize
the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe
which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow?
Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to
divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe's good.

This Europe has largely done. The European world is using black and
brown men for all the uses which men know. Slowly but surely white
culture is evolving the theory that "darkies" are born beasts of burden
for white folk. It were silly to think otherwise, cries the cultured
world, with stronger and shriller accord. The supporting arguments grow
and twist themselves in the mouths of merchant, scientist, soldier,
traveler, writer, and missionary: Darker peoples are dark in mind as
well as in body; of dark, uncertain, and imperfect descent; of frailer,
cheaper stuff; they are cowards in the face of mausers and maxims; they
have no feelings, aspirations, and loves; they are fools, illogical
idiots,--"half-devil and half-child."

Such as they are civilization must, naturally, raise them, but soberly
and in limited ways. They are not simply dark white men. They are not
"men" in the sense that Europeans are men. To the very limited extent of
their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise
cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds,--and let them be paid
what men think they are worth--white men who know them to be well-nigh
worthless.

Such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of
no one race or people. Ever have men striven to conceive of their
victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and
blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage. It has been left,
however, to Europe and to modern days to discover the eternal world-wide
mark of meanness,--color!

Such is the silent revolution that has gripped modern European culture
in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its zenith came in
Boxer times: White supremacy was all but world-wide, Africa was dead,
India conquered, Japan isolated, and China prostrate, while white
America whetted her sword for mongrel Mexico and mulatto South America,
lynching her own Negroes the while. Temporary halt in this program was
made by little Japan and the white world immediately sensed the peril of
such "yellow" presumption! What sort of a world would this be if yellow
men must be treated "white"? Immediately the eventual overthrow of Japan
became a subject of deep thought and intrigue, from St. Petersburg to
San Francisco, from the Key of Heaven to the Little Brother of the Poor.

The using of men for the benefit of masters is no new invention of
modern Europe. It is quite as old as the world. But Europe proposed to
apply it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no
former world ever dreamed. The imperial width of the thing,--the
heaven-defying audacity--makes its modern newness.

The scheme of Europe was no sudden invention, but a way out of
long-pressing difficulties. It is plain to modern white civilization
that the subjection of the white working classes cannot much longer be
maintained. Education, political power, and increased knowledge of the
technique and meaning of the industrial process are destined to make a
more and more equitable distribution of wealth in the near future. The
day of the very rich is drawing to a close, so far as individual white
nations are concerned. But there is a loophole. There is a chance for
exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to
the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. This chance
lies in the exploitation of darker peoples. It is here that the golden
hand beckons. Here are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers
or inconvenient consciences. These men may be used down to the very
bone, and shot and maimed in "punitive" expeditions when they revolt. In
these dark lands "industrial development" may repeat in exaggerated form
every horror of the industrial history of Europe, from slavery and rape
to disease and maiming, with only one test of success,--dividends!

This theory of human culture and its aims has worked itself through warp
and woof of our daily thought with a thoroughness that few realize.
Everything great, good, efficient, fair, and honorable is "white";
everything mean, bad, blundering, cheating, and dishonorable is
"yellow"; a bad taste is "brown"; and the devil is "black." The changes
of this theme are continually rung in picture and story, in newspaper
heading and moving-picture, in sermon and school book, until, of course,
the King can do no wrong,--a White Man is always right and a Black Man
has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.

There must come the necessary despisings and hatreds of these savage
half-men, this unclean _canaille_ of the world--these dogs of men. All
through the world this gospel is preaching. It has its literature, it
has its secret propaganda and above all--it pays!

There's the rub,--it pays. Rubber, ivory, and palm-oil; tea, coffee, and
cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and
copper--they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies
hand up to the white world from pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of
all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the
white world throws it disdainfully.

Small wonder, then, that in the practical world of things-that-be there
is jealousy and strife for the possession of the labor of dark millions,
for the right to bleed and exploit the colonies of the world where this
golden stream may be had, not always for the asking, but surely for the
whipping and shooting. It was this competition for the labor of yellow,
brown, and black folks that was the cause of the World War. Other causes
have been glibly given and other contributing causes there doubtless
were, but they were subsidiary and subordinate to this vast quest of the
dark world's wealth and toil.

Colonies, we call them, these places where "niggers" are cheap and the
earth is rich; they are those outlands where like a swarm of hungry
locusts white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash
of slave-drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as Croesus and send
homeward a golden stream. They belt the earth, these places, but they
cluster in the tropics, with its darkened peoples: in Hong Kong and
Anam, in Borneo and Rhodesia, in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, in Panama and
Havana--these are the El Dorados toward which the world powers stretch
itching palms.

Germany, at last one and united and secure on land, looked across the
seas and seeing England with sources of wealth insuring a luxury and
power which Germany could not hope to rival by the slower processes of
exploiting her own peasants and workingmen, especially with these
workers half in revolt, immediately built her navy and entered into a
desperate competition for possession of colonies of darker peoples. To
South America, to China, to Africa, to Asia Minor, she turned like a
hound quivering on the leash, impatient, suspicious, irritable, with
blood-shot eyes and dripping fangs, ready for the awful word. England
and France crouched watchfully over their bones, growling and wary, but
gnawing industriously, while the blood of the dark world whetted their
greedy appetites. In the background, shut out from the highway to the
seven seas, sat Russia and Austria, snarling and snapping at each other
and at the last Mediterranean gate to the El Dorado, where the Sick Man
enjoyed bad health, and where millions of serfs in the Balkans, Russia,
and Asia offered a feast to greed well-nigh as great as Africa.

The fateful day came. It had to come. The cause of war is preparation
for war; and of all that Europe has done in a century there is nothing
that has equaled in energy, thought, and time her preparation for
wholesale murder. The only adequate cause of this preparation was
conquest and conquest, not in Europe, but primarily among the darker
peoples of Asia and Africa; conquest, not for assimilation and uplift,
but for commerce and degradation. For this, and this mainly, did Europe
gird herself at frightful cost for war.

The red day dawned when the tinder was lighted in the Balkans and
Austro-Hungary seized a bit which brought her a step nearer to the
world's highway; she seized one bit and poised herself for another. Then
came that curious chorus of challenges, those leaping suspicions, raking
all causes for distrust and rivalry and hatred, but saying little of the
real and greatest cause.

Each nation felt its deep interests involved. But how? Not, surely, in
the death of Ferdinand the Warlike; not, surely, in the old,
half-forgotten _revanche_ for Alsace-Lorraine; not even in the
neutrality of Belgium. No! But in the possession of land overseas, in
the right to colonies, the chance to levy endless tribute on the darker
world,--on coolies in China, on starving peasants in India, on black
savages in Africa, on dying South Sea Islanders, on Indians of the
Amazon--all this and nothing more.

Even the broken reed on which we had rested high hopes of eternal
peace,--the guild of the laborers--the front of that very important
movement for human justice on which we had builded most, even this flew
like a straw before the breath of king and kaiser. Indeed, the flying
had been foreshadowed when in Germany and America "international"
Socialists had all but read yellow and black men out of the kingdom of
industrial justice. Subtly had they been bribed, but effectively: Were
they not lordly whites and should they not share in the spoils of rape?
High wages in the United States and England might be the skilfully
manipulated result of slavery in Africa and of peonage in Asia.

With the dog-in-the-manger theory of trade, with the determination to
reap inordinate profits and to exploit the weakest to the utmost there
came a new imperialism,--the rage for one's own nation to own the earth
or, at least, a large enough portion of it to insure as big profits as
the next nation. Where sections could not be owned by one dominant
nation there came a policy of "open door," but the "door" was open to
"white people only." As to the darkest and weakest of peoples there was
but one unanimity in Europe,--that which Hen Demberg of the German
Colonial Office called the agreement with England to maintain white
"prestige" in Africa,--the doctrine of the divine right of white people
to steal.

Thus the world market most wildly and desperately sought today is the
market where labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most
abundant. This labor is kept cheap and helpless because the white world
despises "darkies." If one has the temerity to suggest that these
workingmen may walk the way of white workingmen and climb by votes and
self-assertion and education to the rank of men, he is howled out of
court. They cannot do it and if they could, they shall not, for they are
the enemies of the white race and the whites shall rule forever and
forever and everywhere. Thus the hatred and despising of human beings
from whom Europe wishes to extort her luxuries has led to such jealousy
and bickering between European nations that they have fallen afoul of
each other and have fought like crazed beasts. Such is the fruit of
human hatred.

But what of the darker world that watches? Most men belong to this
world. With Negro and Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they
form two-thirds of the population of the world. A belief in humanity is
a belief in colored men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men,
then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of
darker nations.

What, then, is this dark world thinking? It is thinking that as wild
and awful as this shameful war was, _it is nothing to compare with that
fight for freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will
make unless their oppression and humiliation and insult at the hands of
the White World cease. The Dark World is going to submit to its present
treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer._

Let me say this again and emphasize it and leave no room for mistaken
meaning: The World War was primarily the jealous and avaricious struggle
for the largest share in exploiting darker races. As such it is and must
be but the prelude to the armed and indignant protest of these despised
and raped peoples. Today Japan is hammering on the door of justice,
China is raising her half-manacled hands to knock next, India is
writhing for the freedom to knock, Egypt is sullenly muttering, the
Negroes of South and West Africa, of the West Indies, and of the United
States are just awakening to their shameful slavery. Is, then, this war
the end of wars? Can it be the end, so long as sits enthroned, even in
the souls of those who cry peace, the despising and robbing of darker
peoples? If Europe hugs this delusion, then this is not the end of world
war,--it is but the beginning!

We see Europe's greatest sin precisely where we found Africa's and
Asia's,--in human hatred, the despising of men; with this difference,
however: Europe has the awful lesson of the past before her, has the
splendid results of widened areas of tolerance, sympathy, and love among
men, and she faces a greater, an infinitely greater, world of men than
any preceding civilization ever faced.

It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself,
first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in
this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role. For two or
more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human
hatred,--making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously,
and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of
dislike,--rather a great religion, a world war-cry: Up white, down
black; to your tents, O white folk, and world war with black and
parti-colored mongrel beasts!

Instead of standing as a great example of the success of democracy and
the possibility of human brotherhood America has taken her place as an
awful example of its pitfalls and failures, so far as black and brown
and yellow peoples are concerned. And this, too, in spite of the fact
that there has been no actual failure; the Indian is not dying out, the
Japanese and Chinese have not menaced the land, and the experiment of
Negro suffrage has resulted in the uplift of twelve million people at a
rate probably unparalleled in history. But what of this? America, Land
of Democracy, wanted to believe in the failure of democracy so far as
darker peoples were concerned. Absolutely without excuse she established
a caste system, rushed into preparation for war, and conquered tropical
colonies. She stands today shoulder to shoulder with Europe in Europe's
worst sin against civilization. She aspires to sit among the great
nations who arbitrate the fate of "lesser breeds without the law" and
she is at times heartily ashamed even of the large number of "new" white
people whom her democracy has admitted to place and power. Against this
surging forward of Irish and German, of Russian Jew, Slav and "dago" her
social bars have not availed, but against Negroes she can and does take
her unflinching and immovable stand, backed by this new public policy of
Europe. She trains her immigrants to this despising of "niggers" from
the day of their landing, and they carry and send the news back to the
submerged classes in the fatherlands.

       *       *       *       *       *

All this I see and hear up in my tower, above the thunder of the seven
seas. From my narrowed windows I stare into the night that looms beneath
the cloud-swept stars. Eastward and westward storms are
breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I
will not believe them inevitable. I will not believe that all that was
must be, that all the shameful drama of the past must be done again
today before the sunlight sweeps the silver seas.

If I cry amid this roar of elemental forces, must my cry be in vain,
because it is but a cry,--a small and human cry amid Promethean gloom?

Back beyond the world and swept by these wild, white faces of the awful
dead, why will this Soul of White Folk,--this modern Prometheus,--hang
bound by his own binding, tethered by a fable of the past? I hear his
mighty cry reverberating through the world, "I am white!" Well and good,
O Prometheus, divine thief! Is not the world wide enough for two colors,
for many little shinings of the sun? Why, then, devour your own vitals
if I answer even as proudly, "I am black!"





_The Riddle of the Sphinx_


    Dark daughter of the lotus leaves that watch the Southern Sea!
    Wan spirit of a prisoned soul a-panting to be free!
       The muttered music of thy streams, the whisper of the deep,
       Have kissed each other in God's name and kissed a world to sleep.

    The will of the world is a whistling wind, sweeping a cloud-swept sky,
    And not from the East and not from the West knelled that
         soul-waking cry,
       But out of the South,--the sad, black South--it screamed from
           the top of the sky,
       Crying: "Awake, O ancient race!" Wailing, "O woman, arise!"
    And crying and sighing and crying again as a voice in the
          midnight cries,--
    But the burden of white men bore her back and the white world
          stifled her sighs.

    The white world's vermin and filth:
         All the dirt of London,
         All the scum of New York;
         Valiant spoilers of women
         And conquerers of unarmed men;
         Shameless breeders of bastards,
         Drunk with the greed of gold,
         Baiting their blood-stained hooks
         With cant for the souls of the simple;
         Bearing the white man's burden
         Of liquor and lust and lies!

    Unthankful we wince in the East,
    Unthankful we wail from the westward,
    Unthankfully thankful, we curse,
    In the unworn wastes of the wild:
            I hate them, Oh!
            I hate them well,
            I hate them, Christ!
            As I hate hell!
            If I were God,
            I'd sound their knell
            This day!
    Who raised the fools to their glory,
    But black men of Egypt and Ind,
    Ethiopia's sons of the evening,
    Indians and yellow Chinese,
    Arabian children of morning,
    And mongrels of Rome and Greece?
            Ah, well!
    And they that raised the boasters
    Shall drag them down again,--
    Down with the theft of their thieving
    And murder and mocking of men;
    Down with their barter of women
    And laying and lying of creeds;
    Down with their cheating of childhood
    And drunken orgies of war,--
            down
              down
                deep down,
    Till the devil's strength be shorn,
    Till some dim, darker David, a-hoeing of his corn,
    And married maiden, mother of God,
    Bid the black Christ be born!
    Then shall our burden be manhood,
    Be it yellow or black or white;
    And poverty and justice and sorrow,
    The humble, and simple and strong
    Shall sing with the sons of morning
    And daughters of even-song:
      Black mother of the iron hills that ward the blazing sea,
      Wild spirit of a storm-swept soul, a-struggling to be free,
      Where 'neath the bloody finger-marks thy riven bosom quakes,
      Thicken the thunders of God's Voice and lo! a world awakes!




III

THE HANDS OF ETHIOPIA


"_Semper novi quid ex Africa_," cried the Roman proconsul, and he voiced
the verdict of forty centuries. Yet there are those who would write
world history and leave out of account this most marvelous of
continents. Particularly today most men assume that Africa is far afield
from the center of our burning social problems and especially from our
problem of world war.

Always Africa is giving us something new or some metempsychosis of a
world-old thing. On its black bosom arose one of the earliest, if not
the earliest, of self-protecting civilizations, which grew so mightily
that it still furnishes superlatives to thinking and speaking men. Out
of its darker and more remote forest fastnesses came, if we may credit
many recent scientists, the first welding of iron, and we know that
agriculture and trade flourished there when Europe was a wilderness.

Nearly every human empire that has arisen in the world, material and
spiritual, has found some of its greatest crises on this continent of
Africa, from Greece to Great Britain. As Mommsen says: "It was through
Africa that Christianity became the religion of the world." In Africa
the last flood of Germanic invasions spent itself within hearing of the
last gasp of Byzantium, and it was through Africa that Islam came to
play its great role of conqueror and civilizer.

With the Renaissance and the widened world of modern thought Africa came
no less suddenly with her new-old gift. Shakespeare's "Ancient Pistol"
cries:

    A foutre for the world and worldlings base!
    I speak of Africa and golden joys!

He echoes a legend of gold from the days of Punt and Ophir to those of
Ghana, the Gold Coast, and the Rand. This thought had sent the world's
greed scurrying down the hot, mysterious coasts of Africa to the Good
Hope of gain, until for the first time a real world-commerce was born,
albeit it started as a commerce mainly in the bodies and souls of men.

The present problem of problems is nothing more than democracy beating
itself helplessly against the color bar,--purling, seeping, seething,
foaming to burst through, ever and again overwhelming the emerging
masses of white men in its rolling backwaters and held back by those who
dream of future kingdoms of greed built on black and brown and yellow
slavery.

The indictment of Africa against Europe is grave. For four hundred years
white Europe was the chief support of that trade in human beings which
first and last robbed black Africa of a hundred million human beings,
transformed the face of her social life, overthrew organized government,
distorted ancient industry, and snuffed out the lights of cultural
development. Today instead of removing laborers from Africa to distant
slavery, industry built on a new slavery approaches Africa to deprive
the natives of their land, to force them to toil, and to reap all the
profit for the white world.

It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader of the essential facts
underlying these broad assertions. A recent law of the Union of South
Africa assigns nearly two hundred and fifty million acres of the best of
natives' land to a million and a half whites and leaves thirty-six
million acres of swamp and marsh for four and a half-million blacks. In
Rhodesia over ninety million acres have been practically confiscated. In
the Belgian Congo all the land was declared the property of the state.

Slavery in all but name has been the foundation of the cocoa industry in
St. Thome and St. Principe and in the mines of the Rand. Gin has been
one of the greatest of European imports, having increased fifty per
cent. in ten years and reaching a total of at least twenty-five million
dollars a year today. Negroes of ability have been carefully gotten rid
of, deposed from authority, kept out of positions of influence, and
discredited in their people's eyes, while a caste of white overseers and
governing officials has appeared everywhere.

Naturally, the picture is not all lurid. David Livingstone has had his
successors and Europe has given Africa something of value in the
beginning of education and industry. Yet the balance of iniquity is
desperately large; but worse than that, it has aroused no world protest.
A great Englishman, familiar with African problems for a generation,
says frankly today: "There does not exist any real international
conscience to which you can appeal."

Moreover, that treatment shows no certain signs of abatement. Today in
England the Empire Resources Development Committee proposes to treat
African colonies as "crown estates" and by intensive scientific
exploitation of both land and labor to make these colonies pay the
English national debt after the war! German thinkers, knowing the
tremendous demand for raw material which would follow the war, had
similar plans of exploitation. "It is the clear, common sense of the
African situation," says H.G. Wells, "that while these precious regions
of raw material remain divided up between a number of competitive
European imperialisms, each resolutely set upon the exploitation of its
'possessions' to its own advantage and the disadvantage of the others,
there can be no permanent peace in the world. It is impossible."

We, then, who fought the war against war; who in a hell of blood and
suffering held hardly our souls in leash by the vision of a world
organized for peace; who are looking for industrial democracy and for
the organization of Europe so as to avoid incentives to war,--we, least
of all, should be willing to leave the backward world as the greatest
temptation, not only to wars based on international jealousies, but to
the most horrible of wars,--which arise from the revolt of the maddened
against those who hold them in common contempt.

Consider, my reader,--if you were today a man of some education and
knowledge, but born a Japanese or a Chinaman, an East Indian or a Negro,
what would you do and think? What would be in the present chaos your
outlook and plan for the future? Manifestly, you would want freedom for
your people,--freedom from insult, from segregation, from poverty, from
physical slavery. If the attitude of the European and American worlds is
in the future going to be based essentially upon the same policies as in
the past, then there is but one thing for the trained man of darker
blood to do and that is definitely and as openly as possible to organize
his world for war against Europe. He may have to do it by secret,
underground propaganda, as in Egypt and India and eventually in the
United States; or by open increase of armament, as in Japan; or by
desperate efforts at modernization, as in China; but he must do it. He
represents the vast majority of mankind. To surrender would be far worse
than physical death. There is no way out unless the white world gives up
such insult as its modern use of the adjective "yellow" indicates, or
its connotation of "chink" and "nigger" implies; either it gives up the
plan of color serfdom which its use of the other adjective "white"
implies, as indicating everything decent and every part of the world
worth living in,--or trouble is written in the stars!

It is, therefore, of singular importance after disquieting delay to see
the real Pacifist appear. Both England and Germany have recently been
basing their claims to parts of black Africa on the wishes and interests
of the black inhabitants. Lloyd George has declared "the general
principle of national self-determination applicable at least to German
Africa," while Chancellor Hertling once welcomed a discussion "on the
reconstruction of the world's colonial possessions."

The demand that an Africa for Africans shall replace the present
barbarous scramble for exploitation by individual states comes from
singularly different sources. Colored America demands that "the
conquered German colonies should not be returned to Germany, neither
should they be held by the Allies. Here is the opportunity for the
establishment of a nation that may never recur. Thousands of colored
men, sick of white arrogance and hypocrisy, see in this their race's
only salvation."

Sir Harry H. Johnston recently said: "If we are to talk, as we do,
sentimentally but justly about restoring the nationhood of Poland, about
giving satisfaction to the separatist feeling in Ireland, and about what
is to be done for European nations who are oppressed, then we can hardly
exclude from this feeling the countries of Africa."

Laborers, black laborers, on the Canal Zone write: "Out of this chaos
may be the great awakening of our race. There is cause for rejoicing. If
we fail to embrace this opportunity now, we fail to see how we will be
ever able to solve the race question. It is for the British Negro, the
French Negro, and the American Negro to rise to the occasion and start a
national campaign, jointly and collectively, with this aim in view."

From British West Africa comes the bitter complaint "that the West
Africans should have the right or opportunity to settle their future for
themselves is a thing which hardly enters the mind of the European
politician. That the Balkan States should be admitted to the Council of
Peace and decide the government under which they are to live is taken as
a matter of course because they are Europeans, but no extra-European is
credited, even by the extremist advocates of human equality, with any
right except to humbly accept the fate which Europe shall decide for
him."

Here, then, is the danger and the demand; and the real Pacifist will
seek to organize, not simply the masses in white nations, guarding
against exploitation and profiteering, but will remember that no
permanent relief can come but by including in this organization the
lowest and the most exploited races in the world. World philanthropy,
like national philanthropy, must come as uplift and prevention and not
merely as alleviation and religious conversion. Reverence for humanity,
as such, must be installed in the world, and Africa should be the
talisman.

Black Africa, including British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Italian,
and Spanish possessions and the independent states of Abyssinia and
Liberia and leaving out of account Egypt and North Africa, on the one
hand, and South Africa, on the other, has an area of 8,200,000 square
miles and a population well over one hundred millions of black men,
with less than one hundred thousand whites.

Commercial exploitation in Africa has already larger results to show
than most people realize. Annually $200,000,000 worth of goods was
coming out of black Africa before the World War, including a third of
the world's supply of rubber, a quarter of all of the world's cocoa, and
practically all of the world's cloves, gum-arabic, and palm-oil. In
exchange there was being returned to Africa one hundred millions in
cotton cloth, twenty-five millions in iron and steel, and as much in
foods, and probably twenty-five millions in liquors.

Here are the beginnings of a modern industrial system: iron and steel
for permanent investment, bound to yield large dividends; cloth as the
cheapest exchange for invaluable raw material; liquor to tickle the
appetites of the natives and render the alienation of land and the
breakdown of customary law easier; eventually forced and contract labor
under white drivers to increase and systematize the production of raw
materials. These materials are capable of indefinite expansion: cotton
may yet challenge the southern United States, fruits and vegetables,
hides and skins, lumber and dye-stuffs, coffee and tea, grain and
tobacco, and fibers of all sorts can easily follow organized and
systematic toil.

Is it a paradise of industry we thus contemplate? It is much more likely
to be a hell. Under present plans there will be no voice or law or
custom to protect labor, no trades unions, no eight-hour laws, no
factory legislation,--nothing of that great body of legislation built up
in modern days to protect mankind from sinking to the level of beasts of
burden. All the industrial deviltry, which civilization has been driving
to the slums and the backwaters, will have a voiceless continent to
conceal it. If the slave cannot be taken from Africa, slavery can be
taken to Africa.

Who are the folk who live here? They are brown and black, curly and
crisp-haired, short and tall, and longheaded. Out of them in days
without date flowed the beginnings of Egypt; among them rose, later,
centers of culture at Ghana, Melle, and Timbuktu. Kingdoms and empires
flourished in Songhay and Zymbabwe, and art and industry in Yoruba and
Benin. They have fought every human calamity in its most hideous form
and yet today they hold some similar vestiges of a mighty past,--their
work in iron, their weaving and carving, their music and singing, their
tribal government, their town-meeting and marketplace, their desperate
valor in war.

Missionaries and commerce have left some good with all their evil. In
black Africa today there are more than a thousand government schools and
some thirty thousand mission schools, with a more or less regular
attendance of three-quarters of a million school children. In a few
cases training of a higher order is given chiefs' sons and selected
pupils. These beginnings of education are not much for so vast a land
and there is no general standard or set plan of development, but, after
all, the children of Africa are beginning to learn.

In black Africa today only one-seventeenth of the land and a ninth of
the people in Liberia and Abyssinia are approximately independent,
although menaced and policed by European capitalism. Half the land and
the people are in domains under Portugal, France, and Belgium, held with
the avowed idea of exploitation for the benefit of Europe under a system
of caste and color serfdom. Out of this dangerous nadir of development
stretch two paths: one is indicated by the condition of about three per
cent of the people who in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and French
Senegal, are tending toward the path of modern development; the other
path, followed by a fourth of the land and people, has local
self-government and native customs and might evolve, if undisturbed, a
native culture along their own peculiar lines. A tenth of the land,
sparsely settled, is being monopolized and held for whites to make an
African Australia. To these later folk must be added the four and
one-half millions of the South African Union, who by every modern device
are being forced into landless serfdom.

Before the World War tendencies were strongly toward the destruction of
independent Africa, the industrial slavery of the mass of the blacks and
the encouragement of white immigration, where possible, to hold the
blacks in subjection.

Against this idea let us set the conception of a new African World
State, a Black Africa, applying to these peoples the splendid
pronouncements which have of late been so broadly and perhaps carelessly
given the world: recognizing in Africa the declaration of the American
Federation of Labor, that "no people must be forced under sovereignty
under which it does not wish to live"; recognizing in President Wilson's
message to the Russians, the "principle of the undictated development of
all peoples"; recognizing the resolution of the recent conference of the
Aborigines Protection Society of England, "that in any reconstruction of
Africa, which may result from this war, the interests of the native
inhabitants and also their wishes, in so far as those wishes can be
clearly ascertained, should be recognized as among the principal factors
upon which the decision of their destiny should be based." In other
words, recognizing for the first time in the history of the modern world
that black men are human.

It may not be possible to build this state at once. With the victory of
the Entente Allies, the German colonies, with their million of square
miles and one-half million black inhabitants, should form such a
nucleus. It would give Black Africa its physical beginnings. Beginning
with the German colonies two other sets of colonies could be added, for
obvious reasons. Neither Portugal nor Belgium has shown any particular
capacity for governing colonial peoples. Valid excuses may in both cases
be advanced, but it would certainly be fair to Belgium to have her start
her great task of reorganization after the World War with neither the
burden nor the temptation of colonies; and in the same way Portugal has,
in reality, the alternative of either giving up her colonies to an
African State or to some other European State in the near future. These
two sets of colonies would add 1,700,000 square miles and eighteen
million inhabitants. It would not, however, be fair to despoil Germany,
Belgium, and Portugal of their colonies unless, as Count Hertling once
demanded, the whole question of colonies be opened.

How far shall the modern world recognize nations which are not nations,
but combinations of a dominant caste and a suppressed horde of serfs?
Will it not be possible to rebuild a world with compact nations, empires
of self-governing elements, and colonies of backward peoples under
benevolent international control?

The great test would be easy. Does England propose to erect in India and
Nigeria nations brown and black which shall be eventually independent,
self-governing entities, with a full voice in the British Imperial
Government? If not, let these states either have independence at once
or, if unfitted for that, be put under international tutelage and
guardianship. It is possible that France, with her great heart, may
welcome a Black France,--an enlarged Senegal in Africa; but it would
seem that eventually all Africa south of twenty degrees north latitude
and north of the Union of South Africa should be included in a new
African State. Somaliland and Eritrea should be given to Abyssinia, and
then with Liberia we would start with two small, independent African
states and one large state under international control.

Does this sound like an impossible dream? No one could be blamed for so
regarding it before 1914. I, myself, would have agreed with them. But
since the nightmare of 1914-1918, since we have seen the impossible
happen and the unspeakable become so common as to cease to stir us; in a
day when Russia has dethroned her Czar, England has granted the suffrage
to women and is in the act of giving Home Rule to Ireland; when Germany
has adopted parliamentary government; when Jerusalem has been delivered
from the Turks; and the United States has taken control of its
railroads,--is it really so far-fetched to think of an Africa for the
Africans, guided by organized civilization?

No one would expect this new state to be independent and self-governing
from the start. Contrary, however, to present schemes for Africa the
world would expect independence and self-government as the only possible
end of the experiment At first we can conceive of no better way of
governing this state than through that same international control by
which we hope to govern the world for peace. A curious and instructive
parallel has been drawn by Simeon Strunsky: "Just as the common
ownership of the northwest territory helped to weld the colonies into
the United States, so could not joint and benevolent domination of
Africa and of other backward parts of the world be a cornerstone upon
which the future federation of the world could be built?"

From the British Labor Party comes this declaration: "With regard to the
colonies of the several belligerents in tropical Africa, from sea to
sea, the British Labor Movement disclaims all sympathy with the
imperialist idea that these should form the booty of any nation, should
be exploited for the profit of the capitalists, or should be used for
the promotion of the militarists' aims of government. In view of the
fact that it is impracticable here to leave the various peoples
concerned to settle their own destinies it is suggested that the
interests of humanity would be best served by the full and frank
abandonment by all the belligerents of any dreams of an African Empire;
the transfer of the present colonies of the European Powers in tropical
Africa, however, and the limits of this area may be defined to the
proposed Supernational Authority, or League of Nations."

Lloyd George himself has said in regard to the German colonies a word
difficult to restrict merely to them: "I have repeatedly declared that
they are held at the disposal of a conference, whose decision must have
primary regard to the wishes and interests of the native inhabitants of
such colonies. None of those territories is inhabited by Europeans. The
governing considerations, therefore, must be that the inhabitants should
be placed under the control of an administration acceptable to
themselves, one of whose main purposes will be to prevent their
exploitation for the benefit of European capitalists or governments."

The special commission for the government of this African State must,
naturally, be chosen with great care and thought. It must represent, not
simply governments, but civilization, science, commerce, social reform,
religious philanthropy without sectarian propaganda. It must include,
not simply white men, but educated and trained men of Negro blood. The
guiding principles before such a commission should be clearly
understood. In the first place, it ought by this time to be realized by
the labor movement throughout the world that no industrial democracy can
be built on industrial despotism, whether the two systems are in the
same country or in different countries, since the world today so nearly
approaches a common industrial unity. If, therefore, it is impossible in
any single land to uplift permanently skilled labor without also raising
common labor, so, too, there can be no permanent uplift of American or
European labor as long as African laborers are slaves.

Secondly, this building of a new African State does not mean the
segregation in it of all the world's black folk. It is too late in the
history of the world to go back to the idea of absolute racial
segregation. The new African State would not involve any idea of a vast
transplantation of the twenty-seven million Negroids of the western
world, of Africa, or of the gathering there of Negroid Asia. The Negroes
in the United States and the other Americas have earned the right to
fight out their problems where they are, but they could easily furnish
from time to time technical experts, leaders of thought, and
missionaries of culture for their backward brethren in the new Africa.

With these two principles, the practical policies to be followed out in
the government of the new states should involve a thorough and complete
system of modern education, built upon the present government, religion,
and customary laws of the natives. There should be no violent tampering
with the curiously efficient African institutions of local
self-government through the family and the tribe; there should be no
attempt at sudden "conversion" by religious propaganda. Obviously
deleterious customs and unsanitary usages must gradually be abolished,
but the general government, set up from without, must follow the example
of the best colonial administrators and build on recognized, established
foundations rather than from entirely new and theoretical plans.

The real effort to modernize Africa should be through schools rather
than churches. Within ten years, twenty million black children ought to
be in school. Within a generation young Africa should know the essential
outlines of modern culture and groups of bright African students could
be going to the world's great universities. From the beginning the
actual general government should use both colored and white officials
and later natives should be worked in. Taxation and industry could
follow the newer ideals of industrial democracy, avoiding private land
monopoly and poverty, and promoting co-operation in production and the
socialization of income. Difficulties as to capital and revenue would be
far less than many imagine. If a capable English administrator of
British Nigeria could with $1,500 build up a cocoa industry of twenty
million dollars annually, what might not be done in all Africa, without
gin, thieves, and hypocrisy?

Capital could not only be accumulated in Africa, but attracted from the
white world, with one great difference from present usage: no return so
fabulous would be offered that civilized lands would be tempted to
divert to colonial trade and invest materials and labor needed by the
masses at home, but rather would receive the same modest profits as
legitimate home industry offers.

There is no sense in asserting that the ideal of an African State, thus
governed and directed toward independence and self-government, is
impossible of realization. The first great essential is that the
civilized world believe in its possibility. By reason of a crime
(perhaps the greatest crime in human history) the modern world has been
systematically taught to despise colored peoples. Men of education and
decency ask, and ask seriously, if it is really possible to uplift
Africa. Are Negroes human, or, if human, developed far enough to absorb,
even under benevolent tutelage, any appreciable part of modern culture?
Has not the experiment been tried in Haiti and Liberia, and failed?

One cannot ignore the extraordinary fact that a world campaign beginning
with the slave-trade and ending with the refusal to capitalize the word
"Negro," leading through a passionate defense of slavery by attributing
every bestiality to blacks and finally culminating in the evident modern
profit which lies in degrading blacks,--all this has unconsciously
trained millions of honest, modern men into the belief that black folk
are sub-human. This belief is not based on science, else it would be
held as a postulate of the most tentative kind, ready at any time to be
withdrawn in the face of facts; the belief is not based on history, for
it is absolutely contradicted by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and
Arabian experience; nor is the belief based on any careful survey of the
social development of men of Negro blood to-day in Africa and America.
It is simply passionate, deep-seated heritage, and as such can be moved
by neither argument nor fact. Only faith in humanity will lead the world
to rise above its present color prejudice.

Those who do believe in men, who know what black men have done in human
history, who have taken pains to follow even superficially the story of
the rise of the Negro in Africa, the West Indies, and the Americas of
our day know that our modern contempt of Negroes rests upon no
scientific foundation worth a moment's attention. It is nothing more
than a vicious habit of mind. It could as easily be overthrown as our
belief in war, as our international hatreds, as our old conception of
the status of women, as our fear of educating the masses, and as our
belief in the necessity of poverty. We can, if we will, inaugurate on
the Dark Continent a last great crusade for humanity. With Africa
redeemed Asia would be safe and Europe indeed triumphant.

I have not mentioned North and South Africa, because my eye was centered
on the main mass of the Negro race. Yet it is clear that for the
development of Central Africa, Egypt should be free and independent,
there along the highway to a free and independent India; while Morocco,
Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli must become a part of Europe, with modern
development and home rule. South Africa, stripped of its black serfs and
their lands, must admit the resident natives and colored folk to its
body politic as equals.

The hands which Ethiopia shall soon stretch out unto God are not mere
hands of helplessness and supplication, but rather are they hands of
pain and promise; hard, gnarled, and muscled for the world's real work;
they are hands of fellowship for the half-submerged masses of a
distempered world; they are hands of helpfulness for an agonized God!

       *       *       *       *       *

Twenty centuries before Christ a great cloud swept over seas and settled
on Africa, darkening and well-nigh blotting out the culture of the land
of Egypt. For half a thousand years it rested there, until a black
woman, Queen Nefertari, "the most venerated figure in Egyptian history,"
rose to the throne of the Pharaohs and redeemed the world and her
people. Twenty centuries after Christ, Black Africa,--prostrated, raped,
and shamed, lies at the feet of the conquering Philistines of Europe.
Beyond the awful sea a black woman is weeping and waiting, with her sons
on her breast. What shall the end be? The world-old and fearful
things,--war and wealth, murder and luxury? Or shall it be a new
thing,--a new peace and a new democracy of all races,--a great humanity
of equal men? "_Semper novi quid ex Africa_!"




_The Princess of the Hither Isles_


Her soul was beautiful, wherefore she kept it veiled in lightly-laced
humility and fear, out of which peered anxiously and anon the white and
blue and pale-gold of her face,-beautiful as daybreak or as the laughing
of a child. She sat in the Hither Isles, well walled between the This
and Now, upon a low and silver throne, and leaned upon its armposts,
sadly looking upward toward the sun. Now the Hither Isles are flat and
cold and swampy, with drear-drab light and all manner of slimy, creeping
things, and piles of dirt and clouds of flying dust and sordid scraping
and feeding and noise.

She hated them and ever as her hands and busy feet swept back the dust
and slime her soul sat silver-throned, staring toward the great hill to
the westward, which shone so brilliant-golden beneath the sunlight and
above the sea.

The sea moaned and with it moaned the princess' soul, for she was
lonely,--very, very lonely, and full weary of the monotone of life. So
she was glad to see a moving in Yonder Kingdom on the mountainside,
where the sun shone warm, and when the king of Yonder Kingdom, silken in
robe and golden-crowned and warded by his hound, walked down along the
restless waters and sat beside the armpost of her throne, she wondered
why she could not love him and fly with him up the shining mountain's
side, out of the dirt and dust that nested between the This and Now. She
looked at him and tried to be glad, for he was bonny and good to look
upon, this king of Yonder Kingdom,--tall and straight, thin-lipped and
white and tawny. So, again, this last day, she strove to burn life into
his singularly sodden clay,--to put his icy soul aflame wherewith to
warm her own, to set his senses singing. Vacantly he heard her winged
words, staring and curling his long mustaches with vast thoughtfulness.
Then he said:

"We've found more gold in Yonder Kingdom."

"Hell seize your gold!" blurted the princess.

"No,--it's mine," he maintained stolidly.

She raised her eyes. "It belongs," she said, "to the Empire of the Sun."

"Nay,--the Sun belongs to us," said the king calmly as he glanced to
where Yonder Kingdom blushed above the sea. She glanced, too, and a
softness crept into her eyes.

"No, no," she murmured as with hesitating pause she raised her eyes
above the sea, above the hill, up into the sky where the sun hung silent
and splendid. Its robes were heaven's blue, lined and broidered in
living flame, and its crown was one vast jewel, glistening in glittering
glory that made the sun's own face a blackness,--the blackness of utter
light. With blinded, tear-filled eyes she peered into that formless
black and burning face and sensed in its soft, sad gleam unfathomed
understanding. With sudden, wild abandon she stretched her arms toward
it appealing, beseeching, entreating, and lo!

"Niggers and dagoes," said the king of Yonder Kingdom, glancing
carelessly backward and lighting in his lips a carefully rolled wisp of
fragrant tobacco. She looked back, too, but in half-wondering terror,
for it seemed--

A beggar man was creeping across the swamp, shuffling through the dirt
and slime. He was little and bald and black, rough-clothed, sodden with
dirt, and bent with toil. Yet withal something she sensed about him and
it seemed,--

The king of Yonder Kingdom lounged more comfortably beside the silver
throne and let curl a tiny trail of light-blue smoke.

"I hate beggars," he said, "especially brown and black ones." And he
then pointed at the beggar's retinue and laughed,--an unpleasant laugh,
welded of contempt and amusement. The princess looked and shrank on her
throne. He, the beggar man, was--was what? But his retinue,--that
squalid, sordid, parti-colored band of vacant, dull-faced filth and
viciousness--was writhing over the land, and he and they seemed almost
crouching underneath the scorpion lash of one tall skeleton, that looked
like Death, and the twisted woman whom men called Pain. Yet they all
walked as one.

The King of Yonder Kingdom laughed, but the princess shrank on her
throne, and the king on seeing her thus took a gold-piece from out of
his purse and tossed it carelessly to the passing throng. She watched it
with fascinated eyes,--how it rose and sailed and whirled and struggled
in the air, then seemed to burst, and upward flew its light and sheen
and downward dropped its dross. She glanced at the king, but he was
lighting a match. She watched the dross wallow in the slime, but the
sunlight fell on the back of the beggar's neck, and he turned his head.

The beggar passing afar turned his head and the princess straightened
on her throne; he turned his head and she shivered forward on her
silver seat; he looked upon her full and slow and suddenly she saw
within that formless black and burning face the same soft, glad gleam of
utter understanding, seen so many times before. She saw the suffering of
endless years and endless love that softened it. She saw the burning
passion of the sun and with it the cold, unbending duty-deeds of upper
air. All she had seen and dreamed of seeing in the rising, blazing sun
she saw now again and with it myriads more of human tenderness, of
longing, and of love. So, then, she knew. She rose as to a dream come
true, with solemn face and waiting eyes.

With her rose the king of Yonder Kingdom, almost eagerly.

"You'll come?" he cried. "You'll come and see my gold?" And then in
sudden generosity, he added: "You'll have a golden throne,-up there-when
we marry."

But she, looking up and on with radiant face, answered softly: "I come."

So down and up and on they mounted,-the black beggar man and his
cavalcade of Death and Pain, and then a space; and then a lone, black
hound that nosed and whimpered as he ran, and then a space; and then the
king of Yonder Kingdom in his robes, and then a space; and last the
princess of the Hither Isles, with face set sunward and lovelight in her
eyes.

And so they marched and struggled on and up through endless years and
spaces and ever the black beggar looked back past death and pain toward
the maid and ever the maid strove forward with lovelit eyes, but ever
the great and silken shoulders of the king of Yonder Kingdom arose
between the princess and the sun like a cloud of storms.

Now, finally, they neared unto the hillsides topmost shoulder and there
most eagerly the king bent to the bowels of the earth and bared its
golden entrails,-all green and gray and rusted-while the princess
strained her pitiful eyes aloft to where the beggar, set 'twixt Death
and Pain, whirled his slim back against the glory of the setting sun and
stood somber in his grave majesty, enhaloed and transfigured,
outstretching his long arms, and around all heaven glittered jewels in a
cloth of gold.

A while the princess stood and moaned in mad amaze, then with one wilful
wrench she bared the white flowers of her breast and snatching forth her
own red heart held it with one hand aloft while with the other she
gathered close her robe and poised herself.

The king of Yonder Kingdom looked upward quickly, curiously, still
fingering the earth, and saw the offer of her bleeding heart.

"It's a Negro!" he growled darkly; "it may not be."

The woman quivered.

"It's a nigger!" he repeated fiercely. "It's neither God nor man, but a
nigger!"

The princess stepped forward.

The king grasped his sword and looked north and east; he raised his
sword and looked south and west.

"I seek the sun," the princess sang, and started into the west.

"Never!" cried the king of Yonder Kingdom, "for such were blasphemy and
defilement and the making of all evil."

So, raising his great sword he struck with all his might, and more. Down
hissed the blow and it bit that little, white, heart-holding hand until
it flew armless and disbodied up through the sunlit air. Down hissed the
blow and it clove the whimpering hound until his last shriek shook the
stars. Down hissed the blow and it rent the earth. It trembled, fell
apart, and yawned to a chasm wide as earth from heaven, deep as hell,
and empty, cold, and silent.

On yonder distant shore blazed the mighty Empire of the Sun in warm and
blissful radiance, while on this side, in shadows cold and dark, gloomed
the Hither Isles and the hill that once was golden, but now was green
and slimy dross; all below was the sad and moaning sea, while between
the Here and There flew the severed hand and dripped the bleeding heart.

Then up from the soul of the princess welled a cry of dark
despair,--such a cry as only babe-raped mothers know and murdered loves.
Poised on the crumbling edge of that great nothingness the princess
hung, hungering with her eyes and straining her fainting ears against
the awful splendor of the sky.

Out from the slime and shadows groped the king, thundering: "Back--don't
be a fool!"

But down through the thin ether thrilled the still and throbbing warmth
of heaven's sun, whispering "Leap!"

And the princess leapt.




IV

OF WORK AND WEALTH


For fifteen years I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the
fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of
half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and
replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.

The teacher's life is a double one. He stands in a certain fear. He
tends to be stilted, almost dishonest, veiling himself before those
awful eyes. Not the eyes of Almighty God are so straight, so
penetrating, so all-seeing as the wonder-swept eyes of youth. You walk
into a room: to the left is a tall window, bright with colors of crimson
and gold and sunshine. Here are rows of books and there is a table.
Somber blackboards clothe the walls to the right and beside your desk is
the delicate ivory of a nobly cast head. But you see nothing of this:
you see only a silence and eyes,--fringed, soft eyes; hard eyes; eyes
great and small; eyes here so poignant with beauty that the sob
struggles in your throat; eyes there so hard with sorrow that laughter
wells up to meet and beat it back; eyes through which the mockery and
ridicule of hell or some pulse of high heaven may suddenly flash. Ah!
That mighty pause before the class,--that orison and benediction--how
much of my life it has been and made.

I fought earnestly against posing before my class. I tried to be natural
and honest and frank, but it was a bitter hard. What would you say to a
soft, brown face, aureoled in a thousand ripples of gray-black hair,
which knells suddenly: "Do you trust white people?" You do not and you
know that you do not, much as you want to; yet you rise and lie and say
you do; you must say it for her salvation and the world's; you repeat
that she must trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the
while you are lying and every level, silent eye there knows you are
lying, and miserably you sit and lie on, to the greater glory of God.

I taught history and economics and something called "sociology" at
Atlanta University, where, as our Mr. Webster used to say, we professors
occupied settees and not mere chairs. I was fortunate with this teaching
in having vivid in the minds of my pupils a concrete social problem of
which we all were parts and which we desperately desired to solve. There
was little danger, then, of my teaching or of their thinking becoming
purely theoretical. Work and wage were thrilling realities to us all.
What did we study? I can tell you best by taking a concrete human case,
such as was continually leaping to our eyes and thought and demanding
understanding and interpretation and what I could bring of prophecy.

       *       *       *       *       *

St. Louis sprawls where mighty rivers meet,--as broad as Philadelphia,
but three stories high instead of two, with wider streets and dirtier
atmosphere, over the dull-brown of wide, calm rivers. The city overflows
into the valleys of Illinois and lies there, writhing under its grimy
cloud. The other city is dusty and hot beyond all dream,--a feverish
Pittsburg in the Mississippi Valley--a great, ruthless, terrible thing!
It is the sort that crushes man and invokes some living superman,--a
giant of things done, a clang of awful accomplishment.

Three men came wandering across this place. They were neither kings nor
wise men, but they came with every significance--perhaps even
greater--than that which the kings bore in the days of old. There was
one who came from the North,--brawny and riotous with energy, a man of
concentrated power, who held all the thunderbolts of modern capital in
his great fists and made flour and meat, iron and steel, cunning
chemicals, wood, paint and paper, transforming to endless tools a
disemboweled earth. He was one who saw nothing, knew nothing, sought
nothing but the making and buying of that which sells; who out from the
magic of his hand rolled over miles of iron road, ton upon ton of food
and metal and wood, of coal and oil and lumber, until the thronging of
knotted ways in East and real St. Louis was like the red, festering
ganglia of some mighty heart.

Then from the East and called by the crash of thunderbolts and
forked-flame came the Unwise Man,--unwise by the theft of endless ages,
but as human as anything God ever made. He was the slave for the miracle
maker. It was he that the thunderbolts struck and electrified into
gasping energy. The rasp of his hard breathing shook the midnights of
all this endless valley and the pulse of his powerful arms set the great
nation to trembling.

And then, at last, out of the South, like a still, small voice, came the
third man,--black, with great eyes and greater memories; hesitantly
eager and yet with the infinite softness and ancient calm which come
from that eternal race whose history is not the history of a day, but
of endless ages. Here, surely, was fit meeting-place for these curiously
intent forces, for these epoch-making and age-twisting forces, for these
human feet on their super-human errands.

Yesterday I rode in East St. Louis. It is the kind of place one quickly
recognizes,--tireless and with no restful green of verdure; hard and
uneven of street; crude, cold, and even hateful of aspect; conventional,
of course, in its business quarter, but quickly beyond one sees the ruts
and the hollows, the stench of ill-tamed sewerage, unguarded railroad
crossings, saloons outnumbering churches and churches catering to
saloons; homes impudently strait and new, prostitutes free and happy,
gamblers in paradise, the town "wide open," shameless and frank; great
factories pouring out stench, filth, and flame--these and all other
things so familiar in the world market places, where industry triumphs
over thought and products overwhelm men. May I tell, too, how yesterday
I rode in this city past flame-swept walls and over gray ashes; in
streets almost wet with blood and beside ruins, where the bones of dead
men new-bleached peered out at me in sullen wonder?

Across the river, in the greater city, where bronze St. Louis,--that
just and austere king--looks with angry, fear-swept eyes down from the
rolling heights of Forest Park, which knows him not nor heeds him, there
is something of the same thing, but this city is larger and older and
the forces of evil have had some curbing from those who have seen the
vision and panted for life; but eastward from St. Louis there is a land
of no taxes for great industries; there is a land where you may buy
grafting politicians at far less rate than you would pay for franchises
or privileges in a modern town. There, too, you may escape the buying of
indulgences from the great terminal fist, which squeezes industry out of
St. Louis. In fact, East St. Louis is a paradise for high and frequent
dividends and for the piling up of wealth to be spent in St. Louis and
Chicago and New York and when the world is sane again, across the seas.

So the Unwise Men pouring out of the East,--falling, scrambling, rushing
into America at the rate of a million a year,--ran, walked, and crawled
to this maelstrom of the workers. They garnered higher wage than ever
they had before, but not all of it came in cash. A part, and an
insidious part, was given to them transmuted into whiskey, prostitutes,
and games of chance. They laughed and disported themselves. God! Had not
their mothers wept enough? It was a good town. There was no veil of
hypocrisy here, but a wickedness, frank, ungilded, and open. To be sure,
there were things sometimes to reveal the basic savagery and thin
veneer. Once, for instance, a man was lynched for brawling on the public
square of the county seat; once a mayor who sought to "clean up" was
publicly assassinated; always there was theft and rumors of theft,
until St. Clair County was a hissing in good men's ears; but always,
too, there were good wages and jolly hoodlums and unchecked wassail of
Saturday nights. Gamblers, big and little, rioted in East St. Louis. The
little gamblers used cards and roulette wheels and filched the weekly
wage of the workers. The greater gamblers used meat and iron and undid
the foundations of the world. All the gods of chance flaunted their wild
raiment here, above the brown flood of the Mississippi.

Then the world changed; then civilization, built for culture, rebuilt
itself for wilful murder in Europe, Asia, America, and the Southern
Seas. Hands that made food made powder, and iron for railways was iron
for guns. The wants of common men were forgotten before the groan of
giants. Streams of gold, lost from the world's workers, filtered and
trickled into the hands of gamblers and put new power into the
thunderbolts of East St. Louis.

Wages had been growing before the World War. Slowly but remorselessly
the skilled and intelligent, banding themselves, had threatened the
coffers of the mighty, and slowly the mighty had disgorged. Even the
common workers, the poor and unlettered, had again and again gripped the
sills of the city walls and pulled themselves to their chins; but, alas!
there were so many hands and so many mouths and the feet of the
Disinherited kept coming across the wet paths of the sea to this old El
Dorado.

War brought subtle changes. Wages stood still while prices fattened. It
was not that the white American worker was threatened with starvation,
but it was what was, after all, a more important question,--whether or
not he should lose his front-room and victrola and even the dream of a
Ford car.

There came a whirling and scrambling among the workers,--they fought
each other; they climbed on each others' backs. The skilled and
intelligent, banding themselves even better than before, bargained with
the men of might and held them by bitter threats; the less skilled and
more ignorant seethed at the bottom and tried, as of old, to bring it
about that the ignorant and unlettered should learn to stand together
against both capital and skilled labor.

It was here that there came out of the East a beam of unearthly
light,--a triumph of possible good in evil so strange that the workers
hardly believed it. Slowly they saw the gates of Ellis Island closing,
slowly the footsteps of the yearly million men became fainter and
fainter, until the stream of immigrants overseas was stopped by the
shadow of death at the very time when new murder opened new markets over
all the world to American industry; and the giants with the thunderbolts
stamped and raged and peered out across the world and called for men and
evermore,--men!

The Unwise Men laughed and squeezed reluctant dollars out of the fists
of the mighty and saw in their dream the vision of a day when labor, as
they knew it, should come into its own; saw this day and saw it with
justice and with right, save for one thing, and that was the sound of
the moan of the Disinherited, who still lay without the walls. When they
heard this moan and saw that it came not across the seas, they were at
first amazed and said it was not true; and then they were mad and said
it should not be. Quickly they turned and looked into the red blackness
of the South and in their hearts were fear and hate!

What did they see? They saw something at which they had been taught to
laugh and make sport; they saw that which the heading of every newspaper
column, the lie of every cub reporter, the exaggeration of every press
dispatch, and the distortion of every speech and book had taught them
was a mass of despicable men, inhuman; at best, laughable; at worst, the
meat of mobs and fury.

What did they see? They saw nine and one-half millions of human beings.
They saw the spawn of slavery, ignorant by law and by deviltry, crushed
by insult and debauched by systematic and criminal injustice. They saw a
people whose helpless women have been raped by thousands and whose men
lynched by hundreds in the face of a sneering world. They saw a people
with heads bloody, but unbowed, working faithfully at wages fifty per
cent. lower than the wages of the nation and under conditions which
shame civilization, saving homes, training children, hoping against
hope. They saw the greatest industrial miracle of modern days,--slaves
transforming themselves to freemen and climbing out of perdition by
their own efforts, despite the most contemptible opposition God ever
saw,--they saw all this and what they saw the distraught employers of
America saw, too.

The North called to the South. A scream of rage went up from the cotton
monopolists and industrial barons of the new South. Who was this who
dared to "interfere" with their labor? Who sought to own their black
slaves but they? Who honored and loved "niggers" as they did?

They mobilized all the machinery of modern oppression: taxes, city
ordinances, licenses, state laws, municipal regulations, wholesale
police arrests and, of course, the peculiarly Southern method of the mob
and the lyncher. They appealed frantically to the United States
Government; they groveled on their knees and shed wild tears at the
"suffering" of their poor, misguided black friends, and yet, despite
this, the Northern employers simply had to offer two and three dollars a
day and from one-quarter to one-half a million dark workers arose and
poured themselves into the North. They went to the mines of West
Virginia, because war needs coal; they went to the industries of New
Jersey and Pennsylvania, because war needs ships and iron; they went to
the automobiles of Detroit and the load-carrying of Chicago; and they
went to East St. Louis.

Now there came fear in the hearts of the Unwise Men. It was not that
their wages were lowered,--they went even higher. They received, not
simply, a living wage, but a wage that paid for some of the decencies,
and, in East St. Louis, many of the indecencies of life. What they
feared was not deprivation of the things they were used to and the
shadow of poverty, but rather the definite death of their rising dreams.
But if fear was new-born in the hearts of the Unwise Men, the black man
was born in a house of fear; to him poverty of the ugliest and straitest
type was father, mother, and blood-brother. He was slipping stealthily
northward to escape hunger and insult, the hand of oppression, and the
shadow of death.

Here, then, in the wide valley which Father Marquette saw peaceful and
golden, lazy with fruit and river, half-asleep beneath the nod of
God,--here, then, was staged every element for human tragedy, every
element of the modern economic paradox.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ah! That hot, wide plain of East St. Louis is a gripping thing. The
rivers are dirty with sweat and toil and lip, like lakes, along the low
and burdened shores; flatboats ramble and thread among them, and above
the steamers bridges swing on great arches of steel, striding with
mighty grace from shore to shore. Everywhere are brick kennels,--tall,
black and red chimneys, tongues of flame. The ground is littered with
cars and iron, tracks and trucks, boxes and crates, metals and coal and
rubber. Nature-defying cranes, grim elevators rise above pile on pile of
black and grimy lumber. And ever below is the water,--wide and silent,
gray-brown and yellow.

This is the stage for the tragedy: the armored might of the modern world
urged by the bloody needs of the world wants, fevered today by a
fabulous vision of gain and needing only hands, hands, hands! Fear of
loss and greed of gain in the hearts of the giants; the clustered
cunning of the modern workman, skilled as artificer and skilled in the
rhythm of the habit of work, tasting the world's good and panting for
more; fear of poverty and hate of "scabs" in the hearts of the workers;
the dumb yearning in the hearts of the oppressed; the echo of laughter
heard at the foot of the Pyramids; the faithful, plodding slouch of the
laborers; fear of the Shadow of Death in the hearts of black men.

We ask, and perhaps there is no answer, how far may the captain of the
world's industry do his deeds, despite the grinding tragedy of its
doing? How far may men fight for the beginning of comfort, out beyond
the horrid shadow of poverty, at the cost of starving other and what the
world calls lesser men? How far may those who reach up out of the slime
that fills the pits of the world's damned compel men with loaves to
divide with men who starve?

The answers to these questions are hard, but yet one answer looms above
all,--justice lies with the lowest; the plight of the lowest man,--the
plight of the black man--deserves the first answer, and the plight of
the giants of industry, the last.

Little cared East St. Louis for all this bandying of human problems, so
long as its grocers and saloon-keepers flourished and its industries
steamed and screamed and smoked and its bankers grew rich. Stupidity,
license, and graft sat enthroned in the City Hall. The new black folk
were exploited as cheerfully as white Polacks and Italians; the rent of
shacks mounted merrily, the street car lines counted gleeful gains, and
the crimes of white men and black men flourished in the dark. The high
and skilled and smart climbed on the bent backs of the ignorant; harder
the mass of laborers strove to unionize their fellows and to bargain
with employers.

Nor were the new blacks fools. They had no love for nothings in labor;
they had no wish to make their fellows' wage envelopes smaller, but they
were determined to make their own larger. They, too, were willing to
join in the new union movement. But the unions did not want them. Just
as employers monopolized meat and steel, so they sought to monopolize
labor and beat a giant's bargain. In the higher trades they succeeded.
The best electrician in the city was refused admittance to the union and
driven from the town because he was black. No black builder, printer, or
machinist could join a union or work in East St. Louis, no matter what
his skill or character. But out of the stink of the stockyards and the
dust of the aluminum works and the sweat of the lumber yards the willing
blacks could not be kept.

They were invited to join unions of the laborers here and they joined.
White workers and black workers struck at the aluminum works in the fall
and won higher wages and better hours; then again in the spring they
struck to make bargaining compulsory for the employer, but this time
they fronted new things. The conflagration of war had spread to America;
government and court stepped in and ordered no hesitation, no strikes;
the work must go on.

Deeper was the call for workers. Black men poured in and red anger
flamed in the hearts of the white workers. The anger was against the
wielders of the thunderbolts, but here it was impotent because employers
stood with the hand of the government before their faces; it was against
entrenched union labor, which had risen on the backs of the unskilled
and unintelligent and on the backs of those whom for any reason of race
or prejudice or chicane they could beat beyond the bars of competition;
and finally the anger of the mass of white workers was turned toward
these new black interlopers, who seemed to come to spoil their last
dream of a great monopoly of common labor.

These angers flamed and the union leaders, fearing their fury and
knowing their own guilt, not only in the larger and subtler matter of
bidding their way to power across the weakness of their less fortunate
fellows, but also conscious of their part in making East St. Louis a
miserable town of liquor and lust, leaped quickly to ward the gathering
thunder from their own heads. The thing they wanted was even at their
hands: here were black men, guilty not only of bidding for jobs which
white men could have held at war prices, even if they could not fill,
but also guilty of being black! It was at this blackness that the unions
pointed the accusing finger. It was here that they committed the
unpardonable crime. It was here that they entered the Shadow of Hell,
where suddenly from a fight for wage and protection against industrial
oppression East St. Louis became the center of the oldest and nastiest
form of human oppression,--race hatred.

The whole situation lent itself to this terrible transformation.
Everything in the history of the United States, from slavery to Sunday
supplements, from disfranchisement to residence segregation, from
"Jim-Crow" cars to a "Jim-Crow" army draft--all this history of
discrimination and insult festered to make men think and willing to
think that the venting of their unbridled anger against 12,000,000
humble, upstriving workers was a way of settling the industrial tangle
of the ages. It was the logic of the broken plate, which, seared of old
across its pattern, cracks never again, save along the old destruction.

So hell flamed in East St. Louis! The white men drove even black union
men out of their unions and when the black men, beaten by night and
assaulted, flew to arms and shot back at the marauders, five thousand
rioters arose and surged like a crested stormwave, from noonday until
midnight; they killed and beat and murdered; they dashed out the brains
of children and stripped off the clothes of women; they drove victims
into the flames and hanged the helpless to the lighting poles. Fathers
were killed before the faces of mothers; children were burned; heads
were cut off with axes; pregnant women crawled and spawned in dark, wet
fields; thieves went through houses and firebrands followed; bodies were
thrown from bridges; and rocks and bricks flew through the air.

The Negroes fought. They grappled with the mob like beasts at bay. They
drove them back from the thickest cluster of their homes and piled the
white dead on the street, but the cunning mob caught the black men
between the factories and their homes, where they knew they were armed
only with their dinner pails. Firemen, policemen, and militiamen stood
with hanging hands or even joined eagerly with the mob.

It was the old world horror come to life again: all that Jews suffered
in Spain and Poland; all that peasants suffered in France, and Indians
in Calcutta; all that aroused human deviltry had accomplished in ages
past they did in East St. Louis, while the rags of six thousand
half-naked black men and women fluttered across the bridges of the calm
Mississippi.

The white South laughed,--it was infinitely funny--the "niggers" who had
gone North to escape slavery and lynching had met the fury of the mob
which they had fled. Delegations rushed North from Mississippi and
Texas, with suspicious timeliness and with great-hearted offers to take
these workers back to a lesser hell. The man from Greensville,
Mississippi, who wanted a thousand got six, because, after all, the end
was not so simple.

No, the end was not simple. On the contrary, the problem raised by East
St. Louis was curiously complex. The ordinary American, tired of the
persistence of "the Negro problem," sees only another anti-Negro mob and
wonders, not when we shall settle this problem, but when we shall be
well rid of it. The student of social things sees another mile-post in
the triumphant march of union labor; he is sorry that blood and rapine
should mark its march,--but, what will you? War is life!

Despite these smug reasonings the bare facts were these: East St. Louis,
a great industrial center, lost 5,000 laborers,--good, honest,
hard-working laborers. It was not the criminals, either black or white,
who were driven from East St. Louis. They are still there. They will
stay there. But half the honest black laborers were gone. The crippled
ranks of industrial organization in the mid-Mississippi Valley cannot be
recruited from Ellis Island, because in Europe men are dead and maimed,
and restoration, when restoration comes, will raise a European demand
for labor such as this age has never seen. The vision of industrial
supremacy has come to the giants who lead American industry and finance.
But it can never be realized unless the laborers are here to do the
work,--the skilled laborers, the common laborers, the willing laborers,
the well-paid laborers. The present forces, organized however cunningly,
are not large enough to do what America wants; but there is another
group of laborers, 12,000,000 strong, the natural heirs, by every logic
of justice, to the fruits of America's industrial advance. They will be
used simply because they must be used,--but their using means East St.
Louis!

Eastward from St. Louis lie great centers, like Chicago, Indianapolis,
Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and New York; in every one
of these and in lesser centers there is not only the industrial unrest
of war and revolutionized work, but there is the call for workers, the
coming of black folk, and the deliberate effort to divert the thoughts
of men, and particularly of workingmen, into channels of race hatred
against blacks. In every one of these centers what happened in East St.
Louis has been attempted, with more or less success. Yet the American
Negroes stand today as the greatest strategic group in the world. Their
services are indispensable, their temper and character are fine, and
their souls have seen a vision more beautiful than any other mass of
workers. They may win back culture to the world if their strength can be
used with the forces of the world that make for justice and not against
the hidden hates that fight for barbarism. For fight they must and fight
they will!

Rising on wings we cross again the rivers of St. Louis, winding and
threading between the towers of industry that threaten and drown the
towers of God. Far, far beyond, we sight the green of fields and hills;
but ever below lies the river, blue,--brownish-gray, touched with the
hint of hidden gold. Drifting through half-flooded lowlands, with
shanties and crops and stunted trees, past struggling corn and
straggling village, we rush toward the Battle of the Marne and the West,
from this dread Battle of the East. Westward, dear God, the fire of Thy
Mad World crimsons our Heaven. Our answering Hell rolls eastward from
St. Louis.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here, in microcosm, is the sort of economic snarl that arose continually
for me and my pupils to solve. We could bring to its unraveling little
of the scholarly aloofness and academic calm of most white universities.
To us this thing was Life and Hope and Death!

How should we think such a problem through, not simply as Negroes, but
as men and women of a new century, helping to build a new world? And
first of all, here is no simple question of race antagonism. There are
no races, in the sense of great, separate, pure breeds of men, differing
in attainment, development, and capacity. There are great groups,--now
with common history, now with common interests, now with common
ancestry; more and more common experience and present interest drive
back the common blood and the world today consists, not of races, but of
the imperial commercial group of master capitalists, international and
predominantly white; the national middle classes of the several nations,
white, yellow, and brown, with strong blood bonds, common languages, and
common history; the international laboring class of all colors; the
backward, oppressed groups of nature-folk, predominantly yellow, brown,
and black.

Two questions arise from the work and relations of these groups: how to
furnish goods and services for the wants of men and how equitably and
sufficiently to satisfy these wants. There can be no doubt that we have
passed in our day from a world that could hardly satisfy the physical
wants of the mass of men, by the greatest effort, to a world whose
technique supplies enough for all, if all can claim their right. Our
great ethical question today is, therefore, how may we justly distribute
the world's goods to satisfy the necessary wants of the mass of men.

What hinders the answer to this question? Dislikes, jealousies,
hatreds,--undoubtedly like the race hatred in East St. Louis; the
jealousy of English and German; the dislike of the Jew and the Gentile.
But these are, after all, surface disturbances, sprung from ancient
habit more than from present reason. They persist and are encouraged
because of deeper, mightier currents. If the white workingmen of East
St. Louis felt sure that Negro workers would not and could not take the
bread and cake from their mouths, their race hatred would never have
been translated into murder. If the black workingmen of the South could
earn a decent living under decent circumstances at home, they would not
be compelled to underbid their white fellows.

Thus the shadow of hunger, in a world which never needs to be hungry,
drives us to war and murder and hate. But why does hunger shadow so vast
a mass of men? Manifestly because in the great organizing of men for
work a few of the participants come out with more wealth than they can
possibly use, while a vast number emerge with less than can decently
support life. In earlier economic stages we defended this as the reward
of Thrift and Sacrifice, and as the punishment of Ignorance and Crime.
To this the answer is sharp: Sacrifice calls for no such reward and
Ignorance deserves no such punishment. The chief meaning of our present
thinking is that the disproportion between wealth and poverty today
cannot be adequately accounted for by the thrift and ignorance of the
rich and the poor.

Yesterday we righted one great mistake when we realized that the
ownership of the laborer did not tend to increase production. The world
at large had learned this long since, but black slavery arose again in
America as an inexplicable anachronism, a wilful crime. The freeing of
the black slaves freed America. Today we are challenging another
ownership,-the ownership of materials which go to make the goods we
need. Private ownership of land, tools, and raw materials may at one
stage of economic development be a method of stimulating production and
one which does not greatly interfere with equitable distribution. When,
however, the intricacy and length of technical production increased, the
ownership of these things becomes a monopoly, which easily makes the
rich richer and the poor poorer. Today, therefore, we are challenging
this ownership; we are demanding general consent as to what materials
shall be privately owned and as to how materials shall be used. We are
rapidly approaching the day when we shall repudiate all private property
in raw materials and tools and demand that distribution hinge, not on
the power of those who monopolize the materials, but on the needs of the
mass of men.

Can we do this and still make sufficient goods, justly gauge the needs
of men, and rightly decide who are to be considered "men"? How do we
arrange to accomplish these things today? Somebody decides whose wants
should be satisfied. Somebody organizes industry so as to satisfy these
wants. What is to hinder the same ability and foresight from being used
in the future as in the past? The amount and kind of human ability
necessary need not be decreased,--it may even be vastly increased, with
proper encouragement and rewards. Are we today evoking the necessary
ability? On the contrary, it is not the Inventor, the Manager, and the
Thinker who today are reaping the great rewards of industry, but rather
the Gambler and the Highwayman. Rightly-organized industry might easily
save the Gambler's Profit and the Monopolist's Interest and by paying a
more discriminating reward in wealth and honor bring to the service of
the state more ability and sacrifice than we can today command. If we do
away with interest and profit, consider the savings that could be made;
but above all, think how great the revolution would be when we ask the
mysterious Somebody to decide in the light of public opinion whose wants
should be satisfied. This is the great and real revolution that is
coming in future industry.

But this is not the need of the revolution nor indeed, perhaps, its real
beginning. What we must decide sometime is who are to be considered
"men." Today, at the beginning of this industrial change, we are
admitting that economic classes must give way. The laborers' hire must
increase, the employers' profit must be curbed. But how far shall this
change go? Must it apply to all human beings and to all work throughout
the world?

Certainly not. We seek to apply it slowly and with some reluctance to
white men and more slowly and with greater reserve to white women, but
black folk and brown and for the most part yellow folk we have widely
determined shall not be among those whose needs must justly be heard and
whose wants must be ministered to in the great organization of world
industry.

In the teaching of my classes I was not willing to stop with showing
that this was unfair,--indeed I did not have to do this. They knew
through bitter experience its rank injustice, because they were black.
What I had to show was that no real reorganization of industry could be
permanently made with the majority of mankind left out. These
disinherited darker peoples must either share in the future industrial
democracy or overturn the world.

Of course, the foundation of such a system must be a high, ethical
ideal. We must really envisage the wants of humanity. We must want the
wants of all men. We must get rid of the fascination for exclusiveness.
Here, in a world full of folk, men are lonely. The rich are lonely. We
are all frantic for fellow-souls, yet we shut souls out and bar the ways
and bolster up the fiction of the Elect and the Superior when the great
mass of men is capable of producing larger and larger numbers for every
human height of attainment. To be sure, there are differences between
men and groups and there will ever be, but they will be differences of
beauty and genius and of interest and not necessarily of ugliness,
imbecility, and hatred.

The meaning of America is the beginning of the discovery of the Crowd.
The crowd is not so well-trained as a Versailles garden party of Louis
XIV, but it is far better trained than the Sans-culottes and it has
infinite possibilities. What a world this will be when human
possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger
is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior!

What hinders our approach to the ideals outlined above? Our profit from
degradation, our colonial exploitation, our American attitude toward the
Negro. Think again of East St. Louis! Think back of that to slavery and
Reconstruction! Do we want the wants of American Negroes satisfied? Most
certainly not, and that negative is the greatest hindrance today to the
reorganization of work and redistribution of wealth, not only in
America, but in the world.

All humanity must share in the future industrial democracy of the world.
For this it must be trained in intelligence and in appreciation of the
good and the beautiful. Present Big Business,--that Science of Human
Wants--must be perfected by eliminating the price paid for waste, which
is Interest, and for Chance, which is Profit, and making all income a
personal wage for service rendered by the recipient; by recognizing no
possible human service as great enough to enable a person to designate
another as an idler or as a worker at work which he cannot do. Above
all, industry must minister to the wants of the many and not to the few,
and the Negro, the Indian, the Mongolian, and the South Sea Islander
must be among the many as well as Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen.

In this coming socialization of industry we must guard against that same
tyranny of the majority that has marked democracy in the making of laws.
There must, for instance, persist in this future economics a certain
minimum of machine-like work and prompt obedience and submission. This
necessity is a simple corollary from the hard facts of the physical
world. It must be accepted with the comforting thought that its routine
need not demand twelve hours a day or even eight. With Work for All and
All at Work probably from three to six hours would suffice, and leave
abundant time for leisure, exercise, study, and avocations.

But what shall we say of work where spiritual values and social
distinctions enter? Who shall be Artists and who shall be Servants in
the world to come? Or shall we all be artists and all serve?




_The Second Coming_


Three bishops sat in San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York, peering
gloomily into three flickering fires, which cast and recast shuddering
shadows on book-lined walls. Three letters lay in their laps, which
said:

"And thou, Valdosta, in the land of Georgia, art not least among the
princes of America, for out of thee shall come a governor who shall rule
my people."

The white bishop of New York scowled and impatiently threw the letter
into the fire. "Valdosta?" he thought,--"That's where I go to the
governor's wedding of little Marguerite, my white flower,--" Then he
forgot the writing in his musing, but the paper flared red in the
fireplace.

"Valdosta?" said the black bishop of New Orleans, turning uneasily in
his chair. "I must go down there. Those colored folk are acting
strangely. I don't know where all this unrest and moving will lead to.
Then, there's poor Lucy--" And he threw the letter into the fire, but
eyed it suspiciously as it flamed green. "Stranger things than that have
happened," he said slowly, "'and ye shall hear of wars and rumors of
wars ... for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against
kingdom.'"

In San Francisco the priest of Japan, abroad to study strange lands, sat
in his lacquer chair, with face like soft-yellow and wrinkled parchment.
Slowly he wrote in a great and golden book: "I have been strangely
bidden to the Val d' Osta, where one of those religious cults that swarm
here will welcome a prophet. I shall go and report to Kioto."

So in the dim waning of the day before Christmas three bishops met in
Valdosta and saw its mills and storehouses, its wide-throated and sandy
streets, in the mellow glow of a crimson sun. The governor glared
anxiously up the street as he helped the bishop of New York into his car
and welcomed him graciously.

"I am troubled," said the governor, "about the niggers. They are acting
queerly. I'm not certain but Fleming is back of it."

"Fleming?"

"Yes! He's running against me next term for governor; he's a firebrand;
wants niggers to vote and all that--pardon me a moment, there's a darky
I know--" and he hurried to the black bishop, who had just descended
from the "Jim-Crow" car, and clasped his hand cordially. They talked in
whispers. "Search diligently," said the governor in parting, "and bring
me word again." Then returning to his guest, "You will excuse me, won't
you?" he asked, "but I am sorely troubled! I never saw niggers act so.
They're leaving by the hundreds and those who stay are getting impudent!
They seem to be expecting something. What's the crowd, Jim?"

The chauffeur said that there was some sort of Chinese official in town
and everybody wanted to glimpse him. He drove around another way.

It all happened very suddenly. The bishop of New York, in full
canonicals for the early wedding, stepped out on the rear balcony of his
mansion, just as the dying sun lit crimson clouds of glory in the East
and burned the West.

"Fire!" yelled a wag in the surging crowd that was gathering to
celebrate a southern Christmas-eve; all laughed and ran.

The bishop of New York did not understand. He peered around. Was it that
dark, little house in the far backyard that flamed? Forgetful of his
robes he hurried down,--a brave, white figure in the sunset. He found
himself before an old, black, rickety stable. He could hear the mules
stamping within.

No. It was not fire. It was the sunset glowing through the cracks.
Behind the hut its glory rose toward God like flaming wings of cherubim.
He paused until he heard the faint wail of a child. Hastily he entered.
A white girl crouched before him, down by the very mules' feet, with a
baby in her arms,-a little mite of a baby that wailed weakly. Behind
mother and child stood a shadow. The bishop of New York turned to the
right, inquiringly, and saw a black man in bishop's robes that faintly
re-echoed his own. He turned away to the left and saw a golden Japanese
in golden garb. Then he heard the black man mutter behind him: "But He
was to come the second time in clouds of glory, with the nations
gathered around Him and angels--" at the word a shaft of glorious light
fell full upon the child, while without came the tramping of unnumbered
feet and the whirring of wings.

The bishop of New York bent quickly over the baby. It was black! He
stepped back with a gesture of disgust, hardly listening to and yet
hearing the black bishop, who spoke almost as if in apology:

"She's not really white; I know Lucy--you see, her mother worked for the
governor--" The white bishop turned on his heel and nearly trod on the
yellow priest, who knelt with bowed head before the pale mother and
offered incense and a gift of gold.

Out into the night rushed the bishop of New York. The wings of the
cherubim were folded black against the stars. As he hastened down the
front staircase the governor came rushing up the street steps.

"We are late!" he cried nervously. "The bride awaits!" He hurried the
bishop to the waiting limousine, asking him anxiously: "Did you hear
anything? Do you hear that noise? The crowd is growing strangely on the
streets and there seems to be a fire over toward the East. I never saw
so many people here--I fear violence--a mob--a lynching--I fear--hark!"

What was that which he, too, heard beneath the rhythm of unnumbered
feet? Deep in his heart a wonder grew. What was it? Ah, he knew! It was
music,--some strong and mighty chord. It rose higher as the
brilliantly-lighted church split the night, and swept radiantly toward
them. So high and clear that music flew, it seemed above, around, behind
them. The governor, ashen-faced, crouched in the car; but the bishop
said softly as the ecstasy pulsed in his heart:

"Such music, such wedding music! What choir is it?"




V

"THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE"


The lady looked at me severely; I glanced away. I had addressed the
little audience at some length on the disfranchisement of my people in
society, politics, and industry and had studiously avoided the while her
cold, green eye. I finished and shook weary hands, while she lay in
wait. I knew what was coming and braced my soul.

"Do you know where I can get a good colored cook?" she asked. I
disclaimed all guilty concupiscence. She came nearer and spitefully
shook a finger in my face.

"Why--won't--Negroes--work!" she panted. "I have given money for years
to Hampton and Tuskegee and yet I can't get decent servants. They won't
try. They're lazy! They're unreliable! They're impudent and they leave
without notice. They all want to be lawyers and doctors and" (she spat
the word in venom) "ladies!"

"God forbid!" I answered solemnly, and then being of gentle birth, and
unminded to strike a defenseless female of uncertain years, I ran; I ran
home and wrote a chapter in my book and this is it.

       *       *       *       *       *

I speak and speak bitterly as a servant and a servant's son, for my
mother spent five or more years of her life as a menial; my father's
family escaped, although grandfather as a boat steward had to fight hard
to be a man and not a lackey. He fought and won. My mother's folk,
however, during my childhood, sat poised on that thin edge between the
farmer and the menial. The surrounding Irish had two chances, the
factory and the kitchen, and most of them took the factory, with all its
dirt and noise and low wage. The factory was closed to us. Our little
lands were too small to feed most of us. A few clung almost sullenly to
the old homes, low and red things crouching on a wide level; but the
children stirred restlessly and walked often to town and saw its
wonders. Slowly they dribbled off,--a waiter here, a cook there, help
for a few weeks in Mrs. Blank's kitchen when she had summer boarders.

Instinctively I hated such work from my birth. I loathed it and shrank
from it. Why? I could not have said. Had I been born in Carolina instead
of Massachusetts I should hardly have escaped the taint of "service."
Its temptations in wage and comfort would soon have answered my
scruples; and yet I am sure I would have fought long even in Carolina,
for I knew in my heart that thither lay Hell.

I mowed lawns on contract, did "chores" that left me my own man, sold
papers, and peddled tea--anything to escape the shadow of the awful
thing that lurked to grip my soul. Once, and once only, I felt the sting
of its talons. I was twenty and had graduated from Fisk with a
scholarship for Harvard; I needed, however, travel money and clothes and
a bit to live on until the scholarship was due. Fortson was a
fellow-student in winter and a waiter in summer. He proposed that the
Glee Club Quartet of Fisk spend the summer at the hotel in Minnesota
where he worked and that I go along as "Business Manager" to arrange for
engagements on the journey back. We were all eager, but we knew nothing
of table-waiting. "Never mind," said Fortson, "you can stand around the
dining-room during meals and carry out the big wooden trays of dirty
dishes. Thus you can pick up knowledge of waiting and earn good tips and
get free board." I listened askance, but I went.

I entered that broad and blatant hotel at Lake Minnetonka with distinct
forebodings. The flamboyant architecture, the great verandas, rich
furniture, and richer dresses awed us mightily. The long loft reserved
for us, with its clean little cots, was reassuring; the work was not
difficult,--but the meals! There were no meals. At first, before the
guests ate, a dirty table in the kitchen was hastily strewn with
uneatable scraps. We novices were the only ones who came to eat, while
the guests' dining-room, with its savors and sights, set our appetites
on edge! After a while even the pretense of meals for us was dropped. We
were sure we were going to starve when Dug, one of us, made a startling
discovery: the waiters stole their food and they stole the best. We
gulped and hesitated. Then we stole, too, (or, at least, they stole and
I shared) and we all fattened, for the dainties were marvelous. You
slipped a bit here and hid it there; you cut off extra portions and gave
false orders; you dashed off into darkness and hid in corners and ate
and ate! It was nasty business. I hated it. I was too cowardly to steal
much myself, and not coward enough to refuse what others stole.

Our work was easy, but insipid. We stood about and watched overdressed
people gorge. For the most part we were treated like furniture and were
supposed to act the wooden part. I watched the waiters even more than
the guests. I saw that it paid to amuse and to cringe. One particular
black man set me crazy. He was intelligent and deft, but one day I
caught sight of his face as he served a crowd of men; he was playing the
clown,--crouching, grinning, assuming a broad dialect when he usually
spoke good English--ah! it was a heartbreaking sight, and he made more
money than any waiter in the dining-room.

I did not mind the actual work or the kind of work, but it was the
dishonesty and deception, the flattery and cajolery, the unnatural
assumption that worker and diner had no common humanity. It was uncanny.
It was inherently and fundamentally wrong. I stood staring and thinking,
while the other boys hustled about. Then I noticed one fat hog, feeding
at a heavily gilded trough, who could not find his waiter. He beckoned
me. It was not his voice, for his mouth was too full. It was his way,
his air, his assumption. Thus Caesar ordered his legionaries or
Cleopatra her slaves. Dogs recognized the gesture. I did not. He may be
beckoning yet for all I know, for something froze within me. I did not
look his way again. Then and there I disowned menial service for me and
my people.

I would work my hands off for an honest wage, but for "tips" and
"hand-me-outs," never! Fortson was a pious, honest fellow, who regarded
"tips" as in the nature of things, being to the manner born; but the
hotel that summer in other respects rather astonished even him. He came
to us much flurried one night and got us to help him with a memorial to
the absentee proprietor, telling of the wild and gay doings of midnights
in the rooms and corridors among "tired" business men and their
prostitutes. We listened wide-eyed and eager and wrote the filth out
manfully. The proprietor did not thank Fortson. He did not even answer
the letter.

When I finally walked out of that hotel and out of menial service
forever, I felt as though, in a field of flowers, my nose had been held
unpleasantly long to the worms and manure at their roots.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Cursed be Canaan!" cried the Hebrew priests. "A servant of servants
shall he be unto his brethren." With what characteristic complacency did
the slaveholders assume that Canaanites were Negroes and their
"brethren" white? Are not Negroes servants? _Ergo_! Upon such spiritual
myths was the anachronism of American slavery built, and this was the
degradation that once made menial servants the aristocrats among colored
folk. House servants secured some decencies of food and clothing and
shelter; they could more easily reach their master's ear; their personal
abilities of character became known and bonds grew between slave and
master which strengthened from friendship to love, from mutual service
to mutual blood.

Naturally out of this the West Indian servant climbed out of slavery
into citizenship, for few West Indian masters--fewer Spanish or
Dutch--were callous enough to sell their own children into slavery. Not
so with English and Americans. With a harshness and indecency seldom
paralleled in the civilized world white masters on the mainland sold
their mulatto children, half-brothers and half-sisters, and their own
wives in all but name, into life-slavery by the hundreds and thousands.
They originated a special branch of slave-trading for this trade and the
white aristocrats of Virginia and the Carolinas made more money by this
business during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than in any
other way.

The clang of the door of opportunity thus knelled in the ears of the
colored house servant whirled the whole face of Negro advancement as on
some great pivot. The movement was slow, but vast. When emancipation
came, before and after 1863, the house servant still held advantages. He
had whatever education the race possessed and his white father, no
longer able to sell him, often helped him with land and protection.
Notwithstanding this the lure of house service for the Negro was gone.
The path of salvation for the emancipated host of black folk lay no
longer through the kitchen door, with its wide hall and pillared veranda
and flowered yard beyond. It lay, as every Negro soon knew and knows, in
escape from menial serfdom.

In 1860, 98 per cent of the Negroes were servants and serfs. In 1880, 30
per cent were servants and 65 per cent were serfs. The percentage of
servants then rose slightly and fell again until 21 per cent were in
service in 1910 and, doubtless, much less than 20 per cent today. This
is the measure of our rise, but the Negro will not approach freedom
until this hateful badge of slavery and mediaevalism has been reduced to
less than 10 per cent.

Not only are less than a fifth of our workers servants today, but the
character of their service has been changed. The million menial workers
among us include 300,000 upper servants,--skilled men and women of
character, like hotel waiters, Pullman porters, janitors, and cooks,
who, had they been white, could have called on the great labor movement
to lift their work out of slavery, to standardize their hours, to define
their duties, and to substitute a living, regular wage for personal
largess in the shape of tips, old clothes, and cold leavings of food.
But the labor movement turned their backs on those black men when the
white world dinned in their ears. _Negroes are servants; servants are
Negroes._ They shut the door of escape to factory and trade in their
fellows' faces and battened down the hatches, lest the 300,000 should be
workers equal in pay and consideration with white men.

But, if the upper servants could not escape to modern, industrial
conditions, how much the more did they press down on the bodies and
souls of 700,000 washerwomen and household drudges,--ignorant,
unskilled offal of a millionaire industrial system. Their pay was the
lowest and their hours the longest of all workers. The personal
degradation of their work is so great that any white man of decency
would rather cut his daughter's throat than let her grow up to such a
destiny. There is throughout the world and in all races no greater
source of prostitution than this grade of menial service, and the Negro
race in America has largely escaped this destiny simply because its
innate decency leads black women to choose irregular and temporary
sexual relations with men they like rather than to sell themselves to
strangers. To such sexual morals is added (in the nature of
self-defense) that revolt against unjust labor conditions which
expresses itself in "soldiering," sullenness, petty pilfering,
unreliability, and fast and fruitless changes of masters.

Indeed, here among American Negroes we have exemplified the last and
worst refuge of industrial caste. Menial service is an anachronism,--the
refuse of mediaeval barbarism. Whey, then, does it linger? Why are we
silent about it? Why in the minds of so many decent and up-seeing folks
does the whole Negro problem resolve itself into the matter of their
getting a cook or a maid?

No one knows better than I the capabilities of a system of domestic
service at its best. I have seen children who were spiritual sons and
daughters of their masters, girls who were friends of their mistresses,
and old servants honored and revered. But in every such case the Servant
had transcended the Menial, the Service had been exalted above the Wage.
Now to accomplish this permanently and universally, calls for the same
revolution in household help as in factory help and public service.
While organized industry has been slowly making its help into
self-respecting, well-paid men, and while public service is beginning to
call for the highest types of educated and efficient thinkers, domestic
service lags behind and insists upon seeking to evolve the best types of
men from the worst conditions.

The cause of this perversity, to my mind, is twofold. First, the ancient
high estate of Service, now pitifully fallen, yet gasping for breath;
secondly, the present low estate of the outcasts of the world, peering
with blood-shot eyes at the gates of the industrial heaven.

The Master spoke no greater word than that which said: "Whosoever will
be great among you, let him be your servant!" What is greater than
Personal Service! Surely no social service, no wholesale helping of
masses of men can exist which does not find its effectiveness and beauty
in the personal aid of man to man. It is the purest and holiest of
duties. Some mighty glimmer of this truth survived in those who made the
First Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, the Keepers of the Robes, and the
Knights of the Bath, the highest nobility that hedged an anointed king.
Nor does it differ today in what the mother does for the child or the
daughter for the mother, in all the personal attentions in the
old-fashioned home; this is Service! Think of what Friend has meant, not
simply in spiritual sympathies, but in physical helpfulness. In the
world today what calls for more of love, sympathy, learning, sacrifice,
and long-suffering than the care of children, the preparation of food,
the cleansing and ordering of the home, personal attendance and
companionship, the care of bodies and their raiment--what greater, more
intimate, more holy Services are there than these?

And yet we are degrading these services and loathing them and scoffing
at them and spitting upon them, first, by turning them over to the
lowest and least competent and worst trained classes in the world, and
then by yelling like spoiled children if our babies are neglected, our
biscuits sodden, our homes dirty, and our baths unpoured. Let one
suggest that the only cure for such deeds is in the uplift of the doer
and our rage is even worse and less explicable. We will call them by
their first names, thus blaspheming a holy intimacy; we will confine
them to back doors; we will insist that their meals be no gracious
ceremony nor even a restful sprawl, but usually a hasty, heckled gulp
amid garbage; we exact, not a natural, but a purchased deference, and we
leave them naked to insult by our children and by our husbands.

I remember a girl,--how pretty she was, with the crimson flooding the
old ivory of her cheeks and her gracious plumpness! She had come to the
valley during the summer to "do housework." I met and walked home with
her, in the thrilling shadows, to an old village home I knew well; then
as I turned to leave I learned that she was there alone in that house
for a week-end with only one young white man to represent the family.
Oh, he was doubtless a "gentleman" and all that, but for the first time
in my life I saw what a snare the fowler was spreading at the feet of
the daughters of my people, baited by church and state.

Not alone is the hurt thus offered to the lowly,--Society and Science
suffer. The unit which we seek to make the center of society,--the
Home--is deprived of the help of scientific invention and suggestion. It
is only slowly and by the utmost effort that some small foothold has
been gained for the vacuum cleaner, the washing-machine, the power tool,
and the chemical reagent. In our frantic effort to preserve the last
vestiges of slavery and mediaevalism we not only set out faces against
such improvements, but we seek to use education and the power of the
state to train the servants who do not naturally appear.

Meantime the wild rush from house service, on the part of all who can
scramble or run, continues. The rules of the labor union are designed,
not simply to raise wages, but to guard against any likeness between
artisan and servant. There is no essential difference in ability and
training between a subway guard and a Pullman porter, but between their
union cards lies a whole world.

Yet we are silent. Menial service is not a "social problem." It is not
really discussed. There is no scientific program for its "reform." There
is but one panacea: Escape! Get yourselves and your sons and daughters
out of the shadow of this awful thing! Hire servants, but never be one.
Indeed, subtly but surely the ability to hire at least "a maid" is still
civilization's patent to respectability, while "a man" is the first word
of aristocracy.

All this is because we still consciously and unconsciously hold to the
"manure" theory of social organization. We believe that at the bottom of
organized human life there are necessary duties and services which no
real human being ought to be compelled to do. We push below this mudsill
the derelicts and half-men, whom we hate and despise, and seek to build
above it--Democracy! On such foundations is reared a Theory of
Exclusiveness, a feeling that the world progresses by a process of
excluding from the benefits of culture the majority of men, so that a
gifted minority may blossom. Through this door the modern democrat
arrives to the place where he is willing to allot two able-bodied men
and two fine horses to the task of helping one wizened beldam to take
the morning air.

Here the absurdity ends. Here all honest minds turn back and ask: Is
menial service permanent or necessary? Can we not transfer cooking from
the home to the scientific laboratory, along with the laundry? Cannot
machinery, in the hands of self-respecting and well-paid artisans, do
our cleaning, sewing, moving, and decorating? Cannot the training of
children become an even greater profession than the attending of the
sick? And cannot personal service and companionship be coupled with
friendship and love where it belongs and whence it can never be divorced
without degradation and pain?

In fine, can we not, black and white, rich and poor, look forward to a
world of Service without Servants?

A miracle! you say? True. And only to be performed by the Immortal
Child.




_Jesus Christ in Texas_


It was in Waco, Texas.

The convict guard laughed. "I don't know," he said, "I hadn't thought of
that." He hesitated and looked at the stranger curiously. In the solemn
twilight he got an impression of unusual height and soft, dark eyes.
"Curious sort of acquaintance for the colonel," he thought; then he
continued aloud: "But that nigger there is bad, a born thief, and ought
to be sent up for life; got ten years last time--"

Here the voice of the promoter, talking within, broke in; he was bending
over his figures, sitting by the colonel. He was slight, with a sharp
nose.

"The convicts," he said, "would cost us $96 a year and board. Well, we
can squeeze this so that it won't be over $125 apiece. Now if these
fellows are driven, they can build this line within twelve months. It
will be running by next April. Freights will fall fifty per cent. Why,
man, you'll be a millionaire in less than ten years."

The colonel started. He was a thick, short man, with a clean-shaven face
and a certain air of breeding about the lines of his countenance; the
word millionaire sounded well to his ears. He thought--he thought a
great deal; he almost heard the puff of the fearfully costly automobile
that was coming up the road, and he said:

"I suppose we might as well hire them."

"Of course," answered the promoter.

The voice of the tall stranger in the corner broke in here:

"It will be a good thing for them?" he said, half in question.

The colonel moved. "The guard makes strange friends," he thought to
himself. "What's this man doing here, anyway?" He looked at him, or
rather looked at his eyes, and then somehow he felt a warming toward
him. He said:

"Well, at least, it can't harm them; they're beyond that."

"It will do them good, then," said the stranger again.

The promoter shrugged his shoulders. "It will do us good," he said.

But the colonel shook his head impatiently. He felt a desire to justify
himself before those eyes, and he answered: "Yes, it will do them good;
or at any rate it won't make them any worse than they are." Then he
started to say something else, but here sure enough the sound of the
automobile breathing at the gate stopped him and they all arose.

"It is settled, then," said the promoter.

"Yes," said the colonel, turning toward the stranger again. "Are you
going into town?" he asked with the Southern courtesy of white men to
white men in a country town. The stranger said he was. "Then come along
in my machine. I want to talk with you about this."

They went out to the car. The stranger as he went turned again to look
back at the convict. He was a tall, powerfully built black fellow. His
face was sullen, with a low forehead, thick, hanging lips, and bitter
eyes. There was revolt written about his mouth despite the hang-dog
expression. He stood bending over his pile of stones, pounding
listlessly. Beside him stood a boy of twelve,--yellow, with a hunted,
crafty look. The convict raised his eyes and they met the eyes of the
stranger. The hammer fell from his hands.

The stranger turned slowly toward the automobile and the colonel
introduced him. He had not exactly caught his name, but he mumbled
something as he presented him to his wife and little girl, who were
waiting.

As they whirled away the colonel started to talk, but the stranger had
taken the little girl into his lap and together they conversed in low
tones all the way home.

In some way, they did not exactly know how, they got the impression that
the man was a teacher and, of course, he must be a foreigner. The long,
cloak-like coat told this. They rode in the twilight through the lighted
town and at last drew up before the colonel's mansion, with its
ghost-like pillars.

The lady in the back seat was thinking of the guests she had invited to
dinner and was wondering if she ought not to ask this man to stay. He
seemed cultured and she supposed he was some acquaintance of the
colonel's. It would be rather interesting to have him there, with the
judge's wife and daughter and the rector. She spoke almost before she
thought:

"You will enter and rest awhile?"

The colonel and the little girl insisted. For a moment the stranger
seemed about to refuse. He said he had some business for his father,
about town. Then for the child's sake he consented.

Up the steps they went and into the dark parlor where they sat and
talked a long time. It was a curious conversation. Afterwards they did
not remember exactly what was said and yet they all remembered a certain
strange satisfaction in that long, low talk.

Finally the nurse came for the reluctant child and the hostess
bethought herself:

"We will have a cup of tea; you will be dry and tired."

She rang and switched on a blaze of light. With one accord they all
looked at the stranger, for they had hardly seen him well in the
glooming twilight. The woman started in amazement and the colonel half
rose in anger. Why, the man was a mulatto, surely; even if he did not
own the Negro blood, their practised eyes knew it. He was tall and
straight and the coat looked like a Jewish gabardine. His hair hung in
close curls far down the sides of his face and his face was olive, even
yellow.

A peremptory order rose to the colonel's lips and froze there as he
caught the stranger's eyes. Those eyes,--where had he seen those eyes
before? He remembered them long years ago. The soft, tear-filled eyes of
a brown girl. He remembered many things, and his face grew drawn and
white. Those eyes kept burning into him, even when they were turned half
away toward the staircase, where the white figure of the child hovered
with her nurse and waved good-night. The lady sank into her chair and
thought: "What will the judge's wife say? How did the colonel come to
invite this man here? How shall we be rid of him?" She looked at the
colonel in reproachful consternation.

Just then the door opened and the old butler came in. He was an ancient
black man, with tufted white hair, and he held before him a large,
silver tray filled with a china tea service. The stranger rose slowly
and stretched forth his hands as if to bless the viands. The old man
paused in bewilderment, tottered, and then with sudden gladness in his
eyes dropped to his knees, and the tray crashed to the floor.

"My Lord and my God!" he whispered; but the woman screamed: "Mother's
china!"

The doorbell rang.

"Heavens! here is the dinner party!" exclaimed the lady. She turned
toward the door, but there in the hall, clad in her night clothes, was
the little girl. She had stolen down the stairs to see the stranger
again, and the nurse above was calling in vain. The woman felt
hysterical and scolded at the nurse, but the stranger had stretched out
his arms and with a glad cry the child nestled in them. They caught some
words about the "Kingdom of Heaven" as he slowly mounted the stairs with
his little, white burden.

The mother was glad of anything to get rid of the interloper, even for a
moment. The bell rang again and she hastened toward the door, which the
loitering black maid was just opening. She did not notice the shadow of
the stranger as he came slowly down the stairs and paused by the newel
post, dark and silent.

The judge's wife came in. She was an old woman, frilled and powdered
into a semblance of youth, and gorgeously gowned. She came forward,
smiling with extended hands, but when she was opposite the stranger,
somewhere a chill seemed to strike her and she shuddered and cried:

"What a draft!" as she drew a silken shawl about her and shook hands
cordially; she forgot to ask who the stranger was. The judge strode in
unseeing, thinking of a puzzling case of theft.

"Eh? What? Oh--er--yes,--good evening," he said, "good evening." Behind
them came a young woman in the glory of youth, and daintily silked,
beautiful in face and form, with diamonds around her fair neck. She came
in lightly, but stopped with a little gasp; then she laughed gaily and
said:

"Why, I beg your pardon. Was it not curious? I thought I saw there
behind your man"--she hesitated, but he must be a servant, she
argued--"the shadow of great, white wings. It was but the light on the
drapery. What a turn it gave me." And she smiled again. With her came a
tall, handsome, young naval officer. Hearing his lady refer to the
servant, he hardly looked at him, but held his gilded cap carelessly
toward him, and the stranger placed it carefully on the rack.

Last came the rector, a man of forty, and well-clothed. He started to
pass the stranger, stopped, and looked at him inquiringly.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I beg your pardon,--I think I have met
you?"

The stranger made no answer, and the hostess nervously hurried the
guests on. But the rector lingered and looked perplexed.

"Surely, I know you. I have met you somewhere," he said, putting his
hand vaguely to his head. "You--you remember me, do you not?"

The stranger quietly swept his cloak aside, and to the hostess'
unspeakable relief passed out of the door.

"I never knew you," he said in low tones as he went.

The lady murmured some vain excuse about intruders, but the rector stood
with annoyance written on his face.

"I beg a thousand pardons," he said to the hostess absently. "It is a
great pleasure to be here,--somehow I thought I knew that man. I am sure
I knew him once."

The stranger had passed down the steps, and as he passed, the nurse,
lingering at the top of the staircase, flew down after him, caught his
cloak, trembled, hesitated, and then kneeled in the dust.

He touched her lightly with his hand and said: "Go, and sin no more!"

With a glad cry the maid left the house, with its open door, and turned
north, running. The stranger turned eastward into the night. As they
parted a long, low howl rose tremulously and reverberated through the
night. The colonel's wife within shuddered.

"The bloodhounds!" she said.

The rector answered carelessly:

"Another one of those convicts escaped, I suppose. Really, they need
severer measures." Then he stopped. He was trying to remember that
stranger's name.

The judge's wife looked about for the draft and arranged her shawl. The
girl glanced at the white drapery in the hall, but the young officer was
bending over her and the fires of life burned in her veins.

Howl after howl rose in the night, swelled, and died away. The stranger
strode rapidly along the highway and out into the deep forest. There he
paused and stood waiting, tall and still.

A mile up the road behind a man was running, tall and powerful and
black, with crime-stained face and convicts' stripes upon him, and
shackles on his legs. He ran and jumped, in little, short steps, and his
chains rang. He fell and rose again, while the howl of the hounds rang
louder behind him.

Into the forest he leapt and crept and jumped and ran, streaming with
sweat; seeing the tall form rise before him, he stopped suddenly,
dropped his hands in sullen impotence, and sank panting to the earth. A
greyhound shot out of the woods behind him, howled, whined, and fawned
before the stranger's feet. Hound after hound bayed, leapt, and lay
there; then silently, one by one, and with bowed heads, they crept
backward toward the town.

The stranger made a cup of his hands and gave the man water to drink,
bathed his hot head, and gently took the chains and irons from his feet.
By and by the convict stood up. Day was dawning above the treetops. He
looked into the stranger's face, and for a moment a gladness swept over
the stains of his face.

"Why, you are a nigger, too," he said.

Then the convict seemed anxious to justify himself.

"I never had no chance," he said furtively.

"Thou shalt not steal," said the stranger.

The man bridled.

"But how about them? Can they steal? Didn't they steal a whole year's
work, and then when I stole to keep from starving--" He glanced at the
stranger.

"No, I didn't steal just to keep from starving. I stole to be stealing.
I can't seem to keep from stealing. Seems like when I see things, I just
must--but, yes, I'll try!"

The convict looked down at his striped clothes, but the stranger had
taken off his long coat; he had put it around him and the stripes
disappeared.

In the opening morning the black man started toward the low, log
farmhouse in the distance, while the stranger stood watching him. There
was a new glory in the day. The black man's face cleared up, and the
farmer was glad to get him. All day the black man worked as he had never
worked before. The farmer gave him some cold food.

"You can sleep in the barn," he said, and turned away.

"How much do I git a day?" asked the black man.

The farmer scowled.

"Now see here," said he. "If you'll sign a contract for the season, I'll
give you ten dollars a month."

"I won't sign no contract," said the black man doggedly.

"Yes, you will," said the farmer, threateningly, "or I'll call the
convict guard." And he grinned.

The convict shrank and slouched to the barn. As night fell he looked out
and saw the farmer leave the place. Slowly he crept out and sneaked
toward the house. He looked through the kitchen door. No one was there,
but the supper was spread as if the mistress had laid it and gone out.
He ate ravenously. Then he looked into the front room and listened. He
could hear low voices on the porch. On the table lay a gold watch. He
gazed at it, and in a moment he was beside it,--his hands were on it!
Quickly he slipped out of the house and slouched toward the field. He
saw his employer coming along the highway. He fled back in tenor and
around to the front of the house, when suddenly he stopped. He felt the
great, dark eyes of the stranger and saw the same dark, cloak-like coat
where the stranger sat on the doorstep talking with the mistress of the
house. Slowly, guiltily, he turned back, entered the kitchen, and laid
the watch stealthily where he had found it; then he rushed wildly back
toward the stranger, with arms outstretched.

The woman had laid supper for her husband, and going down from the house
had walked out toward a neighbor's. She was gone but a little while, and
when she came back she started to see a dark figure on the doorsteps
under the tall, red oak. She thought it was the new Negro until he said
in a soft voice:

"Will you give me bread?"

Reassured at the voice of a white man, she answered quickly in her soft,
Southern tones:

"Why, certainly."

She was a little woman, and once had been pretty; but now her face was
drawn with work and care. She was nervous and always thinking, wishing,
wanting for something. She went in and got him some cornbread and a
glass of cool, rich buttermilk; then she came out and sat down beside
him. She began, quite unconsciously, to tell him about herself,--the
things she had done and had not done and the things she had wished for.
She told him of her husband and this new farm they were trying to buy.
She said it was hard to get niggers to work. She said they ought all to
be in the chain-gang and made to work. Even then some ran away. Only
yesterday one had escaped, and another the day before.

At last she gossiped of her neighbors, how good they were and how bad.

"And do you like them all?" asked the stranger.

She hesitated.

"Most of them," she said; and then, looking up into his face and putting
her hand into his, as though he were her father, she said:

"There are none I hate; no, none at all."

He looked away, holding her hand in his, and said dreamily:

"You love your neighbor as yourself?"

She hesitated.

"I try--" she began, and then looked the way he was looking; down under
the hill where lay a little, half-ruined cabin.

"They are niggers," she said briefly.

He looked at her. Suddenly a confusion came over her and she insisted,
she knew not why.

"But they are niggers!"

With a sudden impulse she arose and hurriedly lighted the lamp that
stood just within the door, and held it above her head. She saw his dark
face and curly hair. She shrieked in angry terror and rushed down the
path, and just as she rushed down, the black convict came running up
with hands outstretched. They met in mid-path, and before he could stop
he had run against her and she fell heavily to earth and lay white and
still. Her husband came rushing around the house with a cry and an oath.

"I knew it," he said. "It's that runaway nigger." He held the black man
struggling to the earth and raised his voice to a yell. Down the highway
came the convict guard, with hound and mob and gun. They paused across
the fields. The farmer motioned to them.

"He--attacked--my wife," he gasped.

The mob snarled and worked silently. Right to the limb of the red oak
they hoisted the struggling, writhing black man, while others lifted the
dazed woman. Right and left, as she tottered to the house, she searched
for the stranger with a yearning, but the stranger was gone. And she
told none of her guests.

"No--no, I want nothing," she insisted, until they left her, as they
thought, asleep. For a time she lay still, listening to the departure of
the mob. Then she rose. She shuddered as she heard the creaking of the
limb where the body hung. But resolutely she crawled to the window and
peered out into the moonlight; she saw the dead man writhe. He stretched
his arms out like a cross, looking upward. She gasped and clung to the
window sill. Behind the swaying body, and down where the little,
half-ruined cabin lay, a single flame flashed up amid the far-off shout
and cry of the mob. A fierce joy sobbed up through the terror in her
soul and then sank abashed as she watched the flame rise. Suddenly
whirling into one great crimson column it shot to the top of the sky and
threw great arms athwart the gloom until above the world and behind the
roped and swaying form below hung quivering and burning a great crimson
cross.

She hid her dizzy, aching head in an agony of tears, and dared not look,
for she knew. Her dry lips moved:

"Despised and rejected of men."

She knew, and the very horror of it lifted her dull and shrinking
eyelids. There, heaven-tall, earth-wide, hung the stranger on the
crimson cross, riven and blood-stained, with thorn-crowned head and
pierced hands. She stretched her arms and shrieked.

He did not hear. He did not see. His calm dark eyes, all sorrowful, were
fastened on the writhing, twisting body of the thief, and a voice came
out of the winds of the night, saying:

"This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise!"




VI

OF THE RULING OF MEN


The ruling of men is the effort to direct the individual actions of many
persons toward some end. This end theoretically should be the greatest
good of all, but no human group has ever reached this ideal because of
ignorance and selfishness. The simplest object would be rule for the
Pleasure of One, namely the Ruler; or of the Few--his favorites; or of
many--the Rich, the Privileged, the Powerful. Democratic movements
inside groups and nations are always taking place and they are the
efforts to increase the number of beneficiaries of the ruling. In 18th
century Europe, the effort became so broad and sweeping that an attempt
was made at universal expression and the philosophy of the movement said
that if All ruled they would rule for All and thus Universal Good was
sought through Universal Suffrage.

The unrealized difficulty of this program lay in the widespread
ignorance. The mass of men, even of the more intelligent men, not only
knew little about each other but less about the action of men in groups
and the technique of industry in general. They could only apply
universal suffrage, therefore, to the things they knew or knew
partially: they knew personal and menial service, individual
craftsmanship, agriculture and barter, taxes or the taking of private
property for public ends and the rent of land. With these matters then
they attempted to deal. Under the cry of "Freedom" they greatly relaxed
the grip of selfish interests by restricting menial service, securing
the right of property in handiwork and regulating public taxes;
distributing land ownership and freeing trade and barter.

While they were doing this against stubborn resistance, a whole new
organization of work suddenly appeared. The suddenness of this
"Industrial Revolution" of the 19th century was partly fortuitous--in
the case of Watt's teakettle--partly a natural development, as in the
matter of spinning, but largely the determination of powerful and
intelligent individuals to secure the benefits of privileged persons, as
in the case of foreign slave trade.

The result was on the one hand a vast and unexampled development of
industry. Life and civilization in the late 19th and early 20th century
were Industry in its whole conception, language, and accomplishment: the
object of life was to make goods. Now before this giant aspect of
things, the new democracy stood aghast and impotent. It could not rule
because it did not understand: an invincible kingdom of trade, business,
and commerce ruled the world, and before its threshold stood the Freedom
of 18th century philosophy warding the way. Some of the very ones who
were freed from the tyranny of the Middle Age became the tyrants of the
industrial age.

There came a reaction. Men sneered at "democracy" and politics, and
brought forth Fate and Philanthropy to rule the world--Fate which gave
divine right to rule to the Captains of Industry and their created
Millionaires; Philanthropy which organized vast schemes of relief to
stop at least the flow of blood in the vaster wounds which industry was
making.

It was at this time that the lowest laborers, who worked hardest, got
least and suffered most, began to mutter and rebel, and among these were
the American Negroes. Lions have no historians, and therefore lion hunts
are thrilling and satisfactory human reading. Negroes had no bards, and
therefore it has been widely told how American philanthropy freed the
slave. In truth the Negro revolted by armed rebellion, by sullen refusal
to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the North and Canada,
by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the
abolitionists and by furnishing 200,000 soldiers and many times as many
civilian helpers in the Civil War. This war was not a war for Negro
freedom, but a duel between two industrial systems, one of which was
bound to fail because it was an anachronism, and the other bound to
succeed because of the Industrial Revolution.

When now the Negro was freed the Philanthropists sought to apply to his
situation the Philosophy of Democracy handed down from the 18th century.

There was a chance here to try democratic rule in a new way, that is,
against the new industrial oppression with a mass of workers who were
not yet in its control. With plenty of land widely distributed, staple
products like cotton, rice, and sugar cane, and a thorough system of
education, there was a unique chance to realize a new modern democracy
in industry in the southern United States which would point the way to
the world. This, too, if done by black folk, would have tended to a new
unity of human beings and an obliteration of human hatreds festering
along the color line.

Efforts were begun. The 14th and 15th amendments gave the right to vote
to white and black laborers, and they immediately established a public
school system and began to attack the land question. The United States
government was seriously considering the distribution of land and
capital--"40 acres and a mule"--and the price of cotton opened an easy
way to economic independence. Co-operative movements began on a large
scale.

But alas! Not only were the former slave-owners solidly arrayed against
this experiment, but the owners of the industrial North saw disaster in
any such beginnings of industrial democracy. The opposition based its
objections on the color line, and Reconstruction became in history a
great movement for the self-assertion of the white race against the
impudent ambition of degraded blacks, instead of, in truth, the rise of
a mass of black and white laborers.

The result was the disfranchisement of the blacks of the South and a
world-wide attempt to restrict democratic development to white races and
to distract them with race hatred against the darker races. This
program, however, although it undoubtedly helped raise the scale of
white labor, in much greater proportion put wealth and power in the
hands of the great European Captains of Industry and made modern
industrial imperialism possible.

This led to renewed efforts on the part of white European workers to
understand and apply their political power to its reform through
democratic control.

Whether known as Communism or Socialism or what not, these efforts are
neither new nor strange nor terrible, but world-old and seeking an
absolutely justifiable human ideal--the only ideal that can be sought:
the direction of individual action in industry so as to secure the
greatest good of all. Marxism was one method of accomplishing this, and
its panacea was the doing away with private property in machines and
materials. Two mighty attacks were made on this proposal. One was an
attack on the fundamental democratic foundation: modern European white
industry does not even theoretically seek the good of all, but simply of
all Europeans. This attack was virtually unanswered--indeed some
Socialists openly excluded Negroes and Asiatics from their scheme. From
this it was easy to drift into that form of syndicalism which asks
socialism for the skilled laborer only and leaves the common laborer in
his bonds.

This throws us back on fundamentals. It compels us again to examine the
roots of democracy.

Who may be excluded from a share in the ruling of men? Time and time
again the world has answered:

The Ignorant
The Inexperienced
The Guarded
The Unwilling

That is, we have assumed that only the intelligent should vote, or those
who know how to rule men, or those who are not under benevolent
guardianship, or those who ardently desire the right.

These restrictions are not arguments for the wide distribution of the
ballot--they are rather reasons for restriction addressed to the
self-interest of the present real rulers. We say easily, for instance,
"The ignorant ought not to vote." We would say, "No civilized state
should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and
this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized
which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it. Or, in other words,
education is not a prerequisite to political control--political control
is the cause of popular education.

Again, to make experience a qualification for the franchise is absurd:
it would stop the spread of democracy and make political power
hereditary, a prerequisite of a class, caste, race, or sex. It has of
course been soberly argued that only white folk or Englishmen, or men,
are really capable of exercising sovereign power in a modern state. The
statement proves too much: only yesterday it was Englishmen of high
descent, or men of "blood," or sovereigns "by divine right" who could
rule. Today the civilized world is being ruled by the descendants of
persons who a century ago were pronounced incapable of ever developing a
self-ruling people. In every modern state there must come to the polls
every generation, and indeed every year, men who are inexperienced in
the solutions of the political problems that confront them and who must
experiment in methods of ruling men. Thus and thus only will
civilization grow.

Again, what is this theory of benevolent guardianship for women, for the
masses, for Negroes--for "lesser breeds without the law"? It is simply
the old cry of privilege, the old assumption that there are those in the
world who know better what is best for others than those others know
themselves, and who can be trusted to do this best.

In fact no one knows himself but that self's own soul. The vast and
wonderful knowledge of this marvelous universe is locked in the bosoms
of its individual souls. To tap this mighty reservoir of experience,
knowledge, beauty, love, and deed we must appeal not to the few, not to
some souls, but to all. The narrower the appeal, the poorer the culture;
the wider the appeal the more magnificent are the possibilities.
Infinite is human nature. We make it finite by choking back the mass of
men, by attempting to speak for others, to interpret and act for them,
and we end by acting for ourselves and using the world as our private
property. If this were all, it were crime enough--but it is not all: by
our ignorance we make the creation of the greater world impossible; we
beat back a world built of the playing of dogs and laughter of children,
the song of Black Folk and worship of Yellow, the love of women and
strength of men, and try to express by a group of doddering ancients the
Will of the World.

There are people who insist upon regarding the franchise, not as a
necessity for the many, but as a privilege for the few. They say of
persons and classes: "They do not need the ballot." This is often said
of women. It is argued that everything which women with the ballot might
do for themselves can be done for them; that they have influence and
friends "at court," and that their enfranchisement would simply double
the number of ballots. So, too, we are told that American Negroes can
have done for them by other voters all that they could possibly do for
themselves with the ballot and much more because the white voters are
more intelligent.

Further than this, it is argued that many of the disfranchised people
recognize these facts. "Women do not want the ballot" has been a very
effective counter war-cry, so much so that many men have taken refuge in
the declaration: "When they want to vote, why, then--" So, too, we are
continually told that the "best" Negroes stay out of politics.

Such arguments show so curious a misapprehension of the foundation of
the argument for democracy that the argument must be continually
restated and emphasized. We must remember that if the theory of
democracy is correct, the right to vote is not merely a privilege, not
simply a method of meeting the needs of a particular group, and least of
all a matter of recognized want or desire. Democracy is a method of
realizing the broadest measure of justice to all human beings. The world
has, in the past, attempted various methods of attaining this end, most
of which can be summed up in three categories:

The method of the benevolent tyrant.
The method of the select few.
The method of the excluded groups.

The method of intrusting the government of a people to a strong ruler
has great advantages when the ruler combines strength with ability,
unselfish devotion to the public good, and knowledge of what that good
calls for. Such a combination is, however, rare and the selection of the
right ruler is very difficult. To leave the selection to force is to put
a premium on physical strength, chance, and intrigue; to make the
selection a matter of birth simply transfers the real power from
sovereign to minister. Inevitably the choice of rulers must fall on
electors.

Then comes the problem, who shall elect. The earlier answer was: a
select few, such as the wise, the best born, the able. Many people
assume that it was corruption that made such aristocracies fail. By no
means. The best and most effective aristocracy, like the best monarchy,
suffered from lack of knowledge. The rulers did not know or understand
the needs of the people and they could not find out, for in the last
analysis only the man himself, however humble, knows his own condition.
He may not know how to remedy it, he may not realize just what is the
matter; but he knows when something hurts and he alone knows how that
hurt feels. Or if sunk below feeling or comprehension or complaint, he
does not even know that he is hurt, God help his country, for it not
only lacks knowledge, but has destroyed the sources of knowledge.

So soon as a nation discovers that it holds in the heads and hearts of
its individual citizens the vast mine of knowledge, out of which it may
build a just government, then more and more it calls those citizens to
select their rulers and to judge the justice of their acts.

Even here, however, the temptation is to ask only for the wisdom of
citizens of a certain grade or those of recognized worth. Continually
some classes are tacitly or expressly excluded. Thus women have been
excluded from modern democracy because of the persistent theory of
female subjection and because it was argued that their husbands or other
male folks would look to their interests. Now, manifestly, most
husbands, fathers, and brothers will, so far as they know how or as they
realize women's needs, look after them. But remember the foundation of
the argument,--that in the last analysis only the sufferer knows his
sufferings and that no state can be strong which excludes from its
expressed wisdom the knowledge possessed by mothers, wives, and
daughters. We have but to view the unsatisfactory relations of the sexes
the world over and the problem of children to realize how desperately we
need this excluded wisdom.

The same arguments apply to other excluded groups: if a race, like the
Negro race, is excluded, then so far as that race is a part of the
economic and social organization of the land, the feeling and the
experience of that race are absolutely necessary to the realization of
the broadest justice for all citizens. Or if the "submerged tenth" be
excluded, then again, there is lost from the world an experience of
untold value, and they must be raised rapidly to a place where they can
speak for themselves. In the same way and for the same reason children
must be educated, insanity prevented, and only those put under the
guardianship of others who can in no way be trained to speak for
themselves.

The real argument for democracy is, then, that in the people we have
the source of that endless life and unbounded wisdom which the rulers of
men must have. A given people today may not be intelligent, but through
a democratic government that recognizes, not only the worth of the
individual to himself, but the worth of his feelings and experiences to
all, they can educate, not only the individual unit, but generation
after generation, until they accumulate vast stores of wisdom. Democracy
alone is the method of showing the whole experience of the race for the
benefit of the future and if democracy tries to exclude women or Negroes
or the poor or any class because of innate characteristics which do not
interfere with intelligence, then that democracy cripples itself and
belies its name.

From this point of view we can easily see the weakness and strength of
current criticism of extension of the ballot. It is the business of a
modern government to see to it, first, that the number of ignorant
within its bounds is reduced to the very smallest number. Again, it is
the duty of every such government to extend as quickly as possible the
number of persons of mature age who can vote. Such possible voters must
be regarded, not as sharers of a limited treasure, but as sources of new
national wisdom and strength.

The addition of the new wisdom, the new points of view, and the new
interests must, of course, be from time to time bewildering and
confusing. Today those who have a voice in the body politic have
expressed their wishes and sufferings. The result has been a smaller or
greater balancing of their conflicting interests. The appearance of new
interests and complaints means disarrangement and confusion to the older
equilibrium. It is, of course, the inevitable preliminary step to that
larger equilibrium in which the interests of no human soul will be
neglected. These interests will not, surely, be all fully realized, but
they will be recognized and given as full weight as the conflicting
interests will allow. The problem of government thereafter would be to
reduce the necessary conflict of human interests to the minimum.

From such a point of view one easily sees the strength of the demand for
the ballot on the part of certain disfranchised classes. When women ask
for the ballot, they are asking, not for a privilege, but for a
necessity. You may not see the necessity, you may easily argue that
women do not need to vote. Indeed, the women themselves in considerable
numbers may agree with you. Nevertheless, women do need the ballot. They
need it to right the balance of a world sadly awry because of its brutal
neglect of the rights of women and children. With the best will and
knowledge, no man can know women's wants as well as women themselves. To
disfranchise women is deliberately to turn from knowledge and grope in
ignorance.

So, too, with American Negroes: the South continually insists that a
benevolent guardianship of whites over blacks is the ideal thing. They
assume that white people not only know better what Negroes need than
Negroes themselves, but that they are anxious to supply these needs. As
a result they grope in ignorance and helplessness. They cannot
"understand" the Negro; they cannot protect him from cheating and
lynching; and, in general, instead of loving guardianship we see anarchy
and exploitation. If the Negro could speak for himself in the South
instead of being spoken for, if he could defend himself instead of
having to depend on the chance sympathy of white citizens, how much
healthier a growth of democracy the South would have.

So, too, with the darker races of the world. No federation of the world,
no true inter-nation--can exclude the black and brown and yellow races
from its counsels. They must equally and according to number act and be
heard at the world's council.

It is not, for a moment, to be assumed that enfranchising women will not
cost something. It will for many years confuse our politics. It may even
change the present status of family life. It will admit to the ballot
thousands of inexperienced persons, unable to vote intelligently. Above
all, it will interfere with some of the present prerogatives of men and
probably for some time to come annoy them considerably.

So, too, Negro enfranchisement meant reconstruction, with its theft and
bribery and incompetency as well as its public schools and enlightened,
social legislation. It would mean today that black men in the South
would have to be treated with consideration, have their wishes respected
and their manhood rights recognized. Every white Southerner, who wants
peons beneath him, who believes in hereditary menials and a privileged
aristocracy, or who hates certain races because of their
characteristics, would resent this.

Notwithstanding this, if America is ever to become a government built on
the broadest justice to every citizen, then every citizen must be
enfranchised. There may be temporary exclusions, until the ignorant and
their children are taught, or to avoid too sudden an influx of
inexperienced voters. But such exclusions can be but temporary if
justice is to prevail.

The principle of basing all government on the consent of the governed is
undenied and undeniable. Moreover, the method of modern democracy has
placed within reach of the modern state larger reserves of efficiency,
ability, and even genius than the ancient or mediaeval state dreamed of.
That this great work of the past can be carried further among all races
and nations no one can reasonably doubt.

Great as are our human differences and capabilities there is not the
slightest scientific reason for assuming that a given human being of any
race or sex cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a
reasonable chance. This is, of course, denied. It is denied so volubly
and so frequently and with such positive conviction that the majority of
unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human
and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity. All this goes
to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each
other. It always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves. We
do not really associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of
each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to
question their own ideas. None have more persistently and dogmatically
insisted upon the inherent inferiority of women than the men with whom
they come in closest contact. It is the husbands, brothers, and sons of
women whom it has been most difficult to induce to consider women
seriously or to acknowledge that women have rights which men are bound
to respect. So, too, it is those people who live in closest contact with
black folk who have most unhesitatingly asserted the utter impossibility
of living beside Negroes who are not industrial or political slaves or
social pariahs. All this proves that none are so blind as those nearest
the thing seen, while, on the other hand, the history of the world is
the history of the discovery of the common humanity of human beings
among steadily-increasing circles of men.

If the foundations of democracy are thus seen to be sound, how are we
going to make democracy effective where it now fails to
function--particularly in industry? The Marxists assert that industrial
democracy will automatically follow public ownership of machines and
materials. Their opponents object that nationalization of machines and
materials would not suffice because the mass of people do not understand
the industrial process. They do not know:

    What to do
    How to do it
    Who could do it best
            or
    How to apportion the resulting goods.

There can be no doubt but that monopoly of machines and materials is a
chief source of the power of industrial tyrants over the common worker
and that monopoly today is due as much to chance and cheating as to
thrift and intelligence. So far as it is due to chance and cheating, the
argument for public ownership of capital is incontrovertible even though
it involves some interference with long vested rights and inheritance.
This is being widely recognized in the whole civilized world. But how
about the accumulation of goods due to thrift and intelligence--would
democracy in industry interfere here to such an extent as to discourage
enterprise and make impossible the intelligent direction of the mighty
and intricate industrial process of modern times?

The knowledge of what to do in industry and how to do it in order to
attain the resulting goods rests in the hands and brains of the workers
and managers, and the judges of the result are the public. Consequently
it is not so much a question as to whether the world will admit
democratic control here as how can such control be long avoided when the
people once understand the fundamentals of industry. How can
civilization persist in letting one person or a group of persons, by
secret inherent power, determine what goods shall be made--whether bread
or champagne, overcoats or silk socks? Can so vast a power be kept from
the people?

But it may be opportunely asked: has our experience in electing public
officials led us to think that we could run railways, cotton mills, and
department stores by popular vote? The answer is clear: no, it has not,
and the reason has been lack of interest in politics and the tyranny of
the Majority. Politics have not touched the matters of daily life which
are nearest the interests of the people--namely, work and wages; or if
they have, they have touched it obscurely and indirectly. When voting
touches the vital, everyday interests of all, nominations and elections
will call for more intelligent activity. Consider too the vast unused
and misused power of public rewards to obtain ability and genius for the
service of the state. If millionaires can buy science and art, cannot
the Democratic state outbid them not only with money but with the vast
ideal of the common weal?

There still remains, however, the problem of the Majority.

What is the cause of the undoubted reaction and alarm that the citizens
of democracy continually feel? It is, I am sure, the failure to feel the
full significance of the change of rule from a privileged minority to
that of an omnipotent majority, and the assumption that mere majority
rule is the last word of government; that majorities have no
responsibilities, that they rule by the grace of God. Granted that
government should be based on the consent of the governed, does the
consent of a majority at any particular time adequately express the
consent of all? Has the minority, even though a small and unpopular and
unfashionable minority, no right to respectful consideration?

I remember that excellent little high school text book, "Nordhoff's
Politics," where I first read of government, saying this sentence at the
beginning of its most important chapter: "The first duty of a minority
is to become a majority." This is a statement which has its underlying
truth, but it also has its dangerous falsehood; viz., any minority which
cannot become a majority is not worthy of any consideration. But suppose
that the out-voted minority is necessarily always a minority? Women,
for instance, can seldom expect to be a majority; artists must always be
the few; ability is always rare, and black folk in this land are but a
tenth. Yet to tyrannize over such minorities, to browbeat and insult
them, to call that government a democracy which makes majority votes an
excuse for crushing ideas and individuality and self-development, is
manifestly a peculiarly dangerous perversion of the real democratic
ideal. It is right here, in its method and not in its object, that
democracy in America and elsewhere has so often failed. We have
attempted to enthrone any chance majority and make it rule by divine
right. We have kicked and cursed minorities as upstarts and usurpers
when their sole offense lay in not having ideas or hair like ours.
Efficiency, ability, and genius found often no abiding place in such a
soil as this. Small wonder that revolt has come and high-handed methods
are rife, of pretending that policies which we favor or persons that we
like have the anointment of a purely imaginary majority vote.

Are the methods of such a revolt wise, howsoever great the provocation
and evil may be? If the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and
inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of
individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? Is
the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group
or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? Shall we step
backward a thousand years because our present problem is baffling?

Surely not and surely, too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling
these same minorities to council. As the king-in-council succeeded the
king by the grace of God, so in future democracies the toleration and
encouragement of minorities and the willingness to consider as "men" the
crankiest, humblest and poorest and blackest peoples, must be the real
key to the consent of the governed. Peoples and governments will not in
the future assume that because they have the brute power to enforce
momentarily dominant ideas, it is best to do so without thoughtful
conference with the ideas of smaller groups and individuals.
Proportionate representation in physical and spiritual form must come.

That this method is virtually coming in vogue we can see by the minority
groups of modern legislatures. Instead of the artificial attempts to
divide all possible ideas and plans between two great parties, modern
legislatures in advanced nations tend to develop smaller and smaller
minority groups, while government is carried on by temporary coalitions.
For a time we inveighed against this and sought to consider it a
perversion of the only possible method of practical democracy. Today we
are gradually coming to realize that government by temporary coalition
of small and diverse groups may easily become the most efficient method
of expressing the will of man and of setting the human soul free. The
only hindrance to the faster development of this government by allied
minorities is the fear of external war which is used again and again to
melt these living, human, thinking groups into inhuman, thoughtless, and
murdering machines.

The persons, then, who come forward in the dawn of the 20th century to
help in the ruling of men must come with the firm conviction that no
nation, race, or sex, has a monopoly of ability or ideas; that no human
group is so small as to deserve to be ignored as a part, and as an
integral and respected part, of the mass of men; that, above all, no
group of twelve million black folk, even though they are at the physical
mercy of a hundred million white majority, can be deprived of a voice in
their government and of the right to self-development without a blow at
the very foundations of all democracy and all human uplift; that the
very criticism aimed today at universal suffrage is in reality a demand
for power on the part of consciously efficient minorities,--but these
minorities face a fatal blunder when they assume that less democracy
will give them and their kind greater efficiency. However desperate the
temptation, no modern nation can shut the gates of opportunity in the
face of its women, its peasants, its laborers, or its socially damned.
How astounded the future world-citizen will be to know that as late as
1918 great and civilized nations were making desperate endeavor to
confine the development of ability and individuality to one sex,--that
is, to one-half of the nation; and he will probably learn that similar
effort to confine humanity to one race lasted a hundred years longer.

The doctrine of the divine right of majorities leads to almost humorous
insistence on a dead level of mediocrity. It demands that all people be
alike or that they be ostracized. At the same time its greatest
accusation against rebels is this same desire to be alike: the
suffragette is accused of wanting to be a man, the socialist is accused
of envy of the rich, and the black man is accused of wanting to be
white. That any one of these should simply want to be himself is to the
average worshiper of the majority inconceivable, and yet of all worlds,
may the good Lord deliver us from a world where everybody looks like his
neighbor and thinks like his neighbor and is like his neighbor.

The world has long since awakened to a realization of the evil which a
privileged few may exercise over the majority of a nation. So vividly
has this truth been brought home to us that we have lightly assumed that
a privileged and enfranchised majority cannot equally harm a nation.
Insane, wicked, and wasteful as the tyranny of the few over the many may
be, it is not more dangerous than the tyranny of the many over the few.
Brutal physical revolution can, and usually does, end the tyranny of the
few. But the spiritual losses from suppressed minorities may be vast and
fatal and yet all unknown and unrealized because idea and dream and
ability are paralyzed by brute force.

If, now, we have a democracy with no excluded groups, with all men and
women enfranchised, what is such a democracy to do? How will it
function? What will be its field of work?

The paradox which faces the civilized world today is that democratic
control is everywhere limited in its control of human interests. Mankind
is engaged in planting, forestry, and mining, preparing food and
shelter, making clothes and machines, transporting goods and folk,
disseminating news, distributing products, doing public and private
personal service, teaching, advancing science, and creating art.

In this intricate whirl of activities, the theory of government has been
hitherto to lay down only very general rules of conduct, marking the
limits of extreme anti-social acts, like fraud, theft, and murder.

The theory was that within these bounds was Freedom--the Liberty to
think and do and move as one wished. The real realm of freedom was found
in experience to be much narrower than this in one direction and much
broader in another. In matters of Truth and Faith and Beauty, the
Ancient Law was inexcusably strait and modern law unforgivably stupid.
It is here that the future and mighty fight for Freedom must and will be
made. Here in the heavens and on the mountaintops, the air of Freedom is
wide, almost limitless, for here, in the highest stretches, individual
freedom harms no man, and, therefore, no man has the right to limit it.

On the other hand, in the valleys of the hard, unyielding laws of matter
and the social necessities of time production, and human intercourse,
the limits on our freedom are stern and unbending if we would exist and
thrive. This does not say that everything here is governed by
incontrovertible "natural" law which needs no human decision as to raw
materials, machinery, prices, wages, news-dissemination, education of
children, etc.; but it does mean that decisions here must be limited by
brute facts and based on science and human wants.

Today the scientific and ethical boundaries of our industrial activities
are not in the hands of scientists, teachers, and thinkers; nor is the
intervening opportunity for decision left in the control of the public
whose welfare such decisions guide. On the contrary, the control of
industry is largely in the hands of a powerful few, who decide for their
own good and regardless of the good of others. The making of the rules
of Industry, then, is not in the hands of All, but in the hands of the
Few. The Few who govern industry envisage, not the wants of mankind, but
their own wants. They work quietly, often secretly, opposing Law, on the
one hand, as interfering with the "freedom of industry"; opposing, on
the other hand, free discussion and open determination of the rules of
work and wealth and wages, on the ground that harsh natural law brooks
no interference by Democracy.

These things today, then, are not matters of free discussion and
determination. They are strictly controlled. Who controls them? Who
makes these inner, but powerful, rules? Few people know. Others assert
and believe these rules are "natural"--a part of our inescapable
physical environment. Some of them doubtless are; but most of them are
just as clearly the dictates of self-interest laid down by the powerful
private persons who today control industry. Just here it is that modern
men demand that Democracy supplant skilfully concealed, but all too
evident, Monarchy.

In industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who,
calling themselves democratic, believe that democracy can never enter
here. Industry, they maintain, is a matter of technical knowledge and
ability, and, therefore, is the eternal heritage of the few. They point
to the failure of attempts at democratic control in industry, just as we
used to point to Spanish-American governments, and they expose, not
simply the failures of Russian Soviets,--they fly to arms to prevent
that greatest experiment in industrial democracy which the world has yet
seen. These are the ones who say: We must control labor or civilization
will fail; we must control white labor in Europe and America; above all,
we must control yellow labor in Asia and black labor in Africa and the
South, else we shall have no tea, or rubber, or cotton. And yet,--and
yet is it so easy to give up the dream of democracy? Must industry rule
men or may men rule even industry? And unless men rule industry, can
they ever hope really to make laws or educate children or create beauty?

That the problem of the democratization of industry is tremendous, let
no man deny. We must spread that sympathy and intelligence which
tolerates the widest individual freedom despite the necessary public
control; we must learn to select for public office ability rather than
mere affability. We must stand ready to defer to knowledge and science
and judge by result rather than by method; and finally we must face the
fact that the final distribution of goods--the question of wages and
income is an ethical and not a mere mechanical problem and calls for
grave public human judgment and not secrecy and closed doors. All this
means time and development. It comes not complete by instant revolution
of a day, nor yet by the deferred evolution of a thousand years--it
comes daily, bit by bit and step by step, as men and women learn and
grow and as children are trained in Truth.

These steps are in many cases clear: the careful, steady increase of
public democratic ownership of industry, beginning with the simplest
type of public utilities and monopolies, and extending gradually as we
learn the way; the use of taxation to limit inheritance and to take the
unearned increment for public use beginning (but not ending) with a
"single tax" on monopolized land values; the training of the public in
business technique by co-operation in buying and selling, and in
industrial technique by the shop committee and manufacturing guild.

But beyond all this must come the Spirit--the Will to Human Brotherhood
of all Colors, Races, and Creeds; the Wanting of the Wants of All.
Perhaps the finest contribution of current Socialism to the world is
neither its light nor its dogma, but the idea back of its one mighty
word--Comrade!




The Call


In the Land of the Heavy Laden came once a dreary day. And the King, who
sat upon the Great White Throne, raised his eyes and saw afar off how
the hills around were hot with hostile feet and the sound of the mocking
of his enemies struck anxiously on the King's ears, for the King loved
his enemies. So the King lifted up his hand in the glittering silence
and spake softly, saying: "Call the Servants of the King." Then the
herald stepped before the armpost of the throne, and cried: "Thus saith
the High and Mighty One, who inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is
Holy,--the Servants of the King!"

Now, of the servants of the king there were a hundred and forty-four
thousand,--tried men and brave, brawny of arm and quick of wit; aye,
too, and women of wisdom and women marvelous in beauty and grace. And
yet on this drear day when the King called, their ears were thick with
the dust of the enemy, their eyes were blinded with the flashing of his
spears, and they hid their faces in dread silence and moved not, even at
the King's behest. So the herald called again. And the servants cowered
in very shame, but none came forth. But the third blast of the herald
struck upon a woman's heart, afar. And the woman straightway left her
baking and sweeping and the rattle of pans; and the woman straightway
left her chatting and gossiping and the sewing of garments, and the
woman stood before the King, saying: "The servant of thy servants, O
Lord."

Then the King smiled,--smiled wondrously, so that the setting sun burst
through the clouds, and the hearts of the King's men dried hard within
them. And the low-voiced King said, so low that even they that listened
heard not well: "Go, smite me mine enemies, that they cease to do evil
in my sight." And the woman quailed and trembled. Three times she lifted
her eyes unto the hills and saw the heathen whirling onward in their
rage. And seeing, she shrank--three times she shrank and crept to the
King's feet.

"O King," she cried, "I am but a woman."

And the King answered: "Go, then, Mother of Men."

And the woman said, "Nay, King, but I am still a maid." Whereat the King
cried: "O maid, made Man, thou shalt be Bride of God."

And yet the third time the woman shrank at the thunder in her ears, and
whispered: "Dear God, I am black!"

The King spake not, but swept the veiling of his face aside and lifted
up the light of his countenance upon her and lo! it was black.

So the woman went forth on the hills of God to do battle for the King,
on that drear day in the land of the Heavy Laden, when the heathen raged
and imagined a vain thing.




VII

THE DAMNATION OF WOMEN


I remember four women of my boyhood: my mother, cousin Inez, Emma, and
Ide Fuller. They represented the problem of the widow, the wife, the
maiden, and the outcast. They were, in color, brown and light-brown,
yellow with brown freckles, and white. They existed not for themselves,
but for men; they were named after the men to whom they were related and
not after the fashion of their own souls.

They were not beings, they were relations and these relations were
enfilmed with mystery and secrecy. We did not know the truth or believe
it when we heard it. Motherhood! What was it? We did not know or greatly
care. My mother and I were good chums. I liked her. After she was dead I
loved her with a fierce sense of personal loss.

Inez was a pretty, brown cousin who married. What was marriage? We did
not know, neither did she, poor thing! It came to mean for her a litter
of children, poverty, a drunken, cruel companion, sickness, and death.
Why?

There was no sweeter sight than Emma,--slim, straight, and dainty,
darkly flushed with the passion of youth; but her life was a wild, awful
struggle to crush her natural, fierce joy of love. She crushed it and
became a cold, calculating mockery.

Last there was that awful outcast of the town, the white woman, Ide
Fuller. What she was, we did not know. She stood to us as embodied filth
and wrong,--but whose filth, whose wrong?

Grown up I see the problem of these women transfused; I hear all about
me the unanswered call of youthful love, none the less glorious because
of its clean, honest, physical passion. Why unanswered? Because the
youth are too poor to marry or if they marry, too poor to have children.
They turn aside, then, in three directions: to marry for support, to
what men call shame, or to that which is more evil than nothing. It is
an unendurable paradox; it must be changed or the bases of culture will
totter and fall.

The world wants healthy babies and intelligent workers. Today we refuse
to allow the combination and force thousands of intelligent workers to
go childless at a horrible expenditure of moral force, or we damn them
if they break our idiotic conventions. Only at the sacrifice of
intelligence and the chance to do their best work can the majority of
modern women bear children. This is the damnation of women.

All womanhood is hampered today because the world on which it is
emerging is a world that tries to worship both virgins and mothers and
in the end despises motherhood and despoils virgins.

The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She
must have knowledge. She must have the right of motherhood at her own
discretion. The present mincing horror at free womanhood must pass if we
are ever to be rid of the bestiality of free manhood; not by guarding
the weak in weakness do we gain strength, but by making weakness free
and strong.

The world must choose the free woman or the white wraith of the
prostitute. Today it wavers between the prostitute and the nun.
Civilization must show two things: the glory and beauty of creating life
and the need and duty of power and intelligence. This and this only will
make the perfect marriage of love and work.

    God is Love,
    Love is God;
    There is no God but Love
    And Work is His Prophet!

All this of woman,--but what of black women?

The world that wills to worship womankind studiously forgets its darker
sisters. They seem in a sense to typify that veiled Melancholy:

    "Whose saintly visage is too bright
    To hit the sense of human sight,
    And, therefore, to our weaker view
      O'er-laid with black."

Yet the world must heed these daughters of sorrow, from the primal black
All-Mother of men down through the ghostly throng of mighty womanhood,
who walked in the mysterious dawn of Asia and Africa; from Neith, the
primal mother of all, whose feet rest on hell, and whose almighty hands
uphold the heavens; all religion, from beauty to beast, lies on her
eager breasts; her body bears the stars, while her shoulders are
necklaced by the dragon; from black Neith down to

    "That starr'd Ethiop queen who strove
    To set her beauty's praise above
    The sea-nymphs,"

through dusky Cleopatras, dark Candaces, and darker, fiercer Zinghas, to
our own day and our own land,--in gentle Phillis; Harriet, the crude
Moses; the sybil, Sojourner Truth; and the martyr, Louise De Mortie.

The father and his worship is Asia; Europe is the precocious,
self-centered, forward-striving child; but the land of the mother is and
was Africa. In subtle and mysterious way, despite her curious history,
her slavery, polygamy, and toil, the spell of the African mother
pervades her land. Isis, the mother, is still titular goddess, in
thought if not in name, of the dark continent. Nor does this all seem to
be solely a survival of the historic matriarchate through which all
nations pass,--it appears to be more than this,--as if the great black
race in passing up the steps of human culture gave the world, not only
the Iron Age, the cultivation of the soil, and the domestication of
animals, but also, in peculiar emphasis, the mother-idea.

"No mother can love more tenderly and none is more tenderly loved than
the Negro mother," writes Schneider. Robin tells of the slave who bought
his mother's freedom instead of his own. Mungo Park writes: "Everywhere
in Africa, I have noticed that no greater affront can be offered a Negro
than insulting his mother. 'Strike me,' cries a Mandingo to his enemy,
'but revile not my mother!'" And the Krus and Fantis say the same. The
peoples on the Zambezi and the great lakes cry in sudden fear or joy:
"O, my mother!" And the Herero swears (endless oath) "By my mother's
tears!" "As the mist in the swamps," cries the Angola Negro, "so lives
the love of father and mother."

A student of the present Gold Coast life describes the work of the
village headman, and adds: "It is a difficult task that he is set to,
but in this matter he has all-powerful helpers in the female members of
the family, who will be either the aunts or the sisters or the cousins
or the nieces of the headman, and as their interests are identical with
his in every particular, the good women spontaneously train up their
children to implicit obedience to the headman, whose rule in the family
thus becomes a simple and an easy matter. 'The hand that rocks the
cradle rules the world.' What a power for good in the native state
system would the mothers of the Gold Coast and Ashanti become by
judicious training upon native lines!"

Schweinfurth declares of one tribe: "A bond between mother and child
which lasts for life is the measure of affection shown among the Dyoor"
and Ratzel adds:

"Agreeable to the natural relation the mother stands first among the
chief influences affecting the children. From the Zulus to the Waganda,
we find the mother the most influential counsellor at the court of
ferocious sovereigns, like Chaka or Mtesa; sometimes sisters take her
place. Thus even with chiefs who possess wives by hundreds the bonds of
blood are the strongest and that the woman, though often heavily
burdened, is in herself held in no small esteem among the Negroes is
clear from the numerous Negro queens, from the medicine women, from the
participation in public meetings permitted to women by many Negro
peoples."

As I remember through memories of others, backward among my own family,
it is the mother I ever recall,--the little, far-off mother of my
grandmothers, who sobbed her life away in song, longing for her lost
palm-trees and scented waters; the tall and bronzen grandmother, with
beaked nose and shrewish eyes, who loved and scolded her black and
laughing husband as he smoked lazily in his high oak chair; above all,
my own mother, with all her soft brownness,--the brown velvet of her
skin, the sorrowful black-brown of her eyes, and the tiny brown-capped
waves of her midnight hair as it lay new parted on her forehead. All the
way back in these dim distances it is mothers and mothers of mothers who
seem to count, while fathers are shadowy memories.

Upon this African mother-idea, the westward slave trade and American
slavery struck like doom. In the cruel exigencies of the traffic in men
and in the sudden, unprepared emancipation the great pendulum of social
equilibrium swung from a time, in 1800,--when America had but eight or
less black women to every ten black men,--all too swiftly to a day, in
1870,--when there were nearly eleven women to ten men in our Negro
population. This was but the outward numerical fact of social
dislocation; within lay polygamy, polyandry, concubinage, and moral
degradation. They fought against all this desperately, did these black
slaves in the West Indies, especially among the half-free artisans; they
set up their ancient household gods, and when Toussaint and Cristophe
founded their kingdom in Haiti, it was based on old African tribal ties
and beneath it was the mother-idea.

The crushing weight of slavery fell on black women. Under it there was
no legal marriage, no legal family, no legal control over children. To
be sure, custom and religion replaced here and there what the law
denied, yet one has but to read advertisements like the following to see
the hell beneath the system:

     "One hundred dollars reward will be given for my two fellows, Abram
     and Frank. Abram has a wife at Colonel Stewart's, in Liberty
     County, and a mother at Thunderbolt, and a sister in Savannah.

     "WILLIAM ROBERTS."


     "Fifty dollars reward--Ran away from the subscriber a Negro girl
     named Maria. She is of a copper color, between thirteen and
     fourteen years of age--bareheaded and barefooted. She is small for
     her age--very sprightly and very likely. She stated she was going
     to see her mother at Maysville.


     "SANFORD THOMSON."

     "Fifty dollars reward--Ran away from the subscriber his Negro man
     Pauladore, commonly called Paul. I understand General R.Y. Hayne
     has purchased his wife and children from H.L. Pinckney, Esq., and
     has them now on his plantation at Goose Creek, where, no doubt, the
     fellow is frequently lurking.

     "T. DAVIS."


The Presbyterian synod of Kentucky said to the churches under its care
in 1835: "Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and
wives, are torn asunder and permitted to see each other no more. These
acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks and agony often
witnessed on such occasions proclaim, with a trumpet tongue, the
iniquity of our system. There is not a neighborhood where these
heartrending scenes are not displayed. There is not a village or road
that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts whose
mournful countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that
their hearts hold dear."

A sister of a president of the United States declared: "We Southern
ladies are complimented with the names of wives, but we are only the
mistresses of seraglios."

Out of this, what sort of black women could be born into the world of
today? There are those who hasten to answer this query in scathing terms
and who say lightly and repeatedly that out of black slavery came
nothing decent in womanhood; that adultery and uncleanness were their
heritage and are their continued portion.

Fortunately so exaggerated a charge is humanly impossible of truth. The
half-million women of Negro descent who lived at the beginning of the
19th century had become the mothers of two and one-fourth million
daughters at the time of the Civil War and five million grand-daughters
in 1910. Can all these women be vile and the hunted race continue to
grow in wealth and character? Impossible. Yet to save from the past the
shreds and vestiges of self-respect has been a terrible task. I most
sincerely doubt if any other race of women could have brought its
fineness up through so devilish a fire.

Alexander Crummell once said of his sister in the blood: "In her
girlhood all the delicate tenderness of her sex has been rudely
outraged. In the field, in the rude cabin, in the press-room, in the
factory she was thrown into the companionship of coarse and ignorant
men. No chance was given her for delicate reserve or tender modesty.
From her childhood she was the doomed victim of the grossest passion.
All the virtues of her sex were utterly ignored. If the instinct of
chastity asserted itself, then she had to fight like a tiger for the
ownership and possession of her own person and ofttimes had to suffer
pain and lacerations for her virtuous self-assertion. When she reached
maturity, all the tender instincts of her womanhood were ruthlessly
violated. At the age of marriage,--always prematurely anticipated under
slavery--she was mated as the stock of the plantation were mated, not to
be the companion of a loved and chosen husband, but to be the breeder of
human cattle for the field or the auction block."

Down in such mire has the black motherhood of this race
struggled,--starving its own wailing offspring to nurse to the world
their swaggering masters; welding for its children chains which
affronted even the moral sense of an unmoral world. Many a man and woman
in the South have lived in wedlock as holy as Adam and Eve and brought
forth their brown and golden children, but because the darker woman was
helpless, her chivalrous and whiter mate could cast her off at his
pleasure and publicly sneer at the body he had privately blasphemed.

I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgment day: I shall
forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive
its fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remembering that struggle
with tender tears; I shall forgive its so-called "pride of race," the
passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting
and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world
nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting
of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its
lust. I cannot forget that it is such Southern gentlemen into whose
hands smug Northern hypocrites of today are seeking to place our women's
eternal destiny,--men who insist upon withholding from my mother and
wife and daughter those signs and appellations of courtesy and respect
which elsewhere he withholds only from bawds and courtesans.

The result of this history of insult and degradation has been both
fearful and glorious. It has birthed the haunting prostitute, the
brawler, and the beast of burden; but it has also given the world an
efficient womanhood, whose strength lies in its freedom and whose
chastity was won in the teeth of temptation and not in prison and
swaddling clothes.

To no modern race does its women mean so much as to the Negro nor come
so near to the fulfilment of its meaning. As one of our women writes:
"Only the black woman can say 'when and where I enter, in the quiet,
undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing
or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with
me.'"

They came first, in earlier days, like foam flashing on dark, silent
waters,--bits of stern, dark womanhood here and there tossed almost
carelessly aloft to the world's notice. First and naturally they assumed
the panoply of the ancient African mother of men, strong and black,
whose very nature beat back the wilderness of oppression and contempt.
Such a one was that cousin of my grandmother, whom western Massachusetts
remembers as "Mum Bett." Scarred for life by a blow received in defense
of a sister, she ran away to Great Barrington and was the first slave,
or one of the first, to be declared free under the Bill of Rights of
1780. The son of the judge who freed her, writes:

     "Even in her humble station, she had, when occasion required it, an
     air of command which conferred a degree of dignity and gave her an
     ascendancy over those of her rank, which is very unusual in persons
     of any rank or color. Her determined and resolute character, which
     enabled her to limit the ravages of Shay's mob, was manifested in
     her conduct and deportment during her whole life. She claimed no
     distinction, but it was yielded to her from her superior
     experience, energy, skill, and sagacity. Having known this woman as
     familiarly as I knew either of my parents, I cannot believe in the
     moral or physical inferiority of the race to which she belonged.
     The degradation of the African must have been otherwise caused than
     by natural inferiority."

It was such strong women that laid the foundations of the great Negro
church of today, with its five million members and ninety millions of
dollars in property. One of the early mothers of the church, Mary Still,
writes thus quaintly, in the forties:

     "When we were as castouts and spurned from the large churches,
     driven from our knees, pointed at by the proud, neglected by the
     careless, without a place of worship, Allen, faithful to the
     heavenly calling, came forward and laid the foundation of this
     connection. The women, like the women at the sepulcher, were early
     to aid in laying the foundation of the temple and in helping to
     carry up the noble structure and in the name of their God set up
     their banner; most of our aged mothers are gone from this to a
     better state of things. Yet some linger still on their staves,
     watching with intense interest the ark as it moves over the
     tempestuous waves of opposition and ignorance....

     "But the labors of these women stopped not here, for they knew well
     that they were subject to affliction and death. For the purpose of
     mutual aid, they banded themselves together in society capacity,
     that they might be better able to administer to each others'
     sufferings and to soften their own pillows. So we find the females
     in the early history of the church abounding in good works and in
     acts of true benevolence."

From such spiritual ancestry came two striking figures of
war-time,--Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.

For eight or ten years previous to the breaking out of the Civil War,
Harriet Tubman was a constant attendant at anti-slavery conventions,
lectures, and other meetings; she was a black woman of medium size,
smiling countenance, with her upper front teeth gone, attired in coarse
but neat clothes, and carrying always an old-fashioned reticule at her
side. Usually as soon as she sat down she would drop off in sound sleep.

She was born a slave in Maryland, in 1820, bore the marks of the lash on
her flesh; and had been made partially deaf, and perhaps to some degree
mentally unbalanced by a blow on the head in childhood. Yet she was one
of the most important agents of the Underground Railroad and a leader of
fugitive slaves. She ran away in 1849 and went to Boston in 1854, where
she was welcomed into the homes of the leading abolitionists and where
every one listened with tense interest to her strange stories. She was
absolutely illiterate, with no knowledge of geography, and yet year
after year she penetrated the slave states and personally led North over
three hundred fugitives without losing a single one. A standing reward
of $10,000 was offered for her, but as she said: "The whites cannot
catch us, for I was born with the charm, and the Lord has given me the
power." She was one of John Brown's closest advisers and only severe
sickness prevented her presence at Harper's Ferry.

When the war cloud broke, she hastened to the front, flitting down along
her own mysterious paths, haunting the armies in the field, and serving
as guide and nurse and spy. She followed Sherman in his great march to
the sea and was with Grant at Petersburg, and always in the camps the
Union officers silently saluted her.

The other woman belonged to a different type,--a tall, gaunt, black,
unsmiling sybil, weighted with the woe of the world. She ran away from
slavery and giving up her own name took the name of Sojourner Truth. She
says: "I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old mammy
would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and
groan, and I would say, 'Mammy, what makes you groan so?' And she would
say, 'I am groaning to think of my poor children; they do not know where
I be and I don't know where they be. I look up at the stars and they
look up at the stars!'"

Her determination was founded on unwavering faith in ultimate good.
Wendell Phillips says that he was once in Faneuil Hall, when Frederick
Douglass was one of the chief speakers. Douglass had been describing the
wrongs of the Negro race and as he proceeded he grew more and more
excited and finally ended by saying that they had no hope of justice
from the whites, no possible hope except in their own right arms. It
must come to blood! They must fight for themselves. Sojourner Truth was
sitting, tall and dark, on the very front seat facing the platform, and
in the hush of feeling when Douglass sat down she spoke out in her deep,
peculiar voice, heard all over the hall:

"Frederick, is God dead?"

Such strong, primitive types of Negro womanhood in America seem to some
to exhaust its capabilities. They know less of a not more worthy, but a
finer type of black woman wherein trembles all of that delicate sense of
beauty and striving for self-realization, which is as characteristic of
the Negro soul as is its quaint strength and sweet laughter. George
Washington wrote in grave and gentle courtesy to a Negro woman, in 1776,
that he would "be happy to see" at his headquarters at any time, a
person "to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficial in her
dispensations." This child, Phillis Wheatley, sang her trite and halting
strain to a world that wondered and could not produce her like. Measured
today her muse was slight and yet, feeling her striving spirit, we call
to her still in her own words:

     "Through thickest glooms look back, immortal shade."

Perhaps even higher than strength and art loom human sympathy and
sacrifice as characteristic of Negro womanhood. Long years ago, before
the Declaration of Independence, Kate Ferguson was born in New York.
Freed, widowed, and bereaved of her children before she was twenty, she
took the children of the streets of New York, white and black, to her
empty arms, taught them, found them homes, and with Dr. Mason of Murray
Street Church established the first modern Sunday School in Manhattan.

Sixty years later came Mary Shadd up out of Delaware. She was tall and
slim, of that ravishing dream-born beauty,--that twilight of the races
which we call mulatto. Well-educated, vivacious, with determination
shining from her sharp eyes, she threw herself singlehanded into the
great Canadian pilgrimage when thousands of hunted black men hurried
northward and crept beneath the protection of the lion's paw. She became
teacher, editor, and lecturer; tramping afoot through winter snows,
pushing without blot or blemish through crowd and turmoil to conventions
and meetings, and finally becoming recruiting agent for the United
States government in gathering Negro soldiers in the West.

After the war the sacrifice of Negro women for freedom and uplift is one
of the finest chapters in their history. Let one life typify all: Louise
De Mortie, a free-born Virginia girl, had lived most of her life in
Boston. Her high forehead, swelling lips, and dark eyes marked her for a
woman of feeling and intellect. She began a successful career as a
public reader. Then came the War and the Call. She went to the orphaned
colored children of New Orleans,--out of freedom into insult and
oppression and into the teeth of the yellow fever. She toiled and
dreamed. In 1887 she had raised money and built an orphan home and that
same year, in the thirty-fourth year of her young life, she died, saying
simply: "I belong to God."

As I look about me today in this veiled world of mine, despite the
noisier and more spectacular advance of my brothers, I instinctively
feel and know that it is the five million women of my race who really
count. Black women (and women whose grandmothers were black) are today
furnishing our teachers; they are the main pillars of those social
settlements which we call churches; and they have with small doubt
raised three-fourths of our church property. If we have today, as seems
likely, over a billion dollars of accumulated goods, who shall say how
much of it has been wrung from the hearts of servant girls and
washerwomen and women toilers in the fields? As makers of two million
homes these women are today seeking in marvelous ways to show forth our
strength and beauty and our conception of the truth.

In the United States in 1910 there were 4,931,882 women of Negro
descent; over twelve hundred thousand of these were children, another
million were girls and young women under twenty, and two and a
half-million were adults. As a mass these women were unlettered,--a
fourth of those from fifteen to twenty-five years of age were unable to
write. These women are passing through, not only a moral, but an
economic revolution. Their grandmothers married at twelve and fifteen,
but twenty-seven per cent of these women today who have passed fifteen
are still single.

Yet these black women toil and toil hard. There were in 1910 two and a
half million Negro homes in the United States. Out of these homes walked
daily to work two million women and girls over ten years of age,--over
half of the colored female population as against a fifth in the case of
white women. These, then, are a group of workers, fighting for their
daily bread like men; independent and approaching economic freedom! They
furnished a million farm laborers, 80,000 farmers, 22,000 teachers,
600,000 servants and washerwomen, and 50,000 in trades and
merchandizing.

The family group, however, which is the ideal of the culture with which
these folk have been born, is not based on the idea of an economically
independent working mother. Rather its ideal harks back to the sheltered
harem with the mother emerging at first as nurse and homemaker, while
the man remains the sole breadwinner. What is the inevitable result of
the clash of such ideals and such facts in the colored group? Broken
families.

Among native white women one in ten is separated from her husband by
death, divorce, or desertion. Among Negroes the ratio is one in seven.
Is the cause racial? No, it is economic, because there is the same high
ratio among the white foreign-born. The breaking up of the present
family is the result of modern working and sex conditions and it hits
the laborers with terrible force. The Negroes are put in a peculiarly
difficult position, because the wage of the male breadwinner is below
the standard, while the openings for colored women in certain lines of
domestic work, and now in industries, are many. Thus while toil holds
the father and brother in country and town at low wages, the sisters and
mothers are called to the city. As a result the Negro women outnumber
the men nine or ten to eight in many cities, making what Charlotte
Gilman bluntly calls "cheap women."

What shall we say to this new economic equality in a great laboring
class? Some people within and without the race deplore it. "Back to the
homes with the women," they cry, "and higher wage for the men." But how
impossible this is has been shown by war conditions. Cessation of
foreign migration has raised Negro men's wages, to be sure--but it has
not only raised Negro women's wages, it has opened to them a score of
new avenues of earning a living. Indeed, here, in microcosm and with
differences emphasizing sex equality, is the industrial history of labor
in the 19th and 20th centuries. We cannot abolish the new economic
freedom of women. We cannot imprison women again in a home or require
them all on pain of death to be nurses and housekeepers.

What is today the message of these black women to America and to the
world? The uplift of women is, next to the problem of the color line and
the peace movement, our greatest modern cause. When, now, two of these
movements--woman and color--combine in one, the combination has deep
meaning.

In other years women's way was clear: to be beautiful, to be petted, to
bear children. Such has been their theoretic destiny and if perchance
they have been ugly, hurt, and barren, that has been forgotten with
studied silence. In partial compensation for this narrowed destiny the
white world has lavished its politeness on its womankind,--its chivalry
and bows, its uncoverings and courtesies--all the accumulated homage
disused for courts and kings and craving exercise. The revolt of white
women against this preordained destiny has in these latter days reached
splendid proportions, but it is the revolt of an aristocracy of brains
and ability,--the middle class and rank and file still plod on in the
appointed path, paid by the homage, the almost mocking homage, of men.

From black women of America, however, (and from some others, too, but
chiefly from black women and their daughters' daughters) this gauze has
been withheld and without semblance of such apology they have been
frankly trodden under the feet of men. They are and have been objected
to, apparently for reasons peculiarly exasperating to reasoning human
beings. When in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a
vision, we ask not, how does he look,--but what is his message? It is of
but passing interest whether or not the messenger is beautiful or
ugly,--the _message_ is the thing. This, which is axiomatic among men,
has been in past ages but partially true if the messenger was a woman.
The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she
is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, "What else are women for?"
Beauty "is its own excuse for being," but there are other excuses, as
most men know, and when the white world objects to black women because
it does not consider them beautiful, the black world of right asks two
questions: "What is beauty?" and, "Suppose you think them ugly, what
then? If ugliness and unconventionality and eccentricity of face and
deed do not hinder men from doing the world's work and reaping the
world's reward, why should it hinder women?"

Other things being equal, all of us, black and white, would prefer to be
beautiful in face and form and suitably clothed; but most of us are not
so, and one of the mightiest revolts of the century is against the
devilish decree that no woman is a woman who is not by present standards
a beautiful woman. This decree the black women of America have in large
measure escaped from the first. Not being expected to be merely
ornamental, they have girded themselves for work, instead of adorning
their bodies only for play. Their sturdier minds have concluded that if
a woman be clean, healthy, and educated, she is as pleasing as God wills
and far more useful than most of her sisters. If in addition to this she
is pink and white and straight-haired, and some of her fellow-men prefer
this, well and good; but if she is black or brown and crowned in curled
mists (and this to us is the most beautiful thing on earth), this is
surely the flimsiest excuse for spiritual incarceration or banishment.

The very attempt to do this in the case of Negro Americans has strangely
over-reached itself. By so much as the defective eyesight of the white
world rejects black women as beauties, by so much the more it needs them
as human beings,--an enviable alternative, as many a white woman knows.
Consequently, for black women alone, as a group, "handsome is that
handsome does" and they are asked to be no more beautiful than God made
them, but they are asked to be efficient, to be strong, fertile,
muscled, and able to work. If they marry, they must as independent
workers be able to help support their children, for their men are paid
on a scale which makes sole support of the family often impossible.

On the whole, colored working women are paid as well as white working
women for similar work, save in some higher grades, while colored men
get from one-fourth to three-fourths less than white men. The result is
curious and three-fold: the economic independence of black women is
increased, the breaking up of Negro families must be more frequent, and
the number of illegitimate children is decreased more slowly among them
than other evidences of culture are increased, just as was once true in
Scotland and Bavaria.

What does this mean? It forecasts a mighty dilemma which the whole world
of civilization, despite its will, must one time frankly face: the
unhusbanded mother or the childless wife. God send us a world with
woman's freedom and married motherhood inextricably wed, but until He
sends it, I see more of future promise in the betrayed girl-mothers of
the black belt than in the childless wives of the white North, and I
have more respect for the colored servant who yields to her frank
longing for motherhood than for her white sister who offers up children
for clothes. Out of a sex freedom that today makes us shudder will come
in time a day when we will no longer pay men for work they do not do,
for the sake of their harem; we will pay women what they earn and insist
on their working and earning it; we will allow those persons to vote who
know enough to vote, whether they be black or female, white or male; and
we will ward race suicide, not by further burdening the over-burdened,
but by honoring motherhood, even when the sneaking father shirks his
duty.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Wait till the lady passes," said a Nashville white boy.

"She's no lady; she's a nigger," answered another.

So some few women are born free, and some amid insult and scarlet
letters achieve freedom; but our women in black had freedom thrust
contemptuously upon them. With that freedom they are buying an
untrammeled independence and dear as is the price they pay for it, it
will in the end be worth every taunt and groan. Today the dreams of the
mothers are coming true. We have still our poverty and degradation, our
lewdness and our cruel toil; but we have, too, a vast group of women of
Negro blood who for strength of character, cleanness of soul, and
unselfish devotion of purpose, is today easily the peer of any group of
women in the civilized world. And more than that, in the great rank and
file of our five million women we have the up-working of new
revolutionary ideals, which must in time have vast influence on the
thought and action of this land.

For this, their promise, and for their hard past, I honor the women of
my race. Their beauty,--their dark and mysterious beauty of midnight
eyes, crumpled hair, and soft, full-featured faces--is perhaps more to
me than to you, because I was born to its warm and subtle spell; but
their worth is yours as well as mine. No other women on earth could
have emerged from the hell of force and temptation which once engulfed
and still surrounds black women in America with half the modesty and
womanliness that they retain. I have always felt like bowing myself
before them in all abasement, searching to bring some tribute to these
long-suffering victims, these burdened sisters of mine, whom the world,
the wise, white world, loves to affront and ridicule and wantonly to
insult. I have known the women of many lands and nations,--I have known
and seen and lived beside them, but none have I known more sweetly
feminine, more unswervingly loyal, more desperately earnest, and more
instinctively pure in body and in soul than the daughters of my black
mothers. This, then,--a little thing--to their memory and inspiration.




_Children of the Moon_


    I am dead;
    Yet somehow, somewhere,
    In Time's weird contradiction, I
    May tell of that dread deed, wherewith
    I brought to Children of the Moon
    Freedom and vast salvation.

    I was a woman born,
    And trod the streaming street,
    That ebbs and flows from Harlem's hills,
    Through caves and canons limned in light,
    Down to the twisting sea.

    That night of nights,
    I stood alone and at the End,
    Until the sudden highway to the moon,
    Golden in splendor,
    Became too real to doubt.

    Dimly I set foot upon the air,
    I fled, I flew, through the thrills of light,
    With all about, above, below, the whirring
    Of almighty wings.

    I found a twilight land,
    Where, hardly hid, the sun
    Sent softly-saddened rays of
    Red and brown to burn the iron soil
    And bathe the snow-white peaks
    In mighty splendor.

    Black were the men,
    Hard-haired and silent-slow,
    Moving as shadows,
    Bending with face of fear to earthward;
    And women there were none.

    "Woman, woman, woman!"
    I cried in mounting terror.
    "Woman and Child!"
    And the cry sang back
    Through heaven, with the
    Whirring of almighty wings.

    Wings, wings, endless wings,--
    Heaven and earth are wings;
    Wings that flutter, furl, and fold,
    Always folding and unfolding,
    Ever folding yet again;
    Wings, veiling some vast
    And veiled face,
    In blazing blackness,
    Behind the folding and unfolding,
    The rolling and unrolling of
    Almighty wings!

    I saw the black men huddle,
    Fumed in fear, falling face downward;
    Vainly I clutched and clawed,
    Dumbly they cringed and cowered,
    Moaning in mournful monotone:

      O Freedom, O Freedom,
      O Freedom over me;
      Before I'll be a slave,
      I'll be buried in my grave,
      And go home to my God,
            And be free.

    It was angel-music
    From the dead,
    And ever, as they sang,
    Some winged thing of wings, filling all heaven,
    Folding and unfolding, and folding yet again,

    Tore out their blood and entrails,
    'Til I screamed in utter terror;
    And a silence came--
    A silence and the wailing of a babe.

    Then, at last, I saw and shamed;
    I knew how these dumb, dark, and dusky things
    Had given blood and life,
    To fend the caves of underground,
    The great black caves of utter night,
    Where earth lay full of mothers
    And their babes.

    Little children sobbing in darkness,
    Little children crying in silent pain,
    Little mothers rocking and groping and struggling,
    Digging and delving and groveling,
    Amid the dying-dead and dead-in-life
    And drip and dripping of warm, wet blood,
    Far, far beneath the wings,--
    The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.

    I bent with tears and pitying hands,
    Above these dusky star-eyed children,--
    Crinkly-haired, with sweet-sad baby voices,
    Pleading low for light and love and living--
    And I crooned:

    "Little children weeping there,
    God shall find your faces fair;
    Guerdon for your deep distress,
    He shall send His tenderness;
    For the tripping of your feet
    Make a mystic music sweet
    In the darkness of your hair;
    Light and laughter in the air--
    Little children weeping there,
    God shall find your faces fair!"

    I strode above the stricken, bleeding men,
    The rampart 'ranged against the skies,
    And shouted:
    "Up, I say, build and slay;
    Fight face foremost, force a way,
    Unloose, unfetter, and unbind;
    Be men and free!"

    Dumbly they shrank,
    Muttering they pointed toward that peak,
    Than vastness vaster,
    Whereon a darkness brooded,
    "Who shall look and live," they sighed;
    And I sensed
    The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.

    Yet did we build of iron, bricks, and blood;
    We built a day, a year, a thousand years,
    Blood was the mortar,--blood and tears,
    And, ah, the Thing, the Thing of wings,
    The winged, folding Wing of Things
    Did furnish much mad mortar
    For that tower.

    Slow and ever slower rose the towering task,
    And with it rose the sun,
    Until at last on one wild day,
    Wind-whirled, cloud-swept and terrible
    I stood beneath the burning shadow
    Of the peak,
    Beneath the whirring of almighty wings,
    While downward from my feet
    Streamed the long line of dusky faces
    And the wail of little children sobbing under earth.

    Alone, aloft,
    I saw through firmaments on high
    The drama of Almighty God,
    With all its flaming suns and stars.
    "Freedom!" I cried.
    "Freedom!" cried heaven, earth, and stars;
    And a Voice near-far,
    Amid the folding and unfolding of almighty wings,
    Answered, "I am Freedom--
    Who sees my face is free--
    He and his."

    I dared not look;
    Downward I glanced on deep-bowed heads and closed eyes,
    Outward I gazed on flecked and flaming blue--
    But ever onward, upward flew
    The sobbing of small voices,--
    Down, down, far down into the night.

    Slowly I lifted livid limbs aloft;
    Upward I strove: the face! the face!
    Onward I reeled: the face! the face!
    To beauty wonderful as sudden death,
    Or horror horrible as endless life--
    Up! Up! the blood-built way;
    (Shadow grow vaster!
    Terror come faster!)
    Up! Up! to the blazing blackness
    Of one veiled face.

    And endless folding and unfolding,
    Rolling and unrolling of almighty wings.
    The last step stood!
    The last dim cry of pain
    Fluttered across the stars,
    And then--
    Wings, wings, triumphant wings,
    Lifting and lowering, waxing and waning,
    Swinging and swaying, twirling and whirling,
    Whispering and screaming, streaming and gleaming,
    Spreading and sweeping and shading and flaming--
    Wings, wings, eternal wings,
    'Til the hot, red blood,
    Flood fleeing flood,
    Thundered through heaven and mine ears,
    While all across a purple sky,
    The last vast pinion.
    Trembled to unfold.

    I rose upon the Mountain of the Moon,--
    I felt the blazing glory of the Sun;
    I heard the Song of Children crying, "Free!"
    I saw the face of Freedom--
    And I died.





VIII

THE IMMORTAL CHILD


If a man die shall he live again? We do not know. But this we do know,
that our children's children live forever and grow and develop toward
perfection as they are trained. All human problems, then, center in the
Immortal Child and his education is the problem of problems. And first
for illustration of what I would say may I not take for example, out of
many millions, the life of one dark child.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is now nineteen years since I first saw Coleridge-Taylor. We were in
London in some somber hall where there were many meeting, men and women
called chiefly to the beautiful World's Fair at Paris; and then a few
slipping over to London to meet Pan-Africa. We were there from Cape
Colony and Liberia, from Haiti and the States, and from the Islands of
the Sea. I remember the stiff, young officer who came with credentials
from Menelik of Abyssinia; I remember the bitter, black American who
whispered how an army of the Soudan might some day cross the Alps; I
remember Englishmen, like the Colensos, who sat and counseled with us;
but above all, I remember Coleridge-Taylor.

He was a little man and nervous, with dark-golden face and hair that
bushed and strayed. His fingers were always nervously seeking hidden
keys and he was quick with enthusiasm,--instinct with life. His bride of
a year or more,--dark, too, in her whiter way,--was of the calm and
quiet type. Her soft contralto voice thrilled us often as she sang,
while her silences were full of understanding.

Several times we met in public gatherings and then they bade me to their
home,--a nest of a cottage, with gate and garden, hidden in London's
endless rings of suburbs. I dimly recall through these years a room in
cozy disorder, strewn with music--music on the floor and music on the
chairs, music in the air as the master rushed to the piano now and
again to make some memory melodious--some allusion real.

And then at last, for it was the last, I saw Coleridge-Taylor in a
mighty throng of people crowding the Crystal Palace. We came in facing
the stage and scarcely dared look around. On the stage were a full
orchestra, a chorus of eight hundred voices, and some of the world's
famous soloists. He left his wife sitting beside me, and she was very
silent as he went forward to lift the conductor's baton. It was one of
the earliest renditions of "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast." We sat at rapt
attention and when the last, weird music died, the great chorus and
orchestra rose as a man to acclaim the master; he turned toward the
audience and then we turning for the first time saw that sea of faces
behind,--the misty thousands whose voices rose to one strong shout of
joy! It was a moment such as one does not often live. It seemed, and
was, prophetic.

This young man who stepped forth as one of the most notable of modern
English composers had a simple and uneventful career. His father was a
black surgeon of Sierra Leone who came to London for study. While there
he met an English girl and this son was born, in London, in 1875.

Then came a series of chances. His father failed to succeed and
disappeared back to Africa leaving the support of the child to the poor
working mother. The child showed evidences of musical talent and a
friendly workingman gave him a little violin. A musician glancing from
his window saw a little dark boy playing marbles on the street with a
tiny violin in one hand; he gave him lessons. He happened to gain
entrance into a charity school with a master of understanding mind who
recognized genius when he saw it; and finally his beautiful child's
treble brought him to the notice of the choirmaster of St. George's,
Croyden.

So by happy accident his way was clear. Within his soul was no
hesitation. He was one of those fortunate beings who are not called to
_Wander-Jahre_, but are born with sails set and seas charted. Already
the baby of four little years was a musician, and as choir-boy and
violinist he walked unhesitatingly and surely to his life work. He was
graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Music in 1894, and
married soon after the daughter of one of his professors. Then his life
began, and whatever it lacked of physical adventure in the conventional
round of a modern world-city, it more than gained in the almost
tempestuous outpouring of his spiritual nature. Life to him was neither
meat nor drink,--it was creative flame; ideas, plans, melodies glowed
within him. To create, to do, to accomplish; to know the white glory of
mighty midnights and the pale Amen of dawns was his day of days. Songs,
pianoforte and violin pieces, trios and quintets for strings, incidental
music, symphony, orchestral, and choral works rushed from his fingers.
Nor were they laboriously contrived or light, thin things made to meet
sudden popularity. Rather they were the flaming bits that must be said
and sung,--that could not wait the slower birth of years, so hurried to
the world as though their young creator knew that God gave him but a
day. His whole active life was scarcely more than a decade and a half,
and yet in that time, without wealth, friends, or influence, in the face
of perhaps the most critical and skeptical and least imaginative
civilization of the modern world, he wrote his name so high as a
creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.

And this was but one side of the man. On the other was the
sweet-tempered, sympathetic comrade, always willing to help, never
knowing how to refuse, generous with every nerve and fiber of his being.
Think of a young musician, father of a family, who at the time of his
death held positions as Associate of the Royal College of Music,
Professor in Trinity College and Crystal Palace, Conductor of the Handel
Choral Society and the Rochester Choral Society, Principal of the
Guildhall School of Music, where he had charge of the choral choir, the
orchestra, and the opera. He was repeatedly the leader of music
festivals all over Great Britain and a judge of contests. And with all
this his house was open in cheering hospitality to friends and his hand
ever ready with sympathy and help.

When such a man dies, it must bring pause to a reasoning world. We may
call his death-sickness pneumonia, but we all know that it was sheer
overwork,--the using of a delicately-tuned instrument too commonly and
continuously and carelessly to let it last its normal life. We may well
talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire, but the real and
unforgivable waste of modern civilization is the waste of ability and
genius,--the killing of useful, indispensable men who have no right to
die; who deserve, not for themselves, but for the world, leisure,
freedom from distraction, expert medical advice, and intelligent
sympathy.

Coleridge-Taylor's life work was not finished,--it was but well begun.
He lived only his first period of creative genius, when melody and
harmony flashed and fluttered in subtle, compelling, and more than
promising profusion. He did not live to do the organized, constructive
work in the full, calm power of noonday,--the reflective finishing of
evening. In the annals of the future his name must always stand high,
but with the priceless gift of years, who can say where it might not
have stood.

Why should he have worked so breathlessly, almost furiously? It was, we
may be sure, because with unflinching determination and with no thought
of surrender he faced the great alternative,--the choice which the
cynical, thoughtless, busy, modern world spreads grimly before its
greater souls--food or beauty, bread and butter, or ideals. And
continually we see worthier men turning to the pettier, cheaper
thing--the popular portrait, the sensational novel, the jingling song.
The choice is not always between the least and the greatest, the high
and the empty, but only too often it is between starvation and
something. When, therefore, we see a man, working desperately to earn a
living and still stooping to no paltry dickering and to no unworthy
work, handing away a "Hiawatha" for less than a song, pausing for
glimpses of the stars when a world full of charcoal glowed far more
warmly and comfortably, we know that such a man is a hero in a sense
never approached by the swashbuckling soldier or the lying patriot.

Deep as was the primal tragedy in the life of Coleridge-Taylor, there
lay another still deeper. He smiled at it lightly, as we all do,--we who
live within the veil,--to hide the deeper hurt. He had, with us, that
divine and African gift of laughter, that echo of a thousand centuries
of suns. I mind me how once he told of the bishop, the well-groomed
English bishop, who eyed the artist gravely, with his eye-glass--hair
and color and figure,--and said quite audibly to his friends, "Quite
interesting--looks intelligent,--yes--yes!"

Fortunate was Coleridge-Taylor to be born in Europe and to speak a
universal tongue. In America he could hardly have had his career. His
genius was, to be sure, recognized (with some palpitation and
consternation) when it came full-grown across the seas with an English
imprint; but born here, it might never have been permitted to grow. We
know in America how to discourage, choke, and murder ability when it so
far forgets itself as to choose a dark skin. England, thank God, is
slightly more civilized than her colonies; but even there the path of
this young man was no way of roses and just a shade thornier than that
of whiter men. He did not complain at it,--he did not

     "Wince and cry aloud."

Rather the hint here and there of color discrimination in England
aroused in him deeper and more poignant sympathy with his people
throughout the world. He was one with that great company of
mixed-blooded men: Pushkin and Dumas, Hamilton and Douglass, Browning
and many others; but he more than most of these men knew the call of the
blood when it came and listened and answered. He came to America with
strange enthusiasm. He took with quite simple and unconscious grace the
conventional congratulations of the musical world. He was used to that.
But to his own people--to the sad sweetness of their voices, their
inborn sense of music, their broken, half-articulate voices,--he leapt
with new enthusiasm. From the fainter shadowings of his own life, he
sensed instinctively the vaster tragedy of theirs. His soul yearned to
give voice and being to this human thing. He early turned to the sorrow
songs. He sat at the faltering feet of Paul Laurence Dunbar and he asked
(as we sadly shook our heads) for some masterpiece of this world-tragedy
that his soul could set to music. And then, so characteristically, he
rushed back to England, composed a half-dozen exquisite harmonies
haunted by slave-songs, led the Welsh in their singing, listened to the
Scotch, ordered great music festivals in all England, wrote for Beerbohm
Tree, took on another music professorship, promised a trip to Germany,
and at last, staggering home one night, on his way to his wife and
little boy and girl, fell in his tracks and in four days was dead, at
the age of thirty-seven. They say that in his death-throe he arose and
facing some great, ghostly choir raised his last baton, while all around
the massive silence rang with the last mist-music of his dying ears.

He was buried from St. Michael's on September 5, 1912, with the acclaim
of kings and music masters and little children and to the majestic
melody of his own music. The tributes that followed him to his grave
were unusually hearty and sincere. The head of the Royal College calls
the first production of "Hiawatha" one of the most remarkable events in
modern English musical history and the trilogy one of the most
universally-beloved works of modern English music. One critic calls
Taylor's a name "which with that of Elgar represented the nation's most
individual output" and calls his "Atonement" "perhaps the finest passion
music of modern times." Another critic speaks of his originality:
"Though surrounded by the influences that are at work in Europe today,
he retained his individuality to the end, developing his style, however,
and evincing new ideas in each succeeding work. His untimely death at
the age of thirty-seven, a short life--like those of Schubert,
Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Hugo Wolf--has robbed the world of one of its
noblest singers, one of those few men of modern times who found
expression in the language of musical song, a lyricist of power and
worth."

But the tributes did not rest with the artist; with peculiar unanimity
they sought his "sterling character," "the good husband and father," the
"staunch and loyal friend." And perhaps I cannot better end these
hesitating words than with that tribute from one who called this master,
friend, and whose lament cried in the night with more of depth and
passion than Alfred Noyes is wont in his self-repression to voice:

    "Through him, his race, a moment, lifted up
      Forests of hands to beauty, as in prayer,
    Touched through his lips the sacramental cup
      And then sank back, benumbed in our bleak air."

Yet, consider: to many millions of people this man was all wrong.
_First_, he ought never to have been born, for he was the mulatto son of
a white woman. _Secondly_, he should never have been educated as a
musician,--he should have been trained, for his "place" in the world and
to make him satisfied therewith. _Thirdly_, he should not have married
the woman he loved and who loved him, for she was white and the niece of
an Oxford professor. _Fourthly_, the children of such a union--but why
proceed? You know it all by heart.

If he had been black, like Paul Laurence Dunbar, would the argument have
been different? No. He should never have been born, for he is a
"problem." He should never be educated, for he cannot be educated. He
should never marry, for that means children and there is no place for
black children in this world.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the treatment of the child the world foreshadows its own future and
faith. All words and all thinking lead to the child,--to that vast
immortality and the wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child
represents. Such thought as this it was that made the Master say of old
as He saw baby faces:

"And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it is better for
him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into
the sea."

And yet the mothers and fathers and the men and women of my race must
often pause and ask: Is it worth while? Ought children be born to us?
Have we any right to make human souls face what we face today? The
answer is clear: If the great battle of human right against poverty,
against disease, against color prejudice is to be won, it must be won,
not in our day, but in the day of our children's children. Ours is the
blood and dust of battle; theirs the rewards of victory. If, then, they
are not there because we have not brought them into the world, we have
been the guiltiest factor in conquering ourselves. It is our duty, then,
to accomplish the immortality of black blood, in order that the day may
come in this dark world when poverty shall be abolished, privilege be
based on individual desert, and the color of a man's skin be no bar to
the outlook of his soul.

If it is our duty as honest colored men and women, battling for a great
principle, to bring not aimless rafts of children to the world, but as
many as, with reasonable sacrifice, we can train to largest manhood,
what in its inner essence shall that training be, particularly in its
beginning?

The first temptation is to shield the child,--to hedge it about that it
may not know and will not dream of the color line. Then when we can no
longer wholly shield, to indulge and pamper and coddle, as though in
this dumb way to compensate. From this attitude comes the multitude of
our spoiled, wayward, disappointed children. And must we not blame
ourselves? For while the motive was pure and the outer menace undoubted,
is shielding and indulgence the way to meet it?

Some Negro parents, realizing this, leave their children to sink or swim
in this sea of race prejudice. They neither shield nor explain, but
thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as
they may from brutal fact. Out of this may come strength, poise,
self-dependence, and out of it, too, may come bewilderment, cringing
deception, and self-distrust. It is, all said, a brutal, unfair method,
and in its way it is as bad as shielding and indulgence. Why not,
rather, face the facts and tell the truth? Your child is wiser than you
think.

The truth lies ever between extremes. It is wrong to introduce the child
to race consciousness prematurely; it is dangerous to let that
consciousness grow spontaneously without intelligent guidance. With
every step of dawning intelligence, explanation--frank, free, guiding
explanation--must come. The day will dawn when mother must explain
gently but clearly why the little girls next door do not want to play
with "niggers"; what the real cause is of the teacher's unsympathetic
attitude; and how people may ride in the backs of street cars and the
smoker end of trains and still be people, honest high-minded souls.

Remember, too, that in such frank explanation you are speaking in nine
cases out of ten to a good deal clearer understanding than you think and
that the child-mind has what your tired soul may have lost faith
in,--the Power and the Glory.

Out of little, unspoiled souls rise up wonderful resources and healing
balm. Once the colored child understands the white world's attitude and
the shameful wrong of it, you have furnished it with a great life
motive,--a power and impulse toward good which is the mightiest thing
man has. How many white folk would give their own souls if they might
graft into their children's souls a great, moving, guiding ideal!

With this Power there comes, in the transfiguring soul of childhood, the
Glory: the vision of accomplishment, the lofty ideal. Once let the
strength of the motive work, and it becomes the life task of the parent
to guide and to shape the ideal; to raise it from resentment and revenge
to dignity and self-respect, to breadth and accomplishment, to human
service; to beat back every thought of cringing and surrender.

Here, at last, we can speak with no hesitation, with no lack of faith.
For we know that as the world grows better there will be realized in our
children's lives that for which we fight unfalteringly, but vainly now.

So much for the problem of the home and our own dark children. Now let
us look beyond the pale upon the children of the wide world. What is the
real lesson of the life of Coleridge-Taylor? It is this: humanly
speaking it was sheer accident that this boy developed his genius. We
have a right to assume that hundreds and thousands of boys and girls
today are missing the chance of developing unusual talents because the
chances have been against them; and that indeed the majority of the
children of the world are not being systematically fitted for their life
work and for life itself. Why?

Many seek the reason in the content of the school program. They
feverishly argue the relative values of Greek, mathematics, and manual
training, but fail with singular unanimity in pointing out the
fundamental cause of our failure in human education: That failure is due
to the fact that we aim not at the full development of the child, but
that the world regards and always has regarded education first as a
means of buttressing the established order of things rather than
improving it. And this is the real reason why strife, war, and
revolution have marked the onward march of humanity instead of reason
and sound reform. Instead of seeking to push the coming generation ahead
of our pitiful accomplishment, we insist that it march behind. We say,
morally, that high character is conformity to present public opinion; we
say industrially that the present order is best and that children must
be trained to perpetuate it.

But, it is objected, what else can we do? Can we teach Revolution to the
inexperienced in hope that they may discern progress? No, but we may
teach frankly that this world is not perfection, but development: that
the object of education is manhood and womanhood, clear reason,
individual talent and genius and the spirit of service and sacrifice,
and not simply a frantic effort to avoid change in present institutions;
that industry is for man and not man for industry and that while we must
have workers to work, the prime object of our training is not the work
but the worker--not the maintenance of present industrial caste but the
development of human intelligence by which drudgery may be lessened and
beauty widened.

Back of our present educational system is the philosophy that sneers at
the foolish Fathers who believed it self-evident, "that all men were
created free and equal." Surely the overwhelming evidence is today that
men are slaves and unequal. But is it not education that is the creator
of this freedom and equality? Most men today cannot conceive of a
freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery. They do not want
equality because the thrill of their happiness comes from having things
that others have not. But may not human education fix the fine ideal of
an equal maximum of freedom for every human soul combined with that
minimum of slavery for each soul which the inexorable physical facts of
the world impose--rather than complete freedom for some and complete
slavery for others; and, again, is not the equality toward which the
world moves an equality of honor in the assigned human task itself
rather than equal facility in doing different tasks? Human equality is
not lack of difference, nor do the infinite human differences argue
relative superiority and inferiority. And, again, how new an aspect
human differences may assume when all men are educated. Today we think
of apes, semi-apes, and human beings; tomorrow we may think of Keir
Hardies, Roosevelts, and Beethovens--not equals but men. Today we are
forcing men into educational slavery in order that others may enjoy
life, and excuse ourselves by saying that the world's work must be done.
We are degrading some sorts of work by honoring others, and then
expressing surprise that most people object to having their children
trained solely to take up their father's tasks.

Given as the ideal the utmost possible freedom for every human soul,
with slavery for none, and equal honor for all necessary human tasks,
then our problem of education is greatly simplified: we aim to develop
human souls; to make all intelligent; to discover special talents and
genius. With this course of training beginning in early childhood and
never ceasing must go the technical training for the present world's
work according to carefully studied individual gifts and wishes.

On the other hand, if we arrange our system of education to develop
workmen who will not strike and Negroes satisfied with their present
place in the world, we have set ourselves a baffling task. We find
ourselves compelled to keep the masses ignorant and to curb our own
thought and expression so as not to inflame the ignorant. We force
moderate reformers and men with new and valuable ideas to become red
radicals and revolutionists, since that happens to be the only way to
make the world listen to reason. Consider our race problem in the South:
the South has invested in Negro ignorance; some Northerners proposed
limited education, not, they explained, to better the Negro, but merely
to make the investment more profitable to the present beneficiaries.
They thus gained wide Southern support for schools like Hampton and
Tuskegee. But could this program be expected long to satisfy colored
folk? And was this shifty dodging of the real issue the wisest
statesmanship? No! The real question in the South is the question of the
permanency of present color caste. The problem, then, of the formal
training of our colored children has been strangely complicated by the
strong feeling of certain persons as to their future in America and the
world. And the reaction toward this caste education has strengthened the
idea of caste education throughout the world.

Let us then return to fundamental ideals. Children must be trained in a
knowledge of what the world is and what it knows and how it does its
daily work. These things cannot be separated: we cannot teach pure
knowledge apart from actual facts, or separate truth from the human
mind. Above all we must not forget that the object of all education is
the child itself and not what it does or makes.

It is here that a great movement in America has grievously sinned
against the light. There has arisen among us a movement to make the
Public School primarily the hand-maiden of production. America is
conceived of as existing for the sake of its mines, fields and
factories, and not those factories, fields and mines as existing for
America. Consequently, the public schools are for training the mass of
men as servants and laborers and mechanics to increase the land's
industrial efficiency.

Those who oppose this program, especially if they are black, are accused
of despising common toil and humble service. In fact, we Negroes are but
facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while
maintaining a proper output of goods and furnishing needed services,
increase the knowledge of experience of common men and conserve genius
for the common weal? Without wider, deeper intelligence among the masses
Democracy cannot accomplish its greater ends. Without a more careful
conservation of human ability and talent the world cannot secure the
services which its greater needs call for. Yet today who goes to
college, the Talented or the Rich? Who goes to high school, the Bright
or the Well-to-Do? Who does the physical work of the world, those whose
muscles need the exercise or those whose souls and minds are stupefied
with manual toil? How is the drudgery of the world distributed, by
thoughtful justice or the lash of Slavery?

We cannot base the education of future citizens on the present
inexcusable inequality of wealth nor on physical differences of race. We
must seek not to make men carpenters but to make carpenters men.

Colored Americans must then with deep determination educate their
children in the broadest, highest way. They must fill the colleges with
the talented and fill the fields and shops with the intelligent. Wisdom
is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom.

But why am I talking simply of "colored" children? Is not the problem of
their education simply an intensification of the problem of educating
all children? Look at our plight in the United States, nearly 150 years
after the establishment of a government based on human intelligence.

If we take the figures of the Thirteenth Census, we find that there were
five and one-half million illiterate Americans of whom 3,184,633 were
white. Remembering that illiteracy is a crude and extreme test of
ignorance, we may assume that there are in the United States ten million
people over ten years of age who are too ignorant either to perform
their civic duties or to teach industrial efficiency. Moreover, it does
not seem that this illiteracy is disappearing rapidly.

For instance, nine percent of American children between ten and
nineteen years of age cannot read and write. Moreover, there are
millions of children who, judging by the figures for the school year
1909-10, are not going to learn to read and write, for of the Americans
six to fourteen years of age there were 3,125,392 who were not in school
a single day during that year. If we take the eleven million youths
fifteen to twenty years of age for whom vocational training is
particularly adapted, we find that nearly five per cent of these, or
448,414, are absolutely illiterate; it is not too much to assume that a
million of them have not acquired enough of the ordinary tools of
intelligence to make the most of efficient vocational training.

Confining ourselves to the white people, over fifteen per cent of the
white children six to fourteen years of age, or 2,253,198, did not
attend school during the school year 1909-10. Of the native white
children of native parents ten to fourteen years of age nearly a tenth
were not in school during that year; 121,878 native white children of
native parents, fifteen to nineteen years of age, were illiterate.

If we continue our attention to the colored children, the case is, of
course, much worse.

We cannot hope to make intelligent workmen and intelligent citizens of a
group of people, over forty per cent of whose children six to fourteen
years of age were not in school a single day during 1909-10; for the
other sixty per cent the school term in the majority of cases was
probably less than five months. Of the Negro children ten to fourteen
years of age 18.9 per cent were illiterate; of those fifteen to nineteen
years of age 20.3 per cent were illiterate; of those ten to fourteen
years of age 31.4 per cent did not go to school a single day in 1909-10.

What is the trouble? It is simple. We are spending one dollar for
education where we should spend ten dollars. If tomorrow we multiplied
our effort to educate the next generation ten-fold, we should but begin
our bounden duty. The heaven that lies about our infancy is but the
ideals come true which every generation of children is capable of
bringing; but we, selfish in our own ignorance and incapacity, are
making of education a series of miserable compromises: How ignorant can
we let a child grow to be in order to make him the best cotton mill
operative? What is the least sum that will keep the average youth out of
jail? How many months saved on a high school course will make the
largest export of wheat?

If we realized that children are the future, that immortality is the
present child, that no education which educates can possibly be too
costly, then we know that the menace of Kaiserism which called for the
expenditure of more than 332 thousand millions of dollars was not a whit
more pressing than the menace of ignorance, and that no nation tomorrow
will call itself civilized which does not give every single human being
college and vocational training free and under the best teaching force
procurable for love or money.

This world has never taken the education of children seriously. Misled
by selfish dreamings of personal life forever, we have neglected the
true and practical immortality through the endless life of children's
children. Seeking counsels of our own souls' perfection, we have
despised and rejected the possible increasing perfection of unending
generations. Or if we are thrown back in pessimistic despair from making
living folk decent, we leap to idle speculations of a thousand years
hereafter instead of working steadily and persistently for the next
generation.

All our problems center in the child. All our hopes, our dreams are for
our children. Has our own life failed? Let its lesson save the
children's lives from similar failure. Is democracy a failure? Train up
citizens that will make it succeed. Is wealth too crude, too foolish in
form, and too easily stolen? Train up workers with honor and consciences
and brains. Have we degraded service with menials? Abolish the mean
spirit and implant sacrifice. Do we despise women? Train them as workers
and thinkers and not as playthings, lest future generations ape our
worst mistake. Do we despise darker races? Teach the children its fatal
cost in spiritual degradation and murder, teach them that to hate
"niggers" or "chinks" is to crucify souls like their own. Is there
anything we would accomplish with human beings? Do it with the immortal
child, with a stretch of endless time for doing it and with infinite
possibilities to work on.

Is this our attitude toward education? It is not--neither in England nor
America--in France nor Germany--with black nor white nor yellow folk.
Education to the modern world is a burden which we are driven to carry.
We shirk and complain. We do just as little as possible and only threat
or catastrophe induces us to do more than a minimum. If the ignorant
mass, panting to know, revolts, we dole them gingerly enough knowledge
to pacify them temporarily. If, as in the Great War, we discover
soldiers too ignorant to use our machines of murder and destruction, we
train them--to use machines of murder and destruction. If mounting
wealth calls for intelligent workmen, we rush tumultuously to train
workers--in order to increase our wealth. But of great, broad plans to
train all men for all things--to make a universe intelligent, busy,
good, creative and beautiful--where in this wide world is such an
educational program? To announce it is to invite gasps or Brobdingnagian
laughter. It cannot be done. It will cost too much.

What has been done with man can be done with men, if the world tries
long enough and hard enough. And as to the cost--all the wealth of the
world, save that necessary for sheer decent existence and for the
maintenance of past civilization, is, and of right ought to be, the
property of the children for their education.

I mean it. In one year, 1917, we spent $96,700,000,000 for war. We blew
it away to murder, maim, and destroy! Why? Because the blind, brutal
crime of powerful and selfish interests made this path through hell the
only visible way to heaven. We did it. We had to do it, and we are glad
the putrid horror is over. But, now, are we prepared to spend less to
make a world in which the resurgence of such devilish power will be
impossible?

Do we really want war to cease?

Then educate the children of this generation at a cost no whit less and
if necessary a hundred times as great as the cost of the Great War.

Last year, 1917, education cost us $915,000,000.

Next year it ought to cost us at least two thousand million dollars. We
should spend enough money to hire the best teaching force possible--the
best organizing and directing ability in the land, even if we have to
strip the railroads and meat trust. We should dot city and country with
the most efficient, sanitary, and beautiful school-houses the world
knows and we should give every American child common school, high
school, and college training and then vocational guidance in earning a
living.

Is this a dream?

Can we afford less?

Consider our so-called educational "problems"; "How may we keep pupils
in the high school?" Feed and clothe them. "Shall we teach Latin, Greek,
and mathematics to the 'masses'?" If they are worth teaching to anybody,
the masses need them most. "Who shall go to college?" Everybody. "When
shall culture training give place to technical education for work?"
Never.

These questions are not "problems." They are simply "excuses" for
spending less time and money on the next generation. Given ten millions
of dollars a year, what can we best do with the education of a million
children? The real answer is--kill nine hundred and ninety thousand of
them quickly and not gradually, and make thoroughly-trained men and
women of the other ten thousand. But who set the limit of ten million
dollars? Who says it shall not be ten thousand millions, as it ought to
be? You and I say it, and in saying it we sin against the Holy Ghost.

We sin because in our befuddled brains we have linked money and
education inextricably. We assume that only the wealthy have a real
right to education when, in fact, being born is being given a right to
college training. Our wealth today is, we all know, distributed mainly
by chance inheritance and personal favor and yet we attempt to base the
right to education on this foundation. The result is grotesque! We bury
genius; we send it to jail; we ridicule and mock it, while we send
mediocrity and idiocy to college, gilded and crowned. For three hundred
years we have denied black Americans an education and now we exploit
them before a gaping world: See how ignorant and degraded they are! All
they are fit for is education for cotton-picking and dish-washing. When
Dunbar and Taylor happen along, we are torn between something like
shamefaced anger or impatient amazement.

A world guilty of this last and mightiest war has no right to enjoy or
create until it has made the future safe from another Arkansas or
Rheims. To this there is but one patent way, proved and inescapable,
Education, and that not for me or for you but for the Immortal Child.
And that child is of all races and all colors. All children are the
children of all and not of individuals and families and races. The whole
generation must be trained and guided and out of it as out of a huge
reservoir must be lifted all genius, talent, and intelligence to serve
all the world.




Almighty Death[1]


    Softly, quite softly--
    For I hear, above the murmur of the sea,
    Faint and far-fallen footsteps, as of One
    Who comes from out beyond the endless ends of Time,
    With voice that downward looms thro' singing stars;
    Its subtle sound I see thro' these long-darkened eyes,
    I hear the Light He bringeth on His hands--
    Almighty Death!
    Softly, oh, softly, lest He pass me by,
    And that unquivering Light toward which my longing soul
    And tortured body through these years have writhed,
    Fade to the dun darkness of my days.

    Softly, full softly, let me rise and greet
    The strong, low luting of that long-awaited call;
    Swiftly be all my good and going gone,
    And this vast veiled and vanquished vigor of my soul
    Seek somehow otherwhere its rest and goal,
    Where endless spaces stretch,
    Where endless time doth moan,
    Where endless light doth pour
    Thro' the black kingdoms of eternal death.

    Then haply I may see what things I have not seen,
    Then I may know what things I have not known;
    Then may I do my dreams.

    Farewell! No sound of idle mourning let there be
    To shudder this full silence--save the voice
    Of children--little children, white and black,
    Whispering the deeds I tried to do for them;
    While I at last unguided and alone
    Pass softly, full softly.

[Footnote 1: For Joseph Pulitzer, October 29, 1911.]





IX

OF BEAUTY AND DEATH


For long years we of the world gone wild have looked into the face of
death and smiled. Through all our bitter tears we knew how beautiful it
was to die for that which our souls called sufficient. Like all true
beauty this thing of dying was so simple, so matter-of-fact. The boy
clothed in his splendid youth stood before us and laughed in his own
jolly way,--went and was gone. Suddenly the world was full of the
fragrance of sacrifice. We left our digging and burden-bearing; we
turned from our scraping and twisting of things and words; we paused
from our hurrying hither and thither and walking up and down, and asked
in half-whisper: this Death--is this Life? And is its beauty real or
false? And of this heart-questioning I am writing.

       *       *       *       *       *

My friend, who is pale and positive, said to me yesterday, as the tired
sun was nodding:

"You are too sensitive."

I admit, I am--sensitive. I am artificial. I cringe or am bumptious or
immobile. I am intellectually dishonest, art-blind, and I lack humor.

"Why don't you stop all this?" she retorts triumphantly.

You will not let us.

"There you go, again. You know that I--"

Wait! I answer. Wait!

I arise at seven. The milkman has neglected me. He pays little attention
to colored districts. My white neighbor glares elaborately. I walk
softly, lest I disturb him. The children jeer as I pass to work. The
women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. The
policeman is truculent. The elevator man hates to serve Negroes. My job
is insecure because the white union wants it and does not want me. I try
to lunch, but no place near will serve me. I go forty blocks to
Marshall's, but the Committee of Fourteen closes Marshall's; they say
white women frequent it.

"Do all eating places discriminate?"

No, but how shall I know which do not--except--

I hurry home through crowds. They mutter or get angry. I go to a
mass-meeting. They stare. I go to a church. "We don't admit niggers!"

Or perhaps I leave the beaten track. I seek new work. "Our employees
would not work with you; our customers would object."

I ask to help in social uplift.

"Why--er--we will write you."

I enter the free field of science. Every laboratory door is closed and
no endowments are available.

I seek the universal mistress, Art; the studio door is locked.

I write literature. "We cannot publish stories of colored folks of that
type." It's the only type I know.

This is my life. It makes me idiotic. It gives me artificial problems. I
hesitate, I rush, I waver. In fine,--I am sensitive!

My pale friend looks at me with disbelief and curling tongue.

"Do you mean to sit there and tell me that this is what happens to you
each day?"

Certainly not, I answer low.

"Then you only fear it will happen?"

I fear!

"Well, haven't you the courage to rise above a--almost a craven fear?"

Quite--quite craven is my fear, I admit; but the terrible thing
is--these things do happen!

"But you just said--"

They do happen. Not all each day,--surely not. But now and then--now
seldom, now, sudden; now after a week, now in a chain of awful minutes;
not everywhere, but anywhere--in Boston, in Atlanta. That's the hell of
it. Imagine spending your life looking for insults or for hiding places
from them--shrinking (instinctively and despite desperate bolsterings of
courage) from blows that are not always but ever; not each day, but each
week, each month, each year. Just, perhaps, as you have choked back the
craven fear and cried, "I am and will be the master of my--"

"No more tickets downstairs; here's one to the smoking gallery."

You hesitate. You beat back your suspicions. After all, a cigarette with
Charlie Chaplin--then a white man pushes by--

"Three in the orchestra."

"Yes, sir." And in he goes.

Suddenly your heart chills. You turn yourself away toward the golden
twinkle of the purple night and hesitate again. What's the use? Why not
always yield--always take what's offered,--always bow to force, whether
of cannon or dislike? Then the great fear surges in your soul, the real
fear--the fear beside which other fears are vain imaginings; the fear
lest right there and then you are losing your own soul; that you are
losing your own soul and the soul of a people; that millions of unborn
children, black and gold and mauve, are being there and then despoiled
by you because you are a coward and dare not fight!

Suddenly that silly orchestra seat and the cavorting of a comedian with
funny feet become matters of life, death, and immortality; you grasp the
pillars of the universe and strain as you sway back to that befrilled
ticket girl. You grip your soul for riot and murder. You choke and
sputter, and she seeing that you are about to make a "fuss" obeys her
orders and throws the tickets at you in contempt. Then you slink to your
seat and crouch in the darkness before the film, with every tissue
burning! The miserable wave of reaction engulfs you. To think of
compelling puppies to take your hard-earned money; fattening hogs to
hate you and yours; forcing your way among cheap and tawdry idiots--God!
What a night of pleasure!

       *       *       *       *       *

Here, then, is beauty and ugliness, a wide vision of world-sacrifice, a
fierce gleam of world-hate. Which is life and what is death and how
shall we face so tantalizing a contradiction? Any explanation must
necessarily be subtle and involved. No pert and easy word of
encouragement, no merely dark despair, can lay hold of the roots of
these things. And first and before all, we cannot forget that this world
is beautiful. Grant all its ugliness and sin--the petty, horrible snarl
of its putrid threads, which few have seen more near or more often than
I--notwithstanding all this, the beauty of this world is not to be
denied.

Casting my eyes about I dare not let them rest on the beauty of Love and
Friend, for even if my tongue were cunning enough to sing this, the
revelation of reality here is too sacred and the fancy too untrue. Of
one world-beauty alone may we at once be brutally frank and that is the
glory of physical nature; this, though the last of beauties, is divine!

And so, too, there are depths of human degradation which it is not fair
for us to probe. With all their horrible prevalence, we cannot call them
natural. But may we not compare the least of the world's beauty with the
least of its ugliness--not murder, starvation, and rapine, with love and
friendship and creation--but the glory of sea and sky and city, with the
little hatefulnesses and thoughtfulnesses of race prejudice, that out
of such juxtaposition we may, perhaps, deduce some rule of beauty and
life--or death?

       *       *       *       *       *

There mountains hurl themselves against the stars and at their feet lie
black and leaden seas. Above float clouds--white, gray, and inken, while
the clear, impalpable air springs and sparkles like new wine. Last night
we floated on the calm bosom of the sea in the southernmost haven of
Mount Desert. The water flamed and sparkled. The sun had gone, but above
the crooked back of cumulus clouds, dark and pink with radiance, and on
the other sky aloft to the eastward piled the gorgeous-curtained mists
of evening. The radiance faded and a shadowy velvet veiled the
mountains, a humid depth of gloom behind which lurked all the mysteries
of life and death, while above, the clouds hung ashen and dull; lights
twinkled and flashed along the shore, boats glided in the twilight, and
the little puffing of motors droned away. Then was the hour to talk of
life and the meaning of life, while above gleamed silently, suddenly,
star on star.

Bar Harbor lies beneath a mighty mountain, a great, bare, black mountain
that sleeps above the town; but as you leave, it rises suddenly,
threateningly, until far away on Frenchman's Bay it looms above the town
in withering vastness, as if to call all that little world petty save
itself. Beneath the cool, wide stare of that great mountain, men cannot
live as giddily as in some lesser summer's playground. Before the
unveiled face of nature, as it lies naked on the Maine coast, rises a
certain human awe.

God molded his world largely and mightily off this marvelous coast and
meant that in the tired days of life men should come and worship here
and renew their spirit. This I have done and turning I go to work again.
As we go, ever the mountains of Mount Desert rise and greet us on our
going--somber, rock-ribbed and silent, looking unmoved on the moving
world, yet conscious of their everlasting strength.

About us beats the sea--the sail-flecked, restless sea, humming its tune
about our flying keel, unmindful of the voices of men. The land sinks to
meadows, black pine forests, with here and there a blue and wistful
mountain. Then there are islands--bold rocks above the sea, curled
meadows; through and about them roll ships, weather-beaten and patched
of sail, strong-hulled and smoking, light gray and shining. All the
colors of the sea lie about us--gray and yellowing greens and doubtful
blues, blacks not quite black, tinted silvers and golds and dreaming
whites. Long tongues of dark and golden land lick far out into the
tossing waters, and the white gulls sail and scream above them. It is a
mighty coast--ground out and pounded, scarred, crushed, and carven in
massive, frightful lineaments. Everywhere stand the pines--the little
dark and steadfast pines that smile not, neither weep, but wait and
wait. Near us lie isles of flesh and blood, white cottages, tiled and
meadowed. Afar lie shadow-lands, high mist-hidden hills, mountains
boldly limned, yet shading to the sky, faint and unreal.

We skirt the pine-clad shores, chary of men, and know how bitterly
winter kisses these lonely shores to fill yon row of beaked ice houses
that creep up the hills. We are sailing due westward and the sun, yet
two hours high, is blazoning a fiery glory on the sea that spreads and
gleams like some broad, jeweled trail, to where the blue and distant
shadow-land lifts its carven front aloft, leaving, as it gropes, shades
of shadows beyond.

       *       *       *       *       *

Why do not those who are scarred in the world's battle and hurt by its
hardness travel to these places of beauty and drown themselves in the
utter joy of life? I asked this once sitting in a Southern home. Outside
the spring of a Georgia February was luring gold to the bushes and
languor to the soft air. Around me sat color in human flesh--brown that
crimsoned readily; dim soft-yellow that escaped description; cream-like
duskiness that shadowed to rich tints of autumn leaves. And yet a
suggested journey in the world brought no response.

"I should think you would like to travel," said the white one.

But no, the thought of a journey seemed to depress them.

Did you ever see a "Jim-Crow" waiting-room? There are always exceptions,
as at Greensboro--but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in
summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken,
disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand
and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is
waited on. Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets
and money are over there--

"What d'ye want? What? Where?"

The agent browbeats and contradicts you, hurries and confuses the
ignorant, gives many persons the wrong change, compels some to purchase
their tickets on the train at a higher price, and sends you and me out
on the platform, burning with indignation and hatred!

The "Jim-Crow" car is up next the baggage car and engine. It stops out
beyond the covering in the rain or sun or dust. Usually there is no step
to help you climb on and often the car is a smoker cut in two and you
must pass through the white smokers or else they pass through your part,
with swagger and noise and stares. Your compartment is a half or a
quarter or an eighth of the oldest car in service on the road. Unless it
happens to be a thorough express, the plush is caked with dirt, the
floor is grimy, and the windows dirty. An impertinent white newsboy
occupies two seats at the end of the car and importunes you to the point
of rage to buy cheap candy, Coco-Cola, and worthless, if not vulgar,
books. He yells and swaggers, while a continued stream of white men
saunters back and forth from the smoker to buy and hear. The white train
crew from the baggage car uses the "Jim-Crow" to lounge in and perform
their toilet. The conductor appropriates two seats for himself and his
papers and yells gruffly for your tickets before the train has scarcely
started. It is best not to ask him for information even in the gentlest
tones. His information is for white persons chiefly. It is difficult to
get lunch or clean water. Lunch rooms either don't serve niggers or
serve them at some dirty and ill-attended hole in the wall. As for
toilet rooms,--don't! If you have to change cars, be wary of junctions
which are usually without accommodation and filled with quarrelsome
white persons who hate a "darky dressed up." You are apt to have the
company of a sheriff and a couple of meek or sullen black prisoners on
part of your way and dirty colored section hands will pour in toward
night and drive you to the smallest corner.

"No," said the little lady in the corner (she looked like an ivory cameo
and her dress flowed on her like a caress), "we don't travel much."

       *       *       *       *       *

Pessimism is cowardice. The man who cannot frankly acknowledge the
"Jim-Crow" car as a fact and yet live and hope is simply afraid either
of himself or of the world. There is not in the world a more disgraceful
denial of human brotherhood than the "Jim-Crow" car of the southern
United States; but, too, just as true, there is nothing more beautiful
in the universe than sunset and moonlight on Montego Bay in far Jamaica.
And both things are true and both belong to this our world, and neither
can be denied.

       *       *       *       *       *

The sun, prepared to cross that awful border which men call Night and
Death, marshals his hosts. I seem to see the spears of mighty horsemen
flash golden in the light; empurpled banners flame afar, and the low
thunder of marching hosts thrills with the thunder of the sea. Athwart
his own path, screening a face of fire, he throws cloud masses, masking
his trained guns. And then the miracle is done. The host passes with
roar too vast for human ear and the sun is set, leaving the frightened
moon and blinded stars.

In the dusk the green-gold palms turn their star-like faces and stretch
their fan-like fingers, lifting themselves proudly, lest any lordly leaf
should know the taint of earth.

Out from the isle the serpent hill thrusts its great length around the
bay, shouldering back the waters and the shadows. Ghost rains sweep
down, smearing his rugged sides, yet on he writhes, undulant with pine
and palm, gleaming until his low, sharp head and lambent tongue, grown
gray and pale and silver in the dying day, kisses the molten gold of the
golden sea.

Then comes the moon. Like fireflies nesting in the hand of God gleams
the city, dim-swathed by fairy palms. A long, thin thumb, mist-mighty,
points shadowy to the Spanish Main, while through the fingers foam the
Seven Seas. Above the calm and gold-green moon, beneath the wind-wet
earth; and here, alone, my soul enchained, enchanted!

       *       *       *       *       *

From such heights of holiness men turn to master the world. All the
pettiness of life drops away and it becomes a great battle before the
Lord. His trumpet,--where does it sound and whither? I go. I saw Montego
Bay at the beginning of the World War. The cry for service as high as
heaven, as wide as human feeling, seemed filling the earth. What were
petty slights, silly insults, paltry problems, beside this call to do
and dare and die? We black folk offered our services to fight. What
happened? Most Americans have forgotten the extraordinary series of
events which worked the feelings of black America to fever heat.

First was the refusal to accept Negro volunteers for the army, except in
the four black regiments already established. While the nation was
combing the country for volunteers for the regular army, it would not
let the American Negro furnish even his proportionate quota of regular
soldiers. This led to some grim bantering among Negroes:

"Why do you want to volunteer?" asked many. "Why should you fight for
this country?"

Before we had chance to reply to this, there came the army draft bill
and the proposal by Vardaman and his ilk to except Negroes. We protested
to Washington in various ways, and while we were insisting that colored
men should be drafted just as other citizens, the bill went through with
two little "jokers."

First, it provided that Negroes should be drafted, but trained in
"separate" units; and, secondly, it somewhat ambiguously permitted men
to be drafted for "labor."

A wave of fear and unrest spread among Negroes and while we were looking
at both these provisions askance, suddenly we received the draft
registration blank. It directed persons "of African descent" to "tear
off the corner!" Probably never before in the history of the United
States has a portion of the citizens been so openly and crassly
discriminated against by action of the general government. It was
disheartening, and on top of it came the celebrated "German plots." It
was alleged in various parts of the country with singular unanimity that
Germans were working among the Negroes, and it was further intimated
that this would make the Negroes too dangerous an element to trust with
guns. To us, of course, it looked as though the discovery and the
proposition came from the same thinly-veiled sources.

Considering carefully this series of happenings the American Negro
sensed an approaching crisis and faced a puzzling dilemma. Here was
evidently preparing fertile ground for the spread of disloyalty and
resentment among the black masses, as they were forced to choose
apparently between forced labor or a "Jim-Crow" draft. Manifestly when a
minority group is thus segregated and forced out of the nation, they can
in reason do but one thing--take advantage of the disadvantage. In this
case we demanded colored officers for the colored troops.

General Wood was early approached and asked to admit suitable candidates
to Plattsburg. He refused. We thereupon pressed the government for a
"separate" camp for the training of Negro officers. Not only did the War
Department hesitate at this request, but strong opposition arose among
colored people themselves. They said we were going too far. "We will
obey the law, but to ask for voluntary segregation is to insult
ourselves." But strong, sober second thought came to our rescue. We said
to our protesting brothers: "We face a condition, not a theory. There is
not the slightest chance of our being admitted to white camps;
therefore, it is either a case of a 'Jim-Crow' officers' training camp
or no colored officers. Of the two things no colored officers would be
the greater calamity."

Thus we gradually made up our minds. But the War Department still
hesitated. It was besieged, and when it presented its final argument,
"We have no place for such a camp," the trustees of Howard University
said: "Take our campus." Eventually twelve hundred colored cadets were
assembled at Fort Des Moines for officers' training.

The city of Des Moines promptly protested, but it finally changed its
mind. Des Moines never before had seen such a class of colored men. They
rapidly became popular with all classes and many encomiums were passed
upon their conduct. Their commanding colonel pronounced their work first
class and declared that they presented excellent material for officers.

Meantime, with one accord, the thought of the colored people turned
toward Colonel Young, their highest officer in the regular army. Charles
Young is a heroic figure. He is the typical soldier,--silent,
uncomplaining, brave, and efficient! From his days at West Point
throughout his thirty years of service he has taken whatever task was
assigned him and performed it efficiently; and there is no doubt but
that the army has been almost merciless in the requirements which it has
put upon this splendid officer. He came through all with flying colors.
In Haiti, in Liberia, in western camps, in the Sequoia Forests of
California, and finally with Pershing in Mexico,--in every case he
triumphed. Just at the time we were looking to the United States
government to call him to head the colored officers' training at Des
Moines, he was retired from the army, because of "high blood pressure!"
There is no disputing army surgeons and their judgment in this case may
be justified, but coming at the time it did, nearly every Negro in the
United States believed that the "high blood pressure" that retired
Colonel Young was in the prejudiced heads of the Southern oligarchy who
were determined that no American Negro should ever wear the stars of a
General.

To say that Negroes of the United States were disheartened at the
retirement of Colonel Young is to put it mildly,--but there was more
trouble. The provision that Negroes must be trained separately looked
simple and was simple in places where there were large Negro
contingents, but in the North with solitary Negroes drafted here and
there we had some extraordinary developments. Regiments appeared with
one Negro where the Negro had to be separated like a pest and put into a
house or even a village by himself while the commander frantically
telegraphed to Washington. Small wonder that one poor fellow in Ohio
solved the problem by cutting his throat. The whole process of drafting
Negroes had to be held up until the government could find methods and
places for assembling them.

Then came Houston. In a moment the nation forgot the whole record of one
of the most celebrated regiments in the United States Army and its
splendid service in the Indian Wars and in the Philippines. It was the
first regiment mobilized in the Spanish-American War and it was the
regiment that volunteered to a man to clean up the yellow fever camps
when others hesitated. It was one of the regiments to which Pershing
said in December:

"Men, I am authorized by Congress to tell you all that our people back
in the States are mightily glad and proud at the way the soldiers have
conducted themselves while in Mexico, and I, General Pershing, can say
with pride that a finer body of men never stood under the flag of our
nation than we find here tonight."

The nation, also, forgot the deep resentment mixed with the pale ghost
of fear which Negro soldiers call up in the breasts of the white South.
It is not so much that they fear that the Negro will strike if he gets a
chance, but rather that they assume with curious unanimity that he has
_reason_ to strike, that any other persons in his circumstances or
treated as he is would rebel. Instead of seeking to relieve the cause of
such a possible feeling, most of them strain every effort to bottle up
the black man's resentment. Is it inconceivable that now and then it
bursts all bounds, as at Brownsville and Houston?

So in the midst of this mental turmoil came Houston and East St. Louis.
At Houston black soldiers, goaded and insulted, suddenly went wild and
"shot up" the town. At East St. Louis white strikers on war work killed
and mobbed Negro workingmen, and as a result 19 colored soldiers were
hanged and 51 imprisoned for life for killing 17 whites at Houston,
while for killing 125 Negroes in East St. Louis, 20 white men were
imprisoned, none for more than 15 years, and 10 colored men with them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once upon a time I took a great journey in this land to three of the
ends of our world and over seven thousand mighty miles. I saw the grim
desert and the high ramparts of the Rocky Mountains. Three days I flew
from the silver beauty of Seattle to the somber whirl of Kansas City.
Three days I flew from the brute might of Chicago to the air of the
Angels in California, scented with golden flowers, where the homes of
men crouch low and loving on the good, broad earth, as though they were
kissing her blossoms. Three days I flew through the empire of Texas, but
all these shall be tales untold, for in all this journey I saw but one
thing that lived and will live eternal in my soul,--the Grand Canon.

It is a sudden void in the bosom of the earth, down to its entrails--a
wound where the dull titanic knife has turned and twisted in the hole,
leaving its edges livid, scarred, jagged, and pulsing over the white,
and red, and purple of its mighty flesh, while down below--down, down
below, in black and severed vein, boils the dull and sullen flood of the
Colorado.

It is awful. There can be nothing like it. It is the earth and sky gone
stark and raving mad. The mountains up-twirled, disbodied and inverted,
stand on their peaks and throw their bowels to the sky. Their earth is
air; their ether blood-red rock engreened. You stand upon their roots
and fall into their pinnacles, a mighty mile.

Behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space! See yonder peak!
No human foot has trod it. Into that blue shadow only the eye of God has
looked. Listen to the accents of that gorge which mutters: "Before
Abraham was, I am." Is yonder wall a hedge of black or is it the rampart
between heaven and hell? I see greens,--is it moss or giant pines? I see
specks that may be boulders. Ever the winds sigh and drop into those
sun-swept silences. Ever the gorge lies motionless, unmoved, until I
fear. It is a grim thing, unholy, terrible! It is human--some mighty
drama unseen, unheard, is playing there its tragedies or mocking comedy,
and the laugh of endless years is shrieking onward from peak to peak,
unheard, unechoed, and unknown.

One throws a rock into the abyss. It gives back no sound. It falls on
silence--the voice of its thunders cannot reach so far. It is not--it
cannot be a mere, inert, unfeeling, brute fact--its grandeur is too
serene--its beauty too divine! It is not red, and blue, and green, but,
ah! the shadows and the shades of all the world, glad colorings touched
with a hesitant spiritual delicacy. What does it mean--what does it
mean? Tell me, black and boiling water!

It is not real. It is but shadows. The shading of eternity. Last night
yonder tesselated palace was gloom--dark, brooding thought and sin,
while hither rose the mountains of the sun, golden, blazing,
ensanguined. It was a dream. This blue and brilliant morning shows all
those burning peaks alight, while here, shapeless, mistful, brood the
shadowed towers.

I have been down into the entrails of earth--down, down by straight and
staring cliffs--down by sounding waters and sun-strewn meadows; down by
green pastures and still waters, by great, steep chasms--down by the
gnarled and twisted fists of God to the deep, sad moan of the yellow
river that did this thing of wonder,--a little winding river with death
in its depth and a crown of glory in its flying hair.

I have seen what eye of man was never meant to see. I have profaned the
sanctuary. I have looked upon the dread disrobing of the Night, and yet
I live. Ere I hid my head she was standing in her cavern halls, glowing
coldly westward--her feet were blackness: her robes, empurpled, flowed
mistily from shoulder down in formless folds of folds; her head,
pine-crowned, was set with jeweled stars. I turned away and dreamed--the
canon,--the awful, its depths called; its heights shuddered. Then
suddenly I arose and looked. Her robes were falling. At dim-dawn they
hung purplish-green and black. Slowly she stripped them from her gaunt
and shapely limbs--her cold, gray garments shot with shadows stood
revealed. Down dropped the black-blue robes, gray-pearled and slipped,
leaving a filmy, silken, misty thing, and underneath I glimpsed her
limbs of utter light.

       *       *       *       *       *

My God! For what am I thankful this night? For nothing. For nothing but
the most commonplace of commonplaces; a table of gentlewomen and
gentlemen--soft-spoken, sweet-tempered, full of human sympathy, who made
me, a stranger, one of them. Ours was a fellowship of common books,
common knowledge, mighty aims. We could laugh and joke and think as
friends--and the Thing--the hateful, murderous, dirty Thing which in
American we call "Nigger-hatred" was not only not there--it could not
even be understood. It was a curious monstrosity at which civilized folk
laughed or looked puzzled. There was no elegant and elaborate
condescension of--"We once had a colored servant"--"My father was an
Abolitionist"--"I've always been interested in _your people_"--there was
only the community of kindred souls, the delicate reverence for the
Thought that led, the quick deference to the guest. You left in quiet
regret, knowing that they were not discussing you behind your back with
lies and license. God! It was simply human decency and I had to be
thankful for it because I am an American Negro, and white America, with
saving exceptions, is cruel to everything that has black blood--and
this was Paris, in the years of salvation, 1919. Fellow blacks, we must
join the democracy of Europe.

       *       *       *       *       *

Toul! Dim through the deepening dark of early afternoon, I saw its
towers gloom dusky toward the murk of heaven. We wound in misty roads
and dropped upon the city through the great throats of its walled
bastions. There lay France--a strange, unknown, unfamiliar France. The
city was dispossessed. Through its streets--its narrow, winding streets,
old and low and dark, carven and quaint,--poured thousands upon
thousands of strange feet of khaki-clad foreigners, and the echoes threw
back awkward syllables that were never French. Here was France beaten to
her knees yet fighting as never nation fought before, calling in her
death agony across the seas till her help came and with all its strut
and careless braggadocio saved the worthiest nation of the world from
the wickedest fate ever plotted by Fools.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tim Brimm was playing by the town-pump. Tim Brimm and the bugles of
Harlem blared in the little streets of Maron in far Lorraine. The tiny
streets were seas of mud. Dank mist and rain sifted through the cold air
above the blue Moselle. Soldiers--soldiers everywhere--black soldiers,
boys of Washington, Alabama, Philadelphia, Mississippi. Wild and sweet
and wooing leapt the strains upon the air. French children gazed in
wonder--women left their washing. Up in the window stood a black Major,
a Captain, a Teacher, and I--with tears behind our smiling eyes. Tim
Brimm was playing by the town-pump.

The audience was framed in smoke. It rose ghost-like out of
memories--bitter memories of the officer near dead of pneumonia whose
pain was lighted up by the nurses waiting to know whether he must be
"Jim-Crowed" with privates or not. Memories of that great last morning
when the thunders of hell called the Ninety-second to its last drive.
Memories of bitter humiliations, determined triumphs, great victories,
and bugle-calls that sounded from earth to heaven. Like memories framed
in the breath of God, my audience peered in upon me--good, brown faces
with great, kind, beautiful eyes--black soldiers of America rescuing
beloved France--and the words came in praise and benediction there in
the "Y," with its little stock of cigarettes and candies and its rusty
wood stove.

"_Alors_," said Madame, "_quatre sont morts_"--four dead--four tall,
strong sons dead for France--sons like the sweet and blue-eyed daughter
who was hiding her brave smile in the dusk. It was a tiny stone house
whose front window lipped the passing sidewalk where ever tramped the
feet of black soldiers marching home. There was a cavernous wardrobe, a
great fireplace invaded by a new and jaunty iron stove. Vast, thick
piles of bedding rose in yonder corner. Without was the crowded kitchen
and up a half-stair was our bedroom that gave upon a tiny court with
arched stone staircase and one green tree. We were a touching family
party held together by a great sorrow and a great joy. How we laughed
over the salad that got brandy instead of vinegar--how we ate the golden
pile of fried potatoes and how we pored over the post-card from the
Lieutenant of the Senegalese--dear little vale of crushed and risen
France, in the day when Negroes went "over the top" at Pont-a-Mousson.

       *       *       *       *       *

Paris, Paris by purple facade of the opera, the crowd on the Boulevard
des Italiens and the great swing of the Champs Elysees. But not the
Paris the world knows. Paris with its soul cut to the core--feverish,
crowded, nervous, hurried; full of uniforms and mourning bands, with
cafes closed at 9:30--no sugar, scarce bread, and tears so interwined
with joy that there is scant difference. Paris has been dreaming a
nightmare, and though she awakes, the grim terror is upon her--it lies
on the sand-closed art treasures of the Louvre. Only the flowers are
there, always the flowers, the Roses of England and the Lilies of
France.

       *       *       *       *       *

New York! Behind the Liberty that faces free France rise the white
cliffs of Manhattan, tier on tier, with a curving pinnacle, towers
square and twin, a giant inkwell daintily stoppered, an ancient pyramid
enthroned; beneath, low ramparts wide and mighty; while above,
faint-limned against the turbulent sky, looms the vast grace of that
Cathedral of the Purchased and Purchasing Poor, topping the world and
pointing higher.

Yonder the gray cobwebs of the Brooklyn bridges leap the sea, and here
creep the argosies from all earth's ends. We move to this swift home on
dun and swelling waters and hear as we come the heartbeats of the new
world.

       *       *       *       *       *

New York and night from the Brooklyn Bridge: The bees and fireflies flit
and twinkle in their vast hives; curved clouds like the breath of gods
hover between the towers and the moon. One hears the hiss of lightnings,
the deep thunder of human things, and a fevered breathing as of some
attendant and invincible Powers. The glow of burning millions melts
outward into dim and fairy outlines until afar the liquid music born of
rushing crowds drips like a benediction on the sea.

       *       *       *       *       *

New York and morning: the sun is kissing the timid dew in Central Park,
and from the Fountain of Plenty one looks along that world street, Fifth
Avenue, and walks toward town. The earth life and curves graciously down
from the older mansions of princes to the newer shops of luxury. Egypt
and Abyssinia, Paris and Damascus, London and India caress you by the
way; churches stand aloof while the shops swell to emporiums. But all
this is nothing. Everything is mankind. Humanity stands and flies and
walks and rolls about--the poor, the priceless, the world-known and the
forgotten; child and grandfather, king and leman--the pageant of the
world goes by, set in a frame of stone and jewels, clothed in scarlet
and rags. Princes Street and the Elysian Fields, the Strand and the
Ringstrasse--these are the Ways of the World today.

       *       *       *       *       *

New York and twilight, there where the Sixth Avenue "L" rises and leaps
above the tenements into the free air at 110th Street. It circles like a
bird with heaven and St. John's above and earth and the sweet green and
gold of the Park beneath. Beyond lie all the blue mists and mysteries of
distance; beneath, the city rushes and crawls. Behind echo all the roar
and war and care and maze of the wide city set in its sullen darkening
walls, flashing weird and crimson farewells. Out at the sides the stars
twinkle.

       *       *       *       *       *

Again New York and Night and Harlem. A dark city of fifty thousand rises
like magic from the earth. Gone is the white world, the pale lips, the
lank hair; gone is the West and North--the East and South is here
triumphant. The street is crowd and leisure and laughter. Everywhere
black eyes, black and brown, and frizzled hair curled and sleek, and
skins that riot with luscious color and deep, burning blood. Humanity is
packed dense in high piles of close-knit homes that lie in layers above
gray shops of food and clothes and drink, with here and there a
moving-picture show. Orators declaim on the corners, lovers lark in the
streets, gamblers glide by the saloons, workers lounge wearily home.
Children scream and run and frolic, and all is good and human and
beautiful and ugly and evil, even as Life is elsewhere.

       *       *       *       *       *

And then--the Veil. It drops as drops the night on southern seas--vast,
sudden, unanswering. There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty and Tears. As
one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old,
old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding. And yet it
hangs there, this Veil, between Then and Now, between Pale and Colored
and Black and White--between You and Me. Surely it is a thought-thing,
tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not
in our little day may you and I lift it. We may feverishly unravel its
edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and
gilded top nestles close to the throne of God. But as we work and climb
we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching
and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and
fleshed through this vast hanging darkness that the Doer never sees the
Deed and the Victim knows not the Victor and Each hates All in wild and
bitter ignorance. Listen, O Isles, to these Voices from within the Veil,
for they portray the most human hurt of the Twentieth Cycle of that poor
Jesus who was called the Christ!

       *       *       *       *       *

There is something in the nature of Beauty that demands an end. Ugliness
may be indefinite. It may trail off into gray endlessness. But Beauty
must be complete--whether it be a field of poppies or a great life,--it
must end, and the End is part and triumph of the Beauty. I know there
are those who envisage a beauty eternal. But I cannot. I can dream of
great and never-ending processions of beautiful things and visions and
acts. But each must be complete or it cannot for me exist.

On the other hand, Ugliness to me is eternal, not in the essence but in
its incompleteness; but its eternity does not daunt me, for its eternal
unfulfilment is a cause of joy. There is in it nothing new or
unexpected; it is the old evil stretching out and ever seeking the end
it cannot find; it may coil and writhe and recur in endless battle to
days without end, but it is the same human ill and bitter hurt. But
Beauty is fulfilment. It satisfies. It is always new and strange. It is
the reasonable thing. Its end is Death--the sweet silence of perfection,
the calm and balance of utter music. Therein is the triumph of Beauty.

So strong is the spell of beauty that there are those who, contradicting
their own knowledge and experience, try to say that all is beauty. They
are called optimists, and they lie. All is not beauty. Ugliness and hate
and ill are here with all their contradiction and illogic; they will
always be here--perhaps, God send, with lessened volume and force, but
here and eternal, while beauty triumphs in its great completion--Death.
We cannot conjure the end of all ugliness in eternal beauty, for beauty
by its very being and definition has in each definition its ends and
limits; but while beauty lies implicit and revealed in its end, ugliness
writhes on in darkness forever. So the ugliness of continual birth
fulfils itself and conquers gloriously only in the beautiful end, Death.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last to us all comes happiness, there in the Court of Peace, where
the dead lie so still and calm and good. If we were not dead we would
lie and listen to the flowers grow. We would hear the birds sing and see
how the rain rises and blushes and burns and pales and dies in beauty.
We would see spring, summer, and the red riot of autumn, and then in
winter, beneath the soft white snow, sleep and dream of dreams. But we
know that being dead, our Happiness is a fine and finished thing and
that ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, we shall lie at rest, unhurt
in the Court of Peace.




_The Prayers of God_


    Name of God's Name!
    Red murder reigns;
    All hell is loose;
    On gold autumnal air
    Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed;
    While high on hills of hate,
    Black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd,
    Thou sittest, dumb.

    Father Almighty!
    This earth is mad!
    Palsied, our cunning hands;
    Rotten, our gold;
    Our argosies reel and stagger
    Over empty seas;
    All the long aisles
    Of Thy Great Temples, God,
    Stink with the entrails
    Of our souls.
    And Thou art dumb.

    Above the thunder of Thy Thunders, Lord,
    Lightening Thy Lightnings,
    Rings and roars
    The dark damnation
    Of this hell of war.
    Red piles the pulp of hearts and heads
    And little children's hands.

    Allah!
    Elohim!
    Very God of God!

    Death is here!
    Dead are the living; deep--dead the dead.
    Dying are earth's unborn--
    The babes' wide eyes of genius and of joy,
    Poems and prayers, sun-glows and earth-songs,
    Great-pictured dreams,
    Enmarbled phantasies,
    High hymning heavens--all
    In this dread night
    Writhe and shriek and choke and die
    This long ghost-night--
    While Thou art dumb.

    Have mercy!
    Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!
    Stand forth, unveil Thy Face,
    Pour down the light
    That seethes above Thy Throne,
    And blaze this devil's dance to darkness!
    Hear!
    Speak!
    In Christ's Great Name--

    I hear!
    Forgive me, God!
    Above the thunder I hearkened;
    Beneath the silence, now,--
    I hear!

    (Wait, God, a little space.
    It is so strange to talk with Thee--
    Alone!)

    This gold?
    I took it.
    Is it Thine?
    Forgive; I did not know.

    Blood? Is it wet with blood?
    'Tis from my brother's hands.
    (I know; his hands are mine.)
    It flowed for Thee, O Lord.

    War? Not so; not war--
    Dominion, Lord, and over black, not white;
    Black, brown, and fawn,
    And not Thy Chosen Brood, O God,
    We murdered.
    To build Thy Kingdom,
    To drape our wives and little ones,
    And set their souls a-glitter--
    For this we killed these lesser breeds
    And civilized their dead,
    Raping red rubber, diamonds, cocoa, gold!

    For this, too, once, and in Thy Name,
    I lynched a Nigger--

      (He raved and writhed,
       I heard him cry,
       I felt the life-light leap and lie,
       I saw him crackle there, on high,
       I watched him wither!)

    _Thou?_
    _Thee?_
    _I lynched Thee?_

    Awake me, God! I sleep!
    What was that awful word Thou saidst?
    That black and riven thing--was it Thee?
    That gasp--was it Thine?
    This pain--is it Thine?
    Are, then, these bullets piercing Thee?
    Have all the wars of all the world,
    Down all dim time, drawn blood from Thee?
    Have all the lies and thefts and hates--
    Is this Thy Crucifixion, God,
    And not that funny, little cross,
    With vinegar and thorns?
    Is this Thy kingdom here, not there,
    This stone and stucco drift of dreams?

    Help!
    I sense that low and awful cry--

    Who cries?
    Who weeps?
    With silent sob that rends and tears--
    Can God sob?

    Who prays?
    I hear strong prayers throng by,
    Like mighty winds on dusky moors--
    Can God pray?

    Prayest Thou, Lord, and to me?
    _Thou_ needest me?
    Thou _needest_ me?
    Thou needest _me_?
    Poor, wounded soul!
    Of this I never dreamed. I thought--

    _Courage, God,
    I come!_





X

THE COMET


He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river
that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save
in a way that stung. He was outside the world--"nothing!" as he said
bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him.

"The comet?"

"The comet----"

Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled
patronizingly at him, and asked:

"Well, Jim, are you scared?"

"No," said the messenger shortly.

"I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the
junior clerk affably.

"Oh, that was Halley's," said the president; "this is a new comet, quite
a stranger, they say--wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by
the way, Jim," turning again to the messenger, "I want you to go down
into the lower vaults today."

The messenger followed the president silently. Of course, they wanted
_him_ to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more
valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened.

"Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep
in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records.
Suppose you nose around down there,--it isn't very pleasant, I suppose."

"Not very," said the messenger, as he walked out.

"Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time," said
the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed
silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim
light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark
basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that
lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the
earth, under the world.

He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and
stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he
groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept
across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on
the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back
to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and
pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him
back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black
wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He peered
in; it was evidently a secret vault--some hiding place of the old bank
unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow
room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high
shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them
carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty.
He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on
the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he
found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred
years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and
with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure--and he saw the dull sheen
of gold!

"Boom!"

A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up
and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and
swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He
forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh
he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but
he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless
hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again
harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and
heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body
of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick
and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong,
peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell
fainting across the corpse.

He awoke with a sense of horror, leaped from the body, and groped up the
stairs, calling to the guard. The watchman sat as if asleep, with the
gate swinging free. With one glance at him the messenger hurried up to
the sub-vault. In vain he called to the guards. His voice echoed and
re-echoed weirdly. Up into the great basement he rushed. Here another
guard lay prostrate on his face, cold and still. A fear arose in the
messenger's heart. He dashed up to the cellar floor, up into the bank.
The stillness of death lay everywhere and everywhere bowed, bent, and
stretched the silent forms of men. The messenger paused and glanced
about. He was not a man easily moved; but the sight was appalling!
"Robbery and murder," he whispered slowly to himself as he saw the
twisted, oozing mouth of the president where he lay half-buried on his
desk. Then a new thought seized him: If they found him here alone--with
all this money and all these dead men--what would his life be worth? He
glanced about, tiptoed cautiously to a side door, and again looked
behind. Quietly he turned the latch and stepped out into Wall Street.

How silent the street was! Not a soul was stirring, and yet it was
high-noon--Wall Street? Broadway? He glanced almost wildly up and down,
then across the street, and as he looked, a sickening horror froze in
his limbs. With a choking cry of utter fright he lunged, leaned giddily
against the cold building, and stared helplessly at the sight.

In the great stone doorway a hundred men and women and children lay
crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway
like refuse in a can--as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they
had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept
along the walls, wetting his parched mouth and trying to comprehend,
stilling the tremor in his limbs and the rising terror in his heart. He
met a business man, silk-hatted and frock-coated, who had crept, too,
along that smooth wall and stood now stone dead with wonder written on
his lips. The messenger turned his eyes hastily away and sought the
curb. A woman leaned wearily against the signpost, her head bowed
motionless on her lace and silken bosom. Before her stood a street car,
silent, and within--but the messenger but glanced and hurried on. A
grimy newsboy sat in the gutter with the "last edition" in his uplifted
hand: "Danger!" screamed its black headlines. "Warnings wired around the
world. The Comet's tail sweeps past us at noon. Deadly gases expected.
Close doors and windows. Seek the cellar." The messenger read and
staggered on. Far out from a window above, a girl lay with gasping face
and sleevelets on her arms. On a store step sat a little, sweet-faced
girl looking upward toward the skies, and in the carriage by her
lay--but the messenger looked no longer. The cords gave way--the terror
burst in his veins, and with one great, gasping cry he sprang
desperately forward and ran,--ran as only the frightened run, shrieking
and fighting the air until with one last wail of pain he sank on the
grass of Madison Square and lay prone and still.

When he rose, he gave no glance at the still and silent forms on the
benches, but, going to a fountain, bathed his face; then hiding himself
in a corner away from the drama of death, he quietly gripped himself and
thought the thing through: The comet had swept the earth and this was
the end. Was everybody dead? He must search and see.

He knew that he must steady himself and keep calm, or he would go
insane. First he must go to a restaurant. He walked up Fifth Avenue to a
famous hostelry and entered its gorgeous, ghost-haunted halls. He beat
back the nausea, and, seizing a tray from dead hands, hurried into the
street and ate ravenously, hiding to keep out the sights.

"Yesterday, they would not have served me," he whispered, as he forced
the food down.

Then he started up the street,--looking, peering, telephoning, ringing
alarms; silent, silent all. Was nobody--nobody--he dared not think the
thought and hurried on.

Suddenly he stopped still. He had forgotten. My God! How could he have
forgotten? He must rush to the subway--then he almost laughed. No--a
car; if he could find a Ford. He saw one. Gently he lifted off its
burden, and took his place on the seat. He tested the throttle. There
was gas. He glided off, shivering, and drove up the street. Everywhere
stood, leaned, lounged, and lay the dead, in grim and awful silence. On
he ran past an automobile, wrecked and overturned; past another, filled
with a gay party whose smiles yet lingered on their death-struck lips;
on past crowds and groups of cars, pausing by dead policemen; at 42nd
Street he had to detour to Park Avenue to avoid the dead congestion. He
came back on Fifth Avenue at 57th and flew past the Plaza and by the
park with its hushed babies and silent throng, until as he was rushing
past 72nd Street he heard a sharp cry, and saw a living form leaning
wildly out an upper window. He gasped. The human voice sounded in his
ears like the voice of God.

"Hello--hello--help, in God's name!" wailed the woman. "There's a dead
girl in here and a man and--and see yonder dead men lying in the street
and dead horses--for the love of God go and bring the officers----" And
the words trailed off into hysterical tears.

He wheeled the car in a sudden circle, running over the still body of a
child and leaping on the curb. Then he rushed up the steps and tried the
door and rang violently. There was a long pause, but at last the heavy
door swung back. They stared a moment in silence. She had not noticed
before that he was a Negro. He had not thought of her as white. She was
a woman of perhaps twenty-five--rarely beautiful and richly gowned, with
darkly-golden hair, and jewels. Yesterday, he thought with bitterness,
she would scarcely have looked at him twice. He would have been dirt
beneath her silken feet. She stared at him. Of all the sorts of men she
had pictured as coming to her rescue she had not dreamed of one like
him. Not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from
hers, so infinitely far, that he seldom even entered her thought. Yet as
she looked at him curiously he seemed quite commonplace and usual. He
was a tall, dark workingman of the better class, with a sensitive face
trained to stolidity and a poor man's clothes and hands. His face was
soft and slow and his manner at once cold and nervous, like fires long
banked, but not out.

So a moment each paused and gauged the other; then the thought of the
dead world without rushed in and they started toward each other.

"What has happened?" she cried. "Tell me! Nothing stirs. All is silence!
I see the dead strewn before my window as winnowed by the breath of
God,--and see----" She dragged him through great, silken hangings to
where, beneath the sheen of mahogany and silver, a little French maid
lay stretched in quiet, everlasting sleep, and near her a butler lay
prone in his livery.

The tears streamed down the woman's cheeks and she clung to his arm
until the perfume of her breath swept his face and he felt the tremors
racing through her body.

"I had been shut up in my dark room developing pictures of the comet
which I took last night; when I came out--I saw the dead!

"What has happened?" she cried again.

He answered slowly:

"Something--comet or devil--swept across the earth this morning
and--many are dead!"

"Many? Very many?"

"I have searched and I have seen no other living soul but you."

She gasped and they stared at each other.

"My--father!" she whispered.

"Where is he?"

"He started for the office."

"Where is it?"

"In the Metropolitan Tower."

"Leave a note for him here and come."

Then he stopped.

"No," he said firmly--"first, we must go--to Harlem."

"Harlem!" she cried. Then she understood. She tapped her foot at first
impatiently. She looked back and shuddered. Then she came resolutely
down the steps.

"There's a swifter car in the garage in the court," she said.

"I don't know how to drive it," he said.

"I do," she answered.

In ten minutes they were flying to Harlem on the wind. The Stutz rose
and raced like an airplane. They took the turn at 110th Street on two
wheels and slipped with a shriek into 135th.

He was gone but a moment. Then he returned, and his face was gray. She
did not look, but said:

"You have lost--somebody?"

"I have lost--everybody," he said, simply--"unless----"

He ran back and was gone several minutes--hours they seemed to her.

"Everybody," he said, and he walked slowly back with something film-like
in his hand which he stuffed into his pocket.

"I'm afraid I was selfish," he said. But already the car was moving
toward the park among the dark and lined dead of Harlem--the brown,
still faces, the knotted hands, the homely garments, and the
silence--the wild and haunting silence. Out of the park, and down Fifth
Avenue they whirled. In and out among the dead they slipped and
quivered, needing no sound of bell or horn, until the great, square
Metropolitan Tower hove in sight. Gently he laid the dead elevator boy
aside; the car shot upward. The door of the office stood open. On the
threshold lay the stenographer, and, staring at her, sat the dead clerk.
The inner office was empty, but a note lay on the desk, folded and
addressed but unsent:

     Dear Daughter:

     I've gone for a hundred mile spin in Fred's new Mercedes. Shall not
     be back before dinner. I'll bring Fred with me.

     J.B.H.

"Come," she cried nervously. "We must search the city."

Up and down, over and across, back again--on went that ghostly search.
Everywhere was silence and death--death and silence! They hunted from
Madison Square to Spuyten Duyvel; they rushed across the Williamsburg
Bridge; they swept over Brooklyn; from the Battery and Morningside
Heights they scanned the river. Silence, silence everywhere, and no
human sign. Haggard and bedraggled they puffed a third time slowly down
Broadway, under the broiling sun, and at last stopped. He sniffed the
air. An odor--a smell--and with the shifting breeze a sickening stench
filled their nostrils and brought its awful warning. The girl settled
back helplessly in her seat.

"What can we do?" she cried.

It was his turn now to take the lead, and he did it quickly.

"The long distance telephone--the telegraph and the cable--night rockets
and then--flight!"

She looked at him now with strength and confidence. He did not look like
men, as she had always pictured men; but he acted like one and she was
content. In fifteen minutes they were at the central telephone exchange.
As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her
gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew
his burdens--the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was
alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in
cryptic, sphinx-like immobility. She seated herself on a stool and
donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never
looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with
usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It
looked--she beat back the thought--but it looked,--it persisted in
looking like--she turned her head and found herself alone. One moment
she was terrified; then she thanked him silently for his delicacy and
turned resolutely, with a quick intaking of breath.

"Hello!" she called in low tones. She was calling to the world. The
world _must_ answer. Would the world _answer_? Was the world----

Silence!

She had spoken too low.

"Hello!" she cried, full-voiced.

She listened. Silence! Her heart beat quickly. She cried in clear,
distinct, loud tones: "Hello--hello--hello!"

What was that whirring? Surely--no--was it the click of a receiver?

She bent close, she moved the pegs in the holes, and called and called,
until her voice rose almost to a shriek, and her heart hammered. It was
as if she had heard the last flicker of creation, and the evil was
silence. Her voice dropped to a sob. She sat stupidly staring into the
black and sarcastic mouthpiece, and the thought came again. Hope lay
dead within her. Yes, the cable and the rockets remained; but the
world--she could not frame the thought or say the word. It was too
mighty--too terrible! She turned toward the door with a new fear in her
heart. For the first time she seemed to realize that she was alone in
the world with a stranger, with something more than a stranger,--with a
man alien in blood and culture--unknown, perhaps unknowable. It was
awful! She must escape--she must fly; he must not see her again. Who
knew what awful thoughts--

She gathered her silken skirts deftly about her young, smooth
limbs--listened, and glided into a sidehall. A moment she shrank back:
the hall lay filled with dead women; then she leaped to the door and
tore at it, with bleeding fingers, until it swung wide. She looked out.
He was standing at the top of the alley,--silhouetted, tall and black,
motionless. Was he looking at her or away? She did not know--she did not
care. She simply leaped and ran--ran until she found herself alone amid
the dead and the tall ramparts of towering buildings.

She stopped. She was alone. Alone! Alone on the streets--alone in the
city--perhaps alone in the world! There crept in upon her the sense of
deception--of creeping hands behind her back--of silent, moving things
she could not see,--of voices hushed in fearsome conspiracy. She looked
behind and sideways, started at strange sounds and heard still stranger,
until every nerve within her stood sharp and quivering, stretched to
scream at the barest touch. She whirled and flew back, whimpering like a
child, until she found that narrow alley again and the dark, silent
figure silhouetted at the top. She stopped and rested; then she walked
silently toward him, looked at him timidly; but he said nothing as he
handed her into the car. Her voice caught as she whispered:

"Not--that."

And he answered slowly: "No--not that!"

They climbed into the car. She bent forward on the wheel and sobbed,
with great, dry, quivering sobs, as they flew toward the cable office on
the east side, leaving the world of wealth and prosperity for the world
of poverty and work. In the world behind them were death and silence,
grave and grim, almost cynical, but always decent; here it was hideous.
It clothed itself in every ghastly form of terror, struggle, hate, and
suffering. It lay wreathed in crime and squalor, greed and lust. Only in
its dread and awful silence was it like to death everywhere.

Yet as the two, flying and alone, looked upon the horror of the world,
slowly, gradually, the sense of all-enveloping death deserted them. They
seemed to move in a world silent and asleep,--not dead. They moved in
quiet reverence, lest somehow they wake these sleeping forms who had, at
last, found peace. They moved in some solemn, world-wide _Friedhof_,
above which some mighty arm had waved its magic wand. All nature slept
until--until, and quick with the same startling thought, they looked
into each other's eyes--he, ashen, and she, crimson, with unspoken
thought. To both, the vision of a mighty beauty--of vast, unspoken
things, swelled in their souls; but they put it away.

Great, dark coils of wire came up from the earth and down from the sun
and entered this low lair of witchery. The gathered lightnings of the
world centered here, binding with beams of light the ends of the earth.
The doors gaped on the gloom within. He paused on the threshold.

"Do you know the code?" she asked.

"I know the call for help--we used it formerly at the bank."

She hardly heard. She heard the lapping of the waters far below,--the
dark and restless waters--the cold and luring waters, as they called. He
stepped within. Slowly she walked to the wall, where the water called
below, and stood and waited. Long she waited, and he did not come. Then
with a start she saw him, too, standing beside the black waters. Slowly
he removed his coat and stood there silently. She walked quickly to him
and laid her hand on his arm. He did not start or look. The waters
lapped on in luring, deadly rhythm. He pointed down to the waters, and
said quietly:

"The world lies beneath the waters now--may I go?"

She looked into his stricken, tired face, and a great pity surged within
her heart. She answered in a voice clear and calm, "No."

Upward they turned toward life again, and he seized the wheel. The
world was darkening to twilight, and a great, gray pall was falling
mercifully and gently on the sleeping dead. The ghastly glare of reality
seemed replaced with the dream of some vast romance. The girl lay
silently back, as the motor whizzed along, and looked half-consciously
for the elf-queen to wave life into this dead world again. She forgot to
wonder at the quickness with which he had learned to drive her car. It
seemed natural. And then as they whirled and swung into Madison Square
and at the door of the Metropolitan Tower she gave a low cry, and her
eyes were great! Perhaps she had seen the elf-queen?

The man led her to the elevator of the tower and deftly they ascended.
In her father's office they gathered rugs and chairs, and he wrote a
note and laid it on the desk; then they ascended to the roof and he made
her comfortable. For a while she rested and sank to dreamy somnolence,
watching the worlds above and wondering. Below lay the dark shadows of
the city and afar was the shining of the sea. She glanced at him timidly
as he set food before her and took a shawl and wound her in it, touching
her reverently, yet tenderly. She looked up at him with thankfulness in
her eyes, eating what he served. He watched the city. She watched him.
He seemed very human,--very near now.

"Have you had to work hard?" she asked softly.

"Always," he said.

"I have always been idle," she said. "I was rich."

"I was poor," he almost echoed.

"The rich and the poor are met together," she began, and he finished:

"The Lord is the Maker of them all."

"Yes," she said slowly; "and how foolish our human distinctions
seem--now," looking down to the great dead city stretched below,
swimming in unlightened shadows.

"Yes--I was not--human, yesterday," he said.

She looked at him. "And your people were not my people," she said; "but
today----" She paused. He was a man,--no more; but he was in some larger
sense a gentleman,--sensitive, kindly, chivalrous, everything save his
hands and--his face. Yet yesterday----

"Death, the leveler!" he muttered.

"And the revealer," she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great
eyes. He turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a rocket into the
darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light,
and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. She scarcely
noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly the
mighty prophecy of her destiny overwhelmed her. Above the dead past
hovered the Angel of Annunciation. She was no mere woman. She was
neither high nor low, white nor black, rich nor poor. She was primal
woman; mighty mother of all men to come and Bride of Life. She looked
upon the man beside her and forgot all else but his manhood, his strong,
vigorous manhood--his sorrow and sacrifice. She saw him glorified. He
was no longer a thing apart, a creature below, a strange outcast of
another clime and blood, but her Brother Humanity incarnate, Son of God
and great All-Father of the race to be.

He did not glimpse the glory in her eyes, but stood looking outward
toward the sea and sending rocket after rocket into the unanswering
darkness. Dark-purple clouds lay banked and billowed in the west. Behind
them and all around, the heavens glowed in dim, weird radiance that
suffused the darkening world and made almost a minor music. Suddenly, as
though gathered back in some vast hand, the great cloud-curtain fell
away. Low on the horizon lay a long, white star--mystic, wonderful! And
from it fled upward to the pole, like some wan bridal veil, a pale, wide
sheet of flame that lighted all the world and dimmed the stars.

In fascinated silence the man gazed at the heavens and dropped his
rockets to the floor. Memories of memories stirred to life in the dead
recesses of his mind. The shackles seemed to rattle and fall from his
soul. Up from the crass and crushing and cringing of his caste leaped
the lone majesty of kings long dead. He arose within the shadows, tall,
straight, and stern, with power in his eyes and ghostly scepters
hovering to his grasp. It was as though some mighty Pharaoh lived again,
or curled Assyrian lord. He turned and looked upon the lady, and found
her gazing straight at him.

Silently, immovably, they saw each other face to face--eye to eye. Their
souls lay naked to the night. It was not lust; it was not love--it was
some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill
of soul. It was a thought divine, splendid.

Slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other--the heavens above,
the seas around, the city grim and dead below. He loomed from out the
velvet shadows vast and dark. Pearl-white and slender, she shone beneath
the stars. She stretched her jeweled hands abroad. He lifted up his
mighty arms, and they cried each to the other, almost with one voice,
"The world is dead."

"Long live the----"

"Honk! Honk!" Hoarse and sharp the cry of a motor drifted clearly up
from the silence below. They started backward with a cry and gazed upon
each other with eyes that faltered and fell, with blood that boiled.

"Honk! Honk! Honk! Honk!" came the mad cry again, and almost from their
feet a rocket blazed into the air and scattered its stars upon them. She
covered her eyes with her hands, and her shoulders heaved. He dropped
and bowed, groped blindly on his knees about the floor. A blue flame
spluttered lazily after an age, and she heard the scream of an answering
rocket as it flew.

Then they stood still as death, looking to opposite ends of the earth.

"Clang--crash--clang!"

The roar and ring of swift elevators shooting upward from below made the
great tower tremble. A murmur and babel of voices swept in upon the
night. All over the once dead city the lights blinked, flickered, and
flamed; and then with a sudden clanging of doors the entrance to the
platform was filled with men, and one with white and flying hair rushed
to the girl and lifted her to his breast. "My daughter!" he sobbed.

Behind him hurried a younger, comelier man, carefully clad in motor
costume, who bent above the girl with passionate solicitude and gazed
into her staring eyes until they narrowed and dropped and her face
flushed deeper and deeper crimson.

"Julia," he whispered; "my darling, I thought you were gone forever."

She looked up at him with strange, searching eyes.

"Fred," she murmured, almost vaguely, "is the world--gone?"

"Only New York," he answered; "it is terrible--awful! You know,--but
you, how did you escape--how have you endured this horror? Are you well?
Unharmed?"

"Unharmed!" she said.

"And this man here?" he asked, encircling her drooping form with one arm
and turning toward the Negro. Suddenly he stiffened and his hand flew to
his hip. "Why!" he snarled. "It's--a--nigger--Julia! Has he--has he
dared----"

She lifted her head and looked at her late companion curiously and then
dropped her eyes with a sigh.

"He has dared--all, to rescue me," she said quietly, "and I--thank
him--much." But she did not look at him again. As the couple turned
away, the father drew a roll of bills from his pockets.

"Here, my good fellow," he said, thrusting the money into the man's
hands, "take that,--what's your name?"

"Jim Davis," came the answer, hollow-voiced.

"Well, Jim, I thank you. I've always liked your people. If you ever want
a job, call on me." And they were gone.

The crowd poured up and out of the elevators, talking and whispering.

"Who was it?"

"Are they alive?"

"How many?"

"Two!"

"Who was saved?"

"A white girl and a nigger--there she goes."

"A nigger? Where is he? Let's lynch the damned----"

"Shut up--he's all right-he saved her."

"Saved hell! He had no business----"

"Here he comes."

Into the glare of the electric lights the colored man moved slowly, with
the eyes of those that walk and sleep.

"Well, what do you think of that?" cried a bystander; "of all New York,
just a white girl and a nigger!"

The colored man heard nothing. He stood silently beneath the glare of
the light, gazing at the money in his hand and shrinking as he gazed;
slowly he put his other hand into his pocket and brought out a baby's
filmy cap, and gazed again. A woman mounted to the platform and looked
about, shading her eyes. She was brown, small, and toil-worn, and in one
arm lay the corpse of a dark baby. The crowd parted and her eyes fell on
the colored man; with a cry she tottered toward him.

"Jim!"

He whirled and, with a sob of joy, caught her in his arms.




_A Hymn to the Peoples_


    O Truce of God!
    And primal meeting of the Sons of Man,
    Foreshadowing the union of the World!
    From all the ends of earth we come!
    Old Night, the elder sister of the Day,
    Mother of Dawn in the golden East,
    Meets in the misty twilight with her brood,
    Pale and black, tawny, red and brown,
    The mighty human rainbow of the world,
    Spanning its wilderness of storm.

    Softly in sympathy the sunlight falls,
    Rare is the radiance of the moon;
    And on the darkest midnight blaze the stars--
    The far-flown shadows of whose brilliance
    Drop like a dream on the dim shores of Time,
    Forecasting Days that are to these
    As day to night.

    So sit we all as one.
    So, gloomed in tall and stone-swathed groves,
    The Buddha walks with Christ!
    And Al-Koran and Bible both be holy!

    Almighty Word!
    In this Thine awful sanctuary,
    First and flame-haunted City of the Widened World,
    Assoil us, Lord of Lands and Seas!

    We are but weak and wayward men,
    Distraught alike with hatred and vainglory;
    Prone to despise the Soul that breathes within--
    High visioned hordes that lie and steal and kill,
    Sinning the sin each separate heart disclaims,
    Clambering upon our riven, writhing selves,
    Besieging Heaven by trampling men to Hell!
    We be blood-guilty! Lo, our hands be red!
    Not one may blame the other in this sin!
    But here--here in the white Silence of the Dawn,
    Before the Womb of Time,
    With bowed hearts all flame and shame,
    We face the birth-pangs of a world:
    We hear the stifled cry of Nations all but born--
    The wail of women ravished of their stunted brood!
    We see the nakedness of Toil, the poverty of Wealth,
    We know the Anarchy of Empire, and doleful Death of Life!
    And hearing, seeing, knowing all, we cry:

    Save us, World-Spirit, from our lesser selves!
    Grant us that war and hatred cease,
    Reveal our souls in every race and hue!
    Help us, O Human God, in this Thy Truce,
    To make Humanity divine!





                                   THE
                          GIFT _of_ BLACK FOLK

                           _The Negroes in the
                           Making of America_

                                   by
                         W. E. BURGHARDT DUBOIS
                             PH. D. (HARV.)
         Author of “The Souls of Black Folk,” “Darkwater,” etc.
                         Editor of _The Crisis_

                            _Introduction by_
                       EDWARD F. McSWEENEY, LL. D.

                             [Illustration]

                                  1924
                     THE STRATFORD CO., _Publishers_
                          BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

                             Copyright, 1924
                       By THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS

                 Printed in the United States of America




CONTENTS


    Chapter                                   Page

         Foreword                                i

         Prescript                              33

       I The Black Explorers                    35

      II Black Labor                            52

     III Black Soldiers                         80

      IV The Emancipation of Democracy         135

       V The Reconstruction of Freedom         184

      VI The Freedom of Womanhood              259

     VII The American Folk Song                274

    VIII Negro Art and Literature              287

      IX The Gift of the Spirit                320




FOREWORD


It is not uncommon for casual thinkers to assume that the United States
of America is practically a continuation of English nationality.
Our speech is English and the English played so large a part in our
beginnings that it is easy to fall more or less consciously into the
thought that the history of this nation has been but a continuation and
development of these beginnings. A little reflection, however, quickly
convinces us that at least there was present French influence in the
Mississippi Valley and Spanish influence in the southeast and southwest.
Everything else however that has been added to the American nationality
is often looked upon as a sort of dilution of more or less doubtful
value: peoples that had to be assimilated as far as possible and made
over to the original and basic type. Thus we continually speak of Germans
and Scandinavians, of Irish and Jews, Poles, Austrians and Hungarians;
and, with few exceptions, we regard the coming of the Negroes as an
unmitigated error and a national liability.

It is high time that this course of our thinking should be changed.
America is conglomerate. This is at once her problem and her
glory—perhaps indeed her sole and greatest reason for being. Her physical
foundation is not English and while it is primarily it is not entirely
European. It represents peculiarly a coming together of the peoples of
the world. American institutions have been borrowed from England and
France in the main, but with contributions from many and widely scattered
groups. American history has no prototype and has been developed
from the various racial elements. Despite the fact that our mother
tongue is called English we have developed an American speech with its
idiosyncrasies and idioms, a speech whose purity is not to be measured
by its conformity to the speech of the British Isles. And finally the
American spirit is a new and interesting result of divers threads of
thought and feeling coming not only from America but from Europe and Asia
and indeed from Africa.

This essay is an attempt to set forth more clearly than has hitherto
been done the effect which the Negro has had upon American life. Its
thesis is that despite slavery, war and caste, and despite our present
Negro problem, the American Negro is and has been a distinct asset to
this country and has brought a contribution without which America could
not have been; and that perhaps the essence of our so-called Negro
problem is the failure to recognize this fact and to continue to act as
though the Negro was what we once imagined and wanted to imagine him—a
representative of a subhuman species fitted only for subordination.

A moment’s thought will easily convince open minded persons that the
contribution of the Negro to American nationality as slave, freedman
and citizen was far from negligible. No element in American life has
so subtly and yet clearly woven itself into the warp and woof of our
thinking and acting as the American Negro. He came with the first
explorers and helped in exploration. His labor was from the first the
foundation of the American prosperity and the cause of the rapid growth
of the new world in economic and social importance. Modern democracy
rests not simply on the striving white men in Europe and America but also
on the persistent struggle of the black men in America for two centuries.
The military defense of this land has depended upon Negro soldiers from
the time of the Colonial wars down to the struggle of the World War. Not
only does the Negro appear, reappear and persist in American literature
but a Negro American literature has arisen of deep significance, and
Negro folk lore and music are among the choicest heritages of this land.

Finally the Negro had played a peculiar spiritual rôle in America as a
sort of living, breathing test of our ideals and an example of the faith,
hope and tolerance of our religion.




THE RACIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNITED STATES

By EDW. F. MCSWEENEY, LL. D.


In a general way, the Racial Contribution Series in the Knights of
Columbus historical program is intended as a much needed and important
contribution to national solidarity. The various studies are treated by
able writers, citizens of the United States, each being in full sympathy
with the achievements in this country of the racial group of whom he
treats. The standard of the writers is the only one that will justify
historical writing;—the truth. No censorship has been exercised.

No subject now actively before the people of the United States has been
more written on, and less understood, than alien immigration. Until
1819, there were no official statistics of immigration of any sort; the
so-called census of 1790 was simply a report of the several states of
their male white population under and over 16 years of age, all white
females, slaves, and others. Statements as to the country of origin of
the inhabitants of this country were, in the main, guesswork, with the
result that, while the great bulk of such estimates was honestly and
patriotically done, some of the most quoted during the present day were
inspired, obviously to prove a predetermined case, rather than to recite
the ascertained fact.

From the beginning the dominant groups in control in the United
States have regarded each group of newer arrivals as more or less
the “enemy” to be feared, and, if possible, controlled. A study of
various cross-sections of the country will show dominant alien groups
who formerly had to fight for their very existence. With increased
numerical strength and prosperity they frequently attempted to do to
the later aliens, frequently even of their own group, what had formerly
been done to them:—decry and stifle their achievements, and deny them
opportunity,—the one thing that may justly be demanded in a Democracy,—by
putting them in a position of inferiority.

To attempt, in this country, to set up a “caste” control, based on the
accident of birth, wealth, or privilege, is a travesty of Democracy. When
Washington and his compatriots, a group comprising the most efficiently
prepared men in the history of the world, who had set themselves
definitely to form a democratic civilization, dreamed of and even planned
by Plato, but held back by slavery and paganism, they found their sure
foundations in the precepts of Christianity, and gave them expression
in the Declaration of Independence. The liberty they sought, based on
obedience to the law of God as well as of man, was actually established,
but from the beginning it has met a constant effort to substitute
some form of absolutism tending to break down or replace democratic
institutions.

What may be called, for want of a better term, the colonial spirit, which
is the essence of hyphenism, has persisted in this country to hamper
national progress and national unity. Wherever this colonial spirit shows
itself it is a menace to be fought, whether the secret or acknowledged
attachment binds to England, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Greece or
any other nation.

Jefferson pointed out that we have on this soil evolved a new race of
men who may inexactly be called “Americans”. This term, as a monopoly of
the United States, is properly objected to by our neighbors, North and
South—yet it has a definite meaning for the world.

During the Great War one aspect of war duty was to direct the labor
activities growing out of the war, to divert labor from “non-essential”
to “essential” industry and to arbitrate and mediate on wage matters.
It was found necessary to study and to analyze the greatly feared, but
infrequently discovered “enemy alien”; and as a preparation for this
duty, with the assistance of several hundred local agents, the population
of Massachusetts was separated into naturally allied groups based on
birth, racial descent, religious, social and industrial affiliations.
The astonishing result was that, counting as “native Americans” only
the actual descendants of all those living in Massachusetts in 1840,
of whatever racial stock prior to that time, only two-sevenths, even
with the most liberal classification, came within the group of colonial
descent, while the remaining five-sevenths were found in the various
racial groups coming later than 1840. More than this: While the
“Colonial” group had increased in numbers for three decades after 1840,
in 1918 they were found actually to be fewer in number than in 1840, a
diminution due to excess of deaths over births, proceeding in increasing
ratio.

Membership in the Society of Mayflower descendants is eagerly sought as
the hallmark of American ancestry. In anticipation of the tercentenary
of the Mayflower-coming in 1620, about a dozen years ago a questionnaire
was sent to every known eligible for Mayflower ancestry, and the replies
were submitted to the experts in one of the national universities for
review and report. When this report was presented later, it contained the
statement that, considering the prevailing number of marriages in this
group, and children per family,—when the six-hundredth celebration of the
Pilgrims’ Landing is held in 2220, three hundred years hence, a ship the
size of the original Mayflower will be sufficient to carry back to Europe
all the then living Mayflower descendants.

The future of America is in the keeping of the 80 per cent. of the
population, separate in blood and race from the colonial descent group.
Love of native land is one of the strongest and noblest passions of which
a man is capable. Family life, religion, the soil which holds the dust
of our fathers, sentiment for ancestral property, and many other bonds,
make the ties of home so strong and enduring, and unite a man’s life so
closely with its native environment, that grave and powerful reasons must
exist before a change of residence is contemplated. Escape from religious
persecution and political tyranny were unquestionably the chief reasons
which induced the early comers to America to brave the dangers of an
unknown world. Yet that very intolerance against which this was a protest
soon began to be exercised against all those unwilling to accept in their
new homes the religious leadership of those in control.

It is not necessary to go into the persecutions due to religious bigotry
of the colonial period. While the spirit of liberty was in the free air
of the colonies and would finally have secured national independence, it
is not possible to underestimate the support brought to the revolting
colonials because of the attitude of Great Britain in allowing religious
freedom to Canada after it had been taken from the French. After the
victory of New Orleans, a spirit of national consciousness on a
democratic basis was built up and the narrow spirit of colonialism and
of religious intolerance was to a great degree repudiated by the people,
when they had become inspired with the American spirit,—only to be
revived later on.

The continued manifestation of intolerance has been the most persistent
effort in our national life. It has done incalculable harm. It is
apparently deep-rooted, an active force in almost every generation.
Present in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, stopped temporarily for two decades
by the Civil War, it has recurred subsequently again and again; revived
since the Armistice, it is unfortunately shown today in as great a
virulence and power of destructiveness as at any time during the last
hundred years.

After the 70’s, as the aliens became numerically powerful and began to
demand political representation, movements based on religious prejudice
were started from time to time, some of which came to temporary
prominence, later to die an inglorious death; but all these movements
which attempted to deprive aliens of their right of freedom to worship
were calculated to bring economic discontent and to add to the measure of
national disunion and unhappiness.

Sixty years ago[1] the bigoted slogan was “_No Irish need apply_.” During
the World War, the principal attack was on the German-American citizens
of this country, whose fathers had come here seeking a new land as a
protest against tyranny. Today the current attempt is to deprive the
Jews[2] of the right to educational equality. In short, while there have
been spasmodic manifestations of movements based on intolerance in many
countries, the United States has the unenviable record for continuous
effort to keep alive a bogey based on an increasing fear of something
which never existed, and cannot ever exist in this country.

For a hundred years the potent cause which has poured millions of human
beings into the United States has been its marvellous opportunities,
and unprecedented economic urge. Ever since 1830 a graphic chart of the
variations in immigration from year to year will reflect the industrial
situation in the United States for the same period. In 1837, the total
immigration was 79,430.[3] After the panic of that year it decreased in
1838 to 38,914.[4] In 1842, it increased to 104,565,[5] but a business
depression in 1844 caused it to shrink to 78,615.[6] Thus the influx of
aliens increased or decreased according to the industrial conditions
prevalent here. The business prosperity of the United States was not only
the urge to entice immigrants hither, but it made their coming possible
as they were helped by the savings of relatives and friends already here.

The English were not immigrants, but colonists, merely going from one
part of national territory to another. With few exceptions, the majority
of the early colonists came from England. The first English settlement
was made in Virginia under the London Company in 1607. It took twelve
years of hard struggling to establish this colony on a permanent basis.

The New England region was settled by a different class of colonists.
Plymouth was the first settlement, in 1620, followed in 1630 by the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later absorbed the Plymouth settlement.
Population, after the first ten years, increased rapidly by natural
growth, and soon colonies in Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Connecticut
resulted from the overflow in the original settlements.

While this English settlement was going on North and South, the Dutch,
under the Dutch West India Company, took possession of the region
between, and founded New Netherlands and New Amsterdam, later New York
City. Intervening, as it did, between their Northern and Southern
colonies, New Netherlands, which the English considered a menace, was
seized by the English during a war with Holland, and became New York and
New Jersey.

Early in the seventeenth century there was a substantial French
immigration to the Dutch colonies. There was a constant stream of French
immigration to the English colonies in New England and in Virginia by
many of the Huguenots who had originally emigrated to the West Indies.

In 1681, Penn settled Pennsylvania under a royal charter and thus the
whole Atlantic coast from Canada to Florida became subject to England.
During the colonial period, England contributed to the population of the
colonies. But, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the coming of
the English to New England was practically over. From 1628 to 1641 about
20,000 came from England to New England, but for the next century and a
half more persons went back to Old England than came from there to New
England.[7] Due to the relaxing of religious persecution of dissenting
Protestants in England, the great formerly impelling force to seek a new
home across the ocean in America had ceased.

In 1653 an Irish immigration to New England, much larger in numbers
than the original Plymouth Colony, was proposed. Bristol merchants,
who realized the necessity of populating the colonies to make them
prosperous, treated with the government for men, women and girls to be
sent to the West Indies and to New England.[8] At the very fountain head
of American life we find, therefore, men and women of pure Celtic blood
from the South of Ireland, infused into the primal stock of America.
But these apparently were only a drop in this early tide of Irish
immigration.[9]

No complete memorial has been transmitted of the emigrations that took
place from Europe to America, but (from the few illustrative facts
actually preserved) they seem to have been amazingly copious. In the
years 1771-72, the number of emigrants to America from the North of
Ireland alone amounted to 17,350. Almost all of these emigrated at their
own charge; a great majority of them were persons employed in the linen
manufacture, or farmers possessed of some property which they converted
into money and carried with them. Within the first fortnight of August,
1773, there arrived at Philadelphia 3,500 emigrants from Ireland, and
from the same document which has recorded this circumstance it appears
that vessels were arriving every month freighted with emigrants from
Holland, Germany, and especially from Ireland and the Highlands of
Scotland.[10]

That many Irish settled in Maryland is shown by the fact that in 1699 and
again a few years later an act was passed to prevent too great a number
of Irish Papists being imported into the province.[11] Shipmasters were
required to pay two shillings per poll for such. “Shipping records of
the colonial period show that boatload after boatload left the southern
and eastern shores of Ireland for the New World. Undoubtedly thousands
of their passengers were Irish of the native stock.”[12] So besides the
so-called Scotch-Irish from the North of Ireland, the distinction always
being Protestantism, not race, it is indisputable that thousands, Celtic
in race and Catholic in religion, came to the colonies. These newcomers
made their homes principally in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland,
the Carolinas and the frontiers of the New England colonies. Later
they pushed on westward and founded Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. An
interesting essay by the well-known writer, Irvin S. Cobb, on _The Lost
Irish Tribes in the South_ is an important contribution to this subject.

The Germans were the next most important element of the early population
of America. A number of the artisans and carpenters in the first
Jamestown colony were of German descent. In 1710, a body of 3,000 Germans
came to New York—the largest number of immigrants supposed to have
arrived at one time during the colonial period.[13] Most of the early
German immigrants settled in New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania.
It has been estimated that at the end of the colonial period the number
of Germans was fully two hundred thousand.

Though the Irish and the Germans contributed most largely to colonial
immigration, as distinguished from the English, who are classed as the
Colonials, there were other races who came even thus early to our shores.
The Huguenots came from France to escape religious persecution. The
Jews, then as ever, engaged in their age-old struggle for religious and
economic toleration, came from England, France, Spain and Portugal. The
Dutch Government of New Amsterdam, fearing their commercial competition,
ordered a group of Portuguese Jews to leave the colony, but this decision
was appealed to the home Government at Holland and reversed, so that
they were allowed to remain. On the whole, their freedom to live and to
trade in the colonies was so much greater than in their former homes that
there were soon flourishing colonies of Jewish merchants in Newport,
Philadelphia and Charleston.

In 1626 a company of Swedish merchants organized, under the patronage of
the Great King Gustavus Adolphus, to promote immigration to America. The
King contributed four hundred thousand dollars to the capital raised, but
did not live to see the fruition of his plans. In 1637, the first company
of Swedes and Finns left Stockholm for America. They reached Delaware
Bay and called the country New Sweden. The Dutch claimed, by right of
priority, this same territory and in 1655 the flag of Holland replaced
that of Sweden. The small Swedish colony in Delaware came under Penn’s
rule and became, like Pennsylvania, cosmopolitan in character.

The Dutch in New York preserved their racial characteristics for more
than a hundred years after the English conquest of 1664. At the end of
the colonial period, over one-half of the 170,000 inhabitants of New York
were descendants of the original Dutch.

Many of the immigrants who came here in the early days paid their
own passage. However, the actual number of such is only a matter of
conjecture. From the shipping records of the period we do know positively
that thousands came who were unable to pay. Shipowners and others who
had the means furnished the passage money to those too poor to pay for
themselves, and in return received from these persons a promise or bond.
This bond provided that the person named in it should work for a certain
number of years to repay the money advanced. Such persons were called
“indentured servants” and they were found throughout the colonies,
working in the fields, the shops and the homes of the colonists. The
term of service was from five to seven years. Many found it impossible
to meet their obligations and their servitude dragged on for years.
Others, on the contrary, became free and prosperous. In Pennsylvania
often there were as many as fifty bond servants on estates. The condition
of indentured servants in Virginia “was little better than that of
slaves. Loose indentures and harsh laws put them at the mercy of their
masters.”[14] This seems to have been their fate in all the colonies, as
their treatment depended upon the character of their masters.

Besides these indentured servants who came here voluntarily, a large
number of early settlers were forced to come here. The Irish before
mentioned are one example. In order to secure settlers, men, women and
children were kidnapped from the cities and towns and “spirited away” to
America by the companies and proprietors who had colonies here. In 1680
it was officially computed that 10,000 were sent thus to American shores.
In 1627, about 1,500 children were shipped to Virginia, probably orphans
and dependents whom their relatives were unwilling to support.[15]
Another class sent here were convicts, the scourings of English centers
like Bristol and Liverpool. The colonists protested vehemently against
this practise, but it was continued up to the very end of the colonial
period, when this convict tide was diverted to “Botany Bay.”

In 1619, another race was brought here against their will and sold into
slavery. This was the Negro, forced to leave his home near the African
equator that he might contribute to the material wealth of shipmasters
and planters. Slowly but surely chattel slavery took firm root in the
South and at last became the leading source of the labor supply. The
slave traders found it very easy to seize Negroes in Africa and make
great profits by selling them in Southern ports. The English Royal
African Company sent to America annually between 1713 and 1743 from
5,000 to 10,000 slaves.[16] After a time, when the Negroes were so
numerous that whole sections were overrun, the Southern colonies tried
ineffectually to curb the trade. Virginia in 1710 placed a duty of five
pounds on each slave but the Royal Governor vetoed the bill. Bills of
like import were passed in other colonies from time to time, but the
English crown disapproved in every instance and the trade, so lucrative
to British shipowners, went on. At the time of the Revolution, there were
almost half a million slaves in the colonies.[17] The exact proportions
of the slave trade to America can be but approximately determined. From
1680 to 1688 the African Company sent 249 ships to Africa, shipped there
60,783 Negro slaves, and after losing 14,387 on the middle passage,
delivered 46,396 in America. The trade increased early in the eighteenth
century, 104 ships clearing for Africa in 1701; it then dwindled until
the signing of the Assiento, standing at 74 clearances in 1724. The
final dissolution of the monopoly in 1750 led—excepting in the years
1754-57, when the closing of Spanish marts sensibly affected the trade—to
an extraordinary development, 192 clearances being made in 1771. The
Revolutionary War nearly stopped the traffic, but by 1786 the clearances
had risen again to 146.

To these figures must be added the unregistered trade of Americans and
foreigners. It is probable that about 25,000 slaves were brought to
America each year between 1698 and 1707. The importation then dwindled
but after the Assiento rose to perhaps 30,000. The proportion of these
slaves carried to the continent now began to increase. Of about 20,000
whom the English annually imported from 1733 to 1766, South Carolina
alone received some 3,000. Before the Revolution the total exportation to
America is variously estimated as between 40,000 and 100,000 each year.
Bancroft places the total slave population of the continental colonies
at 59,000 in 1714; 78,000 in 1727; and 293,000 in 1754. The census of
1790 showed 697,897 slaves in the United States. Not all the Negroes who
came to America were slaves and not all remained slaves. There were the
following free Negroes in the decades between 1790 and 1860:

    1790  59,557
    1800  108,435
    1810  186,446
    1820  233,634
    1830  319,599
    1840  386,293
    1850  434,495
    1860  488,070

Immigration of Negroes is still taking place, especially from the West
Indies. It has been estimated that there are the following foreign-born
Negroes in the United States:

    1890  19,979
    1900  20,336
    1910  40,339
    1920  75,000

In 1790, Negroes were one-fifth of the total population; in 1860 they
were one-seventh; in 1900 one-ninth;[18] today they are approximately
one-tenth.

With the beginning of the national era—1783—all peoples subsequently
coming to the United States must be classed as immigrants. During the
first years of our national life, no accurate statistics of immigration
were kept. The Federal Government took no control of the matter and the
State records are incomplete and unreliable. A pamphlet published by the
Bureau of Statistics in 1903, _Immigration into the United States_, says,
“The best estimates of the total immigration into the United States prior
to the official count puts the total number of arrivals at not to exceed
250,000 in the entire period between 1776 and 1820.”

From 1806 to 1816, the unfriendly relations which existed between the
United States and England and France precluded any extensive immigration
to this country. England maintained and for a time successfully enforced
the doctrine that “a man once a subject was always a subject.” The
American Merchant Service, because of the pay and good treatment given,
was very attractive to English sailors and a very great enticement to
them to come to America and enter the American service. However, the
fear of impressment deterred many from so doing. The Blockade Decrees
of England against France in 1806 and the retaliation decrees of France
against England in that same year were other influences which retarded
immigration. These decrees were succeeded by the British Orders in
Council, the Milan Decree of Napoleon, and the United States law of 1809
prohibiting intercourse with both Great Britain and France.

In 1810, the French decrees were annulled and American commerce began
again with France, only to have the vessels fall into the hands of the
British. Then came the War of 1812. The German immigration suffered
greatly from this condition of affairs, as the Germans sailed principally
from the ports of Liverpool and Havre. At these points ships were more
numerous and expenses less heavy. In December, 1814, a few days before
the Battle of New Orleans, a treaty of peace was concluded between the
United States and England and after a few months immigration was resumed
once more.

In 1817, about 22,240 persons arrived at ports of the United States from
foreign countries. This number included American citizens returning from
abroad. In no previous year had so many immigrants come to our shores.

In 1819 a law was passed by Congress and approved by the President
“regulating passenger ships and vessels.” In 1820, the official history
of immigration began. The Port Collectors then began to keep records
which included numbers, sexes, ages, and occupations of all incoming
persons. However, up to 1856, no distinction was made between travellers
and immigrants.

Immigration increased from 8,358 in 1820—of which 6,024 came from Great
Britain and Ireland—to 22,633 in 1831.[19] The decade of the twenties
was a time of great industrial activity in the United States. The Erie
Canal was built, other canals were projected, the railroads were started,
business increased by leaps and bounds. As a consequence, the demand
for labor was imperative and Europe responded. During the entire period
of our early national life, the United States encouraged the coming of
foreign artisans and laborers as the necessity for strength, skill and
courage in the upbuilding of our country began to be realized.

From 1831 the number of immigrants steadily increased until from
September 30, 1849, to September 30, 1850, they totaled 315,334[20] The
largest increases during those years were from 1845 to 1848, when the
famine in Ireland and the revolution in Germany drove thousands to the
shores of free America. These causes continued to increase the number of
arrivals until in 1854 the crest was attained with 460,474[21]—a figure
not again reached for nearly twenty years.

From September 30, 1819, when the official count of immigrants began to
be taken, to December 31, 1855, a total of 4,212,624 persons of foreign
birth arrived in the United States.[22] Of these Bromwell, who wrote
in 1856 a work compiled entirely from official data, estimates that
1,747,930 were Irish.[23] Next comes Germany,[24] with 1,206,087; England
third with 207,492; France fourth with 188,725.

The exodus of the Irish during those famine years furnishes one of the
many examples recorded in history of a subject race driven from its home
by the economic injustice of a dominant race. Later, we see the same
thing true in Austria-Hungary where the Slavs were tyrannized by the
Magyars; again we find it in Russia where the Jew sought freedom from the
Slav; and once again in Armenia and Syria where the native people fled
from the Turk.

After 1855, the tide of immigration began to decrease steadily. During
the first two years of the Civil War, it was less than 100,000.[25] In
1863, an increase was noticeable again and 395,922[26] immigrants are
recorded in 1869.

During all these years up to 1870, the great part of the immigration was
from Northern Europe. The largest racial groups were composed of Irish,
Germans, Scandinavians and French. About the middle of the nineteenth
century French-speaking Canadians were attracted by the opportunities for
employment in the mills and factories of New England.

The number of Irish coming here steadily decreased after 1880 until
it has fallen far below that of other European peoples. Altogether,
the total Irish immigration from 1820 to 1906 is placed at something
over 4,000,000, thus giving the Irish second place as contributors to
the foreign-born population of the United States. The Revolution of
1848 was the contributing cause of a large influx of Germans, many of
whom were professional men and artisans. From 1873 to 1879 there was
great industrial depression in Germany and consequently another large
immigration to America took place. Since 1882, there has also been a
noticeable decline in German immigrants. From 1820 to 1903, a total of
over 5,000,000 Germans was recorded as coming to the United States.[27]

In the period from 1880 to 1910 immigration from Italy totaled 4,018,404.
It will be remembered that the law requiring the registration of outgoing
aliens was not passed until 1908, and it may, therefore, be estimated
that 3,000,000 represents the total number of arrivals from Italy, who
remained here permanently.

After 1903, up to the outbreak of the Great War, the number of alien
arrivals steadily increased. In 1905, it was more than 1,000,000; in
1906, it passed the 1,100,000 mark and in 1907 the 1,200,000 mark; in
1913 and 1914, the total number for each year exceeded 1,400,000.[28]

During the ten years from 1905 to 1915, nearly 12,000,000 aliens landed
in the United States, a yearly average of 1,200,000 arrivals. These
alone form more than 37 per cent. of all recorded immigration since 1820
and make up about 88 out of every 100 of our present total foreign-born
population.[29] Until interrupted by the European War, the immigration
to the United States was the greatest movement of the largest number
of peoples that the world has ever known. Of course, there have been
economic upheavals from time to time which have noticeably affected
this movement. The Civil War, as before noted, and financial panics and
industrial depressions in our country interrupted the incoming tide
repeatedly. The Great War with its social and economic upheaval had a
tremendous effect on our immigration. The twelve months following the
declaration of war shows the smallest number of alien arrivals since
1899. The number was slightly over 325,000. The statistics compiled by
the Federal Bureau of Immigration show that by far the greater part of
the immigrants who come to the United States are from Europe. Of the
1,403,000 alien immigrants who came here in 1914, about 1,114,000 were
from Europe; about 35,000 came from Asia; the remainder, about 254,000,
came from all other countries combined, principally Canada, the West
Indies, and Mexico. Eighty out of every 100, therefore, came from Europe.
As many as sixty of that eighty came from the three countries of Italy,
Austria-Hungary and Russia. Italy sent 294,689; Austria-Hungary was
second with 286,059; Russia contributed 262,409. From all of England,
Ireland, Scotland and Wales came only 88,000 or about 6 out of every 100;
and from Norway, Sweden and Denmark came about 31,000 or 2 out of every
100.

Greece, France, Portugal, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Spain, Turkey, the
Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Roumania contributed virtually all
the remainder of our 1914 immigrants from Europe, given in the order of
importance.

However, we should bear in mind always that the country of origin or
nationality or jurisdiction (as determined by political boundaries) is
not always identical with race. Immigration statistics have followed
national or political boundaries. Take the immigrants from Russia. The
statistics say that 262,000 arrived from that country in 1914. But of
this number, less than 5 out of every 100 are Russians; the rest or 95
out of every 100, are Hebrews, Poles, Lithuanians, Finns and Germans.

Austria-Hungary was another country made of a medley of races. The
Germanic Austrians who ruled Austria and the Hungarian Magyars who ruled
Hungary were less than one-half of the total population of the one time
Austria-Hungary.

The record of alien arrivals from Poland is not accurate because it is
divided into three national statistical divisions—Russia, Germany and
Austria-Hungary. The best estimate is that the total Polish arrivals to
the United States since 1820 approximates 2,500,000.

The Slav, the Magyar, the German, the Latin, and the Jew were all in
Austria-Hungary and moreover, these were all numerously subdivided. The
most numerous of the Slavs are the Czechs and Slovaks. These gave the
United States in 1914 a combined immigration of 37,000. Poles, Ruthenians
and Roumanians also came here from northern Austria, and from the
vicinity of the Black Sea came Roumanians more Latin than Slavic. Besides
these, the one time dual kingdom sent Jews, Greeks and Turks.

Although the most important Slavic country of Europe is Russia, yet it
was from Austria-Hungary that we received most of our Slavic immigrants.
In 1914, as many as 23 out of every 100 of our total immigration were
Slavic, and the larger part of this racial group which reached 319,000
that year, came from Austria-Hungary.

That mere recording of country or origin does not give accurate racial
information is illustrated in the case of the many Greeks under Turkish
rule, and the large number of Armenians found in almost all large Turkish
towns. The Armenians are probably the most numerous of the immigrants
from Asia. In 1914, the total immigration from Turkey was about 20,000,
but the actual Turkish immigration was only 3,000. The remaining 27,000
were Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Syrians, Armenians and
Hebrews.[30]

The “country of origin” tells us almost nothing about the large Hebrew
immigration which comes to the United States. The Jew comes from many
countries. The greater part of all our recent Jewish immigration comes
from Russia, from what is called the “Jewish Pale of Settlement” in the
western part of that country. Other Jews come from Austria, Roumania,
Germany and Turkey. In 1914, the Jews were the fourth largest in numbers
among our immigrants, nearly 143,000.[31]

We must also bear in mind that all of these millions who came to America
do not remain with us. There is a constant emigration going on, a
departure of aliens back to their native land either for a time, or for
all time. Up to 1908, the Bureau of Immigration kept no record of the
“ebb of the tide” but since that time vessels taking aliens out of the
United States, are obliged by law to make a list containing name, age,
sex, nationality, residence in the United States, occupation, and time
of last arrival of each alien passenger, which must be filed with the
Federal Collector of Customs.

The first year of this record, 1908, followed the financial panic of
October, 1907, and due to the economic conditions prevalent in the United
States a very large emigration to Europe was disclosed.

The records show also that the volume of emigration, like that of
immigration, varies from year to year. Just as prosperity here increases
immigration, “bad” times increase emigration from our shores.

There was a time when emigration was so slight that it was of little
importance, but since the early nineties it has assumed large
proportions. After the panic of 1907, for months a larger number left the
country than came into it, and thousands and thousands swarmed the ports
of departure awaiting a chance to return home. In the earlier years,
the immigrant sometimes spent months making the journey here. Besides
the difficulty of the trip, ocean transportation was more expensive.
Therefore, the earlier immigrants came to remain, to make homes here
for themselves and their children. The Irish, the Germans, the early
Bohemians, the Scandinavians, and in fact all the early comers brought
their families and their “household goods”, ready to settle down for all
time and to become citizens of their adopted country.

A large number of the alien arrivals of recent years come here initially
with only a vague intention of remaining permanently, and these make up
the large emigration streaming constantly from our ports. However, it
is only fair to say that eventually many of these people come back to
America and become permanent residents. Anyone who has had experience at
our ports of entry can substantiate the statement that during a period of
years the same faces are seen incoming again and again.

Although immigrants have come by millions into the United States,
and have been the main contributing cause of its wonderful national
expansion, yet opposition to their coming has manifested itself strongly
at different times.

In the colonial period the people objected, and rightly, to the maternal
solicitude which England evidenced by making the colonies the dumping
ground for criminals and undesirables. However, these objections were
disregarded and convicts and criminals continued to come while the
colonies remained under British rule.

After the national era, immigration was practically unrestricted down
to 1875. At different periods there were manifestations of a strong
desire to restrict immigration, but Congress never responded with
exclusion laws. The alien and sedition laws of 1798 had for their
object the removal of foreigners already residents in the United
States. The naturalization laws passed that same year, lengthening the
time of residence necessary for citizenship to fourteen years, were
another severe measure against resident aliens. The native American
and the Know-nothing uprisings were still other indications of that
same spirit of antagonism to the alien based on religious grounds. This
religious antagonism in many of the States took the form of opposition
to immigration itself and a demand for restrictions. But this all
proved futile, for the National Government recognized the necessity of
settling the limitless West. Then, too, another subject loomed large and
threatening at this time, and engrossed the attention of the people away
from the dire evils which the Irish and the Catholics would precipitate
upon “our free and happy people”. This was the State Rights and Slavery
question; and soon the country forgot immigration in the throes of the
Civil War.

By an act of March 3, 1875, the National Government made its first
attempt to restrict immigration; this act prohibited the bringing in
of alien convicts and of women for immoral purposes. On May 6, 1882,
Congress passed and the President approved another act “to regulate
immigration”, by which the coming of Chinese laborers was forbidden
for ten years. The story which led up to this Act of Congress is a
long one, and the details cannot be given here. Briefly, conditions in
California following the Burlingame treaty of 1868, owing to the influx
of Chinese labor, resulted in the organization of a workingman’s party
headed by Dennis Kearney, and forced the Chinese question as one of the
dominant issues of State politics. Resolutions embodying the feelings of
the people on Chinese immigration were presented to the Constitutional
Convention of 1879. The State Legislature enacted laws against this
immigration. Subsequently pressure was brought to bear on the National
Government, a new treaty with China was negotiated, and finally the law
of 1882 was passed by Congress, restricting for ten years the admission
of Chinese laborers, both skilled and unskilled, and of mine workers also.

Ever since the passage of this law, the Federal Government has pursued
a more restrictive and exclusive immigration policy. The next law was
passed in August, 1882, prohibiting the immigration of “any convict,
lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself
without becoming a public charge.” Then, in 1885, came another act
known as the “Alien Contract Labor Law”, forbidding the importation
and immigration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement
to perform labor in the United States. In 1891 came the law called the
“Geary Act” which amended “the various acts relative to immigration and
the importation of aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor”.
This act extended Chinese exclusion for another ten years, and required
the Chinese in the country to register and submit to the Bertillon test
as a means of identification. In 1893 two acts were passed; one which
gave the quarantine service greater powers and placed additional duties
upon the Public Health Service, and another which properly enforced
the existing immigration and contract labor laws. In 1902 the law
of exclusion was made permanent against Chinese laborers. So, since
1875, the United States has passed laws excluding Chinese entirely and
virtually excluding the Japanese, and both these races are ineligible to
citizenship. In 1907, an act was passed “to regulate the immigration of
Aliens into the United States”, which excluded imbeciles, epileptics,
those so defective either physically or mentally that they might become
public charges; children under sixteen not with a parent, etc.

A far more restrictive measure known as the “literacy” or “educational”
test has been before Congress at different times and has, on three
different occasions, failed to become a law. President Cleveland vetoed
it in 1897, Taft in 1913, and Wilson in 1915. All three Presidents
objected to this bill principally on the ground that it was such “a
radical departure” from all previous national policy in regard to
immigration. President Wilson’s veto of 1917 was overcome and the bill
became a law by a two-thirds majority vote of both houses. This law
requires that entering aliens must be able to read the English language
or some other language or dialect. The one thing which the literacy test
was designed to accomplish—to decrease the volume of immigration—was
brought about suddenly and unexpectedly by the European War. From the
opening of the war, the number of immigrants steadily decreased until,
for the year ending June 30, 1916, it was only 298,826[32] and for the
year ending June 30, 1917, only 110,618.[33] Then it began again to
increase steadily until for the year ending June 30, 1920, it reached a
total of 430,001.[34]

On June 3, 1921, an emergency measure known as the three per cent.
law was passed. This act provided that the number of aliens of any
nationality who could be admitted to the United States in any one year
should be limited to three per cent. of the number of foreign-born
persons of such nationality resident in the United States as determined
by the census of 1910. Certain ones were not counted, such as foreign
government officials and their families and employees, aliens in
transit through the United States, tourists, aliens from countries
having immigration treaties with the United States, aliens who have
lived for one year previous to their admission in Canada, Newfoundland,
Mexico, Central America, or South America, and aliens under eighteen
who have parents who are American citizens. More than twenty per cent.
of a country’s full quota could not be admitted in one month except in
the case of actors, artists, lecturers, singers, nurses, clergymen,
professors, members of the learned professions or domestic servants who
could always come in even though the month’s or the year’s quota had been
used.

A well organized effort is under way in the Congress which began its
session in December 1923, to reduce the quota to two per cent. of the
immigrants recorded as coming to the United States in 1890. This bill,
which will probably be passed, is being opposed vigorously, by the
Jews and Italians who are immediately the particular racial groups
to be affected, but since neither the Jews nor Italians, separately
or collectively, have political strength to be a voting factor to be
considered, except in a half dozen of the industrial states, the passage
of the bill seems to be inevitable.

The recent immigration restriction laws make a decided break with past
national history and tradition. There is little doubt that these laws
are in part the fruit of an organized movement which, especially since
the war, is attempting to classify all aliens, except those of one
special group, as “hyphenates” and “mongrels”. These laws are haphazard,
unscientific, based on unworthy prejudice and likely, ultimately, to be
disastrous in their economic consequences. The present three per cent.
immigration law is not based on any fundamental standard of fitness. Once
the percentage of maximum admissions is reached, in any given month, the
next alien applying for entrance may be a potential Washington, Lincoln
or Edison to whom the unyielding process of the law must deny admission.
Such laws, worked out under the hysteria of “after war psychology”, seem
to be one of the instances, so frequent in history, where Democracy must
take time to work out its own mistakes.

Under the circumstances, there is all the more reason that the priceless
heritage of racial achievement by the descendants of various racial
groups in the United States be told.

The United States has departed a long way from the policy which was
recorded in 1795 by the series of coins known as the “Liberty and
Security” coins, on which appeared the words “A Refuge for the Oppressed
of all Nations”.

    ARRIVALS OF ALIEN PASSENGERS AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED
    STATES FROM 1820 TO 1892

    Prepared by the Bureau of Statistics and published in 1893 by
    the Government Printing Office.

    =====================================================================


                                         1821 to     1831 to     1841 to
         Countries Whence Arrived         1830        1840        1850
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    Austria-Hungary
    Belgium                                    27          22       5,074
    Denmark                                   169       1,063         539
    France                                  3,497      45,575      77,262
    Germany                                 6,761     152,454     434,626
    Italy                                     408       2,253       1,870
    Netherlands                             1,078       1,412       8,251
    Norway and Sweden                          91       1,201      13,903
    Russia and Poland                          91         646         656
    Spain and Portugal                      2,622       2,954       2,759
    Switzerland                             3,226       4,821       4,644
                                        =========   =========   =========
    United Kingdom
    England(a)                             22,167      73,143     263,332
    Scotland                                2,912       2,667       3,712
    Ireland                                50,724     207,381     780,719
    Total United Kingdom                   75,803     283,191   1,047,763
                                        =========   =========   =========
    All other countries of Europe              43          96         165
                                        ---------   ---------   ---------
    Total Europe                           98,816     495,688   1,597,502
                                        =========   =========   =========
    British North American Possessions      2,277      13,624      41,723
    Mexico                                  4,817       6,599       3,271
    Central America                           105          44         368
    South America                             531         856       3,579
    West Indies                             3,834      12,301      13,528
                                        ---------   ---------   ---------
    Total America                          11,564      33,424      62,469
    =====================================================================

    =====================================================================
                                            1851       Jan. 1      Fiscal
                                             to         1861       Years
                                          Dec. 31,    to June     1871 to
         Countries Whence Arrived           1860      30, 1870      1880
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    Austria-Hungary                                     7,800      72,969
    Belgium                                 4,738       6,734       7,221
    Denmark                                 3,749      17,094      31,771
    France                                 76,358      35,984      72,206
    Germany                               951,667     787,468     718,182
    Italy                                   9,231      11,728      55,759
    Netherlands                            10,789       9,102      16,541
    Norway and Sweden                      20,931     109,298     211,245
    Russia and Poland                       1,621       4,536      52,254
    Spain and Portugal                     10,353       8,493       9,893
    Switzerland                            25,011      23,286      28,293
                                        =========   =========   =========
    United Kingdom
    England(a)                            385,643     568,128     460,479
    Scotland                               38,331      38,768      87,564
    Ireland                               914,119     435,778     436,871
    Total United Kingdom                1,338,093   1,042,674     984,914
                                        =========   =========   =========
    All other countries of Europe             116         210         656
                                        ---------   ---------   ---------
    Total Europe                        2,452,657   2,064,407   2,261,904
                                        =========   =========   =========
    British North American Possessions     59,309     153,871     383,269
    Mexico                                  3,078       2,191       5,362
    Central America                           449          96         210
    South America                           1,224       1,396         928
    West Indies                            10,660       9,043      13,957
                                        ---------   ---------   ---------
    Total America                          74,720     166,597     403,726
    =====================================================================

    =====================================================================
                                          Fiscal       Fiscal
                                          Years        Years
                                         1881 to     1891 and
         Countries Whence Arrived         1890         1892        Total
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    Austria-Hungary                      353,719      151,178     585,666
    Belgium                               20,177        7,340      51,333
    Denmark                               88,132       21,252     163,769
    France                                50,464       13,291     379,637
    Germany                            1,452,970      244,312   4,748,440
    Italy                                307,309      138,191     526,749
    Netherlands                           53,701       12,466     113,340
    Norway and Sweden                    568,362      107,157   1,032,188
    Russia and Poland                    265,088      192,615     517,507
    Spain and Portugal                     6,535        5,657      49,266
    Switzerland                           81,988       14,219     185,488
                                       =========    =========   =========
    United Kingdom
    England(a)                           657,488      104,575   2,534,955
    Scotland                             149,869       24,077     347,900
    Ireland                              655,482      111,173   3,592,247
    Total United Kingdom               1,462,839      239,825   6,475,102
                                       =========    =========   =========
    All other countries of Europe         10,318        4,954      16,548
                                       ---------    ---------   ---------
    Total Europe                       4,721,602 (b)1,152,457  14,845,038
                                       =========    =========   =========
    British North American Possessions   392,802          (c)   1,046,875
    Mexico                                 1,913          (c)      27,231
    Central America                          462          576       2,310
    South America                          2,304        1,344      12,162
    West Indies                           29,042        5,673      98,038
                                       ---------    ---------   ---------
    Total America                        426,523        7,593   1,186,616
    =====================================================================

    Alien Passengers from October 1, 1820, to December 31, 1867, and
    Immigrants from January 1, 1868, to June 30, 1892.

(a) Includes Wales and Great Britain not specified. According to William
J. Bromwell’s _History of Emigration to the United States_, published in
1856 by Redfield of New York, 1,000,000 of this number were from Ireland,
which is probably accurate. During and after the Irish famine large
numbers of Irish who could not find money for the passage to the United
States did find it possible to go to England to work in coal mines,
factories, and in seasonal agricultural employment; the money secured
from which enabled them to embark for the United States from various
English ports, which explains Bromwell’s estimate.

(b) Includes 777 from Azores and 5 from Greenland.

(c) Immigrants from British North American Possessions and Mexico are not
included since July 1, 1885.

Author’s Note: Official statistics of immigration to the United States
began in 1819, so that statements as to the number of aliens arriving
prior to that time are largely guesswork.

The “panic” of 1893 had the effect to turn the alien tide the other
way—back to Europe. Official statistics as to aliens returning from the
United States were not required by law until 1908.

The quarter of a century which has passed since the character of alien
arrivals to the United States beginning in the forties, changed so
markedly in the decade of 1880 to 1890, is not long enough for accurate
analysis of the economic, political and social influence on the United
States of the coming of these newer races, so that the statistical
records here given do not extend beyond 1892.




THE GIFT OF BLACK FOLK




PRESCRIPT


Who made America? Who made this land that swings its empire from the
Atlantic to the Sea of Peace and from Snow to Fire—this realm of New
Freedom, with Opportunity and Ideal unlimited?

Now that its foundations are laid, deep but bare, there are those as
always who would forget the humble builders, toiling wan mornings and
blazing noons, and picture America as the last reasoned blossom of mighty
ancestors; of those great and glorious world builders and rulers who know
and see and do all things forever and ever, amen! How singular and blind!
For the glory of the world is the possibilities of the commonplace and
America is America even because it shows, as never before, the power of
the common, ordinary, unlovely man. This is real democracy and not that
vain and eternal striving to regard the world as the abiding place of
exceptional genius with great black wastes of hereditary idiots.

We who know may not forget but must forever spread the splendid sordid
truth that out of the most lowly and persecuted of men, Man made America.
And that what Man has here begun with all its want and imperfection, with
all its magnificent promise and grotesque failure will some day blossom
in the souls of the Lowly.




CHAPTER I

THE BLACK EXPLORERS

    How the Negro helped in the discovery of America and gave his
    ancient customs to the land.


Garcia de Montalvo published in 1510 a Spanish romance which said:
“Know ye that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called
California very near the Terrestrial Paradise which is peopled with black
women without any men among them, because they were accustomed to live
after the fashion of the Amazons. They were of strong and hardy bodies,
of ardent courage and of great force.”[35]

The legend that the Negro race had touched America even before the
day of Columbus rests upon a certain basis of fact: First, the Negro
countenance, clear and unmistakable, occurs repeatedly in Indian
carvings, among the relics of the Mound Builders and in Mexican
temples.[36] Secondly, there are evidences of Negro customs among the
Indians in their religious worship; in their methods of building defenses
such as the mounds probably were; and particularly in customs of trade.
Columbus said that he had been told of a land southwest of the Cape Verde
Islands where the black folk had been trading and had used in their trade
the well known African alloy of gold called guanin.[37]

“There can be no question whatever as to the reality of the statement in
regard to the presence in America of the African pombeiros[38] previous
to Columbus because the guani is a Mandingo word and the very alloy is
of African origin. In 1501 a law was passed forbidding persons to sell
guanin to the Indians of Hispaniola.”[39]

Wiener thinks “The presence of Negroes with their trading masters in
America before Columbus is proved by the representation of Negroes in
American sculpture and design, by the occurrence of a black nation at
Darien early in the 16th century, but more specifically by Columbus’
emphatic reference to Negro traders from Guinea, who trafficked in a gold
alloy, guanin, of precisely the same composition and bearing the same
name, as frequently referred to by early writers in Africa.”[40]

And thirdly, many of the productions of America which have hitherto been
considered as indigenous and brought into use especially by the Indians,
may easily have been African in origin, as for instance, tobacco, cotton,
sweet potatoes and peanuts. It is quite possible that many if not all
of these came through the African Negro, being in some cases indigenous
to Negro Africa and in other cases transmitted from the Arabs by the
Negroes. Tobacco particularly was known in Africa and is mentioned in
early America continually in connection with the Negroes. All of these
things were spread in America along the same routes starting with the
mingling of Negroes and Indians in the West Indies and coming up through
Florida and on to Canada. The Arawak Indians, who especially show the
effects of contact with Negroes, and fugitive Negroes, together with
Negroid Caribs, migrated northward and it was they who led Ponce de Leon
to search for the Fountain Bimini where old men became young.[41]

Oviedo says that the sweet potato “came with that evil lot of Negroes and
it has taken very well and it is profitable and good sustenance for the
Negroes of whom there is a greater number than is necessary on account of
their rebellions.”[42] In the same way maize and sugar cane may have been
imported from Africa.

Further than this the raising of bread roots, manioc, yam and sweet
potatoes may have come to America from Guinea by way of Brazil. From
Brazil the culture of these crops spread and many of the words referring
to them are of undoubted African origin.

Negroes probably reached the eastern part of South America from the West
Indies while others from the same source went north along the roads
marked by the Mound Builders as far as Canada.

“The chief cultural influence of the Negro in America was exerted by a
Negro colony in Mexico, most likely from Teotihuacan and Tuxtla, who may
have been instrumental in establishing the city of Mexico. From here
their influence pervaded the neighboring tribes and ultimately, directly
or indirectly, reached Peru.”[43]

The mounds of the “Mound Builders” were probably replicas of Negro forts
in Africa. “That this tendency to build forts and stockades proceeded
from the Antilles, whence the Arawaks had come in the beginning of the
sixteenth century, is proved by the presence of similar works in Cuba.
These are found in the most abandoned and least-explored part of the
island and there can be little doubt that they were locations of fugitive
Negro and Indian stockades, precisely such as were in use in Africa.
It is not possible to prove the direct participation of the Negroes in
the fortifications of the North American Indians, but as the civilizing
influence on the Indians to a great extent proceeded from Cuba over
Florida towards the Huron Country in the north, the solution of the
question of the Mound Builders is to be looked for in the perpetuation of
Arawak or Carib methods, acquired from the Negroes, as well attested by
Ovando’s complaint in 1503 that the Negroes spoiled the manners of the
Indians; and transferred to the white traders, who not only adopted the
methods of the Indians, but frequently lived among the Indians as part of
them, especially in Brazil where we have ample documentary evidence of
the fact.”[44]

All this is prehistoric and in part conjectural and yet it seems
reasonable to suppose that much in custom, trade and religion which has
been regarded as characteristic of the American Indian arose from strong
Negro influences of the pre-Columbian period.

After the discovery of America by Columbus many Negroes came with the
early explorers. Many of these early black men were civilized Christians
and sprung from the large numbers of Negroes imported into Spain and
Portugal during the fifteenth century, where they replaced as laborers
the expelled Moors. Afterward came the mass of slaves brought by the
direct African slave trade.

From the beginning of the fifteenth century mention of the Negro in
America becomes frequent. In 1501 they were permitted to enter the
colonies; in 1503 the Governor of Hispaniola sought to prohibit their
transportation to America because they fled to the Indians and taught
them bad manners. By 1506 they were coming again because the work of one
Negro was worth more than that of four Indians. In 1518 the new sugar
culture in Spain and the Canary Islands began to be transferred to the
West Indies and Negroes were required as laborers. In 1521 Negroes were
not to be used on errands because they incited Indians to rebellion and
the following year they rose in rebellion on Diego Columbus’ mill. In
1540, in Quivera, Mexico, there was a Negro priest and in 1542 there were
at Guamango, Mexico, three Brotherhoods of the True Cross of Spaniards,
one of which was of Negroes and one of Indians.

Thus the Negro is seen not only entering as a laborer but becoming a
part of the civilization of the New World. Helps says: “Very early in
the history of the American Continent there are circumstances to show
that Negroes were gradually entering into that part of the New World.
They constantly appear at remarkable points in the narrative. When the
Marquis Pizarro had been slain by the conspirators, his body was dragged
to the Cathedral by two Negroes. The murdered Factor, Illan Suarez, was
buried by Negroes and Indians. After the battle of Anaquito, the head of
the unfortunate Viceroy, Blasco Nunez Vela, was cut off by a Negro. On
the outbreak of the great earthquake at Guatemala, the most remarkable
figure in that night’s terrors was a gigantic Negro, who was seen in
many parts of the city, and who assisted no one, however much he was
implored. In the narrative of the return of Las Casas to his diocese, it
has been seen that he was attended by a Negro. And many other instances
might be adduced, showing that, in the decade from 1535 to 1545, Negroes
had come to form part of the household of the wealthier colonists. At the
same time, in the West Indian Islands which had borne the first shock
of the conquest, and where the Indians had been more swiftly destroyed,
the Negroes were beginning to form the bulk of the population; and the
licenses for importation were steadily increasing in number.”[45]

Continually they appear with the explorers. Nuflo de Olana, a Negro,
was with Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean,[46] and afterward
thirty Negroes helped Balboa direct the work of over 500 Indians in
transporting the material for his ships across the mountains to the South
Sea.[47]

Cortes carried Negroes and Indians with him from Cuba to Mexico and one
of these Negroes was the first to sow and reap grain in Mexico. There
were two Negroes with Velas in 1520 and 200 black slaves with Alvarado
on his desperate expedition to Quito. Almagro and Valdivia in 1525 were
saved from death by Negroes.[48]

As early as 1528 there were about 10,000 Negroes in the New World. We
hear of one sent as an agent of the Spanish to burn a native village in
Honduras. In 1539 they accompanied De Soto and one of them stayed among
the Indians in Alabama and became the first settler from the old world.
In 1555 in Santiago de Chile a free Negro owns land in the town. Menendez
had a company of trained Negro artisans and agriculturalists when he
founded St. Augustine in 1565 and in 1570 Negroes founded the town of
Santiago del Principe.

In most of these cases probably leadership and initiative on the part
of the early Negro pioneers in America was only spasmodic or a matter
of accident. But this was not always true and there is one well-known
case which, despite the propaganda of 400 years, survives as a clear
and important instance of Negro leadership in exploration. This is
the romantic story of Stephen Dorantes or as he is usually called,
Estevanico, who sailed from Spain in 1527 with the expedition of
Panfilo de Narvaez.[49] This fleet of five vessels and 600 colonists
and soldiers started from Cuba and landed in Tampa Bay in 1582. But
disaster followed disaster until at last there were but four survivors
of whom one was Estevanico “an Arab Negro from Azamor on the Atlantic
coast of Morocco”; he is elsewhere described as “black” and a “person of
intelligence.” Besides him there was his master Dorantes and two other
Spaniards, de Vaca and Maldonado.[50] For six years these men maintained
themselves by practicing medicine among the Indians, and were the first
to reach Mexico from Florida by the overland route.

Estevanico and de Vaca went forward to meet the outposts of the Spaniards
established in Mexico. Estevanico returned with an escort and brought on
the other two men. The four then went west to the present Mexican cities,
Chihuahua and Sonora and reached Culiacan, the capital of the state of
Sinaloa, in April, 1536.

Coronado was governor of Sinaloa and on hearing the story of the
wanderers, he immediately hastened with them to the viceroy, Mendoza,
in the city of Mexico. They told the viceroy not only of their own
adventures but what they had heard of the rich lands toward the North and
of the cities with houses four and five stories high which were really
the Pueblos of New Mexican Indians. Mendoza was eager to explore these
lands. He had already heard something about them and he and Cortes had
planned to make the exploration together but could not agree upon terms.
Cortes therefore hurried to fit out a small fleet in 1537. He took 400
Spaniards and 300 Negroes, sailed up the Gulf of California and called
the country “California”. He then returned to Spain for the last time.

Meantime, de Vaca and Maldonado after several unsuccessful attempts
also went to Spain leaving Dorantes and Estevanico. Dorantes refused to
take part in the proposed expedition to the North but sold his slave
Estevanico to Mendoza. Certain Franciscan Monks joined the expedition and
Fray Marcos de Niza became the leader, having already had some experience
in exploration in Peru. Estevanico, because of his knowledge of the
Indian language and especially of the sign language, was the guide, and
the party started North for what the viceroy dreamed were the Seven
Cities of Cibola. They left March 7th, 1539, and arrived at Vacapa in
central Sinaloa on the 21st. Fray Marcos, probably from timidity, sent
Estevanico on ahead with an escort of Indians whom he could send back
as messengers.[51] The Negro marked his journey by large wooden crosses
and in this way with Estevanico far ahead they traveled for two weeks
until suddenly Fray Marcos was met by a fleeing band of badly frightened
Indians who told him that Estevanico had reached Cibola and had been
killed. Fray Marcos named the country “El Nuevo Reyno de San Francisco”
but being himself scared, distributed among the Indians everything which
his party had in their packs, except the vestments for saying Mass, and
traveling by double marches, returned to Mexico.

Meantime let us follow the adventure of Estevanico: Knowing how much
depended upon appearance in that unknown and savage land, Estevanico
traveled in magnificence, decorated with bells and feathers and carrying
a symbolic gourd which was recognized among the Indian tribes thereabouts
as a symbol of authority. When he reached the Pueblos, the Indian chiefs
were in a quandary. First of all they recognized in Estevanico’s retinue,
numbers of their ancient Indian enemies. Secondly, they were frightened
because Estevanico informed them “that two white men were coming behind
him who had been sent by a great Lord and knew about the things in the
sky and that they were coming to instruct them in divine matters.” They
had good reason to fear that this meant the onslaught of some powerful
enemy. And, moreover, they were puzzled because this black man came
as a representative of white men: “The Lord of Cibola, inquiring of
him whether he had other brethren, he answered that he had an infinite
number and that they had a great store of weapons with them and that they
were not very far thence. When they heard this, many of the chief men
consulted together and resolved to kill him that he might not give news
unto these brethren where they dwelt[52] and that for this cause they
slew him and cut him into many pieces, which were divided among all the
chief Lords that they might know assuredly that he was dead....”

This climax is still told in a legend current among the Zuni Indians
today: “It is to be believed that a long time ago, when roofs lay over
the walls of Kya-ki-me, when smoke hung over the housetops, and the
ladder rounds were still unbroken in Kya-ki-me, then the black Mexicans
came from their abodes in Everlasting Summer-land. One day, unexpectedly,
out of Hemlock Canon they came, and descended to Kya-ki-me. But when
they said they would enter the covered way, it seems that our ancients
looked not gently at them; for with these black Mexicans came many
Indians of So-no-li, as they call it now, ... who were enemies of our
ancients. Therefore, these our ancients, being always bad-tempered, and
quick to anger, made fools of themselves after their fashion, rushing
into their town and out of their town, shouting, skipping and shooting
with their sling-stones and arrows and tossing their war-clubs. Then the
Indians of So-no-li set up a great howl, and thus they and our ancients
did much ill to one another. Then and thus was killed by our ancients,
right where the stone stands down by the arroyo of Kya-ki-me, one of the
black Mexicans, a large man with chilli lips [i. e., lips swollen from
eating chilli peppers] and some of the Indians they killed, catching
others. Then the rest ran away, chased by our grandfathers, and went back
toward their country in the Land of Everlasting Summer....”[53]

The village reached by Estevanico was Hawi-kih as it was called by the
Indians and Grenada as the Spaniards named it. It is fifteen miles
southwest of the present village of Zuni and is thus within New Mexico
and east of the boundary between New Mexico and Arizona. Thus Estevanico
was the first European to discover Arizona and New Mexico. Fray Marcos
returned with Coronado and came as far as the village in 1540 while
Mendoza sent others to pursue explorations that same year within the
present confines of Arizona and they brought back various stories of the
death of Estevanico.

After that for 40 years explorations rested until 1582 when again the
Spaniards entered the territory. With all the Spanish explorers in
Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Kansas, there were Negro slaves
and helpers but none with the initiative, perseverance and success of
Estevanico.

In the after pioneering that took place in later days in the great
western wilderness, the Negro was often present. There was a black man
with Lewis and Clark in 1804; Jacob Dodson, a free Negro of Washington,
volunteered to accompany Fremont in his California expedition of 1843.
He was among the 25 persons selected by Fremont to accompany him in
the discovery of Clamath Lake and also in his ride from Los Angeles to
Monterey. Among the early settlers of California coming up from Mexico
were many Negroes and mulattoes.[54]

William Alexander Leidsdroff was the most distinguished Negro pioneer of
California and at one time lived in the largest house in San Francisco.
He owned the first steamship sailing in San Francisco Bay, and was a
prominent business man, a member of the City Council and treasurer
and member of the school committee. H. H. Bancroft says: “William
Alexander Leidsdroff, a native of Danish West Indies, son of a Dane by a
mulattress, who came to the United States as a boy and became a master of
vessels sailing between New York and New Orleans, came to California as
manager of the ‘Julia Ann,’ on which he made later trips to the Islands,
down to 1845.” His correspondence from 1845, when he became United States
Vice-Consul is a valuable source of historical information. Many Negroes
came in the rush of the “forty-niners” as pioneers and miners as well as
slaves.

The Negro’s work as a pioneer extends down until our day. The late
Commodore Peary who discovered the North Pole said: “Matthew A. Henson,
my Negro assistant, has been with me in one capacity or another since my
second trip to Nicaragua in 1887. I have taken him on each and all of my
expeditions, except the first, and also without exception on each of my
farthest sledge trips. This position I have given him primarily because
of his adaptability and fitness for the work, and secondly on account of
his loyalty. He is a better dog driver and can handle a sledge better
than any man living, except some of the best Esquimo hunters themselves.”
This leaves Henson today as the only living human being who has stood at
the North Pole.




CHAPTER II

BLACK LABOR

    How the Negro gave his brawn and brain to fell the forests,
    till the soil and make America a rich and prosperous land.


The primary reason for the presence of the black man in America was, of
course, his labor and much has been written of the influence of slavery
as established by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English. Most
writers have written of slavery as a moral and economic evil or of the
worker, white and black, as a victim of this system. In this chapter,
however, let us think of the slave as a laborer, as one who furnished
the original great labor force of the new world and differed from modern
labor only in the wages received, the political and civil rights enjoyed,
and the cultural surroundings from which he was taken.

Negro labor has played a peculiar and important part in the history of
the modern world. The black man was the pioneer in the hard physical work
which began the reduction of the American wilderness and which not only
hastened the economic development of America directly but indirectly
released for other employment, thousands of white men and thus enabled
America to grow economically and spiritually at a rate previously
unparalleled anywhere in history. It was black labor that established
the modern world commerce which began first as a commerce in the bodies
of the slaves themselves and was the primary cause of the prosperity of
the first great commercial cities of our day. Then black labor was thrown
into the production of four great crops—tobacco, sugar, rice and cotton.
These crops were not new but their production on a large cheap scale was
new and had a special significance because they catered to the demands of
the masses of men and thus made possible an interchange of goods such as
the luxury trade of the Middle Ages catering to the rich could not build.
Black labor, therefore, beneath these crops became an important part of
the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Moreover the black slave brought into common labor certain new spiritual
values not yet fully realized. As a tropical product with a sensuous
receptivity to the beauty of the world he was not as easily reduced to be
the mechanical draft-horse which the northern European laborer became.
He was not easily brought to recognize any ethical sanctions in work as
such but tended to work as the results pleased him and refused to work
or sought to refuse when he did not find the spiritual returns adequate;
thus he was easily accused of laziness and driven as a slave when in
truth he brought to modern manual labor a renewed valuation of life.

The Negro worked as farm hand and peasant proprietor, as laborer, artisan
and inventor and as servant in the house, and without him, America as we
know it, would have been impossible.

The numerical growth of the Negro population in America indicates his
economic importance. The exact number of slaves exported to America
will never be known. Probably 25,000 Negroes a year arrived in America
between 1698 and 1707. After 1713 this rose to 30,000 and by 1775 to
over 40,000 a year. The American Revolution stopped the trade, but it
was revived afterward and reached enormous proportions. One estimate is
that a million Negroes came in the sixteenth century, three million in
the seventeenth, seven million in the eighteenth and four million in the
nineteenth or fifteen million in all. Certainly at least ten million came
and this meant sixty million killed and stolen in Africa because of the
methods of capture and the horror of the middle passage. This, with the
Asiatic trade, cost black Africa a hundred million souls.[55] Bancroft
places the total slave population of the continental colonies at 59,000
in 1714, 78,000 in 1727, and 293,000 in 1754.

In the West Indies the whole laboring population early became Negro or
Negro with an infiltration of Indian and white blood. In the United
States at the beginning of our independent national existence, Negroes
formed a fifth of the population of the whole nation. The exact figures
are:[56]

    PERCENTAGE NEGRO IN THE POPULATION

           United States         South

    1920            9.9          26.1
    1910           10.7          29.8
    1900           11.6          32.3
    1890           11.9          33.8
    1880           13.1          36.0
    1870           12.7          36.0
    1860           14.1          36.8
    1850           15.7          37.3
    1840           16.8          38.0
    1830           18.1          37.9
    1820           18.4          37.2
    1810           19.0          36.7
    1800           18.9          35.0
    1790           19.3          35.2

If we consider the number of Negroes for each 1,000 whites, we have:

           United States         South

    1920            110           369
    1910            120           426
    1900            132           480
    1890            136           512
    1880            152           564
    1870            145           562
    1860            165           582
    1850            186           595
    1840            203           613
    1830            221           610
    1820            225           592
    1810            235           579
    1800            233           539
    1790            239           543

The proportion of Negroes in the North was small, falling from 3.4% in
1790 to 1.8% in 1910. Nevertheless even here the indirect influence of
the Negro worker was large. The trading colonies, New England and New
York, built up a lucrative commerce based largely on the results of his
toil in the South and in the West Indies, and this commerce supported
local agriculture and manufacture. I have said in my _Suppression of the
Slave Trade_: “Vessels from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
and, to a less extent from New Hampshire, were early and largely
engaged in the carrying slave-trade. ‘We know,’ said Thomas Pemberton
in 1795, ‘that a large trade to Guinea was carried on for many years by
the citizens of Massachusetts Colony, who were the proprietors of the
vessels and their cargoes, out and home. Some of the slaves purchased in
Guinea, and I suppose the greatest part of them, were sold in the West
Indies.’ Dr. John Eliot asserted that ‘it made a considerable branch
of our commerce.... It declined very little until the Revolution.’ Yet
the trade of this colony was said not to equal that of Rhode Island.
Newport was the mart for slaves offered for sale in the North, and a
point of reshipment for all slaves. It was principally this trade that
raised Newport to her commercial importance in the eighteenth century.
Connecticut, too, was an important slave-trader, sending large numbers
of horses and other commodities to the West Indies in exchange for
slaves, and selling the slaves in other colonies.

“This trade formed a perfect circle. Owners of slavers carried slaves to
South Carolina, and brought home naval stores for their ship-building; or
to the West Indies and brought home molasses; or to other colonies, and
brought home hogsheads. The molasses was made into the highly prized New
England rum, and shipped in these hogsheads to Africa for more slaves.
Thus the rum-distilling industry indicated to some extent the activity of
New England in the slave-trade. In May, 1752, one Captain Freeman found
so many slavers fitting out that, in spite of the large importations of
molasses, he could get no rum for his vessel. In Newport alone twenty-two
stills were at one time running continuously; and Massachusetts annually
distilled 15,000 hogsheads of molasses into this ‘chief manufacture.’”[57]

In New York and New Jersey Negroes formed between 7 and 8% of the total
population in 1790, which meant that they were probably 25% of the labor
force of those colonies, especially on the farms.

The growth of the great slave crops shows the increasing economic value
of Negro labor. In 1619, 20,000 pounds of tobacco went from Virginia to
England. Just before the Revolutionary War, 100 million pounds a year
were being sent, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, 800
millions were raised in the United States alone. Sugar was a luxury for
the rich and physicians until the eighteenth century, when it began to
pour out of the West Indies. By the middle of the nineteenth century a
million tons of cane sugar were raised each year and this had increased
to nearly 3 millions in 1900. The cotton crop rose correspondingly.
England, the chief customer at first, consumed 13,000 bales in 1781,
572,000 in 1820, 871,000 in 1830 and 3,366,000 in 1860. The United States
raised 6 million bales in 1880, and at the beginning of the twentieth
century raised 11 million bales annually.

This tremendous increase in crops which formed a large part of modern
commerce was due primarily to black labor. At first most of this labor
was brute toil of the lowest sort. Our estimate of the value of this work
and what it has done for America depends largely upon our estimate of
the value of such toil. It must be confessed that, measured in wages and
in public esteem, such work stands low in America and in the civilized
world. On the other hand the fact that it does stand so low constitutes
one of the greatest problems of social advance. Hard manual labor, and
much of it of a disagreeable sort, must for a long time lie at the
basis of civilized life. We are continually transmitting some of it to
machines, but the residuum remains large. In an ideal society it would
be highly-paid work because of its unpleasantness and necessity; and
even today, no matter what we may say of the individual worker or of the
laboring class, we know that the foundation of America is built on the
backs of the manual laborer.

This was particularly true in the earlier centuries. The problem of
America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the problem of
manual labor. It was settled by importing white bond servants from
Europe, and black servants from Africa, and compelling the American
Indians to work. Indian slavery failed to play any great part because the
comparatively small number of Indians in the West Indies were rapidly
killed off by the unaccustomed toil or mingled their blood and pooled
their destinies with the Negroes. On the continent, on the other hand,
the Indians were too powerful, both in numbers and organization, to be
successfully enslaved. The white bond servants and the Negroes therefore
became the main laboring force of the new world and with their toil the
economic development of the continent began.

There arose a series of special laws to determine the status of laborers
which became the basis of the great slave codes. As the free European
white artisans poured in, these labor codes gradually came to distinguish
between slavery based on race and free labor. The slave codes greatly
weakened the family ties and largely destroyed the family as a center
of government or of economic organization. They made the plantation
the center of economic life and left more or less religious autonomy.
They provided punishment by physical torture, death or sale, but they
always left some minimum of incentive by which the slave could have the
beginnings of private possession.

In this way the economic organization was provided by which the middle
classes of the world were supplied with a cheap sweetening material
derived from sugar cane; a cheap luxury, tobacco; larger quantities
of rice; and finally, and above all, a cheap and universal material
for clothing, cotton. These were things that all men wanted who had
anything to offer in labor or materials for the satisfaction of their
wants. The cost of raising them was a labor cost almost entirely because
land in America was at that time endless in fertility and extent. The
old world trade therefore which sought luxuries in clothing, precious
metal and stones, spices, etc., for the rich, transformed itself to a
world-wide trade in necessities incomparably richer and bigger than its
medieval predecessor because of its enormous basis of demand. Its first
appearance was in the slave trade where the demand for the new American
crops showed itself in a demand for the labor necessary to raise them;
thus the slave trade itself was at the bottom of the rise of great
commerce, and the beginning of modern international commerce. This trade
stimulated invention and was stimulated by it. The wellbeing of European
workers increased and their minds were stimulated. Economic and political
revolution followed, to which America fell heir. New immigrants poured
in. New conceptions of religion, government and work arose and at the
bottom of it all and one of its efficient causes was the toil of the
increasing millions of black slaves.

As the nation developed this slave labor became confined more and more
to the raising of cotton, although sugar continued to be the chief crop
in the West Indies and Louisiana, and rice on the southeast coast and
tobacco in Virginia. This world importance of cotton brought an economic
crisis: Rich land in America, adapted to slave methods of culture, was
becoming limited, and must either be increased or slavery would die an
economic death. On the other hand, beside the plantation hands, there
had grown up a large class of Negro servants and laborers who were
distributed both north and south. These laborers in particular came into
competition with the white laborer and especially the new immigrants.
This and other economic causes led to riots in Philadelphia, New York and
Cincinnati and a growing conviction on the part of a newly enfranchised
white workingmen that one great obstacle in America was slave labor,
together with the necessarily low status of the freedmen. These economic
reasons overthrew slavery.[58]

After the legal disappearance of slavery its natural results remained in
the mass of freedmen who had been trained in the necessary ignorance and
inefficiency of slave labor. On such a foundation it was easy to build
and emphasize race prejudice. On the other hand, however, there was still
plenty of work for even the ignorant and careless working man, so that
the Negro continued to raise cotton and the other great crops and to do
throughout the country the work of the unskilled laborer and the servant.
He continued to be the main laboring force of the South in industrial
lines and began to invade the North.

His full power as a labor reservoir was not seen until the transformation
of the World War. In a few short months 500,000 black laborers came
North to fill the void made by the stoppage of immigration and the
rush of white working men into the munitions industry. This was simply
a foretaste of what will continue to happen. The Negro still is the
mightiest single group of labor force in the United States. As this labor
grows more intelligent, self-conscious and efficient, it will turn to
higher and higher grades of work and it will reinforce the workingman’s
point of view.[59]

It must not be assumed, however, that the labor of the Negro has been
simply the muscle-straining unintelligent work of the lowest grade. On
the contrary he has appeared both as personal servant, skilled laborer
and inventor. That the Negroes of colonial times were not all ignorant
savages is shown by the advertisements concerning them. Continually
runaway slaves are described as speaking very good English; sometimes
as speaking not only English but Dutch and French. Some could read and
write and play musical instruments. Others were blacksmiths, limeburners,
bricklayers and cobblers. Others were noted as having considerable
sums of money.[60] In the early days in the South the whole conduct of
the house was in the hands of the Negro house servant; as butler, cook,
nurse, valet and maid, the Negro conducted family life.

Thus by social contact and mingling of blood the Negro house servant
became closely identified with the civilization of the South and
contributed to it in many ways. For a long time before emancipation the
house servant had been pushing steadily upward; in many cases he had
learned to read and write despite the law. Sometimes he had entered the
skilled trades and was enabled by hiring his time to earn money of his
own and in rare cases to buy his own freedom. Sometimes he was freed and
sent North and given money and land; but even when he was in the South
and in the family and an ambitious menial, he influenced the language and
the imagination of his masters; the children were nursed at the breast
of black women, and in daily intercourse the master was thrown in the
company of Negroes more often than in the company of white people.

From this servile work there went a natural development. The private
cook became the public cook in boarding houses, and restaurant keeper.
The butler became the caterer; the “Black Mammy” became the nurse, and
the work of all these in their various lines was of great influence. The
cooks and caterers led and developed the art of good-eating throughout
the South and particularly in cities like New Orleans and Charleston;
and in northern cities like Philadelphia and New York their methods of
cooking chicken and terrapin, their invention of ice cream and their
general good taste set a standard which has seldom been surpassed in the
world. Moreover, it gave economic independence to numbers of Negroes. It
enabled them to educate their children and it furnished to the abolition
movement a class of educated colored people with some money who were
able to help. After emancipation these descendants of the house servant
became the leading class of American Negroes. Notwithstanding the social
stigma connected with menial service and still lingering there, partially
because slaves and freedmen were so closely connected with it, it is
without doubt one of the most important of the Negro’s gifts to America.

During the existence of slavery all credit for inventions was denied the
Negro slave as a slave could not take out a patent. Nevertheless Negroes
did most of the mechanical work in the South before the Civil War and
more than one suggestion came from them for improving machinery. We are
told that in Virginia: “The county records of the seventeenth century
reveal the presence of many Negro mechanics in the colony during that
period, this being especially the case with carpenters and coopers.”[61]

As example of slave mechanics it is stated that among the slaves of
the first Robert Beverly was a carpenter valued at £30, and that Ralph
Wormeley, of Middlesex county, owned a cooper and a carpenter each valued
at £35. Colonel William Byrd mentions the use of Negroes in iron mining
in 1732. In New Jersey slaves were employed as miners, ironworkers,
sawmill hands, house and ship carpenters, wheelwrights, coopers, tanners,
shoemakers, millers and bakers, among other employments, before the
Revolutionary War. As early as 1708 there were enough slave mechanics
in Pennsylvania to make the freemen feel their competition severely. In
Massachusetts and other states we hear of an occasional artisan.[62]

During the early part of the nineteenth century the Negro artisans
increased. The Spanish Governor Salcedo, early in the nineteenth century,
in trying to keep the province of Louisiana loyal to Spain, made the
militia officers swear allegiance and among them were two companies of
colored men from New Orleans “who composed all the mechanics which the
city possessed.”[63]

Later, black refugees from San Domingo saved Louisiana from economic
ruin. Formerly, Louisiana had had prosperous sugar-makers; but these
industries had been dead for nearly twenty-five years when the attempt
to market sugar was revived. Two Spaniards erected near New Orleans, a
distillery and a battery of sugar kettles and began to manufacture rum
and syrup. They had little success until Etienne de Boré, a colored San
Dominican, appeared. “Face to face with ruin because of the failure
of the indigo crop, he staked his all on the granulation of sugar. He
enlisted the services of these successful San Dominicans and went to
work. In all American history there can be fewer scenes more dramatic
than the one described by careful historians of Louisiana, the day when
the final test was made and the electrical word was passed around, ‘It
granulates!’”

De Boré sold $12,000 worth of sugar that year. Agriculture in the Delta
began to flourish and seven years later New Orleans was selling 2,000,000
gallons of rum, 250,000 gallons of molasses and 5,000,000 pounds of
sugar. It was the beginning of the commercial reign of one of the great
commercial cities of America and it started with the black refugees from
San Domingo.[64]

In the District of Columbia many “were superior mechanics.” Olmsted, in
his journeys through the slave states just before the Civil War, found
slave artisans in all the states. In Virginia they worked in tobacco
factories, ran steamboats, made barrels, etc. On a South Carolina
plantation he was told by the master that the Negro mechanic “exercised
as much skill and ingenuity as the ordinary mechanics that he was used
to employ in New England.” In Charleston and some other places they were
employed in cotton factories. In Alabama he saw a black carpenter—careful
and accurate calculator and excellent workman; he was bought for $2,000.
In Louisiana he was told that master mechanics often bought up slave
mechanics and acted as contractors. In Kentucky the slaves worked in
factories for hemp-bagging, and in iron work on the Cumberland river, and
also in tobacco factories. In the newspapers advertisements for runaway
mechanics were often seen, as, for instance a blacksmith in Texas, “very
smart”; a mason in Virginia, etc. In Mobile an advertisement read “good
blacksmiths and horseshoers for sale on reasonable terms.”[65]

Such men naturally showed inventive genius, here and there. There is a
strong claim that the real credit for the invention of the cotton gin is
due to a Negro on the plantation where Eli Whitney worked. Negroes early
invented devices for handling sails, corn harvesters, and an evaporating
pan for refining sugar. In the United States patent office there is a
record of 1500 inventions made by Negroes and this is only a part of
those that should be credited to Negroes as the race of the inventor is
not usually recorded.

In 1846 Norbert Rillieux, a colored man of Louisiana, invented and
patented a Vacuum pan which revolutionized the method of refining sugar.
He was a machinist and engineer of fine reputation, and devised a system
of sewerage for New Orleans which the city refused to accept because of
his color.

Sydney W. Winslow, president of the United Shoe Machinery Company, laid
the foundation of his great organization by the purchase of an invention
by a native of Dutch Guiana named Jan E. Matzeliger. Matzeliger was the
son of a Negro woman and her husband, a Dutch engineer. He came to
America as a young man and worked as a cobbler in Philadelphia and Lynn.
He died in 1889 before he had realized the value of his invention.

Matzeliger invented a machine for lasting shoes. It held the shoe on
the last, gripped and pulled the leather down around the sole and heel,
guided and drove the nails into place and released a completed shoe from
the machine. This patent was bought by Mr. Winslow and on it was built
the great United Shoe Machinery Company, which now has a capital stock
of more than twenty million dollars, and employs over 5,000 operatives
in factories covering 20 acres of ground. This business enterprise is
one of the largest in our country’s industrial development. Since the
formation of this company in 1890, the product of American shoe factories
has increased from $200,000,000 to $552,631,000, and the exportation of
American shoes from $1,000,000 to $11,000,000. This development is due to
the superiority of the shoes produced by machines founded on the original
Matzeliger type.[66] The cost of shoes has been cut in half, the quality
greatly improved, the wages of workers increased, the hours of labor
diminished, and all these factors have made “the Americans the best shod
people in the world.”

After Matzeliger’s death his Negro blood was naturally often denied, but
in the shoe-making districts the Matzeliger type of machine is still
referred to as the “Nigger machine”; or the “Niggerhead” machine; and
“A certified copy of the death certificate of Matzeliger, which was
furnished the writer by William J. Connery, Mayor of Lynn, on October
23rd, 1912, states that Matzeliger was a mulatto.”[67]

Elijah McCoy is the pioneer inventor of automatic lubricators for
machinery. He completed and patented his first lubricating cup in
1872 and since then has made some fifty different inventions relating
principally to the automatic lubrication of machinery. He is regarded
as the pioneer in the art of steadily supplying oil to machinery in
intermittent drops from a cup so as to avoid the necessity for stopping
the machine to oil it. His lubricating cup was in use for years on
stationary and locomotive machinery in the West including the great
railway locomotives, the boiler engines of the steamers on the Great
Lakes, on transatlantic steamships, and in many of our leading factories.
“McCoy’s lubricating cups were famous thirty years ago as a necessary
equipment in all up-to-date machinery, and it would be rather interesting
to know how many of the thousands of machinists who used them daily had
any idea then that they were the invention of a colored man.”[68]

Another great Negro inventor was Granville T. Woods who patented more
than fifty devices relating to electricity. Many of his patents were
assigned to the General Electric Company of New York, the Westinghouse
Company of Pennsylvania, the American Bell Telephone Company of Boston
and the American Engineering Company of New York. His work and that of
his brother Liates Wood has been favorably mentioned in technical and
scientific journals.

J. H. Dickinson and his son S. L. Dickinson of New Jersey have been
granted more than 12 patents for devices connected with player pianos. W.
B. Purvis of Philadelphia was an early inventor of machinery for making
paper bags. Many of his patents were sold to the Union Paper Bag Company
of New York.

Today the Negro is an economic factor in the United States to a degree
realized by few. His occupations were thus grouped in 1920:[69]

The men were employed as follows:

    in agriculture                                       1,566,627
    in extraction of minerals                               72,892
    in manufacturing and mechanical industries             781,827
    in transportation                                      308,896
    in trade                                               129,309
    in public service                                       49,586
    in professional service                                 41,056
    in domestic and personal service                       273,959
    in clerical occupations                                 28,710

The women were employed as follows:

    in agriculture                                         612,261
    in manufacturing and mechanical industries             104,983
    in trade                                                11,158
    in professional service                                 39,127
    in domestic and personal service                       790,631
    in clerical occupations                                  8,301

A list of occupations in which at least 10,000 Negroes were engaged in
1920 is impressive:

    MALES

    Farmers                                                845,299
    Farm laborers                                          664,567
    Garden laborers                                         15,246
    Lumber men                                              25,400
    Coal miners                                             54,432
    Masons                                                  10,606
    Carpenters                                              34,217
    Firemen (not locomotive)                                23,152
    Laborers                                               127,860
    Laborers in chemical industries                         17,201
    Laborers in cigar and tobacco factories                 12,951
    Laborers in clay, glass and stone industries            18,130
    Laborers in food industries                             24,638
    Laborers in iron and steel industries                  104,518
    Laborers in lumber and furniture industries            103,154
    Laborers in cotton mills                                10,182
    Laborers in other industries                            80,583
    Machinists                                              10,286
    Semi-skilled operatives in food industries              11,160
    Semi-skilled operatives in iron and steel industries    22,916
    Semi-skilled operatives in other industries             14,745
    Longshoremen                                            27,206
    Chauffeurs                                              38,460
    Draymen                                                 56,556
    Street laborers                                         35,673
    Railway laborers                                        99,967
    Delivery men                                            24,352
    Laborers in coal yards, warehouses, etc.                27,197
    Laborers, etc., in stores                               39,446
    Retail dealers                                          20,390
    Laborers in public service                              29,591
    Soldiers, sailors                                       12,511
    Clergymen                                               19,343
    Barbers, etc.                                           18,692
    Janitors                                                38,662
    Porters not in stores                                   59,197
    Servants                                                80,209
    Waiters                                                 31,681
    Clerks except in stores                                 14,014
    Messengers                                              12,587

    FEMALES

    Farmers                                                 79,893
    Farm laborers                                          527,937
    Dressmakers and seamstresses                            26,961
    Semi-skilled operatives in cigar and tobacco factories  13,446
    Teachers                                                29,244
    Hairdressers and manicurists                            12,660
    Housekeepers and stewards                               13,250
    Laundresses not in laundries                           283,557
    Laundry operatives                                      21,084
    Midwives and nurses (not trained)                       13,888
    Servants                                               401,381
    Waiters                                                 14,155

This has been the gift of labor, one of the greatest that the Negro has
made to American nationality. It was in part involuntary, but whether
given willingly or not, it was given and America profited by the gift.
This labor was always of the highest economic and even spiritual
importance. During the World War for instance, the most important single
thing that America could do for the Allies was to furnish them with
materials. The actual fighting of American troops, while important, was
not nearly as important as American food and munitions; but this material
must not only be supplied, it must be transported, handled and delivered
in America and in France; and it was here that the Negro stevedore troops
behind the battle line—men who received no medals and little mention and
were in fact despised as all manual workers have always been despised,—it
was these men that made the victory of the Allies certain by their
desperately difficult but splendid work. The first colored stevedores
went over in June, 1917, and were followed by about 50,000 volunteers. To
these were added later nearly 200,000 drafted men.

To all this we must add the peculiar spiritual contribution which the
Negro made to Labor. Always physical fact has its spiritual complement,
but in this case the gift is apt to be forgotten or slurred over. This
gift is the thing that is usually known as “laziness”. Again and again
men speak of the laziness of Negro labor and some suppose that slavery of
Negroes was necessary on that account; and that even in freedom Negroes
must be “driven”. On the other hand and in contradiction to this is the
fact that Negroes do work and work efficiently. In South Africa and in
Nigeria, in the Sudan and in Brazil, in the West Indies and all over
the United States Negro labor has accomplished tremendous tasks. One
of its latest and greatest tasks has been the building of the Panama
Canal. These two sets of facts, therefore, would seem to be mutually
contradictory, and many a northern manager has seen the contradiction
when, facing the apparent laziness of Negro hands, he has attempted to
drive them and found out that he could not and at the same time has
afterward seen someone used to Negro labor get a tremendous amount
of work out of the same gangs. The explanation of all this is clear
and simple: The Negro laborer has not been trained in modern organized
industry but rather in quite a different school.

The European workman works long hours and every day in the week because
it is only in this way that he can support himself and family. With
the present organization of industry and methods of distributing the
results of industry any failure of the European workingman to toil hard
and steadily would mean either starvation or social disgrace through
the lowering of his standard of living. The Negro workingman on the
other hand came out of an organization of industry which was communistic
and did not call for unlimited toil on the part of the workers. There
was work and hard work to do, for even in the fertile tropical lands
the task of fighting weeds, floods, animals, insects and germs was no
easy thing. But on the other hand the distribution of products was much
simpler and fairer and the wants of the people were less developed. The
black tropical worker therefore looked upon work as a necessary evil
and maintained his right to balance the relative allurements of leisure
and satisfaction at any particular day, hour or season. Moreover in the
simple work-organization of tropical or semi-tropical life individual
desires of this sort did not usually disarrange the whole economic
process or machine.[70]

The white laborer therefore brought to America the habit of regular,
continuous toil which he regarded as a great moral duty. The black
laborer brought the idea of toil as a necessary evil ministering to the
pleasure of life. While the gift of the white laborer made America rich,
or at least made many Americans rich, it will take the psychology of
the black man to make it happy. New and better organization of industry
and a clearer conception of the value of effort and a wider knowledge
of the process of production must come in, so as to increase the wage
of the worker and decrease rent, interest, and profit; and then the
black laborer’s subconscious contribution to current economics will be
recognized as of tremendous and increasing importance.




CHAPTER III

BLACK SOLDIERS

    How the Negro fought in every American war for a cause that was
    not his and to gain for others a freedom which was not his own.


1. COLONIAL WARS

The day is past when historians glory in war. Rather, with all thoughtful
men, they deplore the barbarism of mankind which has made war so large a
part of human history. As long, however, as there are powerful men who
are determined to have their way by brute force, and as long as these
men can compel or persuade enough of their group, nation or race to
support them even to the limit of destruction, rape, theft and murder,
just so long these men will and must be opposed by force—moral force if
possible, physical force in the extreme. The world has undoubtedly come
to the place where it defends reluctantly such defensive war, but has no
words of excuse for offensive war, for the initiation of the program of
physical force.

There is, however, one further consideration: the man in the ranks
has usually little chance to decide whether the war is defensive or
offensive, righteous or wrong. He is called upon to put life and limb
in jeopardy. He responds, sometimes willingly with uplifted soul and
high resolve, persuaded that he is under Divine command; sometimes by
compulsion and by the iron of discipline. In all cases he has by every
nation been given credit; and certainly the man who voluntarily lays
down his life for a cause which he has been led to believe is righteous
deserves public esteem, although the world may weep at his ignorance and
blindness.

From the beginning America was involved in war because it was born in
a day of war. First, there were wars, mostly of aggression but partly
of self-defense, against the Indians. Then there was a series of wars
which were but colonial echoes of European brawls. Next the United States
fought to make itself independent of the economic suzerainty of England.
After that came the conquest of Mexico and the war for the Union which
resolved itself in a war against slavery, and finally the Spanish War and
the great World War.

In all these wars the Negro has taken part. He cannot be blamed for
them so far as they were unrighteous wars (and some of them were
unrighteous), because he was not a leader: he was for the most part a
common soldier in the ranks and did what he was told. Yet in the majority
of cases he was not compelled to fight. He used his own judgment and he
fought because he believed that by fighting for America he would gain
the respect of the land and personal and spiritual freedom. His problem
as a soldier was always peculiar: no matter for what America fought and
no matter for what her enemies fought, the American Negro always fought
for his own freedom and for the self-respect of his race. Whatever the
cause of war, therefore, his cause was peculiarly just. He appears,
therefore, in American wars always with double motive,—the desire to
oppose the so-called enemy of his country along with his fellow white
citizens, and before that, the motive of deserving well of those citizens
and securing justice for his folk. In this way he appears in the earliest
times fighting with the whites against the Indians as well as with the
Indians against the whites, and throughout the history of the West Indies
and Central America as well as the Southern United States we find here
and there groups of Negroes fighting with the whites. For instance: in
Louisiana early in the eighteenth century when Governor Perier took
office, the colony was very much afraid of a combination between the
Choctaw Indians and the fierce Banbara Negroes who had begun to make
common cause with them. To offset this, Perier armed a band of slaves in
1729 and sent them against the Indians. He says: “The Negroes executed
their mission with as much promptitude as secrecy.” Later, in 1730, the
Governor sent twenty white men and six Negroes to carry ammunition to the
Illinois settlement up the Mississippi River. Perier says fifteen Negroes
“in whose hands we had put weapons performed prodigies of valor. If the
blacks did not cost so much and if their labor was not so necessary to
the colony it would be better to turn them into soldiers and to dismiss
those we have who are so bad and so cowardly that they seem to have
been manufactured purposely for this colony.” But this policy of using
the Negroes against the Indians led the Indians to retaliate and seek
alliance with the blacks and in August 1730, the Natchez Indians and the
Chickshaws conspired with the Negroes to revolt. The head of the revolt,
Samba, with eight of his confederates was executed before the conspiracy
came to a head. In 1733, when Governor Bienville returned to power, he
had an army consisting of 544 white men and 45 Negroes, the latter with
free black officers.[71]

In the colonial wars which distracted America during the seventeenth and
early part of the eighteenth centuries the Negro took comparatively small
part because the institution of slavery was becoming more settled and
the masters were afraid to let their slaves fight. Notwithstanding this,
there were black freedmen who voted and were enrolled in the militia
and went to war, while some masters sent their slaves as laborers and
servants. As early as 1652 a law of Massachusetts as to the militia
required “Negro, Scotchmen and Indians” to enroll in the militia.
Afterward the policy was changed and Negroes and Indians were excluded
but Negroes often acted as sentinels at meeting-house doors. At other
times slaves ran away and enlisted as soldiers or as sailors, thus often
gaining their liberty. The New York _Gazette_ in 1760 advertises for a
slave who is suspected of having enlisted “in the provincial service.” In
1763 the Boston _Evening Post_ was looking for a Negro who “was a soldier
last summer.” One mulatto in 1746 is advertised for in the Pennsylvania
_Gazette_. He had threatened to go to the French and Indians and fight
for them. And in the Maryland _Gazette_, 1755, gentlemen are warned that
their slaves may run away to the French and Indians.[72]


2. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR

The estimates of the Negro soldiers who fought on the American side of
the Revolutionary War vary from four to six thousand, or one out of every
50 or 60 of the colonial troops.

On August 24, 1778, the following report was made of Negroes in the
Revolutionary Army:[73]

                              Sick    On
      Brigades       Present Absent Command  Total

    North Carolina     42      10     6       58
    Woodford           36       3     1       40
    Muhlenburg         64      26     8       98
    Smallwood          20       3     1       24
    2nd Maryland       43      15     2       60
    Wayne               2      ..     ..       2
    2nd Pennsylvania   33       1     1       35
    Clinton            33       2     4       62
    Parsons           117      12    19      148
    Huntington         56       2     4       62
    Nixon              26      ..     1       27
    Paterson           64      13    12       89
    Late Learned       34       4     8       46
    Poor               16       7     4       27
                     ----    ----   ----    ----
        Total         586      98     71     755

                                              Alex. Scammell, _Adj. Gen._

This report does not include Negro soldiers enlisted in Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire and other States not mentioned nor
does it include those who were in the army at both earlier and later
dates. Other records prove that Negroes served in as many as 18 brigades.

It was a Negro who in a sense began the actual fighting. In 1750 William
Brown of Framingham, Mass., advertised three times for “A Molatto Fellow
about 27 Years of Age, named _Crispas_, 6 Feet 2 Inches high, short
Curl’d Hair.” This runaway slave was the same Crispus Attucks who in
1779 led a mob on the 5th of March against the British soldiers in the
celebrated “Boston Massacre.”

Much has been said about the importance and lack of importance of this
so-called “Boston Massacre.” Whatever the verdict of history may be,
there is no doubt that the incident loomed large in the eyes of the
colonists. Distinguished men were orators on the 5th of March for years
after, until that date was succeeded by the 4th of July. Daniel Webster
in his great Bunker Hill oration said: “From that moment we may date the
severance of the British Empire.”

Possibly these men exaggerated the actual importance of a street brawl
between citizens and soldiers, led by a runaway slave; but there is no
doubt that the colonists, who fought for independence from England,
thought this occasion of tremendous importance and were nerved to great
effort because of it.

Livermore says: “The presence of the British soldiers in King Street
excited the patriotic indignation of the people. The whole community was
stirred, and sage counsellors were deliberating and writing and talking
about the public grievances. But it was not for the ‘wise and prudent’ to
be first to act against the encroachments of arbitrary power. ‘A motley
rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish Teagues and outlandish
Jack tars,’ (as John Adams described them in his plea in defense of the
soldiers) could not restrain their emotion or stop to enquire if what
they _must do_ was according to the letter of the law. Led by Crispus
Attucks, the mulatto slave, and shouting, ‘The way to get rid of these
soldiers is to attack the main guard; strike at the root; this is the
nest’; with more valor than discretion they rushed to King Street and
were fired upon by Captain Preston’s company. Crispus Attucks was the
first to fall; he and Samuel Gray and Jonas Caldwell were killed on
the spot. Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr were mortally wounded. The
excitement which followed was intense. The bells of the town were rung.
An impromptu town meeting was held and an immense assembly gathered.
Three days after, on the 8th, a public funeral of the Martyrs took place.
The shops in Boston were closed and all the bells of Boston and the
neighboring towns were rung. It is said that a greater number of persons
assembled on this occasion than ever before gathered on this continent
for a similar purpose. The body of Crispus Attucks, the mulatto, had been
placed in Faneuil Hall with that of Caldwell, both being strangers in the
city. Maverick was buried from his mother’s house in Union Street, and
Gray from his brother’s in Royal Exchange Lane. The four hearses formed
a junction in King Street and then the procession marched in columns six
deep, with a long file of coaches belonging to the most distinguished
citizens, to the Middle Burying Ground, where the four victims were
deposited in one grave over which a stone was placed with the inscription:

    ‘Long as in Freedom’s cause the wise contend,
    Dear to your country shall your fame extend;
    While to the world the lettered stone shall tell
    Where Caldwell, Attucks, Gray and Maverick fell.’

    “The anniversary of this event was publicly commemorated in
    Boston by an oration and other exercises every year until our
    National Independence was achieved, when the Fourth of July
    was substituted for the Fifth of March as the more proper day
    for a general celebration. Not only was the event commemorated
    but the martyrs who then gave up their lives were remembered
    and honored.”[74]

The relation of the Negro to the Revolutionary War was peculiar. If his
services were used by the Colonists this would be an excuse for the
English to use the Indians and to emancipate the slaves. If he were not
used not only was this source of strength to the small loyal armies
neglected but there still remained the danger that the English would bid
for the services of Negroes. At first then the free Negro went quite
naturally into the army as he had for the most part been recognized as
liable to military service. Then Congress hesitated and ordered that
no Negroes be enlisted. Immediately there appeared the determination
of the Negroes, whether deliberately arrived at or by the more or less
unconscious development of thought under the circumstances, to give their
services to the side which promised them freedom and decent treatment.
When therefore Governor Dunmore of Virginia and English generals like
Cornwallis and Clinton made a bid for the services of Negroes, coupled
with promises of freedom, they got considerable numbers and in the case
of Dunmore one Negro unit fought a pitched battle against the Colonists.

The Continental Congress took up the question of Negroes in the Army
in September, 1775. A committee consisting of Lynch, Lee and Adams
reported a letter which they had drafted to Washington. Rutledge of South
Carolina moved that Washington be instructed to discharge all Negroes
whether slave or free from the army, but this was defeated. October 8th
Washington and other generals in council of war, agreed unanimously
that slaves should be rejected and a large majority declared that they
refuse free Negroes. October 18th, the question came up again before the
committee consisting of Benjamin Franklin, General Washington, certain
deputies, governors and others. This council agreed that Negroes should
be rejected and Washington issued orders to this effect November 12th,
1775. Meantime, however, Dunmore’s proclamation came and his later
success in raising a black regiment which greatly disturbed Washington.
In July, 1776, the British had 200 Negro soldiers on Long Island and
later two regiments of Negroes were raised by the British in North
Carolina. The South lost thousands of Negroes through the British. In
Georgia a corps of fugitives calling themselves the “King of England
Soldiers” kept attacking on both sides of the Savannah River even after
the Revolution and many feared a general insurrection of slaves.

The colonists soon began to change their attitude. Late in 1775,
Washington reversed his decision and ordered his recruiting officers
to accept free Negroes who had already served in the army and laid the
matter before the Continental Congress. The Committee recommended that
these Negroes be reenlisted but no others. Various leaders advised that
it would be better to enlist the slaves, among them Samuel Hopkins,
Alexander Hamilton, General Greene, James Madison. Even John Laurens of
South Carolina tried to make the South accept the proposition.[75]

Thus Negroes again were received into the American army and from that
time on they played important rôles. They had already distinguished
themselves in individual cases at Bunker Hill. For instance, fourteen
white officers sent the following statement to the Massachusetts
Legislature on December 5, 1775: “The subscribers beg leave to report to
your Honorable House (which we do in justice to the character of so brave
a man) that under our own observation we declare that a Negro man named
Salem Poor, of Colonel Frye’s regiment, Captain Ames’ company, in the
late battle at Charlestown, behaved like an experienced officer as well
as an excellent soldier. To set forth particulars of his conduct would
be tedious. We only beg leave to say, in the person of this said Negro,
centers a brave and gallant soldier. The reward due to so great and
distinguished a character we submit to the Congress.”[76]

They afterward fought desperately in Long Island and at the battle of
Monmouth. Foreign travellers continually note the presence of Negroes in
the American army.

Less known however is the help which the black republic of Haiti offered
to the struggling Colonists. In December 1778 Savannah was captured
by the British, and Americans were in despair until the French fleet
appeared on the coast of Georgia in September 1779. The fleet offered to
help recapture Savannah. It had on board 1900 French troops of whom 800
were black Haitian volunteers. Among these volunteers were Christophe,
afterward king of Haiti, Rigaud, André, Lambert and others. They were a
significant and faithful band which began by helping freedom in America,
then turned and through the French revolution freed Haiti and finally
helped in the emancipation of South America. The French troops landed
below the city with the Americans at their right and together they made
an attack. American and French flags were planted on the British outposts
but their bearers were killed and a general retreat was finally ordered.
Seven hundred and sixty Frenchmen and 312 Americans were killed and
wounded. As the army began to retreat the British general attacked the
rear, determined to annihilate the Americans. It was then that the black
and mulatto freedmen from Haiti under the command of Viscount de Fontages
made the charge on the English and saved the retreating Americans. They
returned to Haiti to prepare eventually to make that country the second
one in America which threw off the domination of Europe.[77]

Some idea of the number of Negro soldiers can be had by reference to
documents mentioning the action of the States. Rhode Island raised
a regiment of slaves, and Governor Cooke said that it was generally
thought that at least 300 would enlist. Four companies were finally
formed there at a cost of over £10,000. Most of the 629 slaves in New
Hampshire enlisted and many of the 15,000 slaves in New York. Connecticut
had Negroes in her regiments and also a regiment of colored soldiers.
Maryland sought in 1781 to raise 750 Negro troops. Massachusetts had
colored troops in her various units from 72 towns in that State. “In view
of these numerous facts it is safe to conclude that there were at least
4,000 Negro soldiers scattered throughout the Continental Army.”[78]

In a debate in Congress in 1820 two men, one from the North and one
from the South, gave the verdict of that time on the value of the Negro
in the Revolutionary War. William Eustis of Massachusetts said: “The
war over and peace restored, these men returned to their respective
States, and who could have said to them on their return to civil life
after having shed their blood in common with the whites in the defense
of the liberties of the country, ‘You are not to participate in the
rights secured by the struggle or in the liberty for which you have been
fighting?’ Certainly no white man in Massachusetts.”

Charles Pinckney of South Carolina said: that the Negroes, “then were, as
they still are, as valuable a part of our population to the Union as any
other equal number of inhabitants. They were in numerous instances the
pioneers and, in all, the laborers of your armies. To their hands were
owing the erection of the greatest part of the fortifications raised for
the protection of our country; some of which, particularly Fort Moultrie,
gave at that early period of the inexperience and untried valor of our
citizens, immortality to American arms: and, in the Northern States
numerous bodies of them were enrolled into and fought by the sides of the
whites, the battles of the Revolution.”[79]

In 1779 in the war between Spain and Great Britain, the Spanish Governor
of Louisiana, Galvez, had in his army which he led against the British,
numbers of blacks and mulattoes who he said “behaved on all occasions
with as much valor and generosity as the whites.”[80]


3. THE WAR OF 1812

In the War of 1812 the Negro appeared not only as soldier but
particularly as sailor and in the dispute concerning the impressment
of American sailors which was one of the causes of the war, Negro
sailors repeatedly figured as seized by England and claimed as American
citizens by America for whose rights the nation was apparently ready to
go to war. For instance, on the Chesapeake were three Negro sailors
whom the British claimed but whom the Americans declared were American
citizens,—Ware, Martin and Strachen. As Bryant says: “The citizenship
of Negroes was sought and defended by England and America at this time
but a little later it was denied by the United States Supreme Court that
Negroes could be citizens.” On demand two of these Negroes were returned
to America by the British government; the other one died in England.

Negroes fought under Perry and Macdonough. On the high seas Negroes were
fighting. Nathaniel Shaler, captain of a privateer, wrote to his agent in
New York in 1813:

“Before I could get our light sails on and almost before I could
turn around, I was under the guns, not of a transport but of a large
frigate! And not more than a quarter of a mile from her.... Her first
broadside killed two men and wounded six others.... My officers conducted
themselves in a way that would have done honor to a more permanent
service.... The name of one of my poor fellows who was killed ought to be
registered in the book of fame, and remembered with reverence as long as
bravery is considered a virtue. He was a black man by the name of John
Johnson.... When America has such tars, she has little to fear from the
tyrants of the ocean.”[81]

A few Negroes were in the northern armies. A Congressman said in 1828: “I
myself saw a battalion of them—as fine martial looking men as I ever saw
attached to the northern army in the last war (1812) on its march from
Plattsburg to Sacketts Harbor where they did service for the country with
credit to New York and honor to themselves.”[82]

But it was in the South that they furnished the most spectacular instance
of participation in this war. Governor Claiborne appealed to General
Jackson to use colored soldiers. “These men, Sir, for the most part,
sustain good characters. Many of them have extensive connections and much
property to defend, and all seem attached to arms. The mode of acting
toward them at the present crisis, is an inquiry of importance. If we
give them not our confidence, the enemy will be encouraged to intrigue
and corrupt them.”[83]

September 21, 1814, Jackson issued a spirited appeal to the free Negroes
of Louisiana: “Through a mistaken policy, you have heretofore been
deprived of a participation in the glorious struggle for national rights
in which our country is engaged. This no longer shall exist.

“As sons of freedom, you are now called upon to defend our most
inestimable blessing. As Americans, your country looks with confidence to
her adopted children for a valorous support as a faithful return for the
advantages enjoyed under her mild and equitable government. As fathers,
husbands and brothers, you are summoned to rally around the standard of
the Eagle, to defend all which is dear in existence.... In the sincerity
of a soldier and the language of truth I address you.”[84]

He promised them the same bounty as whites and they were to have colored
non-commissioned officers. There was some attempt to have Jackson tone
down this appeal and say less of “equality,” but he refused to change his
first draft.

The news of this proclamation created great surprise in the North but not
much criticism. Indeed, things were going too badly for the Americans.
The Capitol at Washington had been burned, the State of Maine was in
British hands, enlistment had stopped and Northern States like New York
were already arming Negroes. The Louisiana legislature, a month after
Jackson’s proclamation, passed an act authorizing two regiments of “men
of color” by voluntary enlistment. Slaves were allowed to enlist and were
publicly manumitted for their services. There were 3200 white and 430
colored soldiers in the battle of New Orleans. The first battalion of 280
Negroes was commanded by a white planter, La Coste; a second battalion
of 150 was raised by Captain J. B. Savary, a colored man, from the San
Dominican refugees, and commanded by Major Daquin who was probably a
quadroon.

Besides these soldiers slaves were used in throwing up the famous cotton
bale ramparts, which saved the city, and this was the idea of a black
slave from Africa, who had seen the same thing done at home. Colored men
were used to reconnoitre, and the slave trader Lafitte brought a mixed
band of white and black fighters to help. Curiously enough there were
also Negroes on the other side, Great Britain having imported a regiment
from the West Indies which was at the head of the attacking column moving
against Jackson’s right, together with an Irish regiment. Conceive this
astounding anomaly!

The American Negro soldiers were stationed very near Jackson and his
staff. Jackson himself in an address to the soldiers after the battle,
complimenting the “embodied militia,” said:

“To the Men of Color.—Soldiers! From the shores of Mobile I collected
you to arms,—I invited you to share in the perils and to divide the
glory of your white countrymen. I expected much from you; for I was not
uninformed of those qualities which must render you so formidable to an
invading foe. I knew that you could endure hunger and thirst and all the
hardships of war. I knew that you loved the land of your nativity and
that, like ourselves, you had to defend all that is most dear to man. But
you surpass my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities,
that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.”[85]

In the celebration of the victory which followed in the great public
square, the Place d’Armes, now Jackson Square, the colored troops shared
the glory and the wounded prisoners were met by colored nurses.[86]


4. THE CIVIL WAR

There were a few Negroes in the Mexican War but they went mostly as
body servants to white officers and there were probably no soldiers and
certainly no distinct Negro organizations. The Negro, therefore, shares
little of the blood guilt of that unhallowed raid for slave soil.

At the time of the Civil War when the call came for volunteers free
Negroes everywhere offered their services to the Northern States and
everywhere their services were declined. Indeed, it was almost looked
upon as insolence that they should offer to fight in this “white man’s
war.” Not only was the war to be fought by white men but desperate effort
was made to cling to the technical fact that this was a war to save the
Union and not a war against slavery. Federal officials and northern
army officers made effort to reassure the South that they were not
abolitionists and that they were not going to touch slavery.[87]

Meantime there began to crystallize the demand that the real object of
the war be made the abolition of slavery and that the slaves and colored
men in general be allowed to fight for freedom.

This met bitter opposition. The New York _Herald_ voiced this August
5, 1862. “The efforts of those who love the Negro more than the Union
to induce the President to swerve from his established policy are
unavailing. He will neither be persuaded by promises nor intimidated
by threats. Today he was called upon by two United States Senators
and rather peremptorily requested to accept the services of two Negro
regiments. They were flatly and unequivocally rejected. The President
did not appreciate the necessity of employing the Negroes to fight the
battles of the country and take the positions which the white men of
the nation, the voters, and sons of patriotic sires, should be proud to
occupy; there were employments in which the Negroes of rebel masters
might well be engaged, but he was not willing to place them upon an
equality with our volunteers who had left home and family and lucrative
occupations to defend the Union and the Constitution while there were
volunteers or militia enough in the loyal States to maintain the
Government without resort to this expedient. If the loyal people were not
satisfied with the policy he had adopted, he was willing to leave the
administration to other hands. One of the Senators was impudent enough to
tell the President he wished to God he would resign.”

In the spring of 1862 General Hunter was sent into South Carolina
with less than 11,000 men and charged with the duty of holding the
whole seacoast of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. He asked for
re-enforcement but was told frankly from Washington, “Not a man from the
North can be spared.” The only way to guard the position was to keep
long lines of entrenchment thrown up against the enemy. General Hunter
calmly announced his intention of forming a Negro regiment to help him.
They were to be paid as laborers by the quartermaster but he expected
eventually to have them recognized as soldiers by the government. At
first he could find no officers. They were shocked at being asked to
command “niggers.” Even non-commissioned officers were difficult to find.
But eventually the regiment was formed and became an object of great
curiosity when on parade. Reports of the first South Carolina infantry
were sent to Washington but there was no reply. Then suddenly the matter
came up in Congress and Hunter was ordered to explain whether he had
enlisted fugitive slaves and upon what authority. Hunter immediately sent
a sharp reply:

“To the first question, therefore, I reply: That no regiment of ‘fugitive
slaves’ has been, or is being, organized in this department. There is,
however, a fine regiment of loyal persons whose late masters are fugitive
rebels—men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the National flag,
leaving their loyal and unhappy servants behind them, to shift as best
they can for themselves. So far, indeed, are the loyal persons composing
the regiment from seeking to evade the presence of their late owners,
that they are now one and all endeavoring with commendable zeal to
acquire the drill and discipline requisite to place them in a position
to go in full and effective pursuit of their fugacious and traitorous
proprietors.

“The experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been
a complete and even marvellous success. They are sober, docile, attentive
and enthusiastic, displaying great natural capacities in acquiring the
duties of the soldier. They are now eager beyond all things to take the
field and be led into action; and it is the unanimous opinion of the
officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this
climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal
to the similar regiments so long and so successfully used by the British
authorities in the West India Islands.

“In conclusion, I would say, it is my hope—there appearing no possibility
of other reinforcements, owing to the exigencies of the campaign in
the peninsula—to have organized by the end of next fall and to be able
to present to the government from 48,000 to 50,000 of these hardy and
devoted soldiers.”[88]

The reply was read in Congress amid laughter despite the indignation of
the Kentucky Congressman who instituted the inquiry.

Protests now came from the South but no answer was forthcoming and
despite all the agitation the regiment remained until at last Hunter was
officially ordered to raise 50,000 black laborers of whom 5,000 might be
armed and dressed as soldiers.

Horace Greeley stated the case clearly August 20, 1862 in his “Prayer of
Twenty Million”:[89]

“On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one
disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who
does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the
same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile—that
the rebellion if crushed out tomorrow would be renewed within a year if
slavery were left in full vigor—that army officers who remain to this day
devoted to slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union—and
that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened
peril to the Union....

“I close as I began, with the statement that what an immense majority
of the loyal millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank,
declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more
especially of the Confiscation Act. That Act gives freedom to the slaves
of rebels coming within our lines or whom those lines may at any time
enclose,—we ask you to render it due obedience by publicly requiring all
your subordinates to recognize and obey it. The rebels are everywhere
using the late anti-Negro riots in the North—as they have long used your
officers’ treatment of Negroes in the South—to convince the slaves that
they have nothing to hope from a Union success—that we mean in that case
to sell them into bitter bondage to defray the cost of the war. Let them
impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant and credulous
bondsmen, and the Union will never be restored—never. We cannot conquer
ten millions of people united in solid phalanx against us, powerfully
aided by northern sympathizers and European allies. We must have scouts,
guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers and choppers from the blacks of
the South—whether we allow them to fight for us or not—or we shall be
baffled and repelled.”

A month later, September 22, Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation. He had considered this step before and his
final decision was caused, first, by a growing realization of the immense
task that lay before the Union armies and, secondly, by the fear that
Europe was going to recognize the Confederacy, since she saw as between
North and South little difference in attitude toward slavery.

The effect of the step was undoubtedly decisive for ultimate victory,
although at first it spread dismay. Six of the Northern States went
Democratic in the fall elections and elsewhere the Republicans lost
heavily. In the army some officers resigned and others threatened to
because “The war for the Union was changed into a war for the Negro.”

In the South men like Beauregard urged the raising of the “Black Flag”
while Jefferson Davis in his third annual message wrote: “We may well
leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent
Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellowmen of all countries to
pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of
an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are
doomed to extermination.”[90]

With emancipation foreshadowed the full recognition of the Negro soldier
was inevitable. In September 1862 came a black Infantry Regiment from
Louisiana and later a regiment of heavy artillery and by the end of
1862 four Negro regiments had enlisted. Immediately after the signing
of the Emancipation Proclamation came the Kansas Colored volunteers and
the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment. A Bureau was established in
Washington to handle the colored enlistments and before the end of the
war 178,975 Negroes had enlisted.

“In the Department [of War] the actual number of Negroes enlisted was
never known, from the fact that a practice prevailed of putting a live
Negro in a dead one’s place. For instance, if a company on picket or
scouting lost ten men, the officer would immediately put ten new men in
their places and have them answer to the dead men’s names. I learn from
very reliable sources that this was done in Virginia, also in Missouri
and Tennessee. If the exact number of men could be ascertained, instead
of 180,000 it would doubtless be in the neighborhood of 220,000 who
entered the ranks of the army.”[91]

General orders covering the enlistment of Negro troops were sent out from
the War Department October 13, 1863. The Union League in New York city
raised 2,000 black soldiers in 45 days, although no bounty was offered
them and no protection promised their families. The regiment had a
triumphal march through the city and a daily paper stated: “In the month
of July last the homes of these people were burned and pillaged by an
infuriated political mob; they and their families were hunted down and
murdered in the public streets of this city; and the force and majesty
of the law were powerless to protect them. Seven brief months have passed
and a thousand of these despised and persecuted men marched through the
city in the garb of the United States soldiers, in vindication of their
own manhood and with the approval of a countless multitude—in effect
saving from inevitable and distasteful conscription the same number of
those who hunted their persons and destroyed their homes during those
days of humiliation and disgrace. This is noble vengeance—a vengeance
taught by Him who commanded, ‘Love them that hate you; do good to them
that persecute you.’”

The enlistment of Negroes caused difficulty and friction among the
white troops. In South Carolina General Gilmore had to forbid the white
troops using Negro troops for menial service in cleaning up the camps.
Black soldiers in uniform often had their uniforms stripped off by white
soldiers.

“I attempted to pass Jackson Square in New Orleans one day in my uniform
when I was met by two white soldiers of the 24th Conn. They halted me and
then ordered me to undress. I refused, when they seized me and began to
tear my coat off. I resisted, but to no good purpose; a half dozen others
came up and began to assist. I recognized a sergeant in the crowd, an
old shipmate on board of a New Bedford, Mass., whaler; he came to my
rescue, my clothing was restored and I was let go. It was nothing strange
to see a black soldier _à la_ Adam come into the barracks out of the
streets.”[92] This conduct led to the killing of a portion of a boat’s
crew of the U. S. Gunboat Jackson, at Ship Island, Miss., by members of a
Negro regiment stationed there.

Then, too, there was contemptible discrimination in pay. While white
soldiers received $13 a month and clothing, Negro soldiers, by act of
Congress, were given $10 a month with $3 deducted for clothing, leaving
only $7 a month as actual pay. This was only remedied when the 54th
Massachusetts Infantry refused all pay for a year until it should be
treated as other regiments. The State of Massachusetts made up the
difference between the $7 and $13 to disabled soldiers until June 16,
1864, when the government finally made the Negroes’ pay equal to that of
the whites.

On the Confederate side there was a movement to use Negro soldiers
fostered by Judah Benjamin, General Lee and others. In 1861 a Negro
company from Nashville offered its services to the Confederate states and
free Negroes of Memphis were authorized by the Committee of Safety to
organize a volunteer company. Companies of free Negroes were raised in
New Orleans,—“Very well drilled and comfortably uniformed.” In Richmond
colored troops were also raised in the last days. Few if any of these
saw actual service. Plantation hands from Alabama built the redoubts
at Charleston, and Negroes worked as teamsters and helpers throughout
the South. In February, 1864, the Confederate congress provided for the
impressment of 20,000 slaves for menial service, and President Davis
suggested that the number be doubled and that they be emancipated at
the end of their service. Before the war started local authorities
had in many cases enrolled free Negroes as soldiers and some of these
remained in the service of the Confederacy. The adjutant general of
the Louisiana militia issued an order which said “the Governor and the
Commander-in-Chief, relying implicitly upon the loyalty of the free
colored population of the city and State, for the protection of their
homes, their property and for southern rights, from the population of
a ruthless invader, and believing that the military organization which
existed prior to February 15, 1862, and elicited praise and respect for
the patriotic motives which prompted it, should exist for and during the
war, calls upon them to maintain their organization and hold themselves
prepared for such orders as may be transmitted to them.” These native
guards did not leave the city when the Confederates did and explained to
General Butler that they dared not refuse to work with the Confederates
and that they hoped by their service to gain greater equality with
the whites and that they would be glad now to join the Union forces.
Two weeks after the fall of Sumter colored volunteers passed through
Georgia on their way to Virginia. There were 16 or more companies. In
November, 1861, a regiment of 1,400 free colored men were in the line of
march at New Orleans. The idea of calling the Negroes grew as the power
of the Confederacy waned and the idea of emancipation as compensation
spread. President Davis said “Should the alternative ever be presented
of subjugation or of the employment of slaves as soldiers there seems no
reason to doubt what should be our decision.”

There was, of course, much difference of opinion. General Cobb said “If
slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong,” while
a Georgian replied “Some say that Negroes will not fight, I say they
will fight. They fought at Ocean Pond, Honey Hill and other places.”
General Lee, in January ’64, gave as his opinion that they should employ
them without delay. “I believe with proper regulations they may be made
efficient soldiers.” He continued, “Our chief aim should be to secure
their fidelity. There have been formidable armies composed of men having
no interest in the cause for which they fought beyond their pay or the
hope of plunder. But it is certain that the surest foundation upon which
the fidelity of an army can rest, especially in a service which imposes
hardships and privations, is the personal interest of the soldier in the
issue of the contest. Such an interest we can give our Negroes by giving
immediate freedom to all who enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to
the families of those who discharge their duties faithfully (whether they
survive or not), together with the privilege of residing at the South. To
this might be added a bounty for faithful service.”

Finally, March 13, 1865, it was directed that slaves be enrolled in the
Confederate army, each state to furnish its quota of 300,000. Recruiting
officers were appointed, but before the plan could be carried out Lee and
Johnson surrendered.[93]

The central fact which we forget in these days is that the real question
in the minds of most white people in the United States in 1863 was
whether or not the Negro really would fight. The generation then living
had never heard of the Negro in the Revolution and in the War of 1812,
much less of his struggles and insurrections before. From 1820 down to
the time of the war a determined and far-reaching propaganda had led most
men to believe in the natural inferiority, cowardice and degradation of
the Negro race. We have already seen Abraham Lincoln suggest that if arms
were put into the hands of the Negro soldier it might be simply a method
of arming the rebels. The New York _Times_ discussed the matter soberly,
defending the right to employ Negroes but suggesting four grounds which
might make it inexpedient; that Negroes would not fight, that prejudice
was so strong that whites would not fight with them, that no free Negroes
would volunteer and that slaves could not be gotten hold of and that the
use of Negroes would exasperate the South. “The very best thing that can
be done under existing circumstances, in our judgment, is to possess our
souls in patience while the experiment is being tried. The problem will
probably speedily solve itself—much more speedily than heated discussion
or harsh criminations can solve it.”

This was in February 16, 1863. It was not long before the results of
using Negro troops began to be reported and we find the _Times_ saying
editorially on the 31st of July: “Negro soldiers have now been in
battle at Port Hudson and at Milliken’s Bend in Louisiana; at Helena
in Arkansas, at Morris Island in South Carolina, and at or near Fort
Gibson in the Indian Territory. In two of these instances they assaulted
fortified positions and led the assault; in two they fought on the
defensive, and in one they attacked rebel infantry. In all of them
they acted in conjunction with white troops and under command of white
officers. In some instances they acted with distinguished bravery, and in
all they acted as well as could be expected of raw troops.”

On the 11th of February, 1863, the news columns of the _Times_ were still
more enthusiastic. “It will not need many such reports as this—and there
have been several before it—to shake our inveterate Saxon prejudice
against the capacity and courage of Negro troops. Everybody knows
that they were used in the Revolution, and in the last war with Great
Britain fought side by side with white troops, and won equal praises
from Washington and Jackson. It is shown also that black sailors are on
equal terms with their white comrades. If on the sea, why not on the
land? No officer who has commanded black troops has yet reported against
them. They are tried in the most unfavorable and difficult circumstances,
but never fail. When shall we learn to use the full strength of the
formidable ally who is only waiting for a summons to rally under the flag
of the Union? Colonel Higginson says: ‘No officer in this regiment now
doubts that the successful prosecution of this war lies in the unlimited
employment of black troops.’ The remark is true in a military sense, and
it has a still deeper political significance.

“When General Hunter has scattered 50,000 muskets among the Negroes of
the Carolinas, and General Butler has organized the 100,000 or 200,000
blacks for whom he may perhaps shortly carry arms to New Orleans, the
possibility of restoring the Union as it was, with slavery again its
dormant power, will be seen to have finally passed away. The Negro is
indeed the key to success.”

The Negroes began to fight and fight hard; but their own and peculiar
characteristics stood out even in the blood of war. A Pennsylvania
Major wrote home: “I find that these colored men learn everything that
pertains to the duties of a soldier much faster than any white soldiers
I have ever seen.... They are willing, obedient, and cheerful; move with
agility, and are full of music.”[94]

Certain battles, carnivals of blood, stand out and despite their horror
must not be forgotten. One of the earliest encounters was the terrible
massacre at Fort Pillow, April 18, 1863. The fort was held with a
garrison of 557 men, of whom 262 were colored soldiers of the 6th United
States Heavy Artillery. The Union commander refused to surrender.

“Upon receiving the refusal of Major Booth to capitulate, Forrest gave
a signal and his troops made a frantic charge upon the fort. It was
received gallantly and resisted stubbornly, but there was no use of
fighting. In ten minutes the enemy, assaulting the fort in the centre,
and striking it on the flanks, swept in. The Federal troops surrendered;
but an indiscriminate massacre followed. Men were shot down in their
tracks; pinioned to the ground with bayonet and sabre. Some were clubbed
to death while dying of wounds; others were made to get down upon their
knees, in which condition they were shot to death. Some were burned
alive, having been fastened into the buildings, while still others were
nailed against the houses, tortured and then burned to a crisp.”[95]

May 27, 1863, came the battle of Port Hudson. “Hearing the firing
apparently more fierce and continuous to the right than anywhere else,
I turned in that direction, past the sugar house of Colonel Chambers,
where I had slept, and advanced to near the pontoon bridge across the Big
Sandy Bayou, which the Negro regiments had erected, and where they were
fighting most desperately. I had seen these brave and hitherto despised
fellows the day before as I rode along the lines, and I had seen General
Banks acknowledge their respectful salute as he would have done that of
any white troops; but still the question was—with too many—‘Will they
fight?’

“General Dwight, at least, must have had the idea, not only that they
were men, but something more than men, from the terrific test to which
he put their valor. Before any impression had been made upon the
earthworks of the enemy, and in full face of the batteries belching forth
their 62-pounders, these devoted people rushed forward to encounter
grape, canister, shell, and musketry, with no artillery but two small
howitzers—that seemed mere popguns to their adversaries—and no reserve
whatever.

“Their force consisted of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards (with colored
field officers) under Lieutenant-Colonel Bassett, and the 3d Louisiana
Native Guards, Colonel Nelson (with white field officers), the whole
under command of the latter officer.

“On going into action they were 1,080 strong, and formed into four lines,
Lieutenant-Colonel Bassett, 1st Louisiana, forming the first line, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Finnegas the second. When ordered to charge up
the works, they did so with the skill and nerve of old veterans (black
people, be it remembered who had never been in action before). Oh, but
the fire from the rebel guns was so terrible upon the unprotected masses,
that the first few shots mowed them down like grass and so continued.

“Colonel Bassett being driven back, Colonel Finnegas took his place,
and his men being similarly cut to pieces, Lieutenant-Colonel Bassett
reformed and recommenced; and thus these brave people went in from
morning until 3:30 P.M., under the most hideous carnage that men ever
had to withstand, and that very few white ones would have had nerve to
encounter, even if ordered to.

“During this time, they rallied, and were ordered to make six distinct
charges, losing 37 killed, and 155 wounded, and 116 missing,—the
majority, if not all, of these being, in all probability, now lying dead
on the gory field, and without the rites of sepulture; for when, by flag
of truce, our forces in other directions were permitted to reclaim their
dead, the benefit, through some neglect, was not extended to these black
regiments.

“The deeds of heroism performed by these colored men were such as the
proudest white men might emulate. Their colors are torn to pieces by
shot and literally bespattered by blood and brains. The color-sergeant
of the 1st Louisiana, on being mortally wounded, hugged the colors to
his breast, when a struggle ensued between the two color-corporals on
each side of him, as to who should have the honor of bearing the sacred
standard, and during this generous contention one was seriously wounded.
One black lieutenant actually mounted the enemy’s works three or four
times, and in one charge the assaulting party came within fifty paces of
them. Indeed, if only ordinarily supported by artillery and reserve, no
one can convince us that they would not have opened a passage through the
enemy’s works.

“Captain Callioux of the 1st Louisiana, a man so black that he actually
prided himself upon his blackness, died the death of a hero, leading on
his men in the thickest of the fight.”[96]

In July 13, 1863, came the draft riot in New York when the daily papers
told the people that they were called upon to fight the battles of
“niggers and abolitionists,” when the governor did nothing but “request”
the rioters to await the report of his demand that the President suspend
the draft. Meantime the city was given over to rapine and murder,
property destroyed, Negroes killed and the colored orphans’ asylum burned
to the ground and property robbed and pillaged.

At that very time in South Carolina black soldiers were preparing to take
Fort Wagner, their greatest battle. It will be noted that continually
Negroes were called upon to rescue lost causes, many times as a sort of
deliberate test of their courage. Fort Wagner was a case in point. The
story may be told from two points of view, that of the white Unionist and
that of the Confederate. The Union account says:

“The signal given, our forces advanced rapidly towards the fort, while
our mortars in the rear tossed their bombs over their heads. The 54th
Massachusetts (a Negro Regiment) led the attack, supported by the 6th
Connecticut, 48th New York, 3rd New Hampshire, 76th Pennsylvania, and
the 9th Maine Regiments.... The silent and shattered walls of Wagner
all at once burst forth into a blinding sheet of vivid light, as though
they had suddenly been transformed by some magic power into the living,
seething crater of a volcano! Down came the whirlwind of destruction
along the beach with the swiftness of lightning! How fearfully the
hissing shot, the shrieking bombs, the whistling bars of iron, and the
whispering bullet struck and crushed through the dense masses of our
brave men! I never shall forget the terrible sound of that awful blast of
death, which swept down, shattered or dead, a thousand of our men. Not
a shot had missed its aim. Every bolt of steel, every globe of iron and
lead, tasted of human blood....

“In a moment the column recovered itself, like a gallant ship at sea when
buried for an instant under the immense wave.

“The ditch is reached; a thousand men leap into it, clamber up the
shattered ramparts, and grapple with the foe, which yields and falls back
to the rear of the fort. Our men swarm over the walls, bayoneting the
desperate rebel cannoneers. Hurrah! the fort is ours!

“But now came another blinding blast from concealed guns in the rear of
the fort, and our men went down by scores.... The struggle is terrific.
Our supports hurry up to the aid of their comrades, but as they reach the
ramparts they fire a volley which strikes down many of our men. Fatal
mistake! Our men rally once more; but, in spite of an heroic resistance,
they are forced back again to the edge of the ditch. Here the brave Shaw,
with scores of his black warriors, went down, fighting desperately.”

When asking for the body of Colonel Shaw, a confederate major said: “We
have buried him with his niggers.”

The Confederate account is equally eloquent.

“The carnage was frightful. It is believed the Federals lost more men on
that eventful night than twice the entire strength of the Confederate
garrison.... According to the statement of Chaplain Dennison the
assaulting columns, in two brigades, commanded by General Strong and
Colonel Putnam (the division under General Seymour), consisted of the
54th Massachusetts, 3rd and 7th New Hampshire, 6th Connecticut and 100th
New York, with a reserve brigade commanded by General Stephenson. One of
the assaulting regiments was composed of Negroes (the 54th Massachusetts)
and to it was assigned the honor of leading the white columns to the
charge. It was a dearly purchased compliment. Their Colonel (Shaw) was
killed upon the parapet and the regiment almost annihilated, although
the Confederates in the darkness could not tell the color of their
assailants.”[97]

At last it was seen that Negro troops could do more than useless or
helpless or impossible tasks, and in the siege of Petersburg they were
put to important work. When the general attack was ordered on the 16th of
June, 1864, a division of black troops was used. The Secretary of War,
Stanton himself, saw them and said:

“The hardest fighting was done by the black troops. The forts they
stormed were the worst of all. After the affair was over General Smith
went to thank them, and tell them he was proud of their courage and dash.
He says they cannot be exceeded as soldiers, and that hereafter he will
send them in a difficult place as readily as the best white troops.”[98]

It was planned to send the colored troops under Burnside against the
enemy after the great mine was exploded. Inspecting officers reported to
Burnside that the black division was fitted for this perilous work. The
white division which was sent made a fiasco of it. Then, after all had
been lost Burnside was ready to send in his black division and though
they charged again and again they were repulsed and the Union lost over
4,000 men killed, wounded and captured.

All the officers of the colored troops in the Civil War were not white.
From the first there were many colored non-commissioned officers, and
the Louisiana regiments raised under Butler had 66 colored officers,
including one Major and 27 Captains, besides the full quota of
non-commissioned colored officers. In the Massachusetts colored troops
there were 10 commissioned Negro officers and 3 among the Kansas troop.
Among these officers was a Lieutenant-Colonel Reed of North Carolina,
who was killed in battle. In Kansas there was Captain H. F. Douglas, and
in other United States’ volunteer regiments were Major M. H. Delaney
and Captain O. S. B. Wall; Dr. A. T. Augusta, surgeon, was brevetted
Lieutenant-Colonel. The losses of Negro troops in the Civil War, killed,
wounded and missing has been placed at 68,178.

Such was the service of the Negro in the Civil War. Men say that the
nation gave them freedom, but the verdict of history is written on the
Shaw monument at the head of Boston Common:

    THE WHITE OFFICERS

    Taking Life and Honor in their Hands—Cast their lot with
    Men of a Despised Race Unproved in War—and Risked Death as
    Inciters of a Servile Insurrection if Taken Prisoners, Besides
    Encountering all the Common Perils of Camp, March, and Battle.

    THE BLACK RANK AND FILE

    Volunteered when Disaster Clouded the Union Cause—Served
    without Pay for Eighteen Months till Given that of White
    Troops—Faced Threatened Enslavement if Captured—Were Brave in
    Action—Patient under Dangerous and Heavy Labors and Cheerful
    amid Hardships and Privations.

    TOGETHER

    They Gave to the Nation Undying Proof that Americans of African
    Descent Possess the Pride, Courage, and Devotion of the Patriot
    Soldier—One Hundred and Eighty Thousand Such Americans Enlisted
    Under the Union Flag in MDCCCLXIII-MDCCCLXV.


5. THE WAR IN CUBA

In the Spanish-American War four Negro regiments were among the first
to be ordered to the front. They were the regular army regiments, 24th
and 25th Infantry, and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. President McKinley
recommended that new regiments of regular army troops be formed among
Negroes but Congress took no action. Colored troops with colored officers
were formed as follows: The 3rd North Carolina, the 8th Illinois, the 9th
Battalion, Ohio and the 23rd Kansas. Regiments known as the Immunes,
being immune to Yellow fever, were formed with colored lieutenants and
white captains and field officers, and called the 7th, 8th, 9th and
10th United States Volunteers. In addition to those there were the
6th Virginia with colored lieutenants and the 3rd Alabama with white
officers. Indiana had two companies attached to the 8th Immunes. None
of the Negro volunteer companies reached the front in time to take part
in battle. The 8th Illinois formed a part of the Army of Occupation and
was noted for its policing and cleaning up of Santiago. Colonel John R.
Marshall, commanding the 8th Illinois, and Major Charles Young, a regular
army commander, both colored, were in charge of the battalion.

The colored regular army regiments took a brilliant part in the war.
The first regiment ordered to the front was the 24th Infantry. Negro
soldiers were in the battles around Santiago. The Tenth Cavalry made an
effective attack at Las Quasimas and at El Caney on July 1 they saved
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders from annihilation. The 24th Infantry volunteered
in the Yellow fever epidemic and cleaned the camp in one day. _Review of
Reviews_ says: “One of the most gratifying incidents of the Spanish War
has been the enthusiasm that the colored regiments of the regular army
have aroused throughout the whole country. Their fighting at Santiago
was magnificent. The Negro soldiers showed excellent discipline, the
highest qualities of personal bravery, very superior physical endurance,
unfailing good temper, and the most generous disposition toward all
comrades-in-arms, whether white or black. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders have
come back singing the praises of the colored troops. There is not a
dissenting voice in the chorus of praise.... Men who can fight for their
country as did these colored troops ought to have their full share of
gratitude and honor.”


6. CARRIZAL

In 1916 the United States sent a punitive expedition under General
Pershing into Mexico in pursuit of the Villa forces which had raided
Columbus, New Mexico. Two Negro regiments, the 10th Cavalry and the 24th
Infantry, were a part of his expedition. On June 21, Troop C and K of
the 10th Cavalry were ambushed at Carrizal by some 700 Mexican soldiers.
Although outnumbered almost ten to one, these black soldiers dismounted
in the face of a withering machine-gun fire, deployed, charged the
Mexicans and killed their commander.

This handful of men fought on until, of the three officers commanding
them, two were killed and one was badly wounded. Seventeen of the men
were killed and twenty-three were made prisoners. One of the many
outstanding heroes of this memorable engagement was Peter Bigstaff, who
fought to the last beside his commander, Lieutenant Adair. A Southern
white man, with no love for blacks, wrote:

“The black trooper might have faltered and fled a dozen times, saving
his own life and leaving Adair to fight alone. But it never seemed to
occur to him. He was a comrade to the last blow. When Adair’s broken
revolver fell from his hand the black trooper pressed another into it,
and together, shouting in defiance, they thinned the swooping circle of
overwhelming odds before them.

“The black man fought in the deadly shambles side by side with the white
man, following always, fighting always as his lieutenant fought.

“And finally, when Adair, literally shot to pieces, fell in his tracks,
his last command to his black trooper was to leave him and save his life.
Even then the heroic Negro paused in the midst of that Hell of carnage
for a final service to his officer. Bearing a charmed life, he had
fought his way out. He saw that Adair had fallen with his head in the
water. With superb loyalty the black trooper turned and went back to the
maelstrom of death, lifted the head of his superior, leaned him against a
tree and left him there dead with dignity when it was impossible to serve
any more.

“There is not a finer piece of soldierly devotion and heroic comradeship
in the history of modern warfare than that of Henry Adair and the black
trooper who fought by him at Carrizal.”[99]


7. THE WORLD WAR

Finally we come to the World War the history of which is not yet written.
At first and until the United States entered the war the Negro figured
as a laborer and a great exodus took place from the South as we have
already noted. Some effort was made to keep the Negro from the draft but
finally he was called and although constituting less than a tenth of the
population he furnished 13% of the soldiers called to the colors. The
registry for the draft had insulting color discriminations and determined
effort was made to confine Negroes to stevedore and labor regiments under
white officers. Most of the Negro draftees were thus sent to the Service
of Supplies where they were largely under illiterate whites and suffered
greatly. Finally a camp for training Negro officers was established and
nearly 700 Negroes commissioned, none of them, however, above the rank of
captain; Charles Young, the highest ranking Negro graduate of West Point
and one of the best officers in the army was kept from the front, because
being already a colonel with a distinguished record he would surely have
become a general if sent to France.

Two Negro divisions were planned, the 92nd and the 93rd. The 93rd was to
be composed of the Negro National Guard regiments all of whom had some
and one all Negro officers. The latter division was never organized as
a complete division but four of its regiments were sent to France and
encountered bitter discrimination from the Americans on account of their
Negro officers. They were eventually brigaded with the French and saw
some of the hardest fighting of the war in the final drive toward Sedan.
They were cited in General Orders as follows by General Goybet:[100]

    “In transmitting to you with legitimate pride the thanks and
    congratulations of the General Garnier Duplessis, allow me, my
    dear friends of all ranks, Americans and French, to thank you
    from the bottom of my heart as a chief and a soldier for the
    expression of gratitude for the glory which you have lent our
    good 157th Division. I had full confidence in you but you have
    surpassed my hopes.

    “During these nine days of hard fighting you have progressed
    nine kilometers through powerful organized defenses, taken
    nearly 600 prisoners, 15 guns of different calibers, 20
    minnewerfers, and nearly 150 machine guns, secured an enormous
    amount of engineering material, an important supply of
    artillery ammunition, brought down by your fire three enemy
    aeroplanes.

    “Your troops have been admirable in their attack. You must be
    proud of the courage of your officers and men; and I consider
    it an honor to have them under my command.

    “The bravery and dash of your regiment won the admiration of
    the 2nd Moroccan Division who are themselves versed in warfare.
    Thanks to you, during those hard days, the Division was at all
    times in advance of all other divisions of the Army Corps. I am
    sending you all my thanks and beg you to transmit them to your
    subordinates.

    “I called on your wounded. Their morale is higher than any
    praise.

                                                          GOYBET.”

The 92nd Division encountered difficulties in organization and was never
assembled as a Division until it arrived in France. There it was finally
gotten in shape and took a small part in the Argonne offensive and in the
fight just preceding the armistice. Their Commanding General said:[101]

“Five months ago today the 92nd Division landed in France.

“After seven weeks of training, it took over a sector in the front line,
and since that time some portion of the Division has been practically
continuously under fire.

“It participated in the last battle of the war with creditable success,
continuously pressing the attack against highly organized defensive
works. It advanced successfully on the first day of the battle,
attaining its objectives and capturing prisoners. This in the face of
determined opposition by an alert enemy, and against rifle, machine-gun
and artillery fire. The issue of the second day’s battle was rendered
indecisive by the order to cease firing at eleven A.M.—when the armistice
became effective.”

With the small chance thus afforded Negro troops nevertheless made a
splendid record and especially those under Negro officers. If they had
had larger opportunity and less organized prejudice they would have
done much more. Perhaps their greatest credit is from the fact that
they withstood so bravely and uncomplainingly the barrage of hatred
and offensive prejudice aimed against them. The young Negro officers
especially made a splendid record as to thinking, guiding leaders of an
oppressed group.

Thus has the black man defended America from the beginning to the World
War. To him our independence from Europe and slavery is in no small
degree due.




CHAPTER IV

THE EMANCIPATION OF DEMOCRACY

    How the black slave by his incessant struggle to be free has
    broadened the basis of democracy in America and in the world.


Help in exploration, labor unskilled and to some extent skilled, and
fighting, have been the three gifts which so far we have considered as
having been contributed by black folk to America. We now turn to a matter
more indefinite and yet perhaps of greater importance.

Without the active participation of the Negro in the Civil War, the
Union could not have been saved nor slavery destroyed in the nineteenth
century.[102] Without the help of black soldiers, the independence of
the United States could not have been gained in the eighteenth century.
But the Negro’s contribution to America was at once more subtle and
important than these things. Dramatically the Negro is the central thread
of American history. The whole story turns on him whether we think of
the dark and flying slave ship in the sixteenth century, the expanding
plantations of the seventeenth, the swelling commerce of the eighteenth,
or the fight for freedom in the nineteenth. It was the black man that
raised a vision of democracy in America such as neither Americans nor
Europeans conceived in the eighteenth century and such as they have not
even accepted in the twentieth century; and yet a conception which every
clear sighted man knows is true and inevitable.


1. DEMOCRACY

Democracy was not planted full grown in America. It was a slow growth
beginning in Europe and developing further and more quickly in America.
It did not envisage at first the man farthest down as a participant in
democratic privilege or even as a possible participant. This was not
simply because of the inability of the ignorant and degraded to express
themselves and act intelligently and efficiently, but it was a failure
to recognize that the mass of men had any rights which the better class
were bound to respect. Thus democracy to the world first meant simply
the transfer of privilege and opportunity from waning to waxing power,
from the well-born to the rich, from the nobility to the merchants.
Divine Right of birth yielded the Divine Right of wealth. Growing
industry, business and commerce were putting economic and social power
into the hands of what we call the middle class. Political opportunity
to correspond with this power was the demand of the eighteenth century
and this was what the eighteenth century called Democracy. On the
other hand, both in Europe and in America, there were classes, and
large classes, without power and without consideration whose place in
democracy was inconceivable both to Europeans and Americans. Among
these were the agricultural serfs and industrial laborers of Europe and
the indentured servants and black slaves of America. The white serfs,
as they were transplanted in America, began a slow, but in the end,
effective agitation for recognition in American democracy. And through
them has risen the modern American labor movement. But this movement
almost from the first looked for its triumph along the ancient paths of
aristocracy and sought to raise the white servant and laborer on the
backs of the black servant and slave. If now the black man had been
inert, unintelligent, submissive, democracy would have continued to mean
in America what it means so widely still in Europe, the admission of the
powerful to participation in government and privilege in so far and only
in so far as their power becomes irresistible. It would not have meant a
recognition of human beings as such and the giving of economic and social
power to the powerless.

It is usually assumed in reading American history that whatever the
Negro has done for America has been passive and unintelligent, that he
accompanied the explorers as a beast of burden and accomplished whatever
he did by sheer accident; that he labored because he was driven to
labor and fought because he was made to fight. This is not true. On the
contrary, it was the rise and growth among the slaves of a determination
to be free and an active part of American democracy that forced American
democracy continually to look into the depths; that held the faces of
American thought to the inescapable fact that as long as there was a
slave in America, America could not be a free republic; and more than
that: as long as there were people in America, slave or nominally free,
who could not participate in government and industry and society as
free, intelligent human beings, our democracy had failed of its greatest
mission.

This great vision of the black man was, of course, at first the vision
of the few, as visions always are, but it was always there; it grew
continuously and it developed quickly from wish to active determination.
One cannot think then of democracy in America or in the modern world
without reference to the American Negro. The democracy established in
America in the eighteenth century was not, and was not designed to be, a
democracy of the masses of men and it was thus singularly easy for people
to fail to see the incongruity of democracy and slavery. It was the
Negro himself who forced the consideration of this incongruity, who made
emancipation inevitable and made the modern world at least consider if
not wholly accept the idea of a democracy including men of all races and
colors.


2. INFLUENCE ON WHITE THOUGHT

Naturally, at first, it was the passive presence of the Negro with his
pitiable suffering and sporadic expression of unrest that bothered
the American colonists. Massachusetts and Connecticut early in the
seventeenth century tried to compromise with their consciences by
declaring that there should be no slavery except of persons “willingly
selling themselves” or “sold to us.” And these were to have “All the
liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in
Israel.” Massachusetts even took a strong stand against proven “man
stealing”; but it was left to a little band of Germans in Pennsylvania,
in 1688, to make the first clear statement the moment they looked upon
a black slave: “Now, though they are black, we cannot conceive there is
more liberty to have them slaves than it is to have other white ones.
There is a saying that we shall do to all men like as we will be done to
ourselves, making no difference of what generation, descent or color they
are. Here is liberty of conscience which is right and reasonable. Here
ought also to be liberty of the body.”[103]

In the eighteenth century, Sewall of Massachusetts attacked slavery.
From that time down until 1863 man after man and prophet after prophet
spoke against slavery and they spoke not so much as theorists but as
people facing extremely uncomfortable facts. Oglethorpe would keep
slavery out of Georgia because he saw how the strength of South Carolina
went to defending themselves against possible slave insurrection rather
than to defending the English colonies against the Spanish. The matter
of baptizing the heathen whom slavery was supposed to convert brought
tremendous heart searchings and argument and disputations and explanatory
laws throughout the colonies. Contradictory benevolences were evident as
when the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel sought to convert the
Negroes and American legislatures sought to make the perpetual slavery of
the converts sure.

The religious conscience, especially as it began to look upon America
as a place of freedom and refuge, was torn by the presence of slavery.
Late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth centuries pressure
began to be felt from the more theoretical philanthropists of Europe
and the position of American philanthropists was made correspondingly
uncomfortable. Benjamin Franklin pointed out some of the evils of
slavery; James Otis inveighing against England’s economic tyranny
acknowledged the rights of black men. Patrick Henry said that slavery
was “repugnant to the first impression of right and wrong” and George
Washington hoped slavery might be abolished. Thomas Jefferson made the
celebrated statement: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that considering
numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of
fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it
may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no
attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.”[104]

Henry Laurens said to his son: “You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery.
I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British
kings and parliaments, as well as by the laws of that country ages before
my existence. I found the Christian religion and slavery growing under
the same authority and cultivation. I nevertheless disliked it. In former
days there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest;
the day I hope is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well
as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness
to comply with the golden rule.”[105]

The first draft of the Declaration of Independence harangued King George
III of Britain for the presence of slavery in the United States:

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him; captivating and carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of Infidel powers, is the warfare
of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open market
where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this
execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no
fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise
in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived
them, by murdering the people on whom we also obtruded them; thus paying
off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with
crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”[106]

The final draft of the Declaration said: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident:—that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed.”

It was afterward argued that Negroes were not included in this general
statement and Judge Taney in his celebrated decision said in 1857:

“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of
an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white
race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that
they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that
the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his
benefit....”[107]

This _obiter dictum_ was disputed by equally learned justices. Justice
McLean said in his opinion:

“Our independence was a great epoch in the history of freedom; and while
I admit the Government was not made especially for the colored race,
yet many of them were citizens of the New England States, and exercised
the rights of suffrage when the Constitution was adopted; and it was
not doubted by any intelligent person that its tendencies would greatly
ameliorate their condition.”[108]

Justice Curtis also said:

“It has been often asserted, that the Constitution was made exclusively
by and for the white race. It has already been shown that in five of the
thirteen original States, colored persons then possessed the elective
franchise and were among those by whom the Constitution was ordained
and established. If so, it is not true, in point of fact, that the
Constitution was made exclusively by the white race. And that it was made
exclusively for the white race is, in my opinion, not only an assumption
not warranted by anything in the Constitution, but contradicted by its
opening declaration, that it was ordained and established by the people
of the United States, for themselves and their posterity. And, as free
colored persons were then citizens of at least five States, they were
among those for whom and whose posterity the Constitution was ordained
and established.”[109]

After the Revolution came the series of State acts abolishing slavery,
beginning with Vermont in 1777; and then came the pause and retrogression
followed by the slow but determined rise of the Cotton Kingdom. But even
in that day the prophets protested. Hezekiah Niles said in 1819: “We are
ashamed of the thing we practice; ... there is no attribute of Heaven
that takes part with us, and we know it. And in the contest that must
come, and will come, there will be a heap of sorrows such as the world
has rarely seen.”[110] While the wild preacher, Lorenzo Dow, raised his
cry from the wilderness even in Alabama and Mississippi, saying: “In
the rest of the Southern States the influence of these Foreigners will
be known and felt in its time, and the seeds from the HORY ALLIANCE
and the DECAPIGANDI, who have a hand in those grades of Generals, from
the Inquisitor to the Vicar General and down.... The STRUGGLE will be
DREADFUL! The CUP will be BITTER! and when the agony is over, those who
survive may see better days! FAREWELL!”[111] Finally came William Lloyd
Garrison and John Brown.


3. INSURRECTION

It may be said, and it usually has been said, that all this showed
the natural conscience and humanity of white Americans protesting and
eventually triumphing over political and economic temptations. But to
this must be added the inescapable fact that the attitude, thought and
action of the Negro himself was in the largest measure back of this heart
searching, discomfort and warning; and first of all was the physical
force which the Negro again and again and practically without ceasing
from the first days of the slave trade down to the war of emancipation,
used to effect his own freedom.

We must remember that the slave trade itself was war; that from
surreptitious kidnapping of the unsuspecting it was finally organized so
as to set African tribes warring against tribes, giving the conquerors
the actual aid of European or Arabian soldiers and the tremendous
incentive of high prices for results of successful wars through the
selling of captives. The captives themselves fought to the last ditch.
It is estimated that every single slave finally landed upon a slave
ship meant five corpses either left behind in Africa or lost through
rebellion, suicide, sickness, and murder on the high seas. This which is
so often looked upon as passive calamity was one of the most terrible and
vindictive and unceasing struggles against misfortune that a group of
human beings ever put forth. It cost Negro Africa perhaps sixty million
souls to land ten million slaves in America.

The first influence of the Negro on American Democracy was naturally
force to oppose force—revolt, murder, assassination coupled with running
away. It was the primitive, ancient effort to avenge blood with blood,
to bring good out of evil by opposing evil with evil. Whether right or
wrong, effective or abortive, it is the human answer to oppression which
the world has tried for thousands of years.

Two facts stand out in American history with regard to slave
insurrections: on the one hand, there is no doubt of the continuous
and abiding fear of them. The slave legislation of the Southern States
is filled with ferocious efforts to guard against this. Masters were
everywhere given peremptory and unquestioned power to kill a slave or
even a white servant who should “resist his master.” The Virginia law of
1680 said: “If any Negro or other slave shall absent himself from his
master’s service and lie, hide and lurk in obscure places, committing
injuries to the inhabitants, and shall resist any person or persons that
shall by lawful authority be employed to apprehend and take the said
Negro, that then, in case of such resistance, it shall be lawful for
such person or persons to kill the said Negro or slave so lying out and
resisting.”[112]

In 1691 and in 1748, there were Virginia acts to punish conspiracies and
insurrections of slaves. In 1708 and in 1712 New York had laws against
conspiracies and insurrections of Negroes. North Carolina passed such
a law in 1741, and South Carolina in 1743 was legislating “against the
insurrection and other wicked attempts of Negroes and other slaves.” The
Mississippi code of 1839 provides for slave insurrections “with arms in
the intent to regain their liberty by force.” Virginia in 1797 decreed
death for any one exciting slaves to insurrection. In 1830 North Carolina
made it a felony to incite insurrection among slaves. The penal code of
Texas, passed in 1857, had a severe section against insurrection.[113]

Such legislation, common in every slave state, could not have been based
on mere idle fear, and when we follow newspaper comment, debates and
arguments and the history of insurrections and attempted insurrections
among slaves, we easily see the reason. No sooner had the Negroes landed
in America than resistance to slavery began.

As early as 1503 the Governor of Hispaniola stopped the transportation
of Negroes “because they fled to the Indians and taught them bad manners
and they could never be apprehended.” In 1518 in the sugar mills of Haiti
the Negroes “quit working and fled whenever they could in squads and
started rebellions and committed murders.” In 1522 there was a rebellion
on the sugar plantations. Twenty Negroes from Diego Columbus’ mill fled
and killed several Spaniards. They joined with other rebellious Negroes
on neighboring plantations. In 1523 many Negro slaves “fled to the
Zapoteca and walked rebelliously through the country.” In 1527 there was
an uprising of Indians and Negroes in Florida. In 1532 the Wolofs and
other rebellious Negroes caused insurrection among the Carib Indians.
These Wolofs were declared to be “haughty, disobedient, rebellious and
incorrigible.” In 1548 there was a rebellion in Honduras and the Viceroy
Mendoza in Mexico writes of an uprising among the slaves and Indians
in 1537.[114] One of the most remarkable cases of resistance was the
establishment and defense of Palmares in Brazil where 40 determined
Negroes in 1560 established a city state which lived for nearly a half
century growing to a population of 20,000 and only overthrown when 7,000
soldiers with artillery were sent against it. The Chiefs committed
suicide rather than surrender.[115]

Early in the sixteenth century and from that time down until the
nineteenth the black rebels whom the Spanish called “Cimarrones” and whom
we know as “Maroons” were infesting the mountains and forests of the
West Indies and South America. Gage says between 1520 and 1530: “What
the Spaniards fear most until they get out of these mountains are two
or three hundred Negroes, Cimarrones, who for the bad treatment they
received have fled from masters in order to resort to these woods; there
they live with their wives and children and increase in numbers every
year, so that the entire force of Guatemala (City) and its environments
is not capable to subdue them.” Gage himself was captured by a mulatto
corsair who was sweeping the seas in his own ship.[116]

The history of these Maroons reads like romance.[117] When England took
Jamaica, in 1565, they found the mountains infested with Maroons whom
they fought for ten years and finally, in 1663, acknowledged their
freedom, gave them land and made their leader, Juan de Bolas, a colonel
in the militia. He was killed, however, in the following year and from
1664 to 1778 some 3,000 black Maroons were in open rebellion against
the British Empire. The English fought them with soldiers, Indians, and
dogs and finally again, in 1738, made a formal treaty of peace with
them, recognizing their freedom and granting them 25,000 acres of land.
The war again broke out in 1795 and blood-hounds were again imported.
The legislature wished to deport them but as they could not get their
consent, peace was finally made on condition that the Maroons surrender
their arms and settle down. No sooner, however, had they done this
than the whites treacherously seized 600 of them and sent them to Nova
Scotia. The Legislature voted a sword to the English general, who made
the treaty; but he indignantly refused to accept it. Eventually these
Maroons were removed to Sierra Leone where they saved that colony to the
British by helping them put down an insurrection.

In the United States insurrection and attempts at insurrection among
the slaves extended from Colonial times down to the Civil War. For the
most part they were unsuccessful. In many cases the conspiracies were
insignificant in themselves but exaggerated by fear of the owners. And
yet a record of the attempts at revolt large and small is striking.

In Virginia there was a conspiracy in 1710 in Surrey County. In 1712 the
City of New York was threatened with burning by slaves. In 1720 whites
were attacked in the homes and on the streets in Charleston, S. C. In
1730 both in South Carolina and Virginia, slaves were armed to kill the
white people and they planned to burn the City of Boston in 1723. In
1730 there was an insurrection in Williamsburg, Va., and five counties
furnished armed men. In 1730 and 1731 homes were burned by slaves in
Massachusetts and in Rhode Island and in 1731 and 1732 three ships crews
were murdered by slaves. In 1729 the Governor of Louisiana reported that
in an expedition sent against the Indians, fifteen Negroes had “performed
prodigies of valor.” But the very next year the Indians, led by a
desperate Negro named Samba, were trying to exterminate the whites.[118]
In 1741 an insurrection of slaves was planned in New York City, for which
thirteen slaves were burned, eighteen hanged and eighty transported. In
1754 and 1755 slaves burned and poisoned certain masters in Charleston,
S. C.[119]


4. HAITI AND AFTER

On the night of August 23, 1791, the great Haitian rebellion took
place. It had been preceded by a small rebellion of the mulattoes who
were bitterly disappointed at the refusal of the planters to assent to
what the free Negroes thought were the basic principles of the French
Revolution. When 450,000 slaves joined them, they began a murderous
civil war seldom paralleled in history. French, English and Spaniards
participated. Toussaint, the first great black leader, was deceived,
imprisoned and died perhaps by poisoning. Twenty-five thousand French
soldiers were sent over by Napoleon Bonaparte to subdue the Negroes and
begin the extension of his American empire through the West Indies and up
the Mississippi valley. Despite all this, the Negroes were triumphant,
established an independent state, made Napoleon give up his dream
of American empire and sell Louisiana for a song:[120] “Thus, all of
Indian Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and
Montana and the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all
of Washington and Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a
despised Negro. Praise if you will, the work of Robert Livingston or a
Jefferson, but today let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L’Ouverture
who was indirectly the means of America’s expansion by the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803.”[121]

The Haitian revolution immediately had its effect upon both North and
South America. We have read how Haitian volunteers helped in the American
revolution. They returned to fight for their own freedom. Afterward when
Bolivar, the founder of five free republics in South America, undertook
his great rebellion in 1811 he at first failed. He took refuge in
Jamaica and implored the help of England but was unsuccessful. Later in
despair he visited Haiti. The black republic was itself at that time in
a precarious position and had to act with great caution. Nevertheless
President Pétion furnished Bolivar, soldiers, arms and money. Bolivar
embarked secretly and again sought to free South America. Again he
failed and a second time returned to Haiti. Money and reinforcements
were a second time furnished him and with the help of these achieved the
liberation of Mexico and Central America.

Thus black Haiti not only freed itself but helped to kindle liberty
all through America. Refugees from Haiti and San Domingo poured into
the United States both colored and white and had great influence in
Maryland and Louisiana.[122] Moreover the news of the black revolt
filtered through to the slaves in the United States. Here the chains of
slavery were stronger and the number of whites much larger. As I have
said in another place: “A long, awful process of selection chose out the
listless, ignorant, sly and humble and sent to heaven the proud, the
vengeful and the daring. The old African warrior spirit died away of
violence and a broken heart.”[123]

Nevertheless a series of attempted rebellions took place which can be
traced to the influence of Haiti. In 1800 came the Prosser conspiracy
in Virginia which planned a force of 11,000 Negroes to march in three
columns in the city and seize the arsenal. A terrific storm thwarted
these men and thirty-six were executed for the attempt. In 1791 Negroes
of Louisiana sought to imitate Toussaint leading to the execution of
twenty-three slaves. Other smaller attempts were made in South Carolina
in 1816 and in Georgia in 1819. In 1822 came the celebrated attempt of
Denmark Vesey, an educated freedman who through his trade as carpenter
accumulated considerable wealth. He spoke French and English and was
familiar with the Haitian revolution, the African Colonization scheme
and the agitation attending the Missouri compromise. He openly discussed
slavery and ridiculed the slaves for their cowardice and submission; he
worked through the church and planned the total annihilation of the men,
women and children of Charleston. Thousands of slaves were enrolled but
one betrayed him and this led to the arrest of 137 blacks of whom 35 were
hanged and 37 banished. A white South Carolinian writing after this plot
said: “We regard our Negroes as the Jacobins of the country, against whom
we should always be upon our guard and who although we fear no permanent
effects from any insurrectionary movements on their part, should be
watched with an eye of steady and unremitted observation.”[124]

Less than ten years elapsed before another insurrection was planned and
partially carried through. Its leader was Nat Turner, a slave born in
Virginia in 1800. He was precocious and considered as “marked” by the
Negroes. He had experimented in making paper, gun powder and pottery;
never swore, never drank and never stole. For the most part he was a
sort of religious devotee, fasting and praying and reading the Bible.
Once he ran away but was commanded by spirit voices to return. By 1825
he was conscious of a great mission and on May 12, 1831, “a great voice
said unto him that the serpent was loosed, that Christ had laid down
the yoke.” He believed that he, Nat Turner, was to lead the movement
and that “the first should be last and the last first.” An eclipse of
the sun in February, 1831 was a further sign to him. He worked quickly.
Gathering six friends together August 21, they made their plans and then
started the insurrection by killing Nat’s master and the family. About
forty Negroes were gathered in all and they killed sixty-one white men,
women and children. They were headed toward town when finally the whites
began to arm in opposition. It was not, however, until two months later,
October 30, that Turner himself was captured. He was tried November 5 and
sentenced to be hanged. When asked if he believed in the righteousness
of his mission he replied “Was not Christ crucified?” He made no
confession.[125]

T. R. Grey—Turner’s attorney—said “As to his ignorance, he certainly
had not the advantages of education, but he can read and write and for
natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension is surpassed by
few men I have ever seen. Further the calm, deliberate composure with
which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his
fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm; still bearing the stains of
the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered
with chains, yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven; with a
spirit soaring above the attributes of man, I looked on him and my blood
curdled in my veins.”[126]

Panic seized the whole of Virginia and the South. Military companies
were mobilized, both whites and Negroes fled to the swamps, slaves were
imprisoned and even as far down as Macon, Ga., the white women and
children were guarded in a building against supposed insurrections.
New slave codes were adopted, new disabilities put upon freedmen, the
carrying of fire arms was especially forbidden. The Negro churches in
the South were almost stopped from functioning and the Negro preachers
from preaching. Traveling and meeting of slaves was stopped, learning to
read and write was forbidden and incendiary pamphlets hunted down. Free
Negroes were especially hounded, sold into slavery or driven out and a
period of the worst oppression of the Negro in the land followed.

In 1839 and 1841 two cases of mutiny of slaves on the high seas caused
much commotion in America. In 1839 a schooner, the Amistad, started
from Havana for another West Indian port with 53 slaves. Led by a black
man, Cinque, the slaves rose, killed the captain and some of the crew,
allowed the rest of the crew to escape and put the two owners in irons.
The Negroes then tried to escape to Africa, but after about two months
they landed in Connecticut and a celebrated law case arose over the
disposition of the black mutineers which went to the Supreme Court of
the United States. John Quincy Adams defended them and won his case.
Eventually money was raised and the Negroes returned to Africa. While
this case was in the court the brig Creole in 1841 sailed from Richmond
to New Orleans with 130 slaves. Nineteen of the slaves mutinied and
led by Madison Washington took command of the vessel and sailed to the
British West Indies. Daniel Webster demanded the return of the slaves
but the British authorities refused.

During these years, rebellion and agitation among Negroes, and agitation
among white friends in Europe, was rapidly freeing the Negroes of the
West Indies and beginning their incorporation into the body politic—a
process not yet finished but which means possibly the eventual
development of a free black and mulatto republic in the isles of the
Caribbean.

It may be said that in most of these cases the attempts of the Negro to
rebel were abortive, and this is true. Yet it must be remembered that in
a few cases they had horrible success; in others nothing but accident or
the actions of favorite slaves saved similar catastrophe, and more and
more the white South had the feeling that it was sitting upon a volcano
and that nothing but the sternest sort of repression would keep the Negro
“in his place.” The appeal of the Negro to force invited reaction and
retaliation not only in the South, as we have noted, but also in the
North. Here the common white workingman and particularly the new English,
Scotch and Irish immigrants entirely misconceived the writhing of the
black man. These white laborers, themselves so near slavery, did not
recognize the struggle of the black slave as part of their own struggle;
rather they felt the sting of economic rivalry and underbidding for home
and job; they easily absorbed hatred and contempt for Negroes as their
first American lesson and were flattered by the white capitalists, slave
owners and sympathizers with slavery into lynching and clubbing their
dark fellow victims back into the pit whence they sought to crawl. It was
a scene for angels’ tears.

In 1826 Negroes were attacked in Cincinnati and also in 1836 and 1841. At
Portsmouth, Ohio, nearly one-half of the Negroes were driven out of the
city in 1830 while mobs drove away free Negroes from Mercer County, Ohio.
In Philadelphia, Negroes were attacked in 1820, 1830 and 1834, having
their churches and property burned and ruined. In 1838 there was another
anti-Negro riot and in 1842, when the blacks attempted to celebrate
abolition in the West Indies. Pittsburg had a riot in 1839 and New York
in 1843 and 1863.[127]

Thus we can see that the fear and heart searchings and mental upheaval of
those who saw the anomaly of slavery in the United States was based not
only upon theoretical democracy but on force and fear of force as used
by the degraded blacks, and on the reaction of that appeal on southern
legislatures and northern mobs.


5. THE APPEAL TO REASON

The appeal of the Negro to democracy, however, was not entirely or
perhaps even principally an appeal of force. There was continually the
appeal to reason and justice. Take the significant case of Paul Cuffee of
Massachusetts, born in 1759, of a Negro father and Indian mother. When
the selectmen of the town of Dartmouth refused to admit colored children
to the public schools, or even to make separate provision for them, he
refused to pay his school taxes. He was duly imprisoned, but when freed
he built at his own expense a school house and opened it to all without
race discrimination. His white neighbors were glad to avail themselves of
this school as it was more convenient and just as good as the school in
town. The result was that the colored children were soon admitted to all
schools. Cuffee was a ship owner and trader, and afterward took a colony
to Liberia at his own expense.[128] Again Prince Hall, the Negro founder
of the African Lodge of Masons which the English set up in 1775, aroused
by the revolution in Haiti and a race riot in Boston said in 1797:

“Patience, I say, for were we not possessed of a great measure of it you
could not bear up under the daily insults you meet with in the streets
of Boston; much more on public days of recreation, how are you shamefully
abused, and that at such a degree that you may truly be said to carry
your lives in your own hands....

“My brethren, let us not be cast down under these and many other abuses
we at present labor under; for the darkest hour is before the break of
day. My brethren, let us remember what a dark day it was with our African
brethren six years ago, in the French West Indies.... But blessed be to
God, the scene is changed, they now confess that God hath no respect of
persons, and therefore receive them as their friends and treat them as
brothers. Thus doth Ethiopia begin to stretch forth her hand from a sink
of slavery to freedom and equality.”[129]

A more subtle appeal was made by seven Massachusetts Negroes on
taxation without representation. In a petition to the General Court
of Massachusetts in 1780 they said: “We being chiefly of the African
extract, and by reason of long bondage and hard slavery, we have been
deprived of enjoying the profits of our labor or the advantage of
inheriting estates from our parents, as our neighbors the white people
do, having some of us not long enjoyed our own freedom; yet of late,
contrary to the invariable custom and practice of the country, we have
been, and now are, taxed both in our polls and that small pittance of
estate which, through much hard labor and industry, we have got together
to sustain ourselves and families withall. We apprehend it therefore, to
be hard usage, and will doubtless (if continued) reduce us to a state
of beggary, whereby we shall become a burden to others, if not timely
prevented by the interposition of your justice and power.

“Your petitioners further show, that we apprehend ourselves to be
aggrieved, in that, while we are not allowed the privilege of free men
of the State, having no vote or influence in the election of those that
tax us, yet many of our color (as is well known) have cheerfully entered
the field of battle in the defence of the common cause, and that (as we
conceive) against similar exertion of power (in regard to taxation) too
well known to need a recital in this place.”[130]

Perhaps though the most startling appeal and challenge came from David
Walker, a free Negro, born of a free mother and slave father in North
Carolina in 1785. He had some education, had traveled widely and
conducted a second-hand clothing store in Boston in 1827. He spoke to
various audiences of Negroes in 1828 and the following year published
the celebrated “Appeal in four articles, together with a preamble to
the Colored Citizens of the World but in particular and very expressly
to those of the United States of America.” It was a thin volume of 76
octavol pages, but it was frank and startlingly clear:

“Can our condition be any worse? Can it be more mean and abject? If there
are any changes, will they not be for the better though they may appear
for the worst at first? Can they get us any lower? Where can they get
us? They cannot treat us worse; for they well know the day they do it
they are gone. But against all accusations which may or can be preferred
against me, I appeal to heaven for my motive in writing—who knows that my
object is if possible to awaken in the breasts of my afflicted, degraded
and slumbering brethren a spirit of enquiry and investigation respecting
our miseries and wretchedness in this Republican land of Liberty!!!!

“My beloved brethren:—The Indians of North and South America—the
Greeks—the Irish, subjected under the King of Great Britain—the Jews,
that ancient people of the Lord—the inhabitants of the Islands of the
Sea—in fine, all the inhabitants of the Earth, (except, however, the sons
of Africa) are called men and of course are and ought to be free.—But
we, (colored people) and our children are brutes and of course are and
ought to be slaves to the American people and their children forever—to
dig their mines and work their farms; and thus go on enriching them from
one generation to another with our blood and our tears!!!!

“I saw a paragraph, a few years since, in a South Carolina paper, which,
speaking of the barbarity of the Turks, it said: ‘The Turks are the most
barbarous people in the world—they treat the Greeks more like brutes than
human beings.’ And in the same paper was an advertisement which said:
‘Eight well built Virginia and Maryland Negro fellows and four wenches
will positively be sold this day to the highest bidder!’

“Beloved brethren—here let me tell you, and believe it, that the Lord our
God as true as He sits on His throne in heaven and as true as our Saviour
died to redeem the world, will give you a Hannibal, and when the Lord
shall have raised him up and given him to you for your possession, Oh!
my suffering brethren, remember the divisions and consequent sufferings
of Carthage and of Haiti. Read the history particularly of Haiti and
see how they were butchered by the whites and do you take warning. The
person whom God shall give you, give him your support and let him go
his length and behold in him the salvation of your God. God will indeed
deliver you through him from your deplorable and wretched condition under
the Christians of America. I charge you this day before my God to lay
no obstacle in his way, but let him go.... What the American preachers
can think of us, I aver this day before my God I have never been able to
define. They have newspapers and monthly periodicals which they receive
in continual succession but on the pages of which you will scarcely ever
find a paragraph respecting slavery which is ten thousand times more
injurious to this country than all the other evils put together; and
which will be the final overthrow of its government unless something is
very speedily done; for their cup is nearly full.—Perhaps they will laugh
at or make light of this; but I tell you, Americans! that unless you
speedily alter your course, you and your Country are gone!

“Do you understand your own language? Hear your language proclaimed to
the world, July 4, 1776—‘We hold these truths to be self evident—that
ALL men are created EQUAL!! That they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness!!! Compare your own language above, extracted
from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders
inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our
fathers and on us—men who have never given your fathers or you the least
provocation!!!

“Now Americans! I ask you candidly, was your suffering under Great
Britain one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical as you have rendered
ours under you? Some of you, no doubt, believe that we will never throw
off your murderous government and provide new guards for our future
‘security’. If Satan has made you believe it, will he not deceive you?”

The book had a remarkable career. It appeared in September, was in a
third edition by the following March and aroused the South to fury.
Special laws were passed and demands made that Walker be punished. He
died in 1830, possibly by foul play.


6. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE

Beside force and the appeal to reason there was a third method which
practically was more effective and decisive for eventual abolition, and
that was the escape from slavery through running away. On the islands
this meant escape to the mountains and existence as brigands. In South
America it meant escape to the almost impenetrable forest.

As I have said elsewhere:[131]

“One thing saved the South from the blood sacrifice of Haiti—not, to be
sure, from so successful a revolt, for the disproportion of races was
less, but from a desperate and bloody effort—and that was the escape of
the fugitive.

“Along the Great Black Way stretched swamps and rivers and the forests
and crests of the Alleghanies. A widening, hurrying stream of fugitives
swept to the havens of refuge, taking the restless, the criminal and the
unconquered—the natural leaders of the more timid mass. These men saved
slavery and killed it. They saved it by leaving it to a false seductive
dream of peace and the eternal subjugation of the laboring class. They
destroyed it by presenting themselves before the eyes of the North and
the world as living specimens of the real meaning of slavery.”

“Three paths were opened to the slaves: to submit, to fight or to run
away. Most of them submitted, as do most people everywhere, to force and
fate. To fight singly meant death and to fight together meant plot and
insurrection—a difficult thing, but one often tried. Easiest of all was
to run away, for the land was wide and bare and the slaves were many.
At first they ran to the swamps and mountains and starved and died. Then
they ran to the Indians and in Florida founded a nation, to overthrow
which cost the United States $20,000,000 and more in slave raids known as
the Seminole ‘wars.’ Then gradually, after the War of 1812 had used so
many black sailors to fight for free trade that the Negroes learned of
the North and Canada as cities of refuge, they fled northward.”

From the sixteenth century Florida Indians had Negro blood, but from
early part of the nineteenth century the Seminoles gained a large new
infiltration of Negro blood from the numbers of slaves who fled to them
and with whom they intermarried. The first Seminole war, therefore,
in 1818 was not simply a defense of the frontiers against the Indians
and a successful raid to drive Spain from Florida, it was also a slave
raid by Georgia owners determined to have back their property. By 1815
Negroes from Georgia among the Creeks and Seminoles numbered not less
than 11,000 and were settled along the Appalachicola river, many of them
with good farms and with a so-called Negro “fort” for protection. The war
was disastrous to Negroes and Indians but not fatal and in 1822 some 800
Negroes were counted among the Indians who inhabited the new territory
seized from Spain. Pressure to secure alleged fugitives and Negroes from
the Indians was kept up for the next three years and the second Seminole
war broke out because the whites treacherously seized the mulatto wife of
the Indian chief Osceola. The war broke out in 1837 and its real nature,
as a New Orleans paper said in 1839, was to subdue the Seminoles and
decrease the danger of uprisings “among the serviles.” Finally after a
total cost of twenty million dollars the Indians were subdued and moved
to the West and a part of the Negroes driven back into slavery, but not
all.[132]

Through the organization which came to be known as the Underground
Railroad, thousands of slaves escaped through Kentucky and into the
Middle West and thence into Canada and also by way of the Appalachian
Mountains into Pennsylvania and the East. Not only were they helped by
white abolitionists but they were guided by black men and women like
Joshua Henson and Harriet Tubman.

Beside this there came the effort for emigration to Africa which was very
early suggested. Two colored men sailed from New York for Africa in 1774
but the Revolutionary War stopped the effort thus begun. The Virginia
legislature in secret session after Gabriel’s insurrection in 1800,
tried to suggest the buying of some land for the colonization of free
Negroes, following the proposal of Thomas Jefferson made in 1781. Paul
Cuffee, mentioned above, started the actual migration in 1815 carrying
nine colored families, thirty-eight persons in all, to Sierra Leone at
an expense of $4,000 which he paid himself. Finally came the American
Colonization Society in 1817 but it was immediately turned from a real
effort to abolish slavery gradually into an effort to get rid of free
Negroes and obstreperous slaves. Even the South saw it and Robert Y.
Hayne said in Congress: “While this process is going on, the colored
classes are gradually diffusing themselves throughout the country and are
making steady advances in intelligence and refinement and if half the
zeal were displayed in bettering their condition that is now wasted in
the vain and fruitless effort of sending them abroad, their intellectual
and moral improvement would be steady and rapid.”


7. BARGAINING

The Negro early learned a lesson which he may yet teach the modern world
and which may prove his crowning gift to America and the world: Force
begets force and you cannot in the end run away successfully from the
world’s problems. The Negro early developed the shrewd foresight of
recognizing the fact that as a minority of black folk in a growing white
country, he could not win his battle by force. Moreover, for the mass of
Negroes it was impracticable to run away and find refuge in some other
land.

Even the appeal to reason had its limitations in an unreasoning land. It
could not unfortunately base itself on justice and right in the midst
of the selfish, breathless battle to earn a living. There was however a
chance to prove that justice and self interest sometimes go hand in hand.
Force and flight might sometimes help but there was still the important
method of co-operating with the best forces of the nation in order to
help them to win and in order to prove that the Negro was a valuable
asset, not simply as a laborer but as a worker for social uplift, as an
American. Sometimes this co-operation was in simple and humble ways and
nevertheless striking. There was, for instance, the yellow fever epidemic
in Philadelphia in 1793. The blacks were not suffering from it or at
least not supposed to suffer from it as much as the whites. The papers
appealed to them to come forward and help with the sick. Led by Jones,
Gray and Allen, Negroes volunteered their services and worked with the
sick and in burying the dead, even spending some of their own funds in
the gruesome duty. The same thing happened much later in New Orleans,
Memphis and Cuba.

In larger ways it must be remembered that the Abolition crusade itself
could not have been successful without the co-operation of Negroes.
Black folk like Remond, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth, were
not simply advocates for freedom but were themselves living refutations
of the whole doctrine of slavery. Their appeal was tremendous in its
efficiency and besides, the free Negroes helped by work and money to
spread the Abolition campaign.[133]

In addition to this there was much deliberate bargaining,—careful
calculation on the part of the Negro that if the whites would aid them,
they in turn would aid the whites at critical times and that otherwise
they would not. Much of this went on at the time of the Revolution and
was clearly recognized by the whites.

Alexander Hamilton (himself probably of Negro descent) said in 1779:
“The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us
fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience;
and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will
furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious
tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice. But it should be
considered that if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy
probably will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they
will hold out will be to offer them ourselves. An essential part of the
plan is to give them their freedom with their muskets. This will secure
their fidelity, animate their courage, and, I believe, will have a good
influence upon those who remain by opening a door to their emancipation.
This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me to wish
the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity and true policy
equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate class of men.”[134]

Dr. Hopkins wrote in 1776: “God is so ordering it in His providence that
it seems absolutely necessary something should speedily be done with
respect to the slaves among us in order to our safety and to prevent
their turning against us in our present struggle in order to get their
liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks and induce them
to take up arms against us by promising them liberty on this condition;
and this plan they are prosecuting to the utmost of their power.... The
only way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil is to set the
blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws; and then give
them proper encouragement to labor or take arms in the defense of the
American cause, as they shall choose. This would at once be doing them
some degree of justice and defeating our enemies in the scheme they are
prosecuting.”[135]

When Dunmore appealed to the slaves of Virginia at the beginning of the
Revolution, the slave owners issued an almost plaintive counter appeal:

“Can it, then, be supposed that the Negroes will be better used by the
English who have always encouraged and upheld this slavery than by their
present masters who pity their condition; who wish, in general, to make
it easy and comfortable as possible; and who would, were it in their
power, or were they permitted, not only prevent any more Negroes from
losing their freedom but restore it to such as have already unhappily
lost it?”[136]

In the South, where Negroes for the most part were not received as
soldiers, the losses of the slaveholders by defection among the slaves
was tremendous. John Adams says that the Georgia delegates gave him “a
melancholy account of the State of Georgia and South Carolina. They said
if one thousand regular troops should land in Georgia and their commander
be provided with arms and clothes enough and proclaim freedom to all
the Negroes who would join his camp, twenty thousand Negroes would join
it from the two provinces in a fortnight. The Negroes have a wonderful
art of communicating intelligence among themselves; it will run several
hundreds of miles in a week or fortnight. They said their only security
was this,—that all the King’s friends and tools of Government have large
plantations and property in Negroes, so that the slaves of the Tories
would be lost as well as those of the Whigs.”[137]

Great Britain, after Cornwallis surrendered, even dreamed of reconquering
America with Negroes. A Tory wrote to Lord Dunmore in 1782:

“If, my Lord, this scheme is adopted, arranged and ready for being put
in execution, the moment the troops penetrate into the country after the
arrival of the promised re-enforcements, America is to be conquered with
its own force (I mean the Provincial troops and the black troops to be
raised), and the British and Hessian army could be spared to attack the
French where they are most vulnerable....”

“‘What! Arm the slaves? We shudder at the very idea, so repugnant to
humanity, so barbarous and shocking to human nature,’ etc. One very
simple answer is, in my mind, to be given: Whether it is better to
make this vast continent become an acquisition of power, strength and
consequence to Great Britain again, or tamely give it up to France who
will reap the fruits of American independence to the utter ruin of
Britain? ... experience will, I doubt not, justify the assertion that
by embodying the most hardy, intrepid and determined blacks, they would
not only keep the rest in good order but by being disciplined and under
command be prevented from raising cabals, tumults, and even rebellion,
what I think might be expected soon after a peace; but so far from
making even our lukewarm friends and secret foes greater enemies by this
measure, I will, by taking their slaves, engage to make them better
friends.”[138]

On the other hand, the Colonial General Greene wrote to the Governor of
South Carolina the same year:

“The natural strength of the country in point of numbers appears to me
to consist much more in the blacks than in the whites. Could they be
incorporated and employed for its defence, it would afford you double
security. That they would make good soldiers, I have not the least doubt;
and I am persuaded the State has it not in its power to give sufficient
re-enforcements without incorporating them either to secure the country
if the enemy mean to act vigorously upon an offensive plan or furnish a
force sufficient to dispossess them of Charleston should it be defensive.”

This spirit of bargaining, more or less carefully carried out, can be
seen in every time of stress and war. During the Civil War certain groups
of Negroes sought repeatedly to make terms with the Confederacy. Judah
Benjamin said at a public meeting in Richmond in 1865:

“We have 680,000 blacks capable of bearing arms and who ought now to
be in the field. Let us now say to every Negro who wishes to go into
the ranks on condition of being free, go and fight—you are free. My
own Negroes have been to me and said, ‘Master, set us free and we’ll
fight for you.’ You must make up your minds to try this or see your
army withdrawn from before your town. I know not where white men can be
found.”[139]

Robert E. Lee said: “We should not expect slaves to fight for prospective
freedom when they can secure it at once by going to the enemy in whose
service they will incur no greater risk than in ours. The reasons that
induce me to recommend the employment of Negro troops at all render the
effect of the measures I have suggested upon slavery immaterial and in
my opinion the best means of securing the efficiency and fidelity of the
auxiliary force would be to accompany the measure with a well-digested
plan of gradual and general emancipation. As that will be the result of
the continuance of the war and will certainly occur if the enemy succeed,
it seems to me most advisable to adopt it at once and thereby obtain all
the benefits that will accrue to our cause.

“The employment of Negro troops under regulations similar to those
indicated would, in my opinion, greatly increase our military strength
and enable us to relieve our white population to some extent. I think we
could dispense with the reserve forces except in cases of emergency. It
would disappoint the hopes which our enemies have upon our exhaustion,
deprive them in a great measure of the aid they now derive from black
troops and thus throw the burden of the war upon their own people. In
addition to the great political advantages that would result to our
cause from the adoption of a system of emancipation, it would exercise a
salutary influence upon our Negro population by rendering more secure the
fidelity of those who become soldiers and diminishing inducements to the
rest to abscond.”[140]

At the time of the World War there was a distinct attitude on the part of
the Negro population that unless they were recognized in the draft and
had Negro officers and were not forced to become simply laborers, they
would not fight and while expression of this determination was not always
made openly it was recognized even by an administration dominated by
Southerners. Especially were there widespread rumors of German intrigue
among Negroes, which had some basis of fact.

Within the Negro group every effort for organization and uplift was
naturally an effort toward the development of American democracy.
The motive force of democracy has nearly always been the push from
below rather than the aristocratic pull from above; the effort of the
privileged classes to outstrip the surging forward of the bourgeoisie has
made groups and nations rise; the determination of the “poor whites” in
the South not to be outdone by the “nigger” has been caused by the black
man’s frantic efforts to rise rather than by any innate ambition on the
part of the lower class of whites. It was a push from below and it made
the necessity of recognizing the white laborer even more apparent. The
great democratic movement which took place during the reign of Andrew
Jackson from 1829-1837 was caused in no small degree by the persistent
striving of the Negroes. They began their meeting together in conventions
in 1830, they organized migration to Canada.[141] In the trouble with
Canada in 1837 and 1838 Negro refugees from America helped to defend
the frontiers. Bishop Loguen says: “The colored population of Canada at
that time was small compared to what it now is; nevertheless, it was
sufficiently large to attract the attention of the government. They were
almost to a man fugitives from the States. They could not, therefore,
be passive when the success of the invaders would break the only arm
interposed for their security, and destroy the only asylum for African
freedom in North America. The promptness with which several companies
of blacks were organized and equipped, and the desperate valor they
displayed in this brief conflict, are an earnest of what may be expected
from the welling thousands of colored fugitives collecting there, in the
event of a war between the two countries.”[142]

In America during this time they sought to establish a manual training
college, they established their first weekly newspaper and they made
a desperate fight for admission to the schools. They helped thus
immeasurably the movement for universal popular education, joined the
anti-slavery societies and organized churches and beneficial societies;
bought land and continued to appeal. Wealthy free Negroes began to appear
even in the South, as in the case of Jehu Jones, proprietor of a popular
hotel in Charleston, and later Thomé Lafon of New Orleans who accumulated
nearly a half million dollars and eventually left it to Negro charities
which still exist. In the North there were tailors and lumber merchants
and the guild of the caterers; taxable property slowly but surely
increased.

All this in a peculiar way forced a more all-embracing democracy upon
America, and it blossomed to fuller efficiency after the Civil War.




CHAPTER V

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF FREEDOM

    How the black fugitive, soldier and freedman after the Civil
    War helped to restore the Union, establish public schools,
    enfranchise the poor white and initiate industrial democracy in
    America.


There have been four great steps toward democracy taken in America:
The refusal to be taxed by the English Parliament; the escape from
European imperialism; the discarding of New England aristocracy; and the
enfranchisement of the Negro slave.

What did the Emancipation of the slave really mean? It meant such
property rights as would give him a share in the income of southern
industry large enough to support him as a modern free laborer; and such
a legal status as would enable him by education and experience to bear
his responsibility as a worker and citizen. This was an enormous task
and meant the transformation of a slave holding oligarchy into a modern
industrial democracy.

Who could do this? Some thought it done by the Emancipation Proclamation
and the 13th amendment and Garrison with naive faith in bare law abruptly
stopped the issue of the _Liberator_ when the slave was declared “free.”
The Negro was not freed by edict or sentiment but by the Abolitionists
backed by the persistent action of the slave himself as fugitive, soldier
and voter.

Slavery was the cause of the war. There might have been other questions
large enough and important enough to have led to a disruption of the
Union but none have successfully done so except slavery. But the North
fought for union and not against slavery and for a long time it refused
to recognize that the Civil War was essentially a war against Negro
slavery. Abraham Lincoln said to Horace Greeley as late as August, 1862,
“If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the
same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object
is to save the Union and not either to save or destroy slavery.”

Despite this attitude it was evident very soon that the Nation was
fighting against the symptom of disease and not against the cause. If we
look at the action of the North taken by itself, we find these singular
contradictions: They fought for the Union; they suddenly emancipated the
slave; they enfranchised the Freedmen; they abandoned the Freedmen. If
now this had been the deliberate action of the North it would have been a
crazy program; but it was not. The action of the American Negro himself
forced the nation into many of these various contradictions; and the
motives of the Negro were primarily economic. He was trying to achieve
economic emancipation. And it is this fact that makes Reconstruction one
of the greatest attempts to spread democracy which the modern world has
seen.

There were in the South in 1860, 3,838,765 Negro slaves and 258,346
free Negroes. The question of land and fugitive slaves had precipitated
the war: that is, if slavery was to survive it had to have more slave
territory, and this the North refused. Moreover if slavery was to survive
the drain of fugitive slaves must stop or the slave trade be reopened.
The North refused to consider the reopening of the slave trade and only
half-heartedly enforced the fugitive slave laws.

No sooner then did the war open in April, 1861, than two contradictory
things happened: Fugitive slaves began to come into the lines of the
Union armies at the very time that Union Generals were assuring the South
that slavery would not be interfered with. In Virginia, Colonel Tyler
said “The relation of master and servant as recognized in your state
shall be respected.” At Port Royal, General T. W. Sherman declared that
he would not interfere with “Your social and local institution.” Dix in
Virginia refused to admit fugitive slaves within his lines and Halleck in
Missouri excluded them. Later, both Buell at Nashville and Hooker on the
upper Potomac allowed their camps to be searched by masters for fugitive
slaves.[143]

Against this attitude, however, there appeared, even in the first year
of the War, some unanswerable considerations. For instance three slaves
escaped into General Butler’s lines at Fortress Monroe just as they were
about to be sent to North Carolina to work on Confederate fortifications.
Butler immediately said “These men are contraband of war, set them at
work.” Butler’s action was sustained.[144] But when Fremont, in August
freed the slaves of Missouri under martial law, declaring it an act
of war, Lincoln hastened to repudiate his action;[145] and the same
thing happened the next year when Hunter at Hilton Head, S. C. declared
“Slavery and martial law in a free country ... incompatible.”[146]
Nevertheless here loomed difficulty and the continued coming of the
fugitive slaves increased the difficulty and forced action.

The year 1862 saw the fugitive slave recognized as a worker and helper
within the Union lines and eventually as a soldier bearing arms.
Thousands of black men during that year, of all ages and both sexes,
clad in rags and with their bundles on their backs, gathered wherever
the Union Army gained foothold—at Norfolk, Hampton, at Alexandria and
Nashville and along the border towards the West. There was sickness and
hunger and some crime but everywhere there was desire for employment.
It was in vain that Burnside was insisting that slavery was not to be
touched and that McClellan repeated this on his Peninsular Campaign.

A change of official attitude began to appear as indeed it had to. When
for instance General Saxton, with headquarters at Beauford, S. C., took
military control of that district, he began to establish market houses
for the sale of produce from the plantations and to put the Negroes to
work as wage laborers. When, in the West, Grant’s army occupied Grand
Junction, Mississippi and a swarm of fugitives appeared, naked and
hungry, some were employed as teamsters, servants and cooks and finally
Grant appointed a “Chief of Negro affairs” for the entire district
under his jurisdiction. Crops were harvested, wages paid, wood cutters
swarmed in forests to furnish fuel for the Federal gun-boats, cabins were
erected and a regular “Freedmen’s Bureau” came gradually into operation.
The Negroes thus employed as regular helpers and laborers in the army,
swelled to more than 200,000 before the end of the war; and if we count
transient workers and spies who helped with information, the number
probably reached a half million.

If now the Negro could work for the Union Army why could he not also
fight? We have seen in the last chapter how the nation hesitated and then
yielded in 1862. The critical Battle of Antietam took place September
17th and the confederate avalanche was checked. Five days later, Abraham
Lincoln proclaimed that he was going to recommend an appropriation
by Congress for encouraging the gradual abolition of slavery through
payment for the slaves; and that on the following January 1st, in all the
territory which was still at war with the United States, he proposed to
declare the slaves free as a military measure.[147] Thus the year 1862
saw the Negro as an active worker in the army and as a soldier.

This fact together with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1st,
made the year 1863 a significant year. Not only were most of the
slaves legally freed by military edict but by the very fact of their
emancipation the stream of fugitives became a vast flood. The Army had to
organize departments and appoint officials for the succor and guidance of
these fugitives in their work; relief on a large scale began to appear
from the North and the demand of the Negro for education began to be felt
in the starting of schools here and there.

“The fugitives poured into the lines and gradually were used as laborers
and helpers. Immediately teaching began and gradually schools sprang up.
When at last the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and Negro soldiers
called for, it was necessary to provide more systematically for Negroes.
Various systems and experiments grew up here and there. The Freedmen
were massed in large numbers at Fortress Monroe, Va., Washington, D. C.,
Beaufort and Port Royal, S. C., New Orleans, La., Vicksburg and Corinth,
Miss., Columbus, Ky., Cairo, Ill., and elsewhere. In such places schools
immediately sprang up under the army officers and chaplains. The most
elaborate system, perhaps, was that under General Banks in Louisiana.
It was established in 1863 and soon had a regular Board of Education,
which laid and collected taxes and supported eventually nearly a hundred
schools with ten thousand pupils, under 162 teachers. At Port Royal,
S. C., were gathered Edward L. Pierce’s ‘Ten Thousand Clients’.... In
the west, General Grant appointed Colonel John Eaton, afterwards United
States Commissioner of Education to be Superintendent of Freedmen
in 1862. He sought to consolidate and regulate the schools already
established and succeeded in organizing a large system.”[148]

The Treasury Department of the Government, solicitous for the cotton
crop, took charge of certain plantations in order to encourage the
workers and preserve the crop. Thus during the Spring of 1863, there were
groups of Freedmen and refugees in long broken lines between the two
armies reaching from Maryland to the Kansas border and down the coast
from Norfolk to New Orleans.

In 1864 a significant action took place: the petty and insulting
discrimination in the pay of white and colored soldiers was stopped.
The Negro began to be a free man and the center of the problem
of Emancipation became land and organized industry. Eaton, the
Superintendent of Freedmen reports, July 15, for his particular district:

“These Freedmen are now disposed of as follows: In military service as
soldiers’ laundresses, cooks, officers’ servants and laborers in the
various staff departments, 41,150; in cities, on plantations and in
freedmen’s villages and cared for, 72,500. Of these 62,300 are entirely
self-supporting—the same as any individual class anywhere else—as
planters, mechanics, barbers, hackmen, draymen, etc., conducting on
their own responsibility or working as hired laborers. The remaining
10,200 receive subsistence from the government. Three thousand of them
are members of families whose heads are carrying on plantations and have
under cultivation 4,000 acres of cotton. They are to pay the government
for their subsistence from the first income of the crop. The other 7,200
include the paupers, that is to say, all Negroes over and under the
self-supporting age, the crippled and sick in hospitals, of the 113,650,
and those engaged in their care. Instead of being unproductive this class
has now under cultivation 500 acres of corn, 970 acres of vegetables
and 1,500 acres of cotton besides working at wood-chopping and other
industries. There are reported in the aggregate over 100,000 acres of
cotton under cultivation. Of these about 7,000 acres are leased and
cultivated by blacks. Some Negroes are managing as high as 300 or 400
acres....”[149]

The experiment at Davis Bend, Mississippi, was of especial interest:
“Late in the season—in November and December, 1864,—the Freedmen’s
Department was restored to full control over the camps and plantations
on President’s Island and Palmyra or Davis Bend. Both these points had
been originally occupied at the suggestion of General Grant and were
among the most successful of our enterprises for the Negroes. With
the expansion of the lessee system, private interests were allowed to
displace the interest of the Negroes whom we had established there under
the protection of the government, but orders issued by General N. J. T.
Dana, upon whose sympathetic and intelligent co-operation my officers
could always rely, restored to us the full control of these lands. The
efforts of the freedmen on Davis Bend were particularly encouraging, and
this property under Colonel Thomas’ able direction, became in reality the
“Negro Paradise” that General Grant had urged us to make of it.”[150]

The United States Treasury went further in overseeing Freedmen and
abandoned lands and appointed special agents over “Freedmen’s home
colonies.” Down the Mississippi Valley, General Thomas issued a
lengthy series of instructions covering industry. He appointed three
Commissioners to lease plantations and care for the employees; fixed the
rate of wages and taxed cotton. At Newbern, N. C., there were several
thousand refugees to whom land was assigned and about 800 houses rented.
After Sherman’s triumphant March to the Sea, Secretary Stanton himself
went to Savannah to investigate the condition of the Negroes.

It was significant that even this early Abraham Lincoln himself was
suggesting limited Negro suffrage. Already he was thinking of the
reconstruction of the states; Louisiana had been in Union hands for two
years and Lincoln wrote to Governor Hahn, March 13th, 1864: “Now you are
about to have a convention, which, ... will probably define the elective
franchise. I barely suggest, for your private consideration, whether
some of the colored people may not be let in, as, for instance, the very
intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.
They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel
of liberty within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion,
not to the public, but to you alone.”[151]

Here again the development had been logical. The Negroes were voting
in many Northern states. At least one-half million of them were taking
part in the war, nearly 200,000 as armed soldiers. They were beginning
to be reorganized in industry by the army officials as free laborers.
Naturally the question must come sooner or later: Could they be expected
to maintain their freedom, either political or economic, unless they had
a vote? And Lincoln with rare foresight saw this several months before
the end of the war.

The year 1865 brought fully to the front the question of Negro suffrage
and Negro free labor. They were recognized January 16th, when Sherman
settled large numbers of Negroes on the Sea Islands. His order said:

“The Islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the
rivers for thirty miles from the sea, and the country bordering the St.
John’s river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of
the Negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the
President of the United States.

“At Beaufort, Hilton Head, Savannah, Fernandina, St. Augustine, and
Jacksonville, the blacks may remain in their chosen or accustomed
vocations but on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be
established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and
soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole
and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people
themselves, subject only to the United States military authority and
the acts of Congress. By the laws of war and orders of the President of
the United States the Negro is free, and must be dealt with as such.
He cannot be subjected to conscription or forced military service,
save by the written orders of the highest military authority of the
department, under such regulations as the President or Congress may
prescribe. Domestic servants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other
mechanics, will be free to select their own work and residence, but the
young and able-bodied Negroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers
in the service of the United States, to contribute their share towards
maintaining their own freedom, and securing their rights as citizens of
the United States.

“Whenever three respectable Negroes, heads of families shall desire to
settle on lands, and shall have selected for that purpose an island
or a locality clearly defined, within the limits above designated,
the Inspector of Settlements and Plantations will himself, or by such
subordinate officer as he may appoint, give them a license to settle
such island or district, and afford them such assistance as he can to
enable them to establish a peaceful agricultural settlement. The three
parties named will subdivide the land, under the supervision of the
Inspector, among themselves and such others as may choose to settle near
them, so that each family shall have a plot of not more than forty (40)
acres of tillable ground, and when it borders on some water channel,
with not more than 800 feet water front, in the possession of which land
the military authorities will afford them protection until such time
as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their
title.”[152]

On March 3, 1865 the Nation came to the parting of the ways. Two measures
passed Congress on this momentous date. First, a Freedmen’s Bank was
incorporated at Washington “to receive on deposit therefore, by or on
behalf of persons heretofore held in slavery in the United States or
their descendants, and investing the same in the stocks, bonds, Treasury
notes, or other securities of the United States.”[153] The first year it
had $300,000 of deposits and the deposits increased regularly until in
1871 there were nearly $20,000,000. Also on March 3rd, the Freedmen’s
Bureau Act was passed. The war was over. Sometime the South must have
restored home rule. When that came what would happen to the freedmen?

These paths were before the nation:

1. They might abandon the freedman to the mercy of his former masters.

2. They might for a generation or more make the freedmen the wards of
the nation—protecting them, encouraging them, educating their children,
giving them land and a minimum of capital and thus inducting them into
real economic and political freedom.

3. They might force a grant of Negro suffrage, support the Negro voters
for a brief period and then with hands off let them sink or swim.

The second path was the path of wisdom and statesmanship. But the country
would not listen to such a comprehensive plan. If the form of this Bureau
had been worked out by Charles Sumner today instead of sixty years ago,
it would have been regarded as a proposal far less revolutionary than
the modern labor legislation of America and Europe. A half-century ago,
however, and in a country which gave the _laisser-faire_ economics
their extremest trial the Freedmen’s Bureau struck the whole nation as
unthinkable save as a very temporary expedient and to relieve the more
pointed forms of distress following war. Yet the proposals of the Bureau
as actually established by the laws of 1865 and 1866 were both simple and
sensible:

1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts.

2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen’s best friend.

3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.

4. To establish schools.

5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor stations,
etc.

How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom
with less than this is hard to see. Of course even with such tutelage
extending over a period of two or three decades the ultimate end had to
be enfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen
who attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had
neither object nor guarantee.

Naturally the Bureau was no sooner established than it faced implacable
enemies. The white South naturally opposed to a man because it
practically abolished private profit in the exploitation of labor. To
step from slave to free labor was economic catastrophe in the opinion of
the white South: but to step further to free labor organized primarily
for the laborers’ benefit, this not only was unthinkable for the white
South but it even touched the economic sensibilities of the white
North. Already the nation owed a staggering debt. It would not face any
large increase for such a purpose. Moreover, who could conduct such an
enterprise? It would have taxed in ordinary times the ability and self
sacrifice of the nation to have found men in sufficient quantity who
could and would have conducted honestly and efficiently such a tremendous
experiment in human uplift. And these were not ordinary times.

Nevertheless a bureau had to be established at least temporarily as a
clearing house for the numberless departments of the armies dealing with
freedmen and holding land and property in their name.

As General Howard, the head of the Bureau said, this Bureau was really a
government and partially ruled the South from the close of the war until
1870. “It made laws, executed them and interpreted them. It laid and
collected taxes, defined and punished crime, maintained and used military
force and dictated such measures as it thought necessary and proper for
the accomplishment of its varied ends.” Its establishment was a herculean
task both physically and socially, and it accomplished a great work
before it was repudiated. Carl Schurz in 1864 felt warranted in saying,
“Not half of the labor that has been done in the South this year, or will
be done there next year, would have been or would be done but for the
exertions of the Freedmen’s Bureau.... No other agency, except one placed
there by the national government, could have wielded the moral power
whose interposition was so necessary to prevent the Southern society
from falling at once into the chaos of a general collision between its
different elements.”[154]

The nation knew, however, that the Freedmen’s Bureau was temporary. What
should follow it? The attitude of the South was not reassuring. Carl
Schurz reported that: “Some planters held back their former slaves on
their plantations by brute force. Armed bands of white men patrolled the
country roads to drive back the Negroes wandering about. Dead bodies
of murdered Negroes were found on and near the highways and by-paths.
Gruesome reports came from the hospitals—reports of colored men and women
whose ears had been cut off, whose skulls had been broken by blows, whose
bodies had been slashed by knives or lacerated by scourges. A number of
such cases I had occasion to examine myself. A veritable reign of terror
prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negro found scant justice in
the local courts against the white man. He could look for protection only
to the military forces of the United States still garrisoning the ‘states
lately in rebellion’ and to the Freedmen’s Bureau.”

The determination to reconstruct the South without recognizing the Negro
as a voter was manifest. The provisional governments set up by Lincoln
and Johnson were based on white male suffrage. In Louisiana for instance,
where free Negroes had wealth and prestige and had furnished thousands of
soldiers under the proposed reconstruction and despite Lincoln’s tactful
suggestion—“Not one Negro was allowed to vote, though at that very time
the wealthy, intelligent free colored people of the State paid taxes
on property assessed at $15,000,000 and many of them were well known
for their patriotic zeal and love for the Union. Thousands of colored
men whose homes were in Louisiana served bravely in the national army
and navy and many of the so-called Negroes in New Orleans could not be
distinguished by the most intelligent strangers from the best class of
white gentlemen either by color or manner, dress or language; still, as
it was known by tradition and common fame that they were not of pure
Caucasian descent, they could not vote.”[155]

Johnson feared this Southern program and like Lincoln suggested limited
Negro suffrage. August 15th, 1865, he wrote to Governor Sharkey of
Mississippi: “If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons
of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English
and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate
valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes
thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example
the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety and
you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of
color, upon the same basis with the free States. I hope and trust your
convention will do this.”[156]

The answer of the South to all such suggestions was the celebrated “Black
Codes”: “Alabama declared ‘stubborn or refractory servants’ or ‘those
who loiter away their time’ to be ‘vagrants’ who could be hired out at
compulsory service by law, while all Negro minors, far from being sent
to school, were to be ‘apprenticed’ preferably to their father’s former
‘masters and mistresses.’ In Florida it was decreed that no Negro could
‘own, use or keep any bowie-knife, dirk, sword, firearms or ammunition of
any kind’ without a license from the Judge of Probate. In South Carolina
the Legislature declared that ‘no person of color shall pursue the
practice of art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic or shopkeeper
or any other trade or employment besides that of husbandry or that of
servant under contract for labor until he shall have obtained a license
from the Judge of the District Court.’ Mississippi required that ‘if a
laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of
his term of service without just cause, he shall forfeit his wages for
that year.’ Louisiana said that ‘every adult freed man or woman shall
furnish themselves with a comfortable home and visible means of support
within twenty days after the passage of this act’ and that any failing to
do so should ‘be immediately arrested’, delivered to the court and ‘hired
out’ by public advertisement, to some citizen, being the highest bidder,
for the remainder year.”[157]

These Codes were not reassuring to the friends of freedom. To be sure it
was not a time to expect calm, cool, thoughtful action on the part of the
South. Its economic condition was pitiable. Property in slaves to the
extent perhaps of two thousand million dollars had suddenly disappeared.
One thousand five hundred more millions representing the Confederate war
debt, had largely disappeared. Large amounts of real estate and other
property had been destroyed, industry had been disorganized, 250,000 men
had been killed and many more maimed. With this went the moral effect of
an unsuccessful war with all its letting down of social standards and
quickening of hatred and discouragement—a situation which would make it
difficult under any circumstances to reconstruct a new government and
a new civilization. Moreover any human being of any color “doomed in
his own person and his posterity to live without knowledge and without
capacity to make anything his own and to toil that another may reap the
fruits,” is bound on sudden emancipation to loom like a great dread on
the horizon.

The fear of Negro freedom in the South was increased by its own
consciousness of guilt, yet it was reasonable to expect from it something
more than mere repression and reaction toward slavery. To some small
extent this expectation was fulfilled: the abolition of slavery was
recognized and the civil rights of owning property and appearing as a
witness in cases in which he was a party were generally granted the
Negro; yet with these went such harsh regulations as largely neutralized
the concessions and gave ground for the assumption that once free from
Northern control the South would virtually re-enslave the Negro. The
colored people themselves naturally feared this and protested, as in
Mississippi, “against the reactionary policy prevailing and expressing
the fear that the Legislature will pass such proscriptive laws as will
drive the freedmen from the State or practically re-enslave them.”[158]

As Professor Burgess (whom no one accuses of being Negrophile) says:
“Almost every act, word or gesture of the Negro not consonant with
good taste and good manners as well as good morals was made a crime or
misdemeanor, for which he could first be fined by the magistrates and
then be consigned to a condition of almost slavery for an indefinite time
if he could not pay the bill.”

All things considered, it seems probable that if the South had been
permitted to have its way in 1865 the harshness of Negro slavery would
have been mitigated so as to make slave trading difficult and to make it
possible for a Negro to hold property if he got any and to appear in some
cases in court; but that in most other respects the blacks would have
remained in slavery. And no small number of whites even in the North
were quite willing to contemplate such a solution.

In October, the democratic platform of Louisiana said “This is a
government of white people,” and although Johnson reported in December
that Reconstruction was complete in North and South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, yet everyone
knew that the real problems of Reconstruction had just begun. The war
caused by slavery could be stopped only by a real abolition of slavery.

It was as though the Germans invading France had found flocking to their
camps the laboring forces of the invaded land, poor and destitute, but
willing to work and willing to fight. What would have been the attitude
of the successful invader when the war was ended? Gratitude alone
counseled help for the Freedmen; wisdom counseled a real abolition of
slavery; so far slavery had not been abolished in spite of the fact that
the 13th Amendment proposed in February had been proclaimed in December.
Freedom and citizenship were primarily a matter of state legislation;
and emancipation from slavery was an economic problem—a question of work
and wages, of land and capital—all these things were matters of state
legislation. Unless then something was done to insure a proper legal
status and legal protection for the Freedmen, the so-called abolition
of slavery would be but a name. Furthermore there were grave political
difficulties: According to the celebrated compromise in the Constitution,
three-fifths of the slaves were counted in the Southern states as a basis
of representation and this gave the white South as compared with the
North a large political advantage. This advantage was now to be increased
because, as freemen, the whole Negro population was to be counted and
still the voting was confined to whites. The North, therefore, found
themselves faced by the fact that the very people whom they had overcome
in a costly and bloody war were now coming back with increased political
power, with determination to keep just as much of slavery as they could
and with freedom to act toward the nation that they had nearly destroyed,
in whatever way the deep hatreds of a hurt and conquered people tempted
them to act. All this was sinister and dangerous. Assume as large minded
and forgiving an attitude as one could, either the abolition of slavery
must be made real or the war was fought in vain.

The Negroes themselves naturally began to insist that without political
power it was impossible to accomplish their economic freedom. Frederick
Douglass said to President Johnson: “Your noble and humane predecessor
placed in our hands the sword to assist in saving the nation and we do
hope that you, his able successor, will favorably regard the placing in
our hands the ballot with which to save ourselves.” And when Johnson
demurred on account of the hostility between blacks and poor whites, a
committee of prominent colored men replied:

“Even if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the blacks
toward the poor whites must necessarily project itself into a state of
freedom, and that this enmity between the two races is even more intense
in a state of freedom than in a state of slavery, in the name of heaven,
we reverently ask, how can you, in view of your professed desire to
promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all means of defense
and clothe him, whom you regard as his enemy, in the panoply of political
power?”[159]

Again as the Negro fugitive slave was already in camp before the nation
was ready to receive him and was even trying to drive him back to his
master; just as the Negro was already bearing arms before he was legally
recognized as a soldier; so too he was voting before Negro suffrage was
contemplated; to cite one instance at Davis Bend, Mississippi. “Early in
1865 a system was adopted for their government in which the freedmen
took a considerable part. The Bend was divided into districts, each
having a sheriff and judge appointed from among the more reliable and
intelligent colored men. A general oversight of the proceedings was
maintained by our officers in charge, who confirmed or modified the
findings of the court. The shrewdness of the colored judges was very
remarkable, though it was sometimes necessary to decrease the severity of
the punishment they proposed. Fines and penal service on the Home Farm
were the usual sentences they imposed. Petty theft and idleness were the
most frequent causes of trouble, but my officers were able to report
that exposed property was as safe on Davis Bend as it would be anywhere.
The community distinctly demonstrated the capacity of the Negro to take
care of himself and exercised under honest and competent direction the
functions of self-government.”[160]

Carl Schurz said in his celebrated report: “The emancipation of the
slaves is submitted to only in so far as chattel slavery in the old form
could not be kept up. But although the freedman is no longer considered
the property of the individual master, he is considered the slave of
society and all independent State legislation will share the tendency to
make him such.

“The solution of the problem would be very much facilitated by enabling
all the loyal and free labor elements in the South to exercise a healthy
influence upon legislation. It will hardly be possible to secure the
freedman against oppressive class legislation and private persecution
unless he be endowed with a certain measure of political power.”

To the argument of ignorance Schurz replied: “The effect of the extension
of the franchise to the colored people upon the development of free labor
and upon the security of human rights in the South being the principal
object in view, the objections raised on the ground of the ignorance of
the freedmen become unimportant. Practical liberty is a good school....
It is idle to say that it will be time to speak of Negro suffrage when
the whole colored race will be educated, for the ballot may be necessary
to him to secure his education.”[161]

Thus Negro suffrage was forced to the front, not as a method of
humiliating the South; not as a theoretical and dangerous gift to the
Freedmen; not according to any preconcerted plan but simply because of
the grim necessities of the situation. The North must either give up
the fruits of war, keep a Freedmen’s Bureau for a generation or use
the Negro vote to reconstruct the Southern states and to insure such
legislation as would at least begin the economic emancipation of the
slave.

_In other words the North being unable to free the slave, let him try to
free himself. And he did, and this was his greatest gift to this nation._

Let us return to the steps by which the Negro accomplished this task.

In 1866, the joint committee of Congress on Reconstruction said that in
the South: “A large proportion of the population had become, instead
of mere chattels, free men and citizens. Through all the past struggle
these had remained true and loyal and had, in large numbers, fought on
the side of the Union. It was impossible to abandon them without securing
them their rights as free men and citizens. The whole civilized world
would have cried out against such base ingratitude and the bare idea is
offensive to all right thinking men. Hence it became important to inquire
what could be done to secure their rights, civil and political.”

The report then proceeded to emphasize the increased political power of
the South and recommended the Fourteenth Amendment, since: “It appeared
to your committee that the rights of these persons by whom the basis
of representation had been thus increased should be recognized by the
General Government. While slaves, they were not considered as having any
rights, civil or political. It did not seem just or proper that all the
political advantages derived from their becoming free should be confined
to their former masters who had fought against the Union and withheld
from themselves who had always been loyal.”[162]

Nor did there seem to be any hope that the South would voluntarily change
its attitude within any reasonable time. As Carl Schurz wrote: “I deem it
proper, however, to offer a few remarks on the assertion frequently put
forth, that the franchise is likely to be extended to the colored man by
the voluntary action of the southern whites themselves. My observation
leads me to a contrary opinion. Aside from a very few enlightened men,
I found but one class of people in favor of the enfranchisement of the
blacks: it was the class of Unionists who found themselves politically
ostracised and looked upon the enfranchisement of the loyal Negroes as
the salvation of the whole loyal element.... The masses are strongly
opposed to colored suffrage; anybody that dares to advocate it is
stigmatized as a dangerous fanatic.

“The only manner in which, in my opinion, the southern people can be
induced to grant to the freedmen some measure of self-protecting power
in the form of suffrage, is to make it a consideration precedent to
‘readmission’.”[163]

During 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau received over a million dollars mostly
from the Freedmen’s fund, sales of crop, rent of lands and buildings
and school taxes. The chief expenditure was in wages, rent and schools.
It was evident that the Negro was demanding education. Schools arose
immediately among the refugees and Negro soldiers. They were helped by
voluntary taxation of the Negroes and then by the activity of Northern
religious bodies. Seldom in the history of the world has an almost
totally illiterate population been given the means of self-education in
so short a time. The movement started with the Negroes themselves and
they continued to form the dynamic force behind it. “This great multitude
arose up simultaneously and asked for intelligence.” There can be no
doubt that these schools were a great conservative steadying force to
which the South owes much. It must not be forgotten that among the agents
of the Freedmen’s Bureau were not only soldiers and politicians but
school teachers and educational leaders like Ware and Cravath.

In 1866, nearly 100,000 Negroes were in the schools under 1300 teachers
and schools for Negroes had been opened in nearly all the southern
states. A second Freedmen’s Bureau act was passed extending the work of
the Bureau, and the Freedmen’s Bank which had been started in 1865 and
had by 1866 twenty branches and $300,000 in savings.

Congress came to blows with President Johnson. His plan of reconstruction
with white male suffrage was repudiated and the 14th Amendment was
proposed by Congress which was designed to force the South to accept
Negro suffrage on penalty of losing a proportionate amount of their
representation in Congress. The 14th Amendment was long delayed and did
not in fact become a law until July, 1868. Meantime, Congress adopted
more drastic measures. By the Reconstruction Acts, the first of which
passed March 2nd, the South was divided into five military districts,
Negro suffrage was established for the constitutional conventions and the
14th Amendment made a prerequisite for readmission of states to the Union.

What was the result? No language has been spared to describe the results
of Negro suffrage as the worst imaginable. Every effort of historical
and social science and propaganda have supported this view; and its
acceptance has been well nigh universal, because it was so clearly to the
interests of the chief parties involved to forget their own shortcomings
and put the blame on the Negro. As a colored man put it, they closed
the “bloody chasm” but closed up the Negro inside. Yet, without Negro
suffrage, slavery could not have been abolished in the United States
and while there were bad results arising from the enfranchisement of
the slaves as there necessarily had to be, the main results were not
bad. Let us not forget that the white South believed it to be of vital
interest to its welfare that the experiment of Negro suffrage should
fail ignominiously and that almost to a man the whites were willing to
insure this failure either by active force or passive resistance; that
beside this there were, as might be expected in a day of social upheaval,
men, white and black, Northern and Southern, only too eager to take
advantage of such a situation for feathering their own nests. The results
in such case had to be evil but to charge the evil to Negro suffrage is
unfair. It may be charged to anger, poverty, venality and ignorance, but
the anger and poverty were the almost inevitable aftermath of war; the
venality was much more reprehensible as exhibited among whites than among
Negroes, and while ignorance was the curse of the Negroes, the fault was
not theirs and they took the initiative to correct it.

Negro suffrage was without doubt a tremendous experiment but with all
its manifest failure it succeeded to an astounding degree; it made the
immediate re-establishment of the old slavery impossible and it was
probably the only quick method of doing this; it gave the Freedmen’s sons
a chance to begin their education. It diverted the energy of the white
South from economic development to the recovery of political power and
in this interval—small as it was—the Negro took his first steps toward
economic freedom. It was the greatest and most important step toward
world democracy of all men of all races ever taken in the modern world.

Let us see just what happened when the Negroes gained the right to vote,
first in the conventions which reconstructed the form of government and
afterward in the regular state governments. The continual charge is made
that the South was put under Negro government—that ignorant ex-slaves
ruled the land. This is untrue. Negroes did not dominate southern
legislatures, and in only two states did they have a majority of the
legislature at any time. In Alabama in the years of 1868-69 there were
106 whites and 27 Negroes in the legislature; in the year 1876 there were
104 whites and 29 Negroes. In Arkansas, 1868-69 there were 8 Negroes
and 96 whites. In Georgia there were 186 whites and 33 Negroes. In
Mississippi, 1870-1, there were 106 whites and 34 Negroes and in 1876,
132 whites and 21 Negroes. In North Carolina, 149 whites and 21 Negroes;
in South Carolina 1868-69, 72 whites and 85 Negroes and in 1876, 70
whites and 54 Negroes. In Texas, 1870-71 there were 110 whites and 10
Negroes. In Virginia, 1868-69, 119 whites and 18 Negroes and in 1876, 112
whites and 13 Negroes.[164]

“Statistics show, however, that with the exception of South Carolina and
Mississippi, no state and not even any department of a state government
was ever dominated altogether by Negroes. The Negroes never wanted and
never had complete control in the Southern states. The most important
offices were generally held by white men. Only two Negroes ever served
in the United States Senate, Hiram R. Revells and B. K. Bruce; and only
twenty ever became representatives in the House and all these did not
serve at the same time, although some of them were elected for more than
one term.”[165]

The Negroes who held office, held for the most part minor offices and
most of them were ignorant men. Some of them were venal and vicious but
this was not true in all cases. Indeed the Freedmen were pathetic too in
their attempt to choose the best persons but they were singularly limited
in their choice. Their former white masters were either disfranchised or
bitterly hostile or ready to deceive them. The “carpet-baggers” often
cheated them; their own ranks had few men of experience and training. Yet
some of the colored men who served them well deserve special mention:

Samuel J. Lee, a member of the South Carolina legislature, was considered
by the whites as one of the best criminal lawyers of the state. When
he died local courts were adjourned and the whole city mourned. Bishop
Isaac Clinton who served as Treasurer of Orangeburg, S. C. for eight
years was held in highest esteem by his white neighbors and upon the
occasion of his death business was suspended as a mark of respect. In
certain communities Negroes were retained in office for years after
the restoration of Democratic party control as, for example Mr. George
Harriot in Georgetown, S. C. who was Superintendent of Education for the
county. Beaufort, South Carolina, retained Negroes as sheriffs and school
officials.

J. T. White who was Commissioner of Public Works and Internal
Improvements in Arkansas; M. W. Gibbs who was Municipal Judge in Little
Rock, and J. C. Corbin, who was State Superintendent of Schools in
Arkansas, had creditable records.[166] John R. Lynch, when speaker of
Mississippi House of Representatives, was given a public testimonial by
Republicans and Democrats and the leading Democratic paper said: “His
bearing in office had been so proper and his rulings in such marked
contrast to the partisan conduct of the ignoble whites of his party
who have aspired to be leaders of the blacks, that the conservatives
cheerfully joined in the testimonial.”[167]

Of the colored treasurer of South Carolina, Governor Chamberlain said:
“I have never heard one word or seen one act of Mr. Cardoza’s which did
not confirm my confidence in his personal integrity and his political
honor and zeal for the honest administration of the State Government. On
every occasion and under all circumstances he has been against fraud and
jobbery and in favor of good measures and good men.”[168]

Jonathan C. Gibbs, a colored man and the first State Superintendent of
Instructions in Florida, was a graduate of Dartmouth. He established
the system and brought it to success, dying in harness in 1874. The
first Negro graduate of Harvard College served in South Carolina, before
he became chief executive officer of the association that erected the
Grant’s Tomb in New York.

In Louisiana we may mention Acting-Governor Pinchback, and
Lieutenant-Governor Dunn, and Treasurer Dubuclet who was investigated
by United States officials. E. P. White, afterward Chief Justice of the
United States, reported that his funds had been honestly handled. Such
men—and there were others—ought not to be forgotten or confounded with
other types of colored and white Reconstruction leaders.

Between 1871 and 1901, twenty-two Negroes sat in Congress—two as senators
and twenty as representatives; three or four others were undoubtedly
elected but were not seated. Ten of these twenty-two Negroes were college
bred: Cain of South Carolina was trained at Wilberforce and afterward
became bishop of the African Methodist Church; Revels was educated at
Knox College, Illinois, or at a Quaker Seminary, in Indiana; Cheatham
was a graduate of Shaw; Murray was trained at the University of South
Carolina; Langston was a graduate of Oberlin; five others were lawyers of
whom the most brilliant was Robert Brown Elliott; he was a graduate of
Eton College, England; Rapier was educated in Canada and O’Hara studied
at Howard University; Miller graduated from Lincoln and White from Howard
University. The other twelve men were self-taught: one was a thriving
merchant tailor, one a barber, three were farmers, one a photographer,
one a pilot and one a merchant.[169]

Of those who served in the Senate, one served an unexpired term and the
other six years. In the House, one representative served one term from
Virginia. From North Carolina one served one term and two, two terms.
Georgia was represented by a Negro for one term and Mississippi for two
terms. South Carolina had eight representatives, two of them served five
terms, three two terms, and the rest one term. Beside these there were
other Negro office holders who were fully the peers of white men; and
those without formal training in the schools were in many cases men of
unusual force and native ability.

James G. Blaine who served with nearly all these men approved of sending
them to Congress: “If it is to be viewed simply as an experiment, it was
triumphantly successful. The colored men who took seats in both Senate
and House did not appear ignorant or helpless. They were as a rule
studious, earnest, ambitious men whose public conduct—as illustrated by
Mr. Revels and Mr. Bruce in the Senate and by Mr. Rapier, Mr. Lynch and
Mr. Rainey in the House would be honorable to any race. Coals of fire
were heaped on the heads of all their enemies when the colored men in
Congress heartily joined in removing the disabilities of those who had
before been their oppressors, and who, with deep regret be it said, have
continued to treat them with injustice and ignominy.”[170]

He cites the magnanimity of Senator Rainey: “When the Amnesty Bill
came before the House for consideration, Mr. Rainey of South Carolina,
speaking for the colored race whom he represented said: ‘It is not the
disposition of my constituents that these disabilities should longer
be retained. We are desirous of being magnanimous; it may be that we
are so to a fault. Nevertheless we have open and frank hearts towards
those who were our oppressors and taskmasters. We foster no enmity now,
and we desire to foster none, for their acts in the past to us or to
the Government we love so well. But while we are willing to accord them
their enfranchisement and here today give our votes that they may be
amnestied, while we declare our hearts open and free from any vindictive
feelings toward them, we would say to those gentlemen on the other side
that there is another class of citizens in the country who have certain
rights and immunities which they would like you, sirs, to remember and
respect.... We invoke you gentlemen, to show the same kindly feeling
towards us, a race long oppressed, and in demonstration of this humane
and just feeling, I implore you, give support to the Civil Rights Bill,
which we have been asking at your hands, lo! these many days.”[171]

The chief charge against Negro governments has to do with property. These
governments are charged with attacking property and the charge is true.
This, although not perhaps sensed at the time, was their real reason
for being. The ex-slaves must have land and capital or they would fall
back into slavery. The masters had both; there must be a transfer. It
was at first proposed that land be confiscated in the South and given to
the Freedmen. “Forty Acres and a Mule” was the widespread promise made
several times with official sanction. This was perhaps the least that
the United States Government could have done to insure emancipation, but
such a program would have cost money. In the early anger of the war, it
seemed to many fair to confiscate land for this purpose without payment
and some land was thus sequestered. But manifestly with all the losses
of war and with the loss of the slaves it was unfair to take the land of
the South without some compensation. The North was unwilling to add to
its tremendous debt anything further to insure the economic independence
of the Freedmen. The Freedmen therefore themselves with their political
power and with such economic advantage as the war gave them, tried to get
hold of land.

The Negro party platform of 1876, in one state, advocated “division of
lands of the state as far as practical into small farms in order that
the masses of our people may be enabled to become landholders.” In the
Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, a colored man said: “One
of the greatest of slavery bulwarks was the infernal plantation system,
one man owning his thousand, another his twenty, another fifty thousands
acres of land. This is the only way by which we will break up that
system, and I maintain that our freedom will be of no effect if we allow
it to continue. What is the main cause of the prosperity of the North.
It is because every man has his own farm and is free and independent.
Let the lands of the South be similarly divided. I would not say for one
moment they should be confiscated but if sold to maintain the war, now
that slavery is destroyed, let the plantation system go with it. We
will never have true freedom until we abolish the system of agriculture
which existed in the Southern States. It is useless to have any schools
while we maintain the stronghold of slavery as the agricultural system
of the country.”[172] This question kept coming up in the South Carolina
convention and elsewhere. Such arguments led in South Carolina to a
scheme to buy land and distribute it and some $800,000 was appropriated
for this purpose.

In the second place, property was attacked through the tax system. The
South had been terribly impoverished and was saddled with new social
burdens. Many of the things which had been done well or indifferently by
the plantations—like the punishment of crime and the care of the sick
and the insane, and such schooling as there was, with most other matters
of social uplift were, after the war, transferred to the control of the
state. Moreover the few and comparatively indifferent public buildings
of slavery days had been ruined either by actual warfare or by neglect.
Thus a new and tremendous burden of social taxation was put upon the
reconstructed states.

As a southern writer says of the state of Mississippi: “The work
of restoration which the government was obliged to undertake, made
increased expenses necessary. During the period of the war, and for
several years thereafter, public buildings and state institutions were
permitted to fall into decay. The state house and grounds, the executive
mansion, the penitentiary, the insane asylum, and the buildings for the
blind, deaf and dumb, were in a dilapidated condition and had to be
extended and repaired. A new building for the blind was purchased and
fitted up. The reconstructionists established a public school system
and spent money to maintain and support it, perhaps too freely, in view
of the impoverishment of the people. When they took hold, warrants
were worth but sixty or seventy cents on the dollar, a fact which
made the price of building materials used in the work of construction
correspondingly higher.”[173]

In addition to all this there was fraud and stealing. There were white
men who cheated and secured large sums. Most of $800,000 appropriated for
land in South Carolina was wasted in graft. Bills for wine and furniture
in South Carolina were enormous; the printing bill of Mississippi was
ridiculously extravagant. Colored men shared in this loot but they at
least had some excuse. We may not forget that among slaves stealing
is not the crime that it becomes in free industry. The slave is victim
of a theft so hateful that nothing he can steal can ever match it. The
freedmen of 1868 still shared the slave psychology. The larger part of
the stealing was done by white men—Northerners and Southerners—and we
must remember that it was not the first time that there had been stealing
and corruption in the South and that the whole moral tone of the nation
had been ruined by war. For instance:

In 1839 it was reported in Mississippi that ninety per cent of the
fines collected by sheriffs and clerks were unaccounted for. In 1841
the State Treasurer acknowledged himself “at a loss to determine the
precise liabilities of the state and her means of paying the same.” And
in 1839 the auditor’s books had not been posted for eighteen months,
no entries made for a year, and no vouchers examined for three years.
Congress gave Jefferson College, Natchez, more than 46,000 acres of land;
before the war this whole property had “disappeared” and the college
was closed. Congress gave to Mississippi among other states, the “16th
section” of the public lands for schools. In thirty years the proceeds
of this land in Mississippi were embezzled to the amount of at least one
and a half millions of dollars. In Columbus, Mississippi a receiver of
public monies stole $100,000 and resigned. His successor stole $55,000
and a treasury agent wrote: “Another receiver would probably follow in
the footsteps of the two. You will not be surprised if I recommend him
being retained in preference to another appointment.” From 1830 to 1860
southern men in federal offices alone embezzled more than a million
dollars—a far greater sum then than now.

There might have been less stealing in the South during Reconstruction
without Negro suffrage but it is certainly highly instructive to remember
that the mark of the thief which dragged its slime across nearly every
great Northern State and almost up to the presidential chair could not
certainly in those cases be charged against the vote of black men. This
was the day when a national Secretary of War was caught stealing, a vice
president presumably took bribes, a private secretary of the president,
a chief clerk of the Treasury, and eighty-six government officials stole
millions in the Whiskey frauds; while the “Credit Mobilier” filched
millions and bribed the government to an extent never fully revealed; not
to mention less distinguished thieves like Tweed.

Is it surprising that in such an atmosphere a new race learning the a-b-c
of government should have become the tools of thieves? And when they
did, was the stealing their fault or was it justly chargeable to their
enfranchisement? Then too, a careful examination of the alleged stealing
in the South reveals much: First, there is repeated exaggeration. For
instance, it is said that the taxation in Mississippi was fourteen times
as great in 1874 as in 1869. This sounds staggering until we learn that
the State taxation in 1869 was only ten cents on one hundred dollars
and that the expenses of government in 1874 were only twice as great as
in 1860 and that too with a depreciated currency. It could certainly
be argued that the State government in Mississippi was doing enough
additional work in 1874 to warrant greatly increased cost. The character
of much of the stealing shows who were the thieves. The frauds through
the manipulation of State and railway bonds and of bank notes must have
inured chiefly to the benefit of experienced white men and this must
have been largely the case in the furnishing and printing frauds. It was
chiefly in the extravagance for “sundries and incidentals” and direct
money payments for votes that the Negroes received their share. The
character of the real thieving shows that white men must have been the
chief beneficiaries and that as a former South Carolina slaveholder said:

“The legislature, ignorant as it is, could not have been bribed without
money; that must have been furnished from some source that it is our
duty to discover. A legislature composed chiefly of our former slaves
has been bribed. One prominent feature of this transaction is the part
which native Carolinians have played in it, some of our own household men
whom the State, in the past, has delighted to honor, appealing to their
cupidity and avarice make them the instruments to effect the robbery of
their impoverished white brethren. Our former slaves have been bribed by
these men to give them the privilege by law of plundering the property
holders of the state.”[174]

Even those who mocked and sneered at Negro legislators brought now and
then words of praise: “But beneath all this shocking burlesque upon
Legislative proceedings we must not forget that there is something very
real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all shame, not
all burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness
in the business of the assembly which we are bound to recognize and
respect.... They have an earnest purpose, born of conviction that their
conditions are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their
proceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often
indulge is on occasion seen to be so transparently sincere and weighty
in their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is
a wonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago
these men were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer.
Today they are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They
find they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It
is easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished
result. It means escape and defence from old oppressors. It means
liberty. It means the destruction of prison walls only too real to them.
It is the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is
their long promised vision of the Lord God Almighty.”[175]

But with the memory of the Freedmen’s Bank before it, America should
utter no sound as to Negro dishonesty during reconstruction. Here from
the entrenched philanthropy of America with some of the greatest names
of the day like Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Simon P. Chase, A.
A. Low, Gerritt Smith, John Jay, A. S. Barnes, S. G. Howe, George L.
Stearns, Edward Atkinson, Levi Coffin and others, a splendid scheme was
launched to help the Freedmen save their pittance and encourage thrift
and hope. On the covers of the pass books is said: “This is a benevolent
institution and profits go to the depositors or to educational purposes
for the Freedmen and their descendants. The whole institution is under
the charter of Congress and receives the commendation of the President,
Abraham Lincoln.” With blare of trumpet it was chartered March 3rd, 1865;
it collapsed in hopeless bankruptcy in 1873. It had received fifty-six
millions of dollars in deposits and failed owing over three millions
most of which was never repaid. A committee of Congress composed of both
Democrats and Republicans said in 1876:

“The law lent no efficacy to the moral obligations assumed by the
trustees, officers, and agents and the whole concern inevitably became
as a ‘whited sepulchre’.... The inspectors ... were of little or no
value, either through the connivance and ignorance of the inspectors or
the indifference of the trustees to their reports.... The committee of
examination ... were still more careless and inefficient, while the board
of trustees, as a supervising and administrative body, intrusted with
the fullest power of general control over the management, proved utterly
faithless to the trust reposed in them....

“The depositors were of small account now compared with the personal
interest of the political jobbers, real estate pools, and fancy-stock
speculators, who were organizing a raid upon the Freedmen’s money
and resorted to ... amendment of the charter to facilitate their
operations.... This mass of putridity, the District government, now
abhorred of all men, and abandoned and repudiated even by the political
authors of its being, was represented in the bank by no less than five
of its high officers ... all of whom were in one way or other concerned
in speculations involving a free use of the funds of the Freedmen’s
Bank. They were high in power, too, with the dominant influence in
Congress, as the legislation they asked or sanctioned and obtained, fully
demonstrated. Thus it was that without consulting the wishes or regarding
the interests of those most concerned—the depositors—the vaults of the
bank were literally thrown open to unscrupulous greed and rapacity.
The toilsome savings of the poor Negroes hoarded and laid by for a
rainy day, through the carelessness and dishonest connivance of their
self-constituted guardians, melted away....”[176]

Even in bankruptcy the institution was not allowed to come under the
operation of the ordinary laws but was liquidated and protected by a
special law, the liquidators picking its corpse and the helpless victims
being finally robbed not only of their money but of much of their faith
in white folk.

Let us laugh hilariously if we must over the golden spittoons of South
Carolina but let us also remember that at most the freedmen filched bits
from those who had all and not all from those who had nothing; and that
the black man had at least the saving grace to hide his petty theft by
enshrining the nasty American habit of spitting in the sheen of sunshine.

With all these difficulties and failings, what did the Freedmen in
politics during the critical years of their first investment with the
suffrage accomplish? We may recognize three things which Negro rule gave
to the South:

1. Democratic government.

2. Free public schools.

3. New social legislation.

Two states will illustrate conditions of government in the South before
and after Negro rule. In South Carolina there was before the war a
property qualification for office holders, and in part, for voters.
The Constitution of 1868, on the other hand, was a modern democratic
document starting (in marked contrast to the old constitution) with a
declaration that “We, the People,”[177] framed it and preceded by a
broad Declaration of Rights which did away with property qualifications
and based representation directly on population instead of property.
It especially took up new subjects of social legislation, declaring
navigable rivers free public highways, instituting homestead exemptions,
establishing boards of county commissioners, providing for a new
penal code of laws, establishing universal manhood suffrage “without
distinction of race or color,” devoting six sections to charitable and
penal institutions and six to corporations, providing separate property
for married women, etc. Above all, eleven sections of the Tenth Article
were devoted to the establishment of a complete public school system.

So satisfactory was the constitution thus adopted by Negro suffrage
and by a convention composed of a majority of blacks that the States
lived twenty-seven years under it without essential change and when the
constitution was revised in 1895, the revision was practically nothing
more than an amplification of the Constitution of 1868. No essential
advance step of the former document was changed except the suffrage
article to disfranchise Negroes.

In Mississippi the Constitution of 1868 was, as compared with that before
the war, more democratic. It not only forbade distinctions on account
of color but abolished all property qualifications for jury service and
property and educational qualifications for suffrage; it required less
rigorous qualifications for office; it prohibited the lending of the
credit of the State for private corporations—an abuse dating back as far
as 1830. It increased the powers of the governor, raised the low State
salaries, and increased the number of state officials. New ideas like
the public school system and the immigration bureau were introduced and
in general the activity of the State greatly and necessarily enlarged.
Finally that was the only constitution of the State ever submitted to
popular approval at the polls. This constitution remained in force
twenty-two years.

In general the words of Judge Albion W. Tourgee, “a carpet-bagger,” are
true when he says of the Negro governments: “They obeyed the Constitution
of the United States and annulled the bonds of states, counties and
cities which had been issued to carry on the war of rebellion and
maintain armies in the field against the Union. They instituted a public
school system in a realm where public schools had been unknown. They
opened the ballot box and jury box to thousands of white men who had
been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced
home rule in the South. They abolished the whipping post, the branding
iron, the stocks and other barbarous forms of punishment which had up to
that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about twenty to
two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant in the sums
appropriated for public works. In all of that time no man’s rights of
person were invaded under the forms of law. Every Democrat’s life, home,
fireside and business were safe. No man obstructed any white man’s way to
the ballot box, interfered with his freedom of speech or boycotted him,
on account of his political faith.”[178]

A thorough study of the legislation accompanying these constitutions and
its changes since would, of course, be necessary before a full picture
of the situation could be given. This has not been done but so far as my
studies have gone I have been surprised at the comparatively small amount
of change in law and government which the overthrow of Negro rule brought
about. There were sharp and often hurtful economies introduced, marking
the return of property to power, there was a sweeping change in officials
but the main body of Reconstruction legislation stood.

There is no doubt but that the thirst of the black man for knowledge—a
thirst which has been too persistent and durable to be mere curiosity
or whim—gave birth to the public free school system of the South. It
was the question upon which the black voters and legislators insisted
more than anything else and while it is possible to find some vestiges
of free schools in some of the Southern States before the war yet a
universal, well established system dates from the day that the black
man got political power. Common school instruction in the South, in the
modern sense of the term, was begun for Negroes by the Freedmen’s Bureau
and missionary societies, and the State public school systems for all
children were formed mainly by Negro Reconstruction governments.

The earlier state constitutions of Mississippi “from 1817 to 1864
contained a declaration that ‘Religion, morality and knowledge being
necessary to good government, the preservation of liberty and the
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever
be encouraged.’ It was not, however, until 1868 that encouragement
was given to any general system of public schools meant to embrace
the whole youthful population.” The Constitution of 1868 makes it the
duty of the legislature to establish “a uniform system of free public
schools by taxation or otherwise for all children between the ages of
five and twenty-one years.” In Alabama the Reconstruction Constitution
of 1868 provided that “It shall be the duty of the Board of Education
to establish throughout the State in each township or other school
district which it may have created, one or more schools at which all
children of the state between the ages of five and twenty-one years may
attend free of charge.” Arkansas in 1868, Florida in 1869, Virginia
in 1870, established school systems. The Constitution of 1868 in
Louisiana required the general assembly to establish “at least one free
public school in every parish,” and that these schools should make no
“distinction of race, color or previous condition.” Georgia’s system was
not fully established until 1873.

We are apt to forget that in all human probability the granting of Negro
manhood suffrage was decisive in rendering permanent the foundation
of the Negro common school. Even after the overthrow of the Negro
governments, if the Negroes had been left a servile caste, personally
free but politically powerless, it is not reasonable to think that
a system of common schools would have been provided for them by the
Southern states. Serfdom and education have ever proven contradictory
terms. But when Congress, backed by the nation, determined to make the
Negroes full-fledged voting citizens, the South had a hard dilemma before
her; either to keep the Negroes under as an ignorant proletariat and
stand the chance of being ruled eventually from the slums and jails, or
to join in helping to raise these wards of the nation to a position of
intelligence and thrift by means of a public school system.[179]

The “carpet-bag” governments hastened the decision of the South and
although there was a period of hesitation and retrogression after the
overthrow of Negro rule in the early seventies, yet the South saw that
to abolish Negro schools in addition to nullifying the Negro vote would
invite Northern interference; and thus eventually every Southern state
confirmed the work of the Negro legislators and maintained the Negro
public schools along with the white.

Finally, in legislation covering property the wider functions of the
State, the punishment of crime and the like, it is sufficient to say that
the laws on these points established by Reconstruction legislatures were
not only different and even revolutionary to the laws of the older South,
but they were so wise and so well suited to the needs of the new South
that in spite of a retrogressive movement following the overthrow of the
Negro governments, the mass of this legislation with elaboration and
development still stands on the statute books of the South.

Reconstruction constitutions, practically unaltered, were kept in

    Florida, 1868-1885               17 years
    Virginia, 1870-1902              32 years
    South Carolina, 1868-1895        27 years
    Mississippi, 1868-1890           22 years

Even in the case of states like Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and
Louisiana, which adopted new constitutions to signify the overthrow
of Negro rule, the new constitutions are nearer the model of the
Reconstruction document than they are to the previous constitutions. They
differ from the Negro constitutions in minor details but very little in
general conception.

Here then on the whole was a much more favorable result of a great
experiment in democracy than the world had a right to await. But
even on its more sinister side and in the matter of the ignorance of
inexperience and venality of the colored voters there came signs of
better things. The theory of democratic government is not that the will
of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of
average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best
course by bitter experience. This is precisely what the Negro voters
showed indubitable signs of doing. First, they strove for schools to
abolish their ignorance, and second, a large and growing number of them
revolted against the carnival of extravagance and stealing that marred
the beginning of Reconstruction and joined with the best elements to
institute reform; and the greatest stigma on the white South is not
that it opposed Negro suffrage and resented theft and incompetence, but
that when it saw the reform movement growing and even in some cases
triumphing, and a larger and larger number of black voters learning to
vote for honesty and ability, it still preferred a Reign of Terror to
a campaign of education and disfranchised Negroes instead of punishing
rascals.

No one has expressed this more convincingly than a Negro who was himself
a member of the Reconstruction legislature of South Carolina and who
spoke at the convention which disfranchised him, against one of the
onslaughts of Tillman:

“The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling up of
the State debt; of jobbery and speculation during the period between
1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice eloquent
enough nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable gifts bestowed
upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro legislators—the laws
relative to finance, the building of penal and charitable institutions
and, greatest of all, the establishment of the public school system.
Starting as infants in legislation in 1869, many wise measures were not
thought of, many injudicious acts were passed. But in the administration
of affairs for the next four years, having learned by experience the
result of bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touching
every department of state, county, municipal and town governments. These
enactments are today upon the statute books of South Carolina. They stand
as living witnesses of the Negro’s fitness to vote and legislate upon the
rights of mankind.

“When we came into power, town governments could lend the credit of
their respective towns to secure funds at any rate of interest that the
council saw fit to pay. Some of the towns paid as high as twenty percent.
We passed an act prohibiting town governments from pledging the credit
of their hamlets for money bearing a greater rate of interest than five
percent.

“Up to 1874, inclusive, the State Treasurer had the power to pay out
State funds as he pleased. He could elect whether he would pay out the
funds on appropriations that would place the money in the hands of the
speculators, or would apply them to appropriations that were honest and
necessary. We saw the evil of this and passed an act making specific
levies and collections of taxes for specific appropriations.

“Another source of profligacy in the expenditure of funds was the law
that provided for and empowered the levying and collecting of special
taxes by school districts, in the name of the schools. We saw its evil
and by a Constitutional amendment provided that there should only be
levied and collected annually a tax of two mills for school purposes,
and took away from the school districts the power to levy and to collect
taxes of any kind. By this act we cured the evils that had been inflicted
upon us in the name of the schools, settled the public school question
for all time to come and established the system upon an honest financial
basis.

“Next, we learned during the period from 1869 to 1874 inclusive, that
what was denominated the floating indebtedness, covering the printing
schemes and other indefinite expenditures, amounted to nearly $2,000,000.
A conference was called of the leading Negro representatives in the
two Houses together with the State Treasurer, also a Negro. After this
conference we passed an act for the purpose of ascertaining the bona fide
floating debt and found that it did not amount to more than $250,000 for
the four years; we created a commission to sift that indebtedness and to
scale it. Hence when the Democratic party came into power they found the
floating debt covering the legislative and all other expenditures, fixed
at the certain sum of $250,000. This same class of Negro legislators,
led by the State Treasurer, Mr. F. L. Cardoza, knowing that there were
millions of fraudulent bonds charged against the credit of the State,
passed another act to ascertain the true bonded indebtedness and to
provide for its settlement. Under this law, at one sweep, those entrusted
with the power to do so, through Negro legislators, stamped six millions
of bonds, denominated as conversion bonds, ‘fraudulent.’ The commission
did not finish its work before 1876. In that year when the Hampton
government came into power, there were still to be examined into and
settled under the terms of the act passed by us and providing for the
legitimate bonded indebtedness of the State, a little over two and a half
million dollars worth of bonds and coupons which had not been passed upon.

“Governor Hampton, General Hagood, Judge Simonton, Judge Wallace and
in fact, all of the conservative thinking Democrats aligned themselves
under the provision enacted by us for the certain and final settlement
of the bonded indebtedness and appealed to their Democratic legislators
to stand by the Republican legislation on the subject and to confirm it.
A faction in the Democratic party obtained a majority of the Democrats
in the legislature against settling the question and they endeavored to
open up anew the whole subject of the State debt. We had a little over
thirty members in the House and enough Republican senators to sustain the
Hampton conservative faction and to stand up for honest finance, or by
our votes to place the debt question of the old State into the hands of
the plunderers and speculators. We were appealed to by General Hagood,
through me, and my answer to him was in these words: ‘General, our people
have learned the difference between profligate and honest legislation.
We have passed acts of financial reform, and with the assistance of God,
when the vote shall have been taken, you will be able to record for the
thirty-odd Negroes, slandered though they have been through the press,
that they voted solidly with you all for the honest legislation and the
preservation of the credit of the State.’ The thirty-odd Negroes in
the legislature and their senators by their votes did settle the debt
question and saved the State $13,000,000.

“We were eight years in power. We had built school houses, established
charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary system,
provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jails
and court houses, rebuilt the bridges and re-established the ferries.
In short, we had reconstructed the State and placed it upon the road
to prosperity and, at the same time, by our acts of financial reform,
transmitted to the Hampton government an indebtedness not greater by more
than $2,500,000 than was the bonded debt of the State in 1868, before the
Republican Negroes and their white allies came into power.”[180]

So too in Louisiana in 1872 and in Mississippi later the better element
of the Republicans triumphed at the polls and joining with the Democrats
instituted reforms, repudiated the worst extravagances and started toward
better things. But unfortunately there was one thing that the white South
feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance and incompetency, and that
was Negro honesty, knowledge and efficiency.

Paint the “carpet-bag” governments and Negro rule as black as may be, the
fact remains that the essence of the revolution which the overturning
of the Negro governments made was to put these black men and their
friends out of power. Outside the curtailing of expenses and stopping
of extravagance, not only did their successors make few changes in the
work which these legislatures and conventions had done, but they largely
carried out their plans, followed their suggestions and strengthened
their institutions. Practically the whole new growth of the South has
been accomplished under laws which black men helped to frame thirty years
ago. I know of no greater compliment to Negro suffrage, and no greater
contribution to real American democracy.[181]

The counter revolution came but it was too late. The Negro had stepped
so far into new economic freedom that he could never be put back into
slavery; and he had widened democracy to include not only a goodly and
increasing number of his own group but the mass of the poor white South.
The economic results of Negro suffrage were so great during the years
from 1865 to 1876 that they have never been overthrown. The Freedmen’s
Bureau came virtually to an end in 1869. General Howard’s report of
that year said: “In spite of all disorders that have prevailed and the
misfortunes that have fallen upon many parts of the South, a good degree
of prosperity and success has already been attained. To the oft-repeated
slander that the Negroes will not work and are incapable of taking care
of themselves, it is a sufficient answer that their voluntary labor has
produced nearly all the food that supported the whole people, besides
a large amount of rice, sugar and tobacco for export, and two millions
of bales of cotton each year, on which was paid into the United States
Treasury during the years 1866 to 1867 a tax of more than forty millions
of dollars ($40,000,000). It is not claimed that this result was wholly
due to the care and oversight of this Bureau but it is safe to say as it
has been said repeatedly by intelligent Southern white men, that without
the Bureau or some similar agency, the material interests of the country
would have greatly suffered and the government would have lost a far
greater amount than has been expended in its maintenance....

“Of the nearly eight hundred thousand (800,000) acres of farming land
and about five thousand (5,000) pieces of town property transferred to
this Bureau by military and treasury officers, or taken up by assistant
commissioners, enough was leased to produce a revenue of nearly four
hundred thousand dollars ($400,000). Some farms were set apart in
each state as homes for the destitute and helpless and a portion was
cultivated by freedmen prior to its restoration....

“Notice the appropriations by Congress:

    For the year ending July 1st, 1867                   $6,940,450.00
    For the year ending July 1st, 1868                    3,936,300.00
    For the relief of the destitute citizens in
      District of Columbia                                   40,000.00
    For relief of destitute freedmen in the same             15,000.00
    For expenses of paying bounties in 1869                 214,000.00
    For expenses for famine in Southern states and
      transportation                                      1,865,645.00
    For support of hospitals                                 50,000.00
    Making a total received from all sources of         $12,961,395.00

“Our expenditures from the beginning (including assumed accounts of the
‘Department of Negro Affairs’ from January 1st, 1865, to August 31,
1869) have been eleven million two hundred and forty-nine thousand and
twenty-eight dollars and ten cents ($11,249,028.10). In addition to
this cash expenditure the subsistence, medical supplies, quartermasters
stores, issued to the refugees and freedmen prior to July 1st, 1866, were
furnished by the commissary, medical and quartermasters department, and
accounted for in the current expenses of those departments; they were
not charged to nor paid for by my officers. They amounted to two million
three hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight dollars
and seventy-two cents ($2,330,788.72) in original cost; but a large
portion of these stores being damaged and condemned as unfit for issue
to troops, their real value to the Government was probably less than one
million dollars ($1,000,000). Adding their original cost to the amount
expended from appropriations and other sources, the total expenses of
our Government for refugees and freedmen to August 31, 1869, have been
thirteen million five hundred and seventy-nine thousand eight hundred
and sixteen dollars and eighty-two cents ($13,579,816.82). And deducting
fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) set apart as a special relief fund for
all classes of destitute people in the Southern states, the real cost
has been thirteen million twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and sixteen
dollars and eighty-two cents ($13,029,816.82).”[182]

By 1875, Negroes owned not less than 2,000,000 and perhaps as much as
4,000,000 acres of land and by 1880 this had increased to 6,000,000.

Notwithstanding the great step forward that the Negro had made this
sinister fact faced him and his friends: he formed a minority of the
population of the South. If that population was solidly arrayed against
him his legal status was in danger and his economic progress was going
to be difficult. It has been repeatedly charged that the action of the
Negro solidified Southern opposition; and that the Negro refusing to
listen to and make fair terms with his white neighbors, sought solely
Northern alliance and the protection of Northern bayonets. This is not
true and is turning facts hindside before. The ones who did the choosing
were the Southern master class. When they got practically their full
political rights in 1872 they had a chance to choose, if they would, the
best of the Negroes as their allies and to work with them as against the
most ruthless elements of the white South. Gradually there could have
been built up a political party or even parties of the best of the black
and white South. The Negroes would have been more than modest in their
demands so long as they saw a chance to keep moving toward real freedom.
But the master class did not choose this, although some like Wade Hampton
of South Carolina, made steps toward it. On the whole, the masters
settled definitely upon a purely racial line, recognizing as theirs
everything that had a white skin and putting without the pale of sympathy
and alliance, everything of Negro descent. By bitter and unyielding
social pressure they pounded the whites into a solid phalanx, but in
order to do this they had to give up much.

In the first place the leadership of the South passed from the hands of
the old slave owners into the hands of the newer town capitalists who
were largely merchants and the coming industrial leaders. Some of them
represented the older dominant class and some of them the newer poor
whites. They were welded, however, into a new economic mastership, less
cultivated, more ruthless and more keen in recognizing the possibilities
of Negro labor if “controlled” as they proposed to control it. This new
leadership, however, did not simply solidify the South, it proceeded to
make alliance in the North and to make alliance of the most effective
kind, namely economic alliance. The sentimentalism of the war period had
in the North changed to the recognition of the grim fact of destroyed
capital, dead workers and high prices. The South was a field which could
be exploited if peaceful conditions could be reached and the laboring
class made sufficiently content and submissive. It was the business then
of the “New” South to show to the northern capitalists that by uniting
the economic interests of both, they could exploit the Negro laborer and
the white laborer—pitting the two classes against each other, keeping
out labor unions and building a new industrial South which would pay
tremendous returns. This was the program which began with the withdrawal
of Northern troops in 1876 and was carried on up to 1890 when it gained
political sanction by open laws disfranchising the Negro.

But the experiment was carried on at a terrific cost. First, the Negro
could not be cowed and beaten back from his new-found freedom without a
mass of force, fraud and actual savagery such as strained the moral fibre
of the white South to the utmost. It will be a century before the South
recovers from this _débacle_ and this explains why this great stretch of
land has today so meager an output of science, literature and art and can
discuss practically nothing but the “Negro” problem. It explains why the
South is the one region in the civilized world where sometimes men are
publicly burned alive at the stake.

On the other hand, even this display of force and hatred did not keep
the Negro from advancing and the reason for this was that he was in
competition with a white laboring class which, despite all efforts and
advantages could not outstrip the Negroes and put them wholly under
their feet. By judiciously using this rivalry, the Negro gained economic
advantage after advantage, and foothold after foothold until today
while by no means free and still largely deprived of political rights,
we have a mass of 10,000,000 people whose economic condition may be
thus described: If we roughly conceive of something like a tenth of the
white population as below the line of decent free economic existence, we
may guess that a third of the black American population of 12 millions
is still in economic serfdom, comparable to condition of the submerged
tenth in cities, and held in debt and crime peonage in the sugar, rice
and cotton belts. Six other millions are emerging and fighting, in
competition with white laborers, a fairly successful battle for rising
wages and better conditions. In the last ten years a million of these
have been willing and able to move physically from Southern serfdom to
the freer air of the North.

The other three millions are as free as the better class of white
laborers; and are pushing and carrying the white laborer with them in
their grim determination to hold advantages gained and gain others.
The Negro’s agitation for the right to vote has made any step toward
disfranchising the poor white unthinkable, for the white vote is needed
to help disfranchise the blacks; the black man is pounding open the doors
of exclusive trade guilds; for how can unions exclude whites when Negro
competition can break a steel strike? The Negro is making America and
the world acknowledge democracy as feasible and desirable for all white
folk, for only in this way do they see any possibility of defending their
world wide fear of yellow, brown and black folk.

In a peculiar way, then, the Negro in the United States has emancipated
democracy, reconstructed the threatened edifice of Freedom and been a
sort of eternal test of the sincerity of our democratic ideals. As a
Negro minister, J. W. C. Pennington, said in London and Glasgow before
the Civil war: “The colored population of the United States has no
destiny separate from that of the nation in which they form an integral
part. Our destiny is bound up with that of America. Her ship is ours; her
pilot is ours; her storms are ours; her calms are ours. If she breaks
upon a rock, we break with her. If we, born in America, cannot live upon
the same soil upon terms of equality with the descendants of Scotchmen,
Englishmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Hungarians, Greeks and Poles,
then the fundamental theory of America fails and falls to the ground.”

This is still true and it puts the American Negro in a peculiar strategic
position with regard to the race problems of the whole world. What do
we mean by democracy? Do we mean democracy of the white races and the
subjection of the colored races? Or do we mean the gradual working
forward to a time when all men will have a voice in government and
industry and will be intelligent enough to express the voice?

It is this latter thesis for which the American Negro stands and has
stood, and more than any other element in the modern world it has slowly
but continuously forced America toward that point and is still forcing.
It must be remembered that it was the late Booker T. Washington who
planned the beginning of an industrial democracy in the South, based
on education, and that in our day the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, nine-tenths of whose members are Negroes,
is the one persistent agency in the United States which is voicing a
demand for democracy unlimited by race, sex or religion. American Negroes
have even crossed the waters and held three Pan-African Congresses
to arouse black men through the world to work for modern democratic
development. Thus the emancipation of the Negro slave in America becomes
through his own determined effort simply one step toward the emancipation
of all men.




CHAPTER VI

THE FREEDOM OF WOMANHOOD

    How the black woman from her low estate not only united two
    great human races but helped lift herself and all women to
    economic independence and self-expression.


The emancipation of woman is, of course, but one phase of the growth
of democracy. It deserves perhaps separate treatment because it is an
interesting example of the way in which the Negro has helped American
democracy.

In the United States in 1920 there were 5,253,695 women of Negro descent;
over twelve hundred thousand of these were children, another twelve
hundred thousand were girls and young women under twenty, and two and a
half million were adults. As a mass these women have but the beginnings
of education,—twelve percent of those from sixteen to twenty years of
age were unable to write, and twenty-eight percent of those twenty-one
years of age and over. These women are passing through, not only a moral,
but an economic revolution. Their grandmothers married at twelve and
fifteen, but in 1910 twenty-seven percent of these women who had passed
fifteen were still single.

Yet these black women toil and toil hard. There were in 1910 two and a
half million Negro homes in the United States. Out of these homes walked
daily to work two million women and girls over ten years of age,—one
half of the colored female population as against a fifth in the case of
white women. These, then, are a group of workers, fighting for their
daily bread like men; independent and approaching economic freedom! They
furnished a million farm laborers, 80,000 farmers, 22,000 teachers,
600,000 servants and washerwomen, and 50,000 in trades and merchandizing.
In 1920, 38.9% of colored women were at work as contrasted with 17.2%
of native white women. Of the colored women 39% were farming and 50% in
service.

The family group, however, which is the ideal of the culture into which
these folk have been born, is not based on the idea of an economically
independent working mother. Rather its ideal harks back to the sheltered
harem with the mother emerging at first as nurse and homemaker, while the
man remains the sole breadwinner. Thus the Negro woman more than the
women of any other group in America is the protagonist in the fight for
an economically independent womanhood in modern countries. Her fight has
not been willing or for the most part conscious but it has, nevertheless,
been curiously effective in its influence on the working world.

This matter of economic independence is, of course, the central fact in
the struggle of women for equality. In the earlier days the slave woman
was found to be economically as efficient as the man. Moreover, because
of her production of children she became in many ways more valuable;
but because she was a field hand the slave family differed from the
free family. The children were brought up very largely in common on the
plantation, there was comparatively small parental control or real family
life and the chief function of the woman was working and not making a
home. We can see here pre-figured a type of social development toward
which the world is working again for similar and larger reasons. In
our modern industrial organization the work of women is being found as
valuable as that of men. They are consequently being taken from the home
and put into industry and the rapidity by which this process is going on
is only kept back by the problem of the child; and more and more the
community is taking charge of the education of children for this reason.

In America the work of Negro women has not only pre-figured this
development but it has had a direct influence upon it. The Negro woman as
laborer, as seamstress, as servant and cook, has come into competition
with the white male laborer and with the white woman worker. The fact
that she could and did replace the white man as laborer, artisan and
servant, showed the possibility of the white woman doing the same thing,
and led to it. Moreover, the usual sentimental arguments against women
at work were not brought forward in the case of Negro womanhood. Nothing
illustrates this so well as the speech of Sojourner Truth before the
second National Woman Suffrage Convention, in 1852.

Sojourner Truth came from the lowest of the low, a slave whose children
had been sold away from her, a hard, ignorant worker without even a name,
who came to this meeting of white women and crouched in a corner against
the wall. “Don’t let her speak,” was repeatedly said to the presiding
officer. “Don’t get our cause mixed up with abolition and ‘niggers’.”
The discussion became warm, resolutions were presented and argued. Much
was said of the superiority of man’s intellect, the general helplessness
of women and their need for courtesy, the sin of Eve, etc. Most of the
white women, being “perfect ladies,” according to the ideals of the time,
were not used to speaking in public and finally to their dismay the black
woman arose from the corner. The audience became silent.

Sojourner Truth was an Amazon nearly six feet high, black, erect and with
piercing eyes, and her speech in reply was to the point:

“Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and
lifted ober ditches, and to have the best places every whar. Nobody eber
help me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place”
(and raising herself to her full height and her voice to a pitch like
rolling thunder, she asked), “and ai’n’t I a woman? Look at me! Look
at my arm!” (And she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her
tremendous muscular power.) “I have plowed, and planted, and gathered
into barns, and no man could head me—and ai’n’t I a woman? I could work
as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash
as well—and ai’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern and seen ’em
mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s
grief, none but Jesus heard—and ai’n’t I a woman? Den dey talks ’bout
dis ting in de head—what dis dey call it?” (“Intellect,” whispered some
one near.) “Dat’s it honey. What’s dat got to do with women’s rights or
niggers’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart,
wouldn’t ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?” ...
She ended by asserting that “If de fust woman God ever made was strong
enough to turn the world upside down, all ’lone, dese togedder” (and she
glanced her eye over us,) “ought to be able to turn it back and get it
right side up again, and now dey is asking to do it, de men better let
’em....”

“Amid roars of applause, she turned to her corner, leaving more than one
of us with streaming eyes and hearts beating with gratitude. She had
taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the slough
of difficulty, turning the whole tide in our favor. I have never in my
life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish
spirit of the day and turned the jibes and sneers of an excited crowd
into notes of respect and admiration. Hundreds rushed up to shake hands,
and congratulate the glorious old mother and bid her God speed on her
mission of ‘testifying again concerning the wickedness of this ’ere
people’.”[183]

Again and in more concrete ways the Negro woman has influenced America
and that is by her personal contact with the family—its men, women and
children. As housekeeper, maid and nurse—as confidante, adviser and
friend, she was often an integral part of the white family life of the
South, and transmitted her dialect, her mannerisms, her quaint philosophy
and her boundless sympathy.

Beyond this she became the concubine. It is a subject scarcely to be
mentioned today with our conventional morals and with the bitter racial
memories swirling about this institution of slavery. Yet the fact remains
stark, ugly, painful, beautiful.

Let us regard it dispassionately, remembering that the concubine is as
old as the world and that birth is a biological fact. It is usual to
speak of the Negro as being the great example of the unassimiliated
group in American life. This, of course, is flatly untrue; probably of
the strains of blood longest present in America since the discovery by
Columbus, the Negro has been less liable to absorption than other groups;
but this does not mean that he has not been absorbed and that his blood
has not been spread throughout the length and breadth of the land.

“We southern ladies are complimented with the names of wives; but we are
only the mistresses of seraglios,” said a sister of President Madison;
and a Connecticut minister who lived 14 years in Carolina said: “As it
relates to amalgamation, I can say, that I have been in respectable
families (so-called), where I could distinguish the family resemblance in
the slaves who waited upon the table. I once hired a slave who belonged
to his own uncle. It is so common for the female slaves to have white
children, that little is ever said about it. Very few inquiries are made
as to who the father is.”[184]

One has only to remember the early histories of cities like Charleston
and New Orleans to see what the Negro concubine meant and how she
transfigured America. Paul Alliot said in his reflections of Louisiana in
1803: “The population of that city counting the people of all colors is
only twelve thousand souls. Mulattoes and Negroes are openly protected by
the Government. He who strikes one of those persons, even though he had
run away from him, would be severely punished. Also twenty whites could
be counted in the prisons of New Orleans against one man of color. The
wives and daughters of the latter are much sought after by the white men,
and white women at times esteem well-built men of color.”[185] The same
writer tells us that few white men marry, preferring to live with their
slaves or with women of color.

A generation later the situation was much the same in spite of reaction.
In 1818, a traveler says of New Orleans: “Here may be seen in the same
crowds, Quadroons, Mulattoes, Samboes, Mustizos, Indians and Negroes; and
there are other commixtures which are not yet classified.”[186]

“The minor distinctions of complexion and race so fiercely adhered to
by the Creoles of the old regime were at their height at this time. The
glory and shame of the city were her quadroons and octoroons, apparently
constituting two aristocratic circles of society, the one as elegant
as the other, the complexions the same, the men the same, the women
different in race, but not in color, nor in dress nor in jewels. Writers
on fire with the romance of this continental city love to speak of the
splendors of the French Opera House, the first place in the country where
grand opera was heard, and tell of the tiers of beautiful women with
their jewels and airs and graces. Above the orchestra circle were four
tiers; the first filled with the beautiful dames of the city; the second
filled with a second array of beautiful women, attired like those of
the first, with no apparent difference; yet these were the octoroons and
quadroons, whose beauty and wealth were all the passports needed. The
third was for the _hoi polloi_ of the white race, and the fourth for the
people of color whose color was more evident. It was a veritable sandwich
of races.”[187]

Whatever judgment we may pass upon all this and however we may like or
dislike it, the fact remains that the colored slave women became the
medium through which two great races were united in America. Moreover
it is the fashion to assume that all this was merely infiltration
of white blood into the black; but we must remember it was just as
surely infiltration of black blood into white America and not even an
extraordinary drawing of the color line against all visible Negro blood
has ever been able to trace its true limits.

There is scarcely an American, certainly none of the South and no Negro
American, who does not know in his personal experience of Americans
of Negro descent who either do not know or do not acknowledge their
African ancestry. This is their right, if they do know, and a matter
of but passing importance if they do not. But without doubt the
spiritual legacy of Africa has been spread through this mingling of
blood. First, of course, we may think of those more celebrated cases
where the mixed blood is fairly well known but nevertheless the man has
worked and passed as a white man. One of the earliest examples was that
of Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton was a case in point of the
much disputed “Creole” blood. Theoretically the Creole was a person of
European descent on both sides born in the West Indies or America; but
as there were naturally few such persons in earlier times because of the
small number of European women who came to America, those descendants of
European fathers and mulatto mothers were in practice called “Creole”
and consequently it soon began to be _prima facie_ evidence, in the
West Indies, that an illegitimate child of a white father was of Negro
descent. Alexander Hamilton was such an illegitimate child. He had
colored relatives whose descendants still live in America and he was
currently reported to be colored in the island of Nevis. Further than
this, of course, proof is impossible. But to those who have given careful
attention to the subject, little further proof is needed.

To this can be added a long list of American notables,—bishops, generals
and members of Congress. Many writers and artists have found hidden
inspiration in their Negro blood and from the first importation in the
fifteenth century down to today there has been a continual mingling
of white and Negro blood in the United States both within and without
the bonds of wedlock that neither law nor slavery nor cruel insult and
contempt has been able to stop.

Besides these influences in economics and the home there has come the
work of Negro women in revolt which cannot be forgotten. We mention two
cases.

Harriet Tubman was a woman absolutely illiterate, who, from 1849 down to
the Civil War, spent her time journeying backward and forward between
the free and slave states and leading hundreds of black fugitives into
freedom. Thousands of dollars were put upon her head as rewards for her
capture; and she was continually sought by northern abolitionists and
was a confidant of John Brown. During the War, she acted as a spy, guide
and nurse and in all these days, worked without pay or reward. William
H. Seward said: “A nobler, higher spirit or truer, seldom dwells in the
human form,” and Wendell Phillips added: “In my opinion there are few
captains, perhaps few colonels who have done more for the loyal cause
since the War began and few men who did before that time more for the
colored race than our fearless and most sagacious friend, Harriet.”
Abraham Lincoln gave her ready audience.[188]

Quite a different kind of woman and yet strangely effective and
influential was Mammy Pleasants of California. Here was a colored
woman who became one of the shrewdest business minds of the State. She
anticipated the development in oil; she was the trusted confidant of many
of the California pioneers like Ralston, Mills and Booth and for years
was a power in San Francisco affairs. Yet, she held her memories, her
hatreds, her deep designs and throughout a life that was perhaps more
than unconventional, she treasured a bitter hatred for slavery and a
certain contempt for white people.

As a field hand in Georgia she had attracted the attention of a planter
by her intelligence and was bought and sent to Boston for training. Here
she was made a household drudge and eventually married Alexander Smith
who was associated with Garrison and the abolitionists. With $50,000
from his estate, she came to California and made a fortune. The epitaph
which she wanted on her tombstone was, “She was a friend of John Brown.”
When she first heard of the projects of Brown she determined to help
him and April 5, 1858, when John Brown was captured at Harper’s Ferry,
they found upon him a letter reading: “The ax is laid at the foot of the
tree; when the first blow is struck there will be more money to help.”
This was signed by three initials which the authorities thought were
“W. E. P.”—in fact they were “M. E. P.” and stood for Mammy Pleasants.
She had come East the spring before with a $30,000 United States draft
which she changed into coin and meeting John Brown in Chatham or Windsor,
Canada, had turned this money over to him. It was agreed, however, that
he was not to strike his blow until she had helped to arouse the slaves.
Disguised as a jockey, she went South and while there heard of Brown’s
raid and capture at Harper’s Ferry. She fled to New York and finally
reached California on a ship that came around Cape Horn, sailing in the
steerage under an assumed name.

Mammy Pleasants “always wore a poke bonnet and a plaid shawl,” and she
was “very black with thin lips” and “she handled more money during
pioneers days in California than any other colored person.”[189]

Here then, we have the types of colored women who rose out of the black
mass of slaves not only to guide their own folk but to influence the
nation.

We have noted then the Negro woman in America as a worker tending to
emancipate all women workers; as a mother nursing the white race and
uniting the black and white race; as a conspirator urging forward
emancipation in various sorts of ways; and we have finally only to
remember that today the women of America who are doing humble but on the
whole the most effective work in the social uplift of the lowly, not so
much by money as by personal contact, are the colored women. Little is
said or known about it but in thousands of churches and social clubs,
in missionary societies and fraternal organizations, in unions like the
National Association of Colored Women, these workers are founding and
sustaining orphanages and old folk homes; distributing personal charity
and relief; visiting prisoners; helping hospitals; teaching children;
and ministering to all sorts of needs. Their work, as it comes now and
then in special cases to the attention of individuals of the white world,
forms a splendid bond of encouragement and sympathy, and helps more than
most realize in minimizing racial difficulties and encouraging human
sympathy.[190]




CHAPTER VII

THE AMERICAN FOLK SONG

    How black folk sang their sorrow songs in the land of their
    bondage and made this music the only American folk music.


“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God
himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has
expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by
fateful chance the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands
today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful
expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been
neglected, it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but
notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of
the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.”[191]

Around the Negro folk-song there has arisen much of controversy and of
misunderstanding. For a long time they were utterly neglected; then every
once in a while and here and there they forced themselves upon popular
attention. In the thirties, they emerged and in tunes like “Near the lake
where droop the willow” and passed into current song or were caricatured
by the minstrels. Then came Stephen Foster who accompanied a mulatto maid
often to the Negro church and heard the black folk sing; he struck a new
note in songs like “Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Folks at Home” and “Nellie
was a Lady.” But it was left to war and emancipation to discover the real
primitive beauty of this music to the world.

When northern men and women who knew music, met the slaves at Port Royal
after its capture by Federal troops, they set down these songs in their
original form for the first time so that the world might hear and sing
them. The sea islands of the Carolinas where these meetings took place
“with no third witness” were filled with primitive black folk, uncouth
in appearance, and queer in language, but their singing was marvellous.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Miss McKim and others collected these
songs in 1867, making the first serious study of Negro American music.
The preface said:

“The musical capacity of the Negro race has been recognized for so many
years that it is hard to explain why no systematic effort has hitherto
been made to collect and preserve their melodies. More than thirty
years ago those plantation songs made their appearance which were so
extraordinarily popular for a while; and if ‘Coal-black Rose,’ ‘Zip
Coon’ and ‘Ole Virginny nebber tire’ have been succeeded by spurious
imitations, manufactured to suit the somewhat sentimental taste of our
community, the fact that these were called ‘Negro melodies’ was itself a
tribute to the musical genius of the race.

“The public had well-nigh forgotten these genuine slave songs, and with
them the creative power from which they sprung, when a fresh interest
was excited through the educational mission to the Port Royal Islands in
1861.”[192]

Still the world listened only half credulously until the Fisk Jubilee
Singers sang the slave songs “so deeply into the world’s heart that
it can never wholly forget them again.” The story of the Fisk Jubilee
singers is romantic. In abandoned barracks at Nashville hundreds of
colored children were being taught and the dream of a Negro University
had risen in the minds of the white teachers. But even the lavish
contribution for missionary work, which followed the war, had by 1870
begun to fall off. It happened that the treasurer of Fisk, George L.
White, loved music. He began to instruct the Fisk students in singing
and he used the folk-songs. He met all sorts of difficulties. The white
people of the nation and especially the conventional church folk who were
sending missionary money, were not interested in “minstrel ditties.” The
colored people looked upon these songs as hateful relics of slavery.
Nevertheless, Mr. White persisted, gathered a pioneer band of singers and
in 1871 started north.

“It was the sixth day of October in the year of our Lord, one thousand
eight hundred and seventy-one, when George L. White started out from
Fisk School with his eleven students to raise money, that Fisk might
live. Professor Adam K. Spence, who was principal of the school, gave
Mr. White all the money in his possession save one dollar, which he
held back, that the treasury might not be empty. While friends and
parents wept, waved, and feared, the train puffed out of the station.
All sorts of difficulties, obstacles, oppositions and failures faced
them until through wonderful persistence, they arrived at Oberlin, Ohio.
Here the National Council of Congregational Churches was in session.
After repeated efforts, Mr. White gained permission for his singers to
render one song. Many of the members of the Council objected vigorously
to having such singers. During the time of the session the weather
had been dark and cloudy. The sun had not shone one moment, it had not
cast one ray upon the village. The singers went into the gallery of the
church, unobserved by all save the moderator and a few who were on the
rostrum. At a lull in the proceeding, there floated sweetly to the ears
of the audience the measures of ‘Steal Away to Jesus.’ Suddenly the sun
broke through the clouds, shone through the windows upon the singers,
and verily they were a heavenly choir. For a time the Council forgot its
business and called for more and more. It was at this point that Henry
Ward Beecher almost demanded of Mr. White that he cancel all engagements
and come straight to his church in Brooklyn....”

The New York papers ridiculed and sneered at Beecher’s “nigger
minstrels.” But Beecher stuck to his plan and it was only a matter of
hearing them once when audiences went into ecstasies.

“When the Metropolitan newspapers called the company ‘Nigger Minstrels,’
Mr. White was face to face with a situation as serious as it was
awkward. His company had no appropriate name, and the odium of the title
attributed by the New York newspapers pained him intensely. If they were
to be known as ‘Nigger Minstrels,’ they could never realize his vision;
they were both handicapped and checkmated, and their career was dead....
The suggestiveness of the Hebrew Jubilee had been borne in upon his mind
and with joy of a deep conviction he exclaimed, ‘Children, you are the
Jubilee Singers’.”[193]

For seven years the career of this company of Jubilee Singers was a
continual triumph. They crowded the concert halls of New England; they
began to send money back to Fisk; they went to Great Britain and sang
before Queen Victoria, Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Gladstone. Gladstone
cried: “It’s wonderful!” Queen Victoria wept. Moody, the evangelist,
brought them again and again to his London meetings, and the singers
were loaded with gifts. Then they went to Germany, and again Kings and
peasants listened to them. In seven years they were able to pay not
only all of their own expenses but to send $150,000 in cash to Fisk
University, and out of this money was built Jubilee Hall, on the spot
that was once a slave market. “There it stands, lifting up its grateful
head to God in His heaven.”

For a long time after some people continued to sneer at Negro music. They
declared it was a “mere imitation,” that it had little intrinsic value,
that it was not the music of Negroes at all. Gradually, however, this
attitude has completely passed and today critics vie with each other in
giving tribute to this wonderful gift of the black man to America.

Damrosch says: “The Negro’s music isn’t ours, it is the Negro’s. It
has become a popular form of musical expression and is interesting,
but it is not ours. Nothing more characteristic of a race exists, but
it is characteristic of the Negro, not the American race. Through it a
primitive people poured out its emotions with wonderful expressiveness.
It no more expresses our emotions than the Indian music does.”

Recently, numbers of serious studies of the Negro folk-song have been
made. James Weldon Johnson says: “In the ‘spirituals,’ or slave songs,
the Negro has given America not only its only folk-songs, but a mass of
noble music. I never think of this music but that I am struck by the
wonder, the miracle of its production. How did the men who originated
these songs manage to do it? The sentiments are easily accounted for;
they are, for the most part, taken from the Bible. But the melodies,
where did they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet, and others so
wonderfully strong. Take, for instance, ‘Go Down, Moses’; I doubt that
there is a stronger theme in the whole musical literature of the world.

“It is to be noted that whereas the chief characteristic of Ragtime is
rhythm, the chief characteristic of the ‘spirituals’ is melody. The
melodies of ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ ‘Nobody
Knows de Trouble I See,’ ‘I couldn’t hear Nobody Pray,’ ‘Deep River,’
‘O, Freedom Over Me,’ and many others of these songs possess a beauty
that is—what shall I say? Poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime
the Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen response to the
sheer joy of living; in the ‘spirituals’ he voiced his sense of beauty
and his deep religious feeling.”[194]

H. E. Krehbiel says: “There was sunshine as well as gloom in the life
of the black slaves in the Southern colonies and States, and so we have
songs which are gay as well as grave; but as a rule the finest songs are
the fruits of suffering undergone and the hope of the deliverance from
bondage which was to come with translation to heaven after death. The
oldest of them are the most beautiful, and many of the most striking
have never yet been collected, partly because they contained elements,
melodic as well as rhythmical, which baffled the ingenuity of the early
collectors. Unfortunately, trained musicians have never entered upon the
field, and it is to be feared that it is now too late. The peculiarities
which the collaborators on ‘Slave Songs of the United States’
recognized, but could not imprison on the written page, were elements
which would have been of especial interest to the student of art.

“Is it not the merest quibble to say that these songs are not American?
They were created in America under American influences and by people who
are Americans in the same sense that any other element of our population
is American—every element except the aboriginal.... Is it only an African
who can sojourn here without becoming an American and producing American
things; is it a matter of length of stay in the country? Scarcely that;
or some Negroes would have at least as good a claim on the title as the
descendants of the Puritans and Pilgrims. Negroes figure in the accounts
of his voyages to America made by Columbus.... A year before the English
colonists landed on Plymouth Rock Negroes were sold into servitude in
Virginia.”[195]

The most gifted and sympathetic student of the folk-song in Africa and
America was Natalie Curtis, and it is scarcely necessary to add to what
she has so carefully and sympathetically written. She has traced the
connection between African and Afro-American music which has always been
assumed but never carefully proven. The African rhythm, through the use
of the drum as a leading instrument, produced musical emphasis which we
call syncopation. Primitive music usually shows rhythm and melody of the
voice sung in unison. But in Africa, part singing was developed long
before it appeared in Europe. The great difference between the music of
Africa and the music of Europe lies in rhythm; in Europe the music is
accented on the regular beats of the music while in Africa the accents
fall often on the unstressed beats. It is this that coming down through
the Negro folk-song in America has produced what is known as ragtime.

Mrs. Curtis Burlin shows that the folk-song of the African in America
can be traced direct to Africa: “As a creator of beauty the black man is
capable of contributing to the great art of the world.

“The Negro’s pronounced gift for music is today widely recognized. That
gift, brought to America in slave-ships, was nurtured by that mother of
woe, human slavery, till out of suffering and toil there sprang a music
which speaks to the heart of mankind—the prayer-song of the American
Negro. In Africa is rooted the parent stem of that out-flowering of Negro
folk-song in other lands.

“Through the Negro this country is vocal with a folk-music intimate,
complete and beautiful. It is the Negro music with its by-product of
‘ragtime’ that today most widely influences the popular song-life of
America, and Negro rhythms have indeed captivated the world at large. Nor
may we foretell the impress that the voice of the slave will leave upon
the art of the country—a poetic justice, this! For the Negro everywhere
discriminated against, segregated and shunned, mobbed and murdered—he
it is whose melodies are on all our lips, and whose rhythms impel our
marching feet in a ‘war for democracy.’ The irresistible music that wells
up from this sunny and unresentful people is hummed and whistled, danced
to and marched to, laughed over and wept over, by high and low and rich
and poor throughout the land. The downtrodden black man whose patient
religious faith has kept his heart still unembittered, is fast becoming
the singing voice of all America. And in his song we hear a prophecy of
the dignity and worth of Negro genius.”[196]

The Negro folk-song entered the Church and became the prayer song and
the sorrow song, still with its haunting melody but surrounded by the
inhibitions of a cheap theology and a conventional morality. But the
musical soul of a race unleashed itself violently from these bonds and
in the saloons and brothels of the Mississippi bottoms and gulf coast
flared to that crimson license of expression known as “ragtime,” “jazz”
and the more singular “blues” retaining with all their impossible words
the glamour of rhythm and wild joy. White composers hastily followed with
songs like “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” and numerous successors
in popular favor.

Out of ragtime grew a further development through both white and black
composers. The “blues,” a curious and intriguing variety of love song
from the levees of the Mississippi, became popular and was spread by the
first colored man who was able to set it down, W. C. Handy of Memphis.
Other men, white and colored, from Stephen Foster to our day, have
taken another side of Negro music and developed its haunting themes
and rippling melody into popular songs and into high and fine forms of
modern music, until today the influence of the Negro reaches every part
of American music, of many foreign masters like Dvorak; and certainly no
program of concert music could be given in America without voicing Negro
composers and Negro themes.

We can best end this chapter with the word of a colored man: “But there
is something deeper than the sensuousness of beauty that makes for the
possibilities of the Negro in the realm of the arts, and that is the soul
of the race. The wail of the old melodies and the plaintive quality that
is ever present in the Negro voice are but the reflection of a background
of tragedy. No race can rise to the greatest heights of art until it has
yearned and suffered. The Russians are a case in point. Such has been
their background in oppression and striving that their literature and
art are today marked by an unmistakable note of power. The same future
beckons to the American Negro. There is something very elemental about
the heart of the race, something that finds its origin in the African
forest, in the sighing of the night wind, and in the falling of the
stars. There is something grim and stern about it all, too, something
that speaks of the lash, of the child torn from its mother’s bosom, of
the dead body riddled with bullets and swinging all night from a limb by
the roadside.”[197]




CHAPTER VIII

NEGRO ART AND LITERATURE

    How the tragic story of the black slave has become a central
    theme of the story of America and has inspired literature and
    created art.


The Negro is primarily an artist. The usual way of putting this is to
speak disdainfully of his “sensuous” nature. This means that the only
race which has held at bay the life destroying forces of the tropics,
has gained therefrom in some slight compensation a sense of beauty,
particularly for sound and color, which characterizes the race. The Negro
blood which flowed in the veins of many of the mightiest of the Pharaohs
accounts for much of Egyptian art, and indeed Egyptian civilization owes
much in its origin to the development of the large strain of Negro blood
which manifested itself in every grade of Egyptian society.

Semitic civilization also had its Negroid influences, and these
continually turn toward art as in the case of black Nosseyeb, one of the
five great poets of Damascus under the Ommiades, and the black Arabian
hero, Antar. It was therefore not to be wondered at that in modern days
one of the greatest of modern literatures, the Russian, should have been
founded by Pushkin, the grandson of a full blooded Negro, and that among
the painters of Spain was the mulatto slave, Gomez. Back of all this
development by way of contact, come the artistic sense of the indigenous
Negro as shown in the stone figures of Sherbro, the bronzes of Benin,
the marvelous hand work in iron and other metals which has characterized
the Negro race so long that archaeologists today, with less and less
hesitation, are ascribing the discovery of the welding of iron to the
Negro race.

Beyond the specific ways in which the Negro has contributed to American
art stands undoubtedly his spirit of gayety and the exotic charm which
his presence has loaned the parts of America which were spiritually free
enough to enjoy it. In New Orleans, for instance, after the war of 1812
and among the free people of color there was a beautiful blossoming of
artistic life which the sordid background of slavery had to work hard
to kill. The “people of color” grew in number and waxed wealthy. Famous
streets even today bear testimony of their old importance. Congo Square
in the old Creole quarter where Negroes danced the weird “Bamboula” long
before colored Coleridge-Taylor made it immortal and Gottschalk wrote
his Negro dance. Camp street and Julia street took their names from
the old Negro field and from the woman who owned land along the Canal.
Americans and Spanish both tried to get the support and sympathy of the
free Negroes. The followers of Aaron Burr courted them.

“Writers describing the New Orleans of this period agree in presenting a
picture of a continental city, most picturesque, most un-American, and as
varied in color as a street of Cairo. There they saw French, Spaniards,
English, Bohemians, Negroes, mulattoes, varied clothes, picturesque white
dresses of the fairer women, brilliant cottons of the darker ones. The
streets, banquettes, we should say, were bright with color, the nights
filled with song and laughter. Through the scene, the people of color add
the spice of color; in the life, they add the zest of romance.”[198]

Music is always back of this gay Negro spirit and the folk song which the
Negro brought to America was developed not simply by white men but by the
Negro himself. Musicians and artists sprung from the Louisiana group.
There was Eugene Warburg who distinguished himself as a sculptor in
Italy. There was Victor Sejour who became a poet and composer in France,
Dubuclet became a musician in Bordeaux and the seven Lamberts taught
and composed in America, France and Brazil. One of the brothers Sydney
was decorated for his work by the King of Portugal. Edmund Dèdè became a
director of a leading orchestra in France.[199]

Among other early colored composers of music are J. Hemmenway who lived
in Philadelphia in the twenties; A. J. Conner of Philadelphia between
1846-57 published numbers of compositions; in the seventies Justin
Holland was well known as a composer in Cleveland, Ohio; Samuel Milady,
known by his stage name as Sam Lucas, was born in 1846 and died in 1916.
He wrote many popular ballads, among them “Grandfather’s Clock Was Too
Tall For The Shelf.” George Melbourne, a Negro street minstrel, composed
“Listen to the Mocking-Bird,” although a white man got the credit. James
Bland wrote “Carry me Back to Ole Virginny”; Gussie L. Davis composed
popular music at Cincinnati.[200]

Coming to our day we remember that the Anglo-African Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor received much of his inspiration from his visits to
the American Negro group; then comes Harry T. Burleigh, perhaps the
greatest living song writer in America. Among his works are “Five Songs”
by Laurence Hope; “The Young Warrior,” which became one of the greatest
of the war songs; “The Grey Wolf” and “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors.” His
adaptations of Negro folk-songs are widely known and he assisted Dvorak
in his “New World Symphony.” R. Nathaniel Dett has written “Listen to
the Lambs,” a carol widely known, and “The Magnolia Suite.” Rosamond
Johnson wrote “Under the Bamboo Tree” and a dozen popular favorites
beside choruses and marches. Clarence Cameron White has composed and
adapted and Maud Cuney Hare has revived and explained Creole music.
Edmund T. Jenkins has won medals at the Royal Academy in London. Among
the colored performers on the piano are R. Augustus Lawson, who has often
been soloist at the concerts of the Hartford Philharmonic Orchestra;
Hazel Harrison, a pupil of Busoni; and Helen Hagen who took the Sanford
scholarship at Yale. Carl Diton is a pianist who has transcribed many
Negro melodies. Melville Charlton has done excellent work on the organ.

Then we must remember the Negro singers, the “Black Swan” of the early
19th century whose voice compared with Jenny Lind’s; the Hyer sisters,
Flora Batson, Florence Cole Talbert, and Roland W. Hayes, the tenor
whose fine voice has charmed London, Paris and Vienna and who is now one
of the leading soloists of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

The Negro has been one of the greatest originators of dancing in the
United States and in the world. He created the “cake walk” and most of
the steps in the “clog” dance which has so enthralled theatre audiences.
The modern dances which have swept over the world like the “Tango” and
“Turkey Trot” originated among the Negroes of the West Indies. The Vernon
Castles always told their audiences that their dances were of Negro
origin.[201]

We turn now to other forms of art and more particularly literature. Here
the subject naturally divides itself into three parts: _first_, the
influence which the Negro has had on American literature,—and _secondly_,
the development of a literature for and by Negroes. And lastly the number
of Negroes who have gained a place in National American literature.

From the earliest times the presence of the black man in America has
inspired American writers. Among the early Colonial writers the Negro was
a subject as, for instance, in Samuel Sewall’s “Selling of Joseph,” the
first American anti-slavery tract published in 1700. But we especially
see in the influence of the Negro’s condition in the work of the masters
of the 19th century, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier,
James Russell Lowell, Walt Whitman, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher
Stowe and Lydia Maria Child. With these must be named the orators Wendell
Phillips, Charles Sumner, John C. Calhoun, Henry Ward Beecher. In our own
day, we have had the writers of fiction, George U. Cable, Thomas Nelson
Page, Thomas Dixson, Ruth McEnery Stewart, William Dean Howells, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson.

It may be said that the influence of the Negro here is a passive
influence and yet one must remember that it would be inconceivable to
have an American literature, even that written by white men, and not have
the Negro as a subject. He has been the lay figure, but after all, the
figure has been alive, it has moved, it has talked, felt and influenced.

In the minds of these and other writers how has the Negro been portrayed?
It is a fascinating subject which I can but barely touch: in the days
of Shakespeare and Southerne the black man of fiction was a man, a
brave, fine, if withal over-trustful and impulsive, hero. In science he
was different but equal, cunning in unusual but mighty possibilities.
Then with the slave trade he suddenly became a clown and dropped
from sight. He emerged slowly beginning about 1830 as a dull stupid
but contented slave, capable of doglike devotion, superstitious and
incapable of education. Then, in the abolition controversy he became a
victim, a man of sorrows, a fugitive chased by blood-hounds, a beautiful
raped octoroon, a crucified Uncle Tom, but a lay figure, objectively
pitiable but seldom subjectively conceived. Suddenly a change came after
Reconstruction. The black man was either a faithful old “Befoh de wah”
darky worshipping lordly white folk, or a frolicking ape, or a villain,
a sullen scoundrel, a violator of womanhood, a low thief and misbirthed
monster. He was sub-normal and congenitally incapable. He was represented
as an unfit survival of Darwinian natural selection. Philanthropy and
religion stood powerless before his pigmy brain and undeveloped morals.
In a “thousands years”? Perhaps. But at present, an upper beast. Out of
this today he is slowly but tentatively, almost apologetically rising—a
somewhat deserving, often poignant, but hopeless figure; a man whose
only proper end is dramatic suicide physically or morally. His trouble
is natural and inborn inferiority, slight by scientific measurement
but sufficient to make absolute limits to his possibilities, save in
exceptional cases.

And here we stand today. As a normal human being reacting humanly to
human problems the Negro has never appeared in the fiction or the science
of white writers, with a bare half dozen exceptions; while to the white
southerner who “knows him best” he is always an idiot or a monster,
and he sees him as such, no matter what is before his very eyes. And
yet, with all this, the Negro has held the stage. In the South he is
everything. You cannot discuss religion, morals, politics, social life,
science, earth or sky, God or devil without touching the Negro. It is
a perennial and continuous and continual subject of books, editorials,
sermons, lectures and smoking car confabs. In the north and west while
seldom in the center, the Negro is always in the wings waiting to appear
or screaming shrill lines off stage. What would intellectual America do
if she woke some fine morning to find no “Negro” Problem?

Coming now to the slowly swelling stream of a distinct group literature,
by and primarily for the Negro, we enter a realm only partially known
to white Americans. First, there come the rich mass of Negro folk lore
transplanted from Africa and developed in America. A white writer, Joel
Chandler Harris, first popularized “Uncle Remus” and “Brer Rabbit” for
white America; but he was simply the deft and singularly successful
translator—the material was Negroid and appears repeatedly among the
black peasants and in various forms and versions. Take for instance the
versions of the celebrated tar-baby story of Joel Chandler Harris. C.
C. Jones took down a striking version apparently direct from Negro lips
early in the 19th century:

“‘Do Buh Wolf, bun me: broke me neck, but don’t trow me in de brier
patch. Lemme dead one time. Don’t tarrify me no mo.’ Buh Wolf yet bin
know wuh Buh Rabbit up teh. Eh tink eh bin guine tare Bur Rabbit hide
off. So, wuh eh do? Eh loose Buh Rabbit from de spakleberry bush, an eh
tek um by de hine leg, an eh swing um roun’, en eh trow um way in de tick
brier patch fuh tare eh hide and cratch eh yeye out. De minnit Buh Rabbit
drap in de brier patch, eh cock up eh tail, eh jump, an holler back to
Buh Wolf: ‘Good bye, Budder! Dis de place me mammy fotch me up,—dis de
place me mammy fotch me up.’ An eh gone before Buh Wolf kin ketch um. Buh
Rabbit too scheemy.”

The Harris version shows the literary touch added by the white man. But
the Negro version told by Jones has all the meat of the primitive tale.

Next we note the folk rhymes and poetry of Negroes, sometimes
accompanying their music and sometimes not. A white instructor in English
literature at the University of Virginia says:

“Of all the builders of the nation the Negro alone has created a species
of lyric verse that all the world may recognize as a distinctly American
production.”

T. W. Talley, a Negro, has recently published an exhaustive collection of
these rhymes. They form an interesting collection of poetry often crude
and commonplace but with here and there touches of real poetry and quaint
humor.[202]

The literary expression of Negroes themselves has had continuous
development in America since the eighteenth century.[203] It may however
be looked upon from two different points of view: We may think of the
writing of Negroes as self-expression and as principally for themselves.
Here we have a continuous line of writers. Only a few of these, however
would we think of as contributing to American literature as such and
yet this inner, smaller stream of Negro literature overflows faintly at
first and now evidently more and more into the wider stream of American
literature; on the other hand there have been figures in American
literature who happen to be of Negro descent and who are but vaguely to
be identified with the group stream as such. Both these points of view
are interesting but let us first take up the succession of authors who
form a group literature by and for Negroes.

As early as the eighteenth century, and even before the Revolutionary
War the first voices of Negro authors were heard in the United States.
Phyllis Wheatley, the black poetess, was easily the pioneer, her first
poems appearing in 1773, and other editions in 1774 and 1793. Her
earliest poem was in memory of George Whitefield. She was honored by
Washington and leading Englishmen and was as a writer above the level of
her American white contemporaries.

She was followed by Richard Allen, first Bishop of the African Methodist
Church whose autobiography, published in 1793 was the beginning of
that long series of personal appears and narratives of which Booker
T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” was the latest. Benjamin Banneker’s
almanacs represented the first scientific work of American Negroes, and
began to be issued in 1792.

Coming now to the first decades of the nineteenth century we find some
essays on freedom by the African Society of Boston, and an apology for
the new Negro church formed in Philadelphia. Paul Cuffe, disgusted with
America, wrote an early account of Sierra Leone, while the celebrated
Lemuel Haynes, ignoring the race question, dipped deeply into the New
England theological controversy about 1815. In 1829 came the first
full-voiced, almost hysterical, protest against slavery and the color
line in David Walker’s Appeal which aroused Southern legislatures to
action. This was followed by the earliest Negro conventions which issued
interesting minutes; two appeals against disfranchisement in Pennsylvania
appeared in this decade, one written by Robert Purvis, who also wrote a
biography of his father-in-law, Mr. James Forten, and the other appeal
written by John Bowers and others. The life of Gustavus Vassa, also known
by his African name of Olaudah Equiana, was published in America in 1837
continuing the interesting personal narratives.

In 1840 some strong writers began to appear. Henry Highland Garnet and
J. W. C. Pennington preached powerful sermons and gave some attention
to Negro history in their pamphlets: R. B. Lewis made a more elaborate
attempt at Negro history. Whitfield’s poems appeared in 1846, and William
Wells Brown began a career of writing which lasted from 1847 until after
the Civil War. He began his literary career by the publication of his
“Narrative of a Fugitive Slave” in 1847. This was followed by a novel in
1853, “Sketches” from abroad in 1855, a play in 1858, “The Black Man” in
1863, “The Negro in the American Rebellion” in 1867, and “The Rising Son”
in 1874. The Colored Convention in Cincinnati and Cleveland published
reports in this decade and Bishop Loguen wrote his life history. In
1845 Douglass’ autobiography made its first appearance, destined to run
through endless editions until the last in 1893. Moreover it was in 1841
that the first Negro magazine appeared in America, edited by George
Hogarth and published by the A. M. E. Church.

In the fifties James Whitfield published further poems, and a new poet
arose in the person of Frances E. W. Harper, a woman of no little ability
who died lately; Martin R. Delaney and William Cooper Nell wrote further
of Negro history, Nell especially making valuable contributions of the
history of the Negro soldiers. Three interesting biographies were added
in this decade to the growing number; Josiah Henson, Samuel C. Ward and
Samuel Northrop; while Catto, leaving general history came down to the
better known history of the Negro church.

In the sixties slave narratives multiplied, like that of Linda Brent,
while two studies of Africa based on actual visits were made by Robert
Campbell and Dr. Alexander Crummell; William Douglass and Bishop Daniel
Payne continued the history of the Negro church, and William Wells Brown
carried forward his work in general Negro history. In this decade, too,
Bishop Tanner began his work in Negro theology.

Most of the Negro talent in the seventies was taken up in politics;
the older men like Bishop Wayman wrote of their experiences; Sojourner
Truth added her story to the slave narratives. A new poet arose in the
person of A. A. Whitman, while James Monroe Trotter was the first to take
literary note of the musical ability of his race. Robert Brown Elliott
stirred the nation by his eloquence in Congress. The Fisk edition of the
Songs of the Jubilee Singers appeared.

In the eighties there are signs of unrest and conflicting streams of
thought. On the one hand the rapid growth of the Negro church is shown
by the writers on church subjects like Moore and Wayman. The historical
spirit was especially strong. Still wrote of the Underground Railroad;
Simmons issued his interesting biographical dictionary, and the greatest
historian of the race appeared when George W. Williams issued his
two-volume history of the Negro Race in America. The political turmoil
was reflected in Langston’s Freedom and Citizenship, Fortune’s Black and
White, and Straker’s New South, and found its bitterest arraignment in
Turner’s pamphlets; but with all this went other new thought: Scarborough
published “First Greek Lessons”; Bishop Payne issued his Treatise on
Domestic Education, and Stewart studied Liberia.

In the nineties came histories, essays, novels and poems, together with
biographies and social studies. The history was represented by Payne’s
History of the A. M. E. Church, Hood’s One Hundred Years of the A. M.
E. Zion Church, Anderson’s sketch of Negro Presbyterianism and Hagood’s
Colored Man in the M. E. Church; general history of the older type
was represented by R. L. Perry’s Cushite and of the newer type in E.
A. Johnson’s histories, while one of the secret societies found their
historian in Brooks; Crogman’s essays appeared and Archibald Grimke’s
biographies. The race question was discussed in Frank Grimke’s published
sermons, social studies were made by Penn, Wright, Mossell, Crummell,
Majors and others. Most notable, however, was the rise of the Negro
novelist and poet with national recognition: Frances Harper was still
writing and Griggs began his racial novels, but both of these spoke
primarily to the Negro race; on the other hand, Chesnutt’s six novels
and Dunbar’s inimitable works spoke of the whole nation. J. T. Wilson’s
“Black Phalanx,” the most complete study of the Negro soldier, came in
these years.

Booker T. Washington’s work began with his address at Atlanta in 1895,
“Up From Slavery” in 1901, “Working with the Hands” in 1904, and “The Man
Farthest Down” in 1912. The American Negro Academy, a small group, began
the publication of occasional papers in 1897 and has published a dozen
or more numbers including a “Symposium on the Negro and the Elective
Franchise” in 1905, a “Comparative Study of the Negro Problem” in 1899,
Love’s “Disfranchisement of the Negro” in 1899, Grimke’s Study of Denmark
Vesey in 1901 and Steward’s “Black St. Domingo Legion” in 1899. Since
1900 the stream of Negro writing has continued. Dunbar has found a
successor in the critic and compiler of anthologies, W. S. Braithwaite;
Booker T. Washington has given us his biography and Story of the Negro;
Kelly Miller’s trenchant essays have appeared in book form and he has
issued numbers of critical monographs on the Negro problem with wide
circulation. Scientific historians have appeared in Benjamin Brawley and
Carter Woodson and George W. Mitchell. Sinclair’s Aftermath of Slavery
has attracted attention, as have the studies made by Atlanta University.
The Negro in American Sculpture has been studied by H. F. M. Murray.

The development in poetry has been significant, beginning with Phyllis
Wheatley.[204] Jupiter Hammon came in the 18th century, George M. Horton
in the early part of the 19th century followed by Frances Harper who
began publishing in 1854 and A. A. Whitman whose first attempts at epic
poetry were published in the seventies. In 1890 came the first thin
volume of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the undoubted laureate of the race, who
published poems and one or two novels up until the beginning of the 20th
century. He was succeeded by William Stanley Braithwaite whose fame rests
chiefly upon his poetic criticism and his anthologies, and finally by
James Weldon Johnson, Claud McKay who came out of the West Indies with a
new and sincere gift, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Johnson and Jessie Fauset.
Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., Langston Hughes, Roscoe C. Jamison and Countée
Cullen have done notable work in verse. Campbell, Davis and others have
continued the poetic tradition of Negro dialect.

On the whole, the literary output of the American Negro has been both
large and creditable, although, of course, comparatively little known;
few great names have appeared and only here and there work that could be
called first class, but this is not a peculiarity of Negro literature.

The time has not yet come for the great development of American Negro
literature. The economic stress is too great and the racial persecution
too bitter to allow the leisure and the poise for which literature calls.
“The Negro in the United States is consuming all his intellectual energy
in this gruelling race-struggle.” And the same statement may be made
in a general way about the white South. Why does not the white South
produce literature and art? The white South, too, is consuming all of its
intellectual energy in this lamentable conflict. Nearly all of the mental
efforts of the white South run through one narrow channel. The life of
every southern white man and all of his activities are impassably limited
by the ever present Negro problem. And that is why, as Mr. H. L. Mencken
puts it, in all that vast region, with its thirty or forty million people
and its territory as large as half a dozen Frances or Germanys, “there is
not a single poet, not a serious historian, not a creditable composer,
not a critic good or bad, not a dramatist dead or alive.”

On the other hand, never in the world has a richer mass of material been
accumulated by a people than that which the Negroes possess today and are
becoming increasingly conscious of. Slowly but surely they are developing
artists of technic who will be able to use this material. The nation
does not notice this for everything touching the Negro has hitherto been
banned by magazines and publishers unless it took the form of caricature
or bitter attack, or was so thoroughly innocuous as to have no literary
flavor. This attitude shows signs of change at last.

Most of the names in this considerable list except those toward the last
would be unknown to the student of American literature. Nevertheless they
form a fairly continuous tradition and a most valuable group expression.
From them several have arisen, as I have said, to become figures in the
main stream of American literature. Phyllis Wheatley was an American
writer of Negro descent just as Dumas was a French writer of Negro
descent. She was the peer of her best American contemporaries but she
represented no conscious Negro group. Lemuel Haynes wrote for Americans
rather than for Negroes.

Dunbar occupies a unique place in American literature. He raised a
dialect and a theme from the minstrel stage to literature and became
and remains a national figure. Charles W. Chesnutt followed him as a
novelist, and many white people read in form of fiction a subject which
they did not want to read or hearken to. He gained his way unaided and
by sheer merit and is a recognized American novelist. Braithwaite is a
critic whose Negro descent is not generally known and has but slightly
influenced his work. His place in American literature is due more to his
work as a critic and anthologist than to his work as a poet. “There is
still another rôle he has played, that of friend of poetry and poets. It
is a recognized fact that in the work which preceded the present revival
of poetry in the United States, no one rendered more unremitting and
valuable service than Mr. Braithwaite. And it can be said that no future
study of American poetry of this age can be made without reference to
Braithwaite.”

Of McKay’s poems, Max Eastman writes that it “should be illuminating to
observe that while these poems are characteristic of that race as we most
admire it—they are gentle, simple, candid, brave and friendly, quick of
laughter and of tears—yet they are still more characteristic of what is
deep and universal in mankind. There is no special or exotic kind of
merit in them, no quality that demands a transmutation of our own natures
to perceive. Just as the sculptures and wood and ivory carvings of the
vast forgotten African Empires of Ife and Benin, although so wistful in
their tranquility, are tranquil in the possession of the qualities of all
classic and great art, so these poems, the purest of them, move with a
sovereignty that is never new to the lovers of the high music of human
utterance.”[205]

The later writers like Jean Toomer, Claud McKay, Jessie Fauset and others
have come on the stage when the stream of Negro literature has grown to
be of such importance and gained so much of technique and merit that
it tends to merge into the broad flood of American literature and any
notable Negro writer became _ipso facto_ a national writer.

One must not forget the Negro orator. While in the white world the human
voice as a vehicle of information and persuasion has waned in importance
until the average man is somewhat suspicious of “eloquence,” in the Negro
world the spoken word is still dominant and Negro orators have wielded
great influence upon both white and black from the time of Frederick
Douglass and Samuel Ward down to the day of J. C. Price and Booker T.
Washington. There is here, undoubtedly, something of unusual gift and
personal magnetism.

One must note in this connection the rise and spread of a Negro
press—magazines and weeklies which are voicing to the world with
increasing power the thought of American Negroes. The influence of this
new force in America is being recognized and the circulation of these
papers aggregate more than a million copies.

On the stage the Negro has naturally had a most difficult chance to be
recognized. He has been portrayed by white dramatists and actors, and for
a time it seemed but natural for a character like Othello to be drawn, or
for Southerne’s Oroonoko to be presented in 1696 in England with a black
Angola prince as its hero. Beginning, however, with the latter part of
the 18th century the stage began to make fun of the Negro and the drunken
character Mungo was introduced at Drury Lane.

In the United States this tradition was continued by the “Negro
Minstrels” which began with Thomas D. Rice’s imitation of a Negro
cripple, Jim Crow. Rice began his work in Louisville in 1828 and had
great success. Minstrel companies imitating Negro songs and dances
and blackening their faces gained a great vogue until long after the
Civil War. Negroes themselves began to appear as principals in minstrel
companies after a time and indeed as early as 1820 there was an
“African company” playing in New York. No sooner had the Negro become
the principal in the minstrel shows than he began to develop and uplift
the art. This took a long time but eventually there appeared Cole and
Johnson, Ernest Hogan and Williams and Walker. Their development of a new
light comedy marked an epoch and Bert Williams was at his recent death
without doubt the leading comedian on the American stage.

In the legitimate drama there was at first no chance for the Negro in the
United States. Ira Aldridge, born in Maryland, had to go to Europe for
opportunity. There he became associated with leading actors like Edmund
Keene and was regarded in the fifties as one of the two or three greatest
actors in the world. He was honored and decorated by the King of Sweden,
the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia. He
had practically no successor until Charles Gilpin triumphed in “The
Emperor Jones” in New York during the season 1920-21.

Efforts to develop a new distinctly racial drama and portray the dramatic
struggle of the Negro in America and elsewhere have rapidly been made.
Mrs. Emily Hapgood made determined effort to initiate a Negro theatre.
She chose the plays of Ridgeley Torrence, a white playwright, who wrote
for the Negro players “Granny Maumee” and “The Rider of Dreams,” pieces
singularly true to Negro genius. The plays were given with unusual merit
and gained the highest praise.

This movement, interrupted by the war, has been started again by the
Ethiopian Players of Chicago and especially by the workers at Howard
University where a Negro drama with Negro instructors, Negro themes and
Negro players is being developed. One of the most interesting pageants
given in America was written, staged and performed by Negroes in New
York, Philadelphia and Washington.

Charles Gilpin had been trained with Williams and Walker and other
colored companies. He got his first chance on the legitimate stage by
playing the part of Curtis in Drinkwater’s “Abraham Lincoln.” Then he
became the principal in O’Neill’s wonderful play and was nominated by the
Drama League in 1921 as one of the ten persons who had contributed most
to the American theatre during the year. Paul Robeson and Evelyn Preer
are following Gilpin’s footsteps.

There is no doubt of the Negro’s dramatic genius. Stephen Graham writes:

“I visited one evening a Negro theatre where a musical comedy was going
on—words and music both by Negroes. It opened with the usual singing and
dancing chorus of Negro girls. They were clad in yellow and crimson and
mauve combinations with white tapes on one side from the lace edge of the
knicker to their dusky arms. They danced from the thigh rather than from
the knee, moving waist and bosom in unrestrained undulation, girls with
large, startled seeming eyes and uncontrollable masses of dark hair.... A
dance of physical joy and abandon, with no restraint in the toes or the
knees, no veiling of the eyes, no half shutting of the lips, no holding
in of the hair. Accustomed to the very aesthetic presentment of the
Bacchanalia in the Russian ballet, it might be difficult to call one of
those Negro dancers a Bacchante, and yet there was one whom I remarked
again and again, a Queen of Sheba in her looks, a face like starry night,
and she was clad slightly in mauve, and went into such ecstacies during
the many encores that her hair fell down about her bare shoulders, and
her cheeks and knees, glistening with perspiration, outshone her eyes....
I had seen nothing so pretty or so amusing, so bewilderingly full of life
and color, since Sanine’s production of the ‘Fair of Sorochinsky’ in
Moscow.”

Turning now to painting, we note a young African painter contemporary
with Phyllis Wheatley who had gained some little renown. Then a half
century ago came E. M. Banister, the center of a group of artists forming
the Rhode Island Art Club, and one of whose pictures took a medal at the
Centennial Exposition in 1876.

William A. Harper died in 1910. His “Avenue of Poplars” took a prize of
$100 at the Chicago Art Institute. William Edward Scott studied in Paris
under Tanner. His picture “La Pauvre Voisine” was hung in the salon in
1910 and bought by the government of the Argentine Republic. Another
picture was hung in Paris and took first prize at the Indiana State Fair,
and a third picture was exhibited in the Royal Academy in London. Lately
Mr. Scott has specialized in mural painting. His work is found in ten
public schools in Chicago, in four in Indianapolis and in the latter city
he decorated two units in the City Hospital with 300 life sized pictures.
In many of these pictures he has especially emphasized the Negro type.

Richard Brown, Edwin Harleston, Albert A. Smith, Laura Wheeler and a
number of rising young painters have shown the ability of the Negro in
this line of art; but their dean is, of course, Henry Ossawa Tanner.
Tanner is today one of the leading painters of the world and universally
is so recognized. He was born an American Negro in Pittsburgh in 1859,
the son of an African Methodist minister; he studied at the Academy of
Fine Arts in Philadelphia and became a photographer in Atlanta. Afterward
he taught at Clark University in Atlanta. In all this time he had sold
less than $200 worth of pictures; but finally he got to Paris and was
encouraged by Benjamin Constant. He soon turned toward his greatest
forte, religious pictures. His “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” was hung in
the salon in 1896 and the next year the “Raising of Lazarus” was bought
by the French government and hung in the Luxembourg. Since then he has
won medals in all the greatest expositions, and his works are sought by
connoisseurs. He has recently received knighthood in the French Legion of
Honor.

In sculpture we may again think of two points of view,—first, there is
the way in which the Negro type has figured in American sculpture as, for
instance, the libyan Sybil of W. A. Story, Bissell’s Emancipation group
in Scotland, the Negro woman on the military monument in Detroit, Ball’s
Negro in the various emancipation groups, Ward’s colored woman on the
Beecher monument, the panel on the Cleveland monument of Scofield, Africa
in D. C. French’s group in front of the Custom’s House in New York City,
Calder’s black boy in the Nations of the West group in the Panama-Pacific
exhibition and, of course, the celebrated Shaw monument in Boston.[206]
On the other hand, there have been a few Negro sculptors, three of whom
merit mention: Edmonia Lewis, who worked during the Civil War, Meta
Warrick Fuller, a pupil of Rodin, and May Howard Jackson, who has done
some wonderful work in the portraying of the mulatto type.

To appraise rightly this body of art one must remember that it represents
mainly the work of those artists whom accident set free; if the artist
had a white face his Negro blood did not militate against him in the
fight for recognition; if his Negro blood was visible white relatives may
have helped him; in a few cases ability was united to indomitable will.
But the shrinking, modest, black artist without special encouragement had
little or no chance in a world determined to make him a menial. Today the
situation is changing. The Negro world is demanding expression in art and
beginning to pay for it. The white world is able to see dimly beyond the
color line. This sum of accomplishment then is but a beginning and an
imperfect indication of what the Negro race is capable of in America and
in the world.

Science, worse luck, has in these drab days little commerce with art
and yet for lack of better place a word may drop here of the American
Negro’s contribution. Science today is a matter chiefly for endowed
fellowships and college chairs. Negroes have small chance here because
of race exclusion and yet no scientist in the world can today write
of insects and ignore the work of C. H. Turner of St. Louis; or of
insanity and forget Dr. S. C. Fuller of Massachusetts. Ernest Just’s
investigations of the origin of life make him stand among the highest
two or three modern scientists in that line and the greatest American
interpreter of Wasserman reactions is a colored man; Dr. Julien H. Lewis
of the University of Chicago, is building a reputation in serology. There
are also a number of deft Negro surgeons including Dr. Dan Williams who
first sewed up a wounded human heart. The great precursors of all these
colored men of science were Thomas Derham and Benjamin Banneker.

Derham was a curiosity more than a great scientist measuring by absolute
standards, and yet in the 18th century and at the age of twenty-six he
was regarded as one of the most eminent physicians in New Orleans. Dr.
Rush of Philadelphia testified to his learning and ability.

Benjamin Banneker was a leading American scientist. He was the grandson
of an English woman and her black slave. Their daughter married a Negro
and Benjamin was their only son. Born in 1731 in Maryland he was educated
in a private school with whites and spent his life on his father’s farm.
He had taste for mathematics and early constructed an ingenious clock.
He became expert in the solution of difficult mathematical problems,
corresponding with interested persons of leisure.

Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Marquis de Condorcet: “We now have in the
United States a Negro, the son of a black man born in Africa and a black
woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable mathematician.
I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying
out the new Federal City on the Potomac and in the intervals of his
leisure, while on that work, he made an almanac for the next year, which
he sent me in his own handwriting and which I enclose to you. I have
seen very elegant solutions of geometrical problems by him. Add to this
that he is a very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a
free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence
so multiplied as to prove that the want of talents observed in them,
is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding
from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect
depends.”[207]

Banneker became greatly interested in astronomy. He made a number of
calculations and finally completed an almanac covering the year 1792. A
member of John Adams’ cabinet had this almanac published in Baltimore.
This patron, James McHenry, said that the almanac was begun and finished
without outside assistance except the loan of books “so that whatever
merit is attached to his present performance, is exclusively and
peculiarly his own.” The publishers declared that the almanac met the
approbation of several of the most distinguished astronomers of America.
The almanac was published yearly until 1802. When the City of Washington
was laid out in 1793 under Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant, President
Washington at the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson appointed Banneker as
one of the six commissioners. He performed a most important part of the
mathematical calculations of the survey and sat in conference with the
other commissioners. Later he wrote essays on bees and studied methods
to promote peace, suggesting a Secretary of Peace in the president’s
cabinet. He “was a brave looking pleasant man with something very noble
in his appearance.” His color was not jet black but decided Negroid. He
died in 1806, with both an American and European reputation and was among
the most learned men of his day in America.




CHAPTER IX

THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT

    How the fine sweet spirit of black folk, despite superstition
    and passion has breathed the soul of humility and forgiveness
    into the formalism and cant of American religion.


Above and beyond all that we have mentioned, perhaps least tangible but
just as true, is the peculiar spiritual quality which the Negro has
injected into American life and civilization. It is hard to define or
characterize it—a certain spiritual joyousness; a sensuous, tropical love
of life, in vivid contrast to the cool and cautious New England reason; a
slow and dreamful conception of the universe, a drawling and slurring of
speech, an intense sensitiveness to spiritual values—all these things and
others like to them, tell of the imprint of Africa on Europe in America.
There is no gainsaying or explaining away this tremendous influence of
the contact of the north and south, of black and white, of Anglo Saxon
and Negro.

One way this influence has been brought to bear is through the actual
mingling of blood. But this is the smaller cause of Negro influence.
Heredity is always stronger through the influence of acts and deeds and
imitations than through actual blood descent; and the presence of the
Negro in the United States quite apart from the mingling of blood has
always strongly influenced the land. We have spoken of its influence in
politics, literature and art, but we have yet to speak of that potent
influence in another sphere of the world’s spiritual activities: religion.

America early became a refuge for religion—a place of mighty spaces and
glorious physical and mental freedom where silent men might sit and
think quietly of God and his world. Hither out of the blood and dust of
war-wrecked Europe with its jealousies, blows, persecutions and fear
of words and thought, came Puritans, Anabaptists, Catholics, Quakers,
Moravians, Methodists—all sorts of men and “isms” and sects searching for
God and Truth in the lonely bitter wilderness.

Hither too came the Negro. From the first he was the concrete test of
that search for Truth, of the strife toward a God, of that body of belief
which is the essence of true religion. His presence rent and tore and
tried the souls of men. “Away with the slave!” some cried—but where away
and why? Was not his body there for work and his soul—what of his soul?
Bring hither the slaves of all Africa and let us convert their souls,
this is God’s good reason for slavery. But convert them to what? to
freedom? to emancipation? to being white men? Impossible. Convert them,
yes. But let them still be slaves for their own good and ours. This was
quibbling and good men felt it, but at least here was a practical path,
follow it.

Thus arose the great mission movements to the blacks. The Catholic Church
began it and not only were there Negro proselytes but black priests and
an order of black monks in Spanish America early in the 16th century.
In the middle of the 17th century a Negro freedman and charcoal burner
lived to see his son, Francisco Xavier de Luna Victoria, raised to head
the Bishopric of Panama where he reigned eight years as the first native
Catholic Bishop in America.

In Spanish America and in French America the history of Negro religion is
bound up with the history of the Catholic Church. On the other hand in
the present territory of the United States with the exception of Maryland
and Louisiana organized religion was practically and almost exclusively
Protestant and Catholics indeed were often bracketed with Negroes for
persecution. They could not marry Protestants at one time in colonial
South Carolina; Catholics and Negroes could not appear in court as
witnesses in Virginia by the law of 1705; Negroes and Catholics were held
to be the cause of the “Negro plot” in New York in 1741.

The work then of the Catholic Church among Negroes began in the United
States well into the 19th century and by Negroes themselves. In
Baltimore, for instance, in 1829, colored refugees from the French West
Indies established a sisterhood and academy and gave an initial endowment
of furniture, real estate and some $50,000 in money. In 1842 in New
Orleans, four free Negro women gave their wealth to form the Sisters of
the Holy Family and this work expanded and grew especially after 1893
when a mulatto, Thomy Lafon, endowed the work with over three quarters
of a million dollars, his life savings. Later, in 1896, a colored man,
Colonel John McKee of Philadelphia, left a million dollars in real estate
to the Catholic Church for colored and white orphans.

Outside of these colored sisterhoods and colored philanthropists, the
church hesitated long before it began any systematic proselyting among
Negroes. This was because of the comparative weakness of the church in
early days and later when the Irish migration strengthened it the new
Catholics were thrown into violent economic competition with slaves and
free Negroes, and their fight to escape slave competition easily resolved
itself into a serious anti-Negro hatred which was back of much of the
rioting in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. It was not then until
the 20th century that the church began active work by establishing a
special mission for Negroes and engaging in it nearly two hundred white
priests. This new impetus was caused by the benevolence of Katherine
Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Notwithstanding all this
and since the beginning of the 18th century only six Negroes have been
ordained to the Catholic priesthood.

The main question of the conversion of the Negro to Christianity in the
United States was therefore the task of the Protestant Church and it
was, if the truth must be told, a task which it did not at all relish.
The whole situation was fraught with perplexing contradictions; Could
Christians be slaves? Could slaves be Christians? Was the object of
slavery the Christianizing of the black man, and when the black man was
Christianized was the mission of slavery done and ended? Was it possible
to make modern Christians of these persons whom the new slavery began
to paint as brutes? The English Episcopal Church finally began the
work in 1701 through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
It had notable officials, the Archbishop of Canterbury being its first
president; it worked in America 82 years, accomplishing something but
after all not very much, on account of the persistent objection of the
masters. The Moravians were more eager and sent missionaries to the
Negroes, converting large numbers in the West Indies and some in the
United States in the 18th century. Into the new Methodist Church which
came to America in 1766, large numbers of Negroes poured from the first,
and finally the Baptists in the 18th century had at least one fourth of
their membership composed of Negroes, so that in 1800 there were 14,000
black Methodists and some 20,000 black Baptists.[208]

It must not be assumed that this missionary work acted on raw material.
Rather it reacted and was itself influenced by a very definite and
important body of thought and belief on the part of the Negroes.
Religion in the United States was not simply brought to the Negro by
the missionaries. To treat it in that way is to miss the essence of the
Negro action and reaction upon American religion. We must think of the
transplanting of the Negro as transplanting to the United States a
certain spiritual entity, and an unbreakable set of world-old beliefs,
manners, morals, superstitions and religious observances. The religion
of Africa is the universal animism or fetishism of primitive peoples,
rising to polytheism and approaching monotheism chiefly, but not wholly,
as a result of Christian and Islamic missions. Of fetishism there is much
misapprehension. It is not mere senseless degradation. It is a philosophy
of life. Among primitive Negroes there can be, as Miss Kingsley reminds
us, no such divorce of religion from practical life as is common in
civilized lands. Religion is life, and fetish an expression of the
practical recognition of dominant forces in which the Negro lives. To him
all the world is spirit. Miss Kingsley says: “It is this power of being
able logically to account for everything that is, I believe, at the back
of the tremendous permanency of fetish in Africa, and the cause of many
of the relapses into it by Africans converted to other religions; it is
also the explanation of the fact that white men who live in the districts
where death and danger are everyday affairs, under a grim pall of
boredom, are liable to believe in fetish, though ashamed of so doing. For
the African, whose mind has been soaked in fetish during his early and
most impressionable years, the voice of fetish is almost irresistible
when affliction comes to him.”[209]

At first sight it would seem that slavery completely destroyed every
vestige of spontaneous social movement among the Negroes; the home had
deteriorated; political authority and economic initiative was in the
hands of the masters; property, as a social institution, did not exist
on the plantation; and, indeed, it is usually assumed by historians and
sociologists that every vestige of internal development disappeared,
leaving the slaves no means of expression for their common life, thought,
and striving. This is not strictly true; the vast power of the priest
in the African state still survived; his realm alone—the province of
religion and medicine—remained largely unaffected by the plantation
system in many important particulars. The Negro priest, therefore, early
became an important figure on the plantation and found his function as
the interpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and
as the one who expressed, rudely, but picturesquely, the longing and
disappointment and resentment of a stolen people. From such beginnings
arose and spread with marvellous rapidity the Negro church, the first
distinctively Negro American social institution. It was not at first
by any means a Christian Church, but a mere adaptation of those
heathen rites which we roughly designate by the term Obe Worship or
“Voodooism.” Association and missionary effort soon gave these rites a
veneer of Christianity, and gradually, after two centuries, the Church
became Christian, with a simple Calvinistic creed, but with many of
the old customs still clinging to the services. It is this historic
fact that the Negro Church today bases itself upon the sole surviving
social institution of the African fatherland, that accounts for its
extraordinary growth and vitality. We easily forget that in the United
States today there is a Church organization for every sixty Negro
families. This institution, therefore, naturally assumed many functions
which the other harshly suppressed social organs had to surrender; the
Church became the center of amusements, of what little spontaneous
economic activity remained, of education, and of all social intercourse,
of music and art.[210]

For these reasons the tendency of the Negro worshippers from the very
first was to integrate into their own organizations. As early as 1775
distinct Negro congregations with Negro ministers began to appear here
and there in the United States. They multiplied, were swept away,
effort was made to absorb them in the white church, but they kept on
growing until they established national bodies with Episcopal control or
democratic federation and these organizations today form the strongest,
most inclusive and most vital of the Negro organizations. They count in
the United States four million members and their churches seat these four
million and six million other guests. They are houses in 40,000 centers,
worth $60,000,000 and have some 200,000 leaders.

On the part of the white church this tendency among the Negroes met with
alternate encouragement and objection: encouragement because they did not
want Negroes in their churches even when they occupied the back seats or
in the gallery; objection when the church became, as it so often did, a
center of intelligent Negro life and even of plotting against slavery.
There arose out of the church the first leaders of the Negro group; and
in the first rank among these stands Richard Allen.[211]

Richard Allen was born in 1760 as a slave in Philadelphia and was
licensed to preach in 1782. He was ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury
and he led the Negroes in their secession from St. George’s Church in
Philadelphia when they tried to stop black folk from praying on the main
floor. He formed first the Free African Society and finally established
Bethel Church.

As this church grew and multiplied it became the African Methodist
Episcopal Church which now boasts three quarters of a million members.
Allen was its first bishop. With Allen was associated Absalom Jones, born
a slave in Delaware in 1746. He became the first Negro priest in the
Episcopal Church. John Gloucester became the pioneer Negro minister among
colored Presbyterians and gave that church his four sons as ministers.
George Leile became a missionary of the American Negroes to the Negroes
of Jamaica and began missionary work on that island while Lott Carey
in a similar way became a missionary to Africa. Then came Nat Turner,
the preacher revolutionist. James Varick, a free negro of New York who
was the first bishop of the black Zion Methodist revolt, and afterward
there followed the stream of Negro leaders who have built and led the
organization of colored churches. But this is only part of the story.

It will be seen that the development of the Negro church was not separate
from the white. Black preachers led white congregations, white preachers
addressed blacks. In many other ways Negroes influenced white religion
continuously and tremendously. There was the “Shout,” combining the
trance and demoniac possession as old as the world, and revivified and
made widespread by the Negro religious devotees in America. Methodist and
Baptist ways of worship, songs and religious dances absorbed much from
the Negroes and whatever there is in American religion today of stirring
and wild enthusiasm, of loud conversions and every day belief in an
anthropomorphic God owes its origin in a no small measure to the black
man.

Of course most of the influence of the Negro preachers was thrown into
their own churches and to their own people and it was from the Negro
church as an organization that Negro religious influence spread most
widely to white people. Many would say that this influence had little
that was uplifting and was a detriment rather than an advantage in that
it held back and holds back the South particularly in its religious
development. There is no doubt that influences of a primitive sort and
customs that belong to the unlettered childhood of the race rather than
to the thinking adult life of civilization crept in with the religious
influence of the slave. Much of superstition, even going so far as
witchcraft, conjury and blood sacrifice for a long time marked Negro
religion here and there in the swamps and islands. But on the other hand
it is just as true that the cold formalism of upper class England and
New England needed the wilder spiritual emotionalism of the black man to
weld out of both a rational human religion based on kindliness and social
uplift; and whether the influence of Negro religion was on the whole good
or bad, the fact remains that it was potent in the white South and still
is.

Several black leaders of white churches are worth remembering.[212]
Lemuel Hayes was born in Connecticut in 1753 of a black father and white
mother. He received his Master of Arts from Middlebury College in 1804,
was a soldier in the Revolution and pastored various churches in New
England. “He was the embodiment of piety and honesty.” Harry Hosier, the
black servant and companion of Bishop Asbury, was called by Dr. Benjamin
Rush, the greatest orator in America. He travelled north and south and
preached to white and black between 1784 and his death in 1810.

John Chavis was a full-blooded Negro, born in Granville county, N. C.,
near Oxford, in 1753. He was born free and was sent to Princeton, and
studied privately under Dr. Witherspoon, where he did well. He went to
Virginia to preach to Negroes. In 1802, in the county court, his freedom
and character were certified to and it was declared that he had passed
“through a regular course of academic studies” at what is now Washington
and Lee University. In 1805 he returned to North Carolina, where he, in
1809 was made a licentiate in the Presbyterian Church and preached. His
English was remarkably pure, his manner impressive, his explanations
clear and concise. For a long time he taught school and had the best
whites as pupils—a United States senator, the sons of a chief justice
of North Carolina, a governor of the state and many others. Some of his
pupils boarded in his family, and his school was regarded as the best in
the State. “All accounts agree that John Chavis was a gentleman” and he
was received socially among the best whites and asked to table. In 1830
he was stopped from preaching by the law. Afterward he taught school for
free Negroes in Raleigh.

Henry Evans was a full-blooded Virginia free Negro, and was the pioneer
of Methodism in Fayetteville, N. C. He found the Negroes there, about
1800, without religious instruction. He began preaching and the town
council ordered him away; he continued and whites came to hear him.
Finally the white auditors outnumbered the black, and sheds were erected
for Negroes at the side of the church. The gathering became a regular
Methodist Church, with a white and Negro membership, but Evans continued
to preach. He exhibited “rare self-control before the most wretched of
castes! Henry Evans did much good, but he would have done more good had
his spirit been untrammelled by this sense of inferiority.”[213]

His dying words uttered as he stood, aged and bent beside his pulpit, are
of singular pathos:

“I have come to say my last word to you. It is this: None but Christ.
Three times I have had my life in jeopardy for preaching the gospel to
you. Three times I have broken ice on the edge of the water and swam
across the Cape Fear to preach the gospel to you; and, if in my last
hour I could trust to that, or anything but Christ crucified, for my
salvation, all should be lost and my soul perish forever.”

Early in the nineteenth century, Ralph Freeman was a slave in Anson
county, N. C. He was a full-blooded Negro, and was ordained and became an
able Baptist preacher. He baptised and administered communion, and was
greatly respected. When the Baptists split on the question of missions he
sided with the anti-mission side. Finally the law forbade him to preach.

The story of Jack of Virginia is best told in the words of a Southern
writer:

“Probably the most interesting case in the whole South is that of an
African preacher of Nottoway county, popularly known as ‘Uncle Jack,’
whose services to white and black were so valuable that a distinguished
minister of the Southern Presbyterian Church felt called upon to memorize
his work in a biography.

“Kidnapped from his idolatrous parents in Africa, he was brought over
in one of the last cargoes of slaves admitted to Virginia and sold
to a remote and obscure planter in Nottoway county, a region at that
time in the backwoods and destitute particularly as to religious life
and instruction. He was converted under the occasional preaching of
Rev. Dr. John Blair Smith, President of Hampden-Sidney College, and of
Dr. William Hill and Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton, then young
theologues, and by hearing the scriptures read. Taught by his master’s
children to read, he became so full of the spirit and knowledge of the
Bible that he was recognized among the whites as a powerful expounder of
Christian doctrine, was licensed to preach by the Baptist Church, and
preached from plantation to plantation within a radius of thirty miles,
as he was invited by overseers or masters. His freedom was purchased by
a subscription of whites, and he was given a home and a tract of land
for his support. He organized a large and orderly Negro church, and
exercised such a wonderful controlling influence over the private morals
of his flock that masters, instead of punishing their slaves, often
referred them to the discipline of their pastor, which they dreaded far
more.

“He stopped a heresy among the Negro Christians of Southern Virginia,
defeating in open argument a famous fanatical Negro preacher named
Campbell, who advocated noise and ‘the spirit’ against the Bible, winning
over Campbell’s adherents in a body. For over forty years and until he
was nearly a hundred years of age, he labored successfully in public and
private among black and whites, voluntarily giving up his preaching in
obedience to the law of 1832, the result of ‘Old Nat’s war.’...

“The most refined and aristocratic people paid tribute to him, and he
was instrumental in the conversion of many whites. Says his biographer,
Rev. Dr. William S. White: ‘He was invited into their houses, sat with
their families, took part in their social worship, sometimes leading the
prayer at the family altar. Many of the most intelligent people attended
upon his ministry and listened to his sermons with great delight. Indeed,
previous to the year 1825, he was considered by the best judges to be the
best preacher in that county. His opinions were respected, his advice
followed, and yet he never betrayed the least symptoms of arrogance or
self-conceit. His dwelling was a rude log cabin, his apparel of the
plainest and coarsest materials.’ This was because he wished to be fully
identified with his class. He refused gifts of better clothing saying
‘These clothes are a great deal better than are generally worn by people
of my color, and besides if I wear them I find shall be obliged to think
about them even at meeting’.”

All this has to do with organized religion.

But back of all this and behind the half childish theology of formal
religion there has run in the heart of black folk the greatest of human
achievements, love and sympathy, even for their enemies, for those
who despised them and hurt them and did them nameless ill. They have
nursed the sick and closed the staring eyes of the dead. They have given
friendship to the friendless, they have shared the pittance of their
poverty with the outcast and nameless; they have been good and true and
pitiful to the bad and false and pitiless and in this lies the real
grandeur of their simple religion, the mightiest gift of black to white
America.

Above all looms the figure of the Black Mammy, one of the most pitiful
of the world’s Christs. Whether drab and dirty drudge or dark and
gentle lady she played her part in the uplift of the South. She was an
embodied Sorrow, an anomaly crucified on the cross of her own neglected
children for the sake of the children of masters who bought and sold
her as they bought and sold cattle. Whatever she had of slovenliness or
neatness, of degradation or of education she surrendered it to those who
lived to lynch her sons and ravish her daughters. From her great full
breast walked forth governors and judges, ladies of wealth and fashion,
merchants and scoundrels who lead the South. And the rest gave her memory
the reverence of silence. But a few snobs have lately sought to advertise
her sacrifice and degradation and enhance their own cheap success by
building on the blood of her riven heart a load of stone miscalled a
monument.

In religion as in democracy, the Negro has been a peculiar test of white
profession. The American church, both Catholic and Protestant, has been
kept from any temptation to over-righteousness and empty formalism by
the fact that just as Democracy in America was tested by the Negro, so
American religion has always been tested by slavery and color prejudice.
It has kept before America’s truer souls the spirit of meekness and self
abasement, it has compelled American religion again and again to search
its heart and cry “I have sinned;” and until the day comes when color
caste falls before reason and economic opportunity the black American
will stand as the last and terrible test of the ethics of Jesus Christ.

Beyond this the black man has brought to America a sense of meekness
and humility which America never has recognized and perhaps never will.
If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek
shall inherit the earth they have not often let their presence be known.
On the other hand it has become almost characteristic of America to look
upon position, self assertion, determination to go forward at all odds,
as typifying the American spirit. This is natural. It is at once the
rebound from European oppression and the encouragement which America
offers physically, economically and socially to the human spirit. But
on the other hand, it is in many of its aspects a dangerous and awful
thing. It hardens and hurts our souls, it contradicts our philanthropy
and religion; and here it is that the honesty of the black race, its
hesitancy and heart searching, its submission to authority and its deep
sympathy with the wishes of the other man comes forward as a tremendous,
even though despised corrective. It is not always going to remain; even
now we see signs of its disappearance before contempt, lawlessness and
lynching. But it is still here, it still works and one of the most
magnificent anomalies in modern human history is the labor and fighting
of a half-million black men and two million whites for the freedom of
four million slaves and these same slaves, dumbly but faithfully and not
wholly unconsciously, protecting the mothers, wives and children of the
very white men who fought to make their slavery perpetual.

This then is the Gift of Black Folk to the new world. Thus in singular
and fine sense the slave became master, the bond servant became free and
the meek not only inherited the earth but made that heritage a thing of
questing for eternal youth, of fruitful labor, of joy and music, of the
free spirit and of the ministering hand, of wide and poignant sympathy
with men in their struggle to live and love which is, after all, the end
of being.




POSTSCRIPT


Listen to the Winds, O God the Reader, that wail across the whip-cords
stretched taut on broken human hearts; listen to the Bones, the bare
bleached bones of slaves, that line the lanes of Seven Seas and beat
eternal tom-toms in the forests of the laboring deep; listen to the
Blood, the cold thick blood that spills its filth across the fields and
flowers of the Free; listen to the Souls that wing and thrill and weep
and scream and sob and sing above it all. What shall these things mean, O
God the Reader? You know. You know.




FOOTNOTES


[1] In the fifties it was customary for the merchants, etc., to have
posted at their door a list of help wanted. Many of these help wanted
signs were accompanied by another which read “No Irish need apply.”
During the Civil War there was an Anti-Draft song with a refrain to the
effect that when it came to drafting they did not practice “No Irish need
apply.”

[2] “Americans only” in a real estate advertisement today usually means
“No Jews need apply.” It sometimes means Irish (i. e., Catholic) also.

[3] Wm. J. Bromwell, _History of Immigration to United States_, p. 96.

[4] _Ibid._, p. 100.

[5] _Ibid._, p. 116.

[6] _Ibid._, p. 124.

[7] _Commercial Relations of the United States_, 1885-1886, Appendix III,
p. 1967.

[8] “The Commissioners for Ireland gave them orders upon the governors
of garrisons, to deliver to them prisoners of war; upon the keepers of
gaols, for offenders in custody; upon masters of workhouses, for the
destitute in their care ‘who were of an age to labor, or if women were
marriageable and not past breeding’; and gave directions to all in
authority to seize those who had no visible means of livelihood, and
deliver them to these agents of the Bristol sugar merchants, in execution
of which latter direction Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every
part like the slave hunts in Africa. How many girls of gentle birth have
been caught and hurried to the private prisons of these man-catchers none
can tell. Messrs. Sellick and Leader, Mr. Robert Yeomans, Mr. Joseph
Lawrence, and others, all of Bristol, were active agents. As one instance
out of many: Captain John Vernon was employed by the Commissioners for
Ireland, into England, and contracted in their behalf with Mr. David
Sellick and Mr. Leader under his hand, bearing date the 14th September,
1653, to supply them with two hundred and fifty women of the Irish
nation above twelve years, and under the age of forty-five, also three
hundred men above twelve years of age, and under fifty, to be found in
the country within twenty miles of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, Waterford
and Wexford, to transport them into New England.” J. P. Prendergast, _The
Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland_, London, 1865. 2d. ed., pp. 89-90.

[9] “It is calculated that in four years (1653-1657) English firms of
slave-dealers shipped 6,400 Irish men and women, boys and maidens, to the
British colonies of North America.” A. J. Thebaud, _The Irish Race in the
Past and Present_, N. Y., 1893, p. 385.

[10] Rev. T. A. Spencer, _History of the United States_, Vol. I, p. 305.

[11] Henry Pratt Fairchild, _Immigration: A world movement, and its
American significance_, N. Y., 1913, p. 47. See also _Archives of
Maryland_, Vol. 22, p. 497.

[12] Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, _History of the United States_, N. Y.,
1921, p. 11.

[13] Fairchild, p. 35.

[14] Henry Cabot Lodge, _A Short History of the English Colonies in
America_, N. Y., 1881, p. 70.

[15] Beard, p. 15.

[16] Beard, p. 16.

[17] W. E. Burghardt DuBois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, Harvard
Historical Studies, No. 1, p. 5.

[18] John R. Commons, _Races and Immigrants in America_, N. Y., 1907, p.
53.

[19] Adam Seybert, _Statistical Annals of the United States_, Phila.,
1818, p. 29.

[20] Young, _Special Report on Immigration_, Phila., 1871, p. 5.

[21] Bromwell, p. 145.

[22] _Ibid._, p. 16.

[23] _Ibid._, p. 18.

[24] _Ibid._, pp. 16-17.

[25] Young, p. 6.

[26] _Ibid._, p. 6.

[27] _Special Consular Reports_, Vol. 30, p. 8.

[28] _Immigration and Emigration_, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Washington, 1915, p. 1099.

[29] _Ibid._

[30] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1915.

[31] _Ibid._

[32] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1918, p. 208.

[33] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1920, p. 400.

[34] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1921, p. 365.

[35] From a Spanish Romance called _La Sergas de Espladian_, by Garcia
de Montalvo, published in 1510; translated in Beasley’s _The Negro Trail
Blazers of California_, p. 18.

[36] Cf. Wiener, _Africa and the Discovery of America_, Vol. 1, pp.
169-70, 172, 174-5; Vol. 3, p. 322; Thurston, _Antiquities of Tennessee_,
etc., 1890, p. 105; De Charnay, _Ancient Cities of the New World_ (trans.
by Gonino and Conant, 1887), pp. 132ff.; Kabell, _America för Columbus_,
1892, p. 235.

[37] J. B. Thacher, _Christopher Columbus_, 1903, Vol. 2, pp. 379-80;
_Raccolta di documenti e studi publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana
pel quarto centenario dalla scoperta dell’ America_, parte I, Rome, 1892,
Vol. 1, p. 96.

[38] i. e., Negro Traders.

[39] Thacher, Vol. 2, pp. 379, 380; Wiener, Vol. 2, pp. 116-17.

[40] Wiener, Vol. 3, p. 365.

[41] _Memoir of Hernando de Essalante Fontanedo, respecting Florida_,
translated from the Spanish by Buckingham Smith, Washington, 1854.

[42] Oviedo y Valdes, _Historia general_, etc., Vol. 1, p. 286.

[43] Wiener, Vol. 3, p. 365.

[44] Wiener, Vol. 1, p. 190.

[45] Helps, _Spanish Conquest in America_, Vol. 4, p. 401.

[46] J. F. Rippy in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 6, p. 183.

[47] Helps, Vol. 1, p. 421.

[48] Rippy, _loc. cit._

[49] The following narrative is based on: H. O. Flipper, _Did a Negro
discover Arizona and New Mexico_ (contains a translation of parts of the
narrative of Pedro de Castaneda de Majera); Pedro de Castaneda, “Account
of the Expedition to Cibola which took place in the year 1540....”
translated in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States_ (J.
F. Jameson Ed.); Beasley, _Trail Blazers of California_, Chapter 2;
Rippy, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 6, pp. 183ff.; _American
Anthropologist_, Vol. 4.

[50] A fifth survivor, a Spaniard, stayed with the Indians and was
afterward found by DeSoto.

[51] Another story is that Estevanico and the Monks did not get on well
together.

[52] The story that Estevanico was killed because of his greed is
evidently apocryphal.

[53] Legends of the Zuni Pueblos of New Mexico quoted in Lowery _Spanish
Settlements in the United States, 1513-1561_, pp. 281-82.

[54] Cf. Beasley, Chapter 10.

[55] Cf. Du Bois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_; Du Bois, _The Negro_
(Home University Library).

[56] United States Census, _Negro Population 1790-1915_; Fourteenth
Census, Vol. 3.

[57] Du Bois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, Chapter 4.

[58] Cf. Du Bois, _The Philadelphia Negro_, Chapter 4.

[59] Cf. Woodson, _A Century of Negro Migration_; E. J. Scott: _Negro
Migration During the War_.

[60] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, p. 163.

[61] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, Vol. 2, pp. 405-6.

[62] Atlanta University Publications: Cf. _The Negro Artisan_, 1902-1912,
and _Economic Cooperation among Negro Americans_, 1907.

[63] Alice Dunbar Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 52.

[64] Alice Dunbar Nelson, in the _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, p.
375.

[65] Olmsted, _A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, Journey through
Texas_, and _Journey in the Back Country_.

[66] Prior to the Matzeliger machine the McKay machine was patented,
designed for making the heaviest and cheapest kind of men’s shoes. The
Matzeliger machine was designed for light work, women’s shoes, etc., and
was the most important invention necessary to the formation of the United
Shoe Machinery Company.

[67] H. E. Baker, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, pp. 21ff.

[68] Baker: _The Colored Inventor_, p. 7.

[69] U. S. Census of 1920. Wilcox-Du Bois, _Negroes in the United States_
(U. S. Census bulletin No. 8, 1904).

[70] Olivier, _White Capital and Coloured Labor_, Chapter 8, London, 1906.

[71] Alice Dunbar Nelson, _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, pp. 369,
370, 371.

[72] Cf. Livermore, _Opinion of the Founders of the Republic_, etc., part
2; _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, p. 198ff.

[73] G. H. Moore, _Historical Notes_, etc., N. Y., 1862.

[74] Livermore, pp. 115-16.

[75] Cf. Livermore and Moore as above; also _Journal of Negro History_,
Vol. 1, pp. 114-20.

[76] Livermore, p. 122. See also the account of Peter Salem, _do._, pp.
118-21.

[77] T. G. Steward, in _Publications American Negro Academy_, No. 5, p.
12.

[78] W. B. Hartgrove, _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, pp. 125-9.

[79] Wilson, _Black Phalanx_, p. 71.

[80] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, pp. 373-4; Gayarre’s _History of
Louisiana_, Vol. 3, p. 108.

[81] Niles’ _Register_, Feb. 26, 1814.

[82] Wilson, _Black Phalanx_, p. 88.

[83] Alice Dunbar-Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 58.

[84] Niles’ Register, Vol. 7, p. 205.

[85] Niles’ Register, Vol. 7, pp. 345-6.

[86] Dunbar-Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, pp. 59-60.

[87] Williams, _Negro Race in America_, Vol. 2, pp. 244ff.

[88] Williams, _Negro Race in America_, Vol. 2, pp. 280-82.

[89] New York _Tribune_, Aug. 19, 1862.

[90] Williams, Vol. 2, p. 271.

[91] Wilson, p. 123.

[92] Wilson, p. 132.

[93] Wesley, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 4, pp. 239ff.

[94] New York _Tribune_, Nov. 14, 1863; Williams, Vol. 2, p. 347.

[95] Williams, Vol. 2, p. 360.

[96] New York _Times_, June 13, 1863.

[97] Wilson, pp. 250-54.

[98] Williams, Vol. 2, p. 338.

[99] John Temple Graves in _Review of Reviews_.

[100] MS. Copies of orders.

[101] MS. Copies of orders.

[102] At least this was the opinion of Abraham Lincoln—cf. Wilson’s
_Black Phalanx_, p. 108.

[103] Thomas, _Attitude of Friends toward Slavery_, p. 267 and Appendix.

[104] Jefferson’s Writings, Vol. 8, pp. 403-4.

[105] George Livermore, _Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on
Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers_, Boston, 1862, p. 61.

[106] Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 1, pp. 23-4.

[107] Howard’s Reports, Vol. 19.

[108] Howard’s Reports, pp. 536-8.

[109] Howard’s Reports, pp. 572-3, 582.

[110] Niles’ Register, Vol. 16, May 22, 1819.

[111] Benjamin Brawley, _A Social History of the American Negro_, New
York, 1921, p. 90.

[112] Hening’s Statutes.

[113] John C. Hurd, _The Law of Freedom and Bondage_, Boston, 1858-1862.

[114] Wiener, _Africa and the Discovery of America_, Vol. 1, pp. 155-8.

[115] C. E. Chapman in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 3, p. 29.

[116] J. Kunst, _Negroes in Guatemala_, _Journal of Negro History_, Vol.
1, pp. 392-8.

[117] Cf. Bryan Edward’s _West Indies_, 4th Edition, Vol. 1, pp. 337-98.

[118] Gayarre, _History of Louisiana_, Vol. 1, pp. 435, 440.

[119] Du Bois’ _Slave Trade_, pp. 6, 10, 22, 206; J. Coppin, _Slave
Insurrections_, 1860; Brawley, _Social History_, pp. 39, 86, 132.

[120] Cf. T. G. Steward, _The Haitian Revolution_.

[121] DeWitt Talmadge in the _Christian Herald_, Nov. 28, 1906; Du Bois’
_Slave Trade_, Chapter 7.

[122] Cf. Dunbar-Nelson in the _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1.

[123] Du Bois, _John Brown_, p. 81.

[124] A. H. Grimke, _Right on the Scaffold in Occasional Papers_, No. 7,
American Negro Academy.

[125] Brawley, p. 140; T. W. Higginson, _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 8, p.
173.

[126] I. W. Cromwell, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 5, pp. 208ff.

[127] Cf. Du Bois’ _Philadelphia Negro_, Chapter 4; Woodson’s _Negro in
our History_, pp. 140-1.

[128] Brawley, pp. 123-4; _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, pp. 209-28.

[129] Brawley, p. 71.

[130] Williams’ _Negro Race_, Vol. 2, p. 126.

[131] Du Bois’ _John Brown_, pp. 82ff.

[132] Cf. Joshua R. Giddings, _Exiles of Florida_, Columbus, Ohio, 1858.

[133] Among the first subscribers to Garrison’s _Liberator_ were free
Negroes and one report is that the very first paid subscriber was a
colored Philadelphia caterer.

[134] Livermore, p. 170.

[135] Livermore, pp. 125-6.

[136] Force’s Archives, 4th series, Vol. 3, p. 1387.

[137] Works of John Adams, Vol. 2, p. 428.

[138] Livermore, pp. 183, 184.

[139] Wilson, pp. 491-92.

[140] J. T. Wilson, _The History of the Black Phalanx_, Hartford, 1897,
p. 490.

[141] Cf. Cromwell, _Negro In American History_, Chapter 2.

[142] J. W. Loguen, _As a Slave and as a Freeman_, p. 344.

[143] George W. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_, New
York, 1882, Vol. 1, Chapter 15.

[144] Williams, Vol. 1, pp. 250-1.

[145] Williams, Vol. 2, pp. 255-7.

[146] Williams, Vol. 1, pp. 257-9.

[147] Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Sept. 22, 1862.

[148] Atlanta University Publications, Atlanta, Ga., 1906, No. 8, p. 23.

[149] John Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, New York, 1907, p.
134.

[150] Eaton, 165.

[151] Walter L. Fleming, _Documentary History of Reconstruction_,
Cleveland, Ohio, 1907, Vol. 1, p. 112.

[152] Fleming, Vol. 1, pp. 350-1.

[153] Fleming, Vol. 2, p. 382.

[154] Report of Carl Schurz to President Johnson, in Senate Exec. Doc.
No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.

[155] Brewster, _Sketches of Southern Mystery, Treason and Murder_, p.
116.

[156] McPherson, _Reconstruction_, p. 19.

[157] Atlanta University Publications, Atlanta, Ga., 1901, No. 6, p. 36.

[158] October 7, 1865.

[159] McPherson, pp. 52, 56.

[160] A. U. Publications, No. 12, p. 38; Cf. also Fleming, Vol. 1, P. 355.

[161] Schurz’ Report.

[162] House Reports, No. 30, 39th Congress, 1st Session.

[163] Schurz’ Report.

[164] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 5, p. 238.

[165] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 7, pp. 127ff.

[166] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 7, p. 424.

[167] Jackson, Miss., _Clarion_, April 24, 1873.

[168] Walter Allen, _Governor Chamberlain’s Administration in South
Carolina_, New York, 1888, p. 82.

[169] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 7, pp. 127ff.

[170] Blaine, _Twenty Years in Congress_, Vol. 2, p. 515.

[171] Blaine, _Twenty Years in Congress_, pp. 513-14.

[172] Fleming, Vol. 1, pp. 450-1.

[173] J. W. Garner, _Reconstruction in Mississippi_, New York, 1901, p.
322.

[174] Warley in _Brewster’s Sketches_, p. 150.

[175] A Liberal Republican’s description of the S. C. Legislature in
1871, Fleming, Vol. 2, pp. 53-4.

[176] Fleming, Vol. 1, pp. 382ff.

[177] Some of the Reconstruction Constitutions preceding Negro Suffrage
showed tendencies toward democratization among the whites.

[178] Chicago Weekly _Inter-Ocean_, Dec. 26, 1890.

[179] Cf. Atlanta University Pub. No. 6 and No. 16.

[180] This speech was made in the South Carolina Constitutional
Convention of 1890 which disfranchised the Negro, by the Hon. Thomas
E. Miller, ex-congressman and one of the six Negro members of the
Convention. The Convention did not have the courage to publish it in
their proceedings but it may be found in the Occasional Papers of the
American Negro Academy No. 6, pp. 11-13.

[181] Cf. W. E. B. Du Bois, _Reconstruction_ (American Historical Review,
XV, No. 4, p. 871).

W. E. B. Du Bois, _Economics of Negro Emancipation_ (Sociological Review,
Oct., 1911, p. 303).

[182] O. O. Howard, _Autobiography_, New York, 1907, Vol. 2, pp. 361-7,
371-2.

[183] Testimony of the presiding officer, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, in
“_Narrative of Sojourner Truth_,” 1884, pp. 134-5.

[184] Goodell, _Slave Code_, p. 111.

[185] Robertson, _Louisiana under the Rule of Spain_, Vol. 1, pp. 67,
103, 111; Dunbar-Nelson, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 56.

[186] Dunbar-Nelson, _loc. cit._

[187] Dunbar-Nelson, _op. cit._, p. 62; Martineau, _Society in America_,
p. 326ff.

[188] Brownie’s Book, March, 1921.

[189] Beasley, _Negro Trail Blazers_, pp. 95-7.

[190] Cf. Annual Reports National Association of Colored Women; Atlanta
University Publications, No. 14.

[191] Du Bois, _Souls of Black Folk_, Chapter No. 14.

[192] W. F. Allen and others, _Slave Songs of the United States_, New
York, 1867.

[193] G. D. Pike, _The Jubilee Singers_, New York, 1873.

[194] James Weldon Johnson, _Book of American Negro Poetry_, New York,
1922.

[195] H. E. Krehbiel, _Afro-American Folksongs_, New York, 1914; cf. also
John W. Work, _Folksong of the American Negro_, Nashville, Tenn., 1915.

[196] Natalie Curtis-Burlin, _Negro Folksongs_, 4 books, 1918-19; _Songs
and Tales from the Dark Continent_, 1920.

[197] Benjamin Brawley, _Negro in Literature and Art_.

[198] Alice Dunbar-Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 55.

[199] Washington, _Story of the Negro_, Vol. 2, pp. 276-7.

[200] Cf. Benjamin Brawley, _The Negro in Literature and Art_, New York,
1921.

[201] Cf. Preface to James Weldon Johnson’s _The Book of American Negro
Poetry_, New York, 1922.

[202] T. W. Talley, _Negro Folk Rhymes_.

[203] Cf. W. E. B. Du Bois, _The Negro in Literature and Art_ (Annals
American Academy, Sept., 1913).

[204] A. A. Schomberg, _A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro
Poetry_, New York, 1916.

[205] Preface to Claud McKay’s _Harlem Shadows_.

[206] Cf. Freeman H. M. Murray, _Emancipation and the Freed in American
Sculpture_, Washington, D. C., 1916.

[207] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 3, p. 99ff. Later, Jefferson
writing to an American thought Banneker had “a mind of very common
stature indeed”.

[208] Charles C. Jones, _Religious Instruction of the Negroes_, Savannah,
1842.

[209] M. H. Kingsley, _West African Studies_.

[210] Atlanta University Publications, _The Negro Church_, 1903.

[211] Richard Allen, _Life, Experience and Gospel Labors_, Philadelphia,
1880.

[212] Cf. Carter G. Woodson, _The History of the Negro Church_,
Washington, D. C., 1921; Atlanta University Publications, _The Negro
Church_; and J. E. Bassett, _Slavery in North Carolina_.

[213] Bassett, pp. 58-9.




INDEX


  Adair, Lieut., 129, 130

  Adams, John, 87, 90, 159, 176, 177, 317

  Adolphus, King Gustavus, 11

  Aldridge, Ira, 310

  Alexander, Dr. Archibald, 335

  Allen, 173, 298, 329, 330

  Allen, Walter, 220, 276

  Alliot, Paul, 266

  Almagro, 42

  Alvarado, 42

  Ames, Capt., 92

  Anderson, 302

  André, 92

  Antar, 288

  Atkinson, Edward, 232

  Attucks, Crispus, 86, 87, 88

  Augusta, Dr. A. T., 125


  Baker, H. E., 72, 73

  Balboa, 42

  Ball, 314

  Bancroft, H. H., 50, 55

  Banister, E. M., 313

  Banks, General, 118

  Banneker, Benjamin, 298, 316, 317, 318

  Bassett, Lieut.-Col., 119, 332, 334

  Batson, Flora, 291

  Beard, Charles A. & Mary R., 9, 12, 16

  Beasley, 43, 49, 272

  Beauregard, 137

  Beecher, Henry Ward, 278, 293

  Benjamin, Judah, 179

  Beverly, Robert, 67

  Bienville, Governor, 83

  Bigstaff, Peter, 129

  Bissell, 314

  Blaine, James G., 222, 223, 224

  Bland, James, 290

  Bolas, Juan de, 151

  Bolivar, 154, 155

  Bonaparte, Napoleon, 153, 154

  Booth, Major, 117, 271

  Boré, Etienne de, 68

  Bowers, John, 299

  Braithwaite, W. S., 303, 304, 307

  Brawley, Benjamin, 146, 153, 158, 162, 163, 285, 290, 303

  Brent, Linda, 301

  Brewster, 203

  Bromwell, 17

  Brooks, 302

  Brown, John, 146, 270, 271, 272

  Brown, Richard, 313

  Brown, William, 86, 301, 299

  Browne, 271

  Bruce, B. K., 67, 218, 223

  Bryant, William Cullen, 232

  Buell, 187

  Burgess, Prof., 206

  Burleigh, Harry T., 290, 291

  Burlin, Mrs. Curtis, 283, 284

  Burnside, 124

  Burr, Aaron, 289

  Butler, General, 112, 116, 187

  Byrd, Col., 67


  Cable, George U., 293

  Cain, 221

  Calder, 314

  Caldwell, Jonas, 87, 88

  Calhoun, John C., 293

  Callioux, Capt., 120

  Campbell, Robert, 301, 304, 336

  Carey, Lott, 330

  Carr, Patrick, 87

  Castaneda, Pedro de, 43

  Castle, Vernon, 292

  Catto, 300

  Chamberlain, Governor, 220

  Chambers, Colonel, 118

  Chapman, C. E., 150

  Charlton, Melville, 291

  Chase, Simon P., 232

  Chavis, John, 332, 333

  Cheatham, 221

  Chesnutt, Charles W., 303, 307

  Child, Lydia Marcia, 293

  Christophe, 92

  Church, A. M. E., 300

  Cinque, 159

  Claiborne, Governor, 97

  Clark, 49

  Cleveland, 26

  Clinton, Bishop Isaac, 89, 219

  Cobb, General, 112

  Cobb, Irvin S., 10

  Coffin, Levi, 232

  Cole, 310

  Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel, 289, 290

  Columbus, 35, 36, 37, 40, 265, 282

  Commons, John R., 15

  Conant, 36

  Conner, A. J., 290

  Connery, William J., 72

  Constant, Benjamin, 314

  Cooke, Governor, 93

  Cooper, Peter, 232

  Coppin, J., 153

  Corbin, J. C., 220

  Cardoza, F. L., 220-246

  Cornwallis, 89, 177

  Coronado, 44, 49

  Cortes, 42, 45

  Cotter, Joseph C. Jr., 304

  Cravath, 214

  Crogman, 302

  Cromwell, J. W., 158, 182

  Crummell, Dr. Alexander, 301, 302

  Cuffee, Paul, 162, 172, 299

  Cullen, Countée, 304

  Curtis, Justice, 144

  Curtis, Natalie, 282

  Cushite, R. L. Perry, 302


  Damrosch, 280

  Dana, Gen. N. J. T., 193

  Daquin, Major, 99

  Davis, 304

  Davis, Pres., 111, 112

  Davis, Gussie L., 290

  Davis, Jefferson, 107

  De Charnay, 36

  Dèdè, Edmund, 290

  Delaney, Major M. H., 125

  Delaney, Martin R., 300

  Dennison, Chaplain, 123

  Derham, Thomas, 316

  De Soto, 43, 44

  Dett, R. Nathaniel, 291

  Dickinson, J. H., 73

  Dickinson, S. L., 73

  Diton, Carl, 291

  Dix, 187

  Dixon, Thomas, 293

  Dodson, Jacob, 49

  Dorantes, Stephen, 43, 44, 45

  Douglas, Captain H. F., 125

  Douglass, Frederick, 174, 208, 300, 301, 308

  Dow, Lorenzo, 145

  Drexel, Katherine, 324

  Drinkwater, 311

  DuBois, W. E. B., 13, 55, 58, 63, 153, 155, 161, 169, 249, 274, 297

  DuBois, Wilcox, 73

  Dubuclet, 221, 290

  Dumas, 306

  Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 303, 304, 306

  Dunmore, Governor, 89, 90, 176, 177

  Dunn, Lieut.-Gov., 221

  Duplessis, General Garnier, 131

  Dvorak, 285, 291

  Dwight, General, 118


  Eaton, Col. John, 191, 193

  Eastman, Max, 307

  Edison, 28

  Edward, Bryan, 151

  Eliot, Dr. John, 57

  Elliott, Robert Brown, 221, 301

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 293

  Equiana, Olaudah (See Gustavus Vassa)

  Estevanico, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49

  Eustis, William, 94

  Evans, Henry, 333, 334


  Fairchild, Henry Pratt, 9

  Fauset, Jessie, 304, 308

  Finnegas, Lieut.-Col. Henry, 119

  Fleming, Walter L., 194, 197, 226, 232, 234

  Flipper, H. O., 43

  Fontages, Viscount de, 93

  Force, 176

  Forrest, 117

  Foster, Stephen, 275, 285

  Forten, James, 299

  Franklin, Benjamin, 90, 141

  Freeman, Captain, 58

  Freeman, Ralph, 334

  Fremont, 49

  French, D. C., 314

  Frye, Colonel, 92

  Fuller, Meta Warrick, 315


  Gabriel, 172

  Gage, Mrs. Frances D., 151, 264

  Galvez, 95

  Garner, J. W., 227

  Garnet, Henry Highland, 299

  Garrison, 174, 271

  Garrison, William Lloyd, 146, 185

  Gayarre, 95, 153

  Geary, 25

  Gibbs, Jonathan C., 220

  Gibbs, M. W., 220

  Giddings, Joshua R., 171

  Gilmore, General, 109

  Gilpin, Charles, 310, 311

  Gladstone, 279

  Gloucester, John, 330

  Gomez, 288

  Gonino, 36

  Goodell, 266

  Gottschalk, 289

  Goybet, General, 131, 132

  Graham, Stephen, 311

  Grant, General, 188, 191, 193

  Graves, John Temple, 130

  Gray, Samuel, 87, 88, 173

  Greeley, Horace, 105, 185

  Greene, General, 91, 178

  Grey, T. R., 158

  Griggs, 302

  Grimke, A. H., 156, 302

  Grimke, Frank, 302, 303


  Hagen, Helen, 291

  Hagood, General, 246, 247, 302

  Hahn, Governor, 194

  Hall, Prince, 162

  Halleck, 187

  Hamilton, Alexander, 91, 174, 269

  Hammon, Jupiter, 304

  Hampton, Governor, 246

  Hampton, Wade, 283

  Handy, W. C., 285

  Hapgood, Mrs. Emily, 310

  Hare, Maude-Cuney, 291

  Harleston, Edwin, 313

  Harper, Frances E. W., 300, 302, 304

  Harper, William A., 313

  Harriot, George, 29, 94

  Harris, Joel Chandler, 295, 296

  Harrison, Hazel, 291

  Hartgrove, W. B., 94

  Hayes, Roland W., 292

  Hayne, Robert Y., 172

  Haynes, Lemuel, 299, 306, 332

  Helps, 42

  Hemmenway, J., 290

  Hening, 148

  Henry, Patrick, 141

  Henson, Joshua, 171, 300

  Henson, Matthew A., 50, 51

  Higginson, Colonel, 116, 158, 275, 293

  Hill, Dr. William, 335

  Hogarth, George, 300

  Hogan, Ernest, 310

  Holland, Justin, 290

  Hood, 302

  Hooker, 187

  Hope, Lawrence, 291

  Hopkins, Samuel, 91, 175

  Horton, George M., 304

  Hosier, Harry, 332

  Howard, General, 144, 145, 200, 249, 252

  Howe, Julia Ward, 293

  Howells, William Dean, 293

  Hughes, Langston, 304

  Hunter, General, 102, 103, 105, 116, 187

  Hurd, John C., 148

  Hyer, Sisters, 291


  Jackson, General, 97, 99, 115, 182, 220

  Jackson, M. Howard, 315

  Jamison, J. F., 43

  Jamison, Roscoe C., 304

  Jay, John, 232

  Jefferson, Thomas, 3, 141, 143, 154, 172, 317

  Jenkins, Edmund T., 291

  Johnson, E. A., 302

  Johnson, Fenton, 304

  Johnson, Georgia, 304

  Johnson, James Weldon, 280, 292, 314

  Johnson, John, 96, 113

  Johnson, President, 201, 202, 203, 207, 208, 209, 214, 281

  Johnson, Rosamond, 291

  Jones, 173, 183, 330

  Jones, C. C., 296, 325

  Just, Ernest, 316


  Kabell, 36

  Keene, Edmund, 310

  King George, 3rd of Britain, 142

  Kingsley, Miss, 326, 327

  Krehbiel, H. E., 281, 282

  Kunst, J., 151


  La Coste, 99

  Lafitte, 99

  Lafon, Thomé, 183, 323

  Lambert, 92, 291

  Langston, 22, 302

  Las Casas, 42

  Laurens, Henry, 141

  Laurens, John, 91

  Lawrence, Joseph, 8

  Lawson, A. Augustus, 291

  Leader, 8

  Lee, Samuel J., 219

  Leile, George, 330

  Leon, Ponce de, 38

  L’Enfant, Major Pierre, 318

  Lewis, 49

  Lewis, Edmonia, 315

  Lewis, Julien H., 316

  Lewis, R. B., 299

  Lind, Jenny, 291

  Lincoln, Abraham, 28, 106, 114, 135, 185, 187, 189, 195, 202, 203,
        233, 271

  Livermore, 84, 87, 89, 91, 92, 142, 175, 176, 178, 194

  Livingston, Robert, 154

  Lodge, Henry Cabot, 12

  Loguen, Bishop, 182, 300

  Low, A. A., 232

  Lowell, James Russell, 293

  Lucas, Sam (See Samuel Milady)

  Lynch, 90

  Lynch, John R., 220, 223


  Macdonough, 96

  Madison, James, 91

  Majors, 302

  Maldonado, 44, 45

  Marcos, Fray, 45, 46, 49

  Marquis de Condorcet, 317

  Marshall, Colonel John R., 127

  Martin, 96

  Martineau, 268

  Matzeliger, Jan E., 70, 71, 72

  Maverick, Samuel, 87, 88

  McCoy, Elijah, 72

  McHenry, James, 318

  McKay, 71, 304, 307

  McKay, Claud, 308

  McKee, Colonel John, 323

  McKim, Miss, 275

  McKinley, President, 126

  McLean, Justice, 144

  McClellan, 188

  McPherson, 203, 209

  McSweeney, Edw. F., Introduction to series

  Melbourne, George, 290

  Mencken, H. L., 305

  Mendoza, 44, 45, 49, 150

  Menendez, 43

  Milady, Samuel, 290 (See Sam Lucas also)

  Miller, Kelly, 303

  Miller, Hon. Thomas E., 248

  Mills, 271

  Mitchell, George W., 303

  Montalvo, Garcia de, 35

  Moody, 279

  Moore, G. H., 85, 91

  Mossell, 302

  Murray, 221

  Murray, Freeman H. M., 304, 315


  Narvaez, Panfilo de, 43

  Nell, William Cooper, 300

  Nelson, Alice Dunbar, 68, 69, 83, 97, 100, 145, 155, 267, 268, 289

  Nelson, Colonel, 119

  Niles, 97, 98, 100, 145

  Northrop, Samuel, 300

  Nosseyeb, 287


  Oglethorpe, 140

  O’Hara, 222

  Olana, Nuflo de, 42

  Olivier, 79

  Olmsted, 69, 70

  O’Neill, 311

  Osceola, 171

  Otis, James, 141

  Ouverture, Toussaint le, 154, 156

  Ovando, 39

  Oviedo, 38


  Page, Thomas Nelson, 293

  Payne, Bishop Daniel, 301, 302

  Peary, Commodore, 50

  Pemberton, Thomas, 57

  Penn, 7, 302

  Pennington, J. W. C., 257, 299

  Perier, Governor, 82, 83

  Perry, 96

  Pétion, President, 154

  Phillips, Wendell, 270, 293

  Pierce, Edward L., 191

  Pike, G. D., 279

  Pinchback, 221

  Pinckney, Charles, 94

  Pizarro, Marquis, 41

  Plato, 2

  Pleasants, Mammy, 271, 272

  Poor, Salem, 92

  Portugal, King of, 290

  Preer, Evelyn, 311

  Prendergast, J. P., 8

  Preston, Captain, 87

  Price, J. C., 308

  Purvis, Robert, 299

  Purvis, W. L., 73

  Pushkin, 288

  Putnam, Colonel, 123


  Rainey, 223

  Ralston, 271

  Rapier, 221, 223

  Redmond, 174

  Reed, Lieut.-Col., 125

  Revels, 221, 223

  Revells, Hiram R., 218

  Rice, Thomas D., 309

  Rigaud, 92

  Rillieux, Robert, 70

  Rippy, J. F., 42, 43

  Robertson, 267

  Robeson, Paul, 311

  Rodin, 315

  Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 316, 332

  Rutledge, 90


  Salcedo, Governor, 67

  Samba, 83

  Sanine, 312

  Savary, J. B. Capt., 99

  Saxton, General, 188

  Scammell, Alexander, 85

  Scarborough, 302

  Schomberg, A. A., 304

  Schurz, Carl, 201, 210, 211, 213, 214

  Scofield, 314

  Scott, William Edward, 313

  Sejour, Victor, 289

  Sellick, 8

  Sewall, 140

  Seward, William H., 140

  Seybert, Adam, 16

  Seymour, General, 123

  Shaftesbury, Lord, 279

  Shakespeare, 293

  Shaler, Governor, 203

  Sharkey, Governor, 203

  Sherman, General T. W., 187, 194

  Shaw, Colonel, 123, 315

  Simmons, 301

  Simonton, Judge, 246

  Sinclair, 303

  Smith, Albert A., 313

  Smith, Alexander, 271

  Smith, Buckingham, 38

  Smith, General, 124

  Smith, Gerritt, 232

  Smith, Rev. John Blair, 335

  Southerne, 293, 309

  Spence, Adam K., 277

  Spencer, Rev. T. A., 9

  Stanton, 124, 194

  Stearns, George L., 232

  Stephenson, General, 123

  Steward, 93, 154, 303

  Stewart, Ruth M., 293, 302

  Story, W. A., 314

  Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 293

  Strachen, 96

  Straker, 302

  Strong, Gen., 123

  Suarez, Illan, 41

  Sumner, Charles, 198, 293


  Talbert, Cole, 291

  Talley, T. W., 297

  Talmadge, DeWitt, 154

  Taney, Judge, 143

  Tanner, Bishop, 301, 313

  Thacher, J. C., 36

  Thebaud, A. J., 8

  Thomas, General, 140, 193, 194

  Thurston, 36

  Tillman, 243

  Toomer, Jean, 308

  Tourgee, Judge Albion W., 237

  Trotter, James Monroe, 301

  Truth, Sojourner, 174

  Tubman, Harriet, 171, 270, 271

  Turner, C. H., 316

  Turner, Nat., 157, 158, 302, 330

  Tyler, Col., 186


  Vaca de, 44, 45

  Valdivia, 42

  Vassa, Gustavus, 279 (See Olaudah Equiana)

  Varick, James, 330

  Vela, Blasco Nunez, 41, 42

  Vernon, Capt. John, 8

  Vesey, Denmark, 156

  Victoria, Francisco Xavier de, 322

  Victoria, Queen, 279


  Walker, David, 164, 168, 299, 310, 311

  Wall, Capt. O. S. B., 125

  Wallace, Judge, 246

  Warburg, Eugene, 289

  Ward, Samuel C., 300, 308, 314

  Ware, 214

  Work, John W., 282

  Warley, 231

  Washington, 2, 38, 89, 102, 103, 115, 141, 298, 318

  Washington, Booker T., 258, 298, 303, 308

  Washington, Madison, 159

  Wayman, Bishop, 301

  Webster, Daniel, 86, 160

  Wiener, 36, 37, 38, 40, 150

  Wesley, 113

  Wheatley, Phyllis, 298, 304, 306, 312

  Wheeler, Laura, 313

  White, Clarence Cameron, 291

  White, E. P., 221

  White, George L., 276, 277, 278

  White, J. L., 219

  White, Dr. William S., 336

  Whitfield, James, 299, 300

  Whitefield, George, 298

  Whittier, John Greenleaf, 293

  Whitman, A. A., 301, 304

  Whitman, Walt, 293

  Whitney, Eli, 70

  Williams, 101, 104, 107, 117, 118, 124, 164, 187, 301, 310, 311

  Williams, Bert, 310

  Williams, Dr. Dan, 316

  Wilson, 26, 95, 97, 108, 110, 124, 135, 179, 181, 303

  Winslow, Sydney W., 70, 71

  Witherspoon, D., 332

  Wood, Liates, 73

  Woods, Granville T., 73

  Woodson, Carter, 64, 161, 303, 332

  Wormeley, Ralph, 67

  Wright, 302


  Yeomans, Robert, 8

  Young, Major Charles, 17, 18, 127, 131


                     AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES

                               Edited by

                    Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph. D.




                    The American Crisis Biographies


Edited by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.D. With the counsel and advice of
Professor John B. McMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania.

Each 12mo, cloth, with frontispiece portrait. Price $1.25 net; by mail,
$1.37.

  These biographies will constitute a complete and comprehensive
  history of the great American sectional struggle in the form of
  readable and authoritative biography. The editor has enlisted the
  co-operation of many competent writers, as will be noted from the
  list given below. An interesting feature of the undertaking is that
  the series is to be impartial, Southern writers having been assigned
  to Southern subjects and Northern writers to Northern subjects, but
  all will belong to the younger generation of writers, thus assuring
  freedom from any suspicion of war-time prejudice. The Civil War will
  not be treated as a rebellion, but as the great event in the history
  of our nation, which, after forty years, it is now clearly
  recognized to have been.

              Now ready:

          =Abraham Lincoln.= By ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER.
          =Thomas H. Benton.= By JOSEPH M. ROGERS.
          =David G. Farragut.= By JOHN R. SPEARS.
          =William T. Sherman.= By EDWARD ROBINS.
          =Frederick Douglass.= By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
          =Judah P. Benjamin.= By PIERCE BUTLER.
          =Robert E. Lee.= By PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE.
          =Jefferson Davis.= By PROF. W. E. DODD.
          =Alexander H. Stephens.= By LOUIS PENDLETON.
          =John C. Calhoun.= By GAILLARD HUNT.
          =“Stonewall” Jackson.= By HENRY ALEXANDER WHITE.
          =John Brown.= By W. E. BURGHARDT DUBOIS.

              In preparation:

          =Daniel Webster.= By PROF. C. H. VAN TYNE.
          =William Lloyd Garrison.= By LINDSAY SWIFT.
          =Charles Sumner.= By Prof. GEORGE H. HAYNES.
          =William H. Seward.= By EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr.
          =Stephen A. Douglas.= By PROF. HENRY PARKER WILLIS.
          =Thaddeus Stevens.= By PROF. J. A. WOODBURN.
          =Andrew Johnson.= By PROF. WALTER L. FLEMING.
          =Henry Clay.= By THOMAS H. CLAY.
          =Ulysses S. Grant.= By PROF. FRANKLIN S. EDMONDS.
          =Edwin M. Stanton.= By EDWIN S. CORWIN.
          =Jay Cooke.= By ELLIS PAXSON OBERHOLTZER.

[Illustration: John Brown]

                      AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES




                               JOHN BROWN


                                   by

                    W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS, Ph. D.

              _Professor of Sociology, Atlanta University_

      Author of “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade,” “The
          Philadelphia Negro,” “The Souls of Black Folk,” etc.


[Illustration]


                              PHILADELPHIA
                       GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                          COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
                       GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
                      _Published September, 1909_


                         _All rights reserved_
                          Printed in U. S. A.




                                  _To
                             the memory of
                               ELIZABETH_

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                PREFACE


After the work of Sanborn, Hinton, Connelley, and Redpath, the only
excuse for another life of John Brown is an opportunity to lay new
emphasis upon the material which they have so carefully collected, and
to treat these facts from a different point of view. The view-point
adopted in this book is that of the little known but vastly important
inner development of the Negro American. John Brown worked not simply
for Black Men—he worked with them; and he was a companion of their daily
life, knew their faults and virtues, and felt, as few white Americans
have felt, the bitter tragedy of their lot. The story of John Brown,
then, cannot be complete unless due emphasis is given this phase of his
activity. Unfortunately, however, few written records of these
friendships and this long continued intimacy exist, so that little new
material along these lines can be adduced. For the most part one must be
content with quoting the authors mentioned (and I have quoted them
freely), and other writers like Anderson, Featherstonhaugh, Barry,
Hunter, Boteler, Douglass and Hamilton. But even in the absence of
special material the great broad truths are clear, and this book is at
once a record of and a tribute to the man who of all Americans has
perhaps come nearest to touching the real souls of black folk.

                                                W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS.




                                CONTENTS


                        CHRONOLOGY                 11

                     I. AFRICA AND AMERICA         15

                    II. THE MAKING OF THE MAN      21

                   III. THE WANDERJAHRE            28

                    IV. THE SHEPHERD OF THE SHEEP  48

                     V. THE VISION OF THE DAMNED   75

                    VI. THE CALL OF KANSAS        123

                   VII. THE SWAMP OF THE SWAN     145

                  VIII. THE GREAT PLAN            198

                    IX. THE BLACK PHALANX         235

                     X. THE GREAT BLACK WAY       273

                    XI. THE BLOW                  308

                   XII. THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX  338

                  XIII. THE LEGACY OF JOHN BROWN  365

                        BIBLIOGRAPHY              397

                        INDEX                     401




                               CHRONOLOGY


                           BOYHOOD AND YOUTH

 1800—      John Brown is born in Torrington, Conn., May 9th. Attempted
              insurrection of slaves under Gabriel in Virginia, in
              September.

 1805—      The family migrates to Ohio.

 1812—      John Brown meets a slave boy.

 1816—      He joins the church.

 1819—      He attends school at Plainfield, Mass.


                               THE TANNER

 1819–1825— John Brown works as a tanner at Hudson, O.

 1821—      He marries Dianthe Lusk, June 21st.

 1822—      Attempted slave insurrection in South Carolina in June.

 1825–1835— He works as a tanner at Randolph, Pa., and is postmaster.

 1831—      Nat Turner’s insurrection, in Virginia, August 21st.

 1832—      His first wife dies, August 10th.

 1833—      He marries Mary Ann Day, July 11th.

 1834—      He outlines his plan for Negro education, November 21st.

 1835–1840— He lives in and near Hudson, O., and speculates in land.

 1837—      He loses heavily in the panic.

 1839—      He and his family swear blood-feud with slavery.

 1840—      He surveys Virginia lands for Oberlin College, and proposes
              buying 1,000 acres.


                              THE SHEPHERD

 1841—      John Brown begins sheep-farming.

 1842—      He goes into bankruptcy.

 1843—      He loses four children in September.

 1844—      He forms the firm of “Perkins and Brown, wool-merchants.”

 1845–51—   He is in charge of the Perkins and Brown warehouse,
              Springfield, O.

 1846—      Gerrit Smith offers Adirondack farms to Negroes, August 1st.

 1847—      Frederick Douglass visits Brown and hears his plan for a
              slave raid.

 1849—      He goes to Europe to sell wool, and visits France and
              Germany, August and September.

 1849—      First removal of his family to North Elba, N. Y.

 1850—      The new Fugitive Slave Law is passed.

 1851–1854— Winding up of the wool business.

 1851—      He founds the League of Gileadites, January 15th.


                               IN KANSAS

 1854—      Kansas and Nebraska Bill becomes a law, May 30th. Five sons
              start for Kansas in October.

 1855—      John Brown at the Syracuse convention of Abolitionists in
              June. He starts for Kansas with a sixth son and his
              son-in-law in September. Two sons take part in Big Springs
              convention in September. John Brown arrives in Kansas,
              October 6th. He helps to defend Lawrence in December.

 1856—      He attends a mass meeting at Osawatomie in April. He visits
              Buford’s camp in May. The sacking of Lawrence, May 21st.
              The Pottawatomie murders, May 23–26th. Arrest of two sons,
              May 28th. Battle of Black Jack, June 2d. Goes to Iowa with
              his wounded son-in-law and joins Lane’s army, July and
              August. Joins in attacks to rid Lawrence of surrounding
              forts, August. Battle of Osawatomie, August 30th.
              Missouri’s last invasion of Kansas, September 15th. Geary
              arrives and induces Brown to leave Kansas, September.
              Brown starts for the East with his sons, September 20th.


                            THE ABOLITIONIST

 1857—      John Brown is in Boston in January. He attends the New York
              meeting of the National Kansas Committee, in January.
              Before the Massachusetts legislature in February. Tours
              New England to raise money, March and April. Contracts for
              1,000 pikes in Connecticut.

 1857—      He starts West, May. He is at Tabor, I., August and
              September. He founds a military school in Iowa, December.

 1858—      John Brown returns to the East, January. He is at Frederick
              Douglass’s house, February. He reveals his plan to Sanborn
              in February. He is in Canada, April. Forbes’ disclosures,
              May. Chatham convention, May 8–10th. Hamilton’s massacre
              in Kansas, May 19th. Plans postponed, May 20th. John Brown
              starts West, June 3d. He arrives in Kansas, June 25th.
              He is in South Kansas, coöperating with Montgomery,
              July-December. The raid into Missouri for slaves, December
              20th.


                        THE HARPER’S FERRY RAID

 1859—      John Brown starts with fugitives for Canada, January 20th.
              He arrives in Canada, March 12th. He speaks in Cleveland,
              March 23d. Last visit of John Brown to the East, April and
              May. He starts for Harper’s Ferry, June. He and three
              companions arrive at Harper’s Ferry, July 3d. He gathers
              twenty-two men and munitions, June-October. He starts on
              the foray, Sunday, October 16th at 8 P. M. The town and
              arsenal are captured, Monday, October 17th at 4 A. M.
              Gathering of the militia, Monday, October 17th at 7 A. M.
              to 12 M. Brown’s party is hemmed in, Monday, October 17th
              at 12 M. He withdraws to the engine-house, Monday, October
              17th at 12 M. Kagi’s party is killed and captured, Monday,
              October 17th at 3 P. M. Lee and 100 marines arrive,
              Monday, October 17th at 12 P. M. Brown is captured,
              Tuesday, October 18th at 8 A. M.

 1859—      Preliminary examination, October 25th. Trial at Charleston
              (then Virginia, now West Virginia), October 27th-November
              4th. Forty days in prison, October 16th-December 2d.
              Execution of John Brown at Charleston, December 2d. Burial
              of John Brown at North Elba, N. Y., December 8th.




                               JOHN BROWN




                               CHAPTER I
                           AFRICA AND AMERICA

  “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the
  prophet saying, ‘Out of Egypt have I called My son.’”


The mystic spell of Africa is and ever was over all America. It has
guided her hardest work, inspired her finest literature, and sung her
sweetest songs. Her greatest destiny—unsensed and despised though it
be,—is to give back to the first of continents the gifts which Africa of
old gave to America’s fathers’ fathers.

Of all inspiration which America owes to Africa, however, the greatest
by far is the score of heroic, men whom the sorrows of these dark
children called to unselfish devotion and heroic self-realization:
Benezet, Garrison and Harriet Stowe; Sumner, Douglass and Lincoln—these
and others, but above all, John Brown.

John Brown was a stalwart, rough-hewn man, mightily yet tenderly carven.
To his making went the stern justice of a Cromwellian “Ironside,” the
freedom-loving fire of a Welsh Celt, and the thrift of a Dutch
housewife. And these very things it was—thrift, freedom, and
justice—that early crossed the unknown seas to find asylum in America.
Yet they came late, for before they came greed, and greed brought black
slaves from Africa.

The Negroes came on the heels, if not on the very ships of Columbus.
They followed De Soto to the Mississippi; saw Virginia with D’Ayllon,
Mexico with Cortez, Peru with Pizarro; and led the western wanderings of
Coronado in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola. Something more
than a a decade after the Cavaliers, and a year before the Pilgrims,
they set lasting foot on the North American continent.

These black men came not of their willing, but because of the hasty
greed of new America selfishly and half thoughtlessly sought to revive
in the New World the dying but unforgotten custom of enslaving the
world’s workers. So with the birth of wealth and liberty west of the
seas, came slavery, and slavery all the more cruel and hideous because
it gradually built itself on a caste of race and color, thus breaking
the common bonds of human fellowship and weaving artificial barriers of
birth and appearance.

The result was evil, as all injustice must be. At first, the black men
writhed and struggled and died in their bonds, and their blood reddened
the paths across the Atlantic and around the beautiful isles of the
Western Indies. Then as the bonds gripped them closer and closer, they
succumbed to sullen indifference or happy ignorance, with only here and
there flashes of wild red vengeance.

For, after all, these black men were but men, neither more nor less
wonderful than other men. In build and stature, they were for the most
part among the taller nations and sturdily made. In their mental
equipment and moral poise, they showed themselves full brothers to all
men—“intensely human”; and this too in their very modifications and
peculiarities—their warm brown and bronzed color and crisp curled hair
under the heat and wet of Africa; their sensuous enjoyment of the music
and color of life; their instinct for barter and trade; their strong
family life and government. Yet these characteristics were bruised and
spoiled and misinterpreted in the rude uprooting of the slave trade and
the sudden transplantation of this race to other climes, among other
peoples. Their color became a badge of servitude, their tropical habit
was deemed laziness, their worship was thought heathenish, their family
customs and the government were ruthlessly overturned and debauched;
many of their virtues became vices, and much of their vice, virtue.

The price of repression is greater than the cost of liberty. The
degradation of men costs something both to the degraded and those who
degrade. While the Negro slaves sank to listless docility and vacant
ignorance, their masters found themselves whirled in the eddies of
mighty movements: their system of slavery was twisting them backward
toward darker ages of force and caste and cruelty, while forward swirled
swift currents of liberty and uplift.

They still felt the impulse of the wonderful awakening of culture from
its barbaric sleep of centuries which men call the Renaissance; they
were own children of the mighty stirring of Europe’s conscience which we
call the Reformation; and they and their children were to be prime
actors in laying the foundations of human liberty in a new a century and
new land. Already the birth pains of the new freedom were felt in that
land. Old Europe was begetting in the new continent a vast longing for
spiritual space. So it was builded into America the thrift of the
searchers of wealth, the freedom of the Renaissance and the stern
morality of the Reformation.

Three lands typified these three things which time planted in the New
World: England sent Puritanism, the last white flower of the Lutheran
revolt; Holland sent the new vigor and thrift of the Renaissance; while
Celtic lands and bits of lands like France and Ireland and Wales, sent
the passionate desire for personal freedom. These three elements came,
and came more often than not in the guise of humble men—an English
carpenter on the _Mayflower_, an Amsterdam tailor seeking a new
ancestral city, and a Welsh wanderer. From three such men sprang in the
marriage of years, John Brown.

To the unraveling of human tangles, we would gladly believe that God
sends especial men—chosen vessels that come to the world’s deliverance.
And what could be more fitting than that the human embodiments of
freedom, Puritanism and trade—the great new currents sweeping across the
back eddies of slavery, should give birth to the man who in years to
come pointed the way to liberty and realized that the cost of liberty
was less than the price of repression? So it was. In bleak December
1620, a carpenter and a weaver landed at Plymouth—Peter and John Brown.
This carpenter Peter came from goodly stock, possibly, though not sure,
from that very John Brown of the early sixteenth century whom bluff King
Henry VIII of England burned for his Puritanism, and whose son was all
too near the same fate. Thirty years after Peter Brown had landed, came
the Welshman, John Owen, to Windsor, Conn., to help in the building of
that commonwealth, and near him settled Peter Mills, the tailor of
Holland. The great-grandson of Peter Brown, born in Connecticut in 1700,
had for a son a Revolutionary soldier, who married one of the Welshman’s
grandchildren and had in turn a son, Owen Brown, the father of John
Brown, in February of 1771. This Owen Brown a neighbor remembers “very
distinctly, and that he was very much respected and esteemed by my
father. He was an earnestly devout and religious man, of the old
Connecticut fashion; and one peculiarity of his impressed his name and
person indelibly upon my memory: he was inveterate and most painful
stammerer—the first specimen of that infirmity that I had ever seen,
and, according to my recollection, the worst that I had ever known to
this day. Consequently, though we removed from Hudson to another
settlement early in the summer of 1807, and returned to Connecticut in
1812, so that I rarely saw any of that family afterward, I have never to
this day seen a man struggling and half strangled with a word stuck to
his throat, without remembering good Mr. Owen Brown, who could not speak
without stammering, except in prayer.”[1]

In 1800, May 9th, wrote this Owen Brown: “John was born, one hundred
years after his great-grandfather. Nothing else very uncommon.”[2]




                               CHAPTER II
                         THE MAKING OF THE MAN

  “There was a man called of God and his name was John.”


A tall big boy of twelve or fifteen, “barefoot and bareheaded, with
buckskin breeches, suspended often with one leather strap over his
shoulder”[3] roamed in the forests of northern Ohio. He remembered the
days of his coming to the strange wild land—the lowing oxen, the great
white wagon that wandered from Connecticut to Pennsylvania and over the
swelling hills and mountains, where the wide-eyed urchin of five sat
staring at the new world of a wild beast and the wilder brown men. Then
came life itself in its realness—the driving of cows and the killing of
rattlesnakes, and swift free rides on great mornings alone with earth
and tree and the sky. He became “a rambler in the wild new country,
finding birds and squirrels and sometimes a wild turkey’s nest.” At
first, the Indians filled him with a strange fear. But his kindly old
father thought of Indians as neither vermin nor property and this fear
“soon wore off and he used to hang about them quite as much as was
consistent with good manners.”

The tragedy and comedy of this broad silent life turned on things
strangely simple and primitive—the stealing of “three large brass pins”;
the disappearance of the wonderful yellow marble which an Indian boy had
given him; the love and losing of a little bob-tailed squirrel for which
he wept and hunted the world in vain; finally the shadow of death which
is ever here—the death of a ewe-lamb and the death of the boy’s mother.

All these things happened before he was eight and they were his main
education. He could dress leather and make whip-lashes; he could herd
cattle and talk Indian; but of books and formal schooling he had little.

“John was never quarrelsome, but was excessively fond of the hardest and
roughest kind of plays, and could never get enough of them. Indeed when
for a short time, he was sometimes sent to school, the opportunity it
afforded to wrestle and snowball and run and jump and knock off old
seedy wool hats, offered to him almost the only compensation for the
confinements and restraints of school.

“With such a feeling and but little chance of going to school at all, he
did not become much of a scholar. He would always choose to stay at home
and work hard rather than be sent to school.” Consequently, “he learned
nothing of grammar, nor did he get at school so much knowledge of common
arithmetic as the four ground rules.”

Almost his only reading at the age of ten was a little history to which
the open bookcase of an old friend tempted him. He knew nothing of games
or sports; he had few or no companions, but, “to be sent off through the
wilderness alone to very considerable distances was particularly his
delight.... By the time he was twelve years old he was sent off more
than a hundred miles with companies of cattle.” So his soul grew apart
and alone and yet untrammeled and unconfined, knowing all the depths of
secret self-abasement, and the heights of confident self-will. With
others he was painfully diffident and bashful, and little sins that
smaller souls would laugh at and forget loomed large and awful to his
heart-searching vision. John had “a very bad foolish habit.... I mean
telling lies, generally to screen himself from blame or from
punishment,” because “he could not well endure to be reproached and I
now think had he been oftener encouraged to be entirely frank ... he
would not have been so often guilty of this fault, nor have been (in
after life) obliged to struggle so long with so mean a habit.”

Such a nature was in its very essence religious, even mystical, but
never superstitious nor blindly trustful in half-known creeds and
formulas. His family was not rigidly Puritan in its thought and
discipline but had rather fallen into the mild heathenism of the
hard-working frontier until just before John’s birth. Then, his father
relates in quaint Calvinistic _patois_: “I lived at home in 1782; this
was a memorable year, as there was a great revival of religion in the
town of Canton. My mother and my older sisters and brother John dated
their hopes of salvation from that summer’s revival under the ministry
of the Rev. Edward Mills. I cannot say as I was a subject of the work;
but this I can say that I then began to hear preaching. I can now
recollect most if not all of those I heard preach, and what their texts
were. The change in our family was great; family worship set up by
brother John was ever afterward continued. There was a revival of
singing in Canton and our family became singers. Conference meetings
were kept up constantly and singing meetings—all of which brought our
family into a very good association—a very great aid of restraining
grace.”

Thus this young freeman of the woods was born into a religious
atmosphere; not that of stern, intellectual Puritanism, but of a milder
and a more sensitive type. Even this, however, the naturally skeptical
bent of his mind did not receive unquestioningly. The doctrines of his
day and church did not wholly satisfy him and he became only “to some
extent a convert to Christianity.” One answer to his questionings did
come, however, bearing its own wonderful credentials—and credentials all
the more wonderful to the man of few books and narrow knowledge of the
world of thought—the English Bible. He grew to be “a firm believer in
the divine authenticity of the Bible. With this book he became very
familiar.” He read and reread it; he committed long passages to memory;
he copied the simple vigor of its English, and wove into the very
essence of his being, its history, poetry, philosophy and truth. To him
the cruel grandeur of the Old Testament was as true as the love and
sacrifice of the New, and both mingled to mold his soul. “This will give
you some general idea of the first fifteen years of his life, during
which time he became very strong and large of his age, and ambitious to
perform the full labor of a man at almost any kind of hard work.”

Young John Brown’s first broad contact with life and affairs came with
the War of 1812, during which Hull’s disastrous campaign brought the
scene of fighting near his western home. His father, a simple wandering
old soul, thrifty without foresight, became a beef contractor, and the
boy drove his herds of cattle and hung about the camp. He met men of
position, was praised for his prowess and let listen to talk that seemed
far beyond his years. Yet he was not deceived. The war he felt was real
war and not the war of fame and fairy tale. He saw shameful defeat,
heard treason broached, and knew of cheating and chicanery. Disease and
death left its slimy trail as it crept homeward through the town of
Hudson from Detroit: “The effect of what he saw during the war went so
far to disgust him with military affairs that he would neither train nor
drill.”

But in all these early years of the making of this man, one incident
stands out as foretaste and prophecy—an incident of which we know only
the indefinite outline, and yet one which unconsciously foretold to the
boy the life deed of the man. It was during the war that a certain
landlord welcomed John to his home whither the boy had ridden with
cattle, a hundred miles through the wilderness. He praised the big,
grave and bashful lad to his guests and made much of him. John, however,
discovered something far more interesting than praise and good food in
the landlord’s parlor, and that was another boy in the landlord’s yard.
Fellow souls were scarce with this backwoodsman and his diffidence
warmed to the kindly welcome of the stranger, especially because he was
black, half-naked, and wretched. In John’s very ears the kind voices of
the master and his folk turned to harsh abuse with this black boy. At
night the slave lay in the bitter cold and once they beat the wretched
thing before John’s very eyes with an iron shovel, and again and again
struck him with any weapon that chanced. In wide-eyed silence John
looked on and questioned, Was the boy bad or stupid? No, he was active,
intelligent and with the great warm sympathy of his race did the
stranger “numerous little acts of kindness,” so that John readily, in
his straightforward candor, acknowledged him “fully if not more than his
equal.” That the black worked and worked hard and steadily was in John’s
eyes no hardship—rather a pleasure. Was not the world work? But that
this boy was fatherless and motherless, and that all slaves must of
necessity be fatherless and motherless with none to protect them or
provide for them, save at the will or caprice of the master—this was to
the half-grown man a thing of fearful portent and he asked, “Is God
their Father?” And what he asked, a million and a half black bondmen
were asking through the land.




                              CHAPTER III
                            THE WANDERJAHRE

  “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell
  asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the
  creation.”


In 1819 a tall, sedate, dignified young man named John Brown was entered
among the students of the Rev. Moses Hallock at Plainfield, Mass., where
men were prepared for Amherst College. He was beginning his years of
wandering—spiritual searching for the way of life, physical wandering in
the wilderness where he must earn his living. In after years he wrote to
a boy:

“I wish you to have some definite plan. Many seem to have none; others
never stick to any that they do form. This was not the case with John.
He followed up with great tenacity whatever he set about as long as it
answered his general purpose; hence he rarely failed in some degree to
effect the things he undertook. This was so much the case that he
habitually expected to succeed in his undertakings.”[4] In this case he
expected to get an education and he came to his task equipped with that
rare mixture of homely thrift and idealism which characterized his whole
life. His father could do little to help him, for the war was followed
by the “hard times” which are the necessary fruit of fighting. As the
father wrote: “Money became scarce, property fell and that which I
thought well bought would not bring its cost. I had made three or four
large purchases, in which I was a heavy loser.”

It was therefore as a poor boy ready to work his way that John started
out at Plainfield. The son of the principal tells how “he brought with
him a piece of sole leather about a foot square, which he had himself
tanned for seven years, to resole his boots. He had also a piece of
sheepskin which he had tanned, and of which he cut some strips about an
eighth of an inch wide, for other students to pull upon. Father took one
string, and winding it around his finger said with a triumphant turn of
the eye and mouth, ‘I shall snap it.’ The very marked, yet kind
immovableness of the young man’s face on seeing father’s defeat,
father’s own look, and the position of the people and the things in the
old kitchen somehow gave me a fixed recollection of this little
incident.”[5]

But all his thrift and planning here were doomed to disappointment. He
was, one may well believe, no brilliant student, and his only chance of
success lay in long and steady application. This he was prepared to make
when inflammation of the eyes set in, of so grave a type that all hopes
of long study must be given up. Several times before he had attempted
regular study, but for the most part these excursions to New England
schools had been but tentative flashes on a background of hard work in
his father’s Hudson tannery: “From fifteen to twenty years of age he
spent most of his time working at the tanner’s and currier’s trade;” and
yet, naturally, ever looking here and there in the world to find his
place. And that place, he came gradually to decide in his quiet firm
way, was to be an important one. He felt he could do things; he grew
used to guiding and commanding men. He kept his own lonely home and was
both foreman and cook in the tannery. His “close attention to business
and success in its management, together with the way he got along with a
company of men and boys, made him quite a favorite with the serious and
more intelligent portion of older persons. This was so much the case and
secured for him so many little notices from those he esteemed, that his
vanity was very much fed by it, and he came forward to manhood quite
full of self-conceit and self-confidence, notwithstanding his extreme
bashfulness. The habit so early formed of being obeyed rendered him in
after life too much disposed to speak in an imperious or dictating
way.”[6] Thus he spoke of himself, but others saw only that peculiar
consciousness of strength and quiet self-confidence, which characterized
him later on.

Just how far his failure to get a college training was a disappointment
to John Brown one is not able to say with certainty. It looks, however,
as if his attempts at higher training were rather the obedient following
of the conventional path, by a spirit which would never have found in
those fields congenial pasture. One suspects that the final decision
that college was impossible came to this strong free spirit with a
certain sense of relief—a relief marred only by the perplexity of
knowing what ought to be the path for his feet, if the traditional way
to accomplishment and distinction was closed.

That he meant to be not simply a tanner was disclosed in all his doing
and thinking. He undertook to study by himself, mastering common
arithmetic and becoming in time an expert surveyor. He “early in life
began to discover a great liking to fine cattle, horses, sheep, and
swine.” Meantime, however, the practical economic sense of his day and
occupation pointed first of all to marriage, as his father, who had had
three wives and sixteen or more children, was at pains to impress upon
him. Nor was John Brown himself disinclined. He was as he quaintly says,
“naturally fond of females, and withal extremely diffident.” One can
easily imagine the deep disappointment of this grave young man in his
first unfortunate love affair, when he felt With many another unloved
heart, this old world through, “a steady, strong desire to die.”

But youth is stronger even than first love, and the widow who came to
keep house for him had a grown daughter, a homely, good-hearted and
simple-minded country lass; the natural result was that John Brown was
married at the age of twenty to Dianthe Lusk, whom he describes as “a
remarkably plain, but neat, industrious and economical girl, of
excellent character, earnest piety and practical common sense.”[7]

Then ensued a period of life which puzzles the casual onlooker with its
seemingly aimless changing character, its wandering restlessness, its
planless wavering. He was now a land surveyor, now a tanner and now a
lumber dealer; a postmaster, a wool-grower, a stock-raiser, a shepherd,
and a farmer. He lived at Hudson, at Franklin and at Richfield in Ohio;
in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. And yet in all this
wavering and wandering, there were certain great currents of growth,
purpose and action. First of all he became the father of a family: in
the eleven years from 1821 to 1832, seven children were born—six sons
and one girl. The patriarchal ideal of family life handed down by his
fathers, strengthened by his own saturation in Hebrew poetry, and by his
own bent, grew up in his home.

His eldest son and daughter tell many little incidents illustrating his
family government: “Our house, on a lane which connects two main roads,
was built under father’s direction in 1824, and still stands much as he
built it with the garden and orchard around it which he laid out. In the
rear of the house was then a wood, now gone, on a knoll leading down to
the brook which supplied the tan-pits.”[8]

“Father used to hold all his children while they were little at night
and sing his favorite songs,” says the eldest daughter. “The first
recollection I have of father was being carried through a piece of woods
on Sunday to attend a meeting held at a neighbor’s house. After we had
been at the house a little while, father and mother stood up and held
us, while the minister put water on our faces. After we sat down father
wiped my face with a brown silk handkerchief with yellow spots on it in
diamond shape. It seemed beautiful to me and I thought how good he was
to wipe my face with that pretty handkerchief. He showed a great deal of
tenderness in that and other ways. He sometimes seemed very stern and
strict with me, yet his tenderness made me forget he was stern....

“When he would come home at night tired out with labor, he would before
going to bed, ask some of the family to read chapters (as was his usual
course night and morning); and would almost always say: ‘Read one of
David’s Psalms.’...

“Whenever he and I were alone, he never failed to give me the best of
advice, just such as a true and anxious mother would give a daughter. He
always seemed interested in my work, and would come around and look at
it when I was sewing or knitting; and when I was learning to spin he
always praised me if he saw that I was improving. He used to say: ‘Try
to do whatever you do in the very best possible manner.’”[9]

“Father had a rule not to threaten one of his children. He commanded and
there was obedience,” writes his eldest son. “My first apprenticeship to
the tanning business consisted of a three years’ course at grinding bark
with a blind horse. This, after months and years, became slightly
monotonous. While the other children were out at play in the sunshine,
where the birds were singing, I used to be tempted to let the old horse
have a rather long rest, especially when father was absent from home;
and I would then join the others at their play. This subjected me to
frequent admonitions and to some corrections for eye-service as father
termed it.... He finally grew tired of these frequent slight admonitions
for my laziness and other shortcomings, and concluded to adopt with me a
sort of book-account something like this:

               “John, Jr.,
                   “For disobeying mother—8 lashes.
                   “For unfaithfulness at work—3 lashes.
                   “For telling a lie—8 lashes.

“This account he showed to me from time to time. On a certain Sunday
morning he invited me to accompany him from the house to the tannery,
saying that he had concluded it was time for a settlement. We went into
the upper or finishing room, and after a long and tearful talk over my
faults, he again showed me my account, which exhibited a fearful footing
up of debits. I had no credits or offsets and was of course bankrupt. I
then paid about one-third of the debt, reckoned in strokes from a nicely
prepared blue-beach switch, laid on ‘masterly.’ Then to my utter
astonishment, father stripped off his shirt and seating himself on a
block gave me the whip and bade me lay it on to his bare back. I dared
not refuse to obey, but at first I did not strike hard. ‘Harder,’ he
said, ‘harder, harder!’ until he received the balance of the account.
Small drops of blood showed on his back where the tip end of the
tingling beach cut through. Thus ended the account and settlement, which
was also my first practical illustration of the doctrine of the
atonement.”[10]

Even the girls did not escape whipping. “He used to whip me often for
telling lies,” says a daughter, “but I can’t remember his ever punishing
me but once when I thought I didn’t deserve, and then he looked at me so
stern that I didn’t dare to tell the truth. He had such a way of saying,
‘Tut, tut!’ if he saw the first sign of a lie in us, that he often
frightened us children.

“When I first began to go to school,” she continues, “I found a piece of
calico one day behind one of the benches—it was not large, but seemed
quite a treasure to me, and I did not show it to any one until I got
home. Father heard me then telling about it and said, ‘Don’t you know
what girl lost it?’ I told him I did not. ‘Well, when you go to school
to-morrow take it with you and find out if you can who lost it. It is a
trifling thing but always remember that if you should lose anything you
valued, no matter how small, you would want the person who found it to
give it back to you.’” He “showed a great deal of tenderness to me,”
continues the daughter, “and one thing I always noticed was my father’s
peculiar tenderness and devotion to his father. In cold weather he
always tucked the bedclothes around grandfather when he went to bed, and
would get up in the night to ask him if he slept warm—always seeming so
kind and loving to him that his example was beautiful to see.”

Especially were his sympathy and devotion evident in sickness: “When his
children were ill with scarlet fever, he took care of us himself and if
he saw persons coming to the house, would go to the gate and meet them,
not wishing them to come in, for fear of spreading the disease.[11]...
When any of the family were sick he did not often trust watchers to care
for the sick one, but sat up himself and was like a tender mother. At
one time he sat up every night for two weeks while mother was sick, for
fear he would oversleep if he went to bed, and then the fire would go
out and she take cold.”[12]

The death of one little girl shows how deeply he could be moved: “He
spared no pains in doing all that medical skill could do for her
together with the tenderest care and nursing. The time that he could be
at home was mostly spent in caring for her. He sat up nights to keep an
even temperature in the room, and to relieve mother from the constant
care which she had through the day. He used to walk with the child and
sing to her so much that she soon learned his step. When she heard him
coming up the steps to the door, she would reach out her hands and cry
for him to take her. When his business at the wool store crowded him so
much that he did not have time to take her, he would steal around
through the wood-shed into the kitchen to eat his dinner, and not go
into the dining-room where she could see or hear him. I used to be
charmed myself with his singing to her. He noticed a change in her one
morning and told us he thought she would not live through the day, and
came home several times to see her. A little before noon he came home
and looked at her and said, ‘She is almost gone.’ She heard him speak,
opened her eyes and put up her little wasted hands with such a pleading
look for him to take her that he lifted her up from the cradle with the
pillows she was lying on, and carried her until she died. He was very
calm, closed her eyes, folded her hands and laid her in her cradle. When
she was buried father broke down completely and sobbed like a
child.”[13]

Dianthe Lusk, John Brown’s first wife, died in childbirth, August 10,
1832, having borne him seven children, two of whom died very young. On
July 11, 1833, now thirty-three years of age, he married Mary Ann Day, a
girl of seventeen, only five years older than his oldest child. She bore
him thirteen children, seven of whom died young. Thus seven sons and
four daughters grew to maturity and his wife, Mary, survived him
twenty-five years. It was, all told, a marvelous family—large and
well-disciplined, yet simple almost to poverty, and hard-working. No
sooner were the children grown than the wise father ceased to command
and simply asked or advised. He wrote to his eldest son when first he
started in life in characteristic style:

“I think the situation in which you have been placed by Providence at
this early period of your life will afford to yourself and others some
little test of the sway you may be expected to exert over minds in after
life and I am glad on the whole to have you brought in some measure to
the test in your youth. If you cannot now go into a disorderly country
school and gain its confidence and esteem, and reduce it to good order
and waken up the energies and the very soul of every rational being in
it—yes, of every mean, ill-behaved, ill-governed boy and girl that
compose it, and secure the good-will of the parents,—then how are you to
stimulate asses to attempt a passage of the Alps? If you run with
footmen and they should weary you, how should you contend with horses?
If in the land of peace they have wearied you, then how will you do in
the swelling of Jordan? Shall I answer the question myself? ‘If any man
lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth liberally and upbraideth
not.’”[14]

Not that Brown was altogether satisfied with his method of dealing with
his children; he said to his wife: “If the large boys do wrong, call
them alone into your room and expostulate with them kindly, and see if
you cannot reach them by a kind but powerful appeal to their honor. I do
not claim that such a theory accords very well with my practice; I
frankly confess it does not; but I want your face to shine even if my
own should be dark and cloudy.”[15]

The impression which he made on his own family was marvelous. A
granddaughter writes me of him, saying: “The attitude of John Brown’s
family and descendants has always been one of exceeding reverence toward
him. This speaks for something. Stern, unyielding, Puritanic, requiring
his wife and daughters to dress in sober brown, disliking show and
requesting that mourning colors be not worn for him—a custom which still
obtains with us—laying the rod heavily upon his boys for their boyish
pranks, he still was wonderfully tender—would invariably walk up hill
rather than burden his horse, loved his family devotedly, and when
sickness occurred, always installed himself as nurse.”

In his personal habits he was austere: severely clean, sparing in his
food so far as to count butter an unnecessary luxury; once a moderate
user of cider and wine—then a strong teetotaler; a lover of horses with
harassing scruples as to breeding race-horses. All this gave an air of
sedateness and maturity to John Brown’s earlier manhood which belied his
years. Having married at twenty, he was but twenty-one years older than
his eldest son; and while his many children and his varied occupations
made him seem prematurely aged, he was, in fact, during this period,
during the years from twenty to forty, experiencing the great formative
development of his spiritual life. This development was most interesting
and fruitful.

He was not a man of books: he had Rollins’ _Ancient History_, Josephus
and Plutarch and lives of Napoleon and Cromwell. With these went
Baxter’s _Saints’ Rest_, Henry _On Meekness_ and _Pilgrim’s Progress_.
“But above all others the Bible was his favorite volume and he had such
perfect knowledge of it that when any person was reading he would
correct the least mistake.”[16]

Into John Brown’s religious life entered two strong elements; the sense
of overruling inexorable fate, and the mystery and promise of death. He
pored over the Old Testament until the freer religious skepticism of his
earlier youth became more formal and straight. The brother of his first
wife says, “Brown was an austere fellow,” and when the young man called
on the sister and mother Sundays, as his only holiday, Brown said to
him: “Milton, I wish you would not make your visits here on the
Sabbath.”

When the panic of 1837 nearly swept Brown from his feet, he saw behind
it the image of the old Hebrew God and wrote his wife: “We all must try
to trust in Him who is very gracious and full of compassion and of
almighty power; for those that do will not be made ashamed. Ezra the
prophet prayed and afflicted himself before God, when himself and the
Captivity were in a strait and I have no doubt you will join with me
under similar circumstances. Don’t get discouraged, any of you, but hope
in God, and try all to serve Him with a perfect heart.”[17]

When Napoleon III seized France and Kossuth came to America, Brown
looked with lofty contempt on the “great excitement” which “seems to
have taken all by surprise.” “I have only to say in regard to those
things, I rejoice in them from the full belief that God is carrying out
His eternal purpose in them all.”[18]

The gloom and horror of life settled early on John Brown. His childhood
had had little formal pleasure, his young manhood had been serious and
filled with responsibility, and almost before he himself knew the full
meaning of life, he was trying to teach it to his children. The iron of
bitterness entered his soul with the coming of death, and a deep
religious fear and foreboding bore him down as it took away member after
member of his family. In 1831 he lost a boy of four and in 1832 his
first wife died insane, and her infant son was buried with her. In 1843
four children varying in ages from one to nine years were swept away.
Two baby girls went in 1846 and 1859 and an infant boy in 1852. The
struggle of a strong man to hold his faith is found in his words, “God
has seen fit to visit us with the pestilence and four of our number
sleep in the dust; four of us that are still living have been more or
less unwell.... This has been to us all a bitter cup indeed and we have
drunk deeply; but still the Lord reigneth and blessed be His holy name
forever.” Again three years later he writes his wife from the edge of a
new-made grave: “I feel assured that notwithstanding that God has
chastised us often and sore, yet He has not entirely withdrawn Himself
from us nor forsaken us utterly. The sudden and dreadful manner in which
He has seen fit to call our dear little Kitty to take her leave of us,
is, I need not tell you how much, in my mind. But before Him I will bow
my head in submission and hold my peace.... I have sailed over a
somewhat stormy sea for nearly half a century, and have experienced
enough to teach me thoroughly that I may most reasonably buckle up and
be prepared for the tempest. Mary, let us try to maintain a cheerful
self-command while we are tossing up and down, and let our motto still
be action, action,—as we have but one life to live.”[19]

His soul gropes for light in the great darkness: “Sometimes my
imagination follows those of my family who have passed behind the
scenes; and I would almost rejoice to be permitted to make them a
personal visit. I have outlived nearly half of all my numerous family,
and I ought to realize that in any event a large proportion of my life
is traveled over.”[20]

Then there rose grimly, as life went on in its humdrum round of failure
and trouble, the thought that in some way his own sin and shortcomings
were bringing upon him the vengeful punishment of God. He laments the
fact that he has done little to help others and the world: “I feel
considerable regret by turns that I have lived so many years and have in
reality done so little to increase the amount of human happiness. I
often regret that my manner is not more kind and affectionate to those I
really love and esteem. But I trust my friends will overlook my harsh
rough ways, when I cease to be in their way as an occasion of pain and
unhappiness.”[21]

The death of a friend fills him with self-reproach: “You say he expected
to die, but do not say how he felt in regard to the change as it drew
near. I have to confess my unfaithfulness to my friend in regard to his
most important interest.... When I think how very little influence I
have even tried to use with my numerous acquaintances and friends in
turning their minds toward God and heaven, I feel justly condemned as a
most wicked and slothful servant; and the more so as I have very seldom
had any one refuse to listen when I earnestly called him to hear. I
sometimes have dreadful reflections about having fled to go down to
Tarshish.”[22]

Especially did the religious skepticism of his children, so like his own
earlier wanderings, worry and dismay the growing man until it loomed
before his vision as his great sin, calling for mighty atonement. He
pleads with his older children continually:

“My attachments to this world have been very strong and divine
Providence has been cutting me loose, one cord after another. Up to the
present time notwithstanding I have so much to remind me that all ties
must soon be severed, I am still clinging like those who have hardly
taken a single lesson. I really hope some of my family may understand
that this world is not the home of man, and act in accordance. Why may I
not hope this for you? When I look forward as regards the religious
prospects of my numerous family—the most of them,—I am forced to say,
and feel too, that I have little—very little to cheer. That this should
be so is, I perfectly well understand, the legitimate fruit of my own
planting; and that only increases my punishment. Some ten or twelve
years ago I was cheered with the belief that my elder children had
chosen the Lord to be their God and I relied much on their influence and
example in atoning for my deficiency and bad example with the younger
children. But where are we now? Several have gone where neither a good
nor a bad example from me will better their condition or prospects or
make them worse. I will not dwell longer on this distressing subject but
only say that so far as I have gone it is from no disposition to reflect
on any one but myself. I think I can clearly discover where I wandered
from the road. How now to get on it with my family is beyond my ability
to _see_ or my courage to _hope_. God grant you thorough conversion from
sin, and full purpose of heart to continue steadfast in His way through
the very short season you will have to pass.”[23]

And again he writes: “One word in regard to the religious belief of
yourself and the ideas of several of my children. My affections are too
deep-rooted to be alienated from them; but ‘my gray hairs must go down
in sorrow to the grave’ unless the true God forgive their denial and
rejection of Him and open their eyes.”

And again: “I would fain hope that the spirit of God has not done
striving in our hard hearts. I sometimes feel encouraged to hope that my
sons will give up their miserable delusions and believe in God and in
His Son, our Saviour.”[24]

All this is evidence of a striving soul, of a man to whom the world was
a terribly earnest thing. Here was neither the smug content of the man
beyond religious doubt, nor the carelessness of the unharassed
conscience. To him the world was a mighty drama. God was an actor in the
play and so was John Brown. But just what his part was to be his soul in
the long agony of years tried to know, and ever and again the chilling
doubt assailed him lest he be unworthy of his place or had missed the
call. Often the brooding masculine mind which demanded “Action! Action!”
sought to pierce the mystic veil. His brother-in-law became a
spiritualist, and he himself hearkened for voices from the Other Land.
Once or twice he thought he heard them. Did not the spirit of Dianthe
Lusk guide him again and again in his perplexity? He once said it did.

And so this saturation in Hebrew prophecy, the chastisement of death,
the sense of personal sin and shortcoming and the voices from nowhere,
deepened, darkened and broadened his religious life. Yet with all this
there went a peculiar common sense, a spirit of thrift and stickling for
detail, a homely shrewd attention to all the little facts of daily
existence. Sometimes this prosaic tinkering with things burdened, buried
and submerged the spiritual life and striving. There was nothing left
except the commonplace, unstable tanner, but ever as one is tempted thus
to fix his place in the world, there wells up surging spiritual life out
of great unfathomed depths—the intellectual longing to see, the moral
wistfulness of the hesitating groping doer. This was the deeper, truer
man, although it was not the whole man. “Certainly I never felt myself
in the presence of a stronger religious influence than while in this
man’s house,” said Frederick Douglass in 1847.




                               CHAPTER IV
                       THE SHEPHERD OF THE SHEEP

  “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field,
  keeping watch over their flock by night.

  “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the
  Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.”


The vastest physical fact in the life of John Brown was the Alleghany
Mountains—that beautiful mass of hill and crag which guards the sombre
majesty of the Maine coast, crumples the rivers on the rocky soil of New
England, and rolls and leaps down through busy Pennsylvania to the misty
peaks of Carolina and the red foothills of Georgia. In the Alleghanies
John Brown was all but born; their forests were his boyhood wonderland;
in their villages he married his wives and begot his clan. On the sides
of the Alleghanies, he tended his sheep and dreamed of his terrible
dream. It was the mystic, awful voice of the mountains that lured him to
liberty, death and martyrdom within their wildest fastness, and in their
bosom he sleeps his last sleep.

So, too, in the development of the United States from the War of 1812 to
the Civil War, it was the Alleghanies that formed the industrial centre
of the land and lured young men to their waters and mines, valleys and
factories, as they lured John Brown. His life from 1805 to 1854 was
almost wholly spent on the western slope of the Alleghanies in a small
area of Ohio and Pennsylvania, beginning eighty miles north of Pittsburg
and ending twenty-five miles southeast of Cleveland. Here in a
half-dozen small towns, but chiefly in Hudson, O., he worked in his
young manhood to support his growing family. From 1819 to 1825, he was a
tanner at Hudson. Then he moved seventy miles westward toward the crests
of the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania, where he set up his tannery again
and became a man of importance in the town. John Quincy Adams made him
postmaster, the village school was held at his log house and the new
feverish prosperity of the post-bellum period began to stir him as it
stirred this whole western world. Indeed, the economic history of the
land from the War of 1812 to the Civil War covers a period of
extraordinary developments—so much so that no man’s life which fell in
these years may be written without knowledge of and allowance for the
battling of gigantic social forces and welding of material, out of which
the present United States was designed.

Three phases roughly mark these days: First, the slough of despond
following the war, when England forced her goods upon us at nominal
prices to kill the new-sprung infant industries; secondly, the new
protection from the competition of foreign goods from 1816 to 1857,
rising high in the prohibitory schedules of 1828, and falling to the
lower duties of the forties and the free trade of the fifties, and
stimulating irregularly and spasmodically but tremendously the cotton,
woolen and iron manufactories; and finally, the three whirlwinds of
1819, 1837–1839, and 1857, marking frightful maladjustments in the
mushroom growth of our industrial life.

John Brown, coming to full industrial manhood in the buoyant prosperity
of 1825, soon began to sense the new spirit. After ten years’ work in
Pennsylvania, he again removed westward, nearer the projected
transportation lines between East and West. He began to invest his
surplus in land along the new canal routes, became a director in one of
the rapidly multiplying banks and was currently rated to be worth
$20,000 in 1835. But his prosperity, like that of his neighbors, and
indeed, of the whole country, was partly fictitious, and built on a fast
expanding credit which was far outstretching the rapid industrial
development. Jackson’s blind tinkering with banking precipitated the
crisis. The storm broke in 1837. Over six hundred banks failed, ten
thousand employees were thrown out of work, money disappeared and prices
went down to a specie level. John Brown, his tannery and his land
speculations, were sucked into the maelstrom.

The overthrow was no ordinary blow to a man of thirty-seven with eight
children, who had already trod the ways of spiritual doubt and unrest.
For three or four years he seemed to flounder almost hopelessly,
certainly with no settled plan or outlook. He bred race-horses till his
conscience troubled him; he farmed and did some surveying; he inquired
into the commission business in various lines, and still did some
tanning. Then gradually he began to find himself. He was a lover of
animals. In 1839 he took a drove of cattle to Connecticut and wrote to
his wife: “I have felt distressed to get my business done and return
ever since I left home, but know of no way consistent with duty but to
make thorough work of it while there is any hope. Things now look more
favorable than they have but I may still be disappointed.”[25] His diary
shows that he priced certain farms for sale, but especially did he
inquire carefully into sheep-raising and its details, and eventually
bought a flock of sheep, which he drove home to Ohio. This marked the
beginning of a new occupation, that of shepherd, “being a calling for
which in early life he had a kind of enthusiastic longing.” He began
sheep-farming near Hudson, keeping his own and a rich merchant’s sheep
and also buying wool on commission.

This industry in the United States had at that time passed through many
vicissitudes. The change from household to factory economy and the
introduction of effective machinery had been slow, and one of the chief
drawbacks was ever the small quantity of good wool. Consequently our
chief supply came from England until the embargo and war cut off that
supply and stimulated domestic manufacture. Between 1810 and 1815 the
value of the manufacture increased five-fold, but after the war, when
England sent goods over here below the price, Americans rightly clamored
for tariff protection. This they got, but their advantage was nearly
upset by the wool farmers who also got protection on the commodity,
although less on low than on better qualities; and it was the low grades
that America produced. From 1816 to 1832 the tariff wall against wool
and woolens rose steadily until it reached almost prohibitive figures,
save on the cheapest kind. In this way the wool manufacture had by 1828
recovered its war-time prosperity; by 1840 the mills were sending out
twenty and a half million dollars’ worth of goods yearly, and nearly
fifty millions by 1860 even though meanwhile the tariff wall was
weakening. Thus by 1841 when John Brown turned his attention to
sheep-farming, there was a large and growing demand for wool, especially
of the better grades, and by the abolition of the English tariff in
1824, there was even a chance of invading England.

Because, then, of his natural liking for the work, and the growing
prosperity of the wool trade, John Brown chose this line of employment.
But not for this alone. His spirit was longing for air and space. He
wanted to think and read; time was flying and his life as yet had been
little but a mean struggle for bread and that, too, only partially
successful. Already he had had a vision of vast service. Already he had
broached the matter to friends and family, and at the age of thirty-nine
he entered his new life distinctly and clearly with “the idea that as a
business it bid fair to afford him the means of carrying out his
greatest or principal object.”[26]

His first idea was to save enough from the wreck of his fortune to buy
and stock a large sheep farm, and in accordance with his already forming
plans as to Negro emancipation, he wanted this farm in or near the
South. A chance seemed opening when through his father, a trustee of
Oberlin College, he learned of the Virginia lands lately given that
institution by Gerrit Smith, whom Brown came to know better. Oberlin
College was dear to John Brown’s heart, for it had almost from the
beginning taken a strong anti-slavery stand. The titles to the Virginia
land, however, were clouded by the fact of many squatters being in
possession, which gave ample prospects of costly lawsuits. Brown wrote
the trustees early in 1840, proposing to survey the lands for a nominal
price, provided he could be allowed to buy on reasonable terms and
establish his family there. He also spoke of school facilities which he
proposed for Negroes as well as whites, according to a long cherished
plan. The college records in April, 1840, say: “Communication from
Brother John Brown of Hudson was presented and read by the secretary,
containing a proposition to visit, survey and make the necessary
investigation respecting boundaries, etc., of those lands, for one
dollar per day and a moderate allowance for necessary expenses; said
paper frankly expressing also his design of viewing the lands as a
preliminary step to locating his family upon them, should the opening
prove a favorable one; whereupon, _voted_ that said proposition be
acceded to, and that a commission and needful outfit be furnished by the
secretary and treasurer.”[27] The treasurer sent John Brown fifty
dollars and wrote his father, as a trustee of Oberlin, commending the
son’s purpose and hoping “for a favorable issue both for him and the
institution.” He added, “Should he succeed in clearing up titles without
difficulty or lawsuits, it would be easy, as it appears to me, to make
provision for religious and school privileges and by proper efforts with
the blessing of God, soon see that wilderness bud and blossom as the
rose.”[28]

Thus John Brown first saw Virginia and looked upon the rich and heavy
land which rolls westward to the misty Blue Ridge. That he visited
Harper’s Ferry on this trip is doubtful but possible. The lands of
Oberlin, however, lay two hundred miles westward in the foothills and
along the valley of the Ohio. He wrote home from Ripley, Va., in April
(for he had gone immediately): “I like the country as well as I
expected, and its inhabitants rather better; and I have seen the spot
where if it be the will of Providence, I hope one day to live with my
family.... Were the inhabitants as resolute and industrious as the
Northern people and did they understand how to manage as well, they
would become rich.”[29]

By the summer of 1840 his work was accomplished with apparent success.
He had about selected his dwelling-place, having “found on the right
branch of Big Battle a valuable spring, good stone-coal, and excellent
bottoms, good timber, sugar orchard, good hill land and beautiful
situation for dwelling—all right. Course of this branch at the forks is
south twenty-one degrees west from a beautiful white oak on which I
marked my initials, 23d April.”[30]

The Oberlin trustees in August, “voted, that the Prudential Committee be
authorized to perfect negotiations and convey by deed to Brother John
Brown of Hudson, one thousand acres of our Virginia land on the
conditions suggested in the correspondence which has already transpired
between him and the committee.”[31]

Here, however, negotiations stopped, for the renewal of the panic in
1839 overthrew all business calculations until 1842 and later, and
forced John Brown to take refuge in formal bankruptcy in 1842. This
step, his son says, was wholly “owing to his purchase of land on
credit—including the Haymaker farm at Franklin, which he bought in
connection with Seth Thompson, of Hartford, Trumbull County, Ohio, and
his individual purchase of three rather large adjoining farms in Hudson.
When he bought those farms, the rise in value of his place in Franklin
was such that good judges estimated his property worth fully twenty
thousand dollars. He was then thought to be a man of excellent business
judgment and was chosen one of the directors of a bank at Cayahoga
Falls.”[32] Probably after the crash of 1837, Brown hoped to extricate
enough to buy land in Virginia and move there, but things went from bad
to worse. Through endorsing a note for a friend, one of his best pieces
of farm property was attached, put up at auction and bought by a
neighbor. Brown, on legal advice, sought to retain possession, but was
arrested and placed in the Akron jail. The property was lost. Legal
bankruptcy followed in October, 1842, but Brown would not take the full
advantage of it. He gave the New England Woolen Company of Rockville,
Conn., a note declaring that “whereas I, John Brown, on or about the
15th day of June, A. D. 1839, received of the New England Company
(through their agent, George Kellogg, Esq.) the sum of twenty-eight
hundred dollars for the purchase of wool for said company, and
imprudently pledged the same for my own benefit and could not redeem it;
and whereas I have been legally discharged from my obligations by the
laws of the United States—I hereby agree (in consideration of the great
kindness and tenderness of said company toward me in my calamity, and
more particularly of the moral obligation I am under to render to all
their due) to pay the same and the interest thereon from time to time as
divine Providence shall enable me to do.”[33]

He wrote Mr. Kellogg at the same time: “I am sorry to say that in
consequence of the unforeseen expense of getting the discharge, the loss
of an ox, and the destitute condition in which a new surrender of my
effects has placed me, with my numerous family, I fear this year must
pass without my effecting in the way of payment what I have encouraged
you to expect.”[34] He was still paying this debt when he died and left
fifty dollars toward it in his will.

It was a labyrinth of disaster in which the soul of John Brown was
well-nigh choked and lost. We hear him now and then gasping for breath:
“I have been careful and troubled with so much serving that I have in a
great measure neglected the one thing needful, and pretty much stopped
all correspondence with heaven.”[35] He goes on to tell his son: “My
worldly business has borne heavily and still does; but we progress some,
have our sheep sheared, and have done something at our haying. Have our
tanning business going on in about the same proportion—that is, we are
pretty fairly behind in business and feel that I must nearly or quite
give up one or the other of the branches for want of regular troops on
whom to depend.”[36] He again tells his son: “I would send you some
money, but I have not yet received a dollar from any source since you
left. I should not be so dry of funds, could I but overtake my
work;”[37] and then follows the teeth-gritting word of a man whose grip
is slipping: “But all is well; all is well.”[38]

Gradually matters began to mend. His tannery, perhaps never wholly
abandoned, was started again and his wool interests increased. Early in
1844 “we seem to be overtaking our business in the tannery,” he says,
and “I have lately entered into a co-partnership with Simon Perkins,
Jr., of Akron, with a view of carrying on the sheep business
extensively. He is to furnish all the feed and shelter for wintering, as
a set-off against our taking all the care of the flock. All other
expenses we are to share equally, and to divide the property equally.”
John Brown and his family were to move to Akron and he says: “I think
that is the most comfortable and the most favorable arrangement of my
worldly concerns that I ever had and calculated to afford us more
leisure for improvement by day and by night than any other. I do hope
that God has enabled us to make it in mercy to us, and not that He
should send leanness into our souls. Our time will all be at our own
command, except the care of the flock. We have nothing to do with
providing for them in the winter, excepting harvesting rutabagas and
potatoes. This I think will be considered no mean alliance for our
family and I most earnestly hope they will have wisdom given to make the
most of it. It is certainly endorsing the poor bankrupt and his family,
three of whom were but recently in Akron jail in a manner quite
unexpected, and proves that notwithstanding we have been a company of
‘belted knights,’ our industrious and steady endeavors to maintain our
integrity and our character have not been wholly overlooked.”[39]

Indeed, the offer seemed to John Brown a flood of light: a beloved
occupation with space and time to think, to study and to dream, to get
acquainted with himself and the world after the long struggle for bread
and butter and the deep disappointment of failure almost in sight of
success. By July, 1844, Brown was reporting 560 lambs raised and 2,700
pounds of wool, for which he had been offered fifty-six cents a pound,
showing it to be of high grade. He began closing up his tanning
business. “The general aspect of our worldly affairs is favorable. Hope
we do not entirely forget God,”[40] he writes.

His daughter says: “As a shepherd, he showed the same watchful care over
his sheep. I remember one spring a great many of his sheep had a disease
called ‘grub in the head,’ and when the lambs came, the ewes would not
own them. For two weeks he did not go to bed, but sat up or slept an
hour or two at a time in his chair, and then would take a lantern, go
out and catch the ewes, and hold them while the lambs sucked. He would
very often bring in a little dead-looking lamb, and put it in warm water
and rub it until it showed signs of life, and then wrap it in a warm
blanket, feed it warm milk with a teaspoon, and work over it with such
tenderness that in a few hours it would be capering around the room. One
Monday morning I had just got my white clothes in a nice warm suds in
the wash-tub, when he came in bringing a little dead-looking lamb. There
seemed to be no sign of life about it. Said he, ‘Take out your clothes
quick, and let me put this lamb in the water.’ I felt a little vexed to
be hindered with my washing, and told him I didn’t believe he could make
it live; but in an hour or two he had it running around the room, and
calling loudly for its mother. The next year he came from the barn and
said to me, ‘Ruth, that lamb I hindered you with when you were washing,
I have just sold for one hundred dollars.’ It was a pure-blooded Saxony
lamb.”[41]

By 1845 wealth again seemed all but within the grasp of John Brown. The
country was entering fully upon one of the most remarkable of many
note-worthy periods of industrial expansion and the situation in the
wool business was particularly favorable. The flock of Saxony sheep
owned by Perkins and Brown was “said to be the finest and most perfect
flock in the United States and worth about $20,000.” The only apparent
danger to the prosperity of the western wool-growers was the increasing
power of the manufacturers and their desire for cheap wool. The tariff
on woolen goods was lower than formerly, but until war-time, remained at
about twenty to thirty per cent. _ad valorem_, which afforded sufficient
protection. The tariff on cheap wool decreased until, in 1857, all wool
costing less than twenty cents a pound came in free and in 1854 Canadian
wool of all grades was admitted without duty. This meant practically
free trade in wool. The manufacturers of hosiery and carpets increased
and the demand for domestic wool was continually growing. There were,
however, many difficulties in realizing just prices for domestic wool:
it was bought up by the manufacturer’s agents, dealing with isolated,
untrained farmers and offering the lowest prices; it was bought in bulk
ungraded and as wool differs enormously in quality and price, the lowest
grade often set the price for all. No sooner did John Brown grasp the
details of the wool business than he began to work out plans of
amelioration. And he conceived of this amelioration not as measured
simply in personal wealth. To him business was a philanthropy. We have
not even to-day reached this idea, but, urged on by the Socialists, we
are faintly perceiving it. Brown proposed nothing Quixotic or
unpractical, but he did propose a more equitable distribution of the
returns of the whole wool business between the producers of the raw
material and the manufacturers. He proceeded first to arouse and
organize the wool-growers. He traveled extensively among the farmers of
Pennsylvania and Ohio. “I am out among the wool-growers, with a view to
next summer’s operations,” he writes March 24, 1846; “our plan seems to
meet with general favor.” And then thinking of greater plans he adds:
“Our unexampled success in minor affairs might be a lesson to us of what
unity and perseverance might do in things of some importance.”[42] For
what indeed were sheep as compared with men, and money weighed with
liberty?

The plan outlined by Brown before a convention of wool-growers involved
the placing of a permanent selling agent in the East, the grading and
warehousing of the wool, and a pooling of profits according to the
quality of the fleece. The final result was that in 1846 Perkins and
Brown sent out a circular, saying: “The undersigned, commission
wool-merchants, wool-graders, and exporters, have completed arrangements
for receiving wool of growers and holders, and for grading and selling
the same for cash at its real value, when quality and condition are
considered.”[43]

John Brown was put in special charge of this business while his son ran
the sheep farm in Ohio. The idea underlying this movement was excellent
and it was soon started successfully. John Brown went to live in
Springfield with his family. In December, 1846, he writes: “We are
getting along with our business slowly, but prudently, I trust, and as
well as we could reasonably expect under all the circumstances; and so
far as we can discover, we are in favor with this people, and also with
the many we have had to do business with.”[44]

In two weeks during 1847 he has “turned about four thousand dollars’
worth of wool into cash since I returned; shall probably make it up to
seven thousand by the 16th.”[45]

Yet great as was this initial prosperity, the business eventually failed
and was practically given up in 1851. Why? It was because of one of
those strange economic paradoxes which bring great moral questions into
the economic realm;—questions which we evaded yesterday and are trying
to evade to-day, but which we must answer to-morrow. Here was a man
doing what every one knew was for the best interests of a great
industry,—grading and improving the quality of its raw material and
systematizing its sale. His methods were absolutely honest, his
technical knowledge was unsurpassed and his organization efficient. Yet
a combination of manufacturers forced him out of business in a few
months. Why? The ordinary answer of current business ethics would be
that John Brown was unable to “corner” the wool market against the
manufacturers. But this he never tried to do. Such a policy of financial
free-booting never occurred to him, and he would have repelled it
indignantly if it had. He wished to force neither buyer nor seller. He
was offering worthy goods at a fair price and making a just return for
them. That this system was best for the whole trade every one knew, yet
it was weak. It was weak in the same sense that the merchants of the
Middle Ages were weak against the lawless onslaughts of robber barons.
Any compact organization of manufacturers could force John Brown to take
lower prices for his wool—that is, to allow the farmer a smaller
proportion of the profit of the business of clothing human beings. In
other words, well-organized industrial highwaymen could hold up the wool
farmer and make him hand over some of his earnings. But John Brown knew,
as did, indeed, the manufacturing gentlemen of the road that the farmers
were getting only moderate returns. It was the millmen who made
fortunes. Now it was possible to oppose the highwaymen’s demand by
counter organization like the Middle-Age Hanse. The difficulty here
would be to bring all the threatened parties into an organization. They
could be forced in by killing off or starving out the ignorant or
recalcitrant. This is the modern business method. Its result is arraying
two industrial armies in a battle whose victims are paupers and
prostitutes, and whose victory comes by compromising, whereby a
half-dozen millionaires are born to the philanthropic world.

On the other hand, to offer no opposition to organized economic
aggression is to depend on the simple justice of your cause in an
industrial world that recognizes no justice. It means industrial death
and that was what it meant to John Brown. The Tariff of 1846 had cut the
manufacturers’ profits. The growing woolen trade would more than recoup
them in a few years, but they “were not in business for their health”;
that is, they recognized no higher moral law than money-making and
therefore determined to keep present profits where they were, and add
possible future profits to them. They continued their past efforts to
force down the price of wool and got practical free trade in wool by
1854. Meantime local New England manufacturers began to boycott John
Brown. They expected him to see his danger and lower his prices on the
really fine grades he carried. He was obdurate. His prices were right
and he thought justice counted in the wool business. The manufacturers
objected. He was not playing according to the rules of the game. He was,
as a fellow merchant complained, “no _trader_: he waited until his wools
were graded and then fixed a price; if this suited the manufacturers
they took the fleeces; if not, they bought elsewhere.... Yet he was a
scrupulously honest and upright man—hard and inflexible, but everybody
had just what belonged to him. Brown was in a position to make a fortune
and a regular bred merchant would have done so.”[46]

Thereupon the combination turned the screws a little closer. Brown’s
clerks were bribed, and other “competitive” methods resorted to. But
Brown was inflexible and serene. The prospect of great wealth did not
tempt but rather repelled him. Indeed this whole warehouse business,
successful and important as it had hitherto been, was drawing him away
from his plans of larger usefulness. It took his time and thought, and
his surroundings more and more made it mere money-getting. The
manufacturers were after dollars, of course; his clients were waiting
simply for returns, and his partner was ever anxiously scanning the
balance-sheet. This whole aspect of things more and more disquieted
Brown. He therefore writes soberly in December, 1847:

“Our business seems to be going on middling well and will not probably
be any the worse for the pinch in the money concerns. I trust that
getting or losing money does not entirely engross our attention; but I
am sensible that it quite occupies too large a share in it. To get a
little property together to leave, as the world would have done, is
really a low mark to be firing at through life.

                   “‘A nobler toil may I sustain,
                   A nobler satisfaction gain.’”[47]

The next year, however, came a severe money pressure, “one of the
severest known for many years. The consequence to us has been, that some
of those who have contracted for wool of us are as yet unable to pay for
and take the wool as they agreed, and we are on that account unable to
close our business.”[48] This brought a fall in the price and complaint
on all sides: on the part of the wool-growers, because their profits
were not continuing to rise; and from manufacturers who demurred more
and more clamorously at the prices demanded by Brown.

He writes early in 1849: “We have been selling wool middling fast of
late, on contract, at 1847 prices;” but he adds, scenting the coming
storm: “We have in this part of the country the strongest proofs that
the great majority have made gold their hope, their only hope.”[49]

Evidently a crisis was approaching. The boycott against the firm was
more evident and the impatience of wool farmers growing. The latter kept
calling for advances on their stored wool. If they had been willing to
wait quietly, there was still a chance, for Perkins and Brown had
undoubtedly the best in the American market and as good as the better
English grades. But the growers were restive and in some cases poor. The
result was shown in the balance-sheet of 1849. Brown had bought 130,000
pounds of wool and paid for it, including freight and commissions,
$57,884.48. His sales had amounted to $49,902.67, leaving him $7,981.81
short, and 200,000 pounds of wool in the warehouse.[50] Perkins
afterward thought Brown was stubborn. It would have been easily possible
for them to have betrayed the growers and accepted a lower price. Their
commissions would have been larger, the manufacturers were friendly, and
the sheepmen too scattered and poor to protest. Indeed, low prices and
cash pleased them better than waiting. But John Brown conceived that a
principle was at stake. He knew that his wool was worth even more than
he asked. He knew that English wool of the same grade sold at good
prices. Why not, then, he argued, take the wool to England and sell it,
thus opening up a new market for a great American product? Then, too, he
had other and, to him, better reasons for wishing to see Europe. He
decided quickly and in August, 1849, he took his 200,000 pounds of wool
to England. He had graded every bit himself, and packed it in new sacks:
“The bales were firm, round, hard and true, almost as if they had been
turned out in a lathe.”[51]

In this English venture John Brown showed one weakness of his character:
he did not know or recognize the subtler twistings of human nature. He
judged it ever from his own simple, clear standpoint and so had a sort
of prophetic vision of the vaster and the eternal aspects of the human
soul. But of its kinks and prejudices, its little selfishnesses and
jealousies and dishonesties, he knew nothing. They always came to him as
a sort of surprise, uncalculated for and but partially comprehended. He
could fight the devil and his angels, and he did, but he could not cope
with the million misbirths that hover between heaven and hell.

Thus to his surprise he found his calculations all at fault in England.
His wool was good, his knowledge of the technique of sorting and grading
unsurpassed and yet because Englishmen believed it was not possible to
raise good wool in America, they obstinately refused to take the
evidence of their own senses. They “seemed highly pleased”; they said
that they “had never seen superior wools” and that they “would see me
again” but they did not offer decent prices. Then, too, American woolen
men had long arms and they were tipped with gold. They fingered busily
across the seas about this prying Yankee, and English wool-growers
responded very willingly, so that John Brown acknowledged mournfully
late in September, “I have a great deal of stupid obstinate prejudice to
contend with, as well as conflicting interests both in this country and
from the United States.”[52] In the end the wool was sacrificed at
prices fifty per cent. below its American value and some of it actually
resold in America. The American woolen men chuckled audibly:

“A little incident occurred in 1850. Perkins and Brown’s clip had come
forward, and it was beautiful; the little compact Saxony fleeces were as
nice as possible. Mr. Musgrave of the Northampton Woolen Mill, who was
making shawls and broadcloths, wanted it, and offered Uncle John [Brown]
sixty cents a pound for it. ‘No, I am going to send it to London.’
Musgrave, who was a Yorkshire man, advised Brown not to do it, for
American wool would not sell in London,—not being thought good. He tried
hard to buy it, but without avail.... Some little time after, long
enough for the purpose, news came that it was sold in London, but the
price was not stated. Musgrave came into my counting-room one forenoon
all aglow, and said he wanted me to go with him,—he was going to have
some fun. Then he went to the stairs and called Uncle John, and told him
he wanted him to go over to the Hartford depot and see a lot of wool he
had bought. So Uncle John put on his coat, and we started. When we
arrived at the depot, and just as we were going into the freight-house,
Musgrave says: ‘Mr. Brune, I want you to tell me what you think of this
lot of wull that stands me in just fifty-two cents a pund.’ One glance
at the bags was enough. Uncle John wheeled, and I can see him now as he
‘put back’ to the lofts, his brown coat-tails floating behind him, and
the nervous strides fairly devouring the way. It was his own clip, for
which Musgrave, some three months before, had offered him sixty cents a
pound as it lay in the loft. It had been graded, new bagged, shipped by
steamer to London, sold, and reshipped, and was in Springfield at eight
cents in the pound less than Musgrave offered.”[53]

It was a great joke and it made American woolen men smile.

This English venture was a death-blow to the Perkins and Brown wool
business. It was not entirely wound up until four years later, but in
1849 Brown removed his family from Springfield up to the silent forests
of the farthest Adirondacks, where the great vision of his life unfolded
itself. It was, however, not easy for him to extricate himself from the
web wound about him. Two currents set for his complete undoing: the
wool-growers whom he had over-advanced and who did not deliver the
promised wool; and certain manufacturers to whom the firm had contracted
to deliver this wool which they could not get. Claims and damages to the
amount of $40,000 appeared and some of these got into court; while, on
the other hand, the scattered and defaulting wool-growers were scarcely
worth suing by the firm. Long drawn-out legal battles ensued, intensely
distasteful to Brown’s straightforward nature and seemingly endless.
Collections and sales continued hard and slow and Perkins began to get
restless. John Brown sighed for the older and simpler life of his young
manhood with its love and dreams: “I can look back to our log cabin at
the centre of Richfield with a supper of porridge and johnny cake as a
place of far more interest to me than the Massasoit of Springfield.”[54]
He says to his children on the Ohio sheep farm: “I am much pleased with
the reflection that you are all three once more together, and all
engaged in the same calling that the old patriarchs followed. I will say
but one word more on that score, and that is taken from their history:
‘See that ye fall not out by the way; and all will be exactly right in
the end.’ I should think matters were brightening a little in this
direction in regard to our claims, but I have not yet been able to get
any of them to a final issue. I think, too, that the prospect for the
fine wool business rather improves. What burdens me most of all is the
apprehension that Mr. Perkins expects of me in the way of bringing
matters to a close, what no living man can possibly bring about in a
short time and that he is getting out of patience and becoming
distrustful.”[55]

Meantime Brown was racing from court to court in Boston, New York, Troy
and elsewhere, seeking to settle up the business and know where he stood
financially, and, above all, to keep peace with and do justice to his
partner. Cases were now settled and now appealed and the progress was
“miserably slow. My journeys back and forth this winter have been very
tedious.” Then, too, his mind was elsewhere. The nation was in turmoil
and so was he. At the time Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston he was
advising with his lawyers at Troy. Redpath says:

“The morning after the news of the Burns affair reached here, Brown went
at his work immediately after breakfast; but in a few minutes started up
from his chair, walked rapidly across the room several times, then
suddenly turned to his counsel, and said, ‘I am going to Boston.’ ‘Going
to Boston!’ said the astonished lawyer. ‘Why do you want to go to
Boston?’ Old Brown continued walking vigorously, and replied, ‘Anthony
Burns must be released, or I will die in the attempt.’ The counsel
dropped his pen in consternation. Then he began to remonstrate; told him
the suit had been in progress a long time, and a verdict just gained. It
was appealed from, and that appeal must be answered in so many days, or
the whole labor would be lost; and no one was sufficiently familiar with
the whole case except himself. It took a long earnest talk with old
Brown to persuade him to remain. His memory and acuteness in that long
and tedious lawsuit—not yet ended, I am told—often astonished his
counsel. While here he wore an entire suit of snuff-colored cloth, the
coat of a decidedly Quakerish cut in collar and skirt. He wore no beard,
and was a clean-shaven, scrupulously neat, well-dressed, quiet old
gentleman. He was, however, notably resolute in all that he did.”[56]

He spent the time not taken up by his lawsuits at Akron, and in the
manner of a patriarch of old, temporarily brought his family back to
Ohio. “I wrote you last week that the family is on the road: the boys
are driving on the cattle, and my wife and little girls are at Oneida
depot waiting for me to go on with them.”[57] He returned to farming
again with interest, taking prizes for his stock at state fairs and
raising many sheep. He had 550 lambs in 1853 and Perkins is urging him
to continue with him, but things changed and on January 25, 1854, he
writes: “This world is not yet freed from real malice and envy. It
appears to be well settled now that we go back to North Elba in the
spring. I have had a good-natured talk with Mr. Perkins about going away
and both families are now preparing to carry out that plan.”[58] His
departure was delayed a year, but he was finally able to remove with a
little surplus on hand.

Back then to the crests and forests of the Alleghanies came John Brown
at the age of fifty-four. “A tall, gaunt, dark-complexioned man ... a
grave, serious man ... with a marked countenance and a natural dignity
of manner,—that dignity which is unconscious, and comes from a superior
habit of mind.”[59]




                               CHAPTER V
                        THE VISION OF THE DAMNED

  “Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.”


There was hell in Hayti in the red waning of the eighteenth century, in
the days when John Brown was born. The dark wave of the French
Revolution had raised the brilliant sinister Napoleon to its crest.
Already he had stretched greedy arms toward American empire in the rich
vale of the Mississippi, when in a flash, out of the dirt and sloth and
slavery of the West Indies, the black inert and heavy cloud of African
degradation writhed to sudden life and lifted up the dark figure of
Toussaint. Ten thousand Frenchmen gasped and died in the fever-haunted
hills, while the black men in sudden frenzy fought like devils for their
freedom and won it. Napoleon saw his gateway to the Mississippi closed;
armed Europe was at his back. What was this wild and empty America to
him, anyway? So he sold Louisiana for a song and turned to the shame of
Trafalgar and the glory of Austerlitz.

John Brown was born just as the shudder of Hayti was running through all
the Americas, and from his earliest boyhood he saw and felt the price of
repression—the fearful cost that the western world was paying for
slavery. From his earliest boyhood he had dimly conceived, and the
conception grew with his growing, that the cost of liberty was less than
the price of repression. Perhaps he was so near the humanistic
enthusiasm of the French Revolution that he undervalued the cost of
liberty. But yet he was right, for it was scarce possible to overrate
the price of repression. True, in these latter days men and women of the
South, and honest ones, too, have striven feverishly to paint Negro
slavery in bright alluring colors. They have told of childlike devotion,
faithful service and light-hearted irresponsibility, in the fine old
aristocracy of the plantation. Much they have said is true. But when all
is said and granted, the awful fact remains congealed in law and
indisputable record that American slavery was the foulest and filthiest
blot on nineteenth century civilization. As a school of brutality and
human suffering, of female prostitution and male debauchery; as a
mockery of marriage and defilement of family life; as a darkening of
reason, and spiritual death, it had no parallel in its day. It took
millions upon millions of men—human men and lovable, light and
liberty-loving children of the sun, and threw them with no sparing of
brutality into one rigid mold: humble, servile, dog-like devotion,
surrender of body, mind and soul, and unaspiring animal content—toward
this ideal the slave might strive, and did. Wonderful, even beautiful
examples of humble service he brought forth and made the eternal
heritage of men. But beyond this there was nothing. All were crushed to
this mold and of them that did not fit, the sullen were cowed, the
careless brutalized and the rebellious killed. Four things make life
worthy to most men: to move, to know, to love, to aspire. None of these
was for Negro slaves. A white child could halt a black man on the
highway and send him slinking to his kennel. No black slave could
legally learn to read. And love? If a black slave loved a lass, there
was not a white man from the Potomac to the Rio Grande that could not
prostitute her to his lust. Did the proud sons of Virginia and Carolina
stoop to such bestial tyranny? Ask the grandmothers of the two million
mulattoes that dot the states to-day. Ask the suffering and humiliated
wives of the master caste. If a Negro married a wife, there was not a
master in the land that could not take her from him.

John Brown’s father, Owen Brown, saw such a power stretched all the way
from Virginia to Connecticut. A Southern slaveholding minister, Thomson
by name, had brought his slaves North and preached in the local church.
Then he attempted to take the unwilling chattels back South. Of what
followed, Owen Brown says: “There was some excitement amongst the
people, some in favor and some against Mr. Thomson; there was quite a
debate, and large numbers to hear. Mr. Thomson said he should carry the
woman and children, whether he could get the man or not. An old man
asked him if he would part man and wife, contrary to their minds. He
said: ‘I married them myself, and did not enjoin obedience on the
woman.’” Owen Brown added, “Ever since I have been an Abolitionist.”[60]

If a slave begat children, there was not a law south of the Ohio that
could stop their eventual sale to any brute with the money. Aspiration
in a slave was suspicious, dangerous, fatal. For him there was no
inviting future, no high incentive, no decent reward. The highest
ambition to which a black woman could aspire was momentarily to supplant
the white man’s wife as a concubine; and the ambition of black men ended
with the carelessly tossed largess of a kinglet. To reduce the slave to
this groveling, what was the price which the master paid? Tyranny,
brutality, and lawlessness reigned and to some extent still reign in the
South. The sweeter, kindlier feelings were blunted: brothers sold
sisters to serfdom and fathers debauched even their own dark daughters.
The arrogant, strutting bully, who shot his enemy and thrashed his dogs
and his darkies, became a living, moving ideal from the cotton-patch to
the United States Senate from 1808 onward. No worthy art nor literature,
nor even the commerce of daily life could thrive in this atmosphere.

Society there was of a certain type—courtly and lavish, but quarrelsome;
seductive and lazy; with a half Oriental sheen and languor spread above
peculiar poverty of resource; a fineness and delicacy in certain
details, coupled with coarseness and self-indulgence in others; a
mingling of the sexes only in play and seldom in work, with its
concomitant tendency toward seclusion and helplessness among its whiter
women. Withal a society strong indeed, but wholly without vigor or
invention.

It was not all as dark as it might have been. Human life, thank God, is
never as bad as it may be, but it is too often desperately bad. Nor do
men easily realize how bad life about them is. The full have scant
sympathy with the empty,—the rich know all the faults of the poor, and
the master sees the horrors of slavery with unseeing eyes. True, there
were flashes of light and longing here and there—noble sacrifice, eager
help, determined emancipation. But all this was local, spasmodic and
exceptional. The unrelenting dead brutality of human bondage to a
thousand tyrants, petty wills and caprice was the rule from Florida to
Missouri and from the Mississippi to the sea. Under it the wretched
writhed like some great black and stricken beast. The flaming fury of
their mad attempts at vengeance echoes all down the blood-swept path of
slavery. In Jamaica they upturned the government and harried the land
until England crept and sued for peace. In the Danish Isles they started
a whirlwind of slaughter; in Hayti they drove their masters into the
sea; and in South Carolina they rose twice like a threatening wave
against the terror-stricken whites, but were betrayed. Such outbreaks
here and there foretold the possibility of coördinate action and organic
development. To be sure, the successful outbreaks were few and
spasmodic; but the flare of Hayti lighted the night and made the world
remember that these, too, were men.

Among these black men, changes significant and momentous, were coming.
The native born Africans were passing away, with their native tongues
and their wild customs. Such were the slaves of John Brown’s father’s
time. “When I was a child four or five years old,” writes Owen Brown,
“one of the nearest neighbors had a slave that was brought from Guinea.
In the year 1776 my father was called into the army at New York, and
left his work undone. In August, our good neighbor, Captain John Fast,
of West Simsbury, let my mother have the labor of his slave to plough a
few days. I used to go out into the field with this slave,—called
Sam,—and he used to carry me on his back, and I fell in love with him.
He worked but a few days, and went home sick with the pleurisy, and died
very suddenly. When told that he would die, he said he should go to
Guinea, and wanted victuals put up for the journey. As I recollect, this
was the first funeral I ever attended in the days of my youth.”

Such slaves and others went into the Revolutionary army and three
thousand of them fought for their masters’ freedom. After the war, their
bravery, the upheaval in Hayti, and the new enthusiasm for human rights,
led to a wave of emancipation which started in Vermont during the
Revolution and swept through New England and Pennsylvania, ending
finally in New York and New Jersey early in the nineteenth century. This
freeing of the Northern slaves led to new complications, for in the
South, after a hesitating pause, the opposite course was pursued and the
thumbscrews were applied; the plantations were isolated, the roads were
guarded, the refractory were whipped till they screamed and crawled, and
the ringleaders were lynched. A long awful process of selection chose
out the listless, ignorant, sly, and humble and sent to heaven the
proud, the vengeful and the daring. The old African warrior spirit died
away of violence and a broken heart.

Thus the great black mass of Southern slaves were cowed, but they were
not conquered. Stretched as they were over wide miles of land, and
isolated; guarded in speech and religion; peaceful and light-hearted as
was their nature, still the fire of liberty burned in them. In Louisiana
and Tennessee and twice in Virginia they raised the night cry of revolt,
and once slew fifty Virginians, holding the state for weeks at bay there
in those same Alleghanies which John Brown loved and listened to. On the
ships of the sea they rebelled and murdered; to Florida they fled and
turned like beasts on their pursuers till whole armies dislodged them
and did them to death in the everglades; and again and again over them
and through them surged and quivered a vast unrest which only the
eternal vigilance of the masters kept down. Yet the fear of that great
bound beast was ever there—a nameless, haunting dread that never left
the South and never ceased, but ever nerved the remorseless cruelty of
the master’s arm.

One thing saved the South from the blood-sacrifice of Hayti—not, to be
sure, from so successful a revolt, for the disproportion of races was
less, but from a desperate and bloody effort—and that was the escape of
the fugitive.

Along the Great Black Way stretched swamps and rivers, and the forests
and crests of the Alleghanies. A widening, hurrying stream of fugitives
swept to the havens of refuge, taking the restless, the criminal and the
unconquered—the natural leaders of the more timid mass. These men saved
slavery and killed it. They saved it by leaving it to a false seductive
dream of peace and the eternal subjugation of the laboring class. They
destroyed it by presenting themselves before the eyes of the North and
the world as living specimens of the real meaning of slavery. What was
the system that could enslave a Frederick Douglass? They saved it too by
joining the free Negroes of the North, and with them organizing
themselves into a great black phalanx that worked and schemed and paid
and finally fought for the freedom of black men in America.

Thus it was that John Brown, even as a child, saw the puzzling anomalies
and contradictions in human right and liberty all about him. Ever and
again he saw this in the North, leading to concerted action among the
free Negroes, especially in cities where they were brought in contact
with one another, and had some chance of asserting their nominal
freedom. Just at the close of the eighteenth century, first in
Philadelphia and then in New York, small groups of them withdrew from
the white churches to escape disgraceful discrimination and established
churches of their own, which still live with millions of adherents. In
the year of John Brown’s birth, 1800, Gabriel planned his formidable
uprising in Virginia, and the year after his marriage, 1821, Denmark
Vesey of South Carolina went grimly to the scaffold, after one of the
shrewdest Negro plots that ever frightened the South into hysterics. Of
all this John Brown, the boy and young man, knew little. In after years
he learned of Gabriel and Vesey and Turner, and told of their exploits
and studied their plans; but at the time he was far off from the world,
carrying on his tannery and marrying a wife. Perhaps as a lad he heard
some of the oratory that celebrated the act of 1808, stopping the slave
trade, as the beginning of the end of slavery. Perhaps not, for the act
did little good until it was reënforced in 1820. All the time, however,
John Brown’s keen eyes were searching for the way of life and his tender
heart was sensitive to injustice and wrong everywhere. Indeed, it is not
unlikely that the first black folk to gain his aid and sympathies and
direct his thoughts to what afterward became his life-work, were the
fugitive slaves from the South.

Three paths were opened to the slaves: to submit, to fight or to run
away. Most of them submitted as do most people everywhere to force and
fate. To fight singly meant death and to fight together meant plot and
insurrection—a difficult thing but one often tried. Easiest of all was
to run away, for the land was wide and bare and the slaves were many. At
first, they ran to the swamps and mountains, and starved and died. Then
they ran to the Indians and in Florida founded a nation to overthrow
which cost the United States $20,000,000 and more in slave raids known
as Seminole “wars.” Then gradually, after the War of 1812 had used so
many black sailors to fight for free trade that the Negroes learned of
the North and Canada as cities of refuge, they fled northward. While
John Brown was a tanner at Hudson, he began helping these dark panting
refugees who flitted by in the night. His eldest son says:

“When I was four or five years old, and probably no later than 1825,
there came one night a fugitive slave and his wife to father’s
door—sent, perhaps, by some townsman who knew John Brown’s compassion
for such wayfarers, then but few. They were the first colored people I
had seen; and when the woman took me upon her knee and kissed me, I ran
away as quick as I could, and rubbed my face ‘to get the black off’; for
I thought she would ‘crock’ me, like mother’s kettle. Mother gave the
poor creatures some supper; but they thought themselves pursued and were
uneasy. Presently father heard the trampling of horses crossing a bridge
on one of the main roads, half a mile off; so he took his guests out the
back door and down into the swamp near the brook to hide, giving them
arms to defend themselves, but returning to the house to await the
event. It proved a false alarm; the horsemen were people of the
neighborhood going to Hudson village. Father then went out into the dark
wood,—for it was night,—and had some difficulty in finding his
fugitives; finally he was guided to the spot by the sound of the man’s
heart throbbing for fear of capture. He brought them into the house
again, sheltered them a while, and sent them on their way.”[61]

The atmosphere in these days was becoming more and more charged with the
slavery problem. That same Louisiana which Toussaint had given America,
was gradually filling with settlers until the question of admitting
parts of it as states faced the nation, and led to the Missouri
Compromise. The discussion of the measure was fierce in John Brown’s
neighborhood, and it must have strengthened his dislike of slavery and
turned his earnest mind more and more toward the Negroes.

In the very year that death first entered his family and took a boy of
four, and just before the sombre days when his earnest young wife died
demented in childbirth and was buried with her babe, occurred the Nat
Turner insurrection in Virginia, the most successful and bloody of slave
uprisings since Hayti.

Squire Hudson, the father of the town where John Brown lived and one of
the founders of Western Reserve University, heard the news in stern joy;
a neighbor met him “one day in September, 1831, coming from his
post-office, and reading a newspaper he had just received, which seemed
to excite him very much as he read. As Mr. Wright came within hearing,
the old Calvinist was exclaiming, ‘Thank God for that! I am glad of it!
Thank God they have risen at last!’ Inquiring what the news was, Squire
Hudson replied, ‘Why, the slaves have risen down in Virginia, and are
fighting for their freedom as we did for ours. I pray God that they may
get it.’”[62]

They did not get freedom but death. And yet there on the edge of Dismal
Swamp they slaughtered fifty whites, held the land in terror for more
than a month, and set going a tremendous wave of reaction. In the South,
Negro churches and free Negro schools were sternly restricted, just at
the time Great Britain was freeing her West Indian slaves. In the North,
came two movements: a determined anti-slavery campaign, and an opposing
movement which disfranchised Negroes, burned their churches and schools,
and robbed them of their friends. The Negroes rushed together for
counsel and defense, and held their first national meeting in
Philadelphia, where they deliberated earnestly on migration to Canada
and on schools. But schools for Negroes were especially feared North as
well as South, and in John Brown’s native state of Connecticut a white
woman was shamefully persecuted for attempting to teach Negroes. All
this aroused John Brown’s antipathy to slavery and made it more definite
and purposeful. In November of the year which witnessed the burning of
Prudence Crandall’s school, and a year after his second marriage, he
wrote to his brother:

“Since you have left me, I have been trying to devise some means whereby
I might do something in a practical way for my poor fellow men who are
in bondage; and having fully consulted the feelings of my wife and my
three boys, we have agreed to get at least one Negro boy or youth, and
bring him up as we do our own,—viz., give him a good English education,
learn him what we can about the history of the world, about business,
about general subjects, and, above all, try to teach him the fear of
God. We think of three ways to obtain one: First, to try to get some
Christian slaveholder to release one to us. Second, to get a free one,
if no one will let us have one that is a slave. Third, if that does not
succeed, we have all agreed to submit to considerable privation in order
to buy one. This we are now using means in order to effect, in the
confident expectation that God is about to bring them all out of the
house of bondage.

“I will just mention that when this subject was first introduced, Jason
had gone to bed; but no sooner did he hear the thing hinted, than his
warm heart kindled, and he turned out to have a part in the discussion
of a subject of such exceeding interest. I have for years been trying to
devise some way to get a school a-going here for blacks, and I think
that on many accounts it would be a most favorable location. Children
here would have no intercourse with vicious people of their own kind,
nor with openly vicious persons of any kind. There would be no powerful
opposition influence against such a thing; and should there be any, I
believe the settlement might be so effected in future as to have almost
the whole influence of the place in favor of such a school. Write me how
you would like to join me, and try to get on from Hudson and thereabouts
some first-rate Abolitionist families with you. I do honestly believe
that our united exertions alone might soon, with the good hand of our
God upon us, effect it all.”[63]

Nothing came of this project, except that John Brown grew more deeply
interested. He was now worth $20,000, a man of influence and he felt
more and more moved toward definite action to help the Negroes. They
were keeping up their conventions and the stream of fugitives was
augmenting. The problem, however, was not simply one of slavery. The
plight of the free Negro was particularly pitiable. He was liable to be
seized and sold South whether an actual slave or not; he was
discriminated against and despised in all walks. This was bad enough in
every-day life, but to a straightforward religious soul like John Brown
it was simply intolerable in the church of God. His eldest daughter
says:

“One evening after he had been singing to me, he asked me how I would
like to have some poor little black children that were slaves
(explaining to me the meaning of slaves) come and live with us; and
asked me if I would be willing to divide my food and clothes with them.
He made such an impression on my sympathies, that the first colored
person that I ever saw (it was a man I met on the street in Meadville,
Pa.) I felt such pity for, that I wanted to ask him if he did not want
to come and live at our house. When I was six or seven years old, a
little incident took place in the church at Franklin, O. (of which all
the older part of our family were members), which caused quite an
excitement.”[64]

His son tells the details of this incident:

“About 1837, mother, Jason, Owen and I, joined the Congregational Church
at Franklin, the Rev. Mr. Burritt, pastor. Shortly after, the other
societies, including Methodists and Episcopalians, joined ours in an
undertaking to hold a protracted meeting under the special management of
an evangelist preacher from Cleveland, named Avery. The house of the
Congregationalists being the largest, it was chosen as the place for
this meeting. Invitations were sent out to church folks in adjoining
towns to ‘come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty;’ and soon
the house was crowded, the assembly occupying by invitation the pews of
the church generally. Preacher Avery gave us in succession four sermons
from one text,—‘Cast ye up, cast ye up! Prepare ye the way of the Lord;
make His paths straight!’ Soon lukewarm Christians were heated up to a
melting condition, and there was a bright prospect of a good shower of
grace. There were at that time in Franklin a number of free colored
persons and some fugitive slaves. These became interested and came to
the meetings, but were given seats by themselves, where the stove had
stood, near the door,—not a good place for seeing ministers or singers.
Father noticed this, and when the next meeting (which was at evening)
had fairly opened, he arose and called attention to the fact that, in
seating the colored portion of the audience, a discrimination had been
made, and said that he did not believe God ‘is a respecter of persons.’
He then invited the colored people to occupy his slip. The blacks
accepted, and all of our family took their vacated seats. This was a
bombshell, and the Holy Spirit in the hearts of Pastor Burritt and
Deacon Beach at once gave up His place to another tenant. The next day
father received a call from the deacons to admonish him and ‘labor’ with
him; but they returned with new views of Christian duty. The blacks
during the remainder of that protracted meeting continued to occupy our
slip, and our family the seats around the stove. We soon after moved to
Hudson, and though living three miles away, became regular attendants at
the Congregational Church in the centre of the town. In about a year we
received a letter from good Deacon Williams, informing us that our
relations with the church in Franklin were ended in accordance with a
rule made by the church since we left, that ‘any member being absent a
year without reporting him or herself to that church should be cut off.’
This was the first intimation we had of the existence of the rule.
Father, on reading the letter, became white with anger. This was my
first taste of the pro-slavery diabolism that had intrenched itself in
the church, and I shed a few uncalled for tears over the matter, for
instead I should have rejoiced in my emancipation. From that day my
theological shackles were a good deal broken, and I have not worn them
since (to speak of),—not even for ornament.”[65]

The years of 1837 and 1838 were the years of persecution for the
Abolition cause. Lovejoy was murdered in Illinois and mobs raged in
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, was
burned, and Marlborough Chapel in Boston, where John Brown himself seems
to have been present fighting back the people, was sacked. Indeed, as he
afterward said, he had seen some of the “principal Abolition mobs.”

Whatever John Brown may have wished to do at this time was frustrated by
the panic, which swept away his fortune, and left him bankrupt. Yet
something he must do—he must at least promise God that he and his family
would eternally oppose slavery. How, he did not know—he was not sure—but
somehow he was determined, and his old idea of educating youth was still
uppermost.

It was in 1839, when a Negro preacher named Fayette was visiting Brown,
and bringing his story of persecution and injustice, that this great
promise was made. Solemnly John Brown arose; he was then a man of nearly
forty years, tall, dark and clean-shaven; by him sat his young wife of
twenty-two and his oldest boys of eighteen, sixteen and fifteen. Six
other children slept in the room back of the dark preacher. John Brown
told them of his purpose to make active war on slavery, and bound his
family in solemn and secret compact to labor for emancipation. And then,
instead of standing to pray, as was his wont, he fell upon his knees and
implored God’s blessing on his enterprise.

This marks a turning-point in John Brown’s life: in his boyhood he had
disliked slavery and his antipathy toward it grew with his years; yet of
necessity it occupied but little of a life busy with breadwinning.
Gradually, however, he saw the gathering of the mighty struggle about
him; the news of the skirmish battles of the greatest moral war of the
century aroused and quickened him, and all the more when they struck the
tender chords of his acquaintanceships and sympathies. He saw his
friends hurt and imposed on until at last, gradually, then suddenly, it
dawned upon him that he must fight this monster slavery. He did not now
plan physical warfare—he was yet a non-resistant, hating war, and did
not dream of Harper’s Ferry; but he set his face toward the goal and
whithersoever the Lord led, he was ready to follow. He still, too, had
his living to earn—his family to care for. Slavery was not yet the sole
object of his life, but as he passed on in his daily duties he was
determined to seize every opportunity to strike it a blow.

This, at least it seems to me, is a fair interpretation of John Brown’s
thought and action from the evidence at hand. Some have believed that
John Brown planned Harper’s Ferry or something similar in 1839; others
have doubted whether he had any plans against slavery before 1850. The
truth probably lies between these extreme views. Human purposes grow
slowly and in curious ways; thought by thought they build themselves
until in their full panoplied vigor and definite outline not even the
thinker can tell the exact process of the growing, or say that here was
the beginning or there the ending. Nor does this slow growth and
gathering make the end less wonderful or the motive less praiseworthy.
Few Americans recognized in 1839 that the great central problem of
America was slavery; and of that few, fewer still were willing to fight
it as they knew it should be fought. Of this lesser number, two men
stood almost alone, ready to back their faith by action—William Lloyd
Garrison and John Brown.

These men did not then know each other—they had in these early days
scarcely heard each other’s names. They never came to be friends or
sympathizers. When John Brown was in Boston he never went to _The
Liberator_ office, and in after years, now and then, he dropped words
very like contempt for “non-resistants”; while Garrison flayed the
leader of the Harper’s Ferry raid. They were alike only in their intense
hatred of slavery, and spiritually they crossed each other’s paths in
curious fashion, Garrison drifting from a willingness to fight slavery
in all ways or in any way to a fateful attitude of non-resistance and
withdrawal from the contamination of slaveholders; John Brown drifting
from non-resistance to the red path of active warfare.

Nowhere did the imminence of a great struggle show itself more clearly
than among the Negroes themselves. Organized insurrection ceased in the
South, not because of the increased rigors of the slave system, but
because the great safety-valve of escape northward was opened wider and
wider, and the methods were gradually coördinated into that mysterious
system known as the Underground Railroad. The slaves and freedmen
started the work and to the end bore the brunt of danger and hardship;
but gradually they more and more secured the coöperation of men like
John Brown, and of others less radical but just as sympathetic. Here and
there the free Negroes in the North began to gain economic footing as
servants in cities, as farmers in Ohio and even as _entrepreneurs_ in
the great catering business of Philadelphia and New York.

The schools were still for the most part closed to them. They made
strenuous efforts to counteract this and established dozens of schools
of their own all over the land. At last in 1839 Oberlin was founded and
certain earnest students of Cincinnati, disgusted with the color line at
Lane College, seceded to Oberlin and brought the color question there.
It was fairly met and Negroes were admitted.

It was the establishment of Oberlin College in 1839 and the appointment
of his father as trustee that gave John Brown a new vision of life and
usefulness—of a life which would at once combine the pursuit of a great
moral ideal and the honest earning of a good living for a family. Brown
proposed to survey the Virginia lands of Oberlin, as we have shown,
locate a large farm for himself and settle there with his family. Here
he undoubtedly expected to carry out the plan previously laid before his
brother Frederick. He consulted the Oberlin authorities concerning
“provision for religious and school privileges” and they thought it
possible to have these, although nothing was said specifically of
Negroes. The position was strategic and John Brown knew it: in the
non-slaveholding portion of a slave state, near the river and not far
from the foothills of mountains, beyond which lay the Great Black Way,
was formed a highway for the Underground Railroad and a place for
experiment in the uplift of black men. That he would meet opposition,
and strong opposition, John Brown must have known, but probably at this
time he counted on the prevalence of law and justice and the stern
principles of his religion rather than on the sword of Gideon, which was
his later reliance. But it was not the “will of Providence” as we have
seen, that Brown should then settle in Virginia, since his increasing
financial straits and final bankruptcy overthrew all plans of purchasing
the one thousand acres for which he had already bargained.

The slough of despond through which John Brown passed in the succeeding
years, from 1842 to 1846, was never fully betrayed by this stern,
self-repressing Puritan. Yet the loss of a fortune and the shattering of
a dream, the bankruptcy and imprisonment, and the death of five
children, while around him whirled the struggle of the churches with
slavery and Abolition mobs, all dropped a sombre brooding veil of stern
inexorable fate over his spirit—a veil which never lifted. The dark
mysterious tragedy of life gripped him with awful intensity—the iron
entered his soul. He became sterner and more silent. He brooded and
listened for the voice of the avenging God, and girded up his loins in
readiness.

“My husband always believed,” said his wife in after years, “that he was
to be an instrument in the hands of Providence, and I believed it
too.... Many a night he had lain awake and prayed concerning it.”[66]

It began to dawn upon him that he had sinned in the selfish pursuit of
petty ends: that he must be about his Father’s business of giving the
death-blow to that “sum of all villanies—slavery.” He had erred in
making his great work a side object—a secondary thing; it must be his
first and only duty, and let God attend to the nurture of his family. As
his conception of his own relation to slavery thus broadened and
deepened, so too did his plan of attacking the system become clearer and
more definite and he spent hours discussing the matter. In Springfield,
“he used to talk much on the subject, and had the reputation of being
quite ultra. His bookkeeper tells me that he and his eldest son used to
discuss slavery by the hour in his counting-room, and he used to say
that it was right for slaves to kill their masters and escape, and
thought slaveholders were guilty of a very great wickedness.”[67]

He studied the census returns and the distribution of the Negroes and
made maps of fugitive slave routes with roads, plantations, and
supplies. He learned of Isaac, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and the
Cumberland region insurrections in South Carolina, Virginia, and
Tennessee; he knew of the organized resistance to slave-catchers in
Pennsylvania, and the history of Hayti and Jamaica.

It needed, as he soon saw, something more radical than schools and moral
suasion; so deep-seated and radical a disease demanded “Action! Action!”
He welcomed his new and long-loved calling of shepherd because of the
leisure it gave him to study out his great moral problem. He sought and
gained the acquaintance of Negro leaders like Garnet, Loguen, Gloucester
and McCune Smith. As his sheep business broadened, he traveled about and
probably at this time first saw Harper’s Ferry—the mighty pass where
Potomac and Shenandoah, hurling aside the mountain masses, rush to their
singular wedding.

Thus the distraction of the Springfield wool business came to John Brown
almost in the guise of a temptation to be shunned. For a moment about
1845 he looked again on the lure of wealth and dreamed how useful it
would be to what was now his great life object. But only for a moment,
for when he realized the price he must pay—the time, the chicanery, the
petty detail—he turned from it in disgust. It was at this time that he
studied the history of insurrection and became familiar with the
Abolition movement; as early as 1846 his Harper’s Ferry project began to
form itself more or less clearly in his mind.

One thing alone reconciled him to his Springfield sojourn and that was
the Negroes whom he met there. He had met black men singly here and
there all his life, but now he met a group. It was not one of the
principal Negro groups of the day—they were in Philadelphia and New
York, Cincinnati and Boston, and in Canada, working largely alone with
only imperfect intercommunication, but working manfully and effectively
for emancipation and full freedom. The Springfield group was a smaller
body without conspicuous leadership, and on that account more nearly
approximated the great mass of their enslaved race. He sought them in
home and church and out on the street, and he hired them in his
business. He came to them on a plane of perfect equality—they sat at his
table and he at theirs. He neither descended upon them from above nor
wallowed with their lowest, and the result was that as Redpath says,
“Captain Brown had a higher notion of the capacity of the Negro race
than most white men. I have often heard him dwell on this subject, and
mention instances of their fitness to take care of themselves, saying,
in his quaint way, that ‘they behaved so much like “folks” that he
almost thought they were so.’ He thought that perhaps a forcible
separation of the connection between master and slave was necessary to
educate the blacks for self-government; but this he threw out as a
suggestion merely.”[68]

Nor did this appreciation of the finer qualities and capacity of the
Negroes blind him to their imperfections. He found them “intensely
human,” but with their human frailties weakened by slavery and caste;
and with perfect faith in their ability to rise above their faults, he
criticized and inspired them. In his quaint essay on “Sambo’s Mistakes,”
putting himself in the black man’s place, he enumerates his errors: His
failure to improve his time in good reading; his waste of money in
indulgent luxuries and societies and consequent lack of capital; his
servile occupations; his talkativeness and inaptitude for organization;
his sectarian bias. In part of his arraignment, which will bear
thoughtful reading to-day by black men as well as white, he makes his
Sambo say:

“Another trifling error of my life has been, that I have always expected
to secure the favor of the whites by tamely submitting to every species
of indignity, contempt, and wrong, instead of nobly resisting their
brutal aggressions from principle, and taking my place as a man, and
assuming the responsibilities of a man, a citizen, a husband, a father,
a brother, a neighbor, a friend,—as God requires of every one (if his
neighbor will allow him to do it); but I find that I get, for all my
submission, about the same reward that the Southern slaveocrats render
to the dough-faced statesmen of the North, for being bribed and browbeat
and fooled and cheated, as Whigs and Democrats love to be, and think
themselves highly honored if they may be allowed to lick up the spittle
of a Southerner. I say to get the reward. But I am uncommon
quick-sighted; I can see in a minute where I missed it.”[69]

No one knew better than John Brown how slavery had contributed to these
faults: for how many slaves could read anything, or when had they been
taught the use of money or the A. B. C. of organization? Not in
condemnation but in faith was this excellent paper written and
delicately worded as from one who has learned his own faults and will
not repeat those of others.

Not only did John Brown thus criticize, but he led these black folk. As
early as 1846 he revealed something of his final plans to Thomas Thomas,
his black porter and friend, with whom he once was photographed in
mutual friendly embrace, holding the sign “S. P. W.”—“Subterranean Pass
Way” of slaves to freedom.

“How early shall I come to-morrow?” asked Thomas one morning.

“We begin work at seven,” answered John Brown. “But I wish you would
come around earlier so that I can talk with you.” Then Brown disclosed a
plan of increasing and systematizing the work of the Underground
Railroad by running off larger bodies of slaves. This was the first form
of his Harper’s Ferry plan and it rapidly grew in detail, so that its
disclosure to Douglass in 1847 showed thought and advance.

The first national Negro leader, Frederick Douglass, had delivered his
wonderful salutatory in New Bedford in 1844. After publishing his
biography, he went to England for safety, but returned in 1847, ransomed
from slavery and ready to launch his paper, _The North Star_. No sooner
had he landed than the black Wise Men of New York told him of the new
Star in the East, whispering of the strange determined man of
Springfield who flitted silently here and there among the groups of
black folk and whose life was devoted to eternal war upon slavery. Both
were eager to meet each other—John Brown to become acquainted with the
greatest leader of the race which he aimed to free; Frederick Douglass
to know an intense foe of slavery. The historic meeting took place in
Springfield and is best told in Douglass’ own words:

“About the time I began my enterprise [_i. e._, his newspaper] in
Rochester, I chanced to spend a night and a day under the roof of a man
whose character and conversation, and whose objects and aims in life,
made a very deep impression upon my mind and heart. His name had been
mentioned to me by several prominent colored men; among whom were the
Rev. Henry Highland Garnet and J. W. Loguen. In speaking of him their
voices would drop to a whisper, and what they said of him made me very
eager to see and to know him. Fortunately, I was invited to see him at
his own house. At the time to which I now refer this man was a
respectable merchant in a populous and thriving city, and our first
place of meeting was at his store. This was a substantial brick building
on a prominent, busy street. A glance at the interior, as well as at the
massive walls without, gave me the impression that the owner must be a
man of considerable wealth. My welcome was all that I could have asked.
Every member of the family, young and old, seemed glad to see me, and I
was made much at home in a very little while. I was, however, a little
disappointed with the appearance of the house and its location. After
seeing the fine store I was prepared to see a fine residence in an
eligible locality, but this conclusion was completely dispelled by
actual observation. In fact, the house was neither commodious nor
elegant, nor its situation desirable. It was a small wooden building on
a back street, in a neighborhood chiefly occupied by laboring men and
mechanics; respectable enough, to be sure, but not quite the place, I
thought, where one would look for the residence of a flourishing and
successful merchant.

“Plain as was the outside of this man’s house, the inside was plainer.
Its furniture would have satisfied a Spartan. It would take longer to
tell what was not in this house than what was in it. There was an air of
plainness about it which almost suggested destitution. My first meal
passed under the misnomer of tea, though there was nothing about it
resembling the usual significance of that term. It consisted of
beef-soup, cabbage, and potatoes—a meal such as a man might relish after
following the plow all day or performing a forced march of a dozen miles
over a rough road in frosty weather. Innocent of paint, veneering,
varnish, or table-cloth, the table announced itself unmistakably of pine
and of the plainest workmanship. There was no hired help visible. The
mother, daughters, and sons did the serving, and did it well. They were
evidently used to it, and had no thought of any impropriety or
degradation in being their own servants. It is said that a house in some
measure reflects the character of its occupants; this one certainly did.
In it there were no disguises, no illusions, no make-believes.
Everything implied stern truth, solid purpose, and rigid economy. I was
not long in company with the master of this house before I discovered
that he was indeed the master of it, and was likely to become mine too
if I stayed long enough with him. His wife believed in him, and his
children observed him with reverence. Whenever he spoke his words
commanded earnest attention. His arguments, which I ventured at some
points to oppose, seemed to convince all; his appeals touched all, and
his will impressed all. Certainly I never felt myself in the presence of
a stronger religious influence than while in this man’s house.

“In person he was lean, strong, and sinewy, of the best New England
mold, built for times of trouble and fitted to grapple with the
flintiest hardships. Clad in plain American woolen, shod in boots of
cowhide leather, and wearing a cravat of the same substantial material,
under six feet high, less than 150 pounds in weight, aged about fifty,
he presented a figure straight and symmetrical as a mountain pine. His
bearing was singularly impressive. His head was not large, but compact
and high. His hair was coarse, strong, slightly gray and closely
trimmed, and grew low on his forehead. His face was smoothly shaved, and
revealed a strong, square mouth, supported by a broad and prominent
chin. His eyes were bluish gray, and in conversation they were full of
light and fire. When on the street, he moved with a long, springing,
racehorse step, absorbed by his own reflections, neither seeking nor
shunning observation. Such was the man whose name I had heard in
whispers; such was the spirit of his house and family; such was the
house in which he lived; and such was Captain John Brown, whose name has
now passed into history, as that of one of the most marked characters
and greatest heroes known to American fame.

“After the strong meal already described, Captain Brown cautiously
approached the subject which he wished to bring to my attention; for he
seemed to apprehend opposition to his views. He denounced slavery in
look and language fierce and bitter; thought that slaveholders had
forfeited their right to live; that the slaves had the right to gain
their liberty in any way they could; did not believe that moral suasion
would ever liberate the slave, or that political action would abolish
the system. He said that he had long had a plan which could accomplish
this end, and he had invited me to his house to lay that plan before me.
He said he had been for some time looking for colored men to whom he
could safely reveal his secret, and at times he had almost despaired of
finding such men; but that now he was encouraged, for he saw heads of
such rising up in all directions. He had observed my course at home and
abroad, and he wanted my coöperation. His plan as it then lay in his
mind had much to commend it. It did not, as some suppose, contemplate a
general rising among the slaves, and a general slaughter of the
slave-masters. An insurrection, he thought, would only defeat the
object; but his plan did contemplate the creating of an armed force
which should act the very heart of the South. He was not averse to the
shedding of blood, and thought the practice of carrying arms would be a
good one for the colored people to adopt, as it would give them a sense
of their manhood. No people, he said, could have self-respect, or be
respected, who would not fight for their freedom. He called my attention
to a map of the United States, and pointed out to me the far-reaching
Alleghanies, which stretch away from the borders of New York into the
Southern states.

“‘These mountains,’ he said, ‘are the basis of my plan. God has given
the strength of the hills to freedom; they were placed here for the
emancipation of the Negro race; they are full of natural forts, where
one man for defense will be equal to a hundred for attack; they are full
also of good hiding-places, where large numbers of brave men could be
concealed, and baffle and elude pursuit for a long time. I know these
mountains well, and could take a body of men into them and keep them
there despite of all efforts of Virginia to dislodge them. The true
object to be sought is first of all to destroy the money value of
slavery property; and that can only be done by rendering such property
insecure. My plan, then, is to take at first about twenty-five picked
men, and begin on a small scale; supply them with arms and ammunition
and post them in squads of fives on a line of twenty-five miles. The
most persuasive and judicious of these shall go down to the fields from
time to time, as opportunity offers, and induce the slaves to join them,
seeking and selecting the most restless and daring.’

“He saw that in this part of the work the utmost care must be used to
avoid treachery and disclosure. Only the most conscientious and skilful
should be sent on this perilous duty. With care and enterprise he
thought he could soon gather a force of one hundred hardy men, men who
would be content to lead the free and adventurous life to which he
proposed to train them; when these were properly drilled, and each man
had found the place for which he was best suited, they would begin work
in earnest; they would run off the slaves in large numbers, retain the
brave and strong ones in the mountains, and send the weak and timid to
the North by the Underground Railroad. His operations would be enlarged
with increasing numbers and would not be confined to one locality.

“When I asked him how he would support these men, he said emphatically
that he would subsist them upon the enemy. Slavery was a state of war,
and the slave had a right to anything necessary to his freedom. ‘But,’
said I, ‘suppose you succeed in running off a few slaves, and thus
impress the Virginia slaveholders with a sense of insecurity in their
slaves further south.’ ‘That,’ he said, ‘will be what I want first to
do; then I would follow them up. If we could drive slavery out of one
county, it would be a great gain; it would weaken the system throughout
the state.’ ‘But they would employ bloodhounds to hunt you out of the
mountains.’ ‘That they might attempt,’ said he, ‘but the chances are, we
should whip them, and when we should have whipped one squad, they would
be careful how they pursued.’ ‘But you might be surrounded and cut off
from your provisions or means of subsistence.’ He thought that this
could not be done so that they could not cut their way out; but even if
the worst came he could but be killed, and he had no better use for his
life than to lay it down in the cause of the slave. When I suggested
that we might convert the slaveholders, he became much excited, and said
that could never be. He knew their proud hearts and they would never be
induced to give up their slaves, until they felt a big stick about their
heads.

“He observed that I might have noticed the simple manner in which he
lived, adding that he had adopted this method in order to save money to
carry out his purposes. This was said in no boastful tone, for he felt
that he had delayed already too long, and had no room to boast either
his zeal or his self-denial. Had some men made such display of rigid
virtue, I should have rejected it as affected, false, and hypocritical,
but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite. From this
night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass., 1847, while I
continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less
hopeful of its peaceful abolition. My utterances became more and more
tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.”[70]

Tremendously impressed as was Douglass in mind and heart with John Brown
and his plan, his reason was never convinced even up to the last; and
naturally because here two radically opposite characters saw slavery
from opposite sides of the shield. Both hated it with all their
strength, but one knew its physical degradation, its tremendous power
and the strong sympathies and interests that buttressed it the world
over; the other felt its moral evil and knowing simply that it was
wrong, concluded that John Brown and God could overthrow it. That was
all—a plain straightforward path; but to the subtler darker man, more
worldly-wise and less religious, the arm of the Lord was not revealed,
while the evil of this world had seared his vitals. He uncovered himself
if not reverently, certainly respectfully before the Seer; he gave him
much help and information; he turned almost imperceptibly but surely
toward Brown’s darker view of the blood-sacrifice of slavery, but he
could never quite believe that John Brown’s tremendous plan was humanly
possible. And this attitude of Douglass was in various degrees and
strides the attitude of the leading Negroes of his day. They believed in
John Brown but not in his plan. They knew he was right, but they knew
that for any failure in his project they, the black men, would probably
pay the cost. And the horror of that cost none knew as they.

If John Brown was to carry out his idea as he had now definitely
conceived it, he must first find the men who could help him. On this
point there seems to have been deliberation and development of plan,
particularly as he consulted Douglass and the Negro leaders. His earlier
scheme probably looked toward the use of Negro allies almost exclusively
outside his own family. This was eminently fitting but impractical, as
Douglass and his fellows must have urged. White men could move where
they would in the United States, but to introduce an armed band
exclusively or mainly of Negroes from the North into the South was
difficult, if not impossible. Nevertheless, some Negroes of the right
type were needed and to John Brown’s mind the Underground Railroad was
bringing North the very material he required. It could not, however, be
properly trained in cities whither it drifted both for economic reasons
and for self-protection. Brown therefore heard of Gerrit Smith’s offer
of August 1, 1846, with great interest. This wealthy leader of the New
York Abolition group took occasion at the celebration of the twelfth
anniversary of British emancipation to offer free Negroes 100,000 acres
of his lands in the Adirondack region on easy terms. It was not a well
thought-out scheme: the climate was bleak for Negroes, the methods of
culture then suitable, were unknown to them; while the surveyor who laid
out these farms cheated them as cheerily as though philanthropy had no
concern with the project. The Gerrit Smith offer was not wholly a
failure. It turned out some good Negro farmers, gave some of its best
Negro citizens of to-day to northern New York, and trained a bishop of
the British African Church. But it did far less than it might have done
if better planned, and much if not all of its success was due to John
Brown. He saw possibilities here both to shelter his family when he
turned definitely to what was now his single object in life, and to
train men to help him. He went to Gerrit Smith at Peterboro, N. Y., in
April, 1848, and said: “I am something of a pioneer; I grew up among the
woods and wild Indians of Ohio and am used to the climate and the way of
life that your colony find so trying. I will take one of your farms
myself, clear it up and plant it, and show my colored neighbors how such
work should be done; will give them work as I have occasion, look after
them in all needful ways and be a kind of father to them.”[71]

His offer was gladly accepted and he moved his family there the
following year. It was a wild, lonely place. Thomas Wentworth Higginson
wrote once: “The Notch seems beyond the world, North Elba and its
half-dozen houses are beyond the Notch, and there is a wilder little
mountain road which rises beyond North Elba. But the house we seek is
not even on that road, but behind it and beyond it; you ride a mile or
two, then take down a pair of bars; beyond the bars faith takes you
across a half-cleared field, through the most difficult of wood-paths,
and after half a mile of forest you come out upon a clearing. There is a
little frame house, unpainted, set in a girdle of black stumps, and with
all heaven about it for a wider girdle; on a high hillside, forests on
north and west,—the glorious line of the Adirondacks on the east, and on
the south one slender road leading off to Westport, a road so straight
that you could sight a United States marshal for five miles.”[72]

To his family John Brown’s word was usually not merely law but wish.
They went to North Elba cheerfully and with full knowledge of the import
of the change, for the father was frank. The daughter Ruth writes:
“While we were living in Springfield, our house was plainly furnished,
but very comfortably, all excepting the parlor. Mother and I had often
expressed a wish that the parlor might be furnished too, and father
encouraged us that it should be; but after he made up his mind to go to
North Elba he began to economize in many ways. One day he called us
older ones to him and said: ‘I want to plan with you a little; and I
want you all to express your minds. I have a little money to spare; and
now shall we use it to furnish the parlor, or spend it to buy clothing
for the colored people who may need help in North Elba another year?’ We
all said, ‘Save the money.’”[73]

It was no paradise, even for the enthusiast. Redpath says: “It is too
cold to raise corn there; they can scarcely, in the most favorable
seasons, obtain a few ears for roasting. Stock must be wintered there
nearly six months in every year. I was there on the first of November,
the ground was snowy, and winter had apparently begun—and it would last
till the middle of May. They never raise anything to sell off that farm,
except sometimes a few fleeces. It was well, they said, if they raised
their own provisions, and could spin their own wool for clothing.”[74]

Meantime the scattered isolated eddies of the anti-slavery battles were
swirling to one great current, and more and more John Brown was becoming
the man of one idea. Impatiently he neglected his pressing wool
business. Instead of keeping his eye on his critical London venture, he
hastened across Europe perfecting military observations. He returned to
America in time to hear all the feverish discussion of the Fugitive
Slave Law and see its final passage. In November, 1850, he writes his
wife from Springfield: “It now seems that the Fugitive Slave Law was to
be the means of making more Abolitionists than all the lectures we have
had for years. It really looks as if God had His hand on this wickedness
also. I of course keep encouraging my colored friends to ‘trust in God
and keep their powder dry.’ I did so to-day at Thanksgiving meeting
publicly.”[75]

His Springfield meetings led to the formation of his “League of
Gileadites,” the first of his steps toward the armed organization of
Negroes. Forty-four Negroes signed the following agreement:

“As citizens of the United States of America, trusting in a just and
merciful God, whose spirit and all-powerful aid we humbly implore, we
will ever be true to the flag of our beloved country, always acting
under it. We, whose names are hereunto affixed, do constitute ourselves
a branch of the United States League of Gileadites. That we will provide
ourselves at once with suitable implements, and will aid those who do
not possess the means, if any such are disposed to join us. We invite
every colored person whose heart is engaged in the performance of our
business, whether male or female, old or young. The duty of the aged,
infirm, and young members of the League shall be to give instant notice
to all members in case of an attack upon any of our people. We agree to
have no officers except a treasurer and secretary pro tem., until after
some trial of courage and talent of able-bodied members shall enable us
to elect officers from those who shall have rendered the most important
services. Nothing but wisdom and undaunted courage, efficiency, and
general good conduct shall in any way influence us in electing
officers.”[76]

To this was added exhortation and advice by John Brown.

“Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery,” he wrote.
“Witness the case of Cinques, of everlasting memory, on board the
_Amistad_. The trial for life of one bold and to some extent successful
man, for defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more
sympathy throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and
sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive colored
population. We need not mention the Greeks struggling against the
oppressive Turks, the Poles against Russia, nor the Hungarians against
Austria and Russia combined, to prove this. No jury can be found in the
Northern states that would convict a man for defending his rights to the
last extremity. This is well understood by Southern congressmen, who
insisted that the right of trial by jury should not be granted to the
fugitive. Colored people have ten times the number of fast friends among
the whites than they suppose, and would have ten times the number they
have now were they but half as much in earnest to secure their dearest
rights as they are to ape the follies and extravagances of their white
neighbors, and to indulge in idle show, in ease and luxury. Just think
of the money expended by individuals in your behalf for the last twenty
years! Think of the number who have been mobbed and imprisoned on your
account! Have any of you seen the branded hand? Do you remember the
names of Lovejoy and Torrey?”[77]

He then gives definite advice as to procedure in case the arrest and the
deportation of a fugitive slave were attempted:

“Should one of your number be arrested, you must collect together as
quickly as possible, so as to outnumber your adversaries, who are taking
an active part against you. Let no able-bodied man appear on the ground
unequipped, or with his weapons exposed to view: let that be understood
beforehand. Your plans must be known only to yourself, and with the
understanding that all traitors must die, wherever caught and proven to
be guilty. ‘Whosoever is fearful or afraid, let him return and depart
early from Mount Gilead’ (Judges 7:3; Deut. 20:8). Give all cowards an
opportunity to show it on condition of holding their peace. Do not delay
one moment after you are ready; you will lose all your resolution if you
do. Let the first blow be the signal for all to engage; and when engaged
do not do your work in halves, but make clean work with your
enemies,—and be sure you meddle not with any others. By going about your
business quietly, you will get the job disposed of before the number
that an uproar would bring together can collect; and you will have the
advantage of those who come out against you, for they will be wholly
unprepared with either equipments or matured plans; all with them will
be confusion and terror. Your enemies will be slow to attack you after
you have done up the work nicely; and if they should, they will have to
encounter your white friends as well as you; for you may safely
calculate on a division of the whites, and may by that means get to an
honorable parley.

“Be firm, determined, and cool; but let it be understood that you are
not to be driven to desperation without making it an awful dear job to
others as well as to you. Give them to know distinctly that those who
live in wooden houses should not throw fire, and that you are just as
able to suffer as your white neighbors. After effecting a rescue, if you
are assailed, go into the houses of your most prominent and influential
white friends with your wives; and that will effectually fasten upon
them the suspicion of being connected with you, and will compel them to
make a common cause with you, whether they would otherwise live up to
their profession or not. This would leave them no choice in the matter.

“Some would doubtless prove themselves true of their own choice; others
would flinch. That would be taking them at their own words. You may make
a tumult in the court room where a trial is going on by burning
gunpowder freely in paper packages, if you cannot think of any better
way to create a momentary alarm, and might possibly give one or more of
your enemies a hoist. But in such case the prisoner will need to take
the hint at once, and bestir himself; and so should his friends improve
the opportunity for a general rush. A lasso might possibly be applied to
a slave-catcher for once with good effect. Hold on to your weapons, and
never be persuaded to leave them, part with them, or have them far away
from you. Stand by one another and by your friends, while a drop of
blood remains; and be hanged if you must, but tell no tales out of
school. Make no confession. Union is strength. Without some well
digested arrangements, nothing to any good purpose is likely to be done,
let the demand be never so great. Witness the case of Hamlet and Long in
New York, when there was no well defined plan of operations or suitable
preparation beforehand. The desired end may be effectually secured by
the means proposed; namely, the enjoyment of our inalienable
rights.”[78]

There is evidence that this league did effective rescue work, as did
other groups of Negroes in Boston, Philadelphia, Albany, New York and
elsewhere. In this service the Negroes could not act alone—it would have
meant mob violence on purely racial lines;—but given a few determined
white men to join in, they could and did bear the brunt of the fighting.

John Brown himself was active in such rescue work. He helped in the
release of “Jerry” in Syracuse, and writes in 1851 from Springfield:
“Since the sending off to slavery of Long from New York, I have improved
my leisure hours quite busily with colored people here, in advising them
how to act, and in giving them all the encouragement in my power. They
very much need encouragement and advice; and some of them are so alarmed
that they tell me they cannot sleep on account of either themselves or
their wives and children. I can only say I think I have been able to do
something to revive their broken spirits. I want all my family to
imagine themselves in the same dreadful condition. My only spare time
being taken up (often till late hours at night) in the way I speak of,
has prevented me from the gloomy homesick feelings which had before so
much oppressed me: not that I forget my family at all.”[79]

His hateful lawsuits hung like a weight about John Brown’s neck, and a
feverish impatience was seizing him: “Father did not close up his wool
business in Springfield when he went to North Elba, and had to make
several journeys back and forth in 1819–50. He was at Springfield in
January, 1851, soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and
went around among his colored friends there, who had been fugitives,
urging them to resist the law, no matter by what authority it should be
enforced. He told them to arm themselves with revolvers, men and women,
and not to be taken alive. When he got to North Elba, he told us about
the Fugitive Slave Law, and bade us resist any attempt that might be
made to take any fugitive from our town, regardless of fine or
imprisonment. Our faithful boy Cyrus was one of that class; and our
feelings were so aroused that we would all have defended him, though the
women folks had resorted to hot water. Father at this time said, ‘Their
cup of iniquity is almost full.’ One evening as I was singing, ‘The
Slave Father Mourning for his Children,’ containing these words,—

                 “‘Ye’re gone from me, my gentle ones,
                 With all your shouts of mirth;
                 A silence is within my walls,
                 A darkness round my hearth,’—

father got up and walked the floor, and before I could finish the song,
he said, ‘O Ruth! Don’t sing any more; it is too sad!’”[80]

At the same time his thrifty careful attention to minutiæ did not desert
him. He keeps his eye on North Elba even after his wife and part of the
family returned to Akron and writes: “The colored families appear to be
doing well, and to feel encouraged. They all send much love to you. They
have constant preaching on the Sabbath; and intelligence, morality and
religion appear to be all on the advance.”[81]

His daughter says: “He did not lose interest in the colored people of
North Elba, and grieved over the sad fate of one of them, Mr. Henderson,
who was lost in the woods in the winter of 1852 and perished with the
cold. Mr. Henderson was an intelligent and good man, and was very
industrious and father thought much of him.”[82]

Once we find him saying: “If you find it difficult for you to pay for
Douglass’ paper, I wish you would let me know, as I know I took
liberty in ordering it continued. You have been very kind in helping
me and I do not mean to make myself a burden.” And again he writes: “I
am much rejoiced at the news of a religious kind in Ruth’s letter and
would be still more rejoiced to learn that all the sects who hear the
Christian name would have no more to do with that mother of all
abominations—man-stealing.”[83]

And the sects were thinking. All men were thinking. A great unrest was
on the land. It was not merely moral leadership from above—it was the
push of physical and mental pain from beneath;—not simply the cry of the
Abolitionist but the up-stretching of the slave. The vision of the
damned was stirring the western world and stirring black men as well as
white. Something was forcing the issue—call it what you will, the Spirit
of God or the spell of Africa. It came like some great grinding ground
swell,—vast, indefinite, immeasurable but mighty, like the dark low
whispering of some infinite disembodied voice—a riddle of the Sphinx. It
tore men’s souls and wrecked their faith. Women cried out as cried once
that tall black sibyl, Sojourner Truth:

“Frederick, is God dead?”

“No,” thundered the Douglass, towering above his Salem audience. “No,
and because God is not dead, slavery can only end in blood.”




                               CHAPTER VI
                           THE CALL OF KANSAS

  “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my
  people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.”


Just three hundred years before John Brown pledged his family to warfare
against slavery, a black man stood on the plains of the Southwest
looking toward Kansas. It was the Negro Steven, once slave of Dorantes,
now leader and interpreter of the Fray Marcos explorers, and the first
man of the Old World to look upon the great Southwest, if not upon
Kansas itself. Whiter men have since ignored and ridiculed his work,
sensualists have charged him with sensuality, lords of greed have called
him greedy, and yet withal the plain truth remains: he led the
expedition that foreran Coronado, reported back the truth of what he saw
and then returned to lay down his life among the savages.[84]

The land he looked upon in those young years of the sixteenth century
was big with the tragic fate of his people. Planted far to the eastward
a century later, their dark faces traveled fast westward until slavery
was secure in the valley of the Mississippi and in the lower Southwest.
Then the slave barons looked behind them, and saw to their own dismay
that there could be no backward step. The slavery of the new Cotton
Kingdom in the nineteenth century must either die or conquer a nation—it
could not hesitate or pause. It was an industrial system built on
ignorance, force and the cotton plant. The slaves must be curbed with an
iron hand. A moment of relaxation and lo! they would be rising either in
revenge or ambition. And slavery had made revenge and ambition one. Such
a system could not compete with intelligence, nor with individual
freedom, nor with miscellaneous and care-demanding crops. It could not
divide territory with these things;—to do so meant economic death and
the sudden, perhaps revolutionary upheaval of a whole social system.
This the South saw as it looked backward in the years from 1820 to 1840.
Then its bolder vision pressed the gloom ahead, and dreamed a dazzling
dream of empire. It saw the slave system triumphant in the great
Southwest—in Mexico, in Central America and the islands of the sea. Its
softer souls, timid with a fear prophetic of failure, still held
halfheartedly back, but bolder leaders like Davis, Toombs and Floyd went
relentlessly, ruthlessly on. Three steps they and their forerunners took
in that great western wilderness, and other steps were planned. Three
steps—that cost uncounted treasure in gold and blood: the first in 1820,
when they set foot beyond the Mississippi into Missouri; the second and
bolder when they set their seal on the spoils of raped Mexico and made
it possible slave soil; and the third and boldest, when on the soil of
Kansas they fought to enslave all territory of the Union.

That these steps would cost much the leaders knew, but they did not
rightly reckon how much. They risked the upheaval of parties, the enmity
of sections and the angry agitation of visionaries. If worse came to
worst, they held the trump-card of disrupting the nation and founding a
mighty slave aristocracy to stretch from the Ohio to Venezuela and from
Cuba to Texas. One thing alone they did not count upon and that was
armed force.

The three steps did raise tremendous opposition. The enslaving of
Missouri gave birth to the early Abolitionists—the conscience of the
nation awakened to find slavery not dead or dying but growing and
aggressive; and in these days John Brown, typifying one phase of that
terrible conscience, swore blood-feud with this “sum of all villanies.”
Thus the first step cost.

The second step went some ways awry since California was lost to
slavery, but a new law to catch runaways brought compensation and
brought too redoubled cost, for it raised in opposition to the whole
slave system not only Abolitionists, but Free Soilers—those who hated
not slavery but slaves. This was a costlier move, for the sneers that
checked philanthropy were powerless against democracy, and when the
echoes of this step reached the ears of John Brown, he laid aside all
and became the man of one idea, and that idea the extinction of slavery
in the United States.

But it was the third step that was costliest—the step that sought to
impose slavery by law and blood on free labor lands despite the lands’
wish. Of all the steps it was the wildest and most foolish, for it
arrayed against slavery not only philanthropy and democracy, but all the
world-old forces of plain justice. It compelled those who loved the
right to meet law and force by force and lawlessness, and one man that
led that lawless fight on the plains of Kansas and struck its bloodiest
blow, was John Brown.

John Brown’s decision to go to Kansas was sudden. Unexpectedly the
centre of the slavery battle had swung westward. A shrewd bidder for the
presidency offered the South the unawaited bribe of Kansas territory for
their votes and they eagerly sprang at the offer. Stephen Douglas drove
the bill through Congress, and Kansas stood ready for its slave
population. But not only for slaves—also for freemen as Eli Thayer
quickly saw, and the representations of him and his associates aroused
the sons of John Brown.

John Brown himself looked on with interest, but he had other plans. He
wrote to his son John: “If you or any of my family are disposed to go to
Kansas or Nebraska with a view to help defeat Satan and his legions in
that direction, I have not a word to say; but I feel committed to
operate in another part of the field. If I were not so committed, I
would be on my way this fall.”[85]

John Brown’s plans were in the Alleghanies. At North Elba lay his
northern stronghold, and at Harper’s Ferry lay the gates to the Great
Black Way. Here he was convinced was the keystone of the slavery arch
and here he must strike. So in former years Gabriel and Turner believed;
so in after years others believed; but it was not till Grant floated
down this path in a sea of blood that slavery finally fell.

The sons of John Brown were, however, greatly attracted by the new
western lands. His eldest son writes:

“During the years of 1853 and 1854, most of the leading Northern
newspapers were not only full of glowing accounts of the extraordinary
fertility, healthfulness, and beauty of the territory of Kansas, then
newly opened for settlement, but of urgent appeals to all lovers of
freedom who desired homes in a new region to go there as settlers, and
by their votes save Kansas from the curse of slavery. Influenced by
these considerations, in the month of October, 1854, five of the sons of
John Brown,—John, Jr., Jason, Owen, Frederick, and Salmon,—then
residents of the state of Ohio, made their arrangements to emigrate to
Kansas. Their combined property consisted chiefly of eleven head of
cattle, mostly young, and three horses. Ten of this number were valuable
on account of the breed. Thinking these especially desirable in a new
country, Owen, Frederick, and Salmon took them by way of the lakes to
Chicago, thence to Meridosia, Ill., where they were wintered; and in the
following spring drove them into Kansas to a place selected by these
brothers for settlement, about eight miles west of the town of
Osawatomie. My brother Jason and his family, and I with my family
followed at the opening of navigation in the spring of 1855, going by
way of Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to St. Louis. There we purchased two
small tents, a plough, and some smaller farming tools, and a hand-mill
for grinding corn. At this period there were no railroads west of St.
Louis; our journey must be continued by boat on the Missouri at a time
of extremely low water, or by stage at great expense. We chose the river
route, taking passage on the steamer _New Lucy_ which too late we found
crowded with passengers, mostly men from the South bound for Kansas.
That they were from the South was plainly indicated by their language
and dress; while their drinking, profanity, and display of revolvers and
bowie-knives—openly worn as an essential part of their make-up—clearly
showed the class to which they belonged, and that their mission was to
aid in establishing slavery in Kansas.

“A box of fruit trees and grape-vines which my brother Jason had brought
from Ohio, our plough, and the few agricultural implements we had on the
deck of that steamer looked lonesome; for these were all we could see
which were adapted to the occupation of peace. Then for the first time
arose in our minds the query: Must the fertile prairies of Kansas,
through a struggle at arms, be first secured to freedom before freemen
can sow and reap? If so, how poorly we were prepared for such work will
be seen when I say that for arms five of us brothers had only two small
squirrel rifles and one revolver. But before we reached our destination,
other matters claimed our attention. Cholera, which then prevailed to
some extent at St. Louis, broke out among our passengers, a number of
whom died. Among these brother Jason’s son, Austin, aged four years, the
elder of his two children, fell a victim to this scourge; and while our
boat lay by for repair of a broken rudder at Waverly, Mo., we buried him
at night near the panic-stricken town, our lonely way illumined only by
the lightning of a furious thunderstorm. True to his spirit of hatred of
Northern people, our captain, without warning to us on shore, cast off
his lines and left us to make our way by stage to Kansas City to which
place we had already paid our fare by boat. Before we reached there,
however, we became very hungry, and endeavored to buy food at various
farmhouses on the way; but the occupants, judging from our speech that
we were not from the South, always denied us, saying, ‘We have nothing
for you.’ The only exception to this answer was at the stage house at
Independence, Mo.

“Arrived in Kansas, her lovely prairies and wooded streams seemed to us
indeed like a haven of rest. Here in prospect we saw our cattle
increased to hundreds and possibly to thousands, fields of corn,
orchards and vineyards. At once we set about the work through which only
our visions of prosperity could be realized. Our tents would suffice to
shelter until we could plough our land, plant corn and other crops,
fruit trees, and vines, cut and secure as hay enough of the waving grass
to supply our stock the coming winter. These cheering prospects beguiled
our labors through the late spring until midsummer, by which time nearly
all of our number were prostrated by fever and ague that would not stay
cured; the grass cut for hay mouldered in the wet for the want of the
care we could not bestow, and our crop of corn wasted by cattle we could
not restrain. If these minor ills and misfortunes were all, they could
be easily borne; but now began to gather the dark clouds of war.

“An election for a first territorial legislature had been held on the
30th of March of this year. On that day the residents of Missouri along
the borders came into Kansas by thousands, and took forcible possession
of the polls. In the words of Horace Greeley, ‘There was no disguise, no
pretense of legality, no regard for decency. On the evening before and
the day of the election, nearly a thousand Missourians arrived at
Lawrence in wagons and on horseback, well armed with rifles, pistols and
bowie-knives, and two pieces of cannon loaded with musket balls.
Although but 831 legal electors in the Territory voted, there were no
less than 6,320 votes polled. They elected all the members of the
legislature, with a single exception in either house,—the two Free
Soilers being chosen from a remote district which the Missourians
overlooked or did not care to reach.’

“Early in the spring and summer of this year the actual settlers at
their convention repudiated this fraudulently chosen legislature, and
refused to obey its enactments. Upon this, the border papers of Missouri
in flaming appeals urged the ruffian horde that had previously invaded
Kansas to arm, and otherwise prepare to march again into the territory
when called upon, as they soon would be, to ‘aid in enforcing laws.’ War
of some magnitude, at least, now appeared to us brothers to be
inevitable; and I wrote to our father, whose home was in North Elba, N.
Y., asking him to procure and send us, if he could, arms and ammunition,
so that we could be better prepared to defend ourselves and our
neighbors.”[86]

John Brown hesitated. His fighting blood was stirred and yet there was
the plan of years yet unrealized. Then a new vision dawned in his mind.
Perhaps this was the call of the Lord and the path to Virginia might lie
through Kansas. He hurriedly consulted his friends—Douglass, McCune
Smith, the cultured Negro physician of New York, and Gerrit Smith, and
in November, 1854, wrote home: “I feel still pretty much determined to
go back to North Elba; but expect Owen and Frederick will set out for
Kansas on Monday next, with cattle belonging to John, Jason and
themselves, intending to winter somewhere in Illinois.... Gerrit Smith
wishes me to go back to North Elba; from Douglass and Dr. McCune Smith I
have not yet heard.”[87]

His business delayed him in Ohio and he still wrote of his going to
North Elba. Then followed the Syracuse convention of Abolitionists and a
new revelation to John Brown. For the first time he came into contact
with the great Abolition movement. He found that money was forthcoming.
Here were men willing to pay if others would work. It was the call of
God and he answered: “Here am I.”

Redpath says: “When in session John Brown appeared in that convention
and made a very fiery speech, during which he said he had four sons in
Kansas, and had three others who were desirous of going there, to aid in
fighting the battles of freedom. He could not consent to go unless he
could go armed, and he would like to arm all his sons; but his poverty
prevented him from doing so. Funds were contributed on the spot;
principally by Gerrit Smith.”[88]

He writes joyfully home:

“Dear wife and children,—I reached here on the first day of the
convention, and I have reason to bless God that I came; for I have met
with a most warm reception from all, so far as I know, and except by a
few sincere, honest, peace friends, a most hearty approval of my
intention of arming my sons and other friends in Kansas. I received
to-day donations amounting to a little over sixty dollars,—twenty from
Gerrit Smith, five from an old British officer; others giving smaller
sums with such earnest and affectionate expression of their good wishes
as did me more good than money even. John’s two letters were introduced,
and read with such effect by Gerrit Smith as to draw tears from numerous
eyes in the great collection of people present. The convention has been
one of the most interesting meetings I ever attended in my life; and I
made a great addition to the number of warm-hearted and honest
friends.”[89]

The die was cast and John Brown left for Kansas. Instead of sending the
money and arms, says his son John, “he came on with them himself,
accompanied by his brother-in-law, Henry Thompson, and my brother
Oliver. In Iowa he bought a horse and covered wagon; concealing the arms
in this and conspicuously displaying his surveying implements, he
crossed into Missouri near Waverly, and at that place disinterred the
body of his grandson, and brought all safely through to our settlement,
arriving there about the 6th of October, 1855.”[90]

His daughter says: “On leaving us finally to go to Kansas that summer,
he said, ‘If it is so painful for us to part with the hope of meeting
again, how dreadful must be the feelings of hundreds of poor slaves who
are separated for life.’”[91]

So John Brown reached Kansas to strike the blow for freedom. Not that he
was the central figure of Kansas territorial history so far as casual
eyes could see, or the acknowledged leader of men and measures; rather
he seemed and was but a humble coworker, appearing and disappearing here
and there,—now startling men with the grim decision of his actions, now
lost and hidden from public view. But it is not always the apparent
leaders who do the world’s work. More often those who sit in high
places, whom men see and hear, do but represent or mask public opinion
and the social conscience, while down in the blood and dust of battle
stoop those who delivered the master-stroke—the makers of the thoughts
of men. So in Kansas Robinson, Lane, Atchison and Geary were the
conspicuous public leaders: Robinson, the canny Yankee, whose astute
reading of the signs of the times proved in the end wise and correct but
left him always the opportunist and politician; Lane, whose impetuous
daring and rough devotion led thousands of immigrants out of the North
and drove hundreds of slaveholders back to Missouri; Atchison, who led
the determination and ruffianism of the South; and Geary, who voiced the
saner nation. And yet one cannot read Kansas history without feeling
that the man who in all this bewildering broil was least the puppet of
circumstances—the man who most clearly saw the real crux of the
conflict, most definitely knew his own convictions and was readiest at
the crisis for decisive action, was a man whose leadership lay not in
his office, wealth or influence, but in the white flame of his utter
devotion to an ideal.

To comprehend this, one must pick from the confused tangle of Kansas
territorial history the main thread of its unraveling and then show how
Brown’s life twined with it. And this is no easy task. Some time before
or after 1850 Southern leaders had tacitly fixed the westward extension
of the Compromise line of 1820 at the northern line of Missouri. When,
then, the bill for organizing this western territory appeared innocently
in Congress, it was hustled back to committee, and appeared finally as
the celebrated Kansas-Nebraska Bill which formed two territories, Kansas
and Nebraska. It was the secret understanding of the promoters of the
bill that Kansas would become slave territory and Nebraska free, and
this tacit compact was expressed in the formula that the people of each
territory should have the right “to form and regulate their domestic
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the
United States.” But the game was so easy, and the price so cheap that
the Southern leaders and their office-hunting Northern tools were not
satisfied, even with the gain of territory, and so juggled the bill as
virtually to leave all territory open to slavery even against the will
of its people, while eventually they fortified their daring by a Supreme
Court decision.

The North, on the other hand, angry enough at even the necessity of
disputing slavery north of the long established line, nevertheless began
in good faith to prepare to vote slavery out of Kansas by pouring in
free settlers.

Thereupon ensued one of the strangest duels of modern times—a political
battle between two economic systems: On the one side were all the
machinery of government, close proximity to the battle-field and a
deep-seated social ideal which did not propose to abide by the rules of
the game; on the other hand were strong moral conviction, pressing
economic necessity and capacity for organization. It took four years to
fight the battle—from the middle of 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
was passed and the Indians were hustled out of their rights, until 1858,
when the pro-slavery constitution was definitely buried under free state
votes.

In the beginning, the fall of 1854, the fatal misunderstanding of the
two sections was clear: The New England Emigrant Aid Society assumed
that the contest was simply a matter of votes, and that if they hurried
settlers to Kansas from the North a majority for freedom was reasonably
certain. Missouri and the South, on the other hand, assumed that Kansas
was already of right a slave state and resented as an impertinence the
attempt to make it free by any means. Thus at Lawrence, on August 1st,
the bewildered and unarmed Northern settlers and their immediate
successors, such as John Brown’s sons, were literally pounced upon by
the furious Missourians, who crossed the border like an invading army.
“To those who have qualms of conscience as to violating laws, state or
national, the time has come when such impositions must be disregarded,
as your rights and property are in danger,” cried Stringfellow of
Missouri. Thereupon 5,000 Missourians proceeded to elect a pro-slavery
legislature and Congressional delegate; and led by what Sumner called
“hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy
civilization,” flourished their pistols and bowie-knives, driving some
of the free state immigrants back home and the rest into apprehensive
inaction and silence.

Snatching thus the whip-hand, with pro-slavery governor, judges, marshal
and legislature, they then proceeded in 1855 to deliver blow upon blow
to the free state cause until it seemed inevitable that Kansas should
become a slave state, with a code of laws which made even an assertion
against the right of slaveholding a felony punishable with imprisonment.

The free state settlers hesitatingly began to take serious counsel. They
found themselves in three parties: a few who hated slavery, more who
hated Negroes, and many who hated slaves. Easily the political
_finesse_, afterward unsuccessfully attempted, might now have pitted the
parties against one another in such irreconcilable difference as would
slip even slavery through. But unblushing force and fraud united them to
an appeal for justice at Big Springs in the fall of 1855—where John
Brown’s sons were present and active—and a declaration of passive, with
a threat of active, resistance to the “bogus” legislature. A peace
program was laid down: they would ignore the patent fraud, organize a
state and appeal to Congress and the nation. This they did in October
and November, 1855, making Topeka their nominal and Lawrence their real
capital.

The pro-slavery party, however, was quick to see the weakness of this
program and they took the first opportunity to force the free state men
into collision with the authorities. A characteristic occasion soon
arose: a peaceful free state settler was brutally killed and instead of
arresting the murderer, the pro-slavery sheriff arrested the chief
witness against him. A few of the bolder free state neighbors released
the prisoner and took him to Lawrence. Immediately the sheriff gathered
an army of 1,500 deputies from Missouri, and surrounded 500 free state
men in Lawrence just after John Brown arrived in Kansas. Things looked
serious enough even to the drunken governor, and with the aid of some
artifice, liquor and stormy weather, the threatened clash was
temporarily averted. The wild and ice-bound winter that fell on Kansas
gave a moment’s pause, but with the opening spring the pro-slavery
forces gathered themselves for a last crushing blow. Armed bands came
out of the South with flying banners, the Missouri River was blockaded
to Northern immigrants, and the border ruffians rode unhindered over the
Missouri line. The free state men, alarmed, appealed to the East and
immigrants were hurried forward; but slavery “with the chief justice,
the tamed and domesticated chief justice who waited on him like a
familiar spirit,” declared the passive resistance movement “constructive
treason” and the pro-slavery marshal arrested the free state leaders
from the governor down, and clapped them into prison. Two thousand
Missourians then surrounded Lawrence and while the hesitating free state
men were striving to keep the peace, sacked and half burned the town on
the day before Brooks broke Sumner’s head in the Senate chamber, for
telling the truth about Kansas.

The deed was done. Kansas was a slave territory. The free state program
had been repudiated by the United States government and had broken like
a reed before the assaults of the pro-slavery party. There were
mutterings in the East but the cause of freedom was at its lowest ebb.
Then suddenly there came the flash of an awful stroke—a deed of
retaliation from the free state side so bloody, relentless and cruel
that it sent a shudder through all Kansas and Missouri, and aroused the
nation. In one black night, John Brown, four of his sons, a son-in-law
and two others, the chosen executors of the boldest free state leaders,
seized and killed five of the worst of the border ruffians who were
harrying the free state settlers, and practically swept out of existence
the “Dutch Henry” pro-slavery settlement in the Swamp of the Swan. The
rank and file of the free state men themselves recoiled at first in
consternation and loudly, then faintly, disclaimed the deed. Suddenly
they saw and laid the lie aside, and seized their Sharps rifles. There
was war in Kansas—a quick sweeping change from the passive appeal to law
and justice which did not respond, to the appeal to force and blood. The
deed did not make Kansas free—no one, least of all John Brown, dreamed
that it would. But it brought to the fore in free state councils the men
who were determined to fight for freedom, and it meant the end of
passive resistance. The carnival of crime and rapine that ensued was a
disgrace to civilization but it was the cost of freedom, and it was less
than the price of repression. There were pitched battles, the building
and besieging of forts, the burning of homes, stealing of property,
raping of women and murder of men, until the scared governor signed a
truce, exchanged prisoners and fled for his life. The wildest
pro-slavery elements, now loosed from all restraint, planned a last
desperate blow. Nearly 3,000 men were mustered in Missouri. The new
governor, whose _cortège_ barely escaped highway robbery, found
“desolation and ruin” on every hand; “homes and firesides were deserted;
the smoke of burning dwellings darkened the atmosphere; women and
children, driven from their habitations, wandered over the prairies and
among the woodlands, or sought refuge and protection even among the
Indian tribes; the highways were infested with numerous predatory bands,
and the towns were fortified and garrisoned by armies of conflicting
partisans, each excited almost to frenzy, and determined upon mutual
extermination.” Not only that, but the territorial “treasury was
bankrupt, there were no pecuniary resources within herself to meet the
exigencies of the time; the Congressional appropriations intended to
defray the expenses of a year, were insufficient to meet the demands of
a fortnight; the laws were null, the courts virtually suspended and the
civil arm of the government almost entirely powerless.”[92]

Governor Geary came in the nick of time and he came with peremptory
orders from the frightened government at Washington, who saw that they
must either check the whirlwind they had raised, or lose the
presidential election of 1856. For not only was there “hell in Kansas”
but the North was aflame—the very thing which John Brown and Lane and
their fellows designed. A great convention met at Buffalo and
mass-meetings were held everywhere. Clothes, money, arms, and men began
to pour out of the North. It was no longer a program of peaceful voting;
it was fight. The Southern party was certain to be swamped by an army of
men, who, though most of them had few convictions as to slavery, did not
propose to settle among slaves. The wilder pro-slavery men did not heed.
When Shannon ran away and before Geary came, they planned to strike
their blow at the free state forces. An army of nearly three thousand
was collected; one wing sacked Osawatomie and the main body was to
capture and destroy Lawrence. No sooner was this done than the force of
the United States army was to be called in to keep the conquered down.
The success of the plan at this juncture might have precipitated Civil
War in 1856 instead of 1861, and Geary hurried breathlessly to ward off
the mad blow. He succeeded, and by strenuous exertions he was able with
some truth to report in Washington before election time: “Peace now
reigns in Kansas.”

The news, though it helped to elect Buchanan, was received but coldly in
Washington, for the Southerners knew how high a price Geary had paid. So
evidently was the governor out of favor that before the spring of 1857,
the third governor fled in mad haste from his post because of the enmity
of his own supporters. It was clear to Washington that Geary’s
recognition of the free state cause, with the heavy immigration, had
already destroyed the possibility of making Kansas a slave state. There
were still, however, certain possibilities for _finesse_ and political
maneuvering. Slaves were already in Kansas and the Dred Scott Decision
on March 6, 1857, legalized them there. Moreover, southeast Kansas,
thanks to one of the most brutal raids in its history, in the fall of
1856, was still strongly pro-slavery. The constitutional convention was
also in that party’s hands. By gracefully yielding the legislature
therefore to the patent free state majority, it seemed possible that
political manipulation might legalize the slaves already in the state.
Once this was conceded, there was still a chance to make Kansas a slave
state. The pro-slavery men, however, trained in the upheaval of 1856,
were poor material to follow and support the astute Governor Walker.
They itched for the law of the club, and made but bungling work of the
Lecompton constitution. Then too the more determined spirits in the
Territory, together with many naturally lawless elements, saw the
pro-slavery danger in southeast Kansas, and proceeded to wage guerrilla
warfare against the squatters on claims whence free state men had been
driven. It was a cruel relentless battle on both sides with murder and
rapine—the last expiring flame of the four years’ war dying down to
sullen peace in the fall of 1858, after the English bill with its bribe
of land for slaves had been killed in the spring.

So Kansas was free. In vain did the sullen Senate in Washington fume and
threaten and keep the young state knocking for admission; the game had
been played and lost and Kansas was free. Free because the slave barons
played for an imperial stake in defiance of modern humanity and economic
development. Free because strong men had suffered and fought not against
slavery but against slaves in Kansas. Above all, free because one man
hated slavery and on a terrible night rode down with his sons among the
shadows of the Swamp of the Swan—that long, low-winding and sombre
stream “fringed everywhere with woods” and dark with bloody memory.
Forty-eight hours they lingered there, and then of a pale May morning
rode up to the world again. Behind them lay five twisted, red and
mangled corpses. Behind them rose the stifled wailing of widows and
little children. Behind them the fearful driver gazed and shuddered. But
before them rode a man, tall, dark, grim-faced and awful. His hands were
red and his name was John Brown. Such was the cost of freedom.




                              CHAPTER VII
                         THE SWAMP OF THE SWAN

  “And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the
  sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his
  hands hath God delivered Midian, and all the host.”


“Did you go out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society?” asked
the Inquisition of John Brown in after years. He answered grimly: “No,
sir, I went out under the auspices of John Brown.” In broad outline the
story of his coming to Kansas has been told in the last chapter, but the
picture needs now to be filled in with the details of his personal
fortunes, and a more careful study of the development of his personal
character in this critical period of his career. The place of his coming
was storied and romantic. French-fathered Indians wheeling onward in
their swift canoes saw stately birds in the reedy lowlands of eastern
Kansas and called the marsh the Swamp of the Swan. Up from the dark
sluggish rivers rose rolling goodly lands over which John Brown’s
brother Edward had passed to California in 1849, and on which his
brother-in-law had settled as early as 1854. Here, too, naturally had
followed the five pioneering sons in April, 1855. They came hating
slavery and yet peacefully, unarmed, and in all good faith, with cattle
and horses and trees and vines to settle in a free land. In Missouri
they met hatred and inhospitality, and in Kansas sickness and freezing
weather. Nevertheless they were stout-hearted and hopeful, and went
bravely to work until the political storm broke, when they wrote home
hastily for arms to defend themselves. John Brown, as we have seen,
brought the arms himself, taking his son Oliver and his son-in-law Henry
with him. “We reached the place where the boys are located one week ago,
late at night,” he wrote October 13, 1855. “We had between us all, sixty
cents in cash when we arrived. We found our folks in a most
uncomfortable situation, with no houses to shelter one of them, no hay
or corn fodder of any account secured, shivering over their little
fires, all exposed to the dreadful cutting winds, morning, evening and
stormy days.” All went to work to build cabins and secure fodder,
keeping at the same time a careful eye on the political developments. On
free state election day, October 9th, “hearing that there was a prospect
of difficulty, we all turned out most thoroughly armed,” but “no enemy
appeared” and Brown was encouraged to think that the prospect of Kansas
becoming free “is brightening every day.”

By November the settlers, he wrote, “have made but little progress, but
we have made a little. We have got a shanty three logs high, chinked and
mudded, and roofed with our tent, and a chimney so far advanced that we
can keep a fire in it for Jason. John has his shanty a little better
fixed than it was, but miserable enough now; and we have got their
little crop of beans secured, which together with johnny cake, mush and
milk, pumpkins and squashes, constitute our fare.” And he adds, “After
all God’s tender mercies are not taken from us.... I feel more and more
confident that slavery will soon die out here—and to God be the praise!”

On November 23d he writes: “We have got both families so sheltered that
they need not suffer hereafter; have got part of the hay (which had been
in cocks) secured; made some progress in preparation to build a house
for John and Owen; and Salmon has caught a prairie wolf in a steel trap.
We continue to have a good deal of stormy weather—rains with severe
winds, and forming into ice as they fall, together with cold nights that
freeze the ground considerably. Still God has not forsaken us!”[93]

It was thus that John Brown came to Kansas and stood ready to fight for
freedom. No sooner had he stepped on Kansas soil, however, than it was
plain to him and to others that the cause for which he was fighting was
far different from that for which most of the settlers were willing to
risk life and property. The difference came out at the first meeting of
settlers in the little Osawatomie township. Redpath says: “The
politicians of the neighborhood were carefully pruning resolutions so as
to suit every variety of anti-slavery extensionists; and more especially
that class of persons whose opposition to slavery was founded on
expediency—the selfishness of race, and caste, and interest: men who
were desirous that Kansas should be consecrated to free white labor
only, not to freedom for all and above all.” The resolution which
aroused the old man’s anger declared that Kansas should be a free white
state, thereby favoring the exclusion of Negroes and mulattoes, whether
slave or free. He rose to speak, and soon alarmed and disgusted the
politicians by asserting the manhood of the Negro race, and expressing
his earnest, anti-slavery convictions with a force and vehemence little
likely to suit the hybrids.[94]

Nothing daunted by the cold reception of his radical ideas here, Brown
strove to extend them when a larger opportunity came at the first
beleaguering of Lawrence. It was in December, 1855, when rumors of the
surrounding of Lawrence by the governor and his pro-slavery followers
came to the Browns. The old man wrote home: “These reports appeared to
be well authenticated, but we could get no further accounts of the
matters; and I left this for the place where the boys are settled, at
evening, intending to go to Lawrence to learn the facts the next day.
John was, however, started on horseback; but before he had gone many
rods, word came that our help was immediately wanted. On getting this
last news, it was at once agreed to break up at John’s camp, and take
Wealthy and Johnnie to Jason’s camp (some two miles off), and that all
the men but Henry, Jason, and Oliver should at once set off for Lawrence
under arms; those three being wholly unfit for duty. We then set about
providing a little corn bread and meat, blankets, and cooking utensils,
running bullets and loading all our guns, pistols, etc. The five set off
in the afternoon, and after a short rest in the night (which was quite
dark), continued our march until after daylight; next morning, when we
got our breakfast, started again, and reached Lawrence in the forenoon,
all of us more or less lamed by our tramp.”[95]

The band approached the town at sunset, looming strangely on the
horizon: an old horse, a homely wagon and seven stalwart men armed with
pikes, swords, pistols and guns. John Brown was immediately put in
command of a company. He found that already “negotiations had commenced
between Governor Shannon (having a force of some fifteen or sixteen
hundred men) and the principal leaders of the free state men, they
having a force of some five hundred men at that time. These were busy,
night and day, fortifying the town with embankments and circular
earthworks, up to the time of the treaty with the governor, as an attack
was constantly looked for, notwithstanding the negotiations then
pending. This state of things continued from Friday until Sunday
evening,”[96] when Governor Shannon was induced to enter the town and
after some parley a treaty was announced. Immediately Brown’s suspicions
were aroused. He surmised that the governor’s party had not thus lightly
given up the fight for slavery, and he feared that the leading free
state politicians had sacrificed the principles for which he was
fighting for the sake of the temporary truce. Already the drunken
governor was making conciliatory remarks to the crowd in front of the
free state hotel, the free state Governor Robinson replying, when John
Brown, mounting a piece of timber at the corner of the house, began a
fiery speech. “He said that the people of Missouri had come to Kansas to
destroy Lawrence; that they had beleaguered the town for two weeks,
threatening its destruction; that they came for blood; that he believed,
‘without the shedding of blood there is no remission’; and asked for
volunteers to go under his command, and attack the pro-slavery camp
stationed near Franklin, some four miles from Lawrence.... He demanded
to know what the terms were. If he understood Governor Shannon’s speech,
something had been conceded, and he conveyed the idea that the
territorial laws were to be observed. Those laws he denounced and spit
upon, and would never obey—no! The crowd was fired by his earnestness
and a great echoing shout arose: ‘No! No! Down with the bogus laws. Lead
us out to fight first!’ For a moment matters looked serious to the free
state leaders who had so ingeniously engineered the compromise, and they
hastened to assure Brown that he was mistaken; that there had been no
surrendering of principles on their side.”[97] The real terms of the
treaty were kept secret, but Brown with his usual loyalty accepted their
word as true and wrote exultingly home: “So ended this last Kansas
invasion,—the Missourians returning with flying colors, after incurring
heavy expenses, suffering great exposure, hardships, and privations, not
having fought any battles, burned or destroyed any infant towns or
Abolition presses; leaving the free state men organized and armed, and
in full possession of the Territory; not having fulfilled any of all
their dreadful threatenings, except to murder one unarmed man, and to
commit some robberies and waste of property upon the defenseless
families, unfortunately within their power. We learn by their papers
that they boast of a great victory over the Abolitionists; and well they
may. Free state men have only hereafter to retain the footing they have
gained, and Kansas is free.”[98]

The Wakarusa “treaty,” however, was but a winter’s truce as John Brown
soon saw; his distrust of the compromisers and politicians grew, and he
tried to get his own channels of news from the seat of government at
Washington. “We are very anxious to know what Congress is doing. We hear
that Frank Pierce means to crush the men of Kansas. I do not know how
well he may succeed, but I think he may find his hands full before it is
all over.”[99] And Joshua R. Giddings assures him that the President
“never will dare to employ the troops of the United States to shoot the
citizens of Kansas.”[100] Yet the President did dare. Not only were
regular troops put into the hands of the Kansas slave power, but armed
bands from the South appeared, and one in particular from Georgia
encamped on the Swamp of the Swan near the Brown settlement. John
Brown’s procedure was characteristic. With his surveying instruments in
hand one May morning, he sauntered into their camp. He was immediately
taken for a government surveyor and consequently “sound on the goose,”
for “every governor sent here, every secretary, every judge, every
Indian agent, every land surveyor, every clerk in every office, believed
in making Kansas a slave state. All the money sent here by the national
government was disbursed by pro-slavery officials to pro-slavery
menials.”[101] Brown took with him, his son says, “four of my
brothers,—Owen, Frederick, Salmon, and Oliver,—as chain carriers, axman,
and marker, and found a section line which, on following, led through
the camp of these men. The Georgians indulged in the utmost freedom of
expression. One of them, who appeared to be the leader of the company,
said: ‘We’ve come here to stay. We won’t make no war on them as minds
their own business; but all the Abolitionists, such as them damned
Browns over there, we’re going to whip, drive out, or kill,—any way to
get shut of them, by God!’”[102]

Many of the intended victims were openly mentioned, and every word said
was calmly written down in John Brown’s surveyor’s book. Soon this
information was corroborated by the Southern camp being moved nearer the
Brown settlement. Secret marauding and stealing began. Brown warned the
intended victims, and, at a night meeting, it seems to have been decided
that at the first sign of a move on the part of the “border ruffians”
the ringleaders should be seized and lynched. Not only was this the
opinion at Osawatomie, but secret councils throughout the state were
beginning to lose faith in conciliation and compromise, and to listen to
more radical advice. From Lawrence, too, there came encouragement to
John Brown to take the lead in this darker forward movement. There was
little open talk or explicit declaration, but it was generally
understood that the next aggressive move in the Swamp of the Swan meant
retaliation and that John Brown would strike the blow.

While, however, the free state leaders were willing to let this radical
hater of slavery thus defend the frontiers of their cause, they
themselves deemed it wise still to stick to the policy of passive
resistance, and their wisdom cost them dear. On the 21st of May the
pro-slavery forces swooped on Lawrence, and burned and sacked it, while
its citizens stood trembling by and raised no hand in its defense. John
Brown knew nothing of this until it was too late to help.
Notwithstanding, he hurried to the scene, and sat down by the smoldering
ashes in grim anger. He was “indignant that there had been no
resistance; that Lawrence was not defended; and denounced the members of
the committee and leading free state men as cowards, or worse.” It
seemed to Brown nothing less than a crime for men thus to lie down and
be kicked by ruffians. “Caution, caution, sir!” he burst out at a
discreet old gentleman, “I am eternally tired of hearing that word
caution—it is nothing but the word of cowardice.”[103] Yet there seemed
nothing to do then, and he was about to break camp when a boy came up
riding swiftly. The ruffians at Dutch Henry’s crossing, he said, had
been warning the defenseless women in the Brown settlement that the free
state families must leave by Saturday or Sunday, else they would be
driven out. The Brown women, hastily gathering up their children and
valuables, had fled by ox-cart to the house of a kinsman farther away.
Two houses and a store in the German settlement had been burned.

John Brown arose. “I will attend to those fellows,” he said grimly.
“Something must be done to show these barbarians that we too have
rights!”[104] He called four of his sons, Watson, Frederick, Owen and
Oliver, his son-in-law, Henry Thompson, and a German, whose home lay in
ashes. A neighbor with wagon and horses offered to carry the band, and
the cutlasses were carefully sharpened. An uneasy feeling crept through
the onlookers. They knew that John Brown was going to strike a blow for
freedom in Kansas, but they did not understand just what that blow would
be. There were hesitation and whispering, and one at least ventured a
mild remonstrance, but Brown shook him off in disgust. As the wagon
moved off, a cheer arose from the company left behind.

It was two o’clock on Friday afternoon that the eight men started toward
the Swamp of the Swan. Arriving in the neighborhood they spent Saturday
in quietly and secretly investigating the situation, and in gathering
evidence of the intentions of the “border ruffians.” Although the exact
facts have never all been told, it seems clear that a meeting of the
intended victims was secured at which John Brown himself presided.
Probably it was then decided that the seven ringleaders of the projected
deviltry must be killed, and John Brown was appointed to see that the
deed was done. The men condemned were among the worst of their kind. One
was a liquor dealer in whose disreputable dive the United States court
was held. His brother, a giant of six feet four, was a thief and a bully
whose pastime was insulting free state women. The third was the
postmaster, who managed to avoid direct complicity in the crime, but
shared the spoils. Next came the probate judge, who harried the free
state men with warrants of all sorts; and lastly, three miserable
drunken tools, formerly slave-chasers who had come to Kansas with their
bloodhounds and were ready for any kind of evil.

These were not the leaders of the pro-slavery party in Kansas, but
rather the dogs which were to worry the free state men to death. The
ringleaders sat securely hedged back of United States bayonets and the
Missouri militia, but their tools depended for their safety on
terrorizing the localities wherein they lived. Here then, said John
Brown, was the spot to strike and, once sentence of death had been
formally passed, the band hurried to its task. The saloon lay on the
creek where the great highway from Leavenworth in the northeastern part
of the state crossed on its way to Fort Scott. Around it within an
hour’s walk were the cabins of the others. In all cases the proceeding
was similar: a silent approach and a quick sharp knocking in the night.
The inmates leapt startled from their beds, for midnight rappings were
ominous there. They hesitated to open the door, but the demand was
peremptory and the door was frail. Then the dark room was filled with
shadowy figures, the man dressed quickly, the woman whimpered and
listened, but the footsteps died away and all was still. Three homes
were visited thus; two of the number could not be found, but five men
went out into the darkness with their captors and never returned. They
were led quickly into the woods and surrounded. John Brown raised his
hand and at the signal the victims were hacked to death with
broadswords.

The deed inflamed Kansas. The timid rushed to disavow the deed. The free
state people were silent and the pro-slavery party was roused to fury.
Even the silent co-conspirators of Pottawatomie rushed to pledge
themselves “individually and collectively, to prevent a recurrence of a
similar tragedy, and to ferret out and hand over to the criminal
authorities the perpetrators for punishment.” But they took no steps to
lay hands on John Brown and as he said, their cowardice did not protect
them. Four times in four years the wrath of the avengers flamed in the
Swamp of the Swan, and swept the land in fire and blood, and the last
red breath of the expiring war in Kansas glowed in these dark ravines.

To this day men differ as to the effect of John Brown’s blow. Some say
it freed Kansas, while others say it plunged the land back into civil
war. Truth lies in both statements. The blow freed Kansas by plunging it
into civil war, and compelling men to fight for freedom which they had
vainly hoped to gain by political diplomacy. At first it was hard to see
this, and even those sons of John Brown whom he had not taken with him,
recoiled at the news. One son says: “On the afternoon of Monday, May
26th, a man came to us at Liberty Hill, ... his horse reeking with
sweat, and said, ‘five men have been killed on the Pottawatomie,
horribly cut and mangled; and they say old John Brown did it.’ Hearing
this, I was afraid it was true, and it was the most terrible shock that
ever happened to my feelings in my life; but brother John took a
different view. The next day as we were on the east side of Middle
Creek, I asked father, ‘Did you have any hand in the killing?’ He said,
‘I did not, but I stood by and saw it.’ I did not ask further for fear I
should hear something I did not wish to hear. Frederick said, ‘I could
not feel as if it was right;’ but another of the party said it was
justifiable as a means of self-defense and the defense of others. What I
said against it seemed to hurt father very much; but all he said was,
‘God is my judge,—we were justified under the circumstances.’”[105]

This was as much as John Brown usually said of the matter, although in
later years a friend relates: “I finally said, ‘Captain Brown, I want to
ask you one question, and you can answer it or not as you please, and I
shall not be offended.’ He stopped his pacing, looked me square in the
face, and said, ‘What is it?’ Said I, ‘Captain Brown, did you kill those
five men on the Pottawatomie, or did you not?’ He replied, ‘I did not;
but I do not pretend to say that they were not killed by my order; and
in doing so I believe I was doing God’s service.’ My wife spoke and
said, ‘Then, captain, you think that God uses you as an instrument in
His hands to kill men?’ Brown replied, ‘I think He has used me as an
instrument to kill men; and if I live, I think He will use me as an
instrument to kill a good many more!’”[106]

No sooner was the deed known than John Brown became a hunted outlaw. Two
of his sons who had not been with him at the murders were arrested on
Lecompte’s “constructive treason” warrants because they had affiliated
with the free state movement. Horror at his father’s deed and the
cruelty of his captors drove the eldest son temporarily insane, while
the life of the other was saved only by a scrap of paper which said, “I
am aware that you hold my two sons, John and Jason, prisoners—John
Brown.”[107] The old man never wavered. He wrote home: “Jason started to
go and place himself under the protection of the government troops; but
on his way he was taken prisoner by the bogus men, and is yet a
prisoner, I suppose. John tried to hide for several days; but from
feelings of the ungrateful conduct of those who ought to have stood by
him, excessive fatigue, anxiety, and constant loss of sleep, he became
quite insane, and in that situation gave up, or, as we are told, was
betrayed at Osawatomie into the hands of the bogus men. We do not know
all the truth about this affair. He has since, we are told, been kept in
irons, and brought to a trial before bogus court, the result of which we
have not yet learned. We have great anxiety both for him and Jason, and
numerous other prisoners with the enemy (who have all the while had the
government troops to sustain them). We can only commend them to
God.”[108]

Withdrawing to the forests, John Brown now began to organize his
followers. Thirty-five of them adopted this covenant in the summer of
1856:

“We whose names are found on these and the next following pages, do
hereby enlist ourselves to serve in the free state cause under John
Brown as commander, during the full period of time affixed to our names
respectively and we severally pledge our word and our sacred honor to
said commander, and to each other, that during the time for which we
have enlisted, we will faithfully and punctually perform our duty (in
such capacity or place as may be assigned to us by a majority of all the
votes of those associated with us, or of the companies to which we may
belong as the case may be) as a regular volunteer force for the
maintenance of the rights and liberties of the free state citizens of
Kansas: and we further agree; that as individuals we will conform to the
by-laws of this organization and that we will insist on their regular
and punctual enforcement as a first and a last duty: and, in short, that
we will observe and maintain a strict and thorough military discipline
at all times until our term of service expires.”[109]

A score of by-laws were added, providing for electing officers, trial by
jury, disposal of captured property, etc. Then follow these articles:

“Art. XIV. All uncivil, ungentlemanly, profane, vulgar talk or
conversation shall be discountenanced.

“Art. XV. All acts of petty theft, needless waste of property of the
members or of citizens are hereby declared disorderly; together with all
uncivil, or unkind treatment of citizens or of prisoners.

“Art. XX. No person after having first surrendered himself a prisoner
shall be put to death, or subjected to corporeal punishment, without
first having had the benefit of an impartial trial.

“Art. XXI. The ordinary use or introduction into the camp of any
intoxicating liquor, as a beverage, is hereby declared disorderly.”[110]

Nor was this ideal of discipline merely on paper. The reporter of the
New York _Tribune_ stumbled on the camp which the authorities did not
dare to find:

“I shall not soon forget the scene that here opened to my view. Near the
edge of the creek a dozen horses were tied, all ready saddled for a ride
for life, or a hunt after Southern invaders. A dozen rifles and sabres
were stacked against the trees. In an open space, amid the shady and
lofty woods, there was a great blazing fire with a pot on it; a woman,
bareheaded, with an honest sunburnt face, was picking blackberries from
the bushes; three or four armed men were lying on red and blue blankets
on the grass; and two fine-looking youths were standing, leaning on
their arms, on guard near by. One of them was the youngest son of old
Brown, and the other was ‘Charley,’ the brave Hungarian, who was
subsequently murdered at Osawatomie. Old Brown himself stood near the
fire, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, and a large piece of pork in his
hand. He was cooking a pig. He was poorly clad, and his toes protruded
from his boots. The old man received me with great cordiality, and the
little band gathered about me. But it was a moment only; for the captain
ordered them to renew their work. He respectfully but firmly forbade
conversation on the Pottawatomie affair; and said that, if I desired any
information from the company in relation to their conduct or intentions,
he, as their captain, would answer for them whatever it was proper to
communicate.

“In this camp no manner of profane language was permitted; no man of
immoral character was allowed to stay, excepting as a prisoner of war.
He made prayers in which all the company united, every morning and
evening; and no food was ever tasted by his men until the divine
blessing had been asked on it. After every meal, thanks were returned to
the Bountiful Giver. Often, I was told, the old man would retire to the
densest solitudes, to wrestle with his God in secret prayer. One of his
company subsequently informed me that, after these retirings, he would
say that the Lord had directed him in visions what to do; that for
himself he did not love warfare, but peace,—only acting in obedience to
the will of the Lord, and fighting God’s battles for His children’s
sake.

“It was at this time that the old man said to me: ‘I would rather have
the smallpox, yellow fever, and cholera all together in my camp, than a
man without principles. It’s a mistake, sir,’ he continued, ‘that our
people make, when they think that bullies are the best fighters, or that
they are the men fit to oppose those Southerners. Give me men of good
principles; God-fearing men; men who respect themselves; and, with a
dozen of them, I will oppose any hundred such men as these Buford
ruffians.’

“I remained in the camp about an hour. Never before had I met such a
band of men. They were not earnest but earnestness incarnate.”[111]

A member of the band says:

“We stayed here up to the morning of Sunday, the first of June, and
during these few days I fully succeeded in understanding the exalted
character of my old friend. He exhibited at all times the most
affectionate care for each of us. He also attended to cooking. We had
two meals daily, consisting of bread made of flour, baked in skillets;
this was washed down with creek water, mixed with a little ginger and a
spoon of molasses to each pint. Nevertheless we kept in excellent
spirits; we considered ourselves as one family, allied to one another by
the consciousness that it was our duty to undergo all these privations
to further the good cause; had determined to share any danger with one
another, that victory or death might find us together. We were united as
a band of brothers by the love and affection toward the man who with
tender words and wise counsel, in the depth of the wilderness of Ottawa
Creek, prepared a handful of young men for the work of laying the
foundation of a free commonwealth. His words have ever remained firmly
engraved in my mind. Many and various were the instructions he gave
during the days of our compulsory leisure in this camp. He expressed
himself to us that we should never allow ourselves to be tempted by any
consideration to acknowledge laws and institutions to exist as of right,
if our conscience and reason condemned them. He admonished us not to
care whether a majority, no matter how large, opposed our principles and
opinions. The largest majorities were sometimes only organized mobs,
whose howlings never changed black into white, or night into day. A
minority conscious of its rights, based on moral principles, would,
under a republican government, sooner or later become the majority.
Regarding the curse and crimes of the institution of slavery, he
declared that the outrages committed in Kansas to further its extension
had directed the attention of all intelligent citizens of the United
States and of the world to the necessity of its abolishment, as a
stumbling-block in the path of nineteenth century civilization; that
while it was true that the pro-slavery people and their aiders and
abettors had the upper hand at present, and the free state organization
dwindled to a handful hid in the brush, nevertheless, we ought to be of
good cheer, and start the ball to rolling at the first opportunity, no
matter whether its starting motion would even crush us to death. We were
under a protection of a wise Providence, which might use our feeble
efforts.

“Occasionally Captain Brown also gave us directions for our conduct
during a fight, for attack and retreat. Time and again he entreated us
never to follow the example of the border ruffians, who took a delight
in destruction; never to burn houses or fences, so often done by the
enemy. Free state people could use them to advantage. Repeatedly he
admonished us not to take human life except when absolutely necessary.
Plunder taken from the enemy should be common property, to be used for
continuance of the struggle; horses to go to recruits, cattle and
provision to poor free state people.”[112]

To this band of men the surrounding country, which was already feeling
the first retaliatory blows of the pro-slavery party, now looked for
aid, and Brown stood ever ready. His men, however, could form but the
nucleus of a spirited defense and for a time the settlers hesitated to
join the band until Brown threatened to withdraw. “Why did you send
Carpenter after us? I am not willing to sacrifice my men without having
some hope of accomplishing something,”[113] he demanded of a hesitating
emissary, and turning to his men he said: “If the cowardice and
indifference of the free state people compel us to leave Kansas, what do
you say, men, if we start south, for instance to Louisiana, and get up a
Negro insurrection, and thereby compel them to let go their grip on
Kansas, and so bring relief to our friends here?” Frederick Brown jumped
up and said: “I am ready.”[114]

The petty outrages of the Georgia guerrillas now so increased in
boldness and in frequency that a company was hastily formed which called
Brown’s men to the defense of a neighboring village. “We will be with
you,” cried Brown, and thus he told the story of what followed to the
folks at home:

“The cowardly mean conduct of Osawatomie and vicinity did not save them;
for the ruffians came on them, made numerous prisoners, fired their
buildings, and robbed them. After this a picked party of the bogus men
went to Brown’s Station, burned John’s and Jason’s houses, and their
contents to ashes; in which burning we have all suffered more or less.
Orson and boy have been prisoners, but we soon set them at liberty. They
are well, and have not been seriously injured. Owen and I have just come
here for the first time to look at the ruins. All looks desolate and
forsaken,—the grass and weeds fast covering up the signs that these
places were lately the abodes of quiet families. After burning the
houses, this self-same party of picked men, some forty in number, set
out as they supposed, and as was the fact, on the track of my little
company, boasting with awful profanity, that they would have our scalps.
They, however, passed the place where we hid, and robbed a little town
some four or five miles beyond our camp in the timber. I had omitted to
say that some murders had been committed at the time Lawrence was
sacked.

“On learning that this party was in pursuit of us, my little company,
now increased to ten in all, started after them in company of a Captain
Shore, with eighteen men, he included (June 1st). We were all mounted as
we traveled. We did not meet them on that day, but took five prisoners,
four of whom were of their scouts, and well armed. We were out all
night, but could find nothing of them until about six o’clock next
morning, when we prepared to attack them at once, on foot, leaving
Frederick and one of Captain Shore’s men to guard the horses. As I was
much older than Captain Shore, the principal direction of the fight
devolved on me. We got to within about a mile of their camp before being
discovered by their scouts, and then moved at a brisk pace, Captain
Shore and men forming our left, and my company the right. When within
about sixty rods of the enemy, Captain Shore’s men halted by mistake in
a very exposed situation, and continued the fire, both his men and the
enemy being armed with Sharps rifles. My company had no long shooters.
We (my company) did not fire a gun until we gained the rear of a bank,
about fifteen or twenty rods to the right of the enemy, where we
commenced, and soon compelled them to hide in a ravine. Captain Shore,
after getting one man wounded, and exhausting his ammunition, came with
part of his men to the right of my position, much discouraged. The
balance of his men, including the one wounded, had left the ground. Five
of Captain Shore’s men came boldly down and joined my company, and all
but one man, wounded, helped to maintain the fight until it was over. I
was obliged to give my consent that he should go after more help, when
all his men left but eight, four of whom I persuaded to remain in a
secure position, and there busied them in the horses and mules of the
enemy, which served for a show of fight. After the firing had continued
for some two to three hours, Captain Pate with twenty-three men, two
badly wounded, laid down their arms to nine men, myself included,—four
of Captain Shore’s men and four of my own. One of my men (Henry
Thompson) was badly wounded, and after continuing his fire for an hour
longer, was obliged to quit the ground. Three others of my company (but
not of my family) had gone off. Salmon was dreadfully wounded by
accident, soon after the fight; but both he and Henry are fast
recovering.

“A day or two after the fight, Colonel Sumner of the United States army
came suddenly upon us, while fortifying our camp and guarding our
prisoners (which, by the way, it had been agreed mutually should be
exchanged for as many free state men, John and Jason included), and
compelled us to let go our prisoners without being exchanged, and to
give up their horses and arms. They did not go more than two or three
miles before they began to rob and injure free state people. We consider
this in good keeping with the cruel and unjust course of the
administration and its tools throughout this whole Kansas difficulty.
Colonel Sumner also compelled us to disband; and we, being only a
handful, were obliged to submit.

“Since then we have, like David of old, had our dwellings with the
serpents of the rocks and wild beasts of the wilderness, being obliged
to hide away from our enemies. We are not disheartened, though nearly
destitute of food, clothing, and money. God, who has not given us over
to the will of our enemies, but has moreover delivered them into our
hand, will, we humbly trust, still keep and deliver us. We feel assured
that He who sees not as men see, does not lay the guilt of innocent
blood to our charge.”[115]

It was John Brown’s hope that the courage engendered by the striking
success of the fight at Black Jack, would spread the spirit of
resistance to the whole free state party. Lawrence, then the capital,
was still surrounded by a chain of forts held by bands of pro-slavery
marauders: one at Franklin just east of the city; another just south and
known as Fort Saunders; and a third between Lawrence and the pro-slavery
capital, Lecompton, known as Fort Titus. When it was rumored that the
United States troops would disperse the free state legislature about to
meet at Topeka, John Brown hurried thither, hoping that resistance would
begin here and sweep the Territory. One of the free state leaders met
him at Lawrence and journeyed with him toward Topeka. Brown and he took
the main road as far as Big Springs, he says, and continues:

“There we left the road, going in a southwesterly direction for a mile,
when we halted on a hill, and the horses were stripped of their saddles,
and picketed out to graze. The grass was wet with dew. The men ate of
what provision they had with them, and I received a portion from the
captain,—dry beef (which was not so bad), and bread made from corn
bruised between stones, then rolled in balls and cooked in the ashes of
the camp-fire. Captain Brown observed that I nibbled it very gingerly,
and said, ‘I am afraid you will be hardly able to eat a soldier’s harsh
fare.’

“We next placed our two saddles together, so that our heads lay only a
few feet apart. Brown spread his blanket on the wet grass, and when we
lay together upon it, mine was spread over us. It was past eleven
o’clock, and we lay there until two in the morning, but we slept none.
He seemed to be as little disposed to sleep as I was, and we talked; or
rather he did, for I said little. I found that he was a thorough
astronomer; he pointed out the different constellations and their
movements. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it is midnight,’ as he pointed to the
finger-marks of his great clock in the sky. The whispering of the wind
on the prairie was full of voices to him, and the stars as they shone in
the firmament of God seemed to inspire him. ‘How admirable is the
symmetry of the heaven; how grand and beautiful! Everything moves in
sublime harmony in the government of God. Not so with us poor creatures.
If one star is more brilliant than others, it is continually shooting in
some erratic way into space.’

“He criticized both parties in Kansas. Of the pro-slavery men he said
that slavery besotted everything, and made men more brutal and
coarse—nor did the free state men escape his sharp censure. He said that
we had many noble and true men, but too many broken-down politicians
from the older states, who would rather pass resolutions than act, and
who criticized all who did real work. A professional politician, he went
on, you never could trust; for even if he had convictions, he was always
ready to sacrifice his principles for his advantage. One of the most
interesting things in his conversation that night, and one that marked
him as a theorist, was his treatment of our forms of social and
political life. He thought that society ought to be organized on a less
selfish basis; for while material interests gained something by the
deification of pure selfishness, men and women lost much by it. He said
that all great reforms, like the Christian religion, were based on
broad, generous, self-sacrificing principles. He condemned the sale of
land as a chattel, and thought that there was an indefinite number of
wrongs to right before society would be what it should be, but that in
our country slavery was the ‘sum of all villanies,’ and its abolition
the first essential work. If the American people did not take courage
and end it speedily, human freedom and republican liberty would soon be
empty names in these United States.”

Early next morning the party pressed on until they came in sight of the
town. Brown would not enter but sent a messenger ahead, and the narrator
continues:

“As he wrung my hand at parting, he urged that we should have the
legislature meet, resist all who should interfere with it, and fight, if
necessary, even the United States troops. He had told me the night
before of his visit to many of the fortifications in Europe, and
criticized them sharply, holding that modern warfare did away with them,
and that a well-armed brave soldier was the best fortification. He
criticized all the arms then in use, and showed me a fine
repeating-rifle which he said would carry eight hundred yards; but he
added, ‘The way to fight is to press to close quarters.’”[116]

The Topeka journey was in vain. The legislature quietly dispersed at the
command of Colonel Sumner, and John Brown saw that his only hope of
stirring up effective resistance lay in Lane’s “army” of immigrants,
then approaching the northern boundaries of Kansas, with whom was his
son-in-law’s brother. Taking, therefore, his wounded son-in-law and
leaving his band, he pressed forward alone on a dangerous and wearisome
way of one hundred and fifty miles through the enemy’s country. Hinton
saw him as he rode into one of the camps and says:

“‘Have you a man in your camp named William Thompson? You are from
Massachusetts, young man, I believe, and Mr. Thompson joined you at
Buffalo.’ These words were addressed to me by an elderly man, riding a
worn-looking, gaunt gray horse. It was on a late July day, and in its
hottest hours. I had been idly watching a wagon and one horse, toiling
slowly northward across the prairie, along the emigrant trail that had
been marked out by free state men under command of ‘Sam’ Walker and
Aaron D. Stevens, who was then known as ‘Colonel Whipple.’ John Brown,
whose name the young and ardent had begun to conjure with and swear by,
had been described to me. So, as I heard the question, I looked up and
met the full, strong gaze of a pair of luminous, questioning eyes.
Somehow I instinctively knew this was John Brown, and with that name I
replied, saying that Thompson was in our company. It was a long,
rugged-featured face I saw. A tall, sinewy figure, too (he had
dismounted), five feet eleven, I estimated, with square shoulders,
narrow flank, sinewy and deep-chested. A frame full of nervous power,
but not impressing one especially with muscular vigor. The impression
left by the pose and the figure was that of reserve, endurance, and
quiet strength. The questioning voice-tones were mellow, magnetic, and
grave. On the weather-worn face was a stubby, short, gray beard,
evidently of recent growth.... This figure,—unarmed, poorly clad, with
coarse linen trousers tucked into high, heavy cowhide boots, with heavy
spurs on their heels, a cotton shirt opened at the throat, a long torn
linen duster, and a bewrayed chip straw hat he held in his hand as he
waited for Thompson to reach us, made up the outward garb and appearance
of John Brown when I first met him. In ten minutes his mounted figure
disappeared over the north horizon.”[117]

Pushing on northward, Brown found asylum for his wounded follower at
Tabor, Ia. Returning, he joined the main body of Lane’s men at Nebraska
City. Here again arose divided counsels. Radical leaders like Lane and
Brown were proscribed men, and United States troops stood on the borders
of Iowa to prevent the entrance of armed bodies. It was decided,
therefore, that Lane must not enter with the immigrants, and a letter to
this effect was brought to him by Samuel Walker, a free state leader.
Walker says:

“After reading it he sat for a long time with his head bowed and the
tears running down his cheeks. Finally he looked up and said: ‘Walker,
if you say the people of Kansas don’t want me, it’s all right, and I’ll
blow my brains out. I can never go back to the states, and look the
people in the face, and tell them that as soon as I got these Kansas
friends of mine fairly into danger I had to abandon them. I can’t do it.
No matter what I say in my own defense, no one will believe it. I’ll
blow my brains out and end the thing right here.’ ‘General,’ said I,
‘the people of Kansas would rather have you than all the party at
Nebraska City. I have got fifteen good boys that are my own. If you will
put yourself under my orders I’ll take you through all right.’”[118]

Thus Walker, Lane, and John Brown with a party of thirty stole into
Kansas and started anew the flame of civil war.

Brown’s old company, organized early in 1858, was mounted and brought to
the front, and a systematic effort was made by Lane to free Lawrence
from its beleaguering forts. The first attack was directed against
Franklin on the night of August 12th, and as ex-Senator Atchison of
Missouri indignantly reported: “Three hundred Abolitionists, under this
same Brown, attacked the town of Franklin, robbed, plundered and burned,
took all the arms in town, broke open and destroyed the post-office,
captured the old cannon ‘Sacramento,’ which our gallant Missourians
captured in Mexico, and are now turning its mouth against our
friends.”[119] Two days later the little army turned southward to Fort
Saunders. Lane deployed his forces before it with John Brown’s cavalry
on his right wing. A charge was ordered and the garrison fled to the
woods, leaving an untasted dinner and large stores of goods. On August
16th, Fort Titus on the road to Lecompton was besieged with cannon, and
finally fired by a load of hay; Colonel Titus, a Georgian, was captured
and John Brown and other leaders wanted to hang him, for he was one of
the most brutal of the border-ruffian commanders. Sam Walker, however,
saved his neck.

So furious had been this short campaign that the pro-slavery party sued
for a truce. Walker tells how “on the following day Governor Shannon and
Major Sedgwick came to Lawrence to negotiate an exchange of prisoners.
They held about thirty of our men and we forty of theirs. It was agreed
to ‘swap even,’ we surrendering all their men, including Titus; they to
hand over all our men and cannon they had captured at the sacking of
Lawrence. I insisted very strongly on this last point of the contract,
for when the gun was taken I swore I would have it back within six
months. I had the pleasure of escorting our prisoners to Sedgwick’s
camp, and receiving the cannon and the prisoners held by the enemy
there, in exchange.”[120]

The whirlwind of guerrilla warfare now swept back to the dark ravines of
the Swamp of the Swan. After the murders of May came the first counter
attack of early June, culminating in the battle of Black Jack. This
check quelled the pro-slavery party a while and they began manning the
forts around Lawrence. On August 5th the free state men struck a
retaliating blow while John Brown was absent in Nebraska, although he
was credited with being present by the Missouri newspapers. Similar
skirmishes followed, and the advantage was now so completely with the
free state forces, that a final crushing blow was planned by the slave
party of Missouri. Manifestoes swept the state, and “No quarter” was the
motto. The Missourians responded with alacrity and a great mass crossed
the border divided into two wings. The lesser attacked Osawatomie and a
newspaper in Missouri said:

“The attack on Osawatomie was by part of an army of eleven hundred and
fifty men, of whom Atchison was major-general. General Reid with two
hundred and fifty men and one piece of artillery, moved on to attack
Osawatomie; he arrived near that place and was attacked by two hundred
Abolitionists under the command of the notorious John Brown, who
commenced firing upon Reid from a thick chaparral four hundred yards
off. General Reid made a successful charge, killing thirty-one, and
taking seven prisoners. Among the killed was Frederick Brown. The
notorious John Brown was also killed, by a pro-slavery man named White,
in attempting to cross the Marais des Cygnes. The pro-slavery party have
five wounded. On the same day Captain Hays, with forty men, attacked the
house of the notorious Ottawa Jones, burned it, and killed two
Abolitionists. Jones fled to the cornfield, was shot by Hays, and is
believed to be dead.”[121]

But John Brown was not dead and was ever after known as “Osawatomie”
Brown. He wrote home September 7th saying:

“I have one moment to write to you, to say that I am yet alive, that
Jason and family were well yesterday; John and family, I hear, are well
(he being yet a prisoner). On the morning of the 30th of August an
attack was made by the ruffians on Osawatomie, numbering some four
hundred, by whose scouts our dear Frederick was shot dead without
warning,—he supposing them to be free state men, as near as we can
learn. One other man, a cousin of Mr. Adair, was murdered by them about
the same time that Frederick was killed, and one badly wounded at the
same time. At this time I was about three miles off, where I had some
fourteen or fifteen men over night that I had just enlisted to serve
under me as regulars. These I collected as well as I could, with some
twelve or fifteen more; and in about three-quarters of an hour I
attacked them from a wood with thick undergrowth. With this force we
threw them into confusion for about fifteen or twenty minutes, during
which time we killed or wounded from seventy to eighty of the enemy,—as
they say,—and then we escaped as well as we could, with one killed while
escaping, two or three wounded, and as many more missing. Four or five
free state men were butchered during the day in all. Jason fought
bravely by my side during the fight, and escaped with me, he being
unhurt. I was struck by a partly-spent grape, canister, or rifle shot,
which bruised me some, but did not injure me seriously. Hitherto the
Lord has helped me.”[122]

A cheer went up from all free Kansas over this vigorous defense, and for
once there was unanimity among the leaders of the free state cause.
Robinson, the wariest of them, wrote: “I cheerfully accord to you my
heartfelt thanks for your prompt, efficient, and timely action against
the invaders of our rights and the murderers of our citizens. History
will give your name a proud place on her pages, and posterity will pay
homage to your heroism in the cause of God and humanity.”[123]

Meantime the Missourians, after their hard-won victory, hastened back to
join the larger wing of the invaders, and so disconcerting was their
report, that when Lane made a feint against them, they started to
retreat. Governor Woodson’s call for the “territorial militia,” however,
heartened them and gave them legal standing. By September 15th they were
threatening Kansas again with nearly 3,000 men. The nation, however, was
now aroused and the new governor, Geary, with orders to make peace at
all costs, was hurrying forward. Among the first whom he summoned to
secret conference was John Brown. Brown came to Lawrence and was
leaving, satisfied with Geary’s promises, when the invading army of
Missourians suddenly appeared before the city. He immediately returned
to the town, where there were only 200 fighting men. He was asked to
take command of the defense but declined, preferring to act with his
usual independence. About five o’clock Monday, the 15th, he mounted a
dry-goods box on Main Street opposite the post-office and spoke to the
people:

“Gentlemen,—it is said that there are twenty-five hundred Missourians
down at Franklin, and that they will be here in two hours. You can see
for yourselves the smoke they are making by setting fire to the houses
in that town. Now is probably the last opportunity you will have of
seeing a fight, so that you had better do your best. If they should come
up and attack us, don’t yell and make a great noise, but remain
perfectly silent and still. Wait until they get within twenty-five yards
of you; get a good object; be sure you see the hind sight of your
gun,—then fire. A great deal of powder and lead and very precious time
is wasted by shooting too high. You had better aim at their legs than at
their heads. In either case, be sure of the hind sights of your guns. It
is from this reason that I myself have so many times escaped; for if all
the bullets which have ever been aimed at me had hit me, I would have
been as full of holes as a riddle.”[124]

It was a desperate situation. The free state forces were scattered,
leaving but a handful to face an army. But in that handful was John
Brown, and the invaders knew it, and advanced cautiously. Redpath who
was with Brown says: “About five o’clock in the afternoon, their
advance-guard, consisting of four hundred horsemen, crossed the
Wakarusa, and presented themselves in sight of the town, about two miles
off, when they halted, and arrayed themselves for battle, fearing,
perhaps, to come within too close range of Sharps rifle balls. Brown’s
movement now was a little on the offensive order; for he ordered out all
the Sharps riflemen from every part of the town,—in all not more than
forty or fifty,—marched them a half mile into the prairie, and arranged
them three paces apart, in a line parallel with that of the enemy; and
then they lay down upon their faces in the grass, awaiting the order to
fire.”[125]

The invaders hesitated, halted and then retired. John Brown says:

“I know of no possible reason why they did not attack and burn that
place except that about one hundred free state men volunteered to go out
on the open plain before the town and there give them the offer of a
fight, which they declined after getting some few scattering shots from
our men, and then retreated back toward Franklin. I saw that whole
thing. The government troops at this time were with Governor Geary at
Lecompton, a distance of twelve miles only from Lawrence, and,
notwithstanding several runners had been to advise him in good time of
the approach or of the setting out of the enemy, who had to march some
forty miles to reach Lawrence, he did not on that memorable occasion get
a single soldier on the ground until after the enemy had retreated back
to Franklin, and had been gone for about five hours. He did get the
troops there about midnight afterward; and that is the way he saved
Lawrence, as he boasts of doing in his message to the bogus legislature!

“This was just the kind of protection the administration and its tools
have afforded the free state settlers of Kansas from the first. It has
cost the United States more than a half million, for a year past, to
harass poor free state settlers in Kansas, and to violate all law, and
all right, moral and constitutional, for the sole and only purpose of
forcing slavery upon that territory. I challenge this whole nation to
prove before God or mankind the contrary. Who paid this money to enslave
the settlers of Kansas and worry them out? I say nothing in this
estimate of the money wasted by Congress in the management of this
horrible, tyrannical, and damnable affair.”[126]

The withdrawal, however, was but temporary and it seems hardly possible
that Lawrence could have escaped a second capture and burning had not
Geary thrown himself into the breach with great earnestness. As he
reported: “Fully appreciating the awful calamities that were impending,
I hastened with all possible dispatch to the encampment, assembled the
officers of the militia, and in the name of the President of the United
States demanded a suspension of hostilities. I had sent, in advance, the
secretary and adjutant-general of the Territory, with orders to carry
out the letter and spirit of my proclamations; but up to the time of my
arrival, these orders had been unheeded, and I discovered but little
disposition to obey them. I addressed the officers in command at
considerable length, setting forth the disastrous consequences of such a
demonstration as was contemplated, and the absolute necessity of more
lawful and conciliatory measures to restore peace, tranquillity, and
prosperity to the country. I read my instructions from the President,
and convinced them that my whole course of procedure was in accordance
therewith, and called upon them to aid me in my efforts, not only to
carry out these instructions, but to support and enforce the laws and
the Constitution of the United States.”[127]

Without doubt Geary especially emphasized the fact that another sacking
of Lawrence would possibly defeat Buchanan and elect Frémont. What
chance would there be then for the pro-slavery party?

The Missourians were thus induced to retreat, partly by Geary’s logic,
partly perhaps by John Brown’s resolute handling of his patently
inadequate but nevertheless efficient force. They marched back home,
leaving a trail of flame and ashes—the last and largest Missouri
invasion of Kansas, the culmination and failure of the pro-slavery
policy of force.

Geary now began successfully to cope with the Kansas situation. His most
puzzling problem was John Brown and his ilk. His experience soon led him
to see the righteousness of the free state cause, but he had to insist
on law and order even under the “bogus” laws, promising equitable
treatment in the future. Immediately the free state party split into its
old divisions: the small body of irreconcilables like John Brown, who
were fighting slavery in Kansas and everywhere; and the far larger mass
of compromisers like Robinson, whose only object was to make a free
state of Kansas, and who were willing to concede all else. Under such
circumstances the best move was to get rid of John Brown. To have sought
to arrest him would have precipitated civil war again. Could he not be
induced quietly to leave on promise of immunity? Accordingly, Geary
issued a warrant against Brown, but gave it into the hands of the
friendly Samuel Walker whom he had previously asked to warn the old man.
Brown was not loath. His work in Kansas, so far as he could then see,
was done. The state was bound to be free and further than that few
Kansans cared. They had no enmity toward slavery as such which called
them to a crusade; far from regarding Negroes as brothers, they disliked
them and were willing to disfranchise them and crowd them from the
state.

Among such folk there was no place for John Brown. His greater mission
called him. Kansas had been an interlude only, although for a time he
hoped to make it the chief battle-ground. Now he knew better and again
the Alleghanies beckoned. To be sure, he owed Kansas much. Here he had
passed through his baptism of fire, and had offered the sacrifice of
blood to his God. He was sterner stuff now, ready to go whithersoever
the Master called; and he heard Him calling. Not only had he learned a
method of warfare in Kansas—he had learned to know a band of simple
honest young fellows, hot with the wine of youth, hero-worshipers ready
to do and dare in a great cause. Thus the worst difficulties of the past
disappeared and the way lay clear. Only one thing oppressed him—he was
old and sick, a tired, toil-racked man. Could he live and do the Lord’s
will?

His company of regulators was formally disbanded but left spiritually
intact, and he started north late in September, 1856, taking with him
his four sons, John, Jr., who had at last been released, Jason, Salmon,
and Oliver, and also, true to his cause, a fugitive slave whom he had
chanced upon. As he moved northward the United States troops, unaware of
Geary’s diplomacy, shadowed and all but captured him. Yet he passed
safely through their very midst with his old wagon and cow and the
hidden slave, displaying his surveyor’s instruments. Thus silently John
Brown disappeared from Kansas, and for a year nothing was heard of him
in his former haunts. Only his near friends knew that he had gone
eastward, and a few of them hinted at his great mission. Matters moved
swiftly in Kansas. There was more and more evident a free state
majority. But would the pro-slavery administration let it be counted?
The new governor was trying to save something for his masters, but the
irreconcilables of the Lane and John Brown type doubted it.

“I bless God,” wrote Brown in April, “that He has not left the free
state men of Kansas to pollute themselves by the foul and loathsome
embrace.... I have been trembling all along lest they might ‘back down’
from the high and holy ground they had taken. I say in view of the
wisdom, firmness and patience of my friends and fellow sufferers in the
cause of humanity, let the Lord’s name be eternally praised!”[128]
Notwithstanding this attitude of many of the free state party, they were
prevailed upon to vote in the state election of October, 1857. As a
concession, however, Lane was appointed to guard the ballot-boxes and,
hearing that John Brown was back again in Iowa, he sent for him in hot
haste. His messengers found the old man sick and disappointed among his
staunch Quaker friends at Tabor. Brown offered to come if supplied with
“three good teams, with well-covered wagons, and ten really ingenious,
industrious (not gassy) men, with about one hundred and fifty dollars in
cash.”[129] These demands were not met until too late, so that Brown
returned the money and did not appear in Kansas until the election was
over, and the free state forces had triumphed. This had now but passing
interest for him. He had other objects in Kansas and flitted noiselessly
about among the picked men who had promised their aid. Then he
disappeared again. Eight months passed away, when suddenly another
Kansas outrage startled the nation. It was the last vengeful echo of
that first night of murder in the Swamp of the Swan. In 1856 Linn and
Bourbon counties, some miles below the original Brown settlement, had
been cleared of free state settlers. In 1857 these settlers ventured to
return and found the pro-slavery forces centred at Fort Scott, waiting
for Congress to pass the Lecompton constitution. Thus in 1857 and 1858
the expiring horror of Kansas guerrilla warfare centred in southeast
Kansas. The pro-slavery forces saw the state slipping from them, but
they determined by desperate blows to plant slavery so deeply in the
counties next to Missouri that no free state majority could possibly
uproot it. To accomplish this it was necessary again to drive off the
free state settlers. The settlers objected and led by James Montgomery,
there ensued a series of bloody reprisals culminating in May, 1858, two
years after the first May massacre. A Georgian with a remnant of
Buford’s band again rode down amid the calm silent beauty of the Swamp
of the Swan. They gathered eleven unarmed farmers from their fields and
homes and marched them to a gloomy ravine near Snyder’s blacksmith shop;
there the party killed four and badly wounded six others, leaving them
all for dead.

The echoes of this last desperate blow had scarcely died before John
Brown appeared on the scene and attempted to buy and fortify the very
blacksmith shop where the murders were done. He writes to Eastern
friends:

“I am here with about ten of my men, located on the same quarter-section
where the terrible murders of the 19th of May were committed, called the
Hamilton or trading-post murders. Deserted farms and dwellings lie in
all directions for some miles along the line, and the remaining
inhabitants watch every appearance of persons moving about, with anxious
jealousy and vigilance. Four of the persons wounded or attacked on that
occasion are staying with me. The blacksmith Snyder, who fought the
murderers, with his brother and son are of the number. Old Mr.
Hairgrove, who was terribly wounded at the same time, is another. The
blacksmith returned here with me and intends to bring back his family on
to his claim within two or three days. A constant fear of new trouble
seems to prevail on both sides of the line, and on both sides are
companies of armed men. Any little affair may open the quarrel afresh.
Two murders and cases of robbery are reported of late. I have also a man
with me who fled from his family and farm in Missouri but a day or two
since, his life being threatened on account of being accused of
informing Kansas men of the whereabouts of one of the murderers, who was
lately taken and brought to this side. I have concealed the fact of my
presence pretty much, lest it should tend to create excitement; but it
is getting leaked out, and will soon be known to all. As I am not here
to seek or secure revenge, I do not mean to be the first to reopen the
quarrel. How soon it may be raised against me, I cannot say; nor am I
over-anxious.”[130]

He quickly had fifteen of his former companions in arms organized as
“Shubel Morgan’s Company” under the old regulations, and he eagerly
sought out and coöperated with Captain Montgomery. The vigil was long
and wearisome. “I had lain every night without shelter,” he writes,
“suffering from cold rains and heavy dews, together with the oppressive
heat of the days.”[131] Hinton met Brown at this time and found him not
only unwell but “somewhat more impatient and nervous in his manner than
I had ever before observed. Soon after my arrival, he remarked again in
conversation as to the various public men in the Territory. Captain
Montgomery’s name was introduced, and I inquired how Mr. Brown liked
him. The captain was quite enthusiastic in praise of him, avowing a most
perfect confidence in his integrity and purposes. ‘Captain Montgomery,’
he said, ‘is the only soldier I have met among the prominent Kansas men.
He understands my system of warfare exactly. He is a natural chieftain,
and knows how to lead.’

“Of his own early treatment at the hands of ambitious ‘leaders,’ to
which I alluded in bitter terms, he said:

“‘They acted up to their instincts, as politicians. They thought every
man wanted to lead, and therefore supposed I might be in the way of
their schemes. While they had this feeling, of course they opposed me.
Many men did not like the manner in which I conducted warfare, and they
too opposed me. Committees and councils could not control my movements;
therefore they did not like me. But politicians and leaders soon found
that I had different purposes and forgot their jealousy. They have all
been kind to me since.’

“Further conversation ensued relative to the free state struggle, in
which I, criticizing the management of it from an anti-slavery point of
view, pronounced it, ‘an abortion.’ Captain Brown looked at me with a
peculiar expression in the eyes, as if struck by the word and in a
musing manner remarked, ‘Abortion!—yes, that’s the word!’

“‘For twenty years,’ he said, ‘I have never made any business
arrangement which would prevent me at any time answering the call of the
Lord. I have kept my business in such a condition, that in two weeks I
could always wind up my affairs, and be ready to obey the call. I have
permitted nothing to be in the way of my duty, neither my wife,
children, nor worldly goods. Whenever the occasion offered, I was ready.
The hour is very near at hand, and all who are willing to act should be
ready.’”[132]

During the fall John Brown coöperated with Montgomery in his guerrilla
warfare, and laid out miniature fortifications with his men. While he
himself was not personally present in Montgomery’s fights, he usually
helped plan them and sent his men along. Meantime winter set in and John
Brown knew that hostilities would cease. Once again he turned to his
long and exasperatingly interrupted life-work. Just after the famous
raid on Fort Scott, he had a chance not only to begin his greater work
but to strike a blow at slavery right in Kansas. Hinton says: “On the
Sunday following the expedition of Fort Scott, as I was scouting down
the line, I ran across a colored man, whose ostensible purpose was the
selling of brooms. He soon solved the problem as to the propriety of
making a confidant of me, and I found that his name was Jim Daniels;
that his wife, self, and babies belonged to an estate, and were to be
sold at administrator’s sale in the immediate future. His present
business was not selling of brooms particularly, but to find help to get
himself, family, and a few friends in the vicinity away from these
threatened conditions. Daniels was a fine-looking mulatto. I immediately
hunted up Brown, and it was soon arranged to go the following night and
give what assistance we could. I am sure that Brown, in his mind, was
just waiting for something to turn up; or, in his way of thinking, was
expecting or hoping that God would provide him a basis of action. When
this came, he hailed it as heaven-sent.”[133]

John Brown himself told the story in the New York _Tribune_:

“Not one year ago eleven quiet citizens of this neighborhood,—William
Robertson, William Colpetzer, Amos Hall, Austin Hall, John Campbell, Asa
Snyder, Thomas Stillwell, William Hairgrove, Asa Hairgrove, Patrick
Ross, and B. L. Reed,—were gathered up from their work and their homes
by an armed force under one Hamilton, and without trial or opportunity
to speak in their own defense were formed into line, and all but one
shot,—five killed and five wounded. One fell unharmed, pretending to be
dead. All were left for dead. The only crime charged against them was
that of being free state men. Now, I inquire what action has ever, since
the occurrence in May last, been taken by either the President of the
United States, the governor of Missouri, the governor of Kansas, or any
of their tools, or by any pro-slavery or administration man, to ferret
out and punish the perpetrators of this crime.

“Now for the other parallel. On Sunday, December 19th, a Negro man
called Jim came over to Osage settlement, from Missouri, and stated that
he, together with his wife, two children, and another Negro man, was to
be sold within a day or two, and begged for help to get away. On Monday
(the following) night, two small companies were made up to go to
Missouri and forcibly liberate the five slaves, together with other
slaves. One of these companies I assumed to direct. We proceeded to the
place, surrounding the buildings, liberated the slaves, and also took
certain property supposed to belong to the estate. We, however, learned
before leaving that a portion of the articles we had belonged to a man
living on the plantation as a tenant, and who was supposed to have no
interest in the estate. We promptly returned to him all we had taken. We
then went to another plantation, where we found five more slaves, took
some property and two white men. We all moved slowly away into the
Territory for some distance, and then sent the white men back, telling
them to follow us as soon as they chose to do so. The other company
freed one female slave, took some property, and, as I am informed,
killed one white man (the master), who fought against the liberation.

“Now for comparison. Eleven persons are forcibly restored to their
natural and inalienable rights, with but one man killed, and all ‘hell
is stirred from beneath.’ It is currently reported that the governor of
Missouri has made a requisition upon the governor of Kansas for the
delivery of all such as were concerned in the last named ‘dreadful
outrage.’ The marshal of Kansas is said to be collecting a posse of
Missouri (not Kansas) men at West Point, in Missouri, a little town
about ten miles distant, to ‘enforce the laws.’ All pro-slavery,
conservative, free state, and dough-face men and administration tools
are filled with holy horror.”[134]

One of the slaves, Samuel Harper, afterward told of this wonderful
_katabasis_ of a thousand miles in the teeth of the elements and in
defiance of the law:

“It was mighty slow traveling. You see there were several different
parties amongst our band, and our masters had people looking all over
for us. We would ride all night, and then maybe, we would have to stay
several days in one house to keep from getting caught. In a month we had
only got to a place near Topeka, which was about forty miles from where
we started. There was twelve of us at the one house of a man named
Doyle, besides the captain and his men, when there came along a gang of
slave-hunters. One of Captain Brown’s men, Stevens, he went down to them
and said:—‘Gentlemen, you look as if you were looking for somebody or
something.’ ‘Aye, yes!’ says the leader, ‘we think as how you have some
of our slaves up yonder in that there house.’ ‘Is that so?’ says
Stevens. ‘Well, come on right along with me, and you can look them over
and see.’

“We were watching this here conversation all the time, and when we see
Stevens coming up to the house with that there man, we just didn’t know
what to make of it. We began to get scared that Stevens was going to
give us to them slave-hunters. But the looks of things changed when
Stevens got up to the house. He just opened the door long enough for to
grab a double-barreled gun. He pointed it at the slave-hunter, and says:
‘You want to see your slaves, does you? Well, just look up them barrels
and see if you can find them.’ That man just went all to pieces. He
dropped his gun, his legs went trembling, and the tears most started
from his eyes. Stevens took and locked him up in the house. When the
rest of his crowd seen him captured, they ran away as fast as they could
go.

“Captain Brown went to see the prisoner, and says to him, ‘I’ll show you
what it is to look after slaves, my man.’ That frightened the prisoner
awful. He was a kind of old fellow and when he heard what the captain
said, I suppose he thought he was going to be killed. He began to cry
and beg to be let go. The captain he only smiled a little bit, and
talked some more to him, and the next day he was let go.

“A few days afterward, the United States marshal came up with another
gang to capture us. There was about seventy-five of them, and they
surrounded the house, and we was all afraid we was going to be took for
sure. But the captain he just said, ‘Get ready, boys, and we’ll whip
them all.’ There was only fourteen of us altogether, but the captain was
a terror to them, and when he stepped out of the house and went for them
the whole seventy-five of them started running. Captain Brown and Kagi
and some others chased them, and captured five prisoners. There was a
doctor and lawyer amongst them. They all had nice horses. The captain
made them get down. Then he told five of us slaves to mount the beasts
and we rode them while the white men had to walk. It was early in the
spring, and the mud on the roads was away over their ankles. I just tell
you it was mighty tough walking, and you can believe those fellows had
enough of slave-hunting. The next day the captain let them all go.

“Our masters kept spies watching till we crossed the border. When we got
to Springdale, Ia., a man came to see Captain Brown, and told him there
was a lot of friends down in a town in Kansas that wanted to see him.
The captain said he did not care to go down, but as soon as the man
started back, Captain Brown followed him. When he came back, he said
there was a whole crowd coming up to capture us. We all went up to the
schoolhouse and got ourselves ready to fight.

“The crowd came and hung around the schoolhouse a few days, but they
didn’t try to capture us. The governor of Kansas, he telegraphed to the
United States marshal at Springdale: ‘Capture John Brown, dead or
alive.’ The marshal he answered: ‘If I try to capture John Brown it’ll
be dead, and I’ll be the one that’ll be dead.’ Finally those Kansas
people went home, and then that same marshal put us in a car and sent us
to Chicago. It took us over three months to get to Canada.... What kind
of a man was Captain Brown? He was a great big man, over six feet tall,
with great big shoulders, and long hair, white as snow. He was a very
quiet man, awful quiet. He never even laughed. After we was free we was
wild of course, and we used to cut up all kinds of foolishness. But the
captain would always look as solemn as a graveyard. Sometimes he just
let out the tiniest bit of a smile, and says: ‘You’d better quit your
fooling and take up your book.’”[135]

On the 12th of March, 1859, nearly three months after the starting, John
Brown landed his fugitives safely in Canada “under the lion’s paw.” The
old man lifted his hands and said: “Lord, permit Thy servant to die in
peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation! I could not brook the
thought that any ill should befall you,—least of all, that you should be
taken back to slavery. The arm of Jehovah protected us.”[136]




                              CHAPTER VIII
                             THE GREAT PLAN

  “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of
  wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go
  free, and that ye break every yoke?”


“Sir, the angel of the Lord will camp round about me,” said John Brown
with stern eyes when the timid foretold his doom.[137] With a steadfast
almost superstitious faith in his divine mission, the old man had walked
unscathed out of Kansas in the fall of 1856, two years and a half before
the slave raid into Missouri related in the last chapter. In his mind
lay a definitely matured plan for attacking slavery in the United States
in such a way as would shake its very foundations. The plan had been
long forming, and changing in shape from 1828, when he proposed a Negro
school in Hudson, until 1859 when he finally fixed on Harper’s Ferry. At
first he thought to educate Negroes in the North and let them leaven the
lump of slaves. Then, moving forward a step, he determined to settle in
a border state and educate slaves openly or clandestinely and send them
out as emissaries. As gradually he became acquainted with the great work
and wide ramifications of the Underground Railroad, he conceived the
idea of central depots for running off slaves in the inaccessible
portions of the South, and he began studying Southern geography with
this in view. He noted the rivers, swamps and mountains, and more
especially, the great struggling heights of the Alleghanies, which swept
from his Pennsylvania home down to the swamps of Virginia, Carolina and
Georgia. His Kansas experiences suggested for a time the southwest
pathway to Louisiana by the swamps of the Red and Arkansas Rivers, but
this was but a passing thought; he soon reverted to the great spur of
the Alleghanies.

“I never shall forget,” writes Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “the quiet
way in which he once told me that ‘God had established the Alleghany
Mountains from the foundation of the world that they might one day be a
refuge for fugitive slaves.’ I did not know then that his own home was
among the Adirondacks.”[138]

More and more, as he thought and worked, did his great plan present
itself to him clearly and definitely until finally it stood in 1858 as
Kagi told it to Hinton:

“The mountains of Virginia were named as the place of refuge, and as a
country admirably adapted in which to carry on guerrilla warfare. In the
course of the conversation, Harper’s Ferry was mentioned as a point to
be seized, but not held,—on account of the arsenal. The white members of
the company were to act as officers of different guerrilla bands, which,
under the general command of John Brown, were to be composed of Canadian
refugees, and the Virginia slaves who would join them. A different time
of the year was mentioned for the commencement of the warfare from that
which had lately been chosen. It was not anticipated that the first
movement would have any other appearance to the masters than a slave
stampede, or local insurrection, at most. The planters would pursue
their chattels and be defeated. The militia would then be called out,
and would also be defeated. It was not intended that the movement should
appear to be of large dimension, but that, gradually increasing in
magnitude, it should, as it opened, strike terror into the heart of the
slave states by the amount of the organization it would exhibit, and the
strength it gathered. They anticipated, after the first blow had been
struck, that, by the aid of the free and Canadian Negroes who would join
them, they could inspire confidence in the slaves, and induce them to
rally. No intention was expressed of gathering a large body of slaves,
and removing them to Canada. On the contrary, Kagi clearly stated, in
answer to my inquiries, that the design was to make the fight in the
mountains of Virginia, extending it to North Carolina, and Tennessee,
and also to the swamps of South Carolina if possible. Their purpose was
not the extradition of one or a thousand slaves, but their liberation in
the states wherein they were born, and were now held in bondage. ‘The
mountains and swamps of the South were intended by the Almighty,’ said
John Brown to me afterward, ‘for a refuge for the slave, and a defense
against the oppressor.’ Kagi spoke of having marked out a chain of
counties extending continuously through South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, and Mississippi. He had traveled over a large portion of the
region indicated, and from his own personal knowledge, and with the
assistance of Canadian Negroes who had escaped from those states, they
had arranged a general plan of attack.

“The counties he named were those which contained the largest proportion
of slaves, and would, therefore, be the best in which to strike. The
blow struck at Harper’s Ferry was to be in the spring, when the planters
were busy, and the slaves most needed. The arms in the arsenal were to
be taken to the mountains, with such slaves that joined. The telegraph
wires were to be cut, and the railroad tracks torn up in all directions.
As fast as possible other bands besides the original ones were to be
formed, and a continuous chain of posts established in the mountains.
They were to be supported by provisions taken from the farms of the
oppressors. They expected to be speedily and constantly reënforced;
first, by the arrival of those men, who, in Canada, were anxiously
looking and praying for the time of deliverance, and then by the slaves
themselves. The intention was to hold the egress to the free states as
long as possible, in order to retreat when that was advisable. Kagi,
however, expected to retreat southward, not in the contrary direction.
The slaves were to be armed with pikes, scythes, muskets, shotguns, and
other simple instruments of defense; the officers, white or black, and
such of the men as were skilled and trustworthy, to have the use of the
Sharps rifles and revolvers. They anticipated procuring provisions
enough for subsistence by forage, as also arms, horses, and ammunition.
Kagi said one of the reasons that induced him to go into the enterprise
was a full conviction that at no very distant day forcible efforts for
freedom would break out among the slaves, and that slavery might be more
speedily abolished by such efforts, than by any other means. He knew by
observation in the South, that in no point was the system so vulnerable
as in its fear of slave-rising. Believing that such a blow would soon be
struck, he wanted to organize it so as to make it more effectual, and
also, by directing and controlling the Negroes, to prevent some of the
atrocities that would necessarily arise from the sudden upheaval of such
a mass as the Southern slaves.”[139]

The knowledge of the country was obtained by personal inspection. Kagi
and others of Brown’s lieutenants went out on trips; the old man himself
had been in western, northern and southern Virginia, and his Negro
friends especially knew these places and routes. One of Brown’s men
writes:

“My object in wishing to see Mr. Reynolds, who was a colored man (very
little colored, however), was in regard to a military organization
which, I had understood, was in existence among the colored people. He
assured me that such was the fact, and that its ramifications extended
through most, or nearly all, of the slave states. He, himself, I think,
had been through many of the slave states visiting and organizing. He
referred me to many references in the Southern papers, telling of this
and that favorite slave being killed or found dead. These, he asserted,
must be taken care of, being the most dangerous element they had to
contend with. He also asserted that they were only waiting for Brown, or
some one else to make a successful initiative move when their forces
would be put in motion. None but colored persons could be admitted to
membership, and, in part to corroborate his assertions, he took me to
the room in which they held their meetings and used as their arsenal. He
showed me a fine collection of arms. He gave me this under the pledge of
secrecy which we gave to each other at the Chatham Convention.

“On my return to Cleveland he passed me through the organization, first
to J. J. Pierce, colored, at Milan, who paid my bill over night at the
Eagle Hotel, and gave me some money, and a note to E. Moore, at Norwalk,
who in turn paid my hotel bill and purchased a railroad ticket through
to Cleveland for me.”[140]

Speaking of this league, Hinton also says:

“As one may naturally understand, looking at conditions then existing,
there existed something of an organization to assist fugitives and for
resistance to their masters. It was found all along the borders from
Syracuse, New York, to Detroit, Michigan. As none but colored men were
admitted into direct and active membership with this ‘League of
Freedom,’ it is quite difficult to trace its workings or know how far
its ramifications extended. One of the most interesting phases of slave
life, so far as the whites were enabled to see or impinge upon it, was
the extent and rapidity of communication among them. Four geographical
lines seem to have been chiefly followed. One was that of the coast
south of the Potomac, whose almost continuous line of swamps from the
vicinity of Norfolk, Va., to the northern border of Florida afforded a
refuge for many who could not escape and became ‘marooned’ in their
depths, while giving facility to the more enduring to work their way out
to the North Star Land. The great Appalachian range and its abutting
mountains were long a rugged, lonely, but comparatively safe route to
freedom. It was used, too, for many years. Doubtless a knowledge of that
fact, for John Brown was always an active Underground Railroad man, had
very much to do, apart from its immediate use strategically considered,
with the captain’s decision to begin operations therein. Harriet Tubman,
whom John Brown met for the first time at St. Catherines in March or
April, 1858, was a constant user of the Appalachian route.”[141]

The trained leadership John Brown found in his Kansas experience, and
his wide acquaintance with colored men; the organization of the Negroes
culminated in a convention at Chatham, Canada. The raising of money for
this work, as time went on, was more and more the object of his various
occupations and commercial ventures. These visions of personal wealth to
be expended for great deeds failed because the pressure of work for the
ideal overcame the pressure of work for funds to finance it. When once
he discovered at Syracuse men of means, ready to pay the expenses of men
of deeds, he dropped all further thought of his physical necessities,
gave himself to the cause and called on them for money. In his earlier
calls he regards this not as charity but as wages. He said once: “From
about the 20th of May of last year hundreds of men like ourselves lost
their whole time, and entirely failed of securing any kind of crop
whatever. I believe it safe to say that five hundred free state men lost
each one hundred and twenty-five days, at $1.50 per day, which would be,
to say nothing of attendant losses, $90,000. I saw the ruins of many
free state men’s houses at different places in the Territory, together
with stacks of grain wasted and burning, to the amount of, say $50,000;
making, in lost time and destruction of property, more than
$150,000.”[142]

And again: “John Brown has devoted the service of himself and two minor
sons to the free state cause for more than a year; suffered by the fire
before named and by robbery; has gone at his own cost for that period,
except that he and his company together have received forty dollars in
cash, two sacks of flour, thirty-five pounds bacon, thirty-five pounds
sugar, and twenty pounds rice.

“I propose to serve hereafter in the free state cause (provided my
needful expenses can be met), should that be desired; and to raise a
small regular force to serve on the same condition. My own means are so
far exhausted that I can no longer continue in the service at present
without the means of defraying my expenses are furnished me.”[143]

Finally, however, he had to appeal more directly to philanthropy. He was
especially encouraged by the Kansas committees. These committees had
sprung up in various ways and places in 1854, but had nearly all united
in Thayer’s New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1855. This company
proposed to aid free state emigration as an investment, but it failed in
this respect because of the political troubles, and the panic of 1857.
It did, however, arouse great interest throughout the nation. The
National Kansas Committee, formed after the sacking of Lawrence, was
more belligerent than philanthropic in its projects, while the Boston
Relief Committee was distinctly radical. John Brown had some connection
with Thayer’s company, but his hopes were especially built on the
National Kansas Committee, which Lane had done so much to bring into
being, and to which Gerrit Smith contributed many thousands of dollars.

Leaving Kansas secretly in October, 1856, John Brown hastened to the
Chicago headquarters of this National Kansas Committee with a proposal
that they equip a company for him. The Chicago committee referred this
proposal to a full meeting of the members to be held in New York in
January. John Brown immediately started East, clad in new clothes which
the committee furnished and armed with letters from the governors of
Kansas and Ohio. Gerrit Smith welcomed him and said: “Captain John
Brown,—you did not need to show me letters from Governor Chase and
Governor Robinson to let me know who and what you are. I have known you
for many years, and have highly esteemed you as long as I have known
you. I know your unshrinking bravery, your self-sacrificing benevolence,
your devotion to the cause of freedom, and have long known them. May
Heaven preserve your life and health, and prosper your noble
purpose!”[144]

But his half-brother in Ohio wrote:

“Since the trouble growing out of the settlement of the Kansas
Territory, I have observed a marked change in brother John. Previous to
this, he devoted himself entirely to business; but since these troubles
he has abandoned all business, and has become wholly absorbed by the
subject of slavery. He had property left him by his father, and of which
I had the agency. He has never taken a dollar of it for the benefit of
his family, but has called for a portion of it to be expended in what he
called the Service. After his return to Kansas he called on me, and I
urged him to go home to his family and attend to his private affairs;
that I feared his course would prove his destruction and that of his
boys.... He replied that he was sorry that I did not sympathize with
him; that he knew that he was in the line of his duty, and he must
pursue it, though it should destroy him and his family. He stated to me
that he was satisfied that he was a chosen instrument in the hands of
God to war against slavery. From his manner and from his conversation at
this time, I had no doubt he had become insane upon the subject of
slavery, and gave him to understand that this was my opinion of
him!”[145]

Mrs. George L. Stearns, the wife of the Massachusetts anti-slavery
leader, writes:

“At this juncture, Mr. Stearns wrote to John Brown, that if he would
come to Boston and consult with the friends of freedom, he would pay his
expenses. They had never met, but ‘Osawatomie Brown’ had become a
cherished household name during the anxious summer of 1856. Arriving in
Boston they were introduced to each other in the street by a Kansas man,
who chanced to be with Mr. Stearns on his way to the committee rooms in
Nilis’s Block, School Street. Captain Brown made a profound impression
on all who came within the sphere of his moral magnetism. Emerson called
him ‘the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into
action.’ His absolute superiority to all selfish aims and narrowing
pride of opinion touched an answering chord in the self-devotion of Mr.
Stearns. A little anecdote illustrates the modest estimate of the work
he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together certain friends
to meet Captain Brown at his home, in Medford, he found that Sunday was
the only day that would serve their several conveniences, and being a
little uncertain how it might strike his ideas of religious propriety,
he prefaced his invitation with something like an apology. With
characteristic promptness came the reply: ‘Mr. Stearns, I have a little
ewe-lamb that I want to pull out of the ditch, and the Sabbath will be
as good a day as any to do it.’

“It may not be out of place to describe the impression he made upon the
writer on this first visit. When I entered the parlor, he was sitting
near the hearth, where glowed a bright, open fire. He rose to greet me,
stepping forward with such an erect, military bearing, such fine
courtesy of demeanor and grave earnestness, that he seemed to my instant
thought some old Cromwellian hero suddenly dropped down before me; a
suggestion which was presently strengthened by his saying (proceeding
with the conversation my entrance had interrupted), ‘Gentlemen, I
consider the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence one and
inseparable; and it is better that a whole generation of men, women,
children should be swept away than that this crime of slavery should
exist one day longer.’ These words were uttered like rifle balls; in
such emphatic tones and manner that our little Carl, not three years
old, remembered it in manhood as one of his earliest recollections. The
child stood perfectly still, in the middle of the room, gazing with his
beautiful eyes on this new sort of a man, until his absorption arrested
the attention of Captain Brown, who soon coaxed him to his knee, though
the look and childlike wonder remained. His dress was of some dark brown
stuff, quite coarse, but its exactness and neatness produced a singular
air of refinement. At dinner, he declined all dainties, saying that he
was unaccustomed to luxuries, even to partaking of butter.

“The ‘friends of freedom,’ with whom Mr. Stearns had invited John Brown
to consult, were profoundly impressed with his sagacity, integrity, and
devotion; notably among these were R. W. Emerson, Theodore Parker, H. D.
Thoreau, A. Bronson Alcott, F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S. G. Howe, Col. T. W.
Higginson, Governor Andrew, and others.”[146]

Sanborn says:

“He came to me with a note of introduction from George Walker of
Springfield—both of us being Kansas committee men, working to maintain
the freedom of that Territory, and Brown had been one of the fighting
men there in the summer of 1856, just before. His theory required
fighting in Kansas; it was the only sure way, he thought, to keep that
region free from the curse of slavery. His mission now was to levy war
on it, and for that to raise and equip a company of a hundred well-armed
men who should resist aggression in Kansas, or occasionally carry the
war into Missouri. Behind that purpose, but not yet disclosed, was his
intention to use the men thus put into the field for incursions into
Virginia or other slave states. Our State Kansas Committee, of which I
was secretary, had a stock of arms that Brown wished to use for this
company, and these we voted to him. They had been put in the custody of
the National Committee at Chicago, and it was needful to follow up our
vote by similar action in the National Committee. For this purpose I was
sent to a meeting of that committee at the Astor House, in New York, as
the proxy of Dr. Howe and Dr. Samuel Cabot—both members of the National
Committee. I met Brown there, and aided him in obtaining from the
meeting an appropriation of $5,000 for his work in Kansas, of which,
however, he received only $500. The committee also voted to restore the
custody of two hundred rifles to the Massachusetts committee which
bought them, well knowing that we should turn them over to John Brown,
as we did. He found them at Tabor, Ia., in the following September, and
took possession; it was with part of these rifles that he entered
Virginia two years later.

“At this Astor House meeting Brown was closely questioned by some of the
National Committee, particularly by Mr. Hurd of Chicago, as to what he
would do with money and arms. He refused to pledge himself to use them
solely in Kansas, and declared that his past record ought to be a
sufficient guarantee that he should employ them judiciously. If we chose
to trust him, well and good, but he would neither make pledges nor
disclose his plans. Mr. Hurd had some inkling that Brown would not
confine his warfare to Kansas, but the rest of us were willing to trust
Brown, and the money was voted.”[147]

John Brown immediately made a careful estimate of the cost of the
necessary equipment which with “two weeks of provisions for men and
horses” amounted to $1,774. The funds of the committee, however, were
low and the officers suspicious; in April they informed Brown: “The
committee are at present out of money, and compelled to decline sending
you the five hundred dollars you speak of. They are sorry this has
become the case, but it was unavoidable. I need not state to you all the
reasons why. The country has stopped sending us contributions, and we
have no means of replenishing our treasury. We shall need to have aid
from some quarter to enable us to meet our present engagements.”[148]

Immediately Brown set out to raise his own funds and for three months
worked fervently. Just before the Dred Scott Decision he spoke to the
Massachusetts legislature from which his friends hoped to secure an
appropriation for Kansas. This failed, and Brown started on a tour in
New England. He spoke at his old home and made a contract for securing
one thousand pikes near there. He showed a Kansas bowie-knife and said:
“Such a blade as this, mounted upon a strong shaft, or handle, would
make a cheap and effective weapon. Our friends in Kansas are without
arms or money to get them; and if I could put such weapons into their
hands, they could make them very useful. A resolute woman, with such a
pike, could defend her cabin door against man or beast.”[149]

In Hartford he spoke and said:

“I am trying to raise from twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars in the
free states to enable me to continue my efforts in the cause of freedom.
Will the people of Connecticut, my native state, afford me some aid in
this undertaking? Will the gentlemen and ladies of Hartford, where I
make my appeal in this state, set the example of an earnest effort? Will
some gentleman or lady take hold and try what can be done by small
contributions from counties, cities, towns, societies, or churches, or
in some other way? I think the little beggar children in the street are
sufficiently interested to warrant their contributing, if there was any
need of it, to secure the object.

“I was told that the newspapers in a certain city were dressed in
mourning on hearing that I was killed and scalped in Kansas, but I did
not know of it until I reached the place. Much good it did me. In the
same place I met a more cool reception than in any other place where I
have stopped. If my friends will hold up my hands while I live, I will
freely absolve them from any expense over me when I am dead. I do not
ask for pay, but shall be most grateful for all the assistance I can
get.”[150]

On the day that Buchanan was inaugurated and two days before the Dred
Scott Decision, he published a similar appeal in the New York _Tribune_
“with no little sacrifice of personal feeling.” Once he writes: “I am
advised that one of Uncle Sam’s hounds is on my track, and I have kept
myself hid for a few days to let my track get cold. I have no idea of
being taken, and intend (if God will) to go back with irons in, rather
than upon, my hands.”[151]

Dr. Wayland met him in Worcester where a Frederick Douglass meeting was
being arranged just after Taney’s decision and says: “I called at the
house of Eli Thayer, afterward member of Congress from that district, to
ask him to sit on the platform. Here I found a stranger, a man of tall,
gaunt form, with a face smooth-shaven, destitute of full beard, that
later became a part of history. The children were climbing over his
knees; he said, ‘The children always come to me.’ I was then introduced
to John Brown of Osawatomie. How little one imagined then that in less
than three years the name of this plain homespun man would fill America
and Europe! Mr. Brown consented to occupy a place on the platform, and
at the urgent request of the audience, spoke briefly. It is one of the
curious facts, that many men who _do_ it are utterly unable to _tell_
about it. John Brown, a flame of fire in action, was dull in
speech.”[152]

Later in the same month Brown accompanied Sanborn and Conway to
ex-Governor Reeder’s home in Pennsylvania to induce him to return to
Kansas, but he declined. April 1st found Brown back in Massachusetts,
where for a week or more he was again in hiding from United States
officers, probably among his Negro friends in Springfield. It was in
April, too, that he took another step in his plan, namely, toward
securing military training for his band. He stated according to Realf
that, “for twenty or thirty years the idea had possessed him like a
passion of giving liberty to the slaves; that he made a journey to
England, during which he made a tour upon the European continent,
inspecting all fortifications, and especially all earthwork forts which
he could find, with a view of applying the knowledge thus gained, with
modifications and inventions of his own, to a mountain warfare in the
United States. He stated that he had read all the books upon
insurrectionary warfare, that he could lay his hands on: the Roman
warfare, the successful opposition of the Spanish chieftains during the
period when Spain was a Roman province,—how, with ten thousand men,
divided and subdivided into small companies, acting simultaneously, yet
separately, they withstood the whole consolidated power of the Roman
Empire through a number of years. In addition to this he had become very
familiar with the successful warfare waged by Schamyl, the Circassian
chief, against the Russians; he had posted himself in relation to the
wars of Toussaint L’Ouverture; he had become thoroughly acquainted with
the wars in Hayti and the islands round about.”[153]

Despite his own knowledge, however, he felt the need of expert advice,
and meeting a former lieutenant of Garibaldi, one Hugh Forbes, he was
captivated by him, and forthwith hired him to drill his men. Forbes was
an excitable, ill-balanced Englishman, who had fought in Italy and at
last landed penniless in New York. He thought Brown simply an agent of
wealthy and powerful interests and that the whole North was ready to
attack slavery. He proposed translating and publishing a manual of
guerrilla warfare and John Brown gave him $600 for this work. He was
then to join the leader and they would together go to the West and
gather and drill a company. This large outlay left John Brown but little
in his purse, for, after all, his efforts had been disappointing, and he
departed from New England with a quaint half-sarcastic “Farewell to the
Plymouth Rocks, Bunker Hill monuments, Charter Oaks and Uncle Tom’s
Cabins.” He wrote:

“He has left for Kansas; has been trying since he came out of the
Territory to secure an outfit, or, in other words, the means of arming
and thoroughly equipping his regular minutemen, who are mixed up with
the people of Kansas. And he leaves the states with the deepest sadness,
that after exhausting his own small means, and with his family and with
his brave men suffering hunger, cold, nakedness, and some of them
sickness, wounds, imprisonment in irons with extreme cruel treatment,
and others death; that, lying on the ground for months in the most
sickly, unwholesome, and uncomfortable places, some of the time with the
sick and wounded, destitute of shelter, hunted like wolves, and
sustained in part by Indians; that after all this, in order to sustain a
cause which every citizen of this ‘glorious Republic’ is under equal
moral obligation to do, and for the neglect of which he will be held
accountable by God,—a cause in which every man, woman, and child of the
entire human family has a deep and awful interest,—that when no wages
are asked or expected, he cannot secure, amid all wealth, luxury, and
extravagance of this ‘heaven-exalted’ people, even the necessary
supplies of the common soldier. ‘How are the mighty fallen!’

“I am destitute of horses, baggage wagons, tents, harness, saddles,
bridles, holsters, spurs, and belts; camp equipage, such as cooking and
eating utensils, blankets, knapsacks, intrenching tools, axes, shovels,
spades, mattocks, crowbars; have not a supply of ammunition; have not
money sufficient to pay freight and traveling expenses; and left my
family poorly supplied with common necessaries.”[154]

Forbes also disappointed him by his delay, lingering in New York and not
appearing in Iowa until August. Brown, who had been sick again, was
nevertheless pushing matters among his Kansas friends. He wrote in June:
“There are some half-dozen men I want a visit from at Tabor, Ia., to
come off in the most quiet way; ... I have some very important matters
to confer with some of you about. Let there be no words about it.”[155]

Arriving at Tabor early in August, Brown’s first business was to secure
the arms voted him. Because of a previous failure to equip emigrants at
points further east, the Massachusetts Kansas State Committee had sent
200 Sharps rifles to Tabor, Ia. Here they were stored in a minister’s
barn until John Brown called for and removed them. Hugh Forbes finally
arrived August 9th, bringing with him copies of his “Manual for the
Patriotic Volunteer.” Brown wrote home that he and his son Owen were
“beginning to take lessons and have, we think, a capable teacher.”

Differences, however, soon arose. Forbes wanted $100 per month in
addition to the $600 previously paid, while Brown apparently considered
that he had already advanced a half year’s wage. Then too matters were
on a meaner scale than Forbes had dreamed; there was no money, few
followers and little glory in sight. He felt himself duped; he despised
Brown’s ability and proposed taking full command himself, projecting
slave raids into Missouri and other states. Brown was obdurate, and
early in November, the foreign tactician suddenly left for the East.
This disturbed Brown’s plans. He had intended to establish two or three
military schools, one in Iowa, one in northern Ohio and one in Canada.
Forbes’s desertion made him determine to give up the Iowa school and
hasten to Ohio. He therefore passed quickly to Kansas, arriving in the
vicinity of Lawrence, November 5, 1857.

Cook says:

“I met him at the house of E. B. Whitman, about four miles from
Lawrence, K. T., which, I think, was about the first of November
following. I was told that he intended to organize a company for the
purpose of putting a stop to the aggressions of the pro-slavery men. I
agreed to join him and was asked if I knew of any other young men who
were perfectly reliable whom I thought would join also. I recommended
Richard Realf, L. F. Parsons, and R. J. Hinton. I received a note on the
next Sunday morning, while at breakfast in the Whitney House, from
Captain Brown, requesting me to come up that day, and to bring Realf,
Parsons, and Hinton with me. Realf and Hinton were not in town, and
therefore I could not extend to them the invitation. Parsons and myself
went and had a long talk with Captain Brown. A few days afterward I
received another note from Captain Brown, which read, as near as I can
recollect, as follows:

“‘CAPTAIN COOK:—Dear Sir—You will please get everything ready to join me
at Topeka by Monday night next. Come to Mrs. Sheridan’s, two miles south
of Topeka, and bring your arms, ammunition, clothing and other articles
you may require. Bring Parsons with you if he can get ready in time.
Please keep very quiet about this matter. Yours, etc.,

                                                            JOHN BROWN.’

“I made all my arrangements for starting at the time appointed. Parsons,
Realf, and Hinton could not get ready. I left them at Lawrence, and
started in a carriage for Topeka. Stopped at a hotel over night, and
left early next morning for Mrs. Sheridan’s to meet Captain Brown. Staid
a day and a half at Mrs. S.’s—then left for Topeka, at which place we
were joined by Whipple, Moffett, and Kagi. Left Topeka for Nebraska
City, and camped at night on the prairie northeast of Topeka. Here, for
the first, I learned that we were to leave Kansas to attend a military
school during the winter. It was the intention of the party to go to
Ashtabula County, Ohio.”[156]

In this way Brown enlisted John E. Cook, whom he had met about the time
of the turn of the battle of Black Jack; Luke F. Parsons, who was a
member of his old Kansas company; and Richard Realf, a newspaper man. At
Topeka Aaron D. Stevens, a veteran free state fighter, joined, with
Charles W. Moffett, an Iowa man, and John Henry Kagi, who became his
right hand. With these six he returned to Tabor, where he found William
H. Seeman and Charles Plummer Tidd, two of his former followers; Richard
Richardson, an intelligent Negro fugitive; and his son Owen. This party
of eleven started hurriedly for Ashtabula, O., late in November.
“Good-bye,” said John Brown, “you will hear from me. We’ve had enough
talk about ‘bleeding Kansas.’ I will make a bloody spot at another point
to be talked about.”[157]

So the band started and pressed on their lonely way over two hundred and
fifty miles across the wild wastes of Iowa until they came to the
village of Springdale, about fifty miles from the Missouri. This was a
little settlement intensely anti-slavery in sentiment. Here Brown had
planned to stop long enough to sell his teams and then proceed by
railroad, eastward. The panic of this year, beginning late in August,
was by December in full swing, and he found himself without funds, and
with no remittances from the East. He therefore decided to have his men
spend the winter at Springdale while he went East alone. The Quakers
received them gladly and they were quartered at a farmhouse three miles
from the village, where they paid only a dollar a week for board. The
winter passed pleasantly but busily.

Stevens was made drill-master; all arose at five, breakfasted, studied
until ten and drilled from ten to twelve. In the afternoon they
practiced gymnastics and shooting at targets. Five nights in the week a
mock legislature was held either at the home or in the schoolhouse near
by. Sometimes Realf and others listened to the townspeople, and there
was much visiting. Before John Brown left for the East, he revealed his
plans in part to his landlord and two other citizens of Springdale.

“Some time toward spring, John Brown came to my house one Sunday
afternoon,” said this man. “He informed me that he wished to have some
private talk with me; we went into the parlor. He then told me his plans
for the future. He had not then decided to attack the armory at Harper’s
Ferry, but intended to take some fifty to one hundred men into the hills
near the Ferry and remain there until he could get together quite a
number of slaves, and then take what conveyances were needed to
transport the Negroes and their families to Canada. And in a short time
after the excitement had abated, to make a strike in some other Southern
state; and to continue on making raids, as opportunity offered, until
slavery ceased to exist. I did my best to convince him that the
probabilities were that all would be killed. He said that, as for
himself, he was willing to give his life for the slaves. He told me
repeatedly, while talking, that he believed he was an instrument in the
hands of God through which slavery would be abolished. I said to him:
‘You and your handful of men cannot cope with the whole South.’ His
reply was: ‘I tell you, Doctor, it will be the beginning of the end of
slavery.’ He also told me that but two of his men, Kagi and Stevens,
knew what his intentions were.”[158]

The landlord several times sat late into the night arguing with Brown
about his plans. Some of the neighbors were persuaded to join the band,
among them the two Coppocs, and George B. Gill, a Canadian. Stewart
Taylor also enlisted there. Hinton, however, still supposed the
battle-ground would be Kansas. He says:

“There was no attempt to make a secret of their drilling, and as Gill
shows and Cook stated in his ‘confession,’ the neighborhood folks all
understood that this band of earnest young men were preparing for
something far out of the ordinary. Of course Kansas was presumed to be
the objective point. But generally the impression prevailed that when
the party moved again, it would be somewhere in the direction of the
slave states. The atmosphere of those days was charged with disturbance.
It is difficult to determine how many of the party actually knew that
John Brown designed to invade Virginia. All the testimony goes to show
that it is most probable that not until after the assembling at the
Maryland farm in 1859 was there a full, definite announcement of
Harper’s Ferry as the objective point. That he fully explained his
purpose to make reprisals on slavery wherever the opportunity offered is
without question, but except to Owen, who was vowed to work in his early
youth, and Kagi, who informed me at Osawatomie in July, 1858, that Brown
gave him his fullest confidence upon their second interview at Topeka in
1857, there is every reason to believe that among the men the details of
the intended movement were matters of after confidence. My own
experience illustrates this. I was absent from Lawrence when John Brown
recruited his little company. He had left already for Iowa before I
returned. I met Realf just as he was leaving, and we talked without
reserve, he assuring me that the purpose was just to prepare a fighting
nucleus for resisting the enforcement of the Lecompton Constitution,
which it was then expected Congress might try to impose upon us. Through
this, advantage was to be taken of the agitation to prepare for a
movement against slavery in Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian Territory and
possibly Louisiana. At Kagi’s request (with whom I maintained for nearly
two years an important, if irregular, correspondence), I began a
systematic investigation of the conditions, roads and topography of the
Southwest, visiting a good deal of the Indian Territory, with portions
of southwest Missouri, western Arkansas, and northern Texas, also, under
the guise of examining railroad routes, etc.”[159]

Forbes in the meantime hurried East, nursing his wrath. He had all of a
foreigner’s difficulty in following the confused threads of another
nation’s politics at a critical time. He classed Seward, Wilson, Sumner,
Phillips and John Brown together as anti-slavery men who were ready to
attack the institution _vi et armis_. This movement which he proposed to
lead had been started, and then, as he supposed, shamelessly neglected
by its sponsors while he had been thrust upon the tender mercies of John
Brown. He was angry and penniless and he intended to have reparation. He
first sought out Frederick Douglass, but was received coldly. He appears
to have been more successful with McCune Smith and the New York group of
Negro leaders. He immediately, too, began to address letters to
prominent Republicans.

John Brown was annoyed at Forbes’s behavior but seems at first not to
have taken it seriously. He left his men at Springdale, and started East
in January, arriving at Douglass’s Rochester home in February. Douglass
says:

“He desired to stop with me several weeks, but added, ‘I will not stay
unless you will allow me to pay board.’ Knowing that he was no trifler,
but meant all he said, and desirous of retaining him under my roof, I
charged him three dollars a week. While here he spent most of his time
in correspondence. He wrote often to George L. Stearns, of Boston,
Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, and many others, and received many letters
in return. When he was not writing letters, he was writing and revising
a constitution, which he meant to put in operation by means of the men
who should go with him in the mountains. He said that to avoid anarchy
and confusion there should be a regularly constituted government, which
each man who came with him should be sworn to honor and support.... His
whole time and thought were given to this subject. It was the first
thing in the morning and the last thing at night till, I confess, it
began to be something of a bore to me. Once in a while he would say he
could, with a few resolute men, capture Harper’s Ferry and supply
himself with arms belonging to the government at that place; but he
never announced his intention to do so.

“It was, however, very evidently passing in his mind as a thing that he
might do. I paid but little attention to such remarks, although I never
doubted that he thought just what he said. Soon after his coming to me
he asked me to get for him two smoothly planed boards, upon which he
could illustrate, with a pair of dividers, by a drawing, the plan of
fortification which he meant to adopt in the mountains. These forts were
to be so arranged as to connect one with the other by secret passages,
so that if one was carried, another could easily be fallen back upon,
and be the means of dealing death to the enemy at the very moment when
he might think himself victorious. I was less interested in these
drawings than my children were; but they showed that the old man had an
eye to the means as well as to the end, and was giving his best thought
to the work he was about to take in hand.”[160]

From Rochester went letters sounding his friends, as he was uncertain of
the real devotion of the many types of Abolitionists. He wrote Theodore
Parker:

“I am again out of Kansas and at this time concealing my whereabouts;
but for very different reasons, however, from those I had for doing so
at Boston last spring. I have nearly perfected arrangements for carrying
out an important measure in which the world has a deep interest, as well
as Kansas; and only lack from five to eight hundred dollars to do
so,—the same object for which I asked for the secret-service money last
fall. It is my only errand here; and I have written to some of my mutual
friends in regard to it, but they none of them understand my views so
well as you do, and I cannot explain without their first committing
themselves more than I know of their doing. I have heard that Parker
Pillsbury, and some others in your quarters hold out ideas similar to
those on which I act; but I have no personal acquaintance with them, and
know nothing of their influence or means. Cannot you either by direct or
indirect action do something to further me? Do you know of some parties
whom you could induce to give their Abolition theories a thoroughly
practical shape? I hope that this will prove to be the last time I shall
be driven to harass a friend in such a way. Do you think any of my
Garrisonian friends, either at Boston, Worcester, or any other place,
can be induced to supply a little ‘straw,’ if I will absolutely make
‘brick’? I have written George L. Stearns, of Medford, and Mr. F. B.
Sanborn, of Concord; but I am not informed as to how deeply-dyed
Abolitionists those friends are, and must beg you to consider this
communication strictly confidential, unless you know of parties who will
feel and act, and hold their peace. I want to bring the thing about
during the next sixty days.”[161]

To Higginson he wrote: “Railroad business on a somewhat extended scale
is the identical object for which I am trying to get means. I have been
connected with that business, as commonly conducted, from my childhood,
and never let an opportunity slip. I have been operating to some purpose
the past season; but I know I have a measure on foot that I feel sure
would awaken in you something more than a common interest if you could
understand it. I have just written to my friends G. L. Stearns, and F.
B. Sanborn, asking them to meet me for consultation at Peterboro, N. Y.
I am very anxious to have you come along, as I feel certain that you
will never regret having been one of the council.”[162]

The Boston folk hesitated and suggested that Brown come there. He
demurred on account of his being too well known. Finally Sanborn alone
went to meet Brown and thus relates his experience:

“After dinner, and after a few minutes spent with our guests in the
parlor, I went with Mr. Smith, John Brown, and my classmate Morton, to
the room of Mr. Morton in the third story. Here, in the long winter
evening which followed, the whole outline of Brown’s campaign in
Virginia was laid before our little council, to the astonishment and
almost the dismay of those present. The constitution which he had drawn
for the government of his men, and of such territory as they might
occupy, was exhibited by Brown, its provisions recited and explained,
the proposed movements of his men indicated, and the middle of May was
named as the time of the attack. To begin his hazardous adventure he
asked for but eight hundred dollars, and would think himself rich with a
thousand. Being questioned and opposed by his friends, he laid before
them in detail his methods of organization and fortification; of
settlement in the South, if that were possible, and of retreat through
the North, if necessary; and his theory of the way in which such an
invasion would be received in the country at large. He desired from his
friends a patient hearing of his statements, a candid opinion concerning
his plan, and, if that were favorable, then such aid in money and
support as we could give him. We listened until after midnight,
proposing objections and raising difficulties; but nothing could shake
the purpose of the old Puritan. Every difficulty had been foreseen and
provided against in some manner; the grand difficulty of all,—the
manifest hopelessness of undertaking anything so vast with such slender
means,—was met with the text of Scripture: ‘If God be for us, who can be
against us?’ He had made nearly all his arrangements: he had so many men
enlisted, so many hundred weapons; all he now wanted was the small sum
of money. With that he would open his campaign in the spring, and he had
no doubt that the enterprise ‘would pay’ as he said.

“On the 23d of February the discussion was renewed, and, as usually
happened when he had time enough, Captain Brown began to prevail over
the objections of his friends. At any rate, they saw that they must
either stand by him, or leave him to dash himself alone against the
fortress he was determined to assault. To withhold aid would only delay,
not prevent him; nothing short of betraying him to the enemy would do
that. As the sun was setting over the snowy hills of the region where we
met, I walked for an hour with Gerrit Smith among those woods and fields
(then included in his broad manor) which his father had purchased of the
Indians and bequeathed to him. Brown was left at home by the fire,
discussing the points of theology with Charles Stewart, an old captain
under Wellington, who also happened to be visiting at the house. Mr.
Smith restated in his eloquent way the daring propositions of Brown,
whose import he understood fully; and then said in substance: ‘You see
how it is; our dear old friend has made up his mind to this course, and
cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must
support him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for him; you must lay
the case before your friends in Massachusetts and perhaps they will do
the same. I see no other way.’ For myself, I had reached the same
conclusion, and engaged to bring the scheme at once to the attention of
the three Massachusetts men to whom Brown had written, and also of Dr.
S. G. Howe, who had sometimes favored action almost as extreme as this
proposed by Brown. I returned to Boston on the 25th of February, and on
the same day communicated the enterprise to Theodore Parker and
Wentworth Higginson. At the suggestion of Parker, Brown, who had gone to
Brooklyn, N. Y., was invited to visit Boston secretly, and did so on the
4th of March, taking a room at the American House, in Hanover Street,
and remaining for the most part in his room during the four days of his
stay. Mr. Parker was deeply interested in the project, but not very
sanguine of its success. He wished to see it tried, believing that it
must do good even if it failed. Brown remained at the American House
until Monday, March 8th, when he departed for Philadelphia.”

On the 6th of March he wrote to his son John from Boston: “My call here
has met with a hearty response, so that I feel assured of at least
tolerable success. I ought to be thankful for this. All has been
effected by quiet meeting of a few choice friends, it being scarcely
known that I have been in the city.”[163]

Leaving the money-raising to Sanborn and Smith, Brown turned to his
Negro friends, saying to his eldest son, meantime: “I have been thinking
that I would like to have you make a trip to Bedford, Chambersburg,
Gettysburg, and Uniontown in Pennsylvania, traveling slowly along, and
inquiring of every man on the way, or every family of the right stripe,
and getting acquainted with them as much as you could. When you look at
the location of those places, you will readily perceive the advantage of
getting some acquaintance in those parts.”[164]

And then he wrote two touching letters; one to his eldest daughter and
one to his staunch friend, Sanborn.

To Ruth Brown he wrote: “The anxiety I feel to see my wife and children
once more I am unable to describe. I want exceedingly to see my big baby
Ruth’s baby, and to see how that little company of sheep look about this
time. The cries of my poor sorrow-strieken, despairing children, whose
‘tears on their cheeks’ are ever in my eyes, and whose sighs are ever in
my ears, may however prevent my enjoying the happiness I so much desire.
But, courage, courage, courage!—the great work of my life (the unseen
hand that ‘guided me, and who had indeed holden my right hand, may hold
it still,’ though I have not known Him at all as I ought) I may yet see
accomplished (God helping), and be permitted to return, and ‘rest at
evening.’

“Oh, my daughter Ruth! Could any plan be devised whereby you could let
Henry go ‘to school’ (as you expressed it in your letter to him while in
Kansas), I would rather now have him ‘for another term’ than to have a
hundred average scholars. I have a particular and very important, but
not dangerous, place for him to fill in the ‘school,’ and I know of no
man living so well adapted to fill it. I am quite confident some way can
be devised so that you and your children could be with him, and be quite
happy even, and safe; but God forbid me to flatter you in trouble!”[165]

To his friend Sanborn he said: “I believe when you come to look at the
ample field I labor in, and the rich harvest which not only this entire
country but the whole world during the present and future generations
may reap from its successful cultivation, you will feel that you are in
it, an entire unit. What an inconceivable amount of good you might so
effect by your counsel, your example, your encouragement, your natural
and acquired ability for active service! And then, how very little we
can possibly lose! Certainly the cause is enough to live for, if not
to—for. I have only had this one opportunity, in a life of nearly sixty
years; and could I be continued ten times as long again, I might not
again have another equal opportunity. God has honored but comparatively
a very small part of mankind with any possible chance for such mighty
and soul-satisfying rewards. But, my dear friend, if you should make up
your mind to do so, I trust it will be wholly from the promptings of
your own spirit, after having thoroughly counted the cost. I would
flatter no man into such a measure, if I could do it ever so easily.

“I expect nothing but to endure hardness; but I expect to effect a
mighty conquest, even though it be like the last victory of Samson. I
felt for a number of years, in earlier life, a steady, strong desire to
die; but since I saw any prospect of becoming a ‘reaper’ in the great
harvest, I have not only felt quite willing to live, but have enjoyed
life much; and am now rather anxious to live for a few years more.”[166]




                               CHAPTER IX
                           THE BLACK PHALANX

  “Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion.”


The decade 1830 to 1840 was one of the severest seasons of trial through
which the black American ever passed. The great economic change which
made slavery the corner-stone of the cotton kingdom was definitely
finished and all the subtle moral adjustments which follow were in full
action. New immigrants took advantage of the growing prejudice which
found a profitable place for the Negro in slavery, and was determined to
keep him in it. They began to crowd the free Northern Negro in a fierce
economic battle. With a precarious social foothold, little economic
organization, and no support in public opinion, the Northern free Negro
was forced to yield. In Philadelphia from 1829 to 1849 six mobs of
hoodlums and foreigners cowed and murdered the Negroes. In the Middle
West and, especially in Ohio, severe Black Laws had been enacted in 1804
to 1807 providing that (_a_) No Negro should be allowed to settle in
Ohio unless he could within twenty days give bond to the amount of $500
signed by two bondsmen, who should guarantee his good behavior and
support; (_b_) The fine for harboring or concealing a fugitive was at
first $50, then $100, one-half to go to the informer and one-half to the
overseer of the poor in the district; (_c_) No Negro was allowed to give
evidence in any case where a white man was a party.[167]

These laws, however, were dead letters until 1829, when increased Negro
immigration induced the Cincinnati authorities to enforce them. The
Negroes obtained a respite of thirty days and sent a deputation to
Canada. They were absent for sixty days, and when the whites saw no
effort to enforce the law further, they organized a riot. For three days
Negroes were killed in the streets until they barricaded their homes and
shot back. Meantime the governor of upper Canada sent word that he
“would extend to them a cordial welcome.” He said: “Tell the republicans
on your side of the line that we royalists do not know men of their
color. Should you come to us you will be entitled to all the privileges
of the rest of His Majesty’s subjects.”[168]

On receipt of this, fully two thousand Negroes went to Canada and
founded Wilberforce; while a national convention of Negroes was called
in Philadelphia in 1830—the first of its kind. This convention at an
adjourned session in 1831 addressed the public as follows:

“The cause of general emancipation is gaining powerful and able friends
abroad. Britain and Denmark have performed such deeds as will
immortalize them for their humanity, in the breasts of the
philanthropists of the present day; whilst as a just tribute to their
virtues, after-ages will yet erect imperishable monuments to their
memory. (Would to God we could say thus of our own native soil.)

“And it is only when we look to our own native land, to the birthplace
of our fathers, to the land for whose prosperity their blood and our
sweat have been shed and cruelty extorted, that the convention has had
cause to hang its head and blush. Laws as cruel in themselves as they
were unconstitutional and unjust, have in many places been enacted
against our poor unfriended and unoffending brethren; laws (without a
shadow of provocation on our part) at whose bare recital the very savage
draws him up for fear of the contagion, looks noble, and prides himself
because he bears not the name of a Christian. But the convention would
not wish to dwell long on this subject, as it is one that is too
sensibly felt to need description....

“This spirit of persecution was the cause of our convention. It was this
that induced us to seek an asylum in the Canadas; and the convention
feels happy to report to its brethren, that our efforts to establish a
settlement in that province have not been made in vain. Our prospects
are cheering; our friends and funds are daily increasing; wonders have
been performed far exceeding our most sanguine expectations; already
have our brethren purchased eight hundred acres of land—and two thousand
of them have left the soil of their birth, crossed the lines, and laid
the foundation for a structure which promises to prove an asylum for the
colored population of these United States. They have erected two hundred
log-houses, and have five hundred acres under cultivation.”

A college “on the manual labor system” was planned: “For the present
ignorant and degraded condition of many of our brethren in these United
States (which has been a subject of much concern to the convention) can
excite no astonishment (although used by our enemies to show our
inferiority in the scale of human beings); for, what opportunities have
they possessed for mental cultivation or improvement? Mere ignorance,
however, in a people divested of the means of acquiring information by
books, or an extensive connection with the world, is no just criterion
of their intellectual incapacity; and it has been actually seen, in
various remarkable instances, that the degradation of the mind and
character, which has been too hastily imputed to a people kept, as we
are, at a distance from those sources of knowledge which abound in
civilized and enlightened communities, has resulted from no other causes
than our unhappy situation and circumstances.”[169]

The convention met again in 1833 and resolved on further plans for
settling in Canada. These conventions continued to assemble annually for
five years, when they were succeeded by the convention of the American
Moral Reform Society which met two years longer. Meantime Nat Turner had
terrorized Virginia and the South and sent a wave of repression over the
North that led to the disfranchisement of Pennsylvania Negroes in 1837.

Notwithstanding all this the Negroes were struggling on. Beside the
general conventions arose the Phœnix Societies, which “planned an
organization of the colored people in their municipal subdivisions with
the special object of the promotion of their improvement in morals,
literature and the mechanic arts.” Lewis Tappan refers to them in his
biography. The “Mental Feast,” which was a social feature, survived
thirty years later in some of the interior towns of Pennsylvania and the
West.[170]

The first Negro paper, _Freedom’s Journal_, had been established in 1827
and organizations like the Massachusetts General Colored Association
were coöperating with the Abolitionists. The news of emancipation in the
British West Indies cheered the Negroes, and indeed without the long
effective and self-sacrificing efforts of the Northern freed Negroes,
the Abolition movement in the United States could not have been
successful. Garrison’s first subscriber to _The Liberator_ was a black
man of Philadelphia, and before and after the Negroes were admitted to
membership in the anti-slavery societies, their aid was invaluable. In
the West, despite proscription, a fight for schools was carried on from
1830 to 1840, which finally resulted in a wide system of Negro schools
partially supported by public funds. Toward 1840 signs of promise began
gradually to appear. A West Indian endowed a Negro school in
Philadelphia in 1837. The Negro population increased from two and
one-third to two and nine-tenths millions in the decade, and evidences
of economic success were seen among the free Negroes. Philadelphia had
in 1838 one hundred small beneficial societies; Ohio Negroes owned ten
thousand acres of land in 1840, while the Canada refugees were beginning
to prosper. The mutiny on the _Creole_, the establishment of the Negro
Odd Fellows, and the doubling, in ten years, of the membership of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church, all pointed to an awakening after
the long period of distress.

The decade of 1840 to 1850 was a new era—an era of self-assertion and
rapid advance for the free Northern Negro. For the first time conscious
leadership of undoubted ability appeared. In Boston there was De Grasse,
a physician, trained in this country and in France and a member of the
Massachusetts Medical Society. Robert Morris was a member of the bar, as
was E. R. Walker, whose “Appeal” in 1829 startled the country. William
Wells Brown and William Nell were writing, while Charles Lennox Remond
was one of the first of the Abolition orators. In New York were the
gifted preacher, Henry Highland Garnet; the teachers, Reason and
Peterson who made the Negro schools effective; and the physician, McCune
Smith, one of the best trained men of his day. In Philadelphia were
Robert Purvis, the Abolitionist; William Still, of the Underground
Railroad; the three men who made the catering business—Dorsey, Jones and
Minton; and the rich Negro lumber merchant, Stephen Smith, whose
magnificent endowment for aged Negroes stands to-day at the corner of
Girard and Belmont Avenues and is valued at $400,000. In western
Pennsylvania were Vashon and Woodson, and in the West were Day,
librarian of the Cleveland library; the three Langstons of Oberlin, and
the merchants Boyd and Wilcox of Cincinnati. Elsewhere appeared the
unlettered, but brave and shrewd leaders of the fugitive slaves. It is
said that 500 black messengers of this sort were passing backward and
forward between the slave and the free states in this decade, and
noticeable among them were Harriet Tubman and Josiah Henson, who brought
thousands to the North and to Canada. Foremost of all came Frederick
Douglass, born in 1817 and reborn to freedom in 1838. He made his first
speech in 1841 and took a prominent part in the anti-slavery campaign of
the next decade. In 1845–6, he was in England and, returning in 1847, he
established his paper and met John Brown. From that time on he was
Brown’s chief Negro confidant, and in his house Brown’s Eastern campaign
was started and largely carried on. The churches also were training men
in social leadership in the persons of their bishops, like John Brown’s
friend Loguen and the noble Daniel Payne.

About 1847 new life appeared in the free Negro group. The Odd Fellows,
under Peter Ogden, maintained their independence against aggressions of
the whites, and the first of a new series of national colored
conventions assembled at Troy, N. Y. “The first article in the first
number of Frederick Douglass’s _North Star_, published January, 1848,
was an extended notice of this convention held at the Liberty Street
Church, Troy, N. Y., 1847.”

The next year, 1848, Cleveland welcomed a similar national convention.
Nearly seventy delegates assembled there on September 6th, “the sessions
alternating between the Court-House and the Tabernacle. Frederick
Douglass was chosen president. As in previous conventions education was
encouraged, the importance of statistical information stated and
temperance societies urged.”[171]

The representative character of the delegates was shown by the fact that
printers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, engineers, dentists,
gunsmiths, farmers, physicians, plasterers, masons, college students,
clergymen, barbers, hair-dressers, laborers, coopers, livery-stable
keepers, bath-house keepers and grocers were among the members who were
present.[172]

The same year Frederick Douglass attended a Free Soil convention at
Buffalo, N. Y., and writes: “I was not the only colored man well known
to the country who was present at this convention. Samuel Ringgold Ward,
Henry Highland Garnet, Charles L. Remond, and Henry Bibb were there and
made speeches which were received with surprise and gratification by the
thousands there assembled. As a colored man I felt greatly encouraged
and strengthened for my cause while listening to these men, in the
presence of the ablest men of the Caucasian race. Mr. Ward especially
attracted attention at that convention. As an orator and thinker he was
vastly superior, I thought, to any of us, and being perfectly black and
of unmixed African descent, the splendors of his intellect went directly
to the glory of race. In depth of thought, fluency of speech, readiness
of wit, logical exactness, and general intelligence, Samuel R. Ward has
left no successor among the colored men amongst us, and it was a sad day
for our cause when he was laid low in the soil of a foreign
country.”[173]

The next decade opened with over three and one-half millions of Negroes
in the United States—an enormous increase since 1840—and a remarkable
indication of virility and prosperity despite the new Fugitive Slave
Law. The Canadian Negroes were being organized in the Elgin and other
settlements, the colored Baptists reported 150,000 members, and the
Negroes of New York, replying to the Black Law recommendations of
Governor Ward Hunt, proved unincumbered ownership of $1,160,000 worth of
property. The escape of fugitive slaves was now systematized in the
Underground Railroad and in the secret organization known to outsiders
variously as the “League of Freedom,” “Liberty League,” or “American
Mysteries.” To these were added the fourteen Canadian “True Bands” with
several hundred members each.

State conventions were called in many instances, and the most
representative and intelligent national convention held up to that time
met in Rochester, N. Y., Douglass’s home, in 1853. This convention
developed definite opposition to any hope of permanent relief for the
colored freeman through schemes of emigration. On the contrary, it
directed its energies to affirmative constructive action and planned
three measures:

(1) An industrial college “on the manual labor plan.” Harriet Beecher
Stowe, who was to make a visit to England at the instance of friends in
that country, was authorized to receive funds in the name of the colored
people of the country for that purpose. “The successful establishment
and conduct of such an institution of learning would train youth to be
self-reliant and skilled workmen, fitted to hold their own in the
struggle of life on the conditions prevailing here.”

(2) A registry of colored mechanics, artisans, and business men
throughout the Union, and also, “of all the persons willing to employ
colored men in business, to teach colored boys mechanic trades, liberal
and scientific professions and farming; also a registry of colored men
and youth seeking employment or instruction.”

(3) A committee on publication “to collect all facts, statistics and
statements; all laws and historical records and biographies of the
colored people and all books by colored authors.” This committee was
further authorized “to publish replies of any assaults worthy of note,
made upon the character or condition of the colored people.”[174]

The radical stand of this assembly against emigration caused a call for
a distinct emigration Negro convention in 1854. This convention was held
under the presidency of the same man who afterward presided at the
Chatham conclave of John Brown, and with some of the same Negroes
present. The account of it continues:

“There were three parties in the emigration convention, ranged according
to the foreign fields they preferred to emigrate to. Dr. Delaney headed
the party that desired to go to the Niger Valley in Africa, Whitfield
the party which preferred to go to Central America, and Holly the party
which preferred to go to Haiti.

“All these parties were recognized and embraced by the convention. Dr.
Delaney was given a commission to go to Africa, in the Niger Valley,
Whitfield to go to Central America, and Holly to Haiti, to enter into
negotiations with the authorities of these various countries for Negro
emigrants and to report to future conventions. Holly was the first to
execute his mission, going down to Haiti in 1855, when he entered into
relations with the Minister of the Interior, the father of the late
President Hyppolite, and by him was presented to Emperor Faustin I. The
next emigration convention was held at Chatham, Canada West, in 1856,
when the report on Haiti was made. Dr. Delaney went off on his mission
to the Niger Valley, Africa, via England, in 1858. There he concluded a
treaty signed by himself and eight kings, offering inducements to Negro
emigrants to their territories. Whitfield went to California, intending
later to go thence to Central America, but died in San Francisco before
he could do so. Meanwhile [James] Redpath went to Haiti as a John
Brownist after the Harper’s Ferry raid, and reaped the first fruits of
Holly’s mission by being appointed Haitian Commissioner of Emigration in
the United States by the Haitian government, but with the express
injunction that Rev. Holly should be called to coöperate with him. On
Redpath’s arrival in the United States, he tendered Rev. Holly a
commission from the Haitian government at $1,000 per annum and traveling
expenses to engage emigrants to go to Haiti. The first load of emigrants
were from Philadelphia in 1861.”[175]

In 1853 when the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, Negroes like
Purvis and Barbadoes, trained in the Negro convention movement, were
among its founders. By 1856 the African Methodist Church had 20,000
members and $425,000 worth of property.

Of all this development John Brown knew far more than most white men and
it was on this great knowledge that his great faith was based. To most
Americans the inner striving of the Negro was a veiled and an unknown
tale: they had heard of Douglass, they knew of fugitive slaves, but of
the living, organized, struggling group that made both these phenomena
possible they had no conception.

From his earliest interest in Negroes, John Brown sought to know
individuals among them intimately and personally. He invited them to his
home and he went to theirs. He talked to them, and listened to the
history of their trials, advised them and took advice from them. His
dream was to enlist the boldest and most daring spirits among them in
his great plan.

When, therefore, John Brown came East in January, 1858, his object was
not simply to further his campaign for funds, but more especially
definitely to organize the Negroes for his work. Already he had
disclosed his intentions to Thomas Thomas of Springfield and to
Frederick Douglass. He now determined to enlist a larger number and he
particularly had in mind the Negroes of New York and Philadelphia, and
those in Canada. At no time, however, did John Brown plan to begin his
foray with many Negroes. He knew that he must gain the confidence of
black men first by a successful stroke, and that after initial success
he could count on large numbers. His object then was to interest a few
leaders like Douglass, organize societies with wide ramifications, and
after the first raid to depend on these societies for aid and recruits.

During his stay with Douglass in February, 1858, he wrote to many
colored leaders: Henry Highland Garnet and James N. Gloucester in New
York; John Jones in Chicago, and J. W. Loguen of the Zion Church. The
addresses of Downing of Rhode Island, and Martin R. Delaney were also
noted. On February 23d, after he had been in Boston and Peterboro he
notes writing to Loguen, one of the closest of his Negro friends: “Think
I shall be ready to go with him [to Canada] by the first of March or
about that time.”[176]

On March 10th, John Brown and his eldest son, Henry Highland Garnet,
William Still and others met at the house of Stephen Smith, the rich
Negro lumber merchant, of 921 Lombard Street, Philadelphia. Brown seems
to have stayed nearly a week in that city, and probably had long
conferences with all the chief Philadelphia Negro leaders. On March
18th, he was in New Haven where he wrote Frederick Douglass and J. W.
Loguen, saying: “I expect to be on the way by the 28th or 30th inst.”
After a flying visit home, involving a long walk to save expense, he
appeared again at Douglass’s in April. Gloucester collected a little
money for him in New York and he probably received some in Philadelphia;
at last he turned his face toward Canada.

He had long wished to see Canada, and had planned a visit as far back as
1846. Hither he had sent one of the earliest of his North Elba refugees,
Walter Hawkins, who became Bishop of the British African Church. On
April 8th, John Brown writes his son: “I came on here direct with J. W.
Loguen the day after you left Rochester. I am succeeding, to all
appearance, beyond my expectations. Harriet Tubman hooked on his whole
team at once. He (Harriet) is the most of a man, naturally, that I ever
met with. There is the most abundant material, and of the right quality,
in this quarter, beyond all doubt. Do not forget to write Mr. Case (near
Rochester) at once about hunting up every person and family of the
reliable kind about, at, or near Bedford, Chambersburg, Gettysburg, and
Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, and also Hagerstown and vicinity, Maryland,
and Harper’s Ferry, Va.”[177]

He stayed at St. Catherines until the 14th or 15th, chiefly in
consultation with that wonderful woman, Harriet Tubman, and sheltered in
her home. Harriet Tubman was a full-blooded African, born a slave on the
eastern shore of Maryland in 1820. When a girl she was injured by having
an iron weight thrown on her head by an overseer, an injury that gave
her wild, half-mystic ways with dreams, rhapsodies and trances. In her
early womanhood she did the rudest and hardest man’s work, driving,
carting and plowing. Finally the slave family was broken up in 1849,
when she ran away. Then began her wonderful career as a rescuer of
fugitive slaves. Back and forth she traveled like some dark ghost until
she had personally led over three hundred blacks to freedom, no one of
whom was ever lost while in her charge. A reward of $10,000 for her,
alive or dead, was offered, but she was never taken. A dreamer of dreams
as she was, she ever “laid great stress on a dream which she had had
just before she met Captain Brown in Canada. She thought she was in ‘a
wilderness sort of place, all full of rocks, and bushes,’ when she saw a
serpent raise its head among the rocks, and as it did so, it became the
head of an old man with a long white beard, gazing at her, ‘wishful
like, jes as ef he war gwine to speak to me,’ and then two other heads
rose up beside him, younger than he,—and as she stood looking at them,
and wondering what they could want with her, a great crowd of men rushed
in and struck down the younger heads, and then the head of the old man,
still looking at her so ‘wishful!’ This dream she had again and again,
and could not interpret it; but when she met Captain Brown, shortly
after, behold he was the very image of the head she had seen. But still
she could not make out what her dream signified, till the news came to
her of the tragedy of Harper’s Ferry, and then she knew the two other
heads were his two sons.”[178]

In this woman John Brown placed the utmost confidence. Wendell Phillips
says: “The last time I ever saw John Brown was under my own roof, as he
brought Harriet Tubman to me, saying: ‘Mr. Phillips, I bring you one of
the best and bravest persons on this continent—General Tubman, as we
call her.’ He then went on to recount her labors and sacrifices in
behalf of her race.”[179]

Only sickness, brought on by her toil and exposure, prevented Harriet
Tubman from being present at Harper’s Ferry.

From St. Catherines John Brown went to Ingersoll, Hamilton and Chatham.
He also visited Toronto, holding meetings with Negroes in Temperance
Hall, and at the house of the “late Mr. Holland, a colored man, on Queen
Street West. On one occasion Captain Brown remained as a guest with his
friend, Dr. A. M. Ross, who is distinguished as a naturalist, as well as
an intrepid Abolitionist, who risked his life on several occasions in
excursions into the South to enable slaves to flee to Canada!”[180]

Having finally perfected plans for a convention, Brown hurried back to
Iowa for his men. During his three months’ absence they had been working
and drilling in the Quaker settlement of Springdale, Ia., as most
persons supposed, for future troubles in “bleeding Kansas.” On John
Brown’s arrival they all hurriedly packed up—Owen Brown, Realf, Kagi,
Cook, Stevens, Tidd, Leeman, Moffett, Parsons, and the colored man
Richardson, together with their recruits, Gill and Taylor. The Coppocs
were to come later. “The leave-taking between them and the people of
Springdale was one of tears. Ties which had been knitting through many
weeks were sundered, and not only so, but the natural sorrow at parting
was intensified by the consciousness of all that the future was full of
hazard for Brown and his followers. Before quitting the house and home
of Mr. Maxon, where they had spent so long a time, each of Brown’s band
wrote his name in pencil on the wall of the parlor, where the writing
still can be seen by the interested traveler.” They all immediately
started for Canada by way of Chicago and Detroit. At Chicago they had to
wait twelve hours, and the first hotel refused to accommodate Richardson
at the breakfast table. John Brown immediately sought another place. The
company arrived shortly in Chatham and stopped at a hotel kept by Mr.
Barber, a colored man. While at Chatham, John Brown, as Anderson
relates, “made a profound impression upon those who saw or became
acquainted with him. Some supposed him to be a staid but modernized
‘Quaker’; others a solid business man, from ‘somewhere,’ and without
question a philanthropist. His long white beard, thoughtful and reverent
brow and physiognomy, his sturdy, measured tread, as he circulated about
with hands, portrayed in the best lithograph, under the pendant
coat-skirt of plain brown tweed, with other garments to match, revived
to those honored with his acquaintance and knowing his history the
memory of a Puritan of the most exalted type.”[181]

John Brown’s choice of Canada as a centre of Negro culture, was wise.
There were nearly 50,000 Negroes there, and the number included many
energetic, intelligent and brave men, with some wealth. Settlements had
grown up, farms had been bought, schools established and an intricate
social organization begun. Negroes like Henson had been loyally assisted
by white men like King, and fugitives were welcomed and succored. Near
Buxton, where King and the Elgin Association were working, was Chatham,
the chief town of the county of Kent, with a large Negro population of
farmers, merchants and mechanics; they had a graded school, Wilberforce
Institute, several churches, a newspaper, a fire-engine company and
several organizations for social intercourse and uplift. One of the
inhabitants said:

“Mr. Brown did not overestimate the state of education of the colored
people. He knew that they would need leaders, and require training. His
great hope was that the struggle would be supported by volunteers from
Canada, educated and accustomed to self-government. He looked on our
fugitives as picked men of sufficient intelligence, which, combined with
a hatred for the South, would make them willing abettors of any
enterprise destined to free their race.”

There were many white Abolitionists near by, but they distrusted Brown
and in this way he gained less influence among the Negroes than he
otherwise might have had. Martin R. Delaney, who was a fervid African
emigrationist, was just about to start to Africa, bearing the mandate of
the last Negro convention, when John Brown appeared. “On returning home
from a professional visit in the country, Mrs. Delaney informed him that
an old gentleman had called to see him during his absence. She described
him as having a long, white beard, very gray hair, a sad but placid
countenance. In speech he was peculiarly solemn. She added, ‘He looked
like one of the old prophets. He would neither come in nor leave his
name, but promised to be back in two weeks’ time.’”

Finally Delaney met John Brown who said:

“‘I come to Chatham expressly to see you, this being my third visit on
the errand. I must see you at once, sir,’ he continued, with emphasis,
‘and that, too, in private, as I have much to do and but little time
before me. If I am to do nothing here, I want to know it at once.’”

Delaney continues:

“Going directly to the private parlor of a hotel near by, he at once
revealed to me that he desired to carry out a great project in his
scheme of Kansas emigration, which, to be successful, must be aided and
countenanced by the influence of a general convention or council. That
he was unable to effect in the United States, but had been advised by
distinguished friends of his and mine, that, if he could but see me, his
object could be attained at once. On my expressing astonishment at the
conclusion to which my friends and himself had arrived, with a nervous
impatience, he exclaimed, ‘Why should you be surprised? Sir, the people
of the Northern states are cowards; slavery has made cowards of them
all. The whites are afraid of each other, and the blacks are afraid of
the whites. You can effect nothing among such people,’ he added, with
decided emphasis. On assuring him if a council was all that was desired,
he could readily obtain it, he replied, ‘That is all; but that is a
great deal to me. It is men I want, and not money; money I can get
plentiful enough, but no men. Money can come without being seen, but men
are afraid of identification with me, though they favor my measures.
They are cowards, sir! Cowards!’ he reiterated. He then fully revealed
his designs. With these I found no fault, but fully favored and aided in
getting up the convention.”[182]

Meantime John Brown proceeded carefully to sound public opinion, got the
views of others, and, while revealing few of his own plans, set about
getting together a body who were willing to ratify his general aims. He
consulted the leading Negroes in private, and called a series of small
conferences to thresh out preliminary difficulties. In these meetings
and in the personal visits, many points arose and were settled. A member
of the convention says:

“One evening the question came up as to what flag should be used; our
English colored subjects, who had been naturalized, said they would
never think of fighting under the hated ‘Stars and Stripes.’ Too many of
them thought they carried their emblem on their backs. But Brown said
the old flag was good enough for him; under it freedom had been won from
the tyrants of the Old World, for white men; now he intended to make it
do duty for the black men. He declared emphatically that he would not
give up the Stars and Stripes. That settled the question.

“Some one proposed admitting women as members, but Brown strenuously
opposed this, and warned the members not to intimate, even to their
wives, what was done.

“One day in my shop I told him how utterly hopeless his plans would be
if he persisted in making an attack with the few at his command, and
that we could not afford to spare white men of his stamp, ready to
sacrifice their lives for the salvation of black men. While I was
speaking, Mr. Brown walked to and fro, with his hands behind his back,
as was his custom when thinking on his favorite subject. He stopped
suddenly and bringing down his right hand with great force, exclaimed:
‘Did not my Master Jesus Christ come down from Heaven and sacrifice
Himself upon the altar for the salvation of the race, and should I, a
worm, not worthy to crawl under His feet, refuse to sacrifice myself?’
With a look of determination, he resumed his walk. In all the
conversations I had with him during his stay in Chatham of nearly a
month, I never once saw a smile light upon his countenance. He seemed to
be always in deep and earnest thought.”[183]

The preliminary meeting was held in a frame cottage on Princess Street,
south of King Street, then known as the “King Street High School.” Some
meetings were also held in the First Baptist Church on King Street. In
order to mislead the inquisitive, it was pretended that the persons
assembling were organizing a Masonic Lodge of colored people. The
important proceedings took place in “No. 3 Engine House,” a wooden
building near McGregor’s Creek, erected by Mr. Holden and other colored
men.

The regular invitations were issued on the fifth:

                                      “_Chatham, Canada, May 5, 1858._

  “MY DEAR FRIEND:

  “I have called a quiet convention in this place of true friends of
  freedom. Your attendance is earnestly requested....

                                             “Your friend,
                                                         “JOHN BROWN.”

The convention was called together at 10 A. M., Saturday, May 8th, and
opened without ceremony. There were present the following Negroes:
William Charles Monroe, a Baptist clergyman, formerly president of the
emigration convention and elected president of this assembly; Martin R.
Delaney, afterward major in the United States Army in the Civil War;
Alfred Whipper, of Pennsylvania; William Lambert and I. D. Shadd, of
Detroit, Mich.; James H. Harris, of Cleveland, O., after the war a
representative in Congress for two terms from North Carolina; G. J.
Reynolds, an active Underground Railroad leader of Sandusky City; J. C.
Grant, A. J. Smith, James M. Jones, a gunsmith and engraver, graduate of
Oberlin College, 1849; M. F. Bailey, S. Hunton, John J. Jackson,
Jeremiah Anderson, James M. Bell, Alfred Ellisworth, James W. Purnell,
George Aiken, Stephen Dettin, Thomas Hickerson, John Cannel, Robinson
Alexander, Thomas F. Cary, Thomas M. Kinnard, Robert Van Vauken, Thomas
Stringer, John A. Thomas, believed by some to be John Brown’s earlier
confidant and employee at Springfield, Mass., afterward employed by
Abraham Lincoln in his Illinois home and at the White House also; Robert
Newman, Charles Smith, Simon Fislin, Isaac Holden, a merchant and
surveyor and John Brown’s host; James Smith, and Richard Richardson.

Hinton says: “There is no evidence to show that Douglass, Loguen,
Garnet, Stephen Smith, Gloucester, Langston, or others of the prominent
men of color in the states who knew John Brown, were invited to the
Chatham meeting. It is doubtful if their appearance would have been
wise, as it would assuredly have been commented on and aroused
suspicion.”[184]

The white men present were: John and Owen Brown, father and son; John
Henri Kagi, Aaron Dwight Stevens, still known as Charles Whipple; John
Edwin Cook, Richard Realf, George B. Gill, Charles Plummer Tidd, William
Henry Leeman, Charles W. Moffett, Luke F. Parsons, all of Kansas; and
Steward Taylor of Canada, twelve in all. It has been usually assumed
that Jeremiah Anderson was white but the evidence makes it possible that
he was a mulatto. John J. Jackson called the meeting to order and Monroe
was chosen president. Delaney then asked for John Brown, and Brown spoke
at length, followed by Delaney and others.

The constitution was brought forward and, after a solemn parole of
honor, was read. It proved to be a frame of government based on the
national Constitution, but much simplified and adapted to a moving band
of guerrillas. The first forty-five articles were accepted without
debate. The next article was: “The foregoing articles shall not be so as
in any way to encourage the overthrow of any state government, or the
general government of the United States, and look to no dissolution of
the Union, but simply to amendment and repeal, and our flag shall be the
same that our fathers fought for under the Revolution.”

To this Reynolds, the “coppersmith,” one of the strongest men in the
convention, objected. He felt no allegiance to the nation that had
robbed and humiliated him. Brown, Delaney, Kagi and others, however,
earnestly advocated the article and it passed. Saturday afternoon the
constitution was finally adopted and signed. Brown induced James M.
Jones, who had not attended all the sittings, to come to this one, as
the constitution must be signed, and he wished his name to be on the
roll of honor. As the paper was presented for signature, Brown said,
“Now, friend Jones, give us John Hancock bold and strong.”

The account continues:

“During one of the sittings, Mr. Jones had the floor, and discussed the
chances of the success or failure of the slaves rising to support the
plan proposed. Mr. Brown’s scheme was to fortify some place in the
mountains, and call the slaves to rally under his colors. Jones
expressed fear that he would be disappointed, because the slaves did not
know enough to rally to his support. The American slaves, Jones argued,
were different from those of the West India Island of San Domingo, whose
successful uprising is a matter of history, as they had there imbibed
some of the impetuous character of their French masters, and were not so
overawed by white men. ‘Mr. Brown, no doubt thought,’ says Mr. Jones,
‘that I was making an impression on some of the members, if not on him,
for he arose suddenly and remarked, “Friend Jones, you will please say
no more on that side. There will be a plenty to defend that side of the
question.” A general laugh took place.’

“A question as to the time for making the attack came up in the
convention. Some advocated that we should wait until the United States
became involved in war with some first-class power; that it would be
next to madness to plunge into a strife for the abolition of slavery
while the government was at peace with other nations. Mr. Brown listened
to the argument for some time, then slowly arose to his full height, and
said: ‘I would be the last one to take the advantage of my country in
the face of a foreign foe.’ He seemed to regard it as a great insult.
That settled the matter in my mind that John Brown was not insane.”[185]

At 6 P. M. the election of officers under the constitution took place,
and was finished Monday, the tenth. John Brown was elected
commander-in-chief; Kagi, secretary of war; Realf, secretary of state;
Owen Brown, treasurer; and George B. Gill, secretary of the treasury.
Members of congress chosen were Alfred Ellisworth and Osborne P.
Anderson, colored.

After appointing a committee to fill other offices, the convention
adjourned. Another and a larger body was also organized, as Delaney
says: “This organization was an extensive body, holding the same
relation to his movements as a state or national executive committee
holds to its party principles, directing their adherence to fundamental
principles.”[186]

This committee still existed at the time of the Harper’s Ferry raid.
With characteristic reticence Brown revealed his whole plan to no one,
and many of those close to him received quite different impressions, or
rather read their own ideas into Brown’s careful speech. One of his
Kansas band says: “I am sure that Brown did not communicate the details
of his plans to the members of the convention, more than in a very
general way. Indeed, I do not now remember that he gave them any more
than the impressions which they could gather from the methods of
organization. From those who were directly connected with his movements
he solicited plans and methods—including localities—of operations in
writing. Of course, we had almost precise knowledge of his methods, but
all of us perhaps did not know just the locality selected by him, or, if
knowing, did not comprehend the resources and surroundings.”[187]

“John Brown, never, I think,” said Mr. Jones, “communicated his whole
plan, even to his immediate followers. In his conversations with me he
led me to think that he intended to sacrifice himself and a few of his
followers for the purpose of arousing the people of the North from the
stupor they were in on this subject. He seemed to think such sacrifice
necessary to awaken the people from the deep sleep that had settled upon
the minds of the whites of the North. He well knew that the sacrifice of
any number of Negroes would have no effect. What he intended to do, so
far as I could gather from his conversation, from time to time, was to
emulate Arnold Winkelried, the Swiss chieftain, when he threw himself
upon the Austrian spearmen, crying, ‘Make way for Liberty.’”[188]
Delaney in his own bold, original way assumed that Brown intended
another Underground Railway terminating in Kansas. Delaney himself was
on his way to Africa and could take no active part in the movement.

The constitution adopted by the convention was an instrument designed
for the government of a band of isolated people fighting for liberty.
The preamble said:

“Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States,
is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of
one portion of its citizens upon another portion—the only conditions of
which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude or absolute
extermination—in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and
self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence:

“Therefore, we, citizens of the United States, and the oppressed people
who, by a recent decision of the Supreme Court, are declared to have no
rights which the white man is bound to respect, together with all other
people degraded by the laws thereof, do, for the time being, ordain and
establish ourselves the following provisional constitution and
ordinances, the better to protect our persons, property, lives, and
liberties, and to govern our actions.”[189]

The Declaration of Independence referred to was probably designed to be
adopted July 4, 1858, when, as originally planned, the blow was to be
actually struck. It was a paraphrase of the original declaration and
ended by saying:

“Declaring that we will serve them no longer as slaves, knowing that the
‘Laborer is worthy of his hire,’ We therefore, the Representatives of
the circumscribed citizens of the United States of America, in General
Congress assembled, appealing to the supreme Judge of the World, for the
rectitude of our intentions, Do in the name, & by authority of the
oppressed Citizens of the Slave States, Solemnly publish and Declare:
that the Slaves are, & of right ought to be as free & as independent as
the unchangeable Law of God requires that All Men Shall be. That they
are absolved from all allegiance to those Tyrants, who still persist in
forcibly subjecting them to perpetual ‘Bondage,’ and that all friendly
connection between them and such Tyrants, is & ought to be totally
dissolved, And that as free and independent citizens of these states,
they have a perfect right, a sufficient and just cause, to defend
themselves against the Tyrrany of their oppressors. To solicit aid from
& ask the protection of all true friends of humanity and reform, of
whatever nation, & wherever found; A right to contract all Alliances, &
to do all other acts and things which free independent Citizens may of
right do. And for the support of the Declaration, with a firm reliance
on the protection of divine Providence: We mutually pledge to each
other, Our Lives, and Our sacred Honor.”[190]

The constitution consisted of forty-eight articles. All persons of
mature age were admitted to membership and there was established a
congress with one house of five to ten members, a president and
vice-president and a court of five members, each one of whom held
circuit courts. All these officials were to unite in selecting a
commander-in-chief, treasurer, secretaries, and other officials. All
property was to be in common and no salaries were to be paid. All
persons were to labor. All indecent behavior was forbidden: “The
marriage relation shall be at all times respected, and families kept
together, as far as possible; and broken families encouraged to reunite,
and intelligence offices established for that purpose. Schools and
churches established, as soon as may be, for the purpose of religious
and other instructions; and the first day of the week regarded as a day
of rest, and appropriated to moral and religions instruction and
improvement, relief of the suffering, instruction of the young and
ignorant, and the encouragement of personal cleanliness; nor shall any
person be required on that day to perform ordinary manual labor, unless
in extremely urgent cases.”[191] All persons were to carry arms but not
concealed. There were special provisions for the capture of prisoners,
and protection of their persons and property.

John Brown was well pleased with his work and wrote home: “Had a good
Abolition convention here, from different parts, on the 8th and 10th
inst. Constitution slightly amended and adopted, and society
organized.”[192]

Just now as everything seemed well started, came disquieting news from
the East. Forbes had been there since November, growing more and more
poverty-stricken and angry, and his threats, hints and visits were
becoming frequent and annoying. He complained to Senator Wilson, to
Charles Sumner, to Hale, Seward and Horace Greeley, and to the Boston
coterie. He could not understand why these leaders of the movement
against slavery, as he supposed, should leave the real power in the
hands of John Brown, and neglect an experienced soldier like himself
after raising false expectations. John Brown had dealt with Forbes
gently but firmly, and had sought to conciliate him, but in vain. Brown
was apparently determined to outwit him by haste; he had written his
Massachusetts friends to join him at the Chatham Convention, but Sanborn
and Howe had already received threatening letters from Forbes which
alarmed them. He evidently had careful information of Brown’s movements
and was bent on making trouble. He probably was at this time in the
confidence of McCune Smith and the able Negro group of New York who had
developed a not unnatural distrust of whites, and a desire to foster
race pride. Using information thus obtained, Forbes sought to put
pressure on Republican leaders to organize more effective warfare on
slavery, and to discredit John Brown. Sanborn wrote hastily: “It looks
as if the project must, for the present, be deferred, for I find by
reading Forbes’s epistles to the doctor that he knows the details of the
plan, and even knows (what very few do) that the doctor, Mr. Stearns,
and myself are informed of it. How he got this knowledge is a mystery.
He demands that Hawkins [John Brown] be dismissed as agent, and himself
or some other be put in his place, threatening otherwise to make the
business public.”[193] Gerrit Smith concluded, “Brown must go no
further.” But Higginson wisely demurred. “I regard any postponement,” he
said, “as simply abandoning the project; for if we give it up now, at
the command or threat of H. F., it will be the same next year. The only
way is to circumvent the man somehow (if he cannot be restrained in his
malice). When the thing is well started, who cares what he says?”[194]

Further efforts were made to conciliate Forbes but he wrote wildly: “I
have been grossly defrauded in the name of humanity and anti-slavery....
I have for years labored in the anti-slavery cause, without wanting or
thinking of a recompense. Though I have made the least possible parade
of my work, it has nevertheless not been entirely without fruit....
Patience and mild measures having failed, I reluctantly have recourse to
harshness. Let them not flatter themselves that I shall eventually
become weary and shall drop the subject; it is as yet quite at its
beginning.”[195]

“To go on in face of this is madness,” wrote Sanborn, and John Brown was
urged to come to New York to meet Stearns and Howe. Brown had already
been delayed nearly a month at Chatham by this trouble, but he obeyed
the summons. Sanborn says: “When, about May 20th, Mr. Stearns met Brown
in New York, it was arranged that hereafter the custody of the Kansas
rifles should be in Brown’s hands as the agent, not of this committee,
but of Mr. Stearns alone. It so happened that Gerrit Smith, who seldom
visited Boston, was coming there late in May.... He arrived and took
rooms at the Revere House, where, on the 24th of May, 1858, the secret
committee (organized in March, and consisting of Smith, Parker, Howe,
Higginson, Stearns, and Sanborn) held a meeting to consider the
situation. It had already been decided to postpone the attack, and the
arms had been placed under a temporary interdict, so that they could
only be used, for the present, in Kansas. The questions remaining were
whether Brown should be required to go to Kansas at once, and what
amount of money should be raised for him in the future. Of the six
members of the committee only one (Higginson) was absent.... It was
unanimously resolved that Brown ought to go to Kansas at once.”

As soon as possible after this, on May 21st, Brown visited Boston, and
while there held a conversation with Higginson, who made a record of it
at the time. He states that Brown was full of regret at the decision of
the Revere House council to postpone the attack till the winter or
spring of 1859, when the secret committee would raise for Brown two or
three thousand dollars; he meantime was to blind Forbes by going to
Kansas, and to transfer the property so as to relieve the Kansas
committee of responsibility, they in future not to know his plans.

“On probing Brown,” Higginson goes on, “I found that he ... considered
delay very discouraging to his thirteen men, and to those in Canada.
Impossible to begin in autumn; and he would not lose a day (he finally
said) if he had three hundred dollars; it would not cost twenty-five
dollars apiece to get his men from Ohio, and that was all he needed. The
knowledge that Forbes could give of his plan would be injurious, for he
wished his opponents to underrate him; but still ... the increased
terror produced would perhaps counterbalance this, and it would not make
much difference. If he had the means he would not lose a day. He
complained that some of his Eastern friends were not men of action; that
they were intimidated by Wilson’s letter, and magnified the obstacles.
Still, it was essential that they should not think him reckless, he
said; and as they held the purse, he was powerless without them, having
spent nearly everything received this campaign, on account of delay,—a
month at Chatham, etc.”[196]

There was nothing now for Brown but to conceal his arms, scatter his men
and hide a year in Kansas. It was a bitter necessity and it undoubtedly
helped ruin the success of the foray. The Negroes in Canada fell away
from the plan when it did not materialize and doubted Brown’s
determination and wisdom. His son hid the arms in northern Ohio in a
haymow.

Meantime, a part of the company—Stevens, Cook, Tidd, Gill, Taylor and
Owen Brown—immediately after the adjournment of the convention, had gone
to Cleveland, O., and had found work in the surrounding country. Brown
wrote from Canada at the time:

“It seems that all but three have managed to stop their board bills, and
I do hope the balance will follow the manlike and noble example of
patience and perseverance set them by the others, instead of being
either discouraged or out of humor. The weather is so wet here that no
work can be obtained. I have only received $15 from the East, and such
has been the effect of the course taken by F. [Col. Forbes], on our
Eastern friends, that I have some fears that we shall be compelled to
delay further action for the present. They [his Eastern friends] urge us
to do so, promising us liberal assistance after a while. I am in hourly
expectation of help sufficient to pay off our bills here, and to take us
on to Cleveland, to see and advise with you, which we shall do at once
when we shall get the means. Suppose we do have to defer our direct
efforts; shall great and noble minds either indulge in useless
complaint, or fold their arms in discouragement, or sit in idleness,
when we may at least avoid losing ground? It is in times of difficulty
that men show what they are; it is in such times that men mark
themselves. Are our difficulties such as to make us give up one of the
noblest enterprises in which men ever were engaged?”[197]

Two weeks later the rest of the party, except Kagi, followed to
Cleveland, John Brown going East to meet Stearns. Kagi, who was an
expert printer, went to Hamilton, Canada, where he set up and printed
the constitution, arriving in Cleveland about the middle of June when
Brown returned from the East. Realf says that Brown did not have much
money, but sent him to New York and Washington to watch Forbes and
possibly regain his confidence. Realf, however, had become timid and
lukewarm in the cause and sailed away to England. The rest of the men
scattered. Owen Brown went to Akron, O. Cook left Cleveland for the
neighborhood of Harper’s Ferry; Gill secured work in a Shaker
settlement, probably Lebanon, O., where Tidd was already employed;
Steward Taylor went to Illinois; Stevens awaited Brown at Cleveland;
while Leeman got some work in Ashtabula County. John Brown left Boston,
on the 3rd of June, proceeding to the North Elba home for a short visit.
Then he, Kagi, Stevens, Leeman, Gill, Parsons, Moffett, and Owen were
gathered together and the party went to Kansas, arriving late in June.

Thus suddenly ended John Brown’s attempt to organize the Black Phalanx.
His intimate friends understood that the great plan was only postponed,
but the postponement had, as Higginson predicted, a dampening effect,
and Brown’s chances of enlisting a large Canadian contingent were
materially lessened. Nevertheless, seed had been sown. And there were
millions of human beings to whom the last word of the Chatham
Declaration of Independence was more than mere rhetoric: “Nature is
mourning for its murdered and afflicted children. Hung be the Heavens in
scarlet!”




                               CHAPTER X
                          THE GREAT BLACK WAY

  “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because of the Lord hath
  anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to
  bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and
  the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”


Half-way between Maine and Florida, in the Heart of the Alleghanies, a
mighty gateway lifts its head and discloses a scene which, a century and
a a quarter ago, Thomas Jefferson said was “worth a voyage across the
Atlantic.” He continues: “You stand on a very high point of land; on
your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the
mountain a hundred miles to find a vent; on your left approaches the
Potomac, in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction
they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off
to the sea.”[198]

This is Harper’s Ferry and this was the point which John Brown chose for
his attack on American slavery. He chose it for many reasons. He loved
beauty: “When I met Brown at Peterboro in 1858,” writes Sanborn, “Morton
played some fine music to us in the parlor,—among other things
Schubert’s _Serenade_, then a favorite piece,—and the old Puritan, who
loved music and sang a good part himself, sat weeping at the air.”[199]
He chose Harper’s Ferry because a United States arsenal was there and
the capture of this would give that dramatic climax to the inception of
his plan which was so necessary to its success. But both these were
minor reasons. The foremost and decisive reason was that Harper’s Ferry
was the safest natural entrance to the Great Black Way. Look at the map
(page 274). The shaded portion is “the black belt” of slavery where
there were massed in 1859 at least three of the four million slaves. Two
paths led southward toward it in the East:—the way by Washington,
physically broad and easy, but legally and socially barred to bondsmen;
the other way, known to Harriet Tubman and all fugitives, which led to
the left toward the crests of the Alleghanies and the gateway of
Harper’s Ferry. One has but to glance at the mountains and swamps of the
South to see the Great Black Way. Here, amid the mighty protection of
overwhelming numbers, lay a path from slavery to freedom, and along that
path were fastnesses and hiding-places easily capable of becoming
permanent fortified refuges for organized bands of determined armed men.

The exact details of Brown’s plan will never be fully known. As Realf
said: “John Brown was a man who would never state more than it was
absolutely necessary for him to do. No one of his most intimate
associates and I was one of the most intimate was possessed of more than
barely sufficient information to enable Brown to attach such companion
to him.”[200]

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE GREAT BLACK WAY]

A glance at the map shows clearly that John Brown intended to operate in
the Blue Ridge mountains rising east of the Shenandoah and known at
Harper’s Ferry as Loudoun Heights. The Loudoun Heights rise boldly 500
to 700 feet above the village of Harper’s Ferry and 1,000 feet above the
sea. They run due south and then southwest, dipping down a little the
first three miles, then rising to 1,500 feet, which level is practically
maintained until twenty-five miles below Harper’s Ferry where the
mountains broaden to a dense and labyrinthical wilderness, and rise to a
height of 2,000 or more feet. Right at this high point and insight of
High Knob (a peak of 2,400 feet) began, in Fauquier County, the Great
Black Way. In this county in 1850 were over 10,000 slaves, and 650 free
Negroes, as compared with 9,875 whites. From this county to the southern
boundary of Virginia was a series of black counties with a majority of
slaves, containing in 1850 at least 260,000 Negroes. From here the Great
Black Way went south as John Brown indicated in his diary and
undoubtedly in the marked maps, which Virginia afterward hastily
destroyed.

The easiest way to get to these heights was from Harper’s Ferry. An
hour’s climb from the arsenal grounds would easily have hidden a hundred
men in inaccessible fastnesses, provided they were not overburdened; and
even with arms, ammunition and supplies, they could have repelled,
without difficulty, attacks on the retreat. Forts and defenses could be
prepared in these mountains, and before the raid they had been pretty
thoroughly explored and paths marked. In Harper’s Ferry just at the
crossing of the main road from Maryland lay the arsenal. The plan
without a doubt was first, to collect men and arms on the Maryland side
of the Potomac; second, to attack the arsenal suddenly and capture it;
third, to bring up the arms and ammunition and, together with those
captured, to cross the Shenandoah to Loudoun Heights and hide in the
mountain wilderness; fourth, thence to descend at intervals to release
slaves and get food, and retreat southward. Most writers have apparently
supposed that Brown intended to retreat from the arsenal across the
Potomac. A moment’s thought will show the utter absurdity of this plan.
Brown knew guerrilla warfare, and the failure of Harper’s Ferry raid
does not prove it a blunder from the start. The raid was not a foray
_from_ the mountains, which failed because its retreat was cut off, but
it was a foray _to_ the mountains with the village and arsenal on the
way, which was defeated apparently because the arms and ammunition train
failed to join the advance-guard.

This then was the great plan which John Brown had been slowly
elaborating and formulating for twenty years—since the day when kneeling
beside a Negro minister he had sworn his sons to blood-feud with
slavery.

The money resources with which John Brown undertook his project are not
exactly known. Sanborn says: “Brown’s first request in 1858 was for a
fund of a thousand dollars only; with this in the hand he promised to
take the field either in April or May. Mr. Stearns acted as treasurer of
this fund, and before the 1st of May nearly the whole the amount had
been paid in or subscribed,—Stearns contributing three hundred dollars,
and the rest of our committee smaller sums. It soon appeared, however,
that the amount named would be too small, and Brown’s movements were
embarrassed from the lack of money before the disclosures of Forbes came
to his knowledge.”[201] From first to last George L. Stearns gave in
cash and arms about $7,500, and Gerrit Smith contributed more than
$1,000. Merriam brought with him $600 in gold in October. Between March
10th and October 16th, Brown expended at least $2,500. In all Sanborn
raised $4,000 for Brown. Hinton says: “As near as can be estimated, the
money received by Brown could not have exceeded $12,000, while the
supplies, arms, etc., furnished may have cost $10,000 more. Of course,
there were smaller contributions and support coming in, but if the total
estimate be placed at $25,000, for the period between the 15th of
September, 1856, when he left Lawrence, Kan., and the 16th of October,
1859, when he moved on Harper’s Ferry, Va., with twenty-one men, it will
certainly cover all of the outlay except that of time, labor, and
lives.”[202]

This total, however, does not include a fund of $1,000 raised for his
family.

The civic organization under which Brown intended to work has been
spoken of. The military organization was based on his Kansas experience
and his reading. In his diary is this entry:

                       “Circassia has about 550,000
                          Switzerland 2,037,030

    Guerrilla warfare See Life of Lord Wellington

    Page 71 to Page 75 (Mina)

    See also Page 102 some valuable hints in the Same Book. See also
      Page 196 some most important instructions to officers.

    See also same Book Page 235 these words deep, and

    narrow defiles where 300 men would suffice to check an army.

    See also Page 236 on top of Page ”

This life of Wellington, W. P. Garrison states,[203] was Stocqueler’s
and the pages referred to tell of the Spanish guerrillas under Mina in
1810, and of methods of cooking and discipline. In one place the author
says: “Here we have a chaos of mountains, where we meet at every step
huge fallen masses of rock and earth, yawning fissures, deep and narrow
defiles, where 300 men would suffice to check an army.” The Alleghanies
in Virginia and Carolina was similar in topography and, for the
operation here, Brown proposed a skeleton army which could work together
or in small units of any size:

“A company will consist of fifty-six privates, twelve non-commissioned
officers, eight corporals, four sergeants and three commissioned
officers (two lieutenants, a captain), and a surgeon.

“The privates shall be divided into bands or messes of seven each,
numbering from one to eight, with a corporal to each, numbered like his
band.

“Two bands will comprise a section. Sections will be numbered from one
to four.

“A sergeant will be attached to each section, and numbered like it.

“Two sections will comprise a platoon. Platoons will be numbered one and
two, and each commanded by a lieutenant designed by like number.”[204]

Four companies composed a battalion, four battalions a regiment, and
four regiments a brigade.

So much for his resources and plans. Now for the men whom he chose as
co-workers. The number of those who took part in the Harper’s Ferry raid
is not known. Perhaps, including active slave helpers, there were about
fifty. Seventeen Negroes, reported as probably killed, are wholly
unknown, and those slaves who helped and escaped are also unknown. This
leaves the twenty-two men usually regarded as making the raid. They
fall, of course, into two main groups, the Negroes and the whites. Six
or seven of the twenty-two were Negroes.

First in importance came Osborne Perry Anderson, a free-born
Pennsylvania mulatto, twenty-four years of age. He was a printer by
trade, “well educated, a man of natural dignity, modest, simple in
character and manners.” He met John Brown in Canada. He wrote the most
interesting and reliable account of the raid, and afterward fought in
the Civil War.

Next came Shields Green, a full-blooded Negro from South Carolina,
whence he had escaped from slavery, after his wife had died, leaving a
living boy still in bondage. He was about twenty-four years old, small
and active, uneducated but with natural ability and absolutely fearless.
He met Brown at the home of Frederick Douglass, who says: “While at my
house, John Brown made the acquaintance of a colored man who called
himself by different names—sometimes ‘Emperor,’ at other times, ‘Shields
Green’.... He was a fugitive slave, who had made his escape from
Charleston, S. C.; a state from which a slave found it no easy matter to
run away. But Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or
dangers. He was a man of few words and his speech was singularly broken;
but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.
John Brown saw at once what ‘stuff’ Green ‘was made of,’ and confided to
him his plans and purposes. Green easily believed in Brown, and promised
to go with him whenever he should be ready to move.”[205]

Dangerfield Newby was a free mulatto from the neighborhood of Harper’s
Ferry. He was thirty years of age, tall and well built, with a pleasant
face and manner; he had a wife and seven children in slavery about
thirty miles south of Harper’s Ferry. The wife was about to be sold
south at this time, and was sold immediately after the raid. Newby was
the spy who gave general information to the party, and lived out in the
community until the night of the attack.

John A. Copeland was born of free Negro parents in North Carolina,
reared in Oberlin and educated at Oberlin College. He was a
straight-haired mulatto, twenty-two years old, of medium size, and a
carpenter by trade. Hunter, the prosecuting attorney of Virginia, says:
“From my intercourse with him I regarded him as one of the most
respectable prisoners that we had.... He was a copper-colored Negro,
behaved himself with as much firmness as any of them, and with far more
dignity. If it had been possible to recommend a pardon for any of them,
it would have been for this man Copeland, as I regretted as much, if not
more, at seeing him executed than any other one of the party!”[206]

Lewis Sherrard Leary was born in slavery in North Carolina and also
reared in Oberlin, where he worked as a harness-maker. An Oberlin friend
testified: “He called again afterward, and told me he would like to keep
to the amount I had given him, and would like a certain amount more for
a certain purpose, and was very chary in his communications to me as to
how he was to use it, except that he did inform me that he wished to use
it in aiding slaves to escape. Circumstances just then transpired which
had interested me contrary to any thought I ever had in my mind before.
I had had exhibited to me a daguerreotype of a young lady, a beautiful
appearing girl, who I was informed was about eighteen years of
age....”[207] But here Senator Mason of the Inquisition scented danger,
and we can only guess the reasons that sent Leary to his death. He was
said to be Brown’s first recruit outside the Kansas band.

John Anderson, a free Negro from Boston, was sent by Lewis Hayden and
started for the front. Whether he arrived and was killed, or was too
late has never been settled.

The seventh man of possible Negro blood was Jeremiah Anderson. He is
listed with the Negroes in all the original reports of the Chatham
Convention and was, as a white Virginian who saw him says, “of middle
stature, very black hair and swarthy complexion. He was supposed by some
to be a Canadian mulatto.”[208] He was descended from Virginia
slaveholders who had moved north and was born in Indiana. He was
twenty-six years old.

Of the white men there were, first of all, John Brown and his family,
consisting of three sons, and two brothers of his eldest daughter’s
husband, William and Dauphin Thompson.

Oliver Brown was a boy not yet twenty-one, though tall and muscular, and
had just been married. Watson was a man of twenty-five, tall and
athletic; while Owen was a large, red-haired prematurely aged man of
thirty-five, partially crippled, good-tempered and cynical. The
Thompsons were neighbors of John Brown and part of a brood of twenty
children. The Brown family and their intermarried Anne Brown says that
William, who was twenty-six years of age, was “kind, generous-hearted,
and helpful to others.” Dauphin, a boy of twenty-two, was, she writes,
“very quiet, with a fair, thoughtful face, curly blonde hair, and
baby-blue eyes. He always seemed like a very good girl.”[209]

The three notable characters of the band were Kagi, Stevens and Cook,
the reformer, the soldier, and the poet. Kagi’s family came from the
Shenandoah Valley. He was twenty-four, had a good English education and
was a newspaper reporter in Kansas, where he earnestly helped the free
state cause. He had strong convictions on the subject of slavery and was
willing to risk all for them. “You will all be killed,” cried a friend
who heard his plan. “Yes, I know it, Hinton, but the result will be
worth the sacrifice.” Hinton adds: “I recall my friend as a man of
personal beauty, with a fine, well-shaped head, a voice of quiet, sweet
tones, that could be penetrating and cutting, too, almost to
sharpness.”[210] Anderson writes that Kagi “left home when a youth, an
enemy to slavery, and brought as his gift offering to freedom three
slaves, whom he piloted to the North. His innate hatred of the
institution made him a willing exile from the state of his birth, and
his great abilities, natural and acquired, entitled him to the position
he held in Captain Brown’s confidence. Kagi was indifferent to personal
appearance; he often went about with slouched hat, one leg of his
pantaloons properly adjusted, and the other partly tucked into his high
boot-top; unbrushed, unshaven, and in utter disregard of ‘the latest
style.’”[211]

Stevens was a handsome six-foot Connecticut soldier of twenty-eight
years of age, who had thrashed his major for mistreating a fellow
soldier and deserted from the United States army. He was active in
Kansas and soon came under John Brown’s discipline.

“Why did you come to Harper’s Ferry?” asked a Virginian.

He replied: “It was to help my fellow men out of bondage. You know
nothing of slavery—I know, a great deal. It is the crime of crimes. I
hate it more and more the longer I live. Even since I have been lying in
this cell, I have heard the crying of 3 slave-children torn from their
parents.”[212]

Cook was also a Connecticut man of twenty-nine years, tall, blue-eyed,
golden-haired and handsome, but a far different type from Stevens. He
was talkative, impulsive and restless, eager for adventure but hardly
steadfast. He followed John Brown as he would have followed anyone else
whom he liked, dreaming his dreams, rushing ahead in the face of danger
and shrinking back appalled and pitiful before the grim face of death.
He was the most thoroughly human figure in the band.

One other deserves mention because it was probably his slowness or
obstinacy that ruined the success of John Brown’s raid. This was Charles
P. Tidd. He was from Maine, twenty-seven years old, trained in Kansas
warfare—a nervous, overbearing and quarrelsome man. He bitterly opposed
the plan of capturing Harper’s Ferry when it was finally revealed, and
as Anne Brown said, “got so warm that he left the farm and went down to
Cook’s dwelling near Harper’s Ferry to let his wrath cool off.” A week
passed before he sullenly gave in.

Besides these, there were six other men of more or less indistinct
personalities. Five were young Kansas settlers from Maine, the Middle
West and Canada, trained in guerrilla warfare under Brown and Montgomery
and thoroughly disliking the slave system which they had seen. They were
personal admirers of Brown and lovers of adventure. The last recruit,
Merriam, was a New England aristocrat turned crusader, fighting the
world’s ills blindly but devotedly. The Negro Lewis Hayden met him in
Boston, “and, after a few words, said, ‘I want five hundred dollars and
must have it.’ Merriam, startled at the manner of the request, replied,
‘If you have a good cause, you shall have it.’ Hayden then told Merriam
briefly what he had learned from John Brown, Jr.: that Captain Brown was
at Chambersburg, or could be heard of there; that he was preparing to
lead a party of liberators into Virginia, and that he needed money; to
which Merriam replied: ‘If you tell me John Brown is there, you can have
my money and me along with it.’”[213]

These were the men—idealists, dreamers, soldiers and avengers, varying
from the silent and thoughtful to the quick and impulsive; from the cold
and bitter to the ignorant and faithful. They believed in God, in
spirits, in fate, in liberty. To them, the world was a wild, young
unregulated thing, and they were born to set it right. It was a
veritable band of crusaders, and while it had much of weakness and
extravagance, it had nothing nasty or unclean. On the whole, they were
an unusual set of men. Anne Brown who lived with them said: “Taking them
all together, I think they would compare well [she is speaking of
manners, etc.] with the same number of men in any station of life I have
ever met.”[214]

They were not men of culture or great education, although Kagi had had a
fair schooling. They were intellectually bold and inquiring—several had
been attracted by the then rampant Spiritualism; nearly all were
skeptical of the world’s social conventions. They had been trained
mostly in the rough school of frontier life, had faced death many times,
and were eager, curious, and restless. Some of them were musical, others
dabbled in verse. Their broadest common ground of sympathy lay in the
personality of John Brown—him they revered and loved. Through him, they
had come to hate slavery, and for him and for what he believed, they
were willing to risk their lives. They themselves, had convictions on
slavery and other matters, but John Brown narrowed down their dreaming
to one intense deed.

Finally, there was John Brown himself. His appearance has been often
described—several times in these pages. In 1859 he was the same striking
figure with whitening hair, burning eyes, and the great white beard
which hardly hid the pendulous side lips of Olympian Jove. One thing,
however, must not be forgotten. John Brown was at this time a sick man.
From 1856 to 1859, scarce a mouth passed without telling of illness. His
health was “some improved” in May 1857, but soon he lost a week “with
ague and fever and left home feeble.” In August he wrote of “ill health”
and “repeated returns of fever and ague.” In September and October, his
health was “poor.” The spring and summer of 1858 found him “not very
stout,” and in July and August, he was “down with ague” and “too sick”
to write. In September he was “still weak,” and, although “some
improved” in December, the following spring found him “not very strong.”
In April, amid the feverish activity of his fatal year, he was “quite
prostrated,” with “the difficulty in my head and ear and with the ague
in consequence.” Late in July, he was “delayed with sickness” and there
can be little doubt that it was an illness and pain-racked body which
his indomitable will forced into the raid of Harper’s Ferry.

Having collected a part of the funds and organized the band, John Brown
was about to strike his blow in the early summer of 1858, as we have
seen, when the Forbes disclosures compelled him to hide in Kansas, where
the last massacre on the Swamp of the Swan invited him. He left Canada
for Kansas in June, 1858. Cook, somewhat against the wishes of Brown who
feared his garrulity, went to Harper’s Ferry, worked as a booking agent
and canal keeper, made love to a maid and married her and then acted as
advance agent awaiting the main band. Ten months after leaving Canada,
and in mid-March, 1859, John Brown appeared again in Canada (as has been
told in Chapter VII) with twelve rescued slaves as an earnest of the
feasibility of his plan. He stayed long enough to spread the news and
then went to northern Ohio where he spoke in public of Kansas and
slavery. “He said that he had never lifted a finger toward any one whom
he did not know was a violent persecutor of the free state men. He had
never killed anybody; although, on some occasions, he had shown the
young men with him how some things might be done as well as others, and
they had done the business. He had never destroyed the value of an ear
of corn, and had never set fire to any pro-slavery man’s house or
property. He had never by his action driven out pro-slavery men from the
Territory; but if the occasion demanded it, he would drive them into the
ground, like fence stakes, where they would remain permanent settlers.

“Brown remarked that he was an outlaw, the governor of Missouri has
offered a reward of $3,000, and James Buchanan $250 more, for him. He
quietly remarked, parenthetically, that John Brown would give two
dollars and fifty cents for the safe delivery of the body of James
Buchanan in any jail of the free states. He would never submit to an
arrest, as he had nothing to gain from submission; but he should settle
all questions on the spot if any attempt was made to take him. The
liberation of those slaves was meant as a direct blow to slavery, and he
laid down his platform that he had considered it his duty to break the
fetters from any slave when he had an opportunity. He was a thorough
Abolitionist.”[215]

Then, he went East to see his family and visit Douglass (where he met
and persuaded Shields Green), and to consult with Gerrit Smith and
Sanborn. Alcott at Concord wrote:

“This evening I heard Captain Brown speak at the town hall on Kansas
affairs and the part took by them in the late troubles there. He tells
his story with surpassing simplicity and sense, impressing us all deeply
by his courage and religious earnestness. Our best people listen to his
words,—Emerson, Thoreau, Judge Hoar, my wife; and some of them
contribute something in aid of his plans without asking particulars,
such confidence does he inspire in his integrity and abilities. I have a
few words with him after his speech, and find him superior to legal
traditions, and a disciple of the Right in ideality and the affairs of
the state. He is Sanborn’s guest and stays for a day only. A young man
named Anderson accompanies him. They go armed, I am told, and will
defend themselves, if necessary. I believe they are now on their way to
Connecticut and farther south, but the captain leaves us much in the
dark concerning his destination and designs for the coming months. Yet
he does not conceal his hatred of slavery, nor his readiness to strike a
blow for freedom at the proper moment. I infer he intends to run off as
many slaves as he can, and so render that property insecure to the
master. I think him equal to anything he dares,—the man to do the deed,
if it must be done, and with the martyr’s temper and purpose. Nature was
deeply intent in the making of him. He is of imposing appearance,
personally—tall, with square shoulders and standing; eyes of deep gray,
and couchant, as if ready to spring at the least rustling, dauntless yet
kindly; his hair shooting backward from low down on his forehead; nose
trenchant and Romanesque; set lips, his voice suppressed yet metallic,
suggesting deep reserves; decided mouth; the countenance and frame
charged with power throughout. Since here last he has added a flowing
beard, which gives the soldierly air and the port of an apostle. Though
sixty years old he is agile and alert and ready for any audacity, in any
crisis. I think him about the manliest man I have ever seen,—the type
and synonym of the Just.”[216]

The month of May, John Brown spent in Boston collecting funds, and in
New York consulting his Negro friends, with a trip to Connecticut to
hurry the making of his thousand pikes. Sickness intervened, but at last
on June 20th, the advance-guard of five—Brown and two of his sons, Jerry
Anderson and Kagi—started southward. They stayed several days at
Chambersburg, where Kagi, coöperating with a faithful Negro barber,
Watson, was established as a general agent to forward men, mail, and
freight. Then passing through Hagerstown, they appeared at Harper’s
Ferry on July 4th. Here they met Cook, who had been selling maps,
keeping the canal-lock near the arsenal, and sending regular information
to Brown. Brown and his sons wandered about at first, and a local farmer
greeted them cheerily: “Good-morning, gentlemen, how do you do?” They
returned the greeting pleasantly. The conversation is recounted as
follows:

“I said, ‘Well, gentlemen,’ after saluting them in that form, ‘I suppose
you are out hunting minerals, gold, and silver?’ His answer was, ‘No, we
are not, we are out looking for land; we want to buy land; we have a
little money, but we want to make it go as far as we can.’ He asked me
about the price of the land. I told him that it ranged from fifteen
dollars to thirty dollars in the neighborhood. He remarked, ‘That is
high; I thought I could buy land here for about a dollar or two dollars
per acre.’ I remarked to him, ‘No, sir; if you expect to get land for
that price, you will have to go further west, to Kansas, or some of
those Territories where there is government land.’ ... I then asked him
where they came from. His answer was, ‘From the northern part of the
state of New York.’ I asked him what he followed there. He said farming
and the frost had been so heavy lately, that it cut off their crops
there; that he could not make anything, and sold out, and thought he
would come further south and try it awhile.”[217]

Through this easy-going, inquisitive farmer, Brown learned of a farm for
rent, which he hired for nine months for thirty-five dollars. It was on
the main road between Harper’s Ferry, Chambersburg, and the North, about
five miles from the Ferry and in a quiet secluded place. The house stood
about 300 yards back from the Boonesborough pike, in plain sight. About
600 yards away on the other side of the road was another cabin of one
room and a garret, which was largely hidden from view by the shrubbery.
Here Brown settled and gradually collected his men and material. The
arms were especially slow in coming. Most of the guns arrived at
Chambersburg from Connecticut about August, but the pikes did not come
until a month later. Then to the men were gathered slowly. They were at
the four ends of the country, in all sorts of employment and different
financial conditions, and they were not certain just when the raid would
take place. All this delayed Brown from July until October and greatly
increased the cost of maintenance. A daughter, Anne, and Oliver’s girl
wife came and kept the house from July 16th to October 1st.

At this critical juncture, Harriet Tubman fell sick—a grave loss to the
cause—and there were other delays. By August 1st, there were at Harper’s
Ferry the two Brown daughters and three sons, and the two brothers of a
son-in-law, besides the two Coppocs, Tidd, Jerry Anderson, and Stevens.
Hazlett, Leeman, and Taylor came soon after. Kagi was still at
Chambersburg and John Brown himself “labored and traveled night and day,
sometimes on old Dolly, his brown mule, and sometimes in the wagon. He
would start directly after night, and travel the fifty miles between the
farm and Chambersburg by daylight the next morning; and he otherwise
kept open communication between headquarters and the latter place, in
order that matters might be arranged in due season.”[218]

In the North John Brown, Jr., was shipping the arms and gathering men
and money. He was in Boston August 10th, at Douglass’s home, soon after,
and later in Canada with Loguen. All the chief branches of the League
were visited and then northern Ohio. The result was meagre; not because
of a lack of men but lack of the kind of men wanted at this time. There
were thousands of Negroes ready to fight for liberty in the ranks. But
most of these John Brown could not use at present. No considerable band
of armed black men could have been introduced into the South without
immediate discovery and civil war. It was therefore picked leaders like
Douglass, Reynolds, Holden and Delaney that Brown wanted at
first—discreet and careful men of influence, who, as he said to
Douglass, could hive the swarming bees both North and South. To get
these picked men interested was, however, difficult. Each had his work
and his theory of racial salvation; they were widely scattered. A number
of them had been convinced in 1858, but the postponement had given time
for reflection and doubt. In many ways, the original enthusiasm had
waned, but it was not dead. The cause was just as great and all that was
needed was to convince men that this was a real chance to strike an
effective blow. They required the magic of Brown’s own presence to
impress this fact upon them. They were not sure of his agents. Men
continued to come, however, others began to prepare and still, others
were almost persuaded. An urgent summons went to Kansas to white fellow
workers, and the response there was similarly small. Brown knew that his
ability to command the services of a large number of Northern Negroes
depended to some degree on Frederick Douglass’s attitude. He was the
first great national Negro leader—a man of ability, _finesse_, and
courage. If he followed John Brown, who could hesitate? If he refused,
was it not for the best of reasons? Thus John Brown continually urged
Douglass and as a last appeal arranged for a final conference on August
19th at Chambersburg in an abandoned stone quarry. Douglass says:

“As I came near, he regarded me rather suspiciously, but soon recognized
me, and received me cordially. He had in his hand when I met him a
fishing-tackle, with which he had been fishing in a stream hard by, but
I saw no fish and did not suppose he cared much for his ‘fisherman’s
luck.’ The fishing was simply a disguise and was certainly a good one.
He looked every way like a man of the neighborhood, and as much at home
as any of the farmers around there. His hat was old and storm-beaten,
and his clothing was about the color of the stone quarry itself—his then
present dwelling-place.

“His face wore an anxious expression, and he was much worn by thought
and exposure. I felt that I was on a dangerous mission, and was as
little desirous of discovery as himself, though no reward had been
offered for me. We—Mr. Kagi, Captain Brown, Shields Green, and
myself—sat down among the rocks and talked over the enterprise which was
about to be undertaken. The taking of Harper’s Ferry, of which Captain
Brown had merely hinted before, was now declared as his settled purpose,
and he wanted to know what I thought of it. I at once opposed the
measure with all the arguments at my command. To me, such a measure
would be fatal to running off slaves (as was the original plan), and
fatal to all engaged in doing so. It would be an attack upon The federal
government and would array the whole country against us. Captain Brown
did most of the talking on the other side of the question. He did not at
all object to rousing the nation; it seemed to him that something
startling was just what the nation needed.... Our talk was long and
earnest; we spent the most of Saturday and a part of Sunday in this
debate—Brown for Harper’s Ferry, and I against it; he for striking a
blow which should instantly rouse the country, and I for the policy of
gradually and unaccountably drawing off the slaves to the mountains, as
at first suggested and proposed by him. When I found that he had fully
made up his mind and could not be dissuaded, I turned to Shields Green
and told him he heard what Captain Brown had said; his old plan was
changed, and that I should return home, and if he wished to go with me
he could do so. Captain Brown urged us both to go with him, but I could
not do so, and could but feel that he was about to rivet the fetters
more firmly than ever on the limbs of the enslaved. In parting, he put
his arms around me in a manner more than friendly and said: ‘Come with
me, Douglass; I will defend you with my life. I want you for a special
purpose. When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want
you to help hive them.’ But my discretion or my cowardice made me proof
against the dear old man’s eloquence—perhaps it was something of both
that determined my course. When about to leave, I asked Green what he
had decided to do, and was surprised by his coolly saying, in his broken
way, ‘I b’lieve I’ll go wid de ole man.’ Here we separated; they to go
to Harper’s Ferry, I to Rochester.”[219]

Douglass’s decision undoubtedly kept many Negroes from joining Brown.
Shields Green, however, started south. The slave-catchers followed him
and made him and Owen Brown swim a river. Only their journeying
southward instead of northward saved them from capture.

Life at the farm during this time was curious. Anderson says:

“There was no milk and water sentimentality—no offensive contempt for
the Negro, while working in his cause; the pulsations of every heart
beat in harmony for the suffering and pleading slave. I thank God that I
have been permitted to realize to its furthest, fullest extent, the
moral, mental, physical, social harmony of an anti-slavery family,
carrying out to the letter the principles of its antitype, the
anti-slavery cause. In John Brown’s house, and in John Brown’s presence,
men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one
company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self—no
ghost of distinction found space to enter....

“To a passer-by, the house and its surroundings presented but
indifferent attractions. Any log tenement of equal dimensions would be
as likely to arrest a stray glance. Rough, unsightly, and aged, it was
only for those privileged to enter and tarry for a long time, and to
penetrate the mysteries of the two rooms it contained—kitchen, parlor,
dining-room below, and the spacious chamber, attic, storeroom, prison,
drilling-room, comprised in the loft above—who could tell how we lived
at Kennedy Farm.

“Every morning, when the noble old man was at home, he called the family
around, read from his Bible, and offered to God most fervent and
touching supplications for all flesh; and especially pathetic were his
petitions in behalf of the oppressed. I never heard John Brown pray,
that he did not make strong appeals to God for the deliverance of the
slave. This duty over, the men went to the loft, there to remain all day
long; few only could be seen about, as the neighbors were watchful and
suspicious. It was also important to talk but little among ourselves, as
visitors to the house might be curious. Besides the daughter and
daughter-in-law, who superintended the work, some one or other of the
men was regularly detailed to assist in the cooking, washing, and other
domestic work. After the ladies left, we did all the work, no one being
exempt, because of age or official grade in the organization.

“The principal employment of the prisoners, as we severally were when
compelled to stay in the loft, was to study Forbes’s Manual, and to go
through a quiet, though rigid drill, under the training of Captain
Stevens, at some times. At other times we applied a preparation for
bronzing our gun-barrels-discussed subjects of reform—related our
personal history; but when our resources became pretty well exhausted,
the _ennui_ from confinement, imposed silence, etc., would make the men
almost desperate. At such times, neither slavery nor slaveholders were
discussed mincingly. We were, while the ladies remained, often relieved
of much of the dullness growing out of restraint by their kindness. As
we could not circulate freely, they would bring in wild fruit and
flowers from the woods and fields.”[220]

Anne, the young daughter, says: “One day, a short time after I went down
there, father was sitting at the table writing. I was nearby sewing (he
and I being alone in the room), when two little wrens that had a nest
under the porch came flying in at the door, fluttering and twittering;
then they flew back to their nest and again to us several times,
seemingly trying to attract our attention. They appeared to be in great
distress. I asked father what he thought was the matter with the little
birds. He asked if I had ever seen them act so before; I told him no.
‘Then let us go and see,’ he said. We went out and found that a snake
had crawled up the post and was just ready to devour the little ones in
the nest. Father killed the snake; and then the old birds sat on the
railing and sang as if they would burst. It seemed as if they were
trying to express their joy and gratitude to him for saving their little
ones. After we went back into the room, he said he thought it very
strange the way the birds asked him to help them, and asked if I thought
it an omen of his success. He seemed very much impressed with that idea.
I do not think he was superstitious, but you know he always thought and
felt that God called him to that work; and seemed to place himself, or
rather to imagine himself, in the position of the figure in the old seal
of Virginia, with the tyrant under her foot.”[221]

The men discussed religion and slavery freely, read Paine’s _Age of
Reason_ and the Baltimore _Sun_. John Brown himself was careful to
cultivate the good-will of his neighbors, attending with skill the sick
among animals and men, so much so that he and his sons became prime
favorites. Owen had long conversations with the people, while Cook was
also moving about the country selling maps. A little Dunker chapel was
near with non-resistant, anti-slavery principles; here John Brown often
worshiped and preached. Yet with all this caution and care, suspicion
lurked about them, and discovery was always imminent.

Brown’s daughter relates that “there was a family of poor people who
lived nearby and who had rented the garden on the Kennedy place,
directly back of the house. The little barefooted woman and four small
children (she carried the youngest in her arms) would all come trooping
over to the garden at all hours of the day, and, at times, several times
during the day. Nearly always they would come up the steps and into the
house and stay a short time. This made it very troublesome for us,
compelling the men, when she came insight at meal-times, to gather up
the victuals and table-cloth and quietly disappear up-stairs.

“One Saturday father and I went to a religious (Dunker) meeting that was
held in a grove near the schoolhouse and the folks left at home forgot
to keep a sharp lookout for Mrs. Heiffmaster, and she stole into the
house before they saw her, and saw Shields Green (that must have been in
September), Barclay Coppoc, and Will Lemnian. And another time after
that she saw C. P. Tidd standing on the porch. She thought these
strangers were running off negroes to the North. I used to give her
everything she wanted or asked for to keep her on good terms, but we
were in constant fear that she was either a spy or would betray us. It
was like standing on a powder magazine after a slow match had been
lighted.”[222]

Despite all precautions, a rumor began to get in the air. A Prussian
Pole was among the Kansas cooperators invited. He had been in Kansas in
1856 and was known to Brown and Kagi. After hearing from Brown in August
1859, the Pole disclosed their plans to Edmund Babb, a correspondent of
the Cincinnati _Gazette_. It was probably Babb who thereupon wrote to
the United States Secretary of War: “I have discovered the existence of
a secret association, having for its object the liberation of the slaves
at the South and by a general insurrection. The leader of the movement
is one ‘old John Brown,’ late of Kansas.” Approximately correct details
of the plot followed, but Secretary Floyd was lolling at a summer resort
and had some little conspiracies of his own in hand not unconnected with
United States arsenals. Being, therefore, as he said magniloquently,
“satisfied in my mind that a scheme of such wickedness and outrage could
not be entertained by any citizens of the United States, I put the
letter away, and thought no more of it until the raid broke out.”[223]

Gerrit Smith, too, with little discretion, addressed to Negro audience
words which plainly showed he shortly expected a slave insurrection.
Even among Harper’s Ferry party forced inaction led to disputes and
disaffection. John Brown sharply rebuked the letter-writing and
gossiping about his men. “Any person is a stupid fool,” he told Kagi,
“who expects his friends to keep for him that which he cannot keep
himself. All our friends have each got their special friends; and they
again have theirs, and it would not be right to lay the burden of
keeping a secret on any one at the end of a long string. I could tell
you of reasons I have for feeling rather keenly on this point.”[224]

The men, on the other hand, were dissatisfied with Brown’s plans as they
were finally disclosed. Anne Brown writes that they generally “did not
know that the raid on the government works was a part of the ‘plan’
until after they arrived at the farm in the beginning of August.”[225]
They wanted simply to repeat the Missouri raid on a larger scale and not
try to capture the arsenal. Tidd was especially stubborn and
irreconcilable. The discussion became so warm that John Brown at one
time resigned, but he was immediately reëlected and this formal letter
was sent to him:

“DEAR SIR—We have all agreed to sustain your decisions, until you have
proved incompetent, and many of us will adhere to your decisions so long
as you will.”[226]

In these ways Brown was compelled to hurry and accordingly he urged his
eldest son, who replied: “Through those associations which I formed in
Canada, I am able to reach each individual member at the shortest notice
by letter. I am devoting my whole time to our company business. I shall
immediately go out organizing and raising funds. From what I even had
understood, I had supposed you would not think it best to commence
opening the coal banks before spring unless circumstances should make it
imperative. However, I suppose the reasons are satisfactory to you, and
if so, those who own smaller shares ought not to object. I hope we shall
be able to get on in season some of those old miners of whom I wrote
you. I shall strain every nerve to accomplish this. You may be assured
that what you say to me will reach those who may be benefited thereby,
and those who would take stock, in the shortest possible time; so don’t
fail to keep me posted.”[227]

As late as October 6th Brown expected to “move about the end of the
month” and made a hurried trip to Philadelphia. There he met a large
group of Negroes, and Dorsey the caterer with whom he stayed, at 1221
Locust Street, is said to have given him $300. In some way, he was
disappointed with the visit. Anderson says he went “on the business of
great importance. How important, men there and elsewhere now know. How
affected by, and affecting the main features of the enterprise, we at
the farm knew full after their return, as the old captain, in the
fullness of his overflowing, saddened heart, detailed point after point
of interest”[228] Perhaps he was still trying to persuade Douglass and
the leaders of the Philadelphia and New York groups.

The women left the farm late in September and O. P. Anderson, Copeland,
and Leary arrived. Merriam joined Brown while he was on the Philadelphia
trip and was sent to Baltimore to buy caps for the guns. Others were
coming when suddenly Brown fixed on October 17th as the date of the
raid. This hurried change was probably because officials and neighbors
were getting inquisitive, and arms were being removed from the arsenal
to man Southern stations. Yet it was unfortunate, as Anderson says:
“Could other parties, waiting for the word, have reached the
headquarters in time for the outbreak when it took place, the taking of
the armory, engine-house, and rifle factory, would have been quite
different. But the men at the farm had been so closely confined, that
they went out about the house and farm in the daytime during that week,
and so indiscreetly exposed their numbers to the prying neighbors, who
thereupon took steps to have a search instituted in the early part of
the coming week. Captain Brown was not seconded in another quarter, as
he expected, at the time of the action, but could the fears of the
neighbors have been allayed for a few days, the disappointment in the
former respect would not have been of much weight.”[229]

Only the nearest of the slaves round about who awaited the word could be
communicated with and several recruits like Hinton were left stranded on
the way, unable to get through in time. So the great day dawned: “On
Sunday morning, October 16th, Captain Brown arose earlier than usual,
and called his men down to worship. He read a chapter from the Bible,
applicable to the condition of the slaves, and our duty as their
brethren, and then offered up a fervent prayer to God to assist in the
liberation of the bondmen in that slaveholding land. The services were
impressive.”[230]

A council was held, over which O. P. Anderson, the colored man,
presided. In the afternoon the final orders were given and at night just
before setting out, John Brown said: “And now, gentlemen, let me impress
this one thing upon your minds. You all know how dear life is to you,
and how dear life is to your friends. And in remembering that, consider
that the lives of others areas dear to them as yours are to you. Do not,
therefore, take the life of anyone, if you can possibly avoid it, but if
it is necessary to take life to save your own, then make sure work of
it.”[231]




                               CHAPTER XI
                                THE BLOW

         “Woe unto them that call evil, good; and good, evil.”

“At eight o’clock on Sunday evening, Captain Brown said: ‘Men, get on
your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry.’ His horse and wagon were
brought out before the door, and some pikes, a sledge-hammer and a
crowbar were placed in it. The captain then put on his old Kansas cap,
and said: ‘Come, boys!’ when we marched out of the camp behind him, into
the lane leading down the hill to the main road.”[232]

The orders given commanded Owen Brown, Merriam and Barclay Coppoc to
watch the house and arms until ordered to bring them toward the Ferry.
Tidd and Cook were to cut the telegraph lines and Kagi and Stephens to
detain the bridge guard. Watson Brown and Taylor were to hold the bridge
over the Potomac, and Oliver Brown and William Thompson the bridge over
the Shenandoah. Jerry Anderson and Dauphin Thompson were to occupy the
engine-house in the arsenal yard, while Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc were to
hold the armory.

During the night Kagi and Copeland were to seize and guard the rifle
factory, and others were to go out in the country and bring in certain
masters and their slaves.

It was a cold dark night when the band started. Ahead was John Brown in
his one-horse farm-wagon, with pikes, a sledge-hammer and a crowbar.
Behind him marched the men silently and at intervals, Cook and Tidd
leading. They had five miles to go, over rolling hills and through woods
and then down to a narrow road between the cliffs and the Cincinnati and
Ohio canal. As they approached the railroad, Cook and Tidd cut the
telegraph wires which led to Baltimore and Washington. At the bridge
they halted and made ready their arms. At ten o’clock William Williams,
one of the watchmen there, was surprised to find himself a prisoner in
the hands of Kagi and Stevens, who took him through the covered
structure to the town, leaving Watson Brown and Steward Taylor to guard
the bridge. The rest of the company entered Harper’s Ferry.

The land between the rivers is itself high, though dwarfed by the
mountains and running down to a low point where the rivers join. At this
place the bridge leads to Maryland. After crossing the bridge to
Virginia, about sixty yards up the street, running parallel to the
Potomac, was the gate of the armory where the arms were made. On the
Shenandoah side about sixty yards from the armory gate is the arsenal,
where the arms were stored. The company proceeded to the armory gate.
The watchman tells how the place was captured:

“‘Open the gate,’ said they; I said, ‘I could not if I was stuck,’ and
one of them jumped up on the pier of the gate over my head, and another
fellow ran and put his hand on me and caught me by the coat and held me;
I was inside and they were outside, and the fellow standing over my head
upon the pier, and then when I would not open the gate for them, five or
six ran in from the wagon, clapped their guns against my breast, and
told me I should deliver up the key; I told them I could not; and
another fellow made an answer and said they had not time now to be
waiting for the key, but to go to the wagon and bring out the crowbar
and large hammer, and they would soon get in; they went to the little
wagon and brought a large crowbar out of it; there is a large chain
around the two sides of the wagon-gate going in; they twisted the
crowbar in the chain and they opened it, and in they ran and got in the
wagon; one fellow took me; they all gathered about me and looked in my
face; I was nearly scared to death with so many guns about me.”[233]

[Illustration: MAP OF HARPER’S FERRY, SHOWING POINTS FIGURING IN THE
RAID]

The two captured watchmen, Anderson says, “were left in the custody of
Jerry Anderson and Dauphin Thompson, and A. D. Stevens arranged the men
to take possession of the armory and rifle factory. About this time,
there was apparently much excitement. People were passing back and forth
in the town, and before we could do much, we had to take several
prisoners. After the prisoners were secured, we passed to the opposite
side of the street and took the armory, and Albert Hazlett and Edwin
Coppoc were ordered to hold it for the time being.”[234]

The other fourteen men quickly dispersed through the village. Oliver
Brown and William Thompson seized and guarded the bridge across the
Shenandoah. This bridge was sixty rods from the railway bridge up the
river and was the direct route to Loudoun Heights, the slave-filled
lower valley, and the Great Black Way. It was, however, not the only way
across the Shenandoah: a little more than half a mile farther up were
the rifle works, where the stream could be easily forded. Kagi and
Copeland went there, captured the watchman and took possession.

“These places were all taken, and the prisoners secured, without the
snap of a gun, or any violence whatever,” says Anderson, and he
continues: “The town being taken, Brown, Stevens, and the men who had no
post in charge, returned to the engine-house, where council was held,
after which Captain Stevens, Tidd, Cook, Shields Green, Leary and myself
went to the country. On the road we met some colored men, to whom we
made known our purpose, when they immediately agreed to join us. They
said they had been long waiting for an opportunity of the kind. Stevens
then asked them to go around among the colored people and circulate the
news, when each started off in a different direction. The result was
that many colored men gathered to the scene of action. The first
prisoner taken by us was Colonel Lewis Washington [a relative of George
Washington]. When we neared his house, Captain Stevens placed Leary and
Shields Green to guard the approaches to the house, the one at the side,
and the other in front. We then knocked, but no one answering, although
females were looking from upper windows, we entered the building and
commenced a search for the proprietor. Colonel Washington opened his
room door, and begged us not to kill him. Captain Stevens replied, ‘You
are our prisoner,’ when he stood as if speechless or petrified. Stevens
further told him to get ready to go to the Ferry; that he had come to
abolish slavery, not to take life but in self-defense, but that he must
go along. The colonel replied: ‘You can have my slaves, if you will let
me remain.’ ‘No,’ said the captain, ‘you must go along too; so get
ready.’”[235]

He and his male slaves were thus taken, together with a large four-horse
wagon and some arms, including the Lafayette sword. Away the party went
and after capturing another planter and his slaves, arrived at the Ferry
before daybreak.

Meantime the citizens of the Ferry, returning late from protracted
Methodist meeting, were being taken prisoners and about one o’clock in
the morning the east-bound Baltimore and Ohio train arrived. This was
detained and the local colored porter shot dead by Brown’s guards on the
bridge. The passengers were greatly excited, but at first thought it was
a strike of some kind. After sunrise the train was allowed to proceed,
John Brown himself walking ahead across the bridge to reassure the
conductor. So Monday, October 17th, began and Anderson says it “was a
time of stirring and exciting events. In consequence of the movements of
the night before, we were prepared for commotion and tumult, but
certainly not for more than we beheld around us. Gray dawn and yet
brighter daylight revealed great confusion, and as the sun arose, the
panic spread like wild-fire. Men, women and children could be seen
leaving their homes in every direction; some seeking refuge among
residents, and in quarters further away; others climbing up the
hillsides, and hurrying off in various directions, evidently impelled by
a sudden fear, which was plainly visible in their countenances or in
their movements.

“Captain Brown was all activity, though I could not help thinking that
at times he appeared somewhat puzzled. He ordered Lewis Sherrard Leary
and four slaves, and a free man belonging in the neighborhood, to join
John Henry Kagi and John Copeland at the rifle factory, which they
immediately did.... After the departure of the train, quietness
prevailed for a short time; a number of prisoners were already in the
engine-house, and of the many colored men living in the neighborhood,
who had assembled in the town, a number were armed.”[236]

Up to this point everything in John Brown’s plan had worked like
clockwork, and there had been but one death. The armory was captured,
from twenty-five to fifty slaves had been armed, several masters were in
custody and the next move was to get the arms and ammunition from the
farm. Cook says that when the party returned from the country at dawn,
“I stayed a short while in the engine-house to get warm, as I was
chilled through. After I got warm, Captain Brown ordered me to go with
C. P. Tidd, who was to take William H. Leeman, and, I think, four slaves
[Anderson says fourteen slaves] with him, in Colonel Washington’s large
wagon, across the river, and to take Terrence Burns and his brother and
their slaves prisoners. My orders were to hold Burns and brother as
prisoners at their own house, while Tidd and the slaves who accompanied
him were to go to Captain Brown’s house and to load in arms and bring
them down to the schoolhouse, stopping for the Burnses and their guard.
William H. Leeman remained with me to guard the prisoners. On return of
the wagon, in compliance with orders, we all started for the
schoolhouse. When we got there, I was to remain, by Captain Brown’s
orders, with one of the slaves to guard the arms, while C. P. Tidd, with
the other Negroes, was to go back for the rest of the arms, and Burns
was to be sent with William H. Leeman to Captain Brown at the armory. It
was at this time that William Thompson came up from the Ferry and
reported that everything was all right, and then hurried on to overtake
William H. Leeman. A short time after the departure of Tidd, I heard a
good deal of firing and became anxious to know the cause, but my orders
were strict to remain in the schoolhouse and guard the arms, and I
obeyed the orders to the letter. About four o’clock in the evening C. P.
Tidd came with the second load.”[237]

Here, in all probability, was the fatal hitch. The farm was not over
three miles from the schoolhouse, and there was a heavy farm-wagon with
four large strong horses and a dozen men or more to help. The fact that
it took these men eleven hours to move two wagon-loads of material less
than three miles is the secret of the extraordinary failure of Brown’s
foray at a time when victory was in his grasp. That Cook was needlessly
dilatory in the moving is certain. He sat down in Byrnes’s house and
made a speech on human equality. Then Tidd went on to the farm with the
wagon and brought a load of arms, which he deposited at the point where
the Kennedy farm road meets the Potomac almost at right angles, about
three miles or less from the Ferry. The schoolhouse stood here and the
children were frightened half to death. Cook stopped at this place and
unloaded the wagon, and then Leeman went with Byrnes to the guard-house,
lingering and actually sitting beside the road. Even then they arrived
before ten o’clock. With haste it is certain that, despite the muddy
road, the first load of arms could have been at the schoolhouse before
eight o’clock in the morning, and the whole of the stores by ten
o’clock. That Brown expected this is shown by his sending William
Thompson to reassure the men at the farm of his safety and probably to
urge haste; yet when the second load of arms appeared, it was four
o’clock in the afternoon, at least three hours after Brown had been
completely surrounded. Judging from Cook’s narrative, it is likely that
Thompson did not see Tidd at all. It was this inexcusable delay on the
part of Tidd and Cook and, possibly, William Thompson that undoubtedly
made the raid a failure. To be sure, John Brown never said so—never
hinted that any one was to blame but himself. But that was John Brown’s
way.

Events in the town had moved quickly. After Cook had departed, Brown
ordered O. P. Anderson “to take the pikes out of the wagon in which he
rode to the Ferry, and to place them in the hands of the colored men who
had come with us from the plantations, and others who had come forward
without having had communication with any of our party.”[238]

The citizens were “wild with fright and excitement.... The prisoners
were also terror-stricken. Some wanted to go home to see their families,
as if for the last time. The privilege was granted them, under escort,
and they were brought back again. Edwin Coppoc, one of the sentinels at
the armory gate, was fired at by one of the citizens, but the ball did
not reach him, when one of the insurgents close by put up his rifle, and
made the enemy bite the dust. Among the arms taken from Colonel
Washington was one double-barreled gun. This weapon was loaded by Leeman
with buckshot, and placed in the hands of an elderly slave man, early in
the morning. After the cowardly charge upon Coppoc, this old man was
ordered by Captain Stevens to arrest a citizen. The old man ordered him
to halt, which he refused to do, when instantly the terrible load was
discharged into him, and he fell, and expired without a struggle.”[239]

The next step which John Brown had in mind is unknown, but there were
two safe movements at 9 A. M. Monday morning:

(_a_) The arms could have been brought across the Potomac bridge and
then across the Shenandoah, and so up Londoun Heights. The men from the
Maryland side could have joined, and Brown and his men covered their
retreat by compelling the hostages to march with them. Kagi and his men,
by wading the Shenandoah, could have supported them.

(_b_) The arms could have been taken down to the Potomac from the
schoolhouse, ferried across and moved over to Kagi. Brown and his men
could have joined the party there and all retreated up Loudoun Heights.
From the fact that Brown had the arms stopped at the schoolhouse, this
seems probably to have been the thought in his mind.

On the other hand, the plan usually attributed to Brown is unthinkable;
viz., that he intended retreating across the Potomac into the Maryland
mountains. First, he had just come out of the Maryland mountains and had
moved down his arms and ammunition; and second, this manœuvre would have
cut his band off from the Great Black Way to the South unless he
captured the Ferry a second time. Manifestly this, then, was not Brown’s
idea. It has, however, been suggested that the arms had been moved down
to the schoolhouse to be placed in the hands of slaves there. But why
were they left on the Maryland side? In the whole Maryland country west
of the mountains were less than a thousand able-bodied Negroes, of whom
not a tenth could have been cognizant of the uprising, while Brown had
arms for 1,200 men or more. No, Brown intended to move the arms in bulk.
He had perhaps a ton, or a ton and a half of baggage. He wished it moved
first to the schoolhouse, and then if all was well to the Ferry, or
straight across to the mountains. Cook started before five o’clock in
the morning, and Brown no doubt expected to hear that the arms were at
the schoolhouse by ten. At eleven o’clock he dispatched William Thompson
to Kennedy farm. Anderson thinks that Thompson’s message made the farm
party even more leisurely because it told of success so far. This is
surely impossible. The veriest tyro must have known that minutes were
golden despite the tremendous fortune of the expedition. Did Thompson
misapprehend his message? Was the delay Tidd’s and what was Owen Brown
thinking and doing? It is a curious puzzle, but it is the puzzle of the
foray. If the party with the arms had arrived at the bridge any time
before noon, the raid would have been successful. Even as it was, Brown
still had three courses open to him, all of which promised a measure of
success:

(_a_) He could have gotten his band and crossed back to
Maryland,—although this meant the abandonment of the main features of
his whole plan. As time waned Stevens and Kagi urged this but Brown
refused.

(_b_) He could have gone to Loudoun Heights, but this would have
involved abandoning his arms and stores and above all, one of his sons,
Cook, Tidd, Merriam, Coppoc and the slaves. This was unthinkable.

(_c_) He could have used his hostages to force terms. For not doing this
he afterward repeatedly blamed himself, but characteristically blamed no
one else for anything.

Meantime every minute of delay aroused the country and brought the
citizens to their senses. “The train that left Harper’s Ferry carried a
panic to Virginia, Maryland and Washington with it. The passengers,
taking all the paper they could find, wrote accounts of the
insurrection, which they threw from the windows as the train rushed
onward.”[240]

A local physician says: “I went back to the hillside then, and tried to
get the citizens together, to see what we could do to get rid of these
fellows. They seemed to be very troublesome. When I got on the hill I
learned that they had shot Boerly. That was probably about seven
o’clock.... I had ordered the Lutheran church bell to be rung to get the
citizens together to see what sort of arms they had. I found one or two
squirrel rifles and a few shotguns. I had sent a messenger to
Charlestown in the meantime for Captain Rowan, commander of a volunteer
company there. I also sent messengers to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
to stop the trains coming east, and not let them approach the Ferry, and
also a messenger to Shepherdstown.”[241]

Another eye-witness adds: “There was unavoidable delay in the
preparations for a fight, because of the scarcity of weapons; for only a
few squirrel guns and fowling-pieces could be found. There were then at
Harper’s Ferry thousands and tens of thousands of muskets and rifles of
the most approved patterns, but they were all boxed up in the arsenal,
and the arsenal was in the hands of the enemy. And such, too, was the
scarcity of the ammunition that, after using up the limited supply of
lead found in the village stores, pewter plates and spoons had to be
melted and molded into bullets for the occasion.

“By nine o’clock a number of indifferently armed citizens assembled on
Camp Hill and decided that the party, consisting of half a dozen men,
should cross the Potomac a short distance above the Ferry, and, going
down the tow-path of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal as far as the railway
bridge, should attack the two sentinels stationed there, who, by the
way, had been reënforced by four more of Brown’s party. Another small
party under Captain Medler was to cross the Shenandoah and take position
opposite the rifle works, while Captain Avis, with a sufficient force,
should take possession of the Shenandoah bridge, and Captain Roderick,
with some of the armorers, should post themselves on the Baltimore and
Ohio Railway west of the Ferry just above the armories.”[242]

At last the militia commenced to arrive and the movements to cut off
Brown’s men began. The Jefferson Guards crossed the Potomac, came down
to the Maryland side and seized the Potomac bridge. The local company
was sent to take the Shenandoah bridge, leave a guard and march to the
rear of the arsenal, while another local company was to seize the houses
in front of the arsenal.

“As strangers poured in,” says Anderson, “the enemy took positions round
about, so as to prevent any escape, within shooting distance of the
engine-house and arsenal. Captain Brown, seeing their manœuvres, said,
‘We will hold on to our three positions, if they are unwilling to come
to terms, and die like men.’”[243]

The attack came at noon from the Jefferson Guards, who started across
the Potomac bridge from Maryland. This is Anderson’s story:

“It was about twelve o’clock in the day when we were first attacked by
the troops. Prior to that, Captain Brown, in anticipation of further
trouble, had girded to his side the famous sword taken from Colonel
Lewis Washington the night before, and with that memorable weapon, he
commanded his men against General Washington’s own state. When the
captain received the news that the troops had entered the bridge from
the Maryland side, he, with some of his men, went into the street, and
sent a message to the arsenal for us to come forth also. We hastened to
the street as ordered, when he said—‘The troops are on the bridge,
coming into town; we will give them a warm reception.’ He then walked
around amongst us, giving us words of encouragement, in this wise:—‘Men!
be cool! Don’t waste your powder and shot! Take aim, and make every shot
count!’ ‘The troops will look for us to retreat on their first
appearance; be careful to shoot first.’ Our men were well supplied with
firearms, but Captain Brown had no rifle at that time; his only weapon
was the sword before mentioned.

“The troops soon came out of the bridge, and up the street facing us, we
occupying an irregular position. When they got within sixty or seventy
yards, Captain Brown said, ‘Let go upon them!’ which we did, when
several of them fell. Again and again the dose was repeated. There was
now consternation among the troops. From marching in solid martial
columns, they became scattered. Some hastened to seize upon and bear up
the wounded and dying,—several lay dead upon the ground. They seemed not
to realize, at first, that we would fire upon them, but evidently
expected that we would be driven out by them without firing. Captain
Brown seemed fully to understand the matter, and hence, very properly
and in our defense, undertook to forestall their movements. The
consequence of their unexpected reception was, after leaving several of
their dead on the field, they beat a confused retreat into the bridge,
and there stayed under cover until reinforcements came to the Ferry. On
the retreat of the troops, we were ordered back to our former
posts.”[244]

At this time the Negro, Newby, was killed and his assailant shot in turn
by Green. Two slaves also died fighting. Now “there was comparative
quiet for a time, except that the citizens seemed to be wild with
terror. Men, women and children forsook the place in great haste,
climbing up hillsides, and scaling the mountains. The latter seemed to
be alive with white fugitives, fleeing from their doomed city. During
this time, William Thompson, who was returning from his errand to the
Kennedy farm, was surrounded on the bridge by railroad men, who next
came up, and taken a prisoner to the Wager house.”[245]

It was now one o’clock in the day and while things were going against
Brown, his cause was not desperate. His Maryland men might yet attack
the disorganized Jefferson Guards in the rear and the arsenal was full
of hostages. But militia and citizens kept pouring into the town and by
three o’clock “could be seen coming from every direction.” Kagi sent
word to Brown, urging retreat; but Brown faced a difficult dilemma:
Should he go to Loudoun Heights and lose half his men and all his
munitions? or should he retreat to Maryland? This latter path lay open,
he was sure, by means of his hostages. Meantime the Maryland party might
appear at any moment. Indeed, the Jefferson Guards had once been
mistaken for them. On this account the message was sent back to Kagi “to
hold out for a few minutes, when we would all evacuate the place.” Still
the Maryland party lingered with the stubborn Tidd somewhere up the
road, and Cook idly kicking his heels at the schoolhouse.

The messenger, Jerry Anderson, was fired on and mortally wounded before
he reached Kagi, and the latter’s party was attacked by a large force
and driven into the river.

“The river at that point runs rippling over a rocky bed,” writes a
Virginian, “and at ordinary stages of the water is easily forded. The
raiders, finding their retreat to the opposite shore intercepted by
Medler’s men, made for a large flat rock near the middle of the stream.
Before reaching it, however, Kagi fell and died in the water, apparently
without a struggle. Four others reached the rock, where, for a while,
they made an ineffectual stand, returning the fire of the citizens. But
it was not long before two of them were killed outright and another
prostrated by a mortal wound, leaving Copeland, a mulatto, standing
alone unharmed upon their rock of refuge.

“Thereupon, a Harper’s Ferry man, James H. Holt, dashed into the river,
gun in hand, to capture Copeland, who, as he approached him, made a show
of fight by pointing his gun at Holt, who halted and leveled his; but,
to the surprise of the lookers-on, neither of their weapons were
discharged, both having been rendered temporarily useless, as I
afterward learned, from being wet. Holt, however, as he again advanced,
continued to snap his gun, while Copeland did the same.”[246]

Copeland was taken alive and Leeman, with a second message from Kagi to
Brown, was killed. Matters were now getting desperate, but the armory
was full of prisoners and therein lay John Brown’s final hope. Easily as
a last resort he could use these citizens as a screen and so escape to
the mountains. In attempting this, however, some of the prisoners were
bound to be killed and Brown hesitated at sacrificing innocent blood to
save himself. He thought that the same end might be accomplished by
negotiation. His first move, therefore, was to withdraw all his force
and the important prisoners to a small brick building near the armory
gate called the “engine-house.” Captain Daingerfield, one of the
prisoners, says: “He entered the engine-house, carrying his prisoners
along, or rather part of them, for he made selections. After getting
into the engine-house he made this speech: ‘Gentlemen, perhaps you
wonder why I have selected you from the others. It is because I believe
you to be the most influential; and I have only to say now, that you
will have to share precisely the same fate that your friends extend to
my men.’ He began at once to bar the doors and windows, and to cut
port-holes through the brick wall.”[247]

This evident weakening of the raiders let pandemonium loose. The
citizens realized how small a force Brown had and were filled with fury
at his presumption. His men began to fight desperately for their lives.

“About the time when Brown immured himself,” a narrator reports, “a
company of Berkeley County militia arrived from Martinsburg who, with
some citizens of Harper’s Ferry and the surrounding country, made a rush
on the armory and released the great mass of the prisoners outside of
the engine-house, not, however, without suffering some loss from a
galling fire kept up by the enemy from ‘the fort.’”[248]

This released the arms and one of the Virginia watchmen says: “The
people, who came pouring into town, broke into liquor saloons, filled
up, and then got into the arsenal, arming themselves with United States
guns and ammunition. They kept shooting at random and howling.”[249]

The prisoners within the engine-house heard “a terrible firing from
without, at every point from which the windows could be seen, and in a
few minutes every window was shattered, and hundreds of balls came
through the doors. These shots were answered from within whenever the
attacking party could be seen. This was kept up most of the day, and,
strange to say, not a prisoner was hurt, though thousands of balls were
imbedded in the walls, and holes shot in the doors almost large enough
for a man to creep through.”[250]

The doomed raiders saw “volley upon volley” discharged, while “the
echoes from the hills, the shrieks of the townspeople, and the groans of
their wounded and dying, all of which filled the air, were truly
frightful.” Yet “no powder and ball were wasted. We shot from under
cover, and took deadly aim. For an hour before the flag of truce was
sent out, the firing was uninterrupted, and one and another of the enemy
were constantly dropping to the earth.”[251]

Oliver Brown was shot and died without a word and Taylor was mortally
wounded. The mayor of the city ventured out, unarmed, to reconnoitre and
was killed. Immediately the son of Andrew Hunter, who afterward was
state’s attorney against Brown, rushed into the hotel after the prisoner
William Thompson:

“We burst into the room where he was, and found several around him, but
they offered only a feeble resistance; we brought our guns down to his
head repeatedly,—myself and another person,—for the purpose of shooting
him in the room.

“There was a young lady there, the sister of Mr. Fouke, the
hotel-keeper, who sat in this man’s lap, covered his face with her arms,
and shielded him with her person whenever we brought our guns to bear.
She said to us, ‘For God’s sake, wait and let the law take its course.’
My associate shouted to kill him. ‘Let us shed his blood,’ were his
words. All round were shouting, ‘Mr. Beckham’s life was worth ten
thousand of these vile Abolitionists.’ I was cool about it, and
deliberate. My gun was pushed by some one who seized the barrel, and I
then moved to the back part of the room, still with purpose unchanged,
but with a view to divert attention from me, in order to get an
opportunity, at some moment when the crowd would be less dense, to shoot
him. After a moment’s thought it occurred to me that that was not the
proper place to kill him. We then proposed to take him out and hang him.
Some portion of our band then opened a way to him, and first pushing
Miss Fouke aside, we slung him out-of-doors. I gave him a push, and many
others did the same. We then shoved him along the platform and down to
the trestle work of the bridge; he begged for his life all the time,
very piteously at first.”[252]

Thus he was shot to death as he crawled in the trestle work. The
prisoners in the engine-house now urged Brown to make terms with the
citizens, representing that this was possible and that he and his men
could escape. Brown sent out his son Watson with a white flag, but the
maddened citizens paid no attention to it and shot him down. A lull in
the fighting came a little later, and Stevens took a second flag of
truce, but was captured and held prisoner. Daingerfield says:

“At night the firing ceased, for we were in total darkness, and nothing
could be seen in the engine-house. During the day and night I talked
much with Brown. I found him as brave as a man could be, and sensible
upon all subjects except slavery. He believed it was his duty to free
the slaves, even if in doing so he lost his own life. During a sharp
fight one of Brown’s sons was killed. He fell; then trying to raise
himself, he said, ‘It is all over with me,’ and died instantly. Brown
did not leave his post at the port-hole; but when the fighting was over
he walked to his son’s body, straightened out his limbs, took off his
trappings, and then, turning to me, said, ‘This is the third son I have
lost in this cause.’ Another son had been shot in the morning, and was
then dying, having been brought in from the street. Often during the
affair at the engine-house, when his men would want to fire upon some
one who might be seen passing, Brown would stop them, saying, ‘Don’t
shoot; that man is unarmed.’ The firing was kept up by our men all day
and until late at night, and during this time several of his men were
killed, but none of the prisoners were hurt, though in great danger.
During the day and night many propositions, pro and con, were made,
looking to Brown’s surrender and the release of the prisoners, but
without result.”[253]

Another eye-witness says:

“A little before night Brown asked if any of his captives would
volunteer to go out among the citizens and induce them to cease firing
on the fort, as they were endangering the lives of their friends—the
prisoners. He promised on his part that, if there was no more firing on
his men, there should be none by them on the besiegers. Mr. Israel
Russel undertook the dangerous duty; the risk arose from the excited
state of the people who would be likely to fire on anything seen
stirring around the prison-house, and the citizens were persuaded to
stop firing in consideration of the danger incurred of injuring the
prisoners....

“It was now dark and the wildest excitement existed in the town,
especially among the friends of the killed, wounded and prisoners of the
citizens’ party. It had rained some little all day and the atmosphere
was raw and cold. Now, a cloudy and moonless sky hung like a pall over
the scene of war, and, on the whole, a more dismal night cannot be
imagined. Guards were stationed round the engine-house to prevent
Brown’s escape and, as forces were constantly arriving from Winchester,
Frederick City, Baltimore and other places to help the Harper’s Ferry
people, the town soon assumed quite a military appearance. The United
States authorities in Washington had been notified in the meantime, and,
in the course of the night, Colonel Robert E. Lee, afterward the famous
General Lee of the Southern Confederacy, arrived with a force of United
States marines, to protect the interests of the government, and kill or
capture the invaders.”[254]

Meantime Cook had awakened to the fact that something was wrong. He left
Tidd at the schoolhouse and started toward the Ferry; finding it
surrounded, he fired one volley from a tree and fled. He found no one at
the schoolhouse, but met Tidd, and the whole farm guard, and one Negro
on the road beyond. They all turned and fled north, Tidd and Cook
quarreling. They wandered fourteen days in rain and snow, and finally
all escaped except Cook who went into a town for food and was arrested.

Robert E. Lee, with 100 marines, arrived just before midnight on Monday
and one of the prisoners tells the story of the last stand:

“When Colonel Lee came with the government troops in the night, he at
once sent a flag of truce by his aid, J. E. B. Stuart, to notify Brown
of his arrival, and in the name of the United States to demand his
surrender, advising him to throw himself on the clemency of the
government. Brown declined to accept Colonel Lee’s terms, and determined
to await the attack. When Stuart was admitted and a light brought, he
exclaimed, ‘Why, aren’t you old Osawatomie Brown of Kansas, whom I once
had there as my prisoner?’ ‘Yes,’ was the answer, ‘but you did not keep
me.’ This was the first intimation we had of Brown’s real name. When
Colonel Lee advised Brown to trust to the clemency of the government,
Brown responded that he knew what that meant,—a rope for his men and
himself; adding, ‘I prefer to die just here.’ Stuart told him he would
return at early morning for his final reply, and left him. When he had
gone, Brown at once proceeded to barricade the doors, windows, etc.,
endeavoring to make the place as strong as possible. All this time no
one of Brown’s men showed the slightest fear, but calmly awaited the
attack, selecting the best situations to fire from, and arranging their
guns and pistols so that a fresh one could be taken up as soon as one
was discharged....

“When Lieutenant Stuart came in the morning for the final reply to the
demand to surrender, I got up and went to Brown’s side to hear his
answer. Stuart asked, ‘Are you ready to surrender, and trust to the
mercy of the government?’ Brown answered, ‘No, I prefer to die here.’
His manner did not betray the least alarm. Stuart stepped aside and made
a signal for the attack, which was instantly begun with sledge-hammers
to break down the door. Finding it would not yield, the soldiers seized
a long ladder for a battering-ram, and commenced beating the door with
that, the party within firing incessantly. I had assisted in the
barricading, fixing the fastenings so that I could remove them on the
first effort to get in. But I was not at the door when the battering
began, and could not get to the fastenings till the ladder was used. I
then quickly removed the fastenings; and, after two or three strokes of
the ladder, the engine rolled partially back, making a small aperture,
through which Lieutenant Green of the marines forced his way, jumped on
top of the engine, and stood a second, amidst a shower of balls, looking
for John Brown. When he saw Brown, he sprang about twelve feet at him,
giving an under-thrust of his sword, striking Brown about midway the
body, and raising him completely from the ground. Brown fell forward,
with his head between his knees, while Green struck him several times
over the head, and, as I then supposed, split his skull at every stroke.
I was not two feet from Brown at that time. Of course, I got out of the
building as soon as possible, and did not know till some time later that
Brown was not killed. It seems that Green’s sword, in making the thrust,
struck Brown’s belt and did not penetrate the body. The sword was bent
double. The reason that Brown was not killed when struck on the head
was, that Green was holding his sword in the middle, striking with the
hilt, and making only scalp wounds.”[255]

After the attack on the troops at the bridge, Brown had ordered O. P.
Anderson, Hazlett and Green back to the arsenal. But Green saw the
desperate strait of Brown and chose voluntarily to go into the
engine-house and fight until the last. Anderson and Hazlett, when they
saw the door battered in, went to the back of the arsenal, climbed the
wall and fled along the railway that goes up the Shenandoah. Here in the
cliffs they had a skirmish with the troops but finally escaped in the
night, crossed the town and the Potomac and so got into Maryland and
went to the farm. It was deserted and pillaged. Then they came back to
the schoolhouse and found that empty. In the morning they heard firing
and Anderson’s narrative continues:

“Hazlett thought it must be Owen Brown and his men trying to force their
way into the town, as they had been informed that a number of us had
been taken prisoners, and we started down along the ridge to join them.
When we got in sight of the Ferry, we saw the troops firing across the
river to the Maryland side with considerable spirit. Looking closely, we
saw, to our surprise, that they were firing upon a few of the colored
men, who had been armed the day before by our men, at the Kennedy farm,
and stationed down at the schoolhouse by C. P. Tidd. They were in the
bushes on the edge of the mountains, dodging about, occasionally
exposing themselves to the enemy. The troops crossed the bridge in
pursuit of them, but they retreated in different directions. Being
further in the mountains, and more secure, we could see without personal
harm befalling us. One of the colored men came toward where we were,
when we hailed him, and inquired the particulars. He said that one of
his comrades had been shot, and was lying on the side of the mountains;
that they thought the men who had armed them the day before must be in
the Ferry. That opinion, we told him, was not correct. We asked him to
join with us in hunting up the rest of the party, but he declined, and
went his way.

“While we were in this part of the mountains, some of the troops went to
the schoolhouse, and took possession of it. On our return along up the
ridge, from our position, screened by the bushes, we could see them as
they invested it. Our last hope of shelter, or of meeting our
companions, now being destroyed, we concluded to make our escape
north.”[256]

Anderson managed to get away, but Hazlett was captured in Pennsylvania
and was returned to Virginia. Thus John Brown’s raid ended. Seven of the
men—John Brown himself, Shields Green, Edwin Coppoc, Stevens and
Copeland and eventually Cook and Hazlett—were captured and hanged.
Watson and Oliver Brown, the two Thompsons, Kagi, Jerry Anderson,
Taylor, Newby, Leary, and John Anderson, ten in all, were killed in the
fight, and six others—Owen Brown, Tidd, Leeman, Barclay Coppoc, Merriam
and O. Anderson escaped.

At high noon on Tuesday, October 18th, the raid was over. John Brown lay
wounded and bloodstained on the floor and the governor of Virginia bent
over him.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is John Brown; I have been well known as old John Brown of
Kansas. Two of my sons were killed here to-day, and I’m dying too. I
came here to liberate slaves, and was to receive no reward. I have acted
from a sense of duty, and am content to await my fate; but I think the
crowd have treated me badly. I am an old man. Yesterday I could have
killed whom I chose; but I had no desire to kill any person, and would
not have killed a man had they not tried to kill me and my men. I could
have sacked and burned the town, but did not; I have treated the persons
whom I took as hostages kindly, and I appeal to them for the truth of
what I say. If I had succeeded in running off slaves this time, I could
have raised twenty times as many men as I have now, for a similar
expedition. But I have failed.”[257]




                              CHAPTER XII
                        THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

  “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we
  did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

  “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our
  iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His
  stripes we are healed.”


The deed was done. The next day the world knew and the world sat in
puzzled amazement. It was ever so and ever will be. When a prophet like
John Brown appears, how must we of the world receive him? Must we follow
out the drear, dread logic of surrounding facts, as did the South, even
if they crucify a clean and pure soul, simply because consistent
allegiance to our cherished, chosen ideal demands it? If we do, the
shame will brand our latest history. Shall we hesitate and waver before
his clear white logic, now helping, now fearing to help, now believing,
now doubting? Yes, this we must do so long as the doubt and hesitation
are genuine; but we must not lie. If we are human, we must thus hesitate
until we know the right. How shall we know it? That is the Riddle of the
Sphinx. We are but darkened groping souls, that know not light often
because of its very blinding radiance. Only in time is truth revealed.
To-day at last we know: John Brown was right.

Yet there are some great principles to guide us. That there are in this
world matters of vast human import which are eternally right or
eternally wrong, all men believe. Whether that great right comes, as the
simpler, clearer minded think, from the spoken word of God, or whether
it is simply another way of saying: this deed makes for the good of
mankind, or that, for the ill—however it may be, all men know that there
are in this world here and there and again and again great partings of
the ways—the one way wrong, the other right, in some vast and eternal
sense. This certainly is true at times—in the mighty crises of lives and
nations. On the other hand, it is also true, as human experience again
and again shows, that the usual matters of human debate and difference
of opinion are not so vitally important, or so easily classified; that
in most cases there is much of right and wrong on both sides and, so
usual is it to find this true, that men tend to argue it always so.
Their life morality becomes always a wavering path of expediency, not
necessarily the best or the worst path, as they freely even smilingly
admit, but a good path, a safe path, a path of little resistance and one
that leads to the good if not to the theoretical (but usually
impracticable) best. Such philosophy of the world’s ways is common, and
probably it is well that thus it is. And yet we all feel its temporary,
tentative character; we instinctively distrust its comfortable tone, and
listen almost fearfully for the greater voice; its better is often so
far below that which we feel is a possible best, that its present
temporizing seems evil to us, and ever and again after the world has
complacently dodged and compromised with, and skilfully evaded a great
evil, there shines, suddenly, a great white light—an unwavering,
unflickering brightness, blinding by its all-seeing brilliance, making
the whole world simply a light and a darkness—a right and a wrong. Then
men tremble and writhe and waver. They whisper, “But—but—of course;”
“the thing is plain, but it is too plain to be true—it is true but truth
is not the only thing in the world.” Thus they hide from the light, they
burrow and grovel, and yet ever in, and through, and on them blazes that
mighty light with its horror of darkness and behind it peals the
voice—the Riddle of the Sphinx, that must be answered.

Such a light was the soul of John Brown. He was simple, exasperatingly
simple; unlettered, plain, and homely. No casuistry of culture or of
learning, of well-being or tradition moved him in the slightest degree:
“Slavery is wrong,” he said,—“kill it.” Destroy it—uproot it, stem,
blossom, and branch; give it no quarter, exterminate it and do it now.
Was he wrong? No. The forcible staying of human uplift by barriers of
law, and might, and tradition is the most wicked thing on earth. It is
wrong, eternally wrong. It is wrong, by whatever name it is called, or
in whatever guise it lurks, and whenever it appears. But it is
especially heinous, black, and cruel when it masquerades in the robes of
law and justice and patriotism. So was American slavery clothed in 1859,
and it had to die by revolution, not by milder means. And this men knew.
They had known it a hundred years. Yet they shrank and trembled. From
round about the white and blinding path of this soul flew equivocations,
lies, thievings and red murders. And yet all men instinctively felt that
these things were not of the light but of the surrounding darkness. It
is at once surprising, baffling and pitiable to see the way in which
men—honest American citizens—faced this light. Many types met and
answered the argument, John Brown (for he did not use argument, he was
himself an argument). First there was the Western American—the typical
American, like Charles Robinson—one to whose imagination the empire of
the vale of the Mississippi appealed with tremendous force. Then there
was the Abolitionist—shading away from him who held slavery an incubus
to him who saw its sin, of whom Gerrit Smith was a fair type. Then there
was the lover of men, like Dr. Howe, and the merchant-errant like
Stearns. Finally, there were the two great fateful types—the master and
the slave.

To Robinson, Brown was simply a means to an end—beyond that he was
whatever prevailing public opinion indicated. When the gratitude of
Osawatomie swelled high, Brown was fit to be named with Jesus Christ;
when the wave of Southern reaction subjugated the nation, he was
something less than a fanatic. But whatever he was, he was the sword on
which struggling Kansas and its leaders could depend, the untarnished
doer of its darker deeds, when they that knew them necessary cowered and
held their hands. Brown’s was not the only hand that freed Kansas, but
his hand was indispensable, and not the first time, nor the last, has a
cool and skilful politician, like Robinson, climbed to power on the
heads of those helpers of his, whose half-realized ideals he bartered
for present possibilities—human freedom for statehood. For the
Abolitionist of the Garrison type Brown had a contempt, as undeserved as
it was natural to his genius. To recognize an evil and not strike it was
to John Brown sinful. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said derisively. Nor did he
rightly gauge the value of spiritual as contrasted with physical blows,
until the day when he himself struck the greatest on the Charleston
scaffold.

But if John Brown failed rightly to gauge the movement of the
Abolitionists, few of them failed to appreciate him when they met him.
Instinctively they knew him as one who grasped the very pith and kernel
of the evil which they fought. They asked no proofs or credentials; they
asked John Brown. So it was with Gerrit Smith. He saw Brown and believed
in him. He entertained him at his house. He heard his detailed plans for
striking slavery a heart blow. He gave him in all over a thousand
dollars, and bade him Godspeed! Yet when the blow was struck, he was
filled with immeasurable consternation. He equivocated and even denied
knowledge of Brown’s plans. To be sure, he, his family, his fortune were
in the shadow of danger—but where was John Brown? So with Dr. Howe,
whose memory was painfully poor on the witness stand and who fluttered
from enthusiastic support of Brown to a weak wavering when once he had
tasted the famous Southern hospitality. He found slavery, to his own
intense surprise, human: not ideally and horribly devilish, but only
humanly bad. Was a bad human institution to be attacked _vi et armis_?
Or was it not rather to be met with persuasive argument in the soft
shade of a Carolina veranda? Dr. Howe inclined to the latter thought,
after his Cuban visit, and he was exceedingly annoyed and scared after
the raid. He fled precipitately to Canada. Of the Boston committee only
Stearns stood up and out in the public glare and said unequivocally,
then and there: “I believe John Brown to be the representative man of
this century, as Washington was of the last—the Harper’s Ferry affair,
and the capacity shown by the Italians for self-government, the great
events of this age. One will free Europe and the other America.”[258]

The attitude of the black man toward John Brown is typified by Frederick
Douglass and Shields Green. Said Douglass: “On the evening when the news
came that John Brown had taken and was then holding the town of Harper’s
Ferry, it so happened that I was speaking to a large audience in
National Hall, Philadelphia. The announcement came upon us with the
startling effect of an earthquake. It was something to make the boldest
hold his breath.”[259]

Wise and Buchanan started immediately on Douglass’s track and he fled to
Canada and eventually to England. Why did not Douglass join John Brown?
Because, first, he was of an entirely different cast of temperament and
mind; and because, secondly, he knew, as only a Negro slave can know,
the tremendous might and organization of the slave power. Brown’s plan
never in the slightest degree appealed to Douglass’s reason. That the
Underground Railroad methods could be enlarged and systematized,
Douglass believed, but any further plan he did not think possible. Only
national force could dislodge national slavery. As it was with Douglass,
so it was practically with the Negro race. They believed in John Brown
but not in his plan. He touched their warm loving hearts but not their
hard heads. The Canadian Negroes, for instance, were men who knew what
slavery meant. They had suffered its degradation, its repression and its
still more fatal license. They knew the slave system. They had been
slaves. They had risked life to help loved ones to escape its
far-reaching tentacles. They had reached a land of freedom and had begun
to taste the joy of being human. Their little homes were clustering
about—they had their churches, lodges, social gatherings, and newspaper.
Then came the call. They loved the old man and cherished him, helped and
forwarded his work in a thousand little ways. But the call? Were they
asked to sacrifice themselves to free their fellow-slaves? Were they not
quite ready? No—to do that they stood ever ready. But here they were
asked to sacrifice themselves for the sake of possibly freeing a few
slaves and certainly arousing the nation. They saw what John Brown did
not fully realize until the last: the tremendous meaning of sacrifice
even though his enterprise failed and they were sure it would fail. Yet
in truth it need not have failed. History and military science prove its
essential soundness. But the Negro knew little of history and military
science. He did know slavery and the slave power, and they loomed large
and invincible in his fertile imagination. He could not conceive their
overthrow by anything short of the direct voice of God. That a supreme
sacrifice of human beings on the altar of Moloch might hasten the day of
emancipation was possible, but were they called to give their lives to
this forlorn hope? Most of them said no, as most of their fellows, black
and white, ever answer to the “voice, without reply.” They said it
reluctantly, slowly, even hesitatingly, but they said it even as their
leader Douglass said it. And why not, they argued? Was not their whole
life already a sacrifice? Were they called by any right of God or man to
give more than they already had given? What more did they owe the world?
Did not the world owe them an unpayable amount?

Then, too, the sacrifice demanded of black men in this raid was far more
than that demanded of whites. In 1859 it was a crime for a free black
man even to set foot on Virginia soil, and it was slavery or death for a
fugitive to return. If worse came to worst, the Negro stood the least
chance of escape and the least consideration on capture. Yet despite all
this and despite the terrible training of slavery in cowardice,
submission and fatality; the systematic elimination, by death and
cruelty, of strength and self-respect and bravery, there were in Canada
and in the United States scores of Negroes ready for the sacrifice. But
the necessary secrecy, vagueness and intangibility of the summons, the
repeated changes of date, the difficulty of communication and the
poverty of black men, all made effective coöperation exceedingly
difficult.

Even as it was, fifteen or twenty Negroes had enlisted and would
probably have been present had they had the time. Five, probably six,
actually came in time, and thirty or forty slaves actively helped.
Considering the mass of Negroes in the land and the character of the
leader, this was an insignificant number. But what it lacked in number
it made up in characters like Shields Green. He was a poor, unlettered
fugitive, ignorant by the law of the land, stricken in life and homely
in body. He sat and listened as Douglass and Brown argued amid the
boulders of that old Chambersburg quarry. Some things he understood,
some he did not. But one thing he did understand and that was the soul
of John Brown, so he said, “I guess I’ll go with the old man.” Again in
the sickening fury of that fatal Monday, a white man and a black man
found themselves standing with freedom before them. The white man was
John Brown’s truest companion and the black man was Shields Green. “I
told him to come,” said the white man afterward, “that we could do
nothing more,” but he simply said, “I must go down to the old man.” And
he went down to John Brown and to death.

If this was the attitude of the slave, what was that of the master? It
was when John Brown faced the indignant, self-satisfied and arrogant
slave power of the South, flanked by its Northern Vallandighams, that
the mighty paradox and burning farce of the situation revealed itself.
Picture the situation: An old and blood-bespattered man, half-dead from
the wounds inflicted but a few hours before; a man lying in the cold and
dirt, without sleep for fifty-five nerve-wrecking hours, without food
for nearly as long, with the dead bodies of two sons almost before his
eyes, the piled corpses of his seven slain comrades near and afar, a
wife and a bereaved family listening in vain, and a Lost Cause, the
dream of a lifetime, lying dead in his heart. Around him was a group of
bitter, inquisitive Southern aristocrats and their satellites, headed by
one of the foremost leaders of subsequent secession.

“Who sent you—who sent you?” these inquisitors insisted.

“No man sent me—I acknowledge no master in human form!”

“What was your object in coming?”

“We came to free the slaves.”

“How do you justify your acts?”

“You are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity and it would
be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free
those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I think I did right;
and that others will do right who interfere with you at any time and at
all times. I hold that the Golden Rule, ‘Do unto others as ye would that
others should do unto you,’ applies to all who would help others to gain
their liberty.”

“But don’t you believe in the Bible?”

“Certainly, I do.”

“Do you consider this a religious movement?”

“It is in my opinion the greatest service man can render to God.”

“Do you consider yourself an instrument in the hands of Providence?”

“I do.”

“Upon what principles do you justify your acts?”

“Upon the Golden Rule. I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help
them. That is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity,
revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and
the wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of
God.”

“Certainly. But why take the slaves against their will?”

“I never did.”...

“Who are your advisers in this movement?”

“I have numerous sympathizers throughout the entire North.... I want you
to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and the weakest
of colored people, oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do
those of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that has moved
me, and that alone. We expected no reward except satisfaction of
endeavoring to do for those in distress and greatly oppressed as we
would be done by. The cry of distress of the oppressed is my reason, and
the only thing that prompted me to come here.”

“Why did you do it secretly?”

“Because I thought that necessary to success; no other reason.... I
agree with Mr. Smith that moral suasion is hopeless. I don’t think the
people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in
its true light till some other argument is resorted to than moral
suasion.”

“Did you expect a general rising of the slaves in case of your success?”

“No, sir; nor did I wish it. I expected to gather them up from time to
time, and set them free.”

“Did you expect to hold possession here till then?”

“You overrate your strength in supposing I could have been taken if I
had not allowed it. I was too tardy after commencing the open attack—in
delaying my movements through Monday night, and up to the time I was
attacked by the government troops.”

“Where did you get arms?”

“I bought them.”

“In what state?”

“That I will not state. I have nothing to say, only that I claim to be
here in carrying out a measure I believe perfectly justifiable, and not
to act the part of an incendiary or ruffian, but to aid those suffering
great wrong. I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better—all you
people at the South—prepare yourselves for a settlement of this
question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared
for it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me
very easily,—I am nearly disposed of now, but this question is still to
be settled,—this Negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet.”

“Brown, suppose you had every nigger in the United States, what would
you do with them?”

“Set them free.”

“Your intention was to carry them off and free them?”

“Not at all.”

“To set them free would sacrifice the life of every man in this
community.”

“I do not think so.”

“I know it; I think you are fanatical.”

“And I think you are fanatical. Whom the gods would destroy they first
make mad, and you are mad.”

“Was it your only object to free the Negroes?”

“Absolutely our only object.”...

“You are a robber,” cried some voice in the crowd.

“You slaveholders are robbers,” retorted Brown.

But Governor Wise interrupted: “Mr. Brown, the silver of your hair is
reddened by the blood of crime, and you should eschew these hard words
and think upon eternity. You are suffering from wounds, perhaps fatal;
and should you escape death from these causes, you must submit to a
trial which may involve death. Your confessions justify the presumption
that you will be found guilty; and even now you are committing a felony
under the laws of Virginia, by uttering sentiments like these. It is
better you should turn your attention to your eternal future than be
dealing in denunciations which can only injure you.”

John Brown replied: “Governor, I have from all appearances not more than
fifteen or twenty years the start of you in the journey to that eternity
of which you kindly warn me; and whether my time here shall be fifteen
months, or fifteen days, or fifteen hours, I am equally prepared to go.
There is an eternity behind and an eternity before; and this little
speck in the centre, however long, is but comparatively a minute. The
difference between your tenure and mine is trifling, and I therefore
tell you to be prepared. I am prepared. You have a heavy responsibility,
and it behooves you to prepare more than it does me.”[260]

Thus from the day John Brown was captured to the day he died, and after,
it was the South and slavery that was on trial—not John Brown. Indeed,
the dilemma into which John Brown’s raid threw the state of Virginia was
perfect. If his foray was the work of a handful of fanatics, led by a
lunatic and repudiated by the slaves to a man, then the proper procedure
would have been to ignore the incident, quietly punish the worst
offenders and either pardon the misguided leader, or send him to an
asylum. If, on the other hand, Virginia faced a conspiracy that
threatened her social existence, aroused dangerous unrest in her slave
population, and was full of portent for the future, then extraordinary
precaution, swift and extreme punishment, and bitter complaint were only
natural. But both these situations could not be true—both horns of the
dilemma could not be logically seized. Yet this was precisely what the
South and Virginia sought. While insisting that the raid was too
hopelessly and ridiculously small to accomplish anything, and saying,
with Andrew Hunter, that “not a single one of the slaves” joined John
Brown “except by coercion,” the state nevertheless spent $250,000 to
punish the invaders, stationed from one to three thousand soldiers in
the vicinity and threw the nation into turmoil. When the inconsistency
of this action struck various minds, the attempt was made to exaggerate
the danger of the invading white men. The presiding judge at the trial
wrote, as late as 1889, that the number in Brown’s party was proven by
witnesses to have been seventy-five to one hundred and he “expected
large reinforcements”; while Andrew Hunter, the state’s attorney, saw
nation-wide conspiracies.

What, then, was the truth about the matter? It was as Frederick Douglass
said twenty-two years later on the very spot: “If John Brown did not end
the war that ended slavery, he did, at least, begin the war that ended
slavery. If we look over the dates, places, and men for which this honor
is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not Fort
Sumter, but Harper’s Ferry and the arsenal, not Major Anderson, but John
Brown began the war that ended American slavery, and made this a free
republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim,
shadowy, and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words,
votes, and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky
was cleared,—the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the
chasm of a broken Union, and the clash of arms was at hand.”[261]

The paths by which John Brown’s raid precipitated civil war were these:
In the first place, he aroused the Negroes of Virginia. How far the
knowledge of his plan had penetrated is of course only to be
conjectured. Evidently few knew that the foray would take place on
October 17th. But when the movement had once made a successful start,
there is no doubt that Osborne Anderson knew whereof he spoke, when he
said that slaves were ready to coöperate. His words were proven by the
200,000 black soldiers in the Civil War. That something was wrong was
shown, too, by five incendiary fires in a single week after the raid.
Hunter sought to attribute these to “Northern emissaries,” but this
charge was unproven and extremely improbable. The only other possible
perpetrators were slaves and free Negroes. That Virginians believed this
is shown by Hinton’s declaration that the loss in 1859 by the sale of
Virginia slaves alone was $10,000,000.[262] A lady who visited John
Brown said, “It was hard for me to forget the presence of the jailer (I
had that morning seen his advertisement of ‘fifty Negroes for
sale’).”[263] It is impossible to prove the extent of this clearing-out
of suspected slaves but the census reports indicate something of it. The
Negro population of Maryland and Virginia increased a little over four
per cent. between 1850 and 1860. But in the three counties bordering on
Harper’s Ferry—Loudoun and Jefferson in Virginia and Washington in
Maryland, the 17,647 slaves of 1850 had shrunk to 15,996 in 1860, a
decrease of nearly ten per cent. This means a disappearance of 2,400
slaves and is very significant.

Secondly, long before John Brown appeared at Harper’s Ferry, Southern
leaders like Mason, the author of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and chairman
of the Harper’s Ferry investigating committee; Jefferson Davis, who was
a member of this committee; Wise, Hunter and other Virginians, had set
their faces toward secession as the only method of protecting slavery.
Into the mouths of these men John Brown put a tremendous argument and a
fearful warning. The argument they used, the warning they suppressed and
hushed. The argument was: This is Abolitionism; this is the North. This
is the kind of treatment which the South and its cherished institution
can expect unless it resorts to extreme measures. Proceeding along these
lines, they emphasized and enlarged the raid so far as its white
participants and Northern sympathizers were concerned. Governor Wise, on
November 25th, issued a burning manifesto for the ears of the South and
the eyes of President Buchanan, and the majority report of the Senate
Committee closed with ominous words. On the other hand, the warning of
John Brown’s raid—the danger of Negro insurrection, was but whispered.

Third, and this was the path that led to Civil War and far beyond: The
raid aroused and directed the conscience of the nation. Strange it was
to watch its work. Some, impulsive, eager to justify themselves, rushed
into print. To Garrison, the non-resistant, the sword of Gideon was
abhorrent; Beecher thundered against John Brown and Seward bitterly
traduced him. Then came an ominous silence in the land while his voice,
in his own defense, was heard over the whole country. A great surging
throb of sympathy arose and swept the world. That John Brown was legally
a lawbreaker and a murderer all men knew. But wider and wider circles
were beginning dimly and more clearly to recognize that his lawlessness
was in obedience to the highest call of self-sacrifice for the welfare
of his fellow men. They began to ask themselves, What is this cause that
can inspire such devotion? The reiteration of the simple statement of
“the brother in bonds” could not help but attract attention. The beauty
of the conception despite its possible unearthliness and
impracticability attracted poet and philosopher and common man.

To be sure, the nation had long been thinking over the problem of the
black man, but never before had its attention been held by such deep
dramatic and personal interest as in the forty days from mid-October to
December, 1859. This arresting of national attention was due to Virginia
and to John Brown:—to Virginia by reason of its exaggerated plaint; to
John Brown whose strength, simplicity and acumen made his trial,
incarceration and execution the most powerful Abolition argument yet
offered. The very processes by which Virginia used John Brown to “fire
the Southern heart” were used by John Brown to fire the Northern
conscience. Andrew Hunter, the prosecuting state’s attorney, of right
demanded that the trial should be short and the punishment swift and in
this John Brown fully agreed. He had no desire to escape the
consequences of his act or to clog the wheels of Virginia justice. After
a certain moral bewilderment there in the old engine-house at his
failure on the brink of success, the true significance of his mission of
sacrifice slowly rose before him. In the face of proposals to rescue him
he said at first thoughtfully: “I do not know that I ought to encourage
any attempt to save my life. I am not sure that it would not be better
for me to die at this time. I am not incapable of error, and I may be
wrong; but I think that perhaps my object would be nearer fulfilment if
I should die. I must give it some thought.”[264] And more and more this
conviction seized and thrilled him, and he began to say decisively: “I
think I cannot now better serve the cause I love so much than to die for
it; and in my death I may do more than in my life.”[265]

And again: “I can trust God with both the time and the manner of my
death, believing, as I now do, that for me at this time to seal my
testimony for God and humanity with my blood will do vastly more toward
advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavored to promote, than all I
have done in my life before.” And then finally came that last great hymn
of utter sacrifice: “I feel astonished that one so vile and unworthy as
I am would even be suffered to have a place anyhow or anywhere amongst
the very least of all who when they came to die (as all must) were
permitted to pay the debt of nature in defense of the right and of God’s
eternal and immutable truth.”[266]

The trial was a difficult experience. Virginia attempted to hold scales
of even justice between mob violence and the world-wide sympathy of all
good men. To defend its domestic institutions, it must try a man for
murder when that very man, sitting as self-appointed judge of those very
institutions, had convicted them before a jury of mankind. To defend the
good name of the state, Virginia had to restrain the violent blood
vengeance of men whose kin had been killed in the raid, and who had
sworn that no prisoner should escape the extreme penalty. The trial was
legally fair but pressed to a conclusion in unseemly haste, and in
obedience to a threatening public opinion and a great hovering dread.
Only against this unfair haste did John Brown protest, for he wanted the
world to understand why he had done the deed. On the other hand, Hunter
not only feared the local mob but the slowly arising sentiment for this
white-haired crusader. He therefore pushed the proceedings legally, but
with almost brutal pertinacity. The prisoner was arraigned while wounded
and in bed; the lawyers, hurriedly chosen, were given scant time for
consultation or preparation. John Brown was formally committed to jail
at Charlestown, the county seat, on October 20th, had a preliminary
examination October 25th, and was indicted by the grand jury October
26th, for “conspiracy with slaves for the purpose of insurrection; with
treason against the commonwealth of Virginia; and with murder in the
first degree.”

Thursday, October 27th, his trial was begun. A jury was impaneled
without challenge and Brown’s lawyers, ignoring his outline of defense,
brought in the plea of insanity. The old man arose from his couch and
said: “I look upon it as a miserable artifice and pretext of those who
ought to take a different course in regard to me, if they took any at
all, and I view it with contempt more than otherwise.... I am perfectly
unconscious of insanity, and I reject, so far as I am capable, any
attempts to interfere in my behalf on that score.”[267]

On Friday a Massachusetts lawyer arrived to help in the trial and also
privately to suggest methods of escape. John Brown quietly refused to
contemplate any such attempt, but was glad to accept the aid of this
lawyer and two others, who were sent by John A. Andrew and his friends.
The judge curtly refused these men any time to prepare their case, but
in spite of this it ran over until Monday when the jury retired. Late
Monday afternoon they returned. Redpath says:

“At this moment the crowd filled all the space from the couch inside the
bar, around the prisoner, beyond the railing in the body of the court,
out through the wide hall, and beyond the doors. There stood the anxious
but perfectly silent and attentive populace, stretching head and neck to
witness the closing scene of old Brown’s trial.”

The clerk of the court read the indictment and asked: “Gentlemen of the
jury, what say you? Is the prisoner at the bar, John Brown, guilty or
not guilty?”

“Guilty,” answered the foreman.

“Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others
to rebel, and murder in the first degree?”

“Yes.”

Redpath continues: “Not the slightest sound was heard in this vast crowd
as this verdict was thus returned and read. Not the slightest expression
of elation or triumph was uttered from the hundreds present, who, a
moment before, outside the court, joined in heaping threats and
imprecations on his head; nor was this strange silence interrupted
during the whole of the time occupied by the forms of the court. Old
Brown himself said not even a word, but, as on any previous day, turned
to adjust his pallet, and then composedly stretched himself upon
it.”[268]

The following Wednesday John Brown was sentenced. Moving with painful
steps and pale face, he took his seat under the gaslight in the great
square room and remained motionless. The judge read his decision on the
points of exception and the clerk asked: “Have you anything to say why
sentence of death should not be passed upon you?” Then rising and
leaning forward, John Brown made that last great speech, in a voice at
once gentle and firm:

“I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.

“In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along
admitted,—the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly
to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when I
went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun
on either side, moved them through the country and finally left them in
Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again, on a larger scale.
That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the
destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or
to make insurrection.

“I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should
suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and
which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and
candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in
this case),—had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the
intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their
friends,—either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or
any of that class,—and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this
interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court
would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

“This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God.
I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least
the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would
that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me,
further, to ‘remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.’ I
endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to
understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have
interfered as I have done—as I have always freely admitted I have
done—in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if
it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance
of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my
children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose
rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments,—I
submit; so let it be done! Let me say one word further.

“I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my
trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than
I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the
first what was my intention, and what was not. I never had any design
against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason,
or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never
encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that
kind.

“Let me say, also, a word in regard to the statements made by some of
those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that
I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say
this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one
of them but that joined me of his own accord, and the greater part at
their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of
conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was for the
purpose I have stated.

“Now I have done.”[269]

The day of his dying, December 2d, dawned glorious; twenty-four hours
before he had kissed his wife good-bye, and on this morning he visited
his doomed companions—Shields Green and Copeland first; then the
wavering Cook and Coppoc and the unmovable Stevens. At last he turned
toward the place of his hanging. Since early morning three thousand
soldiers had been marching and counter-marching around the scaffold,
which had been erected a half mile from Charlestown, encircling it for
fifteen miles; a hush sat on the hearts of men. John Brown rode out into
the morning. “This is a beautiful land,” he said. It was beautiful.
Wide, glistening, rolling fields flickered in the sunlight. Beyond, the
Shenandoah went rolling northward, and still afar rose the mighty masses
of the Blue Ridge, where Nat Turner had fought and died, where Gabriel
had looked for refuge and where John Brown had builded his awful dream.
Some say he kissed a Negro child as he passed, but Andrew Hunter
vehemently denies it. “No Negro could get access to him,” he says, and
he is probably right; and yet all about him as he hung there knelt the
funeral guard he prayed for when he said:

“My love to all who love their neighbors. I have asked to be spared from
having any weak or hypocritical prayers made over me when I am publicly
murdered, and that my only religious attendants be poor little dirty,
ragged, bareheaded, and barefooted slave boys and girls, led by some
gray-headed slave mother. Farewell! Farewell!”[270]




                              CHAPTER XIII
                        THE LEGACY OF JOHN BROWN

  “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that
  hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk
  without money and without price.”


“I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land
will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly,
flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

These were the last written words of John Brown, set down the day he
died—the culminating of that wonderful message of his forty days in
prison, which all in all made the mightiest Abolition document that
America has known. Uttered in chains and solemnity, spoken in the very
shadow of death, its dramatic intensity after that wild and puzzling
raid, its deep earnestness as embodied in the character of the man, did
more to shake the foundations of slavery than any single thing that ever
happened in America. Of himself he speaks simply and with satisfaction:
“I should be sixty years old were I to live to May 9, 1860. I have
enjoyed much of life as it is, and have been remarkably prosperous,
having early learned to regard the welfare and prosperity of others as
my own. I have never, since I can remember, required a great amount of
sleep; so that I conclude that I have already enjoyed full an average
number of working hours with those who reach their threescore years and
ten. I have not yet been driven to the use of glasses, but can see to
read and write quite comfortably. But more than that, I have generally
enjoyed remarkably good health. I might go on to recount unnumbered and
unmerited blessings, among which would be some very severe afflictions
and those the most needed blessings of all. And now, when I think how
easily I might be left to spoil all I have done or suffered in the cause
of freedom, I hardly dare wish another voyage even if I had the
opportunity.”[271]

After a surging, trouble-tossed voyage he is at last at peace in body
and mind. He asserts that he is and has been in his right mind: “I may
be very insane; and I am so, if insane at all. But if that be so,
insanity is like a very pleasant dream to me. I am not in the least
degree conscious of my ravings, of my fears, or of any terrible visions
whatever; but fancy myself entirely composed, and that my sleep, in
particular, is as sweet as that of a healthy, joyous little infant. I
pray God that He will grant me a continuance of the same calm but
delightful dream, until I come to know of those realities which eyes
have not seen and which ears have not heard. I have scarce realized that
I am in prison or in irons at all. I certainly think I was never more
cheerful in my life.”[272]

To his family he hands down the legacy of his faith and works: “I
beseech you all to live in habitual contentment with moderate
circumstances and gains of worldly store, and earnestly to teach this to
your children and children’s children after you, by example as well as
precept.” And again: “Be sure to remember and follow my advice, and my
example too, so far as it has been consistent with the holy religion of
Jesus Christ, in which I remain a most firm and humble believer. Never
forget the poor, nor think anything you bestow on them to be lost to
you, even though they may be black as Ebedmelech, the Ethiopian eunuch,
who cared for Jeremiah in the pit of the dungeon; or as black as the one
to whom Philip preached Christ. Be sure to entertain strangers, for
thereby some have.... Remember them that are in bonds as bound with
them.”[273]

Of his own merit and desert he is modest but firm: “The great bulk of
mankind estimate each other’s actions and motives by the measure of
success or otherwise that attends them through life. By that rule, I
have been one of the worst and one of the best of men. I do not claim to
have been one of the latter, and I leave it to an impartial tribunal to
decide whether the world has been the worse or the better for my living
and dying in it.”[274]

He has no sense of shame for his action: “I feel no consciousness of
guilt in that matter, nor even mortification on account of my
imprisonment and irons; I feel perfectly sure that very soon no member
of my family will feel any possible disposition to blush on my
account.”[275]

“I do not feel conscious of guilt in taking up arms; and had it been in
behalf of the rich and powerful, the intelligent, the great (as men
count greatness), or those who form enactments to suit themselves and
corrupt others, or some of their friends, that I interfered, suffered,
sacrificed, and fell, it would have been doing very well. But enough of
this. These light afflictions, which endure for a moment, shall but work
for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”[276]

With desperate faith he clings to his belief in the providence of an
all-wise God: “Under all these terrible calamities, I feel quite
cheerful in the assurance that God reigns and will overrule all for His
glory and the best possible good.”[277]

True is it that the night is dark and his faith at first wavers, yet it
rises ever again triumphant: “As I believe most firmly that God reigns,
I cannot believe that anything I have done, suffered, or may yet suffer,
will be lost to the cause of God or of humanity. And before I began my
work at Harper’s Ferry, I felt assured that in the worst event it would
certainly pay. I often expressed that belief; and I can now see no
possible cause to alter my mind. I am not as yet, in the main, at all
disappointed, I have been a good deal disappointed as it regards myself
in not keeping up to my own plans; but I now feel entirely reconciled to
that, even,—for God’s plan was infinitely better, no doubt, or I should
have kept to my own.”[278]

He is, after all, the servant and instrument of the Almighty: “If you do
not believe I had a murderous intention (while I know I had not), why
grieve so terribly on my account? The scaffold has but few terrors for
me. God has often covered my head in the day of battle, and granted me
many times deliverances that were almost so miraculous that I can scarce
realize their truth; and now, when it seems quite certain that He
intends to use me in a different way, shall I not most cheerfully
go?”[279]

“I have often passed under the rod of Him whom I call my Father,—and
certainly no son ever needed it oftener; and yet I have enjoyed much of
life, as I was enabled to discover the secret of this somewhat early. It
has been in making the prosperity and happiness of others my own; so
that really I have had a great deal of prosperity. I am very prosperous
still; and looking forward to a time when ‘peace on earth and good-will
to men’ shall everywhere prevail, I have no murmuring thoughts or
envious feelings to fret my mind. I’ll praise my Maker with my
breath.”[280]

“Success is in general the standard of all merit I have passed my time
quite cheerfully; still trusting that neither my life nor my death will
prove a total loss. As regards both, however, I am liable to mistake. It
affords me some satisfaction to feel conscious of having at least tried
to better the condition of those who are always on the under-hill side,
and am in hopes of being able to meet the consequences without a murmur.
I am endeavoring to get ready for another field of action, where no
defeat befalls the truly brave. That ‘God reigns,’ and most wisely, and
controls all events, might, it would seem, reconcile those who believe
it to much that appears to be very disastrous. I am one who has tried to
believe that, and still keep trying.”[281]

“I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day,
nor a storm so furious or dreadful as to prevent the return of warm
sunshine and a cloudless sky.”[282]

More and more his eyes pierce the gloom and see the vast plan for which
God has used him and the glory of his sacrifice:

“‘He shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines.’
This was said of a poor erring servant many years ago; and for many
years I have felt a strong impression that God had given me powers and
faculties, unworthy as I was, that He intended to use for a similar
purpose. This most unmerited honor He has seen fit to bestow; and
whether, like the same poor frail man to whom I allude, my death may not
be of vastly more value than my life is, I think quite beyond all human
foresight.”[283]

“I think I feel as happy as Paul did when he lay in prison. He knew if
they killed him, it would greatly advance the cause of Christ; that was
the reason he rejoiced so. On that same ground ‘I do rejoice, yea, and
will rejoice.’ Let them hang me; I forgive them, and may God forgive
them, for they know not what they do. I have no regret for the
transaction for which I am condemned. I went against the laws of men, it
is true, but ‘whether it be right to obey God or men, judge ye.’”[284]

“When and in what form death may come is but of small moment. I feel
just as content to die for God’s eternal truth and for suffering
humanity on the scaffold as in any other way; and I do not say this from
disposition to ‘brave it out.’ No; I would readily own my wrong were I
in the least convinced of it. I have now been confined over a month,
with a good opportunity to look the whole thing as ‘fair in the face’ as
I am capable of doing; and I feel it most grateful that I am counted in
the least possible degree worthy to suffer for the truth.”[285]

“I can trust God with both the time and the manner of my death,
believing, as I now do, that for me at this time to seal my testimony
for God and humanity with my blood will do vastly more toward advancing
the cause I have earnestly endeavored to promote, than all I have done
in my life before.”[286]

“My whole life before had not afforded me one-half the opportunity to
plead for the right. In this, also, I find much to reconcile me to both
my present condition and my immediate prospect.”[287]

Against slavery his face is set like flint: “There are no ministers of
Christ here. These ministers who profess to be Christian, and hold
slaves or advocate slavery, I cannot abide them. My knees will not bend
in prayer with them, while their hands are stained with the blood of
souls.”[288] He said to one Southern clergyman: “I will thank you to
leave me alone; your prayers would be an abomination to God.” To another
he said, “I would not insult God by bowing down in prayer with any one
who had the blood of the slave on his skirts.”

And to a third who argued in favor of slavery as “a Christian
institution,” John Brown replied impatiently: “My dear sir, you know
nothing about Christianity; you will have to learn its A, B, C; I find
you quite ignorant of what the word Christianity means.... I respect you
as a gentleman, of course; but it is as a heathen gentleman.”[289]

To his children he wrote: “Be determined to know by experience, as soon
as may be, whether Bible instruction is of divine origin or not. Be sure
to owe no man anything, but to love one another. John Rogers wrote his
children, ‘Abhor that arrant whore of Rome.’ John Brown writes to his
children to abhor, with undying hatred also, that sum of all
villanies,—slavery.”[290]

And finally he rejoiced: “Men cannot imprison, or chain, or hang the
soul. I go joyfully in behalf of millions that ‘have no rights’ that
this great and glorious, this Christian republic ‘is bound to respect.’
Strange change in morals, political as well as Christian, since
1776.”[291]

“No formal will can be of use,” he wrote on his doomsday, “when my
expressed wishes are made known to my dutiful and beloved family.”[292]

This was the man. His family is the world. What legacy did he leave? It
was soon seen that his voice was a call to the great final battle with
slavery.

In the spring of 1861 the Boston Light Infantry was sent to Fort Warren
in Boston harbor to drill. A quartette was formed among the soldiers to
sing patriotic songs and for them was contrived the verses,

           “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
                 His soul is marching on,” etc.

This was set to the music of an old camp-meeting tune—possibly of Negro
origin—called, “Say, Brother, Will You Meet Us?” The regiment learned it
and first sang it publicly when it came up from Fort Warren and marched
past the scene where Crispus Attucks fell. Gilmore’s Band learned and
played it and thus “the song of John Brown was started on its eternal
way!”

Was John Brown simply an episode, or was he an eternal truth? And if a
truth, how speaks that truth to-day? John Brown loved his neighbor as
himself. He could not endure therefore to see his neighbor, poor,
unfortunate or oppressed. This natural sympathy was strengthened by a
saturation in Hebrew religion which stressed the personal responsibility
of every human soul to a just God. To this religion of equality and
sympathy with misfortune, was added the strong influence of the social
doctrines of the French Revolution with its emphasis on freedom and
power in political life. And on all this was built John Brown’s own
inchoate but growing belief in a more just and a more equal distribution
of property. From this he concluded,—and acted on that conclusion—that
all men are created free and equal, and that the cost of liberty is less
than the price of repression.

Up to the time of John Brown’s death this doctrine was a growing,
conquering, social thing. Since then there has come a change and many
would rightly find reason for that change in the coincidence that the
year in which John Brown suffered martyrdom was the year that first
published the _Origin of Species_. Since that day tremendous scientific
and economic advance has been accompanied by distinct signs of moral
retrogression in social philosophy. Strong arguments have been made for
the fostering of war, the utility of human degradation and disease, and
the inevitable and known inferiority of certain classes and races of
men. While such arguments have not stopped the efforts of the advocates
of peace, the workers for social uplift and the believers in human
brotherhood, they have, it must be confessed, made their voices falter
and tinged their arguments with apology.

Why is this? It is because the splendid scientific work of Darwin,
Weissman, Galton and others has been widely interpreted as meaning that
there is essential and inevitable inequality among men and races of men,
which no philanthropy can or ought to eliminate; that civilization is a
struggle for existence whereby the weaker nations and individuals will
gradually succumb, and the strong will inherit the earth. With this
interpretation has gone the silent assumption that the white European
stock represents the strong surviving peoples, and that the swarthy,
yellow and black peoples are the ones rightly doomed to eventual
extinction.

One can easily see what influence such a doctrine would have on the race
problem in America. It meant moral revolution in the attitude of the
nation. Those that stepped into the pathway marked by men like John
Brown faltered and large numbers turned back. They said: He was a good
man—even great, but he has no message for us to-day—he was a “belated
Covenanter,” an anachronism in the age of Darwin, one who gave his life
to lift not the unlifted but the unliftable. We have consequently the
present reaction—a reaction which says in effect, Keep these black
people in their places, and do not attempt to treat a Negro simply as a
white man with a black face; to do this would mean the moral
deterioration of the race and the nation—a fate against which a divine
racial prejudice is successfully fighting. This is the attitude of the
larger portion of our thinking people.

It is not, however, an attitude that has brought mental rest or social
peace. On the contrary, it is to-day involving a degree of moral strain
and political and social anomaly that gives the wisest pause. The chief
difficulty has been that the natural place in which by scientific law
the black race in America should stay, cannot easily be determined. To
be sure, the freedmen did not, as the philanthropists of the sixties
apparently expected, step in forty years from slavery to nineteenth
century civilization. Neither, on the other hand, did they, as the
ex-masters confidently predicted, retrograde and die. Contrary to both
these views, they chose a third and apparently quite unawaited way. From
the great, sluggish, almost imperceptibly moving mass, they sent off
larger and larger numbers of faithful workmen and artisans, some
merchants and professional men, and even men of educational ability and
discernment. They developed no world geniuses, no millionaires, no great
captains of industry, no artists of the first rank; but they did in
forty years get rid of the greater part of their total illiteracy,
accumulate a half-billion dollars of property in small homesteads, and
gain now and then respectful attention in the world’s ears and eyes. It
has been argued that this progress of the black man in America is due to
the exceptional men among them and does not measure the ability of the
mass. Such an admission is, however, fatal to the whole argument. If the
doomed races of men are going to develop exceptions to the rule of
inferiority, then no rule, scientific or moral, should or can proscribe
the race as such.

To meet this difficulty in racial philosophy, a step has been taken in
America fraught with the gravest social consequences to the world, and
threatening not simply the political but the moral integrity of the
nation: that step is denying in the case of black men the validity of
those evidences of culture, ability, and decency which are accepted
unquestionably in the ease of other people; and by vague assertions,
unprovable assumptions, unjust emphasis, and now and then by deliberate
untruth, aiming to secure not only the continued proscription of all
these people, but, by caste distinction, to shut in the faces of their
rising classes many of the paths to further advance.

When a social policy, based on a supposed scientific sanction, leads to
such a moral anomaly, it is time to examine rather carefully the logical
foundations of the argument. And as soon as we do this many things are
clear: first, assuming the truth of the unproved dictum that there are
stocks of human beings whose elimination the best welfare of the world
demands it is certainly questionable if these stocks include the
majority of mankind; and it is indefensible and monstrous to pretend
that we know to-day with any reasonable assurance which these stocks
are. We can point to degenerate individuals and families here and there
among all races, but there is not the slightest warrant for assuming
that there does not lie among the Chinese and Hindus, the African Bantus
and American Indians as lofty possibilities of human culture as any
European race has ever exhibited. It is, to be sure, puzzling to know
why the Soudan should linger a thousand years in culture behind the
valley of the Seine, but it is no more puzzling than the fact that the
valley of the Thames was miserably backward as compared with the banks
of the Tiber. Climate, human contact, facilities of communication and
what we call accident, have played a great part in the rise of culture
among nations: to ignore these and assert dogmatically that the present
distribution of culture is a fair index of the distribution of human
ability and desert, is to make an assertion for which there is not the
slightest scientific warrant.

What the age of Darwin has done is to add to the eighteenth century idea
of individual worth the complementary idea of physical immortality. And
this, far from annulling or contracting the idea of human freedom,
rather emphasizes its necessity and eternal possibility—the
boundlessness and endlessness of human achievement. Freedom has come to
mean not individual caprice or aberration, but social self-realization
in an endless chain of selves; and freedom for such development is not
the denial but the central assertion of the evolutionary theory. So,
too, the doctrine of human equality passes through the fire of
scientific inquiry, not obliterated but transfigured: not equality of
present attainment but equality of opportunity, for unbounded future
attainment is the rightful demand of mankind.

What now does the present hegemony of the white races threaten? It
threatens by means of brute force a survival of some of the worst stocks
of mankind. It attempts to people the best parts of the earth and put in
absolute authority over the rest, not usually (and indeed not mainly)
the culture of Europe but its greed and degradation—not only some
representatives of the best stocks of the West End of London, upper New
York and the Champs Elysées, but also, in as large if not larger
numbers, the worst stocks of Whitechapel, the East Side and Montmartre;
and it essays to make the slums of white society in all cases and under
all circumstances the superior of any colored group, no matter what its
ability or culture. To be sure, this outrageous program of wholesale
human degeneration is not outspoken yet, save in the backward
civilizations of the Southern United States, South Africa and Australia.
But its enunciation is listened to with respect and tolerance in
England, Germany, and the Northern states by those very persons who
accuse philanthropy with seeking to degrade holy white blood by an
infiltration of colored strains. And the average citizen is voting ships
and guns to carry out this program.

This movement gathered force and strength; during the latter half of the
nineteenth century and reached its culmination when France, Germany,
England and Russia began the partition of China and the East. With the
sudden self-assertion of Japan, its wildest dreams collapsed, but it is
still to-day a living, virile, potent force and motive, the most subtle
and dangerous enemy of world peace and the dream of human brotherhood.
It has a whole vocabulary of its own: the strong races, superior
peoples, race preservation, the struggle for survival and a variety of
terms meaning the right of white men of any kind to beat blacks into
submission, make them surrender their wealth and the use of their women
and submit to dictation without murmur, for the sake of being swept off
the fairest portions of the earth or held there in perpetual serfdom or
guardianship. Ignoring the fact that the era of physical struggle for
survival has passed away among human beings, and that there is plenty of
room accessible on earth for all, this theory makes the possession of
Krupp guns the main criterion of mental stamina and moral fitness.

Even armed with this morality of the club, and every advantage of modern
culture, the white races have been unable to possess the earth. Many
signs of degeneracy have appeared among them: their birth-rate is
falling, their average ability is not increasing, their physical stamina
is impaired, and their social condition is not reassuring. Lacking the
physical ability to take possession of the world, they are to-day
fencing in America, Australia, and South Africa and declaring that no
dark race shall occupy or develop the land which they themselves are
unable to use. And all this on the plea that their stock is threatened
with deterioration from without, when in reality its most dangerous
threat is deterioration from within.

We are, in fact, to-day repeating in our intercourse between races all
the former evils of class distinction within the nation: personal hatred
and abuse, mutual injustice, unequal taxation and rigid caste.
Individual nations outgrew these fatal things by breaking down the
horizontal barriers between classes. We are bringing them back by
seeking to erect vertical barriers between races. Men were told that
abolition of compulsory class distinction meant leveling down,
degradation, disappearance of culture and genius and the triumph of the
mob. As a matter of fact, it has been the salvation of European
civilization. Some deterioration and leveling there was but it was more
than balanced by the discovery of new reservoirs of ability and
strength. So to-day we are told that free racial contact—or “social
equality” as Southern _patois_ has it—means contamination of blood and
lowering of ability and culture. It need mean nothing of the sort.
Abolition of class distinction did not mean universal intermarriage of
stocks, but rather the survival of the fittest by peaceful, personal and
social selection—a selection all the more effective because free
democracy and equality of opportunity allow the best to rise to their
rightful place. The same is true in racial contact. Vertical race
distinctions are even more emphatic hindrances to human evolution than
horizontal class distinctions, and their tearing away involves fewer
chances of degradation and greater opportunities of human betterment
than in case of class lines. On the other hand, persistence in racial
distinction spells disaster sooner or later. The earth is growing
smaller and more accessible. Race contact will become in the future
increasingly inevitable not only in America, Asia, and Africa but even
in Europe. The color line will mean not simply a return to the
absurdities of class as exhibited in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, but even to the caste of ancient days. This, however, the
Japanese, the Chinese, the East Indians and the Negroes are going to
resent in just such proportion as they gain the power; and they are
gaining the power, and they cannot be kept from gaining more power. The
price of repression will then be hypocrisy and slavery and blood.

This is the situation to-day. Has John Brown no message—no legacy, then,
to the twentieth century? He has and it is this great word: the cost of
liberty is less than the price of repression. The price of repressing
the world’s darker races is shown in a moral retrogression and an
economic waste unparalleled since the age of the African slave trade.
What would be the cost of liberty? What would be the cost of giving the
great stocks of mankind every reasonable help and incentive to
self-development—opening the avenues of opportunity freely, spreading
knowledge, suppressing war and cheating, and treating men and women as
equals the world over whenever and wherever they attain equality? It
would cost something. It would cost something in pride and prejudice,
for eventually many a white man would be blacking black men’s boots; but
this cost we may ignore—its greatest cost would be the new problems of
racial intercourse and intermarriage which would come to the front.
Freedom and equal opportunity in this respect would inevitably bring
some intermarriage of whites and yellows and browns and blacks. This
might be a good thing and it might not be. We do not know. Our belief on
the matter may be strong and even frantic, but it has no adequate
scientific foundation. If such marriages are proven inadvisable, how
could they be stopped? Easily. We associate with cats and cows, but we
do not fear intermarriage with them, even though they be given all
freedom of development. So, too, intelligent human beings can be trained
to breed intelligently without the degradation of such of their fellows
as they may not wish to breed with. In the Southern United States, on
the contrary, it is assumed that unwise marriages can be stopped only by
the degradation of the blacks—the classing of all darker women with
prostitutes, the loading of a whole race with every badge of public
isolation, degradation and contempt, and by burning offenders at the
stake. Is this civilization? No. The civilized method of preventing
ill-advised marriage lies in the training of mankind in the ethics of
sex and child-bearing. We cannot ensure the survival of the best blood
by the public murder and degradation of unworthy suitors, but we can
substitute a civilized human selection of husbands and wives which shall
ensure the survival of the fittest. Not the methods of the jungle, not
even the careless choices of the drawing-room, but the thoughtful
selection of the schools and laboratory is the ideal of future marriage.
This will cost something in ingenuity, self-control and toleration, but
it will cost less than forcible repression.

Not only is the cost of repression to-day large—it is a continually
increasing cost: the procuring of coolie labor, the ruling of India, the
exploitation of Africa, the problem of the unemployed, and the curbing
of the corporations, are a tremendous drain on modern society with no
near end in sight. The cost is not merely in wealth but in social
progress and spiritual strength, and it tends ever to explosion, murder,
and war. All these things but increase the difficulty of beginning a
régime of freedom in human growth and development—they raise the cost of
liberty. Not only that but the very explosions, like the Russo-Japanese
War, which bring partial freedom, tend in the complacent current
philosophy to prove the Wisdom of repression. “Blood will tell,” men
say. “The fit will survive; step up the tea-kettle and eventually the
steam will burst the iron,” and therefore only the steam that bursts is
worth the generating; only organized murder proves the fitness of a
people for liberty. This is a fearful and dangerous doctrine. It
encourages wrong leadership and perverted ideals at the very time when
loftiest and most unselfish striving is called for—as witness Japan
after her emancipation, or America after the Civil War. Conversely, it
leads the shallow and unthinking to brand as demagogue and radical every
group leader who in the day of slavery and struggle cries out for
freedom.

For such reasons it is that the memory of John Brown stands to-day as a
mighty warning to his country. He saw, he felt in his soul the wrong and
danger of that most daring and insolent system of human repression known
as American slavery. He knew that in 1700 it would have cost something
to overthrow slavery and establish liberty; and that by reason of
cowardice and blindness the cost in 1800 was vastly larger but still not
unpayable. He felt that by 1900 no human hand could pluck the vampire
from the body of the land without doing the nation to death. He said, in
1859, “Now is the accepted time.” Now is the day to strike for a free
nation. It will cost something—even blood and suffering, but it will not
cost as much as waiting. And he was right. Repression bred
repression—serfdom bred slavery, until in 1861 the South was farther
from freedom than in 1800.

The edict of 1863 was the first step in emancipation and its cost in
blood and treasure was staggering. But that was not all—it was only a
first step. There were other bills to pay of material reconstruction,
social regeneration, mental training and moral uplift. These the nation
started to meet in the Fifteenth Amendment, the Freedman’s Bureau, the
crusade of school-teachers and the Civil Rights Bill. But the effort was
great and the determination of the South to pay no single cent or deed
for past error save by force, led in the revolution of 1876 to the
triumph of reaction. Reaction meant and means a policy of state, society
and individual, whereby no American of Negro blood shall ever come into
the full freedom of modern culture. In the carrying out of this program
by certain groups and sections, no pains have been spared—no expenditure
of money, ingenuity, physical or moral strength. The building of
barriers around these black men has been pushed with an energy so
desperate and unflagging that it has seriously checked the great
outpouring of benevolence and sympathy that greeted the freedman in
1863. It has come so swathed and gowned in graciousness as to disarm
philanthropy and chill enthusiasm. It has used double-tongued argument
with deadly effect. Has the Negro advanced? Beware his further strides.
Has the Negro retrograded? It is his fate, why seek to help him? Thus
has the spirit of repression gained attention, complacent acquiescence,
and even coöperation. To be sure, there still stand staunch souls who
cannot yet believe the doctrine of human repression, and who pour out
their wealth for Negro training and freedom in the face of the common
cry. But the majority of Americans seem to have forgotten the foundation
principles of their government and the recklessly destructive effect of
the blows meant to bind and tether their fellows. We have come to see a
day here in America when one citizen can deprive another of his vote at
his discretion; can restrict the education of his neighbors’ children as
he sees fit; can with impunity load his neighbor with public insult on
the king’s highway; can deprive him of his property without due process
of law; can deny him the right of trial by his peers, or of any trial
whatsoever if he can get a large enough group of men to join him; can
refuse to protect or safeguard the integrity of the family of some men
whom he dislikes; finally, can not only close the door of opportunity in
commercial and social lines in a fully competent neighbor’s face, but
can actually count on the national and state governments to help and
make effective this discrimination.

Such a state of affairs is not simply disgraceful; it is deeply and
increasingly dangerous. Not only does the whole nation feel already the
loosening of joints which these vicious blows on human liberty have
caused—lynching, lawlessness, lying and stealing, bribery and
divorce—but it can look for darker deeds to come.

And this not merely because of the positive harm of this upbuilding of
barriers, but above all because within these bursting barriers are
men—human forces which no human hand can hold. It is human force and
aspiration and endeavor which are moving there amid the creaking of
timbers and writhing of souls. It is human force that has already done
in a generation the work of many centuries. It has saved over a
half-billion dollars in property, bought and paid for landed estate half
the size of all England, and put homes thereon as good and as pure as
the homes of any corresponding economic class the world around; it has
crowded eager children through a wretched and half-furnished school
system until from an illiteracy of seventy per cent., two-thirds of the
living adults can read and write. These proscribed millions have 50,000
professional men, 200,000 men in trade and transportation, 275,000
artisans and mechanics, 1,250,000 servants and 2,000,000 farmers working
with the nation to earn its daily bread. These farmers raise yearly on
their own and hired farms over 4,000,000 bales of cotton, 25,000,000
pounds of rice, 10,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 90,000,000 pounds of
tobacco and 100,000,000 bushels of corn, besides that for which they
labor on the farms of others. They have given America music, inspired
art and literature, made its bread, dug its ditches, fought its battles,
and suffered in its misfortunes. The great mass of these men is becoming
daily more thoroughly organized, more deeply self-critical, more
conscious of its power. Threatened though it has been naturally, as a
proletariat, with degeneration and disease, it is to-day reducing its
death-rate and beginning organized rescue of its delinquents and
defectives. The mass can still to-day be called ignorant, poor and but
moderately efficient, but it is daily growing better trained, richer and
more intelligent. And as it grows it is sensing more and more the
vantage-ground which it holds as a defender of the right of the freedom
of human development for black men in the midst of a centre of modern
culture. It sees its brothers in yellow, black and brown held physically
at arms’ length from civilization lest they become civilized and less
liable to conquest and exploitation. It sees the world-wide effort to
build an aristocracy of races and nations on a foundation of darker
half-enslaved and tributary peoples. It knows that the last great battle
of the West is to vindicate the right of any man of any nation, race, or
color to share in the world’s goods and thoughts and efforts to the
extent of his effort and ability.

Thus to-day the Negro American faces his destiny and doggedly strives to
realize it. He has his tempters and temptations. There are ever those
about him whispering: “You are nobody; why strive to be somebody? The
odds are overwhelming against you—wealth, tradition, learning and guns.
Be reasonable. Accept the dole of charity and the cant of missionaries
and sink contentedly to your place as humble servants and helpers of the
white world.” If this has not been effective, threats have been used:
“If you continue to complain, we will withdraw all aid, boycott your
labor, cease to help support your schools and let you die and disappear
from the land in ignorance, crime and disease.” Still the black man has
pushed on, has continued to protest, has refused to die out and
disappear, and to-day stands as physically the most virile element in
America, intellectually among the most promising, and morally the most
tremendous and insistent of the social problems of the New World. Not
even the silence of his friends, or of those who ought to be the friends
of struggling humanity, has silenced him. Not even the wealth of modern
Golconda has induced him to believe that life without liberty is worth
living.

On the other side heart-searching is in order. It is not well with this
land of ours: poverty is certainly not growing less, wealth is being
wantonly wasted, business honesty is far too rare, family integrity is
threatened, bribery is poisoning our public life, theft is honeycombing
our private business, and voting is largely unintelligent. Not that
these evils are unopposed. There are brave men and women striving for
social betterment, for the curbing of the vicious power of wealth, for
the uplift of women and the downfall of thieves. But their battle is
hard, and how much harder because of the race problem—because of the
calloused conscience of caste, the peonage of black labor hands, the
insulting of black women, and the stealing of black votes? How far are
business dishonesty and civic degradation in America the direct result
of racial prejudice?

Well do I know that many persons defend their treatment of undeveloped
peoples on the highest grounds. They say, as Jefferson Davis intimated,
that liberty is for the full-grown, not for children. It was during
Senator Mason’s inquisition after the hanging of John Brown, whereby the
Southern leader hoped to entrap the Abolitionists. Joshua R. Giddings,
keen, impetuous and fiery, was on the rack. Senator Davis, pale, sallow
and imperturbable, with all the aristocratic poise and dignity built on
the unpaid toil of two centuries of slaves, said:

“Did you, in inculcating, by popular lectures, the doctrine of a law
higher than that of the social compact, make your application
exclusively to Negro slaves, or did you also include minors, convicts,
and lunatics, who might be restrained of their liberty by the laws of
the land?”

Mr. Giddings smiled. “Permit me,” he said, “... with all due deference,
to suggest, so that I may understand you, do you intend to inquire
whether those lectures would indicate whether your slaves of the slave
states had a right at all times to their liberty?”

“I will put the question in that form if you like it,” answered Davis,
and then Giddings flashed:

“My lectures, in all instances, would indicate the right of every human
soul in the enjoyment of reason, while he is charged with no crime or
offense, to maintain his life, his liberty, the pursuit of his own
happiness; that this has reference to the enslaved of all the states as
much as it had reference to our own people while enslaved by the
Algerines in Africa.”

But Mr. Davis suavely pressed his point: “Then the next question is,
whether the same right was asserted for minors and apprentices, being
men in good reason, yet restrained of their liberty by the laws of the
land.”

Giddings replied: “I will answer at once that the proposition or
comparison is conflicting with the dictates of truth. The minor is, from
the law of nature, under the restraints of parental affection for the
purposes of nurture, of education, of preparing him to secure and
maintain the very rights to which I refer.”[293]

This debate is not yet closed. It was not closed by the Civil War. Men
still maintain that East Indians and Africans and others ought to be
under the restraint and benevolent tutelage of stronger and wiser
nations for their own benefit. Well and good. Is the tutelage really
benevolent? Then it is training in liberty. Is it training in slavery?
Then it is not benevolent. Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is
the first step in responsibility.

Even the restraints imposed in the training of men and children are
restraints that will in the end make greater freedom possible. Is the
benevolent expansion of to-day of such a character? Is England trying to
see how soon and how effectively the Indians can be trained for
self-government or is she willing to exploit them just so long as they
can be cajoled or quieted into submission? Is Germany trying to train
her Africans to modern citizenship or to modern “work without
complaint”? Is the South trying to make the Negroes responsible,
self-reliant freemen of a republic, or the dumb driven cattle of a great
industrial machine?

No sooner is the question put this way than the defenders of modern
caste retire behind a more defensible breastwork. They say: “Yes, we
exploit nations for our own advantage purposely—even at times brutally.
But only in that way can the high efficiency of the modern industrial
process be maintained, and in the long run it benefits the oppressed
even more than the oppressor.” This doctrine is as wide-spread as it is
false and mischievous. It is true that the bribe of greed will
artificially hasten economic development, but it does so at fearful
cost, as America itself can testify. We have here a wonderful industrial
machine, but a machine quickly rather than carefully built, formed of
forcing rather than of growth, involving sinful and unnecessary expense.
Better smaller production and more equitable distribution; better fewer
miles of railway and more honor, truth, and liberty; better fewer
millionaires and more contentment. So it is the world over, where force
and fraud and graft have extorted rich reward from writhing millions.
Moreover, it is historically unprovable that the advance of undeveloped
peoples has been helped by wholesale exploitation at the hands of their
richer, stronger, and more unscrupulous neighbors. This idea is a legend
of the long exploded doctrine of inevitable economic harmonies in all
business life. True it is that adversity and difficulties make for
character, but the real and inevitable difficulties of life are numerous
enough for genuine development without the aid of artificial hindrances.
The inherent and natural difficulties of raising a people from ignorant
unmoral slavishness to self-reliant modern manhood are great enough for
purposes of character-building without the aid of murder, theft, caste,
and degradation. Not because of but in spite of these latter hindrances
has the Negro American pressed forward.

This, then, is the truth: the cost of liberty is less than the price of
repression, even though that cost be blood. Freedom of development and
equality of opportunity is the demand of Darwinism and this calls for
the abolition of hard and fast lines between races, just as it called
for the breaking down of barriers between classes. Only in this way can
the best in humanity be discovered and conserved, and only thus can
mankind live in peace and progress. The present attempt to force all
whites above all darker peoples is a sure method of human degeneration.
The cost of liberty is thus a decreasing cost, while the cost of
repression ever tends to increase to the danger point of war and
revolution. Revolution is not a test of capacity; it is always a loss
and a lowering of ideals.

John Brown taught us that the cheapest price to pay for liberty is its
cost to-day. The building of barriers against the advance of
Negro-Americans hinders but in the end cannot altogether stop their
progress. The excuse of benevolent tutelage cannot be urged, for that
tutelage is not benevolent that does not prepare for free responsible
manhood. Nor can the efficiency of greed as an economic developer be
proven—it may hasten development but it does so at the expense of
solidity of structure, smoothness of motion, and real efficiency. Nor
does selfish exploitation help the undeveloped; rather it hinders and
weakens them.

It is now full fifty years since this white-haired old man lay weltering
in the blood which he spilled for broken and despised humanity. Let the
nation which he loved and the South to which he spoke, reverently listen
again to-day to those words, as prophetic now as then:

“You had better—all you people of the South—prepare yourselves for a
settlement of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner than
you are prepared for it, and the sooner you commence that preparation,
the better for you. You may dispose of me very easily—I am nearly
disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled—this Negro
question, I mean. The end of that is not yet.”




                              BIBLIOGRAPHY


  _For the general reader the following works are indispensable_:

  SANBORN, FRANKLIN BENJAMIN. The Life and Letters of John Brown,
            Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia. 1885. (The most
            complete collection of John Brown letters.)

  HINTON, RICHARD JOSIAH. John Brown and His Men, with some account of
            the roads they traveled to reach Harper’s Ferry. 1894.
            (Valuable for its treatment of Kansas and its lives of
            Brown’s companions.)

  REDPATH, JAMES. Public Life of Captain John Brown, with autobiography
            of his childhood and youth. (The best contemporary account.)

  CONNELLEY, WILLIAM ELSEY. John Brown. 1900, (Valuable for Kansas life
            of Brown.)

  To the above may be added the shorter estimate by H. E. von Holst,
            1899, and some may like Chamberlain’s pert essay (Beacon
            Biographies, 1889).


_Students must add to these the following books and articles which
contain many of the original sources of our knowledge_:

  ANDERSON, OSBORNE P. A Voice from Harper’s Ferry. A narrative of
            events at Harper’s Ferry; with incidents prior and
            subsequent to its capture by John Brown and his men. 1861.
            (The best account of the raid by a participant.)

  MANUSCRIPT DIARY of John Brown in the Boston Public Library. (2
            volumes.) 1838–1844, 1855–1859.

  GARRISON, WENDELL PHILLIPS. The Preludes of Harper’s Ferry. In the
            _Andover Review_, December, 1890, and January, 1891.

  JOSEPHUS, JR. (Joseph Barry). The Brown Raid. In his annals of
            Harper’s Ferry, 1872. (Excellent local account.)

  UNITED STATES CONGRESSIONAL REPORTS. Report of the select committee of
            the Senate appointed to inquire into John Brown’s invasion
            and the seizure of the public property at Harper’s Ferry.
            Thirty-sixth Congress, first session. Senate Reports of
            Committees.

  TRANSACTIONS of the Kansas State Historical Society, together with
            addresses, etc., Volumes I-IX. (Contains many personal
            narratives.)

  CALENDAR of Virginia State papers, Volume XI, pp. 269–349. (A large
            amount of the Brown data copied from the papers found in his
            carpetbag at Harper’s Ferry.)

  VIRGINIA SENATE Journal and Documents for the session of 1859–60:
            Report of the joint committee of the Senate and House of
            Delegates, appointed to consider the Harper’s Ferry affair
            by Alexander H. Stuart, the chairman of the committee.

  VIRGINIA, Journal of House of Delegates of Virginia, 1859–60,
            containing messages of the governor, the trial and
            publication of John Brown’s papers.

  FEATHERSTONHAUGH, THOMAS. Bibliography of John Brown, Part I.
            Publications of the Southern History Association, Volume I,
            pp. 196–202.

  —— John Brown’s Men; the lives of those killed at Harper’s Ferry, with
            a supplementary bibliography of John Brown. In Southern
            History Association publications. Volume 3, pp. 281–306.
            (The best bibliography.)

  DOUGLASS, FREDERICK. John Brown, an address at the fourteenth
            anniversary of Storer College, 1881.

  —— Life and Times of. 1892.

  REDPATH, JAMES. Echoes of Harper’s Ferry. 1860.

  HUNTER, ANDREW. John Brown’s Raid. In Southern History Association
            publications. Volume I, pp. 165–195. 1897. (The story of the
            prosecuting attorney.)

  HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH. A Visit to John Brown’s Household in
            1859. (In “Contemporaries,” 1899.)

  WRIGHT, HARRY A. John Brown in Springfield. _New England Magazine_,
            pp. 272–281.

  WEBB, RICHARD D., Editor. The Life and Letters of Captain John Brown,
            who was executed at Charlestown, Va, December 2, 1859, for
            an armed attack upon American slavery; with notices of some
            of his confederates. 1861.

  BOTELER, ALEXANDER L. Recollections of the John Brown Raid. _Century._
            July, 1883. Comment by F. B. Sanborn.

  DAINGERFIELD, JOHN E. P. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. _Century._
            June. 1885, pp. 265–267. (The story of an engine-house
            prisoner.)

  VOORHEES, DANIEL W. Argument delivered at Charleston, Va., November 8,
            1859, upon the trial of John E. Cook. Richmond, Va., 1861.

  HAMILTON, JAMES CLELAND. John Brown in Canada. Illustrated.
            Republished from _Canadian Magazine_, December, 1894.

  _The purely controversial literature raging around John Brown is
  endless. Those interested might read_:

  UTTER, DAVID N. John Brown of Osawatomie. _North American Review_,
            November, 1883.

  NICOLAY, JOHN G. and HAY, JOHN. Abraham Lincoln, a history. 1890.
            (Volume two contains history of John Brown and Harper’s
            Ferry Raid.)

  ROBINSON, CHARLES. The Kansas Conflict. 1892.

  BROWN, GEORGE WASHINGTON, M. D. False claims of Kansas historians
            truthfully corrected. Principally a refutation of the claim
            that the rescue of Kansas from slavery was due to John
            Brown. Rockford, Ill. The author. 1902.

  —— Reminiscences of Old John Brown. Thrilling instances of border life
            in Kansas. With appendix by Eli Thayer. Rockford, Ill. 1880.
            Printed by Eli Smith.

  WRIGHT, MARCUS JOSEPH. Trial of John Brown. Its impartiality and
            decorum vindicated. Southern History Society Papers, Vol.
            XVI, pp. 357–363.

  SPRING, L. W. Kansas. 1885.

  WILLIAMS, G. W. History of Negro Race in America. 1883. Two volumes.
            (For John Brown, see volume two, pp. 213–227.)

  THAYER, ELI. The Kansas Crusade. 1889.

  HUGO, VICTOR. John Brown. 1861.

  WISE, BARTON H. The Life of Henry S. Wise. 1899.




                                 INDEX


 Abolitionists, 86, 91, 93, 96, 125, 341–342.

 Adams, John Quincy, 49.

 Adirondack farm, the, 12, 199.

 Alcott, A. Bronson, 210, 290–291.

 Alleghany Mountains, 48, 106, 127, 275, 279, 299.

 Anderson, Jeremiah, 258, 282–283, 324, 325, 336.

 Anderson, John, 282.

 Anderson, Osborne Perry, 280, 305, 334, 336.

 Atchison, Senator, 134, 175.


 Black Jack, battle of, 166–169, 221.

 Brown, Anne, 286, 300, 301.

 Brown, Edward, 145.

 Brown, Frederick (the brother), 95.

 Brown, Frederick (the son), 128, 152, 155, 166, 167, 178.

 Brown, Jason, 87, 128, 146, 149, 159, 160, 186.

 Brown, John, Jr., 127, 146, 147, 159, 186.

 Brown, John, ancestry of, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20;
   boyhood and youth of, 21–23, 25, 31;
   as tanner, 31;
   marriage of, 32;
   occupations of, 32;
   family life of, 33–37;
   second marriage of, 38;
   in panic of 1837, 41;
   as shepherd, 52–60;
   as wool merchant, 61–68;
   in England, 68–71;
   lawsuits of, 71–74;
   and fugitive slaves, 84, 85;
   first plan against slavery, 87–88;
   and Negroes in, 89–91;
   and mobs, 91;
   and oath vs. slavery, 92, 93;
   and Abolitionists, 91–94;
   and settlement in Virginia, 95;
   and black men, 97–121;
   and Frederick Douglass, 102–109;
   in the Adirondacks, 111–113;
   in Kansas, 126–134, 139–140, 143–144, 145–197;
   developing plans of, 198–206;
   trip eastward of, 197, 207–218;
   meets Forbes, 216;
   return westward, 218;
   securing arms and men, 218–225;
   second trip eastward, 225–251;
   at Douglass’ home, 225–227;
   revelation of, 229–231;
   trip to Canada of, 15, 248–251;
   meets Harriet Tubman, 249–251;
   return to Iowa of, 251–253;
   third trip eastward of, 252;
   return to Canada, 252;
   Chatham convention, 253–266;
   betrayal of, by Forbes, 266–269;
   in New England and New York, 268–270;
   third return westward, 270–272;
   Harper’s Ferry plans of, 274–277;
   financial resources of, 277–278;
   military organizations of, 106, 116, 149, 160–169, 175–179, 181–182,
      188–189, 191, 226–227, 278–279;
   Negro companions of, 280–283;
   white companions
 of, 283–287;
   health of, 288;
   seventh trip eastward, 288–291;
   starts South, 291;
   arrives at Harper’s Ferry, 292;
   perfecting arrangements, 293–307;
   meets Douglass, 295–297;
   life at Kennedy Farm, 298–302;
   betrayal of plans of, 302–303;
   raid of, at Harper’s Ferry, 308–337;
   capture of, 333–334;
   fate of companions of, 336;
   results, 338;
   trial of, 356–364;
   execution of, 363–364;
   last letters of, 365–373;
   and present Negro problem, 373–396;
   character of, 15, 16, 22–23, 26–47, 300–301, 338–358;
   descriptions of, 21, 28, 73, 74, 92, 104, 173–174, 197, 287;
   family of, 31–39, 42, 44, 45, 58, 71, 73, 74, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95,
      102–104, 112, 119, 120, 121;
   letters of, 42–46, 53–60, 62–63, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 74, 87–88, 113,
      118, 132, 146–149, 151, 152, 159, 166–169, 178, 179, 182, 186,
      187, 188–189, 218, 220, 227, 228, 232–234, 248, 249, 257, 266,
      267, 270, 271, 304, 357, 365–373;
   reading of, 40;
   religion of, 23, 25, 40–41, 42, 47, 365–373;
   speeches of, 132, 150, 180–182, 213–214;
   song of, 334.

 Brown, Oliver, 133, 146, 149, 152, 155, 283.

 Brown, Owen, 19, 20, 77, 78, 128, 147, 152, 155, 186, 252, 259, 272,
    283, 319, 329, 335, 336.

 Brown, Peter, 19.

 Brown, Salmon, 128, 137, 152–168, 186.

 Brown, Watson, 155, 283.

 Buchanan, President, 142, 214.

 Burns, Anthony, 72.


 Canada, the Negroes in, 236–238, 253–254, 270.

 Caste and the Negro, 76–78, 81, 235–247, 377–380, 387, 388, 391–393.

 Catchers, slave, 97.

 Charleston, Va. (W. Va.), 13.

 Committee, National Kansas, New York meeting of, 13, 207.

 Constitution, articles of Brown’s, 265, 266.

 Constitution, pro-slavery, of Kansas, 136.

 Constitution, Lecompton of Kansas, 143, 187, 224.

 Contact of races, 380, 382.

 Convention, address of Philadelphia, 236–238.

 Convention, Big Springs, Kansas, 12.

 Convention, Chatham, 203, 257, 267.

 Convention, Syracuse, of Abolitionists, 12, 132, 133.

 Cook, John E., 219, 220, 252, 259, 315, 316, 318, 319, 324, 331, 336.

 Copeland, John A., 281–305, 325, 336.

 Coppoc, Barclay, 223, 319, 336.

 Coppoc, Edwin, 223, 336.

 Coronado, 16, 123.

 Covenant and by-laws of John Brown’s followers, 160–161.

 Crandall, Prudence, 87.


 Daingerfield, Captain, 326.

 Daniels, Jim, 192.

 Davis, Jefferson, 124, 391–393.

 Day, Mary Ann, 11, 38, 241.

 Decision, Dred Scott, 142, 213.

 Delaney, Martin R., 245–246, 248, 254, 258.

 Diary, John Brown’s, 278.

 Douglass, Frederick, 7, 12, 13, 15, 47, 101, 102–109, 121, 122, 131,
    132, 214, 225, 241, 247, 258, 342, 344–346, 353.

 Douglas, Stephen A., 126.

 Dutch Henry’s Crossing, 134, 154.


 Emancipation, 386–387.

 Engine-house at Harper’s Ferry, 326, 334.


 Fight at Harper’s Ferry, 322–326.

 Floyd, John, Secretary of War, 124.

 Forbes, Hugh, 73;
   meets Brown, 216–217;
   goes West, 218–219;
   returns East, 219;
   betrays plans, 225;
   complaints of, 266, 268.

 Franklin, Kansas, attack on, 175–176.

 Freedom, League of, 244.

 Free Soilers, 131.

 Fugitive Slave Law, 12, 236.

 Fugitive slaves, 82, 84, 85, 88, 94, 106–108, 203–204, 241.


 Gabriel, 11, 83, 127.

 Garnet, H. H., 98, 102, 240, 243, 248, 258.

 Garrison, William Lloyd, 15, 93, 342.

 Geary, Governor of Kansas, 13, 141–180, 183–184.

 Giddings, Joshua, 152, 391–392.

 Gill, George B., 223, 259.

 Gloucester, Negro minister, 98, 248, 258.

 Great Black Way, the, 273.

 Greeley, Horace, 130, 266.

 Green, Shields, 280, 323, 334, 336, 343–347.


 Hall, Pennsylvania, 91.

 Hamilton’s massacre, 188, 192–194.

 Harper’s Ferry raid:
   the place 273–274;
   plans of, 274–276;
   financial resources of, 277–278;
   military organizations of, 278–280;
   participants of, 280–288;
   depot at Chambersburg, 291–292;
   preparations, 293–307;
   beginning of foray, 308;
   capture of armory, 310;
   capture of town, 311;
   capture of Colonel Washington, 311–312;
   halting of train, 313;
   bringing up the arms, 314–316;
   further plans, 317–319;
   gathering of militia, 320–322;
   dislodging of Kagi, 324–325;
   retreat of engine-house, 326;
   killing of Brown’s men, 327–329;
   arrival of Lee, 331;
   parleying, 330–333;
   capture of Brown, 333–334;
   capture and escape of others, 334–336.

 Harper, Samuel, 194–195.

 Hayti, 75, 97.

 Hazlett, Albert, 334, 336.

 Henson, Josiah, 241, 253.

 Hinton, R. J., 7, 173, 181, 189, 204, 207, 222, 258, 277, 284.

 Holden, Isaac, 257, 258, 277, 284.

 Howe, Dr. S. G., 210, 231, 267, 341, 343.

 Hunter, Andrew, 352, 353, 356.


 Independence, Chatham Declaration of, 272.

 Insurrection, Cumberland region, 97.

 Insurrection in Virginia, 81.

 Insurrection of slaves, 79, 80, 83, 85, 97, 105–106.

 Insurrection, proposed Negro, 166.

 Intermarriage of races, 382, 384, 385.

 Isaac, insurrection of, 97.


 Jackson, President, 50.

 Jamaica, 79, 97.

 Jones, Henry, 241.

 Jones, John, 248.

 Jones, J. M., 256, 258.

 Jones, Ottawa, 178.

 _Journal, Freedom’s_, 239.


 Kagi, J. H., 13, 196, 199, 200, 201, 202, 252, 259, 317, 318, 324, 325.

 Kansas, 123;
   Brown’s sons in, 127–131;
   and slavery, 126, 134, 138, 144;
   John Brown and, 125, 126–127, 131–134, 139, 143–197.

 Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 13, 135, 136, 219–221.

 Kennedy Farm, 319.


 Lane, General James, 134, 141, 173–176, 186.

 Lane’s Army, 13, 173–176.

 Lane College, 95.

 Langston brothers, 241, 258.

 Law, Fugitive Slave, 12, 113, 119.

 Lawrence, Kansas, 12, 167, 170;
   sacking of, 153–154;
   last attack on, 180–184.

 League, Liberty, 244.

 League of Gileadites, 12, 114.

 Leary, Lewis Sherrard, 282–305.

 Lee, Robert E., 13, 331, 332.

 Leeman, William H., 221, 252, 259, 325, 336.

 _Liberator, The_, 94, 239.

 Liberty Hall, 158.

 Loudoun Heights, at Harper’s Ferry, 275, 318.

 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 75, 216.

 Lovejoy, 91, 115.

 Lusk, Dianthe, 11, 32, 38.


 Marlborough Chapel, 91.

 Massacre at Dutch Henry’s Crossing, 139–140, 143–144, 154–159.

 Maxon farm, Iowa, 252.

 Merriam, F. J., 286, 305, 336.

 Middle Creek, Kansas, 158.

 Military organization of Brown’s men, 106, 146, 149, 160–169, 175–179,
    181–182, 188–189, 191, 226–227, 278–279.

 Mills, Peter, 19.

 Missouri slave raid, 191–197.

 Mobs, abolition, 91.

 Mobs against Negroes, 235.

 Moffett, Charles W., 221, 252, 259.

 Montgomery, Captain, 188, 189, 190, 191.

 “Morgan, Shubel,” 189.

 Mulattoes, 77.

 Mysteries, American, 244.


 Negro character, 17.

 Negro conventions, 236, 237, 238, 239, 242, 244, 245–246.

 Negro emigration, 245–246.

 Negro insurgents, 318, 353–354.

 Negro insurrections, 79–80, 83, 85, 97, 105–106.

 Negro leaders, 97, 98, 101, 102, 110, 240, 241–243, 246, 258, 259, 294,
    295.

 Negro, Northern, 235.

 Negro organizations, 203–204, 244.

 Negro progress, 1830–1840, 235;
   1840–1850, 240;
   1850–1860, 243.

 Negro slavery, 76–84.

 Negroes, 12, 16.

 Negroes in America, 16, 17;
   in Canada, 236–238.

 Negroes, increase of, in ten years, 243.

 Negroes and John Brown, 343, 344, 347.

 Negroes of Springfield, 98, 99.

 Negroes, present condition of, 389.

 Newby, Dangerfield, 281, 323.

 North Elba, New York, 12.

 _North Star_, 101, 242.


 Oberlin College, 11, 53, 55, 95, 258, 281, 283.

 Oberlin College lands in Virginia, 53–55, 95.

 Odd Fellows, Negro, 240.

 Osawatomie, Kansas, 12, 128, 142, 147, 152, 159, 162, 166, 177, 224.

 Owen, John, 19.


 Panic of 1837, 11, 50, 55, 91.

 Parker, Theodore, 210, 227, 231.

 Parsons, L. L., 220–221, 252, 259.

 Perkins, Simon, 58, 68.

 Perkins and Brown, wool-merchants, 62, 67.

 Pierce, President, 151.

 Plans at Harper’s Ferry, 101, 318, 319, 324, 326.

 Plans of John Brown, 106–107, 260, 276.

 Pottawatomie Creek, 12, 157, 158, 162.

 Purvis, Robert, 241, 246.


 Raid at Harper’s Ferry, see Harper’s Ferry.

 Realf, Richard, 215–220, 252, 259.

 Redpath, James, 7, 72, 99, 132, 147, 181, 246.

 Reeder, Governor of Kansas, 215.

 Reynolds, G. J., 208, 258, 260.

 Richardson, Richard, 221, 252, 258.

 Robinson, Charles, Governor of Kansas, 134, 150, 184, 207, 341, 342.

 Rochester, N. Y., state convention, 244–245.

 Ross, Dr. A. M., 251, 257.

 Routes, Fugitive Slave, 97.


 “Sambo’s Mistakes,” 99.

 Sanborn, Frank B., 7, 13, 210, 228, 267.

 Schools for Negroes, 87, 94, 95.

 Shannon, Governor of Kansas, 141, 149, 150, 176.

 Shore, Captain, 167–168.

 “Shubel Morgan’s” Company, 189.

 Slave insurrections, 79–80, 83, 85, 97, 105–106.

 Slavery, 75–89, 124–126, 235.

 Smith, Gerrit, 12, 53, 131, 132, 133, 207, 226, 303, 341.

 Smith, J. McCune, 98, 131, 132, 225, 240, 267.

 Smith, Stephen, 241, 248, 258.

 Societies, Phœnix, 239.

 Society, American Anti-slavery, 246.

 Society, American Moral Reform, 238.

 Society, New England Emigrant Aid, 136, 145.

 Song of “John Brown’s Body,” 374.

 Southern bands in Kansas, 152, 166, 188.

 Spell of Africa, 121.

 Springdale, Iowa, John Brown in, 221–224.

 Stephens, Aaron D., 173, 194, 195–222, 252, 259, 336.

 Stearns, George L., 208–210, 226, 228, 277, 341.

 Still, William, 241, 248.

 Stuart, J. E. B., 332, 333.

 “Subterranean Pass Way,” 214.

 Sumner, Colonel, 15, 137, 139, 168–169, 225, 266.

 Survey of Virginia lands, 53–55.

 Swamp, Dismal, 86.

 Swamp of the Swan, 134, 145, 177, 188, 288.

 Sword of Gideon, 96.


 Tariff and wool, 61.

 Tariff of 1846, the, 65.

 Taylor, Stewart, 223, 259.

 Thayer, Eli, 126, 214.

 Thomas, John A., 258.

 Thomas, Thomas, 101, 247.

 Thompson, Henry, 113, 155–168.

 Thompson, William, 77, 173, 315, 316, 319, 324, 328, 329.

 Tidd, C. P., 221, 252, 259, 315, 316, 319, 324, 331, 335, 336.

 Tubman, Harriet, 204, 241, 249, 251, 293.

 Turner, Nat, 11, 85, 97, 127, 239.


 Underground Railroad, 94, 101, 107, 110, 198, 243, 263.

 University, Western Reserve, 86.


 Vesey, Denmark, 83, 97.

 Virginia, 16.


 Wakarusa war and treaty, 151.

 War, Civil, 48, 142.

 War in Kansas, 140, 142.

 War of 1812, 25, 48–49.

 Ward, Samuel Ringgold, 242, 243.

 Wars, Seminole, 84.

 Washington, Colonel Lewis, 317, 322.

 Wilberforce University, 236, 253.

 Wilson, Senator, 225, 226.

 Wise, Governor of Virginia, 336, 355.

 Woodson, Governor of Missouri, 180, 241.

 Wool-growers’ convention, 62.

-----

Footnote 1:

  Redpath, _Public Life of Captain John Brown_, p. 25.

Footnote 2:

  Autobiography of Owen Brown in Sanborn, _Life and Letters of John
  Brown_, p. 7.

Footnote 3:

  The quotations in this chapter are from John Brown’s Autobiography,
  Sanborn, _Life and Letters of John Brown_, pp. 12–17.

Footnote 4:

  John Brown’s Autobiography, Sanborn, p. 16.

Footnote 5:

  Heman Hallock, in the New York _Journal of Commerce_, quoted in
  Sanborn, p. 32.

Footnote 6:

  John Brown’s Autobiography, Sanborn, p. 16.

Footnote 7:

  John Brown’s Autobiography, Sanborn, pp. 16, 17.

Footnote 8:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, p. 34.

Footnote 9:

  Ruth Brown in Sanborn, pp. 37–39.

Footnote 10:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, pp. 91–93.

Footnote 11:

  Ruth Brown in Sanborn, pp. 93–94.

Footnote 12:

  _Ibid._, p. 104.

Footnote 13:

  Ruth Brown in Sanborn, p. 44.

Footnote 14:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1841, in Sanborn, p. 139.

Footnote 15:

  Letter to his wife, 1844, in Sanborn, p. 61.

Footnote 16:

  Ruth Brown in Sanborn, pp. 38–39.

Footnote 17:

  Letter to his wife, 1839, in Sanborn, p. 69.

Footnote 18:

  Letter to his wife, 1851, in Sanborn, p. 146.

Footnote 19:

  Letter to his wife, 1846, in Sanborn, p. 142.

Footnote 20:

  Letter to his daughter, 1847, in Sanborn, p. 142.

Footnote 21:

  Letter to his wife, 1844, in Sanborn, pp. 60–61.

Footnote 22:

  Letter to his father, 1846, in Sanborn, pp. 21, 22.

Footnote 23:

  Letter to his daughter, 1852, in Sanborn, p. 45.

Footnote 24:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1852, and to his children, 1853, in
  Sanborn, pp. 151 and 155.

Footnote 25:

  Letter to his wife, 1839, in Sanborn, p. 68.

Footnote 26:

  Sanborn, p. 58.

Footnote 27:

  Records of Oberlin College, quoted in Sanborn, pp. 134–135.

Footnote 28:

  Levi Burnell to Owen Brown, 1840, in Sanborn, p. 135.

Footnote 29:

  Letter to his family, 1840, in Sanborn, p. 134.

Footnote 30:

  MS. Diary, Boston Public Library. Vol. I. p. 65.

Footnote 31:

  Records of the Board of Trustees, Oberlin College, Aug. 28, 1840,
  quoted in Sanborn, p. 135.

Footnote 32:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, p 87.

Footnote 33:

  Agreement quoted in Sanborn, pp. 55–56.

Footnote 34:

  Letter to George Kellogg, 1844, in Sanborn, p. 56.

Footnote 35:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1843, in Sanborn, p. 58.

Footnote 36:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1843, in Sanborn, pp. 58–59.

Footnote 37:

  _Ibid._, p. 59.

Footnote 38:

  _Ibid._, p. 59.

Footnote 39:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1844, in Sanborn, pp. 59–60.

Footnote 40:

  _Ibid._, p. 61.

Footnote 41:

  Ruth Brown in Sanborn, p. 95.

Footnote 42:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1846, in Sanborn, p. 62.

Footnote 43:

  Circular issued in 1846, quoted in Sanborn, p. 63.

Footnote 44:

  Letter to Owen Brown, 1846, in Sanborn, p. 22.

Footnote 45:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1847, in Sanborn, p. 143.

Footnote 46:

  E. C. Leonard in Sanborn, p. 65.

Footnote 47:

  Letter to Owen Brown, 1847, in Sanborn, pp. 23–24.

Footnote 48:

  Letter to Owen Brown, 1849, in Sanborn, p. 25.

Footnote 49:

  _Ibid._

Footnote 50:

  Memoranda by John Brown, in Sanborn, p. 65; Redpath, p. 56

Footnote 51:

  Sanborn, pp. 67–68.

Footnote 52:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1849, Sanborn, p. 73.

Footnote 53:

  E. C. Leonard, in Sanborn, pp. 67–68.

Footnote 54:

  Letter to his wife, 1850, in Sanborn, p. 107.

Footnote 55:

  Letter to his children, 1850, in Sanborn, pp. 75–76.

Footnote 56:

  Redpath, p. 58.

Footnote 57:

  Letter to his son, in Sanborn, p. 145.

Footnote 58:

  Letter to his children, 1854, in Sanborn, p. 155.

Footnote 59:

  R. H. Dana, in the _Atlantic Monthly_, 1871.

Footnote 60:

  Owen Brown, in Sanborn, pp. 10–11.

Footnote 61:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, p. 35.

Footnote 62:

  Sanborn, p. 34.

Footnote 63:

  Letter to his brother Frederick, 1834, in Sanborn, pp. 40–41.

Footnote 64:

  Ruth Brown, in Sanborn, p. 37.

Footnote 65:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, pp. 52–53.

Footnote 66:

  Redpath, p. 65.

Footnote 67:

  Redpath, pp. 53–54.

Footnote 68:

  Redpath, pp. 59–60.

Footnote 69:

  From “Sambo’s Mistakes,” published in the _Ram’s Horn_ and printed in
  Sanborn, p. 130.

Footnote 70:

  Douglass, _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_ (1892), Chap. 8, Part
  II, pp. 337–342.

Footnote 71:

  Sanborn, p. 97.

Footnote 72:

  Redpath, p. 61.

Footnote 73:

  Ruth Brown, in Sanborn. p. 100.

Footnote 74:

  Redpath, p. 62.

Footnote 75:

  Letter to his wife, 1850, in Sanborn, pp. 106–107.

Footnote 76:

  Letter of instructions, agreement and resolutions, as given in
  Sanborn, pp. 124–127.

Footnote 77:

  Letter of instructions, agreement and resolutions, as given in
  Sanborn, pp. 124–127.

Footnote 78:

  Letter of instructions, agreement and resolutions, as given in
  Sanborn, pp. 124–127.

Footnote 79:

  Sanborn, p. 132.

Footnote 80:

  Ruth Brown, in Sanborn, pp. 131–132.

Footnote 81:

  Letter to his wife, 1852, in Sanborn, pp. 108–109.

Footnote 82:

  Ruth Brown, in Sunburn, p. 104.

Footnote 83:

  Letters to his children, 1852–1853, in Sanborn, pp. 110 and 148.

Footnote 84:

  Compare the _American Anthropologist_, Vol. 4, No. 2, April-June,
  1902.

Footnote 85:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1854, in Sanborn, p. 191.

Footnote 86:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, pp. 188–190.

Footnote 87:

  Letter to his children, 1854, in Sanborn, pp. 110–111.

Footnote 88:

  Redpath, p. 81.

Footnote 89:

  Letter to his wife, 1855, in Sanborn, pp. 193–194.

Footnote 90:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, pp. 190–191.

Footnote 91:

  Ruth Thompson, in Sanborn, p. 105.

Footnote 92:

  Farewell address of Governor Geary, _Transactions_ of the Kansas State
  Historical Society, Vol. IV, p. 739.

Footnote 93:

  Letters to his family, 1855, in Sanborn, pp. 201 and 205.

Footnote 94:

  Redpath, pp. 103–104.

Footnote 95:

  Letter to his family, 1855, in Sanborn, pp. 217–221.

Footnote 96:

  Letter to his wife, 1855, in Sanborn, pp. 217–221.

Footnote 97:

  G. W. Brown, _Reminiscences of Old John Brown_, p. 8; Phillips,
  _History of Kansas_, quoted in Redpath, p. 90.

Footnote 98:

  Letter to his family, 1855, in Sanborn, pp. 217–221.

Footnote 99:

  Letter to his family, 1856, in Sanborn, p. 223.

Footnote 100:

  Letter of Giddings to John Brown, 1856, in Sanborn, p. 224.

Footnote 101:

  D. W. Wilder, in the _Transactions_ of the Kansas State Historical
  Society, Vol. 6, p. 337.

Footnote 102:

  E. A. Coleman, in Sanborn, p. 260.

Footnote 103:

  James Hanway, in Hinton, _John Brown and His Men_, p. 695.

Footnote 104:

  Bondi in _Transactions_ of the Kansas State Historical Society, Vol.
  8, p. 279; Spring, _Kansas_, p. 143.

Footnote 105:

  Jason Brown, in Sanborn, p. 273.

Footnote 106:

  E. A. Coleman, in Sanborn, p. 259.

Footnote 107:

  John Brown, Jr., in Sanborn, p. 278.

Footnote 108:

  Letter to his family, 1856, in Sanborn, pp. 236–241.

Footnote 109:

  Sanborn, pp. 287–288.

Footnote 110:

  Sanborn, pp. 288–290.

Footnote 111:

  Redpath, pp. 112–114.

Footnote 112:

  Bondi in the _Transactions_ of the Kansas State Historical Society,
  Vol. 8, pp. 282–284.

Footnote 113:

  Bondi in the _Transactions_ of the Kansas State Historical Society,
  Vol. 8, p. 285.

Footnote 114:

  _Ibid._, p. 284.

Footnote 115:

  Bondi in the _Transactions_ of the Kansas State Historical Society,
  Vol. 8, p. 286; John Brown to his family, 1856, in Sanborn, pp.
  236–241.

Footnote 116:

  W. A. Phillips, in Sanborn, pp. 306–308.

Footnote 117:

  Hinton, pp. 201–204.

Footnote 118:

  Samuel Walker in _Transactions_ of the Kansas State Historical
  Society, Vol. 6, p. 267.

Footnote 119:

  Appeal to the citizens of Lafayette County, Mo., Sanborn, p. 309.

Footnote 120:

  Samuel Walker in _Transactions_ of the Kansas State Historical
  Society, Vol. 6, pp. 272–273.

Footnote 121:

  Quoted in Sanborn, p. 321.

Footnote 122:

  John Brown to his family, 1856, Sanborn, pp. 317–318.

Footnote 123:

  Charles Robinson to John Brown, 1856, in Sanborn, pp. 330–331.

Footnote 124:

  Speech of John Brown, Redpath, pp. 163–164.

Footnote 125:

  Redpath, pp. 164–165.

Footnote 126:

  Paper by John Brown, Sanborn, pp. 332–333.

Footnote 127:

  Executive minutes of Governor Geary in _Transactions_ of the Kansas
  State Historical Society, Vol. 4, p. 537.

Footnote 128:

  Letter to Augustus Wattles, 1857, in Sanborn, p. 391.

Footnote 129:

  Correspondence of Lane and Brown, in Sanborn, pp. 401–402.

Footnote 130:

  Letter to F. B. Sanborn and others, 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 474–477.

Footnote 131:

  _Ibid._

Footnote 132:

  Hinton in Redpath, pp. 199–206.

Footnote 133:

  George B. Gill in Hinton, p. 218.

Footnote 134:

  Sanborn, pp. 481–483.

Footnote 135:

  Hamilton, _John Brown in Canada_, pp. 4–5.

Footnote 136:

  Sanborn, p. 491.

Footnote 137:

  Redpath, p. 48.

Footnote 138:

  Redpath, p. 71.

Footnote 139:

  Hinton in Redpath, pp. 203–205.

Footnote 140:

  Reminiscences of George B. Gill, Hinton, pp. 732–733.

Footnote 141:

  Hinton, pp. 171–172.

Footnote 142:

  Notes by John Brown, in Sanborn, p. 244.

Footnote 143:

  Paper by John Brown, in Sanborn, pp. 241–242.

Footnote 144:

  Letter from Gerrit Smith to John Brown, in Sanborn, p. 364.

Footnote 145:

  Jeremiah Brown in Redpath, pp. 174–175.

Footnote 146:

  Reminiscences of Mrs. Mary E. Stearns, in Hinton, pp. 719–727.

Footnote 147:

  Sanborn, _John Brown and his Friends_, p. 8.

Footnote 148:

  Letter of H. B. Hurd to John Brown, 1857, in Sanborn, p. 367.

Footnote 149:

  Sanborn, pp. 375–376.

Footnote 150:

  Speech of John Brown, Sanborn. p. 379.

Footnote 151:

  Letter to Eli Thayer, 1857, in Sanborn, p. 382.

Footnote 152:

  Reminiscences of Dr. Wayland, Sanborn, p. 381.

Footnote 153:

  Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No. 278,
  Testimony of Richard Realf, p. 96.

Footnote 154:

  Hinton, pp. 614–615.

Footnote 155:

  Letter to Augustus Wattles, 1857, in Sanborn, p. 393.

Footnote 156:

  Confession of John E. Cook in Hinton, pp. 700–701.

Footnote 157:

  Richman, _John Brown Among the Quakers_, pp. 20–21.

Footnote 158:

  Richman, pp. 28–29.

Footnote 159:

  Hinton, pp. 156–157.

Footnote 160:

  Douglass, _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, pp. 385–386.

Footnote 161:

  Letter to Theodore Parker, 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 434–435.

Footnote 162:

  Letter to Higginson, 1858, in Sanborn, p. 436.

Footnote 163:

  Sanborn, pp. 438—440.

Footnote 164:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 450–451.

Footnote 165:

  Letter to his family, 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 440–441.

Footnote 166:

  Letter to F. B. Sanborn, 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 444–445.

Footnote 167:

  Hickok, _The Negro in Ohio_, p. 42.

Footnote 168:

  _Ibid._, p. 44.

Footnote 169:

  Williams, _Negro Race in America_, Vol. 2, pp. 65–67.

Footnote 170:

  Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy, No. 9, p. 10.

Footnote 171:

  Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy, No. 9, p. 15.

Footnote 172:

  _Ibid._, No. 9, p. 16.

Footnote 173:

  Douglass, _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_ (1892), p. 345.

Footnote 174:

  Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy, No. 9, pp. 16–19.

Footnote 175:

  Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy, No. 9, pp. 20–21.

Footnote 176:

  Manuscript Diary of John Brown, Boston Public Library, Vol. 2, p. 35.

Footnote 177:

  Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1858, in Sanborn, p. 452.

Footnote 178:

  Bradford, _Harriet, the Moses of Her People_, pp. 118–119.

Footnote 179:

  Letter of Wendell Phillips, printed in Bradford, _Harriet, the Moses
  of Her People_, pp. 155–156.

Footnote 180:

  Hamilton, _John Brown in Canada_, p. 10.

Footnote 181:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 9.

Footnote 182:

  Rollins, _Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delaney_, pp. 85–90.

Footnote 183:

  Reminiscences of J. M. Jones, in Hamilton, _John Brown in Canada_, pp.
  14–15.

Footnote 184:

  Hinton, p. 178.

Footnote 185:

  Reminiscences of J. M. Jones, in Hamilton, _John Brown in Canada_, pp.
  14 and 16.

Footnote 186:

  Rollins, _Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delaney_, pp. 85–90.

Footnote 187:

  Reminiscences of George B. Gill, in Hinton, p. 185.

Footnote 188:

  Reminiscences of J. M. Jones, in Hamilton, _John Brown in Canada_, p.
  16.

Footnote 189:

  Hinton, pp. 619–633.

Footnote 190:

  Hinton, pp. 642–643.

Footnote 191:

  Provisional Constitution, Art. 42.

Footnote 192:

  Letter to his family, 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 455–456.

Footnote 193:

  Letter from Sanborn to Higginson, 1858, in Sanborn, p. 458.

Footnote 194:

  Letter from Higginson to Theodore Parker, in Sanborn, p. 459.

Footnote 195:

  Letter from Forbes to Higginson, 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 460–461.

Footnote 196:

  Sanborn, pp. 463–464.

Footnote 197:

  Letter to Owen Brown, 1858, in Richman, _John Brown Among the
  Quakers_, pp. 40–41.

Footnote 198:

  Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_.

Footnote 199:

  Sanborn, p. 467.

Footnote 200:

  Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No. 278;
  Testimony of Richard Realf, p. 100.

Footnote 201:

  Sanborn, p. 457.

Footnote 202:

  Hinton, pp. 130–131.

Footnote 203:

  W. P. Garrison in the _Andover Review_, Dec., 1890, and Jan., 1891.

Footnote 204:

  General Orders, Oct. 10, 1859, Hinton, pp. 646–647.

Footnote 205:

  Douglass, _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, p. 387.

Footnote 206:

  Hunter, _John Brown’s Raid_, republished in the Publications of the
  Southern History Association, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 188.

Footnote 207:

  Report: Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No.
  278; Testimony of Ralph Plumb, p. 181.

Footnote 208:

  Barry, _The Strange Story of Harper’s Ferry_, p. 93.

Footnote 209:

  Anne Brown in Hinton, pp. 529–530.

Footnote 210:

  Hinton, p. 453.

Footnote 211:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 15.

Footnote 212:

  Hinton, pp. 496–497.

Footnote 213:

  Sanborn in the _Atlantic Monthly_, Hinton, p. 570.

Footnote 214:

  Anne Brown in Hinton, p. 450.

Footnote 215:

  From the newspaper report of the speech at Cleveland, March 22d,
  Redpath, pp. 239–240.

Footnote 216:

  Diary of A. Bronson Alcott, Sanborn, pp. 504–505.

Footnote 217:

  Report: Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No.
  278; Testimony of John C. Unseld, pp. 1–2.

Footnote 218:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 19.

Footnote 219:

  Douglass, _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, pp. 388–391.

Footnote 220:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, pp. 23–25.

Footnote 221:

  Anne Brown in Sanborn, p. 531.

Footnote 222:

  Anne Brown in Hinton, p. 265.

Footnote 223:

  Report: Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No.
  278; Testimony of John B. Floyd, pp. 250–252.

Footnote 224:

  Letter to Kagi, 1859, in Hinton, pp. 257–258.

Footnote 225:

  Anne Brown in Hinton, p. 260.

Footnote 226:

  Letter of Owen to John Brown, 1850, in Hinton, p. 259.

Footnote 227:

  John Brown, Jr., to Kagi, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 547–548.

Footnote 228:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 26.

Footnote 229:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 27.

Footnote 230:

  _Ibid._, p. 23.

Footnote 231:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 29.

Footnote 232:

  Anderson. _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, pp. 31–32.

Footnote 233:

  Report: Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No.
  278; Testimony of Daniel Wheeler, pp. 21–22.

Footnote 234:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 33.

Footnote 235:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, pp. 33–34.

Footnote 236:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, pp. 36–37.

Footnote 237:

  Statement by John Edwin Cook in Hinton, pp. 700–718.

Footnote 238:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 37.

Footnote 239:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, pp. 37–38.

Footnote 240:

  Redpath, p. 249.

Footnote 241:

  Report: Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No.
  278; Testimony of John D. Starry, p. 25.

Footnote 242:

  Boteler, “Recollections of the John Brown Raid” in the _Century
  Magazine_, July, 1883, p. 405.

Footnote 243:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 42.

Footnote 244:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, pp. 39–40.

Footnote 245:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 40.

Footnote 246:

  Boteler, “Recollections of the John Brown Raid” in the _Century
  Magazine_, July, 1883, p. 407.

Footnote 247:

  Daingerfield in the _Century Magazine_, June, 1885.

Footnote 248:

  Barry, _Strange Story of Harper’s Ferry_, p. 67.

Footnote 249:

  Patrick Higgins in Hinton, p. 290.

Footnote 250:

  Daingerfield in the _Century Magazine_, June, 1885.

Footnote 251:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 42.

Footnote 252:

  Testimony of Henry Hunter in Redpath, pp. 320–321.

Footnote 253:

  Daingerfield in the _Century Magazine_, June, 1885.

Footnote 254:

  Berry, _Strange Story of Harper’s Ferry_, pp. 70–71.

Footnote 255:

  Daingerfield in the _Century Magazine_, June, 1885.

Footnote 256:

  Anderson, _A Voice from Harper’s Ferry_, p. 52.

Footnote 257:

  John Brown in Sanborn, pp. 560–661.

Footnote 258:

  Report: Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No.
  278; Testimony of George L. Stearns, pp. 241–242.

Footnote 259:

  Douglass, _Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_ (1892), p. 376.

Footnote 260:

  Correspondence of the New York _Herald_, Sanborn, pp. 562–571.

Footnote 261:

  Frederick Douglass in a speech at Storer College at Harper’s Ferry,
  May, 1882.

Footnote 262:

  Hinton, pp. 325–326.

Footnote 263:

  Mrs. Spring in Redpath, p. 377.

Footnote 264:

  Newspaper report in Redpath, p. 376.

Footnote 265:

  Mrs. Spring in Redpath, p. 377.

Footnote 266:

  Letter to his sister, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 607–609.

Footnote 267:

  Remarks by John Brown in Redpath, p. 309.

Footnote 268:

  Newspaper report quoted by Redpath, p. 337.

Footnote 269:

  Redpath, pp. 340–342.

Footnote 270:

  Letter to Mrs. George L. Stearns, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 610–611.

Footnote 271:

  Letter to his cousin, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 594–595.

Footnote 272:

  Letter to D. R. Tilden in Sanborn, pp. 609–610.

Footnote 273:

  Letters to his family, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 579–580, 613–615.

Footnote 274:

  Letter to D. R. Tilden in Sanborn, pp. 609–610.

Footnote 275:

  Letter to his family, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 579–580.

Footnote 276:

  Letter to a friend, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 582–583.

Footnote 277:

  Letter to his family, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 579–580.

Footnote 278:

  Letter to H. L. Vaill, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 589–591.

Footnote 279:

  Letter to Rev. Dr. Humphrey, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 603–605.

Footnote 280:

  Letter to H. L. Vaill, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 590–591.

Footnote 281:

  Letter to Miss Stearns, Sanborn, p. 607.

Footnote 282:

  Postscript of letter to his family, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 585–587.

Footnote 283:

  Letter to Rev. Dr. Humphrey, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 603–605.

Footnote 284:

  Letter to Mr. McFarland, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 598–599.

Footnote 285:

  Letter to his younger children, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 596–597.

Footnote 286:

  Letter to his wife and children in Sanborn, pp. 585–587.

Footnote 287:

  Letter to D. R. Tilden in Sanborn, pp. 609–610.

Footnote 288:

  Letter to Mr. McFarland, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 598–599.

Footnote 289:

  Redpath, pp. 382–383. c

Footnote 290:

  Last letter to his family, 1859, in Sanborn, pp. 614–615.

Footnote 291:

  Letter to F. B. Musgrave, 1859, in Sanborn, p. 593.

Footnote 292:

  Report: Reports of Senate Committees, 36th Congress, 1st Session, No.
  278; Testimony of Joshua R. Giddings, pp. 147–156.





MY BONDAGE and MY FREEDOM

By Frederick Douglass


By a principle essential to Christianity, a PERSON is eternally
differenced from a THING; so that the idea of a HUMAN BEING,
necessarily excludes the idea of PROPERTY IN THAT BEING. —COLERIDGE

Entered according to Act of Congress in 1855 by Frederick Douglass in
the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Northern District of
New York

TO
HONORABLE GERRIT SMITH,
AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF
ESTEEM FOR HIS CHARACTER,
ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS AND BENEVOLENCE,
AFFECTION FOR HIS PERSON, AND
GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,
AND AS
A Small but most Sincere Acknowledgement of
HIS PRE-EMINENT SERVICES IN BEHALF OF THE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES
OF AN
AFFLICTED, DESPISED AND DEEPLY OUTRAGED PEOPLE,
BY RANKING SLAVERY WITH PIRACY AND MURDER,
AND BY
DENYING IT EITHER A LEGAL OR CONSTITUTIONAL EXISTENCE,
This Volume is Respectfully Dedicated,
BY HIS FAITHFUL AND FIRMLY ATTACHED FRIEND,

FREDERICK DOUGLAS.
ROCHESTER, N.Y.




CONTENTS

 MY BONDAGE and MY FREEDOM
 EDITOR’S PREFACE
 INTRODUCTION

 CHAPTER I. _Childhood_
 CHAPTER II. _Removed from My First Home_
 CHAPTER III. _Parentage_
 CHAPTER IV. _A General Survey of the Slave Plantation_
 CHAPTER V. _Gradual Initiation to the Mysteries of Slavery_
 CHAPTER VI. _Treatment of Slaves on Lloyd’s Plantation_
 CHAPTER VII. _Life in the Great House_
 CHAPTER VIII. _A Chapter of Horrors_
 CHAPTER IX. _Personal Treatment_
 CHAPTER X. _Life in Baltimore_
 CHAPTER XI. _“A Change Came O’er the Spirit of My Dream”_
 CHAPTER XII. _Religious Nature Awakened_
 CHAPTER XIII. _The Vicissitudes of Slave Life_
 CHAPTER XIV. _Experience in St. Michael’s_
 CHAPTER XV. _Covey, the Negro Breaker_
 CHAPTER XVI. _Another Pressure of the Tyrant’s Vice_
 CHAPTER XVII. _The Last Flogging_
 CHAPTER XVIII. _New Relations and Duties_
 CHAPTER XIX. _The Run-Away Plot_
 CHAPTER XX. _Apprenticeship Life_
 CHAPTER XXI. _My Escape from Slavery_

 LIFE as a FREEMAN
 CHAPTER XXII. _Liberty Attained_
 CHAPTER XXIII. _Introduced to the Abolitionists_
 CHAPTER XXIV. _Twenty-One Months in Great Britain_
 CHAPTER XXV. _Various Incidents_

 RECEPTION SPEECH [10]. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12,
 Dr. Campbell’s Reply
 LETTER TO HIS OLD MASTER. [11]. To My Old Master, Thomas Auld
 THE NATURE OF SLAVERY. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,
 INHUMANITY OF SLAVERY. Extract from A Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,
 WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY?. Extract from an Oration, at
 THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE. Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July
 THE SLAVERY PARTY. Extract from a Speech Delivered before the A. A. S.
 THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. Extracts from a Lecture before Various

 FOOTNOTES




MY BONDAGE and MY FREEDOM




EDITOR’S PREFACE


If the volume now presented to the public were a mere work of ART, the
history of its misfortune might be written in two very simple words—TOO
LATE. The nature and character of slavery have been subjects of an
almost endless variety of artistic representation; and after the
brilliant achievements in that field, and while those achievements are
yet fresh in the memory of the million, he who would add another to the
legion, must possess the charm of transcendent excellence, or apologize
for something worse than rashness. The reader is, therefore, assured,
with all due promptitude, that his attention is not invited to a work
of ART, but to a work of FACTS—Facts, terrible and almost incredible,
it may be yet FACTS, nevertheless.

I am authorized to say that there is not a fictitious name nor place in
the whole volume; but that names and places are literally given, and
that every transaction therein described actually transpired.

Perhaps the best Preface to this volume is furnished in the following
letter of Mr. Douglass, written in answer to my urgent solicitation for
such a work:

ROCHESTER, N. Y. _July_ 2, 1855.


DEAR FRIEND: I have long entertained, as you very well know, a somewhat
positive repugnance to writing or speaking anything for the public,
which could, with any degree of plausibilty, make me liable to the
imputation of seeking personal notoriety, for its own sake.
Entertaining that feeling very sincerely, and permitting its control,
perhaps, quite unreasonably, I have often refused to narrate my
personal experience in public anti-slavery meetings, and in
sympathizing circles, when urged to do so by friends, with whose views
and wishes, ordinarily, it were a pleasure to comply. In my letters and
speeches, I have generally aimed to discuss the question of Slavery in
the light of fundamental principles, and upon facts, notorious and open
to all; making, I trust, no more of the fact of my own former
enslavement, than circumstances seemed absolutely to require. I have
never placed my opposition to slavery on a basis so narrow as my own
enslavement, but rather upon the indestructible and unchangeable laws
of human nature, every one of which is perpetually and flagrantly
violated by the slave system. I have also felt that it was best for
those having histories worth the writing—or supposed to be so—to commit
such work to hands other than their own. To write of one’s self, in
such a manner as not to incur the imputation of weakness, vanity, and
egotism, is a work within the ability of but few; and I have little
reason to believe that I belong to that fortunate few.

These considerations caused me to hesitate, when first you kindly urged
me to prepare for publication a full account of my life as a slave, and
my life as a freeman.

Nevertheless, I see, with you, many reasons for regarding my
autobiography as exceptional in its character, and as being, in some
sense, naturally beyond the reach of those reproaches which honorable
and sensitive minds dislike to incur. It is not to illustrate any
heroic achievements of a man, but to vindicate a just and beneficent
principle, in its application to the whole human family, by letting in
the light of truth upon a system, esteemed by some as a blessing, and
by others as a curse and a crime. I agree with you, that this system is
now at the bar of public opinion—not only of this country, but of the
whole civilized world—for judgment. Its friends have made for it the
usual plea—“not guilty;” the case must, therefore, proceed. Any facts,
either from slaves, slaveholders, or by-standers, calculated to
enlighten the public mind, by revealing the true nature, character, and
tendency of the slave system, are in order, and can scarcely be
innocently withheld.

I see, too, that there are special reasons why I should write my own
biography, in preference to employing another to do it. Not only is
slavery on trial, but unfortunately, the enslaved people are also on
trial. It is alleged, that they are, naturally, inferior; that they are
_so low_ in the scale of humanity, and so utterly stupid, that they are
unconscious of their wrongs, and do not apprehend their rights.
Looking, then, at your request, from this stand-point, and wishing
everything of which you think me capable to go to the benefit of my
afflicted people, I part with my doubts and hesitation, and proceed to
furnish you the desired manuscript; hoping that you may be able to make
such arrangements for its publication as shall be best adapted to
accomplish that good which you so enthusiastically anticipate.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

There was little necessity for doubt and hesitation on the part of Mr.
Douglass, as to the propriety of his giving to the world a full account
of himself. A man who was born and brought up in slavery, a living
witness of its horrors; who often himself experienced its cruelties;
and who, despite the depressing influences surrounding his birth, youth
and manhood, has risen, from a dark and almost absolute obscurity, to
the distinguished position which he now occupies, might very well
assume the existence of a commendable curiosity, on the part of the
public, to know the facts of his remarkable history.

EDITOR




INTRODUCTION


When a man raises himself from the lowest condition in society to the
highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration; when he
accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by prudence and
wisdom, their admiration is increased; but when his course, onward and
upward, excellent in itself, furthermore proves a possible, what had
hitherto been regarded as an impossible, reform, then he becomes a
burning and a shining light, on which the aged may look with gladness,
the young with hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what
they may themselves become. To such a man, dear reader, it is my
privilege to introduce you.

The life of Frederick Douglass, recorded in the pages which follow, is
not merely an example of self-elevation under the most adverse
circumstances; it is, moreover, a noble vindication of the highest aims
of the American anti-slavery movement. The real object of that movement
is not only to disenthrall, it is, also, to bestow upon the Negro the
exercise of all those rights, from the possession of which he has been
so long debarred.

But this full recognition of the colored man to the right, and the
entire admission of the same to the full privileges, political,
religious and social, of manhood, requires powerful effort on the part
of the enthralled, as well as on the part of those who would
disenthrall them. The people at large must feel the conviction, as well
as admit the abstract logic, of human equality; the Negro, for the
first time in the world’s history, brought in full contact with high
civilization, must prove his title first to all that is demanded for
him; in the teeth of unequal chances, he must prove himself equal to
the mass of those who oppress him—therefore, absolutely superior to his
apparent fate, and to their relative ability. And it is most cheering
to the friends of freedom, today, that evidence of this equality is
rapidly accumulating, not from the ranks of the half-freed colored
people of the free states, but from the very depths of slavery itself;
the indestructible equality of man to man is demonstrated by the ease
with which black men, scarce one remove from barbarism—if slavery can
be honored with such a distinction—vault into the high places of the
most advanced and painfully acquired civilization. Ward and Garnett,
Wells Brown and Pennington, Loguen and Douglass, are banners on the
outer wall, under which abolition is fighting its most successful
battles, because they are living exemplars of the practicability of the
most radical abolitionism; for, they were all of them born to the doom
of slavery, some of them remained slaves until adult age, yet they all
have not only won equality to their white fellow citizens, in civil,
religious, political and social rank, but they have also illustrated
and adorned our common country by their genius, learning and eloquence.

The characteristics whereby Mr. Douglass has won first rank among these
remarkable men, and is still rising toward highest rank among living
Americans, are abundantly laid bare in the book before us. Like the
autobiography of Hugh Miller, it carries us so far back into early
childhood, as to throw light upon the question, “when positive and
persistent memory begins in the human being.” And, like Hugh Miller, he
must have been a shy old-fashioned child, occasionally oppressed by
what he could not well account for, peering and poking about among the
layers of right and wrong, of tyrant and thrall, and the wonderfulness
of that hopeless tide of things which brought power to one race, and
unrequited toil to another, until, finally, he stumbled upon his
“first-found Ammonite,” hidden away down in the depths of his own
nature, and which revealed to him the fact that liberty and right, for
all men, were anterior to slavery and wrong. When his knowledge of the
world was bounded by the visible horizon on Col. Lloyd’s plantation,
and while every thing around him bore a fixed, iron stamp, as if it had
always been so, this was, for one so young, a notable discovery.

To his uncommon memory, then, we must add a keen and accurate insight
into men and things; an original breadth of common sense which enabled
him to see, and weigh, and compare whatever passed before him, and
which kindled a desire to search out and define their relations to
other things not so patent, but which never succumbed to the marvelous
nor the supernatural; a sacred thirst for liberty and for learning,
first as a means of attaining liberty, then as an end in itself most
desirable; a will; an unfaltering energy and determination to obtain
what his soul pronounced desirable; a majestic self-hood; determined
courage; a deep and agonizing sympathy with his embruted, crushed and
bleeding fellow slaves, and an extraordinary depth of passion, together
with that rare alliance between passion and intellect, which enables
the former, when deeply roused, to excite, develop and sustain the
latter.

With these original gifts in view, let us look at his schooling; the
fearful discipline through which it pleased God to prepare him for the
high calling on which he has since entered—the advocacy of emancipation
by the people who are not slaves. And for this special mission, his
plantation education was better than any he could have acquired in any
lettered school. What he needed, was facts and experiences, welded to
acutely wrought up sympathies, and these he could not elsewhere have
obtained, in a manner so peculiarly adapted to his nature. His physical
being was well trained, also, running wild until advanced into boyhood;
hard work and light diet, thereafter, and a skill in handicraft in
youth.

For his special mission, then, this was, considered in connection with
his natural gifts, a good schooling; and, for his special mission, he
doubtless “left school” just at the proper moment. Had he remained
longer in slavery—had he fretted under bonds until the ripening of
manhood and its passions, until the drear agony of slave-wife and
slave-children had been piled upon his already bitter experiences—then,
not only would his own history have had another termination, but the
drama of American slavery would have been essentially varied; for I
cannot resist the belief, that the boy who learned to read and write as
he did, who taught his fellow slaves these precious acquirements as he
did, who plotted for their mutual escape as he did, would, when a man
at bay, strike a blow which would make slavery reel and stagger.
Furthermore, blows and insults he bore, at the moment, without
resentment; deep but suppressed emotion rendered him insensible to
their sting; but it was afterward, when the memory of them went
seething through his brain, breeding a fiery indignation at his injured
self-hood, that the resolve came to resist, and the time fixed when to
resist, and the plot laid, how to resist; and he always kept his
self-pledged word. In what he undertook, in this line, he looked fate
in the face, and had a cool, keen look at the relation of means to
ends. Henry Bibb, to avoid chastisement, strewed his master’s bed with
charmed leaves and _was whipped_. Frederick Douglass quietly pocketed a
like _fetiche_, compared his muscles with those of Covey—and _whipped
him_.

In the history of his life in bondage, we find, well developed, that
inherent and continuous energy of character which will ever render him
distinguished. What his hand found to do, he did with his might; even
while conscious that he was wronged out of his daily earnings, he
worked, and worked hard. At his daily labor he went with a will; with
keen, well set eye, brawny chest, lithe figure, and fair sweep of arm,
he would have been king among calkers, had that been his mission.

It must not be overlooked, in this glance at his education, that Mr.
Douglass lacked one aid to which so many men of mark have been deeply
indebted—he had neither a mother’s care, nor a mother’s culture, save
that which slavery grudgingly meted out to him. Bitter nurse! may not
even her features relax with human feeling, when she gazes at such
offspring! How susceptible he was to the kindly influences of
mother-culture, may be gathered from his own words, on page 57: “It has
been a life-long standing grief to me, that I know so little of my
mother, and that I was so early separated from her. The counsels of her
love must have been beneficial to me. The side view of her face is
imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in life, without feeling her
presence; but the image is mute, and I have no striking words of hers
treasured up.”

From the depths of chattel slavery in Maryland, our author escaped into
the caste-slavery of the north, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here he
found oppression assuming another, and hardly less bitter, form; of
that very handicraft which the greed of slavery had taught him, his
half-freedom denied him the exercise for an honest living; he found
himself one of a class—free colored men—whose position he has described
in the following words:

“Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental principles of the
republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here or
elsewhere, may appeal with confidence, in the hope of awakening a
favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to us. The glorious
doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and the more glorious
teachings of the Son of God, are construed and applied against us. We
are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities,
human and divine. * * * * American humanity hates us, scorns us,
disowns and denies, in a thousand ways, our very personality. The
outspread wing of American christianity, apparently broad enough to
give shelter to a perishing world, refuses to cover us. To us, its
bones are brass, and its features iron. In running thither for shelter
and succor, we have only fled from the hungry blood-hound to the
devouring wolf—from a corrupt and selfish world, to a hollow and
hypocritical church.”—_Speech before American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society, May_, 1854.

Four years or more, from 1837 to 1841, he struggled on, in New Bedford,
sawing wood, rolling casks, or doing what labor he might, to support
himself and young family; four years he brooded over the scars which
slavery and semi-slavery had inflicted upon his body and soul; and
then, with his wounds yet unhealed, he fell among the Garrisonians—a
glorious waif to those most ardent reformers. It happened one day, at
Nantucket, that he, diffidently and reluctantly, was led to address an
anti-slavery meeting. He was about the age when the younger Pitt
entered the House of Commons; like Pitt, too, he stood up a born
orator.

William Lloyd Garrison, who was happily present, writes thus of Mr.
Douglass’ maiden effort; “I shall never forget his first speech at the
convention—the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind—the
powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely
taken by surprise. * * * I think I never hated slavery so intensely as
at that moment; certainly, my perception of the enormous outrage which
is inflicted by it on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered
far more clear than ever. There stood one in physical proportions and
stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural
eloquence a prodigy.” 1

It is of interest to compare Mr. Douglass’s account of this meeting
with Mr. Garrison’s. Of the two, I think the latter the most correct.
It must have been a grand burst of eloquence! The pent up agony,
indignation and pathos of an abused and harrowed boyhood and youth,
bursting out in all their freshness and overwhelming earnestness!

This unique introduction to its great leader, led immediately to the
employment of Mr. Douglass as an agent by the American Anti-Slavery
Society. So far as his self-relying and independent character would
permit, he became, after the strictest sect, a Garrisonian. It is not
too much to say, that he formed a complement which they needed, and
they were a complement equally necessary to his “make-up.” With his
deep and keen sensitiveness to wrong, and his wonderful memory, he came
from the land of bondage full of its woes and its evils, and painting
them in characters of living light; and, on his part, he found, told
out in sound Saxon phrase, all those principles of justice and right
and liberty, which had dimly brooded over the dreams of his youth,
seeking definite forms and verbal expression. It must have been an
electric flashing of thought, and a knitting of soul, granted to but
few in this life, and will be a life-long memory to those who
participated in it. In the society, moreover, of Wendell Phillips,
Edmund Quincy, William Lloyd Garrison, and other men of earnest faith
and refined culture, Mr. Douglass enjoyed the high advantage of their
assistance and counsel in the labor of self-culture, to which he now
addressed himself with wonted energy. Yet, these gentlemen, although
proud of Frederick Douglass, failed to fathom, and bring out to the
light of day, the highest qualities of his mind; the force of their own
education stood in their own way: they did not delve into the mind of a
colored man for capacities which the pride of race led them to believe
to be restricted to their own Saxon blood. Bitter and vindictive
sarcasm, irresistible mimicry, and a pathetic narrative of his own
experiences of slavery, were the intellectual manifestations which they
encouraged him to exhibit on the platform or in the lecture desk.

A visit to England, in 1845, threw Mr. Douglass among men and women of
earnest souls and high culture, and who, moreover, had never drank of
the bitter waters of American caste. For the first time in his life, he
breathed an atmosphere congenial to the longings of his spirit, and
felt his manhood free and unrestricted. The cordial and manly greetings
of the British and Irish audiences in public, and the refinement and
elegance of the social circles in which he mingled, not only as an
equal, but as a recognized man of genius, were, doubtless, genial and
pleasant resting places in his hitherto thorny and troubled journey
through life. There are joys on the earth, and, to the wayfaring
fugitive from American slavery or American caste, this is one of them.

But his sojourn in England was more than a joy to Mr. Douglass. Like
the platform at Nantucket, it awakened him to the consciousness of new
powers that lay in him. From the pupilage of Garrisonism he rose to the
dignity of a teacher and a thinker; his opinions on the broader aspects
of the great American question were earnestly and incessantly sought,
from various points of view, and he must, perforce, bestir himself to
give suitable answer. With that prompt and truthful perception which
has led their sisters in all ages of the world to gather at the feet
and support the hands of reformers, the gentlewomen of England 2 were
foremost to encourage and strengthen him to carve out for himself a
path fitted to his powers and energies, in the life-battle against
slavery and caste to which he was pledged. And one stirring thought,
inseparable from the British idea of the evangel of freedom, must have
smote his ear from every side—

Hereditary bondmen! know ye not
Who would be free, themselves mast strike the blow?


The result of this visit was, that on his return to the United States,
he established a newspaper. This proceeding was sorely against the
wishes and the advice of the leaders of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, but our author had fully grown up to the conviction of a truth
which they had once promulged, but now forgotten, to wit: that in their
own elevation—self-elevation—colored men have a blow to strike “on
their own hook,” against slavery and caste. Differing from his Boston
friends in this matter, diffident in his own abilities, reluctant at
their dissuadings, how beautiful is the loyalty with which he still
clung to their principles in all things else, and even in this.

Now came the trial hour. Without cordial support from any large body of
men or party on this side the Atlantic, and too far distant in space
and immediate interest to expect much more, after the much already
done, on the other side, he stood up, almost alone, to the arduous
labor and heavy expenditure of editor and lecturer. The Garrison party,
to which he still adhered, did not want a _colored_ newspaper—there was
an odor of _caste_ about it; the Liberty party could hardly be expected
to give warm support to a man who smote their principles as with a
hammer; and the wide gulf which separated the free colored people from
the Garrisonians, also separated them from their brother, Frederick
Douglass.

The arduous nature of his labors, from the date of the establishment of
his paper, may be estimated by the fact, that anti-slavery papers in
the United States, even while organs of, and when supported by,
anti-slavery parties, have, with a single exception, failed to pay
expenses. Mr. Douglass has maintained, and does maintain, his paper
without the support of any party, and even in the teeth of the
opposition of those from whom he had reason to expect counsel and
encouragement. He has been compelled, at one and the same time, and
almost constantly, during the past seven years, to contribute matter to
its columns as editor, and to raise funds for its support as lecturer.
It is within bounds to say, that he has expended twelve thousand
dollars of his own hard earned money, in publishing this paper, a
larger sum than has been contributed by any one individual for the
general advancement of the colored people. There had been many other
papers published and edited by colored men, beginning as far back as
1827, when the Rev. Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russworm (a graduate
of Bowdoin college, and afterward Governor of Cape Palmas) published
the _Freedom’s Journal_, in New York City; probably not less than one
hundred newspaper enterprises have been started in the United States,
by free colored men, born free, and some of them of liberal education
and fair talents for this work; but, one after another, they have
fallen through, although, in several instances, anti-slavery friends
contributed to their support. 3 It had almost been given up, as an
impracticable thing, to maintain a colored newspaper, when Mr.
Douglass, with fewest early advantages of all his competitors, essayed,
and has proved the thing perfectly practicable, and, moreover, of great
public benefit. This paper, in addition to its power in holding up the
hands of those to whom it is especially devoted, also affords
irrefutable evidence of the justice, safety and practicability of
Immediate Emancipation; it further proves the immense loss which
slavery inflicts on the land while it dooms such energies as his to the
hereditary degradation of slavery.

It has been said in this Introduction, that Mr. Douglass had raised
himself by his own efforts to the highest position in society. As a
successful editor, in our land, he occupies this position. Our editors
rule the land, and he is one of them. As an orator and thinker, his
position is equally high, in the opinion of his countrymen. If a
stranger in the United States would seek its most distinguished men—the
movers of public opinion—he will find their names mentioned, and their
movements chronicled, under the head of “BY MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH,” in the
daily papers. The keen caterers for the public attention, set down, in
this column, such men only as have won high mark in the public esteem.
During the past winter—1854-5—very frequent mention of Frederick
Douglass was made under this head in the daily papers; his name glided
as often—this week from Chicago, next week from Boston—over the
lightning wires, as the name of any other man, of whatever note. To no
man did the people more widely nor more earnestly say, _“Tell me thy
thought!”_ And, somehow or other, revolution seemed to follow in his
wake. His were not the mere words of eloquence which Kossuth speaks of,
that delight the ear and then pass away. No! They were _work_-able,
_do_-able words, that brought forth fruits in the revolution in
Illinois, and in the passage of the franchise resolutions by the
Assembly of New York.

And the secret of his power, what is it? He is a Representative
American man—a type of his countrymen. Naturalists tell us that a full
grown man is a resultant or representative of all animated nature on
this globe; beginning with the early embryo state, then representing
the lowest forms of organic life, 4 and passing through every
subordinate grade or type, until he reaches the last and
highest—manhood. In like manner, and to the fullest extent, has
Frederick Douglass passed through every gradation of rank comprised in
our national make-up, and bears upon his person and upon his soul every
thing that is American. And he has not only full sympathy with every
thing American; his proclivity or bent, to active toil and visible
progress, are in the strictly national direction, delighting to
outstrip “all creation.”

Nor have the natural gifts, already named as his, lost anything by his
severe training. When unexcited, his mental processes are probably
slow, but singularly clear in perception, and wide in vision, the
unfailing memory bringing up all the facts in their every aspect;
incongruities he lays hold of incontinently, and holds up on the edge
of his keen and telling wit. But this wit never descends to frivolity;
it is rigidly in the keeping of his truthful common sense, and always
used in illustration or proof of some point which could not so readily
be reached any other way. “Beware of a Yankee when he is feeding,” is a
shaft that strikes home in a matter never so laid bare by satire
before. “The Garrisonian views of disunion, if carried to a successful
issue, would only place the people of the north in the same relation to
American slavery which they now bear to the slavery of Cuba or the
Brazils,” is a statement, in a few words, which contains the result and
the evidence of an argument which might cover pages, but could not
carry stronger conviction, nor be stated in less pregnable form. In
proof of this, I may say, that having been submitted to the attention
of the Garrisonians in print, in March, it was repeated before them at
their business meeting in May—the platform, _par excellence_, on which
they invite free fight, _a l’outrance_, to all comers. It was given out
in the clear, ringing tones, wherewith the hall of shields was wont to
resound of old, yet neither Garrison, nor Phillips, nor May, nor
Remond, nor Foster, nor Burleigh, with his subtle steel of “the ice
brook’s temper,” ventured to break a lance upon it! The doctrine of the
dissolution of the Union, as a means for the abolition of American
slavery, was silenced upon the lips that gave it birth, and in the
presence of an array of defenders who compose the keenest intellects in
the land.

_“The man who is right is a majority”_ is an aphorism struck out by Mr.
Douglass in that great gathering of the friends of freedom, at
Pittsburgh, in 1852, where he towered among the highest, because, with
abilities inferior to none, and moved more deeply than any, there was
neither policy nor party to trammel the outpourings of his soul. Thus
we find, opposed to all disadvantages which a black man in the United
States labors and struggles under, is this one vantage ground—when the
chance comes, and the audience where he may have a say, he stands forth
the freest, most deeply moved and most earnest of all men.

It has been said of Mr. Douglass, that his descriptive and declamatory
powers, admitted to be of the very highest order, take precedence of
his logical force. Whilst the schools might have trained him to the
exhibition of the formulas of deductive logic, nature and circumstances
forced him into the exercise of the higher faculties required by
induction. The first ninety pages of this “Life in Bondage,” afford
specimens of observing, comparing, and careful classifying, of such
superior character, that it is difficult to believe them the results of
a child’s thinking; he questions the earth, and the children and the
slaves around him again and again, and finally looks to _“God in the
sky”_ for the why and the wherefore of the unnatural thing, slavery.
_“Yes, if indeed thou art, wherefore dost thou suffer us to be slain?”_
is the only prayer and worship of the God-forsaken Dodos in the heart
of Africa. Almost the same was his prayer. One of his earliest
observations was that white children should know their ages, while the
colored children were ignorant of theirs; and the songs of the slaves
grated on his inmost soul, because a something told him that harmony in
sound, and music of the spirit, could not consociate with miserable
degradation.

To such a mind, the ordinary processes of logical deduction are like
proving that two and two make four. Mastering the intermediate steps by
an intuitive glance, or recurring to them as Ferguson resorted to
geometry, it goes down to the deeper relation of things, and brings out
what may seem, to some, mere statements, but which are new and
brilliant generalizations, each resting on a broad and stable basis.
Thus, Chief Justice Marshall gave his decisions, and then told Brother
Story to look up the authorities—and they never differed from him.
Thus, also, in his “Lecture on the Anti-Slavery Movement,” delivered
before the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Douglass
presents a mass of thought, which, without any showy display of logic
on his part, requires an exercise of the reasoning faculties of the
reader to keep pace with him. And his “Claims of the Negro
Ethnologically Considered,” is full of new and fresh thoughts on the
dawning science of race-history.

If, as has been stated, his intellection is slow, when unexcited, it is
most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused. Memory, logic,
wit, sarcasm, invective pathos and bold imagery of rare structural
beauty, well up as from a copious fountain, yet each in its proper
place, and contributing to form a whole, grand in itself, yet complete
in the minutest proportions. It is most difficult to hedge him in a
corner, for his positions are taken so deliberately, that it is rare to
find a point in them undefended aforethought. Professor Reason tells me
the following: “On a recent visit of a public nature, to Philadelphia,
and in a meeting composed mostly of his colored brethren, Mr. Douglass
proposed a comparison of views in the matters of the relations and
duties of ‘our people;’ he holding that prejudice was the result of
condition, and could be conquered by the efforts of the degraded
themselves. A gentleman present, distinguished for logical acumen and
subtlety, and who had devoted no small portion of the last twenty-five
years to the study and elucidation of this very question, held the
opposite view, that prejudice is innate and unconquerable. He
terminated a series of well dove-tailed, Socratic questions to Mr.
Douglass, with the following: ‘If the legislature at Harrisburgh should
awaken, to-morrow morning, and find each man’s skin turned black and
his hair woolly, what could they do to remove prejudice?’ ‘Immediately
pass laws entitling black men to all civil, political and social
privileges,’ was the instant reply—and the questioning ceased.”

The most remarkable mental phenomenon in Mr. Douglass, is his style in
writing and speaking. In March, 1855, he delivered an address in the
assembly chamber before the members of the legislature of the state of
New York. An eye witness 5 describes the crowded and most intelligent
audience, and their rapt attention to the speaker, as the grandest
scene he ever witnessed in the capitol. Among those whose eyes were
riveted on the speaker full two hours and a half, were Thurlow Weed and
Lieutenant Governor Raymond; the latter, at the conclusion of the
address, exclaimed to a friend, “I would give twenty thousand dollars,
if I could deliver that address in that manner.” Mr. Raymond is a first
class graduate of Dartmouth, a rising politician, ranking foremost in
the legislature; of course, his ideal of oratory must be of the most
polished and finished description.

The style of Mr. Douglass in writing, is to me an intellectual puzzle.
The strength, affluence and terseness may easily be accounted for,
because the style of a man is the man; but how are we to account for
that rare polish in his style of writing, which, most critically
examined, seems the result of careful early culture among the best
classics of our language; it equals if it does not surpass the style of
Hugh Miller, which was the wonder of the British literary public, until
he unraveled the mystery in the most interesting of autobiographies.
But Frederick Douglass was still calking the seams of Baltimore
clippers, and had only written a “pass,” at the age when Miller’s style
was already formed.

I asked William Whipper, of Pennsylvania, the gentleman alluded to
above, whether he thought Mr. Douglass’s power inherited from the
Negroid, or from what is called the Caucasian side of his make up?
After some reflection, he frankly answered, “I must admit, although
sorry to do so, that the Caucasian predominates.” At that time, I
almost agreed with him; but, facts narrated in the first part of this
work, throw a different light on this interesting question.

We are left in the dark as to who was the paternal ancestor of our
author; a fact which generally holds good of the Romuluses and Remuses
who are to inaugurate the new birth of our republic. In the absence of
testimony from the Caucasian side, we must see what evidence is given
on the other side of the house.

“My grandmother, though advanced in years, * * * was yet a woman of
power and spirit. She was marvelously straight in figure, elastic and
muscular.” (p. 46.)

After describing her skill in constructing nets, her perseverance in
using them, and her wide-spread fame in the agricultural way he adds,
“It happened to her—as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person
residing in an ignorant and improvident neighborhood—to enjoy the
reputation of being born to good luck.” And his grandmother was a black
woman.

“My mother was tall, and finely proportioned; of deep black, glossy
complexion; had regular features; and among other slaves was remarkably
sedate in her manners.” “Being a field hand, she was obliged to walk
twelve miles and return, between nightfall and daybreak, to see her
children” (p. 54.) “I shall never forget the indescribable expression
of her countenance when I told her that I had had no food since
morning. * * * There was pity in her glance at me, and a fiery
indignation at Aunt Katy at the same time; * * * * she read Aunt Katy a
lecture which she never forgot.” (p. 56.) “I learned after my mother’s
death, that she could read, and that she was the _only_ one of all the
slaves and colored people in Tuckahoe who enjoyed that advantage. How
she acquired this knowledge, I know not, for Tuckahoe is the last place
in the world where she would be apt to find facilities for learning.”
(p. 57.) “There is, in _Prichard’s Natural History of Man_, the head of
a figure—on page 157—the features of which so resemble those of my
mother, that I often recur to it with something of the feeling which I
suppose others experience when looking upon the pictures of dear
departed ones.” (p. 52.)

The head alluded to is copied from the statue of Ramses the Great, an
Egyptian king of the nineteenth dynasty. The authors of the _Types of
Mankind_ give a side view of the same on page 148, remarking that the
profile, “like Napoleon’s, is superbly European!” The nearness of its
resemblance to Mr. Douglass’ mother rests upon the evidence of his
memory, and judging from his almost marvelous feats of recollection of
forms and outlines recorded in this book, this testimony may be
admitted.

These facts show that for his energy, perseverance, eloquence,
invective, sagacity, and wide sympathy, he is indebted to his Negro
blood. The very marvel of his style would seem to be a development of
that other marvel—how his mother learned to read. The versatility of
talent which he wields, in common with Dumas, Ira Aldridge, and Miss
Greenfield, would seem to be the result of the grafting of the
Anglo-Saxon on good, original, Negro stock. If the friends of
“Caucasus” choose to claim, for that region, what remains after this
analysis—to wit: combination—they are welcome to it. They will forgive
me for reminding them that the term “Caucasian” is dropped by recent
writers on Ethnology; for the people about Mount Caucasus, are, and
have ever been, Mongols. The great “white race” now seek paternity,
according to Dr. Pickering, in Arabia—“Arida Nutrix” of the best breed
of horses &c. Keep on, gentlemen; you will find yourselves in Africa,
by-and-by. The Egyptians, like the Americans, were a _mixed race_, with
some Negro blood circling around the throne, as well as in the mud
hovels.

This is the proper place to remark of our author, that the same strong
self-hood, which led him to measure strength with Mr. Covey, and to
wrench himself from the embrace of the Garrisonians, and which has
borne him through many resistances to the personal indignities offered
him as a colored man, sometimes becomes a hyper-sensitiveness to such
assaults as men of his mark will meet with, on paper. Keen and
unscrupulous opponents have sought, and not unsuccessfully, to pierce
him in this direction; for well they know, that if assailed, he will
smite back.

It is not without a feeling of pride, dear reader, that I present you
with this book. The son of a self-emancipated bond-woman, I feel joy in
introducing to you my brother, who has rent his own bonds, and who, in
his every relation—as a public man, as a husband and as a father—is
such as does honor to the land which gave him birth. I shall place this
book in the hands of the only child spared me, bidding him to strive
and emulate its noble example. You may do likewise. It is an American
book, for Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea. It shows that
the worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down
energy, truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right. It proves the
justice and practicability of Immediate Emancipation. It shows that any
man in our land, “no matter in what battle his liberty may have been
cloven down, * * * * no matter what complexion an Indian or an African
sun may have burned upon him,” not only may “stand forth redeemed and
disenthralled,” but may also stand up a candidate for the highest
suffrage of a great people—the tribute of their honest, hearty
admiration. Reader, _Vale! New York_

JAMES M’CUNE SMITH




CHAPTER I. _Childhood_


PLACE OF BIRTH—CHARACTER OF THE DISTRICT—TUCKAHOE—ORIGIN OF THE
NAME—CHOPTANK RIVER—TIME OF BIRTH—GENEALOGICAL TREES—MODE OF COUNTING
TIME—NAMES OF GRANDPARENTS—THEIR POSITION—GRANDMOTHER ESPECIALLY
ESTEEMED—“BORN TO GOOD LUCK”—SWEET POTATOES—SUPERSTITION—THE LOG
CABIN—ITS CHARMS—SEPARATING CHILDREN—MY AUNTS—THEIR NAMES—FIRST
KNOWLEDGE OF BEING A SLAVE—OLD MASTER—GRIEFS AND JOYS OF
CHILDHOOD—COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF THE SLAVE-BOY AND THE SON OF A
SLAVEHOLDER.


In Talbot county, Eastern Shore, Maryland, near Easton, the county town
of that county, there is a small district of country, thinly populated,
and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out,
sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation of
its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its
inhabitants, and the prevalence of ague and fever.

The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken
district is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black and
white. It was given to this section of country probably, at the first,
merely in derision; or it may possibly have been applied to it, as I
have heard, because some one of its earlier inhabitants had been guilty
of the petty meanness of stealing a hoe—or taking a hoe that did not
belong to him. Eastern Shore men usually pronounce the word _took_, as
_tuck; Took-a-hoe_, therefore, is, in Maryland parlance, _Tuckahoe_.
But, whatever may have been its origin—and about this I will not be
positive—that name has stuck to the district in question; and it is
seldom mentioned but with contempt and derision, on account of the
barrenness of its soil, and the ignorance, indolence, and poverty of
its people. Decay and ruin are everywhere visible, and the thin
population of the place would have quitted it long ago, but for the
Choptank river, which runs through it, from which they take abundance
of shad and herring, and plenty of ague and fever.

It was in this dull, flat, and unthrifty district, or neighborhood,
surrounded by a white population of the lowest order, indolent and
drunken to a proverb, and among slaves, who seemed to ask, _“Oh! what’s
the use?”_ every time they lifted a hoe, that I—without any fault of
mine was born, and spent the first years of my childhood.

The reader will pardon so much about the place of my birth, on the
score that it is always a fact of some importance to know where a man
is born, if, indeed, it be important to know anything about him. In
regard to the _time_ of my birth, I cannot be as definite as I have
been respecting the _place_. Nor, indeed, can I impart much knowledge
concerning my parents. Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves.
A person of some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated
_father_, is literally abolished in slave law and slave practice. It is
only once in a while that an exception is found to this statement. I
never met with a slave who could tell me how old he was. Few
slave-mothers know anything of the months of the year, nor of the days
of the month. They keep no family records, with marriages, births, and
deaths. They measure the ages of their children by spring time, winter
time, harvest time, planting time, and the like; but these soon become
undistinguishable and forgotten. Like other slaves, I cannot tell how
old I am. This destitution was among my earliest troubles. I learned
when I grew up, that my master—and this is the case with masters
generally—allowed no questions to be put to him, by which a slave might
learn his age. Such questions deemed evidence of impatience, and even
of impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of which
I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born about the year
1817.

The first experience of life with me that I now remember—and I remember
it but hazily—began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather.
Betsey and Isaac Baily. They were quite advanced in life, and had long
lived on the spot where they then resided. They were considered old
settlers in the neighborhood, and, from certain circumstances, I infer
that my grandmother, especially, was held in high esteem, far higher
than is the lot of most colored persons in the slave states. She was a
good nurse, and a capital hand at making nets for catching shad and
herring; and these nets were in great demand, not only in Tuckahoe, but
at Denton and Hillsboro, neighboring villages. She was not only good at
making the nets, but was also somewhat famous for her good fortune in
taking the fishes referred to. I have known her to be in the water half
the day. Grandmother was likewise more provident than most of her
neighbors in the preservation of seedling sweet potatoes, and it
happened to her—as it will happen to any careful and thrifty person
residing in an ignorant and improvident community—to enjoy the
reputation of having been born to “good luck.” Her “good luck” was
owing to the exceeding care which she took in preventing the succulent
root from getting bruised in the digging, and in placing it beyond the
reach of frost, by actually burying it under the hearth of her cabin
during the winter months. In the time of planting sweet potatoes,
“Grandmother Betty,” as she was familiarly called, was sent for in all
directions, simply to place the seedling potatoes in the hills; for
superstition had it, that if “Grandmamma Betty but touches them at
planting, they will be sure to grow and flourish.” This high reputation
was full of advantage to her, and to the children around her. Though
Tuckahoe had but few of the good things of life, yet of such as it did
possess grandmother got a full share, in the way of presents. If good
potato crops came after her planting, she was not forgotten by those
for whom she planted; and as she was remembered by others, so she
remembered the hungry little ones around her.

The dwelling of my grandmother and grandfather had few pretensions. It
was a log hut, or cabin, built of clay, wood, and straw. At a distance
it resembled—though it was smaller, less commodious and less
substantial—the cabins erected in the western states by the first
settlers. To my child’s eye, however, it was a noble structure,
admirably adapted to promote the comforts and conveniences of its
inmates. A few rough, Virginia fence-rails, flung loosely over the
rafters above, answered the triple purpose of floors, ceilings, and
bedsteads. To be sure, this upper apartment was reached only by a
ladder—but what in the world for climbing could be better than a
ladder? To me, this ladder was really a high invention, and possessed a
sort of charm as I played with delight upon the rounds of it. In this
little hut there was a large family of children: I dare not say how
many. My grandmother—whether because too old for field service, or
because she had so faithfully discharged the duties of her station in
early life, I know not—enjoyed the high privilege of living in a cabin,
separate from the quarter, with no other burden than her own support,
and the necessary care of the little children, imposed. She evidently
esteemed it a great fortune to live so. The children were not her own,
but her grandchildren—the children of her daughters. She took delight
in having them around her, and in attending to their few wants. The
practice of separating children from their mother, and hiring the
latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting, except at
long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the
slave system. But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery,
which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man to a level with the
brute. It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and
heart of the slave, all just ideas of the sacredness of _the family_,
as an institution.

Most of the children, however, in this instance, being the children of
my grandmother’s daughters, the notions of family, and the reciprocal
duties and benefits of the relation, had a better chance of being
understood than where children are placed—as they often are in the
hands of strangers, who have no care for them, apart from the wishes of
their masters. The daughters of my grandmother were five in number.
Their names were JENNY, ESTHER, MILLY, PRISCILLA, and HARRIET. The
daughter last named was my mother, of whom the reader shall learn more
by-and-by.

Living here, with my dear old grandmother and grandfather, it was a
long time before I knew myself to be _a slave_. I knew many other
things before I knew that. Grandmother and grandfather were the
greatest people in the world to me; and being with them so snugly in
their own little cabin—I supposed it be their own—knowing no higher
authority over me or the other children than the authority of
grandmamma, for a time there was nothing to disturb me; but, as I grew
larger and older, I learned by degrees the sad fact, that the “little
hut,” and the lot on which it stood, belonged not to my dear old
grandparents, but to some person who lived a great distance off, and
who was called, by grandmother, “OLD MASTER.” I further learned the
sadder fact, that not only the house and lot, but that grandmother
herself, (grandfather was free,) and all the little children around
her, belonged to this mysterious personage, called by grandmother, with
every mark of reverence, “Old Master.” Thus early did clouds and
shadows begin to fall upon my path. Once on the track—troubles never
come singly—I was not long in finding out another fact, still more
grievous to my childish heart. I was told that this “old master,” whose
name seemed ever to be mentioned with fear and shuddering, only allowed
the children to live with grandmother for a limited time, and that in
fact as soon as they were big enough, they were promptly taken away, to
live with the said “old master.” These were distressing revelations
indeed; and though I was quite too young to comprehend the full import
of the intelligence, and mostly spent my childhood days in gleesome
sports with the other children, a shade of disquiet rested upon me.

The absolute power of this distant “old master” had touched my young
spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron, and left me
something to brood over after the play and in moments of repose.
Grandmammy was, indeed, at that time, all the world to me; and the
thought of being separated from her, in any considerable time, was more
than an unwelcome intruder. It was intolerable.

Children have their sorrows as well as men and women; and it would be
well to remember this in our dealings with them. SLAVE-children _are_
children, and prove no exceptions to the general rule. The liability to
be separated from my grandmother, seldom or never to see her again,
haunted me. I dreaded the thought of going to live with that mysterious
“old master,” whose name I never heard mentioned with affection, but
always with fear. I look back to this as among the heaviest of my
childhood’s sorrows. My grandmother! my grandmother! and the little
hut, and the joyous circle under her care, but especially _she_, who
made us sorry when she left us but for an hour, and glad on her
return,—how could I leave her and the good old home?

But the sorrows of childhood, like the pleasures of after life, are
transient. It is not even within the power of slavery to write
_indelible_ sorrow, at a single dash, over the heart of a child.

The tear down childhood’s cheek that flows,
Is like the dew-drop on the rose—
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And waves the bush—the flower is dry.


There is, after all, but little difference in the measure of
contentment felt by the slave-child neglected and the slaveholder’s
child cared for and petted. The spirit of the All Just mercifully holds
the balance for the young.

The slaveholder, having nothing to fear from impotent childhood, easily
affords to refrain from cruel inflictions; and if cold and hunger do
not pierce the tender frame, the first seven or eight years of the
slave-boy’s life are about as full of sweet content as those of the
most favored and petted _white_ children of the slaveholder. The
slave-boy escapes many troubles which befall and vex his white brother.
He seldom has to listen to lectures on propriety of behavior, or on
anything else. He is never chided for handling his little knife and
fork improperly or awkwardly, for he uses none. He is never reprimanded
for soiling the table-cloth, for he takes his meals on the clay floor.
He never has the misfortune, in his games or sports, of soiling or
tearing his clothes, for he has almost none to soil or tear. He is
never expected to act like a nice little gentleman, for he is only a
rude little slave. Thus, freed from all restraint, the slave-boy can
be, in his life and conduct, a genuine boy, doing whatever his boyish
nature suggests; enacting, by turns, all the strange antics and freaks
of horses, dogs, pigs, and barn-door fowls, without in any manner
compromising his dignity, or incurring reproach of any sort. He
literally runs wild; has no pretty little verses to learn in the
nursery; no nice little speeches to make for aunts, uncles, or cousins,
to show how smart he is; and, if he can only manage to keep out of the
way of the heavy feet and fists of the older slave boys, he may trot
on, in his joyous and roguish tricks, as happy as any little heathen
under the palm trees of Africa. To be sure, he is occasionally
reminded, when he stumbles in the path of his master—and this he early
learns to avoid—that he is eating his _“white bread,”_ and that he will
be made to _“see sights”_ by-and-by. The threat is soon forgotten; the
shadow soon passes, and our sable boy continues to roll in the dust, or
play in the mud, as bests suits him, and in the veriest freedom. If he
feels uncomfortable, from mud or from dust, the coast is clear; he can
plunge into the river or the pond, without the ceremony of undressing,
or the fear of wetting his clothes; his little tow-linen shirt—for that
is all he has on—is easily dried; and it needed ablution as much as did
his skin. His food is of the coarsest kind, consisting for the most
part of cornmeal mush, which often finds it way from the wooden tray to
his mouth in an oyster shell. His days, when the weather is warm, are
spent in the pure, open air, and in the bright sunshine. He always
sleeps in airy apartments; he seldom has to take powders, or to be paid
to swallow pretty little sugar-coated pills, to cleanse his blood, or
to quicken his appetite. He eats no candies; gets no lumps of loaf
sugar; always relishes his food; cries but little, for nobody cares for
his crying; learns to esteem his bruises but slight, because others so
esteem them. In a word, he is, for the most part of the first eight
years of his life, a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy, upon
whom troubles fall only like water on a duck’s back. And such a boy, so
far as I can now remember, was the boy whose life in slavery I am now
narrating.




CHAPTER II. _Removed from My First Home_


THE NAME “OLD MASTER” A TERROR—COLONEL LLOYD’S PLANTATION—WYE
RIVER—WHENCE ITS NAME—POSITION OF THE LLOYDS—HOME ATTRACTION—MEET
OFFERING—JOURNEY FROM TUCKAHOE TO WYE RIVER—SCENE ON REACHING OLD
MASTER’S—DEPARTURE OF GRANDMOTHER—STRANGE MEETING OF SISTERS AND
BROTHERS—REFUSAL TO BE COMFORTED—SWEET SLEEP.


That mysterious individual referred to in the first chapter as an
object of terror among the inhabitants of our little cabin, under the
ominous title of “old master,” was really a man of some consequence. He
owned several farms in Tuckahoe; was the chief clerk and butler on the
home plantation of Col. Edward Lloyd; had overseers on his own farms;
and gave directions to overseers on the farms belonging to Col. Lloyd.
This plantation is situated on Wye river—the river receiving its name,
doubtless, from Wales, where the Lloyds originated. They (the Lloyds)
are an old and honored family in Maryland, exceedingly wealthy. The
home plantation, where they have resided, perhaps for a century or
more, is one of the largest, most fertile, and best appointed, in the
state.

About this plantation, and about that queer old master—who must be
something more than a man, and something worse than an angel—the reader
will easily imagine that I was not only curious, but eager, to know all
that could be known. Unhappily for me, however, all the information I
could get concerning him increased my great dread of being carried
thither—of being separated from and deprived of the protection of my
grandmother and grandfather. It was, evidently, a great thing to go to
Col. Lloyd’s; and I was not without a little curiosity to see the
place; but no amount of coaxing could induce in me the wish to remain
there. The fact is, such was my dread of leaving the little cabin, that
I wished to remain little forever, for I knew the taller I grew the
shorter my stay. The old cabin, with its rail floor and rail bedsteads
upstairs, and its clay floor downstairs, and its dirt chimney, and
windowless sides, and that most curious piece of workmanship dug in
front of the fireplace, beneath which grandmammy placed the sweet
potatoes to keep them from the frost, was MY HOME—the only home I ever
had; and I loved it, and all connected with it. The old fences around
it, and the stumps in the edge of the woods near it, and the squirrels
that ran, skipped, and played upon them, were objects of interest and
affection. There, too, right at the side of the hut, stood the old
well, with its stately and skyward-pointing beam, so aptly placed
between the limbs of what had once been a tree, and so nicely balanced
that I could move it up and down with only one hand, and could get a
drink myself without calling for help. Where else in the world could
such a well be found, and where could such another home be met with?
Nor were these all the attractions of the place. Down in a little
valley, not far from grandmammy’s cabin, stood Mr. Lee’s mill, where
the people came often in large numbers to get their corn ground. It was
a watermill; and I never shall be able to tell the many things thought
and felt, while I sat on the bank and watched that mill, and the
turning of that ponderous wheel. The mill-pond, too, had its charms;
and with my pinhook, and thread line, I could get _nibbles_, if I could
catch no fish. But, in all my sports and plays, and in spite of them,
there would, occasionally, come the painful foreboding that I was not
long to remain there, and that I must soon be called away to the home
of old master.

I was A SLAVE—born a slave and though the fact was incomprehensible to
me, it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will
of _somebody_ I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I had
been made to fear this somebody above all else on earth. Born for
another’s benefit, as the _firstling_ of the cabin flock I was soon to
be selected as a meet offering to the fearful and inexorable _demigod_,
whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my childhood’s
imagination. When the time of my departure was decided upon, my
grandmother, knowing my fears, and in pity for them, kindly kept me
ignorant of the dreaded event about to transpire. Up to the morning (a
beautiful summer morning) when we were to start, and, indeed, during
the whole journey—a journey which, child as I was, I remember as well
as if it were yesterday—she kept the sad fact hidden from me. This
reserve was necessary; for, could I have known all, I should have given
grandmother some trouble in getting me started. As it was, I was
helpless, and she—dear woman!—led me along by the hand, resisting, with
the reserve and solemnity of a priestess, all my inquiring looks to the
last.

The distance from Tuckahoe to Wye river—where my old master lived—was
full twelve miles, and the walk was quite a severe test of the
endurance of my young legs. The journey would have proved too severe
for me, but that my dear old grandmother—blessings on her
memory!—afforded occasional relief by “toting” me (as Marylanders have
it) on her shoulder. My grandmother, though advanced in years—as was
evident from more than one gray hair, which peeped from between the
ample and graceful folds of her newly-ironed bandana turban—was yet a
woman of power and spirit. She was marvelously straight in figure,
elastic, and muscular. I seemed hardly to be a burden to her. She would
have “toted” me farther, but that I felt myself too much of a man to
allow it, and insisted on walking. Releasing dear grandmamma from
carrying me, did not make me altogether independent of her, when we
happened to pass through portions of the somber woods which lay between
Tuckahoe and Wye river. She often found me increasing the energy of my
grip, and holding her clothing, lest something should come out of the
woods and eat me up. Several old logs and stumps imposed upon me, and
got themselves taken for wild beasts. I could see their legs, eyes, and
ears, or I could see something like eyes, legs, and ears, till I got
close enough to them to see that the eyes were knots, washed white with
rain, and the legs were broken limbs, and the ears, only ears owing to
the point from which they were seen. Thus early I learned that the
point from which a thing is viewed is of some importance.

As the day advanced the heat increased; and it was not until the
afternoon that we reached the much dreaded end of the journey. I found
myself in the midst of a group of children of many colors; black,
brown, copper colored, and nearly white. I had not seen so many
children before. Great houses loomed up in different directions, and a
great many men and women were at work in the fields. All this hurry,
noise, and singing was very different from the stillness of Tuckahoe.
As a new comer, I was an object of special interest; and, after
laughing and yelling around me, and playing all sorts of wild tricks,
they (the children) asked me to go out and play with them. This I
refused to do, preferring to stay with grandmamma. I could not help
feeling that our being there boded no good to me. Grandmamma looked
sad. She was soon to lose another object of affection, as she had lost
many before. I knew she was unhappy, and the shadow fell from her brow
on me, though I knew not the cause.

All suspense, however, must have an end; and the end of mine, in this
instance, was at hand. Affectionately patting me on the head, and
exhorting me to be a good boy, grandmamma told me to go and play with
the little children. “They are kin to you,” said she; “go and play with
them.” Among a number of cousins were Phil, Tom, Steve, and Jerry,
Nance and Betty.

Grandmother pointed out my brother PERRY, my sister SARAH, and my
sister ELIZA, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor
my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt
a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were
to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that?
Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters
we were by blood; but _slavery_ had made us strangers. I heard the
words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but
slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning. The experience
through which I was passing, they had passed through before. They had
already been initiated into the mysteries of old master’s domicile, and
they seemed to look upon me with a certain degree of compassion; but my
heart clave to my grandmother. Think it not strange, dear reader, that
so little sympathy of feeling existed between us. The conditions of
brotherly and sisterly feeling were wanting—we had never nestled and
played together. My poor mother, like many other slave-women, had many
_children_, but NO FAMILY! The domestic hearth, with its holy lessons
and precious endearments, is abolished in the case of a slave-mother
and her children. “Little children, love one another,” are words seldom
heard in a slave cabin.

I really wanted to play with my brother and sisters, but they were
strangers to me, and I was full of fear that grandmother might leave
without taking me with her. Entreated to do so, however, and that, too,
by my dear grandmother, I went to the back part of the house, to play
with them and the other children. _Play_, however, I did not, but stood
with my back against the wall, witnessing the playing of the others. At
last, while standing there, one of the children, who had been in the
kitchen, ran up to me, in a sort of roguish glee, exclaiming, “Fed,
Fed! grandmammy gone! grandmammy gone!” I could not believe it; yet,
fearing the worst, I ran into the kitchen, to see for myself, and found
it even so. Grandmammy had indeed gone, and was now far away, “clean”
out of sight. I need not tell all that happened now. Almost
heart-broken at the discovery, I fell upon the ground, and wept a boy’s
bitter tears, refusing to be comforted. My brother and sisters came
around me, and said, “Don’t cry,” and gave me peaches and pears, but I
flung them away, and refused all their kindly advances. I had never
been deceived before; and I felt not only grieved at parting—as I
supposed forever—with my grandmother, but indignant that a trick had
been played upon me in a matter so serious.

It was now late in the afternoon. The day had been an exciting and
wearisome one, and I knew not how or where, but I suppose I sobbed
myself to sleep. There is a healing in the angel wing of sleep, even
for the slave-boy; and its balm was never more welcome to any wounded
soul than it was to mine, the first night I spent at the domicile of
old master. The reader may be surprised that I narrate so minutely an
incident apparently so trivial, and which must have occurred when I was
not more than seven years old; but as I wish to give a faithful history
of my experience in slavery, I cannot withhold a circumstance which, at
the time, affected me so deeply. Besides, this was, in fact, my first
introduction to the realities of slavery.




CHAPTER III. _Parentage_


MY FATHER SHROUDED IN MYSTERY—MY MOTHER—HER PERSONAL
APPEARANCE—INTERFERENCE OF SLAVERY WITH THE NATURAL AFFECTIONS OF
MOTHER AND CHILDREN—SITUATION OF MY MOTHER—HER NIGHTLY VISITS TO HER
BOY—STRIKING INCIDENT—HER DEATH—HER PLACE OF BURIAL.


If the reader will now be kind enough to allow me time to grow bigger,
and afford me an opportunity for my experience to become greater, I
will tell him something, by-and-by, of slave life, as I saw, felt, and
heard it, on Col. Edward Lloyd’s plantation, and at the house of old
master, where I had now, despite of myself, most suddenly, but not
unexpectedly, been dropped. Meanwhile, I will redeem my promise to say
something more of my dear mother.

I say nothing of _father_, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have never
been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away
with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and
its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of
the plantation. When they _do_ exist, they are not the outgrowths of
slavery, but are antagonistic to that system. The order of civilization
is reversed here. The name of the child is not expected to be that of
its father, and his condition does not necessarily affect that of the
child. He may be the slave of Mr. Tilgman; and his child, when born,
may be the slave of Mr. Gross. He may be a _freeman;_ and yet his child
may be a _chattel_. He may be white, glorying in the purity of his
Anglo-Saxon blood; and his child may be ranked with the blackest
slaves. Indeed, he _may_ be, and often _is_, master and father to the
same child. He can be father without being a husband, and may sell his
child without incurring reproach, if the child be by a woman in whose
veins courses one thirty-second part of African blood. My father was a
white man, or nearly white. It was sometimes whispered that my master
was my father.

But to return, or rather, to begin. My knowledge of my mother is very
scanty, but very distinct. Her personal appearance and bearing are
ineffaceably stamped upon my memory. She was tall, and finely
proportioned; of deep black, glossy complexion; had regular features,
and, among the other slaves, was remarkably sedate in her manners.
There is in _Prichard’s Natural History of Man_, the head of a
figure—on page 157—the features of which so resemble those of my
mother, that I often recur to it with something of the feeling which I
suppose others experience when looking upon the pictures of dear
departed ones.

Yet I cannot say that I was very deeply attached to my mother;
certainly not so deeply as I should have been had our relations in
childhood been different. We were separated, according to the common
custom, when I was but an infant, and, of course, before I knew my
mother from any one else.

The germs of affection with which the Almighty, in his wisdom and
mercy, arms the hopeless infant against the ills and vicissitudes of
his lot, had been directed in their growth toward that loving old
grandmother, whose gentle hand and kind deportment it was in the first
effort of my infantile understanding to comprehend and appreciate.
Accordingly, the tenderest affection which a beneficent Father allows,
as a partial compensation to the mother for the pains and lacerations
of her heart, incident to the maternal relation, was, in my case,
diverted from its true and natural object, by the envious, greedy, and
treacherous hand of slavery. The slave-mother can be spared long enough
from the field to endure all the bitterness of a mother’s anguish, when
it adds another name to a master’s ledger, but _not_ long enough to
receive the joyous reward afforded by the intelligent smiles of her
child. I never think of this terrible interference of slavery with my
infantile affections, and its diverting them from their natural course,
without feelings to which I can give no adequate expression.

I do not remember to have seen my mother at my grandmother’s at any
time. I remember her only in her visits to me at Col. Lloyd’s
plantation, and in the kitchen of my old master. Her visits to me there
were few in number, brief in duration, and mostly made in the night.
The pains she took, and the toil she endured, to see me, tells me that
a true mother’s heart was hers, and that slavery had difficulty in
paralyzing it with unmotherly indifference.

My mother was hired out to a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles
from old master’s, and, being a field hand, she seldom had leisure, by
day, for the performance of the journey. The nights and the distance
were both obstacles to her visits. She was obliged to walk, unless
chance flung into her way an opportunity to ride; and the latter was
sometimes her good luck. But she always had to walk one way or the
other. It was a greater luxury than slavery could afford, to allow a
black slave-mother a horse or a mule, upon which to travel twenty-four
miles, when she could walk the distance. Besides, it is deemed a
foolish whim for a slave-mother to manifest concern to see her
children, and, in one point of view, the case is made out—she can do
nothing for them. She has no control over them; the master is even more
than the mother, in all matters touching the fate of her child. Why,
then, should she give herself any concern? She has no responsibility.
Such is the reasoning, and such the practice. The iron rule of the
plantation, always passionately and violently enforced in that
neighborhood, makes flogging the penalty of failing to be in the field
before sunrise in the morning, unless special permission be given to
the absenting slave. “I went to see my child,” is no excuse to the ear
or heart of the overseer.

One of the visits of my mother to me, while at Col. Lloyd’s, I remember
very vividly, as affording a bright gleam of a mother’s love, and the
earnestness of a mother’s care.

“I had on that day offended “Aunt Katy,” (called “Aunt” by way of
respect,) the cook of old master’s establishment. I do not now remember
the nature of my offense in this instance, for my offenses were
numerous in that quarter, greatly depending, however, upon the mood of
Aunt Katy, as to their heinousness; but she had adopted, that day, her
favorite mode of punishing me, namely, making me go without food all
day—that is, from after breakfast. The first hour or two after dinner,
I succeeded pretty well in keeping up my spirits; but though I made an
excellent stand against the foe, and fought bravely during the
afternoon, I knew I must be conquered at last, unless I got the
accustomed reenforcement of a slice of corn bread, at sundown. Sundown
came, but _no bread_, and, in its stead, their came the threat, with a
scowl well suited to its terrible import, that she “meant to _starve
the life out of me!”_ Brandishing her knife, she chopped off the heavy
slices for the other children, and put the loaf away, muttering, all
the while, her savage designs upon myself. Against this disappointment,
for I was expecting that her heart would relent at last, I made an
extra effort to maintain my dignity; but when I saw all the other
children around me with merry and satisfied faces, I could stand it no
longer. I went out behind the house, and cried like a fine fellow! When
tired of this, I returned to the kitchen, sat by the fire, and brooded
over my hard lot. I was too hungry to sleep. While I sat in the corner,
I caught sight of an ear of Indian corn on an upper shelf of the
kitchen. I watched my chance, and got it, and, shelling off a few
grains, I put it back again. The grains in my hand, I quickly put in
some ashes, and covered them with embers, to roast them. All this I did
at the risk of getting a brutual thumping, for Aunt Katy could beat, as
well as starve me. My corn was not long in roasting, and, with my keen
appetite, it did not matter even if the grains were not exactly done. I
eagerly pulled them out, and placed them on my stool, in a clever
little pile. Just as I began to help myself to my very dry meal, in
came my dear mother. And now, dear reader, a scene occurred which was
altogether worth beholding, and to me it was instructive as well as
interesting. The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest need—and
when he did not dare to look for succor—found himself in the strong,
protecting arms of a mother; a mother who was, at the moment (being
endowed with high powers of manner as well as matter) more than a match
for all his enemies. I shall never forget the indescribable expression
of her countenance, when I told her that I had had no food since
morning; and that Aunt Katy said she “meant to starve the life out of
me.” There was pity in her glance at me, and a fiery indignation at
Aunt Katy at the same time; and, while she took the corn from me, and
gave me a large ginger cake, in its stead, she read Aunt Katy a lecture
which she never forgot. My mother threatened her with complaining to
old master in my behalf; for the latter, though harsh and cruel
himself, at times, did not sanction the meanness, injustice, partiality
and oppressions enacted by Aunt Katy in the kitchen. That night I
learned the fact, that I was, not only a child, but _somebody’s_ child.
The “sweet cake” my mother gave me was in the shape of a heart, with a
rich, dark ring glazed upon the edge of it. I was victorious, and well
off for the moment; prouder, on my mother’s knee, than a king upon his
throne. But my triumph was short. I dropped off to sleep, and waked in
the morning only to find my mother gone, and myself left at the mercy
of the sable virago, dominant in my old master’s kitchen, whose fiery
wrath was my constant dread.

I do not remember to have seen my mother after this occurrence. Death
soon ended the little communication that had existed between us; and
with it, I believe, a life judging from her weary, sad, down-cast
countenance and mute demeanor—full of heartfelt sorrow. I was not
allowed to visit her during any part of her long illness; nor did I see
her for a long time before she was taken ill and died. The heartless
and ghastly form of _slavery_ rises between mother and child, even at
the bed of death. The mother, at the verge of the grave, may not gather
her children, to impart to them her holy admonitions, and invoke for
them her dying benediction. The bond-woman lives as a slave, and is
left to die as a beast; often with fewer attentions than are paid to a
favorite horse. Scenes of sacred tenderness, around the death-bed,
never forgotten, and which often arrest the vicious and confirm the
virtuous during life, must be looked for among the free, though they
sometimes occur among the slaves. It has been a life-long, standing
grief to me, that I knew so little of my mother; and that I was so
early separated from her. The counsels of her love must have been
beneficial to me. The side view of her face is imaged on my memory, and
I take few steps in life, without feeling her presence; but the image
is mute, and I have no striking words of her’s treasured up.

I learned, after my mother’s death, that she could read, and that she
was the _only_ one of all the slaves and colored people in Tuckahoe who
enjoyed that advantage. How she acquired this knowledge, I know not,
for Tuckahoe is the last place in the world where she would be apt to
find facilities for learning. I can, therefore, fondly and proudly
ascribe to her an earnest love of knowledge. That a “field hand” should
learn to read, in any slave state, is remarkable; but the achievement
of my mother, considering the place, was very extraordinary; and, in
view of that fact, I am quite willing, and even happy, to attribute any
love of letters I possess, and for which I have got—despite of
prejudices only too much credit, _not_ to my admitted Anglo-Saxon
paternity, but to the native genius of my sable, unprotected, and
uncultivated _mother_—a woman, who belonged to a race whose mental
endowments it is, at present, fashionable to hold in disparagement and
contempt.

Summoned away to her account, with the impassable gulf of slavery
between us during her entire illness, my mother died without leaving me
a single intimation of _who_ my father was. There was a whisper, that
my master was my father; yet it was only a whisper, and I cannot say
that I ever gave it credence. Indeed, I now have reason to think he was
not; nevertheless, the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness,
that, by the laws of slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to
the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest
license to brutal slaveholders, and their profligate sons, brothers,
relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the additional
attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written on this single
feature of slavery, as I have observed it.

One might imagine, that the children of such connections, would fare
better, in the hands of their masters, than other slaves. The rule is
quite the other way; and a very little reflection will satisfy the
reader that such is the case. A man who will enslave his own blood, may
not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who
remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent—and the
mulatto child’s face is a standing accusation against him who is master
and father to the child. What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is
a constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence, and when a
slaveholding woman hates, she wants not means to give that hate telling
effect. Women—white women, I mean—are IDOLS at the south, not WIVES,
for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these
_idols_ but nod, or lift a finger, woe to the poor victim: kicks, cuffs
and stripes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to
sell this class of their slaves, out of deference to the feelings of
their white wives; and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man
to sell his own blood to the traffickers in human flesh, it is often an
act of humanity toward the slave-child to be thus removed from his
merciless tormentors.

It is not within the scope of the design of my simple story, to comment
upon every phase of slavery not within my experience as a slave.

But, I may remark, that, if the lineal descendants of Ham are only to
be enslaved, according to the scriptures, slavery in this country will
soon become an unscriptural institution; for thousands are ushered into
the world, annually, who—like myself—owe their existence to white
fathers, and, most frequently, to their masters, and master’s sons. The
slave-woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her
master. The thoughtful know the rest.

After what I have now said of the circumstances of my mother, and my
relations to her, the reader will not be surprised, nor be disposed to
censure me, when I tell but the simple truth, viz: that I received the
tidings of her death with no strong emotions of sorrow for her, and
with very little regret for myself on account of her loss. I had to
learn the value of my mother long after her death, and by witnessing
the devotion of other mothers to their children.

There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so
destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers
to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded
my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in
the world.

My mother died when I could not have been more than eight or nine years
old, on one of old master’s farms in Tuckahoe, in the neighborhood of
Hillsborough. Her grave is, as the grave of the dead at sea, unmarked,
and without stone or stake.




CHAPTER IV. _A General Survey of the Slave Plantation_


ISOLATION OF LLOYD S PLANTATION—PUBLIC OPINION THERE NO PROTECTION TO
THE SLAVE—ABSOLUTE POWER OF THE OVERSEER—NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL CHARMS
OF THE PLACE—ITS BUSINESS-LIKE APPEARANCE—SUPERSTITION ABOUT THE BURIAL
GROUND—GREAT IDEAS OF COL. LLOYD—ETIQUETTE AMONG SLAVES—THE COMIC SLAVE
DOCTOR—PRAYING AND FLOGGING—OLD MASTER LOSING ITS TERRORS—HIS
BUSINESS—CHARACTER OF AUNT KATY—SUFFERINGS FROM HUNGER—OLD MASTER’S
HOME—JARGON OF THE PLANTATION—GUINEA SLAVES—MASTER DANIEL—FAMILY OF
COL. LLOYD—FAMILY OF CAPT. ANTHONY—HIS SOCIAL POSITION—NOTIONS OF RANK
AND STATION.


It is generally supposed that slavery, in the state of Maryland, exists
in its mildest form, and that it is totally divested of those harsh and
terrible peculiarities, which mark and characterize the slave system,
in the southern and south-western states of the American union. The
argument in favor of this opinion, is the contiguity of the free
states, and the exposed condition of slavery in Maryland to the moral,
religious and humane sentiment of the free states.

I am not about to refute this argument, so far as it relates to slavery
in that state, generally; on the contrary, I am willing to admit that,
to this general point, the arguments is well grounded. Public opinion
is, indeed, an unfailing restraint upon the cruelty and barbarity of
masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it can
reach them; but there are certain secluded and out-of-the-way places,
even in the state of Maryland, seldom visited by a single ray of
healthy public sentiment—where slavery, wrapt in its own congenial,
midnight darkness, _can_, and _does_, develop all its malign and
shocking characteristics; where it can be indecent without shame, cruel
without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or fear of
exposure.

Just such a secluded, dark, and out-of-the-way place, is the “home
plantation” of Col. Edward Lloyd, on the Eastern Shore, Maryland. It is
far away from all the great thoroughfares, and is proximate to no town
or village. There is neither school-house, nor town-house in its
neighborhood. The school-house is unnecessary, for there are no
children to go to school. The children and grand-children of Col. Lloyd
were taught in the house, by a private tutor—a Mr. Page a tall, gaunt
sapling of a man, who did not speak a dozen words to a slave in a whole
year. The overseers’ children go off somewhere to school; and they,
therefore, bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad, to
embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the place. Not
even the mechanics—through whom there is an occasional out-burst of
honest and telling indignation, at cruelty and wrong on other
plantations—are white men, on this plantation. Its whole public is made
up of, and divided into, three classes—SLAVEHOLDERS, SLAVES and
OVERSEERS. Its blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and
coopers, are slaves. Not even commerce, selfish and iron-hearted at it
is, and ready, as it ever is, to side with the strong against the
weak—the rich against the poor—is trusted or permitted within its
secluded precincts. Whether with a view of guarding against the escape
of its secrets, I know not, but it is a fact, the every leaf and grain
of the produce of this plantation, and those of the neighboring farms
belonging to Col. Lloyd, are transported to Baltimore in Col. Lloyd’s
own vessels; every man and boy on board of which—except the captain—are
owned by him. In return, everything brought to the plantation, comes
through the same channel. Thus, even the glimmering and unsteady light
of trade, which sometimes exerts a civilizing influence, is excluded
from this “tabooed” spot.

Nearly all the plantations or farms in the vicinity of the “home
plantation” of Col. Lloyd, belong to him; and those which do not, are
owned by personal friends of his, as deeply interested in maintaining
the slave system, in all its rigor, as Col. Lloyd himself. Some of his
neighbors are said to be even more stringent than he. The Skinners, the
Peakers, the Tilgmans, the Lockermans, and the Gipsons, are in the same
boat; being slaveholding neighbors, they may have strengthened each
other in their iron rule. They are on intimate terms, and their
interests and tastes are identical.

Public opinion in such a quarter, the reader will see, is not likely to
very efficient in protecting the slave from cruelty. On the contrary,
it must increase and intensify his wrongs. Public opinion seldom
differs very widely from public practice. To be a restraint upon
cruelty and vice, public opinion must emanate from a humane and
virtuous community. To no such humane and virtuous community, is Col.
Lloyd’s plantation exposed. That plantation is a little nation of its
own, having its own language, its own rules, regulations and customs.
The laws and institutions of the state, apparently touch it nowhere.
The troubles arising here, are not settled by the civil power of the
state. The overseer is generally accuser, judge, jury, advocate and
executioner. The criminal is always dumb. The overseer attends to all
sides of a case.

There are no conflicting rights of property, for all the people are
owned by one man; and they can themselves own no property. Religion and
politics are alike excluded. One class of the population is too high to
be reached by the preacher; and the other class is too low to be cared
for by the preacher. The poor have the gospel preached to them, in this
neighborhood, only when they are able to pay for it. The slaves, having
no money, get no gospel. The politician keeps away, because the people
have no votes, and the preacher keeps away, because the people have no
money. The rich planter can afford to learn politics in the parlor, and
to dispense with religion altogether.

In its isolation, seclusion, and self-reliant independence, Col.
Lloyd’s plantation resembles what the baronial domains were during the
middle ages in Europe. Grim, cold, and unapproachable by all genial
influences from communities without, _there it stands;_ full three
hundred years behind the age, in all that relates to humanity and
morals.

This, however, is not the only view that the place presents.
Civilization is shut out, but nature cannot be. Though separated from
the rest of the world; though public opinion, as I have said, seldom
gets a chance to penetrate its dark domain; though the whole place is
stamped with its own peculiar, ironlike individuality; and though
crimes, high-handed and atrocious, may there be committed, with almost
as much impunity as upon the deck of a pirate ship—it is, nevertheless,
altogether, to outward seeming, a most strikingly interesting place,
full of life, activity, and spirit; and presents a very favorable
contrast to the indolent monotony and languor of Tuckahoe. Keen as was
my regret and great as was my sorrow at leaving the latter, I was not
long in adapting myself to this, my new home. A man’s troubles are
always half disposed of, when he finds endurance his only remedy. I
found myself here; there was no getting away; and what remained for me,
but to make the best of it? Here were plenty of children to play with,
and plenty of places of pleasant resort for boys of my age, and boys
older. The little tendrils of affection, so rudely and treacherously
broken from around the darling objects of my grandmother’s hut,
gradually began to extend, and to entwine about the new objects by
which I now found myself surrounded.

There was a windmill (always a commanding object to a child’s eye) on
Long Point—a tract of land dividing Miles river from the Wye a mile or
more from my old master’s house. There was a creek to swim in, at the
bottom of an open flat space, of twenty acres or more, called “the Long
Green”—a very beautiful play-ground for the children.

In the river, a short distance from the shore, lying quietly at anchor,
with her small boat dancing at her stern, was a large sloop—the Sally
Lloyd; called by that name in honor of a favorite daughter of the
colonel. The sloop and the mill were wondrous things, full of thoughts
and ideas. A child cannot well look at such objects without _thinking_.

Then here were a great many houses; human habitations, full of the
mysteries of life at every stage of it. There was the little red house,
up the road, occupied by Mr. Sevier, the overseer. A little nearer to
my old master’s, stood a very long, rough, low building, literally
alive with slaves, of all ages, conditions and sizes. This was called
“the Longe Quarter.” Perched upon a hill, across the Long Green, was a
very tall, dilapidated, old brick building—the architectural dimensions
of which proclaimed its erection for a different purpose—now occupied
by slaves, in a similar manner to the Long Quarter. Besides these,
there were numerous other slave houses and huts, scattered around in
the neighborhood, every nook and corner of which was completely
occupied. Old master’s house, a long, brick building, plain, but
substantial, stood in the center of the plantation life, and
constituted one independent establishment on the premises of Col.
Lloyd.

Besides these dwellings, there were barns, stables, store-houses, and
tobacco-houses; blacksmiths’ shops, wheelwrights’ shops, coopers’
shops—all objects of interest; but, above all, there stood the grandest
building my eyes had then ever beheld, called, by every one on the
plantation, the “Great House.” This was occupied by Col. Lloyd and his
family. They occupied it; _I_ enjoyed it. The great house was
surrounded by numerous and variously shaped out-buildings. There were
kitchens, wash-houses, dairies, summer-house, green-houses, hen-houses,
turkey-houses, pigeon-houses, and arbors, of many sizes and devices,
all neatly painted, and altogether interspersed with grand old trees,
ornamental and primitive, which afforded delightful shade in summer,
and imparted to the scene a high degree of stately beauty. The great
house itself was a large, white, wooden building, with wings on three
sides of it. In front, a large portico, extending the entire length of
the building, and supported by a long range of columns, gave to the
whole establishment an air of solemn grandeur. It was a treat to my
young and gradually opening mind, to behold this elaborate exhibition
of wealth, power, and vanity. The carriage entrance to the house was a
large gate, more than a quarter of a mile distant from it; the
intermediate space was a beautiful lawn, very neatly trimmed, and
watched with the greatest care. It was dotted thickly over with
delightful trees, shrubbery, and flowers. The road, or lane, from the
gate to the great house, was richly paved with white pebbles from the
beach, and, in its course, formed a complete circle around the
beautiful lawn. Carriages going in and retiring from the great house,
made the circuit of the lawn, and their passengers were permitted to
behold a scene of almost Eden-like beauty. Outside this select
inclosure, were parks, where as about the residences of the English
nobility—rabbits, deer, and other wild game, might be seen, peering and
playing about, with none to molest them or make them afraid. The tops
of the stately poplars were often covered with the red-winged
black-birds, making all nature vocal with the joyous life and beauty of
their wild, warbling notes. These all belonged to me, as well as to
Col. Edward Lloyd, and for a time I greatly enjoyed them.

A short distance from the great house, were the stately mansions of the
dead, a place of somber aspect. Vast tombs, embowered beneath the
weeping willow and the fir tree, told of the antiquities of the Lloyd
family, as well as of their wealth. Superstition was rife among the
slaves about this family burying ground. Strange sights had been seen
there by some of the older slaves. Shrouded ghosts, riding on great
black horses, had been seen to enter; balls of fire had been seen to
fly there at midnight, and horrid sounds had been repeatedly heard.
Slaves know enough of the rudiments of theology to believe that those
go to hell who die slaveholders; and they often fancy such persons
wishing themselves back again, to wield the lash. Tales of sights and
sounds, strange and terrible, connected with the huge black tombs, were
a very great security to the grounds about them, for few of the slaves
felt like approaching them even in the day time. It was a dark, gloomy
and forbidding place, and it was difficult to feel that the spirits of
the sleeping dust there deposited, reigned with the blest in the realms
of eternal peace.

The business of twenty or thirty farms was transacted at this, called,
by way of eminence, “great house farm.” These farms all belonged to
Col. Lloyd, as did, also, the slaves upon them. Each farm was under the
management of an overseer. As I have said of the overseer of the home
plantation, so I may say of the overseers on the smaller ones; they
stand between the slave and all civil constitutions—their word is law,
and is implicitly obeyed.

The colonel, at this time, was reputed to be, and he apparently was,
very rich. His slaves, alone, were an immense fortune. These, small and
great, could not have been fewer than one thousand in number, and
though scarcely a month passed without the sale of one or more lots to
the Georgia traders, there was no apparent diminution in the number of
his human stock: the home plantation merely groaned at a removal of the
young increase, or human crop, then proceeded as lively as ever.
Horse-shoeing, cart-mending, plow-repairing, coopering, grinding, and
weaving, for all the neighboring farms, were performed here, and slaves
were employed in all these branches. “Uncle Tony” was the blacksmith;
“Uncle Harry” was the cartwright; “Uncle Abel” was the shoemaker; and
all these had hands to assist them in their several departments.

These mechanics were called “uncles” by all the younger slaves, not
because they really sustained that relationship to any, but according
to plantation _etiquette_, as a mark of respect, due from the younger
to the older slaves. Strange, and even ridiculous as it may seem, among
a people so uncultivated, and with so many stern trials to look in the
face, there is not to be found, among any people, a more rigid
enforcement of the law of respect to elders, than they maintain. I set
this down as partly constitutional with my race, and partly
conventional. There is no better material in the world for making a
gentleman, than is furnished in the African. He shows to others, and
exacts for himself, all the tokens of respect which he is compelled to
manifest toward his master. A young slave must approach the company of
the older with hat in hand, and woe betide him, if he fails to
acknowledge a favor, of any sort, with the accustomed _“tank’ee,”_ &c.
So uniformly are good manners enforced among slaves, I can easily
detect a “bogus” fugitive by his manners.

Among other slave notabilities of the plantation, was one called by
everybody Uncle Isaac Copper. It is seldom that a slave gets a surname
from anybody in Maryland; and so completely has the south shaped the
manners of the north, in this respect, that even abolitionists make
very little of the surname of a Negro. The only improvement on the
“Bills,” “Jacks,” “Jims,” and “Neds” of the south, observable here is,
that “William,” “John,” “James,” “Edward,” are substituted. It goes
against the grain to treat and address a Negro precisely as they would
treat and address a white man. But, once in a while, in slavery as in
the free states, by some extraordinary circumstance, the Negro has a
surname fastened to him, and holds it against all conventionalities.
This was the case with Uncle Isaac Copper. When the “uncle” was
dropped, he generally had the prefix “doctor,” in its stead. He was our
doctor of medicine, and doctor of divinity as well. Where he took his
degree I am unable to say, for he was not very communicative to
inferiors, and I was emphatically such, being but a boy seven or eight
years old. He was too well established in his profession to permit
questions as to his native skill, or his attainments. One qualification
he undoubtedly had—he was a confirmed _cripple;_ and he could neither
work, nor would he bring anything if offered for sale in the market.
The old man, though lame, was no sluggard. He was a man that made his
crutches do him good service. He was always on the alert, looking up
the sick, and all such as were supposed to need his counsel. His
remedial prescriptions embraced four articles. For diseases of the
body, _Epsom salts and castor oil;_ for those of the soul, _the Lord’s
Prayer_, and _hickory switches_!

I was not long at Col. Lloyd’s before I was placed under the care of
Doctor Issac Copper. I was sent to him with twenty or thirty other
children, to learn the “Lord’s Prayer.” I found the old gentleman
seated on a huge three-legged oaken stool, armed with several large
hickory switches; and, from his position, he could reach—lame as he
was—any boy in the room. After standing awhile to learn what was
expected of us, the old gentleman, in any other than a devotional tone,
commanded us to kneel down. This done, he commenced telling us to say
everything he said. “Our Father”—this was repeated after him with
promptness and uniformity; “Who art in heaven”—was less promptly and
uniformly repeated; and the old gentleman paused in the prayer, to give
us a short lecture upon the consequences of inattention, both immediate
and future, and especially those more immediate. About these he was
absolutely certain, for he held in his right hand the means of bringing
all his predictions and warnings to pass. On he proceeded with the
prayer; and we with our thick tongues and unskilled ears, followed him
to the best of our ability. This, however, was not sufficient to please
the old gentleman. Everybody, in the south, wants the privilege of
whipping somebody else. Uncle Isaac shared the common passion of his
country, and, therefore, seldom found any means of keeping his
disciples in order short of flogging. “Say everything I say;” and bang
would come the switch on some poor boy’s undevotional head. _“What you
looking at there”—“Stop that pushing”_—and down again would come the
lash.

The whip is all in all. It is supposed to secure obedience to the
slaveholder, and is held as a sovereign remedy among the slaves
themselves, for every form of disobedience, temporal or spiritual.
Slaves, as well as slaveholders, use it with an unsparing hand. Our
devotions at Uncle Isaac’s combined too much of the tragic and comic,
to make them very salutary in a spiritual point of view; and it is due
to truth to say, I was often a truant when the time for attending the
praying and flogging of Doctor Isaac Copper came on.

The windmill under the care of Mr. Kinney, a kind hearted old
Englishman, was to me a source of infinite interest and pleasure. The
old man always seemed pleased when he saw a troop of darkey little
urchins, with their tow-linen shirts fluttering in the breeze,
approaching to view and admire the whirling wings of his wondrous
machine. From the mill we could see other objects of deep interest.
These were, the vessels from St. Michael’s, on their way to Baltimore.
It was a source of much amusement to view the flowing sails and
complicated rigging, as the little crafts dashed by, and to speculate
upon Baltimore, as to the kind and quality of the place. With so many
sources of interest around me, the reader may be prepared to learn that
I began to think very highly of Col. L.‘s plantation. It was just a
place to my boyish taste. There were fish to be caught in the creek, if
one only had a hook and line; and crabs, clams and oysters were to be
caught by wading, digging and raking for them. Here was a field for
industry and enterprise, strongly inviting; and the reader may be
assured that I entered upon it with spirit.

Even the much dreaded old master, whose merciless fiat had brought me
from Tuckahoe, gradually, to my mind, parted with his terrors. Strange
enough, his reverence seemed to take no particular notice of me, nor of
my coming. Instead of leaping out and devouring me, he scarcely seemed
conscious of my presence. The fact is, he was occupied with matters
more weighty and important than either looking after or vexing me. He
probably thought as little of my advent, as he would have thought of
the addition of a single pig to his stock!

As the chief butler on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, his duties were
numerous and perplexing. In almost all important matters he answered in
Col. Lloyd’s stead. The overseers of all the farms were in some sort
under him, and received the law from his mouth. The colonel himself
seldom addressed an overseer, or allowed an overseer to address him.
Old master carried the keys of all store houses; measured out the
allowance for each slave at the end of every month; superintended the
storing of all goods brought to the plantation; dealt out the raw
material to all the handicraftsmen; shipped the grain, tobacco, and all
saleable produce of the plantation to market, and had the general
oversight of the coopers’ shop, wheelwrights’ shop, blacksmiths’ shop,
and shoemakers’ shop. Besides the care of these, he often had business
for the plantation which required him to be absent two and three days.

Thus largely employed, he had little time, and perhaps as little
disposition, to interfere with the children individually. What he was
to Col. Lloyd, he made Aunt Katy to him. When he had anything to say or
do about us, it was said or done in a wholesale manner; disposing of us
in classes or sizes, leaving all minor details to Aunt Katy, a person
of whom the reader has already received no very favorable impression.
Aunt Katy was a woman who never allowed herself to act greatly within
the margin of power granted to her, no matter how broad that authority
might be. Ambitious, ill-tempered and cruel, she found in her present
position an ample field for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities.
She had a strong hold on old master she was considered a first rate
cook, and she really was very industrious. She was, therefore, greatly
favored by old master, and as one mark of his favor, she was the only
mother who was permitted to retain her children around her. Even to
these children she was often fiendish in her brutality. She pursued her
son Phil, one day, in my presence, with a huge butcher knife, and dealt
a blow with its edge which left a shocking gash on his arm, near the
wrist. For this, old master did sharply rebuke her, and threatened that
if she ever should do the like again, he would take the skin off her
back. Cruel, however, as Aunt Katy was to her own children, at times
she was not destitute of maternal feeling, as I often had occasion to
know, in the bitter pinches of hunger I had to endure. Differing from
the practice of Col. Lloyd, old master, instead of allowing so much for
each slave, committed the allowance for all to the care of Aunt Katy,
to be divided after cooking it, amongst us. The allowance, consisting
of coarse corn-meal, was not very abundant—indeed, it was very slender;
and in passing through Aunt Katy’s hands, it was made more slender
still, for some of us. William, Phil and Jerry were her children, and
it is not to accuse her too severely, to allege that she was often
guilty of starving myself and the other children, while she was
literally cramming her own. Want of food was my chief trouble the first
summer at my old master’s. Oysters and clams would do very well, with
an occasional supply of bread, but they soon failed in the absence of
bread. I speak but the simple truth, when I say, I have often been so
pinched with hunger, that I have fought with the dog—“Old Nep”—for the
smallest crumbs that fell from the kitchen table, and have been glad
when I won a single crumb in the combat. Many times have I followed,
with eager step, the waiting-girl when she went out to shake the table
cloth, to get the crumbs and small bones flung out for the cats. The
water, in which meat had been boiled, was as eagerly sought for by me.
It was a great thing to get the privilege of dipping a piece of bread
in such water; and the skin taken from rusty bacon, was a positive
luxury. Nevertheless, I sometimes got full meals and kind words from
sympathizing old slaves, who knew my sufferings, and received the
comforting assurance that I should be a man some day. “Never mind,
honey—better day comin’,” was even then a solace, a cheering
consolation to me in my troubles. Nor were all the kind words I
received from slaves. I had a friend in the parlor, as well, and one to
whom I shall be glad to do justice, before I have finished this part of
my story.

I was not long at old master’s, before I learned that his surname was
Anthony, and that he was generally called “Captain Anthony”—a title
which he probably acquired by sailing a craft in the Chesapeake Bay.
Col. Lloyd’s slaves never called Capt. Anthony “old master,” but always
Capt. Anthony; and _me_ they called “Captain Anthony Fred.” There is
not, probably, in the whole south, a plantation where the English
language is more imperfectly spoken than on Col. Lloyd’s. It is a
mixture of Guinea and everything else you please. At the time of which
I am now writing, there were slaves there who had been brought from the
coast of Africa. They never used the “s” in indication of the
possessive case. “Cap’n Ant’ney Tom,” “Lloyd Bill,” “Aunt Rose Harry,”
means “Captain Anthony’s Tom,” “Lloyd’s Bill,” &c. _“Oo you dem long
to?”_ means, “Whom do you belong to?” _“Oo dem got any peachy?”_ means,
“Have you got any peaches?” I could scarcely understand them when I
first went among them, so broken was their speech; and I am persuaded
that I could not have been dropped anywhere on the globe, where I could
reap less, in the way of knowledge, from my immediate associates, than
on this plantation. Even “MAS’ DANIEL,” by his association with his
father’s slaves, had measurably adopted their dialect and their ideas,
so far as they had ideas to be adopted. The equality of nature is
strongly asserted in childhood, and childhood requires children for
associates. _Color_ makes no difference with a child. Are you a child
with wants, tastes and pursuits common to children, not put on, but
natural? then, were you black as ebony you would be welcome to the
child of alabaster whiteness. The law of compensation holds here, as
well as elsewhere. Mas’ Daniel could not associate with ignorance
without sharing its shade; and he could not give his black playmates
his company, without giving them his intelligence, as well. Without
knowing this, or caring about it, at the time, I, for some cause or
other, spent much of my time with Mas’ Daniel, in preference to
spending it with most of the other boys.

Mas’ Daniel was the youngest son of Col. Lloyd; his older brothers were
Edward and Murray—both grown up, and fine looking men. Edward was
especially esteemed by the children, and by me among the rest; not that
he ever said anything to us or for us, which could be called especially
kind; it was enough for us, that he never looked nor acted scornfully
toward us. There were also three sisters, all married; one to Edward
Winder; a second to Edward Nicholson; a third to Mr. Lownes.

The family of old master consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; his
daughter, Lucretia, and her newly married husband, Capt. Auld. This was
the house family. The kitchen family consisted of Aunt Katy, Aunt
Esther, and ten or a dozen children, most of them older than myself.
Capt. Anthony was not considered a rich slaveholder, but was pretty
well off in the world. He owned about thirty _“head”_ of slaves, and
three farms in Tuckahoe. The most valuable part of his property was his
slaves, of whom he could afford to sell one every year. This crop,
therefore, brought him seven or eight hundred dollars a year, besides
his yearly salary, and other revenue from his farms.

The idea of rank and station was rigidly maintained on Col. Lloyd’s
plantation. Our family never visited the great house, and the Lloyds
never came to our home. Equal non-intercourse was observed between
Capt. Anthony’s family and that of Mr. Sevier, the overseer.

Such, kind reader, was the community, and such the place, in which my
earliest and most lasting impressions of slavery, and of slave-life,
were received; of which impressions you will learn more in the coming
chapters of this book.




CHAPTER V. _Gradual Initiation to the Mysteries of Slavery_


GROWING ACQUAINTANCE WITH OLD MASTER—HIS CHARACTER—EVILS OF
UNRESTRAINED PASSION—APPARENT TENDERNESS—OLD MASTER A MAN OF
TROUBLE—CUSTOM OF MUTTERING TO HIMSELF—NECESSITY OF BEING AWARE OF HIS
WORDS—THE SUPPOSED OBTUSENESS OF SLAVE-CHILDREN—BRUTAL OUTRAGE—DRUNKEN
OVERSEER—SLAVEHOLDER’S IMPATIENCE—WISDOM OF APPEALING TO SUPERIORS—THE
SLAVEHOLDER S WRATH BAD AS THAT OF THE OVERSEER—A BASE AND SELFISH
ATTEMPT TO BREAK UP A COURTSHIP—A HARROWING SCENE.


Although my old master—Capt. Anthony—gave me at first, (as the reader
will have already seen) very little attention, and although that little
was of a remarkably mild and gentle description, a few months only were
sufficient to convince me that mildness and gentleness were not the
prevailing or governing traits of his character. These excellent
qualities were displayed only occasionally. He could, when it suited
him, appear to be literally insensible to the claims of humanity, when
appealed to by the helpless against an aggressor, and he could himself
commit outrages, deep, dark and nameless. Yet he was not by nature
worse than other men. Had he been brought up in a free state,
surrounded by the just restraints of free society—restraints which are
necessary to the freedom of all its members, alike and equally—Capt.
Anthony might have been as humane a man, and every way as respectable,
as many who now oppose the slave system; certainly as humane and
respectable as are members of society generally. The slaveholder, as
well as the slave, is the victim of the slave system. A man’s character
greatly takes its hue and shape from the form and color of things about
him. Under the whole heavens there is no relation more unfavorable to
the development of honorable character, than that sustained by the
slaveholder to the slave. Reason is imprisoned here, and passions run
wild. Like the fires of the prairie, once lighted, they are at the
mercy of every wind, and must burn, till they have consumed all that is
combustible within their remorseless grasp. Capt. Anthony could be
kind, and, at times, he even showed an affectionate disposition. Could
the reader have seen him gently leading me by the hand—as he sometimes
did—patting me on the head, speaking to me in soft, caressing tones and
calling me his “little Indian boy,” he would have deemed him a kind old
man, and really, almost fatherly. But the pleasant moods of a
slaveholder are remarkably brittle; they are easily snapped; they
neither come often, nor remain long. His temper is subjected to
perpetual trials; but, since these trials are never borne patiently,
they add nothing to his natural stock of patience.

Old master very early impressed me with the idea that he was an unhappy
man. Even to my child’s eye, he wore a troubled, and at times, a
haggard aspect. His strange movements excited my curiosity, and
awakened my compassion. He seldom walked alone without muttering to
himself; and he occasionally stormed about, as if defying an army of
invisible foes. “He would do this, that, and the other; he’d be d—d if
he did not,”—was the usual form of his threats. Most of his leisure was
spent in walking, cursing and gesticulating, like one possessed by a
demon. Most evidently, he was a wretched man, at war with his own soul,
and with all the world around him. To be overheard by the children,
disturbed him very little. He made no more of our presence, than of
that of the ducks and geese which he met on the green. He little
thought that the little black urchins around him, could see, through
those vocal crevices, the very secrets of his heart. Slaveholders ever
underrate the intelligence with which they have to grapple. I really
understood the old man’s mutterings, attitudes and gestures, about as
well as he did himself. But slaveholders never encourage that kind of
communication, with the slaves, by which they might learn to measure
the depths of his knowledge. Ignorance is a high virtue in a human
chattel; and as the master studies to keep the slave ignorant, the
slave is cunning enough to make the master think he succeeds. The slave
fully appreciates the saying, “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to
be wise.” When old master’s gestures were violent, ending with a
threatening shake of the head, and a sharp snap of his middle finger
and thumb, I deemed it wise to keep at a respectable distance from him;
for, at such times, trifling faults stood, in his eyes, as momentous
offenses; and, having both the power and the disposition, the victim
had only to be near him to catch the punishment, deserved or
undeserved.

One of the first circumstances that opened my eyes to the cruelty and
wickedness of slavery, and the heartlessness of my old master, was the
refusal of the latter to interpose his authority, to protect and shield
a young woman, who had been most cruelly abused and beaten by his
overseer in Tuckahoe. This overseer—a Mr. Plummer—was a man like most
of his class, little better than a human brute; and, in addition to his
general profligacy and repulsive coarseness, the creature was a
miserable drunkard. He was, probably, employed by my old master, less
on account of the excellence of his services, than for the cheap rate
at which they could be obtained. He was not fit to have the management
of a drove of mules. In a fit of drunken madness, he committed the
outrage which brought the young woman in question down to my old
master’s for protection. This young woman was the daughter of Milly, an
own aunt of mine. The poor girl, on arriving at our house, presented a
pitiable appearance. She had left in haste, and without preparation;
and, probably, without the knowledge of Mr. Plummer. She had traveled
twelve miles, bare-footed, bare-necked and bare-headed. Her neck and
shoulders were covered with scars, newly made; and not content with
marring her neck and shoulders, with the cowhide, the cowardly brute
had dealt her a blow on the head with a hickory club, which cut a
horrible gash, and left her face literally covered with blood. In this
condition, the poor young woman came down, to implore protection at the
hands of my old master. I expected to see him boil over with rage at
the revolting deed, and to hear him fill the air with curses upon the
brutual Plummer; but I was disappointed. He sternly told her, in an
angry tone, he “believed she deserved every bit of it,” and, if she did
not go home instantly, he would himself take the remaining skin from
her neck and back. Thus was the poor girl compelled to return, without
redress, and perhaps to receive an additional flogging for daring to
appeal to old master against the overseer.

Old master seemed furious at the thought of being troubled by such
complaints. I did not, at that time, understand the philosophy of his
treatment of my cousin. It was stern, unnatural, violent. Had the man
no bowels of compassion? Was he dead to all sense of humanity? No. I
think I now understand it. This treatment is a part of the system,
rather than a part of the man. Were slaveholders to listen to
complaints of this sort against the overseers, the luxury of owning
large numbers of slaves, would be impossible. It would do away with the
office of overseer, entirely; or, in other words, it would convert the
master himself into an overseer. It would occasion great loss of time
and labor, leaving the overseer in fetters, and without the necessary
power to secure obedience to his orders. A privilege so dangerous as
that of appeal, is, therefore, strictly prohibited; and any one
exercising it, runs a fearful hazard. Nevertheless, when a slave has
nerve enough to exercise it, and boldly approaches his master, with a
well-founded complaint against an overseer, though he may be repulsed,
and may even have that of which he complains repeated at the time, and,
though he may be beaten by his master, as well as by the overseer, for
his temerity, in the end the policy of complaining is, generally,
vindicated by the relaxed rigor of the overseer’s treatment. The latter
becomes more careful, and less disposed to use the lash upon such
slaves thereafter. It is with this final result in view, rather than
with any expectation of immediate good, that the outraged slave is
induced to meet his master with a complaint. The overseer very
naturally dislikes to have the ear of the master disturbed by
complaints; and, either upon this consideration, or upon advice and
warning privately given him by his employers, he generally modifies the
rigor of his rule, after an outbreak of the kind to which I have been
referring.

Howsoever the slaveholder may allow himself to act toward his slave,
and, whatever cruelty he may deem it wise, for example’s sake, or for
the gratification of his humor, to inflict, he cannot, in the absence
of all provocation, look with pleasure upon the bleeding wounds of a
defenseless slave-woman. When he drives her from his presence without
redress, or the hope of redress, he acts, generally, from motives of
policy, rather than from a hardened nature, or from innate brutality.
Yet, let but his own temper be stirred, his own passions get loose, and
the slave-owner will go _far beyond_ the overseer in cruelty. He will
convince the slave that his wrath is far more terrible and boundless,
and vastly more to be dreaded, than that of the underling overseer.
What may have been mechanically and heartlessly done by the overseer,
is now done with a will. The man who now wields the lash is
irresponsible. He may, if he pleases, cripple or kill, without fear of
consequences; except in so far as it may concern profit or loss. To a
man of violent temper—as my old master was—this was but a very slender
and inefficient restraint. I have seen him in a tempest of passion,
such as I have just described—a passion into which entered all the
bitter ingredients of pride, hatred, envy, jealousy, and the
thrist(sic) for revenge.

The circumstances which I am about to narrate, and which gave rise to
this fearful tempest of passion, are not singular nor isolated in slave
life, but are common in every slaveholding community in which I have
lived. They are incidental to the relation of master and slave, and
exist in all sections of slave-holding countries.

The reader will have noticed that, in enumerating the names of the
slaves who lived with my old master, _Esther_ is mentioned. This was a
young woman who possessed that which is ever a curse to the slave-girl;
namely—personal beauty. She was tall, well formed, and made a fine
appearance. The daughters of Col. Lloyd could scarcely surpass her in
personal charms. Esther was courted by Ned Roberts, and he was as fine
looking a young man, as she was a woman. He was the son of a favorite
slave of Col. Lloyd. Some slaveholders would have been glad to promote
the marriage of two such persons; but, for some reason or other, my old
master took it upon him to break up the growing intimacy between Esther
and Edward. He strictly ordered her to quit the company of said
Roberts, telling her that he would punish her severely if he ever found
her again in Edward’s company. This unnatural and heartless order was,
of course, broken. A woman’s love is not to be annihilated by the
peremptory command of any one, whose breath is in his nostrils. It was
impossible to keep Edward and Esther apart. Meet they would, and meet
they did. Had old master been a man of honor and purity, his motives,
in this matter, might have been viewed more favorably. As it was, his
motives were as abhorrent, as his methods were foolish and
contemptible. It was too evident that he was not concerned for the
girl’s welfare. It is one of the damning characteristics of the slave
system, that it robs its victims of every earthly incentive to a holy
life. The fear of God, and the hope of heaven, are found sufficient to
sustain many slave-women, amidst the snares and dangers of their
strange lot; but, this side of God and heaven, a slave-woman is at the
mercy of the power, caprice and passion of her owner. Slavery provides
no means for the honorable continuance of the race. Marriage as
imposing obligations on the parties to it—has no existence here, except
in such hearts as are purer and higher than the standard morality
around them. It is one of the consolations of my life, that I know of
many honorable instances of persons who maintained their honor, where
all around was corrupt.

Esther was evidently much attached to Edward, and abhorred—as she had
reason to do—the tyrannical and base behavior of old master. Edward was
young, and fine looking, and he loved and courted her. He might have
been her husband, in the high sense just alluded to; but WHO and _what_
was this old master? His attentions were plainly brutal and selfish,
and it was as natural that Esther should loathe him, as that she should
love Edward. Abhorred and circumvented as he was, old master, having
the power, very easily took revenge. I happened to see this exhibition
of his rage and cruelty toward Esther. The time selected was singular.
It was early in the morning, when all besides was still, and before any
of the family, in the house or kitchen, had left their beds. I saw but
few of the shocking preliminaries, for the cruel work had begun before
I awoke. I was probably awakened by the shrieks and piteous cries of
poor Esther. My sleeping place was on the floor of a little, rough
closet, which opened into the kitchen; and through the cracks of its
unplaned boards, I could distinctly see and hear what was going on,
without being seen by old master. Esther’s wrists were firmly tied, and
the twisted rope was fastened to a strong staple in a heavy wooden
joist above, near the fireplace. Here she stood, on a bench, her arms
tightly drawn over her breast. Her back and shoulders were bare to the
waist. Behind her stood old master, with cowskin in hand, preparing his
barbarous work with all manner of harsh, coarse, and tantalizing
epithets. The screams of his victim were most piercing. He was cruelly
deliberate, and protracted the torture, as one who was delighted with
the scene. Again and again he drew the hateful whip through his hand,
adjusting it with a view of dealing the most pain-giving blow. Poor
Esther had never yet been severely whipped, and her shoulders were
plump and tender. Each blow, vigorously laid on, brought screams as
well as blood. _“Have mercy; Oh! have mercy”_ she cried; “_I won’t do
so no more;”_ but her piercing cries seemed only to increase his fury.
His answers to them are too coarse and blasphemous to be produced here.
The whole scene, with all its attendants, was revolting and shocking,
to the last degree; and when the motives of this brutal castigation are
considered,—language has no power to convey a just sense of its awful
criminality. After laying on some thirty or forty stripes, old master
untied his suffering victim, and let her get down. She could scarcely
stand, when untied. From my heart I pitied her, and—child though I
was—the outrage kindled in me a feeling far from peaceful; but I was
hushed, terrified, stunned, and could do nothing, and the fate of
Esther might be mine next. The scene here described was often repeated
in the case of poor Esther, and her life, as I knew it, was one of
wretchedness.




CHAPTER VI. _Treatment of Slaves on Lloyd’s Plantation_


EARLY REFLECTIONS ON SLAVERY—PRESENTIMENT OF ONE DAY BEING A
FREEMAN—COMBAT BETWEEN AN OVERSEER AND A SLAVEWOMAN—THE ADVANTAGES OF
RESISTANCE—ALLOWANCE DAY ON THE HOME PLANTATION—THE SINGING OF
SLAVES—AN EXPLANATION—THE SLAVES FOOD AND CLOTHING—NAKED CHILDREN—LIFE
IN THE QUARTER—DEPRIVATION OF SLEEP—NURSING CHILDREN CARRIED TO THE
FIELD—DESCRIPTION OF THE COWSKIN—THE ASH-CAKE—MANNER OF MAKING IT—THE
DINNER HOUR—THE CONTRAST.


The heart-rending incidents, related in the foregoing chapter, led me,
thus early, to inquire into the nature and history of slavery. _Why am
I a slave? Why are some people slaves, and others masters? Was there
ever a time this was not so? How did the relation commence?_ These were
the perplexing questions which began now to claim my thoughts, and to
exercise the weak powers of my mind, for I was still but a child, and
knew less than children of the same age in the free states. As my
questions concerning these things were only put to children a little
older, and little better informed than myself, I was not rapid in
reaching a solid footing. By some means I learned from these inquiries
that _“God, up in the sky,”_ made every body; and that he made _white_
people to be masters and mistresses, and _black_ people to be slaves.
This did not satisfy me, nor lessen my interest in the subject. I was
told, too, that God was good, and that He knew what was best for me,
and best for everybody. This was less satisfactory than the first
statement; because it came, point blank, against all my notions of
goodness. It was not good to let old master cut the flesh off Esther,
and make her cry so. Besides, how did people know that God made black
people to be slaves? Did they go up in the sky and learn it? or, did He
come down and tell them so? All was dark here. It was some relief to my
hard notions of the goodness of God, that, although he made white men
to be slaveholders, he did not make them to be _bad_ slaveholders, and
that, in due time, he would punish the bad slaveholders; that he would,
when they died, send them to the bad place, where they would be “burnt
up.” Nevertheless, I could not reconcile the relation of slavery with
my crude notions of goodness.

Then, too, I found that there were puzzling exceptions to this theory
of slavery on both sides, and in the middle. I knew of blacks who were
_not_ slaves; I knew of whites who were _not_ slaveholders; and I knew
of persons who were _nearly_ white, who were slaves. _Color_,
therefore, was a very unsatisfactory basis for slavery.

Once, however, engaged in the inquiry, I was not very long in finding
out the true solution of the matter. It was not _color_, but _crime_,
not _God_, but _man_, that afforded the true explanation of the
existence of slavery; nor was I long in finding out another important
truth, viz: what man can make, man can unmake. The appalling darkness
faded away, and I was master of the subject. There were slaves here,
direct from Guinea; and there were many who could say that their
fathers and mothers were stolen from Africa—forced from their homes,
and compelled to serve as slaves. This, to me, was knowledge; but it
was a kind of knowledge which filled me with a burning hatred of
slavery, increased my suffering, and left me without the means of
breaking away from my bondage. Yet it was knowledge quite worth
possessing. I could not have been more than seven or eight years old,
when I began to make this subject my study. It was with me in the woods
and fields; along the shore of the river, and wherever my boyish
wanderings led me; and though I was, at that time, quite ignorant of
the existence of the free states, I distinctly remember being, _even
then_, most strongly impressed with the idea of being a freeman some
day. This cheering assurance was an inborn dream of my human nature a
constant menace to slavery—and one which all the powers of slavery were
unable to silence or extinguish.

Up to the time of the brutal flogging of my Aunt Esther—for she was my
own aunt—and the horrid plight in which I had seen my cousin from
Tuckahoe, who had been so badly beaten by the cruel Mr. Plummer, my
attention had not been called, especially, to the gross features of
slavery. I had, of course, heard of whippings and of savage
_rencontres_ between overseers and slaves, but I had always been out of
the way at the times and places of their occurrence. My plays and
sports, most of the time, took me from the corn and tobacco fields,
where the great body of the hands were at work, and where scenes of
cruelty were enacted and witnessed. But, after the whipping of Aunt
Esther, I saw many cases of the same shocking nature, not only in my
master’s house, but on Col. Lloyd’s plantation. One of the first which
I saw, and which greatly agitated me, was the whipping of a woman
belonging to Col. Lloyd, named Nelly. The offense alleged against
Nelly, was one of the commonest and most indefinite in the whole
catalogue of offenses usually laid to the charge of slaves, viz:
“impudence.” This may mean almost anything, or nothing at all, just
according to the caprice of the master or overseer, at the moment. But,
whatever it is, or is not, if it gets the name of “impudence,” the
party charged with it is sure of a flogging. This offense may be
committed in various ways; in the tone of an answer; in answering at
all; in not answering; in the expression of countenance; in the motion
of the head; in the gait, manner and bearing of the slave. In the case
under consideration, I can easily believe that, according to all
slaveholding standards, here was a genuine instance of impudence. In
Nelly there were all the necessary conditions for committing the
offense. She was a bright mulatto, the recognized wife of a favorite
“hand” on board Col. Lloyd’s sloop, and the mother of five sprightly
children. She was a vigorous and spirited woman, and one of the most
likely, on the plantation, to be guilty of impudence. My attention was
called to the scene, by the noise, curses and screams that proceeded
from it; and, on going a little in that direction, I came upon the
parties engaged in the skirmish. Mr. Siever, the overseer, had hold of
Nelly, when I caught sight of them; he was endeavoring to drag her
toward a tree, which endeavor Nelly was sternly resisting; but to no
purpose, except to retard the progress of the overseer’s plans.
Nelly—as I have said—was the mother of five children; three of them
were present, and though quite small (from seven to ten years old, I
should think) they gallantly came to their mother’s defense, and gave
the overseer an excellent pelting with stones. One of the little
fellows ran up, seized the overseer by the leg and bit him; but the
monster was too busily engaged with Nelly, to pay any attention to the
assaults of the children. There were numerous bloody marks on Mr.
Sevier’s face, when I first saw him, and they increased as the struggle
went on. The imprints of Nelly’s fingers were visible, and I was glad
to see them. Amidst the wild screams of the children—“_Let my mammy
go”—“let my mammy go_”—there escaped, from between the teeth of the
bullet-headed overseer, a few bitter curses, mingled with threats, that
“he would teach the d—d b—h how to give a white man impudence.” There
is no doubt that Nelly felt herself superior, in some respects, to the
slaves around her. She was a wife and a mother; her husband was a
valued and favorite slave. Besides, he was one of the first hands on
board of the sloop, and the sloop hands—since they had to represent the
plantation abroad—were generally treated tenderly. The overseer never
was allowed to whip Harry; why then should he be allowed to whip
Harry’s wife? Thoughts of this kind, no doubt, influenced her; but, for
whatever reason, she nobly resisted, and, unlike most of the slaves,
seemed determined to make her whipping cost Mr. Sevier as much as
possible. The blood on his (and her) face, attested her skill, as well
as her courage and dexterity in using her nails. Maddened by her
resistance, I expected to see Mr. Sevier level her to the ground by a
stunning blow; but no; like a savage bull-dog—which he resembled both
in temper and appearance—he maintained his grip, and steadily dragged
his victim toward the tree, disregarding alike her blows, and the cries
of the children for their mother’s release. He would, doubtless, have
knocked her down with his hickory stick, but that such act might have
cost him his place. It is often deemed advisable to knock a _man_ slave
down, in order to tie him, but it is considered cowardly and
inexcusable, in an overseer, thus to deal with a _woman_. He is
expected to tie her up, and to give her what is called, in southern
parlance, a “genteel flogging,” without any very great outlay of
strength or skill. I watched, with palpitating interest, the course of
the preliminary struggle, and was saddened by every new advantage
gained over her by the ruffian. There were times when she seemed likely
to get the better of the brute, but he finally overpowered her, and
succeeded in getting his rope around her arms, and in firmly tying her
to the tree, at which he had been aiming. This done, and Nelly was at
the mercy of his merciless lash; and now, what followed, I have no
heart to describe. The cowardly creature made good his every threat;
and wielded the lash with all the hot zest of furious revenge. The
cries of the woman, while undergoing the terrible infliction, were
mingled with those of the children, sounds which I hope the reader may
never be called upon to hear. When Nelly was untied, her back was
covered with blood. The red stripes were all over her shoulders. She
was whipped—severely whipped; but she was not subdued, for she
continued to denounce the overseer, and to call him every vile name. He
had bruised her flesh, but had left her invincible spirit undaunted.
Such floggings are seldom repeated by the same overseer. They prefer to
whip those who are most easily whipped. The old doctrine that
submission is the very best cure for outrage and wrong, does not hold
good on the slave plantation. He is whipped oftenest, who is whipped
easiest; and that slave who has the courage to stand up for himself
against the overseer, although he may have many hard stripes at the
first, becomes, in the end, a freeman, even though he sustain the
formal relation of a slave. “You can shoot me but you can’t whip me,”
said a slave to Rigby Hopkins; and the result was that he was neither
whipped nor shot. If the latter had been his fate, it would have been
less deplorable than the living and lingering death to which cowardly
and slavish souls are subjected. I do not know that Mr. Sevier ever
undertook to whip Nelly again. He probably never did, for it was not
long after his attempt to subdue her, that he was taken sick, and died.
The wretched man died as he had lived, unrepentant; and it was
said—with how much truth I know not—that in the very last hours of his
life, his ruling passion showed itself, and that when wrestling with
death, he was uttering horrid oaths, and flourishing the cowskin, as
though he was tearing the flesh off some helpless slave. One thing is
certain, that when he was in health, it was enough to chill the blood,
and to stiffen the hair of an ordinary man, to hear Mr. Sevier talk.
Nature, or his cruel habits, had given to his face an expression of
unusual savageness, even for a slave-driver. Tobacco and rage had worn
his teeth short, and nearly every sentence that escaped their
compressed grating, was commenced or concluded with some outburst of
profanity. His presence made the field alike the field of blood, and of
blasphemy. Hated for his cruelty, despised for his cowardice, his death
was deplored by no one outside his own house—if indeed it was deplored
there; it was regarded by the slaves as a merciful interposition of
Providence. Never went there a man to the grave loaded with heavier
curses. Mr. Sevier’s place was promptly taken by a Mr. Hopkins, and the
change was quite a relief, he being a very different man. He was, in
all respects, a better man than his predecessor; as good as any man can
be, and yet be an overseer. His course was characterized by no
extraordinary cruelty; and when he whipped a slave, as he sometimes
did, he seemed to take no especial pleasure in it, but, on the
contrary, acted as though he felt it to be a mean business. Mr. Hopkins
stayed but a short time; his place much to the regret of the slaves
generally—was taken by a Mr. Gore, of whom more will be said hereafter.
It is enough, for the present, to say, that he was no improvement on
Mr. Sevier, except that he was less noisy and less profane.

I have already referred to the business-like aspect of Col. Lloyd’s
plantation. This business-like appearance was much increased on the two
days at the end of each month, when the slaves from the different farms
came to get their monthly allowance of meal and meat. These were gala
days for the slaves, and there was much rivalry among them as to _who_
should be elected to go up to the great house farm for the allowance,
and, indeed, to attend to any business at this (for them) the capital.
The beauty and grandeur of the place, its numerous slave population,
and the fact that Harry, Peter and Jake the sailors of the sloop—almost
always kept, privately, little trinkets which they bought at Baltimore,
to sell, made it a privilege to come to the great house farm. Being
selected, too, for this office, was deemed a high honor. It was taken
as a proof of confidence and favor; but, probably, the chief motive of
the competitors for the place, was, a desire to break the dull monotony
of the field, and to get beyond the overseer’s eye and lash. Once on
the road with an ox team, and seated on the tongue of his cart, with no
overseer to look after him, the slave was comparatively free; and, if
thoughtful, he had time to think. Slaves are generally expected to sing
as well as to work. A silent slave is not liked by masters or
overseers. _“Make a noise,” “make a noise,”_ and _“bear a hand,”_ are
the words usually addressed to the slaves when there is silence amongst
them. This may account for the almost constant singing heard in the
southern states. There was, generally, more or less singing among the
teamsters, as it was one means of letting the overseer know where they
were, and that they were moving on with the work. But, on allowance
day, those who visited the great house farm were peculiarly excited and
noisy. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for
miles around, reverberate with their wild notes. These were not always
merry because they were wild. On the contrary, they were mostly of a
plaintive cast, and told a tale of grief and sorrow. In the most
boisterous outbursts of rapturous sentiment, there was ever a tinge of
deep melancholy. I have never heard any songs like those anywhere since
I left slavery, except when in Ireland. There I heard the same _wailing
notes_, and was much affected by them. It was during the famine of
1845-6. In all the songs of the slaves, there was ever some expression
in praise of the great house farm; something which would flatter the
pride of the owner, and, possibly, draw a favorable glance from him.

I am going away to the great house farm,
O yea!  O yea!  O yea!
My old master is a good old master,
O yea!  O yea!  O yea!


This they would sing, with other words of their own improvising—jargon
to others, but full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought,
that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress truly
spiritual-minded men and women with the soul-crushing and death-dealing
character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of its mere
physical cruelties. They speak to the heart and to the soul of the
thoughtful. I cannot better express my sense of them now, than ten
years ago, when, in sketching my life, I thus spoke of this feature of
my plantation experience:

I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude,
and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so
that I neither saw or heard as those without might see and hear. They
told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension;
they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and
complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone
was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance
from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my
spirits, and filled my heart with ineffable sadness. The mere
recurrence, even now, afflicts my spirit, and while I am writing these
lines, my tears are falling. To those songs I trace my first glimmering
conceptions of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get
rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my
hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds.
If any one wishes to be impressed with a sense of the soul-killing
power of slavery, let him go to Col. Lloyd’s plantation, and, on
allowance day, place himself in the deep, pine woods, and there let
him, in silence, thoughtfully analyze the sounds that shall pass
through the chambers of his soul, and if he is not thus impressed, it
will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”

The remark is not unfrequently made, that slaves are the most contended
and happy laborers in the world. They dance and sing, and make all
manner of joyful noises—so they do; but it is a great mistake to
suppose them happy because they sing. The songs of the slave represent
the sorrows, rather than the joys, of his heart; and he is relieved by
them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. Such is the
constitution of the human mind, that, when pressed to extremes, it
often avails itself of the most opposite methods. Extremes meet in mind
as in matter. When the slaves on board of the “Pearl” were overtaken,
arrested, and carried to prison—their hopes for freedom blasted—as they
marched in chains they sang, and found (as Emily Edmunson tells us) a
melancholy relief in singing. The singing of a man cast away on a
desolate island, might be as appropriately considered an evidence of
his contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave. Sorrow and
desolation have their songs, as well as joy and peace. Slaves sing more
to _make_ themselves happy, than to express their happiness.

It is the boast of slaveholders, that their slaves enjoy more of the
physical comforts of life than the peasantry of any country in the
world. My experience contradicts this. The men and the women slaves on
Col. Lloyd’s farm, received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight
pounds of pickled pork, or their equivalent in fish. The pork was often
tainted, and the fish was of the poorest quality—herrings, which would
bring very little if offered for sale in any northern market. With
their pork or fish, they had one bushel of Indian meal—unbolted—of
which quite fifteen per cent was fit only to feed pigs. With this, one
pint of salt was given; and this was the entire monthly allowance of a
full grown slave, working constantly in the open field, from morning
until night, every day in the month except Sunday, and living on a
fraction more than a quarter of a pound of meat per day, and less than
a peck of corn-meal per week. There is no kind of work that a man can
do which requires a better supply of food to prevent physical
exhaustion, than the field-work of a slave. So much for the slave’s
allowance of food; now for his raiment. The yearly allowance of
clothing for the slaves on this plantation, consisted of two tow-linen
shirts—such linen as the coarsest crash towels are made of; one pair of
trowsers of the same material, for summer, and a pair of trowsers and a
jacket of woolen, most slazily put together, for winter; one pair of
yarn stockings, and one pair of shoes of the coarsest description. The
slave’s entire apparel could not have cost more than eight dollars per
year. The allowance of food and clothing for the little children, was
committed to their mothers, or to the older slavewomen having the care
of them. Children who were unable to work in the field, had neither
shoes, stockings, jackets nor trowsers given them. Their clothing
consisted of two coarse tow-linen shirts—already described—per year;
and when these failed them, as they often did, they went naked until
the next allowance day. Flocks of little children from five to ten
years old, might be seen on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, as destitute of
clothing as any little heathen on the west coast of Africa; and this,
not merely during the summer months, but during the frosty weather of
March. The little girls were no better off than the boys; all were
nearly in a state of nudity.

As to beds to sleep on, they were known to none of the field hands;
nothing but a coarse blanket—not so good as those used in the north to
cover horses—was given them, and this only to the men and women. The
children stuck themselves in holes and corners, about the quarters;
often in the corner of the huge chimneys, with their feet in the ashes
to keep them warm. The want of beds, however, was not considered a very
great privation. Time to sleep was of far greater importance, for, when
the day’s work is done, most of the slaves have their washing, mending
and cooking to do; and, having few or none of the ordinary facilities
for doing such things, very many of their sleeping hours are consumed
in necessary preparations for the duties of the coming day.

The sleeping apartments—if they may be called such—have little regard
to comfort or decency. Old and young, male and female, married and
single, drop down upon the common clay floor, each covering up with his
or her blanket,—the only protection they have from cold or exposure.
The night, however, is shortened at both ends. The slaves work often as
long as they can see, and are late in cooking and mending for the
coming day; and, at the first gray streak of morning, they are summoned
to the field by the driver’s horn.

More slaves are whipped for oversleeping than for any other fault.
Neither age nor sex finds any favor. The overseer stands at the quarter
door, armed with stick and cowskin, ready to whip any who may be a few
minutes behind time. When the horn is blown, there is a rush for the
door, and the hindermost one is sure to get a blow from the overseer.
Young mothers who worked in the field, were allowed an hour, about ten
o’clock in the morning, to go home to nurse their children. Sometimes
they were compelled to take their children with them, and to leave them
in the corner of the fences, to prevent loss of time in nursing them.
The overseer generally rides about the field on horseback. A cowskin
and a hickory stick are his constant companions. The cowskin is a kind
of whip seldom seen in the northern states. It is made entirely of
untanned, but dried, ox hide, and is about as hard as a piece of
well-seasoned live oak. It is made of various sizes, but the usual
length is about three feet. The part held in the hand is nearly an inch
in thickness; and, from the extreme end of the butt or handle, the
cowskin tapers its whole length to a point. This makes it quite elastic
and springy. A blow with it, on the hardest back, will gash the flesh,
and make the blood start. Cowskins are painted red, blue and green, and
are the favorite slave whip. I think this whip worse than the
“cat-o’nine-tails.” It condenses the whole strength of the arm to a
single point, and comes with a spring that makes the air whistle. It is
a terrible instrument, and is so handy, that the overseer can always
have it on his person, and ready for use. The temptation to use it is
ever strong; and an overseer can, if disposed, always have cause for
using it. With him, it is literally a word and a blow, and, in most
cases, the blow comes first.

As a general rule, slaves do not come to the quarters for either
breakfast or dinner, but take their “ash cake” with them, and eat it in
the field. This was so on the home plantation; probably, because the
distance from the quarter to the field, was sometimes two, and even
three miles.

The dinner of the slaves consisted of a huge piece of ash cake, and a
small piece of pork, or two salt herrings. Not having ovens, nor any
suitable cooking utensils, the slaves mixed their meal with a little
water, to such thickness that a spoon would stand erect in it; and,
after the wood had burned away to coals and ashes, they would place the
dough between oak leaves and lay it carefully in the ashes, completely
covering it; hence, the bread is called ash cake. The surface of this
peculiar bread is covered with ashes, to the depth of a sixteenth part
of an inch, and the ashes, certainly, do not make it very grateful to
the teeth, nor render it very palatable. The bran, or coarse part of
the meal, is baked with the fine, and bright scales run through the
bread. This bread, with its ashes and bran, would disgust and choke a
northern man, but it is quite liked by the slaves. They eat it with
avidity, and are more concerned about the quantity than about the
quality. They are far too scantily provided for, and are worked too
steadily, to be much concerned for the quality of their food. The few
minutes allowed them at dinner time, after partaking of their coarse
repast, are variously spent. Some lie down on the “turning row,” and go
to sleep; others draw together, and talk; and others are at work with
needle and thread, mending their tattered garments. Sometimes you may
hear a wild, hoarse laugh arise from a circle, and often a song. Soon,
however, the overseer comes dashing through the field. _“Tumble up!
Tumble up_, and to _work, work,”_ is the cry; and, now, from twelve
o’clock (mid-day) till dark, the human cattle are in motion, wielding
their clumsy hoes; hurried on by no hope of reward, no sense of
gratitude, no love of children, no prospect of bettering their
condition; nothing, save the dread and terror of the slave-driver’s
lash. So goes one day, and so comes and goes another.

But, let us now leave the rough usage of the field, where vulgar
coarseness and brutal cruelty spread themselves and flourish, rank as
weeds in the tropics; where a vile wretch, in the shape of a man,
rides, walks, or struts about, dealing blows, and leaving gashes on
broken-spirited men and helpless women, for thirty dollars per month—a
business so horrible, hardening and disgraceful, that, rather, than
engage in it, a decent man would blow his own brains out—and let the
reader view with me the equally wicked, but less repulsive aspects of
slave life; where pride and pomp roll luxuriously at ease; where the
toil of a thousand men supports a single family in easy idleness and
sin. This is the great house; it is the home of the LLOYDS! Some idea
of its splendor has already been given—and, it is here that we shall
find that height of luxury which is the opposite of that depth of
poverty and physical wretchedness that we have just now been
contemplating. But, there is this difference in the two extremes; viz:
that in the case of the slave, the miseries and hardships of his lot
are imposed by others, and, in the master’s case, they are imposed by
himself. The slave is a subject, subjected by others; the slaveholder
is a subject, but he is the author of his own subjection. There is more
truth in the saying, that slavery is a greater evil to the master than
to the slave, than many, who utter it, suppose. The self-executing laws
of eternal justice follow close on the heels of the evil-doer here, as
well as elsewhere; making escape from all its penalties impossible.
But, let others philosophize; it is my province here to relate and
describe; only allowing myself a word or two, occasionally, to assist
the reader in the proper understanding of the facts narrated.




CHAPTER VII. _Life in the Great House_


COMFORTS AND LUXURIES—ELABORATE EXPENDITURE—HOUSE SERVANTS—MEN SERVANTS
AND MAID SERVANTS—APPEARANCES—SLAVE ARISTOCRACY—STABLE AND CARRIAGE
HOUSE—BOUNDLESS HOSPITALITY—FRAGRANCE OF RICH DISHES—THE DECEPTIVE
CHARACTER OF SLAVERY—SLAVES SEEM HAPPY—SLAVES AND SLAVEHOLDERS ALIKE
WRETCHED—FRETFUL DISCONTENT OF SLAVEHOLDERS—FAULT-FINDING—OLD
BARNEY—HIS PROFESSION—WHIPPING—HUMILIATING SPECTACLE—CASE
EXCEPTIONAL—WILLIAM WILKS—SUPPOSED SON OF COL. LLOYD—CURIOUS
INCIDENT—SLAVES PREFER RICH MASTERS TO POOR ONES.


The close-fisted stinginess that fed the poor slave on coarse corn-meal
and tainted meat; that clothed him in crashy tow-linen, and hurried him
to toil through the field, in all weathers, with wind and rain beating
through his tattered garments; that scarcely gave even the young
slave-mother time to nurse her hungry infant in the fence corner;
wholly vanishes on approaching the sacred precincts of the great house,
the home of the Lloyds. There the scriptural phrase finds an exact
illustration; the highly favored inmates of this mansion are literally
arrayed “in purple and fine linen,” and fare sumptuously every day! The
table groans under the heavy and blood-bought luxuries gathered with
painstaking care, at home and abroad. Fields, forests, rivers and seas,
are made tributary here. Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure,
fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the
taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great _desideratum_. Fish,
flesh and fowl, are here in profusion. Chickens, of all breeds; ducks,
of all kinds, wild and tame, the common, and the huge Muscovite; Guinea
fowls, turkeys, geese, and pea fowls, are in their several pens, fat
and fatting for the destined vortex. The graceful swan, the mongrels,
the black-necked wild goose; partridges, quails, pheasants and pigeons;
choice water fowl, with all their strange varieties, are caught in this
huge family net. Beef, veal, mutton and venison, of the most select
kinds and quality, roll bounteously to this grand consumer. The teeming
riches of the Chesapeake bay, its rock, perch, drums, crocus, trout,
oysters, crabs, and terrapin, are drawn hither to adorn the glittering
table of the great house. The dairy, too, probably the finest on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland—supplied by cattle of the best English stock,
imported for the purpose, pours its rich donations of fragant cheese,
golden butter, and delicious cream, to heighten the attraction of the
gorgeous, unending round of feasting. Nor are the fruits of the earth
forgotten or neglected. The fertile garden, many acres in size,
constituting a separate establishment, distinct from the common
farm—with its scientific gardener, imported from Scotland (a Mr.
McDermott) with four men under his direction, was not behind, either in
the abundance or in the delicacy of its contributions to the same full
board. The tender asparagus, the succulent celery, and the delicate
cauliflower; egg plants, beets, lettuce, parsnips, peas, and French
beans, early and late; radishes, cantelopes, melons of all kinds; the
fruits and flowers of all climes and of all descriptions, from the
hardy apple of the north, to the lemon and orange of the south,
culminated at this point. Baltimore gathered figs, raisins, almonds and
juicy grapes from Spain. Wines and brandies from France; teas of
various flavor, from China; and rich, aromatic coffee from Java, all
conspired to swell the tide of high life, where pride and indolence
rolled and lounged in magnificence and satiety.

Behind the tall-backed and elaborately wrought chairs, stand the
servants, men and maidens—fifteen in number—discriminately selected,
not only with a view to their industry and faithfulness, but with
special regard to their personal appearance, their graceful agility and
captivating address. Some of these are armed with fans, and are fanning
reviving breezes toward the over-heated brows of the alabaster ladies;
others watch with eager eye, and with fawn-like step anticipate and
supply wants before they are sufficiently formed to be announced by
word or sign.

These servants constituted a sort of black aristocracy on Col. Lloyd’s
plantation. They resembled the field hands in nothing, except in color,
and in this they held the advantage of a velvet-like glossiness, rich
and beautiful. The hair, too, showed the same advantage. The delicate
colored maid rustled in the scarcely worn silk of her young mistress,
while the servant men were equally well attired from the over-flowing
wardrobe of their young masters; so that, in dress, as well as in form
and feature, in manner and speech, in tastes and habits, the distance
between these favored few, and the sorrow and hunger-smitten multitudes
of the quarter and the field, was immense; and this is seldom passed
over.

Let us now glance at the stables and the carriage house, and we shall
find the same evidences of pride and luxurious extravagance. Here are
three splendid coaches, soft within and lustrous without. Here, too,
are gigs, phaetons, barouches, sulkeys and sleighs. Here are saddles
and harnesses—beautifully wrought and silver mounted—kept with every
care. In the stable you will find, kept only for pleasure, full
thirty-five horses, of the most approved blood for speed and beauty.
There are two men here constantly employed in taking care of these
horses. One of these men must be always in the stable, to answer every
call from the great house. Over the way from the stable, is a house
built expressly for the hounds—a pack of twenty-five or thirty—whose
fare would have made glad the heart of a dozen slaves. Horses and
hounds are not the only consumers of the slave’s toil. There was
practiced, at the Lloyd’s, a hospitality which would have astonished
and charmed any health-seeking northern divine or merchant, who might
have chanced to share it. Viewed from his own table, and _not_ from the
field, the colonel was a model of generous hospitality. His house was,
literally, a hotel, for weeks during the summer months. At these times,
especially, the air was freighted with the rich fumes of baking,
boiling, roasting and broiling. The odors I shared with the winds; but
the meats were under a more stringent monopoly except that,
occasionally, I got a cake from Mas’ Daniel. In Mas’ Daniel I had a
friend at court, from whom I learned many things which my eager
curiosity was excited to know. I always knew when company was expected,
and who they were, although I was an outsider, being the property, not
of Col. Lloyd, but of a servant of the wealthy colonel. On these
occasions, all that pride, taste and money could do, to dazzle and
charm, was done.

Who could say that the servants of Col. Lloyd were not well clad and
cared for, after witnessing one of his magnificent entertainments? Who
could say that they did not seem to glory in being the slaves of such a
master? Who, but a fanatic, could get up any sympathy for persons whose
every movement was agile, easy and graceful, and who evinced a
consciousness of high superiority? And who would ever venture to
suspect that Col. Lloyd was subject to the troubles of ordinary
mortals? Master and slave seem alike in their glory here? Can it all be
seeming? Alas! it may only be a sham at last! This immense wealth; this
gilded splendor; this profusion of luxury; this exemption from toil;
this life of ease; this sea of plenty; aye, what of it all? Are the
pearly gates of happiness and sweet content flung open to such suitors?
_far from it!_ The poor slave, on his hard, pine plank, but scantily
covered with his thin blanket, sleeps more soundly than the feverish
voluptuary who reclines upon his feather bed and downy pillow. Food, to
the indolent lounger, is poison, not sustenance. Lurking beneath all
their dishes, are invisible spirits of evil, ready to feed the
self-deluded gormandizers which aches, pains, fierce temper,
uncontrolled passions, dyspepsia, rheumatism, lumbago and gout; and of
these the Lloyds got their full share. To the pampered love of ease,
there is no resting place. What is pleasant today, is repulsive
tomorrow; what is soft now, is hard at another time; what is sweet in
the morning, is bitter in the evening. Neither to the wicked, nor to
the idler, is there any solid peace: _“Troubled, like the restless
sea.”_

I had excellent opportunities of witnessing the restless discontent and
the capricious irritation of the Lloyds. My fondness for horses—not
peculiar to me more than to other boys attracted me, much of the time,
to the stables. This establishment was especially under the care of
“old” and “young” Barney—father and son. Old Barney was a fine looking
old man, of a brownish complexion, who was quite portly, and wore a
dignified aspect for a slave. He was, evidently, much devoted to his
profession, and held his office an honorable one. He was a farrier as
well as an ostler; he could bleed, remove lampers from the mouths of
the horses, and was well instructed in horse medicines. No one on the
farm knew, so well as Old Barney, what to do with a sick horse. But his
gifts and acquirements were of little advantage to him. His office was
by no means an enviable one. He often got presents, but he got stripes
as well; for in nothing was Col. Lloyd more unreasonable and exacting,
than in respect to the management of his pleasure horses. Any supposed
inattention to these animals were sure to be visited with degrading
punishment. His horses and dogs fared better than his men. Their beds
must be softer and cleaner than those of his human cattle. No excuse
could shield Old Barney, if the colonel only suspected something wrong
about his horses; and, consequently, he was often punished when
faultless. It was absolutely painful to listen to the many unreasonable
and fretful scoldings, poured out at the stable, by Col. Lloyd, his
sons and sons-in-law. Of the latter, he had three—Messrs. Nicholson,
Winder and Lownes. These all lived at the great house a portion of the
year, and enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they
pleased, which was by no means unfrequently. A horse was seldom brought
out of the stable to which no objection could be raised. “There was
dust in his hair;” “there was a twist in his reins;” “his mane did not
lie straight;” “he had not been properly grained;” “his head did not
look well;” “his fore-top was not combed out;” “his fetlocks had not
been properly trimmed;” something was always wrong. Listening to
complaints, however groundless, Barney must stand, hat in hand, lips
sealed, never answering a word. He must make no reply, no explanation;
the judgment of the master must be deemed infallible, for his power is
absolute and irresponsible. In a free state, a master, thus complaining
without cause, of his ostler, might be told—“Sir, I am sorry I cannot
please you, but, since I have done the best I can, your remedy is to
dismiss me.” Here, however, the ostler must stand, listen and tremble.
One of the most heart-saddening and humiliating scenes I ever
witnessed, was the whipping of Old Barney, by Col. Lloyd himself. Here
were two men, both advanced in years; there were the silvery locks of
Col. L., and there was the bald and toil-worn brow of Old Barney;
master and slave; superior and inferior here, but _equals_ at the bar
of God; and, in the common course of events, they must both soon meet
in another world, in a world where all distinctions, except those based
on obedience and disobedience, are blotted out forever. “Uncover your
head!” said the imperious master; he was obeyed. “Take off your jacket,
you old rascal!” and off came Barney’s jacket. “Down on your knees!”
down knelt the old man, his shoulders bare, his bald head glistening in
the sun, and his aged knees on the cold, damp ground. In his humble and
debasing attitude, the master—that master to whom he had given the best
years and the best strength of his life—came forward, and laid on
thirty lashes, with his horse whip. The old man bore it patiently, to
the last, answering each blow with a slight shrug of the shoulders, and
a groan. I cannot think that Col. Lloyd succeeded in marring the flesh
of Old Barney very seriously, for the whip was a light, riding whip;
but the spectacle of an aged man—a husband and a father—humbly kneeling
before a worm of the dust, surprised and shocked me at the time; and
since I have grown old enough to think on the wickedness of slavery,
few facts have been of more value to me than this, to which I was a
witness. It reveals slavery in its true color, and in its maturity of
repulsive hatefulness. I owe it to truth, however, to say, that this
was the first and the last time I ever saw Old Barney, or any other
slave, compelled to kneel to receive a whipping.

I saw, at the stable, another incident, which I will relate, as it is
illustrative of a phase of slavery to which I have already referred in
another connection. Besides two other coachmen, Col. Lloyd owned one
named William, who, strangely enough, was often called by his surname,
Wilks, by white and colored people on the home plantation. Wilks was a
very fine looking man. He was about as white as anybody on the
plantation; and in manliness of form, and comeliness of features, he
bore a very striking resemblance to Mr. Murray Lloyd. It was whispered,
and pretty generally admitted as a fact, that William Wilks was a son
of Col. Lloyd, by a highly favored slave-woman, who was still on the
plantation. There were many reasons for believing this whisper, not
only in William’s appearance, but in the undeniable freedom which he
enjoyed over all others, and his apparent consciousness of being
something more than a slave to his master. It was notorious, too, that
William had a deadly enemy in Murray Lloyd, whom he so much resembled,
and that the latter greatly worried his father with importunities to
sell William. Indeed, he gave his father no rest until he did sell him,
to Austin Woldfolk, the great slave-trader at that time. Before selling
him, however, Mr. L. tried what giving William a whipping would do,
toward making things smooth; but this was a failure. It was a
compromise, and defeated itself; for, immediately after the infliction,
the heart-sickened colonel atoned to William for the abuse, by giving
him a gold watch and chain. Another fact, somewhat curious, is, that
though sold to the remorseless _Woldfolk_, taken in irons to Baltimore
and cast into prison, with a view to being driven to the south,
William, by _some_ means—always a mystery to me—outbid all his
purchasers, paid for himself, _and now resides in Baltimore, a_
FREEMAN. Is there not room to suspect, that, as the gold watch was
presented to atone for the whipping, a purse of gold was given him by
the same hand, with which to effect his purchase, as an atonement for
the indignity involved in selling his own flesh and blood. All the
circumstances of William, on the great house farm, show him to have
occupied a different position from the other slaves, and, certainly,
there is nothing in the supposed hostility of slaveholders to
amalgamation, to forbid the supposition that William Wilks was the son
of Edward Lloyd. _Practical_ amalgamation is common in every
neighborhood where I have been in slavery.

Col. Lloyd was not in the way of knowing much of the real opinions and
feelings of his slaves respecting him. The distance between him and
them was far too great to admit of such knowledge. His slaves were so
numerous, that he did not know them when he saw them. Nor, indeed, did
all his slaves know him. In this respect, he was inconveniently rich.
It is reported of him, that, while riding along the road one day, he
met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual way of speaking to
colored people on the public highways of the south: “Well, boy, who do
you belong to?” “To Col. Lloyd,” replied the slave. “Well, does the
colonel treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the ready reply. “What? does he
work you too hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, don’t he give enough to eat?”
“Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it is.” The colonel, after
ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the slave also went on
about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing with his
master. He thought, said and heard nothing more of the matter, until
two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then informed by his
overseer, that, for having found fault with his master, he was now to
be sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed;
and thus, without a moment’s warning he was snatched away, and forever
sundered from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than
that of death. _This_ is the penalty of telling the simple truth, in
answer to a series of plain questions. It is partly in consequence of
such facts, that slaves, when inquired of as to their condition and the
character of their masters, almost invariably say they are contented,
and that their masters are kind. Slaveholders have been known to send
spies among their slaves, to ascertain, if possible, their views and
feelings in regard to their condition. The frequency of this had the
effect to establish among the slaves the maxim, that a still tongue
makes a wise head. They suppress the truth rather than take the
consequence of telling it, and, in so doing, they prove themselves a
part of the human family. If they have anything to say of their master,
it is, generally, something in his favor, especially when speaking to
strangers. I was frequently asked, while a slave, if I had a kind
master, and I do not remember ever to have given a negative reply. Nor
did I, when pursuing this course, consider myself as uttering what was
utterly false; for I always measured the kindness of my master by the
standard of kindness set up by slaveholders around us. However, slaves
are like other people, and imbibe similar prejudices. They are apt to
think _their condition_ better than that of others. Many, under the
influence of this prejudice, think their own masters are better than
the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some cases, when the
very reverse is true. Indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to
fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative kindness of
their masters, contending for the superior goodness of his own over
that of others. At the very same time, they mutually execrate their
masters, when viewed separately. It was so on our plantation. When Col.
Lloyd’s slaves met those of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a
quarrel about their masters; Col. Lloyd’s slaves contending that he was
the richest, and Mr. Jepson’s slaves that he was the smartest, man of
the two. Col. Lloyd’s slaves would boost his ability to buy and sell
Jacob Jepson; Mr. Jepson’s slaves would boast his ability to whip Col.
Lloyd. These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the
parties; those that beat were supposed to have gained the point at
issue. They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was
transferable to themselves. To be a SLAVE, was thought to be bad
enough; but to be a _poor man’s_ slave, was deemed a disgrace, indeed.




CHAPTER VIII. _A Chapter of Horrors_


AUSTIN GORE—A SKETCH OF HIS CHARACTER—OVERSEERS AS A CLASS—THEIR
PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS—THE MARKED INDIVIDUALITY OF AUSTIN GORE—HIS
SENSE OF DUTY—HOW HE WHIPPED—MURDER OF POOR DENBY—HOW IT
OCCURRED—SENSATION—HOW GORE MADE PEACE WITH COL. LLOYD—THE MURDER
UNPUNISHED—ANOTHER DREADFUL MURDER NARRATED—NO LAWS FOR THE PROTECTION
OF SLAVES CAN BE ENFORCED IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.


As I have already intimated elsewhere, the slaves on Col. Lloyd’s
plantation, whose hard lot, under Mr. Sevier, the reader has already
noticed and deplored, were not permitted to enjoy the comparatively
moderate rule of Mr. Hopkins. The latter was succeeded by a very
different man. The name of the new overseer was Austin Gore. Upon this
individual I would fix particular attention; for under his rule there
was more suffering from violence and bloodshed than had—according to
the older slaves ever been experienced before on this plantation. I
confess, I hardly know how to bring this man fitly before the reader.
He was, it is true, an overseer, and possessed, to a large extent, the
peculiar characteristics of his class; yet, to call him merely an
overseer, would not give the reader a fair notion of the man. I speak
of overseers as a class. They are such. They are as distinct from the
slaveholding gentry of the south, as are the fishwomen of Paris, and
the coal-heavers of London, distinct from other members of society.
They constitute a separate fraternity at the south, not less marked
than is the fraternity of Park Lane bullies in New York. They have been
arranged and classified by that great law of attraction, which
determines the spheres and affinities of men; which ordains, that men,
whose malign and brutal propensities predominate over their moral and
intellectual endowments, shall, naturally, fall into those employments
which promise the largest gratification to those predominating
instincts or propensities. The office of overseer takes this raw
material of vulgarity and brutality, and stamps it as a distinct class
of southern society. But, in this class, as in all other classes, there
are characters of marked individuality, even while they bear a general
resemblance to the mass. Mr. Gore was one of those, to whom a general
characterization would do no manner of justice. He was an overseer; but
he was something more. With the malign and tyrannical qualities of an
overseer, he combined something of the lawful master. He had the
artfulness and the mean ambition of his class; but he was wholly free
from the disgusting swagger and noisy bravado of his fraternity. There
was an easy air of independence about him; a calm self-possession, and
a sternness of glance, which might well daunt hearts less timid than
those of poor slaves, accustomed from childhood and through life to
cower before a driver’s lash. The home plantation of Col. Lloyd
afforded an ample field for the exercise of the qualifications for
overseership, which he possessed in such an eminent degree.

Mr. Gore was one of those overseers, who could torture the slightest
word or look into impudence; he had the nerve, not only to resent, but
to punish, promptly and severely. He never allowed himself to be
answered back, by a slave. In this, he was as lordly and as imperious
as Col. Edward Lloyd, himself; acting always up to the maxim,
practically maintained by slaveholders, that it is better that a dozen
slaves suffer under the lash, without fault, than that the master or
the overseer should _seem_ to have been wrong in the presence of the
slave. _Everything must be absolute here_. Guilty or not guilty, it is
enough to be accused, to be sure of a flogging. The very presence of
this man Gore was painful, and I shunned him as I would have shunned a
rattlesnake. His piercing, black eyes, and sharp, shrill voice, ever
awakened sensations of terror among the slaves. For so young a man (I
describe him as he was, twenty-five or thirty years ago) Mr. Gore was
singularly reserved and grave in the presence of slaves. He indulged in
no jokes, said no funny things, and kept his own counsels. Other
overseers, how brutal soever they might be, were, at times, inclined to
gain favor with the slaves, by indulging a little pleasantry; but Gore
was never known to be guilty of any such weakness. He was always the
cold, distant, unapproachable _overseer_ of Col. Edward Lloyd’s
plantation, and needed no higher pleasure than was involved in a
faithful discharge of the duties of his office. When he whipped, he
seemed to do so from a sense of duty, and feared no consequences. What
Hopkins did reluctantly, Gore did with alacrity. There was a stern
will, an iron-like reality, about this Gore, which would have easily
made him the chief of a band of pirates, had his environments been
favorable to such a course of life. All the coolness, savage barbarity
and freedom from moral restraint, which are necessary in the character
of a pirate-chief, centered, I think, in this man Gore. Among many
other deeds of shocking cruelty which he perpetrated, while I was at
Mr. Lloyd’s, was the murder of a young colored man, named Denby. He was
sometimes called Bill Denby, or Demby; (I write from sound, and the
sounds on Lloyd’s plantation are not very certain.) I knew him well. He
was a powerful young man, full of animal spirits, and, so far as I
know, he was among the most valuable of Col. Lloyd’s slaves. In
something—I know not what—he offended this Mr. Austin Gore, and, in
accordance with the custom of the latter, he under took to flog him. He
gave Denby but few stripes; the latter broke away from him and plunged
into the creek, and, standing there to the depth of his neck in water,
he refused to come out at the order of the overseer; whereupon, for
this refusal, _Gore shot him dead!_ It is said that Gore gave Denby
three calls, telling him that if he did not obey the last call, he
would shoot him. When the third call was given, Denby stood his ground
firmly; and this raised the question, in the minds of the by-standing
slaves—“Will he dare to shoot?” Mr. Gore, without further parley, and
without making any further effort to induce Denby to come out of the
water, raised his gun deliberately to his face, took deadly aim at his
standing victim, and, in an instant, poor Denby was numbered with the
dead. His mangled body sank out of sight, and only his warm, red blood
marked the place where he had stood.

This devilish outrage, this fiendish murder, produced, as it was well
calculated to do, a tremendous sensation. A thrill of horror flashed
through every soul on the plantation, if I may except the guilty wretch
who had committed the hell-black deed. While the slaves generally were
panic-struck, and howling with alarm, the murderer himself was calm and
collected, and appeared as though nothing unusual had happened. The
atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out, in reprobation of it;
but the whole thing proved to be less than a nine days’ wonder. Both
Col. Lloyd and my old master arraigned Gore for his cruelty in the
matter, but this amounted to nothing. His reply, or explanation—as I
remember to have heard it at the time was, that the extraordinary
expedient was demanded by necessity; that Denby had become
unmanageable; that he had set a dangerous example to the other slaves;
and that, without some such prompt measure as that to which he had
resorted, were adopted, there would be an end to all rule and order on
the plantation. That very convenient covert for all manner of cruelty
and outrage that cowardly alarm-cry, that the slaves would _“take the
place,”_ was pleaded, in extenuation of this revolting crime, just as
it had been cited in defense of a thousand similar ones. He argued,
that if one slave refused to be corrected, and was allowed to escape
with his life, when he had been told that he should lose it if he
persisted in his course, the other slaves would soon copy his example;
the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves, and the
enslavement of the whites. I have every reason to believe that Mr.
Gore’s defense, or explanation, was deemed satisfactory—at least to
Col. Lloyd. He was continued in his office on the plantation. His fame
as an overseer went abroad, and his horrid crime was not even submitted
to judicial investigation. The murder was committed in the presence of
slaves, and they, of course, could neither institute a suit, nor
testify against the murderer. His bare word would go further in a court
of law, than the united testimony of ten thousand black witnesses.

All that Mr. Gore had to do, was to make his peace with Col. Lloyd.
This done, and the guilty perpetrator of one of the most foul murders
goes unwhipped of justice, and uncensured by the community in which he
lives. Mr. Gore lived in St. Michael’s, Talbot county, when I left
Maryland; if he is still alive he probably yet resides there; and I
have no reason to doubt that he is now as highly esteemed, and as
greatly respected, as though his guilty soul had never been stained
with innocent blood. I am well aware that what I have now written will
by some be branded as false and malicious. It will be denied, not only
that such a thing ever did transpire, as I have now narrated, but that
such a thing could happen in _Maryland_. I can only say—believe it or
not—that I have said nothing but the literal truth, gainsay it who may.

I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave, or any colored
person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either
by the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, ship carpenter, of
St. Michael’s, killed two slaves, one of whom he butchered with a
hatchet, by knocking his brains out. He used to boast of the commission
of the awful and bloody deed. I have heard him do so, laughingly,
saying, among other things, that he was the only benefactor of his
country in the company, and that when “others would do as much as he
had done, we should be relieved of the d—d niggers.”

As an evidence of the reckless disregard of human life where the life
is that of a slave I may state the notorious fact, that the wife of Mr.
Giles Hicks, who lived but a short distance from Col. Lloyd’s, with her
own hands murdered my wife’s cousin, a young girl between fifteen and
sixteen years of age—mutilating her person in a most shocking manner.
The atrocious woman, in the paroxysm of her wrath, not content with
murdering her victim, literally mangled her face, and broke her breast
bone. Wild, however, and infuriated as she was, she took the precaution
to cause the slave-girl to be buried; but the facts of the case coming
abroad, very speedily led to the disinterment of the remains of the
murdered slave-girl. A coroner’s jury was assembled, who decided that
the girl had come to her death by severe beating. It was ascertained
that the offense for which this girl was thus hurried out of the world,
was this: she had been set that night, and several preceding nights, to
mind Mrs. Hicks’s baby, and having fallen into a sound sleep, the baby
cried, waking Mrs. Hicks, but not the slave-girl. Mrs. Hicks, becoming
infuriated at the girl’s tardiness, after calling several times, jumped
from her bed and seized a piece of fire-wood from the fireplace; and
then, as she lay fast asleep, she deliberately pounded in her skull and
breast-bone, and thus ended her life. I will not say that this most
horrid murder produced no sensation in the community. It _did_ produce
a sensation; but, incredible to tell, the moral sense of the community
was blunted too entirely by the ordinary nature of slavery horrors, to
bring the murderess to punishment. A warrant was issued for her arrest,
but, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served. Thus did
Mrs. Hicks not only escape condign punishment, but even the pain and
mortification of being arraigned before a court of justice.

Whilst I am detailing the bloody deeds that took place during my stay
on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another dark
transaction, which occurred about the same time as the murder of Denby
by Mr. Gore.

On the side of the river Wye, opposite from Col. Lloyd’s, there lived a
Mr. Beal Bondley, a wealthy slaveholder. In the direction of his land,
and near the shore, there was an excellent oyster fishing ground, and
to this, some of the slaves of Col. Lloyd occasionally resorted in
their little canoes, at night, with a view to make up the deficiency of
their scanty allowance of food, by the oysters that they could easily
get there. This, Mr. Bondley took it into his head to regard as a
trespass, and while an old man belonging to Col. Lloyd was engaged in
catching a few of the many millions of oysters that lined the bottom of
that creek, to satisfy his hunger, the villainous Mr. Bondley, lying in
ambush, without the slightest ceremony, discharged the contents of his
musket into the back and shoulders of the poor old man. As good fortune
would have it, the shot did not prove mortal, and Mr. Bondley came
over, the next day, to see Col. Lloyd—whether to pay him for his
property, or to justify himself for what he had done, I know not; but
this I _can_ say, the cruel and dastardly transaction was speedily
hushed up; there was very little said about it at all, and nothing was
publicly done which looked like the application of the principle of
justice to the man whom _chance_, only, saved from being an actual
murderer. One of the commonest sayings to which my ears early became
accustomed, on Col. Lloyd’s plantation and elsewhere in Maryland, was,
that it was _“worth but half a cent to kill a nigger, and a half a cent
to bury him;”_ and the facts of my experience go far to justify the
practical truth of this strange proverb. Laws for the protection of the
lives of the slaves, are, as they must needs be, utterly incapable of
being enforced, where the very parties who are nominally protected, are
not permitted to give evidence, in courts of law, against the only
class of persons from whom abuse, outrage and murder might be
reasonably apprehended. While I heard of numerous murders committed by
slaveholders on the Eastern Shores of Maryland, I never knew a solitary
instance in which a slaveholder was either hung or imprisoned for
having murdered a slave. The usual pretext for killing a slave is, that
the slave has offered resistance. Should a slave, when assaulted, but
raise his hand in self defense, the white assaulting party is fully
justified by southern, or Maryland, public opinion, in shooting the
slave down. Sometimes this is done, simply because it is alleged that
the slave has been saucy. But here I leave this phase of the society of
my early childhood, and will relieve the kind reader of these
heart-sickening details.




CHAPTER IX. _Personal Treatment_


MISS LUCRETIA—HER KINDNESS—HOW IT WAS MANIFESTED—“IKE”—A BATTLE WITH
HIM—THE CONSEQUENCES THEREOF—MISS LUCRETIA’S BALSAM—BREAD—HOW I
OBTAINED IT—BEAMS OF SUNLIGHT AMIDST THE GENERAL DARKNESS—SUFFERING
FROM COLD—HOW WE TOOK OUR MEALS—ORDERS TO PREPARE FOR
BALTIMORE—OVERJOYED AT THE THOUGHT OF QUITTING THE
PLANTATION—EXTRAORDINARY CLEANSING—COUSIN TOM’S VERSION OF
BALTIMORE—ARRIVAL THERE—KIND RECEPTION GIVEN ME BY MRS. SOPHIA
AULD—LITTLE TOMMY—MY NEW POSITION—MY NEW DUTIES—A TURNING POINT IN MY
HISTORY.


I have nothing cruel or shocking to relate of my own personal
experience, while I remained on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, at the home of
my old master. An occasional cuff from Aunt Katy, and a regular
whipping from old master, such as any heedless and mischievous boy
might get from his father, is all that I can mention of this sort. I
was not old enough to work in the field, and, there being little else
than field work to perform, I had much leisure. The most I had to do,
was, to drive up the cows in the evening, to keep the front yard clean,
and to perform small errands for my young mistress, Lucretia Auld. I
have reasons for thinking this lady was very kindly disposed toward me,
and, although I was not often the object of her attention, I constantly
regarded her as my friend, and was always glad when it was my privilege
to do her a service. In a family where there was so much that was
harsh, cold and indifferent, the slightest word or look of kindness
passed, with me, for its full value. Miss Lucretia—as we all continued
to call her long after her marriage—had bestowed upon me such words and
looks as taught me that she pitied me, if she did not love me. In
addition to words and looks, she sometimes gave me a piece of bread and
butter; a thing not set down in the bill of fare, and which must have
been an extra ration, planned aside from either Aunt Katy or old
master, solely out of the tender regard and friendship she had for me.
Then, too, I one day got into the wars with Uncle Able’s son, “Ike,”
and had got sadly worsted; in fact, the little rascal had struck me
directly in the forehead with a sharp piece of cinder, fused with iron,
from the old blacksmith’s forge, which made a cross in my forehead very
plainly to be seen now. The gash bled very freely, and I roared very
loudly and betook myself home. The coldhearted Aunt Katy paid no
attention either to my wound or my roaring, except to tell me it served
me right; I had no business with Ike; it was good for me; I would now
keep away _“from dem Lloyd niggers.”_ Miss Lucretia, in this state of
the case, came forward; and, in quite a different spirit from that
manifested by Aunt Katy, she called me into the parlor (an extra
privilege of itself) and, without using toward me any of the
hard-hearted and reproachful epithets of my kitchen tormentor, she
quietly acted the good Samaritan. With her own soft hand she washed the
blood from my head and face, fetched her own balsam bottle, and with
the balsam wetted a nice piece of white linen, and bound up my head.
The balsam was not more healing to the wound in my head, than her
kindness was healing to the wounds in my spirit, made by the unfeeling
words of Aunt Katy. After this, Miss Lucretia was my friend. I felt her
to be such; and I have no doubt that the simple act of binding up my
head, did much to awaken in her mind an interest in my welfare. It is
quite true, that this interest was never very marked, and it seldom
showed itself in anything more than in giving me a piece of bread when
I was hungry; but this was a great favor on a slave plantation, and I
was the only one of the children to whom such attention was paid. When
very hungry, I would go into the back yard and play under Miss
Lucretia’s window. When pretty severely pinched by hunger, I had a
habit of singing, which the good lady very soon came to understand as a
petition for a piece of bread. When I sung under Miss Lucretia’s
window, I was very apt to get well paid for my music. The reader will
see that I now had two friends, both at important points—Mas’ Daniel at
the great house, and Miss Lucretia at home. From Mas’ Daniel I got
protection from the bigger boys; and from Miss Lucretia I got bread, by
singing when I was hungry, and sympathy when I was abused by that
termagant, who had the reins of government in the kitchen. For such
friendship I felt deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections
of slavery, I love to recall any instances of kindness, any sunbeams of
humane treatment, which found way to my soul through the iron grating
of my house of bondage. Such beams seem all the brighter from the
general darkness into which they penetrate, and the impression they
make is vividly distinct and beautiful.

As I have before intimated, I was seldom whipped—and never severely—by
my old master. I suffered little from the treatment I received, except
from hunger and cold. These were my two great physical troubles. I
could neither get a sufficiency of food nor of clothing; but I suffered
less from hunger than from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter,
I was kept almost in a state of nudity; no shoes, no stockings, no
jacket, no trowsers; nothing but coarse sackcloth or tow-linen, made
into a sort of shirt, reaching down to my knees. This I wore night and
day, changing it once a week. In the day time I could protect myself
pretty well, by keeping on the sunny side of the house; and in bad
weather, in the corner of the kitchen chimney. The great difficulty
was, to keep warm during the night. I had no bed. The pigs in the pen
had leaves, and the horses in the stable had straw, but the children
had no beds. They lodged anywhere in the ample kitchen. I slept,
generally, in a little closet, without even a blanket to cover me. In
very cold weather. I sometimes got down the bag in which corn-meal was
usually carried to the mill, and crawled into that. Sleeping there,
with my head in and feet out, I was partly protected, though not
comfortable. My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen
with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes. The manner of
taking our meals at old master’s, indicated but little refinement. Our
corn-meal mush, when sufficiently cooled, was placed in a large wooden
tray, or trough, like those used in making maple sugar here in the
north. This tray was set down, either on the floor of the kitchen, or
out of doors on the ground; and the children were called, like so many
pigs; and like so many pigs they would come, and literally devour the
mush—some with oyster shells, some with pieces of shingles, and none
with spoons. He that eat fastest got most, and he that was strongest
got the best place; and few left the trough really satisfied. I was the
most unlucky of any, for Aunt Katy had no good feeling for me; and if I
pushed any of the other children, or if they told her anything
unfavorable of me, she always believed the worst, and was sure to whip
me.

As I grew older and more thoughtful, I was more and more filled with a
sense of my wretchedness. The cruelty of Aunt Katy, the hunger and cold
I suffered, and the terrible reports of wrong and outrage which came to
my ear, together with what I almost daily witnessed, led me, when yet
but eight or nine years old, to wish I had never been born. I used to
contrast my condition with the black-birds, in whose wild and sweet
songs I fancied them so happy! Their apparent joy only deepened the
shades of my sorrow. There are thoughtful days in the lives of
children—at least there were in mine when they grapple with all the
great, primary subjects of knowledge, and reach, in a moment,
conclusions which no subsequent experience can shake. I was just as
well aware of the unjust, unnatural and murderous character of slavery,
when nine years old, as I am now. Without any appeal to books, to laws,
or to authorities of any kind, it was enough to accept God as a father,
to regard slavery as a crime.

I was not ten years old when I left Col. Lloyd’s plantation for
Balitmore(sic). I left that plantation with inexpressible joy. I never
shall forget the ecstacy with which I received the intelligence from my
friend, Miss Lucretia, that my old master had determined to let me go
to Baltimore to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, a brother to Mr. Thomas Auld,
my old master’s son-in-law. I received this information about three
days before my departure. They were three of the happiest days of my
childhood. I spent the largest part of these three days in the creek,
washing off the plantation scurf, and preparing for my new home. Mrs.
Lucretia took a lively interest in getting me ready. She told me I must
get all the dead skin off my feet and knees, before I could go to
Baltimore, for the people there were very cleanly, and would laugh at
me if I looked dirty; and, besides, she was intending to give me a pair
of trowsers, which I should not put on unless I got all the dirt off.
This was a warning to which I was bound to take heed; for the thought
of owning a pair of trowsers, was great, indeed. It was almost a
sufficient motive, not only to induce me to scrub off the _mange_ (as
pig drovers would call it) but the skin as well. So I went at it in
good earnest, working for the first time in the hope of reward. I was
greatly excited, and could hardly consent to sleep, lest I should be
left. The ties that, ordinarily, bind children to their homes, were all
severed, or they never had any existence in my case, at least so far as
the home plantation of Col. L. was concerned. I therefore found no
severe trail at the moment of my departure, such as I had experienced
when separated from my home in Tuckahoe. My home at my old master’s was
charmless to me; it was not home, but a prison to me; on parting from
it, I could not feel that I was leaving anything which I could have
enjoyed by staying. My mother was now long dead; my grandmother was far
away, so that I seldom saw her; Aunt Katy was my unrelenting tormentor;
and my two sisters and brothers, owing to our early separation in life,
and the family-destroying power of slavery, were, comparatively,
strangers to me. The fact of our relationship was almost blotted out. I
looked for _home_ elsewhere, and was confident of finding none which I
should relish less than the one I was leaving. If, however, I found in
my new home to which I was going with such blissful
anticipations—hardship, whipping and nakedness, I had the questionable
consolation that I should not have escaped any one of these evils by
remaining under the management of Aunt Katy. Then, too, I thought,
since I had endured much in this line on Lloyd’s plantation, I could
endure as much elsewhere, and especially at Baltimore; for I had
something of the feeling about that city which is expressed in the
saying, that being “hanged in England, is better than dying a natural
death in Ireland.” I had the strongest desire to see Baltimore. My
cousin Tom—a boy two or three years older than I—had been there, and
though not fluent (he stuttered immoderately) in speech, he had
inspired me with that desire, by his eloquent description of the place.
Tom was, sometimes, Capt. Auld’s cabin boy; and when he came from
Baltimore, he was always a sort of hero amongst us, at least till his
Baltimore trip was forgotten. I could never tell him of anything, or
point out anything that struck me as beautiful or powerful, but that he
had seen something in Baltimore far surpassing it. Even the great house
itself, with all its pictures within, and pillars without, he had the
hardihood to say “was nothing to Baltimore.” He bought a trumpet (worth
six pence) and brought it home; told what he had seen in the windows of
stores; that he had heard shooting crackers, and seen soldiers; that he
had seen a steamboat; that there were ships in Baltimore that could
carry four such sloops as the “Sally Lloyd.” He said a great deal about
the market-house; he spoke of the bells ringing; and of many other
things which roused my curiosity very much; and, indeed, which
heightened my hopes of happiness in my new home.

We sailed out of Miles river for Baltimore early on a Saturday morning.
I remember only the day of the week; for, at that time, I had no
knowledge of the days of the month, nor, indeed, of the months of the
year. On setting sail, I walked aft, and gave to Col. Lloyd’s
plantation what I hoped would be the last look I should ever give to
it, or to any place like it. My strong aversion to the great farm, was
not owing to my own personal suffering, but the daily suffering of
others, and to the certainty that I must, sooner or later, be placed
under the barbarous rule of an overseer, such as the accomplished Gore,
or the brutal and drunken Plummer. After taking this last view, I
quitted the quarter deck, made my way to the bow of the sloop, and
spent the remainder of the day in looking ahead; interesting myself in
what was in the distance, rather than what was near by or behind. The
vessels, sweeping along the bay, were very interesting objects. The
broad bay opened like a shoreless ocean on my boyish vision, filling me
with wonder and admiration.

Late in the afternoon, we reached Annapolis, the capital of the state,
stopping there not long enough to admit of my going ashore. It was the
first large town I had ever seen; and though it was inferior to many a
factory village in New England, my feelings, on seeing it, were excited
to a pitch very little below that reached by travelers at the first
view of Rome. The dome of the state house was especially imposing, and
surpassed in grandeur the appearance of the great house. The great
world was opening upon me very rapidly, and I was eagerly acquainting
myself with its multifarious lessons.

We arrived in Baltimore on Sunday morning, and landed at Smith’s wharf,
not far from Bowly’s wharf. We had on board the sloop a large flock of
sheep, for the Baltimore market; and, after assisting in driving them
to the slaughter house of Mr. Curtis, on Loudon Slater’s Hill, I was
speedily conducted by Rich—one of the hands belonging to the sloop—to
my new home in Alliciana street, near Gardiner’s ship-yard, on Fell’s
Point. Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld, my new mistress and master, were both at
home, and met me at the door with their rosy cheeked little son,
Thomas, to take care of whom was to constitute my future occupation. In
fact, it was to “little Tommy,” rather than to his parents, that old
master made a present of me; and though there was no _legal_ form or
arrangement entered into, I have no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Auld felt
that, in due time, I should be the legal property of their bright-eyed
and beloved boy, Tommy. I was struck with the appearance, especially,
of my new mistress. Her face was lighted with the kindliest emotions;
and the reflex influence of her countenance, as well as the tenderness
with which she seemed to regard me, while asking me sundry little
questions, greatly delighted me, and lit up, to my fancy, the pathway
of my future. Miss Lucretia was kind; but my new mistress, “Miss
Sophy,” surpassed her in kindness of manner. Little Thomas was
affectionately told by his mother, that _“there was his Freddy,”_ and
that “Freddy would take care of him;” and I was told to “be kind to
little Tommy”—an injunction I scarcely needed, for I had already fallen
in love with the dear boy; and with these little ceremonies I was
initiated into my new home, and entered upon my peculiar duties, with
not a cloud above the horizon.

I may say here, that I regard my removal from Col. Lloyd’s plantation
as one of the most interesting and fortunate events of my life. Viewing
it in the light of human likelihoods, it is quite probable that, but
for the mere circumstance of being thus removed before the rigors of
slavery had fastened upon me; before my young spirit had been crushed
under the iron control of the slave-driver, instead of being, today, a
FREEMAN, I might have been wearing the galling chains of slavery. I
have sometimes felt, however, that there was something more intelligent
than _chance_, and something more certain than _luck_, to be seen in
the circumstance. If I have made any progress in knowledge; if I have
cherished any honorable aspirations, or have, in any manner, worthily
discharged the duties of a member of an oppressed people; this little
circumstance must be allowed its due weight in giving my life that
direction. I have ever regarded it as the first plain manifestation of
that

Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them as we will.


I was not the only boy on the plantation that might have been sent to
live in Baltimore. There was a wide margin from which to select. There
were boys younger, boys older, and boys of the same age, belonging to
my old master some at his own house, and some at his farm—but the high
privilege fell to my lot.

I may be deemed superstitious and egotistical, in regarding this event
as a special interposition of Divine Providence in my favor; but the
thought is a part of my history, and I should be false to the earliest
and most cherished sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed, or hesitated
to avow that opinion, although it may be characterized as irrational by
the wise, and ridiculous by the scoffer. From my earliest recollections
of serious matters, I date the entertainment of something like an
ineffaceable conviction, that slavery would not always be able to hold
me within its foul embrace; and this conviction, like a word of living
faith, strengthened me through the darkest trials of my lot. This good
spirit was from God; and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.




CHAPTER X. _Life in Baltimore_


CITY ANNOYANCES—PLANTATION REGRETS—MY MISTRESS, MISS SOPHA—HER
HISTORY—HER KINDNESS TO ME—MY MASTER, HUGH AULD—HIS SOURNESS—MY
INCREASED SENSITIVENESS—MY COMFORTS—MY OCCUPATION—THE BANEFUL EFFECTS
OF SLAVEHOLDING ON MY DEAR AND GOOD MISTRESS—HOW SHE COMMENCED TEACHING
ME TO READ—WHY SHE CEASED TEACHING ME—CLOUDS GATHERING OVER MY BRIGHT
PROSPECTS—MASTER AULD’S EXPOSITION OF THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF
SLAVERY—CITY SLAVES—PLANTATION SLAVES—THE CONTRAST—EXCEPTIONS—MR.
HAMILTON’S TWO SLAVES, HENRIETTA AND MARY—MRS. HAMILTON’S CRUEL
TREATMENT OF THEM—THE PITEOUS ASPECT THEY PRESENTED—NO POWER MUST COME
BETWEEN THE SLAVE AND THE SLAVEHOLDER.


Once in Baltimore, with hard brick pavements under my feet, which
almost raised blisters, by their very heat, for it was in the height of
summer; walled in on all sides by towering brick buildings; with troops
of hostile boys ready to pounce upon me at every street corner; with
new and strange objects glaring upon me at every step, and with
startling sounds reaching my ears from all directions, I for a time
thought that, after all, the home plantation was a more desirable place
of residence than my home on Alliciana street, in Baltimore. My country
eyes and ears were confused and bewildered here; but the boys were my
chief trouble. They chased me, and called me _“Eastern Shore man,”_
till really I almost wished myself back on the Eastern Shore. I had to
undergo a sort of moral acclimation, and when that was over, I did much
better. My new mistress happily proved to be all she _seemed_ to be,
when, with her husband, she met me at the door, with a most beaming,
benignant countenance. She was, naturally, of an excellent disposition,
kind, gentle and cheerful. The supercilious contempt for the rights and
feelings of the slave, and the petulance and bad humor which generally
characterize slaveholding ladies, were all quite absent from kind
“Miss” Sophia’s manner and bearing toward me. She had, in truth, never
been a slaveholder, but had—a thing quite unusual in the south—depended
almost entirely upon her own industry for a living. To this fact the
dear lady, no doubt, owed the excellent preservation of her natural
goodness of heart, for slavery can change a saint into a sinner, and an
angel into a demon. I hardly knew how to behave toward “Miss Sopha,” as
I used to call Mrs. Hugh Auld. I had been treated as a _pig_ on the
plantation; I was treated as a _child_ now. I could not even approach
her as I had formerly approached Mrs. Thomas Auld. How could I hang
down my head, and speak with bated breath, when there was no pride to
scorn me, no coldness to repel me, and no hatred to inspire me with
fear? I therefore soon learned to regard her as something more akin to
a mother, than a slaveholding mistress. The crouching servility of a
slave, usually so acceptable a quality to the haughty slaveholder, was
not understood nor desired by this gentle woman. So far from deeming it
impudent in a slave to look her straight in the face, as some
slaveholding ladies do, she seemed ever to say, “look up, child; don’t
be afraid; see, I am full of kindness and good will toward you.” The
hands belonging to Col. Lloyd’s sloop, esteemed it a great privilege to
be the bearers of parcels or messages to my new mistress; for whenever
they came, they were sure of a most kind and pleasant reception. If
little Thomas was her son, and her most dearly beloved child, she, for
a time, at least, made me something like his half-brother in her
affections. If dear Tommy was exalted to a place on his mother’s knee,
“Feddy” was honored by a place at his mother’s side. Nor did he lack
the caressing strokes of her gentle hand, to convince him that, though
_motherless_, he was not _friendless_. Mrs. Auld was not only a
kind-hearted woman, but she was remarkably pious; frequent in her
attendance of public worship, much given to reading the bible, and to
chanting hymns of praise, when alone. Mr. Hugh Auld was altogether a
different character. He cared very little about religion, knew more of
the world, and was more of the world, than his wife. He set out,
doubtless to be—as the world goes—a respectable man, and to get on by
becoming a successful ship builder, in that city of ship building. This
was his ambition, and it fully occupied him. I was, of course, of very
little consequence to him, compared with what I was to good Mrs. Auld;
and, when he smiled upon me, as he sometimes did, the smile was
borrowed from his lovely wife, and, like all borrowed light, was
transient, and vanished with the source whence it was derived. While I
must characterize Master Hugh as being a very sour man, and of
forbidding appearance, it is due to him to acknowledge, that he was
never very cruel to me, according to the notion of cruelty in Maryland.
The first year or two which I spent in his house, he left me almost
exclusively to the management of his wife. She was my law-giver. In
hands so tender as hers, and in the absence of the cruelties of the
plantation, I became, both physically and mentally, much more sensitive
to good and ill treatment; and, perhaps, suffered more from a frown
from my mistress, than I formerly did from a cuff at the hands of Aunt
Katy. Instead of the cold, damp floor of my old master’s kitchen, I
found myself on carpets; for the corn bag in winter, I now had a good
straw bed, well furnished with covers; for the coarse corn-meal in the
morning, I now had good bread, and mush occasionally; for my poor
tow-lien shirt, reaching to my knees, I had good, clean clothes. I was
really well off. My employment was to run errands, and to take care of
Tommy; to prevent his getting in the way of carriages, and to keep him
out of harm’s way generally. Tommy, and I, and his mother, got on
swimmingly together, for a time. I say _for a time_, because the fatal
poison of irresponsible power, and the natural influence of slavery
customs, were not long in making a suitable impression on the gentle
and loving disposition of my excellent mistress. At first, Mrs. Auld
evidently regarded me simply as a child, like any other child; she had
not come to regard me as _property_. This latter thought was a thing of
conventional growth. The first was natural and spontaneous. A noble
nature, like hers, could not, instantly, be wholly perverted; and it
took several years to change the natural sweetness of her temper into
fretful bitterness. In her worst estate, however, there were, during
the first seven years I lived with her, occasional returns of her
former kindly disposition.

The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible for she often
read aloud when her husband was absent soon awakened my curiosity in
respect to this _mystery_ of reading, and roused in me the desire to
learn. Having no fear of my kind mistress before my eyes, (she had then
given me no reason to fear,) I frankly asked her to teach me to read;
and, without hesitation, the dear woman began the task, and very soon,
by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words
of three or four letters. My mistress seemed almost as proud of my
progress, as if I had been her own child; and, supposing that her
husband would be as well pleased, she made no secret of what she was
doing for me. Indeed, she exultingly told him of the aptness of her
pupil, of her intention to persevere in teaching me, and of the duty
which she felt it to teach me, at least to read _the bible_. Here arose
the first cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the precursor of drenching
rains and chilling blasts.

Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably
for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery,
and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and
mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld
promptly forbade continuance of her instruction; telling her, in the
first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also
unsafe, and could only lead to mischief. To use his own words, further,
he said, “if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell;” “he
should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it.”
“if you teach that nigger—speaking of myself—how to read the bible,
there will be no keeping him;” “it would forever unfit him for the
duties of a slave;” and “as to himself, learning would do him no good,
but probably, a great deal of harm—making him disconsolate and
unhappy.” “If you learn him now to read, he’ll want to know how to
write; and, this accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself.”
Such was the tenor of Master Hugh’s oracular exposition of the true
philosophy of training a human chattel; and it must be confessed that
he very clearly comprehended the nature and the requirements of the
relation of master and slave. His discourse was the first decidedly
anti-slavery lecture to which it had been my lot to listen. Mrs. Auld
evidently felt the force of his remarks; and, like an obedient wife,
began to shape her course in the direction indicated by her husband.
The effect of his words, _on me_, was neither slight nor transitory.
His iron sentences—cold and harsh—sunk deep into my heart, and stirred
up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within
me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special
revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful
understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the _white_
man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the _black_ man. “Very
well,” thought I; “knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I
instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I
understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. This was just
what I needed; and I got it at a time, and from a source, whence I
least expected it. I was saddened at the thought of losing the
assistance of my kind mistress; but the information, so instantly
derived, to some extent compensated me for the loss I had sustained in
this direction. Wise as Mr. Auld was, he evidently underrated my
comprehension, and had little idea of the use to which I was capable of
putting the impressive lesson he was giving to his wife. _He_ wanted me
to be _a slave;_ I had already voted against that on the home
plantation of Col. Lloyd. That which he most loved I most hated; and
the very determination which he expressed to keep me in ignorance, only
rendered me the more resolute in seeking intelligence. In learning to
read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as much to the
opposition of my master, as to the kindly assistance of my amiable
mistress. I acknowledge the benefit rendered me by the one, and by the
other; believing, that but for my mistress, I might have grown up in
ignorance.

I had resided but a short time in Baltimore, before I observed a marked
difference in the manner of treating slaves, generally, from which I
had witnessed in that isolated and out-of-the-way part of the country
where I began life. A city slave is almost a free citizen, in
Baltimore, compared with a slave on Col. Lloyd’s plantation. He is much
better fed and clothed, is less dejected in his appearance, and enjoys
privileges altogether unknown to the whip-driven slave on the
plantation. Slavery dislikes a dense population, in which there is a
majority of non-slaveholders. The general sense of decency that must
pervade such a population, does much to check and prevent those
outbreaks of atrocious cruelty, and those dark crimes without a name,
almost openly perpetrated on the plantation. He is a desperate
slaveholder who will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding
neighbors, by the cries of the lacerated slaves; and very few in the
city are willing to incur the odium of being cruel masters. I found, in
Baltimore, that no man was more odious to the white, as well as to the
colored people, than he, who had the reputation of starving his slaves.
Work them, flog them, if need be, but don’t starve them. These are,
however, some painful exceptions to this rule. While it is quite true
that most of the slaveholders in Baltimore feed and clothe their slaves
well, there are others who keep up their country cruelties in the city.

An instance of this sort is furnished in the case of a family who lived
directly opposite to our house, and were named Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton
owned two slaves. Their names were Henrietta and Mary. They had always
been house slaves. One was aged about twenty-two, and the other about
fourteen. They were a fragile couple by nature, and the treatment they
received was enough to break down the constitution of a horse. Of all
the dejected, emaciated, mangled and excoriated creatures I ever saw,
those two girls—in the refined, church going and Christian city of
Baltimore were the most deplorable. Of stone must that heart be made,
that could look upon Henrietta and Mary, without being sickened to the
core with sadness. Especially was Mary a heart-sickening object. Her
head, neck and shoulders, were literally cut to pieces. I have
frequently felt her head, and found it nearly covered over with
festering sores, caused by the lash of her cruel mistress. I do not
know that her master ever whipped her, but I have often been an eye
witness of the revolting and brutal inflictions by Mrs. Hamilton; and
what lends a deeper shade to this woman’s conduct, is the fact, that,
almost in the very moments of her shocking outrages of humanity and
decency, she would charm you by the sweetness of her voice and her
seeming piety. She used to sit in a large rocking chair, near the
middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin, such as I have elsewhere
described; and I speak within the truth when I say, that these girls
seldom passed that chair, during the day, without a blow from that
cowskin, either upon their bare arms, or upon their shoulders. As they
passed her, she would draw her cowskin and give them a blow, saying,
_“move faster, you black jip!”_ and, again, _“take that, you black
jip!”_ continuing, _“if you don’t move faster, I will give you more.”_
Then the lady would go on, singing her sweet hymns, as though her
_righteous_ soul were sighing for the holy realms of paradise.

Added to the cruel lashings to which these poor slave-girls were
subjected—enough in themselves to crush the spirit of men—they were,
really, kept nearly half starved; they seldom knew what it was to eat a
full meal, except when they got it in the kitchens of neighbors, less
mean and stingy than the psalm-singing Mrs. Hamilton. I have seen poor
Mary contending for the offal, with the pigs in the street. So much was
the poor girl pinched, kicked, cut and pecked to pieces, that the boys
in the street knew her only by the name of _“pecked,”_ a name derived
from the scars and blotches on her neck, head and shoulders.

It is some relief to this picture of slavery in Baltimore, to say—what
is but the simple truth—that Mrs. Hamilton’s treatment of her slaves
was generally condemned, as disgraceful and shocking; but while I say
this, it must also be remembered, that the very parties who censured
the cruelty of Mrs. Hamilton, would have condemned and promptly
punished any attempt to interfere with Mrs. Hamilton’s _right_ to cut
and slash her slaves to pieces. There must be no force between the
slave and the slaveholder, to restrain the power of the one, and
protect the weakness of the other; and the cruelty of Mrs. Hamilton is
as justly chargeable to the upholders of the slave system, as
drunkenness is chargeable on those who, by precept and example, or by
indifference, uphold the drinking system.




CHAPTER XI. _“A Change Came O’er the Spirit of My Dream”_


HOW I LEARNED TO READ—MY MISTRESS—HER SLAVEHOLDING DUTIES—THEIR
DEPLORABLE EFFECTS UPON HER ORIGINALLY NOBLE NATURE—THE CONFLICT IN HER
MIND—HER FINAL OPPOSITION TO MY LEARNING TO READ—TOO LATE—SHE HAD GIVEN
ME THE INCH, I WAS RESOLVED TO TAKE THE ELL—HOW I PURSUED MY
EDUCATION—MY TUTORS—HOW I COMPENSATED THEM—WHAT PROGRESS I
MADE—SLAVERY—WHAT I HEARD SAID ABOUT IT—THIRTEEN YEARS OLD—THE
_Columbian Orator_—A RICH SCENE—A DIALOGUE—SPEECHES OF CHATHAM,
SHERIDAN, PITT AND FOX—KNOWLEDGE EVER INCREASING—MY EYES
OPENED—LIBERTY—HOW I PINED FOR IT—MY SADNESS—THE DISSATISFACTION OF MY
POOR MISTRESS—MY HATRED OF SLAVERY—ONE UPAS TREE OVERSHADOWED US BOTH.


I lived in the family of Master Hugh, at Baltimore, seven years, during
which time—as the almanac makers say of the weather—my condition was
variable. The most interesting feature of my history here, was my
learning to read and write, under somewhat marked disadvantages. In
attaining this knowledge, I was compelled to resort to indirections by
no means congenial to my nature, and which were really humiliating to
me. My mistress—who, as the reader has already seen, had begun to teach
me was suddenly checked in her benevolent design, by the strong advice
of her husband. In faithful compliance with this advice, the good lady
had not only ceased to instruct me, herself, but had set her face as a
flint against my learning to read by any means. It is due, however, to
my mistress to say, that she did not adopt this course in all its
stringency at the first. She either thought it unnecessary, or she
lacked the depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental
darkness. It was, at least, necessary for her to have some training,
and some hardening, in the exercise of the slaveholder’s prerogative,
to make her equal to forgetting my human nature and character, and to
treating me as a thing destitute of a moral or an intellectual nature.
Mrs. Auld—my mistress—was, as I have said, a most kind and
tender-hearted woman; and, in the humanity of her heart, and the
simplicity of her mind, she set out, when I first went to live with
her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat
another.

It is easy to see, that, in entering upon the duties of a slaveholder,
some little experience is needed. Nature has done almost nothing to
prepare men and women to be either slaves or slaveholders. Nothing but
rigid training, long persisted in, can perfect the character of the one
or the other. One cannot easily forget to love freedom; and it is as
hard to cease to respect that natural love in our fellow creatures. On
entering upon the career of a slaveholding mistress, Mrs. Auld was
singularly deficient; nature, which fits nobody for such an office, had
done less for her than any lady I had known. It was no easy matter to
induce her to think and to feel that the curly-headed boy, who stood by
her side, and even leaned on her lap; who was loved by little Tommy,
and who loved little Tommy in turn; sustained to her only the relation
of a chattel. I was _more_ than that, and she felt me to be more than
that. I could talk and sing; I could laugh and weep; I could reason and
remember; I could love and hate. I was human, and she, dear lady, knew
and felt me to be so. How could she, then, treat me as a brute, without
a mighty struggle with all the noble powers of her own soul. That
struggle came, and the will and power of the husband was victorious.
Her noble soul was overthrown; but, he that overthrew it did not,
himself, escape the consequences. He, not less than the other parties,
was injured in his domestic peace by the fall.

When I went into their family, it was the abode of happiness and
contentment. The mistress of the house was a model of affection and
tenderness. Her fervent piety and watchful uprightness made it
impossible to see her without thinking and feeling—“_that woman is a
Christian_.” There was no sorrow nor suffering for which she had not a
tear, and there was no innocent joy for which she did not a smile. She
had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every
mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to
divest her of these excellent qualities, and her home of its early
happiness. Conscience cannot stand much violence. Once thoroughly
broken down, _who_ is he that can repair the damage? It may be broken
toward the slave, on Sunday, and toward the master on Monday. It cannot
endure such shocks. It must stand entire, or it does not stand at all.
If my condition waxed bad, that of the family waxed not better. The
first step, in the wrong direction, was the violence done to nature and
to conscience, in arresting the benevolence that would have enlightened
my young mind. In ceasing to instruct me, she must begin to justify
herself _to_ herself; and, once consenting to take sides in such a
debate, she was riveted to her position. One needs very little
knowledge of moral philosophy, to see _where_ my mistress now landed.
She finally became even more violent in her opposition to my learning
to read, than was her husband himself. She was not satisfied with
simply doing as _well_ as her husband had commanded her, but seemed
resolved to better his instruction. Nothing appeared to make my poor
mistress—after her turning toward the downward path—more angry, than
seeing me, seated in some nook or corner, quietly reading a book or a
newspaper. I have had her rush at me, with the utmost fury, and snatch
from my hand such newspaper or book, with something of the wrath and
consternation which a traitor might be supposed to feel on being
discovered in a plot by some dangerous spy.

Mrs. Auld was an apt woman, and the advice of her husband, and her own
experience, soon demonstrated, to her entire satisfaction, that
education and slavery are incompatible with each other. When this
conviction was thoroughly established, I was most narrowly watched in
all my movements. If I remained in a separate room from the family for
any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a
book, and was at once called upon to give an account of myself. All
this, however, was entirely _too late_. The first, and never to be
retraced, step had been taken. In teaching me the alphabet, in the days
of her simplicity and kindness, my mistress had given me the _“inch,”_
and now, no ordinary precaution could prevent me from taking the
_“ell.”_

Seized with a determination to learn to read, at any cost, I hit upon
many expedients to accomplish the desired end. The plea which I mainly
adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of using
my young white playmates, with whom I met in the streets as teachers. I
used to carry, almost constantly, a copy of Webster’s spelling book in
my pocket; and, when sent of errands, or when play time was allowed me,
I would step, with my young friends, aside, and take a lesson in
spelling. I generally paid my _tuition fee_ to the boys, with bread,
which I also carried in my pocket. For a single biscuit, any of my
hungry little comrades would give me a lesson more valuable to me than
bread. Not every one, however, demanded this consideration, for there
were those who took pleasure in teaching me, whenever I had a chance to
be taught by them. I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or
three of those little boys, as a slight testimonial of the gratitude
and affection I bear them, but prudence forbids; not that it would
injure me, but it might, possibly, embarrass them; for it is almost an
unpardonable offense to do any thing, directly or indirectly, to
promote a slave’s freedom, in a slave state. It is enough to say, of my
warm-hearted little play fellows, that they lived on Philpot street,
very near Durgin & Bailey’s shipyard.

Although slavery was a delicate subject, and very cautiously talked
about among grown up people in Maryland, I frequently talked about
it—and that very freely—with the white boys. I would, sometimes, say to
them, while seated on a curb stone or a cellar door, “I wish I could be
free, as you will be when you get to be men.” “You will be free, you
know, as soon as you are twenty-one, and can go where you like, but I
am a slave for life. Have I not as good a right to be free as you
have?” Words like these, I observed, always troubled them; and I had no
small satisfaction in wringing from the boys, occasionally, that fresh
and bitter condemnation of slavery, that springs from nature, unseared
and unperverted. Of all consciences let me have those to deal with
which have not been bewildered by the cares of life. I do not remember
ever to have met with a _boy_, while I was in slavery, who defended the
slave system; but I have often had boys to console me, with the hope
that something would yet occur, by which I might be made free. Over and
over again, they have told me, that “they believed I had as good a
right to be free as _they_ had;” and that “they did not believe God
ever made any one to be a slave.” The reader will easily see, that such
little conversations with my play fellows, had no tendency to weaken my
love of liberty, nor to render me contented with my condition as a
slave.

When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning to
read, every increase of knowledge, especially respecting the FREE
STATES, added something to the almost intolerable burden of the
thought—I AM A SLAVE FOR LIFE. To my bondage I saw no end. It was a
terrible reality, and I shall never be able to tell how sadly that
thought chafed my young spirit. Fortunately, or unfortunately, about
this time in my life, I had made enough money to buy what was then a
very popular school book, viz: the _Columbian Orator_. I bought this
addition to my library, of Mr. Knight, on Thames street, Fell’s Point,
Baltimore, and paid him fifty cents for it. I was first led to buy this
book, by hearing some little boys say they were going to learn some
little pieces out of it for the Exhibition. This volume was, indeed, a
rich treasure, and every opportunity afforded me, for a time, was spent
in diligently perusing it. Among much other interesting matter, that
which I had perused and reperused with unflagging satisfaction, was a
short dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave is represented
as having been recaptured, in a second attempt to run away; and the
master opens the dialogue with an upbraiding speech, charging the slave
with ingratitude, and demanding to know what he has to say in his own
defense. Thus upbraided, and thus called upon to reply, the slave
rejoins, that he knows how little anything that he can say will avail,
seeing that he is completely in the hands of his owner; and with noble
resolution, calmly says, “I submit to my fate.” Touched by the slave’s
answer, the master insists upon his further speaking, and recapitulates
the many acts of kindness which he has performed toward the slave, and
tells him he is permitted to speak for himself. Thus invited to the
debate, the quondam slave made a spirited defense of himself, and
thereafter the whole argument, for and against slavery, was brought
out. The master was vanquished at every turn in the argument; and
seeing himself to be thus vanquished, he generously and meekly
emancipates the slave, with his best wishes for his prosperity. It is
scarcely neccessary(sic) to say, that a dialogue, with such an origin,
and such an ending—read when the fact of my being a slave was a
constant burden of grief—powerfully affected me; and I could not help
feeling that the day might come, when the well-directed answers made by
the slave to the master, in this instance, would find their counterpart
in myself.

This, however, was not all the fanaticism which I found in this
_Columbian Orator_. I met there one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches, on
the subject of Catholic Emancipation, Lord Chatham’s speech on the
American war, and speeches by the great William Pitt and by Fox. These
were all choice documents to me, and I read them, over and over again,
with an interest that was ever increasing, because it was ever gaining
in intelligence; for the more I read them, the better I understood
them. The reading of these speeches added much to my limited stock of
language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts,
which had frequently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of
utterance. The mighty power and heart-searching directness of truth,
penetrating even the heart of a slaveholder, compelling him to yield up
his earthly interests to the claims of eternal justice, were finely
illustrated in the dialogue, just referred to; and from the speeches of
Sheridan, I got a bold and powerful denunciation of oppression, and a
most brilliant vindication of the rights of man. Here was, indeed, a
noble acquisition. If I ever wavered under the consideration, that the
Almighty, in some way, ordained slavery, and willed my enslavement for
his own glory, I wavered no longer. I had now penetrated the secret of
all slavery and oppression, and had ascertained their true foundation
to be in the pride, the power and the avarice of man. The dialogue and
the speeches were all redolent of the principles of liberty, and poured
floods of light on the nature and character of slavery. With a book of
this kind in my hand, my own human nature, and the facts of my
experience, to help me, I was equal to a contest with the religious
advocates of slavery, whether among the whites or among the colored
people, for blindness, in this matter, is not confined to the former. I
have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the
delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their
chains with meekness and humility. I could entertain no such nonsense
as this; and I almost lost my patience when I found any colored man
weak enough to believe such stuff. Nevertheless, the increase of
knowledge was attended with bitter, as well as sweet results. The more
I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest slavery, and my
enslavers. “Slaveholders,” thought I, “are only a band of successful
robbers, who left their homes and went into Africa for the purpose of
stealing and reducing my people to slavery.” I loathed them as the
meanest and the most wicked of men. As I read, behold! the very
discontent so graphically predicted by Master Hugh, had already come
upon me. I was no longer the light-hearted, gleesome boy, full of mirth
and play, as when I landed first at Baltimore. Knowledge had come;
light had penetrated the moral dungeon where I dwelt; and, behold!
there lay the bloody whip, for my back, and here was the iron chain;
and my good, _kind master_, he was the author of my situation. The
revelation haunted me, stung me, and made me gloomy and miserable. As I
writhed under the sting and torment of this knowledge, I almost envied
my fellow slaves their stupid contentment. This knowledge opened my
eyes to the horrible pit, and revealed the teeth of the frightful
dragon that was ready to pounce upon me, but it opened no way for my
escape. I have often wished myself a beast, or a bird—anything, rather
than a slave. I was wretched and gloomy, beyond my ability to describe.
I was too thoughtful to be happy. It was this everlasting thinking
which distressed and tormented me; and yet there was no getting rid of
the subject of my thoughts. All nature was redolent of it. Once
awakened by the silver trump of knowledge, my spirit was roused to
eternal wakefulness. Liberty! the inestimable birthright of every man,
had, for me, converted every object into an asserter of this great
right. It was heard in every sound, and beheld in every object. It was
ever present, to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. The
more beautiful and charming were the smiles of nature, the more
horrible and desolate was my condition. I saw nothing without seeing
it, and I heard nothing without hearing it. I do not exaggerate, when I
say, that it looked from every star, smiled in every calm, breathed in
every wind, and moved in every storm.

I have no doubt that my state of mind had something to do with the
change in the treatment adopted, by my once kind mistress toward me. I
can easily believe, that my leaden, downcast, and discontented look,
was very offensive to her. Poor lady! She did not know my trouble, and
I dared not tell her. Could I have freely made her acquainted with the
real state of my mind, and given her the reasons therefor, it might
have been well for both of us. Her abuse of me fell upon me like the
blows of the false prophet upon his ass; she did not know that an
_angel_ stood in the way; and—such is the relation of master and slave
I could not tell her. Nature had made us _friends;_ slavery made us
_enemies_. My interests were in a direction opposite to hers, and we
both had our private thoughts and plans. She aimed to keep me ignorant;
and I resolved to know, although knowledge only increased my
discontent. My feelings were not the result of any marked cruelty in
the treatment I received; they sprung from the consideration of my
being a slave at all. It was _slavery_—not its mere _incidents_—that I
hated. I had been cheated. I saw through the attempt to keep me in
ignorance; I saw that slaveholders would have gladly made me believe
that they were merely acting under the authority of God, in making a
slave of me, and in making slaves of others; and I treated them as
robbers and deceivers. The feeding and clothing me well, could not
atone for taking my liberty from me. The smiles of my mistress could
not remove the deep sorrow that dwelt in my young bosom. Indeed, these,
in time, came only to deepen my sorrow. She had changed; and the reader
will see that I had changed, too. We were both victims to the same
overshadowing evil—_she_, as mistress, I, as slave. I will not censure
her harshly; she cannot censure me, for she knows I speak but the
truth, and have acted in my opposition to slavery, just as she herself
would have acted, in a reverse of circumstances.




CHAPTER XII. _Religious Nature Awakened_


ABOLITIONISTS SPOKEN OF—MY EAGERNESS TO KNOW WHAT THIS WORD MEANT—MY
CONSULTATION OF THE DICTIONARY—INCENDIARY INFORMATION—HOW AND WHERE
DERIVED—THE ENIGMA SOLVED—NATHANIEL TURNER’S INSURRECTION—THE
CHOLERA—RELIGION—FIRST AWAKENED BY A METHODIST MINISTER NAMED HANSON—MY
DEAR AND GOOD OLD COLORED FRIEND, LAWSON—HIS CHARACTER AND
OCCUPATION—HIS INFLUENCE OVER ME—OUR MUTUAL ATTACHMENT—THE COMFORT I
DERIVED FROM HIS TEACHING—NEW HOPES AND ASPIRATIONS—HEAVENLY LIGHT
AMIDST EARTHLY DARKNESS—THE TWO IRISHMEN ON THE WHARF—THEIR
CONVERSATION—HOW I LEARNED TO WRITE—WHAT WERE MY AIMS.


Whilst in the painful state of mind described in the foregoing chapter,
almost regretting my very existence, because doomed to a life of
bondage, so goaded and so wretched, at times, that I was even tempted
to destroy my own life, I was keenly sensitive and eager to know any,
and every thing that transpired, having any relation to the subject of
slavery. I was all ears, all eyes, whenever the words _slave, slavery_,
dropped from the lips of any white person, and the occasions were not
unfrequent when these words became leading ones, in high, social
debate, at our house. Every little while, I could hear Master Hugh, or
some of his company, speaking with much warmth and excitement about
_“abolitionists.”_ Of _who_ or _what_ these were, I was totally
ignorant. I found, however, that whatever they might be, they were most
cordially hated and soundly abused by slaveholders, of every grade. I
very soon discovered, too, that slavery was, in some sort, under
consideration, whenever the abolitionists were alluded to. This made
the term a very interesting one to me. If a slave, for instance, had
made good his escape from slavery, it was generally alleged, that he
had been persuaded and assisted by the abolitionists. If, also, a slave
killed his master—as was sometimes the case—or struck down his
overseer, or set fire to his master’s dwelling, or committed any
violence or crime, out of the common way, it was certain to be said,
that such a crime was the legitimate fruits of the abolition movement.
Hearing such charges often repeated, I, naturally enough, received the
impression that abolition—whatever else it might be—could not be
unfriendly to the slave, nor very friendly to the slaveholder. I
therefore set about finding out, if possible, _who_ and _what_ the
abolitionists were, and _why_ they were so obnoxious to the
slaveholders. The dictionary afforded me very little help. It taught me
that abolition was the “act of abolishing;” but it left me in ignorance
at the very point where I most wanted information—and that was, as to
the _thing_ to be abolished. A city newspaper, the _Baltimore
American_, gave me the incendiary information denied me by the
dictionary. In its columns I found, that, on a certain day, a vast
number of petitions and memorials had been presented to congress,
praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and
for the abolition of the slave trade between the states of the Union.
This was enough. The vindictive bitterness, the marked caution, the
studied reverse, and the cumbrous ambiguity, practiced by our white
folks, when alluding to this subject, was now fully explained. Ever,
after that, when I heard the words “abolition,” or “abolition
movement,” mentioned, I felt the matter one of a personal concern; and
I drew near to listen, when I could do so, without seeming too
solicitous and prying. There was HOPE in those words. Ever and anon,
too, I could see some terrible denunciation of slavery, in our
papers—copied from abolition papers at the north—and the injustice of
such denunciation commented on. These I read with avidity. I had a deep
satisfaction in the thought, that the rascality of slaveholders was not
concealed from the eyes of the world, and that I was not alone in
abhorring the cruelty and brutality of slavery. A still deeper train of
thought was stirred. I saw that there was _fear_, as well as _rage_, in
the manner of speaking of the abolitionists. The latter, therefore, I
was compelled to regard as having some power in the country; and I felt
that they might, possibly, succeed in their designs. When I met with a
slave to whom I deemed it safe to talk on the subject, I would impart
to him so much of the mystery as I had been able to penetrate. Thus,
the light of this grand movement broke in upon my mind, by degrees; and
I must say, that, ignorant as I then was of the philosophy of that
movement, I believe in it from the first—and I believed in it, partly,
because I saw that it alarmed the consciences of slaveholders. The
insurrection of Nathaniel Turner had been quelled, but the alarm and
terror had not subsided. The cholera was on its way, and the thought
was present, that God was angry with the white people because of their
slaveholding wickedness, and, therefore, his judgments were abroad in
the land. It was impossible for me not to hope much from the abolition
movement, when I saw it supported by the Almighty, and armed with
DEATH!

Previous to my contemplation of the anti-slavery movement, and its
probable results, my mind had been seriously awakened to the subject of
religion. I was not more than thirteen years old, when I felt the need
of God, as a father and protector. My religious nature was awakened by
the preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson. He thought
that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight
of God; that they were, by nature, rebels against His government; and
that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God, through
Christ. I cannot say that I had a very distinct notion of what was
required of me; but one thing I knew very well—I was wretched, and had
no means of making myself otherwise. Moreover, I knew that I could pray
for light. I consulted a good colored man, named Charles Johnson; and,
in tones of holy affection, he told me to pray, and what to pray for. I
was, for weeks, a poor, brokenhearted mourner, traveling through the
darkness and misery of doubts and fears. I finally found that change of
heart which comes by “casting all one’s care” upon God, and by having
faith in Jesus Christ, as the Redeemer, Friend, and Savior of those who
diligently seek Him.

After this, I saw the world in a new light. I seemed to live in a new
world, surrounded by new objects, and to be animated by new hopes and
desires. I loved all mankind—slaveholders not excepted; though I
abhorred slavery more than ever. My great concern was, now, to have the
world converted. The desire for knowledge increased, and especially did
I want a thorough acquaintance with the contents of the bible. I have
gathered scattered pages from this holy book, from the filthy street
gutters of Baltimore, and washed and dried them, that in the moments of
my leisure, I might get a word or two of wisdom from them. While thus
religiously seeking knowledge, I became acquainted with a good old
colored man, named Lawson. A more devout man than he, I never saw. He
drove a dray for Mr. James Ramsey, the owner of a rope-walk on Fell’s
Point, Baltimore. This man not only prayed three time a day, but he
prayed as he walked through the streets, at his work—on his dray
everywhere. His life was a life of prayer, and his words (when he spoke
to his friends,) were about a better world. Uncle Lawson lived near
Master Hugh’s house; and, becoming deeply attached to the old man, I
went often with him to prayer-meeting, and spent much of my leisure
time with him on Sunday. The old man could read a little, and I was a
great help to him, in making out the hard words, for I was a better
reader than he. I could teach him _“the letter,”_ but he could teach me
_“the spirit;”_ and high, refreshing times we had together, in singing,
praying and glorifying God. These meetings with Uncle Lawson went on
for a long time, without the knowledge of Master Hugh or my mistress.
Both knew, however, that I had become religious, and they seemed to
respect my conscientious piety. My mistress was still a professor of
religion, and belonged to class. Her leader was no less a person than
the Rev. Beverly Waugh, the presiding elder, and now one of the bishops
of the Methodist Episcopal church. Mr. Waugh was then stationed over
Wilk street church. I am careful to state these facts, that the reader
may be able to form an idea of the precise influences which had to do
with shaping and directing my mind.

In view of the cares and anxieties incident to the life she was then
leading, and, especially, in view of the separation from religious
associations to which she was subjected, my mistress had, as I have
before stated, become lukewarm, and needed to be looked up by her
leader. This brought Mr. Waugh to our house, and gave me an opportunity
to hear him exhort and pray. But my chief instructor, in matters of
religion, was Uncle Lawson. He was my spiritual father; and I loved him
intensely, and was at his house every chance I got.

This pleasure was not long allowed me. Master Hugh became averse to my
going to Father Lawson’s, and threatened to whip me if I ever went
there again. I now felt myself persecuted by a wicked man; and I
_would_ go to Father Lawson’s, notwithstanding the threat. The good old
man had told me, that the “Lord had a great work for me to do;” and I
must prepare to do it; and that he had been shown that I must preach
the gospel. His words made a deep impression on my mind, and I verily
felt that some such work was before me, though I could not see _how_ I
should ever engage in its performance. “The good Lord,” he said, “would
bring it to pass in his own good time,” and that I must go on reading
and studying the scriptures. The advice and the suggestions of Uncle
Lawson, were not without their influence upon my character and destiny.
He threw my thoughts into a channel from which they have never entirely
diverged. He fanned my already intense love of knowledge into a flame,
by assuring me that I was to be a useful man in the world. When I would
say to him, “How can these things be and what can _I_ do?” his simple
reply was, _“Trust in the Lord.”_ When I told him that “I was a slave,
and a slave FOR LIFE,” he said, “the Lord can make you free, my dear.
All things are possible with him, only _have faith in God.”_ “Ask, and
it shall be given.” “If you want liberty,” said the good old man, “ask
the Lord for it, _in faith_, AND HE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU.”

Thus assured, and cheered on, under the inspiration of hope, I worked
and prayed with a light heart, believing that my life was under the
guidance of a wisdom higher than my own. With all other blessings
sought at the mercy seat, I always prayed that God would, of His great
mercy, and in His own good time, deliver me from my bondage.

I went, one day, on the wharf of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen
unloading a large scow of stone, or ballast I went on board, unasked,
and helped them. When we had finished the work, one of the men came to
me, aside, and asked me a number of questions, and among them, if I
were a slave. I told him “I was a slave, and a slave for life.” The
good Irishman gave his shoulders a shrug, and seemed deeply affected by
the statement. He said, “it was a pity so fine a little fellow as
myself should be a slave for life.” They both had much to say about the
matter, and expressed the deepest sympathy with me, and the most
decided hatred of slavery. They went so far as to tell me that I ought
to run away, and go to the north; that I should find friends there, and
that I would be as free as anybody. I, however, pretended not to be
interested in what they said, for I feared they might be treacherous.
White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and then—to
get the reward—they have kidnapped them, and returned them to their
masters. And while I mainly inclined to the notion that these men were
honest and meant me no ill, I feared it might be otherwise. I
nevertheless remembered their words and their advice, and looked
forward to an escape to the north, as a possible means of gaining the
liberty for which my heart panted. It was not my enslavement, at the
then present time, that most affected me; the being a slave _for life_,
was the saddest thought. I was too young to think of running away
immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, before going, as
I might have occasion to write my own pass. I now not only had the hope
of freedom, but a foreshadowing of the means by which I might, some
day, gain that inestimable boon. Meanwhile, I resolved to add to my
educational attainments the art of writing.

After this manner I began to learn to write: I was much in the ship
yard—Master Hugh’s, and that of Durgan & Bailey—and I observed that the
carpenters, after hewing and getting a piece of timber ready for use,
wrote on it the initials of the name of that part of the ship for which
it was intended. When, for instance, a piece of timber was ready for
the starboard side, it was marked with a capital “S.” A piece for the
larboard side was marked “L;” larboard forward, “L. F.;” larboard aft,
was marked “L. A.;” starboard aft, “S. A.;” and starboard forward “S.
F.” I soon learned these letters, and for what they were placed on the
timbers.

My work was now, to keep fire under the steam box, and to watch the
ship yard while the carpenters had gone to dinner. This interval gave
me a fine opportunity for copying the letters named. I soon astonished
myself with the ease with which I made the letters; and the thought was
soon present, “if I can make four, I can make more.” But having made
these easily, when I met boys about Bethel church, or any of our
play-grounds, I entered the lists with them in the art of writing, and
would make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and
ask them to “beat that if they could.” With playmates for my teachers,
fences and pavements for my copy books, and chalk for my pen and ink, I
learned the art of writing. I, however, afterward adopted various
methods of improving my hand. The most successful, was copying the
_italics_ in Webster’s spelling book, until I could make them all
without looking on the book. By this time, my little “Master Tommy” had
grown to be a big boy, and had written over a number of copy books, and
brought them home. They had been shown to the neighbors, had elicited
due praise, and were now laid carefully away. Spending my time between
the ship yard and house, I was as often the lone keeper of the latter
as of the former. When my mistress left me in charge of the house, I
had a grand time; I got Master Tommy’s copy books and a pen and ink,
and, in the ample spaces between the lines, I wrote other lines, as
nearly like his as possible. The process was a tedious one, and I ran
the risk of getting a flogging for marring the highly prized copy books
of the oldest son. In addition to those opportunities, sleeping, as I
did, in the kitchen loft—a room seldom visited by any of the family—I
got a flour barrel up there, and a chair; and upon the head of that
barrel I have written (or endeavored to write) copying from the bible
and the Methodist hymn book, and other books which had accumulated on
my hands, till late at night, and when all the family were in bed and
asleep. I was supported in my endeavors by renewed advice, and by holy
promises from the good Father Lawson, with whom I continued to meet,
and pray, and read the scriptures. Although Master Hugh was aware of my
going there, I must say, for his credit, that he never executed his
threat to whip me, for having thus, innocently, employed-my leisure
time.




CHAPTER XIII. _The Vicissitudes of Slave Life_


DEATH OF OLD MASTER’S SON RICHARD, SPEEDILY FOLLOWED BY THAT OF OLD
MASTER—VALUATION AND DIVISION OF ALL THE PROPERTY, INCLUDING THE
SLAVES—MY PRESENCE REQUIRED AT HILLSBOROUGH TO BE APPRAISED AND
ALLOTTED TO A NEW OWNER—MY SAD PROSPECTS AND GRIEF—PARTING—THE UTTER
POWERLESSNESS OF THE SLAVES TO DECIDE THEIR OWN DESTINY—A GENERAL DREAD
OF MASTER ANDREW—HIS WICKEDNESS AND CRUELTY—MISS LUCRETIA MY NEW
OWNER—MY RETURN TO BALTIMORE—JOY UNDER THE ROOF OF MASTER HUGH—DEATH OF
MRS. LUCRETIA—MY POOR OLD GRANDMOTHER—HER SAD FATE—THE LONE COT IN THE
WOODS—MASTER THOMAS AULD’S SECOND MARRIAGE—AGAIN REMOVED FROM MASTER
HUGH’S—REASONS FOR REGRETTING THE CHANGE—A PLAN OF ESCAPE ENTERTAINED.


I must now ask the reader to go with me a little back in point of time,
in my humble story, and to notice another circumstance that entered
into my slavery experience, and which, doubtless, has had a share in
deepening my horror of slavery, and increasing my hostility toward
those men and measures that practically uphold the slave system.

It has already been observed, that though I was, after my removal from
Col. Lloyd’s plantation, in _form_ the slave of Master Hugh, I was, in
_fact_, and in _law_, the slave of my old master, Capt. Anthony. Very
well.

In a very short time after I went to Baltimore, my old master’s
youngest son, Richard, died; and, in three years and six months after
his death, my old master himself died, leaving only his son, Andrew,
and his daughter, Lucretia, to share his estate. The old man died while
on a visit to his daughter, in Hillsborough, where Capt. Auld and Mrs.
Lucretia now lived. The former, having given up the command of Col.
Lloyd’s sloop, was now keeping a store in that town.

Cut off, thus unexpectedly, Capt. Anthony died intestate; and his
property must now be equally divided between his two children, Andrew
and Lucretia.

The valuation and the division of slaves, among contending heirs, is an
important incident in slave life. The character and tendencies of the
heirs, are generally well understood among the slaves who are to be
divided, and all have their aversions and preferences. But, neither
their aversions nor their preferences avail them anything.

On the death of old master, I was immediately sent for, to be valued
and divided with the other property. Personally, my concern was,
mainly, about my possible removal from the home of Master Hugh, which,
after that of my grandmother, was the most endeared to me. But, the
whole thing, as a feature of slavery, shocked me. It furnished me anew
insight into the unnatural power to which I was subjected. My
detestation of slavery, already great, rose with this new conception of
its enormity.

That was a sad day for me, a sad day for little Tommy, and a sad day
for my dear Baltimore mistress and teacher, when I left for the Eastern
Shore, to be valued and divided. We, all three, wept bitterly that day;
for we might be parting, and we feared we were parting, forever. No one
could tell among which pile of chattels I should be flung. Thus early,
I got a foretaste of that painful uncertainty which slavery brings to
the ordinary lot of mortals. Sickness, adversity and death may
interfere with the plans and purposes of all; but the slave has the
added danger of changing homes, changing hands, and of having
separations unknown to other men. Then, too, there was the intensified
degradation of the spectacle. What an assemblage! Men and women, young
and old, married and single; moral and intellectual beings, in open
contempt of their humanity, level at a blow with horses, sheep, horned
cattle and swine! Horses and men—cattle and women—pigs and children—all
holding the same rank in the scale of social existence; and all
subjected to the same narrow inspection, to ascertain their value in
gold and silver—the only standard of worth applied by slaveholders to
slaves! How vividly, at that moment, did the brutalizing power of
slavery flash before me! Personality swallowed up in the sordid idea of
property! Manhood lost in chattelhood!

After the valuation, then came the division. This was an hour of high
excitement and distressing anxiety. Our destiny was now to be _fixed
for life_, and we had no more voice in the decision of the question,
than the oxen and cows that stood chewing at the haymow. One word from
the appraisers, against all preferences or prayers, was enough to
sunder all the ties of friendship and affection, and even to separate
husbands and wives, parents and children. We were all appalled before
that power, which, to human seeming, could bless or blast us in a
moment. Added to the dread of separation, most painful to the majority
of the slaves, we all had a decided horror of the thought of falling
into the hands of Master Andrew. He was distinguished for cruelty and
intemperance.

Slaves generally dread to fall into the hands of drunken owners. Master
Andrew was almost a confirmed sot, and had already, by his reckless
mismanagement and profligate dissipation, wasted a large portion of old
master’s property. To fall into his hands, was, therefore, considered
merely as the first step toward being sold away to the far south. He
would spend his fortune in a few years, and his farms and slaves would
be sold, we thought, at public outcry; and we should be hurried away to
the cotton fields, and rice swamps, of the sunny south. This was the
cause of deep consternation.

The people of the north, and free people generally, I think, have less
attachment to the places where they are born and brought up, than have
the slaves. Their freedom to go and come, to be here and there, as they
list, prevents any extravagant attachment to any one particular place,
in their case. On the other hand, the slave is a fixture; he has no
choice, no goal, no destination; but is pegged down to a single spot,
and must take root here, or nowhere. The idea of removal elsewhere,
comes, generally, in the shape of a threat, and in punishment of crime.
It is, therefore, attended with fear and dread. A slave seldom thinks
of bettering his condition by being sold, and hence he looks upon
separation from his native place, with none of the enthusiasm which
animates the bosoms of young freemen, when they contemplate a life in
the far west, or in some distant country where they intend to rise to
wealth and distinction. Nor can those from whom they separate, give
them up with that cheerfulness with which friends and relations yield
each other up, when they feel that it is for the good of the departing
one that he is removed from his native place. Then, too, there is
correspondence, and there is, at least, the hope of reunion, because
reunion is _possible_. But, with the slave, all these mitigating
circumstances are wanting. There is no improvement in his condition
_probable_,—no correspondence _possible_,—no reunion attainable. His
going out into the world, is like a living man going into the tomb,
who, with open eyes, sees himself buried out of sight and hearing of
wife, children and friends of kindred tie.

In contemplating the likelihoods and possibilities of our
circumstances, I probably suffered more than most of my fellow
servants. I had known what it was to experience kind, and even tender
treatment; they had known nothing of the sort. Life, to them, had been
rough and thorny, as well as dark. They had—most of them—lived on my
old master’s farm in Tuckahoe, and had felt the reign of Mr. Plummer’s
rule. The overseer had written his character on the living parchment of
most of their backs, and left them callous; my back (thanks to my early
removal from the plantation to Baltimore) was yet tender. I had left a
kind mistress at Baltimore, who was almost a mother to me. She was in
tears when we parted, and the probabilities of ever seeing her again,
trembling in the balance as they did, could not be viewed without alarm
and agony. The thought of leaving that kind mistress forever, and,
worse still, of being the slave of Andrew Anthony—a man who, but a few
days before the division of the property, had, in my presence, seized
my brother Perry by the throat, dashed him on the ground, and with the
heel of his boot stamped him on the head, until the blood gushed from
his nose and ears—was terrible! This fiendish proceeding had no better
apology than the fact, that Perry had gone to play, when Master Andrew
wanted him for some trifling service. This cruelty, too, was of a piece
with his general character. After inflicting his heavy blows on my
brother, on observing me looking at him with intense astonishment, he
said, “_That_ is the way I will serve you, one of these days;” meaning,
no doubt, when I should come into his possession. This threat, the
reader may well suppose, was not very tranquilizing to my feelings. I
could see that he really thirsted to get hold of me. But I was there
only for a few days. I had not received any orders, and had violated
none, and there was, therefore, no excuse for flogging me.

At last, the anxiety and suspense were ended; and they ended, thanks to
a kind Providence, in accordance with my wishes. I fell to the portion
of Mrs. Lucretia—the dear lady who bound up my head, when the savage
Aunt Katy was adding to my sufferings her bitterest maledictions.

Capt. Thomas Auld and Mrs. Lucretia at once decided on my return to
Baltimore. They knew how sincerely and warmly Mrs. Hugh Auld was
attached to me, and how delighted Mr. Hugh’s son would be to have me
back; and, withal, having no immediate use for one so young, they
willingly let me off to Baltimore.

I need not stop here to narrate my joy on returning to Baltimore, nor
that of little Tommy; nor the tearful joy of his mother; nor the
evident saticfaction(sic) of Master Hugh. I was just one month absent
from Baltimore, before the matter was decided; and the time really
seemed full six months.

One trouble over, and on comes another. The slave’s life is full of
uncertainty. I had returned to Baltimore but a short time, when the
tidings reached me, that my friend, Mrs. Lucretia, who was only second
in my regard to Mrs. Hugh Auld, was dead, leaving her husband and only
one child—a daughter, named Amanda.

Shortly after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, strange to say, Master Andrew
died, leaving his wife and one child. Thus, the whole family of
Anthonys was swept away; only two children remained. All this happened
within five years of my leaving Col. Lloyd’s.

No alteration took place in the condition of the slaves, in consequence
of these deaths, yet I could not help feeling less secure, after the
death of my friend, Mrs. Lucretia, than I had done during her life.
While she lived, I felt that I had a strong friend to plead for me in
any emergency. Ten years ago, while speaking of the state of things in
our family, after the events just named, I used this language:

Now all the property of my old master, slaves included, was in the
hands of strangers—strangers who had nothing to do in accumulating it.
Not a slave was left free. All remained slaves, from youngest to
oldest. If any one thing in my experience, more than another, served to
deepen my conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill
me with unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base
ingratitude to my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master
faithfully from youth to old age. She had been the source of all his
wealth; she had peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a
great-grandmother in his service. She had rocked him in infancy,
attended him in childhood, served him through life, and at his death
wiped from his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes
forever. She was nevertheless left a slave—a slave for life—a slave in
the hands of strangers; and in their hands she saw her children, her
grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren, divided, like so many
sheep, without being gratified with the small privilege of a single
word, as to their or her own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their
base ingratitude and fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now
very old, having outlived my old master and all his children, having
seen the beginning and end of all of them, and her present owners
finding she was of but little value, her frame already racked with the
pains of old age, and complete helplessness fast stealing over her once
active limbs, they took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put
up a little mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of
supporting herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning
her out to die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to
suffer in utter loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the
loss of children, the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of
great-grandchildren. They are, in the language of the slave’s poet,
Whittier—

Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever-demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air:—
          Gone, gone, sold and gone
          To the rice swamp dank and lone,
          From Virginia hills and waters—
          Woe is me, my stolen daughters!


The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who
once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in
the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her
children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the
screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And
now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head
inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence
meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together—at this
time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that
tenderness and affection which children only can exercise toward a
declining parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve
children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim
embers.

Two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas married his
second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton, the eldest daughter of Mr.
William Hamilton, a rich slaveholder on the Eastern Shore of Maryland,
who lived about five miles from St. Michael’s, the then place of my
master’s residence.

Not long after his marriage, Master Thomas had a misunderstanding with
Master Hugh, and, as a means of punishing his brother, he ordered him
to send me home.

As the ground of misunderstanding will serve to illustrate the
character of southern chivalry, and humanity, I will relate it.

Among the children of my Aunt Milly, was a daughter, named Henny. When
quite a child, Henny had fallen into the fire, and burnt her hands so
bad that they were of very little use to her. Her fingers were drawn
almost into the palms of her hands. She could make out to do something,
but she was considered hardly worth the having—of little more value
than a horse with a broken leg. This unprofitable piece of human
property, ill shapen, and disfigured, Capt. Auld sent off to Baltimore,
making his brother Hugh welcome to her services.

After giving poor Henny a fair trial, Master Hugh and his wife came to
the conclusion, that they had no use for the crippled servant, and they
sent her back to Master Thomas. Thus, the latter took as an act of
ingratitude, on the part of his brother; and, as a mark of his
displeasure, he required him to send me immediately to St. Michael’s,
saying, if he cannot keep _“Hen,”_ he shall not have _“Fred.”_

Here was another shock to my nerves, another breaking up of my plans,
and another severance of my religious and social alliances. I was now a
big boy. I had become quite useful to several young colored men, who
had made me their teacher. I had taught some of them to read, and was
accustomed to spend many of my leisure hours with them. Our attachment
was strong, and I greatly dreaded the separation. But regrets,
especially in a slave, are unavailing. I was only a slave; my wishes
were nothing, and my happiness was the sport of my masters.

My regrets at now leaving Baltimore, were not for the same reasons as
when I before left that city, to be valued and handed over to my proper
owner. My home was not now the pleasant place it had formerly been. A
change had taken place, both in Master Hugh, and in his once pious and
affectionate wife. The influence of brandy and bad company on him, and
the influence of slavery and social isolation upon her, had wrought
disastrously upon the characters of both. Thomas was no longer “little
Tommy,” but was a big boy, and had learned to assume the airs of his
class toward me. My condition, therefore, in the house of Master Hugh,
was not, by any means, so comfortable as in former years. My
attachments were now outside of our family. They were felt to those to
whom I _imparted_ instruction, and to those little white boys from whom
I _received_ instruction. There, too, was my dear old father, the pious
Lawson, who was, in christian graces, the very counterpart of “Uncle”
Tom. The resemblance is so perfect, that he might have been the
original of Mrs. Stowe’s christian hero. The thought of leaving these
dear friends, greatly troubled me, for I was going without the hope of
ever returning to Baltimore again; the feud between Master Hugh and his
brother being bitter and irreconcilable, or, at least, supposed to be
so.

In addition to thoughts of friends from whom I was parting, as I
supposed, _forever_, I had the grief of neglected chances of escape to
brood over. I had put off running away, until now I was to be placed
where the opportunities for escaping were much fewer than in a large
city like Baltimore.

On my way from Baltimore to St. Michael’s, down the Chesapeake bay, our
sloop—the “Amanda”—was passed by the steamers plying between that city
and Philadelphia, and I watched the course of those steamers, and,
while going to St. Michael’s, I formed a plan to escape from slavery;
of which plan, and matters connected therewith the kind reader shall
learn more hereafter.




CHAPTER XIV. _Experience in St. Michael’s_


THE VILLAGE—ITS INHABITANTS—THEIR OCCUPATION AND LOW PROPENSITIES
CAPTAN(sic) THOMAS AULD—HIS CHARACTER—HIS SECOND WIFE, ROWENA—WELL
MATCHED—SUFFERINGS FROM HUNGER—OBLIGED TO TAKE FOOD—MODE OF ARGUMENT IN
VINDICATION THEREOF—NO MORAL CODE OF FREE SOCIETY CAN APPLY TO SLAVE
SOCIETY—SOUTHERN CAMP MEETING—WHAT MASTER THOMAS DID
THERE—HOPES—SUSPICIONS ABOUT HIS CONVERSION—THE RESULT—FAITH AND WORKS
ENTIRELY AT VARIANCE—HIS RISE AND PROGRESS IN THE CHURCH—POOR COUSIN
“HENNY”—HIS TREATMENT OF HER—THE METHODIST PREACHERS—THEIR UTTER
DISREGARD OF US—ONE EXCELLENT EXCEPTION—REV. GEORGE COOKMAN—SABBATH
SCHOOL—HOW BROKEN UP AND BY WHOM—A FUNERAL PALL CAST OVER ALL MY
PROSPECTS—COVEY THE NEGRO-BREAKER.


St. Michael’s, the village in which was now my new home, compared
favorably with villages in slave states, generally. There were a few
comfortable dwellings in it, but the place, as a whole, wore a dull,
slovenly, enterprise-forsaken aspect. The mass of the buildings were
wood; they had never enjoyed the artificial adornment of paint, and
time and storms had worn off the bright color of the wood, leaving them
almost as black as buildings charred by a conflagration.

St. Michael’s had, in former years, (previous to 1833, for that was the
year I went to reside there,) enjoyed some reputation as a ship
building community, but that business had almost entirely given place
to oyster fishing, for the Baltimore and Philadelphia markets—a course
of life highly unfavorable to morals, industry, and manners. Miles
river was broad, and its oyster fishing grounds were extensive; and the
fishermen were out, often, all day, and a part of the night, during
autumn, winter and spring. This exposure was an excuse for carrying
with them, in considerable quanties(sic), spirituous liquors, the then
supposed best antidote for cold. Each canoe was supplied with its jug
of rum; and tippling, among this class of the citizens of St.
Michael’s, became general. This drinking habit, in an ignorant
population, fostered coarseness, vulgarity and an indolent disregard
for the social improvement of the place, so that it was admitted, by
the few sober, thinking people who remained there, that St. Michael’s
had become a very _unsaintly_, as well as unsightly place, before I
went there to reside.

I left Baltimore for St. Michael’s in the month of March, 1833. I know
the year, because it was the one succeeding the first cholera in
Baltimore, and was the year, also, of that strange phenomenon, when the
heavens seemed about to part with its starry train. I witnessed this
gorgeous spectacle, and was awe-struck. The air seemed filled with
bright, descending messengers from the sky. It was about daybreak when
I saw this sublime scene. I was not without the suggestion, at the
moment, that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of Man;
and, in my then state of mind, I was prepared to hail Him as my friend
and deliverer. I had read, that the “stars shall fall from heaven”; and
they were now falling. I was suffering much in my mind. It did seem
that every time the young tendrils of my affection became attached,
they were rudely broken by some unnatural outside power; and I was
beginning to look away to heaven for the rest denied me on earth.

But, to my story. It was now more than seven years since I had lived
with Master Thomas Auld, in the family of my old master, on Col.
Lloyd’s plantation. We were almost entire strangers to each other; for,
when I knew him at the house of my old master, it was not as a
_master_, but simply as “Captain Auld,” who had married old master’s
daughter. All my lessons concerning his temper and disposition, and the
best methods of pleasing him, were yet to be learnt. Slaveholders,
however, are not very ceremonious in approaching a slave; and my
ignorance of the new material in shape of a master was but transient.
Nor was my mistress long in making known her animus. She was not a
“Miss Lucretia,” traces of whom I yet remembered, and the more
especially, as I saw them shining in the face of little Amanda, her
daughter, now living under a step-mother’s government. I had not
forgotten the soft hand, guided by a tender heart, that bound up with
healing balsam the gash made in my head by Ike, the son of Abel. Thomas
and Rowena, I found to be a well-matched pair. _He_ was stingy, and
_she_ was cruel; and—what was quite natural in such cases—she possessed
the ability to make him as cruel as herself, while she could easily
descend to the level of his meanness. In the house of Master Thomas, I
was made—for the first time in seven years to feel the pinchings of
hunger, and this was not very easy to bear.

For, in all the changes of Master Hugh’s family, there was no change in
the bountifulness with which they supplied me with food. Not to give a
slave enough to eat, is meanness intensified, and it is so recognized
among slaveholders generally, in Maryland. The rule is, no matter how
coarse the food, only let there be enough of it. This is the theory,
and—in the part of Maryland I came from—the general practice accords
with this theory. Lloyd’s plantation was an exception, as was, also,
the house of Master Thomas Auld.

All know the lightness of Indian corn-meal, as an article of food, and
can easily judge from the following facts whether the statements I have
made of the stinginess of Master Thomas, are borne out. There were four
slaves of us in the kitchen, and four whites in the great house Thomas
Auld, Mrs. Auld, Hadaway Auld (brother of Thomas Auld) and little
Amanda. The names of the slaves in the kitchen, were Eliza, my sister;
Priscilla, my aunt; Henny, my cousin; and myself. There were eight
persons in the family. There was, each week, one half bushel of
corn-meal brought from the mill; and in the kitchen, corn-meal was
almost our exclusive food, for very little else was allowed us. Out of
this bushel of corn-meal, the family in the great house had a small
loaf every morning; thus leaving us, in the kitchen, with not quite a
half a peck per week, apiece. This allowance was less than half the
allowance of food on Lloyd’s plantation. It was not enough to subsist
upon; and we were, therefore, reduced to the wretched necessity of
living at the expense of our neighbors. We were compelled either to
beg, or to steal, and we did both. I frankly confess, that while I
hated everything like stealing, _as such_, I nevertheless did not
hesitate to take food, when I was hungry, wherever I could find it. Nor
was this practice the mere result of an unreasoning instinct; it was,
in my case, the result of a clear apprehension of the claims of
morality. I weighed and considered the matter closely, before I
ventured to satisfy my hunger by such means. Considering that my labor
and person were the property of Master Thomas, and that I was by him
deprived of the necessaries of life necessaries obtained by my own
labor—it was easy to deduce the right to supply myself with what was my
own. It was simply appropriating what was my own to the use of my
master, since the health and strength derived from such food were
exerted in _his_ service. To be sure, this was stealing, according to
the law and gospel I heard from St. Michael’s pulpit; but I had already
begun to attach less importance to what dropped from that quarter, on
that point, while, as yet, I retained my reverence for religion. It was
not always convenient to steal from master, and the same reason why I
might, innocently, steal from him, did not seem to justify me in
stealing from others. In the case of my master, it was only a question
of _removal_—the taking his meat out of one tub, and putting it into
another; the ownership of the meat was not affected by the transaction.
At first, he owned it in the _tub_, and last, he owned it in _me_. His
meat house was not always open. There was a strict watch kept on that
point, and the key was on a large bunch in Rowena’s pocket. A great
many times have we, poor creatures, been severely pinched with hunger,
when meat and bread have been moulding under the lock, while the key
was in the pocket of our mistress. This had been so when she _knew_ we
were nearly half starved; and yet, that mistress, with saintly air,
would kneel with her husband, and pray each morning that a merciful God
would bless them in basket and in store, and save them, at last, in his
kingdom. But I proceed with the argument.

It was necessary that right to steal from _others_ should be
established; and this could only rest upon a wider range of
generalization than that which supposed the right to steal from my
master.

It was sometime before I arrived at this clear right. The reader will
get some idea of my train of reasoning, by a brief statement of the
case. “I am,” thought I, “not only the slave of Thomas, but I am the
slave of society at large. Society at large has bound itself, in form
and in fact, to assist Master Thomas in robbing me of my rightful
liberty, and of the just reward of my labor; therefore, whatever rights
I have against Master Thomas, I have, equally, against those
confederated with him in robbing me of liberty. As society has marked
me out as privileged plunder, on the principle of self-preservation I
am justified in plundering in turn. Since each slave belongs to all;
all must, therefore, belong to each.”

I shall here make a profession of faith which may shock some, offend
others, and be dissented from by all. It is this: Within the bounds of
his just earnings, I hold that the slave is fully justified in helping
himself to the _gold and silver, and the best apparel of his master, or
that of any other slaveholder; and that such taking is not stealing in
any just sense of that word_.

The morality of _free_ society can have no application to _slave_
society. Slaveholders have made it almost impossible for the slave to
commit any crime, known either to the laws of God or to the laws of
man. If he steals, he takes his own; if he kills his master, he
imitates only the heroes of the revolution. Slaveholders I hold to be
individually and collectively responsible for all the evils which grow
out of the horrid relation, and I believe they will be so held at the
judgment, in the sight of a just God. Make a man a slave, and you rob
him of moral responsibility. Freedom of choice is the essence of all
accountability. But my kind readers are, probably, less concerned about
my opinions, than about that which more nearly touches my personal
experience; albeit, my opinions have, in some sort, been formed by that
experience.

Bad as slaveholders are, I have seldom met with one so entirely
destitute of every element of character capable of inspiring respect,
as was my present master, Capt. Thomas Auld.

When I lived with him, I thought him incapable of a noble action. The
leading trait in his character was intense selfishness. I think he was
fully aware of this fact himself, and often tried to conceal it. Capt.
Auld was not a _born_ slaveholder—not a birthright member of the
slaveholding oligarchy. He was only a slaveholder by _marriage-right;_
and, of all slaveholders, these latter are, _by far_, the most
exacting. There was in him all the love of domination, the pride of
mastery, and the swagger of authority, but his rule lacked the vital
element of consistency. He could be cruel; but his methods of showing
it were cowardly, and evinced his meanness rather than his spirit. His
commands were strong, his enforcement weak.

Slaves are not insensible to the whole-souled characteristics of a
generous, dashing slaveholder, who is fearless of consequences; and
they prefer a master of this bold and daring kind—even with the risk of
being shot down for impudence to the fretful, little soul, who never
uses the lash but at the suggestion of a love of gain.

Slaves, too, readily distinguish between the birthright bearing of the
original slaveholder and the assumed attitudes of the accidental
slaveholder; and while they cannot respect either, they certainly
despise the latter more than the former.

The luxury of having slaves wait upon him was something new to Master
Thomas; and for it he was wholly unprepared. He was a slaveholder,
without the ability to hold or manage his slaves. We seldom called him
“master,” but generally addressed him by his “bay craft” title—“_Capt.
Auld_.” It is easy to see that such conduct might do much to make him
appear awkward, and, consequently, fretful. His wife was especially
solicitous to have us call her husband “master.” Is your _master_ at
the store?”—“Where is your _master_?”—“Go and tell your _master”_—“I
will make your _master_ acquainted with your conduct”—she would say;
but we were inapt scholars. Especially were I and my sister Eliza inapt
in this particular. Aunt Priscilla was less stubborn and defiant in her
spirit than Eliza and myself; and, I think, her road was less rough
than ours.

In the month of August, 1833, when I had almost become desperate under
the treatment of Master Thomas, and when I entertained more strongly
than ever the oft-repeated determination to run away, a circumstance
occurred which seemed to promise brighter and better days for us all.
At a Methodist camp-meeting, held in the Bay Side (a famous place for
campmeetings) about eight miles from St. Michael’s, Master Thomas came
out with a profession of religion. He had long been an object of
interest to the church, and to the ministers, as I had seen by the
repeated visits and lengthy exhortations of the latter. He was a fish
quite worth catching, for he had money and standing. In the community
of St. Michael’s he was equal to the best citizen. He was strictly
temperate; _perhaps_, from principle, but most likely, from interest.
There was very little to do for him, to give him the appearance of
piety, and to make him a pillar in the church. Well, the camp-meeting
continued a week; people gathered from all parts of the county, and two
steamboat loads came from Baltimore. The ground was happily chosen;
seats were arranged; a stand erected; a rude altar fenced in, fronting
the preachers’ stand, with straw in it for the accommodation of
mourners. This latter would hold at least one hundred persons. In
front, and on the sides of the preachers’ stand, and outside the long
rows of seats, rose the first class of stately tents, each vieing with
the other in strength, neatness, and capacity for accommodating its
inmates. Behind this first circle of tents was another, less imposing,
which reached round the camp-ground to the speakers’ stand. Outside
this second class of tents were covered wagons, ox carts, and vehicles
of every shape and size. These served as tents to their owners. Outside
of these, huge fires were burning, in all directions, where roasting,
and boiling, and frying, were going on, for the benefit of those who
were attending to their own spiritual welfare within the circle.
_Behind_ the preachers’ stand, a narrow space was marked out for the
use of the colored people. There were no seats provided for this class
of persons; the preachers addressed them, _“over the left,”_ if they
addressed them at all. After the preaching was over, at every service,
an invitation was given to mourners to come into the pen; and, in some
cases, ministers went out to persuade men and women to come in. By one
of these ministers, Master Thomas Auld was persuaded to go inside the
pen. I was deeply interested in that matter, and followed; and, though
colored people were not allowed either in the pen or in front of the
preachers’ stand, I ventured to take my stand at a sort of half-way
place between the blacks and whites, where I could distinctly see the
movements of mourners, and especially the progress of Master Thomas.

“If he has got religion,” thought I, “he will emancipate his slaves;
and if he should not do so much as this, he will, at any rate, behave
toward us more kindly, and feed us more generously than he has
heretofore done.” Appealing to my own religious experience, and judging
my master by what was true in my own case, I could not regard him as
soundly converted, unless some such good results followed his
profession of religion.

But in my expectations I was doubly disappointed; Master Thomas was
_Master Thomas_ still. The fruits of his righteousness were to show
themselves in no such way as I had anticipated. His conversion was not
to change his relation toward men—at any rate not toward BLACK men—but
toward God. My faith, I confess, was not great. There was something in
his appearance that, in my mind, cast a doubt over his conversion.
Standing where I did, I could see his every movement. I watched
narrowly while he remained in the little pen; and although I saw that
his face was extremely red, and his hair disheveled, and though I heard
him groan, and saw a stray tear halting on his cheek, as if inquiring
“which way shall I go?”—I could not wholly confide in the genuineness
of his conversion. The hesitating behavior of that tear-drop and its
loneliness, distressed me, and cast a doubt upon the whole transaction,
of which it was a part. But people said, _“Capt. Auld had come
through,”_ and it was for me to hope for the best. I was bound to do
this, in charity, for I, too, was religious, and had been in the church
full three years, although now I was not more than sixteen years old.
Slaveholders may, sometimes, have confidence in the piety of some of
their slaves; but the slaves seldom have confidence in the piety of
their masters. _“He cant go to heaven with our blood in his skirts_,”
is a settled point in the creed of every slave; rising superior to all
teaching to the contrary, and standing forever as a fixed fact. The
highest evidence the slaveholder can give the slave of his acceptance
with God, is the emancipation of his slaves. This is proof that he is
willing to give up all to God, and for the sake of God. Not to do this,
was, in my estimation, and in the opinion of all the slaves, an
evidence of half-heartedness, and wholly inconsistent with the idea of
genuine conversion. I had read, also, somewhere in the Methodist
Discipline, the following question and answer:

“_Question_. What shall be done for the extirpation of slavery?

“_Answer_. We declare that we are much as ever convinced of the great
evil of slavery; therefore, no slaveholder shall be eligible to any
official station in our church.”

These words sounded in my ears for a long time, and encouraged me to
hope. But, as I have before said, I was doomed to disappointment.
Master Thomas seemed to be aware of my hopes and expectations
concerning him. I have thought, before now, that he looked at me in
answer to my glances, as much as to say, “I will teach you, young man,
that, though I have parted with my sins, I have not parted with my
sense. I shall hold my slaves, and go to heaven too.”

Possibly, to convince us that we must not presume _too much_ upon his
recent conversion, he became rather more rigid and stringent in his
exactions. There always was a scarcity of good nature about the man;
but now his whole countenance was _soured_ over with the seemings of
piety. His religion, therefore, neither made him emancipate his slaves,
nor caused him to treat them with greater humanity. If religion had any
effect on his character at all, it made him more cruel and hateful in
all his ways. The natural wickedness of his heart had not been removed,
but only reinforced, by the profession of religion. Do I judge him
harshly? God forbid. Facts _are_ facts. Capt. Auld made the greatest
profession of piety. His house was, literally, a house of prayer. In
the morning, and in the evening, loud prayers and hymns were heard
there, in which both himself and his wife joined; yet, _no more meal_
was brought from the mill, _no more attention_ was paid to the moral
welfare of the kitchen; and nothing was done to make us feel that the
heart of Master Thomas was one whit better than it was before he went
into the little pen, opposite to the preachers’ stand, on the camp
ground.

Our hopes (founded on the discipline) soon vanished; for the
authorities let him into the church _at once_, and before he was out of
his term of _probation_, I heard of his leading class! He distinguished
himself greatly among the brethren, and was soon an exhorter. His
progress was almost as rapid as the growth of the fabled vine of Jack’s
bean. No man was more active than he, in revivals. He would go many
miles to assist in carrying them on, and in getting outsiders
interested in religion. His house being one of the holiest, if not the
happiest in St. Michael’s, became the “preachers’ home.” These
preachers evidently liked to share Master Thomas’s hospitality; for
while he _starved us_, he _stuffed_ them. Three or four of these
ambassadors of the gospel—according to slavery—have been there at a
time; all living on the fat of the land, while we, in the kitchen, were
nearly starving. Not often did we get a smile of recognition from these
holy men. They seemed almost as unconcerned about our getting to
heaven, as they were about our getting out of slavery. To this general
charge there was one exception—the Rev. GEORGE COOKMAN. Unlike Rev.
Messrs. Storks, Ewry, Hickey, Humphrey and Cooper (all whom were on the
St. Michael’s circuit) he kindly took an interest in our temporal and
spiritual welfare. Our souls and our bodies were all alike sacred in
his sight; and he really had a good deal of genuine anti-slavery
feeling mingled with his colonization ideas. There was not a slave in
our neighborhood that did not love, and almost venerate, Mr. Cookman.
It was pretty generally believed that he had been chiefly instrumental
in bringing one of the largest slaveholders—Mr. Samuel Harrison—in that
neighborhood, to emancipate all his slaves, and, indeed, the general
impression was, that Mr. Cookman had labored faithfully with
slaveholders, whenever he met them, to induce them to emancipate their
bondmen, and that he did this as a religious duty. When this good man
was at our house, we were all sure to be called in to prayers in the
morning; and he was not slow in making inquiries as to the state of our
minds, nor in giving us a word of exhortation and of encouragement.
Great was the sorrow of all the slaves, when this faithful preacher of
the gospel was removed from the Talbot county circuit. He was an
eloquent preacher, and possessed what few ministers, south of Mason
Dixon’s line, possess, or _dare_ to show, viz: a warm and philanthropic
heart. The Mr. Cookman, of whom I speak, was an Englishman by birth,
and perished while on his way to England, on board the ill-fated
“President”. Could the thousands of slaves in Maryland know the fate of
the good man, to whose words of comfort they were so largely indebted,
they would thank me for dropping a tear on this page, in memory of
their favorite preacher, friend and benefactor.

But, let me return to Master Thomas, and to my experience, after his
conversion. In Baltimore, I could, occasionally, get into a Sabbath
school, among the free children, and receive lessons, with the rest;
but, having already learned both to read and to write, I was more of a
teacher than a pupil, even there. When, however, I went back to the
Eastern Shore, and was at the house of Master Thomas, I was neither
allowed to teach, nor to be taught. The whole community—with but a
single exception, among the whites—frowned upon everything like
imparting instruction either to slaves or to free colored persons. That
single exception, a pious young man, named Wilson, asked me, one day,
if I would like to assist him in teaching a little Sabbath school, at
the house of a free colored man in St. Michael’s, named James Mitchell.
The idea was to me a delightful one, and I told him I would gladly
devote as much of my Sabbath as I could command, to that most laudable
work. Mr. Wilson soon mustered up a dozen old spelling books, and a few
testaments; and we commenced operations, with some twenty scholars, in
our Sunday school. Here, thought I, is something worth living for; here
is an excellent chance for usefulness; and I shall soon have a company
of young friends, lovers of knowledge, like some of my Baltimore
friends, from whom I now felt parted forever.

Our first Sabbath passed delightfully, and I spent the week after very
joyously. I could not go to Baltimore, but I could make a little
Baltimore here. At our second meeting, I learned that there was some
objection to the existence of the Sabbath school; and, sure enough, we
had scarcely got at work—_good work_, simply teaching a few colored
children how to read the gospel of the Son of God—when in rushed a mob,
headed by Mr. Wright Fairbanks and Mr. Garrison West—two
class-leaders—and Master Thomas; who, armed with sticks and other
missiles, drove us off, and commanded us never to meet for such a
purpose again. One of this pious crew told me, that as for my part, I
wanted to be another Nat Turner; and if I did not look out, I should
get as many balls into me, as Nat did into him. Thus ended the infant
Sabbath school, in the town of St. Michael’s. The reader will not be
surprised when I say, that the breaking up of my Sabbath school, by
these class-leaders, and professedly holy men, did not serve to
strengthen my religious convictions. The cloud over my St. Michael’s
home grew heavier and blacker than ever.

It was not merely the agency of Master Thomas, in breaking up and
destroying my Sabbath school, that shook my confidence in the power of
southern religion to make men wiser or better; but I saw in him all the
cruelty and meanness, _after_ his conversion, which he had exhibited
before he made a profession of religion. His cruelty and meanness were
especially displayed in his treatment of my unfortunate cousin, Henny,
whose lameness made her a burden to him. I have no extraordinary
personal hard usage toward myself to complain of, against him, but I
have seen him tie up the lame and maimed woman, and whip her in a
manner most brutal, and shocking; and then, with blood-chilling
blasphemy, he would quote the passage of scripture, “That servant which
knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according
to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” Master would keep this
lacerated woman tied up by her wrists, to a bolt in the joist, three,
four and five hours at a time. He would tie her up early in the
morning, whip her with a cowskin before breakfast; leave her tied up;
go to his store, and, returning to his dinner, repeat the castigation;
laying on the rugged lash, on flesh already made raw by repeated blows.
He seemed desirous to get the poor girl out of existence, or, at any
rate, off his hands. In proof of this, he afterwards gave her away to
his sister Sarah (Mrs. Cline) but, as in the case of Master Hugh, Henny
was soon returned on his hands. Finally, upon a pretense that he could
do nothing with her (I use his own words) he “set her adrift, to take
care of herself.” Here was a recently converted man, holding, with
tight grasp, the well-framed, and able bodied slaves left him by old
master—the persons, who, in freedom, could have taken care of
themselves; yet, turning loose the only cripple among them, virtually
to starve and die.

No doubt, had Master Thomas been asked, by some pious northern brother,
_why_ he continued to sustain the relation of a slaveholder, to those
whom he retained, his answer would have been precisely the same as many
other religious slaveholders have returned to that inquiry, viz: “I
hold my slaves for their own good.”

Bad as my condition was when I lived with Master Thomas, I was soon to
experience a life far more goading and bitter. The many differences
springing up between myself and Master Thomas, owing to the clear
perception I had of his character, and the boldness with which I
defended myself against his capricious complaints, led him to declare
that I was unsuited to his wants; that my city life had affected me
perniciously; that, in fact, it had almost ruined me for every good
purpose, and had fitted me for everything that was bad. One of my
greatest faults, or offenses, was that of letting his horse get away,
and go down to the farm belonging to his father-in-law. The animal had
a liking for that farm, with which I fully sympathized. Whenever I let
it out, it would go dashing down the road to Mr. Hamilton’s, as if
going on a grand frolic. My horse gone, of course I must go after it.
The explanation of our mutual attachment to the place is the same; the
horse found there good pasturage, and I found there plenty of bread.
Mr. Hamilton had his faults, but starving his slaves was not among
them. He gave food, in abundance, and that, too, of an excellent
quality. In Mr. Hamilton’s cook—Aunt Mary—I found a most generous and
considerate friend. She never allowed me to go there without giving me
bread enough to make good the deficiencies of a day or two. Master
Thomas at last resolved to endure my behavior no longer; he could
neither keep me, nor his horse, we liked so well to be at his
father-in-law’s farm. I had now lived with him nearly nine months, and
he had given me a number of severe whippings, without any visible
improvement in my character, or my conduct; and now he was resolved to
put me out—as he said—“_to be broken._”

There was, in the Bay Side, very near the camp ground, where my master
got his religious impressions, a man named Edward Covey, who enjoyed
the execrated reputation, of being a first rate hand at breaking young
Negroes. This Covey was a poor man, a farm renter; and this reputation
(hateful as it was to the slaves and to all good men) was, at the same
time, of immense advantage to him. It enabled him to get his farm
tilled with very little expense, compared with what it would have cost
him without this most extraordinary reputation. Some slaveholders
thought it an advantage to let Mr. Covey have the government of their
slaves a year or two, almost free of charge, for the sake of the
excellent training such slaves got under his happy management! Like
some horse breakers, noted for their skill, who ride the best horses in
the country without expense, Mr. Covey could have under him, the most
fiery bloods of the neighborhood, for the simple reward of returning
them to their owners, _well broken_. Added to the natural fitness of
Mr. Covey for the duties of his profession, he was said to “enjoy
religion,” and was as strict in the cultivation of piety, as he was in
the cultivation of his farm. I was made aware of his character by some
who had been under his hand; and while I could not look forward to
going to him with any pleasure, I was glad to get away from St.
Michael’s. I was sure of getting enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I
suffered in other respects. _This_, to a hungry man, is not a prospect
to be regarded with indifference.




CHAPTER XV. _Covey, the Negro Breaker_


JOURNEY TO MY NEW MASTER’S—MEDITATIONS BY THE WAY—VIEW OF COVEY’S
RESIDENCE—THE FAMILY—MY AWKWARDNESS AS A FIELD HAND—A CRUEL BEATING—WHY
IT WAS GIVEN—DESCRIPTION OF COVEY—FIRST ADVENTURE AT OX DRIVING—HAIR
BREADTH ESCAPES—OX AND MAN ALIKE PROPERTY—COVEY’S MANNER OF PROCEEDING
TO WHIP—HARD LABOR BETTER THAN THE WHIP FOR BREAKING DOWN THE
SPIRIT—CUNNING AND TRICKERY OF COVEY—FAMILY WORSHIP—SHOCKING CONTEMPT
FOR CHASTITY—I AM BROKEN DOWN—GREAT MENTAL AGITATION IN CONTRASTING THE
FREEDOM OF THE SHIPS WITH HIS OWN SLAVERY—ANGUISH BEYOND DESCRIPTION.


The morning of the first of January, 1834, with its chilling wind and
pinching frost, quite in harmony with the winter in my own mind, found
me, with my little bundle of clothing on the end of a stick, swung
across my shoulder, on the main road, bending my way toward Covey’s,
whither I had been imperiously ordered by Master Thomas. The latter had
been as good as his word, and had committed me, without reserve, to the
mastery of Mr. Edward Covey. Eight or ten years had now passed since I
had been taken from my grandmother’s cabin, in Tuckahoe; and these
years, for the most part, I had spent in Baltimore, where—as the reader
has already seen—I was treated with comparative tenderness. I was now
about to sound profounder depths in slave life. The rigors of a field,
less tolerable than the field of battle, awaited me. My new master was
notorious for his fierce and savage disposition, and my only
consolation in going to live with him was, the certainty of finding him
precisely as represented by common fame. There was neither joy in my
heart, nor elasticity in my step, as I started in search of the
tyrant’s home. Starvation made me glad to leave Thomas Auld’s, and the
cruel lash made me dread to go to Covey’s. Escape was impossible; so,
heavy and sad, I paced the seven miles, which separated Covey’s house
from St. Michael’s—thinking much by the solitary way—averse to my
condition; but _thinking_ was all I could do. Like a fish in a net,
allowed to play for a time, I was now drawn rapidly to the shore,
secured at all points. “I am,” thought I, “but the sport of a power
which makes no account, either of my welfare or of my happiness. By a
law which I can clearly comprehend, but cannot evade nor resist, I am
ruthlessly snatched from the hearth of a fond grandmother, and hurried
away to the home of a mysterious ‘old master;’ again I am removed from
there, to a master in Baltimore; thence am I snatched away to the
Eastern Shore, to be valued with the beasts of the field, and, with
them, divided and set apart for a possessor; then I am sent back to
Baltimore; and by the time I have formed new attachments, and have
begun to hope that no more rude shocks shall touch me, a difference
arises between brothers, and I am again broken up, and sent to St.
Michael’s; and now, from the latter place, I am footing my way to the
home of a new master, where, I am given to understand, that, like a
wild young working animal, I am to be broken to the yoke of a bitter
and life-long bondage.”

With thoughts and reflections like these, I came in sight of a small
wood-colored building, about a mile from the main road, which, from the
description I had received, at starting, I easily recognized as my new
home. The Chesapeake bay—upon the jutting banks of which the little
wood-colored house was standing—white with foam, raised by the heavy
north-west wind; Poplar Island, covered with a thick, black pine
forest, standing out amid this half ocean; and Kent Point, stretching
its sandy, desert-like shores out into the foam-cested bay—were all in
sight, and deepened the wild and desolate aspect of my new home.

The good clothes I had brought with me from Baltimore were now worn
thin, and had not been replaced; for Master Thomas was as little
careful to provide us against cold, as against hunger. Met here by a
north wind, sweeping through an open space of forty miles, I was glad
to make any port; and, therefore, I speedily pressed on to the little
wood-colored house. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Covey; Miss
Kemp (a broken-backed woman) a sister of Mrs. Covey; William Hughes,
cousin to Edward Covey; Caroline, the cook; Bill Smith, a hired man;
and myself. Bill Smith, Bill Hughes, and myself, were the working force
of the farm, which consisted of three or four hundred acres. I was now,
for the first time in my life, to be a field hand; and in my new
employment I found myself even more awkward than a green country boy
may be supposed to be, upon his first entrance into the bewildering
scenes of city life; and my awkwardness gave me much trouble. Strange
and unnatural as it may seem, I had been at my new home but three days,
before Mr. Covey (my brother in the Methodist church) gave me a bitter
foretaste of what was in reserve for me. I presume he thought, that
since he had but a single year in which to complete his work, the
sooner he began, the better. Perhaps he thought that by coming to blows
at once, we should mutually better understand our relations. But to
whatever motive, direct or indirect, the cause may be referred, I had
not been in his possession three whole days, before he subjected me to
a most brutal chastisement. Under his heavy blows, blood flowed freely,
and wales were left on my back as large as my little finger. The sores
on my back, from this flogging, continued for weeks, for they were kept
open by the rough and coarse cloth which I wore for shirting. The
occasion and details of this first chapter of my experience as a field
hand, must be told, that the reader may see how unreasonable, as well
as how cruel, my new master, Covey, was. The whole thing I found to be
characteristic of the man; and I was probably treated no worse by him
than scores of lads who had previously been committed to him, for
reasons similar to those which induced my master to place me with him.
But, here are the facts connected with the affair, precisely as they
occurred.

On one of the coldest days of the whole month of January, 1834, I was
ordered, at day break, to get a load of wood, from a forest about two
miles from the house. In order to perform this work, Mr. Covey gave me
a pair of unbroken oxen, for, it seems, his breaking abilities had not
been turned in this direction; and I may remark, in passing, that
working animals in the south, are seldom so well trained as in the
north. In due form, and with all proper ceremony, I was introduced to
this huge yoke of unbroken oxen, and was carefully told which was
“Buck,” and which was “Darby”—which was the “in hand,” and which was
the “off hand” ox. The master of this important ceremony was no less a
person than Mr. Covey, himself; and the introduction was the first of
the kind I had ever had. My life, hitherto, had led me away from horned
cattle, and I had no knowledge of the art of managing them. What was
meant by the “in ox,” as against the “off ox,” when both were equally
fastened to one cart, and under one yoke, I could not very easily
divine; and the difference, implied by the names, and the peculiar
duties of each, were alike _Greek_ to me. Why was not the “off ox”
called the “in ox?” Where and what is the reason for this distinction
in names, when there is none in the things themselves? After initiating
me into the _“woa,” “back” “gee,” “hither”_—the entire spoken language
between oxen and driver—Mr. Covey took a rope, about ten feet long and
one inch thick, and placed one end of it around the horns of the “in
hand ox,” and gave the other end to me, telling me that if the oxen
started to run away, as the scamp knew they would, I must hold on to
the rope and stop them. I need not tell any one who is acquainted with
either the strength of the disposition of an untamed ox, that this
order was about as unreasonable as a command to shoulder a mad bull! I
had never driven oxen before, and I was as awkward, as a driver, as it
is possible to conceive. It did not answer for me to plead ignorance,
to Mr. Covey; there was something in his manner that quite forbade
that. He was a man to whom a slave seldom felt any disposition to
speak. Cold, distant, morose, with a face wearing all the marks of
captious pride and malicious sternness, he repelled all advances. Covey
was not a large man; he was only about five feet ten inches in height,
I should think; short necked, round shoulders; of quick and wiry
motion, of thin and wolfish visage; with a pair of small, greenish-gray
eyes, set well back under a forehead without dignity, and constantly in
motion, and floating his passions, rather than his thoughts, in sight,
but denying them utterance in words. The creature presented an
appearance altogether ferocious and sinister, disagreeable and
forbidding, in the extreme. When he spoke, it was from the corner of
his mouth, and in a sort of light growl, like a dog, when an attempt is
made to take a bone from him. The fellow had already made me believe
him even _worse_ than he had been presented. With his directions, and
without stopping to question, I started for the woods, quite anxious to
perform my first exploit in driving, in a creditable manner. The
distance from the house to the woods gate a full mile, I should
think—was passed over with very little difficulty; for although the
animals ran, I was fleet enough, in the open field, to keep pace with
them; especially as they pulled me along at the end of the rope; but,
on reaching the woods, I was speedily thrown into a distressing plight.
The animals took fright, and started off ferociously into the woods,
carrying the cart, full tilt, against trees, over stumps, and dashing
from side to side, in a manner altogether frightful. As I held the
rope, I expected every moment to be crushed between the cart and the
huge trees, among which they were so furiously dashing. After running
thus for several minutes, my oxen were, finally, brought to a stand, by
a tree, against which they dashed themselves with great violence,
upsetting the cart, and entangling themselves among sundry young
saplings. By the shock, the body of the cart was flung in one
direction, and the wheels and tongue in another, and all in the
greatest confusion. There I was, all alone, in a thick wood, to which I
was a stranger; my cart upset and shattered; my oxen entangled, wild,
and enraged; and I, poor soul! but a green hand, to set all this
disorder right. I knew no more of oxen than the ox driver is supposed
to know of wisdom. After standing a few moments surveying the damage
and disorder, and not without a presentiment that this trouble would
draw after it others, even more distressing, I took one end of the cart
body, and, by an extra outlay of strength, I lifted it toward the
axle-tree, from which it had been violently flung; and after much
pulling and straining, I succeeded in getting the body of the cart in
its place. This was an important step out of the difficulty, and its
performance increased my courage for the work which remained to be
done. The cart was provided with an ax, a tool with which I had become
pretty well acquainted in the ship yard at Baltimore. With this, I cut
down the saplings by which my oxen were entangled, and again pursued my
journey, with my heart in my mouth, lest the oxen should again take it
into their senseless heads to cut up a caper. My fears were groundless.
Their spree was over for the present, and the rascals now moved off as
soberly as though their behavior had been natural and exemplary. On
reaching the part of the forest where I had been, the day before,
chopping wood, I filled the cart with a heavy load, as a security
against another running away. But, the neck of an ox is equal in
strength to iron. It defies all ordinary burdens, when excited. Tame
and docile to a proverb, when _well_ trained, the ox is the most sullen
and intractable of animals when but half broken to the yoke.

I now saw, in my situation, several points of similarity with that of
the oxen. They were property, so was I; they were to be broken, so was
I. Covey was to break me, I was to break them; break and be broken—such
is life.

Half the day already gone, and my face not yet homeward! It required
only two day’s experience and observation to teach me, that such
apparent waste of time would not be lightly overlooked by Covey. I
therefore hurried toward home; but, on reaching the lane gate, I met
with the crowning disaster for the day. This gate was a fair specimen
of southern handicraft. There were two huge posts, eighteen inches in
diameter, rough hewed and square, and the heavy gate was so hung on one
of these, that it opened only about half the proper distance. On
arriving here, it was necessary for me to let go the end of the rope on
the horns of the “in hand ox;” and now as soon as the gate was open,
and I let go of it to get the rope, again, off went my oxen—making
nothing of their load—full tilt; and in doing so they caught the huge
gate between the wheel and the cart body, literally crushing it to
splinters, and coming only within a few inches of subjecting me to a
similar crushing, for I was just in advance of the wheel when it struck
the left gate post. With these two hair-breadth escape, I thought I
could sucessfully(sic) explain to Mr. Covey the delay, and avert
apprehended punishment. I was not without a faint hope of being
commended for the stern resolution which I had displayed in
accomplishing the difficult task—a task which, I afterwards learned,
even Covey himself would not have undertaken, without first driving the
oxen for some time in the open field, preparatory to their going into
the woods. But, in this I was disappointed. On coming to him, his
countenance assumed an aspect of rigid displeasure, and, as I gave him
a history of the casualties of my trip, his wolfish face, with his
greenish eyes, became intensely ferocious. “Go back to the woods
again,” he said, muttering something else about wasting time. I hastily
obeyed; but I had not gone far on my way, when I saw him coming after
me. My oxen now behaved themselves with singular propriety, opposing
their present conduct to my representation of their former antics. I
almost wished, now that Covey was coming, they would do something in
keeping with the character I had given them; but no, they had already
had their spree, and they could afford now to be extra good, readily
obeying my orders, and seeming to understand them quite as well as I
did myself. On reaching the woods, my tormentor—who seemed all the way
to be remarking upon the good behavior of his oxen—came up to me, and
ordered me to stop the cart, accompanying the same with the threat that
he would now teach me how to break gates, and idle away my time, when
he sent me to the woods. Suiting the action to the word, Covey paced
off, in his own wiry fashion, to a large, black gum tree, the young
shoots of which are generally used for ox _goads_, they being
exceedingly tough. Three of these _goads_, from four to six feet long,
he cut off, and trimmed up, with his large jack-knife. This done, he
ordered me to take off my clothes. To this unreasonable order I made no
reply, but sternly refused to take off my clothing. “If you will beat
me,” thought I, “you shall do so over my clothes.” After many threats,
which made no impression on me, he rushed at me with something of the
savage fierceness of a wolf, tore off the few and thinly worn clothes I
had on, and proceeded to wear out, on my back, the heavy goads which he
had cut from the gum tree. This flogging was the first of a series of
floggings; and though very severe, it was less so than many which came
after it, and these, for offenses far lighter than the gate breaking.

I remained with Mr. Covey one year (I cannot say I _lived_ with him)
and during the first six months that I was there, I was whipped, either
with sticks or cowskins, every week. Aching bones and a sore back were
my constant companions. Frequent as the lash was used, Mr. Covey
thought less of it, as a means of breaking down my spirit, than that of
hard and long continued labor. He worked me steadily, up to the point
of my powers of endurance. From the dawn of day in the morning, till
the darkness was complete in the evening, I was kept at hard work, in
the field or the woods. At certain seasons of the year, we were all
kept in the field till eleven and twelve o’clock at night. At these
times, Covey would attend us in the field, and urge us on with words or
blows, as it seemed best to him. He had, in his life, been an overseer,
and he well understood the business of slave driving. There was no
deceiving him. He knew just what a man or boy could do, and he held
both to strict account. When he pleased, he would work himself, like a
very Turk, making everything fly before him. It was, however, scarcely
necessary for Mr. Covey to be really present in the field, to have his
work go on industriously. He had the faculty of making us feel that he
was always present. By a series of adroitly managed surprises, which he
practiced, I was prepared to expect him at any moment. His plan was,
never to approach the spot where his hands were at work, in an open,
manly and direct manner. No thief was ever more artful in his devices
than this man Covey. He would creep and crawl, in ditches and gullies;
hide behind stumps and bushes, and practice so much of the cunning of
the serpent, that Bill Smith and I—between ourselves—never called him
by any other name than _“the snake.”_ We fancied that in his eyes and
his gait we could see a snakish resemblance. One half of his
proficiency in the art of Negro breaking, consisted, I should think, in
this species of cunning. We were never secure. He could see or hear us
nearly all the time. He was, to us, behind every stump, tree, bush and
fence on the plantation. He carried this kind of trickery so far, that
he would sometimes mount his horse, and make believe he was going to
St. Michael’s; and, in thirty minutes afterward, you might find his
horse tied in the woods, and the snake-like Covey lying flat in the
ditch, with his head lifted above its edge, or in a fence corner,
watching every movement of the slaves! I have known him walk up to us
and give us special orders, as to our work, in advance, as if he were
leaving home with a view to being absent several days; and before he
got half way to the house, he would avail himself of our inattention to
his movements, to turn short on his heels, conceal himself behind a
fence corner or a tree, and watch us until the going down of the sun.
Mean and contemptible as is all this, it is in keeping with the
character which the life of a slaveholder is calculated to produce.
There is no earthly inducement, in the slave’s condition, to incite him
to labor faithfully. The fear of punishment is the sole motive for any
sort of industry, with him. Knowing this fact, as the slaveholder does,
and judging the slave by himself, he naturally concludes the slave will
be idle whenever the cause for this fear is absent. Hence, all sorts of
petty deceptions are practiced, to inspire this fear.

But, with Mr. Covey, trickery was natural. Everything in the shape of
learning or religion, which he possessed, was made to conform to this
semi-lying propensity. He did not seem conscious that the practice had
anything unmanly, base or contemptible about it. It was a part of an
important system, with him, essential to the relation of master and
slave. I thought I saw, in his very religious devotions, this
controlling element of his character. A long prayer at night made up
for the short prayer in the morning; and few men could seem more
devotional than he, when he had nothing else to do.

Mr. Covey was not content with the cold style of family worship,
adopted in these cold latitudes, which begin and end with a simple
prayer. No! the voice of praise, as well as of prayer, must be heard in
his house, night and morning. At first, I was called upon to bear some
part in these exercises; but the repeated flogging given me by Covey,
turned the whole thing into mockery. He was a poor singer, and mainly
relied on me for raising the hymn for the family, and when I failed to
do so, he was thrown into much confusion. I do not think that he ever
abused me on account of these vexations. His religion was a thing
altogether apart from his worldly concerns. He knew nothing of it as a
holy principle, directing and controlling his daily life, making the
latter conform to the requirements of the gospel. One or two facts will
illustrate his character better than a volume of generalties(sic).

I have already said, or implied, that Mr. Edward Covey was a poor man.
He was, in fact, just commencing to lay the foundation of his fortune,
as fortune is regarded in a slave state. The first condition of wealth
and respectability there, being the ownership of human property, every
nerve is strained, by the poor man, to obtain it, and very little
regard is had to the manner of obtaining it. In pursuit of this object,
pious as Mr. Covey was, he proved himself to be as unscrupulous and
base as the worst of his neighbors. In the beginning, he was only
able—as he said—“to buy one slave;” and, scandalous and shocking as is
the fact, he boasted that he bought her simply “_as a breeder_.” But
the worst is not told in this naked statement. This young woman
(Caroline was her name) was virtually compelled by Mr. Covey to abandon
herself to the object for which he had purchased her; and the result
was, the birth of twins at the end of the year. At this addition to his
human stock, both Edward Covey and his wife, Susan, were ecstatic with
joy. No one dreamed of reproaching the woman, or of finding fault with
the hired man—Bill Smith—the father of the children, for Mr. Covey
himself had locked the two up together every night, thus inviting the
result.

But I will pursue this revolting subject no further. No better
illustration of the unchaste and demoralizing character of slavery can
be found, than is furnished in the fact that this professedly Christian
slaveholder, amidst all his prayers and hymns, was shamelessly and
boastfully encouraging, and actually compelling, in his own house,
undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means of increasing his
human stock. I may remark here, that, while this fact will be read with
disgust and shame at the north, it will be _laughed at_, as smart and
praiseworthy in Mr. Covey, at the south; for a man is no more condemned
there for buying a woman and devoting her to this life of dishonor,
than for buying a cow, and raising stock from her. The same rules are
observed, with a view to increasing the number and quality of the
former, as of the latter.

I will here reproduce what I said of my own experience in this wretched
place, more than ten years ago:

If at any one time of my life, more than another, I was made to drink
the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six
months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked all weathers. It was
never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, snow, or hail too
hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more
the order of the day than the night. The longest days were too short
for him, and the shortest nights were too long for him. I was somewhat
unmanageable when I first went there; but a few months of his
discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken
in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my
intellect languished; the disposition to read departed; the cheerful
spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed
in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!

Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times, I
would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
accompanied with a faint beam of hope, flickered for a moment, and then
vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition. I was
sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was
prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this
plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality.

Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake bay, whose broad
bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to
the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and
torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the
deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the banks of
that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the
countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The sight of
these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel
utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour
out my soul’s complaint in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the
moving multitude of ships:

“You are loosed from your moorings, and free; I am fast in my chains,
and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly
before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly
around the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O, that I were free!
O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting
wing! Alas! betwixt me and you the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O
that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I
born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides
in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery.
O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why
am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, or get
clear, I’ll try it. I had as well die with ague as with fever. I have
only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing.
Only think of it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try
it? Yes! God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die
a slave. I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into
freedom. The steamboats steered in a north-east coast from North Point.
I will do the same; and when I get to the head of the bay, I will turn
my canoe adrift, and walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania.
When I get there, I shall not be required to have a pass; I will travel
without being disturbed. Let but the first opportunity offer, and come
what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under the yoke. I
am not the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I can bear as
much as any of them. Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to
some one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my
happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming.”

I shall never be able to narrate the mental experience through which it
was my lot to pass during my stay at Covey’s. I was completely wrecked,
changed and bewildered; goaded almost to madness at one time, and at
another reconciling myself to my wretched condition. Everything in the
way of kindness, which I had experienced at Baltimore; all my former
hopes and aspirations for usefulness in the world, and the happy
moments spent in the exercises of religion, contrasted with my then
present lot, but increased my anguish.

I suffered bodily as well as mentally. I had neither sufficient time in
which to eat or to sleep, except on Sundays. The overwork, and the
brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that
ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought—“_I am a slave—a slave for
life—a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom_”—rendered me
a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness.




CHAPTER XVI. _Another Pressure of the Tyrant’s Vice_


EXPERIENCE AT COVEY’S SUMMED UP—FIRST SIX MONTHS SEVERER THAN THE
SECOND—PRELIMINARIES TO THE CHANCE—REASONS FOR NARRATING THE
CIRCUMSTANCES—SCENE IN TREADING YARD—TAKEN ILL—UNUSUAL BRUTALITY OF
COVEY—ESCAPE TO ST. MICHAEL’S—THE PURSUIT—SUFFERING IN THE WOODS—DRIVEN
BACK AGAIN TO COVEY’S—BEARING OF MASTER THOMAS—THE SLAVE IS NEVER
SICK—NATURAL TO EXPECT SLAVES TO FEIGN SICKNESS—LAZINESS OF
SLAVEHOLDERS.


The foregoing chapter, with all its horrid incidents and shocking
features, may be taken as a fair representation of the first six months
of my life at Covey’s. The reader has but to repeat, in his own mind,
once a week, the scene in the woods, where Covey subjected me to his
merciless lash, to have a true idea of my bitter experience there,
during the first period of the breaking process through which Mr. Covey
carried me. I have no heart to repeat each separate transaction, in
which I was victim of his violence and brutality. Such a narration
would fill a volume much larger than the present one. I aim only to
give the reader a truthful impression of my slave life, without
unnecessarily affecting him with harrowing details.

As I have elsewhere intimated that my hardships were much greater
during the first six months of my stay at Covey’s, than during the
remainder of the year, and as the change in my condition was owing to
causes which may help the reader to a better understanding of human
nature, when subjected to the terrible extremities of slavery, I will
narrate the circumstances of this change, although I may seem thereby
to applaud my own courage. You have, dear reader, seen me humbled,
degraded, broken down, enslaved, and brutalized, and you understand how
it was done; now let us see the converse of all this, and how it was
brought about; and this will take us through the year 1834.

On one of the hottest days of the month of August, of the year just
mentioned, had the reader been passing through Covey’s farm, he might
have seen me at work, in what is there called the “treading yard”—a
yard upon which wheat is trodden out from the straw, by the horses’
feet. I was there, at work, feeding the “fan,” or rather bringing wheat
to the fan, while Bill Smith was feeding. Our force consisted of Bill
Hughes, Bill Smith, and a slave by the name of Eli; the latter having
been hired for this occasion. The work was simple, and required
strength and activity, rather than any skill or intelligence, and yet,
to one entirely unused to such work, it came very hard. The heat was
intense and overpowering, and there was much hurry to get the wheat,
trodden out that day, through the fan; since, if that work was done an
hour before sundown, the hands would have, according to a promise of
Covey, that hour added to their night’s rest. I was not behind any of
them in the wish to complete the day’s work before sundown, and, hence,
I struggled with all my might to get the work forward. The promise of
one hour’s repose on a week day, was sufficient to quicken my pace, and
to spur me on to extra endeavor. Besides, we had all planned to go
fishing, and I certainly wished to have a hand in that. But I was
disappointed, and the day turned out to be one of the bitterest I ever
experienced. About three o’clock, while the sun was pouring down his
burning rays, and not a breeze was stirring, I broke down; my strength
failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended
with extreme dizziness, and trembling in every limb. Finding what was
coming, and feeling it would never do to stop work, I nerved myself up,
and staggered on until I fell by the side of the wheat fan, feeling
that the earth had fallen upon me. This brought the entire work to a
dead stand. There was work for four; each one had his part to perform,
and each part depended on the other, so that when one stopped, all were
compelled to stop. Covey, who had now become my dread, as well as my
tormentor, was at the house, about a hundred yards from where I was
fanning, and instantly, upon hearing the fan stop, he came down to the
treading yard, to inquire into the cause of our stopping. Bill Smith
told him I was sick, and that I was unable longer to bring wheat to the
fan.

I had, by this time, crawled away, under the side of a post-and-rail
fence, in the shade, and was exceeding ill. The intense heat of the
sun, the heavy dust rising from the fan, the stooping, to take up the
wheat from the yard, together with the hurrying, to get through, had
caused a rush of blood to my head. In this condition, Covey finding out
where I was, came to me; and, after standing over me a while, he asked
me what the matter was. I told him as well as I could, for it was with
difficulty that I could speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the
side, which jarred my whole frame, and commanded me to get up. The man
had obtained complete control over me; and if he had commanded me to do
any possible thing, I should, in my then state of mind, have endeavored
to comply. I made an effort to rise, but fell back in the attempt,
before gaining my feet. The brute now gave me another heavy kick, and
again told me to rise. I again tried to rise, and succeeded in gaining
my feet; but upon stooping to get the tub with which I was feeding the
fan, I again staggered and fell to the ground; and I must have so
fallen, had I been sure that a hundred bullets would have pierced me,
as the consequence. While down, in this sad condition, and perfectly
helpless, the merciless Negro breaker took up the hickory slab, with
which Hughes had been striking off the wheat to a level with the sides
of the half bushel measure (a very hard weapon) and with the sharp edge
of it, he dealt me a heavy blow on my head which made a large gash, and
caused the blood to run freely, saying, at the same time, “If _you have
got the headache, I’ll cure you_.” This done, he ordered me again to
rise, but I made no effort to do so; for I had made up my mind that it
was useless, and that the heartless monster might now do his worst; he
could but kill me, and that might put me out of my misery. Finding me
unable to rise, or rather despairing of my doing so, Covey left me,
with a view to getting on with the work without me. I was bleeding very
freely, and my face was soon covered with my warm blood. Cruel and
merciless as was the motive that dealt that blow, dear reader, the
wound was fortunate for me. Bleeding was never more efficacious. The
pain in my head speedily abated, and I was soon able to rise. Covey
had, as I have said, now left me to my fate; and the question was,
shall I return to my work, or shall I find my way to St. Michael’s, and
make Capt. Auld acquainted with the atrocious cruelty of his brother
Covey, and beseech him to get me another master? Remembering the object
he had in view, in placing me under the management of Covey, and
further, his cruel treatment of my poor crippled cousin, Henny, and his
meanness in the matter of feeding and clothing his slaves, there was
little ground to hope for a favorable reception at the hands of Capt.
Thomas Auld. Nevertheless, I resolved to go straight to Capt. Auld,
thinking that, if not animated by motives of humanity, he might be
induced to interfere on my behalf from selfish considerations. “He
cannot,” thought I, “allow his property to be thus bruised and
battered, marred and defaced; and I will go to him, and tell him the
simple truth about the matter.” In order to get to St. Michael’s, by
the most favorable and direct road, I must walk seven miles; and this,
in my sad condition, was no easy performance. I had already lost much
blood; I was exhausted by over exertion; my sides were sore from the
heavy blows planted there by the stout boots of Mr. Covey; and I was,
in every way, in an unfavorable plight for the journey. I however
watched my chance, while the cruel and cunning Covey was looking in an
opposite direction, and started off, across the field, for St.
Michael’s. This was a daring step; if it failed, it would only
exasperate Covey, and increase the rigors of my bondage, during the
remainder of my term of service under him; but the step was taken, and
I must go forward. I succeeded in getting nearly half way across the
broad field, toward the woods, before Mr. Covey observed me. I was
still bleeding, and the exertion of running had started the blood
afresh. _“Come back! Come back!”_ vociferated Covey, with threats of
what he would do if I did not return instantly. But, disregarding his
calls and his threats, I pressed on toward the woods as fast as my
feeble state would allow. Seeing no signs of my stopping, Covey caused
his horse to be brought out and saddled, as if he intended to pursue
me. The race was now to be an unequal one; and, thinking I might be
overhauled by him, if I kept the main road, I walked nearly the whole
distance in the woods, keeping far enough from the road to avoid
detection and pursuit. But, I had not gone far, before my little
strength again failed me, and I laid down. The blood was still oozing
from the wound in my head; and, for a time, I suffered more than I can
describe. There I was, in the deep woods, sick and emaciated, pursued
by a wretch whose character for revolting cruelty beggars all
opprobrious speech—bleeding, and almost bloodless. I was not without
the fear of bleeding to death. The thought of dying in the woods, all
alone, and of being torn to pieces by the buzzards, had not yet been
rendered tolerable by my many troubles and hardships, and I was glad
when the shade of the trees, and the cool evening breeze, combined with
my matted hair to stop the flow of blood. After lying there about three
quarters of an hour, brooding over the singular and mournful lot to
which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole scale or circle of
belief and unbelief, from faith in the overruling providence of God, to
the blackest atheism, I again took up my journey toward St. Michael’s,
more weary and sad than in the morning when I left Thomas Auld’s for
the home of Mr. Covey. I was bare-footed and bare-headed, and in my
shirt sleeves. The way was through bogs and briers, and I tore my feet
often during the journey. I was full five hours in going the seven or
eight miles; partly, because of the difficulties of the way, and
partly, because of the feebleness induced by my illness, bruises and
loss of blood. On gaining my master’s store, I presented an appearance
of wretchedness and woe, fitted to move any but a heart of stone. From
the crown of my head to the sole of my feet, there were marks of blood.
My hair was all clotted with dust and blood, and the back of my shirt
was literally stiff with the same. Briers and thorns had scarred and
torn my feet and legs, leaving blood marks there. Had I escaped from a
den of tigers, I could not have looked worse than I did on reaching St.
Michael’s. In this unhappy plight, I appeared before my professedly
_Christian_ master, humbly to invoke the interposition of his power and
authority, to protect me from further abuse and violence. I had begun
to hope, during the latter part of my tedious journey toward St.
Michael’s, that Capt. Auld would now show himself in a nobler light
than I had ever before seen him. I was disappointed. I had jumped from
a sinking ship into the sea; I had fled from the tiger to something
worse. I told him all the circumstances, as well as I could; how I was
endeavoring to please Covey; how hard I was at work in the present
instance; how unwilling I sunk down under the heat, toil and pain; the
brutal manner in which Covey had kicked me in the side; the gash cut in
my head; my hesitation about troubling him (Capt. Auld) with
complaints; but, that now I felt it would not be best longer to conceal
from him the outrages committed on me from time to time by Covey. At
first, master Thomas seemed somewhat affected by the story of my
wrongs, but he soon repressed his feelings and became cold as iron. It
was impossible—as I stood before him at the first—for him to seem
indifferent. I distinctly saw his human nature asserting its conviction
against the slave system, which made cases like mine _possible;_ but,
as I have said, humanity fell before the systematic tyranny of slavery.
He first walked the floor, apparently much agitated by my story, and
the sad spectacle I presented; but, presently, it was _his_ turn to
talk. He began moderately, by finding excuses for Covey, and ending
with a full justification of him, and a passionate condemnation of me.
“He had no doubt I deserved the flogging. He did not believe I was
sick; I was only endeavoring to get rid of work. My dizziness was
laziness, and Covey did right to flog me, as he had done.” After thus
fairly annihilating me, and rousing himself by his own eloquence, he
fiercely demanded what I wished _him_ to do in the case!

With such a complete knock-down to all my hopes, as he had given me,
and feeling, as I did, my entire subjection to his power, I had very
little heart to reply. I must not affirm my innocence of the
allegations which he had piled up against me; for that would be
impudence, and would probably call down fresh violence as well as wrath
upon me. The guilt of a slave is always, and everywhere, presumed; and
the innocence of the slaveholder or the slave employer, is always
asserted. The word of the slave, against this presumption, is generally
treated as impudence, worthy of punishment. “Do you contradict me, you
rascal?” is a final silencer of counter statements from the lips of a
slave.

Calming down a little in view of my silence and hesitation, and,
perhaps, from a rapid glance at the picture of misery I presented, he
inquired again, “what I would have him do?” Thus invited a second time,
I told Master Thomas I wished him to allow me to get a new home and to
find a new master; that, as sure as I went back to live with Mr. Covey
again, I should be killed by him; that he would never forgive my coming
to him (Capt. Auld) with a complaint against him (Covey); that, since I
had lived with him, he almost crushed my spirit, and I believed that he
would ruin me for future service; that my life was not safe in his
hands. This, Master Thomas _(my brother in the church)_ regarded as
“nonsence(sic).” “There was no danger of Mr. Covey’s killing me; he was
a good man, industrious and religious, and he would not think of
removing me from that home; besides,” said he and this I found was the
most distressing thought of all to him—“if you should leave Covey now,
that your year has but half expired, I should lose your wages for the
entire year. You belong to Mr. Covey for one year, and you _must go
back_ to him, come what will. You must not trouble me with any more
stories about Mr. Covey; and if you do not go immediately home, I will
get hold of you myself.” This was just what I expected, when I found he
had _prejudged_ the case against me. “But, Sir,” I said, “I am sick and
tired, and I cannot get home to-night.” At this, he again relented, and
finally he allowed me to remain all night at St. Michael’s; but said I
must be off early in the morning, and concluded his directions by
making me swallow a huge dose of _epsom salts_—about the only medicine
ever administered to slaves.

It was quite natural for Master Thomas to presume I was feigning
sickness to escape work, for he probably thought that were _he_ in the
place of a slave with no wages for his work, no praise for well doing,
no motive for toil but the lash—he would try every possible scheme by
which to escape labor. I say I have no doubt of this; the reason is,
that there are not, under the whole heavens, a set of men who cultivate
such an intense dread of labor as do the slaveholders. The charge of
laziness against the slave is ever on their lips, and is the standing
apology for every species of cruelty and brutality. These men literally
“bind heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s
shoulders; but they, themselves, will not move them with one of their
fingers.”

My kind readers shall have, in the next chapter—what they were led,
perhaps, to expect to find in this—namely: an account of my partial
disenthrallment from the tyranny of Covey, and the marked change which
it brought about.




CHAPTER XVII. _The Last Flogging_


A SLEEPLESS NIGHT—RETURN TO COVEY’S—PURSUED BY COVEY—THE CHASE
DEFEATED—VENGEANCE POSTPONED—MUSINGS IN THE WOODS—THE
ALTERNATIVE—DEPLORABLE SPECTACLE—NIGHT IN THE WOODS—EXPECTED
ATTACK—ACCOSTED BY SANDY, A FRIEND, NOT A HUNTER—SANDY’S
HOSPITALITY—THE “ASH CAKE” SUPPER—THE INTERVIEW WITH SANDY—HIS
ADVICE—SANDY A CONJURER AS WELL AS A CHRISTIAN—THE MAGIC ROOT—STRANGE
MEETING WITH COVEY—HIS MANNER—COVEY’S SUNDAY FACE—MY DEFENSIVE
RESOLVE—THE FIGHT—THE VICTORY, AND ITS RESULTS.


Sleep itself does not always come to the relief of the weary in body,
and the broken in spirit; especially when past troubles only foreshadow
coming disasters. The last hope had been extinguished. My master, who I
did not venture to hope would protect me as _a man_, had even now
refused to protect me as _his property;_ and had cast me back, covered
with reproaches and bruises, into the hands of a stranger to that mercy
which was the soul of the religion he professed. May the reader never
spend such a night as that allotted to me, previous to the morning
which was to herald my return to the den of horrors from which I had
made a temporary escape.

I remained all night—sleep I did not—at St. Michael’s; and in the
morning (Saturday) I started off, according to the order of Master
Thomas, feeling that I had no friend on earth, and doubting if I had
one in heaven. I reached Covey’s about nine o’clock; and just as I
stepped into the field, before I had reached the house, Covey, true to
his snakish habits, darted out at me from a fence corner, in which he
had secreted himself, for the purpose of securing me. He was amply
provided with a cowskin and a rope; and he evidently intended to _tie
me up_, and to wreak his vengeance on me to the fullest extent. I
should have been an easy prey, had he succeeded in getting his hands
upon me, for I had taken no refreshment since noon on Friday; and this,
together with the pelting, excitement, and the loss of blood, had
reduced my strength. I, however, darted back into the woods, before the
ferocious hound could get hold of me, and buried myself in a thicket,
where he lost sight of me. The corn-field afforded me cover, in getting
to the woods. But for the tall corn, Covey would have overtaken me, and
made me his captive. He seemed very much chagrined that he did not
catch me, and gave up the chase, very reluctantly; for I could see his
angry movements, toward the house from which he had sallied, on his
foray.

Well, now I am clear of Covey, and of his wrathful lash, for present. I
am in the wood, buried in its somber gloom, and hushed in its solemn
silence; hid from all human eyes; shut in with nature and nature’s God,
and absent from all human contrivances. Here was a good place to pray;
to pray for help for deliverance—a prayer I had often made before. But
how could I pray? Covey could pray—Capt. Auld could pray—I would fain
pray; but doubts (arising partly from my own neglect of the means of
grace, and partly from the sham religion which everywhere prevailed,
cast in my mind a doubt upon all religion, and led me to the conviction
that prayers were unavailing and delusive) prevented my embracing the
opportunity, as a religious one. Life, in itself, had almost become
burdensome to me. All my outward relations were against me; I must stay
here and starve (I was already hungry) or go home to Covey’s, and have
my flesh torn to pieces, and my spirit humbled under the cruel lash of
Covey. This was the painful alternative presented to me. The day was
long and irksome. My physical condition was deplorable. I was weak,
from the toils of the previous day, and from the want of food and rest;
and had been so little concerned about my appearance, that I had not
yet washed the blood from my garments. I was an object of horror, even
to myself. Life, in Baltimore, when most oppressive, was a paradise to
this. What had I done, what had my parents done, that such a life as
this should be mine? That day, in the woods, I would have exchanged my
manhood for the brutehood of an ox.

Night came. I was still in the woods, unresolved what to do. Hunger had
not yet pinched me to the point of going home, and I laid myself down
in the leaves to rest; for I had been watching for hunters all day, but
not being molested during the day, I expected no disturbance during the
night. I had come to the conclusion that Covey relied upon hunger to
drive me home; and in this I was quite correct—the facts showed that he
had made no effort to catch me, since morning.

During the night, I heard the step of a man in the woods. He was coming
toward the place where I lay. A person lying still has the advantage
over one walking in the woods, in the day time, and this advantage is
much greater at night. I was not able to engage in a physical struggle,
and I had recourse to the common resort of the weak. I hid myself in
the leaves to prevent discovery. But, as the night rambler in the woods
drew nearer, I found him to be a _friend_, not an enemy; it was a slave
of Mr. William Groomes, of Easton, a kind hearted fellow, named
“Sandy.” Sandy lived with Mr. Kemp that year, about four miles from St.
Michael’s. He, like myself had been hired out by the year; but, unlike
myself, had not been hired out to be broken. Sandy was the husband of a
free woman, who lived in the lower part of _“Potpie Neck,”_ and he was
now on his way through the woods, to see her, and to spend the Sabbath
with her.

As soon as I had ascertained that the disturber of my solitude was not
an enemy, but the good-hearted Sandy—a man as famous among the slaves
of the neighborhood for his good nature, as for his good sense I came
out from my hiding place, and made myself known to him. I explained the
circumstances of the past two days, which had driven me to the woods,
and he deeply compassionated my distress. It was a bold thing for him
to shelter me, and I could not ask him to do so; for, had I been found
in his hut, he would have suffered the penalty of thirty-nine lashes on
his bare back, if not something worse. But Sandy was too generous to
permit the fear of punishment to prevent his relieving a brother
bondman from hunger and exposure; and, therefore, on his own motion, I
accompanied him to his home, or rather to the home of his wife—for the
house and lot were hers. His wife was called up—for it was now about
midnight—a fire was made, some Indian meal was soon mixed with salt and
water, and an ash cake was baked in a hurry to relieve my hunger.
Sandy’s wife was not behind him in kindness—both seemed to esteem it a
privilege to succor me; for, although I was hated by Covey and by my
master, I was loved by the colored people, because _they_ thought I was
hated for my knowledge, and persecuted because I was feared. I was the
_only_ slave _now_ in that region who could read and write. There had
been one other man, belonging to Mr. Hugh Hamilton, who could read (his
name was “Jim”), but he, poor fellow, had, shortly after my coming into
the neighborhood, been sold off to the far south. I saw Jim ironed, in
the cart, to be carried to Easton for sale—pinioned like a yearling for
the slaughter. My knowledge was now the pride of my brother slaves;
and, no doubt, Sandy felt something of the general interest in me on
that account. The supper was soon ready, and though I have feasted
since, with honorables, lord mayors and aldermen, over the sea, my
supper on ash cake and cold water, with Sandy, was the meal, of all my
life, most sweet to my taste, and now most vivid in my memory.

Supper over, Sandy and I went into a discussion of what was _possible_
for me, under the perils and hardships which now overshadowed my path.
The question was, must I go back to Covey, or must I now tempt to run
away? Upon a careful survey, the latter was found to be impossible; for
I was on a narrow neck of land, every avenue from which would bring me
in sight of pursuers. There was the Chesapeake bay to the right, and
“Pot-pie” river to the left, and St. Michael’s and its neighborhood
occupying the only space through which there was any retreat.

I found Sandy an old advisor. He was not only a religious man, but he
professed to believe in a system for which I have no name. He was a
genuine African, and had inherited some of the so-called magical
powers, said to be possessed by African and eastern nations. He told me
that he could help me; that, in those very woods, there was an herb,
which in the morning might be found, possessing all the powers required
for my protection (I put his thoughts in my own language); and that, if
I would take his advice, he would procure me the root of the herb of
which he spoke. He told me further, that if I would take that root and
wear it on my right side, it would be impossible for Covey to strike me
a blow; that with this root about my person, no white man could whip
me. He said he had carried it for years, and that he had fully tested
its virtues. He had never received a blow from a slaveholder since he
carried it; and he never expected to receive one, for he always meant
to carry that root as a protection. He knew Covey well, for Mrs. Covey
was the daughter of Mr. Kemp; and he (Sandy) had heard of the barbarous
treatment to which I was subjected, and he wanted to do something for
me.

Now all this talk about the root, was to me, very absurd and
ridiculous, if not positively sinful. I at first rejected the idea that
the simple carrying a root on my right side (a root, by the way, over
which I walked every time I went into the woods) could possess any such
magic power as he ascribed to it, and I was, therefore, not disposed to
cumber my pocket with it. I had a positive aversion to all pretenders
to _“divination.”_ It was beneath one of my intelligence to countenance
such dealings with the devil, as this power implied. But, with all my
learning—it was really precious little—Sandy was more than a match for
me. “My book learning,” he said, “had not kept Covey off me” (a
powerful argument just then) and he entreated me, with flashing eyes,
to try this. If it did me no good, it could do me no harm, and it would
cost me nothing, any way. Sandy was so earnest, and so confident of the
good qualities of this weed, that, to please him, rather than from any
conviction of its excellence, I was induced to take it. He had been to
me the good Samaritan, and had, almost providentially, found me, and
helped me when I could not help myself; how did I know but that the
hand of the Lord was in it? With thoughts of this sort, I took the
roots from Sandy, and put them in my right hand pocket.

This was, of course, Sunday morning. Sandy now urged me to go home,
with all speed, and to walk up bravely to the house, as though nothing
had happened. I saw in Sandy too deep an insight into human nature,
with all his superstition, not to have some respect for his advice; and
perhaps, too, a slight gleam or shadow of his superstition had fallen
upon me. At any rate, I started off toward Covey’s, as directed by
Sandy. Having, the previous night, poured my griefs into Sandy’s ears,
and got him enlisted in my behalf, having made his wife a sharer in my
sorrows, and having, also, become well refreshed by sleep and food, I
moved off, quite courageously, toward the much dreaded Covey’s.
Singularly enough, just as I entered his yard gate, I met him and his
wife, dressed in their Sunday best—looking as smiling as angels—on
their way to church. The manner of Covey astonished me. There was
something really benignant in his countenance. He spoke to me as never
before; told me that the pigs had got into the lot, and he wished me to
drive them out; inquired how I was, and seemed an altered man. This
extraordinary conduct of Covey, really made me begin to think that
Sandy’s herb had more virtue in it than I, in my pride, had been
willing to allow; and, had the day been other than Sunday, I should
have attributed Covey’s altered manner solely to the magic power of the
root. I suspected, however, that the _Sabbath_, and not the _root_, was
the real explanation of Covey’s manner. His religion hindered him from
breaking the Sabbath, but not from breaking my skin. He had more
respect for the _day_ than for the _man_, for whom the day was
mercifully given; for while he would cut and slash my body during the
week, he would not hesitate, on Sunday, to teach me the value of my
soul, or the way of life and salvation by Jesus Christ.

All went well with me till Monday morning; and then, whether the root
had lost its virtue, or whether my tormentor had gone deeper into the
black art than myself (as was sometimes said of him), or whether he had
obtained a special indulgence, for his faithful Sabbath day’s worship,
it is not necessary for me to know, or to inform the reader; but, this
I _may_ say—the pious and benignant smile which graced Covey’s face on
_Sunday_, wholly disappeared on _Monday_. Long before daylight, I was
called up to go and feed, rub, and curry the horses. I obeyed the call,
and would have so obeyed it, had it been made at an earilier(sic) hour,
for I had brought my mind to a firm resolve, during that Sunday’s
reflection, viz: to obey every order, however unreasonable, if it were
possible, and, if Mr. Covey should then undertake to beat me, to defend
and protect myself to the best of my ability. My religious views on the
subject of resisting my master, had suffered a serious shock, by the
savage persecution to which I had been subjected, and my hands were no
longer tied by my religion. Master Thomas’s indifference had served the
last link. I had now to this extent “backslidden” from this point in
the slave’s religious creed; and I soon had occasion to make my fallen
state known to my Sunday-pious brother, Covey.

Whilst I was obeying his order to feed and get the horses ready for the
field, and when in the act of going up the stable loft for the purpose
of throwing down some blades, Covey sneaked into the stable, in his
peculiar snake-like way, and seizing me suddenly by the leg, he brought
me to the stable floor, giving my newly mended body a fearful jar. I
now forgot my roots, and remembered my pledge to _stand up in my own
defense_. The brute was endeavoring skillfully to get a slip-knot on my
legs, before I could draw up my feet. As soon as I found what he was up
to, I gave a sudden spring (my two day’s rest had been of much service
to me,) and by that means, no doubt, he was able to bring me to the
floor so heavily. He was defeated in his plan of tying me. While down,
he seemed to think he had me very securely in his power. He little
thought he was—as the rowdies say—“in” for a “rough and tumble” fight;
but such was the fact. Whence came the daring spirit necessary to
grapple with a man who, eight-and-forty hours before, could, with his
slightest word have made me tremble like a leaf in a storm, I do not
know; at any rate, _I was resolved to fight_, and, what was better
still, I was actually hard at it. The fighting madness had come upon
me, and I found my strong fingers firmly attached to the throat of my
cowardly tormentor; as heedless of consequences, at the moment, as
though we stood as equals before the law. The very color of the man was
forgotten. I felt as supple as a cat, and was ready for the snakish
creature at every turn. Every blow of his was parried, though I dealt
no blows in turn. I was strictly on the _defensive_, preventing him
from injuring me, rather than trying to injure him. I flung him on the
ground several times, when he meant to have hurled me there. I held him
so firmly by the throat, that his blood followed my nails. He held me,
and I held him.

All was fair, thus far, and the contest was about equal. My resistance
was entirely unexpected, and Covey was taken all aback by it, for he
trembled in every limb. _“Are you going to resist_, you scoundrel?”
said he. To which, I returned a polite _“Yes sir;”_ steadily gazing my
interrogator in the eye, to meet the first approach or dawning of the
blow, which I expected my answer would call forth. But, the conflict
did not long remain thus equal. Covey soon cried out lustily for help;
not that I was obtaining any marked advantage over him, or was injuring
him, but because he was gaining none over me, and was not able, single
handed, to conquer me. He called for his cousin Hughs, to come to his
assistance, and now the scene was changed. I was compelled to give
blows, as well as to parry them; and, since I was, in any case, to
suffer for resistance, I felt (as the musty proverb goes) that “I might
as well be hanged for an old sheep as a lamb.” I was still _defensive_
toward Covey, but _aggressive_ toward Hughs; and, at the first approach
of the latter, I dealt a blow, in my desperation, which fairly sickened
my youthful assailant. He went off, bending over with pain, and
manifesting no disposition to come within my reach again. The poor
fellow was in the act of trying to catch and tie my right hand, and
while flattering himself with success, I gave him the kick which sent
him staggering away in pain, at the same time that I held Covey with a
firm hand.

Taken completely by surprise, Covey seemed to have lost his usual
strength and coolness. He was frightened, and stood puffing and
blowing, seemingly unable to command words or blows. When he saw that
poor Hughes was standing half bent with pain—his courage quite gone the
cowardly tyrant asked if I “meant to persist in my resistance.” I told
him “_I did mean to resist, come what might_;” that I had been by him
treated like a _brute_, during the last six months; and that I should
stand it _no longer_. With that, he gave me a shake, and attempted to
drag me toward a stick of wood, that was lying just outside the stable
door. He meant to knock me down with it; but, just as he leaned over to
get the stick, I seized him with both hands by the collar, and, with a
vigorous and sudden snatch, I brought my assailant harmlessly, his full
length, on the _not_ overclean ground—for we were now in the cow yard.
He had selected the place for the fight, and it was but right that he
should have all the advantges(sic) of his own selection.

By this time, Bill, the hiredman, came home. He had been to Mr.
Hemsley’s, to spend the Sunday with his nominal wife, and was coming
home on Monday morning, to go to work. Covey and I had been skirmishing
from before daybreak, till now, that the sun was almost shooting his
beams over the eastern woods, and we were still at it. I could not see
where the matter was to terminate. He evidently was afraid to let me
go, lest I should again make off to the woods; otherwise, he would
probably have obtained arms from the house, to frighten me. Holding me,
Covey called upon Bill for assistance. The scene here, had something
comic about it. “Bill,” who knew _precisely_ what Covey wished him to
do, affected ignorance, and pretended he did not know what to do. “What
shall I do, Mr. Covey,” said Bill. “Take hold of him—take hold of him!”
said Covey. With a toss of his head, peculiar to Bill, he said,
“indeed, Mr. Covey I want to go to work.” _“This is_ your work,” said
Covey; “take hold of him.” Bill replied, with spirit, “My master hired
me here, to work, and _not_ to help you whip Frederick.” It was now my
turn to speak. “Bill,” said I, “don’t put your hands on me.” To which
he replied, “My GOD! Frederick, I ain’t goin’ to tech ye,” and Bill
walked off, leaving Covey and myself to settle our matters as best we
might.

But, my present advantage was threatened when I saw Caroline (the
slave-woman of Covey) coming to the cow yard to milk, for she was a
powerful woman, and could have mastered me very easily, exhausted as I
now was. As soon as she came into the yard, Covey attempted to rally
her to his aid. Strangely—and, I may add, fortunately—Caroline was in
no humor to take a hand in any such sport. We were all in open
rebellion, that morning. Caroline answered the command of her master to
_“take hold of me,”_ precisely as Bill had answered, but in _her_, it
was at greater peril so to answer; she was the slave of Covey, and he
could do what he pleased with her. It was _not_ so with Bill, and Bill
knew it. Samuel Harris, to whom Bill belonged, did not allow his slaves
to be beaten, unless they were guilty of some crime which the law would
punish. But, poor Caroline, like myself, was at the mercy of the
merciless Covey; nor did she escape the dire effects of her refusal. He
gave her several sharp blows.

Covey at length (two hours had elapsed) gave up the contest. Letting me
go, he said—puffing and blowing at a great rate—“Now, you scoundrel, go
to your work; I would not have whipped you half so much as I have had
you not resisted.” The fact was, _he had not whipped me at all_. He had
not, in all the scuffle, drawn a single drop of blood from me. I had
drawn blood from him; and, even without this satisfaction, I should
have been victorious, because my aim had not been to injure him, but to
prevent his injuring me.

During the whole six months that I lived with Covey, after this
transaction, he never laid on me the weight of his finger in anger. He
would, occasionally, say he did not want to have to get hold of me
again—a declaration which I had no difficulty in believing; and I had a
secret feeling, which answered, “You need not wish to get hold of me
again, for you will be likely to come off worse in a second fight than
you did in the first.”

Well, my dear reader, this battle with Mr. Covey—undignified as it was,
and as I fear my narration of it is—was the turning point in my _“life
as a slave_.” It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of
liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my
own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was _nothing_
before; I WAS A MAN NOW. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect
and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to
be A FREEMAN. A man, without force, is without the essential dignity of
humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot _honor_ a
helpless man, although it can _pity_ him; and even this it cannot do
long, if the signs of power do not arise.

He can only understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has
himself incurred something, hazarded something, in repelling the unjust
and cruel aggressions of a tyrant. Covey was a tyrant, and a cowardly
one, withal. After resisting him, I felt as I had never felt before. It
was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to
the heaven of comparative freedom. I was no longer a servile coward,
trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but, my
long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of manly independence. I
had reached the point, at which I was _not afraid to die_. This spirit
made me a freeman in _fact_, while I remained a slave in _form_. When a
slave cannot be flogged he is more than half free. He has a domain as
broad as his own manly heart to defend, and he is really _“a power on
earth_.” While slaves prefer their lives, with flogging, to instant
death, they will always find Christians enough, like unto Covey, to
accommodate that preference. From this time, until that of my escape
from slavery, I was never fairly whipped. Several attempts were made to
whip me, but they were always unsuccessful. Bruises I did get, as I
shall hereafter inform the reader; but the case I have been describing,
was the end of the brutification to which slavery had subjected me.

The reader will be glad to know why, after I had so grievously offended
Mr. Covey, he did not have me taken in hand by the authorities; indeed,
why the law of Maryland, which assigns hanging to the slave who resists
his master, was not put in force against me; at any rate, why I was not
taken up, as is usual in such cases, and publicly whipped, for an
example to other slaves, and as a means of deterring me from committing
the same offense again. I confess, that the easy manner in which I got
off, for a long time, a surprise to me, and I cannot, even now, fully
explain the cause.

The only explanation I can venture to suggest, is the fact, that Covey
was, probably, ashamed to have it known and confessed that he had been
mastered by a boy of sixteen. Mr. Covey enjoyed the unbounded and very
valuable reputation, of being a first rate overseer and _Negro
breaker_. By means of this reputation, he was able to procure his hands
for _very trifling_ compensation, and with very great ease. His
interest and his pride mutually suggested the wisdom of passing the
matter by, in silence. The story that he had undertaken to whip a lad,
and had been resisted, was, of itself, sufficient to damage him; for
his bearing should, in the estimation of slaveholders, be of that
imperial order that should make such an occurrence _impossible_. I
judge from these circumstances, that Covey deemed it best to give me
the go-by. It is, perhaps, not altogether creditable to my natural
temper, that, after this conflict with Mr. Covey, I did, at times,
purposely aim to provoke him to an attack, by refusing to keep with the
other hands in the field, but I could never bully him to another
battle. I had made up my mind to do him serious damage, if he ever
again attempted to lay violent hands on me.

Hereditary bondmen, know ye not
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?




CHAPTER XVIII. _New Relations and Duties_


CHANGE OF MASTERS—BENEFITS DERIVED BY THE CHANGE—FAME OF THE FIGHT WITH
COVEY—RECKLESS UNCONCERN—MY ABHORRENCE OF SLAVERY—ABILITY TO READ A
CAUSE OF PREJUDICE—THE HOLIDAYS—HOW SPENT—SHARP HIT AT SLAVERY—EFFECTS
OF HOLIDAYS—A DEVICE OF SLAVERY—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COVEY AND
FREELAND—AN IRRELIGIOUS MASTER PREFERRED TO A RELIGIOUS ONE—CATALOGUE
OF FLOGGABLE OFFENSES—HARD LIFE AT COVEY’S USEFUL—IMPROVED CONDITION
NOT FOLLOWED BY CONTENTMENT—CONGENIAL SOCIETY AT FREELAND’S—SABBATH
SCHOOL INSTITUTED—SECRECY NECESSARY—AFFECTIONATE RELATIONS OF TUTOR AND
PUPILS—CONFIDENCE AND FRIENDSHIP AMONG SLAVES—I DECLINE PUBLISHING
PARTICULARS OF CONVERSATIONS WITH MY FRIENDS—SLAVERY THE INVITER OF
VENGEANCE.


My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day,
1834. I gladly left the snakish Covey, although he was now as gentle as
a lamb. My home for the year 1835 was already secured—my next master
was already selected. There is always more or less excitement about the
matter of changing hands, but I had become somewhat reckless. I cared
very little into whose hands I fell—I meant to fight my way. Despite of
Covey, too, the report got abroad, that I was hard to whip; that I was
guilty of kicking back; that though generally a good tempered Negro, I
sometimes “_got the devil in me_.” These sayings were rife in Talbot
county, and they distinguished me among my servile brethren. Slaves,
generally, will fight each other, and die at each other’s hands; but
there are few who are not held in awe by a white man. Trained from the
cradle up, to think and feel that their masters are superior, and
invested with a sort of sacredness, there are few who can outgrow or
rise above the control which that sentiment exercises. I had now got
free from it, and the thing was known. One bad sheep will spoil a whole
flock. Among the slaves, I was a bad sheep. I hated slavery,
slaveholders, and all pertaining to them; and I did not fail to inspire
others with the same feeling, wherever and whenever opportunity was
presented. This made me a marked lad among the slaves, and a suspected
one among the slaveholders. A knowledge of my ability to read and
write, got pretty widely spread, which was very much against me.

The days between Christmas day and New Year’s, are allowed the slaves
as holidays. During these days, all regular work was suspended, and
there was nothing to do but to keep fires, and look after the stock.
This time was regarded as our own, by the grace of our masters, and we,
therefore used it, or abused it, as we pleased. Those who had families
at a distance, were now expected to visit them, and to spend with them
the entire week. The younger slaves, or the unmarried ones, were
expected to see to the cattle, and attend to incidental duties at home.
The holidays were variously spent. The sober, thinking and industrious
ones of our number, would employ themselves in manufacturing corn
brooms, mats, horse collars and baskets, and some of these were very
well made. Another class spent their time in hunting opossums, coons,
rabbits, and other game. But the majority spent the holidays in sports,
ball playing, wrestling, boxing, running foot races, dancing, and
drinking whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was
generally most agreeable to their masters. A slave who would work
during the holidays, was thought, by his master, undeserving of
holidays. Such an one had rejected the favor of his master. There was,
in this simple act of continued work, an accusation against slaves; and
a slave could not help thinking, that if he made three dollars during
the holidays, he might make three hundred during the year. Not to be
drunk during the holidays, was disgraceful; and he was esteemed a lazy
and improvident man, who could not afford to drink whisky during
Christmas.

The fiddling, dancing and _“jubilee beating_,” was going on in all
directions. This latter performance is strictly southern. It supplies
the place of a violin, or of other musical instruments, and is played
so easily, that almost every farm has its “Juba” beater. The performer
improvises as he beats, and sings his merry songs, so ordering the
words as to have them fall pat with the movement of his hands. Among a
mass of nonsense and wild frolic, once in a while a sharp hit is given
to the meanness of slaveholders. Take the following, for an example:

_We raise de wheat,
Dey gib us de corn;
We bake de bread,
Dey gib us de cruss;
We sif de meal,
Dey gib us de huss;
We peal de meat,
Dey gib us de skin,
And dat’s de way
Dey takes us in.
We skim de pot,
Dey gib us the liquor,
And say dat’s good enough for nigger.
          Walk over! walk over!
Tom butter and de fat;
          Poor nigger you can’t get over dat;
                              Walk over_!


This is not a bad summary of the palpable injustice and fraud of
slavery, giving—as it does—to the lazy and idle, the comforts which God
designed should be given solely to the honest laborer. But to the
holiday’s.

Judging from my own observation and experience, I believe these
holidays to be among the most effective means, in the hands of
slaveholders, of keeping down the spirit of insurrection among the
slaves.

To enslave men, successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their
minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of
which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must be
kept before them. These holidays serve the purpose of keeping the minds
of the slaves occupied with prospective pleasure, within the limits of
slavery. The young man can go wooing; the married man can visit his
wife; the father and mother can see their children; the industrious and
money loving can make a few dollars; the great wrestler can win
laurels; the young people can meet, and enjoy each other’s society; the
drunken man can get plenty of whisky; and the religious man can hold
prayer meetings, preach, pray and exhort during the holidays. Before
the holidays, these are pleasures in prospect; after the holidays, they
become pleasures of memory, and they serve to keep out thoughts and
wishes of a more dangerous character. Were slaveholders at once to
abandon the practice of allowing their slaves these liberties,
periodically, and to keep them, the year round, closely confined to the
narrow circle of their homes, I doubt not that the south would blaze
with insurrections. These holidays are conductors or safety valves to
carry off the explosive elements inseparable from the human mind, when
reduced to the condition of slavery. But for these, the rigors of
bondage would become too severe for endurance, and the slave would be
forced up to dangerous desperation. Woe to the slaveholder when he
undertakes to hinder or to prevent the operation of these electric
conductors. A succession of earthquakes would be less destructive, than
the insurrectionary fires which would be sure to burst forth in
different parts of the south, from such interference.

Thus, the holidays, became part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrongs
and inhumanity of slavery. Ostensibly, they are institutions of
benevolence, designed to mitigate the rigors of slave life, but,
practically, they are a fraud, instituted by human selfishness, the
better to secure the ends of injustice and oppression. The slave’s
happiness is not the end sought, but, rather, the master’s safety. It
is not from a generous unconcern for the slave’s labor that this
cessation from labor is allowed, but from a prudent regard to the
safety of the slave system. I am strengthened in this opinion, by the
fact, that most slaveholders like to have their slaves spend the
holidays in such a manner as to be of no real benefit to the slaves. It
is plain, that everything like rational enjoyment among the slaves, is
frowned upon; and only those wild and low sports, peculiar to
semi-civilized people, are encouraged. All the license allowed, appears
to have no other object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary
freedom, and to make them as glad to return to their work, as they were
to leave it. By plunging them into exhausting depths of drunkenness and
dissipation, this effect is almost certain to follow. I have known
slaveholders resort to cunning tricks, with a view of getting their
slaves deplorably drunk. A usual plan is, to make bets on a slave, that
he can drink more whisky than any other; and so to induce a rivalry
among them, for the mastery in this degradation. The scenes, brought
about in this way, were often scandalous and loathsome in the extreme.
Whole multitudes might be found stretched out in brutal drunkenness, at
once helpless and disgusting. Thus, when the slave asks for a few hours
of virtuous freedom, his cunning master takes advantage of his
ignorance, and cheers him with a dose of vicious and revolting
dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of LIBERTY. We were induced
to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were over, we all
staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a long breath, and went
away to our various fields of work; feeling, upon the whole, rather
glad to go from that which our masters artfully deceived us into the
belief was freedom, back again to the arms of slavery. It was not what
we had taken it to be, nor what it might have been, had it not been
abused by us. It was about as well to be a slave to _master_, as to be
a slave to _rum_ and _whisky._

I am the more induced to take this view of the holiday system, adopted
by slaveholders, from what I know of their treatment of slaves, in
regard to other things. It is the commonest thing for them to try to
disgust their slaves with what they do not want them to have, or to
enjoy. A slave, for instance, likes molasses; he steals some; to cure
him of the taste for it, his master, in many cases, will go away to
town, and buy a large quantity of the _poorest_ quality, and set it
before his slave, and, with whip in hand, compel him to eat it, until
the poor fellow is made to sicken at the very thought of molasses. The
same course is often adopted to cure slaves of the disagreeable and
inconvenient practice of asking for more food, when their allowance has
failed them. The same disgusting process works well, too, in other
things, but I need not cite them. When a slave is drunk, the
slaveholder has no fear that he will plan an insurrection; no fear that
he will escape to the north. It is the sober, thinking slave who is
dangerous, and needs the vigilance of his master, to keep him a slave.
But, to proceed with my narrative.

On the first of January, 1835, I proceeded from St. Michael’s to Mr.
William Freeland’s, my new home. Mr. Freeland lived only three miles
from St. Michael’s, on an old worn out farm, which required much labor
to restore it to anything like a self-supporting establishment.

I was not long in finding Mr. Freeland to be a very different man from
Mr. Covey. Though not rich, Mr. Freeland was what may be called a
well-bred southern gentleman, as different from Covey, as a
well-trained and hardened Negro breaker is from the best specimen of
the first families of the south. Though Freeland was a slaveholder, and
shared many of the vices of his class, he seemed alive to the sentiment
of honor. He had some sense of justice, and some feelings of humanity.
He was fretful, impulsive and passionate, but I must do him the justice
to say, he was free from the mean and selfish characteristics which
distinguished the creature from which I had now, happily, escaped. He
was open, frank, imperative, and practiced no concealments, disdaining
to play the spy. In all this, he was the opposite of the crafty Covey.

Among the many advantages gained in my change from Covey’s to
Freeland’s—startling as the statement may be—was the fact that the
latter gentleman made no profession of religion. I assert _most
unhesitatingly_, that the religion of the south—as I have observed it
and proved it—is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes; the
justifier of the most appalling barbarity; a sanctifier of the most
hateful frauds; and a secure shelter, under which the darkest, foulest,
grossest, and most infernal abominations fester and flourish. Were I
again to be reduced to the condition of a slave, _next_ to that
calamity, I should regard the fact of being the slave of a religious
slaveholder, the greatest that could befall me. For all slaveholders
with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have
found them, almost invariably, the vilest, meanest and basest of their
class. Exceptions there may be, but this is true of religious
slaveholders, _as a class_. It is not for me to explain the fact.
Others may do that; I simply state it as a fact, and leave the
theological, and psychological inquiry, which it raises, to be decided
by others more competent than myself. Religious slaveholders, like
religious persecutors, are ever extreme in their malice and violence.
Very near my new home, on an adjoining farm, there lived the Rev.
Daniel Weeden, who was both pious and cruel after the real Covey
pattern. Mr. Weeden was a local preacher of the Protestant Methodist
persuasion, and a most zealous supporter of the ordinances of religion,
generally. This Weeden owned a woman called “Ceal,” who was a standing
proof of his mercilessness. Poor Ceal’s back, always scantily clothed,
was kept literally raw, by the lash of this religious man and gospel
minister. The most notoriously wicked man—so called in distinction from
church members—could hire hands more easily than this brute. When sent
out to find a home, a slave would never enter the gates of the preacher
Weeden, while a sinful sinner needed a hand. Be have ill, or behave
well, it was the known maxim of Weeden, that it is the duty of a master
to use the lash. If, for no other reason, he contended that this was
essential to remind a slave of his condition, and of his master’s
authority. The good slave must be whipped, to be _kept_ good, and the
bad slave must be whipped, to be _made_ good. Such was Weeden’s theory,
and such was his practice. The back of his slave-woman will, in the
judgment, be the swiftest witness against him.

While I am stating particular cases, I might as well immortalize
another of my neighbors, by calling him by name, and putting him in
print. He did not think that a “chiel” was near, “taking notes,” and
will, doubtless, feel quite angry at having his character touched off
in the ragged style of a slave’s pen. I beg to introduce the reader to
REV. RIGBY HOPKINS. Mr. Hopkins resides between Easton and St.
Michael’s, in Talbot county, Maryland. The severity of this man made
him a perfect terror to the slaves of his neighborhood. The peculiar
feature of his government, was, his system of whipping slaves, as he
said, _in advance_ of deserving it. He always managed to have one or
two slaves to whip on Monday morning, so as to start his hands to their
work, under the inspiration of a new assurance on Monday, that his
preaching about kindness, mercy, brotherly love, and the like, on
Sunday, did not interfere with, or prevent him from establishing his
authority, by the cowskin. He seemed to wish to assure them, that his
tears over poor, lost and ruined sinners, and his pity for them, did
not reach to the blacks who tilled his fields. This saintly Hopkins
used to boast, that he was the best hand to manage a Negro in the
county. He whipped for the smallest offenses, by way of preventing the
commission of large ones.

The reader might imagine a difficulty in finding faults enough for such
frequent whipping. But this is because you have no idea how easy a
matter it is to offend a man who is on the look-out for offenses. The
man, unaccustomed to slaveholding, would be astonished to observe how
many _foggable_ offenses there are in the slaveholder’s catalogue of
crimes; and how easy it is to commit any one of them, even when the
slave least intends it. A slaveholder, bent on finding fault, will
hatch up a dozen a day, if he chooses to do so, and each one of these
shall be of a punishable description. A mere look, word, or motion, a
mistake, accident, or want of power, are all matters for which a slave
may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied with his
condition? It is said, that he has the devil in him, and it must be
whipped out. Does he answer _loudly_, when spoken to by his master,
with an air of self-consciousness? Then, must he be taken down a
button-hole lower, by the lash, well laid on. Does he forget, and omit
to pull off his hat, when approaching a white person? Then, he must, or
may be, whipped for his bad manners. Does he ever venture to vindicate
his conduct, when harshly and unjustly accused? Then, he is guilty of
impudence, one of the greatest crimes in the social catalogue of
southern society. To allow a slave to escape punishment, who has
impudently attempted to exculpate himself from unjust charges,
preferred against him by some white person, is to be guilty of great
dereliction of duty. Does a slave ever venture to suggest a better way
of doing a thing, no matter what? He is, altogether, too officious—wise
above what is written—and he deserves, even if he does not get, a
flogging for his presumption. Does he, while plowing, break a plow, or
while hoeing, break a hoe, or while chopping, break an ax? No matter
what were the imperfections of the implement broken, or the natural
liabilities for breaking, the slave can be whipped for carelessness.
The _reverend_ slaveholder could always find something of this sort, to
justify him in using the lash several times during the week.
Hopkins—like Covey and Weeden—were shunned by slaves who had the
privilege (as many had) of finding their own masters at the end of each
year; and yet, there was not a man in all that section of country, who
made a louder profession of religion, than did MR. RIGBY HOPKINS.

But, to continue the thread of my story, through my experience when at
Mr. William Freeland’s.

My poor, weather-beaten bark now reached smoother water, and gentler
breezes. My stormy life at Covey’s had been of service to me. The
things that would have seemed very hard, had I gone direct to Mr.
Freeland’s, from the home of Master Thomas, were now (after the
hardships at Covey’s) “trifles light as air.” I was still a field hand,
and had come to prefer the severe labor of the field, to the enervating
duties of a house servant. I had become large and strong; and had begun
to take pride in the fact, that I could do as much hard work as some of
the older men. There is much rivalry among slaves, at times, as to
which can do the most work, and masters generally seek to promote such
rivalry. But some of us were too wise to race with each other very
long. Such racing, we had the sagacity to see, was not likely to pay.
We had our times for measuring each other’s strength, but we knew too
much to keep up the competition so long as to produce an extraordinary
day’s work. We knew that if, by extraordinary exertion, a large
quantity of work was done in one day, the fact, becoming known to the
master, might lead him to require the same amount every day. This
thought was enough to bring us to a dead halt when over so much excited
for the race.

At Mr. Freeland’s, my condition was every way improved. I was no longer
the poor scape-goat that I was when at Covey’s, where every wrong thing
done was saddled upon me, and where other slaves were whipped over my
shoulders. Mr. Freeland was too just a man thus to impose upon me, or
upon any one else.

It is quite usual to make one slave the object of especial abuse, and
to beat him often, with a view to its effect upon others, rather than
with any expectation that the slave whipped will be improved by it, but
the man with whom I now was, could descend to no such meanness and
wickedness. Every man here was held individually responsible for his
own conduct.

This was a vast improvement on the rule at Covey’s. There, I was the
general pack horse. Bill Smith was protected, by a positive prohibition
made by his rich master, and the command of the rich slaveholder is LAW
to the poor one; Hughes was favored, because of his relationship to
Covey; and the hands hired temporarily, escaped flogging, except as
they got it over my poor shoulders. Of course, this comparison refers
to the time when Covey _could_ whip me.

Mr. Freeland, like Mr. Covey, gave his hands enough to eat, but, unlike
Mr. Covey, he gave them time to take their meals; he worked us hard
during the day, but gave us the night for rest—another advantage to be
set to the credit of the sinner, as against that of the saint. We were
seldom in the field after dark in the evening, or before sunrise in the
morning. Our implements of husbandry were of the most improved pattern,
and much superior to those used at Covey’s.

Nothwithstanding the improved condition which was now mine, and the
many advantages I had gained by my new home, and my new master, I was
still restless and discontented. I was about as hard to please by a
master, as a master is by slave. The freedom from bodily torture and
unceasing labor, had given my mind an increased sensibility, and
imparted to it greater activity. I was not yet exactly in right
relations. “How be it, that was not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” When entombed
at Covey’s, shrouded in darkness and physical wretchedness, temporal
wellbeing was the grand _desideratum;_ but, temporal wants supplied,
the spirit puts in its claims. Beat and cuff your slave, keep him
hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like
a dog; but, feed and clothe him well—work him moderately—surround him
with physical comfort—and dreams of freedom intrude. Give him a _bad_
master, and he aspires to a _good_ master; give him a good master, and
he wishes to become his _own_ master. Such is human nature. You may
hurl a man so low, beneath the level of his kind, that he loses all
just ideas of his natural position; but elevate him a little, and the
clear conception of rights arises to life and power, and leads him
onward. Thus elevated, a little, at Freeland’s, the dreams called into
being by that good man, Father Lawson, when in Baltimore, began to
visit me; and shoots from the tree of liberty began to put forth tender
buds, and dim hopes of the future began to dawn.

I found myself in congenial society, at Mr. Freeland’s. There were
Henry Harris, John Harris, Handy Caldwell, and Sandy Jenkins. 6

Henry and John were brothers, and belonged to Mr. Freeland. They were
both remarkably bright and intelligent, though neither of them could
read. Now for mischief! I had not been long at Freeland’s before I was
up to my old tricks. I early began to address my companions on the
subject of education, and the advantages of intelligence over
ignorance, and, as far as I dared, I tried to show the agency of
ignorance in keeping men in slavery. Webster’s spelling book and the
_Columbian Orator_ were looked into again. As summer came on, and the
long Sabbath days stretched themselves over our idleness, I became
uneasy, and wanted a Sabbath school, in which to exercise my gifts, and
to impart the little knowledge of letters which I possessed, to my
brother slaves. A house was hardly necessary in the summer time; I
could hold my school under the shade of an old oak tree, as well as any
where else. The thing was, to get the scholars, and to have them
thoroughly imbued with the desire to learn. Two such boys were quickly
secured, in Henry and John, and from them the contagion spread. I was
not long bringing around me twenty or thirty young men, who enrolled
themselves, gladly, in my Sabbath school, and were willing to meet me
regularly, under the trees or elsewhere, for the purpose of learning to
read. It was surprising with what ease they provided themselves with
spelling books. These were mostly the cast off books of their young
masters or mistresses. I taught, at first, on our own farm. All were
impressed with the necessity of keeping the matter as private as
possible, for the fate of the St. Michael’s attempt was notorious, and
fresh in the minds of all. Our pious masters, at St. Michael’s, must
not know that a few of their dusky brothers were learning to read the
word of God, lest they should come down upon us with the lash and
chain. We might have met to drink whisky, to wrestle, fight, and to do
other unseemly things, with no fear of interruption from the saints or
sinners of St. Michael’s.

But, to meet for the purpose of improving the mind and heart, by
learning to read the sacred scriptures, was esteemed a most dangerous
nuisance, to be instantly stopped. The slaveholders of St. Michael’s,
like slaveholders elsewhere, would always prefer to see the slaves
engaged in degrading sports, rather than to see them acting like moral
and accountable beings.

Had any one asked a religious white man, in St. Michael’s, twenty years
ago, the names of three men in that town, whose lives were most after
the pattern of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the first three would
have been as follows:

GARRISON WEST, _Class Leader_.
WRIGHT FAIRBANKS, _Class Leader_.
THOMAS AULD, _Class Leader_.


And yet, these were men who ferociously rushed in upon my Sabbath
school, at St. Michael’s, armed with mob-like missiles, and I must say,
I thought him a Christian, until he took part in bloody by the lash.
This same Garrison West was my class leader, and I must say, I thought
him a Christian, until he took part in breaking up my school. He led me
no more after that. The plea for this outrage was then, as it is now
and at all times—the danger to good order. If the slaves learnt to
read, they would learn something else, and something worse. The peace
of slavery would be disturbed; slave rule would be endangered. I leave
the reader to characterize a system which is endangered by such causes.
I do not dispute the soundness of the reasoning. It is perfectly sound;
and, if slavery be _right_, Sabbath schools for teaching slaves to read
the bible are _wrong_, and ought to be put down. These Christian class
leaders were, to this extent, consistent. They had settled the
question, that slavery is _right_, and, by that standard, they
determined that Sabbath schools are wrong. To be sure, they were
Protestant, and held to the great Protestant right of every man to
_“search the scriptures”_ for himself; but, then, to all general rules,
there are _exceptions_. How convenient! What crimes may not be
committed under the doctrine of the last remark. But, my dear, class
leading Methodist brethren, did not condescend to give me a reason for
breaking up the Sabbath school at St. Michael’s; it was enough that
they had determined upon its destruction. I am, however, digressing.

After getting the school cleverly into operation, the second time
holding it in the woods, behind the barn, and in the shade of trees—I
succeeded in inducing a free colored man, who lived several miles from
our house, to permit me to hold my school in a room at his house. He,
very kindly, gave me this liberty; but he incurred much peril in doing
so, for the assemblage was an unlawful one. I shall not mention, here,
the name of this man; for it might, even now, subject him to
persecution, although the offenses were committed more than twenty
years ago. I had, at one time, more than forty scholars, all of the
right sort; and many of them succeeded in learning to read. I have met
several slaves from Maryland, who were once my scholars; and who
obtained their freedom, I doubt not, partly in consequence of the ideas
imparted to them in that school. I have had various employments during
my short life; but I look back to _none_ with more satisfaction, than
to that afforded by my Sunday school. An attachment, deep and lasting,
sprung up between me and my persecuted pupils, which made parting from
them intensely grievous; and, when I think that most of these dear
souls are yet shut up in this abject thralldom, I am overwhelmed with
grief.

Besides my Sunday school, I devoted three evenings a week to my fellow
slaves, during the winter. Let the reader reflect upon the fact, that,
in this christian country, men and women are hiding from professors of
religion, in barns, in the woods and fields, in order to learn to read
the _holy bible_. Those dear souls, who came to my Sabbath school, came
_not_ because it was popular or reputable to attend such a place, for
they came under the liability of having forty stripes laid on their
naked backs. Every moment they spend in my school, they were under this
terrible liability; and, in this respect, I was sharer with them. Their
minds had been cramped and starved by their cruel masters; the light of
education had been completely excluded; and their hard earnings had
been taken to educate their master’s children. I felt a delight in
circumventing the tyrants, and in blessing the victims of their curses.

The year at Mr. Freeland’s passed off very smoothly, to outward
seeming. Not a blow was given me during the whole year. To the credit
of Mr. Freeland—irreligious though he was—it must be stated, that he
was the best master I ever had, until I became my own master, and
assumed for myself, as I had a right to do, the responsibility of my
own existence and the exercise of my own powers. For much of the
happiness—or absence of misery—with which I passed this year with Mr.
Freeland, I am indebted to the genial temper and ardent friendship of
my brother slaves. They were, every one of them, manly, generous and
brave, yes; I say they were brave, and I will add, fine looking. It is
seldom the lot of mortals to have truer and better friends than were
the slaves on this farm. It is not uncommon to charge slaves with great
treachery toward each other, and to believe them incapable of confiding
in each other; but I must say, that I never loved, esteemed, or
confided in men, more than I did in these. They were as true as steel,
and no band of brothers could have been more loving. There were no mean
advantages taken of each other, as is sometimes the case where slaves
are situated as we were; no tattling; no giving each other bad names to
Mr. Freeland; and no elevating one at the expense of the other. We
never undertook to do any thing, of any importance, which was likely to
affect each other, without mutual consultation. We were generally a
unit, and moved together. Thoughts and sentiments were exchanged
between us, which might well be called very incendiary, by oppressors
and tyrants; and perhaps the time has not even now come, when it is
safe to unfold all the flying suggestions which arise in the minds of
intelligent slaves. Several of my friends and brothers, if yet alive,
are still in some part of the house of bondage; and though twenty years
have passed away, the suspicious malice of slavery might punish them
for even listening to my thoughts.

The slaveholder, kind or cruel, is a slaveholder still—the every hour
violator of the just and inalienable rights of man; and he is,
therefore, every hour silently whetting the knife of vengeance for his
own throat. He never lisps a syllable in commendation of the fathers of
this republic, nor denounces any attempted oppression of himself,
without inviting the knife to his own throat, and asserting the rights
of rebellion for his own slaves.

The year is ended, and we are now in the midst of the Christmas
holidays, which are kept this year as last, according to the general
description previously given.




CHAPTER XIX. _The Run-Away Plot_


NEW YEAR’S THOUGHTS AND MEDITATIONS—AGAIN BOUGHT BY FREELAND—NO
AMBITION TO BE A SLAVE—KINDNESS NO COMPENSATION FOR SLAVERY—INCIPIENT
STEPS TOWARD ESCAPE—CONSIDERATIONS LEADING THERETO—IRRECONCILABLE
HOSTILITY TO SLAVERY—SOLEMN VOW TAKEN—PLAN DIVULGED TO THE
SLAVES—_Columbian Orator—_SCHEME GAINS FAVOR, DESPITE PRO-SLAVERY
PREACHING—DANGER OF DISCOVERY—SKILL OF SLAVEHOLDERS IN READING THE
MINDS OF THEIR SLAVES—SUSPICION AND COERCION—HYMNS WITH DOUBLE
MEANING—VALUE, IN DOLLARS, OF OUR COMPANY—PRELIMINARY
CONSULTATION—PASS-WORD—CONFLICTS OF HOPE AND FEAR—DIFFICULTIES TO BE
OVERCOME—IGNORANCE OF GEOGRAPHY—SURVEY OF IMAGINARY DIFFICULTIES—EFFECT
ON OUR MINDS—PATRICK HENRY—SANDY BECOMES A DREAMER—ROUTE TO THE NORTH
LAID OUT—OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED—FRAUDS PRACTICED ON FREEMEN—PASSES
WRITTEN—ANXIETIES AS THE TIME DREW NEAR—DREAD OF FAILURE—APPEALS TO
COMRADES—STRANGE PRESENTIMENT—COINCIDENCE—THE BETRAYAL DISCOVERED—THE
MANNER OF ARRESTING US—RESISTANCE MADE BY HENRY HARRIS—ITS EFFECT—THE
UNIQUE SPEECH OF MRS. FREELAND—OUR SAD PROCESSION TO PRISON—BRUTAL
JEERS BY THE MULTITUDE ALONG THE ROAD—PASSES EATEN—THE DENIAL—SANDY TOO
WELL LOVED TO BE SUSPECTED—DRAGGED BEHIND HORSES—THE JAIL A RELIEF—A
NEW SET OF TORMENTORS—SLAVE-TRADERS—JOHN, CHARLES AND HENRY
RELEASED—ALONE IN PRISON—I AM TAKEN OUT, AND SENT TO BALTIMORE.


I am now at the beginning of the year 1836, a time favorable for
serious thoughts. The mind naturally occupies itself with the mysteries
of life in all its phases—the ideal, the real and the actual. Sober
people look both ways at the beginning of the year, surveying the
errors of the past, and providing against possible errors of the
future. I, too, was thus exercised. I had little pleasure in
retrospect, and the prospect was not very brilliant. “Notwithstanding,”
thought I, “the many resolutions and prayers I have made, in behalf of
freedom, I am, this first day of the year 1836, still a slave, still
wandering in the depths of spirit-devouring thralldom. My faculties and
powers of body and soul are not my own, but are the property of a
fellow mortal, in no sense superior to me, except that he has the
physical power to compel me to be owned and controlled by him. By the
combined physical force of the community, I am his slave—a slave for
life.” With thoughts like these, I was perplexed and chafed; they
rendered me gloomy and disconsolate. The anguish of my mind may not be
written.

At the close of the year 1835, Mr. Freeland, my temporary master, had
bought me of Capt. Thomas Auld, for the year 1836. His promptness in
securing my services, would have been flattering to my vanity, had I
been ambitious to win the reputation of being a valuable slave. Even as
it was, I felt a slight degree of complacency at the circumstance. It
showed he was as well pleased with me as a slave, as I was with him as
a master. I have already intimated my regard for Mr. Freeland, and I
may say here, in addressing northern readers—where is no selfish motive
for speaking in praise of a slaveholder—that Mr. Freeland was a man of
many excellent qualities, and to me quite preferable to any master I
ever had.

But the kindness of the slavemaster only gilds the chain of slavery,
and detracts nothing from its weight or power. The thought that men are
made for other and better uses than slavery, thrives best under the
gentle treatment of a kind master. But the grim visage of slavery can
assume no smiles which can fascinate the partially enlightened slave,
into a forgetfulness of his bondage, nor of the desirableness of
liberty.

I was not through the first month of this, my second year with the kind
and gentlemanly Mr. Freeland, before I was earnestly considering and
advising plans for gaining that freedom, which, when I was but a mere
child, I had ascertained to be the natural and inborn right of every
member of the human family. The desire for this freedom had been
benumbed, while I was under the brutalizing dominion of Covey; and it
had been postponed, and rendered inoperative, by my truly pleasant
Sunday school engagements with my friends, during the year 1835, at Mr.
Freeland’s. It had, however, never entirely subsided. I hated slavery,
always, and the desire for freedom only needed a favorable breeze, to
fan it into a blaze, at any moment. The thought of only being a
creature of the _present_ and the _past_, troubled me, and I longed to
have a _future_—a future with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the
past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the
soul—whose life and happiness is unceasing progress—what the prison is
to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors. The dawning of
this, another year, awakened me from my temporary slumber, and roused
into life my latent, but long cherished aspirations for freedom. I was
now not only ashamed to be contented in slavery, but ashamed to _seem_
to be contented, and in my present favorable condition, under the mild
rule of Mr. F., I am not sure that some kind reader will not condemn me
for being over ambitious, and greatly wanting in proper humility, when
I say the truth, that I now drove from me all thoughts of making the
best of my lot, and welcomed only such thoughts as led me away from the
house of bondage. The intense desires, now felt, _to be free_,
quickened by my present favorable circumstances, brought me to the
determination to act, as well as to think and speak. Accordingly, at
the beginning of this year 1836, I took upon me a solemn vow, that the
year which had now dawned upon me should not close, without witnessing
an earnest attempt, on my part, to gain my liberty. This vow only bound
me to make my escape individually; but the year spent with Mr. Freeland
had attached me, as with “hooks of steel,” to my brother slaves. The
most affectionate and confiding friendship existed between us; and I
felt it my duty to give them an opportunity to share in my virtuous
determination by frankly disclosing to them my plans and purposes.
Toward Henry and John Harris, I felt a friendship as strong as one man
can feel for another; for I could have died with and for them. To them,
therefore, with a suitable degree of caution, I began to disclose my
sentiments and plans; sounding them, the while on the subject of
running away, provided a good chance should offer. I scarcely need tell
the reader, that I did my _very best_ to imbue the minds of my dear
friends with my own views and feelings. Thoroughly awakened, now, and
with a definite vow upon me, all my little reading, which had any
bearing on the subject of human rights, was rendered available in my
communications with my friends. That (to me) gem of a book, the
_Columbian Orator_, with its eloquent orations and spicy dialogues,
denouncing oppression and slavery—telling of what had been dared, done
and suffered by men, to obtain the inestimable boon of liberty—was
still fresh in my memory, and whirled into the ranks of my speech with
the aptitude of well trained soldiers, going through the drill. The
fact is, I here began my public speaking. I canvassed, with Henry and
John, the subject of slavery, and dashed against it the condemning
brand of God’s eternal justice, which it every hour violates. My fellow
servants were neither indifferent, dull, nor inapt. Our feelings were
more alike than our opinions. All, however, were ready to act, when a
feasible plan should be proposed. “Show us _how_ the thing is to be
done,” said they, “and all is clear.”

We were all, except Sandy, quite free from slaveholding priestcraft. It
was in vain that we had been taught from the pulpit at St. Michael’s,
the duty of obedience to our masters; to recognize God as the author of
our enslavement; to regard running away an offense, alike against God
and man; to deem our enslavement a merciful and beneficial arrangement;
to esteem our condition, in this country, a paradise to that from which
we had been snatched in Africa; to consider our hard hands and dark
color as God’s mark of displeasure, and as pointing us out as the
proper subjects of slavery; that the relation of master and slave was
one of reciprocal benefits; that our work was not more serviceable to
our masters, than our master’s thinking was serviceable to us. I say,
it was in vain that the pulpit of St. Michael’s had constantly
inculcated these plausible doctrine. Nature laughed them to scorn. For
my own part, I had now become altogether too big for my chains. Father
Lawson’s solemn words, of what I ought to be, and might be, in the
providence of God, had not fallen dead on my soul. I was fast verging
toward manhood, and the prophecies of my childhood were still
unfulfilled. The thought, that year after year had passed away, and my
resolutions to run away had failed and faded—that I was _still a
slave_, and a slave, too, with chances for gaining my freedom
diminished and still diminishing—was not a matter to be slept over
easily; nor did I easily sleep over it.

But here came a new trouble. Thoughts and purposes so incendiary as
those I now cherished, could not agitate the mind long, without danger
of making themselves manifest to scrutinizing and unfriendly beholders.
I had reason to fear that my sable face might prove altogether too
transparent for the safe concealment of my hazardous enterprise. Plans
of greater moment have leaked through stone walls, and revealed their
projectors. But, here was no stone wall to hide my purpose. I would
have given my poor, tell tale face for the immoveable countenance of an
Indian, for it was far from being proof against the daily, searching
glances of those with whom I met.

It is the interest and business of slaveholders to study human nature,
with a view to practical results, and many of them attain astonishing
proficiency in discerning the thoughts and emotions of slaves. They
have to deal not with earth, wood, or stone, but with _men;_ and, by
every regard they have for their safety and prosperity, they must study
to know the material on which they are at work. So much intellect as
the slaveholder has around him, requires watching. Their safety depends
upon their vigilance. Conscious of the injustice and wrong they are
every hour perpetrating, and knowing what they themselves would do if
made the victims of such wrongs, they are looking out for the first
signs of the dread retribution of justice. They watch, therefore, with
skilled and practiced eyes, and have learned to read, with great
accuracy, the state of mind and heart of the slaves, through his sable
face. These uneasy sinners are quick to inquire into the matter, where
the slave is concerned. Unusual sobriety, apparent abstraction,
sullenness and indifference—indeed, any mood out of the common
way—afford ground for suspicion and inquiry. Often relying on their
superior position and wisdom, they hector and torture the slave into a
confession, by affecting to know the truth of their accusations. “You
have got the devil in you,” say they, “and we will whip him out of
you.” I have often been put thus to the torture, on bare suspicion.
This system has its disadvantages as well as their opposite. The slave
is sometimes whipped into the confession of offenses which he never
committed. The reader will see that the good old rule—“a man is to be
held innocent until proved to be guilty”—does not hold good on the
slave plantation. Suspicion and torture are the approved methods of
getting at the truth, here. It was necessary for me, therefore, to keep
a watch over my deportment, lest the enemy should get the better of me.

But with all our caution and studied reserve, I am not sure that Mr.
Freeland did not suspect that all was not right with us. It _did_ seem
that he watched us more narrowly, after the plan of escape had been
conceived and discussed amongst us. Men seldom see themselves as others
see them; and while, to ourselves, everything connected with our
contemplated escape appeared concealed, Mr. Freeland may have, with the
peculiar prescience of a slaveholder, mastered the huge thought which
was disturbing our peace in slavery.

I am the more inclined to think that he suspected us, because, prudent
as we were, as I now look back, I can see that we did many silly
things, very well calculated to awaken suspicion. We were, at times,
remarkably buoyant, singing hymns and making joyous exclamations,
almost as triumphant in their tone as if we reached a land of freedom
and safety. A keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing
of

_O Canaan, sweet Canaan,
I am bound for the land of Canaan,_


something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the
_north_—and the north was our Canaan.

_I thought I heard them say,
There were lions in the way,
I don’t expect to Star
          Much longer here._

_Run to Jesus—shun the danger—
I don’t expect to stay
          Much longer here_.


was a favorite air, and had a double meaning. In the lips of some, it
meant the expectation of a speedy summons to a world of spirits; but,
in the lips of _our_ company, it simply meant, a speedy pilgrimage
toward a free state, and deliverance from all the evils and dangers of
slavery.

I had succeeded in winning to my (what slaveholders would call wicked)
scheme, a company of five young men, the very flower of the
neighborhood, each one of whom would have commanded one thousand
dollars in the home market. At New Orleans, they would have brought
fifteen hundred dollars a piece, and, perhaps, more. The names of our
party were as follows: Henry Harris; John Harris, brother to Henry;
Sandy Jenkins, of root memory; Charles Roberts, and Henry Bailey. I was
the youngest, but one, of the party. I had, however, the advantage of
them all, in experience, and in a knowledge of letters. This gave me
great influence over them. Perhaps not one of them, left to himself,
would have dreamed of escape as a possible thing. Not one of them was
self-moved in the matter. They all wanted to be free; but the serious
thought of running away, had not entered into their minds, until I won
them to the undertaking. They all were tolerably well off—for
slaves—and had dim hopes of being set free, some day, by their masters.
If any one is to blame for disturbing the quiet of the slaves and
slave-masters of the neighborhood of St. Michael’s, _I am the man_. I
claim to be the instigator of the high crime (as the slaveholders
regard it) and I kept life in it, until life could be kept in it no
longer.

Pending the time of our contemplated departure out of our Egypt, we met
often by night, and on every Sunday. At these meetings we talked the
matter over; told our hopes and fears, and the difficulties discovered
or imagined; and, like men of sense, we counted the cost of the
enterprise to which we were committing ourselves.

These meetings must have resembled, on a small scale, the meetings of
revolutionary conspirators, in their primary condition. We were
plotting against our (so called) lawful rulers; with this difference
that we sought our own good, and not the harm of our enemies. We did
not seek to overthrow them, but to escape from them. As for Mr.
Freeland, we all liked him, and would have gladly remained with him,
_as freeman_. LIBERTY was our aim; and we had now come to think that we
had a right to liberty, against every obstacle even against the lives
of our enslavers.

We had several words, expressive of things, important to us, which we
understood, but which, even if distinctly heard by an outsider, would
convey no certain meaning. I have reasons for suppressing these
_pass-words_, which the reader will easily divine. I hated the secrecy;
but where slavery is powerful, and liberty is weak, the latter is
driven to concealment or to destruction.

The prospect was not always a bright one. At times, we were almost
tempted to abandon the enterprise, and to get back to that comparative
peace of mind, which even a man under the gallows might feel, when all
hope of escape had vanished. Quiet bondage was felt to be better than
the doubts, fears and uncertainties, which now so sadly perplexed and
disturbed us.

The infirmities of humanity, generally, were represented in our little
band. We were confident, bold and determined, at times; and, again,
doubting, timid and wavering; whistling, like the boy in the graveyard,
to keep away the spirits.

To look at the map, and observe the proximity of Eastern Shore,
Maryland, to Delaware and Pennsylvania, it may seem to the reader quite
absurd, to regard the proposed escape as a formidable undertaking. But
to _understand_, some one has said a man must _stand under_. The real
distance was great enough, but the imagined distance was, to our
ignorance, even greater. Every slaveholder seeks to impress his slave
with a belief in the boundlessness of slave territory, and of his own
almost illimitable power. We all had vague and indistinct notions of
the geography of the country.

The distance, however, is not the chief trouble. The nearer are the
lines of a slave state and the borders of a free one, the greater the
peril. Hired kidnappers infest these borders. Then, too, we knew that
merely reaching a free state did not free us; that, wherever caught, we
could be returned to slavery. We could see no spot on this side the
ocean, where we could be free. We had heard of Canada, the real Canaan
of the American bondmen, simply as a country to which the wild goose
and the swan repaired at the end of winter, to escape the heat of
summer, but not as the home of man. I knew something of theology, but
nothing of geography. I really did not, at that time, know that there
was a state of New York, or a state of Massachusetts. I had heard of
Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, and all the southern states, but
was ignorant of the free states, generally. New York city was our
northern limit, and to go there, and be forever harassed with the
liability of being hunted down and returned to slavery—with the
certainty of being treated ten times worse than we had ever been
treated before was a prospect far from delightful, and it might well
cause some hesitation about engaging in the enterprise. The case,
sometimes, to our excited visions, stood thus: At every gate through
which we had to pass, we saw a watchman; at every ferry, a guard; on
every bridge, a sentinel; and in every wood, a patrol or slave-hunter.
We were hemmed in on every side. The good to be sought, and the evil to
be shunned, were flung in the balance, and weighed against each other.
On the one hand, there stood slavery; a stern reality, glaring
frightfully upon us, with the blood of millions in his polluted
skirts—terrible to behold—greedily devouring our hard earnings and
feeding himself upon our flesh. Here was the evil from which to escape.
On the other hand, far away, back in the hazy distance, where all forms
seemed but shadows, under the flickering light of the north star—behind
some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain—stood a doubtful freedom,
half frozen, beckoning us to her icy domain. This was the good to be
sought. The inequality was as great as that between certainty and
uncertainty. This, in itself, was enough to stagger us; but when we
came to survey the untrodden road, and conjecture the many possible
difficulties, we were appalled, and at times, as I have said, were upon
the point of giving over the struggle altogether.

The reader can have little idea of the phantoms of trouble which flit,
in such circumstances, before the uneducated mind of the slave. Upon
either side, we saw grim death assuming a variety of horrid shapes.
Now, it was starvation, causing us, in a strange and friendless land,
to eat our own flesh. Now, we were contending with the waves (for our
journey was in part by water) and were drowned. Now, we were hunted by
dogs, and overtaken and torn to pieces by their merciless fangs. We
were stung by scorpions—chased by wild beasts—bitten by snakes; and,
worst of all, after having succeeded in swimming rivers—encountering
wild beasts—sleeping in the woods—suffering hunger, cold, heat and
nakedness—we supposed ourselves to be overtaken by hired kidnappers,
who, in the name of the law, and for their thrice accursed reward,
would, perchance, fire upon us—kill some, wound others, and capture
all. This dark picture, drawn by ignorance and fear, at times greatly
shook our determination, and not unfrequently caused us to

Rather bear those ills we had
Than fly to others which we knew not of.


I am not disposed to magnify this circumstance in my experience, and
yet I think I shall seem to be so disposed, to the reader. No man can
tell the intense agony which is felt by the slave, when wavering on the
point of making his escape. All that he has is at stake; and even that
which he has not, is at stake, also. The life which he has, may be
lost, and the liberty which he seeks, may not be gained.

Patrick Henry, to a listening senate, thrilled by his magic eloquence,
and ready to stand by him in his boldest flights, could say, GIVE ME
LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH, and this saying was a sublime one, even for a
freeman; but, incomparably more sublime, is the same sentiment, when
_practically_ asserted by men accustomed to the lash and chain—men
whose sensibilities must have become more or less deadened by their
bondage. With us it was a _doubtful_ liberty, at best, that we sought;
and a certain, lingering death in the rice swamps and sugar fields, if
we failed. Life is not lightly regarded by men of sane minds. It is
precious, alike to the pauper and to the prince—to the slave, and to
his master; and yet, I believe there was not one among us, who would
not rather have been shot down, than pass away life in hopeless
bondage.

In the progress of our preparations, Sandy, the root man, became
troubled. He began to have dreams, and some of them were very
distressing. One of these, which happened on a Friday night, was, to
him, of great significance; and I am quite ready to confess, that I
felt somewhat damped by it myself. He said, “I dreamed, last night,
that I was roused from sleep, by strange noises, like the voices of a
swarm of angry birds, that caused a roar as they passed, which fell
upon my ear like a coming gale over the tops of the trees. Looking up
to see what it could mean,” said Sandy, “I saw you, Frederick, in the
claws of a huge bird, surrounded by a large number of birds, of all
colors and sizes. These were all picking at you, while you, with your
arms, seemed to be trying to protect your eyes. Passing over me, the
birds flew in a south-westerly direction, and I watched them until they
were clean out of sight. Now, I saw this as plainly as I now see you;
and furder, honey, watch de Friday night dream; dare is sumpon in it,
shose you born; dare is, indeed, honey.”

I confess I did not like this dream; but I threw off concern about it,
by attributing it to the general excitement and perturbation consequent
upon our contemplated plan of escape. I could not, however, shake off
its effect at once. I felt that it boded me no good. Sandy was
unusually emphatic and oracular, and his manner had much to do with the
impression made upon me.

The plan of escape which I recommended, and to which my comrades
assented, was to take a large canoe, owned by Mr. Hamilton, and, on the
Saturday night previous to the Easter holidays, launch out into the
Chesapeake bay, and paddle for its head—a distance of seventy miles
with all our might. Our course, on reaching this point, was, to turn
the canoe adrift, and bend our steps toward the north star, till we
reached a free state.

There were several objections to this plan. One was, the danger from
gales on the bay. In rough weather, the waters of the Chesapeake are
much agitated, and there is danger, in a canoe, of being swamped by the
waves. Another objection was, that the canoe would soon be missed; the
absent persons would, at once, be suspected of having taken it; and we
should be pursued by some of the fast sailing bay craft out of St.
Michael’s. Then, again, if we reached the head of the bay, and turned
the canoe adrift, she might prove a guide to our track, and bring the
land hunters after us.

These and other objections were set aside, by the stronger ones which
could be urged against every other plan that could then be suggested.
On the water, we had a chance of being regarded as fishermen, in the
service of a master. On the other hand, by taking the land route,
through the counties adjoining Delaware, we should be subjected to all
manner of interruptions, and many very disagreeable questions, which
might give us serious trouble. Any white man is authorized to stop a
man of color, on any road, and examine him, and arrest him, if he so
desires.

By this arrangement, many abuses (considered such even by slaveholders)
occur. Cases have been known, where freemen have been called upon to
show their free papers, by a pack of ruffians—and, on the presentation
of the papers, the ruffians have torn them up, and seized their victim,
and sold him to a life of endless bondage.

The week before our intended start, I wrote a pass for each of our
party, giving them permission to visit Baltimore, during the Easter
holidays. The pass ran after this manner:

This is to certify, that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my
servant, John, full liberty to go to Baltimore, to spend the Easter
holidays.


W.H.
Near St. Michael’s, Talbot county, Maryland


Although we were not going to Baltimore, and were intending to land
east of North Point, in the direction where I had seen the Philadelphia
steamers go, these passes might be made useful to us in the lower part
of the bay, while steering toward Baltimore. These were not, however,
to be shown by us, until all other answers failed to satisfy the
inquirer. We were all fully alive to the importance of being calm and
self-possessed, when accosted, if accosted we should be; and we more
times than one rehearsed to each other how we should behave in the hour
of trial.

These were long, tedious days and nights. The suspense was painful, in
the extreme. To balance probabilities, where life and liberty hang on
the result, requires steady nerves. I panted for action, and was glad
when the day, at the close of which we were to start, dawned upon us.
Sleeping, the night before, was out of the question. I probably felt
more deeply than any of my companions, because I was the instigator of
the movement. The responsibility of the whole enterprise rested on my
shoulders. The glory of success, and the shame and confusion of
failure, could not be matters of indifference to me. Our food was
prepared; our clothes were packed up; we were all ready to go, and
impatient for Saturday morning—considering that the last morning of our
bondage.

I cannot describe the tempest and tumult of my brain, that morning. The
reader will please to bear in mind, that, in a slave state, an
unsuccessful runaway is not only subjected to cruel torture, and sold
away to the far south, but he is frequently execrated by the other
slaves. He is charged with making the condition of the other slaves
intolerable, by laying them all under the suspicion of their
masters—subjecting them to greater vigilance, and imposing greater
limitations on their privileges. I dreaded murmurs from this quarter.
It is difficult, too, for a slavemaster to believe that slaves escaping
have not been aided in their flight by some one of their fellow slaves.
When, therefore, a slave is missing, every slave on the place is
closely examined as to his knowledge of the undertaking; and they are
sometimes even tortured, to make them disclose what they are suspected
of knowing of such escape.

Our anxiety grew more and more intense, as the time of our intended
departure for the north drew nigh. It was truly felt to be a matter of
life and death with us; and we fully intended to _fight_ as well as
_run_, if necessity should occur for that extremity. But the trial hour
was not yet to come. It was easy to resolve, but not so easy to act. I
expected there might be some drawing back, at the last. It was natural
that there should be; therefore, during the intervening time, I lost no
opportunity to explain away difficulties, to remove doubts, to dispel
fears, and to inspire all with firmness. It was too late to look back;
and _now_ was the time to go forward. Like most other men, we had done
the talking part of our work, long and well; and the time had come to
_act_ as if we were in earnest, and meant to be as true in action as in
words. I did not forget to appeal to the pride of my comrades, by
telling them that, if after having solemnly promised to go, as they had
done, they now failed to make the attempt, they would, in effect, brand
themselves with cowardice, and might as well sit down, fold their arms,
and acknowledge themselves as fit only to be _slaves_. This detestable
character, all were unwilling to assume. Every man except Sandy (he,
much to our regret, withdrew) stood firm; and at our last meeting we
pledged ourselves afresh, and in the most solemn manner, that, at the
time appointed, we _would_ certainly start on our long journey for a
free country. This meeting was in the middle of the week, at the end of
which we were to start.

Early that morning we went, as usual, to the field, but with hearts
that beat quickly and anxiously. Any one intimately acquainted with us,
might have seen that all was not well with us, and that some monster
lingered in our thoughts. Our work that morning was the same as it had
been for several days past—drawing out and spreading manure. While thus
engaged, I had a sudden presentiment, which flashed upon me like
lightning in a dark night, revealing to the lonely traveler the gulf
before, and the enemy behind. I instantly turned to Sandy Jenkins, who
was near me, and said to him, _“Sandy, we are betrayed;_ something has
just told me so.” I felt as sure of it, as if the officers were there
in sight. Sandy said, “Man, dat is strange; but I feel just as you do.”
If my mother—then long in her grave—had appeared before me, and told me
that we were betrayed, I could not, at that moment, have felt more
certain of the fact.

In a few minutes after this, the long, low and distant notes of the
horn summoned us from the field to breakfast. I felt as one may be
supposed to feel before being led forth to be executed for some great
offense. I wanted no breakfast; but I went with the other slaves toward
the house, for form’s sake. My feelings were not disturbed as to the
right of running away; on that point I had no trouble, whatever. My
anxiety arose from a sense of the consequences of failure.

In thirty minutes after that vivid presentiment came the apprehended
crash. On reaching the house, for breakfast, and glancing my eye toward
the lane gate, the worst was at once made known. The lane gate off Mr.
Freeland’s house, is nearly a half mile from the door, and shaded by
the heavy wood which bordered the main road. I was, however, able to
descry four white men, and two colored men, approaching. The white men
were on horseback, and the colored men were walking behind, and seemed
to be tied. _“It is all over with us,”_ thought I, _“we are surely
betrayed_.” I now became composed, or at least comparatively so, and
calmly awaited the result. I watched the ill-omened company, till I saw
them enter the gate. Successful flight was impossible, and I made up my
mind to stand, and meet the evil, whatever it might be; for I was not
without a slight hope that things might turn differently from what I at
first expected. In a few moments, in came Mr. William Hamilton, riding
very rapidly, and evidently much excited. He was in the habit of riding
very slowly, and was seldom known to gallop his horse. This time, his
horse was nearly at full speed, causing the dust to roll thick behind
him. Mr. Hamilton, though one of the most resolute men in the whole
neighborhood, was, nevertheless, a remarkably mild spoken man; and,
even when greatly excited, his language was cool and circumspect. He
came to the door, and inquired if Mr. Freeland was in. I told him that
Mr. Freeland was at the barn. Off the old gentleman rode, toward the
barn, with unwonted speed. Mary, the cook, was at a loss to know what
was the matter, and I did not profess any skill in making her
understand. I knew she would have united, as readily as any one, in
cursing me for bringing trouble into the family; so I held my peace,
leaving matters to develop themselves, without my assistance. In a few
moments, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Freeland came down from the barn to the
house; and, just as they made their appearance in the front yard, three
men (who proved to be constables) came dashing into the lane, on
horseback, as if summoned by a sign requiring quick work. A few seconds
brought them into the front yard, where they hastily dismounted, and
tied their horses. This done, they joined Mr. Freeland and Mr.
Hamilton, who were standing a short distance from the kitchen. A few
moments were spent, as if in consulting how to proceed, and then the
whole party walked up to the kitchen door. There was now no one in the
kitchen but myself and John Harris. Henry and Sandy were yet at the
barn. Mr. Freeland came inside the kitchen door, and with an agitated
voice, called me by name, and told me to come forward; that there was
some gentlemen who wished to see me. I stepped toward them, at the
door, and asked what they wanted, when the constables grabbed me, and
told me that I had better not resist; that I had been in a scrape, or
was said to have been in one; that they were merely going to take me
where I could be examined; that they were going to carry me to St.
Michael’s, to have me brought before my master. They further said,
that, in case the evidence against me was not true, I should be
acquitted. I was now firmly tied, and completely at the mercy of my
captors. Resistance was idle. They were five in number, armed to the
very teeth. When they had secured me, they next turned to John Harris,
and, in a few moments, succeeded in tying him as firmly as they had
already tied me. They next turned toward Henry Harris, who had now
returned from the barn. “Cross your hands,” said the constables, to
Henry. “I won’t” said Henry, in a voice so firm and clear, and in a
manner so determined, as for a moment to arrest all proceedings. “Won’t
you cross your hands?” said Tom Graham, the constable. “_No I won’t_,”
said Henry, with increasing emphasis. Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Freeland, and
the officers, now came near to Henry. Two of the constables drew out
their shining pistols, and swore by the name of God, that he should
cross his hands, or they would shoot him down. Each of these hired
ruffians now cocked their pistols, and, with fingers apparently on the
triggers, presented their deadly weapons to the breast of the unarmed
slave, saying, at the same time, if he did not cross his hands, they
would “blow his d—d heart out of him.”

_“Shoot! shoot me!”_ said Henry. “_You can’t kill me but once_.
Shoot!—shoot! and be d—d. _I won’t be tied_.” This, the brave fellow
said in a voice as defiant and heroic in its tone, as was the language
itself; and, at the moment of saying this, with the pistols at his very
breast, he quickly raised his arms, and dashed them from the puny hands
of his assassins, the weapons flying in opposite directions. Now came
the struggle. All hands was now rushed upon the brave fellow, and,
after beating him for some time, they succeeded in overpowering and
tying him. Henry put me to shame; he fought, and fought bravely. John
and I had made no resistance. The fact is, I never see much use in
fighting, unless there is a reasonable probability of whipping
somebody. Yet there was something almost providential in the resistance
made by the gallant Henry. But for that resistance, every soul of us
would have been hurried off to the far south. Just a moment previous to
the trouble with Henry, Mr. Hamilton _mildly_ said—and this gave me the
unmistakable clue to the cause of our arrest—“Perhaps we had now better
make a search for those protections, which we understand Frederick has
written for himself and the rest.” Had these passes been found, they
would have been point blank proof against us, and would have confirmed
all the statements of our betrayer. Thanks to the resistance of Henry,
the excitement produced by the scuffle drew all attention in that
direction, and I succeeded in flinging my pass, unobserved, into the
fire. The confusion attendant upon the scuffle, and the apprehension of
further trouble, perhaps, led our captors to forego, for the present,
any search for _“those protections” which Frederick was said to have
written for his companions_; so we were not yet convicted of the
purpose to run away; and it was evident that there was some doubt, on
the part of all, whether we had been guilty of such a purpose.

Just as we were all completely tied, and about ready to start toward
St. Michael’s, and thence to jail, Mrs. Betsey Freeland (mother to
William, who was very much attached—after the southern fashion—to Henry
and John, they having been reared from childhood in her house) came to
the kitchen door, with her hands full of biscuits—for we had not had
time to take our breakfast that morning—and divided them between Henry
and John. This done, the lady made the following parting address to me,
looking and pointing her bony finger at me. “You devil! you yellow
devil! It was you that put it into the heads of Henry and John to run
away. But for _you_, you _long legged yellow devil_, Henry and John
would never have thought of running away.” I gave the lady a look,
which called forth a scream of mingled wrath and terror, as she slammed
the kitchen door, and went in, leaving me, with the rest, in hands as
harsh as her own broken voice.

Could the kind reader have been quietly riding along the main road to
or from Easton, that morning, his eye would have met a painful sight.
He would have seen five young men, guilty of no crime, save that of
preferring _liberty_ to a life of _bondage_, drawn along the public
highway—firmly bound together—tramping through dust and heat,
bare-footed and bare-headed—fastened to three strong horses, whose
riders were armed to the teeth, with pistols and daggers—on their way
to prison, like felons, and suffering every possible insult from the
crowds of idle, vulgar people, who clustered around, and heartlessly
made their failure the occasion for all manner of ribaldry and sport.
As I looked upon this crowd of vile persons, and saw myself and friends
thus assailed and persecuted, I could not help seeing the fulfillment
of Sandy’s dream. I was in the hands of moral vultures, and firmly held
in their sharp talons, and was hurried away toward Easton, in a
south-easterly direction, amid the jeers of new birds of the same
feather, through every neighborhood we passed. It seemed to me (and
this shows the good understanding between the slaveholders and their
allies) that every body we met knew the cause of our arrest, and were
out, awaiting our passing by, to feast their vindictive eyes on our
misery and to gloat over our ruin. Some said, _I ought to be hanged_,
and others, _I ought to be burnt_, others, I ought to have the _“hide”_
taken from my back; while no one gave us a kind word or sympathizing
look, except the poor slaves, who were lifting their heavy hoes, and
who cautiously glanced at us through the post-and-rail fences, behind
which they were at work. Our sufferings, that morning, can be more
easily imagined than described. Our hopes were all blasted, at a blow.
The cruel injustice, the victorious crime, and the helplessness of
innocence, led me to ask, in my ignorance and weakness “Where now is
the God of justice and mercy? And why have these wicked men the power
thus to trample upon our rights, and to insult our feelings?” And yet,
in the next moment, came the consoling thought, _“The day of oppressor
will come at last.”_ Of one thing I could be glad—not one of my dear
friends, upon whom I had brought this great calamity, either by word or
look, reproached me for having led them into it. We were a band of
brothers, and never dearer to each other than now. The thought which
gave us the most pain, was the probable separation which would now take
place, in case we were sold off to the far south, as we were likely to
be. While the constables were looking forward, Henry and I, being
fastened together, could occasionally exchange a word, without being
observed by the kidnappers who had us in charge. “What shall I do with
my pass?” said Henry. “Eat it with your biscuit,” said I; “it won’t do
to tear it up.” We were now near St. Michael’s. The direction
concerning the passes was passed around, and executed. _“Own nothing!”_
said I. _“Own nothing!”_ was passed around and enjoined, and assented
to. Our confidence in each other was unshaken; and we were quite
resolved to succeed or fail together—as much after the calamity which
had befallen us, as before.

On reaching St. Michael’s, we underwent a sort of examination at my
master’s store, and it was evident to my mind, that Master Thomas
suspected the truthfulness of the evidence upon which they had acted in
arresting us; and that he only affected, to some extent, the
positiveness with which he asserted our guilt. There was nothing said
by any of our company, which could, in any manner, prejudice our cause;
and there was hope, yet, that we should be able to return to our
homes—if for nothing else, at least to find out the guilty man or woman
who had betrayed us.

To this end, we all denied that we had been guilty of intended flight.
Master Thomas said that the evidence he had of our intention to run
away, was strong enough to hang us, in a case of murder. “But,” said I,
“the cases are not equal. If murder were committed, some one must have
committed it—the thing is done! In our case, nothing has been done! We
have not run away. Where is the evidence against us? We were quietly at
our work.” I talked thus, with unusual freedom, to bring out the
evidence against us, for we all wanted, above all things, to know the
guilty wretch who had betrayed us, that we might have something
tangible upon which to pour the execrations. From something which
dropped, in the course of the talk, it appeared that there was but one
witness against us—and that that witness could not be produced. Master
Thomas would not tell us _who_ his informant was; but we suspected, and
suspected _one_ person _only_. Several circumstances seemed to point
SANDY out, as our betrayer. His entire knowledge of our plans his
participation in them—his withdrawal from us—his dream, and his
simultaneous presentiment that we were betrayed—the taking us, and the
leaving him—were calculated to turn suspicion toward him; and yet, we
could not suspect him. We all loved him too well to think it _possible_
that he could have betrayed us. So we rolled the guilt on other
shoulders.

We were literally dragged, that morning, behind horses, a distance of
fifteen miles, and placed in the Easton jail. We were glad to reach the
end of our journey, for our pathway had been the scene of insult and
mortification. Such is the power of public opinion, that it is hard,
even for the innocent, to feel the happy consolations of innocence,
when they fall under the maledictions of this power. How could we
regard ourselves as in the right, when all about us denounced us as
criminals, and had the power and the disposition to treat us as such.

In jail, we were placed under the care of Mr. Joseph Graham, the
sheriff of the county. Henry, and John, and myself, were placed in one
room, and Henry Baily and Charles Roberts, in another, by themselves.
This separation was intended to deprive us of the advantage of concert,
and to prevent trouble in jail.

Once shut up, a new set of tormentors came upon us. A swarm of imps, in
human shape the slave-traders, deputy slave-traders, and agents of
slave-traders—that gather in every country town of the state, watching
for chances to buy human flesh (as buzzards to eat carrion) flocked in
upon us, to ascertain if our masters had placed us in jail to be sold.
Such a set of debased and villainous creatures, I never saw before, and
hope never to see again. I felt myself surrounded as by a pack of
_fiends_, fresh from _perdition_. They laughed, leered, and grinned at
us; saying, “Ah! boys, we’ve got you, havn’t we? So you were about to
make your escape? Where were you going to?” After taunting us, and
peering at us, as long as they liked, they one by one subjected us to
an examination, with a view to ascertain our value; feeling our arms
and legs, and shaking us by the shoulders to see if we were sound and
healthy; impudently asking us, “how we would like to have them for
masters?” To such questions, we were, very much to their annoyance,
quite dumb, disdaining to answer them. For one, I detested the
whisky-bloated gamblers in human flesh; and I believe I was as much
detested by them in turn. One fellow told me, “if he had me, he would
cut the devil out of me pretty quick.”

These Negro buyers are very offensive to the genteel southern Christian
public. They are looked upon, in respectable Maryland society, as
necessary, but detestable characters. As a class, they are hardened
ruffians, made such by nature and by occupation. Their ears are made
quite familiar with the agonizing cry of outraged and woe-smitted
humanity. Their eyes are forever open to human misery. They walk amid
desecrated affections, insulted virtue, and blasted hopes. They have
grown intimate with vice and blood; they gloat over the wildest
illustrations of their soul-damning and earth-polluting business, and
are moral pests. Yes; they are a legitimate fruit of slavery; and it is
a puzzle to make out a case of greater villainy for them, than for the
slaveholders, who make such a class _possible_. They are mere hucksters
of the surplus slave produce of Maryland and Virginia coarse, cruel,
and swaggering bullies, whose very breathing is of blasphemy and blood.

Aside from these slave-buyers, who infested the prison, from time to
time, our quarters were much more comfortable than we had any right to
expect they would be. Our allowance of food was small and coarse, but
our room was the best in the jail—neat and spacious, and with nothing
about it necessarily reminding us of being in prison, but its heavy
locks and bolts and the black, iron lattice-work at the windows. We
were prisoners of state, compared with most slaves who are put into
that Easton jail. But the place was not one of contentment. Bolts, bars
and grated windows are not acceptable to freedom-loving people of any
color. The suspense, too, was painful. Every step on the stairway was
listened to, in the hope that the comer would cast a ray of light on
our fate. We would have given the hair off our heads for half a dozen
words with one of the waiters in Sol. Lowe’s hotel. Such waiters were
in the way of hearing, at the table, the probable course of things. We
could see them flitting about in their white jackets in front of this
hotel, but could speak to none of them.

Soon after the holidays were over, contrary to all our expectations,
Messrs. Hamilton and Freeland came up to Easton; not to make a bargain
with the “Georgia traders,” nor to send us up to Austin Woldfolk, as is
usual in the case of run-away slaves, but to release Charles, Henry
Harris, Henry Baily and John Harris, from prison, and this, too,
without the infliction of a single blow. I was now left entirely alone
in prison. The innocent had been taken, and the guilty left. My friends
were separated from me, and apparently forever. This circumstance
caused me more pain than any other incident connected with our capture
and imprisonment. Thirty-nine lashes on my naked and bleeding back,
would have been joyfully borne, in preference to this separation from
these, the friends of my youth. And yet, I could not but feel that I
was the victim of something like justice. Why should these young men,
who were led into this scheme by me, suffer as much as the instigator?
I felt glad that they were leased from prison, and from the dread
prospect of a life (or death I should rather say) in the rice swamps.
It is due to the noble Henry, to say, that he seemed almost as
reluctant to leave the prison with me in it, as he was to be tied and
dragged to prison. But he and the rest knew that we should, in all the
likelihoods of the case, be separated, in the event of being sold; and
since we were now completely in the hands of our owners, we all
concluded it would be best to go peaceably home.

Not until this last separation, dear reader, had I touched those
profounder depths of desolation, which it is the lot of slaves often to
reach. I was solitary in the world, and alone within the walls of a
stone prison, left to a fate of life-long misery. I had hoped and
expected much, for months before, but my hopes and expectations were
now withered and blasted. The ever dreaded slave life in Georgia,
Louisiana and Alabama—from which escape is next to impossible now, in
my loneliness, stared me in the face. The possibility of ever becoming
anything but an abject slave, a mere machine in the hands of an owner,
had now fled, and it seemed to me it had fled forever. A life of living
death, beset with the innumerable horrors of the cotton field, and the
sugar plantation, seemed to be my doom. The fiends, who rushed into the
prison when we were first put there, continued to visit me, and to ply
me with questions and with their tantalizing remarks. I was insulted,
but helpless; keenly alive to the demands of justice and liberty, but
with no means of asserting them. To talk to those imps about justice
and mercy, would have been as absurd as to reason with bears and
tigers. Lead and steel are the only arguments that they understand.

After remaining in this life of misery and despair about a week, which,
by the way, seemed a month, Master Thomas, very much to my surprise,
and greatly to my relief, came to the prison, and took me out, for the
purpose, as he said, of sending me to Alabama, with a friend of his,
who would emancipate me at the end of eight years. I was glad enough to
get out of prison; but I had no faith in the story that this friend of
Capt. Auld would emancipate me, at the end of the time indicated.
Besides, I never had heard of his having a friend in Alabama, and I
took the announcement, simply as an easy and comfortable method of
shipping me off to the far south. There was a little scandal, too,
connected with the idea of one Christian selling another to the Georgia
traders, while it was deemed every way proper for them to sell to
others. I thought this friend in Alabama was an invention, to meet this
difficulty, for Master Thomas was quite jealous of his Christian
reputation, however unconcerned he might be about his real Christian
character. In these remarks, however, it is possible that I do Master
Thomas Auld injustice. He certainly did not exhaust his power upon me,
in the case, but acted, upon the whole, very generously, considering
the nature of my offense. He had the power and the provocation to send
me, without reserve, into the very everglades of Florida, beyond the
remotest hope of emancipation; and his refusal to exercise that power,
must be set down to his credit.

After lingering about St. Michael’s a few days, and no friend from
Alabama making his appearance, to take me there, Master Thomas decided
to send me back again to Baltimore, to live with his brother Hugh, with
whom he was now at peace; possibly he became so by his profession of
religion, at the camp-meeting in the Bay Side. Master Thomas told me
that he wished me to go to Baltimore, and learn a trade; and that, if I
behaved myself properly, he would _emancipate me at twenty-five!_
Thanks for this one beam of hope in the future. The promise had but one
fault; it seemed too good to be true.




CHAPTER XX. _Apprenticeship Life_


NOTHING LOST BY THE ATTEMPT TO RUN AWAY—COMRADES IN THEIR OLD
HOMES—REASONS FOR SENDING ME AWAY—RETURN TO BALTIMORE—CONTRAST BETWEEN
TOMMY AND THAT OF HIS COLORED COMPANION—TRIALS IN GARDINER’S SHIP
YARD—DESPERATE FIGHT—ITS CAUSES—CONFLICT BETWEEN WHITE AND BLACK
LABOR—DESCRIPTION OF THE OUTRAGE—COLORED TESTIMONY NOTHING—CONDUCT OF
MASTER HUGH—SPIRIT OF SLAVERY IN BALTIMORE—MY CONDITION IMPROVES—NEW
ASSOCIATIONS—SLAVEHOLDER’S RIGHT TO TAKE HIS WAGES—HOW TO MAKE A
CONTENTED SLAVE.


Well! dear reader, I am not, as you may have already inferred, a loser
by the general upstir, described in the foregoing chapter. The little
domestic revolution, notwithstanding the sudden snub it got by the
treachery of somebody—I dare not say or think who—did not, after all,
end so disastrously, as when in the iron cage at Easton, I conceived it
would. The prospect, from that point, did look about as dark as any
that ever cast its gloom over the vision of the anxious, out-looking,
human spirit. “All is well that ends well.” My affectionate comrades,
Henry and John Harris, are still with Mr. William Freeland. Charles
Roberts and Henry Baily are safe at their homes. I have not, therefore,
any thing to regret on their account. Their masters have mercifully
forgiven them, probably on the ground suggested in the spirited little
speech of Mrs. Freeland, made to me just before leaving for the
jail—namely: that they had been allured into the wicked scheme of
making their escape, by me; and that, but for me, they would never have
dreamed of a thing so shocking! My friends had nothing to regret,
either; for while they were watched more closely on account of what had
happened, they were, doubtless, treated more kindly than before, and
got new assurances that they would be legally emancipated, some day,
provided their behavior should make them deserving, from that time
forward. Not a blow, as I learned, was struck any one of them. As for
Master William Freeland, good, unsuspecting soul, he did not believe
that we were intending to run away at all. Having given—as he
thought—no occasion to his boys to leave him, he could not think it
probable that they had entertained a design so grievous. This, however,
was not the view taken of the matter by “Mas’ Billy,” as we used to
call the soft spoken, but crafty and resolute Mr. William Hamilton. He
had no doubt that the crime had been meditated; and regarding me as the
instigator of it, he frankly told Master Thomas that he must remove me
from that neighborhood, or he would shoot me down. He would not have
one so dangerous as “Frederick” tampering with his slaves. William
Hamilton was not a man whose threat might be safely disregarded. I have
no doubt that he would have proved as good as his word, had the warning
given not been promptly taken. He was furious at the thought of such a
piece of high-handed _theft_, as we were about to perpetrate the
stealing of our own bodies and souls! The feasibility of the plan, too,
could the first steps have been taken, was marvelously plain. Besides,
this was a _new_ idea, this use of the bay. Slaves escaping, until now,
had taken to the woods; they had never dreamed of profaning and abusing
the waters of the noble Chesapeake, by making them the highway from
slavery to freedom. Here was a broad road of destruction to slavery,
which, before, had been looked upon as a wall of security by
slaveholders. But Master Billy could not get Mr. Freeland to see
matters precisely as he did; nor could he get Master Thomas so excited
as he was himself. The latter—I must say it to his credit—showed much
humane feeling in his part of the transaction, and atoned for much that
had been harsh, cruel and unreasonable in his former treatment of me
and others. His clemency was quite unusual and unlooked for. “Cousin
Tom” told me that while I was in jail, Master Thomas was very unhappy;
and that the night before his going up to release me, he had walked the
floor nearly all night, evincing great distress; that very tempting
offers had been made to him, by the Negro-traders, but he had rejected
them all, saying that _money could not tempt him to sell me to the far
south_. All this I can easily believe, for he seemed quite reluctant to
send me away, at all. He told me that he only consented to do so,
because of the very strong prejudice against me in the neighborhood,
and that he feared for my safety if I remained there.

Thus, after three years spent in the country, roughing it in the field,
and experiencing all sorts of hardships, I was again permitted to
return to Baltimore, the very place, of all others, short of a free
state, where I most desired to live. The three years spent in the
country, had made some difference in me, and in the household of Master
Hugh. “Little Tommy” was no longer _little_ Tommy; and I was not the
slender lad who had left for the Eastern Shore just three years before.
The loving relations between me and Mas’ Tommy were broken up. He was
no longer dependent on me for protection, but felt himself a _man_,
with other and more suitable associates. In childhood, he scarcely
considered me inferior to himself certainly, as good as any other boy
with whom he played; but the time had come when his _friend_ must
become his _slave_. So we were cold, and we parted. It was a sad thing
to me, that, loving each other as we had done, we must now take
different roads. To him, a thousand avenues were open. Education had
made him acquainted with all the treasures of the world, and liberty
had flung open the gates thereunto; but I, who had attended him seven
years, and had watched over him with the care of a big brother,
fighting his battles in the street, and shielding him from harm, to an
extent which had induced his mother to say, “Oh! Tommy is always safe,
when he is with Freddy,” must be confined to a single condition. He
could grow, and become a MAN; I could grow, though I could _not_ become
a man, but must remain, all my life, a minor—a mere boy. Thomas Auld,
Junior, obtained a situation on board the brig “Tweed,” and went to
sea. I know not what has become of him; he certainly has my good wishes
for his welfare and prosperity. There were few persons to whom I was
more sincerely attached than to him, and there are few in the world I
would be more pleased to meet.

Very soon after I went to Baltimore to live, Master Hugh succeeded in
getting me hired to Mr. William Gardiner, an extensive ship builder on
Fell’s Point. I was placed here to learn to calk, a trade of which I
already had some knowledge, gained while in Mr. Hugh Auld’s ship-yard,
when he was a master builder. Gardiner’s, however, proved a very
unfavorable place for the accomplishment of that object. Mr. Gardiner
was, that season, engaged in building two large man-of-war vessels,
professedly for the Mexican government. These vessels were to be
launched in the month of July, of that year, and, in failure thereof,
Mr. G. would forfeit a very considerable sum of money. So, when I
entered the ship-yard, all was hurry and driving. There were in the
yard about one hundred men; of these about seventy or eighty were
regular carpenters—privileged men. Speaking of my condition here I
wrote, years ago—and I have now no reason to vary the picture as
follows:

There was no time to learn any thing. Every man had to do that which he
knew how to do. In entering the ship-yard, my orders from Mr. Gardiner
were, to do whatever the carpenters commanded me to do. This was
placing me at the beck and call of about seventy-five men. I was to
regard all these as masters. Their word was to be my law. My situation
was a most trying one. At times I needed a dozen pair of hands. I was
called a dozen ways in the space of a single minute. Three or four
voices would strike my ear at the same moment. It was—“Fred., come help
me to cant this timber here.” “Fred., come carry this timber
yonder.”—“Fred., bring that roller here.”—“Fred., go get a fresh can of
water.”—“Fred., come help saw off the end of this timber.”—“Fred., go
quick and get the crow bar.”—“Fred., hold on the end of this
fall.”—“Fred., go to the blacksmith’s shop, and get a new punch.”—

“Hurra, Fred.! run and bring me a cold chisel.”—“I say, Fred., bear a
hand, and get up a fire as quick as lightning under that
steam-box.”—“Halloo, nigger! come, turn this grindstone.”—“Come, come!
move, move! and _bowse_ this timber forward.”—“I say, darkey, blast
your eyes, why don’t you heat up some pitch?”—“Halloo! halloo! halloo!”
(Three voices at the same time.) “Come here!—Go there!—Hold on where
you are! D—n you, if you move, I’ll knock your brains out!”

Such, dear reader, is a glance at the school which was mine, during,
the first eight months of my stay at Baltimore. At the end of the eight
months, Master Hugh refused longer to allow me to remain with Mr.
Gardiner. The circumstance which led to his taking me away, was a
brutal outrage, committed upon me by the white apprentices of the
ship-yard. The fight was a desperate one, and I came out of it most
shockingly mangled. I was cut and bruised in sundry places, and my left
eye was nearly knocked out of its socket. The facts, leading to this
barbarous outrage upon me, illustrate a phase of slavery destined to
become an important element in the overthrow of the slave system, and I
may, therefore state them with some minuteness. That phase is this:
_the conflict of slavery with the interests of the white mechanics and
laborers of the south_. In the country, this conflict is not so
apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans,
Mobile, &c., it is seen pretty clearly. The slaveholders, with a
craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the
poor, laboring white man against the blacks, succeeds in making the
said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The
difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the
latter belongs to _one_ slaveholder, and the former belongs to _all_
the slaveholders, collectively. The white slave has taken from him, by
indirection, what the black slave has taken from him, directly, and
without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers. The
slave is robbed, by his master, of all his earnings, above what is
required for his bare physical necessities; and the white man is robbed
by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he is
flung into competition with a class of laborers who work without wages.
The competition, and its injurious consequences, will, one day, array
the nonslaveholding white people of the slave states, against the slave
system, and make them the most effective workers against the great
evil. At present, the slaveholders blind them to this competition, by
keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves, _as men_—not against
them _as slaves_. They appeal to their pride, often denouncing
emancipation, as tending to place the white man, on an equality with
Negroes, and, by this means, they succeed in drawing off the minds of
the poor whites from the real fact, that, by the rich slave-master,
they are already regarded as but a single remove from equality with the
slave. The impression is cunningly made, that slavery is the only power
that can prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of
the slave’s poverty and degradation. To make this enmity deep and
broad, between the slave and the poor white man, the latter is allowed
to abuse and whip the former, without hinderance. But—as I have
suggested—this state of facts prevails _mostly_ in the country. In the
city of Baltimore, there are not unfrequent murmurs, that educating the
slaves to be mechanics may, in the end, give slavemasters power to
dispense with the services of the poor white man altogether. But, with
characteristic dread of offending the slaveholders, these poor, white
mechanics in Mr. Gardiner’s ship-yard—instead of applying the natural,
honest remedy for the apprehended evil, and objecting at once to work
there by the side of slaves—made a cowardly attack upon the free
colored mechanics, saying _they_ were eating the bread which should be
eaten by American freemen, and swearing that they would not work with
them. The feeling was, _really_, against having their labor brought
into competition with that of the colored people at all; but it was too
much to strike directly at the interest of the slaveholders; and,
therefore proving their servility and cowardice they dealt their blows
on the poor, colored freeman, and aimed to prevent _him_ from serving
himself, in the evening of life, with the trade with which he had
served his master, during the more vigorous portion of his days. Had
they succeeded in driving the black freemen out of the ship-yard, they
would have determined also upon the removal of the black slaves. The
feeling was very bitter toward all colored people in Baltimore, about
this time (1836), and they—free and slave suffered all manner of insult
and wrong.

Until a very little before I went there, white and black ship
carpenters worked side by side, in the ship yards of Mr. Gardiner, Mr.
Duncan, Mr. Walter Price, and Mr. Robb. Nobody seemed to see any
impropriety in it. To outward seeming, all hands were well satisfied.
Some of the blacks were first rate workmen, and were given jobs
requiring highest skill. All at once, however, the white carpenters
knocked off, and swore that they would no longer work on the same stage
with free Negroes. Taking advantage of the heavy contract resting upon
Mr. Gardiner, to have the war vessels for Mexico ready to launch in
July, and of the difficulty of getting other hands at that season of
the year, they swore they would not strike another blow for him, unless
he would discharge his free colored workmen.

Now, although this movement did not extend to me, _in form_, it did
reach me, _in fact_. The spirit which it awakened was one of malice and
bitterness, toward colored people _generally_, and I suffered with the
rest, and suffered severely. My fellow apprentices very soon began to
feel it to be degrading to work with me. They began to put on high
looks, and to talk contemptuously and maliciously of _“the Niggers;”_
saying, that “they would take the country,” that “they ought to be
killed.” Encouraged by the cowardly workmen, who, knowing me to be a
slave, made no issue with Mr. Gardiner about my being there, these
young men did their utmost to make it impossible for me to stay. They
seldom called me to do any thing, without coupling the call with a
curse, and Edward North, the biggest in every thing, rascality
included, ventured to strike me, whereupon I picked him up, and threw
him into the dock. Whenever any of them struck me, I struck back again,
regardless of consequences. I could manage any of them _singly_, and,
while I could keep them from combining, I succeeded very well. In the
conflict which ended my stay at Mr. Gardiner’s, I was beset by four of
them at once—Ned North, Ned Hays, Bill Stewart, and Tom Humphreys. Two
of them were as large as myself, and they came near killing me, in
broad day light. The attack was made suddenly, and simultaneously. One
came in front, armed with a brick; there was one at each side, and one
behind, and they closed up around me. I was struck on all sides; and,
while I was attending to those in front, I received a blow on my head,
from behind, dealt with a heavy hand-spike. I was completely stunned by
the blow, and fell, heavily, on the ground, among the timbers. Taking
advantage of my fall, they rushed upon me, and began to pound me with
their fists. I let them lay on, for a while, after I came to myself,
with a view of gaining strength. They did me little damage, so far;
but, finally, getting tired of that sport, I gave a sudden surge, and,
despite their weight, I rose to my hands and knees. Just as I did this,
one of their number (I know not which) planted a blow with his boot in
my left eye, which, for a time, seemed to have burst my eyeball. When
they saw my eye completely closed, my face covered with blood, and I
staggering under the stunning blows they had given me, they left me. As
soon as I gathered sufficient strength, I picked up the hand-spike,
and, madly enough, attempted to pursue them; but here the carpenters
interfered, and compelled me to give up my frenzied pursuit. It was
impossible to stand against so many.

Dear reader, you can hardly believe the statement, but it is true, and,
therefore, I write it down: not fewer than fifty white men stood by,
and saw this brutal and shameless outrage committed, and not a man of
them all interposed a single word of mercy. There were four against
one, and that one’s face was beaten and battered most horribly, and no
one said, “that is enough;” but some cried out, “Kill him—kill him—kill
the d—d nigger! knock his brains out—he struck a white person.” I
mention this inhuman outcry, to show the character of the men, and the
spirit of the times, at Gardiner’s ship yard, and, indeed, in Baltimore
generally, in 1836. As I look back to this period, I am almost amazed
that I was not murdered outright, in that ship yard, so murderous was
the spirit which prevailed there. On two occasions, while there, I came
near losing my life. I was driving bolts in the hold, through the
keelson, with Hays. In its course, the bolt bent. Hays cursed me, and
said that it was my blow which bent the bolt. I denied this, and
charged it upon him. In a fit of rage he seized an adze, and darted
toward me. I met him with a maul, and parried his blow, or I should
have then lost my life. A son of old Tom Lanman (the latter’s double
murder I have elsewhere charged upon him), in the spirit of his
miserable father, made an assault upon me, but the blow with his maul
missed me. After the united assault of North, Stewart, Hays and
Humphreys, finding that the carpenters were as bitter toward me as the
apprentices, and that the latter were probably set on by the former, I
found my only chances for life was in flight. I succeeded in getting
away, without an additional blow. To strike a white man, was death, by
Lynch law, in Gardiner’s ship yard; nor was there much of any other law
toward colored people, at that time, in any other part of Maryland. The
whole sentiment of Baltimore was murderous.

After making my escape from the ship yard, I went straight home, and
related the story of the outrage to Master Hugh Auld; and it is due to
him to say, that his conduct—though he was not a religious man—was
every way more humane than that of his brother, Thomas, when I went to
the latter in a somewhat similar plight, from the hands of _“Brother
Edward Covey.”_ He listened attentively to my narration of the
circumstances leading to the ruffianly outrage, and gave many proofs of
his strong indignation at what was done. Hugh was a rough, but
manly-hearted fellow, and, at this time, his best nature showed itself.

The heart of my once almost over-kind mistress, Sophia, was again
melted in pity toward me. My puffed-out eye, and my scarred and
blood-covered face, moved the dear lady to tears. She kindly drew a
chair by me, and with friendly, consoling words, she took water, and
washed the blood from my face. No mother’s hand could have been more
tender than hers. She bound up my head, and covered my wounded eye with
a lean piece of fresh beef. It was almost compensation for the
murderous assault, and my suffering, that it furnished and occasion for
the manifestation, once more, of the orignally(sic) characteristic
kindness of my mistress. Her affectionate heart was not yet dead,
though much hardened by time and by circumstances.

As for Master Hugh’s part, as I have said, he was furious about it; and
he gave expression to his fury in the usual forms of speech in that
locality. He poured curses on the heads of the whole ship yard company,
and swore that he would have satisfaction for the outrage. His
indignation was really strong and healthy; but, unfortunately, it
resulted from the thought that his rights of property, in my person,
had not been respected, more than from any sense of the outrage
committed on me _as a man_. I inferred as much as this, from the fact
that he could, himself, beat and mangle when it suited him to do so.
Bent on having satisfaction, as he said, just as soon as I got a little
the better of my bruises, Master Hugh took me to Esquire Watson’s
office, on Bond street, Fell’s Point, with a view to procuring the
arrest of those who had assaulted me. He related the outrage to the
magistrate, as I had related it to him, and seemed to expect that a
warrant would, at once, be issued for the arrest of the lawless
ruffians.

Mr. Watson heard it all, and instead of drawing up his warrant, he
inquired.—

“Mr. Auld, who saw this assault of which you speak?”

“It was done, sir, in the presence of a ship yard full of hands.”

“Sir,” said Watson, “I am sorry, but I cannot move in this matter
except upon the oath of white witnesses.”

“But here’s the boy; look at his head and face,” said the excited
Master Hugh; _“they_ show _what_ has been done.”

But Watson insisted that he was not authorized to do anything, unless
_white_ witnesses of the transaction would come forward, and testify to
what had taken place. He could issue no warrant on my word, against
white persons; and, if I had been killed in the presence of a _thousand
blacks_, their testimony, combined would have been insufficient to
arrest a single murderer. Master Hugh, for once, was compelled to say,
that this state of things was _too bad;_ and he left the office of the
magistrate, disgusted.

Of course, it was impossible to get any white man to testify against my
assailants. The carpenters saw what was done; but the actors were but
the agents of their malice, and only what the carpenters sanctioned.
They had cried, with one accord, _“Kill the nigger!” “Kill the
nigger!”_ Even those who may have pitied me, if any such were among
them, lacked the moral courage to come and volunteer their evidence.
The slightest manifestation of sympathy or justice toward a person of
color, was denounced as abolitionism; and the name of abolitionist,
subjected its bearer to frightful liabilities. “D—n _abolitionists,”_
and _“Kill the niggers,”_ were the watch-words of the foul-mouthed
ruffians of those days. Nothing was done, and probably there would not
have been any thing done, had I been killed in the affray. The laws and
the morals of the Christian city of Baltimore, afforded no protection
to the sable denizens of that city.

Master Hugh, on finding he could get no redress for the cruel wrong,
withdrew me from the employment of Mr. Gardiner, and took me into his
own family, Mrs. Auld kindly taking care of me, and dressing my wounds,
until they were healed, and I was ready to go again to work.

While I was on the Eastern Shore, Master Hugh had met with reverses,
which overthrew his business; and he had given up ship building in his
own yard, on the City Block, and was now acting as foreman of Mr.
Walter Price. The best he could now do for me, was to take me into Mr.
Price’s yard, and afford me the facilities there, for completing the
trade which I had began to learn at Gardiner’s. Here I rapidly became
expert in the use of my calking tools; and, in the course of a single
year, I was able to command the highest wages paid to journeymen
calkers in Baltimore.

The reader will observe that I was now of some pecuniary value to my
master. During the busy season, I was bringing six and seven dollars
per week. I have, sometimes, brought him as much as nine dollars a
week, for the wages were a dollar and a half per day.

After learning to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own
contracts, and collected my own earnings; giving Master Hugh no trouble
in any part of the transactions to which I was a party.

Here, then, were better days for the Eastern Shore _slave_. I was now
free from the vexatious assalts(sic) of the apprentices at Mr.
Gardiner’s; and free from the perils of plantation life, and once more
in a favorable condition to increase my little stock of education,
which had been at a dead stand since my removal from Baltimore. I had,
on the Eastern Shore, been only a teacher, when in company with other
slaves, but now there were colored persons who could instruct me. Many
of the young calkers could read, write and cipher. Some of them had
high notions about mental improvement; and the free ones, on Fell’s
Point, organized what they called the _“East Baltimore Mental
Improvement Society.”_ To this society, notwithstanding it was intended
that only free persons should attach themselves, I was admitted, and
was, several times, assigned a prominent part in its debates. I owe
much to the society of these young men.

The reader already knows enough of the _ill_ effects of good treatment
on a slave, to anticipate what was now the case in my improved
condition. It was not long before I began to show signs of disquiet
with slavery, and to look around for means to get out of that condition
by the shortest route. I was living among _free men;_ and was, in all
respects, equal to them by nature and by attainments. _Why should I be
a slave?_ There was _no_ reason why I should be the thrall of any man.

Besides, I was now getting—as I have said—a dollar and fifty cents per
day. I contracted for it, worked for it, earned it, collected it; it
was paid to me, and it was _rightfully_ my own; and yet, upon every
returning Saturday night, this money—my own hard earnings, every cent
of it—was demanded of me, and taken from me by Master Hugh. He did not
earn it; he had no hand in earning it; why, then, should he have it? I
owed him nothing. He had given me no schooling, and I had received from
him only my food and raiment; and for these, my services were supposed
to pay, from the first. The right to take my earnings, was the right of
the robber. He had the power to compel me to give him the fruits of my
labor, and this power was his only right in the case. I became more and
more dissatisfied with this state of things; and, in so becoming, I
only gave proof of the same human nature which every reader of this
chapter in my life—slaveholder, or nonslaveholder—is conscious of
possessing.

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is
necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as
possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect
no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be
able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not
depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his
master’s will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his
mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness. If there be one
crevice through which a single drop can fall, it will certainly rust
off the slave’s chain.




CHAPTER XXI. _My Escape from Slavery_


CLOSING INCIDENTS OF “MY LIFE AS A SLAVE”—REASONS WHY FULL PARTICULARS
OF THE MANNER OF MY ESCAPE WILL NOT BE GIVEN—CRAFTINESS AND MALICE OF
SLAVEHOLDERS—SUSPICION OF AIDING A SLAVE’S ESCAPE ABOUT AS DANGEROUS AS
POSITIVE EVIDENCE—WANT OF WISDOM SHOWN IN PUBLISHING DETAILS OF THE
ESCAPE OF THE FUGITIVES—PUBLISHED ACCOUNTS REACH THE MASTERS, NOT THE
SLAVES—SLAVEHOLDERS STIMULATED TO GREATER WATCHFULNESS—MY
CONDITION—DISCONTENT—SUSPICIONS IMPLIED BY MASTER HUGH’S MANNER, WHEN
RECEIVING MY WAGES—HIS OCCASIONAL GENEROSITY!—DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY
OF ESCAPE—EVERY AVENUE GUARDED—PLAN TO OBTAIN MONEY—I AM ALLOWED TO
HIRE MY TIME—A GLEAM OF HOPE—ATTENDS CAMP-MEETING, WITHOUT
PERMISSION—ANGER OF MASTER HUGH THEREAT—THE RESULT—MY PLANS OF ESCAPE
ACCELERATED THERBY—THE DAY FOR MY DEPARTURE FIXED—HARASSED BY DOUBTS
AND FEARS—PAINFUL THOUGHTS OF SEPARATION FROM FRIENDS—THE ATTEMPT
MADE—ITS SUCCESS.


I will now make the kind reader acquainted with the closing incidents
of my “Life as a Slave,” having already trenched upon the limit
allotted to my “Life as a Freeman.” Before, however, proceeding with
this narration, it is, perhaps, proper that I should frankly state, in
advance, my intention to withhold a part of the(sic) connected with my
escape from slavery. There are reasons for this suppression, which I
trust the reader will deem altogether valid. It may be easily
conceived, that a full and complete statement of all facts pertaining
to the flight of a bondman, might implicate and embarrass some who may
have, wittingly or unwittingly, assisted him; and no one can wish me to
involve any man or woman who has befriended me, even in the liability
of embarrassment or trouble.

Keen is the scent of the slaveholder; like the fangs of the
rattlesnake, his malice retains its poison long; and, although it is
now nearly seventeen years since I made my escape, it is well to be
careful, in dealing with the circumstances relating to it. Were I to
give but a shadowy outline of the process adopted, with characteristic
aptitude, the crafty and malicious among the slaveholders might,
possibly, hit upon the track I pursued, and involve some one in
suspicion which, in a slave state, is about as bad as positive
evidence. The colored man, there, must not only shun evil, but shun the
very _appearance_ of evil, or be condemned as a criminal. A
slaveholding community has a peculiar taste for ferreting out offenses
against the slave system, justice there being more sensitive in its
regard for the peculiar rights of this system, than for any other
interest or institution. By stringing together a train of events and
circumstances, even if I were not very explicit, the means of escape
might be ascertained, and, possibly, those means be rendered,
thereafter, no longer available to the liberty-seeking children of
bondage I have left behind me. No antislavery man can wish me to do
anything favoring such results, and no slaveholding reader has any
right to expect the impartment of such information.

While, therefore, it would afford me pleasure, and perhaps would
materially add to the interest of my story, were I at liberty to
gratify a curiosity which I know to exist in the minds of many, as to
the manner of my escape, I must deprive myself of this pleasure, and
the curious of the gratification, which such a statement of facts would
afford. I would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations
that evil minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself by
explanation, and thereby run the hazards of closing the slightest
avenue by which a brother in suffering might clear himself of the
chains and fetters of slavery.

The practice of publishing every new invention by which a slave is
known to have escaped from slavery, has neither wisdom nor necessity to
sustain it. Had not Henry Box Brown and his friends attracted
slaveholding attention to the manner of his escape, we might have had a
thousand _Box Browns_ per annum. The singularly original plan adopted
by William and Ellen Crafts, perished with the first using, because
every slaveholder in the land was apprised of it. The _salt water
slave_ who hung in the guards of a steamer, being washed three days and
three nights—like another Jonah—by the waves of the sea, has, by the
publicity given to the circumstance, set a spy on the guards of every
steamer departing from southern ports.

I have never approved of the very public manner, in which some of our
western friends have conducted what _they_ call the _“Under-ground
Railroad,”_ but which, I think, by their open declarations, has been
made, most emphatically, the _“Upper_-ground Railroad.” Its stations
are far better known to the slaveholders than to the slaves. I honor
those good men and women for their noble daring, in willingly
subjecting themselves to persecution, by openly avowing their
participation in the escape of slaves; nevertheless, the good resulting
from such avowals, is of a very questionable character. It may kindle
an enthusiasm, very pleasant to inhale; but that is of no practical
benefit to themselves, nor to the slaves escaping. Nothing is more
evident, than that such disclosures are a positive evil to the slaves
remaining, and seeking to escape. In publishing such accounts, the
anti-slavery man addresses the slaveholder, _not the slave;_ he
stimulates the former to greater watchfulness, and adds to his
facilities for capturing his slave. We owe something to the slaves,
south of Mason and Dixon’s line, as well as to those north of it; and,
in discharging the duty of aiding the latter, on their way to freedom,
we should be careful to do nothing which would be likely to hinder the
former, in making their escape from slavery. Such is my detestation of
slavery, that I would keep the merciless slaveholder profoundly
ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave. He should be left
to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible tormentors, ever
ready to snatch, from his infernal grasp, his trembling prey. In
pursuing his victim, let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let
shades of darkness, commensurate with his crime, shut every ray of
light from his pathway; and let him be made to feel, that, at every
step he takes, with the hellish purpose of reducing a brother man to
slavery, he is running the frightful risk of having his hot brains
dashed out by an invisible hand.

But, enough of this. I will now proceed to the statement of those
facts, connected with my escape, for which I am alone responsible, and
for which no one can be made to suffer but myself.

My condition in the year (1838) of my escape, was, comparatively, a
free and easy one, so far, at least, as the wants of the physical man
were concerned; but the reader will bear in mind, that my troubles from
the beginning, have been less physical than mental, and he will thus be
prepared to find, after what is narrated in the previous chapters, that
slave life was adding nothing to its charms for me, as I grew older,
and became better acquainted with it. The practice, from week to week,
of openly robbing me of all my earnings, kept the nature and character
of slavery constantly before me. I could be robbed by _indirection_,
but this was _too_ open and barefaced to be endured. I could see no
reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my
honest toil into the purse of any man. The thought itself vexed me, and
the manner in which Master Hugh received my wages, vexed me more than
the original wrong. Carefully counting the money and rolling it out,
dollar by dollar, he would look me in the face, as if he would search
my heart as well as my pocket, and reproachfully ask me, “_Is that
all_?”—implying that I had, perhaps, kept back part of my wages; or, if
not so, the demand was made, possibly, to make me feel, that, after
all, I was an “unprofitable servant.” Draining me of the last cent of
my hard earnings, he would, however, occasionally—when I brought home
an extra large sum—dole out to me a sixpence or a shilling, with a
view, perhaps, of kindling up my gratitude; but this practice had the
opposite effect—it was an admission of _my right to the whole sum_. The
fact, that he gave me any part of my wages, was proof that he suspected
that I had a right _to the whole of them_. I always felt uncomfortable,
after having received anything in this way, for I feared that the
giving me a few cents, might, possibly, ease his conscience, and make
him feel himself a pretty honorable robber, after all!

Held to a strict account, and kept under a close watch—the old
suspicion of my running away not having been entirely removed—escape
from slavery, even in Baltimore, was very difficult. The railroad from
Baltimore to Philadelphia was under regulations so stringent, that even
_free_ colored travelers were almost excluded. They must have _free_
papers; they must be measured and carefully examined, before they were
allowed to enter the cars; they only went in the day time, even when so
examined. The steamboats were under regulations equally stringent. All
the great turnpikes, leading northward, were beset with kidnappers, a
class of men who watched the newspapers for advertisements for runaway
slaves, making their living by the accursed reward of slave hunting.

My discontent grew upon me, and I was on the look-out for means of
escape. With money, I could easily have managed the matter, and,
therefore, I hit upon the plan of soliciting the privilege of hiring my
time. It is quite common, in Baltimore, to allow slaves this privilege,
and it is the practice, also, in New Orleans. A slave who is considered
trustworthy, can, by paying his master a definite sum regularly, at the
end of each week, dispose of his time as he likes. It so happened that
I was not in very good odor, and I was far from being a trustworthy
slave. Nevertheless, I watched my opportunity when Master Thomas came
to Baltimore (for I was still his property, Hugh only acted as his
agent) in the spring of 1838, to purchase his spring supply of goods,
and applied to him, directly, for the much-coveted privilege of hiring
my time. This request Master Thomas unhesitatingly refused to grant;
and he charged me, with some sternness, with inventing this stratagem
to make my escape. He told me, “I could go _nowhere_ but he could catch
me; and, in the event of my running away, I might be assured he should
spare no pains in his efforts to recapture me.” He recounted, with a
good deal of eloquence, the many kind offices he had done me, and
exhorted me to be contented and obedient. “Lay out no plans for the
future,” said he. “If you behave yourself properly, I will take care of
you.” Now, kind and considerate as this offer was, it failed to soothe
me into repose. In spite of Master Thomas, and, I may say, in spite of
myself, also, I continued to think, and worse still, to think almost
exclusively about the injustice and wickedness of slavery. No effort of
mine or of his could silence this trouble-giving thought, or change my
purpose to run away.

About two months after applying to Master Thomas for the privilege of
hiring my time, I applied to Master Hugh for the same liberty,
supposing him to be unacquainted with the fact that I had made a
similar application to Master Thomas, and had been refused. My boldness
in making this request, fairly astounded him at the first. He gazed at
me in amazement. But I had many good reasons for pressing the matter;
and, after listening to them awhile, he did not absolutely refuse, but
told me he would think of it. Here, then, was a gleam of hope. Once
master of my own time, I felt sure that I could make, over and above my
obligation to him, a dollar or two every week. Some slaves have made
enough, in this way, to purchase their freedom. It is a sharp spur to
industry; and some of the most enterprising colored men in Baltimore
hire themselves in this way. After mature reflection—as I must suppose
it was Master Hugh granted me the privilege in question, on the
following terms: I was to be allowed all my time; to make all bargains
for work; to find my own employment, and to collect my own wages; and,
in return for this liberty, I was required, or obliged, to pay him
three dollars at the end of each week, and to board and clothe myself,
and buy my own calking tools. A failure in any of these particulars
would put an end to my privilege. This was a hard bargain. The wear and
tear of clothing, the losing and breaking of tools, and the expense of
board, made it necessary for me to earn at least six dollars per week,
to keep even with the world. All who are acquainted with calking, know
how uncertain and irregular that employment is. It can be done to
advantage only in dry weather, for it is useless to put wet oakum into
a seam. Rain or shine, however, work or no work, at the end of each
week the money must be forthcoming.

Master Hugh seemed to be very much pleased, for a time, with this
arrangement; and well he might be, for it was decidedly in his favor.
It relieved him of all anxiety concerning me. His money was sure. He
had armed my love of liberty with a lash and a driver, far more
efficient than any I had before known; and, while he derived all the
benefits of slaveholding by the arrangement, without its evils, I
endured all the evils of being a slave, and yet suffered all the care
and anxiety of a responsible freeman. “Nevertheless,” thought I, “it is
a valuable privilege another step in my career toward freedom.” It was
something even to be permitted to stagger under the disadvantages of
liberty, and I was determined to hold on to the newly gained footing,
by all proper industry. I was ready to work by night as well as by day;
and being in the enjoyment of excellent health, I was able not only to
meet my current expenses, but also to lay by a small sum at the end of
each week. All went on thus, from the month of May till August;
then—for reasons which will become apparent as I proceed—my much valued
liberty was wrested from me.

During the week previous to this (to me) calamitous event, I had made
arrangements with a few young friends, to accompany them, on Saturday
night, to a camp-meeting, held about twelve miles from Baltimore. On
the evening of our intended start for the camp-ground, something
occurred in the ship yard where I was at work, which detained me
unusually late, and compelled me either to disappoint my young friends,
or to neglect carrying my weekly dues to Master Hugh. Knowing that I
had the money, and could hand it to him on another day, I decided to go
to camp-meeting, and to pay him the three dollars, for the past week,
on my return. Once on the camp-ground, I was induced to remain one day
longer than I had intended, when I left home. But, as soon as I
returned, I went straight to his house on Fell street, to hand him his
(my) money. Unhappily, the fatal mistake had been committed. I found
him exceedingly angry. He exhibited all the signs of apprehension and
wrath, which a slaveholder may be surmised to exhibit on the supposed
escape of a favorite slave. “You rascal! I have a great mind to give
you a severe whipping. How dare you go out of the city without first
asking and obtaining my permission?” “Sir,” said I, “I hired my time
and paid you the price you asked for it. I did not know that it was any
part of the bargain that I should ask you when or where I should go.”

“You did not know, you rascal! You are bound to show yourself here
every Saturday night.” After reflecting, a few moments, he became
somewhat cooled down; but, evidently greatly troubled, he said, “Now,
you scoundrel! you have done for yourself; you shall hire your time no
longer. The next thing I shall hear of, will be your running away.
Bring home your tools and your clothes, at once. I’ll teach you how to
go off in this way.”

Thus ended my partial freedom. I could hire my time no longer; and I
obeyed my master’s orders at once. The little taste of liberty which I
had had—although as the reader will have seen, it was far from being
unalloyed—by no means enhanced my contentment with slavery. Punished
thus by Master Hugh, it was now my turn to punish him. “Since,” thought
I, “you _will_ make a slave of me, I will await your orders in all
things;” and, instead of going to look for work on Monday morning, as I
had formerly done, I remained at home during the entire week, without
the performance of a single stroke of work. Saturday night came, and he
called upon me, as usual, for my wages. I, of course, told him I had
done no work, and had no wages. Here we were at the point of coming to
blows. His wrath had been accumulating during the whole week; for he
evidently saw that I was making no effort to get work, but was most
aggravatingly awaiting his orders, in all things. As I look back to
this behavior of mine, I scarcely know what possessed me, thus to
trifle with those who had such unlimited power to bless or to blast me.
Master Hugh raved and swore his determination to _“get hold of me;”_
but, wisely for _him_, and happily for _me_, his wrath only employed
those very harmless, impalpable missiles, which roll from a limber
tongue. In my desperation, I had fully made up my mind to measure
strength with Master Hugh, in case he should undertake to execute his
threats. I am glad there was no necessity for this; for resistance to
him could not have ended so happily for me, as it did in the case of
Covey. He was not a man to be safely resisted by a slave; and I freely
own, that in my conduct toward him, in this instance, there was more
folly than wisdom. Master Hugh closed his reproofs, by telling me that,
hereafter, I need give myself no uneasiness about getting work; that he
“would, himself, see to getting work for me, and enough of it, at
that.” This threat I confess had some terror in it; and, on thinking
the matter over, during the Sunday, I resolved, not only to save him
the trouble of getting me work, but that, upon the third day of
September, I would attempt to make my escape from slavery. The refusal
to allow me to hire my time, therefore, hastened the period of flight.
I had three weeks, now, in which to prepare for my journey.

Once resolved, I felt a certain degree of repose, and on Monday,
instead of waiting for Master Hugh to seek employment for me, I was up
by break of day, and off to the ship yard of Mr. Butler, on the City
Block, near the draw-bridge. I was a favorite with Mr. B., and, young
as I was, I had served as his foreman on the float stage, at calking.
Of course, I easily obtained work, and, at the end of the week—which by
the way was exceedingly fine I brought Master Hugh nearly nine dollars.
The effect of this mark of returning good sense, on my part, was
excellent. He was very much pleased; he took the money, commended me,
and told me I might have done the same thing the week before. It is a
blessed thing that the tyrant may not always know the thoughts and
purposes of his victim. Master Hugh little knew what my plans were. The
going to camp-meeting without asking his permission—the insolent
answers made to his reproaches—the sulky deportment the week after
being deprived of the privilege of hiring my time—had awakened in him
the suspicion that I might be cherishing disloyal purposes. My object,
therefore, in working steadily, was to remove suspicion, and in this I
succeeded admirably. He probably thought I was never better satisfied
with my condition, than at the very time I was planning my escape. The
second week passed, and again I carried him my full week’s wages—_nine
dollars;_ and so well pleased was he, that he gave me TWENTY-FIVE
CENTS! and “bade me make good use of it!” I told him I would, for one
of the uses to which I meant to put it, was to pay my fare on the
underground railroad.

Things without went on as usual; but I was passing through the same
internal excitement and anxiety which I had experienced two years and a
half before. The failure, in that instance, was not calculated to
increase my confidence in the success of this, my second attempt; and I
knew that a second failure could not leave me where my first did—I must
either get to the _far north_, or be sent to the _far south_. Besides
the exercise of mind from this state of facts, I had the painful
sensation of being about to separate from a circle of honest and warm
hearted friends, in Baltimore. The thought of such a separation, where
the hope of ever meeting again is excluded, and where there can be no
correspondence, is very painful. It is my opinion, that thousands would
escape from slavery who now remain there, but for the strong cords of
affection that bind them to their families, relatives and friends. The
daughter is hindered from escaping, by the love she bears her mother,
and the father, by the love he bears his children; and so, to the end
of the chapter. I had no relations in Baltimore, and I saw no
probability of ever living in the neighborhood of sisters and brothers;
but the thought of leaving my friends, was among the strongest
obstacles to my running away. The last two days of the week—Friday and
Saturday—were spent mostly in collecting my things together, for my
journey. Having worked four days that week, for my master, I handed him
six dollars, on Saturday night. I seldom spent my Sundays at home; and,
for fear that something might be discovered in my conduct, I kept up my
custom, and absented myself all day. On Monday, the third day of
September, 1838, in accordance with my resolution, I bade farewell to
the city of Baltimore, and to that slavery which had been my abhorrence
from childhood.

How I got away—in what direction I traveled—whether by land or by
water; whether with or without assistance—must, for reasons already
mentioned, remain unexplained.




LIFE as a FREEMAN




CHAPTER XXII. _Liberty Attained_


TRANSITION FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM—A WANDERER IN NEW YORK—FEELINGS ON
REACHING THAT CITY—AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE MET—UNFAVORABLE
IMPRESSIONS—LONELINESS AND INSECURITY—APOLOGY FOR SLAVES WHO RETURN TO
THEIR MASTERS—COMPELLED TO TELL MY CONDITION—SUCCORED BY A SAILOR—DAVID
RUGGLES—THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD—MARRIAGE—BAGGAGE TAKEN FROM
ME—KINDNESS OF NATHAN JOHNSON—MY CHANGE OF NAME—DARK NOTIONS OF
NORTHERN CIVILIZATION—THE CONTRAST—COLORED PEOPLE IN NEW BEDFORD—AN
INCIDENT ILLUSTRATING THEIR SPIRIT—A COMMON LABORER—DENIED WORK AT MY
TRADE—THE FIRST WINTER AT THE NORTH—REPULSE AT THE DOORS OF THE
CHURCH—SANCTIFIED HATE—THE _Liberator_ AND ITS EDITOR.


There is no necessity for any extended notice of the incidents of this
part of my life. There is nothing very striking or peculiar about my
career as a freeman, when viewed apart from my life as a slave. The
relation subsisting between my early experience and that which I am now
about to narrate, is, perhaps, my best apology for adding another
chapter to this book.

Disappearing from the kind reader, in a flying cloud or balloon (pardon
the figure), driven by the wind, and knowing not where I should
land—whether in slavery or in freedom—it is proper that I should
remove, at once, all anxiety, by frankly making known where I alighted.
The flight was a bold and perilous one; but here I am, in the great
city of New York, safe and sound, without loss of blood or bone. In
less than a week after leaving Baltimore, I was walking amid the
hurrying throng, and gazing upon the dazzling wonders of Broadway. The
dreams of my childhood and the purposes of my manhood were now
fulfilled. A free state around me, and a free earth under my feet! What
a moment was this to me! A whole year was pressed into a single day. A
new world burst upon my agitated vision. I have often been asked, by
kind friends to whom I have told my story, how I felt when first I
found myself beyond the limits of slavery; and I must say here, as I
have often said to them, there is scarcely anything about which I could
not give a more satisfactory answer. It was a moment of joyous
excitement, which no words can describe. In a letter to a friend,
written soon after reaching New York. I said I felt as one might be
supposed to feel, on escaping from a den of hungry lions. But, in a
moment like that, sensations are too intense and too rapid for words.
Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be described, but joy
and gladness, like the rainbow of promise, defy alike the pen and
pencil.

For ten or fifteen years I had been dragging a heavy chain, with a huge
block attached to it, cumbering my every motion. I had felt myself
doomed to drag this chain and this block through life. All efforts,
before, to separate myself from the hateful encumbrance, had only
seemed to rivet me the more firmly to it. Baffled and discouraged at
times, I had asked myself the question, May not this, after all, be
God’s work? May He not, for wise ends, have doomed me to this lot? A
contest had been going on in my mind for years, between the clear
consciousness of right and the plausible errors of superstition;
between the wisdom of manly courage, and the foolish weakness of
timidity. The contest was now ended; the chain was severed; God and
right stood vindicated. I was A FREEMAN, and the voice of peace and joy
thrilled my heart.

Free and joyous, however, as I was, joy was not the only sensation I
experienced. It was like the quick blaze, beautiful at the first, but
which subsiding, leaves the building charred and desolate. I was soon
taught that I was still in an enemy’s land. A sense of loneliness and
insecurity oppressed me sadly. I had been but a few hours in New York,
before I was met in the streets by a fugitive slave, well known to me,
and the information I got from him respecting New York, did nothing to
lessen my apprehension of danger. The fugitive in question was
“Allender’s Jake,” in Baltimore; but, said he, I am “WILLIAM DIXON,” in
New York! I knew Jake well, and knew when Tolly Allender and Mr. Price
(for the latter employed Master Hugh as his foreman, in his shipyard on
Fell’s Point) made an attempt to recapture Jake, and failed. Jake told
me all about his circumstances, and how narrowly he escaped being taken
back to slavery; that the city was now full of southerners, returning
from the springs; that the black people in New York were not to be
trusted; that there were hired men on the lookout for fugitives from
slavery, and who, for a few dollars, would betray me into the hands of
the slave-catchers; that I must trust no man with my secret; that I
must not think of going either on the wharves to work, or to a
boarding-house to board; and, worse still, this same Jake told me it
was not in his power to help me. He seemed, even while cautioning me,
to be fearing lest, after all, I might be a party to a second attempt
to recapture him. Under the inspiration of this thought, I must suppose
it was, he gave signs of a wish to get rid of me, and soon left me his
whitewash brush in hand—as he said, for his work. He was soon lost to
sight among the throng, and I was alone again, an easy prey to the
kidnappers, if any should happen to be on my track.

New York, seventeen years ago, was less a place of safety for a runaway
slave than now, and all know how unsafe it now is, under the new
fugitive slave bill. I was much troubled. I had very little money
enough to buy me a few loaves of bread, but not enough to pay board,
outside a lumber yard. I saw the wisdom of keeping away from the ship
yards, for if Master Hugh pursued me, he would naturally expect to find
me looking for work among the calkers. For a time, every door seemed
closed against me. A sense of my loneliness and helplessness crept over
me, and covered me with something bordering on despair. In the midst of
thousands of my fellowmen, and yet a perfect stranger! In the midst of
human brothers, and yet more fearful of them than of hungry wolves! I
was without home, without friends, without work, without money, and
without any definite knowledge of which way to go, or where to look for
succor.

Some apology can easily be made for the few slaves who have, after
making good their escape, turned back to slavery, preferring the actual
rule of their masters, to the life of loneliness, apprehension, hunger,
and anxiety, which meets them on their first arrival in a free state.
It is difficult for a freeman to enter into the feelings of such
fugitives. He cannot see things in the same light with the slave,
because he does not, and cannot, look from the same point from which
the slave does. “Why do you tremble,” he says to the slave “you are in
a free state;” but the difficulty is, in realizing that he is in a free
state, the slave might reply. A freeman cannot understand why the
slave-master’s shadow is bigger, to the slave, than the might and
majesty of a free state; but when he reflects that the slave knows more
about the slavery of his master than he does of the might and majesty
of the free state, he has the explanation. The slave has been all his
life learning the power of his master—being trained to dread his
approach—and only a few hours learning the power of the state. The
master is to him a stern and flinty reality, but the state is little
more than a dream. He has been accustomed to regard every white man as
the friend of his master, and every colored man as more or less under
the control of his master’s friends—the white people. It takes stout
nerves to stand up, in such circumstances. A man, homeless,
shelterless, breadless, friendless, and moneyless, is not in a
condition to assume a very proud or joyous tone; and in just this
condition was I, while wandering about the streets of New York city and
lodging, at least one night, among the barrels on one of its wharves. I
was not only free from slavery, but I was free from home, as well. The
reader will easily see that I had something more than the simple fact
of being free to think of, in this extremity.

I kept my secret as long as I could, and at last was forced to go in
search of an honest man—a man sufficiently _human_ not to betray me
into the hands of slave-catchers. I was not a bad reader of the human
face, nor long in selecting the right man, when once compelled to
disclose the facts of my condition to some one.

I found my man in the person of one who said his name was Stewart. He
was a sailor, warm-hearted and generous, and he listened to my story
with a brother’s interest. I told him I was running for my freedom—knew
not where to go—money almost gone—was hungry—thought it unsafe to go
the shipyards for work, and needed a friend. Stewart promptly put me in
the way of getting out of my trouble. He took me to his house, and went
in search of the late David Ruggles, who was then the secretary of the
New York Vigilance Committee, and a very active man in all anti-slavery
works. Once in the hands of Mr. Ruggles, I was comparatively safe. I
was hidden with Mr. Ruggles several days. In the meantime, my intended
wife, Anna, came on from Baltimore—to whom I had written, informing her
of my safe arrival at New York—and, in the presence of Mrs. Mitchell
and Mr. Ruggles, we were married, by Rev. James W. C. Pennington.

Mr. Ruggles 7 was the first officer on the under-ground railroad with
whom I met after reaching the north, and, indeed, the first of whom I
ever heard anything. Learning that I was a calker by trade, he promptly
decided that New Bedford was the proper place to send me. “Many ships,”
said he, “are there fitted out for the whaling business, and you may
there find work at your trade, and make a good living.” Thus, in one
fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in New Bedford,
regularly entered upon the exercise of the rights, responsibilities,
and duties of a freeman.

I may mention a little circumstance which annoyed me on reaching New
Bedford. I had not a cent of money, and lacked two dollars toward
paying our fare from Newport, and our baggage not very costly—was taken
by the stage driver, and held until I could raise the money to redeem
it. This difficulty was soon surmounted. Mr. Nathan Johnson, to whom we
had a line from Mr. Ruggles, not only received us kindly and
hospitably, but, on being informed about our baggage, promptly loaned
me two dollars with which to redeem my little property. I shall ever be
deeply grateful, both to Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson, for the lively
interest they were pleased to take in me, in this hour of my extremest
need. They not only gave myself and wife bread and shelter, but taught
us how to begin to secure those benefits for ourselves. Long may they
live, and may blessings attend them in this life and in that which is
to come!

Once initiated into the new life of freedom, and assured by Mr. Johnson
that New Bedford was a safe place, the comparatively unimportant
matter, as to what should be my name, came up for considertion(sic). It
was necessary to have a name in my new relations. The name given me by
my beloved mother was no less pretentious than “Frederick Augustus
Washington Bailey.” I had, however, before leaving Maryland, dispensed
with the _Augustus Washington_, and retained the name _Frederick
Bailey_. Between Baltimore and New Bedford, however, I had several
different names, the better to avoid being overhauled by the hunters,
which I had good reason to believe would be put on my track. Among
honest men an honest man may well be content with one name, and to
acknowledge it at all times and in all places; but toward fugitives,
Americans are not honest. When I arrived at New Bedford, my name was
Johnson; and finding that the Johnson family in New Bedford were
already quite numerous—sufficiently so to produce some confusion in
attempts to distinguish one from another—there was the more reason for
making another change in my name. In fact, “Johnson” had been assumed
by nearly every slave who had arrived in New Bedford from Maryland, and
this, much to the annoyance of the original “Johnsons” (of whom there
were many) in that place. Mine host, unwilling to have another of his
own name added to the community in this unauthorized way, after I spent
a night and a day at his house, gave me my present name. He had been
reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and was pleased to regard me as a
suitable person to wear this, one of Scotland’s many famous names.
Considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan
Johnson, I have felt that he, better than I, illustrated the virtues of
the great Scottish chief. Sure I am, that had any slave-catcher entered
his domicile, with a view to molest any one of his household, he would
have shown himself like him of the “stalwart hand.”

The reader will be amused at my ignorance, when I tell the notions I
had of the state of northern wealth, enterprise, and civilization. Of
wealth and refinement, I supposed the north had none. My _Columbian
Orator_, which was almost my only book, had not done much to enlighten
me concerning northern society. The impressions I had received were all
wide of the truth. New Bedford, especially, took me by surprise, in the
solid wealth and grandeur there exhibited. I had formed my notions
respecting the social condition of the free states, by what I had seen
and known of free, white, non-slaveholding people in the slave states.
Regarding slavery as the basis of wealth, I fancied that no people
could become very wealthy without slavery. A free white man, holding no
slaves, in the country, I had known to be the most ignorant and
poverty-stricken of men, and the laughing stock even of slaves
themselves—called generally by them, in derision, _“poor white trash_.”
Like the non-slaveholders at the south, in holding no slaves, I suppose
the northern people like them, also, in poverty and degradation. Judge,
then, of my amazement and joy, when I found—as I did find—the very
laboring population of New Bedford living in better houses, more
elegantly furnished—surrounded by more comfort and refinement—than a
majority of the slaveholders on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. There
was my friend, Mr. Johnson, himself a colored man (who at the south
would have been regarded as a proper marketable commodity), who lived
in a better house—dined at a richer board—was the owner of more
books—the reader of more newspapers—was more conversant with the
political and social condition of this nation and the world—than
nine-tenths of all the slaveholders of Talbot county, Maryland. Yet Mr.
Johnson was a working man, and his hands were hardened by honest toil.
Here, then, was something for observation and study. Whence the
difference? The explanation was soon furnished, in the superiority of
mind over simple brute force. Many pages might be given to the
contrast, and in explanation of its causes. But an incident or two will
suffice to show the reader as to how the mystery gradually vanished
before me.

My first afternoon, on reaching New Bedford, was spent in visiting the
wharves and viewing the shipping. The sight of the broad brim and the
plain, Quaker dress, which met me at every turn, greatly increased my
sense of freedom and security. “I am among the Quakers,” thought I,
“and am safe.” Lying at the wharves and riding in the stream, were
full-rigged ships of finest model, ready to start on whaling voyages.
Upon the right and the left, I was walled in by large granite-fronted
warehouses, crowded with the good things of this world. On the wharves,
I saw industry without bustle, labor without noise, and heavy toil
without the whip. There was no loud singing, as in southern ports,
where ships are loading or unloading—no loud cursing or swearing—but
everything went on as smoothly as the works of a well adjusted machine.
How different was all this from the nosily fierce and clumsily absurd
manner of labor-life in Baltimore and St. Michael’s! One of the first
incidents which illustrated the superior mental character of northern
labor over that of the south, was the manner of unloading a ship’s
cargo of oil. In a southern port, twenty or thirty hands would have
been employed to do what five or six did here, with the aid of a single
ox attached to the end of a fall. Main strength, unassisted by skill,
is slavery’s method of labor. An old ox, worth eighty dollars, was
doing, in New Bedford, what would have required fifteen thousand
dollars worth of human bones and muscles to have performed in a
southern port. I found that everything was done here with a scrupulous
regard to economy, both in regard to men and things, time and strength.
The maid servant, instead of spending at least a tenth part of her time
in bringing and carrying water, as in Baltimore, had the pump at her
elbow. The wood was dry, and snugly piled away for winter. Woodhouses,
in-door pumps, sinks, drains, self-shutting gates, washing machines,
pounding barrels, were all new things, and told me that I was among a
thoughtful and sensible people. To the ship-repairing dock I went, and
saw the same wise prudence. The carpenters struck where they aimed, and
the calkers wasted no blows in idle flourishes of the mallet. I learned
that men went from New Bedford to Baltimore, and bought old ships, and
brought them here to repair, and made them better and more valuable
than they ever were before. Men talked here of going whaling on a four
_years’_ voyage with more coolness than sailors where I came from
talked of going a four _months’_ voyage.

I now find that I could have landed in no part of the United States,
where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast to
the condition of the free people of color in Baltimore, than I found
here in New Bedford. No colored man is really free in a slaveholding
state. He wears the badge of bondage while nominally free, and is often
subjected to hardships to which the slave is a stranger; but here in
New Bedford, it was my good fortune to see a pretty near approach to
freedom on the part of the colored people. I was taken all aback when
Mr. Johnson—who lost no time in making me acquainted with the fact—told
me that there was nothing in the constitution of Massachusetts to
prevent a colored man from holding any office in the state. There, in
New Bedford, the black man’s children—although anti-slavery was then
far from popular—went to school side by side with the white children,
and apparently without objection from any quarter. To make me at home,
Mr. Johnson assured me that no slaveholder could take a slave from New
Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their lives,
before such an outrage could be perpetrated. The colored people
themselves were of the best metal, and would fight for liberty to the
death.

Soon after my arrival in New Bedford, I was told the following story,
which was said to illustrate the spirit of the colored people in that
goodly town: A colored man and a fugitive slave happened to have a
little quarrel, and the former was heard to threaten the latter with
informing his master of his whereabouts. As soon as this threat became
known, a notice was read from the desk of what was then the only
colored church in the place, stating that business of importance was to
be then and there transacted. Special measures had been taken to secure
the attendance of the would-be Judas, and had proved successful.
Accordingly, at the hour appointed, the people came, and the betrayer
also. All the usual formalities of public meetings were scrupulously
gone through, even to the offering prayer for Divine direction in the
duties of the occasion. The president himself performed this part of
the ceremony, and I was told that he was unusually fervent. Yet, at the
close of his prayer, the old man (one of the numerous family of
Johnsons) rose from his knees, deliberately surveyed his audience, and
then said, in a tone of solemn resolution, _“Well, friends, we have got
him here, and I would now recommend that you young men should just take
him outside the door and kill him.”_ With this, a large body of the
congregation, who well understood the business they had come there to
transact, made a rush at the villain, and doubtless would have killed
him, had he not availed himself of an open sash, and made good his
escape. He has never shown his head in New Bedford since that time.
This little incident is perfectly characteristic of the spirit of the
colored people in New Bedford. A slave could not be taken from that
town seventeen years ago, any more than he could be so taken away now.
The reason is, that the colored people in that city are educated up to
the point of fighting for their freedom, as well as speaking for it.

Once assured of my safety in New Bedford, I put on the habiliments of a
common laborer, and went on the wharf in search of work. I had no
notion of living on the honest and generous sympathy of my colored
brother, Johnson, or that of the abolitionists. My cry was like that of
Hood’s laborer, “Oh! only give me work.” Happily for me, I was not long
in searching. I found employment, the third day after my arrival in New
Bedford, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil for the New York market.
It was new, hard, and dirty work, even for a calker, but I went at it
with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master—a
tremendous fact—and the rapturous excitement with which I seized the
job, may not easily be understood, except by some one with an
experience like mine. The thoughts—“I can work! I can work for a
living; I am not afraid of work; I have no Master Hugh to rob me of my
earnings”—placed me in a state of independence, beyond seeking
friendship or support of any man. That day’s work I considered the real
starting point of something like a new existence. Having finished this
job and got my pay for the same, I went next in pursuit of a job at
calking. It so happened that Mr. Rodney French, late mayor of the city
of New Bedford, had a ship fitting out for sea, and to which there was
a large job of calking and coppering to be done. I applied to that
noblehearted man for employment, and he promptly told me to go to work;
but going on the float-stage for the purpose, I was informed that every
white man would leave the ship if I struck a blow upon her. “Well,
well,” thought I, “this is a hardship, but yet not a very serious one
for me.” The difference between the wages of a calker and that of a
common day laborer, was an hundred per cent in favor of the former; but
then I was free, and free to work, though not at my trade. I now
prepared myself to do anything which came to hand in the way of turning
an honest penny; sawed wood—dug cellars—shoveled coal—swept chimneys
with Uncle Lucas Debuty—rolled oil casks on the wharves—helped to load
and unload vessels—worked in Ricketson’s candle works—in Richmond’s
brass foundery, and elsewhere; and thus supported myself and family for
three years.

The first winter was unusually severe, in consequence of the high
prices of food; but even during that winter we probably suffered less
than many who had been free all their lives. During the hardest of the
winter, I hired out for nine dolars(sic) a month; and out of this
rented two rooms for nine dollars per quarter, and supplied my wife—who
was unable to work—with food and some necessary articles of furniture.
We were closely pinched to bring our wants within our means; but the
jail stood over the way, and I had a wholesome dread of the
consequences of running in debt. This winter past, and I was up with
the times—got plenty of work—got well paid for it—and felt that I had
not done a foolish thing to leave Master Hugh and Master Thomas. I was
now living in a new world, and was wide awake to its advantages. I
early began to attend the meetings of the colored people of New
Bedford, and to take part in them. I was somewhat amazed to see colored
men drawing up resolutions and offering them for consideration. Several
colored young men of New Bedford, at that period, gave promise of great
usefulness. They were educated, and possessed what seemed to me, at the
time, very superior talents. Some of them have been cut down by death,
and others have removed to different parts of the world, and some
remain there now, and justify, in their present activities, my early
impressions of them.

Among my first concerns on reaching New Bedford, was to become united
with the church, for I had never given up, in reality, my religious
faith. I had become lukewarm and in a backslidden state, but I was
still convinced that it was my duty to join the Methodist church. I was
not then aware of the powerful influence of that religious body in
favor of the enslavement of my race, nor did I see how the northern
churches could be responsible for the conduct of southern churches;
neither did I fully understand how it could be my duty to remain
separate from the church, because bad men were connected with it. The
slaveholding church, with its Coveys, Weedens, Aulds, and Hopkins, I
could see through at once, but I could not see how Elm Street church,
in New Bedford, could be regarded as sanctioning the Christianity of
these characters in the church at St. Michael’s. I therefore resolved
to join the Methodist church in New Bedford, and to enjoy the spiritual
advantage of public worship. The minister of the Elm Street Methodist
church, was the Rev. Mr. Bonney; and although I was not allowed a seat
in the body of the house, and was proscribed on account of my color,
regarding this proscription simply as an accommodation of the
uncoverted congregation who had not yet been won to Christ and his
brotherhood, I was willing thus to be proscribed, lest sinners should
be driven away form the saving power of the gospel. Once converted, I
thought they would be sure to treat me as a man and a brother.
“Surely,” thought I, “these Christian people have none of this feeling
against color. They, at least, have renounced this unholy feeling.”
Judge, then, dear reader, of my astonishment and mortification, when I
found, as soon I did find, all my charitable assumptions at fault.

An opportunity was soon afforded me for ascertaining the exact position
of Elm Street church on that subject. I had a chance of seeing the
religious part of the congregation by themselves; and although they
disowned, in effect, their black brothers and sisters, before the
world, I did think that where none but the saints were assembled, and
no offense could be given to the wicked, and the gospel could not be
“blamed,” they would certainly recognize us as children of the same
Father, and heirs of the same salvation, on equal terms with
themselves.

The occasion to which I refer, was the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,
that most sacred and most solemn of all the ordinances of the Christian
church. Mr. Bonney had preached a very solemn and searching discourse,
which really proved him to be acquainted with the inmost secerts(sic)
of the human heart. At the close of his discourse, the congregation was
dismissed, and the church remained to partake of the sacrament. I
remained to see, as I thought, this holy sacrament celebrated in the
spirit of its great Founder.

There were only about a half dozen colored members attached to the Elm
Street church, at this time. After the congregation was dismissed,
these descended from the gallery, and took a seat against the wall most
distant from the altar. Brother Bonney was very animated, and sung very
sweetly, “Salvation ‘tis a joyful sound,” and soon began to administer
the sacrament. I was anxious to observe the bearing of the colored
members, and the result was most humiliating. During the whole
ceremony, they looked like sheep without a shepherd. The white members
went forward to the altar by the bench full; and when it was evident
that all the whites had been served with the bread and wine, Brother
Bonney—pious Brother Bonney—after a long pause, as if inquiring whether
all the whites members had been served, and fully assuring himself on
that important point, then raised his voice to an unnatural pitch, and
looking to the corner where his black sheep seemed penned, beckoned
with his hand, exclaiming, “Come forward, colored friends! come
forward! You, too, have an interest in the blood of Christ. God is no
respecter of persons. Come forward, and take this holy sacrament to
your comfort.” The colored members poor, slavish souls went forward, as
invited. I went out, and have never been in that church since, although
I honestly went there with a view to joining that body. I found it
impossible to respect the religious profession of any who were under
the dominion of this wicked prejudice, and I could not, therefore, feel
that in joining them, I was joining a Christian church, at all. I tried
other churches in New Bedford, with the same result, and finally, I
attached myself to a small body of colored Methodists, known as the
Zion Methodists. Favored with the affection and confidence of the
members of this humble communion, I was soon made a classleader and a
local preacher among them. Many seasons of peace and joy I experienced
among them, the remembrance of which is still precious, although I
could not see it to be my duty to remain with that body, when I found
that it consented to the same spirit which held my brethren in chains.

In four or five months after reaching New Bedford, there came a young
man to me, with a copy of the _Liberator_, the paper edited by WILLIAM
LLOYD GARRISON, and published by ISAAC KNAPP, and asked me to subscribe
for it. I told him I had but just escaped from slavery, and was of
course very poor, and remarked further, that I was unable to pay for it
then; the agent, however, very willingly took me as a subscriber, and
appeared to be much pleased with securing my name to his list. From
this time I was brought in contact with the mind of William Lloyd
Garrison. His paper took its place with me next to the bible.

The _Liberator_ was a paper after my own heart. It detested slavery
exposed hypocrisy and wickedness in high places—made no truce with the
traffickers in the bodies and souls of men; it preached human
brotherhood, denounced oppression, and, with all the solemnity of God’s
word, demanded the complete emancipation of my race. I not only liked—I
_loved_ this paper, and its editor. He seemed a match for all the
oponents(sic) of emancipation, whether they spoke in the name of the
law, or the gospel. His words were few, full of holy fire, and straight
to the point. Learning to love him, through his paper, I was prepared
to be pleased with his presence. Something of a hero worshiper, by
nature, here was one, on first sight, to excite my love and reverence.

Seventeen years ago, few men possessed a more heavenly countenance than
William Lloyd Garrison, and few men evinced a more genuine or a more
exalted piety. The bible was his text book—held sacred, as the word of
the Eternal Father—sinless perfection—complete submission to insults
and injuries—literal obedience to the injunction, if smitten on one
side to turn the other also. Not only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all
days were Sabbaths, and to be kept holy. All sectarism false and
mischievous—the regenerated, throughout the world, members of one body,
and the HEAD Christ Jesus. Prejudice against color was rebellion
against God. Of all men beneath the sky, the slaves, because most
neglected and despised, were nearest and dearest to his great heart.
Those ministers who defended slavery from the bible, were of their
“father the devil”; and those churches which fellowshiped slaveholders
as Christians, were synagogues of Satan, and our nation was a nation of
liars. Never loud or noisy—calm and serene as a summer sky, and as
pure. “You are the man, the Moses, raised up by God, to deliver his
modern Israel from bondage,” was the spontaneous feeling of my heart,
as I sat away back in the hall and listened to his mighty words; mighty
in truth—mighty in their simple earnestness.

I had not long been a reader of the _Liberator_, and listener to its
editor, before I got a clear apprehension of the principles of the
anti-slavery movement. I had already the spirit of the movement, and
only needed to understand its principles and measures. These I got from
the _Liberator_, and from those who believed in that paper. My
acquaintance with the movement increased my hope for the ultimate
freedom of my race, and I united with it from a sense of delight, as
well as duty.

Every week the _Liberator_ came, and every week I made myself master of
its contents. All the anti-slavery meetings held in New Bedford I
promptly attended, my heart burning at every true utterance against the
slave system, and every rebuke of its friends and supporters. Thus
passed the first three years of my residence in New Bedford. I had not
then dreamed of the posibility(sic) of my becoming a public advocate of
the cause so deeply imbedded in my heart. It was enough for me to
listen—to receive and applaud the great words of others, and only
whisper in private, among the white laborers on the wharves, and
elsewhere, the truths which burned in my breast.




CHAPTER XXIII. _Introduced to the Abolitionists_


FIRST SPEECH AT NANTUCKET—MUCH SENSATION—EXTRAORDINARY SPEECH OF MR.
GARRISON—AUTHOR BECOMES A PUBLIC LECTURER—FOURTEEN YEARS
EXPERIENCE—YOUTHFUL ENTHUSIASM—A BRAND NEW FACT—MATTER OF MY AUTHOR’S
SPEECH—COULD NOT FOLLOW THE PROGRAMME—FUGITIVE SLAVESHIP DOUBTED—TO
SETTLE ALL DOUBT I WRITE MY EXPERIENCE OF SLAVERY—DANGER OF RECAPTURE
INCREASED.


In the summer of 1841, a grand anti-slavery convention was held in
Nantucket, under the auspices of Mr. Garrison and his friends. Until
now, I had taken no holiday since my escape from slavery. Having worked
very hard that spring and summer, in Richmond’s brass
foundery—sometimes working all night as well as all day—and needing a
day or two of rest, I attended this convention, never supposing that I
should take part in the proceedings. Indeed, I was not aware that any
one connected with the convention even so much as knew my name. I was,
however, quite mistaken. Mr. William C. Coffin, a prominent
abolitionst(sic) in those days of trial, had heard me speaking to my
colored friends, in the little school house on Second street, New
Bedford, where we worshiped. He sought me out in the crowd, and invited
me to say a few words to the convention. Thus sought out, and thus
invited, I was induced to speak out the feelings inspired by the
occasion, and the fresh recollection of the scenes through which I had
passed as a slave. My speech on this occasion is about the only one I
ever made, of which I do not remember a single connected sentence. It
was with the utmost difficulty that I could stand erect, or that I
could command and articulate two words without hesitation and
stammering. I trembled in every limb. I am not sure that my
embarrassment was not the most effective part of my speech, if speech
it could be called. At any rate, this is about the only part of my
performance that I now distinctly remember. But excited and convulsed
as I was, the audience, though remarkably quiet before, became as much
excited as myself. Mr. Garrison followed me, taking me as his text; and
now, whether I had made an eloquent speech in behalf of freedom or not,
his was one never to be forgotten by those who heard it. Those who had
heard Mr. Garrison oftenest, and had known him longest, were
astonished. It was an effort of unequaled power, sweeping down, like a
very tornado, every opposing barrier, whether of sentiment or opinion.
For a moment, he possessed that almost fabulous inspiration, often
referred to but seldom attained, in which a public meeting is
transformed, as it were, into a single individuality—the orator
wielding a thousand heads and hearts at once, and by the simple majesty
of his all controlling thought, converting his hearers into the express
image of his own soul. That night there were at least one thousand
Garrisonians in Nantucket! A(sic) the close of this great meeting, I
was duly waited on by Mr. John A. Collins—then the general agent of the
Massachusetts anti-slavery society—and urgently solicited by him to
become an agent of that society, and to publicly advocate its
anti-slavery principles. I was reluctant to take the proffered
position. I had not been quite three years from slavery—was honestly
distrustful of my ability—wished to be excused; publicity exposed me to
discovery and arrest by my master; and other objections came up, but
Mr. Collins was not to be put off, and I finally consented to go out
for three months, for I supposed that I should have got to the end of
my story and my usefulness, in that length of time.

Here opened upon me a new life a life for which I had had no
preparation. I was a “graduate from the peculiar institution,” Mr.
Collins used to say, when introducing me, _“with my diploma written on
my back!”_ The three years of my freedom had been spent in the hard
school of adversity. My hands had been furnished by nature with
something like a solid leather coating, and I had bravely marked out
for myself a life of rough labor, suited to the hardness of my hands,
as a means of supporting myself and rearing my children.

Now what shall I say of this fourteen years’ experience as a public
advocate of the cause of my enslaved brothers and sisters? The time is
but as a speck, yet large enough to justify a pause for
retrospection—and a pause it must only be.

Young, ardent, and hopeful, I entered upon this new life in the full
gush of unsuspecting enthusiasm. The cause was good; the men engaged in
it were good; the means to attain its triumph, good; Heaven’s blessing
must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the pining millions
under a ruthless bondage. My whole heart went with the holy cause, and
my most fervent prayer to the Almighty Disposer of the hearts of men,
were continually offered for its early triumph. “Who or what,” thought
I, “can withstand a cause so good, so holy, so indescribably glorious.
The God of Israel is with us. The might of the Eternal is on our side.
Now let but the truth be spoken, and a nation will start forth at the
sound!” In this enthusiastic spirit, I dropped into the ranks of
freedom’s friends, and went forth to the battle. For a time I was made
to forget that my skin was dark and my hair crisped. For a time I
regretted that I could not have shared the hardships and dangers
endured by the earlier workers for the slave’s release. I soon,
however, found that my enthusiasm had been extravagant; that hardships
and dangers were not yet passed; and that the life now before me, had
shadows as well as sunbeams.

Among the first duties assigned me, on entering the ranks, was to
travel, in company with Mr. George Foster, to secure subscribers to the
_Anti-slavery Standard_ and the _Liberator_. With him I traveled and
lectured through the eastern counties of Massachusetts. Much interest
was awakened—large meetings assembled. Many came, no doubt, from
curiosity to hear what a Negro could say in his own cause. I was
generally introduced as a _“chattel”—_a_“thing”_—a piece of southern
_“property”_—the chairman assuring the audience that _it_ could speak.
Fugitive slaves, at that time, were not so plentiful as now; and as a
fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being a _“brand new
fact”_—the first one out. Up to that time, a colored man was deemed a
fool who confessed himself a runaway slave, not only because of the
danger to which he exposed himself of being retaken, but because it was
a confession of a very _low_ origin! Some of my colored friends in New
Bedford thought very badly of my wisdom for thus exposing and degrading
myself. The only precaution I took, at the beginning, to prevent Master
Thomas from knowing where I was, and what I was about, was the
withholding my former name, my master’s name, and the name of the state
and county from which I came. During the first three or four months, my
speeches were almost exclusively made up of narrations of my own
personal experience as a slave. “Let us have the facts,” said the
people. So also said Friend George Foster, who always wished to pin me
down to my simple narrative. “Give us the facts,” said Collins, “we
will take care of the philosophy.” Just here arose some embarrassment.
It was impossible for me to repeat the same old story month after
month, and to keep up my interest in it. It was new to the people, it
is true, but it was an old story to me; and to go through with it night
after night, was a task altogether too mechanical for my nature. “Tell
your story, Frederick,” would whisper my then revered friend, William
Lloyd Garrison, as I stepped upon the platform. I could not always
obey, for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were
presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to _narrate_
wrongs; I felt like _denouncing_ them. I could not always curb my moral
indignation for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long enough
for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost
everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room. “People
won’t believe you ever was a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this
way,” said Friend Foster. “Be yourself,” said Collins, “and tell your
story.” It was said to me, “Better have a _little_ of the plantation
manner of speech than not; ‘tis not best that you seem too learned.”
These excellent friends were actuated by the best of motives, and were
not altogether wrong in their advice; and still I must speak just the
word that seemed to _me_ the word to be spoken _by_ me.

At last the apprehended trouble came. People doubted if I had ever been
a slave. They said I did not talk like a slave, look like a slave, nor
act like a slave, and that they believed I had never been south of
Mason and Dixon’s line. “He don’t tell us where he came from—what his
master’s name was—how he got away—nor the story of his experience.
Besides, he is educated, and is, in this, a contradiction of all the
facts we have concerning the ignorance of the slaves.” Thus, I was in a
pretty fair way to be denounced as an impostor. The committee of the
Massachusetts anti-slavery society knew all the facts in my case, and
agreed with me in the prudence of keeping them private. They,
therefore, never doubted my being a genuine fugitive; but going down
the aisles of the churches in which I spoke, and hearing the free
spoken Yankees saying, repeatedly, _“He’s never been a slave, I’ll
warrant ye_,” I resolved to dispel all doubt, at no distant day, by
such a revelation of facts as could not be made by any other than a
genuine fugitive.

In a little less than four years, therefore, after becoming a public
lecturer, I was induced to write out the leading facts connected with
my experience in slavery, giving names of persons, places, and
dates—thus putting it in the power of any who doubted, to ascertain the
truth or falsehood of my story of being a fugitive slave. This
statement soon became known in Maryland, and I had reason to believe
that an effort would be made to recapture me.

It is not probable that any open attempt to secure me as a slave could
have succeeded, further than the obtainment, by my master, of the money
value of my bones and sinews. Fortunately for me, in the four years of
my labors in the abolition cause, I had gained many friends, who would
have suffered themselves to be taxed to almost any extent to save me
from slavery. It was felt that I had committed the double offense of
running away, and exposing the secrets and crimes of slavery and
slaveholders. There was a double motive for seeking my
reenslavement—avarice and vengeance; and while, as I have said, there
was little probability of successful recapture, if attempted openly, I
was constantly in danger of being spirited away, at a moment when my
friends could render me no assistance. In traveling about from place to
place—often alone I was much exposed to this sort of attack. Any one
cherishing the design to betray me, could easily do so, by simply
tracing my whereabouts through the anti-slavery journals, for my
meetings and movements were promptly made known in advance. My true
friends, Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips, had no faith in the power of
Massachusetts to protect me in my right to liberty. Public sentiment
and the law, in their opinion, would hand me over to the tormentors.
Mr. Phillips, especially, considered me in danger, and said, when I
showed him the manuscript of my story, if in my place, he would throw
it into the fire. Thus, the reader will observe, the settling of one
difficulty only opened the way for another; and that though I had
reached a free state, and had attained position for public usefulness,
I ws(sic) still tormented with the liability of losing my liberty. How
this liability was dispelled, will be related, with other incidents, in
the next chapter.




CHAPTER XXIV. _Twenty-One Months in Great Britain_


GOOD ARISING OUT OF UNPROPITIOUS EVENTS—DENIED CABIN
PASSAGE—PROSCRIPTION TURNED TO GOOD ACCOUNT—THE HUTCHINSON FAMILY—THE
MOB ON BOARD THE “CAMBRIA”—HAPPY INTRODUCTION TO THE BRITISH
PUBLIC—LETTER ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON—TIME AND LABORS WHILE
ABROAD—FREEDOM PURCHASED—MRS. HENRY RICHARDSON—FREE
PAPERS—ABOLITIONISTS DISPLEASED WITH THE RANSOM—HOW MY ENERGIES WERE
DIRECTED—RECEPTION SPEECH IN LONDON—CHARACTER OF THE SPEECH
DEFENDED—CIRCUMSTANCES EXPLAINED—CAUSES CONTRIBUTING TO THE SUCCESS OF
MY MISSION—FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND—TESTIMONIAL.


The allotments of Providence, when coupled with trouble and anxiety,
often conceal from finite vision the wisdom and goodness in which they
are sent; and, frequently, what seemed a harsh and invidious
dispensation, is converted by after experience into a happy and
beneficial arrangement. Thus, the painful liability to be returned
again to slavery, which haunted me by day, and troubled my dreams by
night, proved to be a necessary step in the path of knowledge and
usefulness. The writing of my pamphlet, in the spring of 1845,
endangered my liberty, and led me to seek a refuge from republican
slavery in monarchical England. A rude, uncultivated fugitive slave was
driven, by stern necessity, to that country to which young American
gentlemen go to increase their stock of knowledge, to seek pleasure, to
have their rough, democratic manners softened by contact with English
aristocratic refinement. On applying for a passage to England, on board
the “Cambria”, of the Cunard line, my friend, James N. Buffum, of Lynn,
Massachusetts, was informed that I could not be received on board as a
cabin passenger. American prejudice against color triumphed over
British liberality and civilization, and erected a color test and
condition for crossing the sea in the cabin of a British vessel. The
insult was keenly felt by my white friends, but to me, it was common,
expected, and therefore, a thing of no great consequence, whether I
went in the cabin or in the steerage. Moreover, I felt that if I could
not go into the first cabin, first-cabin passengers could come into the
second cabin, and the result justified my anticipations to the fullest
extent. Indeed, I soon found myself an object of more general interest
than I wished to be; and so far from being degraded by being placed in
the second cabin, that part of the ship became the scene of as much
pleasure and refinement, during the voyage, as the cabin itself. The
Hutchinson Family, celebrated vocalists—fellow-passengers—often came to
my rude forecastle deck, and sung their sweetest songs, enlivening the
place with eloquent music, as well as spirited conversation, during the
voyage. In two days after leaving Boston, one part of the ship was
about as free to me as another. My fellow-passengers not only visited
me, but invited me to visit them, on the saloon deck. My visits there,
however, were but seldom. I preferred to live within my privileges, and
keep upon my own premises. I found this quite as much in accordance
with good policy, as with my own feelings. The effect was, that with
the majority of the passengers, all color distinctions were flung to
the winds, and I found myself treated with every mark of respect, from
the beginning to the end of the voyage, except in a single instance;
and in that, I came near being mobbed, for complying with an invitation
given me by the passengers, and the captain of the “Cambria,” to
deliver a lecture on slavery. Our New Orleans and Georgia passengers
were pleased to regard my lecture as an insult offered to them, and
swore I should not speak. They went so far as to threaten to throw me
overboard, and but for the firmness of Captain Judkins, probably would
have (under the inspiration of _slavery_ and _brandy_) attempted to put
their threats into execution. I have no space to describe this scene,
although its tragic and comic peculiarities are well worth describing.
An end was put to the _melee_, by the captain’s calling the ship’s
company to put the salt water mobocrats in irons. At this determined
order, the gentlemen of the lash scampered, and for the rest of the
voyage conducted themselves very decorously.

This incident of the voyage, in two days after landing at Liverpool,
brought me at once before the British public, and that by no act of my
own. The gentlemen so promptly snubbed in their meditated violence,
flew to the press to justify their conduct, and to denounce me as a
worthless and insolent Negro. This course was even less wise than the
conduct it was intended to sustain; for, besides awakening something
like a national interest in me, and securing me an audience, it brought
out counter statements, and threw the blame upon themselves, which they
had sought to fasten upon me and the gallant captain of the ship.

Some notion may be formed of the difference in my feelings and
circumstances, while abroad, from the following extract from one of a
series of letters addressed by me to Mr. Garrison, and published in the
_Liberator_. It was written on the first day of January, 1846:

MY DEAR FRIEND GARRISON: Up to this time, I have given no direct
expression of the views, feelings, and opinions which I have formed,
respecting the character and condition of the people of this land. I
have refrained thus, purposely. I wish to speak advisedly, and in order
to do this, I have waited till, I trust, experience has brought my
opinions to an intelligent maturity. I have been thus careful, not
because I think what I say will have much effect in shaping the
opinions of the world, but because whatever of influence I may possess,
whether little or much, I wish it to go in the right direction, and
according to truth. I hardly need say that, in speaking of Ireland, I
shall be influenced by no prejudices in favor of America. I think my
circumstances all forbid that. I have no end to serve, no creed to
uphold, no government to defend; and as to nation, I belong to none. I
have no protection at home, or resting-place abroad. The land of my
birth welcomes me to her shores only as a slave, and spurns with
contempt the idea of treating me differently; so that I am an outcast
from the society of my childhood, and an outlaw in the land of my
birth. “I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers
were.” That men should be patriotic, is to me perfectly natural; and as
a philosophical fact, I am able to give it an _intellectual_
recognition. But no further can I go. If ever I had any patriotism, or
any capacity for the feeling, it was whipped out of me long since, by
the lash of the American soul-drivers.

In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright
blue sky, her grand old woods, her fertile fields, her beautiful
rivers, her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is
soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that
all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slaveholding, robbery, and
wrong; when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the
tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten,
and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my
outraged sisters; I am filled with unutterable loathing, and led to
reproach myself that anything could fall from my lips in praise of such
a land. America will not allow her children to love her. She seems bent
on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be her worst
enemies. May God give her repentance, before it is too late, is the
ardent prayer of my heart. I will continue to pray, labor, and wait,
believing that she cannot always be insensible to the dictates of
justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity.

My opportunities for learning the character and condition of the people
of this land have been very great. I have traveled almost from the Hill
of Howth to the Giant’s Causeway, and from the Giant’s Causway, to Cape
Clear. During these travels, I have met with much in the chara@@ and
condition of the people to approve, and much to condemn; much that
@@thrilled me with pleasure, and very much that has filled me with
pain. I @@ @@t, in this letter, attempt to give any description of
those scenes which have given me pain. This I will do hereafter. I have
enough, and more than your subscribers will be disposed to read at one
time, of the bright side of the picture. I can truly say, I have spent
some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this country.
I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life. The warm
and generous cooperation extended to me by the friends of my despised
race; the prompt and liberal manner with which the press has rendered
me its aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked
to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved
fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and the
strong abhorrence of the slaveholder, everywhere evinced; the
cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious
bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion, have embraced me,
and lent me their aid; the kind of hospitality constantly proffered to
me by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom
that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the entire
absence of everything that looked like prejudice against me, on account
of the color of my skin—contrasted so strongly with my long and bitter
experience in the United States, that I look with wonder and amazement
on the transition. In the southern part of the United States, I was a
slave, thought of and spoken of as property; in the language of the
LAW, “_held, taken, reputed, and adjudged to be a chattel in the hands
of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and
assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever_.”
(Brev. Digest, 224). In the northern states, a fugitive slave, liable
to be hunted at any moment, like a felon, and to be hurled into the
terrible jaws of slavery—doomed by an inveterate prejudice against
color to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the
question)—denied the privileges and courtesies common to others in the
use of the most humble means of conveyance—shut out from the cabins on
steamboats—refused admission to respectable hotels—caricatured,
scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with impunity by any one (no
matter how black his heart), so he has a white skin. But now behold the
change! Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand
miles of the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am
under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue sky of
America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle. I
breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for
one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or
offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I
reach the hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlor—I
dine at the same table and no one is offended. No delicate nose grows
deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in obtaining
admission into any place of worship, instruction, or amusement, on
equal terms with people as white as any I ever saw in the United
States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion. I find myself
regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid
to white people. When I go to church, I am met by no upturned nose and
scornful lip to tell me, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_!”

I remember, about two years ago, there was in Boston, near the
south-west corner of Boston Common, a menagerie. I had long desired to
see such a collection as I understood was being exhibited there. Never
having had an opportunity while a slave, I resolved to seize this, my
first, since my escape. I went, and as I approached the entrance to
gain admission, I was met and told by the door-keeper, in a harsh and
contemptuous tone, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_.” I also remember
attending a revival meeting in the Rev. Henry Jackson’s meeting-house,
at New Bedford, and going up the broad aisle to find a seat, I was met
by a good deacon, who told me, in a pious tone, “_We don’t allow
niggers in here_!” Soon after my arrival in New Bedford, from the
south, I had a strong desire to attend the Lyceum, but was told, “_They
don’t allow niggers in here_!” While passing from New York to Boston,
on the steamer Massachusetts, on the night of the 9th of December,
1843, when chilled almost through with the cold, I went into the cabin
to get a little warm. I was soon touched upon the shoulder, and told,
“_We don’t allow niggers in here_!” On arriving in Boston, from an
anti-slavery tour, hungry and tired, I went into an eating-house, near
my friend, Mr. Campbell’s to get some refreshments. I was met by a lad
in a white apron, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_!” A week or two
before leaving the United States, I had a meeting appointed at
Weymouth, the home of that glorious band of true abolitionists, the
Weston family, and others. On attempting to take a seat in the omnibus
to that place, I was told by the driver (and I never shall forget his
fiendish hate). “_I don’t allow niggers in here_!” Thank heaven for the
respite I now enjoy! I had been in Dublin but a few days, when a
gentleman of great respectability kindly offered to conduct me through
all the public buildings of that beautiful city; and a little
afterward, I found myself dining with the lord mayor of Dublin. What a
pity there was not some American democratic Christian at the door of
his splendid mansion, to bark out at my approach, “_They don’t allow
niggers in here_!” The truth is, the people here know nothing of the
republican Negro hate prevalent in our glorious land. They measure and
esteem men according to their moral and intellectual worth, and not
according to the color of their skin. Whatever may be said of the
aristocracies here, there is none based on the color of a man’s skin.
This species of aristocracy belongs preeminently to “the land of the
free, and the home of the brave.” I have never found it abroad, in any
but Americans. It sticks to them wherever they go. They find it almost
as hard to get rid of, as to get rid of their skins.

The second day after my arrival at Liverpool, in company with my
friend, Buffum, and several other friends, I went to Eaton Hall, the
residence of the Marquis of Westminster, one of the most splendid
buildings in England. On approaching the door, I found several of our
American passengers, who came out with us in the “Cambria,” waiting for
admission, as but one party was allowed in the house at a time. We all
had to wait till the company within came out. And of all the faces,
expressive of chagrin, those of the Americans were preeminent. They
looked as sour as vinegar, and as bitter as gall, when they found I was
to be admitted on equal terms with themselves. When the door was
opened, I walked in, on an equal footing with my white fellow-citizens,
and from all I could see, I had as much attention paid me by the
servants that showed us through the house, as any with a paler skin. As
I walked through the building, the statuary did not fall down, the
pictures did not leap from their places, the doors did not refuse to
open, and the servants did not say, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_!”

A happy new-year to you, and all the friends of freedom.

My time and labors, while abroad were divided between England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales. Upon this experience alone, I might write a book
twice the size of this, _My Bondage and My Freedom_. I visited and
lectured in nearly all the large towns and cities in the United
Kingdom, and enjoyed many favorable opportunities for observation and
information. But books on England are abundant, and the public may,
therefore, dismiss any fear that I am meditating another infliction in
that line; though, in truth, I should like much to write a book on
those countries, if for nothing else, to make grateful mention of the
many dear friends, whose benevolent actions toward me are ineffaceably
stamped upon my memory, and warmly treasured in my heart. To these
friends I owe my freedom in the United States. On their own motion,
without any solicitation from me (Mrs. Henry Richardson, a clever lady,
remarkable for her devotion to every good work, taking the lead), they
raised a fund sufficient to purchase my freedom, and actually paid it
over, and placed the papers 8 of my manumission in my hands, before
they would tolerate the idea of my returning to this, my native
country. To this commercial transaction I owe my exemption from the
democratic operation of the Fugitive Slave Bill of 1850. But for this,
I might at any time become a victim of this most cruel and scandalous
enactment, and be doomed to end my life, as I began it, a slave. The
sum paid for my freedom was one hundred and fifty pounds sterling.

Some of my uncompromising anti-slavery friends in this country failed
to see the wisdom of this arrangement, and were not pleased that I
consented to it, even by my silence. They thought it a violation of
anti-slavery principles—conceding a right of property in man—and a
wasteful expenditure of money. On the other hand, viewing it simply in
the light of a ransom, or as money extorted by a robber, and my liberty
of more value than one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, I could not
see either a violation of the laws of morality, or those of economy, in
the transaction.

It is true, I was not in the possession of my claimants, and could have
easily remained in England, for the same friends who had so generously
purchased my freedom, would have assisted me in establishing myself in
that country. To this, however, I could not consent. I felt that I had
a duty to perform—and that was, to labor and suffer with the oppressed
in my native land. Considering, therefore, all the circumstances—the
fugitive slave bill included—I think the very best thing was done in
letting Master Hugh have the hundred and fifty pounds sterling, and
leaving me free to return to my appropriate field of labor. Had I been
a private person, having no other relations or duties than those of a
personal and family nature, I should never have consented to the
payment of so large a sum for the privilege of living securely under
our glorious republican form of government. I could have remained in
England, or have gone to some other country; and perhaps I could even
have lived unobserved in this. But to this I could not consent. I had
already become somewhat notorious, and withal quite as unpopular as
notorious; and I was, therefore, much exposed to arrest and recapture.

The main object to which my labors in Great Britain were directed, was
the concentration of the moral and religious sentiment of its people
against American slavery. England is often charged with having
established slavery in the United States, and if there were no other
justification than this, for appealing to her people to lend their
moral aid for the abolition of slavery, I should be justified. My
speeches in Great Britain were wholly extemporaneous, and I may not
always have been so guarded in my expressions, as I otherwise should
have been. I was ten years younger then than now, and only seven years
from slavery. I cannot give the reader a better idea of the nature of
my discourses, than by republishing one of them, delivered in Finsbury
chapel, London, to an audience of about two thousand persons, and which
was published in the _London Universe_, at the time. 9

Those in the United States who may regard this speech as being harsh in
its spirit and unjust in its statements, because delivered before an
audience supposed to be anti-republican in their principles and
feelings, may view the matter differently, when they learn that the
case supposed did not exist. It so happened that the great mass of the
people in England who attended and patronized my anti-slavery meetings,
were, in truth, about as good republicans as the mass of Americans, and
with this decided advantage over the latter—they are lovers of
republicanism for all men, for black men as well as for white men. They
are the people who sympathize with Louis Kossuth and Mazzini, and with
the oppressed and enslaved, of every color and nation, the world over.
They constitute the democratic element in British politics, and are as
much opposed to the union of church and state as we, in America, are to
such an union. At the meeting where this speech was delivered, Joseph
Sturge—a world-wide philanthropist, and a member of the society of
Friends—presided, and addressed the meeting. George William Alexander,
another Friend, who has spent more than an Ameriacn(sic) fortune in
promoting the anti-slavery cause in different sections of the world,
was on the platform; and also Dr. Campbell (now of the _British
Banner_) who combines all the humane tenderness of Melanchthon, with
the directness and boldness of Luther. He is in the very front ranks of
non-conformists, and looks with no unfriendly eye upon America. George
Thompson, too, was there; and America will yet own that he did a true
man’s work in relighting the rapidly dying-out fire of true
republicanism in the American heart, and be ashamed of the treatment he
met at her hands. Coming generations in this country will applaud the
spirit of this much abused republican friend of freedom. There were
others of note seated on the platform, who would gladly ingraft upon
English institutions all that is purely republican in the institutions
of America. Nothing, therefore, must be set down against this speech on
the score that it was delivered in the presence of those who cannot
appreciate the many excellent things belonging to our system of
government, and with a view to stir up prejudice against republican
institutions.

Again, let it also be remembered—for it is the simple truth—that
neither in this speech, nor in any other which I delivered in England,
did I ever allow myself to address Englishmen as against Americans. I
took my stand on the high ground of human brotherhood, and spoke to
Englishmen as men, in behalf of men. Slavery is a crime, not against
Englishmen, but against God, and all the members of the human family;
and it belongs to the whole human family to seek its suppression. In a
letter to Mr. Greeley, of the New York Tribune, written while abroad, I
said:

I am, nevertheless aware that the wisdom of exposing the sins of one
nation in the ear of another, has been seriously questioned by good and
clear-sighted people, both on this and on your side of the Atlantic.
And the thought is not without weight on my own mind. I am satisfied
that there are many evils which can be best removed by confining our
efforts to the immediate locality where such evils exist. This,
however, is by no means the case with the system of slavery. It is such
a giant sin—such a monstrous aggregation of iniquity—so hardening to
the human heart—so destructive to the moral sense, and so well
calculated to beget a character, in every one around it, favorable to
its own continuance,—that I feel not only at liberty, but abundantly
justified, in appealing to the whole world to aid in its removal.

But, even if I had—as has been often charged—labored to bring American
institutions generally into disrepute, and had not confined my labors
strictly within the limits of humanity and morality, I should not have
been without illustrious examples to support me. Driven into semi-exile
by civil and barbarous laws, and by a system which cannot be thought of
without a shudder, I was fully justified in turning, if possible, the
tide of the moral universe against the heaven-daring outrage.

Four circumstances greatly assisted me in getting the question of
American slavery before the British public. First, the mob on board the
“Cambria,” already referred to, which was a sort of national
announcement of my arrival in England. Secondly, the highly
reprehensible course pursued by the Free Church of Scotland, in
soliciting, receiving, and retaining money in its sustentation fund for
supporting the gospel in Scotland, which was evidently the ill-gotten
gain of slaveholders and slave-traders. Third, the great Evangelical
Alliance—or rather the attempt to form such an alliance, which should
include slaveholders of a certain description—added immensely to the
interest felt in the slavery question. About the same time, there was
the World’s Temperance Convention, where I had the misfortune to come
in collision with sundry American doctors of divinity—Dr. Cox among the
number—with whom I had a small controversy.

It has happened to me—as it has happened to most other men engaged in a
good cause—often to be more indebted to my enemies than to my own skill
or to the assistance of my friends, for whatever success has attended
my labors. Great surprise was expressed by American newspapers, north
and south, during my stay in Great Britain, that a person so illiterate
and insignificant as myself could awaken an interest so marked in
England. These papers were not the only parties surprised. I was myself
not far behind them in surprise. But the very contempt and scorn, the
systematic and extravagant disparagement of which I was the object,
served, perhaps, to magnify my few merits, and to render me of some
account, whether deserving or not. A man is sometimes made great, by
the greatness of the abuse a portion of mankind may think proper to
heap upon him. Whether I was of as much consequence as the English
papers made me out to be, or not, it was easily seen, in England, that
I could not be the ignorant and worthless creature, some of the
American papers would have them believe I was. Men, in their senses, do
not take bowie-knives to kill mosquitoes, nor pistols to shoot flies;
and the American passengers who thought proper to get up a mob to
silence me, on board the “Cambria,” took the most effective method of
telling the British public that I had something to say.

But to the second circumstance, namely, the position of the Free Church
of Scotland, with the great Doctors Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish
at its head. That church, with its leaders, put it out of the power of
the Scotch people to ask the old question, which we in the north have
often most wickedly asked—“_What have we to do with slavery_?” That
church had taken the price of blood into its treasury, with which to
build _free_ churches, and to pay _free_ church ministers for preaching
the gospel; and, worse still, when honest John Murray, of Bowlien
Bay—now gone to his reward in heaven—with William Smeal, Andrew Paton,
Frederick Card, and other sterling anti-slavery men in Glasgow,
denounced the transaction as disgraceful and shocking to the religious
sentiment of Scotland, this church, through its leading divines,
instead of repenting and seeking to mend the mistake into which it had
fallen, made it a flagrant sin, by undertaking to defend, in the name
of God and the bible, the principle not only of taking the money of
slave-dealers to build churches, but of holding fellowship with the
holders and traffickers in human flesh. This, the reader will see,
brought up the whole question of slavery, and opened the way to its
full discussion, without any agency of mine. I have never seen a people
more deeply moved than were the people of Scotland, on this very
question. Public meeting succeeded public meeting. Speech after speech,
pamphlet after pamphlet, editorial after editorial, sermon after
sermon, soon lashed the conscientious Scotch people into a perfect
_furore_. “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” was indignantly cried out, from
Greenock to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. George Thompson,
of London, Henry C. Wright, of the United States, James N. Buffum, of
Lynn, Massachusetts, and myself were on the anti-slavery side; and
Doctors Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish on the other. In a conflict
where the latter could have had even the show of right, the truth, in
our hands as against them, must have been driven to the wall; and while
I believe we were able to carry the conscience of the country against
the action of the Free Church, the battle, it must be confessed, was a
hard-fought one. Abler defenders of the doctrine of fellowshiping
slaveholders as christians, have not been met with. In defending this
doctrine, it was necessary to deny that slavery is a sin. If driven
from this position, they were compelled to deny that slaveholders were
responsible for the sin; and if driven from both these positions, they
must deny that it is a sin in such a sense, and that slaveholders are
sinners in such a sense, as to make it wrong, in the circumstances in
which they were placed, to recognize them as Christians. Dr. Cunningham
was the most powerful debater on the slavery side of the question; Mr.
Thompson was the ablest on the anti-slavery side. A scene occurred
between these two men, a parallel to which I think I never witnessed
before, and I know I never have since. The scene was caused by a single
exclamation on the part of Mr. Thompson.

The general assembly of the Free Church was in progress at Cannon
Mills, Edinburgh. The building would hold about twenty-five hundred
persons; and on this occasion it was densely packed, notice having been
given that Doctors Cunningham and Candlish would speak, that day, in
defense of the relations of the Free Church of Scotland to slavery in
America. Messrs. Thompson, Buffum, myself, and a few anti-slavery
friends, attended, but sat at such a distance, and in such a position,
that, perhaps we were not observed from the platform. The excitement
was intense, having been greatly increased by a series of meetings held
by Messrs. Thompson, Wright, Buffum, and myself, in the most splendid
hall in that most beautiful city, just previous to the meetings of the
general assembly. “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” stared at us from every street
corner; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” in large capitals, adorned the broad
flags of the pavement; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” was the chorus of the
popular street songs; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” was the heading of leading
editorials in the daily newspapers. This day, at Cannon Mills, the
great doctors of the church were to give an answer to this loud and
stern demand. Men of all parties and all sects were most eager to hear.
Something great was expected. The occasion was great, the men great,
and great speeches were expected from them.

In addition to the outside pressure upon Doctors Cunningham and
Candlish, there was wavering in their own ranks. The conscience of the
church itself was not at ease. A dissatisfaction with the position of
the church touching slavery, was sensibly manifest among the members,
and something must be done to counteract this untoward influence. The
great Dr. Chalmers was in feeble health, at the time. His most potent
eloquence could not now be summoned to Cannon Mills, as formerly. He
whose voice was able to rend asunder and dash down the granite walls of
the established church of Scotland, and to lead a host in solemn
procession from it, as from a doomed city, was now old and enfeebled.
Besides, he had said his word on this very question; and his word had
not silenced the clamor without, nor stilled the anxious heavings
within. The occasion was momentous, and felt to be so. The church was
in a perilous condition. A change of some sort must take place in her
condition, or she must go to pieces. To stand where she did, was
impossible. The whole weight of the matter fell on Cunningham and
Candlish. No shoulders in the church were broader than theirs; and I
must say, badly as I detest the principles laid down and defended by
them, I was compelled to acknowledge the vast mental endowments of the
men. Cunningham rose; and his rising was the signal for almost
tumultous applause. You will say this was scarcely in keeping with the
solemnity of the occasion, but to me it served to increase its grandeur
and gravity. The applause, though tumultuous, was not joyous. It seemed
to me, as it thundered up from the vast audience, like the fall of an
immense shaft, flung from shoulders already galled by its crushing
weight. It was like saying, “Doctor, we have borne this burden long
enough, and willingly fling it upon you. Since it was you who brought
it upon us, take it now, and do what you will with it, for we are too
weary to bear it. [“no close”].

Doctor Cunningham proceeded with his speech, abounding in logic,
learning, and eloquence, and apparently bearing down all opposition;
but at the moment—the fatal moment—when he was just bringing all his
arguments to a point, and that point being, that neither Jesus Christ
nor his holy apostles regarded slaveholding as a sin, George Thompson,
in a clear, sonorous, but rebuking voice, broke the deep stillness of
the audience, exclaiming, HEAR! HEAR! HEAR! The effect of this simple
and common exclamation is almost incredible. It was as if a granite
wall had been suddenly flung up against the advancing current of a
mighty river. For a moment, speaker and audience were brought to a dead
silence. Both the doctor and his hearers seemed appalled by the
audacity, as well as the fitness of the rebuke. At length a shout went
up to the cry of “_Put him out_!” Happily, no one attempted to execute
this cowardly order, and the doctor proceeded with his discourse. Not,
however, as before, did the learned doctor proceed. The exclamation of
Thompson must have reechoed itself a thousand times in his memory,
during the remainder of his speech, for the doctor never recovered from
the blow.

The deed was done, however; the pillars of the church—_the proud, Free
Church of Scotland_—were committed and the humility of repentance was
absent. The Free Church held on to the blood-stained money, and
continued to justify itself in its position—and of course to apologize
for slavery—and does so till this day. She lost a glorious opportunity
for giving her voice, her vote, and her example to the cause of
humanity; and to-day she is staggering under the curse of the enslaved,
whose blood is in her skirts. The people of Scotland are, to this day,
deeply grieved at the course pursued by the Free Church, and would
hail, as a relief from a deep and blighting shame, the “sending back
the money” to the slaveholders from whom it was gathered.

One good result followed the conduct of the Free Church; it furnished
an occasion for making the people of Scotland thoroughly acquainted
with the character of slavery, and for arraying against the system the
moral and religious sentiment of that country. Therefore, while we did
not succeed in accomplishing the specific object of our mission,
namely—procure the sending back of the money—we were amply justified by
the good which really did result from our labors.

Next comes the Evangelical Alliance. This was an attempt to form a
union of all evangelical Christians throughout the world. Sixty or
seventy American divines attended, and some of them went there merely
to weave a world-wide garment with which to clothe evangelical
slaveholders. Foremost among these divines, was the Rev. Samuel Hanson
Cox, moderator of the New School Presbyterian General Assembly. He and
his friends spared no pains to secure a platform broad enough to hold
American slaveholders, and in this partly succeeded. But the question
of slavery is too large a question to be finally disposed of, even by
the Evangelical Alliance. We appealed from the judgment of the
Alliance, to the judgment of the people of Great Britain, and with the
happiest effect. This controversy with the Alliance might be made the
subject of extended remark, but I must forbear, except to say, that
this effort to shield the Christian character of slaveholders greatly
served to open a way to the British ear for anti-slavery discussion,
and that it was well improved.

The fourth and last circumstance that assisted me in getting before the
British public, was an attempt on the part of certain doctors of
divinity to silence me on the platform of the World’s Temperance
Convention. Here I was brought into point blank collison with Rev. Dr.
Cox, who made me the subject not only of bitter remark in the
convention, but also of a long denunciatory letter published in the New
York Evangelist and other American papers. I replied to the doctor as
well as I could, and was successful in getting a respectful hearing
before the British public, who are by nature and practice ardent lovers
of fair play, especially in a conflict between the weak and the strong.

Thus did circumstances favor me, and favor the cause of which I strove
to be the advocate. After such distinguished notice, the public in both
countries was compelled to attach some importance to my labors. By the
very ill usage I received at the hands of Dr. Cox and his party, by the
mob on board the “Cambria,” by the attacks made upon me in the American
newspapers, and by the aspersions cast upon me through the organs of
the Free Church of Scotland, I became one of that class of men, who,
for the moment, at least, “have greatness forced upon them.” People
became the more anxious to hear for themselves, and to judge for
themselves, of the truth which I had to unfold. While, therefore, it is
by no means easy for a stranger to get fairly before the British
public, it was my lot to accomplish it in the easiest manner possible.

Having continued in Great Britain and Ireland nearly two years, and
being about to return to America—not as I left it, a slave, but a
freeman—leading friends of the cause of emancipation in that country
intimated their intention to make me a testimonial, not only on grounds
of personal regard to myself, but also to the cause to which they were
so ardently devoted. How far any such thing could have succeeded, I do
not know; but many reasons led me to prefer that my friends should
simply give me the means of obtaining a printing press and printing
materials, to enable me to start a paper, devoted to the interests of
my enslaved and oppressed people. I told them that perhaps the greatest
hinderance to the adoption of abolition principles by the people of the
United States, was the low estimate, everywhere in that country, placed
upon the Negro, as a man; that because of his assumed natural
inferiority, people reconciled themselves to his enslavement and
oppression, as things inevitable, if not desirable. The grand thing to
be done, therefore, was to change the estimation in which the colored
people of the United States were held; to remove the prejudice which
depreciated and depressed them; to prove them worthy of a higher
consideration; to disprove their alleged inferiority, and demonstrate
their capacity for a more exalted civilization than slavery and
prejudice had assigned to them. I further stated, that, in my judgment,
a tolerably well conducted press, in the hands of persons of the
despised race, by calling out the mental energies of the race itself;
by making them acquainted with their own latent powers; by enkindling
among them the hope that for them there is a future; by developing
their moral power; by combining and reflecting their talents—would
prove a most powerful means of removing prejudice, and of awakening an
interest in them. I further informed them—and at that time the
statement was true—that there was not, in the United States, a single
newspaper regularly published by the colored people; that many attempts
had been made to establish such papers; but that, up to that time, they
had all failed. These views I laid before my friends. The result was,
nearly two thousand five hundred dollars were speedily raised toward
starting my paper. For this prompt and generous assistance, rendered
upon my bare suggestion, without any personal efforts on my part, I
shall never cease to feel deeply grateful; and the thought of
fulfilling the noble expectations of the dear friends who gave me this
evidence of their confidence, will never cease to be a motive for
persevering exertion.

Proposing to leave England, and turning my face toward America, in the
spring of 1847, I was met, on the threshold, with something which
painfully reminded me of the kind of life which awaited me in my native
land. For the first time in the many months spent abroad, I was met
with proscription on account of my color. A few weeks before departing
from England, while in London, I was careful to purchase a ticket, and
secure a berth for returning home, in the “Cambria”—the steamer in
which I left the United States—paying therefor the round sum of forty
pounds and nineteen shillings sterling. This was first cabin fare. But
on going aboard the Cambria, I found that the Liverpool agent had
ordered my berth to be given to another, and had forbidden my entering
the saloon! This contemptible conduct met with stern rebuke from the
British press. For, upon the point of leaving England, I took occasion
to expose the disgusting tyranny, in the columns of the London _Times_.
That journal, and other leading journals throughout the United Kingdom,
held up the outrage to unmitigated condemnation. So good an opportunity
for calling out a full expression of British sentiment on the subject,
had not before occurred, and it was most fully embraced. The result
was, that Mr. Cunard came out in a letter to the public journals,
assuring them of his regret at the outrage, and promising that the like
should never occur again on board his steamers; and the like, we
believe, has never since occurred on board the steamships of the Cunard
line.

It is not very pleasant to be made the subject of such insults; but if
all such necessarily resulted as this one did, I should be very happy
to bear, patiently, many more than I have borne, of the same sort.
Albeit, the lash of proscription, to a man accustomed to equal social
position, even for a time, as I was, has a sting for the soul hardly
less severe than that which bites the flesh and draws the blood from
the back of the plantation slave. It was rather hard, after having
enjoyed nearly two years of equal social privileges in England, often
dining with gentlemen of great literary, social, political, and
religious eminence never, during the whole time, having met with a
single word, look, or gesture, which gave me the slightest reason to
think my color was an offense to anybody—now to be cooped up in the
stern of the “Cambria,” and denied the right to enter the saloon, lest
my dark presence should be deemed an offense to some of my democratic
fellow-passengers. The reader will easily imagine what must have been
my feelings.




CHAPTER XXV. _Various Incidents_


NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE—UNEXPECTED OPPOSITION—THE OBJECTIONS TO IT—THEIR
PLAUSIBILITY ADMITTED—MOTIVES FOR COMING TO ROCHESTER—DISCIPLE OF MR.
GARRISON—CHANGE OF OPINION—CAUSES LEADING TO IT—THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE
CHANGE—PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR—AMUSING CONDESCENSION—“JIM CROW
CARS”—COLLISIONS WITH CONDUCTORS AND BRAKEMEN—TRAINS ORDERED NOT TO
STOP AT LYNN—AMUSING DOMESTIC SCENE—SEPARATE TABLES FOR MASTER AND
MAN—PREJUDICE UNNATURAL—ILLUSTRATIONS—IN HIGH COMPANY—ELEVATION OF THE
FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR—PLEDGE FOR THE FUTURE.


I have now given the reader an imperfect sketch of nine years’
experience in freedom—three years as a common laborer on the wharves of
New Bedford, four years as a lecturer in New England, and two years of
semi-exile in Great Britain and Ireland. A single ray of light remains
to be flung upon my life during the last eight years, and my story will
be done.

A trial awaited me on my return from England to the United States, for
which I was but very imperfectly prepared. My plans for my then future
usefulness as an anti-slavery advocate were all settled. My friends in
England had resolved to raise a given sum to purchase for me a press
and printing materials; and I already saw myself wielding my pen, as
well as my voice, in the great work of renovating the public mind, and
building up a public sentiment which should, at least, send slavery and
oppression to the grave, and restore to “liberty and the pursuit of
happiness” the people with whom I had suffered, both as a slave and as
a freeman. Intimation had reached my friends in Boston of what I
intended to do, before my arrival, and I was prepared to find them
favorably disposed toward my much cherished enterprise. In this I was
mistaken. I found them very earnestly opposed to the idea of my
starting a paper, and for several reasons. First, the paper was not
needed; secondly, it would interfere with my usefulness as a lecturer;
thirdly, I was better fitted to speak than to write; fourthly, the
paper could not succeed. This opposition, from a quarter so highly
esteemed, and to which I had been accustomed to look for advice and
direction, caused me not only to hesitate, but inclined me to abandon
the enterprise. All previous attempts to establish such a journal
having failed, I felt that probably I should but add another to the
list of failures, and thus contribute another proof of the mental and
moral deficiencies of my race. Very much that was said to me in respect
to my imperfect literary acquirements, I felt to be most painfully
true. The unsuccessful projectors of all the previous colored
newspapers were my superiors in point of education, and if they failed,
how could I hope for success? Yet I did hope for success, and persisted
in the undertaking. Some of my English friends greatly encouraged me to
go forward, and I shall never cease to be grateful for their words of
cheer and generous deeds.

I can easily pardon those who have denounced me as ambitious and
presumptuous, in view of my persistence in this enterprise. I was but
nine years from slavery. In point of mental experience, I was but nine
years old. That one, in such circumstances, should aspire to establish
a printing press, among an educated people, might well be considered,
if not ambitious, quite silly. My American friends looked at me with
astonishment! “A wood-sawyer” offering himself to the public as an
editor! A slave, brought up in the very depths of ignorance, assuming
to instruct the highly civilized people of the north in the principles
of liberty, justice, and humanity! The thing looked absurd.
Nevertheless, I persevered. I felt that the want of education, great as
it was, could be overcome by study, and that knowledge would come by
experience; and further (which was perhaps the most controlling
consideration). I thought that an intelligent public, knowing my early
history, would easily pardon a large share of the deficiencies which I
was sure that my paper would exhibit. The most distressing thing,
however, was the offense which I was about to give my Boston friends,
by what seemed to them a reckless disregard of their sage advice. I am
not sure that I was not under the influence of something like a slavish
adoration of my Boston friends, and I labored hard to convince them of
the wisdom of my undertaking, but without success. Indeed, I never
expect to succeed, although time has answered all their original
objections. The paper has been successful. It is a large sheet, costing
eighty dollars per week—has three thousand subscribers—has been
published regularly nearly eight years—and bids fair to stand eight
years longer. At any rate, the eight years to come are as full of
promise as were the eight that are past.

It is not to be concealed, however, that the maintenance of such a
journal, under the circumstances, has been a work of much difficulty;
and could all the perplexity, anxiety, and trouble attending it, have
been clearly foreseen, I might have shrunk from the undertaking. As it
is, I rejoice in having engaged in the enterprise, and count it joy to
have been able to suffer, in many ways, for its success, and for the
success of the cause to which it has been faithfully devoted. I look
upon the time, money, and labor bestowed upon it, as being amply
rewarded, in the development of my own mental and moral energies, and
in the corresponding development of my deeply injured and oppressed
people.

From motives of peace, instead of issuing my paper in Boston, among my
New England friends, I came to Rochester, western New York, among
strangers, where the circulation of my paper could not interfere with
the local circulation of the _Liberator_ and the _Standard;_ for at
that time I was, on the anti-slavery question, a faithful disciple of
William Lloyd Garrison, and fully committed to his doctrine touching
the pro-slavery character of the constitution of the United States, and
the _non-voting principle_, of which he is the known and distinguished
advocate. With Mr. Garrison, I held it to be the first duty of the
non-slaveholding states to dissolve the union with the slaveholding
states; and hence my cry, like his, was, “No union with slaveholders.”
With these views, I came into western New York; and during the first
four years of my labor here, I advocated them with pen and tongue,
according to the best of my ability.

About four years ago, upon a reconsideration of the whole subject, I
became convinced that there was no necessity for dissolving the “union
between the northern and southern states;” that to seek this
dissolution was no part of my duty as an abolitionist; that to abstain
from voting, was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means
for abolishing slavery; and that the constitution of the United States
not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the
contrary, it is, in its letter and spirit, an anti-slavery instrument,
demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence,
as the supreme law of the land.

Here was a radical change in my opinions, and in the action logically
resulting from that change. To those with whom I had been in agreement
and in sympathy, I was now in opposition. What they held to be a great
and important truth, I now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very
painful, and yet a very natural, thing now happened. Those who could
not see any honest reasons for changing their views, as I had done,
could not easily see any such reasons for my change, and the common
punishment of apostates was mine.

The opinions first entertained were naturally derived and honestly
entertained, and I trust that my present opinions have the same claims
to respect. Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact
with a class of abolitionists regarding the constitution as a
slaveholding instrument, and finding their views supported by the
united and entire history of every department of the government, it is
not strange that I assumed the constitution to be just what their
interpretation made it. I was bound, not only by their superior
knowledge, to take their opinions as the true ones, in respect to the
subject, but also because I had no means of showing their unsoundness.
But for the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the
necessity imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists
in this state, I should in all probability have remained as firm in my
disunion views as any other disciple of William Lloyd Garrison.

My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to
study, with some care, not only the just and proper rules of legal
interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights, powers, and
duties of civil government, and also the relations which human beings
sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading, I was conducted
to the conclusion that the constitution of the United
States—inaugurated “to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty”—could not well
have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system
of rapine and murder, like slavery; especially, as not one word can be
found in the constitution to authorize such a belief. Then, again, if
the declared purposes of an instrument are to govern the meaning of all
its parts and details, as they clearly should, the constitution of our
country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state in
the American Union. I mean, however, not to argue, but simply to state
my views. It would require very many pages of a volume like this, to
set forth the arguments demonstrating the unconstitutionality and the
complete illegality of slavery in our land; and as my experience, and
not my arguments, is within the scope and contemplation of this volume,
I omit the latter and proceed with the former.

I will now ask the kind reader to go back a little in my story, while I
bring up a thread left behind for convenience sake, but which, small as
it is, cannot be properly omitted altogether; and that thread is
American prejudice against color, and its varied illustrations in my
own experience.

When I first went among the abolitionists of New England, and began to
travel, I found this prejudice very strong and very annoying. The
abolitionists themselves were not entirely free from it, and I could
see that they were nobly struggling against it. In their eagerness,
sometimes, to show their contempt for the feeling, they proved that
they had not entirely recovered from it; often illustrating the saying,
in their conduct, that a man may “stand up so straight as to lean
backward.” When it was said to me, “Mr. Douglass, I will walk to
meeting with you; I am not afraid of a black man,” I could not help
thinking—seeing nothing very frightful in my appearance—“And why should
you be?” The children at the north had all been educated to believe
that if they were bad, the old _black_ man—not the old _devil_—would
get them; and it was evidence of some courage, for any so educated to
get the better of their fears.

The custom of providing separate cars for the accommodation of colored
travelers, was established on nearly all the railroads of New England,
a dozen years ago. Regarding this custom as fostering the spirit of
caste, I made it a rule to seat myself in the cars for the
accommodation of passengers generally. Thus seated, I was sure to be
called upon to betake myself to the “_Jim Crow car_.” Refusing to obey,
I was often dragged out of my seat, beaten, and severely bruised, by
conductors and brakemen. Attempting to start from Lynn, one day, for
Newburyport, on the Eastern railroad, I went, as my custom was, into
one of the best railroad carriages on the road. The seats were very
luxuriant and beautiful. I was soon waited upon by the conductor, and
ordered out; whereupon I demanded the reason for my invidious removal.
After a good deal of parleying, I was told that it was because I was
black. This I denied, and appealed to the company to sustain my denial;
but they were evidently unwilling to commit themselves, on a point so
delicate, and requiring such nice powers of discrimination, for they
remained as dumb as death. I was soon waited on by half a dozen fellows
of the baser sort (just such as would volunteer to take a bull-dog out
of a meeting-house in time of public worship), and told that I must
move out of that seat, and if I did not, they would drag me out. I
refused to move, and they clutched me, head, neck, and shoulders. But,
in anticipation of the stretching to which I was about to be subjected,
I had interwoven myself among the seats. In dragging me out, on this
occasion, it must have cost the company twenty-five or thirty dollars,
for I tore up seats and all. So great was the excitement in Lynn, on
the subject, that the superintendent, Mr. Stephen A. Chase, ordered the
trains to run through Lynn without stopping, while I remained in that
town; and this ridiculous farce was enacted. For several days the
trains went dashing through Lynn without stopping. At the same time
that they excluded a free colored man from their cars, this same
company allowed slaves, in company with their masters and mistresses,
to ride unmolested.

After many battles with the railroad conductors, and being roughly
handled in not a few instances, proscription was at last abandoned; and
the “Jim Crow car”—set up for the degradation of colored people—is
nowhere found in New England. This result was not brought about without
the intervention of the people, and the threatened enactment of a law
compelling railroad companies to respect the rights of travelers. Hon.
Charles Francis Adams performed signal service in the Massachusetts
legislature, in bringing this reformation; and to him the colored
citizens of that state are deeply indebted.

Although often annoyed, and sometimes outraged, by this prejudice
against color, I am indebted to it for many passages of quiet
amusement. A half-cured subject of it is sometimes driven into awkward
straits, especially if he happens to get a genuine specimen of the race
into his house.

In the summer of 1843, I was traveling and lecturing, in company with
William A. White, Esq., through the state of Indiana. Anti-slavery
friends were not very abundant in Indiana, at that time, and beds were
not more plentiful than friends. We often slept out, in preference to
sleeping in the houses, at some points. At the close of one of our
meetings, we were invited home with a kindly-disposed old farmer, who,
in the generous enthusiasm of the moment, seemed to have forgotten that
he had but one spare bed, and that his guests were an ill-matched pair.
All went on pretty well, till near bed time, when signs of uneasiness
began to show themselves, among the unsophisticated sons and daughters.
White is remarkably fine looking, and very evidently a born gentleman;
the idea of putting us in the same bed was hardly to be tolerated; and
yet, there we were, and but the one bed for us, and that, by the way,
was in the same room occupied by the other members of the family.
White, as well as I, perceived the difficulty, for yonder slept the old
folks, there the sons, and a little farther along slept the daughters;
and but one other bed remained. Who should have this bed, was the
puzzling question. There was some whispering between the old folks,
some confused looks among the young, as the time for going to bed
approached. After witnessing the confusion as long as I liked, I
relieved the kindly-disposed family by playfully saying, “Friend White,
having got entirely rid of my prejudice against color, I think, as a
proof of it, I must allow you to sleep with me to-night.” White kept up
the joke, by seeming to esteem himself the favored party, and thus the
difficulty was removed. If we went to a hotel, and called for dinner,
the landlord was sure to set one table for White and another for me,
always taking him to be master, and me the servant. Large eyes were
generally made when the order was given to remove the dishes from my
table to that of White’s. In those days, it was thought strange that a
white man and a colored man could dine peaceably at the same table, and
in some parts the strangeness of such a sight has not entirely
subsided.

Some people will have it that there is a natural, an inherent, and an
invincible repugnance in the breast of the white race toward
dark-colored people; and some very intelligent colored men think that
their proscription is owing solely to the color which nature has given
them. They hold that they are rated according to their color, and that
it is impossible for white people ever to look upon dark races of men,
or men belonging to the African race, with other than feelings of
aversion. My experience, both serious and mirthful, combats this
conclusion. Leaving out of sight, for a moment, grave facts, to this
point, I will state one or two, which illustrate a very interesting
feature of American character as well as American prejudice. Riding
from Boston to Albany, a few years ago, I found myself in a large car,
well filled with passengers. The seat next to me was about the only
vacant one. At every stopping place we took in new passengers, all of
whom, on reaching the seat next to me, cast a disdainful glance upon
it, and passed to another car, leaving me in the full enjoyment of a
hole form. For a time, I did not know but that my riding there was
prejudicial to the interest of the railroad company. A circumstance
occurred, however, which gave me an elevated position at once. Among
the passengers on this train was Gov. George N. Briggs. I was not
acquainted with him, and had no idea that I was known to him, however,
I was, for upon observing me, the governor left his place, and making
his way toward me, respectfully asked the privilege of a seat by my
side; and upon introducing himself, we entered into a conversation very
pleasant and instructive to me. The despised seat now became honored.
His excellency had removed all the prejudice against sitting by the
side of a Negro; and upon his leaving it, as he did, on reaching
Pittsfield, there were at least one dozen applicants for the place. The
governor had, without changing my skin a single shade, made the place
respectable which before was despicable.

A similar incident happened to me once on the Boston and New Bedford
railroad, and the leading party to it has since been governor of the
state of Massachusetts. I allude to Col. John Henry Clifford. Lest the
reader may fancy I am aiming to elevate myself, by claiming too much
intimacy with great men, I must state that my only acquaintance with
Col. Clifford was formed while I was _his hired servant_, during the
first winter of my escape from slavery. I owe it him to say, that in
that relation I found him always kind and gentlemanly. But to the
incident. I entered a car at Boston, for New Bedford, which, with the
exception of a single seat was full, and found I must occupy this, or
stand up, during the journey. Having no mind to do this, I stepped up
to the man having the next seat, and who had a few parcels on the seat,
and gently asked leave to take a seat by his side. My fellow-passenger
gave me a look made up of reproach and indignation, and asked me why I
should come to that particular seat. I assured him, in the gentlest
manner, that of all others this was the seat for me. Finding that I was
actually about to sit down, he sang out, “O! stop, stop! and let me get
out!” Suiting the action to the word, up the agitated man got, and
sauntered to the other end of the car, and was compelled to stand for
most of the way thereafter. Halfway to New Bedford, or more, Col.
Clifford, recognizing me, left his seat, and not having seen me before
since I had ceased to wait on him (in everything except hard arguments
against his pro-slavery position), apparently forgetful of his rank,
manifested, in greeting me, something of the feeling of an old friend.
This demonstration was not lost on the gentleman whose dignity I had,
an hour before, most seriously offended. Col. Clifford was known to be
about the most aristocratic gentleman in Bristol county; and it was
evidently thought that I must be somebody, else I should not have been
thus noticed, by a person so distinguished. Sure enough, after Col.
Clifford left me, I found myself surrounded with friends; and among the
number, my offended friend stood nearest, and with an apology for his
rudeness, which I could not resist, although it was one of the lamest
ever offered. With such facts as these before me—and I have many of
them—I am inclined to think that pride and fashion have much to do with
the treatment commonly extended to colored people in the United States.
I once heard a very plain man say (and he was cross-eyed, and awkwardly
flung together in other respects) that he should be a handsome man when
public opinion shall be changed.

Since I have been editing and publishing a journal devoted to the cause
of liberty and progress, I have had my mind more directed to the
condition and circumstances of the free colored people than when I was
the agent of an abolition society. The result has been a corresponding
change in the disposition of my time and labors. I have felt it to be a
part of my mission—under a gracious Providence to impress my sable
brothers in this country with the conviction that, notwithstanding the
ten thousand discouragements and the powerful hinderances, which beset
their existence in this country—notwithstanding the blood-written
history of Africa, and her children, from whom we have descended, or
the clouds and darkness (whose stillness and gloom are made only more
awful by wrathful thunder and lightning) now overshadowing
them—progress is yet possible, and bright skies shall yet shine upon
their pathway; and that “Ethiopia shall yet reach forth her hand unto
God.”

Believing that one of the best means of emancipating the slaves of the
south is to improve and elevate the character of the free colored
people of the north I shall labor in the future, as I have labored in
the past, to promote the moral, social, religious, and intellectual
elevation of the free colored people; never forgetting my own humble
orgin(sic), nor refusing, while Heaven lends me ability, to use my
voice, my pen, or my vote, to advocate the great and primary work of
the universal and unconditional emancipation of my entire race.




RECEPTION SPEECH 10. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12,


1846

Mr. Douglass rose amid loud cheers, and said: I feel exceedingly glad
of the opportunity now afforded me of presenting the claims of my
brethren in bonds in the United States, to so many in London and from
various parts of Britain, who have assembled here on the present
occasion. I have nothing to commend me to your consideration in the way
of learning, nothing in the way of education, to entitle me to your
attention; and you are aware that slavery is a very bad school for
rearing teachers of morality and religion. Twenty-one years of my life
have been spent in slavery—personal slavery—surrounded by degrading
influences, such as can exist nowhere beyond the pale of slavery; and
it will not be strange, if under such circumstances, I should betray,
in what I have to say to you, a deficiency of that refinement which is
seldom or ever found, except among persons that have experienced
superior advantages to those which I have enjoyed. But I will take it
for granted that you know something about the degrading influences of
slavery, and that you will not expect great things from me this
evening, but simply such facts as I may be able to advance immediately
in connection with my own experience of slavery.

Now, what is this system of slavery? This is the subject of my lecture
this evening—what is the character of this institution? I am about to
answer the inquiry, what is American slavery? I do this the more
readily, since I have found persons in this country who have identified
the term slavery with that which I think it is not, and in some
instances, I have feared, in so doing, have rather (unwittingly, I
know) detracted much from the horror with which the term slavery is
contemplated. It is common in this country to distinguish every bad
thing by the name of slavery. Intemperance is slavery; to be deprived
of the right to vote is slavery, says one; to have to work hard is
slavery, says another; and I do not know but that if we should let them
go on, they would say that to eat when we are hungry, to walk when we
desire to have exercise, or to minister to our necessities, or have
necessities at all, is slavery. I do not wish for a moment to detract
from the horror with which the evil of intemperance is contemplated—not
at all; nor do I wish to throw the slightest obstruction in the way of
any political freedom that any class of persons in this country may
desire to obtain. But I am here to say that I think the term slavery is
sometimes abused by identifying it with that which it is not. Slavery
in the United States is the granting of that power by which one man
exercises and enforces a right of property in the body and soul of
another. The condition of a slave is simply that of the brute beast. He
is a piece of property—a marketable commodity, in the language of the
law, to be bought or sold at the will and caprice of the master who
claims him to be his property; he is spoken of, thought of, and treated
as property. His own good, his conscience, his intellect, his
affections, are all set aside by the master. The will and the wishes of
the master are the law of the slave. He is as much a piece of property
as a horse. If he is fed, he is fed because he is property. If he is
clothed, it is with a view to the increase of his value as property.
Whatever of comfort is necessary to him for his body or soul that is
inconsistent with his being property, is carefully wrested from him,
not only by public opinion, but by the law of the country. He is
carefully deprived of everything that tends in the slightest degree to
detract from his value as property. He is deprived of education. God
has given him an intellect; the slaveholder declares it shall not be
cultivated. If his moral perception leads him in a course contrary to
his value as property, the slaveholder declares he shall not exercise
it. The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one-sixth
of the population of democratic America is denied its privileges by the
law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its
liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity,
boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its
own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of
marriage?—what must be the condition of that people? I need not lift up
the veil by giving you any experience of my own. Every one that can put
two ideas together, must see the most fearful results from such a state
of things as I have just mentioned. If any of these three millions find
for themselves companions, and prove themselves honest, upright,
virtuous persons to each other, yet in these cases—few as I am bound to
confess they are—the virtuous live in constant apprehension of being
torn asunder by the merciless men-stealers that claim them as their
property. This is American slavery; no marriage—no education—the light
of the gospel shut out from the dark mind of the bondman—and he
forbidden by law to learn to read. If a mother shall teach her children
to read, the law in Louisiana proclaims that she may be hanged by the
neck. If the father attempt to give his son a knowledge of letters, he
may be punished by the whip in one instance, and in another be killed,
at the discretion of the court. Three millions of people shut out from
the light of knowledge! It is easy for you to conceive the evil that
must result from such a state of things.

I now come to the physical evils of slavery. I do not wish to dwell at
length upon these, but it seems right to speak of them, not so much to
influence your minds on this question, as to let the slaveholders of
America know that the curtain which conceals their crimes is being
lifted abroad; that we are opening the dark cell, and leading the
people into the horrible recesses of what they are pleased to call
their domestic institution. We want them to know that a knowledge of
their whippings, their scourgings, their brandings, their chainings, is
not confined to their plantations, but that some Negro of theirs has
broken loose from his chains—has burst through the dark incrustation of
slavery, and is now exposing their deeds of deep damnation to the gaze
of the christian people of England.

The slaveholders resort to all kinds of cruelty. If I were disposed, I
have matter enough to interest you on this question for five or six
evenings, but I will not dwell at length upon these cruelties. Suffice
it to say, that all of the peculiar modes of torture that were resorted
to in the West India islands, are resorted to, I believe, even more
frequently, in the United States of America. Starvation, the bloody
whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, cat-hauling, the
cat-o’-nine-tails, the dungeon, the blood-hound, are all in requisition
to keep the slave in his condition as a slave in the United States. If
any one has a doubt upon this point, I would ask him to read the
chapter on slavery in Dickens’s _Notes on America_. If any man has a
doubt upon it, I have here the “testimony of a thousand witnesses,”
which I can give at any length, all going to prove the truth of my
statement. The blood-hound is regularly trained in the United States,
and advertisements are to be found in the southern papers of the Union,
from persons advertising themselves as blood-hound trainers, and
offering to hunt down slaves at fifteen dollars a piece, recommending
their hounds as the fleetest in the neighborhood, never known to fail.
Advertisements are from time to time inserted, stating that slaves have
escaped with iron collars about their necks, with bands of iron about
their feet, marked with the lash, branded with red-hot irons, the
initials of their master’s name burned into their flesh; and the
masters advertise the fact of their being thus branded with their own
signature, thereby proving to the world, that, however damning it may
appear to non-slavers, such practices are not regarded discreditable
among the slaveholders themselves. Why, I believe if a man should brand
his horse in this country—burn the initials of his name into any of his
cattle, and publish the ferocious deed here—that the united execrations
of Christians in Britain would descend upon him. Yet in the United
States, human beings are thus branded. As Whittier says—

... Our countrymen in chains,
The whip on woman’s shrinking flesh,
Our soil yet reddening with the stains
Caught from her scourgings warm and fresh.


The slave-dealer boldly publishes his infamous acts to the world. Of
all things that have been said of slavery to which exception has been
taken by slaveholders, this, the charge of cruelty, stands foremost,
and yet there is no charge capable of clearer demonstration, than that
of the most barbarous inhumanity on the part of the slaveholders toward
their slaves. And all this is necessary; it is necessary to resort to
these cruelties, in order to _make the slave a slave_, and to _keep him
a slave_. Why, my experience all goes to prove the truth of what you
will call a marvelous proposition, that the better you treat a slave,
the more you destroy his value _as a slave_, and enhance the
probability of his eluding the grasp of the slaveholder; the more
kindly you treat him, the more wretched you make him, while you keep
him in the condition of a slave. My experience, I say, confirms the
truth of this proposition. When I was treated exceedingly ill; when my
back was being scourged daily; when I was whipped within an inch of my
life—_life_ was all I cared for. “Spare my life,” was my continual
prayer. When I was looking for the blow about to be inflicted upon my
head, I was not thinking of my liberty; it was my life. But, as soon as
the blow was not to be feared, then came the longing for liberty. If a
slave has a bad master, his ambition is to get a better; when he gets a
better, he aspires to have the best; and when he gets the best, he
aspires to be his own master. But the slave must be brutalized to keep
him as a slave. The slaveholder feels this necessity. I admit this
necessity. If it be right to hold slaves at all, it is right to hold
them in the only way in which they can be held; and this can be done
only by shutting out the light of education from their minds, and
brutalizing their persons. The whip, the chain, the gag, the
thumb-screw, the blood-hound, the stocks, and all the other bloody
paraphernalia of the slave system, are indispensably necessary to the
relation of master and slave. The slave must be subjected to these, or
he ceases to be a slave. Let him know that the whip is burned; that the
fetters have been turned to some useful and profitable employment; that
the chain is no longer for his limbs; that the blood-hound is no longer
to be put upon his track; that his master’s authority over him is no
longer to be enforced by taking his life—and immediately he walks out
from the house of bondage and asserts his freedom as a man. The
slaveholder finds it necessary to have these implements to keep the
slave in bondage; finds it necessary to be able to say, “Unless you do
so and so; unless you do as I bid you—I will take away your life!”

Some of the most awful scenes of cruelty are constantly taking place in
the middle states of the Union. We have in those states what are called
the slave-breeding states. Allow me to speak plainly. Although it is
harrowing to your feelings, it is necessary that the facts of the case
should be stated. We have in the United States slave-breeding states.
The very state from which the minister from our court to yours comes,
is one of these states—Maryland, where men, women, and children are
reared for the market, just as horses, sheep, and swine are raised for
the market. Slave-rearing is there looked upon as a legitimate trade;
the law sanctions it, public opinion upholds it, the church does not
condemn it. It goes on in all its bloody horrors, sustained by the
auctioneer’s block. If you would see the cruelties of this system, hear
the following narrative. Not long since the following scene occurred. A
slave-woman and a slaveman had united themselves as man and wife in the
absence of any law to protect them as man and wife. They had lived
together by the permission, not by right, of their master, and they had
reared a family. The master found it expedient, and for his interest,
to sell them. He did not ask them their wishes in regard to the matter
at all; they were not consulted. The man and woman were brought to the
auctioneer’s block, under the sound of the hammer. The cry was raised,
“Here goes; who bids cash?” Think of it—a man and wife to be sold! The
woman was placed on the auctioneer’s block; her limbs, as is customary,
were brutally exposed to the purchasers, who examined her with all the
freedom with which they would examine a horse. There stood the husband,
powerless; no right to his wife; the master’s right preeminent. She was
sold. He was next brought to the auctioneer’s block. His eyes followed
his wife in the distance; and he looked beseechingly, imploringly, to
the man that had bought his wife, to buy him also. But he was at length
bid off to another person. He was about to be separated forever from
her he loved. No word of his, no work of his, could save him from this
separation. He asked permission of his new master to go and take the
hand of his wife at parting. It was denied him. In the agony of his
soul he rushed from the man who had just bought him, that he might take
a farewell of his wife; but his way was obstructed, he was struck over
the head with a loaded whip, and was held for a moment; but his agony
was too great. When he was let go, he fell a corpse at the feet of his
master. His heart was broken. Such scenes are the everyday fruits of
American slavery. Some two years since, the Hon. Seth. M. Gates, an
anti-slavery gentleman of the state of New York, a representative in
the congress of the United States, told me he saw with his own eyes the
following circumstances. In the national District of Columbia, over
which the star-spangled emblem is constantly waving, where orators are
ever holding forth on the subject of American liberty, American
democracy, American republicanism, there are two slave prisons. When
going across a bridge, leading to one of these prisons, he saw a young
woman run out, bare-footed and bare-headed, and with very little
clothing on. She was running with all speed to the bridge he was
approaching. His eye was fixed upon her, and he stopped to see what was
the matter. He had not paused long before he saw three men run out
after her. He now knew what the nature of the case was; a slave
escaping from her chains—a young woman, a sister—escaping from the
bondage in which she had been held. She made her way to the bridge, but
had not reached, ere from the Virginia side there came two
slaveholders. As soon as they saw them, her pursuers called out, “Stop
her!” True to their Virginian instincts, they came to the rescue of
their brother kidnappers, across the bridge. The poor girl now saw that
there was no chance for her. It was a trying time. She knew if she went
back, she must be a slave forever—she must be dragged down to the
scenes of pollution which the slaveholders continually provide for most
of the poor, sinking, wretched young women, whom they call their
property. She formed her resolution; and just as those who were about
to take her, were going to put hands upon her, to drag her back, she
leaped over the balustrades of the bridge, and down she went to rise no
more. She chose death, rather than to go back into the hands of those
christian slaveholders from whom she had escaped.

Can it be possible that such things as these exist in the United
States? Are not these the exceptions? Are any such scenes as this
general? Are not such deeds condemned by the law and denounced by
public opinion? Let me read to you a few of the laws of the
slaveholding states of America. I think no better exposure of slavery
can be made than is made by the laws of the states in which slavery
exists. I prefer reading the laws to making any statement in
confirmation of what I have said myself; for the slaveholders cannot
object to this testimony, since it is the calm, the cool, the
deliberate enactment of their wisest heads, of their most
clear-sighted, their own constituted representatives. “If more than
seven slaves together are found in any road without a white person,
twenty lashes a piece; for visiting a plantation without a written
pass, ten lashes; for letting loose a boat from where it is made fast,
thirty-nine lashes for the first offense; and for the second, shall
have cut off from his head one ear; for keeping or carrying a club,
thirty-nine lashes; for having any article for sale, without a ticket
from his master, ten lashes; for traveling in any other than the most
usual and accustomed road, when going alone to any place, forty lashes;
for traveling in the night without a pass, forty lashes.” I am afraid
you do not understand the awful character of these lashes. You must
bring it before your mind. A human being in a perfect state of nudity,
tied hand and foot to a stake, and a strong man standing behind with a
heavy whip, knotted at the end, each blow cutting into the flesh, and
leaving the warm blood dripping to the feet; and for these trifles.
“For being found in another person’s negro-quarters, forty lashes; for
hunting with dogs in the woods, thirty lashes; for being on horseback
without the written permission of his master, twenty-five lashes; for
riding or going abroad in the night, or riding horses in the day time,
without leave, a slave may be whipped, cropped, or branded in the cheek
with the letter R. or otherwise punished, such punishment not extending
to life, or so as to render him unfit for labor.” The laws referred to,
may be found by consulting _Brevard’s Digest; Haywood’s Manual;
Virginia Revised Code; Prince’s Digest; Missouri Laws; Mississippi
Revised Code_. A man, for going to visit his brethren, without the
permission of his master—and in many instances he may not have that
permission; his master, from caprice or other reasons, may not be
willing to allow it—may be caught on his way, dragged to a post, the
branding-iron heated, and the name of his master or the letter R
branded into his cheek or on his forehead. They treat slaves thus, on
the principle that they must punish for light offenses, in order to
prevent the commission of larger ones. I wish you to mark that in the
single state of Virginia there are seventy-one crimes for which a
colored man may be executed; while there are only three of these
crimes, which, when committed by a white man, will subject him to that
punishment. There are many of these crimes which if the white man did
not commit, he would be regarded as a scoundrel and a coward. In the
state of Maryland, there is a law to this effect: that if a slave shall
strike his master, he may be hanged, his head severed from his body,
his body quartered, and his head and quarters set up in the most
prominent places in the neighborhood. If a colored woman, in the
defense of her own virtue, in defense of her own person, should shield
herself from the brutal attacks of her tyrannical master, or make the
slightest resistance, she may be killed on the spot. No law whatever
will bring the guilty man to justice for the crime.

But you will ask me, can these things be possible in a land professing
Christianity? Yes, they are so; and this is not the worst. No; a darker
feature is yet to be presented than the mere existence of these facts.
I have to inform you that the religion of the southern states, at this
time, is the great supporter, the great sanctioner of the bloody
atrocities to which I have referred. While America is printing tracts
and bibles; sending missionaries abroad to convert the heathen;
expending her money in various ways for the promotion of the gospel in
foreign lands—the slave not only lies forgotten, uncared for, but is
trampled under foot by the very churches of the land. What have we in
America? Why, we have slavery made part of the religion of the land.
Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender of this cursed
_institution_, as it is called. Ministers of religion come forward and
torture the hallowed pages of inspired wisdom to sanction the bloody
deed. They stand forth as the foremost, the strongest defenders of this
“institution.” As a proof of this, I need not do more than state the
general fact, that slavery has existed under the droppings of the
sanctuary of the south for the last two hundred years, and there has
not been any war between the _religion_ and the _slavery_ of the south.
Whips, chains, gags, and thumb-screws have all lain under the droppings
of the sanctuary, and instead of rusting from off the limbs of the
bondman, those droppings have served to preserve them in all their
strength. Instead of preaching the gospel against this tyranny, rebuke,
and wrong, ministers of religion have sought, by all and every means,
to throw in the back-ground whatever in the bible could be construed
into opposition to slavery, and to bring forward that which they could
torture into its support. This I conceive to be the darkest feature of
slavery, and the most difficult to attack, because it is identified
with religion, and exposes those who denounce it to the charge of
infidelity. Yes, those with whom I have been laboring, namely, the old
organization anti-slavery society of America, have been again and again
stigmatized as infidels, and for what reason? Why, solely in
consequence of the faithfulness of their attacks upon the slaveholding
religion of the southern states, and the northern religion that
sympathizes with it. I have found it difficult to speak on this matter
without persons coming forward and saying, “Douglass, are you not
afraid of injuring the cause of Christ? You do not desire to do so, we
know; but are you not undermining religion?” This has been said to me
again and again, even since I came to this country, but I cannot be
induced to leave off these exposures. I love the religion of our
blessed Savior. I love that religion that comes from above, in the
“wisdom of God,” which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy
to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and
without hypocrisy. I love that religion that sends its votaries to bind
up the wounds of him that has fallen among thieves. I love that
religion that makes it the duty of its disciples to visit the father
less and the widow in their affliction. I love that religion that is
based upon the glorious principle, of love to God and love to man;
which makes its followers do unto others as they themselves would be
done by. If you demand liberty to yourself, it says, grant it to your
neighbors. If you claim a right to think for yourself, it says, allow
your neighbors the same right. If you claim to act for yourself, it
says, allow your neighbors the same right. It is because I love this
religion that I hate the slaveholding, the woman-whipping, the
mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the
southern states of America. It is because I regard the one as good, and
pure, and holy, that I cannot but regard the other as bad, corrupt, and
wicked. Loving the one I must hate the other; holding to the one I must
reject the other.

I may be asked, why I am so anxious to bring this subject before the
British public—why I do not confine my efforts to the United States? My
answer is, first, that slavery is the common enemy of mankind, and all
mankind should be made acquainted with its abominable character. My
next answer is, that the slave is a man, and, as such, is entitled to
your sympathy as a brother. All the feelings, all the susceptibilities,
all the capacities, which you have, he has. He is a part of the human
family. He has been the prey—the common prey—of Christendom for the
last three hundred years, and it is but right, it is but just, it is
but proper, that his wrongs should be known throughout the world. I
have another reason for bringing this matter before the British public,
and it is this: slavery is a system of wrong, so blinding to all
around, so hardening to the heart, so corrupting to the morals, so
deleterious to religion, so sapping to all the principles of justice in
its immediate vicinity, that the community surrounding it lack the
moral stamina necessary to its removal. It is a system of such gigantic
evil, so strong, so overwhelming in its power, that no one nation is
equal to its removal. It requires the humanity of Christianity, the
morality of the world to remove it. Hence, I call upon the people of
Britain to look at this matter, and to exert the influence I am about
to show they possess, for the removal of slavery from America. I can
appeal to them, as strongly by their regard for the slaveholder as for
the slave, to labor in this cause. I am here, because you have an
influence on America that no other nation can have. You have been drawn
together by the power of steam to a marvelous extent; the distance
between London and Boston is now reduced to some twelve or fourteen
days, so that the denunciations against slavery, uttered in London this
week, may be heard in a fortnight in the streets of Boston, and
reverberating amidst the hills of Massachusetts. There is nothing said
here against slavery that will not be recorded in the United States. I
am here, also, because the slaveholders do not want me to be here; they
would rather that I were not here. I have adopted a maxim laid down by
Napoleon, never to occupy ground which the enemy would like me to
occupy. The slaveholders would much rather have me, if I will denounce
slavery, denounce it in the northern states, where their friends and
supporters are, who will stand by and mob me for denouncing it. They
feel something as the man felt, when he uttered his prayer, in which he
made out a most horrible case for himself, and one of his neighbors
touched him and said, “My friend, I always had the opinion of you that
you have now expressed for yourself—that you are a very great sinner.”
Coming from himself, it was all very well, but coming from a stranger
it was rather cutting. The slaveholders felt that when slavery was
denounced among themselves, it was not so bad; but let one of the
slaves get loose, let him summon the people of Britain, and make known
to them the conduct of the slaveholders toward their slaves, and it
cuts them to the quick, and produces a sensation such as would be
produced by nothing else. The power I exert now is something like the
power that is exerted by the man at the end of the lever; my influence
now is just in proportion to the distance that I am from the United
States. My exposure of slavery abroad will tell more upon the hearts
and consciences of slaveholders, than if I was attacking them in
America; for almost every paper that I now receive from the United
States, comes teeming with statements about this fugitive Negro,
calling him a “glib-tongued scoundrel,” and saying that he is running
out against the institutions and people of America. I deny the charge
that I am saying a word against the institutions of America, or the
people, as such. What I have to say is against slavery and
slaveholders. I feel at liberty to speak on this subject. I have on my
back the marks of the lash; I have four sisters and one brother now
under the galling chain. I feel it my duty to cry aloud and spare not.
I am not averse to having the good opinion of my fellow creatures. I am
not averse to being kindly regarded by all men; but I am bound, even at
the hazard of making a large class of religionists in this country hate
me, oppose me, and malign me as they have done—I am bound by the
prayers, and tears, and entreaties of three millions of kneeling
bondsmen, to have no compromise with men who are in any shape or form
connected with the slaveholders of America. I expose slavery in this
country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those
monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death. Expose
slavery, and it dies. Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is
to the root of a tree; it must die under it. All the slaveholder asks
of me is silence. He does not ask me to go abroad and preach _in favor_
of slavery; he does not ask any one to do that. He would not say that
slavery is a good thing, but the best under the circumstances. The
slaveholders want total darkness on the subject. They want the hatchway
shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing
human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having
no one to reprove or rebuke him. Slavery shrinks from the light; it
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be
reproved. To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose
it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may
burn and wither it out of existence, is my object in coming to this
country. I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of
anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and
his system glaring down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he
has no sympathy in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in
Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians; that the
voice of the civilized, aye, and savage world is against him. I would
have condemnation blaze down upon him in every direction, till, stunned
and overwhelmed with shame and confusion, he is compelled to let go the
grasp he holds upon the persons of his victims, and restore them to
their long-lost rights.




Dr. Campbell’s Reply


From Rev. Dr. Campbell’s brilliant reply we extract the following:
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, “the beast of burden,” the portion of “goods and
chattels,” the representative of three millions of men, has been raised
up! Shall I say the _man?_ If there is a man on earth, he is a man. My
blood boiled within me when I heard his address tonight, and thought
that he had left behind him three millions of such men.

We must see more of this man; we must have more of this man. One would
have taken a voyage round the globe some forty years back—especially
since the introduction of steam—to have heard such an exposure of
slavery from the lips of a slave. It will be an era in the individual
history of the present assembly. Our children—our boys and girls—I have
tonight seen the delightful sympathy of their hearts evinced by their
heaving breasts, while their eyes sparkled with wonder and admiration,
that this black man—this slave—had so much logic, so much wit, so much
fancy, so much eloquence. He was something more than a man, according
to their little notions. Then, I say, we must hear him again. We have
got a purpose to accomplish. He has appealed to the pulpit of England.
The English pulpit is with him. He has appealed to the press of
England; the press of England is conducted by English hearts, and that
press will do him justice. About ten days hence, and his second master,
who may well prize “such a piece of goods,” will have the pleasure of
reading his burning words, and his first master will bless himself that
he has got quit of him. We have to create public opinion, or rather,
not to create it, for it is created already; but we have to foster it;
and when tonight I heard those magnificent words—the words of Curran,
by which my heart, from boyhood, has ofttimes been deeply moved—I
rejoice to think that they embody an instinct of an Englishman’s
nature. I heard, with inexpressible delight, how they told on this
mighty mass of the citizens of the metropolis.

Britain has now no slaves; we can therefore talk to the other nations
now, as we could not have talked a dozen years ago. I want the whole of
the London ministry to meet Douglass. For as his appeal is to England,
and throughout England, I should rejoice in the idea of churchmen and
dissenters merging all sectional distinctions in this cause. Let us
have a public breakfast. Let the ministers meet him; let them hear him;
let them grasp his hand; and let him enlist their sympathies on behalf
of the slave. Let him inspire them with abhorrence of the
man-stealer—the slaveholder. No slaveholding American shall ever my
cross my door. No slaveholding or slavery-supporting minister shall
ever pollute my pulpit. While I have a tongue to speak, or a hand to
write, I will, to the utmost of my power, oppose these slaveholding
men. We must have Douglass amongst us to aid in fostering public
opinion.

The great conflict with slavery must now take place in America; and
while they are adding other slave states to the Union, our business is
to step forward and help the abolitionists there. It is a pleasing
circumstance that such a body of men has risen in America, and whilst
we hurl our thunders against her slavers, let us make a distinction
between those who advocate slavery and those who oppose it. George
Thompson has been there. This man, Frederick Douglass, has been there,
and has been compelled to flee. I wish, when he first set foot on our
shores, he had made a solemn vow, and said, “Now that I am free, and in
the sanctuary of freedom, I will never return till I have seen the
emancipation of my country completed.” He wants to surround these men,
the slaveholders, as by a wall of fire; and he himself may do much
toward kindling it. Let him travel over the island—east, west, north,
and south—everywhere diffusing knowledge and awakening principle, till
the whole nation become a body of petitioners to America. He will, he
must, do it. He must for a season make England his home. He must send
for his wife. He must send for his children. I want to see the sons and
daughters of such a sire. We, too, must do something for him and them
worthy of the English name. I do not like the idea of a man of such
mental dimensions, such moral courage, and all but incomparable talent,
having his own small wants, and the wants of a distant wife and
children, supplied by the poor profits of his publication, the sketch
of his life. Let the pamphlet be bought by tens of thousands. But we
will do something more for him, shall we not?

It only remains that we pass a resolution of thanks to Frederick
Douglass, the slave that was, the man that is! He that was covered with
chains, and that is now being covered with glory, and whom we will send
back a gentleman.




LETTER TO HIS OLD MASTER. 11. To My Old Master, Thomas Auld


SIR—The long and intimate, though by no means friendly, relation which
unhappily subsisted between you and myself, leads me to hope that you
will easily account for the great liberty which I now take in
addressing you in this open and public manner. The same fact may remove
any disagreeable surprise which you may experience on again finding
your name coupled with mine, in any other way than in an advertisement,
accurately describing my person, and offering a large sum for my
arrest. In thus dragging you again before the public, I am aware that I
shall subject myself to no inconsiderable amount of censure. I shall
probably be charged with an unwarrantable, if not a wanton and reckless
disregard of the rights and properties of private life. There are those
north as well as south who entertain a much higher respect for rights
which are merely conventional, than they do for rights which are
personal and essential. Not a few there are in our country, who, while
they have no scruples against robbing the laborer of the hard earned
results of his patient industry, will be shocked by the extremely
indelicate manner of bringing your name before the public. Believing
this to be the case, and wishing to meet every reasonable or plausible
objection to my conduct, I will frankly state the ground upon which I
justfy(sic) myself in this instance, as well as on former occasions
when I have thought proper to mention your name in public. All will
agree that a man guilty of theft, robbery, or murder, has forfeited the
right to concealment and private life; that the community have a right
to subject such persons to the most complete exposure. However much
they may desire retirement, and aim to conceal themselves and their
movements from the popular gaze, the public have a right to ferret them
out, and bring their conduct before the proper tribunals of the country
for investigation. Sir, you will undoubtedly make the proper
application of these generally admitted principles, and will easily see
the light in which you are regarded by me; I will not therefore
manifest ill temper, by calling you hard names. I know you to be a man
of some intelligence, and can readily determine the precise estimate
which I entertain of your character. I may therefore indulge in
language which may seem to others indirect and ambiguous, and yet be
quite well understood by yourself.

I have selected this day on which to address you, because it is the
anniversary of my emancipation; and knowing no better way, I am led to
this as the best mode of celebrating that truly important events. Just
ten years ago this beautiful September morning, yon bright sun beheld
me a slave—a poor degraded chattel—trembling at the sound of your
voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute. The
hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful
escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by
dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to
heave with the heavy contest between hope and fear. I have no words to
describe to you the deep agony of soul which I experienced on that
never-to-be-forgotten morning—for I left by daylight. I was making a
leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far as I could by reason
determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking. The preliminaries
and precautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. I was like
one going to war without weapons—ten chances of defeat to one of
victory. One in whom I had confided, and one who had promised me
assistance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me, thus
leaving the responsibility of success or failure solely with myself.
You, sir, can never know my feelings. As I look back to them, I can
scarcely realize that I have passed through a scene so trying. Trying,
however, as they were, and gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to the
Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed, at the moment which
was to determine my whole earthly career, His grace was sufficient; my
mind was made up. I embraced the golden opportunity, took the morning
tide at the flood, and a free man, young, active, and strong, is the
result.

I have often thought I should like to explain to you the grounds upon
which I have justified myself in running away from you. I am almost
ashamed to do so now, for by this time you may have discovered them
yourself. I will, however, glance at them. When yet but a child about
six years old, I imbibed the determination to run away. The very first
mental effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve
the mystery—why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful mind
was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than
others. When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the blood
out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the
corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery. I had, through
some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all
mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to
serve the whites as slaves. How he could do this and be _good_, I could
not tell. I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God
responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over
it long and often. At one time, your first wife, Mrs. Lucretia, heard
me sighing and saw me shedding tears, and asked of me the matter, but I
was afraid to tell her. I was puzzled with this question, till one
night while sitting in the kitchen, I heard some of the old slaves
talking of their parents having been stolen from Africa by white men,
and were sold here as slaves. The whole mystery was solved at once.
Very soon after this, my Aunt Jinny and Uncle Noah ran away, and the
great noise made about it by your father-in-law, made me for the first
time acquainted with the fact, that there were free states as well as
slave states. From that time, I resolved that I would some day run
away. The morality of the act I dispose of as follows: I am myself; you
are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are,
I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both, and made us
separate beings. I am not by nature bond to you, or you to me. Nature
does not make your existence depend upon me, or mine to depend upon
yours. I cannot walk upon your legs, or you upon mine. I cannot breathe
for you, or you for me; I must breathe for myself, and you for
yourself. We are distinct persons, and are each equally provided with
faculties necessary to our individual existence. In leaving you, I took
nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for
obtaining an _honest_ living. Your faculties remained yours, and mine
became useful to their rightful owner. I therefore see no wrong in any
part of the transaction. It is true, I went off secretly; but that was
more your fault than mine. Had I let you into the secret, you would
have defeated the enterprise entirely; but for this, I should have been
really glad to have made you acquainted with my intentions to leave.

You may perhaps want to know how I like my present condition. I am free
to say, I greatly prefer it to that which I occupied in Maryland. I am,
however, by no means prejudiced against the state as such. Its
geography, climate, fertility, and products, are such as to make it a
very desirable abode for any man; and but for the existence of slavery
there, it is not impossible that I might again take up my abode in that
state. It is not that I love Maryland less, but freedom more. You will
be surprised to learn that people at the north labor under the strange
delusion that if the slaves were emancipated at the south, they would
flock to the north. So far from this being the case, in that event, you
would see many old and familiar faces back again to the south. The fact
is, there are few here who would not return to the south in the event
of emancipation. We want to live in the land of our birth, and to lay
our bones by the side of our fathers; and nothing short of an intense
love of personal freedom keeps us from the south. For the sake of this,
most of us would live on a crust of bread and a cup of cold water.

Since I left you, I have had a rich experience. I have occupied
stations which I never dreamed of when a slave. Three out of the ten
years since I left you, I spent as a common laborer on the wharves of
New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was there I earned my first free dollar.
It was mine. I could spend it as I pleased. I could buy hams or herring
with it, without asking any odds of anybody. That was a precious dollar
to me. You remember when I used to make seven, or eight, or even nine
dollars a week in Baltimore, you would take every cent of it from me
every Saturday night, saying that I belonged to you, and my earnings
also. I never liked this conduct on your part—to say the best, I
thought it a little mean. I would not have served you so. But let that
pass. I was a little awkward about counting money in New England
fashion when I first landed in New Bedford. I came near betraying
myself several times. I caught myself saying phip, for fourpence; and
at one time a man actually charged me with being a runaway, whereupon I
was silly enough to become one by running away from him, for I was
greatly afraid he might adopt measures to get me again into slavery, a
condition I then dreaded more than death.

I soon learned, however, to count money, as well as to make it, and got
on swimmingly. I married soon after leaving you; in fact, I was engaged
to be married before I left you; and instead of finding my companion a
burden, she was truly a helpmate. She went to live at service, and I to
work on the wharf, and though we toiled hard the first winter, we never
lived more happily. After remaining in New Bedford for three years, I
met with William Lloyd Garrison, a person of whom you have _possibly_
heard, as he is pretty generally known among slaveholders. He put it
into my head that I might make myself serviceable to the cause of the
slave, by devoting a portion of my time to telling my own sorrows, and
those of other slaves, which had come under my observation. This was
the commencement of a higher state of existence than any to which I had
ever aspired. I was thrown into society the most pure, enlightened, and
benevolent, that the country affords. Among these I have never
forgotten you, but have invariably made you the topic of
conversation—thus giving you all the notoriety I could do. I need not
tell you that the opinion formed of you in these circles is far from
being favorable. They have little respect for your honesty, and less
for your religion.

But I was going on to relate to you something of my interesting
experience. I had not long enjoyed the excellent society to which I
have referred, before the light of its excellence exerted a beneficial
influence on my mind and heart. Much of my early dislike of white
persons was removed, and their manners, habits, and customs, so
entirely unlike what I had been used to in the kitchen-quarters on the
plantations of the south, fairly charmed me, and gave me a strong
disrelish for the coarse and degrading customs of my former condition.
I therefore made an effort so to improve my mind and deportment, as to
be somewhat fitted to the station to which I seemed almost
providentially called. The transition from degradation to
respectability was indeed great, and to get from one to the other
without carrying some marks of one’s former condition, is truly a
difficult matter. I would not have you think that I am now entirely
clear of all plantation peculiarities, but my friends here, while they
entertain the strongest dislike to them, regard me with that charity to
which my past life somewhat entitles me, so that my condition in this
respect is exceedingly pleasant. So far as my domestic affairs are
concerned, I can boast of as comfortable a dwelling as your own. I have
an industrious and neat companion, and four dear children—the oldest a
girl of nine years, and three fine boys, the oldest eight, the next
six, and the youngest four years old. The three oldest are now going
regularly to school—two can read and write, and the other can spell,
with tolerable correctness, words of two syllables. Dear fellows! they
are all in comfortable beds, and are sound asleep, perfectly secure
under my own roof. There are no slaveholders here to rend my heart by
snatching them from my arms, or blast a mother’s dearest hopes by
tearing them from her bosom. These dear children are ours—not to work
up into rice, sugar, and tobacco, but to watch over, regard, and
protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and admonition of the
gospel—to train them up in the paths of wisdom and virtue, and, as far
as we can, to make them useful to the world and to themselves. Oh! sir,
a slaveholder never appears to me so completely an agent of hell, as
when I think of and look upon my dear children. It is then that my
feelings rise above my control. I meant to have said more with respect
to my own prosperity and happiness, but thoughts and feelings which
this recital has quickened, unfit me to proceed further in that
direction. The grim horrors of slavery rise in all their ghastly terror
before me; the wails of millions pierce my heart and chill my blood. I
remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the death-like gloom
overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman; the appalling
liability of his being torn away from wife and children, and sold like
a beast in the market. Say not that this is a picture of fancy. You
well know that I wear stripes on my back, inflicted by your direction;
and that you, while we were brothers in the same church, caused this
right hand, with which I am now penning this letter, to be closely tied
to my left, and my person dragged, at the pistol’s mouth, fifteen
miles, from the Bay Side to Easton, to be sold like a beast in the
market, for the alleged crime of intending to escape from your
possession. All this, and more, you remember, and know to be perfectly
true, not only of yourself, but of nearly all of the slaveholders
around you.

At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of
my own dear sisters, and my only brother, in bondage. These you regard
as your property. They are recorded on your ledger, or perhaps have
been sold to human flesh-mongers, with a view to filling our own
ever-hungry purse. Sir, I desire to know how and where these dear
sisters are. Have you sold them? or are they still in your possession?
What has become of them? are they living or dead? And my dear old
grandmother, whom you turned out like an old horse to die in the
woods—is she still alive? Write and let me know all about them. If my
grandmother be still alive, she is of no service to you, for by this
time she must be nearly eighty years old—too old to be cared for by one
to whom she has ceased to be of service; send her to me at Rochester,
or bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness of
my life to take care of her in her old age. Oh! she was to me a mother
and a father, so far as hard toil for my comfort could make her such.
Send me my grandmother! that I may watch over and take care of her in
her old age. And my sisters—let me know all about them. I would write
to them, and learn all I want to know of them, without disturbing you
in any way, but that, through your unrighteous conduct, they have been
entirely deprived of the power to read and write. You have kept them in
utter ignorance, and have therefore robbed them of the sweet enjoyments
of writing or receiving letters from absent friends and relatives. Your
wickedness and cruelty, committed in this respect on your
fellow-creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon
my back or theirs. It is an outrage upon the soul, a war upon the
immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the bar of
our common Father and Creator.

The responsibility which you have assumed in this regard is truly
awful, and how you could stagger under it these many years is
marvelous. Your mind must have become darkened, your heart hardened,
your conscience seared and petrified, or you would have long since
thrown off the accursed load, and sought relief at the hands of a
sin-forgiving God. How, let me ask, would you look upon me, were I,
some dark night, in company with a band of hardened villains, to enter
the precincts of your elegant dwelling, and seize the person of your
own lovely daughter, Amanda, and carry her off from your family,
friends, and all the loved ones of her youth—make her my slave—compel
her to work, and I take her wages—place her name on my ledger as
property—disregard her personal rights—fetter the powers of her
immortal soul by denying her the right and privilege of learning to
read and write—feed her coarsely—clothe her scantily, and whip her on
the naked back occasionally; more, and still more horrible, leave her
unprotected—a degraded victim to the brutal lust of fiendish overseers,
who would pollute, blight, and blast her fair soul—rob her of all
dignity—destroy her virtue, and annihilate in her person all the graces
that adorn the character of virtuous womanhood? I ask, how would you
regard me, if such were my conduct? Oh! the vocabulary of the damned
would not afford a word sufficiently infernal to express your idea of
my God-provoking wickedness. Yet, sir, your treatment of my beloved
sisters is in all essential points precisely like the case I have now
supposed. Damning as would be such a deed on my part, it would be no
more so than that which you have committed against me and my sisters.

I will now bring this letter to a close; you shall hear from me again
unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of you as a
weapon with which to assail the system of slavery—as a means of
concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening the horror
of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you
as a means of exposing the character of the American church and
clergy—and as a means of bringing this guilty nation, with yourself, to
repentance. In doing this, I entertain no malice toward you personally.
There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and
there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort,
which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege
to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.

I am your fellow-man, but not your slave.




THE NATURE OF SLAVERY. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,


December 1, 1850

More than twenty years of my life were consumed in a state of slavery.
My childhood was environed by the baneful peculiarities of the slave
system. I grew up to manhood in the presence of this hydra headed
monster—not as a master—not as an idle spectator—not as the guest of
the slaveholder—but as A SLAVE, eating the bread and drinking the cup
of slavery with the most degraded of my brother-bondmen, and sharing
with them all the painful conditions of their wretched lot. In
consideration of these facts, I feel that I have a right to speak, and
to speak _strongly_. Yet, my friends, I feel bound to speak truly.

Goading as have been the cruelties to which I have been
subjected—bitter as have been the trials through which I have
passed—exasperating as have been, and still are, the indignities
offered to my manhood—I find in them no excuse for the slightest
departure from truth in dealing with any branch of this subject.

First of all, I will state, as well as I can, the legal and social
relation of master and slave. A master is one—to speak in the
vocabulary of the southern states—who claims and exercises a right of
property in the person of a fellow-man. This he does with the force of
the law and the sanction of southern religion. The law gives the master
absolute power over the slave. He may work him, flog him, hire him out,
sell him, and, in certain contingencies, _kill_ him, with perfect
impunity. The slave is a human being, divested of all rights—reduced to
the level of a brute—a mere “chattel” in the eye of the law—placed
beyond the circle of human brotherhood—cut off from his kind—his name,
which the “recording angel” may have enrolled in heaven, among the
blest, is impiously inserted in a _master’s ledger_, with horses,
sheep, and swine. In law, the slave has no wife, no children, no
country, and no home. He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire
nothing, but what must belong to another. To eat the fruit of his own
toil, to clothe his person with the work of his own hands, is
considered stealing. He toils that another may reap the fruit; he is
industrious that another may live in idleness; he eats unbolted meal
that another may eat the bread of fine flour; he labors in chains at
home, under a burning sun and biting lash, that another may ride in
ease and splendor abroad; he lives in ignorance that another may be
educated; he is abused that another may be exalted; he rests his
toil-worn limbs on the cold, damp ground that another may repose on the
softest pillow; he is clad in coarse and tattered raiment that another
may be arrayed in purple and fine linen; he is sheltered only by the
wretched hovel that a master may dwell in a magnificent mansion; and to
this condition he is bound down as by an arm of iron.

From this monstrous relation there springs an unceasing stream of most
revolting cruelties. The very accompaniments of the slave system stamp
it as the offspring of hell itself. To ensure good behavior, the
slaveholder relies on the whip; to induce proper humility, he relies on
the whip; to rebuke what he is pleased to term insolence, he relies on
the whip; to supply the place of wages as an incentive to toil, he
relies on the whip; to bind down the spirit of the slave, to imbrute
and destroy his manhood, he relies on the whip, the chain, the gag, the
thumb-screw, the pillory, the bowie knife the pistol, and the
blood-hound. These are the necessary and unvarying accompaniments of
the system. Wherever slavery is found, these horrid instruments are
also found. Whether on the coast of Africa, among the savage tribes, or
in South Carolina, among the refined and civilized, slavery is the
same, and its accompaniments one and the same. It makes no difference
whether the slaveholder worships the God of the Christians, or is a
follower of Mahomet, he is the minister of the same cruelty, and the
author of the same misery. _Slavery_ is always _slavery;_ always the
same foul, haggard, and damning scourge, whether found in the eastern
or in the western hemisphere.

There is a still deeper shade to be given to this picture. The physical
cruelties are indeed sufficiently harassing and revolting; but they are
as a few grains of sand on the sea shore, or a few drops of water in
the great ocean, compared with the stupendous wrongs which it inflicts
upon the mental, moral, and religious nature of its hapless victims. It
is only when we contemplate the slave as a moral and intellectual
being, that we can adequately comprehend the unparalleled enormity of
slavery, and the intense criminality of the slaveholder. I have said
that the slave was a man. “What a piece of work is man! How noble in
reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and
admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God!
The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!”

The slave is a man, “the image of God,” but “a little lower than the
angels;” possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of
endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears,
of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with
those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and
sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely
glorious idea of a God. It is _such_ a being that is smitten and
blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those
characteristics of its victims which distinguish _men_ from _things_,
and _persons_ from _property_. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of
high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere
machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of
God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark,
under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and
sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to
extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to
handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the
conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over
his victim.

It is, then, the first business of the enslaver of men to blunt,
deaden, and destroy the central principle of human responsibility.
Conscience is, to the individual soul, and to society, what the law of
gravitation is to the universe. It holds society together; it is the
basis of all trust and confidence; it is the pillar of all moral
rectitude. Without it, suspicion would take the place of trust; vice
would be more than a match for virtue; men would prey upon each other,
like the wild beasts of the desert; and earth would become a _hell_.

Nor is slavery more adverse to the conscience than it is to the mind.
This is shown by the fact, that in every state of the American Union,
where slavery exists, except the state of Kentucky, there are laws
absolutely prohibitory of education among the slaves. The crime of
teaching a slave to read is punishable with severe fines and
imprisonment, and, in some instances, with _death itself_.

Nor are the laws respecting this matter a dead letter. Cases may occur
in which they are disregarded, and a few instances may be found where
slaves may have learned to read; but such are isolated cases, and only
prove the rule. The great mass of slaveholders look upon education
among the slaves as utterly subversive of the slave system. I well
remember when my mistress first announced to my master that she had
discovered that I could read. His face colored at once with surprise
and chagrin. He said that “I was ruined, and my value as a slave
destroyed; that a slave should know nothing but to obey his master;
that to give a negro an inch would lead him to take an ell; that having
learned how to read, I would soon want to know how to write; and that
by-and-by I would be running away.” I think my audience will bear
witness to the correctness of this philosophy, and to the literal
fulfillment of this prophecy.

It is perfectly well understood at the south, that to educate a slave
is to make him discontened(sic) with slavery, and to invest him with a
power which shall open to him the treasures of freedom; and since the
object of the slaveholder is to maintain complete authority over his
slave, his constant vigilance is exercised to prevent everything which
militates against, or endangers, the stability of his authority.
Education being among the menacing influences, and, perhaps, the most
dangerous, is, therefore, the most cautiously guarded against.

It is true that we do not often hear of the enforcement of the law,
punishing as a crime the teaching of slaves to read, but this is not
because of a want of disposition to enforce it. The true reason or
explanation of the matter is this: there is the greatest unanimity of
opinion among the white population in the south in favor of the policy
of keeping the slave in ignorance. There is, perhaps, another reason
why the law against education is so seldom violated. The slave is too
poor to be able to offer a temptation sufficiently strong to induce a
white man to violate it; and it is not to be supposed that in a
community where the moral and religious sentiment is in favor of
slavery, many martyrs will be found sacrificing their liberty and lives
by violating those prohibitory enactments.

As a general rule, then, darkness reigns over the abodes of the
enslaved, and “how great is that darkness!”

We are sometimes told of the contentment of the slaves, and are
entertained with vivid pictures of their happiness. We are told that
they often dance and sing; that their masters frequently give them
wherewith to make merry; in fine, that they have little of which to
complain. I admit that the slave does sometimes sing, dance, and appear
to be merry. But what does this prove? It only proves to my mind, that
though slavery is armed with a thousand stings, it is not able entirely
to kill the elastic spirit of the bondman. That spirit will rise and
walk abroad, despite of whips and chains, and extract from the cup of
nature occasional drops of joy and gladness. No thanks to the
slaveholder, nor to slavery, that the vivacious captive may sometimes
dance in his chains; his very mirth in such circumstances stands before
God as an accusing angel against his enslaver.

It is often said, by the opponents of the anti-slavery cause, that the
condition of the people of Ireland is more deplorable than that of the
American slaves. Far be it from me to underrate the sufferings of the
Irish people. They have been long oppressed; and the same heart that
prompts me to plead the cause of the American bondman, makes it
impossible for me not to sympathize with the oppressed of all lands.
Yet I must say that there is no analogy between the two cases. The
Irishman is poor, but he is not a slave. He may be in rags, but he is
not a slave. He is still the master of his own body, and can say with
the poet, “The hand of Douglass is his own.” “The world is all before
him, where to choose;” and poor as may be my opinion of the British
parliament, I cannot believe that it will ever sink to such a depth of
infamy as to pass a law for the recapture of fugitive Irishmen! The
shame and scandal of kidnapping will long remain wholly monopolized by
the American congress. The Irishman has not only the liberty to
emigrate from his country, but he has liberty at home. He can write,
and speak, and cooperate for the attainment of his rights and the
redress of his wrongs.

The multitude can assemble upon all the green hills and fertile plains
of the Emerald Isle; they can pour out their grievances, and proclaim
their wants without molestation; and the press, that “swift-winged
messenger,” can bear the tidings of their doings to the extreme bounds
of the civilized world. They have their “Conciliation Hall,” on the
banks of the Liffey, their reform clubs, and their newspapers; they
pass resolutions, send forth addresses, and enjoy the right of
petition. But how is it with the American slave? Where may he assemble?
Where is his Conciliation Hall? Where are his newspapers? Where is his
right of petition? Where is his freedom of speech? his liberty of the
press? and his right of locomotion? He is said to be happy; happy men
can speak. But ask the slave what is his condition—what his state of
mind—what he thinks of enslavement? and you had as well address your
inquiries to the _silent dead_. There comes no _voice_ from the
enslaved. We are left to gather his feelings by imagining what ours
would be, were our souls in his soul’s stead.

If there were no other fact descriptive of slavery, than that the slave
is dumb, this alone would be sufficient to mark the slave system as a
grand aggregation of human horrors.

Most who are present, will have observed that leading men in this
country have been putting forth their skill to secure quiet to the
nation. A system of measures to promote this object was adopted a few
months ago in congress. The result of those measures is known. Instead
of quiet, they have produced alarm; instead of peace, they have brought
us war; and so it must ever be.

While this nation is guilty of the enslavement of three millions of
innocent men and women, it is as idle to think of having a sound and
lasting peace, as it is to think there is no God to take cognizance of
the affairs of men. There can be no peace to the wicked while slavery
continues in the land. It will be condemned; and while it is condemned
there will be agitation. Nature must cease to be nature; men must
become monsters; humanity must be transformed; Christianity must be
exterminated; all ideas of justice and the laws of eternal goodness
must be utterly blotted out from the human soul—ere a system so foul
and infernal can escape condemnation, or this guilty republic can have
a sound, enduring peace.




INHUMANITY OF SLAVERY. Extract from A Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,


December 8, 1850

The relation of master and slave has been called patriarchal, and only
second in benignity and tenderness to that of the parent and child.
This representation is doubtless believed by many northern people; and
this may account, in part, for the lack of interest which we find among
persons whom we are bound to believe to be honest and humane. What,
then, are the facts? Here I will not quote my own experience in
slavery; for this you might call one-sided testimony. I will not cite
the declarations of abolitionists; for these you might pronounce
exaggerations. I will not rely upon advertisements cut from newspapers;
for these you might call isolated cases. But I will refer you to the
laws adopted by the legislatures of the slave states. I give you such
evidence, because it cannot be invalidated nor denied. I hold in my
hand sundry extracts from the slave codes of our country, from which I
will quote. * * *

Now, if the foregoing be an indication of kindness, _what is cruelty_?
If this be parental affection, _what is bitter malignity_? A more
atrocious and blood-thirsty string of laws could not well be conceived
of. And yet I am bound to say that they fall short of indicating the
horrible cruelties constantly practiced in the slave states.

I admit that there are individual slaveholders less cruel and barbarous
than is allowed by law; but these form the exception. The majority of
slaveholders find it necessary, to insure obedience, at times, to avail
themselves of the utmost extent of the law, and many go beyond it. If
kindness were the rule, we should not see advertisements filling the
columns of almost every southern newspaper, offering large rewards for
fugitive slaves, and describing them as being branded with irons,
loaded with chains, and scarred by the whip. One of the most telling
testimonies against the pretended kindness of slaveholders, is the fact
that uncounted numbers of fugitives are now inhabiting the Dismal
Swamp, preferring the untamed wilderness to their cultivated
homes—choosing rather to encounter hunger and thirst, and to roam with
the wild beasts of the forest, running the hazard of being hunted and
shot down, than to submit to the authority of _kind_ masters.

I tell you, my friends, humanity is never driven to such an unnatural
course of life, without great wrong. The slave finds more of the milk
of human kindness in the bosom of the savage Indian, than in the heart
of his _Christian_ master. He leaves the man of the _bible_, and takes
refuge with the man of the _tomahawk_. He rushes from the praying
slaveholder into the paws of the bear. He quits the homes of men for
the haunts of wolves. He prefers to encounter a life of trial, however
bitter, or death, however terrible, to dragging out his existence under
the dominion of these _kind_ masters.

The apologists for slavery often speak of the abuses of slavery; and
they tell us that they are as much opposed to those abuses as we are;
and that they would go as far to correct those abuses and to ameliorate
the condition of the slave as anybody. The answer to that view is, that
slavery is itself an abuse; that it lives by abuse; and dies by the
absence of abuse. Grant that slavery is right; grant that the relations
of master and slave may innocently exist; and there is not a single
outrage which was ever committed against the slave but what finds an
apology in the very necessity of the case. As we said by a slaveholder
(the Rev. A. G. Few) to the Methodist conference, “If the relation be
right, the means to maintain it are also right;” for without those
means slavery could not exist. Remove the dreadful scourge—the plaited
thong—the galling fetter—the accursed chain—and let the slaveholder
rely solely upon moral and religious power, by which to secure
obedience to his orders, and how long do you suppose a slave would
remain on his plantation? The case only needs to be stated; it carries
its own refutation with it.

Absolute and arbitrary power can never be maintained by one man over
the body and soul of another man, without brutal chastisement and
enormous cruelty.

To talk of _kindness_ entering into a relation in which one party is
robbed of wife, of children, of his hard earnings, of home, of friends,
of society, of knowledge, and of all that makes this life desirable, is
most absurd, wicked, and preposterous.

I have shown that slavery is wicked—wicked, in that it violates the
great law of liberty, written on every human heart—wicked, in that it
violates the first command of the decalogue—wicked, in that it fosters
the most disgusting licentiousness—wicked, in that it mars and defaces
the image of God by cruel and barbarous inflictions—wicked, in that it
contravenes the laws of eternal justice, and tramples in the dust all
the humane and heavenly precepts of the New Testament.

The evils resulting from this huge system of iniquity are not confined
to the states south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Its noxious influence
can easily be traced throughout our northern borders. It comes even as
far north as the state of New York. Traces of it may be seen even in
Rochester; and travelers have told me it casts its gloomy shadows
across the lake, approaching the very shores of Queen Victoria’s
dominions.

The presence of slavery may be explained by—as it is the explanation
of—the mobocratic violence which lately disgraced New York, and which
still more recently disgraced the city of Boston. These violent
demonstrations, these outrageous invasions of human rights, faintly
indicate the presence and power of slavery here. It is a significant
fact, that while meetings for almost any purpose under heaven may be
held unmolested in the city of Boston, that in the same city, a meeting
cannot be peaceably held for the purpose of preaching the doctrine of
the American Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created
equal.” The pestiferous breath of slavery taints the whole moral
atmosphere of the north, and enervates the moral energies of the whole
people.

The moment a foreigner ventures upon our soil, and utters a natural
repugnance to oppression, that moment he is made to feel that there is
little sympathy in this land for him. If he were greeted with smiles
before, he meets with frowns now; and it shall go well with him if he
be not subjected to that peculiarly fining method of showing fealty to
slavery, the assaults of a mob.

Now, will any man tell me that such a state of things is natural, and
that such conduct on the part of the people of the north, springs from
a consciousness of rectitude? No! every fibre of the human heart unites
in detestation of tyranny, and it is only when the human mind has
become familiarized with slavery, is accustomed to its injustice, and
corrupted by its selfishness, that it fails to record its abhorrence of
slavery, and does not exult in the triumphs of liberty.

The northern people have been long connected with slavery; they have
been linked to a decaying corpse, which has destroyed the moral health.
The union of the government; the union of the north and south, in the
political parties; the union in the religious organizations of the
land, have all served to deaden the moral sense of the northern people,
and to impregnate them with sentiments and ideas forever in conflict
with what as a nation we call _genius of American institutions_.
Rightly viewed, this is an alarming fact, and ought to rally all that
is pure, just, and holy in one determined effort to crush the monster
of corruption, and to scatter “its guilty profits” to the winds. In a
high moral sense, as well as in a national sense, the whole American
people are responsible for slavery, and must share, in its guilt and
shame, with the most obdurate men-stealers of the south.

While slavery exists, and the union of these states endures, every
American citizen must bear the chagrin of hearing his country branded
before the world as a nation of liars and hypocrites; and behold his
cherished flag pointed at with the utmost scorn and derision. Even now
an American _abroad_ is pointed out in the crowd, as coming from a land
where men gain their fortunes by “the blood of souls,” from a land of
slave markets, of blood-hounds, and slave-hunters; and, in some
circles, such a man is shunned altogether, as a moral pest. Is it not
time, then, for every American to awake, and inquire into his duty with
respect to this subject?

Wendell Phillips—the eloquent New England orator—on his return from
Europe, in 1842, said, “As I stood upon the shores of Genoa, and saw
floating on the placid waters of the Mediterranean, the beautiful
American war ship Ohio, with her masts tapering proportionately aloft,
and an eastern sun reflecting her noble form upon the sparkling waters,
attracting the gaze of the multitude, my first impulse was of pride, to
think myself an American; but when I thought that the first time that
gallant ship would gird on her gorgeous apparel, and wake from beneath
her sides her dormant thunders, it would be in defense of the African
slave trade, I blushed in utter _shame_ for my country.”

Let me say again, _slavery is alike the sin and the shame of the
American people;_ it is a blot upon the American name, and the only
national reproach which need make an American hang his head in shame,
in the presence of monarchical governments.

With this gigantic evil in the land, we are constantly told to look _at
home;_ if we say ought against crowned heads, we are pointed to our
enslaved millions; if we talk of sending missionaries and bibles
abroad, we are pointed to three millions now lying in worse than
heathen darkness; if we express a word of sympathy for Kossuth and his
Hungarian fugitive brethren, we are pointed to that horrible and
hell-black enactment, “the fugitive slave bill.”

Slavery blunts the edge of all our rebukes of tyranny abroad—the
criticisms that we make upon other nations, only call forth ridicule,
contempt, and scorn. In a word, we are made a reproach and a by-word to
a mocking earth, and we must continue to be so made, so long as slavery
continues to pollute our soil.

We have heard much of late of the virtue of patriotism, the love of
country, &c., and this sentiment, so natural and so strong, has been
impiously appealed to, by all the powers of human selfishness, to
cherish the viper which is stinging our national life away. In its
name, we have been called upon to deepen our infamy before the world,
to rivet the fetter more firmly on the limbs of the enslaved, and to
become utterly insensible to the voice of human woe that is wafted to
us on every southern gale. We have been called upon, in its name, to
desecrate our whole land by the footprints of slave-hunters, and even
to engage ourselves in the horrible business of kidnapping.

I, too, would invoke the spirit of patriotism; not in a narrow and
restricted sense, but, I trust, with a broad and manly signification;
not to cover up our national sins, but to inspire us with sincere
repentance; not to hide our shame from the the(sic) world’s gaze, but
utterly to abolish the cause of that shame; not to explain away our
gross inconsistencies as a nation, but to remove the hateful, jarring,
and incongruous elements from the land; not to sustain an egregious
wrong, but to unite all our energies in the grand effort to remedy that
wrong.

I would invoke the spirit of patriotism, in the name of the law of the
living God, natural and revealed, and in the full belief that
“righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin is a reproach to any
people.” “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that
despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from the
holding of bribes, he shall dwell on high, his place of defense shall
be the munitions of rocks, bread shall be given him, his water shall be
sure.”

We have not only heard much lately of patriotism, and of its aid being
invoked on the side of slavery and injustice, but the very prosperity
of this people has been called in to deafen them to the voice of duty,
and to lead them onward in the pathway of sin. Thus has the blessing of
God been converted into a curse. In the spirit of genuine patriotism, I
warn the American people, by all that is just and honorable, to BEWARE!

I warn them that, strong, proud, and prosperous though we be, there is
a power above us that can “bring down high looks; at the breath of
whose mouth our wealth may take wings; and before whom every knee shall
bow;” and who can tell how soon the avenging angel may pass over our
land, and the sable bondmen now in chains, may become the instruments
of our nation’s chastisement! Without appealing to any higher feeling,
I would warn the American people, and the American government, to be
wise in their day and generation. I exhort them to remember the history
of other nations; and I remind them that America cannot always sit “as
a queen,” in peace and repose; that prouder and stronger governments
than this have been shattered by the bolts of a just God; that the time
may come when those they now despise and hate, may be needed; when
those whom they now compel by oppression to be enemies, may be wanted
as friends. What has been, may be again. There is a point beyond which
human endurance cannot go. The crushed worm may yet turn under the heel
of the oppressor. I warn them, then, with all solemnity, and in the
name of retributive justice, _to look to their ways;_ for in an evil
hour, those sable arms that have, for the last two centuries, been
engaged in cultivating and adorning the fair fields of our country, may
yet become the instruments of terror, desolation, and death, throughout
our borders.

It was the sage of the Old Dominion that said—while speaking of the
possibility of a conflict between the slaves and the slaveholders—“God
has no attribute that could take sides with the oppressor in such a
contest. I tremble for my country when I reflect that God _is just_,
and that his justice cannot sleep forever.” Such is the warning voice
of Thomas Jefferson; and every day’s experience since its utterance
until now, confirms its wisdom, and commends its truth.




WHAT TO THE SLAVE IS THE FOURTH OF JULY?. Extract from an Oration, at


Rochester, July 5, 1852

Fellow-Citizens—Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to
speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your
national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom
and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence,
extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble
offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and
express devout gratitude for the blessings, resulting from your
independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer
could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be
light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that
a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the
claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such
priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his
voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains
of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case
like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as
an hart.”

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of
the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this
glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the
immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day
rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice,
liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is
shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to
you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is
_yours_, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in
fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him
to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious
irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day?
If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it
is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up
to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that
nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament
of a peeled and woe-smitten people.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we
remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst
thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a
song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one
of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange
land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of
my mouth.”

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultous joy, I hear the
mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,
are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach
them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding
children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and
may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass
lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme,
would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a
reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens,
is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see this day and its popular
characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there,
identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not
hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct
of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions
of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and
revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and
solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and
the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of
humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered,
in the name of the constitution and the bible, which are disregarded
and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all
the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate
slavery—the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I
will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and
yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not
blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not
confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this
circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a
favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and
denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause
would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain
there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed
would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of
this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a
man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders
themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their
government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the
part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the state of
Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he
be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these
same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is
this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual,
and responsible being. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is
admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with
enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching
of the slave to read or write. When you can point to any such laws, in
reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the
manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of
the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and
the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from
a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro
race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and
reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses,
constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron,
copper, silver, and gold; that, while we are reading, writing, and
cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among
us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and
teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises
common to other men—digging gold in California, capturing the whale in
the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving,
acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and
children, and, above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian’s
God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave—we
are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the
rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I
argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans?
Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a
matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of
the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look
to-day in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a
discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking
of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do
so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your
understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that
does not know that slavery is wrong for _him_.

What! am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of
their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of
their relations to their fellow-men, to beat them with sticks, to flay
their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them
with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock
out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and
submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system, thus marked
with blood and stained with pollution, is wrong? No; I will not. I have
better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would
imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine;
that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are
mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman
cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition! They that can,
may! I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is
needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I
would to-day pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting
reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that
is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need
the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation
must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the
propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation
must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed
and denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that
reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross
injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your
celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your
national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty
and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence;
your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and
hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade
and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and
hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation
of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more
shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at
this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the
monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South
America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay
your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and
you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless
hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.




THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE. Extract from an Oration, at Rochester, July


5, 1852

Take the American slave trade, which, we are told by the papers, is
especially prosperous just now. Ex-senator Benton tells us that the
price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show
that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of
American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and
cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every
year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade is
a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the
foreign slave trade) _“the internal slave trade_.” It is, probably,
called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the
foreign slave trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been
denounced by this government as piracy. It has been denounced with
burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable
traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a
squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere in this
country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave trade as a most
inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty
to extirpate and destroy it is admitted even by our _doctors of
divinity_. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have
consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave
this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa.
It is, however, a notable fact, that, while so much execration is
poured out by Americans, upon those engaged in the foreign slave trade,
the men engaged in the slave trade between the states pass without
condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave trade—the
American slave trade sustained by American politics and American
religion! Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the
market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover.
They inhabit all our southern states. They perambulate the country, and
crowd the highways of the nation with droves of human stock. You will
see one of these human-flesh-jobbers, armed with pistol, whip, and
bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children,
from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched
people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are
food for the cotton-field and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad
procession as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives
them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries
on his affrighted captives. There, see the old man, with locks thinned
and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose
shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the
brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping,
yes, weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn.
The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their
strength. Suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a
rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your
ears are saluted with a scream that seems to have torn its way to the
center of your soul. The crack you heard was the sound of the slave
whip; the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe.
Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains;
that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to
New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the
forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of
American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and
never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered
multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, can you witness a
spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the
American slave trade, as it exists at this moment, in the ruling part
of the United States.

I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave trade
is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a
sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot street, Fell’s Point,
Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave ships in the
basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh,
waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There
was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt street,
by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in
Maryland, announcing their arrival through the papers, and on flaming
hand-bills, headed, “cash for negroes.” These men were generally well
dressed, and very captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to
treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the
turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms
of its mothers by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them,
chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number
have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of
conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile or to New Orleans. From the
slave-prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of
night; for since the anti-slavery agitation a certain caution is
observed.

In the deep, still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by
the dead, heavy footsteps and the piteous cries of the chained gangs
that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I
was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to
hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear
the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to
find one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow citizens, this murderous traffic is to-day in active operation
in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of
dust raised on the highways of the south; I see the bleeding footsteps;
I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave
markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and
swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest
ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice, and rapacity of
the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

Is this the land your fathers loved?
    The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the earth whereon they moved?
    Are these the graves they slumber in?


But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things
remains to be presented. By an act of the American congress, not yet
two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and
revolting form. By that act, Mason and Dixon’s line has been
obliterated; New York has become as Virginia; and the power to hold,
hunt, and sell men, women, and children as slaves, remains no longer a
mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United
States. The power is coextensive with the star-spangled banner and
American christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless
slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the
sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees,
the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad
republican domain is a hunting-ground for _men_. Not for thieves and
robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime.
Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this
hellish sport. Your president, your secretary of state, your lords,
nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce as a duty you owe to your free and
glorious country and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not
fewer than forty Americans have within the past two years been hunted
down, and without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and
consigned to slavery and excruciating torture. Some of these have had
wives and children dependent on them for bread; but of this no account
was made. The right of the hunter to his prey, stands superior to the
right of marriage, and to _all_ rights in this republic, the rights of
God included! For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity,
nor religion. The fugitive slave law makes MERCY TO THEM A CRIME; and
bribes the judge who tries them. An American judge GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR
EVERY VICTIM HE CONSIGNS to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so.
The oath of an(sic) two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black
enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the
remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring
no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound by
the law to hear but _one side_, and that side is the side of the
oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be
thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king hating,
people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are
filled with judges, who hold their office under an open and palpable
_bribe_, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, _to
hear only his accusers!_

In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of
administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless,
and in diabolical intent, this fugitive slave law stands alone in the
annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on
the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the
statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in
this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly
confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.




THE SLAVERY PARTY. Extract from a Speech Delivered before the A. A. S.


Society, in New York, May, 1853.

Sir, it is evident that there is in this country a purely slavery
party—a party which exists for no other earthly purpose but to promote
the interests of slavery. The presence of this party is felt everywhere
in the republic. It is known by no particular name, and has assumed no
definite shape; but its branches reach far and wide in the church and
in the state. This shapeless and nameless party is not intangible in
other and more important respects. That party, sir, has determined upon
a fixed, definite, and comprehensive policy toward the whole colored
population of the United States. What that policy is, it becomes us as
abolitionists, and especially does it become the colored people
themselves, to consider and to understand fully. We ought to know who
our enemies are, where they are, and what are their objects and
measures. Well, sir, here is my version of it—not original with me—but
mine because I hold it to be true.

I understand this policy to comprehend five cardinal objects. They are
these: 1st. The complete suppression of all anti-slavery discussion.
2d. The expatriation of the entire free people of color from the United
States. 3d. The unending perpetuation of slavery in this republic. 4th.
The nationalization of slavery to the extent of making slavery
respected in every state of the Union. 5th. The extension of slavery
over Mexico and the entire South American states.

Sir, these objects are forcibly presented to us in the stern logic of
passing events; in the facts which are and have been passing around us
during the last three years. The country has been and is now dividing
on these grand issues. In their magnitude, these issues cast all others
into the shade, depriving them of all life and vitality. Old party ties
are broken. Like is finding its like on either side of these great
issues, and the great battle is at hand. For the present, the best
representative of the slavery party in politics is the democratic
party. Its great head for the present is President Pierce, whose boast
it was, before his election, that his whole life had been consistent
with the interests of slavery, that he is above reproach on that score.
In his inaugural address, he reassures the south on this point. Well,
the head of the slave power being in power, it is natural that the pro
slavery elements should cluster around the administration, and this is
rapidly being done. A fraternization is going on. The stringent
protectionists and the free-traders strike hands. The supporters of
Fillmore are becoming the supporters of Pierce. The silver-gray whig
shakes hands with the hunker democrat; the former only differing from
the latter in name. They are of one heart, one mind, and the union is
natural and perhaps inevitable. Both hate Negroes; both hate progress;
both hate the “higher law;” both hate William H. Seward; both hate the
free democratic party; and upon this hateful basis they are forming a
union of hatred. “Pilate and Herod are thus made friends.” Even the
central organ of the whig party is extending its beggar hand for a
morsel from the table of slavery democracy, and when spurned from the
feast by the more deserving, it pockets the insult; when kicked on one
side it turns the other, and preseveres in its importunities. The fact
is, that paper comprehends the demands of the times; it understands the
age and its issues; it wisely sees that slavery and freedom are the
great antagonistic forces in the country, and it goes to its own side.
Silver grays and hunkers all understand this. They are, therefore,
rapidly sinking all other questions to nothing, compared with the
increasing demands of slavery. They are collecting, arranging, and
consolidating their forces for the accomplishment of their appointed
work.

The keystone to the arch of this grand union of the slavery party of
the United States, is the compromise of 1850. In that compromise we
have all the objects of our slaveholding policy specified. It is, sir,
favorable to this view of the designs of the slave power, that both the
whig and the democratic party bent lower, sunk deeper, and strained
harder, in their conventions, preparatory to the late presidential
election, to meet the demands of the slavery party than at any previous
time in their history. Never did parties come before the northern
people with propositions of such undisguised contempt for the moral
sentiment and the religious ideas of that people. They virtually asked
them to unite in a war upon free speech, and upon conscience, and to
drive the Almighty presence from the councils of the nation. Resting
their platforms upon the fugitive slave bill, they boldly asked the
people for political power to execute the horrible and hell-black
provisions of that bill. The history of that election reveals, with
great clearness, the extent to which slavery has shot its leprous
distillment through the life-blood of the nation. The party most
thoroughly opposed to the cause of justice and humanity, triumphed;
while the party suspected of a leaning toward liberty, was
overwhelmingly defeated, some say annihilated.

But here is a still more important fact, illustrating the designs of
the slave power. It is a fact full of meaning, that no sooner did the
democratic slavery party come into power, than a system of legislation
was presented to the legislatures of the northern states, designed to
put the states in harmony with the fugitive slave law, and the
malignant bearing of the national government toward the colored
inhabitants of the country. This whole movement on the part of the
states, bears the evidence of having one origin, emanating from one
head, and urged forward by one power. It was simultaneous, uniform, and
general, and looked to one end. It was intended to put thorns under
feet already bleeding; to crush a people already bowed down; to enslave
a people already but half free; in a word, it was intended to
discourage, dishearten, and drive the free colored people out of the
country. In looking at the recent black law of Illinois, one is struck
dumb with its enormity. It would seem that the men who enacted that
law, had not only banished from their minds all sense of justice, but
all sense of shame. It coolly proposes to sell the bodies and souls of
the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites;
to rob every black stranger who ventures among them, to increase their
literary fund.

While this is going on in the states, a pro-slavery, political board of
health is established at Washington. Senators Hale, Chase, and Sumner
are robbed of a part of their senatorial dignity and consequence as
representing sovereign states, because they have refused to be
inoculated with the slavery virus. Among the services which a senator
is expected by his state to perform, are many that can only be done
efficiently on committees; and, in saying to these honorable senators,
you shall not serve on the committees of this body, the slavery party
took the responsibility of robbing and insulting the states that sent
them. It is an attempt at Washington to decide for the states who shall
be sent to the senate. Sir, it strikes me that this aggression on the
part of the slave power did not meet at the hands of the proscribed
senators the rebuke which we had a right to expect would be
administered. It seems to me that an opportunity was lost, that the
great principle of senatorial equality was left undefended, at a time
when its vindication was sternly demanded. But it is not to the purpose
of my present statement to criticise the conduct of our friends. I am
persuaded that much ought to be left to the discretion of anti slavery
men in congress, and charges of recreancy should never be made but on
the most sufficient grounds. For, of all the places in the world where
an anti-slavery man needs the confidence and encouragement of friends,
I take Washington to be that place.

Let me now call attention to the social influences which are operating
and cooperating with the slavery party of the country, designed to
contribute to one or all of the grand objects aimed at by that party.
We see here the black man attacked in his vital interests; prejudice
and hate are excited against him; enmity is stirred up between him and
other laborers. The Irish people, warm-hearted, generous, and
sympathizing with the oppressed everywhere, when they stand upon their
own green island, are instantly taught, on arriving in this Christian
country, to hate and despise the colored people. They are taught to
believe that we eat the bread which of right belongs to them. The cruel
lie is told the Irish, that our adversity is essential to their
prosperity. Sir, the Irish-American will find out his mistake one day.
He will find that in assuming our avocation he also has assumed our
degradation. But for the present we are sufferers. The old employments
by which we have heretofore gained our livelihood, are gradually, and
it may be inevitably, passing into other hands. Every hour sees us
elbowed out of some employment to make room perhaps for some
newly-arrived emigrants, whose hunger and color are thought to give
them a title to especial favor. White men are becoming house-servants,
cooks, and stewards, common laborers, and flunkeys to our gentry, and,
for aught I see, they adjust themselves to their stations with all
becoming obsequiousness. This fact proves that if we cannot rise to the
whites, the whites can fall to us. Now, sir, look once more. While the
colored people are thus elbowed out of employment; while the enmity of
emigrants is being excited against us; while state after state enacts
laws against us; while we are hunted down, like wild game, and
oppressed with a general feeling of insecurity—the American
colonization society—that old offender against the best interests and
slanderer of the colored people—awakens to new life, and vigorously
presses its scheme upon the consideration of the people and the
government. New papers are started—some for the north and some for the
south—and each in its tone adapting itself to its latitude. Government,
state and national, is called upon for appropriations to enable the
society to send us out of the country by steam! They want steamers to
carry letters and Negroes to Africa. Evidently, this society looks upon
our “extremity as its opportunity,” and we may expect that it will use
the occasion well. They do not deplore, but glory, in our misfortunes.

But, sir, I must hasten. I have thus briefly given my view of one
aspect of the present condition and future prospects of the colored
people of the United States. And what I have said is far from
encouraging to my afflicted people. I have seen the cloud gather upon
the sable brows of some who hear me. I confess the case looks black
enough. Sir, I am not a hopeful man. I think I am apt even to
undercalculate the benefits of the future. Yet, sir, in this seemingly
desperate case, I do not despair for my people. There is a bright side
to almost every picture of this kind; and ours is no exception to the
general rule. If the influences against us are strong, those for us are
also strong. To the inquiry, will our enemies prevail in the execution
of their designs. In my God and in my soul, I believe they _will not_.
Let us look at the first object sought for by the slavery party of the
country, viz: the suppression of anti slavery discussion. They desire
to suppress discussion on this subject, with a view to the peace of the
slaveholder and the security of slavery. Now, sir, neither the
principle nor the subordinate objects here declared, can be at all
gained by the slave power, and for this reason: It involves the
proposition to padlock the lips of the whites, in order to secure the
fetters on the limbs of the blacks. The right of speech, precious and
priceless, _cannot, will not_, be surrendered to slavery. Its
suppression is asked for, as I have said, to give peace and security to
slaveholders. Sir, that thing cannot be done. God has interposed an
insuperable obstacle to any such result. “There can be _no peace_,
saith my God, to the wicked.” Suppose it were possible to put down this
discussion, what would it avail the guilty slaveholder, pillowed as he
is upon heaving bosoms of ruined souls? He could not have a peaceful
spirit. If every anti-slavery tongue in the nation were silent—every
anti-slavery organization dissolved—every anti-slavery press
demolished—every anti slavery periodical, paper, book, pamphlet, or
what not, were searched out, gathered, deliberately burned to ashes,
and their ashes given to the four winds of heaven, still, still the
slaveholder could have _“no peace_.” In every pulsation of his heart,
in every throb of his life, in every glance of his eye, in the breeze
that soothes, and in the thunder that startles, would be waked up an
accuser, whose cause is, “Thou art, verily, guilty concerning thy
brother.”




THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. Extracts from a Lecture before Various


Anti-Slavery Bodies, in the Winter of 1855.

A grand movement on the part of mankind, in any direction, or for any
purpose, moral or political, is an interesting fact, fit and proper to
be studied. It is such, not only for those who eagerly participate in
it, but also for those who stand aloof from it—even for those by whom
it is opposed. I take the anti-slavery movement to be such an one, and
a movement as sublime and glorious in its character, as it is holy and
beneficent in the ends it aims to accomplish. At this moment, I deem it
safe to say, it is properly engrossing more minds in this country than
any other subject now before the American people. The late John C.
Calhoun—one of the mightiest men that ever stood up in the American
senate—did not deem it beneath him; and he probably studied it as
deeply, though not as honestly, as Gerrit Smith, or William Lloyd
Garrison. He evinced the greatest familiarity with the subject; and the
greatest efforts of his last years in the senate had direct reference
to this movement. His eagle eye watched every new development connected
with it; and he was ever prompt to inform the south of every important
step in its progress. He never allowed himself to make light of it; but
always spoke of it and treated it as a matter of grave import; and in
this he showed himself a master of the mental, moral, and religious
constitution of human society. Daniel Webster, too, in the better days
of his life, before he gave his assent to the fugitive slave bill, and
trampled upon all his earlier and better convictions—when his eye was
yet single—he clearly comprehended the nature of the elements involved
in this movement; and in his own majestic eloquence, warned the south,
and the country, to have a care how they attempted to put it down. He
is an illustration that it is easier to give, than to take, good
advice. To these two men—the greatest men to whom the nation has yet
given birth—may be traced the two great facts of the present—the south
triumphant, and the north humbled. Their names may stand thus—Calhoun
and domination—Webster and degradation. Yet again. If to the enemies of
liberty this subject is one of engrossing interest, vastly more so
should it be such to freedom’s friends. The latter, it leads to the
gates of all valuable knowledge—philanthropic, ethical, and religious;
for it brings them to the study of man, wonderfully and fearfully
made—the proper study of man through all time—the open book, in which
are the records of time and eternity.

Of the existence and power of the anti-slavery movement, as a fact, you
need no evidence. The nation has seen its face, and felt the
controlling pressure of its hand. You have seen it moving in all
directions, and in all weathers, and in all places, appearing most
where desired least, and pressing hardest where most resisted. No place
is exempt. The quiet prayer meeting, and the stormy halls of national
debate, share its presence alike. It is a common intruder, and of
course has the name of being ungentlemanly. Brethren who had long sung,
in the most affectionate fervor, and with the greatest sense of
security,

Together let us sweetly live—together let us die,


have been suddenly and violently separated by it, and ranged in hostile
attitude toward each other. The Methodist, one of the most powerful
religious organizations of this country, has been rent asunder, and its
strongest bolts of denominational brotherhood started at a single
surge. It has changed the tone of the northern pulpit, and modified
that of the press. A celebrated divine, who, four years ago, was for
flinging his own mother, or brother, into the remorseless jaws of the
monster slavery, lest he should swallow up the Union, now recognizes
anti-slavery as a characteristic of future civilization. Signs and
wonders follow this movement; and the fact just stated is one of them.
Party ties are loosened by it; and men are compelled to take sides for
or against it, whether they will or not. Come from where he may, or
come for what he may, he is compelled to show his hand. What is this
mighty force? What is its history? and what is its destiny? Is it
ancient or modern, transient or permanent? Has it turned aside, like a
stranger and a sojourner, to tarry for a night? or has it come to rest
with us forever? Excellent chances are here for speculation; and some
of them are quite profound. We might, for instance, proceed to inquire
not only into the philosophy of the anti-slavery movement, but into the
philosophy of the law, in obedience to which that movement started into
existence. We might demand to know what is that law or power, which, at
different times, disposes the minds of men to this or that particular
object—now for peace, and now for war—now for freedom, and now for
slavery; but this profound question I leave to the abolitionists of the
superior class to answer. The speculations which must precede such
answer, would afford, perhaps, about the same satisfaction as the
learned theories which have rained down upon the world, from time to
time, as to the origin of evil. I shall, therefore, avoid water in
which I cannot swim, and deal with anti-slavery as a fact, like any
other fact in the history of mankind, capable of being described and
understood, both as to its internal forces, and its external phases and
relations.

[After an eloquent, a full, and highly interesting exposition of the
nature, character, and history of the anti-slavery movement, from the
insertion of which want of space precludes us, he concluded in the
following happy manner.]

Present organizations may perish, but the cause will go on. That cause
has a life, distinct and independent of the organizations patched up
from time to time to carry it forward. Looked at, apart from the bones
and sinews and body, it is a thing immortal. It is the very essence of
justice, liberty, and love. The moral life of human society, it cannot
die while conscience, honor, and humanity remain. If but one be filled
with it, the cause lives. Its incarnation in any one individual man,
leaves the whole world a priesthood, occupying the highest moral
eminence even that of disinterested benevolence. Whoso has ascended his
height, and has the grace to stand there, has the world at his feet,
and is the world’s teacher, as of divine right. He may set in judgment
on the age, upon the civilization of the age, and upon the religion of
the age; for he has a test, a sure and certain test, by which to try
all institutions, and to measure all men. I say, he may do this, but
this is not the chief business for which he is qualified. The great
work to which he is called is not that of judgment. Like the Prince of
Peace, he may say, if I judge, I judge righteous judgment; still
mainly, like him, he may say, this is not his work. The man who has
thoroughly embraced the principles of justice, love, and liberty, like
the true preacher of Christianity, is less anxious to reproach the
world of its sins, than to win it to repentance. His great work on
earth is to exemplify, and to illustrate, and to ingraft those
principles upon the living and practical understandings of all men
within the reach of his influence. This is his work; long or short his
years, many or few his adherents, powerful or weak his
instrumentalities, through good report, or through bad report, this is
his work. It is to snatch from the bosom of nature the latent facts of
each individual man’s experience, and with steady hand to hold them up
fresh and glowing, enforcing, with all his power, their acknowledgment
and practical adoption. If there be but _one_ such man in the land, no
matter what becomes of abolition societies and parties, there will be
an anti-slavery cause, and an anti-slavery movement. Fortunately for
that cause, and fortunately for him by whom it is espoused, it requires
no extraordinary amount of talent to preach it or to receive it when
preached. The grand secret of its power is, that each of its principles
is easily rendered appreciable to the faculty of reason in man, and
that the most unenlightened conscience has no difficulty in deciding on
which side to register its testimony. It can call its preachers from
among the fishermen, and raise them to power. In every human breast, it
has an advocate which can be silent only when the heart is dead. It
comes home to every man’s understanding, and appeals directly to every
man’s conscience. A man that does not recognize and approve for himself
the rights and privileges contended for, in behalf of the American
slave, has not yet been found. In whatever else men may differ, they
are alike in the apprehension of their natural and personal rights. The
difference between abolitionists and those by whom they are opposed, is
not as to principles. All are agreed in respect to these. The manner of
applying them is the point of difference.

The slaveholder himself, the daily robber of his equal brother,
discourses eloquently as to the excellency of justice, and the man who
employs a brutal driver to flay the flesh of his negroes, is not
offended when kindness and humanity are commended. Every time the
abolitionist speaks of justice, the anti-abolitionist assents says,
yes, I wish the world were filled with a disposition to render to every
man what is rightfully due him; I should then get what is due me.
That’s right; let us have justice. By all means, let us have justice.
Every time the abolitionist speaks in honor of human liberty, he
touches a chord in the heart of the anti-abolitionist, which responds
in harmonious vibrations. Liberty—yes, that is evidently my right, and
let him beware who attempts to invade or abridge that right. Every time
he speaks of love, of human brotherhood, and the reciprocal duties of
man and man, the anti-abolitionist assents—says, yes, all right—all
true—we cannot have such ideas too often, or too fully expressed. So he
says, and so he feels, and only shows thereby that he is a man as well
as an anti-abolitionist. You have only to keep out of sight the manner
of applying your principles, to get them endorsed every time.
Contemplating himself, he sees truth with absolute clearness and
distinctness. He only blunders when asked to lose sight of himself. In
his own cause he can beat a Boston lawyer, but he is dumb when asked to
plead the cause of others. He knows very well whatsoever he would have
done unto himself, but is quite in doubt as to having the same thing
done unto others. It is just here, that lions spring up in the path of
duty, and the battle once fought in heaven is refought on the earth. So
it is, so hath it ever been, and so must it ever be, when the claims of
justice and mercy make their demand at the door of human selfishness.
Nevertheless, there is that within which ever pleads for the right and
the just.

In conclusion, I have taken a sober view of the present anti-slavery
movement. I am sober, but not hopeless. There is no denying, for it is
everywhere admitted, that the anti-slavery question is the great moral
and social question now before the American people. A state of things
has gradually been developed, by which that question has become the
first thing in order. It must be met. Herein is my hope. The great idea
of impartial liberty is now fairly before the American people.
Anti-slavery is no longer a thing to be prevented. The time for
prevention is past. This is great gain. When the movement was younger
and weaker—when it wrought in a Boston garret to human apprehension, it
might have been silently put out of the way. Things are different now.
It has grown too large—its friends are too numerous—its facilities too
abundant—its ramifications too extended—its power too omnipotent, to be
snuffed out by the contingencies of infancy. A thousand strong men
might be struck down, and its ranks still be invincible. One flash from
the heart-supplied intellect of Harriet Beecher Stowe could light a
million camp fires in front of the embattled host of slavery, which not
all the waters of the Mississippi, mingled as they are with blood,
could extinguish. The present will be looked to by after coming
generations, as the age of anti-slavery literature—when supply on the
gallop could not keep pace with the ever growing demand—when a picture
of a Negro on the cover was a help to the sale of a book—when
conservative lyceums and other American literary associations began
first to select their orators for distinguished occasions from the
ranks of the previously despised abolitionists. If the anti-slavery
movement shall fail now, it will not be from outward opposition, but
from inward decay. Its auxiliaries are everywhere. Scholars, authors,
orators, poets, and statesmen give it their aid. The most brilliant of
American poets volunteer in its service. Whittier speaks in burning
verse to more than thirty thousand, in the National Era. Your own
Longfellow whispers, in every hour of trial and disappointment, “labor
and wait.” James Russell Lowell is reminding us that “men are more than
institutions.” Pierpont cheers the heart of the pilgrim in search of
liberty, by singing the praises of “the north star.” Bryant, too, is
with us; and though chained to the car of party, and dragged on amidst
a whirl of political excitement, he snatches a moment for letting drop
a smiling verse of sympathy for the man in chains. The poets are with
us. It would seem almost absurd to say it, considering the use that has
been made of them, that we have allies in the Ethiopian songs; those
songs that constitute our national music, and without which we have no
national music. They are heart songs, and the finest feelings of human
nature are expressed in them. “Lucy Neal,” “Old Kentucky Home,” and
“Uncle Ned,” can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call
forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the
slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and flourish.
In addition to authors, poets, and scholars at home, the moral sense of
the civilized world is with us. England, France, and Germany, the three
great lights of modern civilization, are with us, and every American
traveler learns to regret the existence of slavery in his country. The
growth of intelligence, the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and
lightning are our allies. It would be easy to amplify this summary, and
to swell the vast conglomeration of our material forces; but there is a
deeper and truer method of measuring the power of our cause, and of
comprehending its vitality. This is to be found in its accordance with
the best elements of human nature. It is beyond the power of slavery to
annihilate affinities recognized and established by the Almighty. The
slave is bound to mankind by the powerful and inextricable net-work of
human brotherhood. His voice is the voice of a man, and his cry is the
cry of a man in distress, and man must cease to be man before he can
become insensible to that cry. It is the righteous of the cause—the
humanity of the cause—which constitutes its potency. As one genuine
bankbill is worth more than a thousand counterfeits, so is one man,
with right on his side, worth more than a thousand in the wrong. “One
may chase a thousand, and put ten thousand to flight.” It is,
therefore, upon the goodness of our cause, more than upon all other
auxiliaries, that we depend for its final triumph.

Another source of congratulations is the fact that, amid all the
efforts made by the church, the government, and the people at large, to
stay the onward progress of this movement, its course has been onward,
steady, straight, unshaken, and unchecked from the beginning. Slavery
has gained victories large and numerous; but never as against this
movement—against a temporizing policy, and against northern timidity,
the slave power has been victorious; but against the spread and
prevalence in the country, of a spirit of resistance to its aggression,
and of sentiments favorable to its entire overthrow, it has yet
accomplished nothing. Every measure, yet devised and executed, having
for its object the suppression of anti-slavery, has been as idle and
fruitless as pouring oil to extinguish fire. A general rejoicing took
place on the passage of “the compromise measures” of 1850. Those
measures were called peace measures, and were afterward termed by both
the great parties of the country, as well as by leading statesmen, a
final settlement of the whole question of slavery; but experience has
laughed to scorn the wisdom of pro-slavery statesmen; and their final
settlement of agitation seems to be the final revival, on a broader and
grander scale than ever before, of the question which they vainly
attempted to suppress forever. The fugitive slave bill has especially
been of positive service to the anti-slavery movement. It has
illustrated before all the people the horrible character of slavery
toward the slave, in hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him
away from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than
marriage or parental claims. It has revealed the arrogant and
overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states;
despising their principles—shocking their feelings of humanity, not
only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but by
attempting to make them parties to the crime. It has called into
exercise among the colored people, the hunted ones, a spirit of manly
resistance well calculated to surround them with a bulwark of sympathy
and respect hitherto unknown. For men are always disposed to respect
and defend rights, when the victims of oppression stand up manfully for
themselves.

There is another element of power added to the anti-slavery movement,
of great importance; it is the conviction, becoming every day more
general and universal, that slavery must be abolished at the south, or
it will demoralize and destroy liberty at the north. It is the nature
of slavery to beget a state of things all around it favorable to its
own continuance. This fact, connected with the system of bondage, is
beginning to be more fully realized. The slave-holder is not satisfied
to associate with men in the church or in the state, unless he can
thereby stain them with the blood of his slaves. To be a slave-holder
is to be a propagandist from necessity; for slavery can only live by
keeping down the under-growth morality which nature supplies. Every
new-born white babe comes armed from the Eternal presence, to make war
on slavery. The heart of pity, which would melt in due time over the
brutal chastisements it sees inflicted on the helpless, must be
hardened. And this work goes on every day in the year, and every hour
in the day.

What is done at home is being done also abroad here in the north. And
even now the question may be asked, have we at this moment a single
free state in the Union? The alarm at this point will become more
general. The slave power must go on in its career of exactions. Give,
give, will be its cry, till the timidity which concedes shall give
place to courage, which shall resist. Such is the voice of experience,
such has been the past, such is the present, and such will be that
future, which, so sure as man is man, will come. Here I leave the
subject; and I leave off where I began, consoling myself and
congratulating the friends of freedom upon the fact that the
anti-slavery cause is not a new thing under the sun; not some moral
delusion which a few years’ experience may dispel. It has appeared
among men in all ages, and summoned its advocates from all ranks. Its
foundations are laid in the deepest and holiest convictions, and from
whatever soul the demon, selfishness, is expelled, there will this
cause take up its abode. Old as the everlasting hills; immovable as the
throne of God; and certain as the purposes of eternal power, against
all hinderances, and against all delays, and despite all the mutations
of human instrumentalities, it is the faith of my soul, that this
anti-slavery cause will triumph.




FOOTNOTES


1 (return) [ Letter, Introduction to _Life of Frederick Douglass_,
Boston, 1841.]

2 (return) [ One of these ladies, impelled by the same noble spirit
which carried Miss Nightingale to Scutari, has devoted her time, her
untiring energies, to a great extent her means, and her high literary
abilities, to the advancement and support of Frederick Douglass’ Paper,
the only organ of the downtrodden, edited and published by one of
themselves, in the United States.]

3 (return) [ Mr. Stephen Myers, of Albany, deserves mention as one of
the most persevering among the colored editorial fraternity.]

4 (return) [ The German physiologists have even discovered vegetable
matter—starch—in the human body. See _Med. Chirurgical Rev_., Oct.,
1854, p. 339.]

5 (return) [ Mr. Wm. H. Topp, of Albany.]

6 (return) [ This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my
being whipped by Mr. Covey. He was “a clever soul.” We used frequently
to talk about the fight with Covey, and as often as we did so, he would
claim my success as the result of the roots which he gave me. This
superstition is very common among the more ignorant slaves. A slave
seldom dies, but that his death is attributed to trickery.]

7 (return) [ He was a whole-souled man, fully imbued with a love of his
afflicted and hunted people, and took pleasure in being to me, as was
his wont, “Eyes to the blind, and legs to the lame.” This brave and
devoted man suffered much from the persecutions common to all who have
been prominent benefactors. He at last became blind, and needed a
friend to guide him, even as he had been a guide to others. Even in his
blindness, he exhibited his manly character. In search of health, he
became a physician. When hope of gaining is(sic) own was gone, he had
hope for others. Believing in hydropathy, he established, at
Northampton, Massachusetts, a large _“Water Cure,”_ and became one of
the most successful of all engaged in that mode of treatment.]

8 (return) [ The following is a copy of these curious papers, both of
my transfer from Thomas to Hugh Auld, and from Hugh to myself:

“Know all men by these Presents, That I, Thomas Auld, of Talbot county,
and state of Maryland, for and in consideration of the sum of one
hundred dollars, current money, to me paid by Hugh Auld, of the city of
Baltimore, in the said state, at and before the sealing and delivery of
these presents, the receipt whereof, I, the said Thomas Auld, do hereby
acknowledge, have granted, bargained, and sold, and by these presents
do grant, bargain, and sell unto the said Hugh Auld, his executors,
administrators, and assigns, ONE NEGRO MAN, by the name of FREDERICK
BAILY, or DOUGLASS, as he callls(sic) himself—he is now about
twenty-eight years of age—to have and to hold the said negro man for
life. And I, the said Thomas Auld, for myself my heirs, executors, and
administrators, all and singular, the said FREDERICK BAILY _alias_
DOUGLASS, unto the said Hugh Auld, his executors, administrators, and
assigns against me, the said Thomas Auld, my executors, and
administrators, and against ali and every other person or persons
whatsoever, shall and will warrant and forever defend by these
presents. In witness whereof, I set my hand and seal, this thirteenth
day of November, eighteen hundred and forty-six.

THOMAS AULD

“Signed, sealed, and delivered in presence of Wrightson Jones.

“JOHN C. LEAS.

The authenticity of this bill of sale is attested by N. Harrington, a
justice of the peace of the state of Maryland, and for the county of
Talbot, dated same day as above.

“To all whom it may concern: Be it known, that I, Hugh Auld, of the
city of Baltimore, in Baltimore county, in the state of Maryland, for
divers good causes and considerations, me thereunto moving, have
released from slavery, liberated, manumitted, and set free, and by
these presents do hereby release from slavery, liberate, manumit, and
set free, MY NEGRO MAN, named FREDERICK BAILY, otherwise called
DOUGLASS, being of the age of twenty-eight years, or thereabouts, and
able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood and maintenance; and him
the said negro man named FREDERICK BAILY, otherwise called FREDERICK
DOUGLASS, I do declare to be henceforth free, manumitted, and
discharged from all manner of servitude to me, my executors, and
administrators forever.

“In witness whereof, I, the said Hugh Auld, have hereunto set my hand
and seal the fifth of December, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and forty-six.

Hugh Auld

“Sealed and delivered in presence of T. Hanson Belt.

“JAMES N. S. T. WRIGHT”]

9 (return) [ See Appendix to this volume, page 317.]

10 (return) [ Mr. Douglass’ published speeches alone, would fill two
volumes of the size of this. Our space will only permit the insertion
of the extracts which follow; and which, for originality of thought,
beauty and force of expression, and for impassioned, indignatory
eloquence, have seldom been equaled.]

11 (return) [ It is not often that chattels address their owners. The
following letter is unique; and probably the only specimen of the kind
extant. It was written while in England.]




Contents

  PREFACE 
  LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ. 
  FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
  CHAPTER I 
  CHAPTER II 
  CHAPTER III 
  CHAPTER IV 
  CHAPTER V 
  CHAPTER VI 
  CHAPTER VII 
  CHAPTER VIII 
  CHAPTER IX 
  CHAPTER X 
  CHAPTER XI 
  APPENDIX 
  A PARODY 




 PREFACE


In the month of August, 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in
Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to become acquainted with
_Frederick Douglass_, the writer of the following Narrative. He was a
stranger to nearly every member of that body; but, having recently made
his escape from the southern prison-house of bondage, and feeling his
curiosity excited to ascertain the principles and measures of the
abolitionists,—of whom he had heard a somewhat vague description while
he was a slave,—he was induced to give his attendance, on the occasion
alluded to, though at that time a resident in New Bedford.

Fortunate, most fortunate occurrence!—fortunate for the millions of his
manacled brethren, yet panting for deliverance from their awful
thraldom!—fortunate for the cause of negro emancipation, and of
universal liberty!—fortunate for the land of his birth, which he has
already done so much to save and bless!—fortunate for a large circle of
friends and acquaintances, whose sympathy and affection he has strongly
secured by the many sufferings he has endured, by his virtuous traits
of character, by his ever-abiding remembrance of those who are in
bonds, as being bound with them!—fortunate for the multitudes, in
various parts of our republic, whose minds he has enlightened on the
subject of slavery, and who have been melted to tears by his pathos, or
roused to virtuous indignation by his stirring eloquence against the
enslavers of men!—fortunate for himself, as it at once brought him into
the field of public usefulness, “gave the world assurance of a MAN,”
quickened the slumbering energies of his soul, and consecrated him to
the great work of breaking the rod of the oppressor, and letting the
oppressed go free!

I shall never forget his first speech at the convention—the
extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind—the powerful impression
it created upon a crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise—the
applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous
remarks. I think I never hated slavery so intensely as at that moment;
certainly, my perception of the enormous outrage which is inflicted by
it, on the godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more clear
than ever. There stood one, in physical proportion and stature
commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a
prodigy—in soul manifestly “created but a little lower than the
angels”—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety,
hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white
person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, for the
love of God and humanity! Capable of high attainments as an
intellectual and moral being—needing nothing but a comparatively small
amount of cultivation to make him an ornament to society and a blessing
to his race—by the law of the land, by the voice of the people, by the
terms of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a beast of
burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!

A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on Mr. DOUGLASS  to address
the convention. He came forward to the platform with a hesitancy and
embarrassment, necessarily the attendants of a sensitive mind in such a
novel position. After apologizing for his ignorance, and reminding the
audience that slavery was a poor school for the human intellect and
heart, he proceeded to narrate some of the facts in his own history as
a slave, and in the course of his speech gave utterance to many noble
thoughts and thrilling reflections. As soon as he had taken his seat,
filled with hope and admiration, I rose, and declared that PATRICK
HENRY, of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more eloquent in the
cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to from the lips of
that hunted fugitive. So I believed at that time—such is my belief now.
I reminded the audience of the peril which surrounded this
self-emancipated young man at the North,—even in Massachusetts, on the
soil of the Pilgrim Fathers, among the descendants of revolutionary
sires; and I appealed to them, whether they would ever allow him to be
carried back into slavery,—law or no law, constitution or no
constitution. The response was unanimous and in thunder-tones—“NO!”
“Will you succor and protect him as a brother-man—a resident of the old
Bay State?” “YES!” shouted the whole mass, with an energy so startling,
that the ruthless tyrants south of Mason and Dixon’s line might almost
have heard the mighty burst of feeling, and recognized it as the pledge
of an invincible determination, on the part of those who gave it, never
to betray him that wanders, but to hide the outcast, and firmly to
abide the consequences.

It was at once deeply impressed upon my mind, that, if Mr. DOUGLASS
could be persuaded to consecrate his time and talents to the promotion
of the anti-slavery enterprise, a powerful impetus would be given to
it, and a stunning blow at the same time inflicted on northern
prejudice against a colored complexion. I therefore endeavored to
instil hope and courage into his mind, in order that he might dare to
engage in a vocation so anomalous and responsible for a person in his
situation; and I was seconded in this effort by warm-hearted friends,
especially by the late General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society, Mr. JOHN A. COLLINS, whose judgment in this instance entirely
coincided with my own. At first, he could give no encouragement; with
unfeigned diffidence, he expressed his conviction that he was not
adequate to the performance of so great a task; the path marked out was
wholly an untrodden one; he was sincerely apprehensive that he should
do more harm than good. After much deliberation, however, he consented
to make a trial; and ever since that period, he has acted as a
lecturing agent, under the auspices either of the American or the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In labors he has been most
abundant; and his success in combating prejudice, in gaining
proselytes, in agitating the public mind, has far surpassed the most
sanguine expectations that were raised at the commencement of his
brilliant career. He has borne himself with gentleness and meekness,
yet with true manliness of character. As a public speaker, he excels in
pathos, wit, comparison, imitation, strength of reasoning, and fluency
of language. There is in him that union of head and heart, which is
indispensable to an enlightenment of the heads and a winning of the
hearts of others. May his strength continue to be equal to his day! May
he continue to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God,” that he
may be increasingly serviceable in the cause of bleeding humanity,
whether at home or abroad!

It is certainly a very remarkable fact, that one of the most efficient
advocates of the slave population, now before the public, is a fugitive
slave, in the person of _Frederick Douglass_; and that the free colored
population of the United States are as ably represented by one of their
own number, in the person of _Charles Lenox Remond_, whose eloquent
appeals have extorted the highest applause of multitudes on both sides
of the Atlantic. Let the calumniators of the colored race despise
themselves for their baseness and illiberality of spirit, and
henceforth cease to talk of the natural inferiority of those who
require nothing but time and opportunity to attain to the highest point
of human excellence.

It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other portion of the
population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings
and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the
scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been
left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase
their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to
mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of
a most frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for
centuries! To illustrate the effect of slavery on the white man,—to
show that he has no powers of endurance, in such a condition, superior
to those of his black brother,—_Daniel O’Connell_, the distinguished
advocate of universal emancipation, and the mightiest champion of
prostrate but not conquered Ireland, relates the following anecdote in
a speech delivered by him in the Conciliation Hall, Dublin, before the
Loyal National Repeal Association, March 31, 1845. “No matter,” said
_Mr. O’Connell_, “under what specious term it may disguise itself,
slavery is still hideous. _It has a natural, an inevitable tendency to
brutalize every noble faculty of man._ An American sailor, who was cast
away on the shore of Africa, where he was kept in slavery for three
years, was, at the expiration of that period, found to be imbruted and
stultified—he had lost all reasoning power; and having forgotten his
native language, could only utter some savage gibberish between Arabic
and English, which nobody could understand, and which even he himself
found difficulty in pronouncing. So much for the humanizing influence
of _The Domestic Institution_!” Admitting this to have been an
extraordinary case of mental deterioration, it proves at least that the
white slave can sink as low in the scale of humanity as the black one.

_Mr. Douglass_ has very properly chosen to write his own Narrative, in
his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to
employ some one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production;
and, considering how long and dark was the career he had to run as a
slave,—how few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since he
broke his iron fetters,—it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his
head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving
breast, an afflicted spirit,—without being filled with an unutterable
abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated with a
determination to seek the immediate overthrow of that execrable
system,—without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of
a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed, and whose
arm is not shortened that it cannot save,—must have a flinty heart, and
be qualified to act the part of a trafficker “in slaves and the souls
of men.” I am confident that it is essentially true in all its
statements; that nothing has been set down in malice, nothing
exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination; that it comes short of
the reality, rather than overstates a single fact in regard to _slavery
as it is_. The experience of _Frederick Douglass_, as a slave, was not
a peculiar one; his lot was not especially a hard one; his case may be
regarded as a very fair specimen of the treatment of slaves in
Maryland, in which State it is conceded that they are better fed and
less cruelly treated than in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana. Many have
suffered incomparably more, while very few on the plantations have
suffered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what
terrible chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more
shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble
powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even
by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ
Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how
destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest
extremities! how heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded in
blackness the last ray of hope, and filled the future with terror and
gloom! what longings after freedom took possession of his breast, and
how his misery augmented, in proportion as he grew reflective and
intelligent,—thus demonstrating that a happy slave is an extinct man!
how he thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver, with the
chains upon his limbs! what perils he encountered in his endeavors to
escape from his horrible doom! and how signal have been his deliverance
and preservation in the midst of a nation of pitiless enemies!

This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of
great eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them
all is the description _Douglass_ gives of his feelings, as he stood
soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being
a freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay—viewing the receding
vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and
apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who
can read that passage, and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?
Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought, feeling,
and sentiment—all that can, all that need be urged, in the form of
expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,—making
man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system,
which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image,
reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a
level with four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in human flesh
above all that is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one
hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its
presence imply but the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man,
on the part of the people of the United States? Heaven speed its
eternal overthrow!

So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that
they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any
recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They
do not deny that the slaves are held as property; but that terrible
fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure to
outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of
mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the
banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be greatly
indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements,
such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if
all these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery! As
if it were less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of a
thing, than to give him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of
necessary food and clothing! As if whips, chains, thumb-screws,
paddles, blood-hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols, were not all
indispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give protection to their
ruthless oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution is abolished,
concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound; when
all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to
protect the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is
assumed over life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destructive
sway! Skeptics of this character abound in society. In some few
instances, their incredulity arises from a want of reflection; but,
generally, it indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield
slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race,
whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit the shocking tales of
slaveholding cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative; but
they will labor in vain. _Mr. Douglass_ has frankly disclosed the place
of his birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and
soul, and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has
alleged against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be
disproved, if they are untrue.

In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
cruelty,—in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging
to a neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his
lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out
the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a
bloody scourging. _Mr. Douglass_ states that in neither of these
instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial
investigation. The Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates a
similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity—as
follows:—“_Shooting a slave._—We learn, upon the authority of a letter
from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city,
that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and
whose father, it is believed, holds an office at Washington, killed one
of the slaves upon his father’s farm by shooting him. The letter states
that young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave
an order to the servant, which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to the
house, _obtained a gun, and, returning, shot the servant._ He
immediately, the letter continues, fled to his father’s residence,
where he still remains unmolested.”—Let it never be forgotten, that no
slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on
the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony
of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are
adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though
they were indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal
protection in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave
population; and any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with
impunity. Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more
horrible state of society?

The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters
is vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any
thing but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the
highest degree pernicious. The testimony of _Mr. Douglass_, on this
point, is sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is
unimpeachable. “A slaveholder’s profession of Christianity is a
palpable imposture. He is a felon of the highest grade. He is a
man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in the other scale.”

Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on
the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are
you the foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared
to do and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring
in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.
Come what may—cost what it may—inscribe on the banner which you unfurl
to the breeze, as your religious and political motto—“NO COMPROMISE
WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!”

WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON,

_May_ 1, 1845.




 LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.


BOSTON, _April_ 22, 1845.

My Dear Friend:

You remember the old fable of “The Man and the Lion,” where the lion
complained that he should not be so misrepresented “when the lions
wrote history.”

I am glad the time has come when the “lions write history.” We have
been left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the
involuntary evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest
sufficiently satisfied with what, it is evident, must be, in general,
the results of such a relation, without seeking farther to find whether
they have followed in every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the
half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the lashes on the slave’s
back, are seldom the “stuff” out of which reformers and abolitionists
are to be made. I remember that, in 1838, many were waiting for the
results of the West India experiment, before they could come into our
ranks. Those “results” have come long ago; but, alas! few of that
number have come with them, as converts. A man must be disposed to
judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the
produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it
starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone
of his anti-slavery life.

I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of
God’s children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice
done them. Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had
mastered your A B C, or knew where the “white sails” of the Chesapeake
were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave,
not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the
cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul.

In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the
more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are
told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what
it is at its best estate—gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and
then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture,
as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the
Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along.

Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence
in your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak
has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel,
persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No
one-sided portrait,—no wholesale complaints,—but strict justice done,
whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the
deadly system with which it was strangely allied. You have been with
us, too, some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights,
which your race enjoy at the North, with that “noon of night” under
which they labor south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Tell us whether,
after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than
the pampered slave of the rice swamps!

In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out
some rare specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which
even you have drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no
individual ills, but such as must mingle always and necessarily in the
lot of every slave. They are the essential ingredients, not the
occasional results, of the system.

After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years
ago, when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace,
you may remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of
all. With the exception of a vague description, so I continued, till
the other day, when you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the
time, whether to thank you or not for the sight of them, when I
reflected that it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men
to tell their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the
Declaration of Independence with the halter about their necks. You,
too, publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you
around. In all the broad lands which the Constitution of the United
States overshadows, there is no single spot,—however narrow or
desolate,—where a fugitive slave can plant himself and say, “I am
safe.” The whole armory of Northern Law has no shield for you. I am
free to say that, in your place, I should throw the MS. into the fire.

You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, endeared as you are to so
many warm hearts by rare gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to
the service of others. But it will be owing only to your labors, and
the fearless efforts of those who, trampling the laws and Constitution
of the country under their feet, are determined that they will “hide
the outcast,” and that their hearths shall be, spite of the law, an
asylum for the oppressed, if, some time or other, the humblest may
stand in our streets, and bear witness in safety against the cruelties
of which he has been the victim.

Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing hearts which welcome
your story, and form your best safeguard in telling it, are all beating
contrary to the “statute in such case made and provided.” Go on, my
dear friend, till you, and those who, like you, have been saved, so as
by fire, from the dark prison-house, shall stereotype these free,
illegal pulses into statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a
blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house of refuge for the
oppressed,—till we no longer merely “_hide_ the outcast,” or make a
merit of standing idly by while he is hunted in our midst; but,
consecrating anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the
oppressed, proclaim our _welcome_ to the slave so loudly, that the
tones shall reach every hut in the Carolinas, and make the
broken-hearted bondman leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts.

God speed the day!
_Till then, and ever,_
Yours truly,
WENDELL PHILLIPS




 FREDERICK DOUGLASS.


Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington
Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the
exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a
young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he
learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master’s wife. In
1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he
married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore.
Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he
addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in
Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately
employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that
numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, so he wrote
_Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass_. During the Civil War he
assisted in the recruiting of colored men for the 54th and 55th
Massachusetts Regiments and consistently argued for the emancipation of
slaves. After the war he was active in securing and protecting the
rights of the freemen. In his later years, at different times, he was
secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, marshall and recorder of
deeds of the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti.
His other autobiographical works are _My Bondage And My Freedom_ and
_Life And Times Of Frederick Douglass_, published in 1855 and 1881
respectively. He died in 1895.




 CHAPTER I


I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from
Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my
age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the
larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know
of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to
keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a
slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it
than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or
fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of
unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell
their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same
privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master
concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave
improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The
nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and
twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say,
some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.

My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and
Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker
complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.

My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever
heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my
master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know
nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I
were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother.
It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away,
to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently,
before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken
from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and
the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field
labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to
hinder the development of the child’s affection toward its mother, and
to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child.
This is the inevitable result.

I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five
times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration,
and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve
miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night,
travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her
day’s work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not
being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission
from his or her master to the contrary—a permission which they seldom
get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a
kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light
of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and
get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little
communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little
we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering.
She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master’s farms,
near Lee’s Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at
her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about
it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing
presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her
death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the
death of a stranger.

Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation
of who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or
may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to
my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that
slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children
of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their
mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own
lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as
well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder,
in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of
master and father.

I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves
invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with,
than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their
mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom
do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she
sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of
showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his
black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of
his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and,
cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own
children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity
for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them
himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of
but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to
his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down
to his parental partiality, and only makes a bad matter worse, both for
himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend.

Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was
doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great
statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the
inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled
or not, it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of
people are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from
those originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their
increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument,
that God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right. If the
lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is
certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for
thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe
their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently
their own masters.

I have had two masters. My first master’s name was Anthony. I do not
remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony—a
title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the
Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two
or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were
under the care of an overseer. The overseer’s name was Plummer. Mr.
Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage
monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have
known him to cut and slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even
master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him
if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane
slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an
overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of
slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping
a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most
heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to
a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered
with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim,
seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she
screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there
he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her
to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to
swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever
witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well
remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It
was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed
to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It
was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery,
through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I
wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.

This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old
master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one
night,—where or for what I do not know,—and happened to be absent when
my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go out
evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in
company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to
Colonel Lloyd. The young man’s name was Ned Roberts, generally called
Lloyd’s Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to
conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions,
having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance,
among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.

Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had
been found in company with Lloyd’s Ned; which circumstance, I found,
from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he
been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought
interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew
him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced
whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her
from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely
naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same
time a d——d b—-h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong
rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in
for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to
the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were
stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of
her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d——d b—-h, I’ll learn you how
to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced
to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid
heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came
dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the
sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till
long after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my
turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it
before. I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the
plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger
women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody
scenes that often occurred on the plantation.




 CHAPTER II


My master’s family consisted of two sons, Andrew and Richard; one
daughter, Lucretia, and her husband, Captain Thomas Auld. They lived in
one house, upon the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. My master
was Colonel Lloyd’s clerk and superintendent. He was what might be
called the overseer of the overseers. I spent two years of childhood on
this plantation in my old master’s family. It was here that I witnessed
the bloody transaction recorded in the first chapter; and as I received
my first impressions of slavery on this plantation, I will give some
description of it, and of slavery as it there existed. The plantation
is about twelve miles north of Easton, in Talbot county, and is
situated on the border of Miles River. The principal products raised
upon it were tobacco, corn, and wheat. These were raised in great
abundance; so that, with the products of this and the other farms
belonging to him, he was able to keep in almost constant employment a
large sloop, in carrying them to market at Baltimore. This sloop was
named Sally Lloyd, in honor of one of the colonel’s daughters. My
master’s son-in-law, Captain Auld, was master of the vessel; she was
otherwise manned by the colonel’s own slaves. Their names were Peter,
Isaac, Rich, and Jake. These were esteemed very highly by the other
slaves, and looked upon as the privileged ones of the plantation; for
it was no small affair, in the eyes of the slaves, to be allowed to see
Baltimore.

Colonel Lloyd kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home
plantation, and owned a large number more on the neighboring farms
belonging to him. The names of the farms nearest to the home plantation
were Wye Town and New Design. “Wye Town” was under the overseership of
a man named Noah Willis. New Design was under the overseership of a Mr.
Townsend. The overseers of these, and all the rest of the farms,
numbering over twenty, received advice and direction from the managers
of the home plantation. This was the great business place. It was the
seat of government for the whole twenty farms. All disputes among the
overseers were settled here. If a slave was convicted of any high
misdemeanor, became unmanageable, or evinced a determination to run
away, he was brought immediately here, severely whipped, put on board
the sloop, carried to Baltimore, and sold to Austin Woolfolk, or some
other slave-trader, as a warning to the slaves remaining.

Here, too, the slaves of all the other farms received their monthly
allowance of food, and their yearly clothing. The men and women slaves
received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or
its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Their yearly
clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen
trousers, like the shirts, one jacket, one pair of trousers for winter,
made of coarse negro cloth, one pair of stockings, and one pair of
shoes; the whole of which could not have cost more than seven dollars.
The allowance of the slave children was given to their mothers, or the
old women having the care of them. The children unable to work in the
field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers, given to
them; their clothing consisted of two coarse linen shirts per year.
When these failed them, they went naked until the next allowance-day.
Children from seven to ten years old, of both sexes, almost naked,
might be seen at all seasons of the year.

There were no beds given the slaves, unless one coarse blanket be
considered such, and none but the men and women had these. This,
however, is not considered a very great privation. They find less
difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep;
for when their day’s work in the field is done, the most of them having
their washing, mending, and cooking to do, and having few or none of
the ordinary facilities for doing either of these, very many of their
sleeping hours are consumed in preparing for the field the coming day;
and when this is done, old and young, male and female, married and
single, drop down side by side, on one common bed,—the cold, damp
floor,—each covering himself or herself with their miserable blankets;
and here they sleep till they are summoned to the field by the driver’s
horn. At the sound of this, all must rise, and be off to the field.
There must be no halting; every one must be at his or her post; and woe
betides them who hear not this morning summons to the field; for if
they are not awakened by the sense of hearing, they are by the sense of
feeling: no age nor sex finds any favor. Mr. Severe, the overseer, used
to stand by the door of the quarter, armed with a large hickory stick
and heavy cowskin, ready to whip any one who was so unfortunate as not
to hear, or, from any other cause, was prevented from being ready to
start for the field at the sound of the horn.

Mr. Severe was rightly named: he was a cruel man. I have seen him whip
a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this,
too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother’s
release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish
barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was
enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to
hear him talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was commenced or
concluded by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness his
cruelty and profanity. His presence made it both the field of blood and
of blasphemy. From the rising till the going down of the sun, he was
cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among the slaves of the field,
in the most frightful manner. His career was short. He died very soon
after I went to Colonel Lloyd’s; and he died as he lived, uttering,
with his dying groans, bitter curses and horrid oaths. His death was
regarded by the slaves as the result of a merciful providence.

Mr. Severe’s place was filled by a Mr. Hopkins. He was a very different
man. He was less cruel, less profane, and made less noise, than Mr.
Severe. His course was characterized by no extraordinary demonstrations
of cruelty. He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. He was
called by the slaves a good overseer.

The home plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appearance of a country
village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed
here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting,
coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the
slaves on the home plantation. The whole place wore a business-like
aspect very unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too,
conspired to give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was
called by the slaves the _Great House Farm._ Few privileges were
esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being
selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in
their minds with greatness. A representative could not be prouder of
his election to a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of
the out-farms would be of his election to do errands at the Great House
Farm. They regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them
by their overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant
desire to be out of the field from under the driver’s lash, that they
esteemed it a high privilege, one worth careful living for. He was
called the smartest and most trusty fellow, who had this honor
conferred upon him the most frequently. The competitors for this office
sought as diligently to please their overseers, as the office-seekers
in the political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The
same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd’s slaves, as
are seen in the slaves of the political parties.

The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly
allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly
enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods,
for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once
the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as
they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that
came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently
in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic
sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment
in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to
weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this,
when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following
words:—

“I am going away to the Great House Farm!
O, yea! O, yea! O!”


This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem
unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to
themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those
songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character
of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the
subject could do.

I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and
apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I
neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension;
they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and
complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone
was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance
from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my
spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found
myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs,
even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an
expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those
songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing
character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those
songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my
sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed
with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd’s
plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine
woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall
pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed,
it will only be because “there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.”

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to
find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence
of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a
greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs
of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by
them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such
is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to
express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike
uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast
away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as
evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the
songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.




 CHAPTER III


Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated garden, which afforded
almost constant employment for four men, besides the chief gardener,
(Mr. M’Durmond.) This garden was probably the greatest attraction of
the place. During the summer months, people came from far and near—from
Baltimore, Easton, and Annapolis—to see it. It abounded in fruits of
almost every description, from the hardy apple of the north to the
delicate orange of the south. This garden was not the least source of
trouble on the plantation. Its excellent fruit was quite a temptation
to the hungry swarms of boys, as well as the older slaves, belonging to
the colonel, few of whom had the virtue or the vice to resist it.
Scarcely a day passed, during the summer, but that some slave had to
take the lash for stealing fruit. The colonel had to resort to all
kinds of stratagems to keep his slaves out of the garden. The last and
most successful one was that of tarring his fence all around; after
which, if a slave was caught with any tar upon his person, it was
deemed sufficient proof that he had either been into the garden, or had
tried to get in. In either case, he was severely whipped by the chief
gardener. This plan worked well; the slaves became as fearful of tar as
of the lash. They seemed to realize the impossibility of touching _tar_
without being defiled.

The colonel also kept a splendid riding equipage. His stable and
carriage-house presented the appearance of some of our large city
livery establishments. His horses were of the finest form and noblest
blood. His carriage-house contained three splendid coaches, three or
four gigs, besides dearborns and barouches of the most fashionable
style.

This establishment was under the care of two slaves—old Barney and
young Barney—father and son. To attend to this establishment was their
sole work. But it was by no means an easy employment; for in nothing
was Colonel Lloyd more particular than in the management of his horses.
The slightest inattention to these was unpardonable, and was visited
upon those, under whose care they were placed, with the severest
punishment; no excuse could shield them, if the colonel only suspected
any want of attention to his horses—a supposition which he frequently
indulged, and one which, of course, made the office of old and young
Barney a very trying one. They never knew when they were safe from
punishment. They were frequently whipped when least deserving, and
escaped whipping when most deserving it. Every thing depended upon the
looks of the horses, and the state of Colonel Lloyd’s own mind when his
horses were brought to him for use. If a horse did not move fast
enough, or hold his head high enough, it was owing to some fault of his
keepers. It was painful to stand near the stable-door, and hear the
various complaints against the keepers when a horse was taken out for
use. “This horse has not had proper attention. He has not been
sufficiently rubbed and curried, or he has not been properly fed; his
food was too wet or too dry; he got it too soon or too late; he was too
hot or too cold; he had too much hay, and not enough of grain; or he
had too much grain, and not enough of hay; instead of old Barney’s
attending to the horse, he had very improperly left it to his son.” To
all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never
a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a slave.
When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen, and tremble; and such was
literally the case. I have seen Colonel Lloyd make old Barney, a man
between fifty and sixty years of age, uncover his bald head, kneel down
upon the cold, damp ground, and receive upon his naked and toil-worn
shoulders more than thirty lashes at the time. Colonel Lloyd had three
sons—Edward, Murray, and Daniel,—and three sons-in-law, Mr. Winder, Mr.
Nicholson, and Mr. Lowndes. All of these lived at the Great House Farm,
and enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants when they pleased, from
old Barney down to William Wilkes, the coach-driver. I have seen Winder
make one of the house-servants stand off from him a suitable distance
to be touched with the end of his whip, and at every stroke raise great
ridges upon his back.

To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to
describing the riches of Job. He kept from ten to fifteen
house-servants. He was said to own a thousand slaves, and I think this
estimate quite within the truth. Colonel Lloyd owned so many that he
did not know them when he saw them; nor did all the slaves of the
out-farms know him. It is reported of him, that, while riding along the
road one day, he met a colored man, and addressed him in the usual
manner of speaking to colored people on the public highways of the
south: “Well, boy, whom do you belong to?” “To Colonel Lloyd,” replied
the slave. “Well, does the colonel treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the
ready reply. “What, does he work you too hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well,
don’t he give you enough to eat?” “Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such
as it is.”

The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the
man also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been
conversing with his master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of
the matter, until two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then
informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master,
he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained
and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched
away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more
unrelenting than death. This is the penalty of telling the truth, of
telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions.

It is partly in consequence of such facts, that slaves, when inquired
of as to their condition and the character of their masters, almost
universally say they are contented, and that their masters are kind.
The slaveholders have been known to send in spies among their slaves,
to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to their condition. The
frequency of this has had the effect to establish among the slaves the
maxim, that a still tongue makes a wise head. They suppress the truth
rather than take the consequences of telling it, and in so doing prove
themselves a part of the human family. If they have any thing to say of
their masters, it is generally in their masters’ favor, especially when
speaking to an untried man. I have been frequently asked, when a slave,
if I had a kind master, and do not remember ever to have given a
negative answer; nor did I, in pursuing this course, consider myself as
uttering what was absolutely false; for I always measured the kindness
of my master by the standard of kindness set up among slaveholders
around us. Moreover, slaves are like other people, and imbibe
prejudices quite common to others. They think their own better than
that of others. Many, under the influence of this prejudice, think
their own masters are better than the masters of other slaves; and
this, too, in some cases, when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is
not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves
about the relative goodness of their masters, each contending for the
superior goodness of his own over that of the others. At the very same
time, they mutually execrate their masters when viewed separately. It
was so on our plantation. When Colonel Lloyd’s slaves met the slaves of
Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters;
Colonel Lloyd’s slaves contending that he was the richest, and Mr.
Jepson’s slaves that he was the smartest, and most of a man. Colonel
Lloyd’s slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson.
Mr. Jepson’s slaves would boast his ability to whip Colonel Lloyd.
These quarrels would almost always end in a fight between the parties,
and those that whipped were supposed to have gained the point at issue.
They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was
transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be
a slave; but to be a poor man’s slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!




 CHAPTER IV


Mr. Hopkins remained but a short time in the office of overseer. Why
his career was so short, I do not know, but suppose he lacked the
necessary severity to suit Colonel Lloyd. Mr. Hopkins was succeeded by
Mr. Austin Gore, a man possessing, in an eminent degree, all those
traits of character indispensable to what is called a first-rate
overseer. Mr. Gore had served Colonel Lloyd, in the capacity of
overseer, upon one of the out-farms, and had shown himself worthy of
the high station of overseer upon the home or Great House Farm.

Mr. Gore was proud, ambitious, and persevering. He was artful, cruel,
and obdurate. He was just the man for such a place, and it was just the
place for such a man. It afforded scope for the full exercise of all
his powers, and he seemed to be perfectly at home in it. He was one of
those who could torture the slightest look, word, or gesture, on the
part of the slave, into impudence, and would treat it accordingly.
There must be no answering back to him; no explanation was allowed a
slave, showing himself to have been wrongfully accused. Mr. Gore acted
fully up to the maxim laid down by slaveholders,—“It is better that a
dozen slaves should suffer under the lash, than that the overseer
should be convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at
fault.” No matter how innocent a slave might be—it availed him nothing,
when accused by Mr. Gore of any misdemeanor. To be accused was to be
convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always
following the other with immutable certainty. To escape punishment was
to escape accusation; and few slaves had the fortune to do either,
under the overseership of Mr. Gore. He was just proud enough to demand
the most debasing homage of the slave, and quite servile enough to
crouch, himself, at the feet of the master. He was ambitious enough to
be contented with nothing short of the highest rank of overseers, and
persevering enough to reach the height of his ambition. He was cruel
enough to inflict the severest punishment, artful enough to descend to
the lowest trickery, and obdurate enough to be insensible to the voice
of a reproving conscience. He was, of all the overseers, the most
dreaded by the slaves. His presence was painful; his eye flashed
confusion; and seldom was his sharp, shrill voice heard, without
producing horror and trembling in their ranks.

Mr. Gore was a grave man, and, though a young man, he indulged in no
jokes, said no funny words, seldom smiled. His words were in perfect
keeping with his looks, and his looks were in perfect keeping with his
words. Overseers will sometimes indulge in a witty word, even with the
slaves; not so with Mr. Gore. He spoke but to command, and commanded
but to be obeyed; he dealt sparingly with his words, and bountifully
with his whip, never using the former where the latter would answer as
well. When he whipped, he seemed to do so from a sense of duty, and
feared no consequences. He did nothing reluctantly, no matter how
disagreeable; always at his post, never inconsistent. He never promised
but to fulfil. He was, in a word, a man of the most inflexible firmness
and stone-like coolness.

His savage barbarity was equalled only by the consummate coolness with
which he committed the grossest and most savage deeds upon the slaves
under his charge. Mr. Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel
Lloyd’s slaves, by the name of Demby. He had given Demby but few
stripes, when, to get rid of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself
into a creek, and stood there at the depth of his shoulders, refusing
to come out. Mr. Gore told him that he would give him three calls, and
that, if he did not come out at the third call, he would shoot him. The
first call was given. Demby made no response, but stood his ground. The
second and third calls were given with the same result. Mr. Gore then,
without consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving
Demby an additional call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly
aim at his standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more.
His mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the
water where he had stood.

A thrill of horror flashed through every soul upon the plantation,
excepting Mr. Gore. He alone seemed cool and collected. He was asked by
Colonel Lloyd and my old master, why he resorted to this extraordinary
expedient. His reply was, (as well as I can remember,) that Demby had
become unmanageable. He was setting a dangerous example to the other
slaves,—one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration
on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and
order upon the plantation. He argued that if one slave refused to be
corrected, and escaped with his life, the other slaves would soon copy
the example; the result of which would be, the freedom of the slaves,
and the enslavement of the whites. Mr. Gore’s defence was satisfactory.
He was continued in his station as overseer upon the home plantation.
His fame as an overseer went abroad. His horrid crime was not even
submitted to judicial investigation. It was committed in the presence
of slaves, and they of course could neither institute a suit, nor
testify against him; and thus the guilty perpetrator of one of the
bloodiest and most foul murders goes unwhipped of justice, and
uncensured by the community in which he lives. Mr. Gore lived in St.
Michael’s, Talbot county, Maryland, when I left there; and if he is
still alive, he very probably lives there now; and if so, he is now, as
he was then, as highly esteemed and as much respected as though his
guilty soul had not been stained with his brother’s blood.

I speak advisedly when I say this,—that killing a slave, or any colored
person, in Talbot county, Maryland, is not treated as a crime, either
by the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, of St. Michael’s,
killed two slaves, one of whom he killed with a hatchet, by knocking
his brains out. He used to boast of the commission of the awful and
bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly, saying, among other
things, that he was the only benefactor of his country in the company,
and that when others would do as much as he had done, we should be
relieved of “the d——d niggers.”

The wife of Mr. Giles Hicks, living but a short distance from where I
used to live, murdered my wife’s cousin, a young girl between fifteen
and sixteen years of age, mangling her person in the most horrible
manner, breaking her nose and breastbone with a stick, so that the poor
girl expired in a few hours afterward. She was immediately buried, but
had not been in her untimely grave but a few hours before she was taken
up and examined by the coroner, who decided that she had come to her
death by severe beating. The offence for which this girl was thus
murdered was this:—She had been set that night to mind Mrs. Hicks’s
baby, and during the night she fell asleep, and the baby cried. She,
having lost her rest for several nights previous, did not hear the
crying. They were both in the room with Mrs. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks, finding
the girl slow to move, jumped from her bed, seized an oak stick of wood
by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl’s nose and breastbone, and
thus ended her life. I will not say that this most horrid murder
produced no sensation in the community. It did produce sensation, but
not enough to bring the murderess to punishment. There was a warrant
issued for her arrest, but it was never served. Thus she escaped not
only punishment, but even the pain of being arraigned before a court
for her horrid crime.

Whilst I am detailing bloody deeds which took place during my stay on
Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another, which
occurred about the same time as the murder of Demby by Mr. Gore.

Colonel Lloyd’s slaves were in the habit of spending a part of their
nights and Sundays in fishing for oysters, and in this way made up the
deficiency of their scanty allowance. An old man belonging to Colonel
Lloyd, while thus engaged, happened to get beyond the limits of Colonel
Lloyd’s, and on the premises of Mr. Beal Bondly. At this trespass, Mr.
Bondly took offence, and with his musket came down to the shore, and
blew its deadly contents into the poor old man.

Mr. Bondly came over to see Colonel Lloyd the next day, whether to pay
him for his property, or to justify himself in what he had done, I know
not. At any rate, this whole fiendish transaction was soon hushed up.
There was very little said about it at all, and nothing done. It was a
common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a
half-cent to kill a “nigger,” and a half-cent to bury one.




 CHAPTER V


As to my own treatment while I lived on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, it
was very similar to that of the other slave children. I was not old
enough to work in the field, and there being little else than field
work to do, I had a great deal of leisure time. The most I had to do
was to drive up the cows at evening, keep the fowls out of the garden,
keep the front yard clean, and run of errands for my old master’s
daughter, Mrs. Lucretia Auld. The most of my leisure time I spent in
helping Master Daniel Lloyd in finding his birds, after he had shot
them. My connection with Master Daniel was of some advantage to me. He
became quite attached to me, and was a sort of protector of me. He
would not allow the older boys to impose upon me, and would divide his
cakes with me.

I was seldom whipped by my old master, and suffered little from any
thing else than hunger and cold. I suffered much from hunger, but much
more from cold. In hottest summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost
naked—no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, no trousers, nothing on but a
coarse tow linen shirt, reaching only to my knees. I had no bed. I must
have perished with cold, but that, the coldest nights, I used to steal
a bag which was used for carrying corn to the mill. I would crawl into
this bag, and there sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor, with my head
in and feet out. My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the
pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes.

We were not regularly allowanced. Our food was coarse corn meal boiled.
This was called _mush_. It was put into a large wooden tray or trough,
and set down upon the ground. The children were then called, like so
many pigs, and like so many pigs they would come and devour the mush;
some with oyster-shells, others with pieces of shingle, some with naked
hands, and none with spoons. He that ate fastest got most; he that was
strongest secured the best place; and few left the trough satisfied.

I was probably between seven and eight years old when I left Colonel
Lloyd’s plantation. I left it with joy. I shall never forget the
ecstasy with which I received the intelligence that my old master
(Anthony) had determined to let me go to Baltimore, to live with Mr.
Hugh Auld, brother to my old master’s son-in-law, Captain Thomas Auld.
I received this information about three days before my departure. They
were three of the happiest days I ever enjoyed. I spent the most part
of all these three days in the creek, washing off the plantation scurf,
and preparing myself for my departure.

The pride of appearance which this would indicate was not my own. I
spent the time in washing, not so much because I wished to, but because
Mrs. Lucretia had told me I must get all the dead skin off my feet and
knees before I could go to Baltimore; for the people in Baltimore were
very cleanly, and would laugh at me if I looked dirty. Besides, she was
going to give me a pair of trousers, which I should not put on unless I
got all the dirt off me. The thought of owning a pair of trousers was
great indeed! It was almost a sufficient motive, not only to make me
take off what would be called by pig-drovers the mange, but the skin
itself. I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time with
the hope of reward.

The ties that ordinarily bind children to their homes were all
suspended in my case. I found no severe trial in my departure. My home
was charmless; it was not home to me; on parting from it, I could not
feel that I was leaving any thing which I could have enjoyed by
staying. My mother was dead, my grandmother lived far off, so that I
seldom saw her. I had two sisters and one brother, that lived in the
same house with me; but the early separation of us from our mother had
well nigh blotted the fact of our relationship from our memories. I
looked for home elsewhere, and was confident of finding none which I
should relish less than the one which I was leaving. If, however, I
found in my new home hardship, hunger, whipping, and nakedness, I had
the consolation that I should not have escaped any one of them by
staying. Having already had more than a taste of them in the house of
my old master, and having endured them there, I very naturally inferred
my ability to endure them elsewhere, and especially at Baltimore; for I
had something of the feeling about Baltimore that is expressed in the
proverb, that “being hanged in England is preferable to dying a natural
death in Ireland.” I had the strongest desire to see Baltimore. Cousin
Tom, though not fluent in speech, had inspired me with that desire by
his eloquent description of the place. I could never point out any
thing at the Great House, no matter how beautiful or powerful, but that
he had seen something at Baltimore far exceeding, both in beauty and
strength, the object which I pointed out to him. Even the Great House
itself, with all its pictures, was far inferior to many buildings in
Baltimore. So strong was my desire, that I thought a gratification of
it would fully compensate for whatever loss of comforts I should
sustain by the exchange. I left without a regret, and with the highest
hopes of future happiness.

We sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore on a Saturday morning. I
remember only the day of the week, for at that time I had no knowledge
of the days of the month, nor the months of the year. On setting sail,
I walked aft, and gave to Colonel Lloyd’s plantation what I hoped would
be the last look. I then placed myself in the bows of the sloop, and
there spent the remainder of the day in looking ahead, interesting
myself in what was in the distance rather than in things near by or
behind.

In the afternoon of that day, we reached Annapolis, the capital of the
State. We stopped but a few moments, so that I had no time to go on
shore. It was the first large town that I had ever seen, and though it
would look small compared with some of our New England factory
villages, I thought it a wonderful place for its size—more imposing
even than the Great House Farm!

We arrived at Baltimore early on Sunday morning, landing at Smith’s
Wharf, not far from Bowley’s Wharf. We had on board the sloop a large
flock of sheep; and after aiding in driving them to the slaughterhouse
of Mr. Curtis on Louden Slater’s Hill, I was conducted by Rich, one of
the hands belonging on board of the sloop, to my new home in Alliciana
Street, near Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard, on Fells Point.

Mr. and Mrs. Auld were both at home, and met me at the door with their
little son Thomas, to take care of whom I had been given. And here I
saw what I had never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the
most kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld.
I wish I could describe the rapture that flashed through my soul as I
beheld it. It was a new and strange sight to me, brightening up my
pathway with the light of happiness. Little Thomas was told, there was
his Freddy,—and I was told to take care of little Thomas; and thus I
entered upon the duties of my new home with the most cheering prospect
ahead.

I look upon my departure from Colonel Lloyd’s plantation as one of the
most interesting events of my life. It is possible, and even quite
probable, that but for the mere circumstance of being removed from that
plantation to Baltimore, I should have to-day, instead of being here
seated by my own table, in the enjoyment of freedom and the happiness
of home, writing this Narrative, been confined in the galling chains of
slavery. Going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the
gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity. I have ever regarded it as
the first plain manifestation of that kind providence which has ever
since attended me, and marked my life with so many favors. I regarded
the selection of myself as being somewhat remarkable. There were a
number of slave children that might have been sent from the plantation
to Baltimore. There were those younger, those older, and those of the
same age. I was chosen from among them all, and was the first, last,
and only choice.

I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this
event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But
I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I
suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the
hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false,
and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the
entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be
able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my
career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope
departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me
through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer
thanksgiving and praise.




 CHAPTER VI


My new mistress proved to be all she appeared when I first met her at
the door,—a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings. She had
never had a slave under her control previously to myself, and prior to
her marriage she had been dependent upon her own industry for a living.
She was by trade a weaver; and by constant application to her business,
she had been in a good degree preserved from the blighting and
dehumanizing effects of slavery. I was utterly astonished at her
goodness. I scarcely knew how to behave towards her. She was entirely
unlike any other white woman I had ever seen. I could not approach her
as I was accustomed to approach other white ladies. My early
instruction was all out of place. The crouching servility, usually so
acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward
her. Her favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it.
She did not deem it impudent or unmannerly for a slave to look her in
the face. The meanest slave was put fully at ease in her presence, and
none left without feeling better for having seen her. Her face was made
of heavenly smiles, and her voice of tranquil music.

But, alas! this kind heart had but a short time to remain such. The
fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon
commenced its infernal work. That cheerful eye, under the influence of
slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet
accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic
face gave place to that of a demon.

Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly
commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I had learned this, she
assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just
at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and
at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among
other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave
to read. To use his own words, further, he said, “If you give a nigger
an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey
his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would _spoil_ the best
nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking
of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever
unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of
no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a
great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” These
words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay
slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought.
It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious
things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but
struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most
perplexing difficulty—to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the
black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From
that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom. It was
just what I wanted, and I got it at a time when I the least expected
it. Whilst I was saddened by the thought of losing the aid of my kind
mistress, I was gladdened by the invaluable instruction which, by the
merest accident, I had gained from my master. Though conscious of the
difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and
a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read. The
very decided manner with which he spoke, and strove to impress his wife
with the evil consequences of giving me instruction, served to convince
me that he was deeply sensible of the truths he was uttering. It gave
me the best assurance that I might rely with the utmost confidence on
the results which, he said, would flow from teaching me to read. What
he most dreaded, that I most desired. What he most loved, that I most
hated. That which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was
to me a great good, to be diligently sought; and the argument which he
so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me
with a desire and determination to learn. In learning to read, I owe
almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly
aid of my mistress. I acknowledge the benefit of both.

I had resided but a short time in Baltimore before I observed a marked
difference, in the treatment of slaves, from that which I had witnessed
in the country. A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with a slave
on the plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, and enjoys
privileges altogether unknown to the slave on the plantation. There is
a vestige of decency, a sense of shame, that does much to curb and
check those outbreaks of atrocious cruelty so commonly enacted upon the
plantation. He is a desperate slaveholder, who will shock the humanity
of his non-slaveholding neighbors with the cries of his lacerated
slave. Few are willing to incur the odium attaching to the reputation
of being a cruel master; and above all things, they would not be known
as not giving a slave enough to eat. Every city slaveholder is anxious
to have it known of him, that he feeds his slaves well; and it is due
to them to say, that most of them do give their slaves enough to eat.
There are, however, some painful exceptions to this rule. Directly
opposite to us, on Philpot Street, lived Mr. Thomas Hamilton. He owned
two slaves. Their names were Henrietta and Mary. Henrietta was about
twenty-two years of age, Mary was about fourteen; and of all the
mangled and emaciated creatures I ever looked upon, these two were the
most so. His heart must be harder than stone, that could look upon
these unmoved. The head, neck, and shoulders of Mary were literally cut
to pieces. I have frequently felt her head, and found it nearly covered
with festering sores, caused by the lash of her cruel mistress. I do
not know that her master ever whipped her, but I have been an
eye-witness to the cruelty of Mrs. Hamilton. I used to be in Mr.
Hamilton’s house nearly every day. Mrs. Hamilton used to sit in a large
chair in the middle of the room, with a heavy cowskin always by her
side, and scarce an hour passed during the day but was marked by the
blood of one of these slaves. The girls seldom passed her without her
saying, “Move faster, you _black gip!_” at the same time giving them a
blow with the cowskin over the head or shoulders, often drawing the
blood. She would then say, “Take that, you _black gip!_” continuing,
“If you don’t move faster, I’ll move you!” Added to the cruel lashings
to which these slaves were subjected, they were kept nearly
half-starved. They seldom knew what it was to eat a full meal. I have
seen Mary contending with the pigs for the offal thrown into the
street. So much was Mary kicked and cut to pieces, that she was oftener
called “_pecked_” than by her name.




 CHAPTER VII


I lived in Master Hugh’s family about seven years. During this time, I
succeeded in learning to read and write. In accomplishing this, I was
compelled to resort to various stratagems. I had no regular teacher. My
mistress, who had kindly commenced to instruct me, had, in compliance
with the advice and direction of her husband, not only ceased to
instruct, but had set her face against my being instructed by any one
else. It is due, however, to my mistress to say of her, that she did
not adopt this course of treatment immediately. She at first lacked the
depravity indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness. It was at
least necessary for her to have some training in the exercise of
irresponsible power, to make her equal to the task of treating me as
though I were a brute.

My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tender-hearted woman; and
in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live
with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat
another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem
to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and
that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but
dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me.
When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman.
There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had
bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every
mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to
divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender
heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of
tiger-like fierceness. The first step in her downward course was in her
ceasing to instruct me. She now commenced to practise her husband’s
precepts. She finally became even more violent in her opposition than
her husband himself. She was not satisfied with simply doing as well as
he had commanded; she seemed anxious to do better. Nothing seemed to
make her more angry than to see me with a newspaper. She seemed to
think that here lay the danger. I have had her rush at me with a face
made all up of fury, and snatch from me a newspaper, in a manner that
fully revealed her apprehension. She was an apt woman; and a little
experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and
slavery were incompatible with each other.

From this time I was most narrowly watched. If I was in a separate room
any considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a
book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. All this,
however, was too late. The first step had been taken. Mistress, in
teaching me the alphabet, had given me the _inch,_ and no precaution
could prevent me from taking the _ell._

The plan which I adopted, and the one by which I was most successful,
was that of making friends of all the little white boys whom I met in
the street. As many of these as I could, I converted into teachers.
With their kindly aid, obtained at different times and in different
places, I finally succeeded in learning to read. When I was sent of
errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my
errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return. I used
also to carry bread with me, enough of which was always in the house,
and to which I was always welcome; for I was much better off in this
regard than many of the poor white children in our neighborhood. This
bread I used to bestow upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return,
would give me that more valuable bread of knowledge. I am strongly
tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a
testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them; but prudence
forbids;—not that it would injure me, but it might embarrass them; for
it is almost an unpardonable offence to teach slaves to read in this
Christian country. It is enough to say of the dear little fellows, that
they lived on Philpot Street, very near Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard.
I used to talk this matter of slavery over with them. I would sometimes
say to them, I wished I could be as free as they would be when they got
to be men. “You will be free as soon as you are twenty-one, _but I am a
slave for life!_ Have not I as good a right to be free as you have?”
These words used to trouble them; they would express for me the
liveliest sympathy, and console me with the hope that something would
occur by which I might be free.

I was now about twelve years old, and the thought of being _a slave for
life_ began to bear heavily upon my heart. Just about this time, I got
hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I
got, I used to read this book. Among much of other interesting matter,
I found in it a dialogue between a master and his slave. The slave was
represented as having run away from his master three times. The
dialogue represented the conversation which took place between them,
when the slave was retaken the third time. In this dialogue, the whole
argument in behalf of slavery was brought forward by the master, all of
which was disposed of by the slave. The slave was made to say some very
smart as well as impressive things in reply to his master—things which
had the desired though unexpected effect; for the conversation resulted
in the voluntary emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.

In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches on and
in behalf of Catholic emancipation. These were choice documents to me.
I read them over and over again with unabated interest. They gave
tongue to interesting thoughts of my own soul, which had frequently
flashed through my mind, and died away for want of utterance. The moral
which I gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the
conscience of even a slaveholder. What I got from Sheridan was a bold
denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.
The reading of these documents enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to
meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery; but while they
relieved me of one difficulty, they brought on another even more
painful than the one of which I was relieved. The more I read, the more
I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no
other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their
homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a
strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest
as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the
subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had
predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment
and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I
would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than
a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without
the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder
upon which to get out. In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves
for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred
the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter
what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my
condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was
pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or
inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal
wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was
heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to
torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without
seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without
feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm,
breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself
dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I
should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have
been killed. While in this state of mind, I was eager to hear any one
speak of slavery. I was a ready listener. Every little while, I could
hear something about the abolitionists. It was some time before I found
what the word meant. It was always used in such connections as to make
it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and succeeded in
getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or
did any thing very wrong in the mind of a slaveholder, it was spoken of
as the fruit of _abolition._ Hearing the word in this connection very
often, I set about learning what it meant. The dictionary afforded me
little or no help. I found it was “the act of abolishing;” but then I
did not know what was to be abolished. Here I was perplexed. I did not
dare to ask any one about its meaning, for I was satisfied that it was
something they wanted me to know very little about. After a patient
waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the
number of petitions from the north, praying for the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia, and of the slave trade between the
States. From this time I understood the words _abolition_ and
_abolitionist,_ and always drew near when that word was spoken,
expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-slaves.
The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the wharf
of Mr. Waters; and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I
went, unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came
to me and asked me if I were a slave. I told him I was. He asked, “Are
ye a slave for life?” I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed
to be deeply affected by the statement. He said to the other that it
was a pity so fine a little fellow as myself should be a slave for
life. He said it was a shame to hold me. They both advised me to run
away to the north; that I should find friends there, and that I should
be free. I pretended not to be interested in what they said, and
treated them as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might
be treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves to
escape, and then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to
their masters. I was afraid that these seemingly good men might use me
so; but I nevertheless remembered their advice, and from that time I
resolved to run away. I looked forward to a time at which it would be
safe for me to escape. I was too young to think of doing so
immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I might have
occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I
should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write.

The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being
in Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship
carpenters, after hewing, and getting a piece of timber ready for use,
write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was
intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the larboard side, it
would be marked thus—“L.” When a piece was for the starboard side, it
would be marked thus—“S.” A piece for the larboard side forward, would
be marked thus—“L. F.” When a piece was for starboard side forward, it
would be marked thus—“S. F.” For larboard aft, it would be marked
thus—“L. A.” For starboard aft, it would be marked thus—“S. A.” I soon
learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended
when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately
commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four
letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could
write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word
would be, “I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.” I would then
make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him
to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which
it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way.
During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and
pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned
mainly how to write. I then commenced and continued copying the Italics
in Webster’s Spelling Book, until I could make them all without looking
on the book. By this time, my little Master Thomas had gone to school,
and learned how to write, and had written over a number of copy-books.
These had been brought home, and shown to some of our near neighbors,
and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class meeting at the
Wilk Street meetinghouse every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take
care of the house. When left thus, I used to spend the time in writing
in the spaces left in Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had
written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar
to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years,
I finally succeeded in learning how to write.




 CHAPTER VIII


In a very short time after I went to live at Baltimore, my old master’s
youngest son Richard died; and in about three years and six months
after his death, my old master, Captain Anthony, died, leaving only his
son, Andrew, and daughter, Lucretia, to share his estate. He died while
on a visit to see his daughter at Hillsborough. Cut off thus
unexpectedly, he left no will as to the disposal of his property. It
was therefore necessary to have a valuation of the property, that it
might be equally divided between Mrs. Lucretia and Master Andrew. I was
immediately sent for, to be valued with the other property. Here again
my feelings rose up in detestation of slavery. I had now a new
conception of my degraded condition. Prior to this, I had become, if
not insensible to my lot, at least partly so. I left Baltimore with a
young heart overborne with sadness, and a soul full of apprehension. I
took passage with Captain Rowe, in the schooner Wild Cat, and, after a
sail of about twenty-four hours, I found myself near the place of my
birth. I had now been absent from it almost, if not quite, five years.
I, however, remembered the place very well. I was only about five years
old when I left it, to go and live with my old master on Colonel
Lloyd’s plantation; so that I was now between ten and eleven years old.

We were all ranked together at the valuation. Men and women, old and
young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.
There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all
holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to
the same narrow examination. Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth,
maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection. At
this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of
slavery upon both slave and slaveholder.

After the valuation, then came the division. I have no language to
express the high excitement and deep anxiety which were felt among us
poor slaves during this time. Our fate for life was now to be decided.
We had no more voice in that decision than the brutes among whom we
were ranked. A single word from the white men was enough—against all
our wishes, prayers, and entreaties—to sunder forever the dearest
friends, dearest kindred, and strongest ties known to human beings. In
addition to the pain of separation, there was the horrid dread of
falling into the hands of Master Andrew. He was known to us all as
being a most cruel wretch,—a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless
mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a large
portion of his father’s property. We all felt that we might as well be
sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we
knew that that would be our inevitable condition,—a condition held by
us all in the utmost horror and dread.

I suffered more anxiety than most of my fellow-slaves. I had known what
it was to be kindly treated; they had known nothing of the kind. They
had seen little or nothing of the world. They were in very deed men and
women of sorrow, and acquainted with grief. Their backs had been made
familiar with the bloody lash, so that they had become callous; mine
was yet tender; for while at Baltimore I got few whippings, and few
slaves could boast of a kinder master and mistress than myself; and the
thought of passing out of their hands into those of Master Andrew—a man
who, but a few days before, to give me a sample of his bloody
disposition, took my little brother by the throat, threw him on the
ground, and with the heel of his boot stamped upon his head till the
blood gushed from his nose and ears—was well calculated to make me
anxious as to my fate. After he had committed this savage outrage upon
my brother, he turned to me, and said that was the way he meant to
serve me one of these days,—meaning, I suppose, when I came into his
possession.

Thanks to a kind Providence, I fell to the portion of Mrs. Lucretia,
and was sent immediately back to Baltimore, to live again in the family
of Master Hugh. Their joy at my return equalled their sorrow at my
departure. It was a glad day to me. I had escaped a worse than lion’s
jaws. I was absent from Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and
division, just about one month, and it seemed to have been six.

Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mistress, Lucretia, died,
leaving her husband and one child, Amanda; and in a very short time
after her death, Master Andrew died. Now all the property of my old
master, slaves included, was in the hands of strangers,—strangers who
had had nothing to do with accumulating it. Not a slave was left free.
All remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest. If any one thing
in my experience, more than another, served to deepen my conviction of
the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with unutterable
loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to my poor old
grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from youth to old
age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had peopled his
plantation with slaves; she had become a great grandmother in his
service. She had rocked him in infancy, attended him in childhood,
served him through life, and at his death wiped from his icy brow the
cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She was nevertheless
left a slave—a slave for life—a slave in the hands of strangers; and in
their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren, and her
great-grandchildren, divided, like so many sheep, without being
gratified with the small privilege of a single word, as to their or her
own destiny. And, to cap the climax of their base ingratitude and
fiendish barbarity, my grandmother, who was now very old, having
outlived my old master and all his children, having seen the beginning
and end of all of them, and her present owners finding she was of but
little value, her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and
complete helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs, they
took her to the woods, built her a little hut, put up a little
mud-chimney, and then made her welcome to the privilege of supporting
herself there in perfect loneliness; thus virtually turning her out to
die! If my poor old grandmother now lives, she lives to suffer in utter
loneliness; she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children,
the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They
are, in the language of the slave’s poet, Whittier,—

“Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever-demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air:—
Gone, gone, sold and gone
To the rice swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia hills and waters—
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!”


The hearth is desolate. The children, the unconscious children, who
once sang and danced in her presence, are gone. She gropes her way, in
the darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her
children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the
screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And
now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head
inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence
meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together—at this
time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that
tenderness and affection which children only can exercise towards a
declining parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve
children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim
embers. She stands—she sits—she staggers—she falls—she groans—she
dies—and there are none of her children or grandchildren present, to
wipe from her wrinkled brow the cold sweat of death, or to place
beneath the sod her fallen remains. Will not a righteous God visit for
these things?

In about two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas
married his second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton. She was the
eldest daughter of Mr. William Hamilton. Master now lived in St.
Michael’s. Not long after his marriage, a misunderstanding took place
between himself and Master Hugh; and as a means of punishing his
brother, he took me from him to live with himself at St. Michael’s.
Here I underwent another most painful separation. It, however, was not
so severe as the one I dreaded at the division of property; for, during
this interval, a great change had taken place in Master Hugh and his
once kind and affectionate wife. The influence of brandy upon him, and
of slavery upon her, had effected a disastrous change in the characters
of both; so that, as far as they were concerned, I thought I had little
to lose by the change. But it was not to them that I was attached. It
was to those little Baltimore boys that I felt the strongest
attachment. I had received many good lessons from them, and was still
receiving them, and the thought of leaving them was painful indeed. I
was leaving, too, without the hope of ever being allowed to return.
Master Thomas had said he would never let me return again. The barrier
betwixt himself and brother he considered impassable.

I then had to regret that I did not at least make the attempt to carry
out my resolution to run away; for the chances of success are tenfold
greater from the city than from the country.

I sailed from Baltimore for St. Michael’s in the sloop Amanda, Captain
Edward Dodson. On my passage, I paid particular attention to the
direction which the steamboats took to go to Philadelphia. I found,
instead of going down, on reaching North Point they went up the bay, in
a north-easterly direction. I deemed this knowledge of the utmost
importance. My determination to run away was again revived. I resolved
to wait only so long as the offering of a favorable opportunity. When
that came, I was determined to be off.




 CHAPTER IX


I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left
Baltimore, and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael’s,
in March, 1832. It was now more than seven years since I lived with him
in the family of my old master, on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. We of
course were now almost entire strangers to each other. He was to me a
new master, and I to him a new slave. I was ignorant of his temper and
disposition; he was equally so of mine. A very short time, however,
brought us into full acquaintance with each other. I was made
acquainted with his wife not less than with himself. They were well
matched, being equally mean and cruel. I was now, for the first time
during a space of more than seven years, made to feel the painful
gnawings of hunger—a something which I had not experienced before since
I left Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. It went hard enough with me then,
when I could look back to no period at which I had enjoyed a
sufficiency. It was tenfold harder after living in Master Hugh’s
family, where I had always had enough to eat, and of that which was
good. I have said Master Thomas was a mean man. He was so. Not to give
a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development
of meanness even among slaveholders. The rule is, no matter how coarse
the food, only let there be enough of it. This is the theory; and in
the part of Maryland from which I came, it is the general
practice,—though there are many exceptions. Master Thomas gave us
enough of neither coarse nor fine food. There were four slaves of us in
the kitchen—my sister Eliza, my aunt Priscilla, Henny, and myself; and
we were allowed less than a half of a bushel of corn-meal per week, and
very little else, either in the shape of meat or vegetables. It was not
enough for us to subsist upon. We were therefore reduced to the
wretched necessity of living at the expense of our neighbors. This we
did by begging and stealing, whichever came handy in the time of need,
the one being considered as legitimate as the other. A great many times
have we poor creatures been nearly perishing with hunger, when food in
abundance lay mouldering in the safe and smoke-house, and our pious
mistress was aware of the fact; and yet that mistress and her husband
would kneel every morning, and pray that God would bless them in basket
and store!

Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every
element of character commanding respect. My master was one of this rare
sort. I do not know of one single noble act ever performed by him. The
leading trait in his character was meanness; and if there were any
other element in his nature, it was made subject to this. He was mean;
and, like most other mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his
meanness. Captain Auld was not born a slaveholder. He had been a poor
man, master only of a Bay craft. He came into possession of all his
slaves by marriage; and of all men, adopted slaveholders are the worst.
He was cruel, but cowardly. He commanded without firmness. In the
enforcement of his rules, he was at times rigid, and at times lax. At
times, he spoke to his slaves with the firmness of Napoleon and the
fury of a demon; at other times, he might well be mistaken for an
inquirer who had lost his way. He did nothing of himself. He might have
passed for a lion, but for his ears. In all things noble which he
attempted, his own meanness shone most conspicuous. His airs, words,
and actions, were the airs, words, and actions of born slaveholders,
and, being assumed, were awkward enough. He was not even a good
imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the
power. Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the
copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of
inconsistency; and of consequence he was an object of contempt, and was
held as such even by his slaves. The luxury of having slaves of his own
to wait upon him was something new and unprepared for. He was a
slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves. He found himself
incapable of managing his slaves either by force, fear, or fraud. We
seldom called him “master;” we generally called him “Captain Auld,” and
were hardly disposed to title him at all. I doubt not that our conduct
had much to do with making him appear awkward, and of consequence
fretful. Our want of reverence for him must have perplexed him greatly.
He wished to have us call him master, but lacked the firmness necessary
to command us to do so. His wife used to insist upon our calling him
so, but to no purpose. In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist
camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced
religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to
emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at
any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both
these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to
emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him
more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been
a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his
conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him
in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious
sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest
pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed
morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his
brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity
in revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands
of the church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers’
home. They used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for
while he starved us, he stuffed them. We have had three or four
preachers there at a time. The names of those who used to come most
frequently while I lived there, were Mr. Storks, Mr. Ewery, Mr.
Humphry, and Mr. Hickey. I have also seen Mr. George Cookman at our
house. We slaves loved Mr. Cookman. We believed him to be a good man.
We thought him instrumental in getting Mr. Samuel Harrison, a very rich
slaveholder, to emancipate his slaves; and by some means got the
impression that he was laboring to effect the emancipation of all the
slaves. When he was at our house, we were sure to be called in to
prayers. When the others were there, we were sometimes called in and
sometimes not. Mr. Cookman took more notice of us than either of the
other ministers. He could not come among us without betraying his
sympathy for us, and, stupid as we were, we had the sagacity to see it.

While I lived with my master in St. Michael’s, there was a white young
man, a Mr. Wilson, who proposed to keep a Sabbath school for the
instruction of such slaves as might be disposed to learn to read the
New Testament. We met but three times, when Mr. West and Mr. Fairbanks,
both class-leaders, with many others, came upon us with sticks and
other missiles, drove us off, and forbade us to meet again. Thus ended
our little Sabbath school in the pious town of St. Michael’s.

I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an
example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I
have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy
cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip;
and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage
of Scripture—“He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not,
shall be beaten with many stripes.”

Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid
situation four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up
early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to
his store, return at dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the
places already made raw with his cruel lash. The secret of master’s
cruelty toward “Henny” is found in the fact of her being almost
helpless. When quite a child, she fell into the fire, and burned
herself horribly. Her hands were so burnt that she never got the use of
them. She could do very little but bear heavy burdens. She was to
master a bill of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant
offence to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of
existence. He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift,
she was not disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use
his own words, “set her adrift to take care of herself.” Here was a
recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same
time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas
was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very
charitable purpose of taking care of them.

My master and myself had quite a number of differences. He found me
unsuitable to his purpose. My city life, he said, had had a very
pernicious effect upon me. It had almost ruined me for every good
purpose, and fitted me for every thing which was bad. One of my
greatest faults was that of letting his horse run away, and go down to
his father-in-law’s farm, which was about five miles from St.
Michael’s. I would then have to go after it. My reason for this kind of
carelessness, or carefulness, was, that I could always get something to
eat when I went there. Master William Hamilton, my master’s
father-in-law, always gave his slaves enough to eat. I never left there
hungry, no matter how great the need of my speedy return. Master Thomas
at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine
months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings,
all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be
broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named
Edward Covey. Mr. Covey was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the
place upon which he lived, as also the hands with which he tilled it.
Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young
slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him
to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could
have had it done without such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought
it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for
the sake of the training to which they were subjected, without any
other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in
consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of
Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion—a pious soul—a member and a
class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his
reputation as a “nigger-breaker.” I was aware of all the facts, having
been made acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I
nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough
to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man.




 CHAPTER X


I had left Master Thomas’s house, and went to live with Mr. Covey, on
the 1st of January, 1833. I was now, for the first time in my life, a
field hand. In my new employment, I found myself even more awkward than
a country boy appeared to be in a large city. I had been at my new home
but one week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whipping, cutting
my back, causing the blood to run, and raising ridges on my flesh as
large as my little finger. The details of this affair are as follows:
Mr. Covey sent me, very early in the morning of one of our coldest days
in the month of January, to the woods, to get a load of wood. He gave
me a team of unbroken oxen. He told me which was the in-hand ox, and
which the off-hand one. He then tied the end of a large rope around the
horns of the in-hand ox, and gave me the other end of it, and told me,
if the oxen started to run, that I must hold on upon the rope. I had
never driven oxen before, and of course I was very awkward. I, however,
succeeded in getting to the edge of the woods with little difficulty;
but I had got a very few rods into the woods, when the oxen took
fright, and started full tilt, carrying the cart against trees, and
over stumps, in the most frightful manner. I expected every moment that
my brains would be dashed out against the trees. After running thus for
a considerable distance, they finally upset the cart, dashing it with
great force against a tree, and threw themselves into a dense thicket.
How I escaped death, I do not know. There I was, entirely alone, in a
thick wood, in a place new to me. My cart was upset and shattered, my
oxen were entangled among the young trees, and there was none to help
me. After a long spell of effort, I succeeded in getting my cart
righted, my oxen disentangled, and again yoked to the cart. I now
proceeded with my team to the place where I had, the day before, been
chopping wood, and loaded my cart pretty heavily, thinking in this way
to tame my oxen. I then proceeded on my way home. I had now consumed
one half of the day. I got out of the woods safely, and now felt out of
danger. I stopped my oxen to open the woods gate; and just as I did so,
before I could get hold of my ox-rope, the oxen again started, rushed
through the gate, catching it between the wheel and the body of the
cart, tearing it to pieces, and coming within a few inches of crushing
me against the gate-post. Thus twice, in one short day, I escaped death
by the merest chance. On my return, I told Mr. Covey what had happened,
and how it happened. He ordered me to return to the woods again
immediately. I did so, and he followed on after me. Just as I got into
the woods, he came up and told me to stop my cart, and that he would
teach me how to trifle away my time, and break gates. He then went to a
large gum-tree, and with his axe cut three large switches, and, after
trimming them up neatly with his pocketknife, he ordered me to take off
my clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He
repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip
myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore
off my clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his switches,
cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for a long time
after. This whipping was the first of a number just like it, and for
similar offences.

I lived with Mr. Covey one year. During the first six months, of that
year, scarce a week passed without his whipping me. I was seldom free
from a sore back. My awkwardness was almost always his excuse for
whipping me. We were worked fully up to the point of endurance. Long
before day we were up, our horses fed, and by the first approach of day
we were off to the field with our hoes and ploughing teams. Mr. Covey
gave us enough to eat, but scarce time to eat it. We were often less
than five minutes taking our meals. We were often in the field from the
first approach of day till its last lingering ray had left us; and at
saving-fodder time, midnight often caught us in the field binding
blades.

Covey would be out with us. The way he used to stand it, was this. He
would spend the most of his afternoons in bed. He would then come out
fresh in the evening, ready to urge us on with his words, example, and
frequently with the whip. Mr. Covey was one of the few slaveholders who
could and did work with his hands. He was a hard-working man. He knew
by himself just what a man or a boy could do. There was no deceiving
him. His work went on in his absence almost as well as in his presence;
and he had the faculty of making us feel that he was ever present with
us. This he did by surprising us. He seldom approached the spot where
we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed at
taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that we used to call him,
among ourselves, “the snake.” When we were at work in the cornfield, he
would sometimes crawl on his hands and knees to avoid detection, and
all at once he would rise nearly in our midst, and scream out, “Ha, ha!
Come, come! Dash on, dash on!” This being his mode of attack, it was
never safe to stop a single minute. His comings were like a thief in
the night. He appeared to us as being ever at hand. He was under every
tree, behind every stump, in every bush, and at every window, on the
plantation. He would sometimes mount his horse, as if bound to St.
Michael’s, a distance of seven miles, and in half an hour afterwards
you would see him coiled up in the corner of the wood-fence, watching
every motion of the slaves. He would, for this purpose, leave his horse
tied up in the woods. Again, he would sometimes walk up to us, and give
us orders as though he was upon the point of starting on a long
journey, turn his back upon us, and make as though he was going to the
house to get ready; and, before he would get half way thither, he would
turn short and crawl into a fence-corner, or behind some tree, and
there watch us till the going down of the sun.

Mr. Covey’s _forte_ consisted in his power to deceive. His life was
devoted to planning and perpetrating the grossest deceptions. Every
thing he possessed in the shape of learning or religion, he made
conform to his disposition to deceive. He seemed to think himself equal
to deceiving the Almighty. He would make a short prayer in the morning,
and a long prayer at night; and, strange as it may seem, few men would
at times appear more devotional than he. The exercises of his family
devotions were always commenced with singing; and, as he was a very
poor singer himself, the duty of raising the hymn generally came upon
me. He would read his hymn, and nod at me to commence. I would at times
do so; at others, I would not. My non-compliance would almost always
produce much confusion. To show himself independent of me, he would
start and stagger through with his hymn in the most discordant manner.
In this state of mind, he prayed with more than ordinary spirit. Poor
man! such was his disposition, and success at deceiving, I do verily
believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief, that
he was a sincere worshipper of the most high God; and this, too, at a
time when he may be said to have been guilty of compelling his woman
slave to commit the sin of adultery. The facts in the case are these:
Mr. Covey was a poor man; he was just commencing in life; he was only
able to buy one slave; and, shocking as is the fact, he bought her, as
he said, for _a breeder_. This woman was named Caroline. Mr. Covey
bought her from Mr. Thomas Lowe, about six miles from St. Michael’s.
She was a large, able-bodied woman, about twenty years old. She had
already given birth to one child, which proved her to be just what he
wanted. After buying her, he hired a married man of Mr. Samuel
Harrison, to live with him one year; and him he used to fasten up with
her every night! The result was, that, at the end of the year, the
miserable woman gave birth to twins. At this result Mr. Covey seemed to
be highly pleased, both with the man and the wretched woman. Such was
his joy, and that of his wife, that nothing they could do for Caroline
during her confinement was too good, or too hard, to be done. The
children were regarded as being quite an addition to his wealth.

If at any one time of my life more than another, I was made to drink
the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six
months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It
was never too hot or too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or
snow, too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was
scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days
were too short for him, and the shortest nights too long for him. I was
somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this
discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken
in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my
intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful
spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed
in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!

Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
stupor, between sleep and wake, under some large tree. At times I would
rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and
then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
I was sometimes prompted to take my life, and that of Covey, but was
prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings on this
plantation seem now like a dream rather than a stern reality.

Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad
bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to
the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and
torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often, in the
deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty
banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The
sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel
utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour
out my soul’s complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the
moving multitude of ships:—

“You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my
chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I
sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels,
that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were
free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your
protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go
on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O,
why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone;
she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of
unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is
there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it.
Get caught, or get clear, I’ll try it. I had as well die with ague as
the fever. I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed
running as die standing. Only think of it; one hundred miles straight
north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God helping me, I will. It cannot be
that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water. This very
bay shall yet bear me into freedom. The steamboats steered in a
north-east course from North Point. I will do the same; and when I get
to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and walk straight
through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not be
required to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed. Let but
the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I am off. Meanwhile,
I will try to bear up under the yoke. I am not the only slave in the
world. Why should I fret? I can bear as much as any of them. Besides, I
am but a boy, and all boys are bound to some one. It may be that my
misery in slavery will only increase my happiness when I get free.
There is a better day coming.”

Thus I used to think, and thus I used to speak to myself; goaded almost
to madness at one moment, and at the next reconciling myself to my
wretched lot.

I have already intimated that my condition was much worse, during the
first six months of my stay at Mr. Covey’s, than in the last six. The
circumstances leading to the change in Mr. Covey’s course toward me
form an epoch in my humble history. You have seen how a man was made a
slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man. On one of the hottest
days of the month of August, 1833, Bill Smith, William Hughes, a slave
named Eli, and myself, were engaged in fanning wheat. Hughes was
clearing the fanned wheat from before the fan. Eli was turning, Smith
was feeding, and I was carrying wheat to the fan. The work was simple,
requiring strength rather than intellect; yet, to one entirely unused
to such work, it came very hard. About three o’clock of that day, I
broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching
of the head, attended with extreme dizziness; I trembled in every limb.
Finding what was coming, I nerved myself up, feeling it would never do
to stop work. I stood as long as I could stagger to the hopper with
grain. When I could stand no longer, I fell, and felt as if held down
by an immense weight. The fan of course stopped; every one had his own
work to do; and no one could do the work of the other, and have his own
go on at the same time.

Mr. Covey was at the house, about one hundred yards from the
treading-yard where we were fanning. On hearing the fan stop, he left
immediately, and came to the spot where we were. He hastily inquired
what the matter was. Bill answered that I was sick, and there was no
one to bring wheat to the fan. I had by this time crawled away under
the side of the post and rail-fence by which the yard was enclosed,
hoping to find relief by getting out of the sun. He then asked where I
was. He was told by one of the hands. He came to the spot, and, after
looking at me awhile, asked me what was the matter. I told him as well
as I could, for I scarce had strength to speak. He then gave me a
savage kick in the side, and told me to get up. I tried to do so, but
fell back in the attempt. He gave me another kick, and again told me to
rise. I again tried, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but, stooping to
get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and
fell. While down in this situation, Mr. Covey took up the hickory slat
with which Hughes had been striking off the half-bushel measure, and
with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a large wound, and
the blood ran freely; and with this again told me to get up. I made no
effort to comply, having now made up my mind to let him do his worst.
In a short time after receiving this blow, my head grew better. Mr.
Covey had now left me to my fate. At this moment I resolved, for the
first time, to go to my master, enter a complaint, and ask his
protection. In order to do this, I must that afternoon walk seven
miles; and this, under the circumstances, was truly a severe
undertaking. I was exceedingly feeble; made so as much by the kicks and
blows which I received, as by the severe fit of sickness to which I had
been subjected. I, however, watched my chance, while Covey was looking
in an opposite direction, and started for St. Michael’s. I succeeded in
getting a considerable distance on my way to the woods, when Covey
discovered me, and called after me to come back, threatening what he
would do if I did not come. I disregarded both his calls and his
threats, and made my way to the woods as fast as my feeble state would
allow; and thinking I might be overhauled by him if I kept the road, I
walked through the woods, keeping far enough from the road to avoid
detection, and near enough to prevent losing my way. I had not gone far
before my little strength again failed me. I could go no farther. I
fell down, and lay for a considerable time. The blood was yet oozing
from the wound on my head. For a time I thought I should bleed to
death; and think now that I should have done so, but that the blood so
matted my hair as to stop the wound. After lying there about three
quarters of an hour, I nerved myself up again, and started on my way,
through bogs and briers, barefooted and bareheaded, tearing my feet
sometimes at nearly every step; and after a journey of about seven
miles, occupying some five hours to perform it, I arrived at master’s
store. I then presented an appearance enough to affect any but a heart
of iron. From the crown of my head to my feet, I was covered with
blood. My hair was all clotted with dust and blood; my shirt was stiff
with blood. I suppose I looked like a man who had escaped a den of wild
beasts, and barely escaped them. In this state I appeared before my
master, humbly entreating him to interpose his authority for my
protection. I told him all the circumstances as well as I could, and it
seemed, as I spoke, at times to affect him. He would then walk the
floor, and seek to justify Covey by saying he expected I deserved it.
He asked me what I wanted. I told him, to let me get a new home; that
as sure as I lived with Mr. Covey again, I should live with but to die
with him; that Covey would surely kill me; he was in a fair way for it.
Master Thomas ridiculed the idea that there was any danger of Mr.
Covey’s killing me, and said that he knew Mr. Covey; that he was a good
man, and that he could not think of taking me from him; that, should he
do so, he would lose the whole year’s wages; that I belonged to Mr.
Covey for one year, and that I must go back to him, come what might;
and that I must not trouble him with any more stories, or that he would
himself _get hold of me_. After threatening me thus, he gave me a very
large dose of salts, telling me that I might remain in St. Michael’s
that night, (it being quite late,) but that I must be off back to Mr.
Covey’s early in the morning; and that if I did not, he would _get hold
of me,_ which meant that he would whip me. I remained all night, and,
according to his orders, I started off to Covey’s in the morning,
(Saturday morning,) wearied in body and broken in spirit. I got no
supper that night, or breakfast that morning. I reached Covey’s about
nine o’clock; and just as I was getting over the fence that divided
Mrs. Kemp’s fields from ours, out ran Covey with his cowskin, to give
me another whipping. Before he could reach me, I succeeded in getting
to the cornfield; and as the corn was very high, it afforded me the
means of hiding. He seemed very angry, and searched for me a long time.
My behavior was altogether unaccountable. He finally gave up the chase,
thinking, I suppose, that I must come home for something to eat; he
would give himself no further trouble in looking for me. I spent that
day mostly in the woods, having the alternative before me,—to go home
and be whipped to death, or stay in the woods and be starved to death.
That night, I fell in with Sandy Jenkins, a slave with whom I was
somewhat acquainted. Sandy had a free wife who lived about four miles
from Mr. Covey’s; and it being Saturday, he was on his way to see her.
I told him my circumstances, and he very kindly invited me to go home
with him. I went home with him, and talked this whole matter over, and
got his advice as to what course it was best for me to pursue. I found
Sandy an old adviser. He told me, with great solemnity, I must go back
to Covey; but that before I went, I must go with him into another part
of the woods, where there was a certain _root,_ which, if I would take
some of it with me, carrying it _always on my right side,_ would render
it impossible for Mr. Covey, or any other white man, to whip me. He
said he had carried it for years; and since he had done so, he had
never received a blow, and never expected to while he carried it. I at
first rejected the idea, that the simple carrying of a root in my
pocket would have any such effect as he had said, and was not disposed
to take it; but Sandy impressed the necessity with much earnestness,
telling me it could do no harm, if it did no good. To please him, I at
length took the root, and, according to his direction, carried it upon
my right side. This was Sunday morning. I immediately started for home;
and upon entering the yard gate, out came Mr. Covey on his way to
meeting. He spoke to me very kindly, bade me drive the pigs from a lot
near by, and passed on towards the church. Now, this singular conduct
of Mr. Covey really made me begin to think that there was something in
the _root_ which Sandy had given me; and had it been on any other day
than Sunday, I could have attributed the conduct to no other cause than
the influence of that root; and as it was, I was half inclined to think
the _root_ to be something more than I at first had taken it to be. All
went well till Monday morning. On this morning, the virtue of the
_root_ was fully tested. Long before daylight, I was called to go and
rub, curry, and feed, the horses. I obeyed, and was glad to obey. But
whilst thus engaged, whilst in the act of throwing down some blades
from the loft, Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope; and just
as I was half out of the loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about
tying me. As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring,
and as I did so, he holding to my legs, I was brought sprawling on the
stable floor. Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do
what he pleased; but at this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t
know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I
seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to
me, and I to him. My resistance was so entirely unexpected that Covey
seemed taken all aback. He trembled like a leaf. This gave me
assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I
touched him with the ends of my fingers. Mr. Covey soon called out to
Hughes for help. Hughes came, and, while Covey held me, attempted to
tie my right hand. While he was in the act of doing so, I watched my
chance, and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs. This kick
fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left me in the hands of Mr. Covey.
This kick had the effect of not only weakening Hughes, but Covey also.
When he saw Hughes bending over with pain, his courage quailed. He
asked me if I meant to persist in my resistance. I told him I did, come
what might; that he had used me like a brute for six months, and that I
was determined to be used so no longer. With that, he strove to drag me
to a stick that was lying just out of the stable door. He meant to
knock me down. But just as he was leaning over to get the stick, I
seized him with both hands by his collar, and brought him by a sudden
snatch to the ground. By this time, Bill came. Covey called upon him
for assistance. Bill wanted to know what he could do. Covey said, “Take
hold of him, take hold of him!” Bill said his master hired him out to
work, and not to help to whip me; so he left Covey and myself to fight
our own battle out. We were at it for nearly two hours. Covey at length
let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying that if I had
not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much. The truth was,
that he had not whipped me at all. I considered him as getting entirely
the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I
had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr.
Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger. He
would occasionally say, he didn’t want to get hold of me again. “No,”
thought I, “you need not; for you will come off worse than you did
before.”

This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a
slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived
within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed
self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.
The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for
whatever else might follow, even death itself. He only can understand
the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by
force the bloody arm of slavery. I felt as I never felt before. It was
a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of
freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance
took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a
slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in
fact. I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man
who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me.

From this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped,
though I remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights,
but was never whipped.

It was for a long time a matter of surprise to me why Mr. Covey did not
immediately have me taken by the constable to the whipping-post, and
there regularly whipped for the crime of raising my hand against a
white man in defence of myself. And the only explanation I can now
think of does not entirely satisfy me; but such as it is, I will give
it. Mr. Covey enjoyed the most unbounded reputation for being a
first-rate overseer and negro-breaker. It was of considerable
importance to him. That reputation was at stake; and had he sent me—a
boy about sixteen years old—to the public whipping-post, his reputation
would have been lost; so, to save his reputation, he suffered me to go
unpunished.

My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas day,
1833. The days between Christmas and New Year’s day are allowed as
holidays; and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor,
more than to feed and take care of the stock. This time we regarded as
our own, by the grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused
it nearly as we pleased. Those of us who had families at a distance,
were generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society.
This time, however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober,
thinking and industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in
making corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another class
of us would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But
by far the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing
ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking
whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most
agreeable to the feelings of our masters. A slave who would work during
the holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely deserving them.
He was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his master. It was
deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he was regarded as
lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the necessary means,
during the year, to get whisky enough to last him through Christmas.

From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I
believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the
slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the
slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest
doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves.
These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the
rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would
be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the
slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of
those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go
forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling
earthquake.

The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and
inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by the
benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the
result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon
the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because
they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but
because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will
be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves
spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their
ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust
their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of
dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the
slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him
drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink
the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in
getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks
for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance,
cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with
the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the
result was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think
that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt,
and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as
to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of
our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,—feeling,
upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us
into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.

I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system
of fraud and inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to
disgust the slave with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse
of it, is carried out in other things. For instance, a slave loves
molasses; he steals some. His master, in many cases, goes off to town,
and buys a large quantity; he returns, takes his whip, and commands the
slave to eat the molasses, until the poor fellow is made sick at the
very mention of it. The same mode is sometimes adopted to make the
slaves refrain from asking for more food than their regular allowance.
A slave runs through his allowance, and applies for more. His master is
enraged at him; but, not willing to send him off without food, gives
him more than is necessary, and compels him to eat it within a given
time. Then, if he complains that he cannot eat it, he is said to be
satisfied neither full nor fasting, and is whipped for being hard to
please! I have an abundance of such illustrations of the same
principle, drawn from my own observation, but think the cases I have
cited sufficient. The practice is a very common one.

On the first of January, 1834, I left Mr. Covey, and went to live with
Mr. William Freeland, who lived about three miles from St. Michael’s. I
soon found Mr. Freeland a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not
rich, he was what would be called an educated southern gentleman. Mr.
Covey, as I have shown, was a well-trained negro-breaker and
slave-driver. The former (slaveholder though he was) seemed to possess
some regard for honor, some reverence for justice, and some respect for
humanity. The latter seemed totally insensible to all such sentiments.
Mr. Freeland had many of the faults peculiar to slaveholders, such as
being very passionate and fretful; but I must do him the justice to
say, that he was exceedingly free from those degrading vices to which
Mr. Covey was constantly addicted. The one was open and frank, and we
always knew where to find him. The other was a most artful deceiver,
and could be understood only by such as were skilful enough to detect
his cunningly-devised frauds. Another advantage I gained in my new
master was, he made no pretensions to, or profession of, religion; and
this, in my opinion, was truly a great advantage. I assert most
unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for
the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a
sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which
the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders
find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains
of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave
of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For
of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders
are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most
cruel and cowardly, of all others. It was my unhappy lot not only to
belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such
religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and
in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were
members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden
owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This
woman’s back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of
this merciless, _religious_ wretch. He used to hire hands. His maxim
was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally
to whip a slave, to remind him of his master’s authority. Such was his
theory, and such his practice.

Mr. Hopkins was even worse than Mr. Weeden. His chief boast was his
ability to manage slaves. The peculiar feature of his government was
that of whipping slaves in advance of deserving it. He always managed
to have one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did
this to alarm their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped.
His plan was to whip for the smallest offences, to prevent the
commission of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for
whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding
life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of
which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,—a
mistake, accident, or want of power,—are all matters for which a slave
may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said,
he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak
loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded,
and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull
off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in
reverence, and should be whipped for it. Does he ever venture to
vindicate his conduct, when censured for it? Then he is guilty of
impudence,—one of the greatest crimes of which a slave can be guilty.
Does he ever venture to suggest a different mode of doing things from
that pointed out by his master? He is indeed presumptuous, and getting
above himself; and nothing less than a flogging will do for him. Does
he, while ploughing, break a plough,—or, while hoeing, break a hoe? It
is owing to his carelessness, and for it a slave must always be
whipped. Mr. Hopkins could always find something of this sort to
justify the use of the lash, and he seldom failed to embrace such
opportunities. There was not a man in the whole county, with whom the
slaves who had the getting their own home, would not prefer to live,
rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there was not a man any
where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was more
active in revivals,—more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and
preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family,—that prayed
earlier, later, louder, and longer,—than this same reverend
slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins.

But to return to Mr. Freeland, and to my experience while in his
employment. He, like Mr. Covey, gave us enough to eat; but, unlike Mr.
Covey, he also gave us sufficient time to take our meals. He worked us
hard, but always between sunrise and sunset. He required a good deal of
work to be done, but gave us good tools with which to work. His farm
was large, but he employed hands enough to work it, and with ease,
compared with many of his neighbors. My treatment, while in his
employment, was heavenly, compared with what I experienced at the hands
of Mr. Edward Covey.

Mr. Freeland was himself the owner of but two slaves. Their names were
Henry Harris and John Harris. The rest of his hands he hired. These
consisted of myself, Sandy Jenkins,[1] and Handy Caldwell.

 [1] This is the same man who gave me the roots to prevent my being
 whipped by Mr. Covey. He was “a clever soul.” We used frequently to
 talk about the fight with Covey, and as often as we did so, he would
 claim my success as the result of the roots which he gave me. This
 superstition is very common among the more ignorant slaves. A slave
 seldom dies but that his death is attributed to trickery.


Henry and John were quite intelligent, and in a very little while after
I went there, I succeeded in creating in them a strong desire to learn
how to read. This desire soon sprang up in the others also. They very
soon mustered up some old spelling-books, and nothing would do but that
I must keep a Sabbath school. I agreed to do so, and accordingly
devoted my Sundays to teaching these my loved fellow-slaves how to
read. Neither of them knew his letters when I went there. Some of the
slaves of the neighboring farms found what was going on, and also
availed themselves of this little opportunity to learn to read. It was
understood, among all who came, that there must be as little display
about it as possible. It was necessary to keep our religious masters at
St. Michael’s unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the
Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to
learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us
engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like
intellectual, moral, and accountable beings. My blood boils as I think
of the bloody manner in which Messrs. Wright Fairbanks and Garrison
West, both class-leaders, in connection with many others, rushed in
upon us with sticks and stones, and broke up our virtuous little
Sabbath school, at St. Michael’s—all calling themselves Christians!
humble followers of the Lord Jesus Christ! But I am again digressing.

I held my Sabbath school at the house of a free colored man, whose name
I deem it imprudent to mention; for should it be known, it might
embarrass him greatly, though the crime of holding the school was
committed ten years ago. I had at one time over forty scholars, and
those of the right sort, ardently desiring to learn. They were of all
ages, though mostly men and women. I look back to those Sundays with an
amount of pleasure not to be expressed. They were great days to my
soul. The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest
engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to
leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When
I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the
prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready
to ask, “Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he
hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and
deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?” These dear souls
came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I
teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment
they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up, and given
thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds
had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in
mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul
to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my
race. I kept up my school nearly the whole year I lived with Mr.
Freeland; and, beside my Sabbath school, I devoted three evenings in
the week, during the winter, to teaching the slaves at home. And I have
the happiness to know, that several of those who came to Sabbath school
learned how to read; and that one, at least, is now free through my
agency.

The year passed off smoothly. It seemed only about half as long as the
year which preceded it. I went through it without receiving a single
blow. I will give Mr. Freeland the credit of being the best master I
ever had, _till I became my own master._ For the ease with which I
passed the year, I was, however, somewhat indebted to the society of my
fellow-slaves. They were noble souls; they not only possessed loving
hearts, but brave ones. We were linked and interlinked with each other.
I loved them with a love stronger than any thing I have experienced
since. It is sometimes said that we slaves do not love and confide in
each other. In answer to this assertion, I can say, I never loved any
or confided in any people more than my fellow-slaves, and especially
those with whom I lived at Mr. Freeland’s. I believe we would have died
for each other. We never undertook to do any thing, of any importance,
without a mutual consultation. We never moved separately. We were one;
and as much so by our tempers and dispositions, as by the mutual
hardships to which we were necessarily subjected by our condition as
slaves.

At the close of the year 1834, Mr. Freeland again hired me of my
master, for the year 1835. But, by this time, I began to want to live
_upon free land_ as well as _with Freeland;_ and I was no longer
content, therefore, to live with him or any other slaveholder. I began,
with the commencement of the year, to prepare myself for a final
struggle, which should decide my fate one way or the other. My tendency
was upward. I was fast approaching manhood, and year after year had
passed, and I was still a slave. These thoughts roused me—I must do
something. I therefore resolved that 1835 should not pass without
witnessing an attempt, on my part, to secure my liberty. But I was not
willing to cherish this determination alone. My fellow-slaves were dear
to me. I was anxious to have them participate with me in this, my
life-giving determination. I therefore, though with great prudence,
commenced early to ascertain their views and feelings in regard to
their condition, and to imbue their minds with thoughts of freedom. I
bent myself to devising ways and means for our escape, and meanwhile
strove, on all fitting occasions, to impress them with the gross fraud
and inhumanity of slavery. I went first to Henry, next to John, then to
the others. I found, in them all, warm hearts and noble spirits. They
were ready to hear, and ready to act when a feasible plan should be
proposed. This was what I wanted. I talked to them of our want of
manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement without at least one noble
effort to be free. We met often, and consulted frequently, and told our
hopes and fears, recounted the difficulties, real and imagined, which
we should be called on to meet. At times we were almost disposed to
give up, and try to content ourselves with our wretched lot; at others,
we were firm and unbending in our determination to go. Whenever we
suggested any plan, there was shrinking—the odds were fearful. Our path
was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining
the end of it, our right to be free was yet questionable—we were yet
liable to be returned to bondage. We could see no spot, this side of
the ocean, where we could be free. We knew nothing about Canada. Our
knowledge of the north did not extend farther than New York; and to go
there, and be forever harassed with the frightful liability of being
returned to slavery—with the certainty of being treated tenfold worse
than before—the thought was truly a horrible one, and one which it was
not easy to overcome. The case sometimes stood thus: At every gate
through which we were to pass, we saw a watchman—at every ferry a
guard—on every bridge a sentinel—and in every wood a patrol. We were
hemmed in upon every side. Here were the difficulties, real or
imagined—the good to be sought, and the evil to be shunned. On the one
hand, there stood slavery, a stern reality, glaring frightfully upon
us,—its robes already crimsoned with the blood of millions, and even
now feasting itself greedily upon our own flesh. On the other hand,
away back in the dim distance, under the flickering light of the north
star, behind some craggy hill or snow-covered mountain, stood a
doubtful freedom—half frozen—beckoning us to come and share its
hospitality. This in itself was sometimes enough to stagger us; but
when we permitted ourselves to survey the road, we were frequently
appalled. Upon either side we saw grim death, assuming the most horrid
shapes. Now it was starvation, causing us to eat our own flesh;—now we
were contending with the waves, and were drowned;—now we were
overtaken, and torn to pieces by the fangs of the terrible bloodhound.
We were stung by scorpions, chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes,
and finally, after having nearly reached the desired spot,—after
swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts, sleeping in the woods,
suffering hunger and nakedness,—we were overtaken by our pursuers, and,
in our resistance, we were shot dead upon the spot! I say, this picture
sometimes appalled us, and made us

“rather bear those ills we had,
Than fly to others, that we knew not of.”


In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than
Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was a
doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my
part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.

Sandy, one of our number, gave up the notion, but still encouraged us.
Our company then consisted of Henry Harris, John Harris, Henry Bailey,
Charles Roberts, and myself. Henry Bailey was my uncle, and belonged to
my master. Charles married my aunt: he belonged to my master’s
father-in-law, Mr. William Hamilton.

The plan we finally concluded upon was, to get a large canoe belonging
to Mr. Hamilton, and upon the Saturday night previous to Easter
holidays, paddle directly up the Chesapeake Bay. On our arrival at the
head of the bay, a distance of seventy or eighty miles from where we
lived, it was our purpose to turn our canoe adrift, and follow the
guidance of the north star till we got beyond the limits of Maryland.
Our reason for taking the water route was, that we were less liable to
be suspected as runaways; we hoped to be regarded as fishermen;
whereas, if we should take the land route, we should be subjected to
interruptions of almost every kind. Any one having a white face, and
being so disposed, could stop us, and subject us to examination.

The week before our intended start, I wrote several protections, one
for each of us. As well as I can remember, they were in the following
words, to wit:—

“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer, my
servant, full liberty to go to Baltimore, and spend the Easter
holidays. Written with mine own hand, &c., 1835.


“WILLIAM HAMILTON,
“Near St. Michael’s, in Talbot county, Maryland.”


We were not going to Baltimore; but, in going up the bay, we went
toward Baltimore, and these protections were only intended to protect
us while on the bay.

As the time drew near for our departure, our anxiety became more and
more intense. It was truly a matter of life and death with us. The
strength of our determination was about to be fully tested. At this
time, I was very active in explaining every difficulty, removing every
doubt, dispelling every fear, and inspiring all with the firmness
indispensable to success in our undertaking; assuring them that half
was gained the instant we made the move; we had talked long enough; we
were now ready to move; if not now, we never should be; and if we did
not intend to move now, we had as well fold our arms, sit down, and
acknowledge ourselves fit only to be slaves. This, none of us were
prepared to acknowledge. Every man stood firm; and at our last meeting,
we pledged ourselves afresh, in the most solemn manner, that, at the
time appointed, we would certainly start in pursuit of freedom. This
was in the middle of the week, at the end of which we were to be off.
We went, as usual, to our several fields of labor, but with bosoms
highly agitated with thoughts of our truly hazardous undertaking. We
tried to conceal our feelings as much as possible; and I think we
succeeded very well.

After a painful waiting, the Saturday morning, whose night was to
witness our departure, came. I hailed it with joy, bring what of
sadness it might. Friday night was a sleepless one for me. I probably
felt more anxious than the rest, because I was, by common consent, at
the head of the whole affair. The responsibility of success or failure
lay heavily upon me. The glory of the one, and the confusion of the
other, were alike mine. The first two hours of that morning were such
as I never experienced before, and hope never to again. Early in the
morning, we went, as usual, to the field. We were spreading manure; and
all at once, while thus engaged, I was overwhelmed with an
indescribable feeling, in the fulness of which I turned to Sandy, who
was near by, and said, “We are betrayed!” “Well,” said he, “that
thought has this moment struck me.” We said no more. I was never more
certain of any thing.

The horn was blown as usual, and we went up from the field to the house
for breakfast. I went for the form, more than for want of any thing to
eat that morning. Just as I got to the house, in looking out at the
lane gate, I saw four white men, with two colored men. The white men
were on horseback, and the colored ones were walking behind, as if
tied. I watched them a few moments till they got up to our lane gate.
Here they halted, and tied the colored men to the gate-post. I was not
yet certain as to what the matter was. In a few moments, in rode Mr.
Hamilton, with a speed betokening great excitement. He came to the
door, and inquired if Master William was in. He was told he was at the
barn. Mr. Hamilton, without dismounting, rode up to the barn with
extraordinary speed. In a few moments, he and Mr. Freeland returned to
the house. By this time, the three constables rode up, and in great
haste dismounted, tied their horses, and met Master William and Mr.
Hamilton returning from the barn; and after talking awhile, they all
walked up to the kitchen door. There was no one in the kitchen but
myself and John. Henry and Sandy were up at the barn. Mr. Freeland put
his head in at the door, and called me by name, saying, there were some
gentlemen at the door who wished to see me. I stepped to the door, and
inquired what they wanted. They at once seized me, and, without giving
me any satisfaction, tied me—lashing my hands closely together. I
insisted upon knowing what the matter was. They at length said, that
they had learned I had been in a “scrape,” and that I was to be
examined before my master; and if their information proved false, I
should not be hurt.

In a few moments, they succeeded in tying John. They then turned to
Henry, who had by this time returned, and commanded him to cross his
hands. “I won’t!” said Henry, in a firm tone, indicating his readiness
to meet the consequences of his refusal. “Won’t you?” said Tom Graham,
the constable. “No, I won’t!” said Henry, in a still stronger tone.
With this, two of the constables pulled out their shining pistols, and
swore, by their Creator, that they would make him cross his hands or
kill him. Each cocked his pistol, and, with fingers on the trigger,
walked up to Henry, saying, at the same time, if he did not cross his
hands, they would blow his damned heart out. “Shoot me, shoot me!” said
Henry; “you can’t kill me but once. Shoot, shoot,—and be damned! _I
won’t be tied!_” This he said in a tone of loud defiance; and at the
same time, with a motion as quick as lightning, he with one single
stroke dashed the pistols from the hand of each constable. As he did
this, all hands fell upon him, and, after beating him some time, they
finally overpowered him, and got him tied.

During the scuffle, I managed, I know not how, to get my pass out, and,
without being discovered, put it into the fire. We were all now tied;
and just as we were to leave for Easton jail, Betsy Freeland, mother of
William Freeland, came to the door with her hands full of biscuits, and
divided them between Henry and John. She then delivered herself of a
speech, to the following effect:—addressing herself to me, she said,
“_You devil! You yellow devil!_ it was you that put it into the heads
of Henry and John to run away. But for you, you long-legged mulatto
devil! Henry nor John would never have thought of such a thing.” I made
no reply, and was immediately hurried off towards St. Michael’s. Just a
moment previous to the scuffle with Henry, Mr. Hamilton suggested the
propriety of making a search for the protections which he had
understood Frederick had written for himself and the rest. But, just at
the moment he was about carrying his proposal into effect, his aid was
needed in helping to tie Henry; and the excitement attending the
scuffle caused them either to forget, or to deem it unsafe, under the
circumstances, to search. So we were not yet convicted of the intention
to run away.

When we got about half way to St. Michael’s, while the constables
having us in charge were looking ahead, Henry inquired of me what he
should do with his pass. I told him to eat it with his biscuit, and own
nothing; and we passed the word around, “_Own nothing;_” and “_Own
nothing!_” said we all. Our confidence in each other was unshaken. We
were resolved to succeed or fail together, after the calamity had
befallen us as much as before. We were now prepared for any thing. We
were to be dragged that morning fifteen miles behind horses, and then
to be placed in the Easton jail. When we reached St. Michael’s, we
underwent a sort of examination. We all denied that we ever intended to
run away. We did this more to bring out the evidence against us, than
from any hope of getting clear of being sold; for, as I have said, we
were ready for that. The fact was, we cared but little where we went,
so we went together. Our greatest concern was about separation. We
dreaded that more than any thing this side of death. We found the
evidence against us to be the testimony of one person; our master would
not tell who it was; but we came to a unanimous decision among
ourselves as to who their informant was. We were sent off to the jail
at Easton. When we got there, we were delivered up to the sheriff, Mr.
Joseph Graham, and by him placed in jail. Henry, John, and myself, were
placed in one room together—Charles, and Henry Bailey, in another.
Their object in separating us was to hinder concert.

We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave
traders, and agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us,
and to ascertain if we were for sale. Such a set of beings I never saw
before! I felt myself surrounded by so many fiends from perdition. A
band of pirates never looked more like their father, the devil. They
laughed and grinned over us, saying, “Ah, my boys! we have got you,
haven’t we?” And after taunting us in various ways, they one by one
went into an examination of us, with intent to ascertain our value.
They would impudently ask us if we would not like to have them for our
masters. We would make them no answer, and leave them to find out as
best they could. Then they would curse and swear at us, telling us that
they could take the devil out of us in a very little while, if we were
only in their hands.

While in jail, we found ourselves in much more comfortable quarters
than we expected when we went there. We did not get much to eat, nor
that which was very good; but we had a good clean room, from the
windows of which we could see what was going on in the street, which
was very much better than though we had been placed in one of the dark,
damp cells. Upon the whole, we got along very well, so far as the jail
and its keeper were concerned. Immediately after the holidays were
over, contrary to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Freeland
came up to Easton, and took Charles, the two Henrys, and John, out of
jail, and carried them home, leaving me alone. I regarded this
separation as a final one. It caused me more pain than any thing else
in the whole transaction. I was ready for any thing rather than
separation. I supposed that they had consulted together, and had
decided that, as I was the whole cause of the intention of the others
to run away, it was hard to make the innocent suffer with the guilty;
and that they had, therefore, concluded to take the others home, and
sell me, as a warning to the others that remained. It is due to the
noble Henry to say, he seemed almost as reluctant at leaving the prison
as at leaving home to come to the prison. But we knew we should, in all
probability, be separated, if we were sold; and since he was in their
hands, he concluded to go peaceably home.

I was now left to my fate. I was all alone, and within the walls of a
stone prison. But a few days before, and I was full of hope. I expected
to have been safe in a land of freedom; but now I was covered with
gloom, sunk down to the utmost despair. I thought the possibility of
freedom was gone. I was kept in this way about one week, at the end of
which, Captain Auld, my master, to my surprise and utter astonishment,
came up, and took me out, with the intention of sending me, with a
gentleman of his acquaintance, into Alabama. But, from some cause or
other, he did not send me to Alabama, but concluded to send me back to
Baltimore, to live again with his brother Hugh, and to learn a trade.

Thus, after an absence of three years and one month, I was once more
permitted to return to my old home at Baltimore. My master sent me
away, because there existed against me a very great prejudice in the
community, and he feared I might be killed.

In a few weeks after I went to Baltimore, Master Hugh hired me to Mr.
William Gardner, an extensive ship-builder, on Fell’s Point. I was put
there to learn how to calk. It, however, proved a very unfavorable
place for the accomplishment of this object. Mr. Gardner was engaged
that spring in building two large man-of-war brigs, professedly for the
Mexican government. The vessels were to be launched in the July of that
year, and in failure thereof, Mr. Gardner was to lose a considerable
sum; so that when I entered, all was hurry. There was no time to learn
any thing. Every man had to do that which he knew how to do. In
entering the shipyard, my orders from Mr. Gardner were, to do whatever
the carpenters commanded me to do. This was placing me at the beck and
call of about seventy-five men. I was to regard all these as masters.
Their word was to be my law. My situation was a most trying one. At
times I needed a dozen pair of hands. I was called a dozen ways in the
space of a single minute. Three or four voices would strike my ear at
the same moment. It was—“Fred., come help me to cant this timber
here.”—“Fred., come carry this timber yonder.”—“Fred., bring that
roller here.”—“Fred., go get a fresh can of water.”—“Fred., come help
saw off the end of this timber.”—“Fred., go quick, and get the
crowbar.”—“Fred., hold on the end of this fall.”—“Fred., go to the
blacksmith’s shop, and get a new punch.”—“Hurra, Fred! run and bring me
a cold chisel.”—“I say, Fred., bear a hand, and get up a fire as quick
as lightning under that steam-box.”—“Halloo, nigger! come, turn this
grindstone.”—“Come, come! move, move! and _bowse_ this timber
forward.”—“I say, darky, blast your eyes, why don’t you heat up some
pitch?”—“Halloo! halloo! halloo!” (Three voices at the same time.)
“Come here!—Go there!—Hold on where you are! Damn you, if you move,
I’ll knock your brains out!”

This was my school for eight months; and I might have remained there
longer, but for a most horrid fight I had with four of the white
apprentices, in which my left eye was nearly knocked out, and I was
horribly mangled in other respects. The facts in the case were these:
Until a very little while after I went there, white and black
ship-carpenters worked side by side, and no one seemed to see any
impropriety in it. All hands seemed to be very well satisfied. Many of
the black carpenters were freemen. Things seemed to be going on very
well. All at once, the white carpenters knocked off, and said they
would not work with free colored workmen. Their reason for this, as
alleged, was, that if free colored carpenters were encouraged, they
would soon take the trade into their own hands, and poor white men
would be thrown out of employment. They therefore felt called upon at
once to put a stop to it. And, taking advantage of Mr. Gardner’s
necessities, they broke off, swearing they would work no longer, unless
he would discharge his black carpenters. Now, though this did not
extend to me in form, it did reach me in fact. My fellow-apprentices
very soon began to feel it degrading to them to work with me. They
began to put on airs, and talk about the “niggers” taking the country,
saying we all ought to be killed; and, being encouraged by the
journeymen, they commenced making my condition as hard as they could,
by hectoring me around, and sometimes striking me. I, of course, kept
the vow I made after the fight with Mr. Covey, and struck back again,
regardless of consequences; and while I kept them from combining, I
succeeded very well; for I could whip the whole of them, taking them
separately. They, however, at length combined, and came upon me, armed
with sticks, stones, and heavy handspikes. One came in front with a
half brick. There was one at each side of me, and one behind me. While
I was attending to those in front, and on either side, the one behind
ran up with the handspike, and struck me a heavy blow upon the head. It
stunned me. I fell, and with this they all ran upon me, and fell to
beating me with their fists. I let them lay on for a while, gathering
strength. In an instant, I gave a sudden surge, and rose to my hands
and knees. Just as I did that, one of their number gave me, with his
heavy boot, a powerful kick in the left eye. My eyeball seemed to have
burst. When they saw my eye closed, and badly swollen, they left me.
With this I seized the handspike, and for a time pursued them. But here
the carpenters interfered, and I thought I might as well give it up. It
was impossible to stand my hand against so many. All this took place in
sight of not less than fifty white ship-carpenters, and not one
interposed a friendly word; but some cried, “Kill the damned nigger!
Kill him! kill him! He struck a white person.” I found my only chance
for life was in flight. I succeeded in getting away without an
additional blow, and barely so; for to strike a white man is death by
Lynch law,—and that was the law in Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard; nor is
there much of any other out of Mr. Gardner’s ship-yard.

I went directly home, and told the story of my wrongs to Master Hugh;
and I am happy to say of him, irreligious as he was, his conduct was
heavenly, compared with that of his brother Thomas under similar
circumstances. He listened attentively to my narration of the
circumstances leading to the savage outrage, and gave many proofs of
his strong indignation at it. The heart of my once overkind mistress
was again melted into pity. My puffed-out eye and blood-covered face
moved her to tears. She took a chair by me, washed the blood from my
face, and, with a mother’s tenderness, bound up my head, covering the
wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh beef. It was almost compensation
for my suffering to witness, once more, a manifestation of kindness
from this, my once affectionate old mistress. Master Hugh was very much
enraged. He gave expression to his feelings by pouring out curses upon
the heads of those who did the deed. As soon as I got a little the
better of my bruises, he took me with him to Esquire Watson’s, on Bond
Street, to see what could be done about the matter. Mr. Watson inquired
who saw the assault committed. Master Hugh told him it was done in Mr.
Gardner’s ship-yard at midday, where there were a large company of men
at work. “As to that,” he said, “the deed was done, and there was no
question as to who did it.” His answer was, he could do nothing in the
case, unless some white man would come forward and testify. He could
issue no warrant on my word. If I had been killed in the presence of a
thousand colored people, their testimony combined would have been
insufficient to have arrested one of the murderers. Master Hugh, for
once, was compelled to say this state of things was too bad. Of course,
it was impossible to get any white man to volunteer his testimony in my
behalf, and against the white young men. Even those who may have
sympathized with me were not prepared to do this. It required a degree
of courage unknown to them to do so; for just at that time, the
slightest manifestation of humanity toward a colored person was
denounced as abolitionism, and that name subjected its bearer to
frightful liabilities. The watchwords of the bloody-minded in that
region, and in those days, were, “Damn the abolitionists!” and “Damn
the niggers!” There was nothing done, and probably nothing would have
been done if I had been killed. Such was, and such remains, the state
of things in the Christian city of Baltimore.

Master Hugh, finding he could get no redress, refused to let me go back
again to Mr. Gardner. He kept me himself, and his wife dressed my wound
till I was again restored to health. He then took me into the ship-yard
of which he was foreman, in the employment of Mr. Walter Price. There I
was immediately set to calking, and very soon learned the art of using
my mallet and irons. In the course of one year from the time I left Mr.
Gardner’s, I was able to command the highest wages given to the most
experienced calkers. I was now of some importance to my master. I was
bringing him from six to seven dollars per week. I sometimes brought
him nine dollars per week: my wages were a dollar and a half a day.
After learning how to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own
contracts, and collected the money which I earned. My pathway became
much more smooth than before; my condition was now much more
comfortable. When I could get no calking to do, I did nothing. During
these leisure times, those old notions about freedom would steal over
me again. When in Mr. Gardner’s employment, I was kept in such a
perpetual whirl of excitement, I could think of nothing, scarcely, but
my life; and in thinking of my life, I almost forgot my liberty. I have
observed this in my experience of slavery,—that whenever my condition
was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only
increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain
my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is
necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his
moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the
power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in
slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be
brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.

I was now getting, as I have said, one dollar and fifty cents per day.
I contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to me; it was rightfully
my own; yet, upon each returning Saturday night, I was compelled to
deliver every cent of that money to Master Hugh. And why? Not because
he earned it,—not because he had any hand in earning it,—not because I
owed it to him,—nor because he possessed the slightest shadow of a
right to it; but solely because he had the power to compel me to give
it up. The right of the grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is
exactly the same.




 CHAPTER XI


I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally
succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any
of the peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my
intention not to state all the facts connected with the transaction. My
reasons for pursuing this course may be understood from the following:
First, were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not
only possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be
involved in the most embarrassing difficulties. Secondly, such a
statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part
of slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would, of
course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother
bondman might escape his galling chains. I deeply regret the necessity
that impels me to suppress any thing of importance connected with my
experience in slavery. It would afford me great pleasure indeed, as
well as materially add to the interest of my narrative, were I at
liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I know exists in the minds of
many, by an accurate statement of all the facts pertaining to my most
fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this pleasure, and the
curious of the gratification which such a statement would afford. I
would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations which
evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself, and
thereby run the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a
brother slave might clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery.

I have never approved of the very public manner in which some of our
western friends have conducted what they call the _underground
railroad,_ but which I think, by their open declarations, has been made
most emphatically the _upperground railroad._ I honor those good men
and women for their noble daring, and applaud them for willingly
subjecting themselves to bloody persecution, by openly avowing their
participation in the escape of slaves. I, however, can see very little
good resulting from such a course, either to themselves or the slaves
escaping; while, upon the other hand, I see and feel assured that those
open declarations are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, who are
seeking to escape. They do nothing towards enlightening the slave,
whilst they do much towards enlightening the master. They stimulate him
to greater watchfulness, and enhance his power to capture his slave. We
owe something to the slave south of the line as well as to those north
of it; and in aiding the latter on their way to freedom, we should be
careful to do nothing which would be likely to hinder the former from
escaping from slavery. I would keep the merciless slaveholder
profoundly ignorant of the means of flight adopted by the slave. I
would leave him to imagine himself surrounded by myriads of invisible
tormentors, ever ready to snatch from his infernal grasp his trembling
prey. Let him be left to feel his way in the dark; let darkness
commensurate with his crime hover over him; and let him feel that at
every step he takes, in pursuit of the flying bondman, he is running
the frightful risk of having his hot brains dashed out by an invisible
agency. Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by
which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother. But enough of
this. I will now proceed to the statement of those facts, connected
with my escape, for which I am alone responsible, and for which no one
can be made to suffer but myself.

In the early part of the year 1838, I became quite restless. I could
see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of
my toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly
wages, he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a
robber-like fierceness, and ask, “Is this all?” He was satisfied with
nothing less than the last cent. He would, however, when I made him six
dollars, sometimes give me six cents, to encourage me. It had the
opposite effect. I regarded it as a sort of admission of my right to
the whole. The fact that he gave me any part of my wages was proof, to
my mind, that he believed me entitled to the whole of them. I always
felt worse for having received any thing; for I feared that the giving
me a few cents would ease his conscience, and make him feel himself to
be a pretty honorable sort of robber. My discontent grew upon me. I was
ever on the look-out for means of escape; and, finding no direct means,
I determined to try to hire my time, with a view of getting money with
which to make my escape. In the spring of 1838, when Master Thomas came
to Baltimore to purchase his spring goods, I got an opportunity, and
applied to him to allow me to hire my time. He unhesitatingly refused
my request, and told me this was another stratagem by which to escape.
He told me I could go nowhere but that he could get me; and that, in
the event of my running away, he should spare no pains in his efforts
to catch me. He exhorted me to content myself, and be obedient. He told
me, if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He
said, if I behaved myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed,
he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me
to depend solely upon him for happiness. He seemed to see fully the
pressing necessity of setting aside my intellectual nature, in order to
contentment in slavery. But in spite of him, and even in spite of
myself, I continued to think, and to think about the injustice of my
enslavement, and the means of escape.

About two months after this, I applied to Master Hugh for the privilege
of hiring my time. He was not acquainted with the fact that I had
applied to Master Thomas, and had been refused. He too, at first,
seemed disposed to refuse; but, after some reflection, he granted me
the privilege, and proposed the following terms: I was to be allowed
all my time, make all contracts with those for whom I worked, and find
my own employment; and, in return for this liberty, I was to pay him
three dollars at the end of each week; find myself in calking tools,
and in board and clothing. My board was two dollars and a half per
week. This, with the wear and tear of clothing and calking tools, made
my regular expenses about six dollars per week. This amount I was
compelled to make up, or relinquish the privilege of hiring my time.
Rain or shine, work or no work, at the end of each week the money must
be forthcoming, or I must give up my privilege. This arrangement, it
will be perceived, was decidedly in my master’s favor. It relieved him
of all need of looking after me. His money was sure. He received all
the benefits of slaveholding without its evils; while I endured all the
evils of a slave, and suffered all the care and anxiety of a freeman. I
found it a hard bargain. But, hard as it was, I thought it better than
the old mode of getting along. It was a step towards freedom to be
allowed to bear the responsibilities of a freeman, and I was determined
to hold on upon it. I bent myself to the work of making money. I was
ready to work at night as well as day, and by the most untiring
perseverance and industry, I made enough to meet my expenses, and lay
up a little money every week. I went on thus from May till August.
Master Hugh then refused to allow me to hire my time longer. The ground
for his refusal was a failure on my part, one Saturday night, to pay
him for my week’s time. This failure was occasioned by my attending a
camp meeting about ten miles from Baltimore. During the week, I had
entered into an engagement with a number of young friends to start from
Baltimore to the camp ground early Saturday evening; and being detained
by my employer, I was unable to get down to Master Hugh’s without
disappointing the company. I knew that Master Hugh was in no special
need of the money that night. I therefore decided to go to camp
meeting, and upon my return pay him the three dollars. I staid at the
camp meeting one day longer than I intended when I left. But as soon as
I returned, I called upon him to pay him what he considered his due. I
found him very angry; he could scarce restrain his wrath. He said he
had a great mind to give me a severe whipping. He wished to know how I
dared go out of the city without asking his permission. I told him I
hired my time and while I paid him the price which he asked for it, I
did not know that I was bound to ask him when and where I should go.
This reply troubled him; and, after reflecting a few moments, he turned
to me, and said I should hire my time no longer; that the next thing he
should know of, I would be running away. Upon the same plea, he told me
to bring my tools and clothing home forthwith. I did so; but instead of
seeking work, as I had been accustomed to do previously to hiring my
time, I spent the whole week without the performance of a single stroke
of work. I did this in retaliation. Saturday night, he called upon me
as usual for my week’s wages. I told him I had no wages; I had done no
work that week. Here we were upon the point of coming to blows. He
raved, and swore his determination to get hold of me. I did not allow
myself a single word; but was resolved, if he laid the weight of his
hand upon me, it should be blow for blow. He did not strike me, but
told me that he would find me in constant employment in future. I
thought the matter over during the next day, Sunday, and finally
resolved upon the third day of September, as the day upon which I would
make a second attempt to secure my freedom. I now had three weeks
during which to prepare for my journey. Early on Monday morning, before
Master Hugh had time to make any engagement for me, I went out and got
employment of Mr. Butler, at his ship-yard near the drawbridge, upon
what is called the City Block, thus making it unnecessary for him to
seek employment for me. At the end of the week, I brought him between
eight and nine dollars. He seemed very well pleased, and asked why I
did not do the same the week before. He little knew what my plans were.
My object in working steadily was to remove any suspicion he might
entertain of my intent to run away; and in this I succeeded admirably.
I suppose he thought I was never better satisfied with my condition
than at the very time during which I was planning my escape. The second
week passed, and again I carried him my full wages; and so well pleased
was he, that he gave me twenty-five cents, (quite a large sum for a
slaveholder to give a slave,) and bade me to make a good use of it. I
told him I would.

Things went on without very smoothly indeed, but within there was
trouble. It is impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of
my contemplated start drew near. I had a number of warmhearted friends
in Baltimore,—friends that I loved almost as I did my life,—and the
thought of being separated from them forever was painful beyond
expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery,
who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to
their friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most
painful thought with which I had to contend. The love of them was my
tender point, and shook my decision more than all things else. Besides
the pain of separation, the dread and apprehension of a failure
exceeded what I had experienced at my first attempt. The appalling
defeat I then sustained returned to torment me. I felt assured that, if
I failed in this attempt, my case would be a hopeless one—it would seal
my fate as a slave forever. I could not hope to get off with any thing
less than the severest punishment, and being placed beyond the means of
escape. It required no very vivid imagination to depict the most
frightful scenes through which I should have to pass, in case I failed.
The wretchedness of slavery, and the blessedness of freedom, were
perpetually before me. It was life and death with me. But I remained
firm, and, according to my resolution, on the third day of September,
1838, I left my chains, and succeeded in reaching New York without the
slightest interruption of any kind. How I did so,—what means I
adopted,—what direction I travelled, and by what mode of conveyance,—I
must leave unexplained, for the reasons before mentioned.

I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free
State. I have never been able to answer the question with any
satisfaction to myself. It was a moment of the highest excitement I
ever experienced. I suppose I felt as one may imagine the unarmed
mariner to feel when he is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the
pursuit of a pirate. In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my
arrival at New York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of
hungry lions. This state of mind, however, very soon subsided; and I
was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I
was yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of
slavery. This in itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm.
But the loneliness overcame me. There I was in the midst of thousands,
and yet a perfect stranger; without home and without friends, in the
midst of thousands of my own brethren—children of a common Father, and
yet I dared not to unfold to any one of them my sad condition. I was
afraid to speak to any one for fear of speaking to the wrong one, and
thereby falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose
business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the
ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey. The motto
which I adopted when I started from slavery was this—“Trust no man!” I
saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every colored man cause
for distrust. It was a most painful situation; and, to understand it,
one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar
circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave in a strange land—a land
given up to be the hunting-ground for slaveholders—whose inhabitants
are legalized kidnappers—where he is every moment subjected to the
terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the
hideous crocodile seizes upon his prey!—I say, let him place himself in
my situation—without home or friends—without money or credit—wanting
shelter, and no one to give it—wanting bread, and no money to buy
it,—and at the same time let him feel that he is pursued by merciless
men-hunters, and in total darkness as to what to do, where to go, or
where to stay,—perfectly helpless both as to the means of defence and
means of escape,—in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible
gnawings of hunger,—in the midst of houses, yet having no home,—among
fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose
greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is
only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up
the helpless fish upon which they subsist,—I say, let him be placed in
this most trying situation,—the situation in which I was placed,—then,
and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know
how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.

Thank Heaven, I remained but a short time in this distressed situation.
I was relieved from it by the humane hand of _Mr. David Ruggles_, whose
vigilance, kindness, and perseverance, I shall never forget. I am glad
of an opportunity to express, as far as words can, the love and
gratitude I bear him. Mr. Ruggles is now afflicted with blindness, and
is himself in need of the same kind offices which he was once so
forward in the performance of toward others. I had been in New York but
a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to
his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets. Mr.
Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable _Darg_ case, as
well as attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways
and means for their successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed
in on almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his
enemies.

Very soon after I went to Mr. Ruggles, he wished to know of me where I
wanted to go; as he deemed it unsafe for me to remain in New York. I
told him I was a calker, and should like to go where I could get work.
I thought of going to Canada; but he decided against it, and in favor
of my going to New Bedford, thinking I should be able to get work there
at my trade. At this time, Anna,[2] my intended wife, came on; for I
wrote to her immediately after my arrival at New York, (notwithstanding
my homeless, houseless, and helpless condition,) informing her of my
successful flight, and wishing her to come on forthwith. In a few days
after her arrival, Mr. Ruggles called in the Rev. J. W. C. Pennington,
who, in the presence of Mr. Ruggles, Mrs. Michaels, and two or three
others, performed the marriage ceremony, and gave us a certificate, of
which the following is an exact copy:—

“This may certify, that I joined together in holy matrimony Frederick
Johnson[3] and Anna Murray, as man and wife, in the presence of Mr.
David Ruggles and Mrs. Michaels.


“JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON
“_New York, Sept_. 15, 1838”


 [2] She was free.


 [3] I had changed my name from Frederick _Bailey_ to that of
 _Johnson_.


Upon receiving this certificate, and a five-dollar bill from Mr.
Ruggles, I shouldered one part of our baggage, and Anna took up the
other, and we set out forthwith to take passage on board of the
steamboat John W. Richmond for Newport, on our way to New Bedford. Mr.
Ruggles gave me a letter to a Mr. Shaw in Newport, and told me, in case
my money did not serve me to New Bedford, to stop in Newport and obtain
further assistance; but upon our arrival at Newport, we were so anxious
to get to a place of safety, that, notwithstanding we lacked the
necessary money to pay our fare, we decided to take seats in the stage,
and promise to pay when we got to New Bedford. We were encouraged to do
this by two excellent gentlemen, residents of New Bedford, whose names
I afterward ascertained to be Joseph Ricketson and William C. Taber.
They seemed at once to understand our circumstances, and gave us such
assurance of their friendliness as put us fully at ease in their
presence.

It was good indeed to meet with such friends, at such a time. Upon
reaching New Bedford, we were directed to the house of Mr. Nathan
Johnson, by whom we were kindly received, and hospitably provided for.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Johnson took a deep and lively interest in our
welfare. They proved themselves quite worthy of the name of
abolitionists. When the stage-driver found us unable to pay our fare,
he held on upon our baggage as security for the debt. I had but to
mention the fact to Mr. Johnson, and he forthwith advanced the money.

We now began to feel a degree of safety, and to prepare ourselves for
the duties and responsibilities of a life of freedom. On the morning
after our arrival at New Bedford, while at the breakfast-table, the
question arose as to what name I should be called by. The name given me
by my mother was, “Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.” I, however,
had dispensed with the two middle names long before I left Maryland so
that I was generally known by the name of “Frederick Bailey.” I started
from Baltimore bearing the name of “Stanley.” When I got to New York, I
again changed my name to “Frederick Johnson,” and thought that would be
the last change. But when I got to New Bedford, I found it necessary
again to change my name. The reason of this necessity was, that there
were so many Johnsons in New Bedford, it was already quite difficult to
distinguish between them. I gave Mr. Johnson the privilege of choosing
me a name, but told him he must not take from me the name of
“Frederick.” I must hold on to that, to preserve a sense of my
identity. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and
at once suggested that my name be “Douglass.” From that time until now
I have been called “Frederick Douglass;” and as I am more widely known
by that name than by either of the others, I shall continue to use it
as my own.

I was quite disappointed at the general appearance of things in New
Bedford. The impression which I had received respecting the character
and condition of the people of the north, I found to be singularly
erroneous. I had very strangely supposed, while in slavery, that few of
the comforts, and scarcely any of the luxuries, of life were enjoyed at
the north, compared with what were enjoyed by the slaveholders of the
south. I probably came to this conclusion from the fact that northern
people owned no slaves. I supposed that they were about upon a level
with the non-slaveholding population of the south. I knew _they_ were
exceedingly poor, and I had been accustomed to regard their poverty as
the necessary consequence of their being non-slaveholders. I had
somehow imbibed the opinion that, in the absence of slaves, there could
be no wealth, and very little refinement. And upon coming to the north,
I expected to meet with a rough, hard-handed, and uncultivated
population, living in the most Spartan-like simplicity, knowing nothing
of the ease, luxury, pomp, and grandeur of southern slaveholders. Such
being my conjectures, any one acquainted with the appearance of New
Bedford may very readily infer how palpably I must have seen my
mistake.

In the afternoon of the day when I reached New Bedford, I visited the
wharves, to take a view of the shipping. Here I found myself surrounded
with the strongest proofs of wealth. Lying at the wharves, and riding
in the stream, I saw many ships of the finest model, in the best order,
and of the largest size. Upon the right and left, I was walled in by
granite warehouses of the widest dimensions, stowed to their utmost
capacity with the necessaries and comforts of life. Added to this,
almost every body seemed to be at work, but noiselessly so, compared
with what I had been accustomed to in Baltimore. There were no loud
songs heard from those engaged in loading and unloading ships. I heard
no deep oaths or horrid curses on the laborer. I saw no whipping of
men; but all seemed to go smoothly on. Every man appeared to understand
his work, and went at it with a sober, yet cheerful earnestness, which
betokened the deep interest which he felt in what he was doing, as well
as a sense of his own dignity as a man. To me this looked exceedingly
strange. From the wharves I strolled around and over the town, gazing
with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful
dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of wealth,
comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of
slaveholding Maryland.

Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no
dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked
children and barefooted women, such as I had been accustomed to see in
Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael’s, and Baltimore. The people looked
more able, stronger, healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland. I
was for once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being
saddened by seeing extreme poverty. But the most astonishing as well as
the most interesting thing to me was the condition of the colored
people, a great many of whom, like myself, had escaped thither as a
refuge from the hunters of men. I found many, who had not been seven
years out of their chains, living in finer houses, and evidently
enjoying more of the comforts of life, than the average of slaveholders
in Maryland. I will venture to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan
Johnson (of whom I can say with a grateful heart, “I was hungry, and he
gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger,
and he took me in”) lived in a neater house; dined at a better table;
took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral,
religious, and political character of the nation,—than nine tenths of
the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland. Yet Mr. Johnson was a
working man. His hands were hardened by toil, and not his alone, but
those also of Mrs. Johnson. I found the colored people much more
spirited than I had supposed they would be. I found among them a
determination to protect each other from the blood-thirsty kidnapper,
at all hazards. Soon after my arrival, I was told of a circumstance
which illustrated their spirit. A colored man and a fugitive slave were
on unfriendly terms. The former was heard to threaten the latter with
informing his master of his whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was
called among the colored people, under the stereotyped notice,
“Business of importance!” The betrayer was invited to attend. The
people came at the appointed hour, and organized the meeting by
appointing a very religious old gentleman as president, who, I believe,
made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as follows:
“_Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you young
men just take him outside the door, and kill him!_” With this, a number
of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid
than themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not
been seen in New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such
threats, and should there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be
the consequence.

I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop
with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went
at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It
was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by
those who have been slaves. It was the first work, the reward of which
was to be entirely my own. There was no Master Hugh standing ready, the
moment I earned the money, to rob me of it. I worked that day with a
pleasure I had never before experienced. I was at work for myself and
newly-married wife. It was to me the starting-point of a new existence.
When I got through with that job, I went in pursuit of a job of
calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among
the white calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course I
could get no employment.[4] Finding my trade of no immediate benefit, I
threw off my calking habiliments, and prepared myself to do any kind of
work I could get to do. Mr. Johnson kindly let me have his wood-horse
and saw, and I very soon found myself a plenty of work. There was no
work too hard—none too dirty. I was ready to saw wood, shovel coal,
carry wood, sweep the chimney, or roll oil casks,—all of which I did
for nearly three years in New Bedford, before I became known to the
anti-slavery world.

 [4] I am told that colored persons can now get employment at calking
 in New Bedford—a result of anti-slavery effort.


In about four months after I went to New Bedford, there came a young
man to me, and inquired if I did not wish to take the “Liberator.” I
told him I did; but, just having made my escape from slavery, I
remarked that I was unable to pay for it then. I, however, finally
became a subscriber to it. The paper came, and I read it from week to
week with such feelings as it would be quite idle for me to attempt to
describe. The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on
fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciations
of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery—and its powerful
attacks upon the upholders of the institution—sent a thrill of joy
through my soul, such as I had never felt before!

I had not long been a reader of the “Liberator,” before I got a pretty
correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery
reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what
I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in
an anti-slavery meeting. I seldom had much to say at the meetings,
because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But,
while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of
August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time
much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard
me speak in the colored people’s meeting at New Bedford. It was a
severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt
myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me
down. I spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and
said what I desired with considerable ease. From that time until now, I
have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren—with what
success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my
labors to decide.



 APPENDIX


I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in
several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting
religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious
views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the
liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the
following brief explanation. What I have said respecting and against
religion, I mean strictly to apply to the _slaveholding religion_ of
this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for,
between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ,
I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the
one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as
bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity
to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial
Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding,
women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical
Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most
deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I
look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds,
and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of
“stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I
am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious
pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every
where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers
for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members. The man who
wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on
Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The
man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a
class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the
path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of
prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who
proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of
learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the
religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred
influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The
warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that
scatters whole families,—sundering husbands and wives, parents and
children, sisters and brothers,—leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth
desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer
against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to
support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the _Poor
Heathen! All For The Glory Of God And The Good Of Souls!_ The slave
auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other,
and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the
religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals
in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the
church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling
of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the
church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and
souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they
mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to
support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal
business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and
robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and
hell presenting the semblance of paradise.

“Just God! and these are they,v Who minister at thine altar, God of
right!
Men who their hands, with prayer and blessing, lay
On Israel’s ark of light.

“What! preach, and kidnap men?
Give thanks, and rob thy own afflicted poor?
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
Bolt hard the captive’s door?

“What! servants of thy own
Merciful Son, who came to seek and save
The homeless and the outcast, fettering down
The tasked and plundered slave!

“Pilate and Herod friends!
Chief priests and rulers, as of old, combine!
Just God and holy! is that church which lends
Strength to the spoiler thine?”


The Christianity of America is a Christianity, of whose votaries it may
be as truly said, as it was of the ancient scribes and Pharisees, “They
bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s
shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their
fingers. All their works they do for to be seen of men.—They love the
uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, . . .
. . . and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.—But woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against
men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
entering to go in. Ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make
long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Ye
compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye
make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.—Woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise,
and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
other undone. Ye blind guides! which strain at a gnat, and swallow a
camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make
clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but within, they are
full of extortion and excess.—Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear
beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all
uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but
within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of
the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain
at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our
churches? They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a
_sheep_-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a
_man_-stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with
them for it. They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward
forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters
of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are always ready to
sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented
as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate
their brother whom they have seen. They love the heathen on the other
side of the globe. They can pray for him, pay money to have the Bible
put into his hand, and missionaries to instruct him; while they despise
and totally neglect the heathen at their own doors.

Such is, very briefly, my view of the religion of this land; and to
avoid any misunderstanding, growing out of the use of general terms, I
mean by the religion of this land, that which is revealed in the words,
deeds, and actions, of those bodies, north and south, calling
themselves Christian churches, and yet in union with slaveholders. It
is against religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it
my duty to testify.

I conclude these remarks by copying the following portrait of the
religion of the south, (which is, by communion and fellowship, the
religion of the north,) which I soberly affirm is “true to the life,”
and without caricature or the slightest exaggeration. It is said to
have been drawn, several years before the present anti-slavery
agitation began, by a northern Methodist preacher, who, while residing
at the south, had an opportunity to see slaveholding morals, manners,
and piety, with his own eyes. “Shall I not visit for these things?
saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”


A PARODY


“Come, saints and sinners, hear me tell
How pious priests whip Jack and Nell,
And women buy and children sell,
And preach all sinners down to hell,
And sing of heavenly union.

“They’ll bleat and baa, dona like goats,
Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes,
Array their backs in fine black coats,
Then seize their negroes by their throats,
And choke, for heavenly union.

“They’ll church you if you sip a dram,
And damn you if you steal a lamb;
Yet rob old Tony, Doll, and Sam,
Of human rights, and bread and ham;
Kidnapper’s heavenly union.

“They’ll loudly talk of Christ’s reward,
And bind his image with a cord,
And scold, and swing the lash abhorred,
And sell their brother in the Lord
To handcuffed heavenly union.

“They’ll read and sing a sacred song,
And make a prayer both loud and long,
And teach the right and do the wrong,
Hailing the brother, sister throng,
With words of heavenly union.

“We wonder how such saints can sing,
Or praise the Lord upon the wing,
Who roar, and scold, and whip, and sting,
And to their slaves and mammon cling,
In guilty conscience union.

“They’ll raise tobacco, corn, and rye,
And drive, and thieve, and cheat, and lie,
And lay up treasures in the sky,
By making switch and cowskin fly,
In hope of heavenly union.

“They’ll crack old Tony on the skull,
And preach and roar like Bashan bull,
Or braying ass, of mischief full,
Then seize old Jacob by the wool,
And pull for heavenly union.

“A roaring, ranting, sleek man-thief,
Who lived on mutton, veal, and beef,
Yet never would afford relief
To needy, sable sons of grief,
Was big with heavenly union.

“‘Love not the world,’ the preacher said,
And winked his eye, and shook his head;
He seized on Tom, and Dick, and Ned,
Cut short their meat, and clothes, and bread,
Yet still loved heavenly union.

“Another preacher whining spoke
Of One whose heart for sinners broke:
He tied old Nanny to an oak,
And drew the blood at every stroke,
And prayed for heavenly union.

“Two others oped their iron jaws,
And waved their children-stealing paws;
There sat their children in gewgaws;
By stinting negroes’ backs and maws,
They kept up heavenly union.

“All good from Jack another takes,
And entertains their flirts and rakes,
Who dress as sleek as glossy snakes,
And cram their mouths with sweetened cakes;
And this goes down for union.”


Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something
toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the
glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in
bonds—faithfully relying upon the power of truth, love, and justice,
for success in my humble efforts—and solemnly pledging my self anew to
the sacred cause,—I subscribe myself,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.


LYNN, _Mass., April_ 28, 1845.


THE END



THE
NEGRO PROBLEM




CONTENTS


  I      Industrial Education for the Negro
         _Booker T. Washington_         7

 II      The Talented Tenth
         _W.E. Burghardt DuBois_       31

III      The Disfranchisement of the Negro
         _ Charles W. Chesnutt_        77

 IV      The Negro and the Law
         _Wilford H. Smith_           125

  V      The Characteristics of the Negro People
         _H.T. Kealing_               161

 VI      Representative American Negroes
         _Paul Laurence Dunbar_       187

VII      The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day
         _T. Thomas Fortune_          211


[_Transcriber's Note: Variant spellings have been left in the text. Obvious
typos have been corrected and indicated with a footnote._]





_Industrial Education for the Negro_

By BOOKER T. WASHINGTON,

Principal of Tuskegee Institute

  The necessity for the race's learning the difference between being
  worked and working. He would not confine the Negro to industrial life,
  but believes that the very best service which any one can render to what
  is called the "higher education" is to teach the present generation to
  work and save. This will create the wealth from which alone can come
  leisure and the opportunity for higher education.


One of the most fundamental and far-reaching deeds that has been
accomplished during the last quarter of a century has been that by which
the Negro has been helped to find himself and to learn the secrets of
civilization--to learn that there are a few simple, cardinal principles
upon which a race must start its upward course, unless it would fail, and
its last estate be worse than its first.

It has been necessary for the Negro to learn the difference between being
worked and working--to learn that being worked meant degradation, while
working means civilization; that all forms of labor are honorable, and all
forms of idleness disgraceful. It has been necessary for him to learn that
all races that have got upon their feet have done so largely by laying an
economic foundation, and, in general, by beginning in a proper cultivation
and ownership of the soil.

Forty years ago my race emerged from slavery into freedom. If, in too many
cases, the Negro race began development at the wrong end, it was largely
because neither white nor black properly understood the case. Nor is it
any wonder that this was so, for never before in the history of the world
had just such a problem been presented as that of the two races at the
coming of freedom in this country.

For two hundred and fifty years, I believe the way for the redemption of
the Negro was being prepared through industrial development. Through all
those years the Southern white man did business with the Negro in a way
that no one else has done business with him. In most cases if a Southern
white man wanted a house built he consulted a Negro mechanic about the
plan and about the actual building of the structure. If he wanted a suit
of clothes made he went to a Negro tailor, and for shoes he went to a
shoemaker of the same race. In a certain way every slave plantation in the
South was an industrial school. On these plantations young colored men and
women were constantly being trained not only as farmers but as carpenters,
blacksmiths, wheelwrights, brick masons, engineers, cooks, laundresses,
sewing women and housekeepers.

I do not mean in any way to apologize for the curse of slavery, which was
a curse to both races, but in what I say about industrial training in
slavery I am simply stating facts. This training was crude, and was given
for selfish purposes. It did not answer the highest ends, because there
was an absence of mental training in connection with the training of the
hand. To a large degree, though, this business contact with the Southern
white man, and the industrial training on the plantations, left the Negro
at the close of the war in possession of nearly all the common and skilled
labor in the South. The industries that gave the South its power,
prominence and wealth prior to the Civil War were mainly the raising of
cotton, sugar cane, rice and tobacco. Before the way could be prepared for
the proper growing and marketing of these crops forests had to be cleared,
houses to be built, public roads and railroads constructed. In all these
works the Negro did most of the heavy work. In the planting, cultivating
and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the chief dependence,
but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient
workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead
in the large tobacco manufactories.

In most of the industries, though, what happened? For nearly twenty years
after the war, except in a few instances, the value of the industrial
training given by the plantations was overlooked. Negro men and women were
educated in literature, in mathematics and in the sciences, with little
thought of what had been taking place during the preceding two hundred and
fifty years, except, perhaps, as something to be escaped, to be got as
far away from as possible. As a generation began to pass, those who had
been trained as mechanics in slavery began to disappear by death, and
gradually it began to be realized that there were few to take their
places. There were young men educated in foreign tongues, but few in
carpentry or in mechanical or architectural drawing. Many were trained in
Latin, but few as engineers and blacksmiths. Too many were taken from the
farm and educated, but educated in everything but farming. For this reason
they had no interest in farming and did not return to it. And yet
eighty-five per cent. of the Negro population of the Southern states lives
and for a considerable time will continue to live in the country
districts. The charge is often brought against the members of my race--and
too often justly, I confess--that they are found leaving the country
districts and flocking into the great cities where temptations are more
frequent and harder to resist, and where the Negro people too often become
demoralized. Think, though, how frequently it is the case that from the
first day that a pupil begins to go to school his books teach him much
about the cities of the world and city life, and almost nothing about the
country. How natural it is, then, that when he has the ordering of his
life he wants to live it in the city.

Only a short time before his death the late Mr. C.P. Huntington, to whose
memory a magnificent library has just been given by his widow to the
Hampton Institute for Negroes, in Virginia, said in a public address some
words which seem to me so wise that I want to quote them here:

"Our schools teach everybody a little of almost everything, but, in my
opinion, they teach very few children just what they ought to know in
order to make their way successfully in life. They do not put into their
hands the tools they are best fitted to use, and hence so many failures.
Many a mother and sister have worked and slaved, living upon scanty food,
in order to give a son and brother a "liberal education," and in doing
this have built up a barrier between the boy and the work he was fitted to
do. Let me say to you that all honest work is honorable work. If the labor
is manual, and seems common, you will have all the more chance to be
thinking of other things, or of work that is higher and brings better pay,
and to work out in your minds better and higher duties and
responsibilities for yourselves, and for thinking of ways by which you can
help others as well as yourselves, and bring them up to your own higher
level."

Some years ago, when we decided to make tailoring a part of our training
at the Tuskegee Institute, I was amazed to find that it was almost
impossible to find in the whole country an educated colored man who could
teach the making of clothing. We could find numbers of them who could
teach astronomy, theology, Latin or grammar, but almost none who could
instruct in the making of clothing, something that has to be used by every
one of us every day in the year. How often have I been discouraged as I
have gone through the South, and into the homes of the people of my race,
and have found women who could converse intelligently upon abstruse
subjects, and yet could not tell how to improve the condition of the
poorly cooked and still more poorly served bread and meat which they and
their families were eating three times a day. It is discouraging to find a
girl who can tell you the geographical location of any country on the
globe and who does not know where to place the dishes upon a common dinner
table. It is discouraging to find a woman who knows much about theoretical
chemistry, and who cannot properly wash and iron a shirt.

In what I say here I would not by any means have it understood that I
would limit or circumscribe the mental development of the Negro-student.
No race can be lifted until its mind is awakened and strengthened. By the
side of industrial training should always go mental and moral training,
but the pushing of mere abstract knowledge into the head means little. We
want more than the mere performance of mental gymnastics. Our knowledge
must be harnessed to the things of real life. I would encourage the Negro
to secure all the mental strength, all the mental culture--whether gleaned
from science, mathematics, history, language or literature that his
circumstances will allow, but I believe most earnestly that for years to
come the education of the people of my race should be so directed that the
greatest proportion of the mental strength of the masses will be brought
to bear upon the every-day practical things of life, upon something that
is needed to be done, and something which they will be permitted to do in
the community in which they reside. And just the same with the
professional class which the race needs and must have, I would say give
the men and women of that class, too, the training which will best fit
them to perform in the most successful manner the service which the race
demands.

I would not confine the race to industrial life, not even to agriculture,
for example, although I believe that by far the greater part of the Negro
race is best off in the country districts and must and should continue to
live there, but I would teach the race that in industry the foundation
must be laid--that the very best service which any one can render to what
is called the higher education is to teach the present generation to
provide a material or industrial foundation. On such a foundation as this
will grow habits of thrift, a love of work, economy, ownership of
property, bank accounts. Out of it in the future will grow practical
education, professional education, positions of public responsibility. Out
of it will grow moral and religious strength. Out of it will grow wealth
from which alone can come leisure and the opportunity for the enjoyment of
literature and the fine arts.

In the words of the late beloved Frederick Douglass: "Every blow of the
sledge hammer wielded by a sable arm is a powerful blow in support of our
cause. Every colored mechanic is by virtue of circumstances an elevator of
his race. Every house built by a black man is a strong tower against the
allied hosts of prejudice. It is impossible for us to attach too much
importance to this aspect of the subject. Without industrial development
there can be no wealth; without wealth there can be no leisure; without
leisure no opportunity for thoughtful reflection and the cultivation of
the higher arts."

I would set no limits to the attainments of the Negro in arts, in letters
or statesmanship, but I believe the surest way to reach those ends is by
laying the foundation in the little things of life that lie immediately
about one's door. I plead for industrial education and development for the
Negro not because I want to cramp him, but because I want to free him. I
want to see him enter the all-powerful business and commercial world.

It was such combined mental, moral and industrial education which the late
General Armstrong set out to give at the Hampton Institute when he
established that school thirty years ago. The Hampton Institute has
continued along the lines laid down by its great founder, and now each
year an increasing number of similar schools are being established in the
South, for the people of both races.

Early in the history of the Tuskegee Institute we began to combine
industrial training with mental and moral culture. Our first efforts were
in the direction of agriculture, and we began teaching this with no
appliances except one hoe and a blind mule. From this small beginning we
have grown until now the Institute owns two thousand acres of land, eight
hundred of which are cultivated each year by the young men of the school.
We began teaching wheelwrighting and blacksmithing in a small way to the
men, and laundry work, cooking and sewing and housekeeping to the young
women. The fourteen hundred and over young men and women who attended the
school during the last school year received instruction--in addition to
academic and religious training--in thirty-three trades and industries,
including carpentry, blacksmithing, printing, wheelwrighting
harnessmaking, painting, machinery, founding, shoemaking, brickmasonry and
brickmaking, plastering, sawmilling, tinsmithing, tailoring, mechanical
and architectural drawing, electrical and steam engineering, canning,
sewing, dressmaking, millinery, cooking, laundering, housekeeping,
mattress making, basketry, nursing, agriculture, dairying and stock
raising, horticulture.

Not only do the students receive instruction in these trades, but they do
actual work, by means of which more than half of them pay some part or all
of their expenses while remaining at the school. Of the sixty buildings
belonging to the school all but four were almost wholly erected by the
students as a part of their industrial education. Even the bricks which go
into the walls are made by students in the school's brick yard, in which,
last year, they manufactured two million bricks.

When we first began this work at Tuskegee, and the idea got spread among
the people of my race that the students who came to the Tuskegee school
were to be taught industries in connection with their academic studies,
were, in other words, to be taught to work, I received a great many verbal
messages and letters from parents informing me that they wanted their
children taught books, but not how to work. This protest went on for three
or four years, but I am glad to be able to say now that our people have
very generally been educated to a point where they see their own needs and
conditions so clearly that it has been several years since we have had a
single protest from parents against the teaching of industries, and there
is now a positive enthusiasm for it. In fact, public sentiment among the
students at Tuskegee is now so strong for industrial training that it
would hardly permit a student to remain on the grounds who was unwilling
to labor.

It seems to me that too often mere book education leaves the Negro young
man or woman in a weak position. For example, I have seen a Negro girl
taught by her mother to help her in doing laundry work at home. Later,
when this same girl was graduated from the public schools or a high school
and returned home she finds herself educated out of sympathy with laundry
work, and yet not able to find anything to do which seems in keeping with
the cost and character of her education. Under these circumstances we
cannot be surprised if she does not fulfill the expectations made for her.
What should have been done for her, it seems to me, was to give her along
with her academic education thorough training in the latest and best
methods of laundry work, so that she could have put so much skill and
intelligence into it that the work would have been lifted out from the
plane of drudgery[A]. The home which she would then have been able to
found by the results of her work would have enabled her to help her
children to take a still more responsible position in life.

Almost from the first Tuskegee has kept in mind--and this I think should
be the policy of all industrial schools--fitting students for occupations
which would be open to them in their home communities. Some years ago we
noted the fact that there was beginning to be a demand in the South for
men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. We opened a dairy
department in connection with the school, where a number of young men
could have instruction in the latest and most scientific methods of dairy
work. At present we have calls--mainly from Southern white men--for twice
as many dairymen as we are able to supply. What is equally satisfactory,
the reports which come to us indicate that our young men are giving the
highest satisfaction and are fast changing and improving the dairy product
in the communities into which they go. I use the dairy here as an example.
What I have said of this is equally true of many of the other industries
which we teach. Aside from the economic value of this work I cannot but
believe, and my observation confirms me in my belief, that as we continue
to place Negro men and women of intelligence, religion, modesty,
conscience and skill in every community in the South, who will prove by
actual results their value to the community, I cannot but believe, I say,
that this will constitute a solution to many of the present political and
social difficulties.

Many seem to think that industrial education is meant to make the Negro
work as he worked in the days of slavery. This is far from my conception
of industrial education. If this training is worth anything to the Negro,
it consists in teaching him how not to work, but how to make the forces of
nature--air, steam, water, horse-power and electricity--work for him. If
it has any value it is in lifting labor up out of toil and drudgery into
the plane of the dignified and the beautiful. The Negro in the South works
and works hard; but too often his ignorance and lack of skill causes him
to do his work in the most costly and shiftless manner, and this keeps him
near the bottom of the ladder in the economic world.

I have not emphasized particularly in these pages the great need of
training the Negro in agriculture, but I believe that this branch of
industrial education does need very great emphasis. In this connection I
want to quote some words which Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Montgomery,
Alabama, has recently written upon this subject:

"We must incorporate into our public school system a larger recognition of
the practical and industrial elements in educational training. Ours is an
agricultural population. The school must be brought more closely to the
soil. The teaching of history, for example, is all very well, but nobody
can really know anything of history unless he has been taught to see
things grow--has so seen things not only with the outward eye, but with
the eyes of his intelligence and conscience. The actual things of the
present are more important, however, than the institutions of the past.
Even to young children can be shown the simpler conditions and processes
of growth--how corn is put into the ground--how cotton and potatoes
should be planted--how to choose the soil best adapted to a particular
plant, how to improve that soil, how to care for the plant while it grows,
how to get the most value out of it, how to use the elements of waste for
the fertilization of other crops; how, through the alternation of crops,
the land may be made to increase the annual value of its products--these
things, upon their elementary side are absolutely vital to the worth and
success of hundreds of thousands of these people of the Negro race, and
yet our whole educational system has practically ignored them.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Such work will mean not only an education in agriculture, but an
education through agriculture and education, through natural symbols and
practical forms, which will educate as deeply, as broadly and as truly as
any other system which the world has known. Such changes will bring far
larger results than the mere improvement of our Negroes. They will give
us an agricultural class, a class of tenants or small land owners, trained
not away from the soil, but in relation to the soil and in intelligent
dependence upon its resources."

I close, then, as I began, by saying that as a slave the Negro was worked,
and that as a freeman he must learn to work. There is still doubt in many
quarters as to the ability of the Negro unguided, unsupported, to hew his
own path and put into visible, tangible, indisputable form, products and
signs of civilization. This doubt cannot be much affected by abstract
arguments, no matter how delicately and convincingly woven together.
Patiently, quietly, doggedly, persistently, through summer and winter,
sunshine and shadow, by self-sacrifice, by foresight, by honesty and
industry, we must re-enforce argument with results. One farm bought, one
house built, one home sweetly and intelligently kept, one man who is the
largest tax payer or has the largest bank account, one school or church
maintained, one factory running successfully, one truck garden profitably
cultivated, one patient cured by a Negro doctor, one sermon well
preached, one office well filled, one life cleanly lived--these will tell
more in our favor than all the abstract eloquence that can be summoned to
plead our cause. Our pathway must be up through the soil, up through
swamps, up through forests, up through the streams, the rocks, up through
commerce, education and religion!

[Footnote A: In the original, this was 'drudggery'.]




_The Talented Tenth_

By PROF. W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS

  A strong plea for the higher education of the Negro, which those who are
  interested in the future of the freedmen cannot afford to ignore. Prof.
  DuBois produces ample evidence to prove conclusively the truth of his
  statement that "to attempt to establish any sort of a system of common
  and industrial school training, without _first_ providing for the higher
  training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the
  winds."

[Illustration: W.E. BURGHARDT DuBOIS.]


The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional
men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal
with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this
race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of
the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a
difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for educational
experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the
object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily
men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess
artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make
manhood the object of the work of the schools--intelligence, broad
sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of
men to it--this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must
underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill
of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man
mistake the means of living for the object of life.

       *       *       *       *       *

If this be true--and who can deny it--three tasks lay before me; first to
show from the past that the Talented Tenth as they have risen among
American Negroes have been worthy of leadership; secondly, to show how
these men may be educated and developed; and thirdly, to show their
relation to the Negro problem.

       *       *       *       *       *

You misjudge us because you do not know us. From the very first it has
been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and
elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded
their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but
the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of
natural internal leadership? Negro leadership, therefore, sought from the
first to rid the race of this awful incubus that it might make way for
natural selection and the survival of the fittest. In colonial days came
Phillis Wheatley and Paul Cuffe striving against the bars of prejudice;
and Benjamin Banneker, the almanac maker, voiced their longings when he
said to Thomas Jefferson, "I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am
of the African race, and in colour which is natural to them, of the
deepest dye; and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the
Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you that I am not
under that state of tyrannical thraldom and inhuman captivity to which too
many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the
fruition of those blessings which proceed from that free and unequalled
liberty with which you are favored, and which I hope you will willingly
allow, you have mercifully received from the immediate hand of that Being
from whom proceedeth every good and perfect gift.

"Suffer me to recall to your mind that time, in which the arms of the
British crown were exerted with every powerful effort, in order to reduce
you to a state of servitude; look back, I entreat you, on the variety of
dangers to which you were exposed; reflect on that period in which every
human aid appeared unavailable, and in which even hope and fortitude wore
the aspect of inability to the conflict, and you cannot but be led to a
serious and grateful sense of your miraculous and providential
preservation, you cannot but acknowledge, that the present freedom and
tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received, and that a
peculiar blessing of heaven.

"This, sir, was a time when you clearly saw into the injustice of a state
of Slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its
condition. It was then that your abhorrence thereof was so excited, that
you publicly held forth this true and invaluable doctrine, which is worthy
to be recorded and remembered in all succeeding ages: 'We hold these
truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"

Then came Dr. James Derham, who could tell even the learned Dr. Rush
something of medicine, and Lemuel Haynes, to whom Middlebury College gave
an honorary A.M. in 1804. These and others we may call the Revolutionary
group of distinguished Negroes--they were persons of marked ability,
leaders of a Talented Tenth, standing conspicuously among the best of
their time. They strove by word and deed to save the color line from
becoming the line between the bond and free, but all they could do was
nullified by Eli Whitney and the Curse of Gold. So they passed into
forgetfulness.

But their spirit did not wholly die; here and there in the early part of
the century came other exceptional men. Some were natural sons of
unnatural fathers and were given often a liberal training and thus a race
of educated mulattoes sprang up to plead for black men's rights. There was
Ira Aldridge, whom all Europe loved to honor; there was that Voice crying
in the Wilderness, David Walker, and saying:

"I declare it does appear to me as though some nations think God is
asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their
mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history, sacred or
profane. I ask every man who has a heart, and is blessed with the
privilege of believing--Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures?
Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants and
permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children
in eternal ignorance and wretchedness to support them and their families,
would he be to us a God of Justice? I ask, O, ye Christians, who hold us
and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a
people were afflicted with since the world began--I say if God gives you
peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and
our children, who have never given you the least provocation--would He be
to us a God of Justice? If you will allow that we are men, who feel for
each other, does not the blood of our fathers and of us, their children,
cry aloud to the Lord of Sabaoth against you for the cruelties and murders
with which you have and do continue to afflict us?"

This was the wild voice that first aroused Southern legislators in 1829 to
the terrors of abolitionism.

In 1831 there met that first Negro convention in Philadelphia, at which
the world gaped curiously but which bravely attacked the problems of race
and slavery, crying out against persecution and declaring that "Laws as
cruel in themselves as they were unconstitutional and unjust, have in many
places been enacted against our poor, unfriended and unoffending brethren
(without a shadow of provocation on our part), at whose bare recital the
very savage draws himself up for fear of contagion--looks noble and
prides himself because he bears not the name of Christian." Side by side
this free Negro movement, and the movement for abolition, strove until
they merged into one strong stream. Too little notice has been taken of
the work which the Talented Tenth among Negroes took in the great
abolition crusade. From the very day that a Philadelphia colored man
became the first subscriber to Garrison's "Liberator," to the day when
Negro soldiers made the Emancipation Proclamation possible, black leaders
worked shoulder to shoulder with white men in a movement, the success of
which would have been impossible without them. There was Purvis and
Remond, Pennington and Highland Garnett, Sojourner Truth and Alexander
Crummel, and above all, Frederick Douglass--what would the abolition
movement have been without them? They stood as living examples of the
possibilities of the Negro race, their own hard experiences and well
wrought culture said silently more than all the drawn periods of
orators--they were the men who made American slavery impossible. As Maria
Weston Chapman once said, from the school of anti-slavery agitation "a
throng of authors, editors, lawyers, orators and accomplished gentlemen of
color have taken their degree! It has equally implanted hopes and
aspirations, noble thoughts, and sublime purposes, in the hearts of both
races. It has prepared the white man for the freedom of the black man, and
it has made the black man scorn the thought of enslavement, as does a
white man, as far as its influence has extended. Strengthen that noble
influence! Before its organization, the country only saw here and there in
slavery some faithful Cudjoe or Dinah, whose strong natures blossomed even
in bondage, like a fine plant beneath a heavy stone. Now, under the
elevating and cherishing influence of the American Anti-slavery Society,
the colored race, like the white, furnishes Corinthian capitals for the
noblest temples."

Where were these black abolitionists trained? Some, like Frederick
Douglass, were self-trained, but yet trained liberally; others, like
Alexander Crummell and McCune Smith, graduated from famous foreign
universities. Most of them rose up through the colored schools of New York
and Philadelphia and Boston, taught by college-bred men like Russworm, of
Dartmouth, and college-bred white men like Neau and Benezet.

After emancipation came a new group of educated and gifted leaders:
Langston, Bruce and Elliot, Greener, Williams and Payne. Through political
organization, historical and polemic writing and moral regeneration, these
men strove to uplift their people. It is the fashion of to-day to sneer at
them and to say that with freedom Negro leadership should have begun at
the plow and not in the Senate--a foolish and mischievous lie; two hundred
and fifty years that black serf toiled at the plow and yet that toiling
was in vain till the Senate passed the war amendments; and two hundred
and fifty years more the half-free serf of to-day may toil at his plow,
but unless he have political rights and righteously guarded civic
status, he will still remain the poverty-stricken and ignorant plaything
of rascals, that he now is. This all sane men know even if they dare
not say it.

And so we come to the present--a day of cowardice and vacillation, of
strident wide-voiced wrong and faint hearted compromise; of double-faced
dallying with Truth and Right. Who are to-day guiding the work of the
Negro people? The "exceptions" of course. And yet so sure as this Talented
Tenth is pointed out, the blind worshippers of the Average cry out in
alarm: "These are exceptions, look here at death, disease and crime--these
are the happy rule." Of course they are the rule, because a silly nation
made them the rule: Because for three long centuries this people lynched
Negroes who dared to be brave, raped black women who dared to be virtuous,
crushed dark-hued youth who dared to be ambitious, and encouraged and
made to flourish servility and lewdness and apathy. But not even this was
able to crush all manhood and chastity and aspiration from black folk. A
saving remnant continually survives and persists, continually aspires,
continually shows itself in thrift and ability and character. Exceptional
it is to be sure, but this is its chiefest promise; it shows the
capability of Negro blood, the promise of black men. Do Americans ever
stop to reflect that there are in this land a million men of Negro blood,
well-educated, owners of homes, against the honor of whose womanhood no
breath was ever raised, whose men occupy positions of trust and
usefulness, and who, judged by any standard, have reached the full measure
of the best type of modern European culture? Is it fair, is it decent, is
it Christian to ignore these facts of the Negro problem, to belittle such
aspiration, to nullify such leadership and seek to crush these people back
into the mass out of which by toil and travail, they and their fathers
have raised themselves?

Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly
raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and
character? Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the
bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top
downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that
are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of
human progress; and the two historic mistakes which have hindered that
progress were the thinking first that no more could ever rise save the few
already risen; or second, that it would better the unrisen to pull the
risen down.

How then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the hands
of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one answer: The best and
most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and
universities of the land. We will not quarrel as to just what the
university of the Negro should teach or how it should teach it--I
willingly admit that each soul and each race-soul needs its own peculiar
curriculum. But this is true: A university is a human invention for the
transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to generation,
through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no
other human invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools.

All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or
nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of
training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and
necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their
bellies, and no God greater than Gold. This is true training, and thus in
the beginning were the favored sons of the freedmen trained. Out of the
colleges of the North came, after the blood of war, Ware, Cravath, Chase,
Andrews, Bumstead and Spence to build the foundations of knowledge and
civilization in the black South. Where ought they to have begun to build?
At the bottom, of course, quibbles the mole with his eyes in the earth.
Aye! truly at the bottom, at the very bottom; at the bottom of knowledge,
down in the very depths of knowledge there where the roots of justice
strike into the lowest soil of Truth. And so they did begin; they founded
colleges, and up from the colleges shot normal schools, and out from the
normal schools went teachers, and around the normal teachers clustered
other teachers to teach the public schools; the college trained in Greek
and Latin and mathematics, 2,000 men; and these men trained full 50,000
others in morals and manners, and they in turn taught thrift and the
alphabet to nine millions of men, who to-day hold $300,000,000 of
property. It was a miracle--the most wonderful peace-battle of the 19th
century, and yet to-day men smile at it, and in fine superiority tell us
that it was all a strange mistake; that a proper way to found a system of
education is first to gather the children and buy them spelling books and
hoes; afterward men may look about for teachers, if haply they may find
them; or again they would teach men Work, but as for Life--why, what has
Work to do with Life, they ask vacantly.

Was the work of these college founders successful; did it stand the test
of time? Did the college graduates, with all their fine theories of life,
really live? Are they useful men helping to civilize and elevate their
less fortunate fellows? Let us see. Omitting all institutions which have
not actually graduated students from a college course, there are to-day in
the United States thirty-four institutions giving something above high
school training to Negroes and designed especially for this race.

Three of these were established in border States before the War; thirteen
were planted by the Freedmen's Bureau in the years 1864-1869; nine were
established between 1870 and 1880 by various church bodies; five were
established after 1881 by Negro churches, and four are state institutions
supported by United States' agricultural funds. In most cases the college
departments are small adjuncts to high and common school work. As a matter
of fact six institutions--Atlanta, Fisk, Howard, Shaw, Wilberforce and
Leland, are the important Negro colleges so far as actual work and number
of students are concerned. In all these institutions, seven hundred and
fifty Negro college students are enrolled. In grade the best of these
colleges are about a year behind the smaller New England colleges and a
typical curriculum is that of Atlanta University. Here students from the
grammar grades, after a three years' high school course, take a college
course of 136 weeks. One-fourth of this time is given to Latin and Greek;
one-fifth, to English and modern languages; one-sixth, to history and
social science; one-seventh, to natural science; one-eighth to
mathematics, and one-eighth to philosophy and pedagogy.

In addition to these students in the South, Negroes have attended Northern
colleges for many years. As early as 1826 one was graduated from Bowdoin
College, and from that time till to-day nearly every year has seen
elsewhere, other such graduates. They have, of course, met much color
prejudice. Fifty years ago very few colleges would admit them at all. Even
to-day no Negro has ever been admitted to Princeton, and at some other
leading institutions they are rather endured than encouraged. Oberlin was
the great pioneer in the work of blotting out the color line in colleges,
and has more Negro graduates by far than any other Northern college.

The total number of Negro college graduates up to 1899, (several of the
graduates of that year not being reported), was as follows:

---------------+---------------+-----------------
               |Negro Colleges.| White Colleges.
---------------+---------------+-----------------
Before '76     |     137       |        75
       '75-80  |     143       |        22
       '80-85  |     250       |        31
       '85-90  |     413       |        43
       '90-95  |     465       |        66
       '96-99  |     475       |        88
Class Unknown  |      57       |        64
---------------+---------------+-----------------
Total          |   1,914       |       390
---------------+---------------+-----------------

Of these graduates 2,079 were men and 252 were women; 50 per cent. of
Northern-born college men come South to work among the masses of their
people, at a sacrifice which few people realize; nearly 90 per cent. of
the Southern-born graduates instead of seeking that personal freedom and
broader intellectual atmosphere which their training has led them, in some
degree, to conceive, stay and labor and wait in the midst of their black
neighbors and relatives.

The most interesting question, and in many respects the crucial question,
to be asked concerning college-bred Negroes, is: Do they earn a living? It
has been intimated more than once that the higher training of Negroes has
resulted in sending into the world of work, men who could find nothing to
do suitable to their talents. Now and then there comes a rumor of a
colored college man working at menial service, etc. Fortunately, returns
as to occupations of college-bred Negroes, gathered by the Atlanta
conference, are quite full--nearly sixty per cent. of the total number of
graduates.

This enables us to reach fairly certain conclusions as to the occupations
of all college-bred Negroes. Of 1,312 persons reported, there were:

---------------------------------+----------+------------
                                 | Per Cent.|
---------------------------------+----------+------------
Teachers,                        |  53.4    |************
Clergymen,                       |  16.8    |******
Physicians, etc.,                |   6.3    |****
Students,                        |   5.6    |***
Lawyers,                         |   4.7    |***
In Govt. Service,                |   4.0    |**
In Business,                     |   3.6    |**
Farmers and Artisans,            |   2.7    |*
Editors, Secretaries and Clerks, |   2.4    |*
Miscellaneous.                   |    .5    |*
---------------------------------+----------+------------

Over half are teachers, a sixth are preachers, another sixth are students
and professional men; over 6 per cent. are farmers, artisans and
merchants, and 4 per cent. are in government service. In detail the
occupations are as follows:

_Occupations of College-Bred Men._

Teachers:
  Presidents and Deans,                       19
  Teacher of Music,                            7
  Professors, Principals and Teachers,       675      Total 701

Clergymen:
  Bishop,                                      1
  Chaplains U.S. Army,                         2
  Missionaries,                                9
  Presiding Elders,                           12
  Preachers,                                 197      Total 221

Physicians,
  Doctors of Medicine,                        76
  Druggists,                                   4
  Dentists,                                    3      Total  83

Students,                                                    74

Lawyers,                                                     62

Civil Service:
  U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary,               1
  U.S. Consul,                                 1
  U.S. Deputy Collector,                       1
  U.S. Gauger,                                 1
  U.S. Postmasters,                            2
  U.S. Clerks,                                44
  State Civil Service,                         2
  City Civil Service,                          1       Total 53

Business Men:
  Merchants, etc.,                            30
  Managers,                                   13
  Real Estate Dealers,                         4       Total 47

Farmers,                                                     26

Clerks and Secretaries:
  Secretary of National Societies,             7
  Clerks, etc.,                               15       Total 22

Artisans,                                                     9

Editors,                                                      9

Miscellaneous,                                                5

These figures illustrate vividly the function of the college-bred Negro.
He is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of
the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social
movements. It need hardly be argued that the Negro people need social
leadership more than most groups; that they have no traditions to fall
back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, no well
defined social classes. All these things must be slowly and painfully
evolved. The preacher was, even before the war, the group leader of the
Negroes, and the church their greatest social institution. Naturally this
preacher was ignorant and often immoral, and the problem of replacing the
older type by better educated men has been a difficult one. Both by direct
work and by direct influence on other preachers, and on congregations, the
college-bred preacher has an opportunity for reformatory work and moral
inspiration, the value of which cannot be overestimated.

It has, however, been in the furnishing of teachers that the Negro college
has found its peculiar function. Few persons realize how vast a work, how
mighty a revolution has been thus accomplished. To furnish five millions
and more of ignorant people with teachers of their own race and blood, in
one generation, was not only a very difficult undertaking, but a very
important one, in that, it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro
child an attainable ideal. It brought the masses of the blacks in contact
with modern civilization, made black men the leaders of their communities
and trainers of the new generation. In this work college-bred Negroes were
first teachers, and then teachers of teachers. And here it is that the
broad culture of college work has been of peculiar value. Knowledge of
life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro's deepest
ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been
simply for bread winning, but also for human culture, has been of
inestimable value in the training of these men.

In earlier years the two occupations of preacher and teacher were
practically the only ones open to the black college graduate. Of later
years a larger diversity of life among his people, has opened new avenues
of employment. Nor have these college men been paupers and spendthrifts;
557 college-bred Negroes owned in 1899, $1,342,862.50 worth of real
estate, (assessed value) or $2,411 per family. The real value of the total
accumulations of the whole group is perhaps about $10,000,000, or $5,000 a
piece. Pitiful, is it not, beside the fortunes of oil kings and steel
trusts, but after all is the fortune of the millionaire the only stamp of
true and successful living? Alas! it is, with many, and there's the rub.

The problem of training the Negro is to-day immensely complicated by the
fact that the whole question of the efficiency and appropriateness of our
present systems of education, for any kind of child, is a matter of active
debate, in which final settlement seems still afar off. Consequently it
often happens that persons arguing for or against certain systems of
education for Negroes, have these controversies in mind and miss the real
question at issue. The main question, so far as the Southern Negro is
concerned, is: What under the present circumstance, must a system of
education do in order to raise the Negro as quickly as possible in the
scale of civilization? The answer to this question seems to me clear: It
must strengthen the Negro's character, increase his knowledge and teach
him to earn a living. Now it goes without saying, that it is hard to do
all these things simultaneously or suddenly, and that at the same time it
will not do to give all the attention to one and neglect the others; we
could give black boys trades, but that alone will not civilize a race of
ex-slaves; we might simply increase their knowledge of the world, but this
would not necessarily make them wish to use this knowledge honestly; we
might seek to strengthen character and purpose, but to what end if this
people have nothing to eat or to wear? A system of education is not one
thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter
of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and
without the school house walls, which molds and develops men. If then we
start out to train an ignorant and unskilled people with a heritage of bad
habits, our system of training must set before itself two great aims--the
one dealing with knowledge and character, the other part seeking to give
the child the technical knowledge necessary for him to earn a living under
the present circumstances. These objects are accomplished in part by the
opening of the common schools on the one, and of the industrial schools on
the other. But only in part, for there must also be trained those who are
to teach these schools--men and women of knowledge and culture and
technical skill who understand modern civilization, and have the training
and aptitude to impart it to the children under them. There must be
teachers, and teachers of teachers, and to attempt to establish any sort
of a system of common and industrial school training, without _first_
(and I say _first_ advisedly) without _first_ providing for the higher
training of the very best teachers, is simply throwing your money to the
winds. School houses do not teach themselves--piles of brick and mortar
and machinery do not send out _men_. It is the trained, living human soul,
cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the
real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they
be black or white, Greek, Russian or American. Nothing, in these latter
days, has so dampened the faith of thinking Negroes in recent educational
movements, as the fact that such movements have been accompanied by
ridicule and denouncement and decrying of those very institutions of
higher training which made the Negro public school possible, and make
Negro industrial schools thinkable. It was Fisk, Atlanta, Howard and
Straight, those colleges born of the faith and sacrifice of the
abolitionists, that placed in the black schools of the South the 30,000
teachers and more, which some, who depreciate the work of these higher
schools, are using to teach their own new experiments. If Hampton,
Tuskegee and the hundred other industrial schools prove in the future to
be as successful as they deserve to be, then their success in training
black artisans for the South, will be due primarily to the white colleges
of the North and the black colleges of the South, which trained the
teachers who to-day conduct these institutions. There was a time when the
American people believed pretty devoutly that a log of wood with a boy at
one end and Mark Hopkins at the other, represented the highest ideal of
human training. But in these eager days it would seem that we have changed
all that and think it necessary to add a couple of saw-mills and a hammer
to this outfit, and, at a pinch, to dispense with the services of Mark
Hopkins.

I would not deny, or for a moment seem to deny, the paramount necessity of
teaching the Negro to work, and to work steadily and skillfully; or seem
to depreciate in the slightest degree the important part industrial
schools must play in the accomplishment of these ends, but I _do_ say, and
insist upon it, that it is industrialism drunk with its vision of success,
to imagine that its own work can be accomplished without providing for the
training of broadly cultured men and women to teach its own teachers, and
to teach the teachers of the public schools.

But I have already said that human education is not simply a matter of
schools; it is much more a matter of family and group life--the training
of one's home, of one's daily companions, of one's social class. Now the
black boy of the South moves in a black world--a world with its own
leaders, its own thoughts, its own ideals. In this world he gets by far
the larger part of his life training, and through the eyes of this dark
world he peers into the veiled world beyond. Who guides and determines the
education which he receives in his world? His teachers here are the
group-leaders of the Negro people--the physicians and clergymen, the
trained fathers and mothers, the influential and forceful men about him of
all kinds; here it is, if at all, that the culture of the surrounding
world trickles through and is handed on by the graduates of the higher
schools. Can such culture training of group leaders be neglected? Can we
afford to ignore it? Do you think that if the leaders of thought among
Negroes are not trained and educated thinkers, that they will have no
leaders? On the contrary a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold
the places they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous
busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; either you must help
furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained
leadership, or you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless
misguided rabble.

I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black
boys, and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of
Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education since the
war, has been industrial training for black boys. Nevertheless, I insist
that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is
to make carpenters men; there are two means of making the carpenter a man,
each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in
which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and
his family what life means; the second is to give him sufficient
intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman; the
first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men--not a
quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many
college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to
raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good
system of common schools, well-taught, conveniently located and properly
equipped.

The Sixth Atlanta Conference truly said in 1901:

"We call the attention of the Nation to the fact that less than one
million of the three million Negro children of school age, are at present
regularly attending school, and these attend a session which lasts only a
few months.

"We are to-day deliberately rearing millions of our citizens in ignorance,
and at the same time limiting the rights of citizenship by educational
qualifications. This is unjust. Half the black youth of the land have no
opportunities open to them for learning to read, write and cipher. In the
discussion as to the proper training of Negro children after they leave
the public schools, we have forgotten that they are not yet decently
provided with public schools.

"Propositions are beginning to be made in the South to reduce the already
meagre school facilities of Negroes. We congratulate the South on
resisting, as much as it has, this pressure, and on the many millions it
has spent on Negro education. But it is only fair to point out that Negro
taxes and the Negroes' share of the income from indirect taxes and
endowments have fully repaid this expenditure, so that the Negro public
school system has not in all probability cost the white taxpayers a single
cent since the war.

"This is not fair. Negro schools should be a public burden, since they are
a public benefit. The Negro has a right to demand good common school
training at the hands of the States and the Nation since by their fault he
is not in position to pay for this himself."

What is the chief need for the building up of the Negro public school in
the South? The Negro race in the South needs teachers to-day above all
else. This is the concurrent testimony of all who know the situation. For
the supply of this great demand two things are needed--institutions of
higher education and money for school houses and salaries. It is usually
assumed that a hundred or more institutions for Negro training are to-day
turning out so many teachers and college-bred men that the race is
threatened with an over-supply. This is sheer nonsense. There are to-day
less than 3,000 living Negro college graduates in the United States, and
less than 1,000 Negroes in college. Moreover, in the 164 schools for
Negroes, 95 per cent. of their students are doing elementary and secondary
work, work which should be done in the public schools. Over half the
remaining 2,157 students are taking high school studies. The mass of
so-called "normal" schools for the Negro, are simply doing elementary
common school work, or, at most, high school work, with a little
instruction in methods. The Negro colleges and the post-graduate courses
at other institutions are the only agencies for the broader and more
careful training of teachers. The work of these institutions is hampered
for lack of funds. It is getting increasingly difficult to get funds for
training teachers in the best modern methods, and yet all over the South,
from State Superintendents, county officials, city boards and school
principals comes the wail, "We need TEACHERS!" and teachers must be
trained. As the fairest minded of all white Southerners, Atticus G.
Haygood, once said: "The defects of colored teachers are so great as to
create an urgent necessity for training better ones. Their excellencies
and their successes are sufficient to justify the best hopes of success in
the effort, and to vindicate the judgment of those who make large
investments of money and service, to give to colored students opportunity
for thoroughly preparing themselves for the work of teaching children of
their people."

The truth of this has been strikingly shown in the marked improvement of
white teachers in the South. Twenty years ago the rank and file of white
public school teachers were not as good as the Negro teachers. But they,
by scholarships and good salaries, have been encouraged to thorough normal
and collegiate preparation, while the Negro teachers have been discouraged
by starvation wages and the idea that any training will do for a black
teacher. If carpenters are needed it is well and good to train men as
carpenters. But to train men as carpenters, and then set them to teaching
is wasteful and criminal; and to train men as teachers and then refuse
them living wages, unless they become carpenters, is rank nonsense.

The United States Commissioner of Education says in his report for 1900:
"For comparison between the white and colored enrollment in secondary and
higher education, I have added together the enrollment in high schools and
secondary schools, with the attendance on colleges and universities, not
being sure of the actual grade of work done in the colleges and
universities. The work done in the secondary schools is reported in such
detail in this office, that there can be no doubt of its grade."

He then makes the following comparisons of persons in every million
enrolled in secondary and higher education:

      _Whole Country._  _Negroes._
1880       4,362            1,289
1900      10,743            2,061

And he concludes: "While the number in colored high schools and colleges
had increased somewhat faster than the population, it had not kept pace
with the average of the whole country, for it had fallen from 30 per cent.
to 24 per cent. of the average quota. Of all colored pupils, one (1) in
one hundred was engaged in secondary and higher work, and that ratio has
continued substantially for the past twenty years. If the ratio of colored
population in secondary and higher education is to be equal to the average
for the whole country, it must be increased to five times its present
average." And if this be true of the secondary and higher education, it is
safe to say that the Negro has not one-tenth his quota in college studies.
How baseless, therefore, is the charge of too much training! We need Negro
teachers for the Negro common schools, and we need first-class normal
schools and colleges to train them. This is the work of higher Negro
education and it must be done.

Further than this, after being provided with group leaders of
civilization, and a foundation of intelligence in the public schools, the
carpenter, in order to be a man, needs technical skill. This calls for
trade schools. Now trade schools are not nearly such simple things as
people once thought. The original idea was that the "Industrial" school
was to furnish education, practically free, to those willing to work for
it; it was to "do" things--i.e.: become a center of productive industry,
it was to be partially, if not wholly, self-supporting, and it was to
teach trades. Admirable as were some of the ideas underlying this scheme,
the whole thing simply would not work in practice; it was found that if
you were to use time and material to teach trades thoroughly, you could
not at the same time keep the industries on a commercial basis and make
them pay. Many schools started out to do this on a large scale and went
into virtual bankruptcy. Moreover, it was found also that it was possible
to teach a boy a trade mechanically, without giving him the full
educative benefit of the process, and, vice versa, that there was a
distinctive educative value in teaching a boy to use his hands and eyes in
carrying out certain physical processes, even though he did not actually
learn a trade. It has happened, therefore, in the last decade, that a
noticeable change has come over the industrial schools. In the first place
the idea of commercially remunerative industry in a school is being pushed
rapidly to the back-ground. There are still schools with shops and farms
that bring an income, and schools that use student labor partially for the
erection of their buildings and the furnishing of equipment. It is coming
to be seen, however, in the education of the Negro, as clearly as it has
been seen in the education of the youths the world over, that it is the
_boy_ and not the material product, that is the true object of education.
Consequently the object of the industrial school came to be the thorough
training of boys regardless of the cost of the training, so long as it was
thoroughly well done.

Even at this point, however, the difficulties were not surmounted. In the
first place modern industry has taken great strides since the war, and the
teaching of trades is no longer a simple matter. Machinery and long
processes of work have greatly changed the work of the carpenter, the
ironworker and the shoemaker. A really efficient workman must be to-day an
intelligent man who has had good technical training in addition to
thorough common school, and perhaps even higher training. To meet this
situation the industrial schools began a further development; they
established distinct Trade Schools for the thorough training of better
class artisans, and at the same time they sought to preserve for the
purposes of general education, such of the simpler processes of elementary
trade learning as were best suited therefor. In this differentiation of
the Trade School and manual training, the best of the industrial schools
simply followed the plain trend of the present educational epoch. A
prominent educator tells us that, in Sweden, "In the beginning the
economic conception was generally adopted, and everywhere manual training
was looked upon as a means of preparing the children of the common people
to earn their living. But gradually it came to be recognized that manual
training has a more elevated purpose, and one, indeed, more useful in the
deeper meaning of the term. It came to be considered as an educative
process for the complete moral, physical and intellectual development of
the child."

Thus, again, in the manning of trade schools and manual training schools
we are thrown back upon the higher training as its source and chief
support. There was a time when any aged and wornout carpenter could teach
in a trade school. But not so to-day. Indeed the demand for college-bred
men by a school like Tuskegee, ought to make Mr. Booker T. Washington the
firmest friend of higher training. Here he has as helpers the son of a
Negro senator, trained in Greek and the humanities, and graduated at
Harvard; the son of a Negro congressman and lawyer, trained in Latin and
mathematics, and graduated at Oberlin; he has as his wife, a woman who
read Virgil and Homer in the same class room with me; he has as college
chaplain, a classical graduate of Atlanta University; as teacher of
science, a graduate of Fisk; as teacher of history, a graduate of
Smith,--indeed some thirty of his chief teachers are college graduates,
and instead of studying French grammars in the midst of weeds, or buying
pianos for dirty cabins, they are at Mr. Washington's right hand helping
him in a noble work. And yet one of the effects of Mr. Washington's
propaganda has been to throw doubt upon the expediency of such training
for Negroes, as these persons have had.

       *       *       *       *       *

Men of America, the problem is plain before you. Here is a race
transplanted through the criminal foolishness of your fathers. Whether you
like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do
not lift them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the
levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless inspired by
the right ideals and guided by intelligence. Education must not simply
teach work--it must teach Life. The Talented Tenth of the Negro race
must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their
people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men
for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by
its exceptional men.




_The Disfranchisement of the Negro_

By CHARLES W. CHESNUTT

  In this paper the author presents a straightforward statement of facts
  concerning the disfranchisement of the Negro in the Southern States. Mr.
  Chesnutt, who is too well known as a writer to need any introduction to
  an American audience, puts the case for the Negro to the American people
  very plainly, and spares neither the North nor the South.

[Illustration: CHARLES W. CHESNUTT.]


The right of American citizens of African descent, commonly called
Negroes, to vote upon the same terms as other citizens of the United
States, is plainly declared and firmly fixed by the Constitution. No such
person is called upon to present reasons why he should possess this right:
that question is foreclosed by the Constitution. The object of the
elective franchise is to give representation. So long as the Constitution
retains its present form, any State Constitution, or statute, which seeks,
by juggling the ballot, to deny the colored race fair representation, is a
clear violation of the fundamental law of the land, and a corresponding
injustice to those thus deprived of this right.

For thirty-five years this has been the law. As long as it was measurably
respected, the colored people made rapid strides in education, wealth,
character and self-respect. This the census proves, all statements to the
contrary notwithstanding. A generation has grown to manhood and womanhood
under the great, inspiring freedom conferred by the Constitution and
protected by the right of suffrage--protected in large degree by the mere
naked right, even when its exercise was hindered or denied by unlawful
means. They have developed, in every Southern community, good citizens,
who, if sustained and encouraged by just laws and liberal institutions,
would greatly augment their number with the passing years, and soon wipe
out the reproach of ignorance, unthrift, low morals and social
inefficiency, thrown at them indiscriminately and therefore unjustly, and
made the excuse for the equally undiscriminating contempt of their persons
and their rights. They have reduced their illiteracy nearly 50 per cent.
Excluded from the institutions of higher learning in their own States,
their young men hold their own, and occasionally carry away honors, in
the universities of the North. They have accumulated three hundred million
dollars worth of real and personal property. Individuals among them have
acquired substantial wealth, and several have attained to something like
national distinction in art, letters and educational leadership. They are
numerously represented in the learned professions. Heavily handicapped,
they have made such rapid progress that the suspicion is justified that
their advancement, rather than any stagnation or retrogression, is the
true secret of the virulent Southern hostility to their rights, which has
so influenced Northern opinion that it stands mute, and leaves the colored
people, upon whom the North conferred liberty, to the tender mercies of
those who have always denied their fitness for it.

It may be said, in passing, that the word "Negro," where used in this
paper, is used solely for convenience. By the census of 1890 there were
1,000,000 colored people in the country who were half, or more than half,
white, and logically there must be, as in fact there are, so many who
share the white blood in some degree, as to justify the assertion that the
race problem in the United States concerns the welfare and the status of a
mixed race. Their rights are not one whit the more sacred because of this
fact; but in an argument where injustice is sought to be excused because
of fundamental differences of race, it is well enough to bear in mind that
the race whose rights and liberties are endangered all over this country
by disfranchisement at the South, are the colored people who live in the
United States to-day, and not the low-browed, man-eating savage whom the
Southern white likes to set upon a block and contrast with Shakespeare and
Newton and Washington and Lincoln.

Despite and in defiance of the Federal Constitution, to-day in the six
Southern States of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, North Carolina, South
Carolina and Virginia, containing an aggregate colored population of about
6,000,000, these have been, to all intents and purposes, denied, so far
as the States can effect it, the right to vote. This disfranchisement is
accomplished by various methods, devised with much transparent ingenuity,
the effort being in each instance to violate the spirit of the Federal
Constitution by disfranchising the Negro, while seeming to respect its
letter by avoiding the mention of race or color.

These restrictions fall into three groups. The first comprises a property
qualification--the ownership of $300 worth or more of real or personal
property (Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia and South Carolina); the payment of
a poll tax (Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia); an educational
qualification--the ability to read and write (Alabama, Louisiana, North
Carolina). Thus far, those who believe in a restricted suffrage
everywhere, could perhaps find no reasonable fault with any one of these
qualifications, applied either separately or together.

But the Negro has made such progress that these restrictions alone would
perhaps not deprive him of effective representation. Hence the second
group. This comprises an "understanding" clause--the applicant must be
able "to read, or understand when read to him, any clause in the
Constitution" (Mississippi), or to read and explain, or to understand and
explain when read to him, any section of the Constitution (Virginia); an
employment qualification--the voter must be regularly employed in some
lawful occupation (Alabama); a character qualification--the voter must be
a person of good character and who "understands the duties and obligations
of citizens under a republican (!) form of government" (Alabama).

The qualifications under the first group it will be seen, are capable of
exact demonstration; those under the second group are left to the
discretion and judgment of the registering officer--for in most instances
these are all requirements for registration, which must precede voting.

But the first group, by its own force, and the second group, under
imaginable conditions, might exclude not only the Negro vote, but a large
part of the white vote. Hence, the third group, which comprises: a
military service qualification--any man who went to war, willingly or
unwillingly, in a good cause or a bad, is entitled to register (Ala.,
Va.); a prescriptive qualification, under which are included all male
persons who were entitled to vote on January 1, 1867, at which date the
Negro had not yet been given the right to vote; a hereditary
qualification, (the so-called "grandfather" clause), whereby any son
(Va.), or descendant (Ala.), of a soldier, and (N.C.) the descendant of
any person who had the right to vote on January 1, 1867, inherits that
right. If the voter wish to take advantage of these last provisions, which
are in the nature of exceptions to a general rule, he must register within
a stated time, whereupon he becomes a member of a privileged class of
permanently enrolled voters not subject to any of the other restrictions.

It will be seen that these restrictions are variously combined in the
different States, and it is apparent that if combined to their declared
end, practically every Negro may, under color of law, be denied the right
to vote, and practically every white man accorded that right. The
effectiveness of these provisions to exclude the Negro vote is proved by
the Alabama registration under the new State Constitution. Out of a total,
by the census of 1900, of 181,471 Negro "males of voting age," less than
3,000 are registered; in Montgomery county alone, the seat of the State
capital, where there are 7,000 Negro males of voting age, only 47 have
been allowed to register, while in several counties not one single Negro
is permitted to exercise the franchise.

These methods of disfranchisement have stood such tests as the United
States Courts, including the Supreme Court, have thus far seen fit to
apply, in such cases as have been before them for adjudication. These
include a case based upon the "understanding" clause of the Mississippi
Constitution, in which the Supreme Court held, in effect, that since there
was no ambiguity in the language employed and the Negro was not directly
named, the Court would not go behind the wording of the Constitution to
find a meaning which discriminated against the colored voter; and the
recent case of Jackson vs. Giles, brought by a colored citizen of
Montgomery, Alabama, in which the Supreme Court confesses itself impotent
to provide a remedy for what, by inference, it acknowledges _may_ be a
"great political wrong," carefully avoiding, however, to state that it is
a wrong, although the vital prayer of the petition was for a decision upon
this very point.

Now, what is the effect of this wholesale disfranchisement of colored men,
upon their citizenship. The value of food to the human organism is not
measured by the pains of an occasional surfeit, but by the effect of its
entire deprivation. Whether a class of citizens should vote, even if not
always wisely--what class does?--may best be determined by considering
their condition when they are without the right to vote.

The colored people are left, in the States where they have been
disfranchised, absolutely without representation, direct or indirect, in
any law-making body, in any court of justice, in any branch of
government--for the feeble remnant of voters left by law is so
inconsiderable as to be without a shadow of power. Constituting one-eighth
of the population of the whole country, two-fifths of the whole Southern
people, and a majority in several States, they are not able, because
disfranchised where most numerous, to send one representative to the
Congress, which, by the decision in the Alabama case, is held by the
Supreme Court to be the only body, outside of the State itself, competent
to give relief from a great political wrong. By former decisions of the
same tribunal, even Congress is impotent to protect their civil rights,
the Fourteenth Amendment having long since, by the consent of the same
Court, been in many respects as completely nullified as the Fifteenth
Amendment is now sought to be. They have no direct representation in any
Southern legislature, and no voice in determining the choice of white men
who might be friendly to their rights. Nor are they able to influence the
election of judges or other public officials, to whom are entrusted the
protection of their lives, their liberties and their property. No judge is
rendered careful, no sheriff diligent, for fear that he may offend a black
constituency; the contrary is most lamentably true; day after day the
catalogue of lynchings and anti-Negro riots upon every imaginable pretext,
grows longer and more appalling. The country stands face to face with the
revival of slavery; at the moment of this writing a federal grand jury in
Alabama is uncovering a system of peonage established under cover of law.

Under the Southern program it is sought to exclude colored men from every
grade of the public service; not only from the higher administrative
functions, to which few of them would in any event, for a long time
aspire, but from the lowest as well. A Negro may not be a constable or a
policeman. He is subjected by law to many degrading discriminations. He is
required to be separated from white people on railroads and street cars,
and, by custom, debarred from inns and places of public entertainment. His
equal right to a free public education is constantly threatened and is
nowhere equitably recognized. In Georgia, as has been shown by Dr. DuBois,
where the law provides for a pro rata distribution of the public school
fund between the races, and where the colored school population is 48 per
cent. of the total, the amount of the fund devoted to their schools is
only 20 per cent. In New Orleans, with an immense colored population, many
of whom are persons of means and culture, all colored public schools above
the fifth grade have been abolished.

The Negro is subjected to taxation without representation, which the
forefathers of this Republic made the basis of a bloody revolution.

Flushed with their local success, and encouraged by the timidity of the
Courts and the indifference of public opinion, the Southern whites have
carried their campaign into the national government, with an ominous
degree of success. If they shall have their way, no Negro can fill any
federal office, or occupy, in the public service, any position that is not
menial. This is not an inference, but the openly, passionately avowed
sentiment of the white South. The right to employment in the public
service is an exceedingly valuable one, for which white men have struggled
and fought. A vast army of men are employed in the administration of
public affairs. Many avenues of employment are closed to colored men by
popular prejudice. If their right to public employment is recognized, and
the way to it open through the civil service, or the appointing power, or
the suffrages of the people, it will prove, as it has already, a strong
incentive to effort and a powerful lever for advancement. Its value to the
Negro, like that of the right to vote, may be judged by the eagerness of
the whites to deprive him of it.

Not only is the Negro taxed without representation in the States referred
to, but he pays, through the tariff and internal revenue, a tax to a
National government whose supreme judicial tribunal declares that it
cannot, through the executive arm, enforce its own decrees, and,
therefore, refuses to pass upon a question, squarely before it, involving
a basic right of citizenship. For the decision of the Supreme Court in the
Giles case, if it foreshadows the attitude which the Court will take upon
other cases to the same general end which will soon come before it, is
scarcely less than a reaffirmation of the Dred Scott decision; it
certainly amounts to this--that in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment,
colored men in the United States have no political rights which the States
are bound to respect. To say this much is to say that all the privileges
and immunities which Negroes henceforth enjoy, must be by favor of the
whites; they are not _rights_. The whites have so declared; they proclaim
that the country is theirs, that the Negro should be thankful that he has
so much, when so much more might be withheld from him. He stands upon a
lower footing than any alien; he has no government to which he may look
for protection.

Moreover, the white South sends to Congress, on a basis including the
Negro population, a delegation nearly twice as large as it is justly
entitled to, and one which may always safely be relied upon to oppose in
Congress every measure which seeks to protect the equality, or to enlarge
the rights of colored citizens. The grossness of this injustice is all the
more apparent since the Supreme Court, in the Alabama case referred to,
has declared the legislative and political department of the government to
be the only power which can right a political wrong. Under this decision
still further attacks upon the liberties of the citizen may be confidently
expected. Armed with the Negro's sole weapon of defense, the white South
stands ready to smite down his rights. The ballot was first given to the
Negro to defend him against this very thing. He needs it now far more than
then, and for even stronger reasons. The 9,000,000 free colored people of
to-day have vastly more to defend than the 3,000,000 hapless blacks who
had just emerged from slavery. If there be those who maintain that it was
a mistake to give the Negro the ballot at the time and in the manner in
which it was given, let them take to heart this reflection: that to
deprive him of it to-day, or to so restrict it as to leave him utterly
defenseless against the present relentless attitude of the South toward
his rights, will prove to be a mistake so much greater than the first, as
to be no less than a crime, from which not alone the Southern Negro must
suffer, but for which the nation will as surely pay the penalty as it paid
for the crime of slavery. Contempt for law is death to a republic, and
this one has developed alarming symptoms of the disease.

And now, having thus robbed the Negro of every political and civil
_right_, the white South, in palliation of its course, makes a great show
of magnanimity in leaving him, as the sole remnant of what he acquired
through the Civil War, a very inadequate public school education, which,
by the present program, is to be directed mainly towards making him a
better agricultural laborer. Even this is put forward as a favor, although
the Negro's property is taxed to pay for it, and his labor as well. For it
is a well settled principle of political economy, that land and machinery
of themselves produce nothing, and that labor indirectly pays its fair
proportion of the tax upon the public's wealth. The white South seems to
stand to the Negro at present as one, who, having been reluctantly
compelled to release another from bondage, sees him stumbling forward and
upward, neglected by his friends and scarcely yet conscious of his own
strength; seizes him, binds him, and having bereft him of speech, of sight
and of manhood, "yokes him with the mule" and exclaims, with a show of
virtue which ought to deceive no one: "Behold how good a friend I am of
yours! Have I not left you a stomach and a pair of arms, and will I not
generously permit you to work for me with the one, that you may thereby
gain enough to fill the other? A brain you do not need. We will relieve
you of any responsibility that might seem to demand such an organ."

The argument of peace-loving Northern white men and Negro opportunists
that the political power of the Negro having long ago been suppressed by
unlawful means, his right to vote is a mere paper right, of no real value,
and therefore to be lightly yielded for the sake of a hypothetical
harmony, is fatally short-sighted. It is precisely the attitude and
essentially the argument which would have surrendered to the South in the
sixties, and would have left this country to rot in slavery for another
generation. White men do not thus argue concerning their own rights. They
know too well the value of ideals. Southern white men see too clearly the
latent power of these unexercised rights. If the political power of the
Negro was a nullity because of his ignorance and lack of leadership, why
were they not content to leave it so, with the pleasing assurance that if
it ever became effective, it would be because the Negroes had grown fit
for its exercise? On the contrary, they have not rested until the
possibility of its revival was apparently headed off by new State
Constitutions. Nor are they satisfied with this. There is no doubt that an
effort will be made to secure the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, and
thus forestall the development of the wealthy and educated Negro, whom the
South seems to anticipate as a greater menace than the ignorant ex-slave.
However improbable this repeal may seem, it is not a subject to be lightly
dismissed; for it is within the power of the white people of the nation to
do whatever they wish in the premises--they did it once; they can do it
again. The Negro and his friends should see to it that the white majority
shall never wish to do anything to his hurt. There still stands, before
the Negro-hating whites of the South, the specter of a Supreme Court
which will interpret the Constitution to mean what it says, and what those
who enacted it meant, and what the nation, which ratified it, understood,
and which will find power, in a nation which goes beyond seas to
administer the affairs of distant peoples, to enforce its own fundamental
laws; the specter, too, of an aroused public opinion which will compel
Congress and the Courts to preserve the liberties of the Republic, which
are the liberties of the people. To wilfully neglect the suffrage, to hold
it lightly, is to tamper with a sacred right; to yield it for anything
else whatever is simply suicidal. Dropping the element of race,
disfranchisement is no more than to say to the poor and poorly taught,
that they must relinquish the right to defend themselves against
oppression until they shall have become rich and learned, in competition
with those already thus favored and possessing the ballot in addition.
This is not the philosophy of history. The growth of liberty has been the
constant struggle of the poor against the privileged classes; and the
goal of that struggle has ever been the equality of all men before the
law. The Negro who would yield this right, deserves to be a slave; he has
the servile spirit. The rich and the educated can, by virtue of their
influence, command many votes; can find other means of protection; the
poor man has but one, he should guard it as a sacred treasure. Long ago,
by fair treatment, the white leaders of the South might have bound the
Negro to themselves with hoops of steel. They have not chosen to take this
course, but by assuming from the beginning an attitude hostile to his
rights, have never gained his confidence, and now seek by foul means to
destroy where they have never sought by fair means to control.

I have spoken of the effect of disfranchisement upon the colored race; it
is to the race as a whole, that the argument of the problem is generally
directed. But the unit of society in a republic is the individual, and not
the race, the failure to recognize this fact being the fundamental error
which has beclouded the whole discussion. The effect of disfranchisement
upon the individual is scarcely less disastrous. I do not speak of the
moral effect of injustice upon those who suffer from it; I refer rather to
the practical consequences which may be appreciated by any mind. No
country is free in which the way upward is not open for every man to try,
and for every properly qualified man to attain whatever of good the
community life may offer. Such a condition does not exist, at the South,
even in theory, for any man of color. In no career can such a man compete
with white men upon equal terms. He must not only meet the prejudice of
the individual, not only the united prejudice of the white community; but
lest some one should wish to treat him fairly, he is met at every turn
with some legal prohibition which says, "Thou shalt not," or "Thus far
shalt thou go and no farther." But the Negro race is viable; it adapts
itself readily to circumstances; and being thus adaptable, there is
always the temptation to

    "Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
    Where thrift may follow fawning."

He who can most skilfully balance himself upon the advancing or receding
wave of white opinion concerning his race, is surest of such measure of
prosperity as is permitted to men of dark skins. There are Negro teachers
in the South--the privilege of teaching in their own schools is the one
respectable branch of the public service still left open to them--who, for
a grudging appropriation from a Southern legislature, will decry their own
race, approve their own degradation, and laud their oppressors. Deprived
of the right to vote, and, therefore, of any power to demand what is their
due, they feel impelled to buy the tolerance of the whites at any
sacrifice. If to live is the first duty of man, as perhaps it is the first
instinct, then those who thus stoop to conquer may be right. But is it
needful to stoop so low, and if so, where lies the ultimate
responsibility for this abasement?

I shall say nothing about the moral effect of disfranchisement upon the
white people, or upon the State itself. What slavery made of the Southern
whites is a matter of history. The abolition of slavery gave the South an
opportunity to emerge from barbarism. Present conditions indicate that the
spirit which dominated slavery still curses the fair section over which
that institution spread its blight.

And now, is the situation remediless? If not so, where lies the remedy?
First let us take up those remedies suggested by the men who approve of
disfranchisement, though they may sometimes deplore the method, or regret
the necessity.

Time, we are told, heals all diseases, rights all wrongs, and is the only
cure for this one. It is a cowardly argument. These people are entitled to
their rights to-day, while they are yet alive to enjoy them; and it is
poor statesmanship and worse morals to nurse a present evil and thrust it
forward upon a future generation for correction. The nation can no more
honestly do this than it could thrust back upon a past generation the
responsibility for slavery. It had to meet that responsibility; it ought
to meet this one.

Education has been put forward as the great corrective--preferably
industrial education. The intellect of the whites is to be educated to the
point where they will so appreciate the blessings of liberty and equality,
as of their own motion to enlarge and defend the Negro's rights. The
Negroes, on the other hand, are to be so trained as to make them, not
equal with the whites in any way--God save the mark! this would be
unthinkable!--but so useful to the community that the whites will protect
them rather than to lose their valuable services. Some few enthusiasts go
so far as to maintain that by virtue of education the Negro will, in time,
become strong enough to protect himself against any aggression of the
whites; this, it may be said, is a strictly Northern view.

It is not quite clearly apparent how education alone, in the ordinary
meaning of the word, is to solve, in any appreciable time, the problem of
the relations of Southern white and black people. The need of education of
all kinds for both races is wofully apparent. But men and nations have
been free without being learned, and there have been educated slaves.
Liberty has been known to languish where culture had reached a very high
development. Nations do not first become rich and learned and then free,
but the lesson of history has been that they first become free and then
rich and learned, and oftentimes fall back into slavery again because of
too great wealth, and the resulting luxury and carelessness of civic
virtues. The process of education has been going on rapidly in the
Southern States since the Civil War, and yet, if we take superficial
indications, the rights of the Negroes are at a lower ebb than at any time
during the thirty-five years of their freedom, and the race prejudice more
intense and uncompromising. It is not apparent that educated Southerners
are less rancorous than others in their speech concerning the Negro, or
less hostile in their attitude toward his rights. It is their voice alone
that we have heard in this discussion; and if, as they state, they are
liberal in their views as compared with the more ignorant whites, then God
save the Negro!

I was told, in so many words, two years ago, by the Superintendent of
Public Schools of a Southern city that "there was no place in the modern
world for the Negro, except under the ground." If gentlemen holding such
opinions are to instruct the white youth of the South, would it be at all
surprising if these, later on, should devote a portion of their leisure to
the improvement of civilization by putting under the ground as many of
this superfluous race as possible?

The sole excuse made in the South for the prevalent injustice to the Negro
is the difference in race, and the inequalities and antipathies resulting
therefrom. It has nowhere been declared as a part of the Southern program
that the Negro, when educated, is to be given a fair representation in
government or an equal opportunity in life; the contrary has been
strenuously asserted; education can never make of him anything but a
Negro, and, therefore, essentially inferior, and not to be safely trusted
with any degree of power. A system of education which would tend to soften
the asperities and lessen the inequalities between the races would be of
inestimable value. An education which by a rigid separation of the races
from the kindergarten to the university, fosters this racial antipathy,
and is directed toward emphasizing the superiority of one class and the
inferiority of another, might easily have disastrous, rather than
beneficial results. It would render the oppressing class more powerful to
injure, the oppressed quicker to perceive and keener to resent the injury,
without proportionate power of defense. The same assimilative education
which is given at the North to all children alike, whereby native and
foreign, black and white, are taught side by side in every grade of
instruction, and are compelled by the exigencies of discipline to keep
their prejudices in abeyance, and are given the opportunity to learn and
appreciate one another's good qualities, and to establish friendly
relations which may exist throughout life, is absent from the Southern
system of education, both of the past and as proposed for the future.
Education is in a broad sense a remedy for all social ills; but the
disease we have to deal with now is not only constitutional but acute. A
wise physician does not simply give a tonic for a diseased limb, or a high
fever; the patient might be dead before the constitutional remedy could
become effective. The evils of slavery, its injury to whites and blacks,
and to the body politic, was clearly perceived and acknowledged by the
educated leaders of the South as far back as the Revolutionary War and the
Constitutional Convention, and yet they made no effort to abolish it.
Their remedy was the same--time, education, social and economic
development;--and yet a bloody war was necessary to destroy slavery and
put its spirit temporarily to sleep. When the South and its friends are
ready to propose a system of education which will recognize and teach the
equality of all men before the law, the potency of education alone to
settle the race problem will be more clearly apparent.

At present even good Northern men, who wish to educate the Negroes, feel
impelled to buy this privilege from the none too eager white South, by
conceding away the civil and political rights of those whom they would
benefit. They have, indeed, gone farther than the Southerners themselves
in approving the disfranchisement of the colored race. Most Southern men,
now that they have carried their point and disfranchised the Negro, are
willing to admit, in the language of a recent number of the _Charleston
Evening Post_, that "the attitude of the Southern white man toward the
Negro is incompatible with the fundamental ideas of the republic." It
remained for our Clevelands and Abbotts and Parkhursts to assure them that
their unlawful course was right and justifiable, and for the most
distinguished Negro leader to declare that "every revised Constitution
throughout the Southern States has put a premium upon intelligence,
ownership of property, thrift and character." So does every penitentiary
sentence put a premium upon good conduct; but it is poor consolation to
the one unjustly condemned, to be told that he may shorten his sentence
somewhat by good behavior. Dr. Booker T. Washington, whose language is
quoted above, has, by his eminent services in the cause of education, won
deserved renown. If he has seemed, at times, to those jealous of the best
things for their race, to decry the higher education, it can easily be
borne in mind that his career is bound up in the success of an industrial
school; hence any undue stress which he may put upon that branch of
education may safely be ascribed to the natural zeal of the promoter,
without detracting in any degree from the essential value of his
teachings in favor of manual training, thrift and character-building. But
Mr. Washington's prominence as an educational leader, among a race whose
prominent leaders are so few, has at times forced him, perhaps
reluctantly, to express himself in regard to the political condition of
his people, and here his utterances have not always been so wise nor so
happy. He has declared himself in favor of a restricted suffrage, which at
present means, for his own people, nothing less than complete loss of
representation--indeed it is only in that connection that the question has
been seriously mooted; and he has advised them to go slow in seeking to
enforce their civil and political rights, which, in effect, means silent
submission to injustice. Southern white men may applaud this advice as
wise, because it fits in with their purposes; but Senator McEnery of
Louisiana, in a recent article in the _Independent_, voices the Southern
white opinion of such acquiescence when he says: "What other race would
have submitted so many years to slavery without complaint? _What other
race would have submitted so quietly to disfranchisement?_ These facts
stamp his (the Negro's) inferiority to the white race." The time to
philosophize about the good there is in evil, is not while its correction
is still possible, but, if at all, after all hope of correction is past.
Until then it calls for nothing but rigorous condemnation. To try to read
any good thing into these fraudulent Southern constitutions, or to accept
them as an accomplished fact, is to condone a crime against one's race.
Those who commit crime should bear the odium. It is not a pleasing
spectacle to see the robbed applaud the robber. Silence were better.

It has become fashionable to question the wisdom of the Fifteenth
Amendment. I believe it to have been an act of the highest statesmanship,
based upon the fundamental idea of this Republic, entirely justified by
conditions; experimental in its nature, perhaps, as every new thing must
be, but just in principle; a choice between methods, of which it seemed
to the great statesmen of that epoch the wisest and the best, and
essentially the most just, bearing in mind the interests of the freedmen
and the Nation, as well as the feelings of the Southern whites; never
fairly tried, and therefore, not yet to be justly condemned. Not one of
those who condemn it, has been able, even in the light of subsequent
events, to suggest a better method by which the liberty and civil rights
of the freedmen and their descendants could have been protected. Its
abandonment, as I have shown, leaves this liberty and these rights frankly
without any guaranteed protection. All the education which philanthropy or
the State could offer as a _substitute_ for equality of rights, would be a
poor exchange; there is no defensible reason why they should not go hand
in hand, each encouraging and strengthening the other. The education which
one can demand as a right is likely to do more good than the education for
which one must sue as a favor.

The chief argument against Negro suffrage, the insistently proclaimed
argument, worn threadbare in Congress, on the platform, in the pulpit, in
the press, in poetry, in fiction, in impassioned rhetoric, is the
reconstruction period. And yet the evils of that period were due far more
to the venality and indifference of white men than to the incapacity of
black voters. The revised Southern Constitutions adopted under
reconstruction reveal a higher statesmanship than any which preceded or
have followed them, and prove that the freed voters could as easily have
been led into the paths of civic righteousness as into those of
misgovernment. Certain it is that under reconstruction the civil and
political rights of all men were more secure in those States than they
have ever been since. We will hear less of the evils of reconstruction,
now that the bugaboo has served its purpose by disfranchising the Negro,
it will be laid aside for a time while the nation discusses the political
corruption of great cities; the scandalous conditions in Rhode Island; the
evils attending reconstruction in the Philippines, and the scandals in
the postoffice department--for none of which, by the way, is the Negro
charged with any responsibility, and for none of which is the restriction
of the suffrage a remedy seriously proposed. Rhode Island is indeed the
only Northern State which has a property qualification for the franchise!

There are three tribunals to which the colored people may justly appeal
for the protection of their rights: the United States Courts, Congress and
public opinion. At present all three seem mainly indifferent to any
question of human rights under the Constitution. Indeed, Congress and the
Courts merely follow public opinion, seldom lead it. Congress never enacts
a measure which is believed to oppose public opinion;--your Congressman
keeps his ear to the ground. The high, serene atmosphere of the Courts is
not impervious to its voice; they rarely enforce a law contrary to public
opinion, even the Supreme Court being able, as Charles Sumner once put it,
to find a reason for every decision it may wish to render; or, as
experience has shown, a method to evade any question which it cannot
decently decide in accordance with public opinion. The art of straddling
is not confined to the political arena. The Southern situation has been
well described by a colored editor in Richmond: "When we seek relief at
the hands of Congress, we are informed that our plea involves a legal
question, and we are referred to the Courts. When we appeal to the Courts,
we are gravely told that the question is a political one, and that we must
go to Congress. When Congress enacts remedial legislation, our enemies
take it to the Supreme Court, which promptly declares it
unconstitutional." The Negro might chase his rights round and round this
circle until the end of time, without finding any relief.

Yet the Constitution is clear and unequivocal in its terms, and no Supreme
Court can indefinitely continue to construe it as meaning anything but
what it says. This Court should be bombarded with suits until it makes
some definite pronouncement, one way or the other, on the broad question
of the constitutionality of the disfranchising Constitutions of the
Southern States. The Negro and his friends will then have a clean-cut
issue to take to the forum of public opinion, and a distinct ground upon
which to demand legislation for the enforcement of the Federal
Constitution. The case from Alabama was carried to the Supreme Court
expressly to determine the constitutionality of the Alabama Constitution.
The Court declared itself without jurisdiction, and in the same breath
went into the merits of the case far enough to deny relief, without
passing upon the real issue. Had it said, as it might with absolute
justice and perfect propriety, that the Alabama Constitution is a bold and
impudent violation of the Fifteenth Amendment, the purpose of the lawsuit
would have been accomplished and a righteous cause vastly strengthened.

But public opinion cannot remain permanently indifferent to so vital a
question. The agitation is already on. It is at present largely academic,
but is slowly and resistlessly, forcing itself into politics, which is the
medium through which republics settle such questions. It cannot much
longer be contemptuously or indifferently elbowed aside. The South itself
seems bent upon forcing the question to an issue, as, by its arrogant
assumptions, it brought on the Civil War. From that section, too, there
come now and then, side by side with tales of Southern outrage, excusing
voices, which at the same time are accusing voices; which admit that the
white South is dealing with the Negro unjustly and unwisely; that the
Golden Rule has been forgotten; that the interests of white men alone have
been taken into account, and that their true interests as well are being
sacrificed. There is a silent white South, uneasy in conscience, darkened
in counsel, groping for the light, and willing to do the right. They are
as yet a feeble folk, their voices scarcely audible above the clamor of
the mob. May their convictions ripen into wisdom, and may their numbers
and their courage increase! If the class of Southern white men of whom
Judge Jones of Alabama, is so noble a representative, are supported and
encouraged by a righteous public opinion at the North, they may, in time,
become the dominant white South, and we may then look for wisdom and
justice in the place where, so far as the Negro is concerned, they now
seem well-nigh strangers. But even these gentlemen will do well to bear in
mind that so long as they discriminate in any way against the Negro's
equality of right, so long do they set class against class and open the
door to every sort of discrimination. There can be no middle ground
between justice and injustice, between the citizen and the serf.

It is not likely that the North, upon the sober second thought, will
permit the dearly-bought results of the Civil War to be nullified by any
change in the Constitution. As long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the
_rights_ of colored citizens are ultimately secure. There were would-be
despots in England after the granting of Magna Charta; but it outlived
them all, and the liberties of the English people are secure. There was
slavery in this land after the Declaration of Independence, yet the faces
of those who love liberty have ever turned to that immortal document. So
will the Constitution and its principles outlive the prejudices which
would seek to overthrow it.

What colored men of the South can do to secure their citizenship to-day,
or in the immediate future, is not very clear. Their utterances on
political questions, unless they be to concede away the political rights
of their race, or to soothe the consciences of white men by suggesting
that the problem is insoluble except by some slow remedial process which
will become effectual only in the distant future, are received with scant
respect--could scarcely, indeed, be otherwise received, without a voting
constituency to back them up,--and must be cautiously made, lest they meet
an actively hostile reception. But there are many colored men at the
North, where their civil and political rights in the main are respected.
There every honest man has a vote, which he may freely cast, and which is
reasonably sure to be fairly counted. When this race develops a sufficient
power of combination, under adequate leadership,--and there are signs
already that this time is near at hand,--the Northern vote can be wielded
irresistibly for the defense of the rights of their Southern brethren.

In the meantime the Northern colored men have the right of free speech,
and they should never cease to demand their rights, to clamor for them, to
guard them jealously, and insistently to invoke law and public sentiment
to maintain them. He who would be free must learn to protect his freedom.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. He who would be respected must
respect himself. The best friend of the Negro is he who would rather see,
within the borders of this republic one million free citizens of that
race, equal before the law, than ten million cringing serfs existing by a
contemptuous sufferance. A race that is willing to survive upon any other
terms is scarcely worthy of consideration.

The direct remedy for the disfranchisement of the Negro lies through
political action. One scarcely sees the philosophy of distinguishing
between a civil and a political right. But the Supreme Court has
recognized this distinction and has designated Congress as the power to
right a political wrong. The Fifteenth Amendment gives Congress power to
enforce its provisions. The power would seem to be inherent in government
itself; but anticipating that the enforcement of the Amendment might
involve difficulty, they made the superorogatory declaration. Moreover,
they went further, and passed laws by which they provided for such
enforcement. These the Supreme Court has so far declared insufficient. It
is for Congress to make more laws. It is for colored men and for white men
who are not content to see the blood-bought results of the Civil War
nullified, to urge and direct public opinion to the point where it will
demand stringent legislation to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments. This demand will rest in law, in morals and in true
statesmanship; no difficulties attending it could be worse than the
present ignoble attitude of the Nation toward its own laws and its own
ideals--without courage to enforce them, without conscience to change
them, the United States presents the spectacle of a Nation drifting
aimlessly, so far as this vital, National problem is concerned, upon the
sea of irresolution, toward the maelstrom of anarchy.

The right of Congress, under the Fourteenth Amendment, to reduce Southern
representation can hardly be disputed. But Congress has a simpler and more
direct method to accomplish the same end. It is the sole judge of the
qualifications of its own members, and the sole judge of whether any
member presenting his credentials has met those qualifications. It can
refuse to seat any member who comes from a district where voters have been
disfranchised: it can judge for itself whether this has been done, and
there is no appeal from its decision.

If, when it has passed a law, any Court shall refuse to obey its behests,
it can impeach the judges. If any president refuse to lend the executive
arm of the government to the enforcement of the law, it can impeach the
president. No such extreme measures are likely to be necessary for the
enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments--and the
Thirteenth, which is also threatened--but they are mentioned as showing
that Congress is supreme; and Congress proceeds, the House directly, the
Senate indirectly, from the people and is governed by public opinion. If
the reduction of Southern representation were to be regarded in the light
of a bargain by which the Fifteenth Amendment was surrendered, then it
might prove fatal to liberty. If it be inflicted as a punishment and a
warning, to be followed by more drastic measures if not sufficient, it
would serve a useful purpose. The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the
right to vote _shall not_ be denied or abridged on account of color; and
any measure adopted by Congress should look to that end. Only as the power
to injure the Negro in Congress is reduced thereby, would a reduction of
representation protect the Negro; without other measures it would still
leave him in the hands of the Southern whites, who could safely be
trusted to make him pay for their humiliation.

Finally, there is, somewhere in the Universe a "Power that works for
righteousness," and that leads men to do justice to one another. To this
power, working upon the hearts and consciences of men, the Negro can
always appeal. He has the right upon his side, and in the end the right
will prevail. The Negro will, in time, attain to full manhood and
citizenship throughout the United States. No better guaranty of this is
needed than a comparison of his present with his past. Toward this he must
do his part, as lies within his power and his opportunity. But it will be,
after all, largely a white man's conflict, fought out in the forum of the
public conscience. The Negro, though eager enough when opportunity
offered, had comparatively little to do with the abolition of slavery,
which was a vastly more formidable task than will be the enforcement of
the Fifteenth Amendment.




_The Negro and the Law_

By WILFORD H. SMITH

  The law and how it is dodged by enactments infringing upon the rights
  guaranteed to the freedmen by constitutional amendment. A powerful plea
  for justice for the Negro.

[Illustration: WILFORD H. SMITH.]


The colored people in the United States are indebted to the beneficent
provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution of
the United States, for the establishment of their freedom and citizenship,
and it is to these mainly they must look for the maintenance of their
liberty and the protection of their civil rights. These amendments
followed close upon the Emancipation Proclamation issued January 1st,
1863, by President Lincoln, and his call for volunteers, which was
answered by more than three hundred thousand negro soldiers, who, during
three years of military service, helped the Union arms to victory at
Appomattox. Standing in the shadow of the awful calamity and deep distress
of the civil war, and grateful to God for peace and victory over the
rebellion, the American people, who upheld the Union, rose to the sublime
heights of doing justice to the former slaves, who had grown and
multiplied with the country from the early settlement at Jamestown. It
looked like an effort to pay them back for their years of faithfulness and
unrequited toil, by not only making them free but placing them on equal
footing with themselves in the fundamental law. Certainly, they intended
at least, that they should have as many rights under the Constitution as
are given to white naturalized citizens who come to this country from all
the nations of Europe.

The 13th amendment provides that neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or any place subject
to their jurisdiction.

The 14th amendment provides in section one, that all persons born or
naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of
law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection
of the law.

The 15th amendment provides that the right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by
any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Chief Justice Waite, in the case of the United States vs. Cruikshank, 92nd
U.S. 542, said:--

"The 14th amendment prohibits a State from denying to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. The equality of the
rights of citizens is a principle of republicanism. Every Republican
government is in duty bound to protect all its citizens in the enjoyment
of this principle if within its power."

The same Chief Justice, in the case of the United States vs. Reese, 92nd
U.S. 214, said:

"The 15th amendment does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone. It
prevents the States or the United States from giving preference in this
particular to one citizen of the United States over another, on account of
race, color or previous condition of servitude. Before its adoption this
could be done. It was as much within the power of a State to exclude
citizens of the United States from voting on account of race and color, as
it was on account of age, property or education. Now it is not."

Notwithstanding the manifest meaning of equality of citizenship contained
in the constitutional amendments, it was found necessary to reinforce them
by a civil rights law, enacted by the Congress of the United States, March
1st, 1875, entitled, "An Act To Protect All Citizens In Their Civil and
Legal Rights." Its preamble and first section are as follows:--Preamble:
"Whereas, it is essential to just government we recognize the equality of
all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of government in its
dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of
whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious or political, and
it being the appropriate object of legislation to enact great fundamental
principles into law, therefore,

"Be it enacted that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United
States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the
accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, public
conveyances on land or water, theatres and other places of public
amusement, subject only to the conditions and limitations established by
law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless
to any previous condition of servitude."

The Supreme Court of the United States has held this salutary law
unconstitutional and void as applied to the States, but binding in the
District of Columbia, and the Territories over which the government of the
United States has control.--Civil Rights cases 109 U.S. 63. Since the
Supreme Court's ruling, many Northern and Western States have enacted
similar civil rights laws. Equality of citizenship in the United States
suffered a severe blow when the civil rights bill was struck down by the
Supreme Court. The colored people looked upon the decision as unsound, and
prompted by race prejudice. It was clear that the amendments to the
Constitution were adopted to secure not only their freedom, but their
equal civil rights, and by ratifying the amendments the several States
conceded to the Federal government the power and authority of maintaining
not alone their freedom, but their equal civil rights in the United States
as well.

The Federal Supreme Court put a narrow interpretation on the Constitution,
rather than a liberal one in favor of equal rights; in marked contrast to
a recent decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New
York in a civil rights case arising under the statute of New York, Burks
vs. Bosso, 81 N.Y. Supp, 384. The New York Supreme Court held this
language: "The liberation of the slaves, and the suppression of the
rebellion, was supplemented by the amendments to the national Constitution
according to the colored people their civil rights and investing them with
citizenship. The amendments indicated a clear purpose to secure equal
rights to the black people with the white race. The legislative intent
must control, and that may be gathered from circumstances inducing the
act. Where that intent has been unvaryingly manifested in one direction,
and that in the prohibition of any discrimination against a large class of
citizens, the courts should not hesitate to keep apace with legislative
purpose. We must remember that the slightest trace of African blood places
a man under the ban of belonging to that race. However respectable and
whatever he may be, he is ostracized socially, and when the policy of the
law is against extending the prohibition of his civil rights, a liberal,
rather than a narrow interpretation should be given to enactments
evidencing the intent to eliminate race discrimination, as far as that
can be accomplished by legislative intervention."

The statutory enactments and recent Constitutions of most of the former
slave-holding States, show that they have never looked with favor upon the
amendments to the national Constitution. They rather regard them as war
measures designed by the North to humiliate and punish the people of those
States lately in rebellion. While in the main they accept the 13th
amendment and concede that the negro should have personal freedom, they
have never been altogether in harmony with the spirit and purposes of the
14th and 15th amendments. There seems to be a distinct and positive fear
on the part of the South that if the negro is given a man's chance, and is
accorded equal civil rights with white men on the juries, on common
carriers, and in public places, that it will in some way lead to his
social equality. This fallacious argument is persisted in, notwithstanding
the well-known fact, that although the Jews are the leaders in the wealth
and commerce of the South, their civil equality has never, except in rare
instances, led to any social intermingling with the Southern whites.

Holding these views the Southern people in 1875, found means to overcome
the Republican majorities in all the re-constructed States, and
practically drove the negroes out of the law-making bodies of all those
States. So that, now in all the Southern States, so far as can be
ascertained, there is not one negro sitting as a representative in any of
the law-making bodies. The next step was to deny them representation on
the grand and petit juries in the State courts, through Jury
Commissioners, who excluded them from the panels.

To be taxed without representation is a serious injustice in a republic
whose foundations are laid upon the principle of "no taxation without
representation." But serious as this phase of the case must appear,
infinitely more serious is the case when we consider the fact that they
are likewise excluded from the grand and petit juries in all the State
courts, with the fewest and rarest exceptions. The courts sit in judgment
upon their lives and liberties, and dispose of their dearest earthly
possessions. They are not entitled to life, liberty or property if the
courts should decide they are not, and yet in this all-important tribunal
they are denied all voice, except as parties and witnesses, and here and
there a negro lawyer is permitted to appear. One vote on the grand jury
might prevent an indictment, and save disgrace and the risk of public
trial; while one vote on the petit jury might save a life or a term of
imprisonment, for an innocent person pursued and persecuted by powerful
enemies.

With no voice in the making of the laws, which they are bound to obey, nor
in their administration by the courts, thus tied and helpless, the negroes
were proscribed by a system of legal enactments intended to wholly nullify
the letter and spirit of the war amendments to the national organic law.
This crusade was begun by enacting a system of Jim-Crow car laws in all
the Southern States, so that now the Jim-Crow cars run from the Gulf of
Mexico into the national capital. They are called, "Separate Car Laws,"
providing for separate but equal accommodations for whites and negroes.
Though fair on their face, they are everywhere known to discriminate
against the colored people in their administration, and were intended to
humiliate and degrade them.

Setting apart separate places for negroes on public carriers, is just as
repugnant to the spirit and intent of the national Constitution, as would
be a law compelling all Jews or all Roman Catholics to occupy compartments
specially set apart for them on account of their religion. If these
statutes were not especially aimed at the negro, an arrangement of
different fares, such as first, second and third classes, would have been
far more just and preferable, and would have enabled the refined and
exclusive of both races to avoid the presence of the coarse and vicious,
by selecting the more expensive fare. Still these laws have been upheld by
the Federal Supreme Court, and pronounced not in conflict with the
amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

City ordinances providing for separate street cars for white and colored
passengers, are in force in Atlanta, New Orleans, and in nearly all the
cities of the South. In all the principal cities of Alabama, a certain
portion of the street cars is set apart and marked for negroes. The
conductors are clothed with the authority of determining to what race the
passenger belongs, and may arrest persons refusing to obey his orders. It
is often a very difficult task to determine to what race some passengers
belong, there being so many dark-white persons that might be mistaken for
negroes, and persons known as negroes who are as fair as any white person.

In the State of Georgia, a negro cannot purchase a berth in a sleeping
car, under any circumstances, no matter where his destination, owing to
the following statute enacted December 20th, 1899: "Sleeping car
companies, and all railroads operating sleeping cars in this State, shall
separate the white and colored races, and shall not permit them to occupy
the same compartment; provided, that nothing in this act shall be
construed to compel sleeping car companies or railroads operating sleeping
cars, to carry persons of color in sleeping or parlor cars; provided also,
that this act shall not apply to colored nurses or servants travelling
with their employers." The violation of this statute is a misdemeanor.

Article 45, section 639 of the statutes of Georgia, 1895, makes it a
misdemeanor to keep or confine white and colored convicts together, or to
chain them together going to and from work. There is also a statute in
Georgia requiring that a separate tax list be kept in every county, of the
property of white and colored persons. Both races generally approve the
laws prohibiting inter-marriages between white and colored persons, which
seem to be uniform throughout the Southern States.

Florida seems to have gone a step further than the rest, and by sections
2612 and 2613, Revised Statutes, 1892, it is made a misdemeanor for a
white man and a colored woman, and vice versa, to sleep under the same
roof at night, occupying the same room. Florida is entitled to credit,
however, for a statute making marriages between white and colored persons
prior to 1866, where they continue to live together, valid and binding to
all intents and purposes.

In addition to this forced separation of the races by law, "from the
cradle to the grave," there is yet a sadder and more deplorable
separation, in the almost universal disposition to leave the negroes
wholly and severely to themselves in their home life and religious life,
by the white Christian people of the South, distinctly manifesting no
concern in their moral and religious development.

In Georgia and the Carolinas, and all the Gulf States (except Texas, where
the farm labor is mostly white) the negroes on the farms are held by a
system of laws which prevents them from leaving the plantations, and
enables the landlord to punish them by fine and imprisonment for any
alleged breach of contract. In the administration of these laws they are
virtually made slaves to the landlord, as long as they are in debt, and it
is wholly in the power of the landlord to forever keep them in debt.

By section 355, of the Criminal Code of South Carolina, 1902, it is made a
misdemeanor to violate a contract to work and labor on a farm, subject to
a fine of not less than five dollars, and more than one hundred dollars,
or imprisonment for not less than ten days, or more than thirty. It is
also made a misdemeanor to employ any farm laborer while under contract
with another, or to persuade or entice a farm laborer to leave his
employer.

The Georgia laws are a little stronger in this respect than the laws of
the other States. By section 121, of the Code of Georgia, 1895, it is
provided, "that if any person shall, by offering higher wages, or in any
other way entice, persuade or decoy, or attempt to entice, persuade or
decoy any farm laborer from his employer, he shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor." Again, by act of December 17th, 1901, the Georgia
Legislature passed a law making it an offense to rent land, or furnish
land to a farm laborer, after he has contracted with another landlord,
without first obtaining the consent of the first landlord.

The presence of large numbers of negroes in the towns and cities of the
South and North can be accounted for by such laws as the above,
administered by ignorant country magistrates, in nearly all cases the
pliant tools of the landlords.

The boldest and most open violation of the negro's rights under the
Federal Constitution, was the enactment of the grand-father clauses, and
understanding clauses in the new Constitutions of Louisiana, Alabama, the
Carolinas, and Virginia, which have had the effect to deprive the great
body of them of the right to vote in those States, for no other reason
than their race and color. Although thus depriving him of his vote, and
all voice in the State governments at the South, in all of them his
property is taxed to pay pensions to Confederate soldiers, who fought to
continue him in slavery. The fact is, the franchise had been practically
taken from the negroes in the South since 1876, by admitted fraudulent
methods and intimidation in elections, but it was not until late years
that this nullification of the amendments was enacted into State
Constitutions.

This brings me to the proposition that it is mainly in the enforcement, or
the administration of the laws, however fair and equal they may appear on
their face, that the constitutional rights of negroes to equal protection
and treatment are denied, not only in the South but in many Northern
States. There are noble exceptions, however, of high-toned honorable
gentlemen on the bench as trial judges, and Supreme Court justices, in the
South, who without regard to consequences have stood for fairness and
justice to the negro in their courts.

With the population of the South distinctly divided into two classes, not
the rich and poor, not the educated and ignorant, not the moral and
immoral, but simply whites and blacks, all negroes being generally
regarded as inferior and not entitled to the same rights as any white
person, it is bound to be a difficult matter to obtain fair and just
results, when there is any sort of conflict between the races. The negro
realizes this, and knows that he is at an immense disadvantage when he is
forced to litigate with a white man in civil matters, and much more so
when he is charged with a crime by a white person.

The juries in the South almost always reject the testimony of any number
of negroes if given in opposition to that of a white witness, and this is
true in many instances, no matter how unreasonable or inconsistent the
testimony of the white witness may be. Jurors in the South have been heard
to admit that they would be socially ostracized if they brought in a
verdict upon colored testimony alone, in opposition to white testimony.

Perhaps it can be best explained how the negro fares in the courts of the
South by giving a few cases showing how justice is administered to him:

A negro boy was brought to the bar for trial before a police magistrate,
in a Southern capital city, charged with assault and battery on a white
boy about the same age, but a little larger. The testimony showed that the
white boy had beat the negro on several previous occasions as he passed on
his way to school, and each time the negro showed no disposition to fight.
On the morning of the charge he attacked the negro and attempted to cut
him with a knife, because the negro's mother had reported to the white
boy's mother the previous assaults, and asked her to chastise him. The
colored boy in trying to keep from being cut was compelled to fight, and
got the advantage and threw the white boy down and blacked his eyes. The
magistrate on this evidence fined the negro twenty-five dollars. The
mother of the negro having once been a servant for the magistrate, found
courage to rise, and said: "Jedge, yo Honer, can I speak?" The magistrate
replied, "Yes, go on." She said, "Well, Jedge, my boy is ben tellin' me
about dis white boy meddlin' him on his way to school, but I would not let
my boy fight, 'cause I 'tole him he couldn't git no jestice in law. But he
had no other way to go to school 'ceptin' gwine dat way; and den jedge,
dis white chile is bigger an my chile and jumped on him fust with a knife
for nothin', befo' my boy tetched him. Jedge I am a po' woman, and washes
fur a livin', and ain't got nobody to help me, and can't raise all dat
money. I think dat white boy's mammy ought to pay half of dis fine." By
this time her voice had become stifled by her tears. The judge turned to
the mother of the white boy and said, "Madam, are you willing to pay half
of this fine?" She answered, "Yes, Your Honor." And the judge changed the
order to a fine of $12.50 each, against both boys.

A celebrated case in point reported in the books is, George Maury vs. The
State of Miss., 68 Miss. 605. I reproduce the court's statement of the
case:--"This is an appeal from the Circuit Court of Kemper County.
Appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to imprisonment for life.
He appears in this court without counsel. The facts are briefly these:
One, Nicholson, a white man, accompanied by his little son seven years
old, was driving an ox team along a public road; he had occasion to stop
and the oxen were driven by his son; defendant, a negro, also in an ox
wagon, was going along the road in an opposite direction, and met
Nicholson's wagon in charge of the little boy. It was after dark, and when
the wagons met, according to the testimony of Nicholson, the defendant
insultingly demanded of the boy to give the way, and cursed and abused
him. Nicholson, hearing the colloquy, hurried to the scene and a fight
ensued between him and Maury, in which the latter got the advantage,
inflicting severe blows upon Nicholson. This occurred on Thursday, and on
the following Sunday night, Nicholson, in company with eleven or twelve of
his friends, rode to the farm of Maury, and after sending several of their
number to ascertain if he was at home, rode rapidly into his yard and
called for him. Not finding him, they proceeded to search the premises,
and found several colored men shut up in the smoke house, the door of
which some of the searching party had broken open. Maury, the accused, was
not found there, and about that time some one called out, "Here is
George." Some of the party then started in the direction of the cotton
house from which the voice proceeded, when a volley was fired from it, and
two of the searching party were killed, one of whom was the son of the
former owner of the defendant, and the other a brother-in-law of
Nicholson. The members of the raiding party testified that their purpose
in going to the home of the defendant was merely to arrest him. It was,
however, shown that Nicholson, immediately after the fight on Thursday,
informed Cobb, and Cobb between Thursday and Sunday night collected the
men who joined in the raid. No affidavit for the arrest of Maury had been
made, and none of the party had any warrant, or made any announcement to
the defendant or his family, of the object of their visit. The accused who
testified in his own behalf, denied that he was at home at the time of the
shooting, and says he fled before the raiding party arrived. He also
contradicted Nicholson in his account of the difficulty with him, and
denies that he spoke harshly to the child." Chief Justice Campbell, in
delivering the opinion of the court said, "It is inconceivable that the
crime of murder is predicable of the facts disclosed by the evidence in
this case. The time and place and circumstances of the killing forbid any
such conclusion as a verdict of guilty of murder." The judgment of the
trial court was reversed.

This same Chief Justice, in the case of Monroe vs. Mississippi, 71 Miss.
201, where a negro was convicted of rape, makes use of the following
brave and noble language, reversing the case on the ground of the
insufficiency of the evidence: "We might greatly lighten our labors by
deferring in all cases to the verdict approved by the presiding judge as
to the facts, but our duty is to administer justice without respect of
persons, and do equal right to the poor and the rich. Hence the
disposition, which we are not ashamed to confess we have, to guard
jealously the rights of the poor and friendless and despised, and to be
astute as far as we properly may, against injustice, whether proceeding
from wilfulness or indifference."

The country has produced no abler jurist, nor the South no greater man
than Ex-Chief Justice Campbell of Mississippi. If the counsel of such men
as he and Chief Justice Garret of the Court of Civil Appeals of Texas,
could obtain in the South, there would be no problem between the races.
All would be contented because justice would be administered to the whites
and blacks alike.

In the administration of the suffrage sections under the new
Constitutions of the South by the partisan boards of registrars, the same
discrimination against negroes was practiced. Their methods are of more or
less interest. The plan was to exclude all negroes from the electorate
without excluding a single white man. Under the Alabama Constitution, a
soldier in the Civil War, either on the Federal or Confederate side, is
entitled to qualification. When a negro goes up to register as a soldier
he is asked for his discharge. When he presents it he is asked, "How do we
know that you are the man whose name is written in this discharge? Bring
us two white men whom we know and who will swear that you have not found
this paper, and that they know that you were a soldier in the company and
regiment in which you claim to have been." This, of course, could not be
done, and the ex-soldier who risked his life for the Union is denied the
right to vote.

The same Constitution provides that if not a soldier or the legal
descendant of one, an elector must be of good character and understand the
duties and obligations of citizenship under a Republican form of
government. When a negro claims qualifications under the good character
and understanding clauses he is put through an examination similar to the
following:

"What is a republican form of government?

"What is a limited monarchy?

"What islands did the United States come into possession of by the
Spanish-American War?

"What is the difference between Jeffersonian Democracy and Calhoun
principles, as compared to the Monroe Doctrine?

"If the Nicaragua Canal is cut, what will be the effect if the Pacific
Ocean is two feet higher than the Atlantic?" Should these questions be
answered satisfactorily, the negro must still produce two white men known
to the registrars to testify to his good character. A remarkable
exception in the treatment of negroes by the registrars of Dallas county,
Alabama, is shown in the following account taken from the Montgomery
Advertizer:--

"An old negro barber by the name of Edward E. Harris, stepped in before
the registrars, hat in hand, humble and polite, with a kindly smile on his
face. He respectfully asked to be registered. He signed the application
and waited a few minutes until the registrars had disposed of some other
matters, and being impressed with his respectful bearing, some member of
the board commenced to ask a few questions. The old man told his story in
a straight forward manner. He said: "Gentlemen, I am getting to be a
pretty old man. I was born here in the South, and I followed my young
master through all of the campaigns in Virginia, when Mas' Bob Lee made it
so warm for the Yankees. But our luck left us at Gettysburg. The Yankees
got around in our rear there, and I got a bullet in the back of my head,
and one in my leg before I got out of that scrape. But I was not hurt
much, and my greatest anxiety was about my young master, Mr. John Holly,
who was a member of the Bur Rifles, 18th Mississippi. He was a private and
enlisted at Jackson, Miss.

"He could not be found the first day; I looked all among the dead on the
battle field for him and he was not there. Next day I got a permit to go
through the hospitals, and I looked into the face of every soldier
closely, in the hope of finding my young master. After many hours of
searching I found him, but he was dangerously wounded. I stayed by his
side, wounded as I was, for three long weeks, but he gradually grew worse
and then he died. I went out with the body and saw it buried as decently
as I could, and then I went back to Jackson and told the young mistress
how brave he was in battle, how good he was to me, and told her all the
words he had sent her, as he lay there on that rude cot in the hospital.
That is my record as a Confederate soldier, and if you gentlemen care to
give me a certificate of registration, I would be much obliged to you."
It is needless to say that old Ed. Harris got his certificate.

It is insisted upon by the leaders of public opinion at the South, that
negroes should not be given equal political and civil rights with white
men, defined by law and enforceable by the courts; but that they should be
content to strive to deserve the good wishes and friendly feeling of the
whites, and if the South is let alone, they will see to it that negroes
get becoming treatment.

While there is a large number of the high-toned, chivalrous element of the
old master class yet living, who would stand by the negro and not permit
him to be wronged if they could prevent it, yet they are powerless to
control the great mass of the poor whites who are most bitter in their
prejudices against the negro. They should also bear in mind that the old
master class is rapidly passing way, and that there is constantly an
influx of foreigners to the South, and in less than fifty years the
Italians, or some other foreign nationality, may be the ruling class in
all the Southern States; and the negro, deprived of all political and
civil rights by the Constitution and laws, would be wholly at the mercy of
a people without sympathy for him.

In order to show the fallacy and the wrong and injustice of this doctrine,
and how helplessly exposed it leaves the negro to the prejudices of the
poor whites, I relate a tragedy in the life of a friend of mine, who was
well known and respected in the town of Rayville, Louisiana.

Sewall Smith, for many years ran the leading barber shop for whites in the
town of Rayville, and was well-liked and respected by the leading white
men of the entire parish. At the suggestion of his customers he bought
Louisiana state lands while they were cheap, before the railroad was put
through between Vicksburg and Shreveport; and as the road passed near his
lands he was thereby made a rich man, as wealth goes in those parts. His
good fortune, however, did not swell his head and he remained the same to
his friends. He became so useful in his parish that there was never a
public gathering of the leading white business men that he was not invited
to it, and he was always on the delegations to all the levee or river
conventions sent from his parish. He was chosen to such places by white
men exclusively; and in his own town he was as safe from wrong or injury,
on account of his race or color, as any white man.

After the trains began to run through Rayville, on the Shreveport road, he
had occasion to visit the town of Ruston, in another parish some miles in
the interior, and as he got off at the depot, a barefoot, poor white boy
asked to carry his satchel. Smith was a fine looking mulatto, dressed
well, and could have easily been taken for a white man, and the boy might
not have known at the time he was a negro. When he arrived at his stopping
place he gave the boy such a large coin that he asked permission to take
his satchel back to the train on the following day when he was to return.
The next day the boy came for the satchel, and they had nearly reached the
depot about train time, when they passed a saloon where a crowd of poor
whites sat on boxes whittling sticks. The sight of a negro having a white
boy carrying his satchel quite enraged them, and after cursing and abusing
Smith and the boy, they undertook to kick and assault Smith. Smith
defended himself. The result was a shooting affair, in which Smith shot
two or three of them and was himself shot. The train rolled up while the
fight was in progress, and without inquiring the cause or asking any
questions whatever, fully a hundred white men jumped off the train and
riddled Smith with bullets. That was the end of it. Nobody was indicted or
even arrested for killing an insolent "nigger" that did not keep his
place. That is the way the affair was regarded in Ruston. Of course, the
people of Rayville very much regretted it, but they could not do anything,
and could not afford to defend the rights of a negro against white men
under such circumstances, and the matter dropped.

I have preferred not to mention the numerous ways and many instances in
which the rights of negroes are denied in public places, and on the common
carriers in the South, under circumstances very humiliating and degrading.
Nor have I cared to refer to the barbarous and inhuman prison systems of
the South, that are worse than anything the imagination can conceive in a
civilized and Christian land, as shown by reports of legislative
committees.

If the negro can secure a fair and impartial trial in the courts, and can
be secure in his life and liberty and property, so as not to be deprived
of them except by due process of law, and can have a voice in the making
and administration of the laws, he shall have gone a great way in the
South. It is to be hoped that public opinion can be awakened to this
extent, and that it may assist him to attain that end.




_The Characteristics of the Negro People_

By H.T. KEALING

  A frank statement of the virtues and failings of the race, indicating
  very clearly the evils which must be overcome, and the good which must
  be developed, if success is really to attend the effort to uplift them.

[Illustration: H.T. KEALING.]


The characteristics of the Negro are of two kinds--the inborn and the
inbred. As they reveal themselves to us, this distinction may not be seen,
but it exists. Inborn qualities are ineradicable; they belong to the
blood; they constitute individuality; they are independent, or nearly so,
of time and habitat. Inbred qualities are acquired, and are the result of
experience. They may be overcome by a reversal of the process which
created them. The fundamental, or inborn, characteristics of the Negro may
be found in the African, as well as the American, Negro; but the inbred
characteristics of the latter belong to the American life alone.

There is but one human nature, made up of constituent elements the same in
all men, and racial or national differences arise from the predominance
of one or another element in this or that race. It is a question of
proportion. The Negro is not a Caucasian, not a Chinese, not an Indian;
though no psychological quality in the one is absent from the other. The
same moral sense, called conscience; the same love of harmony in color or
in sound; the same pleasure in acquiring knowledge; the same love of truth
in word, or of fitness in relation; the same love of respect and
approbation; the same vengeful or benevolent feelings; the same appetites,
belong to all, but in varying proportions. They form the indicia to a
people's mission, and are our best guides to God's purpose in creating us.
They constitute the material to be worked on in educating a race, and
suggest in every case where the stress of civilization or education should
be applied in order to follow the lines of least resistance.

But there are also certain manifestations, the result of training or
neglect, which are not inborn. As they are inculcable, so they are
eradicable; and it is only by a loose terminology that we apply the term
characteristics to them without distinction between them and the inherent
traits. In considering the characteristics of the Negro people, therefore,
we must not confuse the constitutional with the removable. Studied with
sympathy and at first hand, the black man of America will be seen to
possess certain predominant idiosyncrasies of which the following form a
fair catalogue:

_He is intensely religious._ True religion is based upon a belief in the
supernatural, upon faith and feeling. A people deeply superstitious are
apt to be deeply religious, for both rest upon a belief in a spiritual
world. Superstition differs from religion in being the untrained and
unenlightened gropings of the human soul after the mysteries of the higher
life; while the latter, more or less enlightened, "feels after God, if
haply," it may find Him. The Negro gives abundant evidence of both phases.
The absolute inability of the master, in the days of slavery, while
successfully vetoing all other kinds of convocation, to stop the Negro's
church meetings, as well as the almost phenomenal influence and growth of
his churches since; and his constant referring of every event, adverse or
favorable, to the personal ministrations of the Creator, are things unique
and persistent. And the master class reposed more faith in their slaves'
religion ofttimes than they did in their own. Doubtless much of the
reverential feeling that pervades the American home to-day, above that of
all other nations, is the result of the Negro mammy's devotion and loyalty
to God.

_He is imaginative._ This is not evinced so much in creative directions as
in poetical, musical, combinatory, inventional and what, if coupled with
learning, we call literary imagination. Negro eloquence is proverbial. The
crudest sermon of the most unlettered slave abounded in tropes and glowing
tongue pictures of apochalyptic visions all his own; and, indeed, the
poetic quality of his mind is seen in all his natural efforts when the
self-consciousness of education does not stand guard. The staid religious
muse of Phillis Wheatley and the rollicking, somewhat jibing, verse of
Dunbar show it equally, unpremeditated and spontaneous.

I have heard by the hour some ordinary old uneducated Negro tell those
inimitable animal stories, brought to literary existence in "Uncle Remus,"
with such quaint humor, delicious conceit and masterly delineation of
plot, character and incident that nothing but the conventional rating of
Aesop's Fables could put them in the same class. Then, there are more
Negro inventors than the world supposes. This faculty is impossible
without a well-ordered imagination held in leash by a good memory and
large perception.

_He is affectionate and without vindictiveness._ He does not nurse even
great wrongs. Mercurial as he is, often furiously angry and frequently in
murderous mood, he comes nearer not letting the sun go down upon his anger
than any other man I know. Like Brutus, he may be compared to the flint
which,

    "Much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
    And straight is cold again."

His affection is not less towards the Caucasian than to his own race. It
is not saying too much to remark that the soul of the Negro yearns for the
white man's good will and respect; and the old ties of love that subsisted
in so many instances in the days of slavery still survive where the
ex-slave still lives. The touching case of a Negro Bishop who returned to
the State in which he had been a slave, and rode twenty miles to see and
alleviate the financial distress of his former master is an exception to
numerous other similar cases only in the prominence of the Negro
concerned. I know of another case of a man whose tongue seems dipped in
hyssop when he begins to tell of the wrongs of his race, and who will not
allow anyone to say in his presence that any good came out of slavery,
even incidentally; yet he supports the widowed and aged wife of his
former master. And, surely, if these two instances are not sufficient to
establish the general proposition, none will gainsay the patience,
vigilance, loyalty and helpfulness of the Negro slave during the Civil
War, and of his good old wife who nursed white children at her breast at a
time when all ties save those of affection were ruptured, and when no
protection but devoted hearts watched over the "great house," whose head
and master was at the front, fighting to perpetuate slavery. Was it
stupidity on the Negro's part? Not at all. He was well informed as to the
occurrences of the times. A freemasonry kept him posted as well as the
whites were themselves on the course of the war and the issue of each
battle. Was it fear that kept him at the old home? Not that, either. Many
thousands _did_ cross the line to freedom; many other thousands (200,000)
fought in the ranks for freedom, but none of them--those who went and
those who stayed--those who fought and those who worked,--betrayed a
trust, outraged a female, or rebelled against a duty. It was love, the
natural wellings of affectionate natures.

_He has great endurance, both dispositional and physical._ So true is the
first that his patience has been the marvel of the world; and, indeed,
many, regarding this trait manifested in such an unusual degree, doubted
the Negro's courage, till the splendid record of the '60's and the equal,
but more recent, record of the '90's, wrote forbearance as the real
explanation of an endurance seemingly so at variance with manly spirit.

Of his physical powers, his whole record as a laborer at killing tasks in
the most trying climate in America speaks so eloquently that nothing but
the statistics of cotton, corn, rice, sugar, railroad ties and felled
forests can add to the praise of this burden-bearer of the nation. The
census tables here are more romantic and thrilling than figures of
rhetoric.

_He is courageous._ His page in the war record of this country is without
blot or blemish. His commanders unite in pronouncing him admirable for
courage in the field, commendable for obedience in camp. That he should
exhibit such excellent fighting qualities as a soldier, and yet exercise
the forbearance that characterizes him as a citizen, is remarkable.

_He is cheerful._ His ivories are as famous as his songs. That the South
is "sunny" is largely due to the brightness his rollicking laugh and
unfailing good nature bring to it. Though the mudsill of the labor world,
he whistles as he hoes, and no dark broodings or whispered conspirings mar
the cheerful acceptance of the load he bears. Against the rubber bumper of
his good cheer things that have crushed and maddened others rebound
without damage. When one hears the quaint jubilee songs, set to minor
cadence, he might suppose them the expressions of a melancholy people.
They are not to be so interpreted. Rather are they the expression of an
experience, not a nature. Like the subdued voice of a caged bird, these
songs are the coinage of an occasion, and not the free note of nature.
The slave sang of griefs he was not allowed to discuss, hence his songs.
This cheerfulness has enabled the Negro to live and increase under
circumstances which, in all other instances, have decimated, if not
exterminated, inferior peoples. His plasticity to moulding forces and his
resiliency against crushing ones come from a Thalian philosophy,
unconscious and unstudied, that extracts Epicurean delights from funeral
meats.

The above traits are inborn and fundamental, belonging to the race
everywhere, in Africa as well as America. Strict correctness requires,
however, that attention be called to the fact that there are tribal
differences among African Negroes that amount almost to the national
variations of Europe; and these are reflected in American Negroes, who are
the descendants of these different tribes. There is as much difference
between the Mandingo and the Hottentot, both black, as between the Italian
and the German, both white; or between the Bushman and the Zulu, both
black, as between the Russian and the Englishman, both white. Scientific
exactness, therefore, would require a closer analysis of racial
characteristics than an article of this length could give; but, speaking
in a large way, it may be said that in whatever outward conformity may
come to the race in America by reason of training or contact, these traits
will lie at the base, the very warp and woof of his soul texture.

If, now, we turn to consider his inbred traits, those the result of
experience, conditions and environments, we find that they exist mainly as
deficiencies and deformities. These have been superimposed upon the native
soul endowment. Slavery has been called the Negro's great schoolmaster,
because it took him a savage and released him civilized; took him a
heathen and released him a Christian; took him an idler and released him a
laborer. Undoubtedly it did these things superficially, but one great
defect is to be charged against this school--it did not teach him the
meaning of home, purity and providence. To do this is the burden of
freedom.

The emancipated Negro struggles up to-day against many obstacles, the
entailment of a brutal slavery. Leaving out of consideration the many who
have already emerged, let us apply our thoughts to the great body of
submerged people in the congested districts of city and country who
present a real problem, and who must be helped to higher things. We note
some of the heritages under which they stagger up into full development:

_Shiftlessness._ He had no need to devise and plan in bondage. There was
no need for an enterprising spirit; consequently, he is lacking in
leadership and self-reliance. He is inclined to stay in ruts, and applies
himself listlessly to a task, feeling that the directive agency should
come from without.

_Incontinence._ It is not to the point to say that others are, too.
Undoubtedly, example has as much to do with this laxity as neglect. We
simply record the fact. A slave's value was increased by his prolificacy.
Begetting children for the auction block could hardly sanctify family
ties. It was not nearly so necessary for a slave to know his father as his
owner. Added to the promiscuity encouraged and often forced among this
class, was the dreadful license which cast lustful Caucasian eyes upon
"likely" Negro women.

_Indolence._ Most men are, especially in a warm climate: but the Negro
acquired more than the natural share, because to him as a bondman laziness
was great gain, for he had no pecuniary interest in his own labor. Hence,
holidays were more to be desired than whole labor days, and he learned to
do as little as he might, be excused as often as he could, and hail
Saturday as the oasis in a desert week. He hails it yet. The labor
efficiency of the Negro has greatly increased since the emancipation, for
self-interest is a factor now. In 1865, each Negro produced two-thirds of
a bale of cotton; now he produces an average of one whole bale to the man.
But there is still woful waste of productive energy. A calculation
showing the comparative productive capacity, man for man, between the
Northern[B] and Southern laborer would be very interesting.

_Improvidence and Extravagance._ He will drop the most important job to go
on an excursion or parade with his lodge. He spends large sums on
expensive clothing and luxuries, while going without things necessary to a
real home. He will cheerfully eat fat bacon and "pone" corn-bread all the
week[C] in order to indulge in unlimited soda-water, melon and fish at the
end. In the cities he is oftener seen dealing with the pawn-broker than
the banker. His house, when furnished at all, is better furnished that
that of a white man of equal earning power, but it is on the installment
plan. He is loath to buy a house, because he has no taste for
responsibility nor faith in himself to manage large concerns; but organs,
pianos, clocks, sewing-machines and parlor suits, on time, have no terrors
for him. This is because he has been accustomed to think in small
numbers. He does not regard the Scotchman's "mickle," because he does not
stop to consider that the end is a "muckle." He has amassed, at full
valuation, nearly a billion dollars' worth of property, despite this, but
this is about one-half of what proper providence would have shown.

_Untidiness._ Travel through the South and you will be struck with the
general misfit and dilapidated appearance of things. Palings are missing
from the fences, gates sag on single hinges, houses are unpainted, window
panes are broken, yards unkempt and the appearance of a squalor greater
than the real is seen on every side. The inside of the house meets the
suggestions of the outside. This is a projection of the slave's "quarters"
into freedom. The cabin of the slave was, at best, a place to eat and
sleep in; there was no thought of the esthetic in such places. A quilt on
a plank was a luxury to the tired farm-hand, and paint was nothing to the
poor, sun-scorched fellow who sought the house for shade rather than
beauty. Habits of personal cleanliness were not inculcated, and even now
it is the exception to find a modern bath-room in a Southern home.

_Dishonesty._ This is the logic, if not the training, of slavery. It is
easy for the unrequited toiler in another's field to justify reprisal;
hence there arose among the Negroes an amended Commandment which added to
"Thou shalt not steal" the clause, "except thou be stolen from." It was no
great fault, then, according to this code, to purloin a pig, a sheep, a
chicken, or a few potatoes from a master who took all from the slave.

_Untruthfulness._ This is seen more in innocent and childish exaggeration
than in vicious distortion. It is the vice of untutored minds to run to
gossip and make miracles of the matter-of-fact. The Negro also tells
falsehoods from excess of good nature. He promises to do a piece of work
on a certain day, because it is so much easier and pleasanter to say Yes,
and stay away, than it is to say No.

_Business Unreliability._ He does not meet a promise in the way and at
the time promised. Not being accustomed to business, he has small
conception of the place the promise has in the business world. It is only
recently he has begun to deal with banks. He, who has no credit, sees[D]
no loss of it in a protested note, especially if he intends to pay it some
time. That chain which links one man's obligation to another man's
solvency he has not considered. He is really as good and safe a debt-payer
when he owes a white man as the latter can have, but the methods of the
modern bank, placing a time limit on debts, is his detestation. He much
prefers the _laissez-faire_ of the Southern plantation store.

_Lack of Initiative._ It was the policy of slavery to crush out the
combining instinct, and it was well done; for, outside of churches and
secret societies, the Negro has done little to increase the social
efficiency which can combine many men into an organic whole, subject to
the corporate will and direction. He has, however, made some hopeful
beginnings.

_Suspicion of his own race._ He was taught to watch other Negroes and tell
all that they did. This was slavery's native detective force to discover
incipient insurrection. Each slave learned to distrust his fellow. And
added to this is the knowledge one Negro has that no other has had half
sufficient experience in business to be a wise counsellor, or a safe
steward of another man's funds. Almost all Negroes who have acquired
wealth have entrusted its management to white men.

_Ignorance._ The causes of his ignorance all know. That he has thrown off
one-half of it in forty years is a wonderful showing; but a great incubus
remains in the other half, and it demands the nation's attention. What the
census calls literacy is often very shallow. The cause of this shallowness
lies, in part, in the poor character and short duration of Southern
schools; in the poverty that snatches the child from school prematurely to
work for bread; in the multitude of mushroom colleges and get-smart-quick
universities scattered over the South, and in the glamour of a
professional education that entices poorly prepared students into special
work.

Add to this, too, the commercialism of the age which regards each day in
school as a day out of the market. Boys and girls by scores learn the
mechanical parts of type-writing and stenography without the basal culture
which gives these callings their greatest efficiency. They copy a
manuscript, Chinese-like, mistakes and all; they take you phonetically in
sense as well as sound, having no reserve to draw upon to interpret a
learned allusion or unusual phrase. Thus while prejudice makes it hard to
secure a place, auto-deficiency loses many a one that is secured.

We have discussed the leading characteristics of the Negro, his inborn
excellencies and inbred defects, candidly and as they are to be seen in
the great mass whose place determines the status of the race as a whole.
It would, however, be to small purpose if we did not ask what can be done
to develop the innate good and correct the bad in a race so puissant and
numerous? This mass is not inert; it has great reactionary force,
modifying and influencing all about it. The Negro's excellences have
entered into American character and life already; so have his weaknesses.
He has brought cheer, love, emotion and religion in saving measure to the
land. He has given it wealth by his brawn and liberty by his blood. His
self-respect, even in abasement, has kept him struggling upward; his
confidence in his own future has infected his friends and kept him from
nursing despondency or planning anarchy. But he has laid, and does lay,
burdens upon the land, too: his ignorance, his low average of morality,
his low standards of home, his lack of enterprise, his lack of
self-reliance--these must be cured.

Evidently, he is to be "solved" by educational processes. Everyone of his
inborn traits must be respected and developed to proper proportion.
Excesses and excrescences must not be carelessly dealt with, for they mark
the fertility of a soil that raises rank weeds because no gardener has
tilled it. His religion must become "ethics touched with feeling"--not a
paroxysm, but a principle. His imagination must be given a rudder to guide
its sails; and the first fruits of its proper exercise, as seen in a
Dunbar, a Chesnutt, a Coleridge-Taylor and a Tanner, must be pedestaled
along the Appian Way over which others are to march. His affection must be
met with larger love; his patience rewarded with privilege; his courage
called to defend the rights of others rather than redress his own wrongs.
Thus shall he supplement from within the best efforts of good men without.

To cure the evils entailed upon him by an unhappy past, he must be
educated to work with skill, with self-direction, in combination and
unremittingly. Industrial education with constant application, is the
slogan of his rise from racial pauperism to productive manliness. Not that
exceptional minds should not have exceptional opportunities (and they
already exist); but that the great majority of awkward and unskilled ones,
who must work somehow, somewhere, all the time, shall have their
opportunities for training in industrial schools near them and with
courses consonant with the lives they are to lead. Let the ninety and nine
who must work, either with trained or fumbling hands, have a chance. Train
the Negro to accept and carry responsibility by putting it upon him. Train
him, more than any schools are now doing, in morals--to speak the truth,
to keep a promise, to touch only his own property, to trust the
trustworthy among his own race, to risk something in business, to strike
out in new lines of endeavor, to buy houses and make homes, to regard
beauty as well as utility, to save rather than display. In short, let us
subordinate mere knowledge to the work of invigorating the will,
energizing productive effort and clarifying moral vision. Let us make safe
men rather than vociferous mountebanks; let us put deftness in daily labor
above sleight-of-hand tricks, and common sense, well trained, above
classical smatterings, which awe the multitude but butter no parsnips.

If we do this, America will have enriched her blood, ennobled her record
and shown the world how to deal with its Dark Races without reproach.

[Footnote B: In the original, this was 'Northen'.]

[Footnote C: In the original, this was 'weeek'.]

[Footnote D: In the original, this was 'seees'.]




_Representative American Negroes_

By PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

  An enumeration of some of the noteworthy American Negroes of to-day and
  yesterday, with some account of their lives and their work. In this
  paper Mr. Dunbar has turned out his largest and most successful picture
  of the colored people. It is a noble canvas crowded with heroic figures.


In considering who and what are representative Negroes there are
circumstances which compel one to question what is a representative man of
the colored race. Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and
others lived during the reconstruction period. To have achieved something
for the betterment of his race rather than for the aggrandizement of
himself, seems to be a man's best title to be called representative. The
street corner politician, who through questionable methods or even through
skillful manipulation, succeeds in securing the janitorship of the Court
House, may be written up in the local papers as "representative," but is
he?

I have in mind a young man in Baltimore, Bernard Taylor by name, who to me
is more truly representative of the race than half of the "Judges,"
"Colonels," "Doctors" and "Honorables" whose stock cuts burden the pages
of our negro journals week after week. I have said that he is young.
Beyond that he is quiet and unobtrusive; but quiet as he is, the worth of
his work can be somewhat estimated when it is known that he has set the
standard for young men in a city that has the largest colored population
in the world.

It is not that as an individual he has ridden to success one enterprise
after another. It is not that he has shown capabilities far beyond his
years, nor yet that his personal energy will not let him stop at one
triumph. The importance of him lies in the fact that his influence upon
his fellows is all for good, and in a large community of young Negroes the
worth of this cannot be over-estimated. He has taught them that striving
is worth while, and by the very force of his example of industry and
perseverance, he stands out from the mass. He does not tell how to do
things, he does them. Nothing has contributed more to his success than
his alertness, and nothing has been more closely followed by his
observers, and yet I sometimes wonder when looking at him, how old he must
be, how world weary, before the race turns from its worship of the
political janitor and says of him, "this is one of our representative
men."

This, however, is a matter of values and neither the negro himself, his
friends, his enemies, his lauders, nor his critics has grown quite certain
in appraising these. The rabid agitator who goes about the land preaching
the independence and glory of his race, and by his very mouthings
retarding both, the saintly missionary, whose only mission is like that of
"Pooh Bah," to be insulted; the man of the cloth who thunders against the
sins of the world and from whom honest women draw away their skirts, the
man who talks temperance and tipples high-balls--these are not
representative, and whatever their station in life, they should be rated
at their proper value, for there is a difference between attainment and
achievement.

Under the pure light of reason, the ignorant carpet bagger judge is a
person and not a personality. The illiterate and inefficient black man,
whom circumstance put into Congress, was "a representative" but was not
representative. So the peculiar conditions of the days immediately after
the war have made it necessary to draw fine distinctions.

When Robert Smalls, a slave, piloted the Confederate ship Planter out of
Charleston Harbor under the very guns of the men who were employing him,
who owned him, his body, his soul, and the husk of his allegiance, and
brought it over to the Union, it is a question which forty years has not
settled as to whether he was a hero or a felon, a patriot or a traitor. So
much has been said of the old Negro's fidelity to his masters that
something different might have been expected of him. But take the singular
conditions: the first faint streaks of a long delayed dawn had just begun
to illumine the sky and this black pilot with his face turned toward the
East had no eye for the darkness behind him. He had no time to analyze his
position, the right or wrong of it. He had no opportunity to question
whether it was loyalty to a union in which he aspired to citizenship, or
disloyalty to his masters of the despised confederacy. It was not a time
to argue, it was a time to do; and with rare power of decision, skill of
action and with indomitable courage, he steered the good ship Planter past
Fort Johnson, past Fort Sumter, past Morris Island, out where the flag,
the flag of his hopes and fears floated over the federal fleet. And Robert
Smalls had done something, something that made him loved and hated,
praised and maligned, revered and despised, but something that made him
representative of the best that there is in sturdy Negro manhood.

It may seem a far cry from Robert Smalls, the pilot of the Planter, to
Booker T. Washington, Principal of the Institute at Tuskegee, Alabama.
But much the same traits of character have made the success of the two
men; the knowledge of what to do, the courage to do it, and the following
out of a single purpose. They are both pilots, and the waters through
which their helms have swung have been equally stormy. The methods of both
have been questioned; but singularly neither one has stopped to question
himself, but has gone straight on to his goal over the barriers of
criticism, malice and distrust. The secret of Mr. Washington's power is
organization, and organization after all is only a concentration of force.
This concentration only expresses his own personality, in which every
trait and quality tend toward one definite end. They say of this man that
he is a man of one idea, but that one is a great one and he has merely
concentrated all his powers upon it; in other words he has organized
himself and gone forth to gather in whatever about him was essential.

Pilot he is, steadfast and unafraid, strong in his own belief,--yes
strong enough to make others believe in him. Without doubt or skepticism,
himself he has confounded the skeptics.

Less statesmanlike than Douglass, less scholarly than DuBois, less
eloquent than the late J.C. Price, he is yet the foremost figure in Negro
national life. He is a great educator and a great man, and though one may
not always agree with him, one must always respect him. The race has
produced no more adroit diplomatist than he. The statement is broad but
there is no better proof of it than the fact that while he is our most
astute politician, he has succeeded in convincing both himself and the
country that he is not in politics. He has none of the qualities of the
curb-stone politician. He is bigger, broader, better, and the highest
compliment that could be paid him is that through all his ups and downs,
with all he has seen of humanity, he has kept his faith and his ideals.
While Mr. Washington stands pre-eminent in his race there are other names
that must be mentioned with him as co-workers in the education of the
world, names that for lack of time can be only mentioned and passed.

W.H. Council, of Normal, Alabama, has been doing at his school a good and
great work along the same lines as Tuskegee. R.R. Wright, of the State
College of Georgia, "We'se a-risin' Wright," he is called, and by his own
life and work for his people he has made true the boyish prophecy which in
the old days inspired Whittier's poem. Three decades ago this was his
message from the lowly South, "Tell 'em we'se a-risin," and by thought, by
word, by deed, he has been "Tellin' em so" ever since. The old Southern
school has melted into the misty shades of an unregretted past. A new
generation, new issues, new conditions, have replaced the old, but the boy
who sent that message from the heart of the Southland to the North's heart
of hearts has risen, and a martyred President did not blush to call him
friend.

So much of the Negro's time has been given to the making of teachers that
it is difficult to stop when one has begun enumerating some of those who
have stood out more than usually forceful. For my part, there are two more
whom I cannot pass over. Kelly Miller, of Howard University, Washington,
D.C., is another instructor far above the average. He is a mathematician
and a thinker. The world has long been convinced of what the colored man
could do in music and in oratory, but it has always been skeptical, when
he is to be considered as a student of any exact science. Miller, in his
own person, has settled all that. He finished at Johns Hopkins where they
will remember him. He is not only a teacher but an author who writes with
authority upon his chosen themes, whether he is always known as a Negro
writer or not. He is endowed with an accurate, analytical mind, and the
most engaging blackness, for which some of us thank God, because there can
be no argument as to the source of his mental powers.

Now of the other, William E.B. DuBois, what shall be said? Educator and
author, political economist and poet, an Eastern man against a Southern
back-ground, he looms up strong, vivid and in bold relief. I say looms
advisedly, because, intellectually, there is something so distinctively
big about the man. Since the death of the aged Dr. Crummell, we have had
no such ripe and finished scholar. Dr. DuBois, Harvard gave him to us, and
there he received his Ph.D., impresses one as having reduced all life and
all literature to a perfect system. There is about him a fascinating calm
of certain power, whether as a searcher after economic facts, under the
wing of the University of Pennsylvania, or defying the "powers that be" in
a Negro college or leading his pupils along the way of light, one always
feels in him this same sense of conscious, restrained, but assured force.

Some years ago in the course of his researches, he took occasion to tell
his own people some plain hard truths, and oh, what a howl of protest and
denunciation went up from their assembled throats, but it never once
disturbed his magnificent calm. He believed what he had said, and not for
a single moment did he think of abandoning his position.

He goes at truth as a hard-riding old English squire would take a
difficult fence. Let the ditch be beyond if it will.

Dr. DuBois would be the first to disclaim the name of poet but everything
outside of his statistical work convicts him. The rhythm of his style, his
fancy, his imagery, all bid him bide with those whose souls go singing by
a golden way. He has written a number of notable pamphlets and books, the
latest of which is "The Soul of the Black Folk," an invaluable
contribution to the discussion of the race problem by a man who knows
whereof he speaks.

Dr. DuBois is at Atlanta University and has had every opportunity to
observe all the phases of America's great question, and I wish I might
write at length of his books.

It may be urged that too much time has already been taken up with the
educational side of the Negro, but the reasonableness of this must become
apparent when one remembers that for the last forty years the most helpful
men of the race have come from the ranks of its teachers, and few of those
who have finally done any big thing, but have at some time or other held
the scepter of authority in a school. They may have changed later and
grown, indeed they must have done so, but the fact remains that their
poise, their discipline, the impulse for their growth came largely from
their work in the school room.

There is perhaps no more notable example of this phase of Negro life than
the Hon. Richard Theodore Greener, our present Consul at Vladivostok. He
was, I believe, the first of our race to graduate from Harvard and he has
always been regarded as one of the most scholarly men who, through the
touch of Negro blood, belongs to us. He has been historian, journalist and
lecturer, but back of all this he was a teacher; and for years after his
graduation he was a distinguished professor at the most famous of all the
old Negro colleges. This institution is now a thing of the past, but the
men who knew it in its palmy days speak of it still with longing and
regret. It is claimed, and from the names and qualities of the men, not
without justice, that no school for the higher education of the black man
has furnished a finer curriculum or possessed a better equipped or more
efficient faculty. Among these, Richard T. Greener was a bright,
particular star.

After the passing of the school, Mr. Greener turned to other activities.
His highest characteristics were a fearless patience and a hope that
buoyed him up through days of doubt and disappointment. Author and editor
he was, but he was not satisfied with these. Beyond their scope were
higher things that beckoned him. Politics, or perhaps better, political
science, allured him, and he applied himself to a course that brought him
into intimate contact with the leaders of his country, white and black. A
man of wide information, great knowledge and close grasp of events he made
himself invaluable to his party and then with his usual patience awaited
his reward.

The story of how he came to his own cannot be told without just a shade of
bitterness darkening the smile that one must give to it all. The cause for
which he had worked triumphed. The men for whom he had striven gained
their goal and now, Greener must be recognized, but--

Vladivostok, your dictionary will tell you, is a sea-port in the maritime
Province of Siberia, situated on the Golden Horn of Peter the Great. It
will tell you also that it is the chief Russian naval station on the
Pacific. It is an out of the way place and one who has not the
world-circling desire would rather hesitate before setting out thither. It
was to this post that Mr. Greener was appointed.

"Exile," his friends did not hesitate to say. "Why didn't the Government
make it a sentence instead of veiling it in the guise of an appointment?"
asked others sarcastically.

"Will he go?" That was the general question that rose and fell, whispered
and thundered about the new appointee, and in the midst of it all, silent
and dignified, he kept his council. The next thing Washington knew he was
gone. There was a gasp of astonishment and then things settled back into
their former state of monotony and Greener was forgotten.

But in the eastern sky, darkness began to arise, the warning flash of
danger swept across the heavens, the thunder drum of war began to roll.
For a moment the world listened in breathless suspense, the suspense of
horror. Louder and louder rose the thunder peal until it drowned every
other sound in the ears of the nation, every other sound save the cries
and wails of dying women and the shrieks of tortured children. Then
France, England, Germany, Japan and America marshalled their forces and
swept eastward to save and to avenge. The story of the Boxer uprising has
been told, but little has been said of how Vladivostok, "A sea-port in the
maritime Province of Siberia," became one of the most important points of
communication with the outside world, and its Consul came frequently to be
heard from by the State Department. And so Greener after years of patience
and toil had come to his own. If the government had wished to get him out
of the way, it had reckoned without China.

A new order of things has come into Negro-American politics and this man
has become a part of it. It matters not that he began his work under the
old regime. So did Judge Gibbs, a man eighty years of age, but he, too,
has kept abreast of the times, and although the reminiscences in his
delightful autobiography take one back to the hazy days when the land was
young and politics a more strenuous thing than it is even now, when there
was anarchy in Louisiana and civil war in Arkansas, when one shot first
and questioned afterward; yet because his mind is still active, because
he has changed his methods with the changing time, because his influence
over young men is greatly potent still; he is, in the race, perhaps, the
best representative of what the old has brought to the new.

Beside him strong, forceful, commanding, stands the figure of George H.
White, whose farewell speech before the Fifty-sixth Congress, when through
the disfranchisement of Negroes he was defeated for re-election, stirred
the country and fired the hearts of his brothers. He has won his place
through honesty, bravery and aggressiveness. He has given something to the
nation that the nation needed, and with such men as Pinchback, Lynch,
Terrell and others of like ilk, acting in concert, it is but a matter of
time when his worth shall induce a repentant people, with a justice
builded upon the foundation of its old prejudice, to ask the Negro back to
take a hand in the affairs of state.

Add to all this the facts that the Negro has his representatives in the
commercial world: McCoy and Granville T. Woods, inventors; in the
agricultural world with J.H. Groves, the potato king of Kansas, who last
year shipped from his own railway siding seventy-two thousand five hundred
bushels of potatoes alone; in the military, with Capt. Charles A. Young, a
West Pointer, now stationed at the Presidio; that in medicine, he
possesses in Daniel H. Williams, of Chicago, one of the really great
surgeons of the country; that Edward H. Morris, a black man, is one of the
most brilliant lawyers at the brilliant Cook County bar; that in every
walk of life he has men and women who stand for something definite and
concrete, and it seems to me that there can be little doubt that the race
problem will gradually solve itself.

I have spoken of "men and women," and indeed the women must not be
forgotten, for to them the men look for much of the inspiration and
impulse that drives them forward to success. Mrs. Mary Church Terrell
upon the platform speaking for Negro womanhood and Miss Sarah Brown, her
direct opposite, a little woman sitting up in her aerie above a noisy New
York street, stand for the very best that there is in our mothers, wives
and sisters. The one fully in the public eye, with learning and eloquence,
telling the hopes and fears of her kind; the other in suffering and
retirement, with her knowledge of the human heart and her gentleness
inspiring all who meet her to better and nobler lives. They are both doing
their work bravely and grandly. But when the unitiate ask who is "la
Petite Reine," we think of the quiet little woman in a New York fifth
floor back and are silent.

She is a patron of all our literature and art and we have both. Whether it
is a new song by Will Marion Cook or a new book by DuBois or Chestnut,
than whom no one has ever told the life of the Negro more accurately and
convincingly, she knows it and has a kindly word of praise or
encouragement.

In looking over the field for such an article as this, one just begins to
realize how many Negroes are representative of something, and now it seems
that in closing no better names could be chosen than those of the two
Tanners.

From time immemorial, Religion and Art have gone together, but it remained
for us to place them in the persons of these two men, in the relation of
father and son. Bishop Benj. Tucker Tanner, of the A.M.E. Church, is not
only a theologian and a priest, he is a dignified, polished man of the
higher world and a poet. He has succeeded because he was prepared for
success. As to his writings, he will, perhaps, think most highly of "His
Apology For African Methodism;" but some of us, while respecting this,
will turn from it to the poems and hymns that have sung themselves out of
his gentle heart.

Is it any wonder that his son, Henry O. Tanner, is a poet with the brush
or that the French Government has found it out? From the father must have
come the man's artistic impulse, and he carried it on and on to a golden
fruition. In the Luxembourg gallery hangs his picture, "The Raising of
Lazarus." At the Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, I saw his
"Annunciation," both a long way from his "Banjo Lesson," and thinking of
him I began to wonder whether, in spite of all the industrial tumult, it
were not in the field of art, music and literature that the Negro was to
make his highest contribution to American civilization. But this is merely
a question which time will answer.

All these of whom I have spoken are men who have striven and achieved and
the reasons underlying their success are the same that account for the
advancement of men of any other race: preparation, perseverance, bravery,
patience, honesty and the power to seize the opportunity.

It is a little dark still, but there are warnings of the day and somewhere
out of the darkness a bird is singing to the Dawn.




_The Negro's Place in American Life at the Present Day_

BY T. THOMAS FORTUNE

  Considering the two hundred and forty-five years of his slavery and the
  comparatively short time he has enjoyed the opportunities of freedom,
  his place in American life at the present day is creditable to him and
  promising for the future.

[Illustration: T. THOMAS FORTUNE.]


There can be no healthy growth in the life of a race or a nation without a
self-reliant spirit animating the whole body; if it amounts to optimism,
devoid of egotism and vanity, so much the better. This spirit necessarily
carries with it intense pride of race, or of nation, as the case may be,
and ramifies the whole mass, inspiring and shaping its thought and effort,
however humble or exalted these may be,--as it takes "all sorts and
conditions of men" to make up a social order, instinct with the ambition
and the activity which work for "high thinking and right living," of which
modern evolution in all directions is the most powerful illustration in
history. If pride of ancestry can, happily, be added to pride of race and
nation, and these are re-enforced by self-reliance, courage and correct
moral living, the possible success of such people may be accepted, without
equivocation, as a foregone conclusion. I have found all of these
requirements so finely blended in the life and character of no people as
that of the Japanese, who are just now emerging from "the double night of
ages" into the vivifying sunlight of modern progress.

What is the Negro's place in American life at the present day?

The answer depends entirely upon the point of view. Unfortunately for the
Afro-American people, they have no pride of ancestry; in the main, few of
them can trace their parentage back four generations; and the "daughter of
an hundred earls" of whom there are probably many, is unconscious of her
descent, and would profit nothing by it if this were not true. The blood
of all the ethnic types that go to make up American citizenship flows in
the veins of the Afro-American people, so that of the ten million of them
in this country, accounted for by the Federal census, not more than four
million are of pure negroid descent, while some four million of them, not
accounted for by the Federal census, have escaped into the ranks of the
white race, and are re-enforced very largely by such escapements every
year. The vitiation of blood has operated irresistibly to weaken that
pride of ancestry, which is the foundation-stone of pride of race; so that
the Afro-American people have been held together rather by the segregation
decreed by law and public opinion than by ties of consanguinity since
their manumission and enfranchisement. It is not because they are poor and
ignorant and oppressed, as a mass, that there is no such sympathy of
thought and unity of effort among them as among Irishmen and Jews the
world over, but because the vitiation of blood, beyond the honorable
restrictions of law, has destroyed, in large measure, that pride of
ancestry upon which pride of race must be builded. In no other logical
way can we account for the failure of the Afro-American people to stand
together, as other oppressed races do, and have done, for the righting of
wrongs against them authorized by the laws of the several states, if not
by the Federal Constitution, and sanctioned or tolerated by public
opinion. In nothing has this radical defect been more noticeable since the
War of the Rebellion than in the uniform failure of the people to sustain
such civic organizations as exist and have existed, to test in the courts
of law and in the forum of public opinion the validity of organic laws of
States intended to deprive them of the civil and political rights
guaranteed to them by the Federal Constitution. The two such organizations
of this character which have appealed to them are the National
Afro-American League, organized in Chicago, in 1890, and the National
Afro-American Council, organized in Rochester, New York, out of the
League, in 1898. The latter organization still exists, the strongest of
its kind, but it has never commanded the sympathy and support of the
masses of the people, nor is there, or has there been, substantial
agreement and concert of effort among the thoughtful men of the race along
these lines. They have been restrained by selfish, personal and petty
motives, while the constitutional rights which vitalize their citizenship
have been "denied or abridged" by legislation of certain of the States and
by public opinion, even as Nero fiddled while Rome burned. If they had
been actuated by a strong pride of ancestry and of race, if they had felt
that injury to one was injury to all, if they had hung together instead of
hanging separately, their place in the civil and political life of the
Republic to-day would not be that, largely, of pariahs, with none so poor
as to do them honor, but that of equality of right under the law enjoyed
by all other alien ethnic forces in our citizenship. They who will not
help themselves are usually not helped by others. They who make a loud
noise and courageously contend for what is theirs, usually enjoy the
respect and confidence of their fellows and get, in the end, what belongs
to them, or a reasonable modification of it.

As a consequence of inability to unite in thought and effort for the
conservation of their civil and political rights, the Afro-American
Negroes and colored people have lost, by fundamental enactments of the old
slave-holding States, all of the civil and political rights guaranteed
them by the Federal Constitution, in the full enjoyment of which they were
from the adoption of the War Amendments up to 1876-7, when they were
sacrificed by their Republican allies of the North and West, in the
alienation of their State governments, in order to save the Presidency to
Mr. Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. Their reverses in this matter in the old
slave-holding States, coupled with a vast mass of class legislation,
modelled on the slave code, have affected the Afro-American people in
their civil and political rights in all of the States of the Republic,
especially as far as public opinion is concerned. This was inevitable,
and follows in every instance in history where a race element of the
citizenship is set aside by law or public opinion as separate and distinct
from its fellows, with a fixed status or caste.

It will take the Afro-American people fully a century to recover what they
lost of civil and political equality under the law in the Southern States,
as a result of the re-actionary and bloody movement begun in the
Reconstruction period by the Southern whites, and culminating in
1877,--the excesses of the Reconstruction governments, about which so much
is said to the discredit of the Negro, being chargeable to the weakness
and corruption of Northern carpet-baggers, who were the master and
responsible spirits of the time and the situation, rather than to the
weakness, the ignorance and venality of their Negro dupes, who, very
naturally, followed where they led, as any other grateful people would
have done. For, were not these same Northern carpet-baggers the direct
representatives of the Government and the Army which crushed the slave
power and broke the shackles of the slave? Even so. The Northern
carpet-baggers planned and got the plunder, and have it; the Negro got the
credit and the odium, and have them yet. It often happens that way in
history, that the innocent dupes are made to suffer for the misdeeds and
crimes of the guilty.

The recovery of civil and political rights under the Constitution, as
"denied or abridged" by the constitutions of the States, more especially
those of the old slave holding ones, will be a slow and tedious process,
and will come to the individual rather than to the race, as the reward of
character and thrift; because, for reasons already stated, it will hardly
be possible in the future, as it has not been in the past, to unify the
mass of the Afro-American people, in thought and conduct, for a proper
contention in the courts and at the ballot-box and in the education of
public opinion, to accomplish this purpose. Perhaps there is no other
instance in history where everything depended so largely upon the
individual, and so little upon the mass of his race, for that development
in the religious and civic virtues which makes more surely for an
honorable status in any citizenship than constitutions or legislative
enactments built upon them.

But even from this point of view, I am disposed to believe that the
Negro's civil and political rights are more firmly fixed in law and public
opinion than was true at the close of the Reconstruction period, when
everything relating to him was unsettled and confused, based in
legislative guarantees, subject to approval or disapproval of the dominant
public opinion of the several States, and that he will gradually work out
his own salvation under the Constitution,--such as Charles Sumner,
Thaddeus Stevens, Benjamin F. Butler, Frederick Douglass, and their
co-workers, hoped and labored that he might enjoy. He has lost nothing
under the fundamental law; such of these restrictions, as apply to him by
the law of certain of the States, necessarily apply to white men in like
circumstances of ignorance and poverty, and can be overcome, in time, by
assiduous courtship of the schoolmaster and the bank cashier. The extent
to which the individual members of the race are overcoming the
restrictions made a bar to their enjoyment of civil and political rights
under the Constitution is gratifying to those who wish the race well and
who look beyond the present into the future: while it is disturbing the
dreams of those who spend most of their time and thought in abortive
efforts to "keep the 'nigger' in his place"--as if any man or race could
have a place in the world's thought and effort which he did not make for
himself! In our grand Republic, at least, it has been so often
demonstrated as to become proverbial, that the door of opportunity shall
be closed to no man, and that he shall be allowed to have that place in
our national life which he makes for himself. So it is with the Negro now,
as an individual. Will it be so with him in the future as a race? To
answer that we shall first have to determine that he has a race.

However he may be lacking in pride of ancestry and race, no one can accuse
the Negro of lack of pride of Nation and State, and even of county.
Indeed, his pride in the Republic and his devotion to it are among the
most pathetic phases of his pathetic history, from Jamestown, in 1620, to
San Juan Hill, in 1898. He has given everything to the Republic,--his
labor and blood and prayers. What has the Republic given him, but blows
and rebuffs and criminal ingratitude! And he stands now, ready and eager,
to give the Republic all that he has. What does the Republic stand ready
and eager to give him? Let the answer come out of the mouth of the future.

It is a fair conclusion that the Negro has a firmer and more assured civil
and political status in American life to-day than at the close of the
Reconstruction period, paradoxical as this may appear to many, despite the
adverse legislation of the old slave-holding States, and the tolerant
favor shown such legislation by the Federal Supreme Court, in such
opinions as it has delivered, from time to time, upon the subject, since
the adoption of the War amendments to the Federal Constitution.
Technically, the Negro stands upon equality with all other citizens under
this large body of special and class legislation; but, as a matter of
fact, it is so framed that the greatest inequality prevails, and was
intended to prevail, in the administration of it by the several States
chiefly concerned. As long as such legislation by the States specifies, on
the face of it, that it shall operate upon all citizens equally, however
unequally and unjustly the legislation may be interpreted and administered
by the local courts, the Federal Supreme Court has held, time and again,
that no hardship was worked, and, if so, that the aggrieved had his
recourse in appeal to the higher courts of the State of which he is a
citizen,--a recourse at this time precisely like that of carrying coal to
New Castle.

Under the circumstances, there is no alternative for the Negro citizen
but to work out his salvation under the Constitution, as other citizens
have done and are doing. It will be a long and tedious process before the
equitable adjustment has been attained, but that does not much matter, as
full and fair enjoyment of civil and political rights requires much time
and patience and hard labor in any given situation, where two races come
together in the same governmental environment; such as is the case of the
Negro in America, the Irishman in Ireland, and the Jew everywhere in
Europe. It is just as well, perhaps, that the Negro will have to work out
his salvation under the Constitution as an individual rather than as a
race, as the Jew has done it in Great Britain and as the Irishman will
have to do it under the same Empire, as it is and has been the tendency of
our law and precedent to subordinate race elements and to exalt the
individual citizens as indivisible "parts of one stupendous whole." When
this has been accomplished by the law in the case of the Negro, as in the
case of other alien ethnic elements of the citizenship, it will be more
gradually, but assuredly, accomplished by society at large, the
indestructible foundation of which was laid by the reckless and brutal
prostitution of black women by white men in the days of slavery, from
which a vast army of mulattoes were produced, who have been and are,
gradually, by honorable marriage among themselves, changing the alleged
"race characteristics and tendencies" of the Negro people. A race element,
it is safe and fair to conclude, incapable, like that of the North
American Indian, of such a process of elimination and assimilation, will
always be a thorn in the flesh of the Republic, in which there is,
admittedly, no place for the integrality and growth of a distinct race
type. The Afro-American people, for reasons that I have stated, are even
now very far from being such a distinct race type, and without further
admixture of white and black blood, will continue to be less so to the end
of the chapter. It seems to me that this view of the matter has not
received the consideration that it deserves at the hands of those who set
themselves up as past grand masters in the business of "solving the race
problem," and in accurately defining "The Negro's Place in American Life
at the Present Day." The negroid type and the Afro-American type are two
very distinct types, and the sociologist who confounds them, as is very
generally done, is bound to confuse his subject and his audience.

It is a debatable question as to whether the Negro's present industrial
position is better or worse than it was, say, at the close of the
Reconstruction period. As a mass, I am inclined to the opinion that it is
worse, as the laws of the States where he is congregated most numerously
are so framed as to favor the employer in every instance, and he does not
scruple to get all out of the industrial slave that he can; which is, in
the main, vastly more than the slave master got, as the latter was at the
expense of housing, feeding, clothing and providing medical service for
his chattel, while the former is relieved of this expense and trouble.
Prof. W.E.B. DuBois, of Atlanta University, who has made a critical study
of the rural Negro of the Southern States, sums up the industrial phase of
the matter in the following ("The Souls of Black Folk," pp. 39-40):

"For this much all men know: Despite compromise, war and struggle, the
Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and
miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the
whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to
an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the
penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the
Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and
privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom, they stand on a
different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule
of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must
have been, lawlessness and crime."

It is a dark and gloomy picture, the substitution of industrial for
chattel slavery, with none of the legal and selfish restraints upon the
employer which surrounded and actuated the master. And this is true of the
entire mass of the Afro-American laborers of the Southern States. Out of
the mass have arisen a large number of individuals who own and till their
own lands. This element is very largely recruited every year, and to this
source must we look for the gradual undermining of the industrial slavery
of the mass of the people. Here, too, we have a long and tedious process
of evolution, but it is nothing new in the history of races circumstanced
as the Afro-American people are. That the Negro is destined, however, to
be the landlord and master agriculturist of the Southern States is a
probability sustained by all the facts in the situation; not the least of
which being the tendency of the poor white class and small farmers to
abandon agricultural pursuits for those of the factory and the mine, from
which the Negro laborer is excluded, partially in the mine and wholly in
the factory. The development of mine and factory industries in the
Southern States in the past two decades has been one of the most
remarkable in industrial history.

In the skilled trades, at the close of the War of the Rebellion, most of
the work was done by Negroes educated as artisans in the hard school of
slavery, but there has been a steady decline in the number of such
laborers, not because of lack of skill, but because trade unionism has
gradually taken possession of such employments in the South, and will not
allow the Negro to work alongside of the white man. And this is the rule
of the trade unions in all parts of the country. It is to be hoped that
there may be a gradual broadening of the views of white laborers in this
vital matter and a change of attitude by the trade unions that they
dominate. Can we reasonably expect this? As matters now stand, it is the
individual Negro artisan, often a master contractor, who can work at his
trade and give employment to his fellows. Fortunately, there are a great
many of these in all parts of the Southern States, and their number is
increasing every year, as the result of the rapid growth and high favor of
industrial schools, where the trades are taught. A very great deal should
be expected from this source, as a Negro contractor stands very nearly on
as good footing as a white one in the bidding, when he has established a
reputation for reliability. The facts obtained in every Southern city bear
out this view of the matter. The individual black man has a fighting
chance for success in the skilled trades; and, as he succeeds, will draw
the skilled mass after him. The proper solution of the skilled labor
problem is strictly within the power of the individual Negro. I believe
that he is solving it, and that he will ultimately solve it.

It is, however, in the marvellous building up of a legal, comfortable and
happy home life, where none whatever existed at the close of the War of
the Rebellion; in the no less stupendous development of the church life,
with large and puissant organizations that command the respect and
admiration of mankind, and owning splendid church property valued at
millions of dollars; in the quenchless thirst of the mass of the people
for useful knowledge, displayed at the close of the War of the Rebellion,
and abating nothing of its intense keenness since, with the remarkable
reduction in the illiteracy of the mass of the people, as is eloquently
disclosed by the census reports--it is in these results that no cause for
complaint or discouragement can be found. The whole race here stands on
improved ground over that it occupied at the close of the War of the
Rebellion; albeit, even here, the individual has outstripped the mass of
the race, as it was but natural that he should and always will. But, while
this is true and gratifying to all those that hope the Afro-American
people well, it is also true, and equally gratifying that, as far as the
mass is concerned, the home life, the church and the school house have
come into the life of the people, in some sort, everywhere, giving the
whole race a character and a standing in the estimation of mankind which
it did not have at the close of the war, and presaging, logically, unless
all signs fail, a development along high and honorable lines in the
future; the results from which, I predict, at the end of the ensuing half
century, builded upon the foundation already laid, being such as to
confound the prophets of evil, who never cease to doubt and shake their
heads, asking: "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" We have the
answer already in the social and home life of the people, which is so vast
an improvement over the conditions and the heritage of slavery as to
stagger the understanding of those who are informed on the subject, or
will take the trouble to inform themselves.

If we have much loose moral living, it is not sanctioned by the mass,
wedlock being the rule, and not the exception; if we have a vast volume of
illiteracy, we have reduced it by forty per cent. since the war, and the
school houses are all full of children eager to learn, and the schools of
higher and industrial training cannot accommodate all those who knock at
their doors for admission; if we have more than our share of criminality,
we have also churches in every hamlet and city, to which a vast majority
of the people belong, and which are insistently pointing "the way, the
light and the truth" to higher and nobler living.

Mindful, therefore, of the Negro's two hundred and forty-five years of
slave education and unrequited toil, and of his thirty years of partial
freedom and less than partial opportunity, who shall say that his place in
American life at the present day is not all that should be reasonably
expected of him, that it is not creditable to him, and that it is not a
sufficient augury for better and nobler and higher thinking, striving and
building in the future? Social growth is the slowest of all growth. If
there be signs of growth, then, there is reasonable hope for a healthy
maturity. There are plenty of such signs, and he who runs may read them,
if he will.












  The American Negro Academy

  Occasional Papers, No. 2.


  The Conservation of Races.

  BY
  W. E. BURGHARDT Du BOIS.


  WASHINGTON, D. C.
  Published by the Academy.
  1897.



  Baptist Magazine Print,
  Washington, D. C.

  Orders may be sent to John H. Wills.
  The Boston Cheap Book Store,
  Washington, D. C.




Announcement


The American Negro Academy believes that upon those of the race who have
had the advantages of higher education and culture, rests the
responsibility of taking concerted steps for the employment of these
agencies to uplift the race to higher planes of thought and action.

Two great obstacles to this consummation are apparent: (_a_) The lack of
unity, want of harmony, absence of a self-sacrificing spirit, and no
well-defined line of policy seeking definite aims; and (_b_) The
persistent, relentless, at times covert opposition employed to thwart
the Negro at every step of his upward struggles to establish the
justness of his claim to the highest physical, intellectual and moral
possibilities.

The Academy will, therefore, from time to time, publish such papers as
in their judgment aid, by their broad and scholarly treatment of the
topics discussed the dissemination of principles tending to the growth
and development of the Negro along right lines, and the vindication of
that race against vicious assaults.




THE CONSERVATION OF RACES.


The American Negro has always felt an intense personal interest in
discussions as to the origins and destinies of races: primarily because
back of most discussions of race with which he is familiar, have lurked
certain assumptions as to his natural abilities, as to his political,
intellectual and moral status, which he felt were wrong. He has,
consequently, been led to deprecate and minimize race distinctions, to
believe intensely that out of one blood God created all nations, and to
speak of human brotherhood as though it were the possibility of an
already dawning to-morrow.

Nevertheless, in our calmer moments we must acknowledge that human
beings are divided into races; that in this country the two most extreme
types of the world's races have met, and the resulting problem as to the
future relations of these types is not only of intense and living
interest to us, but forms an epoch in the history of mankind.

It is necessary, therefore, in planning our movements, in guiding our
future development, that at times we rise above the pressing, but
smaller questions of separate schools and cars, wage-discrimination and
lynch law, to survey the whole question of race in human philosophy and
to lay, on a basis of broad knowledge and careful insight, those large
lines of policy and higher ideals which may form our guiding lines and
boundaries in the practical difficulties of every day. For it is certain
that all human striving must recognize the hard limits of natural law,
and that any striving, no matter how intense and earnest, which is
against the constitution of the world, is vain. The question, then,
which we must seriously consider is this: What is the real meaning of
Race; what has, in the past, been the law of race development, and what
lessons has the past history of race development to teach the rising
Negro people?

When we thus come to inquire into the essential difference of races we
find it hard to come at once to any definite conclusion. Many criteria
of race differences have in the past been proposed, as color, hair,
cranial measurements and language. And manifestly, in each of these
respects, human beings differ widely. They vary in color, for instance,
from the marble-like pallor of the Scandinavian to the rich, dark brown
of the Zulu, passing by the creamy Slav, the yellow Chinese, the light
brown Sicilian and the brown Egyptian. Men vary, too, in the texture of
hair from the obstinately straight hair of the Chinese to the
obstinately tufted and frizzled hair of the Bushman. In measurement of
heads, again, men vary; from the broad-headed Tartar to the
medium-headed European and the narrow-headed Hottentot; or, again in
language, from the highly-inflected Roman tongue to the monosyllabic
Chinese. All these physical characteristics are patent enough, and if
they agreed with each other it would be very easy to classify mankind.
Unfortunately for scientists, however, these criteria of race are most
exasperatingly intermingled. Color does not agree with texture of hair,
for many of the dark races have straight hair; nor does color agree with
the breadth of the head, for the yellow Tartar has a broader head than
the German; nor, again, has the science of language as yet succeeded in
clearing up the relative authority of these various and contradictory
criteria. The final word of science, so far, is that we have at least
two, perhaps three, great families of human beings--the whites and
Negroes, possibly the yellow race. That other races have arisen from the
intermingling of the blood of these two. This broad division of the
world's races which men like Huxley and Raetzel have introduced as more
nearly true than the old five-race scheme of Blumenbach, is nothing more
than an acknowledgment that, so far as purely physical characteristics
are concerned, the differences between men do not explain all the
differences of their history. It declares, as Darwin himself said, that
great as is the physical unlikeness of the various races of men their
likenesses are greater, and upon this rests the whole scientific
doctrine of Human Brotherhood.

Although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the
grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way
toward explaining the different roles which groups of men have played
in Human Progress, yet there are differences--subtle, delicate and
elusive, though they may be--which have silently but definitely
separated men into groups. While these subtle forces have generally
followed the natural cleavage of common blood, descent and physical
peculiarities, they have at other times swept across and ignored these.
At all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which,
while they perhaps transcend scientific definition, nevertheless, are
clearly defined to the eye of the Historian and Sociologist.

If this be true, then the history of the world is the history, not of
individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who
ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and
overrides the central thought of all history. What, then, is a race? It
is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and
language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are
both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the
accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life.

Turning to real history, there can be no doubt, first, as to the
widespread, nay, universal, prevalence of the race idea, the race
spirit, the race ideal, and as to its efficiency as the vastest and most
ingenious invention for human progress. We, who have been reared and
trained under the individualistic philosophy of the Declaration of
Independence and the laisser-faire philosophy of Adam Smith, are loath
to see and loath to acknowledge this patent fact of human history. We
see the Pharaohs, Caesars, Toussaints and Napoleons of history and
forget the vast races of which they were but epitomized expressions. We
are apt to think in our American impatience, that while it may have been
true in the past that closed race groups made history, that here in
conglomerate America _nous avons changer tout cela_--we have changed all
that, and have no need of this ancient instrument of progress. This
assumption of which the Negro people are especially fond, can not be
established by a careful consideration of history.

We find upon the world's stage today eight distinctly differentiated
races, in the sense in which History tells us the word must be used.
They are, the Slavs of eastern Europe, the Teutons of middle Europe, the
English of Great Britain and America, the Romance nations of Southern
and Western Europe, the Negroes of Africa and America, the Semitic
people of Western Asia and Northern Africa, the Hindoos of Central Asia
and the Mongolians of Eastern Asia. There are, of course, other minor
race groups, as the American Indians, the Esquimaux and the South Sea
Islanders; these larger races, too, are far from homogeneous; the Slav
includes the Czech, the Magyar, the Pole and the Russian; the Teuton
includes the German, the Scandinavian and the Dutch; the English include
the Scotch, the Irish and the conglomerate American. Under Romance
nations the widely-differing Frenchman, Italian, Sicilian and Spaniard
are comprehended. The term Negro is, perhaps, the most indefinite of
all, combining the Mulattoes and Zamboes of America and the Egyptians,
Bantus and Bushmen of Africa. Among the Hindoos are traces of widely
differing nations, while the great Chinese, Tartar, Corean and Japanese
families fall under the one designation--Mongolian.

The question now is: What is the real distinction between these nations?
Is it the physical differences of blood, color and cranial measurements?
Certainly we must all acknowledge that physical differences play a great
part, and that, with wide exceptions and qualifications, these eight
great races of to-day follow the cleavage of physical race distinctions;
the English and Teuton represent the white variety of mankind; the
Mongolian, the yellow; the Negroes, the black. Between these are many
crosses and mixtures, where Mongolian and Teuton have blended into the
Slav, and other mixtures have produced the Romance nations and the
Semites. But while race differences have followed mainly physical race
lines, yet no mere physical distinctions would really define or explain
the deeper differences--the cohesiveness and continuity of these groups.
The deeper differences are spiritual, psychical, differences--undoubtedly
based on the physical, but infinitely transcending them. The forces that
bind together the Teuton nations are, then, first, their race identity
and common blood; secondly, and more important, a common history, common
laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving
together for certain ideals of life. The whole process which has brought
about these race differentiations has been a growth, and the great
characteristic of this growth has been the differentiation of spiritual
and mental differences between great races of mankind and the
integration of physical differences.

The age of nomadic tribes of closely related individuals represents the
maximum of physical differences. They were practically vast families,
and there were as many groups as families. As the families came together
to form cities the physical differences lessened, purity of blood was
replaced by the requirement of domicile, and all who lived within the
city bounds became gradually to be regarded as members of the group;
_i. e._, there was a slight and slow breaking down of physical barriers.
This, however, was accompanied by an increase of the spiritual and
social differences between cities. This city became husbandmen, this,
merchants, another warriors, and so on. The _ideals of life_ for which
the different cities struggled were different. When at last cities began
to coalesce into nations there was another breaking down of barriers
which separated groups of men. The larger and broader differences of
color, hair and physical proportions were not by any means ignored, but
myriads of minor differences disappeared, and the sociological and
historical races of men began to approximate the present division of
races as indicated by physical researches. At the same time the
spiritual and physical differences of race groups which constituted the
nations became deep and decisive. The English nation stood for
constitutional liberty and commercial freedom; the German nation for
science and philosophy; the Romance nations stood for literature and
art, and the other race groups are striving, each in its own way, to
develope for civilization its particular message, its particular ideal,
which shall help to guide the world nearer and nearer that perfection of
human life for which we all long, that

  "one far off Divine event."

This has been the function of race differences up to the present time.
What shall be its function in the future? Manifestly some of the great
races of today--particularly the Negro race--have not as yet given to
civilization the full spiritual message which they are capable of
giving. I will not say that the Negro race has as yet given no message
to the world, for it is still a mooted question among scientists as to
just how far Egyptian civilization was Negro in its origin; if it was
not wholly Negro, it was certainly very closely allied. Be that as it
may, however the fact still remains that the full, complete Negro
message of the whole Negro race has not as yet been given to the world:
that the messages and ideal of the yellow race have not been completed,
and that the striving of the mighty Slavs has but begun. The question
is, then: How shall this message be delivered; how shall these various
ideals be realized? The answer is plain: By the development of these
race groups, not as individuals, but as races. For the development of
Japanese genius, Japanese literature and art, Japanese spirit, only
Japanese, bound and welded together, Japanese inspired by one vast
ideal, can work out in its fullness the wonderful message which Japan
has for the nations of the earth. For the development of Negro genius,
of Negro literature and art, of Negro spirit, only Negroes bound and
welded together, Negroes inspired by one vast ideal, can work out in its
fullness the great message we have for humanity. We cannot reverse
history; we are subject to the same natural laws as other races, and if
the Negro is ever to be a factor in the world's history--if among the
gaily-colored banners that deck the broad ramparts of civilization is to
hang one uncompromising black, then it must be placed there by black
hands, fashioned by black heads and hallowed by the travail of
200,000,000 black hearts beating in one glad song of jubilee.

For this reason, the advance guard of the Negro people--the 8,000,000
people of Negro blood in the United States of America--must soon come to
realize that if they are to take their just place in the van of
Pan-Negroism, then their destiny is _not_ absorption by the white
Americans. That if in America it is to be proven for the first time in
the modern world that not only Negroes are capable of evolving
individual men like Toussaint, the Saviour, but are a nation stored with
wonderful possibilities of culture, then their destiny is not a servile
imitation of Anglo-Saxon culture, but a stalwart originality which shall
unswervingly follow Negro ideals.

It may, however, be objected here that the situation of our race in
America renders this attitude impossible; that our sole hope of
salvation lies in our being able to lose our race identity in the
commingled blood of the nation; and that any other course would merely
increase the friction of races which we call race prejudice, and against
which we have so long and so earnestly fought.

Here, then, is the dilemma, and it is a puzzling one, I admit. No Negro
who has given earnest thought to the situation of his people in America
has failed, at some time in life, to find himself at these cross-roads;
has failed to ask himself at some time: What, after all, am I? Am I an
American or am I a Negro? Can I be both? Or is it my duty to cease to be
a Negro as soon as possible and be an American? If I strive as a Negro,
am I not perpetuating the very cleft that threatens and separates Black
and White America? Is not my only possible practical aim the subduction
of all that is Negro in me to the American? Does my black blood place
upon me any more obligation to assert my nationality than German, or
Irish or Italian blood would?

It is such incessant self-questioning and the hesitation that arises
from it, that is making the present period a time of vacillation and
contradiction for the American Negro; combined race action is stifled,
race responsibility is shirked, race enterprises languish, and the best
blood, the best talent, the best energy of the Negro people cannot be
marshalled to do the bidding of the race. They stand back to make room
for every rascal and demagogue who chooses to cloak his selfish deviltry
under the veil of race pride.

Is this right? Is it rational? Is it good policy? Have we in America a
distinct mission as a race--a distinct sphere of action and an
opportunity for race development, or is self-obliteration the highest
end to which Negro blood dare aspire?

If we carefully consider what race prejudice really is, we find it,
historically, to be nothing but the friction between different groups of
people; it is the difference in aim, in feeling, in ideals of two
different races; if, now, this difference exists touching territory,
laws, language, or even religion, it is manifest that these people
cannot live in the same territory without fatal collision; but if, on
the other hand, there is substantial agreement in laws, language and
religion; if there is a satisfactory adjustment of economic life, then
there is no reason why, in the same country and on the same street, two
or three great national ideals might not thrive and develop, that men of
different races might not strive together for their race ideals as well,
perhaps even better, than in isolation. Here, it seems to me, is the
reading of the riddle that puzzles so many of us. We are Americans, not
only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our
language, our religion. Farther than that, our Americanism does not go.
At that point, we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from
the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark
forests of its African fatherland. We are the first fruits of this new
nation, the harbinger of that black to-morrow which is yet destined to
soften the whiteness of the Teutonic to-day. We are that people whose
subtle sense of song has given America its only American music, its only
American fairy tales, its only touch of pathos and humor amid its mad
money-getting plutocracy. As such, it is our duty to conserve our
physical powers, our intellectual endowments, our spiritual ideals; as a
race we must strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race
unity to the realization of that broader humanity which freely
recognizes differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in
their opportunities of development.

For the accomplishment of these ends we need race organizations: Negro
colleges, Negro newspapers, Negro business organizations, a Negro school
of literature and art, and an intellectual clearing house, for all these
products of the Negro mind, which we may call a Negro Academy. Not only
is all this necessary for positive advance, it is absolutely imperative
for negative defense. Let us not deceive ourselves at our situation in
this country. Weighted with a heritage of moral iniquity from our past
history, hard pressed in the economic world by foreign immigrants and
native prejudice, hated here, despised there and pitied everywhere; our
one haven of refuge is ourselves, and but one means of advance, our own
belief in our great destiny, our own implicit trust in our ability and
worth. There is no power under God's high heaven that can stop the
advance of eight thousand thousand honest, earnest, inspired and united
people. But--and here is the rub--they _must_ be honest, fearlessly
criticising their own faults, zealously correcting them; they must be
_earnest_. No people that laughs at itself, and ridicules itself, and
wishes to God it was anything but itself ever wrote its name in history;
it _must_ be inspired with the Divine faith of our black mothers, that
out of the blood and dust of battle will march a victorious host, a
mighty nation, a peculiar people, to speak to the nations of earth a
Divine truth that shall make them free. And such a people must be
united; not merely united for the organized theft of political spoils,
not united to disgrace religion with whoremongers and ward-heelers; not
united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to stop the
ravages of consumption among the Negro people, united to keep black boys
from loafing, gambling and crime; united to guard the purity of black
women and to reduce that vast army of black prostitutes that is today
marching to hell; and united in serious organizations, to determine by
careful conference and thoughtful interchange of opinion the broad lines
of policy and action for the American Negro.

This is the reason for being which the American Negro Academy has. It
aims at once to be the epitome and expression of the intellect of the
black-blooded people of America, the exponent of the race ideals of one
of the world's great races. As such, the Academy must, if successful, be

  (_a_). Representative in character.

  (_b_). Impartial in conduct.

  (_c_). Firm in leadership.

It must be representative in character; not in that it represents all
interests or all factions, but in that it seeks to comprise something of
the _best_ thought, the most unselfish striving and the highest ideals.
There are scattered in forgotten nooks and corners throughout the land,
Negroes of some considerable training, of high minds, and high motives,
who are unknown to their fellows, who exert far too little influence.
These the Negro Academy should strive to bring into touch with each
other and to give them a common mouthpiece.

The Academy should be impartial in conduct; while it aims to exalt the
people it should aim to do so by truth--not by lies, by honesty--not by
flattery. It should continually impress the fact upon the Negro people
that they must not expect to have things done for them--they MUST DO FOR
THEMSELVES; that they have on their hands a vast work of self-reformation
to do, and that a little less complaint and whining, and a little more
dogged work and manly striving would do us more credit and benefit than a
thousand Force or Civil Rights bills.

Finally, the American Negro Academy must point out a practical path of
advance to the Negro people; there lie before every Negro today hundreds
of questions of policy and right which must be settled and which each
one settles now, not in accordance with any rule, but by impulse or
individual preference; for instance: What should be the attitude of
Negroes toward the educational qualification for voters? What should be
our attitude toward separate schools? How should we meet discriminations
on railways and in hotels? Such questions need not so much specific
answers for each part as a general expression of policy, and nobody
should be better fitted to announce such a policy than a representative
honest Negro Academy.

All this, however, must come in time after careful organization and long
conference. The immediate work before us should be practical and have
direct bearing upon the situation of the Negro. The historical work of
collecting the laws of the United States and of the various States of
the Union with regard to the Negro is a work of such magnitude and
importance that no body but one like this could think of undertaking it.
If we could accomplish that one task we would justify our existence.

In the field of Sociology an appalling work lies before us. First, we
must unflinchingly and bravely face the truth, not with apologies, but
with solemn earnestness. The Negro Academy ought to sound a note of
warning that would echo in every black cabin in the land: _Unless we
conquer our present vices they will conquer us_; we are diseased, we are
developing criminal tendencies, and an alarmingly large percentage of
our men and women are sexually impure. The Negro Academy should stand
and proclaim this over the housetops, crying with Garrison: _I will not
equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard_. The
Academy should seek to gather about it the talented, unselfish men, the
pure and noble-minded women, to fight an army of devils that disgraces
our manhood and our womanhood. There does not stand today upon God's
earth a race more capable in muscle, in intellect, in morals, than the
American Negro, if he will bend his energies in the right direction; if
he will

      Burst his birth's invidious bar
  And grasp the skirts of happy chance,
  And breast the blows of circumstance,
      And grapple with his evil star.

In science and morals, I have indicated two fields of work for the
Academy. Finally, in practical policy, I wish to suggest the following
_Academy Creed_:

1. We believe that the Negro people, as a race, have a contribution to
make to civilization and humanity, which no other race can make.

2. We believe it the duty of the Americans of Negro descent, as a body,
to maintain their race identity until this mission of the Negro people
is accomplished, and the ideal of human brotherhood has become a
practical possibility.

3. We believe that, unless modern civilization is a failure, it is
entirely feasible and practicable for two races in such essential
political, economic and religious harmony as the white and colored
people of America, to develop side by side in peace and mutual
happiness, the peculiar contribution which each has to make to the
culture of their common country.

4. As a means to this end we advocate, not such social equality between
these races as would disregard human likes and dislikes, but such a
social equilibrium as would, throughout all the complicated relations of
life, give due and just consideration to culture, ability, and moral
worth, whether they be found under white or black skins.

5. We believe that the first and greatest step toward the settlement of
the present friction between the races--commonly called the Negro
Problem--lies in the correction of the immorality, crime and laziness
among the Negroes themselves, which still remains as a heritage from
slavery. We believe that only earnest and long continued efforts on our
own part can cure these social ills.

6. We believe that the second great step toward a better adjustment of
the relations between the races, should be a more impartial selection of
ability in the economic and intellectual world, and a greater respect
for personal liberty and worth, regardless of race. We believe that only
earnest efforts on the part of the white people of this country will
bring much needed reform in these matters.

7. On the basis of the foregoing declaration, and firmly believing in
our high destiny, we, as American Negroes, are resolved to strive in
every honorable way for the realization of the best and highest aims,
for the development of strong manhood and pure womanhood, and for the
rearing of a race ideal in America and Africa, to the glory of God and
the uplifting of the Negro people.            W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS.




Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.

The following misprints have been corrected:
  "menta" corrected to "mental" (page 8)
  "o;ganization" corrected to "organization" (page 14)

Other than the corrections listed above, printer's spelling and
hyphenation usage have been retained.






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CONTENTS

     Preface
   I Africa
  II The Coming of Black Men
 III Ethiopia and Egypt
  IV The Niger and Islam
   V Guinea and Congo
  VI The Great Lakes and Zymbabwe
 VII The War of Races at Land's End
VIII African Culture
  IX The Trade in Men
   X The West Indies and Latin America
  XI The Negro in the United States
 XII The Negro Problems
     Suggestions for Further Reading


MAPS

The Physical Geography of Africa
Ancient Kingdoms of Africa
Races in Africa
Distribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern




THE NEGRO




TO
A FAITHFUL HELPER
M.G.A.




PREFACE


The time has not yet come for a complete history of the Negro
peoples. Archaeological research in Africa has just begun, and many
sources of information in Arabian, Portuguese, and other tongues are
not fully at our command; and, too, it must frankly be confessed,
racial prejudice against darker peoples is still too strong in so-called
civilized centers for judicial appraisement of the peoples of Africa.
Much intensive monographic work in history and science is needed
to clear mooted points and quiet the controversialist who mistakes
present personal desire for scientific proof.

Nevertheless, I have not been able to withstand the temptation to
essay such short general statement of the main known facts and their
fair interpretation as shall enable the general reader to know as men
a sixth or more of the human race. Manifestly so short a story must
be mainly conclusions and generalizations with but meager indication
of authorities and underlying arguments. Possibly, if the Public
will, a later and larger book may be more satisfactory on these points.

W.E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS.

New York City, Feb. 1, 1915.




[Illustration: The Physical Geography of Africa]




I AFRICA

                "Behold!
The Sphinx is Africa. The bond
Of Silence is upon her. Old
And white with tombs, and rent and shorn;
With raiment wet with tears and torn,
And trampled on, yet all untamed."

MILLER


Africa is at once the most romantic and the most tragic of continents. Its
very names reveal its mystery and wide-reaching influence. It is the
"Ethiopia" of the Greek, the "Kush" and "Punt" of the Egyptian, and the
Arabian "Land of the Blacks." To modern Europe it is the "Dark Continent"
and "Land of Contrasts"; in literature it is the seat of the Sphinx and
the lotus eaters, the home of the dwarfs, gnomes, and pixies, and the
refuge of the gods; in commerce it is the slave mart and the source of
ivory, ebony, rubber, gold, and diamonds. What other continent can rival
in interest this Ancient of Days?

There are those, nevertheless, who would write universal history and leave
out Africa. But how, asks Ratzel, can one leave out the land of Egypt and
Carthage? and Frobenius declares that in future Africa must more and more
be regarded as an integral part of the great movement of world history.
Yet it is true that the history of Africa is unusual, and its strangeness
is due in no small degree to the physical peculiarities of the continent.
With three times the area of Europe it has a coast line a fifth shorter.
Like Europe it is a peninsula of Asia, curving southwestward around the
Indian Sea. It has few gulfs, bays, capes, or islands. Even the rivers,
though large and long, are not means of communication with the outer
world, because from the central high plateau they plunge in rapids and
cataracts to the narrow coastlands and the sea.

The general physical contour of Africa has been likened to an inverted
plate with one or more rows of mountains at the edge and a low coastal
belt. In the south the central plateau is three thousand or more feet
above the sea, while in the north it is a little over one thousand feet.
Thus two main divisions of the continent are easily distinguished: the
broad northern rectangle, reaching down as far as the Gulf of Guinea and
Cape Guardafui, with seven million square miles; and the peninsula which
tapers toward the south, with five million square miles.

Four great rivers and many lesser streams water the continent. The
greatest is the Congo in the center, with its vast curving and endless
estuaries; then the Nile, draining the cluster of the Great Lakes and
flowing northward "like some grave, mighty thought, threading a dream";
the Niger in the northwest, watering the Sudan below the Sahara; and,
finally, the Zambesi, with its greater Niagara in the southeast. Even
these waters leave room for deserts both south and north, but the greater
ones are the three million square miles of sand wastes in the north.

More than any other land, Africa lies in the tropics, with a warm, dry
climate, save in the central Congo region, where rain at all seasons
brings tropical luxuriance. The flora is rich but not wide in variety,
including the gum acacia, ebony, several dye woods, the kola nut, and
probably tobacco and millet. To these many plants have been added in
historic times. The fauna is rich in mammals, and here, too, many from
other continents have been widely introduced and used.

Primarily Africa is the Land of the Blacks. The world has always been
familiar with black men, who represent one of the most ancient of human
stocks. Of the ancient world gathered about the Mediterranean, they formed
a part and were viewed with no surprise or dislike, because this world saw
them come and go and play their part with other men. Was Clitus the
brother-in-law of Alexander the Great less to be honored because he
happened to be black? Was Terence less famous? The medieval European
world, developing under the favorable physical conditions of the north
temperate zone, knew the black man chiefly as a legend or occasional
curiosity, but still as a fellow man--an Othello or a Prester John or an
Antar.

The modern world, in contrast, knows the Negro chiefly as a bond slave in
the West Indies and America. Add to this the fact that the darker races in
other parts of the world have, in the last four centuries, lagged behind
the flying and even feverish footsteps of Europe, and we face to-day a
widespread assumption throughout the dominant world that color is a mark
of inferiority.

The result is that in writing of this, one of the most ancient,
persistent, and widespread stocks of mankind, one faces astounding
prejudice. That which may be assumed as true of white men must be proven
beyond peradventure if it relates to Negroes. One who writes of the
development of the Negro race must continually insist that he is writing
of a normal human stock, and that whatever it is fair to predicate of the
mass of human beings may be predicated of the Negro. It is the silent
refusal to do this which has led to so much false writing on Africa and
of its inhabitants. Take, for instance, the answer to the apparently
simple question "What is a Negro?" We find the most extraordinary
confusion of thought and difference of opinion. There is a certain type in
the minds of most people which, as David Livingstone said, can be found
only in caricature and not in real life. When scientists have tried to
find an extreme type of black, ugly, and woolly-haired Negro, they have
been compelled more and more to limit his home even in Africa. At least
nine-tenths of the African people do not at all conform to this type, and
the typical Negro, after being denied a dwelling place in the Sudan, along
the Nile, in East Central Africa, and in South Africa, was finally given a
very small country between the Senegal and the Niger, and even there was
found to give trace of many stocks. As Winwood Reade says, "The typical
Negro is a rare variety even among Negroes."

As a matter of fact we cannot take such extreme and largely fanciful stock
as typifying that which we may fairly call the Negro race. In the case of
no other race is so narrow a definition attempted. A "white" man may be of
any color, size, or facial conformation and have endless variety of
cranial measurement and physical characteristics. A "yellow" man is
perhaps an even vaguer conception.

In fact it is generally recognized to-day that no scientific definition of
race is possible. Differences, and striking differences, there are between
men and groups of men, but they fade into each other so insensibly that we
can only indicate the main divisions of men in broad outlines. As Von
Luschan says, "The question of the number of human races has quite lost
its _raison d'etre_ and has become a subject rather of philosophic
speculation than of scientific research. It is of no more importance now
to know how many human races there are than to know how many angels can
dance on the point of a needle. Our aim now is to find out how ancient and
primitive races developed from others and how races changed or evolved
through migration and inter-breeding."[1]

The mulatto (using the term loosely to indicate either an intermediate
type between white and black or a mingling of the two) is as typically
African as the black man and cannot logically be included in the "white"
race, especially when American usage includes the mulatto in the Negro
race.

It is reasonable, according to fact and historic usage, to include under
the word "Negro" the darker peoples of Africa characterized by a brown
skin, curled or "frizzled" hair, full and sometimes everted lips, a
tendency to a development of the maxillary parts of the face, and a
dolichocephalic head. This type is not fixed or definite. The color varies
widely; it is never black or bluish, as some say, and it becomes often
light brown or yellow. The hair varies from curly to a wool-like mass, and
the facial angle and cranial form show wide variation.

It is as impossible in Africa as elsewhere to fix with any certainty the
limits of racial variation due to climate and the variation due to
intermingling. In the past, when scientists assumed one unvarying Negro
type, every variation from that type was interpreted as meaning mixture of
blood. To-day we recognize a broader normal African type which, as
Palgrave says, may best be studied "among the statues of the Egyptian
rooms of the British Museum; the larger gentle eye, the full but not
over-protruding lips, the rounded contour, and the good-natured, easy,
sensuous expression. This is the genuine African model." To this race
Africa in the main and parts of Asia have belonged since prehistoric
times.

The color of this variety of man, as the color of other varieties, is due
to climate. Conditions of heat, cold, and moisture, working for thousands
of years through the skin and other organs, have given men their
differences of color. This color pigment is a protection against sunlight
and consequently varies with the intensity of the sunlight. Thus in Africa
we find the blackest men in the fierce sunlight of the desert, red pygmies
in the forest, and yellow Bushmen on the cooler southern plateau.

Next to the color, the hair is the most distinguishing characteristic of
the Negro, but the two characteristics do not vary with each other. Some
of the blackest of the Negroes have curly rather than woolly hair, while
the crispest, most closely curled hair is found among the yellow
Hottentots and Bushmen. The difference between the hair of the lighter and
darker races is a difference of degree, not of kind, and can be easily
measured. If the hair follicles of a China-man, a European, and a Negro
are cut across transversely, it will be found that the diameter of the
first is 100 by 77 to 85, the second 100 by 62 to 72, while that of the
Negro is 100 by 40 to 60. This elliptical form of the Negro's hair causes
it to curl more or less tightly.

There have been repeated efforts to discover, by measurements of various
kinds, further and more decisive differences which would serve as really
scientific determinants of race. Gradually these efforts have been given
up. To-day we realize that there are no hard and fast racial types among
men. Race is a dynamic and not a static conception, and the typical races
are continually changing and developing, amalgamating and differentiating.
In this little book, then, we are studying the history of the darker part
of the human family, which is separated from the rest of mankind by no
absolute physical line, but which nevertheless forms, as a mass, a social
group distinct in history, appearance, and to some extent in spiritual
gift.

We cannot study Africa without, however, noting some of the other races
concerned in its history, particularly the Asiatic Semites. The
intercourse of Africa with Arabia and other parts of Asia has been so
close and long-continued that it is impossible to-day to disentangle the
blood relationships. Negro blood certainly appears in strong strain among
the Semites, and the obvious mulatto groups in Africa, arising from
ancient and modern mingling of Semite and Negro, has given rise to the
term "Hamite," under cover of which millions of Negroids have been
characteristically transferred to the "white" race by some eager
scientists.

The earliest Semites came to Africa across the Red Sea. The Phoenicians
came along the northern coasts a thousand years before Christ and began
settlements which culminated in Carthage and extended down the Atlantic
shores of North Africa nearly to the Gulf of Guinea.

From the earliest times the Greeks have been in contact with Africa as
visitors, traders, and colonists, and the Persian influence came with
Cambyses and others. Roman Africa was bounded by the desert, but at times
came into contact with the blacks across the Sahara and in the valley of
the Nile. After the breaking up of the Roman Empire the Greek and Latin
Christians filtered through Africa, followed finally by a Germanic
invasion in 429 A.D.

In the seventh century the All-Mother, Asia, claimed Africa again for her
own and blew a cloud of Semitic Mohammedanism all across North Africa,
veiling the dark continent from Europe for a thousand years and converting
vast masses of the blacks to Islam. The Portuguese began to raise the veil
in the fifteenth century, sailing down the Atlantic coast and initiating
the modern slave trade. The Spanish, French, Dutch, and English followed
them, but as traders in men rather than explorers.

The Portuguese explored the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, visiting the
interior kingdoms, and then passing by the mouth of the Congo proceeded
southward. Eventually they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and pursued their
explorations as far as the mountains of Abyssinia. This began the modern
exploration of Africa, which is a curious fairy tale, and recalls to us
the great names of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Stanley, Barth,
Schweinfurth, and many others. In this way Africa has been made known to
the modern world.

The difficulty of this modern lifting of the veil of centuries emphasizes
two physical facts that underlie all African history: the peculiar
inaccessibility of the continent to peoples from without, which made it so
easily possible for the great human drama played here to hide itself from
the ears of other worlds; and, on the other hand, the absence of interior
barriers--the great stretch of that central plateau which placed
practically every budding center of culture at the mercy of barbarism,
sweeping a thousand miles, with no Alps or Himalayas or Appalachians to
hinder.

With this peculiarly uninviting coast line and the difficulties in
interior segregation must be considered the climate of Africa. While there
is much diversity and many salubrious tracts along with vast barren
wastes, yet, as Sir Harry Johnston well remarks, "Africa is the chief
stronghold of the real Devil--the reactionary forces of Nature hostile to
the uprise of Humanity. Here Beelzebub, King of the Flies, marshals his
vermiform and arthropod hosts--insects, ticks, and nematode worms--which
more than in other continents (excepting Negroid Asia) convey to the skin,
veins, intestines, and spinal marrow of men and other vertebrates the
microorganisms which cause deadly, disfiguring, or debilitating diseases,
or themselves create the morbid condition of the persecuted human being,
beasts, bird, reptile, frog, or fish."[2] The inhabitants of this land
have had a sheer fight for physical survival comparable with that in no
other great continent, and this must not be forgotten when we consider
their history.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Von Luschan: in _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 16.

[2] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, pp. 14-15.




II THE COMING OF BLACK MEN


The movements of prehistoric man can be seen as yet but dimly in the
uncertain mists of time. This is the story that to-day seems most
probable: from some center in southern Asia primitive human beings began
to differentiate in two directions. Toward the south appeared the
primitive Negro, long-headed and with flattened hair follicle. He spread
along southern Asia and passed over into Africa, where he survives to-day
as the reddish dwarfs of the center and the Bushmen of South Africa.

Northward and eastward primitive man became broader headed and
straight-haired and spread over eastern Asia, forming the Mongolian type.
Either through the intermingling of these two types or, as some prefer to
think, by the direct prolongation of the original primitive man, a third
intermediate type of human being appeared with hair and cranial
measurement intermediate between the primitive Negro and Mongolian. All
these three types of men intermingled their blood freely and developed
variations according to climate and environment.

Other and older theories and legends of the origin and spread of mankind
are of interest now only because so many human beings have believed them
in the past. The biblical story of Shem, Ham, and Japheth retains the
interest of a primitive myth with its measure of allegorical truth,[3] but
has, of course, no historic basis.

The older "Aryan" theory assumed the migration into Europe of one dominant
Asiatic race of civilized conquerors, to whose blood and influence all
modern culture was due. To this "white" race Semitic Asia, a large part of
black Africa, and all Europe was supposed to belong. This "Aryan" theory
has been practically abandoned in the light of recent research, and it
seems probable now that from the primitive Negroid stock evolved in Asia
the Semites either by local variation or intermingling with other stocks;
later there developed the Mediterranean race, with Negroid
characteristics, and the modern Negroes. The blue-eyed, light-haired
Germanic people may have arisen as a modern variation of the mixed peoples
produced by the mingling of Asiatic and African elements. The last word on
this development has not yet been said, and there is still much to learn
and explain; but it is certainly proved to-day beyond doubt that the
so-called Hamites of Africa, the brown and black curly and frizzly-haired
inhabitants of North and East Africa, are not "white" men if we draw the
line between white and black in any logical way.

The primitive Negroid race of men developed in Asia wandered eastward as
well as westward. They entered on the one hand Burmah and the South Sea
Islands, and on the other hand they came through Mesopotamia and gave
curly hair and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assyrian. Ancient
statues of Indian divinities show the Negro type with black face and
close-curled hair, and early Babylonian culture was Negroid. In Arabia the
Negroes may have divided, and one stream perhaps wandered into Europe by
way of Syria. Traces of these Negroes are manifest not only in skeletons,
but in the brunette type of all South Europe. The other branch proceeded
to Egypt and tropical Africa. Another, but perhaps less probable, theory
is that ancient Negroes may have entered Africa from Europe, since the
most ancient skulls of Algeria are Negroid.

The primitive African was not an extreme type. One may judge from modern
pygmy and Bushmen that his color was reddish or yellow, and his skull was
sometimes round like the Mongolian. He entered Africa not less than fifty
thousand years ago and settled eventually in the broad region between Lake
Chad and the Great Lakes and remained there long stretches of years.

After a lapse of perhaps thirty thousand years there entered Africa a
further migration of Asiatic people, Negroid in many characteristics, but
lighter and straighter haired than the primitive Negroes. From this
Mediterranean race was developed the modern inhabitants of the shores of
the Mediterranean in Europe, Asia, and Africa and, by mingling with the
primitive Negroes, the ancient Egyptians and modern Negroid races of
Africa.

As we near historic times the migrations of men became more frequent from
Asia and from Europe, and in Africa came movements and minglings which
give to the whole of Africa a distinct mulatto character. The primitive
Negro stock was "mulatto" in the sense of being not widely differentiated
from the dark, original Australoid stock. As the earlier yellow Negro
developed in the African tropics to the bigger, blacker type, he was
continually mingling his blood with similar types developed in temperate
climes to sallower color and straighter hair.

We find therefore, in Africa to-day, every degree of development in
Negroid stocks and every degree of intermingling of these developments,
both among African peoples and between Africans, Europeans, and Asiatics.
The mistake is continually made of considering these types as transitions
between absolute Caucasians and absolute Negroes. No such absolute type
ever existed on either side. Both were slowly differentiated from a common
ancestry and continually remingled their blood while the differentiating
was progressing. From prehistoric times down to to-day Africa is, in this
sense, primarily the land of the mulatto. So, too, was earlier Europe and
Asia; only in these countries the mulatto was early bleached by the
climate, while in Africa he was darkened.

It is not easy to summarize the history of these dark African peoples,
because so little is known and so much is still in dispute. Yet, by
avoiding the real controversies and being unafraid of mere questions of
definition, we may trace a great human movement with considerable
definiteness.

Three main Negro types early made their appearance: the lighter and
smaller primitive stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and on the
west coast, and the tall, black Nilotic Negro in the eastern Sudan. In the
earliest times we find the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, pressing
downward from the interior. Here they mingled with Semitic types, and
after a lapse of millenniums there arose from this mingling the culture of
Ethiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures.

To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded straight across the continent
to the Atlantic. Centers of higher culture appeared very early along the
Gulf of Guinea and curling backward met Egyptian, Ethiopian, and even
European and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad. To the southeast, nearer
the primitive seats of the earliest African immigrants and open to
Egyptian and East Indian influences, the Negro culture which culminated at
Zymbabwe arose, and one may trace throughout South Africa its wide
ramifications.

All these movements gradually aroused the central tribes to unrest. They
beat against the barriers north, northeast, and west, but gradually
settled into a great southeastward migration. Calling themselves proudly
La Bantu (The People), they grew by agglomeration into a warlike nation,
speaking one language. They eventually conquered all Africa south of the
Gulf of Guinea and spread their influence to the northward.

While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she was also
receiving influences from beyond her shores and sending influences out.
With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much so
that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin. The
truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and from
her vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received and
transmitted Negro ideals.

Phoenician, Greek, and Roman came into touch more or less with black
Africa. Carthage, that North African city of a million men, had a large
caravan trade with Negroland in ivory, metals, cloth, precious stones, and
slaves. Black men served in the Carthaginian armies and marched with
Hannibal on Rome. In some of the North African kingdoms the infiltration
of Negro blood was very large and kings like Massinissa and Jugurtha were
Negroid. By way of the Atlantic the Carthaginians reached the African west
coast. Greek and Roman influences came through the desert, and the
Byzantine Empire and Persia came into communication with Negroland by way
of the valley of the Nile. The influence of these trade routes, added to
those of Egypt, Ethiopia, Benin, and Yoruba, stimulated centers of culture
in the central and western Sudan, and European and African trade early
reached large volume.

Negro soldiers were used largely in the armies that enabled the
Mohammedans to conquer North Africa and Spain. Beginning in the tenth
century and slowly creeping across the desert into Negroland, the new
religion found an already existent culture and came, not a conqueror, but
as an adapter and inspirer. Civilization received new impetus and a wave
of Mohammedanism swept eastward, erecting the great kingdoms of Melle, the
Songhay, Bornu, and the Hausa states. The older Negro culture was not
overthrown, but, like a great wedge, pushed upward and inward from Yoruba,
and gave stubborn battle to the newer culture for seven or eight
centuries.

Then it was, in the fifteenth century, that the heart disease of Africa
developed in its most virulent form. There is a modern theory that black
men are and always have been naturally slaves. Nothing is further from the
truth. In the ancient world Africa was no more a slave hunting ground than
Europe or Asia, and both Greece and Rome had much larger numbers of white
slaves than of black. It was natural that a stream of black slaves should
have poured into Egypt, because the chief line of Egyptian conquest and
defense lay toward the heart of Africa. Moreover, the Egyptians,
themselves of Negro descent, had not only Negro slaves but Negroes among
their highest nobility and even among their Pharaohs. Mohammedan
conquerors enslaved peoples of all colors in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but
eventually their empire centered in Asia and Africa and their slaves came
principally from these countries. Asia submitted to Islam except in the
Far East, which was self-protecting. Negro Africa submitted only
partially, and the remaining heathen were in small states which could not
effectively protect themselves against the Mohammedan slave trade. In this
wise the slave trade gradually began to center in Africa, for religious
and political rather than for racial reasons.

The typical African culture was the culture of family, town, and small
tribe. Hence domestic slavery easily developed a slave trade through war
and commerce. Only the integrating force of state building could have
stopped this slave trade. Was this failure to develop the great state a
racial characteristic? This does not seem a fair conclusion. In four great
centers state building began in Africa. In Ethiopia several large states
were built up, but they tottered before the onslaughts of Egypt, Persia,
Rome, and Byzantium, on the one hand, and finally fell before the
turbulent Bantu warriors from the interior. The second attempt at empire
building began in the southeast, but the same Bantu hordes, pressing now
slowly, now fiercely, from the congested center of the continent,
gradually overthrew this state and erected on its ruins a series of
smaller and more transient kingdoms.

The third attempt at state building arose on the Guinea coast in Benin and
Yoruba. It never got much beyond a federation of large industrial cities.
Its expansion toward the Congo valley was probably a prime cause of the
original Bantu movements to the southeast. Toward the north and northeast,
on the other hand, these city-states met the Sudanese armed with the new
imperial Mohammedan idea. Just as Latin Rome gave the imperial idea to the
Nordic races, so Islam brought this idea to the Sudan.

In the consequent attempts at imperialism in the western Sudan there
arose the largest of the African empires. Two circumstances, however,
militated against this empire building: first, the fierce resistance of
the heathen south made war continuous and slaves one of the articles of
systematic commerce. Secondly, the highways of legitimate African commerce
had for millenniums lain to the north. These were suddenly closed by the
Moors in the sixteenth century, and the Negro empires were thrown into the
turmoil of internal war.

It was then that the European slave traders came from the southwest. They
found partially disrupted Negro states on the west coast and falling
empires in the Sudan, together with the old unrest of over-population and
migration in the valley of the Congo. They not only offered a demand for
the usual slave trade, but they increased it to an enormous degree, until
their demand, added to the demand of the Mohammedan in Africa and Asia,
made human beings the highest priced article of commerce in Africa. Under
such circumstances there could be but one end: the virtual uprooting of
ancient African culture, leaving only misty reminders of the ruin in the
customs and work of the people. To complete this disaster came the
partition of the continent among European nations and the modern attempt
to exploit the country and the natives for the economic benefit of the
white world, together with the transplanting of black nations to the new
western world and their rise and self-assertion there.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Ham is probably the Egyptian word "Khem" (black), the native name of
Egypt. In the original myth Canaan and not Ham was Noah's third son.

The biblical story of the "curse of Canaan" (Genesis IX, 24-25) has been
the basis of an astonishing literature which has to-day only a
psychological interest. It is sufficient to remember that for several
centuries leaders of the Christian Church gravely defended Negro slavery
and oppression as the rightful curse of God upon the descendants of a son
who had been disrespectful to his drunken father! Cf. Bishop Hopkins:
_Bible Views of Slavery_, p. 7.




III ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT


Having viewed now the land and movements of African people in main
outline, let us scan more narrowly the history of five main centers of
activity and culture, namely: the valleys of the Nile and of the Congo,
the borders of the great Gulf of Guinea, the Sudan, and South Africa.
These divisions do not cover all of Negro Africa, but they take in the
main areas and the main lines in development.

First, we turn to the valley of the Nile, perhaps the most ancient of
known seats of civilization in the world, and certainly the oldest in
Africa, with a culture reaching back six or eight thousand years. Like all
civilizations it drew largely from without and undoubtedly arose in the
valley of the Nile, because that valley was so easily made a center for
the meeting of men of all types and from all parts of the world. At the
same time Egyptian civilization seems to have been African in its
beginnings and in its main line of development, despite strong influences
from all parts of Asia. Of what race, then, were the Egyptians? They
certainly were not white in any sense of the modern use of that
word--neither in color nor physical measurement, in hair nor countenance,
in language nor social customs. They stood in relationship nearest the
Negro race in earliest times, and then gradually through the infiltration
of Mediterranean and Semitic elements became what would be described in
America as a light mulatto stock of Octoroons or Quadroons. This stock was
varied continually; now by new infiltration of Negro blood from the south,
now by Negroid and Semitic blood from the east, now by Berber types from
the north and west.

Egyptian monuments show distinctly Negro and mulatto faces. Herodotus, in
an incontrovertible passage, alludes to the Egyptians as "black and
curly-haired"[4]--a peculiarly significant statement from one used to the
brunette Mediterranean type; in another passage, concerning the fable of
the Dodonian Oracle, he again alludes to the swarthy color of the
Egyptians as exceedingly dark and even black. AEschylus, mentioning a boat
seen from the shore, declares that its crew are Egyptians, because of
their black complexions.

Modern measurements, with all their admitted limitations, show that in the
Thebaid from one-seventh to one-third of the Egyptian population were
Negroes, and that of the predynastic Egyptians less than half could be
classed as non-Negroid. Judging from measurements in the tombs of nobles
as late as the eighteenth dynasty, Negroes form at least one-sixth of the
higher class.[5]

Such measurements are by no means conclusive, but they are apt to be
under rather than over statements of the prevalence of Negro blood. Head
measurements of Negro Americans would probably place most of them in the
category of whites. The evidence of language also connects Egypt with
Africa and the Negro race rather than with Asia, while religious
ceremonies and social customs all go to strengthen this evidence.

The ethnic history of Northeast Africa would seem, therefore, to have been
this: predynastic Egypt was settled by Negroes from Ethiopia. They were of
varied type: the broad-nosed, woolly-haired type to which the word "Negro"
is sometimes confined; the black, curly-haired, sharper featured type,
which must be considered an equally Negroid variation. These Negroes met
and mingled with the invading Mediterranean race from North Africa and
Asia. Thus the blood of the sallower race spread south and that of the
darker race north. Black priests appear in Crete three thousand years
before Christ, and Arabia is to this day thoroughly permeated with Negro
blood. Perhaps, as Chamberlain says, "one of the prime reasons why no
civilization of the type of that of the Nile arose in other parts of the
continent, if such a thing were at all possible, was that Egypt acted as a
sort of channel by which the genius of Negro-land was drafted off into the
service of Mediterranean and Asiatic culture."[6]

To one familiar with the striking and beautiful types arising from the
mingling of Negro with Latin and Germanic types in America, the puzzle of
the Egyptian type is easily solved. It was unlike any of its neighbors and
a unique type until one views the modern mulatto; then the faces of
Rahotep and Nefert, of Khafra and Amenemhat I, of Aahmes and Nefertari,
and even of the great Ramessu II, become curiously familiar.

The history of Egypt is a science in itself. Before the reign of the first
recorded king, five thousand years or more before Christ, there had
already existed in Egypt a culture and art arising by long evolution from
the days of paleolithic man, among a distinctly Negroid people. About 4777
B.C. Aha-Mena began the first of three successive Egyptian empires. This
lasted two thousand years, with many Pharaohs, like Khafra of the Fourth
Dynasty, of a strongly Negroid cast of countenance.

At the end of the period the empire fell apart into Egyptian and Ethiopian
halves, and a silence of three centuries ensued. It is quite possible that
an incursion of conquering black men from the south poured over the land
in these years and dotted Egypt in the next centuries with monuments on
which the full-blooded Negro type is strongly and triumphantly impressed.
The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so familiar to all the world, the Sphinxes of
Tanis, the statue from the Fayum, the statue of the Esquiline at Rome,
and the Colossi of Bubastis all represent black, full-blooded Negroes and
are described by Petrie as "having high cheek bones, flat cheeks, both in
one plane, a massive nose, firm projecting lips, and thick hair, with an
austere and almost savage expression of power."[7]

Blyden, the great modern black leader of West Africa, said of the Sphinx
at Gizeh: "Her features are decidedly of the African or Negro type, with
'expanded nostrils.' If, then, the Sphinx was placed here--looking out in
majestic and mysterious silence over the empty plain where once stood the
great city of Memphis in all its pride and glory, as an 'emblematic
representation of the king'--is not the inference clear as to the peculiar
type or race to which that king belonged?"[8]

The middle empire arose 3064 B.C. and lasted nearly twenty-four centuries.
Under Pharaohs whose Negro descent is plainly evident, like Amenemhat I
and III and Usertesen I, the ancient glories of Egypt were restored and
surpassed. At the same time there is strong continuous pressure from the
wild and unruly Negro tribes of the upper Nile valley, and we get some
idea of the fear which they inspired throughout Egypt when we read of the
great national rejoicing which followed the triumph of Usertesen III (c.
2660-22) over these hordes. He drove them back and attempted to confine
them to the edge of the Nubian Desert above the Second Cataract. Hemmed in
here, they set up a state about this time and founded Nepata.

Notwithstanding this repulse of black men, less than one hundred years
later a full-blooded Negro from the south, Ra Nehesi, was seated on the
throne of the Pharaohs and was called "The king's eldest son." This may
mean that an incursion from the far south had placed a black conqueror on
the throne. At any rate, the whole empire was in some way shaken, and two
hundred years later the invasion of the Hyksos began. The domination of
Hyksos kings who may have been Negroids from Asia[9] lasted for five
hundred years.

The redemption of Egypt from these barbarians came from Upper Egypt, led
by the mulatto Aahmes. He founded in 1703 B.C. the new empire, which
lasted fifteen hundred years. His queen, Nefertari, "the most venerated
figure of Egyptian history,"[10] was a Negress of great beauty, strong
personality, and of unusual administrative force. She was for many years
joint ruler with her son, Amenhotep I, who succeeded his father.[11]

The new empire was a period of foreign conquest and internal splendor and
finally of religious dispute and overthrow. Syria was conquered in these
reigns and Asiatic civilization and influences poured in upon Egypt. The
great Tahutmes III, whose reign was "one of the grandest and most eventful
in Egyptian history,"[12] had a strong Negroid countenance, as had also
Queen Hatshepsut, who sent the celebrated expedition to reopen ancient
trade with the Hottentots of Punt. A new strain of Negro blood came to the
royal line through Queen Mutemua about 1420 B.C., whose son, Amenhotep
III, built a great temple at Luqsor and the Colossi at Memnon.

The whole of the period in a sense culminated in the great Ramessu II, the
oppressor of the Hebrews, who with his Egyptian, Libyan, and Negro armies
fought half the world. His reign, however, was the beginning of decline,
and foes began to press Egypt from the white north and the black south.
The priests transferred their power at Thebes, while the Assyrians under
Nimrod overran Lower Egypt. The center of interest is now transferred to
Ethiopia, and we pass to the more shadowy history of that land.

The most perfect example of Egyptian poetry left to us is a celebration of
the prowess of Usertesen III in confining the turbulent Negro tribes to
the territory below the Second Cataract of the Nile. The Egyptians called
this territory Kush, and in the farthest confines of Kush lay Punt, the
cradle of their race. To the ancient Mediterranean world Ethiopia (i.e.,
the Land of the Black-faced) was a region of gods and fairies. Zeus and
Poseidon feasted each year among the "blameless Ethiopians," and Black
Memnon, King of Ethiopia, was one of the greatest of heroes.

"The Ethiopians conceive themselves," says Diodorus Siculus (Lib. III),
"to be of greater antiquity than any other nation; and it is probable
that, born under the sun's path, its warmth may have ripened them earlier
than other men. They suppose themselves also to be the inventors of divine
worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and every
religious practice. They affirm that the Egyptians are one of their
colonies."

The Egyptians themselves, in later days, affirmed that they and their
civilization came from the south and from the black tribes of Punt, and
certainly "at the earliest period in which human remains have been
recovered Egypt and Lower Nubia appear to have formed culturally and
racially one land."[13]

The forging ahead of Egypt in culture was mainly from economic causes.
Ethiopia, living in a much poorer land with limited agricultural
facilities, held to the old arts and customs, and at the same time lost
the best elements of its population to Egypt, absorbing meantime the
oncoming and wilder Negro tribes from the south and west. Under the old
empire, therefore, Ethiopia remained in comparative poverty, except as
some of its tribes invaded Egypt with their handicrafts.

As soon as the civilization below the Second Cataract reached a height
noticeably above that of Ethiopia, there was continued effort to protect
that civilization against the incursion of barbarians. Hundreds of
campaigns through thousands of years repeatedly subdued or checked the
blacks and brought them in as captives to mingle their blood with the
Egyptian nation; but the Egyptian frontier was not advanced.

A separate and independent Ethiopian culture finally began to arise during
the middle empire of Egypt and centered at Nepata and Meroe. Widespread
trade in gold, ivory, precious stones, skins, wood, and works of
handicraft arose.[14] The Negro began to figure as the great trader of
Egypt.

This new wealth of Ethiopia excited the cupidity of the Pharaohs and led
to aggression and larger intercourse, until at last, when the dread Hyksos
appeared, Ethiopia became both a physical and cultural refuge for
conquered Egypt. The legitimate Pharaohs moved to Thebes, nearer the
boundaries of Ethiopia, and from here, under Negroid rulers, Lower Egypt
was redeemed.

The ensuing new empire witnessed the gradual incorporation of Ethiopia
into Egypt, although the darker kingdom continued to resist. Both mulatto
Pharaohs, Aahmes and Amenhotep I, sent expeditions into Ethiopia, and in
the latter's day sons of the reigning Pharaoh began to assume the title of
"Royal Son of Kush" in some such way as the son of the King of England
becomes the Prince of Wales.

Trade relations were renewed with Punt under circumstances which lead us
to place that land in the region of the African lakes. The Sudanese tribes
were aroused by these and other incursions, until the revolts became
formidable in the fourteenth century before Christ.

Egyptian culture, however, gradually conquered Ethiopia where her armies
could not, and Egyptian religion and civil rule began to center in the
darker kingdom. When, therefore, Shesheng I, the Libyan, usurped the
throne of the Pharaohs in the tenth century B.C., the Egyptian legitimate
dynasty went to Nepata as king priests and established a theocratic
monarchy. Gathering strength, the Ethiopian kingdom under this dynasty
expanded north about 750 B.C. and for a century ruled all Egypt.

The first king, Pankhy, was Egyptian bred and not noticeably Negroid, but
his successors showed more and more evidence of Negro blood--Kashta the
Kushite, Shabaka, Tarharqa, and Tanutamen. During the century of Ethiopian
rule a royal son was appointed to rule Egypt, just as formerly a royal
Egyptian had ruled Kush. In many ways this Ethiopian kingdom showed its
Negro peculiarities: first, in its worship of distinctly Sudanese gods;
secondly, in the rigid custom of female succession in the kingdom, and
thirdly, by the election of kings from the various royal claimants to the
throne. "It was the heyday of the Negro. For the greater part of the
century ... Egypt itself was subject to the blacks, just as in the new
empire the Sudan had been subject to Egypt."[15]

Egypt now began to fall into the hands of Asia and was conquered first by
the Assyrians and then by the Persians, but the Ethiopian kings kept their
independence. Aspeluta, whose mother and sister are represented as
full-blooded Negroes, ruled from 630 to 600 B.C. Horsiatef (560-525 B.C.)
made nine expeditions against the warlike tribes south of Meroe, and his
successor, Nastosenen (525-500 B.C.) was the one who repelled Cambyses. He
also removed the capital from Nepata to Meroe, although Nepata continued
to be the religious capital and the Ethiopian kings were still crowned on
its golden throne.

From the fifth to the second century B.C. we find the wild Sudanese tribes
pressing in from the west and Greek culture penetrating from the east.
King Arg-Amen (Ergamenes) showed strong Greek influences and at the same
time began to employ the Ethiopian speech in writing and used a new
Ethiopian alphabet.

While the Ethiopian kings were still crowned at Nepata, Meroe gradually
became the real capital and supported at one time four thousand artisans
and two hundred thousand soldiers. It was here that the famous Candaces
reigned as queens. Pliny tells us that one Candace of the time of Nero had
had forty-four predecessors on the throne, while another Candace figures
in the New Testament.[16]

It was probably this latter Candace who warred against Rome at the time of
Augustus and received unusual consideration from her formidable foe. The
prestige of Ethiopia at this time was considerable throughout the world.
Pseudo-Callisthenes tells an evidently fabulous story of the visit of
Alexander the Great to Candace, Queen of Meroe, which nevertheless
illustrates her fame: Candace will not let him enter Ethiopia and says he
is not to scorn her people because they are black, for they are whiter in
soul than his white folk. She sent him gold, maidens, parrots, sphinxes,
and a crown of emeralds and pearls. She ruled eighty tribes, who were
ready to punish those who attacked her.

The Romans continued to have so much trouble with their Ethiopian frontier
that finally, when Semitic mulattoes appeared in the east, the Emperor
Diocletian invited the wild Sudanese tribe of Nubians (Nobadae) from the
west to repel them. These Nubians eventually embraced Christianity, and
northern Ethiopia came to be known in time as Nubia.

The Semitic mulattoes from the east came from the highlands bordering the
Red Sea and Asia. On both sides of this sea Negro blood is strongly in
evidence, predominant in Africa and influential in Asia. Ludolphus,
writing in the seventeenth century, says that the Abyssinians "are
generally black, which [color] they most admire." Trade and war united the
two shores, and merchants have passed to and fro for thirty centuries.

In this way Arabian, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman influences spread
slowly upon the Negro foundation. Early legendary history declares that a
queen, Maqueda, or Nikaula of Sheba, a state of Central Abyssinia, visited
Solomon in 1050 B.C. and had her son Menelik educated in Jerusalem. This
was the supposed beginning of the Axumite kingdom, the capital of which,
Axume, was a flourishing center of trade. Ptolemy Evergetes and his
successors did much to open Abyssinia to the world, but most of the
population of that day was nomadic. In the fourth century Byzantine
influences began to be felt, and in 330 St. Athanasius of Alexandria
consecrated Fromentius as Bishop of Ethiopia. He tutored the heir to the
Abyssinian kingdom and began its gradual christianization. By the early
part of the sixth century Abyssinia was trading with India and Byzantium
and was so far recognized as a Christian country that the Emperor
Justinian appealed to King Kaleb to protect the Christians in southwestern
Arabia. Kaleb conquered Yemen in 525 and held it fifty years.

Eventually a Jewish princess, Judith, usurped the Axumite throne; the
Abyssinians were expelled from Arabia, and a long period begins when as
Gibbon says, "encompassed by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians
slept for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they
were forgotten." Throughout the middle ages, however, the legend of a
great Christian kingdom hidden away in Africa persisted, and the search
for Prester John became one of the world quests.

It was the expanding power of Abyssinia that led Rome to call in the
Nubians from the western desert. The Nubians had formed a strong league of
tribes, and as the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia declined they drove back
the Abyssinians, who had already established themselves at Meroe.

In the sixth century the Nubians were converted to Christianity by a
Byzantine priest, and they immediately began to develop. A new capital,
Dongola, replaced Nepata and Meroe, and by the twelfth century churches
and brick dwellings had appeared. As the Mohammedan flood pressed up the
Nile valley it was the Nubians that held it back for two centuries.

Farther south other wild tribes pushed out of the Sudan and began a
similar development. Chief among these were the Fung, who fixed their
capital at Senaar, at the junction of the White and Blue Nile. When the
Mohammedan flood finally passed over Nubia, the Fung diverted it by
declaring themselves Moslems. This left the Fung as the dominant power in
the fifteenth century from the Three Cataracts to Fazogli and from the Red
Sea at Suakin to the White Nile. Islam then swept on south in a great
circle, skirted the Great Lakes, and then curled back to Somaliland,
completely isolating Abyssinia.

Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries the Egyptian Sudan became a
congeries of Mohammedan kingdoms with Arab, mulatto, and Negro kings. Far
to the west, near Lake Chad, arose in 1520 the sultanate of Baghirmi,
which reached its highest power in the seventh century. This dynasty was
overthrown by the Negroid Mabas, who established Wadai to the eastward
about 1640. South of Wadai lay the heathen and cannibals of the Congo
valley, against which Islam never prevailed. East of Wadai and nearer the
Nile lay the kindred state of Darfur, a Nubian nation whose sultans
reigned over two hundred years and which reached great prosperity in the
early seventeenth century under Soliman Solon.

Before the Mohammedan power reached Abyssinia the Portuguese pioneers had
entered the country from the east and begun to open the country again to
European knowledge. Without doubt, in the centuries of silence, a
civilization of some height had flourished in Abyssinia, but all authentic
records were destroyed by fire in the tenth century. When the Portuguese
came, the older Axumite kingdom had fallen and had been succeeded by a
number of petty states.

The Sudanese kingdoms of the Sudan resisted the power of the Mameluke beys
in Egypt, and later the power of the Turks until the nineteenth century,
when the Sudan was made nominally a part of Egypt. Continuous upheaval,
war, and conquest had by this time done their work, and little of ancient
Ethiopian culture survived except the slave trade.

The entrance of England into Egypt, after the building of the Suez Canal,
stirred up eventually revolt in the Sudan, for political, economic, and
religious reasons. Led by a Sudanese Negro, Mohammed Ahmad, who claimed to
be the Messiah (Mahdi), the Sudan arose in revolt in 1881, determined to
resist a hated religion, foreign rule, and interference with their chief
commerce, the trade in slaves. The Sudan was soon aflame, and the able
mulatto general, Osman Digna, aided by revolt among the heathen Dinka,
drove Egypt and England out of the Sudan for sixteen years. It was not
until 1898 that England reentered the Sudan and in petty revenge
desecrated the bones of the brave, even if misguided, prophet.

Meantime this Mahdist revolt had delayed England's designs on Abyssinia,
and the Italians, replacing her, attempted a protectorate. Menelik of
Shoa, one of the smaller kingdoms of Abyssinia, was a shrewd man of
predominantly Negro blood, and had been induced to make a treaty with the
Italians after King John had been killed by the Mahdists. The exact terms
of the treaty were disputed, but undoubtedly the Italians tried by this
means to reduce Menelik to vassalage. Menelik stoutly resisted, and at the
great battle of Adua, one of the decisive battles of the modern world, the
Abyssinians on March 1, 1896, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Italians,
killing four thousand of them and capturing two thousand prisoners. The
empress, Taitou, a full-blooded Negress, led some of the charges. By this
battle Abyssinia became independent.

Such in vague and general outline is the strange story of the valley of
the Nile--of Egypt, the motherland of human culture and

"That starr'd Ethiop Queen that strove To set her beauty's praise above
The sea nymphs."

FOOTNOTES:

[4] [Greek: "autos de eikasa tede kai hote melanchroes eisi kai
oulotriches."] Liber II, Cap. 104.

[5] Cf. Maciver and Thompson: _Ancient Races of the Thebaid_.

[6] _Journal of Race Development_, I, 484.

[7] Petrie: _History of Egypt_, I, 51, 237.

[8] _From West Africa to Palestine_, p. 114.

[9] Depending partly on whether the so-called Hyksos sphinxes belong to
the period of the Hyksos kings or to an earlier period (cf. Petrie, I,
52-53, 237). That Negroids largely dominated in the early history of
western Asia is proven by the monuments.

[10] Petrie: _History of Egypt_, II, 337.

[11] Chamberlain: _Journal of Race Development_, April, 1911.

[12] Petrie: _History of Egypt_, II, 337.

[13] Reisner: _Archeological Survey of Nubia_, I, 319.

[14] Hoskins declares that the arch had its origin in Ethiopia.

[15] Maciver and Wooley: _Areika_, p. 2.

[16] Acts VIII, 27.




IV THE NIGER AND ISLAM


The Arabian expression "Bilad es Sudan" (Land of the Blacks) was applied
to the whole region south of the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the Nile. It
is a territory some thirty-five hundred miles by six hundred miles,
containing two million square miles, and has to-day a population of
perhaps eighty million. It is thus two-thirds the size of the United
States and quite as thickly settled. In the western Sudan the Niger plays
the same role as the Nile in the east. In this chapter we follow the
history of the Niger.

The history of this part of Africa was probably something as follows:
primitive man, entering Africa from Arabia, found the Great Lakes, spread
in the Nile valley, and wandered westward to the Niger. Herodotus tells of
certain youths who penetrated the desert to the Niger and found there a
city of black dwarfs. Succeeding migrations of Negroes and Negroids pushed
the dwarfs gradually into the inhospitable forests and occupied the Sudan,
pushing on to the Atlantic. Here the newcomers, curling northward, met the
Mediterranean race coming down across the western desert, while to the
southward the Negro came to the Gulf of Guinea and the thick forests of
the Congo valley. Indigenous civilizations arose on the west coast in
Yoruba and Benin, and contact of these with the Mediterranean race in the
desert, and with Egyptian and Arab from the east, gave rise to centers of
Negro culture in the Sudan at Ghana and Melle and in Songhay, Nupe, the
Hausa states, and Bornu.

The history of the Sudan thus leads us back again to Ethiopia, that
strange and ancient center of world civilization whose inhabitants in the
ancient world were considered to be the most pious and the oldest of men.
From this center the black originators of African culture, and to a large
degree of world culture, wandered not simply down the Nile, but also
westward. These Negroes developed the original substratum of culture which
later influences modified but never displaced.

We know that Egyptian Pharaohs in several cases ventured into the western
Sudan and that Egyptian influences are distinctly traceable. Greek and
Byzantine culture and Phoenician and Carthaginian trade also penetrated,
while Islam finally made this whole land her own. Behind all these
influences, however, stood from the first an indigenous Negro culture. The
stone figures of Sherbro, the megaliths of Gambia, the art and industry of
the west coast are all too deep and original evidences of civilization to
be merely importations from abroad.

Nor was the Sudan the inert recipient of foreign influence when it came.
According to credible legend, the "Great King" at Byzantium imported
glass, tin, silver, bronze, cut stones, and other treasure from the Sudan.
Embassies were sent and states like Nupe recognized the suzerainty of the
Byzantine emperor. The people of Nupe especially were filled with pride
when the Byzantine people learned certain kinds of work in bronze and
glass from them, and this intercourse was only interrupted by the
Mohammedan conquest.

To this ancient culture, modified somewhat by Byzantine and Christian
influences, came Islam. It approached from the northwest, coming
stealthily and slowly and being handed on particularly by the Mandingo
Negroes. About 1000-1200 A.D. the situation was this: Ghana was on the
edge of the desert in the north, Mandingoland between the Niger and the
Senegal in the south and the western Sahara, Djolof was in the west on the
Senegal, and the Songhay on the Niger in the center. The Mohammedans came
chiefly as traders and found a trade already established. Here and there
in the great cities were districts set aside for these new merchants, and
the Mohammedans gave frequent evidence of their respect for these black
nations.

Islam did not found new states, but modified and united Negro states
already ancient; it did not initiate new commerce, but developed a
widespread trade already established. It is, as Frobenius says, "easily
proved from chronicles written in Arabic that Islam was only effective in
fact as a fertilizer and stimulant. The essential point is the
resuscitative and invigorative concentration of Negro power in the service
of a new era and a Moslem propaganda, as well as the reaction thereby
produced."[17]

Early in the eighth century Islam had conquered North Africa and converted
the Berbers. Aided by black soldiers, the Moslems crossed into Spain; in
the following century Berber and Arab armies crossed the west end of the
Sahara and came to Negroland. Later in the eleventh century Arabs
penetrated the Sudan and Central Africa from the east, filtering through
the Negro tribes of Darfur, Kanem, and neighboring regions. The Arabs were
too nearly akin to Negroes to draw an absolute color line. Antar, one of
the great pre-Islamic poets of Arabia, was the son of a black woman, and
one of the great poets at the court of Haroun al Raschid was black. In the
twelfth century a learned Negro poet resided at Seville, and Sidjilmessa,
the last town in Lower Morocco toward the desert, was founded in 757 by a
Negro who ruled over the Berber inhabitants. Indeed, many towns in the
Sudan and the desert were thus ruled, and felt no incongruity in this
arrangement. They say, to be sure, that the Moors destroyed Audhoghast
because it paid tribute to the black town of Ghana, but this was because
the town was heathen and not because it was black. On the other hand,
there is a story that a Berber king overthrew one of the cities of the
Sudan and all the black women committed suicide, being too proud to allow
themselves to fall into the hands of white men.

In the west the Moslems first came into touch with the Negro kingdom of
Ghana. Here large quantities of gold were gathered in early days, and we
have names of seventy-four rulers before 300 A.D. running through
twenty-one generations. This would take us back approximately a thousand
years to 700 B.C., or about the time that Pharaoh Necho of Egypt sent out
the Phoenician expedition which circumnavigated Africa, and possibly
before the time when Hanno, the Carthaginian, explored the west coast of
Africa.

By the middle of the eleventh century Ghana was the principal kingdom in
the western Sudan. Already the town had a native and a Mussulman quarter,
and was built of wood and stone with surrounding gardens. The king had an
army of two hundred thousand and the wealth of the country was great. A
century later the king had become Mohammedan in faith and had a palace
with sculptures and glass windows. The great reason for this development
was the desert trade. Gold, skins, ivory, kola nuts, gums, honey, wheat,
and cotton were exported, and the whole Mediterranean coast traded in the
Sudan. Other and lesser black kingdoms like Tekrou, Silla, and Masina
surrounded Ghana.

In the early part of the thirteenth century the prestige of Ghana began to
fall before the rising Mandingan kingdom to the west. Melle, as it was
called, was founded in 1235 and formed an open door for Moslem and Moorish
traders. The new kingdom, helped by its expanding trade, began to grow,
and Islam slowly surrounded the older Negro culture west, north, and east.
However, a great mass of the older heathen culture, pushing itself upward
from the Guinea coast, stood firmly against Islam down to the nineteenth
century.

Steadily Mohammedanism triumphed in the growing states which almost
encircled the protagonists of ancient Atlantic culture. Mandingan Melle
eventually supplanted Ghana in prestige and power, after Ghana had been
overthrown by the heathen Su Su from the south.

The territory of Melle lay southeast of Ghana and some five hundred miles
north of the Gulf of Guinea. Its kings were known by the title of Mansa,
and from the middle of the thirteenth century to the middle of the
fourteenth the Mellestine, as its dominion was called, was the leading
power in the land of the blacks. Its greatest king, Mari Jalak (Mansa
Musa), made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, with a caravan of sixty
thousand persons, including twelve thousand young slaves gowned in figured
cotton and Persian silk. He took eighty camel loads of gold dust (worth
about five million dollars) to defray his expenses, and greatly impressed
the people of the East with his magnificence.

On his return he found that Timbuktu had been sacked by the Mossi, but he
rebuilt the town and filled the new mosque with learned blacks from the
University of Fez. Mansa Musa reigned twenty-five years and "was
distinguished by his ability and by the holiness of his life. The justice
of his administration was such that the memory of it still lives."[18] The
Mellestine preserved its preeminence until the beginning of the sixteenth
century, when the rod of Sudanese empire passed to Songhay, the largest
and most famous of the black empires.

The known history of Songhay covers a thousand years and three dynasties
and centers in the great bend of the Niger. There were thirty kings of the
First Dynasty, reigning from 700 to 1335. During the reign of one of these
the Songhay kingdom became the vassal kingdom of Melle, then at the height
of its glory. In addition to this the Mossi crossed the valley, plundered
Timbuktu in 1339, and separated Jenne, the original seat of the Songhay,
from the main empire. The sixteenth king was converted to Mohammedanism in
1009, and after that all the Songhay princes were Mohammedans. Mansa Musa
took two young Songhay princes to the court of Melle to be educated in
1326. These boys when grown ran away and founded a new dynasty in Songhay,
that of the Sonnis, in 1355. Seventeen of these kings reigned, the last
and greatest being Sonni Ali, who ascended the throne in 1464. Melle was
at this time declining, other cities like Jenne, with its seven thousand
villages, were rising, and the Tuaregs (Berbers with Negro blood) had
captured Timbuktu.

Sonni Ali was a soldier and began his career with the conquest of Timbuktu
in 1469. He also succeeded in capturing Jenne and attacked the Mossi and
other enemies on all sides. Finally he concentrated his forces for the
destruction of Melle and subdued nearly the whole empire on the west bend
of the Niger. In summing up Sonni Ali's military career the chronicle says
of him, "He surpassed all his predecessors in the numbers and valor of his
soldiery. His conquests were many and his renown extended from the rising
to the setting of the sun. If it is the will of God, he will be long
spoken of."[19]

Sonni Ali was a Songhay Negro whose father was a Berber. He was succeeded
by a full-blooded black, Mohammed Abou Bekr, who had been his prime
minister. Mohammed was hailed as "Askia" (usurper) and is best known as
Mohammed Askia. He was strictly orthodox where Ali was rather a scoffer,
and an organizer where Ali was a warrior. On his pilgrimage to Mecca in
1495 there was nothing of the barbaric splendor of Mansa Musa, but a
brilliant group of scholars and holy men with a small escort of fifteen
hundred soldiers and nine hundred thousand dollars in gold. He stopped and
consulted with scholars and politicians and studied matters of taxation,
weights and measures, trade, religious tolerance, and manners. In Cairo,
where he was invested by the reigning caliph of Egypt, he may have heard
of the struggle of Europe for the trade of the Indies, and perhaps of the
parceling of the new world between Portugal and Spain. He returned to the
Sudan in 1497, instituted a standing army of slaves, undertook a holy war
against the indomitable Mossi, and finally marched against the Hausa. He
subdued these cities and even imposed the rule of black men on the Berber
town of Agades, a rich city of merchants and artificers with stately
mansions. In fine Askia, during his reign, conquered and consolidated an
empire two thousand miles long by one thousand wide at its greatest
diameters; a territory as large as all Europe. The territory was divided
into four vice royalties, and the system of Melle, with its
semi-independent native dynasties, was carried out. His empire extended
from the Atlantic to Lake Chad and from the salt mines of Tegazza and the
town of Augila in the north to the 10th degree of north latitude toward
the south.

It was a six months' journey across the empire and, it is said, "he was
obeyed with as much docility on the farthest limits of the empire as he
was in his own palace, and there reigned everywhere great plenty and
absolute peace."[20] The University of Sankore became a center of learning
in correspondence with Egypt and North Africa and had a swarm of black
Sudanese students. Law, literature, grammar, geography and surgery were
studied. Askia the Great reigned thirty-six years, and his dynasty
continued on the throne until after the Moorish conquest in 1591.

Meanwhile, to the eastward, two powerful states appeared. They never
disputed the military supremacy of Songhay, but their industrial
development was marvelous. The Hausa states were formed by seven original
cities, of which Kano was the oldest and Katsena the most famous. Their
greatest leaders, Mohammed Rimpa and Ahmadu Kesoke, arose in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. The land was subject to the Songhay, but
the cities became industrious centers of smelting, weaving, and dyeing.
Katsena especially, in the middle of the sixteenth century, is described
as a place thirteen or fourteen miles in circumference, divided into
quarters for strangers, for visitors from various other states, and for
the different trades and industries, as saddlers, shoemakers, dyers, etc.

Beyond the Hausa states and bordering on Lake Chad was Bornu. The people
of Bornu had a large infiltration of Berber blood, but were predominantly
Negro. Berber mulattoes had been kings in early days, but they were soon
replaced by black men. Under the early kings, who can be traced back to
the third century, these people had ruled nearly all the territory between
the Nile and Lake Chad. The country was known as Kanem, and the pagan
dynasty of Dugu reigned there from the middle of the ninth to the end of
the eleventh century. Mohammedanism was introduced from Egypt at the end
of the eleventh century, and under the Mohammedan kings Kanem became one
of the first powers of the Sudan. By the end of the twelfth century the
armies of Kanem were very powerful and its rulers were known as "Kings of
Kanem and Lords of Bornu." In the thirteenth century the kings even dared
to invade the southern country down toward the valley of the Congo.

Meantime great things were happening in the world beyond the desert, the
ocean, and the Nile. Arabian Mohammedanism had succumbed to the wild
fanaticism of the Seljukian Turks. These new conquerors were not only
firmly planted at the gates of Vienna, but had swept the shores of the
Mediterranean and sent all Europe scouring the seas for their lost trade
connections with the riches of India. Religious zeal, fear of conquest,
and commercial greed inflamed Europe against the Mohammedan and led to the
discovery of a new world, the riches of which poured first on Spain.
Oppression of the Moors followed, and in 1502 they were driven back into
Africa, despoiled and humbled. Here the Spaniards followed and harassed
them and here the Turks, fighting the Christians, captured the
Mediterranean ports and cut the Moors off permanently from Europe. In the
slow years that followed, huddled in Northwest Africa, they became a
decadent people and finally cast their eyes toward Negroland.

The Moors in Morocco had come to look upon the Sudan as a gold mine, and
knew that the Sudan was especially dependent upon salt. In 1545 Morocco
claimed the principal salt mines at Tegazza, but the reigning Askia
refused to recognize the claim.

When the Sultan Elmansour came to the throne of Morocco, he increased the
efficiency of his army by supplying it with fire arms and cannon.
Elmansour determined to attack the Sudan and sent four hundred men under
Pasha Djouder, who left Morocco in 1590. The Songhay, with their bows and
arrows, were helpless against powder and shot, and they were defeated at
Tenkadibou April 12, 1591. Askia Ishak, the king, offered terms, and
Djouder Pasha referred them to Morocco. The sultan, angry with his
general's delay, deposed him and sent another, who crushed and
treacherously murdered the king and set up a puppet. Thereafter there were
two Askias, one under the Moors at Timbuktu and one who maintained himself
in the Hausa states, which the Moors could not subdue. Anarchy reigned in
Songhay. The Moors tried to put down disorder with a high hand, drove out
and murdered the distinguished men of Timbuktu, and as a result let loose
a riot of robbery and decadence throughout the Sudan. Pasha now succeeded
pasha with revolt and misrule until in 1612 the soldiers elected their own
pasha and deliberately shut themselves up in the Sudan by cutting off
approach from the north.

Hausaland and Bornu were still open to Turkish and Mohammedan influence
from the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the slave trade from the south,
but the face of the finest Negro civilization the modern world had ever
produced was veiled from Europe and given to the defilement of wild
Moorish soldiers. In 1623 it is written "excesses of every kind are now
committed unchecked by the soldiery," and "the country is profoundly
convulsed and oppressed."[21] The Tuaregs marched down from the desert and
deprived the Moors of many of the principal towns. The rest of the empire
of the Songhay was by the end of the eighteenth century divided among
separate Moorish chiefs, who bought supplies from the Negro peasantry and
were "at once the vainest, proudest, and perhaps the most bigoted,
ferocious, and intolerant of all the nations of the south."[22] They lived
a nomadic life, plundering the Negroes. To such depths did the mighty
Songhay fall.

As the Songhay declined a new power arose in the nineteenth century, the
Fula. The Fula, who vary in race from Berber mulattoes to full-blooded
Negroes, may be the result of a westward migration of some people like the
"Leukoaethiopi" of Pliny, or they may have arisen from the migration of
Berber mulattoes in the western oases, driven south by Romans and Arabs.

These wandering herdsmen lived on the Senegal River and the ocean in very
early times and were not heard of until the nineteenth century. By this
time they had changed to a Negro or dark mulatto people and lived
scattered in small communities between the Atlantic and Darfur. They were
without political union or national sentiment, but were all Mohammedans.
Then came a sudden change, and led by a religious fanatic, these despised
and persecuted people became masters of the central Sudan. They were the
ones who at last broke down that great wedge of resisting Atlantic
culture, after it had been undermined and disintegrated by the American
slave trade.

Thus Islam finally triumphed in the Sudan and the ancient culture combined
with the new. In the Sudan to-day one may find evidences of the union of
two classes of people. The representatives of the older civilization dwell
as peasants in small communities, carrying on industries and speaking a
large number of different languages. With them or above them is the ruling
Mohammedan caste, speaking four main languages: Mandingo, Hausa, Fula, and
Arabic. These latter form the state builders. Negro blood predominates
among both classes, but naturally there is more Berber blood among the
Mohammedan invaders.

Europe during the middle ages had some knowledge of these movements in the
Sudan and Africa. Melle and Songhay appear on medieval maps. In literature
we have many allusions: the mulatto king, Feirifis, was one of Wolfram von
Eschenbach's heroes; Prester John furnished endless lore; Othello, the
warrior, and the black king represented by medieval art as among the three
wise men, and the various black Virgin Marys' all show legendary knowledge
of what African civilization was at that time doing.

It is a curious commentary on modern prejudice that most of this splendid
history of civilization and uplift is unknown to-day, and men confidently
assert that Negroes have no history.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, II, 359-360.

[18] Ibn Khaldun, quoted in Lugard, p. 128.

[19] Quoted in Lugard, p. 180.

[20] Es-Sa 'di, quoted by Lugard, p. 199.

[21] Lugard, p. 373.

[22] Mungo Park, quoted in Lugard, p. 374.




V GUINEA AND CONGO


One of the great cities of the Sudan was Jenne. The chronicle says "that
its markets are held every day of the week and its populations are very
enormous. Its seven thousand villages are so near to one another that the
chief of Jenne has no need of messengers. If he wishes to send a note to
Lake Dibo, for instance, it is cried from the gate of the town and
repeated from village to village, by which means it reaches its
destination almost instantly."[23]



From the name of this city we get the modern name Guinea, which is used
to-day to designate the country contiguous to the great gulf of that
name--a territory often referred to in general as West Africa. Here,
reaching from the mouth of the Gambia to the mouth of the Niger, is a
coast of six hundred miles, where a marvelous drama of world history has
been enacted. The coast and its hinterland comprehends many well-known
names. First comes ancient Guinea, then, modern Sierra Leone and Liberia;
then follow the various "coasts" of ancient traffic--the grain, ivory,
gold, and slave coasts--with the adjoining territories of Ashanti,
Dahomey, Lagos, and Benin, and farther back such tribal and territorial
names as those of the Mandingoes, Yorubas, the Mossi, Nupe, Borgu, and
others.

Recent investigation makes it certain that an ancient civilization existed
on this coast which may have gone back as far as three thousand years
before Christ. Frobenius, perhaps fancifully, identified this African
coast with the Atlantis of the Greeks and as part of that great western
movement in human culture, "beyond the pillars of Hercules," which
thirteen centuries before Christ strove with Egypt and the East. It is, at
any rate, clear that ancient commerce reached down the west coast. The
Phoenicians, 600 B.C., and the Carthaginians, a century or more later,
record voyages, and these may have been attempted revivals of still more
ancient intercourse.

These coasts at some unknown prehistoric period were peopled from the
Niger plateau toward the north and west by the black West African type of
Negro, while along the west end of the desert these Negroes mingled with
the Berbers, forming various Negroid races.

Movement and migration is evident along this coast in ancient and modern
times. The Yoruba-Benin-Dahomey peoples were among the earliest arrivals,
with their remarkable art and industry, which places them in some lines of
technique abreast with the modern world. Behind them came the Mossi from
the north, and many other peoples in recent days have filtered through,
like the Limba and Temni of Sierra Leone and the Agni-Ashanti, who moved
from Borgu some two thousand years ago to the Gold and Ivory coasts.

We have already noted in the main the history of black men along the
wonderful Niger and seen how, pushing up from the Gulf of Guinea, a
powerful wedge of ancient culture held back Islam for a thousand years,
now victorious, now stubbornly disputing every inch of retreat. The center
of this culture lay probably, in oldest times, above the Bight of Benin,
along the Slave Coast, and reached east, west, and north. We trace it
to-day not only in the remarkable tradition of the natives, but in stone
monuments, architecture, industrial and social organization, and works of
art in bronze, glass, and terra cotta.

Benin art has been practiced without interruption for centuries, and Von
Luschan says that it is "of extraordinary significance that by the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a local and monumental art had been
learned in Benin which in many respects equaled European art and developed
a technique of the very highest accomplishment."[24]

Summing up Yoruban civilization, Frobenius concluded that "the technical
summit of that civilization was reached in the terra-cotta industry, and
that the most important achievements in art were not expressed in stone,
but in fine clay baked in the furnace; that hollow casting was thoroughly
known, too, and practiced by these people; that iron was mainly used for
decoration; that, whatever their purpose, they kept their glass beads in
stoneware urns within their own locality, and that they manufactured both
earthen and glass ware; that the art of weaving was highly developed among
them; that the stone monuments, it is true, show some dexterity in
handling and are so far instructive, but in other respects evidence a
cultural condition insufficiently matured to grasp the utility of stone
monumental material; and, above all, that the then great and significant
idea of the universe as imaged in the Templum was current in those
days."[25]

Effort has naturally been made to ascribe this civilization to white
people. First it was ascribed to Portuguese influence, but much of it is
evidently older than the Portuguese discovery. Egypt and India have been
evoked and Greece and Carthage. But all these explanations are
far-fetched. If ever a people exhibited unanswerable evidence of
indigenous civilization, it is the west-coast Africans. Undoubtedly they
adapted much that came to them, utilized new ideas, and grew from contact.
But their art and culture is Negro through and through.

Yoruba forms one of the three city groups of West Africa; another is
around Timbuktu, and a third in the Hausa states. The Timbuktu cities have
from five to fifteen hundred towns, while the Yoruba cities have one
hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants and more. The Hausa cities are many
of them important, but few are as large as the Yoruba cities and they lie
farther apart. AH three centers, however, are connected with the Niger,
and the group nearest the coast--that is, the Yoruba cities--has the
greatest numbers of towns, the most developed architectural styles, and
the oldest institutions.

The Yoruba cities are not only different from the Sudanese in population,
but in their social relations. The Sudanese cities were influenced from
the desert and the Mediterranean, and form nuclei of larger surrounding
monarchial states. The Yoruba cities, on the other hand, remained
comparatively autonomous organizations down to modern times, and their
relative importance changed from time to time without developing an
imperialistic idea or subordinating the group to one overpowering city.

This social and industrial state of the Yorubas formerly spread and
wielded great influence. We find Yoruba reaching out and subduing states
like Nupe toward the northward. But the industrial democracy and city
autonomy of Yoruba lent itself indifferently to conquest, and the state
fell eventually a victim to the fanatical Fula Mohammedans and was made a
part of the modern sultanate of Gando.

West of Yoruba on the lower courses of the Niger is Benin, an ancient
state which in 1897 traced its twenty-three kings back one thousand years;
some legends even named a line of sixty kings. It seems probable that
Benin developed the imperial idea and once extended its rule into the
Congo valley. Later and also to the west of the Yoruba come two states
showing a fiercer and ruder culture, Dahomey and Ashanti. The state of
Dahomey was founded by Tacondomi early in the seventeenth century, and
developed into a fierce and bloody tyranny with wholesale murder. The king
had a body of two thousand to five thousand Amazons renowned for their
bravery and armed with rifles. The kingdom was overthrown by the French in
1892-93. Under Sai Tutu, Ashanti arose to power in the seventeenth
century. A military aristocracy with cruel blood sacrifices was formed. By
1816 the king had at his disposal two hundred thousand soldiers. The
Ashanti power was crushed by the English in the war of 1873-74.

In these states and in later years in Benin the whole character of
west-coast culture seems to change. In place of the Yoruban culture, with
its city democracy, its elevated religious ideas, its finely organized
industry, and its noble art, came Ashanti and Dahomey. What was it that
changed the character of the west coast from this to the orgies of war and
blood sacrifice which we read of later in these lands?

There can be but one answer: the slave trade. Not simply the sale of men,
but an organized traffic of such proportions and widely organized
ramifications as to turn the attention and energies of men from nearly all
other industries, encourage war and all the cruelest passions of war, and
concentrate this traffic in precisely that part of Africa farthest from
the ancient Mediterranean lines of trade.

We need not assume that the cultural change was sudden or absolute.
Ancient Yoruba had the cruelty of a semi-civilized land, but it was not
dominant or tyrannical. Modern Benin and Dahomey showed traces of skill,
culture, and industry along with inexplicable cruelty and
bloodthirstiness. But it was the slave trade that turned the balance and
set these lands backward. Dahomey was the last word in a series of human
disasters which began with the defeat of the Askias at Tenkadibou.[26]

From the middle of the fifteenth to the last half of the nineteenth
centuries the American slave trade centered in Guinea and devastated the
coast morally, socially, and physically. European rum and fire arms were
traded for human beings, and it was not until 1787 that any measures were
taken to counteract this terrible scourge. In that year the idea arose of
repatriating stolen Negroes on that coast and establishing civilized
centers to supplant the slave trade. About four hundred Negroes from
England were sent to Sierra Leone, to whom the promoters considerately
added sixty white prostitutes as wives. The climate on the low coast,
however, was so deadly that new recruits were soon needed. An American
Negro, Thomas Peters, who had served as sergeant under Sir Henry Clinton
in the British army in America, went to England seeking an allotment of
land for his fellows. The Sierra Leone Company welcomed him and offered
free passage and land in Sierra Leone to the Negroes of Nova Scotia. As a
result fifteen vessels sailed with eleven hundred and ninety Negroes in
1792. Arriving in Africa, they found the chief white man in control there
so drunk that he soon died of delirium tremens. John Clarkson, however,
brother of Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist, eventually took the lead,
founded Freetown, and the colony began its checkered career. In 1896 the
colony was saved from insurrection by the exiled Maroon Negroes from
Jamaica. After 1833, when emancipation in English colonies took place,
severer measures against the slave trade was possible and the colony began
to grow. To-day its imports and exports amount to fifteen million dollars
a year.

Liberia was a similar American experiment. In 1816 American
philanthropists decided that slavery was bound to die out, but that the
problem lay in getting rid of the freed Negroes, of which there were then
two hundred thousand in the United States. Accordingly the American
Colonization Society was proposed this year and founded January 1, 1817,
with Bushrod Washington as President. It was first thought to encourage
migration to Sierra Leone, and eighty-eight Negroes were sent, but they
were not welcomed. As a result territory was bought in the present
confines of Liberia, December 15, 1821, and colonists began to arrive. A
little later an African depot for recaptured slaves taken in the
contraband slave trade, provided for in the Act of 1819, was established
and an agent was sent to Africa to form a settlement. Gradually this
settlement was merged with the settlement of the Colonization Society, and
from this union Liberia was finally evolved.

The last white governor of Liberia died in 1841 and was succeeded by the
first colored governor, Joseph J. Roberts, a Virginian. The total
population in 1843 was about twenty-seven hundred and ninety, and with
this as a beginning in 1847 Governor Roberts declared the independence of
the state. The recognition of Liberian independence by all countries
except the United States followed in 1849. The United States, not wishing
to receive a Negro minister, did not recognize Liberia until 1862.

No sooner was the independence of Liberia announced than England and
France began a long series of aggressions to limit her territory and
sovereignty. Considerable territory was lost by treaty, and in the effort
to get capital to develop the rest, Liberia was saddled with a debt of
four hundred thousand dollars, of which she received less than one hundred
thousand dollars in actual cash. Finally the Liberians turned to the
United States for capital and protection. As a result the Liberian customs
have been put under international control and Major Charles Young, the
ranking Negro officer in the United States army, with several colored
assistants, has been put in charge of the making of roads and drilling a
constabulary to keep order in the interior.

To-day Liberia has an area of forty thousand square miles, about three
hundred and fifty miles of coast line, and an estimated total population
of two million of which fifty thousand are civilized. The revenue amounted
in 1913 to $531,500. The imports in 1912 were $1,667,857 and the exports
$1,199,152. The latter consisted chiefly of rubber, palm oil and kernels,
coffee, piassava fiber, ivory, ginger, camwood, and arnotto.

Perhaps Liberia's greatest citizen was the late Edward Wilmot Blyden, who
migrated in early life from the Danish West Indies and became a prophet of
the renaissance of the Negro race.

Turning now from Guinea we pass down the west coast. In 1482 Diego Cam of
Portugal, sailing this coast, set a stone at the mouth of a great river
which he called "The Mighty," but which eventually came to be known by the
name of the powerful Negro kingdom through which it flowed--the Congo.

We must think of the valley of the Congo with its intricate interlacing of
water routes and jungle of forests as a vast caldron shut away at first
from the African world by known and unknown physical hindrances. Then it
was penetrated by the tiny red dwarfs and afterward horde after horde of
tall black men swirled into the valley like a maelstrom, moving usually
from north to east and from south to west.

The Congo valley became, therefore, the center of the making of what we
know to-day as the Bantu nations. They are not a unified people, but a
congeries of tribes of considerable physical diversity, united by the
compelling bond of language and other customs imposed on the conquered by
invading conquerors.

The history or these invasions we must to-day largely imagine. Between two
and three thousand years ago the wilder tribes of Negroes began to move
out of the region south or southeast of Lake Chad. This was always a land
of shadows and legends, where fearful cannibals dwelt and where no
Egyptian or Ethiopian or Sudanese armies dared to go. It is possible,
however, that pressure from civilization in the Nile valley and rising
culture around Lake Chad was at this time reenforced by expansion of the
Yoruba-Benin culture on the west coast. Perhaps, too, developing culture
around the Great Lakes in the east beckoned or the riotous fertility of
the Congo valleys became known. At any rate the movement commenced, now by
slow stages, now in wild forays. There may have been a preliminary
movement from east to west to the Gulf of Guinea. The main movement,
however, was eastward, skirting the Congo forests and passing down by the
Victoria Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Here two paths beckoned: the lakes
and the sea to the east, the Congo to the west. A great stream of men
swept toward the ocean and, dividing, turned northward and fought its way
down the Nile valley and into the Abyssinian highlands; another branch
turned south and approached the Zambesi, where we shall meet it again.

Another horde of invaders turned westward and entered the valley of the
Congo in three columns. The northern column moved along the Lualaba and
Congo rivers to the Cameroons; the second column became the industrial and
state-building Luba and Lunda peoples in the southern Congo valley and
Angola; while the third column moved into Damaraland and mingled with
Bushman and Hottentot.

In the Congo valley the invaders settled in village and plain, absorbed
such indigenous inhabitants as they found or drove them deeper into the
forest, and immediately began to develop industry and political
organization. They became skilled agriculturists, raising in some
localities a profusion of cereals, fruit, and vegetables such as manioc,
maize, yams, sweet potatoes, ground nuts, sorghum, gourds, beans, peas,
bananas, and plantains. Everywhere they showed skill in mining and the
welding of iron, copper, and other metals. They made weapons, wire and
ingots, cloth, and pottery, and a widespread system of trade arose. Some
tribes extracted rubber from the talamba root; others had remarkable
breeds of fowl and cattle, and still others divided their people by crafts
into farmers, smiths, boat builders, warriors, cabinet makers, armorers,
and speakers. Women here and there took part in public assemblies and were
rulers in some cases. Large towns were built, some of which required hours
to traverse from end to end.

Many tribes developed intelligence of a high order. Wissmann called the Ba
Luba "a nation of thinkers." Bateman found them "thoroughly and
unimpeachably honest, brave to foolhardiness, and faithful to each other
and to their superiors." One of their kings, Calemba, "a really princely
prince," Bateman says would "amongst any people be a remarkable and indeed
in many respects a magnificent man."[27]

These beginnings of human culture were, however, peculiarly vulnerable to
invading hosts of later comers. There were no natural protecting barriers
like the narrow Nile valley or the Kong mountains or the forests below
Lake Chad. Once the pathways to the valley were open and for hundreds of
years the newcomers kept arriving, especially from the welter of tribes
south of the Sudan and west of the Nile, which rising culture beyond kept
in unrest and turmoil.

Against these intruders there was but one defense, the State. State
building was thus forced on the Congo valley. How early it started we
cannot say, but when the Portuguese arrived in the fifteenth century,
there had existed for centuries a large state among the Ba-Congo, with its
capital at the city now known as San Salvador.

The Negro Mfumu, or emperor, was eventually induced to accept
Christianity. His sons and many young Negroes of high birth were taken to
Portugal to be educated. There several were raised to the Catholic
priesthood and one became bishop; others distinguished themselves at the
universities. Thus suddenly there arose a Catholic kingdom south of the
valley of the Congo, which lasted three centuries, but was partially
overthrown by invading barbarians from the interior in the seventeenth
century. A king of Congo still reigns as pensioner of Portugal, and on the
coast to-day are the remains of the kingdom in the civilized blacks and
mulattoes, who are intelligent traders and boat builders.

Meantime the Luba-Lunda people to the eastward founded Kantanga and other
states, and in the sixteenth century the larger and more ambitious realm
of the Mwata Yamvo. The last of the fourteen rulers of this line was
feudal lord of about three hundred chiefs, who paid him tribute in ivory,
skins, corn, cloth, and salt. His territory included about one hundred
thousand square miles and two million or more inhabitants. Eventually this
state became torn by internal strife and revolt, especially by attacks
from the south across the Congo-Zambesi divide.

Farther north, among the Ba-Lolo and the Ba-Songo, the village policy
persisted and the cannibals of the northeast pressed down on the more
settled tribes. The result was a curious blending of war and industry,
artistic tastes and savage customs.

The organized slave trade of the Arabs penetrated the Congo valley in the
sixteenth century and soon was aiding all the forces of unrest and
turmoil. Industry was deranged and many tribes forced to take refuge in
caves and other hiding places.

Here, as on the west coast, disintegration and retrogression followed, for
as the American traffic lessened, the Arabian traffic increased. When,
therefore, Stanley opened the Congo valley to modern knowledge, Leopold II
of Belgium conceived the idea of founding here a free international state
which was to bring civilization to the heart of Africa. Consequently there
was formed in 1878 an international committee to study the region. Stanley
was finally commissioned to inquire as to the best way of introducing
European trade and culture. "I am charged," he said, "to open and keep
open, if possible, all such districts and countries as I may explore, for
the benefit of the commercial world. The mission is supported by a
philanthropic society, which numbers nobleminded men of several nations.
It is not a religious society, but my instructions are entirely of that
spirit. No violence must be used, and wherever rejected, the mission must
withdraw to seek another field."[28]

The Bula Matadi or Stone Breaker, as the natives called Stanley, threw
himself energetically into the work and had by 1881 built a road past the
falls to the plateau, where thousands of miles of river navigation were
thus opened. Stations were established, and by 1884 Stanley returned armed
with four hundred and fifty "treaties" with the native chiefs, and the new
"State" appealed to the world for recognition.

The United States first recognized the "Congo Free State," which was at
last made a sovereign power under international guarantees by the Congress
of Berlin in the year 1885, and Leopold II was chosen its king. The state
had an area of about nine hundred thousand square miles, with a population
of about thirty million.

One of the first tasks before the new state was to check the Arab slave
traders. The Arabs had hitherto acted as traders and middlemen along the
upper Congo, and when the English and Congo state overthrew Mzidi, the
reigning king in the Kantanga country, a general revolt of the Arabs and
mulattoes took place. For a time, 1892-93, the whites were driven out, but
in a year or two the Arabs and their allies were subdued.

Humanity and commerce, however, did not replace the Arab slave traders.
Rather European greed and serfdom were substituted. The land was
confiscated by the state and farmed out to private Belgian corporations.
The wilder cannibal tribes were formed into a militia to prey on the
industrious, who were taxed with specific amounts of ivory and rubber, and
scourged and mutilated if they failed to pay. Harris declares that King
Leopold's regime meant the death of twelve million natives.

"Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian atrocities, and they were terrible
indeed; but what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was the
fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was the desolation and murder
in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction
of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the
introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people
dumb with horror--in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality
overwhelmed the Congo tribes."[29]

So notorious did the exploitation and misrule become that Leopold was
forced to take measures toward reform, and finally in 1909 the Free State
became a Belgian colony. Some reforms have been inaugurated and others may
follow, but the valley of the Congo will long stand as a monument of shame
to Christianity and European civilization.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Quoted in Du Bois: _Timbuktu_.

[24] Von Luschan: _Verhandlungen der berliner Gesellschaft fuer
Anthropologie_, etc., 1898.

[25] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I.

[26] Cf. p. 58.

[27] Keane: _Africa_, II, 117-118.

[28] _The Congo_, I, Chap. III.

[29] Harris: _Dawn in Africa_.




VI THE GREAT LAKES AND ZYMBABWE


We have already seen how a branch of the conquering Bantus turned eastward
by the Great Lakes and thus reached the sea and eventually both the Nile
and South Africa.

This brought them into the ancient and mysterious land far up the Nile,
south of Ethiopia. Here lay the ancient Punt of the Egyptians (whether we
place it in Somaliland or, as seems far more likely, around the Great
Lakes) and here, as the Egyptians thought, their civilization began. The
earliest inhabitants of the land were apparently of the Bushman or
Hottentot type of Negro. These were gradually pushed southward and
westward by the intrusion of the Nilotic Negroes. Five thousand years
before Christ the mulatto Egyptians were in the Nile valley below the
First Cataract. The Negroes were in the Nile valley down as far as the
Second Cataract and between the First and Second Cataracts were Negroes
into whose veins Semitic blood had penetrated more or less. These mixed
elements became the ancestors of the modern Somali, Gala, Bishari, and
Beja and spread Negro blood into Arabia beyond the Red Sea. The Nilotic
Negroes to the south early became great traders in ivory, gold, leopard
skins, gums, beasts, birds, and slaves, and they opened up systematic
trade between Egypt and the Great Lakes.

The result was endless movement and migration both in ancient and modern
days, which makes the cultural history of the Great Lakes region very
difficult to understand. Three great elements are, however, clear: first,
the Egyptian element, by the northward migration of the Negro ancestors of
predynastic Egypt and the southern conquests and trade of dynastic Egypt;
second, the Semitic influence from Arabia and Persia; third, the Negro
influences from western and central Africa.

The migration of the Bantu is the first clearly defined movement of modern
times. As we have shown, they began to move southward at least a thousand
years before Christ, skirting the Congo forests and wandering along the
Great Lakes and down to the Zambesi. What did they find in this land?

We do not know certainly, but from what we do know we may reconstruct the
situation in this way: the primitive culture of the Hottentots of Punt had
been further developed by them and by other stronger Negro stocks until it
reached a highly developed culture. Widespread agriculture, and mining of
gold, silver, and precious stones started a trade that penetrated to Asia
and North Africa. This may have been the source of the gold of the Ophir.

The state that thus arose became in time strongly organized; it employed
slave labor in crushing the hard quartz, sinking pits, and carrying
underground galleries; it carried out a system of irrigation and built
stone buildings and fortifications. There exists to-day many remains of
these building operations in the Kalahari desert and in northern Rhodesia.
Five hundred groups, covering over an area of one hundred and fifty
thousand square miles, lie between the Limpopo and Zambesi rivers. Mining
operations have been carried on in these plains for generations, and one
estimate is that at least three hundred and seventy-five million dollars'
worth of gold had been extracted. Some have thought that the older
workings must date back to one or even three thousand years before the
Christian era.

"There are other mines," writes De Barros in the seventeenth century,[30]
"in a district called Toroa, which is otherwise known as the kingdom of
Butua, whose ruler is a prince, by name Burrow, a vassal of Benomotapa.
This land is near the other which we said consisted of extensive plains,
and those ruins are the oldest that are known in that region. They are all
in a plain, in the middle of which stands a square fortress, all of
dressed stones within and without, well wrought and of marvelous size,
without any lime showing the joinings, the walls of which are over
twenty-five hands thick, but the height is not so great compared to the
thickness. And above the gateway of that edifice is an inscription which
some Moorish [Arab] traders who were there could not read, nor say what
writing it was. All these structures the people of this country call
Symbaoe [Zymbabwe], which with them means a court, for every place where
Benomotapa stays is so called."

Later investigation has shown that these buildings were in many cases
carefully planned and built fortifications. At Niekerk, for instance, nine
or ten hills are fortified on concentric walls thirty to fifty feet in
number, with a place for the village at the top. The buildings are forts,
miniature citadels, and also workshops and cattle kraals. Iron implements
and handsome pottery were found here, and close to the Zambesi there are
extraordinary fortifications. Farther south at Inyanga there is less
strong defense, and at Umtali there are no fortifications, showing that
builders feared invasion from the north.

These people worked in gold, silver, tin, copper, and bronze and made
beautiful pottery. There is evidence of religious significance in the
buildings, and what is called the temple was the royal residence and
served as a sort of acropolis. The surrounding residences in the valley
were evidently occupied by wealthy traders and were not fortified. Here
the gold was received from surrounding districts and bartered with
traders.

As usual there have been repeated attempts to find an external and
especially an Asiatic origin for this culture. So far, however,
archeological research seems to confirm its African origin. The
implements, weapons, and art are characteristically African and there is
no evident connection with outside sources. How far back this civilization
dates it is difficult to say, a great deal depending upon the dating of
the iron age in South Africa. If it was the same as in the Mediterranean
regions, the earliest limit was 1000 B.C.; it might, however, have been
much earlier, especially if, as seems probable, the use of iron originated
in Africa. On the other hand the culmination of this culture has been
placed by some as late as the modern middle ages.

What was it that overthrew this civilization? Undoubtedly the same sort of
raids of barbarous warriors that we have known in our day. For instance,
in 1570 there came upon the country of Mozambique, farther up the coast,
"such an inundation of pagans that they could not be numbered. They came
from that part of Monomotapa where is the great lake from which spring
these great rivers. They left no other signs of the towns they passed but
the heaps of ruins and the bones of inhabitants." So, too, it is told how
the Zimbas came, "a strange people never before seen there, who, leaving
their own country, traversed a great part of this Ethiopia like a scourge
of God, destroying every living thing they came across. They were twenty
thousand strong and marched without children or women," just as four
hundred years later the Zulu impi marched. Again in 1602 a horde of people
came from the interior called the Cabires, or cannibals. They entered the
kingdom of Monomotapa, and the reigning king, being weak, was in great
terror. Thus gradually the Monomotapa fell, and its power was scattered
until the Kaffir-Zulu raids of our day.[31]

The Arab writer, Macoudi, in the tenth century visited the East African
coast somewhere north of the equator. He found the Indian Sea at that time
frequented by Arab and Persian vessels, but there were no Asiatic
settlements on the African shore. The Bantu, or as he calls them, Zenji,
inhabited the country as far south as Sofala, where they bordered upon the
Bushmen. These Bantus were under a ruler with the dynastic title of
Waklimi. He was paramount over all the other tribes of the north and could
put three hundred thousand men in the field. They used oxen as beasts of
burden and the country produced gold in abundance, while panther skin was
largely used for clothing. Ivory was sold to Asia and the Bantu used iron
for personal adornment instead of gold or silver. They rode on their oxen,
which ran with great speed, and they ate millet and honey and the flesh of
animals.

Inland among the Bantu arose later the line of rulers called the
Monomotapa among the gifted Makalanga. Their state was very extensive,
ranging from the coast far into the interior and from Mozambique down to
the Limpopo. It was strongly organized, with feudatory allied states, and
carried on an extensive commerce by means of the traders on the coast. The
kings were converted to nominal Christianity by the Portuguese.

There are indications of trade between Nupe in West Africa and Sofala on
the east coast, and certainly trade between Asia and East Africa is
earlier than the beginning of the Christian era. The Asiatic traders
settled on the coast and by means of mulatto and Negro merchants brought
Central Africa into contact with Arabia, India, China, and Malaysia.

The coming of the Asiatics was in this wise: Zaide, great-grandson of Ali,
nephew and son-in-law of Mohammed, was banished from Arabia as a heretic.
He passed over to Africa and formed temporary settlements. His people
mingled with the blacks, and the resulting mulatto traders, known as the
Emoxaidi, seem to have wandered as far south as the equator. Soon other
Arabian families came over on account of oppression and founded the towns
of Magadosho and Brava, both not far north of the equator. The first town
became a place of importance and other settlements were made. The
Emoxaidi, whom the later immigrants regarded as heretics, were driven
inland and became the interpreting traders between the coast and the
Bantu. Some wanderers from Magadosho came into the Port of Sofala and
there learned that gold could be obtained. This led to a small Arab
settlement at that place.

Seventy years later, and about fifty years before the Norman conquest of
England, certain Persians settled at Kilwa in East Africa, led by Ali, who
had been despised in his land because he was the son of a black Abyssinian
slave mother. Kilwa, because of this, eventually became the most important
commercial station on the East African coast, and in this and all these
settlements a very large mulatto population grew up, so that very soon the
whole settlement was indistinguishable in color from the Bantu.

In 1330 Ibn Batuta visited Kilwa. He found an abundance of ivory and some
gold and heard that the inhabitants of Kilwa had gained victories over the
Zenji or Bantu. Kilwa had at that time three hundred mosques and was
"built of handsome houses of stone and lime, and very lofty, with their
windows like those of the Christians; in the same way it has streets, and
these houses have got terraces, and the wood-work is with the masonry,
with plenty of gardens, in which there are many fruit trees and much
water."[32] Kilwa after a time captured Sofala, seizing it from Magadosho.
Eventually Kilwa became mistress of the island of Zanzibar, of Mozambique,
and of much other territory. The forty-third ruler of Kilwa after Ali was
named Abraham, and he was ruling when the Portuguese arrived. The latter
reported that these people cultivated rice and cocoa, built ships, and had
considerable commerce with Asia. All the people, of whatever color, were
Mohammedans, and the richer were clothed in gorgeous robes of silk and
velvet. They traded with the inland Bantus and met numerous tribes,
receiving gold, ivory, millet, rice, cattle, poultry, and honey.

On the islands the Asiatics were independent, but on the main lands south
of Kilwa the sheiks ruled only their own people, under the overlordship of
the Bantus, to whom they were compelled to pay large tribute each year.

Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 and went north on the
east coast as far as India. In the next ten years the Portuguese had
occupied more than six different points on that coast, including
Sofala.[33]

Thus civilization waxed and waned in East Africa among prehistoric
Negroes, Arab and Persian mulattoes on the coast, in the Zend or Zeng
empire of Bantu Negroes, and later in the Bantu rule of the Monomotapa.
And thus, too, among later throngs of the fiercer, warlike Bantu, the
ancient culture of the land largely died. Yet something survived, and in
the modern Bantu state, language, and industry can be found clear links
that establish the essential identity of the absorbed peoples with the
builders of Zymbabwe.

So far we have traced the history of the lands into which the southward
stream of invading Bantus turned, and have followed them to the Limpopo
River. We turn now to the lands north from Lake Nyassa.

The aboriginal Negroes sustained in prehistoric time invasions from the
northeast by Negroids of a type like the ancient Egyptians and like the
modern Gallas, Masai, and Somalis. To these migrations were added attacks
from the Nile Negroes to the north and the Bantu invaders from the south.
This has led to great differences among the groups of the population and
in their customs. Some are fierce mountaineers, occupying hilly plateaus
six thousand feet above the sea level; others, like the Wa Swahili, are
traders on the coast. There are the Masai, chocolate-colored and
frizzly-haired, organized for war and cattle lifting; and Negroids like
the Gallas, who, blending with the Bantus, have produced the race of
modern Uganda.

It was in this region that the kingdom of Kitwara was founded by the Galla
chief, Kintu. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the empire was
dismembered, the largest share falling to Uganda. The ensuing history of
Uganda is of great interest. When King Mutesa came to the throne in 1862,
he found Mohammedan influences in his land and was induced to admit
English Protestants and French Catholics. Uganda thereupon became an
extraordinary religious battlefield between these three beliefs. Mutesa's
successor, Mwanga, caused an English bishop to be killed in 1885,
believing (as has since proven quite true) that the religion he offered
would be used as a cloak for conquest. The final result was that, after
open war between the religions, Uganda was made an English protectorate in
1894.

The Negroes of Uganda are an intelligent people who had organized a
complex feudal state. At the head stood the king, and under him twelve
feudal lords. The present king, Daudi Chua, is the young grandson of
Mutesa and rules under the overlordship of England.

Many things show the connection between Egypt and this part of Africa. The
same glass beads are found in Uganda and Upper Egypt, and similar canoes
are built. Harps and other instruments bear great resemblance. Finally the
Bahima, as the Galla invaders are called, are startlingly Egyptian in
type; at the same time they are undoubtedly Negro in hair and color.
Perhaps we have here the best racial picture of what ancient Egyptian and
upper Nile regions were in predynastic times and later.

Thus in outline was seen the mission of The People--La Bantu as they
called themselves. They migrated, they settled, they tore down, and they
learned, and they in turn were often overthrown by succeeding tribes of
their own folk. They rule with their tongue and their power all Africa
south of the equator, save where the Europeans have entered. They have
never been conquered, although the gold and diamond traders have sought to
debauch them, and the ivory and rubber capitalists have cruelly wronged
their weaker groups. They are the Africans with whom the world of
to-morrow must reckon, just as the world of yesterday knew them to its
cost.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Quoted in Bent: _Ruined Cities of Mashonaland_, pp. 203 ff.

[31] Cf. "Ethiopia Oriental," by J. Dos Santos, in Theal's _Records of
South Africa_, Vol. VII.

[32] Barbosa, quoted in Keane, II, 482.

[33] It was called Sofala, from an Arabic word, and may be associated with
the Ophir of Solomon. So, too, the river Sabi, a little off Sofala, may be
associated with the name of the Queen of Sheba, whose lineage was supposed
to be perpetuated in the powerful Monomotapa as well as the Abyssinians.




VII THE WAR OF RACES AT LAND'S END


Primitive man in Africa is found in the interior jungles and down at
Land's End in South Africa. The Pygmy people in the jungles represent
to-day a small survival from the past, but a survival of curious interest,
pushed aside by the torrent of conquest. Also pushed on by these waves of
Bantu conquest, moved the ancient Abatwa or Bushmen. They are small in
stature, yellow in color, with crisp-curled hair. The traditions of the
Bushmen say that they came southward from the regions of the Great Lakes,
and indeed the king and queen of Punt, as depicted by the Egyptians, were
Bushmen or Hottentots.

Their tribes may be divided, in accordance with their noticeable artistic
talents, into the painters and the sculptors. The sculptors entered South
Africa by moving southward through the more central portions of the
country, crossing the Zambesi, and coming down to the Cape. The painters,
on the other hand, came through Damaraland on the west coast; when they
came to the great mountain regions, they turned eastward and can be traced
as far as the mountains opposite Delagoa Bay. The mass of them settled
down in the lower part of the Cape and in the Kalahari desert. The
painters were true cave dwellers, but the sculptors lived in large
communities on the stony hills, which they marked with their carvings.

These Bushmen believed in an ancient race of people who preceded them in
South Africa. They attributed magic power to these unknown folk, and said
that some of them had been translated as stars to the sky. Before their
groups were dispersed the Bushmen had regular government. Tribes with
their chiefs occupied well-defined tracts of country and were subdivided
into branch tribes under subsidiary chiefs. The great cave represented the
dignity and glory of the entire tribe.

The Bushmen suffered most cruelly in the succeeding migrations and
conquests of South Africa. They fought desperately in self-defense; they
saw their women and children carried into bondage and they themselves
hunted like wild beasts. Both savage and civilized men appropriated their
land. Still they were brave people. "In this struggle for existence their
bitterest enemies, of whatever shade of color they might be, were forced
to make an unqualified acknowledgement of the courage and daring they so
invariably exhibited."[34]

Here, to a remote corner of the world, where, as one of their number said,
they had supposed that the only beings in the world were Bushmen and
lions, came a series of invaders. It was the outer ripples of civilization
starting far away, the indigenous and external civilizations of Africa
beating with great impulse among the Ethiopians and the Egyptian mulattoes
and Sudanese Negroes and Yorubans, and driving the Bantu race southward.
The Bantus crowded more and more upon the primitive Bushmen, and probably
a mingling of the Bushmen and the Bantus gave rise to the Hottentots.

The Hottentots, or as they called themselves, Khoi Khoin (Men of Men),
were physically a stronger race than the Abatwa and gave many evidences of
degeneration from a high culture, especially in the "phenomenal
perfection" of a language which "is so highly developed, both in its rich
phonetic system, as represented by a very delicately graduated series of
vowels and diphthongs, and in its varied grammatical structure, that
Lepsius sought for its affinities in the Egyptian at the other end of the
continent."

When South Africa was first discovered there were two distinct types of
Hottentot. The more savage Hottentots were simply large, strong Bushmen,
using weapons superior to the Bushmen, without domestic cattle or sheep.
Other tribes nearer the center of South Africa were handsomer in
appearance and raised an Egyptian breed of cattle which they rode.

In general the Hottentots were yellow, with close-curled hair, high cheek
bones, and somewhat oblique eyes. Their migration commenced about the end
of the fourteenth century and was, as is usual in such cases, a scattered,
straggling movement. The traditions of the Hottentots point to the lake
country of Central Africa as their place of origin, whence they were
driven by the Bechuana tribes of the Bantu. They fled westward to the
ocean and then turned south and came upon the Bushmen, whom they had only
partially subdued when the Dutch arrived as settlers in 1652.

The Dutch "Boers" began by purchasing land from the Hottentots and then,
as they grew more powerful, they dispossessed the dark men and tried to
enslave them. There grew up a large Dutch-Hottentot class. Indeed the
filtration of Negro blood noticeable in modern Boers accounts for much
curious history. Soon after the advent of the Dutch some of the
Hottentots, of whom there were not more than thirty or forty thousand, led
by the Korana clans, began slowly to retreat northward, followed by the
invading Dutch and fighting the Dutch, each other, and the wretched
Bushmen. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Hottentots had
reached the great interior plain and met the on-coming outposts of the
Bantu nations.

The Bechuana, whom the Hottentots first met, were the most advanced of the
Negro tribes of Central Africa. They had crossed the Zambesi in the
fourteenth or fifteenth century; their government was a sort of feudal
system with hereditary chiefs and vassals; they were careful
agriculturists, laid out large towns with great regularity, and were the
most skilled of smiths. They used stone in building, carved on wood, and
many of them, too, were keen traders. These tribes, coming southward,
occupied the east-central part of South Africa comprising modern
Bechuanaland. Apparently they had started from the central lake country
somewhere late in the fifteenth century, and by the middle of the
eighteenth century one of their great chiefs, Tao, met the on-coming
Hottentots.

The Hottentots compelled Tao to retreat, but the mulatto Gricquas arrived
from the south, and, allying themselves with the Bechuana, stopped the
rout. The Gricquas sprang from and took their name from an old Hottentot
tribe. They were led by Kok and Barends, and by adding other elements they
became, partly through their own efforts and partly through the efforts of
the missionaries, a community of fairly well civilized people. In
Gricqualand West the mulatto Gricquas, under their chiefs Kok and
Waterboer, lived until the discovery of diamonds.

The Griquas and Bechuana tribes were thus gradually checking the
Hottentots when, in the nineteenth century, there came two new
developments: first, the English took possession of Cape Colony, and the
Dutch began to move in larger numbers toward the interior; secondly, a
newer and fiercer element of the Bantu tribes, the Zulu-Kaffirs, appeared.
The Kaffirs, or as they called themselves, the Amazosas, claimed descent
from Zuide, a great chief of the fifteenth century in the lake country.
They are among the tallest people in the world, averaging five feet ten
inches, and are slim, well-proportioned, and muscular. The more warlike
tribes were usually clothed in leopard or ox skins. Cattle formed their
chief wealth, stock breeding and hunting and fighting their main pursuits.
Mentally they were men of tact and intelligence, with a national religion
based upon ancestor worship, while their government was a patriarchal
monarchy limited by an aristocracy and almost feudal in character. The
common law which had grown up from the decisions of the chiefs made the
head of the family responsible for the conduct of its branches, a village
for all its residents, and the clan for all its villages. Finally there
was a paramount chief, who was the civil and military father of his
people. These people laid waste to the coast regions and in 1779 came in
contact with the Dutch. A series of Dutch-Kaffir wars ensued between 1779
and 1795 in which the Dutch were hard pressed.

In 1806 the English took final possession of Cape Colony. At that time
there were twenty-five thousand Boers, twenty-five thousand pure and mixed
Hottentots, and twenty-five thousand slaves secured from the east coast.
Between 1811 and 1877 there were six Kaffir-English wars. One of these in
1818 grew out of the ignorant interference of the English with the Kaffir
tribal system; then there came a terrible war between 1834 and 1835,
followed by the annexation of all the country as far as the Kei River. The
war of the Axe (1846-48) led to further annexation by the British.

Hostilities broke out again in 1856 and 1863. In the former year,
despairing of resistance to invading England, a prophet arose who advised
the wholesale destruction of all Kaffir property except weapons, in order
that this faith might bring back their dead heroes. The result was that
almost a third of the nation perished from hunger. Fresh troubles occurred
in 1877, when the Ama-Xosa confederacy was finally broken up, and to-day
gradually these tribes are passing from independence to a state of mild
vassalage to the British.

Meantime the more formidable part of the Zulu-Kaffirs had been united
under the terrible Chief Chaka. He had organized a military system, not a
new one by any means, but one of which we hear rumors back in the lake
regions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. McDonald says, "There
has probably never been a more perfect system of discipline than that by
which Chaka ruled his army and kingdom. At a review an order might be
given in the most unexpected manner, which meant death to hundreds. If the
regiment hesitated or dared to remonstrate, so perfect was the discipline
and so great the jealousy that another was ready to cut them down. A
warrior returning from battle without his arms was put to death without
trial. A general returning unsuccessful in the main purpose of his
expedition shared the same fate. Whoever displeased the king was
immediately executed. The traditional courts practically ceased to exist
so far as the will and action of the tyrant was concerned." With this army
Chaka fell on tribe after tribe. The Bechuana fled before him and some
tribes of them were entirely destroyed. The Hottentots suffered severely
and one of his rival Zulu tribes under Umsilikatsi fled into Matabililand,
pushing back the Bechuana. By the time the English came to Port Natal,
Chaka was ruling over the whole southeastern seaboard, from the Limpopo
River to Cape Colony, including the Orange and Transvaal states and the
whole of Natal. Chaka was killed in 1828 and was eventually succeeded by
his brother Dingan, who reigned twelve years. It was during Dingan's reign
that England tried to abolish slavery in Cape Colony, but did not pay
promptly for the slaves, as she had promised; the result was the so-called
"Great Trek," about 1834, when thousands of Boers went into the interior
across the Orange and Vaal rivers.

Dingan and these Boers were soon engaged in a death struggle in which the
Zulus were repulsed and Dingan replaced by Panda. Under this chief there
was something like repose for sixteen years, but in 1856 civil war broke
out between his sons, one of whom, Cetewayo, succeeded his father in 1882.
He fell into border disputes with the English, and the result was one of
the fiercest clashes of Europe and Africa in modern days. The Zulus fought
desperately, annihilating at one time a whole detachment and killing the
young prince Napoleon. But after all it was assagais against machine guns,
and the Zulus were finally defeated at Ulundi, July 4, 1879. Thereupon
Zululand was divided among thirteen semi-independent chiefs and became a
British protectorate.

[Illustration: Ancient Kingdom of Africa]

Since then the best lands have been gradually reoccupied by a large number
of tribes--Kaffirs from the south and Zulus from the north. The tribal
organization, without being actually broken up, has been deprived of its
dangerous features by appointing paid village headmen and transforming the
hereditary chief into a British government official. In Natal there are
about one hundred and seventy tribal chiefs, and nearly half of these have
been appointed by the governor.

Umsilikatsi, who had been driven into Matabililand by the terrible Chaka
in 1828 and defeated by the Dutch in 1837, had finally reestablished his
headquarters in Rhodesia in 1838. Here he introduced the Zulu military
system and terrorized the peaceful and industrious Bechuana populations.
Lobengula succeeded Umsilikatsi in 1870 and, realizing that his power was
waning, began to retreat northward toward the Zambesi. He was finally
defeated by the British and native forces in 1893 and the land was
incorporated into South Central Africa.

The result of all these movements was to break the inhabitants of
Bechuanaland into numerous fragments. There were small numbers of mulatto
Gricquas in the southwest and similar Bastaards in the northwest. The
Hottentots and Bushmen were dispersed into groups and seem doomed to
extinction, the last Hottentot chief being deposed in 1810 and replaced by
an English magistrate. Partially civilized Hottentots still live grouped
together in their kraals and are members of Christian churches. The
Bechuana hold their own in several centers; one is in Basutoland, west of
Natal, where a number of tribes were welded together under the far-sighted
Moshesh into a modern and fairly well civilized nation. In the north part
of Bechuanaland are the self-governing Bamangwato and the Batwana, the
former ruled by Khama, one of the canniest of modern rulers in Africa.

Meantime, in Portuguese territory south of the Zambesi, there arose Gaza,
a contemporary and rival of Chaka. His son, Manikus, was deputed by
Dingan, Chaka's successor, to drive out the Portuguese. This Manikus
failed to do, and to escape vengeance he migrated north of the Limpopo.
Here he established his military kraal in a district thirty-six hundred
and fifty feet above the sea and one hundred and twenty miles inland from
Sofala. From this place his soldiery nearly succeeded in driving the
Portuguese out of East Africa. He was succeeded by his son, Umzila, and
Umzila's brother, Guzana (better known as Gungunyana), who exercised for a
time joint authority. Gungunyana was finally overthrown in November, 1895,
captured, and removed to the Azores.

[Illustration: Races in Africa]

North of the Zambesi, in British territory, the chief role in recent times
has been played by the Bechuana, the first of the Bantu to return
northward after the South African migration. Livingstone found there the
Makolo, who with other tribes had moved northward on account of the
pressure of the Dutch and Zulus below, and by conquering various tribes
in the Zambesi region had established a strong power. This kingdom was
nearly overthrown by the rebellion of the Barotse, and in 1875 the Barotse
kingdom comprised a large territory. To-day their king, Lewanika, rules
directly and indirectly fifty thousand square miles, with a population
between one and two and a half million. They are under a protectorate of
the British.

In Southwest Africa, Hottentot mulattoes crossing from the Cape caused
widespread change. They were strong men and daring fighters and soon
became dominant in what is now German Southwest Africa, where they fought
fiercely with the Bantu Ova-Hereros. Armed with fire arms, these Namakwa
Hottentots threatened Portuguese West Africa, but Germany intervened,
ostensibly to protect missionaries. By spending millions of dollars and
thousands of soldiers Germany has nearly exterminated these brave men.

Thus we have between the years 1400 and 1900 a great period of migration
up to 1750, when Bushmen, Hottentot, Bantu, and Dutch appeared in
succession at Land's End. In the latter part of the eighteenth century we
have the clash of the Hottentots and Bechuana, followed in the nineteenth
century by the terrible wars of Chaka, the Kaffirs, and Matabili. Finally,
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, we see the gradual
subjection of the Kaffir-Zulus and the Bechuana under the English and the
final conquest of the Dutch. The resulting racial problem in South Africa
is one of great intricacy.

To the racial problem has been added the tremendous problem of modern
capital brought by the discovery of gold and diamond mines, so that the
future of the Negro race is peculiarly bound up in developments here at
Land's End, where the ship of the Flying Dutchman beats back and forth on
its endless quest.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Stowe: Native Races of South Africa, pp. 215-216.




VIII AFRICAN CULTURE


We have followed the history of mankind in Africa down the valley of the
Nile, past Ethiopia to Egypt; we have seen kingdoms arise along the great
bend of the Niger and strive with the ancient culture at its mouth. We
have seen the remnants of mankind at Land's End, the ancient culture at
Punt and Zymbabwe, and followed the invading Bantu east, south, and west
to their greatest center in the vast jungle of the Congo valleys.

We must now gather these threads together and ask what manner of men these
were and how far and in what way they progressed on the road of human
culture.

That Negro peoples were the beginners of civilization along the Ganges,
the Euphrates, and the Nile seems proven. Early Babylon was founded by a
Negroid race. Hammurabi's code, the most ancient known, says "Anna and Bel
called me, Hammurabi the exalted prince, the worshiper of the gods; to
cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked, to prevent
the strong from oppressing the weak, to go forth like the sun over the
black-head race, to enlighten the land, and to further the welfare of the
people." The Assyrians show a distinct Negroid strain and early Egypt was
predominantly Negro. These earliest of cultures were crude and primitive,
but they represented the highest attainment of mankind after tens of
thousands of years in unawakened savagery.

It has often been assumed that the Negro is physically inferior to other
races and markedly distinguishable from them; modern science gives no
authority for such an assumption. The supposed inferiority cannot rest on
color,[35] for that is "due to the combined influences of a great number
of factors of environment working through physiological processes," and
"however marked the contrasts may be, there is no corresponding difference
in anatomical structure discoverable."[36] So, too, difference in texture
of hair is a matter of degree, not kind, and is caused by heat, moisture,
exposure, and the like.

The bony skeleton presents no distinctly racial lines of variation.
Prognathism "presents too many individual varieties to be taken as a
distinctive character of race."[37] Difference in physical measurements
does not show the Negro to be a more primitive evolutionary form.
Comparative ethnology to-day affords "no support to the view which sees in
the so-called lower races of mankind a transition stage from beast to
man."[38]

Much has been made of the supposed smaller brain of the Negro race; but
this is as yet an unproved assumption, based on the uncritical measurement
of less than a thousand Negro brains as compared with eleven thousand or
more European brains. Even if future measurement prove the average Negro
brain lighter, the vast majority of Negro brain weights fall within the
same limits as the whites; and finally, "neither size nor weight of the
brain seems to be of importance" as an index of mental capacity. We may,
therefore, say with Ratzel, "There is only one species of man. The
variations are numerous, but do not go deep."[39]

To this we may add the word of the Secretary of the First Races Congress:
"We are, then, under the necessity of concluding that an impartial
investigator would be inclined to look upon the various important peoples
of the world as to all intents and purposes essentially equal in
intellect, enterprise, morality, and physique."[40]

If these conclusions are true, we should expect to see in Africa the
human drama play itself out much as in other lands, and such has actually
been the fact. At the same time we must expect peculiarities arising from
the physiography of the land--its climate, its rainfall, its deserts, and
the peculiar inaccessibility of the coast.

Three principal zones of habitation appear: first, the steppes and deserts
around the Sahara in the north and the Kalahari desert in the south;
secondly, the grassy highlands bordering the Great Lakes and connecting
these two regions; thirdly, the forests and rivers of Central and West
Africa. In the deserts are the nomads, and the Pygmies are in the forest
fastnesses. Herdsmen and their cattle cover the steppes and highlands,
save where the tsetse fly prevents. In the open forests and grassy
highlands are the agriculturists.

Among the forest farmers the village is the center of life, while in the
open steppes political life tends to spread into larger political units.
Political integration is, however, hindered by an ease of internal
communication almost as great as the difficulty of reaching outer worlds
beyond the continent. The narrow Nile valley alone presented physical
barriers formidable enough to keep back the invading barbarians of the
south, and even then with difficulty. Elsewhere communication was all too
easy. For a while the Congo forests fended away the restless, but this
only temporarily.

On the whole Africa from the Sahara to the Cape offered no great physical
barrier to the invader, and we continually have whirlwinds of invading
hosts rushing now southward, now northward, from the interior to the coast
and from the coast inland, and hurling their force against states,
kingdoms, and cities. Some resisted for generations, some for centuries,
some but a few years. It is, then, this sudden change and the fear of it
that marks African culture, particularly in its political aspects, and
which makes it so difficult to trace this changing past. Nevertheless
beneath all change rests the strong substructure of custom, religion,
industry, and art well worth the attention of students.

Starting with agriculture, we learn that "among all the great groups of
the 'natural' races, the Negroes are the best and keenest tillers of the
ground. A minority despise agriculture and breed cattle; many combine both
occupations. Among the genuine tillers the whole life of the family is
taken up in agriculture, and hence the months are by preference called
after the operations which they demand. Constant clearings change forests
to fields, and the ground is manured with the ashes of the burnt thicket.
In the middle of the fields rise the light watch-towers, from which a
watchman scares grain-eating birds and other thieves. An African
cultivated landscape is incomplete without barns. The rapidity with which,
when newly imported, the most various forms of cultivation spread in
Africa says much for the attention which is devoted to this branch of
economy. Industries, again, which may be called agricultural, like the
preparation of meal from millet and other crops, also from cassava, the
fabrication of fermented drinks from grain, or the manufacture of cotton,
are widely known and sedulously fostered."[41]

Buecher reminds us of the deep impression made upon travelers when they
sight suddenly the well-attended fields of the natives on emerging from
the primeval forests. "In the more thickly populated parts of Africa these
fields often stretch for many a mile, and the assiduous care of the Negro
women shines in all the brighter light when we consider the insecurity of
life, the constant feuds and pillages, in which no one knows whether he
will in the end be able to harvest what he has sown. Livingstone gives
somewhere a graphic description of the devastations wrought by slave
hunts; the people were lying about slain, the dwellings were demolished;
in the fields, however, the grain was ripening and there was none to
harvest it."[42]

Sheep, goat, and chickens are domestic animals all over Africa, and Von
Franzius considers Africa the home of the house cattle and the Negro as
the original tamer. Northeastern Africa especially is noted for
agriculture, cattle raising, and fruit culture. In the eastern Sudan, and
among the great Bantu tribes extending from the Sudan down toward the
south, cattle are evidences of wealth; one tribe, for instance, having so
many oxen that each village had ten or twelve thousand head. Lenz (1884),
Bouet-Williaumez (1848), Hecquard (1854), Bosman (1805), and Baker (1868)
all bear witness to this, and Schweinfurth (1878) tells us of great cattle
parks with two to three thousand head and of numerous agricultural and
cattle-raising tribes. Von der Decken (1859-61) described the paradise of
the dwellers about Kilimanjaro--the bananas, fruit, beans and peas, cattle
raising with stall feed, the fertilizing of the fields, and irrigation.
The Negroid Gallas have seven or eight cattle to each inhabitant.
Livingstone bears witness to the busy cattle raising of the Bantus and
Kaffirs. Hulub (1881) and Chapman (1868) tell of agriculture and fruit
raising in South Africa. Shutt (1884) found the tribes in the southwestern
basin of the Congo with sheep, swine, goats, and cattle. On this
agricultural and cattle-raising economic foundation has arisen the
organized industry of the artisan, the trader, and the manufacturer.

While the Pygmies, still living in the age of wood, make no iron or stone
implements, they seem to know how to make bark cloth and fiber baskets and
simple outfits for hunting and fishing. Among the Bushmen the art of
making weapons and working in hides is quite common. The Hottentots are
further advanced in the industrial arts, being well versed in the
manufacture of clothing, weapons, and utensils. In the dressing of skins
and furs, as well as in the plaiting of cords and the weaving of mats, we
find evidences of their workmanship. In addition they are good workers in
iron and copper, using the sheepskin bellows for this purpose. The
Ashantis of the Gold Coast know how to make "cotton fabrics, turn and
glaze earthenware, forge iron, fabricate instruments and arms, embroider
rugs and carpets, and set gold and precious stones."[43] Among the people
of the banana zone we find rough basket work, coarse pottery, grass cloth,
and spoons made of wood and ivory. The people of the millet zone, because
of uncertain agricultural resources, quite generally turn to
manufacturing. Charcoal is prepared by the smiths, iron is smelted, and
numerous implements are manufactured. Among them we find axes, hatchets,
hoes, knives, nails, scythes, and other hardware. Cloaks, shoes, sandals,
shields, and water and oil vessels are made from leather which the natives
have dressed. Soap is manufactured in the Bautschi district, glass is
made, formed, and colored by the people of Nupeland, and in almost every
city cotton is spun and woven and dyed. Barth tells us that the weaving of
cotton was known in the Sudan as early as the eleventh century. There is
also extensive manufacture of wooden ware, tools, implements, and
utensils.

In describing particular tribes, Baker and Felkin tell of smiths of
wonderful adroitness, goatskins prepared better than a European tanner
could do, drinking cups and kegs of remarkable symmetry, and polished clay
floors. Schweinfurth says, "The arrow and the spear heads are of the
finest and most artistic work; their bristlelike barbs and points are
baffling when one knows how few tools these smiths have." Excellent wood
carving is found among the Bongo, Ovambo, and Makololo. Pottery and
basketry and careful hut building distinguish many tribes. Cameron (1877)
tells of villages so clean, with huts so artistic, that, save in book
knowledge, the people occupied no low plane of civilization. The Mangbettu
work both iron and copper. "The masterpieces of the Monbutto [Mangbettu]
smiths are the fine chains worn as ornaments, and which in perfection of
form and fineness compare well with our best steel chains." Shubotz in
1911 called the Mangbettu "a highly cultivated people" in architecture and
handicraft. Barth found copper exported from Central Africa in competition
with European copper at Kano.

Nor is the iron industry confined to the Sudan. About the Great Lakes and
other parts of Central Africa it is widely distributed. Thornton says,
"This iron industry proves that the East Africans stand by no means on so
low a plane of culture as many travelers would have us think. It is
unnecessary to be reminded what a people without instruction, and with the
rudest tools to do such skilled work, could do if furnished with steel
tools." Arrows made east of Lake Nyanza were found to be nearly as good as
the best Swedish iron in Birmingham. From Egypt to the Cape, Livingstone
assures us that the mortar and pestle, the long-handled axe, the goatskin
bellows, etc., have the same form, size, etc., pointing to a migration
southwestward. Holub (1879), on the Zambesi, found fine workers in iron
and bronze. The Bantu huts contain spoons, wooden dishes, milk pails,
calabashes, handmills, and axes.

Kaffirs and Zulus, in the extreme south, are good smiths, and the latter
melt copper and tin together and draw wire from it, according to Kranz
(1880). West of the Great Lakes, Stanley (1878) found wonderful examples
of smith work: figures worked out of brass and much work in copper.
Cameron (1878) saw vases made near Lake Tanganyika which reminded him of
the amphorae in the Villa of Diomedes, Pompeii. Horn (1882) praises tribes
here for iron and copper work. Livingstone (1871) passed thirty smelting
houses in one journey, and Cameron came across bellows with valves, and
tribes who used knives in eating. He found tribes which no Europeans had
ever visited, who made ingots of copper in the form of the St. Andrew's
cross, which circulated even to the coast. In the southern Congo basin
iron and copper are worked; also wood and ivory carving and pottery making
are pursued. In equatorial West Africa, Lenz and Du Chaillu (1861) found
iron workers with charcoal, and also carvers of bone and ivory. Near Cape
Lopez, Huebbe-Schleiden found tribes making ivory needles inlaid with
ebony, while the arms and dishes of the Osaka are found among many tribes
even as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Wilson (1856) found natives in West
Africa who could repair American watches.

Gold Coast Negroes make gold rings and chains, forming the metal into all
kinds of forms. Soyaux says, "The works in relief which natives of Lower
Guinea carve with their own knives out of ivory and hippopotamus teeth are
really entitled to be called works of art, and many wooden figures of
fetishes in the Ethnographical Museum of Berlin show some understanding of
the proportions of the human body." Great Bassam is called by Hecquard the
"Fatherland of Smiths." The Mandingo in the northwest are remarkable
workers in iron, silver, and gold, we are told by Mungo Park (1800), while
there is a mass of testimony as to the work in the north-west of Africa in
gold, tin, weaving, and dyeing. Caille found the Negroes in Bambana
manufacturing gunpowder (1824-28), and the Hausa make soap; so, too,
Negroes in Uganda and other parts have made guns after seeing European
models.

So marked has been the work of Negro artisans and traders in the
manufacture and exchange of iron implements that a growing number of
archeologists are disposed to-day to consider the Negro as the originator
of the art of smelting iron. Gabriel de Mortillet (1883) declared Negroes
the only iron users among primitive people. Some would, therefore, argue
that the Negro learned it from other folk, but Andree declares that the
Negro developed his own "Iron Kingdom." Schweinfurth, Von Luschan, Boaz,
and others incline to the belief that the Negroes invented the smelting of
iron and passed it on to the Egyptians and to modern Europe.

Boaz says, "It seems likely that at a time when the European was still
satisfied with rude stone tools, the African had invented or adopted the
art of smelting iron. Consider for a moment what this invention has meant
for the advance of the human race. As long as the hammer, knife, saw,
drill, the spade, and the hoe had to be chipped out of stone, or had to be
made of shell or hard wood, effective industrial work was not impossible,
but difficult. A great progress was made when copper found in large
nuggets was hammered out into tools and later on shaped by melting, and
when bronze was introduced; but the true advancement of industrial life
did not begin until the hard iron was discovered. It seems not unlikely
that the people who made the marvelous discovery of reducing iron ores by
smelting were the African Negroes. Neither ancient Europe, nor ancient
western Asia, nor ancient China knew the iron, and everything points to
its introduction from Africa. At the time of the great African discoveries
toward the end of the past century, the trade of the blacksmith was found
all over Africa, from north to south and from east to west. With his
simple bellows and a charcoal fire he reduced the ore that is found in
many parts of the continent and forged implements of great usefulness and
beauty."[44]

Torday has argued recently, "I feel convinced by certain arguments that
seem to prove to my satisfaction that we are indebted to the Negro for the
very keystone of our modern civilization and that we owe him the discovery
of iron. That iron could be discovered by accident in Africa seems beyond
doubt: if this is so in other parts of the world, I am not competent to
say. I will only remind you that Schweinfurth and Petherick record the
fact that in the northern part of East Africa smelting furnaces are worked
without artificial air current and, on the other hand, Stuhlmann and
Kollmann found near Victoria Nyanza that the natives simply mixed powdered
ore with charcoal and by introduction of air currents obtained the metal.
These simple processes make it simple that iron should have been
discovered in East or Central Africa. No bronze implements have ever been
found in black Africa; had the Africans received iron from the Egyptians,
bronze would have preceded this metal and all traces of it would not have
disappeared. Black Africa was for a long time an exporter of iron, and
even in the twelfth century exports to India and Java are recorded by
Idrisi.

"It is difficult to imagine that Egypt should have obtained it from
Europe where the oldest find (in Hallstadt) cannot be of an earlier period
than 800 B.C., or from Asia, where iron is not known before 1000 B.C., and
where, in the times of Ashur Nazir Pal, it was still used concurrently
with bronze, while iron beads have been only recently discovered by
Messrs. G.A. Wainwright and Bushe Fox in a predynastic grave, and where a
piece of this metal, possibly a tool, was found in the masonry of the
great pyramid."[45]

The Negro is a born trader. Lenz says, "our sharpest European merchants,
even Jews and Armenians, can learn much of the cunning and trade of the
Negroes." We know that the trade between Central Africa and Egypt was in
the hands of Negroes for thousands of years, and in early days the cities
of the Sudan and North Africa grew rich through Negro trade.

Leo Africanus, writing of Timbuktu in the sixteenth century, said, "It is
a wonder to see what plentie of Merchandize is daily brought hither and
how costly and sumptuous all things be.... Here are many shops of
artificers and merchants and especially of such as weave linnen and
cloth."

Long before cotton weaving was a British industry, West Africa and the
Sudan were supplying a large part of the world with cotton cloth. Even
to-day cities like Kuka on the west shore of Lake Chad and Sokota are
manufacturing centers where cotton is spun and woven, skins tanned,
implements and iron ornaments made.

"Travelers," says Buecher, "have often observed this tribal or local
development of industrial technique. 'The native villages,' relates a
Belgian observer of the Lower Congo, 'are often situated in groups. Their
activities are based upon reciprocality, and they are to a certain extent
the complements of one another. Each group has its more or less strongly
defined specialty. One carries on fishing; another produces palm wine; a
third devotes itself to trade and is broker for the others, supplying the
community with all products from outside; another has reserved to itself
work in iron and copper, making weapons for war and hunting, various
utensils, etc. None may, however, pass beyond the sphere of its own
specialty without exposing itself to the risk of being universally
proscribed.'"

From the Loango Coast, Bastian tells of a great number of centers for
special products of domestic industry. "Loango excels in mats and fishing
baskets, while the carving of elephants' tusks is specially followed in
Chilungo. The so-called Mafooka hats with raised patterns are drawn
chiefly from the bordering country of Kakongo and Mayyume. In Bakunya are
made potter's wares, which are in great demand; in Basanza, excellent
swords; in Basundi, especially beautiful ornamented copper rings; on the
Congo, clever wood and tablet carvings; in Loango, ornamented clothes and
intricately designed mats; in Mayumbe, clothing of finely woven mat-work;
in Kakongo, embroidered hats and also burnt clay pitchers; and among the
Bayakas and Mantetjes, stuffs of woven grass."[46]

A native Negro student tells of the development of trade among the
Ashanti. "It was a part of the state system of Ashanti to encourage trade.
The king once in every forty days, at the Adai custom, distributed among a
number of chiefs various sums of gold dust with a charge to turn the same
to good account. These chiefs then sent down to the coast caravans of
tradesmen, some of whom would be their slaves, sometimes some two or three
hundred strong, to barter ivory for European goods, or buy such goods with
gold dust, which the king obtained from the royal alluvial workings. Down
to 1873 a constant stream of Ashanti traders might be seen daily wending
their way to the merchants of the coast and back again, yielding more
certain wealth and prosperity to the merchants of the Gold Coast and Great
Britain than may be expected for some time yet to come from the mining
industry and railway development put together. The trade chiefs would, in
due time, render a faithful account to the king's stewards, being allowed
to retain a fair portion of the profit. In the king's household, too, he
would have special men who directly traded for him. Important chiefs
carried on the same system of trading with the coast as did the king. Thus
every member of the state, from the king downward, took an active interest
in the promotion of trade and in the keeping open of trade routes into the
interior."[47]

The trade thus encouraged and carried on in various parts of West Africa
reached wide areas. From the Fish River to Kuka, and from Lagos to
Zanzibar, the markets have become great centers of trade, the leading
implement to civilization. Permanent markets are found in places like
Ujiji and Nyangwe, where everything can be bought and sold from
earthenware to wives; from the one to three thousand traders flocked here.

"How like is the market traffic, with all its uproar and sound of human
voices, to one of our own markets! There is the same rivalry in praising
the goods, the violent, brisk movements, the expressive gesture, the
inquiring, searching glance, the changing looks of depreciation or
triumph, of apprehension, delight, approbation. So says Stanley. Trade
customs are not everywhere alike. If when negotiating with the Bangalas of
Angola you do not quickly give them what they want, they go away and do
not come back. Then perhaps they try to get possession of the coveted
object by means of theft. It is otherwise with the Songos and Kiokos, who
let you deal with them in the usual way. To buy even a small article you
must go to the market; people avoid trading anywhere else. If a man says
to another; 'Sell me this hen' or 'that fruit,' the answer as a rule will
be, 'Come to the market place.' The crowd gives confidence to individuals,
and the inviolability of the visitor to the market, and of the market
itself, looks like an idea of justice consecrated by long practice. Does
not this remind us of the old Germanic 'market place'?"[48]

Turning now to Negro family and social life we find, as among all
primitive peoples, polygamy and marriage by actual or simulated purchase.
Out of the family develops the typical African village organization, which
is thus described in Ashanti by a native Gold Coast writer: "The headman,
as his name implies, is the head of a village community, a ward in a
township, or of a family. His position is important, inasmuch as he has
directly to deal with the composite elements of the general bulk of the
people.

"It is the duty of the head of a family to bring up the members thereof in
the way they should go; and by 'family' you must understand the entire
lineal descendants of a materfamilias, if I may coin a convenient phrase.
It is expected of him by the state to bring up his charge in the knowledge
of matters political and traditional. It is his work to train up his wards
in the ways of loyalty and obedience to the powers that be. He is held
responsible for the freaks of recalcitrant members of his family, and he
is looked to to keep them within bounds and to insist upon conformity of
their party with the customs, laws, and traditional observances of the
community. In early times he could send off to exile by sale a troublesome
relative who would not observe the laws of the community.

"It is a difficult task that he is set to, but in this matter he has
all-powerful helpers in the female members of the family, who will be
either the aunts, or the sisters, or the cousins, or the nieces of the
headman; and as their interests are identical with his in every
particular, the good women spontaneously train up their children to
implicit obedience to the headman, whose rule in the family thus becomes a
simple and an easy matter. 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules the
world.' What a power for good in the native state system would the mothers
of the Gold Coast and Ashanti become by judicious training upon native
lines!

"The headman is par excellence the judge of his family or ward. Not only
is he called upon to settle domestic squabbles, but frequently he sits
judge over more serious matters arising between one member of the ward and
another; and where he is a man of ability and influence, men from other
wards bring him their disputes to settle. When he so settles disputes, he
is entitled to a hearing fee, which, however, is not so much as would be
payable in the regular court of the king or chief.

"The headman is naturally an important member of his company and often is
a captain thereof. When he combines the two offices of headman and
captain, he renders to the community a very important service. For in
times of war, where the members of the ward would not serve cordially
under a stranger, they would in all cases face any danger with their own
kinsman as their leader. The headman is always succeeded by his uterine
brother, cousin, or nephew--the line of succession, that is to say,
following the customary law."[49]

We may contrast this picture with the more warlike Bantus of Southeast
Africa. Each tribe lived by itself in a town with from five to fifteen
thousand inhabitants, surrounded by gardens of millet, beans, and
watermelon. Beyond these roamed their cattle, sheep, and goats. Their
religion was ancestor worship with sacrifice to spirits and the dead, and
some of the tribes made mummies of the corpses and clothed them for
burial. They wove cloth of cotton and bark, they carved wood and built
walls of unhewn stone. They had a standing military organization, and the
tribes had their various totems, so that they were known as the Men of
Iron, the Men of the Sun, the Men of the Serpents, Sons of the Corn
Cleaners, and the like. Their system of common law was well conceived and
there were organized tribunals of justice. In difficult cases precedents
were sought and learned antiquaries consulted. At the age of fifteen or
sixteen the boys were circumcised and formed into guilds. The land was
owned by the tribe and apportioned to the chief by each family, and the
main wealth of the tribe was in its cattle.

In general, among the African clans the idea of private property was but
imperfectly developed and never included land. The main mass of visible
wealth belonged to the family and clan rather than to the individual; only
in the matter of weapons and ornaments was exclusive private ownership
generally recognized.

The government, vested in fathers and chiefs, varied in different tribes
from absolute despotisms to limited monarchies, almost republican. Viewing
the Basuto National Assembly in South Africa, Lord Bryce recently wrote,
"The resemblance to the primary assemblies of the early peoples of Europe
is close enough to add another to the arguments which discredit the theory
that there is any such thing as an Aryan type of institutions."[50]

While women are sold into marriage throughout Africa, nevertheless their
status is far removed from slavery. In the first place the tracing of
relationships through the female line, which is all but universal in
Africa, gives the mother great influence. Parental affection is very
strong, and throughout Negro Africa the mother is the most influential
councilor, even in cases of tyrants like Chaka or Mutesa.

"No mother can love more tenderly or be more deeply beloved than the Negro
mother. Robin tells of a slave in Martinique who, with his savings, freed
his mother instead of himself. 'Everywhere in Africa,' writes Mungo Park,
'I have noticed that no greater affront can be offered a Negro than
insulting his mother. 'Strike me,' cried a Mandingo to his enemy, 'but
revile not my mother!' ... The Herero swears 'By my mother's tears!'.. The
Angola Negroes have a saying, 'As a mist lingers on the swamps, so lingers
the love of father and mother.'"[51]

Black queens have often ruled African tribes. Among the Ba-Lolo, we are
told, women take part in public assemblies where all-important questions
are discussed. The system of educating children among such tribes as the
Yoruba is worthy of emulation by many more civilized peoples.

Close knit with the family and social organization comes the religious
life of the Negro. The religion of Africa is the universal animism or
fetishism of primitive peoples, rising to polytheism and approaching
monotheism chiefly, but not wholly, as a result of Christian and Islamic
missions. Of fetishism there is much misapprehension. It is not mere
senseless degradation. It is a philosophy of life. Among primitive Negroes
there can be, as Miss Kingsley reminds us, no such divorce of religion
from practical life as is common in civilized lands. Religion is life, and
fetish an expression of the practical recognition of dominant forces in
which the Negro lives. To him all the world is spirit. Miss Kingsley says,
"If you want, for example, to understand the position of man in nature
according to fetish, there is, as far as I know, no clearer statement of
it made than is made by Goethe in his superb 'Prometheus.'"[52] Fetish is
a severely logical way of accounting for the world in terms of good and
malignant spirits.

"It is this power of being able logically to account for everything that
is, I believe, at the back of the tremendous permanency of fetish in
Africa, and the cause of many of the relapses into it by Africans
converted to other religions; it is also the explanation of the fact that
white men who live in the districts where death and danger are everyday
affairs, under a grim pall of boredom, are liable to believe in fetish,
though ashamed of so doing. For the African, whose mind has been soaked in
fetish during his early and most impressionable years, the voice of fetish
is almost irresistible when affliction comes to him."[53]

Ellis tells us of the spirit belief of the Ewe people, who believe that
men and all nature have the indwelling "Kra," which is immortal; that the
man himself after death may exist as a ghost, which is often conceived of
as departed from the "Kra," a shadowy continuing of the man. Bryce,
speaking of the Kaffirs of South Africa, says, "To the Kaffirs, as to the
most savage races, the world was full of spirits--spirits of the rivers,
the mountains, and the woods. Most important were the ghosts of the dead,
who had power to injure or help the living, and who were, therefore,
propitiated by offerings at stated periods, as well as on occasions when
their aid was especially desired. This kind of worship, the worship once
most generally diffused throughout the world, and which held its ground
among the Greeks and Italians in the most flourishing period of ancient
civilization, as it does in China and Japan to-day, was, and is, virtually
the religion of the Kaffirs."[54]

African religion does not, however, stop with fetish, but, as in the case
of other peoples, tends toward polytheism and monotheism. Among the
Yoruba, for instance, Frobenius shows that religion and city-state go hand
in hand.

"The first experienced glance will here detect the fact that this nation
originally possessed a clear and definite organization so duly ordered and
so logical that we but seldom meet with its like among all the peoples of
the earth. And the basic idea of every clan's progeniture is a powerful
God; the legitimate order in which the descendants of a particular clan
unite in marriage to found new families, the essential origin of every
new-born babe's descent in the founder of its race and its consideration
as a part of the God in Chief; the security with which the newly wedded
wife not only may, but should, minister to her own God in an unfamiliar
home."[55]

The Yoruba have a legend of a dying divinity. "This people ... give
evidence of a generalized system; a theocratic scheme, a well-conceived
perceptible organization, reared in rhythmically proportioned manner."

Miss Kingsley says, "The African has a great Over God."[56] Nassau, the
missionary, declares, "After more than forty years' residence among these
tribes, fluently using their language, conversant with their customs,
dwelling intimately in their huts, associating with them in the various
relations of teacher, pastor, friend, master, fellow-traveler, and guest,
and in my special office as missionary, searching after their religious
thought (and therefore being allowed a deeper entrance into the arcana of
their soul than would be accorded to a passing explorer), I am able
unhesitatingly to say that among all the multitude of degraded ones with
whom I have met, I have seen or heard of none whose religious thought was
only a superstition.

"Standing in the village street, surrounded by a company whom their chief
has courteously summoned at my request, when I say to him, 'I have come to
speak to your people,' I do not need to begin by telling them that there
is a God. Looking on that motley assemblage of villagers,--the bold, gaunt
cannibal with his armament of gun, spear, and dagger; the artisan with
rude adze in hand, or hands soiled at the antique bellows of the village
smithy; women who have hasted from their kitchen fire with hands white
with the manioc dough or still grasping the partly scaled fish; and
children checked in their play with tiny bow and arrow or startled from
their dusty street pursuit of dog or goat,--I have yet to be asked, 'Who
is God?'"[57]

The basis of Egyptian religion was "of a purely Nigritian character,"[58]
and in its developed form Sudanese tribal gods were invoked and venerated
by the priests. In Upper Egypt, near the confines of Ethiopia, paintings
repeatedly represent black priests conferring on red Egyptian priests the
instruments and symbols of priesthood. In the Sudan to-day Frobenius
distinguishes four principal religions: first, earthly ancestor worship;
next, the social cosmogony of the Atlantic races; third, the religion of
the Bori, and fourth, Islam. The Bori religion spreads from Nubia as far
as the Hausa, and from Lake Chad in the Niger as far as the Yoruba. It is
the religion of possession and has been connected by some with Asiatic
influences.

From without have come two great religious influences, Islam and
Christianity. Islam came by conquest, trade, and proselytism. As a
conqueror it reached Egypt in the seventh century and had by the end of
the fourteenth century firm footing in the Egyptian Sudan. It overran the
central Sudan by the close of the seventeenth century, and at the
beginning of the nineteenth century had swept over Senegambia and the
whole valley of the Niger down to the Gulf of Guinea. On the east Islam
approached as a trader in the eighth century; it spread into Somaliland
and overran Nubia in the fourteenth century. To-day Islam dominates Africa
north of ten degrees north latitude and is strong between five and ten
degrees north latitude. In the east it reaches below the Victoria Nyanza.

Christianity early entered Africa; indeed, as Mommsen says, "It was
through Africa that Christianity became the religion of the world.
Tertullian and Cyprian were from Carthage, Arnobius from Sicca Veneria,
Lactantius, and probably in like manner Minucius Felix, in spite of their
Latin names, were natives of Africa, and not less so Augustine. In Africa
the Church found its most zealous confessors of the faith and its most
gifted defenders."[59]

The Africa referred to here, however, was not Negroland, but Africa above
the desert, where Negro blood was represented in the ancient Mediterranean
race and by intercourse across the desert. On the other hand Christianity
was early represented in the valley of the Nile under "the most holy pope
and patriarch of the great city of Alexandria and of all of the land of
Egypt, of Jerusalem, the holy city, of Nubia, Abyssinia, and Pentapolis,
and all the preaching of St. Mark." This patriarchate had a hundred
bishoprics in the fourth century and included thousands of black
Christians. Through it the Cross preceded the Crescent in some of the
remotest parts of black Africa.

All these beginnings were gradually overthrown by Islam except among the
Copts in Egypt, and in Abyssinia. The Portuguese in the sixteenth century
began to replant the Christian religion and for a while had great success,
both on the east and west coasts. Roman Catholic enterprise halted in the
eighteenth century and the Protestants began. To-day the west coast is
studded with English and German missions, South Africa is largely
Christian through French and English influence, and the region about the
Great Lakes is becoming christianized. The Roman Catholics have lately
increased their activities, and above all the Negroes of America have
entered with their own churches and with the curiously significant
"Ethiopian" movement.

Coming now to other spiritual aspects of African culture, we can speak at
present only in a fragmentary way. Roughly speaking, Africa can be divided
into two language zones: north of the fifth degree of north latitude is
the zone of diversity, with at least a hundred groups of widely divergent
languages; south of the line there is one minor language
(Bushman-Hottentot), spoken by less than fifty thousand people, and
elsewhere the predominant Bantu tongue with its various dialects, spoken
by at least fifty million. The Bantu tongue, which thus rules all Central,
West, and South Africa, is an agglutinative tongue which makes especial
use of prefixes. The hundreds of Negro tongues or dialects in the north
represent most probably the result of war and migration and the breaking
up of ancient centers of culture. In Abyssinia and the great horn of East
Africa the influence of Semitic tongues is noted. Despite much effort on
the part of students, it has been impossible to show any Asiatic origin
for the Egyptian language. As Sergi maintains, "everything favors an
African origin."[60] The most brilliant suggestion of modern days links
together the Egyptian of North Africa and the Hottentot and Bushmen
tongues of South Africa.

Language was reduced to writing among the Egyptians and Ethiopians and to
some extent elsewhere in Africa. Over 100 manuscripts of Ethiopian and
Ethiopic-Arabian literature are extant, including a version of the Bible
and historical chronicles. The Arabic was used as the written tongue of
the Sudan, and Negroland has given us in this tongue many chronicles and
other works of black authors. The greatest of these, the Epic of the Sudan
(Tarikh-es-Soudan), deserves to be placed among the classics of all
literature. In other parts of Africa there was no written language, but
there was, on the other hand, an unusual perfection of oral tradition
through bards, and extraordinary efficiency in telegraphy by drum and
horn.

The folklore and proverbs of the African tribes are exceedingly rich. Some
of these have been made familiar to English writers through the work of
"Uncle Remus." Others have been collected by Johnston, Ellis, and Theal.

A black bard of our own day has described the onslaught of the Matabili in
poetry of singular force and beauty:

  They saw the clouds ascend from the plains:
  It was the smoke of burning towns.
    The confusion of the whirlwind
Was in the heart of the great chief of the blue-colored cattle.
      The shout was raised,
        "They are friends!"
      But they shouted again,
        "They are foes!"
Till their near approach proclaimed them Matabili.
      The men seized their arms,
And rushed out as if to chase the antelope.
    The onset was as the voice of lightning,
And their javelins as the shaking of the forest in the autumn storm.[61]

There can be no doubt of the Negro's deep and delicate sense of beauty in
form, color, and sound. Soyaux says of African industry, "Whoever denies
to them independent invention and individual taste in their work either
shuts his eyes intentionally before perfectly evident facts, or lack of
knowledge renders him an incompetent judge."[62] M. Rutot had lately told
us how the Negro race brought art and sculpture to pre-historic Europe.
The bones of the European Negroids are almost without exception found in
company with drawings and sculpture in high and low relief; some of their
sculptures, like the Wellendorff "Venus," are unusually well finished for
primitive man. So, too, the painting and carving of the Bushmen and their
forerunners in South Africa has drawn the admiration of students. The
Negro has been prolific in the invention of musical instruments and has
given a new and original music to the western world.

Schweinfurth, who has preserved for us much of the industrial art of the
Negroes, speaks of their delight in the production of works of art for the
embellishment and convenience of life. Frobenius expressed his
astonishment at the originality of the African in the Yoruba temple which
he visited. "The lofty veranda was divided from the passageway by
fantastically carved and colored pillars. On the pillars were sculptured
knights, men climbing trees, women, gods, and mythical beings. The dark
chamber lying beyond showed a splendid red room with stone hatchets,
wooden figures, cowry beads, and jars. The whole picture, the columns
carved in colors in front of the colored altar, the old man sitting in the
circle of those who reverenced him, the open scaffolding of ninety
rafters, made a magnificent impression."[63]

The Germans have found, in Kamarun, towns built, castellated, and
fortified in a manner that reminds one of the prehistoric cities of Crete.
The buildings and fortifications of Zymbabwe have already been described
and something has been said of the art of Benin, with its brass and bronze
and ivory. All the work of Benin in bronze and brass was executed by
casting, and by methods so complicated that it would be no easy task for a
modern European craftsman to imitate them.

Perhaps no race has shown in its earlier development a more magnificent
art impulse than the Negro, and the student must not forget how far Negro
genius entered into the art in the valley of the Nile from Meroe and
Nepata down to the great temples of Egypt.

Frobenius has recently directed the world's attention to art in West
Africa. Quartz and granite he found treated with great dexterity. But more
magnificent than the stone monument is the proof that at some remote era
glass was made and molded in Yorubaland and that the people here were
brilliant in the production of terra-cotta images. The great mass of
potsherds, lumps of glass, heaps of slag, etc., "proves, at all events,
that the glass industry flourished in this locality in ages past. It is
plain that the glass beads found to have been so very common in Africa
were not only not imported, but were actually manufactured in great
quantities at home."

The terra-cotta pieces are "remains of another ancient and fine type of
art" and were "eloquent of a symmetry, a vitality, a delicacy of form, and
practically a reminiscence of the ancient Greeks." The antique bronze head
Frobenius describes as "a head of marvelous beauty, wonderfully cast," and
"almost equal in beauty and, at least, no less noble in form, and as
ancient as the terra-cotta heads."[64]

In a park of monuments Frobenius saw the celebrated forge and hammer: a
mighty mass of iron, like a falling drop in shape, and a block of quartz
fashioned like a drum. Frobenius thinks these were relics dating from past
ages of culture, when the manipulation of quartz and granite was
thoroughly understood and when iron manipulation gave evidence of a skill
not met with to-day.

Even when we contemplate such revolting survivals of savagery as
cannibalism we cannot jump too quickly at conclusions. Cannibalism is
spread over many parts of Negro Africa, yet the very tribes who practice
cannibalism show often other traits of industry and power. "These cannibal
Bassonga were, according to the types we met with, one of those rare
nations of the African interior which can be classed with the most
esthetic and skilled, most discreet and intelligent of all those generally
known to us as the so-called natural races. Before the Arabic and European
invasion they did not dwell in 'hamlets,' but in towns with twenty or
thirty thousand inhabitants, in towns whose highways were shaded by
avenues of splendid palms planted at regular intervals and laid out with
the symmetry of colonnades. Their pottery would be fertile in suggestion
to every art craftsman in Europe. Their weapons of iron were so perfectly
fashioned that no industrial art from abroad could improve upon their
workmanship. The iron blades were cunningly ornamented with damascened
copper, and the hilts artistically inlaid with the same metal. Moreover,
they were most industrious and capable husbandmen, whose careful tillage
of the suburbs made them able competitors of any gardener in Europe. Their
sexual and parental relations evidenced an amount of tact and delicacy of
feelings unsurpassed among ourselves, either in the simplicity of the
country or the refinements of the town. Originally their political and
municipal system was organized on the lines of a representative republic.
True, it is on record that these well-governed towns often waged an
internecine warfare; but in spite of this it had been their invariable
custom from time immemorial, even in times of strife, to keep the trade
routes open and to allow their own and foreign merchants to go their ways
unharmed. And the commerce of these nations ebbed and flowed along a road
of unknown age, running from Itimbiri to Batubenge, about six hundred
miles in length. This highway was destroyed by the 'missionaries of
civilization' from Arabia only toward the close of the eighteenth century.
But even in my own time there were still smiths who knew the names of
places along that wonderful trade route driven through the heart of the
'impenetrable forests of the Congo.' For every scrap of imported iron was
carried over it."[65]

In disposition the Negro is among the most lovable of men. Practically all
the great travelers who have spent any considerable time in Africa testify
to this and pay deep tribute to the kindness with which they were
received. One has but to remember the classic story of Mungo Park, the
strong expressions of Livingstone, the words of Stanley and hundreds of
others to realize this.

Ceremony and courtesy mark Negro life. Livingstone again and again reminds
us of "true African dignity." "When Ilifian men or women salute each
other, be it with a plain and easy curtsey (which is here the simplest
form adopted), or kneeling down, or throwing oneself upon the ground, or
kissing the dust with one's forehead, no matter which, there is yet a
deliberateness, a majesty, a dignity, a devoted earnestness in the manner
of its doing, which brings to light with every gesture, with every fold of
clothing, the deep significance and essential import of every single
action. Everyone may, without too greatly straining his attention, notice
the very striking precision and weight with which the upper and lower
native classes observe these niceties of intercourse."[66]

All this does not mean that the African Negro is not human with the
all-too-well-known foibles of humanity. Primitive life among them is,
after all, as bare and cruel as among primitive Germans or Chinese, but it
is not more so, and the more we study the Negro the more we realize that
we are dealing with a normal human stock which under reasonable conditions
has developed and will develop in the same lines as other men. Why is it,
then, that so much of misinformation and contempt is widespread concerning
Africa and its people, not simply among the unthinking mass, but among men
of education and knowledge?

One reason lies undoubtedly in the connotation of the term "Negro." In
North America a Negro may be seven-eights white, since the term refers to
any person of Negro descent. If we use the term in the same sense
concerning the inhabitants of the rest of world, we may say truthfully
that Negroes have been among the leaders of civilization in every age of
the world's history from ancient Babylon to modern America; that they have
contributed wonderful gifts in art, industry, political organization, and
religion, and that they are doing the same to-day in all parts of the
world.

In sharp contrast to this usage the term "Negro" in Africa has been more
and more restricted until some scientists, late in the last century,
declared that the great mass of the black and brown people of Africa were
not Negroes at all, and that the "real" Negro dwells in a small space
between the Niger and the Senegal. Ratzel says, "If we ask what justifies
so narrow a limitation, we find that the hideous Negro type, which the
fancy of observers once saw all over Africa, but which, as Livingstone
says, is really to be seen only as a sign in front of tobacco shops, has
on closer inspection evaporated from all parts of Africa, to settle no one
knows how in just this region. If we understand that an extreme case may
have been taken for the genuine and pure form, even so we do not
comprehend the ground of its geographical limitation and location; for
wherever dark, woolly-haired men dwell, this ugly type also crops up. We
are here in the presence of a refinement of science which to an
unprejudiced eye will hardly hold water."[67]

In this restricted sense the Negro has no history, culture, or ability,
for the simple fact that such human beings as have history and evidence
culture and ability are not Negroes! Between these two extreme
definitions, with unconscious adroitness, the most extraordinary and
contradictory conclusions have been reached.

Let it therefore be said, once for all, that racial inferiority is not the
cause of anti-Negro prejudice. Boaz, the anthropologist, says, "An
unbiased estimate of the anthropological evidence so far brought forward
does not permit us to countenance the belief in a racial inferiority which
would unfit an individual of the Negro race to take his part in modern
civilization. We do not know of any demand made on the human body or mind
in modern life that anatomical or ethnological evidence would prove to be
beyond the powers of the Negro."[68]

"We have every reason to suppose that all races are capable, under proper
guidance, of being fitted into the complex scheme of our modern
civilization, and the policy of artificially excluding them from its
benefits is as unjustifiable scientifically as it is ethically
abhorrent."[69] What is, then, this so-called "instinctive" modern
prejudice against black folk?

Lord Bryce says of the intermingling of blacks and whites in South
America, "The ease with which the Spaniards have intermingled by marriage
with the Indian tribes--and the Portuguese have done the like, not only
with the Indians, but with the more physically dissimilar Negroes--shows
that race repugnance is no such constant and permanent factor in human
affairs as members of the Teutonic peoples are apt to assume. Instead of
being, as we Teutons suppose, the rule in the matter, we are rather the
exception, for in the ancient world there seems to have been little race
repulsion."

In nearly every age and land men of Negro descent have distinguished
themselves. In literature there is Terence in Rome, Nosseyeb and Antar in
Arabia, Es-Sa'di in the Sudan, Pushkin in Russia, Dumas in France, Al
Kanemi in Spain, Heredia in the West Indies, and Dunbar in the United
States, not to mention the alleged Negro strain in AEsop and Robert
Browning. As rulers and warriors we remember such Negroes as Queen
Nefertari and Amenhotep III among many others in Egypt; Candace and
Ergamenes in Ethiopia; Mansa Musa, Sonni Ali, and Mohammed Askai in the
Sudan; Diaz in Brazil, Toussaint L'Ouverture in Hayti, Hannivalov in
Russia, Sakanouye Tamuramaro in Japan, the elder Dumas in France, Cazembe
and Chaka among the Bantu, and Menelik, of Abyssinia; the numberless black
leaders of India, and the mulatto strain of Alexander Hamilton. In music
and art we recall Bridgewater, the friend of Beethoven, and the
unexplained complexion of Beethoven's own father; Coleridge-Taylor in
England, Tanner in America, Gomez in Spain; Ira Aldridge, the actor, and
Johnson, Cook, and Burleigh, who are making the new American syncopated
music. In the Church we know that Negro blood coursed in the veins of many
of the Catholic African fathers, if not in certain of the popes; and there
were in modern days Benoit of Palermo, St. Benedict, Bishop Crowther, the
Mahdi who drove England from the Sudan, and Americans like Allen, Lot
Carey, and Alexander Crummell. In science, discovery, and invention the
Negroes claim Lislet Geoffroy of the French Academy, Latino and Amo, well
known in European university circles; and in America the explorers
Dorantes and Henson; Banneker, the almanac maker; Wood, the telephone
improver; McCoy, inventor of modern lubrication; Matseliger, who
revolutionized shoemaking. Here are names representing all degrees of
genius and talent from the mediocre to the highest, but they are strong
human testimony to the ability of this race.

We must, then, look for the origin of modern color prejudice not to
physical or cultural causes, but to historic facts. And we shall find the
answer in modern Negro slavery and the slave trade.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] "Some authors write that the Ethiopians paint the devil white, in
disdain of our complexions."--Ludolf: _History of Ethiopia_, p. 72.

[36] Ripley: _Races of Europe_, pp. 58, 62.

[37] Denniker: _Races of Men_, p. 63.

[38] G. Finot: _Race Prejudice_. F. Herz: _Moderne Rassentheorien_.

[39] Ratzel: quoted in Spiller: _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 31.

[40] Spiller: _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 35.

[41] Ratzel: _History of Mankind_, II, 380 ff.

[42] _Industrial Evolution_, p. 47.

[43] These and other references in this chapter are from Schneider:
Culturfaehigkeit des Negers.

[44] Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19.

[45] _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_, XLIII, 414, 415.
Cf. also _The Crisis_, Vol. IX, p. 234.

[46] Buecher: _Industrial Revolution_ (tr. by Wickett), pp. 57-58.

[47] Hayford: _Native Institutions_, pp. 95-96.

[48] Ratzel, II, 376.

[49] Hayford: _Native Institutions_, pp. 76 ff.

[50] _Impressions of South Africa_, 3d ed., p. 352.

[51] William Schneider.

[52] _West African Studies_, Chap. V.

[53] _Op. cit._

[54] _Impressions of South Africa._

[55] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I.

[56] _West African Studies_, p. 107.

[57] Nassau: _Fetishism in West Africa_, p. 36.

[58] _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 9th ed., XX, 362.

[59] _The African Provinces_, II, 345.

[60] _Mediterranean Race_, p. 10.

[61] Stowe: _Native Races_, etc., pp. 553-554.

[62] Quoted in Schneider.

[63] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I, Chap. XIV.

[64] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I.

[65] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, I, 14-15.

[66] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, I, 272.

[67] Ratzel: _History of Mankind_, II, 313.

[68] Atlanta University Publications, No. 11.

[69] Robert Lowie in the _New Review_, Sept., 1914.




IX THE TRADE IN MEN


Color was never a badge of slavery in the ancient or medieval world, nor
has it been in the modern world outside of Christian states. Homer sings
of a black man, a "reverend herald"

    Of visage solemn, sad, but sable hue,
    Short, woolly curls, o'erfleeced his bending head,...
    Eurybiates, in whose large soul alone,
    Ulysses viewed an image of his own.

Greece and Rome had their chief supplies of slaves from Europe and Asia.
Egypt enslaved races of all colors, and if there were more blacks than
others among her slaves, there were also more blacks among her nobles and
Pharaohs, and both facts are explained by her racial origin and
geographical position. The fall of Rome led to a cessation of the slave
trade, but after a long interval came the white slave trade of the
Saracens and Moors, and finally the modern trade in Negroes.

Slavery as it exists universally among primitive people is a system
whereby captives in war are put to tasks about the homes and in the
fields, thus releasing the warriors for systematic fighting and the women
for leisure. Such slavery has been common among all peoples and was
wide-spread in Africa. The relative number of African slaves under these
conditions was small and the labor not hard; they were members of the
family and might and did often rise to high position in the tribe.

Remembering that in the fifteenth century there was no great disparity
between the civilization of Negroland and that of Europe, what made the
striking difference in subsequent development? European civilization, cut
off by physical barriers from further incursions of barbaric races,
settled more and more to systematic industry and to the domination of one
religion; African culture and industries were threatened by powerful
barbarians from the west and central regions of the continent and by the
Moors in the north, and Islam had only partially converted the leading
peoples.

When, therefore, a demand for workmen arose in America, European
exportation was limited by religious ties and economic stability. African
exportation was encouraged not simply by the Christian attitude toward
heathen, but also by the Moslem enmity toward the unconverted Negroes. Two
great modern religions, therefore, agreed at least in the policy of
enslaving heathen blacks, while the overthrow of black Askias by the Moors
at Tenkadibou brought that economic chaos among the advanced Negro peoples
and movement among the more barbarous tribes which proved of prime
advantage to the development of a systematic trade in men.

The modern slave trade began with the Mohammedan conquests in Africa, when
heathen Negroes were seized to supply the harems, and as soldiers and
servants. They were bought from the masters and seized in war, until the
growing wealth and luxury of the conquerors demanded larger numbers. Then
Negroes from the Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia, and Zanzibar began to pass
into Arabia, Persia, and India in increased numbers. As Negro kingdoms and
tribes rose to power they found the slave trade lucrative and natural,
since the raids in which slaves were captured were ordinary inter-tribal
wars. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the
demand for slaves in Christian lands made slaves the object, and not the
incident, of African wars.

In Mohammedan countries there were gleams of hope in slavery. In fiction
and in truth the black slave had a chance. Once converted to Islam, he
became a brother to the best, and the brotherhood of the faith was not the
sort of idle lie that Christian slave masters made it. In Arabia black
leaders arose like Antar; in India black slaves carved out principalities
where their descendants still rule.

Some Negro slaves were brought to Europe by the Spaniards in the
fourteenth century, and a small trade was continued by the Portuguese, who
conquered territory from the "tawny" Moors of North Africa in the early
fifteenth century. Later, after their severe repulse at Al-Kasr-Al-Kabu,
the Portuguese began to creep down the west coast in quest of trade. They
reached the River of Gold in 1441, and their story is that their leader
seized certain free Moors and the next year exchanged them for ten black
slaves, a target of hide, ostrich eggs, and some gold dust. The trade was
easily justified on the ground that the Moors were Mohammedans and refused
to be converted to Christianity, while heathen Negroes would be better
subjects for conversion and stronger laborers. In the next few years a
small number of Negroes continued to be imported into Spain and Portugal
as servants. We find, for instance, in 1474, that Negro slaves were common
in Seville. There is a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella in the year 1474
to a celebrated Negro, Juan de Valladolid, commonly called the "Negro
Count" (El Conde Negro), nominating him to the office of "mayoral of the
Negroes" in Seville. The slaves were apparently treated kindly, allowed to
keep their own dances and festivals, and to have their own chief, who
represented them in the courts, as against their own masters, and settled
their private quarrels.

Between 1455 and 1492 little mention is made of slaves in the trade with
Africa. Columbus is said to have suggested Negroes for America, but
Ferdinand and Isabella refused. Nevertheless, by 1501, we have the first
incidental mention of Negroes going to America in a declaration that Negro
slaves "born in the power of Christians were to be allowed to pass to the
Indies, and the officers of the royal revenue were to receive the money to
be paid for their permits."

About 1501 Ovando, Governor of Spanish America, was objecting to Negro
slaves and "solicited that no Negro slaves should be sent to Hispaniola,
for they fled amongst the Indians and taught them bad customs, and never
could be captured." Nevertheless a letter from the king to Ovando, dated
Segovia, the fifteenth of September, 1505, says, "I will send more Negro
slaves as you request; I think there may be a hundred. At each time a
trustworthy person will go with them who may have some share in the gold
they may collect and may promise them ease if they work well."[70] There
is a record of a hundred slaves being sent out this very year, and Diego
Columbus was notified of fifty to be sent from Seville for the mines in
1510.

After this time frequent notices show that Negroes were common in the new
world.[71] When Pizarro, for instance, had been slain in Peru, his body
was dragged to the cathedral by two Negroes. After the battle of Anaquito
the head of the viceroy was cut off by a Negro, and during the great
earthquake in Guatemala a most remarkable figure was a gigantic Negro seen
in various parts of the city. Nunez had thirty Negroes with him on the top
of the Sierras, and there was rumor of an aboriginal tribe of Negroes in
South America. One of the last acts of King Ferdinand was to urge that no
more Negroes be sent to the West Indies, but under Charles V, Bishop Las
Casas drew up a plan of assisted migration to America and asked in 1517
the right for immigrants to import twelve Negro slaves, in return for
which the Indians were to be freed.

Las Casas, writing in his old age, owns his error: "This advice that
license should be given to bring Negro slaves to these lands, the Clerigo
Casas first gave, not considering the injustice with which the Portuguese
take them and make them slaves; which advice, after he had apprehended the
nature of the thing, he would not have given for all he had in the world.
For he always held that they had been made slaves unjustly and
tyrannically; for the same reason holds good of them as of the
Indians[72]."

As soon as the plan was broached a Savoyard, Lorens de Gomenot, Governor
of Bresa, obtained a monopoly of this proposed trade and shrewdly sold it
to the Genoese for twenty-five thousand ducats. Other monopolies were
granted in 1523, 1527, and 1528[73]. Thus the American trade became
established and gradually grew, passing successively into the hands of the
Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English.

At first the trade was of the same kind and volume as that already passing
northward over the desert routes. Soon, however, the American trade
developed. A strong, unchecked demand for brute labor in the West Indies
and on the continent of America grew until it culminated in the eighteenth
century, when Negro slaves were crossing the Atlantic at the rate of fifty
to one hundred thousand a year. This called for slave raiding on a scale
that drew upon every part of Africa--upon the west coast, the western and
Egyptian Sudan, the valley of the Congo, Abyssinia, the lake regions, the
east coast, and Madagascar. Not simply the degraded and weaker types of
Negroes were seized, but the strong Bantu, the Mandingo and Songhay, the
Nubian and Nile Negroes, the Fula, and even the Asiatic Malay, were
represented in the raids.

There was thus begun in modern days a new slavery and slave trade. It was
different from that of the past, because more and more it came in time to
be founded on racial caste, and this caste was made the foundation of a
new industrial system. For four hundred years, from 1450 to 1850, European
civilization carried on a systematic trade in human beings of such
tremendous proportions that the physical, economic, and moral effects are
still plainly to be remarked throughout the world. To this must be added
the large slave trade of Mussulman lands, which began with the seventh
century and raged almost unchecked until the end of the nineteenth
century.

These were not days of decadence, but a period that gave the world
Shakespeare, Martin Luther, and Raphael, Haroun-al-Raschid and Abraham
Lincoln. It was the day of the greatest expansion of two of the world's
most pretentious religions and of the beginnings of the modern
organization of industry. In the midst of this advance and uplift this
slave trade and slavery spread more human misery, inculcated more
disrespect for and neglect of humanity, a greater callousness to
suffering, and more petty, cruel, human hatred than can well be
calculated. We may excuse and palliate it, and write history so as to let
men forget it; it remains the most inexcusable and despicable blot on
modern human history.

The Portuguese built the first slave-trading fort at Elmina, on the Gold
Coast, in 1482, and extended their trade down the west coast and up the
east coast. Under them the abominable traffic grew larger and larger,
until it became far the most important in money value of all the commerce
of the Zambesi basin. There could be no extension of agriculture, no
mining, no progress of any kind where it was so extensively carried
on[74].

It was the Dutch, however, who launched the oversea slave trade as a
regular institution. They began their fight for freedom from Spain in
1579; in 1595, as a war measure against Spain, who at that time was
dominating Portugal, they made their first voyage to Guinea. By 1621 they
had captured Portugal's various slave forts on the west coast and they
proceeded to open sixteen forts along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea.
Ships sailed from Holland to Africa, got slaves in exchange for their
goods, carried the slaves to the West Indies or Brazil, and returned home
laden with sugar. In 1621 the private companies trading in the west were
all merged into the Dutch West India Company, which sent in four years
fifteen thousand four hundred and thirty Negroes to Brazil, carried on war
with Spain, supplied even the English plantations, and gradually became
the great slave carrier of the day.

The commercial supremacy of the Dutch early excited the envy and emulation
of the English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was aimed at them, and
two wars were necessary to wrest the slave trade from them and place it in
the hands of the English. The final terms of peace, among other things,
surrendered New Netherlands to England and opened the way for England to
become henceforth the world's greatest slave trader.

The English trade began with Sir John Hawkins' voyages in 1562 and later,
in which "the Jesus, our chiefe shippe" played a leading part. Desultory
trade was kept up by the English until the middle of the seventeenth
century, when English chartered slave-trading companies began to appear.
In 1662 the "Royal Adventurers," including the king, the queen dowager,
and the Duke of York, invested in the trade, and finally the Royal African
Company, which became the world's chief slave trader, was formed in 1672
and carried on a growing trade for a quarter of a century. Jamaica had
finally been captured and held by Oliver Cromwell in 1655 and formed a
West Indian base for the trade in men.

The chief contract for trade in Negroes was the celebrated "Asiento" or
agreement of the King of Spain to the importation of slaves into Spanish
domains. The Pope's Bull or Demarkation, 1493, debarred Spain from African
possessions, and compelled her to contract with other nations for slaves.
This contract was in the hands of the Portuguese in 1600; in 1640 the
Dutch received it, and in 1701 the French. The War of the Spanish
Succession brought this monopoly to England.

This Asiento of 1713 was an agreement between England and Spain by which
the latter granted the former a monopoly of the Spanish colonial slave
trade for thirty years, and England engaged to supply the colonies within
that time with at least one hundred and forty-four thousand slaves at the
rate of forty-eight hundred per year. The English counted this prize as
the greatest result of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which ended the
mighty struggle against the power of Louis XIV. The English held the
monopoly until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), although they had to
go to war over it in 1739.

From this agreement the slave traders reaped a harvest. The trade centered
at Liverpool, and that city's commercial greatness was built largely on
this foundation. In 1709 it sent out one slaver of thirty tons' burden;
encouraged by Parliamentary subsidies which amounted to nearly half a
million dollars between 1729 and 1750, the trade amounted to fifty-three
ships in 1751; eighty-six in 1765, and at the beginning of the nineteenth
century one hundred and eighty-five, which carried forty-nine thousand two
hundred and thirteen slaves in one year.

The slave trade thus begun by the Portuguese, enlarged by the Dutch, and
carried to its culmination by the English centered on the west coast near
the seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. It
came at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupe
had exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood of
Mohammedan culture. It has succeeded in maintaining its small, loosely
federated city-states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had developed
strong resistance toward the Sudan state builders toward the north, as in
the case of the fighting Mossi; but behind this warlike resistance lay the
peaceful city life which gave industrial ideas to Byzantium and shared
something of Ethiopian and Mediterranean culture.

The first advent of the slave traders increased and encouraged native
industry, as is evidenced by the bronze work of Benin; but soon this was
pushed into the background, for it was not bronze metal but bronze flesh
that Europe wanted. A new tyranny, blood-thirsty, cruel, and built on war,
forced itself forward in the Niger delta. The powerful state of Dahomey
arose early in the eighteenth century and became a devastating tyranny,
reaching its highest power early in the nineteenth century. Ashanti, a
similar kingdom, began its conquests in 1719 and grew with the slave
trade. Thus state building in West Africa began to replace the city
economy, but it was a state built on war and on war supported and
encouraged largely for the sake of trade in human flesh. The native
industries were changed and disorganized. Family ties and government were
weakened. Far into the heart of Africa this devilish disintegration,
coupled with Christian rum and Mohammedan raiding, penetrated. The face of
Africa was turned south on these slave traders instead of northward toward
the Mediterranean, where for two thousand years and more Europe and Africa
had met in legitimate trade and mutual respect. The full significance of
the battle of Tenkadibou, which overthrew the Askias, was now clear.
Hereafter Africa for centuries was to appear before the world, not as the
land of gold and ivory, of Mansa Musa and Meroe, but as a bound and
captive slave, dumb and degraded.

The natural desire to avoid a painful subject has led historians to gloss
over the details of the slave trade and leave the impression that it was a
local west-coast phenomenon and confined to a few years. It was, on the
contrary, continent wide and centuries long and an economic, social, and
political catastrophe probably unparalleled in human history.

The exact proportions of the slave trade can be estimated only
approximately. From 1680 to 1688 we know that the English African Company
alone sent 249 ships to Africa, shipped there 60,783 Negro slaves, and
after losing 14,387 on the middle passage, delivered 46,396 in America.

It seems probable that 25,000 Negroes a year arrived in America between
1698 and 1707. After the Asiento of 1713 this number rose to 30,000
annually, and before the Revolutionary War it had reached at least 40,000
and perhaps 100,000 slaves a year.

The total number of slaves imported is not known. Dunbar estimates that
nearly 900,000 came to America in the sixteenth century, 2,750,000 in the
seventeenth, 7,000,000 in the eighteenth, and over 4,000,000 in the
nineteenth, perhaps 15,000,000 in all. Certainly it seems that at least
10,000,000 Negroes were expatriated. Probably every slave imported
represented on the average five corpses in Africa or on the high seas. The
American slave trade, therefore, meant the elimination of at least
60,000,000 Negroes from their fatherland. The Mohammedan slave trade meant
the expatriation or forcible migration in Africa of nearly as many more.
It would be conservative, then, to say that the slave trade cost Negro
Africa 100,000,000 souls. And yet people ask to-day the cause of the
stagnation of culture in that land since 1600!

Such a large number of slaves could be supplied only by organized slave
raiding in every corner of Africa. The African continent gradually became
revolutionized. Whole regions were depopulated, whole tribes disappeared;
villages were built in caves and on hills or in forest fastnesses; the
character of peoples like those of Benin developed their worst excesses of
cruelty instead of the already flourishing arts of peace. The dark,
irresistible grasp of fetish took firmer hold on men's minds.

Further advances toward civilization became impossible. Not only was there
the immense demand for slaves which had its outlet on the west coast, but
the slave caravans were streaming up through the desert to the
Mediterranean coast and down the valley of the Nile to the centers of
Mohammedanism. It was a rape of a continent to an extent never paralleled
in ancient or modern times.

In the American trade there was not only the horrors of the slave raid,
which lined the winding paths of the African jungles with bleached bones,
but there was also the horrors of what was called the "middle passage,"
that is, the voyage across the Atlantic. As Sir William Dolben said, "The
Negroes were chained to each other hand and foot, and stowed so close that
they were not allowed above a foot and a half for each in breadth. Thus
crammed together like herrings in a barrel, they contracted putrid and
fatal disorders; so that they who came to inspect them in a morning had
occasionally to pick dead slaves out of their rows, and to unchain their
carcases from the bodies of their wretched fellow-sufferers to whom they
had been fastened[75]."

It was estimated that out of every one hundred lot shipped from Africa
only about fifty lived to be effective laborers across the sea, and among
the whites more seamen died in that trade in one year than in the whole
remaining trade of England in two. The full realization of the horrors of
the slave trade was slow in reaching the ears and conscience of the modern
world, just as to-day the treatment of dark natives in European colonies
is brought to publicity with the greatest difficulty. The first move
against the slave trade in England came in Parliament in 1776, but it was
not until thirty-one years later, in 1807, that the trade was banned
through the arduous labors of Clarkson, Wilberforce, Sharpe, and others.

Denmark had already abolished the trade, and the United States attempted
to do so the following year. Portugal and Spain were induced to abolish
the trade between 1815 and 1830. Notwithstanding these laws, the
contraband trade went on until the beginning of the Civil War in America.
The reasons for this were the enormous profit of the trade and the
continued demand of the American slave barons, who had no sympathy with
the efforts to stop their source of cheap labor supply.

However, philanthropy was not working alone to overthrow Negro slavery and
the slave trade. It was seen, first in England and later in other
countries, that slavery as an industrial system could not be made to work
satisfactorily in modern times. Its cost was too great, and one of the
causes of this cost was the slave insurrections from the very beginning,
when the slaves rose on the plantation of Diego Columbus down to the Civil
War in America. Actual and potential slave insurrection in the West
Indies, in North and South America, kept the slave owners in apprehension
and turmoil, or called for a police system difficult to maintain. In North
America revolt finally took the form of organized running away to the
North, and this, with the growing scarcity of suitable land and the moral
revolt, led to the Civil War and the disappearance of the American slave
trade.

There was still, however, the Mohammedan slave trade to deal with, and
this has been the work of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In
the last quarter of the nineteenth century ten thousand slaves annually
were being distributed on the southern and eastern coast of the
Mediterranean and at the great slave market in Bornu.

On the east coast of Africa in 1862 nineteen thousand slaves were passed
into Zanzibar and thence into Arabia and Persia. As late as 1880, three
thousand annually were being thus transplanted, but now the trade is about
stopped. To-day the only centers of actual slave trading may be said to be
the cocoa plantations of the Portuguese Islands on the west coast of
Africa, and the Congo Free State.

Such is the story of the Rape of Ethiopia--a sordid, pitiful, cruel tale.
Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sung; and
through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea
amid the bleaching bones of the dead; for four hundred years the sharks
followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn
with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four
hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Cf. Helps: _Spanish Conquest_, IV, 401.

[71] Helps, _op. cit._, I, 219-220.

[72] Helps, _op. cit._, II, 18-19.

[73] Helps, _op. cit._, III, 211-212.

[74] Theal: _History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795_, I, 476.

[75] Ingram: _History of Slavery_, p. 152.




X THE WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA


That was a wonderful century, the fifteenth, when men realized that beyond
the scowling waste of western waters were dreams come true. Curious and
yet crassly human it is that, with all this poetry and romance, arose at
once the filthiest institution of the modern world and the costliest. For
on Negro slavery in America was built, not simply the abortive cotton
kingdom, but the foundations of that modern imperialism which is based on
the despising of backward men.

According to some accounts Alonzo, "the Negro," piloted one of the ships
of Columbus, and certainly there was Negro blood among his sailors. As
early as 1528 there were nearly ten thousand Negroes in the new world. We
hear of them in all parts. In Honduras, for instance, a Negro is sent to
burn a native village; in 1555 the town council of Santiago de Chile voted
to allow an enfranchised Negro possession of land in the town, and
evidently treated him just as white applicants were treated. D'Allyon, who
explored the coast of Virginia in the first quarter of the sixteenth
century, used Negro slaves (who afterward revolted) to build his ships and
help in exploration; Balboa had with him thirty Negroes, who, in 1513,
helped to build the first ships on the Pacific coast; Cortez had three
hundred Negro porters in 1522.

Before 1530 there were enough Negroes in Mexico to lead to an
insurrection, where the Negroes fought desperately, but were overcome and
their ringleaders executed. Later the followers of another Negro
insurgent, Bayano, were captured and sent back to Spain. Negroes founded
the town of Santiago del Principe in 1570, and in 1540 a Negro slave of
Hernandez de Alarcon was the only one of the party to carry a message
across the country to the Zunis of New Mexico. A Negro, Stephen Dorantes,
discovered New Mexico. This Stephen or "Estevanico" was sent ahead by
certain Spanish friars to the "Seven Cities of Cibola." "As soon as
Stephen had left said friars, he determined to earn all the reputation and
honor for himself, and that the boldness and daring of having alone
discovered those villages of high stories so much spoken of throughout
that country should be attributed to him; and carrying along with him the
people who followed him, he endeavored to cross the wilderness which is
between Cibola and the country he had gone through, and he was so far
ahead of the friars that when they arrived at Chichilticalli, which is on
the edge of the wilderness, he was already at Cibola, which is eighty
leagues of wilderness beyond." But the Indians of the new and strange
country took alarm and concluded that Stephen "must be a spy or guide for
some nations who intended to come and conquer them, because it seemed to
them unreasonable for him to say that the people were white in the country
from which he came, being black himself and being sent by them."[76]

Slaves imported under the Asiento treaties went to all parts of the
Americas. Spanish America had by the close of the eighteenth century ten
thousand in Santo Domingo, eighty-four thousand in Cuba, fifty thousand in
Porto Rico, sixty thousand in Louisiana and Florida, and sixty thousand in
Central and South America.

The history of the Negro in Spanish America centered in Cuba, Venezuela,
and Central America. In the sixteenth century slaves began to arrive in
Cuba and Negroes joined many of the exploring expeditions from there to
various parts of America. The slave trade greatly increased in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, and after the revolution in Hayti large
numbers of French emigrants from that island settled in Cuba. This and
Spanish greed increased the harshness of slavery and eventually led to
revolt among the Negroes. In 1844 Governor O'Donnell began a cruel
persecution of the blacks on account of a plot discovered among them.
Finally in 1866 the Ten Years' War broke out in which Negro and white
rebels joined. They demanded the abolition of slavery and equal political
rights for natives and foreigners, whites and blacks. The war was cruel
and bloody but ended in 1878 with the abolition of slavery, while a
further uprising the following year secured civil rights for Negroes.
Spanish economic oppression continued, however, and the leading chiefs of
the Ten Years' War including such leaders as the mulatto, Antonio Maceo,
with large numbers of Negro soldiers, took the field again in 1895. The
result was the freeing of Cuba by the intervention of the United States.
Negro regiments from the United States played here a leading role. A
number of leaders in Cuba in political, industrial, and literary lines
have been men of Negro descent.

Slavery was abolished by Guatemala in 1824 and by Mexico in 1829.
Argentine, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay ceased to recognize it about
1825. Between 1840 and 1845 it came to an end in Colombia, Venezuela, and
Ecquador. Bolivar, Paez, Sucre, and other South American leaders used
Negro soldiers in fighting for freedom (1814-16), and Hayti twice at
critical times rendered assistance and received Bolivar twice as a
refugee.

Brazil was the center of Portuguese slavery, but slaves were not
introduced in large numbers until about 1720, when diamonds were
discovered in the territory above Rio Janeiro. Gradually the seaboard from
Pernambuco to Rio Janeiro and beyond became filled with Negroes, and
although the slave trade north of the equator was theoretically abolished
by Portugal in 1815 and south of the equator in 1830, and by Brazil in
these regions in 1826 and 1830, nevertheless between 1825 and 1850 over a
million and a quarter of Negroes were introduced. Not until Brazil
abolished slavery in 1888 did the importation wholly cease. Brazilian
slavery allowed the slave to purchase his freedom, and the color line was
not strict. Even in the eighteenth century there were black clergy and
bishops; indeed the Negro clergy seem to have been on a higher moral level
than the whites.

Insurrection was often attempted, especially among the Mohammedan Negroes
around Bahia. In 1695 a tribe of revolted slaves held out for a long time.
In 1719 a widespread conspiracy failed, but many of the leaders fled to
the forest. In 1828 a thousand rose in revolt at Bahia, and again in 1830.
From 1831 to 1837 revolt was in the air, and in 1835 came the great revolt
of the Mohammedans, who attempted to enthrone a queen. The Negroes fought
with furious bravery, but were finally defeated.

By 1872 the number of free Negroes had very greatly increased, so that
emancipation did not come as a shock. While Mohammedan Negroes still gave
trouble and were in some cases sent back to Africa, yet on the whole
emancipation was peaceful, and whites, Negroes, and Indians are to-day
amalgamating into a new race. "At the present moment there is scarcely a
lowly or a highly placed federal or provincial official at the head of or
within any of the great departments of state that has not more or less
Negro or Amer-Indian blood in his veins."[77]

Lord Bryce says, "It is hardly too much to say that along the coast from
Rio to Bahia and Pernambuco, as well as in parts of the interior behind
these two cities, the black population predominates.... The Brazilian
lower class intermarries freely with the black people; the Brazilian
middle class intermarries with mulattoes and Quadroons. Brazil is the one
country in the world, besides the Portuguese colonies on the east and west
coasts of Africa, in which a fusion of the European and African races is
proceeding unchecked by law or custom. The doctrines of human equality and
human solidarity have here their perfect work. The result is so far
satisfactory that there is little or no class friction. The white man does
not lynch or maltreat the Negro; indeed I have never heard of a lynching
anywhere in South America except occasionally as part of a political
convulsion. The Negro is not accused of insolence and does not seem to
develop any more criminality than naturally belongs to any ignorant
population with loose notions of morality and property.

"What ultimate effect the intermixture of blood will have on the European
element in Brazil I will not venture to predict. If one may judge from a
few remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the intellectual
standard. One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians I have known had
some color; and other such cases have been mentioned to me. Assumptions
and preconceptions must be eschewed, however plausible they may
seem."[78]

A Brazilian writer said at the First Races Congress: "The cooperation of
the _metis_[79] in the advance of Brazil is notorious and far from
inconsiderable. They played the chief part during many years in Brazil in
the campaign for the abolition of slavery. I could quote celebrated names
of more than one of these _metis_ who put themselves at the head of the
literary movement. They fought with firmness and intrepidity in the press
and on the platform. They faced with courage the gravest perils to which
they were exposed in their struggle against the powerful slave owners, who
had the protection of a conservative government. They gave evidence of
sentiments of patriotism, self-denial, and appreciation during the long
campaign in Paraguay, fighting heroically at the boarding of the ships in
the naval battle of Riachuelo and in the attacks on the Brazilian army, on
numerous occasions in the course of this long South American war. It was
owing to their support that the republic was erected on the ruins of the
empire."[80]

The Dutch brought the first slaves to the North American continent. John
Rolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia "a
Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars."[81] This was probably one
of the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading companies which early
entered into the developed and the lucrative African slave trade. Although
the Dutch thus commenced the continental slave trade they did not actually
furnish a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside the
West Indies. A small trade had by 1698 brought a few thousand to New York
and still fewer to New Jersey.

The Dutch found better scope for slaves in Guiana, which they settled in
1616. Sugar cane became the staple crop, but the Negroes early began to
revolt and the Dutch brought in East Indian coolies. The slaves were badly
treated and the runaways joined the revolted Bush Negroes in the interior.
From 1715 to 1775 there was continuous fighting with the Bush Negroes or
insurrections, until at last in 1749 a formal treaty between sixteen
hundred Negroes and the Dutch was made. Immediately a new group revolted
under a Mohammedan, Arabi, and they obtained land and liberty. In 1763 the
coast Negroes revolted. They were checked, but made terms and settled in
the interior. The Bush Negroes fought against both French and English to
save Guiana to the Dutch, but Guiana was eventually divided between the
three. The Bush Negroes still maintain their independence and vigor.

The French encouraged settlements in the West Indies in the seventeenth
century, but at last, finding that French immigrants would not come, they
began about 1642 to import Negroes. Owing to wars with England, slaves
were supplied by the Dutch and Portuguese, although the Royal Senegal
Company held the coveted Asiento from 1701 to 1713.

It was in the island of Hayti, however, that French slavery centered.
Pirates from many nations, but chiefly French, began to frequent the
island, and in 1663 the French annexed the eastern part, thus dividing the
island between France and Spain. By 1680 there were so many slaves and
mulattoes that Louis XIV issued his celebrated Code Noir, which was
notable in compelling bachelor masters, fathers of slave children, to
marry their concubines. Children followed the condition of the mother as
to slavery or freedom; they could have no property; harsh punishments were
provided for, but families could not be separated by sale except in the
case of grown children; emancipation with full civil rights was made
possible for any slave twenty years of age or more. When Louisiana was
settled and the Alabama coast, slaves were introduced there. Louisiana was
transferred to Spain in 1762, against the resistance of both settlers and
slaves, but Spain took possession in 1769 and introduced more Negroes.

Later, in Hayti, a more liberal policy encouraged trade; war was over and
capital and slaves poured in. Sugar, coffee, chocolate, indigo, dyes, and
spices were raised. There were large numbers of mulattoes, many of whom
were educated in France, and many masters married Negro women who had
inherited large properties, just as in the United States to-day white men
are marrying eagerly the landed Indian women in the West. When white
immigration increased in 1749, however, prejudice arose against these
mulattoes and severe laws were passed depriving them of civil rights,
entrance into the professions, and the right to hold office; severe edicts
were enforced as to clothing, names, and social intercourse. Finally,
after 1777, mulattoes were forbidden to come to France.

When the French Revolution broke out, the Haytians managed to send two
delegates to Paris. Nevertheless the planters maintained the upper hand,
and one of the colored delegates, Oge, on returning, started a small
rebellion. He and his companions were killed with great brutality. This
led the French government to grant full civil rights to free Negroes,
Immediately planters and free Negroes flew to arms against each other and
then, suddenly, August 22, 1791, the black slaves, of whom there were four
hundred and fifty-two thousand, arose in revolt to help the free Negroes.

For many years runaway slaves had hidden in the mountains under their own
chiefs. One of the earliest of these chiefs was Polydor, in 1724, who was
succeeded by Macandal. The great chief of these runaways or "Maroons" at
the time of the slave revolt was Jean Francois, who was soon succeeded by
Biassou.

Pierre Dominic Toussaint, known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, joined these
Maroon bands, where he was called "the doctor of the armies of the king,"
and soon became chief aid to Jean Francois and Biassou. Upon their deaths
Toussaint rose to the chief command. He acquired complete control over the
blacks, not only in military matters, but in politics and social
organization; "the soldiers regarded him as a superior being, and the
farmers prostrated themselves before him. All his generals trembled before
him (Dessalines did not dare to look in his face), and all the world
trembled before his generals."[82]

The revolt once started, blacks and mulattoes murdered whites without
mercy and the whites retaliated. Commissioners were sent from France, who
asked simply civil rights for freedmen, and not emancipation. Indeed that
was all that Toussaint himself had as yet demanded. The planters intrigued
with the British and this, together with the beheading of the king (an
impious act in the eyes of Negroes), induced Toussaint to join the
Spaniards. In 1793 British troops were landed and the French commissioners
in desperation declared the slaves emancipated. This at once won back
Toussaint from the Spaniards. He became supreme in the north, while
Rigaud, leader of the mulattoes, held the south and the west. By 1798 the
British, having lost most of their forces by yellow fever, surrendered
Mole St. Nicholas to Toussaint and departed. Rigaud finally left for
France, and Toussaint in 1800 was master of Hayti. He promulgated a
constitution under which Hayti was to be a self-governing colony; all men
were equal before the law, and trade was practically free. Toussaint was
to be president for life, with the power to name his successor.

Napoleon Bonaparte, master of France, had at this time dreams of a great
American empire, and replied to Toussaint's new government by sending
twenty-five thousand men under his brother-in-law to subdue the
presumptuous Negroes, as a preliminary step to his occupation and
development of the Mississippi valley. Fierce fighting and yellow fever
decimated the French, but matters went hard with the Negroes too, and
Toussaint finally offered to yield. He was courteously received with
military honors and then, as soon as possible, treacherously seized,
bound, and sent to France. He was imprisoned at Fort Joux and died,
perhaps of poison, after studied humiliations, April 7, 1803.

Thus perished the greatest of American Negroes and one of the great men of
all time, at the age of fifty-six. A French planter said, "God in his
terrestrial globe did not commune with a purer spirit."[83] Wendell
Phillips said, "Some doubt the courage of the Negro. Go to Hayti and stand
on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had and
ask them what they think of the Negro's sword. I would call him Napoleon,
but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of
blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but
Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him
into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held
slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave trade in
the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, for you
read history, not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty
years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put
Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for the English, La
Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate flower of
our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will
write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the
statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture."

The treacherous killing of Toussaint did not conquer Hayti. In 1802 and
1803 some forty thousand French soldiers died of war and fever. A new
colored leader, Dessalines, arose and all the eight thousand remaining
French surrendered to the blockading British fleet.

The effect of all this was far-reaching. Napoleon gave up his dream of
American empire and sold Louisiana for a song. "Thus, all of Indian
Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana and
the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of Washington and
Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a despised Negro.
Praise, if you will, the work of a Robert Livingstone or a Jefferson, but
to-day let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was
indirectly the means of America's expansion by the Louisiana Purchase of
1803."[84]

With the freedom of Hayti in 1801 came a century of struggle to fit the
people for the freedom they had won. They were yet slaves, crushed by a
cruel servitude, without education or religious instruction. The Haytian
leaders united upon Dessalines to maintain the independence of the
republic. Dessalines, like Toussaint and his lieutenant Christophe, was
noted in slavery days for his severity toward his fellows and the
discipline which he insisted on. He had other characteristics of African
chieftains. "There were seasons when he broke through his natural
sullenness and showed himself open, affable, and even generous. His vanity
was excessive and manifested itself in singular perversities."[85] He was
a man of great personal bravery and succeeded in maintaining the
independence of Hayti, which had already cost the Frenchmen fifty thousand
lives.

On January 1, 1804, at the place whence Toussaint had been treacherously
seized and sent to France, the independence of Hayti was declared by the
military leaders. Dessalines was made governor-general for life and
afterward proclaimed himself emperor. This was not an act of
grandiloquence and mimicry. "It is truer to say that in it both Dessalines
and later Christophe were actuated by a clear insight into the social
history and peculiarities of their people. There was nothing in the
constitution which did not have its companion in Africa, where the
organization of society was despotic, with elective hereditary chiefs,
royal families, polygamic marriages, councils, and regencies."[86]

The population was divided into soldiers and laborers. The territory was
parceled out to chiefs, and the laborers were bound to the soil and worked
under rigorous inspection; part of the products were reserved for their
support, and the rest went to the chiefs, the king, the general
government, and the army. The army was under stern discipline and
military service was compulsory. Women did much of the agricultural labor.
Under Toussaint the administration of this system was committed to
Dessalines, who carried it out with rigor; it was afterward followed by
Christophe. The latter even imported four thousand Negroes from Africa,
from whom he formed a national guard for patrolling the land. These
regulations brought back for a time a large part of the former prosperity
of the island.

The severity with which Dessalines enforced the laws soon began to turn
many against him. The educated mulattoes especially objected to submission
to the savage African _mores_. Dessalines started to suppress their
revolt, but was killed in ambush in October, 1806.

Great Britain now began to intrigue for a protectorate over the island and
the Spanish end of the island threatened attack. These difficulties were
overcome, but at a cost of great internal strain. After the death of
Dessalines it seemed that Hayti was about to dissolve into a number of
petty subdivisions. At one time Christophe was ruling as king in the
north, Petion as president at Port au Prince, Rigaud in the south, and a
semi-brigand, Goman, in the extreme southwest. Very soon, however, the
rivalry narrowed down to Petion and Christophe. Petion was a man of
considerable ability and did much, not simply for Hayti, but for South
America. Already as early as 1779, before the revolution in Hayti, the
Haytian Negroes had helped the United States. The British had captured
Savannah in 1778. The French fleet appeared on the coast of Georgia late
that year and was ordered to recruit men in Hayti. Eight hundred young
freedmen, blacks and mulattoes, offered to take part in the expedition,
and they fought valiantly in the siege and covered themselves with glory.
It was this legion that made the charge on the British and saved the
retreating American army. Among the men who fought there was Christophe.

When Simon Bolivar, Commodore Aury, and many Venezuelan families were
driven from their country in 1815, they and their ships took temporary
refuge in Hayti. Notwithstanding the embarrassed condition of the
republic, Petion received them and gave them four thousand rifles with
ammunition, provisions, and last and best a printing press. He also
settled some international quarrels among members of the groups, and
Bolivar expressed himself afterward as being "overwhelmed with magnanimous
favors."[87]

Petion died in 1818 and was succeeded by his friend Boyer. Christophe
committed suicide the following year and Boyer became not simply ruler of
western Hayti, but also, by arrangement with the eastern end of the
island, gained the mastery there, where they were afraid of Spanish
aggression. Thus from 1822 to 1843 Boyer, a man of much ability, ruled the
whole of the island and gained the recognition of Haytian independence
from France and other nations.

France, under Charles X, demanded an indemnity of thirty million dollars
to reimburse the planters for confiscated lands and property. This Hayti
tried to pay, but the annual installment was a tremendous burden to the
impoverished country. Further negotiations were entered into. Finally in
1838 France recognized the independence of the republic and the indemnity
was reduced to twelve million dollars. Even this was a large burden for
Hayti, and the payment of it for years crippled the island.

The United States and Great Britain in 1825-26 recognized the independence
of Hayti. A concordat was arranged with the Pope for governing the church
in Hayti, and finally in 1860 the church placed under the French
hierarchy. Thus Boyer did unusually well; but his necessary concessions to
France weakened his influence at home, and finally an earthquake, which
destroyed several towns in 1842, raised the superstitious of the populace
against him. He resigned in 1843, leaving the treasury well filled; but
with his withdrawal the Spanish portion of the island was lost to Hayti.

The subsequent history of Hayti since 1843 has been the struggle of a
small divided country to maintain political independence. The rich
resources of the country called for foreign capital, but outside capital
meant political influence from abroad, which the little nation rightly
feared. Within, the old antagonism between the freedman and the slave
settled into a color line between the mulatto and the black, which for a
time meant the difference between educated liberalism and reactionary
ignorance. This difference has largely disappeared, but some vestiges of
the color line remain. The result has been reaction and savagery under
Soulouque, Dominique, and Nord Alexis, and decided advance under
presidents like Nissage-Saget, Solomon, Legitime, and Hyppolite.

In political life Hayti is still in the sixteenth century; but in
economic life she has succeeded in placing on their own little farms the
happiest and most contented peasantry in the world, after raising them
from a veritable hell of slavery. If modern capitalistic greed can be
restrained from interference until the best elements of Hayti secure
permanent political leadership the triumph of the revolution will be
complete.

In other parts of the French-American dominion the slaves achieved freedom
also by insurrection. In Guadeloupe they helped the French drive out the
British, and thus gained emancipation. In Martinique it took three revolts
and a civil war to bring freedom.

The English slave empire in America centered in the Bermudas, Barbadoes,
Jamaica and the lesser islands, and in the United States. Barbadoes
developed a savage slave code, and the result was attempted slave
insurrections in 1674, 1692, and 1702. These were not successful, but a
rising in 1816 destroyed much property under the leadership of a mulatto,
Washington Franklin, and the repeal of bad laws and eventual
enfranchisement of the colored people followed. One Barbadian mulatto, Sir
Conrad Reeves, has held the position of chief justice in the island and
was knighted. A Negro insurrection in Dominica under Farcel greatly
exercised England in 1791 and 1794 and delayed slave trade abolition; in
1844 and 1847 further uprisings took place, and these continued from 1853
to 1893.

The chief island domain of English slavery was Jamaica. It was Oliver
Cromwell who, in his zeal for God and the slave trade, sent an expedition
to seize Hayti. His fleet, driven off there, took Jamaica in 1655. The
English found the mountains already infested with runaway slaves known as
"Maroons," and more Negroes joined them when the English arrived. In 1663
the freedom of the Maroons was acknowledged, land was given them, and
their leader, Juan de Bolas, was made a colonel in the militia. He was
killed, however, in the following year, and from 1664 to 1738 the three
thousand or more black Maroons fought the British Empire in guerrilla
warfare. Soldiers, Indians, and dogs were sent against them, and finally
in 1738 Captain Cudjo and other chiefs made a formal treaty of peace with
Governor Trelawney. They were granted twenty-five hundred acres and their
freedom was recognized.

The peace lasted until 1795, when they rebelled again and gave the
British a severe drubbing, besides murdering planters. Bloodhounds again
were imported. The Maroons offered to surrender on the express condition
that none of their number should be deported from the island, as the
legislature wished. General Walpole hesitated, but could get peace on no
other terms and gave his word. The Maroons surrendered their arms, and
immediately the whites seized six hundred of the ringleaders and
transported them to the snows of Nova Scotia! The legislature then voted a
sword worth twenty-five hundred dollars to General Walpole, which he
indignantly refused to accept. Eventually these exiled Maroons found their
way to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in time to save that colony to the
British crown.[88]

The pressing desire for peace with the Maroons on the part of the white
planters arose from the new sugar culture introduced in 1673. A greatly
increased demand for slaves followed, and between 1700 and 1786 six
hundred and ten thousand slaves were imported; nevertheless, so severely
were they driven, that there were only three hundred thousand Negroes in
Jamaica in the latter year.

Despite the Moravian missions and other efforts late in the eighteenth
century, unrest among the Jamaica slaves and freedmen grew and was
increased by the anti-slavery agitation in England and the revolt in
Hayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes of
northwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of the
emancipation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half
million dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there.
The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free,
for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. There
ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials sent out
in these days were arbitrary and corrupt. Little was done for the mass of
the people and there was outrageous over-taxation. Nevertheless the
backwardness of the colony was attributed to the Negro. Governor Eyre
complained in 1865 that the young and strong were good for nothing and
were filling the jails; but a simultaneous report by a missionary told the
truth concerning the officials. This aroused the colored people, and a
mulatto, George William Gordon, called a meeting. Other meetings were
afterward held, and finally the Negro peasantry began a riot in 1861, in
which eighteen people were killed, only a few of whom were white.

The result was that Governor Eyre tried and executed by court-martial 354
persons, and in addition to this killed without trial 85, a total of 439.
One thousand Negro homes were burned to the ground and thousands of
Negroes flogged or mutilated. Children had their brains dashed out,
pregnant women were murdered, and Gordon was tried by court-martial and
hanged. In fact the punishment was, as the royal commissioners said,
"reckless and positively barbarous."[89]

This high-handed act aroused England. Eyre was not punished, but the
island was made a crown colony in 1866, and given representation in the
legislature in 1886.

In the island of St. Vincent, Indians first sought to enslave the fugitive
Negroes wrecked there, but the Negroes took the Carib women and then drove
the Indian men away. These "black Caribs" fought with Indians, English,
and others for three quarters of a century, until the Indians were
exterminated. The British took possession in 1763. The black Caribs
resisted, and after hard fighting signed a treaty in 1773, receiving
one-third of the island as their property. They afterward helped the
French against the British, and were finally deported to the island of
Ruatan, off Honduras. In Trinidad and British Guiana there have been
mutinies and rioting of slaves and a curious mingling of races.

Other parts of South America must be dismissed briefly, because of
insufficient data. Colombia and Venezuela, with perhaps eight million
people, have at least one-third of their population of Negro and Indian
descent. Here Simon Bolivar with his Negro, mulatto, and Indian forces
began the war that liberated South America. Central America has a smaller
proportion of Negroids, perhaps one hundred thousand in all. Bolivia and
Peru have small amounts of Negro blood, while Argentine and Uruguay have
very little. The Negro population in these lands is everywhere in process
of rapid amalgamation with whites and Indians.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] H.O. Flipper's translation of Castaneda de Nafera's narrative.

[77] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, p. 109.

[78] Bryce: _South America_, pp. 479-480.

[79] I.e., mulattoes.

[80] _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 381.

[81] Smith: _General History of Virginia_.

[82] La Croix: _Memoires sur la Revolution_, I, 253, 408.

[83] Marquis d'Hermonas. Cf. Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, p. 158.

[84] DeWitt Talmage, in Christian Herald, November 28, 1906.

[85] Aimes: _African Institutions in America_ (reprinted from _Journal of
American Folk Lore_), p. 25.

[86] Brown: _History of San Domingo_, II, 158-159.

[87] See Leger: _Hayti_, Chap. XI.

[88] Cf. Chapter V, p. 69.

[89] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_.




XI THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES


There were half a million slaves in the confines of the United States when
the Declaration of Independence declared "that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The
land that thus magniloquently heralded its advent into the family of
nations had supported the institution of human slavery for one hundred and
fifty-seven years and was destined to cling to it eighty-seven years
longer.

The greatest experiment in Negro slavery as a modern industrial system was
made on the mainland of North America and in the confines of the present
United States. And this experiment was on such a scale and so
long-continued that it is profitable for study and reflection. There were
in the United States in its dependencies, in 1910, 9,828,294 persons of
acknowledged Negro descent, not including the considerable infiltration of
Negro blood which is not acknowledged and often not known. To-day the
number of persons called Negroes is probably about ten and a quarter
million. These persons are almost entirely descendants of African slaves,
brought to America in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries.

The importation of Negroes to the mainland of North America was small
until the British got the coveted privilege of the Asiento in 1713. Before
that Northern States like New York had received some slaves from the
Dutch, and New England had early developed a trade by which she imported a
number of house servants. Ships went out to the African coast with rum,
sold the rum, and brought the slaves to the West Indies; there they
exchanged the slaves for sugar and molasses and brought the molasses back
to New England, to be made into rum for further exploits. After the
Asiento treaty the Negro population increased in the eighteenth century
from about 50,000 in 1710 to 220,000 in 1750 and to 462,000 in 1770. When
the colonies became independent, the foreign slave trade was soon made
illegal; but illicit trade, annexation of territory and natural increase
enlarged the Negro population from a little over a million at the
beginning of the nineteenth century to four and a half millions at the
outbreak of the Civil War and to about ten and a quarter millions in 1914.

The present so-called Negro population of the United States is:

1. A mixture of the various African populations, Bantu, Sudanese,
west-coast Negroes, some dwarfs, and some traces of Arab, Berber, and
Semitic blood.

2. A mixture of these strains with the blood of white Americans through a
system of concubinage of colored women in slavery days, together with some
legal intermarriage.

The figures as to mulattoes[90] have been from time to time officially
acknowledged to be understatements. Probably one-third of the Negroes of
the United States have distinct traces of white blood. This blending of
the races has led to interesting human types, but racial prejudice has
hitherto prevented any scientific study of the matter. In general the
Negro population in the United States is brown in color, darkening to
almost black and shading off in the other direction to yellow and white,
and is indistinguishable in some cases from the white population.

Much has been written of the black man in America, but most of this has
been from the point of view of the whites, so that we know of the effect
of Negro slavery on the whites, the strife among the whites for and
against abolition, and the consequent problem of the Negro so far as the
white population is concerned.

This chapter, however, is dealing with the matter more from the point of
view of the Negro group itself, and seeking to show what slavery meant to
them, how they reacted against it, what they did to secure their freedom,
and what they are doing with their partial freedom to-day.

The slaves landing from 1619 onward were received by the colonies at first
as laborers, on the same plane as other laborers. For a long time there
was in law no distinction between the indented white servant from England
and the black servant from Africa, except in the term of their service.
Even here the distinction was not always observed, some of the whites
being kept beyond term of their service and Negroes now and then securing
their freedom. Gradually the planters realized the advantage of laborers
held for life, but they were met by certain moral difficulties. The
opposition to slavery had from the first been largely stilled when it was
stated that this was a method of converting the heathen to Christianity.
The corollary was that when a slave was converted he became free. Up to
1660 or thereabouts it seemed accepted in most colonies and in the English
West Indies that baptism into a Christian church would free a Negro slave.
Masters therefore, were reluctant in the seventeenth century to have their
slaves receive Christian instruction. Massachusetts first apparently
legislated on this matter by enacting in 1641 that slavery should be
confined to captives in just wars "and such strangers as willingly sell
themselves or are sold to us,"[91] meaning by "strangers" apparently
heathen, but saying nothing as to the effect of conversion. Connecticut
adopted similar legislation in 1650, and Virginia declared in 1661 that
Negroes "are incapable of making satisfaction" for time lost in running
away by lengthening their time of services, thus implying that they were
slaves for life. Maryland declared in 1663 that Negro slaves should serve
_durante vita_, but it was not until 1667 that Virginia finally plucked up
courage to attack the issue squarely and declared by law: "Baptism doth
not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom, in
order that diverse masters freed from this doubt may more carefully
endeavor the propagation of Christianity."[92]

The transplanting of the Negro from his African clan life to the West
Indian plantation was a social revolution. Marriage became geographical
and transient, while women and girls were without protection.

The private home as a self-protective, independent unit did not exist.
That powerful institution, the polygamous African home, was almost
completely destroyed, and in its place in America arose sexual
promiscuity, a weak community life, with common dwelling, meals, and child
nurseries. The internal slave trade tended further to weaken natural ties.
A small number of favored house servants and artisans were raised above
this--had their private homes, came in contact with the culture of the
master class, and assimilated much of American civilization. This was,
however, exceptional; broadly speaking, the greatest social effect of
American slavery was to substitute for the polygamous Negro home a new
polygamy less guarded, less effective, and less civilized.

At first sight it would seem that slavery completely destroyed every
vestige of spontaneous movement among the Negroes. This is not strictly
true. The vast power of the priest in the African state is well known; his
realm alone--the province of religion and medicine--remained largely
unaffected by the plantation system. The Negro priest, therefore, early
became an important figure on the plantation and found his function as the
interpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and as
the one who expressed, rudely but picturesquely, the longing and
disappointment and resentment of a stolen people. From such beginnings
arose and spread with marvelous rapidity the Negro church, the first
distinctively Negro American social institution. It was not at first by
any means a Christian church, but a mere adaptation of those rites of
fetish which in America is termed obe worship, or "voodooism."[93]
Association and missionary effort soon gave these rites a veneer of
Christianity and gradually, after two centuries, the church became
Christian, with a simple Calvinistic creed, but with many of the old
customs still clinging to the services. It is this historic fact, that the
Negro church of to-day bases itself upon the sole surviving social
institution of the African fatherland, that accounts for its extraordinary
growth and vitality.

The slave codes at first were really labor codes based on an attempt to
reestablish in America the waning feudalism of Europe. The laborers were
mainly black and were held for life. Above them came the artisans, free
whites with a few blacks, and above them the master class. The feudalism
called for the plantation system, and the plantation system as developed
in America, and particularly in Virginia, was at first a feudal domain. On
these plantations the master was practically supreme. The slave codes in
early days were but moderately harsh, allowing punishment by the master,
but restraining him in extreme cases and providing for care of the slaves
and of the aged. With the power, however, solely in the hands of the
master class, and with the master supreme on his own plantation, his power
over the slave was practically what he wished it to be. In some cases the
cruelty was as great as on the worst West Indian plantations. In other
cases the rule was mild and paternal.

Up through this American feudalism the Negro began to rise. He learned in
the eighteenth century the English language, he began to be identified
with the Christian church, he mingled his blood to a considerable extent
with the master class. The house servants particularly were favored, in
some cases receiving education, and the number of free Negroes gradually
increased.

Present-day students are often puzzled at the apparent contradictions of
Southern slavery. One hears, on the one hand, of the staid and gentle
patriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with lord and retainers, ease
and happiness; on the other hand one hears of barbarous cruelty and
unbridled power and wide oppression of men. Which is the true picture? The
answer is simple: both are true. They are not opposite sides of the same
shield; they are different shields. They are pictures, on the one hand, of
house service in the great country seats and in the towns, and on the
other hand of the field laborers who raised the great tobacco, rice, and
cotton crops. We have thus not only carelessly mixed pictures of what were
really different kinds of slavery, but of that which represented different
degrees in the development of the economic system. House service was the
older feudal idea of personal retainership, developed in Virginia and
Carolina in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It had all the
advantages and disadvantages of such a system; the advantage of the strong
personal tie and disadvantage of unyielding caste distinctions, with the
resultant immoralities. At its worst, however, it was a matter primarily
of human relationships.

Out of this older type of slavery in the northern South there developed,
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the southern South the
type of slavery which corresponds to the modern factory system in its
worst conceivable form. It represented production of a staple product on a
large scale; between the owner and laborer were interposed the overseer
and the drivers. The slaves were whipped and driven to a mechanical task
system. Wide territory was needed, so that at last absentee landlordship
was common. It was this latter type of slavery that marked the cotton
kingdom, and the extension of the area of this system southward and
westward marked the aggressive world-conquering visions of the slave
barons. On the other hand it was the milder and far different Virginia
house service and the personal retainership of town life in which most
white children grew up; it was this that impressed their imaginations and
which they have so vividly portrayed. The Negroes, however, knew the other
side, for it was under the harsher, heartless driving of the fields that
fully nine-tenths of them lived.

There early began to be some internal development and growth of
self-consciousness among the Negroes: for instance, in New England towns
Negro "governors" were elected. This was partly an African custom
transplanted and partly an endeavor to put the regulation of the slaves
into their own hands. Negroes voted in those days: for instance, in North
Carolina until 1835 the Constitution extended the franchise to every
freeman, and when Negroes were disfranchised in 1835, several hundred
colored men were deprived of the vote. In fact, as Albert Bushnell Hart
says, "In the colonies freed Negroes, like freed indentured white
servants, acquired property, founded families, and came into the political
community if they had the energy, thrift, and fortune to get the necessary
property."[94]

The humanitarian movement of the eighteenth century was active toward
Negroes, because of the part which they played in the Revolutionary War.
Negro regiments and companies were raised in Connecticut and Rhode Island,
and a large number of Negroes were members of the continental armies
elsewhere. Individual Negroes distinguished themselves. It is estimated
that five thousand Negroes fought in the American armies.

The mass of the Americans considered at the time of the adoption of the
Constitution that Negro slavery was doomed. There soon came a series of
laws emancipating slaves in the North: Vermont began in 1779, followed by
judicial decision in Massachusetts in 1780 and gradual emancipation in
Pennsylvania beginning the same year; emancipation was accomplished in New
Hampshire in 1783, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. The
momentous exclusion of slavery in the Northwest Territory took place in
1787, and gradual emancipation began in New York and New Jersey in 1799
and 1804.

Beneficial and insurance societies began to appear among colored people.
Nearly every town of any size in Virginia in the early eighteenth century
had Negro organizations for caring for the sick and burying the dead. As
the number of free Negroes increased, particularly in the North, these
financial societies began to be openly formed. One of the earliest was the
Free African Society of Philadelphia. This eventually became the present
African Methodist Church, which has to-day half a million members and over
eleven million dollars' worth of property.

Negroes began to be received into the white church bodies in separate
congregations, and before 1807 there is the record of the formation of
eight such Negro churches. This brought forth leaders who were usually
preachers in these churches. Richard Allen, the founder of the African
Methodist Church, was one; Lot Carey, one of the founders of Liberia, was
another. In the South there was John Chavis, who passed through a regular
course of studies at what is now Washington and Lee University. He started
a school for young white men in North Carolina and had among his pupils a
United States senator, sons of a chief justice of North Carolina, a
governor of the state, and many others. He was a full-blooded Negro, but a
Southern writer says that "all accounts agree that John Chavis was a
gentleman. He was received socially among the best whites and asked to
table."[95]

In the war of 1812 thirty-three hundred Negroes helped Jackson win the
battle of New Orleans, and numbers fought in New York State and in the
navy under Perry, Channing, and others. Phyllis Wheatley, a Negro girl,
wrote poetry, and the mulatto, Benjamin Banneker, published one of the
first American series of almanacs.

In fine, it seemed in the early years of the nineteenth century that
slavery in the United States would gradually disappear and that the Negro
would have, in time, a man's chance. A change came, however, between 1820
and 1830, and it is directly traceable to the industrial revolution of the
nineteenth century.

Between 1738 and 1830 there had come a remarkable series of inventions
which revolutionized the methods of making cloth. This series included the
invention of the fly shuttle, the carding machine, the steam engine, and
the power loom. The world began to look about for a cheaper and larger
supply of fiber for weaving. It was found in the cotton plant, and the
southern United States was especially adapted to its culture. The
invention of the cotton gin removed the last difficulties. The South now
had a crop which could be attended to by unskilled labor and for which
there was practically unlimited demand. There was land, and rich land, in
plenty. The result was that the cotton crop in the United States increased
from 8,000 bales in 1790 to 650,000 bales in 1820, to 2,500,000 bales in
1850, and to 4,000,000 bales in 1860.

In this growth one sees the economic foundation of the new slavery in the
United States, which rose in the second decade of the nineteenth century.
Manifestly the fatal procrastination in dealing with slavery in the
eighteenth century received in the nineteenth century its terrible reward.
The change in the attitude toward slavery was manifest in various ways.
The South no longer excused slavery, but began to defend it as an economic
system. The enforcement of the slave trade laws became notoriously lax
and there was a tendency to make slave codes harsher.

This led to retaliation on the part of the Negroes. There had not been in
the United States before this many attempts at insurrection. The slaves
were distributed over a wide territory, and before they became intelligent
enough to cooperate the chance of emancipation was held before them.
Several small insurrections are alluded to in South Carolina early in the
eighteenth century, and one by Cato at Stono in 1740 caused widespread
alarm. The Negro plot in New York in 1712 put the city into hysterics.
There was no further plotting on any scale until the Haytian revolt, when
Gabriel in Virginia made an abortive attempt. In 1822 a free Negro,
Denmark Vesey, in South Carolina, failed in a well-laid plot, and ten
years after that, in 1831, Nat Turner led his insurrection in Virginia and
killed fifty-one persons. The result of this insurrection was to
crystallize tendencies toward harshness which the economic revolution was
making advisable.

A wave of legislation passed over the South, prohibiting the slaves from
learning to read and write, forbidding Negroes to preach, and interfering
with Negro religious meetings. Virginia declared in 1831 that neither
slaves nor free Negroes might preach, nor could they attend religious
service at night without permission. In North Carolina slaves and free
Negroes were forbidden to preach, exhort, or teach "in any prayer meeting
or other association for worship where slaves of different families are
collected together" on penalty of not more than thirty-nine lashes.
Maryland and Georgia and other states had similar laws.

The real effective revolt of the Negro against slavery was not, however,
by fighting, but by running away, usually to the North, which had been
recently freed from slavery. From the beginning of the nineteenth century
slaves began to escape in considerable numbers. Four geographical paths
were chiefly followed: one, leading southward, was the line of swamps
along the coast from Norfolk, Virginia, to the northern border of Florida.
This gave rise to the Negro element among the Indians in Florida and led
to the two Seminole wars of 1817 and 1835. These wars were really slave
raids to make the Indians give up the Negro and half-breed slaves
domiciled among them. The wars cost the United States ten million dollars
and two thousand lives.

The great Appalachian range, with its abutting mountains, was the safest
path northward. Through Tennessee and Kentucky and the heart of the
Cumberland Mountains, using the limestone caverns, was the third route,
and the valley of the Mississippi was the western tunnel.

These runaways and the freedmen of the North soon began to form a group of
people who sought to consider the problem of slavery and the destiny of
the Negro in America. They passed through many psychological changes of
attitude in the years from 1700 to 1850. At first, in the early part of
the eighteenth century, there was but one thought: revolt and revenge. The
development of the latter half of the century brought an attitude of hope
and adjustment and emphasized the differences between the slave and the
free Negro. The first part of the nineteenth century brought two
movements: among the free Negroes an effort at self-development and
protection through organization; among slaves and recent fugitives a
distinct reversion to the older idea of revolt.

As the new industrial slavery, following the rise of the cotton kingdom,
began to press harder, a period of storm and stress ensued in the black
world, and in 1829 came the first full-voiced, almost hysterical protest
of a Negro against slavery and the color line in David Walker's Appeal,
which aroused Southern legislatures to action.

The decade 1830-40 was a severe period of trial. Not only were the chains
of slavery tighter in the South, but in the North the free Negro was
beginning to feel the ostracism and competition of white workingmen,
native and foreign. In Philadelphia, between 1829 and 1849, six mobs of
hoodlums and foreigners murdered and maltreated Negroes. In the Middle
West harsh black laws which had been enacted in earlier days were hauled
from their hiding places and put into effect. No Negro was allowed to
settle in Ohio unless he gave bond within twenty days to the amount of
five thousand dollars to guarantee his good behavior and support.
Harboring or concealing fugitives was heavily fined, and no Negro could
give evidence in any case where a white man was party. These laws began to
be enforced in 1829 and for three days riots went on in Cincinnati and
Negroes were shot and killed. Aroused, the Negroes sent a deputation to
Canada where they were offered asylum. Fully two thousand migrated from
Ohio. Later large numbers from other parts of the United States joined
them.

In 1830-31 the first Negro conventions were called in Philadelphia to
consider the desperate condition of the Negro population, and in 1833 the
convention met again and local societies were formed. The first Negro
paper was issued in New York in 1827, while later emancipation in the
British West Indies brought some cheer in the darkness.

A system of separate Negro schools was established and the little band of
abolitionists led by Garrison and others appeared. In spite of all the
untoward circumstances, therefore, the internal development of the free
Negro in the North went on. The Negro population increased twenty-three
per cent between 1830 and 1840; Philadelphia had, in 1838, one hundred
small beneficial societies, while Ohio Negroes had ten thousand acres of
land. The slave mutiny on the Creole, the establishment of the Negro Odd
Fellows, and the growth of the Negro churches all indicated advancement.

Between 1830 and 1850 the concerted cooperation to assist fugitives came
to be known as the Underground Railroad. It was an organization not simply
of white philanthropists, but the cooperation of Negroes in the most
difficult part of the work made it possible. Hundreds of Negroes visited
the slave states to entice the slaves away, and the list of Underground
Railroad operators given by Siebert contains one hundred and twenty-eight
names of Negroes. In Canada and in the northern United States there was a
secret society, known as the League of Freedom, which especially worked to
help slaves run away. Harriet Tubman was one of the most energetic of
these slave conductors and brought away several thousand slaves. William
Lambert, a colored man, was reputed between 1829 and 1862 to have aided in
the escape of thirty thousand.

The decade 1840-50 was a period of hope and uplift for the Negro group,
with clear evidences of distinct self-assertion and advance. A few
well-trained lawyers and physicians appeared, and colored men took their
place among the abolition orators. The catering business in Philadelphia
and other cities fell largely into their hands, and some small merchants
arose here and there. Above all, Frederick Douglass made his first speech
in 1841 and thereafter became one of the most prominent figures in the
abolition crusade. A new series of national conventions began to assemble
late in the forties, and the delegates were drawn from the artisans and
higher servants, showing a great increase of efficiency in the rank and
file of the free Negroes.

By 1850 the Negroes had increased to three and a half million. Those in
Canada were being organized in settlements and were accumulating property.
The escape of fugitive slaves was systematized and some of the most
representative conventions met. One particularly, in 1854, grappled
frankly with the problem of emigration. It looked as though it was going
to be impossible for Negroes to remain in the United States and be free.
As early as 1788 a Negro union of Newport, Rhode Island, had proposed a
general exodus to Africa. John and Paul Cuffe, after petitioning for the
right to vote in 1780, started in 1815 for Africa, organizing an
expedition at their own expense which cost four thousand dollars. Lot
Carey organized the African Mission Society in 1813, and the first Negro
college graduate went to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of
public schools. The Colonization Society encouraged this migration, and
the Negroes themselves had organized the Canadian exodus.

The Rochester Negro convention in 1853 pronounced against migration, but
nevertheless emissaries were sent in various directions to see what
inducements could be offered. One went to the Niger valley, one to Central
America, and one to Hayti. The Haytian trip was successful and about two
thousand black emigrants eventually settled in Hayti.

Delaney, who went to Africa, concluded a treaty with eight kings offering
inducements to Negroes, but nothing came of it. In 1853 Negroes like
Purvis and Barbadoes helped in the formation of the American Anti-slavery
society, and for a while colored men cooperated with John Brown and
probably would have given him considerable help if they had thoroughly
known his plans. As it was, six or seven of his twenty-two followers were
Negroes.

Meantime the slave power was impelled by the high price of slaves and the
exhaustion of cotton land to make increased demands. Slavery was forced
north of Mason and Dixon's line in 1820; a new slave empire with thousands
of slaves was annexed in 1850, and a fugitive slave law was passed which
endangered the liberty of every free Negro; finally a determined attempt
was made to force slavery into the Northwest in competition with free
white labor, and less effective but powerful movements arose to annex more
slave territory to the south and to reopen the African slave trade.

It looked like a triumphal march for the slave barons, but each step cost
more than the last. Missouri gave rise to the early abolitionist movement.
Mexico and the fugitive slave law aroused deep opposition in the North,
and Kansas developed an attack upon the free labor system, not simply of
the North, but of the civilized world. The result was war; but the war was
not against slavery. It was fought to protect free white laborers against
the competition of slaves, and it was thought possible to do this by
segregating slavery.

The first thing that vexed the Northern armies on Southern soil during the
war was the question of the disposition of the fugitive slaves, who
immediately began to arrive in increasing numbers. Butler confiscated
them, Fremont freed them, and Halleck caught and returned them; but their
numbers swelled to such large proportions that the mere economic problem
of their presence overshadowed everything else, especially after the
Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was glad to have them come after once
he realized their strength to the Confederacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation was forced, not simply by the necessity of
paralyzing industry in the South, but also by the necessity of employing
Negro soldiers. During the first two years of the war no one wanted Negro
soldiers. It was declared to be a "white man's war." General Hunter tried
to raise a regiment in South Carolina, but the War Department disavowed
the act. In Louisiana the Negroes were anxious to enlist, but were held
off. In the meantime the war did not go as well as the North had hoped,
and on the twenty-sixth of January, 1863, the Secretary of War authorized
the Governor of Massachusetts to raise two regiments of Negro troops.
Frederick Douglass and others began the work with enthusiasm, and in the
end one hundred and eighty-seven thousand Negroes enlisted in the Northern
armies, of whom seventy thousand were killed and wounded. The conduct of
these troops was exemplary. They were indispensable in camp duties and
brave on the field, where they fought in two hundred and thirteen battles.
General Banks wrote, "Their conduct was heroic. No troops could be more
determined or more daring."[96]

The assault on Fort Wagner, led by a thousand black soldiers under the
white Colonel Shaw, is one of the greatest deeds of desperate bravery on
record. On the other hand the treatment of Negro soldiers when captured by
the Confederates was barbarous. At Fort Pillow, after the surrender of the
federal troops, the colored regiment was indiscriminately butchered and
some of them were buried alive.

Abraham Lincoln said, "The slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove to
any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed with Democratic
strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it.
There are now in the service of the United States near two hundred
thousand able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and
acquiring Union territory.... Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by
black men; take two hundred thousand men from our side and put them in the
battlefield or cornfield against us, and we would be compelled to abandon
the war in three weeks."[97] Emancipation thus came as a war measure to
break the power of the Confederacy, preserve the Union, and gain the
sympathy of the civilized world.

However, two hundred and forty-four years of slavery could not be stopped
by edict. There were legal difficulties, the whole slow problem of
economic readjustment, and the subtle and far-reaching questions of future
race relations.

The peculiar circumstances of emancipation forced the legal and political
difficulties to the front, and these were so striking that they have since
obscured the others in the eyes of students. Quite unexpectedly and
without forethought the nation had emancipated four million slaves. Once
the deed was done, the majority of the nation was glad and recognized that
this was, after all, the only result of a fearful four years' war which in
any degree justified it. But how was the result to be secured for all
time? There were three possibilities: (1) to declare the slave free and
leave him at the mercy of his former masters; (2) to establish a careful
government guardianship designed to guide the slave from legal to real
economic freedom; (3) to give the Negro the political power to guard
himself as well as he could during this development. It is very easy to
forget that the United States government tried each one of these in
succession and was literally forced to adopt the third, because the first
had utterly failed and the second was thought too "paternal" and
especially too costly. To leave the Negroes helpless after a paper edict
of emancipation was manifestly impossible. It would have meant that the
war had been fought in vain.

Carl Schurz, who traversed the South just after the war, said, "A
veritable reign of terror prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negro
found scant justice in the local courts against the white man. He could
look for protection only to the military forces of the United States still
garrisoning the states lately in rebellion and to the Freedmen's
Bureau."[98] This Freedmen's Bureau was proposed by Charles Sumner. If it
had been presented to-day instead of fifty years ago, it would have been
regarded as a proposal far less revolutionary than the state insurance of
England and Germany. A half century ago, however, and in a country which
gave the _laisser faire_ economics their extremest trial, the Freedmen's
Bureau struck the whole nation as unthinkable, save as a very temporary
expedient and to relieve the more pointed forms of distress following war.
Yet the proposals of the Bureau were both simple and sensible:

1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts for freedmen.

2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen's best friend.

3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.

4. To establish schools.

5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor relief
stations, etc.

How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom
with less than this it is hard to see. Even with such tutelage extending
over a period of two or three decades, the ultimate end had to be
enfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen who
attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had neither
object nor guarantee. Precisely on this account the former masters opposed
the Freedmen's Bureau with all their influence. They did not want the
Negro trained or really freed, and they criticized mercilessly the many
mistakes of the new Bureau.

The North at first thought to pay for the main cost of the Freedmen's
Bureau by confiscating the property of former slave owners; but finding
this not in accordance with law, they realized that they were embarking on
an enterprise which bade fair to add many millions to the already
staggering cost of the war. When, therefore, they saw that the abolition
of slavery could not be left to the white South and could not be done by
the North without time and money, they determined to put the
responsibility on the Negro himself. This was without a doubt a tremendous
experiment, but with all its manifest mistakes it succeeded to an
astonishing degree. It made the immediate reestablishment of the old
slavery impossible, and it was probably the only quick method of doing
this. It gave the freedmen's sons a chance to begin their education. It
diverted the energy of the white South slavery to the recovery of
political power, and in this interval, small as it was, the Negro took his
first steps toward economic freedom.

The difficulties that stared reconstruction politicians in the face were
these: (1) They must act quickly. (2) Emancipation had increased the
political power of the South by one-sixth. Could this increased political
power be put in the hands of those who, in defense of slavery, had
disrupted the Union? (3) How was the abolition of slavery to be made
effective? (4) What was to be the political position of the freedmen?

The Freedmen's Bureau in its short life accomplished a great task. Carl
Schurz, in 1865, felt warranted in saying that "not half of the labor that
has been done in the South this year, or will be done there next year,
would have been or would be done but for the exertions of the Freedmen's
Bureau.... No other agency except one placed there by the national
government could have wielded that moral power whose interposition was so
necessary to prevent Southern society from falling at once into the chaos
of a general collision between its different elements."[99]
Notwithstanding this the Bureau was temporary, was regarded as a
makeshift, and soon abandoned.

Meantime partial Negro suffrage seemed not only just, but almost
inevitable. Lincoln, in 1864, "cautiously" suggested to Louisiana's
private consideration "whether some of the colored people may not be let
in as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who fought
gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time to
come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." Indeed, the
"family of freedom" in Louisiana being somewhat small just then, who else
was to be intrusted with the "jewel"? Later and for different reasons
Johnson, in 1865, wrote to Mississippi, "If you could extend the elective
franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the
United States in English and write their name, and to all persons of color
who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars,
and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set
an example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect
safety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free
persons of color, upon the same basis with the free states. I hope and
trust your convention will do this."

The Negroes themselves began to ask for the suffrage. The Georgia
convention in Augusta (1866) advocated "a proposition to give those who
could write and read well and possessed a certain property qualification
the right of suffrage." The reply of the South to these suggestions was
decisive. In Tennessee alone was any action attempted that even suggested
possible Negro suffrage in the future, and that failed. In all other
states the "Black Codes" adopted were certainly not reassuring to the
friends of freedom. To be sure, it was not a time to look for calm, cool,
thoughtful action on the part of the white South. Their economic condition
was pitiable, their fear of Negro freedom genuine. Yet it was reasonable
to expect from them something less than repression and utter reaction
toward slavery. To some extent this expectation was fulfilled. The
abolition of slavery was recognized on the statute book, and the civil
rights of owning property and appearing as a witness in cases in which he
was a party were generally granted the Negro; yet with these in many cases
went harsh and unbearable regulations which largely neutralized the
concessions and certainly gave ground for an assumption that, once free,
the South would virtually reenslave the Negro. The colored people
themselves naturally feared this, protesting, as in Mississippi, "against
the reactionary policy prevailing and expressing the fear that the
legislature will pass such prescriptive laws as will drive the freedmen
from the state, or practically reenslave them."

The codes spoke for themselves. As Burgess says, "Almost every act, word,
or gesture of the Negro, not consonant with good taste and good manners as
well as good morals, was made a crime or misdemeanor for which he could
first be fined by the magistrates and then be consigned to a condition of
almost slavery for an indefinite time, if he could not pay the bill."[100]

All things considered, it seems probable that, if the South had been
permitted to have its way in 1865, the harshness of Negro slavery would
have been mitigated so as to make slave trading difficult, and so as to
make it possible for a Negro to hold property and appear in some cases in
court; but that in most other respects the blacks would have remained in
slavery.

What could prevent this? A Freedmen's Bureau established for ten, twenty,
or forty years, with a careful distribution of land and capital and a
system of education for the children, might have prevented such an
extension of slavery. But the country would not listen to such a
comprehensive plan. A restricted grant of the suffrage voluntarily made by
the states would have been a reassuring proof of a desire to treat the
freedmen fairly and would have balanced in part, at least, the increased
political power of the South. There was no such disposition evident.

In Louisiana, for instance, under the proposed reconstruction "not one
Negro was allowed to vote, though at that very time the wealthy
intelligent free colored people of the state paid taxes on property
assessed at fifteen million dollars and many of them were well known for
their patriotic zeal and love for the Union."[101]

Thus the arguments for universal Negro suffrage from the start were strong
and are still strong, and no one would question their strength were it not
for the assumption that the experiment failed. Frederick Douglass said to
President Johnson, "Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our hands
the sword to assist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, his
able successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballot
with which to save ourselves."[102]

Carl Schurz wrote, "It is idle to say that it will be time to speak of
Negro suffrage when the whole colored race will be educated, for the
ballot may be necessary to him to secure his education."[103]

The granting of full Negro suffrage meant one of two alternatives to the
South: (1) The uplift of the Negro for sheer self-preservation. This is
what Schurz and the saner North expected. As one Southern school
superintendent said, "The elevation of this class is a matter of prime
importance, since a ballot in the hands of a black citizen is quite as
potent as in the hands of a white one." Or (2) Negro suffrage meant a
determined concentration of Southern effort by actual force to deprive the
Negro of the ballot or nullify its use. This last is what really happened.
But even in this case, so much energy was taken in keeping the Negro from
voting that the plan for keeping him in virtual slavery and denying him
education partially failed. It took ten years to nullify Negro suffrage in
part and twenty years to escape the fear of federal intervention. In these
twenty years a vast number of Negroes had arisen so far as to escape
slavery forever. Debt peonage could be fastened on part of the rural South
and was; but even here the new Negro landholder appeared. Thus despite
everything the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone, struck the death knell
of slavery.

The steps toward the Fifteenth Amendment were taken slowly. First Negroes
were allowed to take part in reconstructing the state governments. This
was inevitable if loyal governments were to be obtained. Next the restored
state governments were directed to enfranchise all citizens, black or
white, or have their representation in Congress cut down proportionately.
Finally the United States said the last word of simple justice: the states
may regulate the suffrage, but no state may deprive a person of the right
to vote simply because he is a Negro or has been a slave.

For such reasons the Negro was enfranchised. What was the result? No
language has been spared to describe these results as the worst
imaginable. This is not true. There were bad results, and bad results
arising from Negro suffrage; but those results were not so bad as usually
painted, nor was Negro suffrage the prime cause of many of them. Let us
not forget that the white South believed it to be of vital interest to its
welfare that the experiment of Negro suffrage should fail ignominiously
and that almost to a man the whites were willing to insure this failure
either by active force or passive acquiescence; that besides this there
were, as might be expected, men, black and white, Northern and Southern,
only too eager to take advantage of such a situation for feathering their
own nests. Much evil must result in such case; but to charge the evil to
Negro suffrage is unfair. It may be charged to anger, poverty, venality,
and ignorance, but the anger and poverty were the almost inevitable
aftermath of war; the venality was much greater among whites than Negroes
both North and South, and while ignorance was the curse of Negroes, the
fault was not theirs and they took the initiative to correct it.

The chief charges against the Negro governments are extravagance, theft,
and incompetency of officials. There is no serious charge that these
governments threatened civilization or the foundations of social order.
The charge is that they threatened property and that they were
inefficient. These charges are in part undoubtedly true, but they are
often exaggerated. The South had been terribly impoverished and saddled
with new social burdens. In other words, states with smaller resources
were asked not only to do a work of restoration, but a larger social
work. The property holders were aghast. They not only demurred, but,
predicting ruin and revolution, they appealed to secret societies, to
intimidation, force, and murder. They refused to believe that these
novices in government and their friends were aught but scamps and fools.
Under the circumstances occurring directly after the war, the wisest
statesman would have been compelled to resort to increased taxation and
would have, in turn, been execrated as extravagant, dishonest, and
incompetent. It is easy, therefore, to see what flaming and incredible
stories of Reconstruction governments could gain wide currency and belief.
In fact the extravagance, although great, was not universal, and much of
it was due to the extravagant spirit pervading the whole country in a day
of inflated currency and speculation.

That the Negroes led by the astute thieves, became at first tools and
received some small share of the spoils is true. But two considerations
must be added: much of the legislation which resulted in fraud was
represented to the Negroes as good legislation, and thus their votes were
secured by deliberate misrepresentation. Take, for instance, the land
frauds of South Carolina. A wise Negro leader of that state, advocating
the state purchase of farm lands, said, "One of the greatest of slavery
bulwarks was the infernal plantation system, one man owning his thousand,
another his twenty, another fifty thousand acres of land. This is the only
way by which we will break up that system, and I maintain that our freedom
will be of no effect if we allow it to continue. What is the main cause of
the prosperity of the North? It is because every man has his own farm and
is free and independent. Let the lands of the South be similarly
divided."[104]

From such arguments the Negroes were induced to aid a scheme to buy land
and distribute it. Yet a large part of eight hundred thousand dollars
appropriated was wasted and went to the white landholders' pockets.

The most inexcusable cheating of the Negroes took place through the
Freedmen's Bank. This bank was incorporated by Congress in 1865 and had in
its list of incorporators some of the greatest names in America including
Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryan and John Jay. Yet the bank was allowed
to fail in 1874 owing the freedmen their first savings of over three
millions of dollars. They have never been reimbursed.

Many Negroes were undoubtedly venal, but more were ignorant and deceived.
The question is: Did they show any signs of a disposition to learn to
better things? The theory of democratic government is not that the will of
the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average
intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by
bitter experience. This is precisely what the Negro voters showed
indubitable signs of doing. First they strove for schools to abolish
ignorance, and second, a large and growing number of them revolted against
the extravagance and stealing that marred the beginning of Reconstruction,
and joined with the best elements to institute reform. The greatest stigma
on the white South is not that it opposed Negro suffrage and resented
theft and incompetence, but that, when it saw the reform movements growing
and even in some cases triumphing, and a larger and larger number of black
voters learning to vote for honesty and ability, it still preferred a
Reign of Terror to a campaign of education and disfranchised Negroes
instead of punishing rascals.

No one has expressed this more convincingly than a Negro who was himself a
member of the Reconstruction legislature of South Carolina, and who spoke
at the convention which disfranchised him against one of the onslaughts of
Tillman. "We were eight years in power. We had built school houses,
established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary
system, provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jails
and court houses, rebuilt the bridges, and reestablished the ferries. In
short, we had reconstructed the state and placed it upon the road to
prosperity, and at the same time, by our acts of financial reform,
transmitted to the Hampton government an indebtedness not greater by more
than two and a half million dollars than was the bonded debt of the state
in 1868, before the Republican Negroes and their white allies came into
power."[105]

So, too, in Louisiana in 1872, and in Mississippi later, the better
element of the Republicans triumphed at the polls and, joining with the
Democrats, instituted reforms, repudiated the worst extravagance, and
started toward better things. Unfortunately there was one thing that the
white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and
incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency.

In the midst of all these difficulties the Negro governments in the South
accomplished much of positive good. We may recognize three things which
Negro rule gave to the South: (1) democratic government, (2) free public
schools, (3) new social legislation.

In general, the words of Judge Albion W. Tourgee, a white "carpet bagger,"
are true when he says of the Negro governments, "They obeyed the
Constitution of the United States and annulled the bonds of states,
counties, and cities which had been issued to carry on the War of
Rebellion and maintain armies in the field against the Union. They
instituted a public school system in a realm where public schools had been
unknown. They opened the ballot box and the jury box to thousands of white
men who had been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They
introduced home rule into the South. They abolished the whipping post, the
branding iron, the stocks, and other barbarous forms of punishment which
had up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about
twenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant in
the sums appropriated for public works. In all of that time no man's
rights of persons were invaded under the forms of law. Every Democrat's
life, home, fireside, and business were safe. No man obstructed any white
man's way to the ballot box, interfered with his freedom of speech, or
boycotted him on account of his political faith."[106]

A thorough study of the legislation accompanying these constitutions and
its changes since shows the comparatively small amount of change in law
and government which the overthrow of Negro rule brought about. There were
sharp and often hurtful economies introduced, marking the return of
property to power; there was a sweeping change of officials, but the main
body of Reconstruction legislation stood. The Reconstruction democracy
brought forth new leaders and definitely overthrew the old Southern
aristocracy. Among these new men were Negroes of worth and ability. John
R. Lynch, when Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, was
given a public testimonial by Republicans and Democrats, and the leading
white paper said, "His bearing in office had been so proper, and his
rulings in such marked contrasts to the partisan conduct of the ignoble
whites of his party who have aspired to be leaders of the blacks, that the
conservatives cheerfully joined in the testimonial."[107]

Of the colored treasurer of South Carolina the white Governor Chamberlain
said, "I have never heard one word or seen one act of Mr. Cardoza's which
did not confirm my confidence in his personal integrity and his political
honor and zeal for the honest administration of the state government. On
every occasion, and under all circumstances, he has been against fraud and
robbery and in favor of good measures and good men."[108]

Jonathan C. Gibbs, a colored man and the first state superintendent of
instruction in Florida, was a graduate of Dartmouth. He established the
system and brought it to success, dying in harness in 1874. Such men--and
there were others--ought not to be forgotten or confounded with other
types of colored and white Reconstruction leaders.

There is no doubt that the thirst of the black man for knowledge, a thirst
which has been too persistent and durable to be mere curiosity or whim,
gave birth to the public school system of the South. It was the question
upon which black voters and legislators insisted more than anything else,
and while it is possible to find some vestiges of free schools in some of
the Southern States before the war, yet a universal, well-established
system dates from the day that the black man got political power.

Finally, in legislation covering property, the wider functions of the
state, the punishment of crime and the like, it is sufficient to say that
the laws on these points established by Reconstruction legislatures were
not only different from and even revolutionary to the laws in the older
South, but they were so wise and so well suited to the needs of the new
South that, in spite of a retrogressive movement following the overthrow
of the Negro governments, the mass of this legislation, with elaborations
and development, still stands on the statute books of the South.[109]

The triumph of reaction in the South inaugurated a new era in which we may
distinguish three phases: the renewed attempt to reduce the Negroes to
serfdom, the rise of the Negro metayer, and the economic disfranchisement
of the Southern working class.

The attempt to replace individual slavery had been frustrated by the
Freedmen's Bureau and the Fifteenth Amendment. The disfranchisement of
1876 was followed by the widespread rise of "crime" peonage. Stringent
laws on vagrancy, guardianship, and labor contracts were enacted and large
discretion given judge and jury in cases of petty crime. As a result
Negroes were systematically arrested on the slightest pretext and the
labor of convicts leased to private parties. This "convict lease system"
was almost universal in the South until about 1890, when its outrageous
abuses and cruelties aroused the whole country. It still survives over
wide areas, and is not only responsible for the impression that the Negro
is a natural criminal, but also for the inability of the Southern courts
to perform their normal functions after so long a prostitution to ends far
removed from justice.

In more normal economic lines the employers began with the labor contract
system. Before the war they owned labor, land, and subsistence. After the
war they still held the land and subsistence. The laborer was hired and
the subsistence "advanced" to him while the crop was growing. The fall of
the Freedmen's Bureau hindered the transmutation of this system into a
modern wage system, and allowed the laborers to be cheated by high
interest charges on the subsistence advanced and actual cheating often in
book accounts.

The black laborers became deeply dissatisfied under this system and began
to migrate from the country to the cities, where there was an increasing
demand for labor. The employing farmers complained bitterly of the
scarcity of labor and of Negro "laziness," and secured the enactment of
harsher vagrancy and labor contract laws, and statutes against the
"enticement" of laborers. So severe were these laws that it was often
impossible for a laborer to stop work without committing a felony.
Nevertheless competition compelled the landholders to offer more
inducements to the farm hand. The result was the rise of the black share
tenant: the laborer securing better wages saved a little capital and began
to hire land in parcels of forty to eighty acres, furnishing his own tools
and seed and practically raising his own subsistence. In this way the
whole face of the labor contract in the South was, in the decade 1880-90,
in process of change from a nominal wage contract to a system of tenantry.
The great plantations were apparently broken up into forty and eighty acre
farms with black farmers. To many it seemed that emancipation was
accomplished, and the black folk were especially filled with joy and hope.

It soon was evident, however, that the change was only partial. The
landlord still held the land in large parcels. He rented this in small
farms to tenants, but retained direct control. In theory the laborer was
furnishing capital, but in the majority of cases he was borrowing at
least a part of this capital from some merchant.

The retail merchant in this way entered on the scene as middle man between
landlord and laborer. He guaranteed the landowner his rent and relieved
him of details by taking over the furnishing of supplies to the laborer.
He tempted the laborer by a larger stock of more attractive goods, made a
direct contract with him, and took a mortgage on the growing crop. Thus he
soon became the middle man to whom the profit of the transaction largely
flowed, and he began to get rich.

If the new system benefited the merchant and the landlord, it also brought
some benefits to the black laborers. Numbers of these were still held in
peonage, and the mass were laborers working for scant board and clothes;
but above these began to rise a large number of independent tenants and
farm owners.

In 1890, therefore, the South was faced by this question: Are we willing
to allow the Negro to advance as a free worker, peasant farmer, metayer,
and small capitalist, with only such handicaps as naturally impede the
poor and ignorant, or is it necessary to erect further artificial barriers
to restrain the advance of the Negroes? The answer was clear and
unmistakable. The advance of the freedmen had been too rapid and the South
feared it; every effort must be made to "keep the Negro in his place" as a
servile caste.

To this end the South strove to make the disfranchisement of the Negroes
effective and final. Up to this time disfranchisement was illegal and
based on intimidation. The new laws passed between 1890 and 1910 sought on
their face to base the right to vote on property and education in such a
way as to exclude poor and illiterate Negroes and admit all whites. In
fact they could be administered so as to exclude nearly all Negroes. To
this was added a series of laws designed publicly to humiliate and
stigmatize Negro blood: as, for example, separate railway cars; separate
seats in street cars, and the like; these things were added to the
separation in schools and churches, and the denial of redress to seduced
colored women, which had long been the custom in the South. All these new
enactments meant not simply separation, but subordination, caste,
humiliation, and flagrant injustice.

To all this was added a series of labor laws making the exploitation of
Negro labor more secure. All this legislation had to be accomplished in
the face of the labor movement throughout the world, and particularly in
the South, where it was beginning to enter among the white workers. This
was accomplished easily, however, by an appeal to race prejudice. No
method of inflaming the darkest passions of men was unused. The lynching
mob was given its glut of blood and egged on by purposely exaggerated and
often wholly invented tales of crime on the part of perhaps the most
peaceful and sweet-tempered race the world has ever known. Under the flame
of this outward noise went the more subtle and dangerous work. The
election laws passed in the states where three-fourths of the Negroes
live, were so ingeniously framed that a black university graduate could be
prevented from voting and the most ignorant white hoodlum could be
admitted to the polls. Labor laws were so arranged that imprisonment for
debt was possible and leaving an employer could be made a penitentiary
offense. Negro schools were cut off with small appropriations or wholly
neglected, and a determined effort was made with wide success to see that
no Negro had any voice either in the making or the administration of
local, state, or national law.

The acquiescence of the white labor vote of the South was further insured
by throwing white and black laborers, so far as possible, into rival
competing groups and making each feel that the one was the cause of the
other's troubles. The neutrality of the white people of the North was
secured through their fear for the safety of large investments in the
South, and through the fatalistic attitude common both in America and
Europe toward the possibility of real advance on the part of the darker
nations.

The reaction of the Negro Americans upon this wholesale and open attempt
to reduce them to serfdom has been interesting. Naturally they began to
organize and protest and in some cases to appeal to the courts. Then, to
their astonishment, there arose a colored leader, Mr. Booker T.
Washington, who advised them to yield to disfranchisement and caste and
wait for greater economic strength and general efficiency before demanding
full rights as American citizens. The white South naturally agreed with
Mr. Washington, and the white North thought they saw here a chance for
peace in the racial conflict and safety for their Southern investments.

For a time the colored people hesitated. They respected Mr. Washington for
shrewdness and recognized the wisdom of his homely insistence on thrift
and hard work; but gradually they came to see more and more clearly that,
stripped of political power and emasculated by caste, they could never
gain sufficient economic strength to take their place as modern men. They
also realized that any lull in their protests would be taken advantage of
by Negro haters to push their caste program. They began, therefore, with
renewed persistence to fight for their fundamental rights as American
citizens. The struggle tended at first to bitter personal dissension
within the group. But wiser counsels and the advice of white friends
eventually prevailed and raised it to the broad level of a fight for the
fundamental principles of democracy. The launching of the "Niagara
Movement" by twenty-nine daring colored men in 1905, followed by the
formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People in 1910, marked an epoch in the advance of the Negro. This latter
organization, with its monthly organ, _The Crisis_, is now waging a
nation-wide fight for justice to Negroes. Other organizations, and a
number of strong Negro weekly papers are aiding in this fight. What has
been the net result of this struggle of half a century?

In 1863 there were about five million persons of Negro descent in the
United States. Of these, four million and more were just being released
from slavery. These slaves could be bought and sold, could move from place
to place only with permission, were forbidden to learn to read or write,
and legally could never hold property or marry. Ninety per cent were
totally illiterate, and only one adult in six was a nominal Christian.

Fifty years later, in 1913, there were in the United States ten and a
quarter million persons of Negro descent, an increase of one hundred and
five per cent. Legal slavery has been abolished leaving, however, vestiges
in debt slavery, peonage, and the convict lease system. The mass of the
freedmen and their sons have

1. Earned a living as free and partially free laborers.

2. Shared the responsibilities of government.

3. Developed the internal organization of their race.

4. Aspired to spiritual self-expression.

The Negro was freed as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer.
There were a few free Negroes who owned property in the South, and a
larger number who owned property in the North; but ninety-nine per cent of
the race in the South were penniless field hands and servants.

To-day there are two and a half million laborers, the majority of whom are
efficient wage earners. Above these are more than a million servants and
tenant farmers; skilled and semi-skilled workers make another million and
at the top of the economic column are 600,000 owners and managers of farms
and businesses, cash tenants, officials, and professional men. This makes
a total of 5,192,535 colored breadwinners in 1910.

More specifically these breadwinners include 218,972 farm owners and
319,346 cash farm tenants and managers. There were in all 62,755 miners,
288,141 in the building and hand trades; 28,515 workers in clay, glass,
and stone; 41,739 iron and steel workers; 134,102 employees on railways;
62,822 draymen, cab drivers, and liverymen; 133,245 in wholesale and
retail trade; 32,170 in the public service; and 69,471 in professional
service, including 29,750 teachers, 17,495 clergymen, and 4,546
physicians, dentists, trained nurses, etc. Finally, we must not forget
2,175,000 Negro homes, with their housewives, and 1,620,000 children in
school.

Fifty years ago the overwhelming mass of these people were not only
penniless, but were themselves assessed as real estate. By 1875 the
Negroes probably had gotten hold of something between 2,000,000 and
4,000,000 acres of land through their bounties as soldiers and the low
price of land after the war. By 1880 this was increased to about 6,000,000
acres; in 1890 to about 8,000,000 acres; in 1900 to over 12,000,000 acres.
In 1910 this land had increased to nearly 20,000,000 acres, a realm as
large as Ireland.

The 120,738 farms owned by Negroes in 1890 increased to 218,972 in 1910,
or eighty-one per cent. The value of these farms increased from
$179,796,639 in 1900 to $440,992,439 in 1910; Negroes owned in 1910 about
500,000 homes out of a total of 2,175,000. Their total property in 1900
was estimated at $300,000,000 by the American Economic Association. On the
same basis of calculation it would be worth to-day not less than
$800,000,000.

Despite the disfranchisement of three-fourths of his voting population,
the Negro to-day is a recognized part of the American government. He holds
7,500 offices in the executive service of the nation, besides furnishing
four regiments in the army and a large number of sailors. In the state and
municipal service he holds nearly 20,000 other offices, and he furnishes
500,000 of the votes which rule the Union.

In these same years the Negro has relearned the lost art of organization.
Slavery was the almost absolute denial of initiative and responsibility.
To-day Negroes have nearly 40,000 churches, with edifices worth at least
$75,000,000 and controlling nearly 4,000,000 members. They raise
themselves $7,500,000 a year for these churches.

There are 200 private schools and colleges managed and almost entirely
supported by Negroes, and these and other public and private Negro schools
have received in 40 years $45,000,000 of Negro money in taxes and
donations. Five millions a year are raised by Negro secret and beneficial
societies which hold at least $6,000,000 in real estate. Negroes support
wholly or in part over 100 old folks' homes and orphanages, 30 hospitals,
and 500 cemeteries. Their organized commercial life is extending rapidly
and includes over 22,000 small retail businesses and 40 banks.

Above and beyond this material growth has gone the spiritual uplift of a
great human race. From contempt and amusement they have passed to the
pity, perplexity, and fear on the part of their neighbors, while within
their own souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to open
protest and more and more manly self-assertion. Where nine-tenths of them
could not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds can; they have 300
papers and periodicals, and their voice and expression are compelling
attention. Already in poetry, literature, music, and painting the work of
Americans of Negro descent has gained notable recognition. Instead of
being led and defended by others, as in the past, American Negroes are
gaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals.
Self-realization is thus coming slowly but surely to another of the
world's great races, and they are to-day girding themselves to fight in
the van of progress, not simply for their own rights as men, but for the
ideals of the greater world in which they live: the emancipation of women,
universal peace, democratic government, the socialization of wealth, and
human brotherhood.

FOOTNOTES:

[90]

The figures given by the census are as follows:
1850, mulattoes formed 11.2 per cent of the total Negro population.
1860, mulattoes formed 13.2 per cent of the total Negro population.
1870, mulattoes formed 12 per cent of the total Negro population.
1890, mulattoes formed 15.2 per cent of the total Negro population.
1910, mulattoes formed 20.9 per cent of the total Negro population.

Or in actual numbers:
1850, 405,751 mulattoes.
1860, 588,352 mulattoes.
1870, 585,601 mulattoes.
1890, 1,132,060 mulattoes.
1910, 2,050,686 mulattoes.

[91] Cf. "The Spanish Jurist Solorzaris," quoted in Helps: _Spanish
Conquest_, IV, 381.

[92] Hurd: _Law of Freedom and Bondage_.

[93] "Obi (Obeah, Obiah, or Obia) is the adjective; Obe or Obi, the noun.
It is of African origin, probably connected with Egyptian Ob, Aub, or
Obron, meaning 'serpent.' Moses forbids Israelites ever to consult the
demon Ob, i.e., 'Charmer, Wizard.' The Witch of Endor is called Oub or Ob.
Oubaois is the name of the Baselisk or Royal Serpent, emblem of the Sun,
and, according to Horus Appollo, 'the Ancient Deity of Africa.'"--Edwards:
_West Indies_, ed. 1819, II. 106-119. Cf. Johnston: _Negro in the New
World_, pp. 65-66; _also Atlanta University Publications_, No. 8, pp. 5-6.

[94] _Boston Transcript_, March 24, 1906.

[95] Bassett: _North Carolina_, pp. 73-76.

[96] Cf. Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_.

[97] Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_, p. 108.

[98] _American Historical Review_, Vol. XV.

[99] Report to President Johnson.

[100] _Reconstruction and the Constitution._

[101] Brewster: _Sketches_, etc.

[102] McPherson: _Reconstruction_, p. 52.

[103] Report to the President, 1865.

[104] _American Historical Review_, Vol. XV, No. 4.

[105] _Occasional Papers_, American Negro Academy, No. 6.

[106] _Occasional Papers_, American Negro Academy, No. 6.

[107] _Jackson (Miss.) Clarion_, April 24, 1873.

[108] Allen: _Governor Chamberlain's Administration_, p. 82.

[109] Reconstruction Constitutions, practically unaltered, were kept in
Florida, 1868-85, seventeen years; Virginia, 1870-1902, thirty-two years;
South Carolina, 1868-95, twenty-seven years; Mississippi, 1868-90,
twenty-two years.




XII THE NEGRO PROBLEMS


It is impossible to separate the population of the world accurately by
race, since that is no scientific criterion by which to divide races. If
we divide the world, however, roughly into African Negroes and Negroids,
European whites, and Asiatic and American brown and yellow peoples, we
have approximately 150,000,000 Negroes, 500,000,000 whites, and
900,000,000 yellow and brown peoples. Of the 150,000,000 Negroes,
121,000,000 live in Africa, 27,000,000[110] in the new world, and
2,000,000 in Asia.

What is to be the future relation of the Negro race to the rest of the
world? The visitor from Altruria might see here no peculiar problem. He
would expect the Negro race to develop along the lines of other human
races. In Africa his economic and political development would restore and
eventually outrun the ancient glories of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Yoruba;
overseas the West Indies would become a new and nobler Africa, built in
the very pathway of the new highway of commerce between East and West--the
real sea route to India; while in the United States a large part of its
citizenship (showing for perhaps centuries their dark descent, but
nevertheless equal sharers of and contributors to the civilization of the
West) would be the descendants of the wretched victims of the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth century slave trade.

This natural assumption of a stranger finds, however, lodging in the minds
of few present-day thinkers. On the contrary, such an outcome is usually
dismissed summarily. Most persons have accepted that tacit but clear
modern philosophy which assigns to the white race alone the hegemony of
the world and assumes that other races, and particularly the Negro race,
will either be content to serve the interests of the whites or die out
before their all-conquering march. This philosophy is the child of the
African slave trade and of the expansion of Europe during the nineteenth
century.

The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce,
followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an article
of commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid. When the Americas
had enough black laborers for their immediate demand, the moral action of
the eighteenth century had a chance to make its faint voice heard.

The moral repugnance was powerfully reenforced by the revolt of the slaves
in the West Indies and South America, and by the fact that North America
early began to regard itself as the seat of advanced ideas in politics,
religion, and humanity.

Finally European capital began to find better investments than slave
shipping and flew to them. These better investments were the fruit of the
new industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, with its factory
system; they were also in part the result of the cheapened price of gold
and silver, brought about by slavery and the slave trade to the new world.
Commodities other than gold, and commodities capable of manufacture and
exploitation in Europe out of materials furnishable by America, became
enhanced in value; the bottom fell out of the commercial slave trade and
its suppression became possible.

The middle of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of the rise of the
modern working class. By means of political power the laborers slowly but
surely began to demand a larger share in the profiting industry. In the
United States their demand bade fair to be halted by the competition of
slave labor. The labor vote, therefore, first confined slavery to limits
in which it could not live, and when the slave power sought to exceed
these territorial limits, it was suddenly and unintentionally abolished.

As the emancipation of millions of dark workers took place in the West
Indies, North and South America, and parts of Africa at this time, it was
natural to assume that the uplift of this working class lay along the same
paths with that of European and American whites. This was the _first_
suggested solution of the Negro problem. Consequently these Negroes
received partial enfranchisement, the beginnings of education, and some of
the elementary rights of wage earners and property holders, while the
independence of Liberia and Hayti was recognized. However, long before
they were strong enough to assert the rights thus granted or to gather
intelligence enough for proper group leadership, the new colonialism of
the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries began to dawn. The new
colonial theory transferred the reign of commercial privilege and
extraordinary profit from the exploitation of the European working class
to the exploitation of backward races under the political domination of
Europe. For the purpose of carrying out this idea the European and white
American working class was practically invited to share in this new
exploitation, and particularly were flattered by popular appeals to their
inherent superiority to "Dagoes," "Chinks," "Japs," and "Niggers."

This tendency was strengthened by the fact that the new colonial expansion
centered in Africa. Thus in 1875 something less than one-tenth of Africa
was under nominal European control, but the Franco-Prussian War and the
exploration of the Congo led to new and fateful things. Germany desired
economic expansion and, being shut out from America by the Monroe
Doctrine, turned to Africa. France, humiliated in war, dreamed of an
African empire from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Italy became ambitious
for Tripoli and Abyssinia. Great Britain began to take new interest in her
African realm, but found herself largely checkmated by the jealousy of all
Europe. Portugal sought to make good her ancient claim to the larger part
of the whole southern peninsula. It was Leopold of Belgium who started to
make the exploration and civilization of Africa an international movement.
This project failed, and the Congo Free State became in time simply a
Belgian colony. While the project was under discussion, the international
scramble for Africa began. As a result the Berlin Conference and
subsequent wars and treaties gave Great Britain control of 2,101,411
square miles of African territory, in addition to Egypt and the Egyptian
Sudan with 1,600,000 square miles. This includes South Africa,
Bechuanaland and Rhodesia, East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar, Nigeria, and
British West Africa. The French hold 4,106,950 square miles, including
nearly all North Africa (except Tripoli) west of the Niger valley and
Libyan Desert, and touching the Atlantic at four points. To this is added
the Island of Madagascar. The Germans have 910,150 square miles,
principally in Southeast and South-west Africa and the Kamerun. The
Portuguese retain 787,500 square miles in Southeast and Southwest Africa.
The Belgians have 900,000 square miles, while Liberia (43,000 square
miles) and Abyssinia (350,000 square miles) are independent. The Italians
have about 600,000 square miles and the Spanish less than 100,000 square
miles.

This partition of Africa brought revision of the ideas of Negro uplift.
Why was it necessary, the European investors argued, to push a continent
of black workers along the paths of social uplift by education,
trades-unionism, property holding, and the electoral franchise when the
workers desired no change, and the rate of European profit would suffer?

There quickly arose then the _second_ suggestion for settling the Negro
problem. It called for the virtual enslavement of natives in certain
industries, as rubber and ivory collecting in the Belgian Congo, cocoa
raising in Portuguese Angola, and diamond mining in South Africa. This new
slavery or "forced" labor was stoutly defended as a necessary foundation
for implanting modern industry in a barbarous land; but its likeness to
slavery was too clear and it has been modified, but not wholly abolished.

The _third_ attempted solution of the Negro sought the result of the
_second_ by less direct methods. Negroes in Africa, the West Indies, and
America were to be forced to work by land monopoly, taxation, and little
or no education. In this way a docile industrial class working for low
wages, and not intelligent enough to unite in labor unions, was to be
developed. The peonage systems in parts of the United States and the labor
systems of many of the African colonies of Great Britain and Germany
illustrate this phase of solution.[111] It is also illustrated in many of
the West Indian islands where we have a predominant Negro population, and
this population freed from slavery and partially enfranchised. Land and
capital, however, have for the most part been so managed and monopolized
that the black peasantry have been reduced to straits to earn a living in
one of the richest parts of the world. The problem is now going to be
intensified when the world's commerce begins to sweep through the Panama
Canal.

All these solutions and methods, however, run directly counter to modern
philanthropy, and have to be carried on with a certain concealment and
half-hypocrisy which is not only distasteful in itself, but always liable
to be discovered and exposed by some liberal or religious movement of the
masses of men and suddenly overthrown. These solutions are, therefore,
gradually merging into a _fourth_ solution, which is to-day very popular.
This solution says: Negroes differ from whites in their inherent genius
and stage of development. Their development must not, therefore, be sought
along European lines, but along their own native lines. Consequently the
effort is made to-day in British Nigeria, in the French Congo and Sudan,
in Uganda and Rhodesia to leave so far as possible the outward structure
of native life intact; the king or chief reigns, the popular assemblies
meet and act, the native courts adjudicate, and native social and family
life and religion prevail. All this, however, is subject to the veto and
command of a European magistracy supported by a native army with European
officers. The advantage of this method is that on its face it carries no
clue to its real working. Indeed it can always point to certain undoubted
advantages: the abolition of the slave trade, the suppression of war and
feud, the encouragement of peaceful industry. On the other hand, back of
practically all these experiments stands the economic motive--the
determination to use the organization, the land, and the people, not for
their own benefit, but for the benefit of white Europe. For this reason
education is seldom encouraged, modern religious ideas are carefully
limited, sound political development is sternly frowned upon, and industry
is degraded and changed to the demands of European markets. The most
ruthless class of white mercantile exploiters is allowed large liberty, if
not a free hand, and protected by a concerted attempt to deify white men
as such in the eyes of the native and in their own imagination.[112]

White missionary societies are spending perhaps as much as five million
dollars a year in Africa and accomplishing much good, but at the same time
white merchants are sending at least twenty million dollars' worth of
European liquor into Africa each year, and the debauchery of the almost
unrestricted rum traffic goes far to neutralize missionary effort.

[Illustration: Distribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern]

Under this last mentioned solution of the Negro problems we may put the
attempts at the segregation of Negroes and mulattoes in the United States
and to some extent in the West Indies. Ostensibly this is "separation" of
the races in society, civil rights, etc. In practice it is the
subordination of colored people of all grades under white tutelage, and
their separation as far as possible from contact with civilization in
dwelling place, in education, and in public life.

On the other hand the economic significance of the Negro to-day is
tremendous. Black Africa to-day exports annually nearly two hundred
million dollars' worth of goods, and its economic development has scarcely
begun. The black West Indies export nearly one hundred million dollars'
worth of goods; to this must be added the labor value of Negroes in South
Africa, Egypt, the West Indies, North, Central, and South America, where
the result is blended in the common output of many races. The economic
foundation of the Negro problem can easily be seen to be a matter of many
hundreds of millions to-day, and ready to rise to the billions tomorrow.

Such figures and facts give some slight idea of the economic meaning of
the Negro to-day as a worker and industrial factor. "Tropical Africa and
its peoples are being brought more irrevocably every year into the vortex
of the economic influences that sway the western world."[113]

What do Negroes themselves think of these their problems and the attitude
of the world toward them? First and most significant, they are thinking.
There is as yet no great single centralizing of thought or unification of
opinion, but there are centers which are growing larger and larger and
touching edges. The most significant centers of this new thinking are,
perhaps naturally, outside Africa and in America: in the United States and
in the West Indies; this is followed by South Africa and West Africa and
then, more vaguely, by South America, with faint beginnings in East
Central Africa, Nigeria, and the Sudan.

The Pan-African movement when it comes will not, however, be merely a
narrow racial propaganda. Already the more far-seeing Negroes sense the
coming unities: a unity of the working classes everywhere, a unity of the
colored races, a new unity of men. The proposed economic solution of the
Negro problem in Africa and America has turned the thoughts of Negroes
toward a realization of the fact that the modern white laborer of Europe
and America has the key to the serfdom of black folk, in his support of
militarism and colonial expansion. He is beginning to say to these
workingmen that, so long as black laborers are slaves, white laborers
cannot be free. Already there are signs in South Africa and the United
States of the beginning of understanding between the two classes.

In a conscious sense of unity among colored races there is to-day only a
growing interest. There is slowly arising not only a curiously strong
brotherhood of Negro blood throughout the world, but the common cause of
the darker races against the intolerable assumptions and insults of
Europeans has already found expression. Most men in this world are
colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The future
world will, in all reasonable probability, be what colored men make it. In
order for this colored world to come into its heritage, must the earth
again be drenched in the blood of fighting, snarling human beasts, or will
Reason and Good Will prevail? That such may be true, the character of the
Negro race is the best and greatest hope; for in its normal condition it
is at once the strongest and gentlest of the races of men: "Semper novi
quid ex Africa!"

FOOTNOTES:

[110] Sir Harry Johnston estimates 135,000,000 Negroes, of whom 24,591,000
live in America. See _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 335.

[111] The South African natives, in an appeal to the English Parliament,
show in an astonishing way the confiscation of their land by the English.
They say that in the Union of South Africa 1,250,000 whites own
264,000,000 acres of land, while the 4,500,000 natives have only
21,000,000 acres. On top of this the Union Parliament has passed a law
making even the future purchase of land by Negroes illegal save in
restricted areas!

[112] The traveler Glave writes in the _Century Magazine_ (LIII, 913):
"Formerly [in the Congo Free State] an ordinary white man was merely
called 'bwana' or 'Mzunga'; now the merest insect of a pale face earns the
title of 'bwana Mkubwa' [big master]."

[113] E.D. Morel, in the _Nineteenth Century_.




SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING


There is no general history of the Negro race. Perhaps Sir Harry H.
Johnston, in his various works on Africa, has come as near covering the
subject as any one writer, but his valuable books have puzzling
inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Keane's _Africa_ is a helpful
compendium, despite the fact that whenever Keane discovers intelligence in
an African he immediately discovers that its possessor is no "Negro." The
articles in the latest edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ are of
some value, except the ridiculous article on the "Negro" by T.A. Joyce.
Frobenius' newly published _Voice of Africa_ is broad-minded and
informing, and Brown's _Story of Africa and its Explorers_ brings together
much material in readable form. The compendiums by Keltie and White, and
Johnston's _Opening up of Africa_ are the best among the shorter
treatises.

None of these authors write from the point of view of the Negro as a man,
or with anything but incidental acknowledgment of the existence or value
of his history. We may, however, set down certain books under the various
subjects which the chapters have treated. These books will consist of (1)
standard works for wider reading and (2) special works on which the author
has relied for his statements or which amplify his point of view. _The
latter are starred_.


THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF AFRICA

A.S. White: _The Development of Africa_, 2d ed., 1892.

Stanford's Compendium of Geography: _Africa_, by A.H. Keane, 2d ed.,
1904-7.

E. Reclus: _Universal Geography_, Vols. X-XIII.


RACIAL DIFFERENCES AND THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS OF NEGROES

J. Deniker: _The Races of Man_, etc., New York, 1904.

*J. Finot: _Race Prejudice_ (tr. by Wade-Evans), New York, 1907.

*W.Z. Ripley: _The Races of Europe_, etc., New York, 1899.

*Jacques Loeb: in _The Crisis_, Vol. VIII, p. 84, Vol. IX, p. 92.

*_Papers on Inter-Racial Problems Communicated to the First Universal
Races Congress_, etc. (ed. by G. Spiller), 1911.

*G. Sergi: _The Mediterranean Race_, etc., London, 1901.

*Franz Boas: _The Mind of Primitive Man_, New York, 1911.

C.B. Davenport: _Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses_, 1913.


EARLY MOVEMENTS OF THE NEGRO RACE

*Sir Harry H. Johnston: _The Opening up of Africa_ (Home University
Library).

---- _A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races_, Cambridge,
1905.

*G.W. Stowe: _The Native Races of South Africa_ (ed. by G.M. Theal),
London, 1910.

(Consult also Johnston's other works on Africa, and his article in Vol.
XLIII of the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland_; also _Inter-Racial Problems, and_ Deniker, noted
above.)


NEGRO IN ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT

(The works of Breasted and Petrie, Maspero, Budge and Newberry and
Garstang are the standard books on Egypt. They mention the Negro, but
incidentally and often slightingly.)

*A.F. Chamberlain: "The Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization"
(_Journal of Race Development_, Vol. I, April, 1911).

T.E.S. Scholes: _Glimpses of the Ages_, etc., London, 1905.

W.H. Ferris: _The African Abroad_, etc., 2 vols., New Haven, 1913.

E.A.W. Budge: _The Egyptian Sudan_, 2 vols., 1907.

*_Archeological Survey of Nubia_.

*A. Thompson and D. Randal McIver: _The Ancient Races of the Thebaid_,
1905.


ABYSSINIA

Job Ludolphus: _A New History of Ethiopia_ (tr. by Gent), London, 1682.

W.S. Harris: _Highlands of AEthiopia_, 3 vols., London, 1844.

R.S. Whiteway: _The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia_ ... as narrated by
Castanhosa, etc., 1902.


THE NIGER RIVER AND ISLAM *F.L. Shaw (Lady Lugard): _A Tropical
Dependency_, etc., London, 1906.

(The reader may dismiss as worthless Lady Lugard's definition of "Negro."
Otherwise her book is excellent.)

*Es-Sa'di, Abderrahman Ben Abdallah, etc., translated into French by O.
Houdas, Paris, 1900.

*F. DuBois: _Timbuktu the Mysterious_ (tr. by White), 1896.

*W.D. Cooley: _The Negroland of the Arabs_, etc., 1841.

*H. Barth: _Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa_, etc., 5
vols., 1857-58.

*Ibn Batuta: _Travels_, etc. (tr. by Lee), 1829.

*Leo Africanus: _The History and Description of Africa_, etc. (tr. by
Pory, ed. by R. Brown), 3 vols., 1896.

*E.W. Blyden: _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_.

*Leo Frobenius: _The Voice of Africa_ (tr. by Blind), 2 vols., 1913.

Mungo Park: _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_, 1799.


THE NEGRO ON THE GUINEA COAST

*Leo Frobenius (as above).

Sir Harry H. Johnston: _Liberia_, 2 vols., New York, 1906.

H.H. Foote: _Africa and the American Flag_, New York, 1859.

T.H.T. McPherson: _A History of Liberia_, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
Studies.

T.J. Alldridge: _A Transformed Colony_ (Sierra Leone), London, 1910.

E.D. Morel: _Affairs of West Africa_, 1902.

H.L. Roth: _Great Benin and Its Customs_, 1903.

*F. Starr: _Liberia_, 1913.

W. Jay: _An Inquiry_, etc., 1835.

*A.B. Ellis: _The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast_, 1887.

---- _The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, 1890.

---- _The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, 1894.

C.H. Read and O.M. Dalton: _Antiquities from the City of Benin_, etc.,
1899.

*M.H. Kingsley: _West African Studies_, 2d. ed., 1904.

*G.W. Ellis: _Negro Culture in West Africa_ (Vai-speaking peoples), 1914.



THE CONGO VALLEY

*G. Schweinfurth: _The Heart of Africa_, Vol. II, 1873.

*H.M. Stanley: _Through the Dark Continent_, 2 vols., 1878.

---- _In Darkest Africa_, 2 vols., 1890.

---- _The Congo_, etc., 2 vols., London, 1885.

H. von Wissman: _My Second Journey through Equatorial Africa_, 1891.

*H.R. Fox-Bourne: _Civilization in Congoland_, 1903.

Sir Harry H. Johnston: _George Grenfell and the Congo_, 2 vols., London,
1908.

*E.D. Morel: _Red Rubber_, London, 1906.


THE NEGRO IN THE REGION OF THE GREAT LAKES

*Sir Harry H. Johnston: _The Uganda Protectorate_, 2d ed., 2 vols., 1904.

---- _British Central Africa_, 1897.

---- _The Nile Quest_, 1903.

*D. Randal McIver: _Mediaeval Rhodesia_, 1906.

*_The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa_ (ed. by H.
Waller), 1874.

J. Dos Santos: _Ethiopia Oriental_ (Theal's _Records of South Africa_,
Vol. VII).

C. Peters: "Ophir and Punt in South Africa" (_African Society Journal_,
Vol. I).

De Barros: _De Asia_.

R. Burton: _Lake Regions of Central Africa_, 1860.

R.P. Ashe: _Chronicles of Uganda_, 1894.

(See also Stanley's works, as above.)


THE NEGRO IN SOUTH AFRICA

*G.M. Theal: _History and Ethnography of South Africa of the Zambesi to
1795_, 3 vols., 1907-10.

---- _History of South Africa since September, 1795_, 5 vols., 1908.

---- _Records of South Eastern Africa_, 9 vols., 1898-1903.

*J. Bryce: _Impressions of South Africa_, 1897.

D. Livingstone: _Missionary Travels in South Africa_, 1857.

*South African Native Affairs Commission, 1903-5, _Reports_, etc., 5
vols., Cape Town, 1904-5.

G. Lagden: _The Basutos_, London, 1909.

J. Stewart: _Lovedale_, 1884.

(See also Stowe, as above.)


ON NEGRO CIVILIZATION

J. Dowd: _The Negro Races_, 1907, 1914.

*H. Gregoire: _An Inquiry concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties
and Literature of Negroes_, etc. (tr. by Warden), Brooklyn, 1810.

C. Buecher: _Industrial Evolution_ (tr. by Wickett), New York, 1904.

*Franz Boas: "The Real Race Problem" (_The Crisis_, December, 1910).

---- _Commencement Address_ (Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19).

*F. Ratzel: _The History of Mankind_ (tr. by Butler), 3 vols., 1904.

C. Hayford: _Gold Coast Institutions_, 1903.

A.B. Camphor: _Missionary Sketches and Folk Lore from Africa_, 1909.

R.H. Nassau: _Fetishism in West Africa_, 1907.

*William Schneider: _Die Culturfaehigkeit des Negers_, Frankfort, 1885.

*G. Schweinfurth: _Artes Africanae_, etc., 1875.

Duke of Mecklenburg: _From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile_ (English
tr.), Philadelphia, 1914.

D. Crawford: _Thinking Black_.

R.N. Cust: _Sketch of Modern Language of Africa_, 2 vols., 1883.

H. Chatelain: _The Folk Lore of Angola_.

D. Kidd: _The Essential Kaffir_, 1904.

---- _Savage Childhood_, 1906.

---- _Kaffir Socialism and the Dawn of Individualism_, 1908.

M.H. Tongue: _Bushman Paintings_, Oxford, 1909.

(See also the works of A.B. Ellis, Miss Kingsley, Sir Harry H. Johnston,
Frobenius, Stowe, Theal, and Ibn Batuta; and particularly Chamberlain's
article in the _Journal of Race Development_.)


THE SLAVE TRADE

T.K. Ingram: _History of Slavery and Serfdom_, London, 1895. (Same article
revised in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition.)

John R. Spears: The American Slave Trade, 1900.

*T.F. Buxton: _The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy_, etc., 1896.

T. Clarkson: _History ... of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade_,
etc., 2 vols., 1808.

R. Drake: _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, New York, 1860.

*_Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council_, etc., London, 1789.

*B. Mayer: _Captain Canot or Twenty Years of an African Slaver_, etc.,
1854.

W.E.B. DuBois: _The suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the U.S.A._,
1896.

(See also Bryan Edwards' _West Indies_.)


THE WEST INDIES AND SOUTH AMERICA

Fletcher and Kidder: _Brazil and the Brazilians_, 1879.

*Bryan Edwards: _History ... of the British West Indies_, 5 editions,
Vols. II-V, 1793-1819.

*Sir Harry H. Johnston: _The Negro in the New World_, 1910.

T.G. Steward: _The Haitian Revolution_, 1791-1804, 1914.

J.N. Leger: _Haiti_, etc., 1907.

J. Bryce: _South America_, etc., 1912.

*J.B. de Lacerda: "The Metis or Half-Breeds of Brazil" (_Inter-Racial
Problems_, etc.)

A.K. Fiske: _History of the West Indies_, 1899.


THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES

*_Walker's Appeal_, 1829.

*G.W. Williams: _History of the Negro Race in America_, 1619-1880, 1882.

B.G. Brawley: _A Short History of the American Negro_, 1913.

B.T. Washington: _Up from Slavery_, 1901.

---- _The Story of the Negro_, 2 vols., 1909.

*_The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man_, 1912.

*G.E. Stroud: _Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery_, etc., 1827.

_The Human Way_: Addresses on Race Problems at the Southern Sociological
Congress, Atlanta, 1913 (ed. by J.E. McCulloch).

W.J. Simmons: _Men of Mark_, 1887.

*J.R. Giddings: _The Exiles of Florida_, 1858.

W.E. Nell: _The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution_, etc., 1855.

C.W. Chesnutt: _The Marrow of Tradition_, 1901.

P.L. Dunbar: _Lyrics of Lowly Life_, 1896.

*_Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, revised edition, 1892.

*H.E. Kreihbel: _Afro-American Folk Songs_, etc., 1914.

T.P. Fenner and others: _Cabin and Plantation Songs_, 3d ed., 1901.

W.F. Allen and others: _Slave Songs of the United States_, 1867.

W.E.B. DuBois: "The Negro Race in the United States of America"
(_Inter-Racial Problems_, etc.).

---- "The Economics of Negro Emancipation" (_Sociological Review_,
October, 1911).

---- _John Brown_.

---- _The Philadelphia Negro_, 1899.

W.E.B. DuBois: "Reconstruction and its Benefits" (_American Historical
Review_, Vol. XV, No. 4).

---- _editor_, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, monthly, 1910.

---- _editor_, The Atlanta University Studies:
  No. 1. _Mortality Among Negroes in Cities_, 1896.
  No. 2. _Social and Physical Conditions of Negroes in Cities_, 1897.
  No. 3. _Some Efforts of Negroes for Social Betterment_, 1898.
  No. 4. _The Negro in Business_, 1899.
  No. 5. _The College Bred Negro_, 1900.
  No. 6. _The Negro Common School_, 1901.
  No. 7. _The Negro Artisan_, 1902.
  No. 8. _The Negro Church_, 1903.
  No. 9. _Notes on Negro Crime_, 1904.
  No. 10. _A Select Bibliography of the Negro American_, 1905.
  No. 11. _Health and Physique of the Negro American_, 1906.
  No. 12. _Economic Co-operation among Negro Americans_, 1907.
  No. 13. _The Negro American Family_, 1908.
  No. 14. _Efforts for Social Betterment among Negro Americans_, 1909.
  No. 15. _The College Bred Negro American_, 1910.
  No. 16. _The Common School and the Negro American_, 1911.
  No. 17. _The Negro American Artisan_, 1912.
  No. 18. _Morals and Manners among Negro Americans_, 1913.

*G.W. Cable: _The Silent South_, etc., 1885.

*J.R. Lynch: _The Facts of Reconstruction_, 1913.

*J.T. Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_, 1897.

William Goodell: _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, 1852.

G.S. Merriam: _The Negro and the Nation_, 1906.

A.B. Hart: _The Southern South_, 1910.

*G. Livermore: _An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the
Founders of the Republic on Negroes_, etc., 1862.

Hartshorn and Penniman: _An Era of Progress and Promise_, 1910 (profusely
illustrated).

*James Brewster: _Sketches of Southern Mystery, Treason, and Murder_.

Willcox and DuBois: _Negroes in the United States_ (United States Census
of 1900, Bulletin No. 8).


THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

*J.S. Keltie: _The Partition of Africa_, 2d ed., 1895.

B.T. Washington: _The Future of the Negro_.

W.E.B. DuBois: "The Future of the Negro Race in America" (_East and West_,
Vol. II, No. 5).

---- _Souls of Black Folk_, 1913.

---- _Quest of the Silver Fleece_.

Alexander Crummell: _The Future of Africa_, 2d ed., 1862.

*Casely Hayford: _Ethiopia Unbound_, 1911.

Kelly Miller: _Out of the House of Bondage_, 1914.

---- _Race Adjustment_, 1908.

*J. Royce: _Race Questions_, etc., 1908.

*R.S. Baker: _Following the Color Line_, 1908.

N.S. Shaler: _The Neighbor_.

E.D. Morel: "Free Labor in Tropical Africa" (_Nineteenth Century and
After_, 1914).

(See also Finot, Boas, _Inter-Racial Problems_, and White's _Development
of Africa_.)



THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE

_A Novel_

W.E.B. DU BOIS

1911

A.C. McClurg & Co.




_Contents_

THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE

_Note from the Author_                            3

_One_: DREAMS                                     5

_Two_: THE SCHOOL                                12

_Three_: MISS MARY TAYLOR                        16

_Four_: TOWN                                     23

_Five_: ZORA                                     33

_Six_: COTTON                                    42

_Seven_: THE PLACE OF DREAMS                     53

_Eight_: MR. HARRY CRESSWELL                     66

_Nine_: THE PLANTING                             74

_Ten_: MR. TAYLOR CALLS                          84

_Eleven_: THE FLOWERING OF THE FLEECE            99

_Twelve_: THE PROMISE                           108

_Thirteen_: MRS. GREY GIVES A DINNER            122

_Fourteen_: LOVE                                128

_Fifteen_: REVELATION                           134

_Sixteen_: THE GREAT REFUSAL                    146

_Seventeen_: THE RAPE OF THE FLEECE             154

_Eighteen_: THE COTTON CORNER                   162

_Nineteen_: THE DYING OF ELSPETH                171

_Twenty_: THE WEAVING OF THE SILVER FLEECE      182

_Twenty-one_: THE MARRIAGE MORNING              191

_Twenty-two_: MISS CAROLINE WYNN                199

_Twenty-three_: THE TRAINING OF ZORA            210

_Twenty-four_: THE EDUCATION OF ALWYN           218

_Twenty-five_: THE CAMPAIGN                     230

_Twenty-six_: CONGRESSMAN CRESSWELL             244

_Twenty-seven_: THE VISION OF ZORA              254

_Twenty-eight_: THE ANNUNCIATION                263

_Twenty-nine_: A MASTER OF FATE                 271

_Thirty_: THE RETURN OF ZORA                    283

_Thirty-one_: A PARTING OF WAYS                 293

_Thirty-two_: ZORA'S WAY                        309

_Thirty-three_: THE BUYING OF THE SWAMP         316

_Thirty-four_: THE RETURN OF ALWYN              328

_Thirty-five_: THE COTTON MILL                  339

_Thirty-six_: THE LAND                          350

_Thirty-seven_: THE MOB                         364

_Thirty-eight_: ATONEMENT                       371






THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE




                   TO ONE

whose name may not be written but to whose tireless
faith the shaping of these cruder thoughts to forms
     more fitly perfect is doubtless due, this
        finished work is herewith dedicated






_Note_

He who would tell a tale must look toward three ideals: to tell it well,
to tell it beautifully, and to tell the truth.

The first is the Gift of God, the second is the Vision of Genius, but
the third is the Reward of Honesty.

In _The Quest of the Silver Fleece_ there is little, I ween, divine or
ingenious; but, at least, I have been honest. In no fact or picture have
I consciously set down aught the counterpart of which I have not seen or
known; and whatever the finished picture may lack of completeness, this
lack is due now to the story-teller, now to the artist, but never to the
herald of the Truth.

NEW YORK CITY

_August 15, 1911_

THE AUTHOR




_One_

DREAMS


Night fell. The red waters of the swamp grew sinister and sullen. The
tall pines lost their slimness and stood in wide blurred blotches all
across the way, and a great shadowy bird arose, wheeled and melted,
murmuring, into the black-green sky.

The boy wearily dropped his heavy bundle and stood still, listening as
the voice of crickets split the shadows and made the silence audible. A
tear wandered down his brown cheek. They were at supper now, he
whispered--the father and old mother, away back yonder beyond the night.
They were far away; they would never be as near as once they had been,
for he had stepped into the world. And the cat and Old Billy--ah, but
the world was a lonely thing, so wide and tall and empty! And so bare,
so bitter bare! Somehow he had never dreamed of the world as lonely
before; he had fared forth to beckoning hands and luring, and to the
eager hum of human voices, as of some great, swelling music.

Yet now he was alone; the empty night was closing all about him here in
a strange land, and he was afraid. The bundle with his earthly treasure
had hung heavy and heavier on his shoulder; his little horde of money
was tightly wadded in his sock, and the school lay hidden somewhere far
away in the shadows. He wondered how far it was; he looked and harkened,
starting at his own heartbeats, and fearing more and more the long dark
fingers of the night.

Then of a sudden up from the darkness came music. It was human music,
but of a wildness and a weirdness that startled the boy as it fluttered
and danced across the dull red waters of the swamp. He hesitated, then
impelled by some strange power, left the highway and slipped into the
forest of the swamp, shrinking, yet following the song hungrily and half
forgetting his fear. A harsher, shriller note struck in as of many and
ruder voices; but above it flew the first sweet music, birdlike,
abandoned, and the boy crept closer.

The cabin crouched ragged and black at the edge of black waters. An old
chimney leaned drunkenly against it, raging with fire and smoke, while
through the chinks winked red gleams of warmth and wild cheer. With a
revel of shouting and noise, the music suddenly ceased. Hoarse staccato
cries and peals of laughter shook the old hut, and as the boy stood
there peering through the black trees, abruptly the door flew open and a
flood of light illumined the wood.

Amid this mighty halo, as on clouds of flame, a girl was dancing. She
was black, and lithe, and tall, and willowy. Her garments twined and
flew around the delicate moulding of her dark, young, half-naked limbs.
A heavy mass of hair clung motionless to her wide forehead. Her arms
twirled and flickered, and body and soul seemed quivering and whirring
in the poetry of her motion.

As she danced she sang. He heard her voice as before, fluttering like a
bird's in the full sweetness of her utter music. It was no tune nor
melody, it was just formless, boundless music. The boy forgot himself
and all the world besides. All his darkness was sudden light; dazzled he
crept forward, bewildered, fascinated, until with one last wild whirl
the elf-girl paused. The crimson light fell full upon the warm and
velvet bronze of her face--her midnight eyes were aglow, her full purple
lips apart, her half hid bosom panting, and all the music dead.
Involuntarily the boy gave a gasping cry and awoke to swamp and night
and fire, while a white face, drawn, red-eyed, peered outward from some
hidden throng within the cabin.

"Who's that?" a harsh voice cried.

"Where?" "Who is it?" and pale crowding faces blurred the light.

The boy wheeled blindly and fled in terror stumbling through the swamp,
hearing strange sounds and feeling stealthy creeping hands and arms and
whispering voices. On he toiled in mad haste, struggling toward the road
and losing it until finally beneath the shadows of a mighty oak he sank
exhausted. There he lay a while trembling and at last drifted into
dreamless sleep.

It was morning when he awoke and threw a startled glance upward to the
twisted branches of the oak that bent above, sifting down sunshine on
his brown face and close curled hair. Slowly he remembered the
loneliness, the fear and wild running through the dark. He laughed in
the bold courage of day and stretched himself.

Then suddenly he bethought him again of that vision of the night--the
waving arms and flying limbs of the girl, and her great black eyes
looking into the night and calling him. He could hear her now, and hear
that wondrous savage music. Had it been real? Had he dreamed? Or had it
been some witch-vision of the night, come to tempt and lure him to his
undoing? Where was that black and flaming cabin? Where was the girl--the
soul that had called him? _She_ must have been real; she had to live and
dance and sing; he must again look into the mystery of her great eyes.
And he sat up in sudden determination, and, lo! gazed straight into the
very eyes of his dreaming.

She sat not four feet from him, leaning against the great tree, her
eyes now languorously abstracted, now alert and quizzical with mischief.
She seemed but half-clothed, and her warm, dark flesh peeped furtively
through the rent gown; her thick, crisp hair was frowsy and rumpled, and
the long curves of her bare young arms gleamed in the morning sunshine,
glowing with vigor and life. A little mocking smile came and sat upon
her lips.

"What you run for?" she asked, with dancing mischief in her eyes.

"Because--" he hesitated, and his cheeks grew hot.

"I knows," she said, with impish glee, laughing low music.

"Why?" he challenged, sturdily.

"You was a-feared."

He bridled. "Well, I reckon you'd be a-feared if you was caught out in
the black dark all alone."

"Pooh!" she scoffed and hugged her knees. "Pooh! I've stayed out all
alone heaps o' nights."

He looked at her with a curious awe.

"I don't believe you," he asserted; but she tossed her head and her eyes
grew scornful.

"Who's a-feared of the dark? I love night." Her eyes grew soft.

He watched her silently, till, waking from her daydream, she abruptly
asked:

"Where you from?"

"Georgia."

"Where's that?"

He looked at her in surprise, but she seemed matter-of-fact.

"It's away over yonder," he answered.

"Behind where the sun comes up?"

"Oh, no!"

"Then it ain't so far," she declared. "I knows where the sun rises, and
I knows where it sets." She looked up at its gleaming splendor glinting
through the leaves, and, noting its height, announced abruptly:

"I'se hungry."

"So'm I," answered the boy, fumbling at his bundle; and then, timidly:
"Will you eat with me?"

"Yes," she said, and watched him with eager eyes.

Untying the strips of cloth, he opened his box, and disclosed chicken
and biscuits, ham and corn-bread. She clapped her hands in glee.

"Is there any water near?" he asked.

Without a word, she bounded up and flitted off like a brown bird,
gleaming dull-golden in the sun, glancing in and out among the trees,
till she paused above a tiny black pool, and then came tripping and
swaying back with hands held cupwise and dripping with cool water.

"Drink," she cried. Obediently he bent over the little hands that seemed
so soft and thin. He took a deep draught; and then to drain the last
drop, his hands touched hers and the shock of flesh first meeting flesh
startled them both, while the water rained through. A moment their eyes
looked deep into each other's--a timid, startled gleam in hers; a wonder
in his. Then she said dreamily:

"We'se known us all our lives, and--before, ain't we?"

He hesitated.

"Ye--es--I reckon," he slowly returned. And then, brightening, he asked
gayly: "And we'll be friends always, won't we?"

"Yes," she said at last, slowly and solemnly, and another brief moment
they stood still.

Then the mischief danced in her eyes, and a song bubbled on her lips.
She hopped to the tree.

"Come--eat!" she cried. And they nestled together amid the big black
roots of the oak, laughing and talking while they ate.

"What's over there?" he asked pointing northward.

"Cresswell's big house."

"And yonder to the west?"

"The school."

He started joyfully.

"The school! What school?"

"Old Miss' School."

"Miss Smith's school?"

"Yes." The tone was disdainful.

"Why, that's where I'm going. I was a-feared it was a long way off; I
must have passed it in the night."

"I hate it!" cried the girl, her lips tense.

"But I'll be so near," he explained. "And why do you hate it?"

"Yes--you'll be near," she admitted; "that'll be nice; but--" she
glanced westward, and the fierce look faded. Soft joy crept to her face
again, and she sat once more dreaming.

"Yon way's nicest," she said.

"Why, what's there?"

"The swamp," she said mysteriously.

"And what's beyond the swamp?"

She crouched beside him and whispered in eager, tense tones: "Dreams!"

He looked at her, puzzled.

"Dreams?" vaguely--"dreams? Why, dreams ain't--nothing."

"Oh, yes they is!" she insisted, her eyes flaming in misty radiance as
she sat staring beyond the shadows of the swamp. "Yes they is! There
ain't nothing but dreams--that is, nothing much.

"And over yonder behind the swamps is great fields full of dreams, piled
high and burning; and right amongst them the sun, when he's tired o'
night, whispers and drops red things, 'cept when devils make 'em black."

The boy stared at her; he knew not whether to jeer or wonder.

"How you know?" he asked at last, skeptically.

"Promise you won't tell?"

"Yes," he answered.

She cuddled into a little heap, nursing her knees, and answered slowly.

"I goes there sometimes. I creeps in 'mongst the dreams; they hangs
there like big flowers, dripping dew and sugar and blood--red, red
blood. And there's little fairies there that hop about and sing, and
devils--great, ugly devils that grabs at you and roasts and eats you if
they gits you; but they don't git me. Some devils is big and white, like
ha'nts; some is long and shiny, like creepy, slippery snakes; and some
is little and broad and black, and they yells--"

The boy was listening in incredulous curiosity, half minded to laugh,
half minded to edge away from the black-red radiance of yonder dusky
swamp. He glanced furtively backward, and his heart gave a great bound.

"Some is little and broad and black, and they yells--" chanted the girl.
And as she chanted, deep, harsh tones came booming through the forest:

"_Zo-ra! Zo-ra!_ O--o--oh, Zora!"

He saw far behind him, toward the shadows of the swamp, an old
woman--short, broad, black and wrinkled, with fangs and pendulous lips
and red, wicked eyes. His heart bounded in sudden fear; he wheeled
toward the girl, and caught only the uncertain flash of her
garments--the wood was silent, and he was alone.

He arose, startled, quickly gathered his bundle, and looked around him.
The sun was strong and high, the morning fresh and vigorous. Stamping
one foot angrily, he strode jauntily out of the wood toward the big
road.

But ever and anon he glanced curiously back. Had he seen a haunt? Or was
the elf-girl real? And then he thought of her words:

"We'se known us all our lives."




_Two_

THE SCHOOL


Day was breaking above the white buildings of the Negro school and
throwing long, low lines of gold in at Miss Sarah Smith's front window.
She lay in the stupor of her last morning nap, after a night of
harrowing worry. Then, even as she partially awoke, she lay still with
closed eyes, feeling the shadow of some great burden, yet daring not to
rouse herself and recall its exact form; slowly again she drifted toward
unconsciousness.

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" hard knuckles were beating upon the door below.

She heard drowsily, and dreamed that it was the nailing up of all her
doors; but she did not care much, and but feebly warded the blows away,
for she was very tired.

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" persisted the hard knuckles.

She started up, and her eye fell upon a letter lying on her bureau. Back
she sank with a sigh, and lay staring at the ceiling--a gaunt, flat,
sad-eyed creature, with wisps of gray hair half-covering her baldness,
and a face furrowed with care and gathering years.

It was thirty years ago this day, she recalled, since she first came to
this broad land of shade and shine in Alabama to teach black folks.

It had been a hard beginning with suspicion and squalor around; with
poverty within and without the first white walls of the new school home.
Yet somehow the struggle then with all its helplessness and
disappointment had not seemed so bitter as today: then failure meant but
little, now it seemed to mean everything; then it meant disappointment
to a score of ragged urchins, now it meant two hundred boys and girls,
the spirits of a thousand gone before and the hopes of thousands to
come. In her imagination the significance of these half dozen gleaming
buildings perched aloft seemed portentous--big with the destiny not
simply of a county and a State, but of a race--a nation--a world. It was
God's own cause, and yet--

"_Bang! bang! bang!_" again went the hard knuckles down there at the
front.

Miss Smith slowly arose, shivering a bit and wondering who could
possibly be rapping at that time in the morning. She sniffed the
chilling air and was sure she caught some lingering perfume from Mrs.
Vanderpool's gown. She had brought this rich and rare-apparelled lady up
here yesterday, because it was more private, and here she had poured
forth her needs. She had talked long and in deadly earnest. She had not
spoken of the endowment for which she had hoped so desperately during a
quarter of a century--no, only for the five thousand dollars to buy the
long needed new land. It was so little--so little beside what this woman
squandered--

The insistent knocking was repeated louder than before.

"Sakes alive," cried Miss Smith, throwing a shawl about her and leaning
out the window. "Who is it, and what do you want?"

"Please, ma'am. I've come to school," answered a tall black boy with a
bundle.

"Well, why don't you go to the office?" Then she saw his face and
hesitated. She felt again the old motherly instinct to be the first to
welcome the new pupil; a luxury which, in later years, the endless push
of details had denied her.

"Wait!" she cried shortly, and began to dress.

A new boy, she mused. Yes, every day they straggled in; every day came
the call for more, more--this great, growing thirst to know--to do--to
be. And yet that woman had sat right here, aloof, imperturbable,
listening only courteously. When Miss Smith finished, she had paused
and, flicking her glove,--

"My dear Miss Smith," she said softly, with a tone that just escaped a
drawl--"My dear Miss Smith, your work is interesting and your
faith--marvellous; but, frankly, I cannot make myself believe in it. You
are trying to treat these funny little monkeys just as you would your
own children--or even mine. It's quite heroic, of course, but it's sheer
madness, and I do not feel I ought to encourage it. I would not mind a
thousand or so to train a good cook for the Cresswells, or a clean and
faithful maid for myself--for Helene has faults--or indeed deft and
tractable laboring-folk for any one; but I'm quite through trying to
turn natural servants into masters of me and mine. I--hope I'm not too
blunt; I hope I make myself clear. You know, statistics show--"

"Drat statistics!" Miss Smith had flashed impatiently. "These are
folks."

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled indulgently. "To be sure," she murmured, "but
what sort of folks?"

"God's sort."

"Oh, well--"

But Miss Smith had the bit in her teeth and could not have stopped. She
was paying high for the privilege of talking, but it had to be said.

"God's sort, Mrs. Vanderpool--not the sort that think of the world as
arranged for their exclusive benefit and comfort."

"Well, I do want to count--"

Miss Smith bent forward--not a beautiful pose, but earnest.

"I want you to count, and I want to count, too; but I don't want us to
be the only ones that count. I want to live in a world where every soul
counts--white, black, and yellow--all. _That's_ what I'm teaching these
children here--to count, and not to be like dumb, driven cattle. If you
don't believe in this, of course you cannot help us."

"Your spirit is admirable, Miss Smith," she had said very softly; "I
only wish I could feel as you do. Good-afternoon," and she had rustled
gently down the narrow stairs, leaving an all but imperceptible
suggestion of perfume. Miss Smith could smell it yet as she went down
this morning.

The breakfast bell jangled. "Five thousand dollars," she kept repeating
to herself, greeting the teachers absently--"five thousand dollars." And
then on the porch she was suddenly aware of the awaiting boy. She eyed
him critically: black, fifteen, country-bred, strong, clear-eyed.

"Well?" she asked in that brusque manner wherewith her natural timidity
was wont to mask her kindness. "Well, sir?"

"I've come to school."

"Humph--we can't teach boys for nothing."

The boy straightened. "I can pay my way," he returned.

"You mean you can pay what we ask?"

"Why, yes. Ain't that all?"

"No. The rest is gathered from the crumbs of Dives' table."

Then he saw the twinkle in her eyes. She laid her hand gently upon his
shoulder.

"If you don't hurry you'll be late to breakfast," she said with an air
of confidence. "See those boys over there? Follow them, and at noon come
to the office--wait! What's your name?"

"Blessed Alwyn," he answered, and the passing teachers smiled.




_Three_

MISS MARY TAYLOR


Miss Mary Taylor did not take a college course for the purpose of
teaching Negroes. Not that she objected to Negroes as human
beings--quite the contrary. In the debate between the senior societies
her defence of the Fifteenth Amendment had been not only a notable bit
of reasoning, but delivered with real enthusiasm. Nevertheless, when the
end of the summer came and the only opening facing her was the teaching
of children at Miss Smith's experiment in the Alabama swamps, it must be
frankly confessed that Miss Taylor was disappointed.

Her dream had been a post-graduate course at Bryn Mawr; but that was out
of the question until money was earned. She had pictured herself earning
this by teaching one or two of her "specialties" in some private school
near New York or Boston, or even in a Western college. The South she had
not thought of seriously; and yet, knowing of its delightful
hospitality and mild climate, she was not averse to Charleston or New
Orleans. But from the offer that came to teach Negroes--country Negroes,
and little ones at that--she shrank, and, indeed, probably would have
refused it out of hand had it not been for her queer brother, John. John
Taylor, who had supported her through college, was interested in cotton.
Having certain schemes in mind, he had been struck by the fact that the
Smith School was in the midst of the Alabama cotton-belt.

"Better go," he had counselled, sententiously. "Might learn something
useful down there."

She had been not a little dismayed by the outlook, and had protested
against his blunt insistence.

"But, John, there's no society--just elementary work--"

John had met this objection with, "Humph!" as he left for his office.
Next day he had returned to the subject.

"Been looking up Tooms County. Find some Cresswells there--big
plantations--rated at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Some
others, too; big cotton county."

"You ought to know, John, if I teach Negroes I'll scarcely see much of
people in my own class."

"Nonsense! Butt in. Show off. Give 'em your Greek--and study Cotton. At
any rate, I say go."

And so, howsoever reluctantly, she had gone.

The trial was all she had anticipated, and possibly a bit more. She was
a pretty young woman of twenty-three, fair and rather daintily moulded.
In favorable surroundings, she would have been an aristocrat and an
epicure. Here she was teaching dirty children, and the smell of confused
odors and bodily perspiration was to her at times unbearable.

Then there was the fact of their color: it was a fact so insistent, so
fatal she almost said at times, that she could not escape it.
Theoretically she had always treated it with disdainful ease.

"What's the mere color of a human soul's skin," she had cried to a
Wellesley audience and the audience had applauded with enthusiasm. But
here in Alabama, brought closely and intimately in touch with these dark
skinned children, their color struck her at first with a sort of
terror--it seemed ominous and forbidding. She found herself shrinking
away and gripping herself lest they should perceive. She could not help
but think that in most other things they were as different from her as
in color. She groped for new ways to teach colored brains and marshal
colored thoughts and the result was puzzling both to teacher and
student. With the other teachers she had little commerce. They were in
no sense her sort of folk. Miss Smith represented the older New England
of her parents--honest, inscrutable, determined, with a conscience which
she worshipped, and utterly unselfish. She appealed to Miss Taylor's
ruddier and daintier vision but dimly and distantly as some memory of
the past. The other teachers were indistinct personalities, always very
busy and very tired, and talking "school-room" with their meals. Miss
Taylor was soon starving for human companionship, for the lighter
touches of life and some of its warmth and laughter. She wanted a glance
of the new books and periodicals and talk of great philanthropies and
reforms. She felt out of the world, shut in and mentally anaemic; great
as the "Negro Problem" might be as a world problem, it looked sordid and
small at close range. So for the hundredth time she was thinking today,
as she walked alone up the lane back of the barn, and then slowly down
through the bottoms. She paused a moment and nodded to the two boys at
work in a young cotton field.

"Cotton!"

She paused. She remembered with what interest she had always read of
this little thread of the world. She had almost forgotten that it was
here within touch and sight. For a moment something of the vision of
Cotton was mirrored in her mind. The glimmering sea of delicate leaves
whispered and murmured before her, stretching away to the Northward.
She remembered that beyond this little world it stretched on and on--how
far she did not know--but on and on in a great trembling sea, and the
foam of its mighty waters would one time flood the ends of the earth.

She glimpsed all this with parted lips, and then sighed impatiently.
There might be a bit of poetry here and there, but most of this place
was such desperate prose.

She glanced absently at the boys.

One was Bles Alwyn, a tall black lad. (Bles, she mused,--now who would
think of naming a boy "Blessed," save these incomprehensible creatures!)
Her regard shifted to the green stalks and leaves again, and she started
to move away. Then her New England conscience stepped in. She ought not
to pass these students without a word of encouragement or instruction.

"Cotton is a wonderful thing, is it not, boys?" she said rather primly.
The boys touched their hats and murmured something indistinctly. Miss
Taylor did not know much about cotton, but at least one more remark
seemed called for.

"How long before the stalks will be ready to cut?" she asked carelessly.
The farther boy coughed and Bles raised his eyes and looked at her; then
after a pause he answered slowly. (Oh! these people were so slow--now a
New England boy would have answered and asked a half-dozen questions in
the time.)

"I--I don't know," he faltered.

"Don't know! Well, of all things!" inwardly commented Miss
Taylor--"literally born in cotton, and--Oh, well," as much as to ask,
"What's the use?" She turned again to go.

"What is planted over there?" she asked, although she really didn't
care.

"Goobers," answered the smaller boy.

"Goobers?" uncomprehendingly.

"Peanuts," Bles specified.

"Oh!" murmured Miss Taylor. "I see there are none on the vines yet. I
suppose, though, it's too early for them."

Then came the explosion. The smaller boy just snorted with irrepressible
laughter and bolted across the fields. And Bles--was Miss Taylor
deceived?--or was he chuckling? She reddened, drew herself up, and then,
dropping her primness, rippled with laughter.

"What is the matter, Bles?" she asked.

He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

"Well, you see, Miss Taylor, it's like this: farming don't seem to be
your specialty."

The word was often on Miss Taylor's lips, and she recognized it. Despite
herself she smiled again.

"Of course, it isn't--I don't know anything about farming. But what did
I say so funny?"

Bles was now laughing outright.

"Why, Miss Taylor! I declare! Goobers don't grow on the tops of vines,
but underground on the roots--like yams."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, and we--we don't pick cotton stalks except for kindling."

"I must have been thinking of hemp. But tell me more about cotton."

His eyes lighted, for cotton was to him a very real and beautiful thing,
and a life-long companion, yet not one whose friendship had been
coarsened and killed by heavy toil. He leaned against his hoe and talked
half dreamily--where had he learned so well that dream-talk?

"We turn up the earth and sow it soon after Christmas. Then pretty soon
there comes a sort of greenness on the black land and it swells and
grows and, and--shivers. Then stalks shoot up with three or four leaves.
That's the way it is now, see? After that we chop out the weak stalks,
and the strong ones grow tall and dark, till I think it must be like the
ocean--all green and billowy; then come little flecks here and there
and the sea is all filled with flowers--flowers like little bells, blue
and purple and white."

"Ah! that must be beautiful," sighed Miss Taylor, wistfully, sinking to
the ground and clasping her hands about her knees.

"Yes, ma'am. But it's prettiest when the bolls come and swell and burst,
and the cotton covers the field like foam, all misty--"

She bent wondering over the pale plants. The poetry of the thing began
to sing within her, awakening her unpoetic imagination, and she
murmured:

"The Golden Fleece--it's the Silver Fleece!"

He harkened.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Have you never heard of the Golden Fleece, Bles?"

"No, ma'am," he said eagerly; then glancing up toward the Cresswell
fields, he saw two white men watching them. He grasped his hoe and
started briskly to work.

"Some time you'll tell me, please, won't you?"

She glanced at her watch in surprise and arose hastily.

"Yes, with pleasure," she said moving away--at first very fast, and then
more and more slowly up the lane, with a puzzled look on her face.

She began to realize that in this pleasant little chat the fact of the
boy's color had quite escaped her; and what especially puzzled her was
that this had not happened before. She had been here four months, and
yet every moment up to now she seemed to have been vividly, almost
painfully conscious, that she was a white woman talking to black folk.
Now, for one little half-hour she had been a woman talking to a boy--no,
not even that: she had been talking--just talking; there were no persons
in the conversation, just things--one thing: Cotton.

She started thinking of cotton--but at once she pulled herself back to
the other aspect. Always before she had been veiled from these folk: who
had put the veil there? Had she herself hung it before her soul, or had
they hidden timidly behind its other side? Or was it simply a brute
fact, regardless of both of them?

The longer she thought, the more bewildered she grew. There seemed no
analogy that she knew. Here was a unique thing, and she climbed to her
bedroom and stared at the stars.




_Four_

TOWN


John Taylor had written to his sister. He wanted information, very
definite information, about Tooms County cotton; about its stores, its
people--especially its people. He propounded a dozen questions, sharp,
searching questions, and he wanted the answers tomorrow. Impossible!
thought Miss Taylor. He had calculated on her getting this letter
yesterday, forgetting that their mail was fetched once a day from the
town, four miles away. Then, too, she did not know all these matters and
knew no one who did. Did John think she had nothing else to do? And
sighing at the thought of to-morrow's drudgery, she determined to
consult Miss Smith in the morning.

Miss Smith suggested a drive to town--Bles could take her in the
top-buggy after school--and she could consult some of the merchants and
business men. She could then write her letter and mail it there; it
would be but a day or so late getting to New York.

"Of course," said Miss Smith drily, slowly folding her napkin, "of
course, the only people here are the Cresswells."

"Oh, yes," said Miss Taylor invitingly. There was an allurement about
this all-pervasive name; it held her by a growing fascination and she
was anxious for the older woman to amplify. Miss Smith, however,
remained provokingly silent, so Miss Taylor essayed further.

"What sort of people are the Cresswells?" she asked.

"The old man's a fool; the young one a rascal; the girl a ninny," was
Miss Smith's succinct and acid classification of the county's first
family; adding, as she rose, "but they own us body and soul." She
hurried out of the dining-room without further remark. Miss Smith was
more patient with black folk than with white.

The sun was hanging just above the tallest trees of the swamp when Miss
Taylor, weary with the day's work, climbed into the buggy beside Bles.
They wheeled comfortably down the road, leaving the sombre swamp, with
its black-green, to the right, and heading toward the golden-green of
waving cotton fields. Miss Taylor lay back, listlessly, and drank the
soft warm air of the languorous Spring. She thought of the golden sheen
of the cotton, and the cold March winds of New England; of her brother
who apparently noted nothing of leaves and winds and seasons; and of the
mighty Cresswells whom Miss Smith so evidently disliked. Suddenly she
became aware of her long silence and the silence of the boy.

"Bles," she began didactically, "where are you from?"

He glanced across at her and answered shortly:

"Georgia, ma'am," and was silent.

The girl tried again.

"Georgia is a large State,"--tentatively.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Are you going back there when you finish?"

"I don't know."

"I think you ought to--and work for your people."

"Yes, ma'am."

She stopped, puzzled, and looked about. The old horse jogged lazily on,
and Bles switched him unavailingly. Somehow she had missed the way
today. The Veil hung thick, sombre, impenetrable. Well, she had done her
duty, and slowly she nestled back and watched the far-off green and
golden radiance of the cotton.

"Bles," she said impulsively, "shall I tell you of the Golden Fleece?"

He glanced at her again.

"Yes'm, please," he said.

She settled herself almost luxuriously, and began the story of Jason and
the Argonauts.

The boy remained silent. And when she had finished, he still sat silent,
elbow on knee, absently flicking the jogging horse and staring ahead at
the horizon. She looked at him doubtfully with some disappointment that
his hearing had apparently shared so little of the joy of her telling;
and, too, there was mingled a vague sense of having lowered herself to
too familiar fellowship with this--this boy. She straightened herself
instinctively and thought of some remark that would restore proper
relations. She had not found it before he said, slowly:

"All yon is Jason's."

"What?" she asked, puzzled.

He pointed with one sweep of his long arm to the quivering mass of
green-gold foliage that swept from swamp to horizon.

"All yon golden fleece is Jason's now," he repeated.

"I thought it was--Cresswell's," she said.

"That's what I mean."

She suddenly understood that the story had sunk deeply.

"I am glad to hear you say that," she said methodically, "for Jason was
a brave adventurer--"

"I thought he was a thief."

"Oh, well--those were other times."

"The Cresswells are thieves now."

Miss Taylor answered sharply.

"Bles, I am ashamed to hear you talk so of your neighbors simply because
they are white."

But Bles continued.

"This is the Black Sea," he said, pointing to the dull cabins that
crouched here and there upon the earth, with the dark twinkling of their
black folk darting out to see the strangers ride by.

Despite herself Miss Taylor caught the allegory and half whispered, "Lo!
the King himself!" as a black man almost rose from the tangled earth at
their side. He was tall and thin and sombre-hued, with a carven face and
thick gray hair.

"Your servant, mistress," he said, with a sweeping bow as he strode
toward the swamp. Miss Taylor stopped him, for he looked interesting,
and might answer some of her brother's questions. He turned back and
stood regarding her with sorrowful eyes and ugly mouth.

"Do you live about here?" she asked.

"I'se lived here a hundred years," he answered. She did not believe it;
he might be seventy, eighty, or even ninety--indeed, there was about him
that indefinable sense of age--some shadow of endless living; but a
hundred seemed absurd.

"You know the people pretty well, then?"

"I knows dem all. I knows most of 'em better dan dey knows demselves. I
knows a heap of tings in dis world and in de next."

"This is a great cotton country?"

"Dey don't raise no cotton now to what dey used to when old Gen'rel
Cresswell fust come from Carolina; den it was a bale and a half to the
acre on stalks dat looked like young brushwood. Dat was cotton."

"You know the Cresswells, then?"

"Know dem? I knowed dem afore dey was born."

"They are--wealthy people?"

"Dey rolls in money and dey'se quality, too. No shoddy upstarts dem,
but born to purple, lady, born to purple. Old Gen'ral Cresswell had
niggers and acres no end back dere in Carolina. He brung a part of dem
here and here his son, de father of dis Colonel Cresswell, was born. De
son--I knowed him well--he had a tousand niggers and ten tousand acres
afore de war."

"Were they kind to their slaves?"

"Oh, yaas, yaas, ma'am, dey was careful of de're niggers and wouldn't
let de drivers whip 'em much."

"And these Cresswells today?"

"Oh, dey're quality--high-blooded folks--dey'se lost some land and
niggers, but, lordy, nuttin' can buy de Cresswells, dey naturally owns
de world."

"Are they honest and kind?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am--dey'se good white folks."

"Good white folk?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am--course you knows white folks will be white
folks--white folks will be white folks. Your servant, ma'am." And the
swamp swallowed him.

The boy's eyes followed him as he whipped up the horse.

"He's going to Elspeth's," he said.

"Who is he?"

"We just call him Old Pappy--he's a preacher, and some folks say a
conjure man, too."

"And who is Elspeth?"

"She lives in the swamp--she's a kind of witch, I reckon, like--like--"

"Like Medea?"

"Yes--only--I don't know--" and he grew thoughtful.

The road turned now and far away to the eastward rose the first
straggling cabins of the town. Creeping toward them down the road rolled
a dark squat figure. It grew and spread slowly on the horizon until it
became a fat old black woman, hooded and aproned, with great round hips
and massive bosom. Her face was heavy and homely until she looked up and
lifted the drooping cheeks, and then kindly old eyes beamed on the young
teacher, as she curtsied and cried:

"Good-evening, honey! Good-evening! You sure is pretty dis evening."

"Why, Aunt Rachel, how are you?" There was genuine pleasure in the
girl's tone.

"Just tolerable, honey, bless de Lord! Rumatiz is kind o' bad and Aunt
Rachel ain't so young as she use ter be."

"And what brings you to town afoot this time of day?"

The face fell again to dull care and the old eyes crept away. She
fumbled with her cane.

"It's de boys again, honey," she returned solemnly; "dey'se good boys,
dey is good to de're old mammy, but dey'se high strung and dey gits
fighting and drinking and--and--last Saturday night dey got took up
again. I'se been to Jedge Grey--I use to tote him on my knee,
honey--I'se been to him to plead him not to let 'em go on de gang,
'cause you see, honey," and she stroked the girl's sleeve as if pleading
with her, too, "you see it done ruins boys to put 'em on de gang."

Miss Taylor tried hard to think of something comforting to say, but
words seemed inadequate to cheer the old soul; but after a few moments
they rode on, leaving the kind face again beaming and dimpling.

And now the country town of Toomsville lifted itself above the cotton
and corn, fringed with dirty straggling cabins of black folk. The road
swung past the iron watering trough, turned sharply and, after passing
two or three pert cottages and a stately house, old and faded, opened
into the wide square. Here pulsed the very life and being of the land.
Yonder great bales of cotton, yellow-white in its soiled sacking, piled
in lofty, dusty mountains, lay listening for the train that, twice a
day, ran out to the greater world. Round about, tied to the well-gnawed
hitching rails, were rows of mules--mules with back cloths; mules with
saddles; mules hitched to long wagons, buggies, and rickety gigs; mules
munching golden ears of corn, and mules drooping their heads in
sorrowful memory of better days.

Beyond the cotton warehouse smoked the chimneys of the seed-mill and the
cotton-gin; a red livery-stable faced them and all about three sides of
the square ran stores; big stores and small wide-windowed, narrow
stores. Some had old steps above the worn clay side-walks, and some were
flush with the ground. All had a general sense of dilapidation--save
one, the largest and most imposing, a three-story brick. This was
Caldwell's "Emporium"; and here Bles stopped and Miss Taylor entered.

Mr. Caldwell himself hurried forward; and the whole store, clerks and
customers, stood at attention, for Miss Taylor was yet new to the
county.

She bought a few trifles and then approached her main business.

"My brother wants some information about the county, Mr. Caldwell, and I
am only a teacher, and do not know much about conditions here."

"Ah! where do you teach?" asked Mr. Caldwell. He was certain he knew the
teachers of all the white schools in the county. Miss Taylor told him.
He stiffened slightly but perceptibly, like a man clicking the buckles
of his ready armor, and two townswomen who listened gradually turned
their backs, but remained near.

"Yes--yes," he said, with uncomfortable haste. "Any--er--information--of
course--" Miss Taylor got out her notes.

"The leading land-owners," she began, sorting the notes searchingly, "I
should like to know something about them."

"Well, Colonel Cresswell is, of course, our greatest landlord--a
high-bred gentleman of the old school. He and his son--a worthy
successor to the name--hold some fifty thousand acres. They may be
considered representative types. Then, Mr. Maxwell has ten thousand
acres and Mr. Tolliver a thousand."

Miss Taylor wrote rapidly. "And cotton?" she asked.

"We raise considerable cotton, but not nearly what we ought to; nigger
labor is too worthless."

"Oh! The Negroes are not, then, very efficient?"

"Efficient!" snorted Mr. Caldwell; at last she had broached a phase of
the problem upon which he could dilate with fervor. "They're the
lowest-down, ornriest--begging your pardon--good-for-nothing loafers you
ever heard of. Why, we just have to carry them and care for them like
children. Look yonder," he pointed across the square to the court-house.
It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and
very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men--some black and shackled;
some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and
shaven and stiff. "Court's just out," pursued Mr. Caldwell, "and them
niggers have just been sent to the gang--young ones, too; educated but
good for nothing. They're all that way."

Miss Taylor looked up a little puzzled, and became aware of a battery of
eyes and ears. Everybody seemed craning and listening, and she felt a
sudden embarrassment and a sense of half-veiled hostility in the air.
With one or two further perfunctory questions, and a hasty expression of
thanks, she escaped into the air.

The whole square seemed loafing and lolling--the white world perched on
stoops and chairs, in doorways and windows; the black world filtering
down from doorways to side-walk and curb. The hot, dusty quadrangle
stretched in dreary deadness toward the temple of the town, as if doing
obeisance to the court-house. Down the courthouse steps the sheriff,
with Winchester on shoulder, was bringing the last prisoner--a
curly-headed boy with golden face and big brown frightened eyes.

"It's one of Dunn's boys," said Bles. "He's drunk again, and they say
he's been stealing. I expect he was hungry." And they wheeled out of the
square.

Miss Taylor was tired, and the hastily scribbled letter which she
dropped into the post in passing was not as clearly expressed as she
could wish.

A great-voiced giant, brown and bearded, drove past them, roaring a
hymn. He greeted Bles with a comprehensive wave of the hand.

"I guess Tylor has been paid off," said Bles, but Miss Taylor was too
disgusted to answer. Further on they overtook a tall young yellow boy
walking awkwardly beside a handsome, bold-faced girl. Two white men came
riding by. One leered at the girl, and she laughed back, while the
yellow boy strode sullenly ahead. As the two white riders approached the
buggy one said to the other:

"Who's that nigger with?"

"One of them nigger teachers."

"Well, they'll stop this damn riding around or they'll hear something,"
and they rode slowly by.

Miss Taylor felt rather than heard their words, and she was
uncomfortable. The sun fell fast; the long shadows of the swamp swept
soft coolness on the red road. Then afar in front a curled cloud of
white dust arose and out of it came the sound of galloping horses.

"Who's this?" asked Miss Taylor.

"The Cresswells, I think; they usually ride to town about this time."
But already Miss Taylor had descried the brown and tawny sides of the
speeding horses.

"Good gracious!" she thought. "The Cresswells!" And with it came a
sudden desire not to meet them--just then. She glanced toward the swamp.
The sun was sifting blood-red lances through the trees. A little
wagon-road entered the wood and disappeared. Miss Taylor saw it.

"Let's see the sunset in the swamp," she said suddenly. On came the
galloping horses. Bles looked up in surprise, then silently turned into
the swamp. The horses flew by, their hoof-beats dying in the distance. A
dark green silence lay about them lit by mighty crimson glories beyond.
Miss Taylor leaned back and watched it dreamily till a sense of
oppression grew on her. The sun was sinking fast.

"Where does this road come out?" she asked at last.

"It doesn't come out."

"Where does it go?"

"It goes to Elspeth's."

"Why, we must turn back immediately. I thought--" But Bles was already
turning. They were approaching the main road again when there came a
fluttering as of a great bird beating its wings amid the forest. Then a
girl, lithe, dark brown, and tall, leaped lightly into the path with
greetings on her lips for Bles. At the sight of the lady she drew
suddenly back and stood motionless regarding Miss Taylor, searching her
with wide black liquid eyes. Miss Taylor was a little startled.

"Good--good-evening," she said, straightening herself.

The girl was still silent and the horse stopped. One tense moment pulsed
through all the swamp. Then the girl, still motionless--still looking
Miss Taylor through and through--said with slow deliberateness:

"I hates you."

The teacher in Miss Taylor strove to rebuke this unconventional greeting
but the woman in her spoke first and asked almost before she knew it--

"Why?"




_Five_

ZORA


Zora, child of the swamp, was a heathen hoyden of twelve wayward,
untrained years. Slight, straight, strong, full-blooded, she had dreamed
her life away in wilful wandering through her dark and sombre kingdom
until she was one with it in all its moods; mischievous, secretive,
brooding; full of great and awful visions, steeped body and soul in
wood-lore. Her home was out of doors, the cabin of Elspeth her port of
call for talking and eating. She had not known, she had scarcely seen, a
child of her own age until Bles Alwyn had fled from her dancing in the
night, and she had searched and found him sleeping in the misty morning
light. It was to her a strange new thing to see a fellow of like years
with herself, and she gripped him to her soul in wild interest and new
curiosity. Yet this childish friendship was so new and incomprehensible
a thing to her that she did not know how to express it. At first she
pounced upon him in mirthful, almost impish glee, teasing and mocking
and half scaring him, despite his fifteen years of young manhood.

"Yes, they is devils down yonder behind the swamp," she would whisper,
warningly, when, after the first meeting, he had crept back again and
again, half fascinated, half amused to greet her; "I'se seen 'em, I'se
heard 'em, 'cause my mammy is a witch."

The boy would sit and watch her wonderingly as she lay curled along the
low branch of the mighty oak, clinging with little curved limbs and
flying fingers. Possessed by the spirit of her vision, she would chant,
low-voiced, tremulous, mischievous:

"One night a devil come to me on blue fire out of a big red flower that
grows in the south swamp; he was tall and big and strong as anything,
and when he spoke the trees shook and the stars fell. Even mammy was
afeared; and it takes a lot to make mammy afeared, 'cause she's a witch
and can conjure. He said, 'I'll come when you die--I'll come when you
die, and take the conjure off you,' and then he went away on a big
fire."

"Shucks!" the boy would say, trying to express scornful disbelief when,
in truth, he was awed and doubtful. Always he would glance involuntarily
back along the path behind him. Then her low birdlike laughter would
rise and ring through the trees.

So passed a year, and there came the time when her wayward teasing and
the almost painful thrill of her tale-telling nettled him and drove him
away. For long months he did not meet her, until one day he saw her deep
eyes fixed longingly upon him from a thicket in the swamp. He went and
greeted her. But she said no word, sitting nested among the greenwood
with passionate, proud silence, until he had sued long for peace; then
in sudden new friendship she had taken his hand and led him through the
swamp, showing him all the beauty of her swamp-world--great shadowy oaks
and limpid pools, lone, naked trees and sweet flowers; the whispering
and flitting of wild things, and the winging of furtive birds. She had
dropped the impish mischief of her way, and up from beneath it rose a
wistful, visionary tenderness; a mighty half-confessed, half-concealed,
striving for unknown things. He seemed to have found a new friend.

And today, after he had taken Miss Taylor home and supped, he came out
in the twilight under the new moon and whistled the tremulous note that
always brought her.

"Why did you speak so to Miss Taylor?" he asked, reproachfully. She
considered the matter a moment.

"You don't understand," she said. "You can't never understand. I can see
right through people. You can't. You never had a witch for a mammy--did
you?"

"No."

"Well, then, you see I have to take care of you and see things for you."

"Zora," he said thoughtfully, "you must learn to read."

"What for?"

"So that you can read books and know lots of things."

"Don't white folks make books?"

"Yes--most of the books."

"Pooh! I knows more than they do now--a heap more."

"In some ways you do; but they know things that give them power and
wealth and make them rule."

"No, no. They don't really rule; they just thinks they rule. They just
got things--heavy, dead things. We black folks is got the _spirit_.
We'se lighter and cunninger; we fly right through them; we go and come
again just as we wants to. Black folks is wonderful."

He did not understand what she meant; but he knew what he wanted and he
tried again.

"Even if white folks don't know everything they know different things
from us, and we ought to know what they know."

This appealed to her somewhat.

"I don't believe they know much," she concluded; "but I'll learn to read
and just see."

"It will be hard work," he warned. But he had come prepared for
acquiescence. He took a primer from his pocket and, lighting a match,
showed her the alphabet.

"Learn those," he said.

"What for?" she asked, looking at the letters disdainfully.

"Because that's the way," he said, as the light flared and went out.

"I don't believe it," she disputed, disappearing in the wood and
returning with a pine-knot. They lighted it and its smoky flame threw
wavering shadows about. She turned the leaves till she came to a picture
which she studied intently.

"Is this about this?" she asked, pointing alternately to reading and
picture.

"Yes. And if you learn--"

"Read it," she commanded. He read the page.

"Again," she said, making him point out each word. Then she read it
after him, accurately, with more perfect expression. He stared at her.
She took the book, and with a nod was gone.

It was Saturday and dark. She never asked Bles to her home--to that
mysterious black cabin in mid-swamp. He thought her ashamed of it, and
delicately refrained from going. So tonight she slipped away, stopped
and listened till she heard his footsteps on the pike, and then flew
homeward. Presently the old black cabin loomed before her with its wide
flapping door. The old woman was bending over the fire, stirring some
savory mess, and a yellow girl with a white baby on one arm was placing
dishes on a rickety wooden table when Zora suddenly and noiselessly
entered the door.

"Come, is you? I 'lowed victuals would fetch you," grumbled the hag.

But Zora deigned no answer. She walked placidly to the table, where she
took up a handful of cold corn-bread and meat, and then went over and
curled up by the fire.

Elspeth and the girl talked and laughed coarsely, and the night wore
on.

By and by loud laughter and tramping came from the road--a sound of
numerous footsteps. Zora listened, leapt to her feet and started to the
door. The old crone threw an epithet after her; but she flashed through
the lighted doorway and was gone, followed by the oath and shouts from
the approaching men. In the hut night fled with wild song and revel, and
day dawned again. Out from some fastness of the wood crept Zora. She
stopped and bathed in a pool, and combed her close-clung hair, then
entered silently to breakfast.

Thus began in the dark swamp that primal battle with the Word. She hated
it and despised it, but her pride was in arms and her one great life
friendship in the balance. She fought her way with a dogged persistence
that brought word after word of praise and interest from Bles. Then,
once well begun, her busy, eager mind flew with a rapidity that
startled; the stories especially she devoured--tales of strange things
and countries and men gripped her imagination and clung to her memory.

"Didn't I tell you there was lots to learn?" he asked once.

"I knew it all," she retorted; "every bit. I'se thought it all before;
only the little things is different--and I like the little, strange
things."

Spring ripened to summer. She was reading well and writing some.

"Zora," he announced one morning under their forest oak, "you must go to
school."

She eyed him, surprised.

"Why?"

"You've found some things worth knowing in this world, haven't you,
Zora?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"But there are more--many, many more--worlds on worlds of things--you
have not dreamed of."

She stared at him, open-eyed, and a wonder crept upon her face battling
with the old assurance. Then she looked down at her bare brown feet and
torn gown.

"I've got a little money, Zora," he said quickly.

But she lifted her head.

"I'll earn mine," she said.

"How?" he asked doubtfully.

"I'll pick cotton."

"Can you?"

"Course I can."

"It's hard work."

She hesitated.

"I don't like to work," she mused. "You see, mammy's pappy was a king's
son, and kings don't work. I don't work; mostly I dreams. But I can
work, and I will--for the wonder things--and for you."

So the summer yellowed and silvered into fall. All the vacation days
Bles worked on the farm, and Zora read and dreamed and studied in the
wood, until the land lay white with harvest. Then, without warning, she
appeared in the cotton-field beside Bles, and picked.

It was hot, sore work. The sun blazed; her bent and untrained back
pained, and the soft little hands bled. But no complaint passed her
lips; her hands never wavered, and her eyes met his steadily and
gravely. She bade him good-night, cheerily, and then stole away to the
wood, crouching beneath the great oak, and biting back the groans that
trembled on her lips. Often, she fell supperless to sleep, with two
great tears creeping down her tired cheeks.

When school-time came there was not yet money enough, for cotton-picking
was not far advanced. Yet Zora would take no money from Bles, and worked
earnestly away.

Meantime there occurred to the boy the momentous question of clothes.
Had Zora thought of them? He feared not. She knew little of clothes and
cared less. So one day in town he dropped into Caldwell's "Emporium"
and glanced hesitantly at certain ready-made dresses. One caught his
eye. It came from the great Easterly mills in New England and was red--a
vivid red. The glowing warmth of this cloth of cotton caught the eye of
Bles, and he bought the gown for a dollar and a half.

He carried it to Zora in the wood, and unrolled it before her eyes that
danced with glad tears. Of course, it was long and wide; but he fetched
needle and thread and scissors, too. It was a full month after school
had begun when they, together back in the swamp, shadowed by the
foliage, began to fashion the wonderful garment. At the same time she
laid ten dollars of her first hard-earned money in his hands.

"You can finish the first year with this money," Bles assured her,
delighted, "and then next year you must come in to board; because, you
see, when you're educated you won't want to live in the swamp."

"I wants to live here always."

"But not at Elspeth's."

"No-o--not there, not there." And a troubled questioning trembled in her
eyes, but brought no answering thought in his, for he was busy with his
plans.

"Then, you see, Zora, if you stay here you'll need a new house, and
you'll want to learn how to make it beautiful."

"Yes, a beautiful, great castle here in the swamp," she dreamed; "but,"
and her face fell, "I can't get money enough to board in; and I don't
want to board in--I wants to be free."

He looked at her, curled down so earnestly at her puzzling task, and a
pity for the more than motherless child swept over him. He bent over
her, nervously, eagerly, and she laid down her sewing and sat silent and
passive with dark, burning eyes.

"Zora," he said, "I want you to do all this--for me."

"I will, if you wants me to," she said quietly, but with something in
her voice that made him look half startled into her beautiful eyes and
feel a queer flushing in his face. He stretched his hand out and taking
hers held it lightly till she quivered and drew away, bending again
over her sewing.

Then a nameless exaltation rose within his heart.

"Zora," he whispered, "I've got a plan."

"What is it?" she asked, still with bowed head.

"Listen, till I tell you of the Golden Fleece."

Then she too heard the story of Jason. Breathless she listened, dropping
her sewing and leaning forward, eager-eyed. Then her face clouded.

"Do you s'pose mammy's the witch?" she asked dubiously.

"No; she wouldn't give her own flesh and blood to help the thieving
Jason."

She looked at him searchingly.

"Yes, she would, too," affirmed the girl, and then she paused, still
intently watching him. She was troubled, and again a question eagerly
hovered on her lips. But he continued:

"Then we must escape her," he said gayly. "See! yonder lies the Silver
Fleece spread across the brown back of the world; let's get a bit of it,
and hide it here in the swamp, and comb it, and tend it, and make it the
beautifullest bit of all. Then we can sell it, and send you to school."

She sat silently bent forward, turning the picture in her mind. Suddenly
forgetting her trouble, she bubbled with laughter, and leaping up
clapped her hands.

"And I knows just the place!" she cried eagerly, looking at him with a
flash of the old teasing mischief--"down in the heart of the
swamp--where dreams and devils lives."

       *       *       *       *       *

Up at the school-house Miss Taylor was musing. She had been invited to
spend the summer with Mrs. Grey at Lake George, and such a
summer!--silken clothes and dainty food, motoring and golf, well-groomed
men and elegant women. She would not have put it in just that way, but
the vision came very close to spelling heaven to her mind. Not that she
would come to it vacant-minded, but rather as a trained woman, starved
for companionship and wanting something of the beauty and ease of life.
She sat dreaming of it here with rows of dark faces before her, and the
singsong wail of a little black reader with his head aslant and his
patched kneepants.

The day was warm and languorous, and the last pale mist of the Silver
Fleece peeped in at the windows. She tried to follow the third-reader
lesson with her finger, but persistently off she went, dreaming, to some
exquisite little parlor with its green and gold, the clink of dainty
china and hum of low voices, and the blue lake in the window; she would
glance up, the door would open softly and--

Just here she did glance up, and all the school glanced with her. The
drone of the reader hushed. The door opened softly, and upon the
threshold stood Zora. Her small feet and slender ankles were black and
bare; her dark, round, and broad-browed head and strangely beautiful
face were poised almost defiantly, crowned with a misty mass of waveless
hair, and lit by the velvet radiance of two wonderful eyes. And hanging
from shoulder to ankle, in formless, clinging folds, blazed the scarlet
gown.




_Six_

COTTON


The cry of the naked was sweeping the world. From the peasant toiling in
Russia, the lady lolling in London, the chieftain burning in Africa, and
the Esquimaux freezing in Alaska; from long lines of hungry men, from
patient sad-eyed women, from old folk and creeping children went up the
cry, "Clothes, clothes!" Far away the wide black land that belts the
South, where Miss Smith worked and Miss Taylor drudged and Bles and Zora
dreamed, the dense black land sensed the cry and heard the bound of
answering life within the vast dark breast. All that dark earth heaved
in mighty travail with the bursting bolls of the cotton while black
attendant earth spirits swarmed above, sweating and crooning to its
birth pains.

After the miracle of the bursting bolls, when the land was brightest
with the piled mist of the Fleece, and when the cry of the naked was
loudest in the mouths of men, a sudden cloud of workers swarmed between
the Cotton and the Naked, spinning and weaving and sewing and carrying
the Fleece and mining and minting and bringing the Silver till the Song
of Service filled the world and the poetry of Toil was in the souls of
the laborers. Yet ever and always there were tense silent white-faced
men moving in that swarm who felt no poetry and heard no song, and one
of these was John Taylor.

He was tall, thin, cold, and tireless and he moved among the Watchers of
this World of Trade. In the rich Wall Street offices of Grey and
Easterly, Brokers, Mr. Taylor, as chief and confidential clerk surveyed
the world's nakedness and the supply of cotton to clothe it. The object
of his watching was frankly stated to himself and to his world. He
purposed going into business neither for his own health nor for the
healing or clothing of the peoples but to apply his knowledge of the
world's nakedness and of black men's toil in such a way as to bring
himself wealth. In this he was but following the teaching of his highest
ideal, lately deceased, Mr. Job Grey. Mr. Grey had so successfully
manipulated the cotton market that while black men who made the cotton
starved in Alabama and white men who bought it froze in Siberia, he
himself sat--

     _"High on a throne of royal state
     That far outshone the wealth
     Of Ormuz or of Ind._"

Notwithstanding this he died eventually, leaving the burden of his
wealth to his bewildered wife, and his business to the astute Mr.
Easterly; not simply to Mr. Easterly, but in a sense to his spiritual
heir, John Taylor.

To be sure Mr. Taylor had but a modest salary and no financial interest
in the business, but he had knowledge and business daring--effrontery
even--and the determination was fixed in his mind to be a millionaire at
no distant date. Some cautious fliers on the market gave him enough
surplus to send his sister Mary through the high school of his country
home in New Hampshire, and afterward through Wellesley College; although
just why a woman should want to go through college was inexplicable to
John Taylor, and he was still uncertain as to the wisdom of his charity.

When she had an offer to teach in the South, John Taylor hurried her off
for two reasons: he was profoundly interested in the cotton-belt, and
there she might be of service to him; and secondly, he had spent all the
money on her that he intended to at present, and he wanted her to go to
work. As an investment he did not consider Mary a success. Her letters
intimated very strongly her intention not to return to Miss Smith's
School; but they also brought information--disjointed and incomplete, to
be sure--which mightily interested Mr. Taylor and sent him to atlases,
encyclopaedias, and census-reports. When he went to that little lunch
with old Mrs. Grey he was not sure that he wanted his sister to leave
the cotton-belt just yet. After lunch he was sure that he did not want
her to leave.

The rich Mrs. Grey was at the crisis of her fortunes. She was an elderly
lady, in those uncertain years beyond fifty, and had been left suddenly
with more millions than she could easily count. Personally she was
inclined to spend her money in bettering the world right off, in such
ways as might from time to time seem attractive. This course, to her
husband's former partner and present executor, Mr. Edward Easterly, was
not only foolish but wicked, and, incidentally, distinctly unprofitable
to him. He had expressed himself strongly to Mrs. Grey last night at
dinner and had reinforced his argument by a pointed letter written this
morning.

To John Taylor Mrs. Grey's disposal of the income was unbelievable
blasphemy against the memory of a mighty man. He did not put this in
words to Mrs. Grey--he was only head clerk in her late husband's
office--but he became watchful and thoughtful. He ate his soup in
silence when she descanted on various benevolent schemes.

"Now, what do you know," she asked finally, "about Negroes--about
educating them?" Mr. Taylor over his fish was about to deny all
knowledge of any sort on the subject, but all at once he recollected his
sister, and a sudden gleam of light radiated his mental gloom.

"Have a sister who is--er--devoting herself to teaching them," he said.

"Is that so!" cried Mrs. Grey, joyfully. "Where is she?"

"In Tooms County, Alabama--in--" Mr. Taylor consulted a remote mental
pocket--"in Miss Sara Smith's school."

"Why, how fortunate! I'm so glad I mentioned the matter. You see, Miss
Smith is a sister of a friend of ours, Congressman Smith of New Jersey,
and she has just written to me for help; a very touching letter, too,
about the poor blacks. My father set great store by blacks and was a
leading abolitionist before he died."

Mr. Taylor was thinking fast. Yes, the name of Congressman Peter Smith
was quite familiar. Mr. Easterly, as chairman of the Republican State
Committee of New Jersey, had been compelled to discipline Mr. Smith
pretty severely for certain socialistic votes in the House, and
consequently his future career was uncertain. It was important that such
a man should not have too much to do with Mrs. Grey's philanthropies--at
least, in his present position.

"Should like to have you meet and talk with my sister, Mrs. Grey; she's
a Wellesley graduate," said Taylor, finally.

Mrs. Grey was delighted. It was a combination which she felt she needed.
Here was a college-girl who could direct her philanthropies and her
etiquette during the summer. Forthwith Mary Taylor received an
intimation from her brother that vast interests depended on her summer
vacation.

Thus it had happened that Miss Taylor came to Lake George for her
vacation after the first year at the Smith School, and she and Miss
Smith had silently agreed as she left that it would be better for her
not to return. But the gods of lower Broadway thought otherwise. Not
that Mary Taylor did not believe in Miss Smith's work, she was too
honest not to believe in education; but she was sure that this was not
her work, and she had not as yet perfected in her own mind any theory of
the world into which black folk fitted. She was rather taken back,
therefore, to be regarded as an expert on the problem. First her brother
attacked her, not simply on cotton, but, to her great surprise, on Negro
education; and after listening to her halting uncertain remarks, he
suggested to her certain matters which it would be better for her to
believe when Mrs. Grey talked to her.

"Interested in darkies, you see," he concluded, "and looks to you to
tell things. Better go easy and suggest a waiting-game before she goes
in heavy."

"But Miss Smith needs money--" the New England conscience prompted. John
Taylor cut in sharply:

"We all need money, and I know people who need Mrs. Grey's more than
Miss Smith does at present."

Miss Taylor found the Lake George colony charming. It was not
ultra-fashionable, but it had wealth and leisure and some breeding.
Especially was this true of a circumscribed, rather exclusive, set which
centred around the Vanderpools of New York and Boston. They, or rather
Mr. Vanderpool's connections, were of Old Dutch New York stock; his
father it was who had built the Lake George cottage.

Mrs. Vanderpool was a Wells of Boston, and endured Lake George now and
then during the summer for her husband's sake, although she regarded it
all as rather a joke. This summer promised to be unusually lonesome for
her, and she was meditating a retreat to the Massachusetts north shore
when she chanced to meet Mary Taylor, at a miscellaneous dinner, and
found her interesting. She discovered that this young woman knew things,
that she could talk books, and that she was rather pretty. To be sure
she knew no people, but Mrs. Vanderpool knew enough to even things.

"By the bye, I met some charming Alabama people last winter, in
Montgomery--the Cresswells; do you know them?" she asked one day, as
they were lounging in wicker chairs on the Vanderpool porch. Then she
answered the query herself: "No, of course you could not. It is too bad
that your work deprives you of the society of people of your class. Now
my ideal is a set of Negro schools where the white teachers _could_ know
the Cresswells."

"Why, yes--" faltered Miss Taylor; "but--wouldn't that be difficult?"

"Why should it be?"

"I mean, would the Cresswells approve of educating Negroes?"

"Oh, 'educating'! The word conceals so much. Now, I take it the
Cresswells would object to instructing them in French and in dinner
etiquette and tea-gowns, and so, in fact, would I; but teach them how to
handle a hoe and to sew and cook. I have reason to know that people like
the Cresswells would be delighted."

"And with the teachers of it?"

"Why not?--provided, of course, they were--well, gentlefolk and
associated accordingly."

"But one must associate with one's pupils."

"Oh, certainly, certainly; just as one must associate with one's maids
and chauffeurs and dressmakers--cordially and kindly, but with a
difference."

"But--but, dear Mrs. Vanderpool, you wouldn't want your children trained
that way, would you?"

"Certainly not, my dear. But these are not my children, they are the
children of Negroes; we can't quite forget that, can we?"

"No, I suppose not," Miss Taylor admitted, a little helplessly. "But--it
seems to me--that's the modern idea of taking culture to the masses."

"Frankly, then, the modern idea is not my idea; it is too socialistic.
And as for culture applied to the masses, you utter a paradox. The
masses and work is the truth one must face."

"And culture and work?"

"Quite incompatible, I assure you, my dear." She stretched her silken
limbs, lazily, while Miss Taylor sat silently staring at the waters.

Just then Mrs. Grey drove up in her new red motor.

Up to the time of Mary Taylor's arrival the acquaintance of the
Vanderpools and Mrs. Grey had been a matter chiefly of smiling bows.
After Miss Taylor came there had been calls and casual intercourse, to
Mrs. Grey's great gratification and Mrs. Vanderpool's mingled amusement
and annoyance. Mrs. Grey announced the arrival of the Easterlys and John
Taylor for the week-end. As Mrs. Vanderpool could think of nothing less
boring, she consented to dine.

The atmosphere of Mrs. Grey's ornate cottage was different from that of
the Vanderpools. The display of wealth and splendor had a touch of the
barbaric. Mary Taylor liked it, although she found the Vanderpool
atmosphere more subtly satisfying. There was a certain grim power
beneath the Greys' mahogany and velvets that thrilled while it appalled.
Precisely that side of the thing appealed to her brother. He would have
seen little or nothing in the plain elegance yonder, while here he saw a
Japanese vase that cost no cent less than a thousand dollars. He meant
to be able to duplicate it some day. He knew that Grey was poor and less
knowing than he sixty years ago.

The dead millionaire had begun his fortune by buying and selling
cotton--travelling in the South in reconstruction times, and sending his
agents. In this way he made his thousands. Then he took a step forward,
and instead of following the prices induced the prices to follow him.
Two or three small cotton corners brought him his tens of thousands.
About this time Easterly joined him and pointed out a new road--the
buying and selling of stock in various cotton-mills and other industrial
enterprises. Grey hesitated, but Easterly pushed him on and he made his
hundreds of thousands. Then Easterly proposed buying controlling
interests in certain large mills and gradually consolidating them. The
plan grew and succeeded, and Grey made his millions.

Then Grey stopped; he had money enough, and he would venture no farther.
He "was going to retire and eat peanuts," he said with a chuckle.

Easterly was disgusted. He, too, had made millions--not as many as Grey,
but a few. It was not, however, simply money that he wanted, but power.
The lust of financial dominion had gripped his soul, and he had a vision
of a vast trust of cotton manufacturing covering the land. He talked
this incessantly into Grey, but Grey continued to shake his head; the
thing was too big for his imagination. He was bent on retiring, and just
as he had set the date a year hence he inadvertently died. On the whole,
Mr. Easterly was glad of his partner's definite withdrawal, since he
left his capital behind him, until he found his vast plans about to be
circumvented by Mrs. Grey withdrawing this capital from his control. "To
give to the niggers and Chinamen," he snorted to John Taylor, and strode
up and down the veranda. John Taylor removed his coat, lighted a black
cigar, and elevated his heels. The ladies were in the parlor, where the
female Easterlys were prostrating themselves before Mrs. Vanderpool.

"Just what is your plan?" asked Taylor, quite as if he did not know.

"Why, man, the transfer of a hundred millions of stock would give me
control of the cotton-mills of America. Think of it!--the biggest trust
next to steel."

"Why not bigger?" asked Taylor, imperturbably puffing away. Mr. Easterly
eyed him. He had regarded Taylor hitherto as a very valuable asset to
the business--had relied on his knowledge of routine, his judgment and
his honesty; but he detected tonight a new tone in his clerk, something
almost authoritative and self-reliant. He paused and smiled at him.

"Bigger?"

But John Taylor was dead in earnest. He did not smile.

"First, there's England--and all Europe; why not bring them into the
trust?"

"Possibly, later; but first, America. Of course, I've got my eyes on the
European situation and feelers out; but such matters are more difficult
and slower of adjustment over there--so damned much law and gospel."

"But there's another side."

"What's that?"

"You are planning to combine and control the manufacture of cotton--"

"Yes."

"But how about your raw material? The steel trust owns its iron mines."

"Of course--mines could be monopolized and hold the trust up; but our
raw material is perfectly safe--farms growing smaller, farms isolated,
and we fixing the price. It's a cinch."

"Are you sure?" Taylor surveyed him with a narrowed look.

"Certain."

"I'm not. I've been looking up things, and there are three points you'd
better study: First, cotton farms are not getting smaller; they're
getting bigger almighty fast, and there's a big cotton-land monopoly in
sight. Second, the banks and wholesale houses in the South _can_ control
the cotton output if they work together. Third, watch the Southern
'Farmers' League' of big landlords."

Mr. Easterly threw away his cigar and sat down. Taylor straightened up,
switched on the porch light, and took a bundle of papers from his coat
pocket.

"Here are census figures," he said, "commercial reports and letters."
They pored over them a half hour. Then Easterly arose.

"There's something in it," he admitted, "but what can we do? What do you
propose?"

"Monopolize the growth as well as the manufacture of cotton, and use
the first to club European manufacturers into submission."

Easterly stared at him.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated; "you're crazy!"

But Taylor smiled a slow, thin smile, and put away his papers. Easterly
continued to stare at his subordinate with a sort of fascination, with
the awe that one feels when genius unexpectedly reveals itself from a
source hitherto regarded as entirely ordinary. At last he drew a long
breath, remarking indefinitely:

"I'll think it over."

A stir in the parlor indicated departure.

"Well, you watch the Farmers' League, and note its success and methods,"
counselled John Taylor, his tone and manner unchanged. "Then figure what
it might do in the hands of--let us say, friends."

"Who's running it?"

"A Colonel Cresswell is its head, and happens also to be the force
behind it. Aristocratic family--big planter--near where my sister
teaches."

"H'm--well, we'll watch _him_."

"And say," as Easterly was turning away, "you know Congressman Smith?"

"I should say I did."

"Well, Mrs. Grey seems to be depending on him for advice in distributing
some of her charity funds."

Easterly appeared startled.

"She is, is she!" he exclaimed. "But here come the ladies." He went
forward at once, but John Taylor drew back. He noted Mrs. Vanderpool,
and thought her too thin and pale. The dashing young Miss Easterly was
more to his taste. He intended to have a wife like that one of these
days.

"Mary," said he to his sister as he finally rose to go, "tell me about
the Cresswells."

Mary explained to him at length the impossibility of her knowing much
about the local white aristocracy of Tooms County, and then told him all
she had heard.

"Mrs. Grey talked to you much?"

"Yes."

"About darky schools?"

"Yes."

"What does she intend to do?"

"I think she will aid Miss Smith first."

"Did you suggest anything?"

"Well, I told her what I thought about cooeperating with the local white
people."

"The Cresswells?"

"Yes--you see Mrs. Vanderpool knows the Cresswells."

"Does, eh? Good! Say, that's a good point. You just bear heavy on
it--cooeperate with the Cresswells."

"Why, yes. But--you see, John, I don't just know whether one _could_
cooeperate with the Cresswells or not--one hears such contradictory
stories of them. But there must be some other white people--"

"Stuff! It's the Cresswells we want."

"Well," Mary was very dubious, "they are--the most important."




_Seven_


THE PLACE OF DREAMS

When she went South late in September, Mary Taylor had two definite but
allied objects: she was to get all possible business information
concerning the Cresswells, and she was to induce Miss Smith to prepare
for Mrs. Grey's benevolence by interesting the local whites in her work.
The programme attracted Miss Taylor. She felt in touch, even if dimly
and slightly, with great industrial movements, and she felt, too, like a
discerning pioneer in philanthropy. Both roles she liked. Besides, they
held, each, certain promises of social prestige; and society, Miss
Taylor argued, one must have even in Alabama.

Bles Alwyn met her at the train. He was growing to be a big fine bronze
giant, and Mary was glad to see him. She especially tried, in the first
few weeks of opening school, to glean as much information as possible
concerning the community, and particularly the Cresswells. She found the
Negro youth quicker, surer, and more intelligent in his answers than
those she questioned elsewhere, and she gained real enjoyment from her
long talks with him.

"Isn't Bles developing splendidly?" she said to Miss Smith one
afternoon. There was an unmistakable note of enthusiasm in her voice.
Miss Smith slowly closed her letter-file but did not look up.

"Yes," she said crisply. "He's eighteen now--quite a man."

"And most interesting to talk with."

"H'm--very"--drily. Mary was busy with her own thoughts, and she did not
notice the other woman's manner.

"Do you know," she pursued, "I'm a little afraid of one thing."

"So am I."

"Oh, you've noted it, too?--his friendship for that impossible girl,
Zora?"

Miss Smith gave her a searching look.

"What of it?" she demanded.

"She is so far beneath him."

"How so?"

"She is a bold, godless thing; I don't understand her."

"The two are not quite the same."

"Of course not; but she is unnaturally forward."

"Too bright," Miss Smith amplified.

"Yes; she knows quite too much. You surely remember that awful scarlet
dress? Well, all her clothes have arrived, or remained, at a simplicity
and vividness that is--well--immodest."

"Does she think them immodest?"

"What she thinks is a problem."

"_The_ problem, you mean?"

"Well, yes."

They paused a moment. Then Miss Smith said slowly: "What I don't
understand, I don't judge."

"No, but you can't always help seeing and meeting it," laughed Miss
Taylor.

"Certainly not. I don't try; I court the meeting and seeing. It is the
only way."

"Well, perhaps, for us--but not for a boy like Bles, and a girl like
Zora."

"True; men and women must exercise judgment in their intercourse
and"--she glanced sharply at Miss Taylor--"my dear, you yourself must
not forget that Bles Alwyn is a man."

Far up the road came a low, long, musical shouting; then with creaking
and straining of wagons, four great black mules dashed into sight with
twelve bursting bales of yellowish cotton looming and swaying behind.
The drivers and helpers were lolling and laughing and singing, but Miss
Taylor did not hear nor see. She had sat suddenly upright; her face had
flamed crimson, and then went dead white.

"Miss--Miss Smith!" she gasped, overwhelmed with dismay, a picture of
wounded pride and consternation.

Miss Smith turned around very methodically and took her hand; but while
she spoke the girl merely stared at her in stony silence.

"Now, dear, don't mean more than I do. I'm an old woman, and I've seen
many things. This is but a little corner of the world, and yet many
people pass here in thirty years. The trouble with new teachers who come
is, that like you, they cannot see black folk as human. All to them are
either impossible Zoras, or else lovable Blessings. They forget that
Zora is not to be annihilated, but studied and understood, and that Bles
is a young man of eighteen and not a clod."

"But that he should dare--" Mary began breathlessly.

"He hasn't dared," Miss Smith went gently on. "No thought of you but as
a teacher has yet entered his dear, simple head. But, my point is simply
this: he's a man, and a human one, and if you keep on making much over
him, and talking to him and petting him, he'll have the right to
interpret your manner in his own way--the same that any young man
would."

"But--but, he's a--a--"

"A Negro. To be sure, he is; and a man in addition. Now, dear, don't
take this too much to heart; this is not a rebuke, but a clumsy warning.
I am simply trying to make clear to you _why_ you should be careful.
Treat poor Zora a little more lovingly, and Bles a little less warmly.
They are just human--but, oh! so human."

Mary Taylor rose up stiffly and mumbled a brief good-night. She went to
her room, and sat down in the dark. The mere mention of the thing was to
her so preposterous--no, loathsome, she kept repeating.

She slowly undressed in the dark, and heard the rumbling of the cotton
wagons as they swayed toward town. The cry of the Naked was sweeping the
world, and yonder in the night black men were answering the call. They
knew not what or why they answered, but obeyed the irresistible call,
with hearts light and song upon their lips--the Song of Service. They
lashed their mules and drank their whiskey, and all night the piled
fleece swept by Mary Taylor's window, flying--flying to that far cry.
Miss Taylor turned uneasily in her bed and jerked the bed-clothes about
her ears.

"Mrs. Vanderpool is right," she confided to the night, with something of
the awe with which one suddenly comprehends a hidden oracle; "there must
be a difference, always, always! That impudent Negro!"

All night she dreamed, and all day,--especially when trim and immaculate
she sat in her chair and looked down upon fifty dark faces--and upon
Zora.

Zora sat thinking. She saw neither Miss Taylor nor the long straight
rows of desks and faces. She heard neither the drone of the spellers nor
did she hear Miss Taylor say, "Zora!" She heard and saw none of this.
She only heard the prattle of the birds in the wood, far down where the
Silver Fleece would be planted.

For the time of cotton-planting was coming; the gray and drizzle of
December was past and the hesitation, of January. Already a certain
warmth and glow had stolen into the air, and the Swamp was calling its
child with low, seductive voice. She knew where the first leaves were
bursting, where tiny flowers nestled, and where young living things
looked upward to the light and cried and crawled. A wistful longing was
stealing into her heart. She wanted to be free. She wanted to run and
dance and sing, but Bles wanted--

"Zora!"

This time she heard the call, but did not heed it. Miss Taylor was very
tiresome, and was forever doing and saying silly things. So Zora paid no
attention, but sat still and thought. Yes, she would show Bles the place
that very night; she had kept it secret from him until now, out of
perverseness, out of her love of mystery and secrets. But tonight, after
school, when he met her on the big road with the clothes, she would take
him and show him the chosen spot.

Soon she was aware that school had been dismissed, and she leisurely
gathered up her books and rose. Mary Taylor regarded her in perplexed
despair. Oh, these people! Mrs. Vanderpool was right: culture and--some
masses, at least--were not to be linked; and, too, culture and
work--were they incompatible? At any rate, culture and _this_ work were.

Now, there was Mrs. Vanderpool--she toiled not, neither did she spin,
and yet! If all these folk were like poor, stupid, docile Jennie it
would be simpler, but what earthly sense was there in trying do to
anything with a girl like Zora, so stupid in some matters, so
startlingly bright in others, and so stubborn in everything? Here, she
was doing some work twice as well and twice as fast as the class, and
other work she would not touch because she "didn't like it." Her
classification in school was nearly as difficult as her classification
in the world, and Miss Taylor reached up impatiently and removed the
gold pin from her stock to adjust it more comfortably when Zora
sauntered past unseeing, unheeding, with that curious gliding walk which
Miss Taylor called stealthy. She laid the pin on the desk and on sudden
impulse spoke again to the girl as she arranged her neck trimmings.

"Zora," she said evenly, "why didn't you come to class when I called?"

"I didn't hear you," said Zora, looking at her full-eyed and telling the
half-truth easily.

Miss Taylor was sure Zora was lying, and she knew that she had lied to
her on other occasions. Indeed, she had found lying customary in this
community, and she had a New England horror of it. She looked at Zora
disapprovingly, while Zora looked at her quite impersonally, but
steadily. Then Miss Taylor braced herself, mentally, and took the war
into Africa.

"Do you ever tell lies, Zora?"

"Yes."

"Don't you know that is a wicked, bad habit?"

"Why?"

"Because God hates them."

"How does _you_ know He does?" Zora's tone was still impersonal.

"He hates all evil."

"But why is lies evil?"

"Because they make us deceive each other."

"Is that wrong?"

"Yes."

Zora bent forward and looked squarely into Miss Taylor's blue eyes. Miss
Taylor looked into the velvet blackness of hers and wondered what they
veiled.

"Is it wrong," asked Zora, "to make believe you likes people when you
don't, when you'se afeared of them and thinks they may rub off and dirty
you?"

"Why--why--yes, if you--if you, deceive."

"Then you lies sometimes, don't you?"

Miss Taylor stared helplessly at the solemn eyes that seemed to look so
deeply into her.

"Perhaps--I do, Zora; I'm sure I don't mean to, and--I hope God will
forgive me."

Zora softened.

"Oh, I reckon He will if He's a good God, because He'd know that lies
like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only," she
added severely, "you mustn't keep saying it's wicked to lie 'cause it
ain't. Sometimes I lies," she reflected pensively, "and sometimes I
don't--it depends."

Miss Taylor forgot her collar, and fingered the pin on the desk. She
felt at once a desperate desire to know this girl better and to
establish her own authority. Yet how should she do it? She kept toying
with the pin, and Zora watched her. Then Miss Taylor said, absently:

"Zora, what do you propose to do when you grow up?"

Zora considered.

"Think and walk--and rest," she concluded.

"I mean, what work?"

"Work? Oh, I sha'n't work. I don't like work--do you?"

Miss Taylor winced, wondering if the girl were lying again. She said
quickly:

"Why, yes--that is, I like some kinds of work."

"What kinds?"

But Miss Taylor refused to have the matter made personal, as Zora had a
disconcerting way of pointing all their discussions.

"Everybody likes some kinds of work," she insisted.

"If you likes it, it ain't work," declared Zora; but Mary Taylor
proceeded around her circumscribed circle:

"You might make a good cook, or a maid."

"I hate cooking. What's a maid?"

"Why, a woman who helps others."

"Helps folks that they love? I'd like that."

"It is not a question of affection," said Miss Taylor, firmly: "one is
paid for it."

"I wouldn't work for pay."

"But you'll have to, child; you'll have to earn a living."

"Do you work for pay?"

"I work to earn a living."

"Same thing, I reckon, and it ain't true. Living just comes free,
like--like sunshine."

"Stuff! Zora, your people must learn to work and work steadily and work
hard--" She stopped, for she was sure Zora was not listening; the far
away look was in her eyes and they were shining. She was beautiful as
she stood there--strangely, almost uncannily, but startlingly beautiful
with her rich dark skin, softly moulded features, and wonderful eyes.

"My people?--my people?" she murmured, half to herself. "Do you know my
people? They don't never work; they plays. They is all little, funny
dark people. They flies and creeps and crawls, slippery-like; and they
cries and calls. Ah, my people! my poor little people! they misses me
these days, because they is shadowy things that sing and smell and bloom
in dark and terrible nights--"

Miss Taylor started up. "Zora, I believe you're crazy!" she cried. But
Zora was looking at her calmly again.

"We'se both crazy, ain't we?" she returned, with a simplicity that left
the teacher helpless.

Miss Taylor hurried out, forgetting her pin. Zora looked it over
leisurely, and tried it on. She decided that she liked it, and putting
it in her pocket, went out too.

School was out but the sun was still high, as Bles hurried from the barn
up the big road beside the soft shadows of the swamp. His head was busy
with new thoughts and his lips were whistling merrily, for today Zora
was to show him the long dreamed of spot for the planting of the Silver
Fleece. He hastened toward the Cresswell mansion, and glanced anxiously
up the road. At last he saw her coming, swinging down the road, lithe
and dark, with the big white basket of clothes poised on her head.

"Zora," he yodled, and she waved her apron.

He eased her burden to the ground and they sat down together, he
nervous and eager; she silent, passive, but her eyes restless. Bles was
full of his plans.

"Zora," he said, "we'll make it the finest bale ever raised in Tooms;
we'll just work it to the inch--just love it into life."

She considered the matter intently.

"But,"--presently,--"how can we sell it without the Cresswells knowing?"

"We won't try; we'll just take it to them and give them half, like the
other tenants."

"But the swamp is mortal thick and hard to clear."

"We can do it."

Zora had sat still, listening; but now, suddenly, she leapt to her feet.

"Come," she said, "I'll take the clothes home, then we'll go"--she
glanced at him--"down where the dreams are." And laughing, they hurried
on.

Elspeth stood in the path that wound down to the cottage, and without a
word Zora dropped the basket at her feet. She turned back; but Bles,
struck by a thought, paused. The old woman was short, broad, black and
wrinkled, with yellow fangs, red hanging lips, and wicked eyes. She
leered at them; the boy shrank before it, but stood his ground.

"Aunt Elspeth," he began, "Zora and I are going to plant and tend some
cotton to pay for her schooling--just the very best cotton we can
find--and I heard"--he hesitated,--"I heard you had some wonderful
seed."

"Yes," she mumbled, "I'se got the seed--I'se got it--wonder seed, sowed
wid the three spells of Obi in the old land ten tousand moons ago. But
you couldn't plant it," with a sudden shrillness, "it would kill you."

"But--" Bles tried to object, but she waved him away.

"Git the ground--git the ground; dig it--pet it, and we'll see what
we'll see." And she disappeared.

Zora was not sure that it had been wise to tell their secret.

"I was going to steal the seed," she said. "I knows where it is, and I
don't fear conjure."

"You mustn't steal, Zora," said Bles, gravely.

"Why?" Zora quickly asked.

But before he answered, they both forgot; for their faces were turned
toward the wonder of the swamp. The golden sun was pouring floods of
glory through the slim black trees, and the mystic sombre pools caught
and tossed back the glow in darker, duller crimson. Long echoing cries
leapt to and fro; silent footsteps crept hither and yonder; and the
girl's eyes gleamed with a wild new joy.

"The dreams!" she cried. "The dreams!" And leaping ahead, she danced
along the shadowed path. He hastened after her, but she flew fast and
faster; he followed, laughing, calling, pleading. He saw her twinkling
limbs a-dancing as once he saw them dance in a halo of firelight; but
now the fire was the fire of the world. Her garments twined and flew in
shadowy drapings about the perfect moulding of her young and dark
half-naked figure. Her heavy hair had burst its fastenings and lay in
stiffened, straggling masses, bending reluctantly to the breeze, like
curled smoke; while all about, the mad, wild singing rose and fell and
trembled, till his head whirled. He paused uncertainly at a parting of
the paths, crying:

"Zora! Zora!" as for some lost soul. "Zora! Zora!" echoed the cry,
faintly.

Abruptly the music fell; there came a long slow-growing silence; and
then, with a flutter, she was beside him again, laughing in his ears and
crying with mocking voice:

"Is you afeared, honey?"

He saw in her eyes sweet yearnings, but could speak nothing. He could
only clasp her hand tightly, and again down they raced through the wood.

All at once the swamp changed and chilled to a dull grayness; tall,
dull trees started down upon the murky waters; and long pendent
streamings of moss-like tears dripped from tree to earth. Slowly and
warily they threaded their way.

"Are you sure of the path, Zora?" he once inquired anxiously.

"I could find it asleep," she answered, skipping sure-footed onward. He
continued to hold her hand tightly, and his own pace never slackened.
Around them the gray and death-like wilderness darkened. They felt and
saw the cold white mist rising slowly from the ground, and waters
growing blacker and broader.

At last they came to what seemed the end. Silently and dismally the
half-dead forest, with its ghostly moss, lowered and darkened, and the
black waters spread into a great silent lake of slimy ooze. The dead
trunk of a fallen tree lay straight in front, torn and twisted, its top
hidden yonder and mingled with impenetrable undergrowth.

"Where now, Zora?" he cried.

In a moment she had slipped her hand away and was scrambling upon the
tree trunk. The waters yawned murkily below.

"Careful! careful!" he warned, struggling after her until she
disappeared amid the leaves. He followed eagerly, but cautiously; and
all at once found himself confronting a paradise.

Before them lay a long island, opening to the south, on the black lake,
but sheltered north and east by the dense undergrowth of the black swamp
and the rampart of dead and living trees. The soil was virgin and black,
thickly covered over with a tangle of bushes, vines, and smaller growth
all brilliant with early leaves and wild flowers.

"A pretty tough proposition for clearing and ploughing," said Bles, with
practised eye. But Zora eagerly surveyed the prospect.

"It's where the Dreams lives," she whispered.

Meantime Miss Taylor had missed her brooch and searched for it in vain.
In the midst of this pursuit the truth occurred to her--Zora had stolen
it. Negroes would steal, everybody said. Well, she must and would have
the pin, and she started for Elspeth's cabin.

On the way she met the old woman in the path, but got little
satisfaction. Elspeth merely grunted ungraciously while eyeing the white
woman with suspicion.

Mary Taylor, again alone, sat down at a turn in the path, just out of
sight of the house, and waited. Soon she saw, with a certain grim
satisfaction, Zora and Bles emerging from the swamp engaged in earnest
conversation. Here was an opportunity to overwhelm both with an
unforgettable reprimand. She rose before them like a spectral vengeance.

"Zora, I want my pin."

Bles started and stared; but Zora eyed her calmly with something like
disdain.

"What pin?" she returned, unmoved.

"Zora, don't deny that you took my pin from the desk this afternoon,"
the teacher commanded severely.

"I didn't say I didn't take no pin."

"Persons who will lie and steal will do anything."

"Why shouldn't people do anything they wants to?"

"And you knew the pin was mine."

"I saw you a-wearing of it," admitted Zora easily.

"Then you have stolen it, and you are a thief."

Still Zora appeared to be unimpressed with the heinousness of her fault.

"Did you make that pin?" she asked.

"No, but it is mine."

"Why is it yours?"

"Because it was given to me."

"But you don't need it; you've got four other prettier ones--I counted."

"That makes no difference."

"Yes it does--folks ain't got no right to things they don't need."

"That makes no difference, Zora, and you know it. The pin is mine. You
stole it. If you had wanted a pin and asked me I might have given you--"

The girl blazed.

"I don't want your old gifts," she almost hissed. "You don't own what
you don't need and can't use. God owns it and I'm going to send it back
to Him."

With a swift motion she whipped the pin from her pocket and raised her
arm to hurl it into the swamp. Bles caught her hand. He caught it
lightly and smiled sorrowfully into her eyes. She wavered a moment, then
the answering light sprang to her face. Dropping the brooch into his
hand, she wheeled and fled toward the cabin.

Bles handed it silently to Miss Taylor. Mary Taylor was beside herself
with impatient anger--and anger intensified by a conviction of utter
helplessness to cope with any strained or unusual situations between
herself and these two.

"Alwyn," she said sharply, "I shall report Zora for stealing. And you
may report yourself to Miss Smith tonight for disrespect toward a
teacher."




_Eight_


MR. HARRY CRESSWELL


The Cresswells, father and son, were at breakfast. The daughter was
taking her coffee and rolls up stairs in bed.

"P'sh! I don't like it!" declared Harry Cresswell, tossing the letter
back to his father. "I tell you, it is a damned Yankee trick."

He was a man of thirty-five, smooth and white, slight, well-bred and
masterful. His father, St. John Cresswell, was sixty, white-haired,
mustached and goateed; a stately, kindly old man with a temper and much
family pride.

"Well, well," he said, his air half preoccupied, half unconcerned, "I
suppose so--and yet"--he read the letter again, aloud: "'Approaching you
as one of the most influential landowners of Alabama, on a confidential
matter'--h'm--h'm--'a combination of capital and power, such as this
nation has never seen'--'cotton manufacturers and cotton growers.' ...
Well, well! Of course, I suppose there's nothing in it. And yet, Harry,
my boy, this cotton-growing business is getting in a pretty tight pinch.
Unless relief comes somehow--well, we'll just have to quit. We simply
can't keep the cost of cotton down to a remunerative figure with niggers
getting scarcer and dearer. Every year I have to pinch 'em closer and
closer. I had to pay Maxwell two hundred and fifty to get that old darky
and his boys turned over to me, and one of the young ones has run away
already."

Harry lighted a cigarette.

"We must drive them more. You're too easy, father; they understand that.
By the way, what did that letter say about a 'sister'?"

"Says he's got a sister over at the nigger school whom perhaps we know.
I suppose he thinks we dine there occasionally." The old man chuckled.
"That reminds me, Elspeth is sending her girl there."

"What's that?" An angry gleam shot into the younger man's eye.

"Yes. She announced this morning, pert as you please, that she couldn't
tote clothes any more--she had to study."

"Damn it! This thing is going too far. We can't keep a maid or a
plough-boy on the place because of this devilish school. It's going to
ruin the whole labor system. We've been too mild and decent. I'm going
to put my foot down right here. I'll make Elspeth take that girl out of
school if I have to horse-whip her, and I'll warn the school against
further interference with our tenants. Here, in less than a week, go two
plough-hands--and now this girl."

The old man smiled.

"You'll hardly miss any work Zora does," he said.

"I'll make her work. She's giving herself too many damned airs. I know
who's back of this--it's that nigger we saw talking to the white woman
in the field the other day."

"Well, don't work yourself up. The wench don't amount to much anyhow. By
the way, though, if you do go to the school it won't hurt to see this
Taylor's sister and size the family up."

"Pshaw! I'm going to give the Smith woman such a scare that she'll keep
her hands off our niggers." And Harry Cresswell rode away.

Mary Taylor had charge of the office that morning, while Miss Smith,
shut up in her bedroom, went laboriously over her accounts. Miss Mary
suddenly sat up, threw a hasty glance into the glass and felt the back
of her belt. It was--it couldn't be--surely, it was Mr. Harry Cresswell
riding through the gateway on his beautiful white mare. He kicked the
gate open rather viciously, did not stop to close it, and rode straight
across the lawn. Miss Taylor noticed his riding breeches and leggings,
his white linen and white, clean-cut, high-bred face. Such apparitions
were few about the country lands. She felt inclined to flutter, but
gripped herself.

"Good-morning," she said, a little stiffly.

Mr. Cresswell halted and stared; then lifting the hat which he had
neglected to remove in crossing the hall, he bowed in stately grace.
Miss Taylor was no ordinary picture. Her brown hair was almost golden;
her dark eyes shone blue; her skin was clear and healthy, and her white
dress--happy coincidence!--had been laundered that very morning. Her
half-suppressed excitement at the sudden duty of welcoming the great
aristocrat of the county, gave a piquancy to her prettiness.

"The--devil!" commented Mr. Harry Cresswell to himself. But to Miss
Taylor:

"I beg pardon--er--Miss Smith?"

"No--I'm sorry. Miss Smith is engaged this morning. I am Miss Taylor."

"I cannot share Miss Taylor's sorrow," returned Mr. Cresswell gravely,
"for I believe I have the honor of some correspondence with Miss
Taylor's brother." Mr. Cresswell searched for the letter, but did not
find it.

"Oh! Has John written you?" She beamed suddenly. "I'm so glad. It's more
than he's done for me this three-month. I beg your pardon--do sit
down--I think you'll find this one easier. Our stock of chairs is
limited."

It was delightful to have a casual meeting receive this social stamp;
the girl was all at once transfigured--animated, glowing, lovely; all of
which did not escape the caller's appraising inspection.

"There!" said Mr. Cresswell. "I've left your gate gaping."

"Oh, don't mind ... I hope John's well?"

"The truth is," confessed Cresswell, "it was a business matter--cotton,
you know."

"John is nothing but cotton; I tell him his soul is fibrous."

"He mentioned your being here and I thought I'd drop over and welcome
you to the South."

"Thank you," returned Miss Taylor, reddening with pleasure despite
herself. There was a real sincerity in the tone. All this confirmed so
many convictions of hers.

"Of course, you know how it is in the South," Cresswell pursued, the
opening having been so easily accomplished.

"I understand perfectly."

"My sister would be delighted to meet you, but--"

"Oh I realize the--difficulties."

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind riding by some day--it's embarrassing to
suggest this, but, you know--"

Miss Taylor was perfectly self-possessed.

"Mr. Cresswell," she said seriously, "I know very well that it wouldn't
do for your sister to call here, and I sha'n't mind a bit coming by to
see her first. I don't believe in standing on stupid ceremony."

Cresswell thanked her with quiet cordiality, and suggested that when he
was driving by he might pick her up in his gig some morning. Miss Taylor
expressed her pleasure at the prospect. Then the talk wandered to
general matters--the rain, the trees, the people round about, and,
inevitably--the Negro.

"Oh, by the bye," said Mr. Cresswell, frowning and hesitating over the
recollection of his errand's purpose, "there was one matter"--he paused.
Miss Taylor leant forward, all interest. "I hardly know that I ought to
mention it, but your school--"

This charming young lady disarmed his truculent spirit, and the usually
collected and determined young man was at a loss how to proceed. The
girl, however, was obviously impressed and pleased by his evidence of
interest, whatever its nature; so in a manner vastly different from the
one he had intended to assume, he continued:

"There is a way in which we may be of service to you, and that is by
enlightening you upon points concerning which the nature of your
position--both as teacher and socially--must keep you in the dark.

"For instance, all these Negroes are, as you know, of wretchedly low
morals; but there are a few so depraved that it would be suicidal to
take them into this school. We recognize the good you are doing, but we
do not want it more than offset by utter lack of discrimination in
choosing your material."

"Certainly not--have we--" Miss Mary faltered. This beginning was a bit
ominous, wholly unexpected.

"There is a girl, Zora, who has just entered, who--I must speak
candidly--who ought not to be here; I thought it but right to let you
know."

"Thank you, so much. I'll tell Miss Smith." Mary Taylor suddenly felt
herself a judge of character. "I suspected that she was--not what she
ought to be. Believe me, we appreciate your interest."

A few more words, and Mr. Cresswell, after bending courteously over her
hand with a deference no New Englander had ever shown, was riding away
on his white mare.

For a while Mary Taylor sat very quietly. It was like a breath of air
from the real world, this hour's chat with a well-bred gentleman. She
wondered how she had done her part--had she been too eager and
school-girlish? Had she met this stately ceremony with enough breeding
to show that she too was somebody? She pounced upon Miss Smith the
minute that lady entered the office.

"Miss Smith, who do you think has been here?" she burst out
enthusiastically.

"I saw him on the lawn." There was a suspicious lack of warmth in this
brief affirmation.

"He was so gracious and kindly, and he knows my brother. And oh, Miss
Smith! we've got to send that Zora right away."

"Indeed"--the observation was not even interrogatory. The preceptress of
the struggling school for Negro children merely evinced patience for the
younger woman's fervency.

"Yes; he says she's utterly depraved."

"Said that, did he?" Miss Smith watched her with tranquil regard. Miss
Taylor paused.

"Of course, we cannot think of keeping her."

Miss Smith pursed her lips, offering her first expression of opinion.

"I guess we'll worry along with her a little while anyhow," she said.

The girl stared at Miss Smith in honest, if unpardonable, amazement.

"Do you mean to say that you are going to keep in this school a girl who
not only lies and steals but is positively--_immoral_?"

Miss Smith smiled, wholly unmoved.

"No; but I mean that _I_ am here to learn from those whose ideas of
right do not agree with mine, to discover _why_ they differ, and to let
them learn of me--so far as I am worthy."

Mary Taylor was not unappreciative of Miss Smith's stern
high-mindedness, but her heart hardened at this, to her, misdirected
zeal. Echo of the spirit of an older day, Miss Smith seemed, to her, to
be cramped and paralyzed in an armor of prejudice and sectionalisms.
Plain-speaking was the only course, and Mary, if a little complacent
perhaps in her frankness, was sincere in her purpose.

"I think, Miss Smith, you are making a very grave mistake. I regard
Zora as a very undesirable person from every point of view. I look upon
Mr. Cresswell's visit today as almost providential. He came offering an
olive branch from the white aristocracy to this work; to bespeak his
appreciation and safeguard the future. Moreover," and Miss Taylor's
voice gathered firmness despite Miss Smith's inscrutable eye, "moreover,
I have reason to know that the disposition--indeed, the plan--in certain
quarters to help this work materially depends very largely on your
willingness to meet the advances of the Southern whites half way."

She paused for a reply or a question. Receiving neither, she walked with
dignity up the stairs. From her window she could see Cresswell's
straight shoulders, as he rode toward town, and beyond him a black speck
in the road. But she could not see the smile on Mr. Cresswell's lips,
nor did she hear him remark twice, with seeming irrelevance, "The
devil!"

The rider, being closer to it, recognized in Mary Taylor's "black speck"
Bles Alwyn walking toward him rapidly with axe and hoe on shoulder,
whistling merrily. They saw each other almost at the same moment and
whistle and smile faded. Mr. Cresswell knew the Negro by sight and
disliked him. He belonged in his mind to that younger class of
half-educated blacks who were impudent and disrespectful toward their
superiors, not even touching his hat when he met a white man. Moreover,
he was sure that it was Miss Taylor with whom this boy had been talking
so long and familiarly in the cotton-field last Spring--an offence
doubly heinous now that he had seen Miss Taylor.

His first impulse was to halt the Negro then and there and tell him a
few plain truths. But he did not feel quarrelsome at the moment, and
there was, after all, nothing very tangible to justify a berating. The
fellow's impudence was sure to increase, and then! So he merely reined
his horse to the better part of the foot-path and rode on.

Bles, too, was thinking. He knew the well-dressed man with his
milk-white face and overbearing way. He would expect to be greeted with
raised hat but Bles bit his lips and pulled down his cap firmly. The
axe, too, in some indistinct way felt good in his hand. He saw the horse
coming in his pathway and stepping aside in the dust continued on his
way, neither looking nor speaking.

So they passed each other by, Mr. Cresswell to town, Bles to the swamp,
apparently ignorant of each other's very existence. Yet, as the space
widened between them, each felt a more vindictive anger for the other.

How dares the black puppy to ignore a Cresswell on the highway? If this
went on, the day would surely come when Negroes felt no respect or fear
whatever for whites? And then--my God! Mr. Cresswell struck his mare a
vicious blow and dashed toward town.

The black boy, too, went his way in silent, burning rage. Why should he
be elbowed into the roadside dust by an insolent bully? Why had he not
stood his ground? Pshaw! All this fine frenzy was useless, and he knew
it. The sweat oozed on his forehead. It wasn't man against man, or he
would have dragged the pale puppy from his horse and rubbed his face in
the earth. It wasn't even one against many, else how willingly, swinging
his axe, would have stood his ground before a mob.

No, it was one against a world, a world of power, opinion, wealth,
opportunity; and he, the one, must cringe and bear in silence lest the
world crash about the ears of his people. He slowly plodded on in bitter
silence toward the swamp. But the day was balmy, the way was beautiful;
contempt slowly succeeded anger, and hope soon triumphed over all. For
yonder was Zora, poised, waiting. And behind her lay the Field of
Dreams.




_Nine_


THE PLANTING


Zora looked down upon Bles, where he stood to his knees in mud. The toil
was beyond exhilaration--it was sickening weariness and panting despair.
The great roots, twined in one unbroken snarl, clung frantically to the
black soil. The vines and bushes fought back with thorn and bramble.
Zora stood wiping the blood from her hands and staring at Bles. She saw
the long gnarled fingers of the tough little trees and they looked like
the fingers of Elspeth down there beneath the earth pulling against the
boy. Slowly Zora forgot her blood and pain. Who would win--the witch, or
Jason?

Bles looked up and saw the bleeding hands. With a bound he was beside
her.

"Zora!" The cry seemed wrung from his heart by contrition. Why had he
not known--not seen before! "Zora, come right out of this! Sit down here
and rest."

She looked at him unwaveringly; there was no flinching of her spirit.

"I sha'n't do it," she said. "You'se working, and I'se going to work."

"But--Zora--you're not used to such work, and I am. You're tired out."

"So is you," was her reply.

He looked himself over ruefully, and dropping his axe, sat down beside
her on a great log. Silently they contemplated the land; it seemed
indeed a hopeless task. Then they looked at each other in sudden,
unspoken fear of failure.

"If we only had a mule!" he sighed. Immediately her face lighted and her
lips parted, but she said nothing. He presently bounded to his feet.

"Never mind, Zora. To-morrow is Saturday, and I'll work all day. We just
_will_ get it done--sometime." His mouth closed with determination.

"We won't work any more today, then?" cried Zora, her eagerness
betraying itself despite her efforts to hide it.

"_You_ won't," affirmed Bles. "But I've got to do just a little--"

But Zora was adamant: he was tired; she was tired; they would rest.
To-morrow with the rising sun they would begin again.

"There'll be a bright moon tonight," ventured Bles.

"Then I'll come too," Zora announced positively, and he had to promise
for her sake to rest.

They went up the path together and parted diffidently, he watching her
flit away with sorrowful eyes, a little disturbed and puzzled at the
burden he had voluntarily assumed, but never dreaming of drawing back.

Zora did not go far. No sooner did she know herself well out of his
sight than she dropped lightly down beside the path, listening intently
until the last echo of his footsteps had died away. Then, leaving the
cabin on her right, and the scene of their toil on her left, she cut
straight through the swamp, skirted the big road, and in a half-hour
was in the lower meadows of the Cresswell plantations, where the tired
stock was being turned out to graze for the night. Here, in the shadow
of the wood, she lingered. Slowly, but with infinite patience, she broke
one strand after another of the barbed-wire fencing, watching, the
while, the sun grow great and crimson, and die at last in mighty
splendor behind the dimmer westward forests.

The voices of the hands and hostlers grew fainter and thinner in the
distance of purple twilight until the last of them disappeared. Silence
fell, deep and soft; the silence of a day sinking to sleep. Not until
then did Zora steal forth from her hiding-place.

She had chosen her mule long before--a big, black beast, snorting over
his pile of corn,--and gliding up to him, she gathered his supper into
her skirt, found a stout halter, and fed him sparingly as he followed
her. Quickly she unfastened the pieces of the fence, led the animal
through, and spliced them again; and then, with fox-like caution, she
guided her prize through the labyrinthine windings of the swamp. It was
dark and haunting, and ever and again rose lonely night cries. The girl
trembled a little, but plodded resolutely on until the dim silver disk
of the half-moon began to glimmer through the trees. Then she pressed on
more swiftly, and fed more scantily, until finally, with the moonlight
pouring over them at the black lagoon, Zora attempted to drive the
animal into the still waters; but he gave a loud protesting snort and
balked. By subtle temptings she gave him to understand that plenty lay
beyond the dark waters, and quickly swinging herself to his back she
started to ride him up and down along the edge of the lagoon, petting
and whispering to him of good things beyond. Slowly her eyes grew wide;
she seemed to be riding out of dreamland on some hobgoblin beast.

Deeper and deeper they penetrated into the dark waters. Now they entered
the slime; now they stumbled on hidden roots; but deeper and deeper they
waded until at last, turning the animal's head with a jerk, and giving
him a sharp stroke of the whip, she headed straight for the island. A
moment the beast snorted and plunged; higher and higher the black still
waters rose round the girl. They crept up her little limbs, swirled
round her breasts and gleamed green and slimy along her shoulders. A
wild terror gripped her. Maybe she was riding the devil's horse, and
these were the yawning gates of hell, black and sombre beneath the cold,
dead radiance of the moon. She saw again the gnarled and black and
claw-like fingers of Elspeth gripping and dragging her down.

A scream struggled in her breast, her fingers relaxed, and the big
beast, stretching his cramped neck, rose in one mighty plunge and
planted his feet on the sand of the island.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bles, hurrying down in the morning with new tools and new determination,
stopped and stared in blank amazement. Zora was perched in a tree
singing softly and beneath a fat black mule was finishing his breakfast.

"Zora--" he gasped, "how--how did you do it?"

She only smiled and sang a happier measure, pausing only to whisper:

"Dreams--dreams--it's all dreams here, I tells you."

Bles frowned and stood irresolute. The song proceeded with less
assurance, slower and lower, till it stopped, and the singer dropped to
the ground, watching him with wide eyes. He looked down at her, slight,
tired, scratched, but undaunted, striving blindly toward the light with
stanch, unfaltering faith. A pity surged in his heart. He put his arm
about her shoulders and murmured:

"You poor, brave child."

And she shivered with joy.

All day Saturday and part of Sunday they worked feverishly. The trees
crashed and the stumps groaned and crept up into the air, the brambles
blazed and smoked; little frightened animals fled for shelter; and a
wide black patch of rich loam broadened and broadened till it kissed,
on every side but the sheltered east, the black waters of the lagoon.
Late Sunday night the mule again swam the slimy lagoon, and disappeared
toward the Cresswell fields. Then Bles sat down beside Zora, facing the
fields, and gravely took her hand. She looked at him in quick,
breathless fear.

"Zora," he said, "sometimes you tell lies, don't you?"

"Yes," she said slowly; "sometimes."

"And, Zora, sometimes you steal--you stole the pin from Miss Taylor, and
we stole Mr. Cresswell's mule for two days."

"Yes," she said faintly, with a perplexed wrinkle in her brows, "I stole
it."

"Well, Zora, I don't want you ever to tell another lie, or ever to take
anything that doesn't belong to you."

She looked at him silently with the shadow of something like terror far
back in the depths of her deep eyes.

"Always--tell--the truth?" she repeated slowly.

"Yes."

Her fingers worked nervously.

"All the truth?" she asked.

He thought a while.

"No," said he finally, "it is not necessary always to tell all the
truth; but never tell anything that isn't the truth."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Even if it hurts me?"

"Even if it hurts. God is good, He will not let it hurt much."

"He's a fair God, ain't He?" she mused, scanning the evening sky.

"Yes--He's fair, He wouldn't take advantage of a little girl that did
wrong, when she didn't know it was wrong."

Her face lightened and she held his hands in both hers, and said
solemnly as though saying a prayer:

"I won't lie any more, and I won't steal--and--" she looked at him in
startled wistfulness--he remembered it in after years; but he felt he
had preached enough.

"And now for the seed!" he interrupted joyously. "And then--the Silver
Fleece!"

That night, for the first time, Bles entered Zora's home. It was a
single low, black room, smoke-shadowed and dirty, with two dingy beds
and a gaping fire-place. On one side of the fire-place sat the yellow
woman, young, with traces of beauty, holding the white child in her
arms; on the other, hugging the blaze, huddled a formless heap, wreathed
in coils of tobacco smoke--Elspeth, Zora's mother.

Zora said nothing, but glided in and stood in the shadows.

"Good-evening," said Bles cheerily. The woman with the baby alone
responded.

"I came for the seed you promised us--the cotton-seed."

The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and
twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing--filthy of breath,
dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung
loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on her
great neck. Bles shuddered and stepped back.

"Is you afeared, honey?" she whispered.

"No," he said sturdily.

She chuckled drily. "Yes, you is--everybody's 'feared of old Elspeth;
but she won't hurt you--you's got the spell;" and wheeling again, she
was back at the fire.

"But the seed?" he ventured.

She pointed impressively roofward. "The dark of the moon, boy, the dark
of the moon--the first dark--at midnight." Bles could not wring another
word from her; nor did the ancient witch, by word or look, again give
the slightest indication that she was aware of his presence.

With reluctant farewell, Bles turned home. For a space Zora watched him,
and once she started after him, but came slowly back, and sat by the
fire-place.

Out of the night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and
galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men,
but the keener, more metallic sound of white men's cries, and Bles Alwyn
paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided
after a moment to go home and to bed.

Zora, however, leapt to her feet and fled into the night, while the hag
screamed after her and cursed. There was tramping of feet on the cabin
floor, and loud voices and singing and cursing.

"Where's Zora?" some one yelled, with an oath. "Damn it! where is she? I
haven't seen her for a year, you old devil."

The hag whimpered and snarled. Far down in the field of the Fleece, Zora
lay curled beneath a tall dark tree asleep. All night there was coming
and going in the cabin; the talk and laughter grew loud and boisterous,
and the red fire glared in the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island
lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a dyke around the edge;
Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It
was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out
across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.

"Don't throw the dirt too high there," she begged; "it'll bring my seat
too near the earth."

He looked up.

"Why, it's a throne," he laughed.

"It needs a roof," he whimsically told her when his day's work was done.
Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove
a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it
snugly from wind and water.

Early next morning Bles slipped down and improved the nest; adding
foot-rests to make the climbing easy, peep-holes east and west, a bit
of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture
in blue and gold of Bougereau's Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in
silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in--there was not room to enter: the girl
was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear
his presence, and she inquired softly:

"Who's it, Bles?"

"The mother of God," he answered reverently.

"And why does she hold a lily?"

"It stands for purity--she was a good woman."

"With a baby," Zora added slowly.

"Yes--" said Bles, and then more quickly--"It is the Christ Child--God's
baby."

"God is the father of all the little babies, ain't He, Bles?"

"Why, yes--yes, of course; only this little baby didn't have any other
father."

"Yes, I know one like that," she said,--and then she added softly: "Poor
little Christ-baby."

Bles hesitated, and before he found words Zora was saying:

"How white she is; she's as white as the lily, Bles; but--I'm sorry
she's white--Bles, what's purity--just whiteness?"

Bles glanced at her awkwardly but she was still staring wide-eyed at the
picture, and her voice was earnest. She was now so old and again so much
a child, an eager questioning child, that there seemed about her
innocence something holy.

"It means," he stammered, groping for meanings--"it means being
good--just as good as a woman knows how."

She wheeled quickly toward him and asked him eagerly:

"Not better--not better than she knows, but just as good, in--lying and
stealing and--and everything?"

Bles smiled.

"No--not better than she knows, but just as good."

She trembled happily.

"I'm--pure," she said, with a strange little breaking voice and
gesture. A sob struggled in his throat.

"Of course you are," he whispered tenderly, hiding her little hands in
his.

"I--I was so afraid--sometimes--that I wasn't," she whispered, lifting
up to him her eyes streaming with tears. Silently he kissed her lips.

From that day on they walked together in a new world. No revealing word
was spoken; no vows were given, none asked for; but a new bond held
them. She grew older, quieter, taller, he humbler, more tender and
reverent, as they toiled together.

So the days passed. The sun burned in the heavens; but the silvered
glory of the moon grew fainter and fainter and each night it rose later
than the night before. Then one day Zora whispered:

"Tonight!"

Bles came to the cabin, and he and Zora and Elspeth sat silently around
the fire-place with its meagre embers. The night was balmy and still;
only occasionally a wandering breeze searching the hidden places of the
swamp, or the call and song of night birds, jarred the stillness. Long
they sat, until the silence crept into Bles's flesh, and stretching out
his hand, he touched Zora's, clasping it.

After a time the old woman rose and hobbled to a big black chest. Out of
it she brought an old bag of cotton seed--not the white-green seed which
Bles had always known, but small, smooth black seeds, which she handled
carefully, dipping her hands deep down and letting them drop through her
gnarled fingers. And so again they sat and waited and waited, saying no
word.

Not until the stars of midnight had swung to the zenith did they start
down through the swamp. Bles sought to guide the old woman, but he found
she knew the way better than he did. Her shadowy figure darting in and
out among the trunks till they crossed the tree bridge, moved ever
noiselessly ahead.

She motioned the boy and girl away to the thicket at the edge, and
stood still and black in the midst of the cleared island. Bles slipped
his arm protectingly around Zora, glancing fearfully about in the
darkness. Slowly a great cry rose and swept the island. It struck madly
and sharply, and then died away to uneasy murmuring. From afar there
seemed to come the echo or the answer to the call. The form of Elspeth
blurred the night dimly far off, almost disappearing, and then growing
blacker and larger. They heard the whispering "_swish-swish_" of falling
seed; they felt the heavy tread of a great coming body. The form of the
old woman suddenly loomed black above them, hovering a moment formless
and vast then fading again away, and the "_swish-swish_" of the falling
seed alone rose in the silence of the night.

At last all was still. A long silence. Then again the air seemed
suddenly filled with that great and awful cry; its echoing answer
screamed afar and they heard the raucous voice of Elspeth beating in
their ears:

_"De seed done sowed! De seed done sowed!"_




_Ten_

MR. TAYLOR CALLS


"Thinking the matter over," said Harry Cresswell to his father, "I'm
inclined to advise drawing this Taylor out a little further."

The Colonel puffed his cigar and one eye twinkled, the lid of the other
being at the moment suggestively lowered.

"Was she pretty?" he asked; but his son ignored the remark, and the
father continued:

"I had a telegram from Taylor this morning, after you left. He'll be
passing through Montgomery the first of next month, and proposes
calling."

"I'll wire him to come," said Harry, promptly.

At this juncture the door opened and a young lady entered. Helen
Cresswell was twenty, small and pretty, with a slightly languid air.
Outside herself there was little in which she took very great interest,
and her interest in herself was not absorbing. Yet she had a curiously
sweet way. Her servants liked her and the tenants could count on her
spasmodic attentions in time of sickness and trouble.

"Good-morning," she said, with a soft drawl. She sauntered over to her
father, kissed him, and hung over the back of his chair.

"Did you get that novel for me, Harry?"--expectantly regarding her
brother.

"I forgot it, Sis. But I'll be going to town again soon."

The young lady showed that she was annoyed.

"By the bye, Sis, there's a young lady over at the Negro school whom I
think you'd like."

"Black or white?"

"A young lady, I said. Don't be sarcastic."

"I heard you. I did not know whether you were using our language or
others'."

"She's really unusual, and seems to understand things. She's planning to
call some day--shall you be at home?"

"Certainly not, Harry; you're crazy." And she strolled out to the porch,
exchanged some remarks with a passing servant, and then nestled
comfortably into a hammock. She helped herself to a chocolate and called
out musically:

"Pa, are you going to town today?"

"Yes, honey."

"Can I go?"

"I'm going in an hour or so, and business at the bank will keep me until
after lunch."

"I don't care, I just must go. I'm clean out of anything to read. And I
want to shop and call on Dolly's friend--she's going soon."

"All right. Can you be ready by eleven?"

She considered.

"Yes--I reckon," she drawled, prettily swinging her foot and watching
the tree-tops above the distant swamp.

Harry Cresswell, left alone, rang the bell for the butler.

"Still thinking of going, are you, Sam?" asked Cresswell, carelessly,
when the servant appeared. He was a young, light-brown boy, his manner
obsequious.

"Why, yes, sir--if you can spare me."

"Spare you, you black rascal! You're going anyhow. Well, you'll repent
it; the North is no place for niggers. See here, I want lunch for two at
one o'clock." The directions that followed were explicit and given with
a particularity that made Sam wonder. "Order my trap," he finally
directed.

Cresswell went out on the high-pillared porch until the trap appeared.

"Oh, Harry! I wanted to go in the trap--take me?" coaxed his sister.

"Sorry, Sis, but I'm going the other way."

"I don't believe it," said Miss Cresswell, easily, as she settled down
to another chocolate. Cresswell did not take the trouble to reply.

Miss Taylor was on her morning walk when she saw him spinning down the
road, and both expressed surprise and pleasure at the meeting.

"What a delightful morning!" said the school-teacher, and the glow on
her face said even more.

"I'm driving round through the old plantation," he explained; "won't you
join me?"

"The invitation is tempting," she hesitated; "but I've got just oodles
of work."

"What! on Saturday?"

"Saturday is my really busy day, don't you know. I guess I could get
off; really, though, I suspect I ought to tell Miss Smith."

He looked a little perplexed; but the direction in which her
inclinations lay was quite clear to him.

"It--it would be decidedly the proper thing," he murmured, "and we
could, of course, invite Miss--"

She saw the difficulty and interrupted him:

"It's quite unnecessary; she'll think I have simply gone for a long
walk." And soon they were speeding down the silent road, breathing the
perfume of the pines.

Now a ride of an early spring morning, in Alabama, over a leisurely old
plantation road and behind a spirited horse, is an event to be enjoyed.
Add to this a man bred to be agreeable and outdoing his training, and a
pretty girl gay with new-found companionship--all this is apt to make a
morning worth remembering.

They turned off the highway and passed through long stretches of
ploughed and tumbled fields, and other fields brown with the dead ghosts
of past years' cotton standing straggling and weather-worn. Long,
straight, or curling rows of ploughers passed by with steaming,
struggling mules, with whips snapping and the yodle of workers or the
sharp guttural growl of overseers as a constant accompaniment.

"They're beginning to plough up the land for the cotton-crop," he
explained.

"What a wonderful crop it is!" Mary had fallen pensive.

"Yes, indeed--if only we could get decent returns for it."

"Why, I thought it was a most valuable crop." She turned to him
inquiringly.

"It is--to Negroes and manufacturers, but not to planters."

"But why don't the planters do something?"

"What can be done with Negroes?" His tone was bitter. "We tried to
combine against manufacturers in the Farmers' League of last winter. My
father was president. The pastime cost him fifty thousand dollars."

Miss Taylor was perplexed, but eager. "You must correspond with my
brother, Mr. Cresswell," she gravely observed. "I'm sure he--" Before
she could finish, an overseer rode up. He began talking abruptly, with a
quick side-glance at Mary, in which she might have caught a gleam of
surprised curiosity.

"That old nigger, Jim Sykes, over on the lower place, sir, ain't showed
up again this morning."

Cresswell nodded. "I'll drive by and see," he said carelessly.

The old man was discovered sitting before his cabin with his head in
his hands. He was tall, black, and gaunt, partly bald, with tufted hair.
One leg was swathed in rags, and his eyes, as he raised them, wore a
cowed and furtive look.

"Well, Uncle Jim, why aren't you at work?" called Cresswell from the
roadside. The old man rose painfully to his feet, swayed against the
cabin, and clutched off his cap.

"It's my leg again, Master Harry--the leg what I hurt in the gin last
fall," he answered, uneasily.

Cresswell frowned. "It's probably whiskey," he assured his companion, in
an undertone; then to the man:

"You must get to the field to-morrow,"--his habitually calm, unfeeling
positiveness left no ground for objection; "I cannot support you in
idleness, you know."

"Yes, Master Harry," the other returned, with conciliatory eagerness; "I
knows that--I knows it and I ain't shirking. But, Master Harry, they
ain't doing me right 'bout my cabin--I just wants to show you." He got
out some dirty papers, and started to hobble forward, wincing with pain.
Mary Taylor stirred in her seat under an involuntary impulse to help,
but Cresswell touched the horse.

"All right, Uncle Jim," he said; "we'll look it over to-morrow."

They turned presently to where they could see the Cresswell oaks waving
lazily in the sunlight and the white gleam of the pillared "Big House."

A pause at the Cresswell store, where Mr. Cresswell entered, afforded
Mary Taylor an opportunity further to extend her fund of information.

"Do you go to school?" she inquired of the black boy who held the horse,
her mien sympathetic and interested.

"No, ma'am," he mumbled.

"What's your name?"

"Buddy--I'se one of Aunt Rachel's chilluns."

"And where do you live, Buddy?"

"I lives with granny, on de upper place."

"Well, I'll see Aunt Rachel and ask her to send you to school."

"Won't do no good--she done ast, and Mr. Cresswell, he say he ain't
going to have no more of his niggers--"

But Mr. Cresswell came out just then, and with him a big, fat, and
greasy black man, with little eyes and soft wheedling voice. He was
following Cresswell at the side but just a little behind, hat in hand,
head aslant, and talking deferentially. Cresswell strode carelessly on,
answering him with good-natured tolerance.

The black man stopped with humility before the trap and swept a profound
obeisance. Cresswell glanced up quizzically at Miss Taylor.

"This," he announced, "is Jones, the Baptist preacher--begging."

"Ah, lady,"--in mellow, unctuous tones--"I don't know what we poor black
folks would do without Mr. Cresswell--the Lord bless him," said the
minister, shoving his hand far down into his pocket.

Shortly afterward they were approaching the Cresswell Mansion, when the
young man reined in the horse.

"If you wouldn't mind," he suggested, "I could introduce my sister to
you."

"I should be delighted," answered Miss Taylor, readily.

When they rolled up to the homestead under its famous oaks the hour was
past one. The house was a white oblong building of two stories. In front
was the high pillared porch, semi-circular, extending to the roof with a
balcony in the second story. On the right was a broad verandah looking
toward a wide lawn, with the main road and the red swamp in the
distance.

The butler met them, all obeisance.

"Ask Miss Helen to come down," said Mr. Cresswell.

Sam glanced at him.

"Miss Helen will be dreadful sorry, but she and the Colonel have just
gone to town--I believe her Aunty ain't well."

Mr. Cresswell looked annoyed.

"Well, well! that's too bad," he said. "But at any rate, have a seat a
moment out here on the verandah, Miss Taylor. And, Sam, can't you find
us a sandwich and something cool? I could not be so inhospitable as to
send you away hungry at this time of day."

Miss Taylor sat down in a comfortable low chair facing the refreshing
breeze, and feasted her eyes on the scene. Oh, this was life: a smooth
green lawn, and beds of flowers, a vista of brown fields, and the dark
line of wood beyond. The deft, quiet butler brought out a little table,
spread with the whitest of cloths and laid with the brightest of silver,
and "found" a dainty lunch. There was a bit of fried chicken breast,
some crisp bacon, browned potatoes, little round beaten biscuit, and
rose-colored sherbet with a whiff of wine in it. Miss Taylor wondered a
little at the bounty of Southern hospitality; but she was hungry, and
she ate heartily, then leaned back dreamily and listened to Mr.
Cresswell's smooth Southern _r_'s, adding a word here and there that
kept the conversation going and brought a grave smile to his pale lips.
At last with a sigh she arose to her feet.

"I must go! What shall I tell Miss Smith! No, no--no carriage; I must
walk." Of course, however, she could not refuse to let him go at least
half-way, ostensibly to tell her of the coming of her brother. He
expressed again his disappointment at his sister's absence.

Somewhat to Miss Taylor's surprise Miss Smith said nothing until they
were parting for the night, then she asked:

"Was Miss Cresswell at home?"

Mary reddened.

"She had been called suddenly to town."

"Well, my dear, I wouldn't do it again."

The girl was angry.

"I'm not a school-girl, but a grown woman, and capable of caring for
myself. Moreover, in matter of propriety I do not think you have usually
found my ideas too lax--rather the opposite."

"There, there, dear; don't be angry. Only I think if your brother
knew--"

"He will know in a very few weeks; he is coming to visit the
Cresswells." And Miss Taylor sailed triumphantly up the stairs.

But John Taylor was not the man to wait weeks when a purpose could be
accomplished in days or hours. No sooner was Harry Cresswell's telegram
at hand than he hastened back from Savannah, struck across country, and
the week after his sister's ride found him striding up the carriage-way
of the Cresswell home.

John Taylor had prospered since summer. The cotton manufacturers'
combine was all but a fact; Mr. Easterly had discovered that his chief
clerk's sense and executive ability were invaluable, and John Taylor was
slated for a salary in five figures when things should be finally
settled, not to mention a generous slice of stock--watery at present,
but warranted to ripen early.

While Mr. Easterly still regarded Taylor's larger trust as chimerical,
some occurrences of the fall made him take a respectful attitude toward
it. Just as the final clauses of the combine agreement were to be
signed, there appeared a shortage in the cotton-crop, and prices began
to soar. The cause was obviously the unexpected success of the new
Farmers' League among the cotton-growers. Mr. Easterly found it
comparatively easy to overthrow the corner, but the flurry made some of
the manufacturers timid, and the trust agreement was postponed until a
year later. This experience and the persistence of Mr. Taylor induced
Mr. Easterly to take a step toward the larger project: he let in some
eager outside capital to the safer manufacturing scheme, and withdrew a
corresponding amount of Mrs. Grey's money. This he put into John
Taylor's hands to invest in the South in bank stock and industries with
the idea of playing a part in the financial situation there.

"It's a risk, Taylor, of course, and we'll let the old lady take the
risk. At the worst it's safer than the damned foolishness she has in
mind."

So it happened that John Taylor went South to look after large
investments and, as Mr. Easterly expressed it, "to bring back facts,
not dreams." His investment matters went quickly and well, and now he
turned to his wider and bigger scheme. He wrote the Cresswells
tentatively, expecting no reply, or an evasive one; planning to circle
around them, drawing his nets closer, and trying them again later. To
his surprise they responded quickly.

"Humph! Hard pressed," he decided, and hurried to them.

So it was the week after Mary Taylor's ride that found him at
Cresswell's front door, thin, eagle-eyed, fairly well dressed and
radiating confidence.

"John Taylor," he announced to Sam, jerkily, thrusting out a card. "Want
to see Mr. Cresswell; soon as possible."

Sam made him wait a half-hour, for the sake of discipline, and then
brought father and son.

"Good-morning, Mr. Cresswell, and Mr. Cresswell again," said Mr. Taylor,
helping himself to a straight-backed chair. "Hope you'll pardon this
unexpected visit. Found myself called through Montgomery, just after I
got your wire; thought I'd better drop over."

At Harry's suggestion they moved to the verandah and sat down over
whiskey and soda, which Taylor refused, and plunged into the subject
without preliminaries.

"I'm assuming that you gentlemen are in the cotton business for making
money. So am I. I see a way in which you and your friends can help me
and mine, and clear up more millions than all of us can spend; for this
reason I've hunted you up. This is my scheme.

"See here; there are a thousand cotton-mills in this country, half of
them in the South, one-fourth in New England, and one-fourth in the
Middle States. They are capitalized at six hundred million dollars. Now
let me tell you: we control three hundred and fifty millions of that
capitalization. The trust is going through capitalization at a billion.
The only thing that threatens it is child-labor legislation in the
South, the tariff, and the control of the supply of cotton. Pretty big
hindrances, you say. That's so, but look here: we've got the stock so
placed that nothing short of a popular upheaval can send any Child Labor
bill through Congress in six years. See? After that we don't care. Same
thing applies to the tariff. The last bill ran ten years. The present
bill will last longer, or I lose my guess--'specially if Smith is in the
Senate.

"Well, then, there remains raw cotton. The connection of cotton-raising
and its raw material is too close to risk a manufacturing trust that
does not include practical control of the raw material. For that reason
we're planning a trust to include the raising and manufacturing of
cotton in America. Then, too, cornering the cotton market here means the
whip-hand of the industrial world. Gentlemen, it's the biggest idea of
the century. It beats steel."

Colonel Cresswell chuckled.

"How do you spell that?" he asked.

But John Taylor was not to be diverted; his thin face was pale, but his
gray eyes burned with the fire of a zealot. Harry Cresswell only smiled
dimly and looked interested.

"Now, again," continued John Taylor. "There are a million cotton farms
in the South, half run by colored people and half by whites. Leave the
colored out of account as long as they are disfranchised. The half
million white farms are owned or controlled by five thousand wholesale
merchants and three thousand big landowners, of whom you, Colonel
Cresswell, are among the biggest with your fifty thousand acres. Ten
banks control these eight thousand people--one of these is the Jefferson
National of Montgomery, of which you are a silent director."

Colonel Cresswell started; this man evidently had inside information.
Did he know of the mortgage, too?

"Don't be alarmed. I'm safe," Taylor assured him. "Now, then, if we can
get the banks, wholesale merchants, and biggest planters into line we
can control the cotton crop."

"But," objected Harry Cresswell, "while the banks and the large
merchants may be possibilities, do you know what it means to try to get
planters into line?"

"Yes, I do. And what I don't know you and your father do. Colonel
Cresswell is president of the Farmers' League. That's the reason I'm
here. Your success last year made you indispensable to our plans."

"Our success?" laughed Colonel Cresswell, ruefully, thinking of the
fifty thousand dollars lost and the mortgage to cover it.

"Yes, sir--success! You didn't know it; we were too careful to allow
that; and I say frankly you wouldn't know it now if we weren't convinced
you were too far involved and the League too discouraged to repeat the
dose."

"Now, look here, sir," began Colonel Cresswell, flushing and drawing
himself erect.

"There, there, Colonel Cresswell, don't misunderstand me. I'm a plain
man. I'm playing a big game--a tremendous one. I need you, and I know
you need me. I find out about you, and my sources of knowledge are wide
and unerring. But the knowledge is safe, sir; it's buried. Last year
when you people curtailed cotton acreage and warehoused a big chunk of
the crop you gave the mill men the scare of their lives. We had a hasty
conference and the result was that the bottom fell out of your credit."

Colonel Cresswell grew pale. There was a disquieting, relentless element
in this unimpassioned man's tone.

"You failed," pursued John Taylor, "because you couldn't get the banks
and the big merchants behind you. We've got 'em behind us--with big
chunks of stock and a signed iron-clad agreement. You can wheel the
planters into line--will you do it?" John Taylor bent forward tense but
cool and steel-like. Harry Cresswell laid his hand on his father's arm
and said quietly:

"And where do we come in?"

"That's business," affirmed John Taylor. "You and two hundred and fifty
of the biggest planters come in on the ground-floor of the
two-billion-dollar All-Cotton combine. It can easily mean two million
to you in five years."

"And the other planters?"

"They come in for high-priced cotton until we get our grip."

"And then?"

The quiet question seemed to invoke a vision for John Taylor; the gray
eyes took on the faraway look of a seer; the thin, bloodless lips formed
a smile in which there was nothing pleasant.

"They keep their mouths shut or we squeeze 'em and buy the land. We
propose to own the cotton belt of the South."

Colonel Cresswell started indignantly from his seat.

"Do you think--by God, sir!--that I'd betray Southern gentlemen to--"

But Harry's hand and impassive manner restrained him; he cooled as
suddenly as he had flared up.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Taylor," he concluded; "we'll consider this
matter carefully. You'll spend the night, of course."

"Can't possibly--must catch that next train back."

"But we must talk further," the Colonel insisted. "And then, there's
your sister."

"By Jove! Forgot all about Mary." John Taylor after a little desultory
talk, followed his host up-stairs.

The next afternoon John Taylor was sitting beside Helen Cresswell on the
porch which overlooked the terrace, and was, on the whole, thinking less
of cotton than he had for several years. To be sure, he was talking
cotton; but he was doing it mechanically and from long habit, and was
really thinking how charming a girl Helen Cresswell was. She fascinated
him. For his sister Taylor had a feeling of superiority that was almost
contempt. The idea of a woman trying to understand and argue about
things men knew! He admired the dashing and handsome Miss Easterly, but
she scared him and made him angrily awkward. This girl, on the other
hand, just lounged and listened with an amused smile, or asked the most
child-like questions. She required him to wait on her quite as a matter
of course--to adjust her pillows, hand her the bon-bons, and hunt for
her lost fan. Mr. Taylor, who had not waited on anybody since his mother
died, and not much before, found a quite inexplicable pleasure in these
little domesticities. Several times he took out his watch and frowned;
yet he managed to stay with her quite happily.

On her part Miss Cresswell was vastly amused. Her acquaintance with men
was not wide, but it was thorough so far as her own class was concerned.
They were all well-dressed and leisurely, fairly good looking, and they
said the same words and did the same things in the same way. They paid
her compliments which she did not believe, and they did not expect her
to believe. They were charmingly deferential in the matter of dropped
handkerchiefs, but tyrannical of opinion. They were thoughtful about
candy and flowers, but thoughtless about feelings and income. Altogether
they were delightful, but cloying. This man was startlingly different;
ungainly and always in a desperate, unaccountable hurry. He knew no
pretty speeches, he certainly did not measure up to her standard of
breeding, and yet somehow he was a gentleman. All this was new to Helen
Cresswell, and she liked it.

Meanwhile the men above-stairs lingered in the Colonel's office--the
older one perturbed and sputtering, the younger insistent and
imperturbable.

"The fact is, father," he was saying, "as you yourself have said, one
bad crop of cotton would almost ruin us."

"But the prospects are good."

"What are prospects in March? No, father, this is the situation--three
good crops in succession will wipe off our indebtedness and leave us
facing only low prices and a scarcity of niggers; on the other hand--"
The father interrupted impatiently.

"Yes, on the other hand, if we plunge deeper in debt and betray our
friends we may come out millionaires or--paupers."

"Precisely," said Harry Cresswell, calmly. "Now, our plan is to take no
chances; I propose going North and looking into this matter thoroughly.
If he represents money and has money, and if the trust has really got
the grip he says it has, why, it's a case of crush or get crushed, and
we'll have to join them on their own terms. If he's bluffing, or the
thing looks weak, we'll wait."

It all ended as matters usually did end, in Harry's having his way. He
came downstairs, expecting, indeed, rather hoping, to find Taylor
impatiently striding to and fro, watch in hand; but here he was,
ungainly, it might be, but quite docile, drawing the picture of a
power-loom for Miss Cresswell, who seemed really interested. Harry
silently surveyed them from the door, and his face lighted with a new
thought.

Taylor, espying him, leapt to his feet and hauled out his watch.

"Well--I--" he began lamely.

"No, you weren't either," interrupted Harry, with a laugh that was
unmistakably cordial and friendly. "You had quite forgotten what you
were waiting for--isn't that so, Sis?"

Helen regarded her brother through her veiling lashes: what meant this
sudden assumption of warmth and amiability?

"No, indeed; he was raging with impatience," she returned.

"Why, Miss Cresswell, I--I--" John Taylor forsook social amenities and
pulled himself together. "Well," shortly, "now for that talk--ready?"
And quite forgetting Miss Cresswell, he bolted into the parlor.

"The decision we have come to is this," said Harry Cresswell. "We are in
debt, as you know."

"Forty-nine thousand, seven hundred and forty-two dollars and twelve
cents," responded Taylor; "in three notes, due in twelve, twenty-four,
and thirty-six months, interest at eight per cent, held by--"

The Colonel snorted his amazement, and Harry Cresswell cut in:

"Yes," he calmly admitted; "and with good crops for three years we'd be
all right; good crops even for two years would leave us fairly well
off."

"You mean it would relieve you of the present stringency and put you
face to face with the falling price of cotton and rising wages," was
John Taylor's dry addendum.

"Rising price of cotton, you mean," Harry corrected.

"Oh, temporarily," John Taylor admitted.

"Precisely, and thus postpone the decision."

"No, Mr. Cresswell. I'm offering to let you in on the ground
floor--_now_--not next year, or year after."

"Mr. Taylor, have you any money in this?"

"Everything I've got."

"Well, the thing is this way: if you can prove to us that conditions are
as you say, we're in for it."

"Good! Meet me in New York, say--let's see, this is March tenth--well,
May third."

Young Cresswell was thinking rapidly. This man without doubt represented
money. He was anxious for an alliance. Why? Was it all straight, or did
the whole move conceal a trick?

His eyes strayed to the porch where his pretty sister sat languidly, and
then toward the school where the other sister lived. John Taylor looked
out on the porch, too. They glanced quickly at each other, and each
wondered if the other had shared his thought. Harry Cresswell did not
voice his mind for he was not wholly disposed to welcome what was there;
but he could not refrain from saying in tones almost confidential:

"You could recommend this deal, then, could you--to your own friends?"

"To my own family," asserted John Taylor, looking at Harry Cresswell
with sudden interest. But Mr. Cresswell was staring at the end of his
cigar.




_Eleven_

THE FLOWERING OF THE FLEECE


"Zora," observed Miss Smith, "it's a great blessing not to need
spectacles, isn't it?"

Zora thought that it was; but she was wondering just what spectacles had
to do with the complaint she had brought to the office from Miss Taylor.

"I'm always losing my glasses and they get dirty and--Oh, dear! now
where is that paper?"

Zora pointed silently to the complaint.

"No, not that--another paper. It must be in my room. Don't you want to
come up and help me look?"

They went up to the clean, bare room, with its white iron bed, its cool,
spotless shades and shining windows. Zora walked about softly and
looked, while Miss Smith quietly searched on desk and bureau, paying no
attention to the girl. For the time being she was silent.

"I sometimes wish," she began at length, "I had a bright-eyed girl like
you to help me find and place things."

Zora made no comment.

"Sometimes Bles helps me," added Miss Smith, guilefully.

Zora looked sharply at her. "Could I help?" she asked, almost timidly.

"Why, I don't know,"--the answer was deliberate. "There are one or two
little things perhaps--"

Placing a hand gently upon Zora's shoulder, she pointed out a few odd
tasks, and left the girl busily doing them; then she returned to the
office, and threw Miss Taylor's complaint into the waste-basket.

For a week or more Zora slipped in every day and performed the little
tasks that Miss Smith laid out: she sorted papers, dusted the bureau,
hung a curtain; she did not do the things very well, and she broke some
china, but she worked earnestly and quickly, and there was no thought of
pay. Then, too, did not Bles praise her with a happy smile, as together,
day after day, they stood and watched the black dirt where the Silver
Fleece lay planted? She dreamed and sang over that dark field, and again
and again appealed to him: "S'pose it shouldn't come up after all?" And
he would laugh and say that of course it would come up.

One day, when Zora was helping Miss Smith in the bedroom, she paused
with her arms full of clothes fresh from the laundry.

"Where shall I put these?"

Miss Smith looked around. "They might go in there," she said, pointing
to a door. Zora opened it. A tiny bedroom was disclosed, with one broad
window looking toward the swamp; white curtains adorned it, and white
hangings draped the plain bureau and wash-stand and the little bed.
There was a study table, and a small bookshelf holding a few books, all
simple and clean. Zora paused uncertainly, and surveyed the room.

"Sometimes when you're tired and want to be alone you can come up here,
Zora," said Miss Smith carelessly. "No one uses this room."

Zora caught her breath sharply, but said nothing. The next day Miss
Smith said to her when she came in:

"I'm busy now, dear, but you go up to your little room and read and I'll
call."

Zora quietly obeyed. An hour later Miss Smith looked in, then she closed
the door lightly and left. Another hour flew by before Zora hurried
down.

"I was reading, and I forgot," she said.

"It's all right," returned Miss Smith. "I didn't need you. And any day,
after you get all your lessons, I think Miss Taylor will excuse you and
let you go to your room and read." Miss Taylor, it transpired, was more
than glad.

Day after day Bles and Zora visited the field; but ever the ground lay
an unrelieved black beneath the bright sun, and they would go
reluctantly home again, today there was much work to be done, and Zora
labored steadily and eagerly, never pausing, and gaining in deftness and
care.

In the afternoon Bles went to town with the school wagon. A light shower
flew up from the south, lingered a while and fled, leaving a fragrance
in the air. For a moment Zora paused, and her nostrils quivered; then
without a word she slipped down-stairs, glided into the swamp, and sped
away to the island. She swung across the tree and a low, delighted cry
bubbled on her lips. All the rich, black ground was sprinkled with
tender green. She bent above the verdant tenderness and kissed it; then
she rushed back, bursting into the room.

"_It's come! It's come!--the Silver Fleece!_"

Miss Smith was startled.

"The Silver Fleece!" she echoed in bewilderment.

Zora hesitated. It came over her all at once that this one great
all-absorbing thing meant nothing to the gaunt tired-look woman before
her.

"Would Bles care if I told?" she asked doubtfully.

"No," Miss Smith ventured.

And then the girl crouched at her feet and told the dream and the
story. Many factors were involved that were quite foreign to the older
woman's nature and training. The recital brought to her New England mind
many questions of policy and propriety. And yet, as she looked down upon
the dark face, hot with enthusiasm, it all seemed somehow more than
right. Slowly and lightly Miss Smith slipped her arm about Zora, and
nodded and smiled a perfect understanding. They looked out together into
the darkening twilight.

"It is so late and wet and you're tired tonight--don't you think you'd
better sleep in your little room?"

Zora sat still. She thought of the noisy flaming cabin and the dark
swamp; but a contrasting thought of the white bed made her timid, and
slowly she shook her head. Nevertheless Miss Smith led her to the room.

"Here are things for you to wear," she pointed out, opening the bureau,
"and here is the bath-room." She left the girl standing in the middle of
the floor.

In time Zora came to stay often at Miss Smith's cottage, and to learn
new and unknown ways of living and dressing. She still refused to board,
for that would cost more than she could pay yet, and she would accept no
charity. Gradually an undemonstrative friendship sprang up between the
pale old gray-haired teacher and the dark young black-haired girl.
Delicately, too, but gradually, the companionship of Bles and Zora was
guided and regulated. Of mornings Zora would hurry through her lessons
and get excused to fly to the swamp, to work and dream alone. At noon
Bles would run down, and they would linger until he must hurry back to
dinner. After school he would go again, working while she was busy in
Miss Smith's office, and returning later, would linger awhile to tell
Zora of his day while she busied herself with her little tasks. Saturday
mornings they would go to the swamp and work together, and sometimes
Miss Smith, stealing away from curious eyes, would come and sit and talk
with them as they toiled.

In those days, for these two souls, earth came very near to heaven.
Both were in the midst of that mighty change from youth to womanhood and
manhood. Their manner toward each other by degrees grew shyer and more
thoughtful. There was less of comradeship, but the little meant more.
The rough good fellowship was silently put aside; they no longer lightly
clasped hands; and each at times wondered, in painful
self-consciousness, if the other cared.

Then began, too, that long and subtle change wherein a soul, until now
unmindful of its wrappings, comes suddenly to consciousness of body and
clothes; when it gropes and tries to adjust one with the other, and
through them to give to the inner deeper self, finer and fuller
expression. One saw it easily, almost suddenly, in Alwyn's Sunday suit,
vivid neckties, and awkward fads.

Slower, subtler, but more striking was the change in Zora, as she began
to earn bits of pin money in the office and to learn to sew. Dresses
hung straighter; belts served a better purpose; stockings were smoother;
underwear was daintier. Then her hair--that great dark mass of immovable
infinitely curled hair--began to be subdued and twisted and combed
until, with steady pains and study, it lay in thick twisted braids about
her velvet forehead, like some shadowed halo. All this came much more
slowly and spasmodically than one tells it. Few noticed the change much;
none noticed all; and yet there came a night--a student's social--when
with a certain suddenness the whole school, teachers and pupils,
realized the newness of the girl, and even Bles was startled.

He had bought her in town, at Christmas time, a pair of white satin
slippers, partly to test the smallness of her feet on which in younger
days he had rallied her, and partly because she had mentioned a possible
white dress. They were a cheap, plain pair but dainty, and they fitted
well.

When the evening came and the students were marching and the teachers,
save Miss Smith, were sitting rather primly apart and commenting, she
entered the room. She was a little late, and a hush greeted her. One
boy, with the inimitable drawl of the race, pushed back his ice-cream
and addressed it with a mournful head-shake:

"Go way, honey, yo' los' yo' tas'e!"

The dress was plain and fitted every curving of a healthy girlish form.
She paused a moment white-bodied and white-limbed but dark and
velvet-armed, her full neck and oval head rising rich and almost black
above, with its deep-lighted eyes and crown of silent darkling hair.

To some, such a revelation of grace and womanliness in this hoyden, the
gentle swelling of lankness to beauty, of lowliness to shy self-poise,
was a sudden joy, to others a mere blindness. Mary Taylor was perplexed
and in some indefinite way amazed; and many of the other teachers saw no
beauty, only a strangeness that brought a smile. They were such as know
beauty by convention only, and find it lip-ringed, hoop-skirted,
tattooed, or corsetted, as time and place decree.

The change in Zora, however, had been neither cataclysmic nor
revolutionary and it was yet far--very far--from complete. She still ran
and romped in the woods, and dreamed her dreams; she still was
passionately independent and "queer." Tendencies merely had become
manifest, some dominant. She would, unhindered, develop to a brilliant,
sumptuous womanhood; proud, conquering, full-blooded, and deep
bosomed--a passionate mother of men. Herein lay all her early wildness
and strangeness. Herein lay, as yet half hidden, dimly sensed and all
unspoken, the power of a mighty all-compelling love for one human soul,
and, through it, for all the souls of men. All this lay growing and
developing; but as yet she was still a girl, with a new shyness and
comeliness and a bold, searching heart.

In the field of the Silver Fleece all her possibilities were beginning
to find expression. These new-born green things hidden far down in the
swamp, begotten in want and mystery, were to her a living wonderful
fairy tale come true. All the latent mother in her brooded over them;
all her brilliant fancy wove itself about them. They were her
dream-children, and she tended them jealously; they were her Hope, and
she worshipped them. When the rabbits tried the tender plants she
watched hours to drive them off, and catching now and then a pulsing
pink-eyed invader, she talked to it earnestly:

"Brer Rabbit--poor little Brer Rabbit, don't you know you mustn't eat
Zora's cotton? Naughty, naughty Brer Rabbit." And then she would show it
where she had gathered piles of fragrant weeds for it and its fellows.

The golden green of the first leaves darkened, and the plants sprang
forward steadily. Never before was such a magnificent beginning, a full
month ahead of other cotton. The rain swept down in laughing, bubbling
showers, and laved their thirsty souls, and Zora held her beating breast
day by day lest it rain too long or too heavily. The sun burned fiercely
upon the young cotton plants as the spring hastened, and they lifted
their heads in darker, wilder luxuriance; for the time of hoeing was at
hand.

These days were days of alternate hope and doubt with Bles Alwyn.
Strength and ambition and inarticulate love were fighting within him. He
felt, in the dark thousands of his kind about him, a mighty calling to
deeds. He was becoming conscious of the narrowness and straightness of
his black world, and red anger flashed in him ever and again as he felt
his bonds. His mental horizon was broadening as he prepared for the
college of next year; he was faintly grasping the wider, fuller world,
and its thoughts and aspirations.

But beside and around and above all this, like subtle, permeating ether,
was--Zora. His feelings for her were not as yet definite, expressed, or
grasped; they were rather the atmosphere in which all things occurred
and were felt and judged. From an amusing pastime she had come to be a
companion and thought-mate; and now, beyond this, insensibly they were
drifting to a silenter, mightier mingling of souls. But drifting,
merely--not arrived; going gently, irresistibly, but not yet at the
realized goal.

He felt all this as the stirring of a mighty force, but knew not what
he felt. The teasing of his fellows, the common love-gossip of the
school yard, seemed far different from his plight. He laughed at it and
indignantly denied it. Yet he was uncomfortable, restless, unhappy. He
fancied Zora cared less for his company, and he gave her less, and then
was puzzled to find time hanging so empty, so wretchedly empty, on his
hands. When they were together in these days they found less to talk
about, and had it not been for the Silver Fleece which in magic
wilfulness opened both their mouths, they would have found their
companionship little more than a series of awkward silences. Yet in
their silences, their walks, and their sittings there was a
companionship, a glow, a satisfaction, as came to them nowhere else on
earth, and they wondered at it.

They were both wondering at it this morning as they watched their
cotton. It had seemingly bounded forward in a night and it must be hoed
forthwith. Yet, hoeing was murder--the ruthless cutting away of tenderer
plants that the sturdier might thrive the more and grow.

"I hate it, Bles, don't you?"

"Hate what?"

"Killing any of it; it's all so pretty."

"But it must be, so that what's left will be prettier, or at least more
useful."

"But it shouldn't be so; everything ought to have a chance to be
beautiful and useful."

"Perhaps it ought to be so," admitted Bles, "but it isn't."

"Isn't it so--anywhere?"

"I reckon not. Death and pain pay for all good things."

She hoed away silently, hesitating over the choice of the plants,
pondering this world-old truth, saddened by its ruthless cruelty.

"Death and pain," she murmured; "what a price!"

Bles leaned on his hoe and considered. It had not occurred to him till
now that Zora was speaking better and better English: the idioms and
errors were dropping away; they had not utterly departed, however, but
came crowding back in moments of excitement. At other times she clothed
Miss Smith's clear-cut, correct speech in softer Southern accents. She
was drifting away from him in some intangible way to an upper world of
dress and language and deportment, and the new thought was pain to him.

So it was that the Fleece rose and spread and grew to its wonderful
flowering; and so these two children grew with it into theirs. Zora
never forgot how they found the first white flower in that green and
billowing sea, nor her low cry of pleasure and his gay shout of joy.
Slowly, wonderfully the flowers spread--white, blue, and purple bells,
hiding timidly, blazing luxuriantly amid the velvet leaves; until one
day--it was after a southern rain and the sunlight was twinkling through
the morning--all the Fleece was in flower--a mighty swaying sea,
darkling rich and waving, and upon it flecks and stars of white and
purple foam. The joy of the two so madly craved expression that they
burst into singing; not the wild light song of dancing feet, but a low,
sweet melody of her fathers' fathers, whereunto Alwyn's own deep voice
fell fitly in minor cadence.

Miss Smith and Miss Taylor, who were sorting the mail, heard them
singing as they came up out of the swamp. Miss Taylor looked at them,
then at Miss Smith.

But Miss Smith sat white and rigid with the first opened letter in her
hand.




_Twelve_

THE PROMISE


Miss Smith sat with her face buried in her hands while the tears
trickled silently through her thin fingers. Before her lay the letter,
read a dozen times:

"Old Mrs. Grey has been to see me, and she has announced her intention
of endowing five colored schools, yours being one. She asked if $500,000
would do it. She has plenty of money, so I told her $750,000 would be
better--$150,000 apiece. She's arranging for a Board of Trust, etc.
You'll probably hear from her soon. You've been so worried about
expenses that I thought I'd send this word on; I knew you'd be glad."

Glad? Dear God, how flat the word fell! For thirty years she had sown
the seed, planting her life-blood in this work, that had become the
marrow of her soul.

Successful? No, it had not been successful; but it had been human.
Through yonder doorway had trooped an army of hundreds upon hundreds of
bright and dull, light and dark, eager and sullen faces. There had been
good and bad, honest and deceptive, frank and furtive. Some had caught,
kindled and flashed to ambition and achievement; some, glowing dimly,
had plodded on in a slow, dumb faithful work worth while; and yet others
had suddenly exploded, hurtling human fragments to heaven and to hell.
Around this school home, as around the centre of some little universe,
had whirled the sorrowful, sordid, laughing, pulsing drama of a world:
birth pains, and the stupor of death; hunger and pale murder; the riot
of thirst and the orgies of such red and black cabins as Elspeth's,
crouching in the swamp.

She groaned as she read of the extravagances of the world and saw her
own vanishing revenues; but the funds continued to dwindle until Sarah
Smith asked herself: "What will become of this school when I die?" With
trembling fingers she had sat down to figure how many teachers must be
dropped next year, when her brother's letter came, and she slipped to
her knees and prayed.

Mrs. Grey's decision was due in no little way to Mary Taylor's reports.
Slowly but surely the girl had begun to think that she had found herself
in this new world. She would never be attuned to it thoroughly, for she
was set for different music. The veil of color and race still hung
thickly between her and her pupils; and yet she seemed to see some
points of penetration. No one could meet daily a hundred or more of
these light-hearted, good-natured children without feeling drawn to
them. No one could cross the thresholds of the cabins and not see the
old and well-known problems of life and striving. More and more,
therefore, the work met Miss Taylor's approval and she told Mrs. Grey
so.

At the same time Mary Taylor had come to some other definite
conclusions: she believed it wrong to encourage the ambitions of these
children to any great extent; she believed they should be servants and
farmers, content to work under present conditions until those conditions
could be changed; and she believed that the local white aristocracy,
helped by Northern philanthropy, should take charge of such gradual
changes.

These conclusions she did not pretend to have originated; but she
adopted them from reading and conversation, after hesitating for a year
before such puzzling contradictions as Bles Alwyn and Harry Cresswell.
For her to conclude to treat Bles Alwyn as a man despite his color was
as impossible as to think Mr. Cresswell a criminal. Some compromise was
imperative which would save her the pleasure of Mr. Cresswell's company
and at the same time leave open a way of fulfilling the world's duty to
this black boy. She thought she had found this compromise and she wrote
Mrs. Grey suggesting a chain of endowed Negro schools under the
management of trustees composed of Northern business men and local
Southern whites. Mrs. Grey acquiesced gladly and announced her plan,
eventually writing Miss Smith of her decision "to second her noble
efforts in helping the poor colored people," and she hoped to have the
plan under way before next fall.

The sharpness of Miss Smith's joy did not let her dwell on the proposed
"Board of Trust"; of course, it would be a board of friends of the
school.

She sat in her office looking out across the land. School had closed for
the year and Bles with the carryall was just taking Miss Taylor to the
train with her trunk and bags. Far up the road she could see dotted here
and there the little dirty cabins of Cresswell's tenants--the Cresswell
domain that lay like a mighty hand around the school, ready at a word to
squeeze its life out. Only yonder, to the eastward, lay the way out; the
five hundred acres of the Tolliver plantation, which the school needed
so sadly for its farm and community. But the owner was a hard and
ignorant white man, hating "niggers" only a shade more than he hated
white aristocrats of the Cresswell type. He had sold the school its
first land to pique the Cresswells; but he would not sell any more, she
was sure, even now when the promise of wealth faced the school.

She lay back and closed her eyes and fell lightly asleep. As she slept
an old woman came toiling up the hill northward from the school, and
out of the eastward spur of the Cresswell barony. She was fat and black,
hooded and aproned, with great round head and massive bosom. Her face
was dull and heavy and homely, her old eyes sorrowful. She moved
swiftly, carrying a basket on her arm. Opposite her, to the southward,
but too far for sight, an old man came out of the lower Cresswell place,
skirting the swamp. He was tall, black, and gaunt, part bald with tufted
hair, and a cowed and furtive look was in his eyes. One leg was
crippled, and he hobbled painfully.

Up the road to the eastward that ran past the school, with the morning
sun at his back, strode a young man, yellow, crisp-haired, strong-faced,
with darkly knit brows. He greeted Bles and the teacher coldly, and
moved on in nervous haste. A woman, hurrying out of the westward swamp
up the path that led from Elspeth's, saw him and shrank back hastily.
She turned quickly into the swamp and waited, looking toward the school.
The old woman hurried into the back gate just as the old man appeared to
the southward on the road. The young man greeted him cordially and they
stopped a moment to talk, while the hiding woman watched.

"Howdy, Uncle Jim."

"Howdy, son. Hit's hot, ain't it? How is you?"

"Tolerable, how are you?"

"Poorly, son, poorly--and worser in mind. I'se goin' up to talk to old
Miss."

"So am I, but I just see Aunt Rachel going in. We'd better wait."

Miss Smith started up at the timid knocking, and rubbed her eyes. It was
long since she had slept in the daytime and she was annoyed at such
laziness. She opened the back door and led the old woman to the office.

"Now, what have you got there?" she demanded, eyeing the basket.

"Just a little chicken fo' you and a few aigs."

"Oh, you are so thoughtful!" Sarah Smith's was a grateful heart.

"Go 'long now--hit ain't a thing."

Then came a pause, the old woman sliding into the proffered seat, while
over her genial, dimpled smile there dropped a dull veil of care. Her
eyes shifted uneasily. Miss Smith tried not to notice the change.

"Well, are you all moved, Aunt Rachel?" she inquired cheerfully.

"No'm, and we ain't gwine to move."

"But I thought it was all arranged."

"It was," gloomily, "but de ole Cunnel, he won't let us go."

The listener was instantly sympathetic. "Why not?" she asked.

"He says we owes him."

"But didn't you settle at Christmas?"

"Yas'm; but when he found we was goin' away, he looked up some more
debts."

"How much?"

"I don't know 'zactly--more'n a hundred dollars. Den de boys done got in
dat trouble, and he paid their fines."

"What was the trouble?"

"Well, one was a-gambling, and the other struck the overseer what was
a-whippin' him."

"Whipping him!"--in horrified exclamation, quite as much at Aunt
Rachel's matter-of-fact way of regarding the matter as at the deed
itself.

"Yas'm. He didn't do his work right and he whipped him. I speck he
needed it."

"But he's a grown man," Miss Smith urged earnestly.

"Yas'm; he's twenty now, and big."

"Whipped him!" Miss Smith repeated. "And so you can't leave?"

"No'm, he say he'll sell us out and put us in de chain-gang if we go.
The boys is plumb mad, but I'se a-pleadin' with 'em not to do nothin'
rash."

"But--but I thought they had already started to work a crop on the
Tolliver place?"

"Yes'm, dey had; but, you see, dey were arrested, and then Cunnel
Cresswell took 'em and 'lowed they couldn't leave his place. Ol' man
Tolliver was powerful mad."

"Why, Aunt Rachel, it's slavery!" cried the lady in dismay. Aunt Rachel
did not offer to dispute her declaration.

"Yas'm, hit's slavery," she agreed. "I hates it mighty bad, too, 'cause
I wanted de little chillens in school; but--" The old woman broke down
and sobbed.

A knocking came at the door; hastily wiping her eyes Aunt Rachel rose.

"I'll--I'll see what I can do, Aunt Rachel--I must do something,"
murmured Miss Smith hastily, as the woman departed, and an old black man
came limping in. Miss Smith looked up in surprise.

"I begs pardon, Mistress--I begs pardon. Good-morning."

"Good-morning--" she hesitated.

"Sykes--Jim Sykes--that's me."

"Yes, I've heard of you, Mr. Sykes; you live over south of the swamp."

"Yes, ma'am, that's me; and I'se got a little shack dar and a bit of
land what I'se trying to buy."

"Of Colonel Cresswell?"

"Yas'm, of de Cunnel."

"And how long have you been buying it?"

"Going on ten year now; and dat's what I comes to ask you about."

"Goodness me! And how much have you paid a year?"

"I gen'rally pays 'bout three bales of cotton a year."

"Does he furnish you rations?"

"Only sugar and coffee and a little meat now and then."

"What does it amount to a year?"

"I doesn't rightly know--but I'se got some papers here."

Miss Smith looked them over and sighed. It was the same old tale of
blind receipts for money "on account"--no items, no balancing. By his
help she made out that last year his total bill at Cresswell's store was
perhaps forty dollars.

"An' last year's bill was bigger'n common 'cause I hurt my leg working
at the gin and had to have some medicine."

"Why, as far as I can see, Mr. Sykes, you've paid Cresswell about a
thousand dollars in the last ten years. How large is your place?"

"About twenty acres."

"And what were you to pay for it?"

"Four hundred."

"Have you got the deed?"

"Yes'm, but I ain't finished paying yet; de Cunnel say as how I owes him
two hundred dollars still, and I can't see it. Dat's why I come over
here to talk wid you."

"Where is the deed?"

He handed it to her and her heart sank. It was no deed, but a
complicated contract binding the tenant hand and foot to the landlord.
She sighed, he watching her eagerly.

"I'se getting old," he explained, "and I ain't got nobody to take care
of me. I can't work as I once could, and de overseers dey drives me too
hard. I wants a little home to die in."

Miss Smith's throat swelled. She couldn't tell him that he would never
get one at the present rate; she only said:

"I'll--look this up. You come again next Saturday."

Then sadly she watched the ragged old slave hobble away with his
cherished "papers." He greeted the young man at the gate and passed out,
while the latter walked briskly up to the door and knocked.

"Why, how do you do, Robert?"

"How do you do, Miss Smith?"

"Well, are you getting things in shape so as to enter school early next
year?"

Robert looked embarrassed.

"That's what I came to tell you, Miss Smith. Mr. Cresswell has offered
me forty acres of good land."

Miss Smith looked disheartened.

"Robert, here you are almost finished, and my heart is set on your going
to Atlanta University and finishing college. With your fine voice and
talent for drawing--"

A dogged look settled on Robert's young bright face, and the speaker
paused.

"What's the use, Miss Smith--what opening is there for a--a nigger with
an education?"

Miss Smith was shocked.

"Why--why, every chance," she protested, "and where there's none _make_
a chance!"

"Miss Taylor says"--Miss Smith's heart sank; how often had she heard
that deadening phrase in the last year!--"that there's no use. That
farming is the only thing we ought to try to do, and I reckon she thinks
there ain't much chance even there."

"Robert, farming is a noble calling. Whether you're suited to it or not,
I don't yet know, but I'd like nothing better than to see you settled
here in a decent home with a family, running a farm. But, Robert,
farming doesn't call for less intelligence than other things; it calls
for more. It is because the world thinks any training good enough for a
farmer that the Southern farmer is today practically at the mercy of his
keener and more intelligent fellows. And of all people, Robert, your
people need trained intelligence to cope with this problem of farming
here. Without intelligence and training and some capital it is the
wildest nonsense to think you can lead your people out of slavery. Look
round you." She told him of the visitors. "Are they not hard working
honest people?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Yet they are slaves--dumb driven cattle."

"But they have no education."

"And you have a smattering; therefore are ready to pit yourself against
the organized plantation system without capital or experience. Robert,
you may succeed; you may find your landlord honest and the way clear;
but my advice to you is--finish your education, develop your talents,
and then come to your life work a full-fledged man and not a
half-ignorant boy."

"I'll think of it," returned the boy soberly. "I reckon you're right. I
know Miss Taylor don't think much of us. But I'm tired of waiting; I
want to get to work."

Miss Smith laid a kindly hand upon his shoulder.

"I've been waiting thirty years, Robert," she said, with feeling, and he
hung his head.

"I wanted to talk about it," he awkwardly responded, turning slowly
away. But Miss Smith stopped him.

"Robert, where is the land Cresswell offers you?"

"It's on the Tolliver place."

"The Tolliver place?"

"Yes, he is going to buy it."

Miss Smith dismissed the boy absently and sat down. The crisis seemed
drawing near. She had not dreamed the Tolliver place was for sale. The
old man must be hard pressed to sell to the Cresswells.

She started up. Why not go see him? Perhaps a mortgage on the strength
of the endowment? It was dangerous--but--

She threw a veil over her hair, and opened the door. A woman stood
there, who shrank and cowered, as if used to blows. Miss Smith eyed her
grimly, then slowly stepped back.

"Come in," she commanded briefly, motioning the woman to a chair.

But she stood, a pathetic figure, faded, worn, yet with unmistakable
traces of beauty in her golden face and soft brown hair. Miss Smith
contemplated her sadly. Here was her most haunting failure, this girl
whom she first had seen twelve years ago in her wonderful girlish
comeliness. She had struggled and fought for her, but the forces of the
devil had triumphed. She caught glimpses of her now and then, but today
was the first time she had spoken to her for ten years. She saw the
tears that gathered but did not fall; then her hands quivered.

"Bertie," she began brokenly. The girl shivered, but stood aloof.

"Miss Smith," she said. "No--don't talk--I'm bad--but I've got a little
girl, Miss Smith, ten years old, and--and--I'm afraid for her; I want
you to take her."

"I have no place for one so young. And why are you afraid for her?"

"The men there are beginning to notice her."

"Where?"

"At Elspeth's."

"Do you stay there now?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"_He_ wants me to."

"Must you do as he wants?"

"Yes. But I want the child--different."

"Don't _you_ want to be different?"

The woman quivered again but she answered steadily: "No."

Miss Smith sank into a chair and moistened her dry lips.

"Elspeth's is an awful place," she affirmed solemnly.

"Yes."

"And Zora?"

"She is not there much now, she stays away."

"But if she escapes, why not you?"

"She wants to escape."

"And you?"

"I don't want to."

This stubborn depravity was so distressing that Sarah Smith was at an
utter loss what to say or do.

"I can do nothing--" she began.

"For me," the woman quickly replied; "I don't ask anything; but for the
child,--she isn't to blame."

The older woman wavered.

"Won't you try?" pleaded the younger.

"Yes--I'll try, I'll try; I am trying all the time, but there are more
things than my weak strength can do. Good-bye."

Miss Smith stood a long time in the doorway, watching the fading figure
and vaguely trying to remember what it was that she had started to do,
when the sharp staccato step of a mule drew her attention to a rider who
stopped at the gate. It was her neighbor, Tolliver--a gaunt,
yellow-faced white man, ragged, rough, and unkempt; one of the poor
whites who had struggled up and failed. He spent no courtesy on the
"nigger" teacher, but sat in his saddle and called her to the gate, and
she went.

"Say," he roughly opened up, "I've got to sell some land and them damn
Cresswells are after it. You can have it for five thousand dollars if
you git the cash in a week." With a muttered oath he rode abruptly off;
but not before she had seen the tears in his eyes.

All night Sarah Smith lay thinking, and all day she thought and dreamed.
Toward dark she walked slowly out the gate and up the highway toward the
Cresswell oaks. She had never been within the gates before, and she
looked about thoughtfully. The great trees in their regular curving rows
must have been planted more than half a century ago. The lawn was well
tended and the flowers. Yes, there were signs of taste and wealth. "But
it was built on a moan," cried Miss Smith to herself, passionately, and
she would not look round any more, but stared straight ahead where she
saw old Colonel Cresswell smoking and reading on the verandah.

The Colonel saw her, too, and was uneasy, for he knew that Miss Smith
had a sharp tongue and a most disconcerting method of argument, which
he, as a Southern gentleman, courteous to all white females, even if
they did eat with "niggers," could not properly answer. He received her
with courtesy, offered a chair, laid aside his cigar, and essayed some
general remarks on cotton weather. But Miss Smith plunged into her
subject:

"Colonel Cresswell, I'm thinking of raising some money from a mortgage
on our school property."

The Colonel's face involuntarily lighted up. He thought he saw the
beginning of the end of an institution which had been a thorn in his
flesh ever since Tolliver, in a fit of rage, had sold land for a Negro
school.

"H'm," he reflected deprecatingly, wiping his brow.

"I need some ready money," she continued, "to keep from curtailing our
work."

"Indeed?"

"I have good prospects in a year or so"--the Colonel looked up sharply,
but said nothing--"and so I thought of a mortgage."

"Money is pretty tight," was the Colonel's first objection.

"The land is worth, you know, at least fifty dollars an acre."

"Not more than twenty-five dollars, I fear."

"Why, you wanted seventy-five dollars for poorer land last year! We have
two hundred acres." It was not for nothing that this lady had been born
in New England.

"I wouldn't reckon it as worth more than five thousand dollars,"
insisted the Colonel.

"And ten thousand dollars for improvements."

But the Colonel arose. "You had better talk to the directors of the
Jefferson Bank," he said politely. "They may accommodate you--how much
would you want?"

"Five thousand dollars," Miss Smith replied. Then she hesitated. That
would buy the land, to be sure; but money was needed to develop and run
it; to install tenants; and then, too, for new teachers. But she said
nothing more, and, nodding to his polite bow, departed. Colonel
Cresswell had noticed her hesitation, and thought of it as he settled to
his cigar again.

Bles Alwyn arose next morning and examined the sky critically. He
feared rain. The season had been quite wet enough, particularly down on
the swamp land, and but yesterday Bles had viewed his dykes with
apprehension for the black pool scowled about them. He dared not think
what a long heavy rain might do to the wonderful island of cotton which
now stood fully five feet high, with flowers and squares and budding
bolls. It might not rain, but the safest thing would be to work at those
dykes, so he started for spade and hoe. He heard Miss Smith calling,
however.

"Bles--hitch up!"

He was vexed. "Are you--in a hurry, Miss Smith?" he asked.

"Yes, I am," she replied, with unmistakable positiveness.

He started off, and hesitated. "Miss Smith, would Jim do to drive?"

"No," sharply. "I want you particularly." At another time she might have
observed his anxiety, but today she was agitated. She knew she was
taking a critical step.

Slowly Bles hitched up. After all it might not rain, he argued as they
jogged toward town. In silence they rode on. Bles kept looking at the
skies. The south was getting darker and darker. It might rain. It might
rain only an hour or so, but, suppose it should rain a day--two days--a
week?

Miss Smith was looking at her own skies and despite the promised sunrise
they loomed darkly. Five thousand was needed for the land and at least
another thousand for repairs. Two thousand would "buy" a half dozen
desirable tenants by paying their debts to their present landlords. Then
two thousand would be wanted for new teachers and a carpenter shop--ten
thousand dollars!

It was a great temptation. And yet, once in the hands of these
past-masters of debt-manipulation, would her school be safe? Suppose,
after all, this Grey gift--but she caught her breath sharply just as a
wet splash of rain struck upon her forehead. No. God could not be so
cruel. She pushed her bonnet back: how good and cool the water felt! But
on Bles as he raised the buggy top it felt hot and fiery.

He felt the coming of some great calamity, the end of a dream. This
rain might stay for days; it looked like such a downpour; and that would
mean the end of the Silver Fleece; the end of Zora's hopes; the end of
everything. He gulped in despairing anger and hit the staid old horse
the smartest tap she had known all summer.

"Why, Bles, what's the matter?" called Miss Smith, as the horse started
forward. He murmured something about getting wet and drew up at the
Toomsville bank.

Miss Smith was invited politely into the private parlor. She explained
her business. The President was there and Colonel Cresswell and one
other local director.

"I have come for a mortgage. Our land is, as you know, gentlemen, worth
at least ten thousand dollars; the buildings cost fifteen thousand
dollars; our property is, therefore, conservatively valued at
twenty-five thousand dollars. Now I want to mortgage it for"--she
hesitated--"five thousand dollars."

Colonel Cresswell was silent, but the president said:

"Money is rather scarce just now, Miss Smith; but it happens that I have
ten thousand dollars on hand, which we prefer, however, to loan in one
lump sum. Now, if the security were ample, I think perhaps you might get
this ten thousand dollars."

Miss Smith grew white; it was the sum she wanted. She tried to escape
the temptation, yet the larger amount was more than twice as desirable
to her as the smaller, and she knew that they knew it. They were trying
to tempt her; they wanted as firm a hold on the school property as
possible. And yet, why should she hesitate? It was a risk, but the
returns would be enormous--she must do it. Besides, there was the
endowment; it was certain; yes--she felt forced to close the bargain.

"Very well," she declared her decision, and they handed her the
preliminary papers. She took the pen and glanced at Mr. Cresswell; he
was smiling slightly, but nevertheless she signed her name grimly, in a
large round hand, "Sarah Smith."




_Thirteen_

MRS. GREY GIVES A DINNER


The Hon. Charles Smith, Miss Sarah's brother, was walking swiftly uptown
from Mr. Easterly's Wall Street office and his face was pale. At last
the Cotton Combine was to all appearances an assured fact and he was
slated for the Senate. The price he had paid was high: he was to
represent the interests of the new trust and sundry favorable measures
were already drafted and reposing in the safe of the combine's legal
department. Among others was one relating to child labor, another that
would effect certain changes in the tariff, and a proposed law providing
for a cotton bale of a shape and dimensions different from the
customary--the last constituting a particularly clever artifice which,
under the guise of convenience in handling, would necessitate the
installation of entirely new gin and compress machinery, to be supplied,
of course, by the trust.

As Mr. Smith drew near Mrs. Grey's Murray Hill residence his face had
melted to a cynical smile. After all why should he care? He had tried
independence and philanthropy and failed. Why should he not be as other
men? He had seen many others that very day swallow the golden bait and
promise everything. They were gentlemen. Why should he pose as better
than his fellows? There was young Cresswell. Did his aristocratic air
prevent his succumbing to the lure of millions and promising the
influence of his father and the whole Farmer's League to the new
project? Mr. Smith snapped his fingers and rang the bell. The door
opened softly. The dark woodwork of the old English wainscoting glowed
with the crimson flaming of logs in the wide fireplace. There was just
the touch of early autumn chill in the air without, that made both the
fire and the table with its soft linen, gold and silver plate, and
twinkling glasses a warming, satisfying sight.

Mrs. Grey was a portly woman, inclined to think much of her dinner and
her clothes, both of which were always rich and costly. She was not
herself a notably intelligent woman; she greatly admired intelligence or
whatever looked to her like intelligence in others. Her money, too, was
to her an ever worrying mystery and surprise, which she found herself
always scheming to husband shrewdly and spend philanthropically--a
difficult combination.

As she awaited her guests she surveyed the table with both satisfaction
and disquietude, for her social functions were few, tonight there
were--she checked them off on her fingers--Sir James Creighton, the rich
English manufacturer, and Lady Creighton, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderpool, Mr.
Harry Cresswell and his sister, John Taylor and his sister, and Mr.
Charles Smith, whom the evening papers mentioned as likely to be United
States Senator from New Jersey--a selection of guests that had been
determined, unknown to the hostess, by the meeting of cotton interests
earlier in the day.

Mrs. Grey's chef was high-priced and efficient, and her butler was the
envy of many; consequently, she knew the dinner would be good. To her
intense satisfaction, it was far more than this. It was a most agreeable
couple of hours; all save perhaps Mr. Smith unbent, the Englishman
especially, and the Vanderpools were most gracious; but if the general
pleasure was owing to any one person particularly it was to Mr. Harry
Cresswell. Mrs. Grey had met Southerners before, but not intimately, and
she always had in mind vividly their cruelty to "poor Negroes," a
subject she made a point of introducing forthwith. She was therefore
most agreeably surprised to hear Mr. Cresswell express himself so
cordially as approving of Negro education.

"Why, I thought," said Mrs. Grey, "that you Southerners rather
disapproved--or at least--"

Mr. Cresswell inclined his head courteously.

"We Southerners, my dear Mrs. Grey, are responsible for a variety of
reputations." And he told an anecdote that set the table laughing.
"Seriously, though," he continued, "we are not as black as the blacks
paint us, although on the whole I _prefer_ that Helen should marry--a
white man."

They all glanced at Miss Cresswell, who lay softly back in her chair
like a white lily, gleaming and bejewelled, her pale face flushing under
the scrutiny; Mrs. Grey was horrified.

"Why--why the idea!" she sputtered. "Why, Mr. Cresswell, how can you
conceive of anything else--no Northerner dreams--"

Mr. Cresswell sipped his wine slowly.

"No--no--I do not think you do _mean_ that--" He paused and the
Englishman bent forward.

"Really, now, you do not mean to say that there is a danger of--of
amalgamation, do you?" he sang.

Mr. Cresswell explained. No, of course there was no immediate danger;
but when people were suddenly thrust beyond their natural station,
filled with wild ideas and impossible ambitions, it meant terrible
danger to Southern white women.

"But you believe in some education?" asked Mary Taylor.

"I believe in the training of people to their highest capacity." The
Englishman here heartily seconded him.

"But," Cresswell added significantly, "capacity differs enormously
between races."

The Vanderpools were sure of this and the Englishman, instancing India,
became quite eloquent. Mrs. Grey was mystified, but hardly dared admit
it. The general trend of the conversation seemed to be that most
individuals needed to be submitted to the sharpest scrutiny before being
allowed much education, and as for the "lower races" it was simply
criminal to open such useless opportunities to them.

"Why, I had a colored servant-girl once," laughed Mrs. Vanderpool by way
of climax, "who spent half her wages in piano lessons."

Then Mary Taylor, whose conscience was uncomfortable, said:

"But, Mr. Cresswell, you surely believe in schools like Miss Smith's?"

"Decidedly," returned Mr. Cresswell, with enthusiasm, "it has done great
good."

Mrs. Grey was gratified and murmured something of Miss Smith's
"sacrifice."

"Positively heroic," added Cresswell, avoiding his sister's eyes.

"Of course," Mary Taylor hastened to encourage this turn of the
conversation, "there are many points on which Miss Smith and I disagree,
but I think everybody admires her work."

Mrs. Grey wanted particulars. "What did you disagree about?" she asked
bluntly.

"I may be responsible for some of the disagreement," interrupted Mr.
Cresswell, hesitatingly; "I'm afraid Miss Smith does not approve of us
white Southerners."

"But you mean to say you can't even advise her?"

"Oh, no; we can. But--we're not--er--exactly welcomed. In fact," said
Cresswell gravely, "the chief criticism I have against your Northerners'
schools for Negroes is, that they not only fail to enlist the sympathy
and aid of the _best_ Southerners, but even repel it."

"That is very wrong--very wrong," commented the Englishman warmly, a
sentiment in which Mrs. Grey hastened to agree.

"Of course," continued Cresswell, "I am free to confess that I have no
personal desire to dabble in philanthropy, or conduct schools of any
kind; my hands are full of other matters."

"But it's precisely the advice of such disinterested men that
philanthropic work needs," Mr. Vanderpool urged.

"Well, I volunteered advice once in this case and I sha'n't repeat the
experiment soon," said Cresswell laughing. Mrs. Grey wanted to hear the
incident, but the young man was politely reluctant. Mary Taylor,
however, related the tale of Zora to Mrs. Grey's private ear later.

"Fortunately," said Mr. Vanderpool, "Northerners and Southerners are
arriving at a better mutual understanding on most of these matters."

"Yes, indeed," Cresswell agreed. "After all, they never were far apart,
even in slavery days; both sides were honest and sincere."

All through the dinner Mr. Smith had been preoccupied and taciturn. Now
he abruptly shot a glance at Cresswell.

"I suppose that one was right and one was wrong."

"No," said Cresswell, "both were right."

"I thought the only excuse for fighting was a great Right; if Right is
on neither side or simultaneously on both, then War is not only Hell but
Damnation."

Mrs. Grey looked shocked and Mrs. Vanderpool smiled.

"How about fighting for exercise?" she suggested.

"At any rate," said Cresswell, "we can all agree on helping these poor
victims of our quarrel as far as their limited capacity will allow--and
no farther, for that is impossible."

Very soon after dinner Charles Smith excused himself. He was not yet
inured to the ways of high finance, and the programme of the cotton
barons, as unfolded that day, lay heavy on his mind, despite all his
philosophy.

"I have had a--full day," he explained to Mrs. Grey.




_Fourteen_

LOVE


The rain was sweeping down in great thick winding sheets. The wind
screamed in the ancient Cresswell oaks and swirled across the swamp in
loud, wild gusts. The waters roared and gurgled in the streams, and
along the roadside. Then, when the wind fell murmuring away, the clouds
grew blacker and blacker and rain in long slim columns fell straight
from Heaven to earth digging itself into the land and throwing back the
red mud in angry flashes.

So it rained for one long week, and so for seven endless days Bles
watched it with leaden heart. He knew the Silver Fleece--his and
Zora's--must be ruined. It was the first great sorrow of his life; it
was not so much the loss of the cotton itself--but the fantasy, the
hopes, the dreams built around it. If it failed, would not they fail?
Was not this angry beating rain, this dull spiritless drizzle, this wild
war of air and earth, but foretaste and prophecy of ruin and
discouragement, of the utter futility of striving? But if his own
despair was great his pain at the plight of Zora made it almost
unbearable. He did not see her in these seven days. He pictured her
huddled there in the swamp in the cheerless leaky cabin with worse than
no companions. Ah! the swamp, the cruel swamp! It was a fearful place in
the rain. Its oozing mud and fetid vapors, its clinging slimy
draperies,--how they twined about the bones of its victims and chilled
their hearts. Yet here his Zora,--his poor disappointed child--was
imprisoned.

Child? He had always called her child--but now in the inward
illumination of these dark days he knew her as neither child nor sister
nor friend, but as the One Woman. The revelation of his love lighted and
brightened slowly till it flamed like a sunrise over him and left him in
burning wonder. He panted to know if she, too, knew, or knew and cared
not, or cared and knew not. She was so strange and human a creature. To
her all things meant something--nothing was aimless, nothing merely
happened. Was this rain beating down and back her love for him, or had
she never loved? He walked his room, gripping his hands, peering through
the misty windows toward the swamp--rain, rain, rain, nothing but rain.
The world was water veiled in mists.

Then of a sudden, at midday, the sun shot out, hot and still; no breath
of air stirred; the sky was like blue steel; the earth steamed. Bles
rushed to the edge of the swamp and stood there irresolute. Perhaps--if
the water had but drained from the cotton!--it was so strong and tall!
But, pshaw! Where was the use of imagining? The lagoon had been level
with the dykes a week ago; and now? He could almost see the beautiful
Silver Fleece, bedraggled, drowned, and rolling beneath the black lake
of slime. He went back to his work, but early in the morning the thought
of it lured him again. He must at least see the grave of his hope and
Zora's, and out of it resurrect new love and strength.

Perhaps she, too, might be there, waiting, weeping. He started at the
thought. He hurried forth sadly. The rain-drops were still dripping and
gleaming from the trees, flashing back the heavy yellow sunlight. He
splashed and stamped along, farther and farther onward until he neared
the rampart of the clearing, and put foot upon the tree-bridge. Then he
looked down. The lagoon was dry. He stood a moment bewildered, then
turned and rushed upon the island. A great sheet of dazzling sunlight
swept the place, and beneath lay a mighty mass of olive green, thick,
tall, wet, and willowy. The squares of cotton, sharp-edged, heavy, were
just about to burst to bolls! And underneath, the land lay carefully
drained and black! For one long moment he paused, stupid, agape with
utter amazement, then leaned dizzily against a tree.

The swamp, the eternal swamp, had been drained in its deepest fastness;
but, how?--how? He gazed about, perplexed, astonished. What a field of
cotton! what a marvellous field! But how had it been saved?

He skirted the island slowly, stopping near Zora's oak. Here lay the
reading of the riddle: with infinite work and pain, some one had dug a
canal from the lagoon to the creek, into which the former had drained by
a long and crooked way, thus allowing it to empty directly. The canal
went straight, a hundred yards through stubborn soil, and it was oozing
now with slimy waters.

He sat down weak, bewildered, and one thought was uppermost--Zora! And
with the thought came a low moan of pain. He wheeled and leapt toward
the dripping shelter in the tree. There she lay--wet, bedraggled,
motionless, gray-pallid beneath her dark-drawn skin, her burning eyes
searching restlessly for some lost thing, her lips a-moaning.

In dumb despair he dropped beside her and gathered her in his arms. The
earth staggered beneath him as he stumbled on; the mud splashed and
sunlight glistened; he saw long snakes slithering across his path and
fear-struck beasts fleeing before his coming. He paused for neither path
nor way but went straight for the school, running in mighty strides, yet
gently, listening to the moans that struck death upon his heart. Once he
fell headlong, but with a great wrench held her from harm, and minded
not the pain that shot through his ribs. The yellow sunshine beat
fiercely around and upon him, as he stumbled into the highway, lurched
across the mud-strewn road, and panted up the porch.

"Miss Smith--!" he gasped, and then--darkness.

The years of the days of her dying were ten. The boy that entered the
darkness and the shadow of death emerged a man, a silent man and grave,
working furiously and haunting, day and night, the little window above
the door. At last, of one gray morning when the earth was stillest, they
came and told him, "She will live!" And he went out under the stars,
lifted his long arms and sobbed: "Curse me, O God, if I let me lose her
again!" And God remembered this in after years.

The hope and dream of harvest was upon the land. The cotton crop was
short and poor because of the great rain; but the sun had saved the
best, and the price had soared. So the world was happy, and the face of
the black-belt green and luxuriant with thickening flecks of the coming
foam of the cotton.

Up in the sick room Zora lay on the little white bed. The net and web of
endless things had been crawling and creeping around her; she had
struggled in dumb, speechless terror against some mighty grasping that
strove for her life, with gnarled and creeping fingers; but now at last,
weakly, she opened her eyes and questioned.

Bles, where was he? The Silver Fleece, how was it? The Sun, the Swamp?
Then finding all well, she closed her eyes and slept. After some days
they let her sit by the window, and she saw Bles pass, but drew back
timidly when he looked; and he saw only the flutter of her gown, and
waved.

At last there came a day when they let her walk down to the porch, and
she felt the flickering of her strength again. Yet she looked different;
her buxom comeliness was spiritualized; her face looked smaller, and her
masses of hair, brought low about her ears, heightened her ghostly
beauty; her skin was darkly transparent, and her eyes looked out from
velvet veils of gloom. For a while she lay in her chair, in happy,
dreamy pleasure at sun and bird and tree. Bles did not know yet that she
was down; but soon he would come searching, for he came each hour, and
she pressed her little hands against her breast to still the beating of
her heart and the bursting wonder of her love.

Then suddenly a panic seized her. He must not find her here--not here;
there was but one place in all the earth for them to meet, and that was
yonder in the Silver Fleece. She rose with a fleeting glance, gathered
the shawl round her, then gliding forward, wavering, tremulous, slipped
across the road and into the swamp. The dark mystery of the Swamp swept
over her; the place was hers. She had been born within its borders;
within its borders she had lived and grown, and within its borders she
had met her love. On she hurried until, sweeping down to the lagoon and
the island, lo! the cotton lay before her! A great white foam was spread
upon its brown and green; the whole field was waving and shivering in
the sunlight. A low cry of pleasure burst from her lips; she forgot her
weakness, and picking her way across the bridge, stood still amid the
cotton that nestled about her shoulders, clasping it lovingly in her
hands.

He heard that she was down-stairs and ran to meet her with beating
heart. The chair was empty; but he knew. There was but one place then
for these two souls to meet. Yet it was far, and he feared, and ran with
startled eyes.

She stood on the island, ethereal, splendid, like some tall, dark, and
gorgeous flower of the storied East. The green and white of the cotton
billowed and foamed about her breasts; the red scarf burned upon her
neck; the dark brown velvet of her skin pulsed warm and tremulous with
the uprushing blood, and in the midnight depths of her great eyes flamed
the mighty fires of long-concealed and new-born love.

He darted through the trees and paused, a tall man strongly but slimly
made. He threw up his hands in the old way and hallooed; happily she
crooned back a low mother-melody, and waited. He came down to her
slowly, with fixed, hungry eyes, threading his way amid the Fleece. She
did not move, but lifted both her dark hands, white with cotton; and
then, as he came, casting it suddenly to the winds, in tears and
laughter she swayed and dropped quivering in his arms. And all the world
was sunshine and peace.




_Fifteen_

REVELATION


Harry Cresswell was scowling over his breakfast. It was not because his
apartment in the New York hotel was not satisfactory, or his breakfast
unpalatable; possibly a rather bewildering night in Broadway was
expressing its influence; but he was satisfied that his ill-temper was
due to a paragraph in the morning paper:

"It is stated on good authority that the widow of the late
multimillionaire, Job Grey, will announce a large and carefully planned
scheme of Negro education in the South, and will richly endow schools in
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas."

Cresswell finally thrust his food away. He knew that Mrs. Grey helped
Miss Smith's school, and supposed she would continue to do so; with that
in mind he had striven to impress her, hoping that she might trust his
judgment in later years. He had no idea, however, that she meant to
endow the school, or entertained wholesale plans for Negro education.
The knowledge made him suspicious. Why had neither Mary nor John Taylor
mentioned this? Was there, after all, some "nigger-loving" conspiracy
back of the cotton combine? He took his hat and started down-town.

Once in John Taylor's Broadway office, he opened the subject
abruptly--the more so perhaps because he felt a resentment against
Taylor for certain unnamed or partially voiced assumptions. Here was a
place, however, for speech, and he spoke almost roughly.

"Taylor, what does this mean?" He thrust the clipping at him.

"Mean? That Mrs. Grey is going to get rid of some of her surplus
cash--is going to endow some nigger schools," Taylor drily retorted.

"It must be stopped," declared Cresswell.

The other's brows drew up.

"Why?" in a surprised tone.

"Why? Why? Do you think the plantation system can be maintained without
laborers? Do you think there's the slightest chance of cornering cotton
and buying the Black Belt if the niggers are unwilling to work under
present conditions? Do you know the man that stands ready to gobble up
every inch of cotton land in this country at a price which no trust can
hope to rival?"

John Taylor's interest quickened.

"Why, no," he returned sharply. "Who?"

"The Black Man, whose woolly head is filled with ideas of rising. We're
striving by main force to prevent this, and here come your damned
Northern philanthropists to plant schools. Why, Taylor, it'll knock the
cotton trust to hell."

"Don't get excited," said Taylor, judicially. "We've got things in our
hands; it's the Grey money, you know, that is back of us."

"That's just what confounds me," declared the perplexed young man. "Are
you men fools, or rascals? Don't you see the two schemes can't mix?
They're dead opposite, mutually contradictory, absolutely--" Taylor
checked him; it was odd to behold Harry Cresswell so disturbed.

"Well, wait a moment. Let's see. Sit down. Wish I had a cigar for you,
but I don't smoke."

"Do you happen to have any whiskey handy?"

"No, I don't drink."

"Well, what the devil--Oh, well, fire away."

"Now, see here. We control the Grey millions. Of course, we've got to
let her play with her income, and that's considerable. Her favorite game
just now is Negro education, and she's planning to go in heavy. Her
adviser in this line, however, is Smith, and he belongs to us."

"What Smith?"

"Why, the man who's going to be Senator from New Jersey. He has a sister
teaching in the South--you know, of course; it's at your home where my
sister Mary taught."

"Great Scott! Is that woman's brother going to spend this money? Why,
are you daft? See here! American cotton-spinning supremacy is built on
cheap cotton; cheap cotton is built on cheap niggers. Educating, or
rather _trying_ to educate niggers, will make them restless and
discontented--that is, scarce and dear as workers. Don't you see you're
planning to cut off your noses? This Smith School, particularly, has
nearly ruined our plantation. It's stuck almost in our front yard; _you_
are planning to put our plough-hands all to studying Greek, and at the
same time to corner the cotton crop--rot!"

John Taylor caressed his lean jaw.

"New point of view to me; I sort of thought education would improve
things in the South," he commented, unmoved.

"It would if we ran it."

"We?"

"Yes--we Southerners."

"Um!--I see--there's light. See here, let's talk to Easterly about
this." They went into the next office, and after a while got audience
with the trust magnate. Mr. Easterly heard the matter carefully and
waved it aside.

"Oh, that doesn't concern us, Taylor; let Cresswell take care of the
whole thing. We'll see that Smith does what Cresswell wants."

But Taylor shook his head.

"Smith would kick. Mrs. Grey would get suspicious, and the devil be to
pay. This is better. Form a big committee of Northern business men like
yourself--philanthropists like Vanderpool, and Southerners like
Cresswell; let them be a sort of Negro Education steering-committee.
We'll see that on such committee you Southerners get what you
want--control of Negro education."

"That sounds fair. But how about the Smith School? My father writes me
that they are showing signs of expecting money right off--is that true?
If it is, I want it stopped; it will ruin our campaign for the Farmers'
League."

John Taylor looked at Cresswell. He thought he saw something more than
general policy, or even racial prejudice--something personal--in his
vehemence. The Smith School was evidently a severe thorn in the flesh of
this man. All the more reason for mollifying him. Then, too, there was
something in his argument. It was not wise to start educating these
Negroes and getting them discontented just now. Ignorant labor was not
ideal, but it was worth too much to employers to lose it now. Educated
Negro labor might be worth more to Negroes, but not to the cotton
combine. "H'm--well, then--" and John Taylor went into a brown study,
while Cresswell puffed impatiently at a cigarette.

"I have it," said Taylor. Cresswell sat up. "First, let Mr. Easterly get
Smith." Easterly turned to the telephone.

"Is that you, Smith?"

"Well, this is Easterly.... Yes--how about Mrs. Grey's education
schemes?... Yes.... h'm--well,--see here Smith, we must go a little easy
there.... Oh, no, no,--but to advertise just now a big scheme of Negro
Education would drive the Cresswells, the Farmers' League, and the whole
business South dead against us.... Yes, yes indeed; they believe in
education all right, but they ain't in for training lawyers and
professors just yet.... No, I don't suppose her school is.... Well,
then; see here. She'll be reasonable, won't she, and placate the
Cresswells?... No, I mean run the school to suit their ideas.... No, no,
but in general along the lines which they could approve.... Yes, I
thought so ... of course ... good-bye."

"Inclined to be a little nasty?" asked Taylor.

"A little sharp--but tractable. Now, Mr. Cresswell, the thing is in your
hands. We'll get this committee which Taylor suggests appointed, and
send it on a junket to Alabama; you do the rest--see?"

"Who'll be the committee?" asked Cresswell.

"Name it."

Mr. Cresswell smiled and left.

The winter started in severely, and it was easy to fill two private cars
with members of the new Negro Education Board right after Thanksgiving.
Cresswell had worked carefully and with caution. There was Mrs. Grey,
comfortable and beaming, Mr. Easterly, who thought this a good business
opportunity, and his family. Mrs. Vanderpool liked the South and was
amused at the trip, and had induced Mr. Vanderpool to come by stories of
shooting.

"Ah!" said Mr. Vanderpool.

Mr. Charles Smith and John Taylor were both too busy to go, but
bronchial trouble induced the Rev. Dr. Boldish of St. Faith's rich
parish to be one of the party, and at the last moment Temple Bocombe,
the sociologist, consented to join.

"Awfully busy," he said, "but I've been reading up on the Negro problem
since you mentioned the matter to me last week, Mr. Cresswell, and I
think I understand it thoroughly. I may be able to help out."

The necessary spice of young womanhood was added to the party by Miss
Taylor and Miss Cresswell, together with the silent Miss Boldish. They
were a comfortable and sometimes merry party. Dr. Boldish pointed out
the loafers at the stations, especially the black ones; Mr. Bocombe
counted them and estimated the number of hours of work lost at ten cents
an hour.

"Do they get that--ten cents an hour?" asked Miss Taylor.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Mr. Bocombe; "but suppose they do, for
instance. That is an average wage today."

"They look lazy," said Mrs. Grey.

"They are lazy," said Mr. Cresswell.

"So am I," added Mrs. Vanderpool, suppressing a yawn.

"It is uninteresting," murmured her husband, preparing for a nap.

On the whole the members of the party enjoyed themselves from the moment
they drew out of Jersey City to the afternoon when, in four carriages,
they rolled beneath the curious eyes of all Toomsville and swept under
the shadowed rampart of the swamp.

"The Christmas" was coming and all the Southern world was busy. Few
people were busier than Bles and Zora. Slowly, wonderfully for them,
heaven bent in these dying days of the year and kissed the earth, and
the tremor thrilled all lands and seas. Everything was good, all things
were happy, and these two were happiest of all. Out of the shadows and
hesitations of childhood they had stepped suddenly into manhood and
womanhood, with firm feet and uplifted heads. All the day that was
theirs they worked, picking the Silver Fleece--picking it tenderly and
lovingly from off the brown and spent bodies which had so utterly
yielded life and beauty to the full fruition of this long and silken
tendril, this white beauty of the cotton. November came and flew, and
still the unexhausted field yielded its frothing fruit.

Today seemed doubly glorious, for Bles had spoken of their marriage;
with twined hands and arms, and lips ever and again seeking their mates,
they walked the leafy way.

Unconscious, rapt, they stepped out into the Big Road skirting the edge
of the swamp. Why not? Was it not the King's Highway? And Love was King.
So they talked on, unknowing that far up the road the Cresswell coaches
were wheeling along with precious burdens. In the first carriage were
Mrs. Grey and Mrs. Vanderpool, Mr. Cresswell and Miss Taylor. Mrs.
Vanderpool was lolling luxuriously, but Mrs. Grey was a little stiff
from long travel and sat upright. Mr. Cresswell looked clean-cut and
handsome, and Miss Taylor seemed complacent and responsible. The dying
of the day soothed them all insensibly. Groups of dark little children
passed them as they neared the school, staring with wide eyes and
greeting timidly.

"There seems to be marrying and giving in marriage," laughed Mrs.
Vanderpool.

"Not very much," said Mr. Cresswell drily.

"Well, at least plenty of children."

"Plenty."

"But where are the houses?" asked Mrs. Grey.

"Perhaps in the swamp," said Mrs. Vanderpool lightly, looking up at the
sombre trees that lined the left.

"They live where they please and do as they please," Cresswell
explained; to which Mrs. Vanderpool added: "Like other animals."

Mary Taylor opened her lips to rebuke this levity when suddenly the
coachman called out and the horses swerved, and the carriage's four
occupants faced a young man and a young woman embracing heartily.

Out through the wood Bles and Zora had come to the broad red road;
playfully he celebrated all her beauty unconscious of time and place.

"You are tall and bend like grasses on the swamp," he said.

"And yet look up to you," she murmured.

"Your eyes are darkness dressed in night."

"To see you brighter, dear," she said.

"Your little hands are much too frail for work."

"They must grow larger, then, and soon."

"Your feet are far too small to travel on."

"They'll travel on to you--that's far enough."

"Your lips--your full and purple lips--were made alone for kissing, not
for words."

"They'll do for both."

He laughed in utter joy and touched her hair with light caressing hands.

"It does not fly with sunlight," she said quickly, with an upward
glance.

"No," he answered. "It sits and listens to the night."

But even as she nestled to him happily there came the harsh thunder of
horses' hoofs, beating on their ears. He drew her quickly to him in
fear, and the coach lurched and turned, and left them facing four pairs
of eyes. Miss Taylor reddened; Mrs. Grey looked surprised; Mrs.
Vanderpool smiled; but Mr. Cresswell darkened with anger. The couple
unclasped shamefacedly, and the young man, lifting his hat, started to
stammer an apology; but Cresswell interrupted him:

"Keep your--your philandering to the woods, or I shall have you
arrested," he said slowly, his face colorless, his lips twitching with
anger. "Drive on, John."

Miss Taylor felt that her worst suspicions had been confirmed; but Mrs.
Vanderpool was curious as to the cause of Cresswell's anger. It was so
genuine that it needed explanation.

"Are kisses illegal here?" she asked before the horses started, turning
the battery of her eyes full upon him. But Cresswell had himself well in
hand.

"No," he said. "But the girl is--notorious."

On the lovers the words fell like a blow. Zora shivered, and a grayish
horror mottled the dark burning of her face. Bles started in anger, then
paused in shivering doubt. What had happened? They knew not; yet
involuntarily their hands fell apart; they avoided each other's eyes.

"I--I must go now," gasped Zora, as the carriage swept away.

He did not hold her, he did not offer the farewell kiss, but stood
staring at the road as she walked into the swamp. A moment she paused
and looked back; then slowly, almost painfully, she took the path back
to the field of the Fleece, and reaching it after long, long minutes,
began mechanically to pick the cotton. But the cotton glowed crimson in
the failing sun.

Bles walked toward the school. What had happened? he kept asking. And
yet he dared not question the awful shape that sat somewhere, cold and
still, behind his soul. He heard the hoofs of horses again. It was Miss
Taylor being brought back to the school to greet Miss Smith and break
the news of the coming of the party. He raised his hat. She did not
return the greeting, but he found her pausing at the gate. It seemed to
her too awful for this foolish fellow thus to throw himself away. She
faced him and he flinched as from some descending blow.

"Bles," she said primly, "have you absolutely no shame?"

He braced himself and raised his head proudly.

"I am going to marry her; it is no crime." Then he noted the expression
on her face, and paused.

She stepped back, scandalized.

"Can it be, Bles Alwyn," she said, "that you don't know the sort of girl
she is?"

He raised his hands and warded off her words, dumbly, as she turned to
go, almost frightened at the havoc she saw. The heavens flamed scarlet
in his eyes and he screamed.

"It's a lie! It's a damned lie!" He wheeled about and tore into the
swamp.

"It's a damned lie!" he shouted to the trees. "Is it?--is it?" chirped
the birds. "It's a cruel falsehood!" he moaned. "Is it?--is it?"
whispered the devils within.

It seemed to him as though suddenly the world was staggering and
faltering about him. The trees bent curiously and strange breathings
were upon the breezes. He unbuttoned his collar that he might get more
air. A thousand things he had forgotten surged suddenly to life. Slower
and slower he ran, more and more the thoughts crowded his head. He
thought of that first red night and the yelling and singing and wild
dancing; he thought of Cresswell's bitter words; he thought of Zora
telling how she stayed out nights; he thought of the little bower that
he had built her in the cotton field. A wild fear struggled with his
anger, but he kept repeating, "No, no," and then, "At any rate, she will
tell me the truth." She had never lied to him; she would not dare; he
clenched his hands, murder in his heart.

Slowly and more slowly he ran. He knew where she was--where she must be,
waiting. And yet as he drew near huge hands held him back, and heavy
weights clogged his feet. His heart said: "On! quick! She will tell the
truth, and all will be well." His mind said: "Slow, slow; this is the
end." He hurled the thought aside, and crashed through the barrier.

She was standing still and listening, with a huge basket of the piled
froth of the field upon her head. One long brown arm, tender with
curvings, balanced the cotton; the other, poised, balanced the slim
swaying body. Bending she listened, her eyes shining, her lips apart,
her bosom fluttering at the well-known step.

He burst into her view with the fury of a beast, rending the wood away
and trampling the underbrush, reeling and muttering until he saw her.
She looked at him. Her hands dropped, she stood very still with drawn
face, grayish-brown, both hands unconsciously out-stretched, and the
cotton swaying, while deep down in her eyes, dimly, slowly, a horror lit
and grew. He paused a moment, then came slowly onward doggedly,
drunkenly, with torn clothes, flying collar, and red eyes. Then he
paused again, still beyond arm's-length, looking at her with fear-struck
eyes. The cotton on her head shivered and dropped in a pure mass of
white and silvery snow about her limbs. Her hands fell limply and the
horror flamed in her wet eyes. He struggled with his voice but it grated
and came hoarse and hard from his quivering throat.

"Zora!"

"Yes, Bles."

"You--you told me--you were--pure."

She was silent, but her body went all a-tremble. He stepped forward
until she could almost touch him; there standing straight and tall he
glared down upon her.

"Answer me," he whispered in a voice hard with its tight held sobs. A
misery darkened her face and the light died from her eyes, yet she
looked at him bravely and her voice came low and full as from afar.

"I asked you what it meant to be pure, Bles, and--and you told--and I
told you the truth."

"What it meant!--what it meant!" he repeated in the low, tense anguish.


"But--but, Bles--" She faltered; there came an awful pleading in her
eyes; her hand groped toward him; but he stepped slowly back--"But,
Bles--you said--willingly--you said--if--if she knew--"

He thundered back in livid anger:

"Knew! All women know! You should have _died_!"

Sobs were rising and shaking her from head to foot, but she drove them
back and gripped her breasts with her hands.

"No, Bles--no--all girls do not know. I was a child. Not since I knew
you, Bles--never, never since I saw you."

"Since--since," he groaned--"Christ! But before?"

"Yes, before."

"My God!"

She knew the end had come. Yet she babbled on tremblingly:

"He was our master, and all the other girls that gathered there did his
will; I--I--" she choked and faltered, and he drew farther away--"I
began running away, and they hunted me through the swamps. And
then--then I reckon I'd have gone back and been--as they all are--but
you came, Bles--you came, and you--you were a new great thing in my
life, and--and--yet, I was afraid I was not worthy until you--you said
the words. I thought you knew, and I thought that--that purity was just
wanting to be pure."

He ground his teeth in fury. Oh, he was an innocent--a blind baby--the
joke and laughing-stock of the country around, with yokels grinning at
him and pale-faced devils laughing aloud. The teachers knew; the girls
knew; God knew; everybody but he knew--poor blind, deaf mole, stupid
jackass that he was. He must run--run away from this world, and far off
in some free land beat back this pain.

Then in sheer weariness the anger died within his soul, leaving but
ashes and despair. Slowly he turned away, but with a quick motion she
stood in his path.

"Bles," she cried, "how can I grow pure?"

He looked at her listlessly.

"Never--never again," he slowly answered her.

Dark fear swept her drawn face.

"Never?" she gasped.

Pity surged and fought in his breast; but one thought held and burned
him. He bent to her fiercely:

"Who?" he demanded.

She pointed toward the Cresswell Oaks, and he turned away. She did not
attempt to stop him again, but dropped her hands and stared drearily up
into the clear sky with its shining worlds.

"Good-bye, Bles," she said slowly. "I thank God he gave you to me--just
a little time." She hesitated and waited. There came no word as the man
moved slowly away. She stood motionless. Then slowly he turned and came
back. He laid his hand a moment, lightly, upon her head.

"Good-bye--Zora," he sobbed, and was gone.

She did not look up, but knelt there silent, dry-eyed, till the last
rustle of his going died in the night. And then, like a waiting storm,
the torrent of her grief swept down upon her; she stretched herself upon
the black and fleece-strewn earth, and writhed.




_Sixteen_

THE GREAT REFUSAL


All night Miss Smith lay holding the quivering form of Zora close to her
breast, staring wide-eyed into the darkness--thinking, thinking. In the
morning the party would come. There would be Mrs. Grey and Mary Taylor,
Mrs. Vanderpool, who had left her so coldly in the lurch before, and
some of the Cresswells. They would come well fed and impressed with the
charming hospitality of their hosts, and rather more than willing to see
through those host's eyes. They would be in a hurry to return to some
social function, and would give her work but casual attention.

It seemed so dark an ending to so bright a dream. Never for her had a
fall opened as gloriously. The love of this boy and girl, blossoming as
it had beneath her tender care, had been a sacred, wonderful history
that revived within her memories of long-forgotten days. But above lay
the vision of her school, redeemed and enlarged, its future safe, its
usefulness broadened--small wonder that to Sarah Smith the future had
seemed in November almost golden.

Then things began to go wrong. The transfer of the Tolliver land had not
yet been effected; the money was ready, but Mr. Tolliver seemed busy or
hesitating. Next came this news of Mrs. Grey's probable conditions. So
here it was Christmas time, and Sarah Smith's castles lay almost in
ruins about her.

The girl moaned in her fitful sleep and Miss Smith soothed her. Poor
child! here too was work--a strange strong soul cruelly stricken in her
youth. Could she be brought back to a useful life? How she needed such a
strong, clear-eyed helper in this crisis of her work! Would Zora make
one or would this blow send her to perdition? Not if Sarah Smith could
save her, she resolved, and stared out the window where the pale red
dawn was sending its first rays on the white-pillared mansion of the
Cresswells.

Mrs. Grey saw the light on the columns, too, as she lay lazily in her
soft white bed. There was a certain delicious languor in the late
lingering fall of Alabama that suited her perfectly. Then, too, she
liked the house and its appointments; there was not, to be sure, all the
luxury that she was used to in her New York mansion, but there was a
certain finish about it, an elegance and staid old-fashioned hospitality
that appealed to her tremendously. Mrs. Grey's heart warmed to the sight
of Helen in her moments of spasmodic caring for the sick and afflicted
on the estate. No better guardian of her philanthropies could be found
than these same Cresswells. She must, of course, go over and see dear
Sarah Smith; but really there was not much to say or to look at.

The prospects seemed most alluring. Later, Mr. Easterly talked a while
on routine business, saying, as he turned away:

"I am more and more impressed, Mrs. Grey, with your wisdom in placing
large investments in the South. With peaceful social conditions the
returns will be large."

Mrs. Grey heard this delicate flattery complacently. She had her streak
of thrift, and wanted her business capacity recognized. She listened
attentively.

"For this reason, I trust you will handle your Negro philanthropies
judicially, as I know you will. There's dynamite in this race problem
for amateur reformers, but fortunately you have at hand wise and
sympathetic advisers in the Cresswells."

Mrs. Grey agreed entirely.

Mary Taylor, alone of the committee, took her commission so seriously as
to be anxious to begin work.

"We are to visit the school this morning, you know," she reminded the
others, looking at her watch; "I'm afraid we're late already."

The remark created mild consternation. It seemed that Mr. Vanderpool had
gone hunting and his wife had not yet arisen. Dr. Boldish was very
hoarse, Mr. Easterly was going to look over some plantations with
Colonel Cresswell, and Mr. Bocombe was engrossed in a novel.

"Clever, but not true to life," he said.

Finally the clergyman and Mr. Bocombe, Mrs. Grey and Mrs. Vanderpool and
Miss Taylor started for the school, with Harry Cresswell, about an hour
after lunch. The delay and suppressed excitement among the little folks
had upset things considerably there, but at the sight of the visitors at
the gate Miss Smith rang the bell.

The party came in, laughing and chatting. They greeted Miss Smith
cordially. Dr. Boldish was beginning to tell a good story when a silence
fell.

The children had gathered, quietly, almost timidly, and before the
distinguished company realized it, they turned to meet that battery of
four hundred eyes. A human eye is a wonderful thing when it simply waits
and watches. Not one of these little things alone would have been worth
more than a glance, but together, they became mighty, portentous. Mr.
Bocombe got out his note-book and wrote furiously therein. Dr. Boldish,
naturally the appointed spokesman, looked helplessly about and whispered
to Mrs. Vanderpool:

"What on earth shall I talk about?"

"The brotherhood of man?" suggested the lady.

"Hardly advisable," returned Dr. Boldish, seriously, "in our friend's
presence,"--with a glance toward Cresswell. Then he arose.

"My friends," he said, touching his finger-tips and using blank verse in
A minor. "This is an auspicious day. You should be thankful for the
gifts of the Lord. His bounty surrounds you--the trees, the fields, the
glorious sun. He gives cotton to clothe you, corn to eat, devoted
friends to teach you. Be joyful. Be good. Above all, be thrifty and save
your money, and do not complain and whine at your apparent
disadvantages. Remember that God did not create men equal but unequal,
and set metes and bounds. It is not for us to question the wisdom of the
Almighty, but to bow humbly to His will.

"Remember that the slavery of your people was not necessarily a crime.
It was a school of work and love. It gave you noble friends, like Mr.
Cresswell here." A restless stirring, and the battery of eyes was turned
upon that imperturbable gentleman, as if he were some strange animal.
"Love and serve them. Remember that we get, after all, little education
from books; rather in the fields, at the plough and in the kitchen. Let
your ambition be to serve rather than rule, to be humble followers of
the lowly Jesus."

With an upward glance the Rev. Dr. Boldish sat down amid a silence a
shade more intense than that which had greeted him. Then slowly from the
far corner rose a thin voice, tremulously. It wavered on the air and
almost broke, then swelled in sweet, low music. Other and stronger
voices gathered themselves to it, until two hundred were singing a soft
minor wail that gripped the hearts and tingled in the ears of the
hearers. Mr. Bocombe groped with a puzzled expression to find the pocket
for his note-book; Harry Cresswell dropped his eyes, and on Mrs.
Vanderpool's lips the smile died. Mary Taylor flushed, and Mrs. Grey
cried frankly:

"Poor things!" she whispered.

"Now," said Mrs. Grey, turning about, "we haven't but just a moment and
we want to take a little look at your work." She smiled graciously upon
Miss Smith.

Mrs. Grey thought the cooking-school very nice.

"I suppose," she said, "that you furnish cooks for the county."

"Largely," said Miss Smith. Mrs. Vanderpool looked surprised, but Miss
Smith added: "This county, you know, is mostly black." Mrs. Grey did not
catch the point.

The dormitories were neat and the ladies expressed great pleasure in
them.

"It is certainly nice for them to know what a clean place is," commented
Mrs. Grey. Mr. Cresswell, however, looked at a bath-room and smiled.

"How practical!" he said.

"Can you not stop and see some of the classes?" Sarah Smith knew in her
heart that the visit was a failure, still she would do her part to the
end.

"I doubt if we shall have time," Mrs. Grey returned, as they walked on.
"Mr. Cresswell expects friends to dinner."

"What a magnificent intelligence office," remarked Mr. Bocombe, "for
furnishing servants to the nation. I saw splendid material for cooks and
maids."

"And plough-boys," added Cresswell.

"And singers," said Mary Taylor.

"Well, now that's just my idea," said Mrs. Grey, "that these schools
should furnish trained servants and laborers for the South. Isn't that
your idea, Miss Smith?"

"Not exactly," the lady replied, "or at least I shouldn't put it just
that way. My idea is that this school should furnish men and women who
can work and earn an honest living, train up families aright, and
perform their duties as fathers, mothers, and citizens."

"Yes--yes, precisely," said Mrs. Grey, "that's what I meant."

"I think the whites can attend to the duties of citizenship without
help," observed Mr. Cresswell.

"Don't let the blacks meddle in politics," said Dr. Boldish.

"I want to make these children full-fledged men and women, strong,
self-reliant, honest, without any 'ifs' and 'ands' to their
development," insisted Miss Smith.

"Of course, and that is just what Mr. Cresswell wants. Isn't it, Mr.
Cresswell?" asked Mrs. Grey.

"I think I may say yes," Mr. Cresswell agreed. "I certainly want these
people to develop as far as they can, although Miss Smith and I would
differ as to their possibilities. But it is not so much in the general
theory of Negro education as in its particular applications where our
chief differences would lie. I may agree that a boy should learn higher
arithmetic, yet object to his loafing in plough-time. I might want to
educate some girls but not girls like Zora."

Mrs. Vanderpool glanced at Mr. Cresswell, smiling to herself.

Mrs. Grey broke in, beaming:

"That's just it, dear Miss Smith,--just it. Your heart is good, but you
need strong practical advice. You know we weak women are so impractical,
as my poor Job so often said. Now, I'm going to arrange to endow this
school with at least--at least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. One
condition is that my friend, Mr. Cresswell here, and these other
gentlemen, including sound Northern business men like Mr. Easterly,
shall hold this money in trust, and expend it for your school as they
think best."

"Mr. Cresswell would be their local representative?" asked Miss Smith
slowly with white face.

"Why yes--yes, of course."

There was a long, tense silence. Then the firm reply,

"Mrs. Grey, I thank you, but I cannot accept your offer."

Sarah Smith's voice was strong, the tremor had left her hands. She had
expected something like this, of course; yet when it came--somehow it
failed to stun. She would not turn over the direction of the school, or
the direction of the education of these people, to those who were most
opposed to their education. Therefore, there was no need to hesitate;
there was no need to think the thing over--she had thought it over--and
she looked into Mrs. Grey's eyes and with gathering tears in her own
said:

"Again, I thank you very much, Mrs. Grey."

Mrs. Grey was a picture of the most emphatic surprise, and Mr. Cresswell
moved to the window. Mrs. Grey looked helplessly at her companions.

"But--I don't understand, Miss Smith--why can't you accept my offer?"

"Because you ask me to put my school in control of those who do not wish
for the best interests of black folk, and in particular I object to Mr.
Cresswell," said Miss Smith, slowly but very distinctly, "because his
relation to the forces of evil in this community has been such that he
can direct no school of mine." Mrs. Vanderpool moved toward the door and
Mr. Cresswell bowing slightly followed. Dr. Boldish looked indignant and
Mr. Bocombe dove after his note-book. Mary Taylor, her head in a whirl,
came forward. She felt that in some way she was responsible for this
dreadful situation and she wanted desperately to save matters from final
disaster.

"Come," she said, "Mrs. Grey, we'll talk this matter over again later. I
am sure Miss Smith does not mean quite all she says--she is tired and
nervous. You join the others and don't wait for me and I will be along
directly."

Mrs. Grey was only too glad to escape and Mr. Bocombe got a chance to
talk. He drew out his note-book.

"Awfully interesting," he said, "awfully. Now--er--let's see--oh, yes.
Did you notice how unhealthy the children looked? Race is undoubtedly
dying out; fact. No hope. Weak. No spontaneity either--rather languid,
did you notice? Yes, and their heads--small and narrow--no brain
capacity. They can't concentrate; notice how some slept when Dr. Boldish
was speaking? Mr. Cresswell says they own almost no land here; think of
it? This land was worth only ten dollars an acre a decade ago, he says.
Negroes might have bought all and been rich. Very shiftless--and that
singing. Now, I wonder where they got the music? Imitation, of course."
And so he rattled on, noting not the silence of the others.

As the carriage drove off Mary turned to Miss Smith.

"Now, Miss Smith," she began--but Miss Smith looked at her, and said
sternly, "Sit down."

Mary Taylor sat down. She had been so used to lecturing the older woman
that the sudden summoning of her well known sternness against herself
took her breath, and she sat awkwardly like the school girl that she was
waiting for Miss Smith to speak. She felt suddenly very young and very
helpless--she who had so jauntily set out to solve this mighty problem
by a waving of her wand. She saw with a swelling of pity the drawn and
stricken face of her old friend and she started up.

"Sit down," repeated Miss Smith harshly. "Mary Taylor, you are a fool.
You are not foolish, for the foolish learn; you are simply a fool. You
will never learn; you have blundered into this life work of mine and
well nigh ruined it. Whether I can yet save it God alone knows. You have
blundered into the lives of two loving children, and sent one wandering
aimless on the face of the earth and the other moaning in yonder chamber
with death in her heart. You are going to marry the man that sought
Zora's ruin when she was yet a child because you think of his
aristocratic pose and pretensions built on the poverty, crime, and
exploitation of six generations of serfs. You'll marry him and--"

But Miss Taylor leapt to her feet with blazing cheeks.

"How dare you?" she screamed, beside herself.

"But God in heaven help you if you do," finished Miss Smith, calmly.




_Seventeen_

THE RAPE OF THE FLEECE


When slowly from the torpor of ether, one wakens to the misty sense of
eternal loss, and there comes the exquisite prick of pain, then one
feels in part the horror of the ache when Zora wakened to the world
again. The awakening was the work of days and weeks. At first in sheer
exhaustion, physical and mental, she lay and moaned. The sense of
loss--of utter loss--lay heavy upon her. Something of herself, something
dearer than self, was gone from her forever, and an infinite loneliness
and silence, as of endless years, settled on her soul. She wished
neither food nor words, only to be alone. Then gradually the pain of
injury stung her when the blood flowed fuller. As Miss Smith knelt
beside her one night to make her simple prayer Zora sat suddenly
upright, white-swathed, dishevelled, with fury in her midnight eyes.

"I want no prayers!" she cried, "I will not pray! He is no God of mine.
He isn't fair. He knows and won't tell. He takes advantage of us--He
works and fools us." All night Miss Smith heard mutterings of this
bitterness, and the next day the girl walked her room like a
tigress,--to and fro, to and fro, all the long day. Toward night a dumb
despair settled upon her. Miss Smith found her sitting by the window
gazing blankly toward the swamp. She came to Miss Smith, slowly, and put
her hands upon her shoulders with almost a caress.

"You must forgive me," she pleaded plaintively. "I reckon I've been
mighty bad with you, and you always so good to me; but--but, you see--it
hurts so."

"I know it hurts, dear; I know it does. But men and women must learn to
bear hurts in this world."

"Not hurts like this; they couldn't."

"Yes, even hurts like this. Bear and stand straight; be brave. After
all, Zora, no man is quite worth a woman's soul; no love is worth a
whole life."

Zora turned away with a gesture of impatience.

"You were born in ice," she retorted, adding a bit more tenderly, "in
clear strong ice; but I was born in fire. I live--I love; that's all."
And she sat down again, despairingly, and stared at the dull swamp. Miss
Smith stood for a moment and closed her eyes upon a vision.

"Ice!" she whispered. "My God!"

Then, at length, she said to Zora:

"Zora, there's only one way: do something; if you sit thus brooding
you'll go crazy."

"Do crazy folks forget?"

"Nonsense, Zora!" Miss Smith ridiculed the girl's fantastic vagaries;
her sound common sense rallied to her aid. "They are the people who
remember; sane folk forget. Work is the only cure for such pain."

"But there's nothing to do--nothing I want to do--nothing worth
doing--now."

"The Silver Fleece?"

The girl sat upright.

"The Silver Fleece," she murmured. Without further word, slowly she
arose and walked down the stairs, and out into the swamp. Miss Smith
watched her go; she knew that every step must be the keen prickle of
awakening flesh. Yet the girl walked steadily on.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the Christmas--not Christmas-tide of the North and West, but
Christmas of the Southern South. It was not the festival of the Christ
Child, but a time of noise and frolic and license, the great Pay-Day of
the year when black men lifted their heads from a year's toiling in the
earth, and, hat in hand, asked anxiously: "Master, what have I earned?
Have I paid my old debts to you? Have I made my clothes and food? Have I
got a little of the year's wage coming to me?" Or, more carelessly and
cringingly: "Master, gimme a Christmas gift."

The lords of the soil stood round, gauging their cotton, measuring their
men. Their stores were crowded, their scales groaned, their gins sang.
In the long run public opinion determines all wage, but in more
primitive times and places, private opinion, personal judgment of some
man in power, determines. The Black Belt is primitive and the landlord
wields the power.

"What about Johnson?" calls the head clerk.

"Well, he's a faithful nigger and needs encouragement; cancel his debt
and give him ten dollars for Christmas." Colonel Cresswell glowed, as if
he were full of the season's spirit.

"And Sanders?"

"How's his cotton?"

"Good, and a lot of it."

"He's trying to get away. Keep him in debt, but let him draw what he
wants."

"Aunt Rachel?"

"H'm, they're way behind, aren't they? Give her a couple of dollars--not
a cent more."

"Jim Sykes?"

"Say, Harry, how about that darky, Sykes?" called out the Colonel.

Excusing himself from his guests, Harry Cresswell came into the office.

To them this peculiar spectacle of the market place was of unusual
interest. They saw its humor and its crowding, its bizarre effects and
unwonted pageantry. Black giants and pigmies were there; kerchiefed
aunties, giggling black girls, saffron beauties, and loafing white men.
There were mules and horses and oxen, wagons and buggies and carts; but
above all and in all, rushing through, piled and flying, bound and
baled--was cotton. Cotton was currency; cotton was merchandise; cotton
was conversation.

All this was "beautiful" to Mrs. Grey and "unusually interesting" to
Mrs. Vanderpool. To Mary Taylor it had the fascination of a puzzle whose
other side she had already been partially studying. She was particularly
impressed with the joy and abandon of the scene--light laughter, huge
guffaws, handshakes, and gossipings.

"At all events," she concluded, "this is no oppressed people." And
sauntering away from the rest she noted the smiles of an undersized
smirking yellow man who hurried by with a handful of dollar bills. At a
side entrance liquor was evidently on sale--men were drinking and women,
too; some were staggering, others cursing, and yet others singing. Then
suddenly a man swung around the corner swearing in bitter rage:

"The damned thieves, they'se stole a year's work--the white--" But some
one called, "Hush up, Sanders! There's a white woman." And he threw a
startled look at Mary and hurried by. She was perplexed and upset and
stood hesitating a moment when she heard a well-known voice:

"Why, Miss Taylor, I was alarmed for you; you really must be careful
about trusting yourself with these half drunken Negroes."

"Wouldn't it be better not to give them drink, Mr. Cresswell?"

"And let your neighbor sell them poison at all hours? No, Miss Taylor."
They joined the others, and all were turning toward the carriage when a
figure coming down the road attracted them.

"Quite picturesque," observed Mrs. Vanderpool, looking at the tall, slim
girl swaying toward them with a piled basket of white cotton poised
lightly on her head. "Why," in abrupt recognition, "it is our Venus of
the Roadside, is it not?"

Mary saw it was Zora. Just then, too, Zora caught sight of them, and for
a moment hesitated, then came on; the carriage was in front of the
store, and she was bound for the store. A moment Mary hesitated, too,
and then turned resolutely to greet her. But Zora's eyes did not see
her. After one look at that sorrow-stricken face, Mary turned away.

Colonel Cresswell stood by the door, his hat on, his hands in his
pockets.

"Well, Zora, what have you there?" he asked.

"Cotton, sir."

Harry Cresswell bent over it.

"Great heavens! Look at this cotton!" he ejaculated. His father
approached. The cotton lay in silken handfuls, clean and shimmering,
with threads full two inches long. The idlers, black and white,
clustered round, gazing at it, and fingering it with repeated
exclamations of astonishment.

"Where did this come from?" asked the Colonel sharply. He and Harry were
both eying the girl intently.

"I raised it in the swamp," Zora replied quietly, in a dead voice. There
was no pride of achievement in her manner, no gladness; all that had
flown.

"Is that all?"

"No, sir; I think there's two bales."

"Two bales! Where is it? How the devil--" The Colonel was forgetting his
guests, but Harry intervened.

"You'll need to get it picked right off," he suggested.

"It's all picked, sir."

"But where is it?"

"If you'll send a wagon, sir--"

But the Colonel hardly waited.

"Here you, Jim, take the big mules and drive like--Where's that wench?"

But Zora was already striding on ahead, and was far up the red road when
the great mules galloped into sight and the long whip snapped above
their backs. The Colonel was still excited.

"That cotton must be ours, Harry--all of it. And see that none is
stolen. We've got no contract with the wench, so don't dally with her."
But Harry said firmly, quietly:

"It's fine cotton, and she raised it; she must be paid well for it."
Colonel Cresswell glanced at him with something between contempt and
astonishment on his face.

"You go along with the ladies," Harry added; "I'll see to this cotton."
Mary Taylor's smile had rewarded him; now he must get rid of his
company--before Zora returned.

It was dark when the cotton came; such a load as Cresswell's store had
never seen before. Zora watched it weighed, received the cotton checks,
and entered the store. Only the clerk was there, and he was closing. He
pointed her carelessly to the office in the back part. She went into the
small dim room, and laying the cotton-check on the desk, stood waiting.
Slowly the hopelessness and bitterness of it all came back in a great
whelming flood. What was the use of trying for anything? She was lost
forever. The world was against her, and again she saw the fingers of
Elspeth--the long black claw-like talons that clutched and dragged her
down--down. She did not struggle--she dropped her hands listlessly,
wearily, and stood but half conscious as the door opened and Mr. Harry
Cresswell entered the dimly lighted room. She opened her eyes. She had
expected his father. Somewhere way down in the depths of her nature the
primal tiger awoke and snarled. She was suddenly alive from hair to
finger tip. Harry Cresswell paused a second and swept her full length
with his eye--her profile, the long supple line of bosom and hip, the
little foot. Then he closed the door softly and walked slowly toward
her. She stood like stone, without a quiver; only her eye followed the
crooked line of the Cresswell blue blood on his marble forehead as she
looked down from her greater height; her hand closed almost caressingly
on a rusty poker lying on the stove nearby; and as she sensed the hot
breath of him she felt herself purring in a half heard whisper.

"I should not like--to kill you."

He looked at her long and steadily as he passed to his desk. Slowly he
lighted a cigarette, opened the great ledger, and compared the
cotton-check with it.

"Three thousand pounds," he announced in a careless tone. "Yes, that
will make about two bales of lint. It's extra cotton--say fifteen cents
a pound--one hundred fifty dollars--seventy-five dollars to you--h'm."
He took a note-book out of his pocket, pushed his hat back on his head,
and paused to relight his cigarette.

"Let's see--your rent and rations--"

"Elspeth pays no rent," she said slowly, but he did not seem to hear.

"Your rent and rations with the five years' back debt,"--he made a hasty
calculation--"will be one hundred dollars. That leaves you twenty-five
in our debt. Here's your receipt."

The blow had fallen. She did not wince nor cry out. She took the
receipt, calmly, and walked out into the darkness.

They had stolen the Silver Fleece.

What should she do? She never thought of appeal to courts, for Colonel
Cresswell was Justice of the Peace and his son was bailiff. Why had they
stolen from her? She knew. She was now penniless, and in a sense
helpless. She was now a peon bound to a master's bidding. If Elspeth
chose to sign a contract of work for her to-morrow, it would mean
slavery, jail, or hounded running away. What would Elspeth do? One never
knew. Zora walked on. An hour ago it seemed that this last blow must
have killed her. But now it was different. Into her first despair had
crept, in one fierce moment, grim determination. Somewhere in the world
sat a great dim Injustice which had veiled the light before her young
eyes, just as she raised them to the morning. With the veiling, death
had come into her heart.

And yet, they should not kill her; they should not enslave her. A
desperate resolve to find some way up toward the light, if not to it,
formed itself within her. She would not fall into the pit opening before
her. Somehow, somewhere lay The Way. She must never fall lower; never be
utterly despicable in the eyes of the man she had loved. There was no
dream of forgiveness, of purification, of re-kindled love; all these she
placed sadly and gently into the dead past. But in awful earnestness,
she turned toward the future; struggling blindly, groping in half formed
plans for a way.

She came thus into the room where sat Miss Smith, strangely pallid
beneath her dusky skin. But there lay a light in her eyes.




_Eighteen_

THE COTTON CORNER


All over the land the cotton had foamed in great white flakes under the
winter sun. The Silver Fleece lay like a mighty mantle across the earth.
Black men and mules had staggered beneath its burden, while deep songs
welled in the hearts of men; for the Fleece was goodly and gleaming and
soft, and men dreamed of the gold it would buy. All the roads in the
country had been lined with wagons--a million wagons speeding to and fro
with straining mules and laughing black men, bearing bubbling masses of
piled white Fleece. The gins were still roaring and spitting flames and
smoke--fifty thousand of them in town and vale. Then hoarse iron throats
were filled with fifteen billion pounds of white-fleeced, black-specked
cotton, for the whirling saws to tear out the seed and fling five
thousand million pounds of the silken fibre to the press.

And there again the black men sang, like dark earth-spirits flitting in
twilight; the presses creaked and groaned; closer and closer they
pressed the silken fleece. It quivered, trembled, and then lay cramped,
dead, and still, in massive, hard, square bundles, tied with iron
strings. Out fell the heavy bales, thousand upon thousand, million upon
million, until they settled over the South like some vast dull-white
swarm of birds. Colonel Cresswell and his son, in these days, had a long
and earnest conversation perforated here and there by explosions of the
Colonel's wrath. The Colonel could not understand some things.

"They want us to revive the Farmers' League?" he fiercely demanded.


"Yes," Harry calmly replied.

"And throw the rest of our capital after the fifty thousand dollars
we've already lost?"

"Yes."

"And you were fool enough to consent--"

"Wait, Father--and don't get excited. Listen. Cotton is going up--"

"Of course it's going up! Short crop and big demand--"

"Cotton is going up, and then it's going to fall."

"I don't believe it."

"I know it; the trust has got money and credit enough to force it down."

"Well, what then?" The Colonel glared.

"Then somebody will corner it."

"The Farmers' League won't stand--"

"Precisely. The Farmers' League can do the cornering and hold it for
higher prices."

"Lord, son! if we only could!" groaned the Colonel.

"We can; we'll have unlimited credit."

"But--but--" stuttered the bewildered Colonel, "I don't understand. Why
should the trust--"

"Nonsense, Father--what's the use of understanding. Our advantage is
plain, and John Taylor guarantees the thing."

"Who's John Taylor?" snorted the Colonel. "Why should we trust him?"

"Well," said Harry slowly, "he wants to marry Helen--"

His father grew apopletic.

"I'm not saying he will, Father; I'm only saying that he wants to,"
Harry made haste to placate the rising tide of wrath.

"No Southern gentleman--" began the Colonel. But Harry shrugged his
shoulders.

"Which is better, to be crushed by the trust or to escape at their
expense, even if that escape involves unwarranted assumptions on the
part of one of them? I tell you, Father, the code of the Southern
gentleman won't work in Wall Street."

"And I'll tell you why--there _are_ no Southern gentlemen," growled his
father.

The Silver Fleece was golden, for its prices were flying aloft. Mr.
Caldwell told Colonel Cresswell that he confidently expected twelve-cent
cotton.

"The crop is excellent and small, scarcely ten million bales," he
declared. "The price is bound to go up."

Colonel Cresswell was hesitant, even doubtful; the demand for cotton at
high prices usually fell off rapidly and he had heard rumors of
curtailed mill production. While, then, he hoped for high prices he
advised the Farmers' League to be on guard.

Mr. Caldwell seemed to be right, for cotton rose to ten cents a
pound--ten and a half--eleven--and then the South began to see visions
and to dream dreams.

"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Maxwell, whose lands lay next to the
Cresswells' on the northwest, "yes, if cotton goes to twelve or thirteen
cents as seems probable, I think we can begin the New House"--for Mrs.
Maxwell's cherished dream was a pillared mansion like the Cresswells'.

Mr. Tolliver looked at his house and barns. "Well, daughter, if this
crop sells at twelve cents, I'll be on my feet again, and I won't have
to sell that land to the nigger school after all. Once out of the
clutch of the Cresswells--well, I think we can have a coat of paint."
And he laughed as he had not laughed in ten years.

Down in the bottoms west of the swamp a man and woman were figuring
painfully on an old slate. He was light brown and she was yellow.

"Honey," he said tremblingly, "I b'lieve we can do it--if cotton goes to
twelve cents, we can pay the mortgage."

Two miles north of the school an old black woman was shouting and waving
her arms. "If cotton goes to twelve cents we can pay out and be free!"
and she threw her apron over her head and wept, gathering her children
in her arms.

But even as she cried a flash and tremor shook the South. Far away to
the north a great spider sat weaving his web. The office looked down
from the clouds on lower Broadway, and was soft with velvet and leather.
Swift, silent messengers hurried in and out, and Mr. Easterly, deciding
the time was ripe, called his henchman to him.

"Taylor, we're ready--go South."

And John Taylor rose, shook hands silently, and went.

As he entered Cresswell's plantation store three days later, a colored
woman with a little boy turned sadly away from the counter.

"No, aunty," the clerk was telling her, "calico is too high; can't let
you have any till we see how your cotton comes out."

"I just wanted a bit; I promised the boy--"

"Go on, go on--Why, Mr. Taylor!" And the little boy burst into tears
while he was hurried out.

"Tightening up on the tenants?" asked Taylor.

"Yes; these niggers are mighty extravagant. Besides, cotton fell a
little today--eleven to ten and three-fourths; just a flurry, I reckon.
Had you heard?"

Mr. Taylor said he had heard, and he hurried on. Next morning the long
shining wires of that great Broadway web trembled and flashed again and
cotton went to ten cents.

"No house this year, I fear," quoth Mr. Maxwell, bitterly.

The next day nine and a half was the quotation, and men began to look at
each other and asked questions.

"Paper says the crop is larger than the government estimate," said
Tolliver, and added, "There'll be no painting this year." He looked
toward the Smith School and thought of the five thousand dollars
waiting; but he hesitated. John Taylor had carefully mentioned seven
thousand dollars as a price he was willing to pay and "perhaps more."
Was Cresswell back of Taylor? Tolliver was suspicious and moved to delay
matters.

"It's manipulation and speculation in New York," said Colonel Cresswell,
"and the Farmers' League must begin operations."

The local paper soon had an editorial on "our distinguished fellow
citizen, Colonel Cresswell," and his efforts to revive the Farmers'
League. It was understood that Colonel Cresswell was risking his whole
private fortune to hold the price of cotton, and some effort seemed to
be needed, for cotton dropped to nine cents within a week. Swift
negotiations ensued, and a meeting of the executive committee of the
Farmers' League was held in Montgomery. A system of warehouses and
warehouse certificates was proposed.

"But that will cost money," responded each of the dozen big landlords
who composed the committee; whereupon Harry Cresswell introduced John
Taylor, who represented thirty millions of Southern bank stock.

"I promise you credit to any reasonable amount," said Mr. Taylor, "I
believe in cotton--the present price is abnormal." And Mr. Taylor knew
whereof he spoke, for when he sent a cipher despatch North, cotton
dropped to eight and a half. The Farmers' League leased three warehouses
at Savannah, Montgomery, and New Orleans.

Then silently the South gripped itself and prepared for battle. Men
stopped spending, business grew dull, and millions of eyes were glued
to the blackboards of the cotton-exchange. Tighter and tighter the
reins grew on the backs of the black tenants.

"Miss Smith, is yo' got just a drap of coffee to lend me? Mr. Cresswell
won't give me none at the store and I'se just starving for some," said
Aunt Rachel from over the hill. "We won't git free this year, Miss
Smith, not this year," she concluded plaintively.

Cotton fell to seven and a half cents and the muttered protest became
angry denunciation. Why was it? Who was doing it?

Harry Cresswell went to Montgomery. He was getting nervous. The thing
was too vast. He could not grasp it. It set his head in a whirl. Harry
Cresswell was not a bad man--are there any bad men? He was a man who
from the day he first wheedled his black mammy into submission, down to
his thirty-sixth year, had seldom known what it was voluntarily to deny
himself or curb a desire. To rise when he would, eat what he craved, and
do what the passing fancy suggested had long been his day's programme.
Such emptiness of life and aim had to be filled, and it was filled; he
helped his father sometimes with the plantations, but he helped
spasmodically and played at work.

The unregulated fire of energy and delicacy of nervous poise within him
continually hounded him to the verge of excess and sometimes beyond.
Cool, quiet, and gentlemanly as he was by rule of his clan, the ice was
thin and underneath raged unappeased fires. He craved the madness of
alcohol in his veins till his delicate hands trembled of mornings. The
women whom he bent above in languid, veiled-eyed homage, feared lest
they love him, and what work was to others gambling was to him.

The Cotton Combine, then, appealed to him overpoweringly--to his passion
for wealth, to his passion for gambling. But once entered upon the game
it drove him to fear and frenzy: first, it was a long game and Harry
Cresswell was not trained to waiting, and, secondly, it was a game whose
intricacies he did not know. In vain did he try to study the matter
through. He ordered books from the North, he subscribed for financial
journals, he received special telegraphic reports only to toss them
away, curse his valet, and call for another brandy. After all, he kept
saying to himself, what guarantee, what knowledge had he that this was
not a "damned Yankee trick"?

Now that the web was weaving its last mesh in early January he haunted
Montgomery, and on this day when it seemed that things must culminate or
he would go mad, he hastened again down to the Planters' Hotel and was
quickly ushered to John Taylor's room. The place was filled with tobacco
smoke. An electric ticker was drumming away in one corner, a telephone
ringing on the desk, and messenger boys hovered outside the door and
raced to and fro.

"Well," asked Cresswell, maintaining his composure by an effort, "how
are things?"

"Great!" returned Taylor. "League holds three million bales and controls
five. It's the biggest corner in years."

"But how's cotton?"

"Ticker says six and three-fourths."

Cresswell sat down abruptly opposite Taylor, looking at him fixedly.

"That last drop means liabilities of a hundred thousand to us," he said
slowly.

"Exactly," Taylor blandly admitted.

Beads of sweat gathered on Cresswell's forehead. He looked at the
scrawny iron man opposite, who had already forgotten his presence. He
ordered whiskey, and taking paper and pencil began to figure, drinking
as he figured. Slowly the blood crept out of his white face leaving it
whiter, and went surging and pounding in his heart. Poverty--that was
what those figures spelled. Poverty--unclothed, wineless poverty, to dig
and toil like a "nigger" from morning until night, and to give up horses
and carriages and women; that was what they spelled.

"How much--farther will it drop?" he asked harshly.

Taylor did not look up.

"Can't tell," he said, "'fraid not much though." He glanced through a
telegram. "No--damn it!--outside mills are low; they'll stampede soon.
Meantime we'll buy."

"But, Taylor--"

"Here are one hundred thousand offered at six and three-fourths."

"I tell you, Taylor--" Cresswell half arose.

"Done!" cried Taylor. "Six and one-half," clicked the machine.

Cresswell arose from his chair by the window and came slowly to the wide
flat desk where Taylor was working feverishly. He sat down heavily in
the chair opposite and tried quietly to regain his self-control. The
liabilities of the Cresswells already amounted to half the value of
their property, at a fair market valuation. The cotton for which they
had made debts was still falling in value. Every fourth of a cent fall
meant--he figured it again tremblingly--meant one hundred thousand more
of liabilities. If cotton fell to six he hadn't a cent on earth. If it
stayed there--"My God!" He felt a faintness stealing over him but he
beat it back and gulped down another glass of fiery liquor.

Then the one protecting instinct of his clan gripped him. Slowly,
quietly his hand moved back until it grasped the hilt of the big Colt's
revolver that was ever with him--his thin white hand became suddenly
steady as it slipped the weapon beneath the shadow of the desk.

"If it goes to six," he kept murmuring, "we're ruined--if it goes to
six--if--"

"Tick," sounded the wheel and the sound reverberated like sudden thunder
in his ears. His hand was iron, and he raised it slightly. "Six," said
the wheel--his finger quivered--"and a half."

"Hell!" yelled Taylor. "She's turned--there'll be the devil to pay now."
A messenger burst in and Taylor scowled.

"She's loose in New York--a regular mob in New Orleans--and--hark!--By
God! there's something doing here. Damn it--I wish we'd got another
million bales. Let's see, we've got--" He figured while the wheel
whirred--"7--7-1/2--8--8-1/2."

Cresswell listened, staggered to his feet, his face crimson and his hair
wild.

"My God, Taylor," he gasped. "I'm--I'm a half a million ahead--great
heavens!"

The ticker whirred, "8-3/4--9--9-1/2--10." Then it stopped dead.

"Exchange closed," said Taylor. "We've cornered the market all
right--cornered it--d'ye hear, Cresswell? We got over half the crop and
we can send prices to the North Star--you--why, I figure it you
Cresswells are worth at least seven hundred and fifty thousand above
liabilities this minute," and John Taylor leaned back and lighted a big
black cigar.

"I've made a million or so myself," he added reflectively.

Cresswell leaned back in his chair, his face had gone white again, and
he spoke slowly to still the tremor in his voice.

"I've gambled--before; I've gambled on cards and on horses; I've
gambled--for money--and--women--but--"

"But not on cotton, hey? Well, I don't know about cards and such; but
they can't beat cotton."

"And say, John Taylor, you're my friend." Cresswell stretched his hand
across the desk, and as he bent forward the pistol crashed to the floor.




_Nineteen_

THE DYING OF ELSPETH


Rich! This was the thought that awakened Harry Cresswell to a sense of
endless well-being. Rich! No longer the mirage and semblance of wealth,
the memory of opulence, the shadow of homage without the substance of
power--no; now the wealth was real, cold hard dollars, and in piles. How
much? He laughed aloud as he turned on his pillow. What did he care?
Enough--enough. Not less than half a million; perhaps three-quarters of
a million; perhaps--was not cotton still rising?--a whole round million!
That would mean from twenty-five to fifty thousand a year. Great
heavens! and he'd been starving on a bare couple of thousand and trying
to keep up appearances! today the Cresswells were almost millionaires;
aye, and he might be married to more millions.

He sat up with a start. Today Mary was going North. He had quite
forgotten it in the wild excitement of the cotton corner. He had
neglected her. Of course, there was always the hovering doubt as to
whether he really wanted her or not. She had the form and carriage; her
beauty, while not startling, was young and fresh and firm. On the other
hand there was about her a certain independence that he did not like to
associate with women. She had thoughts and notions of the world which
were, to his Southern training, hardly feminine. And yet even they
piqued him and spurred him like the sight of an untrained colt. He had
not seen her falter yet beneath his glances or tremble at his touch. All
this he desired--ardently desired. But did he desire her as a wife? He
rather thought that he did. And if so he must speak today.

There was his father, too, to reckon with. Colonel Cresswell, with the
perversity of the simple-minded, had taken the sudden bettering of their
fortunes as his own doing. He had foreseen; he had stuck it out; his
credit had pulled the thing through; and the trust had learned a thing
or two about Southern gentlemen.

Toward John Taylor he perceptibly warmed. His business methods were such
as a Cresswell could never stoop to; but he was a man of his word, and
Colonel Cresswell's correspondence with Mr. Easterly opened his eyes to
the beneficent ideals of Northern capital. At the same time he could not
consider the Easterlys and the Taylors and such folk as the social
equals of the Cresswells, and his prejudice on this score must still be
reckoned with.

Below, Mary Taylor lingered on the porch in strange uncertainty. Harry
Cresswell would soon be coming downstairs. Did she want him to find her?
She liked him frankly, undisguisedly; but from the love she knew to be
so near her heart she recoiled in perturbation. He wooed her--whether
consciously or not, she was always uncertain--with every quiet
attention and subtle deference, with a devotion seemingly quite too
delicate for words; he not only fetched her flowers, but flowers that
chimed with day and gown and season--almost with mood. He had a woman's
premonitions in fulfilling her wishes. His hands, if they touched her,
were soft and tender, and yet he gave a curious impression of strength
and poise and will.

Indeed, in all things he was in her eyes a gentleman in the fine
old-fashioned aristocracy of the term; her own heart voiced all he did
not say, and pleaded for him to her own confusion.

And yet, in her heart, lay the awful doubt--and the words kept ringing
in her ears! "You will marry this man--but heaven help you if you do!"

So it was that on this day when she somehow felt he would speak, his
footsteps on the stairs filled her with sudden panic. Without a word she
slipped behind the pillars and ran down among the oaks and sauntered out
upon the big road. He caught the white flutter of her dress, and smiled
indulgently as he watched and waited and lightly puffed his cigarette.

The morning was splendid with that first delicious languor of the spring
which breathes over the Southland in February. Mary Taylor filled her
lungs, lifted her arms aloft, and turning, stepped into the deep shadow
of the swamp.

Abruptly the air, the day, the scene about her subtly changed. She felt
a closeness and a tremor, a certain brooding terror in the languid
sombre winds. The gold of the sunlight faded to a sickly green, and the
earth was black and burned. A moment she paused and looked back; she
caught the man's silhouette against the tall white pillars of the
mansion and she fled deeper into the forest with the hush of death about
her, and the silence which is one great Voice. Slowly, and mysteriously
it loomed before her--that squat and darksome cabin which seemed to
fitly set in the centre of the wilderness, beside its crawling slime.

She paused in sudden certainty that there lay the answer to her doubts
and mistrust. She felt impelled to go forward and ask--what? She did not
know, but something to still this war in her bosom. She had seldom seen
Elspeth; she had never been in her cabin. She had felt an inconquerable
aversion for the evil hag; she felt it now, and shivered in the warm
breeze.

As she came in full view of the door, she paused. On the step of the
cabin, framed in the black doorway, stood Zora. Measured by the squat
cabin she seemed in height colossal; slim, straight as a pine,
motionless, with one long outstretched arm pointing to where the path
swept onward toward the town.

It was too far for words but the scene lay strangely clear and sharp-cut
in the green mystery of the sunlight. Before that motionless, fateful
figure crouched a slighter, smaller woman, dishevelled, clutching her
breast; she bent and rose--hesitated--seemed to plead; then turning,
clasped in passionate embrace the child whose head was hid in Zora's
gown. Next instant she was staggering along the path whither Zora
pointed.

Slowly the sun was darkened, and plaintive murmurings pulsed through the
wood. The oppression and fear of the swamp redoubled in Mary Taylor.

Zora gave no sign of having seen her. She stood tall and still, and the
little golden-haired girl still sobbed in her gown. Mary Taylor looked
up into Zora's face, then paused in awe. It was a face she did not know;
it was neither the beautifully mischievous face of the girl, nor the
pain-stricken face of the woman. It was a face cold and mask-like,
regular and comely; clothed in a mighty calm, yet subtly, masterfully
veiling behind itself depths of unfathomed misery and wild revolt. All
this lay in its darkness.

"Good-morning, Miss Taylor."

Mary, who was wont to teach this woman--so lately a child--searched in
vain for words to address her now. She stood bare-haired and hesitating
in the pale green light of the darkened morning. It seemed fit that a
deep groan of pain should gather itself from the mysterious depths of
the swamp, and drop like a pall on the black portal of the cabin. But
it brought Mary Taylor back to a sense of things, and under a sudden
impulse she spoke.

"Is--is anything the matter?" she asked nervously.

"Elspeth is sick," replied Zora.

"Is she very sick?"

"Yes--she has been called," solemnly returned the dark young woman.

Mary was puzzled. "Called?" she repeated vaguely.

"We heard the great cry in the night, and Elspeth says it is the End."

It did not occur to Mary Taylor to question this mysticism; she all at
once understood--perhaps read the riddle in the dark, melancholy eyes
that so steadily regarded her.

"Then you can leave the place, Zora?" she exclaimed gladly.

"Yes, I could leave."

"And you will."

"I don't know."

"But the place looks--evil."

"It is evil."

"And yet you will stay?"

Zora's eyes were now fixed far above the woman's head, and she saw a
human face forming itself in the vast rafters of the forest. Its eyes
were wet with pain and anger.

"Perhaps," she answered.

The child furtively uncovered her face and looked at the stranger. She
was blue-eyed and golden-haired.

"Whose child is this?" queried Mary, curiously.

Zora looked coldly down upon the child.

"It is Bertie's. Her mother is bad. She is gone. I sent her. She and the
others like her."

"But where have you sent them?"

"To Hell!"

Mary Taylor started under the shock. Impulsively she moved forward with
hands that wanted to stretch themselves in appeal.

"Zora! Zora! _You_ mustn't go, too!"

But the black girl drew proudly back.

"I _am_ there," she returned, with unmistakable simplicity of absolute
conviction.

The white woman shrank back. Her heart was wrung; she wanted to say
more--to explain, to ask to help; there came welling to her lips a flood
of things that she would know. But Zora's face again was masked.

"I must go," she said, before Mary could speak. "Good-bye." And the dark
groaning depths of the cabin swallowed her.

With a satisfied smile, Harry Cresswell had seen the Northern girl
disappear toward the swamp; for it is significant when maidens run from
lovers. But maidens should also come back, and when, after the lapse of
many minutes, Mary did not reappear, he followed her footsteps to the
swamp.

He frowned as he noted the footprints pointing to Elspeth's--what did
Mary Taylor want there? A fear started within him, and something else.
He was suddenly aware that he wanted this woman, intensely; at the
moment he would have turned Heaven and earth to get her. He strode
forward and the wood rose darkly green above him. A long, low, distant
moan seemed to sound upon the breeze, and after it came Mary Taylor.

He met her with tender solicitude, and she was glad to feel his arm
beneath hers.

"I've been searching for you," he said after a silence. "You should not
wander here alone--it is dangerous."

"Why, dangerous?" she asked.

"Wandering Negroes, and even wild beasts, in the forest depths--and
malaria--see, you tremble now."

"But not from malaria," she slowly returned.

He caught an unfamiliar note in his voice, and a wild desire to justify
himself before this woman clamored in his heart. With it, too, came a
cooler calculating intuition that frankness alone would win her now. At
all hazards he must win, and he cast the die.

"Miss Taylor," he said, "I want to talk to you--I have wanted to for--a
year." He glanced at her: she was white and silent, but she did not
tremble. He went on:

"I have hesitated because I do not know that I have a right to speak or
explain to--to--a good woman."

He felt her arm tighten on his and he continued:

"You have been to Elspeth's cabin; it is an evil place, and has meant
evil for this community, and for me. Elspeth was my mother's favorite
servant and my own mammy. My mother died when I was ten and left me to
her tender mercies. She let me have my way and encouraged the bad in me.
It's a wonder I escaped total ruin. Her cabin became a rendezvous for
drinking and carousing. I told my father, but he, in lazy indifference,
declared the place no worse than all Negro cabins, and did nothing. I
ceased my visits. Still she tried every lure and set false stories going
among the Negroes, even when I sought to rescue Zora. I tell you this
because I know you have heard evil rumors. I have not been a good
man--Mary; but I love you, and you can make me good."

Perhaps no other appeal would have stirred Mary Taylor. She was in many
respects an inexperienced girl. But she thought she knew the world; she
knew that Harry Cresswell was not all he should be, and she knew too
that many other men were not. Moreover, she argued he had not had a fair
chance. All the school-ma'am in her leaped to his teaching. What he
needed was a superior person like herself. She loved him, and she
deliberately put her arms about his neck and lifted her face to be
kissed.

Back by the place of the Silver Fleece they wandered, across the Big
Road, up to the mansion. On the steps stood John Taylor and Helen
Cresswell hand in hand and they all smiled at each other. The Colonel
came out, smiling too, with the paper in his hands.

"Easterly's right," he beamed, "the stock of the Cotton Combine--" he
paused at the silence and looked up. The smile faded slowly and the red
blood mounted to his forehead. Anger struggled back of surprise, but
before it burst forth silently the Colonel turned, and muttering some
unintelligible word, went slowly into the house and slammed the door.

So for Harry Cresswell the day burst, flamed, and waned, and then
suddenly went out, leaving him dull and gray; for Mary and her brother
had gone North, Helen had gone to bed, and the Colonel was in town.
Outside the weather was gusty and lowering with a chill in the air. He
paced the room fitfully.

Well, he was happy. Or, was he happy?

He gnawed his mustache, for already his quick, changeable nature was
feeling the rebound from glory to misery. He was a little ashamed of his
exaltation; a bit doubtful and uncertain. He had stooped low to this
Yankee school-ma'am, lower than he had ever stooped to a woman. Usually,
while he played at loving, women grovelled; for was he not a Cresswell?
Would this woman recognize that fact and respect him accordingly?

Then there was Zora; what had she said and hinted to Mary? The wench was
always eluding and mocking him, the black devil! But, pshaw!--he poured
himself a glass of brandy--was he not rich and young? The world was his.

His valet knocked.

"Gentleman is asking if you forgits it's Saturday night, sir?" said Sam.

Cresswell walked thoughtfully to the window, swept back the curtain, and
looked toward the darkness and the swamp. It lowered threateningly;
behind it the night sky was tinged with blood.

"No," he said; "I'm not going." And he shut out the glow.

Yet he grew more and more restless. The devil danced in his veins and
burned in his forehead. His hands shook. He heard a rustle of departing
feet beneath his window, then a pause and a faint halloo.

"All right," he called, and in a moment went downstairs and out into
the night. As he closed the front door there seemed to come faintly up
from the swamp a low ululation, like the prolonged cry of some wild
bird, or the wail of one's mourning for his dead.

Within the cabin, Elspeth heard. Tremblingly, she swayed to her feet, a
haggard, awful sight. She motioned Zora away, and stretching her hands
palms upward to the sky, cried with dry and fear-struck gasp:

"I'se called! I'se called!"

On the bed the child smiled in its dreaming; the red flame of the
firelight set the gold to dancing in her hair. Zora shrank back into the
shadows and listened. Then it came. She heard the heavy footsteps
crashing through the underbrush--coming, coming, as from the end of the
world. She shrank still farther back, and a shadow swept the door.

He was a mighty man, black and white-haired, and his eyes were the eyes
of death. He bent to enter the door, and then uplifting himself and
stretching his great arms, his palms touched the blackened rafters.

Zora started forward. Thick memories of some forgotten past came piling
in upon her. Where had she known him? What was he to her?

Slowly Elspeth, with quivering hands, unwound the black and snake-like
object that always guarded her breast. Without a word, he took it, and
again his hands flew heavenward. With a low and fearful moan the old
woman lurched sideways, then crashed, like a fallen pine, upon the
hearthstone. She lay still--dead.

Three times the man passed his hands, wave-like, above the dead. Three
times he murmured, and his eyes burned into the shadows, where the girl
trembled. Then he turned and went as he had come, his heavy feet
crashing through the underbrush, on and on, fainter and fainter, as to
the end of the world.

Zora shook herself from the trance-like horror and passed her hands
across her eyes to drive out the nightmare. But, no! there lay the dead
upon the hearth with the firelight flashing over her, a bloated,
hideous, twisted thing, distorted in the rigor of death. A moment Zora
looked down upon her mother. She felt the cold body whence the
wandering, wrecked soul had passed. She sat down and stared death in the
face for the first time. A mighty questioning arose within, a
questioning and a yearning.

Was Elspeth now at peace? Was Death the Way--the wide, dark Way? She had
never thought of it before, and as she thought she crept forward and
looked into the fearful face pityingly.

"Mammy!" she whispered--with bated breath--"Mammy Elspeth!" Out of the
night came a whispered answer: "_Elspeth! Elspeth!_"

Zora sprang to her feet, alert, fearful. With a swing of her arm, she
pulled the great oaken door to and dropped the bar into its place. Over
the dead she spread a clean white sheet. Into the fire she thrust
pine-knots. They glared in vague red, and shadowy brilliance, waving and
quivering and throwing up thin swirling columns of black smoke. Then
standing beside the fireplace with the white, still corpse between her
and the door, she took up her awful vigil.

There came a low knocking at the door; then silence and footsteps
wandering furtively about. The night seemed all footsteps and whispers.
There came a louder knocking, and a voice:

"_Elspeth! Elspeth! Open the door; it's me._"

Then muttering and wandering noises, and silence again.

The child on the bed turned itself, murmuring uneasily in its dreams.
And then _they_ came. Zora froze, watching the door, wide-eyed, while
the fire flamed redder. A loud quick knock at the door--a pause--an oath
and a cry.

"_Elspeth! Open this door, damn you!_"

A moment of waiting and then the knocking came again, furious and long
continued. Outside there was much trampling and swearing. Zora did not
move; the child slept on. A tugging and dragging, a dull blow that set
the cabin quivering; then,--

"_Bang! Crack! Crash!_"--the door wavered, splintered, and dropped upon
the floor.

With a snarl, a crowd of some half-dozen white faces rushed forward,
wavered and stopped. The awakened child sat up and stared with wide blue
eyes. Slowly, with no word, the intruders turned and went silently away,
leaving but one late comer who pressed forward.

"What damned mummery is this?" he cried, and snatching at the sheet,
dragged it from the black distorted countenance of the corpse. He
shuddered but for a moment he could not stir. He felt the midnight eyes
of the girl--he saw the twisted, oozing mouth of the hag, blue-black and
hideous.

Suddenly back behind there in the darkness a shriek split the night like
a sudden flash of flame--a great ringing scream that cracked and swelled
and stopped. With one wild effort the man hurled himself out the door
and plunged through the darkness. Panting and cursing, he flashed his
huge revolver--"_bang! bang! bang!_" it cracked into the night. The
sweat poured from his forehead; the terror of the swamp was upon him.
With a struggling and tearing in his throat, he tripped and fell
fainting under the silent oaks.




_Twenty_

THE WEAVING OF THE SILVER FLEECE


The Silver Fleece, darkly cloaked and girded, lay in the cotton
warehouse of the Cresswells, near the store. Its silken fibres, cramped
and close, shone yellow-white in the sunlight; sadly soiled, yet
beautiful. Many came to see Zora's twin bales, as they lay, handling
them and questioning, while Colonel Cresswell grew proud of his
possession.


The world was going well with the Colonel. Freed from money cares,
praised for his generalship in the cotton corner, able to entertain
sumptuously, he was again a Southern gentleman of the older school, and
so in his envied element. Yet today he frowned as he stood poking
absently with his cane at the baled Fleece.

This marriage--or, rather, these marriages--were not to his liking. It
was a _mesalliance_ of a sort that pricked him tenderly; it savored
grossly of bargain and sale. His neighbors regarded it with
disconcerting equanimity. They seemed to think an alliance with
Northern millions an honor for Cresswell blood, and the Colonel thumped
the nearer bale vigorously. His cane slipped along the iron bands
suddenly, and the old man lurching forward, clutched in space to save
himself and touched a human hand.

Zora, sitting shadowed on the farther bale, drew back her hand quickly
at the contact, and started to move away.

"Who's that?" thundered the Colonel, more angry at his involuntary
fright than at the intrusion. "Here, boys!"

But Zora had come forward into the space where the sunlight of the wide
front doors poured in upon the cotton bales.

"It's me, Colonel," she said.

He glared at her. She was taller and thinner than formerly, darkly
transparent of skin, and her dark eyes shone in strange and dusky
brilliance. Still indignant and surprised, the Colonel lifted his voice
sharply.

"What the devil are you doing here?--sleeping when you ought to be at
work! Get out! And see here, next week cotton chopping begins--you'll go
to the fields or to the chain-gang. I'll have no more of your loafing
about my place."

Awaiting no reply, the Colonel, already half ashamed of his vehemence,
stormed out into the sunlight and climbed upon his bay mare.

But Zora still stood silent in the shadow of the Silver Fleece, hearing
and yet not hearing. She was searching for the Way, groping for the
threads of life, seeking almost wildly to understand the foundations of
understanding, piteously asking for answer to the puzzle of life. All
the while the walls rose straight about her and narrow. To continue in
school meant charity, yet she had nowhere to go and nothing to go with.
To refuse to work for the Cresswells meant trouble for the school and
perhaps arrest for herself. To work in the fields meant endless toil and
a vista that opened upon death.

Like a hunted thing the girl turned and twisted in thought and faced
everywhere the blank Impossible. Cold and dreamlike without, her shut
teeth held back seething fires within, and a spirit of revolt that
gathered wildness as it grew. Above all flew the dream, the phantasy,
the memory of the past, the vision of the future. Over and over she
whispered to herself: "This is not the End; this can not be the End."

Somehow, somewhere, would come salvation. Yet what it would be and what
she expected she did not know. She sought the Way, but what way and
whither she did not know, she dared not dream.

One thing alone lay in her wild fancy like a great and wonderful fact
dragging the dream to earth and anchoring it there. That was the Silver
Fleece. Like a brooding mother, Zora had watched it. She knew how the
gin had been cleaned for its pressing and how it had been baled apart
and carefully covered. She knew how proud Colonel Cresswell was of it
and how daily he had visitors to see it and finger the wide white wound
in its side.

"Yes, sir, grown on my place, by my niggers, sir!" he assured them; and
they marvelled.

To Zora's mind, this beautiful baled fibre was hers; it typified
happiness; it was an holy thing which profane hands had stolen. When it
came back to her (as come it must, she cried with clenched hands) it
would bring happiness; not the great Happiness--that was gone
forever--but illumination, atonement, and something of the power and the
glory. So, involuntarily almost, she haunted the cotton storehouse,
flitting like a dark and silent ghost in among the workmen, greeting
them with her low musical voice, warding them with the cold majesty of
her eyes; each day afraid of some last parting, each night
triumphant--it was still there!

The Colonel--Zora already forgotten--rode up to the Cresswell Oaks,
pondering darkly. It was bad enough to contemplate Helen's marriage in
distant prospect, but the sudden, almost peremptory desire for marrying
at Eastertide, a little less than two months away, was absurd. There
were "business reasons arising from the presidential campaign in the
fall," John Taylor had telegraphed; but there was already too much
business in the arrangement to suit the Colonel. With Harry it was
different. Indeed it was his own quiet suggestion that made John Taylor
hurry matters.

Harry trusted to the novelty of his father's new wealth to make the
latter complacent; he himself felt an impatient longing for the haven of
a home. He had been too long untethered. He distrusted himself. The
devil within was too fond of taking the bit in his teeth. He would
remember to his dying day one awful shriek in the night, as of a soul
tormenting and tormented. He wanted the protection of a good woman, and
sometimes against the clear whiteness of her letters so joyous and
generous, even if a bit prim and didactic, he saw a vision of himself
reflected as he was, and he feared.

It was distinctively disconcerting to Colonel Cresswell to find Harry
quite in favor of early nuptials, and to learn that the sole objection
even in Helen's mind was the improbability of getting a wedding-gown in
time. Helen had all a child's naive love for beautiful and dainty
things, and a wedding-gown from Paris had been her life dream. On this
point, therefore, there ensued spirited arguments and much
correspondence, and both her brother and her lover evinced
characteristic interest in the planning.

Said Harry: "Sis, I'll cable to Paris today. They can easily hurry the
thing along."

Helen was delighted; she handed over a telegram just received from John
Taylor. "Send me, express, two bales best cotton you can get."

The Colonel read the message. "I don't see the connection between this
and hurrying up a wedding-gown," he growled. None of them discerned the
handwriting of Destiny.

"Neither do I," said Harry, who detected yielding in his father's tone.
"But we'd better send him the two prize bales; it will be a fine
advertisement of our plantation, and evidently he has a surprise in
store for us."

The Colonel affected to hesitate, but next morning the Silver Fleece
went to town.

Zora watched it go, and her heart swelled and died within her. She
walked to town, to the station. She did not see Mrs. Vanderpool arriving
from New Orleans; but Mrs. Vanderpool saw her, and looked curiously at
the tall, tragic figure that leaned so dolorously beside the freight
car. The bales were loaded into the express car; the train pulled away,
its hoarse snorting waking vague echoes in the forest beyond. But to the
girl who stood at the End, looking outward to darkness, those echoes
roared like the crack of doom. A passing band of contract hands called
to her mockingly, and one black giant, laughing loudly, gripped her
hand.

"Come, honey," he shouted, "you'se a'dreaming! Come on, honey!"

She turned abruptly and gripped his hand, as one drowning grips anything
offered--gripped till he winced. She laughed a loud mirthless laugh,
that came pouring like a sob from her deep lungs.

"Come on!" she mocked, and joined them.

They were a motley crowd, ragged, swaggering, jolly. There were husky,
big-limbed youths, and bold-faced, loud-tongued girls. To-morrow they
would start up-country to some backwoods barony in the kingdom of
cotton, and work till Christmas time. Today was the last in town; there
was craftily advanced money in their pockets and riot in their hearts.
In the gathering twilight they marched noisily through the streets; in
their midst, wide-eyed and laughing almost hysterically, marched Zora.

Mrs. Vanderpool meantime rode thoughtfully out of town toward Cresswell
Oaks. She was returning from witnessing the Mardi Gras festivities at
New Orleans and at the urgent invitation of the Cresswells had stopped
off. She might even stay to the wedding if the new plans matured.

Mrs. Vanderpool was quite upset. Her French maid, on whom she had
depended absolutely for five years or more, had left her.

"I think I want to try a colored maid," she told the Cresswells,
laughingly, as they drove home. "They have sweet voices and they can't
doff their uniform. Helene without her cap and apron was often mistaken
for a lady, and while I was in New Orleans a French confectioner married
her under some such delusion. Now, haven't you a girl about here who
would do?"

"No," declared Harry decisively, but his sister suggested that she might
ask Miss Smith at the colored school.

Again Mrs. Vanderpool laughed, but after tea she wandered idly down the
road. The sun behind the swamp was crimsoning the world. Mrs. Vanderpool
strolled alone to the school, and saw Sarah Smith. There was no
cordiality in the latter's greeting, but when she heard the caller's
errand her attention was at once arrested and held. The interests of her
charges were always uppermost in her mind.

"Can't I have the girl Zora?" Mrs. Vanderpool at last inquired.

Miss Smith started, for she was thinking of Zora at that very instant.
The girl was later than usual, and she was momentarily expecting to see
her tall form moving languidly up the walk.

She gave Mrs. Vanderpool a searching look. Mrs. Vanderpool glanced
involuntarily at her gown and smiled as she did it.

"Could I trust you with a human soul?" asked Miss Smith abruptly.

Mrs. Vanderpool looked up quickly. The half mocking answer that rose
involuntarily to her lips was checked. Within, Mrs. Vanderpool was a
little puzzled at herself. Why had she asked for this girl? She had felt
a strange interest in her--a peculiar human interest since she first saw
her and as she saw her again this afternoon. But would she make a
satisfactory maid? Was it not a rather dangerous experiment? Why had she
asked for her? She certainly had not intended to when she entered the
house.

In the silence Miss Smith continued: "Here is a child in whom the
fountains of the great deep are suddenly broken up. With peace and care
she would find herself, for she is strong. But here there is no peace.
Slavery of soul and body awaits her and I am powerless to protect her.
She must go away. That going away may make or ruin her. She knows
nothing of working for wages and she has not the servant's humility; but
she has loyalty and pluck. For one she loves there is nothing she would
not do; but she cannot be driven. Or rather, if she is driven, it may
rouse in her the devil incarnate. She needs not exactly affection--she
would almost resent that--but intelligent interest and care. In return
for this she will gradually learn to serve and serve loyally. Frankly,
Mrs. Vanderpool, I would not have chosen you for this task of human
education. Indeed, you would have been my last thought--you seem to
me--I speak plainly--a worldly woman. Yet, perhaps--who can tell?--God
has especially set you to this task. At any rate, I have little choice.
I am at my wits' end. Elspeth, the mother of this child, is not long
dead; and here is the girl, beautiful, unprotected; and here am I,
almost helpless. She is in debt to the Cresswells, and they are pressing
the claim to her service. Take her if you can get her--it is, I fear,
her only chance. Mind you--if you can persuade her; and that may be
impossible."

"Where is she now?"

Miss Smith glanced out at the darkening landscape, and then at her
watch.

"I do not know; she's very late. She's given to wandering, but usually
she is here before this time."

"I saw her in town this afternoon," said Mrs. Vanderpool.

"Zora? In town?" Miss Smith rose. "I'll send her to you tomorrow," she
said quietly. Mrs. Vanderpool had hardly reached the Oaks before Miss
Smith was driving toward town.

A small cabin on the town's ragged fringe was crowded to suffocation.
Within arose noisy shouts, loud songs, and raucous laughter; the
scraping of a fiddle and whine of an accordion. Liquor began to appear
and happy faces grew red-eyed and sodden as the dances whirled. At the
edge of the orgy stood Zora, wild-eyed and bewildered, mad with the pain
that gripped her heart and hammered in her head, crying in tune with the
frenzied music--"the End--the End!"

Abruptly she recognized a face despite the wreck and ruin of its beauty.

"Bertie!" she cried as she seized the mother of little Emma by the arm.

The woman staggered and offered her glass.

"Drink," she cried, "drink and forget."

In a moment Zora sprang forward and seized the burning liquid in both
hands. A dozen hands clapped a devil's tattoo. A score of voices yelled
and laughed. The shriek of the music was drowned beneath the thunder of
stamping feet. Men reeled to singing women's arms, but above the roar
rose the song of the voice of Zora--she glided to the middle of the
room, standing tip-toed with skirts that curled and turned; she threw
back her head, raised the liquor to her lips, paused and looked into the
face of Miss Smith.

A silence fell like a lightning flash on the room as that white face
peered in at the door. Slowly Zora's hands fell and her eyes blinked as
though waking from some awful dream. She staggered toward the woman's
outstretched arms....

Late that night the girl lay close in Miss Smith's motherly embrace.

"I was going to hell!" she whispered, trembling.

"Why, Zora?" asked Miss Smith calmly.

"I couldn't find the Way--and I wanted to forget."

"People in hell don't forget," was the matter-of-fact comment. "And,
Zora, what way do you seek? The way where?"

Zora sat up in bed, and lifted a gray and stricken face.

"It's a lie," she cried, with hoarse earnedstness, "the way nowhere.
There is no Way! You know--I want _him_--I want nothing on earth but
him--and him I can't ever have."

The older woman drew her down tenderly.

"No, Zora," she said, "there's something you want more than him and
something you can have!"

"What?" asked the wondering girl.

"His respect," said Sarah Smith, "and I know the Way."




_Twenty-one_

THE MARRIAGE MORNING


Mrs. Vanderpool watched Zora as she came up the path beneath the oaks.
"She walks well," she observed. And laying aside her book, she waited
with a marked curiosity.

The girl's greeting was brief, almost curt, but unintentionally so, as
one could easily see, for back in her eyes lurked an impatient hunger;
she was not thinking of greetings. She murmured a quick word, and stood
straight and tall with her eyes squarely on the lady.

In the depths of Mrs. Vanderpool's heart something strange--not new, but
very old--stirred. Before her stood this tall black girl, quietly
returning her look. Mrs. Vanderpool had a most uncomfortable sense of
being judged, of being weighed,--and there arose within her an impulse
to self-justification.

She smiled and said sweetly, "Won't you sit?" But despite all this, her
mind seemed leaping backward a thousand years; back to a simpler,
primal day when she herself, white, frail, and fettered, stood before
the dusky magnificence of some bejewelled barbarian queen and sought to
justify herself. She shook off the phantasy,--and yet how well the girl
stood. It was not every one that could stand still and well.

"Please sit down," she repeated with her softest charm, not dreaming
that outside the school white persons did not ask this girl to sit in
their presence. But even this did not move Zora. She sat down. There was
in her, walking, standing, sitting, a simple directness which Mrs.
Vanderpool sensed and met.

"Zora, I need some one to help me--to do my hair and serve my coffee,
and dress and take care of me. The work will not be hard, and you can
travel and see the world and live well. Would you like it?"

"But I do not know how to do all these things," returned Zora, slowly.
She was thinking rapidly--Was this the Way? It sounded wonderful. The
World, the great mysterious World, that stretched beyond the swamp and
into which Bles and the Silver Fleece had gone--did it lead to the Way?
But if she went there what would she see and do, and would it be
possible to become such a woman as Miss Smith pictured?

"What is the world like?" asked Zora.

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled. "Oh, I meant great active cities and buildings,
myriads of people and wonderful sights."

"Yes--but back of it all, what is it really? What does it look like?"

"Heavens, child! Don't ask. Really, it isn't worth while peering back of
things. One is sure to be disappointed."

"Then what's the use of seeing the world?"

"Why, one must live; and why not be happy?" answered Mrs. Vanderpool,
amused, baffled, spurred for the time being from her chronic _ennui_.

"Are you happy?" retorted Zora, looking her over carefully, from silken
stockings to garden hat. Mrs. Vanderpool laid aside her little mockery
and met the situation bravely.

"No," she replied simply. Her eyes grew old and tired.

Involuntarily Zora's hand crept out protectingly and lay a moment over
the white jewelled fingers. Then quickly recovering herself, she started
hastily to withdraw it, but the woman's fingers closed around the darker
ones, and Mrs. Vanderpool's eyes became dim.

"I need you, Zora," she said; and then, seeing the half-formed question,
"Yes, and you need me; we need each other. In the world lies
opportunity, and I will help you."

Zora rose abruptly, and Mrs. Vanderpool feared, with a tightening of
heart, that she had lost this strangely alluring girl.

"I will come to-morrow," said Zora.

As Mrs. Vanderpool went in to lunch, reaction and lingering doubts came
trouping back. To replace the daintiest of trained experts with the most
baffling semi-barbarian, well!

"Have you hired a maid?" asked Helen.

"I've engaged Zora," laughed Mrs. Vanderpool, lightly; "and now I'm
wondering whether I have a jewel or--a white elephant."

"Probably neither," remarked Harry Cresswell, drily; but he avoided the
lady's inquiring eyes.

Next morning Zora came easily into Mrs. Vanderpool's life. There was
little she knew of her duties, but little, too, that she could not learn
with a deftness and divination almost startling. Her quietness, her
quickness, her young strength, were like a soothing balm to the tired
woman of fashion, and within a week she had sunk back contentedly into
Zora's strong arms.

"It's a jewel," she decided.

With this verdict, the house agreed. The servants waited on "Miss Zora"
gladly; the men scarcely saw her, and the ladies ran to her for help in
all sorts. Harry Cresswell looked upon this transformation with an
amused smile, but the Colonel saw in it simply evidence of dangerous
obstinacy in a black girl who hitherto had refused to work.

Zora had been in the house but a week when a large express package was
received from John Taylor. Its unwrapping brought a cry of pleasure
from the ladies. There lay a bolt of silken-like cambric of wondrous
fineness and lustre, marked: "For the wedding-dress." The explanation
accompanied the package, that Mary Taylor had a similar piece in the
North.

Helen and Harry said nothing of the cablegram to the Paris tailor, and
Helen took no steps toward having the cambric dress made, not even when
the wedding invitations appeared.

"A Cresswell married in cotton!" Helen was almost in tears lest the
Paris gown be delayed, and sure enough a cablegram came at last saying
that there was little likelihood of the gown being ready by Easter. It
would be shipped at the earliest convenience, but it could hardly catch
the necessary boat. Helen had a good cry, and then came a wild rush to
get John Taylor's cloth ready. Still, Helen was querulous. She decided
that silk embroidery must embellish the skirt. The dressmaker was in
despair.

"I haven't a single spare worker," she declared.

Helen was appealing to Mrs. Vanderpool.

"I can do it," said Zora, who was in the room.

"Do you know how?" asked the dressmaker.

"No, but I want to know."

Mrs. Vanderpool gave a satisfied nod. "Show her," she said. The
dressmaker was on the edge of rebellion. "Zora sews beautifully," added
Mrs. Vanderpool.

Thus the beautiful cloth came to Zora's room, and was spread in a glossy
cloud over her bed. She trembled at its beauty and felt a vague inner
yearning, as if some subtle magic of the woven web were trying to tell
her its story.

She worked over it faithfully and lovingly in every spare hour and in
long nights of dreaming. Wilfully she departed from the set pattern and
sewed into the cloth something of the beauty in her heart. In new and
intricate ways, with soft shadowings and coverings, she wove in that
white veil her own strange soul, and Mrs. Vanderpool watched her
curiously, but in silence.

Meantime all things were arranged for a double wedding at Cresswell
Oaks. As John and Mary Taylor had no suitable home, they were to come
down and the two brides to go forth from the Cresswell mansion.
Accordingly the Taylors arrived a week before the wedding and the home
took on a festive air. Even Colonel Cresswell expanded under the genial
influences, and while his head still protested his heart was glad. He
had to respect John Taylor's undoubted ability; and Mary Taylor was
certainly lovely, in spite of that assumption of cleverness of which the
Colonel could not approve.

Mary returned to the old scenes with mingled feelings. Especially was
she startled at seeing Zora a member of the household and apparently
high in favor. It brought back something of the old uneasiness and
suspicion.

All this she soon forgot under the cadence of Harry Cresswell's pleasant
voice and the caressing touch of his arm. He seemed handsomer than ever;
and he was, for sleep and temperance and the wooing of a woman had put a
tinge in his marble face, smoothed the puffs beneath his eyes, and given
him a more distinguished bearing and a firmer hand. And Mary Taylor was
very happy. So was her brother, only differently; he was making money;
he was planning to make more, and he had something to pet which seemed
to him extraordinarily precious and valuable.

Taylor eagerly inquired after the cloth, and followed the ladies to
Zora's room, adjoining Mrs. Vanderpool's, to see it. It lay uncut and
shimmering, covered with dim silken tracery of a delicacy and beauty
which brought an exclamation to all lips.

"That's what we can do with Alabama cotton," cried John Taylor in
triumph.

They turned to him incredulously.

"But--"

"No 'buts' about it; these are the two bales you sent me, woven with a
silk woof." No one particularly noticed that Zora had hastily left the
room. "I had it done in Easterly's New Jersey mills according to an old
plan of mine. I'm going to make cloth like that right in this county
some day," and he chuckled gayly.

But Zora was striding up and down the halls, the blood surging in her
ears. After they were gone she came back and closed the doors. She
dropped on her knees and buried her face in the filmy folds of the
Silver Fleece.

"I knew it! I knew it!" she whispered in mingled tears and joy. "It
called and I did not understand."

It was her talisman new-found; her love come back, her stolen dream come
true. Now she could face the world; God had turned it straight again.
She would go into the world and find--not Love, but the thing greater
than Love. Outside the door came voices--the dressmaker's tones, Helen's
soft drawl, and Mrs. Vanderpool's finished accents. Her face went
suddenly gray. The Silver Fleece was not hers! It belonged--She rose
hastily. The door opened and they came in. The cutting must begin at
once, they all agreed.

"Is it ready, Zora?" inquired Helen.

"No," Zora quietly answered, "not quite, but tomorrow morning, early."
As soon as she was alone again, she sat down and considered. By and by,
while the family was at lunch, she folded the Silver Fleece carefully
and locked it in her new trunk. She would hide it in the swamp. During
the afternoon she sent to town for oil-cloth, and bade the black
carpenter at Miss Smith's make a cedar box, tight and tarred. In the
morning she prepared Mrs. Vanderpool's breakfast with unusual care. She
was sorry for Mrs. Vanderpool, and sorry for Miss Smith. They would not,
they could not, understand. What would happen to her? She did not know;
she did not care. The Silver Fleece had returned to her. Soon it would
be buried in the swamp whence it came. She had no alternative; she must
keep it and wait.

She heard the dressmaker's voice, and then her step upon the stair. She
heard the sound of Harry Cresswell's buggy, and a scurrying at the front
door. On came the dressmaker's footsteps--then her door was
unceremoniously burst open.

Helen Cresswell stood there radiant; the dressmaker, too, was wreathed
in smiles. She carried a big red-sealed bundle.

"Zora!" cried Helen in ecstasy. "It's come!" Zora regarded her coldly,
and stood at bay. The dressmaker was ripping and snipping, and soon
there lay revealed before them--the Paris gown!

Helen was in raptures, but her conscience pricked her. She appealed to
them. "Ought I to tell? You see, Mary's gown will look miserably common
beside it."

The dressmaker was voluble. There was really nothing to tell; and
besides, Helen was a Cresswell and it was to be expected, and so forth.
Helen pursed her lips and petulantly tapped the floor with her foot.

"But the other gown?"

"Where is it?" asked the dressmaker, looking about. "It would make a
pretty morning-dress--"

But Helen had taken a sudden dislike to the thought of it.

"I don't want it," she declared. "And besides, I haven't room for it in
my trunks."

Of a sudden she leaned down and whispered to Zora: "Zora, hide it and
keep it if you want it. Come," to the dressmaker, "I'm dying to try this
on--now.... Remember, Zora--not a word." And all this to Zora seemed no
surprise; it was the Way, and it was opening before her because the
talisman lay in her trunk.

So at last it came to Easter morning. The world was golden with jasmine,
and crimson with azalea; down in the darker places gleamed the misty
glory of the dogwood; new cotton shook, glimmered, and blossomed in the
black fields, and over all the soft Southern sun poured its awakening
light of life. There was happiness and hope again in the cabins, and
hope and--if not happiness, ambition, in the mansions.

Zora, almost forgetting the wedding, stood before the mirror. Laying
aside her dress, she draped her shimmering cloth about her, dragging her
hair down in a heavy mass over ears and neck until she seemed herself a
bride. And as she stood there, awed with the mystical union of a dead
love and a living new born self, there came drifting in at the window,
faintly, the soft sound of far-off marriage music.

"'Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!"

Two white and white-swathed brides were coming slowly down the great
staircase of Cresswell Oaks, and two white and black-clothed bridegrooms
awaited them. Either bridegroom looked gladly at the flow of his
sister's garments and almost darkly at his bride's. For Helen was decked
in Parisian splendor, while Mary was gowned in the Fleece.

"'Tis thy marriage morning, shining in the sun!"

Up floated the song of the little dark-faced children, and Zora
listened.




_Twenty-two_

MISS CAROLINE WYNN


Bles Alwyn was seated in the anteroom of Senator Smith's office in
Washington. The Senator had not come in yet, and there were others
waiting, too.

The young man sat in a corner, dreaming. Washington was his first great
city, and it seemed a never-ending delight--the streets, the buildings,
the crowds; the shops, and lights, and noise; the kaleidoscopic panorama
of a world's doing, the myriad forms and faces, the talk and laughter of
men. It was all wonderful magic to the country boy, and he stretched his
arms and filled his lungs and cried: "Here I shall live!"

Especially was he attracted by his own people. They seemed transformed,
revivified, changed. Some might be mistaken for field hands on a
holiday--but not many. Others he did not recognize--they seemed strange
and alien--sharper, quicker, and at once more overbearing and more
unscrupulous.

There were yet others--and at the sight of these Bles stood straighter
and breathed like a man. They were well dressed, and well appearing men
and women, who walked upright and looked one in the eye, and seemed like
persons of affairs and money. They had arrived--they were men--they
filled his mind's ideal--he felt like going up to them and grasping
their hands and saying, "At last, brother!" Ah, it was good to find
one's dreams, walking in the light, in flesh and blood. Continually such
thoughts were surging through his brain, and they were rioting through
it again as he sat waiting in Senator Smith's office.

The Senator was late this morning; when he came in he glanced at the
morning paper before looking over his mail and the list of his callers.
"Do fools like the American people deserve salvation?" he sneered,
holding off the headlines and glancing at them.

"'League Beats Trust.' ... 'Farmers of South Smash Effort to Bear Market
... Send Cotton to Twelve Cents ... Common People Triumph.'

"A man is induced to bite off his own nose and then to sing a paean of
victory. It's nauseating--senseless. There is no earthly use striving
for such blockheads; they'd crucify any Saviour." Thus half consciously
Senator Smith salved his conscience, while he extracted a certificate of
deposit for fifty thousand dollars from his New York mail. He thrust it
aside from his secretary's view and looked at his list as he rang the
bell: there was Representative Todd, and somebody named Alwyn--nobody of
importance. Easterly was due in a half-hour. He would get rid of Todd
meantime.

"Poor Todd," he mused; "a lamb for the slaughter."

But he patiently listened to him plead for party support and influence
for his bill to prohibit gambling in futures.

"I was warned that it was useless to see you, Senator Smith, but I would
come. I believe in you. Frankly, there is a strong group of your old
friends and followers forming against you; they met only last night, but
I did not go. Won't you take a stand on some of these progressive
matters--this bill, or the Child Labor movement, or Low Tariff
legislation?"

Mr. Smith listened but shook his head.

"When the time comes," he announced deliberately, "I shall have
something to say on several of these matters. At present I can only say
that I cannot support this bill," and Mr. Todd was ushered out. He met
Mr. Easterly coming in and greeted him effusively. He knew him only as a
rich philanthropist, who had helped the Neighborhood Guild in
Washington--one of Todd's hobbies.

Easterly greeted Smith quietly.

"Got my letter?"

"Yes."

"Here are the three bills. You will go on the Finance Committee
tomorrow; Sumdrich is chairman by courtesy, but you'll have the real
power. Put the Child Labor Bill first, and we'll work the press. The
Tariff will take most of the session, of course. We'll put the cotton
inspection bill through in the last days of the session--see? I'm
manoeuvring to get the Southern Congressmen into line.... Oh, one thing.
Thompson says he's a little worried about the Negroes; says there's
something more than froth in the talk of a bolt in the Northern Negro
vote. We may have to give them a little extra money and a few more minor
offices than usual. Talk with Thompson; the Negroes are sweet on you and
he's going to be the new chairman of the campaign, you know. Ever met
him?"

"Yes."

"Well--so long."

"Just a moment," the statesman stayed the financier.

"Todd just let fall something of a combination against us in
Congress--know anything of it?"

"Not definitely; I heard some rumors. Better see if you can run it down.
Well, I must hurry--good day."

While Bles Alwyn in the outer office was waiting and musing, a lady
came in. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the curve of her gown,
and as she seated herself beside him, the suggestion of a faint perfume.
A vague resentment rose in him. Colored women would look as well as
that, he argued, with the clothes and wealth and training. He paused,
however, in his thought: he did not want them like the whites--so cold
and formal and precise, without heart or marrow. He started up, for the
secretary was speaking to him.

"Are you the--er--the man who had a letter to the Senator?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let me see it. Oh, yes--he will see you in a moment."

Bles was returning the letter to his pocket when he heard a voice almost
at his ear.

"I beg your pardon--"

He turned and started. It was the lady next to him, and she was colored!
Not extremely colored, but undoubtedly colored, with waving black hair,
light brown skin, and the fuller facial curving of the darker world. And
yet Bles was surprised, for everything else about her--her voice, her
bearing, the set of her gown, her gloves and shoes, the whole impression
was--Bles hesitated for a word--well, "white."

"Yes--yes, ma'am," he stammered, becoming suddenly conscious that the
lady had now a second time asked him if he was acquainted with Senator
Smith. "That is, ma'am,"--why was he saying "ma'am," like a child or a
servant?--"I know his sister and have a letter for him."

"Do you live in Washington?" she inquired.

"No--but I want to. I've been trying to get in as a clerk, and I haven't
succeeded yet. That's what I'm going to see Senator Smith about."

"Have you had the civil-service examinations?"

"Yes. I made ninety-three in the examination for a treasury clerkship."

"And no appointment? I see--they are not partial to us there."

Bles was glad to hear her say "us."

She continued after a pause:

"May I venture to ask a favor of you?"

"Certainly," he responded.

"My name is Wynn," lowering her voice slightly and leaning toward him.
"There are so many ahead of me and I am in a hurry to get to my school;
but I must see the Senator--couldn't I go in with you? I think I might
be of service in this matter of the examination, and then perhaps I'd
get a chance to say a word for myself."

"I'd be very glad to have you come," said Bles, cordially.

The secretary hesitated a little when the two started in, but Miss
Wynn's air was so quietly assured that he yielded.

Senator Smith looked at the tall, straight black man with his smooth
skin and frank eyes. And for a second time that morning a vision of his
own youth dimmed his eyes. But he spoke coldly:

"Mr. Alwyn, I believe."

"Yes, sir."

"And--"

"My friend, Miss Wynn."

The Senator glanced at Miss Wynn and she bowed demurely. Then he turned
to Alwyn.

"Well, Mr. Alwyn, Washington is a bad place to start in the world."

Bles looked surprised and incredulous. He could conceive of no finer
starting-place, but he said nothing.

"It is a grave," continued the Senator, "of ambitions and ideals. You
would far better go back to Alabama"--pausing and looking at the young
man keenly--"but you won't--you won't--not yet, at any rate." And Bles
shook his head slowly.

"No--well, what can I do for you?"

"I want work--I'll do anything."

"No, you'll do one thing--be a clerk, and then if you have the right
stuff in you you will throw up that job in a year and start again."

"I'd like at least to try it, sir."

"Well, I can't help you much there; that's in civil-service, and you
must take the examination."

"I have, sir."

"So? Where, and what mark?"

"In the Treasury Department; I got a mark of ninety-three."

"What!--and no appointment?" The Senator was incredulous.

"No, sir; not yet."

Here Miss Wynn interposed.

"You see, Senator," she said, "civil-service rules are not always
impervious to race prejudice."

The Senator frowned.

"Do you mean to intimate that Mr. Alwyn's appointment is held up because
he is colored?"

"I do."

"Well--well!" The Senator rang for a clerk.

"Get me the Treasury on the telephone."

In a moment the bell rang.

"I want Mr. Cole. Is that you, Mr. Cole? Good-morning. Have you a young
man named Alwyn on your eligible list? What? Yes?" A pause. "Indeed?
Well, why has he no appointment? Of course, I know, he's a Negro. Yes, I
desire it very much--thank you."

"You'll get an appointment to-morrow morning," and the Senator rose.
"How is my sister?" he asked absently.

"She was looking worried, but hopeful of the new endowment when I left."
The Senator held out his hand; Bles took it and then remembered.


"Oh, I beg pardon, but Miss Wynn wanted a word on another matter."

The Senator turned to Miss Wynn.

"I am a school-teacher, Senator Smith, and like all the rest of us I am
deeply interested in the appointment of the new school-board."

"But you know the district committee attends to those things," said the
Senator hastily. "And then, too, I believe there is talk of abolishing
the school-board and concentrating power in the hands of the
superintendent."

"Precisely," said Miss Wynn. "And I came to tell you, Senator Smith,
that the interests which are back of this attack upon the schools are no
friends of yours." Miss Wynn extracted from her reticule a typewritten
paper.

He took the paper and read it intently. Then he keenly scrutinized the
young woman, and she steadily returned his regard.

"How am I to know this is true?"

"Follow it up and see."

He mused.

"Where did you get these facts?" he asked suddenly.

She smiled.

"It is hardly necessary to say."

"And yet," he persisted, "if I were sure of its source I would know my
ground better and--my obligation to you would be greater."

She laughed and glanced toward Alwyn. He had moved out of earshot and
was waiting by the window.

"I am a teacher in the M Street High School," she said, "and we have
some intelligent boys there who work their way through."

"Yes," said the Senator.

"Some," continued Miss Wynn, tapping her boot on the carpet, "some--wait
on table."

The Senator slowly put the paper in his pocket.

"And now," he said, "Miss Wynn, what can I do for you?"

She looked at him.

"If Judge Haynes is reappointed to the school-board I shall probably
continue to teach in the M Street High School," she said slowly.

The Senator made a memorandum and said:

"I shall not forget Miss Wynn--nor her friends." And he bowed, glancing
at Alwyn.

The woman contemplated Bles in momentary perplexity, then bowing in
turn, left. Bles followed, debating just what he ought to say, how far
he might venture to accompany her, what--but she easily settled it all.

"I thank you--good-bye," she said briefly at the door, and was gone.
Bles did not know whether to feel relieved or provoked, or disappointed,
and by way of compromise felt something of all three.

The next morning he received notice of his appointment to a clerkship in
the Treasury Department, at a salary of nine hundred dollars. The sum
seemed fabulous and he was in the seventh heaven. For many days the
consciousness of wealth, the new duties, the street scenes, and the city
life kept him more than busy. He planned to study, and arranged with a
professor at Howard University to guide him. He bought an armful of
books and a desk, and plunged desperately to work.

Gradually as he became used to the office routine, and in the hours when
he was weary of study, he began to find time hanging a little heavily on
his hands; indeed--although he would not acknowledge it--he was getting
lonesome, homesick, amid the myriad men of a busy city. He argued to
himself that this was absurd, and yet he knew that he was longing for
human companionship. When he looked about him for fellowship he found
himself in a strange dilemma: those black folk in whom he recognized the
old sweet-tempered Negro traits, had also looser, uglier manners than he
was accustomed to, from which he shrank. The upper classes of Negroes,
on the other hand, he still observed from afar; they were strangers not
only in acquaintance but because of a curious coldness and aloofness
that made them cease to seem his own kind; they seemed almost at times
like black white people--strangers in way and thought.

He tried to shake off this feeling but it clung, and at last in sheer
desperation, he promised to go out of a night with a fellow clerk who
rather boasted of the "people" he knew. He was soon tired of the
strange company, and had turned to go home, when he met a newcomer in
the doorway.

"Why, hello, Sam! Sam Stillings!" he exclaimed delightedly, and was soon
grasping the hand of a slim, well-dressed man of perhaps thirty, with
yellow face, curling hair, and shifting eyes.

"Well, of all things, Bles--er--ah--Mr. Alwyn! Thought you were hoeing
cotton."

Bles laughed and continued shaking his head. He was foolishly glad to
see the former Cresswell butler, whom he had known but slightly. His
face brought back unuttered things that made his heart beat faster and a
yearning surge within him.

"I thought you went to Chicago," cried Bles.

"I did, but goin' into politics--having entered the political field, I
came here. And you graduated, I suppose, and all that?"

"No," Bless admitted a little sadly, as he told of his coming north, and
of Senator Smith's influence. "But--but how are--all?"

Abruptly Sam hooked his arm into Alwyn's and pulled him with him down
the street. Stillings was a type. Up from servility and menial service
he was struggling to climb to money and power. He was shrewd, willing to
stoop to anything in order to win. The very slights and humiliations of
prejudice he turned to his advantage. When he learned all the
particulars of Alwyn's visit to Senator Smith and his cordial reception
he judged it best to keep in touch with this young man, and he forthwith
invited Bles to accompany him the next night to the Fifteenth Street
Presbyterian Church.

"You'll find the best people there," he said; "the aristocracy. The
Treble Clef gives a concert, and everybody that's anybody will be
there."

They met again the following evening and proceeded to the church. It was
a simple but pleasant auditorium, nearly filled with well-dressed
people. During the programme Bles applauded vociferously every number
that pleased him, which is to say, every one--and stamped his feet,
until he realized that he was attracting considerable attention to
himself. Then the entertainment straightway lost all its charm; he grew
painfully embarrassed, and for the remainder of the evening was
awkwardly self-conscious. When all was over, the audience rose leisurely
and stood in little knots and eddies, laughing and talking; many moved
forward to say a word to the singers and players, Stillings stepped
aside to a group of men, and Bles was left miserably alone. A man came
to him, a white-faced man, with slightly curling close gray hair, and
high-bred ascetic countenance.

"You are a stranger?" he asked pleasantly, and Bles liked him.

"Yes, sir," he answered, and they fell to talking. He discovered that
this was the pastor of the church.

"Do you know no one in town?"

"One or two of my fellow clerks and Mr. Stillings. Oh, yes, I've met
Miss Wynn."

"Why, here is Miss Wynn now."

Bles turned. She was right behind him, the centre of a group. She
turned, slowly, and smiled.

"Oh!" she uttered twice, but with difference cadence. Then something
like amusement lurked a moment in her eye, and she quietly presented
Bles to her friends, while Stillings hovered unnoticed in the offing:

"Miss Jones--Mr. Alwyn of--" she paused a second--"Alabama. Miss
Taylor--Mr. Alwyn--and," with a backward curving of her neck, "Mr.
Teerswell," and so on. Mr. Teerswell was handsome and indolent, with
indecision in his face and a cynical voice. In a moment Bles felt the
subtle antagonism of the group. He was an intruder. Mr. Teerswell nodded
easily and turned away, continuing his conversation with the ladies.

But Miss Wynn was perverse and interrupted. "I saw you enjoyed the
concert, Mr. Alwyn," she said, and one of the young ladies rippled
audibly. Bles darkened painfully, realizing that these people must have
been just behind him. But he answered frankly:

"Yes, I did immensely--I hope I didn't disturb you; you see, I'm not
used to hearing such singing."

Mr. Teerswell, compelled to listen, laughed drily.

"Plantation melodies, I suppose, are more your specialty," he said with
a slight cadence.

"Yes," said Bles simply. A slight pause ensued.

Then came the surprise of the evening for Bles Alwyn. Even his
inexperienced eye could discern that Miss Wynn was very popular, and
that most of the men were rivals for her attentions.

"Mr. Alwyn," she said graciously, rising. "I'm going to trouble you to
see me to my door; it's only a block. Good-night, all!" she called, but
she bowed to Mr. Teerswell.

Miss Wynn placed her hand lightly on Bles's arm, and for a moment he
paused. A thrill ran through him as he felt again the weight of a little
hand and saw beside him the dark beautiful eyes of a girl. He felt again
the warm quiver of her body. Then he awoke to the lighted church and the
moving, well-dressed throng. The hand on his arm was not so small; but
it was well-gloved, and somehow the fancy struck him that it was a cold
hand and not always sympathetic in its touch.




_Twenty-three_

THE TRAINING OF ZORA


"I did not know the world was so large," remarked Zora as she and Mrs.
Vanderpool flew east and northward on the New York-New Orleans limited.
For a long time the girl had given herself up to the sheer delight of
motion. Gazing from the window, she compared the lands she passed with
the lands she knew: noting the formation of the cotton; the kind and
growth of the trees; the state of the roads. Then the comparisons became
infinite, endless; the world stretched on and on until it seemed mere
distance, and she suddenly realized how vast a thing it was and spoke.

Mrs. Vanderpool was amused. "It's much smaller than one would think,"
she responded.

When they came to Atlanta Zora stared and wrinkled her brows. It was her
first large city. The other towns were replicas of Toomsville; strange
in number, not in kind; but this was different, and she could not
understand it. It seemed senseless and unreasonable, and yet so
strangely so that she was at a loss to ask questions. She was very
solemn as they rode on and night came down with dreams.

She awoke in Washington to new fairylands and wonders; the endless going
and coming of men; great piles that challenged heaven, and homes crowded
on homes till one could not believe that they were full of living
things. They rolled by Baltimore and Philadelphia, and she talked of
every-day matters: of the sky which alone stood steadfast amid whirling
change; of bits of empty earth that shook themselves here and there
loose from their burden of men, and lay naked in the cold shining
sunlight.

All the while the greater questions were beating and curling and
building themselves back in her brain, and above all she was wondering
why no one had told her before of all this mighty world. Mrs.
Vanderpool, to whom it seemed too familiar for comment, had said no
word; or, if she had spoken, Zora's ears had not been tuned to
understand; and as they flew toward the towering ramparts of New York,
she sat up big with the terror of a new thought: suppose this world were
full yet of things she did not know nor dream of? How could she find
out? She must know.

When finally they were settled in New York and sat high up on the Fifth
Avenue front of the hotel, gradually the inarticulate questioning found
words, albeit strange ones.

"It reminds me of the swamp," she said.

Mrs. Vanderpool, just returned from a shopping tour, burst into
laughter.

"It is--but I marvel at your penetration."

"I mean, it is moving--always moving."

"The swamp seemed to me unearthly still."

"Yes--yes," cried Zora, eagerly, brushing back the rumpled hair; "and so
did the city, at first, to me."

"Still! New York?"

"Yes. You see, I saw the buildings and forgot the men; and the
buildings were so tall and silent against Heaven. And then I came to see
the people, and suddenly I knew the city was like the swamp, always
restless and changing."

"And more beautiful?" suggested Mrs. Vanderpool, slipping her arms into
her lounging-robe.

"Oh, no; not nearly so beautiful. And yet--more interesting." Then with
a puzzled look: "I wonder why?"

"Perhaps because it's people and not things."

"It's people in the swamp," asserted Zora, dreamily, smoothing out the
pillows of the couch, "'little people,' I call them. The difference is,
I think, that there I know how the story will come out; everything is
changing, but I know how and why and from what and to what. Now here,
_every_thing seems to be happening; but what is it that is happening?"

"You must know what has happened, to know what may happen," said Mrs.
Vanderpool.

"But how can I know?"

"I'll get you some books to-morrow."

"I'd like to know what it means," wistfully.

"It is meaningless." The woman's cynicism was lost upon Zora, of course,
but it possessed the salutary effect of stimulating the girl's thoughts,
encouraging her to discover for herself.

"I think not; so much must mean something," she protested.

Zora gathered up the clothes and things and shaded the windows, glancing
the while down on the street.

"Everybody is going, going," she murmured. "I wonder where. Don't they
ever get there?"

"Few arrive," said Mrs. Vanderpool. Zora softly bent and passed her cool
soft hand over her forehead.

"Then why do they go?"

"The zest of the search, perhaps."

"No," said Zora as she noiselessly left the room and closed the door;
"no, they are searching for something they have lost. Perhaps they, too,
are searching for the Way," and the tears blinded her eyes.

Mrs. Vanderpool lay in the quiet darkened room with a puzzled smile on
her lips. A month ago she had not dreamed that human interest in anybody
would take so strong a hold upon her as her liking for Zora had done.
She was a woman of unusual personal charm, but her own interest and
affections were seldom stirred. Had she been compelled to earn a living
she would have made a successful teacher or manipulator of men. As it
was, she viewed the human scene with detached and cynical interest. She
had no children, few near relations, a husband who went his way and
still was a gentleman.

Essentially Mrs. Vanderpool was unmoral. She held the code of her social
set with sportsmanlike honor; but even beyond this she stooped to no
intrigue, because none interested her. She had all the elements of power
save the motive for doing anything in particular. For the first time,
perhaps, Zora gave her life a peculiar human interest. She did not love
the girl, but she was intensely interested in her; some of the interest
was selfish, for Zora was going to be a perfect maid. The girl's
language came to be more and more like Mrs. Vanderpool's; her dress and
taste in adornment had been Mrs. Vanderpool's first care, and it led to
a curious training in art and sense of beauty until the lady now and
then found herself learner before the quick suggestiveness of Zora's
mind.

When Mrs. Harry Cresswell called a month or so later the talk naturally
included mention of Zora. Mary was happy and vivacious, and noted the
girl's rapid development.

"I wonder what I shall make out of her?" queried Mrs. Vanderpool. "Do
you know, I believe I could mould her into a lady if she were not
black."

Mary Cresswell laughed. "With that hair?"

"It has artistic possibilities. You should have seen my hair-dresser's
face when I told her to do it up. Her face and Zora's were a pantomime
for the gods. Yet it was done. It lay in some great twisted cloud and in
that black net gown of mine Zora was simply magnificent. Her form is
perfect, her height is regal, her skin is satin, and my jewels found a
resting place at last. Jewels, you know, dear, were never meant for
white folk. I was tempted to take her to the box at the opera and let
New York break its impudent neck."

Mary was shocked.

"But, Mrs. Vanderpool," she protested, "is it right? Is it fair? Why
should you spoil this black girl and put impossible ideas into her head?
You can make her a perfect maid, but she can never be much more in
America."

"She is a perfect maid now; that's the miracle of it--she's that deft
and quick and quiet and thoughtful! The hotel employees think her
perfect; my friends rave--really, I'm the most blessed of women. But do
you know I like the girl? I--well, I think of her future."

"It's wrong to treat her as you do. You make her an equal. Her room is
one of the best and filled with books and bric-a-brac. She sometimes
eats with you--is your companion, in fact."

"What of it? She loves to read, and I guide her while she keeps me up on
the latest stuff. She can talk much better than many of my friends and
then she piques my curiosity: she's a sort of intellectual sauce that
stirs my rapidly failing mental appetite. I think that as soon as I can
make up my mind to spare her, I'll take her to France and marry her off
in the colonies."

"Well, that's possible; but one doesn't easily give up good servants. By
the way, I learn from Miss Smith that the boy, Bles Alwyn, in whom Zora
was so interested, is a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington."

"Indeed! I'm going to Washington this winter; I'll look him over and see
if he's worth Zora--which I greatly doubt."

Mrs. Cresswell pursed her lips and changed the subject.

"Have you seen the Easterlys?"

"The ladies left their cards--they are quite impossible. Mr. Easterly
calls this afternoon. I can't imagine why, but he asked for an
appointment. Will you go South with Mr. Cresswell? I'm glad to hear he's
entering politics."

"No, I shall do some early house hunting in Washington," said Mrs.
Cresswell, rising as Mr. Easterly was announced.

Mr. Easterly was not at home in Mrs. Vanderpool's presence. She spoke a
language different from his, and she had shown a disconcerting way, in
the few times when he had spoken with her, of letting the weight of the
conversation rest on him. He felt very distinctly that Mrs. Vanderpool
was not particularly desirous of his company, nor that of his family.
Nevertheless, he needed Mrs. Vanderpool's influence just now, and he was
willing to pay considerable for it. Once under obligation to him her
services would be very valuable. He was glad to find Mrs. Cresswell
there. It showed that the Cresswells were still intimate, and the
Cresswells were bound to him and his interests by strong ties. He bowed
as Mrs. Cresswell left, and then did not beat around the bush because,
in this case, he did not know how.

"Mrs. Vanderpool, I need your aid."

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled politely, and murmured something.

"We are, you know, in the midst of a rather warm presidential campaign,"
continued Mr. Easterly.

"Yes?" with polite interest.

"We are going to win easily, but our majority in Congress for certain
matters will depend on the attitude of Southerners and you usually spend
the winters in Washington. If, now, you could drop a word here and
there--"

"But why should I?" asked Mrs. Vanderpool.

"Mrs. Vanderpool, to be frank, I know some excellent investments that
your influence in this line would help. I take it you're not so rich but
that--"

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled faintly.

"Really, Mr. Easterly, I know little about such matters and care less. I
have food and clothes. Why worry with more?"

Mr. Easterly half expected this and he determined to deliver his last
shot on the run. He arose with a disappointed air.

"Of course, Mrs. Vanderpool, I see how it is: you have plenty and one
can't expect your services or influence for nothing. It had occurred to
me that your husband might like something political; but I presume not."

"Something political?"

"Yes. You see, it's barely possible, for instance, that there will be a
change in the French ambassadorship. The present ambassador is old
and--well, I don't know, but as I say, it's possible. Of course though,
that may not appeal to you, and I can only beg your good offices in
charity if--if you see your way to help us. Well, I must be going."

"What is--I thought the President appointed ambassadors."

"To be sure, but we appoint Presidents," laughed Mr. Easterly.
"Good-day. I shall hope to see you in Washington."

"Good-day," Mrs. Vanderpool returned absently.

After he had gone she walked slowly to Zora's room and opened the door.
For a long time she stood quietly looking in. Zora was curled in a chair
with a book. She was in dreamland; in a world of books builded
thoughtfully for her by Mrs. Vanderpool, and before that by Miss Smith.
Her work took but little of her time and left hours for reading and
thinking. In that thought-life, more and more her real living centred.

Hour after hour, day after day, she lay buried, deaf and dumb to all
else. Her heart cried, up on the World's four corners of the Way, and to
it came the Vision Splendid. She gossiped with old Herodotus across the
earth to the black and blameless Ethiopians; she saw the sculptured
glories of Phidias marbled amid the splendor of the swamp; she listened
to Demosthenes and walked the Appian Way with Cornelia--while all New
York streamed beneath her window.

She saw the drunken Goths reel upon Rome and heard the careless Negroes
yodle as they galloped to Toomsville. Paris, she knew,--wonderful,
haunting Paris: the Paris of Clovis, and St. Louis; of Louis the Great,
and Napoleon III; of Balzac, and her own Dumas. She tasted the mud and
comfort of thick old London, and the while wept with Jeremiah and sang
with Deborah, Semiramis, and Atala. Mary of Scotland and Joan of Arc
held her dark hands in theirs, and Kings lifted up their sceptres.

She walked on worlds, and worlds of worlds, and heard there in her
little room the tread of armies, the paeans of victory, the breaking of
hearts, and the music of the spheres.

Mrs. Vanderpool watched her a while.

"Zora," she presently broke into the girl's absorption, "how would you
like to be Ambassador to France?"




_Twenty-four_

THE EDUCATION OF ALWYN


Miss Caroline Wynn of Washington had little faith in the world and its
people. Nor was this wholly her fault. The world had dealt cruelly with
the young dreams and youthful ambitions of the girl; partly with its
usual heartlessness, partly with that cynical and deadening reserve fund
which it has today for its darker peoples. The girl had bitterly
resented her experiences at first: she was brilliant and well-trained;
she had a real talent for sculpture, and had studied considerably; she
was sprung from at least three generations of respectable mulattoes, who
had left a little competence which yielded her three or four hundred
dollars a year. Furthermore, while not precisely pretty, she was
good-looking and interesting, and she had acquired the marks and
insignia of good breeding. Perhaps she wore her manners just a trifle
consciously; perhaps she was a little morbid that she would fail of
recognition as a lady. Nor was this unnatural: her brown skin invited a
different assumption. Despite this almost unconscious mental
aggressiveness, she was unusually presentable and always well-groomed
and pleasant of speech. Yet she found nearly all careers closed to her.
At first it seemed accidental, the luck of life. Then she attributed it
to her sex; but at last she was sure that, beyond chance and womanhood,
it was the colorline that was hemming her in. Once convinced of this,
she let her imagination play and saw the line even where it did not
exist.

With her bit of property and brilliant parts she had had many suitors
but they had been refused one after another for reasons she could hardly
have explained. For years now Tom Teerswell had been her escort. Whether
or not Caroline Wynn would every marry him was a perennial subject of
speculation among their friends and it usually ended in the verdict that
she could not afford it--that it was financially impossible.

Nevertheless, the two were usually seen in public together, and although
she often showed her quiet mastery of the situation, seldom had she
snubbed him so openly as at the Treble Clef concert.

Teerswell was furious and began to plot vengeance; but Miss Wynn was
attracted by the personality of Bles Alwyn. Southern country Negroes
were rare in her set, but here was a man of intelligence and keenness
coupled with an amazing frankness and modesty, and perceptibly shadowed
by sorrow. The combination was, so far as she had observed, both rare
and temporary and she was disposed to watch it in this case purely as a
matter of intellectual curiosity. At the door of her home, therefore,
after a walk of unusual interest, she said:

"I'm going to have a few friends in next Tuesday night; won't you come,
Mr. Alwyn?" And Mr. Alwyn said that he would.

Next morning Miss Wynn rather repented her hasty invitation, but of
course nothing could be done now. Nothing? Well, there was one thing;
and she went to the telephone. A suggestion to Bles that he might
profitably extend his acquaintance sent him to a certain tailor shop
kept by a friend of hers; a word to the tailor guarded against the least
suspicion of intrigue entering Bles's head.

It turned out quite as Miss Wynn had designed; Mr. Grey, the tailor,
gave Bles some points on dressing, and made him, Southern fashion, a
frock-coat for dress wear that set off his fine figure. On the night of
the gathering at Miss Wynn's Bles dressed with care, hesitating long
over a necktie, but at last choosing one which he had recently purchased
and which pleased him particularly. He was prompt to the minute and was
consequently the first guest; but Miss Wynn's greeting was so quietly
cordial that his embarrassment soon fled. She looked him over at leisure
and sighed at his tie; otherwise he was thoroughly presentable according
to the strictest Washington standard.

They sat down and talked of generalities. Then an idea occurring to her,
she conducted the conversation by devious paths to ties and asked Alwyn
if he had heard of the fad of collecting ties. He had not, and she
showed him a sofa pillow.

"Your tie quite attracted me," she said; "it would make just the dash of
color I need in my new pillow."

"You may have it and welcome. I'll send--"

"Oh, no! A bird in the hand, you know. I'll trade with you now for
another I have."

"Done!"

The exchange was soon made, Miss Wynn tying the new one herself and
sticking a small carved pin in it. Bles slowly sat down again, and after
a pause said, "Thank you."

She looked up quickly, but he seemed quite serious and good-natured.

"You see," he explained, "in the country we don't know much about ties."

The well-balanced Miss Wynn for a moment lost her aplomb, but only for a
moment.

"We must all learn," she replied with penetration, and so their
friendship was established.

The company now began to gather, and soon the double parlor held an
assemblage of twenty-five or thirty persons. They formed a picturesque
group: conventional but graceful in dress; animated in movement; full of
good-natured laughter, but quite un-American in the beautiful modulation
of their speaking tones; chiefly noticeable, however, to a stranger, in
the vast variety of color in skin, which imparted to the throng a
piquant and unusual interest. Every color was here; from the dark brown
of Alwyn, who was customarily accounted black, to the pale pink-white of
Miss Jones, who could "pass for white" when she would, and found her
greatest difficulties when she was trying to "pass" for black. Midway
between these two extremes lay the sallow pastor of the church, the
creamy Miss Williams, the golden yellow of Mr. Teerswell, the golden
brown of Miss Johnson, and the velvet brown of Mr. Grey. The guest
themselves did not notice this; they were used to asking one's color as
one asks of height and weight; it was simply an extra dimension in their
world whereby to classify men.

Beyond this and their hair, there was little to distinguish them from a
modern group of men and women. The speech was a softened English, purely
and, on the whole, correctly spoken--so much so that it seemed at first
almost unfamiliar to Bles, and he experienced again the uncomfortable
feeling of being among strangers. Then, too, he missed the loud but
hearty good-nature of what he had always called "his people." To be
sure, a more experienced observer might have noted a lively, excitable
tropical temperament set and cast in a cold Northern mould, and yet
flashing fire now and then in a sudden anomalous out-bursting. But Bles
missed this; he seemed to have slipped and lost his bearings, and the
characteristics of his simple world were rolling curiously about. Here
stood a black man with a white man's voice, and yonder a white woman
with a Negro's musical cadences; and yet again, a brown girl with
exactly Miss Cresswell's air, and yonder, Miss Williams, with Zora's
wistful willfulness.

Bles was bewildered and silent, and his great undying sorrow sank on his
heart with sickening hopeless weight. His hands got in the way and he
found no natural nook in all those wide and tastefully furnished rooms.
Once he discovered himself standing by a marble statue of a nude woman,
and he edged away; then he stumbled over a rug and saved himself only to
step on Miss Jones's silken train. Miss Jones's smile of pardon was
wintry. When he did approach a group and listen, they seemed speaking of
things foreign to him--usually of people he did not know, their homes,
their doings, their daughters and their fathers. They seemed to know
people intimately who lived far away.

"You mean the Smiths of Boston?" asked Miss Jones.

"No, of Cleveland. They're not related."

"I heard that McGhee of St. Paul will be in the city next week with his
daughter."

"Yes, and the Bentleys of Chicago."

Bles passed on. He was disappointed. He was full of things to say, of
mighty matters to discuss; he felt like stopping these people and
crying: "Ho! What of the morning? How goes the great battle for black
men's rights? I have came with messages from the host, to you who guard
the mountain tops."

Apparently they were not discussing or caring about "the Problem." He
grew disgusted and was edging toward the door when he encountered his
hostess.

"Is all well with you, Mr. Alwyn?" she asked lightly.

"No, I'm not enjoying myself," said Bles, truthfully.

"Delicious! And why not?"

He regarded her earnestly.

"There are so many things to talk about," he said; "earnest things;
things of importance. I--I think when our people--" he hesitated.
Our?--was _our_ right? But he went on: "When our people meet we ought
to talk of our situation, and what to do and--"

Miss Wynn continued to smile.

"We're all talking of it all the time," she said.

He looked incredulous.

"Yes, we are," she insisted. "We veil it a little, and laugh as lightly
as we can; but there is only one thought in this room, and that's grave
and serious enough to suit even you, and quite your daily topic."

"But I don't understand."

"Ah, there's the rub. You haven't learned our language yet. We don't
just blurt into the Negro Problem; that's voted bad form. We leave that
to our white friends. We saunter to it sideways, touch it delicately
because"--her face became a little graver--"because, you see, it hurts."

Bles stood thoughtful and abashed.

"I--I think I understand," he gravely said at last.

"Come here," she said with a sudden turn, and they joined an absorbed
group in the midst of a conversation.

"--Thinking of sending Jessie to Bryn Mawr," Bles heard Miss Jones
saying.

"Could she pass?"

"Oh, they might think her Spanish."

"But it's a snobbish place and she would have to give up all her
friends."

"Yes, Freddie could scarcely visit--" the rest was lost.

"Which, being interpreted," whispered Miss Wynn, "means that Bryn Mawr
draws the color line while we at times surmount it."

They moved on to another group.

"--Splendid draughtsman," a man was saying, "and passed at the head of
the crowd; but, of course, he has no chance."

"Why, it's civil-service, isn't it?"

"It is. But what of that? There was Watson--"

Miss Wynn did not pause. She whispered: "This is the tale of Civil
Service Reform, and how this mighty government gets rid of black men
who know too much."

"But--" Bles tried to protest.

"Hush," Miss Wynn commanded and they joined the group about the piano.
Teerswell, who was speaking, affected not to notice them, and continued:

"--I tell you, it's got to come. We must act independently and not be
bought by a few offices."

"That's all well enough for you to talk, Teerswell; you have no wife and
babies dependant on you. Why should we who have sacrifice the substance
for the shadow?"

"You see, the Judge has got the substance," laughed Teerswell. "Still I
insist: divide and conquer."

"Nonsense! Unite, and keep."

Bles was puzzled.

"They're talking of the coming campaign," said Miss Wynn.

"What!" exclaimed Bles aloud. "You don't mean that any one can advise a
black man to vote the Democratic ticket?"

An elderly man turned to them.

"Thank you, sir," he said; "that is just my attitude; I fought for my
freedom. I know what slavery is; may I forget God when I vote for
traitors and slave-holders."

The discussion waxed warm and Miss Wynn turned away and sought Miss
Jones.

"Come, my dear," she said, "it's 'The Problem' again." They sauntered
away toward a ring of laughter.

The discussion thus begun at Miss Wynn's did not end there. It was on
the eve of the great party conventions, and the next night Sam Stillings
came around to get some crumbs from this assembly of the inner circle,
into which Alwyn had been so unaccountably snatched, and outside of
which, despite his endeavors, Stillings lingered and seemed destined to
linger. But Stillings was a patient, resolute man beneath his
deferential exterior, and he saw in Bles a stepping stone. So he began
to drop in at his lodgings and tonight invited him to the Bethel
Literary.

"What's that?" asked Bles.

"A debating club--oldest in the city; the best people all attend."

Bles hesitated. He had half made up his mind that this was the proper
time to call on Miss Wynn. He told Stillings so, and told him also of
the evening and the discussion.

"Why, that's the subject up tonight," Stillings declared, "and Miss Wynn
will be sure to be there. You can make your call later. Perhaps you
wouldn't mind taking me when you call." Alwyn reached for his hat.

When they arrived, the basement of the great church was filling with a
throng of men and women. Soon the officers and the speaker of the
evening appeared. The president was a brown woman who spoke easily and
well, and introduced the main speaker. He was a tall, thin,
hatchet-faced black man, clean shaven and well dressed, a lawyer by
profession. His theme was "The Democratic Party and the Negro." His
argument was cool, carefully reasoned, and plausible. He was evidently
feeling for the sympathy of his audience, and while they were not
enthusiastic, they warmed to him gradually and he certainly was strongly
impressing them.

Bles was thinking. He sat in the back of the hall, tense, alert,
nervous. As the speaker progressed a white man came in and sat down
beside him. He was spectacled, with bushy eyebrows and a sleepy look.
But he did not sleep. He was very observant.

"Who's speaking?" he asked Bles, and Bles told him. Then he inquired
about one or two other persons. Bles could not inform him, but Stillings
could and did. Stillings seemed willing to devote considerable time to
him.

Bles forgot the man. He was almost crouching for a spring, and no sooner
had the speaker, with a really fine apostrophe to independence and
reason in voting, sat down, than Bles was on his feet, walking forward.
His form was commanding, his voice deep and musical, and his
earnestness terribly evident. He hardly waited for recognition from the
slightly astonished president, but fairly burst into speech.

"I am from Alabama," he began earnestly, "and I know the Democratic
Party." Then he told of government and conditions in the Black Belt, of
the lying, oppression, and helplessness of the sodden black masses;
then, turning, he reminded them of the history of slavery. Finally, he
pointed to Lincoln's picture and to Sumner's and mentioned other white
friends.

"And, my brothers, they are not all dead yet. The gentleman spoke of
Senator Smith and blamed and ridiculed him. I know Senator Smith but
slightly, but I do know his sister well."

Dropping to simple narrative, he told of Miss Smith and of his coming to
school; and if his audience felt that great depth of emotion that welled
beneath his quiet, almost hesitating, address, it was not simply because
of what he did say, but because, too, of the unspoken story that lay too
deep for words. He spoke for nearly an hour, and when he stopped, for a
moment his hearers sighed and then sprang into a whirlwind of applause.
They shouted, clapped, and waved while he sat in blank amazement, and
was with difficulty forced to the rostrum to bow again and again. The
spectacled white man leaned over to Stillings.

"Who is he?" he asked. Stillings told him. The man noted the name and
went quietly out.

Miss Wynn sat lost in thought, and Teerswell beside her fumed. She was
not easily moved, but that speech had moved her. If he could thus stir
men and not be himself swayed, she mused, he would be--invincible. But
tonight he was moved as greatly as his hearers had been, and that was
dangerous. If his intense belief happened to be popular, all right; but
if not? She frowned. He was worth watching, she concluded; quite worth
watching, and perhaps worth guiding.

When Alwyn accompanied her home that night, Miss Wynn set herself to
know him better for she suspected that he might be a coming man. The
best preliminary to her purpose was, she knew, to speak frankly of
herself, and that she did. She told him of her youth and training, her
ambitions, her disappointments. Quite unconsciously her cynicism crept
to the fore, until in word and tone she had almost scoffed at many
things that Alwyn held true and dear. The touch was too light, the
meaning too elusive, for Alwyn to grasp always the point of attack; but
somehow he got the distant impression that Miss Wynn had little faith in
Truth and Goodness and Love. Vaguely shocked he grew so silent that she
noticed it and concluded she had said too much. But he pursued the
subject.

"Surely there must be many friends of our race willing to stand for the
right and sacrifice for it?"

She laughed unpleasantly, almost mockingly.

"Where?"

"Well--there's Miss Smith."

"She gets a salary, doesn't she?"

"A very small one."

"About as large as she could earn. North, I don't doubt."

"But the unselfish work she does--the utter sacrifice?"

"Oh, well, we'll omit Alabama, and admit the exception."

"Well, here, in Washington--there's your friend, the Judge, who has
befriended you so, as you admit."

She laughed again.

"You remember our visit to Senator Smith?"

"Yes."

"Well, it got the Judge his reappointment to the school board."

"He deserved it, didn't he?"

"I deserved it," she said luxuriously, hugging her knee and smiling;
"you see, his appointment meant mine."

"Well, what of it--didn't--"

"Listen," she cut in a little sharply. "Once a young brown girl, with
boundless faith in white folks, went to a Judge's office to ask for an
appointment which she deserved. There was no one there. The benign old
Judge with his saintly face and white hair suggested that she lay aside
her wraps and spend the afternoon."

Bles arose to his feet.

"What--what did you do?" he asked.

"Sit down--there's a good boy." I said: "'Judge, a friend is expecting
me at two,' it was then half-past one, 'would I not best telephone?'"

"'Step right into the booth,' said the Judge, quite indulgently." Miss
Wynn leaned back, and Bles felt his heart sinking; but he said nothing.
"And then," she continued, "I telephoned the Judge's wife that he was
anxious to see her on a matter of urgent business; namely, my
appointment." She gazed reflectively out of the window. "You should have
seen his face when I told him," she concluded. "I was appointed."

But Bles asked coldly:

"Why didn't you have him arrested?"

"For what? And suppose I had?"

Bles threw out his arms helplessly.

"Oh! it isn't as bad as that all over the world, is it?"

"It's worse," affirmed Miss Wynn, quietly positive.

"And you are still friendly with him?"

"What would you have? I use the world; I did not make it; I did not
choose it. He is the world. Through him I earn my bread and butter. I
have shown him his place. Shall I try in addition to reform? Shall I
make him an enemy? I have neither time nor inclination. Shall I resign
and beg, or go tilting at windmills? If he were the only one it would be
different; but they're all alike." Her face grew hard. "Have I shocked
you?" she said as they went toward the door.

"No," he answered slowly. "But I still--believe in the world."

"You are young yet, my friend," she lightly replied. "And besides, that
good Miss Smith has gone and grafted a New England conscience on a
tropical heart, and--dear me!--but it's a gorgeous misfit.
Good-bye--come again." She bowed him graciously out, and paused to take
the mail from the box. There was, among many others, a letter from
Senator Smith.




_Twenty-five_

THE CAMPAIGN


Mr. Easterly sat in Mrs. Vanderpool's apartments in the New Willard,
Washington, drinking tea. His hostess was saying rather carelessly:

"Do you know, Mr. Vanderpool has developed a quite unaccountable liking
for the idea of being Ambassador to France?"

"Dear me!" mildly exclaimed Mr. Easterly, helping himself liberally to
cakes. "I do hope the thing can be managed, but--"

"What are the difficulties?" Mrs. Vanderpool interrupted.

"Well, first and foremost, the difficulty of electing our man."

"I thought that a foregone conclusion."

"It was. But do you know that we're encountering opposition from the
most unexpected source?"

The lady was receptive, and the speaker concluded:

"The Negroes."

"The Negroes!"

"Yes. There are five hundred thousand or more black voters in pivotal
Northern States, you know, and they're in revolt. In a close election
the Negroes of New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois choose the
President."

"What's the matter?"

"Well, business interests have driven our party to make friends with the
South. The South has disfranchised Negroes and lynched a few. The
darkies say we've deserted them."

Mrs. Vanderpool laughed.

"What extraordinary penetration," she cried.

"At any rate," said Mr. Easterly, drily, "Mr. Vanderpool's first step
toward Paris lies in getting the Northern Negroes to vote the Republican
ticket. After that the way is clear."

Mrs. Vanderpool mused.

"I don't suppose you know any one who is acquainted with any number of
these Northern darkies?" continued Mr. Easterly.

"Not on my calling-list," said Mrs. Vanderpool, and then she added more
thoughtfully:

"There's a young clerk in the Treasury Department named Alwyn who has
brains. He's just from the South, and I happened to read of him this
morning--see here."

Mr. Easterly read an account of the speech at the Bethel Literary.

"We'll look this young man up," he decided; "he may help. Of course,
Mrs. Vanderpool, we'll probably win; we can buy these Negroes off with a
little money and a few small offices; then if you will use your
influence for the part with the Southerners, I can confidently predict
from four to eight years' sojourn in Paris."

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled and called her maid as Mr. Easterly went.

"Zora!" She had to call twice, for Zora, with widened eyes, was reading
the Washington Post.

Meantime in the office of Senator Smith, toward which Mr. Easterly was
making his way, several members of the National Republican campaign
committee had been closeted the day before.

"Now, about the niggers," the chairman had asked; "how much more boodle
do they want?"

"That's what's bothering us," announced a member; "it isn't the boodle
crowd that's hollering, but a new set, and I don't understand them; I
don't know what they represent, nor just how influential they are."

"What can I do to help you?" asked Senator Smith.

"This. You are here at Washington with these Negro office-holders at
your back. Find out for us just what this revolt is, how far it goes,
and what good men we can get to swing the darkies into line--see?"

"Very good," the Senator acquiesced. He called in a spectacled man with
bushy eyebrows and a sleepy look.

"I want you to work the Negro political situation," directed the
Senator, "and bring me all the data you can get. Personally, I'm at sea.
I don't understand the Negro of today at all; he puzzles me; he doesn't
fit any of my categories, and I suspect that I don't fit his. See what
you can find out."

The man went out, and the Senator turned to his desk, then paused and
smiled. One day, not long since, he had met a colored person who
personified his perplexity concerning Negroes; she was a lady, yet she
was black--that is, brown; she was educated, even cultured, yet she
taught Negroes; she was quiet, astute, quick and diplomatic--everything,
in fact, that "Negroes" were not supposed to be; and yet she was a
"Negro." She had given him valuable information which he had sought in
vain elsewhere, and the event proved it correct. Suppose he asked
Caroline Wynn to help him in this case? It would certainly do no harm
and it might elect a Republican president. He wrote a short letter with
his own hand and sent it to post.

Miss Wynn read the letter after Alwyn's departure with a distinct thrill
which was something of a luxury for her. Evidently she was coming to
her kingdom. The Republican boss was turning to her for confidential
information.

"What do the colored people want, and who can best influence them in
this campaign?"

She curled up on the ottoman and considered. The first part of the query
did not bother her.

"Whatever they want they won't get," she said decisively.

But as to the man or men who could influence them to believe that they
were getting, or about to get, what they wanted--there was a question.
One by one she considered the men she knew, and, by a process of
elimination, finally arrived at Bles Alwyn.

Why not take this young man in hand and make a Negro leader of him--a
protagonist of ten millions? It would not be unpleasant. But could she
do it? Would he be amenable to her training and become worldly wise? She
flattered herself that he would, and yet--there was a certain steadfast
look in the depths of his eyes that might prove to be sheer
stubbornness. At any rate, who was better? There was a fellow,
Stillings, whom Alwyn had introduced and whom she had heard of. Now he
was a politician--but nothing else. She dismissed him. Of course,
there was the older set of office-holders and rounders. But she was
determined to pick a new man. He was worth trying, at any rate; she knew
none other with the same build, the brains, the gifts, the adorable
youth. Very good. She wrote two letters, and then curled up to her novel
and candy.

Next day Senator Smith held Miss Wynn's letter unopened in his hand when
Mr. Easterly entered. They talked of the campaign and various matters,
until at last Easterly said:

"Say, there's a Negro clerk in the Treasury named Alwyn."

"I know him--I had him appointed."

"Good. He may help us. Have you seen this?"

The Senator read the clipping.

"I hadn't noticed it--but here's my agent."

The spectacled man entered with a mass of documents. He had papers,
posters, programmes, and letters.

"The situation is this," he said. "A small group of educated Negroes are
trying to induce the rest to punish the Republican Party for not
protecting them. These men are not politicians, nor popular leaders, but
they have influence and are using it. The old-style Negro politicians
are no match for them, and the crowd of office-holders are rather
bewildered. Strong measures are needed. Educated men of earnestness and
ability might stem the tide. And I believe I know one such man. He spoke
at a big meeting last night at the Metropolitan church. His name is
Alwyn."

Senator Smith listened as he opened the letter from Caroline Wynn. Then
he started.

"Well!" he ejaculated, looking quickly up at Easterly. "This is
positively uncanny. From three separate sources the name of Alwyn pops
up. Looks like a mascot. Call up the Treasury. Let's have him up when
the sub-committee meets to-morrow."

Bles Alwyn hurried up to Senator Smith's office, hoping to hear
something about the school; perhaps even about--but he stopped with a
sigh, and sat down in the ante-room. He was kept waiting a few moments
while Senator Smith, the chairman, and one other member of the
sub-committee had a word.

"Now, I don't know the young man, mind you," said the Senator; "but he's
strongly recommended."

"What shall we offer him?" asked the chairman.

"Try him at twenty-five dollars a speech. If he balks, raise to fifty
dollars, but no more."

They summoned the young man. The chairman produced cigars.

"I don't smoke," said Bles apologetically.

"Well, we haven't anything to drink," said the chairman. But Senator
Smith broke in, taking up at once the paramount interest.

"Mr. Alwyn, as you know, the Democrats are making an effort to get the
Negro vote in this campaign. Now, I know the disadvantages and wrongs
which black men in this land are suffering. I believe the Republicans
ought to do more to defend them, and I'm satisfied they will; but I
doubt if the way to get Negro rights is to vote for those who took them
away."

"I agree with you perfectly," said Bles.

"I understand you do, and that you made an unusually fine speech on the
subject the other night."

"Thank you, sir." This was a good deal more than Bles had expected, and
he was embarrassed.

"Well, now, we think you're just the man to take the stump during
September and October and convince the colored people of their real
interests."

"I doubt if I could, sir; I'm not a speaker. In fact, that was my first
public speech."

"So much the better. Are you willing to try?"

"Why, yes, sir; but I could hardly afford to give up my position."

"We'll arrange for a leave of absence."

"Then I'll try, sir."

"What would you expect as pay?"

"I suppose my salary would stop?"

"I mean in addition to that."

"Oh, nothing, sir; I'd be glad to do the work."

The chairman nearly choked; sitting back, he eyed the young man. Either
they were dealing with a fool, or else a very astute politician. If the
former, how far could they trust him; if the latter, what was his game?

"Of course, there'll be considerable travelling," the chairman ventured,
looking reflectively out of the window.

"Yes, sir, I suppose so."

"We might pay the railroad fare."

"Thank you, sir. When shall I begin?"

The chairman consulted his calendar.

"Suppose you hold yourself in readiness for one week from today."

"All right," and Bles rose. "Good-day, gentlemen."

But the chairman was still puzzled.

"Now, what's his game?" he asked helplessly.

"He may be honest," offered Senator Smith, contemplating the door almost
wistfully.

The campaign progressed. The National Republican Committee said little
about the Negro revolt and affected to ignore it. The papers were
silent. Underneath this calm, however, the activity was redoubled. The
prominent Negroes were carefully catalogued, written to, and put under
personal influence. The Negro papers were quietly subsidized, and they
began to ridicule and reproach the new leaders.

As the Fall progressed, mass-meetings were held in Washington and the
small towns. Larger and larger ones were projected, and more and more
Alwyn was pushed to the front. He was developing into a most effective
speaker. He had the voice, the presence, the ideas, and above all he was
intensely in earnest. There were other colored orators with voice,
presence, and eloquence; but their people knew their record and
discounted them. Alwyn was new, clear, and sincere, and the black folk
hung on his words. Large and larger crowds greeted him until he was the
central figure in a half dozen great negro mass-meetings in the chief
cities of the country, culminating in New York the night before
election. Perhaps the secret newspaper work, the personal advice of
employers and friends, and the liberal distribution of cash, would have
delivered a large part of the Negro vote to the Republican candidate.
Perhaps--but there was a doubt. With the work of Alwyn, however, all
doubt disappeared, and there was little reason for denying that the new
President walked into the White House through the instrumentality of an
unknown Georgia Negro, little past his majority. This is what Senator
Smith said to Mr. Easterly; what Miss Wynn said to herself; and it was
what Mrs. Vanderpool remarked to Zora as Zora was combing her hair on
the Wednesday after election.

Zora murmured an indistinct response. As already something of the beauty
of the world had found question and answer in her soul, and as she began
to realize how the world had waxed old in thought and stature, so now in
their last days a sense of the power of men, as set over against the
immensity and force of their surroundings, became real to her. She had
begun to read of the lives and doing of those called great, and in her
mind a plan was forming. She saw herself standing dim within the
shadows, directing the growing power of a man: a man who would be great
as the world counted greatness, rich, high in position,
powerful--wonderful because his face was black. He would never see her;
never know how she worked and planned, save perhaps at last, in that
supreme moment as she passed, her soul would cry to his, "Redeemed!" And
he would understand.

All this she was thinking and weaving; not clearly and definitely, but
in great blurred clouds of thought of things as she said slowly:

"He should have a great position for this."

"Why, certainly," Mrs. Vanderpool agreed, and then curiously: "What?"

Zora considered. "Negroes," she said, "have been Registers of the
Treasury, and Recorders of Deeds here in Washington, and Douglas was
Marshal; but I want Bles--" she paused and started again. "Those are not
great enough for Mr. Alwyn; he should have an office so important that
Negroes would not think of leaving their party again."

Mrs. Vanderpool took pains to repeat Zora's words to Mr. Easterly. He
considered the matter.

"In one sense, it's good advice," he admitted; "but there's the South to
reckon with. I'll think it over and speak to the President. Oh, yes; I'm
going to mention France at the same time."

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled and leaned back in her carriage. She noted with
considerable interest the young colored woman who was watching her from
the sidewalk: a brown, well-appearing young woman of notable
self-possession. Caroline Wynn scrutinized Mrs. Vanderpool because she
had been speaking with Mr. Easterly, and Mr. Easterly was a figure of
political importance. That very morning Miss Wynn had telegraphed Bles
Alwyn. Alwyn arrived at Washington just as the morning papers heralded
the sweeping Republican victory. All about he met new deference and new
friends; strangers greeted him familiarly on the street; Sam Stillings
became his shadow; and when he reported for work his chief and fellow
clerks took unusual interest in him.

"Have you seen Senator Smith yet?" Miss Wynn asked after a few words of
congratulation.

"No. What for?"

"What for?" she answered. "Go to him today; don't fail. I shall be at
home at eight tonight."

It seemed to Bles an exceedingly silly thing to do--calling on a busy
man with no errand; but he went. He decided that he would just thank the
Senator for his interest, and get out; or, if the Senator was busy, he
would merely send in his card. Evidently the Senator was busy, for his
waiting-room was full. Bles handed the card to the secretary with a word
of apology, but the secretary detained him.

"Ah, Mr. Alwyn," he said affably; "glad to see you. The Senator will
want to see you, I know. Wait just a minute." And soon Bles was shaking
Senator Smith's hand.

"Well, Mr. Alwyn," said the Senator heartily, "you delivered the goods."

"Thank you, sir. I tried to."

Senator Smith thoughtfully looked him over and drew out the letters.

"Your friends, Mr. Alwyn," he said, adjusting his glasses, "have a
rather high opinion of you. Here now is Stillings, who helped on the
campaign. He suggests an eighteen-hundred-dollar clerkship for you." The
Senator glanced up keenly and omitted to state what Stillings suggested
for himself. Alwyn was visibly grateful as well as surprised.

"I--I hoped," he began hesitatingly, "that perhaps I might get a
promotion, but I had not thought of a first-class clerkship."

"H'm." Senator Smith leaned back and twiddled his thumbs, staring at
Alwyn until the hot blood darkened his cheeks. Then Bles sat up and
stared politely but steadily back. The Senator's eyes dropped and he put
out his hand for the second note.

"Now, your friend, Miss Wynn"--Alwyn started--"is even more ambitious."
He handed her letter to the young man, and pointed out the words.

"Of course, Senator," Bles read, "we expect Mr. Alwyn to be the next
Register of the Treasury."

Bles looked up in amazement, but the Senator reached for a third letter.
The room was very still. At last he found it. "This," he announced
quietly, "is from a man of great power and influence, who has the ear of
the new President." He smoothed out the letter, paused briefly, then
read aloud:

"'It has been suggested to me by'"--the Senator did not read the name;
if he had "Mrs. Vanderpool" would have meant little to Alwyn--"'It has
been suggested to me by blank that the future allegiance of the Negro
vote to the Republican Party might be insured by giving to some
prominent Negro a high political position--for instance, Treasurer of
the United States'--salary, six thousand dollars," interpolated Senator
Smith--"'and that Alwyn would be a popular and safe appointment for that
position.'"

The Senator did not read the concluding sentence, which ran: "Think this
over; we can't touch political conditions in the South; perhaps this sop
will do."

For a long time Alwyn sat motionless, while the Senator said nothing.
Then the young man rose unsteadily.

"I don't think I quite grasp all this," he said as he shook hands.
"I'll think it over," and he went out.

When Caroline Wynn heard of that extraordinary conversation her
amazement knew no bounds. Yet Alwyn ventured to voice doubts:

"I'm not fitted for either of those high offices; there are many others
who deserve more, and I don't somehow like the idea of seeming to have
worked hard in the campaign simply for money or fortune. You see, I
talked against that very thing."

Miss Wynn's eyes widened.

"Well, what else--" she began and then changed. "Mr. Alwyn, the line
between virtue and foolishness is dim and wavering, and I should hate to
see you lost in that marshy borderland. By a streak of extraordinary
luck you have gained the political leadership of Negroes in America.
Here's your chance to lead your people, and here you stand blinking and
hesitating. Be a man!"

Alwyn straightened up and felt his doubts going. The evening passed very
pleasantly.

"I'm going to have a little dinner for you," said Miss Wynn finally, and
Alwyn grew hot with pleasure. He turned to her suddenly and said:

"Why, I'm rather--black." She expressed no surprise but said
reflectively:

"You _are_ dark."

"And I've been given to understand that Miss Wynn and her set
rather--well, preferred the lighter shades of colored folk."

Miss Wynn laughed lightly.

"My parents did," she said simply. "No dark man ever entered their
house; they were simply copying the white world. Now I, as a matter of
aesthetic beauty, prefer your brown-velvet color to a jaundiced yellow,
or even an uncertain cream; but the world doesn't."

"The world?"

"Yes, the world; and especially America. One may be Chinese, Spaniard,
even Indian--anything white or dirty white in this land, and demand
decent treatment; but to be Negro or darkening toward it unmistakably
means perpetual handicap and crucifixion."

"Why not, then, admit that you draw the color-line?"

"Because I don't; but the world does. I am not prejudiced as my parents
were, but I am foresighted. Indeed, it is a deep ethical query, is it
not, how far one has the right to bear black children to the world in
the Land of the Free and the home of the brave. Is it fair--to the
children?"

"Yes, it is!" he cried vehemently. "The more to take up the fight, the
surer the victory."

She laughed at his earnestness.

"You are refreshing," she said. "Well, we'll dine next Tuesday, and
we'll have the cream of our world to meet you."

He knew that this was a great triumph. It flattered his vanity. After
all, he was entering this higher dark world whose existence had piqued
and puzzled him so long. He glanced at Miss Wynn beside him there in the
dimly lighted parlor: she looked so aloof and unapproachable, so
handsome and so elegant. He thought how she would complete a house--such
a home as his prospective four or six thousand dollars a year could
easily purchase. She saw him surveying her, and she smiled at him.

"I find but one fault with you," she said.

He stammered for a pretty speech, but did not find it before she
continued:

"Yes--you are so delightfully primitive; you will not use the world as
it is but insist on acting as if it were something else."

"I am not sure I understand."

"Well, there is the wife of my Judge: she is a fact in my world; in
yours she is a problem to be stated, straightened, and solved. If she
had come to you, as she did to me yesterday, with her theory that all
that Southern Negroes needed was to learn how to make good servants and
lay brick--"

"I should have shown her--" Bles tried to interject.

"Nothing of the sort. You would have tried to show her and would have
failed miserably. She hasn't learned anything in twenty years."

"But surely you didn't join her in advocating that ten million people be
menials?"

"Oh, no; I simply listened."

"Well, there was no harm in that; I believe in silence at times."

"Ah! but I did not listen like a log, but positively and eloquently;
with a nod, a half-formed word, a comment begun, which she finished."

Bles frowned.

"As a result," continued Miss Wynn, "I have a check for five hundred
dollars to finish our cooking-school and buy a cast of Minerva for the
assembly-room. More than that, I have now a wealthy friend. She thinks
me an unusually clever person who, by a process of thought not unlike
her own, has arrived at very similar conclusions."

"But--but," objected Bles, "if the time spent cajoling fools were used
in convincing the honest and upright, think how much we would gain."

"Very little. The honest and upright are a sad minority. Most of these
white folk--believe me, boy," she said caressingly,--"are fools and
knaves: they don't want truth or progress; they want to keep niggers
down."

"I don't believe it; there are scores, thousands, perhaps millions such,
I admit; but the average American loves justice and right, and he is the
one to whom I appeal with frankness and truth. Great heavens! don't you
love to be frank and open?"

She narrowed her eyelids.

"Yes, sometimes I do; once I was; but it's a luxury few of us Negroes
can afford. Then, too, I insist that it's jolly to fool them."

"Don't you hate the deception?"

She chuckled and put her head to one side.

"At first I did; but, do you know, now I believe I prefer it."

He looked so horrified that she burst out laughing. He laughed too. She
was a puzzle to him. He kept thinking what a mistress of a mansion she
would make.

"Why do you say these things?" he asked suddenly.

"Because I want you to do well here in Washington."

"General philanthropy?"

"No, special." Her eyes were bright with meaning.

"Then you care--for me?"

"Yes."

He bent forward and cast the die.

"Enough to marry me?"

She answered very calmly and certainly:

"Yes."

He leaned toward her. And then between him and her lips a dark and
shadowy face; two great storm-swept eyes looked into his out of a world
of infinite pain, and he dropped his head in hesitation and shame, and
kissed her hand. Miss Wynn thought him delightfully bashful.




_Twenty-six_

CONGRESSMAN CRESSWELL


The election of Harry Cresswell to Congress was a very simple matter.
The Colonel and his son drove to town and consulted the Judge; together
they summoned the sheriff and the local member of the State legislature.

"I think it's about time that we Cresswells asked for a little of the
political pie," the Colonel smilingly opened.

"Well, what do you want?" asked the Judge.

"Harry wants to go to Congress."

The Judge hesitated. "We'd half promised that to Caldwell," he objected.


"It will be a little costly this year, too," suggested the sheriff,
tentatively.

"About how much?" asked the Colonel.

"At least five thousand," said the Legislator.

The Colonel said nothing. He simply wrote a check and the matter was
settled. In the Fall Harry Cresswell was declared elected. There were
four hundred and seventy-two votes cast but the sheriff added a cipher.
He said it would look better.

Early December found the Cresswells domiciled in a small house in Du
Pont Circle, Washington. They had an automobile and four servants, and
the house was furnished luxuriously. Mary Taylor Cresswell, standing in
her morning room and looking out on the flowers of the square, told
herself that few people in the world had cause to be as happy as she.
She was tastefully gowned, in a way to set off her blonde beauty and her
delicate rounded figure. She was surrounded with wealth, and above all,
she was in that atmosphere of aristocracy for which she had always
yearned; and already she was acquiring that poise of the head, and a
manner of directing the servants, which showed her born to the purple.

She had cause to be extremely happy, she told herself this morning, and
yet she was puzzled to understand why she was not. Why was she restless
and vaguely ill at ease so often these days?

One matter, indeed, did worry her; but that would right itself in time,
she was sure. She had always pictured herself as directing her husband's
work. She did not plan to step in and demand a share; she knew from
experience with her brother that a woman must prove her usefulness to a
man before he will admit it, and even then he may be silent. She
intended gradually and tactfully to relieve her husband of care
connected with his public life so that, before he realized it, she would
be his guiding spirit and his inspiration. She had dreamed the details
of doing this so long that it seemed already done, and she could imagine
no obstacle to its realization. And yet she found herself today no
nearer her goal than when first she married. Not because Mr. Cresswell
did not share his work, but because, apparently, he had no work, no
duties, no cares. At first, in the dim glories of the honeymoon, this
seemed but part of his delicate courtesy toward her, and it pleased her
despite her thrifty New England nature; but now that they were settled
in Washington, the election over and Congress in session, it really
seemed time for Work and Life to begin in dead earnest, and New England
Mary was dreaming mighty dreams and golden futures.

But Harry apparently was as content as ever with doing nothing. He arose
at ten, dined at seven, and went to bed between midnight and sunrise.
There was some committee meetings and much mail, but Mary was admitted
to knowledge of none of these. The obvious step, of course, would be to
set him at work; but from this undertaking Mary unconsciously recoiled.
She had already recognized that while her tastes and her husband's were
mostly alike, they were also strikingly different in many respects. They
agreed in the daintiness of things, the elegance of detail; but they did
not agree always as to the things themselves. Given the picture, they
would choose the same frame--but they would not choose the same picture.
They liked the same voice, but not the same song; the same company, but
not the same conversation. Of course, Mary reflected, frowning at the
flowers--of course, this must always be so when two human beings are
thrown into new and intimate association. In time they would grow to
sweet communion; only, she hoped the communion would be on tastes nearer
hers than those he sometimes manifested.

She turned impatiently from the window with a feeling of loneliness. But
why lonely? She idly fingered a new book on the table and then put it
down sharply. There had been several attempts at reading aloud between
them some evenings ago, and this book reminded her of them. She had
bought Jane Addams' "Newer Ideals of Peace," and he had yawned over it
undisguisedly. Then he had brought this novel, and--well, she had balked
at the second chapter, and he had kissed her and called her his "little
prude." She did not want to be a prude; she hated to seem so, and had
for some time prided herself on emancipation from narrow New England
prejudices. For example, she had not objected to wine at dinner; it had
seemed indeed rather fine, imparting, as it did, an old-fashioned
flavor; but she did not like the whiskey, and Harry at times appeared to
become just a bit too lively--nothing excessive, of course, but his eyes
and the smell and the color were a little too suggestive. And yet he was
so kind and good, and when he came in at evening he bent so gallantly
for his kiss, and laid fresh flowers before her: could anything have
been more thoughtful and knightly?

Just here again she was puzzled; with her folk, hard work and inflexible
duty were of prime importance; they were the rock foundation; and she
somehow had always counted on the courtesies of life as added to them,
making them sweet and beautiful. But in this world, not perhaps so much
with Harry as with others of his set, the depths beneath the gravely
inclined head, the deferential smile and ceremonious action, the light
clever converse, had sounded strangely hollow once or twice when she had
essayed to sound them, and a certain fear to look and see possessed her.

The bell rang, and she was a little startled at the fright that struck
her heart. She did not analyze it. In reality--pride forbade her to
admit it--she feared it was a call of some of Harry's friends: some
languid, assured Southern ladies, perilously gowned, with veiled disdain
for this interloping Northerner and her strong mind. Especially was
there one from New Orleans, tall and dark--

But it was no caller. It was simply some one named Stillings to see Mr.
Cresswell. She went down to see him--he might be a constituent--and
found a smirky brown man, very apologetic.

"You don't know me--does you, Mrs. Cresswell?" said Stillings. He knew
when it was diplomatic to forget his grammar and assume his dialect.

"Why--no."

"You remember I worked for Mr. Harry and served you-all lunch one day."

"Oh, yes--why, yes! I remember now very well."

"Well, I wants to see Mr. Harry very much; could I wait in the back
hall?"

Mary started to have him wait in the front hall, but she thought better
of it and had him shown back. Less than an hour later her husband
entered and she went quickly to him. He looked worn and white and tired,
but he laughed her concern lightly off.

"I'll be in earlier tonight," he declared.

"Is the Congressional business very heavy?"

He laughed so hilariously that she felt uncomfortable, which he
observed.

"Oh, no," he answered deftly; "not very." And as they moved toward the
dining-room Mary changed the subject.

"Oh," she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. "There is a man--a colored
man--waiting to see you in the back hall, but I guess he can wait until
after lunch."

They ate leisurely.

"There's going to be racing out at the park this evening," said Harry.
"Want to go?"

"I was going to hear an art lecture at the Club," Mary returned, and
grew thoughtful; for here walked her ghost again. Of course, the Club
was an affair with more of gossip than of intellectual effort, but
today, largely through her own suggestion, an art teacher of European
reputation was going to lecture, and Mary preferred it to the company of
the race track. And--just as certainly--her husband didn't.

"Don't forget the man, dear," she reminded him; but he was buried in his
paper, frowning.

"Look at that," he said finally. She glanced at the
head-lines--"Prominent Negro Politician Candidate for High Office at
Hands of New Administration. B. Alwyn of Alabama."

"Why, it's Bles!" she said, her face lighting as his darkened.

"An impudent Negro," he voiced his disgust. "If they must appoint
darkies why can't they get tractable ones like my nigger Stillings."

"Stillings?" she repeated. "Why, he's the man that's waiting."

"Sam, is it? Used to be one of our servants--you remember? Wants to
borrow more money, I presume." He went down-stairs, after first helping
himself to a glass of whiskey, and then gallantly kissing his wife. Mrs.
Cresswell was more unsatisfied than usual. She could not help feeling
that Mr. Cresswell was treating her about as he treated his wine--as an
indulgence; a loved one, a regular one, but somehow not as the reality
and prose of life, unless--she started at the thought--his life was all
indulgence. Having nothing else to do, she went out and paraded the
streets, watching the people who were happy enough to be busy.

Cresswell and Stillings had a long conference, and when Stillings
hastened away he could not forbear cutting a discreet pigeon-wing as he
rounded the corner. He had been promised the backing of the whole
Southern delegation in his schemes.

That night Teerswell called on him in his modest lodgings, where over
hot whiskey and water they talked.

"The damned Southern upstart," growled Teerswell, forgetting Stillings'
birth-place. "Do you mean to say he's actually slated for the place?"

"He's sure of it, unless something turns up."

"Well, who'd have dreamed it?" Teerswell mixed another stiff dram.

"And that isn't all," came Sam Stillings' unctuous voice.

Teerswell glanced at him. "What else?" he asked, pausing with the
steaming drink poised aloft.

"If I'm not mistaken, Alwyn intends to marry Miss Wynn."

"You lie!" the other suddenly yelled with an oath, overturning his
tumbler and striding across the floor. "Do you suppose she'd look at
that black--"

"Well, see here," said the astute Stillings, checking the details upon
his fingers. "They visit Senator Smith's together; he takes her home
from the Treble Clef; they say he talked to nobody else at her party;
she recommends him for the campaign--"

"What!" Teerswell again exploded. But Stillings continued smoothly:

"Oh, I have ways of finding things out. She corresponds with him during
the campaign; she asks Smith to make him Register; and he calls on her
every night."

Teerswell sat down limply.

"I see," he groaned. "It's all up. She's jilted me--and I--and I--"

"I don't see as it's all up yet," Stillings tried to reassure him.

"But didn't you say they were engaged?"

"I think they are; but--well, you know Carrie Wynn better than I do:
suppose, now--suppose he should lose the appointment?"

"But you say that's sure."

"Unless something turns up."

"But what _can_ turn up?"

"We might turn something."

"What--what--I tell you man, I'd--I'd do anything to down that nigger. I
hate him. If you'll help me I'll do anything for you."

Stillings arose and carefully opening the hall door peered out. Then he
came back and, seating himself close to Teerswell, pushed aside the
whiskey.

"Teerswell," he whispered, "you know I was working to be Register of the
Treasury. Well, now, when the scheme of making Alwyn Treasurer came up
they determined to appoint a Southern white Republican and give me a
place under Alwyn. Now, if Alwyn fails to land I've got no chance for
the bigger place, but I've got a good chance to be Register according to
the first plan. I helped in the campaign; I've got the Negro secret
societies backing me and--I don't mind telling you--the solid Southern
Congressional delegation. I'm trying now ostensibly for a
chief-clerkship under Bles, and I'm pretty sure of it: it pays
twenty-five hundred. See here: if we can make Bles do some fool talking
and get it into the papers, he'll be ditched, and I'll be Register."

"Great!" shouted Teerswell.

"Wait--wait. Now, if I get the job, how would you like to be my
assistant?"

"Like it? Why, great Jehoshaphat! I'd marry Carrie--but how can I help
you?"

"This way. I want to be better known among influential Negroes. You
introduce me and let me make myself solid. Especially I must get in Miss
Wynn's set so that both of us can watch her and Alwyn, and make her
friends ours."

"I'll do it--shake!" And Stillings put his oily hand into Teerswell's
nervous grip.

"Now, here," Stillings went on, "you stow all that jealousy and heavy
tragedy. Treat Alwyn well and call on Miss Wynn as usual--see?"

"It's a hard pill--but all right."

"Leave the rest to me; I'm hand in glove with Alwyn. I'll put stuff into
him that'll make him wave the bloody shirt at the next meeting of the
Bethel Literary--see? Then I'll go to Cresswell and say, 'Dangerous
nigger--, just as I told you.' He'll begin to move things. You see?
Cresswell is in with Smith--both directors in the big Cotton
Combine--and Smith will call Alwyn down. Then we'll think further."

"Stillings, you look like a fool, but you're a genius." And Teerswell
fairly hugged him. A few more details settled, and some more whiskey
consumed, and Teerswell went home at midnight in high spirits. Stillings
looked into the glass and scowled.

"Look like a fool, do I?" he mused. "Well, I ain't!"

Congressman Cresswell was stirred to his first political activity by the
hint given him through Stillings. He not only had a strong personal
dislike for Alwyn, but he regarded the promise to him of a high office
as a menace to the South.

The second speech which Alwyn made at the Bethel Literary was, as
Stillings foresaw, a reply to the stinging criticisms of certain colored
papers engineered by Teerswell, who said that Alwyn had been bribed to
remain loyal to the Republicans by a six thousand dollar office. Alwyn
had been cut to the quick, and his reply was a straight out defence of
Negro rights and a call to the Republican Party to redeem its pledges.

Caroline Wynn, seeing the rocks for which her political craft was
headed, adroitly steered several newspaper reports into the waste
basket, but Stillings saw to it that a circumstantial account was in the
_Colored American_, and that a copy of this paper was in Congressman
Cresswell's hands. Cresswell lost no time in calling on Senator Smith
and pointing out to him that Bles Alwyn was a dangerous Negro: seeking
social equality, hating white people, and scheming to make trouble. He
was too young and heady. It would be fatal to give such a man office and
influence; fatal for the development of the South, and bad for the
Cotton Combine.

Senator Smith was unconvinced. Alwyn struck him as a well-balanced
fellow, and he thought he deserved the office. He would, however, warn
him to make no further speeches like that of last night. Cresswell
mentioned Stillings as a good, inoffensive Negro who knew his place and
could be kept track of.

"Stillings is a good man," admitted Smith; "but Alwyn is better.
However, I'll bear what you say in mind."

Cresswell found Mr. Easterly in Mrs. Vanderpool's parlor, and that
gentleman was annoyed at the news.

"I especially picked out this Alwyn because he was Southern and
tractable, and seemed to have sense enough to know how to say well what
we wanted to say."

"When, as a matter of fact," drawled Mrs. Vanderpool, "he was simply
honest."

"The South won't stand it," Cresswell decisively affirmed.

"Well--" began Mr. Easterly.

"See here," interrupted Mrs. Vanderpool. "I'm interested in Alwyn; in
fact, an honest man in politics, even if he is black, piques my
curiosity. Give him a chance and I'll warrant he'll develop all the
desirable traits of a first class office-holder."

Easterly hesitated. "We must not offend the South, and we must placate
the Negroes," he said.

"The right sort of Negro--one like Stillings--appointed to a reasonable
position, would do both," opined Cresswell.

"It evidently didn't," Mrs. Vanderpool interjected.

Cresswell arose. "I tell you, Mr. Easterly, I object--it mustn't go
through." He took his leave.

Mrs. Vanderpool did not readily give up her plea for Alwyn, and bade
Zora get Mr. Smith on the telephone for discussion.

"Well," reported Easterly, hanging up the receiver, "we may land him. It
seems that he is engaged to a Washington school-teacher, and Smith says
she has him well in hand. She's a pretty shrewd proposition, and
understands that Alwyn's only chance now lies in keeping his mouth shut.
We may land him," he repeated.

"Engaged!" gasped Mrs. Vanderpool.

Zora quietly closed the door.




_Twenty-seven_

THE VISION OF ZORA


How Zora found the little church she never knew; but somehow, in the
long dark wanderings which she had fallen into the habit of taking at
nightfall, she stood one evening before it. It looked warm, and she was
cold. It was full of her people, and she was very, very lonely. She sat
in a back seat, and saw with unseeing eyes. She said again, as she had
said to herself a hundred times, that it was all right and just what she
had expected. What else could she have dreamed? That he should ever
marry her was beyond possibility; that had been settled long
since--there where the tall, dark pines, wan with the shades of evening,
cast their haunting shadows across the Silver Fleece and half hid the
blood-washed west. After _that_ he would marry some one else, of course;
some good and pure woman who would help and uplift and serve him.

She had dreamed that she would help--unknown, unseen--and perhaps she
had helped a little through Mrs. Vanderpool. It was all right, and yet
why so suddenly had the threads of life let go? Why was she drifting in
vast waters; in uncharted wastes of sea? Why was the puzzle of life
suddenly so intricate when but a little week ago she was reading it, and
its beauty and wisdom and power were thrilling her delighted hands?
Could it be possible that all unconsciously she had dared dream a
forbidden dream? No, she had always rejected it. When no one else had
the right; when no one thought; when no one cared, she had hovered over
his soul as some dark guardian angel; but now, now somebody else was
receiving his gratitude. It was all right, she supposed; but she, the
outcast child of the swamp, what was there for her to do in the great
world--her, the burden of whose sin--

But then came the voice of the preacher: _"Behold the Lamb of God, that
taketh away the sin of the world_."

She found herself all at once intently listening. She had been to church
many times before, but under the sermons and ceremonies she had always
sat coldly inert. In the South the cries, contortions, and religious
frenzy left her mind untouched; she did not laugh or mock, she simply
sat and watched and wondered. At the North, in the white churches, she
enjoyed the beauty of wall, windows, and hymn, liked the voice and
surplice of the preacher; but his words had no reference to anything in
which she was interested. Here suddenly came an earnest voice addressed,
by singular chance, to her of all the world.

She listened, bending forward, her eyes glued to the speaker's lips and
letting no word drop. He had the build and look of the fanatic: thin to
emancipation; brown; brilliant-eyed; his words snapped in nervous energy
and rang in awful earnestness.

"Life is sin, and sin is sorrow. Sorrow is born of selfishness and
self-seeking--our own good, our own happiness, our own glory. As if any
one of us were worth a life! No, never. A single self as an end is, and
ought to be, disappointment; it is too low; it is nothing. Only in a
whole world of selves, infinite, endless, eternal world on worlds of
selves--only in their vast good is true salvation. The good of others
is our true good; work for others; not for your salvation, but the
salvation of the world." The audience gave a low uneasy groan and the
minister in whose pulpit the stranger preached stirred uneasily. But he
went on tensely, with flying words:

"Unselfishness is sacrifice--Jesus was supreme sacrifice." ("Amen,"
screamed a voice.) "In your dark lives," he cried, "_who_ is the King of
Glory? Sacrifice. Lift up your heads, then, ye gates of prejudice and
hate, and let the King of Glory come in. Forget yourselves and your
petty wants, and behold your starving people. The wail of black millions
sweeps the air--east and west they cry, Help! Help! Are you dumb? Are
you blind? Do you dance and laugh, and hear and see not? The cry of
death is in the air; they murder, burn, and maim us!" ("Oh--oh--" moaned
the people swaying in their seats.) "When we cry they mock us; they ruin
our women and debauch our children--what shall we do?

"Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away sin. Behold the Supreme
Sacrifice that makes us clean. Give up your pleasures; give up your
wants; give up all to the weak and wretched of our people. Go down to
Pharaoh and smite him in God's name. Go down to the South where we
writhe. Strive--work--build--hew--lead--inspire! God calls. Will you
hear? Come to Jesus. The harvest is waiting. Who will cry: 'Here am I,
send me!'"

Zora rose and walked up the aisle; she knelt before the altar and
answered the call: "Here am I--send me."

And then she walked out. Above her sailed the same great stars; around
her hummed the same hoarse city; but within her soul sang some new song
of peace.

"What is the matter, Zora?" Mrs. Vanderpool inquired, for she seemed to
see in the girl's face and carriage some subtle change; something that
seemed to tell how out of the dream had stepped the dreamer into the
realness of things; how suddenly the seeker saw; how to the wanderer,
the Way was opened.

Just how she sensed this Mrs. Vanderpool could not have explained, nor
could Zora. Was there a change, sudden, cataclysmic? No. There were to
come in future days all the old doubts and shiverings, the old restless
cry: "It is all right--all right!" But more and more, above the doubt
and beyond the unrest, rose the great end, the mighty ideal, that
flickered and wavered, but ever grew and waxed strong, until it became
possible, and through it all things else were possible. Thus from the
grave of youth and love, amid the soft, low singing of dark and bowed
worshippers, the Angel of the Resurrection rolled away the stone.

"What is the matter, Zora?" Mrs. Vanderpool repeated.

Zora looked up, almost happily--standing poised on her feet as if to
tell of strength and purpose.

"I have found the Way," she cried joyously.

Mrs. Vanderpool gave her a long searching look.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "I've been waiting."

"I'm sorry--but I've been--converted." And she told her story.

"Pshaw, Zora!" Mrs. Vanderpool uttered impatiently. "He's a fakir."

"Maybe," said Zora serenely and quietly; "but he brought the Word."

"Zora, don't talk cant; it isn't worthy of your intelligence."

"It was more than intelligent--it was true."

"Zora--listen, child! You were wrought up tonight, nervous--wild. You
were happy to meet your people, and where he said one word you supplied
two. What you attribute to him is the voice of your own soul."

But Zora merely smiled. "All you say may be true. But what does it
matter? I know one thing, like the man in the Bible: 'Whereas I was
blind now I see.'"

Mrs. Vanderpool gave a little helpless gesture. "And what shall you do?"
she asked.

"I'm going back South to work for my people."

"When?" The old careworn look stole across Mrs. Vanderpool's features.

Zora came gently forward and slipped her arms lovingly about the other
woman's neck.

"Not right off," she said gently; "not until I learn more. I hate to
leave you, but--it calls!"

Mrs. Vanderpool held the dark girl close and began craftily:

"You see, Zora, the more you know the more you can do."

"Yes."

"And if you are determined I will see that you are taught. You must know
settlement-work and reform movements; not simply here but--" she
hesitated--"in England--in France."

"Will it take long?" Zora asked, smoothing the lady's hair.

Mrs. Vanderpool considered. "No--five years is not long; it is all too
short."

"Five years: it is very long; but there is a great deal to learn. Must I
study five years?"

Mrs. Vanderpool threw back her head.

"Zora, I am selfish I know, but five years truly is none too long. Then,
too, Zora, we have work to do in that time."

"What?"

"There is Alwyn's career," and Mrs. Vanderpool looked into Zora's eyes.

The girl did not shrink, but she paused.

"Yes," she said slowly, "we must help him."

"And after he rises--"

"He will marry."

"Whom?"

"The woman he loves," returned Zora, quietly.

"Yes--that is best," sighed Mrs. Vanderpool. "But how shall we help
him?"

"Make him Treasurer of the United States without sacrificing his
manhood or betraying his people."

"I can do that," said Mrs. Vanderpool slowly.

"It will cost something," said Zora.

"I will do it," was the lady's firm assurance. Zora kissed her.

The next afternoon Mrs. Cresswell went down to a white social settlement
of which Congressman Todd had spoken, where a meeting of the Civic Club
was to be held. She had come painfully to realize that if she was to
have a career she must make it for herself. The plain, unwelcome truth
was that her husband had no great interests in life in which she could
find permanent pleasure. Companionship and love there was and, she told
herself, always would be; but in some respects their lives must flow in
two streams. Last night, for the second time, she had irritated him; he
had spoken almost harshly to her, and she knew she must brood or work
today. And so she hunted work, eagerly.

She felt the atmosphere the moment she entered. There were carelessly
gowned women and men smart and shabby, but none of them were thinking of
clothes nor even of one another. They had great deeds in mind; they were
scanning the earth; they were toiling for men. The same grim excitement
that sends smaller souls hunting for birds and rabbits and lions, had
sent them hunting the enemies of mankind: they were bent to the chase,
scenting the game, knowing the infinite meaning of their hunt and the
glory of victory. Mary Cresswell had listened but a half hour before her
world seemed so small and sordid and narrow, so trivial, that a sense of
shame spread over her. These people were not only earnest, but expert.
They acknowledged the need of Mr. Todd's educational bill.

"But the Republicans are going to side-track it; I have that on the best
authority," said one.

"True; but can't we force them to it?"

"Only by political power, and they've just won a campaign."

"They won it by Negro votes, and the Negro who secured the votes is
eager for this bill; he's a fine, honest fellow."

"Very well; work with him; and when we can be of real service let us
know. Meantime, this Child Labor bill is different. It's bound to pass.
Both parties are back of it, and public opinion is aroused. Now our work
is to force amendments enough to make the bill effective."

Discussion followed; not flamboyant and declamatory, but tense,
staccato, pointed. Mrs. Cresswell found herself taking part. Someone
mentioned her name, and one or two glances of interest and even
curiosity were thrown her way. Congressmen's wives were rare at the
Civic Club.

Congressmen Todd urged Mrs. Cresswell to stay after the discussion and
attend a meeting of the managers and workers of the Washington social
settlements.

"Have you many settlements?" she inquired.

"Three in all--two white and one colored."

"And will they all be represented?"

"Yes, of course, Mrs. Cresswell. If you object to meeting the colored
people--"

Mrs. Cresswell blushed.

"No, indeed," she answered; "I used to teach colored people."

She watched this new group gather: a business man, two fashionable
ladies, three college girls, a gray-haired colored woman, and a young
spectacled brown man, and then, to her surprise, Mrs. Vanderpool and
Zora.

Zora was scarcely seated when that strange sixth sense of hers told her
that something had happened, and it needed but a side-glance from Mrs.
Vanderpool to indicate what it was. She sat with folded hands and the
old dreamy look in her eyes. In one moment she lived it all again--the
red cabin, the moving oak, the sowing of the Fleece, and its fearful
reaping. And now, when she turned her head, she would see the woman who
was to marry Bles Alwyn. She had often dreamed of her, and had set a
high ideal. She wanted her to be handsome, well dressed, earnest and
good. She felt a sort of person proprietorship in her, and when at last
the quickened pulse died to its regular healthy beat, she turned and
looked and knew.

Caroline Wynn deemed it a part of the white world's education to
participate in meetings like this; doing so was not pleasant, but it
appealed to her cynicism and mocking sense of pleasure. She always
roused hostility as she entered: her gown was too handsome, her gloves
too spotless, her air had hauteur enough to be almost impudent in the
opinion of most white people. Then gradually her intelligence, her cool
wit and self-possession, would conquer and she would go gracefully out
leaving a rather bewildered audience behind. She sat today with her dark
gold profile toward Zora, and the girl looked and was glad. She was such
a woman she would have Bles marry. She was glad, and she choked back the
sob that struggled and fought in her throat.

The meeting never got beyond a certain constraint. The Congressman made
an excellent speech; there were various sets of figures read by the
workers; and Miss Wynn added a touch of spice by several pertinent
questions and comments. Then, as the meeting broke up and Mrs. Cresswell
came forward to speak to Zora, Mrs. Vanderpool managed to find herself
near Miss Wynn and to be introduced. They exchanged a few polite
phrases, fencing delicately to test the other's wrist and interest. They
touched on the weather, and settlement work; but Miss Wynn did not
propose to be stranded on the Negro problem.

"I suppose the next bit of excitement will be in the inauguration," she
said to Mrs. Vanderpool.

"I understand it will be unusually elaborate," returned Mrs. Vanderpool,
a little surprised at the turn. Then she added pleasantly: "I think I
shall see it through, from speech to ball."

"Yes, I do usually," Miss Wynn asserted, adjusting her furs.

Mrs. Vanderpool was further surprised. Did colored people attend the
ball?

"We sorely need a national ball-room," she said. "Isn't the census
building wretched?"

"I do not know," smiled Miss Wynn.

"Oh, I thought you said--"

"I meant _our_ ball."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Vanderpool in turn. "Oh!" Here a thought came. Of
course, the colored people had their own ball; she remembered having
heard about it. Why not send Zora? She plunged in:

"Miss Wynn, I have a maid--such an intelligent girl; I do wish she could
attend your ball--" seeing her blunder, she paused. Miss Wynn was coolly
buttoning her glove.

"Yes," she acknowledged politely, "few of us can afford maids, and
therefore we do not usually arrange for them; but I think we can have
your _protegee_ look on from the gallery. Good-afternoon."

As Mrs. Vanderpool drove home she related the talk to Zora. Zora was
silent at first. Then she said deliberately:

"Miss Wynn was right."

"Why, Zora!"

"Did Helene attend the ball four years ago?"

"But, Zora, must you folk ape our nonsense as well as our sense?"

"You force us to," said Zora.




_Twenty-eight_

THE ANNUNCIATION


The new President had been inaugurated. Beneath the creamy pile of the
old Capitol, and facing the new library, he had stood aloft and looked
down on a waving sea of faces--black-coated, jostling, eager-eyed fellow
creatures. They had watched his lips move, had scanned eagerly his dress
and the gowned and decorated dignitaries beside him; and then, with
blare of band and prancing of horses, he had been whirled down the dip
and curve of that long avenue, with its medley of meanness and thrift
and hurry and wealth, until, swinging sharply, the dim walls of the
White House rose before him. He entered with a sigh.

Then the vast welter of humanity dissolved and streamed hither and
thither, gaping and laughing until night, when thousands poured into the
red barn of the census shack and entered the artificial fairyland
within. The President walked through, smiling; the senators protected
their friends in the crush; and Harry Cresswell led his wife to a
little oasis of Southern ladies and gentlemen.

"This is democracy for you," said he, wiping his brow.

From a whirling eddy Mrs. Vanderpool waved at them, and they rescued
her.

"I think I am ready to go," she gasped. "Did you ever!"

"Come," Cresswell invited. But just then the crowd pushed them apart and
shot them along, and Mrs. Cresswell found herself clinging to her
husband amid two great whirling variegated throngs of driving,
white-faced people. The band crashed and blared; the people laughed and
pushed; and with rhythmic sound and swing the mighty throng was dancing.

It took much effort, but at last the Cresswell party escaped and rolled
off in their carriages. They swept into the avenue and out again, then
up 14th Street, where, turning for some street obstruction, they passed
a throng of carriages on a cross street.

"It's the other ball," cried Mrs. Vanderpool, and amid laughter she
added, "Let's go!"

It was--the other ball. For Washington is itself, and something else
besides. Along beside it ever runs that dark and haunting echo; that
shadowy world-in-world with its accusing silence, its emphatic
self-sufficiency. Mrs. Cresswell at first demurred. She thought of
Elspeth's cabin: the dirt, the smell, the squalor: of course, this would
be different; but--well, Mrs. Cresswell had little inclination for
slumming. She was interested in the under-world, but intellectually, not
by personal contact. She did not know that this was a side-world, not an
under-world. Yet the imposing building did not look sordid.

"Hired?" asked some one.

"No, owned."

"Indeed!"

Then there was a hitch.

"Tickets?"

"Where can we buy them?"

"Not on sale," was the curt reply.

"Actually exclusive!" sneered Cresswell, for he could not imagine any
one unwelcome at a Negro ball. Then he bethought himself of Sam
Stillings and sent for him. In a few minutes he had a dozen
complimentary tickets in his hand.

They entered the balcony and sat down. Mary Cresswell leaned forward. It
was interesting. Beneath her was an ordinary pretty ball--flowered,
silked, and ribboned; with swaying whirling figures, music, and
laughter, and all the human fun of gayety and converse.

And then she was impressed with the fact that this was no ordinary
scene; it was, on the contrary, most extraordinary.

There was a black man waltzing with a white woman--no, she was not
white, for Mary caught the cream and curl of the girl as she swept past:
but there was a white man (was he white?) and a black woman. The color
of the scene was wonderful. The hard human white seemed to glow and live
and run a mad gamut of the spectrum, from morn till night, from white to
black; through red and sombre browns, pale and brilliant yellows, dead
and living blacks. Through her opera-glasses Mary scanned their hair;
she noted everything from the infinitely twisted, crackled, dead, and
grayish-black to the piled mass of red golden sunlight. Her eyes went
dreaming; there below was the gathering of the worlds. She saw types of
all nations and all lands swirling beneath her in human brotherhood, and
a great wonder shook her. They seemed so happy. Surely, this was no
nether world; it was upper earth, and--her husband beckoned; he had been
laughing incontinently. He saw nothing but a crowd of queer looking
people doing things they were not made to do and appearing absurdly
happy over it. It irritated him unreasonably.

"See the washer-woman in red," he whispered. "Look at the monkey. Come,
let's go."

They trooped noisily down-stairs, and Cresswell walked unceremoniously
between a black man and his partner. Mrs. Vanderpool recognized and
greeted the girl as Miss Wynn. Mrs. Cresswell did not notice her, but
she paused with a start of recognition at the sight of the man.

"Why, Bles!" she exclaimed impetuously, starting to hold out her hand.
She was sincerely pleased at seeing him. Then she remembered. She bowed
and smiled, looking at him with interest and surprise. He was correctly
dressed, and the white shirt set off the comeliness of his black face in
compelling contrast. He carried himself like a man, and bowed with
gravity and dignity. She passed on and heard her husband's petulant
voice in her ear.

"Mary--Mary! for Heaven's sake, come on; don't shake hands with
niggers."

It was recurring flashes of temper like this, together with evidences of
dubious company and a growing fondness for liquor, that drove Mary
Cresswell more and more to find solace in the work of Congressman Todd's
Civic Club. She collected statistics for several of the Committee, wrote
letters, interviewed a few persons, and felt herself growing in
usefulness and importance. She did not mention these things to her
husband; she knew he would not object, but she shrank from his ridicule.

The various causes advocated by the Civic Club felt the impetus of the
aggressive work of the organization. This was especially the case with
the National Education Bill and the amendment to the Child Labor Bill.
The movement became strong enough to call Mr. Easterly down from New
York. He and the inner circle went over matters carefully.

"We need the political strength of the South," said Easterly; "not only
in framing national legislation in our own interests, but always in
State laws. Particularly, we must get them into line to offset Todd's
foolishness. The Child Labor Bill must either go through unamended or be
killed. The Cotton Inspection Bill--our chief measure--must be slipped
through quietly by Southern votes, while in the Tariff mix-up we must
take good care of cotton.

"Now, on the other hand, we are offending the Southerners in three ways:
Todd's revived Blair Bill is too good a thing for niggers; the South is
clamoring for a first classy embassy appointment; and the President's
nomination of Alwyn as Treasurer will raise a howl from Virginia to
Texas."

"There is some strong influence back of Alwyn," said Senator Smith; "not
only are the Negroes enthused, but the President has daily letters from
prominent whites."

"The strong influence is named Vanderpool," Easterly drily remarked.
"She's playing a bigger political game than I laid out for her. That's
the devil with women: they can't concentrate: they get too damned many
side issues. Now, I offered her husband the French ambassadorship
provided she'd keep the Southerners feeling good toward us. She's hand
in glove with the Southerners, all right; but she wants not only her
husband's appointment but this darkey's too."

"But that's been decided, hasn't it?" put in Smith.

"Yes," grumbled Easterly; "but it makes it hard already. At any rate,
the Educational Bill must be killed right off. No more talk; no more
consideration--kill it, and kill it now. Now about this Child Labor
Bill: Todd's Civic Club is raising the mischief. Who's responsible?"

The silent Jackson spoke up. "Congressman Cresswell's wife has been very
active, and Todd thinks they've got the South with them."

"Congressman Cresswell's wife!" Easterly's face was one great
exclamation point. "Now what the devil does this mean?"

"I'm afraid," said Senator Smith, "that it may mean an attempt on the
part of Cresswell's friends to boost him for the French ambassadorship.
He's the only Southerner with money enough to support the position, and
there's been a good deal of quiet talk, I understand, in Southern
circles."

"But it's treason!" Easterly shouted. "It will ruin the plans of the
Combine to put this amended Child Labor Bill through. John Taylor has
just written me that he's starting mills at Toomsville, and that he
depends on unrestricted labor conditions, as we must throughout the
South. Doesn't Cresswell know this?"

"Of course. I think it's just a bluff. If he gets the appointment he'll
let the bill drop."

"I see--everybody is raising his price, is he? Pretty soon the darky
will be holding us up. Well, see Cresswell, and put it to him strong. I
must go. Wire me."

Senator Smith presented the matter bluntly to Cresswell as soon as he
saw him. "Which would the South prefer--Todd's Education Bill, or
Alwyn's appointment?"

It was characteristic of Cresswell that the smaller matter of Stillings'
intrigue should interest him more than Todd's measure, of which he knew
nothing.

"What is Todd's bill?" asked Harry Cresswell, darkening.

Smith, surprised, got out a copy and explained. Cresswell interrupted
before he was half through.

"Don't you see," he said angrily, "that that will ruin our plans for the
Cotton Combine?"

"Yes, I do," replied Smith; "but it will not do the immediate harm that
the amended Child Labor Bill will do."

"What's that?" demanded Cresswell, frowning again.

Senator Smith regarded him again: was Cresswell playing a shrewd game?

"Why," he said at length, "aren't you promoting it?"

"No," was the reply. "Never heard of it."

"But," Senator Smith began, and paused. He turned and took up a circular
issued by the Civic Club, giving a careful account of their endeavors to
amend and pass the Child Labor Bill. Cresswell read it, then threw it
aside.

"Nonsense!" he indignantly repudiated the measure. "That will never do;
it's as bad as the Education Bill."

"But your wife is encouraging it and we thought you were back of it."

Cresswell stared in blank amazement.

"My wife!" he gasped. Then he bethought himself. "It's a mistake," he
supplemented; "Mrs. Cresswell gave them no authority to sign her name."

"She's been very active," Smith persisted, "and naturally we were all
anxious."

Cresswell bit his lip. "I shall speak to her; she does not realize what
use they are making of her passing interest."

He hurried away, and Senator Smith felt a bit sorry for Mrs. Cresswell
when he recalled the expression on her husband's face.

Mary Cresswell did not get home until nearly dinner time; then she came
in glowing with enthusiasm. Her work had received special commendation
that afternoon, and she had been asked to take the chairmanship of the
committee on publicity. Finding that her husband was at home, she
determined to tell him--it was so good to be doing something worth
while. Perhaps, too, he might be made to show some interest. She thought
of Mr. and Mrs. Todd and the old dream glowed faintly again.

Cresswell looked at her as she entered the library where he was waiting
and smoking. She was rumpled and muddy, with flying hair and thick
walking shoes and the air of bustle and vigor which had crept into her
blood this last month. Truly, her cheeks were glowing and her eyes
bright, but he disapproved. Softness and daintiness, silk and lace and
glimmering flesh, belonged to women in his mind, and he despised Amazons
and "business" women. He received her kiss coldly, and Mary's heart
sank. She essayed some gay greeting, but he interrupted her.

"What's this stuff about the Civic Club?" he began sharply.

"Stuff?" she queried, blankly.

"That's what I said."

"I'm sure I don't know," she answered stiffly. "I belong to the Civic
Club, and have been working with it."

"Why didn't you tell me?" His resentment grew as he proceeded.

"I did not think you were interested."

"Didn't you know that this Child Labor business was opposed to my
interests?"

"Dear, I did not dream it. It's a Republican bill, to be sure; but you
seemed very friendly with Senator Smith, who introduced it. We were
simply trying to improve it."

"Suppose we didn't want it improved."

"That's what some said; but I did not believe such--deception."

The blood rushed to Cresswell's face.

"Well, you will drop this bill and the Civic Club from now on."

"Why?"

"Because I say so," he retorted explosively, too angry to explain
further.


She looked at him--a long, fixed, penetrating look which revealed more
than she had ever seen before, then turned away and went slowly
up-stairs. She did not come down to dinner, and in the evening the
doctor was called.

Cresswell drooped a bit after eating, hesitated, and reflected. He had
acted too cavalierly in this Civic Club mess, he concluded, and yet he
would not back down. He'd go see her and pet her a bit, but be firm.

He opened her boudoir door gently, and she stood before him radiant,
clothed in silk and lace, her hair loosened. He paused, astonished. But
she threw herself upon his neck, with a joyful, half hysterical cry.

"I will give it all up--everything! Willingly, willingly!" Her voice
dropped abruptly to a tremulous whisper. "Oh, Harry! I--I am to be the
mother of a child!"




_Twenty-nine_

A MASTER OF FATE


"There is not the slightest doubt, Miss Wynn," Senator Smith was saying,
"but that the schools of the District will be reorganized."

"And the Board of Education abolished?" she added.

"Yes. The power will be delegated to a single white superintendent."

The vertical line in Caroline Wynn's forehead became pronounced.

"Whose work is this, Senator?" she asked.

"Well, there are, of course, various parties back of the change: the
'outs,' the reformers, the whole tendency to concentrate responsibility,
and so on. But, frankly, the deciding factor was the demand of the
South."

"Is there anything in Washington that the South does not already own?"

Senator Smith smiled thinly.

"Not much," drily; "but we own the South."

"And part of the price is putting the colored schools of the District in
the hands of a Southern man and depriving us of all voice in their
control?"

"Precisely, Miss Wynn. But you'd be surprised to know that it was the
Negroes themselves who stirred the South to this demand."

"Not at all; you mean the colored newspapers, I presume."

"The same, with Teerswell's clever articles; then his partner Stillings
worked the 'impudent Negro teacher' argument on Cresswell until
Cresswell was wild to get the South in control of the schools."

"But what do Teerswell and Stillings want?"

"They want Bles Alwyn to make a fool of himself."

"That is a trifle cryptic," Miss Wynn mused. The Senator amplified.

"We are giving the South the Washington schools and killing the
Education Bill in return for this support of some of our measures and
their assent to Alwyn's appointment. You see I speak frankly."

"I can stand it, Senator."

"I believe you can. Well, now, if Alwyn should act unwisely and offend
the South, somebody else stands in line for the appointment."

"As Treasurer?" she asked in surprise.

"Oh, no, they are too shrewd to ask that; it would offend their backers,
or shall I say their tools, the Southerners. No, they ask only to be
Register and Assistant Register of the Treasury. This is an office
colored men have held for years, and it is quite ambitious enough for
them; so Stillings assures Cresswell and his friends."

"I see," Miss Wynn slowly acknowledged. "But how do they hope to make
Mr. Alwyn blunder?"

"Too easily, I fear--unless _you_ are very careful. Alwyn has been
working like a beaver for the National Education Bill. He's been in to
see me several times, as you probably know. His heart is set on it. He
regards its passage as a sort of vindication of his defence of the
party."

"Yes."

"Now, the party has dropped the bill for good, and Alwyn doesn't like
it. If he should attack the party--"

"But he wouldn't," cried Miss Wynn with a start that belied her
conviction.

"Did you know that he is to be invited to make the principal address to
the graduates of the colored high-school?"

"But," she objected. "They have selected Bishop Johnson; I--"

"I know you did," laughed the Senator, "but the Judge got orders from
higher up."

"Shrewd Mr. Teerswell," remarked Miss Wynn, sagely.

"Shrewd Mr. Stillings," the Senator corrected; "but perhaps too shrewd.
Suppose Mr. Alwyn should take this occasion to make a thorough defence
of the party?"

"But--will he?"

"That's where you come in," Senator Smith pointed out, rising, "and the
real reason of this interview. We're depending on you to pull the party
out of an awkward hole," and he shook hands with his caller.

Miss Wynn walked slowly up Pennsylvania Avenue with a smile on her face.

"I did not give him the credit," she declared, repeating it; "I did not
give him the credit. Here I was, playing an alluring game on the side,
and my dear Tom transforms it into a struggle for bread and butter; for
of course, if the Board of Education goes, I lose my place." She lifted
her head and stared along the avenue.

A bitterness dawned in her eyes. The whole street was a living insult to
her. Here she was, an American girl by birth and breeding, a daughter of
citizens who had fought and bled and worked for a dozen generations on
this soil; yet if she stepped into this hotel to rest, even with full
purse, she would be politely refused accommodation. Should she attempt
to go into this picture show she would be denied entrance. She was
thirsty with the walk; but at yonder fountain the clerk would roughly
refuse to serve her. It was lunch time; there was no place within a mile
where she was allowed to eat. The revolt deepened within her. Beyond
these known and definite discriminations lay the unknown and hovering.
In yonder store nothing hindered the clerk from being exceptionally
pert; on yonder street-car the conductor might reserve his politeness
for white folk; this policeman's business was to keep black and brown
people in their places. All this Caroline Wynn thought of, and then
smiled.

This was the thing poor blind Bles was trying to attack by "appeals" for
"justice." Nonsense! Does one "appeal" to the red-eyed beast that
throttles him? No. He composes himself, looks death in the eye, and
speaks softly, on the chance. Whereupon Miss Wynn composed herself,
waved gayly at a passing acquaintance, and matched some ribbons in a
department store. The clerk was new and anxious to sell.

Meantime her brain was busy. She had a hard task before her. Alwyn's
absurd conscience and Quixotic ideas were difficult to cope with. After
his last indiscreet talk she had ventured deftly to remonstrate, and she
well remembered the conversation.

"Wasn't what I said true?" he had asked.

"Perfectly. Is that an excuse for saying it?"

"The facts ought to be known."

"Yes, but ought you to tell them?"

"If not I, who?"

"Some one who is less useful elsewhere, and whom I like less."

"Carrie," he had been intensely earnest. "I want to do the best thing,
but I'm puzzled. I wonder if I'm selling my birthright for six thousand
dollars?"

"In case of doubt, do it."

"But there's the doubt: I may convert; I may open the eyes of the blind;
I may start a crusade for Negro rights."

"Don't believe it; it's useless; we'll never get our rights in this
land."

"You don't believe that!" he had ejaculated, shocked.

Well, she must begin again. As she had hoped, he was waiting for her
when she reached home. She welcomed him cordially, made a little music
for him, and served tea.

"Bles," she said, "the Opposition has been laying a pretty shrewd trap
for you."

"What?" he asked absently.

"They are going to have you chosen as High School commencement orator."

"Me? Stuff!"

"You--and not stuff, but 'Education' will be your natural theme. Indeed,
they have so engineered it that the party chiefs expect from you a
defence of their dropping of the Educational Bill."

"What!"

"Yes, and probably your nomination will come before the speech and
confirmation after."

Bles walked the floor excitedly for a while and then sat down and
smiled.

"It was a shrewd move," he said; "but I think I thank them for it."

"I don't. But still,

     _"''T is the sport to see the engineer hoist
     by his own petar.'"_

Bles mused and she watched him covertly. Suddenly she leaned over.

"Moreover," she said, "about that same date I'm liable to lose my
position as teacher."

He looked at her quickly, and she explained the coming revolution in
school management.

He did not discuss the matter, and she was equally reticent; but when he
entered the doors of his lodging-place and, gathering his mail, slowly
mounted the stairs, there came the battle of his life.

He knew it and he tried to wage it coolly and with method. He arrayed
the arguments side by side: on this side lay success; the greatest
office ever held by a Negro in America--greater than Douglass or Bruce
or Lynch had held--a landmark, a living example and inspiration. A man
owed the world success; there were plenty who could fail and stumble and
give multiple excuses. Should he be one? He viewed the other side. What
must he pay for success? Aye, face it boldly--what? Mechanically he
searched for his mail and undid the latest number of the _Colored
American_. He was sure the answer stood there in Teerswell's biting
vulgar English. And there it was, with a cartoon:

                HIS MASTER'S VOICE

     Alwyn is Ordered to Eat His Words or Get Out
            Watch Him Do It Gracefully
           The Republican Leaders, etc.

He threw down his paper, and the hot blood sang in his ears. The
sickening thought was that it was true. If he did make the speech
demanded it would be like a dog obedient to his master's voice.

The cold sweat oozed on his face; throwing up the window, he drank in
the Spring breeze, and stared at the city he once had thought so
alluring. Somehow it looked like the swamp, only less beautiful; he
stretched his arms and his lips breathed--"Zora!"

He turned hastily to his desk and looked at the other piece of mail--a
single sealed note carefully written on heavy paper. He did not
recognize the handwriting. Then his mind flew off again. What would they
say if he failed to get the office? How they would silently hoot and
jeer at the upstart who suddenly climbed so high and fell. And Carrie
Wynn--poor Carrie, with her pride and position dragged down in his ruin:
how would she take it? He writhed in soul. And yet, to be a man; to say
calmly, "No"; to stand in that great audience and say, "My people first
and last"; to take Carrie's hand and together face the world and
struggle again to newer finer triumphs--all this would be very close to
attainment of the ideal. He found himself staring at the little letter.
Would she go? Would she, could she, lay aside her pride and cynicism,
her dainty ways and little extravagances? An odd fancy came to him:
perhaps the answer to the riddle lay sealed within the envelope he
fingered.

He opened it. Within lay four lines of writing--no more--no address, no
signature; simply the words:

     _"It matters now how strait the gate,
       How charged with punishment the scroll;
     I am the master of my fate,
       I am the captain of my soul."_

He stared at the lines. Eleven o'clock--twelve--one--chimed the
deep-voiced clock without, before Alwyn went to bed.

Miss Wynn had kept a vigil almost as long. She knew that Bles had
influential friends who had urged his preferment; it might be wise to
enlist them. Before she fell asleep she had determined to have a talk
with Mrs. Vanderpool. She had learned from Senator Smith that the lady
took special interest in Alwyn.

Mrs. Vanderpool heard Miss Wynn's story next day with some inward
dismay. Really the breadth and depth of intrigue in this city almost
frightened her as she walked deeper into the mire. She had promised Zora
that Bles should receive his reward on terms which would not wound his
manhood. It seemed an easy, almost an obvious thing, to promise at the
time. Yet here was this rather unusual young woman asking Mrs.
Vanderpool to use her influence in making Alwyn bow to the yoke. She
fenced for time.

"But I do not know Mr. Alwyn."

"I thought you did; you recommended him highly."

"I knew of him slightly in the South and I have watched his career
here."

"It would be too bad to have that career spoiled now."

"But is it necessary? Suppose he should defend the Education Bill."

"And criticise the party?" asked Miss Wynn. "It would take strong
influence to pull him through."

"And if that strong influence were found?" said Mrs. Vanderpool
thoughtfully.

"It would surely involve some other important concession to the South."

Mrs. Vanderpool looked up, and an interjection hovered on her lips. Was
it possible that the price of Alwyn's manhood would be her husband's
appointment to Paris? And if it were?

"I'll do what I can," she said graciously; "but I am afraid that will
not be much."

Miss Wynn hesitated. She had not succeeded even in guessing the source
of Mrs. Vanderpool's interest in Alwyn, and without that her appeal was
but blind groping. She stopped on her way to the door to admire a bronze
statuette and find time to think.

"You are interested in bronzes?" asked Mrs. Vanderpool.

"Oh, no; I'm far too poor. But I've dabbled a bit in sculpture."

"Indeed?" Mrs. Vanderpool revealed a mild interest, and Miss Wynn was
compelled to depart with little enlightenment.

On the way up town she concluded that there was but one chance of
success: she must write Alwyn's speech. With characteristic decision she
began her plans at once.

"What will you say in your speech?" she asked him that night as he rose
to go.

He looked at her and she wavered slightly under his black eyes. The
fight was becoming a little too desperate even for her steady nerves.

"You would not like me to act dishonestly, would you?" he asked.

"No," she involuntarily replied, regretting the word the moment she had
uttered it. He gave her one of his rare sweet smiles, and, rising,
before she realized his intent, he had kissed her hands and was gone.

She asked herself why she had been so foolish; and yet, somehow, sitting
there alone in the firelight, she felt glad for once that she had risen
above intrigue. Then she sighed and smiled, and began to plot anew.
Teerswell dropped in later and brought his friend, Stillings. They found
their hostess gay and entertaining.

Miss Wynn gathered books about her, and in the days of April and May she
and Alwyn read up on education. He marvelled at the subtlety of her
mind, and she at the relentlessness of his. They were very near each
other during these days, and yet there was ever something between them:
a vision to him of dark and pleading eyes that he constantly saw beside
her cool, keen glance. And he to her was always two men: one man above
men, whom she could respect but would not marry, and one man like all
men, whom she would marry but could not respect. His devotion to an
ideal which she thought so utterly unpractical, aroused keen curiosity
and admiration. She was sure he would fail in the end, and she wanted
him to fail; and somehow, somewhere back beyond herself, her better self
longed to find herself defeated; to see this mind stand firm on
principle, under circumstances where she believed men never stood. Deep
within her she discovered at times a passionate longing to believe in
somebody; yet she found herself bending every energy to pull this man
down to the level of time-servers, and even as she failed, feeling
something like contempt for his stubbornness.

The great day came. He had her notes, her suggestions, her hints, but
she had no intimation of what he would finally say.

"Will you come to hear me?" he asked.

"No," she murmured.

"That is best," he said, and then he added slowly, "I would not like you
ever to despise me."

She answered sharply: "I want to despise you!"

Did he understand? She was not sure. She was sorry she had said it; but
she meant it fiercely. Then he left her, for it was already four in the
afternoon and he spoke at eight.

In the morning she came down early, despite some dawdling over her
toilet. She brought the morning paper into the dining-room and sat down
with it, sipping her coffee. She leaned back and looked leisurely at the
headings. There was nothing on the front page but a divorce, a
revolution, and a new Trust. She took another sip of her coffee, and
turned the page. There it was, "Colored High Schools Close--Vicious
Attack on Republican Party by Negro Orator."

She laid the paper aside and slowly finished her coffee. A few minutes
later she went to her desk and sat there so long that she started at
hearing the clock strike nine.

The day passed. When she came home from school she bought an evening
paper. She was not surprised to learn that the Senate had rejected
Alwyn's nomination; that Samuel Stillings had been nominated and
confirmed as Register of the Treasury, and that Mr. Tom Teerswell was to
be his assistant. Also the bill reorganizing the school board had
passed. She wrote two notes and posted them as she went out to walk.

When she reached home Stillings was there, and they talked earnestly.
The bell rang violently. Teerswell rushed in.

"Well, Carrie!" he cried eagerly.

"Well, Tom," she responded, giving him a languid hand. Stillings rose
and departed. Teerswell nodded and said:

"Well, what do you think of last night?"

"A great speech, I hear."

"A fool speech--that speech cost him, I calculate, between twenty-four
and forty-eight thousand dollars."

"Possibly he's satisfied with his bargain."

"Possibly. Are you?"

"With his bargain?" quickly. "Yes."

"No," he pressed her, "with your bargain?"

"What bargain?" she parried.

"To marry him."

"Oh, no; that's off."

"Is it off?" cried Teerswell delightedly. "Good! It was foolish from the
first--that black country--"

"Gently," Miss Wynn checked him. "I'm not yet over the habit."

"Come. See what I've bought. You know I have a salary now." He produced
a ring with a small diamond cluster.

"How pretty!" she said, taking it and looking at it. Then she handed it
back.

He laughed gayly. "It's yours, Carrie. You're going to marry me."

She looked at him queerly.

"Am I? But I've got another ring already," she said.

"Oh, send Alwyn's back."

"I have. This is still another." And uncovering her hand she showed a
ring with a large and beautiful diamond.

He rose. "Whose is that?" he demanded apprehensively.

"Mine--" her eyes met his.

"But who gave it to you?"

"Mr. Stillings," was the soft reply.

He stared at her helplessly. "I--I--don't understand!" he stammered.

"Well, to be brief, I'm engaged to Mr. Stillings."

"What! To that flat-headed--"

"No," she coolly interrupted, "to the Register of the Treasury."

The man was too dumbfounded, too overwhelmed for coherent speech.

"But--but--come; why in God's name--will you throw yourself away on--on
such a--you're joking--you--"

She motioned him to a chair. He obeyed like one in a trance.

"Now, Tom, be calm. When I was a baby I loved you, but that is long
ago. Today, Tom, you're an insufferable cad and I--well, I'm too much
like you to have two of us in the same family."

"But, Stillings!" he burst forth, almost in tears. "The snake--what is
he?"

"Nearly as bad as you, I'll admit; but he has four thousand a year and
sense enough to keep it. In truth, I need it; for, thanks to your
political activity, my own position is gone."

"But he's a--a damned rascal!" Wounded self-conceit was now getting the
upper hand.

She laughed.

"I think he is. But he's such an exceptional rascal; he appeals to me.
You know, Tom, we're all more or less rascally--except one."

"Except who?" he asked quickly.

"Bles Alwyn."

"The fool!"

"Yes," she slowly agreed. "Bles Alwyn, the Fool--and the Man. But by
grace of the Negro Problem, I cannot afford to marry a man--Hark! Some
one is on the steps. I'm sure it's Bles. You'd better go now. Don't
attempt to fight with him; he's very strong. Good-night."

Alwyn entered. He didn't notice Teerswell as he passed out. He went
straight to Miss Wynn holding a crumpled note, and his voice faltered a
little.

"Do you mean it?"

"Yes, Bles."

"Why?"

"Because I am selfish and--small."

"No, you are not. You want to be; but give it up, Carrie; it isn't worth
the cost. Come, let's be honest and poor--and free."

She regarded him a moment, searchingly, then a look half quizzical, half
sorrowful came into her eyes. She put both her hands on his shoulders
and said as she kissed his lips:

"Bles, almost thou persuadest me--to be a fool. Now go."




_Thirty_

THE RETURN OF ZORA


"I never realized before just what a lie meant," said Zora.

The paper in Mrs. Vanderpool's hands fell quickly to her lap, and she
gazed across the toilet-table.

As she gazed that odd mirage of other days haunted her again. She did
not seem to see her maid, nor the white and satin morning-room. She saw,
with some long inner sight, a vast hall with mighty pillars; a smooth,
marbled floor and a great throng whose silent eyes looked curiously upon
her. Strange carven beasts gazed on from a setting of rich, barbaric
splendor and she herself--the Liar--lay in rags before the gold and
ivory of that lofty throne whereon sat Zora.

The foolish phantasy passed with the second of time that brought it, and
Mrs. Vanderpool's eyes dropped again to her paper, to those lines,--

"The President has sent the following nominations to the Senate ... To
be ambassador to France, John Vanderpool, Esq."

The first feeling of triumph thrilled faintly again until the low voice
of Zora startled her. It was so low and calm, it came as though
journeying from great distances and weary with travel.

"I used to think a lie a little thing, a convenience; but now I see. It
is a great No and it kills things. You remember that day when Mr.
Easterly called?"

"Yes," replied Mrs. Vanderpool, faintly.

"I heard all he said. I could not help it; my transom was open. And
then, too, after he mentioned--Mr. Alwyn's name, I wanted to hear. I
knew that his appointment would cost you the embassy--unless Bles was
tempted and should fall. So I came to you to say--to say you mustn't pay
the price."

"And I lied," said Mrs. Vanderpool. "I told you that he should be
appointed and remain a man. I meant to make him see that he could yield
without great cost. But I let you think I was giving up the embassy when
I never intended to."

She spoke coldly, yet Zora knew. She reached out and took the white,
still hands in hers, and over the lady's face again flitted that
stricken look of age.

"I do not blame you," said Zora gently. "I blame the world."

"I am the world," Mrs. Vanderpool uttered harshly, then suddenly
laughed. But Zora went on:

"It bewildered me when I first read the news early this morning; the
world--everything--seemed wrong. You see, my plan was all so splendid.
Just as I turned away from him, back to my people, I was to help him to
the highest. I was so afraid he would miss it and think that Right
didn't win in Life, that I wrote him--"

"You wrote him? So did I."

Zora glanced at her quickly.

"Yes," said Mrs. Vanderpool. "I thought I knew him. He seemed an
ordinary, rather priggish, opinionated country boy, and I wrote and
said--Oh, I said that the world is the world; take it as it is. You
wrote differently, and he obeyed you."

"No; he did not know it was I. I was just a Voice from nowhere calling
to him. I thought I was right. I wrote each day, sometimes twice,
sending bits of verse, quotations, references, all saying the same
thing: Right always triumphs. But it doesn't, does it?"

"No. It never does save by accident."

"I do not think that is quite so," Zora pondered aloud, "and I am a
little puzzled. I do not belong in this world where Right and Wrong get
so mixed. With us yonder there is wrong, but we call it wrong--mostly.
Oh, I don't know; even there things are mixed." She looked sadly at Mrs.
Vanderpool, and the fear that had been hovering behind her mistress's
eyes became visible.

"It was so beautiful," said Zora. "I expected a great thing of you--a
sacrifice. I do not blame you because you could not do it; and yet--yet,
after this,--don't you see?--I cannot stay here."

Mrs. Vanderpool arose and walked over to her. She stood above her, in
her silken morning-gown, her brown and gray sprinkled hair rising above
the pale, strong-lined face.

"Zora," she faltered, "will you leave me?"

Zora answered, "Yes." It was a soft "yes," a "yes" full of pity and
regret, but a "yes" that Mrs. Vanderpool knew in her soul to be final.

She sat down again on the lounge and her fingers crept along the
cushions.

"Ambassadorships come--high," she said with a catch in her voice. Then
after a pause: "When will you go, Zora?"

"When you leave for the summer."

Mrs. Vanderpool looked out upon the beautiful city. She was a little
surprised at herself. She had found herself willing to sacrifice almost
anything for Zora. No living soul had ever raised in her so deep an
affection, and yet she knew now that, although the cost was great, she
was willing to sacrifice Zora for Paris. After all, it was not too
late; a rapid ride even now might secure high office for Alwyn and make
Cresswell ambassador. It would be difficult but possible. But she had
not the slightest inclination to attempt it, and she said aloud, half
mockingly:

"You are right, Zora. I promised--and--I lied. Liars have no place in
heaven and heaven is doubtless a beautiful place--but oh, Zora! you
haven't seen Paris!"

Two months later they parted simply, knowing well it was forever. Mrs.
Vanderpool wrote a check.

"Use this in your work," she said. "Miss Smith asked for it long ago. It
is--my campaign contribution."

Zora smiled and thanked her. As she put the sealed envelope in her trunk
her hand came in contact with a long untouched package. Zora took it out
silently and opened it and the beauty of it lightened the room.

"It is the Silver Fleece," said Zora, and Mrs. Vanderpool kissed her and
went.

Zora walked alone to the vaulted station. She did not try to buy a
Pullman ticket, although the journey was thirty-six hours. She knew it
would be difficult if not impossible and she preferred to share the lot
of her people. Once on the foremost car, she leaned back and looked. The
car seemed clean and comfortable but strangely short. Then she realized
that half of it was cut off for the white smokers and as the door swung
whiffs of the smoke came in. But she was content for she was almost
alone.

It was eighteen little months ago that she had ridden up to the world
with widening eyes. In that time what had happened? Everything. How well
she remembered her coming, the first reflection of yonder gilded dome
and the soaring of the capitol; the swelling of her heart, with
inarticulate wonder; the pain of the thirst to know and understand. She
did not know much now but she had learned how to find things out. She
did not understand all, but some things she--

"Ticket"--the tone was harsh and abrupt. Zora started. She had always
noted how polite conductors were to her and Mrs. Vanderpool--was it
simply because Mrs. Vanderpool was evidently a great and rich lady? She
held up her ticket and he snatched it from her muttering some direction.

"I beg your pardon?" she said.

"Change at Charlotte," he snapped as he went on.

It seemed to Zora that his discourtesy was almost forced: that he was
afraid he might be betrayed into some show of consideration for a black
woman. She felt no anger, she simply wondered what he feared. The
increasing smell of tobacco smoke started her coughing. She turned. To
be sure. Not only was the door to the smoker standing open, but a white
passenger was in her car, sitting by the conductor and puffing heartily.
As the black porter passed her she said gently:

"Is smoking allowed in here?"

"It ain't non o' my business," he flung back at her and moved away. All
day white men passed back and forward through the car as through a
thoroughfare. They talked loudly and laughed and joked, and if they did
not smoke they carried their lighted cigars. At her they stared and made
comments, and one of them came and lounged almost over her seat,
inquiring where she was going.

She did not reply; she neither looked nor stirred, but kept whispering
to herself with something like awe: "This is what they must endure--my
poor people!"

At Lynchburg a newsboy boarded the train with his wares. The conductor
had already appropriated two seats for himself, and the newsboy routed
out two colored passengers, and usurped two other seats. Then he began
to be especially annoying. He joked and wrestled with the porter, and on
every occasion pushed his wares at Zora, insisting on her buying.

"Ain't you got no money?" he asked. "Where you going?"

"Say," he whispered another time, "don't you want to buy these gold
spectacles? I found 'em and I dassen't sell 'em open, see? They're
worth ten dollars--take 'em for a dollar."

Zora sat still, keeping her eyes on the window; but her hands worked
nervously, and when he threw a book with a picture of a man and
half-dressed woman directly under her eyes, she took it and dropped it
out the window.

The boy started to storm and demanded pay, while the conductor glared at
her; but a white man in the conductor's seat whispered something, and
the row suddenly stopped.

A gang of colored section hands got on, dirty and loud. They sprawled
about and smoked, drank, and bought candy and cheap gewgaws. They eyed
her respectfully, and with one of them she talked a little as he
awkwardly fingered his cap.

As the day wore on Zora found herself strangely weary. It was not simply
the unpleasant things that kept happening, but the continued
apprehension of unknown possibilities. Then, too, she began to realize
that she had had nothing to eat. Travelling with Mrs. Vanderpool there
was always a dainty lunch to be had at call. She did not expect this,
but she asked the porter:

"Do you know where I can get a lunch?"

"Search me," he answered, lounging into a seat. "Ain't no chance betwixt
here and Danville as I knows on."

Zora viewed her plight with a certain dismay--twelve hours without food!
How foolish of her not to have thought of this. The hours passed. She
turned desperately to the gruff conductor.

"Could I buy a lunch from the dining-car?" she inquired.

"No," was the curt reply.

She made herself as comfortable as she could, and tried to put the
matter from her mind. She remembered how, forgotten years ago, she had
often gone a day without eating and thought little of it. Night came
slowly, and she fell to dreaming until the cry came, "Charlotte! Change
cars!" She scrambled out. There was no step to the platform, her bag
was heavy, and the porter was busy helping the white folks to alight.
She saw a dingy lunchroom marked "Colored," but she had no time to go to
it for her train was ready.

There was another colored porter on this, and he was very polite and
affable.

"Yes, Miss; certainly I'll fetch you a lunch--plenty of time." And he
did. It did not look clean but Zora was ravenous.

The white smoker now had few occupants, but the white train crew
proceeded to use the colored coach as a lounging-room and sleeping-car.
There was no passenger except Zora. They took off their coats, stretched
themselves on the seats, and exchanged jokes; but Zora was too tired to
notice much, and she was dozing wearily when she felt a touch on the arm
and found the porter in the seat beside her with his arm thrown
familiarly behind her along the top of the back. She rose abruptly to
her feet and he started up.

"I beg pardon," he said, grinning.

Zora sat slowly down as he got up and left. She determined to sleep no
more. Yet a vast vision sank on her weary spirit--the vision of a dark
cloud that dropped and dropped upon her, and lay as lead along her
straining shoulders. She must lift it, she knew, though it were big as a
world, and she put her strength to it and groaned as the porter cried in
the ghostly morning light:

"Atlanta! All change!"

Away yonder at the school near Toomsville, Miss Smith sat waiting for
the coming of Zora, absently attending the duties of the office. Dark
little heads and hands bobbed by and soft voices called:

"Miss Smith, I wants a penny pencil."

"Miss Smith, is yo' got a speller fo' ten cents?"

"Miss Smith, mammy say please lemme come to school this week and she'll
sho' pay Sata'day."

Yet the little voices that summoned her back to earth were less
clamorous than in other years, for the school was far from full, and
Miss Smith observed the falling off with grave eyes. This condition was
patently the result of the cotton corner and the subsequent
manipulation. When cotton rose, the tenants had already sold their
cotton; when cotton fell the landlords squeezed the rations and lowered
the wages. When cotton rose again, up went the new Spring rent
contracts. So it was that the bewildered black serf dawdled in listless
inability to understand. The Cresswells in their new wealth, the
Maxwells and Tollivers in the new pinch of poverty, stretched long arms
to gather in the tenants and their children. Excuse after excuse came to
the school.

"I can't send the chilluns dis term, Miss Smith; dey has to work."

"Mr. Cresswell won't allow Will to go to school this term."

"Mr. Tolliver done put Sam in the field."

And so Miss Smith contemplated many empty desks.

Slowly a sort of fatal inaction seized her. The school went on; daily
the dark little cloud of scholars rose up from hill and vale and settled
in the white buildings; the hum of voices and the busy movements of
industrious teachers filled the day; the office work went on
methodically; but back of it all Miss Smith sat half hopeless. It cost
five thousand a year to run the school, and this sum she raised with
increasingly greater difficulty. Extra and heart-straining effort had
been needed to raise the eight hundred dollars additional for interest
money on the mortgage last year. Next year it might have to come out of
the regular income and thus cut off two teachers. Beyond all this the
raising of ten thousand dollars to satisfy the mortgage seemed simply
impossible, and Miss Smith sat in fatal resignation, awaiting the coming
day.

"It's the Lord's work. I've done what I could. I guess if He wants it to
go on, He'll find a way. And if He doesn't--" She looked off across the
swamp and was silent.

Then came Zora's letter, simple and brief, but breathing youth and
strength of purpose. Miss Smith seized upon it as an omen of salvation.
In vain her shrewd New England reason asked: "What can a half-taught
black girl do in this wilderness?" Her heart answered back: "What is
impossible to youth and resolution?" Let the shabbiness increase; let
the debts pile up; let the boarders complain and the teachers
gossip--Zora was coming. And somehow she and Zora would find a way.

And Zora came just as the sun threw its last crimson through the black
swamp; came and gathered the frail and white-haired woman in her arms;
and they wept together. Long and low they talked, far into the soft
Southern night; sitting shaded beneath the stars, while nearby blinked
the drowsy lights of the girls' dormitory. At last Miss Smith said,
rising stiffly:

"I forgot to ask about Mrs. Vanderpool. How is she, and where?"

Zora murmured some answer; but as she went to bed in her little white
room she sat wondering sadly. Where was the poor spoiled woman? Who was
putting her to bed and smoothing the pillow? Who was caring for her, and
what was she doing? And Zora strained her eyes Northward through the
night.

At this moment, Mrs. Vanderpool, rising from a gala dinner in the
brilliant drawing-room of her Lake George mansion, was reading the
evening paper which her husband had put into her hands. With startled
eyes she caught the impudent headlines:

              VANDERPOOL DROPPED

          Senate Refuses to Confirm

 Todd Insurgents Muster Enough Votes to Defeat

      Confirmation of President's Nominee

Rumored Revenge for Machine's Defeat of Child Labor

               Bill Amendment.


The paper trembled in her jewelled hands. She glanced down the column.

"Todd asks: Who is Vanderpool, anyhow? What did he ever do? He is known
only as a selfish millionaire who thinks more of horses than of men."

Carelessly Mrs. Vanderpool threw the paper to the floor and bit her lips
as the angry blood dyed her face.

"They _shall_ confirm him," she whispered, "if I have to mortgage my
immortal soul!" And she rang up long distance on the telephone.




_Thirty-one_

A PARTING OF WAYS


"Was the child born dead?"

"Worse than dead!"

Somehow, somewhere, Mary Cresswell had heard these words; long, long,
ago, down there in the great pain-swept shadows of utter agony, where
Earth seemed slipping its moorings; and now, today, she lay repeating
them mechanically, grasping vaguely at their meaning. Long she had
wrestled with them as they twisted and turned and knotted themselves,
and she worked and toiled so hard as she lay there to make the thing
clear--to understand.

"Was the child born dead?"

"Worse than dead!"

Then faint and fainter whisperings: what could be worse than death? She
had tried to ask the grey old doctor, but he soothed her like a child
each day and left her lying there. Today she was stronger, and for the
first time sitting up, looking listlessly out across the world--a queer
world. Why had they not let her see the child--just one look at its
little dead face? That would have been something. And again, as the
doctor cheerily turned to go, she sought to repeat the old question. He
looked at her sharply, then interrupted, saying kindly:

"There, now; you've been dreaming. You must rest quietly now." And with
a nod he passed into the other room to talk with her husband.

She was not satisfied. She had not been dreaming. She would tell Harry
to ask him--she did not often see her husband, but she must ask him now
and she arose unsteadily and swayed noiselessly across the floor. A
moment she leaned against the door, then opened it slightly. From the
other side the words came distinctly and clearly:

"--other children, doctor?"

"You must have no other children, Mr. Cresswell."

"Why?"

"Because the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation."

Slowly, softly, she crept away. Her mind seemed very clear. And she
began a long journey to reach her window and chair--a long, long
journey; but at last she sank into the chair again and sat dry-eyed,
wondering who had conceived this world and made it, and why.

A long time afterward she found herself lying in bed, awake, conscious,
clear-minded. Yet she thought as little as possible, for that was pain;
but she listened gladly, for without she heard the solemn beating of the
sea, the mighty rhythmic beating of the sea. Long days she lay, and sat
and walked beside those vast and speaking waters, till at last she knew
their voice and they spoke to her and the sea-calm soothed her soul.

For one brief moment of her life she saw herself clearly: a well-meaning
woman, ambitious, but curiously narrow; not willing to work long for
the Vision, but leaping at it rashly, blindly, with a deep-seated sense
of duty which she made a source of offence by preening and parading it,
and forcing it to ill-timed notice. She saw that she had looked on her
husband as a means not an end. She had wished to absorb him and his work
for her own glory. She had idealized for her own uses a very human man
whose life had been full of sin and fault. She must atone.

No sooner, in this brief moment, did she see herself honestly than her
old habits swept her on tumultuously. No ordinary atonement would do.
The sacrifice must be vast; the world must stand in wonder before this
clever woman sinking her soul in another and raising him by sheer will
to the highest.

So after six endless months Mary Cresswell walked into her Washington
home again. She knew she had changed in appearance, but she had
forgotten to note how much until she saw the stare--almost the
recoil--of her husband, the muttered exclamation, the studied, almost
overdone welcome. Then she went up to her mirror and looked long, and
knew.

She was strong; she felt well; but she was slight, almost scrawny, and
her beauty was gone forever. It had been of that blonde white-and-pink
type that fades in a flash, and its going left her body flattened and
angular, her skin drawn and dead white, her eyes sunken. From the
radiant girl whom Cresswell had met three years earlier the change was
startling, and yet the contrast seemed even greater than it was, for her
glory then had been her abundant and almost golden hair. Now that hair
was faded, and falling so fast that at last the doctor advised her to
cut it short. This left her ill-shaped head exposed and emphasized the
sunken hollows of her face. She knew that she was changed but she did
not quite realize how changed, until now as she stood and gazed.

Yet she did not hesitate but from that moment set herself to her new
life task. Characteristically, she started dramatically and largely. She
was to make her life an endless sacrifice; she was to revivify the
manhood in Harry Cresswell, and all this for no return, no partnership
of soul--all was to be complete sacrifice and sinking soul in soul.

If Mary Cresswell had attempted less she would have accomplished more.
As it was, she began well; she went to work tactfully, seeming to note
no change in his manner toward her; but his manner had changed. He was
studiously, scrupulously polite in private, and in public devoted; but
there was no feeling, no passion, no love. The polished shell of his
clan reflected conventional light even more carefully than formerly
because the shell was cold and empty. There were no little flashes of
anger now, no poutings nor sweet reconciliations. Life ran very smoothly
and courteously; and while she did not try to regain the affection, she
strove to enthrall his intellect. She supplied a sub-committee upon
which he was serving--not directly, but through him--with figures, with
reports, books, and papers, so that he received special commendations; a
praise that piqued as well as pleased him, because it implied a certain
surprise that he was able to do it.

"The damned Yankees!" he sneered. "They think they've got the brains of
the nation."

"Why not make a speech on the subject?" she suggested.

He laughed. The matter under discussion was the cotton-goods schedule of
the new tariff bill, about which really he knew a little; his wife
placed every temptation to knowledge before him, even inspiring Senator
Smith to ask him to defend that schedule against the low-tariff
advocate. Mary Cresswell worked with redoubled energy, and for nearly a
week Harry staid at home nights and studied. Thanks to his wife the
speech was unusually informing and well put, and the fact that a
prominent free-trader spoke the same afternoon gave it publicity, while
Mr. Easterly saw to the press despatches.

Cresswell subscribed to a clipping-bureau and tasted the sweets of
dawning notoriety, and Mrs. Cresswell arranged a select dinner-party
which included a cabinet officer, a foreign ambassador, two
millionaires, and the leading Southern Congressmen. The talk came
around to the failure of the Senate to confirm Mr. Vanderpool, and it
was generally assumed that the President would not force the issue.

Who, then, should be nominated? There were several suggestions, but the
knot of Southern Congressmen about Mrs. Cresswell declared emphatically
that it must be a Southerner. Not since the war had a prominent
Southerner represented America at a first-class foreign court; it was
shameful; the time was ripe for change. But who? Here opinions differed
widely. Nearly every one mentioned a candidate, and those who did not
seemed to refrain from motives of personal modesty.

Mary Cresswell sped her departing guests with a distinct purpose in
mind. She must make herself leader of the Southern set in Washington and
concentrate its whole force on the appointment of Harry Cresswell as
ambassador to France. Quick reward and promotion were essential to
Harry's success. He was not one to keep up the strain of effort a long
time. Unless, then, tangible results came and came quickly, he was
liable to relapse into old habits. Therefore he must succeed and succeed
at once. She would have preferred a less ornamental position than the
ambassadorship, but there were no other openings. The Alabama senators
were firmly seated for at least four years and the Governorship had been
carefully arranged for. A term of four years abroad, however, might
bring Harry Cresswell back in time for greater advancement. At any rate,
it was the only tangible offering, and Mary Cresswell silently
determined to work for it.

Here it was that she made her mistake. It was one thing for her to be a
tactful hostess, pleasing her husband and his guests; it was another for
her to aim openly at social leadership and political influence. She had
at first all the insignia of success. Her dinners became of real
political significance and her husband figured more and more as a
leading Southerner. The result was two-fold. Cresswell, on the one hand,
with his usual selfishness, took his rising popularity as a matter of
course and as the fruits of his own work; he was rising, he was making
valuable speeches, he was becoming a social power, and his only handicap
was his plain and over-ambitious wife. But on the other hand Mrs.
Cresswell forgot two pitfalls: the cleft between the old Southern
aristocracy and the pushing new Southerners; and above all, her own
Northern birth and presumably pro-Negro sympathies.

What Mrs. Cresswell forgot Mrs. Vanderpool sensed unerringly. She had
heard with uneasiness of Cresswell's renewed candidacy for the Paris
ambassadorship, and she set herself to block it. She had worked hard.
The President stood ready to send her husband's appointment again to the
Senate whenever Easterly could assure him of favorable action. Easterly
had long and satisfactory interviews with several senators, while the
Todd insurgents were losing heart at the prospect of choosing between
Vanderpool and Cresswell. At present four Southern votes were needed to
confirm Vanderpool; but if they could not be had, Easterly declared it
would be good politics to nominate Cresswell and give him Republican
support. Manifestly, then, Mrs. Vanderpool's task was to discredit the
Cresswells with the Southerners. It was not a work to her liking, but
the die was cast and she refused to contemplate defeat.

The result was that while Mrs. Cresswell was giving large and brilliant
parties to the whole Southern contingent, Mrs. Vanderpool was
engineering exclusive dinners where old New York met stately Charleston
and gossiped interestingly. On such occasions it was hinted not once,
but many times, that the Cresswells were well enough, but who was that
upstart wife who presumed to take social precedence?

It was not, however, until Mrs. Cresswell's plan for an all-Southern art
exhibit in Washington that Mrs. Vanderpool, in a flash of inspiration,
saw her chance. In the annual exhibit of the Corcoran Art Gallery, a
Southern girl had nearly won first prize over a Western man. The
concensus of Southern opinion was that the judgment had been unfair, and
Mrs. Cresswell was convinced of this. With quick intuition she
suggested a Southern exhibit with such social prestige back of it as to
impress the country.

The proposal caught the imagination of the Southern set. None suspected
a possible intrusion of the eternal race issue for no Negroes were
allowed in the Corcoran exhibit or school. This Mrs. Vanderpool easily
ascertained and a certain sense of justice combined in a curious way
with her political intrigue to bring about the undoing of Mary
Cresswell.

Mrs. Vanderpool's very first cautious inquiries by way of the back
stairs brought gratifying response--for did not all black Washington
know well of the work in sculpture done by Mrs. Samuel Stillings, _nee_
Wynn? Mrs. Vanderpool remembered Mrs. Stillings perfectly, and she
walked, that evening, through unobtrusive thoroughfares and called on
Mrs. Stillings. Had Mrs. Stillings heard of the new art movement? Did
she intend to exhibit? Mrs. Stillings did not intend to exhibit as she
was sure she would not be welcome. She had had a bust accepted by the
Corcoran Art Gallery once, and when they found she was colored they
returned it. But if she were especially invited? That would make a
difference, although even then the line would be drawn somehow.

"Would it not be worth a fight?" suggested Mrs. Vanderpool with a little
heightening of color in her pale cheek.

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Stillings, as she brought out some specimens of her
work.

Mrs. Vanderpool was both ashamed and grateful. With money and leisure
Mrs. Stillings had been able to get in New York and Boston the training
she had been denied in Washington on account of her color. The things
she exhibited really had merit and one curiously original group appealed
to Mrs. Vanderpool tremendously.

"Send it," she counseled with strangely contradictory feelings of
enthusiasm, and added: "Enter it under the name of Wynn."

In addition to the general invitations to the art exhibit numbers of
special ones were issued to promising Southern amateurs who had never
exhibited. For these a prize of a long-term scholarship and other
smaller prizes were offered. When Mrs. Vanderpool suggested the name of
"Miss Wynn" to Mrs. Cresswell among a dozen others, for special
invitation, there was nothing in its sound to distinguish it from the
rest of the names, and the invitation went duly. As a result there came
to the exhibit a little group called "The Outcasts," which was really a
masterly thing and sent the director, Signor Alberni, into hysterical
commendation.

In the private view and award of prizes which preceded the larger social
function the jury hesitated long between "The Outcasts" and a painting
from Georgia. Mrs. Cresswell was enthusiastic and voluble for the bit of
sculpture, and it finally won the vote for the first prize.

All was ready for the great day. The President was coming and most of
the diplomatic corps, high officers of the army, and all the social
leaders. Congress would be well represented, and the boom for Cresswell
as ambassador to France was almost visible in the air.

Mary Cresswell paused a moment in triumph looking back at the darkened
hall, when a little woman fluttered up to her and whispered:

"Mrs. Cresswell, have you heard the gossip?"

"No--what?"

"That Wynn woman they say is a nigger. Some are whispering that you
brought her in purposely to force social equality. They say you used to
teach darkies. Of course, I don't believe all their talk, but I thought
you ought to know." She talked a while longer, then fluttered furtively
away.

Mrs. Cresswell sat down limply. She saw ruin ahead--to think of a black
girl taking a prize at an all-Southern art exhibit! But there was still
a chance, and she leaped to action. This colored woman was doubtless
some poor deserving creature. She would call on her immediately, and by
an offer of abundant help induce her to withdraw quietly.

Entering her motor, she drove near the address and then proceeded on
foot. The street was a prominent one, the block one of the best, the
house almost pretentious. She glanced at her memorandum again to see if
she was mistaken. Perhaps the woman was a domestic; probably she was,
for the name on the door was Stillings. It occurred to her that she had
heard that name before--but where? She looked again at her memorandum
and at the house.

She rang the bell, asking the trim black maid: "Is there a person named
Caroline Wynn living in this house?"

The girl smiled and hesitated.

"Yes, ma'am," she finally replied. "Won't you come in?" She was shown
into the parlor, where she sat down. The room was most interesting,
furnished in unimpeachable taste. A few good pictures were on the walls,
and Mrs. Cresswell was examining one when she heard the swish of silken
skirts. A lady with gold brown face and straight hair stood before her
with pleasant smile. Where had Mrs. Cresswell seen her before? She tried
to remember, but could not.

"You wished to see--Caroline Wynn?"

"Yes."

"What can I do for you?"

Mrs. Cresswell groped for her proper cue, but the brown lady merely
offered a chair and sat down silently. Mrs. Cresswell's perplexity
increased. She had been planning to descend graciously but
authoritatively upon some shrinking girl, but this woman not only seemed
to assume equality but actually looked it. From a rapid survey, Mrs.
Cresswell saw a black silk stocking, a bit of lace, a tailor-made gown,
and a head with two full black eyes that waited in calmly polite
expectancy.

Something had to be said.

"I--er--came; that is, I believe you sent a group to the art exhibit?"

"Yes."

"It was good--very good."

Miss Wynn said nothing, but sat calmly looking at her visitor. Mrs.
Cresswell felt irritated.

"Of course," she managed to continue, "we are very sorry that we cannot
receive it."

"Indeed? I understood it had taken the first prize."

Mrs. Cresswell was aghast. Who had rushed the news to this woman? She
realized that there were depths to this matter that she did not
understand and her irritation increased.

"You know that we could not give the prize to a--Negro."

"Why not?"

"That is quite immaterial. Social equality cannot be forced. At the same
time I recognize the injustice, and I have come to say that if you will
withdraw your exhibit you will be given a scholarship in a Boston
school."

"I do not wish it."

"Well, what do you want?"

"I was not aware that I had asked for anything."

Mrs. Cresswell felt herself getting angry.

"Why did you send your exhibit when you knew it was not wanted?"

"Because you asked me to."

"We did not ask for colored people."

"You asked all Southern-born persons. I am a person and I am Southern
born. Moreover, you sent me a personal letter."

Mrs. Cresswell was sure that this was a lie and was thoroughly incensed.

"You cannot have the prize," she almost snapped. "If you will withdraw I
will pay you any reasonable sum."

"Thank you. I do not want money; I want justice."

Mrs. Cresswell arose and her face was white.

"That is the trouble with you Negroes: you wish to get above your places
and force yourselves where you are not wanted. It does no good, it only
makes trouble and enemies." Mrs. Cresswell stopped, for the colored
woman had gone quietly out of the room and in a moment the maid entered
and stood ready. Mrs. Cresswell walked slowly to the door and stepped
out. Then she turned.

"What does Miss Wynn do for a living?"

The girl tittered.

"She used to teach school but she don't do nothing now. She's just
married; her husband is Mr. Stillings, Register of the Treasury."

Mrs. Cresswell saw light as she turned to go down the steps. There was
but one resource--she must keep the matter out of the newspapers, and
see Stillings, whom she now remembered well.

"I beg pardon, does the Miss Wynn live here who got the prize in the art
exhibition?"

Mrs. Cresswell turned in amazement. It was evidently a reporter, and the
maid was admitting him. The news would reach the papers and be blazoned
to-morrow. Slowly she caught her motor and fell wearily back on its
cushions.

"Where to, Madame?" asked the chauffeur.

"I don't care," returned Madame; so the chauffeur took her home.

She walked slowly up the stairs. All her carefully laid plans seemed
about to be thwarted and her castles were leaning toward ruin.

Yet all was not lost, if her husband continued to believe in her. If, as
she feared, he should suspect her on account of this Negro woman, and
quarrel with her--

But he must not. This very night, before the morning papers came out,
she must explain. He must see; he must appreciate her efforts.

She rushed into her dressing-room and called her maid. Contrary to her
Puritan notions, she frankly sought to beautify herself. She remembered
that it was the anniversary of her coming to this house. She got out her
wedding-dress, and although it hung loosely, the maid draped the Silver
Fleece beautifully about her.

She heard her husband enter and come up-stairs. Quickly finishing her
toilet, she hurried down to arrange the flowers, for they were alone
that night. The telephone rang. She knew it would ring up-stairs in his
room, but she usually answered it for he disliked to. She raised the
receiver and started to speak when she realized that she had broken into
the midst of a conversation.

"--committee won't meet tonight, Harry."

"So? All right. Anything on?"

"Yes--big spree at Nell's. Will you go?"

"Sure thing; you know me! What time?"

"Meet us at the Willard by nine. S'long."

"Good-bye."

She slowly, half guiltily, replaced the receiver. She had not meant to
listen, but now to her desperate longing to keep him home was added a
new motive. Where was "Nell's"? What was "Nell's"? What was--and there
was fear in her heart. At dinner she tried all her powers on him. She
had his favorite dishes; she mixed his salad and selected his wine; she
talked interestingly, and listened sympathetically, to him. He looked at
her with more attention. Her cheeks were more brilliant, for she had
touched them with rouge. Her eyes flashed; but he glanced furtively at
her short hair. She saw the act; but still she strove until he was
content and laughing; then coming round back of his chair, she placed
her arms about his neck.

"Harry, will you do me a favor?"

"Why, yes--if--"

"It is something I want very, very much."

"Well, all right, if--"

"Harry, I feel a little--hysterical, tonight, and--you will not refuse
me, will you, Harry?"

Standing there, she saw the tableau in her own mind, and it looked
strange. She was afraid of herself. She knew that she would do something
foolish if she did not win this battle. She felt that overpowering
fanaticism back within her raging restlessly. If she was not careful--

"But what is it you want?" asked her husband.

"I don't want you to go out tonight."

He laughed awkwardly.

"Nonsense, girl! The sub-committee on the cotton schedule meets
tonight--very important; otherwise--"

She shuddered at the smooth lie and clasped him closer, putting her
cheek to his.

"Harry," she pleaded, "just this once--for me."

He disengaged himself, half impatiently, and rose, glancing at the
clock. It was nearly nine. A feeling of desperation came over her.

"Harry," she asked again as he slipped on his coat.

"Don't be foolish," he growled.

"Just this once--Harry--I--" But the door banged to, and he was gone.

She stood looking at the closed door a moment. Something in her head was
ready to snap. She went to the rack and taking his long heavy overcoat
slipped it on. It nearly touched the floor. She seized a soft
broad-brimmed hat and umbrella and walked out. Just what she meant to do
she did not know, but somehow she must save her husband and herself from
evil. She hurried to the Willard Hotel and watched, walking up and down
the opposite sidewalk. A woman brushed by her and looked her in the
face.

"Hell! I thought you was a man," she said. "Is this a new gag?"

Mrs. Cresswell looked down at herself involuntarily and smiled wanly.
She did look like a man, with her hat and coat and short hair. The woman
peered at her doubtingly. She was, as Mrs. Cresswell noticed, a young
woman, once pretty, perhaps, and a little over-dressed.

"Are you walking?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Cresswell, and then in a moment it
flashed upon her. She took the woman's arm and walked with her. Suddenly
she stopped.

"Where's--Nell's?"

The woman frowned. "Oh, that's a swell place," she said. "Senators and
millionaires. Too high for us to fly."

Mrs. Cresswell winced. "But where is it?" she asked.

"We'll walk by it if you want to."

And Mary Cresswell walked in another world. Up from the ground of the
drowsy city rose pale gray forms; pale, flushed, and brilliant, in
silken rags. Up and down they passed, to and fro, looking and gliding
like sheeted ghosts; now dodging policemen, now accosting them
familiarly.

"Hello, Elise," growled one big blue-coat.

"Hello, Jack."

"What's this?" and he peered at Mrs. Cresswell, who shrank back.

"Friend of mine. All right."

A horror crept over Mary Cresswell: where had she lived that she had
seen so little before? What was Washington, and what was this fine,
tall, quiet residence? Was this--"Nell's"?

"Yes, this is it--good-bye--I must--"

"Wait--what is your name?"

"I haven't any name," answered the woman suspiciously.

"Well--pardon me! Here!" and she thrust a bill into the woman's hand.

The girl stared. "Well, you're a queer one! Thanks. Guess I'll turn in."

Mary Cresswell turned to see her husband and his companions ascending
the steps of the quiet mansion. She stood uncertainly and looked at the
opening and closing door. Then a policeman came by and looked at her.

"Come, move on," he brusquely ordered. Her vacillation promptly
vanished, and she resolutely mounted the steps. She put out her hand to
ring, but the door flew silently open and a man-servant stood looking at
her.

"I have some friends here," she said, speaking coarsely.

"You will have to be introduced," said the man. She hesitated and
started to turn away. Thrusting her hand in her pocket it closed upon
her husband's card-case. She presented a card. It worked a rapid
transformation in the servant's manner, which did not escape her.

"Come in," he invited her.

She did not stop at the outstretched arm of the cloakman, but glided
quickly up the stairs toward a vision of handsome women and strains of
music. Harry Cresswell was sitting opposite and bending over an impudent
blue-and-blonde beauty. Mary slipped straight across to him and leaned
across the table. The hat fell off, but she let it go.

"Harry!" she tried to say as he looked up.

Then the table swayed gently to and fro; the room bowed and whirled
about; the voices grew fainter and fainter--all the world receded
suddenly far away. She extended her hands languidly, then, feeling so
utterly tired, let her eyelids drop and fell asleep.

She awoke with a start, in her own bed. She was physically exhausted but
her mind was clear. She must go down and meet him at breakfast and talk
frankly with him. She would let bygones be bygones. She would explain
that she had followed him to save him, not to betray him. She would
point out the greater career before him if only he would be a man; she
would show him that they had not failed. For herself she asked nothing,
only his word, his confidence, his promise to try.

After his first start of surprise at seeing her at the table, Cresswell
uttered nothing immediately save the commonplaces of greeting. He
mentioned one or two bits of news from the paper, upon which she
commented while dawdling over her egg. When the servant went out and
closed the door, she paused a moment considering whether to open by
appeal or explanation. His smooth tones startled her:

"Of course, after your art exhibit and the scene of last night, Mary, it
will be impossible for us to live longer together."

She stared at him, utterly aghast--voiceless and numb.

"I have seen the crisis approaching for some time, and the Negro
business settles it," he continued. "I have now decided to send you to
my home in Alabama, to my father or your brother. I am sure you will be
happier there."

He rose. Bowing courteously, he waited, coldly and calmly, for her to
go.

All at once she hated him and hated his aristocratic repression; this
cold calm that hid hell and its fires. She looked at him, wide-eyed, and
said in a voice hoarse with horror and loathing:

"You brute! You nasty brute!"




_Thirty-two_

ZORA'S WAY


Zora was looking on her world with the keener vision of one who, blind
from very seeing, closes the eyes a space and looks again with wider
clearer vision. Out of a nebulous cloudland she seemed to step; a land
where all things floated in strange confusion, but where one thing stood
steadfast, and that was love. When love was shaken all things moved, but
now, at last, for the first time she seemed to know the real and mighty
world that stood behind that old and shaken dream.

So she looked on the world about her with new eyes. These men and women
of her childhood had hitherto walked by her like shadows; today they
lived for her in flesh and blood. She saw hundreds and thousands of
black men and women: crushed, half-spirited, and blind. She saw how high
and clear a light Sarah Smith, for thirty years and more, had carried
before them. She saw, too, how that the light had not simply shone in
darkness, but had lighted answering beacons here and there in these dull
souls.

There were thoughts and vague stirrings of unrest in this mass of black
folk. They talked long about their firesides, and here Zora began to sit
and listen, often speaking a word herself. All through the countryside
she flitted, till gradually the black folk came to know her and, in
silent deference to some subtle difference, they gave her the title of
white folk, calling her "Miss" Zora.

Today, more than ever before, Zora sensed the vast unorganized power in
this mass, and her mind was leaping here and there, scheming and
testing, when voices arrested her.

It was a desolate bit of the Cresswell manor, a tiny cabin, new-boarded
and bare, in front of it a blazing bonfire. A white man was tossing into
the flames different household articles--a feather bed, a bedstead, two
rickety chairs. A young, boyish fellow, golden-faced and curly, stood
with clenched fists, while a woman with tear-stained eyes clung to him.
The white man raised a cradle to dash it into the flames; the woman
cried, and the yellow man raised his arm threateningly. But Zora's hand
was on his shoulder.

"What's the matter, Rob?" she asked.

"They're selling us out," he muttered savagely. "Millie's been sick
since the last baby died, and I had to neglect my crop to tend her and
the other little ones--I didn't make much. They've took my mule, now
they're burning my things to make me sign a contract and be a slave. But
by--"

"There, Rob, let Millie come with me--we'll see Miss Smith. We must get
land to rent and arrange somehow."

The mother sobbed, "The cradle--was baby's!"

With an oath the white man dashed the cradle into the fire, and the red
flame spurted aloft.

The crimson fire flashed in Zora's eyes as she passed the overseer.

"Well, nigger, what are you going to do about it?" he growled
insolently.

Zora's eyelids drooped, her upper lip quivered.

"Nothing," she answered softly. "But I hope your soul will burn in hell
forever and forever."

They proceeded down the plantation road, but Zora could not speak. She
pushed them slowly on, and turned aside to let the anger, the impotent,
futile anger, rage itself out. Alone in the great broad spaces, she knew
she could fight it down, and come back again, cool and in calm and
deadly earnest, to lead these children to the light.

The sorrow in her heart was new and strange; not sorrow for herself, for
of that she had tasted the uttermost; but the vast vicarious suffering
for the evil of the world. The tumult and war within her fled, and a
sense of helplessness sent the hot tears streaming down her cheeks. She
longed for rest; but the last plantation was yet to be passed. Far off
she heard the yodle of the gangs of peons. She hesitated, looking for
some way of escape: if she passed them she would see something--she
always saw something--that would send the red blood whirling madly.

"Here, you!--loafing again, damn you!" She saw the black whip writhe and
curl across the shoulders of the plough-boy. The boy crouched and
snarled, and again the whip hissed and cracked.

Zora stood rigid and gray.

"My God!" her silent soul was shrieking within, "why doesn't the
coward--"

And then the "coward" did. The whip was whirring in the air again; but
it never fell. A jagged stone in the boy's hand struck true, and the
overseer plunged with a grunt into the black furrow. In blank dismay,
Zora came back to her senses.

"Poor child!" she gasped, as she saw the boy flying in wild terror over
the fields, with hue and cry behind him.

"Poor child!--running to the penitentiary--to shame and hunger and
damnation!"

She remembered the rector in Mrs. Vanderpool's library, and his
question that revealed unfathomable depths of ignorance: "Really, now,
how do you account for the distressing increase in crime among your
people?"

She swung into the great road trembling with the woe of the world in her
eyes. Cruelty, poverty, and crime she had looked in the face that
morning, and the hurt of it held her heart pinched and quivering. A
moment the mists in her eyes shut out the shadows of the swamp, and the
roaring in her ears made a silence of the world.

Before she found herself again she dimly saw a couple sauntering along
the road, but she hardly noticed their white faces until the little
voice of the girl, raised timidly, greeted her.

"Howdy, Zora."

Zora looked. The girl was Emma, and beside her, smiling, stood a
half-grown white man. It was Emma, Bertie's child; and yet it was not,
for in the child of other days Zora saw for the first time the dawning
woman.

And she saw, too, the white man. Suddenly the horror of the swamp was
upon her. She swept between the couple like a gust, gripping the child's
arm till she paled and almost whimpered.

"I--I was just going on an errand for Miss Smith!" she cried.

Looking down into her soul, Zora discerned its innocence and the fright
shining in the child's eyes. Her own eyes softened, her grip became a
caress, but her heart was hard.

The young man laughed awkwardly and strolled away. Zora looked back at
him and the paramount mission of her life formed itself in her mind. She
would protect this girl; she would protect all black girls. She would
make it possible for these poor beasts of burden to be decent in their
toil. Out of protection of womanhood as the central thought, she must
build ramparts against cruelty, poverty, and crime. All this in
turn--but now and first, the innocent girlhood of this daughter of shame
must be rescued from the devil. It was her duty, her heritage. She must
offer this unsullied soul up unto God in mighty atonement--but how? Here
now was no protection. Already lustful eyes were in wait, and the child
was too ignorant to protect herself. She must be sent to
boarding-school, somewhere far away; but the money? God! it was money,
money, always money. Then she stopped suddenly, thrilled with the
recollection of Mrs. Vanderpool's check.

She dismissed the girl with a kiss, and stood still a moment
considering. Money to send Emma off to school; money to buy a school
farm; money to "buy" tenants to live on it; money to furnish them
rations; money--

She went straight to Miss Smith.

"Miss Smith, how much money have you?" Miss Smith's hand trembled a bit.
Ah, that splendid strength of young womanhood--if only she herself had
it! But perhaps Zora was the chosen one. She reached up and took down a
well-worn book.

"Zora," she said slowly, "I've been going to tell you ever since you
came, but I hadn't the courage. Zora," Miss Smith hesitated and gripped
the book with thin white fingers, "I'm afraid--I almost know that this
school is doomed."

There lay a silence in the room while the two women stared into each
other's souls with startled eyes. Swallowing hard, Miss Smith spoke.

"When I thought the endowment sure, I mortgaged the school in order to
buy Tolliver's land. The endowment failed, as you know, because--perhaps
I was too stubborn."

But Zora's eyes snapped "No!" and Miss Smith continued:

"I borrowed ten thousand dollars. Then I tried to get the land, but
Tolliver kept putting me off, and finally I learned that Colonel
Cresswell had bought it. It seems that Tolliver got caught tight in the
cotton corner, and that Cresswell, through John Taylor, offered him
twice what he had agreed to sell to me for, and he took it. I don't
suppose Taylor knew what he was doing; I hope he didn't.

"Well, there I was with ten thousand dollars idle on my hands, paying
ten per cent on it and getting less than three per cent. I tried to get
the bank to take the money back, but they refused. Then I was
tempted--and fell." She paused, and Zora took both her hands in her own.

"You see," continued Miss Smith, "just as soon as the announcement of
the prospective endowment was sent broadcast by the press, the donations
from the North fell off. Letter after letter came from old friends of
the school full of congratulations, but no money. I ought to have cut
down the teaching force to the barest minimum, and gone North
begging--but I couldn't. I guess my courage was gone. I knew how I'd
have to explain and plead, and I just could not. So I used the ten
thousand dollars to pay its own interest and help run the school.
Already it's half gone, and when the rest goes then will come the end."

Without, the great red sun paused a moment over the edge of the swamp,
and the long, low cry of night birds broke sadly on the twilight
silence. Zora sat stroking the lined hands.

"Not the end," she spoke confidently. "It cannot end like this. I've got
a little money that Mrs. Vanderpool gave me, and somehow we must get
more. Perhaps I might go North and--beg." She shivered. Then she sat up
resolutely and turned to the book.

"Let's go over matters carefully," she proposed.

Together they counted and calculated.

"The balance is four thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight dollars,"
said Miss Smith.

"Yes, and then there's Mrs. Vanderpool's check."

"How much is that?"

Zora paused; she did not know. In her world there was little calculation
of money. Credit and not cash is the currency of the Black Belt. She had
been pleased to receive the check, but she had not examined it.

"I really don't know," she presently confessed. "I think it was one
thousand dollars; but I was so hurried in leaving that I didn't look
carefully," and the wild thought surged in her, suppose it was more!

She ran into the other room and plunged into her trunk; beneath the
clothes, beneath the beauty of the Silver Fleece, till her fingers
clutched and tore the envelope. A little choking cry burst from her
throat, her knees trembled so that she was obliged to sit down.

In her fingers fluttered a check for--_ten thousand dollars!_

It was not until the next day that the two women were sufficiently
composed to talk matters over sanely.

"What is your plan?" asked Zora.

"To put the money in a Northern savings bank at three per cent interest;
to supply the rest of the interest, and the deficit in the running
expenses, from our balance, and to send you North to beg."

Zora shook her head. "It won't do," she objected. "I'd make a poor
beggar; I don't know human nature well enough, and I can't talk to rich
white folks the way they expect us to talk."

"It wouldn't be hypocrisy, Zora; you would be serving in a great cause.
If you don't go, I--"

"Wait! You sha'n't go. If any one goes it must be me. But let's think it
out: we pay off the mortgage, we get enough to run the school as it has
been run. Then what? There will still be slavery and oppression all
around us. The children will be kept in the cotton fields; the men will
be cheated, and the women--" Zora paused and her eyes grew hard.

She began again rapidly: "We must have land--our own farm with our own
tenants--to be the beginning of a free community."

Miss Smith threw up her hands impatiently.

"But sakes alive! Where, Zora? Where can we get land, with Cresswell
owning every inch and bound to destroy us?"

Zora sat hugging her knees and staring out the window toward the sombre
ramparts of the swamp. In her eyes lay slumbering the madness of long
ago; in her brain danced all the dreams and visions of childhood.

"I'm thinking," she murmured, "of buying the swamp."




_Thirty-three_

THE BUYING OF THE SWAMP


"It's a shame," asserted John Taylor with something like real feeling.
He was spending Sunday with his father-in-law, and both, over their
after-dinner cigars, were gazing thoughtfully at the swamp.

"What's a shame?" asked Colonel Cresswell.

"To see all that timber and prime cotton-land going to waste. Don't you
remember those fine bales of cotton that came out of there several
seasons ago?"

The Colonel smoked placidly. "You can't get it cleared," he said.

"But couldn't you hire some good workers?"

"Niggers won't work. Now if we had Italians we might do it."

"Yes, and in a few years they'd own the country."

"That's right; so there we are. There's only one way to get that swamp
cleared."

"How?"

"Sell it to some fool darkey."

"Sell it? It's too valuable to sell."

"That's just it. You don't understand. The only way to get decent work
out of some niggers is to let them believe they're buying land. In nine
cases out of ten he works hard a while and then throws up the job. We
get back our land and he makes good wages for his work."

"But in the tenth case--suppose he should stick to it?"

"Oh,"--easily, "we could get rid of him when we want to. White people
rule here."

John Taylor frowned and looked a little puzzled. He was no moralist, but
he had his code and he did not understand Colonel Cresswell. As a matter
of fact, Colonel Cresswell was an honest man. In most matters of
commerce between men he was punctilious to a degree almost annoying to
Taylor. But there was one part of the world which his code of honor did
not cover, and he saw no incongruity in the omission. The uninitiated
cannot easily picture to himself the mental attitude of a former
slaveholder toward property in the hands of a Negro. Such property
belonged of right to the master, if the master needed it; and since
ridiculous laws safeguarded the property, it was perfectly permissible
to circumvent such laws. No Negro starved on the Cresswell place,
neither did any accumulate property. Colonel Cresswell saw to both
matters.

As the Colonel and John Taylor were thus conferring, Zora appeared,
coming up the walk.

"Who's that?" asked the Colonel shading his eyes.

"It's Zora--the girl who went North with Mrs. Vanderpool," Taylor
enlightened him.

"Back, is she? Too trifling to stick to a job, and full of Northern
nonsense," growled the Colonel. "Even got a Northern walk--I thought for
a moment she was a lady."

Neither of the gentlemen ever dreamed how long, how hard, how
heart-wringing was that walk from the gate up the winding way beneath
their careless gaze. It was not the coming of the thoughtless, careless
girl of five years ago who had marched a dozen times unthinking before
the faces of white men. It was the approach of a woman who knew how the
world treated women whom it respected; who knew that no such treatment
would be thought of in her case: neither the bow, the lifted hat, nor
even the conventional title of decency. Yet she must go on naturally and
easily, boldly but circumspectly, and play a daring game with two
powerful men.

"Can I speak with you a moment, Colonel?" she asked.

The Colonel did not stir or remove his cigar; he even injected a little
gruffness into his tone.

"Well, what is it?"

Of course, she was not asked to sit, but she stood with her hands
clasped loosely before her and her eyes half veiled.

"Colonel, I've got a thousand dollars." She did not mention the other
nine.

The Colonel sat up.

"Where did you get it?" he asked.

"Mrs. Vanderpool gave it to me to use in helping the colored people."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Well, that's just what I came to see you about. You see, I might give
it to the school, but I've been thinking that I'd like to buy some land
for some of the tenants."

"I've got no land to sell," said the Colonel.

"I was thinking you might sell a bit of the swamp."

Cresswell and Taylor glanced at each other and the Colonel re-lit his
cigar.

"How much of it?" he asked finally.

"I don't know; I thought perhaps two hundred acres."

"Two hundred acres? Do you expect to buy that land for five dollars an
acre?"

"Oh, no, sir. I thought it might cost as much as twenty-five dollars."

"But you've only got a thousand dollars."

"Yes, sir; I thought I might pay that down and then pay the rest from
the crops."

"Who's going to work on the place?"

Zora named a number of the steadiest tenants to whom she had spoken.

"They owe me a lot of money," said the Colonel.

"We'd try to pay that, too."

Colonel Cresswell considered. There was absolutely no risk. The cost of
the land, the back debts of the tenants--no possible crops could pay for
them. Then there was the chance of getting the swamp cleared for almost
nothing.

"How's the school getting on?" he asked suddenly.

"Very poorly," answered Zora sadly. "You know it's mortgaged, and Miss
Smith has had to use the mortgage money for yearly expenses."

The Colonel smiled grimly.

"It will cost you fifty dollars an acre," he said finally. Zora looked
disappointed and figured out the matter slowly.

"That would be one thousand down and nine thousand to pay--"

"With interest," said Cresswell.

Zora shook her head doubtfully.

"What would the interest be?" she asked.

"Ten per cent."

She stood silent a moment and Colonel Cresswell spoke up:

"It's the best land about here and about the only land you can buy--I
wouldn't sell it to anybody else."

She still hesitated.

"The trouble is, you see, Colonel Cresswell, the price is high and the
interest heavy. And after all I may not be able to get as many tenants
as I'd need. I think though, I'd try it if--if I could be sure you'd
treat me fairly, and that I'd get the land if I paid for it."

Colonel Cresswell reddened a little, and John Taylor looked away.

"Well, if you don't want to undertake it, all right."

Zora looked thoughtfully across the field--

"Mr. Maxwell has a bit of land," she began meditatively.

"Worked out, and not worth five dollars an acre!" snapped the Colonel.
But he did not propose to hand Maxwell a thousand dollars. "Now, see
here, I'll treat you as well as anybody, and you know it."

"I believe so, sir," acknowledged Zora in a tone that brought a sudden
keen glance from Taylor; but her face was a mask. "I reckon I'll make
the bargain."

"All right. Bring the money and we'll fix the thing up."

"The money is here," said Zora, taking an envelope out of her bosom.

"Well, leave it here, and I'll see to it."

"But you see, sir, Miss Smith is so methodical; she expects some papers
or receipts."

"Well, it's too late tonight."

"Possibly you could sign a sort of receipt and later--"

Cresswell laughed. "Well, write one," he indulgently assented. And Zora
wrote.

When Zora left Colonel Cresswell's about noon that Sunday she knew her
work had just begun, and she walked swiftly along the country roads,
calling here and there. Would Uncle Isaac help her build a log home?
Would the boys help her some time to clear some swamp land? Would Rob
become a tenant when she asked? For this was the idle time of the year.
Crops were laid by and planting had not yet begun.

This too was the time of big church meetings. She knew that in her part
of the country on that day the black population, man, woman, and child,
were gathered in great groups; all day they had been gathering,
streaming in snake-like lines along the country roads, in well-brushed,
brilliant attire, half fantastic, half crude. Down where the
Toomsville-Montgomery highway dipped to the stream that fed the
Cresswell swamp squatted a square barn that slept through day and weeks
in dull indifference. But on the First Sunday it woke to sudden mighty
life. The voices of men and children mingled with the snorting of
animals and the cracking of whips. Then came the long drone and
sing-song of the preacher with its sharp wilder climaxes and the
answering "amens" and screams of the worshippers. This was the shrine of
the Baptists--shrine and oracle, centre and source of inspiration--and
hither Zora hurried.

The preacher was Jones, a big man, fat, black, and greasy, with little
eyes, unctuous voice, and three manners: his white folks manner, soft,
humble, wheedling; his black folks manner, voluble, important,
condescending; and above all, his pulpit manner, loud, wild, and strong.
He was about to don this latter cloak when Zora approached with a
request briefly to address the congregation. Remembering some former
snubs, his manner was lordly.

"I doesn't see," he returned reflectively, wiping his brows, "as how I
can rightly spare you any time; the brethren is a-gettin' mighty
onpatient to hear me." He pulled down his cuffs, regarding her
doubtfully.

"I might speak after you're through," she suggested. But he objected
that there was the regular collection and two or three other
collections, a baptism, a meeting of the trustees; there was no time, in
short; but--he eyed her again.

"Does you want--a collection?" he questioned suspiciously, for he could
imagine few other reasons for talking. Then, too, he did not want to be
too inflexible, for all of his people knew Zora and liked her.

"Oh, no, I want no collection at all. I only want a little voluntary
work on their part." He looked relieved, frowned through the door at the
audience, and looked at his bright gold watch. The whole crowd was not
there yet--perhaps--

"You kin say just a word before the sermont," he finally yielded; "but
not long--not long. They'se just a-dying to hear me."

So Zora spoke simply but clearly: of neglect and suffering, of the sins
of others that bowed young shoulders, of the great hope of the
children's future. Then she told something of what she had seen and read
of the world's newer ways of helping men and women. She talked of
cooperation and refuges and other efforts; she praised their way of
adopting children into their own homes; and then finally she told them
of the land she was buying for new tenants and the helping hands she
needed. The preacher fidgeted and coughed but dared not actually
interrupt, for the people were listening breathless to a kind of
straightforward talk which they seldom heard and for which they were
hungering.

And Zora forgot time and occasion. The moments flew; the crowd increased
until the wonderful spell of those dark and upturned faces pulsed in her
blood. She felt the wild yearning to help them beating in her ears and
blinding her eyes.

"Oh, my people!" she almost sobbed. "My own people, I am not asking you
to help others; I am pleading with you to help yourselves. Rescue your
own flesh and blood--free yourselves--free yourselves!" And from the
swaying sobbing hundreds burst a great "Amen!" The minister's dusky face
grew more and more sombre, and the angry sweat started on his brow. He
felt himself hoaxed and cheated, and he meant to have his revenge. Two
hundred men and women rose and pledged themselves to help Zora; and when
she turned with overflowing heart to thank the preacher he had left the
platform, and she found him in the yard whispering darkly with two
deacons. She realized her mistake, and promised to retrieve it during
the week; but the week was full of planning and journeying and talking.

Saturday dawned cool and clear. She had dinner prepared for cooking in
the yard: sweet potatoes, hoe-cake, and buttermilk, and a hog to be
barbecued. Everything was ready by eight o'clock in the morning. Emma
and two other girl helpers were on the tip-toe of expectancy. Nine
o'clock came and no one with it. Ten o'clock came, and eleven. High
noon found Zora peering down the highway under her shading hand, but no
soul in sight. She tried to think it out: what could have happened? Her
people were slow, tardy, but they would not thus forget her and
disappoint her without some great cause. She sent the girls home at dusk
and then seated herself miserably under the great oak; then at last one
half-grown boy hurried by.

"I wanted to come, Miss Zora, but I was afeared. Preacher Jones has been
talking everywhere against you. He says that your mother was a voodoo
woman and that you don't believe in God, and the deacons voted that the
members mustn't help you."

"And do the people believe that?" she asked in consternation.

"They just don't know what to say. They don't 'zactly believe it, but
they has to 'low that you didn't say much 'bout religion when you
talked. You ain't been near Big Meetin'--and--and--you ain't saved." He
hurried on.

Zora leaned her head back wearily, watching the laced black branches
where the star-light flickered through--as coldly still and immovable as
she had watched them from those gnarled roots all her life--and she
murmured bitterly the world-old question of despair: "What's the use?"
It seemed to her that every breeze and branch was instinct with
sympathy, and murmuring, "What's the use?" She wondered vaguely why, and
as she wondered, she knew.

For yonder where the black earth of the swamp heaved in a formless mound
she felt the black arms of Elspeth rising from the sod--gigantic,
mighty. They stole toward her with stealthy hands and claw-like talons.
They clutched at her skirts. She froze and could not move. Down, down
she slipped toward the black slime of the swamp, and the air about was
horror--down, down, till the chilly waters stung her knees; and then
with one grip she seized the oak, while the great hand of Elspeth
twisted and tore her soul. Faint, afar, nearer and nearer and ever
mightier, rose a song of mystic melody. She heard its human voice and
sought to cry aloud. She strove again and again with that gripping,
twisting pain--that awful hand--until the shriek came and she awoke.

She lay panting and sweating across the bent and broken roots of the
oak. The hand of Elspeth was gone but the song was still there. She rose
trembling and listened. It was the singing of the Big Meeting in the
church far away. She had forgotten this religious revival in her days of
hurried preparation, and the preacher had used her absence and apparent
indifference against her and her work. The hand of Elspeth was reaching
from the grave to pull her back; but she was no longer dreaming now.
Drawing her shawl about her, she hurried down the highway.

The meeting had overflowed the church and spread to the edge of the
swamp. The tops of young trees had been bent down and interlaced to form
a covering and benches twined to their trunks. Thus a low and wide
cathedral, all green and silver in the star-light, lay packed with a
living mass of black folk. Flaming pine torches burned above the
devotees; the rhythm of their stamping, the shout of their voices, and
the wild music of their singing shook the night. Four hundred people
fell upon their knees when the huge black preacher, uncoated, red-eyed,
frenzied, stretched his long arms to heaven. Zora saw the throng from
afar, and hesitated. After all, she knew little of this strange faith of
theirs--had little belief in its mummery. She herself had been brought
up almost without religion save some few mystic remnants of a
half-forgotten heathen cult. The little she had seen of religious
observance had not moved her greatly, save once yonder in Washington.
There she found God after a searching that had seared her soul; but He
had simply pointed the Way, and the way was human.

Humanity was near and real. She loved it. But if she talked again of
mere men would these devotees listen? Already the minister had spied her
tall form and feared her power. He set his powerful voice and the frenzy
of his hearers to crush her.

"Who is dis what talks of doing the Lord's work for Him? What does de
good Book say? Take no thought 'bout de morrow. Why is you trying to
make dis ole world better? I spits on the world! Come out from it. Seek
Jesus. Heaven is my home! Is it yo's?" "Yes," groaned the multitude. His
arm shot out and he pointed straight at Zora.

"Beware the ebil one!" he shouted, and the multitude moaned. "Beware of
dem dat calls ebil good. Beware of dem dat worships debbils; the debbils
dat crawl; de debbils what forgits God."

"Help him, Lord!" cried the multitude.

Zora stepped into the circle of light. A hush fell on the throng; the
preacher paused a moment, then started boldly forward with upraised
hands. Then a curious thing happened. A sharp cry arose far off down
toward the swamp and the sound of great footsteps coming, coming as from
the end of the world; there swelled a rhythmical chanting, wilder and
more primitive than song. On, on it came, until it swung into sight. An
old man led the band--tall, massive, with tufted gray hair and wrinkled
leathery skin, and his eyes were the eyes of death. He reached the
circle of light, and Zora started: once before she had seen that old
man. The singing stopped but he came straight on till he reached Zora's
side and then he whirled and spoke.

The words leaped and flew from his lips as he lashed the throng with
bitter fury. He said what Zora wanted to say with two great differences:
first, he spoke their religious language and spoke it with absolute
confidence and authority; and secondly, he seemed to know each one there
personally and intimately so that he spoke to no inchoate throng--he
spoke to them individually, and they listened awestruck and fearsome.

"God is done sent me," he declared in passionate tones, "to preach His
acceptable time. Faith without works is dead; who is you that dares to
set and wait for the Lord to do your work?" Then in sudden fury, "Ye
generation of vipers--who kin save you?" He bent forward and pointed his
long finger. "Yes," he cried, "pray, Sam Collins, you black devil; pray,
for the corn you stole Thursday." The black figure moved. "Moan, Sister
Maxwell, for the backbiting you did today. Yell, Jack Tolliver, you
sneaking scamp, t'wil the Lord tell Uncle Bill who ruined his daughter.
Weep, May Haynes, for that baby--"

But the woman's shriek drowned his words, and he whirled full on the
preacher, stamping his feet and waving his hands. His anger choked him;
the fat preacher cowered gray and trembling. The gaunt fanatic towered
over him.

"You--you--ornery hound of Hell! God never knowed you and the devil owns
your soul!" There leapt from his lips a denunciation so livid, specific,
and impassioned that the preacher squatted and bowed, then finally fell
upon his face and moaned.

The gaunt speaker turned again to the people. He talked of little
children; he pictured their sin and neglect. "God is done sent me to
offer you all salvation," he cried, while the people wept and wailed;
"not in praying, but in works. Follow me!" The hour was halfway between
midnight and dawn, but nevertheless the people leapt frenziedly to their
feet.

"Follow me!" he shouted.

And, singing and chanting, the throng poured out upon the black highway,
waving their torches. Zora knew his intention. With a half-dozen of
younger onlookers she unhitched teams and rode across the land, calling
at the cabins. Before sunrise, tools were in the swamp, axes and saws
and hammers. The noise of prayer and singing filled the Sabbath dawn.
The news of the great revival spread, and men and women came pouring in.
Then of a sudden the uproar stopped, and the ringing of axes and grating
of saws and tugging of mules was heard. The forest trembled as by some
mighty magic, swaying and falling with crash on crash. Huge bonfires
blazed and crackled, until at last a wide black scar appeared in the
thick south side of the swamp, which widened and widened to full twenty
acres.

The sun rose higher and higher till it blazed at high noon. The workers
dropped their tools. The aroma of coffee and roasting meat rose in the
dim cool shade. With ravenous appetites the dark, half-famished throng
fell upon the food, and then in utter weariness stretched themselves and
slept: lying along the earth like huge bronze earth-spirits, sitting
against trees, curled in dense bushes.

And Zora sat above them on a high rich-scented pile of logs. Her senses
slept save her sleepless eyes. Amid a silence she saw in the little
grove that still stood, the cabin of Elspeth tremble, sigh, and
disappear, and with it flew some spirit of evil.

Then she looked down to the new edge of the swamp, by the old lagoon,
and saw Bles Alwyn standing there. It seemed very natural; and closing
her eyes, she fell asleep.




_Thirty-four_

THE RETURN OF ALWYN


Bles Alwyn stared at Mrs. Harry Cresswell in surprise. He had not seen
her since that moment at the ball, and he was startled at the change.
Her abundant hair was gone; her face was pale and drawn, and there were
little wrinkles below her sunken eyes. In those eyes lurked the tired
look of the bewildered and the disappointed. It was in the lofty
waiting-room of the Washington station where Alwyn had come to meet a
friend. Mrs. Cresswell turned and recognized him with genuine pleasure.
He seemed somehow a part of the few things in the world--little and
unimportant perhaps--that counted and stood firm, and she shook his hand
cordially, not minding the staring of the people about. He took her bag
and carried it towards the gate, which made the observers breathe
easier, seeing him in servile duty. Someway, she knew not just how, she
found herself telling him of the crisis in her life before she realized;
not everything, of course, but a great deal. It was much as though she
were talking to some one from another world--an outsider; but one she
had known long, one who understood. Both from what she recounted and
what she could not tell he gathered the substance of the story, and it
bewildered him. He had not thought that white people had such troubles;
yet, he reflected, why not? They, too, were human.

"I suppose you hear from the school?" he ventured after a pause.

"Why, yes--not directly--but Zora used to speak of it."

Bles looked up quickly.

"Zora?"

"Yes. Didn't you see her while she was here? She has gone back now."

Then the gate opened, the crowd surged through, sweeping them apart, and
next moment he was alone.

Alwyn turned slowly away. He forgot the friend he was to meet. He forgot
everything but the field of the Silver Fleece. It rose shadowy there in
the pale concourse, swaying in ghostly breezes. The purple of its
flowers mingled with the silver radiance of tendrils that trembled
across the hurrying throng, like threads of mists along low hills. In
its midst rose a dark, slim, and quivering form. She had been here--here
in Washington! Why had he not known? What was she doing? "She has gone
back now"--back to the Sun and the Swamp, back to the Burden.

Why should not he go back, too? He walked on thinking. He had failed.
His apparent success had been too sudden, too overwhelming, and when he
had faced the crisis his hand had trembled. He had chosen the Right--but
the Right was ineffective, impotent, almost ludicrous. It left him
shorn, powerless, and in moral revolt. The world had suddenly left him,
as the vision of Carrie Wynn had left him, alone, a mere clerk, an
insignificant cog in the great grinding wheel of humdrum drudgery. His
chance to do and thereby to be had not come.

He thought of Zora again. Why not go back to the South where she had
gone? He shuddered as one who sees before him a cold black pool whither
his path leads. To face the proscription, the insult, the lawless hate
of the South again--never! And yet he went home and sat down and wrote a
long letter to Miss Smith.

The reply that came after some delay was almost curt. It answered few of
his questions, argued with none of his doubts, and made no mention of
Zora. Yes, there was need of a manager for the new farm and settlement.
She was not sure whether Alwyn could do the work or not. The salary was
meagre and the work hard. If he wished it, he must decide immediately.

Two weeks later found Alwyn on the train facing Southward in the Jim
Crow car. How he had decided to go back South he did not know. In fact,
he had not decided. He had sat helpless and inactive in the grip of
great and shadowed hands, and the thing was as yet incomprehensible. And
so it was that the vision Zora saw in the swamp had been real enough,
and Alwyn felt strangely disappointed that she had given no sign of
greeting on recognition.

In other ways, too, Zora, when he met her, was to him a new creature.
She came to him frankly and greeted him, her gladness shining in her
eyes, yet looking nothing more than gladness and saying nothing more.
Just what he had expected was hard to say; but he had left her on her
knees in the dirt with outstretched hands, and somehow he had expected
to return to some corresponding mental attitude. The physical change of
these three years was marvellous. The girl was a woman, well-rounded and
poised, tall, straight, and quick. And with this went mental change: a
self-mastery; a veiling of the self even in intimate talk; a subtle air
as of one looking from great and unreachable heights down on the dawn of
the world. Perhaps no one who had not known the child and the girl as he
had would have noted all this; but he saw and realized the
transformation with a pang--something had gone; the innocence and wonder
of the child, and in their place had grown up something to him
incomprehensible and occult.

Miss Smith was not to be easily questioned on the subject. She took no
hints and gave no information, and when once he hazarded some pointed
questions she turned on him abruptly, observing acidly: "If I were you
I'd think less of Zora and more of her work."

Gradually, in his spiritual perplexity, Alwyn turned to Mary Cresswell.
She was staying with the Colonel at Cresswell Oaks. Her coming South was
supposed to be solely for reasons of health, and her appearance made
this excuse plausible. She was lonely and restless, and naturally drawn
toward the school. Her intercourse with Miss Smith was only formal, but
her interest in Zora's work grew. Down in the swamp, at the edge of the
cleared space, had risen a log cabin; long, low, spacious, overhung with
oak and pine. It was Zora's centre for her settlement-work. There she
lived, and with her a half-dozen orphan girls and children too young for
the boarding department of the school. Mrs. Cresswell easily fell into
the habit of walking by here each day, coming down the avenue of oaks
across the road and into the swamp. She saw little of Zora personally
but she saw her girls and learned much of her plans.

The rooms of the cottage were clean and light, supplied with books and
pictures, simple toys, and a phonograph. The yard was one wide green and
golden play-ground, and all day the music of children's glad crooning
and the singing of girls went echoing and trembling through the trees,
as they played and sewed and washed and worked.

From the Cresswells and the Maxwells and others came loads of clothes
for washing and mending. The Tolliver girls had simple dresses made,
embroidery was ordered from town, and soon there would be the gardens
and cotton fields. Mrs. Cresswell would saunter down of mornings.
Sometimes she would talk to the big girls and play with the children;
sometimes she would sit hidden in the forest, listening and glimpsing
and thinking, thinking, till her head whirled and the world danced red
before her eyes, today she rose wearily, for it was near noon, and
started home. She saw Alwyn swing along the road to the school
dining-room where he had charge of the students at the noonday meal.

Alwyn wanted Mrs. Cresswell's judgment and advice. He was growing
doubtful of his own estimate of women. Evidently something about his
standards was wrong; consequently he made opportunities to talk with
Mrs. Cresswell when she was about, hoping she would bring up the subject
of Zora of her own accord. But she did not. She was too full of her own
cares and troubles, and she was only too glad of willing and sympathetic
ears into which to pour her thoughts. Miss Smith soon began to look on
these conversations with some uneasiness. Black men and white women
cannot talk together casually in the South and she did not know how far
the North had put notions in Alwyn's head.

Today both met each other almost eagerly.

Mrs. Cresswell had just had a bit of news which only he would fully
appreciate.

"Have you heard of the Vanderpools?" she asked.

"No--except that he was appointed and confirmed at last."

"Well, they had only arrived in France when he died of apoplexy. I do
not know," added Mrs. Cresswell, "I may be wrong and--I hope I'm not
glad." Then there leapt to her mind a hypothetical question which had to
do with her own curious situation. It was characteristic of her to brood
and then restlessly to seek relief in consulting the one person near who
knew her story. She started to open the subject again today.

But Alwyn, his own mind full, spoke first and rapidly. He, too, had
turned to her as he saw her come from Zora's home. He must know more
about the girl. He could no longer endure this silence. Zora beneath her
apparent frankness was impenetrable, and he felt that she carefully
avoided him, although she did it so deftly that he felt rather than
observed it. Miss Smith still systematically snubbed him when he
broached the subject of Zora. With others he did not speak; the matter
seemed too delicate and sacred, and he always had an awful dread lest
sometime, somewhere, a chance and fatal word would be dropped, a breath
of evil gossip which would shatter all. He had hated to obtrude his
troubles on Mrs. Cresswell, who seemed so torn in soul. But today he
must speak, although time pressed.

"Mrs. Cresswell," he began hurriedly, "there's a matter--a personal
matter of which I have wanted to speak--a long time--I--" The
dinner-bell rang, and he stopped, vexed.

"Come up to the house this afternoon," she said; "Colonel Cresswell will
be away--" Then she paused abruptly. A strange startling thought flashed
through her brain. Alwyn noticed nothing. He thanked her cordially and
hurried toward the dining-hall, meeting Colonel Cresswell on horseback
just as he turned into the school gate.

Mary Cresswell walked slowly on, flushing and paling by turns. Could it
be that this Negro had dared to misunderstand her--had presumed? She
reviewed her conduct. Perhaps she had been indiscreet in thus making a
confidant of him in her trouble. She had thought of him as a boy--an old
student, a sort of confidential servant; but what had he thought? She
remembered Miss Smith's warning of years before--and he had been North
since and acquired Northern notions of freedom and equality. She bit her
lip cruelly.

Yet, she mused, she was herself to blame. She had unwittingly made the
intimacy and he was but a Negro, looking on every white woman as a
goddess and ready to fawn at the slightest encouragement. There had been
no one else here to confide in. She could not tell Miss Smith her
troubles, although she knew Miss Smith must suspect. Harry Cresswell,
apparently, had written nothing home of their quarrel. All the neighbors
behaved as if her excuse of ill-health were sufficient to account for
her return South to escape the rigors of a Northern winter. Alwyn, and
Alwyn alone, really knew. Well, it was her blindness, and she must right
it quietly and quickly with hard ruthless plainness. She blushed again
at the shame of it; then she began to excuse.

After all, which was worse--a Cresswell or an Alwyn? It was no sin that
Alwyn had done; it was simply ignorant presumption, and she must correct
him firmly, but gently, like a child. What a crazy muddle the world was!
She thought of Harry Cresswell and the tale he told her in the swamp.
She thought of the flitting ghosts that awful night in Washington. She
thought of Miss Wynn who had jilted Alwyn and given her herself a very
bad quarter of an hour. What a world it was, and after all how far was
this black boy wrong? Just then Colonel Cresswell rode up behind and
greeted her.

She started almost guiltily, and again a sense of the awkwardness of her
position reddened her face and neck. The Colonel dismounted, despite her
protest, and walked beside her. They chatted along indifferently, of the
crops, her brother's new baby, the proposed mill.

"Mary," his voice abruptly struck a new note. "I don't like the way you
talk with that Alwyn nigger."

She was silent.

"Of course," he continued, "you're Northern born and you have been a
teacher in this school and feel differently from us in some ways; but
mark what I say, a nigger will presume on the slightest pretext, and you
must keep them in their place. Then, too, you are a Cresswell now--"

She smiled bitterly; he noticed it, but went on:

"You are a Cresswell, even if you have caught Harry up to some of his
deviltry,"--she started,--"and got miffed about it. It'll all come out
right. You're a Cresswell, and you must hold yourself too high to
'Mister' a nigger or let him dream of any sort of equality."

He spoke pleasantly, but with a certain sharp insistence that struck a
note of fear in Mary's heart. For a moment she thought of writing Alwyn
not to call. But, no; a note would be unwise. She and Colonel Cresswell
lunched rather silently.

"Well, I must get to town," he finally announced. "The mill directors
meet today. If Maxwell calls by about that lumber tell him I'll see him
in town." And away he went.

He had scarcely reached the highway and ridden a quarter of a mile or
so when he spied Bles Alwyn hurrying across the field toward the
Cresswell Oaks. He frowned and rode on. Then reining in his horse, he
stopped in the shadow of the trees and watched Alwyn.

It was here that Zora saw him as she came up from her house. She, too,
stopped, and soon saw whom he was watching. She had been planning to see
Mr. Cresswell about the cut timber on her land. By legal right it was
hers but she knew he would claim half, treating her like a mere tenant.
Seeing him watching Alwyn she paused in the shadow and waited, fearing
trouble. She, too, had felt that the continued conversations of Alwyn
and Mrs. Cresswell were indiscreet, but she hoped that they had
attracted no one else's attention. Now she feared the Colonel was
suspicious and her heart sank. Alwyn went straight toward the house and
disappeared in the oak avenue. Still Colonel Cresswell waited but Zora
waited no longer. Alwyn must be warned. She must reach Cresswell's
mansion before Cresswell did and without him seeing her. This meant a
long detour of the swamp to approach the Oaks from the west. She
silently gathered up her skirts and walked quickly and carefully away.

She was a strong woman, lithe and vigorous, living in the open air and
used to walking. Once out of hearing she threw away her hat and bending
forward ran through the swamp. For a while she ran easily and swiftly.
Then for a moment she grew dizzy and it seemed as though she was
standing still and the swamp in solemn grandeur marching past--in solemn
mocking grandeur. She loosened her dress at the neck and flew on.

She sped at last through the oaks, up the terraces, and slowing down to
an unsteady walk, staggered into the house. No one would wonder at her
being there. She came up now and then and sorted the linen and piled the
baskets for her girls. She entered a side door and listened. The
Colonel's voice sounded impatiently in the front hall.

"Mary! Mary?"

A pause, then an answer:

"Yes, father!"

He started up the front stairway and Zora hurried up the narrow back
stairs, almost overturning a servant.

"I'm after the clothes," she explained. She reached the back landing
just in time to see Colonel Cresswell's head rising up the front
staircase. With a quick bound she almost fell into the first room at the
top of the stairs.

Bles Alwyn had hurried through his dinner duties and hastened to the
Oaks. The questions, the doubts, the uncertainty within him were
clamoring for utterance. How much had Mrs. Cresswell ever known of Zora?
What kind of a woman was Zora now? Mrs. Cresswell had seen her and had
talked to her and watched her. What did she think? Thus he formulated
his questions as he went, half timid, and fearful in putting them and
yet determined to know.

Mrs. Cresswell, waiting for him, was almost panic-stricken. Probably he
would beat round the bush seeking further encouragement; but at the
slightest indication she must crush him ruthlessly and at the same time
point the path of duty. He ought to marry some good girl--not Zora, but
some one. Somehow Zora seemed too unusual and strange for him--too
inhuman, as Mary Cresswell judged humanity. She glanced out from her
seat on the upper verandah over the front porch and saw Alwyn coming.
Where should she receive him? On the porch and have Mr. Maxwell ride up?
In the parlor and have the servants astounded and talking? If she took
him up to her own sitting-room the servants would think he was doing
some work or fetching something for the school. She greeted him briefly
and asked him in.

"Good-afternoon, Bles"--using his first name to show him his place, and
then inwardly recoiling at its note of familiarity. She preceded him
up-stairs to the sitting-room, where, leaving the door ajar, she seated
herself on the opposite side of the room and waited.

He fidgeted, then spoke rapidly.

"Mrs. Cresswell--this is a personal affair." She reddened angrily. "A
love affair"--she paled with something like fear--"and I"--she started
to speak, but could not--"I want to know what you think about Zora?"

"About Zora!" she gasped weakly. The sudden reaction, the revulsion of
her agitated feelings, left her breathless.

"About Zora. You know I loved her dearly as a boy--how dearly I have
only just begun to realize: I've been wondering if I understood--if I
wasn't--"

Mrs. Cresswell got angrily to her feet.

"You have come here to speak to me of that--that--" she choked, and Bles
thought his worst fears realized.

"Mary, Mary!" Colonel Cresswell's voice broke suddenly in upon them.
With a start of fear Mrs. Cresswell rushed out into the hall and closed
the door.

"Mary, has that Alwyn nigger been here this afternoon?" Mr. Cresswell
was coming up-stairs, carrying his riding whip.

"Why, no!" she answered, lying instinctively before she quite realized
what her lie meant. She hesitated. "That is, I haven't seen him. I must
have nodded over my book,"--looking toward the little verandah at the
front of the upper hall, where her easy chair stood with her book. Then
with an awful flash of enlightenment she realized what her lie might
mean, and her heart paused.

Cresswell strode up.

"I saw him come up--he must have entered. He's nowhere downstairs," he
wavered and scowled. "Have you been in your sitting-room?" And then, not
waiting for a reply, he strode to the door.

"But the damned scoundrel wouldn't dare!"

He deliberately placed his hand in his right-hand hip-pocket and threw
open the door.

Mary Cresswell stood frozen. The full horror of the thing burst upon
her. Her own silly misapprehension, the infatuation of Alwyn for Zora,
her thoughtless--no, vindictive--betrayal of him to something worse than
death. She listened for the crack of doom. She heard a bird singing far
down in the swamp; she heard the soft raising of a window and the
closing of a door. And then--great God in heaven! must she live forever
in this agony?--and then, she heard the door bang and Mr. Cresswell's
gruff voice--

"Well, where is he?--he isn't in there!"

Mary Cresswell felt that something was giving way within. She swayed and
would have crashed to the bottom of the staircase if just then she had
not seen at the opposite end of the hall, near the back stairs, Zora and
Alwyn emerge calmly from a room, carrying a basket full of clothes.
Colonel Cresswell stared at them, and Zora instinctively put up her hand
and fastened her dress at the throat. The Colonel scowled, for it was
all clear to him now.

"Look here," he angrily opened upon them, "if you niggers want to meet
around keep out of this house; hereafter I'll send the clothes down. By
God, if you want to make love go to the swamp!" He stamped down the
stairs while an ashy paleness stole beneath the dark-red bronze of
Zora's face.

They walked silently down the road together--the old familiar road.
Alwyn was staring moodily ahead.

"We must get married--before Christmas, Zora," he presently avowed, not
looking at her. He felt the basket pause and he glanced up. Her dark
eyes were full upon him and he saw something in their depths that
brought him to himself and made him realize his blunder.

"Zora!" he stammered, "forgive me! Will you marry me?"

She looked at him calmly with infinite compassion. But her reply was
uttered unhesitantly; distinct, direct.

"No, Bles."




_Thirty-five_

THE COTTON MILL


The people of Toomsville started in their beds and listened. A new song
was rising on the air: a harsh, low, murmuring croon that shook the
village ranged around its old square of dilapadated stores. It was not a
song of joy; it was not a song of sorrow; it was not a song at all,
perhaps, but a confused whizzing and murmuring, as of a thousand
ill-tuned, busy voices. Some of the listeners wondered; but most of the
town cried joyfully, "It's the new cotton-mill!"

John Taylor's head teemed with new schemes. The mill trust of the North
was at last a fact. The small mills had not been able to buy cotton when
it was low because Cresswell was cornering it in the name of the
Farmers' League; now that it was high they could not afford to, and many
surrendered to the trust.

"Next thing," wrote Taylor to Easterly, "is to reduce cost of
production. Too much goes in wages. Gradually transfer mills South."

Easterly argued that the labor was too unskilled in the South and that
to send Northern spinners down would spread labor troubles. Taylor
replied briefly: "Never fear; we'll scare them with a vision of niggers
in the mills!"

Colonel Cresswell was not so easily won over to the new scheme. In the
first place he was angry because the school, which he had come to regard
as on its last legs, somehow still continued to flourish. The
ten-thousand-dollar mortgage had but three more years, and that would
end all; but he had hoped for a crash even earlier. Instead of this,
Miss Smith was cheerfully expanding the work, hiring new teachers, and
especially she had brought to help her two young Negroes whom he
suspected. Colonel Cresswell had prevented the Tolliver land sale, only
to be inveigled himself into Zora's scheme which now began to worry him.
He must evict Zora's tenants as soon as the crops were planted and
harvested. There was nothing unjust about such a course, he argued, for
Negroes anyway were too lazy and shiftless to buy the land. They would
not, they could not, work without driving. All this he imparted to John
Taylor, to which that gentleman listened carefully.

"H'm, I see," he owned. "And I know the way out."

"How?"

"A cotton mill in Toomsville."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Bring in whites."

"But I don't want poor white trash; I'd sooner have niggers."

"Now, see here," argued Taylor, "you can't have everything you
want--day's gone by for aristocracy of old kind. You must have
neighbors: choose, then, white or black. I say white."

"But they'll rule us--out-vote us--marry our daughters," warmly objected
the Colonel.

"Some of them may--most of them won't. A few of them with brains will
help us rule the rest with money. We'll plant cotton mills beside the
cotton fields, use whites to keep niggers in their place, and the fear
of niggers to keep the poorer whites in theirs."

The Colonel looked thoughtful.

"There's something in that," he confessed after a while; "but it's a
mighty big experiment, and it may go awry."

"Not with brains and money to guide it. And at any rate, we've got to
try it; it's the next logical step, and we must take it."

"But in the meantime, I'm not going to give up good old methods; I'm
going to set the sheriff behind these lazy niggers," said the Colonel;
"and I'm going to stop that school putting notions into their heads."

In three short months the mill at Toomsville was open and its wheels
whizzing to the boundless pride of the citizens.

"Our enterprise, sir!" they said to the strangers on the strength of the
five thousand dollars locally invested.

Once it had vigor to sing, the song of the mill knew no resting; morning
and evening, day and night it crooned its rhythmic tune; only during the
daylight Sundays did its murmur die to a sibilant hiss. All the week its
doors were filled with the coming and going of men and women and
children: many men, more women, and greater and greater throngs of
children. It seemed to devour children, sitting with its myriad eyes
gleaming and its black maw open, drawing in the pale white mites,
sucking their blood and spewing them out paler and ever paler. The face
of the town began to change, showing a ragged tuberculous looking side
with dingy homes in short and homely rows.

There came gradually a new consciousness to the town. Hitherto town and
country had been ruled by a few great landlords but at the very first
election, Colton, an unknown outsider, had beaten the regular candidate
for sheriff by such a majority that the big property owners dared not
count him out. They had, however, an earnest consultation with John
Taylor.

"It's just as I said," growled Colonel Cresswell, "if you don't watch
out our whole plantation system will be ruined and we'll be governed by
this white trash from the hills."

"There's only one way," sighed Caldwell, the merchant; "we've got to
vote the niggers."

John Taylor laughed. "Nonsense!" he spurned the suggestion. "You're
old-fashioned. Let the mill-hands have the offices. What good will it
do?"

"What good! Why, they'll do as they please with us."

"Bosh! Don't we own the mill? Can't we keep wages where we like by
threatening to bring in nigger labor?"

"No, you can't, permanently," Maxwell disputed, "for they sometime will
call your bluff."

"Let 'em call," said Taylor, "and we'll put niggers in the mills."

"What!" ejaculated the landlords in chorus. Only Maxwell was silent.
"And kill the plantation system?"

"Oh, maybe some time, of course. But not for years; not until you've
made your pile. You don't really expect to keep the darkies down
forever, do you?"

"No, I don't," Maxwell slowly admitted. "This system can't last
always--sometimes I think it can't last long. It's wrong, through and
through. It's built on ignorance, theft, and force, and I wish to God we
had courage enough to overthrow it and take the consequences. I wish it
was possible to be a Southerner and a Christian and an honest man, to
treat niggers and dagoes and white trash like men, and be big enough to
say, 'To Hell with consequences!'"

Colonel Cresswell stared at his neighbor, speechless with bewilderment
and outraged traditions. Such unbelievable heresy from a Northerner or a
Negro would have been natural; but from a Southerner whose father had
owned five hundred slaves--it was incredible! The other landlords
scarcely listened; they were dogged and impatient and they could suggest
no remedy. They could only blame the mill for their troubles.

John Taylor left the conference blithely. "No," he said to the
committee from the new mill-workers' union. "Can't raise wages,
gentlemen, and can't lessen hours. Mill is just started and not yet
paying expenses. You're getting better wages than you ever got. If you
don't want to work, quit. There are plenty of others, white and black,
who want your jobs."

The mention of black people as competitors for wages was like a red rag
to a bull. The laborers got together and at the next election they made
a clean sweep, judge, sheriff, two members of the legislature, and the
registrars of votes. Undoubtedly the following year they would capture
Harry Cresswell's seat in Congress.

The result was curious. From two sides, from landlord and white laborer,
came renewed oppression of black men. The laborers found that their
political power gave them little economic advantage as long as the
threatening cloud of Negro competition loomed ahead. There was some talk
of a strike, but Colton, the new sheriff, discouraged it.

"I tell you, boys, where the trouble lies: it's the niggers. They live
on nothing and take any kind of treatment, and they keep wages down. If
you strike, they'll get your jobs, sure. We'll just have to grin and
bear it a while, but get back at the darkies whenever you can. I'll
stick 'em into the chain-gang every chance I get."

On the other hand, inspired by fright, the grip of the landlords on the
black serfs closed with steadily increasing firmness. They saw one class
rising from beneath them to power, and they tightened the chains on the
other. Matters simmered on in this way, and the only party wholly
satisfied with conditions was John Taylor and the few young Southerners
who saw through his eyes. He was making money. The landlords, on the
contrary, were losing power and prestige, and their farm labor, despite
strenuous efforts, was drifting to town attracted by new and incidental
work and higher wages. The mill-hands were more and more overworked and
underpaid, and hated the Negroes for it in accordance with their
leaders' directions.

At the same time the oppressed blacks and scowling mill-hands could not
help recurring again and again to the same inarticulate thought which no
one was brave enough to voice. Once, however, it came out flatly. It was
when Zora, crowding into the village courthouse to see if she could not
help Aunt Rachel's accused boy, found herself beside a gaunt, overworked
white woman. The woman was struggling with a crippled child and Zora,
turning, lifted him carefully for the weak mother, who thanked her half
timidly. "That mill's about killed him," she said.

At this juncture the manacled boy was led into court, and the woman
suddenly turned again to Zora.

"Durned if I don't think these white slaves and black slaves had ought
ter git together," she declared.

"I think so, too," Zora agreed.

Colonel Cresswell himself caught the conversation and it struck him with
a certain dismay. Suppose such a conjunction should come to pass? He
edged over to John Taylor and spoke to him; but Taylor, who had just
successfully stopped a suit for damages to the injured boy, merely
shrugged his shoulders.

"What's this nigger charged with?" demanded the Judge when the first
black boy was brought up before him.

"Breaking his labor contract."

"Any witnesses?"

"I have the contract here," announced the sheriff. "He refuses to work."

"A year, or one hundred dollars."

Colonel Cresswell paid his fine, and took him in charge.

"What's the charge here?" said the Judge, pointing to Aunt Rachel's boy.

"Attempt to kill a white man."

"Any witnesses?"

"None except the victim."

"And I," said Zora, coming forward.

Both the sheriff and Colonel Cresswell stared at her. Of course, she was
simply a black girl but she was an educated woman, who knew things about
the Cresswell plantations that it was unnecessary to air in court. The
newly elected Judge had not yet taken his seat, and Cresswell's word was
still law in the court. He whispered to the Judge.

"Case postponed," said the Court.

The sheriff scowled.

"Wait till Jim gets on the bench," he growled.

The white bystanders, however, did not seem enthusiastic and one man--he
was a Northern spinner--spoke out plainly.

"It's none o' my business, of course. I've been fired and I'm damned
glad of it. But see here: if you mutts think you're going to beat these
big blokes at their own game of cheating niggers you're daffy. You take
this from me: get together with the niggers and hold up this whole
capitalist gang. If you don't get the niggers first, they'll use 'em as
a club to throw you down. You hear me," and he departed for the train.

Colton was suspicious. The sentiment of joining with the Negroes did not
seem to arouse the bitter resentment he expected. There even came
whispers to his ears that he had sold out to the landlords, and there
was enough truth in the report to scare him. Thus to both parties came
the uncomfortable spectre of the black men, and both sides went to work
to lay the ghost.

Particularly was Colonel Cresswell stirred to action. He realized that
in Bles and Zora he was dealing with a younger class of educated black
folk, who were learning to fight with new weapons. They were, he was
sure, as dissolute and weak as their parents, but they were shrewder and
more aspiring. They must be crushed, and crushed quickly. To this end he
had recourse to two sources of help--Johnson and the whites in town.

Johnson was what Colonel Cresswell repeatedly called "a faithful
nigger." He was one of those constitutionally timid creatures into whom
the servility of his fathers had sunk so deep that it had become
second-nature. To him a white man was an archangel, while the
Cresswells, his father's masters, stood for God. He served them with
dog-like faith, asking no reward, and for what he gave in reverence to
them, he took back in contempt for his fellows--"niggers!" He applied
the epithet with more contempt than the Colonel himself could express.
To the Negroes he was a "white folk's nigger," to be despised and
feared.

To him Colonel Cresswell gave a few pregnant directions. Then he rode to
town, and told Taylor again of his fears of a labor movement which would
include whites and blacks. Taylor could not see any great danger.

"Of course," he conceded, "they'll eventually get together; their
interests are identical. I'll admit it's our game to delay this as long
possible."

"It must be delayed forever, sir."

"Can't be," was the terse response. "But even if they do ally
themselves, our way is easy: separate the leaders, the talented, the
pushers, of both races from their masses, and through them rule the rest
by money."

But Colonel Cresswell shook his head. "It's precisely these leaders of
the Negroes that we mush crush," he insisted. Taylor looked puzzled.

"I thought it was the lazy, shiftless, and criminal Negroes, you
feared?"

"Hang it, no! We can deal with them; we've got whips, chain-gangs,
and--mobs, if need be--no, it's the Negro who wants to climb up that
we've got to beat to his knees."

Taylor could not follow this reasoning. He believed in an aristocracy of
talent alone, and secretly despised Colonel Cresswell's pretensions of
birth. If a man had ability and push Taylor was willing and anxious to
open the way for him, even though he were black. The caste way of
thinking in the South, both as applied to poor whites and to Negroes,
he simply could not understand. The weak and the ignorant of all races
he despised and had no patience with them. "But others--a man's a man,
isn't he?" he persisted. But Colonel Cresswell replied:

"No, never, if he's black, and not always when he's white," and he
stalked away.

Zora sensed fully the situation. She did not anticipate any immediate
understanding with the laboring whites, but she knew that eventually it
would be inevitable. Meantime the Negro must strengthen himself and
bring to the alliance as much independent economic strength as possible.
For the development of her plans she needed Bles Alwyn's constant
cooperation. He was business manager of the school and was doing well,
but she wanted to point out to him the larger field. So long as she was
uncertain of his attitude toward her, it was difficult to act; but now,
since the flash of the imminent tragedy at Cresswell Oaks had cleared
the air, with all its hurt a frank understanding had been made possible.
The very next day Zora chose to show Bles over her new home and grounds,
and to speak frankly to him. They looked at the land, examined the
proposed farm sites, and viewed the living-room and dormitory in the
house.

"You haven't seen my den," said Zora.

"No."

"Miss Smith is in there now; she often hides there. Come."

He went into the large central house and into the living-room, then out
on the porch, beyond which lay the kitchen. But to the left, and at the
end of the porch, was a small building. It was ceiled in dark yellow
pine, with figured denim on the walls. A straight desk of rough hewn
wood stood in the corner by the white-curtained window, and a couch and
two large easy-chairs faced a tall narrow fireplace of uneven stone. A
thick green rag-carpet covered the floor; a few pictures were on the
walls--a Madonna, a scene of mad careering horses, and some sad baby
faces. The room was a unity; things fitted together as if they belonged
together. It was restful and beautiful, from the cheerful pine blaze
before which Miss Smith was sitting, to the square-paned window that let
in the crimson rays of gathering night. All round the room, stopping
only at the fireplace, ran low shelves of the same yellow pine, filled
with books and magazines. He scanned curiously Plato's Republic, Gorky's
"Comrades," a Cyclopaedia of Agriculture, Balzac's novels, Spencer's
"First Principles," Tennyson's Poems.

"This is my university," Zora explained, smiling at his interested
survey. They went out again and wandered down near the old lagoon.

"Now, Bles," she began, "since we understand each other, can we not work
together as good friends?" She spoke simply and frankly, without
apparent effort, and talked on at length of her work and vision.

Somehow he could not understand. His mental attitude toward Zora had
always been one of guidance, guardianship, and instruction. He had been
judging and weighing her from on high, looking down upon her with
thoughts of uplift and development. Always he had been holding her dark
little hands to lead her out of the swamp of life, and always, when in
senseless anger he had half forgotten and deserted her, this vision of
elder brotherhood had still remained. Now this attitude was being
revolutionized. She was proposing to him a plan of wide scope--a bold
regeneration of the land. It was a plan carefully studied out, long
thought of and read about. He was asked to be co-worker--nay, in a sense
to be a follower, for he was ignorant of much.

He hesitated. Then all at once a sense of his utter unworthiness
overwhelmed him. Who was he to stand and judge this unselfish woman? Who
was he to falter when she called? A sense of his smallness and
narrowness, of his priggish blindness, rose like a mockery in his soul.
One thing alone held him back: he was not unwilling to be simply human,
a learner and a follower; but would he as such ever command the love and
respect of this new and inexplicable woman? Would not comradeship on the
basis of the new friendship which she insisted on, be the death of love
and thoughts of love?

Thus he hesitated, knowing that his duty lay clear. In her direst need
he had deserted her. He had left her to go to destruction and expected
that she would. By a superhuman miracle she had risen and seated herself
above him. She was working; here was work to be done. He was asked to
help; he would help. If it killed his old and new-born dream of love,
well and good; it was his punishment.

Yet the sacrifice, the readjustment was hard; he grew to it gradually,
inwardly revolting, feeling always a great longing to take this woman
and make her nestle in his arms as she used to; catching himself again
and again on the point of speaking to her and urging, yet ever again
holding himself back and bowing in silent respect to the dignity of her
life. Only now and then, when their eyes met suddenly or unthinkingly, a
great kindling flash of flame seemed struggling behind showers of tears,
until in a moment she smiled or spoke, and then the dropping veil left
only the frank open glance, unwavering, soft, kind, but nothing more.
Then Alwyn would go wearily away, vexed or disappointed, or merely sad,
and both would turn to their work again.




_Thirty-six_

THE LAND


Colonel Cresswell started all the more grimly to overthrow the new work
at the school because somewhere down beneath his heart a pity and a
wonder were stirring; pity at the perfectly useless struggle to raise
the unraisable, a wonder at certain signs of rising. But it was
impossible--and unthinkable, even if possible. So he squared his jaw and
cheated Zora deliberately in the matter of the cut timber. He placed
every obstacle in the way of getting tenants for the school land. Here
Johnson, the "faithful nigger," was of incalculable assistance. He was
among the first to hear the call for prospective tenants.

The meeting was in the big room of Zora's house, and Aunt Rachel came
early with her cheery voice and smile which faded so quickly to lines of
sorrow and despair, and then twinkled back again. After her hobbled old
Sykes. Fully a half-hour later Rob hurried in.

"Johnson," he informed the others, "has sneaked over to Cresswell's to
tell of this meeting. We ought to beat that nigger up." But Zora asked
him about the new baby, and he was soon deep in child-lore. Higgins and
Sanders came together--dirty, apologetic, and furtive. Then came
Johnson.

"How do, Miss Zora--Mr. Alwyn, I sure is glad to see you, sir. Well, if
there ain't Aunt Rachel! looking as young as ever. And Higgins, you
scamp--Ah, Mr. Sanders--well, gentlemen and ladies, this sure is gwine
to be a good cotton season. I remember--" And he ran on endlessly, now
to this one, now to that, now to all, his little eyes all the while
dancing insinuatingly here and there. About nine o'clock a buggy drove
up and Carter and Simpson came in--Carter, a silent, strong-faced, brown
laborer, who listened and looked, and Simpson, a worried nervous man,
who sat still with difficulty and commenced many sentences but did not
finish them. Alwyn looked at his watch and at Zora, but she gave no sign
until they heard a rollicking song outside and Tylor burst into the
room. He was nearly seven feet high and broad-shouldered, yellow, with
curling hair and laughing brown eyes. He was chewing an enormous quid of
tobacco, the juice of which he distributed generously, and had had just
liquor enough to make him jolly. His entrance was a breeze and a roar.

Alwyn then undertook to explain the land scheme.

"It is the best land in the county--"

"When it's cl'ared," interrupted Johnson, and Simpson looked alarmed.

"It is partially cleared," continued Alwyn, "and our plan is to sell off
small twenty-acre farms--"

"You can't do nothing on twenty acres--" began Johnson, but Tylor laid
his huge hand right over his mouth and said briefly:

"Shut up!"

Alwyn started again: "We shall sell a few twenty-acre farms but keep one
central plantation of one hundred acres for the school. Here Miss Zora
will carry on her work and the school will run a model farm with your
help. We want to centre here agencies to make life better. We want all
sorts of industries; we want a little hospital with a resident physician
and two or three nurses; we want a cooperative store for buying
supplies; we want a cotton-gin and saw-mill, and in the future other
things. This land here, as I have said, is the richest around. We want
to keep this hundred acres for the public good, and not sell it. We are
going to deed it to a board of trustees, and those trustees are to be
chosen from the ones who buy the small farms."

"Who's going to get what's made on this land?" asked Sanders.

"All of us. It is going first to pay for the land, then to support the
Home and the School, and then to furnish capital for industries."

Johnson snickered. "You mean youse gwine to git yo' livin' off it?"

"Yes," answered Alwyn; "but I'm going to work for it."

"Who's gwine--" began Simpson, but stopped helplessly.

"Who's going to tend this land?" asked the practical Carter.

"All of us. Each man is going to promise us so many days' work a year,
and we're going to ask others to help--the women and girls and school
children--they will all help."

"Can you put trust in that sort of help?"

"We can when once the community learns that it pays."

"Does you own the land?" asked Johnson suddenly.

"No; we're buying it, and it's part paid for already."

The discussion became general. Zora moved about among the men whispering
and explaining; while Johnson moved, too, objecting and hinting. At last
he arose.

"Brethren," he began, "the plan's good enough for talkin' but you can't
work it; who ever heer'd tell of such a thing? First place, the land
ain't yours; second place, you can't get it worked; third place, white
folks won't 'low it. Who ever heer'd of such working land on shares?"

"You do it for white folks each day, why not for yourselves," Alwyn
pointed out.

"'Cause we ain't white, and we can't do nothin' like that."

Tylor was asleep and snoring and the others looked doubtfully at each
other. It was a proposal a little too daring for them, a bit too far
beyond their experience. One consideration alone kept them from
shrinking away and that was Zora's influence. Not a man was there whom
she had not helped and encouraged nor who had not perfect faith in her;
in her impetuous hope, her deep enthusiasm, and her strong will. Even
her defects--the hard-held temper, the deeply rooted dislikes--caught
their imagination.

Finally, after several other meetings five men took courage--three of
the best and two of the weakest. During the Spring long negotiations
were entered into by Miss Smith to "buy" the five men. Colonel Cresswell
and Mr. Tolliver had them all charged with large sums of indebtedness
and these sums had to be assumed by the school. As Colonel Cresswell
counted over two thousand dollars of school notes and deposited them
beside the mortgage he smiled grimly for he saw the end. Yet, even then
his hand trembled and that curious doubt came creeping back. He put it
aside angrily and glanced up.

"Nigger wants to talk with you," announced his clerk.

The Colonel sauntered out and found Bles Alwyn waiting.

"Colonel Cresswell," he said, "I have charge of the buying for the
school and our tenants this year and I naturally want to do the best
possible. I thought I'd come over and see about getting my supplies at
your store."

"That's all right; you can get anything you want," said Colonel
Cresswell cheerily, for this to his mind was evidence of sense on the
part of the Negroes. Bles showed his list of needed supplies--seeds,
meat, corn-meal, coffee, sugar, etc. The Colonel glanced over it
carelessly, then moved away.

"All right. Come and get what you want--any time," he called back.

"But about the prices," said Alwyn, following him.

"Oh, they'll be all right."

"Of course. But what I want is an estimate of your lowest cash prices."

"Cash?"

"Yes, sir."

Cresswell thought a while; such a business-like proposition from Negroes
surprised him.

"Well, I'll let you know," he said.

It was nearly a week later before Alwyn approached him again.

"Now, see here," said Colonel Cresswell, "there's practically no
difference between cash and time prices. We buy our stock on time and
you can just as well take advantage of this as not. I have figured out
about what these things will cost. The best thing for you to do is to
make a deposit here and get things when you want them. If you make a
good deposit I'll throw off ten per cent, which is all of my profit."

"Thank you," said Alwyn, but he looked over the account and found the
whole bill at least twice as large as he expected. Without further
parley, he made some excuse and started to town while Mr. Cresswell went
to the telephone.

In town Alwyn went to all the chief merchants one after another and
received to his great surprise practically the same estimate. He could
not understand it. He had estimated the current market prices according
to the Montgomery paper, yet the prices in Toomsville were fifty to a
hundred and fifty per cent higher. The merchant to whom he went last,
laughed.

"Don't you know we're not going to interfere with Colonel Cresswell's
tenants?" He stated the dealers' attitude, and Alwyn saw light. He went
home and told Zora, and she listened without surprise.

"Now to business," she said briskly. "Miss Smith," turning to the
teacher, "as I told you, they're combined against us in town and we must
buy in Montgomery. I was sure it was coming, but I wanted to give
Colonel Cresswell every chance. Bles starts for Montgomery--"

Alwyn looked up. "Does he?" he asked, smiling.

"Yes," said Zora, smiling in turn. "We must lose no further time."

"But there's no train from Toomsville tonight."

"But there's one from Barton in the morning and Barton is only twenty
miles away."

"It is a long walk." Alwyn thought a while, silently. Then he rose. "I'm
going," he said. "Good-bye."

In less than a week the storehouse was full, and tenants were at work.
The twenty acres of cleared swamp land, attended to by the voluntary
labor of all the tenants, was soon bearing a magnificent crop. Colonel
Cresswell inspected all the crops daily with a proprietary air that
would have been natural had these folk been simply tenants, and as such
he persisted in regarding them.

The cotton now growing was perhaps not so uniformly fine as the first
acre of Silver Fleece, but it was of unusual height and thickness.

"At least a bale to the acre," Alwyn estimated, and the Colonel mentally
determined to take two-thirds of the crop. After that he decided that he
would evict Zora immediately; since sufficient land was cleared already
for his purposes and moreover, he had seen with consternation a herd of
cattle grazing in one field on some early green stuff, and heard a drove
of hogs in the swamp. Such an example before the tenants of the Black
Belt would be fatal. He must wait a few weeks for them to pick the
cotton--then, the end. He was fighting the battle of his color and
caste.

The children sang merrily in the brown-white field. The wide baskets,
poised aloft, foamed on the erect and swaying bodies of the dark
carriers. The crop throughout the land was short that year, for prices
had ruled low last season in accordance with the policy of the Combine.
This year they started high again. Would they fall? Many thought so and
hastened to sell.

Zora and Alwyn gathered their tenants' crops, ginned them at the
Cresswells' gin, and carried their cotton to town, where it was
deposited in the warehouse of the Farmers' League.

"Now," said Alwyn, "we would best sell while prices are high."

Zora laughed at him frankly.

"We can't," she said. "Don't you know that Colonel Cresswell will attach
our cotton for rent as soon as it touches the warehouse?"

"But it's ours."

"Nothing is ours. No black man ordinarily can sell his crop without a
white creditor's consent."

Alwyn fumed.

"The best way," he declared, "is to go to Montgomery and get a
first-class lawyer and just fight the thing through. The land is legally
ours, and he has no right to our cotton."

"Yes, but you must remember that no man like Colonel Cresswell regards a
business bargain with a colored man as binding. No white man under
ordinary circumstances will help enforce such a bargain against
prevailing public opinion."

"But if we cannot trust to the justice of the case, and if you knew we
couldn't, why did you try?"

"Because I had to try; and moreover the circumstances are not altogether
ordinary: the men in power in Toomsville now are not the landlords of
this county; they are poor whites. The Judge and sheriff were both
elected by mill-hands who hate Cresswell and Taylor. Then there's a new
young lawyer who wants Harry Cresswell's seat in Congress; he don't know
much law, I'm afraid; but what he don't know of this case I think I do.
I'll get his advice and then--I mean to conduct the case myself," Zora
calmly concluded.

"Without a lawyer!" Bles Alwyn stared his amazement.

"Without a lawyer in court."

"Zora! That would be foolish!"

"Is it? Let's think. For over a year now I've been studying the law of
the case," and she pointed to her law books; "I know the law and most of
the decisions. Moreover, as a black woman fighting a hopeless battle
with landlords, I'll gain the one thing lacking."

"What's that?"

"The sympathy of the court and the bystanders."

"Pshaw! From these Southerners?"

"Yes, from them. They are very human, these men, especially the
laborers. Their prejudices are cruel enough, but there are joints in
their armor. They are used to seeing us either scared or blindly angry,
and they understand how to handle us then, but at other times it is hard
for them to do anything but meet us in a human way."

"But, Zora, think of the contact of the court, the humiliation, the
coarse talk--"

Zora put up her hand and lightly touched his arm. Looking at him, she
said:

"Mud doesn't hurt much. This is my duty. Let me do it."

His eyes fell before the shadow of a deeper rebuke. He arose heavily.

"Very well," he acquiesced as he passed slowly out.

The young lawyer started to refuse to touch the case until he saw--or
did Zora adroitly make him see?--a chance for eventual political
capital. They went over the matter carefully, and the lawyer acquired a
respect for the young woman's knowledge.

"First," he said, "get an injunction on the cotton--then go to court."
And to insure the matter he slipped over and saw the Judge.

Colonel Cresswell next day stalked angrily into his lawyers' office.

"See here," he thundered, handing the lawyer the notice of the
injunction.

"See the Judge," began the lawyer, and then remembered, as he was often
forced to do these days, who was Judge.

He inquired carefully into the case and examined the papers. Then he
said:

"Colonel Cresswell, who drew this contract of sale?"

"The black girl did."

"Impossible!"

"She certainly did--wrote it in my presence."

"Well, it's mighty well done."

"You mean it will stand in law?"

"It certainly will. There's but one way to break it, and that's to
allege misunderstanding on your part."

Cresswell winced. It was not pleasant to go into open court and
acknowledge himself over-reached by a Negro; but several thousand
dollars in cotton and land were at stake.

"Go ahead," he concurred.

"You can depend on Taylor, of course?" added the lawyer.

"Of course," answered Cresswell. "But why prolong the thing?"

"You see, she's got your cotton tied by injunction."

"I don't see how she did it."

"Easy enough: this Judge is the poor white you opposed in the last
primary."

Within a week the case was called, and they filed into the courtroom.
Cresswell's lawyer saw only this black woman--no other lawyer or sign of
one appeared to represent her. The place soon filled with a lazy,
tobacco-chewing throng of white men. A few blacks whispered in one
corner. The dirty stove was glowing with pine-wood and the Judge sat at
a desk.

"Where's your lawyer?" he asked sharply of Zora.

"I have none," returned Zora, rising.

There came a silence in the court. Her voice was low, and the men leaned
forward to listen. The Judge felt impelled to be over-gruff.

"Get a lawyer," he ordered.

"Your honor, my case is simple, and with your honor's permission I wish
to conduct it myself. I cannot afford a lawyer, and I do not think I
need one."

Cresswell's lawyer smiled and leaned back. It was going to be easier
than he supposed. Evidently the woman believed she had no case, and was
weakening.

The trial proceeded, and Zora stated her contention. She told how long
her mother and grandmother had served the Cresswells and showed her
receipt for rent paid.

"A friend sent me some money. I went to Mr. Cresswell and asked him to
sell me two hundred acres of land. He consented to do so and signed this
contract in the presence of his son-in-law."

Just then John Taylor came into the court, and Cresswell beckoned to
him.

"I want you to help me out, John."

"All right," whispered Taylor. "What can I do?"

"Swear that Cresswell didn't mean to sign this," said the lawyer
quickly, as he arose to address the court.

Taylor looked at the paper blankly and then at Cresswell and some
inkling of the irreconcilable difference in the two natures leapt in
both their hearts. Cresswell might gamble and drink and lie "like a
gentleman," but he would never willingly cheat or take advantage of a
white man's financial necessities. Taylor, on the other hand, had a
horror of a lie, never drank nor played games of chance, but his whole
life was speculation and in the business game he was utterly ruthless
and respected no one. Such men could never thoroughly understand each
other. To Cresswell a man who had cheated the whole South out of
millions by a series of misrepresentations ought to regard this little
falsehood as nothing.

Meantime Colonel Cresswell's lawyer was on his feet, and he adopted his
most irritating and contemptuous manner.

"This nigger wench wrote out some illegible stuff and Colonel Cresswell
signed it to get rid of her. We are not going to question the legality
of the form--that's neither here nor there. The point is, Mr. Cresswell
never intended--never dreamed of selling this wench land right in front
of his door. He meant to rent her the land and sign a receipt for rent
paid in advance. I will not worry your honor by a long argument to
prove this, but just call one of the witnesses well known to you--Mr.
John Taylor of the Toomsville mills."

Taylor looked toward the door and then slowly took the stand.

"Mr. Taylor," said the lawyer carelessly, "were you present at this
transaction?"

"Yes."

"Did you see Colonel Cresswell sign this paper?"

"Yes."

"Well, did he intend so far as you know to sign such a paper?"

"I do not know his intentions."

"Did he say he meant to sign such a contract?"

Taylor hesitated.

"Yes," he finally answered. Colonel Cresswell looked up in amazement and
the lawyer dropped his glasses.

"I--I don't think you perhaps understood me, Mr. Taylor," he gasped.
"I--er--meant to ask if Colonel Cresswell, in signing this paper, meant
to sign a contract to sell this wench two hundred acres of land?"

"He said he did," reiterated Taylor. "Although I ought to add that he
did not think the girl would ever be able to pay. If he had thought she
would pay, I don't think he would have signed the paper."

Colonel Cresswell went red, than pale, and leaning forward before the
whole court, he hurled:

"You damned scoundrel!"

The Judge rapped for order and fidgeted in his seat. There was some
confusion and snickering in the courtroom. Finally the Judge plucked up
courage:

"The defendant is ordered to deliver this cotton to Zora Cresswell," he
directed.

The raging of Colonel Cresswell's anger now turned against John Taylor
as well as the Negroes. Wind of the estrangement flew over town quickly.
The poor whites saw a chance to win Taylor's influence and the sheriff
approached him cautiously. Taylor paid him slight courtesy. He was
irritated with this devilish Negro problem; he was making money; his
wife and babies were enjoying life, and here was this fool trial to
upset matters. But the sheriff talked.

"The thing I'm afraid of," he said, "is that Cresswell and his gang will
swing in the niggers on us."

"How do you mean?"

"Let 'em vote."

"But they'd have to read and write."

"Sure!"

"Well, then," said Taylor, "it might be a good thing."

Colton eyed him suspiciously.

"You'd let a nigger vote?"

"Why, yes, if he had sense enough."

"There ain't no nigger got sense."

"Oh, pshaw!" Taylor ejaculated, walking away.

The sheriff was angry and mistrustful. He believed he had discovered a
deep-laid scheme of the aristocrats to cultivate friendliness between
whites and blacks, and then use black voters to crush the whites. Such a
course was, in Colton's mind, dangerous, monstrous, and unnatural; it
must be stopped at all hazards. He began to whisper among his friends.
One or two meetings were held, and the flame of racial prejudice was
studiously fanned.

The atmosphere of the town and country quickly began to change. Whatever
little beginnings of friendship and understanding had arisen now quickly
disappeared. The town of a Saturday no longer belonged to a happy,
careless crowd of black peasants, but the black folk found themselves
elbowed to the gutter, while ugly quarrels flashed here and there with a
quick arrest of the Negroes.

Colonel Cresswell made a sudden resolve. He sent for the sheriff and
received him at the Oaks, in his most respectable style, filling him
with good food, and warming him with good liquor.

"Colton," he asked, "are you sending any of your white children to the
nigger school yet?"

"What!" yelled Colton.

The Colonel laughed, frankly telling Colton John Taylor's philosophy on
the race problem,--his willingness to let Negroes vote; his threat to
let blacks and whites work together; his contempt for the officials
elected by the people.

"Candidly, Colton," he concluded, "I believe in aristocracy. I can't
think it right or wise to replace the old aristocracy by new and untried
blood." And in a sudden outburst--"But, by God, sir! I'm a white man,
and I place the lowest white man ever created above the highest darkey
ever thought of. This Yankee, Taylor, is a nigger-lover. He's secretly
encouraging and helping them. You saw what he did to me, and I'm warning
you in time."

Colton's glass dropped.

"I thought it was you that was corralling the niggers against us," he
exclaimed.

The Colonel reddened. "I don't count all white men my equals, I admit,"
he returned with dignity, "but I know the difference between a white man
and a nigger."

Colton stretched out his massive hand. "Put it there, sir," said he; "I
misjudged you, Colonel Cresswell. I'm a Southerner, and I honor the old
aristocracy you represent. I'm going to join with you to crush this
Yankee and put the niggers in their places. They are getting impudent
around here; they need a lesson and, by gad! they'll get one they'll
remember."

"Now, see here, Colton,--nothing rash," the Colonel charged him,
warningly. "Don't stir up needless trouble; but--well, things must
change."

Colton rose and shook his head.

"The niggers need a lesson," he muttered as he unsteadily bade his host
good-bye. Cresswell watched him uncomfortably as he rode away, and
again a feeling of doubt stirred within him. What new force was he
loosening against his black folk--his own black folk, who had lived
about him and his fathers nigh three hundred years? He saw the huge form
of the sheriff loom like an evil spirit a moment on the rise of the road
and sink into the night. He turned slowly to his cheerless house
shuddering as he entered the uninviting portals.




_Thirty-seven_

THE MOB


When Emma, Bertie's child, came home after a two years' course of study,
she had passed from girlhood to young womanhood. She was white, and
sandy-haired. She was not beautiful, and she appeared to be fragile; but
she also looked sweet and good, with that peculiar innocence which peers
out upon the world with calm, round eyes and sees no evil, but does
methodically its simple, everyday work. Zora mothered her, Miss Smith
found her plenty to do, and Bles thought her a good girl. But Mrs.
Cresswell found her perfect, and began to scheme to marry her off. For
Mary Cresswell, with the restlessness and unhappiness of an unemployed
woman, was trying to atone for her former blunders.

Her humiliation after the episode at Cresswell Oaks had been complete.
It seemed to her that the original cause of her whole life punishment
lay in her persistent misunderstanding of the black people and their
problem. Zora appeared to her in a new and glorified light--a vigorous,
self-sacrificing woman. She knew that Zora had refused to marry Bles,
and this again seemed fitting. Zora was not meant for marrying; she was
a born leader, wedded to a great cause; she had long outgrown the boy
and girl affection. She was the sort of woman she herself might have
been if she had not married.

Alwyn, on the other hand, needed a wife; he was a great, virile boy,
requiring a simple, affectionate mate. No sooner did she see Emma than
she was sure that this was the ideal wife. She compared herself with
Helen Cresswell. Helen was a contented wife and mother because she was
fitted for the position, and happy in it; while she who had aimed so
high had fallen piteously. From such a fate she would save Zora and
Bles.

Emma's course in nurse-training had been simple and short and there was
no resident physician; but Emma, in her unemotional way, was a born
nurse and did much good among the sick in the neighborhood. Zora had a
small log hospital erected with four white beds, a private room, and an
office which was also Emma's bedroom. The new white physician in town,
just fresh from school in Atlanta, became interested and helped with
advice and suggestions.

Meantime John Taylor's troubles began to increase. Under the old
political regime it had been an easy matter to avoid serious
damage-suits for the accidents in the mill. Much child labor and the
lack of protective devices made accidents painfully frequent. Taylor
insisted that the chief cause was carelessness, while the mill hands
alleged criminal neglect on his part. When the new labor officials took
charge of the court and the break occurred between Colonel Cresswell and
his son-in-law, Taylor found that several damage-suits were likely to
cost him a considerable sum.

He determined not to let the bad feelings go too far, and when a
particularly distressing accident to a little girl took place, he showed
more than his usual interest and offered to care for her. The new young
physician recommended Zora's infirmary as the only near place that
offered a chance for the child's recovery.

"Take her out," Taylor promptly directed.

Zora was troubled when the child came. She knew the suspicious temper of
the town whites. The very next day Taylor sent out a second case, a
child who had been hurt some time before and was not recovering as she
should. Under the care of the little hospital and the gentle nurse the
children improved rapidly, and in two weeks were outdoors, playing with
the little black children and even creeping into classrooms and
listening. The grateful mothers came out twice a week at least; at first
with suspicious aloofness, but gradually melting under Zora's tact until
they sat and talked with her and told their troubles and struggles. Zora
realized how human they were, and how like their problems were to hers.
They and their children grew to love this busy, thoughtful woman, and
Zora's fears were quieted.

The catastrophe came suddenly. The sheriff rode by, scowling and hunting
for some poor black runaway, when he saw white children in the Negro
school and white women, whom he knew were mill-hands, looking on. He was
black with anger; turning he galloped back to town. A few hours later
the young physician arrived hastily in a cab to take the women and
children to town. He said something in a low tone to Zora and drove
away, frowning.

Zora came quickly to the school and asked for Alwyn. He was in the barn
and she hurried there.

"Bles," she said quietly, "it is reported that a Toomsville mob will
burn the school tonight."

Bles stood motionless.

"I've been fearing it. The sheriff has been stirring up the worst
elements in the town lately and the mills pay off tonight."

"Well," she said quietly, "we must prepare."

He looked at her, his face aglow with admiration.

"You wonder-woman!" he exclaimed softly.

A moment they regarded each other. She saw the love in his eyes, and he
saw rising in hers something that made his heart bound. But she turned
quickly away.

"You must hurry, Bles; lives are at stake." And in another moment he
thundered out of the barn on the black mare.

Along the pike he flew and up the plantation roads. Across broad fields
and back again, over to the Barton pike and along the swamp. At every
cabin he whispered a word, and left behind him grey faces and whispering
children.

His horse was reeking with sweat as he staggered again into the
school-yard; but already the people were gathering, with frightened,
anxious, desperate faces. Women with bundles and children, men with
guns, tottering old folks, wide-eyed boys and girls. Up from the swamp
land came the children crying and moaning. The sun was setting. The
women and children hurried into the school building, closing the doors
and windows. A moment Alwyn stood without and looked back. The world was
peaceful. He could hear the whistle of birds and the sobbing of the
breeze in the shadowing oaks. The sky was flashing to dull and purplish
blue, and over all lay the twilight hush as though God did not care.

He threw back his head and clenched his hands. His soul groaned within
him. "Heavenly Father, was man ever before set to such a task?" Fight?
God! if he could but fight! If he could but let go the elemental
passions that were leaping and gathering and burning in the eyes of
yonder caged and desperate black men. But his hands were tied--manacled.
One desperate struggle, a whirl of blood, and the whole world would rise
to crush him and his people. The white operatore in yonder town had but
to flash the news, "Negroes killing whites," to bring all the country,
all the State, all the nation, to red vengeance. It mattered not what
the provocation, what the desperate cause.

The door suddenly opened behind him and he wheeled around.

"Zora!" he whispered.

"Bles," she answered softly, and they went silently in to their people.

All at once, from floor to roof, the whole school-house was lighted up,
save a dark window here and there. Then some one slipped out into the
darkness and soon watch-fire after watch-fire flickered and flamed in
the night, and then burned vividly, sending up sparks and black smoke.
Thus ringed with flaming silence, the school lay at the edge of the
great, black swamp and waited. Owls hooted in the forest. Afar the
shriek of the Montgomery train was heard across the night, mingling with
the wail of a wakeful babe; and then redoubled silence. The men became
restless, and Johnson began to edge away toward the lower hall. Alwyn
was watching him when a faint noise came to him on the eastern breeze--a
low, rumbling murmur. It died away, and rose again; then a distant
gun-shot woke the echoes.

"They're coming!" he cried. Standing back in the shadow of a front
window, he waited. Slowly, intermittently, the murmuring swelled, till
it grew distinguishable as yelling, cursing, and singing, intermingled
with the crash of pistol-shots. Far away a flame, as of a burning cabin,
arose, and a wilder, louder yell greeted it. Now the tramp of footsteps
could be heard, and clearer and thicker the grating and booming of
voices, until suddenly, far up the pike, a black moving mass, with
glitter and shout, swept into view. They came headlong, guided by
pine-torches, which threw their white and haggard faces into wild
distortion. Then as bonfire after bonfire met their gaze, they moved
slowly and more slowly, and at last sent a volley of bullets at the
fires. One bullet flew high and sang through a lighted window. Without a
word, Uncle Isaac sank upon the floor and lay still. Silence and renewed
murmuring ensued, and the sound of high voices in dispute. Then the mass
divided into two wings and slowly encircled the fence of fire; starting
noisily and confidently, and then going more slowly, quietly, warily, as
the silence of the flame began to tell on their heated nerves.

Strained whispers arose.

"Careful there!"

"Go on, damn ye!"

"There's some one by yon fire."

"No, there ain't."

"See the bushes move."

_Bang! bang! bang!_

"Who's that?"

"It's me."

"Let's rush through and fire the house."

"And leave a pa'cel of niggers behind to shoot your lights out? Not me."

"What the hell are you going to do?"

"I don't know yet."

"I wish I could see a nigger."

_"Hark!"_

Stealthy steps were approaching, a glint of steel flashed behind the
fire lights. Each band mistook the other for the armed Negroes, and the
leaders yelled in vain; human power can not stay the dashing torrent of
fear-inspired human panic. Whirling, the mob fled till it struck the
road in two confused, surging masses. Then in quick frenzy, shots flew;
three men threw up their hands and tumbled limply in the dust, while the
main body rushed pellmell toward town.

At early dawn, when the men relaxed from the strain of the night's
vigil, Alwyn briefly counselled them: "Hide your guns."

"Why?" blustered Rob. "Haven't I a right to have a gun?"

"Yes, you have, Rob; but don't be foolish--hide it. We've not heard the
last of this."

But Rob tossed his head belligerently.

In town, rumor spread like wildfire. A body of peaceful whites passing
through the black settlement had been fired on from ambush, and six
killed--no, three killed--no, one killed and two severely wounded.

"The thing mustn't stop here," shouted Sheriff Colton; "these niggers
must have a lesson." And before nine next morning fully half the grown
members of the same mob, now sworn in as deputies, rode with him to
search the settlement. They tramped insolently through the school
grounds, but there was no shred of evidence until they came to Rob's
cabin and found his gun. They tied his hands behind him and marched him
toward town.

But before the mob arrived the night before, Johnson feeling that his
safety lay in informing the white folks, had crawled with his gun into
the swamp. In the morning he peered out as the cavalcade approached, and
not knowing what had happened, he recognized Colton, the sheriff, and
signalled to him cautiously. In a moment a dozen men were on him, and he
appealed and explained in vain--the gun was damning evidence. The voices
of Rob's wife and children could be heard behind the two men as they
were hurried along at a dog trot.

The town poured out to greet them--"The murderers! the murderers! Kill
the niggers!" and they came on with a rush. The sheriff turned and
disappeared in the rear. There was a great cloud of dust, a cry and a
wild scramble, as the white and angry faces of men and boys gleamed a
moment and faded.

A hundred or more shots rang out; then slowly and silently, the mass of
women and men were sucked into the streets of the town, leaving but
black eddies on the corners to throw backward glances toward the bare,
towering pine where swung two red and awful things. The pale boy-face of
one, with soft brown eyes glared up sightless to the sun; the dead,
leathered bronze of the other was carved in piteous terror.




_Thirty-eight_

ATONEMENT


Three months had flown. It was Spring again, and Zora sat in the
transformed swamp--now a swamp in name only--beneath the great oak,
dreaming. And what she dreamed there in the golden day she dared not
formulate even to her own soul. She rose with a start, for there was
work to do. Aunt Rachel was ill, and Emma went daily to attend her;
today, as she came back, she brought news that Colonel Cresswell, who
had been unwell for several days, was worse. She must send Emma up to
help, and as she started toward the school she glanced toward the
Cresswell Oaks and saw the arm-chair of its master on the pillared
porch.

Colonel Cresswell sat in his chair on the porch, alone. As far as he
could see, there was no human soul. His eyes were blood-shot, his cheeks
sunken, and his breath came in painful gasps. A sort of terror shook
him until he heard the distant songs of black folk in the fields. He
sighed, and lying back, closed his eyes and the breath came easier. When
he opened them again a white figure was coming up the avenue of the
Oaks. He watched it greedily. It was Mary Cresswell, and she started
when she saw him.

"You are worse, father?" she asked.

"Worse and better," he replied, smiling cynically. Then suddenly he
announced: "I've made my will."

"Why--why--" she stammered.

"Why?" sharply. "Because I'm going to die."

She said nothing. He smiled and continued:

"I've got it all fixed. Harry was in a tight place--gambling as
usual--and I gave him a lump sum in lieu of all claims. Then I gave John
Taylor--you needn't look. I sent for him. He's a damned scoundrel; but
he won't lie, and I needed him. I willed his children all the rest
except two or three legacies. One was one hundred thousand dollars for
you--"

"Oh, father!" she cried. "I don't deserve it."

"I reckon two years with Harry was worth about that much," he returned
grimly. "Then there's another gift of two hundred thousand dollars and
this house and plantation. Whom do you think that's for?"

"Helen?"

"Helen!" he raised his hand in threatening anger. "I might rot here for
all she cares. No--no--but then--I'll not tell you--I--ah--" A spasm of
pain shot across his face, and he lay back white and still. Abruptly he
sat up again and peered down the oaks. "Hush!" he gasped. "Who's that?"

"I don't know--it's a girl--I--"

He gripped her till she winced.

"My God--it walks--like my wife--I tell you--she held her head so--who
is it?" He half rose.

"Oh, father, it's nobody but Emma--little Emma--Bertie's child--the
mulatto girl. She's a nurse now, and I asked to have her come and attend
you."

"Oh," he said, "oh--" He looked at the girl curiously. "Come here." He
peered into her white young face. "Do you know me?"

The girl shrank away from him.

"Yes, sir."

"What do you do?"

"I teach and nurse at the school."

"Good! Well, I'm going to give you some money--do you know why?"

A flash of self-consciousness passed over the girl's face; she looked at
him with her wide blue eyes.

"Yes, Grandfather," she faltered.

Mrs. Cresswell rose to her feet; but the old man slowly dropped the
girl's hand and lay back in his chair, with lips half smiling.
"Grandfather," he repeated softly. He closed his eyes a space and then
opened them. A tremor shivered in his limbs as he stared darkly at the
swamp.

"Hark!" he cried harshly. "Do you hear the bodies creaking on the limbs?
It's Rob and Johnson. I did it--I--"

Suddenly he rose and stood erect and his wild eyes stricken with death
stared full upon Emma. Slowly and thickly he spoke, working his
trembling hands.

"Nell--Nell! Is it you, little wife, come back to accuse me? Ah, Nell,
don't shrink! I know--I have sinned against the light and the blood of
your poor black people is red on these old hands. No, don't put your
clean white hands upon me, Nell, till I wash mine. I'll do it, Nell;
I'll atone. I'm a Cresswell yet, Nell, a Cresswell and a gen--" He
swayed. Vainly he struggled for the word. The shudder of death shook his
soul, and he passed.

A week after the funeral of Colonel Cresswell, John Taylor drove out to
the school and was closeted with Miss Smith. His sister, installed once
again for a few days in her old room at the school, understood that he
was conferring about Emma's legacy, and she was glad. She was more and
more convinced that the marriage of Emma and Bles was the best possible
solution of many difficulties. She had asked Emma once if she liked
Bles, and Emma had replied in her innocent way,

"Oh, so much."

As for Bles, he was often saying what a dear child Emma was. Neither
perhaps realized yet that this was love, but it needed, Mrs. Cresswell
was sure, only the lightning-flash, and they would know. And who could
furnish that illumination better than Zora, the calm, methodical Zora,
who knew them so well?

As for herself, once she had accomplished the marriage and paid the
mortgage on the school out of her legacy, she would go abroad and in
travel seek forgetfulness and healing. There had been no formal divorce,
and so far as she was concerned there never would be; but the separation
from her husband and America would be forever.

Her brother came out of the office, nodded casually, for they had little
intercourse these days, and rode away. She rushed in to Miss Smith and
found her sitting there--straight, upright, composed in all save that
the tears were streaming down her face and she was making no effort to
stop them.

"Why--Miss Smith!" she faltered.

Miss Smith pointed to a paper. Mrs. Cresswell picked it up curiously. It
was an official notification to the trustees of the Smith School of a
legacy of two hundred thousand dollars together with the Cresswell house
and plantation. Mrs. Gresswell sat down in open-mouthed astonishment.
Twice she tried to speak, but there were so many things to say that she
could not choose.

"Tell Zora," Miss Smith at last managed to say.

Zora was dreaming again. Somehow, the old dream-life, with its glorious
phantasies, had come silently back, richer and sweeter than ever. There
was no tangible reason why, and yet today she had shut herself in her
den. Searching down in the depths of her trunk, she drew forth that
filmy cloud of white--silk-bordered and half finished to a gown. Why
were her eyes wet today and her mind on the Silver Fleece? It was an
anniversary, and perhaps she still remembered that moment, that supreme
moment before the mob. She half slipped on, half wound about her, the
white cloud of cloth, standing with parted lips, looking into the long
mirror and gleaming in the fading day like midnight gowned in mists and
stars. Abruptly there came a peremptory knocking at the door.

"Zora! Zora!" sounded Mrs. Cresswell's voice. Forgetting her informal
attire, she opened the door, fearing some mishap. Mrs. Cresswell poured
out the news. Zora received it in such motionless silence that Mary
wondered at her want of feeling. At last, however, she said happily to
Zora:

"Well, the battle's over, isn't it?"

"No, it's just begun."

"Just begun?" echoed Mary in amazement.

"Think of the servile black folk, the half awakened restless whites, the
fat land waiting for the harvest, the masses panting to know--why, the
battle is scarcely even begun."

"Yes, I guess that's so," Mary began to comprehend. "We'll thank God it
has begun, though."

"Thank God!" Zora reverently repeated.

"Come, let's go back to poor, dear Miss Smith," suggested Mary.

"I can't come just now--but pretty soon."

"Why? Oh, I see; you're trying on something--how pretty and becoming!
Well, hurry."

As they stood together, the white woman deemed the moment opportune; she
slipped her arm about the black woman's waist and began:

"Zora, I've had something on my mind for a long time, and I shouldn't
wonder if you had thought of the same thing."

"What is it?"

"Bles and Emma."

"What of them?"

"Their liking for each other."

Zora bent a moment and caught up the folds of the Fleece.

"I hadn't noticed it," she said in a low voice.

"Well, you're busy, you see. They've been very much together--his taking
her to her charges, bringing her back, and all that. I know they love
each other; yet something holds them apart, afraid to show their love.
Do you know--I've wondered if--quite unconciously, it is you? You know
Bles used to imagine himself in love with you, just as he did afterward
with Miss Wynn."

"Miss--Wynn?"

"Yes, the Washington girl. But he got over that and you straightened him
out finally. Still, Emma probably thinks yours is the prior claim,
knowing, of course, nothing of facts. And Bles knows she thinks of him
and you, and I'm convinced if you say the word, they'd love and marry."

Zora walked silently with her to the door, where, looking out, she saw
Bles and Emma coming from Aunt Rachel's. He was helping her from the
carriage with smiling eyes, and her innocent blue eyes were fastened on
him.

Zora looked long and searchingly.

"Please run and tell them of the legacy," she begged. "I--I will
come--in a moment." And Mrs. Cresswell hurried out.

Zora turned back steadily to her room, and locked herself in. After all,
why shouldn't it be? Why had it not occurred to her before in her
blindness? If she had wanted him--and ah, God! was not all her life
simply the want of him?--why had she not bound him to her when he had
offered himself? Why had she not bound him to her? She knew as she
asked--because she had wanted all, not a part--everything, love, respect
and perfect faith--not one thing could she spare then--not one thing.
And now, oh, God! she had dreamed that it was all hers, since that night
of death and circling flame when they looked at each other soul to soul.
But he had not meant anything. It was pity she had seen there, not love;
and she rose and walked the room slowly, fast and faster.

With trembling hands she drew the Silver Fleece round her. Her head swam
again and the blood flashed in her eyes. She heard a calling in the
swamp, and the shadow of Elspeth seemed to hover over her, claiming her
for her own, dragging her down, down.... She rushed through the swamp.
The lagoon lay there before her presently, gleaming in the
darkness--cold and still, and in it swam an awful shape.

She held her burning head--was not everything plain? Was not everything
clear? This was Sacrifice! This was the Atonement for the unforgiven
sin. Emma's was the pure soul which she must offer up to God; for it was
God, a cold and mighty God, who had given it to Bles--her Bles. It was
well; God willed it. But could she live? Must she live? Did God ask
that, too?

All at once she stood straight; her whole body grew tense, alert. She
heard no sound behind her, but knew he was there, and braced herself.
She must be true. She must be just. She must pay the uttermost farthing.

"Bles," she called faintly, but did not turn her head.

"Zora!"

"Bles," she choked, but her voice came stronger, "I know--all. Emma is a
good girl. I helped bring her up myself and did all I could for her and
she--she is pure; marry her."

His voice came slow and firm:

"Emma? But I don't love Emma. I love--some one else."

Her heart bounded and again was still. It was that Washington girl then.
She answered dully, groping for words, for she was tired:

"Who is it?"

"The best woman in all the world, Zora."

"And is"--she struggled at the word madly--"is she pure?"

"She is more than pure."

"Then you must marry her, Bles."

"I am not worthy of her," he answered, sinking before her.

Then at last illumination dawned upon her blindness. She stood very
still and lifted up her eyes. The swamp was living, vibrant, tremulous.
There where the first long note of night lay shot with burning crimson,
burst in sudden radiance the wide beauty of the moon. There pulsed a
glory in the air. Her little hands groped and wandered over his
close-curled hair, and she sobbed, deep voiced:

"Will you--marry me, Bles?"


                              L'ENVOI

     Lend me thine ears, O God the Reader, whose Fathers aforetime sent
     mine down into the land of Egypt, into this House of Bondage. Lay
     not these words aside for a moment's phantasy, but lift up thine
     eyes upon the Horror in this land;--the maiming and mocking and
     murdering of my people, and the prisonment of their souls. Let my
     people go, O Infinite One, lest the world shudder at


                              The End




                         THE SUPPRESSION OF THE
                           AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE
                                 TO THE
                              UNITED STATES
                               OF AMERICA
                                1638-1870

                                Volume I
                        Harvard Historical Studies

                                  1896

                        Longmans, Green, and Co.
                                New York

                   *       *       *       *       *




Preface


This monograph was begun during my residence as Rogers Memorial Fellow
at Harvard University, and is based mainly upon a study of the sources,
i.e., national, State, and colonial statutes, Congressional documents,
reports of societies, personal narratives, etc. The collection of laws
available for this research was, I think, nearly complete; on the other
hand, facts and statistics bearing on the economic side of the study
have been difficult to find, and my conclusions are consequently liable
to modification from this source.

The question of the suppression of the slave-trade is so intimately
connected with the questions as to its rise, the system of American
slavery, and the whole colonial policy of the eighteenth century, that
it is difficult to isolate it, and at the same time to avoid
superficiality on the one hand, and unscientific narrowness of view on
the other. While I could not hope entirely to overcome such a
difficulty, I nevertheless trust that I have succeeded in rendering this
monograph a small contribution to the scientific study of slavery and
the American Negro.

I desire to express my obligation to Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, of
Harvard University, at whose suggestion I began this work and by whose
kind aid and encouragement I have brought it to a close; also I have to
thank the trustees of the John F. Slater Fund, whose appointment made it
possible to test the conclusions of this study by the general principles
laid down in German universities.

                                                 W.E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS.

WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY,
    March, 1896.

                   *       *       *       *       *




Contents


CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

  1. _Plan of the Monograph_                                         9
  2. _The Rise of the English Slave-Trade_                           9


CHAPTER II
THE PLANTING COLONIES

  3. _Character of these Colonies_                                  15
  4. _Restrictions in Georgia_                                      15
  5. _Restrictions in South Carolina_                               16
  6. _Restrictions in North Carolina_                               19
  7. _Restrictions in Virginia_                                     19
  8. _Restrictions in Maryland_                                     22
  9. _General Character of these Restrictions_                      23


CHAPTER III
THE FARMING COLONIES

  10. _Character of these Colonies_                                 24
  11. _The Dutch Slave-Trade_                                       24
  12. _Restrictions in New York_                                    25
  13. _Restrictions in Pennsylvania and Delaware_                   28
  14. _Restrictions in New Jersey_                                  32
  15. _General Character of these Restrictions_                     33


CHAPTER IV
THE TRADING COLONIES

  16. _Character of these Colonies_                                 34
  17. _New England and the Slave-Trade_                             34
  18. _Restrictions in New Hampshire_                               36
  19. _Restrictions in Massachusetts_                               37
  20. _Restrictions in Rhode Island_                                40
  21. _Restrictions in Connecticut_                                 43
  22. _General Character of these Restrictions_                     44


CHAPTER V
THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION, 1774-1787

  23. _The Situation in 1774_                                       45
  24. _The Condition of the Slave-Trade_                            46
  25. _The Slave-Trade and the "Association"_                       47
  26. _The Action of the Colonies_                                  48
  27. _The Action of the Continental Congress_                      49
  28. _Reception of the Slave-Trade Resolution_                     51
  29. _Results of the Resolution_                                   52
  30. _The Slave-Trade and Public Opinion after the War_            53
  31. _The Action of the Confederation_                             56


CHAPTER VI
THE FEDERAL CONVENTION, 1787

  32. _The First Proposition_                                       58
  33. _The General Debate_                                          59
  34. _The Special Committee and the "Bargain"_                     62
  35. _The Appeal to the Convention_                                64
  36. _Settlement by the Convention_                                66
  37. _Reception of the Clause by the Nation_                       67
  38. _Attitude of the State Conventions_                           70
  39. _Acceptance of the Policy_                                    72


CHAPTER VII
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE AND ANTI-SLAVERY EFFORT, 1787-1807

  40. _Influence of the Haytian Revolution_                         74
  41. _Legislation of the Southern States_                          75
  42. _Legislation of the Border States_                            76
  43. _Legislation of the Eastern States_                           76
  44. _First Debate in Congress, 1789_                              77
  45. _Second Debate in Congress, 1790_                             79
  46. _The Declaration of Powers, 1790_                             82
  47. _The Act of 1794_                                             83
  48. _The Act of 1800_                                             85
  49. _The Act of 1803_                                             87
  50. _State of the Slave-Trade from 1789 to 1803_                  88
  51. _The South Carolina Repeal of 1803_                           89
  52. _The Louisiana Slave-Trade, 1803-1805_                        91
  53. _Last Attempts at Taxation, 1805-1806_                        94
  54. _Key-Note of the Period_                                      96


CHAPTER VIII
THE PERIOD OF ATTEMPTED SUPPRESSION, 1807-1825

  55. _The Act of 1807_                                             97
  56. _The First Question: How shall illegally imported Africans
       be disposed of?_                                             99
  57. _The Second Question: How shall Violations be punished?_     104
  58. _The Third Question: How shall the Interstate Coastwise
       Slave-Trade be protected?_                                  106
  59. _Legislative History of the Bill_                            107
  60. _Enforcement of the Act_                                     111
  61. _Evidence of the Continuance of the Trade_                   112
  62. _Apathy of the Federal Government_                           115
  63. _Typical Cases_                                              120
  64. _The Supplementary Acts, 1818-1820_                          121
  65. _Enforcement of the Supplementary Acts, 1818-1825_           126


CHAPTER IX
THE INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE SLAVE-TRADE, 1783-1862

  66. _The Rise of the Movement against the Slave-Trade,
       1788-1807_                                                  133
  67. _Concerted Action of the Powers, 1783-1814_                  134
  68. _Action of the Powers from 1814 to 1820_                     136
  69. _The Struggle for an International Right of Search,
       1820-1840_                                                  137
  70. _Negotiations of 1823-1825_                                  140
  71. _The Attitude of the United States and the State of the
       Slave-Trade_                                                142
  72. _The Quintuple Treaty, 1839-1842_                            145
  73. _Final Concerted Measures, 1842-1862_                        148


CHAPTER X
THE RISE OF THE COTTON KINGDOM, 1820-1850

  74. _The Economic Revolution_                                    152
  75. _The Attitude of the South_                                  154
  76. _The Attitude of the North and Congress_                     156
  77. _Imperfect Application of the Laws_                          159
  78. _Responsibility of the Government_                           161
  79. _Activity of the Slave-Trade, 1820-1850_                     163


CHAPTER XI
THE FINAL CRISIS, 1850-1870

  80. _The Movement against the Slave-Trade Laws_                  168
  81. _Commercial Conventions of 1855-1856_                        169
  82. _Commercial Conventions of 1857-1858_                        170
  83. _Commercial Convention of 1859_                              172
  84. _Public Opinion in the South_                                173
  85. _The Question in Congress_                                   174
  86. _Southern Policy in 1860_                                    176
  87. _Increase of the Slave-Trade from 1850 to 1860_              178
  88. _Notorious Infractions of the Laws_                          179
  89. _Apathy of the Federal Government_                           182
  90. _Attitude of the Southern Confederacy_                       187
  91. _Attitude of the United States_                              190


CHAPTER XII
THE ESSENTIALS IN THE STRUGGLE

  92. _How the Question Arose_                                     193
  93. _The Moral Movement_                                         194
  94. _The Political Movement_                                     195
  95. _The Economic Movement_                                      195
  96. _The Lesson for Americans_                                   196


APPENDICES

  A. _A Chronological Conspectus of Colonial and State Legislation
      restricting the African Slave-Trade, 1641-1787_              199

  B. _A Chronological Conspectus of State, National, and
      International Legislation, 1788-1871_                        234

  C. _Typical Cases of Vessels engaged in the American Slave-Trade,
      1619-1864_                                                   306

  D. _Bibliography_                                                316


INDEX                                                              347

                   *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter I_

INTRODUCTORY.

  1. Plan of the Monograph.
  2. The Rise of the English Slave-Trade.


1. ~Plan of the Monograph.~ This monograph proposes to set forth the
efforts made in the United States of America, from early colonial times
until the present, to limit and suppress the trade in slaves between
Africa and these shores.

The study begins with the colonial period, setting forth in brief the
attitude of England and, more in detail, the attitude of the planting,
farming, and trading groups of colonies toward the slave-trade. It deals
next with the first concerted effort against the trade and with the
further action of the individual States. The important work of the
Constitutional Convention follows, together with the history of the
trade in that critical period which preceded the Act of 1807. The
attempt to suppress the trade from 1807 to 1830 is next recounted. A
chapter then deals with the slave-trade as an international problem.
Finally the development of the crises up to the Civil War is studied,
together with the steps leading to the final suppression; and a
concluding chapter seeks to sum up the results of the investigation.
Throughout the monograph the institution of slavery and the interstate
slave-trade are considered only incidentally.


2. ~The Rise of the English Slave-Trade.~ Any attempt to consider the
attitude of the English colonies toward the African slave-trade must be
prefaced by a word as to the attitude of England herself and the
development of the trade in her hands.[1]

Sir John Hawkins's celebrated voyage took place in 1562, but probably
not until 1631[2] did a regular chartered company undertake to carry on
the trade.[3] This company was unsuccessful,[4] and was eventually
succeeded by the "Company of Royal Adventurers trading to Africa,"
chartered by Charles II. in 1662, and including the Queen Dowager and
the Duke of York.[5] The company contracted to supply the West Indies
with three thousand slaves annually; but contraband trade, misconduct,
and war so reduced it that in 1672 it surrendered its charter to another
company for £34,000.[6] This new corporation, chartered by Charles II.
as the "Royal African Company," proved more successful than its
predecessors, and carried on a growing trade for a quarter of a century.

In 1698 Parliamentary interference with the trade began. By the Statute
9 and 10 William and Mary, chapter 26, private traders, on payment of a
duty of 10% on English goods exported to Africa, were allowed to
participate in the trade. This was brought about by the clamor of the
merchants, especially the "American Merchants," who "in their Petition
suggest, that it would be a great Benefit to the Kingdom to secure the
Trade by maintaining Forts and Castles there, with an equal Duty upon
all Goods exported."[7] This plan, being a compromise between
maintaining the monopoly intact and entirely abolishing it, was adopted,
and the statute declared the trade "highly Beneficial and Advantageous
to this Kingdom, and to the Plantations and Colonies thereunto
belonging."

Having thus gained practically free admittance to the field, English
merchants sought to exclude other nations by securing a monopoly of the
lucrative Spanish colonial slave-trade. Their object was finally
accomplished by the signing of the Assiento in 1713.[8]

The Assiento was a treaty between England and Spain by which the latter
granted the former a monopoly of the Spanish colonial slave-trade for
thirty years, and England engaged to supply the colonies within that
time with at least 144,000 slaves, at the rate of 4,800 per year.
England was also to advance Spain 200,000 crowns, and to pay a duty of
33½ crowns for each slave imported. The kings of Spain and England were
each to receive one-fourth of the profits of the trade, and the Royal
African Company were authorized to import as many slaves as they wished
above the specified number in the first twenty-five years, and to sell
them, except in three ports, at any price they could get.

It is stated that, in the twenty years from 1713 to 1733, fifteen
thousand slaves were annually imported into America by the English, of
whom from one-third to one-half went to the Spanish colonies.[9] To the
company itself the venture proved a financial failure; for during the
years 1729-1750 Parliament assisted the Royal Company by annual grants
which amounted to £90,000,[10] and by 1739 Spain was a creditor to the
extent of £68,000, and threatened to suspend the treaty. The war
interrupted the carrying out of the contract, but the Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle extended the limit by four years. Finally, October 5,
1750, this privilege was waived for a money consideration paid to
England; the Assiento was ended, and the Royal Company was bankrupt.

By the Statute 23 George II., chapter 31, the old company was dissolved
and a new "Company of Merchants trading to Africa" erected in its
stead.[11] Any merchant so desiring was allowed to engage in the trade
on payment of certain small duties, and such merchants formed a company
headed by nine directors. This marked the total abolition of monopoly in
the slave-trade, and was the form under which the trade was carried on
until after the American Revolution.

That the slave-trade was the very life of the colonies had, by 1700,
become an almost unquestioned axiom in British practical economics. The
colonists themselves declared slaves "the strength and sinews of this
western world,"[12] and the lack of them "the grand obstruction"[13]
here, as the settlements "cannot subsist without supplies of them."[14]
Thus, with merchants clamoring at home and planters abroad, it easily
became the settled policy of England to encourage the slave-trade. Then,
too, she readily argued that what was an economic necessity in Jamaica
and the Barbadoes could scarcely be disadvantageous to Carolina,
Virginia, or even New York. Consequently, the colonial governors were
generally instructed to "give all due encouragement and invitation to
merchants and others, ... and in particular to the royal African company
of England."[15] Duties laid on the importer, and all acts in any way
restricting the trade, were frowned upon and very often disallowed.
"Whereas," ran Governor Dobbs's instructions, "Acts have been passed in
some of our Plantations in America for laying duties on the importation
and exportation of Negroes to the great discouragement of the Merchants
trading thither from the coast of Africa.... It is our Will and Pleasure
that you do not give your assent to or pass any Law imposing duties upon
Negroes imported into our Province of North Carolina."[16]

The exact proportions of the slave-trade to America can be but
approximately determined. From 1680 to 1688 the African Company sent 249
ships to Africa, shipped there 60,783 Negro slaves, and after losing
14,387 on the middle passage, delivered 46,396 in America. The trade
increased early in the eighteenth century, 104 ships clearing for Africa
in 1701; it then dwindled until the signing of the Assiento, standing at
74 clearances in 1724. The final dissolution of the monopoly in 1750
led--excepting in the years 1754-57, when the closing of Spanish marts
sensibly affected the trade--to an extraordinary development, 192
clearances being made in 1771. The Revolutionary War nearly stopped the
traffic; but by 1786 the clearances had risen again to 146.

To these figures must be added the unregistered trade of Americans and
foreigners. It is probable that about 25,000 slaves were brought to
America each year between 1698 and 1707. The importation then dwindled,
but rose after the Assiento to perhaps 30,000. The proportion, too, of
these slaves carried to the continent now began to increase. Of about
20,000 whom the English annually imported from 1733 to 1766, South
Carolina alone received some 3,000. Before the Revolution, the total
exportation to America is variously estimated as between 40,000 and
100,000 each year. Bancroft places the total slave population of the
continental colonies at 59,000 in 1714, 78,000 in 1727, and 293,000 in
1754. The census of 1790 showed 697,897 slaves in the United States.[17]

In colonies like those in the West Indies and in South Carolina and
Georgia, the rapid importation into America of a multitude of savages
gave rise to a system of slavery far different from that which the late
Civil War abolished. The strikingly harsh and even inhuman slave codes
in these colonies show this. Crucifixion, burning, and starvation were
legal modes of punishment.[18] The rough and brutal character of the
time and place was partly responsible for this, but a more decisive
reason lay in the fierce and turbulent character of the imported
Negroes. The docility to which long years of bondage and strict
discipline gave rise was absent, and insurrections and acts of violence
were of frequent occurrence.[19] Again and again the danger of planters
being "cut off by their own negroes"[20] is mentioned, both in the
islands and on the continent. This condition of vague dread and unrest
not only increased the severity of laws and strengthened the police
system, but was the prime motive back of all the earlier efforts to
check the further importation of slaves.

On the other hand, in New England and New York the Negroes were merely
house servants or farm hands, and were treated neither better nor worse
than servants in general in those days. Between these two extremes, the
system of slavery varied from a mild serfdom in Pennsylvania and New
Jersey to an aristocratic caste system in Maryland and Virginia.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] This account is based largely on the _Report of the Lords
      of the Committee of Council_, etc. (London, 1789).

  [2] African trading-companies had previously been erected
     (e.g. by Elizabeth in 1585 and 1588, and by James I. in 1618);
      but slaves are not specifically mentioned in their charters,
      and they probably did not trade in slaves. Cf. Bandinel,
      _Account of the Slave Trade_ (1842), pp. 38-44.

  [3] Chartered by Charles I. Cf. Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers,
      Col. Ser., America and W. Indies, 1574-1660_, p. 135.

  [4] In 1651, during the Protectorate, the privileges of the
      African trade were granted anew to this same company for
      fourteen years. Cf. Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser.,
      America and W. Indies, 1574-1660_, pp. 342, 355.

  [5] Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W.
      Indies, 1661-1668_, § 408.

  [6] Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W.
      Indies, 1669-1674_, §§ 934, 1095.

  [7] Quoted in the above _Report_, under "Most Material
      Proceedings in the House of Commons," Vol. I. Part I. An import
      duty of 10% on all goods, except Negroes, imported from Africa
      to England and the colonies was also laid. The proceeds of
      these duties went to the Royal African Company.

  [8] Cf. Appendix A.

  [9] Bandinel, _Account of the Slave Trade_, p. 59. Cf. Bryan
      Edwards, _History of the British Colonies in the W. Indies_
      (London, 1798), Book VI.

 [10] From 1729 to 1788, including compensation to the old
      company, Parliament expended £705,255 on African companies. Cf.
      _Report_, etc., as above.

 [11] Various amendatory statutes were passed: e.g., 24 George
      II. ch. 49, 25 George II. ch. 40, 4 George III. ch. 20, 5
      George III. ch. 44, 23 George III. ch. 65.

 [12] Renatus Enys from Surinam, in 1663: Sainsbury, _Cal.
      State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W. Indies, 1661-68_, §
      577.

 [13] Thomas Lynch from Jamaica, in 1665: Sainsbury, _Cal.
      State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W. Indies, 1661-68_, §
      934.

 [14] Lieutenant-Governor Willoughby of Barbadoes, in 1666:
      Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W.
      Indies, 1661-68_, § 1281.

 [15] Smith, _History of New Jersey_ (1765), p. 254; Sainsbury,
      _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W. Indies,
      1669-74_., §§ 367, 398, 812.

 [16] _N.C. Col. Rec._, V. 1118. For similar instructions, cf.
      _Penn. Archives_, I. 306; _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, VI.
      34; Gordon, _History of the American Revolution_, I. letter 2;
      _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, 4th Ser. X. 642.

 [17] These figures are from the above-mentioned _Report_, Vol.
      II. Part IV. Nos. 1, 5. See also Bancroft, _History of the
      United States_ (1883), II. 274 ff; Bandinel, _Account of the
      Slave Trade_, p. 63; Benezet, _Caution to Great Britain_, etc.,
      pp. 39-40, and _Historical Account of Guinea_, ch. xiii.

 [18] Compare earlier slave codes in South Carolina, Georgia,
      Jamaica, etc.; also cf. Benezet, _Historical Account of
      Guinea_, p. 75; _Report_, etc., as above.

 [19] Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W.
      Indies, 1574-1660_, pp. 229, 271, 295; _1661-68_, §§ 61, 412,
      826, 1270, 1274, 1788; _1669-74_., §§ 508, 1244; Bolzius and
      Von Reck, _Journals_ (in Force, _Tracts_, Vol. IV. No. 5, pp.
      9, 18); _Proceedings of Governor and Assembly of Jamaica in
      regard to the Maroon Negroes_ (London, 1796).

 [20] Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W.
      Indies, 1661-68_, § 1679.

                   *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter II_

THE PLANTING COLONIES.

  3. Character of these Colonies.
  4. Restrictions in Georgia.
  5. Restrictions in South Carolina.
  6. Restrictions in North Carolina.
  7. Restrictions in Virginia.
  8. Restrictions in Maryland.
  9. General Character of these Restrictions.


3. ~Character of these Colonies.~ The planting colonies are those
Southern settlements whose climate and character destined them to be the
chief theatre of North American slavery. The early attitude of these
communities toward the slave-trade is therefore of peculiar interest;
for their action was of necessity largely decisive for the future of the
trade and for the institution in North America. Theirs was the only
soil, climate, and society suited to slavery; in the other colonies,
with few exceptions, the institution was by these same factors doomed
from the beginning. Hence, only strong moral and political motives could
in the planting colonies overthrow or check a traffic so favored by the
mother country.


4. ~Restrictions in Georgia.~ In Georgia we have an example of a
community whose philanthropic founders sought to impose upon it a code
of morals higher than the colonists wished. The settlers of Georgia were
of even worse moral fibre than their slave-trading and whiskey-using
neighbors in Carolina and Virginia; yet Oglethorpe and the London
proprietors prohibited from the beginning both the rum and the slave
traffic, refusing to "suffer slavery (which is against the Gospel as
well as the fundamental law of England) to be authorised under our
authority."[1] The trustees sought to win the colonists over to their
belief by telling them that money could be better expended in
transporting white men than Negroes; that slaves would be a source of
weakness to the colony; and that the "Produces designed to be raised in
the Colony would not require such Labour as to make Negroes necessary
for carrying them on."[2]

This policy greatly displeased the colonists, who from 1735, the date of
the first law, to 1749, did not cease to clamor for the repeal of the
restrictions.[3] As their English agent said, they insisted that "In
Spight of all Endeavours to disguise this Point, it is as clear as Light
itself, that Negroes are as essentially necessary to the Cultivation of
_Georgia_, as Axes, Hoes, or any other Utensil of Agriculture."[4]
Meantime, evasions and infractions of the laws became frequent and
notorious. Negroes were brought across from Carolina and "hired" for
life.[5] "Finally, purchases were openly made in Savannah from African
traders: some seizures were made by those who opposed the principle, but
as a majority of the magistrates were favorable to the introduction of
slaves into the province, legal decisions were suspended from time to
time, and a strong disposition evidenced by the courts to evade the
operation of the law."[6] At last, in 1749, the colonists prevailed on
the trustees and the government, and the trade was thrown open under
careful restrictions, which limited importation, required a registry and
quarantine on all slaves brought in, and laid a duty.[7] It is probable,
however, that these restrictions were never enforced, and that the trade
thus established continued unchecked until the Revolution.


5. ~Restrictions in South Carolina.~[8] South Carolina had the largest
and most widely developed slave-trade of any of the continental
colonies. This was owing to the character of her settlers, her nearness
to the West Indian slave marts, and the early development of certain
staple crops, such as rice, which were adapted to slave labor.[9]
Moreover, this colony suffered much less interference from the home
government than many other colonies; thus it is possible here to trace
the untrammeled development of slave-trade restrictions in a typical
planting community.

As early as 1698 the slave-trade to South Carolina had reached such
proportions that it was thought that "the great number of negroes which
of late have been imported into this Collony may endanger the safety
thereof." The immigration of white servants was therefore encouraged by
a special law.[10] Increase of immigration reduced this disproportion,
but Negroes continued to be imported in such numbers as to afford
considerable revenue from a moderate duty on them. About the time when
the Assiento was signed, the slave-trade so increased that, scarcely a
year after the consummation of that momentous agreement, two heavy duty
acts were passed, because "the number of Negroes do extremely increase
in this Province, and through the afflicting providence of God, the
white persons do not proportionately multiply, by reason whereof, the
safety of the said Province is greatly endangered."[11] The trade,
however, by reason of the encouragement abroad and of increased business
activity in exporting naval stores at home, suffered scarcely any check,
although repeated acts, reciting the danger incident to a "great
importation of Negroes," were passed, laying high duties.[12] Finally,
in 1717, an additional duty of £40,[13] although due in depreciated
currency, succeeded so nearly in stopping the trade that, two years
later, all existing duties were repealed and one of £10 substituted.[14]
This continued during the time of resistance to the proprietary
government, but by 1734 the importation had again reached large
proportions. "We must therefore beg leave," the colonists write in that
year, "to inform your Majesty, that, amidst our other perilous
circumstances, we are subject to many intestine dangers from the great
number of negroes that are now among us, who amount at least to
twenty-two thousand persons, and are three to one of all your Majesty's
white subjects in this province. Insurrections against us have been
often attempted."[15] In 1740 an insurrection under a slave, Cato, at
Stono, caused such widespread alarm that a prohibitory duty of £100 was
immediately laid.[16] Importation was again checked; but in 1751 the
colony sought to devise a plan whereby the slightly restricted
immigration of Negroes should provide a fund to encourage the
importation of white servants, "to prevent the mischiefs that may be
attended by the great importation of negroes into this Province."[17]
Many white servants were thus encouraged to settle in the colony; but so
much larger was the influx of black slaves that the colony, in 1760,
totally prohibited the slave-trade. This act was promptly disallowed by
the Privy Council and the governor reprimanded;[18] but the colony
declared that "an importation of negroes, equal in number to what have
been imported of late years, may prove of the most dangerous consequence
in many respects to this Province, and the best way to obviate such
danger will be by imposing such an additional duty upon them as may
totally prevent the evils."[19] A prohibitive duty of £100 was
accordingly imposed in 1764.[20] This duty probably continued until the
Revolution.

The war made a great change in the situation. It has been computed by
good judges that, between the years 1775 and 1783, the State of South
Carolina lost twenty-five thousand Negroes, by actual hostilities,
plunder of the British, runaways, etc. After the war the trade quickly
revived, and considerable revenue was raised from duty acts until 1787,
when by act and ordinance the slave-trade was totally prohibited.[21]
This prohibition, by renewals from time to time, lasted until 1803.


6. ~Restrictions in North Carolina.~ In early times there were few
slaves in North Carolina;[22] this fact, together with the troubled and
turbulent state of affairs during the early colonial period, did not
necessitate the adoption of any settled policy toward slavery or the
slave-trade. Later the slave-trade to the colony increased; but there is
no evidence of any effort to restrict or in any way regulate it before
1786, when it was declared that "the importation of slaves into this
State is productive of evil consequences and highly impolitic,"[23] and
a prohibitive duty was laid on them.


7. ~Restrictions in Virginia.~[24] Next to South Carolina, Virginia had
probably the largest slave-trade. Her situation, however, differed
considerably from that of her Southern neighbor. The climate, the staple
tobacco crop, and the society of Virginia were favorable to a system of
domestic slavery, but one which tended to develop into a patriarchal
serfdom rather than into a slave-consuming industrial hierarchy. The
labor required by the tobacco crop was less unhealthy than that
connected with the rice crop, and the Virginians were, perhaps, on a
somewhat higher moral plane than the Carolinians. There was consequently
no such insatiable demand for slaves in the larger colony. On the other
hand, the power of the Virginia executive was peculiarly strong, and it
was not possible here to thwart the slave-trade policy of the home
government as easily as elsewhere.

Considering all these circumstances, it is somewhat difficult to
determine just what was the attitude of the early Virginians toward the
slave-trade. There is evidence, however, to show that although they
desired the slave-trade, the rate at which the Negroes were brought in
soon alarmed them. In 1710 a duty of £5 was laid on Negroes, but
Governor Spotswood "soon perceived that the laying so high a Duty on
Negros was intended to discourage the importation," and vetoed the
measure.[25] No further restrictive legislation was attempted for some
years, but whether on account of the attitude of the governor or the
desire of the inhabitants, is not clear. With 1723 begins a series of
acts extending down to the Revolution, which, so far as their contents
can be ascertained, seem to have been designed effectually to check the
slave-trade. Some of these acts, like those of 1723 and 1727, were
almost immediately disallowed.[26] The Act of 1732 laid a duty of 5%,
which was continued until 1769,[27] and all other duties were in
addition to this; so that by such cumulative duties the rate on slaves
reached 25% in 1755,[28] and 35% at the time of Braddock's
expedition.[29] These acts were found "very burthensome," "introductive
of many frauds," and "very inconvenient,"[30] and were so far repealed
that by 1761 the duty was only 15%. As now the Burgesses became more
powerful, two or more bills proposing restrictive duties were passed,
but disallowed.[31] By 1772 the anti-slave-trade feeling had become
considerably developed, and the Burgesses petitioned the king, declaring
that "The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of
Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and
under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear _will
endanger the very existence_ of your Majesty's American dominions....
Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your
Majesty to remove _all those restraints_ on your Majesty's governors of
this colony, _which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check
so very pernicious a commerce_."[32]

Nothing further appears to have been done before the war. When, in 1776,
the delegates adopted a Frame of Government, it was charged in this
document that the king had perverted his high office into a "detestable
and insupportable tyranny, by ... prompting our negroes to rise in arms
among us, those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he
hath refused us permission to exclude by law."[33] Two years later, in
1778, an "Act to prevent the further importation of Slaves" stopped
definitively the legal slave-trade to Virginia.[34]


8. ~Restrictions in Maryland.~[35] Not until the impulse of the Assiento
had been felt in America, did Maryland make any attempt to restrain a
trade from which she had long enjoyed a comfortable revenue. The Act of
1717, laying a duty of 40_s._,[36] may have been a mild restrictive
measure. The duties were slowly increased to 50_s._ in 1754,[37] and £4.
in 1763.[38] In 1771 a prohibitive duty of £9 was laid;[39] and in 1783,
after the war, all importation by sea was stopped and illegally imported
Negroes were freed.[40]

Compared with the trade to Virginia and the Carolinas, the slave-trade
to Maryland was small, and seems at no time to have reached proportions
which alarmed the inhabitants. It was regulated to the economic demand
by a slowly increasing tariff, and finally, after 1769, had nearly
ceased of its own accord before the restrictive legislation of
Revolutionary times.[41] Probably the proximity of Maryland to Virginia
made an independent slave-trade less necessary to her.


9. ~General Character of these Restrictions.~ We find in the planting
colonies all degrees of advocacy of the trade, from the passiveness of
Maryland to the clamor of Georgia. Opposition to the trade did not
appear in Georgia, was based almost solely on political fear of
insurrection in Carolina, and sprang largely from the same motive in
Virginia, mingled with some moral repugnance. As a whole, it may be said
that whatever opposition to the slave-trade there was in the planting
colonies was based principally on the political fear of insurrection.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] Hoare, _Memoirs of Granville Sharp_ (1820), p. 157. For
      the act of prohibition, see W.B. Stevens, _History of Georgia_
      (1847), I. 311.

  [2] [B. Martyn, _Account of the Progress of Georgia_ (1741),
      pp. 9-10.]

  [3] Cf. Stevens, _History of Georgia_, I. 290 ff.

  [4] Stephens, _Account of the Causes_, etc., p. 8. Cf. also
      _Journal of Trustees_, II. 210; cited by Stevens, _History of
      Georgia_, I. 306.

  [5] McCall, _History of Georgia_ (1811), I. 206-7.

  [6] _Ibid._

  [7] _Pub. Rec. Office, Board of Trade_, Vol. X.; cited by C.C.
      Jones, _History of Georgia_ (1883), I. 422-5.

  [8] The following is a summary of the legislation of the
      colony of South Carolina; details will be found in Appendix
      A:--

       1698, Act to encourage the immigration of white servants.
       1703, Duty Act: 10_s._ on Africans, 20_s._ on other Negroes.
       1714,   "   "   additional duty.
       1714,   "   "   £2.
       1714-15, Duty Act: additional duty.
       1716,     "    "   £3 on Africans, £30 on colonial Negroes.
       1717,     "    "   £40 in addition to existing duties.
       1719,     "    "   £10 on Africans, £30 on colonial Negroes.
                            The Act of 1717, etc., was repealed.
       1721,     "    "   £10 on Africans, £50 on colonial Negroes.
       1722,     "    "        "     "      "       "         "
       1740,     "    "   £100 on Africans, £150 on colonial Negroes.
       1751,     "    "   £10  "     "      £50     "         "
       1760, Act prohibiting importation (Disallowed).
       1764, Duty Act: additional duty of £100.
       1783,     "    "   £3 on Africans, £20 on colonial Negroes.
       1784,     "    "        "     "    £5        "         "
       1787, Art and Ordinance prohibiting importation.

  [9] Cf. Hewatt, _Historical Account of S. Carolina and
      Georgia_ (1779), I. 120 ff.; reprinted in _S.C. Hist. Coll._
      (1836), I. 108 ff.

 [10] Cooper, _Statutes at Large of S. Carolina_, II. 153.

 [11] The text of the first act is not extant: cf. Cooper,
      _Statutes_, III. 56. For the second, see Cooper, VII. 365,
      367.

 [12] Cf. Grimké, _Public Laws of S. Carolina_, p. xvi, No.
      362; Cooper, _Statutes_, II. 649. Cf. also _Governor Johnson
      to the Board of Trade_, Jan. 12, 1719-20; reprinted in Rivers,
      _Early History of S. Carolina_ (1874), App., xii.

 [13] Cooper, _Statutes_, VII. 368.

 [14] _Ibid._, III. 56.

 [15] From a memorial signed by the governor, President of the
      Council, and Speaker of the House, dated April 9, 1734,
      printed in Hewatt, _Historical Account of S. Carolina and
      Georgia_ (1779), II. 39; reprinted in S.C. Hist. Coll. (1836),
      I. 305-6. Cf. _N.C. Col. Rec._, II. 421.

 [16] Cooper, _Statutes_, III. 556; Grimké, _Public Laws_, p.
      xxxi, No. 694. Cf. Ramsay, _History of S. Carolina_, I. 110.

 [17] Cooper, _Statutes_, III. 739.

 [18] The text of this law has not been found. Cf. Burge,
      _Commentaries on Colonial and Foreign Laws_, I. 737, note;
      Stevens, _History of Georgia_, I. 286. See instructions of the
      governor of New Hampshire, June 30, 1761, in Gordon, _History
      of the American Revolution_, I. letter 2.

 [19] Cooper, _Statutes_, IV. 187.

 [20] This duty avoided the letter of the English instructions
      by making the duty payable by the first purchasers, and not by
      the importers. Cf. Cooper, _Statutes_, IV. 187.

 [21] Grimké, Public Laws, p. lxviii, Nos. 1485, 1486; Cooper,
      _Statutes_, VII. 430.

 [22] Cf. _N.C. Col. Rec._, IV. 172.

 [23] Martin, _Iredell's Acts of Assembly_, I. 413, 492.

 [24] The following is a summary of the legislation of the
      colony of Virginia; details will be found in Appendix A:--

        1710, Duty Act: proposed duty of £5.
        1723,  "    "   prohibitive (?).
        1727,  "    "        "
        1732,  "    "   5%.
        1736,  "    "   "
        1740,  "    "   additional duty of 5%.
        1754,  "    "        "       "     5%.
        1755,  "    "        "       "     10% (Repealed, 1760).
        1757,  "    "        "       "     10% (Repealed, 1761).
        1759,  "    "   20% on colonial slaves.
        1766,  "    "   additional duty of 10% (Disallowed?).
        1769,  "    "        "       "      "        "
        1772,  "    "   £5 on colonial slaves.
              Petition of Burgesses _vs._ Slave-trade.
        1776, Arraignment of the king in the adopted Frame of Government.
        1778, Importation prohibited.

 [25] _Letters of Governor Spotswood_, in _Va. Hist. Soc.
      Coll._, New Ser., I. 52.

 [26] Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, IV. 118, 182.

 [27] _Ibid._, IV. 317, 394; V. 28, 160, 318; VI. 217, 353;
      VII. 281; VIII. 190, 336, 532.

 [28] _Ibid._, V. 92; VI. 417, 419, 461, 466.

 [29] _Ibid._, VII. 69, 81.

 [30] _Ibid._, VII. 363, 383.

 [31] _Ibid._, VIII. 237, 337.

 [32] _Miscellaneous Papers, 1672-1865_, in _Va. Hist. Soc.
      Coll._, New Ser., VI. 14; Tucker, _Blackstone's Commentaries_,
      I. Part II. App., 51.

 [33] Hening, _Statutes_, IX. 112.

 [34] Importation by sea or by land was prohibited, with a
      penalty of £1000 for illegal importation and £500 for buying
      or selling. The Negro was freed, if illegally brought in. This
      law was revised somewhat in 1785. Cf. Hening, _Statutes_, IX.
      471; XII. 182.

 [35] The following is a summary of the legislation of the
      colony of Maryland; details will be found in Appendix A:--

        1695, Duty Act: 10_s._
        1704,  "    "   20_s._
        1715,  "    "    "
        1717,  "    "   additional duty of 40_s._ (?).
        1754,  "    "      "        "      10_s._, total 50_s._
        1756,  "    "      "        "      20_s._  "     40_s._ (?).
        1763,  "    "      "        "      £2    "     £4.
        1771,  "    "      "        "      £5    "     £9.
        1783, Importation prohibited.

 [36] _Compleat Coll. Laws of Maryland_ (ed. 1727), p. 191;
      Bacon, _Laws of Maryland at Large_, 1728, ch. 8.

 [37] Bacon, _Laws_, 1754, ch. 9, 14.

 [38] _Ibid._, 1763, ch. 28.

 [39] _Laws of Maryland since 1763_: 1771, ch. 7. Cf. _Ibid._:
      1777, sess. Feb.-Apr., ch. 18.

 [40] _Ibid._: 1783, sess. Apr.-June, ch. 23.

 [41] "The last importation of slaves into Maryland was, as I
      am credibly informed, in the year 1769": William Eddis,
      _Letters from America_ (London, 1792), p. 65, note.

      The number of slaves in Maryland has been estimated as follows:--

        In 1704,    4,475.  _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, V. 605.
         " 1710,    7,935.  _Ibid._
         " 1712,    8,330.  Scharf, _History of Maryland_, I. 377.
         " 1719,   25,000.  _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, V. 605.
         " 1748,   36,000.  McMahon, _History of Maryland_, I. 313.
         " 1755,   46,356.  _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXXIV. 261.
         " 1756,   46,225.  McMahon, _History of Maryland_, I. 313.
         " 1761,   49,675.  Dexter, _Colonial Population_, p. 21, note.
         " 1782,   83,362.  _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (9th ed.), XV. 603.
         " 1787,   80,000.  Dexter, _Colonial Population_, p. 21, note.

                   *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter III_

THE FARMING COLONIES.

  10. Character of these Colonies.
  11. The Dutch Slave-Trade.
  12. Restrictions in New York.
  13. Restrictions in Pennsylvania and Delaware.
  14. Restrictions in New Jersey.
  15. General Character of these Restrictions.


10. ~Character of these Colonies.~ The colonies of this group, occupying
the central portion of the English possessions, comprise those
communities where, on account of climate, physical characteristics, and
circumstances of settlement, slavery as an institution found but a
narrow field for development. The climate was generally rather cool for
the newly imported slaves, the soil was best suited to crops to which
slave labor was poorly adapted, and the training and habits of the great
body of settlers offered little chance for the growth of a slave system.
These conditions varied, of course, in different colonies; but the
general statement applies to all. These communities of small farmers and
traders derived whatever opposition they had to the slave-trade from
three sorts of motives,--economic, political, and moral. First, the
importation of slaves did not pay, except to supply a moderate demand
for household servants. Secondly, these colonies, as well as those in
the South, had a wholesome political fear of a large servile population.
Thirdly, the settlers of many of these colonies were of sterner moral
fibre than the Southern cavaliers and adventurers, and, in the absence
of great counteracting motives, were more easily led to oppose the
institution and the trade. Finally, it must be noted that these colonies
did not so generally regard themselves as temporary commercial
investments as did Virginia and Carolina. Intending to found permanent
States, these settlers from the first more carefully studied the
ultimate interests of those States.


11. ~The Dutch Slave-Trade.~ The Dutch seem to have commenced the
slave-trade to the American continent, the Middle colonies and some of
the Southern receiving supplies from them. John Rolfe relates that the
last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia "a dutch man of warre that
sold us twenty Negars."[1] This was probably one of the ships of the
numerous private Dutch trading-companies which early entered into and
developed the lucrative African slave-trade. Ships sailed from Holland
to Africa, got slaves in exchange for their goods, carried the slaves to
the West Indies or Brazil, and returned home laden with sugar.[2]
Through the enterprise of one of these trading-companies the settlement
of New Amsterdam was begun, in 1614. In 1621 the private companies
trading in the West were all merged into the Dutch West India Company,
and given a monopoly of American trade. This company was very active,
sending in four years 15,430 Negroes to Brazil,[3] carrying on war with
Spain, supplying even the English plantations,[4] and gradually becoming
the great slave carrier of the day.

The commercial supremacy of the Dutch early excited the envy and
emulation of the English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was aimed at
them, and two wars were necessary to wrest the slave-trade from them and
place it in the hands of the English. The final terms of peace among
other things surrendered New Netherland to England, and opened the way
for England to become henceforth the world's greatest slave-trader.
Although the Dutch had thus commenced the continental slave-trade, they
had not actually furnished a very large number of slaves to the English
colonies outside the West Indies. A small trade had, by 1698, brought a
few thousand to New York, and still fewer to New Jersey.[5] It was left
to the English, with their strong policy in its favor, to develop this
trade.


12. ~Restrictions in New York.~[6] The early ordinances of the Dutch,
laying duties, generally of ten per cent, on slaves, probably proved
burdensome to the trade, although this was not intentional.[7] The
Biblical prohibition of slavery and the slave-trade, copied from New
England codes into the Duke of York's Laws, had no practical
application,[8] and the trade continued to be encouraged in the
governors' instructions. In 1709 a duty of £3 was laid on Negroes from
elsewhere than Africa.[9] This was aimed at West India slaves, and was
prohibitive. By 1716 the duty on all slaves was £1 12½_s._, which was
probably a mere revenue figure.[10] In 1728 a duty of 40_s._ was laid,
to be continued until 1737.[11] It proved restrictive, however, and on
the "humble petition of the Merchants and Traders of the City of
Bristol" was disallowed in 1735, as "greatly prejudicial to the Trade
and Navigation of this Kingdom."[12] Governor Cosby was also reminded
that no duties on slaves payable by the importer were to be laid. Later,
in 1753, the 40_s._ duty was restored, but under the increased trade of
those days was not felt.[13] No further restrictions seem to have been
attempted until 1785, when the sale of slaves in the State was
forbidden.[14]

The chief element of restriction in this colony appears to have been the
shrewd business sense of the traders, who never flooded the slave
market, but kept a supply sufficient for the slowly growing demand.
Between 1701 and 1726 only about 2,375 slaves were imported, and in 1774
the total slave population amounted to 21,149.[15] No restriction was
ever put by New York on participation in the trade outside the colony,
and in spite of national laws New York merchants continued to be engaged
in this traffic even down to the Civil War.[16]

Vermont, who withdrew from New York in 1777, in her first
Constitution[17] declared slavery illegal, and in 1786 stopped by law
the sale and transportation of slaves within her boundaries.[18]


13. ~Restrictions in Pennsylvania and Delaware.~[19] One of the first
American protests against the slave-trade came from certain German
Friends, in 1688, at a Weekly Meeting held in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
"These are the reasons," wrote "Garret henderich, derick up de graeff,
Francis daniell Pastorius, and Abraham up Den graef," "why we are
against the traffick of men-body, as followeth: Is there any that would
be done or handled at this manner?... Now, tho they are black, we cannot
conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have
other white ones. There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like
as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation,
descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those
who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike?"[20] This little
leaven helped slowly to work a revolution in the attitude of this great
sect toward slavery and the slave-trade. The Yearly Meeting at first
postponed the matter, "It having so General a Relation to many other
Parts."[21] Eventually, however, in 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised
"That Friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more
Negroes."[22] This advice was repeated in stronger terms for a
quarter-century,[23] and by that time Sandiford, Benezet, Lay, and
Woolman had begun their crusade. In 1754 the Friends took a step farther
and made the purchase of slaves a matter of discipline.[24] Four years
later the Yearly Meeting expressed itself clearly as "against every
branch of this practice," and declared that if "any professing with us
should persist to vindicate it, and be concerned in importing, selling
or purchasing slaves, the respective Monthly Meetings to which they
belong should manifest their disunion with such persons."[25] Further,
manumission was recommended, and in 1776 made compulsory.[26] The effect
of this attitude of the Friends was early manifested in the legislation
of all the colonies where the sect was influential, and particularly in
Pennsylvania.

One of the first duty acts (1710) laid a restrictive duty of 40_s._ on
slaves, and was eventually disallowed.[27] In 1712 William Southeby
petitioned the Assembly totally to abolish slavery. This the Assembly
naturally refused to attempt; but the same year, in response to another
petition "signed by many hands," they passed an "Act to prevent the
Importation of Negroes and Indians,"[28]--the first enactment of its
kind in America. This act was inspired largely by the general fear of
insurrection which succeeded the "Negro-plot" of 1712 in New York. It
declared: "Whereas, divers Plots and Insurrections have frequently
happened, not only in the Islands but on the Main Land of _America_, by
Negroes, which have been carried on so far that several of the
inhabitants have been barbarously Murthered, an Instance whereof we have
lately had in our Neighboring Colony of _New York_,"[29] etc. It then
proceeded to lay a prohibitive duty of £20 on all slaves imported. These
acts were quickly disposed of in England. Three duty acts affecting
Negroes, including the prohibitory act, were in 1713 disallowed, and it
was directed that "the Dep^{ty} Gov^{r} Council and Assembly of
Pensilvania, be & they are hereby Strictly Enjoyned & required not to
permit the said Laws ... to be from henceforward put in Execution."[30]
The Assembly repealed these laws, but in 1715 passed another laying a
duty of £5, which was also eventually disallowed.[31] Other acts, the
provisions of which are not clear, were passed in 1720 and 1722,[32] and
in 1725-1726 the duty on Negroes was raised to the restrictive figure of
£10.[33] This duty, for some reason not apparent, was lowered to £2 in
1729,[34] but restored again in 1761.[35] A struggle occurred over this
last measure, the Friends petitioning for it, and the Philadelphia
merchants against it, declaring that "We, the subscribers, ever desirous
to extend the Trade of this Province, have seen, for some time past,
the many inconveniencys the Inhabitants have suffer'd for want of
Labourers and artificers, ... have for some time encouraged the
importation of Negroes;" they prayed therefore at least for a delay in
passing the measure.[36] The law, nevertheless, after much debate and
altercation with the governor, finally passed.

These repeated acts nearly stopped the trade, and the manumission or
sale of Negroes by the Friends decreased the number of slaves in the
province. The rising spirit of independence enabled the colony, in 1773,
to restore the prohibitive duty of £20 and make it perpetual.[37] After
the Revolution unpaid duties on slaves were collected and the slaves
registered,[38] and in 1780 an "Act for the gradual Abolition of
Slavery" was passed.[39] As there were probably at no time before the
war more than 11,000 slaves in Pennsylvania,[40] the task thus
accomplished was not so formidable as in many other States. As it was,
participation in the slave-trade outside the colony was not prohibited
until 1788.[41]

It seems probable that in the original Swedish settlements along the
Delaware slavery was prohibited.[42] This measure had, however, little
practical effect; for as soon as the Dutch got control the slave-trade
was opened, although, as it appears, to no large extent. After the fall
of the Dutch Delaware came into English hands. Not until 1775 do we find
any legislation on the slave-trade. In that year the colony attempted
to prohibit the importation of slaves, but the governor vetoed the
bill.[43] Finally, in 1776 by the Constitution, and in 1787 by law,
importation and exportation were both prohibited.[44]


14. ~Restrictions in New Jersey.~[45] Although the freeholders of West
New Jersey declared, in 1676, that "all and every Person and Persons
Inhabiting the said Province, shall, as far as in us lies, be free from
Oppression and Slavery,"[46] yet Negro slaves are early found in the
colony.[47] The first restrictive measure was passed, after considerable
friction between the Council and the House, in 1713; it laid a duty of
£10, currency.[48] Governor Hunter explained to the Board of Trade that
the bill was "calculated to Encourage the Importation of white Servants
for the better Peopeling that Country."[49] How long this act continued
does not appear; probably, not long. No further legislation was enacted
until 1762 or 1763, when a prohibitive duty was laid on account of "the
inconvenience the Province is exposed to in lying open to the free
importation of Negros, when the Provinces on each side have laid duties
on them."[50] The Board of Trade declared that while they did not object
to "the Policy of imposing a reasonable duty," they could not assent to
this, and the act was disallowed.[51] The Act of 1769 evaded the
technical objection of the Board of Trade, and laid a duty of £15 on the
first purchasers of Negroes, because, as the act declared, "Duties on
the Importation of Negroes in several of the neighbouring Colonies
hath, on Experience, been found beneficial in the Introduction of sober,
industrious Foreigners."[52] In 1774 a bill which, according to the
report of the Council to Governor Morris, "plainly intended an entire
Prohibition of all Slaves being imported from foreign Parts," was thrown
out by the Council.[53] Importation was finally prohibited in 1786.[54]


15. ~General Character of these Restrictions.~ The main difference in
motive between the restrictions which the planting and the farming
colonies put on the African slave-trade, lay in the fact that the former
limited it mainly from fear of insurrection, the latter mainly because
it did not pay. Naturally, the latter motive worked itself out with much
less legislation than the former; for this reason, and because they held
a smaller number of slaves, most of these colonies have fewer actual
statutes than the Southern colonies. In Pennsylvania alone did this
general economic revolt against the trade acquire a distinct moral
tinge. Although even here the institution was naturally doomed, yet the
clear moral insight of the Quakers checked the trade much earlier than
would otherwise have happened. We may say, then, that the farming
colonies checked the slave-trade primarily from economic motives.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] Smith, _Generall Historie of Virginia_ (1626 and 1632), p. 126.

  [2] Cf. Southey, _History of Brazil_.

  [3] De Laet, in O'Callaghan, _Voyages of the Slavers_, etc., p. viii.

  [4] See, e.g., Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers; Col. Ser.,
      America and W. Indies, 1574-1660_, p. 279.

  [5] Cf. below, pp. 27, 32, notes; also _Freedoms_, XXX., in
      O'Callaghan, _Laws of New Netherland, 1638-74_ (ed. 1868), p.
      10; Brodhead, _History of New York_, I. 312.

  [6] The following is a summary of the legislation of the
      colony of New York; details will be found in Appendix A:--

        1709, Duty Act: £3 on Negroes not direct from Africa
               (Continued by the Acts of 1710, 1711).
        1711, Bill to lay further duty, lost in Council.
        1716, Duty Act:  5 oz. plate on Africans in colony ships.
                        10 oz. plate on Africans in other ships.
        1728,  "    "   40_s._ on Africans, £4 on colonial Negroes.
        1732,  "    "   40_s._ on Africans, £4 on colonial Negroes.
        1734,  "    "   (?)
        1753,  "    "   40_s._ on Africans, £4 on colonial Negroes.
                (This act was annually continued.)
       [1777, Vermont Constitution does not recognize slavery.]
        1785, Sale of slaves in State prohibited.
       [1786,  "         "   in Vermont prohibited.]
        1788,  "         "   in State prohibited.

  [7] O'Callaghan, _Laws of New Netherland, 1638-74_, pp. 31,
      348, etc. The colonists themselves were encouraged to trade,
      but the terms were not favorable enough: _Doc. rel. Col. Hist.
      New York_, I. 246; _Laws of New Netherland_, pp. 81-2, note,
      127. The colonists declared "that they are inclined to a
      foreign Trade, and especially to the Coast of _Africa_, ... in
      order to fetch thence Slaves": O'Callaghan, _Voyages of the
      Slavers_, etc., p. 172.

  [8] _Charter to William Penn_, etc. (1879), p. 12. First
      published on Long Island in 1664. Possibly Negro slaves were
      explicitly excepted. Cf. _Magazine of American History_, XI.
      411, and _N.Y. Hist. Soc. Coll._, I. 322.

  [9] _Acts of Assembly, 1691-1718_, pp. 97, 125, 134; _Doc.
      rel. Col. Hist. New York_, V. 178, 185, 293.

 [10] The Assembly attempted to raise the slave duty in 1711,
      but the Council objected (_Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, V.
      292 ff.), although, as it seems, not on account of the slave
      duty in particular. Another act was passed between 1711 and
      1716, but its contents are not known (cf. title of the Act of
      1716). For the Act of 1716, see _Acts of Assembly, 1691-1718_,
      p. 224.

 [11] _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, VI. 37, 38.

 [12] _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, VI. 32-4.

 [13] _Ibid._, VII. 907. This act was annually renewed. The
      slave duty remained a chief source of revenue down to 1774.
      Cf. _Report of Governor Tryon_, in _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New
      York_, VIII. 452.

 [14] _Laws of New York, 1785-88_ (ed. 1886), ch. 68, p. 121.
      Substantially the same act reappears in the revision of the
      laws of 1788: _Ibid._, ch. 40, p. 676.

 [15] The slave population of New York has been estimated as
      follows:--

      In 1698,   2,170. _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, IV. 420.
       " 1703,   2,258. _N.Y. Col. MSS._, XLVIII.; cited in Hough,
                          _N.Y. Census, 1855_, Introd.
       " 1712,   2,425. _Ibid._, LVII., LIX. (a partial census).
       " 1723,   6,171. _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, V. 702.
       " 1731,   7,743. _Ibid._, V. 929.
       " 1737,   8,941. _Ibid._, VI. 133.
       " 1746,   9,107. _Ibid._, VI. 392.
       " 1749,  10,692. _Ibid._, VI. 550.
       " 1756,  13,548. _London Doc._, XLIV. 123; cited in Hough,
                          as above.
       " 1771,  19,863. _Ibid._, XLIV. 144; cited in Hough, as above.
       " 1774,  21,149. _Ibid._,   "    "     "        "        "
       " 1786,  18,889. _Deeds in office Sec. of State_, XXII. 35.

      Total number of Africans imported from 1701 to 1726, 2,375,
      of whom 802 were from Africa: O'Callaghan, _Documentary
      History of New York_, I. 482.

 [16] Cf. below, Chapter XI.

 [17] _Vermont State Papers, 1779-86_, p. 244. The return of
      sixteen slaves in Vermont, by the first census, was an error:
      _New England Record_, XXIX. 249.

 [18] _Vermont State Papers_, p. 505.

 [19] The following is a summary of the legislation of the
      colony of Pennsylvania and Delaware; details will be found in
      Appendix A:--

      1705, Duty Act: (?).
      1710,   "   "   40_s._ (Disallowed).
      1712,   "   "   £20       "
      1712,   "   "   supplementary to the Act of 1710.
      1715,   "   "   £5 (Disallowed).
      1718,   "   "
      1720,   "   "   (?).
      1722,   "   "   (?).
      1725-6, "   "   £10.
      1726,   "   "
      1729,   "   "   £2.
      1761,   "   "   £10.
      1761,   "   "   (?).
      1768,   "   "   re-enactment of the Act of 1761.
      1773,   "   "   perpetual additional duty of £10; total, £20.
      1775, Bill to prohibit importation vetoed by the governor (Delaware).
      1775, Bill to prohibit importation vetoed by the governor.
      1778, Back duties on slaves ordered collected.
      1780, Act for the gradual abolition of slavery.
      1787, Act to prevent the exportation of slaves (Delaware).
      1788, Act to prevent the slave-trade.

 [20] From fac-simile copy, published at Germantown in 1880.
      Cf. Whittier's poem, "Pennsylvania Hall" (_Poetical Works_,
      Riverside ed., III. 62); and Proud, _History of Pennsylvania_
      (1797), I. 219.

 [21] From fac-simile copy, published at Germantown in 1880.

 [22] Bettle, _Notices of Negro Slavery_, in _Penn. Hist. Soc.
      Mem._ (1864), I. 383.

 [23] Cf. Bettle, _Notices of Negro Slavery, passim_.

 [24] Janney, _History of the Friends_, III. 315-7.

 [25] _Ibid._, III. 317.

 [26] Bettle, in _Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._, I. 395.

 [27] _Penn. Col. Rec._ (1852), II. 530; Bettle, in _Penn.
      Hist. Soc. Mem._, I. 415.

 [28] _Laws of Pennsylvania, collected_, etc., 1714, p. 165;
      Bettle, in _Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._, I. 387.

 [29] See preamble of the act.

 [30] The Pennsylvanians did not allow their laws to reach
      England until long after they were passed: _Penn. Archives_,
      I. 161-2; _Col. Rec._, II. 572-3. These acts were disallowed
      Feb. 20, 1713. Another duty act was passed in 1712,
      supplementary to the Act of 1710 (_Col. Rec._, II. 553). The
      contents are unknown.

 [31] _Acts and Laws of Pennsylvania_, 1715, p. 270; Chalmers,
      _Opinions_, II. 118. Before the disallowance was known, the
      act had been continued by the Act of 1718: Carey and Bioren,
      _Laws of Pennsylvania, 1700-1802_, I. 118; _Penn. Col. Rec._,
      III. 38.

 [32] Carey and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 165; _Penn. Col. Rec._, III.
      171; Bettle, in _Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._, I. 389, note.

 [33] Carey and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 214; Bettle, in _Penn. Hist.
      Soc. Mem._, I. 388. Possibly there were two acts this year.

 [34] _Laws of Pennsylvania_ (ed. 1742), p. 354, ch. 287.
      Possibly some change in the currency made this change appear
      greater than it was.

 [35] Carey and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 371; _Acts of Assembly_ (ed.
      1782), p. 149; Dallas, _Laws_, I. 406, ch. 379. This act was
      renewed in 1768: Carey and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 451; _Penn. Col.
      Rec._, IX. 472, 637, 641.

 [36] _Penn. Col. Rec._, VIII. 576.

 [37] A large petition called for this bill. Much altercation
      ensued with the governor: Dallas, _Laws_, I. 671, ch. 692;
      _Penn. Col. Rec._, X. 77; Bettle, in _Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._,
      I. 388-9.

 [38] Dallas, _Laws_, I. 782, ch. 810.

 [39] _Ibid._, I. 838, ch. 881.

 [40] There exist but few estimates of the number of slaves in
      this colony:--

      In 1721, 2,500-5,000. _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, V. 604.
       " 1754, 11,000. Bancroft, _Hist. of United States_ (1883),
                 II. 391.
       " 1760, very few." Burnaby, _Travels through N. Amer._ (2d ed.),
                 p. 81.
       " 1775, 2,000. _Penn. Archives_, IV 597.

 [41] Dallas, _Laws_, II. 586.

 [42] Cf. _Argonautica Gustaviana_, pp. 21-3; _Del. Hist. Soc.
      Papers_, III. 10; _Hazard's Register_, IV. 221, §§ 23, 24;
      _Hazard's Annals_, p. 372; Armstrong, _Record of Upland
      Court_, pp. 29-30, and notes.

 [43] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., II. 128-9.

 [44] _Ibid._, 5th Ser., I. 1178; _Laws of Delaware, 1797_
      (Newcastle ed.), p. 884, ch. 145 b.

 [45] The following is a summary of the legislation of the
      colony of New Jersey; details will be found in Appendix A:--

        1713,     Duty Act: £10.
        1763 (?), Duty Act.
        1769,      "    "   £15.
        1774,      "    "   £5 on Africans, £10 on colonial Negroes.
        1786,  Importation prohibited.

 [46] Leaming and Spicer, _Grants, Concessions_, etc., p. 398.
      Probably this did not refer to Negroes at all.

 [47] Cf. Vincent, _History of Delaware_, I. 159, 381.

 [48] _Laws and Acts of New Jersey, 1703-17_ (ed. 1717), p. 43.

 [49] _N.J. Archives_, IV. 196. There was much difficulty in
      passing the bill: _Ibid._, XIII. 516-41.

 [50] _Ibid._, IX. 345-6. The exact provisions of the act I
      have not found.

 [51] _Ibid._, IX. 383, 447, 458. Chiefly because the duty was
      laid on the importer.

 [52] Allinson, _Acts of Assembly_, pp. 315-6.

 [53] _N.J. Archives_, VI. 222.

 [54] _Acts of the 10th General Assembly_, May 2, 1786. There
      are two estimates of the number of slaves in this colony:--

         In 1738,   3,981. _American Annals_, II. 127.
         "  1754,   4,606.        "      "         II. 143.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter IV_

THE TRADING COLONIES.

  16. Character of these Colonies.
  17. New England and the Slave-Trade.
  18. Restrictions in New Hampshire.
  19. Restrictions in Massachusetts.
  20. Restrictions in Rhode Island.
  21. Restrictions in Connecticut.
  22. General Character of these Restrictions.


16. ~Character of these Colonies.~ The rigorous climate of New England,
the character of her settlers, and their pronounced political views gave
slavery an even slighter basis here than in the Middle colonies. The
significance of New England in the African slave-trade does not
therefore lie in the fact that she early discountenanced the system of
slavery and stopped importation; but rather in the fact that her
citizens, being the traders of the New World, early took part in the
carrying slave-trade and furnished slaves to the other colonies. An
inquiry, therefore, into the efforts of the New England colonies to
suppress the slave-trade would fall naturally into two parts: first, and
chiefly, an investigation of the efforts to stop the participation of
citizens in the carrying slave-trade; secondly, an examination of the
efforts made to banish the slave-trade from New England soil.


17. ~New England and the Slave-Trade.~ Vessels from Massachusetts,[1]
Rhode Island,[2] Connecticut,[3] and, to a less extent, from New
Hampshire,[4] were early and largely engaged in the carrying
slave-trade. "We know," said Thomas Pemberton in 1795, "that a large
trade to Guinea was carried on for many years by the citizens of
Massachusetts Colony, who were the proprietors of the vessels and their
cargoes, out and home. Some of the slaves purchased in Guinea, and I
suppose the greatest part of them, were sold in the West Indies."[5] Dr.
John Eliot asserted that "it made a considerable branch of our
commerce.... It declined very little till the Revolution."[6] Yet the
trade of this colony was said not to equal that of Rhode Island. Newport
was the mart for slaves offered for sale in the North, and a point of
reshipment for all slaves. It was principally this trade that raised
Newport to her commercial importance in the eighteenth century.[7]
Connecticut, too, was an important slave-trader, sending large numbers
of horses and other commodities to the West Indies in exchange for
slaves, and selling the slaves in other colonies.

This trade formed a perfect circle. Owners of slavers carried slaves to
South Carolina, and brought home naval stores for their ship-building;
or to the West Indies, and brought home molasses; or to other colonies,
and brought home hogsheads. The molasses was made into the highly prized
New England rum, and shipped in these hogsheads to Africa for more
slaves.[8] Thus, the rum-distilling industry indicates to some extent
the activity of New England in the slave-trade. In May, 1752, one
Captain Freeman found so many slavers fitting out that, in spite of the
large importations of molasses, he could get no rum for his vessel.[9]
In Newport alone twenty-two stills were at one time running
continuously;[10] and Massachusetts annually distilled 15,000 hogsheads
of molasses into this "chief manufacture."[11]

Turning now to restrictive measures, we must first note the measures of
the slave-consuming colonies which tended to limit the trade. These
measures, however, came comparatively late, were enforced with varying
degrees of efficiency, and did not seriously affect the slave-trade
before the Revolution. The moral sentiment of New England put some check
upon the trade. Although in earlier times the most respectable people
took ventures in slave-trading voyages, yet there gradually arose a
moral sentiment which tended to make the business somewhat
disreputable.[12] In the line, however, of definite legal enactments to
stop New England citizens from carrying slaves from Africa to any place
in the world, there were, before the Revolution, none. Indeed, not until
the years 1787-1788 was slave-trading in itself an indictable offence in
any New England State.

The particular situation in each colony, and the efforts to restrict the
small importing slave-trade of New England, can best be studied in a
separate view of each community.


18. ~Restrictions in New Hampshire.~ The statistics of slavery in New
Hampshire show how weak an institution it always was in that colony.[13]
Consequently, when the usual instructions were sent to Governor
Wentworth as to the encouragement he must give to the slave-trade, the
House replied: "We have considered his Maj^{ties} Instruction relating
to an Impost on Negroes & Felons, to which this House answers, that
there never was any duties laid on either, by this Goverm^{t}, and so
few bro't in that it would not be worth the Publick notice, so as to
make an act concerning them."[14] This remained true for the whole
history of the colony. Importation was never stopped by actual
enactment, but was eventually declared contrary to the Constitution of
1784.[15] The participation of citizens in the trade appears never to
have been forbidden.


19. ~Restrictions in Massachusetts.~ The early Biblical codes of
Massachusetts confined slavery to "lawfull Captives taken in iust
warres, & such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to
us."[16] The stern Puritanism of early days endeavored to carry this out
literally, and consequently when a certain Captain Smith, about 1640,
attacked an African village and brought some of the unoffending natives
home, he was promptly arrested. Eventually, the General Court ordered
the Negroes sent home at the colony's expense, "conceiving themselues
bound by y^e first oportunity to bear witnes against y^e haynos & crying
sinn of manstealing, as also to P'scribe such timely redresse for what
is past, & such a law for y^e future as may sufficiently deterr all
oth^{r}s belonging to us to have to do in such vile & most odious
courses, iustly abhored of all good & iust men."[17]

The temptation of trade slowly forced the colony from this high moral
ground. New England ships were early found in the West Indian
slave-trade, and the more the carrying trade developed, the more did the
profits of this branch of it attract Puritan captains. By the beginning
of the eighteenth century the slave-trade was openly recognized as
legitimate commerce; cargoes came regularly to Boston, and "The
merchants of Boston quoted negroes, like any other merchandise demanded
by their correspondents."[18] At the same time, the Puritan conscience
began to rebel against the growth of actual slavery on New England soil.
It was a much less violent wrenching of moral ideas of right and wrong
to allow Massachusetts men to carry slaves to South Carolina than to
allow cargoes to come into Boston, and become slaves in Massachusetts.
Early in the eighteenth century, therefore, opposition arose to the
further importation of Negroes, and in 1705 an act "for the Better
Preventing of a Spurious and Mixt Issue," laid a restrictive duty of £4
on all slaves imported.[19] One provision of this act plainly
illustrates the attitude of Massachusetts: like the acts of many of the
New England colonies, it allowed a rebate of the whole duty on
re-exportation. The harbors of New England were thus offered as a free
exchange-mart for slavers. All the duty acts of the Southern and Middle
colonies allowed a rebate of one-half or three-fourths of the duty on
the re-exportation of the slave, thus laying a small tax on even
temporary importation.

The Act of 1705 was evaded, but it was not amended until 1728, when the
penalty for evasion was raised to £100.[20] The act remained in force,
except possibly for one period of four years, until 1749. Meantime the
movement against importation grew. A bill "for preventing the
Importation of Slaves into this Province" was introduced in the
Legislature in 1767, but after strong opposition and disagreement
between House and Council it was dropped.[21] In 1771 the struggle was
renewed. A similar bill passed, but was vetoed by Governor
Hutchinson.[22] The imminent war and the discussions incident to it had
now more and more aroused public opinion, and there were repeated
attempts to gain executive consent to a prohibitory law. In 1774 such a
bill was twice passed, but never received assent.[23]

The new Revolutionary government first met the subject in the case of
two Negroes captured on the high seas, who were advertised for sale at
Salem. A resolution was introduced into the Legislature, directing the
release of the Negroes, and declaring "That the selling and enslaving
the human species is a direct violation of the natural rights alike
vested in all men by their Creator, and utterly inconsistent with the
avowed principles on which this, and the other United States, have
carried their struggle for liberty even to the last appeal." To this the
Council would not consent; and the resolution, as finally passed, merely
forbade the sale or ill-treatment of the Negroes.[24] Committees on the
slavery question were appointed in 1776 and 1777,[25] and although a
letter to Congress on the matter, and a bill for the abolition of
slavery were reported, no decisive action was taken.

All such efforts were finally discontinued, as the system was already
practically extinct in Massachusetts and the custom of importation had
nearly ceased. Slavery was eventually declared by judicial decision to
have been abolished.[26] The first step toward stopping the
participation of Massachusetts citizens in the slave-trade outside the
State was taken in 1785, when a committee of inquiry was appointed by
the Legislature.[27] No act was, however, passed until 1788, when
participation in the trade was prohibited, on pain of £50 forfeit for
every slave and £200 for every ship engaged.[28]


20. ~Restrictions in Rhode Island.~ In 1652 Rhode Island passed a law
designed to prohibit life slavery in the colony. It declared that
"Whereas, there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy
negers, to that end they may have them for service or slaves forever;
for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it be ordered, that
no blacke mankind or white being forced by covenant bond, or otherwise,
to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten yeares, or untill they
come to bee twentie four yeares of age, if they bee taken in under
fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this
Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free, as
the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let
them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere, to that end that they
may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to
the Collonie forty pounds."[29]

This law was for a time enforced,[30] but by the beginning of the
eighteenth century it had either been repealed or become a dead letter;
for the Act of 1708 recognized perpetual slavery, and laid an impost of
£3 on Negroes imported.[31] This duty was really a tax on the transport
trade, and produced a steady income for twenty years.[32] From the year
1700 on, the citizens of this State engaged more and more in the
carrying trade, until Rhode Island became the greatest slave-trader in
America. Although she did not import many slaves for her own use, she
became the clearing-house for the trade of other colonies. Governor
Cranston, as early as 1708, reported that between 1698 and 1708 one
hundred and three vessels were built in the State, all of which were
trading to the West Indies and the Southern colonies.[33] They took out
lumber and brought back molasses, in most cases making a slave voyage in
between. From this, the trade grew. Samuel Hopkins, about 1770, was
shocked at the state of the trade: more than thirty distilleries were
running in the colony, and one hundred and fifty vessels were in the
slave-trade.[34] "Rhode Island," said he, "has been more deeply
interested in the slave-trade, and has enslaved more Africans than any
other colony in New England." Later, in 1787, he wrote: "The inhabitants
of Rhode Island, especially those of Newport, have had by far the
greater share in this traffic, of all these United States. This trade in
human species has been the first wheel of commerce in Newport, on which
every other movement in business has chiefly depended. That town has
been built up, and flourished in times past, at the expense of the
blood, the liberty, and happiness of the poor Africans; and the
inhabitants have lived on this, and by it have gotten most of their
wealth and riches."[35]

The Act of 1708 was poorly enforced. The "good intentions" of its
framers "were wholly frustrated" by the clandestine "hiding and
conveying said negroes out of the town [Newport] into the country, where
they lie concealed."[36] The act was accordingly strengthened by the
Acts of 1712 and 1715, and made to apply to importations by land as well
as by sea.[37] The Act of 1715, however, favored the trade by admitting
African Negroes free of duty. The chaotic state of Rhode Island did not
allow England often to review her legislation; but as soon as the Act of
1712 came to notice it was disallowed, and accordingly repealed in
1732.[38] Whether the Act of 1715 remained, or whether any other duty
act was passed, is not clear.

While the foreign trade was flourishing, the influence of the Friends
and of other causes eventually led to a movement against slavery as a
local institution. Abolition societies multiplied, and in 1770 an
abolition bill was ordered by the Assembly, but it was never passed.[39]
Four years later the city of Providence resolved that "as personal
liberty is an essential part of the natural rights of mankind," the
importation of slaves and the system of slavery should cease in the
colony.[40] This movement finally resulted, in 1774, in an act
"prohibiting the importation of Negroes into this Colony,"--a law which
curiously illustrated the attitude of Rhode Island toward the
slave-trade. The preamble of the act declared: "Whereas, the inhabitants
of America are generally engaged in the preservation of their own rights
and liberties, among which, that of personal freedom must be considered
as the greatest; as those who are desirous of enjoying all the
advantages of liberty themselves, should be willing to extend personal
liberty to others;--Therefore," etc. The statute then proceeded to enact
"that for the future, no negro or mulatto slave shall be brought into
this colony; and in case any slave shall hereafter be brought in, he or
she shall be, and are hereby, rendered immediately free...." The logical
ending of such an act would have been a clause prohibiting the
participation of Rhode Island citizens in the slave-trade. Not only was
such a clause omitted, but the following was inserted instead:
"Provided, also, that nothing in this act shall extend, or be deemed to
extend, to any negro or mulatto slave brought from the coast of Africa,
into the West Indies, on board any vessel belonging to this colony, and
which negro or mulatto slave could not be disposed of in the West
Indies, but shall be brought into this colony. Provided, that the owner
of such negro or mulatto slave give bond ... that such negro or mulatto
slave shall be exported out of the colony, within one year from the date
of such bond; if such negro or mulatto be alive, and in a condition to
be removed."[41]

In 1779 an act to prevent the sale of slaves out of the State was
passed,[42] and in 1784, an act gradually to abolish slavery.[43] Not
until 1787 did an act pass to forbid participation in the slave-trade.
This law laid a penalty of £100 for every slave transported and £1000
for every vessel so engaged.[44]


21. ~Restrictions in Connecticut.~ Connecticut, in common with the other
colonies of this section, had a trade for many years with the West
Indian slave markets; and though this trade was much smaller than that
of the neighboring colonies, yet many of her citizens were engaged in
it. A map of Middletown at the time of the Revolution gives, among one
hundred families, three slave captains and "three notables" designated
as "slave-dealers."[45]

The actual importation was small,[46] and almost entirely unrestricted
before the Revolution, save by a few light, general duty acts. In 1774
the further importation of slaves was prohibited, because "the increase
of slaves in this Colony is injurious to the poor and inconvenient." The
law prohibited importation under any pretext by a penalty of £100 per
slave.[47] This was re-enacted in 1784, and provisions were made for the
abolition of slavery.[48] In 1788 participation in the trade was
forbidden, and the penalty placed at £50 for each slave and £500 for
each ship engaged.[49]


22. ~General Character of these Restrictions.~ Enough has already been
said to show, in the main, the character of the opposition to the
slave-trade in New England. The system of slavery had, on this soil and
amid these surroundings, no economic justification, and the small number
of Negroes here furnished no political arguments against them. The
opposition to the importation was therefore from the first based solely
on moral grounds, with some social arguments. As to the carrying trade,
however, the case was different. Here, too, a feeble moral opposition
was early aroused, but it was swept away by the immense economic
advantages of the slave traffic to a thrifty seafaring community of
traders. This trade no moral suasion, not even the strong "Liberty" cry
of the Revolution, was able wholly to suppress, until the closing of the
West Indian and Southern markets cut off the demand for slaves.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] Cf. Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_,
      II. 449-72; G.H. Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_; Charles
      Deane, _Connection of Massachusetts with Slavery_.

  [2] Cf. _American Historical Record_, I. 311, 338.

  [3] Cf. W.C. Fowler, _Local Law in Massachusetts and
      Connecticut_, etc., pp. 122-6.

  [4] _Ibid._, p. 124.

  [5] Deane, _Letters and Documents relating to Slavery in
      Massachusetts_, in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, 5th Ser., III.
      392.

  [6] _Ibid._, III. 382.

  [7] Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, II.
      454.

  [8] A typical voyage is that of the brigantine "Sanderson" of
      Newport. She was fitted out in March, 1752, and carried,
      beside the captain, two mates and six men, and a cargo of
      8,220 gallons of rum, together with "African" iron, flour,
      pots, tar, sugar, and provisions, shackles, shirts, and water.
      Proceeding to Africa, the captain after some difficulty sold
      his cargo for slaves, and in April, 1753, he is expected in
      Barbadoes, as the consignees write. They also state that
      slaves are selling at £33 to £56 per head in lots. After a
      stormy and dangerous voyage, Captain Lindsay arrived, June 17,
      1753, with fifty-six slaves, "all in helth & fatt." He also
      had 40 oz. of gold dust, and 8 or 9 cwt. of pepper. The net
      proceeds of the sale of all this was £1,324 3_d._ The captain
      then took on board 55 hhd. of molasses and 3 hhd. 27 bbl. of
      sugar, amounting to £911 77_s._ 2½_d._, received bills on
      Liverpool for the balance, and returned in safety to Rhode
      Island. He had done so well that he was immediately given a
      new ship and sent to Africa again. _American Historical
      Record_, I. 315-9, 338-42.

  [9] _Ibid._, I. 316.

 [10] _American Historical Record_, I. 317.

 [11] _Ibid._, I. 344; cf. Weeden, _Economic and Social History
      of New England_, II. 459.

 [12] Cf. _New England Register_, XXXI. 75-6, letter of John
      Saffin _et al._ to Welstead. Cf. also Sewall, _Protest_, etc.

 [13] The number of slaves in New Hampshire has been estimated
      as follows:

        In 1730,    200.   _N.H. Hist. Soc. Coll._, I. 229.
         " 1767,    633.   _Granite Monthly_, IV. 108.
         " 1773,    681.   _Ibid._
         " 1773,    674.   _N.H. Province Papers_, X. 636.
         " 1775,    479.   _Granite Monthly_, IV. 108.
         " 1790,    158.   _Ibid._

 [14] _N.H. Province Papers_, IV. 617.

 [15] _Granite Monthly_, VI. 377; Poore, _Federal and State
      Constitutions_, pp. 1280-1.

 [16] Cf. _The Body of Liberties_, § 91, in Whitmore,
      _Bibliographical Sketch of the Laws of the Massachusetts
      Colony_, published at Boston in 1890.

 [17] _Mass. Col. Rec._, II. 168, 176; III. 46, 49, 84.

 [18] Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_, II.
      456.

 [19] _Mass. Province Laws, 1705-6_, ch. 10.

 [20] _Ibid._, _1728-9_, ch. 16; _1738-9_, ch. 27.

 [21] For petitions of towns, cf. Felt, _Annals of Salem_
      (1849), II. 416; _Boston Town Records, 1758-69_, p. 183. Cf.
      also Otis's anti-slavery speech in 1761; John Adams, _Works_,
      X. 315. For proceedings, see _House Journal_, 1767, pp. 353,
      358, 387, 390, 393, 408, 409-10, 411, 420. Cf. Samuel Dexter's
      answer to Dr. Belknap's inquiry, Feb. 23, 1795, in Deane
      (_Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, 5th Ser., III. 385). A committee on
      slave importation was appointed in 1764. Cf. _House Journal_,
      1763-64, p. 170.

 [22] _House Journal_, 1771, pp. 211, 215, 219, 228, 234, 236,
      240, 242-3; Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 131-2.

 [23] Felt, _Annals of Salem_ (1849), II. 416-7; Swan,
      _Dissuasion to Great Britain_, etc. (1773), p. x; Washburn,
      _Historical Sketches of Leicester, Mass._, pp. 442-3; Freeman,
      _History of Cape Cod_, II. 114; Deane, in _Mass. Hist. Soc.
      Coll._, 5th Ser., III. 432; Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_,
      pp. 135-40; Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_,
      I. 234-6; _House Journal_, March, 1774, pp. 224, 226, 237,
      etc.; June, 1774, pp. 27, 41, etc. For a copy of the bill, see
      Moore.

 [24] _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1855-58_, p. 196; Force,
      _American Archives_, 5th Ser., II. 769; _House Journal_, 1776,
      pp. 105-9; _General Court Records_, March 13, 1776, etc., pp.
      581-9; Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 149-54. Cf.
      Moore, pp. 163-76.

 [25] Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 148-9, 181-5.

 [26] Washburn, _Extinction of Slavery in Massachusetts_;
      Haynes, _Struggle for the Constitution in Massachusetts_; La
      Rochefoucauld, _Travels through the United States_, II. 166.

 [27] Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, p. 225.

 [28] _Perpetual Laws of Massachusetts, 1780-89_, p. 235. The
      number of slaves in Massachusetts has been estimated as
      follows:--

      In 1676,     200. Randolph's _Report_, in _Hutchinson's Coll.
                     of Papers_, p. 485.
      "  1680,     120. Deane, _Connection of Mass. with Slavery_,
                     p. 28 ff.
      "  1708,     550. _Ibid._; Moore, _Slavery in Mass._, p. 50.
      "  1720,   2,000. _Ibid._
      "  1735,   2,600. Deane, _Connection of Mass. with Slavery_,
                     p. 28 ff.
      "  1749,   3,000. _Ibid._
      "  1754,   4,489. _Ibid._
      "  1763,   5,000. _Ibid._
      "  1764-5, 5,779. _Ibid._
      "  1776,   5,249. _Ibid._
      "  1784,   4,377. Moore, _Slavery in Mass._, p. 51.
      "  1786,   4,371. _Ibid._
      "  1790,   6,001. _Ibid._

 [29] _R.I. Col. Rec._, I. 240.

 [30] Cf. letter written in 1681: _New England Register_, XXXI.
      75-6. Cf. also Arnold, _History of Rhode Island_, I. 240.

 [31] The text of this act is lost (_Col. Rec._, IV. 34;
      Arnold, _History of Rhode Island_, II. 31). The Acts of Rhode
      Island were not well preserved, the first being published in
      Boston in 1719. Perhaps other whole acts are lost.

 [32] E.g., it was expended to pave the streets of Newport, to
      build bridges, etc.: _R.I. Col. Rec._, IV. 191-3, 225.

 [33] _Ibid._, IV. 55-60.

 [34] Patten, _Reminiscences of Samuel Hopkins_ (1843), p. 80.

 [35] Hopkins, _Works_ (1854), II. 615.

 [36] Preamble of the Act of 1712.

 [37] _R.I. Col. Rec._, IV. 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3.

 [38] _R.I. Col. Rec._, IV. 471.

 [39] Arnold, _History of Rhode Island_, II. 304, 321, 337. For
      a probable copy of the bill, see _Narragansett Historical
      Register_, II. 299.

 [40] A man dying intestate left slaves, who became thus the
      property of the city; they were freed, and the town made the
      above resolve, May 17, 1774, in town meeting: Staples, _Annals
      of Providence_ (1843), p. 236.

 [41] _R.I. Col. Rec._, VII. 251-2.

 [42] _Bartlett's Index_, p. 329; Arnold, _History of Rhode
      Island_, II. 444; _R.I. Col. Rec._, VIII. 618.

 [43] _R.I. Col. Rec._, X. 7-8; Arnold, _History of Rhode
      Island_, II. 506.

 [44] _Bartlett's Index_, p. 333; _Narragansett Historical
      Register_, II. 298-9. The number of slaves in Rhode Island has
      been estimated as follows:--

      In 1708,    426. _R.I. Col. Rec._, IV. 59.
       " 1730,  1,648. _R.I. Hist. Tracts_, No. 19, pt. 2, p. 99.
       " 1749,  3,077. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_,
                         I. 281.
       " 1756,  4,697. _Ibid._
       " 1774,  3,761. _R.I. Col. Rec._, VII. 253.

 [45] Fowler, _Local Law_, etc., p. 124.

 [46] The number of slaves in Connecticut has been estimated as
      follows:--

      In 1680,     30.  _Conn. Col. Rec._, III. 298.
       " 1730,    700.  Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_,
                          I. 259.
       " 1756,  3,636.  Fowler, _Local Law_, etc., p. 140.
       " 1762,  4,590.  Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_,
                          I. 260.
       " 1774,  6,562.  Fowler, _Local Law_, etc., p. 140.
       " 1782,  6,281.  Fowler, _Local Law_, etc., p. 140.
       " 1800,  5,281.  _Ibid._, p. 141.

 [47] _Conn. Col. Rec._, XIV 329. Fowler (pp. 125-6) says that
      the law was passed in 1769, as does Sanford (p. 252). I find
      no proof of this. There was in Connecticut the same Biblical
      legislation on the trade as in Massachusetts. Cf. _Laws of
      Connecticut_ (repr. 1865), p. 9; also _Col. Rec._, I. 77. For
      general duty acts, see _Col. Rec._, V 405; VIII. 22; IX. 283;
      XIII. 72, 125.

 [48] _Acts and Laws of Connecticut_ (ed. 1784), pp. 233-4.

 [49] _Ibid._, pp. 368, 369, 388.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter V_

THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION. 1774-1787.

  23. The Situation in 1774.
  24. The Condition of the Slave-Trade.
  25. The Slave-Trade and the "Association."
  26. The Action of the Colonies.
  27. The Action of the Continental Congress.
  28. Reception of the Slave-Trade Resolution.
  29. Results of the Resolution.
  30. The Slave-Trade and Public Opinion after the War.
  31. The Action of the Confederation.


23. ~The Situation in 1774.~ In the individual efforts of the various
colonies to suppress the African slave-trade there may be traced certain
general movements. First, from 1638 to 1664, there was a tendency to
take a high moral stand against the traffic. This is illustrated in the
laws of New England, in the plans for the settlement of Delaware and,
later, that of Georgia, and in the protest of the German Friends. The
second period, from about 1664 to 1760, has no general unity, but is
marked by statutes laying duties varying in design from encouragement to
absolute prohibition, by some cases of moral opposition, and by the slow
but steady growth of a spirit unfavorable to the long continuance of the
trade. The last colonial period, from about 1760 to 1787, is one of
pronounced effort to regulate, limit, or totally prohibit the traffic.
Beside these general movements, there are many waves of legislation,
easily distinguishable, which rolled over several or all of the colonies
at various times, such as the series of high duties following the
Assiento, and the acts inspired by various Negro "plots."

Notwithstanding this, the laws of the colonies before 1774 had no
national unity, the peculiar circumstances of each colony determining
its legislation. With the outbreak of the Revolution came unison in
action with regard to the slave-trade, as with regard to other matters,
which may justly be called national. It was, of course, a critical
period,--a period when, in the rapid upheaval of a few years, the
complicated and diverse forces of decades meet, combine, act, and react,
until the resultant seems almost the work of chance. In the settlement
of the fate of slavery and the slave-trade, however, the real crisis
came in the calm that succeeded the storm, in that day when, in the
opinion of most men, the question seemed already settled. And indeed it
needed an exceptionally clear and discerning mind, in 1787, to deny that
slavery and the slave-trade in the United States of America were doomed
to early annihilation. It seemed certainly a legitimate deduction from
the history of the preceding century to conclude that, as the system had
risen, flourished, and fallen in Massachusetts, New York, and
Pennsylvania, and as South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland were
apparently following in the same legislative path, the next generation
would in all probability witness the last throes of the system on our
soil.

To be sure, the problem had its uncertain quantities. The motives of the
law-makers in South Carolina and Pennsylvania were dangerously
different; the century of industrial expansion was slowly dawning and
awakening that vast economic revolution in which American slavery was to
play so prominent and fatal a rôle; and, finally, there were already in
the South faint signs of a changing moral attitude toward slavery, which
would no longer regard the system as a temporary makeshift, but rather
as a permanent though perhaps unfortunate necessity. With regard to the
slave-trade, however, there appeared to be substantial unity of opinion;
and there were, in 1787, few things to indicate that a cargo of five
hundred African slaves would openly be landed in Georgia in 1860.


24. ~The Condition of the Slave-Trade.~ In 1760 England, the chief
slave-trading nation, was sending on an average to Africa 163 ships
annually, with a tonnage of 18,000 tons, carrying exports to the value
of £163,818. Only about twenty of these ships regularly returned to
England. Most of them carried slaves to the West Indies, and returned
laden with sugar and other products. Thus may be formed some idea of the
size and importance of the slave-trade at that time, although for a
complete view we must add to this the trade under the French,
Portuguese, Dutch, and Americans. The trade fell off somewhat toward
1770, but was flourishing again when the Revolution brought a sharp and
serious check upon it, bringing down the number of English slavers,
clearing, from 167 in 1774 to 28 in 1779, and the tonnage from 17,218 to
3,475 tons. After the war the trade gradually recovered, and by 1786 had
reached nearly its former extent. In 1783 the British West Indies
received 16,208 Negroes from Africa, and by 1787 the importation had
increased to 21,023. In this latter year it was estimated that the
British were taking annually from Africa 38,000 slaves; the French,
20,000; the Portuguese, 10,000; the Dutch and Danes, 6,000; a total of
74,000. Manchester alone sent £180,000 annually in goods to Africa in
exchange for Negroes.[1]


25. ~The Slave-Trade and the "Association."~ At the outbreak of the
Revolution six main reasons, some of which were old and of slow growth,
others peculiar to the abnormal situation of that time, led to concerted
action against the slave-trade. The first reason was the economic
failure of slavery in the Middle and Eastern colonies; this gave rise to
the presumption that like failure awaited the institution in the South.
Secondly, the new philosophy of "Freedom" and the "Rights of man," which
formed the corner-stone of the Revolution, made the dullest realize
that, at the very least, the slave-trade and a struggle for "liberty"
were not consistent. Thirdly, the old fear of slave insurrections, which
had long played so prominent a part in legislation, now gained new power
from the imminence of war and from the well-founded fear that the
British might incite servile uprisings. Fourthly, nearly all the
American slave markets were, in 1774-1775, overstocked with slaves, and
consequently many of the strongest partisans of the system were "bulls"
on the market, and desired to raise the value of their slaves by at
least a temporary stoppage of the trade. Fifthly, since the vested
interests of the slave-trading merchants were liable to be swept away by
the opening of hostilities, and since the price of slaves was low,[2]
there was from this quarter little active opposition to a cessation of
the trade for a season. Finally, it was long a favorite belief of the
supporters of the Revolution that, as English exploitation of colonial
resources had caused the quarrel, the best weapon to bring England to
terms was the economic expedient of stopping all commercial intercourse
with her. Since, then, the slave-trade had ever formed an important part
of her colonial traffic, it was one of the first branches of commerce
which occurred to the colonists as especially suited to their ends.[3]

Such were the complicated moral, political, and economic motives which
underlay the first national action against the slave-trade. This action
was taken by the "Association," a union of the colonies entered into to
enforce the policy of stopping commercial intercourse with England. The
movement was not a great moral protest against an iniquitous traffic;
although it had undoubtedly a strong moral backing, it was primarily a
temporary war measure.


26. ~The Action of the Colonies.~ The earlier and largely abortive
attempts to form non-intercourse associations generally did not mention
slaves specifically, although the Virginia House of Burgesses, May 11,
1769, recommended to merchants and traders, among other things, to
agree, "That they will not import any slaves, or purchase any imported
after the first day of November next, until the said acts are
repealed."[4] Later, in 1774, when a Faneuil Hall meeting started the
first successful national attempt at non-intercourse, the slave-trade,
being at the time especially flourishing, received more attention. Even
then slaves were specifically mentioned in the resolutions of but three
States. Rhode Island recommended a stoppage of "all trade with Great
Britain, Ireland, Africa and the West Indies."[5] North Carolina, in
August, 1774, resolved in convention "That we will not import any slave
or slaves, or purchase any slave or slaves, imported or brought into
this Province by others, from any part of the world, after the first day
of _November_ next."[6] Virginia gave the slave-trade especial
prominence, and was in reality the leading spirit to force her views on
the Continental Congress. The county conventions of that colony first
took up the subject. Fairfax County thought "that during our present
difficulties and distress, no slaves ought to be imported," and said:
"We take this opportunity of declaring our most earnest wishes to see an
entire stop forever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural
trade."[7] Prince George and Nansemond Counties resolved "That the
_African_ trade is injurious to this Colony, obstructs the population of
it by freemen, prevents manufacturers and other useful emigrants from
_Europe_ from settling amongst us, and occasions an annual increase of
the balance of trade against this Colony."[8] The Virginia colonial
convention, August, 1774, also declared: "We will neither ourselves
import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person,
after the first day of _November_ next, either from _Africa_, the _West
Indies_, or any other place."[9]

In South Carolina, at the convention July 6, 1774, decided opposition to
the non-importation scheme was manifested, though how much this was due
to the slave-trade interest is not certain. Many of the delegates wished
at least to limit the powers of their representatives, and the
Charleston Chamber of Commerce flatly opposed the plan of an
"Association." Finally, however, delegates with full powers were sent to
Congress. The arguments leading to this step were not in all cases on
the score of patriotism; a Charleston manifesto argued: "The planters
are greatly in arrears to the merchants; a stoppage of importation would
give them all an opportunity to extricate themselves from debt. The
merchants would have time to settle their accounts, and be ready with
the return of liberty to renew trade."[10]


27. ~The Action of the Continental Congress.~ The first Continental
Congress met September 5, 1774, and on September 22 recommended
merchants to send no more orders for foreign goods.[11] On September 27
"Mr. Lee made a motion for a non-importation," and it was unanimously
resolved to import no goods from Great Britain after December 1,
1774.[12] Afterward, Ireland and the West Indies were also included, and
a committee consisting of Low of New York, Mifflin of Pennsylvania, Lee
of Virginia, and Johnson of Connecticut were appointed "to bring in a
Plan for carrying into Effect the Non-importation, Non-consumption, and
Non-exportation resolved on."[13] The next move was to instruct this
committee to include in the proscribed articles, among other things,
"Molasses, Coffee or Piemento from the _British_ Plantations or from
_Dominica_,"--a motion which cut deep into the slave-trade circle of
commerce, and aroused some opposition. "Will, can, the people bear a
total interruption of the West India trade?" asked Low of New York; "Can
they live without rum, sugar, and molasses? Will not this impatience and
vexation defeat the measure?"[14]

The committee finally reported, October 12, 1774, and after three days'
discussion and amendment the proposal passed. This document, after a
recital of grievances, declared that, in the opinion of the colonists, a
non-importation agreement would best secure redress; goods from Great
Britain, Ireland, the East and West Indies, and Dominica were excluded;
and it was resolved that "We will neither import, nor purchase any Slave
imported after the First Day of _December_ next; after which Time, we
will wholly discontinue the Slave Trade, and will neither be concerned
in it ourselves, nor will we hire our Vessels, nor sell our Commodities
or Manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[15]

Strong and straightforward as this resolution was, time unfortunately
proved that it meant very little. Two years later, in this same
Congress, a decided opposition was manifested to branding the
slave-trade as inhuman, and it was thirteen years before South Carolina
stopped the slave-trade or Massachusetts prohibited her citizens from
engaging in it. The passing of so strong a resolution must be explained
by the motives before given, by the character of the drafting
committee, by the desire of America in this crisis to appear well
before the world, and by the natural moral enthusiasm aroused by the
imminence of a great national struggle.


28. ~Reception of the Slave-Trade Resolution.~ The unanimity with which
the colonists received this "Association" is not perhaps as remarkable
as the almost entire absence of comment on the radical slave-trade
clause. A Connecticut town-meeting in December, 1774, noticed "with
singular pleasure ... the second Article of the Association, in which it
is agreed to import no more Negro Slaves."[16] This comment appears to
have been almost the only one. There were in various places some
evidences of disapproval; but only in the State of Georgia was this
widespread and determined, and based mainly on the slave-trade
clause.[17] This opposition delayed the ratification meeting until
January 18, 1775, and then delegates from but five of the twelve
parishes appeared, and many of these had strong instructions against the
approval of the plan. Before this meeting could act, the governor
adjourned it, on the ground that it did not represent the province. Some
of the delegates signed an agreement, one article of which promised to
stop the importation of slaves March 15, 1775, i.e., four months later
than the national "Association" had directed. This was not, of course,
binding on the province; and although a town like Darien might declare
"our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery
in _America_"[18] yet the powerful influence of Savannah was "not likely
soon to give matters a favourable turn. The importers were mostly
against any interruption, and the consumers very much divided."[19] Thus
the efforts of this Assembly failed, their resolutions being almost
unknown, and, as a gentleman writes, "I hope for the honour of the
Province ever will remain so."[20] The delegates to the Continental
Congress selected by this rump assembly refused to take their seats.
Meantime South Carolina stopped trade with Georgia, because it "hath not
acceded to the Continental Association,"[21] and the single Georgia
parish of St. Johns appealed to the second Continental Congress to
except it from the general boycott of the colony. This county had
already resolved not to "purchase any Slave imported at _Savannah_
(large Numbers of which we understand are there expected) till the Sense
of Congress shall be made known to us."[22]

May 17, 1775, Congress resolved unanimously "That all exportations to
_Quebec_, _Nova-Scotia_, the Island of _St. John's_, _Newfoundland_,
_Georgia_, except the Parish of _St. John's_, and to _East_ and _West
Florida_, immediately cease."[23] These measures brought the refractory
colony to terms, and the Provincial Congress, July 4, 1775, finally
adopted the "Association," and resolved, among other things, "That we
will neither import or purchase any Slave imported from Africa, or
elsewhere, after this day."[24]

The non-importation agreement was in the beginning, at least, well
enforced by the voluntary action of the loosely federated nation. The
slave-trade clause seems in most States to have been observed with the
others. In South Carolina "a cargo of near three hundred slaves was sent
out of the Colony by the consignee, as being interdicted by the second
article of the Association."[25] In Virginia the vigilance committee of
Norfolk "hold up for your just indignation Mr. _John Brown_, Merchant,
of this place," who has several times imported slaves from Jamaica; and
he is thus publicly censured "to the end that all such foes to the
rights of _British America_ may be publickly known ... as the enemies of
_American_ Liberty, and that every person may henceforth break off all
dealings with him."[26]


29. ~Results of the Resolution.~ The strain of war at last proved too
much for this voluntary blockade, and after some hesitancy Congress,
April 3, 1776, resolved to allow the importation of articles not the
growth or manufacture of Great Britain, except tea. They also voted
"That no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United
Colonies."[27] This marks a noticeable change of attitude from the
strong words of two years previous: the former was a definitive promise;
this is a temporary resolve, which probably represented public opinion
much better than the former. On the whole, the conclusion is inevitably
forced on the student of this first national movement against the
slave-trade, that its influence on the trade was but temporary and
insignificant, and that at the end of the experiment the outlook for the
final suppression of the trade was little brighter than before. The
whole movement served as a sort of social test of the power and
importance of the slave-trade, which proved to be far more powerful than
the platitudes of many of the Revolutionists had assumed.

The effect of the movement on the slave-trade in general was to begin,
possibly a little earlier than otherwise would have been the case, that
temporary breaking up of the trade which the war naturally caused.
"There was a time, during the late war," says Clarkson, "when the slave
trade may be considered as having been nearly abolished."[28] The prices
of slaves rose correspondingly high, so that smugglers made
fortunes.[29] It is stated that in the years 1772-1778 slave merchants
of Liverpool failed for the sum of £710,000.[30] All this, of course,
might have resulted from the war, without the "Association;" but in the
long run the "Association" aided in frustrating the very designs which
the framers of the first resolve had in mind; for the temporary stoppage
in the end created an extraordinary demand for slaves, and led to a
slave-trade after the war nearly as large as that before.


30. ~The Slave-Trade and Public Opinion after the War.~ The Declaration
of Independence showed a significant drift of public opinion from the
firm stand taken in the "Association" resolutions. The clique of
political philosophers to which Jefferson belonged never imagined the
continued existence of the country with slavery. It is well known that
the first draft of the Declaration contained a severe arraignment of
Great Britain as the real promoter of slavery and the slave-trade in
America. In it the king was charged with waging "cruel war against human
nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in
the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
opprobrium of _infidel_ powers, is the warfare of the _Christian_ king
of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where _men_ should be
bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every
legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.
And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished
die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and
to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the
people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes
committed against the _liberties_ of one people with crimes which he
urges them to commit against the _lives_ of another."[31]

To this radical and not strictly truthful statement, even the large
influence of the Virginia leaders could not gain the assent of the
delegates in Congress. The afflatus of 1774 was rapidly subsiding, and
changing economic conditions had already led many to look forward to a
day when the slave-trade could successfully be reopened. More important
than this, the nation as a whole was even less inclined now than in 1774
to denounce the slave-trade uncompromisingly. Jefferson himself says
that this clause "was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and
Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves,
and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern
brethren also, I believe," said he, "felt a little tender under those
censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet
they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[32]

As the war slowly dragged itself to a close, it became increasingly
evident that a firm moral stand against slavery and the slave-trade was
not a probability. The reaction which naturally follows a period of
prolonged and exhausting strife for high political principles now set
in. The economic forces of the country, which had suffered most, sought
to recover and rearrange themselves; and all the selfish motives that
impelled a bankrupt nation to seek to gain its daily bread did not long
hesitate to demand a reopening of the profitable African slave-trade.
This demand was especially urgent from the fact that the slaves, by
pillage, flight, and actual fighting, had become so reduced in numbers
during the war that an urgent demand for more laborers was felt in the
South.

Nevertheless, the revival of the trade was naturally a matter of some
difficulty, as the West India circuit had been cut off, leaving no
resort except to contraband traffic and the direct African trade. The
English slave-trade after the peace "returned to its former state," and
was by 1784 sending 20,000 slaves annually to the West Indies.[33] Just
how large the trade to the continent was at this time there are few
means of ascertaining; it is certain that there was a general reopening
of the trade in the Carolinas and Georgia, and that the New England
traders participated in it. This traffic undoubtedly reached
considerable proportions; and through the direct African trade and the
illicit West India trade many thousands of Negroes came into the United
States during the years 1783-1787.[34]

Meantime there was slowly arising a significant divergence of opinion on
the subject. Probably the whole country still regarded both slavery and
the slave-trade as temporary; but the Middle States expected to see the
abolition of both within a generation, while the South scarcely thought
it probable to prohibit even the slave-trade in that short time. Such a
difference might, in all probability, have been satisfactorily adjusted,
if both parties had recognized the real gravity of the matter. As it
was, both regarded it as a problem of secondary importance, to be solved
after many other more pressing ones had been disposed of. The
anti-slavery men had seen slavery die in their own communities, and
expected it to die the same way in others, with as little active effort
on their own part. The Southern planters, born and reared in a slave
system, thought that some day the system might change, and possibly
disappear; but active effort to this end on their part was ever farthest
from their thoughts. Here, then, began that fatal policy toward slavery
and the slave-trade that characterized the nation for three-quarters of
a century, the policy of _laissez-faire, laissez-passer_.


31. ~The Action of the Confederation.~ The slave-trade was hardly
touched upon in the Congress of the Confederation, except in the
ordinance respecting the capture of slaves, and on the occasion of the
Quaker petition against the trade, although, during the debate on the
Articles of Confederation, the counting of slaves as well as of freemen
in the apportionment of taxes was urged as a measure that would check
further importation of Negroes. "It is our duty," said Wilson of
Pennsylvania, "to lay every discouragement on the importation of slaves;
but this amendment [i.e., to count two slaves as one freeman] would give
the _jus trium liberorum_ to him who would import slaves."[35] The
matter was finally compromised by apportioning requisitions according to
the value of land and buildings.

After the Articles went into operation, an ordinance in regard to the
recapture of fugitive slaves provided that, if the capture was made on
the sea below high-water mark, and the Negro was not claimed, he should
be freed. Matthews of South Carolina demanded the yeas and nays on this
proposition, with the result that only the vote of his State was
recorded against it.[36]

On Tuesday, October 3, 1783, a deputation from the Yearly Meeting of the
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware Friends asked leave to present a
petition. Leave was granted the following day,[37] but no further minute
appears. According to the report of the Friends, the petition was
against the slave-trade; and "though the Christian rectitude of the
concern was by the Delegates generally acknowledged, yet not being
vested with the powers of legislation, they declined promoting any
public remedy against the gross national iniquity of trafficking in the
persons of fellow-men."[38]

The only legislative activity in regard to the trade during the
Confederation was taken by the individual States.[39] Before 1778
Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia had by law
stopped the further importation of slaves, and importation had
practically ceased in all the New England and Middle States, including
Maryland. In consequence of the revival of the slave-trade after the
War, there was then a lull in State activity until 1786, when North
Carolina laid a prohibitive duty, and South Carolina, a year later,
began her series of temporary prohibitions. In 1787-1788 the New England
States forbade the participation of their citizens in the traffic. It
was this wave of legislation against the traffic which did so much to
blind the nation as to the strong hold which slavery still had on the
country.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] These figures are from the _Report of the Lords of the
      Committee of Council_, etc. (London, 1789).

  [2] Sheffield, _Observations on American Commerce_, p. 28;
      P.L. Ford, _The Association of the First Congress_, in
      _Political Science Quarterly_, VI. 615-7.

  [3] Cf., e.g., Arthur Lee's letter to R.H. Lee, March 18,
      1774, in which non-intercourse is declared "the only advisable
      and sure mode of defence": Force, _American Archives_, 4th
      Ser., I. 229. Cf. also _Ibid._, p. 240; Ford, in _Political
      Science Quarterly_, VI. 614-5.

  [4] Goodloe, _Birth of the Republic_, p. 260.

  [5] Staples, _Annals of Providence_ (1843), p. 235.

  [6] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., I. 735. This was
      probably copied from the Virginia resolve.

  [7] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., I. 600.

  [8] _Ibid._, I. 494, 530. Cf. pp. 523, 616, 641, etc.

  [9] _Ibid._, I. 687.

 [10] _Ibid._, I. 511, 526. Cf. also p. 316.

 [11] _Journals of Cong._, I. 20. Cf. Ford, in _Political
      Science Quarterly_, VI. 615-7.

 [12] John Adams, _Works_, II. 382.

 [13] _Journals of Cong._, I. 21.

 [14] _Ibid._, I. 24; Drayton; _Memoirs of the American
      Revolution_, I. 147; John Adams, _Works_, II. 394.

 [15] _Journals of Cong._, I. 27, 32-8.

 [16] Danbury, Dec. 12, 1774: Force, _American Archives_, 4th
      Ser., I. 1038. This case and that of Georgia are the only ones
      I have found in which the slave-trade clause was specifically
      mentioned.

 [17] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., I. 1033, 1136,
      1160, 1163; II. 279-281, 1544; _Journals of Cong._, May 13,
      15, 17, 1775.

 [18] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., I. 1136.

 [19] _Ibid._, II. 279-81.

 [20] _Ibid._, I. 1160.

 [21] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., I. 1163.

 [22] _Journals of Cong._, May 13, 15, 1775.

 [23] _Ibid._, May 17, 1775.

 [24] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., II. 1545.

 [25] Drayton, _Memoirs of the American Revolution_, I. 182.
      Cf. pp. 181-7; Ramsay, _History of S. Carolina_, I. 231.

 [26] Force, _American Archives_, 4th Ser., II. 33-4.

 [27] _Journals of Cong._, II. 122.

 [28] Clarkson, _Impolicy of the Slave-Trade_, pp. 125-8.

 [29] _Ibid._, pp. 25-6.

 [30] _Ibid._

 [31] Jefferson, _Works_ (Washington, 1853-4), I. 23-4. On the
      Declaration as an anti-slavery document, cf. Elliot, _Debates_
      (1861), I. 89.

 [32] Jefferson, _Works_ (Washington, 1853-4), I. 19.

 [33] Clarkson, _Impolicy of the Slave-Trade_, pp. 25-6;
      _Report_, etc., as above.

 [34] Witness the many high duty acts on slaves, and the
      revenue derived therefrom. Massachusetts had sixty
      distilleries running in 1783. Cf. Sheffield, _Observations on
      American Commerce_, p. 267.

 [35] Elliot, _Debates_, I. 72-3. Cf. Art. 8 of the Articles of
      Confederation.

 [36] _Journals of Cong._, 1781, June 25; July 18; Sept. 21,
      27; Nov. 8, 13, 30; Dec. 4.

 [37] _Ibid._, 1782-3, pp. 418-9, 425.

 [38] _Annals of Cong._, 1 Cong. 2 sess. p. 1183.

 [39] Cf. above, chapters ii., iii., iv.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter VI_

THE FEDERAL CONVENTION. 1787.

  32. The First Proposition.
  33. The General Debate.
  34. The Special Committee and the "Bargain."
  35. The Appeal to the Convention.
  36. Settlement by the Convention.
  37. Reception of the Clause by the Nation.
  38. Attitude of the State Conventions.
  39. Acceptance of the Policy.


32. ~The First Proposition.~ Slavery occupied no prominent place in the
Convention called to remedy the glaring defects of the Confederation,
for the obvious reason that few of the delegates thought it expedient to
touch a delicate subject which, if let alone, bade fair to settle itself
in a manner satisfactory to all. Consequently, neither slavery nor the
slave-trade is specifically mentioned in the delegates' credentials of
any of the States, nor in Randolph's, Pinckney's, or Hamilton's plans,
nor in Paterson's propositions. Indeed, the debate from May 14 to June
19, when the Committee of the Whole reported, touched the subject only
in the matter of the ratio of representation of slaves. With this same
exception, the report of the Committee of the Whole contained no
reference to slavery or the slave-trade, and the twenty-three
resolutions of the Convention referred to the Committee of Detail, July
23 and 26, maintain the same silence.

The latter committee, consisting of Rutledge, Randolph, Gorham,
Ellsworth, and Wilson, reported a draft of the Constitution August 6,
1787. The committee had, in its deliberations, probably made use of a
draft of a national Constitution made by Edmund Randolph.[1] One clause
of this provided that "no State shall lay a duty on imports;" and, also,
"1. No duty on exports. 2. No prohibition on such inhabitants as the
United States think proper to admit. 3. No duties by way of such
prohibition." It does not appear that any reference to Negroes was here
intended. In the extant copy, however, notes in Edward Rutledge's
handwriting change the second clause to "No prohibition on such
inhabitants or people as the several States think proper to admit."[2]
In the report, August 6, these clauses take the following form:--

    "Article VII. Section 4. No tax or duty shall be laid by the
    legislature on articles exported from any state; nor on the
    migration or importation of such persons as the several states
    shall think proper to admit; nor shall such migration or
    importation be prohibited."[3]


33. ~The General Debate.~ This, of course, referred both to immigrants
("migration") and to slaves ("importation").[4] Debate on this section
began Tuesday, August 22, and lasted two days. Luther Martin of Maryland
precipitated the discussion by a proposition to alter the section so as
to allow a prohibition or tax on the importation of slaves. The debate
immediately became general, being carried on principally by Rutledge,
the Pinckneys, and Williamson from the Carolinas; Baldwin of Georgia;
Mason, Madison, and Randolph of Virginia; Wilson and Gouverneur Morris
of Pennsylvania; Dickinson of Delaware; and Ellsworth, Sherman, Gerry,
King, and Langdon of New England.[5]

In this debate the moral arguments were prominent. Colonel George Mason
of Virginia denounced the traffic in slaves as "infernal;" Luther Martin
of Maryland regarded it as "inconsistent with the principles of the
revolution, and dishonorable to the American character." "Every
principle of honor and safety," declared John Dickinson of Delaware,
"demands the exclusion of slaves." Indeed, Mason solemnly averred that
the crime of slavery might yet bring the judgment of God on the nation.
On the other side, Rutledge of South Carolina bluntly declared that
religion and humanity had nothing to do with the question, that it was a
matter of "interest" alone. Gerry of Massachusetts wished merely to
refrain from giving direct sanction to the trade, while others contented
themselves with pointing out the inconsistency of condemning the
slave-trade and defending slavery.

The difficulty of the whole argument, from the moral standpoint, lay in
the fact that it was completely checkmated by the obstinate attitude of
South Carolina and Georgia. Their delegates--Baldwin, the Pinckneys,
Rutledge, and others--asserted flatly, not less than a half-dozen times
during the debate, that these States "can never receive the plan if it
prohibits the slave-trade;" that "if the Convention thought" that these
States would consent to a stoppage of the slave-trade, "the expectation
is vain."[6] By this stand all argument from the moral standpoint was
virtually silenced, for the Convention evidently agreed with Roger
Sherman of Connecticut that "it was better to let the Southern States
import slaves than to part with those States."

In such a dilemma the Convention listened not unwillingly to the _non
possumus_ arguments of the States' Rights advocates. The "morality and
wisdom" of slavery, declared Ellsworth of Connecticut, "are
considerations belonging to the States themselves;" let every State
"import what it pleases;" the Confederation has not "meddled" with the
question, why should the Union? It is a dangerous symptom of
centralization, cried Baldwin of Georgia; the "central States" wish to
be the "vortex for everything," even matters of "a local nature." The
national government, said Gerry of Massachusetts, had nothing to do with
slavery in the States; it had only to refrain from giving direct
sanction to the system. Others opposed this whole argument, declaring,
with Langdon of New Hampshire, that Congress ought to have this power,
since, as Dickinson tartly remarked, "The true question was, whether the
national happiness would be promoted or impeded by the importation; and
this question ought to be left to the national government, not to the
states particularly interested."

Beside these arguments as to the right of the trade and the proper seat
of authority over it, many arguments of general expediency were
introduced. From an economic standpoint, for instance, General C.C.
Pinckney of South Carolina "contended, that the importation of slaves
would be for the interest of the whole Union. The more slaves, the more
produce." Rutledge of the same State declared: "If the Northern States
consult their interest, they will not oppose the increase of slaves,
which will increase the commodities of which they will become the
carriers." This sentiment found a more or less conscious echo in the
words of Ellsworth of Connecticut, "What enriches a part enriches the
whole." It was, moreover, broadly hinted that the zeal of Maryland and
Virginia against the trade had an economic rather than a humanitarian
motive, since they had slaves enough and to spare, and wished to sell
them at a high price to South Carolina and Georgia, who needed more. In
such case restrictions would unjustly discriminate against the latter
States. The argument from history was barely touched upon. Only once was
there an allusion to "the example of all the world" "in all ages" to
justify slavery,[7] and once came the counter declaration that "Greece
and Rome were made unhappy by their slaves."[8] On the other hand, the
military weakness of slavery in the late war led to many arguments on
that score. Luther Martin and George Mason dwelt on the danger of a
servile class in war and insurrection; while Rutledge hotly replied that
he "would readily exempt the other states from the obligation to protect
the Southern against them;" and Ellsworth thought that the very danger
would "become a motive to kind treatment." The desirability of keeping
slavery out of the West was once mentioned as an argument against the
trade: to this all seemed tacitly to agree.[9]

Throughout the debate it is manifest that the Convention had no desire
really to enter upon a general slavery argument. The broader and more
theoretic aspects of the question were but lightly touched upon here and
there. Undoubtedly, most of the members would have much preferred not to
raise the question at all; but, as it was raised, the differences of
opinion were too manifest to be ignored, and the Convention, after its
first perplexity, gradually and perhaps too willingly set itself to work
to find some "middle ground" on which all parties could stand. The way
to this compromise was pointed out by the South. The most radical
pro-slavery arguments always ended with the opinion that "if the
Southern States were let alone, they will probably of themselves stop
importations."[10] To be sure, General Pinckney admitted that,
"candidly, he did not think South Carolina would stop her importations
of slaves in any short time;" nevertheless, the Convention "observed,"
with Roger Sherman, "that the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on
in the United States, and that the good sense of the several states
would probably by degrees complete it." Economic forces were evoked to
eke out moral motives: when the South had its full quota of slaves, like
Virginia it too would abolish the trade; free labor was bound finally to
drive out slave labor. Thus the chorus of "_laissez-faire_" increased;
and compromise seemed at least in sight, when Connecticut cried, "Let
the trade alone!" and Georgia denounced it as an "evil." Some few
discordant notes were heard, as, for instance, when Wilson of
Pennsylvania made the uncomforting remark, "If South Carolina and
Georgia were themselves disposed to get rid of the importation of slaves
in a short time, as had been suggested, they would never refuse to unite
because the importation might be prohibited."

With the spirit of compromise in the air, it was not long before the
general terms were clear. The slavery side was strongly intrenched, and
had a clear and definite demand. The forces of freedom were, on the
contrary, divided by important conflicts of interest, and animated by no
very strong and decided anti-slavery spirit with settled aims. Under
such circumstances, it was easy for the Convention to miss the
opportunity for a really great compromise, and to descend to a scheme
that savored unpleasantly of "log-rolling." The student of the situation
will always have good cause to believe that a more sturdy and definite
anti-slavery stand at this point might have changed history for the
better.


34. ~The Special Committee and the "Bargain."~ Since the debate had, in
the first place, arisen from a proposition to tax the importation of
slaves, the yielding of this point by the South was the first move
toward compromise. To all but the doctrinaires, who shrank from taxing
men as property, the argument that the failure to tax slaves was
equivalent to a bounty, was conclusive. With this point settled,
Randolph voiced the general sentiment, when he declared that he "was for
committing, in order that some middle ground might, if possible, be
found." Finally, Gouverneur Morris discovered the "middle ground," in
his suggestion that the whole subject be committed, "including the
clauses relating to taxes on exports and to a navigation act. These
things," said he, "may form a bargain among the Northern and Southern
States." This was quickly assented to; and sections four and five, on
slave-trade and capitation tax, were committed by a vote of 7 to 3,[11]
and section six, on navigation acts, by a vote of 9 to 2.[12] All three
clauses were referred to the following committee: Langdon of New
Hampshire, King of Massachusetts, Johnson of Connecticut, Livingston of
New Jersey, Clymer of Pennsylvania, Dickinson of Delaware, Martin of
Maryland, Madison of Virginia, Williamson of North Carolina, General
Pinckney of South Carolina, and Baldwin of Georgia.

The fullest account of the proceedings of this committee is given in
Luther Martin's letter to his constituents, and is confirmed in its main
particulars by similar reports of other delegates. Martin writes: "A
committee of _one_ member from each state was chosen by ballot, to take
this part of the system under their consideration, and to endeavor to
agree upon some report which should reconcile those states [i.e., South
Carolina and Georgia]. To this committee also was referred the following
proposition, which had been reported by the committee of detail, viz.:
'No navigation act shall be passed without the assent of two thirds of
the members present in each house'--a proposition which the staple and
commercial states were solicitous to retain, lest their commerce should
be placed too much under the power of the Eastern States, but which
these last States were as anxious to reject. This committee--of which
also I had the honor to be a member--met, and took under their
consideration the subjects committed to them. I found the _Eastern_
States, notwithstanding their _aversion to slavery_, were very willing
to indulge the Southern States at least with a temporary liberty to
prosecute the slave trade, provided the Southern States would, in their
turn, gratify _them_, by laying no restriction on navigation acts; and
after a very little time, the committee, by a great majority, agreed on
a report, by which the general government was to be prohibited from
preventing the importation of slaves for a limited time, and the
restrictive clause relative to navigation acts was to be omitted."[13]

That the "bargain" was soon made is proven by the fact that the
committee reported the very next day, Friday, August 24, and that on
Saturday the report was taken up. It was as follows: "Strike out so much
of the fourth section as was referred to the committee, and insert 'The
migration or importation of such persons as the several states, now
existing, shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the
legislature prior to the year 1800; but a tax or duty may be imposed on
such migration or importation, at a rate not exceeding the average of
the duties laid on imports.' The fifth section to remain as in the
report. The sixth section to be stricken out."[14]


35. ~The Appeal to the Convention.~ The ensuing debate,[15] which lasted
only a part of the day, was evidently a sort of appeal to the House on
the decisions of the committee. It throws light on the points of
disagreement. General Pinckney first proposed to extend the
slave-trading limit to 1808, and Gorham of Massachusetts seconded the
motion. This brought a spirited protest from Madison: "Twenty years will
produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to
import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the American
character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution."[16] There
was, however, evidently another "bargain" here; for, without farther
debate, the South and the East voted the extension, 7 to 4, only New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia objecting. The ambiguous
phraseology of the whole slave-trade section as reported did not pass
without comment; Gouverneur Morris would have it read: "The importation
of slaves into North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, shall not be
prohibited," etc.[17] This emendation was, however, too painfully
truthful for the doctrinaires, and was, amid a score of objections,
withdrawn. The taxation clause also was manifestly too vague for
practical use, and Baldwin of Georgia wished to amend it by inserting
"common impost on articles not enumerated," in lieu of the "average"
duty.[18] This minor point gave rise to considerable argument: Sherman
and Madison deprecated any such recognition of property in man as taxing
would imply; Mason and Gorham argued that the tax restrained the trade;
while King, Langdon, and General Pinckney contented themselves with the
remark that this clause was "the price of the first part." Finally, it
was unanimously agreed to make the duty "not exceeding ten dollars for
each person."[19]

Southern interests now being safe, some Southern members attempted, a
few days later, to annul the "bargain" by restoring the requirement of a
two-thirds vote in navigation acts. Charles Pinckney made the motion, in
an elaborate speech designed to show the conflicting commercial
interests of the States; he declared that "The power of regulating
commerce was a pure concession on the part of the Southern States."[20]
Martin and Williamson of North Carolina, Butler of South Carolina, and
Mason of Virginia defended the proposition, insisting that it would be a
dangerous concession on the part of the South to leave navigation acts
to a mere majority vote. Sherman of Connecticut, Morris of Pennsylvania,
and Spaight of North Carolina declared that the very diversity of
interest was a security. Finally, by a vote of 7 to 4, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia being in the minority, the
Convention refused to consider the motion, and the recommendation of the
committee passed.[21]

When, on September 10, the Convention was discussing the amendment
clause of the Constitution, the ever-alert Rutledge, perceiving that
the results of the laboriously settled "bargain" might be endangered,
declared that he "never could agree to give a power by which the
articles relating to slaves might be altered by the states not
interested in that property."[22] As a result, the clause finally
adopted, September 15, had the proviso: "Provided, that no amendment
which may be made prior to the year 1808 shall in any manner affect the
1st and 4th clauses in the 9th section of the 1st article."[23]


36. ~Settlement by the Convention.~ Thus, the slave-trade article of the
Constitution stood finally as follows:--

    "Article I. Section 9. The Migration or Importation of such
    Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to
    admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year
    one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be
    imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each
    Person."

This settlement of the slavery question brought out distinct differences
of moral attitude toward the institution, and yet differences far from
hopeless. To be sure, the South apologized for slavery, the Middle
States denounced it, and the East could only tolerate it from afar; and
yet all three sections united in considering it a temporary institution,
the corner-stone of which was the slave-trade. No one of them had ever
seen a system of slavery without an active slave-trade; and there were
probably few members of the Convention who did not believe that the
foundations of slavery had been sapped merely by putting the abolition
of the slave-trade in the hands of Congress twenty years hence. Here lay
the danger; for when the North called slavery "temporary," she thought
of twenty or thirty years, while the "temporary" period of the South was
scarcely less than a century. Meantime, for at least a score of years, a
policy of strict _laissez-faire_, so far as the general government was
concerned, was to intervene. Instead of calling the whole moral energy
of the people into action, so as gradually to crush this portentous
evil, the Federal Convention lulled the nation to sleep by a "bargain,"
and left to the vacillating and unripe judgment of the States one of the
most threatening of the social and political ills which they were so
courageously seeking to remedy.


37. ~Reception of the Clause by the Nation.~ When the proposed
Constitution was before the country, the slave-trade article came in for
no small amount of condemnation and apology. In the pamphlets of the day
it was much discussed. One of the points in Mason's "Letter of
Objections" was that "the general legislature is restrained from
prohibiting the further importation of slaves for twenty odd years,
though such importations render the United States weaker, more
vulnerable, and less capable of defence."[24] To this Iredell replied,
through the columns of the _State Gazette_ of North Carolina: "If all
the States had been willing to adopt this regulation [i.e., to prohibit
the slave-trade], I should as an individual most heartily have approved
of it, because even if the importation of slaves in fact rendered us
stronger, less vulnerable and more capable of defence, I should rejoice
in the prohibition of it, as putting an end to a trade which has already
continued too long for the honor and humanity of those concerned in it.
But as it was well known that South Carolina and Georgia thought a
further continuance of such importations useful to them, and would not
perhaps otherwise have agreed to the new constitution, those States
which had been importing till they were satisfied, could not with
decency have insisted upon their relinquishing advantages themselves had
already enjoyed. Our situation makes it necessary to bear the evil as it
is. It will be left to the future legislatures to allow such
importations or not. If any, in violation of their clear conviction of
the injustice of this trade, persist in pursuing it, this is a matter
between God and their own consciences. The interests of humanity will,
however, have gained something by the prohibition of this inhuman trade,
though at a distance of twenty odd years."[25]

"Centinel," representing the Quaker sentiment of Pennsylvania, attacked
the clause in his third letter, published in the _Independent Gazetteer,
or The Chronicle of Freedom_, November 8, 1787: "We are told that the
objects of this article are slaves, and that it is inserted to secure to
the southern states the right of introducing negroes for twenty-one
years to come, against the declared sense of the other states to put an
end to an odious traffic in the human species, which is especially
scandalous and inconsistent in a people, who have asserted their own
liberty by the sword, and which dangerously enfeebles the districts
wherein the laborers are bondsmen. The words, dark and ambiguous, such
as no plain man of common sense would have used, are evidently chosen to
conceal from Europe, that in this enlightened country, the practice of
slavery has its advocates among men in the highest stations. When it is
recollected that no poll tax can be imposed on _five_ negroes, above
what _three_ whites shall be charged; when it is considered, that the
imposts on the consumption of Carolina field negroes must be trifling,
and the excise nothing, it is plain that the proportion of
contributions, which can be expected from the southern states under the
new constitution, will be unequal, and yet they are to be allowed to
enfeeble themselves by the further importation of negroes till the year
1808. Has not the concurrence of the five southern states (in the
convention) to the new system, been purchased too dearly by the
rest?"[26]

Noah Webster's "Examination" (1787) addressed itself to such Quaker
scruples: "But, say the enemies of slavery, negroes may be imported for
twenty-one years. This exception is addressed to the quakers, and a very
pitiful exception it is. The truth is, Congress cannot prohibit the
importation of slaves during that period; but the laws against the
importation into particular states, stand unrepealed. An immediate
abolition of slavery would bring ruin upon the whites, and misery upon
the blacks, in the southern states. The constitution has therefore
wisely left each state to pursue its own measures, with respect to this
article of legislation, during the period of twenty-one years."[27]

The following year the "Examination" of Tench Coxe said: "The temporary
reservation of any particular matter must ever be deemed an admission
that it should be done away. This appears to have been well understood.
In addition to the arguments drawn from liberty, justice and religion,
opinions against this practice [i.e., of slave-trading], founded in
sound policy, have no doubt been urged. Regard was necessarily paid to
the peculiar situation of our southern fellow-citizens; but they, on the
other hand, have not been insensible of the delicate situation of our
national character on this subject."[28]

From quite different motives Southern men defended this section. For
instance, Dr. David Ramsay, a South Carolina member of the Convention,
wrote in his "Address": "It is farther objected, that they have
stipulated for a right to prohibit the importation of negroes after 21
years. On this subject observe, as they are bound to protect us from
domestic violence, they think we ought not to increase our exposure to
that evil, by an unlimited importation of slaves. Though Congress may
forbid the importation of negroes after 21 years, it does not follow
that they will. On the other hand, it is probable that they will not.
The more rice we make, the more business will be for their shipping;
their interest will therefore coincide with ours. Besides, we have other
sources of supply--the importation of the ensuing 20 years, added to the
natural increase of those we already have, and the influx from our
northern neighbours who are desirous of getting rid of their slaves,
will afford a sufficient number for cultivating all the lands in this
state."[29]

Finally, _The Federalist_, No. 41, written by James Madison, commented
as follows: "It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of
prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the
year 1808, or rather, that it had been suffered to have immediate
operation. But it is not difficult to account, either for this
restriction on the General Government, or for the manner in which the
whole clause is expressed. It ought to be considered as a great point
gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate
forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly
upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it
will receive a considerable discouragement from the Federal Government,
and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which
continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has
been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for
the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being
redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!

"Attempts have been made to pervert this clause into an objection
against the Constitution, by representing it on one side as a criminal
toleration of an illicit practice, and on another, as calculated to
prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe to America. I
mention these misconstructions, not with a view to give them an answer,
for they deserve none; but as specimens of the manner and spirit, in
which some have thought fit to conduct their opposition to the proposed
Government."[30]


38. ~Attitude of the State Conventions.~ The records of the proceedings
in the various State conventions are exceedingly meagre. In nearly all
of the few States where records exist there is found some opposition to
the slave-trade clause. The opposition was seldom very pronounced or
bitter; it rather took the form of regret, on the one hand that the
Convention went so far, and on the other hand that it did not go
farther. Probably, however, the Constitution was never in danger of
rejection on account of this clause.

Extracts from a few of the speeches, _pro_ and _con_, in various States
will best illustrate the character of the arguments. In reply to some
objections expressed in the Pennsylvania convention, Wilson said,
December 3, 1787: "I consider this as laying the foundation for
banishing slavery out of this country; and though the period is more
distant than I could wish, yet it will produce the same kind, gradual
change, which was pursued in Pennsylvania."[31] Robert Barnwell declared
in the South Carolina convention, January 17, 1788, that this clause
"particularly pleased" him. "Congress," he said, "has guarantied this
right for that space of time, and at its expiration may continue it as
long as they please. This question then arises--What will their interest
lead them to do? The Eastern States, as the honorable gentleman says,
will become the carriers of America. It will, therefore, certainly be
their interest to encourage exportation to as great an extent as
possible; and if the quantum of our products will be diminished by the
prohibition of negroes, I appeal to the belief of every man, whether he
thinks those very carriers will themselves dam up the sources from
whence their profit is derived. To think so is so contradictory to the
general conduct of mankind, that I am of opinion, that, without we
ourselves put a stop to them, the traffic for negroes will continue
forever."[32]

In Massachusetts, January 30, 1788, General Heath said: "The gentlemen
who have spoken have carried the matter rather too far on both sides. I
apprehend that it is not in our power to do anything for or against
those who are in slavery in the southern States.... Two questions
naturally arise, if we ratify the Constitution: Shall we do anything by
our act to hold the blacks in slavery? or shall we become partakers of
other men's sins? I think neither of them. Each State is sovereign and
independent to a certain degree, and they have a right, and will
regulate their own internal affairs, as to themselves appears
proper."[33] Iredell said, in the North Carolina convention, July 26,
1788: "When the entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an
event which must be pleasing to every generous mind, and every friend of
human nature.... But as it is, this government is nobly distinguished
above others by that very provision."[34]

Of the arguments against the clause, two made in the Massachusetts
convention are typical. The Rev. Mr. Neal said, January 25, 1788, that
"unless his objection [to this clause] was removed, he could not put his
hand to the Constitution."[35] General Thompson exclaimed, "Shall it be
said, that after we have established our own independence and freedom,
we make slaves of others?"[36] Mason, in the Virginia convention, June
15, 1788, said: "As much as I value a union of all the states, I would
not admit the Southern States into the Union unless they agree to the
discontinuance of this disgraceful trade.... Yet they have not secured
us the property of the slaves we have already. So that 'they have done
what they ought not to have done, and have left undone what they ought
to have done.'"[37] Joshua Atherton, who led the opposition in the New
Hampshire convention, said: "The idea that strikes those who are opposed
to this clause so disagreeably and so forcibly is,--hereby it is
conceived (if we ratify the Constitution) that we become _consenters to_
and _partakers in_ the sin and guilt of this abominable traffic, at
least for a certain period, without any positive stipulation that it
shall even then be brought to an end."[38]

In the South Carolina convention Lowndes, January 16, 1788, attacked the
slave-trade clause. "Negroes," said he, "were our wealth, our only
natural resource; yet behold how our kind friends in the north were
determined soon to tie up our hands, and drain us of what we had! The
Eastern States drew their means of subsistence, in a great measure, from
their shipping; and, on that head, they had been particularly careful
not to allow of any burdens.... Why, then, call this a reciprocal
bargain, which took all from one party, to bestow it on the other!"[39]

In spite of this discussion in the different States, only one State,
Rhode Island, went so far as to propose an amendment directing Congress
to "promote and establish such laws and regulations as may effectually
prevent the importation of slaves of every description, into the United
States."[40]


39. ~Acceptance of the Policy.~ As in the Federal Convention, so in the
State conventions, it is noticeable that the compromise was accepted by
the various States from widely different motives.[41] Nevertheless,
these motives were not fixed and unchangeable, and there was still
discernible a certain underlying agreement in the dislike of slavery.
One cannot help thinking that if the devastation of the late war had not
left an extraordinary demand for slaves in the South,--if, for instance,
there had been in 1787 the same plethora in the slave-market as in
1774,--the future history of the country would have been far different.
As it was, the twenty-one years of _laissez-faire_ were confirmed by the
States, and the nation entered upon the constitutional period with the
slave-trade legal in three States,[42] and with a feeling of quiescence
toward it in the rest of the Union.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] Conway, _Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph_, ch. ix.

  [2] Conway, _Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph_, p. 78.

  [3] Elliot, _Debates_, I. 227.

  [4] Cf. Conway, _Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph_, pp.
      78-9.

  [5] For the following debate, Madison's notes (Elliot,
      _Debates_, V. 457 ff.) are mainly followed.

  [6] Cf. Elliot, _Debates_, V, _passim_.

  [7] By Charles Pinckney.

  [8] By John Dickinson.

  [9] Mentioned in the speech of George Mason.

 [10] Charles Pinckney. Baldwin of Georgia said that if the
      State were left to herself, "she may probably put a stop to
      the evil": Elliot, _Debates_, V. 459.

 [11] _Affirmative:_ Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland,
      Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,--7.
      _Negative:_ New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware,--3.
      _Absent:_ Massachusetts,--1.

 [12] _Negative:_ Connecticut and New Jersey.

 [13] Luther Martin's letter, in Elliot, _Debates_, I. 373. Cf.
      explanations of delegates in the South Carolina, North
      Carolina, and other conventions.

 [14] Elliot, _Debates_, V. 471.

 [15] Saturday, Aug. 25, 1787.

 [16] Elliot, _Debates_, V. 477.

 [17] Elliot, _Debates_, V. 477. Dickinson made a similar
      motion, which was disagreed to: _Ibid._

 [18] _Ibid._, V. 478.

 [19] _Ibid._

 [20] Aug. 29: _Ibid._, V. 489.

 [21] _Ibid._, V. 492.

 [22] Elliot, _Debates_, V. 532.

 [23] _Ibid._, I. 317.

 [24] P.L. Ford, _Pamphlets on the Constitution_, p. 331.

 [25] _Ibid._, p. 367.

 [26] McMaster and Stone, _Pennsylvania and the Federal
      Convention_, pp. 599-600. Cf. also p. 773.

 [27] See Ford, _Pamphlets_, etc., p. 54.

 [28] Ford, _Pamphlets_, etc., p. 146.

 [29] "Address to the Freemen of South Carolina on the Subject
      of the Federal Constitution": _Ibid._, p. 378.

 [30] Published in the _New York Packet_, Jan. 22, 1788;
      reprinted in Dawson's _Foederalist_, I. 290-1.

 [31] Elliot, _Debates_, II. 452.

 [32] Elliot, _Debates_, IV. 296-7.

 [33] Published in _Debates of the Massachusetts Convention_,
      1788, p. 217 ff.

 [34] Elliot, _Debates_, IV. 100-1.

 [35] Published in _Debates of the Massachusetts Convention_,
      1788, p. 208.

 [36] _Ibid._

 [37] Elliot, _Debates_, III. 452-3.

 [38] Walker, _Federal Convention of New Hampshire_, App. 113;
      Elliot, Debates, II. 203.

 [39] Elliot, _Debates_, IV. 273.

 [40] Updike's _Minutes_, in Staples, _Rhode Island in the
      Continental Congress_, pp. 657-8, 674-9. Adopted by a majority
      of one in a convention of seventy.

 [41] In five States I have found no mention of the subject
      (Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, and Maryland). In
      the Pennsylvania convention there was considerable debate,
      partially preserved in Elliot's and Lloyd's _Debates_. In the
      Massachusetts convention the debate on this clause occupied a
      part of two or three days, reported in published debates. In
      South Carolina there were several long speeches, reported in
      Elliot's _Debates_. Only three speeches made in the New
      Hampshire convention seem to be extant, and two of these are
      on the slave-trade: cf. Walker and Elliot. The Virginia
      convention discussed the clause to considerable extent: see
      Elliot. The clause does not seem to have been a cause of North
      Carolina's delay in ratification, although it occasioned some
      discussion: see Elliot. In Rhode Island "much debate ensued,"
      and in this State alone was an amendment proposed: see
      Staples, _Rhode Island in the Continental Congress_. In New
      York the Committee of the Whole "proceeded through sections 8,
      9 ... with little or no debate": Elliot, _Debates_, II. 406.

 [42] South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina. North
      Carolina had, however, a prohibitive duty.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter VII_

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE AND ANTI-SLAVERY EFFORT, 1787-1806.

  40. Influence of the Haytian Revolution.
  41. Legislation of the Southern States.
  42. Legislation of the Border States.
  43. Legislation of the Eastern States.
  44. First Debate in Congress, 1789.
  45. Second Debate in Congress, 1790.
  46. The Declaration of Powers, 1790.
  47. The Act of 1794.
  48. The Act of 1800.
  49. The Act of 1803.
  50. State of the Slave-Trade from 1789 to 1803.
  51. The South Carolina Repeal of 1803.
  52. The Louisiana Slave-Trade, 1803-1805.
  53. Last Attempts at Taxation, 1805-1806.
  54. Key-Note of the Period.


40. ~Influence of the Haytian Revolution.~ The rôle which the great
Negro Toussaint, called L'Ouverture, played in the history of the United
States has seldom been fully appreciated. Representing the age of
revolution in America, he rose to leadership through a bloody terror,
which contrived a Negro "problem" for the Western Hemisphere,
intensified and defined the anti-slavery movement, became one of the
causes, and probably the prime one, which led Napoleon to sell Louisiana
for a song, and finally, through the interworking of all these effects,
rendered more certain the final prohibition of the slave-trade by the
United States in 1807.

From the time of the reorganization of the Pennsylvania Abolition
Society, in 1787, anti-slavery sentiment became active. New York, New
Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia had strong
organizations, and a national convention was held in 1794. The terrible
upheaval in the West Indies, beginning in 1791, furnished this rising
movement with an irresistible argument. A wave of horror and fear swept
over the South, which even the powerful slave-traders of Georgia did not
dare withstand; the Middle States saw their worst dreams realized, and
the mercenary trade interests of the East lost control of the New
England conscience.


41. ~Legislation of the Southern States.~ In a few years the growing
sentiment had crystallized into legislation. The Southern States took
immediate measures to close their ports, first against West India
Negroes, finally against all slaves. Georgia, who had had legal slavery
only from 1755, and had since passed no restrictive legislation, felt
compelled in 1793[1] to stop the entry of free Negroes, and in 1798[2]
to prohibit, under heavy penalties, the importation of all slaves. This
provision was placed in the Constitution of the State, and, although
miserably enforced, was never repealed.

South Carolina was the first Southern State in which the exigencies of a
great staple crop rendered the rapid consumption of slaves more
profitable than their proper maintenance. Alternating, therefore,
between a plethora and a dearth of Negroes, she prohibited the
slave-trade only for short periods. In 1788[3] she had forbidden the
trade for five years, and in 1792,[4] being peculiarly exposed to the
West Indian insurrection, she quickly found it "inexpedient" to allow
Negroes "from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place beyond sea"
to enter for two years. This act continued to be extended, although with
lessening penalties, until 1803.[5] The home demand in view of the
probable stoppage of the trade in 1808, the speculative chances of the
new Louisiana Territory trade, and the large already existing illicit
traffic combined in that year to cause the passage of an act, December
17, reopening the African slave-trade, although still carefully
excluding "West India" Negroes.[6] This action profoundly stirred the
Union, aroused anti-slavery sentiment, led to a concerted movement for a
constitutional amendment, and, failing in this, to an irresistible
demand for a national prohibitory act at the earliest constitutional
moment.

North Carolina had repealed her prohibitory duty act in 1790,[7] but in
1794 she passed an "Act to prevent further importation and bringing of
slaves," etc.[8] Even the body-servants of West India immigrants and,
naturally, all free Negroes, were eventually prohibited.[9]


42. ~Legislation of the Border States.~ The Border States, Virginia and
Maryland, strengthened their non-importation laws, Virginia freeing
illegally imported Negroes,[10] and Maryland prohibiting even the
interstate trade.[11] The Middle States took action chiefly in the final
abolition of slavery within their borders, and the prevention of the
fitting out of slaving vessels in their ports. Delaware declared, in her
Act of 1789, that "it is inconsistent with that spirit of general
liberty which pervades the constitution of this state, that vessels
should be fitted out, or equipped, in any of the ports thereof, for the
purpose of receiving and transporting the natives of Africa to places
where they are held in slavery,"[12] and forbade such a practice under
penalty of £500 for each person so engaged. The Pennsylvania Act of
1788[13] had similar provisions, with a penalty of £1000; and New Jersey
followed with an act in 1798.[14]


43. ~Legislation of the Eastern States.~ In the Eastern States, where
slavery as an institution was already nearly defunct, action was aimed
toward stopping the notorious participation of citizens in the
slave-trade outside the State. The prime movers were the Rhode Island
Quakers. Having early secured a law against the traffic in their own
State, they turned their attention to others. Through their
remonstrances Connecticut, in 1788,[15] prohibited participation in the
trade by a fine of £500 on the vessel, £50 on each slave, and loss of
insurance; this act was strengthened in 1792,[16] the year after the
Haytian revolt. Massachusetts, after many fruitless attempts, finally
took advantage of an unusually bold case of kidnapping, and passed a
similar act in 1788.[17] "This," says Belknap, "was the utmost which
could be done by our legislatures; we still have to regret the
impossibility of making a law _here_, which shall restrain our citizens
from carrying on this trade _in foreign bottoms_, and from committing
the crimes which this act prohibits, _in foreign countries_, as it is
said some of them have done since the enacting of these laws."[18]

Thus it is seen how, spurred by the tragedy in the West Indies, the
United States succeeded by State action in prohibiting the slave-trade
from 1798 to 1803, in furthering the cause of abolition, and in
preventing the fitting out of slave-trade expeditions in United States
ports. The country had good cause to congratulate itself. The national
government hastened to supplement State action as far as possible, and
the prophecies of the more sanguine Revolutionary fathers seemed about
to be realized, when the ill-considered act of South Carolina showed the
weakness of the constitutional compromise.


44. ~First Debate in Congress, 1789.~ The attention of the national
government was early directed to slavery and the trade by the rise, in
the first Congress, of the question of taxing slaves imported. During
the debate on the duty bill introduced by Clymer's committee, Parker of
Virginia moved, May 13, 1789, to lay a tax of ten dollars _per capita_
on slaves imported. He plainly stated that the tax was designed to check
the trade, and that he was "sorry that the Constitution prevented
Congress from prohibiting the importation altogether." The proposal was
evidently unwelcome, and caused an extended debate.[19] Smith of South
Carolina wanted to postpone a matter so "big with the most serious
consequences to the State he represented." Roger Sherman of Connecticut
"could not reconcile himself to the insertion of human beings as an
article of duty, among goods, wares, and merchandise." Jackson of
Georgia argued against any restriction, and thought such States as
Virginia "ought to let their neighbors get supplied, before they imposed
such a burden upon the importation." Tucker of South Carolina declared
it "unfair to bring in such an important subject at a time when debate
was almost precluded," and denied the right of Congress to "consider
whether the importation of slaves is proper or not."

Mr. Parker was evidently somewhat abashed by this onslaught of friend
and foe, but he "had ventured to introduce the subject after full
deliberation, and did not like to withdraw it." He desired Congress, "if
possible," to "wipe off the stigma under which America labored." This
brought Jackson of Georgia again to his feet. He believed, in spite of
the "fashion of the day," that the Negroes were better off as slaves
than as freedmen, and that, as the tax was partial, "it would be the
most odious tax Congress could impose." Such sentiments were a distinct
advance in pro-slavery doctrine, and called for a protest from Madison
of Virginia. He thought the discussion proper, denied the partiality of
the tax, and declared that, according to the spirit of the Constitution
and his own desire, it was to be hoped "that, by expressing a national
disapprobation of this trade, we may destroy it, and save ourselves from
reproaches, and our posterity the imbecility ever attendant on a country
filled with slaves." Finally, to Burke of South Carolina, who thought
"the gentlemen were contending for nothing," Madison sharply rejoined,
"If we contend for nothing, the gentlemen who are opposed to us do not
contend for a great deal."

It now became clear that Congress had been whirled into a discussion of
too delicate and lengthy a nature to allow its further prolongation.
Compromising councils prevailed; and it was agreed that the present
proposition should be withdrawn and a separate bill brought in. This
bill was, however, at the next session dexterously postponed "until the
next session of Congress."[20]


45. ~Second Debate in Congress, 1790.~ It is doubtful if Congress of its
own initiative would soon have resurrected the matter, had not a new
anti-slavery weapon appeared in the shape of urgent petitions from
abolition societies. The first petition, presented February 11,
1790,[21] was from the same interstate Yearly Meeting of Friends which
had formerly petitioned the Confederation Congress.[22] They urged
Congress to inquire "whether, notwithstanding such seeming impediments,
it be not in reality within your power to exercise justice and mercy,
which, if adhered to, we cannot doubt, must produce the abolition of the
slave trade," etc. Another Quaker petition from New York was also
presented,[23] and both were about to be referred, when Smith of South
Carolina objected, and precipitated a sharp debate.[24] This debate had
a distinctly different tone from that of the preceding one, and
represents another step in pro-slavery doctrine. The key-note of these
utterances was struck by Stone of Maryland, who "feared that if Congress
took any measures indicative of an intention to interfere with the kind
of property alluded to, it would sink it in value very considerably, and
might be injurious to a great number of the citizens, particularly in
the Southern States. He thought the subject was of general concern, and
that the petitioners had no more right to interfere with it than any
other members of the community. It was an unfortunate circumstance, that
it was the disposition of religious sects to imagine they understood the
rights of human nature better than all the world besides."

In vain did men like Madison disclaim all thought of unconstitutional
"interference," and express only a desire to see "If anything is within
the Federal authority to restrain such violation of the rights of
nations and of mankind, as is supposed to be practised in some parts of
the United States." A storm of disapproval from Southern members met
such sentiments. "The rights of the Southern States ought not to be
threatened," said Burke of South Carolina. "Any extraordinary attention
of Congress to this petition," averred Jackson of Georgia, would put
slave property "in jeopardy," and "evince to the people a disposition
towards a total emancipation." Smith and Tucker of South Carolina
declared that the request asked for "unconstitutional" measures. Gerry
of Massachusetts, Hartley of Pennsylvania, and Lawrence of New York
rather mildly defended the petitioners; but after considerable further
debate the matter was laid on the table.

The very next day, however, the laid ghost walked again in the shape of
another petition from the "Pennsylvania Society for promoting the
Abolition of Slavery," signed by its venerable president, Benjamin
Franklin. This petition asked Congress to "step to the very verge of the
power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the
persons of our fellow-men."[25] Hartley of Pennsylvania called up the
memorial of the preceding day, and it was read a second time and a
motion for commitment made. Plain words now came from Tucker of South
Carolina. "The petition," he said, "contained an unconstitutional
request." The commitment would alarm the South. These petitions were
"mischievous" attempts to imbue the slaves with false hopes. The South
would not submit to a general emancipation without "civil war." The
commitment would "blow the trumpet of sedition in the Southern States,"
echoed his colleague, Burke. The Pennsylvania men spoke just as boldly.
Scott declared the petition constitutional, and was sorry that the
Constitution did not interdict this "most abominable" traffic. "Perhaps,
in our Legislative capacity," he said, "we can go no further than to
impose a duty of ten dollars, but I do not know how far I might go if I
was one of the Judges of the United States, and those people were to
come before me and claim their emancipation; but I am sure I would go as
far as I could." Jackson of Georgia rejoined in true Southern spirit,
boldly defending slavery in the light of religion and history, and
asking if it was "good policy to bring forward a business at this moment
likely to light up the flame of civil discord; for the people of the
Southern States will resist one tyranny as soon as another. The other
parts of the Continent may bear them down by force of arms, but they
will never suffer themselves to be divested of their property without a
struggle. The gentleman says, if he was a Federal Judge, he does not
know to what length he would go in emancipating these people; but I
believe his judgment would be of short duration in Georgia, perhaps even
the existence of such a Judge might be in danger." Baldwin, his
New-England-born colleague, urged moderation by reciting the difficulty
with which the constitutional compromise was reached, and declaring,
"the moment we go to jostle on that ground, I fear we shall feel it
tremble under our feet." Lawrence of New York wanted to commit the
memorials, in order to see how far Congress might constitutionally
interfere. Smith of South Carolina, in a long speech, said that his
constituents entered the Union "from political, not from moral motives,"
and that "we look upon this measure as an attack upon the palladium of
the property of our country." Page of Virginia, although a slave owner,
urged commitment, and Madison again maintained the appropriateness of
the request, and suggested that "regulations might be made in relation
to the introduction of them [i.e., slaves] into the new States to be
formed out of the Western Territory." Even conservative Gerry of
Massachusetts declared, with regard to the whole trade, that the fact
that "we have a right to regulate this business, is as clear as that we
have any rights whatever."

Finally, by a vote of 43 to 11, the memorials were committed, the South
Carolina and Georgia delegations, Bland and Coles of Virginia, Stone of
Maryland, and Sylvester of New York voting in the negative.[26] A
committee, consisting of Foster of New Hampshire, Huntington of
Connecticut, Gerry of Massachusetts, Lawrence of New York, Sinnickson of
New Jersey, Hartley of Pennsylvania, and Parker of Virginia, was charged
with the matter, and reported Friday, March 5. The absence of Southern
members on this committee compelled it to make this report a sort of
official manifesto on the aims of Northern anti-slavery politics. As
such, it was sure to meet with vehement opposition in the House, even
though conservatively worded. Such proved to be the fact when the
committee reported. The onslaught to "negative the whole report" was
prolonged and bitter, the debate _pro_ and _con_ lasting several
days.[27]


46. ~The Declaration of Powers, 1790.~ The result is best seen by
comparing the original report with the report of the Committee of the
Whole, adopted by a vote of 29 to 25 Monday, March 23, 1790:[28]--

      REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE.

      That, from the nature of the matters contained in these
      memorials, they were induced to examine the powers vested in
      Congress, under the present Constitution, relating to the
      Abolition of Slavery, and are clearly of opinion,

      _First._ That the General Government is expressly restrained
      from prohibiting the importation of such persons 'as any of
      the States now existing shall think proper to admit, until the
      year one thousand eight hundred and eight.'

      _Secondly._ That Congress, by a fair construction of the
      Constitution, are equally restrained from interfering in the
      emancipation of slaves, who already are, or who may, within
      the period mentioned, be imported into, or born within, any of
      the said States.

      _Thirdly._ That Congress have no authority to interfere in the
      internal regulations of particular States, relative to the
      instructions of slaves in the principles of morality and
      religion; to their comfortable clothing, accommodations, and
      subsistence; to the regulation of their marriages, and the
      prevention of the violation of the rights thereof, or to the
      separation of children from their parents; to a comfortable
      provision in cases of sickness, age, or infirmity; or to the
      seizure, transportation, or sale of free negroes; but have the
      fullest confidence in the wisdom and humanity of the
      Legislatures of the several States, that they will revise
      their laws from time to time, when necessary, and promote the
      objects mentioned in the memorials, and every other measure
      that may tend to the happiness of slaves.

      _Fourthly._ That, nevertheless, Congress have authority, if
      they shall think it necessary, to lay at any time a tax or
      duty, not exceeding ten dollars for each person of any
      description, the importation of whom shall be by any of the
      States admitted as aforesaid.

      _Fifthly._ That Congress have authority to interdict,[29] or
      (so far as it is or may be carried on by citizens of the
      United States, for supplying foreigners), to regulate the
      African trade, and to make provision for the humane treatment
      of slaves, in all cases while on their passage to the United
      States, or to foreign ports, so far as respects the citizens
      of the United States.

      _Sixthly._ That Congress have also authority to prohibit
      foreigners from fitting out vessels in any port of the United
      States, for transporting persons from Africa to any foreign
      port.

      _Seventhly._ That the memorialists be informed, that in all
      cases to which the authority of Congress extends, they will
      exercise it for the humane objects of the memorialists, so far
      as they can be promoted on the principles of justice,
      humanity, and good policy.

                    *       *       *       *       *

      REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE.

      _First._ That the migration or importation of such persons as
      any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit,
      cannot be prohibited by Congress, prior to the year one
      thousand eight hundred and eight.

      _Secondly._ That Congress have no authority to interfere in
      the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them within
      any of the States; it remaining with the several States alone
      to provide any regulation therein, which humanity and true
      policy may require.

      _Thirdly._ That Congress have authority to restrain the
      citizens of the United States from carrying on the African
      trade, for the purpose of supplying foreigners with slaves,
      and of providing, by proper regulations, for the humane
      treatment, during their passage, of slaves imported by the
      said citizens into the States admitting such importation.

      _Fourthly._ That Congress have authority to prohibit
      foreigners from fitting out vessels in any port of the United
      States for transporting persons from Africa to any foreign
      port.


47. ~The Act of 1794.~ This declaration of the powers of the central
government over the slave-trade bore early fruit in the second Congress,
in the shape of a shower of petitions from abolition societies in
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia.[30] In some of these slavery was denounced as
"an outrageous violation of one of the most essential rights of human
nature,"[31] and the slave-trade as a traffic "degrading to the rights
of man" and "repugnant to reason."[32] Others declared the trade
"injurious to the true commercial interest of a nation,"[33] and asked
Congress that, having taken up the matter, they do all in their power to
limit the trade. Congress was, however, determined to avoid as long as
possible so unpleasant a matter, and, save an angry attempt to censure a
Quaker petitioner,[34] nothing was heard of the slave-trade until the
third Congress.

Meantime, news came from the seas southeast of Carolina and Georgia
which influenced Congress more powerfully than humanitarian arguments
had done. The wild revolt of despised slaves, the rise of a noble black
leader, and the birth of a new nation of Negro freemen frightened the
pro-slavery advocates and armed the anti-slavery agitation. As a result,
a Quaker petition for a law against the transport traffic in slaves was
received without a murmur in 1794,[35] and on March 22 the first
national act against the slave-trade became a law.[36] It was designed
"to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to
any foreign place or country," or the fitting out of slavers in the
United States for that country. The penalties for violation were
forfeiture of the ship, a fine of $1000 for each person engaged, and of
$200 for each slave transported. If the Quakers thought this a triumph
of anti-slavery sentiment, they were quickly undeceived. Congress might
willingly restrain the country from feeding West Indian turbulence, and
yet be furious at a petition like that of 1797,[37] calling attention to
"the oppressed state of our brethren of the African race" in this
country, and to the interstate slave-trade. "Considering the present
extraordinary state of the West India Islands and of Europe," young John
Rutledge insisted "that 'sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,'
and that they ought to shut their door against any thing which had a
tendency to produce the like confusion in this country." After excited
debate and some investigation by a special committee, the petition was
ordered, in both Senate and House, to be withdrawn.


48. ~The Act of 1800.~ In the next Congress, the sixth, another petition
threw the House into paroxysms of slavery debate. Waln of Pennsylvania
presented the petition of certain free colored men of Pennsylvania
praying for a revision of the slave-trade laws and of the fugitive-slave
law, and for prospective emancipation.[38] Waln moved the reference of
this memorial to a committee already appointed on the revision of the
loosely drawn and poorly enforced Act of 1794.[39] Rutledge of South
Carolina immediately arose. He opposed the motion, saying, that these
petitions were continually coming in and stirring up discord; that it
was a good thing the Negroes were in slavery; and that already "too much
of this new-fangled French philosophy of liberty and equality" had found
its way among them. Others defended the right of petition, and declared
that none wished Congress to exceed its powers. Brown of Rhode Island, a
new figure in Congress, a man of distinguished services and from a
well-known family, boldly set forth the commercial philosophy of his
State. "We want money," said he, "we want a navy; we ought therefore to
use the means to obtain it. We ought to go farther than has yet been
proposed, and repeal the bills in question altogether, for why should we
see Great Britain getting all the slave trade to themselves; why may not
our country be enriched by that lucrative traffic? There would not be a
slave the more sold, but we should derive the benefits by importing from
Africa as well as that nation." Waln, in reply, contended that they
should look into "the slave trade, much of which was still carrying on
from Rhode Island, Boston and Pennsylvania." Hill of North Carolina
called the House back from this general discussion to the petition in
question, and, while willing to remedy any existing defect in the Act of
1794, hoped the petition would not be received. Dana of Connecticut
declared that the paper "contained nothing but a farrago of the French
metaphysics of liberty and equality;" and that "it was likely to produce
some of the dreadful scenes of St. Domingo." The next day Rutledge again
warned the House against even discussing the matter, as "very serious,
nay, dreadful effects, must be the inevitable consequence." He held up
the most lurid pictures of the fatuity of the French Convention in
listening to the overtures of the "three emissaries from St. Domingo,"
and thus yielding "one of the finest islands in the world" to "scenes
which had never been practised since the destruction of Carthage." "But,
sir," he continued, "we have lived to see these dreadful scenes. These
horrid effects have succeeded what was conceived once to be trifling.
Most important consequences may be the result, although gentlemen little
apprehend it. But we know the situation of things there, although they
do not, and knowing we deprecate it. There have been emissaries amongst
us in the Southern States; they have begun their war upon us; an actual
organization has commenced; we have had them meeting in their club
rooms, and debating on that subject.... Sir, I do believe that persons
have been sent from France to feel the pulse of this country, to know
whether these [i.e., the Negroes] are the proper engines to make use of:
these people have been talked to; they have been tampered with, and this
is going on."

Finally, after censuring certain parts of this Negro petition, Congress
committed the part on the slave-trade to the committee already
appointed. Meantime, the Senate sent down a bill to amend the Act of
1794, and the House took this bill under consideration.[40] Prolonged
debate ensued. Brown of Rhode Island again made a most elaborate plea
for throwing open the foreign slave-trade. Negroes, he said, bettered
their condition by being enslaved, and thus it was morally wrong and
commercially indefensible to impose "a heavy fine and imprisonment ...
for carrying on a trade so advantageous;" or, if the trade must be
stopped, then equalize the matter and abolish slavery too. Nichols of
Virginia thought that surely the gentlemen would not advise the
importation of more Negroes; for while it "was a fact, to be sure," that
they would thus improve their condition, "would it be policy so to do?"
Bayard of Delaware said that "a more dishonorable item of revenue" than
that derived from the slave-trade "could not be established." Rutledge
opposed the new bill as defective and impracticable: the former act, he
said, was enough; the States had stopped the trade, and in addition the
United States had sought to placate philanthropists by stopping the use
of our ships in the trade. "This was going very far indeed." New England
first began the trade, and why not let them enjoy its profits now as
well as the English? The trade could not be stopped.

The bill was eventually recommitted and reported again.[41] "On the
question for its passing, a long and warm debate ensued," and several
attempts to postpone it were made; it finally passed, however, only
Brown of Rhode Island, Dent of Maryland, Rutledge and Huger of South
Carolina, and Dickson of North Carolina voting against it, and 67 voting
for it.[42] This Act of May 10, 1800,[43] greatly strengthened the Act
of 1794. The earlier act had prohibited citizens from equipping slavers
for the foreign trade; but this went so far as to forbid them having any
interest, direct or indirect, in such voyages, or serving on board
slave-ships in any capacity. Imprisonment for two years was added to the
former fine of $2000, and United States commissioned ships were directed
to capture such slavers as prizes. The slaves though forfeited by the
owner, were not to go to the captor; and the act omitted to say what
disposition should be made of them.


49. ~The Act of 1803.~ The Haytian revolt, having been among the main
causes of two laws, soon was the direct instigation to a third. The
frightened feeling in the South, when freedmen from the West Indies
began to arrive in various ports, may well be imagined. On January 17,
1803, the town of Wilmington, North Carolina, hastily memorialized
Congress, stating the arrival of certain freed Negroes from Guadeloupe,
and apprehending "much danger to the peace and safety of the people of
the Southern States of the Union" from the "admission of persons of that
description into the United States."[44] The House committee which
considered this petition hastened to agree "That the system of policy
stated in the said memorial to exist, and to be now pursued in the
French colonial government, of the West Indies, is fraught with danger
to the peace and safety of the United States. That the fact stated to
have occurred in the prosecution of that system of policy, demands the
prompt interference of the Government of the United States, as well
Legislative as Executive."[45] The result was a bill providing for the
forfeiture of any ship which should bring into States prohibiting the
same "any negro, mulatto, or other person of color;" the captain of the
ship was also to be punished. After some opposition[46] the bill became
a law, February 28, 1803.[47]


50. ~State of the Slave-Trade from 1789 to 1803.~ Meantime, in spite of
the prohibitory State laws, the African slave-trade to the United States
continued to flourish. It was notorious that New England traders carried
on a large traffic.[48] Members stated on the floor of the House that
"it was much to be regretted that the severe and pointed statute against
the slave trade had been so little regarded. In defiance of its
forbiddance and its penalties, it was well known that citizens and
vessels of the United States were still engaged in that traffic.... In
various parts of the nation, outfits were made for slave-voyages,
without secrecy, shame, or apprehension.... Countenanced by their
fellow-citizens at home, who were as ready to buy as they themselves
were to collect and to bring to market, they approached our Southern
harbors and inlets, and clandestinely disembarked the sooty offspring of
the Eastern, upon the ill fated soil of the Western hemisphere. In this
way, it had been computed that, during the last twelve months, twenty
thousand enslaved negroes had been transported from Guinea, and, by
smuggling, added to the plantation stock of Georgia and South Carolina.
So little respect seems to have been paid to the existing prohibitory
statute, that it may almost be considered as disregarded by common
consent."[49]

These voyages were generally made under the flag of a foreign nation,
and often the vessel was sold in a foreign port to escape confiscation.
South Carolina's own Congressman confessed that although the State had
prohibited the trade since 1788, she "was unable to enforce" her laws.
"With navigable rivers running into the heart of it," said he, "it was
impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in
some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General
Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into
the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or
two [1802-3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers
little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been
a legal one."[50] The same tale undoubtedly might have been told of
Georgia.


51. ~The South Carolina Repeal of 1803.~ This vast and apparently
irrepressible illicit traffic was one of three causes which led South
Carolina, December 17, 1803, to throw aside all pretence and legalize
her growing slave-trade; the other two causes were the growing certainty
of total prohibition of the traffic in 1808, and the recent purchase of
Louisiana by the United States, with its vast prospective demand for
slave labor. Such a combination of advantages, which meant fortunes to
planters and Charleston slave-merchants, could not longer be withheld
from them; the prohibition was repealed, and the United States became
again, for the first time in at least five years, a legal slave mart.
This action shocked the nation, frightening Southern States with visions
of an influx of untrained barbarians and servile insurrections, and
arousing and intensifying the anti-slavery feeling of the North, which
had long since come to think of the trade, so far as legal enactment
went, as a thing of the past.

Scarcely a month after this repeal, Bard of Pennsylvania solemnly
addressed Congress on the matter. "For many reasons," said he, "this
House must have been justly surprised by a recent measure of one of the
Southern States. The impressions, however, which that measure gave my
mind, were deep and painful. Had I been informed that some formidable
foreign Power had invaded our country, I would not, I ought not, be more
alarmed than on hearing that South Carolina had repealed her law
prohibiting the importation of slaves.... Our hands are tied, and we are
obliged to stand confounded, while we see the flood-gate opened, and
pouring incalculable miseries into our country."[51] He then moved, as
the utmost legal measure, a tax of ten dollars per head on slaves
imported.

Debate on this proposition did not occur until February 14, when Lowndes
explained the circumstances of the repeal, and a long controversy took
place.[52] Those in favor of the tax argued that the trade was wrong,
and that the tax would serve as some slight check; the tax was not
inequitable, for if a State did not wish to bear it she had only to
prohibit the trade; the tax would add to the revenue, and be at the same
time a moral protest against an unjust and dangerous traffic. Against
this it was argued that if the tax furnished a revenue it would defeat
its own object, and make prohibition more difficult in 1808; it was
inequitable, because it was aimed against one State, and would fall
exclusively on agriculture; it would give national sanction to the
trade; it would look "like an attempt in the General Government to
correct a State for the undisputed exercise of its constitutional
powers;" the revenue would be inconsiderable, and the United States had
nothing to do with the moral principle; while a prohibitory tax would be
defensible, a small tax like this would be useless as a protection and
criminal as a revenue measure.

The whole debate hinged on the expediency of the measure, few defending
South Carolina's action.[53] Finally, a bill was ordered to be brought
in, which was done on the 17th.[54] Another long debate took place,
covering substantially the same ground. It was several times hinted that
if the matter were dropped South Carolina might again prohibit the
trade. This, and the vehement opposition, at last resulted in the
postponement of the bill, and it was not heard from again during the
session.


52. ~The Louisiana Slave-Trade, 1803-1805.~ About this time the cession
of Louisiana brought before Congress the question of the status of
slavery and the slave-trade in the Territories. Twice or thrice before
had the subject called for attention. The first time was in the Congress
of the Confederation, when, by the Ordinance of 1787,[55] both slavery
and the slave-trade were excluded from the Northwest Territory. In 1790
Congress had accepted the cession of North Carolina back lands on the
express condition that slavery there be undisturbed.[56] Nothing had
been said as to slavery in the South Carolina cession (1787),[57] but it
was tacitly understood that the provision of the Northwest Ordinance
would not be applied. In 1798 the bill introduced for the cession of
Mississippi contained a specific declaration that the anti-slavery
clause of 1787 should not be included.[58] The bill passed the Senate,
but caused long and excited debate in the House.[59] It was argued, on
the one hand, that the case in Mississippi was different from that in
the Northwest Territory, because slavery was a legal institution in all
the surrounding country, and to prohibit the institution was virtually
to prohibit the settling of the country. On the other hand, Gallatin
declared that if this amendment should not obtain, "he knew not how
slaves could be prevented from being introduced by way of New Orleans,
by persons who are not citizens of the United States." It was moved to
strike out the excepting clause; but the motion received only twelve
votes,--an apparent indication that Congress either did not appreciate
the great precedent it was establishing, or was reprehensibly careless.
Harper of South Carolina then succeeded in building up the Charleston
slave-trade interest by a section forbidding the slave traffic from
"without the limits of the United States." Thatcher moved to strike out
the last clause of this amendment, and thus to prohibit the interstate
trade, but he failed to get a second.[60] Thus the act passed, punishing
the introduction of slaves from without the country by a fine of $300
for each slave, and freeing the slave.[61]

In 1804 President Jefferson communicated papers to Congress on the
status of slavery and the slave-trade in Louisiana.[62] The Spanish had
allowed the traffic by edict in 1793, France had not stopped it, and
Governor Claiborne had refrained from interference. A bill erecting a
territorial government was already pending.[63] The Northern "District
of Louisiana" was placed under the jurisdiction of Indiana Territory,
and was made subject to the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787. Various
attempts were made to amend the part of the bill referring to the
Southern Territory: first, so as completely to prohibit the
slave-trade;[64] then to compel the emancipation at a certain age of all
those imported;[65] next, to confine all importation to that from the
States;[66] and, finally, to limit it further to slaves imported before
South Carolina opened her ports.[67] The last two amendments prevailed,
and the final act also extended to the Territory the Acts of 1794 and
1803. Only slaves imported before May 1, 1798, could be introduced, and
those must be slaves of actual settlers.[68] All slaves illegally
imported were freed.

This stringent act was limited to one year. The next year, in accordance
with the urgent petition of the inhabitants, a bill was introduced
against these restrictions.[69] By dexterous wording, this bill, which
became a law March 2, 1805,[70] swept away all restrictions upon the
slave-trade except that relating to foreign ports, and left even this
provision so ambiguous that, later, by judicial interpretation of the
law,[71] the foreign slave-trade was allowed, at least for a time.

Such a stream of slaves now poured into the new Territory that the
following year a committee on the matter was appointed by the House.[72]
The committee reported that they "are in possession of the fact, that
African slaves, lately imported into Charleston, have been thence
conveyed into the territory of Orleans, and, in their opinion, this
practice will be continued to a very great extent, while there is no law
to prevent it."[73] The House ordered a bill checking this to be
prepared; and such a bill was reported, but was soon dropped.[74]
Importations into South Carolina during this time reached enormous
proportions. Senator Smith of that State declared from official returns
that, between 1803 and 1807, 39,075 Negroes were imported into
Charleston, most of whom went to the Territories.[75]


53. ~Last Attempts at Taxation, 1805-1806.~ So alarming did the trade
become that North Carolina passed a resolution in December, 1804,[76]
proposing that the States give Congress power to prohibit the trade.
Massachusetts,[77] Vermont,[78] New Hampshire,[79] and Maryland[80]
responded; and a joint resolution was introduced in the House, proposing
as an amendment to the Constitution "That the Congress of the United
States shall have power to prevent the further importation of slaves
into the United States and the Territories thereof."[81] Nothing came
of this effort; but meantime the project of taxation was revived. A
motion to this effect, made in February, 1805, was referred to a
Committee of the Whole, but was not discussed. Early in the first
session of the ninth Congress the motion of 1805 was renewed; and
although again postponed on the assurance that South Carolina was about
to stop the trade,[82] it finally came up for debate January 20,
1806.[83] Then occurred a most stubborn legislative battle, which lasted
during the whole session.[84] Several amendments to the motion were
first introduced, so as to make it apply to all immigrants, and again to
all "persons of color." As in the former debate, it was proposed to
substitute a resolution of censure on South Carolina. All these
amendments were lost. A long debate on the expediency of the measure
followed, on the old grounds. Early of Georgia dwelt especially on the
double taxation it would impose on Georgia; others estimated that a
revenue of one hundred thousand dollars might be derived from the tax, a
sum sufficient to replace the tax on pepper and medicines. Angry charges
and counter-charges were made,--e.g., that Georgia, though ashamed
openly to avow the trade, participated in it as well as South Carolina.
"Some recriminations ensued between several members, on the
participation of the traders of some of the New England States in
carrying on the slave trade." Finally, January 22, by a vote of 90 to
25, a tax bill was ordered to be brought in.[85] One was reported on the
27th.[86] Every sort of opposition was resorted to. On the one hand,
attempts were made to amend it so as to prohibit importation after 1807,
and to prevent importation into the Territories; on the other hand,
attempts were made to recommit and postpone the measure. It finally got
a third reading, but was recommitted to a select committee, and
disappeared until February 14.[87] Being then amended so as to provide
for the forfeiture of smuggled cargoes, but saying nothing as to the
disposition of the slaves, it was again relegated to a committee, after
a vote of 69 to 42 against postponement.[88] On March 4 it appeared
again, and a motion to reject it was lost. Finally, in the midst of the
war scare and the question of non-importation of British goods, the bill
was apparently forgotten, and the last attempt to tax imported slaves
ended, like the others, in failure.


54. ~Key-Note of the Period.~ One of the last acts of this period
strikes again the key-note which sounded throughout the whole of it. On
February 20, 1806, after considerable opposition, a bill to prohibit
trade with San Domingo passed the Senate.[89] In the House it was
charged by one side that the measure was dictated by France, and by the
other, that it originated in the fear of countenancing Negro
insurrection. The bill, however, became a law, and by continuations
remained on the statute-books until 1809. Even at that distance the
nightmare of the Haytian insurrection continued to haunt the South, and
a proposal to reopen trade with the island caused wild John Randolph to
point out the "dreadful evil" of a "direct trade betwixt the town of
Charleston and the ports of the island of St. Domingo."[90]

Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they
were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression
of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy
united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade;
then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and
the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the
many.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] Prince, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 786; Marbury
      and Crawford, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, pp. 440, 442.
      The exact text of this act appears not to be extant. Section
      I. is stated to have been "re-enacted by the constitution."
      Possibly this act prohibited slaves also, although this is not
      certain. Georgia passed several regulative acts between 1755
      and 1793. Cf. Renne, _Colonial Acts of Georgia_, pp. 73-4,
      164, note.

  [2] Marbury and Crawford, _Digest_, p. 30, § 11. The clause
      was penned by Peter J. Carnes of Jefferson. Cf. W.B. Stevens,
      _History of Georgia_ (1847), II. 501.

  [3] Grimké, _Public Laws_, p. 466.

  [4] Cooper and McCord, _Statutes_, VII. 431.

  [5] _Ibid._, VII. 433-6, 444, 447.

  [6] _Ibid._, VII. 449.

  [7] Martin, _Iredell's Acts of Assembly_, I. 492.

  [8] _Ibid._, II. 53.

  [9] Cf. _Ibid._, II. 94; _Laws of North Carolina_ (revision of
      1819), I. 786.

 [10] Virginia codified her whole slave legislation in 1792
      (_Va. Statutes at Large_, New Ser., I. 122), and amended her
      laws in 1798 and 1806 (_Ibid._, III. 251).

 [11] Dorsey, _Laws of Maryland, 1796_, I. 334.

 [12] _Laws of Delaware, 1797_ (Newcastle ed.), p. 942, ch. 194 b.

 [13] Dallas, _Laws_, II. 586.

 [14] Paterson, _Digest of the Laws of New Jersey_ (1800), pp.
      307-13. In 1804 New Jersey passed an act gradually to abolish
      slavery. The legislation of New York at this period was
      confined to regulating the exportation of slave criminals
      (1790), and to passing an act gradually abolishing slavery
      (1799). In 1801 she codified all her acts.

 [15] _Acts and Laws of Connecticut_ (ed. 1784), pp. 368, 369, 388.

 [16] _Ibid._, p. 412.

 [17] _Perpetual Laws of Massachusetts, 1780-89_, pp. 235-6.

 [18] _Queries Respecting Slavery_, etc., in _Mass. Hist. Soc.
      Coll._, 1st Ser., IV. 205.

 [19] _Annals of Cong._, 1 Cong, 1 sess. pp. 336-41.

 [20] _Annals of Cong._, 1 Cong. 1 sess. p. 903.

 [21] _Ibid._, 1 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1182-3.

 [22] _Journals of Cong., 1782-3_, pp. 418-9. Cf. above, pp.
      56-57.

 [23] _Annals of Cong._, 1 Cong. 2 sess. p. 1184.

 [24] _Ibid._, pp. 1182-91.

 [25] _Annals of Cong._, 1 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1197-1205.

 [26] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 1 Cong. 2 sess. I. 157-8.

 [27] _Annals of Cong._, I Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1413-7.

 [28] For the reports and debates, cf. _Annals of Cong._, 1
      Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1413-7, 1450-74; _House Journal_ (repr.
      1826), 1 Cong. 2 sess. I. 168-81.

 [29] A clerical error in the original: "interdict" and
      "regulate" should be interchanged.

 [30] See _Memorials presented to Congress_, etc. (1792),
      published by the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.

 [31] From the Virginia petition.

 [32] From the petition of Baltimore and other Maryland
      societies.

 [33] From the Providence Abolition Society's petition.

 [34] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 2 Cong. 2 sess. I. 627-9;
      _Annals of Cong._, 2 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 728-31.

 [35] _Annals of Cong._, 3 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 64, 70, 72; _House
      Journal_ (repr. 1826), 3 Cong. 1 sess. II. 76, 84-5, 96-100;
      _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1820), 3 Cong. 1 sess. II. 51.

 [36] _Statutes at Large_, I. 347-9.

 [37] _Annals of Cong._, 5 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 656-70, 945-1033.

 [38] _Annals of Cong._, 6 Cong. 1 sess. p. 229.

 [39] Dec. 12, 1799: _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 6 Cong. 1
      sess. III. 535. For the debate, see _Annals of Cong._, 6 Cong.
      1 sess. pp. 230-45.

 [40] _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1821), 6 Cong. 1 sess. III. 72,
      77, 88, 92; see _Ibid._, Index, Bill No. 62; _House Journal_
      (repr. 1826), 6 Cong. 1 sess. III., Index, House Bill No. 247.
      For the debate, see _Annals of Cong._, 6 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
      686-700.

 [41] _Annals of Cong._, 6 Cong. 1 sess. p. 697.

 [42] _Ibid._, p. 699-700.

 [43] _Statutes at Large_, II. 70.

 [44] _Annals of Cong._, 7 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 385-6.

 [45] _Ibid._, p. 424.

 [46] See House Bills Nos. 89 and 101; _Annals of Cong._, 7
      Cong. 2 sess. pp. 424, 459-67. For the debate, see _Ibid._,
      pp. 459-72.

 [47] _Statutes at Large_, II. 205.

 [48] Cf. Fowler, _Local Law in Massachusetts and Connecticut_,
      etc., p. 126.

 [49] Speech of S.L. Mitchell of New York, Feb. 14, 1804:
      _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1000. Cf. also speech of
      Bedinger: _Ibid._, pp. 997-8.

 [50] Speech of Lowndes in the House, Feb. 14, 1804: _Annals of
      Cong._, 8 Cong., 1 sess. p. 992. Cf. Stanton's speech later:
      _Ibid._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. p. 240.

 [51] _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 820, 876.

 [52] _Ibid._, pp. 992-1036.

 [53] Huger of South Carolina declared that the whole South
      Carolina Congressional delegation opposed the repeal of the
      law, although they maintained the State's right to do so if
      she chose: _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1005.

 [54] _Ibid._, pp. 1020-36; _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 8
      Cong. 1 sess. IV 523, 578, 580, 581-5.

 [55] On slavery in the Territories, cf. Welling, in _Report
      Amer. Hist. Assoc._, 1891, pp. 133-60.

 [56] _Statutes at Large_, I. 108.

 [57] _Journals of Cong._, XII. 137-8.

 [58] _Annals of Cong._, 5 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 511, 515, 532-3.

 [59] _Ibid._, 5 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1235, 1249, 1277-84,
      1296-1313.

 [60] _Annals of Cong._, 5 Cong. 2 sess. p. 1313.

 [61] _Statutes at Large_, I. 549.

 [62] _Amer. State Papers, Miscellaneous_, I. No. 177.

 [63] _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 106, 211, 223,
      231, 233-4, 238.

 [64] _Ibid._, pp. 240, 1186.

 [65] _Ibid._, p. 241.

 [66] _Ibid._, p. 240.

 [67] _Ibid._, p. 242.

 [68] For further proceedings, see _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 1
      sess. pp. 240-55, 1038-79, 1128-9, 1185-9. For the law, see
      _Statutes at Large_, II. 283-9.

 [69] First, a bill was introduced applying the Northwest
      Ordinance to the Territory (_Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 2 sess.
      pp. 45-6); but this was replaced by a Senate bill (_Ibid._, p.
      68; _Senate Journal_, repr. 1821, 8 Cong. 2 sess. III. 464).
      For the petition of the inhabitants, see _Annals of Cong._, 8
      Cong. 2 sess. p. 727-8.

 [70] The bill was hurried through, and there are no records of
      debate. Cf. _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 28-69, 727,
      871, 957, 1016-20, 1213-5. In _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1821),
      III., see Index, Bill No. 8. Importation of slaves was allowed
      by a clause erecting a Frame of Government "similar" to that
      of the Mississippi Territory.

 [71] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. p. 443. The whole
      trade was practically foreign, for the slavers merely entered
      the Negroes at Charleston and immediately reshipped them to
      New Orleans. Cf. _Annals of Cong._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. p. 264.

 [72] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 1 sess. V. 264;
      _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 445, 878.

 [73] _House Reports_, 9 Cong. 1 sess. Feb. 17, 1806.

 [74] House Bill No. 123.

 [75] _Annals of Cong._, 16 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 73-7. This report
      covers the time from Jan. 1, 1804, to Dec. 31, 1807. During
      that time the following was the number of ships engaged in the
      traffic:--

      From Charleston,   61    From Connecticut,    1
        "  Rhode Island, 59      "  Sweden,         1
        "  Baltimore,     4      "  Great Britain, 70
        "  Boston,        1      "  France,         3
        "  Norfolk,       2                       202

      The consignees of these slave ships were natives of
        Charleston             13
        Rhode Island           88
        Great Britain          91
        France                 10
                             ----
                              202

      The following slaves were imported:--
        By British vessels        19,949
        "  French    "             1,078
                                  ------
                                                21,027

        By American vessels:--
        "  Charleston merchants    2,006
        "  Rhode Island   "        7,958
        "  Foreign        "        5,717
        "  other Northern "          930
        "    "   Southern "        1,437        18,048
                                  ------        ------

      Total number of slaves imported, 1804-7   39,075

      It is, of course, highly probable that the Custom House
      returns were much below the actual figures.

 [76] McMaster, _History of the People of the United States_,
      III. p. 517.

 [77] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 8 Cong. 2 sess. V. 171;
      _Mass. Resolves_, May, 1802, to March, 1806, Vol. II. A.
      (State House ed., p. 239).

 [78] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 1 sess. V. 238.

 [79] _Ibid._, V. 266.

 [80] _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1821), 9 Cong. 1 sess. IV. 76,
      77, 79.

 [81] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 8 Cong. 2 sess. V. 171.

 [82] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. p. 274.

 [83] _Ibid._, pp. 272-4, 323.

 [84] _Ibid._, pp. 346-52, 358-75, etc., to 520.

 [85] _Ibid._, pp. 374-5.

 [86] See House Bill No. 94.

 [87] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. p. 466.

 [88] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 519-20.

 [89] _Ibid._, pp. 21, 52, 75, etc., to 138, 485-515, 1228. See
      House Bill No. 168. Cf. _Statutes at Large_, II. 421-2.

 [90] A few months later, at the expiration of the period,
      trade was quietly reopened. _Annals of Cong._, 11 Cong. 1
      sess. pp. 443-6.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter VIII_

THE PERIOD OF ATTEMPTED SUPPRESSION. 1807-1825.

  55. The Act of 1807.
  56. The First Question: How shall illegally imported Africans be
        disposed of?
  57. The Second Question: How shall Violations be punished?
  58. The Third Question: How shall the Interstate Coastwise Slave-Trade
        be protected?
  59. Legislative History of the Bill.
  60. Enforcement of the Act.
  61. Evidence of the Continuance of the Trade.
  62. Apathy of the Federal Government.
  63. Typical Cases.
  64. The Supplementary Acts, 1818-1820.
  65. Enforcement of the Supplementary Acts, 1818-1825.


55. ~The Act of 1807.~ The first great goal of anti-slavery effort in
the United States had been, since the Revolution, the suppression of the
slave-trade by national law. It would hardly be too much to say that the
Haytian revolution, in addition to its influence in the years from 1791
to 1806, was one of the main causes that rendered the accomplishment of
this aim possible at the earliest constitutional moment. To the great
influence of the fears of the South was added the failure of the French
designs on Louisiana, of which Toussaint L'Ouverture was the most
probable cause. The cession of Louisiana in 1803 challenged and aroused
the North on the slavery question again; put the Carolina and Georgia
slave-traders in the saddle, to the dismay of the Border States; and
brought the whole slave-trade question vividly before the public
conscience. Another scarcely less potent influence was, naturally, the
great anti-slavery movement in England, which after a mighty struggle of
eighteen years was about to gain its first victory in the British Act of
1807.

President Jefferson, in his pacificatory message of December 2, 1806,
said: "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, on the approach of the
period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to
withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further
participation in those violations of human rights which have been so
long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the
morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have
long been eager to proscribe. Although no law you may pass can take
prohibitory effect till the first day of the year one thousand eight
hundred and eight, yet the intervening period is not too long to
prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be completed before
that day."[1]

In pursuance of this recommendation, the very next day Senator Bradley
of Vermont introduced into the Senate a bill which, after a complicated
legislative history, became the Act of March 2, 1807, prohibiting the
African slave-trade.[2]

Three main questions were to be settled by this bill: first, and most
prominent, that of the disposal of illegally imported Africans; second,
that of the punishment of those concerned in the importation; third,
that of the proper limitation of the interstate traffic by water.

The character of the debate on these three questions, as well as the
state of public opinion, is illustrated by the fact that forty of the
sixty pages of officially reported debates are devoted to the first
question, less than twenty to the second, and only two to the third. A
sad commentary on the previous enforcement of State and national laws is
the readiness with which it was admitted that wholesale violations of
the law would take place; indeed, Southern men declared that no strict
law against the slave-trade could be executed in the South, and that it
was only by playing on the motives of personal interest that the trade
could be checked. The question of punishment indicated the slowly
changing moral attitude of the South toward the slave system. Early
boldly said, "A large majority of people in the Southern States do not
consider slavery as even an evil."[3] The South, in fact, insisted on
regarding man-stealing as a minor offence, a "misdemeanor" rather than a
"crime." Finally, in the short and sharp debate on the interstate
coastwise trade, the growing economic side of the slavery question came
to the front, the vested interests' argument was squarely put, and the
future interstate trade almost consciously provided for.

From these considerations, it is doubtful as to how far it was expected
that the Act of 1807 would check the slave traffic; at any rate, so far
as the South was concerned, there seemed to be an evident desire to
limit the trade, but little thought that this statute would definitively
suppress it.

56. ~The First Question: How shall illegally imported Africans be
disposed of?~ The dozen or more propositions on the question of the
disposal of illegally imported Africans may be divided into two chief
heads, representing two radically opposed parties: 1. That illegally
imported Africans be free, although they might be indentured for a term
of years or removed from the country. 2. That such Africans be sold as
slaves.[4] The arguments on these two propositions, which were many and
far-reaching, may be roughly divided into three classes, political,
constitutional, and moral.

The political argument, reduced to its lowest terms, ran thus: those
wishing to free the Negroes illegally imported declared that to enslave
them would be to perpetrate the very evil which the law was designed to
stop. "By the same law," they said, "we condemn the man-stealer and
become the receivers of his stolen goods. We punish the criminal, and
then step into his place, and complete the crime."[5] They said that the
objection to free Negroes was no valid excuse; for if the Southern
people really feared this class, they would consent to the imposing of
such penalties on illicit traffic as would stop the importation of a
single slave.[6] Moreover, "forfeiture" and sale of the Negroes implied
a property right in them which did not exist.[7] Waiving this technical
point, and allowing them to be "forfeited" to the government, then the
government should either immediately set them free, or, at the most,
indenture them for a term of years; otherwise, the law would be an
encouragement to violators. "It certainly will be," said they, "if the
importer can find means to evade the penalty of the act; for there he
has all the advantage of a market enhanced by our ineffectual attempt to
prohibit."[8] They claimed that even the indenturing of the ignorant
barbarian for life was better than slavery; and Sloan declared that the
Northern States would receive the freed Negroes willingly rather than
have them enslaved.[9]

The argument of those who insisted that the Negroes should be sold was
tersely put by Macon: "In adopting our measures on this subject, we must
pass such a law as can be executed."[10] Early expanded this: "It is a
principle in legislation, as correct as any which has ever prevailed,
that to give effect to laws you must not make them repugnant to the
passions and wishes of the people among whom they are to operate. How
then, in this instance, stands the fact? Do not gentlemen from every
quarter of the Union prove, on the discussion of every question that has
ever arisen in the House, having the most remote bearing on the giving
freedom to the Africans in the bosom of our country, that it has excited
the deepest sensibility in the breasts of those where slavery exists?
And why is this so? It is, because those who, from experience, know the
extent of the evil, believe that the most formidable aspect in which it
can present itself, is by making these people free among them. Yes, sir,
though slavery is an evil, regretted by every man in the country, to
have among us in any considerable quantity persons of this description,
is an evil far greater than slavery itself. Does any gentleman want
proof of this? I answer that all proof is useless; no fact can be more
notorious. With this belief on the minds of the people where slavery
exists, and where the importation will take place, if at all, we are
about to turn loose in a state of freedom all persons brought in after
the passage of this law. I ask gentlemen to reflect and say whether such
a law, opposed to the ideas, the passions, the views, and the affections
of the people of the Southern States, can be executed? I tell them, no;
it is impossible--why? Because no man will inform--why? Because to
inform will be to lead to an evil which will be deemed greater than the
offence of which information is given, because it will be opposed to the
principle of self-preservation, and to the love of family. No, no man
will be disposed to jeopard his life, and the lives of his countrymen.
And if no one dare inform, the whole authority of the Government cannot
carry the law into effect. The whole people will rise up against it.
Why? Because to enforce it would be to turn loose, in the bosom of the
country, firebrands that would consume them."[11]

This was the more tragic form of the argument; it also had a mercenary
side, which was presented with equal emphasis. It was repeatedly said
that the only way to enforce the law was to play off individual
interests against each other. The profit from the sale of illegally
imported Negroes was declared to be the only sufficient "inducement to
give information of their importation."[12] "Give up the idea of
forfeiture, and I challenge the gentleman to invent fines, penalties, or
punishments of any sort, sufficient to restrain the slave trade."[13]
If such Negroes be freed, "I tell you that slaves will continue to be
imported as heretofore.... You cannot get hold of the ships employed in
this traffic. Besides, slaves will be brought into Georgia from East
Florida. They will be brought into the Mississippi Territory from the
bay of Mobile. You cannot inflict any other penalty, or devise any other
adequate means of prevention, than a forfeiture of the Africans in whose
possession they may be found after importation."[14] Then, too, when
foreigners smuggled in Negroes, "who then ... could be operated on, but
the purchasers? There was the rub--it was their interest alone which, by
being operated on, would produce a check. Snap their purse-strings,
break open their strong box, deprive them of their slaves, and by
destroying the temptation to buy, you put an end to the trade, ...
nothing short of a forfeiture of the slave would afford an effectual
remedy."[15] Again, it was argued that it was impossible to prevent
imported Negroes from becoming slaves, or, what was just as bad, from
being sold as vagabonds or indentured for life.[16] Even our own laws,
it was said, recognize the title of the African slave factor in the
transported Negroes; and if the importer have no title, why do we
legislate? Why not let the African immigrant alone to get on as he may,
just as we do the Irish immigrant?[17] If he should be returned to
Africa, his home could not be found, and he would in all probability be
sold into slavery again.[18]

The constitutional argument was not urged as seriously as the foregoing;
but it had a considerable place. On the one hand, it was urged that if
the Negroes were forfeited, they were forfeited to the United States
government, which could dispose of them as it saw fit;[19] on the other
hand, it was said that the United States, as owner, was subject to State
laws, and could not free the Negroes contrary to such laws.[20] Some
alleged that the freeing of such Negroes struck at the title to all
slave property;[21] others thought that, as property in slaves was not
recognized in the Constitution, it could not be in a statute.[22] The
question also arose as to the source of the power of Congress over the
slave-trade. Southern men derived it from the clause on commerce, and
declared that it exceeded the power of Congress to declare Negroes
imported into a slave State, free, against the laws of that State; that
Congress could not determine what should or should not be property in a
State.[23] Northern men replied that, according to this principle,
forfeiture and sale in Massachusetts would be illegal; that the power of
Congress over the trade was derived from the restraining clause, as a
non-existent power could not be restrained; and that the United States
could act under her general powers as executor of the Law of
Nations.[24]

The moral argument as to the disposal of illegally imported Negroes was
interlarded with all the others. On the one side, it began with the
"Rights of Man," and descended to a stickling for the decent appearance
of the statute-book; on the other side, it began with the uplifting of
the heathen, and descended to a denial of the applicability of moral
principles to the question. Said Holland of North Carolina: "It is
admitted that the condition of the slaves in the Southern States is much
superior to that of those in Africa. Who, then, will say that the trade
is immoral?"[25] But, in fact, "morality has nothing to do with this
traffic,"[26] for, as Joseph Clay declared, "it must appear to every man
of common sense, that the question could be considered in a commercial
point of view only."[27] The other side declared that, "by the laws of
God and man," these captured Negroes are "entitled to their freedom as
clearly and absolutely as we are;"[28] nevertheless, some were willing
to leave them to the tender mercies of the slave States, so long as the
statute-book was disgraced by no explicit recognition of slavery.[29]
Such arguments brought some sharp sarcasm on those who seemed anxious
"to legislate for the honor and glory of the statute book;"[30] some
desired "to know what honor you will derive from a law that will be
broken every day of your lives."[31] They would rather boldly sell the
Negroes and turn the proceeds over to charity.

The final settlement of the question was as follows:--

    "SECTION 4.... And neither the importer, nor any person
    or persons claiming from or under him, shall hold any right or
    title whatsoever to any negro, mulatto, or person of color, nor
    to the service or labor thereof, who may be imported or brought
    within the United States, or territories thereof, in violation
    of this law, but the same shall remain subject to any
    regulations not contravening the provisions of this act, which
    the Legislatures of the several States or Territories at any
    time hereafter may make, for disposing of any such negro,
    mulatto, or person of color."[32]


57. ~The Second Question: How shall Violations be punished?~ The next
point in importance was that of the punishment of offenders. The
half-dozen specific propositions reduce themselves to two: 1. A
violation should be considered a crime or felony, and be punished by
death; 2. A violation should be considered a misdemeanor, and be
punished by fine and imprisonment.[33]

Advocates of the severer punishment dwelt on the enormity of the
offence. It was "one of the highest crimes man could commit," and "a
captain of a ship engaged in this traffic was guilty of murder."[34] The
law of God punished the crime with death, and any one would rather be
hanged than be enslaved.[35] It was a peculiarly deliberate crime, in
which the offender did not act in sudden passion, but had ample time for
reflection.[36] Then, too, crimes of much less magnitude are punished
with death. Shall we punish the stealer of $50 with death, and the
man-stealer with imprisonment only?[37] Piracy, forgery, and fraudulent
sinking of vessels are punishable with death, "yet these are crimes only
against property; whereas the importation of slaves, a crime committed
against the liberty of man, and inferior only to murder or treason, is
accounted nothing but a misdemeanor."[38] Here, indeed, lies the remedy
for the evil of freeing illegally imported Negroes,--in making the
penalty so severe that none will be brought in; if the South is sincere,
"they will unite to a man to execute the law."[39] To free such Negroes
is dangerous; to enslave them, wrong; to return them, impracticable; to
indenture them, difficult,--therefore, by a death penalty, keep them
from being imported.[40] Here the East had a chance to throw back the
taunts of the South, by urging the South to unite with them in hanging
the New England slave-traders, assuring the South that "so far from
charging their Southern brethren with cruelty or severity in hanging
them, they would acknowledge the favor with gratitude."[41] Finally, if
the Southerners would refuse to execute so severe a law because they did
not consider the offence great, they would probably refuse to execute
any law at all for the same reason.[42]

The opposition answered that the death penalty was more than
proportionate to the crime, and therefore "immoral."[43] "I cannot
believe," said Stanton of Rhode Island, "that a man ought to be hung for
only stealing a negro."[44] It was argued that the trade was after all
but a "transfer from one master to another;"[45] that slavery was worse
than the slave-trade, and the South did not consider slavery a crime:
how could it then punish the trade so severely and not reflect on the
institution?[46] Severity, it was said, was also inexpedient: severity
often increases crime; if the punishment is too great, people will
sympathize with offenders and will not inform against them. Said Mr.
Mosely: "When the penalty is excessive or disproportioned to the
offence, it will naturally create a repugnance to the law, and render
its execution odious."[47] John Randolph argued against even fine and
imprisonment, "on the ground that such an excessive penalty could not,
in such case, be constitutionally imposed by a Government possessed of
the limited powers of the Government of the United States."[48]

The bill as passed punished infractions as follows:--

    For equipping a slaver, a fine of $20,000 and forfeiture of the
    ship.

    For transporting Negroes, a fine of $5000 and forfeiture of the
    ship and Negroes.

    For transporting and selling Negroes, a fine of $1000 to
    $10,000, imprisonment from 5 to 10 years, and forfeiture of the
    ship and Negroes.

    For knowingly buying illegally imported Negroes, a fine of $800
    for each Negro, and forfeiture.


58. ~The Third Question: How shall the Interstate Coastwise Slave-Trade
be protected?~ The first proposition was to prohibit the coastwise
slave-trade altogether,[49] but an amendment reported to the House
allowed it "in any vessel or species of craft whatever." It is probable
that the first proposition would have prevailed, had it not been for the
vehement opposition of Randolph and Early.[50] They probably foresaw the
value which Virginia would derive from this trade in the future, and
consequently Randolph violently declared that if the amendment did not
prevail, "the Southern people would set the law at defiance. He would
begin the example." He maintained that by the first proposition "the
proprietor of sacred and chartered rights is prevented the
Constitutional use of his property."[51] The Conference Committee
finally arranged a compromise, forbidding the coastwise trade for
purposes of sale in vessels under forty tons.[52] This did not suit
Early, who declared that the law with this provision "would not prevent
the introduction of a single slave."[53] Randolph, too, would "rather
lose the bill, he had rather lose all the bills of the session, he had
rather lose every bill passed since the establishment of the Government,
than agree to the provision contained in this slave bill."[54] He
predicted the severance of the slave and the free States, if disunion
should ever come. Congress was, however, weary with the dragging of the
bill, and it passed both Houses with the compromise provision. Randolph
was so dissatisfied that he had a committee appointed the next day, and
introduced an amendatory bill. Both this bill and another similar one,
introduced at the next session, failed of consideration.[55]


59. ~Legislative History of the Bill.~[56] On December 12, 1805, Senator
Stephen R. Bradley of Vermont gave notice of a bill to prohibit the
introduction of slaves after 1808. By a vote of 18 to 9 leave was
given, and the bill read a first time on the 17th. On the 18th, however,
it was postponed until "the first Monday in December, 1806." The
presidential message mentioning the matter, Senator Bradley, December 3,
1806, gave notice of a similar bill, which was brought in on the 8th,
and on the 9th referred to a committee consisting of Bradley, Stone,
Giles, Gaillard, and Baldwin. This bill passed, after some
consideration, January 27. It provided, among other things, that
violations of the act should be felony, punishable with death, and
forbade the interstate coast-trade.[57]

Meantime, in the House, Mr. Bidwell of Massachusetts had proposed,
February 4, 1806, as an amendment to a bill taxing slaves imported, that
importation after December 31, 1807, be prohibited, on pain of fine and
imprisonment and forfeiture of ship.[58] This was rejected by a vote of
86 to 17. On December 3, 1806, the House, in appointing committees on
the message, "_Ordered_, That Mr. Early, Mr. Thomas M. Randolph, Mr.
John Campbell, Mr. Kenan, Mr. Cook, Mr. Kelly, and Mr. Van Rensselaer be
appointed a committee" on the slave-trade. This committee reported a
bill on the 15th, which was considered, but finally, December 18,
recommitted. It was reported in an amended form on the 19th, and amended
in Committee of the Whole so as to make violation a misdemeanor
punishable by fine and imprisonment, instead of a felony punishable by
death.[59] A struggle over the disposal of the cargo then ensued. A
motion by Bidwell to except the cargo from forfeiture was lost, 77 to
39. Another motion by Bidwell may be considered the crucial vote on the
whole bill: it was an amendment to the forfeiture clause, and read,
_"Provided, that no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of this
act."_[60] This resulted in a tie vote, 60 to 60; but the casting vote
of the Speaker, Macon of North Carolina, defeated it. New England voted
solidly in favor of it, the Middle States stood 4 for and 2 against it,
and the six Southern States stood solid against it. On January 8 the
bill went again to a select committee of seventeen, by a vote of 76 to
46. The bill was reported back amended January 20, and on the 28th the
Senate bill was also presented to the House. On the 9th, 10th, and 11th
of February both bills were considered in Committee of the Whole, and
the Senate bill finally replaced the House bill, after several
amendments had been made.[61] The bill was then passed, by a vote of 113
to 5.[62] The Senate agreed to the amendments, including that
substituting fine and imprisonment for the death penalty, but asked for
a conference on the provision which left the interstate coast-trade
free. The six conferees succeeded in bringing the Houses to agree, by
limiting the trade to vessels over forty tons and requiring registry of
the slaves.[63]

The following diagram shows in graphic form the legislative history of
the act:--[64]

                     _Senate._      _1805._       _House._
Bradley gives notice.    +        Dec. 12.
Leave given; bill read.  +             17.
Postponed one year.      +             18.
                         |          _1806._
                                  Feb.  4.         + Bidwell's amendment.
Notice.                  +        Dec.  3.         + Committee on
Bill introduced.         +              8.         |  slave trade.
Committed.               +              9.         |
                         |             15.         + Bill reported.
                         |             17.         |
                         |             18.         |
                         |             19.         |
                         |             23.         |
                         |             29.         |
                         |             31.         |
                         |          _1807._        |
                         |        Jan.  5.         |
                         |              7.         |
                         |              8.         + Read third time;
Reported.                +             15.         |  recommitted.
                         |             16.         |
                         |             20.         + Reported
Third reading.           +             26.         |  amended.
PASSED.                  +             27.         |
                         \ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _   |
                                       28.      |  | Senate bill
                                  Feb.  9.      |  |  reported.
                                       10.      |  |
                                       11.      +  | Senate bill
                                       12.      |     amended.
Reported from House.                   13.      +       PASSED.
                          _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
Reported to House.       |             17.           Reported back.
                          - - - - - - - - - - -
                                       18.      |    House insists;
                          - - - - - - - - - - -       asks conference.
                         \                     /
                          - - _ __ - - - - - -
                               X
House asks conference.   _ _ _/ \_ __
                                     \ _
                                      2|5 - - - -_    Conference report
                          _ _ _ _ _  _-|- - - - -      adopted.
Conference report        /            2|6
 adopted.                \_ _ _        |
Bill enrolled.                 - - - -2|8
                                March  |2.
                                       V
                      Signed by the President.

This bill received the approval of President Jefferson, March 2, 1807,
and became thus the "Act to prohibit the importation of Slaves into any
port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and
after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and eight."[65] The debates in the Senate were not
reported. Those in the House were prolonged and bitter, and hinged
especially on the disposal of the slaves, the punishment of offenders,
and the coast-trade. Men were continually changing their votes, and the
bill see-sawed backward and forward, in committee and out, until the
House was thoroughly worn out. On the whole, the strong anti-slavery
men, like Bidwell and Sloan, were outgeneraled by Southerners, like
Early and Williams; and, considering the immense moral backing of the
anti-slavery party from the Revolutionary fathers down, the bill of 1807
can hardly be regarded as a great anti-slavery victory.


60. ~Enforcement of the Act.~ The period so confidently looked forward
to by the constitutional fathers had at last arrived; the slave-trade
was prohibited, and much oratory and poetry were expended in celebration
of the event. In the face of this, let us see how the Act of 1807 was
enforced and what it really accomplished. It is noticeable, in the first
place, that there was no especial set of machinery provided for the
enforcement of this act. The work fell first to the Secretary of the
Treasury, as head of the customs collection. Then, through the activity
of cruisers, the Secretary of the Navy gradually came to have oversight,
and eventually the whole matter was lodged with him, although the
Departments of State and War were more or less active on different
occasions. Later, at the advent of the Lincoln government, the
Department of the Interior was charged with the enforcement of the
slave-trade laws. It would indeed be surprising if, amid so much
uncertainty and shifting of responsibility, the law were not poorly
enforced. Poor enforcement, moreover, in the years 1808 to 1820 meant
far more than at almost any other period; for these years were, all
over the European world, a time of stirring economic change, and the set
which forces might then take would in a later period be unchangeable
without a cataclysm. Perhaps from 1808 to 1814, in the midst of
agitation and war, there was some excuse for carelessness. From 1814 on,
however, no such palliation existed, and the law was probably enforced
as the people who made it wished it enforced.

Most of the Southern States rather tardily passed the necessary
supplementary acts disposing of illegally imported Africans. A few
appear not to have passed any. Some of these laws, like the
Alabama-Mississippi Territory Act of 1815,[66] directed such Negroes to
be "sold by the proper officer of the court, to the highest bidder, at
public auction, for ready money." One-half the proceeds went to the
informer or to the collector of customs, the other half to the public
treasury. Other acts, like that of North Carolina in 1816,[67] directed
the Negroes to "be sold and disposed of for the use of the state."
One-fifth of the proceeds went to the informer. The Georgia Act of
1817[68] directed that the slaves be either sold or given to the
Colonization Society for transportation, providing the society reimburse
the State for all expense incurred, and pay for the transportation. In
this manner, machinery of somewhat clumsy build and varying pattern was
provided for the carrying out of the national act.


61. ~Evidence of the Continuance of the Trade.~ Undoubtedly, the Act of
1807 came very near being a dead letter. The testimony supporting this
view is voluminous. It consists of presidential messages, reports of
cabinet officers, letters of collectors of revenue, letters of district
attorneys, reports of committees of Congress, reports of naval
commanders, statements made on the floor of Congress, the testimony of
eye-witnesses, and the complaints of home and foreign anti-slavery
societies.

"When I was young," writes Mr. Fowler of Connecticut, "the slave-trade
was still carried on, by Connecticut shipmasters and Merchant
adventurers, for the supply of southern ports. This trade was carried
on by the consent of the Southern States, under the provisions of the
Federal Constitution, until 1808, and, after that time, clandestinely.
There was a good deal of conversation on the subject, in private
circles." Other States were said to be even more involved than
Connecticut.[69] The African Society of London estimated that, down to
1816, fifteen of the sixty thousand slaves annually taken from Africa
were shipped by Americans. "Notwithstanding the prohibitory act of
America, which was passed in 1807, ships bearing the American flag
continued to trade for slaves until 1809, when, in consequence of a
decision in the English prize appeal courts, which rendered American
slave ships liable to capture and condemnation, that flag suddenly
disappeared from the coast. Its place was almost instantaneously
supplied by the Spanish flag, which, with one or two exceptions, was now
seen for the first time on the African coast, engaged in covering the
slave trade. This sudden substitution of the Spanish for the American
flag seemed to confirm what was established in a variety of instances by
more direct testimony, that the slave trade, which now, for the first
time, assumed a Spanish dress, was in reality only the trade of other
nations in disguise."[70]

So notorious did the participation of Americans in the traffic become,
that President Madison informed Congress in his message, December 5,
1810, that "it appears that American citizens are instrumental in
carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the
laws of humanity, and in defiance of those of their own country. The
same just and benevolent motives which produced the interdiction in
force against this criminal conduct, will doubtless be felt by Congress,
in devising further means of suppressing the evil."[71] The Secretary of
the Navy wrote the same year to Charleston, South Carolina: "I hear, not
without great concern, that the law prohibiting the importation of
slaves has been violated in frequent instances, near St. Mary's."[72]
Testimony as to violations of the law and suggestions for improving it
also came in from district attorneys.[73]

The method of introducing Negroes was simple. A slave smuggler says:
"After resting a few days at St. Augustine, ... I agreed to accompany
Diego on a land trip through the United States, where a _kaffle_ of
negroes was to precede us, for whose disposal the shrewd Portuguese had
already made arrangements with my uncle's consignees. I soon learned how
readily, and at what profits, the Florida negroes were sold into the
neighboring American States. The _kaffle_, under charge of negro
drivers, was to strike up the Escambia River, and thence cross the
boundary into Georgia, where some of our wild Africans were mixed with
various squads of native blacks, and driven inland, till sold off,
singly or by couples, on the road. At this period [1812], the United
States had declared the African slave trade illegal, and passed
stringent laws to prevent the importation of negroes; yet the Spanish
possessions were thriving on this inland exchange of negroes and
mulattoes; Florida was a sort of nursery for slave-breeders, and many
American citizens grew rich by trafficking in Guinea negroes, and
smuggling them continually, in small parties, through the southern
United States. At the time I mention, the business was a lively one,
owing to the war then going on between the States and England, and the
unsettled condition of affairs on the border."[74]

The Spanish flag continued to cover American slave-traders. The rapid
rise of privateering during the war was not caused solely by patriotic
motives; for many armed ships fitted out in the United States obtained a
thin Spanish disguise at Havana, and transported thousands of slaves to
Brazil and the West Indies. Sometimes all disguise was thrown aside, and
the American flag appeared on the slave coast, as in the cases of the
"Paz,"[75] the "Rebecca," the "Rosa"[76] (formerly the privateer
"Commodore Perry"), the "Dorset" of Baltimore,[77] and the "Saucy
Jack."[78] Governor McCarthy of Sierra Leone wrote, in 1817: "The slave
trade is carried on most vigorously by the Spaniards, Portuguese,
Americans and French. I have had it affirmed from several quarters, and
do believe it to be a fact, that there is a greater number of vessels
employed in that traffic than at any former period."[79]


62. ~Apathy of the Federal Government.~ The United States cruisers
succeeded now and then in capturing a slaver, like the "Eugene," which
was taken when within four miles of the New Orleans bar.[80] President
Madison again, in 1816, urged Congress to act on account of the
"violations and evasions which, it is suggested, are chargeable on
unworthy citizens, who mingle in the slave trade under foreign flags,
and with foreign ports; and by collusive importations of slaves into the
United States, through adjoining ports and territories."[81] The
executive was continually in receipt of ample evidence of this illicit
trade and of the helplessness of officers of the law. In 1817 it was
reported to the Secretary of the Navy that most of the goods carried to
Galveston were brought into the United States; "the more valuable, and
the slaves are smuggled in through the numerous inlets to the westward,
where the people are but too much disposed to render them every possible
assistance. Several hundred slaves are now at Galveston, and persons
have gone from New-Orleans to purchase them. Every exertion will be
made to intercept them, but I have little hopes of success."[82] Similar
letters from naval officers and collectors showed that a system of slave
piracy had arisen since the war, and that at Galveston there was an
establishment of organized brigands, who did not go to the trouble of
sailing to Africa for their slaves, but simply captured slavers and sold
their cargoes into the United States. This Galveston nest had, in 1817,
eleven armed vessels to prosecute the work, and "the most shameful
violations of the slave act, as well as our revenue laws, continue to be
practised."[83] Cargoes of as many as three hundred slaves were arriving
in Texas. All this took place under Aury, the buccaneer governor; and
when he removed to Amelia Island in 1817 with the McGregor raid, the
illicit traffic in slaves, which had been going on there for years,[84]
took an impulse that brought it even to the somewhat deaf ears of
Collector Bullock. He reported, May 22, 1817: "I have just received
information from a source on which I can implicitly rely, that it has
already become the practice to introduce into the state of Georgia,
across the St. Mary's River, from Amelia Island, East Florida, Africans,
who have been carried into the Port of Fernandina, subsequent to the
capture of it by the Patriot army now in possession of it ...; were the
legislature to pass an act giving compensation in some manner to
informers, it would have a tendency in a great degree to prevent the
practice; as the thing now is, no citizen will take the trouble of
searching for and detecting the slaves. I further understand, that the
evil will not be confined altogether to Africans, but will be extended
to the worst class of West India slaves."[85]

Undoubtedly, the injury done by these pirates to the regular
slave-trading interests was largely instrumental in exterminating them.
Late in 1817 United States troops seized Amelia Island, and President
Monroe felicitated Congress and the country upon escaping the "annoyance
and injury" of this illicit trade.[86] The trade, however, seems to have
continued, as is shown by such letters as the following, written three
and a half months later:--

    PORT OF DARIEN, March 14, 1818.

    ... It is a painful duty, sir, to express to you, that I am in
    possession of undoubted information, that African and West India
    negroes are almost daily illicitly introduced into Georgia, for
    sale or settlement, or passing through it to the territories of
    the United States for similar purposes; these facts are
    notorious; and it is not unusual to see such negroes in the
    streets of St. Mary's, and such too, recently captured by our
    vessels of war, and ordered to Savannah, were illegally bartered
    by hundreds in that city, _for_ this bartering or bonding (as
    _it is called_, but in reality _selling_,) actually took place
    before any decision had [been] passed by the court respecting
    them. I cannot but again express to you, sir, that these
    irregularities and mocking of the laws, by men who understand
    them, and who, it was presumed, would have respected them, are
    such, that it requires the immediate interposition of Congress
    to effect a suppression of this traffic; for, as things are,
    should a faithful officer of the government apprehend such
    negroes, to avoid the penalties imposed by the laws, the
    proprietors disclaim them, and some agent of the executive
    demands a delivery of the same to him, who may employ them as he
    pleases, or effect a sale by way of a bond, for the restoration
    of the negroes when legally called on so to do; which bond, it
    is _understood_, is to be _forfeited_, as the amount of the bond
    is so much less than the value of the property.... There are
    many negroes ... recently introduced into this state and the
    Alabama territory, and which can be apprehended. The undertaking
    would be great; but to be sensible that we shall possess your
    approbation, and that we are carrying the views and wishes of
    the government into execution, is all we wish, and it shall be
    done, independent of every personal consideration.

    I have, etc.[87]

This "approbation" failed to come to the zealous collector, and on the
5th of July he wrote that, "not being favored with a reply," he has been
obliged to deliver over to the governor's agents ninety-one illegally
imported Negroes.[88] Reports from other districts corroborate this
testimony. The collector at Mobile writes of strange proceedings on the
part of the courts.[89] General D.B. Mitchell, ex-governor of Georgia
and United States Indian agent, after an investigation in 1821 by
Attorney-General Wirt, was found "guilty of having prostituted his
power, as agent for Indian affairs at the Creek agency, to the purpose
of aiding and assisting in a conscious breach of the act of Congress of
1807, in prohibition of the slave trade--and this from mercenary
motives."[90] The indefatigable Collector Chew of New Orleans wrote to
Washington that, "to put a stop to that traffic, a naval force suitable
to those waters is indispensable," and that "vast numbers of slaves will
be introduced to an alarming extent, unless prompt and effectual
measures are adopted by the general government."[91] Other collectors
continually reported infractions, complaining that they could get no
assistance from the citizens,[92] or plaintively asking the services of
"one small cutter."[93]

Meantime, what was the response of the government to such
representations, and what efforts were made to enforce the act? A few
unsystematic and spasmodic attempts are recorded. In 1811 some special
instructions were sent out,[94] and the President was authorized to
seize Amelia Island.[95] Then came the war; and as late as November 15,
1818, in spite of the complaints of collectors, we find no revenue
cutter on the Gulf coast.[96] During the years 1817 and 1818[97] some
cruisers went there irregularly, but they were too large to be
effective; and the partial suppression of the Amelia Island pirates was
all that was accomplished. On the whole, the efforts of the government
lacked plan, energy, and often sincerity. Some captures of slavers were
made;[98] but, as the collector at Mobile wrote, anent certain cases,
"this was owing rather to accident, than any well-timed arrangement." He
adds: "from the Chandalier Islands to the Perdido river, including the
coast, and numerous other islands, we have only a small boat, with four
men and an inspector, to oppose to the whole confederacy of smugglers
and pirates."[99]

To cap the climax, the government officials were so negligent that
Secretary Crawford, in 1820, confessed to Congress that "it appears,
from an examination of the records of this office, that no particular
instructions have ever been given, by the Secretary of the Treasury,
under the original or supplementary acts prohibiting the introduction of
slaves into the United States."[100] Beside this inactivity, the
government was criminally negligent in not prosecuting and punishing
offenders when captured. Urgent appeals for instruction from prosecuting
attorneys were too often received in official silence; complaints as to
the violation of law by State officers went unheeded;[101] informers
were unprotected and sometimes driven from home.[102] Indeed, the most
severe comment on the whole period is the report, January 7, 1819, of
the Register of the Treasury, who, after the wholesale and open
violation of the Act of 1807, reported, in response to a request from
the House, "that it doth not appear, from an examination of the records
of this office, and particularly of the accounts (to the date of their
last settlement) of the collectors of the customs, and of the several
marshals of the United States, that any forfeitures had been incurred
under the said act."[103]

63. ~Typical Cases.~ At this date (January 7, 1819), however, certain
cases were stated to be pending, a history of which will fitly conclude
this discussion. In 1818 three American schooners sailed from the United
States to Havana; on June 2 they started back with cargoes aggregating
one hundred and seven slaves. The schooner "Constitution" was captured
by one of Andrew Jackson's officers under the guns of Fort Barancas. The
"Louisa" and "Marino" were captured by Lieutenant McKeever of the United
States Navy. The three vessels were duly proceeded against at Mobile,
and the case began slowly to drag along. The slaves, instead of being
put under the care of the zealous marshal of the district, were placed
in the hands of three bondsmen, friends of the judge. The marshal
notified the government of this irregularity, but apparently received no
answer. In 1822 the three vessels were condemned as forfeited, but the
court "reserved" for future order the distribution of the slaves.
Nothing whatever either then or later was done to the slave-traders
themselves. The owners of the ships promptly appealed to the Supreme
Court of the United States, and that tribunal, in 1824, condemned the
three vessels and the slaves on two of them.[104] These slaves,
considerably reduced in number "from various causes," were sold at
auction for the benefit of the State, in spite of the Act of 1819.
Meantime, before the decision of the Supreme Court, the judge of the
Supreme Court of West Florida had awarded to certain alleged Spanish
claimants of the slaves indemnity for nearly the whole number seized, at
the price of $650 per head, and the Secretary of the Treasury had
actually paid the claim.[105] In 1826 Lieutenant McKeever urgently
petitions Congress for his prize-money of $4,415.15, which he has not
yet received.[106] The "Constitution" was for some inexplicable reason
released from bond, and the whole case fades in a very thick cloud of
official mist. In 1831 Congress sought to inquire into the final
disposition of the slaves. The information given was never printed; but
as late as 1836 a certain Calvin Mickle petitions Congress for
reimbursement for the slaves sold, for their hire, for their natural
increase, for expenses incurred, and for damages.[107]


64. ~The Supplementary Acts, 1818-1820.~ To remedy the obvious defects
of the Act of 1807 two courses were possible: one, to minimize the crime
of transportation, and, by encouraging informers, to concentrate efforts
against the buying of smuggled slaves; the other, to make the crime of
transportation so great that no slaves would be imported. The Act of
1818 tried the first method; that of 1819, the second.[108] The latter
was obviously the more upright and logical, and the only method
deserving thought even in 1807; but the Act of 1818 was the natural
descendant of that series of compromises which began in the
Constitutional Convention, and which, instead of postponing the
settlement of critical questions to more favorable times, rather
aggravated and complicated them.

The immediate cause of the Act of 1818 was the Amelia Island
scandal.[109] Committees in both Houses reported bills, but that of the
Senate finally passed. There does not appear to have been very much
debate.[110] The sale of Africans for the benefit of the informer and of
the United States was strongly urged "as the only means of executing the
laws against the slave trade as experience had fully demonstrated since
the origin of the prohibition."[111] This proposition was naturally
opposed as "inconsistent with the principles of our Government, and
calculated to throw as wide open the door to the importation of slaves
as it was before the existing prohibition."[112] The act, which became a
law April 20, 1818,[113] was a poorly constructed compromise, which
virtually acknowledged the failure of efforts to control the trade, and
sought to remedy defects by pitting cupidity against cupidity, informer
against thief. One-half of all forfeitures and fines were to go to the
informer, and penalties for violation were changed as follows:--

    For equipping a slaver, instead of a fine of $20,000, a fine of
    $1000 to $5000 and imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.

    For transporting Negroes, instead of a fine of $5000 and
    forfeiture of ship and Negroes, a fine of $1000 to $5000 and
    imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.

    For actual importation, instead of a fine of $1000 to $10,000
    and imprisonment from 5 to 10 years, a fine of $1000 to
    $10,000, and imprisonment from 3 to 7 years.

    For knowingly buying illegally imported Negroes, instead of a
    fine of $800 for each Negro and forfeiture, a fine of $1000 for
    each Negro.

The burden of proof was laid on the defendant, to the extent that he
must prove that the slave in question had been imported at least five
years before the prosecution. The slaves were still left to the disposal
of the States.

This statute was, of course, a failure from the start,[114] and at the
very next session Congress took steps to revise it. A bill was reported
in the House, January 13, 1819, but it was not discussed till
March.[115] It finally passed, after "much debate."[116] The Senate
dropped its own bill, and, after striking out the provision for the
death penalty, passed the bill as it came from the House.[117] The House
acquiesced, and the bill became a law, March 3, 1819,[118] in the midst
of the Missouri trouble. This act directed the President to use armed
cruisers on the coasts of the United States and Africa to suppress the
slave-trade; one-half the proceeds of the condemned ship were to go to
the captors as bounty, provided the Africans were safely lodged with a
United States marshal and the crew with the civil authorities. These
provisions were seriously marred by a proviso which Butler of Louisiana,
had inserted, with a "due regard for the interests of the State which he
represented," viz., that a captured slaver must always be returned to
the port whence she sailed.[119] This, of course, secured decided
advantages to Southern slave-traders. The most radical provision of the
act was that which directed the President to "make such regulations and
arrangements as he may deem expedient for the safe keeping, support, and
removal beyond the limits of the United States, of all such negroes,
mulattoes, or persons of colour, as may be so delivered and brought
within their jurisdiction;" and to appoint an agent in Africa to receive
such Negroes.[120] Finally, an appropriation of $100,000 was made to
enforce the act.[121] This act was in some measure due to the new
colonization movement; and the return of Africans recaptured was a
distinct recognition of its efforts, and the real foundation of Liberia.

To render this straightforward act effective, it was necessary to add
but one measure, and that was a penalty commensurate with the crime of
slave stealing. This was accomplished by the Act of May 15, 1820,[122] a
law which may be regarded as the last of the Missouri Compromise
measures. The act originated from the various bills on piracy which were
introduced early in the sixteenth Congress. The House bill, in spite of
opposition, was amended so as to include slave-trading under piracy,
and passed. The Senate agreed without a division. This law provided that
direct participation in the slave-trade should be piracy, punishable
with death.[123]

  ----------------------+----------------------+-----------------------
  STATUTES AT LARGE.    |        DATE.         |  AMOUNT APPROPRIATED.
  ----------------------+----------------------+-----------------------
     VOL.    PAGE       |                      |
     III.    533-4      |    March   3, 1819   |          $100,000
      "      764        |      "     3, 1823   |            50,000
     IV.     141        |      "    14, 1826   |            32,000
      "      208        |    March   2, 1827   |          / 36,710
                        |                      |          \ 20,000
      "      302        |    May    24, 1828   |            30,000
      "      354        |    March   2, 1829   |            16,000
      "      462        |      "     2, 1831   |            16,000
      "      615        |    Feb.   20, 1833   |             5,000
      "      671        |    Jan.   24, 1834   |             5,000
     V.      157-8      |    March   3, 1837   |            11,413.57
      "      501        |    Aug.    4, 1842   |            10,543.42
      "      615        |    March   3, 1843   |             5,000
     IX.      96        |    Aug.   10, 1846   |            25,000
     XI.      90        |      "    18, 1856   |             8,000
      "      227        |    March   3, 1857   |             8,000
      "      404        |      "     3, 1859   |            75,000
     XII.     21        |    May    26, 1860   |            40,000
      "      132        |    Feb.   19, 1861   |           900,000
      "      219        |    March   2, 1861   |           900,000
      "      639        |    Feb.    4, 1863   |            17,000
     XIII.   424        |    Jan.   24, 1865   |            17,000
     XIV.    226        |    July   25, 1866   |            17,000
      "      415        |    Feb.   28, 1867   |            17,000
     XV.      58        |    March  30, 1868   |            12,500
      "      321        |    March   3, 1869   |            12,500
  ----------------------+----------------------+-----------------------
   Total, 50 years                                      $2,386,666.99
   Minus surpluses re-appropriated (approximate)            48,666.99?
                                                        --------------
                                                        $2,338,000
   Cost of squadron, 1843-58, @ $384,500 per year
     (_House Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. IX. No. 73)   5,767,500
   Returning slaves on "Wildfire" (_Statutes at Large_,
     XII. 41)                                              250,000
   Approximate cost of squadron, 1858-66, probably not
     less than $500,000 per year                         4,000,000?
                                                       ---------------
   Approximate money cost of suppressing the
     slave-trade                                       $12,355,500?

Cf. Kendall's Report: _Senate Doc._, 21 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, pp.
211-8; _Amer. State Papers, Naval_, III. No. 429 E.; also Reports of
the Secretaries of the Navy from 1819 to 1860.


65. ~Enforcement of the Supplementary Acts, 1818-1825.~ A somewhat more
sincere and determined effort to enforce the slave-trade laws now
followed; and yet it is a significant fact that not until Lincoln's
administration did a slave-trader suffer death for violating the laws of
the United States. The participation of Americans in the trade
continued, declining somewhat between 1825 and 1830, and then reviving,
until it reached its highest activity between 1840 and 1860. The
development of a vast internal slave-trade, and the consequent rise in
the South of vested interests strongly opposed to slave smuggling, led
to a falling off in the illicit introduction of Negroes after 1825,
until the fifties; nevertheless, smuggling never entirely ceased, and
large numbers were thus added to the plantations of the Gulf States.

Monroe had various constitutional scruples as to the execution of the
Act of 1819;[124] but, as Congress took no action, he at last put a fair
interpretation on his powers, and appointed Samuel Bacon as an agent in
Africa to form a settlement for recaptured Africans. Gradually the
agency thus formed became merged with that of the Colonization Society
on Cape Mesurado; and from this union Liberia was finally evolved.[125]

Meantime, during the years 1818 to 1820, the activity of the
slave-traders was prodigious. General James Tallmadge declared in the
House, February 15, 1819: "Our laws are already highly penal against
their introduction, and yet, it is a well known fact, that about
fourteen thousand slaves have been brought into our country this last
year."[126] In the same year Middleton of South Carolina and Wright of
Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000
respectively.[127] Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to
say: "We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it
[the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity
of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and
watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than
suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped to their
very mouths (I can hardly use too bold a figure) in this stream of
iniquity."[128] The following year, 1820, brought some significant
statements from various members of Congress. Said Smith of South
Carolina: "Pharaoh was, for his temerity, drowned in the Red Sea, in
pursuing them [the Israelites] contrary to God's express will; but our
Northern friends have not been afraid even of that, in their zeal to
furnish the Southern States with Africans. They are better seamen than
Pharaoh, and calculate by that means to elude the vigilance of Heaven;
which they seem to disregard, if they can but elude the violated laws of
their country."[129] As late as May he saw little hope of suppressing
the traffic.[130] Sergeant of Pennsylvania declared: "It is notorious
that, in spite of the utmost vigilance that can be employed, African
negroes are clandestinely brought in and sold as slaves."[131] Plumer of
New Hampshire stated that "of the unhappy beings, thus in violation of
all laws transported to our shores, and thrown by force into the mass of
our black population, scarcely one in a hundred is ever detected by the
officers of the General Government, in a part of the country, where, if
we are to believe the statement of Governor Rabun, 'an officer who would
perform his duty, by attempting to enforce the law [against the slave
trade] is, by many, considered as an officious meddler, and treated with
derision and contempt;' ... I have been told by a gentleman, who has
attended particularly to this subject, that ten thousand slaves were in
one year smuggled into the United States; and that, even for the last
year, we must count the number not by hundreds, but by thousands."[132]
In 1821 a committee of Congress characterized prevailing methods as
those "of the grossest fraud that could be practised to deceive the
officers of government."[133] Another committee, in 1822, after a
careful examination of the subject, declare that they "find it
impossible to measure with precision the effect produced upon the
American branch of the slave trade by the laws above mentioned, and the
seizures under them. They are unable to state, whether those American
merchants, the American capital and seamen which heretofore aided in
this traffic, have abandoned it altogether, or have sought shelter under
the flags of other nations." They then state the suspicious circumstance
that, with the disappearance of the American flag from the traffic, "the
trade, notwithstanding, increases annually, under the flags of other
nations." They complain of the spasmodic efforts of the executive. They
say that the first United States cruiser arrived on the African coast in
March, 1820, and remained a "few weeks;" that since then four others had
in two years made five visits in all; but "since the middle of last
November, the commencement of the healthy season on that coast, no
vessel has been, nor, as your committee is informed, is, under orders
for that service."[134] The United States African agent, Ayres, reported
in 1823: "I was informed by an American officer who had been on the
coast in 1820, that he had boarded 20 American vessels in one morning,
lying in the port of Gallinas, and fitted for the reception of slaves.
It is a lamentable fact, that most of the harbours, between the Senegal
and the line, were visited by an equal number of American vessels, and
for the sole purpose of carrying away slaves. Although for some years
the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short
stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those
traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by
excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain
intelligence of any cruizer being on the coast."[135]

Even such spasmodic efforts bore abundant fruit, and indicated what
vigorous measures might have accomplished. Between May, 1818, and
November, 1821, nearly six hundred Africans were recaptured and eleven
American slavers taken.[136] Such measures gradually changed the
character of the trade, and opened the international phase of the
question. American slavers cleared for foreign ports, there took a
foreign flag and papers, and then sailed boldly past American cruisers,
although their real character was often well known. More stringent
clearance laws and consular instructions might have greatly reduced this
practice; but nothing was ever done, and gradually the laws became in
large measure powerless to deal with the bulk of the illicit trade. In
1820, September 16, a British officer, in his official report, declares
that, in spite of United States laws, "American vessels, American
subjects, and American capital, are unquestionably engaged in the trade,
though under other colours and in disguise."[137] The United States ship
"Cyane" at one time reported ten captures within a few days, adding:
"Although they are evidently owned by Americans, they are so completely
covered by Spanish papers that it is impossible to condemn them."[138]
The governor of Sierra Leone reported the rivers Nunez and Pongas full
of renegade European and American slave-traders;[139] the trade was said
to be carried on "to an extent that almost staggers belief."[140] Down
to 1824 or 1825, reports from all quarters prove this activity in
slave-trading.

The execution of the laws within the country exhibits grave defects and
even criminal negligence. Attorney-General Wirt finds it necessary to
assure collectors, in 1819, that "it is against public policy to
dispense with prosecutions for violation of the law to prohibit the
Slave trade."[141] One district attorney writes: "It appears to be
almost impossible to enforce the laws of the United States against
offenders after the negroes have been landed in the state."[142] Again,
it is asserted that "when vessels engaged in the slave trade have been
detained by the American cruizers, and sent into the slave-holding
states, there appears at once a difficulty in securing the freedom to
these captives which the laws of the United States have decreed for
them."[143] In some cases, one man would smuggle in the Africans and
hide them in the woods; then his partner would "rob" him, and so all
trace be lost.[144] Perhaps 350 Africans were officially reported as
brought in contrary to law from 1818 to 1820: the absurdity of this
figure is apparent.[145] A circular letter to the marshals, in 1821,
brought reports of only a few well-known cases, like that of the
"General Ramirez;" the marshal of Louisiana had "no information."[146]

There appears to be little positive evidence of a large illicit
importation into the country for a decade after 1825. It is hardly
possible, however, considering the activity in the trade, that slaves
were not largely imported. Indeed, when we note how the laws were
continually broken in other respects, absence of evidence of petty
smuggling becomes presumptive evidence that collusive or tacit
understanding of officers and citizens allowed the trade to some
extent.[147] Finally, it must be noted that during all this time
scarcely a man suffered for participating in the trade, beyond the loss
of the Africans and, more rarely, of his ship. Red-handed slavers,
caught in the act and convicted, were too often, like La Coste of South
Carolina, the subjects of executive clemency.[148] In certain cases
there were those who even had the effrontery to ask Congress to cancel
their own laws. For instance, in 1819 a Venezuelan privateer, secretly
fitted out and manned by Americans in Baltimore, succeeded in capturing
several American, Portuguese, and Spanish slavers, and appropriating the
slaves; being finally wrecked herself, she transferred her crew and
slaves to one of her prizes, the "Antelope," which was eventually
captured by a United States cruiser and the 280 Africans sent to
Georgia. After much litigation, the United States Supreme Court ordered
those captured from Spaniards to be surrendered, and the others to be
returned to Africa. By some mysterious process, only 139 Africans now
remained, 100 of whom were sent to Africa. The Spanish claimants of the
remaining thirty-nine sold them to a certain Mr. Wilde, who gave bond to
transport them out of the country. Finally, in December, 1827, there
came an innocent petition to Congress to _cancel this bond_.[149] A bill
to that effect passed and was approved, May 2, 1828,[150] and in
consequence these Africans remained as slaves in Georgia.

On the whole, it is plain that, although in the period from 1807 to 1820
Congress laid down broad lines of legislation sufficient, save in some
details, to suppress the African slave trade to America, yet the
execution of these laws was criminally lax. Moreover, by the facility
with which slavers could disguise their identity, it was possible for
them to escape even a vigorous enforcement of our laws. This situation
could properly be met only by energetic and sincere international
co-operation. The next chapter will review efforts directed toward this
end.[151]


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 2 sess. V. 468.

  [2] Cf. below, § 59.

  [3] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. p. 238.

  [4] There were at least twelve distinct propositions as to the
      disposal of the Africans imported:--

      1. That they be forfeited and sold by the United States at
      auction (Early's bill, reported Dec. 15: _Annals of Cong._, 9
      Cong. 2 sess. pp. 167-8).

      2. That they be forfeited and left to the disposal of the
      States (proposed by Bidwell and Early: _Ibid._, pp. 181, 221,
      477. This was the final settlement.)

      3. That they be forfeited and sold, and that the proceeds go
      to charities, education, or internal improvements (Early,
      Holland, and Masters: _Ibid._, p. 273).

      4. That they be forfeited and indentured for life (Alston and
      Bidwell: _Ibid._, pp. 170-1).

      5. That they be forfeited and indentured for 7, 8, or 10
      years (Pitkin: _Ibid._, p. 186).

      6. That they be forfeited and given into the custody of the
      President, and by him indentured in free States for a term of
      years (bill reported from the Senate Jan. 28: _House Journal_
      (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 2 sess. V. 575; _Annals of Cong._, 9
      Cong. 2 sess. p. 477. Cf. also _Ibid._, p. 272).

      7. That the Secretary of the Treasury dispose of them, at his
      discretion, in service (Quincy: _Ibid._, p. 183).

      8. That those imported into slave States be returned to
      Africa or bound out in free States (Sloan: _Ibid._, p. 254).

      9. That all be sent back to Africa (Smilie: _Ibid._, p. 176).

      10. That those imported into free States be free, those
      imported into slave States be returned to Africa or indentured
      (Sloan: _Ibid._, p. 226).

      11. That they be forfeited but not sold (Sloan and others:
      _Ibid._, p. 270).

      12. That they be free (Sloan: _Ibid._, p. 168; Bidwell:
      _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 2 sess. V. 515).

  [5] Bidwell, Cook, and others: _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2
      sess. p. 201.

  [6] Bidwell: _Ibid._, p. 172.

  [7] Fisk: _Ibid._, pp. 224-5; Bidwell: _Ibid._, p. 221.

  [8] Quincy: _Ibid._, p. 184.

  [9] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. p. 478; Bidwell:
      _Ibid._, p. 171.

 [10] _Ibid._, p. 172.

 [11] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 173-4.

 [12] Alston: _Ibid._, p. 170.

 [13] D.R. Williams: _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. p. 183.

 [14] Early: _Ibid._, pp. 184-5.

 [15] Lloyd, Early, and others: _Ibid._, p. 203.

 [16] Alston: _Ibid._, p. 170.

 [17] Quincy: _Ibid._, p. 222; Macon: _Ibid._, p. 225.

 [18] Macon: _Ibid._, p. 177.

 [19] Barker: _Ibid._, p. 171; Bidwell: _Ibid._, p. 172.

 [20] Clay, Alston, and Early: _Ibid._, p. 266.

 [21] Clay, Alston, and Early: _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2
      sess. p. 266.

 [22] Bidwell: _Ibid._, p. 221.

 [23] Sloan and others: _Ibid._, p. 271; Early and Alston:
      _Ibid._, pp. 168, 171.

 [24] Ely, Bidwell, and others: _Ibid._, pp. 179, 181, 271;
      Smilie and Findley: _Ibid._, pp. 225, 226.

 [25] _Ibid._, p. 240. Cf. Lloyd: _Ibid._, p. 236.

 [26] Holland: _Ibid._, p. 241.

 [27] _Ibid._, p. 227; Macon: _Ibid._, p. 225.

 [28] Bidwell, Cook, and others: _Ibid._, p. 201.

 [29] Bidwell: _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. p. 221. Cf.
      _Ibid._, p. 202.

 [30] Early: _Ibid._, p. 239.

 [31] _Ibid._

 [32] _Ibid._, p. 1267.

 [33] There were about six distinct punishments suggested:--

      1. Forfeiture, and fine of $5000 to $10,000 (Early's bill:
      _Ibid._, p. 167).

      2. Forfeiture and imprisonment (amendment to Senate bill:
      _Ibid._, pp. 231, 477, 483).

      3. Forfeiture, imprisonment from 5 to 10 years, and fine of
      $1000 to $10,000 (amendment to amendment of Senate bill:
      _Ibid._, pp. 228, 483).

      4. Forfeiture, imprisonment from 5 to 40 years, and fine of
      $1000 to $10,000 (Chandler's amendment: _Ibid._, p. 228).

      5. Forfeiture of all property, and imprisonment (Pitkin:
      _Ibid._, p. 188).

      6. Death (Smilie: _Ibid._, pp. 189-90; bill reported to House,
      Dec. 19: _Ibid._, p. 190; Senate bill as reported to House,
      Jan. 28).

 [34] Smilie: _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 189-90.

 [35] Tallmadge: _Ibid._, p. 233; Olin: _Ibid._, p. 237.

 [36] Ely: _Ibid._, p. 237.

 [37] Smilie: _Ibid._, p. 236. Cf. Sloan: _Ibid._, p. 232.

 [38] Hastings: _Ibid._, p. 228.

 [39] Dwight: _Ibid._, p. 241; Ely: _Ibid._, p. 232.

 [40] Mosely: _Ibid._, pp. 234-5.

 [41] Tallmadge: _Ibid._, pp. 232, 234. Cf. Dwight: _Ibid._, p. 241.

 [42] Varnum: _Ibid._, p. 243.

 [43] Elmer: _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. p. 235.

 [44] _Ibid._, p. 240.

 [45] Holland: _Ibid._, p. 240.

 [46] Early: _Ibid._, pp. 238-9; Holland: _Ibid._, p. 239.

 [47] _Ibid._, p. 233. Cf. Lloyd: _Ibid._, p. 237; Ely:
      _Ibid._, p. 232; Early: _Ibid._, pp. 238-9.

 [48] _Ibid._, p. 484.

 [49] This was the provision of the Senate bill as reported to
      the House. It was over the House amendment to this that the
      Houses disagreed. Cf. _Ibid._, p. 484.

 [50] Cf. _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 527-8.

 [51] _Ibid._, p. 528.

 [52] _Ibid._, p. 626.

 [53] _Ibid._

 [54] _Ibid._

 [55] _Ibid._, pp. 636-8; _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong.
      2 sess. V. 616, and House Bill No. 219; _Ibid._, 10 Cong. 1
      sess. VI. 27, 50; _Annals of Cong._, 10 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
      854-5, 961.

 [56] On account of the meagre records it is difficult to
      follow the course of this bill. I have pieced together
      information from various sources, and trust that this account
      is approximately correct.

 [57] Cf. _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1821), 9 Cong. 2 sess. IV.,
      Senate Bill No. 41.

 [58] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. p. 438. Cf. above, §
      53.

 [59] This amendment of the Committee of the Whole was adopted
      by a vote of 63 to 53. The New England States stood 3 to 2 for
      the death penalty; the Middle States were evenly divided, 3
      and 3; and the South stood 5 to 0 against it, with Kentucky
      evenly divided. Cf. _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 2
      sess. V. 504.

 [60] _Ibid._, V. 514-5.

 [61] The substitution of the Senate bill was a victory for the
      anti-slavery party, as all battles had to be fought again. The
      Southern party, however, succeeded in carrying all its
      amendments.

 [62] Messrs. Betton of New Hampshire, Chittenden of Vermont,
      Garnett and Trigg of Virginia, and D.R. Williams of South
      Carolina voted against the bill: _House Journal_ (repr. 1826),
      9 Cong. 2 sess. V. 585-6.

 [63] _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 626-7.

 [64] The unassigned dates refer to debates, etc. The history
      of the amendments and debates on the measure may be traced in
      the following references:--

                      _Senate_ (Bill No. 41).

      _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 20-1; 9 Cong. 2 sess.
      pp. 16, 19, 23, 33, 36, 45, 47, 68, 69, 70, 71, 79, 87, 93,
      etc.

      _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 1-2 sess. IV. 11, 112,
      123, 124, 132, 133, 150, 158, 164, 165, 167, 168, etc.

                    *       *       *       *       *

                      _House_ (Bill No. 148).

      _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. p. 438; 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp.
      114, 151, 167-8, 173-4, 180, 183, 189, 200, 202-4, 220, 228,
      231, 240, 254, 264, 266-7, 270, 273, 373, 427, 477, 481,
      484-6, 527, 528, etc.

      _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 1-2 sess. V. 470, 482,
      488, 490, 491, 496, 500, 504, 510, 513-6, 517, 540, 557, 575,
      579, 581, 583-4, 585, 592, 594, 610, 613-5, 623, 638, 640,
      etc.

 [65] _Statutes at Large_, II. 426. There were some few
      attempts to obtain laws of relief from this bill: see, e.g.,
      _Annals of Cong._, 10 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1243; 11 Cong. 1 sess.
      pp. 34, 36-9, 41, 43, 48, 49, 380, 465, 688, 706, 2209; _House
      Journal_ (repr. 1826), II Cong. 1-2 sess. VII. 100, 102, 124,
      etc., and Index, Senate Bill No. 8. Cf. _Amer. State Papers,
      Miscellaneous_, II. No. 269. There was also one proposed
      amendment to make the prohibition perpetual: _Amer. State
      Papers, Miscellaneous_, I. No. 244.

 [66] Toulmin, _Digest of the Laws of Alabama_, p. 637.

 [67] _Laws of North Carolina_ (revision of 1819), II. 1350.

 [68] Prince, _Digest_, p. 793.

 [69] Fowler, _Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut_,
      in _Local Law_, etc., pp. 122, 126.

 [70] _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, p. 32.

 [71] _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 11 Cong. 3 sess. VII. p.
      435.

 [72] _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 84, p. 5.

 [73] See, e.g., _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 11 Cong. 3 sess.
      VII. p. 575.

 [74] Drake, _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, p. 51. Parts of
      this narrative are highly colored and untrustworthy; this
      passage, however, has every earmark of truth, and is confirmed
      by many incidental allusions.

 [75] For accounts of these slavers, see _House Reports_, 17
      Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, pp. 30-50. The "Paz" was an armed
      slaver flying the American flag.

 [76] Said to be owned by an Englishman, but fitted in America
      and manned by Americans. It was eventually captured by H.M.S.
      "Bann," after a hard fight.

 [77] Also called Spanish schooner "Triumvirate," with American
      supercargo, Spanish captain, and American, French, Spanish,
      and English crew. It was finally captured by a British vessel.

 [78] An American slaver of 1814, which was boarded by a
      British vessel. All the above cases, and many others, were
      proven before British courts.

 [79] _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, p. 51.

 [80] _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 12, pp. 22, 38.
      This slaver was after capture sent to New Orleans,--an
      illustration of the irony of the Act of 1807.

 [81] _House Journal_, 14 Cong. 2 sess. p. 15.

 [82] _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 36, p. 5.

 [83] _Ibid._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 12, pp. 8-14. See
      Chew's letter of Oct. 17, 1817: _Ibid._, pp. 14-16.

 [84] By the secret Joint Resolution and Act of 1811 (_Statutes
      at Large_, III. 471), Congress gave the President power to
      suppress the Amelia Island establishment, which was then
      notorious. The capture was not accomplished until 1817.

 [85] _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 42, pp. 10-11.
      Cf. Report of the House Committee, Jan. 10, 1818: "It is but
      too notorious that numerous infractions of the law prohibiting
      the importation of slaves into the United States have been
      perpetrated with impunity upon our southern frontier." _Amer.
      State Papers, Miscellaneous_, II. No. 441.

 [86] Special message of Jan. 13, 1818: _House Journal_, 15
      Cong. 1 sess. pp. 137-9.

 [87] Collector McIntosh, of the District of Brunswick, Ga., to
      the Secretary of the Treasury. _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1 sess.
      III. No. 42, pp. 8-9.

 [88] _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 42, pp. 6-7.

 [89] _Ibid._, pp. 11-12.

 [90] _Amer. State Papers, Miscellaneous_, II. No. 529.

 [91] _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 42, p. 7.

 [92] _Ibid._, p. 6.

 [93] _House Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348, p. 82.

 [94] They were not general instructions, but were directed to
      Commander Campbell. Cf. _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No.
      84, pp. 5-6.

 [95] _Statutes at Large_, III. 471 ff.

 [96] _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. VI. No. 107, pp. 8-9.

 [97] _Ibid._, IV. No. 84. Cf. Chew's letters in _House
      Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348.

 [98] _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 12, pp. 22, 38; 15
      Cong. 2 sess. VI. No. 100, p. 13; 16 Cong. 1 sess. III. No.
      42, p. 9, etc.; _House Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No.
      348, p. 85.

 [99] _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. VI. No. 107, pp. 8-9.

[100] _House Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348, p. 77.

[101] Cf. _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 42, p. 11:
      "The Grand Jury found true bills against the owners of the
      vessels, masters, and a supercargo--all of whom are
      discharged; why or wherefore I cannot say, except that it
      could not be for want of proof against them."

[102] E.g., in July, 1818, one informer "will have to leave
      that part of the country to save his life": _Ibid._, 15 Cong.
      2 sess. VI. No. 100, p. 9.

[103] Joseph Nourse, Register of the Treasury, to Hon. W.H.
      Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury: _Ibid._, 15 Cong. 2 sess.
      VI. No. 107, p. 5.

[104] The slaves on the "Constitution" were not condemned, for
      the technical reason that she was not captured by a
      commissioned officer of the United States navy.

[105] These proceedings are very obscure, and little was said
      about them. The Spanish claimants were, it was alleged with
      much probability, but representatives of Americans. The claim
      was paid under the provisions of the Treaty of Florida, and
      included slaves whom the court afterward declared forfeited.

[106] An act to relieve him was finally passed, Feb. 8, 1827,
      nine years after the capture. See _Statutes at Large_, VI.
      357.

[107] It is difficult to get at the exact facts in this
      complicated case. The above statement is, I think, much milder
      than the real facts would warrant, if thoroughly known. Cf.
      _House Reports_, 19 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 231; 21 Cong. 1
      sess. III. No. 348, pp. 62-3, etc.; 24 Cong. 1 sess. I. No.
      209; _Amer. State Papers, Naval_, II. No. 308.

[108] The first method, represented by the Act of 1818, was
      favored by the South, the Senate, and the Democrats; the
      second method, represented by the Act of 1819, by the North,
      the House, and by the as yet undeveloped but growing Whig
      party.

[109] Committees on the slave-trade were appointed by the
      House in 1810 and 1813; the committee of 1813 recommended a
      revision of the laws, but nothing was done: _Annals of Cong._,
      11 Cong. 3 sess. p. 387; 12 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1074, 1090. The
      presidential message of 1816 led to committees on the trade in
      both Houses. The committee of the House of Representatives
      reported a joint resolution on abolishing the traffic and
      colonizing the Negroes, also looking toward international
      action. This never came to a vote: _Senate Journal_, 14 Cong.
      2 sess. pp. 46, 179, 180; _House Journal_, 14 Cong. 2 sess.
      pp. 25, 27, 380; _House Doc_, 14 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 77.
      Finally, the presidential message of 1817 (_House Journal_, 15
      Cong. 1 sess. p. 11), announcing the issuance of orders to
      suppress the Amelia Island establishment, led to two other
      committees in both Houses. The House committee under Middleton
      made a report with a bill (_Amer. State Papers,
      Miscellaneous_, II. No. 441), and the Senate committee also
      reported a bill.

[110] The Senate debates were entirely unreported, and the
      report of the House debates is very meagre. For the
      proceedings, see _Senate Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 243,
      304, 315, 333, 338, 340, 348, 377, 386, 388, 391, 403, 406;
      _House Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 19, 20, 29, 51, 92, 131,
      362, 410, 450, 452, 456, 468, 479, 484, 492, 505.

[111] Simkins of South Carolina, Edwards of North Carolina,
      and Pindall: _Annals of Cong._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1740.

[112] Hugh Nelson of Virginia: _Annals of Cong._, 15 Cong. 1
      sess. p. 1740.

[113] _Statutes at Large_, III. 450. By this act the first six
      sections of the Act of 1807 were repealed.

[114] Or, more accurately speaking, every one realized, in
      view of the increased activity of the trade, that it would be
      a failure.

[115] Nov. 18, 1818, the part of the presidential message
      referring to the slave-trade was given to a committee of the
      House, and this committee also took in hand the House bill of
      the previous session which the Senate bill had replaced:
      _House Journal_, 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 9-19, 42, 150, 179, 330,
      334, 341, 343, 352.

[116] Of which little was reported: _Annals of Cong._, 15
      Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1430-31. Strother opposed, "for various
      reasons of expediency," the bounties for captors. Nelson of
      Virginia advocated the death penalty, and, aided by Pindall,
      had it inserted. The vote on the bill was 57 to 45.

[117] The Senate had also had a committee at work on a bill
      which was reported Feb. 8, and finally postponed: _Senate
      Journal_, 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 234, 244, 311-2, 347. The House
      bill was taken up March 2: _Annals of Cong._, 15 Cong. 2 sess.
      p. 280.

[118] _Statutes at Large_, III. 532.

[119] _Annals of Cong._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. p. 1430. This
      insured the trial of slave-traders in a sympathetic slave
      State, and resulted in the "disappearance" of many captured
      Negroes.

[120] _Statutes at Large_, III. 533.

[121] The first of a long series of appropriations extending
      to 1869, of which a list is given on the next page. The totals
      are only approximately correct. Some statutes may have escaped
      me, and in the reports of moneys the surpluses of previous
      years are not always clearly distinguishable.

[122] In the first session of the sixteenth Congress, two
      bills on piracy were introduced into the Senate, one of which
      passed, April 26. In the House there was a bill on piracy, and
      a slave-trade committee reported recommending that the
      slave-trade be piracy. The Senate bill and this bill were
      considered in Committee of the Whole, May 11, and a bill was
      finally passed declaring, among other things, the traffic
      piracy. In the Senate there was "some discussion, rather on
      the form than the substance of these amendments," and "they
      were agreed to without a division": _Senate Journal_, 16 Cong.
      1 sess. pp. 238, 241, 268, 287, 314, 331, 346, 350, 409, 412,
      417, 420, 422, 424, 425; _House Journal_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
      113, 280, 453, 454, 494, 518, 520, 522, 537; _Annals of
      Cong._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 693-4, 2231, 2236-7, etc. The
      debates were not reported.

[123] _Statutes at Large_, III. 600-1. This act was in reality
      a continuation of the piracy Act of 1819, and was only
      temporary. The provision was, however, continued by several
      acts, and finally made perpetual by the Act of Jan. 30, 1823:
      _Statutes at Large_, III. 510-4, 721. On March 3, 1823, it was
      slightly amended so as to give district courts jurisdiction.

[124] Attorney-General Wirt advised him, October, 1819, that
      no part of the appropriation could be used to purchase land in
      Africa or tools for the Negroes, or as salary for the agent:
      _Opinions of Attorneys-General_, I. 314-7. Monroe laid the
      case before Congress in a special message Dec. 20, 1819
      (_House Journal_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. p. 57); but no action was
      taken there.

[125] Cf. Kendall's Report, August, 1830: _Senate Doc._, 21
      Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, pp. 211-8; also see below, Chapter X.

[126] Speech in the House of Representatives, Feb. 15, 1819,
      p. 18; published in Boston, 1849.

[127] Jay, _Inquiry into American Colonization_ (1838), p. 59,
      note.

[128] Quoted in Friends' _Facts and Observations on the Slave
      Trade_ (ed. 1841), pp. 7-8.

[129] _Annals of Cong._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 270-1.

[130] _Ibid._, p. 698.

[131] _Ibid._, p. 1207.

[132] _Annals of Cong._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1433.

[133] Referring particularly to the case of the slaver
      "Plattsburg." Cf. _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No.
      92, p. 10.

[134] _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, p. 2. The
      President had in his message spoken in exhilarating tones of
      the success of the government in suppressing the trade. The
      House Committee appointed in pursuance of this passage made
      the above report. Their conclusions are confirmed by British
      reports: _Parliamentary Papers_, 1822, Vol. XXII., _Slave
      Trade_, Further Papers, III. p. 44. So, too, in 1823, Ashmun,
      the African agent, reports that thousands of slaves are being
      abducted.

[135] Ayres to the Secretary of the Navy, Feb. 24, 1823;
      reprinted in _Friends' View of the African Slave-Trade_
      (1824), p. 31.

[136] _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, pp. 5-6.
      The slavers were the "Ramirez," "Endymion," "Esperanza,"
      "Plattsburg," "Science," "Alexander," "Eugene," "Mathilde,"
      "Daphne," "Eliza," and "La Pensée." In these 573 Africans were
      taken. The naval officers were greatly handicapped by the size
      of the ships, etc. (cf. _Friends' View_, etc., pp. 33-41).
      They nevertheless acted with great zeal.

[137] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1821, Vol. XXIII., _Slave
      Trade_, Further Papers, A, p. 76. The names and description of
      a dozen or more American slavers are given: _Ibid._, pp.
      18-21.

[138] _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, pp. 15-20.

[139] _House Doc._, 18 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 119, p. 13.

[140] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1823, Vol. XVIII., _Slave
      Trade_, Further Papers, A, pp. 10-11.

[141] _Opinions of Attorneys-General_, V. 717.

[142] R.W. Habersham to the Secretary of the Navy, August,
      1821; reprinted in _Friends' View_, etc., p. 47.

[143] _Ibid._, p. 42.

[144] _Ibid._, p. 43.

[145] Cf. above, pp. 126-7.

[146] _Friends' View_, etc., p. 42.

[147] A few accounts of captures here and there would make the
      matter less suspicious; these, however, do not occur. How
      large this suspected illicit traffic was, it is of course
      impossible to say; there is no reason why it may not have
      reached many hundreds per year.

[148] Cf. editorial in _Niles's Register_, XXII. 114. Cf. also
      the following instances of pardons:--

      PRESIDENT JEFFERSON: March 1, 1808, Phillip M. Topham,
      convicted for "carrying on an illegal slave-trade" (pardoned
      twice). _Pardons and Remissions_, I. 146, 148-9.

      PRESIDENT MADISON: July 29, 1809, fifteen vessels arrived at
      New Orleans from Cuba, with 666 white persons and 683 negroes.
      Every penalty incurred under the Act of 1807 was remitted.
      (Note: "Several other pardons of this nature were granted.")
      _Ibid._, I. 179.

      Nov. 8, 1809, John Hopkins and Lewis Le Roy, convicted for
      importing a slave. _Ibid._, I. 184-5.

      Feb. 12, 1810, William Sewall, convicted for importing slaves.
      _Ibid._, I. 194, 235, 240.

      May 5, 1812, William Babbit, convicted for importing slaves.
      _Ibid._, I. 248.

      PRESIDENT MONROE: June 11, 1822, Thomas Shields, convicted for
      bringing slaves into New Orleans. _Ibid._, IV. 15.

      Aug. 24, 1822, J.F. Smith, sentenced to five years'
      imprisonment and $3000 fine; served twenty-five months and was
      then pardoned. _Ibid._, IV. 22.

      July 23, 1823, certain parties liable to penalties for
      introducing slaves into Alabama. _Ibid._, IV. 63.

      Aug. 15, 1823, owners of schooner "Mary," convicted of
      importing slaves. _Ibid._, IV. 66.

      PRESIDENT J.Q. ADAMS: March 4, 1826, Robert Perry; his ship
      was forfeited for slave-trading. _Ibid._, IV. 140.

      Jan. 17, 1827, Jesse Perry; forfeited ship, and was convicted
      for introducing slaves. _Ibid._, IV. 158.

      Feb. 13, 1827, Zenas Winston; incurred penalties for
      slave-trading. _Ibid._, IV. 161. The four following cases are
      similar to that of Winston:--

      Feb. 24, 1827, John Tucker and William Morbon. _Ibid._, IV.
      162.

      March 25, 1828, Joseph Badger. _Ibid._, IV. 192.

      Feb. 19, 1829, L.R. Wallace. _Ibid._, IV. 215.

      PRESIDENT JACKSON: Five cases. _Ibid._, IV. 225, 270, 301,
      393, 440.

      The above cases were taken from manuscript copies of the
      Washington records, made by Mr. W.C. Endicott, Jr., and kindly
      loaned me.

[149] See _Senate Journal_, 20 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 60, 66, 340,
      341, 343, 348, 352, 355; _House Journal_, 20 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
      59, 76, 123, 134, 156, 169, 173, 279, 634, 641, 646, 647, 688,
      692.

[150] _Statutes at Large_, VI. 376.

[151] Among interesting minor proceedings in this period were
      two Senate bills to register slaves so as to prevent illegal
      importation. They were both dropped in the House; a House
      proposition to the same effect also came to nothing: _Senate
      Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188,
      201, 203, 232, 237; 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 63, 74, 77, 202, 207,
      285, 291, 297; _House Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. p. 332; 15
      Cong. 2 sess. pp. 303, 305, 316; 16 Cong. 1 sess. p. 150.
      Another proposition was contained in the Meigs resolution
      presented to the House, Feb. 5, 1820, which proposed to devote
      the public lands to the suppression of the slave-trade. This
      was ruled out of order. It was presented again and laid on the
      table in 1821: _House Journal_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 196, 200,
      227; 16 Cong. 2 sess. p. 238.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter IX_

THE INTERNATIONAL STATUS OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.

1783-1862.

  66. The Rise of the Movement against the Slave-Trade, 1788-1807.
  67. Concerted Action of the Powers, 1783-1814.
  68. Action of the Powers from 1814 to 1820.
  69. The Struggle for an International Right of Search, 1820-1840.
  70. Negotiations of 1823-1825.
  71. The Attitude of the United States and the State of the Slave-Trade.
  72. The Quintuple Treaty, 1839-1842.
  73. Final Concerted Measures, 1842-1862.


66. ~The Rise of the Movement against the Slave-Trade, 1788-1807.~ At
the beginning of the nineteenth century England held 800,000 slaves in
her colonies; France, 250,000; Denmark, 27,000; Spain and Portugal,
600,000; Holland, 50,000; Sweden, 600; there were also about 2,000,000
slaves in Brazil, and about 900,000 in the United States.[1] This was
the powerful basis of the demand for the slave-trade; and against the
economic forces which these four and a half millions of enforced
laborers represented, the battle for freedom had to be fought.

Denmark first responded to the denunciatory cries of the eighteenth
century against slavery and the slave-trade. In 1792, by royal order,
this traffic was prohibited in the Danish possessions after 1802. The
principles of the French Revolution logically called for the extinction
of the slave system by France. This was, however, accomplished more
precipitately than the Convention anticipated; and in a whirl of
enthusiasm engendered by the appearance of the Dominican deputies,
slavery and the slave-trade were abolished in all French colonies
February 4, 1794.[2] This abolition was short-lived; for at the command
of the First Consul slavery and the slave-trade was restored in An X
(1799).[3] The trade was finally abolished by Napoleon during the
Hundred Days by a decree, March 29, 1815, which briefly declared: "À
dater de la publication du présent Décret, la Traite des Noirs est
abolie."[4] The Treaty of Paris eventually confirmed this law.[5]

In England, the united efforts of Sharpe, Clarkson, and Wilberforce
early began to arouse public opinion by means of agitation and pamphlet
literature. May 21, 1788, Sir William Dolben moved a bill regulating the
trade, which passed in July and was the last English measure
countenancing the traffic.[6] The report of the Privy Council on the
subject in 1789[7] precipitated the long struggle. On motion of Pitt, in
1788, the House had resolved to take up at the next session the question
of the abolition of the trade.[8] It was, accordingly, called up by
Wilberforce, and a remarkable parliamentary battle ensued, which lasted
continuously until 1805. The Grenville-Fox ministry now espoused the
cause. This ministry first prohibited the trade with such colonies as
England had acquired by conquest during the Napoleonic wars; then, in
1806, they prohibited the foreign slave-trade; and finally, March 25,
1807, enacted the total abolition of the traffic.[9]


67. ~Concerted Action of the Powers, 1783-1814.~ During the peace
negotiations between the United States and Great Britain in 1783, it was
proposed by Jay, in June, that there be a proviso inserted as follows:
"Provided that the subjects of his Britannic Majesty shall not have any
right or claim under the convention, to carry or import, into the said
States any slaves from any part of the world; it being the intention of
the said States entirely to prohibit the importation thereof."[10] Fox
promptly replied: "If that be their policy, it never can be competent to
us to dispute with them their own regulations."[11] No mention of this
was, however, made in the final treaty, probably because it was thought
unnecessary.

In the proposed treaty of 1806, signed at London December 31, Article 24
provided that "The high contracting parties engage to communicate to
each other, without delay, all such laws as have been or shall be
hereafter enacted by their respective Legislatures, as also all measures
which shall have been taken for the abolition or limitation of the
African slave trade; and they further agree to use their best endeavors
to procure the co-operation of other Powers for the final and complete
abolition of a trade so repugnant to the principles of justice and
humanity."[12]

This marks the beginning of a long series of treaties between England
and other powers looking toward the prohibition of the traffic by
international agreement. During the years 1810-1814 she signed treaties
relating to the subject with Portugal, Denmark, and Sweden.[13] May 30,
1814, an additional article to the Treaty of Paris, between France and
Great Britain, engaged these powers to endeavor to induce the
approaching Congress at Vienna "to decree the abolition of the Slave
Trade, so that the said Trade shall cease universally, as it shall cease
definitively, under any circumstances, on the part of the French
Government, in the course of 5 years; and that during the said period no
Slave Merchant shall import or sell Slaves, except in the Colonies of
the State of which he is a Subject."[14] In addition to this, the next
day a circular letter was despatched by Castlereagh to Austria, Russia,
and Prussia, expressing the hope "that the Powers of Europe, when
restoring Peace to Europe, with one common interest, will crown this
great work by interposing their benign offices in favour of those
Regions of the Globe, which yet continue to be desolated by this
unnatural and inhuman traffic."[15] Meantime additional treaties were
secured: in 1814 by royal decree Netherlands agreed to abolish the
trade;[16] Spain was induced by her necessities to restrain her trade to
her own colonies, and to endeavor to prevent the fraudulent use of her
flag by foreigners;[17] and in 1815 Portugal agreed to abolish the
slave-trade north of the equator.[18]


68. ~Action of the Powers from 1814 to 1820.~ At the Congress of Vienna,
which assembled late in 1814, Castlereagh was indefatigable in his
endeavors to secure the abolition of the trade. France and Spain,
however, refused to yield farther than they had already done, and the
other powers hesitated to go to the lengths he recommended.
Nevertheless, he secured the institution of annual conferences on the
matter, and a declaration by the Congress strongly condemning the trade
and declaring that "the public voice in all civilized countries was
raised to demand its suppression as soon as possible," and that, while
the definitive period of termination would be left to subsequent
negotiation, the sovereigns would not consider their work done until the
trade was entirely suppressed.[19]

In the Treaty of Ghent, between Great Britain and the United States,
ratified February 17, 1815, Article 10, proposed by Great Britain,
declared that, "Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the
principles of humanity and justice," the two countries agreed to use
their best endeavors in abolishing the trade.[20] The final overthrow of
Napoleon was marked by a second declaration of the powers, who,
"desiring to give effect to the measures on which they deliberated at
the Congress of Vienna, relative to the complete and universal
abolition of the Slave Trade, and having, each in their respective
Dominions, prohibited without restriction their Colonies and Subjects
from taking any part whatever in this Traffic, engage to renew
conjointly their efforts, with the view of securing final success to
those principles which they proclaimed in the Declaration of the 4th
February, 1815, and of concerting, without loss of time, through their
Ministers at the Courts of London and of Paris, the most effectual
measures for the entire and definitive abolition of a Commerce so
odious, and so strongly condemned by the laws of religion and of
nature."[21]

Treaties further restricting the trade continued to be made by Great
Britain: Spain abolished the trade north of the equator in 1817,[22] and
promised entire abolition in 1820; Spain, Portugal, and Holland also
granted a mutual limited Right of Search to England, and joined in
establishing mixed courts.[23] The effort, however, to secure a general
declaration of the powers urging, if not compelling, the abolition of
the trade in 1820, as well as the attempt to secure a qualified
international Right of Visit, failed, although both propositions were
strongly urged by England at the Conference of 1818.[24]


69. ~The Struggle for an International Right of Search, 1820-1840.~
Whatever England's motives were, it is certain that only a limited
international Right of Visit on the high seas could suppress or greatly
limit the slave-trade. Her diplomacy was therefore henceforth directed
to this end. On the other hand, the maritime supremacy of England, so
successfully asserted during the Napoleonic wars, would, in case a Right
of Search were granted, virtually make England the policeman of the
seas; and if nations like the United States had already, under present
conditions, had just cause to complain of violations by England of their
rights on the seas, might not any extension of rights by international
agreement be dangerous? It was such considerations that for many years
brought the powers to a dead-lock in their efforts to suppress the
slave-trade.

At first it looked as if England might attempt, by judicial decisions in
her own courts, to seize even foreign slavers.[25] After the war,
however, her courts disavowed such action,[26] and the right was sought
for by treaty stipulation. Castlereagh took early opportunity to
approach the United States on the matter, suggesting to Minister Rush,
June 20, 1818, a mutual but strictly limited Right of Search.[27] Rush
was ordered to give him assurances of the solicitude of the United
States to suppress the traffic, but to state that the concessions asked
for appeared of a character not adaptable to our institutions.
Negotiations were then transferred to Washington; and the new British
minister, Mr. Stratford Canning, approached Adams with full instructions
in December, 1820.[28]

Meantime, it had become clear to many in the United States that the
individual efforts of States could never suppress or even limit the
trade without systematic co-operation. In 1817 a committee of the House
had urged the opening of negotiations looking toward such international
co-operation,[29] and a Senate motion to the same effect had caused long
debate.[30] In 1820 and 1821 two House committee reports, one of which
recommended the granting of a Right of Search, were adopted by the
House, but failed in the Senate.[31] Adams, notwithstanding this, saw
constitutional objections to the plan proposed by Canning, and wrote to
him, December 30: "A Compact, giving the power to the Naval Officers of
one Nation to search the Merchant Vessels of another for Offenders and
offences against the Laws of the latter, backed by a further power to
seize and carry into a Foreign Port, and there subject to the decision
of a Tribunal composed of at least one half Foreigners, irresponsible to
the Supreme Corrective tribunal of this Union, and not amendable to the
controul of impeachment for official misdemeanors, was an investment of
power, over the persons, property and reputation of the Citizens of this
Country, not only unwarranted by any delegation of Sovereign Power to
the National Government, but so adverse to the elementary principles and
indispensable securities of individual rights, ... that not even the
most unqualified approbation of the ends ... could justify the
transgression." He then suggested co-operation of the fleets on the
coast of Africa, a proposal which was promptly accepted.[32]

The slave-trade was again a subject of international consideration at
the Congress of Verona in 1822. Austria, France, Great Britain, Russia,
and Prussia were represented. The English delegates declared that,
although only Portugal and Brazil allowed the trade, yet the traffic was
at that moment carried on to a greater extent than ever before. They
said that in seven months of the year 1821 no less than 21,000 slaves
were abducted, and three hundred and fifty-two vessels entered African
ports north of the equator. "It is obvious," said they, "that this crime
is committed in contravention of the Laws of every Country of Europe,
and of America, excepting only of one, and that it requires something
more than the ordinary operation of Law to prevent it." England
therefore recommended:--

1. That each country denounce the trade as piracy, with a view of
founding upon the aggregate of such separate declarations a general law
to be incorporated in the Law of Nations.

2. A withdrawing of the flags of the Powers from persons not natives of
these States, who engage in the traffic under the flags of these States.

3. A refusal to admit to their domains the produce of the colonies of
States allowing the trade, a measure which would apply to Portugal and
Brazil alone.

These proposals were not accepted. Austria would agree to the first two
only; France refused to denounce the trade as piracy; and Prussia was
non-committal. The utmost that could be gained was another denunciation
of the trade couched in general terms.[33]


70. ~Negotiations of 1823-1825.~ England did not, however, lose hope of
gaining some concession from the United States. Another House committee
had, in 1822, reported that the only method of suppressing the trade was
by granting a Right of Search.[34] The House agreed, February 28, 1823,
to request the President to enter into negotiations with the maritime
powers of Europe to denounce the slave-trade as piracy; an amendment
"that we agree to a qualified right of search" was, however, lost.[35]
Meantime, the English minister was continually pressing the matter upon
Adams, who proposed in turn to denounce the trade as piracy. Canning
agreed to this, but only on condition that it be piracy under the Law of
Nations and not merely by statute law. Such an agreement, he said, would
involve a Right of Search for its enforcement; he proposed strictly to
limit and define this right, to allow captured ships to be tried in
their own courts, and not to commit the United States in any way to the
question of the belligerent Right of Search. Adams finally sent a draft
of a proposed treaty to England, and agreed to recognize the
slave-traffic "as piracy under the law of nations, namely: that,
although seizable by the officers and authorities of every nation, they
should be triable only by the tribunals of the country of the slave
trading vessel."[36]

Rush presented this _project_ to the government in January, 1824.
England agreed to all the points insisted on by the United States; viz.,
that she herself should denounce the trade as piracy; that slavers
should be tried in their own country; that the captor should be laid
under the most effective responsibility for his conduct; and that
vessels under convoy of a ship of war of their own country should be
exempt from search. In addition, England demanded that citizens of
either country captured under the flag of a third power should be sent
home for trial, and that citizens of either country chartering vessels
of a third country should come under these stipulations.[37]

This convention was laid before the Senate April 30, 1824, but was not
acted upon until May 21, when it was so amended as to make it terminable
at six months' notice. The same day, President Monroe, "apprehending,
from the delay in the decision, that some difficulty exists," sent a
special message to the Senate, giving at length the reasons for signing
the treaty, and saying that "should this Convention be adopted, there is
every reason to believe, that it will be the commencement of a system
destined to accomplish the entire Abolition of the Slave Trade." It was,
however, a time of great political pot-boiling, and consequently an
unfortunate occasion to ask senators to settle any great question. A
systematic attack, led by Johnson of Louisiana, was made on all the
vital provisions of the treaty: the waters of America were excepted from
its application, and those of the West Indies barely escaped exception;
the provision which, perhaps, aimed the deadliest blow at American
slave-trade interests was likewise struck out; namely, the application
of the Right of Search to citizens chartering the vessels of a third
nation.[38]

The convention thus mutilated was not signed by England, who demanded as
the least concession the application of the Right of Search to American
waters. Meantime the United States had invited nearly all nations to
denounce the trade as piracy; and the President, the Secretary of the
Navy, and a House committee had urgently favored the granting of the
Right of Search. The bad faith of Congress, however, in the matter of
the Colombian treaty broke off for a time further negotiations with
England.[39]


71. ~The Attitude of the United States and the State of the
Slave-Trade.~ In 1824 the Right of Search was established between
England and Sweden, and in 1826 Brazil promised to abolish the trade in
three years.[40] In 1831 the cause was greatly advanced by the signing
of a treaty between Great Britain and France, granting mutually a
geographically limited Right of Search.[41] This led, in the next few
years, to similar treaties with Denmark, Sardinia,[42] the Hanse
towns,[43] and Naples.[44] Such measures put the trade more and more in
the hands of Americans, and it began greatly to increase. Mercer sought
repeatedly in the House to have negotiations reopened with England, but
without success.[45] Indeed, the chances of success were now for many
years imperilled by the recurrence of deliberate search of American
vessels by the British.[46] In the majority of cases the vessels proved
to be slavers, and some of them fraudulently flew the American flag;
nevertheless, their molestation by British cruisers created much
feeling, and hindered all steps toward an understanding: the United
States was loath to have her criminal negligence in enforcing her own
laws thus exposed by foreigners. Other international questions connected
with the trade also strained the relations of the two countries: three
different vessels engaged in the domestic slave-trade, driven by stress
of weather, or, in the "Creole" case, captured by Negroes on board,
landed slaves in British possessions; England freed them, and refused to
pay for such as were landed after emancipation had been proclaimed in
the West Indies.[47] The case of the slaver "L'Amistad" also raised
difficulties with Spain. This Spanish vessel, after the Negroes on board
had mutinied and killed their owners, was seized by a United States
vessel and brought into port for adjudication. The court, however, freed
the Negroes, on the ground that under Spanish law they were not legally
slaves; and although the Senate repeatedly tried to indemnify the
owners, the project did not succeed.[48]

Such proceedings well illustrate the new tendency of the pro-slavery
party to neglect the enforcement of the slave-trade laws, in a frantic
defence of the remotest ramparts of slave property. Consequently, when,
after the treaty of 1831, France and England joined in urging the
accession of the United States to it, the British minister was at last
compelled to inform Palmerston, December, 1833, that "the Executive at
Washington appears to shrink from bringing forward, in any shape, a
question, upon which depends the completion of their former object--the
utter and universal Abolition of the Slave Trade--from an apprehension
of alarming the Southern States."[49] Great Britain now offered to sign
the proposed treaty of 1824 as amended; but even this Forsyth refused,
and stated that the United States had determined not to become "a party
of any Convention on the subject of the Slave Trade."[50]

Estimates as to the extent of the slave-trade agree that the traffic to
North and South America in 1820 was considerable, certainly not much
less than 40,000 slaves annually. From that time to about 1825 it
declined somewhat, but afterward increased enormously, so that by 1837
the American importation was estimated as high as 200,000 Negroes
annually. The total abolition of the African trade by American countries
then brought the traffic down to perhaps 30,000 in 1842. A large and
rapid increase of illicit traffic followed; so that by 1847 the
importation amounted to nearly 100,000 annually. One province of Brazil
is said to have received 173,000 in the years 1846-1849. In the decade
1850-1860 this activity in slave-trading continued, and reached very
large proportions.

The traffic thus carried on floated under the flags of France, Spain,
and Portugal, until about 1830; from 1830 to 1840 it began gradually to
assume the United States flag; by 1845, a large part of the trade was
under the stars and stripes; by 1850 fully one-half the trade, and in
the decade, 1850-1860 nearly all the traffic, found this flag its best
protection.[51]


72. ~The Quintuple Treaty, 1839-1842.~ In 1839 Pope Gregory XVI.
stigmatized the slave-trade "as utterly unworthy of the Christian name;"
and at the same time, although proscribed by the laws of every civilized
State, the trade was flourishing with pristine vigor. Great advantage
was given the traffic by the fact that the United States, for two
decades after the abortive attempt of 1824, refused to co-operate with
the rest of the civilized world, and allowed her flag to shelter and
protect the slave-trade. If a fully equipped slaver sailed from New
York, Havana, Rio Janeiro, or Liverpool, she had only to hoist the stars
and stripes in order to proceed unmolested on her piratical voyage; for
there was seldom a United States cruiser to be met with, and there were,
on the other hand, diplomats at Washington so jealous of the honor of
the flag that they would prostitute it to crime rather than allow an
English or a French cruiser in any way to interfere. Without doubt, the
contention of the United States as to England's pretensions to a Right
of Visit was technically correct. Nevertheless, it was clear that if the
slave-trade was to be suppressed, each nation must either zealously keep
her flag from fraudulent use, or, as a labor-saving device, depute to
others this duty for limited places and under special circumstances. A
failure of any one nation to do one of these two things meant that the
efforts of all other nations were to be fruitless. The United States had
invited the world to join her in denouncing the slave-trade as piracy;
yet, when such a pirate was waylaid by an English vessel, the United
States complained or demanded reparation. The only answer which this
country for years returned to the long-continued exposures of American
slave-traders and of the fraudulent use of the American flag, was a
recital of cases where Great Britain had gone beyond her legal powers in
her attempt to suppress the slave-trade.[52] In the face of overwhelming
evidence to the contrary, Secretary of State Forsyth declared, in 1840,
that the duty of the United States in the matter of the slave-trade "has
been faithfully performed, and if the traffic still exists as a disgrace
to humanity, it is to be imputed to nations with whom Her Majesty's
Government has formed and maintained the most intimate connexions, and
to whose Governments Great Britain has paid for the right of active
intervention in order to its complete extirpation."[53] So zealous was
Stevenson, our minister to England, in denying the Right of Search, that
he boldly informed Palmerston, in 1841, "that there is no shadow of
pretence for excusing, much less justifying, the exercise of any such
right. That it is wholly immaterial, whether the vessels be equipped
for, or actually engaged in slave traffic or not, and consequently the
right to search or detain even slave vessels, must be confined to the
ships or vessels of those nations with whom it may have treaties on the
subject."[54] Palmerston courteously replied that he could not think
that the United States seriously intended to make its flag a refuge for
slave-traders;[55] and Aberdeen pertinently declared: "Now, it can
scarcely be maintained by Mr. Stevenson that Great Britain should be
bound to permit her own subjects, with British vessels and British
capital, to carry on, before the eyes of British officers, this
detestable traffic in human beings, which the law has declared to be
piracy, merely because they had the audacity to commit an additional
offence by fraudulently usurping the American flag."[56] Thus the
dispute, even after the advent of Webster, went on for a time, involving
itself in metaphysical subtleties, and apparently leading no nearer to
an understanding.[57]

In 1838 a fourth conference of the powers for the consideration of the
slave-trade took place at London. It was attended by representatives of
England, France, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. England laid the _projet_
of a treaty before them, to which all but France assented. This
so-called Quintuple Treaty, signed December 20, 1841, denounced the
slave-trade as piracy, and declared that "the High Contracting Parties
agree by common consent, that those of their ships of war which shall be
provided with special warrants and orders ... may search every
merchant-vessel belonging to any one of the High Contracting Parties
which shall, on reasonable grounds, be suspected of being engaged in the
traffic in slaves." All captured slavers were to be sent to their own
countries for trial.[58]

While the ratification of this treaty was pending, the United States
minister to France, Lewis Cass, addressed an official note to Guizot at
the French foreign office, protesting against the institution of an
international Right of Search, and rather grandiloquently warning the
powers against the use of force to accomplish their ends.[59] This
extraordinary epistle, issued on the minister's own responsibility,
brought a reply denying that the creation of any "new principle of
international law, whereby the vessels even of those powers which have
not participated in the arrangement should be subjected to the right of
search," was ever intended, and affirming that no such extraordinary
interpretation could be deduced from the Convention. Moreover, M. Guizot
hoped that the United States, by agreeing to this treaty, would "aid, by
its most sincere endeavors, in the definitive abolition of the
trade."[60] Cass's theatrical protest was, consciously or unconsciously,
the manifesto of that growing class in the United States who wanted no
further measures taken for the suppression of the slave-trade; toward
that, as toward the institution of slavery, this party favored a policy
of strict _laissez-faire_.


73. ~Final Concerted Measures, 1842-1862.~ The Treaty of Washington, in
1842, made the first effective compromise in the matter and broke the
unpleasant dead-lock, by substituting joint cruising by English and
American squadrons for the proposed grant of a Right of Search. In
submitting this treaty, Tyler said: "The treaty which I now submit to
you proposes no alteration, mitigation, or modification of the rules of
the law of nations. It provides simply that each of the two Governments
shall maintain on the coast of Africa a sufficient squadron to enforce
separately and respectively the laws, rights, and obligations of the two
countries for the suppression of the slave trade."[61] This provision
was a part of the treaty to settle the boundary disputes with England.
In the Senate, Benton moved to strike out this article; but the attempt
was defeated by a vote of 37 to 12, and the treaty was ratified.[62]

This stipulation of the treaty of 1842 was never properly carried out by
the United States for any length of time.[63] Consequently the same
difficulties as to search and visit by English vessels continued to
recur. Cases like the following were frequent. The "Illinois," of
Gloucester, Massachusetts, while lying at Whydah, Africa, was boarded by
a British officer, but having American papers was unmolested. Three days
later she hoisted Spanish colors and sailed away with a cargo of slaves.
Next morning she fell in with another British vessel and hoisted
American colors; the British ship had then no right to molest her; but
the captain of the slaver feared that she would, and therefore ran his
vessel aground, slaves and all. The senior English officer reported that
"had Lieutenant Cumberland brought to and boarded the 'Illinois,'
notwithstanding the American colors which she hoisted,... the American
master of the 'Illinois' ... would have complained to his Government of
the detention of his vessel."[64] Again, a vessel which had been boarded
by British officers and found with American flag and papers was, a
little later, captured under the Spanish flag with four hundred and
thirty slaves. She had in the interim complained to the United States
government of the boarding.[65]

Meanwhile, England continued to urge the granting of a Right of Search,
claiming that the stand of the United States really amounted to the
wholesale protection of pirates under her flag.[66] The United States
answered by alleging that even the Treaty of 1842 had been misconstrued
by England,[67] whereupon there was much warm debate in Congress, and
several attempts were made to abrogate the slave-trade article of the
treaty.[68] The pro-slavery party had become more and more suspicious of
England's motives, since they had seen her abolition of the slave-trade
blossom into abolition of the system itself, and they seized every
opportunity to prevent co-operation with her. At the same time, European
interest in the question showed some signs of weakening, and no decided
action was taken. In 1845 France changed her Right of Search
stipulations of 1833 to one for joint cruising,[69] while the Germanic
Federation,[70] Portugal,[71] and Chili[72]enounced the trade as piracy.
In 1844 Texas granted the Right of Search to England,[73] and in 1845
Belgium signed the Quintuple Treaty.[74]

Discussion between England and the United States was revived when Cass
held the State portfolio, and, strange to say, the author of "Cass's
Protest" went farther than any of his predecessors in acknowledging the
justice of England's demands. Said he, in 1859: "If The United States
maintained that, by carrying their flag at her masthead, any vessel
became thereby entitled to the immunity which belongs to American
vessels, they might well be reproached with assuming a position which
would go far towards shielding crimes upon the ocean from punishment;
but they advance no such pretension, while they concede that, if in the
honest examination of a vessel sailing under American colours, but
accompanied by strongly-marked suspicious circumstances, a mistake is
made, and she is found to be entitled to the flag she bears, but no
injury is committed, and the conduct of the boarding party is
irreproachable, no Government would be likely to make a case thus
exceptional in its character a subject of serious reclamation."[75]
While admitting this and expressing a desire to co-operate in the
suppression of the slave-trade, Cass nevertheless steadily refused all
further overtures toward a mutual Right of Search.

The increase of the slave-traffic was so great in the decade 1850-1860
that Lord John Russell proposed to the governments of the United States,
France, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, that they instruct their ministers
to meet at London in May or June, 1860, to consider measures for the
final abolition of the trade. He stated: "It is ascertained, by
repeated instances, that the practice is for vessels to sail under the
American flag. If the flag is rightly assumed, and the papers correct,
no British cruizer can touch them. If no slaves are on board, even
though the equipment, the fittings, the water-casks, and other
circumstances prove that the ship is on a Slave Trade venture, no
American cruizer can touch them."[76] Continued representations of this
kind were made to the paralyzed United States government; indeed, the
slave-trade of the world seemed now to float securely under her flag.
Nevertheless, Cass refused even to participate in the proposed
conference, and later refused to accede to a proposal for joint cruising
off the coast of Cuba.[77] Great Britain offered to relieve the United
States of any embarrassment by receiving all captured Africans into the
West Indies; but President Buchanan "could not contemplate any such
arrangement," and obstinately refused to increase the suppressing
squadron.[78]

On the outbreak of the Civil War, the Lincoln administration, through
Secretary Seward, immediately expressed a willingness to do all in its
power to suppress the slave-trade.[79] Accordingly, June 7, 1862, a
treaty was signed with Great Britain granting a mutual limited Right of
Search, and establishing mixed courts for the trial of offenders at the
Cape of Good Hope, Sierra Leone, and New York.[80] The efforts of a
half-century of diplomacy were finally crowned; Seward wrote to Adams,
"Had such a treaty been made in 1808, there would now have been no
sedition here."[81]


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] Cf. Augustine Cochin, in Lalor, _Cyclopedia_, III. 723.

  [2] By a law of Aug. 11, 1792, the encouragement formerly
      given to the trade was stopped. Cf. _Choix de rapports,
      opinions et discours prononcés à la tribune nationale depuis
      1789_ (Paris, 1821), XIV. 425; quoted in Cochin, _The Results
      of Emancipation_ (Booth's translation, 1863), pp. 33, 35-8.

  [3] Cochin, _The Results of Emancipation_ (Booth's
      translation, 1863), pp. 42-7.

  [4] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1815-6, p. 196.

  [5] _Ibid._, pp. 195-9, 292-3; 1816-7, p. 755. It was
      eventually confirmed by royal ordinance, and the law of April
      15, 1818.

  [6] _Statute 28 George III._, ch. 54. Cf. _Statute 29 George
      III._, ch. 66.

  [7] Various petitions had come in praying for an abolition of
      the slave-trade; and by an order in Council, Feb. 11, 1788, a
      committee of the Privy Council was ordered to take evidence on
      the subject. This committee presented an elaborate report in
      1739. See published _Report_, London, 1789.

  [8] For the history of the Parliamentary struggle, cf.
      Clarkson's and Copley's histories. The movement was checked in
      the House of Commons in 1789, 1790, and 1791. In 1792 the
      House of Commons resolved to abolish the trade in 1796. The
      Lords postponed the matter to take evidence. A bill to
      prohibit the foreign slave-trade was lost in 1793, passed the
      next session, and was lost in the House of Lords. In 1795,
      1796, 1798, and 1799 repeated attempts to abolish the trade
      were defeated. The matter then rested until 1804, when the
      battle was renewed with more success.

  [9] _Statute 46 George III._, ch. 52, 119; _47 George III._,
      sess. I. ch. 36.

 [10] Sparks, _Diplomatic Correspondence_, X. 154.

 [11] Fox to Hartley, June 10, 1783; quoted in Bancroft,
      _History of the Constitution of the United States_, I. 61.

 [12] _Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, III. No. 214, p. 151.

 [13] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1815-6, pp. 886, 937
      (quotation).

 [14] _Ibid._, pp. 890-1.

 [15] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1815-6, p. 887.
      Russia, Austria, and Prussia returned favorable replies:
      _Ibid._, pp. 887-8.

 [16] _Ibid._, p. 889.

 [17] She desired a loan, which England made on this condition:
      _Ibid._, pp. 921-2.

 [18] _Ibid._, pp. 937-9. Certain financial arrangements
      secured this concession.

 [19] _Ibid._, pp. 939-75

 [20] _Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, III. No. 271, pp. 735-48;
      _U.S. Treaties and Conventions_ (ed. 1889), p. 405.

 [21] This was inserted in the Treaty of Paris, Nov. 20, 1815:
      _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1815-6, p. 292.

 [22] _Ibid._, 1816-7, pp. 33-74 (English version, 1823-4, p.
      702 ff.).

 [23] Cf. _Ibid._, 1817-8, p. 125 ff.

 [24] This was the first meeting of the London ministers of the
      powers according to agreement; they assembled Dec. 4, 1817,
      and finally called a meeting of plenipotentiaries on the
      question of suppression at Aix-la-Chapelle, beginning Oct. 24,
      1818. Among those present were Metternich, Richelieu,
      Wellington, Castlereagh, Hardenberg, Bernstorff, Nesselrode,
      and Capodistrias. Castlereagh made two propositions: 1. That
      the five powers join in urging Portugal and Brazil to abolish
      the trade May 20, 1820; 2. That the powers adopt the principle
      of a mutual qualified Right of Search. Cf. _British and
      Foreign State Papers_, 1818-9, pp. 21-88; _Amer. State Papers,
      Foreign_, V. No. 346, pp. 113-122.

 [25] For cases, see _1 Acton_, 240, the "Amedie," and _1
      Dodson_, 81, the "Fortuna;" quoted in U.S. Reports, _10
      Wheaton_, 66.

 [26] Cf. the case of the French ship "Le Louis": _2 Dodson_,
      238; and also the case of the "San Juan Nepomuceno": _1
      Haggard_, 267.

 [27] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1819-20, pp. 375-9;
      also pp. 220-2.

 [28] _Ibid._, 1820-21, pp. 395-6.

 [29] _House Doc._, 14 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 77.

 [30] _Annals of Cong._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 71, 73-78,
      94-109. The motion was opposed largely by Southern members,
      and passed by a vote of 17 to 16.

 [31] One was reported, May 9, 1820, by Mercer's committee, and
      passed May 12: _House Journal_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 497, 518,
      520, 526; _Annals of Cong._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 697-9. A
      similar resolution passed the House next session, and a
      committee reported in favor of the Right of Search: _Ibid._,
      16 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1064-71. Cf. _Ibid._, pp. 476, 743, 865,
      1469.

 [32] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1820-21, pp. 397-400.

 [33] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1822-3, pp. 94-110.

 [34] _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92.

 [35] _House Journal_, 17 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 212, 280; _Annals
      of Cong._, 17 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 922, 1147-1155.

 [36] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1823-4, pp. 409-21;
      1824-5, pp. 828-47; _Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, V. No. 371,
      pp. 333-7.

 [37] _Ibid._

 [38] _Ibid._, No. 374, p. 344 ff., No. 379, pp. 360-2.

 [39] _House Reports_, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 70; _Amer. State
      Papers, Foreign_, V. No. 379, pp. 364-5, No. 414, p. 783, etc.
      Among the nations invited by the United States to co-operate
      in suppressing the trade was the United States of Colombia.
      Mr. Anderson, our minister, expressed "the certain belief that
      the Republic of Colombia will not permit herself to be behind
      any Government in the civilized world in the adoption of
      energetic measures for the suppression of this disgraceful
      traffic": _Ibid._, No. 407, p. 729. The little republic
      replied courteously; and, as a _projet_ for a treaty, Mr.
      Anderson offered the proposed English treaty of 1824,
      including the Senate amendments. Nevertheless, the treaty thus
      agreed to was summarily rejected by the Senate, March 9, 1825:
      _Ibid._, p. 735. Another result of this general invitation of
      the United States was a proposal by Colombia that the
      slave-trade and the status of Hayti be among the subjects for
      discussion at the Panama Congress. As a result of this, a
      Senate committee recommended that the United States take no
      part in the Congress. This report was finally disagreed to by
      a vote of 19 to 24: _Ibid._, No. 423, pp. 837, 860, 876, 882.

 [40] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1823-4, and 1826-7.
      Brazil abolished the trade in 1830.

 [41] This treaty was further defined in 1833: _Ibid._, 1830-1,
      p. 641 ff.; 1832-3, p. 286 ff.

 [42] _Ibid._, 1833-4, pp. 218 ff., 1059 ff.

 [43] _Ibid._, 1837-8, p. 268 ff.

 [44] _Ibid._, 1838-9, p. 792 ff.

 [45] Viz., Feb. 28, 1825; April 7, 1830; Feb. 16, 1831; March
      3, 1831. The last resolution passed the House: _House
      Journal_, 21 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 426-8.

 [46] Cf. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 35-6,
      etc.; _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, pp.
      730-55, etc.

 [47] These were the celebrated cases of the "Encomium,"
      "Enterprize," and "Comet." Cf. _Senate Doc._, 24 Cong. 2 sess.
      II. No. 174; 25 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 216. Cf. also case of
      the "Creole": _Ibid._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. II.-III. Nos. 51, 137.

 [48] _Ibid._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 179; _Senate Exec.
      Doc._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 29; 32 Cong. 2 sess. III. No.
      19; _Senate Reports_, 31 Cong. 2 sess. No. 301; 32 Cong. 1
      sess. I. No. 158; 35 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 36; _House Doc._, 26
      Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 185; 27 Cong. 3 sess. V. No. 191; 28
      Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 83; _House Exec. Doc._, 32 Cong. 2 sess.
      III. No. 20; _House Reports_, 26 Cong. 2 sess. No. 51; 28
      Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 426; 29 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 753; also
      Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, _15 Peters_, 518. Cf.
      Drake, _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, p. 98.

 [49] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1834-5, p. 136.

 [50] _Ibid._, pp. 135-47. Great Britain made treaties
      meanwhile with Hayti, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentine
      Confederation, Mexico, Texas, etc. Portugal prohibited the
      slave-trade in 1836, except between her African colonies. Cf.
      _Ibid._, from 1838 to 1841.

 [51] These estimates are from the following sources: _Ibid._,
      1822-3, pp. 94-110; _Parliamentary Papers_, 1823, XVIII.,
      _Slave Trade_, Further Papers, A., pp. 10-11; 1838-9, XLIX.,
      _Slave Trade_, Class A, Further Series, pp. 115, 119, 121;
      _House Doc._, 19 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 1, p. 93; 20 Cong. 1
      sess. III. No. 99; 26 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 211; _House Exec.
      Doc._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, p. 193; _House Reports_, 21
      Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348; _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 1 sess.
      IV. No. 217; 31 Cong. 1 sess. XIV. No. 66; 31 Cong. 2 sess.
      II. No. 6; _Amer. State Papers, Naval_, I. No. 249; Buxton,
      _The African Slave Trade and its Remedy_, pp. 44-59; Friends'
      _Facts and Observations on the Slave Trade_ (ed. 1841);
      Friends' _Exposition of the Slave Trade, 1840-50_; _Annual
      Reports of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society_.

      The annexed table gives the dates of the abolition of the
      slave-trade by the various nations:--

    -------+-------------------+---------------------------+--------------
           |                   |                           |Arrangements
           |                   | Right of Search Treaty    |  for Joint
    Date.  |Slave-trade        |   with Great Britain,     |  Cruising
           |  Abolished by     |   made by                 |  with Great
           |                   |                           |  Britain,
           |                   |                           |  made by
    -------+-------------------+---------------------------+--------------
    1802   | Denmark.          |                           |
    1807   | Great Britain;    |                           |
           |   United States.  |                           |
    1813   | Sweden.           |                           |
    1814   | Netherlands.      |                           |
    1815   | Portugal (north   |                           |
           |   of the equator).|                           |
    1817   | Spain (north of   | Portugal; Spain.          |
           |   the equator).   |                           |
    1818   | France.           | Netherlands.              |
    1820   | Spain.            |                           |
    1824   |                   | Sweden.                   |
    1829   | Brazil (?).       |                           |
    1830   | Portugal.         |                           |
    1831-33|                   | France.                   |
    1833-39|                   | Denmark, Hanse Towns, etc.|
    1841   |                   | Quintuple Treaty (Austria,|
    1842   |                   |   Russia, Prussia).       | United States.
    1844   |                   | Texas.                    |
    1845   |                   | Belgium.                  | France.
    1862   |                   | United States.            |
    -------+-------------------+---------------------------+--------------



 [52] Cf. _British and Foreign State Papers_, from 1836 to
      1842.

 [53] _Ibid._, 1839-40, p. 940.

 [54] _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 1 sess. No. 34, pp. 5-6.

 [55] _Senate Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 377, p. 56.

 [56] _Ibid._, p. 72.

 [57] _Ibid._, pp. 133-40, etc.

 [58] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1841-2, p. 269 ff.

 [59] See below, Appendix B.

 [60] _Senate Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 377, p. 201.

 [61] _Senate Exec. Journal_, VI. 123.

 [62] _U.S. Treaties and Conventions_ (ed. 1889), pp. 436-7.
      For the debates in the Senate, see _Congressional Globe_, 27
      Cong. 3 sess. Appendix. Cass resigned on account of the
      acceptance of this treaty without a distinct denial of the
      Right of Search, claiming that this compromised his position
      in France. Cf. _Senate Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. II., IV. Nos.
      52, 223; 29 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 377.

 [63] Cf. below, Chapter X.

 [64] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 150, p. 72.

 [65] _Ibid._, p. 77.

 [66] _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. V. No. 192, p. 4. Cf.
      _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1842-3, p. 708 ff.

 [67] _House Journal_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 431, 485-8. Cf.
      _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. V. No. 192.

 [68] Cf. below, Chapter X.

 [69] With a fleet of 26 vessels, reduced to 12 in 1849:
      _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1844-5, p. 4 ff.; 1849-50,
      p. 480.

 [70] _Ibid._, 1850-1, p. 953.

 [71] Portugal renewed her Right of Search treaty in 1842:
      _Ibid._, 1841-2, p. 527 ff.; 1842-3, p. 450.

 [72] _Ibid._, 1843-4, p. 316.

 [73] _Ibid._, 1844-5, p. 592. There already existed some such
      privileges between England and Texas.

 [74] _Ibid._, 1847-8, p. 397 ff.

 [75] _Ibid._, 1858-9, pp. 1121, 1129.

 [76] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1859-60, pp. 902-3.

 [77] _House Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 7.

 [78] _Ibid._

 [79] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 57.

 [80] _Senate Exec. Journal_, XII. 230-1, 240, 254, 256, 391,
      400, 403; _Diplomatic Correspondence_, 1862, pp. 141, 158;
      _U.S. Treaties and Conventions_ (ed. 1889), pp. 454-9.

 [81] _Diplomatic Correspondence_, 1862, pp. 64-5. This treaty
      was revised in 1863. The mixed court in the West Indies had,
      by February, 1864, liberated 95,206 Africans: _Senate Exec.
      Doc._, 38 Cong. 1 sess. No. 56, p. 24.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter X_

THE RISE OF THE COTTON KINGDOM. 1820-1850.

  74. The Economic Revolution.
  75. The Attitude of the South.
  76. The Attitude of the North and Congress.
  77. Imperfect Application of the Laws.
  78. Responsibility of the Government.
  79. Activity of the Slave-Trade.


74. ~The Economic Revolution.~ The history of slavery and the
slave-trade after 1820 must be read in the light of the industrial
revolution through which the civilized world passed in the first half of
the nineteenth century. Between the years 1775 and 1825 occurred
economic events and changes of the highest importance and widest
influence. Though all branches of industry felt the impulse of this new
industrial life, yet, "if we consider single industries, cotton
manufacture has, during the nineteenth century, made the most
magnificent and gigantic advances."[1] This fact is easily explained by
the remarkable series of inventions that revolutionized this industry
between 1738 and 1830, including Arkwright's, Watt's, Compton's, and
Cartwright's epoch-making contrivances.[2] The effect which these
inventions had on the manufacture of cotton goods is best illustrated
by the fact that in England, the chief cotton market of the world, the
consumption of raw cotton rose steadily from 13,000 bales in 1781, to
572,000 in 1820, to 871,000 in 1830, and to 3,366,000 in 1860.[3] Very
early, therefore, came the query whence the supply of raw cotton was to
come. Tentative experiments on the rich, broad fields of the Southern
United States, together with the indispensable invention of Whitney's
cotton-gin, soon answered this question: a new economic future was
opened up to this land, and immediately the whole South began to extend
its cotton culture, and more and more to throw its whole energy into
this one staple.

Here it was that the fatal mistake of compromising with slavery in the
beginning, and of the policy of _laissez-faire_ pursued thereafter,
became painfully manifest; for, instead now of a healthy, normal,
economic development along proper industrial lines, we have the abnormal
and fatal rise of a slave-labor large farming system, which, before it
was realized, had so intertwined itself with and braced itself upon the
economic forces of an industrial age, that a vast and terrible civil war
was necessary to displace it. The tendencies to a patriarchal serfdom,
recognizable in the age of Washington and Jefferson, began slowly but
surely to disappear; and in the second quarter of the century Southern
slavery was irresistibly changing from a family institution to an
industrial system.

The development of Southern slavery has heretofore been viewed so
exclusively from the ethical and social standpoint that we are apt to
forget its close and indissoluble connection with the world's cotton
market. Beginning with 1820, a little after the close of the Napoleonic
wars, when the industry of cotton manufacture had begun its modern
development and the South had definitely assumed her position as chief
producer of raw cotton, we find the average price of cotton per pound,
8½_d._ From this time until 1845 the price steadily fell, until in the
latter year it reached 4_d._; the only exception to this fall was in the
years 1832-1839, when, among other things, a strong increase in the
English demand, together with an attempt of the young slave power to
"corner" the market, sent the price up as high as 11_d._ The demand for
cotton goods soon outran a crop which McCullough had pronounced
"prodigious," and after 1845 the price started on a steady rise, which,
except for the checks suffered during the continental revolutions and
the Crimean War, continued until 1860.[4] The steady increase in the
production of cotton explains the fall in price down to 1845. In 1822
the crop was a half-million bales; in 1831, a million; in 1838, a
million and a half; and in 1840-1843, two million. By this time the
world's consumption of cotton goods began to increase so rapidly that,
in spite of the increase in Southern crops, the price kept rising. Three
million bales were gathered in 1852, three and a half million in 1856,
and the remarkable crop of five million bales in 1860.[5]

Here we have data to explain largely the economic development of the
South. By 1822 the large-plantation slave system had gained footing; in
1838-1839 it was able to show its power in the cotton "corner;" by the
end of the next decade it had not only gained a solid economic
foundation, but it had built a closed oligarchy with a political policy.
The changes in price during the next few years drove out of competition
many survivors of the small-farming free-labor system, and put the slave
_régime_ in position to dictate the policy of the nation. The zenith of
the system and the first inevitable signs of decay came in the years
1850-1860, when the rising price of cotton threw the whole economic
energy of the South into its cultivation, leading to a terrible
consumption of soil and slaves, to a great increase in the size of
plantations, and to increasing power and effrontery on the part of the
slave barons. Finally, when a rising moral crusade conjoined with
threatened economic disaster, the oligarchy, encouraged by the state of
the cotton market, risked all on a political _coup-d'état_, which failed
in the war of 1861-1865.[6]


75. ~The Attitude of the South.~ The attitude of the South toward the
slave-trade changed _pari passu_ with this development of the cotton
trade. From 1808 to 1820 the South half wished to get rid of a
troublesome and abnormal institution, and yet saw no way to do so. The
fear of insurrection and of the further spread of the disagreeable
system led her to consent to the partial prohibition of the trade by
severe national enactments. Nevertheless, she had in the matter no
settled policy: she refused to support vigorously the execution of the
laws she had helped to make, and at the same time she acknowledged the
theoretical necessity of these laws. After 1820, however, there came a
gradual change. The South found herself supplied with a body of slave
laborers, whose number had been augmented by large illicit importations,
with an abundance of rich land, and with all other natural facilities
for raising a crop which was in large demand and peculiarly adapted to
slave labor. The increasing crop caused a new demand for slaves, and an
interstate slave-traffic arose between the Border and the Gulf States,
which turned the former into slave-breeding districts, and bound them to
the slave States by ties of strong economic interest.

As the cotton crop continued to increase, this source of supply became
inadequate, especially as the theory of land and slave consumption broke
down former ethical and prudential bounds. It was, for example, found
cheaper to work a slave to death in a few years, and buy a new one, than
to care for him in sickness and old age; so, too, it was easier to
despoil rich, new land in a few years of intensive culture, and move on
to the Southwest, than to fertilize and conserve the soil.[7]
Consequently, there early came a demand for land and slaves greater than
the country could supply. The demand for land showed itself in the
annexation of Texas, the conquest of Mexico, and the movement toward the
acquisition of Cuba. The demand for slaves was manifested in the illicit
traffic that noticeably increased about 1835, and reached large
proportions by 1860. It was also seen in a disposition to attack the
government for stigmatizing the trade as criminal,[8] then in a
disinclination to take any measures which would have rendered our
repressive laws effective; and finally in such articulate declarations
by prominent men as this: "Experience having settled the point, that
this Trade _cannot be abolished by the use of force_, and that
blockading squadrons serve only to make it more profitable and more
cruel, I am surprised that the attempt is persisted in, unless as it
serves as a cloak to some other purposes. It would be far better than it
now is, for the African, if the trade was free from all restrictions,
and left to the mitigation and decay which time and competition would
surely bring about."[9]


76. ~The Attitude of the North and Congress.~ With the North as yet
unawakened to the great changes taking place in the South, and with the
attitude of the South thus in process of development, little or no
constructive legislation could be expected on the subject of the
slave-trade. As the divergence in sentiment became more and more
pronounced, there were various attempts at legislation, all of which
proved abortive. The pro-slavery party attempted, as early as 1826, and
again in 1828, to abolish the African agency and leave the Africans
practically at the mercy of the States;[10] one or two attempts were
made to relax the few provisions which restrained the coastwise
trade;[11] and, after the treaty of 1842, Benton proposed to stop
appropriations for the African squadron until England defined her
position on the Right of Search question.[12] The anti-slavery men
presented several bills to amend and strengthen previous laws;[13] they
sought, for instance, in vain to regulate the Texan trade, through which
numbers of slaves indirectly reached the United States.[14] Presidents
and consuls earnestly recommended legislation to restrict the clearances
of vessels bound on slave-trading voyages, and to hinder the facility
with which slavers obtained fraudulent papers.[15] Only one such bill
succeeded in passing the Senate, and that was dropped in the House.[16]

The only legislation of this period was confined to a few appropriation
bills. Only one of these acts, that of 1823, appropriating $50,000,[17]
was designed materially to aid in the suppression of the trade, all the
others relating to expenses incurred after violations. After 1823 the
appropriations dwindled, being made at intervals of one, two, and three
years, down to 1834, when the amount was $5,000. No further
appropriations were made until 1842, when a few thousands above an
unexpended surplus were appropriated. In 1843 $5,000 were given, and
finally, in 1846, $25,000 were secured; but this was the last sum
obtainable until 1856.[18] Nearly all of these meagre appropriations
went toward reimbursing Southern plantation owners for the care and
support of illegally imported Africans, and the rest to the maintenance
of the African agency. Suspiciously large sums were paid for the first
purpose, considering the fact that such Africans were always worked hard
by those to whom they were farmed out, and often "disappeared" while in
their hands. In the accounts we nevertheless find many items like that
of $20,286.98 for the maintenance of Negroes imported on the
"Ramirez;"[19] in 1827, $5,442.22 for the "bounty, subsistence,
clothing, medicine," etc., of fifteen Africans;[20] in 1835, $3,613 for
the support of thirty-eight slaves for two months (including a bill of
$1,038 for medical attendance).[21]

The African agency suffered many vicissitudes. The first agent, Bacon,
who set out early in 1820, was authorized by President Monroe "to form
an establishment on the island of Sherbro, or elsewhere on the coast of
Africa," and to build barracks for three hundred persons. He was,
however, warned "not to connect your agency with the views or plans of
the Colonization Society, with which, under the law, the Government of
the United States has no concern." Bacon soon died, and was followed
during the next four years by Winn and Ayres; they succeeded in
establishing a government agency on Cape Mesurado, in conjunction with
that of the Colonization Society. The agent of that Society, Jehudi
Ashmun, became after 1822, the virtual head of the colony; he fortified
and enlarged it, and laid the foundations of an independent community.
The succeeding government agents came to be merely official
representatives of the United States, and the distribution of free
rations for liberated Africans ceased in 1827.

Between 1819 and 1830 two hundred and fifty-two recaptured Africans were
sent to the agency, and $264,710 were expended. The property of the
government at the agency was valued at $18,895. From 1830 to 1840,
nearly $20,000 more were expended, chiefly for the agents' salaries.
About 1840 the appointment of an agent ceased, and the colony became
gradually self-supporting and independent. It was proclaimed as the
Republic of Liberia in 1847.[22]


77. ~Imperfect Application of the Laws.~ In reviewing efforts toward the
suppression of the slave-trade from 1820 to 1850, it must be remembered
that nearly every cabinet had a strong, if not a predominating, Southern
element, and that consequently the efforts of the executive were
powerfully influenced by the changing attitude of the South. Naturally,
under such circumstances, the government displayed little activity and
no enthusiasm in the work. In 1824 a single vessel of the Gulf squadron
was occasionally sent to the African coast to return by the route
usually followed by the slavers; no wonder that "none of these or any
other of our public ships have found vessels engaged in the slave trade
under the flag of the United States, ... although it is known that the
trade still exists to a most lamentable extent."[23] Indeed, all that an
American slaver need do was to run up a Spanish or a Portuguese flag, to
be absolutely secure from all attack or inquiry on the part of United
States vessels. Even this desultory method of suppression was not
regular: in 1826 "no vessel has been despatched to the coast of Africa
for several months,"[24] and from that time until 1839 this country
probably had no slave-trade police upon the seas, except in the Gulf of
Mexico. In 1839 increasing violations led to the sending of two
fast-sailing vessels to the African coast, and these were kept there
more or less regularly;[25] but even after the signing of the treaty of
1842 the Secretary of the Navy reports: "On the coast of Africa we have
_no_ squadron. The small appropriation of the present year was believed
to be scarcely sufficient."[26] Between 1843 and 1850 the coast squadron
varied from two to six vessels, with from thirty to ninety-eight
guns;[27] "but the force habitually and actively engaged in cruizing on
the ground frequented by slavers has probably been less by one-fourth,
if we consider the size of the ships employed and their withdrawal for
purposes of recreation and health, and the movement of the reliefs,
whose arrival does not correspond exactly with the departure of the
vessels whose term of service has expired."[28] The reports of the navy
show that in only four of the eight years mentioned was the fleet, at
the time of report, at the stipulated size of eighty guns; and at times
it was much below this, even as late as 1848, when only two vessels are
reported on duty along the African coast.[29] As the commanders
themselves acknowledged, the squadron was too small and the
cruising-ground too large to make joint cruising effective.[30]

The same story comes from the Brazil station: "Nothing effectual can be
done towards stopping the slave trade, as our squadron is at present
organized," wrote the consul at Rio Janeiro in 1847; "when it is
considered that the Brazil station extends from north of the equator to
Cape Horn on this continent, and includes a great part of Africa south
of the equator, on both sides of the Cape of Good Hope, it must be
admitted that one frigate and one brig is a very insufficient force to
protect American commerce, and repress the participation in the slave
trade by our own vessels."[31] In the Gulf of Mexico cruisers were
stationed most of the time, although even here there were at times
urgent representations that the scarcity or the absence of such vessels
gave the illicit trade great license.[32]

Owing to this general negligence of the government, and also to its
anxiety on the subject of the theoretic Right of Search, many officials
were kept in a state of chronic deception in regard to the trade. The
enthusiasm of commanders was dampened by the lack of latitude allowed
and by the repeated insistence in their orders on the non-existence of a
Right of Search.[33] When one commander, realizing that he could not
cover the trading-track with his fleet, requested English commanders to
detain suspicious American vessels until one of his vessels came up, the
government annulled the agreement as soon as it reached their ears,
rebuked him, and the matter was alluded to in Congress long after with
horror.[34] According to the orders of cruisers, only slavers with
slaves actually on board could be seized. Consequently, fully equipped
slavers would sail past the American fleet, deliberately make all
preparations for shipping a cargo, then, when the English were not near,
"sell" the ship to a Spaniard, hoist the Spanish flag, and again sail
gayly past the American fleet with a cargo of slaves. An English
commander reported: "The officers of the United States' navy are
extremely active and zealous in the cause, and no fault can be
attributed to them, but it is greatly to be lamented that this blemish
should in so great a degree nullify our endeavours."[35]


78. ~Responsibility of the Government.~ Not only did the government thus
negatively favor the slave-trade, but also many conscious, positive acts
must be attributed to a spirit hostile to the proper enforcement of the
slave-trade laws. In cases of doubt, when the law needed executive
interpretation, the decision was usually in favor of the looser
construction of the law; the trade from New Orleans to Mobile was, for
instance, declared not to be coastwise trade, and consequently, to the
joy of the Cuban smugglers, was left utterly free and unrestricted.[36]
After the conquest of Mexico, even vessels bound to California, by the
way of Cape Horn, were allowed to clear coastwise, thus giving our flag
to "the slave-pirates of the whole world."[37] Attorney-General Nelson
declared that the selling to a slave-trader of an American vessel, to be
delivered on the coast of Africa, was not aiding or abetting the
slave-trade.[38] So easy was it for slavers to sail that corruption
among officials was hinted at. "There is certainly a want of proper
vigilance at Havana," wrote Commander Perry in 1844, "and perhaps at the
ports of the United States;" and again, in the same year, "I cannot but
think that the custom-house authorities in the United States are not
sufficiently rigid in looking after vessels of suspicious
character."[39]

In the courts it was still next to impossible to secure the punishment
of the most notorious slave-trader. In 1847 a consul writes: "The slave
power in this city [i.e., Rio Janeiro] is extremely great, and a consul
doing his duty needs to be supported kindly and effectually at home. In
the case of the 'Fame,' where the vessel was diverted from the business
intended by her owners and employed in the slave trade--both of which
offences are punishable with death, if I rightly read the laws--I sent
home the two mates charged with these offences, for trial, the first
mate to Norfolk, the second mate to Philadelphia. What was done with the
first mate I know not. In the case of the man sent to Philadelphia, Mr.
Commissioner Kane states that a clear prima facie case is made out, and
then holds him to bail in the sum of _one thousand dollars_, which would
be paid by any slave trader in Rio, on the _presentation of a draft_. In
all this there is little encouragement for exertion."[40] Again, the
"Perry" in 1850 captured a slaver which was about to ship 1,800 slaves.
The captain admitted his guilt, and was condemned in the United States
District Court at New York. Nevertheless, he was admitted to bail of
$5,000; this being afterward reduced to $3,000, he forfeited it and
escaped. The mate was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary.[41]
Also several slavers sent home to the United States by the British, with
clear evidence of guilt, escaped condemnation through
technicalities.[42]


79. ~Activity of the Slave-Trade, 1820-1850.~ The enhanced price of
slaves throughout the American slave market, brought about by the new
industrial development and the laws against the slave-trade, was the
irresistible temptation that drew American capital and enterprise into
that traffic. In the United States, in spite of the large interstate
traffic, the average price of slaves rose from about $325 in 1840, to
$360 in 1850, and to $500 in 1860.[43] Brazil and Cuba offered similar
inducements to smugglers, and the American flag was ready to protect
such pirates. As a result, the American slave-trade finally came to be
carried on principally by United States capital, in United States ships,
officered by United States citizens, and under the United States flag.

Executive reports repeatedly acknowledged this fact. In 1839 "a careful
revision of these laws" is recommended by the President, in order that
"the integrity and honor of our flag may be carefully preserved."[44] In
June, 1841, the President declares: "There is reason to believe that the
traffic is on the increase," and advocates "vigorous efforts."[45] His
message in December of the same year acknowledges: "That the American
flag is grossly abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations
is but too probable."[46] The special message of 1845 explains at length
that "it would seem" that a regular policy of evading the laws is
carried on: American vessels with the knowledge of the owners are
chartered by notorious slave dealers in Brazil, aided by English
capitalists, with this intent.[47] The message of 1849 "earnestly"
invites the attention of Congress "to an amendment of our existing laws
relating to the African slave-trade, with a view to the effectual
suppression of that barbarous traffic. It is not to be denied,"
continues the message, "that this trade is still, in part, carried on by
means of vessels built in the United States, and owned or navigated by
some of our citizens."[48] Governor Buchanan of Liberia reported in
1839: "The chief obstacle to the success of the very active measures
pursued by the British government for the suppression of the slave-trade
on the coast, is the _American flag_. Never was the proud banner of
freedom so extensively used by those pirates upon liberty and humanity,
as at this season."[49] One well-known American slaver was boarded
fifteen times and twice taken into port, but always escaped by means of
her papers.[50] Even American officers report that the English are doing
all they can, but that the American flag protects the trade.[51] The
evidence which literally poured in from our consuls and ministers at
Brazil adds to the story of the guilt of the United States.[52] It was
proven that the participation of United States citizens in the trade was
large and systematic. One of the most notorious slave merchants of
Brazil said: "I am worried by the Americans, who insist upon my hiring
their vessels for slave-trade."[53] Minister Proffit stated, in 1844,
that the "slave-trade is almost entirely carried on under our flag, in
American-built vessels."[54] So, too, in Cuba: the British commissioners
affirm that American citizens were openly engaged in the traffic;
vessels arrived undisguised at Havana from the United States, and
cleared for Africa as slavers after an alleged sale.[55] The American
consul, Trist, was proven to have consciously or unconsciously aided
this trade by the issuance of blank clearance papers.[56]

The presence of American capital in these enterprises, and the
connivance of the authorities, were proven in many cases and known in
scores. In 1837 the English government informed the United States that
from the papers of a captured slaver it appeared that the notorious
slave-trading firm, Blanco and Carballo of Havana, who owned the vessel,
had correspondents in the United States: "at Baltimore, Messrs. Peter
Harmony and Co., in New York, Robert Barry, Esq."[57] The slaver
"Martha" of New York, captured by the "Perry," contained among her
papers curious revelations of the guilt of persons in America who were
little suspected.[58] The slaver "Prova," which was allowed to lie in
the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and refit, was afterwards
captured with two hundred and twenty-five slaves on board.[59] The real
reason that prevented many belligerent Congressmen from pressing certain
search claims against England lay in the fact that the unjustifiable
detentions had unfortunately revealed so much American guilt that it was
deemed wiser to let the matter end in talk. For instance, in 1850
Congress demanded information as to illegal searches, and President
Fillmore's report showed the uncomfortable fact that, of the ten
American ships wrongly detained by English men-of-war, nine were proven
red-handed slavers.[60]

The consul at Havana reported, in 1836, that whole cargoes of slaves
fresh from Africa were being daily shipped to Texas in American vessels,
that 1,000 had been sent within a few months, that the rate was
increasing, and that many of these slaves "can scarcely fail to find
their way into the United States." Moreover, the consul acknowledged
that ships frequently cleared for the United States in ballast, taking
on a cargo at some secret point.[61] When with these facts we consider
the law facilitating "recovery" of slaves from Texas,[62] the repeated
refusals to regulate the Texan trade, and the shelving of a proposed
congressional investigation into these matters,[63] conjecture becomes a
practical certainty. It was estimated in 1838 that 15,000 Africans were
annually taken to Texas, and "there are even grounds for suspicion that
there are other places ... where slaves are introduced."[64] Between
1847 and 1853 the slave smuggler Drake had a slave depot in the Gulf,
where sometimes as many as 1,600 Negroes were on hand, and the owners
were continually importing and shipping. "The joint-stock company,"
writes this smuggler, "was a very extensive one, and connected with
leading American and Spanish mercantile houses. Our island[65] was
visited almost weekly, by agents from Cuba, New York, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, Boston, and New Orleans.... The seasoned and instructed
slaves were taken to Texas, or Florida, overland, and to Cuba, in
sailing-boats. As no squad contained more than half a dozen, no
difficulty was found in posting them to the United States, without
discovery, and generally without suspicion.... The Bay Island plantation
sent ventures weekly to the Florida Keys. Slaves were taken into the
great American swamps, and there kept till wanted for the market.
Hundreds were sold as captured runaways from the Florida wilderness. We
had agents in every slave State; and our coasters were built in Maine,
and came out with lumber. I could tell curious stories ... of this
business of smuggling Bozal negroes into the United States. It is
growing more profitable every year, and if you should hang all the
Yankee merchants engaged in it, hundreds would fill their places."[66]
Inherent probability and concurrent testimony confirm the substantial
truth of such confessions. For instance, one traveller discovers on a
Southern plantation Negroes who can speak no English.[67] The careful
reports of the Quakers "apprehend that many [slaves] are also introduced
into the United States."[68] Governor Mathew of the Bahama Islands
reports that "in more than one instance, Bahama vessels with coloured
crews have been purposely wrecked on the coast of Florida, and the crews
forcibly sold." This was brought to the notice of the United States
authorities, but the district attorney of Florida could furnish no
information.[69]

Such was the state of the slave-trade in 1850, on the threshold of the
critical decade which by a herculean effort was destined finally to
suppress it.


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] Beer, _Geschichte des Welthandels im 19^{ten}
      Jahrhundert_, II. 67.

  [2] A list of these inventions most graphically illustrates
      this advance:--

        1738,    John Jay, fly-shuttle.
                 John Wyatt, spinning by rollers.
        1748,    Lewis Paul, carding-machine.
        1760,    Robert Kay, drop-box.
        1769,    Richard Arkwright, water-frame and throstle.
                 James Watt, steam-engine.
        1772,    James Lees, improvements on carding-machine.
        1775,    Richard Arkwright, series of combinations.
        1779,    Samuel Compton, mule.
        1785,    Edmund Cartwright, power-loom.
        1803-4,  Radcliffe and Johnson, dressing-machine.
        1817,    Roberts, fly-frame.
        1818,    William Eaton, self-acting frame.
        1825-30, Roberts, improvements on mule.

      Cf. Baines, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 116-231;
      _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 9th ed., article "Cotton."

  [3] Baines, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, p. 215. A
      bale weighed from 375 lbs. to 400 lbs.

  [4] The prices cited are from Newmarch and Tooke, and refer to
      the London market. The average price in 1855-60 was about
      7_d._

  [5] From United States census reports.

  [6] Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, _The Cotton
      Kingdom_.

  [7] Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, _The Cotton
      Kingdom_.

  [8] As early as 1836 Calhoun declared that he should ever
      regret that the term "piracy" had been applied to the
      slave-trade in our laws: Benton, _Abridgment of Debates_, XII.
      718.

  [9] Governor J.H. Hammond of South Carolina, in _Letters to
      Clarkson_, No. 1, p. 2.

 [10] In 1826 Forsyth of Georgia attempted to have a bill
      passed abolishing the African agency, and providing that the
      Africans imported be disposed of in some way that would entail
      no expense on the public treasury: _Home Journal_, 19 Cong. 1
      sess. p. 258. In 1828 a bill was reported to the House to
      abolish the agency and make the Colonization Society the
      agents, if they would agree to the terms. The bill was so
      amended as merely to appropriate money for suppressing the
      slave-trade: _Ibid._, 20 Cong. 1 sess., House Bill No. 190.

 [11] _Ibid._, pp. 121, 135; 20 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 58-9, 84,
      215.

 [12] _Congressional Globe_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 328, 331-6.

 [13] Cf. Mercer's bill, _House Journal_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. p.
      512; also Strange's two bills, _Senate Journal_, 25 Cong. 3
      sess. pp. 200, 313; 26 Cong. 1 sess., Senate Bill No. 123.

 [14] _Senate Journal_, 25 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 297-8, 300.

 [15] _Senate Doc_, 28 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 217, p. 19;
      _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 6, pp. 3, 10,
      etc.; 33 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 47, pp. 5-6; 34 Cong. 1 sess.
      XV. No. 99, p. 80; _House Journal_, 26 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
      117-8; cf. _Ibid._, 20 Cong. 1 sess. p. 650, etc.; 21 Cong. 2
      sess. p. 194; 27 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 31, 184; _House Doc._, 29
      Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 43, p. 11; _House Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong.
      1 sess. III. pt. 1, No. 5, pp. 7-8.

 [16] _Senate Journal_, 26 Cong. 1 sess., Senate Bill No. 335;
      _House Journal_, 26 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 1138, 1228, 1257.

 [17] _Statutes at Large_, III. 764.

 [18] Cf. above, Chapter VIII. p. 125.

 [19] Cf. _Report of the Secretary of the Navy_, 1827.

 [20] _Ibid._

 [21] _House Reports_, 24 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 223.

 [22] This account is taken exclusively from government
      documents: _Amer. State Papers, Naval_, III. Nos. 339, 340,
      357, 429 E; IV. Nos. 457 R (1 and 2), 486 H, I, p. 161 and 519
      R, 564 P, 585 P; _House Reports_, 19 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 65;
      _House Doc._, 19 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 69; 21 Cong. 2 sess. I.
      No. 2, pp. 42-3, 211-8; 22 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 45,
      272-4; 22 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 48, 229; 23 Cong. 1
      sess. I. No. 1, pp. 238, 269; 23 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp.
      315, 363; 24 Cong, 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 336, 378; 24 Cong. 2
      sess. I. No. 2, pp. 450, 506; 25 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 3, pp.
      771, 850; 26 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 534, 612; 26 Cong. 2
      sess. I. No. 2, pp. 405, 450. It is probable that the agent
      became eventually the United States consul and minister; I
      cannot however cite evidence for this supposition.

 [23] _Report of the Secretary of the Navy_, 1824.

 [24] _Ibid._, 1826.

 [25] _Ibid._, 1839.

 [26] _Ibid._, 1842.

 [27] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1857-8, p. 1250.

 [28] Lord Napier to Secretary of State Cass, Dec. 24, 1857:
      _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1857-8, p. 1249.

 [29] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1847-8, Vol. LXIV. No. 133,
      _Papers Relative to the Suppression of the Slave Trade on the
      Coast of Africa_, p. 2.

 [30] Report of Perry: _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No.
      150, p. 118.

 [31] Consul Park at Rio Janeiro to Secretary Buchanan, Aug.
      20, 1847: _House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61, p.
      7.

 [32] Suppose "an American vessel employed to take in negroes
      at some point on this coast. There is no American man-of-war
      here to obtain intelligence. What risk does she run of being
      searched? But suppose that there is a man-of-war in port. What
      is to secure the master of the merchantman against her [the
      man-of-war's commander's knowing all about his [the
      merchant-man's] intention, or suspecting it in time to be upon
      him [the merchant-man] before he shall have run a league on
      his way to Texas?" Consul Trist to Commander Spence: _House
      Doc._, 27 Cong. 1 sess. No. 34, p. 41.]

 [33] A typical set of instructions was on the following plan:
      1. You are charged with the protection of legitimate commerce.
      2. While the United States wishes to suppress the slave-trade,
      she will not admit a Right of Search by foreign vessels. 3.
      You are to arrest slavers. 4. You are to allow in no case an
      exercise of the Right of Search or any great interruption of
      legitimate commerce.--To Commodore Perry, March 30, 1843:
      _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 104.

 [34] _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, pp.
      765-8. Cf. Benton's speeches on the treaty of 1842.

 [35] Report of Hotham to Admiralty, April 7, 1847:
      _Parliamentary Papers_, 1847-8, Vol. LXIV. No. 133, _Papers
      Relative to the Suppression of the Slave Trade on the Coast of
      Africa_, p. 13.

 [36] _Opinions of Attorneys-General_, III. 512.

 [37] _Tenth Annual Report of the Amer. and Foreign Anti-Slav.
      Soc._, May 7, 1850, p. 149.

 [38] _Opinions of Attorneys-General_, IV. 245.

 [39] _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 150, pp. 108,
      132.

 [40] _House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61, p. 18.

 [41] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, pp. 286-90.

 [42] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1839-40, pp. 913-4.

 [43] Cf. United States census reports; and Olmsted, _Cotton
      Kingdom_.

 [44] _House Journal_, 26 Cong. 1 sess. p. 118.

 [45] _Ibid._, 27 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 31, 184.

 [46] _Ibid._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 14, 15, 86, 113.

 [47] _Senate Journal_, 28 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 191, 227.

 [48] _House Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. III. pt. I. No. 5,
      p. 7.

 [49] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, p. 152.

 [50] _Ibid._, pp. 152-3.

 [51] _Ibid._, p. 241.

 [52] Cf. e.g. _House Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IV. pt. I. No.
      148; 29 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 43; _House Exec. Doc._, 30
      Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61; _Senate Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 1
      sess. IV. No. 28; 31 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 6; 33 Cong. 1 sess.
      VIII. No. 47.

 [53] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, p. 218.

 [54] _Ibid._, p. 221.

 [55] Palmerston to Stevenson: _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess.
      V. No. 115, p. 5. In 1836 five such slavers were known to have
      cleared; in 1837, eleven; in 1838, nineteen; and in 1839,
      twenty-three: _Ibid._, pp. 220-1.

 [56] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1839, Vol. XLIX., _Slave Trade_,
      class A, Further Series, pp. 58-9; class B, Further Series, p.
      110; class D, Further Series, p. 25. Trist pleaded ignorance
      of the law: Trist to Forsyth, _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess.
      V. No. 115.

 [57] _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115.

 [58] Foote, _Africa and the American Flag_, p. 290.

 [59] _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 121,
      163-6.

 [60] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. XIV No. 66.

 [61] Trist to Forsyth: _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No.
      115. "The business of supplying the United States with
      Africans from this island is one that must necessarily exist,"
      because "slaves are a hundred _per cent_, or more, higher in
      the United States than in Cuba," and this profit "is a
      temptation which it is not in human nature as modified by
      American institutions to withstand": _Ibid._

 [62] _Statutes at Large_, V. 674.

 [63] Cf. above, p. 157, note 1.

 [64] Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and its Remedy_, pp.
      44-5. Cf. _2d Report of the London African Soc._, p. 22.

 [65] I.e., Bay Island in the Gulf of Mexico, near the coast of
      Honduras.

 [66] _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, p. 98.

 [67] Mr. H. Moulton in _Slavery as it is_, p. 140; cited in
      _Facts and Observations on the Slave Trade_ (Friends' ed.
      1841), p. 8.

 [68] In a memorial to Congress, 1840: _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 1
      sess. VI. No. 211.

 [69] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1845-6, pp. 883, 968,
      989-90. The governor wrote in reply: "The United States, if
      properly served by their law officers in the Floridas, will
      not experience any difficulty in obtaining the requisite
      knowledge of these illegal transactions, which, I have reason
      to believe, were the subject of common notoriety in the
      neighbourhood where they occurred, and of boast on the part of
      those concerned in them": _British and Foreign State Papers_,
      1845-6, p. 990.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter XI_

THE FINAL CRISIS. 1850-1870.

  80. The Movement against the Slave-Trade Laws.
  81. Commercial Conventions of 1855-56.
  82. Commercial Conventions of 1857-58.
  83. Commercial Convention of 1859.
  84. Public Opinion in the South.
  85. The Question in Congress.
  86. Southern Policy in 1860.
  87. Increase of the Slave-Trade from 1850 to 1860.
  88. Notorious Infractions of the Laws.
  89. Apathy of the Federal Government.
  90. Attitude of the Southern Confederacy.
  91. Attitude of the United States.


80. ~The Movement against the Slave-Trade Laws.~ It was not altogether a
mistaken judgment that led the constitutional fathers to consider the
slave-trade as the backbone of slavery. An economic system based on
slave labor will find, sooner or later, that the demand for the cheapest
slave labor cannot long be withstood. Once degrade the laborer so that
he cannot assert his own rights, and there is but one limit below which
his price cannot be reduced. That limit is not his physical well-being,
for it may be, and in the Gulf States it was, cheaper to work him
rapidly to death; the limit is simply the cost of procuring him and
keeping him alive a profitable length of time. Only the moral sense of a
community can keep helpless labor from sinking to this level; and when a
community has once been debauched by slavery, its moral sense offers
little resistance to economic demand. This was the case in the West
Indies and Brazil; and although better moral stamina held the crisis
back longer in the United States, yet even here the ethical standard of
the South was not able to maintain itself against the demands of the
cotton industry. When, after 1850, the price of slaves had risen to a
monopoly height, the leaders of the plantation system, brought to the
edge of bankruptcy by the crude and reckless farming necessary under a
slave _régime_, and baffled, at least temporarily, in their quest of new
rich land to exploit, began instinctively to feel that the only
salvation of American slavery lay in the reopening of the African
slave-trade.

It took but a spark to put this instinctive feeling into words, and
words led to deeds. The movement first took definite form in the ever
radical State of South Carolina. In 1854 a grand jury in the
Williamsburg district declared, "as our unanimous opinion, that the
Federal law abolishing the African Slave Trade is a public grievance. We
hold this trade has been and would be, if re-established, a blessing to
the American people, and a benefit to the African himself."[1] This
attracted only local attention; but when, in 1856, the governor of the
State, in his annual message, calmly argued at length for a reopening of
the trade, and boldly declared that "if we cannot supply the demand for
slave labor, then we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor
we do not want,"[2] such words struck even Southern ears like "a thunder
clap in a calm day."[3] And yet it needed but a few years to show that
South Carolina had merely been the first to put into words the
inarticulate thought of a large minority, if not a majority, of the
inhabitants of the Gulf States.


81. ~Commercial Conventions of 1855-56.~ The growth of the movement is
best followed in the action of the Southern Commercial Convention, an
annual gathering which seems to have been fairly representative of a
considerable part of Southern opinion. In the convention that met at New
Orleans in 1855, McGimsey of Louisiana introduced a resolution
instructing the Southern Congressmen to secure the repeal of the
slave-trade laws. This resolution went to the Committee on Resolutions,
and was not reported.[4] In 1856, in the convention at Savannah, W.B.
Goulden of Georgia moved that the members of Congress be requested to
bestir themselves energetically to have repealed all laws which forbade
the slave-trade. By a vote of 67 to 18 the convention refused to debate
the motion, but appointed a committee to present at the next convention
the facts relating to a reopening of the trade.[5] In regard to this
action a pamphlet of the day said: "There were introduced into the
convention two leading measures, viz.: the laying of a State tariff on
northern goods, and the reopening of the slave-trade; the one to advance
our commercial interest, the other our agricultural interest, and which,
when taken together, as they were doubtless intended to be, and although
they have each been attacked by presses of doubtful service to the
South, are characterized in the private judgment of politicians as one
of the completest southern remedies ever submitted to popular action....
The proposition to revive, or more properly to reopen, the slave trade
is as yet but imperfectly understood, in its intentions and probable
results, by the people of the South, and but little appreciated by them.
It has been received in all parts of the country with an undefined sort
of repugnance, a sort of squeamishness, which is incident to all such
violations of moral prejudices, and invariably wears off on familiarity
with the subject. The South will commence by enduring, and end by
embracing the project."[6] The matter being now fully before the public
through these motions, Governor Adams's message, and newspaper and
pamphlet discussion, the radical party pushed the project with all
energy.


82. ~Commercial Conventions of 1857-58.~ The first piece of regular
business that came before the Commercial Convention at Knoxville,
Tennessee, August 10, 1857, was a proposal to recommend the abrogation
of the 8th Article of the Treaty of Washington, on the slave-trade. An
amendment offered by Sneed of Tennessee, declaring it inexpedient and
against settled policy to reopen the trade, was voted down, Alabama,
Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia
refusing to agree to it. The original motion then passed; and the
radicals, satisfied with their success in the first skirmish, again
secured the appointment of a committee to report at the next meeting on
the subject of reopening the slave-trade.[7] This next meeting assembled
May 10, 1858, in a Gulf State, Alabama, in the city of Montgomery.
Spratt of South Carolina, the slave-trade champion, presented an
elaborate majority report from the committee, and recommended the
following resolutions:--

    1. _Resolved_, That slavery is right, and that being right,
    there can be no wrong in the natural means to its formation.

    2. _Resolved_, That it is expedient and proper that the foreign
    slave trade should be re-opened, and that this Convention will
    lend its influence to any legitimate measure to that end.

    3. _Resolved_, That a committee, consisting of one from each
    slave State, be appointed to consider of the means, consistent
    with the duty and obligations of these States, for re-opening
    the foreign slave-trade, and that they report their plan to the
    next meeting of this Convention.

Yancey, from the same committee, presented a minority report, which,
though it demanded the repeal of the national prohibitory laws, did not
advocate the reopening of the trade by the States.

Much debate ensued. Pryor of Virginia declared the majority report "a
proposition to dissolve the Union." Yancey declared that "he was for
disunion now. [Applause.]" He defended the principle of the slave-trade,
and said: "If it is right to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to
New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa,
and carry them there?" The opposing speeches made little attempt to meet
this uncomfortable logic; but, nevertheless, opposition enough was
developed to lay the report on the table until the next convention, with
orders that it be printed, in the mean time, as a radical campaign
document. Finally the convention passed a resolution:--

    That it is inexpedient for any State, or its citizens, to
    attempt to re-open the African slave-trade while that State is
    one of the United States of America.[8]


83. ~Commercial Convention of 1859.~ The Convention of 1859 met at
Vicksburg, Mississippi, May 9-19, and the slave-trade party came ready
for a fray. On the second day Spratt called up his resolutions, and the
next day the Committee on Resolutions recommended that, _"in the opinion
of this Convention, all laws, State or Federal, prohibiting the African
slave trade, ought to be repealed."_ Two minority reports accompanied
this resolution: one proposed to postpone action, on account of the
futility of the attempt at that time; the other report recommended that,
since repeal of the national laws was improbable, nullification by the
States impracticable, and action by the Supreme Court unlikely,
therefore the States should bring in the Africans as apprentices, a
system the legality of which "is incontrovertible." "The only difficult
question," it was said, "is the future status of the apprentices after
the expiration of their term of servitude."[9] Debate on these
propositions began in the afternoon. A brilliant speech on the
resumption of the importation of slaves, says Foote of Mississippi, "was
listened to with breathless attention and applauded vociferously. Those
of us who rose in opposition were looked upon by the excited assemblage
present as _traitors_ to the best interests of the South, and only
worthy of expulsion from the body. The excitement at last grew so high
that personal violence was menaced, and some dozen of the more
conservative members of the convention withdrew from the hall in which
it was holding its sittings."[10] "It was clear," adds De Bow, "that the
people of Vicksburg looked upon it [i.e., the convention] with some
distrust."[11] When at last a ballot was taken, the first resolution
passed by a vote of 40 to 19.[12] Finally, the 8th Article of the Treaty
of Washington was again condemned; and it was also suggested, in the
newspaper which was the official organ of the meeting, that "the
Convention raise a fund to be dispensed in premiums for the best
sermons in favor of reopening the African Slave Trade."[13]


84. ~Public Opinion in the South.~ This record of the Commercial
Conventions probably gives a true reflection of the development of
extreme opinion on the question of reopening the slave-trade. First, it
is noticeable that on this point there was a distinct divergence of
opinion and interest between the Gulf and the Border States, and it was
this more than any moral repugnance that checked the radicals. The whole
movement represented the economic revolt of the slave-consuming
cotton-belt against their base of labor supply. This revolt was only
prevented from gaining its ultimate end by the fact that the Gulf States
could not get on without the active political co-operation of the Border
States. Thus, although such hot-heads as Spratt were not able, even as
late as 1859, to carry a substantial majority of the South with them in
an attempt to reopen the trade at all hazards, yet the agitation did
succeed in sweeping away nearly all theoretical opposition to the trade,
and left the majority of Southern people in an attitude which regarded
the reopening of the African slave-trade as merely a question of
expediency.

This growth of Southern opinion is clearly to be followed in the
newspapers and pamphlets of the day, in Congress, and in many
significant movements. The Charleston _Standard_ in a series of articles
strongly advocated the reopening of the trade; the Richmond _Examiner_,
though opposing the scheme as a Virginia paper should, was brought to
"acknowledge that the laws which condemn the Slave-trade imply an
aspersion upon the character of the South.[14] In March, 1859, the
_National Era_ said: "There can be no doubt that the idea of reviving
the African Slave Trade is gaining ground in the South. Some two months
ago we could quote strong articles from ultra Southern journals against
the traffic; but of late we have been sorry to observe in the same
journals an ominous silence upon the subject, while the advocates of
'free trade in negroes' are earnest and active."[15] The Savannah
_Republican_, which at first declared the movement to be of no serious
intent, conceded, in 1859, that it was gaining favor, and that
nine-tenths of the Democratic Congressional Convention favored it, and
that even those who did not advocate a revival demanded the abolition of
the laws.[16] A correspondent from South Carolina writes, December 18,
1859: "The nefarious project of opening it [i.e., the slave trade] has
been started here in that prurient temper of the times which manifests
itself in disunion schemes.... My State is strangely and terribly
infected with all this sort of thing.... One feeling that gives a
countenance to the opening of the slave trade is, that it will be a sort
of spite to the North and defiance of their opinions."[17] The New
Orleans _Delta_ declared that those who voted for the slave-trade in
Congress were men "whose names will be honored hereafter for the
unflinching manner in which they stood up for principle, for truth, and
consistency, as well as the vital interests of the South."[18]

85. ~The Question in Congress.~ Early in December, 1856, the subject
reached Congress; and although the agitation was then new, fifty-seven
Southern Congressmen refused to declare a re-opening of the slave-trade
"shocking to the moral sentiment of the enlightened portion of mankind,"
and eight refused to call the reopening even "unwise" and
"inexpedient."[19] Three years later, January 31, 1859, it was
impossible, in a House of one hundred and ninety-nine members, to get a
two-thirds vote in order even to consider Kilgore's resolutions, which
declared "that no legislation can be too thorough in its measures, nor
can any penalty known to the catalogue of modern punishment for crime be
too severe against a traffic so inhuman and unchristian."[20]

Congressmen and other prominent men hastened with the rising tide.[21]
Dowdell of Alabama declared the repressive acts "highly offensive;" J.B.
Clay of Kentucky was "opposed to all these laws;"[22] Seward of Georgia
declared them "wrong, and a violation of the Constitution;"[23]
Barksdale of Mississippi agreed with this sentiment; Crawford of Georgia
threatened a reopening of the trade; Miles of South Carolina was for
"sweeping away" all restrictions;[24] Keitt of South Carolina wished to
withdraw the African squadron, and to cease to brand slave-trading as
piracy;[25] Brown of Mississippi "would repeal the law instantly;"[26]
Alexander Stephens, in his farewell address to his constituents, said:
"Slave states cannot be made without Africans.... [My object is] to
bring clearly to your mind the great truth that without an increase of
African slaves from abroad, you may not expect or look for many more
slave States."[27] Jefferson Davis strongly denied "any coincidence of
opinion with those who prate of the inhumanity and sinfulness of the
trade. The interest of Mississippi," said he, "not of the African,
dictates my conclusion." He opposed the immediate reopening of the trade
in Mississippi for fear of a paralyzing influx of Negroes, but carefully
added: "This conclusion, in relation to Mississippi, is based upon my
view of her _present_ condition, _not_ upon any _general theory_. It is
not supposed to be applicable to Texas, to New Mexico, or to any _future
acquisitions_ to be made south of the Rio Grande."[28] John Forsyth, who
for seven years conducted the slave-trade diplomacy of the nation,
declared, about 1860: "But one stronghold of its [i.e., slavery's]
enemies remains to be carried, to _complete its triumph_ and assure its
welfare,--that is the existing prohibition of the African
Slave-trade."[29] Pollard, in his _Black Diamonds_, urged the
importation of Africans as "laborers." "This I grant you," said he,
"would be practically the re-opening of the African slave trade; but ...
you will find that it very often becomes necessary to evade the letter
of the law, in some of the greatest measures of social happiness and
patriotism."[30]


86. ~Southern Policy in 1860.~ The matter did not rest with mere words.
During the session of the Vicksburg Convention, an "African Labor Supply
Association" was formed, under the presidency of J.D.B. De Bow, editor
of _De Bow's Review_, and ex-superintendent of the seventh census. The
object of the association was "to promote the supply of African
labor."[31] In 1857 the committee of the South Carolina legislature to
whom the Governor's slave-trade message was referred made an elaborate
report, which declared in italics: _"The South at large does need a
re-opening of the African slave trade."_ Pettigrew, the only member who
disagreed to this report, failed of re-election. The report contained an
extensive argument to prove the kingship of cotton, the perfidy of
English philanthropy, and the lack of slaves in the South, which, it was
said, would show a deficit of six hundred thousand slaves by 1878.[32]
In Georgia, about this time, an attempt to expunge the slave-trade
prohibition in the State Constitution lacked but one vote of
passing.[33] From these slower and more legal movements came others
less justifiable. The long argument on the "apprentice" system finally
brought a request to the collector of the port at Charleston, South
Carolina, from E. Lafitte & Co., for a clearance to Africa for the
purpose of importing African "emigrants." The collector appealed to the
Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb of Georgia, who flatly refused to
take the bait, and replied that if the "emigrants" were brought in as
slaves, it would be contrary to United States law; if as freemen, it
would be contrary to their own State law.[34] In Louisiana a still more
radical movement was attempted, and a bill passed the House of
Representatives authorizing a company to import two thousand five
hundred Africans, "indentured" for fifteen years "at least." The bill
lacked but two votes of passing the Senate.[35] It was said that the
_Georgian_, of Savannah, contained a notice of an agricultural society
which "unanimously resolved to offer a premium of $25 for the best
specimen of a live African imported into the United States within the
last twelve months."[36]

It would not be true to say that there was in the South in 1860
substantial unanimity on the subject of reopening the slave-trade;
nevertheless, there certainly was a large and influential minority,
including perhaps a majority of citizens of the Gulf States, who favored
the project, and, in defiance of law and morals, aided and abetted its
actual realization. Various movements, it must be remembered, gained
much of their strength from the fact that their success meant a partial
nullification of the slave-trade laws. The admission of Texas added
probably seventy-five thousand recently imported slaves to the Southern
stock; the movement against Cuba, which culminated in the "Ostend
Manifesto" of Buchanan, Mason, and Soulé, had its chief impetus in the
thousands of slaves whom Americans had poured into the island. Finally,
the series of filibustering expeditions against Cuba, Mexico, and
Central America were but the wilder and more irresponsible attempts to
secure both slave territory and slaves.


87. ~Increase of the Slave-Trade from 1850 to 1860.~ The long and open
agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade, together with the fact
that the South had been more or less familiar with violations of the
laws since 1808, led to such a remarkable increase of illicit traffic
and actual importations in the decade 1850-1860, that the movement may
almost be termed a reopening of the slave-trade.

In the foreign slave-trade our own officers continue to report "how
shamefully our flag has been used;"[37] and British officers write "that
at least one half of the successful part of the slave trade is carried
on under the American flag," and this because "the number of American
cruisers on the station is so small, in proportion to the immense extent
of the slave-dealing coast."[38] The fitting out of slavers became a
flourishing business in the United States, and centred at New York City.
"Few of our readers," writes a periodical of the day, "are aware of the
extent to which this infernal traffic is carried on, by vessels clearing
from New York, and in close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that
down-town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged
in buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with comparatively
little interruption, for an indefinite number of years."[39] Another
periodical says: "The number of persons engaged in the slave-trade, and
the amount of capital embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation.
The city of New York has been until of late [1862] the principal port of
the world for this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland
and Boston are only second to her in that distinction. Slave dealers
added largely to the wealth of our commercial metropolis; they
contributed liberally to the treasuries of political organizations, and
their bank accounts were largely depleted to carry elections in New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut."[40] During eighteen months of
the years 1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are reported to have been
fitted out in New York harbor,[41] and these alone transported from
30,000 to 60,000 slaves annually.[42] The United States deputy marshal
of that district declared in 1856 that the business of fitting out
slavers "was never prosecuted with greater energy than at present. The
occasional interposition of the legal authorities exercises no apparent
influence for its suppression. It is seldom that one or more vessels
cannot be designated at the wharves, respecting which there is evidence
that she is either in or has been concerned in the Traffic."[43] On the
coast of Africa "it is a well-known fact that most of the Slave ships
which visit the river are sent from New York and New Orleans."[44]

The absence of United States war-ships at the Brazilian station enabled
American smugglers to run in cargoes, in spite of the prohibitory law.
One cargo of five hundred slaves was landed in 1852, and the _Correio
Mercantil_ regrets "that it was the flag of the United States which
covered this act of piracy, sustained by citizens of that great
nation."[45] When the Brazil trade declined, the illicit Cuban trade
greatly increased, and the British consul reported: "Almost all the
slave expeditions for some time past have been fitted out in the United
States, chiefly at New York."[46]

88. ~Notorious Infractions of the Laws.~ This decade is especially
noteworthy for the great increase of illegal importations into the
South. These became bold, frequent, and notorious. Systematic
introduction on a considerable scale probably commenced in the forties,
although with great secrecy. "To have boldly ventured into New Orleans,
with negroes freshly imported from Africa, would not only have brought
down upon the head of the importer the vengeance of our very
philanthropic Uncle Sam, but also the anathemas of the whole sect of
philanthropists and negrophilists everywhere. To import them for years,
however, into quiet places, evading with impunity the penalty of the
law, and the ranting of the thin-skinned sympathizers with Africa, was
gradually to popularize the traffic by creating a demand for laborers,
and thus to pave the way for the _gradual revival of the slave trade_.
To this end, a few men, bold and energetic, determined, ten or twelve
years ago [1848 or 1850], to commence the business of importing negroes,
slowly at first, but surely; and for this purpose they selected a few
secluded places on the coast of Florida, Georgia and Texas, for the
purpose of concealing their stock until it could be sold out. Without
specifying other places, let me draw your attention to a deep and abrupt
pocket or indentation in the coast of Texas, about thirty miles from
Brazos Santiago. Into this pocket a slaver could run at any hour of the
night, because there was no hindrance at the entrance, and here she
could discharge her cargo of movables upon the projecting bluff, and
again proceed to sea inside of three hours. The live stock thus landed
could be marched a short distance across the main island, over a porous
soil which refuses to retain the recent foot-prints, until they were
again placed in boats, and were concealed upon some of the innumerable
little islands which thicken on the waters of the Laguna in the rear.
These islands, being covered with a thick growth of bushes and grass,
offer an inscrutable hiding place for the 'black diamonds.'"[47] These
methods became, however, toward 1860, too slow for the radicals, and the
trade grew more defiant and open. The yacht "Wanderer," arrested on
suspicion in New York and released, landed in Georgia six months later
four hundred and twenty slaves, who were never recovered.[48] The
Augusta _Despatch_ says: "Citizens of our city are probably interested
in the enterprise. It is hinted that this is the third cargo landed by
the same company, during the last six months."[49] Two parties of
Africans were brought into Mobile with impunity. One bark, strongly
suspected of having landed a cargo of slaves, was seized on the Florida
coast; another vessel was reported to be landing slaves near Mobile; a
letter from Jacksonville, Florida, stated that a bark had left there for
Africa to ship a cargo for Florida and Georgia.[50] Stephen A. Douglas
said "that there was not the shadow of doubt that the Slave-trade had
been carried on quite extensively for a long time back, and that there
had been more Slaves imported into the southern States, during the last
year, than had ever been imported before in any one year, even when the
Slave-trade was legal. It was his confident belief, that over fifteen
thousand Slaves had been brought into this country during the past year
[1859.] He had seen, with his own eyes, three hundred of those
recently-imported, miserable beings, in a Slave-pen in Vicksburg, Miss.,
and also large numbers at Memphis, Tenn."[51] It was currently reported
that depots for these slaves existed in over twenty large cities and
towns in the South, and an interested person boasted to a senator, about
1860, that "twelve vessels would discharge their living freight upon our
shores within ninety days from the 1st of June last," and that between
sixty and seventy cargoes had been successfully introduced in the last
eighteen months.[52] The New York _Tribune_ doubted the statement; but
John C. Underwood, formerly of Virginia, wrote to the paper saying that
he was satisfied that the correspondent was correct. "I have," he said,
"had ample evidences of the fact, that reopening the African Slave-trade
is a thing already accomplished, and the traffic is brisk, and rapidly
increasing. In fact, the most vital question of the day is not the
opening of this trade, but its suppression. The arrival of cargoes of
negroes, fresh from Africa, in our southern ports, is an event of
frequent occurrence."[53]

Negroes, newly landed, were openly advertised for sale in the public
press, and bids for additional importations made. In reply to one of
these, the Mobile _Mercury_ facetiously remarks: "Some negroes who never
learned to talk English, went up the railroad the other day."[54]
Congressmen declared on the floor of the House: "The slave trade may
therefore be regarded as practically re-established;"[55] and petitions
like that from the American Missionary Society recited the fact that
"this piratical and illegal trade--this inhuman invasion of the rights
of men,--this outrage on civilization and Christianity--this violation
of the laws of God and man--is openly countenanced and encouraged by a
portion of the citizens of some of the States of this Union."[56]

From such evidence it seems clear that the slave-trade laws, in spite of
the efforts of the government, in spite even of much opposition to these
extra-legal methods in the South itself, were grossly violated, if not
nearly nullified, in the latter part of the decade 1850-1860.


89. ~Apathy of the Federal Government.~ During the decade there was some
attempt at reactionary legislation, chiefly directed at the Treaty of
Washington. June 13, 1854, Slidell, from the Committee on Foreign
Relations, made an elaborate report to the Senate, advocating the
abrogation of the 8th Article of that treaty, on the ground that it was
costly, fatal to the health of the sailors, and useless, as the trade
had actually increased under its operation.[57] Both this and a similar
attempt in the House failed,[58] as did also an attempt to substitute
life imprisonment for the death penalty.[59] Most of the actual
legislation naturally took the form of appropriations. In 1853 there was
an attempt to appropriate $20,000.[60] This failed, and the
appropriation of $8,000 in 1856 was the first for ten years.[61] The
following year brought a similar appropriation,[62] and in 1859[63] and
1860[64] $75,000 and $40,000 respectively were appropriated. Of
attempted legislation to strengthen the laws there was plenty: e.g.,
propositions to regulate the issue of sea-letters and the use of our
flag;[65] to prevent the "coolie" trade, or the bringing in of
"apprentices" or "African laborers;"[66] to stop the coastwise
trade;[67] to assent to a Right of Search;[68] and to amend the
Constitution by forever prohibiting the slave-trade.[69]

The efforts of the executive during this period were criminally lax and
negligent. "The General Government did not exert itself in good faith to
carry out either its treaty stipulations or the legislation of Congress
in regard to the matter. If a vessel was captured, her owners were
permitted to bond her, and thus continue her in the trade; and if any
man was convicted of this form of piracy, the executive always
interposed between him and the penalty of his crime. The laws providing
for the seizure of vessels engaged in the traffic were so constructed as
to render the duty unremunerative; and marshals now find their fees for
such services to be actually less than their necessary expenses. No one
who bears this fact in mind will be surprised at the great indifference
of these officers to the continuing of the slave-trade; in fact, he will
be ready to learn that the laws of Congress upon the subject had become
a dead letter, and that the suspicion was well grounded that certain
officers of the Federal Government had actually connived at their
violation."[70] From 1845 to 1854, in spite of the well-known activity
of the trade, but five cases obtained cognizance in the New York
district. Of these, Captains Mansfield and Driscoll forfeited their
bonds of $5,000 each, and escaped; in the case of the notorious Canot,
nothing had been done as late as 1856, although he was arrested in 1847;
Captain Jefferson turned State's evidence, and, in the case of Captain
Mathew, a _nolle prosequi_ was entered.[71] Between 1854 and 1856
thirty-two persons were indicted in New York, of whom only thirteen had
at the latter date been tried, and only one of these convicted.[72]
These dismissals were seldom on account of insufficient evidence. In the
notorious case of the "Wanderer," she was arrested on suspicion,
released, and soon after she landed a cargo of slaves in Georgia; some
who attempted to seize the Negroes were arrested for larceny, and in
spite of the efforts of Congress the captain was never punished. The
yacht was afterwards started on another voyage, and being brought back
to Boston was sold to her former owner for about one third her
value.[73] The bark "Emily" was seized on suspicion and released, and
finally caught red-handed on the coast of Africa; she was sent to New
York for trial, but "disappeared" under a certain slave captain,
Townsend, who had, previous to this, in the face of the most convincing
evidence, been acquitted at Key West.[74]

The squadron commanders of this time were by no means as efficient as
their predecessors, and spent much of their time, apparently, in
discussing the Right of Search. Instead of a number of small light
vessels, which by the reports of experts were repeatedly shown to be the
only efficient craft, the government, until 1859, persisted in sending
out three or four great frigates. Even these did not attend faithfully
to their duties. A letter from on board one of them shows that, out of a
fifteen months' alleged service, only twenty-two days were spent on the
usual cruising-ground for slavers, and thirteen of these at anchor;
eleven months were spent at Madeira and Cape Verde Islands, 300 miles
from the coast and 3,000 miles from the slave market.[75] British
commanders report the apathy of American officers and the extreme
caution of their instructions, which allowed many slavers to escape.[76]

The officials at Washington often remained in blissful, and perhaps
willing, ignorance of the state of the trade. While Americans were
smuggling slaves by the thousands into Brazil, and by the hundreds into
the United States, Secretary Graham was recommending the abrogation of
the 8th Article of the Treaty of Washington;[77] so, too, when the Cuban
slave-trade was reaching unprecedented activity, and while slavers were
being fitted out in every port on the Atlantic seaboard, Secretary
Kennedy naïvely reports, "The time has come, perhaps, when it may be
properly commended to the notice of Congress to inquire into the
necessity of further continuing the regular employment of a squadron on
this [i.e., the African] coast."[78] Again, in 1855, the government has
"advices that the slave trade south of the equator is entirely broken
up;"[79] in 1856, the reports are "favorable;"[80] in 1857 a British
commander writes: "No vessel has been seen here for one year, certainly;
I think for nearly three years there have been no American cruizers on
these waters, where a valuable and extensive American commerce is
carried on. I cannot, therefore, but think that this continued absence
of foreign cruizers looks as if they were intentionally withdrawn, and
as if the Government did not care to take measures to prevent the
American flag being used to cover Slave Trade transactions;"[81]
nevertheless, in this same year, according to Secretary Toucey, "the
force on the coast of Africa has fully accomplished its main
object."[82] Finally, in the same month in which the "Wanderer" and her
mates were openly landing cargoes in the South, President Buchanan, who
seems to have been utterly devoid of a sense of humor, was urging the
annexation of Cuba to the United States as the only method of
suppressing the slave-trade![83]

About 1859 the frequent and notorious violations of our laws aroused
even the Buchanan government; a larger appropriation was obtained, swift
light steamers were employed, and, though we may well doubt whether
after such a carnival illegal importations "entirely" ceased, as the
President informed Congress,[84] yet some sincere efforts at suppression
were certainly begun. From 1850 to 1859 we have few notices of captured
slavers, but in 1860 the increased appropriation of the thirty-fifth
Congress resulted in the capture of twelve vessels with 3,119
Africans.[85] The Act of June 16, 1860, enabled the President to
contract with the Colonization Society for the return of recaptured
Africans; and by a long-needed arrangement cruisers were to proceed
direct to Africa with such cargoes, instead of first landing them in
this country.[86]


90. ~Attitude of the Southern Confederacy.~ The attempt, initiated by
the constitutional fathers, to separate the problem of slavery from that
of the slave-trade had, after a trial of half a century, signally
failed, and for well-defined economic reasons. The nation had at last
come to the parting of the ways, one of which led to a free-labor
system, the other to a slave system fed by the slave-trade. Both
sections of the country naturally hesitated at the cross-roads: the
North clung to the delusion that a territorially limited system of
slavery, without a slave-trade, was still possible in the South; the
South hesitated to fight for her logical object--slavery and free trade
in Negroes--and, in her moral and economic dilemma, sought to make
autonomy and the Constitution her object. The real line of contention
was, however, fixed by years of development, and was unalterable by the
present whims or wishes of the contestants, no matter how important or
interesting these might be: the triumph of the North meant free labor;
the triumph of the South meant slavery and the slave-trade.

It is doubtful if many of the Southern leaders ever deceived themselves
by thinking that Southern slavery, as it then was, could long be
maintained without a general or a partial reopening of the slave-trade.
Many had openly declared this a few years before, and there was no
reason for a change of opinion. Nevertheless, at the outbreak of actual
war and secession, there were powerful and decisive reasons for
relegating the question temporarily to the rear. In the first place,
only by this means could the adherence of important Border States be
secured, without the aid of which secession was folly. Secondly, while
it did no harm to laud the independence of the South and the kingship of
cotton in "stump" speeches and conventions, yet, when it came to actual
hostilities, the South sorely needed the aid of Europe; and this a
nation fighting for slavery and the slave-trade stood poor chance of
getting. Consequently, after attacking the slave-trade laws for a
decade, and their execution for a quarter-century, we find the Southern
leaders inserting, in both the provisional and the permanent
Constitutions of the Confederate States, the following article:--

    The importation of negroes of the African race, from any foreign
    country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the
    United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is
    required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the
    same.

    Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of
    slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not
    belonging to, this Confederacy.[87]

The attitude of the Confederate government toward this article is best
illustrated by its circular of instructions to its foreign ministers:--

    It has been suggested to this Government, from a source of
    unquestioned authenticity, that, after the recognition of our
    independence by the European Powers, an expectation is generally
    entertained by them that in our treaties of amity and commerce a
    clause will be introduced making stipulations against the
    African slave trade. It is even thought that neutral Powers may
    be inclined to insist upon the insertion of such a clause as a
    _sine qua non_.

    You are well aware how firmly fixed in our Constitution is the
    policy of this Confederacy against the opening of that trade,
    but we are informed that false and insidious suggestions have
    been made by the agents of the United States at European Courts
    of our intention to change our constitution as soon as peace is
    restored, and of authorizing the importation of slaves from
    Africa. If, therefore, you should find, in your intercourse with
    the Cabinet to which you are accredited, that any such
    impressions are entertained, you will use every proper effort to
    remove them, and if an attempt is made to introduce into any
    treaty which you may be charged with negotiating stipulations on
    the subject just mentioned, you will assume, in behalf of your
    Government, the position which, under the direction of the
    President, I now proceed to develop.

    The Constitution of the Confederate States is an agreement made
    between independent States. By its terms all the powers of
    Government are separated into classes as follows, viz.:--

    1st. Such powers as the States delegate to the General
    Government.

    2d. Such powers as the States agree to refrain from exercising,
    although they do not delegate them to the General Government.

    3d. Such powers as the States, without delegating them to the
    General Government, thought proper to exercise by direct
    agreement between themselves contained in the Constitution.

    4th. All remaining powers of sovereignty, which not being
    delegated to the Confederate States by the Constitution nor
    prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
    respectively, or to the people thereof.... Especially in
    relation to the importation of African negroes was it deemed
    important by the States that no power to permit it should exist
    in the Confederate Government.... It will thus be seen that no
    power is delegated to the Confederate Government over this
    subject, but that it is included in the third class above
    referred to, of powers exercised directly by the States.... This
    Government unequivocally and absolutely denies its possession of
    any power whatever over the subject, and cannot entertain any
    proposition in relation to it.... The policy of the Confederacy
    is as fixed and immutable on this subject as the imperfection of
    human nature permits human resolve to be. No additional
    agreements, treaties, or stipulations can commit these States to
    the prohibition of the African slave trade with more binding
    efficacy than those they have themselves devised. A just and
    generous confidence in their good faith on this subject
    exhibited by friendly Powers will be far more efficacious than
    persistent efforts to induce this Government to assume the
    exercise of powers which it does not possess.... We trust,
    therefore, that no unnecessary discussions on this matter will
    be introduced into your negotiations. If, unfortunately, this
    reliance should prove ill-founded, you will decline continuing
    negotiations on your side, and transfer them to us at
    home....[88]

This attitude of the conservative leaders of the South, if it meant
anything, meant that individual State action could, when it pleased,
reopen the slave-trade. The radicals were, of course, not satisfied with
any veiling of the ulterior purpose of the new slave republic, and
attacked the constitutional provision violently. "If," said one, "the
clause be carried into the permanent government, our whole movement is
defeated. It will abolitionize the Border Slave States--it will brand
our institution. Slavery cannot share a government with Democracy,--it
cannot bear a brand upon it; thence another revolution ... having
achieved one revolution to escape democracy at the North, it must still
achieve another to escape it at the South. That it will ultimately
triumph none can doubt."[89]

91. ~Attitude of the United States.~ In the North, with all the
hesitation in many matters, there existed unanimity in regard to the
slave-trade; and the new Lincoln government ushered in the new policy of
uncompromising suppression by hanging the first American slave-trader
who ever suffered the extreme penalty of the law.[90] One of the
earliest acts of President Lincoln was a step which had been necessary
since 1808, but had never been taken, viz., the unification of the whole
work of suppression into the hands of one responsible department. By an
order, dated May 2, 1861, Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior, was
charged with the execution of the slave-trade laws,[91] and he
immediately began energetic work. Early in 1861, as soon as the
withdrawal of the Southern members untied the hands of Congress, two
appropriations of $900,000 each were made to suppress the slave trade,
the first appropriations commensurate with the vastness of the task.
These were followed by four appropriations of $17,000 each in the years
1863 to 1867, and two of $12,500 each in 1868 and 1869.[92] The first
work of the new secretary was to obtain a corps of efficient assistants.
To this end, he assembled all the marshals of the loyal seaboard States
at New York, and gave them instruction and opportunity to inspect
actual slavers. Congress also, for the first time, offered them proper
compensation.[93] The next six months showed the effect of this policy
in the fact that five vessels were seized and condemned, and four
slave-traders were convicted and suffered the penalty of their crimes.
"This is probably the largest number [of convictions] ever obtained, and
certainly the only ones for many years."[94]

Meantime the government opened negotiations with Great Britain, and the
treaty of 1862 was signed June 7, and carried out by Act of Congress,
July 11.[95] Specially commissioned war vessels of either government
were by this agreement authorized to search merchant vessels on the high
seas and specified coasts, and if they were found to be slavers, or, on
account of their construction or equipment, were suspected to be such,
they were to be sent for condemnation to one of the mixed courts
established at New York, Sierra Leone, and the Cape of Good Hope. These
courts, consisting of one judge and one arbitrator on the part of each
government, were to judge the facts without appeal, and upon
condemnation by them, the culprits were to be punished according to the
laws of their respective countries. The area in which this Right of
Search could be exercised was somewhat enlarged by an additional article
to the treaty, signed in 1863. In 1870 the mixed courts were abolished,
but the main part of the treaty was left in force. The Act of July 17,
1862, enabled the President to contract with foreign governments for the
apprenticing of recaptured Africans in the West Indies,[96] and in 1864
the coastwise slave-trade was forever prohibited.[97] By these measures
the trade was soon checked, and before the end of the war entirely
suppressed.[98] The vigilance of the government, however, was not
checked, and as late as 1866 a squadron of ten ships, with one hundred
and thirteen guns, patrolled the slave coast.[99] Finally, the
Thirteenth Amendment legally confirmed what the war had already
accomplished, and slavery and the slave-trade fell at one blow.[100]


FOOTNOTES:

  [1] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1854-5, p. 1156.

  [2] Cluskey, _Political Text-Book_ (14th ed.), p. 585.

  [3] _De Bow's Review_, XXII. 223; quoted from Andrew Hunter of
      Virginia.

  [4] _Ibid._, XVIII. 628.

  [5] _Ibid._, XXII. 91, 102, 217, 221-2.

  [6] From a pamphlet entitled "A New Southern Policy, or the
      Slave Trade as meaning Union and Conservatism;" quoted in
      Etheridge's speech, Feb. 21, 1857: _Congressional Globe_, 34
      Cong. 3 sess., Appendix, p. 366.

  [7] _De Bow's Review_, XXIII. 298-320. A motion to table the
      motion on the 8th article was supported only by Kentucky,
      Tennessee, North Carolina, and Maryland. Those voting for
      Sneed's motion were Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, and
      Tennessee. The appointment of a slave-trade committee was at
      first defeated by a vote of 48 to 44. Finally a similar motion
      was passed, 52 to 40.

  [8] _De Bow's Review_, XXIV. 473-491, 579-605. The Louisiana
      delegation alone did not vote for the last resolution, the
      vote of her delegation being evenly divided.

  [9] _De Bow's Review_, XXVII. 94-235.

 [10] H.S. Foote, in _Bench and Bar of the South and
      Southwest_, p. 69.

 [11] _De Bow's Review_, XXVII. 115.

 [12] _Ibid._, p. 99. The vote was:--

               _Yea._                _Nay._
      Alabama,         5 votes.  Tennessee,      12 votes.
      Arkansas,        4   "     Florida,         3   "
      South Carolina,  4   "     South Carolina,  4   "
      Louisiana,       6   "          Total      19
      Texas,           4   "
      Georgia,        10   "     Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and
      Mississippi,     7   "     North Carolina did not vote; they either
               Total  40         withdrew or were not represented.



 [13] Quoted in _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p.
      38. The official organ was the _True Southron_.

 [14] Quoted in _24th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p.
      54.

 [15] Quoted in _26th Report_, _Ibid._, p. 43.

 [16] _27th Report_, _Ibid._, pp. 19-20.

 [17] Letter of W.C. Preston, in the _National Intelligencer_,
      April 3, 1863. Also published in the pamphlet, _The African
      Slave Trade: The Secret Purpose_, etc., p. 26.

 [18] Quoted in Etheridge's speech: _Congressional Globe_, 34
      Cong. 3 sess. Appen., p. 366.

 [19] _House Journal_, 34 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 105-10;
      _Congressional Globe_, 34 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 123-6; Cluskey,
      _Political Text-Book_ (14th ed.), p. 589.

 [20] _House Journal_, 35 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 298-9. Cf. _26th
      Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 45.

 [21] Cf. _Reports of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, especially
      the 26th, pp. 43-4.

 [22] _Ibid._, p. 43. He referred especially to the Treaty of
      1842.

 [23] _Ibid._; _Congressional Globe_, 35 Cong. 2 sess., Appen.,
      pp. 248-50.

 [24] _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 44.

 [25] _Ibid._; _27th Report_, pp. 13-4.

 [26] _26th Report_, _Ibid._, p. 44.

 [27] Quoted in Lalor, _Cyclopædia_, III. 733; Cairnes, _The
      Slave Power_ (New York, 1862), p. 123, note; _27th Report of
      the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 15.

 [28] Quoted in Cairnes, _The Slave Power_, p. 123, note; _27th
      Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 19.

 [29] _27th Report_, _Ibid._, p. 16; quoted from the Mobile
      _Register_.

 [30] Edition of 1859, pp. 63-4.

 [31] _De Bow's Review_, XXVII. 121, 231-5.

 [32] _Report of the Special Committee_, etc. (1857), pp. 24-5.

 [33] _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 40. The
      vote was 47 to 46.

 [34] _House Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 7, pp.
      632-6. For the State law, cf. above, Chapter II. This refusal
      of Cobb's was sharply criticised by many Southern papers. Cf.
      _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 39.

 [35] New York _Independent_, March 11 and April 1, 1858.

 [36] _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 41.

 [37] Gregory to the Secretary of the Navy, June 8, 1850:
      _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. XIV. No. 66, p. 2. Cf.
      _Ibid._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 6.

 [38] Cumming to Commodore Fanshawe, Feb. 22, 1850: _Senate
      Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. XIV. No. 66, p. 8.

 [39] New York _Journal of Commerce_, 1857; quoted in _24th
      Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 56.

 [40] "The Slave-Trade in New York," in the _Continental
      Monthly_, January, 1862, p. 87.

 [41] New York _Evening Post_; quoted in Lalor, _Cyclopædia_,
      III. 733.

 [42] Lalor, _Cyclopædia_, III. 733; quoted from a New York
      paper.

 [43] _Friends' Appeal on behalf of the Coloured Races_ (1858),
      Appendix, p. 41; quoted from the _Journal of Commerce_.

 [44] _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, pp. 53-4;
      quoted from the African correspondent of the Boston _Journal_.
      From April, 1857, to May, 1858, twenty-one of twenty-two
      slavers which were seized by British cruisers proved to be
      American, from New York, Boston, and New Orleans. Cf. _25th
      Report_, _Ibid._, p. 122. De Bow estimated in 1856 that forty
      slavers cleared annually from Eastern harbors, clearing yearly
      $17,000,000: _De Bow's Review_, XXII. 430-1.

 [45] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 33 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 47, p.
      13.

 [46] _House Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 105, p. 38.

 [47] New York _Herald_, Aug. 5, 1860; quoted in Drake,
      _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, Introd., pp. vii.-viii.

 [48] _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 89. Cf.
      _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, pp. 45-9.

 [49] Quoted in _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p.
      46.

 [50] For all the above cases, cf. _Ibid._, p. 49.

 [51] Quoted in _27th Report_, _Ibid._, p. 20. Cf. _Report of
      the Secretary of the Navy_, 1859; _Senate Exec. Doc._, 36
      Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 2.

 [52] _27th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 21.

 [53] Quoted in _Ibid._

 [54] Issue of July 22, 1860; quoted in Drake, _Revelations of
      a Slave Smuggler_, Introd., p. vi. The advertisement referred
      to was addressed to the "Ship-owners and Masters of our
      Mercantile Marine," and appeared in the Enterprise (Miss.)
      _Weekly News_, April 14, 1859. William S. Price and seventeen
      others state that they will "pay three hundred dollars per
      head for one thousand native Africans, between the ages of
      fourteen and twenty years, (of sexes equal,) likely, sound,
      and healthy, to be delivered within twelve months from this
      date, at some point accessible by land, between Pensacola,
      Fla., and Galveston, Texas; the contractors giving thirty
      days' notice as to time and place of delivery": Quoted in
      _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, pp. 41-2.

 [55] _Congressional Globe_, 35 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1362. Cf. the
      speech of a delegate from Georgia to the Democratic Convention
      at Charleston, 1860: "If any of you northern democrats will go
      home with me to my plantation, I will show you some darkies
      that I bought in Virginia, some in Delaware, some in Florida,
      and I will also show you the pure African, the noblest Roman
      of them all. I represent the African slave trade interest of
      my section:" Lalor, _Cyclopædia_, III. 733.

 [56] _Senate Misc. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. No. 8.

 [57] _Senate Journal_, 34 Cong. 1-2 sess. pp. 396, 695-8;
      _Senate Reports_, 34 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 195.

 [58] _House Journal_, 31 Cong. 2 sess. p. 64. There was still
      another attempt by Sandidge. Cf. _26th Report of the Amer.
      Anti-Slav. Soc._, p. 44.

 [59] _Senate Journal_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. p. 274; _Congressional
      Globe_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1245.

 [60] Congressional Globe, 32 Cong. 2 sess. p. 1072.

 [61] I.e., since 1846: _Statutes at Large_, XI. 90.

 [62] _Ibid._, XI. 227.

 [63] _Ibid._, XI. 404.

 [64] _Ibid._, XII. 21.

 [65] E.g., Clay's resolutions: _Congressional Globe_, 31 Cong.
      2 sess. pp. 304-9. Clayton's resolutions: _Senate Journal_, 33
      Cong. 1 sess. p. 404; _House Journal_, 33 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
      1093, 1332-3; _Congressional Globe_, 33 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
      1591-3, 2139. Seward's bill: _Senate Journal_, 33 Cong. 1
      sess. pp. 448, 451.

 [66] Mr. Blair of Missouri asked unanimous consent in
      Congress, Dec. 23, 1858, to a resolution instructing the
      Judiciary Committee to bring in such a bill; Houston of
      Alabama objected: _Congressional Globe_, 35 Cong. 2 sess. p.
      198; _26th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, p. 44.

 [67] This was the object of attack in 1851 and 1853 by
      Giddings: _House Journal_, 32 Cong. 1 sess. p. 42; 33 Cong. 1
      sess. p. 147. Cf. _House Journal_, 38 Cong. 1 sess. p. 46.

 [68] By Mr. Wilson, March 20, 1860: _Senate Journal_, 36 Cong.
      1 sess. p. 274.

 [69] Four or five such attempts were made: Dec. 12, 1860,
      _House Journal_, 36 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 61-2; Jan. 7, 1861,
      _Congressional Globe_, 36 Cong. 2 sess. p. 279; Jan. 23, 1861,
      _Ibid._, p. 527; Feb. 1, 1861, _Ibid._, p. 690; Feb. 27, 1861,
      _Ibid._, pp. 1243, 1259.

 [70] "The Slave-Trade in New York," in the _Continental
      Monthly_, January, 1862, p. 87.

 [71] New York _Herald_, July 14, 1856.

 [72] _Ibid._ Cf. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess. V. No.
      53.

 [73] _27th Report of the Amer. Anti-slav. Soc._, pp. 25-6. Cf.
      _26th Report_, _Ibid._, pp. 45-9.

 [74] _27th Report_, _Ibid._, pp. 26-7.

 [75] _26th Report_, _Ibid._, p. 54.

 [76] _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1859-60, pp. 899,
      973.

 [77] Nov. 29, 1851: _House Exec. Doc._, 32 Cong. 1 sess. II.
      pt. 2, No. 2, p. 4.

 [78] Dec. 4, 1852: _House Exec. Doc._, 32 Cong. 2 sess. I. pt.
      2, No. 1, p. 293.

 [79] _Ibid._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. I. pt. 3, No. 1, p. 5.

 [80] _Ibid._, 34 Cong. 3 sess. I. pt. 2, No. 1, p. 407.

 [81] Commander Burgess to Commodore Wise, Whydah, Aug. 12,
      1857: _Parliamentary Papers_, 1857-8, vol. LXI. _Slave Trade_,
      Class A, p. 136.

 [82] _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 1 sess. II. pt. 3, No. 2, p.
      576.

 [83] _Ibid._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. II. pt. 1, No. 2, pp. 14-15,
      31-33.

 [84] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, p. 24.
      The Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1859, contains this
      ambiguous passage: "What the effect of breaking up the trade
      will be upon the United States or Cuba it is not necessary to
      inquire; certainly, under the laws of Congress and our treaty
      obligations, it is the duty of the executive government to see
      that our citizens shall not be engaged in it": _Ibid._, 36
      Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 2, pp. 1138-9.

 [85] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. III. pt. 1, No. 1,
      pp. 8-9.

 [86] _Statutes at Large_, XII. 40.

 [87] _Confederate States of America Statutes at Large_, 1861,
      p. 15, Constitution, Art. 1, sect. 9, §§ 1, 2.

 [88] From an intercepted circular despatch from J.P. Benjamin,
      "Secretary of State," addressed in this particular instance to
      Hon. L.Q.C. Lamar, "Commissioner, etc., St. Petersburg,
      Russia," and dated Richmond, Jan. 15, 1863; published in the
      _National Intelligencer_, March 31, 1863; cf. also the issues
      of Feb. 19, 1861, April 2, 3, 25, 1863; also published in the
      pamphlet, _The African Slave-Trade: The Secret Purpose_, etc.
      The editors vouch for its authenticity, and state it to be in
      Benjamin's own handwriting.

 [89] L.W. Spratt of South Carolina, in the _Southern Literary
      Messenger_, June, 1861, XXXII. 414, 420. Cf. also the
      Charleston _Mercury_, Feb. 13, 1861, and the _National
      Intelligencer_, Feb. 19, 1861.

 [90] Captain Gordon of the slaver "Erie;" condemned in the
      U.S. District Court for Southern New York in 1862. Cf. _Senate
      Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, p. 13.

 [91] _Ibid._, pp. 453-4.

 [92] _Statutes at Large_, XII. 132, 219, 639; XIII. 424; XIV.
      226, 415; XV. 58, 321. The sum of $250,000 was also
      appropriated to return the slaves on the "Wildfire": _Ibid._,
      XII. 40-41.

 [93] _Statutes at Large_, XII. 368-9.

 [94] _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, pp.
      453-4.

 [95] _Statutes at Large_, XII. 531.

 [96] For a time not exceeding five years: _Ibid._, pp. 592-3.

 [97] By section 9 of an appropriation act for civil expenses,
      July 2, 1864: _Ibid._, XIII. 353.

 [98] British officers attested this: _Diplomatic
      Correspondence_, 1862, p. 285.

 [99] _Report of the Secretary of the Navy_, 1866; _House Exec.
      Doc._, 39 Cong. 2 sess. IV. p. 12.

[100] There were some later attempts to legislate. Sumner
      tried to repeal the Act of 1803: _Congressional Globe_, 41
      Cong. 2 sess. pp. 2894, 2932, 4953, 5594. Banks introduced a
      bill to prohibit Americans owning or dealing in slaves abroad:
      _House Journal_, 42 Cong. 2 sess. p. 48. For the legislation
      of the Confederate States, cf. Mason, _Veto Power_, 2d ed.,
      Appendix C, No. 1.

                    *       *       *       *       *




_Chapter XII_

THE ESSENTIALS IN THE STRUGGLE.

  92. How the Question Arose.
  93. The Moral Movement.
  94. The Political Movement.
  95. The Economic Movement.
  96. The Lesson for Americans.


92. ~How the Question Arose.~ We have followed a chapter of history
which is of peculiar interest to the sociologist. Here was a rich new
land, the wealth of which was to be had in return for ordinary manual
labor. Had the country been conceived of as existing primarily for the
benefit of its actual inhabitants, it might have waited for natural
increase or immigration to supply the needed hands; but both Europe and
the earlier colonists themselves regarded this land as existing chiefly
for the benefit of Europe, and as designed to be exploited, as rapidly
and ruthlessly as possible, of the boundless wealth of its resources.
This was the primary excuse for the rise of the African slave-trade to
America.

Every experiment of such a kind, however, where the moral standard of a
people is lowered for the sake of a material advantage, is dangerous in
just such proportion as that advantage is great. In this case it was
great. For at least a century, in the West Indies and the southern
United States, agriculture flourished, trade increased, and English
manufactures were nourished, in just such proportion as Americans stole
Negroes and worked them to death. This advantage, to be sure, became
much smaller in later times, and at one critical period was, at least in
the Southern States, almost _nil_; but energetic efforts were wanting,
and, before the nation was aware, slavery had seized a new and well-nigh
immovable footing in the Cotton Kingdom.

The colonists averred with perfect truth that they did not commence this
fatal traffic, but that it was imposed upon them from without.
Nevertheless, all too soon did they lay aside scruples against it and
hasten to share its material benefits. Even those who braved the rough
Atlantic for the highest moral motives fell early victims to the
allurements of this system. Thus, throughout colonial history, in spite
of many honest attempts to stop the further pursuit of the slave-trade,
we notice back of nearly all such attempts a certain moral apathy, an
indisposition to attack the evil with the sharp weapons which its nature
demanded. Consequently, there developed steadily, irresistibly, a vast
social problem, which required two centuries and a half for a nation of
trained European stock and boasted moral fibre to solve.


93. ~The Moral Movement.~ For the solution of this problem there were,
roughly speaking, three classes of efforts made during this
time,--moral, political, and economic: that is to say, efforts which
sought directly to raise the moral standard of the nation; efforts which
sought to stop the trade by legal enactment; efforts which sought to
neutralize the economic advantages of the slave-trade. There is always a
certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil
simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized
in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral
weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called
for. This was the case in the early history of the colonies; and
experience proved that an appeal to moral rectitude was unheard in
Carolina when rice had become a great crop, and in Massachusetts when
the rum-slave-traffic was paying a profit of 100%. That the various
abolition societies and anti-slavery movements did heroic work in
rousing the national conscience is certainly true; unfortunately,
however, these movements were weakest at the most critical times. When,
in 1774 and 1804, the material advantages of the slave-trade and the
institution of slavery were least, it seemed possible that moral suasion
might accomplish the abolition of both. A fatal spirit of temporizing,
however, seized the nation at these points; and although the slave-trade
was, largely for political reasons, forbidden, slavery was left
untouched. Beyond this point, as years rolled by, it was found well-nigh
impossible to rouse the moral sense of the nation. Even in the matter of
enforcing its own laws and co-operating with the civilized world, a
lethargy seized the country, and it did not awake until slavery was
about to destroy it. Even then, after a long and earnest crusade, the
national sense of right did not rise to the entire abolition of
slavery. It was only a peculiar and almost fortuitous commingling of
moral, political, and economic motives that eventually crushed African
slavery and its handmaid, the slave-trade in America.


94. ~The Political Movement.~ The political efforts to limit the
slave-trade were the outcome partly of moral reprobation of the trade,
partly of motives of expediency. This legislation was never such as wise
and powerful rulers may make for a nation, with the ulterior purpose of
calling in the respect which the nation has for law to aid in raising
its standard of right. The colonial and national laws on the slave-trade
merely registered, from time to time, the average public opinion
concerning this traffic, and are therefore to be regarded as negative
signs rather than as positive efforts. These signs were, from one point
of view, evidences of moral awakening; they indicated slow, steady
development of the idea that to steal even Negroes was wrong. From
another point of view, these laws showed the fear of servile
insurrection and the desire to ward off danger from the State; again,
they often indicated a desire to appear well before the civilized world,
and to rid the "land of the free" of the paradox of slavery.
Representing such motives, the laws varied all the way from mere
regulating acts to absolute prohibitions. On the whole, these acts were
poorly conceived, loosely drawn, and wretchedly enforced. The systematic
violation of the provisions of many of them led to a widespread belief
that enforcement was, in the nature of the case, impossible; and thus,
instead of marking ground already won, they were too often sources of
distinct moral deterioration. Certainly the carnival of lawlessness that
succeeded the Act of 1807, and that which preceded final suppression in
1861, were glaring examples of the failure of the efforts to suppress
the slave-trade by mere law.


95. ~The Economic Movement.~ Economic measures against the trade were
those which from the beginning had the best chance of success, but which
were least tried. They included tariff measures; efforts to encourage
the immigration of free laborers and the emigration of the slaves;
measures for changing the character of Southern industry; and, finally,
plans to restore the economic balance which slavery destroyed, by
raising the condition of the slave to that of complete freedom and
responsibility. Like the political efforts, these rested in part on a
moral basis; and, as legal enactments, they were also themselves often
political measures. They differed, however, from purely moral and
political efforts, in having as a main motive the economic gain which a
substitution of free for slave labor promised.

The simplest form of such efforts was the revenue duty on slaves that
existed in all the colonies. This developed into the prohibitive tariff,
and into measures encouraging immigration or industrial improvements.
The colonization movement was another form of these efforts; it was
inadequately conceived, and not altogether sincere, but it had a sound,
although in this case impracticable, economic basis. The one great
measure which finally stopped the slave-trade forever was, naturally,
the abolition of slavery, i.e., the giving to the Negro the right to
sell his labor at a price consistent with his own welfare. The abolition
of slavery itself, while due in part to direct moral appeal and
political sagacity, was largely the result of the economic collapse of
the large-farming slave system.


96. ~The Lesson for Americans.~ It may be doubted if ever before such
political mistakes as the slavery compromises of the Constitutional
Convention had such serious results, and yet, by a succession of
unexpected accidents, still left a nation in position to work out its
destiny. No American can study the connection of slavery with United
States history, and not devoutly pray that his country may never have a
similar social problem to solve, until it shows more capacity for such
work than it has shown in the past. It is neither profitable nor in
accordance with scientific truth to consider that whatever the
constitutional fathers did was right, or that slavery was a plague sent
from God and fated to be eliminated in due time. We must face the fact
that this problem arose principally from the cupidity and carelessness
of our ancestors. It was the plain duty of the colonies to crush the
trade and the system in its infancy: they preferred to enrich themselves
on its profits. It was the plain duty of a Revolution based upon
"Liberty" to take steps toward the abolition of slavery: it preferred
promises to straightforward action. It was the plain duty of the
Constitutional Convention, in founding a new nation, to compromise with
a threatening social evil only in case its settlement would thereby be
postponed to a more favorable time: this was not the case in the slavery
and the slave-trade compromises; there never was a time in the history
of America when the system had a slighter economic, political, and moral
justification than in 1787; and yet with this real, existent, growing
evil before their eyes, a bargain largely of dollars and cents was
allowed to open the highway that led straight to the Civil War.
Moreover, it was due to no wisdom and foresight on the part of the
fathers that fortuitous circumstances made the result of that war what
it was, nor was it due to exceptional philanthropy on the part of their
descendants that that result included the abolition of slavery.

With the faith of the nation broken at the very outset, the system of
slavery untouched, and twenty years' respite given to the slave-trade to
feed and foster it, there began, with 1787, that system of bargaining,
truckling, and compromising with a moral, political, and economic
monstrosity, which makes the history of our dealing with slavery in the
first half of the nineteenth century so discreditable to a great people.
Each generation sought to shift its load upon the next, and the burden
rolled on, until a generation came which was both too weak and too
strong to bear it longer. One cannot, to be sure, demand of whole
nations exceptional moral foresight and heroism; but a certain hard
common-sense in facing the complicated phenomena of political life must
be expected in every progressive people. In some respects we as a nation
seem to lack this; we have the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not
destined to be harassed with great social questions, and that even if we
are, and fail to answer them, the fault is with the question and not
with us. Consequently we often congratulate ourselves more on getting
rid of a problem than on solving it. Such an attitude is dangerous; we
have and shall have, as other peoples have had, critical, momentous, and
pressing questions to answer. The riddle of the Sphinx may be postponed,
it may be evasively answered now; sometime it must be fully answered.

It behooves the United States, therefore, in the interest both of
scientific truth and of future social reform, carefully to study such
chapters of her history as that of the suppression of the slave-trade.
The most obvious question which this study suggests is: How far in a
State can a recognized moral wrong safely be compromised? And although
this chapter of history can give us no definite answer suited to the
ever-varying aspects of political life, yet it would seem to warn any
nation from allowing, through carelessness and moral cowardice, any
social evil to grow. No persons would have seen the Civil War with more
surprise and horror than the Revolutionists of 1776; yet from the small
and apparently dying institution of their day arose the walled and
castled Slave-Power. From this we may conclude that it behooves nations
as well as men to do things at the very moment when they ought to be
done.

                    *       *       *       *       *



APPENDIX A.

A CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF COLONIAL AND STATE LEGISLATION RESTRICTING
THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE. 1641-1787.


~1641. Massachusetts: Limitations on Slavery.~

"Liberties of Forreiners & Strangers": 91. "There shall never be any
bond slaverie villinage or Captivitie amongst vs, unles it be lawfull
Captives taken in iust warres, & such strangers as willingly selle
themselves or are sold to us. And those shall have all the liberties &
Christian usages w^{ch} y^e law of god established in Jsraell concerning
such p/^{sons} doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude
who shall be Judged there to by Authoritie."

"Capitall Laws": 10. "If any man stealeth aman or mankinde, he shall
surely be put to death" (marginal reference, Exodus xxi. 16). Re-enacted
in the codes of 1649, 1660, and 1672. Whitmore, _Reprint of Colonial
Laws of 1660_, etc. (1889), pp. 52, 54, 71-117.


~1642, April 3. New Netherland: Ten per cent Duty.~

"Ordinance of the Director and Council of New Netherland, imposing
certain Import and Export Duties." O'Callaghan, _Laws of New Netherland_
(1868), p. 31.


~1642, Dec. 1. Connecticut: Man-Stealing made a Capital Offence.~

"Capitall Lawes," No. 10. Re-enacted in Ludlow's code, 1650. _Colonial
Records_, I. 77.


~1646, Nov. 4. Massachusetts: Declaration against Man-Stealing.~

Testimony of the General Court. For text, see above, page 37. _Colonial
Records_, II. 168; III. 84.


~1652, April 4. New Netherland: Duty of 15 Guilders.~

"Conditions and Regulations" of Trade to Africa. O'Callaghan, _Laws of
New Netherland_, pp. 81, 127.


~1652, May 18-20. Rhode Island: Perpetual Slavery Prohibited.~

For text, see above, page 40. _Colonial Records_, I. 243.


~1655, Aug. 6. New Netherland: Ten per cent Export Duty.~

"Ordinance of the Director General and Council of New Netherland,
imposing a Duty on exported Negroes." O'Callaghan, _Laws of New
Netherland_, p. 191.


~1664, March 12. Duke of York's Patent: Slavery Regulated.~

"Lawes establisht by the Authority of his Majesties Letters patents,
granted to his Royall Highnes James Duke of Yorke and Albany; Bearing
Date the 12th Day of March in the Sixteenth year of the Raigne of our
Soveraigne Lord Kinge Charles the Second." First published at Long
Island in 1664.

"Bond slavery": "No Christian shall be kept in Bond-slavery villenage or
Captivity, Except Such who shall be Judged thereunto by Authority, or
such as willingly have sould, or shall sell themselves," etc.
Apprenticeship allowed. _Charter to William Penn, and Laws of the
Province of Pennsylvania_ (1879), pp. 3, 12.


~1672, October. Connecticut: Law against Man-Stealing.~

"The General Laws and Liberties of Conecticut

"Capital Laws": 10. "If any Man stealeth a Man or Man kinde, and selleth
him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall be put to death. Exod. 21.
16." _Laws of Connecticut_, 1672 (repr. 1865), p. 9.


~1676, March 3. West New Jersey: Slavery Prohibited (?).~

"The Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors, Freeholders and
Inhabitants of the Province of West New-Jersey, in America."

Chap. XXIII. "That in all publick Courts of Justice for Tryals of
Causes, Civil or Criminal, any Person or Persons, Inhabitants of the
said Province, may freely come into, and attend the said Courts, ...
that all and every Person and Persons Inhabiting the said Province,
shall, as far as in us lies, be free from Oppression and Slavery."
Leaming and Spicer, _Grants, Concessions_, etc., pp. 382, 398.


~1688, Feb. 18. Pennsylvania: First Protest of Friends against
Slave-Trade.~

"At Monthly Meeting of Germantown Friends." For text, see above, pages
28-29. _Fac-simile Copy_ (1880).


~1695, May. Maryland: 10s. Duty Act.~

"An Act for the laying an Imposition upon Negroes, Slaves, and White
Persons imported into this Province." Re-enacted in 1696, and included
in Acts of 1699 and 1704. Bacon, _Laws_, 1695, ch. ix.; 1696, ch. vii.;
1699, ch. xxiii.; 1704, ch. ix.


~1696. Pennsylvania: Protest of Friends.~

"That Friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more
negroes." Bettle, _Notices of Negro Slavery_, in _Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._
(1864), I. 383.


~1698, Oct. 8. South Carolina: White Servants Encouraged.~

"An Act for the Encouragement of the Importation of White Servants."

"Whereas, the great number of negroes which of late have been imported
into this Collony may endanger the safety thereof if speedy care be not
taken and encouragement given for the importation of white servants."

§ 1. £13 are to be given to any ship master for every male white servant
(Irish excepted), between sixteen and forty years, whom he shall bring
into Ashley river; and £12 for boys between twelve and sixteen years.
Every servant must have at least four years to serve, and every boy
seven years.

§ 3. Planters are to take servants in proportion of one to every six
male Negroes above sixteen years.

§ 5. Servants are to be distributed by lot.

§ 8. This act to continue three years. Cooper, _Statutes_, II. 153.


~1699, April. Virginia: 20s. Duty Act.~

"An act for laying an imposition upon servants and slaves imported into
this country, towards building the Capitoll." For three years; continued
in August, 1701, and April, 1704. Hening, _Statutes_, III. 193, 212,
225.


~1703, May 6. South Carolina: Duty Act.~

"An Act for the laying an Imposition on Furrs, Skinns, Liquors and other
Goods and Merchandize, Imported into and Exported out of this part of
this Province, for the raising of a Fund of Money towards defraying the
publick charges and expenses of this Province, and paying the debts due
for the Expedition against St. Augustine." 10_s._ on Africans and 20_s._
on others. Cooper, _Statutes_, II. 201.


~1704, October. Maryland: 20s. Duty Act.~

"An Act imposing Three Pence per Gallon on Rum and Wine, Brandy and
Spirits; and Twenty Shillings per Poll for Negroes; for raising a Supply
to defray the Public Charge of this Province; and Twenty Shillings per
Poll on Irish Servants, to prevent the importing too great a Number of
Irish Papists into this Province." Revived in 1708 and 1712. Bacon,
_Laws_, 1704, ch. xxxiii.; 1708, ch. xvi.; 1712, ch. xxii.


~1705, Jan. 12. Pennsylvania: 10s. Duty Act. ~

"An Act for Raising a Supply of Two pence half penny per Pound & ten
shillings per Head. Also for Granting an Impost & laying on Sundry
Liquors & negroes Imported into this Province for the Support of
Governmt., & defraying the necessary Publick Charges in the
Administration thereof." _Colonial Records_ (1852), II. 232, No. 50.


~1705, October. Virginia: 6d. Tax on Imported Slaves.~

"An act for raising a publick revenue for the better support of the
Government," etc. Similar tax by Act of October, 1710. Hening,
_Statutes_, III. 344, 490.


~1705, October. Virginia: 20s. Duty Act.~

"An act for laying an Imposition upon Liquors and Slaves." For two
years; re-enacted in October, 1710, for three years, and in October,
1712. _Ibid._, III. 229, 482; IV. 30.


~1705, Dec. 5. Massachusetts: £4 Duty Act.~

"An act for the Better Preventing of a Spurious and Mixt Issue," etc.

§ 6. On and after May 1, 1706, every master importing Negroes shall
enter his number, name, and sex in the impost office, and insert them in
the bill of lading; he shall pay to the commissioner and receiver of the
impost £4 per head for every such Negro. Both master and ship are to be
security for the payment of the same.

§ 7. If the master neglect to enter the slaves, he shall forfeit £8 for
each Negro, one-half to go to the informer and one-half to the
government.

§ 8. If any Negro imported shall, within twelve months, be exported and
sold in any other plantation, and a receipt from the collector there be
shown, a drawback of the whole duty will be allowed. Like drawback will
be allowed a purchaser, if any Negro sold die within six weeks after
importation. _Mass. Province Laws, 1705-6_, ch. 10.


~1708, February. Rhode Island: £3 Duty Act.~

No title or text found. Slightly amended by Act of April, 1708;
strengthened by Acts of February, 1712, and July 5, 1715; proceeds
disposed of by Acts of July, 1715, October, 1717, and June, 1729.
_Colonial Records_, IV. 34, 131-5, 138, 143, 191-3, 225, 423-4.


~1709, Sept. 24. New York: £3 Duty Act.~

"An Act for Laying a Duty on the Tonnage of Vessels and Slaves." A duty
of £3 was laid on slaves not imported directly from their native
country. Continued by Act of Oct. 30, 1710. _Acts of Assembly,
1691-1718_, pp. 97, 125, 134; Laws of New York, 1691-1773, p. 83.


~1710, Dec. 28. Pennsylvania: 40s. Duty Act.~

"An impost Act, laying a duty on Negroes, wine, rum and other spirits,
cyder and vessels." Repealed by order in Council Feb. 20, 1713. Carey
and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 82; Bettle, _Notices of Negro Slavery_, in _Penn.
Hist. Soc. Mem._ (1864), I. 415.


~1710. Virginia: £5 Duty Act.~

"Intended to discourage the importation" of slaves. Title and text not
found. Disallowed (?). _Governor Spotswood to the Lords of Trade_, in
_Va. Hist. Soc. Coll._, New Series, I. 52.


~1711, July-Aug. New York: Act of 1709 Strengthened.~

"An Act for the more effectual putting in Execution an Act of General
Assembly, Intituled, An Act for Laying a Duty on the Tonnage of Vessels
and Slaves." _Acts of Assembly, 1691-1718_, p. 134.


~1711, December. New York: Bill to Increase Duty.~

Bill for laying a further duty on slaves. Passed Assembly; lost in
Council. _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, V. 293.


~1711. Pennsylvania: Testimony of Quakers.~

" ... the Yearly Meeting of Philadelphia, on a representation from the
Quarterly Meeting of Chester, that the buying and encouraging the
importation of negroes was still practised by some of the members of the
society, again repeated and enforced the observance of the advice issued
in 1696, and further directed all merchants and factors to write to
their correspondents and discourage their sending any more negroes."
Bettle, _Notices of Negro Slavery_, in _Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._ (1864),
I. 386.


~1712, June 7. Pennsylvania: Prohibitive (?) Duty Act.~

"A supplementary Act to an act, entituled, An impost act, laying a duty
on Negroes, rum," etc. Disallowed by Great Britain, 1713. Carey and
Bioren, _Laws_, I. 87, 88. Cf. _Colonial Records_ (1852), II. 553.


~1712, June 7. Pennsylvania: Prohibitive Duty Act.~

"An act to prevent the Importation of Negroes and Indians into this
Province."

"Whereas Divers Plots and Insurrections have frequently happened, not
only in the Islands, but on the Main Land of _America_, by Negroes,
which have been carried on so far that several of the Inhabitants have
been thereby barbarously Murthered, an instance whereof we have lately
had in our neighboring Colony of _New York_. And whereas the
Importation of Indian Slaves hath given our Neighboring _Indians_ in
this Province some umbrage of Suspicion and Dis-satisfaction. For
Prevention of all which for the future,

"_Be it Enacted_ ..., That from and after the Publication of this Act,
upon the Importation of any Negro or Indian, by Land or Water, into this
Province, there shall be paid by the Importer, Owner or Possessor
thereof, the sum of _Twenty Pounds per head_, for every Negro or Indian
so imported or brought in (except Negroes directly brought in from the
_West India Islands_ before the first Day of the Month called _August_
next) unto the proper Officer herein after named, or that shall be
appointed according to the Directions of this Act to receive the same,"
etc. Disallowed by Great Britain, 1713. _Laws of Pennsylvania,
collected_, etc. (ed. 1714), p. 165; _Colonial Records_ (1852), II. 553;
Burge, _Commentaries_, I. 737, note; _Penn. Archives_, I. 162.


~1713, March 11. New Jersey: £10 Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a Duty on Negro, Indian and Mulatto Slaves, imported
and brought into this Province."

"_Be it Enacted_ ..., That every Person or Persons that shall hereafter
Import or bring in, or cause to be imported or brought into this
Province, any Negro Indian or Mulatto Slave or Slaves, every such Person
or Persons so importing or bringing in, or causing to be imported or
brought in, such Slave or Slaves, shall enter with one of the Collectors
of her Majestie's Customs of this Province, every such Slave or Slaves,
within Twenty Four Hours after such Slave or Slaves is so Imported, and
pay the Sum of _Ten Pounds_ Money as appointed by her Majesty's
Proclamation, for each Slave so imported, or give sufficient Security
that the said Sum of _Ten Pounds_, Money aforesaid, shall be well and
truly paid within three Months after such Slave or Slaves are so
imported, to the Collector or his Deputy of the District into which
such Slave or Slaves shall be imported, for the use of her Majesty, her
Heirs and Successors, toward the Support of the Government of this
Province." For seven years; violations incur forfeiture and sale of
slaves at auction; slaves brought from elsewhere than Africa to pay £10,
etc. _Laws and Acts of New Jersey, 1703-1717_ (ed. 1717), p. 43; _N.J.
Archives_, 1st Series, XIII. 516, 517, 520, 522, 523, 527, 532, 541.


~1713, March 26. Great Britain and Spain: The Assiento.~

"The Assiento, or Contract for allowing to the Subjects of Great Britain
the Liberty of importing Negroes into the Spanish America. Signed by the
Catholick King at Madrid, the 26th Day of March, 1713."

Art. I. "First then to procure, by this means, a mutual and reciprocal
advantage to the sovereigns and subjects of both crowns, her British
majesty does offer and undertake for the persons, whom she shall name
and appoint, That they shall oblige and charge themselves with the
bringing into the West-Indies of America, belonging to his catholick
majesty, in the space of the said 30 years, to commence on the 1st day
of May, 1713, and determine on the like day, which will be in the year
1743, _viz._ 144000 negroes, _Piezas de India_, of both sexes, and of
all ages, at the rate of 4800 negroes, _Piezas de India_, in each of the
said 30 years, with this condition, That the persons who shall go to the
West-Indies to take care of the concerns of the assiento, shall avoid
giving any offence, for in such case they shall be prosecuted and
punished in the same manner, as they would have been in Spain, if the
like misdemeanors had been committed there."

Art. II. Assientists to pay a duty of 33 pieces of eight (_Escudos_) for
each Negro, which should include all duties.

Art. III. Assientists to advance to his Catholic Majesty 200,000 pieces
of eight, which should be returned at the end of the first twenty years,
etc. John Almon, _Treaties of Peace, Alliance, and Commerce, between
Great-Britain and other Powers_ (London, 1772), I. 83-107.


~1713, July 13. Great Britain and Spain: Treaty of Utrecht.~

"Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the most serene and most potent
princess Anne, by the grace of God, Queen of Great Britain, France, and
Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. and the most serene and most potent
Prince Philip V the Catholick King of Spain, concluded at Utrecht, the
2/13 Day of July, 1713."

Art. XII. "The Catholick King doth furthermore hereby give and grant to
her Britannick majesty, and to the company of her subjects appointed for
that purpose, as well the subjects of Spain, as all others, being
excluded, the contract for introducing negroes into several parts of the
dominions of his Catholick Majesty in America, commonly called _el Pacto
de el Assiento de Negros_, for the space of thirty years successively,
beginning from the first day of the month of May, in the year 1713, with
the same conditions on which the French enjoyed it, or at any time might
or ought to enjoy the same, together with a tract or tracts of Land to
be allotted by the said Catholick King, and to be granted to the company
aforesaid, commonly called _la Compania de el Assiento_, in some
convenient place on the river of Plata, (no duties or revenues being
payable by the said company on that account, during the time of the
abovementioned contract, and no longer) and this settlement of the said
society, or those tracts of land, shall be proper and sufficient for
planting, and sowing, and for feeding cattle for the subsistence of
those who are in the service of the said company, and of their negroes;
and that the said negroes may be there kept in safety till they are
sold; and moreover, that the ships belonging to the said company may
come close to land, and be secure from any danger. But it shall always
be lawful for the Catholick King, to appoint an officer in the said
place or settlement, who may take care that nothing be done or practised
contrary to his royal interests. And all who manage the affairs of the
said company there, or belong to it, shall be subject to the inspection
of the aforesaid officer, as to all matters relating to the tracts of
land abovementioned. But if any doubts, difficulties, or controversies,
should arise between the said officer and the managers for the said
company, they shall be referred to the determination of the governor of
Buenos Ayres. The Catholick King has been likewise pleased to grant to
the said company, several other extraordinary advantages, which are more
fully and amply explained in the contract of the Assiento, which was
made and concluded at Madrid, the 26th day of the month of March, of
this present year 1713. Which contract, or _Assiento de Negros_, and all
the clauses, conditions, privileges and immunities contained therein,
and which are not contrary to this article, are and shall be deemed, and
taken to be, part of this treaty, in the same manner as if they had been
here inserted word for word." John Almon, _Treaties of Peace, Alliance,
and Commerce, between Great-Britain and other Powers_, I. 168-80.


~1714, Feb. 18. South Carolina: Duty on American Slaves.~

"An Act for laying an additional duty on all Negro Slaves imported into
this Province from any part of America." Title quoted in Act of 1719,
§30, _q.v._


~1714, Dec. 18. South Carolina: Prohibitive Duty.~

"An additional Act to an Act entitled 'An Act for the better Ordering
and Governing Negroes and all other Slaves.'"

§9 "And _whereas_, the number of negroes do extremely increase in this
Province, and through the afflicting providence of God, the white
persons do not proportionally multiply, by reason whereof, the safety
of the said Province is greatly endangered; for the prevention of which
for the future,

"_Be it further enacted_ by the authority aforesaid, That all negro
slaves from twelve years old and upwards, imported into this part of
this Province from any part of Africa, shall pay such additional duties
as is hereafter named, that is to say:--that every merchant or other
person whatsoever, who shall, six months after the ratification of this
Act, import any negro slaves as aforesaid, shall, for every such slave,
pay unto the public receiver for the time being, (within thirty days
after such importation,) the sum of two pounds current money of this
Province." Cooper, _Statutes_, VII. 365.


~1715, Feb. 18. South Carolina: Duty on American Negroes.~

"_An additional Act_ to an act entitled _an act for raising the sum of
£2000, of and from the estates real and personal of the inhabitants of
this Province, ratified in open Assembly the 18th day of December,
1714_; and for laying an additional duty on all Negroe slaves imported
into this Province from any part of America." Title only given. Grimké,
_Public Laws_, p. xvi, No. 362.


~1715, May 28. Pennsylvania: £5 Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a Duty on _Negroes_ imported into this province."
Disallowed by Great Britain, 1719. _Acts and Laws of Pennsylvania,
1715_, p. 270; _Colonial Records_ (1852), III. 75-6; Chalmers,
_Opinions_, II. 118.


~1715, June 3. Maryland: 20s. Duty Act.~

"An Act laying an Imposition on Negroes ...; and also on Irish Servants,
to prevent the importing too great a Number of Irish Papists into this
Province." Supplemented April 23, 1735, and July 25, 1754. _Compleat
Collection of the Laws of Maryland_ (ed. 1727), p. 157; Bacon, _Laws_,
1715, ch. xxxvi. §8; 1735, ch. vi. §§1-3; _Acts of Assembly, 1754_, p.
10.


~1716, June 30. South Carolina: £3 Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying an Imposition on Liquors, Goods and Merchandizes,
Imported into and Exported out of this Province, for the raising of a
Fund of Money towards the defraying the publick charges and expences of
the Government." A duty of £3 was laid on African slaves, and £30 on
American slaves. Cooper, _Statutes_, II. 649.


~1716. New York: 5 oz. and 10 oz. plate Duty Act.~

"An Act to Oblige all Vessels Trading into this Colony (except such as
are therein excepted) to pay a certain Duty; and for the further
Explanation and rendring more Effectual certain Clauses in an Act of
General Assembly of this Colony, Intituled, An Act by which a Duty is
laid on Negroes, and other Slaves, imported into this Colony." The act
referred to is not to be found. _Acts of Assembly, 1691-1718_, p. 224.


~1717, June 8. Maryland: Additional 20s. Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying an Additional Duty of Twenty Shillings Current Money
per Poll on all Irish Servants, ... also, the Additional Duty of Twenty
Shillings Current Money per Poll on all Negroes, for raising a Fund for
the Use of Publick Schools," etc. Continued by Act of 1728. _Compleat
Collection of the Laws of Maryland_ (ed. 1727), p. 191; Bacon, _Laws_,
1728, ch. viii.


~1717, Dec. 11. South Carolina: Prohibitive Duty.~

"A further additional Act to an Act entitled An Act for the better
ordering and governing of Negroes and all other Slaves; and to an
additional Act to an Act entitled An Act for the better ordering and
governing of Negroes and all other Slaves."

§ 3. "And _whereas_, the great importation of negroes to this Province,
in proportion to the white inhabitants of the same, whereby the future
safety of this Province will be greatly endangered; for the prevention
whereof,

"_Be it enacted_ by the authority aforesaid, That all negro slaves of
any age or condition whatsoever, imported or otherwise brought into this
Province, from any part of the world, shall pay such additional duties
as is hereafter named, that is to say:--that every merchant or other
person whatsoever, who shall, eighteen months after the ratification of
this Act, import any negro slave as aforesaid, shall, for every such
slave, pay unto the public receiver for the time being, at the time of
each importation, over and above all the duties already charged on
negroes, by any law in force in this Province, the additional sum of
forty pounds current money of this Province," etc.

§ 4. This section on duties to be in force for four years after
ratification, and thence to the end of the next session of the General
Assembly. Cooper, _Statutes_, VII. 368.


~1718, Feb. 22. Pennsylvania: Duty Act.~

"An Act for continuing a duty on Negroes brought into this province."
Carey and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 118.


~1719, March 20. South Carolina: £10 Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying an Imposition on Negroes, Liquors, and other Goods
and Merchandizes, imported, and exported out of this Province, for the
raising of a Fund of Money towards the defraying the Publick Charges and
Expences of this Government; as also to Repeal several Duty Acts, and
Clauses and Paragraphs of Acts, as is herein mentioned." This repeals
former duty acts (e.g. that of 1714), and lays a duty of £10 on African
slaves, and £30 on American slaves. Cooper, _Statutes_, III. 56.


~1721, Sept. 21. South Carolina: £10 Duty Act.~

"An Act for granting to His Majesty a Duty and Imposition on Negroes,
Liquors, and other Goods and Merchandize, imported into and exported out
of this Province." This was a continuation of the Act of 1719. _Ibid._,
III. 159.


~1722, Feb. 23. South Carolina: £10 Duty Act.~

"An Act for Granting to His Majesty a Duty and Imposition on Negroes,
Liquors, and other Goods and Merchandizes, for the use of the Publick
of this Province."

§ 1. " ... on all negro slaves imported from Africa directly, or any
other place whatsoever, Spanish negroes excepted, if above ten years of
age, ten pounds; on all negroes under ten years of age, (sucking
children excepted) five pounds," etc.

§ 3. "And whereas, it has proved to the detriment of some of the
inhabitants of this Province, who have purchased negroes imported here
from the Colonies of America, that they were either transported thence
by the Courts of justice, or sent off by private persons for their ill
behaviour and misdemeanours, to prevent which for the future,

"_Be it enacted_ by the authority aforesaid, That all negroes imported
in this Province from any part of America, after the ratification of
this Act, above ten years of age, shall pay unto the Publick Receiver as
a duty, the sum of fifty pounds, and all such negroes under the age of
ten years, (sucking children excepted) the sum of five pounds of like
current money, unless the owner or agent shall produce a testimonial
under the hand and seal of any Notary Publick of the Colonies or
plantations from whence such negroes came last, before whom it was
proved upon oath, that the same are new negroes, and have not been six
months on shoar in any part of America," etc.

§ 4. "And whereas, the importation of Spanish Indians, mustees, negroes,
and mulattoes, may be of dangerous consequence by inticing the slaves
belonging to the inhabitants of this Province to desert with them to the
Spanish settlements near us,

"_Be it therefore enacted_ That all such Spanish negroes, Indians,
mustees, or mulattoes, so imported into this Province, shall pay unto
the Publick Receiver, for the use of this Province, a duty of one
hundred and fifty pounds, current money of this Province."

§ 19. Rebate of three-fourths of the duty allowed in case of
re-exportation in six months.

§ 31. Act of 1721 repealed.

§ 36. This act to continue in force for three years, and thence to the
end of the next session of the General Assembly, and no longer. Cooper,
_Statutes_, III. 193.


~1722, May 12. Pennsylvania: Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a duty on Negroes imported into this province." Carey
and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 165.


~1723, May. Virginia: Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a Duty on Liquors and Slaves." Title only; repealed
by proclamation Oct. 27, 1724. Hening, _Statutes_, IV. 118.


~1723, June 18. Rhode Island: Back Duties Collected.~

Resolve appointing the attorney-general to collect back duties on
Negroes. _Colonial Records_, IV. 330.


~1726, March 5. Pennsylvania: £10 Duty Act.~

"An Act for the better regulating of Negroes in this province." Carey
and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 214; Bettle, _Notices of Negro Slavery_, in
_Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._ (1864), I. 388.


~1726, March 5. Pennsylvania: Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a duty on Negroes imported into this province." Carey
and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 213.


~1727, February. Virginia: Prohibitive Duty Act (?).~

"An Act for laying a Duty on Slaves imported; and for appointing a
Treasurer." Title only found; the duty was probably prohibitive; it was
enacted with a suspending clause, and was not assented to by the king.
Hening, _Statutes_, IV. 182.


~1728, Aug. 31. New York: £2 and £4 Duty Act.~

"An Act to repeal some Parts and to continue and enforce other Parts of
the Act therein mentioned, and for granting several Duties to His
Majesty, for supporting His Government in the Colony of New York" from
Sept. 1, 1728, to Sept. 1, 1733. Same duty continued by Act of 1732.
_Laws of New York, 1691-1773_, pp. 148, 171; _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New
York_, VI. 32, 33, 34, 37, 38.


~1728, Sept. 14. Massachusetts: Act of 1705 Strengthened.~

"An Act more effectually to secure the Duty on the Importation of
Negroes." For seven years; substantially the same law re-enacted Jan.
26, 1738, for ten years. _Mass. Province Laws, 1728-9_, ch. 16;
_1738-9_, ch. 27.


~1729, May 10. Pennsylvania: 40s. Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a Duty on Negroes imported into this Province." _Laws
of Pennsylvania_ (ed. 1742), p. 354, ch. 287.


~1732, May. Rhode Island: Repeal of Act of 1712.~

"Whereas, there was an act made and passed by the General Assembly, at
their session, held at Newport, the 27th day of February, 1711 [O.S.,
N.S. = 1712], entitled 'An Act for laying a duty on negro slaves that
shall be imported into this colony,' and this Assembly being directed by
His Majesty's instructions to repeal the same;--

"Therefore, be it enacted by the General Assembly ... that the said act
... be, and it is hereby repealed, made null and void, and of none
effect for the future." If this is the act mentioned under Act of 1708,
the title is wrongly cited; if not, the act is lost. _Colonial Records_,
IV. 471.


~1732, May. Virginia: Five per cent Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a Duty upon Slaves, to be paid by the Buyers." For
four years; continued and slightly amended by Acts of 1734, 1736, 1738,
1742, and 1745; revived February, 1752, and continued by Acts of
November, 1753, February, 1759, November, 1766, and 1769; revived (or
continued?) by Act of February, 1772, until 1778. Hening, _Statutes_,
IV. 317, 394, 469; V. 28, 160, 318; VI. 217, 353; VII. 281; VIII. 190,
336, 530.


~1734, November. New York: Duty Act.~

"An act to lay a duty on Negroes & a tax on the Slaves therein mentioned
during the time and for the uses within mentioned." The tax was 1_s._
yearly per slave. _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, VI. 38.


~1734, Nov. 28. New York: £2 and £4 (?) Duty Act.~

"An Act to lay a Duty on the Goods, and a Tax on the Slaves therein
mentioned, during the Time, and for the Uses mentioned in the same."
Possibly there were two acts this year. _Laws of New York, 1691-1773_,
p. 186; _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New York_, VI. 27.


~1735. Georgia: Prohibitive Act.~

An "act for rendering the colony of Georgia more defensible by
prohibiting the importation and use of black slaves or negroes into the
same." W.B. Stevens, _History of Georgia_, I. 311; [B. Martyn], _Account
of the Progress of Georgia_ (1741), pp. 9-10; Prince Hoare, _Memoirs of
Granville Sharp_ (London, 1820), p. 157.


~1740, April 5. South Carolina: £100 Prohibitive Duty Act.~

"An Act for the better strengthening of this Province, by granting to
His Majesty certain taxes and impositions on the purchasers of Negroes
imported," etc. The duty on slaves from America was £150. Continued to
1744. Cooper, _Statutes_, III. 556. Cf. _Abstract Evidence on
Slave-Trade before Committee of House of Commons, 1790-91_ (London,
1791), p. 150.


~1740, May. Virginia: Additional Five per cent Duty Act.~

"An Act, for laying an additional Duty upon Slaves, to be paid by the
Buyer, for encouraging persons to enlist in his Majesty's service: And
for preventing desertion." To continue until July 1, 1744. Hening,
_Statutes_, V. 92.


~1751, June 14. South Carolina: White Servants Encouraged.~

"An Act for the better strengthening of this Province, by granting to
His Majesty certain Taxes and Impositions on the purchasers of Negroes
and other slaves imported, and for appropriating the same to the uses
therein mentioned, and for granting to His Majesty a duty on Liquors and
other Goods and Merchandize, for the uses therein mentioned, and for
exempting the purchasers of Negroes and other slaves imported from
payment of the Tax, and the Liquors and other Goods and Merchandize from
the duties imposed by any former Act or Acts of the General Assembly of
this Province."

"Whereas, the best way to prevent the mischiefs that may be attended by
the great importation of negroes into this Province, will be to
establish a method by which such importation should be made a necessary
means of introducing a proportionable number of white inhabitants into
the same; therefore for the effectual raising and appropriating a fund
sufficient for the better settling of this Province with white
inhabitants, we, his Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the
House of Assembly now met in General Assembly, do cheerfully give and
grant unto the King's most excellent Majesty, his heirs and successors,
the several taxes and impositions hereinafter mentioned, for the uses
and to be raised, appropriated, paid and applied as is hereinafter
directed and appointed, and not otherwise, and do humbly pray his most
sacred Majesty that it may be enacted,

§ 1. "_And be it enacted_, by his Excellency James Glen, Esquire,
Governor in chief and Captain General in and over the Province of South
Carolina, by and with the advice and consent of his Majesty's honorable
Council, and the House of Assembly of the said Province, and by the
authority of the same, That from and immediately after the passing of
this Act, there shall be imposed on and paid by all and every the
inhabitants of this Province, and other person and persons whosoever,
first purchasing any negro or other slave, hereafter to be imported, a
certain tax or sum of ten pounds current money for every such negro and
other slave of the height of four feet two inches and upwards; and for
every one under that height, and above three feet two inches, the sum of
five pounds like money; and for all under three feet two inches,
(sucking children excepted) two pounds and ten shillings like money,
which every such inhabitant of this Province, and other person and
persons whosoever shall so purchase or buy as aforesaid, which said sums
of ten pounds and five pounds and two pounds and ten shillings
respectively, shall be paid by such purchaser for every such slave, at
the time of his, her or their purchasing of the same, to the public
treasurer of this Province for the time being, for the uses hereinafter
mentioned, set down and appointed, under pain of forfeiting all and
every such negroes and slaves, for which the said taxes or impositions
shall not be paid, pursuant to the directions of this Act, to be sued
for, recovered and applied in the manner hereinafter directed."

§ 6. "_And be it further enacted_ by the authority aforesaid, That the
said tax hereby imposed on negroes and other slaves, paid or to be paid
by or on the behalf of the purchasers as aforesaid, by virtue of this
Act, shall be applied and appropriated as followeth, and to no other
use, or in any other manner whatever, (that is to say) that three-fifth
parts (the whole into five equal parts to be divided) of the net sum
arising by the said tax, for and during the term of five years from the
time of passing this Act, be applied and the same is hereby applied for
payment of the sum of six pounds proclamation money to every poor
foreign protestant whatever from Europe, or other poor protestant (his
Majesty's subject) who shall produce a certificate under the seal of any
corporation, or a certificate under the hands of the minister and
church-wardens of any parish, or the minister and elders of any church,
meeting or congregation in Great Britain or Ireland, of the good
character of such poor protestant, above the age of twelve and under the
age of fifty years, and for payment of the sum of three pounds like
money, to every such poor protestant under the age of twelve and above
the age of two years; who shall come into this Province within the first
three years of the said term of five years, and settle on any part of
the southern frontier lying between Pon Pon and Savannah rivers, or in
the central parts of this Province," etc. For the last two years the
bounty is £4 and £2.

§ 7. After the expiration of this term of five years, the sum is
appropriated to the protestants settling anywhere in the State, and the
bounty is £2 13_s._ 4_d._, and £1 6_s._ 8_d._

§ 8. One other fifth of the tax is appropriated to survey lands, and the
remaining fifth as a bounty for ship-building, and for encouraging the
settlement of ship-builders.

§ 14. Rebate of three-fourths of the tax allowed in case of
re-exportation of the slaves in six months.

§ 16. "_And be it further enacted_ by the authority aforesaid, That
every person or persons who after the passing this Act shall purchase
any slave or slaves which shall be brought or imported into this
Province, either by land or water, from any of his Majesty's plantations
or colonies in America, that have been in any such colony or plantation
for the space of six months; and if such slave or slaves have not been
so long in such colony or plantation, the importer shall be obliged to
make oath or produce a proper certificate thereof, or otherwise every
such importer shall pay a further tax or imposition of fifty pounds,
over and besides the tax hereby imposed for every such slave which he or
they shall purchase as aforesaid." Actual settlers bringing slaves are
excepted.

§ 41. This act to continue in force ten years from its passage, and
thence to the end of the next session of the General Assembly, and no
longer. Cooper, _Statutes_, III. 739.


~1753, Dec. 12. New York: 5 oz. and 10 oz. plate Duty Act.~

"An Act for granting to His Majesty the several Duties and Impositions,
on Goods, Wares and Merchandizes imported into this Colony, therein
mentioned." Annually continued until 1767, or perhaps until 1774. _Laws
of New York, 1752-62_, p. 21, ch. xxvii.; _Doc. rel. Col. Hist. New
York_, VII. 907; VIII. 452.


~1754, February. Virginia: Additional Five per cent Duty Act.~

"An Act for the encouragement and protection of the settlers upon the
waters of the Mississippi." For three years; continued in 1755 and 1763;
revived in 1772, and continued until 1778. Hening, _Statutes_, VI. 417,
468; VII. 639; VIII. 530.


~1754, July 25. Maryland: Additional 10s. Duty Act.~

"An Act for his Majesty's Service." Bacon, _Laws_, 1754, ch. ix.


~1755, May. Virginia: Additional Ten per cent Duty Act.~

"An act to explain an act, intituled, An act for raising the sum of
twenty thousand pounds, for the protection of his majesty's subjects,
against the insults and encroachments of the French; and for other
purposes therein mentioned."

§ 10. " ... from and after the passing of this act, there shall be
levied and paid to our sovereign lord the king, his heirs and
successors, for all slaves imported, or brought into this colony and
dominion for sale, either by land or water, from any part [port] or
place whatsoever, by the buyer, or purchaser, after the rate of ten per
centum, on the amount of each respective purchase, over and above the
several duties already laid on slaves, imported as aforesaid, by an act
or acts of Assembly, now subsisting, and also over and above the duty
laid by" the Act of 1754. Repealed by Act of May, 1760, § 11, " ...
inasmuch as the same prevents the importation of slaves, and thereby
lessens the fund arising from the duties upon slaves." Hening,
_Statutes_, VI. 461; VII. 363. Cf. _Dinwiddie Papers_, II. 86.


~1756, March 22. Maryland: Additional 20s. Duty Act.~

"An Act for granting a Supply of Forty Thousand Pounds, for his
Majesty's Service," etc. For five years. Bacon, _Laws_, 1756, ch. v.


~1757, April. Virginia: Additional Ten per cent Duty Act.~

"An Act for granting an aid to his majesty for the better protection of
this colony, and for other purposes therein mentioned."

§ 22. " ... from and after the ninth day of July, one thousand seven
hundred and fifty-eight, during the term of seven years, there shall be
paid for all slaves imported into this colony, for sale, either by land
or water, from any port or place whatsoever, by the buyer or purchaser
thereof, after the rate of ten per centum on the amount of each
respective purchase, over and above the several duties already laid upon
slaves imported, as aforesaid, by any act or acts of Assembly now
subsisting in this colony," etc. Repealed by Act of March, 1761, § 6, as
being "found very inconvenient." Hening, _Statutes_, VII. 69, 383.


~1759, November. Virginia: Twenty per cent Duty Act.~

"An Act to oblige the persons bringing slaves into this colony from
Maryland, Carolina, and the West-Indies, for their own use, to pay a
duty."

§ 1. " ... from and after the passing of this act, there shall be paid
... for all slaves imported or brought into this colony and dominion
from Maryland, North-Carolina, or any other place in America, by the
owner or importer thereof, after the rate of twenty per centum on the
amount of each respective purchase," etc. This act to continue until
April 20, 1767; continued in 1766 and 1769, until 1773; altered by Act
of 1772, _q.v. Ibid._, VII. 338; VIII. 191, 336.


~1760. South Carolina: Total Prohibition.~

Text not found; act disallowed by Great Britain. Cf. Burge,
_Commentaries_, I. 737, note; W.B. Stevens, _History of Georgia_, I.
286.


~1761, March 14. Pennsylvania: £10 Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a duty on Negroes and Mulattoe slaves, imported into
this province." Continued in 1768; repealed (or disallowed) in 1780.
Carey and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 371, 451; _Acts of Assembly_ (ed. 1782), p.
149; _Colonial Records_ (1852), VIII. 576.


~1761, April 22. Pennsylvania: Prohibitive Duty Act.~

"A Supplement to an act, entituled An Act for laying a duty on Negroes
and Mulattoe slaves, imported into this province." Continued in 1768.
Carey and Bioren, _Laws_, I. 371, 451; Bettle, _Notices of Negro
Slavery_, in _Penn. Hist. Soc. Mem._ (1864), I. 388-9.


~1763, Nov. 26. Maryland: Additional £2 Duty Act.~

"An Act for imposing an additional Duty of Two Pounds per Poll on all
Negroes Imported into this Province."

§ 1. All persons importing Negroes by land or water into this province,
shall at the time of entry pay to the naval officer the sum of two
pounds, current money, over and above the duties now payable by law, for
every Negro so imported or brought in, on forfeiture of £10 current
money for every Negro so brought in and not paid for. One half of the
penalty is to go to the informer, the other half to the use of the
county schools. The duty shall be collected, accounted for, and paid by
the naval officers, in the same manner as former duties on Negroes.

§ 2. But persons removing from any other of his Majesty's dominions in
order to settle and reside within this province, may import their slaves
for carrying on their proper occupations at the time of removal, duty
free.

§ 3. Importers of Negroes, exporting the same within two months of the
time of their importation, on application to the naval officer shall be
paid the aforesaid duty. Bacon, _Laws_, 1763, ch. xxviii.


~1763 (circa). New Jersey: Prohibitive Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a duty on Negroes and Mulatto Slaves Imported into
this Province." Disallowed (?) by Great Britain. _N.J. Archives_, IX.
345-6, 383, 447, 458.


~1764, Aug. 25. South Carolina: Additional £100 Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying an additional duty upon all Negroes hereafter to be
imported into this Province, for the time therein mentioned, to be paid
by the first purchasers of such Negroes." Cooper, _Statutes_, IV 187.


~1766, November. Virginia: Proposed Duty Act.~

"An act for laying an additional duty upon slaves imported into this
colony."

§ 1. " ... from and after the passing of this act there shall be levied
and paid ... for all slaves imported or brought into this colony for
sale, either by land or water from any port or place whatsoever, by the
buyer or purchaser, after the rate of ten per centum on the amount of
each respective purchase over and above the several duties already laid
upon slaves imported or brought into this colony as aforesaid," etc. To
be suspended until the king's consent is given, and then to continue
seven years. The same act was passed again in 1769. Hening, _Statutes_,
VIII. 237, 337.


~1766. Rhode Island: Restrictive Measure (?).~

Title and text not found. Cf. _Digest_ of 1798, under "Slave Trade;"
_Public Laws of Rhode Island_ (revision of 1822), p. 441.


~1768, Feb. 20. Pennsylvania: Re-enactment of Acts of 1761.~

Titles only found. Dallas, _Laws_, I. 490; _Colonial Records_ (1852),
IX. 472, 637, 641.


~1769, Nov. 16. New Jersey: £15 Duty Act.~

"An Act for laying a Duty on the Purchasers of Slaves imported into this
Colony."

"Whereas Duties on the Importation of Negroes in several of the
neighbouring Colonies hath, on Experience, been found beneficial in the
Introduction of sober, industrious Foreigners, to settle under His
Majesty's Allegiance, and the promoting a Spirit of Industry among the
Inhabitants in general: _In order therefore_ to promote the same good
Designs in this Government, and that such as choose to purchase Slaves
may contribute some equitable Proportion of the publick Burdens," etc.
A duty of "_Fifteen Pounds_, Proclamation Money, is laid." _Acts of
Assembly_ (Allinson, 1776), p. 315.


~1769 (circa). Connecticut: Importation Prohibited (?).~

Title and text not found. "Whereas, the increase of slaves is injurious
to the poor, and inconvenient, therefore," etc. Fowler, _Historical
Status of the Negro in Connecticut_, in _Local Law_, etc., p. 125.


~1770. Rhode Island: Bill to Prohibit Importation.~

Bill to prohibit importation of slaves fails. Arnold, _History of Rhode
Island_ (1859), II. 304, 321, 337.


~1771, April 12. Massachusetts: Bill to Prevent Importation.~

Bill passes both houses and fails of Governor Hutchinson's assent.
_House Journal_, pp. 211, 215, 219, 228, 234, 236, 240, 242-3.


~1771. Maryland: Additional £5 Duty Act.~

"An Act for imposing a further additional duty of five pounds current
money per poll on all negroes imported into this province." For seven
years. _Laws of Maryland since 1763_: 1771, ch. vii.; cf. 1773, sess.
Nov.-Dec., ch. xiv.


~1772, April 1. Virginia: Address to the King.~

" ... The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of
Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and
under its _present encouragement_, we have too much reason to fear _will
endanger the very existence_ of your majesty's American dominions....

"Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your
majesty to _remove all those restraints_ on your majesty's governors of
this colony, _which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check
so very pernicious a commerce_." _Journals of the House of Burgesses_,
p. 131; quoted in Tucker, _Dissertation on Slavery_ (repr. 1861), p. 43.


~1773, Feb. 26. Pennsylvania: Additional £10 Duty Act.~

"An Act for making perpetual the act ... [of 1761] ... and laying an
additional duty on the said slaves." Dallas, _Laws_, I. 671; _Acts of
Assembly_ (ed. 1782), p. 149.


~1774, March, June. Massachusetts: Bills to Prohibit Importation.~

Two bills designed to prohibit the importation of slaves fail of the
governor's assent. First bill: _General Court Records_, XXX. 248, 264;
_Mass. Archives, Domestic Relations, 1643-1774_, IX. 457. Second bill:
_General Court Records_, XXX. 308, 322.


~1774, June. Rhode Island: Importation Restricted.~

"An Act prohibiting the importation of Negroes into this Colony."

"Whereas, the inhabitants of America are generally engaged in the
preservation of their own rights and liberties, among which, that of
personal freedom must be considered as the greatest; as those who are
desirous of enjoying all the advantages of liberty themselves, should be
willing to extend personal liberty to others;--

"Therefore, be it enacted ... that for the future, no negro or mulatto
slave shall be brought into this colony; and in case any slave shall
hereafter be brought in, he or she shall be, and are hereby, rendered
immediately free, so far as respects personal freedom, and the enjoyment
of private property, in the same manner as the native Indians."

"Provided that the slaves of settlers and travellers be excepted.

"Provided, also, that nothing in this act shall extend, or be deemed to
extend, to any negro or mulatto slave brought from the coast of Africa,
into the West Indies, on board any vessel belonging to this colony, and
which negro or mulatto slave could not be disposed of in the West
Indies, but shall be brought into this colony.

"Provided, that the owner of such negro or mulatto slave give bond to
the general treasurer of the said colony, within ten days after such
arrival in the sum of £100, lawful money, for each and every such negro
or mulatto slave so brought in, that such negro or mulatto slave shall
be exported out of the colony, within one year from the date of such
bond; if such negro or mulatto be alive, and in a condition to be
removed."

"Provided, also, that nothing in this act shall extend, or be deemed to
extend, to any negro or mulatto slave that may be on board any vessel
belonging to this colony, now at sea, in her present voyage." Heavy
penalties are laid for bringing in Negroes in order to free them.
_Colonial Records_, VII. 251-3.

[1784, February: "It is voted and resolved, that the whole of the clause
contained in an act of this Assembly, passed at June session,
A.D. 1774, permitting slaves brought from the coast of Africa
into the West Indies, on board any vessel belonging to this (then
colony, now) state, and who could not be disposed of in the West Indies,
&c., be, and the same is, hereby repealed." _Colonial Records_, X. 8.]


~1774, October. Connecticut: Importation Prohibited.~

"An Act for prohibiting the Importation of Indian, Negro or Molatto
Slaves."

" ... no indian, negro or molatto Slave shall at any time hereafter be
brought or imported into this Colony, by sea or land, from any place or
places whatsoever, to be disposed of, left or sold within this Colony."
This was re-enacted in the revision of 1784, and slaves born after 1784
were ordered to be emancipated at the age of twenty-five. _Colonial
Records_, XIV. 329; _Acts and Laws of Connecticut_ (ed. 1784), pp.
233-4.


~1774. New Jersey: Proposed Prohibitive Duty.~

"A Bill for laying a Duty on Indian, Negroe and Molatto Slaves, imported
into this Colony." Passed the Assembly, and was rejected by the Council
as "plainly" intending "an intire Prohibition," etc. _N.J. Archives_,
1st Series, VI. 222.


~1775, March 27. Delaware: Bill to Prohibit Importation.~

Passed the Assembly and was vetoed by the governor. Force, _American
Archives_, 4th Series, II. 128-9.


~1775, Nov. 23. Virginia: On Lord Dunmore's Proclamation.~

Williamsburg Convention to the public: "Our Assemblies have repeatedly
passed acts, laying heavy duties upon imported Negroes, by which they
meant altogether to prevent the horrid traffick; but their humane
intentions have been as often frustrated by the cruelty and covetousness
of a set of _English_ merchants." ... The Americans would, if possible,
"not only prevent any more Negroes from losing their freedom, but
restore it to such as have already unhappily lost it." This is evidently
addressed in part to Negroes, to keep them from joining the British.
_Ibid._, III. 1387.


~1776, June 29. Virginia: Preamble to Frame of Government.~

Blame for the slave-trade thrown on the king. See above, page 21.
Hening, _Statutes_, IX. 112-3.


~1776, Aug.-Sept. Delaware: Constitution.~

"The Constitution or system of Government agreed to and resolved upon by
the Representatives in full Convention of the Delaware State," etc.

§ 26. "No person hereafter imported into this State from _Africa_ ought
to be held in slavery on any pretence whatever; and no Negro, Indian, or
Mulatto slave ought to be brought into this State, for sale, from any
part of the world." Force, _American Archives_, 5th Series, I. 1174-9.


~1777, July 2. Vermont: Slavery Condemned.~

The first Constitution declares slavery a violation of "natural,
inherent and unalienable rights." _Vermont State Papers, 1779-86_, p.
244.


~1777. Maryland: Negro Duty Maintained.~

"An Act concerning duties."

" ... no duties imposed by act of assembly on any article or thing
imported into or exported out of this state (except duties imposed on
the importation of negroes), shall be taken or received within two years
from the end of the present session of the general assembly." _Laws of
Maryland since 1763_: 1777, sess. Feb.-Apr., ch. xviii.


~1778, Sept. 7. Pennsylvania: Act to Collect Back Duties.~

"An Act for the recovery of the duties on Negroes and Mulattoe slaves,
which on the fourth day of July, one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-six, were due to this state," etc. Dallas, _Laws_, I. 782.


~1778, October. Virginia: Importation Prohibited.~

"An act for preventing the farther importation of Slaves.

§ 1. "For preventing the farther importation of slaves into this
commonwealth, _Be it enacted by the General Assembly_, That from and
after the passing of this act no slave or slaves shall hereafter be
imported into this commonwealth by sea or land, nor shall any slaves so
imported be sold or bought by any person whatsoever.

§ 2. "Every person hereafter importing slaves into this commonwealth
contrary to this act shall forfeit and pay the sum of one thousand
pounds for every slave so imported, and every person selling or buying
any such slaves shall in like manner forfeit and pay the sum of five
hundred pounds for every slave so sold or bought," etc.

§ 3. "_And be it farther enacted_, That every slave imported into this
commonwealth, contrary to the true intent and meaning of this act,
shall, upon such importation become free."

§ 4. Exceptions are _bona fide_ settlers with slaves not imported later
than Nov. 1, 1778, nor intended to be sold; and transient travellers.
Re-enacted in substance in the revision of October, 1785. For a
temporary exception to this act, as concerns citizens of Georgia and
South Carolina during the war, see Act of May, 1780. Hening, _Statutes_,
IX. 471; X. 307; XII. 182.


~1779, October. Rhode Island: Slave-Trade Restricted.~

"An Act prohibiting slaves being sold out of the state, against their
consent." Title only found. _Colonial Records_, VIII. 618; Arnold,
_History of Rhode Island_, II. 449.


~1779. Vermont: Importation Prohibited.~

"An Act for securing the general privileges of the people," etc. The act
abolished slavery. _Vermont State Papers, 1779-86_, p. 287.


~1780. Massachusetts: Slavery Abolished.~

Passage in the Constitution which was held by the courts to abolish
slavery: "Art. I. All men are born free and equal, and have certain,
natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned
the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties," etc.
_Constitution of Massachusetts_, Part I., Art. 1; prefixed to _Perpetual
Laws_ (1789).


~1780, March 1. Pennsylvania: Slavery Abolished.~

"An Act for the gradual abolition of slavery."

§ 5. All slaves to be registered before Nov. 1.

§ 10. None but slaves "registered as aforesaid, shall, at any time
hereafter, be deemed, adjudged, or holden, within the territories of
this commonwealth, as slaves or servants for life, but as free men and
free women; except the domestic slaves attending upon Delegates in
Congress from the other American States," and those of travellers not
remaining over six months, foreign ministers, etc., "provided such
domestic slaves be not aliened or sold to any inhabitant," etc.

§ 11. Fugitive slaves from other states may be taken back.

§ 14. Former duty acts, etc., repealed. Dallas, _Laws_, I. 838. Cf.
_Penn. Archives_, VII. 79; VIII. 720.


~1783, April. Confederation: Slave-Trade in Treaty of 1783.~

"To the earnest wish of Jay that British ships should have no right
under the convention to carry into the states any slaves from any part
of the world, it being the intention of the United States entirely to
prohibit their importation, Fox answered promptly: 'If that be their
policy, it never can be competent to us to dispute with them their own
regulations.'" Fox to Hartley, June 10, 1783, in Bancroft, _History of
the Constitution_, I. 61. Cf. Sparks, _Diplomatic Correspondence_, X.
154, June, 1783.


~1783. Maryland: Importation Prohibited.~

"An Act to prohibit the bringing slaves into this state."

" ... it shall not be lawful, after the passing this act, to import or
bring into this state, by land or water, any negro, mulatto, or other
slave, for sale, or to reside within this state; and any person brought
into this state as a slave contrary to this act, if a slave before,
shall thereupon immediately cease to be a slave, and shall be free;
provided that this act shall not prohibit any person, being a citizen of
some one of the United States, coming into this state, with a _bona
fide_ intention of settling therein, and who shall actually reside
within this state for one year at least, ... to import or bring in any
slave or slaves which before belonged to such person, and which slave or
slaves had been an inhabitant of some one of the United States, for the
space of three whole years next preceding such importation," etc. _Laws
of Maryland since 1763_: 1783, sess. April--June, ch. xxiii.


~1783, Aug. 13. South Carolina: £3 and £20 Duty Act.~

"An Act for levying and collecting certain duties and imposts therein
mentioned, in aid of the public revenue." Cooper, _Statutes_, IV. 576.


~1784, February. Rhode Island: Manumission.~

"An Act authorizing the manumission of negroes, mulattoes, and others,
and for the gradual abolition of slavery." Persons born after March,
1784, to be free. Bill framed pursuant to a petition of Quakers.
_Colonial Records_, X. 7-8; Arnold, _History of Rhode Island_, II. 503.


~1784, March 26. South Carolina: £3 and £5 Duty Act.~

"An Act for levying and collecting certain Duties," etc. Cooper,
_Statutes_, IV. 607.


~1785, April 12. New York: Partial Prohibition.~

"An Act granting a bounty on hemp to be raised within this State, and
imposing an additional duty on sundry articles of merchandise, and for
other purposes therein mentioned."

" ... _And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid_, That if
any negro or other person to be imported or brought into this State from
any of the United States or from any other place or country after the
first day of June next, shall be sold as a slave or slaves within this
State, the seller or his or her factor or agent, shall be deemed guilty
of a public offence, and shall for every such offence forfeit the sum of
one hundred pounds lawful money of New York, to be recovered by any
person," etc.

"_And be it further enacted_ ... That every such person imported or
brought into this State and sold contrary to the true intent and meaning
of this act shall be freed." _Laws of New York, 1785-88_ (ed. 1886), pp.
120-21.


~1785. Rhode Island: Restrictive Measure (?).~

Title and text not found. Cf. _Public Laws of Rhode Island_ (revision of
1822), p. 441.


~1786, March 2. New Jersey: Importation Prohibited.~

"An Act to prevent the importation of Slaves into the State of New
Jersey, and to authorize the Manumission of them under certain
restrictions, and to prevent the Abuse of Slaves."

"Whereas the Principles of Justice and Humanity require that the
barbarous Custom of bringing the unoffending African from his native
Country and Connections into a State of Slavery ought to be
discountenanced, and as soon as possible prevented; and sound Policy
also requires, in order to afford ample Support to such of the Community
as depend upon their Labour for their daily Subsistence, that the
Importation of Slaves into this State from any other State or Country
whatsoever, ought to be prohibited under certain Restrictions; and that
such as are under Servitude in the State ought to be protected by Law
from those Exercises of Wanton Cruelty too often practiced upon them;
and that every unnecessary Obstruction in the Way of freeing Slaves
should be removed; therefore,

§ 1. "_Be it Enacted by the Council and General Assembly of this State,
and it is hereby Enacted by the Authority of the same_, That from and
after the Publication of this Act, it shall not be lawful for any Person
or Persons whatsoever to bring into this State, either for Sale or for
Servitude, any Negro Slave brought from Africa since the Year Seventeen
Hundred and Seventy-six; and every Person offending by bringing into
this State any such Negro Slave shall, for each Slave, forfeit and Pay
the Sum of Fifty Pounds, to be sued for and recovered with Costs by the
Collector of the Township into which such Slave shall be brought, to be
applied when recovered to the Use of the State.

§ 2. "_And be it further Enacted by the Authority aforesaid_, That if
any Person shall either bring or procure to be brought into this State,
any Negro or Mulatto Slave, who shall not have been born in or brought
from Africa since the Year above mentioned, and either sell or buy, or
cause such Negro or Mulatto Slave to be sold or remain in this State,
for the Space of six Months, every such Person so bringing or procuring
to be brought or selling or purchasing such Slave, not born in or
brought from Africa since the Year aforesaid, shall for every such
Slave, forfeit and pay the Sum of Twenty Pounds, to be sued for and
recovered with Costs by the Collector of the Township into which such
Slave shall be brought or remain after the Time limited for that
Purpose, the Forfeiture to be applied to the Use of the State as
aforesaid.

§ 3. "_Provided always, and be it further Enacted by the Authority
aforesaid_, That Nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to
prevent any Person who shall remove into the State, to take a settled
Residence here, from bringing all his or her Slaves without incurring
the Penalties aforesaid, excepting such Slaves as shall have been
brought from Africa since the Year first above mentioned, or to prevent
any Foreigners or others having only a temporary Residence in this
State, for the Purpose of transacting any particular Business, or on
their Travels, from bringing and employing such Slaves as Servants,
during the Time of his or her Stay here, provided such Slaves shall not
be sold or disposed of in this State." _Acts of the Tenth General
Assembly_ (Tower Collection of Laws).


~1786, Oct. 30. Vermont: External Trade Prohibited.~

"An act to prevent the sale and transportation of Negroes and Molattoes
out of this State." £100 penalty. _Statutes of Vermont_ (ed. 1787), p.
105.


~1786. North Carolina: Prohibitive Duty.~

"An act to impose a duty on all slaves brought into this state by land
or water."

"Whereas the importation of slaves into this state is productive of evil
consequences, and highly impolitic," etc. A prohibitive duty is imposed.
The exact text was not found.

§ 6. Slaves introduced from States which have passed emancipation acts
are to be returned in three months; if not, a bond of £50 is to be
forfeited, and a fine of £100 imposed.

§ 8. Act to take effect next Feb. 1; repealed by Act of 1790, ch. 18.
Martin, _Iredell's Acts of Assembly_, I. 413, 492.


~1787, Feb. 3. Delaware: Exportation Prohibited.~

"An Act to prevent the exportation of slaves, and for other purposes."
_Laws of Delaware_ (ed. 1797), p. 884, ch. 145 b.


~1787, March 28. South Carolina: Total Prohibition.~

"An Act to regulate the recovery and payment of debts and for
prohibiting the importation of negroes for the time therein mentioned."
Title only given. Grimké, _Public Laws_, p. lxviii, No. 1485.


~1787, March 28. South Carolina: Importation Prohibited.~

"An Ordinance to impose a Penalty on any person who shall import into
this State any Negroes, contrary to the Instalment Act."

1. "_Be it ordained_, by the honorable the Senate and House of
Representatives, met in General Assembly, and by the authority of the
same, That any person importing or bringing into this State a negro
slave, contrary to the Act to regulate the recovery of debts and
prohibiting the importation of negroes, shall, besides the forfeiture of
such negro or slave, be liable to a penalty of one hundred pounds, to
the use of the State, for every such negro or slave so imported and
brought in, in addition to the forfeiture in and by the said Act
prescribed." Cooper, _Statutes_, VII. 430.


~1787, October. Rhode Island: Importation Prohibited.~

"An act to prevent the slave trade and to encourage the abolition of
slavery." This act prohibited and censured trade under penalty of £100
for each person and £1,000 for each vessel. Bartlett, _Index to the
Printed Acts and Resolves_, p. 333; _Narragansett Historical Register_,
II. 298-9.

                    *       *       *       *       *



APPENDIX B.

A CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF STATE, NATIONAL, AND INTERNATIONAL
LEGISLATION.

1788-1871.


    As the State statutes and Congressional reports and bills are
    difficult to find, the significant parts of such documents are
    printed in full. In the case of national statutes and treaties,
    the texts may easily be found through the references.


~1788, Feb. 22. New York: Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

"An Act concerning slaves."

"Whereas in consequence of the act directing a revision of the laws of
this State, it is expedient that the several existing laws relative to
slaves, should be revised, and comprized in one. Therefore, _Be it
enacted_," etc.

"And to prevent the further importation of slaves into this State, _Be
it further enacted by the authority aforesaid_, That if any person shall
sell as a slave within this State any negro, or other person, who has
been imported or brought into this State, after" June 1, 1785, "such
seller, or his or her factor or agent, making such sale, shall be deemed
guilty of a public offence, and shall for every such offence, forfeit
the sum of one hundred pounds.... _And further_, That every person so
imported ... shall be free." The purchase of slaves for removal to
another State is prohibited under penalty of £100. _Laws of New York,
1785-88_ (ed. 1886), pp. 675-6.


~1788, March 25. Massachusetts: Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

"An Act to prevent the Slave-Trade, and for granting Relief to the
Families of such unhappy Persons as may be kidnapped or decoyed away
from this Commonwealth."

"Whereas by the African trade for slaves, the lives and liberties of
many innocent persons have been from time to time sacrificed to the lust
of gain: And whereas some persons residing in this Commonwealth may be
so regardless of the rights of human kind, as to be concerned in that
unrighteous commerce:

§ 1. "Be it therefore enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives,
in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, That no
citizen of this Commonwealth, or other person residing within the same,
shall for himself, or any other person whatsoever, either as master,
factor, supercargo, owner or hirer, in whole or in part, of any vessel,
directly or indirectly, import or transport, or buy or sell, or receive
on board, his or their vessel, with intent to cause to be imported or
transported, any of the inhabitants of any State or Kingdom, in that
part of the world called _Africa_, as slaves, or as servants for term of
years." Any person convicted of doing this shall forfeit and pay the sum
of £50 for every person received on board, and the sum of £200 for every
vessel fitted out for the trade, "to be recovered by action of debt, in
any Court within this Commonwealth, proper to try the same; the one
moiety thereof to the use of this Commonwealth, and the other moiety to
the person who shall prosecute for and recover the same."

§ 2. All insurance on said vessels and cargo shall be null and void;
"and this act may be given in evidence under the general issue, in any
suit or action commenced for the recovery of insurance so made," etc.

§ 4. "_Provided_ ... That this act do not extend to vessels which have
already sailed, their owners, factors, or commanders, for and during
their present voyage, or to any insurance that shall have been made,
previous to the passing of the same." _Perpetual Laws of Massachusetts,
1780-89_ (ed. 1789), p. 235.


~1788, March 29. Pennsylvania: Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

"An Act to explain and amend an act, entituled, 'An Act for the gradual
abolition of slavery.'"

§ 2. Slaves brought in by persons intending to settle shall be free.

§ 3. " ... no negro or mulatto slave, or servant for term of years,"
except servants of congressmen, consuls, etc., "shall be removed out of
this state, with the design and intention that the place of abode or
residence of such slave or servant shall be thereby altered or changed,
or with the design and intention that such slave or servant, if a
female, and pregnant, shall be detained and kept out of this state till
her delivery of the child of which she is or shall be pregnant, or with
the design and intention that such slave or servant shall be brought
again into this state, after the expiration of six months from the time
of such slave or servant having been first brought into this state,
without his or her consent, if of full age, testified upon a private
examination, before two Justices of the peace of the city or county in
which he or she shall reside, or, being under the age of twenty-one
years, without his or her consent, testified in manner aforesaid, and
also without the consent of his or her parents," etc. Penalty for every
such offence, £75.

§ 5. " ... if any person or persons shall build, fit, equip, man, or
otherwise prepare any ship or vessel, within any port of this state, or
shall cause any ship or other vessel to sail from any port of this
state, for the purpose of carrying on a trade or traffic in slaves, to,
from, or between Europe, Asia, Africa or America, or any places or
countries whatever, or of transporting slaves to or from one port or
place to another, in any part or parts of the world, such ship or
vessel, her tackle, furniture, apparel, and other appurtenances, shall
be forfeited to the commonwealth.... And, moreover, all and every person
and persons so building, fitting out," etc., shall forfeit £1000.
Dallas, _Laws_, II. 586.


~1788, October. Connecticut: Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

"An Act to prevent the Slave-Trade."

_"Be it enacted by the Governor, Council and Representatives in General
Court assembled, and by the Authority of the same_, That no Citizen or
Inhabitant of this State, shall for himself, or any other Person, either
as Master, Factor, Supercargo, Owner or Hirer, in Whole, or in Part, of
any Vessel, directly or indirectly, import or transport, or buy or sell,
or receive on board his or her Vessel, with Intent to cause to be
imported or transported, any of the Inhabitants of any Country in
Africa, as Slaves or Servants, for Term of Years; upon Penalty of _Fifty
Pounds_, for every Person so received on board, as aforesaid; and of
_Five Hundred Pounds_ for every such Vessel employed in the Importation
or Transportation aforesaid; to be recovered by Action, Bill, Plaint or
Information; the one Half to the Plaintiff, and the other Half to the
Use of this State." And all insurance on vessels and slaves shall be
void. This act to be given as evidence under general issue, in any suit
commenced for recovery of such insurance.

" ... if any Person shall kidnap ... any free Negro," etc., inhabitant
of this State, he shall forfeit £100. Every vessel clearing for the
coast of Africa or any other part of the world, and suspected to be in
the slave-trade, must give bond in £1000. Slightly amended in 1789.
_Acts and Laws of Connecticut_ (ed. 1784), pp. 368-9, 388.


~1788, Nov. 4. South Carolina: Temporary Prohibition.~

"An Act to regulate the Payment and Recovery of Debts, and to prohibit
the Importation of Negroes, for the Time therein limited."

§ 16. "No negro or other slave shall be imported or brought into this
State either by land or water on or before the first of January, 1793,
under the penalty of forfeiting every such slave or slaves to any person
who will sue or inform for the same; and under further penalty of
paying £100 to the use of the State for every such negro or slave so
imported or brought in: _Provided_, That nothing in this prohibition
contained shall extend to such slaves as are now the property of
citizens of the United States, and at the time of passing this act shall
be within the limits of the said United States.

§ 17. "All former instalment laws, and an ordinance imposing a penalty
on persons importing negroes into this State, passed the 28th day of
March 1787, are hereby repealed." Grimké, _Public Laws_, p. 466.


~1789, Feb. 3. Delaware: Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

"_An additional Supplementary_ ACT _to an act, intituled_, An act to
prevent the exportation of slaves, and for other purposes."

"Whereas it is inconsistent with that spirit of general liberty which
pervades the constitution of this state, that vessels should be fitted
out, or equipped, in any of the ports thereof, for the purpose of
receiving and transporting the natives of Africa to places where they
are held in slavery; or that any acts should be deemed lawful, which
tend to encourage or promote such iniquitous traffic among us:

§ 1. "_Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly of Delaware_,
That if any owner or owners, master, agent, or factor, shall fit out,
equip, man, or otherwise prepare, any ship or vessel within any port or
place in this state, or shall cause any ship, or other vessel, to sail
from any port or place in this state, for the purpose of carrying on a
trade or traffic in slaves, to, from, or between, Europe, Asia, Africa,
or America, or any places or countries whatever, or of transporting
slaves to, or from, one port or place to another, in any part or parts
of the world; such ship or vessel, her tackle, furniture, apparel, and
other appurtenances, shall be forfeited to this state.... And moreover,
all and every person and persons so fitting out ... any ship or vessel
... shall severally forfeit and pay the sum of Five Hundred Pounds;"
one-half to the state, and one-half to the informer.

§ 2. "_And whereas_ it has been found by experience, that the act,
intituled, _An act to prevent the exportation of slaves, and for other
purposes_, has not produced all the good effects expected therefrom,"
any one exporting a slave to Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, or the West Indies, without license, shall forfeit
£100 for each slave exported and £20 for each attempt.

§ 3. Slaves to be tried by jury for capital offences. _Laws of Delaware_
(ed. 1797), p. 942, ch. 194 b.


~1789, May 13. Congress (House): Proposed Duty on Slaves Imported.~

A tax of $10 per head on slaves imported, moved by Parker of Virginia.
After debate, withdrawn. _Annals of Cong._, 1 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 336-42.


~1789, Sept. 19. Congress (House): Bill to Tax Slaves Imported.~

A committee under Parker of Virginia reports, "a bill concerning the
importation of certain persons prior to the year 1808." Read once and
postponed until next session. _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 1 Cong. 1
sess. I. 37, 114; _Annals of Cong._, 1 Cong. 1 sess., pp. 366, 903.


~1790, March 22. Congress (House): Declaration of Powers.~

See above, pages 82-83.


~1790, March 22. New York: Amendment of Act of 1788.~

"An Act to amend the act entitled 'An act concerning slaves.'"

"Whereas many inconveniences have arisen from the prohibiting the
exporting of slaves from this State. Therefore

"_Be it enacted_ ..., That where any slave shall hereafter be convicted
of a crime under the degree of a capital offence, in the supreme court,
or the court of oyer and terminer, and general gaol delivery, or a court
of general sessions of the peace within this State, it shall and may be
lawful to and for the master or mistress to cause such slave to be
transported out of this State," etc. _Laws of New York, 1789-96_ (ed.
1886), p. 151.


~1792, May. Connecticut: Act of 1788 Strengthened.~

"An Act in addition to an Act, entitled 'An Act to prevent the Slave
Trade.'"

This provided that persons directly or indirectly aiding or assisting in
slave-trading should be fined £100. All notes, bonds, mortgages, etc.,
of any kind, made or executed in payment for any slave imported contrary
to this act, are declared null and void. Persons removing from the State
might carry away their slaves. _Acts and Laws of Connecticut_ (ed.
1784), pp. 412-3.


~1792, Dec. 17. Virginia: Revision of Acts.~

"An Act to reduce into one, the several acts concerning slaves, free
negroes, and mulattoes."

§ 1. "_Be it enacted_ ..., That no persons shall henceforth be slaves
within this commonwealth, except such as were so on the seventeenth day
of October," 1785, "and the descendants of the females of them."

§ 2. "Slaves which shall hereafter be brought into this commonwealth,
and kept therein one whole year together, or so long at different times
as shall amount to one year, shall be free."

§ 4. "_Provided_, That nothing in this act contained, shall be construed
to extend to those who may incline to remove from any of the United
States and become citizens of this, if within sixty days after such
removal, he or she shall take the following oath before some justice of
the peace of this commonwealth: '_I, A.B., do swear, that my removal
into the state of Virginia, was with no intent of evading the laws for
preventing the further importation of slaves, nor have I brought with me
any slaves, with an intention of selling them, nor have any of the
slaves which I have brought with me, been imported from Africa, or any
of the West India islands, since the first day of November_,'" 1778,
etc.

§ 53. This act to be in force immediately. _Statutes at Large of
Virginia, New Series_, I. 122.


~1792, Dec. 21. South Carolina: Importation Prohibited until 1795.~

"An Act to prohibit the importation of Slaves from Africa, or other
places beyond sea, into this State, for two years; and also to prohibit
the importation or bringing in Slaves, or Negroes, Mulattoes, Indians,
Moors or Mestizoes, bound for a term of years, from any of the United
States, by land or by water."

"Whereas, it is deemed inexpedient to increase the number of slaves
within this State, in our present circumstances and situation;

§ 1. "_Be it therefore enacted_ ..., That no slave shall be imported
into this State from Africa, the West India Islands, or other place
beyond sea, for and during the term of two years, commencing from the
first day of January next, which will be in the year of our Lord one
thousand seven hundred and ninety-three."

§ 2. No slaves, Negroes, Indians, etc., bound for a term of years, to be
brought in from any of the United States or bordering countries.
Settlers may bring their slaves. Cooper, _Statutes_, VII. 431.


~1793, Dec. 19. Georgia: Importation Prohibited.~

"An act to prevent the importation of negroes into this state from the
places herein mentioned." Title only. Re-enacted (?) by the Constitution
of 1798. Marbury and Crawford, _Digest_, p. 442; Prince, _Digest_, p.
786.


~1794, North Carolina: Importation Prohibited.~

"An act to prevent the further importation and bringing of slaves and
indented servants of colour into this state."

§ 1. "_Be it enacted_ ..., That from and after the first day of May
next, no slave or indented servant of colour shall be imported or
brought into this state by land or water; nor shall any slave or
indented servant of colour, who may be imported or brought contrary to
the intent and meaning of this act, be bought, sold or hired by any
person whatever."

§ 2. Penalty for importing, £100 per slave; for buying or selling, the
same.

§ 4. Persons removing, travelling, etc., are excepted. The act was
amended slightly in 1796. Martin, _Iredell's Acts of Assembly_, II. 53,
94.


~1794, March 22. United States Statute: Export Slave-Trade Forbidden.~

"An Act to prohibit the carrying on the Slave Trade from the United
States to any foreign place or country." _Statutes at Large_, I. 347.
For proceedings in Congress, see _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1820), 3 Cong.
1 sess. II. 51; _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 3 Cong. 1 sess. II. 76,
84, 85, 96, 98, 99, 100; _Annals of Cong._, 3 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 64, 70,
72.


~1794, Dec. 20. South Carolina: Act of 1792 Extended.~

"An Act to revive and extend an Act entitled 'An Act to prohibit the
importation of Slaves from Africa, or other places beyond Sea, into this
State, for two years; and also, to prohibit the importation or bringing
in of Negro Slaves, Mulattoes, Indians, Moors or Mestizoes, bound for a
term of years, from any of the United States, by Land or Water.'"

§ 1. Act of 1792 extended until Jan. 1, 1797.

§ 2. It shall not be lawful hereafter to import slaves, free Negroes,
etc., from the West Indies, any part of America outside the United
States, "or from other parts beyond sea." Such slaves are to be
forfeited and sold; the importer to be fined £50; free Negroes to be
re-transported. Cooper, _Statutes_, VII. 433.


~1795. North Carolina: Act against West Indian Slaves.~

"An act to prevent any person who may emigrate from any of the West
India or Bahama islands, or the French, Dutch or Spanish settlements on
the southern coast of America, from bringing slaves into this state, and
also for imposing certain restrictions on free persons of colour who
may hereafter come into this state." Penalty, £100 for each slave over
15 years of age. _Laws of North Carolina_ (revision of 1819), I. 786.


~1796. Maryland: Importation Prohibited.~

"An Act relating to Negroes, and to repeal the acts of assembly therein
mentioned."

"_Be it enacted_ ..., That it shall not be lawful, from and after the
passing of this act, to import or bring into this state, by land or
water, any negro, mulatto or other slave, for sale, or to reside within
this state; and any person brought into this state as a slave contrary
to this act, if a slave before, shall thereupon immediately cease to be
the property of the person or persons so importing or bringing such
slave within this state, and shall be free."

§ 2. Any citizen of the United States, coming into the State to take up
_bona fide_ residence, may bring with him, or within one year import,
any slave which was his property at the time of removal, "which slaves,
or the mother of which slaves, shall have been a resident of the United
States, or some one of them, three whole years next preceding such
removal."

§ 3. Such slaves cannot be sold within three years, except by will, etc.
In 1797, "A Supplementary Act," etc., slightly amended the preceding,
allowing guardians, executors, etc., to import the slaves of the estate.
Dorsey, _Laws_, I. 334, 344.


~1796, Dec. 19. South Carolina: Importation Prohibited until 1799.~

"An Act to prohibit the importation of Negroes, until the first day of
January, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine."

"Whereas, it appears to be highly impolitic to import negroes from
Africa, or other places beyond seas," etc. Extended by acts of Dec. 21,
1798, and Dec. 20, 1800, until Jan. 1, 1803. Cooper, _Statutes_, VII.
434, 436.


~1797, Jan. 18. Delaware: Codification of Acts.~

"An Act concerning Negro and Mulatto slaves."

§ 5. " ... any Negro or Mulatto slave, who hath been or shall be brought
into this state contrary to the intent and meaning of [the act of 1787];
and any Negro or Mulatto slave who hath been or shall be exported, or
sold with an intention for exportation, or carried out for sale from
this state, contrary to the intent and meaning of [the act of 1793],
shall be, and are hereby declared free; any thing in this act to the
contrary notwithstanding." _Laws of Delaware_ (ed. 1797), p. 1321, ch.
124 c.


~1798, Jan. 31. Georgia: Importation Prohibited.~

"An act to prohibit the further importation of slaves into this state."

§ 1. " ... six months after the passing of this act, it shall be
unlawful for any person or persons to import into this state, from
Africa or elsewhere, any negro or negroes of any age or sex." Every
person so offending shall forfeit for the first offence the sum of
$1,000 for every negro so imported, and for every subsequent offence the
sum of $1,000, one half for the use of the informer, and one half for
the use of the State.

§ 2. Slaves not to be brought from other States for sale after three
months.

§ 3. Persons convicted of bringing slaves into this State with a view to
sell them, are subject to the same penalties as if they had sold them.
Marbury and Crawford, _Digest_, p. 440.


~1798, March 14. New Jersey: Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

"An Act respecting slaves."

§ 12. "_And be it enacted_, That from and after the passing of this act,
it shall not be lawful for any person or persons whatsoever, to bring
into this state, either for sale or for servitude, any negro or other
slave whatsoever." Penalty, $140 for each slave; travellers and
temporary residents excepted.

§ 17. Any persons fitting out vessels for the slave-trade shall forfeit
them. Paterson, _Digest_, p. 307.


~1798, April 7. United States Statute: Importation into Mississippi
Territory Prohibited.~

"An Act for an amicable settlement of limits with the state of Georgia,
and authorizing the establishment of a government in the Mississippi
territory." _Statutes at Large_, I. 549. For proceedings in Congress,
see _Annals of Cong._, 5 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 511, 512, 513, 514, 515, 532,
533, 1235, 1249, 1277-84, 1296, 1298-1312, 1313, 1318.


~1798, May 30. Georgia: Constitutional Prohibition.~

Constitution of Georgia:--

Art. IV § 11. "There shall be no future importation of slaves into this
state from Africa, or any foreign place, after the first day of October
next. The legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the
emancipation of slaves, without the consent of each of their respective
owners previous to such emancipation. They shall have no power to
prevent emigrants, from either of the United States to this state, from
bringing with them such persons as may be deemed slaves, by the laws of
any one of the United States." Marbury and Crawford, _Digest_, p. 30.


~1800, May 10. United States Statute: Americans Forbidden to Trade from
one Foreign Country to Another.~

"An Act in addition to the act intituled 'An act to prohibit the
carrying on the Slave Trade from the United States to any foreign place
or country.'" _Statutes at Large_, II. 70. For proceedings in Congress,
see _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1821), 6 Cong. 1 sess. III. 72, 77, 88, 92.


~1800, Dec. 20. South Carolina: Slaves and Free Negroes Prohibited.~

"An Act to prevent Negro Slaves and other persons of Colour, from being
brought into or entering this State." Supplemented Dec. 19, 1801, and
amended Dec. 18, 1802. Cooper, _Statutes_, VII. 436, 444, 447.


~1801, April 8. New York: Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

"An Act concerning slaves and servants."

" ... _And be it further enacted_, That no slave shall hereafter be
imported or brought into this State, unless the person importing or
bringing such slave shall be coming into this State with intent to
reside permanently therein and shall have resided without this State,
and also have owned such slave at least during one year next preceding
the importing or bringing in of such slave," etc. A certificate, sworn
to, must be obtained; any violation of this act or neglect to take out
such certificate will result in freedom to the slave. Any sale or
limited transfer of any person hereafter imported to be a public
offence, under penalty of $250, and freedom to the slave transferred.
The export of slaves or of any person freed by this act is forbidden,
under penalty of $250 and freedom to the slave. Transportation for crime
is permitted. Re-enacted with amendments March 31, 1817. _Laws of New
York, 1801_ (ed. 1887), pp. 547-52; _Laws of New York, 1817_ (ed. 1817),
p. 136.


~1803, Feb. 28. United States Statute: Importation into States
Prohibiting Forbidden.~

"An Act to prevent the importation of certain persons into certain
states, where, by the laws thereof, their admission is prohibited."
_Statutes at Large_, II. 205. For copy of the proposed bill which this
replaced, see _Annals of Cong._, 7 Cong. 2 sess. p. 467. For proceedings
in Congress, see _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 7 Cong. 2 sess. IV 304,
324, 347; _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1821), 7 Cong. 2 sess. III. 267, 268,
269-70, 273, 275, 276, 279.


~1803, Dec. 17. South Carolina: African Slaves Admitted.~

"An Act to alter and amend the several Acts respecting the importation
or bringing into this State, from beyond seas, or elsewhere, Negroes and
other persons of colour; and for other purposes therein mentioned."

§ 1. Acts of 1792, 1794, 1796, 1798, 1800, 1802, hereby repealed.

§ 2. Importation of Negroes from the West Indies prohibited.

§ 3. No Negro over fifteen years of age to be imported from the United
States except under certificate of good character.

§ 5. Negroes illegally imported to be forfeited and sold, etc. Cooper,
_Statutes_, VII. 449.


~1804.~ [~Denmark.~

Act of 1792 abolishing the slave-trade goes into effect.]


~1804, Feb. 14. Congress (House): Proposed Censure of South Carolina.~

Representative Moore of South Carolina offered the following resolution,
as a substitute to Mr. Bard's taxing proposition of Jan. 6:--

"_Resolved_, That this House receive with painful sensibility
information that one of the Southern States, by a repeal of certain
prohibitory laws, have permitted a traffic unjust in its nature, and
highly impolitic in free Governments." Ruled out of order by the
chairman of the Committee of the Whole. _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 1
sess. p. 1004.


~1804, Feb. 15. Congress (House): Proposed Duty.~

"_Resolved_, That a tax of ten dollars be imposed on every slave
imported into any part of the United States."

"_Ordered_, That a bill, or bills, be brought in, pursuant to the said
resolution," etc. Feb. 16 "a bill laying a duty on slaves imported into
the United States" was read, but was never considered. _House Journal_
(repr. 1826), 8 Cong. 1 sess. IV 523, 578, 580, 581-2, 585; _Annals of
Cong._, 8 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 820, 876, 991, 1012, 1020, 1024-36.


~1804, March 26. United States Statute: Slave-Trade Limited.~

"An Act erecting Louisiana into two territories," etc. Acts of 1794 and
1803 extended to Louisiana. _Statutes at Large_, II. 283. For
proceedings in Congress, see _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 106,
211, 223, 231, 233-4, 238, 255, 1038, 1054-68, 1069-79, 1128-30,
1185-9.


~1805, Feb. 15. Massachusetts: Proposed Amendment.~

"_Resolve requesting the Governor to transmit to the Senators and
Representatives in Congress, and the Executives of the several States
this Resolution, as an amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, respecting Slaves._" June 8, Governor's message; Connecticut
answers that it is inexpedient; Maryland opposes the proposition.
_Massachusetts Resolves_, February, 1805, p. 55; June, 1805, p. 18. See
below, March 3, 1805.


~1805, March 2. United States Statute: Slave-Trade to Orleans Territory
Permitted.~

"An Act further providing for the government of the territory of
Orleans."

§ 1. A territorial government erected similar to Mississippi, with same
rights and privileges.

§ 5. 6th Article of Ordinance of 1787, on slaves, not to extend to this
territory.

_Statutes at Large_, II. 322. For proceedings in Congress, see _Annals
of Cong._, 8 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 28, 30, 45-6, 47, 48, 54, 59-61, 69,
727-8, 871-2, 957, 1016-9, 1020-1, 1201, 1209-10, 1211. Cf. _Statutes at
Large_, II. 331; _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong. 2 sess., pp. 50, 51, 52, 57,
68, 69, 1213, 1215. In _Journals_, see Index, Senate Bills Nos. 8, 11.


~1805, March 3. Congress (House): Massachusetts Proposition to Amend
Constitution.~

Mr. Varnum of Massachusetts presented the resolution of the Legislature
of Massachusetts, "instructing the Senators, and requesting the
Representatives in Congress, from the said State, to take all legal and
necessary steps, to use their utmost exertions, as soon as the same is
practicable, to obtain an amendment to the Federal Constitution, so as
to authorize and empower the Congress of the United States to pass a
law, whenever they may deem it expedient, to prevent the further
importation of slaves from any of the West India Islands, from the coast
of Africa, or elsewhere, into the United States, or any part thereof." A
motion was made that Congress have power to prevent further
importation; it was read and ordered to lie on the table. _House
Journal_ (repr. 1826), 8 Cong. 2 sess. V 171; _Annals of Cong._, 8 Cong.
2 sess. pp. 1221-2. For the original resolution, see _Massachusetts
Resolves_, May, 1802, to March, 1806, Vol. II. A. (State House ed., p.
239.)


~1805, Dec. 17. Congress (Senate): Proposition to Prohibit Importation.~

A "bill to prohibit the importation of certain persons therein described
into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States,
from and after" Jan. 1, 1808, was read twice and postponed. _Senate
Journal_ (repr. 1821), 9 Cong. 1 sess. IV. 10-11; _Annals of Cong._, 9
Cong. 1 sess. pp. 20-1.


~1806, Jan. 20. Congress (House): Vermont Proposed Amendment.~

"Mr. Olin, one of the Representatives from the State of Vermont,
presented to the House certain resolutions of the General Assembly of
the said State, proposing an article of amendment to the Constitution of
the United States, to prevent the further importation of slaves, or
people of color, from any of the West India Islands, from the coast of
Africa, or elsewhere, into the United States, or any part thereof; which
were read, and ordered to lie on the table." No further mention found.
_House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 1 sess. V 238; _Annals of Cong._,
9 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 343-4.


~1806, Jan. 25. Virginia: Imported Slaves to be Sold.~

"An Act to amend the several laws concerning slaves."

§ 5. If the jury before whom the importer is brought "shall find that
the said slave or slaves were brought into this commonwealth, and have
remained therein, contrary to the provisions of this act, the court
shall make an order, directing him, her or them to be delivered to the
overseers of the poor, to be by them sold for cash and applied as herein
directed."

§ 8. Penalty for bringing slaves, $400 per slave; the same for buying
or hiring, knowingly, such a slave.

§ 16. This act to take effect May 1, 1806. _Statutes at Large of
Virginia_, New Series, III. 251.


~1806, Jan. 27. Congress (House): Bill to Tax Slaves Imported.~

"A Bill laying a duty on slaves imported into any of the United States."
Finally dropped. _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 8 Cong. 2 sess. V. 129;
_Ibid._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. V. 195, 223, 240, 242, 243-4, 248, 260, 262,
264, 276-7, 287, 294, 305, 309, 338; _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess.
pp. 273, 274, 346, 358, 372, 434, 442-4, 533.


~1806, Feb. 4. Congress (House): Proposition to Prohibit Slave-Trade
after 1807.~

Mr. Bidwell moved that the following section be added to the bill for
taxing slaves imported,--that any ship so engaged be forfeited. The
proposition was rejected, yeas, 17, nays, 86 (?). _Annals of Cong._, 9
Cong. 1 sess. p. 438.


~1806, Feb. 10. Congress (House): New Hampshire Proposed Amendment.~

"Mr. Tenney ... presented to the House certain resolutions of the
Legislature of the State of New Hampshire, 'proposing an amendment to
the Constitution of the United States, so as to authorize and empower
Congress to pass a law, whenever they may deem it expedient, to prevent
the further importation of slaves,' or people of color, into the United
States, or any part thereof." Read and laid on the table. _House
Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 1 sess. V. 266; _Annals of Cong._, 9
Cong. 1 sess. p. 448.


~1806, Feb. 17. Congress (House): Proposition on Slave-Trade.~

The committee on the slave-trade reported a resolution:--

"_Resolved_, That it shall not be lawful for any person or persons, to
import or bring into any of the Territories of the United States, any
slave or slaves that may hereafter be imported into the United States."
_House Journal_, 9 Cong. 1 sess. V 264, 278, 308, 345-6; _House
Reports_, 9 Cong. 1 sess. II. Feb. 17, 1806; _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong.
1 sess. pp. 472-3.


~1806, April 7. Congress (Senate): Maryland Proposed Amendment.~

"Mr. Wright communicated a resolution of the legislature of the state of
Maryland instructing their Senators and Representatives in Congress to
use their utmost exertions to obtain an amendment to the constitution of
the United States to prevent the further importation of slaves;
whereupon, Mr. Wright submitted the following resolutions for the
consideration of the Senate....

"_Resolved_, That the migration or importation of slaves into the United
States, or any territory thereof, be prohibited after the first day of
January, 1808." Considered April 10, and further consideration postponed
until the first Monday in December next. _Senate Journal_ (repr. 1821),
9 Cong. 1 sess. IV. 76-7, 79; _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
229, 232.


~1806, Dec. 2. President Jefferson's Message.~

See above, pages 97-98. _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 2 sess. V.
468.


~1806, Dec. 15. Congress (House): Proposition on Slave-Trade.~

"A bill to prohibit the importation or bringing of slaves into the
United States, etc.," after Dec. 31, 1807. Finally merged into Senate
bill. _Ibid._, House Bill No. 148.


~1806, Dec. 17. Congress (House): Sloan's Proposition.~

Proposition to amend the House bill by inserting after the article
declaring the forfeiture of an illegally imported slave, "And such
person or slave shall be entitled to his freedom." Lost. _Annals of
Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 167-77, 180-89.


~1806, Dec. 29. Congress (House): Sloan's Second Proposition.~

Illegally imported Africans to be either freed, apprenticed, or
returned to Africa. Lost; Jan. 5, 1807, a somewhat similar proposition
was also lost. _Ibid._, pp. 226-8, 254.


~1806, Dec. 31. Great Britain: Rejected Treaty.~

"Treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation, between His Britannic
Majesty and the United States of America."

"Art. XXIV. The high contracting parties engage to communicate to each
other, without delay, all such laws as have been or shall be hereafter
enacted by their respective Legislatures, as also all measures which
shall have been taken for the abolition or limitation of the African
slave trade; and they further agree to use their best endeavors to
procure the co-operation of other Powers for the final and complete
abolition of a trade so repugnant to the principles of justice and
humanity." _Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, III. 147, 151.


~1807, March 25. [England: Slave-Trade Abolished.~

"An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade." _Statute 47 George III._,
1 sess. ch. 36.]


~1807, Jan. 7. Congress (House): Bidwell's Proposition.~

"Provided, that no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of this
act." Offered as an amendment to § 3 of House bill; defeated 60 to 61,
Speaker voting. A similar proposition was made Dec. 23, 1806. _House
Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 2 sess. V. 513-6. Cf. _Annals of Cong._,
9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 199-203, 265-7.


~1807, Feb. 9. Congress (House): Section Seven of House Bill.~

§ 7 of the bill reported to the House by the committee provided that all
Negroes imported should be conveyed whither the President might direct
and there be indentured as apprentices, or employed in whatever way the
President might deem best for them and the country; provided that no
such Negroes should be indentured or employed except in some State in
which provision is now made for the gradual abolition of slavery. Blank
spaces were left for limiting the term of indenture. The report was
never acted on. _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 477-8.


~1807, March 2. United States Statute: Importation Prohibited.~

"An Act to prohibit the importation of Slaves into any port or place
within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first
day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
eight." Bills to amend § 8, so as to make less ambiguous the permit
given to the internal traffic, were introduced Feb. 27 and Nov. 27.
_Statutes at Large_, II. 426. For proceedings in Senate, see _Senate
Journal_ (repr. 1821), 9 Cong. 1-2 sess. IV. 11, 112, 123, 124, 132,
133, 150, 158, 164, 165, 167, 168; _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess.
pp. 16, 19, 23, 33, 36, 45, 47, 68, 69, 70, 71, 79, 87, 93. For
proceedings in House, see _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 9 Cong. 2 sess.
V. 470, 482, 488, 490, 491, 496, 500, 504, 510, 513-6, 517, 540, 557,
575, 579, 581, 583-4, 585, 592, 594, 610, 613-4, 616, 623, 638, 640; 10
Cong. 1 sess. VI. 27, 50; _Annals of Cong._, 9 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 167,
180, 200, 220, 231, 254, 264, 270.


~1808, Feb. 23. Congress (Senate): Proposition to Amend Constitution.~

"Agreeably to instructions from the legislature of the state of
Pennsylvania to their Senators in Congress, Mr. Maclay submitted the
following resolution, which was read for consideration:--

"_Resolved_ ..., That the Constitution of the United States be so
altered and amended, as to prevent the Congress of the United States,
and the legislatures of any state in the Union, from authorizing the
importation of slaves." No further mention. _Senate Journal_ (repr.
1821), 10 Cong. 1 sess. IV. 235; _Annals of Cong._, 10 Cong. 1 sess. p.
134. For the full text of the instructions, see _Amer. State Papers,
Miscellaneous_, I. 716.


~1810, Dec. 5. President Madison's Message.~

"Among the commercial abuses still committed under the American flag,
... it appears that American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a
traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of
humanity, and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just
and benevolent motives which produced the interdiction in force against
this criminal conduct, will doubtless be felt by Congress, in devising
further means of suppressing the evil." _House Journal_ (repr. 1826), 11
Cong. 3 sess. VII. 435.


~1811, Jan. 15. United States Statute: Secret Act and Joint Resolution
against Amelia Island Smugglers.~

_Statutes at Large_, III. 471 ff.


~1815, March 29. [France: Abolition of Slave-Trade.~

Napoleon on his return from Elba decrees the abolition of the
slave-trade. Decree re-enacted in 1818 by the Bourbon dynasty. _British
and Foreign State Papers_, 1815-16, p. 196, note; 1817-18, p. 1025.]


~1815, Feb. 18. Great Britain: Treaty of Ghent.~

"Treaty of peace and amity. Concluded December 24, 1814; Ratifications
exchanged at Washington February 17, 1815; Proclaimed February 18,
1815."

Art. X. "Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the
principles of humanity and justice, and whereas both His Majesty and the
United States are desirous of continuing their efforts to promote its
entire abolition, it is hereby agreed that both the contracting parties
shall use their best endeavors to accomplish so desirable an object."
_U.S. Treaties and Conventions_ (ed. 1889), p. 405.


~1815, Dec. 8. Alabama and Mississippi Territory: Act to Dispose of
Illegally Imported Slaves.~

"An Act concerning Slaves brought into this Territory, contrary to the
Laws of the United States." Slaves to be sold at auction, and the
proceeds to be divided between the territorial treasury and the
collector or informer. Toulmin, _Digest of the Laws of Alabama_, p. 637;
_Statutes of Mississippi digested_, etc. (ed. 1816), p. 389.


~1816, Nov. 18. North Carolina: Act to Dispose of Illegally Imported
Slaves.~

"An act to direct the disposal of negroes, mulattoes and persons of
colour, imported into this state, contrary to the provisions of an act
of the Congress of the United States, entitled 'an act to prohibit the
importation of slaves into any port or place, within the jurisdiction of
the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight.'"

§ 1. Every slave illegally imported after 1808 shall be sold for the use
of the State.

§ 2. The sheriff shall seize and sell such slave, and pay the proceeds
to the treasurer of the State.

§ 3. If the slave abscond, the sheriff may offer a reward not exceeding
one-fifth of the value of the slave. _Laws of North Carolina, 1816_, ch.
xii. p. 9; _Laws of North Carolina_ (revision of 1819), II. 1350.


~1816, Dec. 3. President Madison's Message.~

"The United States having been the first to abolish, within the extent
of their authority, the transportation of the natives of Africa into
slavery, by prohibiting the introduction of slaves, and by punishing
their citizens participating in the traffick, cannot but be gratified at
the progress, made by concurrent efforts of other nations, towards a
general suppression of so great an evil. They must feel, at the same
time, the greater solicitude to give the fullest efficacy to their own
regulations. With that view, the interposition of Congress appears to be
required by the violations and evasions which, it is suggested, are
chargeable on unworthy citizens, who mingle in the slave trade under
foreign flags, and with foreign ports; and by collusive importations of
slaves into the United States, through adjoining ports and territories.
I present the subject to Congress, with a full assurance of their
disposition to apply all the remedy which can be afforded by an
amendment of the law. The regulations which were intended to guard
against abuses of a kindred character, in the trade between the several
States, ought also to be rendered more effectual for their humane
object." _House Journal_, 14 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 15-6.


~1817, Feb. 11. Congress (House): Proposed Joint Resolution.~

"Joint Resolution for abolishing the traffick in Slaves, and the
Colinization [_sic_] of the Free People of Colour of the United States."

"_Resolved_, ... That the President be, and he is hereby authorized to
consult and negotiate with all the governments where ministers of the
United States are, or shall be accredited, on the means of effecting an
entire and immediate abolition of the traffick in slaves. And, also, to
enter into a convention with the government of Great Britain, for
receiving into the colony of Sierra Leone, such of the free people of
colour of the United States as, with their own consent, shall be carried
thither....

"_Resolved_, That adequate provision shall hereafter be made to defray
any necessary expenses which may be incurred in carrying the preceding
resolution into effect." Reported on petition of the Colonization
Society by the committee on the President's Message. No further record.
_House Journal_, 14 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 25-7, 380; _House Doc._, 14 Cong.
2 sess. No. 77.


~1817, July 28. [Great Britain and Portugal: First Concession of Right
of Search.~

"By this treaty, ships of war of each of the nations might visit
merchant vessels of both, if suspected of having slaves on board,
acquired by illicit traffic." This "related only to the trade north of
the equator; for the slave-trade of Portugal within the regions of
western Africa, to the south of the equator, continued long after this
to be carried on with great vigor." Woolsey, _International Law_
(1874), § 197, pp. 331-2; _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1816-17,
pp. 85-118.]


~1817, Sept. 23. [Great Britain and Spain: Abolition of Trade North of
Equator.~

"By the treaty of Madrid, ... Great Britain obtained from Spain, for the
sum of four hundred thousand pounds, the immediate abolition of the
trade north of the equator, its entire abolition after 1820, and the
concession of the same mutual right of search, which the treaty with
Portugal had just established." Woolsey, _International Law_ (1874), §
197, p. 332; _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1816-17, pp. 33-74.]


~1817, Dec. 2. President Monroe's Message on Amelia Island, etc.~

"A just regard for the rights and interests of the United States
required that they [i.e., the Amelia Island and Galveston pirates]
should be suppressed, and orders have been accordingly issued to that
effect. The imperious considerations which produced this measure will be
explained to the parties whom it may, in any degree, concern." _House
Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. p. 11.


~1817, Dec. 19. Georgia: Act to Dispose of Illegally Imported Slaves.~

"An Act for disposing of any such negro, mulatto, or person of color,
who has been or may hereafter be imported or brought into this State in
violation of an act of the United States, entitled an act to prohibit
the importation of slaves," etc.

§ 1. The governor by agent shall receive such Negroes, and,

§ 2. sell them, or,

§ 3. give them to the Colonization Society to be transported, on
condition that the Society reimburse the State for all expense, and
transport them at their own cost. Prince, _Digest_, p. 793.


~1818, Jan. 10. Congress (House): Bill to Supplement Act of 1807.~

Mr. Middleton, from the committee on so much of the President's Message
as related to the illicit introduction of slaves into the United States
from Amelia Island, reported a bill in addition to former acts
prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the United States. This was
read twice and committed; April 1 it was considered in Committee of the
Whole; Mr. Middleton offered a substitute, which was ordered to be laid
on table and to be printed; it became the Act of 1819. See below, March
3, 1819. _House Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 131, 410.


~1818, Jan. 13. President Monroe's Special Message.~

"I have the satisfaction to inform Congress, that the establishment at
Amelia Island has been suppressed, and without the effusion of blood.
The papers which explain this transaction, I now lay before Congress,"
etc. _Ibid._, pp. 137-9.


~1818, Feb. 9. Congress (Senate): Bill to Register (?) Slaves.~

"A bill respecting the transportation of persons of color, for sale, or
to be held to labor." Passed Senate, dropped in House; similar bill Dec.
9, 1818, also dropped in House. _Senate Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp.
147, 152, 157, 165, 170, 188, 201, 203, 232, 237; 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp.
63, 74, 77, 202, 207, 285, 291, 297; _House Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess.
p. 332; 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 303, 305, 316.


~1818, April 4. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Constitution.~

Mr. Livermore's resolution:--

"No person shall be held to service or labour as a slave, nor shall
slavery be tolerated in any state hereafter admitted into the Union, or
made one of the United States of America." Read, and on the question,
"Will the House consider the same?" it was determined in the negative.
_House Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 420-1; _Annals of Cong._, 15 Cong.
1 sess. pp. 1675-6.


~1818, April 20. United States Statute: Act in Addition to Act of 1807.~

"An Act in addition to 'An act to prohibit the introduction
[importation] of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction
of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight,' and to repeal
certain parts of the same." _Statutes at Large_, III. 450. For
proceedings in Congress, see _Senate Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 243,
304, 315, 333, 338, 340, 348, 377, 386, 388, 391, 403, 406; _House
Journal_, 15 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 450, 452, 456, 468, 479, 484, 492,505.


~1818, May 4. [Great Britain and Netherlands: Treaty.~

Right of Search granted for the suppression of the slave-trade. _British
and Foreign State Papers_, 1817-18, pp. 125-43.]


~1818, Dec. 19. Georgia: Act of 1817 Reinforced.~

No title found. "_Whereas_ numbers of African slaves have been illegally
introduced into the State, in direct violation of the laws of the United
States and of this State, _Be it therefore enacted_," etc. Informers are
to receive one-tenth of the net proceeds from the sale of illegally
imported Africans, "_Provided_, nothing herein contained shall be so
construed as to extend farther back than the year 1817." Prince,
_Digest_, p. 798.


~1819, Feb. 8. Congress (Senate): Bill in Addition to Former Acts.~

"A bill supplementary to an act, passed the 2d day of March, 1807,
entitled," etc. Postponed. _Senate Journal_, 15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 234,
244, 311-2, 347.


~1819, March 3. United States Statute: Cruisers Authorized, etc.~

"An Act in addition to the Acts prohibiting the slave trade." _Statutes
at Large_, III. 532. For proceedings in Congress, see _Senate Journal_,
15 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 338, 339, 343, 345, 350, 362; _House Journal_, 15
Cong. 2 sess. pp. 9-19, 42-3, 150, 179, 330, 334, 341, 343, 352.


~1819, Dec. 7. President Monroe's Message.~

"Due attention has likewise been paid to the suppression of the slave
trade, in compliance with a law of the last session. Orders have been
given to the commanders of all our public ships to seize all vessels
navigated under our flag, engaged in that trade, and to bring them in,
to be proceeded against, in the manner prescribed by that law. It is
hoped that these vigorous measures, supported by like acts by other
nations, will soon terminate a commerce so disgraceful to the civilized
world." _House Journal_, 16 Cong, 1 sess. p. 18.


~1820, Jan. 19. Congress (House): Proposed Registry of Slaves.~

"On motion of Mr. Cuthbert,

"Resolved, That the Committee on the Slave Trade be instructed to
enquire into the expediency of establishing a registry of slaves, more
effectually to prevent the importation of slaves into the United States,
or the territories thereof." No further mention. _Ibid._, p. 150.


~1820, Feb. 5. Congress (House): Proposition on Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Meigs submitted the following preamble and resolution:

"Whereas, slavery in the United States is an evil of great and
increasing magnitude; one which merits the greatest efforts of this
nation to remedy: Therefore,

"Resolved, That a committee be appointed to enquire into the expediency
of devoting the public lands as a fund for the purpose of,

"1st, Employing a naval force competent to the annihilation of the slave
trade;

"2dly, The emancipation of slaves in the United States; and,

"3dly, Colonizing them in such way as shall be conducive to their
comfort and happiness, in Africa, their mother country." Read, and, on
motion of Walker of North Carolina, ordered to lie on the table. Feb. 7,
Mr. Meigs moved that the House now consider the above-mentioned
resolution, but it was decided in the negative. Feb. 18, he made a
similar motion and proceeded to discussion, but was ruled out of order
by the Speaker. He appealed, but the Speaker was sustained, and the
House refused to take up the resolution. No further record appears.
_Ibid._, pp. 196, 200, 227.


~1820, Feb. 23. Massachusetts: Slavery in Western Territory.~

_"Resolve respecting Slavery":--_

"The Committee of both Houses, who were appointed to consider 'what
measures it may be proper for the Legislature of this Commonwealth to
adopt, in the expression of their sentiments and views, relative to the
interesting subject, now before Congress, of interdicting slavery in the
New States, which may be admitted into the Union, beyond the River
Mississippi,' respectfully submit the following report: ...

"Nor has this question less importance as to its influence on the slave
trade. Should slavery be further permitted, an immense new market for
slaves would be opened. It is well known that notwithstanding the
strictness of our laws, and the vigilance of the government, thousands
are now annually imported from Africa," etc. _Massachusetts Resolves_,
May, 1819, to February, 1824, pp. 147-51.


~1820, May 12. Congress (House): Resolution for Negotiation.~

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, That the President of the
United States be requested to negociate with all the governments where
ministers of the United States are or shall be accredited, on the means
of effecting an entire and immediate abolition of the slave trade."
Passed House, May 12, 1820; lost in Senate, May 15, 1820. _House
Journal_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 497, 518, 520-21, 526; _Annals of Cong._,
16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 697-700.


~1820, May 15. United States Statute: Slave-Trade made Piracy.~

"An act to continue in force 'An act to protect the commerce of the
United States, and punish the crime of piracy,' and also to make further
provisions for punishing the crime of piracy." Continued by several
statutes until passage of the Act of 1823, _q.v. Statutes at Large_,
III. 600. For proceedings in Congress, see _Senate Journal_, 16 Cong. 1
sess. pp. 238, 241, 268, 286-7, 314, 331, 346, 350, 409, 412, 417, 422,
424, 425; _House Journal_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 453, 454, 494, 518, 520,
522, 537, 539, 540, 542. There was also a House bill, which was dropped:
cf. _House Journal_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 21, 113, 280, 453, 494.


~1820, Nov. 14. President Monroe's Message.~

"In execution of the law of the last session, for the suppression of the
slave trade, some of our public ships have also been employed on the
coast of Africa, where several captures have already been made of
vessels engaged in that disgraceful traffic." _Senate Journal_, 16 Cong.
2 sess. pp. 16-7.


~1821, Feb. 15. Congress (House): Meigs's Resolution.~

Mr. Meigs offered in modified form the resolutions submitted at the last
session:--

"Whereas slavery, in the United States, is an evil, acknowledged to be
of great and increasing magnitude, ... therefore,

"Resolved, That a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency
of devoting five hundred million acres of the public lands, next west of
the Mississippi, as a fund for the purpose of, in the

"_First place_; Employing a naval force, competent to the annihilation
of the slave trade," etc. Question to consider decided in the
affirmative, 63 to 50; laid on the table, 66 to 55. _House Journal_, 16
Cong. 2 sess. p. 238; _Annals of Cong._, 16 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 1168-70.


~1821, Dec. 3. President Monroe's Message.~

"Like success has attended our efforts to suppress the slave trade.
Under the flag of the United States, and the sanction of their papers,
the trade may be considered as entirely suppressed; and, if any of our
citizens are engaged in it, under the flag and papers of other powers,
it is only from a respect to the rights of those powers, that these
offenders are not seized and brought home, to receive the punishment
which the laws inflict. If every other power should adopt the same
policy, and pursue the same vigorous means for carrying it into effect,
the trade could no longer exist." _House Journal_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. p.
22.


~1822, April 12. Congress (House): Proposed Resolution.~

"_Resolved_, That the President of the United States be requested to
enter into such arrangements as he may deem suitable and proper, with
one or more of the maritime powers of Europe, for the effectual
abolition of the slave trade." _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No.
92, p. 4; _Annals of Cong._, 17 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1538.


~1822, June 18. Mississippi: Act on Importation, etc.~

"An act, to reduce into one, the several acts, concerning slaves, free
negroes, and mulattoes."

§ 2. Slaves born and resident in the United States, and not criminals,
may be imported.

§ 3. No slave born or resident outside the United States shall be
brought in, under penalty of $1,000 per slave. Travellers are excepted.
_Revised Code of the Laws of Mississippi_ (Natchez, 1824), p. 369.


~1822, Dec. 3. President Monroe's Message.~

"A cruise has also been maintained on the coast of Africa, when the
season would permit, for the suppression of the slave-trade; and orders
have been given to the commanders of all our public ships to seize our
own vessels, should they find any engaged in that trade, and to bring
them in for adjudication." _House Journal_, 17 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 12, 21.


~1823, Jan. 1. Alabama: Act to Dispose of Illegally Imported Slaves.~

"An Act to carry into effect the laws of the United States prohibiting
the slave trade."

§ 1. "_Be it enacted_, ... That the Governor of this state be ...
authorized and required to appoint some suitable person, as the agent of
the state, to receive all and every slave or slaves or persons of
colour, who may have been brought into this state in violation of the
laws of the United States, prohibiting the slave trade: _Provided_, that
the authority of the said agent is not to extend to slaves who have been
condemned and sold."

§ 2. The agent must give bonds.

§ 3. "_And be it further enacted_, That the said slaves, when so placed
in the possession of the state, as aforesaid, shall be employed on such
public work or works, as shall be deemed by the Governor of most value
and utility to the public interest."

§ 4. A part may be hired out to support those employed in public work.

§ 5. "_And be it further enacted_, That in all cases in which a decree
of any court having competent authority, shall be in favor of any or
claimant or claimants, the said slaves shall be truly and faithfully, by
said agent, delivered to such claimant or claimants: but in case of
their condemnation, they shall be sold by such agent for cash to the
highest bidder, by giving sixty days notice," etc. _Acts of the Assembly
of Alabama, 1822_ (Cahawba, 1823), p. 62.


~1823, Jan. 30. United States Statute: Piracy Act made Perpetual.~

"An Act in addition to 'An act to continue in force "An act to protect
the commerce of the United States, and punish the crime of piracy,"'"
etc. _Statutes at Large_, III. 510-14, 721, 789. For proceedings in
Congress, see _Senate Journal_, 17 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 61, 64, 70, 83, 98,
101, 106, 110, 111, 122, 137; _House Journal_, 17 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 73,
76, 156, 183, 189.


~1823, Feb. 10. Congress (House): Resolution on Slave-Trade.~

Mr. Mercer offered the following resolution:--

"Resolved, That the President of the United States be requested to enter
upon, and to prosecute, from time to time, such negotiations with the
several maritime powers of Europe and America, as he may deem expedient,
for the effectual abolition of the African slave trade, and its ultimate
denunciation as piracy, under the law of nations, by the consent of the
civilized world." Agreed to Feb. 28; passed Senate. _House Journal_, 17
Cong. 2 sess. pp. 212, 280-82; _Annals of Cong._, 17 Cong. 2 sess. pp.
928, 1147-55.


~1823, March 3. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the support of the navy," etc.

"To enable the President of the United States to carry into effect the
act" of 1819, $50,000. _Statutes at Large_, III. 763, 764


~1823. President: Proposed Treaties.~

Letters to various governments in accordance with the resolution of
1823: April 28, to Spain; May 17, to Buenos Ayres; May 27, to United
States of Colombia; Aug. 14, to Portugal. See above, Feb. 10, 1823.
_House Doc._, 18 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 119.


~1823, June 24. Great Britain: Proposed Treaty.~

Adams, March 31, proposes that the trade be made piracy. Canning, April
8, reminds Adams of the treaty of Ghent and asks for the granting of a
mutual Right of Search to suppress the slave-trade. The matter is
further discussed until June 24. Minister Rush is empowered to propose a
treaty involving the Right of Search, etc. This treaty was substantially
the one signed (see below, March 13, 1824), differing principally in the
first article.

"Article I. The two high contracting Powers, having each separately, by
its own laws, subjected their subjects and citizens, who may be
convicted of carrying on the illicit traffic in slaves on the coast of
Africa, to the penalties of piracy, do hereby agree to use their
influence, respectively, with the other maritime and civilized nations
of the world, to the end that the said African slave trade may be
recognized, and declared to be, piracy, under the law of nations."
_House Doc._, 18 Cong, 1 sess. VI. No. 119.


~1824, Feb. 6. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Constitution.~

Mr. Abbot's resolution on persons of color:--

"That no part of the constitution of the United States ought to be
construed, or shall be construed to authorize the importation or ingress
of any person of color into any one of the United States, contrary to
the laws of such state." Read first and second time and committed to the
Committee of the Whole. _House Journal_, 18 Cong. 1 sess. p. 208;
_Annals of Cong._, 18 Cong. 1 sess. p. 1399.


~1824, March 13. Great Britain: Proposed Treaty of 1824.~

"The Convention:"--

Art. I. "The commanders and commissioned officers of each of the two
high contracting parties, duly authorized, under the regulations and
instructions of their respective Governments, to cruize on the coasts of
Africa, of America, and of the West Indies, for the suppression of the
slave trade," shall have the power to seize and bring into port any
vessel owned by subjects of the two contracting parties, found engaging
in the slave-trade. The vessel shall be taken for trial to the country
where she belongs.

Art. II. Provides that even if the vessel seized does not belong to a
citizen or citizens of either of the two contracting parties, but is
chartered by them, she may be seized in the same way as if she belonged
to them.

Art. III. Requires that in all cases where any vessel of either party
shall be boarded by any naval officer of the other party, on suspicion
of being concerned in the slave-trade, the officer shall deliver to the
captain of the vessel so boarded a certificate in writing, signed by the
naval officer, specifying his rank, etc., and the object of his visit.
Provision is made for the delivery of ships and papers to the tribunal
before which they are brought.

Art. IV. Limits the Right of Search, recognized by the Convention, to
such investigation as shall be necessary to ascertain the fact whether
the said vessel is or is not engaged in the slave-trade. No person shall
be taken out of the vessel so visited unless for reasons of health.

Art. V. Makes it the duty of the commander of either nation, having
captured a vessel of the other under the treaty, to receive unto his
custody the vessel captured, and send or carry it into some port of the
vessel's own country for adjudication, in which case triplicate
declarations are to be signed, etc.

Art. VI. Provides that in cases of capture by the officer of either
party, on a station where no national vessel is cruising, the captor
shall either send or carry his prize to some convenient port of its own
country for adjudication, etc.

Art. VII. Provides that the commander and crew of the captured vessel
shall be proceeded against as pirates, in the ports to which they are
brought, etc.

Art. VIII. Confines the Right of Search, under this treaty, to such
officers of both parties as are especially authorized to execute the
laws of their countries in regard to the slave-trade. For every abusive
exercise of this right, officers are to be personally liable in costs
and damages, etc.

Art. IX. Provides that the government of either nation shall inquire
into abuses of this Convention and of the laws of the two countries, and
inflict on guilty officers the proper punishment.

Art. X. Declares that the right, reciprocally conceded by this treaty,
is wholly and exclusively founded on the consideration that the two
nations have by their laws made the slave-trade piracy, and is not to be
taken to affect in any other way the rights of the parties, etc.; it
further engages that each power shall use its influence with all other
civilized powers, to procure from them the acknowledgment that the
slave-trade is piracy under the law of nations.

Art. XI. Provides that the ratifications of the treaty shall be
exchanged at London within twelve months, or as much sooner as possible.
Signed by Mr. Rush, Minister to the Court of St. James, March 13, 1824.

The above is a synopsis of the treaty as it was laid before the Senate.
It was ratified by the Senate with certain conditions, one of which was
that the duration of this treaty should be limited to the pleasure of
the two parties on six months' notice; another was that the Right of
Search should be limited to the African and West Indian seas: i.e., the
word "America" was struck out. This treaty as amended and passed by the
Senate (cf. above, p. 141) was rejected by Great Britain. A counter
project was suggested by her, but not accepted (cf. above, p. 144). The
striking out of the word "America" was declared to be the insuperable
objection. _Senate Doc._, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, pp. 15-20; _Niles's
Register_, 3rd Series, XXVI. 230-2. For proceedings in Senate, see
_Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, V. 360-2.


~1824, March 31. [Great Britain: Slave-Trade made Piracy.~

"An Act for the more effectual Suppression of the _African_ Slave
Trade."

Any person engaging in the slave-trade "shall be deemed and adjudged
guilty of Piracy, Felony and Robbery, and being convicted thereof shall
suffer Death without Benefit of Clergy, and Loss of Lands, Goods and
Chattels, as Pirates, Felons and Robbers upon the Seas ought to suffer,"
etc. _Statute 5 George IV._, ch. 17; _Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, V.
342.]


~1824, April 16. Congress (House): Bill to Suppress Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Govan, from the committee to which was referred so much of the
President's Message as relates to the suppression of the Slave Trade,
reported a bill respecting the slave trade; which was read twice, and
committed to a Committee of the Whole."

§ 1. Provided a fine not exceeding $5,000, imprisonment not exceeding 7
years, and forfeiture of ship, for equipping a slaver even for the
foreign trade; and a fine not exceeding $3,000, and imprisonment not
exceeding 5 years, for serving on board any slaver. _Annals of Cong._,
18 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 2397-8; _House Journal_, 18 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 26,
180, 181, 323, 329, 356, 423.


~1824, May 21. President Monroe's Message on Treaty of 1824.~

_Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, V. 344-6.


~1824, Nov. 6. [Great Britain and Sweden: Treaty.~

Right of Search granted for the suppression of the slave-trade. _British
and Foreign State Papers_, 1824-5, pp. 3-28.]


~1824, Nov. 6. Great Britain: Counter Project of 1825.~

Great Britain proposes to conclude the treaty as amended by the Senate,
if the word "America" is reinstated in Art. I. (Cf. above, March 13,
1824.) February 16, 1825, the House Committee favors this project; March
2, Addington reminds Adams of this counter proposal; April 6, Clay
refuses to reopen negotiations on account of the failure of the
Colombian treaty. _Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, V. 367; _House
Reports_, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 70; _House Doc._, 19 Cong. 1 sess. I.
No. 16.


~1824, Dec. 7. President Monroe's Message.~

"It is a cause of serious regret, that no arrangement has yet been
finally concluded between the two Governments, to secure, by joint
co-operation, the suppression of the slave trade. It was the object of
the British Government, in the early stages of the negotiation, to adopt
a plan for the suppression, which should include the concession of the
mutual right of search by the ships of war of each party, of the
vessels of the other, for suspected offenders. This was objected to by
this Government, on the principle that, as the right of search was a
right of war of a belligerant towards a neutral power, it might have an
ill effect to extend it, by treaty, to an offence which had been made
comparatively mild, to a time of peace. Anxious, however, for the
suppression of this trade, it was thought adviseable, in compliance with
a resolution of the House of Representatives, founded on an act of
Congress, to propose to the British Government an expedient, which
should be free from that objection, and more effectual for the object,
by making it piratical.... A convention to this effect was concluded and
signed, in London," on the 13th of March, 1824, "by plenipotentiaries
duly authorized by both Governments, to the ratification of which
certain obstacles have arisen, which are not yet entirely removed." [For
the removal of which, the documents relating to the negotiation are
submitted for the action of Congress]....

"In execution of the laws for the suppression of the slave trade, a
vessel has been occasionally sent from that squadron to the coast of
Africa, with orders to return thence by the usual track of the slave
ships, and to seize any of our vessels which might be engaged in that
trade. None have been found, and, it is believed, that none are thus
employed. It is well known, however, that the trade still exists under
other flags." _House Journal_, 18 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 11, 12, 19, 27, 241;
_House Reports_, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 70; Gales and Seaton, _Register
of Debates_, I. 625-8, and Appendix, p. 2 ff.


~1825, Feb. 21. United States of Colombia: Proposed Treaty.~

The President sends to the Senate a treaty with the United States of
Colombia drawn, as United States Minister Anderson said, similar to that
signed at London, with the alterations made by the Senate. March 9,
1825, the Senate rejects this treaty. _Amer. State Papers, Foreign_, V.
729-35.


~1825, Feb. 28. Congress (House): Proposed Resolution on Slave-Trade.~

Mr. Mercer laid on the table the following resolution:--

"_Resolved_, That the President of the United States be requested to
enter upon, and prosecute from time to time, such negotiations with the
several maritime powers of Europe and America, as he may deem expedient
for the effectual abolition of the slave trade, and its ultimate
denunciation, as piracy, under the law of nations, by the consent of the
civilized world." The House refused to consider the resolution. _House
Journal_, 18 Cong. 2 sess. p. 280; Gales and Seaton, _Register of
Debates_, I. 697, 736.


~1825, March 3. Congress (House): Proposed Resolution against Right of
Search.~

"Mr. Forsyth submitted the following resolution:

"_Resolved_, That while this House anxiously desires that the Slave
Trade should be, universally, denounced as Piracy, and, as such, should
be detected and punished under the law of nations, it considers that it
would be highly inexpedient to enter into engagements with any foreign
power, by which _all_ the merchant vessels of the United States would be
exposed to the inconveniences of any regulation of search, from which
any merchant vessels of that foreign power would be exempted."
Resolution laid on the table. _House Journal_, 18 Cong. 2 sess. pp.
308-9; Gales and Seaton, _Register of Debates_, I. 739.


~1825, Dec. 6. President Adams's Message.~

"The objects of the West India Squadron have been, to carry into
execution the laws for the suppression of the African Slave Trade: for
the protection of our commerce against vessels of piratical
character.... These objects, during the present year, have been
accomplished more effectually than at any former period. The African
Slave Trade has long been excluded from the use of our flag; and if some
few citizens of our country have continued to set the laws of the Union,
as well as those of nature and humanity, at defiance, by persevering in
that abominable traffic, it has been only by sheltering themselves under
the banners of other nations, less earnest for the total extinction of
the trade than ours." _House Journal_, 19 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 20, 96,
296-7, 305, 323, 329, 394-5, 399, 410, 414, 421, 451, 640.


~1826, Feb. 14. Congress (House): Proposition to Repeal Parts of Act of
1819.~

"Mr. Forsyth submitted the following resolutions, viz.:

1. "_Resolved_, That it is expedient to repeal so much of the act of the
3d March, 1819, entitled, 'An act in addition to the acts prohibiting
the slave trade,' as provides for the appointment of agents on the coast
of Africa.

2. "_Resolved_, That it is expedient so to modify the said act of the 3d
of March, 1819, as to release the United States from all obligation to
support the negroes already removed to the coast of Africa, and to
provide for such a disposition of those taken in slave ships who now are
in, or who may be, hereafter, brought into the United States, as shall
secure to them a fair opportunity of obtaining a comfortable
subsistence, without any aid from the public treasury." Read and laid on
the table. _Ibid._, p. 258.


~1826, March 14. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the support of the navy," etc.

"For the agency on the coast of Africa, for receiving the negroes,"
etc., $32,000. _Statutes at Large_, IV. 140, 141.


~1827, March 2. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the support of the Navy," etc.

"For the agency on the coast of Africa," etc., $56,710. _Ibid._, W. 206,
208.


~1827, March 11. Texas: Introduction of Slaves Prohibited.~

Constitution of the State of Coahuila and Texas. Preliminary
Provisions:--

Art. 13. "From and after the promulgation of the constitution in the
capital of each district, no one shall be born a slave in the state, and
after six months the introduction of slaves under any pretext shall not
be permitted." _Laws and Decrees of Coahuila and Texas_ (Houston, 1839),
p. 314.


~1827, Sept. 15. Texas: Decree against Slave-Trade.~

"The Congress of the State of Coahuila and Texas decrees as follows:"

Art. 1. All slaves to be registered.

Art. 2, 3. Births and deaths to be recorded.

Art. 4. "Those who introduce slaves, after the expiration of the term
specified in article 13 of the Constitution, shall be subject to the
penalties established by the general law of the 13th of July, 1824."
_Ibid._, pp. 78-9.


~1828, Feb. 25. Congress (House): Proposed Bill to Abolish African
Agency, etc.~

"Mr. McDuffie, from the Committee of Ways and Means, ... reported the
following bill:

"A bill to abolish the Agency of the United States on the Coast of
Africa, to provide other means of carrying into effect the laws
prohibiting the slave trade, and for other purposes." This bill was
amended so as to become the act of May 24, 1828 (see below). _House
Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348, p. 278.


~1828, May 24. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making an appropriation for the suppression of the slave trade."
_Statutes at Large_, IV. 302; _House Journal_, 20 Cong. 1 sess., House
Bill No. 190.


~1829, Jan. 28. Congress (House): Bill to Amend Act of 1807.~

The Committee on Commerce reported "a bill (No. 399) to amend an act,
entitled 'An act to prohibit the importation of slaves,'" etc. Referred
to Committee of the Whole. _House Journal_, 20 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 58, 84,
215. Cf. _Ibid._, 20 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 121, 135.


~1829, March 2. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making additional appropriations for the support of the navy,"
etc.

"For the reimbursement of the marshal of Florida for expenses incurred
in the case of certain Africans who were wrecked on the coast of the
United States, and for the expense of exporting them to Africa,"
$16,000. _Statutes at Large_, IV. 353, 354.


~1830, April 7. Congress (House): Resolution against Slave-Trade.~

Mr. Mercer reported the following resolution:--

"_Resolved_, That the President of the United States be requested to
consult and negotiate with all the Governments where Ministers of the
United States are, or shall be accredited, on the means of effecting an
entire and immediate abolition of the African slave trade; and
especially, on the expediency, with that view, of causing it to be
universally denounced as piratical." Referred to Committee of the Whole;
no further action recorded. _House Journal_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. p. 512.


~1830, April 7. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Act of March 3,
1819.~

Mr. Mercer, from the committee to which was referred the memorial of the
American Colonization Society, and also memorials, from the inhabitants
of Kentucky and Ohio, reported with a bill (No. 412) to amend "An act in
addition to the acts prohibiting the slave trade," passed March 3, 1819.
Read twice and referred to Committee of the Whole. _Ibid._


~1830, May 31. Congress (Statute): Appropriation.~

"An Act making a re-appropriation of a sum heretofore appropriated for
the suppression of the slave trade." _Statutes at Large_, IV. 425;
_Senate Journal_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 359, 360, 383; _House Journal_,
21 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 624, 808-11.


~1830. [Brazil: Prohibition of Slave-Trade.~

Slave-trade prohibited under severe penalties.]


~1831, 1833. [Great Britain and France: Treaty Granting Right of
Search.~

Convention between Great Britain and France granting a mutual limited
Right of Search on the East and West coasts of Africa, and on the coasts
of the West Indies and Brazil. _British and Foreign State Papers_,
1830-1, p. 641 ff; 1832-3, p. 286 ff.]


~1831, Feb. 16. Congress (House): Proposed Resolution on Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Mercer moved to suspend the rule of the House in regard to motions,
for the purpose of enabling himself to submit a resolution requesting
the Executive to enter into negotiations with the maritime Powers of
Europe, to induce them to enact laws declaring the African slave trade
piracy, and punishing it as such." The motion was lost. Gales and
Seaton, _Register of Debates_, VII. 726.


~1831, March 2. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the naval service," etc.

"For carrying into effect the acts for the suppression of the slave
trade," etc., $16,000. _Statutes at Large_, IV. 460, 462.


~1831, March 3. Congress (House): Resolution as to Treaties.~

"Mr. Mercer moved to suspend the rule to enable him to submit the
following resolution:

"_Resolved_, That the President of the United States be requested to
renew, and to prosecute from time to time, such negotiations with the
several maritime powers of Europe and America as he may deem expedient
for the effectual abolition of the African slave trade, and its ultimate
denunciation as piracy, under the laws of nations, by the consent of the
civilized world." The rule was suspended by a vote of 108 to 36, and the
resolution passed, 118 to 32. _House Journal_, 21 Cong. 2 sess. pp.
426-8.


~1833, Feb. 20. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the naval service," etc.

" ... for carrying into effect the acts for the suppression of the slave
trade," etc., $5,000. _Statutes at Large_, IV. 614, 615.


~1833, August. Great Britain and France: Proposed Treaty with the United
States.~

British and French ministers simultaneously invited the United States to
accede to the Convention just concluded between them for the suppression
of the slave-trade. The Secretary of State, Mr. M'Lane, deferred answer
until the meeting of Congress, and then postponed negotiations on
account of the irritable state of the country on the slave question.
Great Britain had proposed that "A reciprocal right of search ... be
conceded by the United States, limited as to place, and subject to
specified restrictions. It is to be employed only in repressing the
Slave Trade, and to be exercised under a written and specific authority,
conferred on the Commander of the visiting ship." In the act of
accession, "it will be necessary that the right of search should be
extended to the coasts of the United States," and Great Britain will in
turn extend it to the British West Indies. This proposal was finally
refused, March 24, 1834, chiefly, as stated, because of the extension of
the Right of Search to the coasts of the United States. This part was
waived by Great Britain, July 7, 1834. On Sept. 12 the French Minister
joined in urging accession. On Oct. 4, 1834, Forsyth states that the
determination has "been definitely formed, not to make the United States
a party to any Convention on the subject of the Slave Trade."
_Parliamentary Papers_, 1835, Vol. LI., _Slave Trade_, Class B., pp.
84-92.


~1833, Dec. 23. Georgia: Slave-Trade Acts Amended.~

"An Act to reform, amend, and consolidate the penal laws of the State of
Georgia."

13th Division. "Offences relative to Slaves":--

§ 1. "If any person or persons shall bring, import, or introduce into
this State, or aid or assist, or knowingly become concerned or
interested, in bringing, importing, or introducing into this State,
either by land or by water, or in any manner whatever, any slave or
slaves, each and every such person or persons so offending, shall be
deemed principals in law, and guilty of a high misdemeanor, and ... on
conviction, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred
dollars each, for each and every slave, ... and imprisonment and labor
in the penitentiary for any time not less than one year, nor longer than
four years." Residents, however, may bring slaves for their own use, but
must register and swear they are not for sale, hire, mortgage, etc.

§ 6. Penalty for knowingly receiving such slaves, $500. Slightly amended
Dec. 23, 1836, e.g., emigrants were allowed to hire slaves out, etc.;
amended Dec. 19, 1849, so as to allow importation of slaves from "any
other slave holding State of this Union." Prince, _Digest_, pp. 619,
653, 812; Cobb, _Digest_, II. 1018.


~1834, Jan. 24. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the naval service," etc.

"For carrying into effect the acts for the suppression of the slave
trade," etc., $5,000. _Statutes at Large_, IV. 670, 671.


~1836, March 17. Texas: African Slave-Trade Prohibited.~

Constitution of the Republic of Texas: General Provisions:--

§ 9. All persons of color who were slaves for life before coming to
Texas shall remain so. "Congress shall pass no laws to prohibit
emigrants from bringing their slaves into the republic with them, and
holding them by the same tenure by which such slaves were held in the
United States; ... the importation or admission of Africans or negroes
into this republic, excepting from the United States of America, is
forever prohibited, and declared to be piracy." _Laws of the Republic of
Texas_ (Houston, 1838), I. 19.


~1836, Dec. 21. Texas: Slave-Trade made Piracy.~

"An Act supplementary to an act, for the punishment of Crimes and
Misdemeanors."

§ 1. "_Be it enacted_ ..., That if any person or persons shall introduce
any African negro or negroes, contrary to the true intent and meaning of
the ninth section of the general provisions of the constitution, ...
except such as are from the United States of America, and had been held
as slaves therein, be considered guilty of piracy; and upon conviction
thereof, before any court having cognizance of the same, shall suffer
death, without the benefit of clergy."

§ 2. The introduction of Negroes from the United States of America,
except of those legally held as slaves there, shall be piracy. _Ibid._,
I. 197. Cf. _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 1 sess. No. 34, p. 42.


~1837, March 3. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the naval service," etc.

"For carrying into effect the acts for the suppression of the slave
trade," etc., $11,413.57. _Statutes at Large_, V. 155, 157.


~1838, March 19. Congress (Senate): Slave-Trade with Texas, etc.~

"Mr. Morris submitted the following motion for consideration:

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to
inquire whether the present laws of the United States, on the subject of
the slave trade, will prohibit that trade being carried on between
citizens of the United States and citizens of the Republic of Texas,
either by land or by sea; and whether it would be lawful in vessels
owned by citizens of that Republic, and not lawful in vessels owned by
citizens of this, or lawful in both, and by citizens of both countries;
and also whether a slave carried from the United States into a foreign
country, and brought back, on returning into the United States, is
considered a free person, or is liable to be sent back, if demanded, as
a slave, into that country from which he or she last came; and also
whether any additional legislation by Congress is necessary on any of
these subjects." March 20, the motion of Mr. Walker that this resolution
"lie on the table," was determined in the affirmative, 32 to 9. _Senate
Journal_, 25 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 297-8, 300.


~1839, Feb. 5. Congress (Senate): Bill to Amend Slave-Trade Acts.~

"Mr. Strange, on leave, and in pursuance of notice given, introduced a
bill to amend an act entitled an act to prohibit the importation of
slaves into any port in the jurisdiction of the United States; which was
read twice, and referred to the Committee on Commerce." March 1, the
Committee was discharged from further consideration of the bill.
_Congressional Globe_, 25 Cong. 3 sess. p. 172; _Senate Journal_, 25
Cong. 3 sess. pp. 200, 313.


~1839, Dec. 24. President Van Buren's Message.~

"It will be seen by the report of the Secretary of the navy respecting
the disposition of our ships of war, that it has been deemed necessary
to station a competent force on the coast of Africa, to prevent a
fraudulent use of our flag by foreigners.

"Recent experience has shown that the provisions in our existing laws
which relate to the sale and transfer of American vessels while abroad,
are extremely defective. Advantage has been taken of these defects to
give to vessels wholly belonging to foreigners, and navigating the
ocean, an apparent American ownership. This character has been so well
simulated as to afford them comparative security in prosecuting the
slave trade, a traffic emphatically denounced in our statutes, regarded
with abhorrence by our citizens, and of which the effectual suppression
is nowhere more sincerely desired than in the United States. These
circumstances make it proper to recommend to your early attention a
careful revision of these laws, so that ... the integrity and honor of
our flag may be carefully preserved." _House Journal_, 26 Cong. 1 sess.
pp. 117-8.


~1840, Jan. 3. Congress (Senate): Bill to Amend Act of 1807.~

"Agreeably to notice, Mr. Strange asked and obtained leave to bring in a
bill (Senate, No. 123) to amend an act entitled 'An act to prohibit the
importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of
the United States from and after the 1st day of January, in the year
1808,' approved the 2d day of March, 1807; which was read the first and
second times, by unanimous consent, and referred to the Committee on the
Judiciary." Jan. 8, it was reported without amendment; May 11, it was
considered, and, on motion by Mr. King, "_Ordered_, That it lie on the
table." _Senate Journal_, 26 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 73, 87, 363.


~1840, May 4. Congress (Senate): Bill on Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Davis, from the Committee on Commerce, reported a bill (Senate, No.
335) making further provision to prevent the abuse of the flag of the
United States, and the use of unauthorized papers in the foreign
slavetrade, and for other purposes." This passed the Senate, but was
dropped in the House. _Ibid._, pp. 356, 359, 440, 442; _House Journal_,
26 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 1138, 1228, 1257.


~1841, June 1. Congress (House): President Tyler's Message.~

"I shall also, at the proper season, invite your attention to the
statutory enactments for the suppression of the slave trade, which may
require to be rendered more efficient in their provisions. There is
reason to believe that the traffic is on the increase. Whether such
increase is to be ascribed to the abolition of slave labor in the
British possessions in our vicinity, and an attendant diminution in the
supply of those articles which enter into the general consumption of the
world, thereby augmenting the demand from other quarters, ... it were
needless to inquire. The highest considerations of public honor, as well
as the strongest promptings of humanity, require a resort to the most
vigorous efforts to suppress the trade." _House Journal_, 27 Cong. 1
sess. pp. 31, 184.


~1841, Dec. 7. President Tyler's Message.~

Though the United States is desirous to suppress the slave-trade, she
will not submit to interpolations into the maritime code at will by
other nations. This government has expressed its repugnance to the trade
by several laws. It is a matter for deliberation whether we will enter
upon treaties containing mutual stipulations upon the subject with other
governments. The United States will demand indemnity for all
depredations by Great Britain.

"I invite your attention to existing laws for the suppression of the
African slave trade, and recommend all such alterations as may give to
them greater force and efficacy. That the American flag is grossly
abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations is but too
probable. Congress has, not long since, had this subject under its
consideration, and its importance well justifies renewed and anxious
attention." _House Journal_, 27 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 14-5, 86, 113.


~1841, Dec. 20. [Great Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and France:
Quintuple Treaty.]~ _British and Foreign State Papers_, 1841-2, p. 269
ff.


~1842, Feb. 15. Right of Search: Cass's Protest.~

Cass writes to Webster, that, considering the fact that the signing of
the Quintuple Treaty would oblige the participants to exercise the Right
of Search denied by the United States, or to make a change in the
hitherto recognized law of nations, he, on his own responsibility,
addressed the following protest to the French Minister of Foreign
Affairs, M. Guizot:--

                                       "LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES,
                                            "PARIS, FEBRUARY 13, 1842.

"SIR: The recent signature of a treaty, having for its object
the suppression of the African slave trade, by five of the powers of
Europe, and to which France is a party, is a fact of such general
notoriety that it may be assumed as the basis of any diplomatic
representations which the subject may fairly require."

The United States is no party to this treaty. She denies the Right of
Visitation which England asserts. [Quotes from the presidential message
of Dec. 7, 1841.] This principle is asserted by the treaty.

" ... The moral effect which such a union of five great powers, two of
which are eminently maritime, but three of which have perhaps never had
a vessel engaged in that traffic, is calculated to produce upon the
United States, and upon other nations who, like them, may be indisposed
to these combined movements, though it may be regretted, yet furnishes
no just cause of complaint. But the subject assumes another aspect when
they are told by one of the parties that their vessels are to be
forcibly entered and examined, in order to carry into effect these
stipulations. Certainly the American Government does not believe that
the high powers, contracting parties to this treaty, have any wish to
compel the United States, by force, to adopt their measures to its
provisions, or to adopt its stipulations ...; and they will see with
pleasure the prompt disavowal made by yourself, sir, in the name of your
country, ... of any intentions of this nature. But were it otherwise,
... They would prepare themselves with apprehension, indeed, but without
dismay--with regret, but with firmness--for one of those desperate
struggles which have sometimes occurred in the history of the world."

If, as England says, these treaties cannot be executed without visiting
United States ships, then France must pursue the same course. It is
hoped, therefore, that his Majesty will, before signing this treaty,
carefully examine the pretensions of England and their compatibility
with the law of nations and the honor of the United States. _Senate
Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. II. No. 52, and IV. No. 223; 29 Cong. 1 sess.
VIII. No. 377, pp. 192-5.


~1842, Feb. 26. Mississippi: Resolutions on Creole Case.~

The following resolutions were referred to the Committee on Foreign
Affairs in the United States Congress, House of Representatives, May 10,
1842:

"Whereas, the right of search has never been yielded to Great Britain,"
and the brig Creole has not been surrendered by the British authorities,
etc., therefore,

§ 1. "_Be it resolved by the Legislature of the State of Mississippi_,
That ... the right of search cannot be conceded to Great Britain without
a manifest servile submission, unworthy a free nation....

§ 2. "_Resolved_, That any attempt to detain and search our vessels, by
British cruisers, should be held and esteemed an unjustifiable outrage
on the part of the Queen's Government; and that any such outrage, which
may have occurred since Lord Aberdeen's note to our envoy at the Court
of St. James, of date October thirteen, eighteen hundred and forty-one,
(if any,) may well be deemed, by our Government, just cause of war."

§ 3. "_Resolved_, That the Legislature of the State, in view of the late
murderous insurrection of the slaves on board the Creole, their
reception in a British port, the absolute connivance at their crimes,
manifest in the protection extended to them by the British authorities,
most solemnly declare their firm conviction that, if the conduct of
those authorities be submitted to, compounded for by the payment of
money, or in any other manner, or atoned for in any mode except by the
surrender of the actual criminals to the Federal Government, and the
delivery of the other identical slaves to their rightful owner or
owners, or his or their agents, the slaveholding States would have most
just cause to apprehend that the American flag is powerless to protect
American property; that the Federal Government is not sufficiently
energetic in the maintenance and preservation of their peculiar rights;
and that these rights, therefore, are in imminent danger."

§ 4. _Resolved_, That restitution should be demanded "at all hazards."
_House Doc._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 215.

~1842, March 21. Congress (House): Giddings's Resolutions.~

Mr. Giddings moved the following resolutions:--

§ 5. "_Resolved_, That when a ship belonging to the citizens of any
State of this Union leaves the waters and territory of such State, and
enters upon the high seas, the persons on board cease to be subject to
the slave laws of such State, and therefore are governed in their
relations to each other by, and are amenable to, the laws of the United
States."

§ 6. _Resolved_, That the slaves in the brig Creole are amenable only to
the laws of the United States.

§ 7. _Resolved_, That those slaves by resuming their natural liberty
violated no laws of the United States.

§ 8. _Resolved_, That all attempts to re-enslave them are
unconstitutional, etc.

Moved that these resolutions lie on the table; defeated, 53 to 125. Mr.
Giddings withdrew the resolutions. Moved to censure Mr. Giddings, and he
was finally censured. _House Journal_, 27 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 567-80.


~1842, May 10. Congress (House): Remonstrance of Mississippi against
Right of Search.~

"Mr. Gwin presented resolutions of the Legislature of the State of
Mississippi, against granting the right of search to Great Britain for
the purpose of suppressing the African slave trade; urging the
Government to demand of the British Government redress and restitution
in relation to the case of the brig Creole and the slaves on board."
Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. _House Journal_, 27 Cong.
2 sess. p. 800.


~1842, Aug. 4. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"An Act making appropriations for the naval service," etc.

"For carrying into effect the acts for the suppression of the slave
trade," etc. $10,543.42. _Statutes at Large_, V. 500, 501.


~1842, Nov. 10. Joint-Cruising Treaty with Great Britain.~

"Treaty to settle and define boundaries; for the final suppression of
the African slave-trade; and for the giving up of criminals fugitive
from justice. Concluded August 9, 1842; ratifications exchanged at
London October 13, 1842; proclaimed November 10, 1842." Articles VIII.,
and IX. Ratified by the Senate by a vote of 39 to 9, after several
unsuccessful attempts to amend it. _U.S. Treaties and Conventions_
(1889), pp. 436-7; _Senate Exec. Journal_, VI. 118-32.


~1842, Dec. 7. President Tyler's Message.~

The treaty of Ghent binds the United States and Great Britain to the
suppression of the slave-trade. The Right of Search was refused by the
United States, and our Minister in France for that reason protested
against the Quintuple Treaty; his conduct had the approval of the
administration. On this account the eighth article was inserted, causing
each government to keep a flotilla in African waters to enforce the
laws. If this should be done by all the powers, the trade would be swept
from the ocean. _House Journal_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 16-7.


~1843, Feb. 22. Congress (Senate): Appropriation Opposed.~

Motion by Mr. Benton, during debate on naval appropriations, to strike
out appropriation "for the support of Africans recaptured on the coast
of Africa or elsewhere, and returned to Africa by the armed vessels of
the United States, $5,000." Lost; similar proposition by Bagby, lost.
Proposition to strike out appropriation for squadron, lost. March 3,
bill becomes a law, with appropriation for Africans, but without that
for squadron. _Congressional Globe_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 328, 331-6;
_Statutes at Large_, V. 615.


~1845, Feb. 20. President Tyler's Special Message to Congress.~

Message on violations of Brazilian slave-trade laws by Americans. _House
Journal_, 28 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 425, 463; _House Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess.
IV. No. 148. Cf. _Ibid._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 43.


~1846, Aug. 10. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

"For carrying into effect the acts for the suppression of the slave
trade, including the support of recaptured Africans, and their removal
to their country, twenty-five thousand dollars." _Statutes at Large_,
IX. 96.


~1849, Dec. 4. President Taylor's Message.~

"Your attention is earnestly invited to an amendment of our existing
laws relating to the African slave-trade, with a view to the effectual
suppression of that barbarous traffic. It is not to be denied that this
trade is still, in part, carried on by means of vessels built in the
United States, and owned or navigated by some of our citizens." _House
Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 5, pp. 7-8.


~1850, Aug. 1. Congress (House): Bill for War Steamers.~

"A bill (House, No. 367) to establish a line of war steamers to the
coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave trade and the promotion
of commerce and colonization." Read twice, and referred to Committee of
the Whole. _House Journal_, 31 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 1022, 1158, 1217.


~1850, Dec. 16. Congress (House): Treaty of Washington.~

"Mr. Burt, by unanimous consent, introduced a joint resolution (No. 28)
'to terminate the eighth article of the treaty between the United
States and Great Britain concluded at Washington the ninth day of
August, 1842.'" Read twice, and referred to the Committee on Naval
Affairs. _Ibid._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. p. 64.


~1851, Jan. 22. Congress (Senate): Resolution on Sea Letters.~

"The following resolution, submitted by Mr. Clay the 20th instant, came
up for consideration:--

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on Commerce be instructed to inquire
into the expediency of making more effectual provision by law to prevent
the employment of American vessels and American seamen in the African
slave trade, and especially as to the expediency of granting sea letters
or other evidence of national character to American vessels clearing out
of the ports of the empire of Brazil for the western coast of Africa."
Agreed to. _Congressional Globe_, 31 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 304-9; _Senate
Journal_, 31 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 95, 102-3.


~1851, Feb. 19. Congress (Senate): Bill on Slave-Trade.~

"A bill (Senate, No. 472) concerning the intercourse and trade of
vessels of the United States with certain places on the eastern and
western coasts of Africa, and for other purposes." Read once. _Senate
Journal_, 31 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 42, 45, 84, 94, 159, 193-4;
_Congressional Globe_, 31 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 246-7.


~1851, Dec. 3. Congress (House): Bill to Amend Act of 1807.~

Mr. Giddings gave notice of a bill to repeal §§ 9 and 10 of the act to
prohibit the importation of slaves, etc. from and after Jan. 1, 1808.
_House Journal_, 32 Cong. 1 sess. p. 42. Cf. _Ibid._, 33 Cong. 1 sess.
p. 147.


~1852, Feb. 5. Alabama: Illegal Importations.~

By code approved on this date:--

§§ 2058-2062. If slaves have been imported contrary to law, they are to
be sold, and one fourth paid to the agent or informer and the residue to
the treasury. An agent is to be appointed to take charge of such
slaves, who is to give bond. Pending controversy, he may hire the slaves
out. Ormond, _Code of Alabama_, pp. 392-3.


~1853, March 3. Congress (Senate): Appropriation Proposed.~

A bill making appropriations for the naval service for the year ending
June 30, 1854. Mr. Underwood offered the following amendment:--

"For executing the provisions of the act approved 3d of March, 1819,
entitled 'An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave trade,'
$20,000." Amendment agreed to, and bill passed. It appears, however, to
have been subsequently amended in the House, and the appropriation does
not stand in the final act. _Congressional Globe_, 32 Cong. 2 sess. p.
1072; _Statutes at Large_, X. 214.


~1854, May 22. Congress (Senate): West India Slave-Trade.~

Mr. Clayton presented the following resolution, which was unanimously
agreed to:--

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on Foreign Relations be instructed to
inquire into the expediency of providing by law for such restrictions on
the power of American consuls residing in the Spanish West India islands
to issue sea letters on the transfer of American vessels in those
islands, as will prevent the abuse of the American flag in protecting
persons engaged in the African slave trade." June 26, 1854, this
committee reported "a bill (Senate, No. 416) for the more effectual
suppression of the slave-trade in American built vessels." Passed
Senate, postponed in House. _Senate Journal_, 33 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 404,
457-8, 472-3, 476; _House Journal_, 33 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 1093, 1332-3;
_Congressional Globe_, 33 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 1257-61, 1511-3, 1591-3,
2139.


~1854, May 29. Congress (Senate): Treaty of Washington.~

_Resolved_, "that, in the opinion of the Senate, it is expedient, and in
conformity with the interests and sound policy of the United States,
that the eighth article of the treaty between this government and Great
Britain, of the 9th of August, 1842, should be abrogated." Introduced by
Slidell, and favorably reported from Committee on Foreign Relations in
Executive Session, June 13, 1854. _Senate Journal_, 34 Cong. 1-2 sess.
pp. 396, 695-8; _Senate Reports_, 34 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 195.


~1854, June 21. Congress (Senate): Bill Regulating Navigation.~

"Mr. Seward asked and obtained leave to bring in a bill (Senate, No.
407) to regulate navigation to the coast of Africa in vessels owned by
citizens of the United States, in certain cases; which was read and
passed to a second reading." June 22, ordered to be printed. _Senate
Journal_, 33 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 448, 451; _Congressional Globe_, 33 Cong.
1 sess. pp. 1456, 1461, 1472.


~1854, June 26. Congress (Senate): Bill to Suppress Slave-Trade.~

"A bill for the more effectual suppression of the slave trade in
American built vessels." See references to May 22, 1854, above.


~1856, June 23. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Act of 1818.~

Notice given of a bill to amend the Act of April 20, 1818. _House
Journal_, 34 Cong. 1 sess. II. 1101.


~1856, Aug. 18. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the Act of March 3, 1819, and subsequent acts, $8,000.
_Statutes at Large_, XI. 90.


~1856, Nov. 24. South Carolina: Governor's Message.~

Governor Adams, in his annual message to the legislature, said:--

"It is apprehended that the opening of this trade [_i.e._, the
slave-trade] will lessen the value of slaves, and ultimately destroy the
institution. It is a sufficient answer to point to the fact, that
unrestricted immigration has not diminished the value of labor in the
Northwestern section of the confederacy. The cry there is, want of
labor, notwithstanding capital has the pauperism of the old world to
press into its grinding service. If we cannot supply the demand for
slave labor, then we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor
we do not want, and which is, from the very nature of things,
antagonistic to our institutions. It is much better that our drays
should be driven by slaves--that our factories should be worked by
slaves--that our hotels should be served by slaves--that our locomotives
should be manned by slaves, than that we should be exposed to the
introduction, from any quarter, of a population alien to us by birth,
training, and education, and which, in the process of time, must lead to
that conflict between capital and labor, 'which makes it so difficult to
maintain free institutions in all wealthy and highly civilized nations
where such institutions as ours do not exist.' In all slaveholding
States, true policy dictates that the superior race should direct, and
the inferior perform all menial service. Competition between the white
and black man for this service, may not disturb Northern sensibility,
but it does not exactly suit our latitude." _South Carolina House
Journal_, 1856, p. 36; Cluskey, _Political Text-Book_, 14 edition, p.
585.


~1856, Dec. 15. Congress (House): Reopening of Slave-Trade.~

"_Resolved_, That this House of Representatives regards all suggestions
and propositions of every kind, by whomsoever made, for a revival of the
African slave trade, as shocking to the moral sentiment of the
enlightened portion of mankind; and that any action on the part of
Congress conniving at or legalizing that horrid and inhuman traffic
would justly subject the government and citizens of the United States to
the reproach and execration of all civilized and Christian people
throughout the world." Offered by Mr. Etheridge; agreed to, 152 to 57.
_House Journal_, 34 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 105-11; _Congressional Globe_, 34
Cong. 3 sess. pp. 123-5, and Appendix, pp. 364-70.


~1856, Dec. 15. Congress (House): Reopening of Slave-Trade.~

"_Resolved_, That it is inexpedient to repeal the laws prohibiting the
African slave trade." Offered by Mr. Orr; not voted upon. _Congressional
Globe_, 34 Cong. 3 sess. p. 123.


~1856, Dec. 15. Congress (House): Reopening of Slave-Trade.~

"_Resolved_, That it is inexpedient, unwise, and contrary to the settled
policy of the United States, to repeal the laws prohibiting the African
slave trade." Offered by Mr. Orr; agreed to, 183 to 8. _House Journal_,
34 Cong. 3 sess. pp. 111-3; _Congressional Globe_, 34 Cong. 3 sess. pp.
125-6.


~1856, Dec. 15. Congress (House): Reopening of Slave-Trade.~

"_Resolved_, That the House of Representatives, expressing, as they
believe, public opinion both North and South, are utterly opposed to the
reopening of the slave trade." Offered by Mr. Boyce; not voted upon.
_Congressional Globe_, 34 Cong. 3 sess. p. 125.


~1857. South Carolina: Report of Legislative Committee.~

Special committee of seven on the slave-trade clause in the Governor's
message report: majority report of six members, favoring the reopening
of the African slave-trade; minority report of Pettigrew, opposing it.
_Report of the Special Committee_, etc., published in 1857.


~1857, March 3. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the Act of March 3, 1819, and subsequent acts, $8,000.
_Statutes at Large_, XI. 227; _House Journal_, 34 Cong. 3 sess. p. 397.
Cf. _House Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 3 sess. IX. No. 70.


~1858, March (?). Louisiana: Bill to Import Africans.~

Passed House; lost in Senate by two votes. Cf. _Congressional Globe_, 35
Cong. 1 sess. p. 1362.


~1858, Dec. 6. President Buchanan's Message.~

"The truth is, that Cuba in its existing colonial condition, is a
constant source of injury and annoyance to the American people. It is
the only spot in the civilized world where the African slave trade is
tolerated; and we are bound by treaty with Great Britain to maintain a
naval force on the coast of Africa, at much expense both of life and
treasure, solely for the purpose of arresting slavers bound to that
island. The late serious difficulties between the United States and
Great Britain respecting the right of search, now so happily terminated,
could never have arisen if Cuba had not afforded a market for slaves. As
long as this market shall remain open, there can be no hope for the
civilization of benighted Africa....

"It has been made known to the world by my predecessors that the United
States have, on several occasions, endeavored to acquire Cuba from Spain
by honorable negotiation. If this were accomplished, the last relic of
the African slave trade would instantly disappear. We would not, if we
could, acquire Cuba in any other manner. This is due to our national
character.... This course we shall ever pursue, unless circumstances
should occur, which we do not now anticipate, rendering a departure from
it clearly justifiable, under the imperative and overruling law of
self-preservation." _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 2, pp.
14-5. See also _Ibid._, pp. 31-3.


~1858, Dec. 23. Congress (House): Resolution on Slave-Trade.~

On motion of Mr. Farnsworth,

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on Naval Affairs be requested to inquire
and report to this House if any, and what, further legislation is
necessary on the part of the United States to fully carry out and
perform the stipulations contained in the eighth article of the treaty
with Great Britain (known as the 'Ashburton treaty') for the suppression
of the slave trade." _House Journal_, 35 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 115-6.


~1859, Jan. 5. Congress (Senate): Resolution on Slave-Trade.~

On motion of Mr. Seward, Dec. 21, 1858,

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on the Judiciary inquire whether any
amendments to existing laws ought to be made for the suppression of the
African slave trade." _Senate Journal_, 35 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 80, 108,
115.


~1859, Jan. 13. Congress (Senate): Bill on Slave-Trade.~

Mr. Seward introduced "a bill (Senate, No. 510) in addition to the acts
which prohibit the slave trade." Referred to committee, reported, and
dropped. _Ibid._, pp. 134, 321.


~1859, Jan. 31. Congress (House): Reopening of Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Kilgore moved that the rules be suspended, so as to enable him to
submit the following preamble and resolutions, viz:

"Whereas the laws prohibiting the African slave trade have become a
topic of discussion with newspaper writers and political agitators, many
of them boldly denouncing these laws as unwise in policy and disgraceful
in their provisions, and insisting on the justice and propriety of their
repeal, and the revival of the odious traffic in African slaves; and
whereas recent demonstrations afford strong reasons to apprehend that
said laws are to be set at defiance, and their violation openly
countenanced and encouraged by a portion of the citizens of some of the
States of this Union; and whereas it is proper in view of said facts
that the sentiments of the people's representatives in Congress should
be made public in relation thereto: Therefore--

"_Resolved_, That while we recognize no right on the part of the federal
government, or any other law-making power, save that of the States
wherein it exists, to interfere with or disturb the institution of
domestic slavery where it is established or protected by State
legislation, we do hold that Congress has power to prohibit the foreign
traffic, and that no legislation can be too thorough in its measures,
nor can any penalty known to the catalogue of modern punishment for
crime be too severe against a traffic so inhuman and unchristian.

"_Resolved_, That the laws in force against said traffic are founded
upon the broadest principles of philanthropy, religion, and humanity;
that they should remain unchanged, except so far as legislation may be
needed to render them more efficient; that they should be faithfully and
promptly executed by our government, and respected by all good citizens.

"_Resolved_, That the Executive should be sustained and commended for
any proper efforts whenever and wherever made to enforce said laws, and
to bring to speedy punishment the wicked violators thereof, and all
their aiders and abettors."

Failed of the two-thirds vote necessary to suspend the rules--the vote
being 115 to 84--and was dropped. _House Journal_, 35 Cong. 2 sess. pp.
298-9.


~1859, March 3. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the Act of March 3, 1819, and subsequent acts, and to pay
expenses already incurred, $75,000. _Statutes at Large_, XI. 404.


~1859, Dec. 19. President Buchanan's Message.~

"All lawful means at my command have been employed, and shall continue
to be employed, to execute the laws against the African slave trade.
After a most careful and rigorous examination of our coasts, and a
thorough investigation of the subject, we have not been able to discover
that any slaves have been imported into the United States except the
cargo by the Wanderer, numbering between three and four hundred. Those
engaged in this unlawful enterprise have been rigorously prosecuted, but
not with as much success as their crimes have deserved. A number of them
are still under prosecution. [Here follows a history of our slave-trade
legislation.]

"These acts of Congress, it is believed, have, with very rare and
insignificant exceptions, accomplished their purpose. For a period of
more than half a century there has been no perceptible addition to the
number of our domestic slaves.... Reopen the trade, and it would be
difficult to determine whether the effect would be more deleterious on
the interests of the master, or on those of the native born slave, ..."
_Senate Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 5-8.


~1860, March 20. Congress (Senate): Proposed Resolution.~

"Mr. Wilson submitted the following resolution; which was considered, by
unanimous consent, and agreed to:--

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to
inquire into the expediency of so amending the laws of the United States
in relation to the suppression of the African slave trade as to provide
a penalty of imprisonment for life for a participation in such trade,
instead of the penalty of forfeiture of life, as now provided; and also
an amendment of such laws as will include in the punishment for said
offense all persons who fit out or are in any way connected with or
interested in fitting out expeditions or vessels for the purpose of
engaging in such slave trade." _Senate Journal_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. p.
274.


~1860, March 20. Congress (Senate): Right of Search.~

"Mr. Wilson asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in
a joint resolution (Senate, No. 20) to secure the right of search on the
coast of Africa, for the more effectual suppression of the African slave
trade." Read twice, and referred to Committee on Foreign Relations.
_Ibid._


~1860, March 20. Congress (Senate): Steam Vessels for Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Wilson asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in
a bill (Senate, No. 296) for the construction of five steam screw
sloops-of-war, for service on the African coast." Read twice, and
referred to Committee on Naval Affairs; May 23, reported with an
amendment. _Ibid._, pp. 274, 494-5.


~1860 March 26. Congress (House): Proposed Resolutions.~

"Mr. Morse submitted ... the following resolutions; which were read and
committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union,
viz:

"_Resolved_, That for the more effectual suppression of the African
slave trade the treaty of 1842 ..., requiring each country to keep
_eighty_ guns on the coast of Africa for that purpose, should be so
changed as to require a specified and sufficient number of small
steamers and fast sailing brigs or schooners to be kept on said
coast....

"_Resolved_, That as the African slave trade appears to be rapidly
increasing, some effective mode of identifying the nationality of a
vessel on the coast of Africa suspected of being in the slave trade or
of wearing false colors should be immediately adopted and carried into
effect by the leading maritime nations of the earth; and that the
government of the United States has thus far, by refusing to aid in
establishing such a system, shown a strange neglect of one of the best
means of suppressing said trade.

"_Resolved_, That the African slave trade is against the moral sentiment
of mankind and a crime against human nature; and that as the most highly
civilized nations have made it a criminal offence or piracy under their
own municipal laws, it ought at once and without hesitation to be
declared a crime by the code of international law; and that ... the
President be requested to open negotiations on this subject with the
leading powers of Europe." ... _House Journal_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. I.
588-9.


~1860, April 16. Congress (Senate): Bill on Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Wilson asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in
a bill (Senate, No. 408) for the more effectual suppression of the slave
trade." Bill read twice, and ordered to lie on the table; May 21,
referred to Committee on the Judiciary, and printed. _Senate Journal_,
36 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 394, 485; _Congressional Globe_, 36 Cong. 1 sess.
pp. 1721, 2207-11.


~1860, May 21. Congress (House): Buyers of Imported Negroes.~

"Mr. Wells submitted the following resolution, and debate arising
thereon, it lies over under the rule, viz:

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to report
forthwith a bill providing that any person purchasing any negro or other
person imported into this country in violation of the laws for
suppressing the slave trade, shall not by reason of said purchase
acquire any title to said negro or person; and where such purchase is
made with a knowledge that such negro or other person has been so
imported, shall forfeit not less than one thousand dollars, and be
punished by imprisonment for a term not less than six months." _House
Journal_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. II. 880.


~1860, May 26. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the Act of March 3, 1819, and subsequent acts, $40,000.
_Statutes at Large_, XII. 21.


~1860, June 16. United States Statute: Additional Act to Act of 1819.~

"An Act to amend an Act entitled 'An Act in addition to the Acts
Prohibiting the Slave Trade.'" _Ibid._, XII. 40-1; _Senate Journal_, 36
Cong. 1 sess., Senate Bill No. 464.


~1860, July 11. Great Britain: Proposed Co-operation.~

Lord John Russell suggested for the suppression of the trade:--

"1st. A systematic plan of cruising on the coast of Cuba by the vessels
of Great Britain, Spain, and the United States.

"2d. Laws of registration and inspection in the Island of Cuba, by
which the employment of slaves, imported contrary to law, might be
detected by the Spanish authorities.

"3d. A plan of emigration from China, regulated by the agents of
European nations, in conjunction with the Chinese authorities."
President Buchanan refused to co-operate on this plan. _House Exec.
Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 7, pp. 441-3, 446-8.


~1860, Dec. 3. President Buchanan's Message.~

"It is with great satisfaction I communicate the fact that since the
date of my last annual message not a single slave has been imported into
the United States in violation of the laws prohibiting the African slave
trade. This statement is founded upon a thorough examination and
investigation of the subject. Indeed, the spirit which prevailed some
time since among a portion of our fellow-citizens in favor of this trade
seems to have entirely subsided." _Senate Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess.
I. No. 1, p. 24.


~1860, Dec. 12. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Constitution.~

Mr. John Cochrane's resolution:--

"The migration or importation of slaves into the United States or any of
the Territories thereof, from any foreign country, is hereby
prohibited." _House Journal_, 36 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 61-2; _Congressional
Globe_, 36 Cong. 2 sess. p. 77.


~1860, Dec. 24. Congress (Senate): Bill on Slave-Trade.~

"Mr. Wilson asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in
a bill (Senate, No. 529) for the more effectual suppression of the slave
trade." Read twice, and referred to Committee on the Judiciary; not
mentioned again. _Senate Journal_, 36 Cong. 2 sess. p. 62;
_Congressional Globe_, 36 Cong. 2 sess. p. 182.


~1861, Jan. 7. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Constitution.~

Mr. Etheridge's resolution:--

§ 5. "The migration or importation of persons held to service or labor
for life, or a term of years, into any of the States, or the Territories
belonging to the United States, is perpetually prohibited; and Congress
shall pass all laws necessary to make said prohibition effective."
_Congressional Globe_, 36 Cong. 2 sess. p. 279.


~1861, Jan. 23. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Constitution.~

Resolution of Mr. Morris of Pennsylvania:--"Neither Congress nor a
Territorial Legislature shall make any law respecting slavery or
involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime; but Congress
may pass laws for the suppression of the African slave trade, and the
rendition of fugitives from service or labor in the States." Mr. Morris
asked to have it printed, that he might at the proper time move it as an
amendment to the report of the select committee of thirty-three. It was
ordered to be printed. _Ibid._, p. 527.


~1861, Feb. 1. Congress (House): Proposition to Amend Constitution.~

Resolution of Mr. Kellogg of Illinois:--

§ 16. "The migration or importation of persons held to service or
involuntary servitude into any State, Territory, or place within the
United States, from any place or country beyond the limits of the United
States or Territories thereof, is forever prohibited." Considered Feb.
27, 1861, and lost. _Ibid._, pp. 690, 1243, 1259-60.


~1861, Feb. 8. Confederate States of America: Importation Prohibited.~

Constitution for the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of
America, Article I. Section 7:--

"1. The importation of African negroes from any foreign country other
than the slave-holding States of the United States, is hereby forbidden;
and Congress are required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent
the same.

"2. The Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of
slaves from any State not a member of this Confederacy." March 11, 1861,
this article was placed in the permanent Constitution. The first line
was changed so as to read "negroes of the African race." _C.S.A.
Statutes at Large, 1861-2_, pp. 3, 15.


~1861, Feb. 9. Confederate States of America: Statutory Prohibition.~

"_Be it enacted by the Confederate States of America in Congress
assembled_, That all the laws of the United States of America in force
and in use in the Confederate States of America on the first day of
November last, and not inconsistent with the Constitution of the
Confederate States, be and the same are hereby continued in force until
altered or repealed by the Congress." _Ibid._, p. 27.


~1861, Feb. 19. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To supply deficiencies in the fund hitherto appropriated to carry out
the Act of March 3, 1819, and subsequent acts, $900,000. _Statutes at
Large_, XII. 132.


~1861, March 2. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the Act of March 3, 1819, and subsequent acts, and to
provide compensation for district attorneys and marshals, $900,000.
_Ibid._, XII. 218-9.


~1861, Dec. 3. President Lincoln's Message.~

"The execution of the laws for the suppression of the African slave
trade has been confided to the Department of the Interior. It is a
subject of gratulation that the efforts which have been made for the
suppression of this inhuman traffic have been recently attended with
unusual success. Five vessels being fitted out for the slave trade have
been seized and condemned. Two mates of vessels engaged in the trade,
and one person in equipping a vessel as a slaver, have been convicted
and subjected to the penalty of fine and imprisonment, and one captain,
taken with a cargo of Africans on board his vessel, has been convicted
of the highest grade of offence under our laws, the punishment of which
is death." _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, p. 13.


~1862, Jan. 27. Congress (Senate): Bill on Slave-Trade.~

"Agreeably to notice Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, asked and obtained
leave to bring in a bill (Senate, No. 173), for the more effectual
suppression of the slave trade." Read twice, and referred to Committee
on the Judiciary; Feb. 11, 1863, reported adversely, and postponed
indefinitely. _Senate Journal_, 37 Cong. 2 sess. p. 143; 37 Cong. 3
sess. pp. 231-2.


~1862, March 14. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

For compensation to United States marshals, district attorneys, etc.,
for services in the suppression of the slave-trade, so much of the
appropriation of March 2, 1861, as may be expedient and proper, not
exceeding in all $10,000. _Statutes at Large_, XII. 368-9.


~1862, March 25. United States Statute: Prize Law.~

"An Act to facilitate Judicial Proceedings in Adjudications upon
Captured Property, and for the better Administration of the Law of
Prize." Applied to captures under the slave-trade law. _Ibid._, XII.
374-5; _Congressional Globe_, 37 Cong. 2 sess., Appendix, pp. 346-7.


~1862, June 7. Great Britain: Treaty of 1862.~

"Treaty for the suppression of the African slave trade. Concluded at
Washington April 7, 1862; ratifications exchanged at London May 20,
1862; proclaimed June 7, 1862." Ratified unanimously by the Senate.
_U.S. Treaties and Conventions_ (1889), pp. 454-66. See also _Senate
Exec. Journal_, XII. pp. 230, 231, 240, 254, 391, 400, 403.


~1862, July 11. United States Statute: Treaty of 1862 Carried into
Effect.~

"An Act to carry into Effect the Treaty between the United States and
her Britannic Majesty for the Suppression of the African Slave-Trade."
_Statutes at Large_, XII. 531; _Senate Journal_ and _House Journal_,
37 Cong. 2 sess., Senate Bill No. 352.


~1862, July 17. United States Statute: Former Acts Amended.~

"An Act to amend an Act entitled 'An Act to amend an Act entitled "An
Act in Addition to the Acts prohibiting the Slave Trade."'" _Statutes at
Large_, XII. 592-3; _Senate Journal_ and _House Journal_, 37 Cong. 2
sess., Senate Bill No. 385.


~1863, Feb. 4. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the treaty with Great Britain, proclaimed July 11, 1862,
$17,000. _Statutes at Large_, XII. 639.


~1863, March 3. Congress: Joint Resolution.~

"Joint Resolution respecting the Compensation of the Judges and so
forth, under the Treaty with Great Britain and other Persons employed in
the Suppression of the Slave Trade." _Statutes at Large_, XII. 829.


~1863, April 22. Great Britain: Treaty of 1862 Amended.~

"Additional article to the treaty for the suppression of the African
slave trade of April 7, 1862." Concluded February 17, 1863;
ratifications exchanged at London April 1, 1863; proclaimed April 22,
1863.

Right of Search extended. _U.S. Treaties and Conventions_ (1889), pp.
466-7.


~1863, Dec. 17. Congress (House): Resolution on Coastwise Slave-Trade.~

Mr. Julian introduced a bill to repeal portions of the Act of March 2,
1807, relative to the coastwise slave-trade. Read twice, and referred to
Committee on the Judiciary. _Congressional Globe_, 38 Cong. 1 sess. p.
46.


~1864, July 2. United States Statute: Coastwise Slave-Trade Prohibited
Forever.~

§ 9 of Appropriation Act repeals §§ 8 and 9 of Act of 1807. _Statutes at
Large_, XIII. 353.


~1864, Dec. 7. Great Britain: International Proposition.~

"The crime of trading in human beings has been for many years branded by
the reprobation of all civilized nations. Still the atrocious traffic
subsists, and many persons flourish on the gains they have derived from
that polluted source.

"Her Majesty's government, contemplating, on the one hand, with
satisfaction the unanimous abhorrence which the crime inspires, and, on
the other hand, with pain and disgust the slave-trading speculations
which still subist [_sic_], have come to the conclusion that no measure
would be so effectual to put a stop to these wicked acts as the
punishment of all persons who can be proved to be guilty of carrying
slaves across the sea. Her Majesty's government, therefore, invite the
government of the United States to consider whether it would not be
practicable, honorable, and humane--

"1st. To make a general declaration, that the governments who are
parties to it denounce the slave trade as piracy.

"2d. That the aforesaid governments should propose to their legislatures
to affix the penalties of piracy already existing in their
laws--provided, only, that the penalty in this case be that of death--to
all persons, being subjects or citizens of one of the contracting
powers, who shall be convicted in a court which takes cognizance of
piracy, of being concerned in carrying human beings across the sea for
the purpose of sale, or for the purpose of serving as slaves, in any
country or colony in the world." Signed,
                                                        "RUSSELL."

Similar letters were addressed to France, Spain, Portugal, Austria,
Prussia, Italy, Netherlands, and Russia. _Diplomatic Correspondence_,
1865, pt. ii. pp. 4, 58-9, etc.


~1865, Jan. 24. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the treaty with Great Britain, proclaimed July 11, 1862,
$17,000. _Statutes at Large_, XIII. 424.


~1866, April 7. United States Statute: Compensation to Marshals, etc.~

For additional compensation to United States marshals, district
attorneys, etc., for services in the suppression of the slave-trade, so
much of the appropriation of March 2, 1861, as may be expedient and
proper, not exceeding in all $10,000; and also so much as may be
necessary to pay the salaries of judges and the expenses of mixed
courts. _Ibid._, XIV. 23.


~1866, July 25. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the treaty with Great Britain, proclaimed July 11, 1862,
$17,000. _Ibid._, XIV. 226.


~1867, Feb. 28. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the treaty with Great Britain, proclaimed July 11, 1862,
$17,000. _Ibid._, XIV. 414-5.


~1868, March 30. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the treaty with Great Britain, proclaimed July 11, 1862,
$12,500. _Ibid._, XV. 58.


~1869, Jan. 6. Congress (House): Abrogation of Treaty of 1862.~

Mr. Kelsey asked unanimous consent to introduce the following
resolution:--

"Whereas the slave trade has been practically suppressed; and whereas by
our treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the slave trade
large appropriations are annually required to carry out the provisions
thereof: Therefore,

"_Resolved_, That the Committee on Foreign Affairs are hereby instructed
to inquire into the expediency of taking proper steps to secure the
abrogation or modification of the treaty with Great Britain for the
suppression of the slave trade." Mr. Arnell objected. _Congressional
Globe_, 40 Cong. 3 sess. p. 224.


~1869, March 3. United States Statute: Appropriation.~

To carry out the treaty with Great Britain, proclaimed July 11, 1862,
$12,500; provided that the salaries of judges be paid only on condition
that they reside where the courts are held, and that Great Britain be
asked to consent to abolish mixed courts. _Statutes at Large_, XV. 321.


~1870, April 22. Congress (Senate): Bill to Repeal Act of 1803.~

Senate Bill No. 251, to repeal an act entitled "An act to prevent the
importation of certain persons into certain States where by the laws
thereof their admission is prohibited." Mr. Sumner said that the bill
had passed the Senate once, and that he hoped it would now pass. Passed;
title amended by adding "approved February 28, 1803;" June 29, bill
passed over in House; July 14, consideration again postponed on Mr.
Woodward's objection. _Congressional Globe_, 41 Cong. 2 sess. pp. 2894,
2932, 4953, 5594.


~1870, Sept. 16. Great Britain: Additional Treaty.~

"Additional convention to the treaty of April 7, 1862, respecting the
African slave trade." Concluded June 3, 1870; ratifications exchanged at
London August 10, 1870; proclaimed September 16, 1870. _U.S. Treaties
and Conventions_ (1889), pp. 472-6.


~1871, Dec. 11. Congress (House): Bill on Slave-Trade.~

On the call of States, Mr. Banks introduced "a bill (House, No. 490) to
carry into effect article thirteen of the Constitution of the United
States, and to prohibit the owning or dealing in slaves by American
citizens in foreign countries." _House Journal_, 42 Cong. 2 sess. p.
48.

                    *       *       *       *       *




APPENDIX C.

TYPICAL CASES OF VESSELS ENGAGED IN THE AMERICAN SLAVE-TRADE. 1619-1864.

    This chronological list of certain typical American slavers is
    not intended to catalogue all known cases, but is designed
    merely to illustrate, by a few selected examples, the character
    of the licit and the illicit traffic to the United States.


~1619.~ ----. Dutch man-of-war, imports twenty Negroes into Virginia,
the first slaves brought to the continent. Smith, _Generall Historie of
Virginia_ (1626 and 1632), p. 126.


~1645.~ ~Rainbowe,~ under Captain Smith, captures and imports African
slaves into Massachusetts. The slaves were forfeited and returned.
_Massachusetts Colonial Records_, II. 115, 129, 136, 168, 176; III. 13,
46, 49, 58, 84.


~1655.~ ~Witte paert,~ first vessel to import slaves into New York.
O'Callaghan, _Laws of New Netherland_ (ed. 1868), p. 191, note.


~1736, Oct.~ ----. Rhode Island slaver, under Capt. John Griffen.
_American Historical Record_, I. 312.


~1746.~ ----. Spanish vessel, with certain free Negroes, captured by
Captains John Dennis and Robert Morris, and Negroes sold by them in
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York; these Negroes afterward
returned to Spanish colonies by the authorities of Rhode Island. _Rhode
Island Colonial Records_, V. 170, 176-7; Dawson's _Historical Magazine_,
XVIII. 98.


~1752.~ ~Sanderson,~ of Newport, trading to Africa and West Indies.
_American Historical Record_, I. 315-9, 338-42. Cf. above, p. 35, note 4.


~1788~ (_circa_). ----. "One or two" vessels fitted out in Connecticut.
W.C. Fowler, _Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut_, in _Local
Law_, etc., p. 125.


~1801.~ ~Sally,~ of Norfolk, Virginia, equipped slaver; libelled and
acquitted; owners claimed damages. _American State Papers, Commerce and
Navigation_, I. No. 128.


~1803~ (?). ----. Two slavers seized with slaves, and brought to
Philadelphia; both condemned, and slaves apprenticed. Robert Sutcliff,
_Travels in North America_, p. 219.


~1804.~ ----. Slaver, allowed by Governor Claiborne to land fifty
Negroes in Louisiana. _American State Papers, Miscellaneous_, I. No.
177.


~1814.~ ~Saucy Jack~ carries off slaves from Africa and attacks British
cruiser. _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, p. 46; 21 Cong. 1
sess. III. No. 348, p. 147.


~1816~ (_circa_). ~Paz,~ ~Rosa,~ ~Dolores,~ ~Nueva Paz,~ and ~Dorset,~
American slavers in Spanish-African trade. Many of these were formerly
privateers. _Ibid._, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, pp. 45-6; 21 Cong. 1
sess. III. No. 348, pp. 144-7.


~1817, Jan. 17.~ ~Eugene,~ armed Mexican schooner, captured while
attempting to smuggle slaves into the United States. _House Doc._, 15
Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 12, p. 22.


~1817, Nov. 19.~ ~Tentativa,~ captured with 128 slaves and brought into
Savannah. _Ibid._, p. 38; _House Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No.
348, p. 81. See _Friends' View of the African Slave Trade_ (1824), pp.
44-7.


~1818.~ ----. Three schooners unload slaves in Louisiana. Collector Chew
to the Secretary of the Treasury, _House Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III.
No. 348, p. 70.


~1818, Jan. 23.~ English brig ~Neptune,~ detained by U.S.S. John Adams,
for smuggling slaves into the United States. _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1
sess. III. No. 36 (3).


~1818, June.~ ~Constitution,~ captured with 84 slaves on the Florida
coast, by a United States army officer. See references under 1818, June,
below.


~1818, June.~ ~Louisa~ and ~Merino,~ captured slavers, smuggling from
Cuba to the United States; condemned after five years' litigation.
_House Doc._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. VI. No. 107; 19 Cong. 1 sess. VI.-IX.
Nos. 121, 126, 152, 163; _House Reports_, 19 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 231;
_American State Papers, Naval Affairs_, II. No. 308; Decisions of the
United States Supreme Court in _9 Wheaton_, 391.


~1819.~ ~Antelope,~ or ~General Ramirez.~ The Colombia (or Arraganta), a
Venezuelan privateer, fitted in the United States and manned by
Americans, captures slaves from a Spanish slaver, the Antelope, and from
other slavers; is wrecked, and transfers crew and slaves to Antelope;
the latter, under the name of the General Ramirez, is captured with 280
slaves by a United States ship. The slaves were distributed, some to
Spanish claimants, some sent to Africa, and some allowed to remain; many
died. _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, pp. 5, 15; 21 Cong.
1 sess. III. No. 348, p. 186; _House Journal_, 20 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 59,
76, 123 to 692, _passim_. Gales and Seaton, _Register of Debates_, IV.
pt. 1, pp. 915-6, 955-68, 998, 1005; _Ibid._, pt. 2, pp. 2501-3;
_American State Papers, Naval Affairs_, II. No. 319, pp. 750-60;
Decisions of the United States Supreme Court in _10 Wheaton_, 66, and
_12 Ibid._, 546.


~1820.~ ~Endymion,~ ~Plattsburg,~ ~Science,~ ~Esperanza,~ and
~Alexander,~ captured on the African coast by United States ships, and
sent to New York and Boston. _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No.
92, pp. 6, 15; 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348, pp. 122, 144, 187.


~1820.~ ~General Artigas~ imports twelve slaves into the United States.
_Friends' View of the African Slave Trade_ (1824), p. 42.

~1821~ (?). ~Dolphin,~ captured by United States officers and sent to
Charleston, South Carolina. _Ibid._, pp. 31-2.


~1821.~ ~La Jeune Eugène,~ ~La Daphnée,~ ~La Mathilde,~ and ~L'Elize,~
captured by U.S.S. Alligator; ~La Jeune Eugène~ sent to Boston; the rest
escape, and are recaptured under the French flag; the French protest.
_House Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348, p. 187; _Friends' View
of the African Slave Trade_ (1824), pp. 35-41.


~1821.~ ~La Pensée,~ captured with 220 slaves by the U.S.S. Hornet;
taken to Louisiana. _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 92, p. 5;
21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348, p. 186.


~1821.~ ~Esencia~ lands 113 Negroes at Matanzas. _Parliamentary Papers_,
1822, Vol. XXII., _Slave Trade, Further Papers_, III. p. 78.


~1826.~ ~Fell's Point~ attempts to land Negroes in the United States.
The Negroes were seized. _American State Papers, Naval Affairs_, II. No.
319, p. 751.


~1827, Dec. 20.~ ~Guerrero,~ Spanish slaver, chased by British, cruiser
and grounded on Key West, with 561 slaves; a part (121) were landed at
Key West, where they were seized by the collector; 250 were seized by
the Spanish and taken to Cuba, etc. _House Journal_, 20 Cong. 1 sess. p.
650; _House_ _Reports_, 24 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 268; 25 Cong. 2 sess.
I. No. 4; _American State Papers, Naval Affairs_, III. No. 370, p. 210;
_Niles's Register_, XXXIII. 373.


~1828, March 11.~ ~General Geddes~ brought into St. Augustine for safe
keeping 117 slaves, said to have been those taken from the wrecked
~Guerrero~ and landed at Key West (see above, 1827). _House Doc._, 20
Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 262.


~1828.~ ~Blue-eyed Mary,~ of Baltimore, sold to Spaniards and captured
with 405 slaves by a British cruiser. _Niles's Register_, XXXIV. 346.


~1830, June 4.~ ~Fenix,~ with 82 Africans, captured by U.S.S. Grampus,
and brought to Pensacola; American built, with Spanish colors. _House
Doc._, 21 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 54; _House Reports_, 24 Cong. 1 sess.
I. No. 223; _Niles's Register_, XXXVIII. 357.


~1831, Jan. 3.~ ~Comet,~ carrying slaves from the District of Columbia
to New Orleans, was wrecked on Bahama banks and 164 slaves taken to
Nassau, in New Providence, where they were freed. Great Britain finally
paid indemnity for these slaves. _Senate Doc._, 24 Cong. 2 sess. II. No.
174; 25 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 216.


~1834, Feb. 4.~ ~Encomium,~ bound from Charleston, South Carolina, to
New Orleans, with 45 slaves, was wrecked near Fish Key, Abaco, and
slaves were carried to Nassau and freed. Great Britain eventually paid
indemnity for these slaves. _Ibid._


~1835, March.~ ~Enterprise,~ carrying 78 slaves from the District of
Columbia to Charleston, was compelled by rough weather to put into the
port of Hamilton, West Indies, where the slaves were freed. Great
Britain refused to pay for these, because, before they landed, slavery
in the West Indies had been abolished. _Ibid._


~1836, Aug.-Sept.~ ~Emanuel,~ ~Dolores,~ ~Anaconda,~ and ~Viper,~ built
in the United States, clear from Havana for Africa. _House Doc._, 26
Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 4-6, 221.


~1837.~ ----. Eleven American slavers clear from Havana for Africa.
_Ibid._, p. 221.


~1837.~ ~Washington,~ allowed to proceed to Africa by the American
consul at Havana. _Ibid._, pp. 488-90, 715 ff; 27 Cong, 1 sess. No. 34,
pp. 18-21.


~1838.~ ~Prova~ spends three months refitting in the harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina; afterwards captured by the British, with 225
slaves. _Ibid._, pp. 121, 163-6.


~1838.~ ----. Nineteen American slavers clear from Havana for Africa.
_House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, p. 221.


~1838-9.~ ~Venus,~ American built, manned partly by Americans, owned by
Spaniards. _Ibid._, pp. 20-2, 106, 124-5, 132, 144-5, 330-2, 475-9.


~1839.~ ~Morris Cooper,~ of Philadelphia, lands 485 Negroes in Cuba.
_Niles's Register_, LVII. 192.


~1839.~ ~Edwin~ and ~George Crooks,~ slavers, boarded by British
cruisers. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 12-4, 61-4.


~1839.~ ~Eagle,~ ~Clara,~ and ~Wyoming,~ with American and Spanish flags
and papers and an American crew, captured by British cruisers, and
brought to New York. The United States government declined to interfere
in case of the ~Eagle~ and the ~Clara,~ and they were taken to Jamaica.
The ~Wyoming~ was forfeited to the United States. _Ibid._, pp. 92-104,
109, 112, 118-9, 180-4; _Niles's Register_, LVI. 256; LVII. 128, 208.


~1839.~ ~Florida,~ protected from British cruisers by American papers.
_House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 113-5.


~1839.~ ----. Five American slavers arrive at Havana from Africa, under
American flags. _Ibid._, p. 192.


~1839.~ ----. Twenty-three American slavers clear from Havana. _Ibid._,
pp. 190-1, 221.


~1839.~ ~Rebecca,~ part Spanish, condemned at Sierra Leone. _House
Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, pp. 649-54, 675-84.


~1839.~ ~Douglas~ and ~Iago,~ American slavers, visited by British
cruisers, for which the United States demanded indemnity. _Ibid._, pp.
542-65, 731-55; _Senate Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 377, pp.
39-45, 107-12, 116-24, 160-1, 181-2.


~1839, April 9.~ ~Susan,~ suspected slaver, boarded by the British.
_House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 34-41.


~1839, July-Sept.~ ~Dolphin~ (or ~Constitução),~ ~Hound,~ ~Mary Cushing~
(or ~Sete de Avril~), with American and Spanish flags and papers.
_Ibid._, pp. 28, 51-5, 109-10, 136, 234-8; _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3
sess. III. No. 283, pp. 709-15.


~1839, Aug.~ ~L'Amistad,~ slaver, with fifty-three Negroes on board, who
mutinied; the vessel was then captured by a United States vessel and
brought into Connecticut; the Negroes were declared free. _House Doc._,
26 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 185; 27 Cong. 3 sess. V. No. 191; 28 Cong. 1
sess. IV. No. 83; _House Exec. Doc._, 32 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 20;
_House Reports_, 26 Cong. 2 sess. No. 51; 28 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 426;
29 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 753; _Senate Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No.
179; _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 29; 32 Cong. 2 sess.
III. No. 19; _Senate Reports_, 31 Cong. 2 sess. No. 301; 32 Cong. 1
sess. I. No. 158; 35 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 36; Decisions of the United
States Supreme Court in _15 Peters_, 518; _Opinions of the
Attorneys-General_, III. 484-92.


~1839, Sept.~ ~My Boy,~ of New Orleans, seized by a British cruiser, and
condemned at Sierra Leone. _Niles's Register_, LVII. 353.


~1839, Sept. 23.~ ~Butterfly,~ of New Orleans, fitted as a slaver, and
captured by a British cruiser on the coast of Africa. _House Doc._, 26
Cong. 2 sess. No. 115, pp. 191, 244-7; _Niles's Register_, LVII. 223.


~1839, Oct.~ ~Catharine,~ of Baltimore, captured on the African coast by
a British cruiser, and brought by her to New York. _House Doc._, 26
Cong. 2 sess. V No. 115, pp. 191, 215, 239-44; _Niles's Register_, LVII.
119, 159.


~1839.~ ~Asp,~ ~Laura,~ and ~Mary Ann Cassard,~ foreign slavers sailing
under the American flag. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp.
126-7, 209-18; _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, p. 688
ff.


~1839.~ ~Two Friends,~ of New Orleans, equipped slaver, with Spanish,
Portuguese, and American flags. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No.
115, pp. 120, 160-2, 305.


~1839.~ ~Euphrates,~ of Baltimore, with American papers, seized by
British cruisers as Spanish property. Before this she had been boarded
fifteen times. _Ibid._, pp. 41-4; A.H. Foote, _Africa and the American
Flag_, pp. 152-6.


~1839.~ ~Ontario,~ American slaver, "sold" to the Spanish on shipping a
cargo of slaves. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 45-50.


~1839.~ ~Mary,~ of Philadelphia; case of a slaver whose nationality was
disputed. _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, pp. 736-8;
_Senate Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 377, pp. 19, 24-5.


~1840, March.~ ~Sarah Ann,~ of New Orleans, captured with fraudulent
papers. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115, pp. 184-7.


~1840, June.~ ~Caballero,~ ~Hudson,~ and ~Crawford;~ the arrival of
these American slavers was publicly billed in Cuba. _Ibid._, pp. 65-6.


~1840.~ ~Tigris,~ captured by British cruisers and sent to Boston for
kidnapping. _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, pp. 724-9;
_Senate Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 377, P. 94.


~1840.~ ~Jones,~ seized by the British. _Senate Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess.
VIII. No. 377, pp. 131-2, 143-7, 148-60.


~1841, Nov. 7.~ ~Creole,~ of Richmond, Virginia, transporting slaves to
New Orleans; the crew mutiny and take her to Nassau, British West
Indies. The slaves were freed and Great Britain refused indemnity.
_Senate Doc._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 51 and III. No. 137.


~1841.~ ~Sophia,~ of New York, ships 750 slaves for Brazil. _House
Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 43, pp. 3-8.


~1841.~ ~Pilgrim,~ of Portsmouth, N.H., ~Solon,~ of Baltimore, ~William
Jones~ and ~Himmaleh,~ of New York, clear from Rio Janeiro for Africa.
_Ibid._, pp. 8-12.


~1842, May.~ ~Illinois,~ of Gloucester, saved from search by the
American flag; escaped under the Spanish flag, loaded with slaves.
_Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 150, p. 72 ff.


~1842, June.~ ~Shakespeare,~ of Baltimore, with 430 slaves, captured by
British cruisers. _Ibid._


~1843.~ ~Kentucky,~ of New York, trading to Brazil. _Ibid._, 30 Cong. 1
sess. IV. No. 28, pp. 71-8; _House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII.
No. 61, p. 72 ff.


~1844.~ ~Enterprise,~ of Boston, transferred in Brazil for slave-trade.
_Senate Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 28, pp. 79-90.


~1844.~ ~Uncas,~ of New Orleans, protected by United States papers;
allowed to clear, in spite of her evident character. _Ibid._, 28 Cong. 2
sess. IX. No. 150, pp. 106-14.


~1844.~ ~Sooy,~ of Newport, without papers, captured by the British
sloop Racer, after landing 600 slaves on the coast of Brazil. _House
Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 148, pp. 4, 36-62.


~1844.~ ~Cyrus,~ of New Orleans, suspected slaver, captured by the
British cruiser Alert. _Ibid._, pp. 3-41.


~1844-5.~ ----. Nineteen slavers from Beverly, Boston, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, New York, Providence, and Portland, make twenty-two trips.
_Ibid._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61, pp. 219-20.


~1844-9.~ ----. Ninety-three slavers in Brazilian trade. _Senate Exec.
Doc._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 6, pp. 37-8.


~1845.~ ~Porpoise,~ trading to Brazil. _House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2
sess. VII. No. 61, pp. 111-56, 212-4.


~1845, May 14.~ ~Spitfire,~ of New Orleans, captured on the coast of
Africa, and the captain indicted in Boston. A.H. Foote, _Africa and the
American Flag_, pp. 240-1; _Niles's Register_, LXVIII. 192, 224, 248-9.


~1845-6.~ ~Patuxent,~ ~Pons,~ ~Robert Wilson,~ ~Merchant,~ and
~Panther,~ captured by Commodore Skinner. _House Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1
sess. IX. No. 73.


~1847.~ ~Fame,~ of New London, Connecticut, lands 700 slaves in Brazil.
_House Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61, pp. 5-6, 15-21.


~1847.~ ~Senator,~ of Boston, brings 944 slaves to Brazil. _Ibid._, pp.
5-14.


~1849.~ ~Casco,~ slaver, with no papers; searched, and captured with 420
slaves, by a British cruiser. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. XIV
No. 66, p. 13.


~1850.~ ~Martha,~ of New York, captured when about to embark 1800
slaves. The captain was admitted to bail, and escaped. A.H. Foote,
_Africa and the American Flag_, pp. 285-92.


~1850.~ ~Lucy Ann,~ of Boston, captured with 547 slaves by the British.
_Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. XIV No. 66, pp. 1-10 ff.


~1850.~ ~Navarre,~ American slaver, trading to Brazil, searched and
finally seized by a British cruiser. _Ibid._


~1850~ (_circa_). ~Louisa Beaton,~ ~Pilot,~ ~Chatsworth,~ ~Meteor,~ ~R.
de Zaldo,~ ~Chester,~ etc., American slavers, searched by British
vessels. _Ibid., passim._


~1851, Sept. 18.~ ~Illinois~ brings seven kidnapped West India Negro
boys into Norfolk, Virginia. _House Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XII.
No. 105, pp. 12-14.


~1852-62.~ ----. Twenty-six ships arrested and bonded for slave-trading
in the Southern District of New York. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2
sess. V. No. 53.


~1852.~ ~Advance~ and ~Rachel P. Brown,~ of New York; the capture of
these was hindered by the United States consul in the Cape Verd Islands.
_Ibid._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XV. No. 99, pp. 41-5; _House Exec. Doc._, 34
Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 105, pp. 15-19.


~1853.~ ~Silenus,~ of New York, and ~General de Kalb,~ of Baltimore,
carry 900 slaves from Africa. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XV.
No. 99, pp. 46-52; _House Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 105,
pp. 20-26.


~1853.~ ~Jasper~ carries slaves to Cuba. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1
sess. XV. No. 99, pp. 52-7.


~1853.~ ~Camargo,~ of Portland, Maine, lands 500 slaves in Brazil.
_Ibid._, 33 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 47.


~1854.~ ~Glamorgan,~ of New York, captured when about to embark nearly
700 slaves. _Ibid._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XV. No. 99, pp. 59-60.


~1854.~ ~Grey Eagle,~ of Philadelphia, captured off Cuba by British
cruiser. _Ibid._, pp. 61-3.


~1854.~ ~Peerless,~ of New York, lands 350 Negroes in Cuba. _Ibid._,
p. 66.


~1854.~ ~Oregon,~ of New Orleans, trading to Cuba. _Senate Exec. Doc._,
34 Cong. 1 sess. XV. No. 99, pp. 69-70.


~1856.~ ~Mary E. Smith,~ sailed from Boston in spite of efforts to
detain her, and was captured with 387 slaves, by the Brazilian brig
Olinda, at port of St. Matthews. _Ibid._, pp. 71-3.


~1857.~ ----. Twenty or more slavers from New York, New Orleans, etc.
_Ibid._, 35 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 49, pp. 14-21, 70-1, etc.


~1857.~ ~William Clark~ and ~Jupiter,~ of New Orleans, ~Eliza Jane,~ of
New York, ~Jos. H. Record,~ of Newport, and ~Onward,~ of Boston,
captured by British cruisers. _Ibid._, pp. 13, 25-6, 69, etc.


~1857.~ ~James Buchanan,~ slaver, escapes under American colors, with
300 slaves. _Ibid._, p. 38.


~1857.~ ~James Titers,~ of New Orleans, with 1200 slaves, captured by
British cruiser. _Ibid._, pp. 31-4, 40-1.


~1857.~ ----. Four New Orleans slavers on the African coast. _Senate
Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 1 sess., XII. No. 49, p. 30.


~1857.~ ~Cortes,~ of New York, captured. _Ibid._, pp. 27-8.


~1857.~ ~Charles,~ of Boston, captured by British cruisers, with about
400 slaves. _Ibid._, pp. 9, 13, 36, 69, etc.


~1857.~ ~Adams Gray~ and ~W.D. Miller,~ of New Orleans, fully equipped
slavers. _Ibid._, pp. 3-5, 13.


~1857-8.~ ~Charlotte,~ of New York, ~Charles,~ of Maryland, etc.,
reported American slavers. _Ibid., passim_.


~1858, Aug. 21.~ ~Echo,~ captured with 306 slaves, and brought to
Charleston, South Carolina. _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. II. pt.
4, No. 2. pt. 4, pp. 5, 14.


~1858, Sept. 8.~ ~Brothers,~ captured and sent to Charleston, South
Carolina. _Ibid._, p. 14.


~1858.~ ~Mobile,~ ~Cortez,~ ~Tropic Bird;~ cases of American slavers
searched by British vessels. _Ibid._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 7, p. 97
ff.


~1858.~ ~Wanderer,~ lands 500 slaves in Georgia. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 35
Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 8; _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No.
89.


~1859, Dec. 20.~ ~Delicia,~ supposed to be Spanish, but without papers;
captured by a United States ship. The United States courts declared her
beyond their jurisdiction. _House Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No.
7, p. 434.


~1860.~ ~Erie,~ with 897 Africans, captured by a United States ship.
_Senate Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, pp. 41-4.


~1860.~ ~William,~ with 550 slaves, ~Wildfire,~ with 507, captured on
the coast of Cuba. _Senate Journal_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. pp. 478-80, 492,
543, etc.; _Senate Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. XI. No. 44; _House
Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 83; 36 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 11;
_House Reports_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 602.


~1861.~ ~Augusta,~ slaver, which, in spite of the efforts of the
officials, started on her voyage. _Senate Exec Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess.
V. No. 40; _New York Tribune_, Nov. 26, 1861.


~1861.~ ~Storm King,~ of Baltimore, lands 650 slaves in Cuba. _Senate
Exec. Doc._, 38 Cong. 1 sess. No. 56, p. 3.


~1862.~ ~Ocilla,~ of Mystic, Connecticut, lands slaves in Cuba. _Ibid._,
pp. 8-13.


~1864.~ ~Huntress,~ of New York, under the American flag, lands slaves
in Cuba. _Ibid._, pp. 19-21.

                    *       *       *       *       *




APPENDIX D.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

~COLONIAL LAWS.~

[The Library of Harvard College, the Boston Public Library, and the
Charlemagne Tower Collection at Philadelphia are especially rich in
Colonial Laws.]


~Alabama and Mississippi Territory.~ Acts of the Assembly of Alabama,
1822, etc.; J.J. Ormond, Code of Alabama, Montgomery, 1852; H. Toulmin,
Digest of the Laws of Alabama, Cahawba, 1823; A. Hutchinson, Code of
Mississippi, Jackson, 1848; Statutes of Mississippi etc., digested,
Natchez, 1816 and 1823.

~Connecticut.~ Acts and Laws of Connecticut, New London, 1784 [-1794],
and Hartford, 1796; Connecticut Colonial Records; The General Laws and
Liberties of Connecticut Colonie, Cambridge, 1673, reprinted at Hartford
in 1865; Statute Laws of Connecticut, Hartford, 1821.

~Delaware.~ Laws of Delaware, 1700-1797, 2 vols., New Castle, 1797.

~Georgia.~ George W.J. De Renne, editor, Colonial Acts of Georgia,
Wormsloe, 1881; Constitution of Georgia; T.R.R. Cobb, Digest of the
Laws, Athens, Ga., 1851; Horatio Marbury and W.H. Crawford, Digest of
the Laws, Savannah, 1802; Oliver H. Prince, Digest of the Laws, 2d
edition, Athens, Ga., 1837.

~Maryland.~ James Bisset, Abridgment of the Acts of Assembly,
Philadelphia, 1759; Acts of Maryland, 1753-1768, Annapolis, 1754
[-1768]; Compleat Collection of the Laws of Maryland, Annapolis, 1727;
Thomas Bacon, Laws of Maryland at Large, Annapolis, 1765; Laws of
Maryland since 1763, Annapolis, 1787, year 1771; Clement Dorsey, General
Public Statutory Law, etc., 1692-1837, 3 vols., Baltimore, 1840.

~Massachusetts.~ Acts and Laws of His Majesty's Province of the
Massachusetts-Bay in New-England, Boston, 1726; Acts and Resolves ... of
the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, 1692-1780 [Massachusetts
Province Laws]; Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, reprinted from the
editions of 1660 and 1672, Boston, 1887, 1890; General Court Records;
Massachusetts Archives; Massachusetts Historical Society Collections;
Perpetual Laws of Massachusetts, 1780-1789, Boston, 1789; Plymouth
Colony Records; Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts
Bay.

~New Jersey.~ Samuel Allinson, Acts of Assembly, Burlington, 1776;
William Paterson, Digest of the Laws, Newark, 1800; William A.
Whitehead, editor, Documents relating to the Colonial History of New
Jersey, Newark, 1880-93; Joseph Bloomfield, Laws of New Jersey, Trenton,
1811; New Jersey Archives.

~New York.~ Acts of Assembly, 1691-1718, London, 1719; E.B. O'Callaghan,
Documentary History of New York, 4 vols., Albany, 1849-51; E.B.
O'Callaghan, editor, Documents relating to the Colonial History of New
York, 12 vols., Albany, 1856-77; Laws of New York, 1752-1762, New York,
1762; Laws of New York, 1777-1801, 5 vols., republished at Albany,
1886-7.

~North Carolina.~ F.X. Martin, Iredell's Public Acts of Assembly,
Newbern, 1804; Laws, revision of 1819, 2 vols., Raleigh, 1821; North
Carolina Colonial Records, edited by William L. Saunders, Raleigh,
1886-90.

~Pennsylvania.~ Acts of Assembly, Philadelphia, 1782; Charter and Laws
of the Province of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, 1879; M. Carey and J.
Bioren, Laws of Pennsylvania, 1700-1802, 6 vols., Philadelphia, 1803;
A.J. Dallas, Laws of Pennsylvania, 1700-1781, Philadelphia, 1797;
_Ibid._, 1781-1790, Philadelphia, 1793; Collection of all the Laws now
in force, 1742; Pennsylvania Archives; Pennsylvania Colonial Records.

~Rhode Island.~ John Russell Bartlett, Index to the Printed Acts and
Resolves, of ... the General Assembly, 1756-1850, Providence, 1856;
Elisha R. Potter, Reports and Documents upon Public Schools, etc.,
Providence, 1855; Rhode Island Colonial Records.

~South Carolina.~ J.F. Grimké, Public Laws, Philadelphia, 1790; Thomas
Cooper and D.J. McCord, Statutes at Large, 10 vols., Columbia, 1836-41.

~Vermont.~ Statutes of Vermont, Windsor, 1787; Vermont State Papers,
Middlebury, 1823.

~Virginia.~ John Mercer, Abridgement of the Acts of Assembly, Glasgow,
1759; Acts of Assembly, Williamsburg, 1769: Collection of Public Acts
... passed since 1768, Richmond, 1785; Collections of the Virginia
Historical Society; W.W. Hening, Statutes at Large, 13 vols., Richmond,
etc., 1819-23; Samuel Shepherd, Statutes at Large, New Series
(continuation of Hening), 3 vols, Richmond, 1835-6.


~UNITED STATES DOCUMENTS.~

~1789-1836.~ American State Papers--Class I., _Foreign Relations_, Vols.
III. and IV. (Reprint of Foreign Relations, 1789-1828.) Class VI.,
_Naval Affairs_. (Well indexed.)

~1794, Feb. 11.~ Report of Committee on the Slave Trade. _Amer. State
Papers, Miscellaneous_, I. No. 44.

~1806, Feb. 17.~ Report of the Committee appointed on the seventh
instant, to inquire whether any, and if any, what Additional Provisions
are necessary to Prevent the Importation of Slaves into the Territories
of the United States. _House Reports_, 9 Cong. 1 sess. II.

~1817, Feb. 11.~ Joint Resolution for abolishing the traffick in Slaves,
and the Colinization [_sic_] of the Free People Of Colour of the United
States. _House Doc._, 14 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 77.

~1817, Dec. 15.~ Message from the President ... communicating
Information of the Proceeding of certain Persons who took Possession of
Amelia Island and of Galvezton, [_sic_] during the Summer of the Present
Year, and made Establishments there. _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. II.
No. 12. (Contains much evidence of illicit traffic.)

~1818, Jan. 10.~ Report of the Committee to whom was referred so much of
the President's Message as relates to the introduction of Slaves from
Amelia Island. _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 46 (cf. _House
Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348).

~1818, Jan. 13.~ Message from the President ... communicating
information of the Troops of the United States having taken possession
of Amelia Island, in East Florida. _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 1 sess. III.
No. 47. (Contains correspondence.)

~1819, Jan. 12.~ Letter from the Secretary of the Navy, transmitting
copies of the instructions which have been issued to Naval Commanders,
upon the subject of the Importation of Slaves, etc. _House Doc._, 15
Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 84.

~1819, Jan. 19.~ Extracts from Documents in the Departments of State, of
the Treasury, and of the Navy, in relation to the Illicit Introduction
of Slaves into the United States. _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. VI. No.
100.

~1819, Jan. 21.~ Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury ... in
relation to Ships engaged in the Slave Trade, which have been Seized and
Condemned, and the Disposition which has been made of the Negroes, by
the several State Governments, under whose Jurisdiction they have
fallen. _House Doc._, 15 Cong. 2 sess. VI. No. 107.

~1820, Jan. 7.~ Letter from the Secretary of the Navy, transmitting
information in relation to the Introduction of Slaves into the United
States. _House Doc._, 16 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 36.

~1820, Jan. 13.~ Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting
... Information in relation to the Illicit Introduction of Slaves into
the United States, etc., _Ibid._, No. 42.

~1820, May 8.~ Report of the Committee to whom was referred ... so much
of the President's Message as relates to the Slave Trade, etc. _House
Reports_, 16 Cong. 1 sess. No. 97.

~1821, Jan. 5.~ Message from the President ... transmitting ...
Information on the Subject of the African Slave Trade. _House Doc._, 16
Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 48.

~1821, Feb. 7.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Reports_, 17
Cong. 1 sess. No. 92, pp. 15-21.

~1821, Feb. 9.~ Report of the Committee to which was referred so much of
the President's message as relates to the Slave Trade. _House Reports_,
16 Cong. 2 sess. No. 59.

~1822, April 12.~ Report of the Committee on the Suppression of the
Slave Trade. Also Report of 1821, Feb. 9, reprinted. (Contains
discussion of the Right of Search, and papers on European Conference for
the Suppression of the Slave Trade.) _House Reports_, 17 Cong. 1 sess.
II. No. 92.

~1823, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 18
Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, p. 111, ff.; _Amer. State Papers, Naval
Affairs_, I. No. 258. (Contains reports on the establishment at Cape
Mesurado.)[1]

~1824, March 20.~ Message from the President ... in relation to the
Suppression of the African Slave Trade. _House Doc._, 18 Cong. 1 sess.
VI. No. 119. (Contains correspondence on the proposed treaty of 1824.)

~1824, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _Amer. State
Papers, Naval Affairs_, I. No. 249.

~1824, Dec. 7.~ Documents accompanying the Message of the President ...
to both Houses of Congress, at the commencement of the Second Session of
the Eighteenth Congress: Documents from the Department of State. _House
Doc._, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1. pp. 1-56. Reprinted in _Senate Doc._,
18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1. (Matter on the treaty of 1824.)

~1825, Feb. 16.~ Report of the Committee to whom was referred so much of
the President's Message, of the 7th of December last, as relates to the
Suppression of the Slave Trade. _House Reports_, 18 Cong. 2 sess. I. No.
70 (Report favoring the treaty of 1824.)

~1825, Dec. 2.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 19
Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 1. p. 98.

~1825, Dec. 27.~ Slave Trade: Message from the President ...
communicating Correspondence with Great Britain in relation to the
Convention for Suppressing the Slave Trade. _House Doc._, 19 Cong. 1
sess. I. No. 16.

~1826, Feb. 6.~ Appropriation--Slave Trade: Report of the Committee of
Ways and Means on the subject of the estimate of appropriations for the
service of the year 1826. _House Reports_, 19 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 65.
(Contains report of the Secretary of the Navy and account of
expenditures for the African station.)

~1826, March 8.~ Slave Ships in Alabama: Message from the President ...
in relation to the Cargoes of certain Slave Ships, etc. _House Doc._, 19
Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 121; cf. _Ibid._, VIII. No. 126, and IX. Nos. 152,
163; also _House Reports_, 19 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 231. (Cases of the
Constitution, Louisa, and Merino.)

~1826, Dec. 2.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. (Part IV. of
Documents accompanying the President's Message.) _House Doc._, 19 Cong.
2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 9, 10, 74-103.

~1827, etc.~ Colonization Society: Reports, etc. _House Doc._, 19 Cong.
2 sess. IV. Nos. 64, 69; 20 Cong. 1 sess. III. Nos. 99, 126, and V. No.
193; 20 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 114, 127-8; 21 Cong. 2 sess. I. No.
2, p. 211-18; _House Reports_, 19 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 101; 21 Cong. 1
sess. II. No. 277, and III. No. 348; 22 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 277.

~1827, Jan. 30.~ Prohibition of the Slave Trade: Statement showing the
Expenditure of the Appropriation for the Prohibition of the Slave Trade,
during the year 1826, and an Estimate for 1827. _House Doc._, 19 Cong. 2
sess. IV. No. 69.

~1827, Dec. 1 and Dec. 4.~ Reports of the Secretary of the Navy. _Amer.
State Papers, Naval Affairs,_ III. Nos. 339, 340.

~1827, Dec. 6.~ Message from the President ... transmitting ... a Report
from the Secretary of the Navy, showing the expense annually incurred in
carrying into effect the Act of March 2, 1819, for Prohibiting the Slave
Trade. _Senate Doc._, 20 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 3.

~1828, March 12.~ Recaptured Africans: Letter from the Secretary of the
Navy ... in relation to ... Recaptured Africans. _House Doc._, 20 Cong.
1 sess. V. No. 193; cf. _Ibid._, 20 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 114,
127-8; also _Amer. State Papers, Naval Affairs_, III. No. 357.

~1828, April 30.~ Africans at Key West: Message from the President ...
relative to the Disposition of the Africans Landed at Key West. _House
Doc._, 20 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 262.

~1828, Nov. 27.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _Amer. State
Papers, Naval Affairs_, III. No. 370.

~1829, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 21
Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, p. 40.

~1830, April 7.~ Slave Trade ... Report: "The committee to whom were
referred the memorial of the American Society for colonizing the free
people of color of the United States; also, sundry memorials from the
inhabitants of the State of Kentucky, and a memorial from certain free
people of color of the State of Ohio, report," etc., 3 pp. Appendix.
Collected and arranged by Samuel Burch. 290 pp. _House Reports_, 21
Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348. (Contains a reprint of legislation and
documents from 14 Cong. 2 sess. to 21 Cong. 1 sess. Very valuable.)

~1830, Dec. 6.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 21
Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 42-3; _Amer. State Papers, Naval Affairs_,
III. No. 429 E.

~1830, Dec. 6.~ Documents communicated to Congress by the President at
the opening of the Second Session of the Twenty-first Congress,
accompanying the Report of the Secretary of the Navy: Paper E. Statement
of expenditures, etc., for the removal of Africans to Liberia. _House
Doc._, 21 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 211-8.

~1831, Jan. 18.~ Spanish Slave Ship Fenix: Message from the President
... transmitting Documents in relation to certain captives on board the
Spanish slave vessel, called the Fenix. _House Doc._, 21 Cong. 2 sess.
III. No. 54; _Amer. State Papers, Naval Affairs_, III. No. 435.

~1831-1835.~ Reports of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 22
Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 45, 272-4; 22 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp.
48, 229; 23 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 1, pp. 238, 269; 23 Cong. 2 sess. I.
No. 2, pp. 315, 363; 24 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 336, 378. Also
_Amer. State Papers, Naval Affairs_, IV. No. 457, R. Nos. 1, 2; No. 486,
H. I.; No. 519, R.; No. 564, P.; No. 585, P.

~1836, Jan. 26.~ Calvin Mickle, Ex'r of Nagle & De Frias. _House
Reports_, 24 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 209. (Reports on claims connected with
the captured slaver Constitution.)

~1836, Jan. 27, etc.~ [Reports from the Committee of Claims on cases of
captured Africans.] _House Reports_, 24 Cong. 1 sess. I. Nos. 223, 268,
and III. No. 574. No. 268 is reprinted in _House Reports_, 25 Cong. 2
sess. I. No. 4.

~1836, Dec. 3.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 24
Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 450, 506.

~1837, Feb. 14.~ Message from the President ... with copies of
Correspondence in relation to the Seizure of Slaves on board the brigs
"Encomium" and "Enterprise." _Senate Doc._, 24 Cong. 2 sess. II. No.
174; cf. _Ibid._, 25 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 216.

~1837-1839.~ Reports of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 25
Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 3, pp. 762, 771, 850; 25 Cong. 3 sess. I. No. 2, p.
613; 26 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 534, 612.

~1839.~ [L'Amistad Case.] _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 185
(correspondence); 27 Cong. 3 sess. V. No. 191 (correspondence); 28 Cong.
1 sess. IV No. 83; _House Exec. Doc._, 32 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 20;
_House Reports_, 26 Cong. 2 sess. No. 51 (case of altered Ms.); 28 Cong.
1 sess. II. No. 426 (Report of Committee); 29 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 753
(Report of Committee); _Senate Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 179
(correspondence); _Senate Exec Doc._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 29
(correspondence); 32 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 19; _Senate Reports_, 31
Cong. 2 sess. No. 301 (Report of Committee); 32 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 158
(Report of Committee); 35 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 36 (Report of Committee).

~1840, May 18.~ Memorial of the Society of Friends, upon the subject of
the foreign slave trade. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 211.
(Results of certain investigations.)

~1840, Dec. 5.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 26
Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 405, 450.

~1841, Jan. 20.~ Message from the President ... communicating ... copies
of correspondence, imputing malpractices to the American consul at
Havana, in regard to granting papers to vessels engaged in the
slave-trade. _Senate Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 125. (Contains
much information.)

~1841, March 3.~ Search or Seizure of American Vessels, etc.: Message
from the President ... transmitting a report from the Secretary of
State, in relation to seizures or search of American vessels on the
coast of Africa, etc. _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 115
(elaborate correspondence). See also _Ibid._, 27 Cong. 1 sess. No. 34;
_House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283, pp. 478-755
(correspondence).

~1841, Dec. 4.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 27
Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 349, 351.

~1842, Jan. 20.~ Message from the President ... communicating ... copies
of correspondence in relation to the mutiny on board the brig Creole,
and the liberation of the slaves who were passengers in the said vessel.
_Senate Doc._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 51. See also _Ibid._, III. No.
137; _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. I. No. 2, p. 114.

~1842, May 10.~ Resolutions of the Legislature of the State of
Mississippi in reference to the right of search, and the case of the
American brig Creole. _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 215.
(Suggestive.)

~1842, etc.~ [Quintuple Treaty and Cass's Protest: Messages of the
President, etc.] _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 249; _Senate
Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. II. No. 52, and IV. No. 223; 29 Cong. 1 sess.
VIII. No. 377.

~1842, June 10.~ Indemnities for slaves on board the Comet and Encomium:
Report of the Secretary of State. _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 2 sess. V. No.
242.

~1842, Aug.~ Suppression of the African Slave Trade--Extradition: Case
of the Creole, etc. _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. I. No. 2, pp.
105-136. (Correspondence accompanying Message of President.)

~1842, Dec.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 27 Cong.
3 sess. I. No. 2, p. 532.

~1842, Dec. 30.~ Message from the President ... in relation to the
strength and expense of the squadron to be employed on the coast of
Africa. _Senate Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. II. No. 20.

~1843, Feb. 28.~ Construction of the Treaty of Washington, etc.: Message
from the President ... transmitting a report from the Secretary of
State, in answer to the resolution of the House of the 22d February,
1843. _House Doc._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. V. No. 192.

~1843, Feb. 28.~ African Colonization.... Report: "The Committee on
Commerce, to whom was referred the memorial of the friends of African
colonization, assembled in convention in the city of Washington in May
last, beg leave to submit the following report," etc. (16 pp.).
Appendix. (1071 pp.). _House Reports_, 27 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 283
[Contents of Appendix: pp. 17-408, identical nearly with the Appendix to
_House Reports_, 21 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 348; pp. 408-478.
Congressional history of the slave-trade, case of the Fenix, etc. (cf.
_House Doc._, 21 Cong. 2 sess. III. No. 54); pp. 478-729, search and
seizure of American vessels (same as _House Doc._, 26 Cong. 2 sess. V.
No. 115, pp. 1-252); pp. 730-755, correspondence on British search of
American vessels, etc.; pp. 756-61, Quintuple Treaty; pp. 762-3,
President's Message on Treaty of 1842; pp. 764-96, correspondence on
African squadron, etc.; pp. 796-1088, newspaper extracts on the
slave-trade and on colonization, report of Colonization Society, etc.]

~1843, Nov. 25.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 28
Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, pp. 484-5.

~1844, March 14.~ Message from the President ... communicating ...
information in relation to the abuse of the flag of the United States in
... the African slave trade, etc. _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 1 sess. IV.
No. 217.

~1844, March 15.~ Report: "The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was
referred the petition of ... John Hanes, ... praying an adjustment of
his accounts for the maintenance of certain captured African slaves, ask
leave to report," etc. _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 194.

~1844, May 4.~ African Slave Trade: Report: "The Committee on Foreign
Affairs, to whom was referred the petition of the American Colonization
Society and others, respectfully report," etc. _House Reports_, 28 Cong.
1 sess. II. No. 469.

~1844, May 22.~ Suppression of the Slave-Trade on the coast of Africa:
Message from the President, etc. _House Doc._, 28 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No.
263.

~1844, Nov. 25.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 28
Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 2, p. 514.

~1845, Feb. 20.~ Slave-Trade, etc.: Message from the President ...
transmitting copies of despatches from the American minister at the
court of Brazil, relative to the slave-trade, etc. _House Doc._, 28
Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 148. (Important evidence, statistics, etc.)

~1845, Feb. 26.~ Message from the President ... communicating ...
information relative to the operations of the United States squadron,
etc. _Senate Doc._, 28 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 150. (Contains reports of
Commodore Perry, and statistics of Liberia.)

~1845, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 29
Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 2, p. 645.

~1845, Dec. 22.~ African Slave-Trade: Message from the President ...
transmitting a report from the Secretary of State, together with the
correspondence of George W. Slacum, relative to the African slave trade.
_House Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 43. (Contains much information.)

~1846, June 6.~ Message from the President ... communicating ... copies
of the correspondence between the government of the United States and
that of Great Britain, on the subject of the right of search; with
copies of the protest of the American minister at Paris against the
quintuple treaty, etc. _Senate Doc._, 29 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 377.
Cf. _Ibid._, 27 Cong. 3 sess. II. No. 52, and IV. No. 223; _House Doc._,
27 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 249.

~1846-1847, Dec.~ Reports of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Doc._, 29
Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 4, p. 377; 30 Cong. 1 sess. II. No. 8, p. 946.

~1848, March 3.~ Message from the President ... communicating a report
from the Secretary of State, with the correspondence of Mr. Wise, late
United States minister to Brazil, in relation to the slave trade.
_Senate Exec. Doc._, 30 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 28. (Full of facts.)

~1848, May 12.~ Report of the Secretary of State, in relation to ...
the seizure of the brig Douglass by a British cruiser. _Senate Exec.
Doc._, 30 Cong. 1 sess. VI. No. 44.

~1848, Dec. 4.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec. Doc._,
30 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1, pp. 605, 607.

~1849, March 2.~ Correspondence between the Consuls of the United States
at Rio de Janeiro, etc., with the Secretary of State, on the subject of
the African Slave Trade: Message of the President, etc. _House Exec.
Doc._, 30 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 61. (Contains much evidence.)

~1849, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec. Doc._,
31 Cong. 1 sess. III. pt. 1, No. 5, pt. 1, pp. 427-8.

~1850, March 18.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy, showing the
annual number of deaths in the United States squadron on the coast of
Africa, and the annual cost of that squadron. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31
Cong. 1 sess. X. No. 40.

~1850, July 22.~ African Squadron: Message from the President ...
transmitting Information in reference to the African squadron. _House
Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 1 sess. IX. No. 73. (Gives total expenses of the
squadron, slavers captured, etc.)

~1850, Aug. 2.~ Message from the President ... relative to the searching
of American vessels by British ships of war. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31
Cong. 1 sess. XIV. No. 66.

~1850, Dec. 17.~ Message of the President ... communicating ... a report
of the Secretary of State, with documents relating to the African slave
trade. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 31 Cong. 2 sess. II. No. 6.

~1851-1853.~ Reports of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec. Doc._,
32 Cong. 1 sess. II. pt. 2, No. 2, pt. 2, pp. 4-5; 32 Cong. 2 sess. I.
pt. 2, No. 1, pt. 2, p. 293; 33 Cong. 1 sess. I. pt. 3, No. 1, pt. 3,
pp. 298-9.

~1854, March 13.~ Message from the President ... communicating ... the
correspondence between Mr. Schenck, United States Minister to Brazil,
and the Secretary of State, in relation to the African slave trade.
_Senate Exec. Doc._, 33 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 47.

~1854, June 13.~ Report submitted by Mr. Slidell, from the Committee on
Foreign Relations, on a resolution relative to the abrogation of the
eighth article of the treaty with Great Britain of the 9th of August,
1842, etc. _Senate Reports_, 34 Cong. 1 sess. I. No. 195. (Injunction of
secrecy removed June 26, 1856.)

~1854-1855, Dec.~ Reports of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec.
Doc._, 33 Cong. 2 sess. I. pt. 2, No. 1, pt. 2, pp. 386-7; 34 Cong. 1
sess. I. pt. 3, No. 1, pt. 3, p. 5.

~1856, May 19.~ Slave and Coolie Trade: Message from the President ...
communicating information in regard to the Slave and Coolie trade.
_House Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 105. (Partly reprinted in
_Senate Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XV No. 99.)

~1856, Aug. 5.~ Report of the Secretary of State, in compliance with a
resolution of the Senate of April 24, calling for information relative
to the coolie trade. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XV. No. 99.
(Partly reprinted in _House Exec Doc._, 34 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 105.)

~1856, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec. Doc._,
34 Cong. 3 sess. I. pt. 2, No. 1, pt. 2, p. 407.

~1857, Feb. 11.~ Slave Trade: Letter from the Secretary of State, asking
an appropriation for the suppression of the slave trade, etc. _House
Exec Doc._, 34 Cong. 3 sess. IX. No. 70.

~1857, Dec. 3.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec Doc._,
35 Cong. 1 sess. II. pt. 3, No. 2, pt. 3, p. 576.

~1858, April 23.~ Message of the President ... communicating ... reports
of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy, with
accompanying papers, in relation to the African slave trade. _Senate
Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 49. (Valuable.)

~1858, Dec. 6.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec. Doc._,
35 Cong. 2 sess. II. pt. 4, No. 2, pt. 4, pp. 5, 13-4.

~1859, Jan. 12.~ Message of the President ... relative to the landing of
the barque Wanderer on the coast of Georgia, etc. _Senate Exec. Doc._,
35 Cong. 2 sess. VII. No. 8. See also _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2
sess. IX. No. 89.

~1859, March 1.~ Instructions to African squadron: Message from the
President, etc. _House Exec. Doc._, 35 Cong. 2 sess. IX. No. 104.

~1859, Dec. 2.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _Senate Exec.
Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. III. No. 2, pt. 3, pp. 1138-9, 1149-50.

~1860, Jan. 25.~ Memorial of the American Missionary Association,
praying the rigorous enforcement of the laws for the suppression of the
African slave-trade, etc. _Senate Misc. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. No. 8.

~1860, April 24.~ Message from the President ... in answer to a
resolution of the House calling for the number of persons ... belonging
to the African squadron, who have died, etc. _House Exec. Doc._, 36
Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 73.

~1860, May 19.~ Message of the President ... relative to the capture of
the slaver Wildfire, etc. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. XI. No.
44.

~1860, May 22.~ Capture of the slaver "William": Message from the
President ... transmitting correspondence relative to the capture of the
slaver "William," etc. _House Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. XII. No. 83.

~1860, May 31.~ The Slave Trade ... Report: "The Committee on the
Judiciary, to whom was referred Senate Bill No. 464, ... together with
the messages of the President ... relative to the capture of the slavers
'Wildfire' and 'William,' ... respectfully report," etc. _House
Reports_, 36 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 602.

~1860, June 16.~ Recaptured Africans: Letter from the Secretary of the
Interior, on the subject of the return to Africa of recaptured Africans,
etc. _House Misc. Doc._, 36 Cong. 1 sess. VII. No. 96. Cf. _Ibid._, No.
97, p. 2.

~1860, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _Senate Exec.
Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. III. pt. 1, No. 1, pt. 3, pp. 8-9.

~1860, Dec. 6.~ African Slave Trade: Message from the President ...
transmitting ... a report from the Secretary of State in reference to
the African slave trade. _House Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 7.
(Voluminous document, containing chiefly correspondence, orders, etc.,
1855-1860.)

~1860, Dec. 17.~ Deficiencies of Appropriation, etc.: Letter from the
Secretary of the Interior, communicating estimates for deficiencies in
the appropriation for the suppression of the slave trade, etc. _House
Exec. Doc._, 36 Cong. 2 sess. V. No. 11. (Contains names of captured
slavers.)

~1861, July 4.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _Senate Exec.
Doc._, 37 Cong. 1 sess. No. 1, pp. 92, 97.

~1861, Dec. 2.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _Senate Exec.
Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess. Vol. III. pt. 1, No. 1, pt. 3, pp. 11, 21.

~1861, Dec. 18.~ In Relation to Captured Africans: Letter from the
Secretary of the Interior ... as to contracts for returning and
subsistence of captured Africans. _House Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2 sess.
I. No. 12.

~1862, April 1.~ Letter of the Secretary of the Interior ... in relation
to the slave vessel the "Bark Augusta." _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2
sess. V. No. 40.

~1862, May 30.~ Letter of the Secretary of the Interior ... in relation
to persons who have been arrested in the southern district of New York,
from the 1st day of May, 1852, to the 1st day of May, 1862, charged with
being engaged in the slave trade, etc. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2
sess. V. No. 53.

~1862, June 10.~ Message of the President ... transmitting a copy of the
treaty between the United States and her Britannic Majesty for the
suppression of the African slave trade. _Senate Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 2
sess. V. No. 57. (Also contains correspondence.)

~1862, Dec. 1.~ Report of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec. Doc._,
37 Cong. 3 sess. III. No. 1, pt. 3, p. 23.

~1863, Jan. 7.~ Liberated Africans: Letter from the Acting Secretary of
the Interior ... transmitting reports from Agent Seys in relation to
care of liberated Africans. _House Exec. Doc._, 37 Cong. 3 sess. V. No.
28.

~1864, July 2.~ Message of the President ... communicating ...
information in regard to the African slave trade. _Senate Exec. Doc._,
38 Cong. 1 sess. No. 56.

~1866-69.~ Reports of the Secretary of the Navy. _House Exec. Doc._, 39
Cong. 2 sess. IV. No. 1, pt. 6, pp. 12, 18-9; 40 Cong. 2 sess. IV. No.
1, p. 11; 40 Cong. 3 sess. IV. No. 1, p. ix; 41 Cong. 2 sess. I. No. 1,
pp. 4, 5, 9, 10.

~1870, March 2.~ [Resolution on the slave-trade submitted to the Senate
by Mr. Wilson]. _Senate Misc. Doc._, 41 Cong. 2 sess. No. 66.


~GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY.~

John Quincy Adams. Argument before the Supreme Court of the United
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An African Merchant (anon.). A Treatise upon the Trade from
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The African Slave Trade: Its Nature, Consequences, and Extent. From the
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The African Slave Trade: The Secret Purpose of the Insurgents to Revive
it. No Treaty Stipulations against the Slave Trade to be entered into
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American Anti-Slavery Society. Memorial for the Abolition of Slavery and
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----. Reports and Proceedings.

American Colonization Society. Annual Reports, 1818-1860. (Cf. above,
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J.A. Andrew and A.G. Browne, proctors. Circuit Court of the United
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Edward Armstrong, editor. The Record of the Court at Upland, in
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Samuel Greene Arnold. History of the State of Rhode Island and
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Assiento, or, Contract for allowing to the Subjects of Great Britain the
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R.S. Baldwin. Argument before the Supreme Court of the United States, in
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James Bandinel. Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa as
connected with Europe and America; From the Introduction of the Trade
into Modern Europe, down to the present Time; especially with reference
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Anthony Benezet. Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade,
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----. Notes on the Slave Trade, etc. [1780?].

Thomas Hart Benton. Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to
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Edward Bettle. Notices of Negro Slavery, as connected with Pennsylvania.
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W.O. Blake. History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Ancient and Modern.
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Jeffrey R. Brackett. The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789. (Essay V. in
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Thomas Branagan. Serious Remonstrances, addressed to the Citizens of the
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----. Proceedings of the general Anti-Slavery Convention, called by
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[A British Merchant.] The African Trade, the Great Pillar and Support
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[British Parliament, House of Lords.] Report of the Lords of the
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William Brodie. Modern Slavery and the Slave Trade: a Lecture, etc.
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Thomas Fowell Buxton. The African Slave Trade and its Remedy. London,
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John Elliot Cairnes. The Slave Power: its Character, Career, and
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Henry C. Carey. The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: why it Exists and
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[Lewis Cass]. An Examination of the Question, now in Discussion, ...
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William Ellery Channing. The Duty of the Free States, or Remarks
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David Christy. Ethiopia, her Gloom and Glory, as illustrated in the
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Rufus W. Clark. The African Slave Trade. Boston, [1860.]

Thomas Clarkson. An Essay on the Comparative Efficiency of Regulation or
Abolition, as applied to the Slave Trade. Shewing that the latter only
can remove the evils to be found in that commerce. London, 1789.

----. An Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade. In two
parts. Second edition. London, 1788.

----. An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species,
particularly the African. London and Dublin, 1786.

----. The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the
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Michael W. Cluskey. The Political Text-Book, or Encyclopedia ... for the
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T.R.R. Cobb. An Historical Sketch of Slavery, from the Earliest Periods.
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T.R.R. Cobb. Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States
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Company of Royal Adventurers. The Several Declarations of the Company of
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Confederate States of America. By Authority of Congress: The Statutes at
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Termination, Feb. 18, 1862, Inclusive, etc. (Contains provisional and
permanent constitutions.) Edited by James M. Matthews. Richmond, 1864.

Constitution of a Society for Abolishing the Slave-Trade. With Several
Acts of the Legislatures of the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut and
Rhode-Island, for that Purpose. Printed by John Carter. Providence,
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Continental Congress. Journals and Secret Journals.

Moncure D. Conway. Omitted Chapters of History disclosed in the Life and
Papers of Edmund Randolph, etc. New York and London, 1888.

Thomas Cooper. Letters on the Slave Trade. Manchester, Eng., 1787.

Correspondence with British Ministers and Agents in Foreign Countries,
and with Foreign Ministers in England, relative to the Slave Trade,
1859-60. London, 1860.

The Creole Case, and Mr. Webster's Despatch; with the comments of the
New York "American." New York, 1842.

B.R. Curtis. Reports of Decisions in the Supreme Court of the United
States. With Notes, and a Digest. Fifth edition. 22 vols. Boston, 1870.

James Dana. The African Slave Trade. A Discourse delivered ...
September, 9, 1790, before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of
Freedom. New Haven, 1791.

Henry B. Dawson, editor. The Foederalist: A Collection of Essays,
written in favor of the New Constitution, as agreed upon by the
Foederal Convention, September 17, 1787. Reprinted from the Original
Text. With an Historical Introduction and Notes. Vol. I. New York,
1863.

Paul Dean. A Discourse delivered before the African Society ... in
Boston, Mass., on the Abolition of the Slave Trade ... July 14, 1819.
Boston, 1819.

Charles Deane. The Connection of Massachusetts with Slavery and the
Slave-Trade, etc. Worcester, 1886. (Also in _Proceedings_ of the
American Antiquarian Society, October, 1886.)

----. Charles Deane. Letters and Documents relating to Slavery in
Massachusetts. (In _Collections_ of the Massachusetts Historical
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Debate on a Motion for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade, in the House of
Commons, on Monday and Tuesday, April 18 and 19, 1791. Reported in
detail. London, 1791.

J.D.B. De Bow. The Commercial Review of the South and West. (Also De
Bow's Review of the Southern and Western States.) 38 vols. New Orleans,
1846-69.

Franklin B. Dexter. Estimates of Population in the American Colonies.
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Captain Richard Drake. Revelations of a Slave Smuggler: being the
Autobiography of Capt. Richard Drake, an African Trader for fifty
years--from 1807 to 1857, etc. New York, [1860.]

Daniel Drayton. Personal Memoir, etc. Including a Narrative of the
Voyage and Capture of the Schooner Pearl. Published by the American and
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Boston and New York, 1855.

John Drayton. Memoirs of the American Revolution. 2 vols. Charleston,
1821.

Paul Dudley. An Essay on the Merchandize of Slaves and Souls of Men.
Boston, 1731.

Edward E. Dunbar. The Mexican Papers, containing the History of the Rise
and Decline of Commercial Slavery in America, with reference to the
Future of Mexico. First Series, No. 5. New York, 1861.

Jonathan Edwards. The Injustice and Impolicy of the Slave Trade, and of
the Slavery of the Africans, etc. [New Haven,] 1791.

Jonathan Elliot. The Debates ... on the adoption of the Federal
Constitution, etc. 4 vols. Washington, 1827-30.

Emerson Etheridge. Speech ... on the Revival of the African Slave Trade,
etc. Washington, 1857.

Alexander Falconbridge. An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of
Africa. London, 1788.

Andrew H. Foote. Africa and the American Flag. New York, 1854.

----. The African Squadron: Ashburton Treaty; Consular Sea Letters.
Philadelphia, 1855.

Peter Force. American Archives, etc. In Six Series. Prepared and
Published under Authority of an act of Congress. Fourth and Fifth
Series. 9 vols. Washington, 1837-53.

Paul Leicester Ford. The Association of the First Congress, (In
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----. Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, published
during its Discussion by the People, 1787-8. (With Bibliography, etc.)
Brooklyn, 1888.

William Chauncey Fowler. Local Law in Massachusetts and Connecticut,
Historically considered; and The Historical Status of the Negro, in
Connecticut, etc. Albany, 1872, and New Haven, 1875.

[Benjamin Franklin.] An Essay on the African Slave Trade. Philadelphia,
1790.

[Friends.] Address to the Citizens of the United States of America on
the subject of Slavery, etc. (At New York Yearly Meeting.) New York,
1837.

----. An Appeal on the Iniquity of Slavery and the Slave Trade. (At
London Yearly Meeting.) London and Cincinnati, 1844.

----. The Appeal of the Religious Society of Friends in Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, Delaware, etc., [Yearly Meeting] to their Fellow-Citizens of
the United States on behalf of the Coloured Races. Philadelphia, 1858.

----. A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the Testimony of
the Religious Society of Friends against Slavery and the Slave Trade.
1671-1787. (At Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia.) Philadelphia, 1843.

----. The Case of our Fellow-Creatures, the Oppressed Africans,
respectfully recommended to the Serious Consideration of the Legislature
of Great-Britain, by the People called Quakers. (At London Meeting.)
London, 1783 and 1784. (This volume contains many tracts on the African
slave-trade, especially in the West Indies; also descriptions of trade,
proposed legislation, etc.)

[Friends.] An Exposition of the African Slave Trade, from the year 1840,
to 1850, inclusive. Prepared from official documents. Philadelphia,
1857.

----. Extracts and Observations on the Foreign Slave Trade.
Philadelphia, 1839.

----. Facts and Observations relative to the Participation of
American Citizens in the African Slave Trade. Philadelphia, 1841.

----. Faits relatifs à la Traite des Noirs, et Détails sur Sierra
Leone; par la Société des Ames. Paris, 1824.

----. Germantown Friends' Protest against Slavery, 1688. Fac-simile
Copy. Philadelphia, 1880.

----. Observations on the Inslaving, importing and purchasing of
Negroes; with some Advice thereon, extracted from the Epistle of the
Yearly-Meeting of the People called Quakers, held at London in the Year
1748. Second edition. Germantown, 1760.

----. Proceedings in relation to the Presentation of the Address of
the [Great Britain and Ireland] Yearly Meeting on the Slave-Trade and
Slavery, to Sovereigns and those in Authority in the nations of Europe,
and in other parts of the world, where the Christian religion is
professed. Cincinnati, 1855.

----. Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States. By
the committee appointed by the late Yearly Meeting of Friends held in
Philadelphia, in 1839. Philadelphia, 1841.

----. A View of the Present State of the African Slave Trade.
Philadelphia, 1824.

Carl Garcis. Das Heutige Völkerrecht und der Menschenhandel. Eine
völkerrechtliche Abhandlung, zugleich Ausgabe des deutschen Textes der
Verträge von 20. Dezember 1841 und 29. März 1879. Berlin, 1879.

----. Der Sklavenhandel, das Völkerrecht, und das deutsche Recht.
(In Deutsche Zeit- und Streit-Fragen, No. 13.) Berlin, 1885.

Agénor Étienne de Gasparin. Esclavage et Traite. Paris, 1838.

Joshua R. Giddings. Speech ... on his motion to reconsider the vote
taken upon the final passage of the "Bill for the relief of the owners
of slaves lost from on Board the Comet and Encomium." [Washington,
1843.]

Benjamin Godwin. The Substance of a Course of Lectures on British
Colonial Slavery, delivered at Bradford, York, and Scarborough. London,
1830.

----. Lectures on Slavery. From the London edition, with additions.
Edited by W.S. Andrews. Boston, 1836.

William Goodell. The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice: its
Distinctive Features shown by its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and
Illustrative Facts. New York, 1853.

----. Slavery and Anti-Slavery; A History of the great Struggle in
both Hemispheres; with a view of the Slavery Question in the United
States. New York, 1852.

Daniel R. Goodloe. The Birth of the Republic. Chicago, [1889.]

[Great Britain.] British and Foreign State Papers.

----. Sessional Papers. (For notices of slave-trade in British
Sessional Papers, see Bates Hall Catalogue, Boston Public Library, pp.
347 _et seq._)

[Great Britain: Parliament.] Chronological Table and Index of the
Statutes, Eleventh Edition, to the end of the Session 52 and 53
Victoria, (1889.) By Authority. London, 1890.

[Great Britain: Record Commission.] The Statutes of the Realm. Printed
by command of His Majesty King George the Third ... From Original
Records and Authentic Manuscripts. 9 vols. London, 1810-22.

George Gregory. Essays, Historical and Moral. Second edition. London,
1788. (Essays 7 and 8: Of Slavery and the Slave Trade; A Short Review,
etc.)

Pope Gregory XVI. To Catholic Citizens! The Pope's Bull [for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade], and the words of Daniel O'Connell [on
American Slavery.] New York, [1856.]

H. Hall. Slavery in New Hampshire. (In _New England Register_, XXIX.
247.)

Isaac W. Hammond. Slavery in New Hampshire in the Olden Time. (In
_Granite Monthly_, IV. 108.)

James H. Hammond. Letters on Southern Slavery: addressed to Thomas
Clarkson. [Charleston, (?)].

Robert G. Harper. Argument against the Policy of Reopening the African
Slave Trade. Atlanta, Ga., 1858.

Samuel Hazard, editor. The Register of Pennsylvania. 16 vols.
Philadelphia, 1828-36.

Hinton R. Helper. The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet it.
Enlarged edition. New York, 1860.

Lewis and Sir Edward Hertslet, compilers. A Complete Collection of the
Treaties and Conventions, and Reciprocal Regulations, at present
subsisting between Great Britain and Foreign Powers, and of the Laws,
Decrees, and Orders in Council, concerning the same; so far as they
relate to Commerce and Navigation, ... the Slave Trade, etc. 17 vols.,
(Vol. XVI., Index.) London, 1840-90.

William B. Hodgson. The Foulahs of Central Africa, and the African Slave
Trade. [New York, (?)] 1843.

John Codman Hurd. The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States. 2
vols. Boston and New York, 1858, 1862.

----. The International Law of the Slave Trade, and the Maritime
Right of Search. (In the American Jurist, XXVI. 330.)

----. The Jamaica Movement, for promoting the Enforcement of the
Slave-Trade Treaties, and the Suppression of the Slave-Trade; with
statements of Fact, Convention, and Law: prepared at the request of the
Kingston Committee. London, 1850.

William Jay. Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery. Boston, 1853.

----. A View of the Action of the Federal Government, in Behalf of
Slavery. New York, 1839.

T. and J.W. Johnson. Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United
States.

Alexandre Moreau de Jonnès. Recherches Statistiques sur l'Esclavage
Colonial et sur les Moyens de le supprimer. Paris, 1842.

M.A. Juge. The American Planter: or The Bound Labor Interest in the
United States. New York, 1854.

Friedrich Kapp. Die Sklavenfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten. Göttingen
and New York, 1854.

----. Geschichte der Sklaverei in den Vereinigten Staaten von
Amerika. Hamburg, 1861.

Frederic Kidder. The Slave Trade in Massachusetts. (In _New-England
Historical and Genealogical Register_, XXXI. 75.)

George Lawrence. An Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade ... Jan.
1, 1813. New York, 1813.

William B. Lawrence. Visitation and Search; or, An Historical Sketch of
the British Claim to exercise a Maritime Police over the Vessels of all
Nations, in Peace as well as in War. Boston, 1858.

Letter from ... in London, to his Friend in America, on the ... Slave
Trade, etc. New York, 1784.

Thomas Lloyd. Debates of the Convention of the State of Pennsylvania on
the Constitution, proposed for the Government of the United States. In
two volumes. Vol. I. Philadelphia, 1788.

London Anti-Slavery Society. The Foreign Slave Trade, A Brief Account of
its State, of the Treaties which have been entered into, and of the Laws
enacted for its Suppression, from the date of the English Abolition Act
to the present time. London, 1837.

----. The Foreign Slave Trade, etc., No. 2. London, 1838.

London Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade, and for the
Civilization of Africa. Proceedings at the first Public Meeting, held at
Exeter Hall, on Monday, 1st June, 1840. London, 1840.

Theodore Lyman, Jr. The Diplomacy of the United States, etc. Second
edition. 2 vols. Boston, 1828.

Hugh M'Call. The History of Georgia, containing Brief Sketches of the
most Remarkable Events, up to the Present Day. 2 vols. Savannah,
1811-16.

Marion J. McDougall. Fugitive Slaves. Boston, 1891.

John Fraser Macqueen. Chief Points in the Laws of War and Neutrality,
Search and Blockade, etc. London and Edinburgh, 1862.

R.R. Madden. A Letter to W.E. Channing, D.D., on the subject of the
Abuse of the Flag of the United States in the Island of Cuba, and the
Advantage taken of its Protection in promoting the Slave Trade. Boston,
1839.

James Madison. Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Fourth
President of the United States. In four volumes. Published by order of
Congress. Philadelphia, 1865.

James Madison. The Papers of James Madison, purchased by order of
Congress; being his Correspondence and Reports of Debates during the
Congress of the Confederation and his Reports of Debates in the Federal
Convention. 3 vols. Washington, 1840.

Marana (pseudonym). The Future of America. Considered ... in View of ...
Re-opening the Slave Trade. Boston, 1858.

E. Marining. Six Months on a Slaver. New York, 1879.

George C. Mason. The African Slave Trade in Colonial Times. (In American
Historical Record, I. 311, 338.)

Frederic G. Mather. Slavery in the Colony and State of New York. (In
_Magazine of American History_, XI. 408.)

Samuel May, Jr. Catalogue of Anti-Slavery Publications in America,
1750-1863. (Contains bibliography of periodical literature.)

Memorials presented to the Congress of the United States of America, by
the Different Societies instituted for promoting the Abolition of
Slavery, etc., etc., in the States of Rhode-Island, Connecticut,
New-York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Philadelphia, 1792.

Charles F. Mercer. Mémoires relatifs à l'Abolition de la Traite
Africaine, etc. Paris, 1855.

C.W. Miller. Address on Re-opening the Slave Trade ... August 29, 1857.
Columbia, S.C., 1857.

George H. Moore. Notes on the History of Slavery in Massachusetts. New
York, 1866.

----. Slavery in Massachusetts. (In _Historical Magazine_, XV. 329.)

Jedidiah Morse. A Discourse ... July 14, 1808, in Grateful Celebration
of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the Governments of the
United States, Great Britain and Denmark. Boston, 1808.

John Pennington, Lord Muncaster. Historical Sketches of the Slave Trade
and its effect on Africa, addressed to the People of Great Britain.
London, 1792.

Edward Needles. An Historical Memoir of the Pennsylvania Society, for
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Philadelphia, 1848.

New England Anti-Slavery Convention. Proceedings at Boston, May 27,
1834. Boston, 1834.

Hezekiah Niles (_et al._), editors. The Weekly Register, etc. 71 vols.
Baltimore, 1811-1847. (For Slave-Trade, see I. 224; III. 189; V. 30, 46;
VI. 152; VII. 54, 96, 286, 350; VIII. 136, 190, 262, 302, Supplement, p.
155; IX. 60, 78, 133, 172, 335; X. 296, 400, 412, 427; XI. 15, 108, 156,
222, 336, 399; XII. 58, 60, 103, 122, 159, 219, 237, 299, 347, 397,
411.)

Robert Norris. A Short Account of the African Slave-Trade. A new edition
corrected. London, 1789.

E.B. O'Callaghan, translator. Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms
of Amsterdam, 1659, 1663; with additional papers illustrative of the
Slave Trade under the Dutch. Albany, 1867. (New York Colonial Tracts,
No. 3.)

Frederick Law Olmsted. A Journey in the Back Country. New York, 1860.

----. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, etc. New York, 1856.

----. A Journey through Texas, etc. New York, 1857.

----. The Cotton Kingdom, etc. 2 vols. New York, 1861.

Sir W.G. Ouseley. Notes on the Slave Trade; with Remarks on the Measures
adopted for its Suppression. London, 1850.

Pennsylvania Historical Society. The Charlemagne Tower Collection of
American Colonial Laws. (Bibliography.) Philadelphia, 1890.

Edward A. Pollard. Black Diamonds gathered in the Darkey Homes of the
South. New York, 1859.

William F. Poole. Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800. To which
is appended a fac-simile reprint of Dr. George Buchanan's Oration on the
Moral and Political Evil of Slavery, etc. Cincinnati, 1873.

Robert Proud. History of Pennsylvania. 2 vols. Philadelphia. 1797-8.

[James Ramsay.] An Inquiry into the Effects of putting a Stop to the
African Slave Trade, and of granting Liberty to the Slaves in the
British Sugar Colonies. London, 1784.

[James Ramsey.] Objections to the Abolition of the Slave Trade, with
Answers, etc. Second edition. London, 1788.

[John Ranby.] Observations on the Evidence given before the Committees
of the Privy Council and House of Commons in Support of the Bill for
Abolishing the Slave Trade. London, 1791.

Remarks on the Colonization of the Western Coast of Africa, by the Free
Negroes of the United States, etc. New York, 1850.

Right of Search. Reply to an "American's Examination" of the "Right of
Search, etc." By an Englishman. London, 1842.

William Noel Sainsbury, editor. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial
Series, America and the West Indies, 1574-1676. 4 vols. London, 1860-93.

George Sauer. La Traite et l'Esclavage des Noirs. London, 1863.

George S. Sawyer. Southern Institutes; or, An Inquiry into the Origin
and Early Prevalence of Slavery and the Slave-Trade. Philadelphia, 1858.

Selections from the Revised Statutes: Containing all the Laws relating
to Slaves, etc. New York, 1830.

Johann J. Sell. Versuch einer Geschichte des Negersclavenhandels. Halle,
1791.

[Granville Sharp.] Extract of a Letter to a Gentleman in Maryland;
Wherein is demonstrated the extreme wickedness of tolerating the Slave
Trade. Fourth edition. London, 1806.

A Short Account of that part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes, ... and
the Manner by which the Slave Trade is carried on. Third edition.
London, 1768.

A Short Sketch of the Evidence for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade.
Philadelphia, 1792.

Joseph Sidney. An Oration commemorative of the Abolition of the Slave
Trade in the United States.... Jan. 2. 1809. New York, 1809.

[A Slave Holder.] Remarks upon Slavery and the Slave-Trade, addressed to
the Hon. Henry Clay. 1839.

The Slave Trade in New York. (In the _Continental Monthly_, January,
1862, p. 86.)

Joseph Smith. A Descriptive Catalogue of Friends' Books. (Bibliography.)
2 vols. London, 1867.

Capt. William Snelgrave. A New Account of some Parts of Guinea, and the
Slave-Trade. London, 1734.

South Carolina. General Assembly (House), 1857. Report of the Special
Committee of the House of Representatives ... on so much of the Message
of His Excellency Gov. Jas. H. Adams, as relates to Slavery and the
Slave Trade. Columbia, S.C., 1857.

L.W. Spratt. A Protest from South Carolina against a Decision of the
Southern Congress: Slave Trade in the Southern Congress. (In Littell's
_Living Age_, Third Series, LXVIII. 801.)

----. Speech upon the Foreign Slave Trade, before the Legislature of
South Carolina. Columbia, S.C., 1858.

----. The Foreign Slave Trade the Source of Political Power, etc.
Charleston, 1858.

William Stith. The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of
Virginia. Virginia and London, 1753.

George M. Stroud. A Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery in the
Several States of the United States of America. Philadelphia, 1827.

James Swan. A Dissuasion to Great-Britain and the Colonies: from the
Slave-Trade to Africa. Shewing the Injustice thereof, etc. Revised and
Abridged. Boston, 1773.

F.T. Texugo. A Letter on the Slave Trade still carried on along the
Eastern Coast of Africa, etc. London, 1839.

R. Thorpe. A View of the Present Increase of the Slave Trade, the Cause
of that Increase, and a mode for effecting its total Annihilation.
London, 1818.

Jesse Torrey. A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery ... and a Project of
Colonial Asylum for Free Persons of Colour. Philadelphia, 1817.

Drs. Tucker and Belknap. Queries respecting the Slavery and Emancipation
of Negroes in Massachusetts, proposed by the Hon. Judge Tucker of
Virginia, and answered by the Rev. Dr. Belknap. (In Collections of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, First Series, IV. 191.)

David Turnbull. Travels in the West. Cuba; with Notices of Porto Rico,
and the Slave Trade. London, 1840.

United States Congress. Annals of Congress, 1789-1824; Congressional
Debates, 1824-37; Congressional Globe, 1833-73; Congressional Record,
1873-; Documents (House and Senate); Executive Documents (House and
Senate); Journals (House and Senate); Miscellaneous Documents (House and
Senate); Reports (House and Senate); Statutes at Large.

United States Supreme Court. Reports of Decisions.

Charles W. Upham. Speech in the House of Representatives, Massachusetts,
on the Compromises of the Constitution, with an Appendix containing the
Ordinance of 1787. Salem, 1849.

Virginia State Convention. Proceedings and Debates, 1829-30. Richmond,
1830.

G. Wadleigh. Slavery in New Hampshire. (In _Granite Monthly_, VI. 377.)

Emory Washburn. Extinction of Slavery in Massachusetts. (In Proceedings
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, May, 1857. Boston, 1859.)

William B. Weeden. Economic and Social History of New England,
1620-1789. 2 vols. Boston, 1890.

Henry Wheaton. Enquiry into the Validity of the British Claim to a Right
of Visitation and Search of American Vessels suspected to be engaged in
the African Slave-Trade. Philadelphia, 1842.

William H. Whitmore. The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts. Reprinted from
the Edition of 1660, with the Supplements to 1772. Containing also the
Body of Liberties of 1641. Boston, 1889.

George W. Williams. History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to
1880. 2 vols. New York, 1883.

Henry Wilson. History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh
and Thirty-eighth United-States Congresses, 1861-64. Boston, 1864.

----. History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. 3
vols. Boston, 1872-7.


FOOTNOTES:

[1]  The Reports of the Secretary of the Navy are found among
the documents accompanying the annual messages of the President.

                    *       *       *       *       *




Index


ABOLITION of slave-trade by Europe, 145 n.

Abolition Societies, organization of, 42, 74;
  petitions of, 79, 80-85.

Adams, C.F., 151.

Adams, J.Q., on Right of Search, 139;
  proposes Treaty of 1824, 140;
  message, 271-72.

Adams, Governor of S.C., message on slave-trade, 169, 170, 289-90.

Advertisements for smuggled slaves, 182 n.

Africa, English trade to, 10, 12-13;
  Dutch trade to, 24-25;
  Colonial trade to, 26, 35, 36, 41-42, 47, 75, 76;
  "Association" and trade to, 47, 52;
  American trade to, 88, 112, 113, 116, 148, 179, 180, 181-82, 185-87;
  reopening of trade to, 168-92.

African Agency, establishment, 124, 126;
  attempts to abolish, 156;
  history, 158.

"African Labor Supply Association," 176.

African Society of London, 113.

African squadron, establishment of, 123, 124;
  activity of, 128, 129, 146, 148, 157, 159, 184, 185, 186, 191.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace, 11;
  Congress, 137 n.

Alabama, in Commercial Convention, 170;
  State statutes, 112, 254, 263-64, 287-88.

Alston, speeches on Act of 1807, 99 n., 101 n., 102 n.

Amelia Island, illicit traffic at, 116, 117, 121, 254;
  capture of, 118, 257.

Amendments to slave-trade clause in Constitution proposed, 72, 94,
  111 n., 183, 248-51, 253, 258, 266, 298, 299.

American Missionary Society, petition, 182.

"L'Amistad," case of, 143, 311.

Anderson, minister to Colombia, 142 n.

"Antelope" ("Ramirez"), case of, 129 n., 132, 284.

"Apprentices," African, importation of, 172, 177;
  Louisiana bill on, 177;
  Congressional bill on, 183.

Appropriations to suppress the slave-trade, chronological list of, 125 n.;
  from 1820 to 1850, 157-58;
  from 1850 to 1860, 183;
  from 1860 to 1870, 190;
  statutes, 255, 265, 272-76, 277-78, 285, 286-89, 291, 294, 297, 300,
    301, 304.

Argentine Confederation, 144 n.

Arkansas, 170.

Arkwright, Richard, 152.

Ashmun, Jehudi, 158.

Assiento treaty, 4, 206, 207;
  influence of, 7, 22, 45.

"Association," the, reasons leading to, 47, 48;
  establishment of, 50, 51;
  results of, 52-53.

Atherton, J., speech of, 72.

"Augusta," case of the slaver, 315.

Aury, Capt., buccaneer, 116.

Austria, at Congress of Vienna, 155-56;
  at Congress of Verona, 139-40;
  signs Quintuple Treaty, 147, 281.

Ayres, Eli, U.S. African agent, 158;
  report of, 128, 129.


BABBIT, William, slave-trader, 131 n.

Bacon, Samuel, African agent, 126, 158.

Badger, Joseph, slave-trader, 131 n.

Baldwin, Abraham, in Federal Convention, 59, 60, 63, 65;
  in Congress, 81, 108.

Baltimore, slave-trade at, 131-32, 165, 166.

Banks, N.P., 192, 305.

Barancas, Fort, 120.

Barbadoes, 12.

Bard (of Pa.), Congressman, 90.

Barksdale, Wm. (of Miss.), 175.

Barnwell, Robert (of S.C.), 70.

Barry, Robert, slave-trader, 165.

Bay Island slave-depot, 166.

Bayard, J.A. (of Del.), Congressman, 87.

Bedinger, G.M. (of Ky.), 89 n.

Belgium, 150.

Belknap, J. (of Mass.), 77.

Benezet, Anthony, 29.

Benton, Thomas H., 140, 156, 285.

Betton (of N.H.), Congressman, 109 n.

Biblical Codes of Law, 26, 37, 44 n.

Bidwell (of Mass.), Congressman, 99 n., 100 n., 102 n., 104 n., 108-10,
    111, 252.

Blanco and Caballo, slave-traders, 165.

Bland, T. (of Va.), Congressman, 81.

Bolivia, 144 n.

Border States, interstate slave-trade from, 155;
  legislation of, 76;
  see also under individual States.

Boston, slave-trade at, 37, 85, 166, 184.

Bozal Negroes, 166.

Braddock's Expedition, 21.

Bradley, S.R., Senator, 98, 107, 108.

Brazil, slave-trade to, 25, 114, 144, 163, 164, 171, 179, 275;
  slaves in, 133;
  proposed conference with, 150;
  squadron on coasts of, 160.

Brazos Santiago, 180.

Brown (of Miss.), Congressman, 175.

Brown, John (of Va.), slave-trader, 52.

Brown, John (of R.I.), 85-87.

Buchanan, James A., refuses to co-operate with England, 151;
  issues "Ostend Manifesto," 177;
  as president, enforces slave-trade laws, 186;
  messages, 291, 294-95, 298.

Buchanan, Governor of Sierra Leone, 164.

Bullock, Collector of Revenue, 116.

Burgesses, Virginia House of, petitions vs. slave-trade, 21;
  declares vs. slave-trade, 21;
  in "Association," 48.

Burke, Aedanus (of S.C.), 78-80.

Butler, Pierce (of S.C.), Senator, 65.


CALHOUN, J.C., 155 n.

California, vessels bound to, 162.

Campbell, John, Congressman, 108.

Campbell, Commander, U.S.N., 118 n.

Canning, Stratford, British Minister, 138, 140.

Canot, Capt., slave-trader, 184.

Cape de Verde Islands, 185.

Cartwright, Edmund, 152.

Cass, Lewis, 147-51, 281.

Castlereagh, British Cabinet Minister, 135, 136.

Cato, insurrection of the slave, 18.

"Centinel," newspaper correspondent, 67.

Central America, 177.

Chandalier Islands, 119.

Chandler, John (of N.H.), 104 n.

Charles II., of England, 10.

Charleston, S.C., attitude toward "Association," 49;
  slave-trade at, 89, 92, 93, 96, 113, 165.

Chew, Beverly, Collector of Revenue, 116, 118.

Chili, 150.

Chittenden, Martin (of Vt.), 109 n.

Claiborne, Wm., Governor of La., 92.

Clarkson, William, 53, 134.

Clay, J.B. (of Ky.), Congressman, 175.

Clay, Congressman, 102 n.

Clearance of slavers, 157, 162, 164, 184, 280, 287, 288.

Clymer, George (of Pa.), 63, 77.

Coastwise slave-trade, 98, 106-09, 156, 161, 183, 191, 302.

Cobb, Howell, Sec. of the Treasury, 177.

Coles (of Va.), Congressman, 81.

Colombia, U.S. of, 142, 270.

Colonies, legislation of, see under individual Colonies, and Appendix A;
  slave-trade in, 11, 13, 22, 25, 34-36, 46-47, 53-56;
  status of slavery in, 13-14, 23, 24, 33-34, 44, 199, 200.

Colonization Society, 126, 156 n., 158, 196.

"Comet," case of the slaver, 143, 309.

Commercial conventions, Southern, 169-73.

Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, 11.

Compromises in Constitution, 62-66, 196-98.

Compton, Samuel, 152.

Confederate States of America, 187-90, 299, 300.

Confederation, the, 56-57, 228.

Congress of the United States, 77-111,
    112, 121-26, 128, 131, 156-58, 174, 190-92, 239, 247-66, 268, 271-75,
    278-81, 284-94, 295-97, 298-99, 301-02, 304-05.

Congress of Verona, 139.

Congress of Vienna, 135, 137.

Connecticut, restrictions in, 43-44, 57;
  elections in, 178;
  Colonial and State legislation, 199, 200, 223, 225, 236, 240.

"Constitution," slaver, 120, 121, 307.

Constitution of the United States, 58-73, 78, 79-83, 94, 102-03, 107,
    111 n., 139, 183, 196, 248-51, 253, 258, 266, 298, 299.
  See also Amendments and Compromises.

Continental Congress, 49-52.

Cook, Congressman, 100 n., 103 n., 108.

Cosby, Governor of N.Y., 27.

Cotton, manufacture of, 152, 153;
  price of, 153-54;
  crop of, 154.

Cotton-gin, 153.

Coxe, Tench, 68.

Cranston, Governor of R.I., 41.

Crawford, W.H., Secretary, 119, 175.

"Creole," case of the slaver, 143, 283-84, 312.

Crimean war, 154.

Cruising Conventions, 138, 139, 146, 148-49, 285, 289, 292, 297-98.

Cuba, cruising off, 151, 297;
  movement to acquire, 155, 177, 186;
  illicit traffic to and from, 161, 162, 164, 166, 171.

Cumberland, Lieut., R.N., 149.

"Cyane," U.S.S., 129.


DANA (of Conn.), Congressman, 86.

Danish slave-trade, 47.

Darien, Ga., 51, 117.

Davis, Jefferson, 175.

De Bow, J.D.B., 172, 176.

Declaration of Independence, 53-54.

Delaware, restrictions in, 31, 56, 76;
  attitude toward slave-trade, 64, 72 n., 74;
  Colonial and State statutes, 225, 226, 232, 238-39, 244.

Denmark, abolition of slave-trade, 133, 247.

Dent (of Md.), Congressman, 87.

Dickinson, John, in the Federal Convention, 59, 60, 63.

Dickson (of N.C.), Congressman, 87.

Disallowance of Colonial acts, 11, 12, 18-19, 21, 27, 29, 32, 42.

Dobbs, Governor of N.C., 12.

Dolben, Sir William, M.P., 134.

Douglas, Stephen A., 181.

Dowdell (of Ala.), Congressman, 175.

Drake, Capt., slave-smuggler, 114, 166.

Driscoll, Capt., slave-trader, 184.

Duke of York's Laws, 26, 200.

Dunmore, Lord, 226.

Dutch. See Holland.

Dutch West India Company, 25.

Duty, on African goods, 10;
  on slaves imported, 10, 11, 12, 16-22, 26-32, 38, 40-42, 59, 62-66,
    67, 68, 77-84, 89, 90, 95, 96, 196, 199-206, 208-27, 229, 232, 239,
    247, 250.

Dwight, Theodore, of Conn., 105 n.


EARLY, Peter (of Ga.), 99 n., 100, 102, 104-08, 111.

East Indies, 50.

Economic revolution, 152-54.

Edwards (of N.C.), Congressman, 122 n.

Ellsworth, Oliver (of Conn.), in Federal Convention, 58, 59, 61.

Elmer, Congressman, 106 n.

Ely, Congressman, 103 n., 105 n.

Emancipation of slaves, 31, 39, 42, 44, 68, 70, 76, 79-84, 192, 196,
    226-29.

"Encomium," case of, 143, 309.

England, slave-trade policy, 9-14, 25, 30, 42, 46-50, 53, 54, 97, 134-51,
    153, 191, 206, 207, 208, 252, 254, 256, 259, 265-69, 275, 276, 281,
    285, 297, 301, 302, 303, 305.
  See Disallowance.

English Colonies. See Colonies.

"Enterprise," case of, 143, 309.

Escambia River, 114.


FAIRFAX County, Virginia, 49.

Faneuil Hall, meeting in, 48.

Federalist, the, on slave-trade, 69.

Fernandina, port of, 116.

Filibustering expeditions, 177.

Findley, Congressman, 103 n.

Fisk, Congressman, 100 n.

Florida, 52, 102, 114, 116, 120, 166, 170, 180, 181.
  See St. Mary's River and Amelia Island.

Foote, H.S. (of Miss.), 172.

Forsyth, John, Secretary of State, 144, 146, 156 n., 176.

Foster (of N.H.), Congressman, 81.

Fowler, W.C., 112-13.

Fox, C.J., English Cabinet Minister, 135 n.

France, Revolution in, 133;
  Colonial slave-trade of, 46, 92, 133, 254;
  Convention of, 86, 133;
  at Congress of Vienna, 135;
  at Congress of Verona, 139;
  treaties with England, 143, 150, 275, 276;
  flag of, in slave-trade, 144;
  refuses to sign Quintuple Treaty, 147;
  invited to conference, 150.

Franklin, Benjamin, 80.

Friends, protest of, vs. slave-trade, 28-29;
  attitude towards slave-trade, 30-31, 33, 43, 68-69, 77, 204;
  petitions of, vs. slave-trade, 56, 57, 77, 84;
  reports of, on slave-trade, 167.


GAILLARD, Congressman, 108.

Gallatin, Albert, 91-92.

Gallinas, port of, Africa, 128.

Galveston, Tex., 115.

Garnett (of Va.), Congressman, 109 n.

"General Ramirez." See "Antelope."

Georgia, slavery in, 13, 14;
  restrictions in, 15, 16, 75, 176-77;
  opposition to "Association," 51, 52;
  demands slave-trade, 16, 55, 60-67;
  attitude toward restrictions, 80, 81, 84, 132;
  smuggling to, 89, 95, 102, 114, 116, 117, 180, 181;
  Colonial and State statutes, 112, 215, 241, 244, 245, 257, 259, 276-77.

Germanic Federation, 150.

Gerry, Elbridge, in the Federal Convention, 59, 60;
  in Congress, 80, 81.

Ghent, Treaty of, 136, 254.

Giddings, J.R., 183 n., 284, 287.

Giles, W.B. (of Va.), Congressman, 108.

Gordon, Capt., slave-trader, 190 n.

Good Hope, Cape of, 151, 160, 191.

Gorham, N. (of Mass.), in Federal Convention, 58, 65.

Goulden, W.B., 169.

Graham, Secretary of the Navy, 185.

Great Britain. See England.

Gregory XVI., Pope, 145.

Grenville-Fox ministry, 134.

Guadaloupe, 88.

Guinea. See Africa.

Guizot, F., French Foreign Minister, 147.


HABERSHAM, R.W., 130 n.

Hamilton, Alexander, 58.

Hanse Towns, 142.

Harmony and Co., slave-traders, 165.

Harper (of S.C.), Congressman, 92.

Hartley, David, 80, 81.

Hastings, Congressman, 105 n.

Havana, Cuba, 119, 120, 145, 162, 165.

Hawkins, Sir John, 9.

Hayti, 144 n.;
  influence of the revolution, 74-77, 84-88, 96-97.
  See San Domingo.

Heath, General, of Mass., 71.

Henderick, Garrett, 28.

Hill (of N.C.), Congressman, 85.

Holland, participation of, in slave-trade, 24, 25, 47;
  slaves in Colonies, 133;
  abolishes slave-trade, 136;
  treaty with England, 137, 259;
  West India Company, 25.

Holland, Congressman, 99 n., 103, 106 n.

Hopkins, John, slave-trader, 131 n.

Hopkins, Samuel, 41.

Horn, Cape, 160, 162.

Huger (of S.C.), Congressman, 87, 91 n.

Hunter, Andrew, 169 n.

Hunter, Governor of N.J., 32.

Hutchinson, Wm., Governor of Mass., 38.


IMPORT duties on slaves. See Duty.

Indians, 29.

Instructions to Governors, 12, 18-19, 27, 30, 33, 36;
  to naval officers, 119, 161, 185.
  See Disallowance.

Insurrections. See Slaves.

Iredell, James (of N.C.), 67, 71.

Ireland, 48.


JACKSON, Andrew, pardons slave-traders, 131 n.

Jackson, J. (of Ga.), 78, 80, 81.

Jacksonville, Fla., 181.

Jamaica, 12.

Jay, William, 134-35.

Jefferson, Thomas, drafts Declaration of Independence, 53, 54;
  as President, messages on slave-trade, 92, 97-98, 251;
  signs Act of 1807, 110;
  pardons slave-traders, 131 n.

Jefferson, Capt, slave-trader, 184.

Johnson (of Conn.), 50, 63.

Johnson (of La.), 141.

Joint-cruising. See Cruising Conventions.


KANE, Commissioner, 162.

Keitt, L.M. (of S.C.), Congressman, 175.

Kelly, Congressman, 108.

Kenan, Congressman, 108.

Kendall, Amos, 126 n.

Kennedy, Secretary of the Navy, 185.

Kentucky, 108 n., 170 n., 172 n.

Key West, 185.

Kilgore, resolutions in Congress, 175, 293.

King, Rufus, in Federal Convention, 59, 63, 65.

Knoxville, Tenn., 170.


LA COSTE, Capt., slave-trader, 131.

Lafitte, E., and Co., 177.

Langdon, John, 59, 60, 63, 65.

Lawrence (of N.Y.), 80, 81.

Laws. See Statutes.

Lee, Arthur, 48 n.

Lee, R.H., 48 n., 49.

Legislation. See Statutes.

Le Roy, L., slave-trader, 131 n.

Liberia, 124, 158.
  See African Agency.

Lincoln, Abraham, 111, 126, 151, 190, 300-01.

Liverpool, Eng., 53, 145.

Livingstone (of N.Y.), in Federal Convention, 63.

Lloyd, Congressman, 102 n., 106 n.

London, Eng., 135, 137, 137 n., 147, 150, 154 n.

"Louisa," slaver, 120, 121.

Louisiana, sale of, 74, 97;
  slave-trade to, 75, 91-94;
  influence on S.C. repeal of 1803, 89;
  status of slave-trade to, 91-94, 171;
  State statutes, 177, 291.

Low, I. (of N.Y.), 50.

Lowndes, R. (of S.C.), 72, 89 n., 90.


MCCARTHY, Governor of Sierra Leone, 115.

McGregor Raid, the, 116.

McIntosh, Collector of Revenue, 117 n.

McKeever, Lieut., U.S.N., 120, 121.

Macon, N., 100, 102 n., 109.

Madeira, 185.

Madison, James, in the Federal Convention, 59, 63, 64;
  in Congress, 78-81;
  as President, 113, 115, 137 n., 254, 255-56.

Madrid, Treaty of, 257.

Maine, 166.

Manchester, Eng., 47.

Mansfield, Capt., slave-trader, 184.

"Marino," slaver, 120, 121.

Martin, Luther (of Md.), in the Federal Convention, 59, 61, 63, 65.

Maryland, slavery in, 14;
  restrictions in, 22, 23, 57, 76;
  attitude toward slave-trade, 65, 74, 83, 94;
  Colonial and State statutes, 201, 202, 209, 210, 219-20, 221, 223, 226,
    229, 243, 251.

Mason, George, 59, 61, 65-67, 71.

Mason, J.M., 177.

Massachusetts, in slave-trade, 34-36;
  restrictions in, 37-39, 77;
  attitude toward slave-trade, 71, 77, 83, 94;
  Colonial and State legislation, 199, 201, 203, 214, 223, 224, 228, 234,
    248, 249, 261.

Masters, Congressman, 99 n.

Mathew, Capt., slave-trader, 184.

Mathew, Governor of the Bahama Islands, 167.

Matthews (of S.C.), 56.

Meigs, Congressman, 132 n., 262.

Memphis, Tenn., 181.

Mercer, John (of Va.), 139 n., 142, 156 n.

Messages, Presidential, 97-98, 113, 115, 141, 148, 157, 163, 251, 254,
    255-60, 262, 264, 269, 271, 279, 280-81, 285, 291, 292, 294-95, 298,
    300-01.

Mesurado, Cape, 126, 158.

Mexico, treaty with England, 144 n.;
  conquest of, 155, 161, 177.

Mexico, Gulf of, 118, 159, 160, 166 n.

Mickle, Calvin, 121.

Middle Colonies, 24, 33, 57, 66.

Middleton (of S.C.), Congressman, 126.

Middletown, Conn., 43.

Mifflin, W. (of Penn.), in Continental Congress, 50.

Miles (of S.C.), Congressman, 175.

Mississippi, slavery in, 91;
  illicit trade to, 102;
  legislation, 112, 254, 263, 283, 284.

Missouri, 123.

Missouri Compromise, 124.

Mitchell, Gen. D.B., 118.

Mitchell, S.L. (of N.Y.), Congressman, 89 n.

Mixed courts for slave-traders, 137, 139, 151, 191.

Mobile, Ala., illicit trade to, 118, 119, 161, 181.

Monroe, James, as President, messages on slave-trade, 117, 141, 257, 258,
    259-60, 262-63, 265, 269;
  establishment of African Agency, 126, 158;
  pardons, 131 n.

Morbon, Wm., slave-trader, 131 n.

Morris, Gouverneur, in Federal Convention, 59, 63, 64, 65.

Morris, Governor of N.J., 33.

Moseley, Congressman, 106.


NANSEMOND County, Va., 49.

Naples (Two Sicilies), 142.

Napoleon I., 74, 134, 136, 254.

Navigation Ordinance, 25.

Navy, United States, 111, 115, 118-20, 123, 124, 128, 159-61, 163, 184-86,
    191, 259, 286, 295, 301;
  reports of Secretary of, 185, 186, 318-31.

Neal, Rev. Mr., in Mass. Convention, 71.

Negroes, character of, 13-14.
  See Slaves.

Negro plots, 18, 30, 204.

Nelson, Hugh (of Va.), 122 n., 123 n.

Nelson, Attorney-General, 162.

Netherlands. See Holland.

New England, slavery in, 14, 34, 44;
  slave-trade by, 34-36, 43, 57;
  Colonial statutes, see under individual Colonies.

New Hampshire, restrictions in, 36, 37;
  attitude toward slave-trade, 34, 72, 94;
  State legislation, 250.

New Jersey, slavery in, 14;
  restrictions in, 32, 33, 76;
  attitude toward slavery, 64, 74, 178;
  Colonial and State statutes, 200, 205, 221, 222, 225, 230, 244.

New Mexico, 176.

New Netherland, 24, 199, 200.

New Orleans, illicit traffic to, 92, 115, 131 n., 161, 166, 171, 179.

Newport, R.I., 35, 41.

New York, slavery in, 14;
  restrictions in, 25-27;
  Abolition societies in, 74, 83;
  Colonial and State statutes, 203-04, 210, 213, 214, 218, 229-30, 234,
    239, 245-46.

New York City, illicit traffic at, 162, 166, 178-81, 190, 191.

Nichols (of Va.), Congressman, 87.

Norfolk, Va., 162.

North Carolina, restrictions in, 19, 57, 76;
  "Association" in, 48, 55;
  reception of Constitution, 65, 71;
  cession of back-lands, 91;
  Colonial and State statutes, 112, 232, 241, 242, 255.

Northwest Territory, 91.

Nourse, Joseph, Registrar of the Treasury, 120 n.

Nova Scotia, 52.

Nunez River, Africa, 129.


OGLETHORPE, General James, 15.

Olin (of Vt.), Congressman, 105 n.

Ordinance of 1787, 91.

"Ostend Manifesto," 177.


PAGE, John (of Va.), 81.

Palmerston, Lord, 146.

Panama Congress, 142 n.

Pardons granted to slave-traders, 131 n.

Paris, France, Treaty of, 134, 135, 137 n.

Parker, R.E. (of Va.), 77-78, 81.

Parliament, slave-trade in, 10, 134.

Pastorius, F.D., 28.

Paterson's propositions, 58.

Peace negotiations of 1783, 134.

Pemberton, Thomas, 34.

Pennsylvania, slavery in, 14;
  restrictions in, 28-31, 76;
  attitude towards slave-trade, 56, 67, 70, 80, 83;
  in Constitutional Convention, 64;
  Colonial and State statutes, 201-05, 209, 211, 213-14, 220, 221, 222,
    223, 227, 235-36.

Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, 74, 80.

Perdido River, 119.

Perry, Commander, U.S.N., 162.

Perry, Jesse, slave-trader, 131 n.

Perry, Robert, slave-trader, 131 n.

"Perry," U.S.S., 162, 165.

Petitions, of Abolition societies, 56, 79-81, 83, 84;
  of free Negroes, 85, 86.

Pettigrew (of S.C.), 176.

Philadelphia, 162, 166.

Pinckney, Charles (of S.C.), in Federal Convention, 58-60, 65.

Pinckney, C.C. (of S.C.), in Federal Convention, 59-63, 64.

Pindall, Congressman, 122 n., 123 n.

Piracy, slave-trade made, 124-25, 140, 141, 146, 149, 155 n.

Pitkin, T. (of Conn.), 99 n., 104 n.

Pitt, William, 134.

Plumer, Wm. (of N.H.), 127.

Pollard, Edward, 176.

Pongas River, Africa, 129.

Portugal, treaties with England, 135, 137, 145 n., 150, 256;
  slaves in colonies, 46, 133;
  abolition of slave-trade by, 136, 144 n.;
  use of flag of, 144.

Presidents. See under individual names.

Price of slaves, 163.

Prince George County, Va., 49.

Privy Council, report to, 134.

Proffit, U.S. Minister to Brazil, 164.

Prohibition of slave-trade by Ga., 15, 75;
  S.C., 17, 89;
  N.C., 19;
  Va., 20;
  Md., 22;
  N.Y., 26;
  Vermont, 28;
  Penn., 28, 29;
  Del., 31;
  N.J., 32;
  N.H., 36;
  Mass., 37;
  R.I., 40;
  Conn., 43;
  United States, 110;
  England, 135;
  Confederate States, 188.
  See also Appendices.

Providence, R.I., 42.

Prussia at European Congresses, 135-36, 139, 147, 281.

Pryor, R.A. (of Va.), 171.


QUAKERS. See Friends.

Quarantine of slaves, 16.

Quebec, 52.

Quincy, Josiah, Congressman, 100 n., 102 n.

Quintuple Treaty, 145, 147, 281.


RABUN, Wm., Governor of Ga., 127.

Ramsey, David (of S.C.), 69.

Randolph, Edmund, in the Federal Convention, 58, 59, 63.

Randolph, John, Congressman, 106-07.

Randolph, Thomas M., Congressman, 108.

Registration of slaves, 16, 132 n., 258, 260.

Revenue from slave-trade, 87, 90, 95, 111, 112.
  See Duty Acts.

Rhode Island, slave-trade in, 34, 35, 85;
  restrictions in, 40-43;
  "Association" in, 48;
  reception of Constitution by, 72;
  abolition societies in, 42, 74, 83;
  Colonial and State legislation, 200, 203, 213, 214, 222, 223, 224-25,
    227-30, 233.

Rice Crop, 17, 20.

Right of Search, 137-42, 145 n., 148-51, 156, 183, 185, 191, 256, 295.

Rio Grande river, 176.

Rio Janeiro, Brazil, 145, 160, 162.

Rolfe, John, 25.

Royal Adventurers, Company of, 10.

Royal African Company, 10-11.

Rum, traffic in, 35, 36, 50.

Rush, Richard, Minister to England, 138.

Russell, Lord John, 150, 297, 303.

Russia in European Congresses, 135, 139, 147;
signs Quintuple Treaty, 147, 281.

Rutledge, Edward, in Federal Convention, 58-61, 65.

Rutledge, John, Congressman, 84-87.


ST. AUGUSTINE, 114.

St. Johns, Island of, 52.

St. Johns Parish, Ga., 52.

St. Mary's River, Fla., 113-14, 116, 117.

"Sanderson," slaver, 35 n.

Sandiford, 29.

San Domingo, trade with, stopped, 50, 96;
  insurrection in, 74, 84, 86, 96;
  deputies from, 133.

Sardinia, 142.

Savannah, Ga., 16, 51, 169.

Search. See Right of Search.

Sewall, Wm., slave-trader, 131 n.

Seward, Wm. H., Secretary, 151, 289, 293.

Seward (of Ga.), Congressman, 175.

Sharpe, Granville, 134.

Sherbro Islands, Africa, 158.

Sherman, Roger, in the Federal Convention, 59, 60, 62, 65;
  in Congress, 78.

Shields, Thomas, slave-trader, 131 n.

Sierra Leone, 129, 151, 191.

Sinnickson (of N.J.), Congressman, 81.

Slave Power, the, 153, 198.

Slavers:
  "Alexander," 129 n.;
  "Amedie," 138 n.;
  "L'Amistad," 143;
  "Antelope" ("Ramirez"), 132;
  "Comet," 143 n.;
  "Constitution," 120, 121;
  "Creole," 143;
  "Daphne," 129 n.;
  "Dorset," 115;
  "Eliza," 129 n.;
  "Emily," 185;
  "Encomium," 143 n.;
  "Endymion," 129 n.;
  "Esperanza," 129 n.;
  "Eugene," 115, 129 n.;
  "Fame," 162;
  "Fortuna," 138 n.;
  "Illinois," 149;
  "Le Louis," 138 n.;
  "Louisa," 120;
  "Marino," 120;
  "Martha," 165;
  "Mary," 131 n.;
  "Mathilde," 129 n.;
  "Paz," 115;
  "La Pensée," 129 n.;
  "Plattsburg," 128 n., 129 n.;
  "Prova," 165;
  "Ramirez" ("Antelope"), 129 n., 130;
  "Rebecca," 115;
  "Rosa," 115;
  "Sanderson," 35 n.;
  "San Juan Nepomuceno," 138 n.;
  "Saucy Jack," 115;
  "Science," 129 n.;
  "Wanderer," 180, 184, 186;
  "Wildfire," 190 n.;
  see also Appendix C.

Slavery. See Table of Contents.

Slaves, number imported, 11, 13, 23 n., 27 n., 31 n., 33 n., 36 n.,
    39 n., 40 n., 43 n., 44 n., 89, 94, 181;
  insurrections of, 13, 18, 30, 204;
  punishments of, 13;
  captured on high seas, 39, 56, 186;
  illegal traffic in, 88, 95, 112-21, 126-32, 165, 166, 179;
  abducted, 144.

Slave-trade, see Table of Contents;
  internal, 9, 155;
  coastwise, 98, 106-09, 156, 161, 183, 191, 302.

Slave-traders, 10, 11, 25, 34, 35, 37, 41, 93, 113, 119, 126-29, 146,
    161, 176, 178, 180, 184;
  prosecution and conviction of, 119, 120, 121, 126, 127, 130, 161, 162,
    183, 190, 191;
  Pardon of, 131;
  punishment of, 37, 104, 122, 127, 132, 190, 191, 199, 261, 264, 268,
    274, 296.
  For ships, see under Slavers, and Appendix C.

Slidell, John, 182.

Sloan (of N.J.), Congressman, 99 n., 100, 105 n., 111, 251, 252.

Smilie, John (of Pa.), Congressman, 99 n., 105 n., 104 n.

Smith, Caleb B., 190.

Smith, J.F., slave-trader, 131 n.

Smith (of S.C.), Senator, 78-81, 93.

Smith, Capt., slave-trader, 37.

Smuggling of slaves, 76, 108, 109, 114, 116, 117, 127, 128, 129, 130,
    166, 179-82.

Sneed (of Tenn.), Congressman, 170.

Soulé, Pierre, 177.

South Carolina, slavery in, 13, 14, 17, 18, 93;
  restrictions in, 16-19, 75;
  attitude toward slave-trade, 49, 52, 55, 57, 81, 84;
  in the Federal Convention, 59-67, 70, 72;
  illicit traffic to, 89;
  repeal of prohibition, 89, 90, 92, 95;
  movement to reopen slave-trade, 169, 171, 172 n., 173;
  Colonial and State statutes, 201, 208-13, 215, 218, 220, 222, 229, 232,
    237-38, 241-43, 245-47, 289-91.

Southeby, Wm., 29.

Southern Colonies, 15, 23.
  See under individual Colonies.

Spaight, in Federal Convention, 65.

Spain, signs Assiento, 11;
  colonial slave-trade of, 10;
  colonial slavery, 133;
  war with Dutch, 25;
  abolishes slave-trade, 136, 137, 145 n.;
  L'Amistad case with, 143;
  flag of, in slave-trade, 113, 114, 115, 144, 150, 159;
  treaties, 206, 208, 257.

Spottswood, Governor of Virginia, 20.

Spratt, L.W. (of S.C.), 171, 172, 190 n.

Stanton (of R.I.), Congressman, 89 n., 106.

States. See under individual States.

Statutes, Colonial, see under names of individual Colonies;
  State, 56-57, 75-77;
    see under names of individual States, and Appendices A and B;
  United States, Act of 1794, 83, 242;
    Act of 1800, 85, 245;
    Act of 1803, 87, 246;
    Act of 1807, 97, 253;
    Act of 1818, 121, 258;
    Act of 1819, 123, 259;
    Act of 1820, 124, 261;
    Act of 1860, 187, 297;
    Act of 1862, 191, 302;
    see also Appendix B, 247, 248, 254, 264, 272, 273, 276, 277, 285,
      286, 289, 291, 294, 300, 303, 304.

Stephens, Alexander, 175.

Stevenson, A., Minister to England, 146-47.

Stone (of Md.), Congressman, 79, 81, 108.

Stono, S.C., insurrection at, 18.

Sumner, Charles, 192 n., 305.

Sweden, 135, 142, 269;
  Delaware Colony, 31;
  slaves in Colonies, 133.

Sylvester (of N.Y.), Congressman, 81.


TAYLOR, Zachary, 286.

Texas, 116, 144 n., 150, 155, 156, 165, 176, 180, 273, 277-78.

Treaties, 11, 135-37, 141, 142, 145, 147-50, 151, 159, 206, 207, 228,
    252, 254, 256, 259, 265, 269, 275, 276, 281, 285, 288, 292, 301-05.

Trist, N., 160 n., 164, 165 n.

Tyler, John, 148, 285, 286.


UNDERWOOD, John C., 181.

United States, 55, 74, 77, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 97, 98, 102, 103, 110,
    114, 117, 119, 120, 122, 126, 127, 128, 129, 133, 138, 136-51, 153,
    156, 157, 158, 162-67, 168, 178, 179, 185, 188, 190, 242, 245-48, 264,
    272-76, 277, 285, 286, 289, 291, 294, 297, 300-04.
  See also Table of Contents.

Up de Graeff, Derick, 28.

Up den Graef, Abraham, 28.

Uruguay, 144 n.

Utrecht, Treaty of, 207.


VAN BUREN, Martin, 79-80.

Van Rensselaer, Congressman, 108.

Varnum, J., Congressman, 105 n.

Venezuela, 144 n.

Vermont, 28, 57, 94, 226, 228, 232, 249.

Verona, Congress of, 139.

Vicksburg, Miss., 172, 181.

Vienna, Congress of, 135.

Virginia, first slaves imported, 28, 306;
  slavery in, 14;
  restrictions in, 19-22, 76;
  frame of government of, 21;
  "Association" in, 48, 52, 57;
  in the Federal Convention, 61, 62, 64, 71;
  abolition sentiment in, 74, 78, 83;
  attitude on reopening the slave-trade, 171, 173 n.;
  Colonial and State statutes, 201-04, 213-15, 219-20, 222, 226, 227,
    240, 249.


WALLACE, L.R., slave-trader, 131 n.

Waln (of Penn.), Congressman, 85.

"Wanderer," case of the slaver, 180, 184.

Washington, Treaty of (1842), 148-50, 170, 172, 182, 185, 285, 286,
    288, 292.

Watt, James, 152 n.

Webster, Daniel, 147, 281.

Webster, Noah, 68.

Wentworth, Governor of N.H., 36.

West Indies, slave-trade to and from, 10, 13, 17, 25, 35, 37, 41, 42,
    46, 48, 50, 55, 114, 117, 141, 151, 275;
  slavery in, 13, 168, 193;
  restrictions on importation of slaves from, 26, 75, 76, 87;
  revolution in, 74-77, 84-88, 96-97;
  mixed court in, 151 n., 191.

Western territory, 81, 261.

Whitney, Eli, 153.

Whydah, Africa, 149.

Wilberforce, Wm., 134.

Wilde, R.H., 132.

"Wildfire," slaver, 190 n., 315.

"William," case of the slaver, 315.

Williams, D.R. (of N.C.), Congressman, 102 n., 109 n., 111.

Williamsburg district, S.C., 169.

Williamson (of S.C.), in Federal Convention, 59, 63, 65.

Wilmington, N.C., 88.

Wilson, James, in Federal Convention, 56, 58, 62, 70.

Wilson (of Mass.), Congressman, 295, 296, 298.

Winn, African agent, 158.

Winston, Zenas, slave-trader, 131 n.

Wirt, William, 118, 126 n., 130.

Woolman, John, 29.

Wright (of Va.), 126.


YANCEY, W.L., 171.


                            TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

1. Text surrounded by underscores (_) was italicised in the original.
2. Text surrounded by tildes (~) was bolded in the original.
3. Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter. Footnote
   numbering restarts with each new chapter. In the original, footnotes
   were collected at the bottom of each page and numbering restarted for
   each page.
4. Letters preceded by ^ and surrounded by {} indicates letters
   superscripted in the original.





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                            THREE ADDRESSES

                                ON THE

                Relations Subsisting between the White
                       and Colored People of the
                            United States,

                                  by

                          FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

                    [Illustration: decorative bar]

                              WASHINGTON:
                GIBSON BROS., PRINTERS AND BOOKBINDERS.
                                 1886.




In Louisville, KY., 1883.

     The following was delivered by FREDERICK DOUGLASS as an address to
     the people of the United States at a Convention of Colored Men held
     in Louisville, Ky., September 24, 1883:

FELLOW-CITIZENS: Charged with the responsibility and duty of doing what
we may to advance the interest and promote the general welfare of a
people lately enslaved, and who, though now free, still suffer many of
the disadvantages and evils derived from their former condition, not the
least among which is the low and unjust estimate entertained of their
abilities and possibilities as men, and their value as citizens of the
Republic; instructed by these people to make such representations and
adopt such measures as in our judgment may help to bring about a better
understanding and a more friendly feeling between themselves and their
white fellow-citizens recognizing the great fact as we do, that the
relations of the American people and those of civilized nations
generally depend more upon prevailing ideas, opinions, and long
established usages for their qualities of good and evil than upon courts
of law or creeds of religion. Allowing the existence of a magnanimous
disposition on your part to listen candidly to an honest appeal for fair
play, coming from any class of your fellow-citizens, however humble, who
may have, or may think they have, rights to assert or wrongs to redress,
the members of this National Convention, chosen from all parts of the
United States, representing the thoughts, feelings and purposes of
colored men generally, would, as one means of advancing the cause
committed to them, most respectfully and earnestly ask your attention
and favorable consideration to the matters contained in the present
paper.

At the outset we very cordially congratulate you upon the altered
condition both of ourselves and our common country. Especially do we
congratulate you upon the fact that a great reproach, which for two
centuries rested on the good name of your country, has been blotted out;
that chattel slavery is no longer the burden of the colored man’s
complaint, and that we now come to rattle no chains, to clank no
fetters, to paint no horrors of the old plantation to shock your
sensibilities, to humble your pride, excite your pity, or to kindle
your indignation. We rejoice also that one of the results of this
stupendous revolution in our national history, the Republic which was
before divided and weakened between two hostile and irreconcilable
interests, has become united and strong; that from a low plain of life,
which bordered upon barbarism, it has risen to the possibility of the
highest civilization; that this change has started the American Republic
on a new departure, full of promise, although it has also brought you
and ourselves face to face with problems novel and difficult, destined
to impose upon us responsibilities and duties, which, plainly enough,
will tax our highest mental and moral ability for their happy solution.

Born on American soil in common with yourselves, deriving our bodies and
our minds from its dust, centuries having passed away since our
ancestors were torn from the shores of Africa, we, like yourselves, hold
ourselves to be in every sense Americans, and that we may, therefore,
venture to speak to you in a tone not lower than that which becomes
earnest men and American citizens. Having watered your soil with our
tears, enriched it with our blood, performed its roughest labor in time
of peace, defended it against enemies in time of war, and at all times
been loyal and true to its best interests, we deem it no arrogance or
presumption to manifest now a common concern with you for its welfare,
prosperity, honor and glory.

If the claim thus set up by us be admitted, as we think it ought to be,
it may be asked, what propriety or necessity can there be for the
Convention, of which we are members? and why are we now addressing you
in some sense as suppliants asking for justice and fair play? These
questions are not new to us. From the day the call for this Convention
went forth this seeming incongruity and contradiction has been brought
to our attention. From one quarter or another, sometimes with argument
and sometimes without argument, sometimes with seeming pity for our
ignorance, and at other times with fierce censure for our depravity,
these questions have met us. With apparent surprise, astonishment, and
impatience, we have been asked: “What more can the colored people of
this country want than they now have, and what more is possible to
them?” It is said they were once slaves, they are now free; they were
once subjects, they are now sovereigns; they were once outside of all
American institutions, they are now inside of all and are a recognized
part of the whole American people. Why, then, do they hold Colored
National Conventions and thus insist upon keeping up the color line
between themselves and their white fellow-countrymen? We do not deny the
pertinence and plausibility of these questions, nor do we shrink from a
candid answer to the argument which they are supposed to contain. For we
do not forget that they are not only put to us by those who have no
sympathy with us, but by many who wish us well, and that in any case
they deserve an answer. Before, however, we proceed to answer them, we
digress here to say that there is only one element associated with them
which excites the least bitterness of feeling in us, or that calls for
special rebuke, and that is when they fall from the lips and pens of
colored men who suffer with us and ought to know better. A few such men,
well known to us and the country, happening to be more fortunate in the
possession of wealth, education, and position than their humbler
brethren, have found it convenient to chime in with the popular cry
against our assembling, on the ground that we have no valid reason for
this measure or for any other separate from the whites; that we ought to
be satisfied with things as they are. With white men who thus object the
case is different and less painful. For them there is a chance for
charity. Educated as they are and have been for centuries, taught to
look upon colored people as a lower order of humanity than themselves,
and as having few rights, if any, above domestic animals, regarding them
also through the medium of their beneficent religious creeds and just
laws--as if law and practice were identical--some allowance can, and
perhaps ought to, be made when they misapprehend our real situation and
deny our wants and assume a virtue they do not possess. But no such
excuse or apology can be properly framed for men who are in any way
identified with us. What may be erroneous in others implies either
baseness or imbecility in them. Such men, it seems to us, are either
deficient in self-respect or too mean, servile and cowardly to assert
the true dignity of their manhood and that of their race. To admit that
there are such men among us is a disagreeable and humiliating
confession. But in this respect, as in others, we are not without the
consolation of company; we are neither alone nor singular in the
production of just such characters. All oppressed people have been thus
afflicted.

It is one of the most conspicuous evils of caste and oppression, that
they inevitably tend to make cowards and serviles of their victims, men
ever ready to bend the knee to pride and power that thrift may follow
fawning, willing to betray the cause of the many to serve the ends of
the few; men who never hesitate to sell a friend when they think they
can thereby purchase an enemy. Specimens of this sort may be found
everywhere and at all times. There were Northern men with Southern
principles in the time of slavery, and Tories in the revolution for
independence. There are betrayers and informers to-day in Ireland, ready
to kiss the hand that smites them and strike down the arm reached out to
save them. Considering our long subjection to servitude and caste, and
the many temptations to which we are exposed to betray our race into the
hands of their enemies, the wonder is not that we have so many traitors
among us as that we have so few.

The most of our people, to their honor be it said, are remarkably sound
and true to each other. To those who think we have no cause to hold this
convention, we freely admit that, so far as the organic law of the land
is concerned, we have indeed nothing to complain of, to ask or desire.
There may be need of legislation, but the organic law is sound.

Happily for us and for the honor of the Republic, the United States
Constitution is just, liberal, and friendly. The amendments to that
instrument, adopted in the trying times of reconstruction of the
Southern States, are a credit to the courage and statesmanship of the
leading men of that crisis. These amendments establish freedom and
abolish all unfair and invidious discrimination against citizens on
account of race and color, so far as law can do so. In their view,
citizens are neither black nor white, and all are equals. With this
admission and this merited reproof to trimmers and traitors, we again
come to the question, Why are we here in this National Convention? To
this we answer, first, because there is a power in numbers and in union;
because the many are more than the few; because the voice of a whole
people, oppressed by a common injustice, is far more likely to command
attention and exert an influence on the public mind than the voice of
single individuals and isolated organizations; because, coming together
from all parts of the country, the members of a National convention have
the means of a more comprehensive knowledge of the general situation,
and may, therefore, fairly be presumed to conceive more clearly and
express more fully and wisely the policy it may be necessary for them
to pursue in the premises. Because conventions of the people are in
themselves harmless, and when made the means of setting forth
grievances, whether real or fancied, they are the safety-valves of the
Republic, a wise and safe substitute for violence, dynamite, and all
sorts of revolutionary action against the peace and good order of
society. If they are held without sufficient reason, that fact will be
made manifest in their proceedings, and people will only smile at their
weakness and pass on to their usual business without troubling
themselves about the empty noise they are able to make. But if held with
good cause, and by wise, sober, and earnest men, that fact will be made
apparent and the result will be salutary. That good old maxim, which has
come down to us from revolutionary times, that error may be safely
tolerated, while truth is left free to combat it, applies here. A bad
law is all the sooner repealed by being executed, and error is sooner
dispelled by exposure than by silence. So much we have deemed it fit to
say of conventions generally, because our resort to this measure has
been treated by many as if there were something radically wrong in the
very idea of a convention. It has been treated as if it were some
ghastly, secret conclave, sitting in darkness to devise strife and
mischief. The fact is, the only serious feature in the argument against
us is the one which respects color. We are asked not only why hold a
convention, but with emphasis, why hold a _colored_ convention? Why keep
up this odious distinction between citizens of a common country, and
thus give countenance to the color line? It is argued that, if colored
men hold conventions, based upon color, white men may hold white
conventions based upon color, and thus keep open the chasm between one
and the other class of citizens, and keep alive a prejudice which we
profess to deplore. We state the argument against us fairly and
forcibly, and will answer it candidly and we hope conclusively. By that
answer it will be seen that the force of the objection is, after all,
more in sound than in substance. No reasonable man will ever object to
white men holding conventions in their own interests, when they are once
in our condition and we in theirs, when they are the oppressed and we
the oppressors. In point of fact, however, white men are already in
convention against us in various ways and at many important points. The
practical construction of American life is a convention against us.
Human law may know no distinction among men in respect of rights, but
human practice may. Examples are painfully abundant.

The border men hate the Indians; the Californian, the Chinaman; the
Mohammedan, the Christian, and _vice versa_. In spite of a common nature
and the equality framed into law, this hate works injustice, of which
each in their own name and under their own color may justly complain.
The apology for observing the color line in the composition of our State
and National conventions is in its necessity and in the fact that we
must do this or nothing, for if we move our color is recognized and must
be. It has its foundation in the exceptional relation we sustain to the
white people of the country. A simple statement of our position
vindicates at once our convention and our cause.

It is our lot to live among a people whose laws, traditions, and
prejudices have been against us for centuries, and from these they are
not yet free. To assume that they are free from these evils simply
because they have changed their laws is to assume what is utterly
unreasonable and contrary to facts. Large bodies move slowly.
Individuals may be converted on the instant and change their whole
course of life. Nations never. Time and events are required for the
conversion of nations. Not even the character of a great political
organization can be changed by a new platform. It will be the same old
snake though in a new skin. Though we have had war, reconstruction and
abolition as a nation, we still linger in the shadow and blight of an
extinct institution. Though the colored man is no longer subject to be
bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adverse sentiment which
fetters all his movements. In his downward course he meets with no
resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step
of his progress. If he comes in ignorance, rags, and wretchedness, he
conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character
he is welcome. But if he shall come as a gentleman, a scholar, and a
statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith
concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence. In the one
case he may provoke contempt and derision, but in the other he is an
affront to pride, and provokes malice. Let him do what he will, there is
at present, therefore, no escape for him. The color line meets him
everywhere, and in a measure shuts him out from all respectable and
profitable trades and callings. In spite of all your religion and laws
he is a rejected man.

He is rejected by trade unions, of every trade, and refused work while
he lives, and burial when he dies, and yet he is asked to forget his
color, and forget that which everybody else remembers. If he offers
himself to a builder as a mechanic, to a client as a lawyer, to a
patient as a physician, to a college as a professor, to a firm as a
clerk, to a Government Department as an agent, or an officer, he is
sternly met on the color line, and his claim to consideration in some
way is disputed on the ground of color.

Not even our churches, whose members profess to follow the despised
Nazarene, whose home, when on earth, was among the lowly and despised,
have yet conquered this feeling of color madness, and what is true of
our churches is also true of our courts of law. Neither is free from
this all-pervading atmosphere of color hate. The one describes the Deity
as impartial, no respecter of persons, and the other the Goddess of
Justice as blindfolded, with sword by her side and scales in her hand
held evenly between high and low, rich and poor, white and black, but
both are the images of American imagination, rather than American
practices.

Taking advantage of the general disposition in this country to impute
crime to color, white men _color_ their faces to commit crime and wash
off the hated color to escape punishment. In many places where the
commission of crime is alleged against one of our color, the ordinary
processes of the law are set aside as too slow for the impetuous justice
of the infuriated populace. They take the law into their own bloody
hands and proceed to whip, stab, shoot, hang, or burn the alleged
culprit, without the intervention of courts, counsel, judges, juries, or
witnesses. In such cases it is not the business of the accusers to prove
guilt, but it is for the accused to prove his innocence, a thing hard
for any man to do, even in a court of law, and utterly impossible for
him to do in these infernal Lynch courts. A man accused, surprised,
frightened and captured by a motley crowd, dragged with a rope about his
neck in midnight-darkness to the nearest tree, and told in the coarsest
terms of profanity to prepare for death, would be more than human if he
did not, in his terror-stricken appearance, more confirm suspicion of
guilt than the contrary. Worse still, in the presence of such hell-black
outrages, the pulpit is usually dumb, and the press in the neighborhood
is silent or openly takes side with the mob. There are occasional cases
in which white men are lynched, but one sparrow does not make a summer.
Every one knows that what is called Lynch law is peculiarly the law for
colored people and for nobody else. If there were no other grievance
than this horrible and barbarous Lynch law custom, we should be
justified in assembling, as we have now done, to expose and denounce it.
But this is not all. Even now, after twenty years of so-called
emancipation, we are subject to lawless raids of midnight riders, who,
with blackened faces, invade our homes and perpetrate the foulest of
crimes upon us and our families. This condition of things is too
flagrant and notorious to require specifications or proof. Thus in all
the relations of life and death we are met by the color line. We cannot
ignore it if we would, and ought not if we could. It hunts us at
midnight, it denies us accommodation in hotels and justice in the
courts; excludes our children from schools, refuses our sons the chance
to learn trades, and compels us to pursue only such labor as will bring
the least reward. While we recognize the color line as a hurtful force,
a mountain barrier to our progress, wounding our bleeding feet with its
flinty rocks at every step, we do not despair. We are a hopeful people.
This convention is a proof of our faith in you, in reason, in truth and
justice--our belief that prejudice, with all its malign accompaniments,
may yet be removed by peaceful means; that, assisted by time and events
and the growing enlightenment of both races, the color line will
ultimately become harmless. When this shall come it will then only be
used, as it should be, to distinguish one variety of the human family
from another. It will cease to have any civil, political, or moral
significance, and colored conventions will then be dispensed with as
anachronisms, wholly out of place, but not till then. Do not marvel that
we are not discouraged. The faith within us has a rational basis, and is
confirmed by facts. When we consider how deep-seated this feeling
against us is; the long centuries it has been forming; the forces of
avarice which have been marshaled to sustain it; how the language and
literature of the country have been pervaded with it; how the church,
the press, the play-house, and other influences of the country have been
arrayed in its support, the progress toward its extinction must be
considered vast and wonderful.

If liberty, with us, is yet but a name, our citizenship is but a sham,
and our suffrage thus far only a cruel mockery, we may yet congratulate
ourselves upon the fact that the laws and institutions of the country
are sound, just and liberal. There is hope for a people when their laws
are righteous whether for the moment they conform to their requirements
or not. But until this nation shall make its practice accord with its
Constitution and its righteous laws, it will not do to reproach the
colored people of this country with keeping up the color line--for that
people would prove themselves scarcely worthy of even theoretical
freedom, to say nothing of practical freedom, if they settled down in
silent, servile and cowardly submission to their wrongs, from fear of
making their color visible. They are bound by every element of manhood
to hold conventions in their own name and on their own behalf, to keep
their grievances before the people and make every organized protest
against the wrongs inflicted upon them within their power. They should
scorn the counsels of cowards, and hang their banner on the outer wall.
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. We do not believe,
as we are often told, that the negro is the ugly child of the national
family, and the more he is kept out of sight the better it will be for
him. You know that liberty given is never so precious as liberty sought
for and fought for. The man outraged is the man to make the outcry.
Depend upon it, men will not care much for a people who do not care for
themselves. Our meeting here was opposed by some of our members, because
it would disturb the peace of the Republican party. The suggestion came
from coward lips and misapprehended the character of that party. If the
Republican party cannot stand a demand for justice and fair play, it
ought to go down. We were men before that party was born, and our
manhood is more sacred than any party can be. Parties were made for men,
not men for parties.

If the six millions of colored people of this country, armed with the
Constitution of the United States, with a million votes of their own to
lean upon, and millions of white men at their back, whose hearts are
responsive to the claims of humanity, have not sufficient spirit and
wisdom to organize and combine to defend themselves from outrage,
discrimination, and oppression, it will be idle for them to expect that
the Republican party or any other political party will organize and
combine for them or care what becomes of them. Men may combine to
prevent cruelty to animals, for they are dumb and cannot speak for
themselves; but we are men and must speak for ourselves, or we shall not
be spoken for at all. We have conventions in America for Ireland, but we
should have none if Ireland did not speak for herself. It is because she
makes a noise and keeps her cause before the people that other people go
to her help. It was the sword of Washington and of Lafayette that gave
us Independence. In conclusion upon this color objection, we have to say
that we meet here in open daylight. There is nothing sinister about us.
The eyes of the nation are upon us. Ten thousand newspapers may tell if
they choose of whatever is said and done here. They may commend our
wisdom or condemn our folly, precisely as we shall be wise or foolish.

We put ourselves before them as honest men, and ask their judgment upon
our work.


THE LABOR QUESTION.

Not the least important among the subjects to which we invite your
earnest attention is the condition of the labor class at the South.
Their cause is one with the labor classes all over the world. The labor
unions of the country should not throw away this colored element of
strength. Everywhere there is dissatisfaction with the present relation
of labor and capital, and to-day no subject wears an aspect more
threatening to civilization than the respective claims of capital and
labor, landlords and tenants. In what we have to say for our laboring
class we expect to have and ought to have the sympathy and support of
laboring men everywhere and of every color.

It is a great mistake for any class of laborers to isolate itself and
thus weaken the bond of brotherhood between those on whom the burden and
hardships of labor fall. The fortunate ones of the earth, who are
abundant in land and money and know nothing of the anxious care and
pinching poverty of the laboring classes, may be indifferent to the
appeal for justice at this point, but the laboring classes cannot afford
to be indifferent. What labor everywhere wants, what it ought to have,
and will some day demand and receive, is an honest day’s pay for an
honest day’s work. As the laborer becomes more intelligent he will
develop what capital he already possesses--that is the power to organize
and combine for its own protection. Experience demonstrates that there
may be a wages of slavery only a little less galling and crushing in
its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go
down with the other.

There is nothing more common now than the remark that the physical
condition of the freedmen of the South is immeasurably worse than in the
time of slavery; that in respect to food, clothing and shelter they are
wretched, miserable and destitute; that they are worse masters to
themselves than their old masters were to them. To add insult to injury,
the reproach of their condition is charged upon themselves. A grandson
of John C. Calhoun, an Arkansas land-owner, testifying the other day
before the Senate Committee of Labor and Education, says the “negroes
are so indolent that they fail to take advantage of the opportunities
offered them; that they will only devote so much of their time to work
as will enable them to procure the necessities of life; that there is
danger of a war of races,” etc., etc.

His testimony proclaims him the grandson of the man whose name he bears.
The blame which belongs to his own class he shifts from them to the
shoulders of labor. It becomes us to test the truth of that assertion by
the light of reason, and by appeals to indisputable facts. Of course the
land-owners of the South may be expected to view things differently from
the landless. The slaveholders always did look at things a little
differently from the slaves, and we therefore insist that, in order that
the whole truth shall be brought out, the laborer as well as the
capitalist shall be called as witnesses before the Senate Committee of
Labor and Education. Experience proves that it takes more than one class
of people to tell the whole truth about matters in which they are
interested on opposite sides, and we protest against the allowance of
only one side of the labor question to be heard by the country in this
case. Meanwhile, a little reason and reflection will in some measure
bring out truth! The colored people of the South are the laboring people
of the South. The labor of a country is the source of its wealth;
without the colored laborer to-day the South would be a howling
wilderness, given up to bats, owls, wolves, and bears. He was the source
of its wealth before the war, and has been the source of its prosperity
since the war. He almost alone is visible in her fields, with implements
of toil in his hands, and laboriously using them to-day.

Let us look candidly at the matter. While we see and hear that the
South is more prosperous than it ever was before and rapidly recovering
from the waste of war, while we read that it raises more cotton, sugar,
rice, tobacco, corn, and other valuable products than it ever produced
before, how happens it, we sternly ask, that the houses of its laborers
are miserable huts, that their clothes are rags, and their food the
coarsest and scantiest? How happens it that the land-owner is becoming
richer and the laborer poorer?

The implication is irresistible--that where the landlord is prosperous
the laborer ought to share his prosperity, and whenever and wherever we
find this is not the case there is manifestly wrong somewhere.

This sharp contrast of wealth and poverty, as every thoughtful man
knows, can exist only in one way, and from one cause, and that is by one
getting more than its proper share of the reward of industry, and the
other side getting less, and that in some way labor has been defrauded
or otherwise denied of its due proportion, and we think the facts, as
well as this philosophy, will support this view in the present case, and
do so conclusively. We utterly deny that the colored people of the South
are too lazy to work, or that they are indifferent to their physical
wants; as already said, they are the workers of that section.

The trouble is not that the colored people of the South are indolent,
but that no matter how hard or how persistent may be their industry,
they get barely enough for their labor to support life at the very low
point at which we find them. We therefore throw off the burden of
disgrace and reproach from the laborer where Mr. Calhoun and others of
his class would place it, and put it on the land-owner where it belongs.
It is the old case over again. The black man does the work and the white
man gets the money.

It may be said after all the colored people have themselves to blame for
this state of things, because they have not intelligently taken the
matter into their own hands and provided a remedy for the evil they
suffer.

Some blame may attach at this point. But those who reproach us thus
should remember that it is hard for labor, however fortunately and
favorably surrounded, to cope with the tremendous power of capital in
any contest for higher wages or improved condition. A strike for higher
wages is seldom successful, and is often injurious to the strikers; the
losses sustained are seldom compensated by the concessions gained. A
case in point is the recent strike of the telegraph operators--a more
intelligent class can nowhere be found. It was a contest of brains
against money, and the want of money compelled intelligence to surrender
to wealth.

An empty sack is not easily made to stand upright. The man who has it in
his power to say to a man, you must work the land for me for such wages
as I choose to give, has a power of slavery over him as real, if not as
complete, as he who compels toil under the lash. All that a man hath
will he give for his life.

In contemplating the little progress made by the colored people in the
acquisition of property in the South, and their present wretched
condition, the circumstances of their emancipation should not be
forgotten. Measurement in their case should not begin from the height
yet to be attained by them, but from the depths whence they have come.

It should be remembered by our severe judges that freedom came to us not
from the sober dictates of wisdom, or from any normal condition of
things, not as a matter of choice on the part of the land-owners of the
South, nor from moral considerations on the part of the North. It was
born of battle and of blood. It came across fields of smoke and fire
strewn with wounded, bleeding, and dying men. Not from the Heaven of
Peace amid the morning stars, but from the hell of war--out of the
tempest and whirlwind of warlike passions, mingled with deadly hate and
a spirit of revenge; it came, not so much as a boon to us as a blast to
the enemy. Those against whom the measure was directed were the
land-owners, and they were not angels, but men, and, being men, it was
to be expected they would resent the blow. They did resent it, and a
part of that resentment unhappily fell upon us.

At first the land-owners drove us out of our old quarters, and told us
they did not want us in their fields; that they meant to import German,
Irish, and Chinese laborers. But as the passions of the war gradually
subsided we were taken back to our old places; but, plainly enough, this
change of front was not from choice, but necessity. Feeling themselves
somehow or other entitled to our labor without the payment of wages, it
was not strange that they should make the hardest bargains for our
labor, and get it for as little as possible. For them the contest was
easy; their tremendous power and our weakness easily gave them the
victory.

Against the voice of Stevens, Sumner, and Wade, and other far-seeing
statesmen, the Government by whom we were emancipated left us completely
in the power of our former owners. They turned us loose to the open sky
and left us not a foot of ground from which to get a crust of bread.

It did not do as well by us as Russia did by her serfs, or Pharaoh did
by the Hebrews. With freedom Russia gave land and Egypt loaned jewels.

It may have been best to leave us thus to make terms with those whose
wrath it had kindled against us. It does not seem right that we should
have been so left, but it fully explains our present poverty and
wretchedness.

The marvel is not that we are poor in such circumstances, but rather
that we were not exterminated. In view of the circumstances, our
extermination was confidently predicted. The facts that we still live
and have increased in higher ratio than the native white people of the
South are proofs of our vitality, and, in some degree, of our industry.

Nor is it to be wondered at that the standard of morals is not higher
among us, that respect for the rights of property is not stronger. The
power of life and death held over labor which says you shall work for me
on my own terms or starve, is a source of crime, as well as poverty.

Weeds do not more naturally spring out of a manure pile than crime out
of enforced destitution. Out of the misery of Ireland comes murder,
assassination, fire, and sword. The Irish are by nature no worse than
other people, and no better. If oppression makes a wise man mad it may
do the same, and worse, to a people who are not reputed wise. The woe
pronounced upon those who keep back wages of the laborer by fraud is
self-acting and self-executing and certain as death. The world is full
of warnings.


THE ORDER SYSTEM.

No more crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern laborers
could be adopted than the one that substitutes orders upon shopkeepers
for currency in payment of wages. It has the merit of a show of honesty,
while it puts the laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and
the shopkeeper. He is between the upper and the nether millstones, and
is hence ground to dust. It gives the shopkeeper a customer who can
trade with no other storekeeper, and thus leaves the latter no motive
for fair dealing except his own moral sense, which is never too strong.
While the laborer holding the orders is tempted by their worthlessness,
as a circulating medium, to get rid of them at any sacrifice, and hence
is led into extravagance and consequent destitution.

The merchant puts him off with his poorest commodities at highest
prices, and can say to him take these or nothing. Worse still. By this
means the laborer is brought into debt, and hence is kept always in the
power of the land-owner. When this system is not pursued and land is
rented to the freedman, he is charged more for the use of an acre of
land for a single year than the land would bring in the market if
offered for sale. On such a system of fraud and wrong one might well
invoke a bolt from heaven--red with uncommon wrath.

It is said if the colored people do not like the conditions upon which
their labor is demanded and secured, let them leave and go elsewhere. A
more heartless suggestion never emanated from an oppressor. Having for
years paid them in shop orders, utterly worthless outside the shop to
which they are directed, without a dollar in their pockets, brought by
this crafty process into bondage to the land-owners, who can and would
arrest them if they should attempt to leave when they are told to go.

We commend the whole subject to the Senate Committee of Labor and
Education, and urge upon that committee the duty to call before it not
only the land-owners, but the landless laborers of the South, and thus
get at the whole truth concerning the labor question of that section.


EDUCATION.

On the subject of equal education and educational facilities, mentioned
in the call for this convention, we expect little resistance from any
quarter. It is everywhere an accepted truth, that in a country governed
by the people, like ours, education of the youth of all classes is vital
to its welfare, prosperity, and to its existence.

In the light of this unquestioned proposition, the patriot cannot but
view with a shudder the widespread and truly alarming illiteracy as
revealed by the census of 1880.

The question as to how this evil is to be remedied is an important one.
Certain it is that it will not do to trust to the philanthropy of
wealthy individuals or benevolent societies to remove it. The States in
which this illiteracy prevails either can not or will not provide
adequate systems of education for their own youth. But, however this may
be, the fact remains that the whole country is directly interested in
the education of every child that lives within its borders. The
ignorance of any part of the American people so deeply concerns all the
rest that there can be no doubt of the right to pass laws compelling the
attendance of every child at school. Believing that such is now required
and ought to be enacted, we hereby put ourselves on record in favor of
stringent laws to this end.

In the presence of this appalling picture, presented by the last census,
we hold it to be the imperative duty of Congress to take hold of this
important subject, and, without waiting for the States to adopt liberal
school systems within their respective jurisdictions, to enter
vigorously upon the work of universal education.

The National Government, with its immense resources, can carry the
benefits of a sound common-school education to the door of every poor
man from Maine to Texas, and to withhold this boon is to neglect the
greatest assurance it has of its own perpetuity. As a part of the
American people we unite most emphatically with others who have already
spoken on this subject, in urging Congress to lay the foundation of a
great national system of aid to education at its next session.

In this connection, and as germane to the subject of education under
national auspices, we would most respectfully and earnestly request
Congress to authorize the appointment of a commission of three or more
persons of suitable character and qualifications to ascertain the legal
claimants, as far as they can, to a large fund now in the United States
treasury, appropriated for the payment of bounties of colored soldiers
and sailors; and to provide by law that at the expiration of three or
five years the balance remaining in the treasury be distributed among
the colored colleges of the country, giving the preference as to amounts
to the schools that are doing effective work in industrial branches.


FREEDMEN’S BANK.

The colored people have suffered much on account of the failure of the
Freedman’s bank. Their loss by this institution was a peculiar hardship,
coming as it did upon them in the days of their greatest weakness. It is
certain that the depositors in this institution were led to believe
that as Congress had chartered it and established its headquarters at
the capital the Government in some way was responsible for the safe
keeping of their money.

Without the dissemination of this belief it would never have had the
confidence of the people as it did nor have secured such an immense
deposit. Nobody authorized to speak for the Government ever corrected
this deception, but on the contrary, Congress continued to legislate for
the bank as if all that had been claimed for it was true.

Under these circumstances, together with much more that might be said in
favor of such a measure, we ask Congress to reimburse the unfortunate
victims of that institution, and thus carry hope and give to many fresh
encouragement in the battle of life.


BOUNTY AND PENSION LAWS.

We desire, also, to call the attention of Congress and the country to
the bounty and pension laws and to the filing of original claims. We ask
for the passage of an act extending the time for filing original claims
beyond the present limit.

This we do for the reason that many of the soldiers and sailors that
served in the war of the rebellion and their heirs, and especially
colored claimants living in parts of the country where they have but
meagre means of information, have been, and still are, ignorant of their
rights and the methods of enforcing them.

But while we urge these duties on Congress and the country, we must
never forget that any race worth living will live, and whether Congress
heeds our request in these and other particulars or not, we must
demonstrate our capacity to live by living. We must acquire property and
educate the hands and hearts and heads of our children whether we are
helped or not. Races that fail to do these things die politically and
socially, and are only fit to die.

One great source of independence that has been sought by multitudes of
our white fellow-citizens is still open to us--we refer to the public
lands in the great West. The amazing rapidity with which the public
lands are being taken up warns us that we must lay hold of this
opportunity soon, or it will be gone forever. The Government gives to
every actual settler, under certain conditions, 160 acres of land. By
addressing a letter to the United States Land Office, Washington, D.
C., any person will receive full information in regard to this subject.
Thousands of white men have settled on these lands with scarcely any
money beyond their immediate wants, and in a few years have found
themselves the lords of a 160-acre farm. Let us do likewise.


CIVIL RIGHTS.

The right of every American citizen to select his own society and invite
whom he will to his own parlor and table should be sacredly respected. A
man’s house is his castle, and he has a right to admit or refuse
admission to it as he may please, and defend his house from all
intruders even with force, if need be. This right belongs to the
humblest not less than the highest, and the exercise of it by any of our
citizens toward anybody or class who may presume to intrude, should
cause no complaint, for each and all may exercise the same right toward
whom he will.

When he quits his home and goes upon the public street, enters a public
car or a public house, he has no exclusive right of occupancy. He is
only a part of the great public, and while he has the right to walk,
ride, and be accommodated with food and shelter in a public conveyance
or hotel, he has no exclusive right to say that another citizen, tall or
short, black or white, shall not have the same civil treatment with
himself. The argument against equal rights at hotels is very improperly
put upon the ground that the exercise of such rights, it is insisted, is
social equality. But this ground is unreasonable. It is hard to say what
social equality is, but it is certain that going into the same street
car, hotel, or steamboat cabin does not make any man society for another
any more than flying in the same air makes all birds of one feather.

Two men may be seated at the same table at a hotel; one may be a Webster
in intellect, and the other a Guiteau in feebleness of mind and morals,
and, of course, socially and intellectually, they are as wide apart as
are the poles of the moral universe, but their civil rights are the
same. The distinction between the two sorts of equality is broad and
plain to the understanding of the most limited, and yet, blinded by
prejudice, men never cease to confound one with the other, and allow
themselves to infringe the civil rights of their fellow-citizens as if
those rights were, in some way, in violation of their social rights.

That this denial of rights to us is because of our color, only as color
is a badge of condition, is manifest in the fact that no matter how
decently dressed or well-behaved a colored man may be, he is denied
civil treatment in the ways thus pointed out, unless he comes as a
servant. His color, not his character, determines the place he shall
hold and the kind of treatment he shall receive. That this is due to a
prejudice and has no rational principle under it is seen in the fact
that the presence of colored persons in hotels and rail cars is only
offensive when they are there as guests and passengers. As servants they
are welcome, but as equal citizens they are not. It is also seen in the
further fact that nowhere else on the globe, except in the United
States, are colored people subject to insult and outrage on account of
color. The colored traveler in Europe does not meet it, and we denounce
it here as a disgrace to American civilization and American religion and
as a violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the
United States. From those courts which have solemnly sworn to support
the Constitution and that yet treat this provision of it with contempt
we appeal to the people, and call upon our friends to remember our civil
rights at the ballot-box. On the point of the two equalities we are
determined to be understood.

We leave social equality where it should be left, with each individual
man and woman. No law can regulate or control it. It is a matter with
which governments have nothing whatever to do. Each may choose his own
friends and associates without interference or dictation of any.


POLITICAL EQUALITY.

Flagrant as have been the outrages committed upon colored citizens in
respect to their civil rights, more flagrant, shocking, and scandalous
still have been the outrages committed upon our political rights by
means of bull-dozing and Kukluxing, Mississippi plans, fraudulent
counts, tissue ballots, and the like devices. Three States in which the
colored people outnumber the white population are without colored
representation and their political voice suppressed. The colored
citizens in those States are virtually disfranchised, the Constitution
held in utter contempt and its provisions nullified. This has been done
in the face of the Republican party and successive Republican
administrations.

It was once said by the great O’Connell that the history of Ireland
might be traced like a wounded man through a crowd by the blood, and
the same may be truly said of the history of the colored voters of the
South.

They have marched to the ballot-box in face of gleaming weapons, wounds,
and death. They have been abandoned by the Government, and left to the
laws of nature. So far as they are concerned, there is no Government or
Constitution of the United States.

They are under control of a foul, haggard, and damning conspiracy
against reason, law, and constitution. How you can be indifferent, how
any leading colored men can allow themselves to be silent in presence of
this state of things, we cannot see.

“Should tongues be mute while deeds are wrought which well might shame
extremest hell?” And yet they are mute, and condemn our assembling here
to speak out in manly tones against the continuance of this infernal
reign of terror.

This is no question of party. It is a question of law and government. It
is a question whether men shall be protected by law, or be left to the
mercy of cyclones of anarchy and bloodshed. It is whether the Government
or the mob shall rule this land; whether the promises solemnly made to
us in the Constitution be manfully kept or meanly and flagrantly broken.
Upon this vital point we ask the whole people of the United States to
take notice that whatever of political power we have shall be exerted
for no man of any party who will not, in advance of election, promise to
use every power given him by the Government, State or National, to make
the black man’s path to the ballot-box as straight, smooth and safe as
that of any other American citizen.


POLITICAL AMBITION.

We are as a people often reproached with ambition for political offices
and honors. We are not ashamed of this alleged ambition. Our destitution
of such ambition would be our real shame. If the six millions and a half
of people whom we represent could develop no aspirants to political
office and honor under this Government, their mental indifference,
barrenness and stolidity might well enough be taken as proof of their
unfitness for American citizenship.

It is no crime to seek or hold office. If it were it would take a larger
space than that of Noah’s Ark to hold the white criminals.

One of the charges against this convention is that it seeks for the
colored people a larger share than they now possess in the offices and
emoluments of the Government.

We are now significantly reminded by even one of our own members that we
are only twenty years out of slavery, and we ought therefore to be
modest in our aspirations. Such leaders should remember that men will
not be religious when the devil turns preacher.

The inveterate and persistent office-seeker and office-holder should be
modest when he preaches that virtue to others which he does not himself
practice. Wolsey could not tell Cromwell to fling away ambition properly
only when he had flung away his own.

We are far from affirming that there may not be too much zeal among
colored men in pursuit of political preferment; but the fault is not
wholly theirs. They have young men among them noble and true, who are
educated and intelligent--fit to engage in enterprise of “pith and
moment"--who find themselves shut out from nearly all the avenues of
wealth and respectability, and hence they turn their attention to
politics. They do so because they can find nothing else. The best cure
for the evil is to throw open other avenues and activities to them.

We shall never cease to be a despised and persecuted class while we are
known to be excluded by our color from all important positions under the
Government.

While we do not make office the one thing important, nor the one
condition of our alliance with any party, and hold that the welfare,
prosperity and happiness of our whole country is the true criterion of
political action for ourselves and for all men, we can not disguise from
ourselves the fact that our persistent exclusion from office as a class
is a great wrong, fraught with injury, and ought to be resented and
opposed by all reasonable and effective means in our power.

We hold it to be self-evident that no class or color should be the
exclusive rulers of this country. If there is such a ruling class, there
must of course be a subject class, and when this condition is once
established this Government of the people, by the people, and for the
people, will have perished from the earth.




IN WASHINGTON, D. C., 1885.

     On being introduced by Hon. B. K. BRUCE, on the occasion of the
     twenty-third anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the
     District of Columbia, FREDERICK DOUGLASS spoke as follows:


FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: Your committee of arrangements were pleased
to select me as your orator of the day, on an occasion similar to this,
two years ago. At that time, while appreciating the honor conferred upon
me, I ventured to express the wish that some one of the many competent
colored young men of this city and District had been chosen to discharge
this honorable duty in my stead. There were excellent reasons for that
wish then, and there are even much better reasons for the same wish now.
Time and cultivation have largely added to the number of those from whom
a suitable selection might have been made, and one of these silent, yet
powerful, agents whose mission it is to create and destroy all things
mortal has left me much less desire for such distinguished service now
than two years ago. Happily, however, the burden is not heavy or
grievous, and the proper story of this occasion is simple, familiar, and
easily told. In observing the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in
the District of Columbia, we attract the attention of the American
people to one of the most important and significant events in their
national history, and at the same time evince a grateful and proper
sense of the wonderful changes for the better that have taken place in
our condition, and in that of the country generally. Though in its
immediate and legal operation this act of emancipation was local in its
range as to territory, and limited in its application as to the number
of persons liberated by it, morally it looms upon us as a grand,
comprehensive, and far-reaching measure.

To appreciate its importance we must not consider it as a single
independent act standing alone, nor as one pertaining to this District
only, nor to the colored people only. We must regard it as a part of a
series of splendid public measures, as one of so many steps in the
national progress looking to one beneficent and glorious result, a large
contribution to the honor and welfare of the whole country. It was the
auspicious beginning of a great movement in the councils of the nation,
made necessary by the war, and one which finally culminated in the
complete and permanent abolition of slavery, not only in the District of
Columbia, but in every part of the Republic. Thus viewed it was the one
act which broke the gloomy spell that bound the nation in the bonds of
servile, unnatural reverence and awe for slavery. It withdrew the
sympathy of European nations from the rebellion; it brought the moral
support of the civilized world to the loyal cause; it erased the foulest
blot that ever stained our national escutcheon; it gave to the war for
the Union a logical, humane, and consistent purpose; it solved a problem
which was the standing grief of good men, and the perplexity of
statesmen for ages; it gave courage and hope to our armies in the field;
it weakened the rebellion; it raised the whole nation to a higher and
happier plane of civilization, and placed the American people where they
never were before, in a position where they could consistently and
effectively preach liberty to all the nations of the world.

The 16th of April, the anniversary of this great act of the nation,
strangely and erroneously enough has been considered simply as the
colored man’s day only. The business of consecrating and preserving its
memory has been, by common consent, relegated to him exclusively. But,
in this, our fellow-citizens have been more generous to us than just to
themselves. Colored men have very little more reason to hallow this day
than have white men. If it brought freedom to us, it brought peace and
safety to them, and hence they may well enough unite in this and similar
celebrations, and regard the day as theirs as well as ours. No truth
taught by our national history is more evident than this, that while
slavery dominated the southern half of the Republic, and free
institutions prevailed in the northern half, peace and harmony between
the two sections were utterly and forever impossible. No man can serve
two masters, and the attempt of our Government to do this was a
stupendous failure. The union between liberty and slavery was a marriage
without love, a house divided against itself; a couple unequally yoked
together, held together by external force, not by moral cohesion; it
brought happiness to neither, and misery to both.

Like any other embodiment of social and material interest peculiar to a
given community, slavery generated its own sentiments, its own morals,
manners, and religion; and begot a character in all around it in favor
of its own existence.

In nearly everything indigenous and peculiar to society in the two
sections, they were as separate and distinct as are any two nations on
the globe. The longer they were thus linked together in the bonds of
outward union, the more palpable became their points of difference, and
the more passionate became their hostility to each other. Liberty became
more and more the glory of the North, and slavery more and more the idol
of the South. Not even the bonds of Christian fellowship were strong
enough to hold together the churches of the two sections.

In view of this settled and growing antagonism, only one of three
courses was opened to the nation: The first was to make the country all
slaves, the second was to make it all free, and the third was to divide
the Union, and let each section set up a government of its own--the one
based upon the system of slavery, and the other based upon the
principles of the Declaration of American Independence.

Thanks to the wisdom, loyalty, patriotism, courage, and statesmanship
developed by the crisis, the nation rejected equally the idea of making
the country all slaves, and permitting two separate nations, with
hostile civilizations, side by side, with a chafing, bloody border
between them, but chose to give us one country, one citizenship, and one
liberty for all the people, and hence we are here this evening. There
was never any physical reason for the dissolution of the Union. The
geographical and topographical conditions of the country all served to
unite rather than to divide the two sections. It was moral not physical
dynamite that blew the two sections asunder.

We are told by the poet that--

    “Lands intersected by a narrow frith, abhor each other;
     Mountains interposed make enemies of nations,
     Which else, like kindred drops, had mingled into one.”

But in this case there were neither friths nor mountains to separate the
South from the North, or to make our Southern brethren hate the people
of the North. The moral cause of trouble in the system of slavery being
now removed, peace and harmony are possible, and, I doubt not, these
blessings, though long delayed, will finally come. In calling attention
to the event which makes this day precious we honor ourselves, and
honor the noble and brave men who brought it about. We render our humble
tribute of gratitude to-day, not only to those whose valor and whose
blood on the battlefield brought freedom to the American slave; not only
to the great generals who led our armies, but to our great statesmen as
well who framed our laws; and not to these only, but also to the noble
army of men and women which preceded both statesmen and warriors in the
cause of emancipation, and made these warriors and statesmen possible.
Neither would our gratitude forget those who supplemented the great act
of emancipation by carrying the blessings of education to the benighted
South, thus preparing the liberated freedman for the duties of
citizenship.

I need not stop here to call the roll of any of these classes. The
nation knows the debt it owes them, and will never forget them. We have
but to mention the honored name of Abraham Lincoln in the Presidential
chair, of Ulysses S. Grant in the field, at whose bedside a grateful
nation now stands mute in sympathy and sad expectation; of William Lloyd
Garrison in the columns of the _Liberator_, of Wendell Phillips on the
rostrum, of Charles Sumner in the Senate, to cause a host of noble men
and women to start up and pass in review before us.

But I drop this brief reference to the history and personnel of the
anti-slavery movement, and will speak of matters nearer our times and
equally pertinent to this occasion. Those who abolished slavery did
their work, and did it well. They served their day and generation with
wisdom, courage, and fortitude, and are an example to this and coming
generations. They bravely upheld the principles of liberty and justice,
and it will go well with this nation and with us if we in our time, and
if those who are to come after us in theirs, shall adhere to and uphold
these same principles with equal zeal, courage, fidelity, and fortitude.
One generation cannot safely rest on the achievements of another, and
ought not so to rest.

Hitherto there has been little variety in the thoughts, resolutions, and
addresses presented for consideration on occasions similar to this. Each
celebration has been almost a _fac-simile_ of its predecessors. The
speeches have been little more than echoes of those made before, because
the conditions of their utterances have been so uniform, and all one
way. To-day, however, conditions are changed, or appear to be changed.
We do not stand where we stood one year ago. We are confronted by a new
Administration. The term of twenty-four years of steady, unbroken,
successful Republican rule is ended. The great Republican party that
carried the country safely through the late war against the rebellion,
emancipated the slave, saved the Union, reconstructed the government of
the Southern States, enfranchised the freedmen, raised the national
credit, improved the currency, decreased the national debt, and did more
for the honor, prosperity, and glory of the American people than was
ever done before in the same length of time by any party in any country
under similar circumstances, has been defeated, humiliated, and driven
from place and power.

For the first time since the chains fell from the limbs of the slaves of
the District of Columbia; for the first time since slaves were raised
from chattels to men; for the first time since they were clothed with
the dignity of American citizenship they find themselves under the rule
of a political party which steadily opposed their every step from
bondage to freedom, and this fact may well enough give a peculiar
coloring to the thoughts and feelings with which this anniversary of
emancipation is celebrated.

The great question of the hour respects the true significance of this
change in the national front. What does it portend? How will it affect
our relations to the people and government of this country? How was this
stupendous change brought about, and, in point of fact, it may be asked
with some propriety if there has really been any serious change made in
our condition by this change in the relations of parties?

To the eye of the colored man the change, or apparent change, in the
political situation is very marked, and wears a very sinister aspect. He
has so long been accustomed to think the Republican party the
sheet-anchor of his liberty, the star of all his hopes, that he can see
nought but ill in the ascendancy of the Democratic party. He addresses
it much as did Hamlet his father’s ghost:

    “Tell why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
     Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre.
     Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
     Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws to cast thee up again.
     What may this mean, that thou, dead corpse,
     Again in complete steel, revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon,
     Making night hideous, and we, poor fools of nature,
     So horridly to shake our disposition
     With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?”

It is, perhaps, too early to determine the full significance of the
return of the Democratic party to power, or to tell just how that return
to power came about. One thing must be admitted, and that is that the
power and vitality of the Democratic party have been vastly underrated.
It has indulged in vices and crimes enough to have killed a dozen
ordinary parties, and yet it lives. At times it has really seemed to be
dead. Some said it had died by opposing the war for the Union, but it
was not so. We thought the life had gone out of it when it took our late
friend, Horace Greely, for its candidate for the Presidency and adopted
a Republican platform, but it was not so.

It was the same old party in a new dress, and time has shown that it was
as full of life and power as ever. The fact is, it was never either
honestly dead or securely buried. Even when it slept it had one eye
open, and saw better with that one eye than did the Republican party
with its two. Our mistakes concerning it have been made abundantly clear
by the late election and the dazzling splendor of the recent
inauguration. We thought the Democratic party dead when it was alive,
and the Republican party alive and strong when it was half dead. Long
continuance in power had developed rival ambitions, personal
animosities, factional combinations in the Republican party that were
fatal to its success and even endangered its life.

One great lesson taught by Republican defeat is familiar to all. It is
the folly of relying upon past good behavior for present success.
Parties, like men, must act in the living present or fail. It is not
what they have done or left undone in the past that turns the scale, but
what they are doing, and mean to do now. The result shows that neither
the past good conduct of the Republican party nor the past bad conduct
of the Democratic party has had much to do with the late election.

Americans have too little memory for good or bad political conduct. The
people have said in the late election, “We care nothing for your past;
but what is your present character and work?” And in rendering judgment
they have said, “We see little ground for preferring one to the other.”

But, fellow-citizens, it is consoling to think that this change in the
political front justly implies no real change for the worse in the moral
convictions of the American people. On the great questions that divided
the parties during the periods of war and reconstruction there has been
no change whatever. Upon all the great measures of justice, liberty,
and civilization, originated and carried through Congress by the
Republican party, I believe the heart of the nation to be still safe and
sound. If the measures then in controversy between the parties were now
submitted to the American people, I fully believe they would sustain
them one and all by an overwhelming vote.

The trouble was that the Republican party in the late campaign forgot
for the moment its high mission as the party of great moral ideas, and
sought victory on grounds far below its ordinary level. It made national
pelf more important and prominent than national purity. It made the body
more important than the soul; national prosperity more important than
national justice. There was no square issue made up between the parties.
One talked in favor of the tariff and the other did not talk against it.
Both together beat the air and raised a dust, confused counsel, blinded
the voters, and rendered victory a thing of chance rather than a thing
of choice. The Republican party was not more surprised by defeat than
the Democratic party was astonished by victory. Twelve hundred votes
would have changed the result; so that nothing for the future can be
safely predicted upon the election either way. It does not imply that
the Democratic party is in power to stay, or that the Republican party
is out of power to stay, or that new parties are to arise and take the
place of the old.

While it was painfully evident that the Republican party, during the
late canvass, had little or nothing to say against the outrages
committed upon the newly enfranchised people of the South, it was
equally plain that the Democratic party had nothing to say in defense of
these outrages. Yet it is not strange, in view of the history of the two
parties, that much alarm was felt by colored people all over the South
when they first learned that the great Republican party was defeated and
that the Democratic party was soon to administer the National
Government.

Ignorant as the colored people of the South have been, and may still be,
about other matters of national importance, they have always been
intelligent enough as to the character and relations of political
parties. They have never been mistaken as to the historical difference
between the party which gave them liberty and the party which sought to
continue their enslavement. They had known the Democratic party long
and well and only as the party of the old master class. They naturally
held the triumph of that party as a victory of the old master class. In
the panic of the moment they saw in it a possible attempt to
rehabilitate the old order of government in the South, in which they
would be greatly oppressed if not enslaved.

In the joy and exultation of the old master class over the defeat of the
Republican party, and over the return of the old Democratic party to
power, they read what they thought their doom. Jealous of their newly
gained liberty, as well they might be, feeling themselves in peril and
left naked to their enemies, their fears amounted to agony. But, thanks
to the kind assurances promptly given by the President-elect and by
other Democrats in high places, this alarm was transient, and has now
given way in some measure to a feeling of confidence and security.

How long this feeling of confidence and security will last, however,
will depend upon the future policy of the present administration. The
inaugural address of President Cleveland was all that any friend of
liberty and justice could reasonably ask for the freedmen. It was a
frank and manly avowal, worthy of the occasion. It accepted their
citizenship as a fact settled beyond debate, and as a subject which
ought to attract attention only with a view to the improvement of their
character and their better qualification by education for the duties and
responsibilities of citizens of the Republic.

No better words have dropped from the east portico of the Capitol since
the inauguration days of Abraham Lincoln and Gen. Grant. I believe they
were sincerely spoken, but whether the President will be able to
administer the government in the light of those liberal sentiments is an
open question. The one-man power in our government is very great, but
the power of party may be greater. The President is not the autocrat,
but the executive of the nation. But, happily, the executive is yet a
power, and may be able to obtain the support of the co-ordinate branches
of the government in so plain a duty as protecting the rights of the
colored citizens, with those of all other citizens of the Republic. For
one, though Republican I am, and have been, and ever expect to be,
though I did what I could to elect James G. Blaine as President of the
United States, I am disposed to trust President Cleveland. By his words,
as well as by his oath of office, solemnly subscribed to before
uncounted thousands of American citizens, he is held and firmly bound
to execute the Constitution of the United States in the fullness of its
spirit and in the completeness of its letter, and thus far he has shown
no disposition to shrink from that duty.

The Southern question is evidently the most difficult question with
which President Cleveland will have to deal. Hard as it may be to manage
his party on the civil service question, where he has only to deal with
hungry and thirsty office-seekers, nineteen out of every twenty of whom
he must necessarily offend by failing to find desirable places for them,
he will find it incomparably harder to meet that party’s wishes in
dealing with the Southern question. There are several methods of
disposing of this Southern question open to him, and there are lions in
the way, whichever method he may adopt.

First. He may adopt a policy of total indifference. He may shut his eyes
to the fact that in all of the Gulf States political rights of colored
citizens are literally stamped out; that the Constitution which he has
solemnly sworn to support and enforce is under the feet of the mob; that
in those States there is no such thing as a fair election and an honest
count. He may utterly refuse to interfere by word or deed for the
enforcement of the Constitution and for the protection of the ballot,
and let the Southern question drift whithersoever it will, to a port of
safety or to a rock of disaster. He will probably be counselled to
pursue the course of President Hayes, but I hope he will refuse to
follow it. The reasons which supported that policy do not exist in the
case of a Democratic President. Mr. Hayes made a virtue of necessity. He
had fair warning that not a dollar or a dime would be voted by a
Democratic Congress if the army were kept in the South. The cry of the
country was against what was called bayonet rule.

Secondly. The President may pursue a temporizing policy; keep the word
of promise to the ear and break it to the heart, a half-hearted, a
neither hot nor cold, a good Lord and good devil policy. He may try to
avoid giving offence to any, and thus succeed in pleasing none; a policy
which no man or party can pursue without inviting and earning the scorn
and contempt of all honest men and of all honest parties.

Thirdly. He may decide to accept the Mississippi plan of conducting
elections at the South; encourage violence and crime; elevate to office
the men whose hands are reddest with innocent blood; force the negroes
out of Southern politics by the shot-gun and the bulldozer’s whip;
cheat them out of the elective franchise; suppress the Republican vote;
kill off their white Republican leaders, and keep the South solid; and
keep its one hundred and fifty-three electoral votes--obtained thus by
force, fraud, and red-handed violence--ready to be cast for a Democratic
candidate in 1888. This might be acceptable to a certain class of
Democrats at the South, but the Democrats of the North would abhor and
denounce it as a bloody and hell-black policy. It would hurl the party
from power in spite of the solid South, and keep it out of power another
four and twenty years.

Fourthly. He may sustain a policy of absolute fidelity to all the
requirements of the Constitution as it is, and, as John Adams said of
the Declaration of Independence, he may bravely say to the South and to
the nation: “Sink or swim, survive or perish, I am for the Constitution
in all its parts! I will be true to my oath, and I will, to the best of
my ability, and to the fullest extent of my power, defend, protect, and
maintain the rights of all citizens, without regard to race or color.”

There can be no doubt as to which of these methods of treating the
Southern question is the most honest and safe one. There may be many
wrong ways for individuals or nations to pursue, but there is but one
right way, and it remains to be seen if this is the one the present
administration will adopt and pursue. Left to the promptings of his own
heart and his own view of his constitutional duties, and to his own
sense of the requirements of consistency, and even expediency, I firmly
believe that President Cleveland would do his utmost to protect and
defend the constitutional rights of all classes of citizens. But he is
not left to himself, and may adopt a different policy.

One thing seems plain, which it is well for all parties to know and
consider. It is this: There are 7,000,000 of colored citizens now in
this Republic. They stand between the two great parties--the Republican
party and the Democratic party--and whichever of these two parties shall
be most just and true to these 7,000,000 may safely count upon a long
lease of power in this Republic. It is not their votes alone that will
tell. There is deep down among the people of this country a love of
justice and fair play, and that fact will tell. It is now as it was in
the time of war, and it will be so in all time. The party which takes
the negro on its side will triumph. The world moves, and the conditions
of success and failure have changed.

Formerly, devotion to slavery was the condition upon which the success
of the Democratic party was based. But time and events have swept away
this abhorred condition. Liberty, not slavery, is now the autocrat of
the Republic. Neither politics nor religion can succeed in the future by
pandering to the prejudices arising out of slavery. Let the great
Democratic party realize this fact, and shape its policy in accordance
with it; let it do justice to the negro, and it will certainly succeed
itself in power four years hence, and long years after.

On the contrary, if it forgets the nation’s progress, falls back into
its old ruts, and seeks success on the old conditions; if it forgets
that slavery has now become an anachronism, a superstition of the past,
having no proper relation to the age and body of our times, it will be
ignominiously driven from place and power four years hence, and no arm
can, or ought to, save it.

    “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which,
     Taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

This tide is now rising at the feet of President Cleveland and his
administration, and, as I have said, it remains to be seen if it will be
wisely taken at the flood. Depend upon it, if the Democratic party does
not avail itself of the colored man’s support the Republican party
certainly will. That party is still the colored man’s party, and it will
be all the more likely to consider the claims of the colored man, in
view of its late defeat, and the causes by which that defeat was brought
about. Twelve hundred more colored votes in the State of New York would
have saved that party from defeat.

Unless the ballot is protected better than heretofore the Augusta speech
of the Hon. James G. Blaine, delivered after the election, will be the
keynote of the Republican campaign four years hence. There is only one
way to prevent the success of the Republican party if that issue is
permitted to be raised. The Northern people were sound for free soil;
sound for free speech; sound for the Union; sound for reconstruction in
other days, and they will be sound for justice and liberty and a free
ballot to the newly enfranchised citizens when that issue shall be
fairly presented as a living issue between the two contending parties.

The great mistake made by the leaders of the Republican party during the
late canvass was the failure to recognize the facts now stated, and
their refusal to act upon them. They had become tired of the old issues
and wanted new ones. They made their appeal to the pocket of the nation,
and not to the heart of the nation. They attended to the mint, anise,
and cummin of politics, but omitted the weightier matters of the
law--judgment, mercy, and faith. They were loud for the protection of
things, but silent for the protection of men. These things they ought to
have done, and not left the other undone.

The idea that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that sin is a
reproach to any people, was, for a time, lost sight of. The
all-engrossing thought of the campaign was a judicious, discriminating
protective tariff. The great thing was protection to the wool of Ohio;
to the iron of Pennsylvania, and to American manufactures generally.
Little was said, thought, or felt about national integrity, the
importance of maintaining good faith with the freedmen or the Indian, or
the protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens, except
where such rights were in no danger.

The great thing to be protected was American industry against
competition with the pauper labor of Europe--not protection of the
starving labor of the South. The body of the nation was everything; the
soul of the nation was nothing. It did not appear from the campaign
speeches that it was important to protect and preserve both, or that the
body was not more dependent upon bread for life than was the soul
dependent upon truth, justice, benevolence, and good faith for health
and life. In the absence of these, the soul of the nation starves,
sickens, and dies. It may not fall at once upon the withdrawal of these,
but persistent injustice will, in the end, do its certain work of moral
destruction. No nation, no party, no man can live long and flourish on
falsehood, deceit, injustice, and broken pledges. Loyalty will perish
where protection and good faith are denied and withheld, and nothing
other that this should be expected, either by a party, a man, or by a
government. On the other hand, where good faith is maintained, where
justice is upheld, where truth and right prevail, the government will be
like the wise man’s house in Scripture--the winds may blow, the rains
may descend, the flood may come and beat upon it, but it will stand,
because it is founded upon the solid rock of principle. I speak this,
not only for the Republican party, but for all parties. Though I am a
party man, to me parties are valuable only as they subserve the ends of
good government. When they persistently violate the fundamental rights
of the humblest and weakest in the land I scout them, despise them, and
leave them.

We boast of our riches, power, and glory as a nation, and we have reason
to do so. But what is prosperity, what is power, what is national glory,
when national honor, national good faith, and national protection to the
rights of our citizens are denied? Of what avail is citizenship and the
elective franchise where a whole people are deliberately abandoned to
anarchy by the Government under which they live, and told they must
protect themselves from violence as best they may, for, practically,
this is just what the American Government has said to the colored and
white Republican voters of the South during the last eight years.
Minister Lowell was accused of not protecting the rights of
Irish-Americans in England, and our ships are just now ordered to Panama
to look after the interests of American citizens in Central America.
This is all right, but when and where have our army and navy gone to
protect the rights of American citizens at home? To say, “I am a Roman
citizen!” could once arrest the bloody scourge and cause the brutal
tyrant to turn pale. But who cares now for the citizenship of any
American Republican, black or white, in Mississippi or South Carolina?
We are rich and powerful. But we should remember that the whole vast
volume of human history is dotted all along with the wrecks of nations
which have perished amid wealth, luxury, and splendor. What doth it
profit a nation to gain the whole world if it shall lose its own soul?
Henry Clay, in 1839, made an elaborate defence of the right to hold
property in man. Two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and
identified negro slaves as property. When warned by anti-slavery men of
the dreadful consequences of perpetuating slavery, he said that that
warning had been given fifty years before, and that it had been answered
by fifty years of unexampled prosperity. His idea was that if slavery
were a curse God would not allow a nation that upheld it to prosper. The
argument was sophistical, but it contained a great truth after all, and
time only was required to verify it. He forgot that God reigns in
eternity; that space is sometimes given for repentance. He did not
remember, as Jefferson did, that God is just, and that His justice
cannot sleep forever.

Had Mr. Clay lived to see, as we have seen, the union of his beloved
country rent asunder at the centre, and hostile armies composed of his
beloved countrymen on the field of battle, amid dust, smoke, and fire,
blowing each other to pieces from the cannon’s mouth; had he seen five
hundred thousand of the youth and flower of both sections of this land
cut down by the sword and flung down into bloody graves; had he seen in
the wake of this fratricidal war the smoldering ruins of noble towns and
cities, and the nation staggering under a debt heavier than a mountain
of gold; had he seen the sullen discontent and deadly hate which
survived the war, and traced all these calamities and more, as he must
do, to the existence of slavery, he would, in all the bitterness of his
soul, have cursed the day when he poured out his eloquence in defence of
that system which brought upon his country these accumulated horrors.

The lesson of this national experience is in place to-day, and it would
be well for this nation to study and learn it. Look abroad! What rocks
Europe to-day? What causes the Emperor of all the Russias to be uneasy
on his pillow? What makes Austria tremble? Why does England start up
frantically at midnight and search her premises? You know, and I know,
that these countries have aggrieved classes among them who have just
ground of complaint against their governments.

Now, fellow-citizens, let me speak plainly. This is an age when men go
to and fro in the earth, and knowledge increases oppressed peoples all
over the world are protesting with earthquake emphasis against all forms
of injustice, some by one means and some by another. Examples, like
certain diseases, are contagious. Railroads, steam navigation, electric
wires, newspapers, and traveling emissaries are abroad. Can you be quite
sure that the oppressed laborers in this country, white and colored,
will not some day make common cause and learn some of the dangerous
modes of protest against injustice adopted in other countries? I deal in
no threats, for myself or for any of my countrymen, and am only for
peaceful methods; but I say to all oppressors, “Have a care how you goad
and imbrute the colored man of the South!” He is weak, but not
powerless. He is submissive to wrongs, but not insensible to his rights.
He is hopeful, but not incapable of despair. He can endure, but even to
him may come a time when he shall think endurance has ceased to be a
virtue. All the world is a school, and in it one lesson is just now
being taught in letters of fire and blood, and that is, the utter
insecurity of life and property in the presence of an aggrieved class.
This lesson can be learned by the ignorant as well as by the wise. Who
can blame the negro if, when he is driven from the ballot-box, the
jury-box, and the schoolhouse, denied equal rights on railroads and
steamboats, called out of his bed at midnight and whipped by regulators,
compelled to live in rags and wretchedness, and his wages kept back by
fraud, denied a fair trial when accused of crime, he shall imitate the
example of other oppressed classes and invokes some terrible explosive
power as a means of bringing his oppressors to their senses, and making
them respect the claims of justice? This would indeed be madness, but
oppression will make even a wise man mad.

It should not be forgotten that the negro is not what he was twenty
years ago. Kossuth once said that bayonets think. The negro is beginning
to think. Years ago a book had as little to say to him and had as little
meaning for him as a brick. It was then a thing of darkness and silence.
Now it is a thing of light and speech. Education, the sheet anchor of
safety to society where liberty and justice are secure, is a dangerous
thing to society in the presence of injustice and oppression.

I pursue this thought no further. A hint to the wise ought to be
sufficient. Let not my words be construed as a menace, but taken as I
mean them--as a warning; not interpreted as inviting disaster, but
considered as designed to avert disaster.

Fellow-citizens, many things calculated to make us thoughtful have
occurred since I addressed you on an occasion like this, two years ago;
but nothing has occurred which ought to make us more thoughtful than the
recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the civil
rights bill. That decision came upon the country like a clap of thunder
from a clear sky. It came without warning. It was a surprise to enemies
and a bitter disappointment to friends. Had the bench been composed of
Democratic judges some such a decision might have come upon us without
producing any very startling effect. But the fact was otherwise. This
blow was dealt us in the house of our friends. The bench was composed
of nine learned Republican judges, and of these nine honorable men only
one came to our help, I mean Honorable Justice John M. Harlan. He stood
up for the rights of colored citizens as those rights are defined by the
fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

It was a magnificent spectacle, this grand representation of American
justice standing alone, and the country will not soon forget it. Without
meaning any disrespect to the Supreme Court, or reflecting upon the
purity of its motives, I must say here, as I have said elsewhere, and
shall say many times over if my life is spared, that that decision is
the most striking illustration I have ever seen of how it is possible to
keep alive the letter of the law and at the same time stab its spirit to
death. Portia strictly construed the law of Venice for mercy, and this
rule of construction has the approval of all the ages, but the Supreme
Court of the United States construed American law against the weak and
in the interest of prejudice and brutality. Never before was made so
clear the meaning of Paul’s saying, “The letter killeth, but the spirit
giveth life.”

I am glad, and I know that you are glad, that there was one man on that
bench who had the mind and heart to be as true to liberty in this its
day as was the old Supreme Court of slavery in its day. While slavery
existed all presumptions were made in its favor. The obvious intention
of the law prevailed, but now the plain intention of the law has been
strangled by the letter of the law.

The fourteenth amendment of the Constitution was plainly intended to
secure equal rights to all citizens of the United States, without regard
to race or color, and Congress was authorized to carry out this
provision by appropriate legislation. But by this decision of the
Supreme Court the fourteenth amendment has been slain in the house of
its friends. I have no doubt that that decision contributed to the
defeat of the Republican party in the late election. I repeat, that
decision may well make colored men thoughtful.

Kentucky has done many evil things in her time, but she has also done
many great and good things. She has recently given us a law by which
equal educational advantages have been extended to colored children.
Long ago she gave us James G. Birney, the first abolition candidate for
the presidency of the United States; a former slave-holder, but one who
emancipated his slaves on his own motion; a genuine gentleman of the old
school, and one to be gratefully remembered by every friend of liberty
in this country. She has given us Cassius M. Clay, the man who fought
his way to freedom of speech on his native soil. She has given us John
G. Fee, the earnest and devoted educator of the freedman. Nor is this
all. She has given us two of the largest hearts and broadest minds of
which our country can boast; men who had the courage of their
convictions, and who dared, at the peril of what men hold most dear, to
be true to their convictions. These strong men--one dead and the other
living--are Abraham Lincoln and John M. Harlan. Abraham Lincoln is
already enshrined in the hearts of the American people, and Justice John
M. Harlan will hold a place beside him in the hearts of his countrymen.

You remember the public meeting held in Lincoln Hall, and the free
expression of opinion upon the unsoundness of the decision of the
Supreme Court on the civil rights bill. You will also remember that the
ablest and boldest words there spoken were from the lips of Robert G.
Ingersoll, a man everywhere spoken against as an infidel and a
blasphemer. Well, my friends, better be an infidel and a so-called
blasphemer than a hypocrite who steals the livery of the court of heaven
to serve the devil in.

Infidel though Mr. Ingersoll may be called, he never turned his back
upon his colored brothers, as did the evangelical Christians of this
city on the occasion of the late visit of Mr. Moody. Of all the forms of
negro hate in this world, save me from that one which clothes itself
with the name of the loving Jesus, who, when on earth, especially
identified himself with the lowest classes of suffering men, and the
proof given of his Messiahship was that the poor had the Gospel preached
unto them. The negro can go into the circus, the theatre, the cars, and
can be admitted into the lectures of Mr. Ingersoll, but cannot go into
an Evangelical Christian meeting.

I do not forget that on the occasion of the civil rights meeting I have
mentioned, one evangelical clergyman, a real man of God, gave to the
gospel trumpet a certain sound. The religion of Dr. John E. Rankin, like
the love of his Redeemer, is not bounded by race or color, but takes in
the whole human family. No truer man than he ever ascended a Washington
pulpit.

In conclusion let me say one word more of the soul of the nation and of
the importance of keeping it sensitive and responsive to the claims of
truth, justice, liberty, and progress. In speaking of the soul of the
nation I deal in no cant phraseology. I speak of that mysterious,
invisible, impalpable something which underlies the life alike of
individuals and of nations, and determines their character and destiny.

It is the soul that makes a nation great or small, noble or ignoble,
weak or strong. It is the soul that exalts it to happiness, or sinks it
to misery. While it modifies and shapes all physical conditions, it is
itself superior to all such conditions. It is the spiritual side of
humanity. Fire cannot burn it, water cannot quench it. Though occult and
impalpable, it is just as real as granite or iron. The laws of its life
are spiritual, not carnal, and it must conform to these laws or it
starves and dies. The outward semblance of it may survive for a time,
just as ancient temples and old cathedrals may stand long after the
spirit that inspired them has vanished. But they, too, will moulder to
ruin and vanish. The life of the nation is secure only while the nation
is honest, truthful, and virtuous; for upon these conditions depend the
life of its life.

A few years ago a terrible and desolating fire swept over the proud
young city of Chicago, and left her architectural splendors in ashes. In
a few hours her “cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces” and solemn
temples crumbled to dust, and were scattered to the four winds of
heaven, so that no man could find them, but there remained the invisible
soul of a great people, full of energy, enterprise, and faith, and
hence, out of the ashes and hollow desolation, a grander Chicago than
the one destroyed arose “as if by magic.”

      “What constitutes a state?
    Not high raised battlements, or labored mound,
      Thick walls or moated gate;
    Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
      Not bays and broad armed ports,
    Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride.
      No, men; high-minded men!
    With power as far above dull brutes endued,
      In forest, brake, or den,
    As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
      Men who their duties know,
    But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain.”




IN WASHINGTON, D. C., 1886.

     In introducing Mr. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, on the occasion of the
     Twenty-fourth Anniversary of Emancipation in the District of
     Columbia, Prof. J. M. GREGORY made the following remarks:


LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: For many years prior to 1861 the friends of
freedom, seeing the prominence slavery had acquired because of its
existence at the capital of the nation, and the evil influence which it
necessarily exerted upon legislation, sought in vain by petitions and
other measures for its abolition in the District of Columbia. It was
not, however, till the national conscience began to be quickened by the
reverses of our armies, and legislators to realize the dangers which
threatened the life of the nation, that the cause could muster
sufficient strength to gain a hearing in Congress.

On the 16th of December, 1861, Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, introduced
into the Senate a bill providing for the immediate emancipation of
slaves in the District upon the payment to the owners of $300 for each
slave. As was to be expected the bill was antagonized by pro-slavery men
in the Senate and House. They feared that the measure proposed was the
entering wedge for the final overthrow of their pet institution in the
South. As subsequent events proved their fears were not without
foundation. Notwithstanding the bitter opposition which the bill
encountered, it passed both houses of Congress in less than four months
from its first introduction in the Senate, and was approved by the
President on the 16th of April, just twenty-four years ago to-day.

The debates on this and kindred questions makes memorable the second
session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and they are of special interest
because they indicated a new departure in the line of argument pursued
by Northern statesmen. They based their arguments for emancipation, not
upon grounds of expediency, but the great principles of right and
justice.

The importance of this act must not be overlooked. It struck the
shackles from the limbs of 3,000 human beings and placed them in the
ranks of freemen. It took away the shame which slavery had brought upon
the National Capital. But this was not all. It elevated the nation in
its own eyes and in the eyes of the civilized world, and roused a
feeling of patriotism and pride. It called forth an expression from the
National Legislature, and a majority of the members by solemn vote
arrayed themselves on the side of emancipation and liberty, in
opposition to slavery and oppression. It was the forerunner of the great
emancipation proclamation--that proclamation which more than all his
other acts makes the name of Abraham Lincoln secure to all posterity.

In our rejoicing on this occasion we should not forget to hold in
grateful remembrance the men whose votes secured the passage of the
bill, and especially its author, a man who by his works proved himself a
friend of the oppressed, Hon. Henry Wilson, the benefactor of the
District.

When the emancipation bill became a law in 1862, there were 15,000
colored people in the District of Columbia, 12,000 of whom were free and
the remainder slaves. They maintained eight schools for the education of
their children, and were the owners of twelve churches, which cost about
$75,000. With the increase of population came the demand for more
churches, so that to-day they have eighty churches and missions in the
District. Many of the churches are very valuable and located on some of
the principal streets and avenues, the new Metropolitan Church alone
being valued at $100,000.

Under the old system the word “colored” appeared opposite the name of
each colored person paying taxes on the books of the Collector of Taxes.
Now, no such distinction is made, and there are no data from which the
number paying taxes among colored citizens can be definitely known. From
information received at the tax office, I judge that there are about 180
persons with property assessed individually at $1,000, the assessed
valuation of real estate in this District being two-thirds to actual
cash valuation. It will be quite in keeping with the facts to say that
two of our citizens have acquired property valued at $100,000 each, two
at $75,000, six at $25,000, fifteen at $20,000, twenty at $10,000, and
fifty at $5,000, making in the aggregate at least a million of dollars.
I am positively assured that the increase in the valuation of property
owned by colored men since emancipation is 100 per cent. This, we think,
is a most creditable showing for our property interests.

Of the 15,000 colored people in the District at the time of emancipation
there were proportionately more skilled carpenters and masons than now
in a population of 70,000. But labor has become more diversified. We are
now engaged in pursuits in which we had no experience before the war. In
1861 a colored lawyer was a personage unknown to the national capital.
Now half a dozen colored lawyers successfully practice their profession
in the courts of the District. Then we had no physicians, regular
graduates of medical schools; now a dozen or more follow the practice of
medicine in the cities of Washington and Georgetown, and are recognized
as men of skill and ability by the profession. One of these physicians,
with his assistant, is in charge of the Freedman’s Hospital, one of the
largest and most successful hospitals in the country. Government
employment tends to keep out many from some business occupations in
which the people in other large cities engage, but this disadvantage, if
disadvantage it be considered, operates no more against us than against
other citizens.

The greatest progress made, however, and that which is necessarily the
first in order of time and importance, has been in matters of education.
The schools have increased from 8 to 174, with an average attendance of
9,000 children, giving employment to more than 100 teachers. Twelve of
the school-houses in which these schools are conducted are among the
largest and most convenient school buildings in the District. Too much
cannot be said in praise of the teachers, supervising principals,
superintendent and trustees, for it is by their combined efforts largely
that the schools have attained that degree of excellence for which they
are known. Howard University and Wayland Seminary, placed on heights
commanding beautiful views of Washington, are among the results of
emancipation. These institutions grew out of the necessities of the
times to meet the wants of colored youth for higher and professional
education. It is proper that we should take pride in our schools and
institutions of learning, for they are the chief instruments through
which our children are to receive the training which will fit them to
properly discharge the duties that will afterward devolve upon them as
men and women and to elevate the race to an equality of development and
enlightenment with other peoples.

We often hear the question asked, “What are we to do with the
Americanized negro?” Articles have appeared in newspapers, pamphlets,
and magazines giving what the author regards as a proper solution of
the negro problem, so-called. But I ask why should there be a negro
problem any more than a problem for any other class of the American
people? We need not go far to seek the answer. It is found in the fact
that in certain parts of our country the people are not willing to
receive the negro into full fellowship and to grant him the civil and
political rights enjoyed in common by other citizens. They take from him
the means of elevation and then reproach him with inferiority. They
would rejoice to rid the country of his presence by colonization, but
seeing the utter hopelessness of the colonization scheme, they seek to
inflame the public mind against him by constant appeals to the low and
narrow prejudices entertained by certain classes of the American people.
When the 300 colored citizens from Cleveland visited President-elect
Garfield at Mentor, he said in reply to the address, to which he had
given respectful attention, that he did not profess to be more of a
friend to colored men than hundreds of others, but he was in favor of
giving, and, so far as it was consistent with the duties of his office,
would give them _opportunity_ to achieve success for themselves. This is
all we ask to-day. This is all we can reasonably ask. Give us fair play,
equal opportunity, and we will work out our own destinies.

Ten years ago, in this city, on the occasion of the unveiling of the
Freedman’s Monument in memory of Abraham Lincoln, an eminent divine,
after congratulating the orator of the day upon his masterly portrayal
of the character of the martyr President, turned to General Grant and
said: “There is but one Frederick Douglass.” This distinguished citizen,
the orator who paid the eloquent tribute to the memory of Mr. Lincoln on
the occasion referred to, the Hon. Frederick Douglass, will now address
you.

At the conclusion of Prof. Gregory’s remarks Mr. Douglass said:

FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I appear before you again, and for the
third time since my residence among you, to assist in the celebration of
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. And while I highly
appreciate the honor and the confidence implied in your call upon me to
do so, when I consider the importance of the task it has imposed, I can
say in all sincerity, as I have said before, that I wish that your
choice of speaker had fallen upon one of our young men, quite as well
qualified to serve you as myself. I want to see them coming to the front
as I am retiring to the rear. Then the fact that I have several times
addressed you upon subjects naturally suggested by the recurrence of
this interesting anniversary is, of itself, somewhat embarrassing. It is
not an easy task to speak many times on the same subject, before the
same audience, without repeating the same views and sentiments. If,
therefore, you find me committing this offence to-day, you will consider
the difficulty of avoiding it, and also that the same views and
sentiments are as pertinent and necessary to-day as years ago. You need
not fear, however, that I shall inflict upon you any one of my former
orations. I am not bound by any such necessity. The field is broad, and
the material is abundant. The phases of public affairs touching the
colored people of the United States are never stationary. They change
with every season, and often many times in the course of a single year.
There is no standing still for anybody in this world. We are either
rising or falling, advancing or retreating.

Last year, at this time, we were confronted with an unusual and somewhat
alarming state of facts. We stood at the gateway of a new and strange
administration. After wandering about during twenty-four years, seeking
rest and finding none, often hungry and sometimes thirsty, and, though
not feeding swine or eating husks, yet not unfrequently found in very
low places and wasting the substance of the national family, our
prodigal Democratic son, with one tremendous effort of will, returned to
the White House, and was received with every demonstration of parental
joy and gladness. Of course this did not take place without a murmur of
complaint and disapproval. There was an elder brother here as elsewhere;
one who had remained at home, worked the old farm, kept the fences in
repair; one who had done his duty and made things in the old house
comfortable and pleasant generally. Indeed, but for his elder brother,
the Republican party, the house would have been broken up, the whole
family turned out of doors and scattered in poverty and destitution. It
was natural, therefore, when this elder brother saw the great doings at
the White House one year ago, when he heard the music and saw the
dancing, and learned what it was all about, he was not over well
pleased, and thought his father not only soft-hearted, but a little
soft-headed, and a trifle ungrateful, if not crazy withal. But elder
brothers, you know, are usually reasonable and patient, and are
generally quite submissive to parental authority, and though he knew
the bad character of the young truant who had now come home, he hoped he
had reformed. How far this cheerful and patient hope has been justified
by one year of this administration I will not now stop to say; I may,
however, remark, as a prelude to what I shall hereafter say, that as far
as the colored people of the country are concerned, their condition
seems no better and not much worse than under previous administrations.
Lynch law, violence, and murder have gone on about the same as formerly,
and without the least show of Federal interference or popular rebuke.
The Constitution has been openly violated with the usual impunity, and
the colored vote has been as completely nullified, suppressed, and
scouted as if the fifteenth amendment formed no part of the
Constitution, and as if every colored citizen of the South had been
struck dead by lightning or blown to atoms by dynamite. There have also
been the usual number of outrages committed against the civil rights of
colored citizens on highways and by-ways, by land and by water, and the
courts of the country, under the decision of the Supreme Court of the
United States, have shown the same disposition to punish the innocent
and shield the guilty, as during the presidency of Mr. Arthur. Perhaps
colored men have fared a little worse, so far as office-holding is
concerned. In some of the Departments, I am sorry to say, there have
been many dismissals, but, even in this respect, colored men have not
suffered much more than one-armed soldiers, and other loyal white men,
whose places were wanted by deserving Democrats. Upon the whole, candor
compels me to admit that this twenty-fourth year of our freedom finds us
thoughtful, somewhat mystified by what is passing around us, but
hopeful, strong to suffer, and yet strong to strive, with a moderate
degree of faith that, under the Constitution and its amendments, we
shall yet be clothed with dignity of freedom and American citizenship.
But more of this in the right place.

I take it that no apology is needed for these annual celebrations, for,
notwithstanding the unfriendly outlook of affairs, we have yet much over
which to rejoice. Besides, such demonstrations of popular feeling in
regard to large benefits received and progress made, are consistent with
and creditable to human nature. They have been observed all along the
line of by-gone ages, and are peculiar to no class, clime, race, or
color. From the day that Moses is said to have smote the Red Sea, and
the Hebrews passed safely over from Egyptian bondage, leaving Pharaoh
overwhelmed and struggling with that hell of waters, down to the 4th of
July, 1776, when the fathers of this Republic threw off the British
yoke, declared their independence, and appealed to the god of battles,
similar events to that which we now celebrate have been gratefully and
joyfully commemorated.

If, for any reason, I feel like apologizing to-day, it is not for this
celebration, but for an incident connected with it, and by which it is
greatly marred. For the first time since the emancipation of the slaves
of the District of Columbia we have two celebrations in progress at the
same time. This should not be so. By this fact we have said to the world
that we are not sufficiently united as a people to celebrate our freedom
together. This spectacle of division among men working for a common
cause is not pleasing in any case, and is especially displeasing and
shocking in this instance. Without attempting to show which party is to
blame in this controversy, I have no hesitation in saying that this
division itself is most unfortunate, disgraceful, and mortifying. It
cannot fail, I fear, to make an unfavorable impression for us upon
thoughtful observers. But, standing here as your mouthpiece to-day, I
beg the disgusted public to remember that colored men are but men, and
that the best men will sometimes differ, and will often differ more
widely and violently about trifles than about things of substance, where
a difference of opinion would be at least dignified. Something must,
however, be pardoned to the spirit of liberty, especially in those who
have but recently acquired liberty. There is always some awkwardness in
the gait of men who, for the first time, have on their Sunday clothes.
When we have enjoyed the blessings of liberty longer we shall put away
such childish things and shall act more wisely. We shall think more of a
common cause and its requirements and less of obligation to support the
claims of rival individual leaders. Depend upon it, a repetition of this
spectacle will bring our celebrations into disgrace and make them
despicable.

The thought is already gaining ground, that we have not heretofore
received the best influence which this anniversary is capable of
exerting; that tinsel show, gaudy display, and straggling processions,
which empty the alleys and dark places of our city into the broad
daylight of our thronged streets and avenues, thus thrusting upon the
public view a vastly undue proportion of the most unfortunate,
unimproved, and unprogressive class of the colored people, and thereby
inviting public disgust and contempt, and repelling the more thrifty and
self-respecting among us, is a positive hurt to the whole colored
population of this city. These annual celebrations of ours should be so
arranged as to make a favorable impression for us upon ourselves and
upon our fellow-citizens. They should bring into notice the very best
elements of our colored population, and in what is said and done on
these occasions, we should find a deeper and broader comprehension of
our relations and duties. They should kindle in us higher hopes, nobler
aspirations, and stimulate us to more earnest endeavors; they should
help us to shorten the distance between ourselves and the more highly
advanced and highly favored people among whom we are. If they fail to
produce, in some measure, such results, they had better be discontinued.
I am sure that such a lecture as I have now given on this point may be
distasteful to a part of this assembly. But I can say, in all truth,
that nothing short of a profound desire to promote the best interests of
all concerned, has emboldened me to run the risk of such displeasure,
and I hope the motive will excuse my offence.

And now, fellow-citizens, I turn away from this and other merely race
considerations, to those common to all our fellow citizens, yet happily
those in which we, too, are included. I call attention to the proposed
celebration of the centennial anniversary of our present form of
government. The year 1789 will never cease to be memorable in the
history and progress of the American people. It was in that year of
grace that the founders of the American Republic, having tested the
strength and discovered the weakness of the old articles of colonial
confederation, bravely decided to lay those articles aside as no longer
adequate to successful and permanent national existence, and resolved to
form a new compact and adopt a new constitution, better suited, in their
judgment, to their national character and to their governmental wants.
In this instrument they set forth six definite and cardinal objects to
be attained by this new departure. These were: First. “To form a more
perfect union.” Second. “To establish justice.” Third. “To provide for
the common defense.” Fourth. “To insure domestic tranquillity.” Fifth.
“To promote the general welfare.” And sixth. “Secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Perhaps there never was an
instrument framed by men at the beginning of any national career
designed to accomplish nobler objects than those set forth in the
preamble of this constitution. They are objects worthy of a great
nation, worthy of those who gave to the world the immortal Declaration
of Independence, in which they asserted the equal rights of man, and
boldly declared in the face of all the divine right governments of
Europe the doctrine that governments derive their right to govern from
the consent of the governed.

How far these fundamental objects, solemnly set forth in the
Constitution, have been realized by the practical operation of the
Government created under it, I will not stop just now to state or
explain. Whether the Union has been perfectly formed, whether under the
ægis of the Constitution the sacred principle of justice has been
established, whether the general welfare has been promoted, or whether
the blessings of liberty have been secured, are questions to which
reference may be made in a subsequent part of this address. For the
present I refer to this grand starting point in the nation’s history for
another purpose. I wish simply to remind you of the flight of time; that
we are now drawing near the close of the first century of our national
existence, and the notice that should be taken of that fact. Without
going into the general questions raised a moment ago, as to the
fulfillment of what was promised in the Constitution, we may, in
passing, affirm what must be admitted by all, that under this form of
government so happily described, and so faithfully upheld by the great
lamented Abraham Lincoln, as “Government of the people, by the people,
and for the people,” this nation has become rich, great, progressive,
and strong. This fact is cheerfully acknowledged by the whole sisterhood
of contemporaneous nations. From thirteen comparatively weak and
sparsely populated States, skirting and hovering along the line of our
Atlantic coast, constituting a mere string of isolated communities, we
now have thirty-eight States covering our broad continent, extending
from east to west, and from sea to sea. Under our Constitution the
desert and solitary places have been reclaimed and made to blossom as
the rose. From a population of seven millions, we have reached the
enormous number of fifty millions; and in less than half a century we
shall have double that number. Such an augmentation of wealth, power,
and population has no example in the experience of any nation in ancient
or modern times. The mind grows dizzy in contemplation of the future of
a country so great and so increasing in greatness, and to whose
greatness there seems to be no limit. The question naturally arises,
what is to be the effect of such accumulated wealth, such vast increase
of population, such expanded domain, and such augmentation of national
power? Plainly enough either one of two very opposite conditions may
arise. It may either blast or bless, it may lift us to heaven or sink us
to perdition.

If we shall become proud, selfish, imperious, oppressive, and rapacious;
if we shall persist in trampling on the weak and exalting the strong,
worshipping the rich and despising the poor, our doom as a nation is
already foreshadowed.

That Almighty Power recognized in one form or another by all thoughtful
men; that Almighty Power which controls every atom of the earth, and
governs the universe; that Almighty Power which stood and measured the
globe, which beheld and drove asunder the nations, will surely deal with
us in the future as that Power has dealt in the past with other wicked
nations--it will bring us to dust and ashes. The rule of life for
individuals and for nations is the same. Neither can escape the
consequences of transgression. As they sow, so shall they reap. There is
no salvation for either outside of a life of truth and justice.
Contradiction to this in theory, for either individuals or nations, is a
damning heresy; and contradiction to this in practice is certain
destruction.

Large and imposing plans are just now proposed, and are maturing, for
the appropriate celebration of this first centennial year of our
national life. If these plans should be perfected and executed, as they
probably will be, and as they certainly should be, Washington will
witness a demonstration in this line far transcending in grandeur and
sublimity the centennial exposition in the city of Philadelphia ten
years ago.

These celebrations, like our own, have large uses. They serve as lofty
pedestals or platforms from which the national patriotism and
intelligence may survey the past, and, in some sense, penetrate and
divine the national future.

It is also fit and proper that our young and beautiful city of
Washington should be the theatre of such a grand national centennial
demonstration. It is the capital of the nation, and is, in some sense,
the shining sun of our national system, around which our thirty-eight
States, linked and inter-linked in one unbroken national interest,
revolve in union. Upon this spot no one citizen has more rights than
another. The right to be here is vested in all alike. Distance does not
diminish or alienate, contiguity does not increase any man’s right on
this soil. In this capital of the nation California is equal to
Virginia, and, as Webster said of Bunker Hill, “Wherever else we may be
strangers, we are all at home here.”

As a part of the people of this great country, we may feel ourselves
included. We represent the class which has enriched our soil with its
blood, watered it with its tears, and defended it with its strong arms,
but have hitherto been excluded from all part in our national glory.
Now, however, all is changed. We may look forward with pleasure to the
promised National Centennial Exposition, and take some credit to
ourselves for helping to make the District of Columbia a suitable place
for such a display. We have at least done a large proportion of the most
laborious and needed work to this end.

The wisdom of the framers of the Constitution of the United States in
granting to the nation, through its Congress, exclusive legislative
jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, has in nothing been more
abundantly and happily vindicated than in the abolition of slavery, and
in making it the freest territory of this country. The benefits of this
act are, however, not confined to the colored people. They are shared by
all the people of this District; not more by the colored than by the
white people.

Washington owes nothing to Maryland or Virginia (though born of those
parents) in comparison to its debt to the nation. Through the National
Government it has become the elegant and beautiful city that it is. It
is the nation that has graded and paved its broad and far-reaching
streets and avenues; it is the nation that has fenced and beautified its
numerous parks and reservations, and made them the joy of our children,
and the admiration of our visitors; it is the nation that has adorned
its ample public squares and circles with choice flowers, flowing
fountains, and imposing statuary; it is the nation that has erected
enduring monuments of bronze and marble in honor of our statesmen,
warriors, patriots, and heroes; it is the nation that has built here
those vast structures, the different departments, and crowned yonder
hill with a Capitol, one of the proudest architectural wonders of the
world; it is the nation that has built Washington Monument, the pride of
the city, the tallest structure that ever rose from the ground toward
heaven at the bidding of human pride, patriotism, or piety, standing
there in full view of all comers, whether approaching by land or water,
with its base deep down in the earth, and its capstone against the sky,
receiving and reflecting every light and shadow of the passing hour,
steady alike in sunshine and storm, defying lightning, whirlwind, and
earthquake--its grandeur and sublimity, like Niagara, impress us more
and more the longer we hold it in range of vision.

But the nation, as I have already said, has done more for the District
of Columbia than to clothe it with material greatness and splendor. It
has, by the act of emancipation, imparted to it a moral beauty. It has
not only made it a pleasure to the eye, but a joy to the heart. No
material adornment or addition has ever done or could do for this
District what the abolition of slavery has done. The nation did a great
and good thing fifteen years ago by giving us a local government, and a
Shepherd that lifted the city out of its deep mud and above its blinding
dust and put it on the way to its present greatness, but it did a
greater and better thing when it lifted it out of the mire of barbarism
coincident with slavery.

Fellow-citizens, we are proud to-day, and justly proud, of the
prosperity and the increasing liberality of Washington. With all our
fellow-citizens we behold it with pride and pleasure rising and
spreading noiselessly around us, almost like the temple of Solomon,
without the sound of a hammer. New faces meet us at the corners of the
streets and greet us in the market-places. Conveniences and improvements
are multiplying on every hand. We walk in the shade of its beautiful
trees by day and in the rays of its soft electric lights by night. We
make it warm where it is cool, and cool where it is warm, and healthy
where it is noxious. Our magnificence fills the stranger and sojourner
with admiration and wonder. The contrast between the old time of slavery
and the new dispensation of liberty looms upon us on every hand. We feel
it in the very air we breathe, and in the friendly aspect of all around
us. But time would fail to tell of the vast and wonderful advancement in
civilization made in this city by the abolition of slavery.

Perhaps a better idea could be formed of what has been done for
Washington and for us by imagining what would be the case in a return to
the old condition of things. Imagine the wheels of progress reversed;
imagine that by some strange and mysterious freak of fortune slavery,
with all its horrid concomitants, was revived; imagine that under the
dome of yonder Capitol legislation was carried on, as formerly, by men
with pistols in their belts and bullets in their pockets; imagine the
right of speech denied, the right of petition stamped out, the press of
the District muzzled, and a word in the streets against slavery the sign
for a mob; imagine a lone woman like Miss Myrtilla Miner, having to
defend her right to teach colored girls to read and write with a pistol
in her hand, here in this very city, now dotted all over with colored
schools, which rival in magnificence the white schools of any other city
of the Union; imagine this, and more, and ask yourselves the question.
What progress has been made in liberty and civilization within the
borders of this capital? Further on let us ask: Of what avail would be
our cloud-capped towers, our gorgeous palaces, and our solemn temples if
slavery again held sway here? Of what avail would be our marble halls if
once more they resounded with the crack of the slave whip, the clank of
the fetter, and the rattle of chains; if slave auctions were held in
front of the halls of justice, and chain-gangs were marched over
Pennsylvania avenue to the Long Bridge for the New Orleans market? Of
what avail would be our state dinners, our splendid receptions if, like
Babylon of old, our people were making merchandise of God’s image,
trafficking in human blood and in the souls and bodies of men? Were this
District once more covered with this moral blight and mildew you would
hear of no plans, as now, for celebrating within its borders the
centennial anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the United
States. Bold and audacious as were the advocates of slavery in the olden
time they would have been ashamed to invite here the representatives of
the civilized world to inspect the workings of their slave system. To
have done so would have been like inviting a clean man to touch pitch, a
humane man to witness an execution, a tender-hearted woman to witness a
slaughter. In its boldest days slavery drew in its claws and presented a
velvet paw to strangers. They knew it was like Lord Granby’s character,
which could only pass without reprobation as it passed without
observation. Emancipation liberated the master as well as the slave. The
fact that our citizens are now loudly proclaiming Washington to be the
right place for the celebration of the discovery of the continent by
Columbus, and the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, is
an acknowledgement of and attestation of the higher civilization that
has, in their judgment, come here with the abolition of slavery. They no
longer dread the gaze of civilized men. They no longer fear lest a word
of liberty should fall into the ear of a trembling captive and awaken
his manhood. They are no longer required to defend with their lips what
they must have condemned in their hearts. When the galling chain dropped
from the limbs of the slave the mantle of shame dropped from the brows
of their masters. The emancipation of the one was the deliverance of the
other; so that this day, in fact, belongs to the one as truly as it
belongs to the other, though it is left to us alone to keep it in
memory.

It is usual on occasions of this kind, not only to set forth, as I have
in some measure done, what has been gained by the abolition of slavery,
but also to speak of the causes and instrumentalities which contributed
to this grand result. If this were my first appearance before you on
similar anniversaries, I should feel it entirely proper to do so now;
but having discharged this duty faithfully and fully in several former
addresses, there is no special reason for a repetition of it in this
instance. In one of those addresses I specially endeavored to trace, and
did trace with more or less success, the history of the earliest
utterances of anti-slavery sentiments in this country and in England. I
described the rise, progress, and final triumph of the abolition
movement in both countries. I have in no case omitted to do justice to
the noble band of men and women who espoused the cause of the slave in
the early days of its weakness, and when to do so was to make themselves
of no reputation and subjects of the vilest abuse. I have held up their
example of virtuous self-sacrifice to the admiration and imitation of
all who would serve the human family in its march from barbarism to a
higher state of civilization. In my judgment there never was a band of
reformers more unselfish, more consistent with their principles, more
ardent in their devotion to any cause than were these early anti-slavery
men and women of this country.

The charge is sometimes made that the colored people are ungrateful to
their benefactors. In my judgment no charge could be more unjust. In
whatever else they have failed, they have ever shown a laudable sense
of gratitude. The names of William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips,
John P. Hale, Charles Sumner, Gerrit Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S.
Grant, and a host of others are never pronounced by us but with
sentiments of high appreciation and sincere gratitude.

Of course I cannot deny that there are those amongst us who, either
thoughtlessly or selfishly, or both, dare to deny their obligations to
the great Republican party and its leaders. They insist upon it that
freedom came to them only as an act of military necessity. They see in
it no sentiment of justice, no moral preference. They profess to see no
difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party, and
insist that one party has no more claim to their support than the other.
Such men are about as ready to join one party as the other. Perhaps they
even lean a little more to the Democratic than to the Republican party.
I admit that were they fair representatives of the colored people of the
United States the charge of ingratitude might be very easily sustained.
But, happily, such men do not represent the sentiments of the colored
people, but greatly and flagrantly misrepresent them. The colored people
do see a difference between the two parties, as broad as the moral
universe and as palpable as the difference between the character of
Moses and that of Pharaoh. For one I never will forget that every
concession of liberty made to the colored people of the United States
has come to them through the action of the Republican party, and that
all the opposition made to those concessions has come from the
Democratic party. Any colored man who either denies this or endeavors to
disparage that party and belittle their concessions by attributing them
entirely to selfish and cowardly motives brands himself as unjust,
uncharitable, and ungrateful. The blindness of such men is very
surprising. Do they not see that in denying their obligations to the
Republican party they only invite the scorn and contempt of the
Democratic party? Do they not understand that they are advertising
themselves as base political ingrates? Do they not know that they are
giving notice to the Democratic party--the party that they are just now
aiming to conciliate--that they will be as unjust and ungrateful to that
party for any concessions from it as they declare themselves to be to
the Republican party for what that party has done?

But, fellow-citizens, while I gratefully remember the important services
of the Republican party in emancipating and enfranchising the colored
people of the United States, I do not forget that the work of that party
is most sadly incomplete. We are yet, as a people, only half-free. The
promise of liberty remains unfulfilled. We stand to-day only in the
twilight of American liberty. The sunbeams of perfect day are still
behind the mountains, and the mission of the Republican party will not
be ended until the persons, the property, and the ballot of the colored
man shall be as well protected in every State of the American Union as
are such rights in the case of the white man. The Republican party is
not perfect. It is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is,
nevertheless, the best political force and friend we have.

And now I return to the point at which I commenced these remarks. I have
spoken to you of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States
and of the national progress and prosperity under that instrument; I
have called your attention to the noble objects announced in the
preamble of the Constitution. I did not stop then and there to inquire
how far those objects, so solemnly proclaimed to the world, and so often
sworn to, have been attained, or to point out how far they have been
practically disregarded and abandoned by the Government ordained to
practically carry them out. I now undertake to say that neither the
Constitution of 1789, nor the Constitution as amended since the war, is
the law of the land. That Constitution has been slain in the house of
its friends. So far as the colored people of the country are concerned,
the Constitution is but a stupendous sham, a rope of sand, a Dead Sea
apple, fair without and foul within, keeping the promise to the eye and
breaking it to the heart. The Federal Government, so far as we are
concerned, has abdicated its functions and abandoned the objects for
which the Constitution was framed and adopted, and for this I arraign it
at the bar of public opinion, both of our own country and that of the
civilized world. I am here to tell the truth, and to tell it without
fear or favor, and the truth is that neither the Republican party nor
the Democratic party has yet complied with the solemn oath, taken by
their respective representatives, to support the Constitution, and
execute the laws enacted under its provisions. They have promised us
law, and abandoned us to anarchy; they have promised protection, and
given us violence; they have promised us fish, and given us a serpent. A
vital and fundamental object which they have sworn to realize to the
best of their ability, is the establishment of justice. This is one of
the six fundamental objects for which the Constitution was ordained; but
when, where, and how has any attempt been made by the Federal Government
to enforce or establish justice in any one of the late slave-holding
States? Has any one of our Republican Presidents, since Grant, earnestly
endeavored to establish justice in the South? According to the highest
legal authorities, justice is the perpetual disposition to secure to
every man, by due process of law, protection to his person, his property
and his political rights. “Due process of law” has a definite and legal
meaning. It means the right to be tried in open court by a jury of one’s
peers, and before an impartial judge. It means that the accused shall be
brought face to face with his accusers; that he shall be allowed to call
witnesses in his defence, and that he shall have the assistance of
counsel; it means that, preceding his trial, he shall be safe in the
custody of the Government, and that no harm shall come to him for any
alleged offence till he is fairly tried, convicted, and sentenced by the
court. This protection is given to the vilest white criminal in the
land. He cannot be convicted while there is even a reasonable doubt in
the minds of the jury as to his guilt. But to the colored man accused of
crime in the Southern States, a different rule is almost everywhere
applied. With him, to be accused is to be convicted. The court in which
he is tried is a lynching mob. This mob takes the place of “due process
of law,” of judge, jury, witness, and counsel. It does not come to
ascertain the guilt or innocence of the accused, but to hang, shoot,
stab, burn, or whip him to death. Neither courts, jails, nor marshals
are allowed to protect him. Every day brings us tidings of these
outrages. I will not stop to detail individual instances. Their name is
legion. Everybody knows that what I say is true, and that no power is
employed by the Government to prevent this lawless violence. Yet our
chief magistrates and other officers, Democratic and Republican,
continue to go through the solemn mockery, the empty form of swearing by
the name of Almighty God that they will execute the laws and the
Constitution; that they will establish justice, insure domestic
tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our
posterity.

Only a few weeks ago, at Carrolton Court-house, Mississippi, in the
absence of all political excitement, while the Government of the nation,
as well as the government of the Southern States, was safely in the
hands of the Democratic party; when there was no pending election, and
no pretence of a fear of possible negro supremacy, one hundred white
citizens, on horseback, armed to the teeth, deliberately assembled and
in cold blood opened a deadly fire upon a party of peaceable, unarmed
colored men, killing eleven of them on the spot, and mortally wounding
nine others, most of whom have since died. The sad thing is that, in the
average American mind, horrors of this character have become so frequent
since the slave-holding rebellion that they excite neither shame nor
surprise; neither pity for the slain, nor indignation for the slayers.
It is the old story verified:

    “Vice is a monster of such frightful mien
     That, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
     But seen too oft, familiar with its face,
     We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

It is said that those who live on the banks of Niagara neither hear its
thunder nor shudder at its overwhelming power. In any other country such
a frightful crime as the Carrolton massacre--in any other country than
this a scream would have gone up from all quarters of the land for the
arrest and punishment of these cold-blooded murderers. But alas! nothing
like this has happened here. We are used to the shedding of innocent
blood, and the heart of this nation is torpid, if not dead, to the
natural claims of justice and humanity where the victims are of the
colored race. Where are the sworn ministers of the law? Where are the
guardians of public justice?

Where are the defenders of the Constitution? What hand in House or
Senate; what voice in court or Cabinet is uplifted to stay this tide of
violence, blood, and barbarism? Neither governors, presidents, nor
statesmen have yet declared that these barbarities shall be stopped. On
the contrary, they all confess themselves powerless to protect our
class; and thus you and I and all of us are struck down, and bloody
treason flourishes over us. In view of this confessed impotency of the
Government and this apparent insensibility of the nation to the claims
of humanity, do you ask me why I expend my time and breath in denouncing
these wholesale murders when there is no seeming prospect of a favorable
response? I answer in turn, how can you, how can any man with a heart
in his breast do otherwise when, louder than the blood of Abel, the
blood of his fellow-men cries from the ground?

    “Shall tongues be mute when deeds are wrought
       Which well might shame extremest hell?
     Shall freeman lock the indignant thought?
       Shall mercy’s bosom cease to swell?
     Shall honor bleed, shall truth succumb,
     Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?
     By all around, above, below,
     Be ours the indignant answer, No!”

In a former address, delivered on the occasion of this anniversary, I
was at the pains of showing that much of the crime attributed to colored
people, and for which they were held responsible, imprisoned, and
murdered, was, in fact, committed by white men disguised as negroes. I
affirm that all presumptions in courts of law and in the community were
against the negro, and that color was the safest disguise a white man
could assume in which to commit crime; that all he had to do to commit
the worst crimes with impunity was to blacken his face and take on the
similitude of a negro, but even this disguise sometimes fails. Only a
few days ago a Mr. J. H. Justice, an eminent citizen of Granger county,
Tenn., attempted under this disguise to commit a cunningly devised
robbery and have his offence fixed upon a negro. All worked well till a
bullet brought him to the ground and a little soap and water was applied
to his face, when he was found to be no negro at all, but a very
respectable white citizen.

Dark, desperate, and forlorn as I have described the situation, the
reality exceeds the description. In most of the Gulf States, and in some
parts of the border States, I have sometimes thought that we should be
about as well-situated for the purposes of justice if there were no
Constitution of the United States at all; as well off if there were no
law or law-makers, no constables, no jails, no courts of justice, and we
were left entirely without the pretence of legal protection, for we are
now at the mercy of midnight raiders, assassins, and murderers, and we
should only be in the same condition if these pretended safeguards were
abandoned. They now only mock us. Other men are presumed to be innocent
until they are proved guilty. We are presumed to be guilty until we are
proved to be innocent.

The charge is often made that negroes are by nature the criminal class
of America; that they furnish a larger proportion of petty thieves than
any other class. I admit the charge, but deny that nature, race, or
color has anything to do with the fact. Any other race with the same
antecedents and the same condition would show a similar thieving
propensity.

The American people have this lesson to learn: That where justice is
denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where
any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to
oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be
safe. I deny that nature has made the negro a thief or a burglar. Look
at these black criminals, as they are brought into your police courts;
view and study their faces, their forms, and their features, as I have
done for years as Marshal of this District, and you will see that their
antecedents are written all over them. Two hundred and fifty years of
grinding slavery has done its work upon them. They stand before you
to-day physically and mentally maimed and mutilated men. Many of their
mothers and grandmothers were lashed to agony before their birth by
cruel overseers, and the children have inherited in their faces the
anguish and resentment felt by their parents. Many of these poor
creatures have not been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the
lash on their backs, and the deeper marks on their souls. No, no! It is
not nature that has erred in making the negro. That shame rests with
slavery. It has twisted his limbs, deformed his body, flattened his
feet, and distorted his features, and made him, though black, no longer
comely. In infancy he slept on the cold clay floor of his cabin, with
quick circulation on one side, and tardy circulation on the other. So
that he has grown up unequal, unsymmetrical, and is no longer a
vertical, well-rounded man, in body or in mind. Time, education, and
training will restore him to natural proportions, for, though bruised
and blasted, he is yet a man.

The school of the negro since leaving slavery has not been much of an
improvement on his former condition. Individuals of the race have here
and there enjoyed large benefits from emancipation, and the result is
seen in their conduct, but the mass have had their liberty coupled with
hardships which tend strongly to keep them a dwarfed and miserable
class. A man who labors ten hours a day with pickaxe, crowbar, and
shovel, and has a family to support and house rent to pay, and receives
for his work but a dollar a day, and what is worse still, he is deprived
of labor a large part of his time by reason of sickness and the weather,
in his poverty, easily falls before the temptation to steal and rob.
Hungry men will eat. Desperate men will commit crime. Outraged men will
seek revenge. It is said to be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of heaven. I have sometimes thought it harder still for a poor man to
enter the kingdom of heaven. Man is so constituted that if he cannot get
a living honestly, he will get it dishonestly. “Skin for skin,” as the
devil said of Job. “All that a man hath will he give for his life.”
Oppression makes even wise men mad and reckless; for illustration I pray
look at East St. Louis.

In the Southern States to-day a landlord system is in operation which
keeps the negroes of that section in rags and wretchedness, almost to
the point of starvation. As a rule, this system puts it out of the power
of the negro to own land. There is, to be sure, no law forbidding the
selling of land to the colored people, but there is an understanding
which has the full effect of law. That understanding is that the land
must be kept in the hands of the old master class. The colored people
can rent land, it is true, and many of them do rent many acres, and find
themselves poorer at the end of the year than at the beginning, because
they are charged more a year for rent per acre than the land would bring
at auction sale. The landlord and tenant system of Ireland, which has
conducted that country to the jaws of ruin, bad as it is, is not worse
than that which prevails at this hour at the South, and yet the colored
people of the South are constantly reproached for their poverty. They
are asked to make bricks without straw. Their hands are tied, and they
are asked to work. They are forced to be poor, and laughed at for their
destitution.

I am speaking mainly to colored men to-night, but I want my words to
find their way to the eyes, ears, heads and hearts of my white
fellow-countrymen, hoping that some among them may be made to think,
some hearts among them will be made to feel, and some of their number
will be made to act. I appeal to our white fellow-countrymen. The power
to protect is in their hands. This is and must be practically the white
man’s government. He has the numbers and the intelligence to control and
direct. To him belongs the responsibility of its honor or dishonor, its
glory or its shame, its salvation or its ruin. If they can protect the
rights of white men they can protect the rights of black men; if they
can defend the rights of American citizens abroad they can defend them
at home; if they can use the army to protect the rights of Chinamen,
they can use the army to protect the rights of colored men. The only
trouble is the will! the will! the will! Here, as elsewhere, “Where
there is a will there is a way.”

I have now said not all that could be said but enough to indicate the
relations at present existing between the white and colored people of
this country, especially the relations subsisting between the two
classes of the late slave-holding States. Time would fail me to trace
this relation in all its ramifications; but that labor is neither
required by this audience nor by the country. The condition of the
emancipated class is known alike to ourselves and to the Government, to
pulpit and press, and to both of the great political parties. These have
only to do their duty and all will be well.

One use of this annual celebration is to keep the subject of our
grievances before the people and government, and to urge both to do
their respective parts in the happy solution of the race problem. The
weapons of our warfare for equal rights are not carnal but simple truth,
addressed to the hearts and sense of justice of the American people. If
this fails we are lost. We have no armies or generals, no swords or
cannons to enforce our claims, and do not want any.

We are often asked with an air of reproach by white men at the North:
“Why don’t your people fight their way to the ballot-box?” The question
adds insult to injury. Whom are we called upon to fight? They are the
men who held this nation, with all its tremendous resources of men and
money, at bay during four long and bloody years. Whom are we to fight? I
answer, not a few midnight assassins, not the rabble mob, but trained
armies, skilled generals of the Confederate army, and in the last resort
we should have to meet the Federal army. Though that army cannot now be
employed to defend the weak against the strong, means would certainly be
found for its employment to protect the strong against the weak. In such
a case insurrection would be madness.

But there is another remedy proposed. These people are advised to make
an exodus to the Pacific slope. With the best intentions they are told
of the fertility of the soil and salubrity of the climate. If they
should tell the same as existing in the moon, the simple question, How
shall they get there? would knock the life out of it at once. Without
money, without friends, without knowledge, and only gaining enough by
daily toil to keep them above the starvation point, where they are, how
can such a people rise and cross the continent? The measure on its face
is no remedy at all. Besides, who does not know that should these people
ever attempt such an exodus, that they would be met with shot-guns at
every cross-road. Who does not know that the white landholders of the
South would never consent to let that labor which alone gives value to
their land march off without opposition? Who does not know that if the
Federal Government is powerless to protect these people in staying that
it would be equally powerless to protect them in going _en masse_? For
one, I say away with such contrivances, such lame and impotent
substitutes for the justice and protection due us. The first duty that
the National Government owes to its citizens is protection.

While, however, I hold now, as I held years ago, that the South is the
natural home of the colored race, and that there must the destiny of
that race be mainly worked out, I still believe that means can be and
ought to be adopted to assist in the emigration of such of their number
as may wish to change their residence to parts of the country where
their civil and political rights are better protected than at present
they can be at the South.

I adopt the suggestion of the _National Republican_, of this city, that
_diffusion_ is the true policy for the colored people of the South. All,
of course, cannot leave that section, and ought not; but some can, and
the condition of those who must remain will be better because of those
who go. Men, like trees, may be too thickly planted to thrive. If the
labor market of Mississippi were to-day not over-loaded and over
supplied, the laborers would be more fully appreciated; but this work of
diffusion and distribution cannot be carried on by the emancipated class
alone. They need, and ought to have, the material aid of both white and
colored people of the free states. A million of dollars devoted to this
purpose would do more for the colored people of the South than the same
amount expended in any other way. There is no degradation, no loss of
self-respect, in asking this aid, considering the circumstances of these
people. The white people of this nation owe them this help and a great
deal more. The keynote of the future should not be concentration, but
diffusion--distribution. This may not be a remedy for all evils now
uncured, but it certainly will be a help in the right direction.

A word now in respect of another remedy for the black man’s ills. It
calls itself independent political action. This has, during the past few
years, been advocated with much zeal and spirit by several of our
leading colored men, and also with much ability, though I am happy to
say not with much success. First, their plan, if I understand it, is to
separate the colored people of the country from the Republican party.
This, with them, is the primary and essential condition of making the
colored vote independent. Hence all their artillery is directed to
making that party odious in the eyes of the colored voters. Colored men
who adhere to the Republican party are vilified as slaves,
office-seekers, serviles, “knuckle-close” Republicans, as tools of white
men, traitors to their race, and much more of the same sort. Perhaps no
one has been a more prominent target for such denunciation than your
humble speaker.

Now, the position to which these gentlemen invite us is one of
neutrality between the two great political parties, and to vote with
either, or against either, according to the prevailing motive when the
time for action shall arrive. In the interval we are to have no standing
with either party, and have no active influence in shaping the policy of
either, but we are to stand alone, and hold ourselves ready to serve one
or to serve the other, or both, as we may incline at the moment.

With all respect to these political doctors, I must say that their
remedy is no remedy at all. No man can serve two masters in politics any
more than in religion. If there is one position in life more despicable
in the eyes of man, and more condemned by nature than another, it is
that of neutrality. Besides, if there is one thing more impossible than
another, it is a position of perfect neutrality in politics. Our
friends, Fortune, Downing, and others, flatter themselves that they have
reached this perfection, but they are utterly mistaken. No man can read
their utterances without seeing their animus of hate to the Republican
party, and their preference for the Democratic party. The fault is not
so much in their intention, as in their position. They can neither act
with nor against the two parties impartially. They are compelled by
their position to either serve the one and oppose the other, and they
cannot serve or oppose both alike. Independence, like neutrality, is
also impossible. If the colored man does not depend upon the Republican
party, he will depend upon the Democratic party, and if he does neither,
he becomes a nonentity in American politics. But these gentlemen do, in
effect, ask us to break down the power of the Republican party, when to
do it is to put the Government in the hands of the Democratic party.
Colored men are already in the Republican party, and to come out of it
is to defeat it.

For one, I must say that the Democratic party has as yet given me no
sufficient reasons for doing it any such service, nor has the Republican
party sunk so low that I must abandon it for its great rival. With all
its faults it is the best party now in existence. In it are the best
elements of the American people, and if any good is to come to us
politically it will be through that party.

I must cease to remember a great many things and must forget a great
many things before I can counsel any man, colored or white, to join the
Democratic party, or to occupy a position of neutrality between that
party and the Republican party. Such a position of the colored people of
this country will prove about as comfortable as between the upper and
nether millstone. Those of our number now posing as Independents are
doing better service to the Democratic party under the Independent mask
than they could do if they came out honestly for the Democratic party.

I am charged with commending the inaugural address of President
Cleveland. I am not ashamed of that charge. I said at the time that no
better words for the colored citizen had dropped from the east portico
of the Capitol since the days of Lincoln and Grant, and I say so still.
I did not say, as my traducer lyingly asserts, that Mr. Cleveland said
better words than Lincoln or Grant. But it would not have suited the man
who left Washington with malice in his heart and falsehood in his throat
to be more truthful in Petersburg than in Washington. This malcontent
accuser seeks to make the impression that those who thought and spoke
well of the inaugural address did so from selfish motives, and from a
desire to get or retain office. “Out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaketh.” “With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and
with what measure ye mete, the same shall be measured to you again.” He
ought to remember, however, that a serpent without a fang, a scorpion
without a sting, has no more ability to poison than a lie which has lost
its ability to deceive has to injure. It so happens that we had two
Presidents and one Vice-President prior to President Cleveland, and I
challenge my ambitious and envious accuser to find any better word for
the colored citizens of this country in the inaugural addresses of
either than is found in the inaugural address of President Cleveland. I
also beg my accuser to remember that I gave no pledge that Mr. Cleveland
would be able to live up to the sentiments of that address, but, on the
contrary I doubted even the probability of his success in doing so. I
gave him credit, however, for an honest purpose, and expressed a hope
that he might be able to do as well and better than he promised. But I
saw him in the rapids and predicted that they would be too strong for
him. Did this look like seeking favor? He did a brave thing in removing
from office an abettor of murder in Mississippi. He has expressed in a
private way, to Messrs. Bruce and Lynch, his reprobation of the recent
massacres at Carrollton, and for this we thank him. But he has done
nothing in his position as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy to
put a stop to such horrors. I am quite sure that he abhors violence and
bloodshed. He has shown this in his publicly spoken words in behalf of
persecuted and murdered Chinamen; he should do the same for the
persecuted and murdered black citizens of Mississippi. He could threaten
the law-breakers and murderers of the West with the sword of the nation,
why not the South? If it was right to protect and defend the Chinese,
why not the negro? If in the days of slavery the army could be used to
hunt slaves, and suppress slave insurrections, why, in the days of
liberty, may it not be used to enforce rights guaranteed by the
Constitution? Alas! fellow-citizens, there is no right so neglected as
the negro’s right. There is no flesh so despised as the negro’s flesh.
There is no blood so cheap as the negro’s blood. I have been saying
these things to the American people for nearly fifty years. In the order
of nature I cannot say them much longer; but, as was said by another,
“though time himself should confront me, and shake his hoary locks at my
persistence, I shall not cease while life is left me, and our wrongs are
unredressed, to thus cry aloud and spare not.”

Fellow-citizens, I am disappointed. The accession of the Democratic
party to power has not been followed by the results I expected. When the
tiger has quenched his thirst in blood, and when the anaconda has
swallowed his prey, they cease to pursue their trembling game and sink
to rest; so I thought when the Democratic party came into power, when
the solid South gave law to the land, when there could no longer be any
pretence for the fear of negro ascendency in the councils of the nation,
persecution, violence, and murder would cease, and the negro would be
left in peace; but the bloody scenes at Carrollton, and the daily
reports of lynch law in the South, have destroyed this cherished hope
and told me that the end of our sufferings is not yet.

But, fellow-citizens, I do not despair, and no power that I know of can
make me despair of the ultimate triumph of justice and liberty in this
country. I have seen too many abuses outgrown, too many evils removed,
too many moral and physical improvements made, to doubt that the wheels
of progress will still roll on. We have but to toil and trust, throw
away whiskey and tobacco, improve the opportunities that we have, put
away all extravagance, learn to live within our means, lay up our
earnings, educate our children, live industrious and virtuous lives,
establish a character for sobriety, punctuality, and general
uprightness, and we shall raise up powerful friends who shall stand by
us in our struggle for an equal chance in the race of life. The white
people of this country are asleep, but not dead. In other days we had a
potent voice in the Senate which awoke the nation.

Ireland now has an advocate in the British Senate who has arrested the
eye and ear of the civilized world in championing the cause of Ireland.
There is to-day in the American Senate an opportunity for an American
Gladstone; one whose voice shall have power to awake this nation to the
stupendous wrongs inflicted upon our newly-made citizens and move the
Government to a vindication of our constitutional rights. We have in
other days had a Sumner, a Wilson, a Chase, a Conkling, a Thaddeus
Stevens, and a Morton. These did not exhaust the justice and humanity of
American statesmanship. There is heart and eloquence still left in the
councils of the nation, and these will, I trust, yet make themselves
potent in having both the Constitution of 1789 and the Constitution with
the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments made practically the law of the
land for all the people thereof.


UP FROM SLAVERY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

By Booker T. Washington




     This volume is dedicated to my Wife
     Margaret James Washington
     And to my Brother John H. Washington
     Whose patience, fidelity,
     and hard work have gone far to make the
     work at Tuskegee successful.




Preface

This volume is the outgrowth of a series of articles, dealing with
incidents in my life, which were published consecutively in the Outlook.
While they were appearing in that magazine I was constantly surprised at
the number of requests which came to me from all parts of the country,
asking that the articles be permanently preserved in book form. I am
most grateful to the Outlook for permission to gratify these requests.

I have tried to tell a simple, straightforward story, with no attempt
at embellishment. My regret is that what I have attempted to do has
been done so imperfectly. The greater part of my time and strength is
required for the executive work connected with the Tuskegee Normal
and Industrial Institute, and in securing the money necessary for the
support of the institution. Much of what I have said has been written
on board trains, or at hotels or railroad stations while I have been
waiting for trains, or during the moments that I could spare from my
work while at Tuskegee. Without the painstaking and generous assistance
of Mr. Max Bennett Thrasher I could not have succeeded in any
satisfactory degree.




Introduction

The details of Mr. Washington's early life, as frankly set down in "Up
from Slavery," do not give quite a whole view of his education. He had
the training that a coloured youth receives at Hampton, which, indeed,
the autobiography does explain. But the reader does not get his
intellectual pedigree, for Mr. Washington himself, perhaps, does not
as clearly understand it as another man might. The truth is he had a
training during the most impressionable period of his life that was very
extraordinary, such a training as few men of his generation have had.
To see its full meaning one must start in the Hawaiian Islands half
a century or more ago.* There Samuel Armstrong, a youth of missionary
parents, earned enough money to pay his expenses at an American college.
Equipped with this small sum and the earnestness that the undertaking
implied, he came to Williams College when Dr. Mark Hopkins was
president. Williams College had many good things for youth in that day,
as it has in this, but the greatest was the strong personality of its
famous president. Every student does not profit by a great teacher; but
perhaps no young man ever came under the influence of Dr. Hopkins,
whose whole nature was so ripe for profit by such an experience as young
Armstrong. He lived in the family of President Hopkins, and thus had a
training that was wholly out of the common; and this training had
much to do with the development of his own strong character, whose
originality and force we are only beginning to appreciate.

     * For this interesting view of Mr. Washington's education, I
     am indebted to Robert C. Ogden, Esq., Chairman of the Board
     of Trustees of Hampton Institute and the intimate friend of
     General Armstrong during the whole period of his educational
     work.

In turn, Samuel Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute, took up his
work as a trainer of youth. He had very raw material, and doubtless most
of his pupils failed to get the greatest lessons from him; but, as
he had been a peculiarly receptive pupil of Dr. Hopkins, so Booker
Washington became a peculiarly receptive pupil of his. To the formation
of Mr. Washington's character, then, went the missionary zeal of New
England, influenced by one of the strongest personalities in modern
education, and the wide-reaching moral earnestness of General Armstrong
himself. These influences are easily recognizable in Mr. Washington
to-day by men who knew Dr. Hopkins and General Armstrong.

I got the cue to Mr. Washington's character from a very simple incident
many years ago. I had never seen him, and I knew little about him,
except that he was the head of a school at Tuskegee, Alabama. I had
occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as "The Rev. Booker T.
Washington." In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him as a
clergyman. But when I had occasion to write to him again, and persisted
in making him a preacher, his second letter brought a postscript: "I
have no claim to 'Rev.'" I knew most of the coloured men who at that
time had become prominent as leaders of their race, but I had not then
known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher; and I had
not heard of the head of an important coloured school who was not
a preacher. "A new kind of man in the coloured world," I said to
myself--"a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an
economic one instead of a theological one." I wrote him an apology for
mistaking him for a preacher.

The first time that I went to Tuskegee I was asked to make an address
to the school on Sunday evening. I sat upon the platform of the large
chapel and looked forth on a thousand coloured faces, and the choir of
a hundred or more behind me sang a familiar religious melody, and the
whole company joined in the chorus with unction. I was the only white
man under the roof, and the scene and the songs made an impression on me
that I shall never forget. Mr. Washington arose and asked them to sing
one after another of the old melodies that I had heard all my life;
but I had never before heard them sung by a thousand voices nor by the
voices of educated Negroes. I had associated them with the Negro of the
past, not with the Negro who was struggling upward. They brought to my
mind the plantation, the cabin, the slave, not the freedman in quest of
education. But on the plantation and in the cabin they had never been
sung as these thousand students sang them. I saw again all the old
plantations that I had ever seen; the whole history of the Negro
ran through my mind; and the inexpressible pathos of his life found
expression in these songs as I had never before felt it.

And the future? These were the ambitious youths of the race, at work
with an earnestness that put to shame the conventional student life of
most educational institutions. Another song rolled up along the
rafters. And as soon as silence came, I found myself in front of this
extraordinary mass of faces, thinking not of them, but of that long and
unhappy chapter in our country's history which followed the one great
structural mistake of the Fathers of the Republic; thinking of the one
continuous great problem that generations of statesmen had wrangled
over, and a million men fought about, and that had so dwarfed the mass
of English men in the Southern States as to hold them back a hundred
years behind their fellows in every other part of the world--in England,
in Australia, and in the Northern and Western States; I was thinking of
this dark shadow that had oppressed every large-minded statesman from
Jefferson to Lincoln. These thousand young men and women about me were
victims of it. I, too, was an innocent victim of it. The whole Republic
was a victim of that fundamental error of importing Africa into America.
I held firmly to the first article of my faith that the Republic
must stand fast by the principle of a fair ballot; but I recalled the
wretched mess that Reconstruction had made of it; I recalled the
low level of public life in all the "black" States. Every effort of
philanthropy seemed to have miscarried, every effort at correcting
abuses seemed of doubtful value, and the race friction seemed to become
severer. Here was the century-old problem in all its pathos seated
singing before me. Who were the more to be pitied--these innocent
victims of an ancient wrong, or I and men like me, who had inherited
the problem? I had long ago thrown aside illusions and theories, and was
willing to meet the facts face to face, and to do whatever in God's name
a man might do towards saving the next generation from such a burden.
But I felt the weight of twenty well-nigh hopeless years of thought and
reading and observation; for the old difficulties remained and new
ones had sprung up. Then I saw clearly that the way out of a century
of blunders had been made by this man who stood beside me and was
introducing me to this audience. Before me was the material he had used.
All about me was the indisputable evidence that he had found the
natural line of development. He had shown the way. Time and patience and
encouragement and work would do the rest.

It was then more clearly than ever before that I understood the
patriotic significance of Mr. Washington's work. It is this conception
of it and of him that I have ever since carried with me. It is on this
that his claim to our gratitude rests.

To teach the Negro to read, whether English, or Greek, or Hebrew,
butters no parsnips. To make the Negro work, that is what his master did
in one way and hunger has done in another; yet both these left Southern
life where they found it. But to teach the Negro to do skilful work,
as men of all the races that have risen have worked,--responsible work,
which IS education and character; and most of all when Negroes so teach
Negroes to do this that they will teach others with a missionary zeal
that puts all ordinary philanthropic efforts to shame,--this is to
change the whole economic basis of life and the whole character of a
people.

The plan itself is not a new one. It was worked out at Hampton
Institute, but it was done at Hampton by white men. The plan had, in
fact, been many times theoretically laid down by thoughtful students of
Southern life. Handicrafts were taught in the days of slavery on most
well-managed plantations. But Tuskegee is, nevertheless, a brand-new
chapter in the history of the Negro, and in the history of the knottiest
problem we have ever faced. It not only makes "a carpenter of a man; it
makes a man of a carpenter." In one sense, therefore, it is of greater
value than any other institution for the training of men and women that
we have, from Cambridge to Palo Alto. It is almost the only one of which
it may be said that it points the way to a new epoch in a large area of
our national life.

To work out the plan on paper, or at a distance--that is one thing. For
a white man to work it out--that too, is an easy thing. For a coloured
man to work it out in the South, where, in its constructive period,
he was necessarily misunderstood by his own people as well as by the
whites, and where he had to adjust it at every step to the strained race
relations--that is so very different and more difficult a thing that the
man who did it put the country under lasting obligations to him.

It was not and is not a mere educational task. Anybody could teach boys
trades and give them an elementary education. Such tasks have been done
since the beginning of civilization. But this task had to be done with
the rawest of raw material, done within the civilization of the dominant
race, and so done as not to run across race lines and social lines that
are the strongest forces in the community. It had to be done for the
benefit of the whole community. It had to be done, moreover, without
local help, in the face of the direst poverty, done by begging, and done
in spite of the ignorance of one race and the prejudice of the other.

No man living had a harder task, and a task that called for more wisdom
to do it right. The true measure of Mr. Washington's success is, then,
not his teaching the pupils of Tuskegee, nor even gaining the support of
philanthropic persons at a distance, but this--that every Southern white
man of character and of wisdom has been won to a cordial recognition
of the value of the work, even men who held and still hold to the
conviction that a mere book education for the Southern blacks under
present conditions is a positive evil. This is a demonstration of
the efficiency of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea that stands like the
demonstration of the value of democratic institutions themselves--a
demonstration made so clear in spite of the greatest odds that it is no
longer open to argument.

Consider the change that has come in twenty years in the discussion
of the Negro problem. Two or three decades ago social philosophers and
statisticians and well-meaning philanthropists were still talking and
writing about the deportation of the Negroes, or about their settlement
within some restricted area, or about their settling in all parts of the
Union, or about their decline through their neglect of their children,
or about their rapid multiplication till they should expel the whites
from the South--of every sort of nonsense under heaven. All this has
given place to the simple plan of an indefinite extension among the
neglected classes of both races of the Hampton-Tuskegee system of
training. The "problem" in one sense has disappeared. The future will
have for the South swift or slow development of its masses and of its
soil in proportion to the swift or slow development of this kind of
training. This change of view is a true measure of Mr. Washington's
work.

The literature of the Negro in America is colossal, from political
oratory through abolitionism to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Cotton is
King"--a vast mass of books which many men have read to the waste of
good years (and I among them); but the only books that I have read a
second time or ever care again to read in the whole list (most of them
by tiresome and unbalanced "reformers") are "Uncle Remus" and "Up from
Slavery"; for these are the great literature of the subject. One has all
the best of the past, the other foreshadows a better future; and the
men who wrote them are the only men who have written of the subject with
that perfect frankness and perfect knowledge and perfect poise whose
other name is genius.

Mr. Washington has won a world-wide fame at an early age. His story
of his own life already has the distinction of translation into more
languages, I think, than any other American book; and I suppose that
he has as large a personal acquaintance among men of influence as any
private citizen now living.

His own teaching at Tuskegee is unique. He lectures to his advanced
students on the art of right living, not out of text-books, but
straight out of life. Then he sends them into the country to visit Negro
families. Such a student will come back with a minute report of the way
in which the family that he has seen lives, what their earnings are,
what they do well and what they do ill; and he will explain how they
might live better. He constructs a definite plan for the betterment
of that particular family out of the resources that they have. Such a
student, if he be bright, will profit more by an experience like this
than he could profit by all the books on sociology and economics that
ever were written. I talked with a boy at Tuskegee who had made such a
study as this, and I could not keep from contrasting his knowledge and
enthusiasm with what I heard in a class room at a Negro university
in one of the Southern cities, which is conducted on the idea that a
college course will save the soul. Here the class was reciting a lesson
from an abstruse text-book on economics, reciting it by rote, with so
obvious a failure to assimilate it that the waste of labour was pitiful.

I asked Mr. Washington years ago what he regarded as the most important
result of his work, and he replied:

"I do not know which to put first, the effect of Tuskegee's work on the
Negro, or the effect on the attitude of the white man to the Negro."

The race divergence under the system of miseducation was fast getting
wider. Under the influence of the Hampton-Tuskegee idea the races
are coming into a closer sympathy and into an honourable and helpful
relation. As the Negro becomes economically independent, he becomes a
responsible part of the Southern life; and the whites so recognize
him. And this must be so from the nature of things. There is nothing
artificial about it. It is development in a perfectly natural way. And
the Southern whites not only so recognize it, but they are imitating it
in the teaching of the neglected masses of their own race. It has thus
come about that the school is taking a more direct and helpful hold on
life in the South than anywhere else in the country. Education is not
a thing apart from life--not a "system," nor a philosophy; it is direct
teaching how to live and how to work.

To say that Mr. Washington has won the gratitude of all thoughtful
Southern white men, is to say that he has worked with the highest
practical wisdom at a large constructive task; for no plan for the
up-building of the freedman could succeed that ran counter to Southern
opinion. To win the support of Southern opinion and to shape it was a
necessary part of the task; and in this he has so well succeeded that
the South has a sincere and high regard for him. He once said to me that
he recalled the day, and remembered it thankfully, when he grew large
enough to regard a Southern white man as he regarded a Northern one. It
is well for our common country that the day is come when he and his work
are regarded as highly in the South as in any other part of the Union. I
think that no man of our generation has a more noteworthy achievement to
his credit than this; and it is an achievement of moral earnestness of
the strong character of a man who has done a great national service.

Walter H. Page.




UP FROM SLAVERY



Chapter I. A Slave Among Slaves

I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I am
not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at
any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time.
As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a cross-roads
post-office called Hale's Ford, and the year was 1858 or 1859. I do not
know the month or the day. The earliest impressions I can now recall are
of the plantation and the slave quarters--the latter being the part of
the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.

My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate,
and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my
owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many
others. I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen
feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother and
sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.

Of my ancestry I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even
later, I heard whispered conversations among the coloured people of
the tortures which the slaves, including, no doubt, my ancestors on my
mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while
being conveyed from Africa to America. I have been unsuccessful in
securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon
the history of my family beyond my mother. She, I remember, had a
half-brother and a half-sister. In the days of slavery not very much
attention was given to family history and family records--that is,
black family records. My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of a
purchaser who was afterward my owner and hers. Her addition to the slave
family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new horse
or cow. Of my father I know even less than of my mother. I do not even
know his name. I have heard reports to the effect that he was a white
man who lived on one of the near-by plantations. Whoever he was, I never
heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way
for my rearing. But I do not find especial fault with him. He was simply
another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily
had engrafted upon it at that time.

The cabin was not only our living-place, but was also used as the
kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The cabin
was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side which let in
the light, and also the cold, chilly air of winter. There was a door to
the cabin--that is, something that was called a door--but the uncertain
hinges by which it was hung, and the large cracks in it, to say nothing
of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very uncomfortable
one. In addition to these openings there was, in the lower right-hand
corner of the room, the "cat-hole,"--a contrivance which almost every
mansion or cabin in Virginia possessed during the ante-bellum period.
The "cat-hole" was a square opening, about seven by eight inches,
provided for the purpose of letting the cat pass in and out of the house
at will during the night. In the case of our particular cabin I could
never understand the necessity for this convenience, since there were
at least a half-dozen other places in the cabin that would have
accommodated the cats. There was no wooden floor in our cabin, the naked
earth being used as a floor. In the centre of the earthen floor there
was a large, deep opening covered with boards, which was used as a place
in which to store sweet potatoes during the winter. An impression of
this potato-hole is very distinctly engraved upon my memory, because I
recall that during the process of putting the potatoes in or taking them
out I would often come into possession of one or two, which I roasted
and thoroughly enjoyed. There was no cooking-stove on our plantation,
and all the cooking for the whites and slaves my mother had to do over
an open fireplace, mostly in pots and "skillets." While the poorly built
cabin caused us to suffer with cold in the winter, the heat from the
open fireplace in summer was equally trying.

The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin, were
not very different from those of thousands of other slaves. My mother,
of course, had little time in which to give attention to the training of
her children during the day. She snatched a few moments for our care in
the early morning before her work began, and at night after the day's
work was done. One of my earliest recollections is that of my mother
cooking a chicken late at night, and awakening her children for the
purpose of feeding them. How or where she got it I do not know. I
presume, however, it was procured from our owner's farm. Some people may
call this theft. If such a thing were to happen now, I should condemn it
as theft myself. But taking place at the time it did, and for the reason
that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my mother was guilty
of thieving. She was simply a victim of the system of slavery. I cannot
remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared
free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Three children--John, my older
brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself--had a pallet on the dirt floor,
or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid
upon the dirt floor.

I was asked not long ago to tell something about the sports and pastimes
that I engaged in during my youth. Until that question was asked it
had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life that was
devoted to play. From the time that I can remember anything, almost
every day of my life had been occupied in some kind of labour; though
I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports.
During the period that I spent in slavery I was not large enough to be
of much service, still I was occupied most of the time in cleaning the
yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going to the mill to
which I used to take the corn, once a week, to be ground. The mill was
about three miles from the plantation. This work I always dreaded. The
heavy bag of corn would be thrown across the back of the horse, and the
corn divided about evenly on each side; but in some way, almost
without exception, on these trips, the corn would so shift as to become
unbalanced and would fall off the horse, and often I would fall with it.
As I was not strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, I would
have to wait, sometimes for many hours, till a chance passer-by came
along who would help me out of my trouble. The hours while waiting for
some one were usually spent in crying. The time consumed in this way
made me late in reaching the mill, and by the time I got my corn ground
and reached home it would be far into the night. The road was a lonely
one, and often led through dense forests. I was always frightened. The
woods were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army,
and I had been told that the first thing a deserter did to a Negro boy
when he found him alone was to cut off his ears. Besides, when I was
late in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a
flogging.

I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on
several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my
young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys
and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon
me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in
this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.

So far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact
that we were slaves, and that freedom of the slaves was being discussed,
was early one morning before day, when I was awakened by my mother
kneeling over her children and fervently praying that Lincoln and his
armies might be successful, and that one day she and her children might
be free. In this connection I have never been able to understand how the
slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so
far as books or newspapers were concerned, were able to keep themselves
so accurately and completely informed about the great National questions
that were agitating the country. From the time that Garrison, Lovejoy,
and others began to agitate for freedom, the slaves throughout the South
kept in close touch with the progress of the movement. Though I was a
mere child during the preparation for the Civil War and during the war
itself, I now recall the many late-at-night whispered discussions that I
heard my mother and the other slaves on the plantation indulge in. These
discussions showed that they understood the situation, and that they
kept themselves informed of events by what was termed the "grape-vine"
telegraph.

During the campaign when Lincoln was first a candidate for the
Presidency, the slaves on our far-off plantation, miles from any
railroad or large city or daily newspaper, knew what the issues involved
were. When war was begun between the North and the South, every slave on
our plantation felt and knew that, though other issues were discussed,
the primal one was that of slavery. Even the most ignorant members of
my race on the remote plantations felt in their hearts, with a certainty
that admitted of no doubt, that the freedom of the slaves would be the
one great result of the war, if the Northern armies conquered. Every
success of the Federal armies and every defeat of the Confederate forces
was watched with the keenest and most intense interest. Often the slaves
got knowledge of the results of great battles before the white people
received it. This news was usually gotten from the coloured man who was
sent to the post-office for the mail. In our case the post-office was
about three miles from the plantation, and the mail came once or twice
a week. The man who was sent to the office would linger about the place
long enough to get the drift of the conversation from the group of white
people who naturally congregated there, after receiving their mail,
to discuss the latest news. The mail-carrier on his way back to our
master's house would as naturally retail the news that he had secured
among the slaves, and in this way they often heard of important events
before the white people at the "big house," as the master's house was
called.

I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early
boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and God's
blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner.
On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were gotten by the
children very much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a piece of bread
here and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at one time and
some potatoes at another. Sometimes a portion of our family would eat
out of the skillet or pot, while some one else would eat from a tin
plate held on the knees, and often using nothing but the hands with
which to hold the food. When I had grown to sufficient size, I was
required to go to the "big house" at meal-times to fan the flies from
the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by a pulley.
Naturally much of the conversation of the white people turned upon the
subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good deal of it. I
remember that at one time I saw two of my young mistresses and some
lady visitors eating ginger-cakes, in the yard. At that time those cakes
seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable things
that I had ever seen; and I then and there resolved that, if I ever got
free, the height of my ambition would be reached if I could get to the
point where I could secure and eat ginger-cakes in the way that I saw
those ladies doing.

Of course as the war was prolonged the white people, in many cases,
often found it difficult to secure food for themselves. I think the
slaves felt the deprivation less than the whites, because the usual diet
for slaves was corn bread and pork, and these could be raised on the
plantation; but coffee, tea, sugar, and other articles which the whites
had been accustomed to use could not be raised on the plantation, and
the conditions brought about by the war frequently made it impossible
to secure these things. The whites were often in great straits. Parched
corn was used for coffee, and a kind of black molasses was used instead
of sugar. Many times nothing was used to sweeten the so-called tea and
coffee.

The first pair of shoes that I recall wearing were wooden ones. They
had rough leather on the top, but the bottoms, which were about an
inch thick, were of wood. When I walked they made a fearful noise, and
besides this they were very inconvenient, since there was no yielding
to the natural pressure of the foot. In wearing them one presented an
exceedingly awkward appearance. The most trying ordeal that I was forced
to endure as a slave boy, however, was the wearing of a flax shirt. In
the portion of Virginia where I lived it was common to use flax as part
of the clothing for the slaves. That part of the flax from which our
clothing was made was largely the refuse, which of course was the
cheapest and roughest part. I can scarcely imagine any torture, except,
perhaps, the pulling of a tooth, that is equal to that caused by putting
on a new flax shirt for the first time. It is almost equal to the
feeling that one would experience if he had a dozen or more chestnut
burrs, or a hundred small pin-points, in contact with his flesh. Even
to this day I can recall accurately the tortures that I underwent when
putting on one of these garments. The fact that my flesh was soft and
tender added to the pain. But I had no choice. I had to wear the flax
shirt or none; and had it been left to me to choose, I should have
chosen to wear no covering. In connection with the flax shirt, my
brother John, who is several years older than I am, performed one of
the most generous acts that I ever heard of one slave relative doing for
another. On several occasions when I was being forced to wear a new flax
shirt, he generously agreed to put it on in my stead and wear it for
several days, till it was "broken in." Until I had grown to be quite a
youth this single garment was all that I wore.

One may get the idea, from what I have said, that there was bitter
feeling toward the white people on the part of my race, because of the
fact that most of the white population was away fighting in a war
which would result in keeping the Negro in slavery if the South was
successful. In the case of the slaves on our place this was not true,
and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the
South where the Negro was treated with anything like decency. During
the Civil War one of my young masters was killed, and two were severely
wounded. I recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves
when they heard of the death of "Mars' Billy." It was no sham sorrow,
but real. Some of the slaves had nursed "Mars' Billy"; others had played
with him when he was a child. "Mars' Billy" had begged for mercy in
the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them. The
sorrow in the slave quarter was only second to that in the "big house."
When the two young masters were brought home wounded, the sympathy of
the slaves was shown in many ways. They were just as anxious to assist
in the nursing as the family relatives of the wounded. Some of the
slaves would even beg for the privilege of sitting up at night to nurse
their wounded masters. This tenderness and sympathy on the part of those
held in bondage was a result of their kindly and generous nature. In
order to defend and protect the women and children who were left on the
plantations when the white males went to war, the slaves would have laid
down their lives. The slave who was selected to sleep in the "big house"
during the absence of the males was considered to have the place of
honour. Any one attempting to harm "young Mistress" or "old Mistress"
during the night would have had to cross the dead body of the slave to
do so. I do not know how many have noticed it, but I think that it will
be found to be true that there are few instances, either in slavery
or freedom, in which a member of my race has been known to betray a
specific trust.

As a rule, not only did the members of my race entertain no feelings of
bitterness against the whites before and during the war, but there are
many instances of Negroes tenderly caring for their former masters and
mistresses who for some reason have become poor and dependent since the
war. I know of instances where the former masters of slaves have for
years been supplied with money by their former slaves to keep them from
suffering. I have known of still other cases in which the former slaves
have assisted in the education of the descendants of their former
owners. I know of a case on a large plantation in the South in which a
young white man, the son of the former owner of the estate, has become
so reduced in purse and self-control by reason of drink that he is a
pitiable creature; and yet, notwithstanding the poverty of the coloured
people themselves on this plantation, they have for years supplied this
young white man with the necessities of life. One sends him a little
coffee or sugar, another a little meat, and so on. Nothing that the
coloured people possess is too good for the son of "old Mars' Tom," who
will perhaps never be permitted to suffer while any remain on the place
who knew directly or indirectly of "old Mars' Tom."

I have said that there are few instances of a member of my race
betraying a specific trust. One of the best illustrations of this which
I know of is in the case of an ex-slave from Virginia whom I met not
long ago in a little town in the state of Ohio. I found that this man
had made a contract with his master, two or three years previous to
the Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be
permitted to buy himself, by paying so much per year for his body; and
while he was paying for himself, he was to be permitted to labour where
and for whom he pleased. Finding that he could secure better wages in
Ohio, he went there. When freedom came, he was still in debt to his
master some three hundred dollars. Notwithstanding that the Emancipation
Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, this black man
walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master
lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar, with interest, in his
hands. In talking to me about this, the man told me that he knew that
he did not have to pay the debt, but that he had given his word to the
master, and his word he had never broken. He felt that he could not
enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise.

From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the
slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who
did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is
so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long
since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern
white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of
our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides,
it was recognized and protected for years by the General Government.
Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social
life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve
itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or
racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that,
notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million
Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors
went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more
hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously,
than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of
the globe. This is so to such an extent that Negroes in this country,
who themselves or whose forefathers went through the school of slavery,
are constantly returning to Africa as missionaries to enlighten those
who remained in the fatherland. This I say, not to justify slavery--on
the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in
America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not
from a missionary motive--but to call attention to a fact, and to
show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish
a purpose. When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what
sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such
faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the
wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already
led us.

Ever since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have
entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted
upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white
man did. The hurtful influences of the institution were not by any means
confined to the Negro. This was fully illustrated by the life upon our
own plantation. The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to
cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation,
of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both races on the slave
plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our place, in a large
measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white
people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as
I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive
industry. The girls were not taught to cook, sew, or to take care of the
house. All of this was left to the slaves. The slaves, of course,
had little personal interest in the life of the plantation, and their
ignorance prevented them from learning how to do things in the most
improved and thorough manner. As a result of the system, fences were
out of repair, gates were hanging half off the hinges, doors creaked,
window-panes were out, plastering had fallen but was not replaced, weeds
grew in the yard. As a rule, there was food for whites and blacks, but
inside the house, and on the dining-room table, there was wanting that
delicacy and refinement of touch and finish which can make a home the
most convenient, comfortable, and attractive place in the world. Withal
there was a waste of food and other materials which was sad. When
freedom came, the slaves were almost as well fitted to begin life anew
as the master, except in the matter of book-learning and ownership of
property. The slave owner and his sons had mastered no special industry.
They unconsciously had imbibed the feeling that manual labour was not
the proper thing for them. On the other hand, the slaves, in many cases,
had mastered some handicraft, and none were ashamed, and few unwilling,
to labour.

Finally the war closed, and the day of freedom came. It was a momentous
and eventful day to all upon our plantation. We had been expecting it.
Freedom was in the air, and had been for months. Deserting soldiers
returning to their homes were to be seen every day. Others who had been
discharged, or whose regiments had been paroled, were constantly passing
near our place. The "grape-vine telegraph" was kept busy night and day.
The news and mutterings of great events were swiftly carried from one
plantation to another. In the fear of "Yankee" invasions, the silverware
and other valuables were taken from the "big house," buried in the
woods, and guarded by trusted slaves. Woe be to any one who would have
attempted to disturb the buried treasure. The slaves would give the
Yankee soldiers food, drink, clothing--anything but that which had been
specifically intrusted to their care and honour. As the great day drew
nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It
was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the
verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom. True, they
had sung those same verses before, but they had been careful to explain
that the "freedom" in these songs referred to the next world, and had
no connection with life in this world. Now they gradually threw off the
mask, and were not afraid to let it be known that the "freedom" in their
songs meant freedom of the body in this world. The night before the
eventful day, word was sent to the slave quarters to the effect that
something unusual was going to take place at the "big house" the next
morning. There was little, if any, sleep that night. All as excitement
and expectancy. Early the next morning word was sent to all the slaves,
old and young, to gather at the house. In company with my mother,
brother, and sister, and a large number of other slaves, I went to
the master's house. All of our master's family were either standing or
seated on the veranda of the house, where they could see what was to
take place and hear what was said. There was a feeling of deep interest,
or perhaps sadness, on their faces, but not bitterness. As I now recall
the impression they made upon me, they did not at the moment seem to be
sad because of the loss of property, but rather because of parting with
those whom they had reared and who were in many ways very close to them.
The most distinct thing that I now recall in connection with the scene
was that some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer,
I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper--the
Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that
we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother,
who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while
tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all
meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but
fearing that she would never live to see.

For some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild
scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of bitterness. In fact,
there was pity among the slaves for our former owners. The wild
rejoicing on the part of the emancipated coloured people lasted but for
a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their
cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of
being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan
for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them. It
was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years
out into the world to provide for himself. In a few hours the great
questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for
centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved. These were
the questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education,
citizenship, and the establishment and support of churches. Was it any
wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and a feeling
of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters? To some it seemed
that, now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more
serious thing than they had expected to find it. Some of the slaves
were seventy or eighty years old; their best days were gone. They had
no strength with which to earn a living in a strange place and among
strange people, even if they had been sure where to find a new place of
abode. To this class the problem seemed especially hard. Besides, deep
down in their hearts there was a strange and peculiar attachment to "old
Marster" and "old Missus," and to their children, which they found it
hard to think of breaking off. With these they had spent in some cases
nearly a half-century, and it was no light thing to think of parting.
Gradually, one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves began
to wander from the slave quarters back to the "big house" to have a
whispered conversation with their former owners as to the future.



Chapter II. Boyhood Days

After the coming of freedom there were two points upon which practically
all the people on our place were agreed, and I found that this was
generally true throughout the South: that they must change their names,
and that they must leave the old plantation for at least a few days or
weeks in order that they might really feel sure that they were free.

In some way a feeling got among the coloured people that it was far from
proper for them to bear the surname of their former owners, and a great
many of them took other surnames. This was one of the first signs of
freedom. When they were slaves, a coloured person was simply called
"John" or "Susan." There was seldom occasion for more than the use of
the one name. If "John" or "Susan" belonged to a white man by the
name of "Hatcher," sometimes he was called "John Hatcher," or as
often "Hatcher's John." But there was a feeling that "John Hatcher" or
"Hatcher's John" was not the proper title by which to denote a freeman;
and so in many cases "John Hatcher" was changed to "John S. Lincoln" or
"John S. Sherman," the initial "S" standing for no name, it being simply
a part of what the coloured man proudly called his "entitles."

As I have stated, most of the coloured people left the old plantation
for a short while at least, so as to be sure, it seemed, that they
could leave and try their freedom on to see how it felt. After they
had remained away for a while, many of the older slaves, especially,
returned to their old homes and made some kind of contract with their
former owners by which they remained on the estate.

My mother's husband, who was the stepfather of my brother John and
myself, did not belong to the same owners as did my mother. In fact, he
seldom came to our plantation. I remember seeing him there perhaps once
a year, that being about Christmas time. In some way, during the war, by
running away and following the Federal soldiers, it seems, he found
his way into the new state of West Virginia. As soon as freedom was
declared, he sent for my mother to come to the Kanawha Valley, in West
Virginia. At that time a journey from Virginia over the mountains
to West Virginia was rather a tedious and in some cases a painful
undertaking. What little clothing and few household goods we had were
placed in a cart, but the children walked the greater portion of the
distance, which was several hundred miles.

I do not think any of us ever had been very far from the plantation, and
the taking of a long journey into another state was quite an event. The
parting from our former owners and the members of our own race on the
plantation was a serious occasion. From the time of our parting till
their death we kept up a correspondence with the older members of the
family, and in later years we have kept in touch with those who were the
younger members. We were several weeks making the trip, and most of
the time we slept in the open air and did our cooking over a log fire
out-of-doors. One night I recall that we camped near an abandoned log
cabin, and my mother decided to build a fire in that for cooking, and
afterward to make a "pallet" on the floor for our sleeping. Just as the
fire had gotten well started a large black snake fully a yard and a half
long dropped down the chimney and ran out on the floor. Of course we at
once abandoned that cabin. Finally we reached our destination--a little
town called Malden, which is about five miles from Charleston, the
present capital of the state.

At that time salt-mining was the great industry in that part of West
Virginia, and the little town of Malden was right in the midst of
the salt-furnaces. My stepfather had already secured a job at a
salt-furnace, and he had also secured a little cabin for us to live
in. Our new house was no better than the one we had left on the
old plantation in Virginia. In fact, in one respect it was worse.
Notwithstanding the poor condition of our plantation cabin, we were at
all times sure of pure air. Our new home was in the midst of a cluster
of cabins crowded closely together, and as there were no sanitary
regulations, the filth about the cabins was often intolerable. Some of
our neighbours were coloured people, and some were the poorest and most
ignorant and degraded white people. It was a motley mixture. Drinking,
gambling, quarrels, fights, and shockingly immoral practices were
frequent. All who lived in the little town were in one way or another
connected with the salt business. Though I was a mere child, my
stepfather put me and my brother at work in one of the furnaces. Often I
began work as early as four o'clock in the morning.

The first thing I ever learned in the way of book knowledge was while
working in this salt-furnace. Each salt-packer had his barrels marked
with a certain number. The number allotted to my stepfather was "18."
At the close of the day's work the boss of the packers would come around
and put "18" on each of our barrels, and I soon learned to recognize
that figure wherever I saw it, and after a while got to the point where
I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any other figures
or letters.

From the time that I can remember having any thoughts about anything,
I recall that I had an intense longing to learn to read. I determined,
when quite a small child, that, if I accomplished nothing else in life,
I would in some way get enough education to enable me to read common
books and newspapers. Soon after we got settled in some manner in our
new cabin in West Virginia, I induced my mother to get hold of a book
for me. How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she
procured an old copy of Webster's "blue-back" spelling-book, which
contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as "ab,"
"ba," "ca," "da." I began at once to devour this book, and I think that
it was the first one I ever had in my hands. I had learned from somebody
that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I tried
in all the ways I could think of to learn it,--all of course without a
teacher, for I could find no one to teach me. At that time there was not
a single member of my race anywhere near us who could read, and I was
too timid to approach any of the white people. In some way, within a few
weeks, I mastered the greater portion of the alphabet. In all my efforts
to learn to read my mother shared fully my ambition, and sympathized
with me and aided me in every way that she could. Though she was totally
ignorant, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of
good, hard, common sense, which seemed to enable her to meet and master
every situation. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel
sure that I inherited the disposition from my mother.

In the midst of my struggles and longing for an education, a young
coloured boy who had learned to read in the state of Ohio came to
Malden. As soon as the coloured people found out that he could read, a
newspaper was secured, and at the close of nearly every day's work
this young man would be surrounded by a group of men and women who were
anxious to hear him read the news contained in the papers. How I used to
envy this man! He seemed to me to be the one young man in all the world
who ought to be satisfied with his attainments.

About this time the question of having some kind of a school opened for
the coloured children in the village began to be discussed by members
of the race. As it would be the first school for Negro children that had
ever been opened in that part of Virginia, it was, of course, to be a
great event, and the discussion excited the wildest interest. The most
perplexing question was where to find a teacher. The young man from
Ohio who had learned to read the papers was considered, but his age was
against him. In the midst of the discussion about a teacher, another
young coloured man from Ohio, who had been a soldier, in some way found
his way into town. It was soon learned that he possessed considerable
education, and he was engaged by the coloured people to teach their
first school. As yet no free schools had been started for coloured
people in that section, hence each family agreed to pay a certain
amount per month, with the understanding that the teacher was to "board
'round"--that is, spend a day with each family. This was not bad for the
teacher, for each family tried to provide the very best on the day the
teacher was to be its guest. I recall that I looked forward with an
anxious appetite to the "teacher's day" at our little cabin.

This experience of a whole race beginning to go to school for the
first time, presents one of the most interesting studies that has ever
occurred in connection with the development of any race. Few people who
were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the
intense desire which the people of my race showed for an education. As
I have stated, it was a whole race trying to go to school. Few were too
young, and none too old, to make the attempt to learn. As fast as any
kind of teachers could be secured, not only were day-schools filled, but
night-schools as well. The great ambition of the older people was to try
to learn to read the Bible before they died. With this end in view men
and women who were fifty or seventy-five years old would often be found
in the night-school. Some day-schools were formed soon after
freedom, but the principal book studied in the Sunday-school was the
spelling-book. Day-school, night-school, Sunday-school, were always
crowded, and often many had to be turned away for want of room.

The opening of the school in the Kanawha Valley, however, brought to me
one of the keenest disappointments that I ever experienced. I had been
working in a salt-furnace for several months, and my stepfather had
discovered that I had a financial value, and so, when the school opened,
he decided that he could not spare me from my work. This decision seemed
to cloud my every ambition. The disappointment was made all the more
severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was where I could see
the happy children passing to and from school mornings and afternoons.
Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn
something, anyway. I applied myself with greater earnestness than ever
to the mastering of what was in the "blue-back" speller.

My mother sympathized with me in my disappointment, and sought to
comfort me in all the ways she could, and to help me find a way to
learn. After a while I succeeded in making arrangements with the teacher
to give me some lessons at night, after the day's work was done. These
night lessons were so welcome that I think I learned more at night
than the other children did during the day. My own experiences in the
night-school gave me faith in the night-school idea, with which, in
after years, I had to do both at Hampton and Tuskegee. But my boyish
heart was still set upon going to the day-school, and I let no
opportunity slip to push my case. Finally I won, and was permitted to go
to the school in the day for a few months, with the understanding that
I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine
o'clock, and return immediately after school closed in the afternoon for
at least two more hours of work.

The schoolhouse was some distance from the furnace, and as I had to work
till nine o'clock, and the school opened at nine, I found myself in
a difficulty. School would always be begun before I reached it, and
sometimes my class had recited. To get around this difficulty I yielded
to a temptation for which most people, I suppose, will condemn me; but
since it is a fact, I might as well state it. I have great faith in the
power and influence of facts. It is seldom that anything is permanently
gained by holding back a fact. There was a large clock in a little
office in the furnace. This clock, of course, all the hundred or more
workmen depended upon to regulate their hours of beginning and ending
the day's work. I got the idea that the way for me to reach school on
time was to move the clock hands from half-past eight up to the nine
o'clock mark. This I found myself doing morning after morning, till the
furnace "boss" discovered that something was wrong, and locked the clock
in a case. I did not mean to inconvenience anybody. I simply meant to
reach that schoolhouse in time.

When, however, I found myself at the school for the first time, I also
found myself confronted with two other difficulties. In the first place,
I found that all the other children wore hats or caps on their heads,
and I had neither hat nor cap. In fact, I do not remember that up to
the time of going to school I had ever worn any kind of covering upon
my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else had even thought
anything about the need of covering for my head. But, of course, when
I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to feel quite
uncomfortable. As usual, I put the case before my mother, and she
explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a "store hat,"
which was a rather new institution at that time among the members of my
race and was considered quite the thing for young and old to own,
but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty.
She accordingly got two pieces of "homespun" (jeans) and sewed them
together, and I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap.

The lesson that my mother taught me in this has always remained with me,
and I have tried as best as I could to teach it to others. I have
always felt proud, whenever I think of the incident, that my mother
had strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation
of seeming to be that which she was not--of trying to impress my
schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a
"store hat" when she was not. I have always felt proud that she refused
to go into debt for that which she did not have the money to pay for.
Since that time I have owned many kinds of caps and hats, but never one
of which I have felt so proud as of the cap made of the two pieces of
cloth sewed together by my mother. I have noted the fact, but without
satisfaction, I need not add, that several of the boys who began their
careers with "store hats" and who were my schoolmates and used to join
in the sport that was made of me because I had only a "homespun" cap,
have ended their careers in the penitentiary, while others are not able
now to buy any kind of hat.

My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather A name.
From the time when I could remember anything, I had been called simply
"Booker." Before going to school it had never occurred to me that it
was needful or appropriate to have an additional name. When I heard the
school-roll called, I noticed that all of the children had at least two
names, and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance
of having three. I was in deep perplexity, because I knew that the
teacher would demand of me at least two names, and I had only one.
By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea
occurred to me which I thought would make me equal to the situation; and
so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him
"Booker Washington," as if I had been called by that name all my life;
and by that name I have since been known. Later in my life I found that
my mother had given me the name of "Booker Taliaferro" soon after I was
born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear and for a
long while was forgotten, but as soon as I found out about it I revived
it, and made my full name "Booker Taliaferro Washington." I think there
are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming
themselves in the way that I have.

More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy
or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry which I could
trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only
inherited a name, but fortune and a proud family homestead; and yet I
have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had
been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to
yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to
do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that
because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my
children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher
effort.

The world should not pass judgment upon the Negro, and especially the
Negro youth, too quickly or too harshly. The Negro boy has obstacles,
discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known to
those not situated as he is. When a white boy undertakes a task, it is
taken for granted that he will succeed. On the other hand, people are
usually surprised if the Negro boy does not fail. In a word, the Negro
youth starts out with the presumption against him.

The influence of ancestry, however, is important in helping forward any
individual or race, if too much reliance is not placed upon it. Those
who constantly direct attention to the Negro youth's moral weaknesses,
and compare his advancement with that of white youths, do not consider
the influence of the memories which cling about the old family
homesteads. I have no idea, as I have stated elsewhere, who my
grandmother was. I have, or have had, uncles and aunts and cousins,
but I have no knowledge as to where most of them are. My case will
illustrate that of hundreds of thousands of black people in every part
of our country. The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if
he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending
back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him
to resist temptations. The fact that the individual has behind and
surrounding him proud family history and connection serves as a stimulus
to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success.

The time that I was permitted to attend school during the day was short,
and my attendance was irregular. It was not long before I had to stop
attending day-school altogether, and devote all of my time again to
work. I resorted to the night-school again. In fact, the greater part
of the education I secured in my boyhood was gathered through the
night-school after my day's work was done. I had difficulty often in
securing a satisfactory teacher. Sometimes, after I had secured some one
to teach me at night, I would find, much to my disappointment, that
the teacher knew but little more than I did. Often I would have to walk
several miles at night in order to recite my night-school lessons. There
was never a time in my youth, no matter how dark and discouraging the
days might be, when one resolve did not continually remain with me, and
that was a determination to secure an education at any cost.

Soon after we moved to West Virginia, my mother adopted into our family,
notwithstanding our poverty, an orphan boy, to whom afterward we gave
the name of James B. Washington. He has ever since remained a member of
the family.

After I had worked in the salt-furnace for some time, work was secured
for me in a coal-mine which was operated mainly for the purpose of
securing fuel for the salt-furnace. Work in the coal-mine I always
dreaded. One reason for this was that any one who worked in a coal-mine
was always unclean, at least while at work, and it was a very hard job
to get one's skin clean after the day's work was over. Then it was fully
a mile from the opening of the coal-mine to the face of the coal, and
all, of course, was in the blackest darkness. I do not believe that one
ever experiences anywhere else such darkness as he does in a coal-mine.
The mine was divided into a large number of different "rooms" or
departments, and, as I never was able to learn the location of all
these "rooms," I many times found myself lost in the mine. To add to the
horror of being lost, sometimes my light would go out, and then, if I
did not happen to have a match, I would wander about in the darkness
until by chance I found some one to give me a light. The work was not
only hard, but it was dangerous. There was always the danger of being
blown to pieces by a premature explosion of powder, or of being crushed
by falling slate. Accidents from one or the other of these causes were
frequently occurring, and this kept me in constant fear. Many children
of the tenderest years were compelled then, as is now true I fear, in
most coal-mining districts, to spend a large part of their lives in
these coal-mines, with little opportunity to get an education; and, what
is worse, I have often noted that, as a rule, young boys who begin life
in a coal-mine are often physically and mentally dwarfed. They soon lose
ambition to do anything else than to continue as a coal-miner.

In those days, and later as a young man, I used to try to picture in my
imagination the feelings and ambitions of a white boy with absolutely
no limit placed upon his aspirations and activities. I used to envy
the white boy who had no obstacles placed in the way of his becoming a
Congressman, Governor, Bishop, or President by reason of the accident of
his birth or race. I used to picture the way that I would act under such
circumstances; how I would begin at the bottom and keep rising until I
reached the highest round of success.

In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once
did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the
position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has
overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I
almost reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and
connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life
is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and
must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure
recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he
is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses
whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.

From any point of view, I had rather be what I am, a member of the Negro
race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of any
other race. I have always been made sad when I have heard members of any
race claiming rights or privileges, or certain badges of distinction,
on the ground simply that they were members of this or that race,
regardless of their own individual worth or attainments. I have been
made to feel sad for such persons because I am conscious of the fact
that mere connection with what is known as a superior race will not
permanently carry an individual forward unless he has individual worth,
and mere connection with what is regarded as an inferior race will not
finally hold an individual back if he possesses intrinsic, individual
merit. Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation
out of the great human law, which is universal and eternal, that merit,
no matter under what skin found, is, in the long run, recognized and
rewarded. This I have said here, not to call attention to myself as an
individual, but to the race to which I am proud to belong.



Chapter III. The Struggle For An Education

One day, while at work in the coal-mine, I happened to overhear two
miners talking about a great school for coloured people somewhere in
Virginia. This was the first time that I had ever heard anything about
any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little
coloured school in our town.

In the darkness of the mine I noiselessly crept as close as I could to
the two men who were talking. I heard one tell the other that not
only was the school established for the members of any race, but the
opportunities that it provided by which poor but worthy students could
work out all or a part of the cost of a board, and at the same time be
taught some trade or industry.

As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must
be the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more
attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and
Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking.
I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where
it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I
remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and
that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.

After hearing of the Hampton Institute, I continued to work for a few
months longer in the coal-mine. While at work there, I heard of a vacant
position in the household of General Lewis Ruffner, the owner of the
salt-furnace and coal-mine. Mrs. Viola Ruffner, the wife of General
Ruffner, was a "Yankee" woman from Vermont. Mrs. Ruffner had a
reputation all through the vicinity for being very strict with her
servants, and especially with the boys who tried to serve her. Few of
them remained with her more than two or three weeks. They all left with
the same excuse: she was too strict. I decided, however, that I would
rather try Mrs. Ruffner's house than remain in the coal-mine, and so my
mother applied to her for the vacant position. I was hired at a salary
of $5 per month.

I had heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner's severity that I was almost
afraid to see her, and trembled when I went into her presence. I had not
lived with her many weeks, however, before I began to understand her. I
soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything kept clean
about her, that she wanted things done promptly and systematically,
and that at the bottom of everything she wanted absolute honesty and
frankness. Nothing must be sloven or slipshod; every door, every fence,
must be kept in repair.

I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruffner before going to
Hampton, but I think it must have been a year and a half. At any rate,
I here repeat what I have said more than once before, that the lessons
that I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as any
education I have ever gotten anywhere else. Even to this day I never see
bits of paper scattered around a house or in the street that I do not
want to pick them up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I do not
want to clean it, a paling off of a fence that I do not want to put it
on, an unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to paint or
whitewash it, or a button off one's clothes, or a grease-spot on them or
on a floor, that I do not want to call attention to it.

From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of
my best friends. When she found that she could trust me she did so
implicitly. During the one or two winters that I was with her she
gave me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a
portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at night,
sometimes alone, sometimes under some one whom I could hire to teach me.
Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all my efforts
to get an education. It was while living with her that I began to get
together my first library. I secured a dry-goods box, knocked out one
side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting into it every kind
of book that I could get my hands upon, and called it my "library."

Notwithstanding my success at Mrs. Ruffner's I did not give up the idea
of going to the Hampton Institute. In the fall of 1872 I determined
to make an effort to get there, although, as I have stated, I had no
definite idea of the direction in which Hampton was, or of what it would
cost to go there. I do not think that any one thoroughly sympathized
with me in my ambition to go to Hampton unless it was my mother, and she
was troubled with a grave fear that I was starting out on a "wild-goose
chase." At any rate, I got only a half-hearted consent from her that
I might start. The small amount of money that I had earned had been
consumed by my stepfather and the remainder of the family, with the
exception of a very few dollars, and so I had very little with which to
buy clothes and pay my travelling expenses. My brother John helped me
all that he could, but of course that was not a great deal, for his work
was in the coal-mine, where he did not earn much, and most of what he
did earn went in the direction of paying the household expenses.

Perhaps the thing that touched and pleased me most in connection with
my starting for Hampton was the interest that many of the older coloured
people took in the matter. They had spent the best days of their lives
in slavery, and hardly expected to live to see the time when they would
see a member of their race leave home to attend a boarding-school. Some
of these older people would give me a nickel, others a quarter, or a
handkerchief.

Finally the great day came, and I started for Hampton. I had only a
small, cheap satchel that contained a few articles of clothing I could
get. My mother at the time was rather weak and broken in health. I
hardly expected to see her again, and thus our parting was all the more
sad. She, however, was very brave through it all. At that time there
were no through trains connecting that part of West Virginia with
eastern Virginia. Trains ran only a portion of the way, and the
remainder of the distance was travelled by stage-coaches.

The distance from Malden to Hampton is about five hundred miles. I had
not been away from home many hours before it began to grow painfully
evident that I did not have enough money to pay my fare to Hampton.
One experience I shall long remember. I had been travelling over the
mountains most of the afternoon in an old-fashion stage-coach, when,
late in the evening, the coach stopped for the night at a common,
unpainted house called a hotel. All the other passengers except myself
were whites. In my ignorance I supposed that the little hotel existed
for the purpose of accommodating the passengers who travelled on the
stage-coach. The difference that the colour of one's skin would make I
had not thought anything about. After all the other passengers had been
shown rooms and were getting ready for supper, I shyly presented myself
before the man at the desk. It is true I had practically no money in my
pocket with which to pay for bed or food, but I had hoped in some way to
beg my way into the good graces of the landlord, for at that season
in the mountains of Virginia the weather was cold, and I wanted to get
indoors for the night. Without asking as to whether I had any money, the
man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of providing
me with food or lodging. This was my first experience in finding out
what the colour of my skin meant. In some way I managed to keep warm by
walking about, and so got through the night. My whole soul was so bent
upon reaching Hampton that I did not have time to cherish any bitterness
toward the hotel-keeper.

By walking, begging rides both in wagons and in the cars, in some way,
after a number of days, I reached the city of Richmond, Virginia, about
eighty-two miles from Hampton. When I reached there, tired, hungry, and
dirty, it was late in the night. I had never been in a large city,
and this rather added to my misery. When I reached Richmond, I was
completely out of money. I had not a single acquaintance in the place,
and, being unused to city ways, I did not know where to go. I applied at
several places for lodging, but they all wanted money, and that was what
I did not have. Knowing nothing else better to do, I walked the streets.
In doing this I passed by many food-stands where fried chicken and
half-moon apple pies were piled high and made to present a most tempting
appearance. At that time it seemed to me that I would have promised all
that I expected to possess in the future to have gotten hold of one of
those chicken legs or one of those pies. But I could not get either of
these, nor anything else to eat.

I must have walked the streets till after midnight. At last I became so
exhausted that I could walk no longer. I was tired, I was hungry, I was
everything but discouraged. Just about the time when I reached extreme
physical exhaustion, I came upon a portion of a street where the board
sidewalk was considerably elevated. I waited for a few minutes, till
I was sure that no passers-by could see me, and then crept under the
sidewalk and lay for the night upon the ground, with my satchel of
clothing for a pillow. Nearly all night I could hear the tramp of feet
over my head. The next morning I found myself somewhat refreshed, but
I was extremely hungry, because it had been a long time since I had
had sufficient food. As soon as it became light enough for me to see my
surroundings I noticed that I was near a large ship, and that this ship
seemed to be unloading a cargo of pig iron. I went at once to the vessel
and asked the captain to permit me to help unload the vessel in order
to get money for food. The captain, a white man, who seemed to be
kind-hearted, consented. I worked long enough to earn money for my
breakfast, and it seems to me, as I remember it now, to have been about
the best breakfast that I have ever eaten.

My work pleased the captain so well that he told me if I desired I could
continue working for a small amount per day. This I was very glad to do.
I continued working on this vessel for a number of days. After buying
food with the small wages I received there was not much left to add on
the amount I must get to pay my way to Hampton. In order to economize
in every way possible, so as to be sure to reach Hampton in a reasonable
time, I continued to sleep under the same sidewalk that gave me shelter
the first night I was in Richmond. Many years after that the coloured
citizens of Richmond very kindly tendered me a reception at which there
must have been two thousand people present. This reception was held not
far from the spot where I slept the first night I spent in the city, and
I must confess that my mind was more upon the sidewalk that first gave
me shelter than upon the recognition, agreeable and cordial as it was.

When I had saved what I considered enough money with which to reach
Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness, and
started again. Without any unusual occurrence I reached Hampton, with a
surplus of exactly fifty cents with which to begin my education. To me
it had been a long, eventful journey; but the first sight of the large,
three-story, brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all
that I had undergone in order to reach the place. If the people who gave
the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence the
sight of it had upon me, as well as upon thousands of other youths, they
would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed to me
to be the largest and most beautiful building I had ever seen. The sight
of it seemed to give me new life. I felt that a new kind of existence
had now begun--that life would now have a new meaning. I felt that I had
reached the promised land, and I resolved to let no obstacle prevent me
from putting forth the highest effort to fit myself to accomplish the
most good in the world.

As soon as possible after reaching the grounds of the Hampton Institute,
I presented myself before the head teacher for an assignment to a
class. Having been so long without proper food, a bath, and a change of
clothing, I did not, of course, make a very favourable impression upon
her, and I could see at once that there were doubts in her mind about
the wisdom of admitting me as a student. I felt that I could hardly
blame her if she got the idea that I was a worthless loafer or tramp.
For some time she did not refuse to admit me, neither did she decide in
my favour, and I continued to linger about her, and to impress her
in all the ways I could with my worthiness. In the meantime I saw her
admitting other students, and that added greatly to my discomfort, for I
felt, deep down in my heart, that I could do as well as they, if I could
only get a chance to show what was in me.

After some hours had passed, the head teacher said to me: "The adjoining
recitation-room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it."

It occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive
an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep, for Mrs. Ruffner
had thoroughly taught me how to do that when I lived with her.

I swept the recitation-room three times. Then I got a dusting-cloth and
dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench,
table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting-cloth. Besides,
every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in
the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large
measure my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher
in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the head
teacher. She was a "Yankee" woman who knew just where to look for dirt.
She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets; then she
took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the walls, and
over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one bit of dirt
on the floor, or a particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly
remarked, "I guess you will do to enter this institution."

I was one of the happiest souls on Earth. The sweeping of that room was
my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for
entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction. I
have passed several examinations since then, but I have always felt that
this was the best one I ever passed.

I have spoken of my own experience in entering the Hampton Institute.
Perhaps few, if any, had anything like the same experience that I had,
but about the same period there were hundreds who found their way to
Hampton and other institutions after experiencing something of the
same difficulties that I went through. The young men and women were
determined to secure an education at any cost.

The sweeping of the recitation-room in the manner that I did it seems to
have paved the way for me to get through Hampton. Miss Mary F. Mackie,
the head teacher, offered me a position as janitor. This, of course, I
gladly accepted, because it was a place where I could work out nearly
all the cost of my board. The work was hard and taxing but I stuck to
it. I had a large number of rooms to care for, and had to work late into
the night, while at the same time I had to rise by four o'clock in the
morning, in order to build the fires and have a little time in which to
prepare my lessons. In all my career at Hampton, and ever since I have
been out in the world, Miss Mary F. Mackie, the head teacher to whom I
have referred, proved one of my strongest and most helpful friends. Her
advice and encouragement were always helpful in strengthening to me in
the darkest hour.

I have spoken of the impression that was made upon me by the buildings
and general appearance of the Hampton Institute, but I have not spoken
of that which made the greatest and most lasting impression on me, and
that was a great man--the noblest, rarest human being that it has
ever been my privilege to meet. I refer to the late General Samuel C.
Armstrong.

It has been my fortune to meet personally many of what are called great
characters, both in Europe and America, but I do not hesitate to say
that I never met any man who, in my estimation, was the equal of General
Armstrong. Fresh from the degrading influences of the slave plantation
and the coal-mines, it was a rare privilege for me to be permitted to
come into direct contact with such a character as General Armstrong. I
shall always remember that the first time I went into his presence he
made the impression upon me of being a perfect man: I was made to
feel that there was something about him that was superhuman. It was my
privilege to know the General personally from the time I entered Hampton
till he died, and the more I saw of him the greater he grew in my
estimation. One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings,
class-rooms, teachers, and industries, and given the men and women there
the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, and
that alone would have been a liberal education. The older I grow, the
more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from
books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten
from contact with great men and women. Instead of studying books so
constantly, how I wish that our schools and colleges might learn to
study men and things!

General Armstrong spent two of the last six months of his life in my
home at Tuskegee. At that time he was paralyzed to the extent that
he had lost control of his body and voice in a very large degree.
Notwithstanding his affliction, he worked almost constantly night and
day for the cause to which he had given his life. I never saw a man
who so completely lost sight of himself. I do not believe he ever had
a selfish thought. He was just as happy in trying to assist some other
institution in the South as he was when working for Hampton. Although he
fought the Southern white man in the Civil War, I never heard him
utter a bitter word against him afterward. On the other hand, he was
constantly seeking to find ways by which he could be of service to the
Southern whites.

It would be difficult to describe the hold that he had upon the students
at Hampton, or the faith they had in him. In fact, he was worshipped by
his students. It never occurred to me that General Armstrong could fail
in anything that he undertook. There is almost no request that he could
have made that would not have been complied with. When he was a guest at
my home in Alabama, and was so badly paralyzed that he had to be wheeled
about in an invalid's chair, I recall that one of the General's former
students had occasion to push his chair up a long, steep hill that taxed
his strength to the utmost. When the top of the hill was reached, the
former pupil, with a glow of happiness on his face, exclaimed, "I am so
glad that I have been permitted to do something that was real hard
for the General before he dies!" While I was a student at Hampton, the
dormitories became so crowded that it was impossible to find room for
all who wanted to be admitted. In order to help remedy the difficulty,
the General conceived the plan of putting up tents to be used as rooms.
As soon as it became known that General Armstrong would be pleased if
some of the older students would live in the tents during the winter,
nearly every student in school volunteered to go.

I was one of the volunteers. The winter that we spent in those tents
was an intensely cold one, and we suffered severely--how much I am sure
General Armstrong never knew, because we made no complaints. It was
enough for us to know that we were pleasing General Armstrong, and
that we were making it possible for an additional number of students to
secure an education. More than once, during a cold night, when a stiff
gale would be blowing, our tent was lifted bodily, and we would find
ourselves in the open air. The General would usually pay a visit to the
tents early in the morning, and his earnest, cheerful, encouraging voice
would dispel any feeling of despondency.

I have spoken of my admiration for General Armstrong, and yet he was but
a type of that Christlike body of men and women who went into the Negro
schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in lifting
up my race. The history of the world fails to show a higher, purer, and
more unselfish class of men and women than those who found their way
into those Negro schools.

Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me; was constantly taking
me into a new world. The matter of having meals at regular hours, of
eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bath-tub and of
the tooth-brush, as well as the use of sheets upon the bed, were all new
to me.

I sometimes feel that almost the most valuable lesson I got at the
Hampton Institute was in the use and value of the bath. I learned there
for the first time some of its value, not only in keeping the body
healthy, but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue. In all my
travels in the South and elsewhere since leaving Hampton I have always
in some way sought my daily bath. To get it sometimes when I have been
the guest of my own people in a single-roomed cabin has not always been
easy to do, except by slipping away to some stream in the woods. I have
always tried to teach my people that some provision for bathing should
be a part of every house.

For some time, while a student at Hampton, I possessed but a single pair
of socks, but when I had worn these till they became soiled, I would
wash them at night and hang them by the fire to dry, so that I might
wear them again the next morning.

The charge for my board at Hampton was ten dollars per month. I was
expected to pay a part of this in cash and to work out the remainder. To
meet this cash payment, as I have stated, I had just fifty cents when I
reached the institution. Aside from a very few dollars that my brother
John was able to send me once in a while, I had no money with which to
pay my board. I was determined from the first to make my work as janitor
so valuable that my services would be indispensable. This I succeeded in
doing to such an extent that I was soon informed that I would be allowed
the full cost of my board in return for my work. The cost of tuition was
seventy dollars a year. This, of course, was wholly beyond my ability to
provide. If I had been compelled to pay the seventy dollars for tuition,
in addition to providing for my board, I would have been compelled to
leave the Hampton school. General Armstrong, however, very kindly got
Mr. S. Griffitts Morgan, of New Bedford, Mass., to defray the cost of
my tuition during the whole time that I was at Hampton. After I finished
the course at Hampton and had entered upon my lifework at Tuskegee, I
had the pleasure of visiting Mr. Morgan several times.

After having been for a while at Hampton, I found myself in difficulty
because I did not have books and clothing. Usually, however, I got
around the trouble about books by borrowing from those who were more
fortunate than myself. As to clothes, when I reached Hampton I had
practically nothing. Everything that I possessed was in a small hand
satchel. My anxiety about clothing was increased because of the fact
that General Armstrong made a personal inspection of the young men in
ranks, to see that their clothes were clean. Shoes had to be polished,
there must be no buttons off the clothing, and no grease-spots. To wear
one suit of clothes continually, while at work and in the schoolroom,
and at the same time keep it clean, was rather a hard problem for me to
solve. In some way I managed to get on till the teachers learned that
I was in earnest and meant to succeed, and then some of them were kind
enough to see that I was partly supplied with second-hand clothing that
had been sent in barrels from the North. These barrels proved a blessing
to hundreds of poor but deserving students. Without them I question
whether I should ever have gotten through Hampton.

When I first went to Hampton I do not recall that I had ever slept in
a bed that had two sheets on it. In those days there were not many
buildings there, and room was very precious. There were seven other boys
in the same room with me; most of them, however, students who had been
there for some time. The sheets were quite a puzzle to me. The first
night I slept under both of them, and the second night I slept on top
of them; but by watching the other boys I learned my lesson in this, and
have been trying to follow it ever since and to teach it to others.

I was among the youngest of the students who were in Hampton at the
time. Most of the students were men and women--some as old as forty
years of age. As I now recall the scene of my first year, I do not
believe that one often has the opportunity of coming into contact with
three or four hundred men and women who were so tremendously in earnest
as these men and women were. Every hour was occupied in study or work.
Nearly all had had enough actual contact with the world to teach them
the need of education. Many of the older ones were, of course, too old
to master the text-books very thoroughly, and it was often sad to watch
their struggles; but they made up in earnest much of what they lacked
in books. Many of them were as poor as I was, and, besides having to
wrestle with their books, they had to struggle with a poverty which
prevented their having the necessities of life. Many of them had aged
parents who were dependent upon them, and some of them were men who had
wives whose support in some way they had to provide for.

The great and prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of every
one was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home. No one
seemed to think of himself. And the officers and teachers, what a rare
set of human beings they were! They worked for the students night and
day, in seasons and out of season. They seemed happy only when they were
helping the students in some manner. Whenever it is written--and I hope
it will be--the part that the Yankee teachers played in the education
of the Negroes immediately after the war will make one of the most
thrilling parts of the history off this country. The time is not far
distant when the whole South will appreciate this service in a way that
it has not yet been able to do.



Chapter IV. Helping Others

At the end of my first year at Hampton I was confronted with another
difficulty. Most of the students went home to spend their vacation. I
had no money with which to go home, but I had to go somewhere. In those
days very few students were permitted to remain at the school during
vacation. It made me feel very sad and homesick to see the other
students preparing to leave and starting for home. I not only had no
money with which to go home, but I had none with which to go anywhere.

In some way, however, I had gotten hold of an extra, second-hand coat
which I thought was a pretty valuable coat. This I decided to sell, in
order to get a little money for travelling expenses. I had a good deal
of boyish pride, and I tried to hide, as far as I could, from the other
students the fact that I had no money and nowhere to go. I made it known
to a few people in the town of Hampton that I had this coat to sell,
and, after a good deal of persuading, one coloured man promised to come
to my room to look the coat over and consider the matter of buying it.
This cheered my drooping spirits considerably. Early the next morning my
prospective customer appeared. After looking the garment over carefully,
he asked me how much I wanted for it. I told him I thought it was worth
three dollars. He seemed to agree with me as to price, but remarked in
the most matter-of-fact way: "I tell you what I will do; I will take the
coat, and will pay you five cents, cash down, and pay you the rest of
the money just as soon as I can get it." It is not hard to imagine what
my feelings were at the time.

With this disappointment I gave up all hope of getting out of the town
of Hampton for my vacation work. I wanted very much to go where I
might secure work that would at least pay me enough to purchase some
much-needed clothing and other necessities. In a few days practically
all the students and teachers had left for their homes, and this served
to depress my spirits even more.

After trying for several days in and near the town of Hampton, I finally
secured work in a restaurant at Fortress Monroe. The wages, however,
were very little more than my board. At night, and between meals, I
found considerable time for study and reading; and in this direction I
improved myself very much during the summer.

When I left school at the end of my first year, I owed the institution
sixteen dollars that I had not been able to work out. It was my greatest
ambition during the summer to save money enough with which to pay this
debt. I felt that this was a debt of honour, and that I could hardly
bring myself to the point of even trying to enter school again till it
was paid. I economized in every way that I could think of--did my own
washing, and went without necessary garments--but still I found my
summer vacation ending and I did not have the sixteen dollars.

One day, during the last week of my stay in the restaurant, I found
under one of the tables a crisp, new ten-dollar bill. I could hardly
contain myself, I was so happy. As it was not my place of business I
felt it to be the proper thing to show the money to the proprietor. This
I did. He seemed as glad as I was, but he coolly explained to me that,
as it was his place of business, he had a right to keep the money, and
he proceeded to do so. This, I confess, was another pretty hard blow
to me. I will not say that I became discouraged, for as I now look
back over my life I do not recall that I ever became discouraged over
anything that I set out to accomplish. I have begun everything with
the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the
multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot
succeed. I determined to face the situation just as it was. At the end
of the week I went to the treasurer of the Hampton Institute, General
J.F.B. Marshall, and told him frankly my condition. To my gratification
he told me that I could reenter the institution, and that he would trust
me to pay the debt when I could. During the second year I continued to
work as a janitor.

The education that I received at Hampton out of the text-books was but
a small part of what I learned there. One of the things that impressed
itself upon me deeply, the second year, was the unselfishness of the
teachers. It was hard for me to understand how any individuals could
bring themselves to the point where they could be so happy in working
for others. Before the end of the year, I think I began learning that
those who are happiest are those who do the most for others. This lesson
I have tried to carry with me ever since.

I also learned a valuable lesson at Hampton by coming into contact with
the best breeds of live stock and fowls. No student, I think, who
has had the opportunity of doing this could go out into the world and
content himself with the poorest grades.

Perhaps the most valuable thing that I got out of my second year was an
understanding of the use and value of the Bible. Miss Nathalie Lord, one
of the teachers, from Portland, Me., taught me how to use and love the
Bible. Before this I had never cared a great deal about it, but now I
learned to love to read the Bible, not only for the spiritual help which
it gives, but on account of it as literature. The lessons taught me in
this respect took such a hold upon me that at the present time, when I
am at home, no matter how busy I am, I always make it a rule to read a
chapter or a portion of a chapter in the morning, before beginning the
work of the day.

Whatever ability I may have as a public speaker I owe in a measure
to Miss Lord. When she found out that I had some inclination in this
direction, she gave me private lessons in the matter of breathing,
emphasis, and articulation. Simply to be able to talk in public for the
sake of talking has never had the least attraction to me. In fact,
I consider that there is nothing so empty and unsatisfactory as mere
abstract public speaking; but from my early childhood I have had a
desire to do something to make the world better, and then to be able to
speak to the world about that thing.

The debating societies at Hampton were a constant source of delight to
me. These were held on Saturday evening; and during my whole life at
Hampton I do not recall that I missed a single meeting. I not only
attended the weekly debating society, but was instrumental in organizing
an additional society. I noticed that between the time when supper was
over and the time to begin evening study there were about twenty minutes
which the young men usually spent in idle gossip. About twenty of us
formed a society for the purpose of utilizing this time in debate or in
practice in public speaking. Few persons ever derived more happiness or
benefit from the use of twenty minutes of time than we did in this way.

At the end of my second year at Hampton, by the help of some money sent
me by my mother and brother John, supplemented by a small gift from
one of the teachers at Hampton, I was enabled to return to my home in
Malden, West Virginia, to spend my vacation. When I reached home I found
that the salt-furnaces were not running, and that the coal-mine was not
being operated on account of the miners being out on "strike." This was
something which, it seemed, usually occurred whenever the men got two or
three months ahead in their savings. During the strike, of course, they
spent all that they had saved, and would often return to work in debt at
the same wages, or would move to another mine at considerable expense.
In either case, my observations convinced me that the miners were worse
off at the end of the strike. Before the days of strikes in that section
of the country, I knew miners who had considerable money in the bank,
but as soon as the professional labour agitators got control, the
savings of even the more thrifty ones began disappearing.

My mother and the other members of my family were, of course, much
rejoiced to see me and to note the improvement that I had made during
my two years' absence. The rejoicing on the part of all classes of the
coloured people, and especially the older ones, over my return, was
almost pathetic. I had to pay a visit to each family and take a meal
with each, and at each place tell the story of my experiences at
Hampton. In addition to this I had to speak before the church and
Sunday-school, and at various other places. The thing that I was most in
search of, though, work, I could not find. There was no work on account
of the strike. I spent nearly the whole of the first month of my
vacation in an effort to find something to do by which I could earn
money to pay my way back to Hampton and save a little money to use after
reaching there.

Toward the end of the first month, I went to a place a considerable
distance from my home, to try to find employment. I did not succeed, and
it was night before I got started on my return. When I had gotten within
a mile or so of my home I was so completely tired out that I could not
walk any farther, and I went into an old, abandoned house to spend the
remainder of the night. About three o'clock in the morning my brother
John found me asleep in this house, and broke to me, as gently as he
could, the sad news that our dear mother had died during the night.

This seemed to me the saddest and blankest moment in my life. For
several years my mother had not been in good health, but I had no idea,
when I parted from her the previous day, that I should never see her
alive again. Besides that, I had always had an intense desire to be with
her when she did pass away. One of the chief ambitions which spurred
me on at Hampton was that I might be able to get to be in a position in
which I could better make my mother comfortable and happy. She had so
often expressed the wish that she might be permitted to live to see her
children educated and started out in the world.

In a very short time after the death of my mother our little home was
in confusion. My sister Amanda, although she tried to do the best
she could, was too young to know anything about keeping house, and my
stepfather was not able to hire a housekeeper. Sometimes we had food
cooked for us, and sometimes we did not. I remember that more than once
a can of tomatoes and some crackers constituted a meal. Our clothing
went uncared for, and everything about our home was soon in a
tumble-down condition. It seems to me that this was the most dismal
period of my life.

My good friend, Mrs. Ruffner, to whom I have already referred, always
made me welcome at her home, and assisted me in many ways during this
trying period. Before the end of the vacation she gave me some work, and
this, together with work in a coal-mine at some distance from my home,
enabled me to earn a little money.

At one time it looked as if I would have to give up the idea of
returning to Hampton, but my heart was so set on returning that I
determined not to give up going back without a struggle. I was very
anxious to secure some clothes for the winter, but in this I was
disappointed, except for a few garments which my brother John secured
for me. Notwithstanding my need of money and clothing, I was very
happy in the fact that I had secured enough money to pay my travelling
expenses back to Hampton. Once there, I knew that I could make myself
so useful as a janitor that I could in some way get through the school
year.

Three weeks before the time for the opening of the term at Hampton, I
was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from my good friend Miss
Mary F. Mackie, the lady principal, asking me to return to Hampton two
weeks before the opening of the school, in order that I might assist her
in cleaning the buildings and getting things in order for the new school
year. This was just the opportunity I wanted. It gave me a chance to
secure a credit in the treasurer's office. I started for Hampton at
once.

During these two weeks I was taught a lesson which I shall never forget.
Miss Mackie was a member of one of the oldest and most cultured families
of the North, and yet for two weeks she worked by my side cleaning
windows, dusting rooms, putting beds in order, and what not. She felt
that things would not be in condition for the opening of school unless
every window-pane was perfectly clean, and she took the greatest
satisfaction in helping to clean them herself. The work which I have
described she did every year that I was at Hampton.

It was hard for me at this time to understand how a woman of her
education and social standing could take such delight in performing such
service, in order to assist in the elevation of an unfortunate race.
Ever since then I have had no patience with any school for my race in
the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labour.

During my last year at Hampton every minute of my time that was not
occupied with my duties as janitor was devoted to hard study. I was
determined, if possible, to make such a record in my class as would
cause me to be placed on the "honour roll" of Commencement speakers.
This I was successful in doing. It was June of 1875 when I finished the
regular course of study at Hampton. The greatest benefits that I got out
of my my life at the Hampton Institute, perhaps, may be classified under
two heads:--

First was contact with a great man, General S.C. Armstrong, who, I
repeat, was, in my opinion, the rarest, strongest, and most beautiful
character that it has ever been my privilege to meet.

Second, at Hampton, for the first time, I learned what education was
expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal
of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an
education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for
manual labour. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace
to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial
value, but for labour's own sake and for the independence and
self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants
done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant
to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the
happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and
happy.

I was completely out of money when I graduated. In company with other
Hampton students, I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel
in Connecticut, and managed to borrow enough money with which to get
there. I had not been in this hotel long before I found out that I knew
practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table. The head waiter,
however, supposed that I was an accomplished waiter. He soon gave me
charge of the table at which there sat four or five wealthy and rather
aristocratic people. My ignorance of how to wait upon them was so
apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that I became
frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without
food. As a result of this I was reduced from the position of waiter to
that of a dish-carrier.

But I determined to learn the business of waiting, and did so within
a few weeks and was restored to my former position. I have had the
satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since I was a
waiter there.

At the close of the hotel season I returned to my former home in Malden,
and was elected to teach the coloured school at that place. This was the
beginning of one of the happiest periods of my life. I now felt that I
had the opportunity to help the people of my home town to a higher life.
I felt from the first that mere book education was not all that the
young people of that town needed. I began my work at eight o'clock in
the morning, and, as a rule, it did not end until ten o'clock at night.
In addition to the usual routine of teaching, I taught the pupils to
comb their hair, and to keep their hands and faces clean, as well as
their clothing. I gave special attention to teaching them the proper
use of the tooth-brush and the bath. In all my teaching I have watched
carefully the influence of the tooth-brush, and I am convinced
that there are few single agencies of civilization that are more
far-reaching.

There were so many of the older boys and girls in the town, as well as
men and women, who had to work in the daytime and still were craving an
opportunity for an education, that I soon opened a night-school. From
the first, this was crowded every night, being about as large as the
school that I taught in the day. The efforts of some of the men and
women, who in many cases were over fifty years of age, to learn, were in
some cases very pathetic.

My day and night school work was not all that I undertook. I established
a small reading-room and a debating society. On Sundays I taught two
Sunday-schools, one in the town of Malden in the afternoon, and the
other in the morning at a place three miles distant from Malden. In
addition to this, I gave private lessons to several young men whom I was
fitting to send to the Hampton Institute. Without regard to pay and with
little thought of it, I taught any one who wanted to learn anything that
I could teach him. I was supremely happy in the opportunity of being
able to assist somebody else. I did receive, however, a small salary
from the public fund, for my work as a public-school teacher.

During the time that I was a student at Hampton my older brother, John,
not only assisted me all that he could, but worked all of the time in
the coal-mines in order to support the family. He willingly neglected
his own education that he might help me. It was my earnest wish to help
him to prepare to enter Hampton, and to save money to assist him in his
expenses there. Both of these objects I was successful in accomplishing.
In three years my brother finished the course at Hampton, and he is
now holding the important position of Superintendent of Industries at
Tuskegee. When he returned from Hampton, we both combined our efforts
and savings to send our adopted brother, James, through the Hampton
Institute. This we succeeded in doing, and he is now the postmaster
at the Tuskegee Institute. The year 1877, which was my second year of
teaching in Malden, I spent very much as I did the first.

It was while my home was at Malden that what was known as the "Ku Klux
Klan" was in the height of its activity. The "Ku Klux" were bands of
men who had joined themselves together for the purpose of regulating the
conduct of the coloured people, especially with the object of preventing
the members of the race from exercising any influence in politics. They
corresponded somewhat to the "patrollers" of whom I used to hear a
great deal during the days of slavery, when I was a small boy. The
"patrollers" were bands of white men--usually young men--who were
organized largely for the purpose of regulating the conduct of the
slaves at night in such matters as preventing the slaves from going from
one plantation to another without passes, and for preventing them from
holding any kind of meetings without permission and without the presence
at these meetings of at least one white man.

Like the "patrollers" the "Ku Klux" operated almost wholly at night.
They were, however, more cruel than the "patrollers." Their objects, in
the main, were to crush out the political aspirations of the Negroes,
but they did not confine themselves to this, because schoolhouses as
well as churches were burned by them, and many innocent persons were
made to suffer. During this period not a few coloured people lost their
lives.

As a young man, the acts of these lawless bands made a great impression
upon me. I saw one open battle take place at Malden between some of the
coloured and white people. There must have been not far from a hundred
persons engaged on each side; many on both sides were seriously injured,
among them General Lewis Ruffner, the husband of my friend Mrs. Viola
Ruffner. General Ruffner tried to defend the coloured people, and
for this he was knocked down and so seriously wounded that he never
completely recovered. It seemed to me as I watched this struggle between
members of the two races, that there was no hope for our people in this
country. The "Ku Klux" period was, I think, the darkest part of the
Reconstruction days.

I have referred to this unpleasant part of the history of the South
simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that has
taken place since the days of the "Ku Klux." To-day there are no such
organizations in the South, and the fact that such ever existed is
almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now
where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist.



Chapter V. The Reconstruction Period

The years from 1867 to 1878 I think may be called the period of
Reconstruction. This included the time that I spent as a student at
Hampton and as a teacher in West Virginia. During the whole of the
Reconstruction period two ideas were constantly agitating in the minds
of the coloured people, or, at least, in the minds of a large part of
the race. One of these was the craze for Greek and Latin learning, and
the other was a desire to hold office.

It could not have been expected that a people who had spent generations
in slavery, and before that generations in the darkest heathenism, could
at first form any proper conception of what an education meant. In every
part of the South, during the Reconstruction period, schools, both
day and night, were filled to overflowing with people of all ages and
conditions, some being as far along in age as sixty and seventy
years. The ambition to secure an education was most praiseworthy and
encouraging. The idea, however, was too prevalent that, as soon as one
secured a little education, in some unexplainable way he would be free
from most of the hardships of the world, and, at any rate, could live
without manual labour. There was a further feeling that a knowledge,
however little, of the Greek and Latin languages would make one a very
superior human being, something bordering almost on the supernatural. I
remember that the first coloured man whom I saw who knew something about
foreign languages impressed me at the time as being a man of all others
to be envied.

Naturally, most of our people who received some little education became
teachers or preachers. While among those two classes there were many
capable, earnest, godly men and women, still a large proportion took
up teaching or preaching as an easy way to make a living. Many became
teachers who could do little more than write their names. I remember
there came into our neighbourhood one of this class, who was in search
of a school to teach, and the question arose while he was there as to
the shape of the earth and how he could teach the children concerning
the subject. He explained his position in the matter by saying that he
was prepared to teach that the earth was either flat or round, according
to the preference of a majority of his patrons.

The ministry was the profession that suffered most--and still suffers,
though there has been great improvement--on account of not only ignorant
but in many cases immoral men who claimed that they were "called to
preach." In the earlier days of freedom almost every coloured man who
learned to read would receive "a call to preach" within a few days
after he began reading. At my home in West Virginia the process of being
called to the ministry was a very interesting one. Usually the "call"
came when the individual was sitting in church. Without warning the one
called would fall upon the floor as if struck by a bullet, and would lie
there for hours, speechless and motionless. Then the news would spread
all through the neighborhood that this individual had received a "call."
If he were inclined to resist the summons, he would fall or be made to
fall a second or third time. In the end he always yielded to the call.
While I wanted an education badly, I confess that in my youth I had a
fear that when I had learned to read and write very well I would receive
one of these "calls"; but, for some reason, my call never came.

When we add the number of wholly ignorant men who preached or "exhorted"
to that of those who possessed something of an education, it can be seen
at a glance that the supply of ministers was large. In fact, some time
ago I knew a certain church that had a total membership of about two
hundred, and eighteen of that number were ministers. But, I repeat, in
many communities in the South the character of the ministry is being
improved, and I believe that within the next two or three decades a very
large proportion of the unworthy ones will have disappeared. The "calls"
to preach, I am glad to say, are not nearly so numerous now as they were
formerly, and the calls to some industrial occupation are growing more
numerous. The improvement that has taken place in the character of the
teachers is even more marked than in the case of the ministers.

During the whole of the Reconstruction period our people throughout the
South looked to the Federal Government for everything, very much as
a child looks to its mother. This was not unnatural. The central
government gave them freedom, and the whole Nation had been enriched for
more than two centuries by the labour of the Negro. Even as a youth,
and later in manhood, I had the feeling that it was cruelly wrong in
the central government, at the beginning of our freedom, to fail to make
some provision for the general education of our people in addition
to what the states might do, so that the people would be the better
prepared for the duties of citizenship.

It is easy to find fault, to remark what might have been done, and
perhaps, after all, and under all the circumstances, those in charge
of the conduct of affairs did the only thing that could be done at the
time. Still, as I look back now over the entire period of our freedom,
I cannot help feeling that it would have been wiser if some plan could
have been put in operation which would have made the possession of
a certain amount of education or property, or both, a test for the
exercise of the franchise, and a way provided by which this test should
be made to apply honestly and squarely to both the white and black
races.

Though I was but little more than a youth during the period of
Reconstruction, I had the feeling that mistakes were being made, and
that things could not remain in the condition that they were in then
very long. I felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related
to my race, was in a large measure on a false foundation, was artificial
and forced. In many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance of my race
was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office,
and that there was an element in the North which wanted to punish the
Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads
of the Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the one to suffer
for this in the end. Besides, the general political agitation drew
the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of
perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing
property.

The temptations to enter political life were so alluring that I came
very near yielding to them at one time, but I was kept from doing so
by the feeling that I would be helping in a more substantial way by
assisting in the laying of the foundation of the race through a generous
education of the hand, head, and heart. I saw coloured men who were
members of the state legislatures, and county officers, who, in some
cases, could not read or write, and whose morals were as weak as their
education. Not long ago, when passing through the streets of a certain
city in the South, I heard some brick-masons calling out, from the
top of a two-story brick building on which they were working, for the
"Governor" to "hurry up and bring up some more bricks." Several times
I heard the command, "Hurry up, Governor!" "Hurry up, Governor!" My
curiosity was aroused to such an extent that I made inquiry as to who
the "Governor" was, and soon found that he was a coloured man who at one
time had held the position of Lieutenant-Governor of his state.

But not all the coloured people who were in office during Reconstruction
were unworthy of their positions, by any means. Some of them, like
the late Senator B.K. Bruce, Governor Pinchback, and many others, were
strong, upright, useful men. Neither were all the class designated as
carpetbaggers dishonourable men. Some of them, like ex-Governor Bullock,
of Georgia, were men of high character and usefulness.

Of course the coloured people, so largely without education, and wholly
without experience in government, made tremendous mistakes, just as many
people similarly situated would have done. Many of the Southern whites
have a feeling that, if the Negro is permitted to exercise his political
rights now to any degree, the mistakes of the Reconstruction period will
repeat themselves. I do not think this would be true, because the Negro
is a much stronger and wiser man than he was thirty-five years ago, and
he is fast learning the lesson that he cannot afford to act in a manner
that will alienate his Southern white neighbours from him. More and more
I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race
problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law
bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty,
and without opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races
alike. Any other course my daily observation in the South convinces me,
will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the
rest of the state in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at
some time we shall have to pay for.

In the fall of 1878, after having taught school in Malden for two years,
and after I had succeeded in preparing several of the young men and
women, besides my two brothers, to enter the Hampton Institute, I
decided to spend some months in study at Washington, D.C. I remained
there for eight months. I derived a great deal of benefit from the
studies which I pursued, and I came into contact with some strong
men and women. At the institution I attended there was no industrial
training given to the students, and I had an opportunity of comparing
the influence of an institution with no industrial training with that of
one like the Hampton Institute, that emphasizes the industries. At this
school I found the students, in most cases, had more money, were better
dressed, wore the latest style of all manner of clothing, and in some
cases were more brilliant mentally. At Hampton it was a standing rule
that, while the institution would be responsible for securing some one
to pay the tuition for the students, the men and women themselves must
provide for their own board, books, clothing, and room wholly by work,
or partly by work and partly in cash. At the institution at which I
now was, I found that a large portion of the students by some means
had their personal expenses paid for them. At Hampton the student was
constantly making the effort through the industries to help himself,
and that very effort was of immense value in character-building. The
students at the other school seemed to be less self-dependent. They
seemed to give more attention to mere outward appearances. In a word,
they did not appear to me to be beginning at the bottom, on a real,
solid foundation, to the extent that they were at Hampton. They knew
more about Latin and Greek when they left school, but they seemed to
know less about life and its conditions as they would meet it at their
homes. Having lived for a number of years in the midst of comfortable
surroundings, they were not as much inclined as the Hampton students to
go into the country districts of the South, where there was little of
comfort, to take up work for our people, and they were more inclined to
yield to the temptation to become hotel waiters and Pullman-car porters
as their life-work.

During the time I was a student at Washington the city was crowded with
coloured people, many of whom had recently come from the South. A large
proportion of these people had been drawn to Washington because they
felt that they could lead a life of ease there. Others had secured minor
government positions, and still another large class was there in the
hope of securing Federal positions. A number of coloured men--some of
them very strong and brilliant--were in the House of Representatives
at that time, and one, the Hon. B.K. Bruce, was in the Senate. All
this tended to make Washington an attractive place for members of the
coloured race. Then, too, they knew that at all times they could have
the protection of the law in the District of Columbia. The public
schools in Washington for coloured people were better then than they
were elsewhere. I took great interest in studying the life of our people
there closely at that time. I found that while among them there was
a large element of substantial, worthy citizens, there was also a
superficiality about the life of a large class that greatly alarmed me.
I saw young coloured men who were not earning more than four dollars a
week spend two dollars or more for a buggy on Sunday to ride up and down
Pennsylvania Avenue in, in order that they might try to convince the
world that they were worth thousands. I saw other young men who received
seventy-five or one hundred dollars per month from the Government, who
were in debt at the end of every month. I saw men who but a few months
previous were members of Congress, then without employment and in
poverty. Among a large class there seemed to be a dependence upon the
Government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had
little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the
Federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then,
and have often wished since, that by some power of magic I might remove
the great bulk of these people into the county districts and plant them
upon the soil, upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of Mother
Nature, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten
their start,--a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one
that nevertheless is real.

In Washington I saw girls whose mothers were earning their living by
laundrying. These girls were taught by their mothers, in rather a crude
way it is true, the industry of laundrying. Later, these girls entered
the public schools and remained there perhaps six or eight years. When
the public school course was finally finished, they wanted more costly
dresses, more costly hats and shoes. In a word, while their wants
have been increased, their ability to supply their wants had not been
increased in the same degree. On the other hand, their six or eight
years of book education had weaned them away from the occupation of
their mothers. The result of this was in too many cases that the girls
went to the bad. I often thought how much wiser it would have been to
give these girls the same amount of maternal training--and I favour any
kind of training, whether in the languages or mathematics, that gives
strength and culture to the mind--but at the same time to give them the
most thorough training in the latest and best methods of laundrying and
other kindred occupations.



Chapter VI. Black Race And Red Race

During the year that I spent in Washington, and for some little time
before this, there had been considerable agitation in the state of
West Virginia over the question of moving the capital of the state
from Wheeling to some other central point. As a result of this, the
Legislature designated three cities to be voted upon by the citizens of
the state as the permanent seat of government. Among these cities was
Charleston, only five miles from Malden, my home. At the close of my
school year in Washington I was very pleasantly surprised to receive,
from a committee of three white people in Charleston, an invitation
to canvass the state in the interests of that city. This invitation I
accepted, and spent nearly three months in speaking in various parts of
the state. Charleston was successful in winning the prize, and is now
the permanent seat of government.

The reputation that I made as a speaker during this campaign induced a
number of persons to make an earnest effort to get me to enter political
life, but I refused, still believing that I could find other service
which would prove of more permanent value to my race. Even then I had a
strong feeling that what our people most needed was to get a foundation
in education, industry, and property, and for this I felt that they
could better afford to strive than for political preferment. As for my
individual self, it appeared to me to be reasonably certain that I could
succeed in political life, but I had a feeling that it would be a rather
selfish kind of success--individual success at the cost of failing to do
my duty in assisting in laying a foundation for the masses.

At this period in the progress of our race a very large proportion of
the young men who went to school or to college did so with the expressed
determination to prepare themselves to be great lawyers, or Congressmen,
and many of the women planned to become music teachers; but I had a
reasonably fixed idea, even at that early period in my life, that there
was a need for something to be done to prepare the way for successful
lawyers, Congressmen, and music teachers.

I felt that the conditions were a good deal like those of an old
coloured man, during the days of slavery, who wanted to learn how to
play on the guitar. In his desire to take guitar lessons he applied to
one of his young masters to teach him, but the young man, not having
much faith in the ability of the slave to master the guitar at his age,
sought to discourage him by telling him: "Uncle Jake, I will give you
guitar lessons; but, Jake, I will have to charge you three dollars for
the first lesson, two dollars for the second lesson, and one dollar for
the third lesson. But I will charge you only twenty-five cents for the
last lesson."

Uncle Jake answered: "All right, boss, I hires you on dem terms. But,
boss! I wants yer to be sure an' give me dat las' lesson first."

Soon after my work in connection with the removal of the capital was
finished, I received an invitation which gave me great joy and which
at the same time was a very pleasant surprise. This was a letter
from General Armstrong, inviting me to return to Hampton at the next
Commencement to deliver what was called the "post-graduate address."
This was an honour which I had not dreamed of receiving. With much
care I prepared the best address that I was capable of. I chose for my
subject "The Force That Wins."

As I returned to Hampton for the purpose of delivering this address,
I went over much of the same ground--now, however, covered entirely by
railroad--that I had traversed nearly six years before, when I first
sought entrance into Hampton Institute as a student. Now I was able to
ride the whole distance in the train. I was constantly contrasting this
with my first journey to Hampton. I think I may say, without seeming
egotism, that it is seldom that five years have wrought such a change in
the life and aspirations of an individual.

At Hampton I received a warm welcome from teachers and students. I found
that during my absence from Hampton the institute each year had been
getting closer to the real needs and conditions of our people; that the
industrial teaching, as well as that of the academic department, had
greatly improved. The plan of the school was not modelled after that of
any other institution then in existence, but every improvement was made
under the magnificent leadership of General Armstrong solely with the
view of meeting and helping the needs of our people as they presented
themselves at the time. Too often, it seems to me, in missionary
and educational work among underdeveloped races, people yield to the
temptation of doing that which was done a hundred years before, or is
being done in other communities a thousand miles away. The temptation
often is to run each individual through a certain educational
mould, regardless of the condition of the subject or the end to be
accomplished. This was not so at Hampton Institute.

The address which I delivered on Commencement Day seems to have pleased
every one, and many kind and encouraging words were spoken to me
regarding it. Soon after my return to my home in West Virginia, where
I had planned to continue teaching, I was again surprised to receive a
letter from General Armstrong, asking me to return to Hampton partly as
a teacher and partly to pursue some supplementary studies. This was
in the summer of 1879. Soon after I began my first teaching in West
Virginia I had picked out four of the brightest and most promising of my
pupils, in addition to my two brothers, to whom I have already referred,
and had given them special attention, with the view of having them go
to Hampton. They had gone there, and in each case the teachers had found
them so well prepared that they entered advanced classes. This fact, it
seems, led to my being called back to Hampton as a teacher. One of
the young men that I sent to Hampton in this way is now Dr. Samuel E.
Courtney, a successful physician in Boston, and a member of the School
Board of that city.

About this time the experiment was being tried for the first time, by
General Armstrong, of educating Indians at Hampton. Few people then had
any confidence in the ability of the Indians to receive education and
to profit by it. General Armstrong was anxious to try the experiment
systematically on a large scale. He secured from the reservations in
the Western states over one hundred wild and for the most part perfectly
ignorant Indians, the greater proportion of whom were young men. The
special work which the General desired me to do was to be a sort of "house
father" to the Indian young men--that is, I was to live in the building
with them and have the charge of their discipline, clothing, rooms, and
so on. This was a very tempting offer, but I had become so much absorbed
in my work in West Virginia that I dreaded to give it up. However, I
tore myself away from it. I did not know how to refuse to perform any
service that General Armstrong desired of me.

On going to Hampton, I took up my residence in a building with about
seventy-five Indian youths. I was the only person in the building who
was not a member of their race. At first I had a good deal of doubt
about my ability to succeed. I knew that the average Indian felt himself
above the white man, and, of course, he felt himself far above the
Negro, largely on account of the fact of the Negro having submitted to
slavery--a thing which the Indian would never do. The Indians, in the
Indian Territory, owned a large number of slaves during the days of
slavery. Aside from this, there was a general feeling that the attempt
to educate and civilize the red men at Hampton would be a failure.
All this made me proceed very cautiously, for I felt keenly the great
responsibility. But I was determined to succeed. It was not long before
I had the complete confidence of the Indians, and not only this, but
I think I am safe in saying that I had their love and respect. I found
that they were about like any other human beings; that they responded
to kind treatment and resented ill-treatment. They were continually
planning to do something that would add to my happiness and comfort. The
things that they disliked most, I think, were to have their long hair
cut, to give up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking; but no
white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until
he wears the white man's clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the
white man's language, and professes the white man's religion.

When the difficulty of learning the English language was subtracted, I
found that in the matter of learning trades and in mastering academic
studies there was little difference between the coloured and Indian
students. It was a constant delight to me to note the interest which
the coloured students took in trying to help the Indians in every way
possible. There were a few of the coloured students who felt that the
Indians ought not to be admitted to Hampton, but these were in the
minority. Whenever they were asked to do so, the Negro students gladly
took the Indians as room-mates, in order that they might teach them to
speak English and to acquire civilized habits.

I have often wondered if there was a white institution in this country
whose students would have welcomed the incoming of more than a hundred
companions of another race in the cordial way that these black students
at Hampton welcomed the red ones. How often I have wanted to say to
white students that they lift themselves up in proportion as they help
to lift others, and the more unfortunate the race, and the lower in the
scale of civilization, the more does one raise one's self by giving the
assistance.

This reminds me of a conversation which I once had with the Hon.
Frederick Douglass. At one time Mr. Douglass was travelling in the state
of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in
the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price
for his passage that the other passengers had paid. When some of the
white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass, and
one of them said to him: "I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been
degraded in this manner," Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on
the box upon which he was sitting, and replied: "They cannot degrade
Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I
am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but
those who are inflicting it upon me."

In one part of the country, where the law demands the separation of
the races on the railroad trains, I saw at one time a rather amusing
instance which showed how difficult it sometimes is to know where the
black begins and the white ends.

There was a man who was well known in his community as a Negro, but who
was so white that even an expert would have hard work to classify him as
a black man. This man was riding in the part of the train set aside for
the coloured passengers. When the train conductor reached him, he showed
at once that he was perplexed. If the man was a Negro, the conductor did
not want to send him to the white people's coach; at the same time, if
he was a white man, the conductor did not want to insult him by asking
him if he was a Negro. The official looked him over carefully, examining
his hair, eyes, nose, and hands, but still seemed puzzled. Finally, to
solve the difficulty, he stooped over and peeped at the man's feet. When
I saw the conductor examining the feet of the man in question, I said to
myself, "That will settle it;" and so it did, for the trainman promptly
decided that the passenger was a Negro, and let him remain where he was.
I congratulated myself that my race was fortunate in not losing one of
its members.

My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to
observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is
less fortunate than his own. This is illustrated in no better way than
by observing the conduct of the old-school type of Southern gentleman
when he is in contact with his former slaves or their descendants.

An example of what I mean is shown in a story told of George Washington,
who, meeting a coloured man in the road once, who politely lifted his
hat, lifted his own in return. Some of his white friends who saw
the incident criticised Washington for his action. In reply to their
criticism George Washington said: "Do you suppose that I am going to
permit a poor, ignorant, coloured man to be more polite than I am?"

While I was in charge of the Indian boys at Hampton, I had one or two
experiences which illustrate the curious workings of caste in America.
One of the Indian boys was taken ill, and it became my duty to take him
to Washington, deliver him over to the Secretary of the Interior, and
get a receipt for him, in order that he might be returned to his Western
reservation. At that time I was rather ignorant of the ways of the
world. During my journey to Washington, on a steamboat, when the bell
rang for dinner, I was careful to wait and not enter the dining room
until after the greater part of the passengers had finished their meal.
Then, with my charge, I went to the dining saloon. The man in charge
politely informed me that the Indian could be served, but that I could
not. I never could understand how he knew just where to draw the colour
line, since the Indian and I were of about the same complexion. The
steward, however, seemed to be an expert in this manner. I had been
directed by the authorities at Hampton to stop at a certain hotel in
Washington with my charge, but when I went to this hotel the clerk
stated that he would be glad to receive the Indian into the house, but
said that he could not accommodate me.

An illustration of something of this same feeling came under my
observation afterward. I happened to find myself in a town in which
so much excitement and indignation were being expressed that it seemed
likely for a time that there would be a lynching. The occasion of the
trouble was that a dark-skinned man had stopped at the local hotel.
Investigation, however, developed the fact that this individual was a
citizen of Morocco, and that while travelling in this country he spoke
the English language. As soon as it was learned that he was not an
American Negro, all the signs of indignation disappeared. The man who
was the innocent cause of the excitement, though, found it prudent after
that not to speak English.

At the end of my first year with the Indians there came another opening
for me at Hampton, which, as I look back over my life now, seems to
have come providentially, to help to prepare me for my work at Tuskegee
later. General Armstrong had found out that there was quite a number of
young coloured men and women who were intensely in earnest in wishing to
get an education, but who were prevented from entering Hampton Institute
because they were too poor to be able to pay any portion of the cost of
their board, or even to supply themselves with books. He conceived the
idea of starting a night-school in connection with the Institute, into
which a limited number of the most promising of these young men and
women would be received, on condition that they were to work for ten
hours during the day, and attend school for two hours at night. They
were to be paid something above the cost of their board for their work.
The greater part of their earnings was to be reserved in the school's
treasury as a fund to be drawn on to pay their board when they had
become students in the day-school, after they had spent one or two years
in the night-school. In this way they would obtain a start in their
books and a knowledge of some trade or industry, in addition to the
other far-reaching benefits of the institution.

General Armstrong asked me to take charge of the night-school, and I
did so. At the beginning of this school there were about twelve strong,
earnest men and women who entered the class. During the day the greater
part of the young men worked in the school's sawmill, and the young
women worked in the laundry. The work was not easy in either place,
but in all my teaching I never taught pupils who gave me much genuine
satisfaction as these did. They were good students, and mastered their
work thoroughly. They were so much in earnest that only the ringing of
the retiring-bell would make them stop studying, and often they would
urge me to continue the lessons after the usual hour for going to bed
had come.

These students showed so much earnestness, both in their hard work
during the day, as well as in their application to their studies at
night, that I gave them the name of "The Plucky Class"--a name which
soon grew popular and spread throughout the institution. After a student
had been in the night-school long enough to prove what was in him, I
gave him a printed certificate which read something like this:--

"This is to certify that James Smith is a member of The Plucky Class of
the Hampton Institute, and is in good and regular standing."

The students prized these certificates highly, and they added greatly to
the popularity of the night-school. Within a few weeks this department
had grown to such an extent that there were about twenty-five students
in attendance. I have followed the course of many of these twenty-five
men and women ever since then, and they are now holding important and
useful positions in nearly every part of the South. The night-school at
Hampton, which started with only twelve students, now numbers between
three and four hundred, and is one of the permanent and most important
features of the institution.



Chapter VII. Early Days At Tuskegee

During the time that I had charge of the Indians and the night-school
at Hampton, I pursued some studies myself, under the direction of
the instructors there. One of these instructors was the Rev. Dr. H.B.
Frissell, the present Principal of the Hampton Institute, General
Armstrong's successor.

In May, 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching the
night-school, in a way that I had not dared expect, the opportunity
opened for me to begin my life-work. One night in the chapel, after the
usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong referred to the fact
that he had received a letter from some gentlemen in Alabama asking him
to recommend some one to take charge of what was to be a normal school
for the coloured people in the little town of Tuskegee in that state.
These gentlemen seemed to take it for granted that no coloured man
suitable for the position could be secured, and they were expecting the
General to recommend a white man for the place. The next day General
Armstrong sent for me to come to his office, and, much to my surprise,
asked me if I thought I could fill the position in Alabama. I told him
that I would be willing to try. Accordingly, he wrote to the people
who had applied to him for the information, that he did not know of any
white man to suggest, but if they would be willing to take a coloured
man, he had one whom he could recommend. In this letter he gave them my
name.

Several days passed before anything more was heard about the matter.
Some time afterward, one Sunday evening during the chapel exercises, a
messenger came in and handed the general a telegram. At the end of the
exercises he read the telegram to the school. In substance, these were
its words: "Booker T. Washington will suit us. Send him at once."

There was a great deal of joy expressed among the students and teachers,
and I received very hearty congratulations. I began to get ready at once
to go to Tuskegee. I went by way of my old home in West Virginia, where
I remained for several days, after which I proceeded to Tuskegee. I
found Tuskegee to be a town of about two thousand inhabitants, nearly
one-half of whom were coloured. It was in what was known as the Black
Belt of the South. In the county in which Tuskegee is situated the
coloured people outnumbered the whites by about three to one. In some of
the adjoining and near-by counties the proportion was not far from six
coloured persons to one white.

I have often been asked to define the term "Black Belt." So far as I can
learn, the term was first used to designate a part of the country which
was distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part of the country
possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course,
the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and
consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later,
and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a
political sense--that is, to designate the counties where the black
people outnumber the white.

Before going to Tuskegee I had expected to find there a building and
all the necessary apparatus ready for me to begin teaching. To my
disappointment, I found nothing of the kind. I did find, though, that
which no costly building and apparatus can supply,--hundreds of hungry,
earnest souls who wanted to secure knowledge.

Tuskegee seemed an ideal place for the school. It was in the midst of
the great bulk of the Negro population, and was rather secluded, being
five miles from the main line of railroad, with which it was connected
by a short line. During the days of slavery, and since, the town had
been a centre for the education of the white people. This was an added
advantage, for the reason that I found the white people possessing
a degree of culture and education that is not surpassed by many
localities. While the coloured people were ignorant, they had not, as a
rule, degraded and weakened their bodies by vices such as are common to
the lower class of people in the large cities. In general, I found the
relations between the two races pleasant. For example, the largest, and
I think at that time the only hardware store in the town was owned and
operated jointly by a coloured man and a white man. This copartnership
continued until the death of the white partner.

I found that about a year previous to my going to Tuskegee some of the
coloured people who had heard something of the work of education being
done at Hampton had applied to the state Legislature, through their
representatives, for a small appropriation to be used in starting a
normal school in Tuskegee. This request the Legislature had complied
with to the extent of granting an annual appropriation of two thousand
dollars. I soon learned, however, that this money could be used only for
the payment of the salaries of the instructors, and that there was no
provision for securing land, buildings, or apparatus. The task before me
did not seem a very encouraging one. It seemed much like making bricks
without straw. The coloured people were overjoyed, and were constantly
offering their services in any way in which they could be of assistance
in getting the school started.

My first task was to find a place in which to open the school. After
looking the town over with some care, the most suitable place that could
be secured seemed to be a rather dilapidated shanty near the coloured
Methodist church, together with the church itself as a sort of
assembly-room. Both the church and the shanty were in about as bad
condition as was possible. I recall that during the first months of
school that I taught in this building it was in such poor repair that,
whenever it rained, one of the older students would very kindly leave
his lessons and hold an umbrella over me while I heard the recitations
of the others. I remember, also, that on more than one occasion my
landlady held an umbrella over me while I ate breakfast.

At the time I went to Alabama the coloured people were taking
considerable interest in politics, and they were very anxious that I
should become one of them politically, in every respect. They seemed to
have a little distrust of strangers in this regard. I recall that one
man, who seemed to have been designated by the others to look after my
political destiny, came to me on several occasions and said, with a
good deal of earnestness: "We wants you to be sure to vote jes' like we
votes. We can't read de newspapers very much, but we knows how to vote,
an' we wants you to vote jes' like we votes." He added: "We watches de
white man, and we keeps watching de white man till we finds out which
way de white man's gwine to vote; an' when we finds out which way de
white man's gwine to vote, den we votes 'xactly de other way. Den we
knows we's right."

I am glad to add, however, that at the present time the disposition
to vote against the white man merely because he is white is largely
disappearing, and the race is learning to vote from principle, for what
the voter considers to be for the best interests of both races.

I reached Tuskegee, as I have said, early in June, 1881. The first month
I spent in finding accommodations for the school, and in travelling
through Alabama, examining into the actual life of the people,
especially in the court districts, and in getting the school advertised
among the class of people that I wanted to have attend it. The most of
my travelling was done over the country roads, with a mule and a cart
or a mule and a buggy wagon for conveyance. I ate and slept with the
people, in their little cabins. I saw their farms, their schools, their
churches. Since, in the case of the most of these visits, there had
been no notice given in advance that a stranger was expected, I had the
advantage of seeing the real, everyday life of the people.

In the plantation districts I found that, as a rule, the whole family
slept in one room, and that in addition to the immediate family there
sometimes were relatives, or others not related to the family, who slept
in the same room. On more than one occasion I went outside the house
to get ready for bed, or to wait until the family had gone to bed. They
usually contrived some kind of a place for me to sleep, either on the
floor or in a special part of another's bed. Rarely was there any place
provided in the cabin where one could bathe even the face and hands, but
usually some provision was made for this outside the house, in the yard.

The common diet of the people was fat pork and corn bread. At times I
have eaten in cabins where they had only corn bread and "black-eye peas"
cooked in plain water. The people seemed to have no other idea than to
live on this fat meat and corn bread,--the meat, and the meal of which
the bread was made, having been bought at a high price at a store in
town, notwithstanding the fact that the land all about the cabin homes
could easily have been made to produce nearly every kind of garden
vegetable that is raised anywhere in the country. Their one object
seemed to be to plant nothing but cotton; and in many cases cotton was
planted up to the very door of the cabin.

In these cabin homes I often found sewing-machines which had been
bought, or were being bought, on instalments, frequently at a cost of
as much as sixty dollars, or showy clocks for which the occupants of
the cabins had paid twelve or fourteen dollars. I remember that on one
occasion when I went into one of these cabins for dinner, when I sat
down to the table for a meal with the four members of the family, I
noticed that, while there were five of us at the table, there was but
one fork for the five of us to use. Naturally there was an awkward pause
on my part. In the opposite corner of that same cabin was an organ
for which the people told me they were paying sixty dollars in monthly
instalments. One fork, and a sixty-dollar organ!

In most cases the sewing-machine was not used, the clocks were so
worthless that they did not keep correct time--and if they had, in nine
cases out of ten there would have been no one in the family who could
have told the time of day--while the organ, of course, was rarely used
for want of a person who could play upon it.

In the case to which I have referred, where the family sat down to the
table for the meal at which I was their guest, I could see plainly that
this was an awkward and unusual proceeding, and was done in my honour.
In most cases, when the family got up in the morning, for example, the
wife would put a piece of meat in a frying-pan and put a lump of dough
in a "skillet," as they called it. These utensils would be placed on the
fire, and in ten or fifteen minutes breakfast would be ready. Frequently
the husband would take his bread and meat in his hand and start for the
field, eating as he walked. The mother would sit down in a corner and
eat her breakfast, perhaps from a plate and perhaps directly from the
"skillet" or frying-pan, while the children would eat their portion of
the bread and meat while running about the yard. At certain seasons of
the year, when meat was scarce, it was rarely that the children who were
not old enough or strong enough to work in the fields would have the
luxury of meat.

The breakfast over, and with practically no attention given to the
house, the whole family would, as a general thing, proceed to the
cotton-field. Every child that was large enough to carry a hoe was put
to work, and the baby--for usually there was at least one baby--would be
laid down at the end of the cotton row, so that its mother could give
it a certain amount of attention when she had finished chopping her
row. The noon meal and the supper were taken in much the same way as the
breakfast.

All the days of the family would be spent after much this same routine,
except Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday the whole family would spent at
least half a day, and often a whole day, in town. The idea in going to
town was, I suppose, to do shopping, but all the shopping that the whole
family had money for could have been attended to in ten minutes by one
person. Still, the whole family remained in town for most of the day,
spending the greater part of the time in standing on the streets, the
women, too often, sitting about somewhere smoking or dipping snuff.
Sunday was usually spent in going to some big meeting. With few
exceptions, I found that the crops were mortgaged in the counties where
I went, and that the most of the coloured farmers were in debt. The
state had not been able to build schoolhouses in the country districts,
and, as a rule, the schools were taught in churches or in log cabins.
More than once, while on my journeys, I found that there was no
provision made in the house used for school purposes for heating the
building during the winter, and consequently a fire had to be built in
the yard, and teacher and pupils passed in and out of the house as they
got cold or warm. With few exceptions, I found the teachers in these
country schools to be miserably poor in preparation for their work, and
poor in moral character. The schools were in session from three to five
months. There was practically no apparatus in the schoolhouses, except
that occasionally there was a rough blackboard. I recall that one day I
went into a schoolhouse--or rather into an abandoned log cabin that was
being used as a schoolhouse--and found five pupils who were studying a
lesson from one book. Two of these, on the front seat, were using
the book between them; behind these were two others peeping over the
shoulders of the first two, and behind the four was a fifth little
fellow who was peeping over the shoulders of all four.

What I have said concerning the character of the schoolhouses and
teachers will also apply quite accurately as a description of the church
buildings and the ministers.

I met some very interesting characters during my travels. As
illustrating the peculiar mental processes of the country people, I
remember that I asked one coloured man, who was about sixty years old,
to tell me something of his history. He said that he had been born in
Virginia, and sold into Alabama in 1845. I asked him how many were sold
at the same time. He said, "There were five of us; myself and brother
and three mules."

In giving all these descriptions of what I saw during my month of travel
in the country around Tuskegee, I wish my readers to keep in mind the
fact that there were many encouraging exceptions to the conditions which
I have described. I have stated in such plain words what I saw, mainly
for the reason that later I want to emphasize the encouraging changes
that have taken place in the community, not wholly by the work of the
Tuskegee school, but by that of other institutions as well.



Chapter VIII. Teaching School In A Stable And A Hen-House

I confess that what I saw during my month of travel and investigation
left me with a very heavy heart. The work to be done in order to lift
these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing. I was only one
person, and it seemed to me that the little effort which I could put
forth could go such a short distance toward bringing about results. I
wondered if I could accomplish anything, and if it were worth while for
me to try.

Of one thing I felt more strongly convinced than ever, after spending
this month in seeing the actual life of the coloured people, and that
was that, in order to lift them up, something must be done more than
merely to imitate New England education as it then existed. I saw more
clearly than ever the wisdom of the system which General Armstrong had
inaugurated at Hampton. To take the children of such people as I had
been among for a month, and each day give them a few hours of mere book
education, I felt would be almost a waste of time.

After consultation with the citizens of Tuskegee, I set July 4, 1881,
as the day for the opening of the school in the little shanty and church
which had been secured for its accommodation. The white people, as well
as the coloured, were greatly interested in the starting of the new
school, and the opening day was looked forward to with much earnest
discussion. There were not a few white people in the vicinity of
Tuskegee who looked with some disfavour upon the project. They
questioned its value to the coloured people, and had a fear that it
might result in bringing about trouble between the races. Some had the
feeling that in proportion as the Negro received education, in the same
proportion would his value decrease as an economic factor in the state.
These people feared the result of education would be that the Negroes
would leave the farms, and that it would be difficult to secure them for
domestic service.

The white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school
had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated Negro, with a
high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a showy walking-stick, kid gloves,
fancy boots, and what not--in a word, a man who was determined to live
by his wits. It was difficult for these people to see how education
would produce any other kind of a coloured man.

In the midst of all the difficulties which I encountered in getting
the little school started, and since then through a period of nineteen
years, there are two men among all the many friends of the school in
Tuskegee upon whom I have depended constantly for advice and guidance;
and the success of the undertaking is largely due to these men, from
whom I have never sought anything in vain. I mention them simply as
types. One is a white man and an ex-slaveholder, Mr. George W. Campbell;
the other is a black man and an ex-slave, Mr. Lewis Adams. These were
the men who wrote to General Armstrong for a teacher.

Mr. Campbell is a merchant and banker, and had had little experience in
dealing with matters pertaining to education. Mr. Adams was a
mechanic, and had learned the trades of shoemaking, harness-making, and
tinsmithing during the days of slavery. He had never been to school a
day in his life, but in some way he had learned to read and write while
a slave. From the first, these two men saw clearly what my plan of
education was, sympathized with me, and supported me in every effort. In
the days which were darkest financially for the school, Mr. Campbell was
never appealed to when he was not willing to extend all the aid in his
power. I do not know two men, one an ex-slaveholder, one an ex-slave,
whose advice and judgment I would feel more like following in everything
which concerns the life and development of the school at Tuskegee than
those of these two men.

I have always felt that Mr. Adams, in a large degree, derived his
unusual power of mind from the training given his hands in the process
of mastering well three trades during the days of slavery. If one
goes to-day into any Southern town, and asks for the leading and most
reliable coloured man in the community, I believe that in five cases
out of ten he will be directed to a Negro who learned a trade during the
days of slavery.

On the morning that the school opened, thirty students reported for
admission. I was the only teacher. The students were about equally
divided between the sexes. Most of them lived in Macon County,
the county in which Tuskegee is situated, and of which it is the
county-seat. A great many more students wanted to enter the school, but
it had been decided to receive only those who were above fifteen years
of age, and who had previously received some education. The greater part
of the thirty were public-school teachers, and some of them were nearly
forty years of age. With the teachers came some of their former pupils,
and when they were examined it was amusing to note that in several cases
the pupil entered a higher class than did his former teacher. It was
also interesting to note how many big books some of them had studied,
and how many high-sounding subjects some of them claimed to have
mastered. The bigger the book and the longer the name of the subject,
the prouder they felt of their accomplishment. Some had studied Latin,
and one or two Greek. This they thought entitled them to special
distinction.

In fact, one of the saddest things I saw during the month of travel
which I have described was a young man, who had attended some high
school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing,
filth all around him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in
studying a French grammar.

The students who came first seemed to be fond of memorizing long and
complicated "rules" in grammar and mathematics, but had little thought
or knowledge of applying these rules to their everyday affairs of their
life. One subject which they liked to talk about, and tell me that they
had mastered, in arithmetic, was "banking and discount," but I soon
found out that neither they nor almost any one in the neighbourhood in
which they had lived had ever had a bank account. In registering the
names of the students, I found that almost every one of them had one or
more middle initials. When I asked what the "J" stood for, in the name
of John J. Jones, it was explained to me that this was a part of his
"entitles." Most of the students wanted to get an education because they
thought it would enable them to earn more money as school-teachers.

Notwithstanding what I have said about them in these respects, I have
never seen a more earnest and willing company of young men and women
than these students were. They were all willing to learn the right thing
as soon as it was shown them what was right. I was determined to start
them off on a solid and thorough foundation, so far as their books were
concerned. I soon learned that most of them had the merest smattering of
the high-sounding things that they had studied. While they could locate
the Desert of Sahara or the capital of China on an artificial globe,
I found out that the girls could not locate the proper places for the
knives and forks on an actual dinner-table, or the places on which the
bread and meat should be set.

I had to summon a good deal of courage to take a student who had been
studying cube root and "banking and discount," and explain to him
that the wisest thing for him to do first was thoroughly master the
multiplication table.

The number of pupils increased each week, until by the end of the first
month there were nearly fifty. Many of them, however, said that, as they
could remain only for two or three months, they wanted to enter a high
class and get a diploma the first year if possible.

At the end of the first six weeks a new and rare face entered the school
as a co-teacher. This was Miss Olivia A. Davidson, who later became
my wife. Miss Davidson was born in Ohio, and received her preparatory
education in the public schools of that state. When little more than a
girl, she heard of the need of teachers in the South. She went to the
state of Mississippi and began teaching there. Later she taught in the
city of Memphis. While teaching in Mississippi, one of her pupils became
ill with smallpox. Every one in the community was so frightened that no
one would nurse the boy. Miss Davidson closed her school and remained by
the bedside of the boy night and day until he recovered. While she was
at her Ohio home on her vacation, the worst epidemic of yellow fever
broke out in Memphis, Tenn., that perhaps has ever occurred in the
South. When she heard of this, she at once telegraphed the Mayor of
Memphis, offering her services as a yellow-fever nurse, although she had
never had the disease.

Miss Davidon's experience in the South showed her that the people needed
something more than mere book-learning. She heard of the Hampton system
of education, and decided that this was what she wanted in order to
prepare herself for better work in the South. The attention of Mrs. Mary
Hemenway, of Boston, was attracted to her rare ability. Through Mrs.
Hemenway's kindness and generosity, Miss Davidson, after graduating
at Hampton, received an opportunity to complete a two years' course of
training at the Massachusetts State Normal School at Framingham.

Before she went to Framingham, some one suggested to Miss Davidson
that, since she was so very light in colour, she might find it more
comfortable not to be known as a coloured women in this school in
Massachusetts. She at once replied that under no circumstances and for
no considerations would she consent to deceive any one in regard to her
racial identity.

Soon after her graduation from the Framingham institution, Miss Davidson
came to Tuskegee, bringing into the school many valuable and fresh ideas
as to the best methods of teaching, as well as a rare moral character
and a life of unselfishness that I think has seldom been equalled. No
single individual did more toward laying the foundations of the Tuskegee
Institute so as to insure the successful work that has been done there
than Olivia A. Davidson.

Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school from
the first. The students were making progress in learning books and in
developing their minds; but it became apparent at once that, if we
were to make any permanent impression upon those who had come to us
for training we must do something besides teach them mere books. The
students had come from homes where they had had no opportunities for
lessons which would teach them how to care for their bodies. With few
exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were
but little improvement upon those from which they had come. We wanted
to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and
clothing. We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it
properly, and how to care for their rooms. Aside from this, we wanted to
give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together with
the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be sure of
knowing how to make a living after they had left us. We wanted to teach
them to study actual things instead of mere books alone.

We found that the most of our students came from the country districts,
where agriculture in some form or other was the main dependence of
the people. We learned that about eighty-five per cent of the coloured
people in the Gulf states depended upon agriculture for their living.
Since this was true, we wanted to be careful not to educate our students
out of sympathy with agricultural life, so that they would be attracted
from the country to the cities, and yield to the temptation of trying
to live by their wits. We wanted to give them such an education as would
fit a large proportion of them to be teachers, and at the same time
cause them to return to the plantation districts and show the people
there how to put new energy and new ideas into farming, as well as into
the intellectual and moral and religious life of the people.

All these ideas and needs crowded themselves upon us with a seriousness
that seemed well-nigh overwhelming. What were we to do? We had only
the little old shanty and the abandoned church which the good
coloured people of the town of Tuskegee had kindly loaned us for the
accommodation of the classes. The number of students was increasing
daily. The more we saw of them, and the more we travelled through the
country districts, the more we saw that our efforts were reaching, to
only a partial degree, the actual needs of the people whom we wanted to
lift up through the medium of the students whom we should educate and
send out as leaders.

The more we talked with the students, who were then coming to us from
several parts of the state, the more we found that the chief ambition
among a large proportion of them was to get an education so that they
would not have to work any longer with their hands.

This is illustrated by a story told of a coloured man in Alabama, who,
one hot day in July, while he was at work in a cotton-field, suddenly
stopped, and, looking toward the skies, said: "O Lawd, de cotton am
so grassy, de work am so hard, and the sun am so hot dat I b'lieve dis
darky am called to preach!"

About three months after the opening of the school, and at the time when
we were in the greatest anxiety about our work, there came into market
for sale an old and abandoned plantation which was situated about a
mile from the town of Tuskegee. The mansion house--or "big house," as
it would have been called--which had been occupied by the owners during
slavery, had been burned. After making a careful examination of the
place, it seemed to be just the location that we wanted in order to make
our work effective and permanent.

But how were we to get it? The price asked for it was very little--only
five hundred dollars--but we had no money, and we were strangers in the
town and had no credit. The owner of the land agreed to let us occupy
the place if we could make a payment of two hundred and fifty dollars
down, with the understanding that the remaining two hundred and fifty
dollars must be paid within a year. Although five hundred dollars was
cheap for the land, it was a large sum when one did not have any part of
it.

In the midst of the difficulty I summoned a great deal of courage and
wrote to my friend General J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton
Institute, putting the situation before him and beseeching him to lend
me the two hundred and fifty dollars on my own personal responsibility.
Within a few days a reply came to the effect that he had no authority to
lend me the money belonging to the Hampton Institute, but that he would
gladly lend me the amount needed from his own personal funds.

I confess that the securing of this money in this way was a great
surprise to me, as well as a source of gratification. Up to that time I
never had had in my possession so much money as one hundred dollars at
a time, and the loan which I had asked General Marshall for seemed a
tremendously large sum to me. The fact of my being responsible for the
repaying of such a large amount of money weighed very heavily upon me.

I lost no time in getting ready to move the school on to the new farm.
At the time we occupied the place there were standing upon it a cabin,
formerly used as a dining room, an old kitchen, a stable, and an old
hen-house. Within a few weeks we had all of these structures in use. The
stable was repaired and used as a recitation-room, and very presently
the hen-house was utilized for the same purpose.

I recall that one morning, when I told an old coloured man who lived
near, and who sometimes helped me, that our school had grown so large
that it would be necessary for us to use the hen-house for school
purposes, and that I wanted him to help me give it a thorough cleaning
out the next day, he replied, in the most earnest manner: "What
you mean, boss? You sholy ain't gwine clean out de hen-house in de
day-time?"

Nearly all the work of getting the new location ready for school
purposes was done by the students after school was over in the
afternoon. As soon as we got the cabins in condition to be used, I
determined to clear up some land so that we could plant a crop. When I
explained my plan to the young men, I noticed that they did not seem
to take to it very kindly. It was hard for them to see the connection
between clearing land and an education. Besides, many of them had been
school-teachers, and they questioned whether or not clearing land would
be in keeping with their dignity. In order to relieve them from any
embarrassment, each afternoon after school I took my axe and led the way
to the woods. When they saw that I was not afraid or ashamed to work,
they began to assist with more enthusiasm. We kept at the work each
afternoon, until we had cleared about twenty acres and had planted a
crop.

In the meantime Miss Davidson was devising plans to repay the loan. Her
first effort was made by holding festivals, or "suppers." She made a
personal canvass among the white and coloured families in the town
of Tuskegee, and got them to agree to give something, like a cake, a
chicken, bread, or pies, that could be sold at the festival. Of course
the coloured people were glad to give anything that they could spare,
but I want to add that Miss Davidson did not apply to a single white
family, so far as I now remember, that failed to donate something; and
in many ways the white families showed their interest in the school.

Several of these festivals were held, and quite a little sum of money
was raised. A canvass was also made among the people of both races for
direct gifts of money, and most of those applied to gave small sums. It
was often pathetic to note the gifts of the older coloured people, most
of whom had spent their best days in slavery. Sometimes they would give
five cents, sometimes twenty-five cents. Sometimes the contribution was
a quilt, or a quantity of sugarcane. I recall one old coloured women who
was about seventy years of age, who came to see me when we were raising
money to pay for the farm. She hobbled into the room where I was,
leaning on a cane. She was clad in rags; but they were clean. She said:
"Mr. Washin'ton, God knows I spent de bes' days of my life in slavery.
God knows I's ignorant an' poor; but," she added, "I knows what you an'
Miss Davidson is tryin' to do. I knows you is tryin' to make better men
an' better women for de coloured race. I ain't got no money, but I wants
you to take dese six eggs, what I's been savin' up, an' I wants you to
put dese six eggs into the eddication of dese boys an' gals."

Since the work at Tuskegee started, it has been my privilege to receive
many gifts for the benefit of the institution, but never any, I think,
that touched me so deeply as this one.



Chapter IX. Anxious Days And Sleepless Nights

The coming of Christmas, that first year of our residence in Alabama,
gave us an opportunity to get a farther insight into the real life of
the people. The first thing that reminded us that Christmas had arrived
was the "foreday" visits of scores of children rapping at our doors,
asking for "Chris'mus gifts! Chris'mus gifts!" Between the hours of two
o'clock and five o'clock in the morning I presume that we must have had
a half-hundred such calls. This custom prevails throughout this portion
of the South to-day.

During the days of slavery it was a custom quite generally observed
throughout all the Southern states to give the coloured people a week of
holiday at Christmas, or to allow the holiday to continue as long as the
"yule log" lasted. The male members of the race, and often the female
members, were expected to get drunk. We found that for a whole week
the coloured people in and around Tuskegee dropped work the day before
Christmas, and that it was difficult for any one to perform any service
from the time they stopped work until after the New Year. Persons who at
other times did not use strong drink thought it quite the proper thing
to indulge in it rather freely during the Christmas week. There was
a widespread hilarity, and a free use of guns, pistols, and gunpowder
generally. The sacredness of the season seemed to have been almost
wholly lost sight of.

During this first Christmas vacation I went some distance from the town
to visit the people on one of the large plantations. In their poverty
and ignorance it was pathetic to see their attempts to get joy out of
the season that in most parts of the country is so sacred and so dear to
the heart. In one cabin I notice that all that the five children had to
remind them of the coming of Christ was a single bunch of firecrackers,
which they had divided among them. In another cabin, where there were
at least a half-dozen persons, they had only ten cents' worth of
ginger-cakes, which had been bought in the store the day before. In
another family they had only a few pieces of sugarcane. In still another
cabin I found nothing but a new jug of cheap, mean whiskey, which the
husband and wife were making free use of, notwithstanding the fact that
the husband was one of the local ministers. In a few instances I found
that the people had gotten hold of some bright-coloured cards that had
been designed for advertising purposes, and were making the most of
these. In other homes some member of the family had bought a new pistol.
In the majority of cases there was nothing to be seen in the cabin to
remind one of the coming of the Saviour, except that the people had
ceased work in the fields and were lounging about their homes. At night,
during Christmas week, they usually had what they called a "frolic," in
some cabin on the plantation. That meant a kind of rough dance, where
there was likely to be a good deal of whiskey used, and where there
might be some shooting or cutting with razors.

While I was making this Christmas visit I met an old coloured man who
was one of the numerous local preachers, who tried to convince me, from
the experience Adam had in the Garden of Eden, that God had cursed all
labour, and that, therefore, it was a sin for any man to work. For that
reason this man sought to do as little work as possible. He seemed at
that time to be supremely happy, because he was living, as he expressed
it, through one week that was free from sin.

In the school we made a special effort to teach our students the meaning
of Christmas, and to give them lessons in its proper observance. In this
we have been successful to a degree that makes me feel safe in saying
that the season now has a new meaning, not only through all that
immediate region, but, in a measure, wherever our graduates have gone.

At the present time one of the most satisfactory features of the
Christmas and Thanksgiving season at Tuskegee is the unselfish and
beautiful way in which our graduates and students spend their time in
administering to the comfort and happiness of others, especially the
unfortunate. Not long ago some of our young men spent a holiday
in rebuilding a cabin for a helpless coloured women who was about
seventy-five years old. At another time I remember that I made it known
in chapel, one night, that a very poor student was suffering from cold,
because he needed a coat. The next morning two coats were sent to my
office for him.

I have referred to the disposition on the part of the white people in
the town of Tuskegee and vicinity to help the school. From the first, I
resolved to make the school a real part of the community in which it was
located. I was determined that no one should have the feeling that it
was a foreign institution, dropped down in the midst of the people, for
which they had no responsibility and in which they had no interest.
I noticed that the very fact that they had been asking to contribute
toward the purchase of the land made them begin to feel as if it was
going to be their school, to a large degree. I noted that just in
proportion as we made the white people feel that the institution was
a part of the life of the community, and that, while we wanted to make
friends in Boston, for example, we also wanted to make white friends in
Tuskegee, and that we wanted to make the school of real service to all
the people, their attitude toward the school became favourable.

Perhaps I might add right here, what I hope to demonstrate later, that,
so far as I know, the Tuskegee school at the present time has no warmer
and more enthusiastic friends anywhere than it has among the white
citizens of Tuskegee and throughout the state of Alabama and the entire
South. From the first, I have advised our people in the South to
make friends in every straightforward, manly way with their next-door
neighbour, whether he be a black man or a white man. I have also advised
them, where no principle is at stake, to consult the interests of their
local communities, and to advise with their friends in regard to their
voting.

For several months the work of securing the money with which to pay for
the farm went on without ceasing. At the end of three months enough was
secured to repay the loan of two hundred and fifty dollars to General
Marshall, and within two months more we had secured the entire five
hundred dollars and had received a deed of the one hundred acres of
land. This gave us a great deal of satisfaction. It was not only a
source of satisfaction to secure a permanent location for the school,
but it was equally satisfactory to know that the greater part of the
money with which it was paid for had been gotten from the white and
coloured people in the town of Tuskegee. The most of this money was
obtained by holding festivals and concerts, and from small individual
donations.

Our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of
the land, so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time give
the students training in agriculture. All the industries at Tuskegee
have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of the needs
of a community settlement. We began with farming, because we wanted
something to eat.

Many of the students, also, were able to remain in school but a few
weeks at a time, because they had so little money with which to pay
their board. Thus another object which made it desirable to get an
industrial system started was in order to make it available as a means
of helping the students to earn money enough so that they might be able
to remain in school during the nine months' session of the school year.

The first animal that the school came into possession of was an old
blind horse given us by one of the white citizens of Tuskegee. Perhaps
I may add here that at the present time the school owns over two hundred
horses, colts, mules, cows, calves, and oxen, and about seven hundred
hogs and pigs, as well as a large number of sheep and goats.

The school was constantly growing in numbers, so much so that, after we
had got the farm paid for, the cultivation of the land begun, and the
old cabins which we had found on the place somewhat repaired, we turned
our attention toward providing a large, substantial building. After
having given a good deal of thought to the subject, we finally had the
plans drawn for a building that was estimated to cost about six thousand
dollars. This seemed to us a tremendous sum, but we knew that the school
must go backward or forward, and that our work would mean little unless
we could get hold of the students in their home life.

One incident which occurred about this time gave me a great deal of
satisfaction as well as surprise. When it became known in the town that
we were discussing the plans for a new, large building, a Southern white
man who was operating a sawmill not far from Tuskegee came to me and
said that he would gladly put all the lumber necessary to erect the
building on the grounds, with no other guarantee for payment than my
word that it would be paid for when we secured some money. I told the
man frankly that at the time we did not have in our hands one dollar of
the money needed. Notwithstanding this, he insisted on being allowed to
put the lumber on the grounds. After we had secured some portion of the
money we permitted him to do this.

Miss Davidson again began the work of securing in various ways small
contributions for the new building from the white and coloured people
in and near Tuskegee. I think I never saw a community of people so happy
over anything as were the coloured people over the prospect of this new
building. One day, when we were holding a meeting to secure funds for
its erection, an old, ante-bellum coloured man came a distance of twelve
miles and brought in his ox-cart a large hog. When the meeting was in
progress, he rose in the midst of the company and said that he had no
money which he could give, but he had raised two fine hogs, and that
he had brought one of them as a contribution toward the expenses of the
building. He closed his announcement by saying: "Any nigger that's got
any love for his race, or any respect for himself, will bring a hog
to the next meeting." Quite a number of men in the community also
volunteered to give several days' work, each, toward the erection of the
building.

After we had secured all the help that we could in Tuskegee, Miss
Davidson decided to go North for the purpose of securing additional
funds. For weeks she visited individuals and spoke in churches and
before Sunday schools and other organizations. She found this work quite
trying, and often embarrassing. The school was not known, but she was
not long in winning her way into the confidence of the best people in
the North.

The first gift from any Northern person was received from a New York
lady whom Miss Davidson met on the boat that was bringing her North.
They fell into a conversation, and the Northern lady became so much
interested in the effort being made at Tuskegee that before they parted
Miss Davidson was handed a check for fifty dollars. For some time before
our marriage, and also after it, Miss Davidson kept up the work of
securing money in the North and in the South by interesting people by
personal visits and through correspondence. At the same time she kept in
close touch with the work at Tuskegee, as lady principal and classroom
teacher. In addition to this, she worked among the older people in and
near Tuskegee, and taught a Sunday school class in the town. She was
never very strong, but never seemed happy unless she was giving all
of her strength to the cause which she loved. Often, at night, after
spending the day in going from door to door trying to interest persons
in the work at Tuskegee, she would be so exhausted that she could not
undress herself. A lady upon whom she called, in Boston, afterward told
me that at one time when Miss Davidson called her to see and send up her
card the lady was detained a little before she could see Miss Davidson,
and when she entered the parlour she found Miss Davidson so exhausted
that she had fallen asleep.

While putting up our first building, which was named Porter Hall, after
Mr. A.H. Porter, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who gave a generous sum toward
its erection, the need for money became acute. I had given one of our
creditors a promise that upon a certain day he should be paid four
hundred dollars. On the morning of that day we did not have a dollar.
The mail arrived at the school at ten o'clock, and in this mail there
was a check sent by Miss Davidson for exactly four hundred dollars.
I could relate many instances of almost the same character. This four
hundred dollars was given by two ladies in Boston. Two years later, when
the work at Tuskegee had grown considerably, and when we were in the
midst of a season when we were so much in need of money that the future
looked doubtful and gloomy, the same two Boston ladies sent us
six thousand dollars. Words cannot describe our surprise, or the
encouragement that the gift brought to us. Perhaps I might add here that
for fourteen years these same friends have sent us six thousand dollars
a year.

As soon as the plans were drawn for the new building, the students began
digging out the earth where the foundations were to be laid, working
after the regular classes were over. They had not fully outgrown the
idea that it was hardly the proper thing for them to use their hands,
since they had come there, as one of them expressed it, "to be educated,
and not to work." Gradually, though, I noted with satisfaction that a
sentiment in favour of work was gaining ground. After a few weeks of
hard work the foundations were ready, and a day was appointed for the
laying of the corner-stone.

When it is considered that the laying of this corner-stone took place in
the heart of the South, in the "Black Belt," in the centre of that
part of our country that was most devoted to slavery; that at that time
slavery had been abolished only about sixteen years; that only sixteen
years before no Negro could be taught from books without the teacher
receiving the condemnation of the law or of public sentiment--when all
this is considered, the scene that was witnessed on that spring day at
Tuskegee was a remarkable one. I believe there are few places in the
world where it could have taken place.

The principal address was delivered by the Hon. Waddy Thompson, the
Superintendent of Education for the county. About the corner-stone were
gathered the teachers, the students, their parents and friends, the
county officials--who were white--and all the leading white men in that
vicinity, together with many of the black men and women whom the same
white people but a few years before had held a title to as property. The
members of both races were anxious to exercise the privilege of placing
under the corner-stone some momento.

Before the building was completed we passed through some very trying
seasons. More than once our hearts were made to bleed, as it were,
because bills were falling due that we did not have the money to meet.
Perhaps no one who has not gone through the experience, month after
month, of trying to erect buildings and provide equipment for a
school when no one knew where the money was to come from, can properly
appreciate the difficulties under which we laboured. During the first
years at Tuskegee I recall that night after night I would roll and toss
on my bed, without sleep, because of the anxiety and uncertainty which
we were in regarding money. I knew that, in a large degree, we were
trying an experiment--that of testing whether or not it was possible
for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large education
institution. I knew that if we failed it would injure the whole race.
I knew that the presumption was against us. I knew that in the case of
white people beginning such an enterprise it would be taken for granted
that they were going to succeed, but in our case I felt that people
would be surprised if we succeeded. All this made a burden which pressed
down on us, sometimes, it seemed, at the rate of a thousand pounds to
the square inch.

In all our difficulties and anxieties, however, I never went to a white
or a black person in the town of Tuskegee for any assistance that was
in their power to render, without being helped according to their means.
More than a dozen times, when bills figuring up into the hundreds of
dollars were falling due, I applied to the white men of Tuskegee for
small loans, often borrowing small amounts from as many as a half-dozen
persons, to meet our obligations. One thing I was determined to do from
the first, and that was to keep the credit of the school high; and
this, I think I can say without boasting, we have done all through these
years.

I shall always remember a bit of advice given me by Mr. George W.
Campbell, the white man to whom I have referred to as the one who
induced General Armstrong to send me to Tuskegee. Soon after I entered
upon the work Mr. Campbell said to me, in his fatherly way: "Washington,
always remember that credit is capital."

At one time when we were in the greatest distress for money that we ever
experienced, I placed the situation frankly before General Armstrong.
Without hesitation he gave me his personal check for all the money which
he had saved for his own use. This was not the only time that General
Armstrong helped Tuskegee in this way. I do not think I have ever made
this fact public before.

During the summer of 1882, at the end of the first year's work of the
school, I was married to Miss Fannie N. Smith, of Malden, W. Va. We
began keeping house in Tuskegee early in the fall. This made a home for
our teachers, who now had been increased to four in number. My wife was
also a graduate of the Hampton Institute. After earnest and constant
work in the interests of the school, together with her housekeeping
duties, my wife passed away in May, 1884. One child, Portia M.
Washington, was born during our marriage.

From the first, my wife most earnestly devoted her thoughts and time to
the work of the school, and was completely one with me in every interest
and ambition. She passed away, however, before she had an opportunity of
seeing what the school was designed to be.



Chapter X. A Harder Task Than Making Bricks Without Straw

From the very beginning, at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the
students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to
have them erect their own buildings. My plan was to have them, while
performing this service, taught the latest and best methods of labour,
so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts,
but the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in
labour, but beauty and dignity; would be taught, in fact, how to lift
labour up from mere drudgery and toil, and would learn to love work for
its own sake. My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way,
but to show them how to make the forces of nature--air, water, steam,
electricity, horse-power--assist them in their labour.

At first many advised against the experiment of having the buildings
erected by the labour of the students, but I was determined to stick to
it. I told those who doubted the wisdom of the plan that I knew that
our first buildings would not be so comfortable or so complete in their
finish as buildings erected by the experienced hands of outside workmen,
but that in the teaching of civilization, self-help, and self-reliance,
the erection of buildings by the students themselves would more than
compensate for any lack of comfort or fine finish.

I further told those who doubted the wisdom of this plan, that the
majority of our students came to us in poverty, from the cabins of the
cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of the South, and that while I knew
it would please the students very much to place them at once in finely
constructed buildings, I felt that it would be following out a more
natural process of development to teach them how to construct their own
buildings. Mistakes I knew would be made, but these mistakes would teach
us valuable lessons for the future.

During the now nineteen years' existence of the Tuskegee school, the
plan of having the buildings erected by student labour has been adhered
to. In this time forty buildings, counting small and large, have been
built, and all except four are almost wholly the product of student
labour. As an additional result, hundreds of men are now scattered
throughout the South who received their knowledge of mechanics while
being taught how to erect these buildings. Skill and knowledge are now
handed down from one set of students to another in this way, until
at the present time a building of any description or size can be
constructed wholly by our instructors and students, from the drawing of
the plans to the putting in of the electric fixtures, without going off
the grounds for a single workman.

Not a few times, when a new student has been led into the temptation of
marring the looks of some building by leadpencil marks or by the cuts
of a jack-knife, I have heard an old student remind him: "Don't do that.
That is our building. I helped put it up."

In the early days of the school I think my most trying experience was
in the matter of brickmaking. As soon as we got the farm work reasonably
well started, we directed our next efforts toward the industry of making
bricks. We needed these for use in connection with the erection of our
own buildings; but there was also another reason for establishing this
industry. There was no brickyard in the town, and in addition to our own
needs there was a demand for bricks in the general market.

I had always sympathized with the "Children of Israel," in their task
of "making bricks without straw," but ours was the task of making bricks
with no money and no experience.

In the first place, the work was hard and dirty, and it was difficult
to get the students to help. When it came to brickmaking, their distaste
for manual labour in connection with book education became especially
manifest. It was not a pleasant task for one to stand in the mud-pit for
hours, with the mud up to his knees. More than one man became disgusted
and left the school.

We tried several locations before we opened up a pit that furnished
brick clay. I had always supposed that brickmaking was very simple, but
I soon found out by bitter experience that it required special skill and
knowledge, particularly in the burning of the bricks. After a good deal
of effort we moulded about twenty-five thousand bricks, and put them
into a kiln to be burned. This kiln turned out to be a failure, because
it was not properly constructed or properly burned. We began at once,
however, on a second kiln. This, for some reason, also proved a failure.
The failure of this kiln made it still more difficult to get the
students to take part in the work. Several of the teachers, however,
who had been trained in the industries at Hampton, volunteered their
services, and in some way we succeeded in getting a third kiln ready for
burning. The burning of a kiln required about a week. Toward the latter
part of the week, when it seemed as if we were going to have a good
many thousand bricks in a few hours, in the middle of the night the kiln
fell. For the third time we had failed.

The failure of this last kiln left me without a single dollar with which
to make another experiment. Most of the teachers advised the abandoning
of the effort to make bricks. In the midst of my troubles I thought of
a watch which had come into my possession years before. I took the watch
to the city of Montgomery, which was not far distant, and placed it in a
pawn-shop. I secured cash upon it to the amount of fifteen dollars, with
which to renew the brickmaking experiment. I returned to Tuskegee, and,
with the help of the fifteen dollars, rallied our rather demoralized and
discouraged forces and began a fourth attempt to make bricks. This time,
I am glad to say, we were successful. Before I got hold of any money,
the time-limit on my watch had expired, and I have never seen it since;
but I have never regretted the loss of it.

Brickmaking has now become such an important industry at the school
that last season our students manufactured twelve hundred thousand of
first-class bricks, of a quality suitable to be sold in any market. Aside
from this, scores of young men have mastered the brickmaking trade--both
the making of bricks by hand and by machinery--and are now engaged in
this industry in many parts of the South.

The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to
the relations of the two races in the South. Many white people who had
had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to
us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks.
They discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community.
The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the
neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not
making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding
something to the wealth and comfort of the community. As the people of
the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them;
they traded with us and we with them. Our business interests became
intermingled. We had something which they wanted; they had something
which we wanted. This, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation
for the pleasant relations that have continued to exist between us and
the white people in that section, and which now extend throughout the
South.

Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that
he has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into
which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in
a degree, it is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent,
dependent upon him. In this way pleasant relations between the races
have been stimulated.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always
makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what
colour of skin merit is found. I have found, too, that it is the
visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices.
The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten
times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought
to build, or perhaps could build.

The same principle of industrial education has been carried out in the
building of our own wagons, carts, and buggies, from the first. We now
own and use on our farm and about the school dozens of these vehicles,
and every one of them has been built by the hands of the students. Aside
from this, we help supply the local market with these vehicles. The
supplying of them to the people in the community has had the same effect
as the supplying of bricks, and the man who learns at Tuskegee to build
and repair wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by both races in
the community where he goes. The people with whom he lives and works are
going to think twice before they part with such a man.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will,
in the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a
community prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek
sentences. The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel
the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and
houses and wagons. If the man can supply the need for those, then, it
will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the
demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it.

About the time that we succeeded in burning our first kiln of bricks
we began facing in an emphasized form the objection of the students
to being taught to work. By this time it had gotten to be pretty well
advertised throughout the state that every student who came to Tuskegee,
no matter what his financial ability might be, must learn some industry.
Quite a number of letters came from parents protesting against their
children engaging in labour while they were in the school. Other parents
came to the school to protest in person. Most of the new students
brought a written or a verbal request from their parents to the effect
that they wanted their children taught nothing but books. The more
books, the larger they were, and the longer the titles printed upon
them, the better pleased the students and their parents seemed to be.

I gave little heed to these protests, except that I lost no opportunity
to go into as many parts of the state as I could, for the purpose
of speaking to the parents, and showing them the value of industrial
education. Besides, I talked to the students constantly on the subject.
Notwithstanding the unpopularity of industrial work, the school
continued to increase in numbers to such an extent that by the middle of
the second year there was an attendance of about one hundred and fifty,
representing almost all parts of the state of Alabama, and including a
few from other states.

In the summer of 1882 Miss Davidson and I both went North and engaged in
the work of raising funds for the completion of our new building. On my
way North I stopped in New York to try to get a letter of recommendation
from an officer of a missionary organization who had become somewhat
acquainted with me a few years previous. This man not only refused to
give me the letter, but advised me most earnestly to go back home at
once, and not make any attempt to get money, for he was quite sure that
I would never get more than enough to pay my travelling expenses. I
thanked him for his advice, and proceeded on my journey.

The first place I went to in the North, was Northampton, Mass., where
I spent nearly a half-day in looking for a coloured family with whom I
could board, never dreaming that any hotel would admit me. I was
greatly surprised when I found that I would have no trouble in being
accommodated at a hotel.

We were successful in getting money enough so that on Thanksgiving Day
of that year we held our first service in the chapel of Porter Hall,
although the building was not completed.

In looking about for some one to preach the Thanksgiving sermon, I found
one of the rarest men that it has ever been my privilege to know. This
was the Rev. Robert C. Bedford, a white man from Wisconsin, who was then
pastor of a little coloured Congregational church in Montgomery, Ala.
Before going to Montgomery to look for some one to preach this sermon
I had never heard of Mr. Bedford. He had never heard of me. He gladly
consented to come to Tuskegee and hold the Thanksgiving service. It was
the first service of the kind that the coloured people there had ever
observed, and what a deep interest they manifested in it! The sight
of the new building made it a day of Thanksgiving for them never to be
forgotten.

Mr. Bedford consented to become one of the trustees of the school, and
in that capacity, and as a worker for it, he has been connected with it
for eighteen years. During this time he has borne the school upon his
heart night and day, and is never so happy as when he is performing some
service, no matter how humble, for it. He completely obliterates himself
in everything, and looks only for permission to serve where service is
most disagreeable, and where others would not be attracted. In all my
relations with him he has seemed to me to approach as nearly to the
spirit of the Master as almost any man I ever met.

A little later there came into the service of the school another man,
quite young at the time, and fresh from Hampton, without whose service
the school never could have become what it is. This was Mr. Warren
Logan, who now for seventeen years has been the treasurer of the
Institute, and the acting principal during my absence. He has always
shown a degree of unselfishness and an amount of business tact, coupled
with a clear judgment, that has kept the school in good condition no
matter how long I have been absent from it. During all the financial
stress through which the school has passed, his patience and faith in
our ultimate success have not left him.

As soon as our first building was near enough to completion so that we
could occupy a portion of it--which was near the middle of the second
year of the school--we opened a boarding department. Students had begun
coming from quite a distance, and in such increasing numbers that we
felt more and more that we were merely skimming over the surface, in
that we were not getting hold of the students in their home life.

We had nothing but the students and their appetites with which to begin
a boarding department. No provision had been made in the new building
for a kitchen and dining room; but we discovered that by digging out a
large amount of earth from under the building we could make a partially
lighted basement room that could be used for a kitchen and dining room.
Again I called on the students to volunteer for work, this time to
assist in digging out the basement. This they did, and in a few weeks
we had a place to cook and eat in, although it was very rough and
uncomfortable. Any one seeing the place now would never believe that it
was once used for a dining room.

The most serious problem, though, was to get the boarding department
started off in running order, with nothing to do with in the way of
furniture, and with no money with which to buy anything. The merchants
in the town would let us have what food we wanted on credit. In fact, in
those earlier years I was constantly embarrassed because people seemed
to have more faith in me than I had in myself. It was pretty hard to
cook, however, without stoves, and awkward to eat without dishes. At
first the cooking was done out-of-doors, in the old-fashioned, primitive
style, in pots and skillets placed over a fire. Some of the carpenters'
benches that had been used in the construction of the building were
utilized for tables. As for dishes, there were too few to make it worth
while to spend time in describing them.

No one connected with the boarding department seemed to have any idea
that meals must be served at certain fixed and regular hours, and this
was a source of great worry. Everything was so out of joint and so
inconvenient that I feel safe in saying that for the first two weeks
something was wrong at every meal. Either the meat was not done or had
been burnt, or the salt had been left out of the bread, or the tea had
been forgotten.

Early one morning I was standing near the dining-room door listening
to the complaints of the students. The complaints that morning were
especially emphatic and numerous, because the whole breakfast had been
a failure. One of the girls who had failed to get any breakfast came out
and went to the well to draw some water to drink and take the place of
the breakfast which she had not been able to get. When she reached
the well, she found that the rope was broken and that she could get no
water. She turned from the well and said, in the most discouraged tone,
not knowing that I was where I could hear her, "We can't even get
water to drink at this school." I think no one remark ever came so near
discouraging me as that one.

At another time, when Mr. Bedford--whom I have already spoken of as one
of our trustees, and a devoted friend of the institution--was visiting
the school, he was given a bedroom immediately over the dining room.
Early in the morning he was awakened by a rather animated discussion
between two boys in the dining room below. The discussion was over the
question as to whose turn it was to use the coffee-cup that morning. One
boy won the case by proving that for three mornings he had not had an
opportunity to use the cup at all.

But gradually, with patience and hard work, we brought order out of
chaos, just as will be true of any problem if we stick to it with
patience and wisdom and earnest effort.

As I look back now over that part of our struggle, I am glad to see
that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those discomforts and
inconveniences. I am glad that our students had to dig out the place for
their kitchen and dining room. I am glad that our first boarding-place
was in the dismal, ill-lighted, and damp basement. Had we started in a
fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have "lost our heads"
and become "stuck up." It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a
foundation which one has made for one's self.

When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and
go into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated, and well-lighted dining
room, and see tempting, well-cooked food--largely grown by the students
themselves--and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins, and vases of
flowers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal
is served exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost no
complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room, they,
too, often say to me that they are glad that we started as we did,
and built ourselves up year by year, by a slow and natural process of
growth.



Chapter XI. Making Their Beds Before They Could Lie On Them

A little later in the history of the school we had a visit from General
J.F.B. Marshall, the Treasurer of the Hampton Institute, who had had
faith enough to lend us the first two hundred and fifty dollars with
which to make a payment down on the farm. He remained with us a week,
and made a careful inspection of everything. He seemed well pleased
with our progress, and wrote back interesting and encouraging reports to
Hampton. A little later Miss Mary F. Mackie, the teacher who had given
me the "sweeping" examination when I entered Hampton, came to see us,
and still later General Armstrong himself came.

At the time of the visits of these Hampton friends the number of
teachers at Tuskegee had increased considerably, and the most of the new
teachers were graduates of the Hampton Institute. We gave our Hampton
friends, especially General Armstrong, a cordial welcome. They were all
surprised and pleased at the rapid progress that the school had made
within so short a time. The coloured people from miles around came to
the school to get a look at General Armstrong, about whom they had heard
so much. The General was not only welcomed by the members of my own
race, but by the Southern white people as well.

This first visit which General Armstrong made to Tuskegee gave me an
opportunity to get an insight into his character such as I had not
before had. I refer to his interest in the Southern white people. Before
this I had had the thought that General Armstrong, having fought the
Southern white man, rather cherished a feeling of bitterness toward the
white South, and was interested in helping only the coloured man there.
But this visit convinced me that I did not know the greatness and the
generosity of the man. I soon learned, by his visits to the Southern
white people, and from his conversations with them, that he was as
anxious about the prosperity and the happiness of the white race as the
black. He cherished no bitterness against the South, and was happy
when an opportunity offered for manifesting his sympathy. In all my
acquaintance with General Armstrong I never heard him speak, in public
or in private, a single bitter word against the white man in the South.
From his example in this respect I learned the lesson that great men
cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.
I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it
strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong,
and resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might
be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. With God's
help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling
toward the Southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted
upon my race. I am made to feel just as happy now when I am rendering
service to Southern white men as when the service is rendered to a
member of my own race. I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual
who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race
prejudice.

The more I consider the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that
the most harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain
sections of the South have felt themselves compelled to resort, in order
to get rid of the force of the Negroes' ballot, is not wholly in the
wrong done to the Negro, but in the permanent injury to the morals of
the white man. The wrong to the Negro is temporary, but to the morals of
the white man the injury is permanent. I have noted time and time again
that when an individual perjures himself in order to break the force of
the black man's ballot, he soon learns to practise dishonesty in other
relations of life, not only where the Negro is concerned, but equally so
where a white man is concerned. The white man who begins by cheating a
Negro usually ends by cheating a white man. The white man who begins to
break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch
a white man. All this, it seems to me, makes it important that the whole
Nation lend a hand in trying to lift the burden of ignorance from the
South.

Another thing that is becoming more apparent each year in the
development of education in the South is the influence of General
Armstrong's idea of education; and this not upon the blacks alone, but
upon the whites also. At the present time there is almost no Southern
state that is not putting forth efforts in the direction of securing
industrial education for its white boys and girls, and in most cases it
is easy to trace the history of these efforts back to General Armstrong.

Soon after the opening of our humble boarding department students began
coming to us in still larger numbers. For weeks we not only had to
contend with the difficulty of providing board, with no money, but also
with that of providing sleeping accommodations. For this purpose we
rented a number of cabins near the school. These cabins were in a
dilapidated condition, and during the winter months the students who
occupied them necessarily suffered from the cold. We charge the students
eight dollars a month--all they were able to pay--for their board.
This included, besides board, room, fuel, and washing. We also gave the
students credit on their board bills for all the work which they did
for the school which was of any value to the institution. The cost of
tuition, which was fifty dollars a year for each student, we had to
secure then, as now, wherever we could.

This small charge in cash gave us no capital with which to start a
boarding department. The weather during the second winter of our work
was very cold. We were not able to provide enough bed-clothes to keep
the students warm. In fact, for some time we were not able to provide,
except in a few cases, bedsteads and mattresses of any kind. During the
coldest nights I was so troubled about the discomfort of the students
that I could not sleep myself. I recall that on several occasions I went
in the middle of the night to the shanties occupied by the young men,
for the purpose of confronting them. Often I found some of them sitting
huddled around a fire, with the one blanket which we had been able to
provide wrapped around them, trying in this way to keep warm. During the
whole night some of them did not attempt to lie down. One morning,
when the night previous had been unusually cold, I asked those of the
students in the chapel who thought that they had been frostbitten during
the night to raise their hands. Three hands went up. Notwithstanding
these experiences, there was almost no complaining on the part of the
students. They knew that we were doing the best that we could for them.
They were happy in the privilege of being permitted to enjoy any kind of
opportunity that would enable them to improve their condition. They
were constantly asking what they might do to lighten the burdens of the
teachers.

I have heard it stated more than once, both in the North and in the
South, that coloured people would not obey and respect each other when
one member of the race is placed in a position of authority over others.
In regard to this general belief and these statements, I can say that
during the nineteen years of my experience at Tuskegee I never, either
by word or act, have been treated with disrespect by any student
or officer connected with the institution. On the other hand, I am
constantly embarrassed by the many acts of thoughtful kindness. The
students do not seem to want to see me carry a large book or a satchel
or any kind of a burden through the grounds. In such cases more than one
always offers to relieve me. I almost never go out of my office when
the rain is falling that some student does not come to my side with an
umbrella and ask to be allowed to hold it over me.

While writing upon this subject, it is a pleasure for me to add that in
all my contact with the white people of the South I have never received
a single personal insult. The white people in and near Tuskegee, to
an especial degree, seem to count it as a privilege to show me all the
respect within their power, and often go out of their way to do this.

Not very long ago I was making a journey between Dallas (Texas) and
Houston. In some way it became known in advance that I was on the train.
At nearly every station at which the train stopped, numbers of white
people, including in most cases of the officials of the town, came
aboard and introduced themselves and thanked me heartily for the work
that I was trying to do for the South.

On another occasion, when I was making a trip from Augusta, Georgia,
to Atlanta, being rather tired from much travel, I rode in a Pullman
sleeper. When I went into the car, I found there two ladies from Boston
whom I knew well. These good ladies were perfectly ignorant, it seems,
of the customs of the South, and in the goodness of their hearts
insisted that I take a seat with them in their section. After some
hesitation I consented. I had been there but a few minutes when one of
them, without my knowledge, ordered supper to be served for the three
of us. This embarrassed me still further. The car was full of Southern
white men, most of whom had their eyes on our party. When I found that
supper had been ordered, I tried to contrive some excuse that would
permit me to leave the section, but the ladies insisted that I must eat
with them. I finally settled back in my seat with a sigh, and said to
myself, "I am in for it now, sure."

To add further to the embarrassment of the situation, soon after the
supper was placed on the table one of the ladies remembered that she had
in her satchel a special kind of tea which she wished served, and as
she said she felt quite sure the porter did not know how to brew it
properly, she insisted upon getting up and preparing and serving it
herself. At last the meal was over; and it seemed the longest one that I
had ever eaten. When we were through, I decided to get myself out of the
embarrassing situation and go to the smoking-room, where most of the men
were by that time, to see how the land lay. In the meantime, however, it
had become known in some way throughout the car who I was. When I went
into the smoking-room I was never more surprised in my life than when
each man, nearly every one of them a citizen of Georgia, came up and
introduced himself to me and thanked me earnestly for the work that I
was trying to do for the whole South. This was not flattery, because
each one of these individuals knew that he had nothing to gain by trying
to flatter me.

From the first I have sought to impress the students with the idea that
Tuskegee is not my institution, or that of the officers, but that it is
their institution, and that they have as much interest in it as any of
the trustees or instructors. I have further sought to have them feel
that I am at the institution as their friend and adviser, and not as
their overseer. It has been my aim to have them speak with directness
and frankness about anything that concerns the life of the school.
Two or three times a year I ask the students to write me a letter
criticising or making complaints or suggestions about anything connected
with the institution. When this is not done, I have them meet me in the
chapel for a heart-to-heart talk about the conduct of the school. There
are no meetings with our students that I enjoy more than these, and none
are more helpful to me in planning for the future. These meetings, it
seems to me, enable me to get at the very heart of all that concerns the
school. Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility
upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. When I have read of
labour troubles between employers and employees, I have often thought
that many strikes and similar disturbances might be avoided if
the employers would cultivate the habit of getting nearer to their
employees, of consulting and advising with them, and letting them feel
that the interests of the two are the same. Every individual responds to
confidence, and this is not more true of any race than of the Negroes.
Let them once understand that you are unselfishly interested in them,
and you can lead them to any extent.

It was my aim from the first at Tuskegee to not only have the buildings
erected by the students themselves, but to have them make their own
furniture as far as was possible. I now marvel at the patience of the
students while sleeping upon the floor while waiting for some kind of a
bedstead to be constructed, or at their sleeping without any kind of a
mattress while waiting for something that looked like a mattress to be
made.

In the early days we had very few students who had been used to handling
carpenters' tools, and the bedsteads made by the students then were very
rough and very weak. Not unfrequently when I went into the students'
rooms in the morning I would find at least two bedsteads lying about on
the floor. The problem of providing mattresses was a difficult one to
solve. We finally mastered this, however, by getting some cheap cloth
and sewing pieces of this together as to make large bags. These bags
we filled with the pine straw--or, as it is sometimes called, pine
needles--which we secured from the forests near by. I am glad to say
that the industry of mattress-making has grown steadily since then, and
has been improved to such an extent that at the present time it is an
important branch of the work which is taught systematically to a
number of our girls, and that the mattresses that now come out of the
mattress-shop at Tuskegee are about as good as those bought in
the average store. For some time after the opening of the boarding
department we had no chairs in the students' bedrooms or in the dining
rooms. Instead of chairs we used stools which the students constructed
by nailing together three pieces of rough board. As a rule, the
furniture in the students' rooms during the early days of the school
consisted of a bed, some stools, and sometimes a rough table made by the
students. The plan of having the students make the furniture is still
followed, but the number of pieces in a room has been increased, and
the workmanship has so improved that little fault can be found with the
articles now. One thing that I have always insisted upon at Tuskegee
is that everywhere there should be absolute cleanliness. Over and over
again the students were reminded in those first years--and are reminded
now--that people would excuse us for our poverty, for our lack of
comforts and conveniences, but that they would not excuse us for dirt.

Another thing that has been insisted upon at the school is the use of
the tooth-brush. "The gospel of the tooth-brush," as General Armstrong
used to call it, is part of our creed at Tuskegee. No student is
permitted to retain who does not keep and use a tooth-brush. Several
times, in recent years, students have come to us who brought with them
almost no other article except a tooth-brush. They had heard from the
lips of other students about our insisting upon the use of this, and
so, to make a good impression, they brought at least a tooth-brush with
them. I remember that one morning, not long ago, I went with the lady
principal on her usual morning tour of inspection of the girls' rooms.
We found one room that contained three girls who had recently arrived
at the school. When I asked them if they had tooth-brushes, one of the
girls replied, pointing to a brush: "Yes, sir. That is our brush. We
bought it together, yesterday." It did not take them long to learn a
different lesson.

It has been interesting to note the effect that the use of the
tooth-brush has had in bringing about a higher degree of civilization
among the students. With few exceptions, I have noticed that, if we can
get a student to the point where, when the first or second tooth-brush
disappears, he of his own motion buys another, I have not been
disappointed in the future of that individual. Absolute cleanliness of
the body has been insisted upon from the first. The students have been
taught to bathe as regularly as to take their meals. This lesson we
began teaching before we had anything in the shape of a bath-house.
Most of the students came from plantation districts, and often we had
to teach them how to sleep at night; that is, whether between the
two sheets--after we got to the point where we could provide them two
sheets--or under both of them. Naturally I found it difficult to teach
them to sleep between two sheets when we were able to supply but one.
The importance of the use of the night-gown received the same attention.

For a long time one of the most difficult tasks was to teach the
students that all the buttons were to be kept on their clothes, and that
there must be no torn places or grease-spots. This lesson, I am pleased
to be able to say, has been so thoroughly learned and so faithfully
handed down from year to year by one set of students to another that
often at the present time, when the students march out of the chapel in
the evening and their dress is inspected, as it is every night, not one
button is found to be missing.



Chapter XII. Raising Money

When we opened our boarding department, we provided rooms in the attic
of Porter Hall, our first building, for a number of girls. But the
number of students, of both sexes, continued to increase. We could find
rooms outside the school grounds for many of the young men, but the
girls we did not care to expose in this way. Very soon the problem
of providing more rooms for the girls, as well as a larger boarding
department for all the students, grew serious. As a result, we finally
decided to undertake the construction of a still larger building--a
building that would contain rooms for the girls and boarding
accommodations for all.

After having had a preliminary sketch of the needed building made, we
found that it would cost about ten thousand dollars. We had no money
whatever with which to begin; still we decided to give the needed
building a name. We knew we could name it, even though we were in doubt
about our ability to secure the means for its construction. We decided
to call the proposed building Alabama Hall, in honour of the state in
which we were labouring. Again Miss Davidson began making efforts to
enlist the interest and help of the coloured and white people in and
near Tuskegee. They responded willingly, in proportion to their means.
The students, as in the case of our first building, Porter Hall, began
digging out the dirt in order to allow the laying of the foundations.

When we seemed at the end of our resources, so far as securing money
was concerned, something occurred which showed the greatness of General
Armstrong--something which proved how far he was above the ordinary
individual. When we were in the midst of great anxiety as to where and
how we were to get funds for the new building, I received a telegram
from General Armstrong asking me if I could spend a month travelling
with him through the North, and asking me, if I could do so, to come to
Hampton at once. Of course I accepted General Armstrong's invitation,
and went to Hampton immediately. On arriving there I found that the
General had decided to take a quartette of singers through the North,
and hold meetings for a month in important cities, at which meetings
he and I were to speak. Imagine my surprise when the General told me,
further, that these meetings were to be held, not in the interests
of Hampton, but in the interests of Tuskegee, and that the Hampton
Institute was to be responsible for all the expenses.

Although he never told me so in so many words, I found that General
Armstrong took this method of introducing me to the people of the North,
as well as for the sake of securing some immediate funds to be used in
the erection of Alabama Hall. A weak and narrow man would have reasoned
that all the money which came to Tuskegee in this way would be just
so much taken from the Hampton Institute; but none of these selfish or
short-sighted feelings ever entered the breast of General Armstrong. He
was too big to be little, too good to be mean. He knew that the people
in the North who gave money gave it for the purpose of helping the whole
cause of Negro civilization, and not merely for the advancement of any
one school. The General knew, too, that the way to strengthen Hampton
was to make it a centre of unselfish power in the working out of the
whole Southern problem.

In regard to the addresses which I was to make in the North, I recall
just one piece of advice which the General gave me. He said: "Give them
an idea for every word." I think it would be hard to improve upon this
advice; and it might be made to apply to all public speaking. From that
time to the present I have always tried to keep his advice in mind.

Meetings were held in New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, and
other large cities, and at all of these meetings General Armstrong
pleaded, together with myself, for help, not for Hampton, but for
Tuskegee. At these meetings an especial effort was made to secure help
for the building of Alabama Hall, as well as to introduce the school to
the attention of the general public. In both these respects the meetings
proved successful.

After that kindly introduction I began going North alone to secure
funds. During the last fifteen years I have been compelled to spend a
large proportion of my time away from the school, in an effort to secure
money to provide for the growing needs of the institution. In my efforts
to get funds I have had some experiences that may be of interest to my
readers. Time and time again I have been asked, by people who are
trying to secure money for philanthropic purposes, what rule or rules
I followed to secure the interest and help of people who were able to
contribute money to worthy objects. As far as the science of what is
called begging can be reduced to rules, I would say that I have had but
two rules. First, always to do my whole duty regarding making our work
known to individuals and organizations; and, second, not to worry about
the results. This second rule has been the hardest for me to live up to.
When bills are on the eve of falling due, with not a dollar in hand
with which to meet them, it is pretty difficult to learn not to worry,
although I think I am learning more and more each year that all worry
simply consumes, and to no purpose, just so much physical and mental
strength that might otherwise be given to effective work. After
considerable experience in coming into contact with wealthy and noted
men, I have observed that those who have accomplished the greatest
results are those who "keep under the body"; are those who never grow
excited or lose self-control, but are always calm, self-possessed,
patient, and polite. I think that President William McKinley is the best
example of a man of this class that I have ever seen.

In order to be successful in any kind of undertaking, I think the
main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets
himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as
one loses himself in the way, in the same degree does he get the highest
happiness out of his work.

My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has taught me to have no
patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because
they are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity.
In the first place, those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms
do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much suffering
would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large
proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great
business enterprises. Then very few persons have any idea of the large
number of applications for help that rich people are constantly being
flooded with. I know wealthy people who receive as much as twenty calls
a day for help. More than once when I have gone into the offices of rich
men, I have found half a dozen persons waiting to see them, and all come
for the same purpose, that of securing money. And all these calls in
person, to say nothing of the applications received through the mails.
Very few people have any idea of the amount of money given away by
persons who never permit their names to be known. I have often heard
persons condemned for not giving away money, who, to my own knowledge,
were giving away thousands of dollars every year so quietly that the
world knew nothing about it.

As an example of this, there are two ladies in New York, whose names
rarely appear in print, but who, in a quiet way, have given us the means
with which to erect three large and important buildings during the last
eight years. Besides the gift of these buildings, they have made other
generous donations to the school. And they not only help Tuskegee, but
they are constantly seeking opportunities to help other worthy causes.

Although it has been my privilege to be the medium through which a
good many hundred thousand dollars have been received for the work at
Tuskegee, I have always avoided what the world calls "begging." I often
tell people that I have never "begged" any money, and that I am not
a "beggar." My experience and observation have convinced me that
persistent asking outright for money from the rich does not, as a rule,
secure help. I have usually proceeded on the principle that persons who
possess sense enough to earn money have sense enough to know how to give
it away, and that the mere making known of the facts regarding Tuskegee,
and especially the facts regarding the work of the graduates, has been
more effective than outright begging. I think that the presentation of
facts, on a high, dignified plane, is all the begging that most rich
people care for.

While the work of going from door to door and from office to office
is hard, disagreeable, and costly in bodily strength, yet it has some
compensations. Such work gives one a rare opportunity to study human
nature. It also has its compensations in giving one an opportunity to
meet some of the best people in the world--to be more correct, I think
I should say the best people in the world. When one takes a broad survey
of the country, he will find that the most useful and influential people
in it are those who take the deepest interest in institutions that exist
for the purpose of making the world better.

At one time, when I was in Boston, I called at the door of a rather
wealthy lady, and was admitted to the vestibule and sent up my card.
While I was waiting for an answer, her husband came in, and asked me in
the most abrupt manner what I wanted. When I tried to explain the object
of my call, he became still more ungentlemanly in his words and manner,
and finally grew so excited that I left the house without waiting for
a reply from the lady. A few blocks from that house I called to see a
gentleman who received me in the most cordial manner. He wrote me his
check for a generous sum, and then, before I had had an opportunity to
thank him, said: "I am so grateful to you, Mr. Washington, for giving me
the opportunity to help a good cause. It is a privilege to have a share
in it. We in Boston are constantly indebted to you for doing our work."
My experience in securing money convinces me that the first type of
man is growing more rare all the time, and that the latter type is
increasing; that is, that, more and more, rich people are coming to
regard men and women who apply to them for help for worthy objects, not
as beggars, but as agents for doing their work.

In the city of Boston I have rarely called upon an individual for funds
that I have not been thanked for calling, usually before I could get an
opportunity to thank the donor for the money. In that city the donors
seem to feel, in a large degree, that an honour is being conferred upon
them in their being permitted to give. Nowhere else have I met with, in
so large a measure, this fine and Christlike spirit as in the city of
Boston, although there are many notable instances of it outside that
city. I repeat my belief that the world is growing in the direction
of giving. I repeat that the main rule by which I have been guided in
collecting money is to do my full duty in regard to giving people who
have money an opportunity for help.

In the early years of the Tuskegee school I walked the streets or
travelled country roads in the North for days and days without receiving
a dollar. Often as it happened, when during the week I had been
disappointed in not getting a cent from the very individuals from whom
I most expected help, and when I was almost broken down and discouraged,
that generous help has come from some one who I had had little idea
would give at all.

I recall that on one occasion I obtained information that led me to
believe that a gentleman who lived about two miles out in the country
from Stamford, Conn., might become interested in our efforts at Tuskegee
if our conditions and needs were presented to him. On an unusually cold
and stormy day I walked the two miles to see him. After some difficulty
I succeeded in securing an interview with him. He listened with some
degree of interest to what I had to say, but did not give me anything.
I could not help having the feeling that, in a measure, the three
hours that I had spent in seeing him had been thrown away. Still, I had
followed my usual rule of doing my duty. If I had not seen him, I should
have felt unhappy over neglect of duty.

Two years after this visit a letter came to Tuskegee from this man,
which read like this: "Enclosed I send you a New York draft for ten
thousand dollars, to be used in furtherance of your work. I had placed
this sum in my will for your school, but deem it wiser to give it to you
while I live. I recall with pleasure your visit to me two years ago."

I can hardly imagine any occurrence which could have given me more
genuine satisfaction than the receipt of this draft. It was by far
the largest single donation which up to that time the school had ever
received. It came at a time when an unusually long period had passed
since we had received any money. We were in great distress because of
lack of funds, and the nervous strain was tremendous. It is difficult
for me to think of any situation that is more trying on the nerves than
that of conducting a large institution, with heavy obligations to
meet, without knowing where the money is to come from to meet these
obligations from month to month.

In our case I felt a double responsibility, and this made the anxiety
all the more intense. If the institution had been officered by white
persons, and had failed, it would have injured the cause of Negro
education; but I knew that the failure of our institution, officered
by Negroes, would not only mean the loss of a school, but would cause
people, in a large degree, to lose faith in the ability of the entire
race. The receipt of this draft for ten thousand dollars, under all
these circumstances, partially lifted a burden that had been pressing
down upon me for days.

From the beginning of our work to the present I have always had the
feeling, and lose no opportunity to impress our teachers with the same
idea, that the school will always be supported in proportion as the
inside of the institution is kept clean and pure and wholesome.

The first time I ever saw the late Collis P. Huntington, the great
railroad man, he gave me two dollars for our school. The last time I saw
him, which was a few months before he died, he gave me fifty thousand
dollars toward our endowment fund. Between these two gifts there were
others of generous proportions which came every year from both Mr. and
Mrs. Huntington.

Some people may say that it was Tuskegee's good luck that brought to us
this gift of fifty thousand dollars. No, it was not luck. It was hard
work. Nothing ever comes to me, that is worth having, except as the
result of hard work. When Mr. Huntington gave me the first two dollars,
I did not blame him for not giving me more, but made up my mind that
I was going to convince him by tangible results that we were worthy of
larger gifts. For a dozen years I made a strong effort to convince Mr.
Huntington of the value of our work. I noted that just in proportion as
the usefulness of the school grew, his donations increased. Never did
I meet an individual who took a more kindly and sympathetic interest in
our school than did Mr. Huntington. He not only gave money to us, but
took time in which to advise me, as a father would a son, about the
general conduct of the school.

More than once I have found myself in some pretty tight places while
collecting money in the North. The following incident I have never
related but once before, for the reason that I feared that people would
not believe it. One morning I found myself in Providence, Rhode Island,
without a cent of money with which to buy breakfast. In crossing the
street to see a lady from whom I hoped to get some money, I found a
bright new twenty-five-cent piece in the middle of the street track. I
not only had this twenty-five cents for my breakfast, but within a few
minutes I had a donation from the lady on whom I had started to call.

At one of our Commencements I was bold enough to invite the Rev. E.
Winchester Donald, D.D., rector of Trinity Church, Boston, to preach the
Commencement sermon. As we then had no room large enough to accommodate
all who would be present, the place of meeting was under a large
improvised arbour, built partly of brush and partly of rough boards.
Soon after Dr. Donald had begun speaking, the rain came down in
torrents, and he had to stop, while someone held an umbrella over him.

The boldness of what I had done never dawned upon me until I saw the
picture made by the rector of Trinity Church standing before that large
audience under an old umbrella, waiting for the rain to cease so that he
could go on with his address.

It was not very long before the rain ceased and Dr. Donald finished his
sermon; and an excellent sermon it was, too, in spite of the weather.
After he had gone to his room, and had gotten the wet threads of his
clothes dry, Dr. Donald ventured the remark that a large chapel at
Tuskegee would not be out of place. The next day a letter came from two
ladies who were then travelling in Italy, saying that they had decided
to give us the money for such a chapel as we needed.

A short time ago we received twenty thousand dollars from Mr. Andrew
Carnegie, to be used for the purpose of erecting a new library building.
Our first library and reading-room were in a corner of a shanty, and the
whole thing occupied a space about five by twelve feet. It required ten
years of work before I was able to secure Mr. Carnegie's interest and
help. The first time I saw him, ten years ago, he seemed to take but
little interest in our school, but I was determined to show him that
we were worthy of his help. After ten years of hard work I wrote him a
letter reading as follows:

December 15, 1900.

Mr. Andrew Carnegie, 5 W. Fifty-first St., New York.

Dear Sir: Complying with the request which you made of me when I saw you
at your residence a few days ago, I now submit in writing an appeal for
a library building for our institution.

We have 1100 students, 86 officers and instructors, together with their
families, and about 200 coloured people living near the school, all of
whom would make use of the library building.

We have over 12,000 books, periodicals, etc., gifts from our friends,
but we have no suitable place for them, and we have no suitable
reading-room.

Our graduates go to work in every section of the South, and whatever
knowledge might be obtained in the library would serve to assist in the
elevation of the whole Negro race.

Such a building as we need could be erected for about $20,000. All
of the work for the building, such as brickmaking, brick-masonry,
carpentry, blacksmithing, etc., would be done by the students. The
money which you would give would not only supply the building, but
the erection of the building would give a large number of students an
opportunity to learn the building trades, and the students would use the
money paid to them to keep themselves in school. I do not believe that
a similar amount of money often could be made go so far in uplifting a
whole race.

If you wish further information, I shall be glad to furnish it.

Yours truly,

Booker T. Washington, Principal.


The next mail brought back the following reply: "I will be very glad
to pay the bills for the library building as they are incurred, to the
extent of twenty thousand dollars, and I am glad of this opportunity to
show the interest I have in your noble work."

I have found that strict business methods go a long way in securing
the interest of rich people. It has been my constant aim at Tuskegee to
carry out, in our financial and other operations, such business methods
as would be approved of by any New York banking house.

I have spoken of several large gifts to the school; but by far the
greater proportion of the money that has built up the institution has
come in the form of small donations from persons of moderate means.
It is upon these small gifts, which carry with them the interest of
hundreds of donors, that any philanthropic work must depend largely for
its support. In my efforts to get money I have often been surprised at
the patience and deep interest of the ministers, who are besieged
on every hand and at all hours of the day for help. If no other
consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the
Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has
done during the last thirty-five years for the elevation of the black
man would have made me a Christian. In a large degree it has been
the pennies, the nickels, and the dimes which have come from the
Sunday-schools, the Christian Endeavour societies, and the missionary
societies, as well as from the church proper, that have helped to
elevate the Negro at so rapid a rate.

This speaking of small gifts reminds me to say that very few Tuskegee
graduates fail to send us an annual contribution. These contributions
range from twenty-five cents up to ten dollars.

Soon after beginning our third year's work we were surprised to receive
money from three special sources, and up to the present time we have
continued to receive help from them. First, the State Legislature of
Alabama increased its annual appropriation from two thousand dollars to
three thousand dollars; I might add that still later it increased this
sum to four thousand five hundred dollars a year. The effort to secure
this increase was led by the Hon. M.F. Foster, the member of the
Legislature from Tuskegee. Second, we received one thousand dollars from
the John F. Slater Fund. Our work seemed to please the trustees of this
fund, as they soon began increasing their annual grant. This has been
added to from time to time until at present we receive eleven thousand
dollars annually from the Fund. The other help to which I have referred
came in the shape of an allowance from the Peabody Fund. This was at
first five hundred dollars, but it has since been increased to fifteen
hundred dollars.

The effort to secure help from the Slater and Peabody Funds brought me
into contact with two rare men--men who have had much to do in shaping
the policy for the education of the Negro. I refer to the Hon. J.L.M.
Curry, of Washington, who is the general agent for these two funds, and
Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New York. Dr. Curry is a native of the South,
an ex-Confederate soldier, yet I do not believe there is any man in
the country who is more deeply interested in the highest welfare of the
Negro than Dr. Curry, or one who is more free from race prejudice.
He enjoys the unique distinction of possessing to an equal degree the
confidence of the black man and the Southern white man. I shall never
forget the first time I met him. It was in Richmond, Va., where he was
then living. I had heard much about him. When I first went into his
presence, trembling because of my youth and inexperience, he took me
by the hand so cordially, and spoke such encouraging words, and gave me
such helpful advice regarding the proper course to pursue, that I came
to know him then, as I have known him ever since, as a high example
of one who is constantly and unselfishly at work for the betterment of
humanity.

Mr. Morris K. Jessup, the treasurer of the Slater Fund, I refer to
because I know of no man of wealth and large and complicated business
responsibilities who gives not only money but his time and thought to
the subject of the proper method of elevating the Negro to the extent
that is true of Mr. Jessup. It is very largely through this effort
and influence that during the last few years the subject of industrial
education has assumed the importance that it has, and been placed on its
present footing.



Chapter XIII. Two Thousand Miles For A Five-Minute Speech

Soon after the opening of our boarding department, quite a number of
students who evidently were worthy, but who were so poor that they did
not have any money to pay even the small charges at the school, began
applying for admission. This class was composed of both men and women.
It was a great trial to refuse admission to these applicants, and in
1884 we established a night-school to accommodate a few of them.

The night-school was organized on a plan similar to the one which I
had helped to establish at Hampton. At first it was composed of about
a dozen students. They were admitted to the night-school only when they
had no money with which to pay any part of their board in the regular
day-school. It was further required that they must work for ten hours
during the day at some trade or industry, and study academic branches
for two hours during the evening. This was the requirement for the first
one or two years of their stay. They were to be paid something above the
cost of their board, with the understanding that all of their earnings,
except a very small part, were to be reserved in the school's treasury,
to be used for paying their board in the regular day-school after they
had entered that department. The night-school, started in this manner,
has grown until there are at present four hundred and fifty-seven
students enrolled in it alone.

There could hardly be a more severe test of a student's worth than this
branch of the Institute's work. It is largely because it furnishes such
a good opportunity to test the backbone of a student that I place such
high value upon our night-school. Any one who is willing to work ten
hours a day at the brick-yard, or in the laundry, through one or two
years, in order that he or she may have the privilege of studying
academic branches for two hours in the evening, has enough bottom to
warrant being further educated.

After the student has left the night-school he enters the day-school,
where he takes academic branches four days in a week, and works at his
trade two days. Besides this he usually works at his trade during the
three summer months. As a rule, after a student has succeeded in going
through the night-school test, he finds a way to finish the regular
course in industrial and academic training. No student, no matter how
much money he may be able to command, is permitted to go through school
without doing manual labour. In fact, the industrial work is now as
popular as the academic branches. Some of the most successful men and
women who have graduated from the institution obtained their start in
the night-school.

While a great deal of stress is laid upon the industrial side of the
work at Tuskegee, we do not neglect or overlook in any degree the
religious and spiritual side. The school is strictly undenominational,
but it is thoroughly Christian, and the spiritual training of the
students is not neglected. Our preaching service, prayer-meetings,
Sunday-school, Christian Endeavour Society, Young Men's Christian
Association, and various missionary organizations, testify to this.

In 1885, Miss Olivia Davidson, to whom I have already referred as being
largely responsible for the success of the school during its early
history, and I were married. During our married life she continued
to divide her time and strength between our home and the work for the
school. She not only continued to work in the school at Tuskegee, but
also kept up her habit of going North to secure funds. In 1889 she died,
after four years of happy married life and eight years of hard and happy
work for the school. She literally wore herself out in her never ceasing
efforts in behalf of the work that she so dearly loved. During our
married life there were born to us two bright, beautiful boys, Booker
Taliaferro and Ernest Davidson. The older of these, Booker, has already
mastered the brick-maker's trade at Tuskegee.

I have often been asked how I began the practice of public speaking.
In answer I would say that I never planned to give any large part of my
life to speaking in public. I have always had more of an ambition to DO
things than merely to talk ABOUT doing them. It seems that when I went
North with General Armstrong to speak at the series of public meetings
to which I have referred, the President of the National Educational
Association, the Hon. Thomas W. Bicknell, was present at one of
those meetings and heard me speak. A few days afterward he sent me an
invitation to deliver an address at the next meeting of the Educational
Association. This meeting was to be held in Madison, Wis. I accepted the
invitation. This was, in a sense, the beginning of my public-speaking
career.

On the evening that I spoke before the Association there must have been
not far from four thousand persons present. Without my knowing it, there
were a large number of people present from Alabama, and some from the
town of Tuskegee. These white people afterward frankly told me that they
went to this meeting expecting to hear the South roundly abused, but
were pleasantly surprised to find that there was no word of abuse in
my address. On the contrary, the South was given credit for all the
praiseworthy things that it had done. A white lady who was teacher in
a college in Tuskegee wrote back to the local paper that she was
gratified, as well as surprised, to note the credit which I gave the
white people of Tuskegee for their help in getting the school started.
This address at Madison was the first that I had delivered that in any
large measure dealt with the general problem of the races. Those who
heard it seemed to be pleased with what I said and with the general
position that I took.

When I first came to Tuskegee, I determined that I would make it my
home, that I would take as much pride in the right actions of the people
of the town as any white man could do, and that I would, at the same
time, deplore the wrong-doing of the people as much as any white man. I
determined never to say anything in a public address in the North that
I would not be willing to say in the South. I early learned that it is
a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this
is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy
actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.

While pursuing this policy I have not failed, at the proper time and
in the proper manner, to call attention, in no uncertain terms, to the
wrongs which any part of the South has been guilty of. I have found
that there is a large element in the South that is quick to respond to
straightforward, honest criticism of any wrong policy. As a rule, the
place to criticise the South, when criticism is necessary, is in the
South--not in Boston. A Boston man who came to Alabama to criticise
Boston would not effect so much good, I think, as one who had his word
of criticism to say in Boston.

In this address at Madison I took the ground that the policy to be
pursued with references to the races was, by every honourable means,
to bring them together and to encourage the cultivation of friendly
relations, instead of doing that which would embitter. I further
contended that, in relation to his vote, the Negro should more and more
consider the interests of the community in which he lived, rather than
seek alone to please some one who lived a thousand miles away from him
and from his interests.

In this address I said that the whole future of the Negro rested largely
upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself, through
his skill, intelligence, and character, of such undeniable value to the
community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with
his presence. I said that any individual who learned to do something
better than anybody else--learned to do a common thing in an uncommon
manner--had solved his problem, regardless of the colour of his skin,
and that in proportion as the Negro learned to produce what other people
wanted and must have, in the same proportion would he be respected.

I spoke of an instance where one of our graduates had produced two
hundred and sixty-six bushels of sweet potatoes from an acre of ground,
in a community where the average production had been only forty-nine
bushels to the acre. He had been able to do this by reason of his
knowledge of the chemistry of the soil and by his knowledge of improved
methods of agriculture. The white farmers in the neighbourhood respected
him, and came to him for ideas regarding the raising of sweet potatoes.
These white farmers honoured and respected him because he, by his skill
and knowledge, had added something to the wealth and the comfort of the
community in which he lived. I explained that my theory of education
for the Negro would not, for example, confine him for all time to farm
life--to the production of the best and the most sweet potatoes--but
that, if he succeeded in this line of industry, he could lay the
foundations upon which his children and grand-children could grow to
higher and more important things in life.

Such, in brief, were some of the views I advocated in this first address
dealing with the broad question of the relations of the two races, and
since that time I have not found any reason for changing my views on any
important point.

In my early life I used to cherish a feeling of ill will toward any one
who spoke in bitter terms against the Negro, or who advocated measures
that tended to oppress the black man or take from him opportunities
for growth in the most complete manner. Now, whenever I hear any
one advocating measures that are meant to curtail the development of
another, I pity the individual who would do this. I know that the one
who makes this mistake does so because of his own lack of opportunity
for the highest kind of growth. I pity him because I know that he is
trying to stop the progress of the world, and because I know that in
time the development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make him
ashamed of his weak and narrow position. One might as well try to stop
the progress of a mighty railroad train by throwing his body across the
track, as to try to stop the growth of the world in the direction
of giving mankind more intelligence, more culture, more skill, more
liberty, and in the direction of extending more sympathy and more
brotherly kindness.

The address which I delivered at Madison, before the National
Educational Association, gave me a rather wide introduction in the
North, and soon after that opportunities began offering themselves for
me to address audiences there.

I was anxious, however, that the way might also be opened for me to
speak directly to a representative Southern white audience. A partial
opportunity of this kind, one that seemed to me might serve as an
entering wedge, presented itself in 1893, when the international meeting
of Christian Workers was held at Atlanta, Ga. When this invitation came
to me, I had engagements in Boston that seemed to make it impossible for
me to speak in Atlanta. Still, after looking over my list of dates and
places carefully, I found that I could take a train from Boston that
would get me into Atlanta about thirty minutes before my address was to
be delivered, and that I could remain in that city before taking another
train for Boston. My invitation to speak in Atlanta stipulated that
I was to confine my address to five minutes. The question, then, was
whether or not I could put enough into a five-minute address to make it
worth while for me to make such a trip.

I knew that the audience would be largely composed of the most
influential class of white men and women, and that it would be a
rare opportunity for me to let them know what we were trying to do at
Tuskegee, as well as to speak to them about the relations of the races.
So I decided to make the trip. I spoke for five minutes to an audience
of two thousand people, composed mostly of Southern and Northern whites.
What I said seemed to be received with favour and enthusiasm. The
Atlanta papers of the next day commented in friendly terms on my
address, and a good deal was said about it in different parts of the
country. I felt that I had in some degree accomplished my object--that
of getting a hearing from the dominant class of the South.

The demands made upon me for public addresses continued to increase,
coming in about equal numbers from my own people and from Northern
whites. I gave as much time to these addresses as I could spare from the
immediate work at Tuskegee. Most of the addresses in the North were
made for the direct purpose of getting funds with which to support the
school. Those delivered before the coloured people had for their
main object the impressing upon them the importance of industrial and
technical education in addition to academic and religious training.

I now come to that one of the incidents in my life which seems to have
excited the greatest amount of interest, and which perhaps went further
than anything else in giving me a reputation that in a sense might be
called National. I refer to the address which I delivered at the opening
of the Atlanta Cotton states and International Exposition, at Atlanta,
Ga., September 18, 1895.

So much has been said and written about this incident, and so many
questions have been asked me concerning the address, that perhaps I may
be excused for taking up the matter with some detail. The five-minute
address in Atlanta, which I came from Boston to deliver, was possibly
the prime cause for an opportunity being given me to make the second
address there. In the spring of 1895 I received a telegram from
prominent citizens in Atlanta asking me to accompany a committee from
that city to Washington for the purpose of appearing before a committee
of Congress in the interest of securing Government help for the
Exposition. The committee was composed of about twenty-five of the most
prominent and most influential white men of Georgia. All the members of
this committee were white men except Bishop Grant, Bishop Gaines, and
myself. The Mayor and several other city and state officials spoke
before the committee. They were followed by the two coloured bishops. My
name was the last on the list of speakers. I had never before appeared
before such a committee, nor had I ever delivered any address in the
capital of the Nation. I had many misgivings as to what I ought to say,
and as to the impression that my address would make. While I cannot
recall in detail what I said, I remember that I tried to impress upon
the committee, with all the earnestness and plainness of any language
that I could command, that if Congress wanted to do something which
would assist in ridding the South of the race question and making
friends between the two races, it should, in every proper way, encourage
the material and intellectual growth of both races. I said that the
Atlanta Exposition would present an opportunity for both races to show
what advance they had made since freedom, and would at the same time
afford encouragement to them to make still greater progress.

I tried to emphasize the fact that while the Negro should not be
deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone
would not save him, and that back of the ballot he must have property,
industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no
race without these elements could permanently succeed. I said that in
granting the appropriation Congress could do something that would prove
to be of real and lasting value to both races, and that it was the first
great opportunity of the kind that had been presented since the close of
the Civil War.

I spoke for fifteen or twenty minutes, and was surprised at the close
of my address to receive the hearty congratulations of the Georgia
committee and of the members of Congress who were present. The Committee
was unanimous in making a favourable report, and in a few days the
bill passed Congress. With the passing of this bill the success of the
Atlanta Exposition was assured.

Soon after this trip to Washington the directors of the Exposition
decided that it would be a fitting recognition of the coloured race to
erect a large and attractive building which should be devoted wholly to
showing the progress of the Negro since freedom. It was further decided
to have the building designed and erected wholly by Negro mechanics.
This plan was carried out. In design, beauty, and general finish the
Negro Building was equal to the others on the grounds.

After it was decided to have a separate Negro exhibit, the question
arose as to who should take care of it. The officials of the Exposition
were anxious that I should assume this responsibility, but I declined
to do so, on the plea that the work at Tuskegee at that time demanded
my time and strength. Largely at my suggestion, Mr. I. Garland Penn, of
Lynchburg, Va., was selected to be at the head of the Negro department.
I gave him all the aid that I could. The Negro exhibit, as a whole,
was large and creditable. The two exhibits in this department which
attracted the greatest amount of attention were those from the Hampton
Institute and the Tuskegee Institute. The people who seemed to be
the most surprised, as well as pleased, at what they saw in the Negro
Building were the Southern white people.

As the day for the opening of the Exposition drew near, the Board of
Directors began preparing the programme for the opening exercises.
In the discussion from day to day of the various features of this
programme, the question came up as to the advisability of putting a
member of the Negro race on for one of the opening addresses, since the
Negroes had been asked to take such a prominent part in the Exposition.
It was argued, further, that such recognition would mark the good
feeling prevailing between the two races. Of course there were those who
were opposed to any such recognition of the rights of the Negro, but the
Board of Directors, composed of men who represented the best and most
progressive element in the South, had their way, and voted to invite a
black man to speak on the opening day. The next thing was to decide upon
the person who was thus to represent the Negro race. After the question
had been canvassed for several days, the directors voted unanimously to
ask me to deliver one of the opening-day addresses, and in a few days
after that I received the official invitation.

The receiving of this invitation brought to me a sense of responsibility
that it would be hard for any one not placed in my position to
appreciate. What were my feelings when this invitation came to me? I
remembered that I had been a slave; that my early years had been spent
in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance, and that I had had little
opportunity to prepare me for such a responsibility as this. It was only
a few years before that time that any white man in the audience might
have claimed me as his slave; and it was easily possible that some of my
former owners might be present to hear me speak.

I knew, too, that this was the first time in the entire history of the
Negro that a member of my race had been asked to speak from the same
platform with white Southern men and women on any important National
occasion. I was asked now to speak to an audience composed of the
wealth and culture of the white South, the representatives of my former
masters. I knew, too, that while the greater part of my audience would
be composed of Southern people, yet there would be present a large
number of Northern whites, as well as a great many men and women of my
own race.

I was determined to say nothing that I did not feel from the bottom of
my heart to be true and right. When the invitation came to me, there
was not one word of intimation as to what I should say or as to what
I should omit. In this I felt that the Board of Directors had paid a
tribute to me. They knew that by one sentence I could have blasted, in
a large degree, the success of the Exposition. I was also painfully
conscious of the fact that, while I must be true to my own race in my
utterances, I had it in my power to make such an ill-timed address as
would result in preventing any similar invitation being extended to a
black man again for years to come. I was equally determined to be true
to the North, as well as to the best element of the white South, in what
I had to say.

The papers, North and South, had taken up the discussion of my coming
speech, and as the time for it drew near this discussion became more and
more widespread. Not a few of the Southern white papers were unfriendly
to the idea of my speaking. From my own race I received many suggestions
as to what I ought to say. I prepared myself as best I could for the
address, but as the eighteenth of September drew nearer, the heavier my
heart became, and the more I feared that my effort would prove a failure
and a disappointment.

The invitation had come at a time when I was very busy with my school
work, as it was the beginning of our school year. After preparing my
address, I went through it, as I usually do with those utterances
which I consider particularly important, with Mrs. Washington, and she
approved of what I intended to say. On the sixteenth of September, the
day before I was to start for Atlanta, so many of the Tuskegee teachers
expressed a desire to hear my address that I consented to read it to
them in a body. When I had done so, and had heard their criticisms and
comments, I felt somewhat relieved, since they seemed to think well of
what I had to say.

On the morning of September 17, together with Mrs. Washington and my
three children, I started for Atlanta. I felt a good deal as I suppose
a man feels when he is on his way to the gallows. In passing through the
town of Tuskegee I met a white farmer who lived some distance out in the
country. In a jesting manner this man said: "Washington, you have spoken
before the Northern white people, the Negroes in the South, and to us
country white people in the South; but Atlanta, to-morrow, you will have
before you the Northern whites, the Southern whites, and the Negroes all
together. I am afraid that you have got yourself in a tight place." This
farmer diagnosed the situation correctly, but his frank words did not
add anything to my comfort.

In the course of the journey from Tuskegee to Atlanta both coloured
and white people came to the train to point me out, and discussed with
perfect freedom, in my hearings, what was going to take place the next
day. We were met by a committee in Atlanta. Almost the first thing
that I heard when I got off the train in that city was an expression
something like this, from an old coloured man near by: "Dat's de man of
my race what's gwine to make a speech at de Exposition to-morrow. I'se
sho' gwine to hear him."

Atlanta was literally packed, at the time, with people from all parts of
the country, and with representatives of foreign governments, as well
as with military and civic organizations. The afternoon papers had
forecasts of the next day's proceedings in flaring headlines. All this
tended to add to my burden. I did not sleep much that night. The next
morning, before day, I went carefully over what I planned to say. I
also kneeled down and asked God's blessing upon my effort. Right here,
perhaps, I ought to add that I make it a rule never to go before an
audience, on any occasion, without asking the blessing of God upon what
I want to say.

I always make it a rule to make especial preparation for each separate
address. No two audiences are exactly alike. It is my aim to reach
and talk to the heart of each individual audience, taking it into my
confidence very much as I would a person. When I am speaking to an
audience, I care little for how what I am saying is going to sound in
the newspapers, or to another audience, or to an individual. At the
time, the audience before me absorbs all my sympathy, thought, and
energy.

Early in the morning a committee called to escort me to my place in
the procession which was to march to the Exposition grounds. In this
procession were prominent coloured citizens in carriages, as well
as several Negro military organizations. I noted that the Exposition
officials seemed to go out of their way to see that all of the coloured
people in the procession were properly placed and properly treated. The
procession was about three hours in reaching the Exposition grounds, and
during all of this time the sun was shining down upon us disagreeably
hot. When we reached the grounds, the heat, together with my nervous
anxiety, made me feel as if I were about ready to collapse, and to
feel that my address was not going to be a success. When I entered the
audience-room, I found it packed with humanity from bottom to top, and
there were thousands outside who could not get in.

The room was very large, and well suited to public speaking. When I
entered the room, there were vigorous cheers from the coloured portion
of the audience, and faint cheers from some of the white people. I had
been told, while I had been in Atlanta, that while many white people
were going to be present to hear me speak, simply out of curiosity,
and that others who would be present would be in full sympathy with me,
there was a still larger element of the audience which would consist of
those who were going to be present for the purpose of hearing me make
a fool of myself, or, at least, of hearing me say some foolish thing
so that they could say to the officials who had invited me to speak, "I
told you so!"

One of the trustees of the Tuskegee Institute, as well as my personal
friend, Mr. William H. Baldwin, Jr. was at the time General Manager of
the Southern Railroad, and happened to be in Atlanta on that day. He was
so nervous about the kind of reception that I would have, and the effect
that my speech would produce, that he could not persuade himself to
go into the building, but walked back and forth in the grounds outside
until the opening exercises were over.



Chapter XIV. The Atlanta Exposition Address

The Atlanta Exposition, at which I had been asked to make an address as
a representative of the Negro race, as stated in the last chapter,
was opened with a short address from Governor Bullock. After other
interesting exercises, including an invocation from Bishop Nelson, of
Georgia, a dedicatory ode by Albert Howell, Jr., and addresses by the
President of the Exposition and Mrs. Joseph Thompson, the President of
the Woman's Board, Governor Bullock introduce me with the words, "We
have with us to-day a representative of Negro enterprise and Negro
civilization."

When I arose to speak, there was considerable cheering, especially from
the coloured people. As I remember it now, the thing that was uppermost
in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the
friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them.
So far as my outward surroundings were concerned, the only thing that
I recall distinctly now is that when I got up, I saw thousands of eyes
looking intently into my face. The following is the address which I
delivered:--

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens.

One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No
enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section
can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest
success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment
of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value
and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously
recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every
stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement
the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of
our freedom.

Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us
a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is
not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the
top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state
legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that
the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than
starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel.
From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water,
water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once
came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the
signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed
vessel, and was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And a
third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket
where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heading
the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh,
sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my
race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who
underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the
Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbour, I would say: "Cast
down your bucket where you are"--cast it down in making friends in every
manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic
service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to
bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear,
when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the
Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing
is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our
greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may
overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions
of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in
proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put
brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in
proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the
substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can
prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field
as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and
not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our
opportunities.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign
birth and strange tongue and habits of the prosperity of the South, were
I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race: "Cast down your
bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes
whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days
when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast
down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour
wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads
and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth,
and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress
of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and
encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education
of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus
land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your
factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the
past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient,
faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen.
As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, nursing your children,
watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often
following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future,
in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no
foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in
defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and
religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both
races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate
as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual
progress.

There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest
intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts
tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be
turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and
intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per
cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed--"blessing him that
gives and him that takes."

There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:--

     The laws of changeless justice bind
     Oppressor with oppressed;
     And close as sin and suffering joined
     We march to fate abreast.

Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load
upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall
constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the
South, or one-third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute
one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we
shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding
every effort to advance the body politic.

Gentlemen of the Exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at
an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting
thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and
pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember
the path that has led from these to the inventions and production of
agricultural implements, buggies, steam-engines, newspapers, books,
statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drug-stores and banks,
has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we
take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we
do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall
far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come
to our education life, not only from the Southern states, but especially
from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant
stream of blessing and encouragement.

The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions
of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the
enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result
of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No
race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long
in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges
of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared
for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar
in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to
spend a dollar in an opera-house.

In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us
more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white
race, as this opportunity offered by the Exposition; and here bending,
as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles
of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three
decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and
intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you
shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only
let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in
these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory,
letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material
benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come,
in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and
suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a
willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, this,
coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South
a new heaven and a new earth.


The first thing that I remember, after I had finished speaking, was that
Governor Bullock rushed across the platform and took me by the hand,
and that others did the same. I received so many and such hearty
congratulations that I found it difficult to get out of the building.
I did not appreciate to any degree, however, the impression which my
address seemed to have made, until the next morning, when I went into
the business part of the city. As soon as I was recognized, I was
surprised to find myself pointed out and surrounded by a crowd of men
who wished to shake hands with me. This was kept up on every street on
to which I went, to an extent which embarrassed me so much that I went
back to my boarding-place. The next morning I returned to Tuskegee. At
the station in Atlanta, and at almost all of the stations at which the
train stopped between that city and Tuskegee, I found a crowd of people
anxious to shake hands with me.

The papers in all parts of the United States published the address
in full, and for months afterward there were complimentary editorial
references to it. Mr. Clark Howell, the editor of the Atlanta
Constitution, telegraphed to a New York paper, among other words, the
following, "I do not exaggerate when I say that Professor Booker T.
Washington's address yesterday was one of the most notable speeches,
both as to character and as to the warmth of its reception, ever
delivered to a Southern audience. The address was a revelation. The
whole speech is a platform upon which blacks and whites can stand with
full justice to each other."

The Boston Transcript said editorially: "The speech of Booker T.
Washington at the Atlanta Exposition, this week, seems to have dwarfed
all the other proceedings and the Exposition itself. The sensation that
it has caused in the press has never been equalled."

I very soon began receiving all kinds of propositions from lecture
bureaus, and editors of magazines and papers, to take the lecture
platform, and to write articles. One lecture bureau offered me fifty
thousand dollars, or two hundred dollars a night and expenses, if I
would place my services at its disposal for a given period. To all these
communications I replied that my life-work was at Tuskegee; and that
whenever I spoke it must be in the interests of Tuskegee school and my
race, and that I would enter into no arrangements that seemed to place a
mere commercial value upon my services.

Some days after its delivery I sent a copy of my address to the
President of the United States, the Hon. Grover Cleveland. I received
from him the following autograph reply:--


Gray Gables, Buzzard's Bay, Mass.,

October 6, 1895.

Booker T. Washington, Esq.:

My Dear Sir: I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered
at the Atlanta Exposition.

I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read
it with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully
justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its
delivery. Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish
well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your
utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every
valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange
indeed.

Yours very truly,

Grover Cleveland.


Later I met Mr. Cleveland, for the first time, when, as President, he
visited the Atlanta Exposition. At the request of myself and others he
consented to spend an hour in the Negro Building, for the purpose
of inspecting the Negro exhibit and of giving the coloured people in
attendance an opportunity to shake hands with him. As soon as I met Mr.
Cleveland I became impressed with his simplicity, greatness, and rugged
honesty. I have met him many times since then, both at public functions
and at his private residence in Princeton, and the more I see of him
the more I admire him. When he visited the Negro Building in Atlanta he
seemed to give himself up wholly, for that hour, to the coloured
people. He seemed to be as careful to shake hands with some old coloured
"auntie" clad partially in rags, and to take as much pleasure in doing
so, as if he were greeting some millionaire. Many of the coloured people
took advantage of the occasion to get him to write his name in a book or
on a slip of paper. He was as careful and patient in doing this as if he
were putting his signature to some great state document.

Mr. Cleveland has not only shown his friendship for me in many personal
ways, but has always consented to do anything I have asked of him for
our school. This he has done, whether it was to make a personal donation
or to use his influence in securing the donations of others. Judging
from my personal acquaintance with Mr. Cleveland, I do not believe that
he is conscious of possessing any colour prejudice. He is too great for
that. In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only
the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good
books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to
permit them to come into contact with other souls--with the great
outside world. No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into
contact with what is highest and best in the world. In meeting men, in
many places, I have found that the happiest people are those who do the
most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least. I have
also found that few things, if any, are capable of making one so blind
and narrow as race prejudice. I often say to our students, in the course
of my talks to them on Sunday evenings in the chapel, that the longer
I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am
convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living
for--and dying for, if need be--is the opportunity of making some one
else more happy and more useful.

The coloured people and the coloured newspapers at first seemed to be
greatly pleased with the character of my Atlanta address, as well as
with its reception. But after the first burst of enthusiasm began to
die away, and the coloured people began reading the speech in cold type,
some of them seemed to feel that they had been hypnotized. They seemed
to feel that I had been too liberal in my remarks toward the Southern
whites, and that I had not spoken out strongly enough for what they
termed the "rights" of my race. For a while there was a reaction, so
far as a certain element of my own race was concerned, but later these
reactionary ones seemed to have been won over to my way of believing and
acting.

While speaking of changes in public sentiment, I recall that about ten
years after the school at Tuskegee was established, I had an experience
that I shall never forget. Dr. Lyman Abbott, then the pastor of Plymouth
Church, and also editor of the Outlook (then the Christian Union),
asked me to write a letter for his paper giving my opinion of the exact
condition, mental and moral, of the coloured ministers in the South, as
based upon my observations. I wrote the letter, giving the exact facts
as I conceived them to be. The picture painted was a rather black
one--or, since I am black, shall I say "white"? It could not be
otherwise with a race but a few years out of slavery, a race which had
not had time or opportunity to produce a competent ministry.

What I said soon reached every Negro minister in the country, I think,
and the letters of condemnation which I received from them were not
few. I think that for a year after the publication of this article every
association and every conference or religious body of any kind, of my
race, that met, did not fail before adjourning to pass a resolution
condemning me, or calling upon me to retract or modify what I had said.
Many of these organizations went so far in their resolutions as
to advise parents to cease sending their children to Tuskegee. One
association even appointed a "missionary" whose duty it was to warn the
people against sending their children to Tuskegee. This missionary had
a son in the school, and I noticed that, whatever the "missionary" might
have said or done with regard to others, he was careful not to take his
son away from the institution. Many of the coloured papers, especially
those that were the organs of religious bodies, joined in the general
chorus of condemnation or demands for retraction.

During the whole time of the excitement, and through all the criticism,
I did not utter a word of explanation or retraction. I knew that I was
right, and that time and the sober second thought of the people would
vindicate me. It was not long before the bishops and other church
leaders began to make careful investigation of the conditions of the
ministry, and they found out that I was right. In fact, the oldest and
most influential bishop in one branch of the Methodist Church said that
my words were far too mild. Very soon public sentiment began making
itself felt, in demanding a purifying of the ministry. While this is
not yet complete by any means, I think I may say, without egotism, and I
have been told by many of our most influential ministers, that my words
had much to do with starting a demand for the placing of a higher type
of men in the pulpit. I have had the satisfaction of having many who
once condemned me thank me heartily for my frank words.

The change of the attitude of the Negro ministry, so far as regards
myself, is so complete that at the present time I have no warmer friends
among any class than I have among the clergymen. The improvement in the
character and life of the Negro ministers is one of the most gratifying
evidences of the progress of the race. My experience with them, as well
as other events in my life, convince me that the thing to do, when one
feels sure that he has said or done the right thing, and is condemned,
is to stand still and keep quiet. If he is right, time will show it.

In the midst of the discussion which was going on concerning my Atlanta
speech, I received the letter which I give below, from Dr. Gilman, the
President of Johns Hopkins University, who had been made chairman of the
judges of award in connection with the Atlanta Exposition:--

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,

President's Office, September 30, 1895.

Dear Mr. Washington: Would it be agreeable to you to be one of the
Judges of Award in the Department of Education at Atlanta? If so, I
shall be glad to place your name upon the list. A line by telegraph will
be welcomed.

Yours very truly,

D.C. Gilman


I think I was even more surprised to receive this invitation than I
had been to receive the invitation to speak at the opening of the
Exposition. It was to be a part of my duty, as one of the jurors, to
pass not only upon the exhibits of the coloured schools, but also upon
those of the white schools. I accepted the position, and spent a month
in Atlanta in performance of the duties which it entailed. The board of
jurors was a large one, containing in all of sixty members. It was about
equally divided between Southern white people and Northern white people.
Among them were college presidents, leading scientists and men of
letters, and specialists in many subjects. When the group of jurors to
which I was assigned met for organization, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, who
was one of the number, moved that I be made secretary of that division,
and the motion was unanimously adopted. Nearly half of our division
were Southern people. In performing my duties in the inspection of the
exhibits of white schools I was in every case treated with respect, and
at the close of our labours I parted from my associates with regret.

I am often asked to express myself more freely than I do upon the
political condition and the political future of my race. These
recollections of my experience in Atlanta give me the opportunity to do
so briefly. My own belief is, although I have never before said so in so
many words, that the time will come when the Negro in the South will
be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character,
and material possessions entitle him to. I think, though, that the
opportunity to freely exercise such political rights will not come in
any large degree through outside or artificial forcing, but will be
accorded to the Negro by the Southern white people themselves, and that
they will protect him in the exercise of those rights. Just as soon
as the South gets over the old feeling that it is being forced by
"foreigners," or "aliens," to do something which it does not want to
do, I believe that the change in the direction that I have indicated
is going to begin. In fact, there are indications that it is already
beginning in a slight degree.

Let me illustrate my meaning. Suppose that some months before the
opening of the Atlanta Exposition there had been a general demand from
the press and public platform outside the South that a Negro be given
a place on the opening programme, and that a Negro be placed upon the
board of jurors of award. Would any such recognition of the race have
taken place? I do not think so. The Atlanta officials went as far as
they did because they felt it to be a pleasure, as well as a duty, to
reward what they considered merit in the Negro race. Say what we will,
there is something in human nature which we cannot blot out, which makes
one man, in the end, recognize and reward merit in another, regardless
of colour or race.

I believe it is the duty of the Negro--as the greater part of the race
is already doing--to deport himself modestly in regard to political
claims, depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed from
the possession of property, intelligence, and high character for the
full recognition of his political rights. I think that the according
of the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of
natural, slow growth, not an over-night, gourd-vine affair. I do not
believe that the Negro should cease voting, for a man cannot learn the
exercise of self-government by ceasing to vote, any more than a boy can
learn to swim by keeping out of the water, but I do believe that in his
voting he should more and more be influenced by those of intelligence
and character who are his next-door neighbours.

I know coloured men who, through the encouragement, help, and advice of
Southern white people, have accumulated thousands of dollars' worth of
property, but who, at the same time, would never think of going to those
same persons for advice concerning the casting of their ballots. This,
it seems to me, is unwise and unreasonable, and should cease. In saying
this I do not mean that the Negro should truckle, or not vote from
principle, for the instant he ceases to vote from principle he loses the
confidence and respect of the Southern white man even.

I do not believe that any state should make a law that permits an
ignorant and poverty-stricken white man to vote, and prevents a black
man in the same condition from voting. Such a law is not only unjust,
but it will react, as all unjust laws do, in time; for the effect of
such a law is to encourage the Negro to secure education and property,
and at the same time it encourages the white man to remain in
ignorance and poverty. I believe that in time, through the operation of
intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the ballot-box
in the South will cease. It will become apparent that the white man
who begins by cheating a Negro out of his ballot soon learns to cheat a
white man out of his, and that the man who does this ends his career of
dishonesty by the theft of property or by some equally serious crime. In
my opinion, the time will come when the South will encourage all of
its citizens to vote. It will see that it pays better, from every
standpoint, to have healthy, vigorous life than to have that political
stagnation which always results when one-half of the population has no
share and no interest in the Government.

As a rule, I believe in universal, free suffrage, but I believe that in
the South we are confronted with peculiar conditions that justify the
protection of the ballot in many of the states, for a while at least,
either by an education test, a property test, or by both combined; but
whatever tests are required, they should be made to apply with equal and
exact justice to both races.



Chapter XV. The Secret Of Success In Public Speaking

As to how my address at Atlanta was received by the audience in the
Exposition building, I think I prefer to let Mr. James Creelman, the
noted war correspondent, tell. Mr. Creelman was present, and telegraphed
the following account to the New York World:--

Atlanta, September 18.

While President Cleveland was waiting at Gray Gables to-day, to send the
electric spark that started the machinery of the Atlanta Exposition, a
Negro Moses stood before a great audience of white people and delivered
an oration that marks a new epoch in the history of the South; and a
body of Negro troops marched in a procession with the citizen soldiery
of Georgia and Louisiana. The whole city is thrilling to-night with a
realization of the extraordinary significance of these two unprecedented
events. Nothing has happened since Henry Grady's immortal speech before
the New England society in New York that indicates so profoundly the
spirit of the New South, except, perhaps, the opening of the Exposition
itself.

When Professor Booker T. Washington, Principal of an industrial school
for coloured people in Tuskegee, Ala. stood on the platform of the
Auditorium, with the sun shining over the heads of his auditors into his
eyes, and with his whole face lit up with the fire of prophecy, Clark
Howell, the successor of Henry Grady, said to me, "That man's speech is
the beginning of a moral revolution in America."

It is the first time that a Negro has made a speech in the South on any
important occasion before an audience composed of white men and women.
It electrified the audience, and the response was as if it had come from
the throat of a whirlwind.

Mrs. Thompson had hardly taken her seat when all eyes were turned on
a tall tawny Negro sitting in the front row of the platform. It was
Professor Booker T. Washington, President of the Tuskegee (Alabama)
Normal and Industrial Institute, who must rank from this time forth
as the foremost man of his race in America. Gilmore's Band played the
"Star-Spangled Banner," and the audience cheered. The tune changed to
"Dixie" and the audience roared with shrill "hi-yis." Again the music
changed, this time to "Yankee Doodle," and the clamour lessened.

All this time the eyes of the thousands present looked straight at the
Negro orator. A strange thing was to happen. A black man was to speak
for his people, with none to interrupt him. As Professor Washington
strode to the edge of the stage, the low, descending sun shot fiery rays
through the windows into his face. A great shout greeted him. He turned
his head to avoid the blinding light, and moved about the platform for
relief. Then he turned his wonderful countenance to the sun without a
blink of the eyelids, and began to talk.

There was a remarkable figure; tall, bony, straight as a Sioux chief,
high forehead, straight nose, heavy jaws, and strong, determined mouth,
with big white teeth, piercing eyes, and a commanding manner. The sinews
stood out on his bronzed neck, and his muscular right arm swung high in
the air, with a lead-pencil grasped in the clinched brown fist. His big
feet were planted squarely, with the heels together and the toes turned
out. His voice range out clear and true, and he paused impressively as
he made each point. Within ten minutes the multitude was in an uproar of
enthusiasm--handkerchiefs were waved, canes were flourished, hats were
tossed in the air. The fairest women of Georgia stood up and cheered. It
was as if the orator had bewitched them.

And when he held his dusky hand high above his head, with the fingers
stretched wide apart, and said to the white people of the South on
behalf of his race, "In all things that are purely social we can be as
separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential
to mutual progress," the great wave of sound dashed itself against the
walls, and the whole audience was on its feet in a delirium of applause,
and I thought at that moment of the night when Henry Grady stood among
the curling wreaths of tobacco-smoke in Delmonico's banquet-hall and
said, "I am a Cavalier among Roundheads."

I have heard the great orators of many countries, but not even Gladstone
himself could have pleased a cause with most consummate power than did
this angular Negro, standing in a nimbus of sunshine, surrounded by the
men who once fought to keep his race in bondage. The roar might swell
ever so high, but the expression of his earnest face never changed.

A ragged, ebony giant, squatted on the floor in one of the aisles,
watched the orator with burning eyes and tremulous face until the
supreme burst of applause came, and then the tears ran down his face.
Most of the Negroes in the audience were crying, perhaps without knowing
just why.

At the close of the speech Governor Bullock rushed across the stage and
seized the orator's hand. Another shout greeted this demonstration, and
for a few minutes the two men stood facing each other, hand in hand.


So far as I could spare the time from the immediate work at Tuskegee,
after my Atlanta address, I accepted some of the invitations to speak
in public which came to me, especially those that would take me into
territory where I thought it would pay to plead the cause of my race,
but I always did this with the understanding that I was to be free
to talk about my life-work and the needs of my people. I also had it
understood that I was not to speak in the capacity of a professional
lecturer, or for mere commercial gain.

In my efforts on the public platform I never have been able to
understand why people come to hear me speak. This question I never can
rid myself of. Time and time again, as I have stood in the street in
front of a building and have seen men and women passing in large numbers
into the audience room where I was to speak, I have felt ashamed that
I should be the cause of people--as it seemed to me--wasting a valuable
hour of their time. Some years ago I was to deliver an address before a
literary society in Madison, Wis. An hour before the time set for me
to speak, a fierce snow-storm began, and continued for several hours. I
made up my mind that there would be no audience, and that I should not
have to speak, but, as a matter of duty, I went to the church, and
found it packed with people. The surprise gave me a shock that I did not
recover from during the whole evening.

People often ask me if I feel nervous before speaking, or else they
suggest that, since I speak often, they suppose that I get used to it.
In answer to this question I have to say that I always suffer intensely
from nervousness before speaking. More than once, just before I was to
make an important address, this nervous strain has been so great that
I have resolved never again to speak in public. I not only feel nervous
before speaking, but after I have finished I usually feel a sense of
regret, because it seems to me as if I had left out of my address the
main thing and the best thing that I had meant to say.

There is a great compensation, though, for this preliminary nervous
suffering, that comes to me after I have been speaking for about ten
minutes, and have come to feel that I have really mastered my audience,
and that we have gotten into full and complete sympathy with each other.
It seems to me that there is rarely such a combination of mental and
physical delight in any effort as that which comes to a public speaker
when he feels that he has a great audience completely within his
control. There is a thread of sympathy and oneness that connects a
public speaker with his audience, that is just as strong as though it
was something tangible and visible. If in an audience of a thousand
people there is one person who is not in sympathy with my views, or is
inclined to be doubtful, cold, or critical, I can pick him out. When
I have found him I usually go straight at him, and it is a great
satisfaction to watch the process of his thawing out. I find that the
most effective medicine for such individuals is administered at first
in the form of a story, although I never tell an anecdote simply for the
sake of telling one. That kind of thing, I think, is empty and hollow,
and an audience soon finds it out.

I believe that one always does himself and his audience an injustice
when he speaks merely for the sake of speaking. I do not believe that
one should speak unless, deep down in his heart, he feels convinced that
he has a message to deliver. When one feels, from the bottom of his feet
to the top of his head, that he has something to say that is going
to help some individual or some cause, then let him say it; and in
delivering his message I do not believe that many of the artificial
rules of elocution can, under such circumstances, help him very much.
Although there are certain things, such as pauses, breathing, and pitch
of voice, that are very important, none of these can take the place of
soul in an address. When I have an address to deliver, I like to forget
all about the rules for the proper use of the English language, and all
about rhetoric and that sort of thing, and I like to make the audience
forget all about these things, too.

Nothing tends to throw me off my balance so quickly, when I am speaking,
as to have some one leave the room. To prevent this, I make up my mind,
as a rule, that I will try to make my address so interesting, will try
to state so many interesting facts one after another, that no one can
leave. The average audience, I have come to believe, wants facts rather
than generalities or sermonizing. Most people, I think, are able to draw
proper conclusions if they are given the facts in an interesting form on
which to base them.

As to the kind of audience that I like best to talk to, I would put at
the top of the list an organization of strong, wide-awake, business
men, such, for example, as is found in Boston, New York, Chicago, and
Buffalo. I have found no other audience so quick to see a point, and
so responsive. Within the last few years I have had the privilege of
speaking before most of the leading organizations of this kind in the
large cities of the United States. The best time to get hold of an
organization of business men is after a good dinner, although I think
that one of the worst instruments of torture that was ever invented
is the custom which makes it necessary for a speaker to sit through a
fourteen-course dinner, every minute of the time feeling sure that his
speech is going to prove a dismal failure and disappointment.

I rarely take part in one of these long dinners that I do not wish that
I could put myself back in the little cabin where I was a slave boy, and
again go through the experience there--one that I shall never forget--of
getting molasses to eat once a week from the "big house." Our usual
diet on the plantation was corn bread and pork, but on Sunday morning
my mother was permitted to bring down a little molasses from the "big
house" for her three children, and when it was received how I did wish
that every day was Sunday! I would get my tin plate and hold it up for
the sweet morsel, but I would always shut my eyes while the molasses was
being poured out into the plate, with the hope that when I opened them
I would be surprised to see how much I had got. When I opened my eyes
I would tip the plate in one direction and another, so as to make the
molasses spread all over it, in the full belief that there would be more
of it and that it would last longer if spread out in this way. So strong
are my childish impressions of those Sunday morning feasts that it
would be pretty hard for any one to convince me that there is not more
molasses on a plate when it is spread all over the plate than when it
occupies a little corner--if there is a corner in a plate. At any rate,
I have never believed in "cornering" syrup. My share of the syrup was
usually about two tablespoonfuls, and those two spoonfuls of molasses
were much more enjoyable to me than is a fourteen-course dinner after
which I am to speak.

Next to a company of business men, I prefer to speak to an audience of
Southern people, of either race, together or taken separately. Their
enthusiasm and responsiveness are a constant delight. The "amens" and
"dat's de truf" that come spontaneously from the coloured individuals
are calculated to spur any speaker on to his best efforts. I think that
next in order of preference I would place a college audience. It has
been my privilege to deliver addresses at many of our leading colleges
including Harvard, Yale, Williams, Amherst, Fisk University, the
University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley, the University of Michigan,
Trinity College in North Carolina, and many others.

It has been a matter of deep interest to me to note the number of people
who have come to shake hands with me after an address, who say that this
is the first time they have ever called a Negro "Mister."

When speaking directly in the interests of the Tuskegee Institute, I
usually arrange, some time in advance, a series of meetings in important
centres. This takes me before churches, Sunday-schools, Christian
Endeavour Societies, and men's and women's clubs. When doing this I
sometimes speak before as many as four organizations in a single day.

Three years ago, at the suggestion of Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New York,
and Dr. J.L.M. Curry, the general agent of the fund, the trustees of
the John F. Slater Fund voted a sum of money to be used in paying
the expenses of Mrs. Washington and myself while holding a series
of meetings among the coloured people in the large centres of Negro
population, especially in the large cities of the ex-slaveholding
states. Each year during the last three years we have devoted some weeks
to this work. The plan that we have followed has been for me to speak
in the morning to the ministers, teachers, and professional men. In the
afternoon Mrs. Washington would speak to the women alone, and in the
evening I spoke to a large mass-meeting. In almost every case the
meetings have been attended not only by the coloured people in large
numbers, but by the white people. In Chattanooga, Tenn., for example,
there was present at the mass-meeting an audience of not less than three
thousand persons, and I was informed that eight hundred of these were
white. I have done no work that I really enjoyed more than this, or that
I think has accomplished more good.

These meetings have given Mrs. Washington and myself an opportunity to
get first-hand, accurate information as to the real condition of
the race, by seeing the people in their homes, their churches, their
Sunday-schools, and their places of work, as well as in the prisons and
dens of crime. These meetings also gave us an opportunity to see the
relations that exist between the races. I never feel so hopeful about
the race as I do after being engaged in a series of these meetings. I
know that on such occasions there is much that comes to the surface that
is superficial and deceptive, but I have had experience enough not to be
deceived by mere signs and fleeting enthusiasms. I have taken pains
to go to the bottom of things and get facts, in a cold, business-like
manner.

I have seen the statement made lately, by one who claims to know what he
is talking about, that, taking the whole Negro race into account, ninety
per cent of the Negro women are not virtuous. There never was a baser
falsehood uttered concerning a race, or a statement made that was less
capable of being proved by actual facts.

No one can come into contact with the race for twenty years, as I have
done in the heart of the South, without being convinced that the race is
constantly making slow but sure progress materially, educationally, and
morally. One might take up the life of the worst element in New
York City, for example, and prove almost anything he wanted to prove
concerning the white man, but all will agree that this is not a fair
test.

Early in the year 1897 I received a letter inviting me to deliver an
address at the dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw monument in Boston.
I accepted the invitation. It is not necessary for me, I am sure, to
explain who Robert Gould Shaw was, and what he did. The monument to
his memory stands near the head of the Boston Common, facing the State
House. It is counted to be the most perfect piece of art of the kind to
be found in the country.

The exercises connected with the dedication were held in Music Hall, in
Boston, and the great hall was packed from top to bottom with one of
the most distinguished audiences that ever assembled in the city. Among
those present were more persons representing the famous old anti-slavery
element that it is likely will ever be brought together in the country
again. The late Hon. Roger Wolcott, then Governor of Massachusetts,
was the presiding officer, and on the platform with him were many other
officials and hundreds of distinguished men. A report of the meeting
which appeared in the Boston Transcript will describe it better than any
words of mine could do:--

The core and kernel of yesterday's great noon meeting, in honour of the
Brotherhood of Man, in Music Hall, was the superb address of the Negro
President of Tuskegee. "Booker T. Washington received his Harvard A.M.
last June, the first of his race," said Governor Wolcott, "to receive an
honorary degree from the oldest university in the land, and this for
the wise leadership of his people." When Mr. Washington rose in the
flag-filled, enthusiasm-warmed, patriotic, and glowing atmosphere of
Music Hall, people felt keenly that here was the civic justification of
the old abolition spirit of Massachusetts; in his person the proof
of her ancient and indomitable faith; in his strong thought and rich
oratory, the crown and glory of the old war days of suffering and
strife. The scene was full of historic beauty and deep significance.
"Cold" Boston was alive with the fire that is always hot in her heart
for righteousness and truth. Rows and rows of people who are seldom seen
at any public function, whole families of those who are certain to be
out of town on a holiday, crowded the place to overflowing. The city was
at her birthright _fête_ in the persons of hundreds of her best citizens,
men and women whose names and lives stand for the virtues that make for
honourable civic pride.

Battle-music had filled the air. Ovation after ovation, applause warm
and prolonged, had greeted the officers and friends of Colonel Shaw,
the sculptor, St. Gaudens, the memorial Committee, the Governor and his
staff, and the Negro soldiers of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts as
they came upon the platform or entered the hall. Colonel Henry Lee,
of Governor Andrew's old staff, had made a noble, simple presentation
speech for the committee, paying tribute to Mr. John M. Forbes, in whose
stead he served. Governor Wolcott had made his short, memorable speech,
saying, "Fort Wagner marked an epoch in the history of a race, and
called it into manhood." Mayor Quincy had received the monument for the
city of Boston. The story of Colonel Shaw and his black regiment had
been told in gallant words, and then, after the singing of

     Mine eyes have seen the glory
     Of the coming of the Lord,

Booker Washington arose. It was, of course, just the moment for him. The
multitude, shaken out of its usual symphony-concert calm, quivered with
an excitement that was not suppressed. A dozen times it had sprung to
its feet to cheer and wave and hurrah, as one person. When this man of
culture and voice and power, as well as a dark skin, began, and uttered
the names of Stearns and of Andrew, feeling began to mount. You could
see tears glisten in the eyes of soldiers and civilians. When the orator
turned to the coloured soldiers on the platform, to the colour-bearer of
Fort Wagner, who smilingly bore still the flag he had never lowered even
when wounded, and said, "To you, to the scarred and scattered remnants
of the Fifty-fourth, who, with empty sleeve and wanting leg, have
honoured this occasion with your presence, to you, your commander is not
dead. Though Boston erected no monument and history recorded no story,
in you and in the loyal race which you represent, Robert Gould Shaw
would have a monument which time could not wear away," then came the
climax of the emotion of the day and the hour. It was Roger Wolcott, as
well as the Governor of Massachusetts, the individual representative of
the people's sympathy as well as the chief magistrate, who had sprung
first to his feet and cried, "Three cheers to Booker T. Washington!"


Among those on the platform was Sergeant William H. Carney, of New
Bedford, Mass., the brave coloured officer who was the colour-bearer
at Fort Wagner and held the American flag. In spite of the fact that a
large part of his regiment was killed, he escaped, and exclaimed, after
the battle was over, "The old flag never touched the ground."

This flag Sergeant Carney held in his hands as he sat on the platform,
and when I turned to address the survivors of the coloured regiment
who were present, and referred to Sergeant Carney, he rose, as if by
instinct, and raised the flag. It has been my privilege to witness
a good many satisfactory and rather sensational demonstrations in
connection with some of my public addresses, but in dramatic effect
I have never seen or experienced anything which equalled this. For
a number of minutes the audience seemed to entirely lose control of
itself.

In the general rejoicing throughout the country which followed the close
of the Spanish-American war, peace celebrations were arranged in several
of the large cities. I was asked by President William R. Harper, of the
University of Chicago, who was chairman of the committee of invitations
for the celebration to be held in the city of Chicago, to deliver one of
the addresses at the celebration there. I accepted the invitation, and
delivered two addresses there during the Jubilee week. The first of
these, and the principal one, was given in the Auditorium, on the
evening of Sunday, October 16. This was the largest audience that I have
ever addressed, in any part of the country; and besides speaking in
the main Auditorium, I also addressed, that same evening, two overflow
audiences in other parts of the city.

It was said that there were sixteen thousand persons in the Auditorium,
and it seemed to me as if there were as many more on the outside trying
to get in. It was impossible for any one to get near the entrance
without the aid of a policeman. President William McKinley attended this
meeting, as did also the members of his Cabinet, many foreign ministers,
and a large number of army and navy officers, many of whom had
distinguished themselves in the war which had just closed. The speakers,
besides myself, on Sunday evening, were Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Father
Thomas P. Hodnett, and Dr. John H. Barrows.

The Chicago Times-Herald, in describing the meeting, said of my
address:--

He pictured the Negro choosing slavery rather than extinction; recalled
Crispus Attucks shedding his blood at the beginning of the American
Revolution, that white Americans might be free, while black Americans
remained in slavery; rehearsed the conduct of the Negroes with Jackson
at New Orleans; drew a vivid and pathetic picture of the Southern slaves
protecting and supporting the families of their masters while the latter
were fighting to perpetuate black slavery; recounted the bravery of
coloured troops at Port Hudson and Forts Wagner and Pillow, and praised
the heroism of the black regiments that stormed El Caney and Santiago
to give freedom to the enslaved people of Cuba, forgetting, for the time
being, the unjust discrimination that law and custom make against them
in their own country.

In all of these things, the speaker declared, his race had chosen the
better part. And then he made his eloquent appeal to the consciences of
the white Americans: "When you have gotten the full story of the heroic
conduct of the Negro in the Spanish-American war, have heard it from the
lips of Northern soldier and Southern soldier, from ex-abolitionist and
ex-masters, then decide within yourselves whether a race that is
thus willing to die for its country should not be given the highest
opportunity to live for its country."


The part of the speech which seems to arouse the wildest and most
sensational enthusiasm was that in which I thanked the President for his
recognition of the Negro in his appointments during the Spanish-American
war. The President was sitting in a box at the right of the stage. When
I addressed him I turned toward the box, and as I finished the sentence
thanking him for his generosity, the whole audience rose and cheered
again and again, waving handkerchiefs and hats and canes, until the
President arose in the box and bowed his acknowledgements. At that
the enthusiasm broke out again, and the demonstration was almost
indescribable.

One portion of my address at Chicago seemed to have been misunderstood
by the Southern press, and some of the Southern papers took occasion
to criticise me rather strongly. These criticisms continued for
several weeks, until I finally received a letter from the editor of the
Age-Herald, published in Birmingham, Ala., asking me if I would say just
what I meant by this part of the address. I replied to him in a letter
which seemed to satisfy my critics. In this letter I said that I had
made it a rule never to say before a Northern audience anything that
I would not say before an audience in the South. I said that I did not
think it was necessary for me to go into extended explanations; if
my seventeen years of work in the heart of the South had not been
explanation enough, I did not see how words could explain. I said that
I made the same plea that I had made in my address at Atlanta, for the
blotting out of race prejudice in "commercial and civil relations." I
said that what is termed social recognition was a question which I never
discussed, and then I quoted from my Atlanta address what I had said
there in regard to that subject.

In meeting crowds of people at public gatherings, there is one type of
individual that I dread. I mean the crank. I have become so accustomed
to these people now that I can pick them out at a distance when I see
them elbowing their way up to me. The average crank has a long beard,
poorly cared for, a lean, narrow face, and wears a black coat. The front
of his vest and coat are slick with grease, and his trousers bag at the
knees.

In Chicago, after I had spoken at a meeting, I met one of these fellows.
They usually have some process for curing all of the ills of the world
at once. This Chicago specimen had a patent process by which he said
Indian corn could be kept through a period of three or four years, and
he felt sure that if the Negro race in the South would, as a whole,
adopt his process, it would settle the whole race question. It mattered
nothing that I tried to convince him that our present problem was to
teach the Negroes how to produce enough corn to last them through one
year. Another Chicago crank had a scheme by which he wanted me to join
him in an effort to close up all the National banks in the country. If
that was done, he felt sure it would put the Negro on his feet.

The number of people who stand ready to consume one's time, to no
purpose, is almost countless. At one time I spoke before a large
audience in Boston in the evening. The next morning I was awakened by
having a card brought to my room, and with it a message that some
one was anxious to see me. Thinking that it must be something very
important, I dressed hastily and went down. When I reached the hotel
office I found a blank and innocent-looking individual waiting for me,
who coolly remarked: "I heard you talk at a meeting last night. I rather
liked your talk, and so I came in this morning to hear you talk some
more."

I am often asked how it is possible for me to superintend the work
at Tuskegee and at the same time be so much away from the school. In
partial answer to this I would say that I think I have learned, in some
degree at least, to disregard the old maxim which says, "Do not get
others to do that which you can do yourself." My motto, on the other
hand, is, "Do not do that which others can do as well."

One of the most encouraging signs in connection with the Tuskegee school
is found in the fact that the organization is so thorough that the
daily work of the school is not dependent upon the presence of any one
individual. The whole executive force, including instructors and clerks,
now numbers eighty-six. This force is so organized and subdivided that
the machinery of the school goes on day by day like clockwork. Most of
our teachers have been connected with the institutions for a number
of years, and are as much interested in it as I am. In my absence, Mr.
Warren Logan, the treasurer, who has been at the school seventeen years,
is the executive. He is efficiently supported by Mrs. Washington, and by
my faithful secretary, Mr. Emmett J. Scott, who handles the bulk of my
correspondence and keeps me in daily touch with the life of the school,
and who also keeps me informed of whatever takes place in the South that
concerns the race. I owe more to his tact, wisdom, and hard work than I
can describe.

The main executive work of the school, whether I am at Tuskegee or not,
centres in what we call the executive council. This council meets twice
a week, and is composed of the nine persons who are at the head of the
nine departments of the school. For example: Mrs. B.K. Bruce, the Lady
Principal, the widow of the late ex-senator Bruce, is a member of the
council, and represents in it all that pertains to the life of the girls
at the school. In addition to the executive council there is a
financial committee of six, that meets every week and decides upon the
expenditures for the week. Once a month, and sometimes oftener, there
is a general meeting of all the instructors. Aside from these there are
innumerable smaller meetings, such as that of the instructors in
the Phelps Hall Bible Training School, or of the instructors in the
agricultural department.

In order that I may keep in constant touch with the life of the
institution, I have a system of reports so arranged that a record of the
school's work reaches me every day of the year, no matter in what part
of the country I am. I know by these reports even what students are
excused from school, and why they are excused--whether for reasons of
ill health or otherwise. Through the medium of these reports I know each
day what the income of the school in money is; I know how many gallons
of milk and how many pounds of butter come from the dairy; what the bill
of fare for the teachers and students is; whether a certain kind of meat
was boiled or baked, and whether certain vegetables served in the dining
room were bought from a store or procured from our own farm. Human
nature I find to be very much the same the world over, and it is
sometimes not hard to yield to the temptation to go to a barrel of rice
that has come from the store--with the grain all prepared to go in the
pot--rather than to take the time and trouble to go to the field and dig
and wash one's own sweet potatoes, which might be prepared in a manner
to take the place of the rice.

I am often asked how, in the midst of so much work, a large part of
which is for the public, I can find time for any rest or recreation,
and what kind of recreation or sports I am fond of. This is rather
a difficult question to answer. I have a strong feeling that every
individual owes it to himself, and to the cause which he is serving,
to keep a vigorous, healthy body, with the nerves steady and strong,
prepared for great efforts and prepared for disappointments and trying
positions. As far as I can, I make it a rule to plan for each day's
work--not merely to go through with the same routine of daily duties,
but to get rid of the routine work as early in the day as possible, and
then to enter upon some new or advance work. I make it a rule to clear
my desk every day, before leaving my office, of all correspondence and
memoranda, so that on the morrow I can begin a NEW day of work. I make
it a rule never to let my work drive me, but to so master it, and keep
it in such complete control, and to keep so far ahead of it, that I will
be the master instead of the servant. There is a physical and mental
and spiritual enjoyment that comes from a consciousness of being
the absolute master of one's work, in all its details, that is very
satisfactory and inspiring. My experience teaches me that, if one learns
to follow this plan, he gets a freshness of body and vigour of mind out
of work that goes a long way toward keeping him strong and healthy. I
believe that when one can grow to the point where he loves his work,
this gives him a kind of strength that is most valuable.

When I begin my work in the morning, I expect to have a successful and
pleasant day of it, but at the same time I prepare myself for unpleasant
and unexpected hard places. I prepared myself to hear that one of our
school buildings is on fire, or has burned, or that some disagreeable
accident has occurred, or that some one has abused me in a public
address or printed article, for something that I have done or omitted
to do, or for something that he had heard that I had said--probably
something that I had never thought of saying.

In nineteen years of continuous work I have taken but one vacation. That
was two years ago, when some of my friends put the money into my hands
and forced Mrs. Washington and myself to spend three months in Europe. I
have said that I believe it is the duty of every one to keep his body in
good condition. I try to look after the little ills, with the idea that
if I take care of the little ills the big ones will not come. When I
find myself unable to sleep well, I know that something is wrong. If I
find any part of my system the least weak, and not performing its duty,
I consult a good physician. The ability to sleep well, at any time and
in any place, I find of great advantage. I have so trained myself that
I can lie down for a nap of fifteen or twenty minutes, and get up
refreshed in body and mind.

I have said that I make it a rule to finish up each day's work before
leaving it. There is, perhaps, one exception to this. When I have an
unusually difficult question to decide--one that appeals strongly to the
emotions--I find it a safe rule to sleep over it for a night, or to
wait until I have had an opportunity to talk it over with my wife and
friends.

As to my reading; the most time I get for solid reading is when I am
on the cars. Newspapers are to me a constant source of delight and
recreation. The only trouble is that I read too many of them. Fiction
I care little for. Frequently I have to almost force myself to read a
novel that is on every one's lips. The kind of reading that I have the
greatest fondness for is biography. I like to be sure that I am reading
about a real man or a real thing. I think I do not go too far when I say
that I have read nearly every book and magazine article that has been
written about Abraham Lincoln. In literature he is my patron saint.

Out of the twelve months in a year I suppose that, on an average, I
spend six months away from Tuskegee. While my being absent from the
school so much unquestionably has its disadvantages, yet there are at
the same time some compensations. The change of work brings a certain
kind of rest. I enjoy a ride of a long distance on the cars, when I am
permitted to ride where I can be comfortable. I get rest on the cars,
except when the inevitable individual who seems to be on every
train approaches me with the now familiar phrase: "Isn't this Booker
Washington? I want to introduce myself to you." Absence from the school
enables me to lose sight of the unimportant details of the work, and
study it in a broader and more comprehensive manner than I could do on
the grounds. This absence also brings me into contact with the best
work being done in educational lines, and into contact with the best
educators in the land.

But, after all this is said, the time when I get the most solid rest and
recreation is when I can be at Tuskegee, and, after our evening meal is
over, can sit down, as is our custom, with my wife and Portia and Baker
and Davidson, my three children, and read a story, or each take turns in
telling a story. To me there is nothing on earth equal to that, although
what is nearly equal to it is to go with them for an hour or more, as we
like to do on Sunday afternoons, into the woods, where we can live for
a while near the heart of nature, where no one can disturb or vex us,
surrounded by pure air, the trees, the shrubbery, the flowers, and the
sweet fragrance that springs from a hundred plants, enjoying the chirp
of the crickets and the songs of the birds. This is solid rest.

My garden, also, what little time I can be at Tuskegee, is another
source of rest and enjoyment. Somehow I like, as often as possible, to
touch nature, not something that is artificial or an imitation, but
the real thing. When I can leave my office in time so that I can spend
thirty or forty minutes in spading the ground, in planting seeds, in
digging about the plants, I feel that I am coming into contact with
something that is giving me strength for the many duties and hard places
that await me out in the big world. I pity the man or woman who has
never learned to enjoy nature and to get strength and inspiration out of
it.

Aside from the large number of fowls and animals kept by the school, I
keep individually a number of pigs and fowls of the best grades, and
in raising these I take a great deal of pleasure. I think the pig is
my favourite animal. Few things are more satisfactory to me than a
high-grade Berkshire or Poland China pig.

Games I care little for. I have never seen a game of football. In cards
I do not know one card from another. A game of old-fashioned marbles
with my two boys, once in a while, is all I care for in this direction.
I suppose I would care for games now if I had had any time in my youth
to give to them, but that was not possible.



Chapter XVI. Europe

In 1893 I was married to Miss Margaret James Murray, a native of
Mississippi, and a graduate of Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn., who
had come to Tuskegee as a teacher several years before, and at the time
we were married was filling the position of Lady Principal. Not only is
Mrs. Washington completely one with me in the work directly connected
with the school, relieving me of many burdens and perplexities, but
aside from her work on the school grounds, she carries on a mothers'
meeting in the town of Tuskegee, and a plantation work among the women,
children, and men who live in a settlement connected with a large
plantation about eight miles from Tuskegee. Both the mothers' meeting
and the plantation work are carried on, not only with a view to helping
those who are directly reached, but also for the purpose of furnishing
object-lessons in these two kinds of work that may be followed by our
students when they go out into the world for their own life-work.

Aside from these two enterprises, Mrs. Washington is also largely
responsible for a woman's club at the school which brings together,
twice a month, the women who live on the school grounds and those who
live near, for the discussion of some important topic. She is also
the President of what is known as the Federation of Southern Coloured
Women's Clubs, and is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the
National Federation of Coloured Women's Clubs.

Portia, the oldest of my three children, has learned dressmaking. She
has unusual ability in instrumental music. Aside from her studies at
Tuskegee, she has already begun to teach there.

Booker Taliaferro is my next oldest child. Young as he is, he has
already nearly mastered the brickmason's trade. He began working at this
trade when he was quite small, dividing his time between this and class
work; and he has developed great skill in the trade and a fondness for
it. He says that he is going to be an architect and brickmason. One of
the most satisfactory letters that I have ever received from any one
came to me from Booker last summer. When I left home for the summer, I
told him that he must work at his trade half of each day, and that the
other half of the day he could spend as he pleased. When I had been away
from home two weeks, I received the following letter from him:

Tuskegee, Alabama.

My dear Papa: Before you left home you told me to work at my trade half
of each day. I like my work so much that I want to work at my trade all
day. Besides, I want to earn all the money I can, so that when I go to
another school I shall have money to pay my expenses.

Your son,

Booker.


My youngest child, Ernest Davidson Washington, says that he is going to
be a physician. In addition to going to school, where he studies books
and has manual training, he regularly spends a portion of his time in
the office of our resident physician, and has already learned to do many
of the duties which pertain to a doctor's office.

The thing in my life which brings me the keenest regret is that my work
in connection with public affairs keeps me for so much of the time away
from my family, where, of all places in the world, I delight to be. I
always envy the individual whose life-work is so laid that he can spend
his evenings at home. I have sometimes thought that people who have this
rare privilege do not appreciate it as they should. It is such a rest
and relief to get away from crowds of people, and handshaking, and
travelling, to get home, even if it be for but a very brief while.

Another thing at Tuskegee out of which I get a great deal of pleasure
and satisfaction is in the meeting with our students, and teachers, and
their families, in the chapel for devotional exercises every evening at
half-past eight, the last thing before retiring for the night. It is an
inspiring sight when one stands on the platform there and sees before
him eleven or twelve hundred earnest young men and women; and one cannot
but feel that it is a privilege to help to guide them to a higher and
more useful life.

In the spring of 1899 there came to me what I might describe as almost
the greatest surprise of my life. Some good ladies in Boston arranged
a public meeting in the interests of Tuskegee, to be held in the Hollis
Street Theatre. This meeting was attended by large numbers of the best
people of Boston, of both races. Bishop Lawrence presided. In addition
to an address made by myself, Mr. Paul Lawrence Dunbar read from his
poems, and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois read an original sketch.

Some of those who attended this meeting noticed that I seemed unusually
tired, and some little time after the close of the meeting, one of the
ladies who had been interested in it asked me in a casual way if I had
ever been to Europe. I replied that I never had. She asked me if I had
ever thought of going, and I told her no; that it was something entirely
beyond me. This conversation soon passed out of my mind, but a few days
afterward I was informed that some friends in Boston, including Mr.
Francis J. Garrison, had raised a sum of money sufficient to pay all the
expenses of Mrs. Washington and myself during a three or four months'
trip to Europe. It was added with emphasis that we MUST go. A year
previous to this Mr. Garrison had attempted to get me to promise to go
to Europe for a summer's rest, with the understanding that he would be
responsible for raising the money among his friends for the expenses
of the trip. At that time such a journey seemed so entirely foreign to
anything that I should ever be able to undertake that I did confess I
did not give the matter very serious attention; but later Mr. Garrison
joined his efforts to those of the ladies whom I have mentioned, and
when their plans were made known to me Mr. Garrison not only had the
route mapped out, but had, I believe, selected the steamer upon which we
were to sail.

The whole thing was so sudden and so unexpected that I was completely
taken off my feet. I had been at work steadily for eighteen years in
connection with Tuskegee, and I had never thought of anything else but
ending my life in that way. Each day the school seemed to depend upon
me more largely for its daily expenses, and I told these Boston friends
that, while I thanked them sincerely for their thoughtfulness and
generosity, I could not go to Europe, for the reason that the school
could not live financially while I was absent. They then informed me
that Mr. Henry L. Higginson, and some other good friends who I know do
not want their names made public, were then raising a sum of money which
would be sufficient to keep the school in operation while I was away. At
this point I was compelled to surrender. Every avenue of escape had been
closed.

Deep down in my heart the whole thing seemed more like a dream than
like reality, and for a long time it was difficult for me to make myself
believe that I was actually going to Europe. I had been born and largely
reared in the lowest depths of slavery, ignorance, and poverty. In my
childhood I had suffered for want of a place to sleep, for lack of food,
clothing, and shelter. I had not had the privilege of sitting down to a
dining-table until I was quite well grown. Luxuries had always seemed to
me to be something meant for white people, not for my race. I had always
regarded Europe, and London, and Paris, much as I regarded heaven. And
now could it be that I was actually going to Europe? Such thoughts as
these were constantly with me.

Two other thoughts troubled me a good deal. I feared that people who
heard that Mrs. Washington and I were going to Europe might not know all
the circumstances, and might get the idea that we had become, as some
might say, "stuck up," and were trying to "show off." I recalled that
from my youth I had heard it said that too often, when people of my
race reached any degree of success, they were inclined to unduly exalt
themselves; to try and ape the wealthy, and in so doing to lose their
heads. The fear that people might think this of us haunted me a good
deal. Then, too, I could not see how my conscience would permit me to
spare the time from my work and be happy. It seemed mean and selfish in
me to be taking a vacation while others were at work, and while there
was so much that needed to be done. From the time I could remember, I
had always been at work, and I did not see how I could spend three or
four months in doing nothing. The fact was that I did not know how to
take a vacation.

Mrs. Washington had much the same difficulty in getting away, but she
was anxious to go because she thought that I needed the rest. There
were many important National questions bearing upon the life of the race
which were being agitated at that time, and this made it all the harder
for us to decide to go. We finally gave our Boston friends our promise
that we would go, and then they insisted that the date of our departure
be set as soon as possible. So we decided upon May 10. My good friend
Mr. Garrison kindly took charge of all the details necessary for the
success of the trip, and he, as well as other friends, gave us a great
number of letters of introduction to people in France and England, and
made other arrangements for our comfort and convenience abroad. Good-bys
were said at Tuskegee, and we were in New York May 9, ready to sail
the next day. Our daughter Portia, who was then studying in South
Framingham, Mass., came to New York to see us off. Mr. Scott, my
secretary, came with me to New York, in order that I might clear up the
last bit of business before I left. Other friends also came to New York
to see us off. Just before we went on board the steamer another pleasant
surprise came to us in the form of a letter from two generous ladies,
stating that they had decided to give us the money with which to erect a
new building to be used in properly housing all our industries for girls
at Tuskegee.

We were to sail on the Friesland, of the Red Star Line, and a beautiful
vessel she was. We went on board just before noon, the hour of sailing.
I had never before been on board a large ocean steamer, and the feeling
which took possession of me when I found myself there is rather hard
to describe. It was a feeling, I think, of awe mingled with delight. We
were agreeably surprised to find that the captain, as well as several of
the other officers, not only knew who we were, but was expecting us and
gave us a pleasant greeting. There were several passengers whom we
knew, including Senator Sewell, of New Jersey, and Edward Marshall, the
newspaper correspondent. I had just a little fear that we would not be
treated civilly by some of the passengers. This fear was based upon
what I had heard other people of my race, who had crossed the ocean, say
about unpleasant experiences in crossing the ocean in American vessels.
But in our case, from the captain down to the most humble servant, we
were treated with the greatest kindness. Nor was this kindness confined
to those who were connected with the steamer; it was shown by all the
passengers also. There were not a few Southern men and women on board,
and they were as cordial as those from other parts of the country.

As soon as the last good-bys were said, and the steamer had cut loose
from the wharf, the load of care, anxiety, and responsibility which I
had carried for eighteen years began to lift itself from my shoulders at
the rate, it seemed to me, of a pound a minute. It was the first time in
all those years that I had felt, even in a measure, free from care; and
my feeling of relief it is hard to describe on paper. Added to this was
the delightful anticipation of being in Europe soon. It all seemed more
like a dream than like a reality.

Mr. Garrison had thoughtfully arranged to have us have one of the most
comfortable rooms on the ship. The second or third day out I began
to sleep, and I think that I slept at the rate of fifteen hours a day
during the remainder of the ten days' passage. Then it was that I began
to understand how tired I really was. These long sleeps I kept up for a
month after we landed on the other side. It was such an unusual feeling
to wake up in the morning and realize that I had no engagements; did not
have to take a train at a certain hour; did not have an appointment to
meet some one, or to make an address, at a certain hour. How different
all this was from the experiences that I have been through when
travelling, when I have sometimes slept in three different beds in a
single night!

When Sunday came, the captain invited me to conduct the religious
services, but, not being a minister, I declined. The passengers,
however, began making requests that I deliver an address to them in the
dining-saloon some time during the voyage, and this I consented to do.
Senator Sewell presided at this meeting. After ten days of delightful
weather, during which I was not seasick for a day, we landed at the
interesting old city of Antwerp, in Belgium.

The next day after we landed happened to be one of those numberless
holidays which the people of those countries are in the habit of
observing. It was a bright, beautiful day. Our room in the hotel faced
the main public square, and the sights there--the people coming in
from the country with all kinds of beautiful flowers to sell, the women
coming in with their dogs drawing large, brightly polished cans filled
with milk, the people streaming into the cathedral--filled me with a
sense of newness that I had never before experienced.

After spending some time in Antwerp, we were invited to go with a part
of a half-dozen persons on a trip through Holland. This party included
Edward Marshall and some American artists who had come over on the
same steamer with us. We accepted the invitation, and enjoyed the trip
greatly. I think it was all the more interesting and instructive
because we went for most of the way on one of the slow, old-fashioned
canal-boats. This gave us an opportunity of seeing and studying the real
life of the people in the country districts. We went in this way as far
as Rotterdam, and later went to The Hague, where the Peace Conference
was then in session, and where we were kindly received by the American
representatives.

The thing that impressed itself most on me in Holland was the
thoroughness of the agriculture and the excellence of the Holstein
cattle. I never knew, before visiting Holland, how much it was possible
for people to get out of a small plot of ground. It seemed to me that
absolutely no land was wasted. It was worth a trip to Holland, too, just
to get a sight of three or four hundred fine Holstein cows grazing in
one of those intensely green fields.

From Holland we went to Belgium, and made a hasty trip through that
country, stopping at Brussels, where we visited the battlefield of
Waterloo. From Belgium we went direct to Paris, where we found that Mr.
Theodore Stanton, the son of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had kindly
provided accommodations for us. We had barely got settled in Paris
before an invitation came to me from the University Club of Paris to be
its guest at a banquet which was soon to be given. The other guests were
ex-President Benjamin Harrison and Archbishop Ireland, who were in Paris
at the time. The American Ambassador, General Horace Porter, presided at
the banquet. My address on this occasion seemed to give satisfaction to
those who heard it. General Harrison kindly devoted a large portion
of his remarks at dinner to myself and to the influence of the work at
Tuskegee on the American race question. After my address at this banquet
other invitations came to me, but I declined the most of them, knowing
that if I accepted them all, the object of my visit would be defeated.
I did, however, consent to deliver an address in the American chapel the
following Sunday morning, and at this meeting General Harrison, General
Porter, and other distinguished Americans were present.

Later we received a formal call from the American Ambassador, and were
invited to attend a reception at his residence. At this reception we
met many Americans, among them Justices Fuller and Harlan, of the United
States Supreme Court. During our entire stay of a month in Paris,
both the American Ambassador and his wife, as well as several other
Americans, were very kind to us.

While in Paris we saw a good deal of the now famous American Negro
painter, Mr. Henry O. Tanner, whom we had formerly known in America. It
was very satisfactory to find how well known Mr. Tanner was in the field
of art, and to note the high standing which all classes accorded to him.
When we told some Americans that we were going to the Luxembourg Palace
to see a painting by an American Negro, it was hard to convince them
that a Negro had been thus honoured. I do not believe that they were
really convinced of the fact until they saw the picture for themselves.
My acquaintance with Mr. Tanner reenforced in my mind the truth which
I am constantly trying to impress upon our students at Tuskegee--and on
our people throughout the country, as far as I can reach them with
my voice--that any man, regardless of colour, will be recognized and
rewarded just in proportion as he learns to do something well--learns to
do it better than some one else--however humble the thing may be. As
I have said, I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it
learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing
so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns
to make its services of indispensable value. This was the spirit
that inspired me in my first effort at Hampton, when I was given the
opportunity to sweep and dust that schoolroom. In a degree I felt that
my whole future life depended upon the thoroughness with which I cleaned
that room, and I was determined to do it so well that no one could find
any fault with the job. Few people ever stopped, I found, when looking
at his pictures, to inquire whether Mr. Tanner was a Negro painter, a
French painter, or a German painter. They simply knew that he was able
to produce something which the world wanted--a great painting--and the
matter of his colour did not enter into their minds. When a Negro girl
learns to cook, to wash dishes, to sew, or write a book, or a Negro boy
learns to groom horses, or to grow sweet potatoes, or to produce butter,
or to build a house, or to be able to practise medicine, as well or
better than some one else, they will be rewarded regardless of race or
colour. In the long run, the world is going to have the best, and any
difference in race, religion, or previous history will not long keep the
world from what it wants.

I think that the whole future of my race hinges on the question as to
whether or not it can make itself of such indispensable value that the
people in the town and the state where we reside will feel that our
presence is necessary to the happiness and well-being of the community.
No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual,
and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without
proper reward. This is a great human law which cannot be permanently
nullified.

The love of pleasure and excitement which seems in a large measure to
possess the French people impressed itself upon me. I think they are
more noted in this respect than is true of the people of my own race. In
point of morality and moral earnestness I do not believe that the French
are ahead of my own race in America. Severe competition and the great
stress of life have led them to learn to do things more thoroughly and
to exercise greater economy; but time, I think, will bring my race to
the same point. In the matter of truth and high honour I do not believe
that the average Frenchman is ahead of the American Negro; while so far
as mercy and kindness to dumb animals go, I believe that my race is far
ahead. In fact, when I left France, I had more faith in the future of
the black man in America than I had ever possessed.

From Paris we went to London, and reached there early in July, just
about the height of the London social season. Parliament was in session,
and there was a great deal of gaiety. Mr. Garrison and other friends had
provided us with a large number of letters of introduction, and they
had also sent letters to other persons in different parts of the United
Kingdom, apprising these people of our coming. Very soon after reaching
London we were flooded with invitations to attend all manner of social
functions, and a great many invitations came to me asking that I deliver
public addresses. The most of these invitations I declined, for the
reason that I wanted to rest. Neither were we able to accept more than
a small proportion of the other invitations. The Rev. Dr. Brooke
Herford and Mrs. Herford, whom I had known in Boston, consulted with
the American Ambassador, the Hon. Joseph Choate, and arranged for me to
speak at a public meeting to be held in Essex Hall. Mr. Choate kindly
consented to preside. The meeting was largely attended. There were many
distinguished persons present, among them several members of Parliament,
including Mr. James Bryce, who spoke at the meeting. What the American
Ambassador said in introducing me, as well as a synopsis of what I said,
was widely published in England and in the American papers at the time.
Dr. and Mrs. Herford gave Mrs. Washington and myself a reception,
at which we had the privilege of meeting some of the best people in
England. Throughout our stay in London Ambassador Choate was most kind
and attentive to us. At the Ambassador's reception I met, for the first
time, Mark Twain.

We were the guests several times of Mrs. T. Fisher Unwin, the daughter
of the English statesman, Richard Cobden. It seemed as if both Mr. and
Mrs. Unwin could not do enough for our comfort and happiness. Later, for
nearly a week, we were the guests of the daughter of John Bright, now
Mrs. Clark, of Street, England. Both Mr. and Mrs. Clark, with their
daughter, visited us at Tuskegee the next year. In Birmingham, England,
we were the guests for several days of Mr. Joseph Sturge, whose father
was a great abolitionist and friend of Whittier and Garrison. It was
a great privilege to meet throughout England those who had known and
honoured the late William Lloyd Garrison, the Hon. Frederick Douglass,
and other abolitionists. The English abolitionists with whom we came
in contact never seemed to tire of talking about these two Americans.
Before going to England I had had no proper conception of the deep
interest displayed by the abolitionists of England in the cause of
freedom, nor did I realize the amount of substantial help given by them.

In Bristol, England, both Mrs. Washington and I spoke at the Women's
Liberal Club. I was also the principal speaker at the Commencement
exercises of the Royal College for the Blind. These exercises were held
in the Crystal Palace, and the presiding officer was the late Duke of
Westminster, who was said to be, I believe, the richest man in England,
if not in the world. The Duke, as well as his wife and their daughter,
seemed to be pleased with what I said, and thanked me heartily. Through
the kindness of Lady Aberdeen, my wife and I were enabled to go with a
party of those who were attending the International Congress of Women,
then in session in London, to see Queen Victoria, at Windsor Castle,
where, afterward, we were all the guests of her Majesty at tea. In our
party was Miss Susan B. Anthony, and I was deeply impressed with the
fact that one did not often get an opportunity to see, during the same
hour, two women so remarkable in different ways as Susan B. Anthony and
Queen Victoria.

In the House of Commons, which we visited several times, we met Sir
Henry M. Stanley. I talked with him about Africa and its relation to the
American Negro, and after my interview with him I became more convinced
than ever that there was no hope of the American Negro's improving his
condition by emigrating to Africa.

On various occasions Mrs. Washington and I were the guests of Englishmen
in their country homes, where, I think, one sees the Englishman at his
best. In one thing, at least, I feel sure that the English are ahead of
Americans, and that is, that they have learned how to get more out of
life. The home life of the English seems to me to be about as perfect as
anything can be. Everything moves like clockwork. I was impressed,
too, with the deference that the servants show to their "masters" and
"mistresses,"--terms which I suppose would not be tolerated in America.
The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and
so he perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class of servants
in America has yet reached. In our country the servant expects to
become, in a few years, a "master" himself. Which system is preferable?
I will not venture an answer.

Another thing that impressed itself upon me throughout England was the
high regard that all classes have for law and order, and the ease and
thoroughness with which everything is done. The Englishmen, I found,
took plenty of time for eating, as for everything else. I am not
sure if, in the long run, they do not accomplish as much or more than
rushing, nervous Americans do.

My visit to England gave me a higher regard for the nobility than I had
had. I had no idea that they were so generally loved and respected by
the classes, nor had I any correct conception of how much time and
money they spent in works of philanthropy, and how much real heart they
put into this work. My impression had been that they merely spent money
freely and had a "good time."

It was hard for me to get accustomed to speaking to English audiences.
The average Englishman is so serious, and is so tremendously in earnest
about everything, that when I told a story that would have made an
American audience roar with laughter, the Englishmen simply looked me
straight in the face without even cracking a smile.

When the Englishman takes you into his heart and friendship, he binds
you there as with cords of steel, and I do not believe that there are
many other friendships that are so lasting or so satisfactory. Perhaps
I can illustrate this point in no better way than by relating the
following incident. Mrs. Washington and I were invited to attend a
reception given by the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, at Stafford
House--said to be the finest house in London; I may add that I believe
the Duchess of Sutherland is said to be the most beautiful woman in
England. There must have been at least three hundred persons at this
reception. Twice during the evening the Duchess sought us out for a
conversation, and she asked me to write her when we got home, and tell
her more about the work at Tuskegee. This I did. When Christmas came
we were surprised and delighted to receive her photograph with her
autograph on it. The correspondence has continued, and we now feel that
in the Duchess of Sutherland we have one of our warmest friends.

After three months in Europe we sailed from Southampton in the steamship
St. Louis. On this steamer there was a fine library that had been
presented to the ship by the citizens of St. Louis, Mo. In this library
I found a life of Frederick Douglass, which I began reading. I became
especially interested in Mr. Douglass's description of the way he was
treated on shipboard during his first or second visit to England. In
this description he told how he was not permitted to enter the cabin,
but had to confine himself to the deck of the ship. A few minutes after
I had finished reading this description I was waited on by a committee
of ladies and gentlemen with the request that I deliver an address at
a concert which was to begin the following evening. And yet there are
people who are bold enough to say that race feeling in America is not
growing less intense! At this concert the Hon. Benjamin B. Odell, Jr.,
the present governor of New York, presided. I was never given a more
cordial hearing anywhere. A large proportion of the passengers were
Southern people. After the concert some of the passengers proposed that
a subscription be raised to help the work at Tuskegee, and the money to
support several scholarships was the result.

While we were in Paris I was very pleasantly surprised to receive the
following invitation from the citizens of West Virginia and of the city
near which I had spent my boyhood days:--

Charleston, W. Va., May 16, 1899.

Professor Booker T. Washington, Paris, France:

Dear Sir: Many of the best citizens of West Virginia have united in
liberal expressions of admiration and praise of your worth and work, and
desire that on your return from Europe you should favour them with
your presence and with the inspiration of your words. We must sincerely
indorse this move, and on behalf of the citizens of Charleston extend
to your our most cordial invitation to have you come to us, that we may
honour you who have done so much by your life and work to honour us.

We are,

Very truly yours,

The Common Council of the City of Charleston,

By W. Herman Smith, Mayor.


This invitation from the City Council of Charleston was accompanied by
the following:--

Professor Booker T. Washington, Paris, France:

Dear Sir: We, the citizens of Charleston and West Virginia, desire to
express our pride in you and the splendid career that you have thus
far accomplished, and ask that we be permitted to show our pride and
interest in a substantial way.

Your recent visit to your old home in our midst awoke within us the
keenest regret that we were not permitted to hear you and render some
substantial aid to your work, before you left for Europe.

In view of the foregoing, we earnestly invite you to share the
hospitality of our city upon your return from Europe, and give us the
opportunity to hear you and put ourselves in touch with your work in a
way that will be most gratifying to yourself, and that we may receive
the inspiration of your words and presence.

An early reply to this invitation, with an indication of the time you
may reach our city, will greatly oblige,

Yours very respectfully,

The Charleston Daily Gazette, The Daily Mail-Tribune; G.W. Atkinson,
Governor; E.L. Boggs, Secretary to Governor; Wm. M.O. Dawson, Secretary
of State; L.M. La Follette, Auditor; J.R. Trotter, Superintendent of
Schools; E.W. Wilson, ex-Governor; W.A. MacCorkle, ex-Governor; John
Q. Dickinson, President Kanawha Valley Bank; L. Prichard, President
Charleston National Bank; Geo. S. Couch, President Kanawha National
Bank; Ed. Reid, Cashier Kanawha National Bank; Geo. S. Laidley,
Superintended City Schools; L.E. McWhorter, President Board of
Education; Chas. K. Payne, wholesale merchant; and many others.


This invitation, coming as it did from the City Council, the state
officers, and all the substantial citizens of both races of the
community where I had spent my boyhood, and from which I had gone a
few years before, unknown, in poverty and ignorance, in quest of an
education, not only surprised me, but almost unmanned me. I could not
understand what I had done to deserve it all.

I accepted the invitation, and at the appointed day was met at the
railway station at Charleston by a committee headed by ex-Governor W.A.
MacCorkle, and composed of men of both races. The public reception was
held in the Opera-House at Charleston. The Governor of the state, the
Hon. George W. Atkinson, presided, and an address of welcome was made
by ex-Governor MacCorkle. A prominent part in the reception was taken by
the coloured citizens. The Opera-House was filled with citizens of both
races, and among the white people were many for whom I had worked when
I was a boy. The next day Governor and Mrs. Atkinson gave me a public
reception at the State House, which was attended by all classes.

Not long after this the coloured people in Atlanta, Georgia, gave me
a reception at which the Governor of the state presided, and a similar
reception was given me in New Orleans, which was presided over by the
Mayor of the city. Invitations came from many other places which I was
not able to accept.



Chapter XVII. Last Words

Before going to Europe some events came into my life which were
great surprises to me. In fact, my whole life has largely been one of
surprises. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant,
unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his
level best each day of his life--that is, tries to make each day reach
as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful
living. I pity the man, black or white, who has never experienced the
joy and satisfaction that come to one by reason of an effort to assist
in making some one else more useful and more happy.

Six months before he died, and nearly a year after he had been stricken
with paralysis, General Armstrong expressed a wish to visit Tuskegee
again before he passed away. Notwithstanding the fact that he had lost
the use of his limbs to such an extent that he was practically helpless,
his wish was gratified, and he was brought to Tuskegee. The owners of
the Tuskegee Railroad, white men living in the town, offered to run a
special train, without cost, out of the main station--Chehaw, five miles
away--to meet him. He arrived on the school grounds about nine o'clock
in the evening. Some one had suggested that we give the General a
"pine-knot torchlight reception." This plan was carried out, and the
moment that his carriage entered the school grounds he began passing
between two lines of lighted and waving "fat pine" wood knots held by
over a thousand students and teachers. The whole thing was so novel and
surprising that the General was completely overcome with happiness. He
remained a guest in my home for nearly two months, and, although almost
wholly without the use of voice or limb, he spent nearly every hour in
devising ways and means to help the South. Time and time again he said
to me, during this visit, that it was not only the duty of the country
to assist in elevating the Negro of the South, but the poor white man
as well. At the end of his visit I resolved anew to devote myself more
earnestly than ever to the cause which was so near his heart. I said
that if a man in his condition was willing to think, work, and act, I
should not be wanting in furthering in every possible way the wish of
his heart.

The death of General Armstrong, a few weeks later, gave me the privilege
of getting acquainted with one of the finest, most unselfish, and most
attractive men that I have ever come in contact with. I refer to the
Rev. Dr. Hollis B. Frissell, now the Principal of the Hampton Institute,
and General Armstrong's successor. Under the clear, strong, and
almost perfect leadership of Dr. Frissell, Hampton has had a career of
prosperity and usefulness that is all that the General could have wished
for. It seems to be the constant effort of Dr. Frissell to hide his own
great personality behind that of General Armstrong--to make himself of
"no reputation" for the sake of the cause.

More than once I have been asked what was the greatest surprise that
ever came to me. I have little hesitation in answering that question. It
was the following letter, which came to me one Sunday morning when I was
sitting on the veranda of my home at Tuskegee, surrounded by my wife and
three children:--

Harvard University, Cambridge, May 28, 1896.

President Booker T. Washington,

My Dear Sir: Harvard University desired to confer on you at the
approaching Commencement an honorary degree; but it is our custom to
confer degrees only on gentlemen who are present. Our Commencement
occurs this year on June 24, and your presence would be desirable
from about noon till about five o'clock in the afternoon. Would it be
possible for you to be in Cambridge on that day?

Believe me, with great regard,

Very truly yours,

Charles W. Eliot.


This was a recognition that had never in the slightest manner entered
into my mind, and it was hard for me to realize that I was to be
honoured by a degree from the oldest and most renowned university in
America. As I sat upon my veranda, with this letter in my hand, tears
came into my eyes. My whole former life--my life as a slave on the
plantation, my work in the coal-mine, the times when I was without food
and clothing, when I made my bed under a sidewalk, my struggles for an
education, the trying days I had had at Tuskegee, days when I did
not know where to turn for a dollar to continue the work there, the
ostracism and sometimes oppression of my race,--all this passed before
me and nearly overcame me.

I had never sought or cared for what the world calls fame. I have always
looked upon fame as something to be used in accomplishing good. I have
often said to my friends that if I can use whatever prominence may have
come to me as an instrument with which to do good, I am content to have
it. I care for it only as a means to be used for doing good, just as
wealth may be used. The more I come into contact with wealthy people,
the more I believe that they are growing in the direction of looking
upon their money simply as an instrument which God has placed in their
hand for doing good with. I never go to the office of Mr. John D.
Rockefeller, who more than once has been generous to Tuskegee, without
being reminded of this. The close, careful, and minute investigation
that he always makes in order to be sure that every dollar that he gives
will do the most good--an investigation that is just as searching as if
he were investing money in a business enterprise--convinces me that the
growth in this direction is most encouraging.

At nine o'clock, on the morning of June 24, I met President Eliot, the
Board of Overseers of Harvard University, and the other guests, at the
designated place on the university grounds, for the purpose of being
escorted to Sanders Theatre, where the Commencement exercises were to be
held and degrees conferred. Among others invited to be present for the
purpose of receiving a degree at this time were General Nelson A. Miles,
Dr. Bell, the inventor of the Bell telephone, Bishop Vincent, and the
Rev. Minot J. Savage. We were placed in line immediately behind the
President and the Board of Overseers, and directly afterward the
Governor of Massachusetts, escorted by the Lancers, arrived and took his
place in the line of march by the side of President Eliot. In the line
there were also various other officers and professors, clad in cap and
gown. In this order we marched to Sanders Theatre, where, after the
usual Commencement exercises, came the conferring of the honorary
degrees. This, it seems, is always considered the most interesting
feature at Harvard. It is not known, until the individuals appear, upon
whom the honorary degrees are to be conferred, and those receiving these
honours are cheered by the students and others in proportion to
their popularity. During the conferring of the degrees excitement and
enthusiasm are at the highest pitch.

When my name was called, I rose, and President Eliot, in beautiful and
strong English, conferred upon me the degree of Master of Arts. After
these exercises were over, those who had received honorary degrees were
invited to lunch with the President. After the lunch we were formed in
line again, and were escorted by the Marshal of the day, who that year
happened to be Bishop William Lawrence, through the grounds, where, at
different points, those who had been honoured were called by name and
received the Harvard yell. This march ended at Memorial Hall, where
the alumni dinner was served. To see over a thousand strong men,
representing all that is best in State, Church, business, and
education, with the glow and enthusiasm of college loyalty and college
pride,--which has, I think, a peculiar Harvard flavour,--is a sight that
does not easily fade from memory.

Among the speakers after dinner were President Eliot, Governor Roger
Wolcott, General Miles, Dr. Minot J. Savage, the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge,
and myself. When I was called upon, I said, among other things:--

It would in some measure relieve my embarrassment if I could, even in
a slight degree, feel myself worthy of the great honour which you do me
to-day. Why you have called me from the Black Belt of the South, from
among my humble people, to share in the honours of this occasion, is not
for me to explain; and yet it may not be inappropriate for me to suggest
that it seems to me that one of the most vital questions that touch
our American life is how to bring the strong, wealthy, and learned into
helpful touch with the poorest, most ignorant, and humblest, and at the
same time make one appreciate the vitalizing, strengthening influence of
the other. How shall we make the mansion on yon Beacon Street feel
and see the need of the spirits in the lowliest cabin in Alabama
cotton-fields or Louisiana sugar-bottoms? This problem Harvard
University is solving, not by bringing itself down, but by bringing the
masses up.

              *   *   *   *   *

If my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of my people
and the bringing about of better relations between your race and mine, I
assure you from this day it will mean doubly more. In the economy of God
there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed--there is
but one for a race. This country demands that every race shall measure
itself by the American standard. By it a race must rise or fall, succeed
or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little.
During the next half-century and more, my race must continue passing
through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our
patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong,
to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; in our
ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial
for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet
small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all.


As this was the first time that a New England university had conferred
an honorary degree upon a Negro, it was the occasion of much newspaper
comment throughout the country. A correspondent of a New York paper
said:--

When the name of Booker T. Washington was called, and he arose to
acknowledge and accept, there was such an outburst of applause as
greeted no other name except that of the popular soldier patriot,
General Miles. The applause was not studied and stiff, sympathetic and
condoling; it was enthusiasm and admiration. Every part of the audience
from pit to gallery joined in, and a glow covered the cheeks of those
around me, proving sincere appreciation of the rising struggle of an
ex-slave and the work he has accomplished for his race.


A Boston paper said, editorially:--

In conferring the honorary degree of Master of Arts upon the Principal
of Tuskegee Institute, Harvard University has honoured itself as well
as the object of this distinction. The work which Professor Booker T.
Washington has accomplished for the education, good citizenship,
and popular enlightenment in his chosen field of labour in the South
entitles him to rank with our national benefactors. The university which
can claim him on its list of sons, whether in regular course or honoris
causa, may be proud.

It has been mentioned that Mr. Washington is the first of his race
to receive an honorary degree from a New England university. This, in
itself, is a distinction. But the degree was not conferred because Mr.
Washington is a coloured man, or because he was born in slavery, but
because he has shown, by his work for the elevation of the people of the
Black Belt of the South, a genius and a broad humanity which count for
greatness in any man, whether his skin be white or black.


Another Boston paper said:--

It is Harvard which, first among New England colleges, confers an
honorary degree upon a black man. No one who has followed the history of
Tuskegee and its work can fail to admire the courage, persistence, and
splendid common sense of Booker T. Washington. Well may Harvard honour
the ex-slave, the value of whose services, alike to his race and
country, only the future can estimate.


The correspondent of the New York Times wrote:--

All the speeches were enthusiastically received, but the coloured man
carried off the oratorical honours, and the applause which broke out
when he had finished was vociferous and long-continued.


Soon after I began work at Tuskegee I formed a resolution, in the secret
of my heart, that I would try to build up a school that would be of
so much service to the country that the President of the United States
would one day come to see it. This was, I confess, rather a bold
resolution, and for a number of years I kept it hidden in my own
thoughts, not daring to share it with any one.

In November, 1897, I made the first move in this direction, and that was
in securing a visit from a member of President McKinley's Cabinet,
the Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture. He came to deliver
an address at the formal opening of the Slater-Armstrong Agricultural
Building, our first large building to be used for the purpose of giving
training to our students in agriculture and kindred branches.

In the fall of 1898 I heard that President McKinley was likely to visit
Atlanta, Georgia, for the purpose of taking part in the Peace Jubilee
exercises to be held there to commemorate the successful close of the
Spanish-American war. At this time I had been hard at work, together
with our teachers, for eighteen years, trying to build up a school that
we thought would be of service to the Nation, and I determined to make
a direct effort to secure a visit from the President and his Cabinet. I
went to Washington, and I was not long in the city before I found my way
to the White House. When I got there I found the waiting rooms full of
people, and my heart began to sink, for I feared there would not be much
chance of my seeing the President that day, if at all. But, at any rate,
I got an opportunity to see Mr. J. Addison Porter, the secretary to the
President, and explained to him my mission. Mr. Porter kindly sent my
card directly to the President, and in a few minutes word came from Mr.
McKinley that he would see me.

How any man can see so many people of all kinds, with all kinds of
errands, and do so much hard work, and still keep himself calm, patient,
and fresh for each visitor in the way that President McKinley does, I
cannot understand. When I saw the President he kindly thanked me for the
work which we were doing at Tuskegee for the interests of the country. I
then told him, briefly, the object of my visit. I impressed upon him the
fact that a visit from the Chief Executive of the Nation would not only
encourage our students and teachers, but would help the entire race. He
seemed interested, but did not make a promise to go to Tuskegee, for the
reason that his plans about going to Atlanta were not then fully made;
but he asked me to call the matter to his attention a few weeks later.

By the middle of the following month the President had definitely
decided to attend the Peace Jubilee at Atlanta. I went to Washington
again and saw him, with a view of getting him to extend his trip to
Tuskegee. On this second visit Mr. Charles W. Hare, a prominent white
citizen of Tuskegee, kindly volunteered to accompany me, to reenforce my
invitation with one from the white people of Tuskegee and the vicinity.

Just previous to my going to Washington the second time, the country
had been excited, and the coloured people greatly depressed, because of
several severe race riots which had occurred at different points in the
South. As soon as I saw the President, I perceived that his heart was
greatly burdened by reason of these race disturbances. Although there
were many people waiting to see him, he detained me for some time,
discussing the condition and prospects of the race. He remarked several
times that he was determined to show his interest and faith in the race,
not merely in words, but by acts. When I told him that I thought that
at that time scarcely anything would go farther in giving hope and
encouragement to the race than the fact that the President of the Nation
would be willing to travel one hundred and forty miles out of his way to
spend a day at a Negro institution, he seemed deeply impressed.

While I was with the President, a white citizen of Atlanta, a Democrat
and an ex-slaveholder, came into the room, and the President asked his
opinion as to the wisdom of his going to Tuskegee. Without hesitation
the Atlanta man replied that it was the proper thing for him to do. This
opinion was reenforced by that friend of the race, Dr. J.L.M. Curry.
The President promised that he would visit our school on the 16th of
December.

When it became known that the President was going to visit our school,
the white citizens of the town of Tuskegee--a mile distant from the
school--were as much pleased as were our students and teachers. The
white people of this town, including both men and women, began arranging
to decorate the town, and to form themselves into committees for the
purpose of cooperating with the officers of our school in order that the
distinguished visitor might have a fitting reception. I think I never
realized before this how much the white people of Tuskegee and vicinity
thought of our institution. During the days when we were preparing for
the President's reception, dozens of these people came to me and said
that, while they did not want to push themselves into prominence, if
there was anything they could do to help, or to relieve me personally,
I had but to intimate it and they would be only too glad to assist. In
fact, the thing that touched me almost as deeply as the visit of the
President itself was the deep pride which all classes of citizens in
Alabama seemed to take in our work.

The morning of December 16th brought to the little city of Tuskegee
such a crowd as it had never seen before. With the President came Mrs.
McKinley and all of the Cabinet officers but one; and most of them
brought their wives or some members of their families. Several prominent
generals came, including General Shafter and General Joseph Wheeler, who
were recently returned from the Spanish-American war. There was also a
host of newspaper correspondents. The Alabama Legislature was in session
in Montgomery at this time. This body passed a resolution to adjourn
for the purpose of visiting Tuskegee. Just before the arrival of the
President's party the Legislature arrived, headed by the governor and
other state officials.

The citizens of Tuskegee had decorated the town from the station to
the school in a generous manner. In order to economize in the matter
of time, we arranged to have the whole school pass in review before the
President. Each student carried a stalk of sugar-cane with some open
bolls of cotton fastened to the end of it. Following the students the
work of all departments of the school passed in review, displayed on
"floats" drawn by horses, mules, and oxen. On these floats we tried
to exhibit not only the present work of the school, but to show the
contrasts between the old methods of doing things and the new. As an
example, we showed the old method of dairying in contrast with the
improved methods, the old methods of tilling the soil in contrast with
the new, the old methods of cooking and housekeeping in contrast with
the new. These floats consumed an hour and a half of time in passing.

In his address in our large, new chapel, which the students had recently
completed, the President said, among other things:--

To meet you under such pleasant auspices and to have the opportunity
of a personal observation of your work is indeed most gratifying. The
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is ideal in its conception, and
has already a large and growing reputation in the country, and is
not unknown abroad. I congratulate all who are associated in this
undertaking for the good work which it is doing in the education of its
students to lead lives of honour and usefulness, thus exalting the race
for which it was established.

Nowhere, I think, could a more delightful location have been chosen for
this unique educational experiment, which has attracted the attention
and won the support even of conservative philanthropists in all sections
of the country.

To speak of Tuskegee without paying special tribute to Booker T.
Washington's genius and perseverance would be impossible. The inception
of this noble enterprise was his, and he deserves high credit for it.
His was the enthusiasm and enterprise which made its steady progress
possible and established in the institution its present high standard
of accomplishment. He has won a worthy reputation as one of the great
leaders of his race, widely known and much respected at home and abroad
as an accomplished educator, a great orator, and a true philanthropist.


The Hon. John D. Long, the Secretary of the Navy, said in part:--

I cannot make a speech to-day. My heart is too full--full of hope,
admiration, and pride for my countrymen of both sections and both
colours. I am filled with gratitude and admiration for your work, and
from this time forward I shall have absolute confidence in your progress
and in the solution of the problem in which you are engaged.

The problem, I say, has been solved. A picture has been presented to-day
which should be put upon canvas with the pictures of Washington and
Lincoln, and transmitted to future time and generations--a picture which
the press of the country should spread broadcast over the land, a most
dramatic picture, and that picture is this: The President of the United
States standing on this platform; on one side the Governor of Alabama,
on the other, completing the trinity, a representative of a race only a
few years ago in bondage, the coloured President of the Tuskegee Normal
and Industrial Institute.

God bless the President under whose majesty such a scene as that is
presented to the American people. God bless the state of Alabama, which
is showing that it can deal with this problem for itself. God bless the
orator, philanthropist, and disciple of the Great Master--who, if he
were on earth, would be doing the same work--Booker T. Washington.


Postmaster General Smith closed the address which he made with these
words:--

We have witnessed many spectacles within the last few days. We have seen
the magnificent grandeur and the magnificent achievements of one of the
great metropolitan cities of the South. We have seen heroes of the war
pass by in procession. We have seen floral parades. But I am sure
my colleagues will agree with me in saying that we have witnessed no
spectacle more impressive and more encouraging, more inspiring for our
future, than that which we have witnessed here this morning.


Some days after the President returned to Washington I received the
letter which follows:--

Executive Mansion, Washington, Dec. 23, 1899.

Dear Sir: By this mail I take pleasure in sending you engrossed copies
of the souvenir of the visit of the President to your institution.
These sheets bear the autographs of the President and the members of the
Cabinet who accompanied him on the trip. Let me take this opportunity of
congratulating you most heartily and sincerely upon the great success
of the exercises provided for and entertainment furnished us under your
auspices during our visit to Tuskegee. Every feature of the programme
was perfectly executed and was viewed or participated in with the
heartiest satisfaction by every visitor present. The unique exhibition
which you gave of your pupils engaged in their industrial vocations was
not only artistic but thoroughly impressive. The tribute paid by the
President and his Cabinet to your work was none too high, and forms
a most encouraging augury, I think, for the future prosperity of your
institution. I cannot close without assuring you that the modesty shown
by yourself in the exercises was most favourably commented upon by all
the members of our party.

With best wishes for the continued advance of your most useful and
patriotic undertaking, kind personal regards, and the compliments of the
season, believe me, always,

Very sincerely yours,

John Addison Porter,

Secretary to the President.

To President Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute, Tuskegee, Ala.



Twenty years have now passed since I made the first humble effort at
Tuskegee, in a broken-down shanty and an old hen-house, without owning
a dollar's worth of property, and with but one teacher and thirty
students. At the present time the institution owns twenty-three hundred
acres of land, one thousand of which are under cultivation each year,
entirely by student labour. There are now upon the grounds, counting
large and small, sixty-six buildings; and all except four of these have
been almost wholly erected by the labour of our students. While the
students are at work upon the land and in erecting buildings, they are
taught, by competent instructors, the latest methods of agriculture and
the trades connected with building.

There are in constant operation at the school, in connection with
thorough academic and religious training, thirty industrial departments.
All of these teach industries at which our men and women can find
immediate employment as soon as they leave the institution. The only
difficulty now is that the demand for our graduates from both white and
black people in the South is so great that we cannot supply more than
one-half the persons for whom applications come to us. Neither have we
the buildings nor the money for current expenses to enable us to admit
to the school more than one-half the young men and women who apply to us
for admission.

In our industrial teaching we keep three things in mind: first, that the
student shall be so educated that he shall be enabled to meet conditions
as they exist now, in the part of the South where he lives--in a word,
to be able to do the thing which the world wants done; second, that
every student who graduates from the school shall have enough skill,
coupled with intelligence and moral character, to enable him to make a
living for himself and others; third, to send every graduate out feeling
and knowing that labour is dignified and beautiful--to make each
one love labour instead of trying to escape it. In addition to the
agricultural training which we give to young men, and the training
given to our girls in all the usual domestic employments, we now train
a number of girls in agriculture each year. These girls are taught
gardening, fruit-growing, dairying, bee-culture, and poultry-raising.

While the institution is in no sense denominational, we have a
department known as the Phelps Hall Bible Training School, in which
a number of students are prepared for the ministry and other forms
of Christian work, especially work in the country districts. What is
equally important, each one of the students works half of each day at
some industry, in order to get skill and the love of work, so that when
he goes out from the institution he is prepared to set the people with
whom he goes to labour a proper example in the matter of industry.

The value of our property is now over $700,000. If we add to this our
endowment fund, which at present is $1,000,000, the value of the total
property is now $1,700,000. Aside from the need for more buildings and
for money for current expenses, the endowment fund should be increased
to at least $3,000,000. The annual current expenses are now about
$150,000. The greater part of this I collect each year by going from
door to door and from house to house. All of our property is free from
mortgage, and is deeded to an undenominational board of trustees who
have the control of the institution.

From thirty students the number has grown to fourteen hundred, coming
from twenty-seven states and territories, from Africa, Cuba, Porto Rico,
Jamaica, and other foreign countries. In our departments there are one
hundred and ten officers and instructors; and if we add the families of
our instructors, we have a constant population upon our grounds of not
far from seventeen hundred people.

I have often been asked how we keep so large a body of people together,
and at the same time keep them out of mischief. There are two answers:
that the men and women who come to us for an education are in earnest;
and that everybody is kept busy. The following outline of our daily work
will testify to this:--

5 a.m., rising bell; 5.50 a.m., warning breakfast bell; 6 a.m.,
breakfast bell; 6.20 a.m., breakfast over; 6.20 to 6.50 a.m., rooms
are cleaned; 6.50, work bell; 7.30, morning study hours; 8.20, morning
school bell; 8.25, inspection of young men's toilet in ranks; 8.40,
devotional exercises in chapel; 8.55, "five minutes with the daily
news;" 9 a.m., class work begins; 12, class work closes; 12.15 p.m.,
dinner; 1 p.m., work bell; 1.30 p.m., class work begins; 3.30 p.m.,
class work ends; 5.30 p.m., bell to "knock off" work; 6 p.m., supper;
7.10 p.m., evening prayers; 7.30 p.m., evening study hours; 8.45 p.m.,
evening study hour closes; 9.20 p.m., warning retiring bell; 9.30 p.m.,
retiring bell.

We try to keep constantly in mind the fact that the worth of the school
is to be judged by its graduates. Counting those who have finished
the full course, together with those who have taken enough training to
enable them to do reasonably good work, we can safely say that at least
six thousand men and women from Tuskegee are now at work in different
parts of the South; men and women who, by their own example or by
direct efforts, are showing the masses of our race now to improve their
material, educational, and moral and religious life. What is equally
important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and self-control
which is causing better relations to exist between the races, and is
causing the Southern white man to learn to believe in the value of
educating the men and women of my race. Aside from this, there is the
influence that is constantly being exerted through the mothers' meeting
and the plantation work conducted by Mrs. Washington.

Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in the
buying of land, improving homes, saving money, in education, and in
high moral characters are remarkable. Whole communities are fast being
revolutionized through the instrumentality of these men and women.

Ten years ago I organized at Tuskegee the first Negro Conference. This
is an annual gathering which now brings to the school eight or nine
hundred representative men and women of the race, who come to spend
a day in finding out what the actual industrial, mental, and moral
conditions of the people are, and in forming plans for improvement. Out
from this central Negro Conference at Tuskegee have grown numerous state
and local conferences which are doing the same kind of work. As a result
of the influence of these gatherings, one delegate reported at the last
annual meeting that ten families in his community had bought and paid
for homes. On the day following the annual Negro Conference, there is
the "Workers' Conference." This is composed of officers and teachers who
are engaged in educational work in the larger institutions in the South.
The Negro Conference furnishes a rare opportunity for these workers to
study the real condition of the rank and file of the people.

In the summer of 1900, with the assistance of such prominent coloured
men as Mr. T. Thomas Fortune, who has always upheld my hands in every
effort, I organized the National Negro Business League, which held its
first meeting in Boston, and brought together for the first time a large
number of the coloured men who are engaged in various lines of trade
or business in different parts of the United States. Thirty states were
represented at our first meeting. Out of this national meeting grew
state and local business leagues.

In addition to looking after the executive side of the work at Tuskegee,
and raising the greater part of the money for the support of the school,
I cannot seem to escape the duty of answering at least a part of the
calls which come to me unsought to address Southern white audiences and
audiences of my own race, as well as frequent gatherings in the North.
As to how much of my time is spent in this way, the following clipping
from a Buffalo (N.Y.) paper will tell. This has reference to an occasion
when I spoke before the National Educational Association in that city.

Booker T. Washington, the foremost educator among the coloured people of
the world, was a very busy man from the time he arrived in the city the
other night from the West and registered at the Iroquois. He had hardly
removed the stains of travel when it was time to partake of supper.
Then he held a public levee in the parlours of the Iroquois until eight
o'clock. During that time he was greeted by over two hundred eminent
teachers and educators from all parts of the United States. Shortly
after eight o'clock he was driven in a carriage to Music Hall, and in
one hour and a half he made two ringing addresses, to as many as five
thousand people, on Negro education. Then Mr. Washington was taken in
charge by a delegation of coloured citizens, headed by the Rev. Mr.
Watkins, and hustled off to a small informal reception, arranged in
honour of the visitor by the people of his race.


Nor can I, in addition to making these addresses, escape the duty
of calling the attention of the South and of the country in general,
through the medium of the press, to matters that pertain to the
interests of both races. This, for example, I have done in regard to
the evil habit of lynching. When the Louisiana State Constitutional
Convention was in session, I wrote an open letter to that body pleading
for justice for the race. In all such efforts I have received warm and
hearty support from the Southern newspapers, as well as from those in
all other parts of the country.

Despite superficial and temporary signs which might lead one to
entertain a contrary opinion, there was never a time when I felt more
hopeful for the race than I do at the present. The great human law that
in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal.
The outside world does not know, neither can it appreciate, the struggle
that is constantly going on in the hearts of both the Southern white
people and their former slaves to free themselves from racial prejudice;
and while both races are thus struggling they should have the sympathy,
the support, and the forbearance of the rest of the world.


As I write the closing words of this autobiography I find myself--not
by design--in the city of Richmond, Virginia: the city which only a
few decades ago was the capital of the Southern Confederacy, and where,
about twenty-five years ago, because of my poverty I slept night after
night under a sidewalk.

This time I am in Richmond as the guest of the coloured people of the
city; and came at their request to deliver an address last night to both
races in the Academy of Music, the largest and finest audience room in
the city. This was the first time that the coloured people had ever
been permitted to use this hall. The day before I came, the City Council
passed a vote to attend the meeting in a body to hear me speak. The
state Legislature, including the House of Delegates and the Senate, also
passed a unanimous vote to attend in a body. In the presence of hundreds
of coloured people, many distinguished white citizens, the City Council,
the state Legislature, and state officials, I delivered my message,
which was one of hope and cheer; and from the bottom of my heart I
thanked both races for this welcome back to the state that gave me
birth.





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[Illustration]


  Why is the Negro
  Lynched?


  BY THE LATE

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS.


  Reprinted by permission from “The A.M.E. Church
  Review” for Memorial Distribution, by a few
  of his English friends.


  BRIDGWATER:
  PRINTED BY JOHN WHITBY AND SONS, LIMITED.
  1895.




_We have felt that the most fitting tribute that we, of the Anti-Caste
movement, can pay to the memory of this noble and faithful life is to
issue broadcast--as far as the means entrusted to us will allow--his
last great appeal for justice (uttered through the pages of “The A.M.E.
Church Review” only a few months before his death). A slanderous charge
against Negro morality has gone forth throughout the world and has been
widely credited. The white American has had his say both North and
South. On behalf of the accused, Frederick Douglass claims, in the name
of justice, to be heard._


Copies can be obtained free from the Editor of “Anti-Caste,” Street,
Somerset, England.




  Why is the Negro Lynched?

  (“THE LESSON OF THE HOUR.”)


  BY THE LATE

  FREDERICK DOUGLASS.


  _Reprinted by permission from the “A.M.E. Church Review.”_




I.


THE AFRO-AMERICAN PEOPLE INDICTED ON A NEW CHARGE. INTRODUCTORY--THE
WRITER’S CLAIM TO BE HEARD.[A]

I propose to give you a coloured man’s view of the so-called “Negro
Problem.” We have had the Southern white man’s view of this subject at
large in the press, in the pulpit and on the platform. He has spoken in
the pride of his power and to willing ears. Coloured by his peculiar
environments, his version has been presented with abundant repetition,
with startling emphasis, and with every advantage to his side of
the question. We have also had the Northern white man’s view of the
subject, tempered by his distance from the scene and by his different,
if not his higher, civilization.

This quality and quantity of evidence, may be considered by some men as
all sufficient upon which to found an intelligent judgment of the whole
matter in controversy, and, therefore, it may be thought my testimony
is not needed. But experience has taught us that it is sometimes wise
and necessary to have more than two witnesses to bring out the whole
truth. Especially is this the case where one of such witnesses has a
powerful motive for suppressing or distorting the facts, as in this
case. I therefore insist upon my right to take the witness stand and
give my version of this Southern question, and though it shall widely
differ from that of both the North and South, I shall submit the same
to the candid judgment of all who hear me in full confidence that it
will be received as true, by honest men and women of both sections of
this Republic.

There is one thing, however, in which I think we must all agree at the
start. It is that this so-called but mis-called Negro problem is one
of the most important and urgent subjects that can now engage public
attention. Its solution is, and ought to be, the serious business of
the best American wisdom and statesmanship. For it involves the honour
or dishonour, the glory or shame, the happiness or misery, of the whole
American people. It not only touches the good name and fame of the
Republic, but its highest moral welfare and its permanent safety. The
evil with which it confronts us is coupled with a peril at once great
and increasing, and one which should be removed, if it can be, without
delay.


EPIDEMIC OF MOB-LAW.

The presence of eight millions of people in any section of this
country, constituting an aggrieved class, smarting under terrible
wrongs, denied the exercise of the commonest rights of humanity,
and regarded by the ruling class of that section as outside of the
government, outside of the law, outside of society, having nothing in
common with the people with whom they live, the sport of mob violence
and murder, is not only a disgrace and a scandal to that particular
section, but a menace to the peace and security of the whole country.
There is, as we all know, a perfect epidemic of mob law and persecution
now prevailing at the South, and the indications of a speedy end are
not hopeful. Great and terrible as have been its ravages in the past,
it now seems to be increasing, not only in the number of its victims,
but in its frantic rage and savage extravagance. Lawless vengeance is
beginning to be visited upon white men as well as black. Our newspapers
are daily disfigured by its ghastly horrors. It is no longer local but
national; no longer confined to the South but has invaded the North.
The contagion is spreading, extending and overleaping geographical
lines and state boundaries, and if permitted to go on, threatens to
destroy all respect for law and order, not only in the South but in all
parts of our common country, North as well as South. For certain it is,
that crime allowed to go unpunished, unresisted and unarrested, will
breed crime. When the poison of anarchy is once in the air, like the
pestilence that walketh in darkness, the winds of heaven will take it
up and favour its diffusion. Though it may strike down the weak to-day,
it will strike down the strong to-morrow.

Not a breeze comes to us from the late rebellious states that is not
tainted and freighted with Negro blood. In its thirst for blood and
its rage for vengeance, the mob has blindly, boldly and defiantly
supplanted sheriffs, constables and police. It has assumed all the
functions of civil authority. It laughs at legal processes, courts
and juries, and its red-handed murderers range abroad unchecked and
unchallenged by law or by public opinion. If the mob is in pursuit of
Negroes who happen to be accused of crime, innocent or guilty, prison
walls and iron bars afford no protection. Jail doors are battered down
in the presence of unresisting jailors, and the accused, awaiting trial
in the courts of law, are dragged out and hanged, shot, stabbed or
burned to death, as the blind and irresponsible mob may elect.

We claim to be a highly-civilized and Christian country. I will not
stop to deny this claim, yet I fearlessly affirm that there is nothing
in the history of savages to surpass the blood-chilling horrors and
fiendish excesses perpetrated against the coloured people of this
country, by the so-called enlightened and Christian people of the
South. It is commonly thought that only the lowest and most disgusting
birds and beasts, such as buzzards, vultures and hyenas, will gloat
over and prey upon dead bodies; but the Southern mob, in its rage,
feeds its vengeance by shooting, stabbing and burning their victims,
when they are dead.

Now, what is the special charge by which this ferocity is justified,
and by which mob law is excused and defended even by good men North and
South? It is a charge of recent origin; a charge never brought before;
a charge never heard of in the time of slavery or in any other time in
our history. It is a charge of assaults by Negroes upon white women.
This new charge, once fairly started on the wings of rumour, no matter
by whom or in what manner originated, whether well or ill-founded,
whether true or false, is certain to raise a mob and to subject the
accused to immediate torture and death. It is nothing that there may
be a mistake in his case as to identity. It is nothing that the
victim pleads “not guilty.” It is nothing that the accused is of fair
reputation and his accuser is of an abandoned character. It is nothing
that the majesty of the law is defied and insulted; no time is allowed
for defence or explanation; he is bound with cords, hurried off amid
the frantic yells and curses of the mob to the scaffold, and there,
under its ghastly shadow, he is tortured, till by pain or promises,
he is made to think that he can possibly gain time or save his life
by confession--confesses--and then, whether guilty or innocent, he is
shot, hanged, stabbed or burned to death amid the wild shouts of the
mob. When the will of the mob is accomplished, when its thirst for
blood has been quenched, when its victim is speechless, silent and
dead, his mobocratic accusers and murderers of course have the ear of
the world all to themselves, and the world, hearing only the testimony
of the mob, generally approves its verdict.

Such, then, is the state of Southern law and civilization at this
moment, in relation to the coloured citizens of that section of our
country. Though the picture is dark and terrible, I venture to affirm
that no man, North or South, can successfully deny its essential truth.


ATTITUDE OF UPPER CLASSES.

Now the question arises, and it is important to know, how this state
of affairs is viewed by the better classes of the Southern States. I
will tell you, and I venture to say in advance, if our hearts were
not already hardened by familiarity with crimes against the Negro, we
should be shocked and astonished, not only by these mobocratic crimes,
but by the attitude of the better classes of the Southern people and
their law-makers, towards the perpetrators of them. With a few noble
exceptions, just enough to prove the rule, the upper classes of the
South seem to be in full sympathy with the mob and its deeds. There
are but few earnest words ever uttered against either. Press, platform
and pulpit are generally either silent or they openly apologise for
the mob and its deeds. The mobocratic murderers are not only permitted
to go free, untried and unpunished, but are lauded and applauded as
honourable men and good citizens, the high-minded guardians of Southern
virtue. If lynch law is in any case condemned by them, it is only
condemned in one breath and excused in another.

The great trouble with the Negro in the South is that all presumptions
are against him. A white man has but to blacken his face and commit
a crime to have some Negro lynched in his stead. An abandoned woman
has only to start a cry, true or false, that she has been insulted
by a black man, to have him arrested and summarily murdered by the
mob. Frightened and tortured by his captors, confused, he may be,
into telling crooked stories about his whereabouts at the time when
the crime is alleged to have been committed, and the death penalty
is at once inflicted, though his story may be but the incoherency of
ignorance or the distraction caused by terror.

In confirmation of what I have said, I have before me the utterances
of some of the best people of the South, and also the testimony of
one from the North, a lady of high character, from whom, considering
her antecedents, we should have expected a more considerate, just and
humane utterance.

In a late number of the _Forum_, Bishop Haygood, author of the “Brother
in Black,” says that “The most alarming fact is that execution by
lynching has ceased to surprise us. The burning of a human being for
any crime, it is thought, is a horror that does not occur outside of
the Southern states of the American Union, yet unless assaults by
Negroes come to an end, there will most probably be still further
display of vengeance that will shock the world, and men who are just
will consider the provocation.”

In an open letter addressed to me by ex-Governor Chamberlain, of South
Carolina, published in the Charleston _News and Courier_, in reply
to an article of mine on the subject of lynching, published in the
_North American Review_, the ex-Governor says: “Your denunciation of
the South on this point is directed exclusively, or nearly so, against
the application of lynch law for the punishment of one crime; the
existence, I suppose I might say the prevalence, of this crime at the
South is undeniable. But I read your article in vain for any special
denunciation of the crime itself. As you say, your people are lynched,
tortured and burned, for assault on white women. As you value your own
good fame and safety as a race, stamp out the infamous crime.”

And now comes the sweet voice of a Northern woman, Miss Frances
Willard, of the W. C. T. U., distinguished among her sisters for
benevolence and Christian charity. She speaks in the same bitter tone
and hurls against us the same blasting accusation. She says in a letter
now before me, “I pity the Southerners. The problem in their hands
is immeasurable. The coloured race multiplies like the locusts of
Egypt. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a
thousand localities at this moment, so that men dare not go beyond the
sight of their own roof tree.” Such, then, is the crushing indictment
drawn up against the Southern Negroes, drawn up, too, by persons who
are perhaps the fairest and most humane of the Negro’s accusers. Yet
even they paint him as a moral monster, ferociously invading the sacred
rights of woman and endangering the homes of the whites.


INCRIMINATION OF THE WHOLE RACE.

Now, I hold, no less than his accusers, that the crime alleged against
the Negro is the most revolting which men can commit. It is a crime
that awakens the intensest abhorrence and tempts mankind to kill the
criminal on first sight.

But this charge thus brought against the Negro and as constantly
reiterated by his enemies, is plainly enough not merely a charge
against the individual culprit, as would be the case with an individual
of any other race, but it is in large measure a charge constructively
against the coloured people as such. It throws over every man of colour
a mantle of odium, and sets upon him a mark of popular hate, more
distressing than the mark set upon the first murderer. It points the
Negro out as an object of suspicion, avoidance and hate.

It is in this form of the charge that you and I and all of us are
required to meet it and refute it, if that can be done. In the opinion
of some of us it were well to say nothing about it, that the least said
about it the better. They would have us suffer quietly under the odium
in silence. In this I do not concur. Taking this charge in its broad
and comprehensive sense, the sense in which it is presented and as now
stated, it strikes at the whole coloured race, and, therefore, as a
coloured man, I am bound to meet it. I am grateful for the opportunity
now afforded me to meet it. For I believe it can be met and met
successfully. I hold that a people too spiritless to defend themselves
against unjust imputations, are not worth defending, and are not worthy
to defend anything else.




II.


THE DEFENCE--“NOT GUILTY.” CHARACTER OF THEIR ACCUSERS CHALLENGED.

Without boasting in advance, but relying upon the goodness of my
cause, I will say here I am ready to confront ex-Governor Chamberlain,
Bishop Fitzgerald, Bishop Haygood and good Miss Frances Willard and
all others, singly or altogether, who bring this charge against the
coloured people as a class.

But I want however, to be clearly understood at the outset. I do not
pretend that Negroes are saints and angels. I do not deny that they are
capable of committing the crime imputed to them, but utterly deny that
they are any more addicted to the commission of that crime than is true
of any other variety of the human family. In entering upon my argument,
I may be allowed to say again what should be taken for granted at the
start, that I am not a defender of any man guilty of this atrocious
crime, but a defender of the coloured people as a class.

In answer, then, to the terrible indictment thus read, and speaking for
the coloured people as a class, I venture in their name and in their
stead, here and now, to plead “not guilty,” and shall submit my case
with confidence of acquittal by good men and women, North and South,
before whom we are, as a class, now being tried. In daring to do this I
know that the moral atmosphere about me is not favourable to my cause.
The sentiment left by slavery is still with us, and the moral vision of
the American people is still darkened by its presence.

It is the misfortune of the coloured people of this country that the
sins of the few are visited more or less upon the many. In respect to
the offenders, I am with General Grant and every other honest man. My
motto is, “Let no guilty man escape.” But while I say this, and mean to
say it strongly, I am also here to say, let no guilty man be condemned
and killed by the mob, or crushed under the weight of a charge of which
he is not guilty.

I need not be told that the cause I have undertaken to support is not
to be maintained by any mere confident assertions or general denials,
however strongly worded. If I had no better ground to stand upon than
this, I would at once leave the field of controversy and give up the
coloured man’s cause to his accusers. I am also aware that I am here
to do in some measure what the masters of logic say is impossible to
be done. I know that I cannot prove a negative; there is one thing
that I can and will do. I will call in question the affirmative. I can
and will show that there are sound reasons for doubting and denying
this horrible charge of rape as the special and peculiar crime of the
coloured people of the South. I doubt it, and deny it with all my soul.
My doubt and denial are based upon three fundamental grounds.

The first ground is, the well-established and well-tested character
of the Negro on the very point upon which he is now so violently and
persistently accused. I contend that his whole history in bondage and
out of bondage contradicts and gives the lie to the allegation. My
second ground for doubt and denial is based upon what I know of the
character and antecedents of the men and women who bring this charge
against him. My third ground is the palpable unfitness of the mob to
testify and which is the main witness in the case.

I therefore affirm that a fierce and frenzied mob is not and ought not
to be deemed a competent witness against any man accused of any crime
whatever, and especially the crime now in question. The ease with which
a mob can be collected, the slight causes by which it can be set in
motion, and the element of which it is composed, deprives its testimony
of the qualities necessary to sound judgment and that which should
inspire confidence and command belief. Blinded by its own fury, it is
moved by impulses utterly unfavourable to a clear perception of facts
and the ability to make an impartial statement of the simple truth.
At the outset, I challenge the credibility of the mob, and as the mob
is the main witness in the case against the Negro I appeal from the
judgment of the mob to the judgment of law-abiding men, in support of
my challenge. I lay special emphasis on the fact that it is the mob
and the mob only that the country has recognised and accepted as its
accredited witness against the Negro. The mob is its law, its judge,
jury and executioner. I need not argue this point further. Its truth
is borne upon its face.

But I go further. I dare not only to impeach the mob, I impeach and
discredit the veracity of men generally, whether mobocrats or otherwise
who sympathise with lynch law, whenever or wherever the acts of
coloured men are in question. It seems impossible for such men to judge
a coloured man fairly. I hold that men who openly and deliberately
nullify the laws and violate the provisions of the Constitution of
their country, which they have solemnly sworn to support and execute,
are not entitled to unqualified belief in any case, and certainly not
in the case of the Negro. I apply to them the legal maxim, “False in
one, false in all.” Especially do I apply this maxim when the conduct
of the Negro is in question.

Again I question the Negro’s accusers on another important ground;
I have no confidence in the veracity of men who publicly justify
themselves in cheating the Negro out of his constitutional right to
vote. The men who do this, either by false returns, or by taking
advantage of the Negro’s illiteracy, or by surrounding the ballot box
with obstacles and sinuosities intended to bewilder him and defeat his
rightful exercise of the elective franchise, are men who should not be
believed on oath. That this is done and approved in Southern States is
notorious. It has been openly defended by so-called honest men inside
and outside of Congress.

I met this shameless defence of crime face to face at the late Chicago
Auxiliary Congress, during the World’s Columbian Exposition, in a
solemn paper by Prof. Weeks, of North Carolina, who boldly advocated
this kind of fraud as necessary and justifiable in order to secure
Anglo-Saxon supremacy, and in doing so, as I believe, he voiced the
moral sentiment of Southern men generally.

Now, men who openly defraud the Negro of his vote by all manner of
artifice, who justify it and boast of it in the face of the world’s
civilization, as was done by Prof. Weeks at Chicago, I hardly need
say that such men are not to be depended upon for truth in any case
where the rights of the Negro are involved. Their testimony in the
case of any other people than the Negro would be instantly and utterly
discredited, and why not the same in this case? Every honest man will
see that this point is well taken. It has for its support common
sense, common honesty, and the best sentiment of mankind. On the other
hand, it has nothing to oppose it but a vulgar, popular prejudice
against the coloured people of our country, a prejudice which we all
know strikes men with moral blindness and renders them incapable of
seeing any distinction between right and wrong where coloured people
are concerned.


THE NEGRO’S CLEAN RECORD DURING WAR TIME.

But I come to a stronger position. I rest my denial not merely upon
general principles but upon well-known facts. I reject the charge
brought against the Negro as a class, because all through the late war,
while the slave-masters of the South were absent from their homes, in
the field of rebellion, with bullets in their pockets, treason in their
hearts, broad blades in their bloody hands, seeking the life of the
nation, with the vile purpose of perpetuating the enslavement of the
Negro, their wives, their daughters, their sisters and their mothers
were left in the absolute custody of these same Negroes, and during all
those long four years of terrible conflict, when the Negro had every
opportunity to commit the abominable crime now alleged against him,
there was never a single instance of such crime reported or charged
against him. He was never accused of assault, insult, or an attempt to
commit an assault upon any white woman in the whole South. A fact like
this, though negative, speaks volumes, and ought to have some weight
with the American people on the present question.

Then, again, on general principles, I do not believe the charge,
because it implies an improbable change, if not an impossible change
in the mental and moral character and composition of the Negro. It
implies a radical change wholly inconsistent with the well-known facts
of human nature. It is a contradiction to human experience. History
does not present an example of a transformation in the character of any
class of men so extreme, so unnatural and so complete as is implied in
this charge. The change is too great and the period for it too brief.
Instances may be cited where men fall like stars from heaven, but such
is not the usual experience with the masses. Decline in the moral
character of such is not sudden, but gradual. The downward steps are
marked at first by slow degrees and by increasing momentum, going from
bad to worse as they proceed. Time is an element in such changes, and I
contend that the Negroes of the South have not had time to experience
this great change and reach this lower depth of infamy. On the
contrary, in point of fact, they have been, and still are, improving
and ascending to higher and still higher levels of moral and social
worth.


EXCUSES FOR LYNCHING--DELICACY OF SUBJECT; POSSIBILITY OF CRIMINAL’S
ESCAPE FROM JUSTICE.

Again I utterly deny the charge on the fundamental ground that those
who bring the charge do not and dare not give the Negro a chance to
be heard in his own defence. He is not allowed to show the deceptive
conditions out of which the charge has originated. He is not allowed to
vindicate his own character from blame, or to criminate the character
and motives of his accusers. Even the mobocrats themselves admit that
it would be fatal to their purpose to have the character of the Negro’s
accusers brought into court. They pretend to a delicate regard for
the feelings of the parties alleged to have been assaulted. They are
too modest to have them brought into court. They are, therefore, for
lynching and against giving a fair trial to the accused. This excuse,
it is needless to say, is contemptible and hypocritical. It is not
only mock modesty, but mob modesty. Men who can collect hundreds and
thousands of their kind, if we believe them, thirsting for vengeance,
and can spread before them in the tempest and whirlwind of vulgar
passion, the most disgusting details of crime, connecting the names
of women with the same, should not be allowed to shelter themselves
under any pretence of modesty. Such a pretence is absurd and shameless
upon the face of it. Who does not know that the modesty of womanhood
is always and in every such case an object for special protection in
a court of law? On the other hand, who does not know that a lawless
mob, composed in part of the basest men, can have no such respect for
the modesty of women, as has a court of law. No woman need be ashamed
to confront one who has insulted or assaulted her in any court of law.
Besides, innocence does not hesitate to come to the rescue of justice,
and need not even in this case.

Again, I do not believe it, and deny it because if the evidence were
deemed sufficient to bring the accused to the scaffold by a verdict of
an impartial jury, there could be and would be no objection to having
the alleged offender tried in conformity to due process of law.

The only excuse for lynch law, which has a shadow of support in it is,
that the criminal would probably otherwise be allowed to escape the
punishment due to his crime. But this excuse is not employed by the
lynchers, though it is sometimes so employed by those who apologise for
the lynchers. But for it there is no foundation whatever, in a country
like the South, where public opinion, the laws, the courts, the juries,
the advocates, are all against the Negro, especially one alleged to be
guilty of the crime now charged. That such an one would be permitted
to escape condign punishment, is not only untenable but an insult
to common sense. The chances are that not even an innocent Negro so
charged would be allowed to escape.




III.


THE THREE STAGES OF NEGRO PERSECUTION. THEIR OBJECT--HIS
DISFRANCHISEMENT.

But I come to another fact, and an all important fact, bearing upon
this case. You will remember that during all the first years of
reconstruction, and long after the war, Negroes were slain by scores.
The world was shocked by these murders, so that the Southern press
and people found it necessary to invent, adopt and propagate almost
every species of falsehood to create sympathy for themselves, and to
formulate excuses for thus gratifying their brutal instincts against
the Negro; there was never at that time a charge made against any Negro
involving an assault upon any white woman or upon little white children
in all the South. During all this time the white women and children
were absolutely safe. During all this time there was no call for Miss
Willard’s pity, or for Bishop Haygood’s defence of burning Negroes to
death, but killing Negroes went on all the same.

You will remember also that during this time the justification for
the murder of Negroes was said to be Negro conspiracies, Negro
insurrections, Negro schemes to murder all the white people, Negro
plots to burn the town and to commit violence generally. These were
the excuses then depended upon, but never a word was then said or
whispered about Negro outrages upon white women and children. So far
as the history of that time is concerned, white women and children
were absolutely safe, and husbands and fathers could leave their homes
without the slightest anxiety for the safety of their families. But
now mark the change and the reasons for the change. When events proved
that no such conspiracies, no such insurrections as were then pretended
to exist, and which were then paraded before the world in glaring
headlines in the columns of nearly all our newspapers, had ever existed
or were even meditated--when these excuses had run their course and
had served their wicked purpose, when the huts of the Negroes had been
searched, and searched in vain for guns and ammunition to prove these
charges against the Negro, and no such proof was found, when there
was no way open thereafter to prove these charges against the Negro,
and no way to make the North believe in them, they did not even then
bring forward the present allegation, but went on harassing and killing
Negroes just the same. But this time they based their right to kill on
the ground that it was necessary to check the domination and supremacy
of the Negro and to secure the absolute rule of the Anglo-Saxon race.

It is important to notice and emphasize here the significant fact that
there has been three distinct periods of persecutions of the Negroes
in the South, and three distinct sets of excuses for this persecution.
They have come along precisely in the order they were most needed. Each
was made to fit its special place. First, you remember, as I have said,
it was insurrection. When that wore out, Negro supremacy became the
excuse. When that was worn out, then came the charge of assault upon
defenceless women. I undertake to say that this orderly arrangement and
periodicity of excuses are significant. They mean something, and should
not be overlooked. They show design, plan, purpose and invention.
And now that Negro insurrection and Negro domination are no longer
defensible as an excuse for Negro persecution, there has come in due
course another suited to the occasion, and that is the heart-rending
cry of the white women and little white children.

Now, my friends, I ask what is the manifest meaning of this charge at
this time? What is the meaning of the singular omission of this charge
during the two periods preceding the present? Why was not this charge
made at that time as now? The Negro was the same man then as to-day.
Why, I ask again, was not this dreadful charge brought forward against
the Negro in war times and in reconstruction times? Had it existed
either in war times or during reconstruction, does any man doubt that
it would have been added to the other charges and proclaimed upon the
house-tops and at the street corners, as this charge is at present?

I will answer the question: or you yourselves have already given the
true answer. For the plain and only rational explanation is that there
was at the times specified no foundation for such a charge, or that the
charge itself was either not thought of, or if thought of it was not
deemed necessary to excuse the lawless violence with which the Negro
was then pursued and killed. The old charges already enumerated were
deemed all sufficient.

Things have changed since then, and the old excuses are not now
available. The times have changed, and the Negro’s accusers have
found it necessary to change with them. They have been compelled to
invent a new charge to suit the times. The old charges are no longer
valid. Upon them the good opinion of the North and of mankind cannot
be secured. Honest men no longer believe that there is any ground to
apprehend Negro supremacy. Times and events have swept away these old
refuges of lies. They were once powerful. They did their work in their
day and did it with terrible energy and effect, but they are now cast
aside as useless. The lie has lost its ability to deceive. The altered
times and circumstances have made necessary a sterner, stronger and
more effective justification of Southern barbarism, and hence we have,
according to my theory, to look into the face of a more shocking and
blasting charge than either Negro supremacy or Negro insurrection.

I insist upon it that this new charge has come at the call of new
conditions, and that nothing could have been hit upon better calculated
to accomplish its brutal purpose. It clouds the character of the Negro
with a crime the most shocking that men can commit, and is fitted to
drive from the criminal all pity and all fair play and all mercy. It
is a crime that places him outside of the pale of the law, and settles
upon his shoulders a mantle of wrath and fire, that blisters and burns
into his very soul.

It is for this purpose, it seems to me, that this new charge, unthought
of and unknown in the times to which I have referred, has been largely
invented and thundered against us. It is for this purpose that it has
been constantly reiterated and adopted. It was intended to blast and
ruin the Negro’s character as a man and a citizen. I need not tell you
how thoroughly it has already done its work. The Negro may and does
feel its malign influence in the very air he breathes. He may read it
in the faces of men among whom he moves. It has cooled his friends;
it has heated his enemies and arrested at home and abroad, in some
measure, the generous efforts that good men were wont to make for his
improvement and elevation. It has deceived his friends at the North
and many good friends at the South, for nearly all of them, in some
measure, have accepted this charge against the Negro as true. Its
perpetual reiteration in our newspapers and magazines has led men and
women to regard him with averted eyes, dark suspicion and increasing
hate.

Some of the Southern papers have denounced me for my unbelief in this
charge and in this new crusade against the Negro, but I repeat I do
not believe it, and firmly deny the grounds upon which it is based.
I reject it because I see in it evidence of an invention called into
being by a well-defined motive, a motive sufficient to stamp it as a
gross expedient to justify murderous assault upon a long enslaved and
hence a hated people.

I not only reject it because it bears upon its face the marks of being
a fraud, a make-shift for a malignant purpose, but because it has
sprung upon the country simultaneously, and in manifest co-operation
with a declared purpose and a well-known effort, and I may say a
fixed determination to degrade the Negro by judicial decisions, by
legislative enactments, by repealing all laws for the protection of the
ballot, by drawing the colour line in all railroad cars and stations
and in all other public places in the South, thus to pave the way to
a final consummation which is nothing less than the Negro’s entire
disenfranchisement as an American citizen. It is to this great end
that all the charges and complaints against the Negro are directed
and are made to converge. This is and has been from first to last the
grand and all-commanding object in view. It is a part of a well-devised
reactionary movement against the Negro as a citizen. The old master
class are wise in their day and generation. They know if they can once
divest the Negro of the elective franchise and nullify his citizenship,
the partition wall between him and slavery will no longer exist, and no
man can tell where the reaction will stop.


THE ATTACK LESS UPON CRIME THAN COLOUR.

Again, I do not believe it, and deny it, because the charge is not so
much against the crime itself, as against the colour of the people
alleged to be guilty of it. Slavery itself, you will remember, was a
system of unmitigated, legalised outrage upon black women of the South,
and no white man was ever shot, burned or hanged for availing himself
of all the power that slavery gave him at this point.

To sum up my argument on this lynching business, it remains to be
said that I have shown that the Negro’s accusers in this case have
violated their oaths, and have cheated the Negro out of his vote;
that they have robbed and defrauded the Negro systematically and
persistently, and have boasted of it. I have shown that when the Negro
had every opportunity to commit the crime now charged against him, he
was never accused of it by his bitterest enemies. I have shown that
during all the years of reconstruction, when he was being murdered
at Hamburg, Yazoo, New Orleans, Copiah and elsewhere, he was never
accused at that time of the crime now charged against him. I have
shown that in the nature of things no such change in the character
and composition of a whole people, as this implies, could have taken
place within the limited period allowed for it. I have shown that those
who accuse him dare not confront him in a court of law and have their
witnesses subjected to proper legal inquiry. I have shown from the very
constitution of a mob, the slight causes by which it may be created,
and the sentiment by which it is impelled, it cannot be depended upon
for either truth or justice. I have shown that its sole aim is to
execute, not to find a true verdict. And showing all this and more, I
have shown that they who charge the Negro with this foul crime, in
such circumstances, may be justly doubted and deemed unworthy of belief.




IV.


OBJECTIONS ANSWERED: PECULIARITIES OF SOUTHERN SENTIMENT. LACK OF
RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE.

But I now come to a grave objection to my theory of this violent
persecution. I shall be told by many of my Northern friends that my
argument, though plausible, is not conclusive. It will be said that
the charges against the Negro are specific and positive, and that
there must be some foundation for them, because, as they allege, men
in their normal condition do not shoot, hang and burn their fellow men
who are guiltless of crime. Well! This assumption is very just and
very charitable. I only wish that something like the same justice and
the same charity shall be shown to the Negro. All credit is due and
is accorded to our Northern friends for their humane judgment of the
South. Humane themselves, they are slow to believe that the mobocrats
are less humane than themselves. Their hearts are right but their heads
are wrong. They apply a general rule to a special case. They forget
that neither the mob nor its victims are in a normal condition. Both
are exceptions to the general rule. The force of the argument against
my version of the case is the assumption that the lynchers are like
other men and that the Negro has the same hold on the protection of
society that other men have. Neither assumption is true. The lynchers
and mobocrats are not like other men, nor is the Negro hedged about by
the same protection accorded other members of society.

The point I make, then, is this. That I am not, in this case, dealing
with men in their natural condition. I am dealing with men brought up
in the exercise of irresponsible power. I am dealing with men whose
ideas, habits and customs are entirely different from those of ordinary
men. It is, therefore, quite gratuitous to assume that the principles
that apply to other men, apply to the lynchers and murderers of the
Negro. The rules resting upon the justice and benevolence of human
nature do not apply to the mobocrats, or to those who were educated in
the habits and customs of a slave-holding community. What these habits
are I have a right to know, both in theory and practice. Whoever has
read the laws of the late slave states relating to the Negroes, will
see what I mean.

I repeat, the mistake made by those who, on this ground, object to
my theory of the charge against the Negro, is that they overlook the
natural influence of the life, education and habits of the lynchers.
We must remember that these people have not now and have never had any
such respect for human life as is common to other men. They have had
among them for centuries a peculiar institution, and that peculiar
institution has stamped them as a peculiar people. They were not before
the war, they were not during the war, and have not been since the war,
in their spirit or in their civilization, a people in common with the
people of the North, or the civilized world. I will not here harrow up
your feelings by detailing their treatment of Northern prisoners during
the war. Their institutions have taught them no respect for human life,
and especially the life of the Negro. It has, in fact, taught them
absolute contempt for his life. The sacredness of life which ordinary
men feel does not touch them anywhere. A dead Negro is with them now,
as before, a common jest.

They care no more for the Negro’s rights to live than they care for
his rights to liberty, or his right to the ballot or any other right.
Chief Justice Taney told the exact truth about these people when he
said: “They did not consider that the black man had any rights which
white men were bound to respect.” No man of the South ever called in
question that statement, and no man ever will. They could always shoot,
stab, hang and burn the Negro, without any such remorse or shame as
other men would feel after committing such a crime. Any Southern man,
who is honest and is frank enough to talk on the subject, will tell you
that he has no such idea as we have of the sacredness of human rights,
and especially, as I have said, of the life of the Negro. Hence it is
absurd to meet my arguments with the facts predicated of our common
human nature.

I know that I shall be charged with apologising for criminals.
Ex-Governor Chamberlain has already virtually done as much. But there
is no foundation for such charge. I affirm that neither I nor any other
coloured man of like standing with myself has ever raised a finger
or uttered a word in defence of any man, black or white, known to be
guilty of the dreadful crime now in question.

But what I contend for, and what every honest man, black or white, has
a right to contend for, is that when any man is accused of this or any
other crime, of whatever name, nature, degree or extent, he shall have
the benefit of a legal investigation; that he shall be confronted by
his accusers; and that he shall, through proper counsel, be allowed to
question his accusers in open court and in open daylight, so that his
guilt or his innocence may be duly proved and established.

If this is to make me liable to the charge of apologising for crime,
I am not ashamed to be so charged. I dare to contend for the coloured
people of the United States that they are a law-abiding people, and I
dare to insist upon it that they or any other people, black or white,
accused of crime, shall have a fair trial before they are punished.


GENERAL UNFAIRNESS--THE CHICAGO EXHIBITION, ETC.

Again, I cannot dwell too much upon the fact that coloured people are
much damaged by this charge. As an injured class we have a right to
appeal from the judgment of the mob, to the judgment of the law and to
the justice of the American people.

Full well our enemies have known where to strike and how to stab us
most fatally. Owing to popular prejudice, it has become the misfortune
of the coloured people of the South and of the North as well, to have,
as I have said, the sins of the few visited upon the many.

When a white man steals, robs or murders, his crime is visited upon
his own head alone. But not so with the black man. When he commits a
crime, the whole race is made responsible. The case before us is an
example. This unfairness confronts us not only here but it confronts us
everywhere else.

Even when American art undertakes to picture the types of the two
races, it invariably places in comparison, not the best of both races
as common fairness would dictate, but it puts side by side and in
glaring contrast, the lowest type of the Negro with the highest type
of the white man and then calls upon the world to “look upon this
picture, then upon that.”

When a black man’s language is quoted, in order to belittle and degrade
him, his ideas are often put in the most grotesque and unreadable
English, while the utterances of Negro scholars and authors are
ignored. To-day, Sojourner Truth is more readily quoted than Alexander
Cromwell or Dr. James McCune Smith. A hundred white men will attend a
concert of counterfeit Negro minstrels, with faces blackened with burnt
cork, to one who will attend a lecture by an intelligent Negro.

Even the late World’s Columbian Exposition was guilty of this
unfairness. While I join with all other men in pronouncing the
Exposition itself one of the grandest demonstrations of civilization
that the world has ever seen, yet great and glorious as it was, it was
made to show just this kind of injustice and discrimination against the
Negro.

As nowhere in the world, it was hoped that here the idea of human
brotherhood would have been grandly recognized and most gloriously
illustrated. It should have been thus and would have been thus, had
it been what it professed to be, a World’s Exposition. It was not
such, however, in its spirit at this point; it was only an American
Exposition. The spirit of American caste against the educated Negro
was conspicuously seen from start to finish, and to this extent the
Exposition was made simply an American Exposition instead of a World’s
Exposition.

Since the day of Pentecost there was never assembled in any one place
or on any one occasion a larger variety of peoples of all forms,
features and colors and all degrees of civilization, than was assembled
at this World’s Exposition. It was a grand ethnological object lesson,
a fine chance to study all likenesses and all differences of mankind.
Here were Japanese, Soudanese, Chinese, Singalese, Syrians, Persians,
Tunisians, Algerians, Egyptians, East Indians, Laplanders, Esquimaux,
and, as if to shame the educated Negro of America, the Dahomeyans
were there to exhibit their barbarism and increase American contempt
for the Negro intellect. All classes and conditions were there save
the educated American Negro. He ought to have been there, if only to
show what American slavery and American freedom have done for him. The
fact that all other nations were there at their best, made the Negro’s
exclusion the more pronounced and the more significant. People from
abroad noticed the fact that while we have eight millions of colored
people in the United States, many of them gentlemen and scholars,
not one of them was deemed worthy to be appointed a Commissioner,
or a member of an important committee, or a guide or a guard on the
Exposition grounds, and this was evidently an intentional slight to
the race. What a commentary is this upon the liberality of our boasted
American liberty and American equality! It is a silent example, to
be sure, but it is one that speaks louder than words. It says to the
world that the colored people of America are not deemed by Americans as
within the compass of American law, progress and civilization. It says
to the lynchers and mobocrats of the South, go on in your hellish work
of Negro persecution. You kill their bodies, we kill their souls.




V.


NEGRO SUFFRAGE: ATTEMPT TO ABRIDGE THE RIGHT. THE LOWLY NEED ITS
PROTECTION.

But now a word on the question of Negro suffrage. It has come to be
fashionable of late to ascribe much of the trouble at the South to
ignorant Negro suffrage. That great measure recommended by General
Grant and adopted by the loyal nation, is now denounced as a blunder
and a failure. The proposition now is, therefore, to find some way to
abridge and limit this right by imposing upon it an educational or some
other qualification. Among those who take this view of the question are
Mr. John J. Ingalls and Mr. John M. Langston, one white and the other
colored. They are both distinguished leaders; the one is the leader
of the whites and the other is the leader of the blacks. They are
both eloquent, both able, and both wrong. Though they are both Johns,
neither of them is to my mind a “St. John,” and not even a “John the
Baptist.” They have taken up an idea which they seem to think quite
new, but which in reality is as old as despotism, and about as narrow
and selfish as despotism. It has been heard and answered a thousand
times over. It is the argument of the crowned heads and privileged
classes of the world. It is as good against our Republican form of
government as it is against the Negro. The wonder is that its votaries
do not see its consequences. It does away with that noble and just idea
of Abraham Lincoln that our government should be a government of the
people, by the people and for the people and for _all_ the people.

These gentlemen are very learned, very eloquent and very able, but I
cannot follow them in this effort to restrict voting to the educated
classes. Much learning has made them mad. Education is great but
manhood is greater. The one is the principle, the other the accident.
Man was not made as an attribute to education, but education as an
attribute to man. I say to these gentlemen, first protect the man and
you will thereby protect education. Do not make illiteracy a bar to the
ballot, but make the ballot a bar to illiteracy. Take the ballot from
the Negro and you take from him the means and motives that make for
education. Those who are already educated and are vested with political
power have thereby an advantage which they are not likely to divide
with the Negro, especially when they have a fixed purpose to make
this entirely a white man’s government. I cannot, therefore, follow
these gentlemen in a path so dangerous to the Negro. I would not make
suffrage more exclusive but more inclusive. I would not have it embrace
only the élite, but I would have it include the lowly. I would not
only include the men, but would gladly include the women, and make our
government in reality, as in name, a government by the people, of the
people, and for the whole people.

But, manifestly, it is all nonsense to make suffrage to the coloured
people, the cause of the failure of good government in the Southern
states. On the contrary it is the lawless limitation of suffrage that
makes the trouble.

Much thoughtless speech is heard about the ignorance of the Negro in
the South. But plainly enough, it is not the ignorance of the Negro
but the malevolence of his accusers, which is the real cause of
Southern disorder. It is easy to show that the illiteracy of the Negro
has no part or lot in the disturbances there. They who contend for
disfranchisement on this ground, know, and know very well, that there
is no truth whatever in their contention. To make out their case, they
must show that some oppressive and hurtful measure has been imposed
upon the country by Negro voters. But they cannot show any such thing
and they know it.

The Negro has never set up a separate party, never adopted a Negro
platform, never proclaimed or adopted a separate policy for himself or
for the country. His assailants know this and know that he has never
acted apart from the whole American people. They know that he has
never sought to lead, but has always been content to follow. They know
that he has not made his ignorance the rule of his political conduct,
but he has been guided by the rule of white men. They know that he
simply kept pace with the average intelligence of his age and country.
They know that he has gone steadily along in the line of his politics
with the most enlightened citizens of the country and that he has never
gone faster or farther. They know that he has always voted with one or
the other of the two great political parties. They know that if the
votes of these parties have been guided by intelligence and patriotism,
the same must be said of the vote of the Negro. Knowing all this, they
ought to know also, that it is a shame and an outrage upon common
sense and fair dealing to hold him or his suffrage responsible for
any disorder that may reign in the Southern States. Yet while any lie
may be safely told against the Negro and will be credited by popular
prejudice, this lie will find eloquent tongues, bold and shameless
enough to tell it.

It is true that the Negro once voted solidly for the candidates of the
republican party; but what if he did? He then only voted with John
Mercer Langston, John J. Ingalls, John Sherman, General Harrison,
Senator Hoar, Henry Cabot Lodge and Governor McKinley and many of the
most intelligent statesmen and noblest patriots of whom this country
can boast. The charge against him at this time is, therefore, utterly
groundless and is used for fraud, violence and persecution.

The proposition to disfranchise the coloured voter of the South in
order to solve the race problem, I therefore denounce as a false and
cowardly proposition, utterly unworthy of an honest and grateful
nation. It is a proposition to sacrifice friends in order to conciliate
enemies; to surrender the constitution for the lack of moral courage to
execute its provisions. It is a proclamation of the helplessness of the
Nation to protect its own citizens. It says to the coloured citizen,
“We cannot protect you, we therefore propose to join your oppressors.
Your suffrage has been rendered a failure by violence, and we now
propose to make it a failure by law.”

Than this, there was never a surrender more dishonorable, more
ungrateful, or more cowardly. Any statesman, black or white, who
dares to support such a scheme by any concession, deserves no worse
punishment than to be allowed to stay at home, deprived of all
legislative trusts until he repents. Even then he should only be
received on probation.


DECADENCE OF THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY.

Do not ask me what will be the final result of the so-called Negro
problem. I cannot tell you. I have sometimes thought that the American
people are too great to be small, too just and magnanimous to oppress
the weak, too brave to yield up the right to the strong, and too
grateful for public services ever to forget them or to reward them.
I have fondly hoped that this estimate of American character would
soon cease to be contradicted or put in doubt. But events have made me
doubtful. The favour with which this proposition of disfranchisement
has been received by public men, white and black, by republicans as
well as democrats, has shaken my faith in the nobility of the nation.
I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate
future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts
before me.

Strange things have happened of late and are still happening. Some of
these tend to dim the lustre of the American name, and chill the hopes
once entertained for the cause of American liberty. He is a wiser man
than I am who can tell how low the moral sentiment of the Republic may
yet fall. When the moral sense of a nation begins to decline, and the
wheels of progress to roll backward, there is no telling how low the
one will fall or where the other will stop. The downward tendency,
already manifest, has swept away some of the most important safeguards
of justice and liberty. The Supreme Court, has, in a measure,
surrendered. State sovereignty is essentially restored. The Civil
Rights Bill is impaired. The Republican party is converted into a party
of money, rather than a party of humanity and justice. We may well ask,
what next?

The pit of hell is said to be bottomless. Principles which we all
thought to have been firmly and permanently settled by the late war
have been boldly assaulted and overthrown by the defeated party.
Rebel rule is now nearly complete in many states, and it is gradually
capturing the nation’s Congress. The cause lost in the war is the cause
regained in peace, and the cause gained in war is the cause lost in
peace.

There was a threat made long ago by an American statesman that the
whole body of legislation enacted for the protection of American
liberty and to secure the results of the war for the Union, should
be blotted from the national statute book. That threat is now being
sternly pursued and may yet be fully realised. The repeal of the laws
intended to protect the elective franchise has heightened the suspicion
that Southern rule may yet become complete, though, I trust, not
permanent. There is no denying that the trend is in the wrong direction
at present. The late election, however, gives us hope that the loyal
Republican party may yet return to its first love.




VI.


DELUSIVE COLONISATION SCHEMES.

But I now come to another proposition, held up as a solution of the
race problem, and this I consider equally unworthy with the one just
disposed of. The two belong to the same low-bred family of ideas.

It is the proposition to colonize the coloured people of America in
Africa, or somewhere else. Happily this scheme will be defeated,
both by its impolicy and its impracticability. It is all nonsense to
talk about the removal of eight millions of the American people from
their homes in America to Africa. The expense and hardships, to say
nothing of the cruelty attending such a measure, would make success
impossible. The American people are wicked, but they are not fools;
they will hardly be disposed to incur the expense, to say nothing of
the injustice which this measure demands. Nevertheless, this colonizing
scheme, unworthy as it is of American statesmanship, and American
honour, and though full of mischief to the coloured people, seems to
have a strong hold on the public mind, and at times has shown much life
and vigor.

The bad thing about it is, that it has, of late, owing to persecution,
begun to be advocated by coloured men of acknowledged ability and
learning, and every little while some white statesman becomes its
advocate. Those gentlemen will doubtless have their opinion of me; I
certainly have mine of them. My opinion is, that if they are sensible,
they are insincere; and if they are sincere, they are not sensible.
They know, or they ought to know that it would take more money than
the cost of the late war, to transport even one half of the coloured
people of the United States to Africa. Whether intentionally or not,
they are, as I think, simply trifling with an afflicted people. They
urge them to look for relief where they ought to know that relief is
impossible. The only excuse they can make for the measure is that there
is no hope for the Negro here, and that the coloured people in America
owe something to Africa.

This last sentimental idea makes colonization very fascinating to the
dreamers of both colours. But there is really no foundation for it.

They tell us that we owe something to our native land. This sounds
well. But when the fact is brought to view, which should never be
forgotten, that a man can only have one native land and that is the
land in which he is born, the bottom falls entirely out of this
sentimental argument.

Africa, according to her colonization advocates, is by no means modest
in her demands upon us. She calls upon us to send her only our best
men. She does not want our riff-raff, but our best men. But these are
just the men who are valuable and who are wanted at home. It is true
that we have a few preachers and laymen with a missionary turn of mind
whom we might easily spare. Some who would possibly do as much good by
going there as by staying here. By this is not the colonization idea.
Its advocates want not only the best, but millions of the best. Better
still, they want the United States Government to vote the money to send
them there. They do not seem to see that if the Government votes money
to send the Negro to Africa, that the Government may employ means to
complete the arrangement and compel us to go.

Now I hold that the American Negro owes no more to the Negroes in
Africa than he owes to the Negroes in America. There are millions of
needy people over there, but there are also millions of needy people
over here as well, and the millions in America need intelligent men of
their number to help them, as much as intelligent men are needed in
Africa to help her people. Besides, we have a fight on our hands right
here, a fight for the redemption of the whole race, and a blow struck
successfully for the Negro in America, is a blow struck for the Negro
in Africa. For, until the Negro is respected in America, he need not
expect consideration elsewhere. All this native land talk, however,
is nonsense. The native land of the American Negro is America. His
bones, his muscles, his sinews, are all American. His ancestors for two
hundred and seventy years have lived and laboured and died, on American
soil, and millions of his posterity have inherited Caucasian blood.

It is pertinent, therefore, to ask, in view of this admixture, as well
as in view of other facts, where the people of this mixed race are to
go, for their ancestors are white and black, and it will be difficult
to find their native land anywhere outside of the United States.

But the worst thing, perhaps, about this colonization nonsense is, that
it tends to throw over the Negro a mantle of despair. It leads him to
doubt the possibility of his progress as an American citizen. It also
encourages popular prejudice with the hope that by persecution or by
persuasion, the Negro can finally be dislodged and driven from his
natural home, while in the nature of the case he must stay here and
will stay here, if for no other reason than because he cannot well get
away.

I object to the colonization scheme, because it tends to weaken the
Negro’s hold on one country, while it can give him no rational hope of
another. Its tendency is to make him despondent and doubtful, where he
should feel assured and confident. It forces upon him the idea that he
is for ever doomed to be a stranger and a sojourner in the land of his
birth, and that he has no permanent abiding place here.

All this is hurtful; with such ideas constantly flaunted before him, he
cannot easily set himself to work to better his condition in such ways
as are open to him here. It sets him to groping everlastingly after the
impossible.

Every man who thinks at all, must know that home is the fountain head,
the inspiration, the foundation and main support, not only of all
social virtue but of all motives to human progress, and that no people
can prosper, or amount to much, unless they have a home, or the hope of
a home. A man who has not such an object, either in possession or in
prospect, is a nobody and will never be anything else. To have a home,
the Negro must have a country, and he is an enemy to the moral progress
of the Negro, whether he knows it or not, who calls upon him to break
up his home in this country, for an uncertain home in Africa.

But the agitation on this subject has a darker side still. It has
already been given out that if we do not go of our own accord, we
may be forced to go, at the point of the bayonet. I cannot say that
we shall not have to face this hardship, but badly as I think of the
tendency of our times, I do not think that American sentiment will ever
reach a condition which will make the expulsion of the Negro from the
United States by any such means, possible.

Yet, the way to make it possible is to predict it. There are people
in the world who know how to bring their own prophecies to pass. The
best way to get up a mob, is to say there will be one, and this is what
is being done. Colonization is no solution, but an evasion. It is not
repentance but putting the wronged ones out of our presence. It is not
atonement, but banishment. It is not love, but hate. Its reiteration
and agitation only serves to fan the flame of popular prejudice and to
add insult to to injury.

The righteous judgment of mankind will say if the American people could
endure the Negro’s presence while a slave, they certainly can and ought
to endure his presence as a free man.

If they could tolerate him when he was a heathen, they might bear
with him now that he is a Christian. If they could bear with him when
ignorant and degraded, they should bear with him now that he is a
gentleman and a scholar.

But even the Southern whites have an interest in this question. Woe to
the South when it no longer has the strong arm of the Negro to till its
soil, “and woe to the nation when it shall employ the sword to drive
the Negro from his native land.”

Such a crime against justice, such a crime against gratitude, should it
ever be attempted, would certainly bring a national punishment which
would cause the earth to shudder. It would bring a stain upon the
nation’s honour, like the blood on Lady Macbeth’s hand. The waters of
all the oceans would not suffice to wash out the infamy. But the nation
will commit no such crime. But in regard to this point of our future,
my mind is easy. We are here and are here to stay. It is well for us
and well for the American people to rest up on this as final.


EMANCIPATION CRIPPLED. LANDLORD AND TENANT.

Another mode of impeaching the wisdom of emancipation, and the one
which seems to give special pleasure to our enemies, is, as they say,
that the condition of the coloured people of the South has been made
worse by emancipation.

The champions of this idea are the only men who glory in the good old
times when the slaves were under the lash and were bought and sold
in the market with horses, sheep, and swine. It is another way of
saying that slavery is better than freedom; that darkness is better
than light, and that wrong is better than right; that hell is better
than heaven! It is the American method of reasoning in all matters
concerning the Negro. It inverts everything; turns truth upside down,
and puts the case of the unfortunate Negro inside out and wrong end
foremost every time. There is, however, nearly always some truth on
their side of error, and it is so in this case.

When these false reasoners assert that the condition of the emancipated
slave is wretched and deplorable, they partly tell the truth, and I
agree with them. I even concur with them in the statement that the
Negro is physically, in certain localities, in a worse condition to-day
than in the time of slavery, but I part with these gentlemen when they
ascribe this condition to emancipation.

To my mind the blame does not rest upon emancipation, but the defeat of
emancipation. It is not the work of the spirit of liberty, but the work
of the spirit of bondage. It comes of the determination of slavery to
perpetuate itself, if not under one form, then under another. It is due
to the folly of endeavouring to put the new wine of liberty in the old
bottles of slavery. I concede the evil, but deny the alleged cause.

The landowners of the South want the labour of the Negro on the hardest
terms possible. They once had it for nothing. They now want it for next
to nothing. To accomplish this, they have contrived three ways. The
first is, to rent their land to the Negro at an exorbitant price per
annum and compel him to mortgage his crop in advance to pay this rent.
The laws under which this is done are entirely in the interest of the
landlord. He has a first claim upon everything produced on the land.
The Negro can have nothing, can keep nothing, can sell nothing, without
the consent of the landlord. As the Negro is at the start poor and
empty-handed, he has had to draw on the landlord for meat and bread to
feed himself and family while his crop is growing. The landlord keeps
books; the Negro does not; hence, no matter how hard he may work or how
hard saving he may be, he is, in most cases, brought in debt at the end
of the year, and once in debt he is fastened to the land as by hooks of
steel. If he attempts to leave he may be arrested under the order of
the law.

Another way, which is still more effective, is the practice of paying
the labourer with orders on the store instead of lawful money. By
this means money is kept out of the hands of the Negro, and the Negro
is kept entirely in the hands of the landlord. He cannot save money
because he gets no money to save. He cannot seek a better market for
his labour because he has no money with which to pay his fare, and
because he is, by that vicious order system, already in debt, and
therefore already in bondage. Thus he is riveted to one place, and is,
in some sense, a slave; for a man to whom it can be said, “You shall
work for me for what I choose to pay you, and how I shall choose to pay
you,” is, in fact, a slave, though he may be called a free man.

We denounce the landlord and tenant system of England, but it can be
said of England as cannot be said of our free country, that by law no
labourer can be paid for labour in any other than lawful money. England
holds any other payment to be a penal offence and punishable by fine
and imprisonment. The same should be the case in every State in the
American Union.

Under the mortgage system, no matter how industrious or economical the
Negro may be, he finds himself at the end of the year in debt to the
landlord, and from year to year he toils on and is tempted to try again
and again, but seldom with any better result.

With this power over the Negro, this possession of his labour, you may
easily see why the South sometimes makes a display of its liberality
and brags that it does not want slavery back. It had the Negro’s
labour, heretofore for nothing, and now it has it for next to nothing
and at the same time is freed from the obligation to take care of the
young and the aged, the sick and the decrepit. There is not much virtue
in all this, yet it is the ground of loud boasting.


ATTITUDE OF WHITE RACE TOWARDS NEGROES. A NATIONAL PROBLEM.

I now come to the so-called, but mis-called “Negro Problem,” as a
characterization of the relations existing in the Southern States.

I say at once, I do not admit the justice or propriety of this formula,
as applied to the question before us. Words are things. They are
certainly such in this case, since they give us a misnomer that is
misleading and hence mischievous. It is a formula of Southern origin
and has a strong bias against the Negro. It handicaps his cause with
all the prejudice known to exist and anything to which he is a party.
It has been accepted by the good people of the North, as I think,
without proper thought and investigation. It is a crafty invention and
is in every way worthy of its inventors.

It springs out of a desire to throw off just responsibility and
to evade the performance of disagreeable but manifest duty. Its
natural effect and purpose is to divert attention from the true
issue now before the American people. It does this by holding up and
pre-occupying the public mind with an issue entirely different from the
real one in question. That which is really a great national problem and
which ought to be so considered by the whole American people, dwarfs
into a “Negro Problem.” The device is not new. It is an old trick. It
has been oft repeated and with a similar purpose and effect. For truth,
it gives us falsehood. For innocence, it gives us guilt. It removes
the burden of proof from the old master class and imposes it upon the
Negro. It puts upon the race a work which belongs to the nation. It
belongs to that craftiness often displayed by disputants who aim to
make the worse appear the better reason. It gives bad names to good
things and good names to bad things.

The Negro has often been the victim to this kind of low cunning. You
may remember that during the late war, when the South fought for
the perpetuity of slavery, it usually called the slaves “domestic
servants,” and slavery a “domestic institution.” Harmless names,
indeed, but the things they stood for were far from harmless.

The South has always known how to have a dog hanged by giving him a bad
name. When it prefixed “Negro” to the national problem, it knew that
the device would awaken and increase a deep-seated prejudice at once
and that it would repel fair and candid investigation. As it stands, it
implies that the Negro is the cause of whatever trouble there is in the
South. In old slave times, when a little white child lost his temper,
he was given a little whip and told to go and whip “Jim” or “Sal,” and
he thus regained his temper. The same is true to-day on a large scale.

I repeat, and my contention is that this Negro problem formula lays
the fault at the door of the Negro and removes it from the door of the
white man, shields the guilty and blames the innocent, makes the Negro
responsible, when it should so make the nation.

Now what the real problem is, we all ought to know. It is not a Negro
problem, but in every sense a great national problem. It involves the
question, whether after all our boasted civilization, our Declaration
of Independence, our matchless Constitution, our sublime Christianity,
our wise statesmanship, we as a people, possess virtue enough to
solve this problem in accordance with wisdom and justice, and to the
advantage of both races.

The marvel is that this old trick of misnaming things, so often
displayed by Southern politicians, should have worked so well for the
bad cause in which it is now employed; for the American people have
fallen in with the bad idea that this is a Negro problem, a question
of the character of the Negro and not a question of the nation. It is
still more surprising that the coloured press of the country, and some
of our coloured orators, have made the same mistake, and still insist
upon calling it a “Negro problem,” or a race problem, for by race they
mean the Negro race. Now, there is nothing the matter with the Negro,
whatever; he is all right. Learned or ignorant, he is all right. He is
neither a lyncher, a mobocrat or an anarchist. He is now what he has
ever been, a loyal, law-abiding, hard working and peaceable man; so
much so that men have thought him cowardly and spiritless. Had he been
a turbulent anarchist he might indeed have been a troublesome problem,
but he is not. To his reproach, it is sometimes said that any other
people in the world would have invented some violent way in which to
resent their wrongs. If this problem depended upon the character and
conduct of the Negro there would be no problem to solve; there would be
no menace to the peace and good order of Southern Society. He makes no
unlawful fight between labour and capital. That problem, which often
makes the American people thoughtful, is not of his bringing, though he
may some day be compelled to talk of this tremendous problem in common
with other labourers.

He has as little to do with the cause of the Southern trouble as he
has with its cure. There is no reason, therefore, in the world, why
his name should be given to this problem. It is false, misleading and
prejudicial, and, like all other falsehoods, must eventually come to
naught.

I well remember, as others may remember, that this same old falsehood
was employed and used against the Negro during the late war. He was
then charged and stigmatized with being the cause of the war, on the
principle that there would be no highway robbers if there were nobody
on the road to be robbed. But as absurd as this pretence was, the
colour prejudice of the country was stimulated by it and joined in the
accusation, and the Negro had to bear the brunt of it.

Even at the North he was hated and hunted on account of it. In the
great city of New York his houses were burned, his children were hunted
down like wild beasts, and his people were murdered in the streets, all
because “they were the cause of the war.” Even the good and noble Mr.
Lincoln, one of the best and most clear-sighted men that ever lived,
once told a committee of Negroes, who waited upon him at Washington,
that “they were the cause of the war.”

Many were the men who, in their wrath and hate, accepted this theory,
and wished the Negro in Africa, or in a hotter climate, as some do now.

There is nothing to which prejudice is not equal in the way of
perverting the truth and inflaming the passions of men.

But call this problem what you may or will, the all-important question
is: How can it be solved? How can the peace and tranquility of the
South and of the country be secured and established?

There is nothing occult or mysterious about the answer to this
question. Some things are to be kept in the mind when dealing with this
subject and should never be forgotten. It should be remembered that, in
the order of Divine Providence, the “man, who puts one end of a chain
around the ankle of his fellow man, will find the other end around his
own neck.” And it is the same with a nation. Confirmation of this truth
is as strong as proofs of holy writ. As we sow we shall reap, is a
lesson that will be learned here as elsewhere. We tolerated slavery and
it has cost us a million graves, and it may be that lawless murder now
raging, if permitted to go on, may yet bring the red hand of vengeance,
not only on the reverend head of age, and upon the heads of helpless
women, but upon even the innocent babes in the cradle.




VII.


HOW THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED.

But how can this problem be solved? I will tell you how it cannot
be solved. It cannot be solved by keeping the Negro poor, degraded,
ignorant and half-starved, as I have shown is now being done in
Southern States.

It cannot be solved by keeping back the wages of the labourer by fraud,
as is now being done by the landlords of the South. It cannot be done
by ballot-box stuffing, by falsifying election returns, or by confusing
the Negro voter by cunning devices. It cannot be done by repealing all
federal laws enacted to secure honest elections. It can, however, be
done, and very easily done, for where there is a will there is a way.

Let the white people of the North and South conquer their prejudices.

Let the Northern press and pulpit proclaim the gospel of truth and
justice against the war now being made upon the Negro.

Let the American people cultivate kindness and humanity.

Let the South abandon the system of mortgage labour and cease to make
the Negro a pauper, by paying him dishonest scrip for his honest labour.

Let them give up the idea that they can be free while making the Negro
a slave. Let them give up the idea that to degrade the coloured man
is to elevate the white man. Let them cease putting new wine into old
bottles, and mending old garments with new cloth.

They are not required to do much. They are only required to undo the
evil they have done, in order to solve this problem.

In old times when it was asked, “How can we abolish slavery?” the
answer was “Quit stealing.”

The same is the solution of the race problem to-day. The whole thing
can be done simply by no longer violating the amendment of the
Constitution of the United States, and no longer evading the claims
of justice. If this were done, there would be no Negro problem or
national problem to vex the South or to vex the nation.

Let the organic law of the land be honestly sustained and obeyed. Let
the political parties cease to palter in a double sense, and live up to
the noble declarations we find in their platforms. Let the statesmen of
our country live up to their convictions. In the language of ex-Senator
Ingalls: “Let the nation try justice and the problem will be solved.”

Two hundred and twenty years ago the Negro was made a religious
problem, one which gave our white forefathers about as much perplexity
and annoyance as we now profess. At that time the problem was in
respect of what relation a Negro sustains to the Christian Church,
whether he was in fact a fit subject for baptism, and Dr. Godwin, a
celebrated divine of his time, and one far in advance of his brethren,
was at the pains of writing a book of two hundred pages or more,
containing an elaborate argument to prove that it was not a sin in the
sight of God to baptize a Negro.

His argument was very able, very learned, very long. Plain as the truth
may seem, there were at that time very strong arguments against the
position of the learned divine.

As usual, it was not merely the baptism of the Negro that gave trouble,
but it was as to what might follow such baptism. The sprinkling him
with water was a very simple thing and easily gotten along with, but
the slaveholders of that day saw in the innovation something more
dangerous than cold water. They said that to baptize the Negro and
make him a member of the Church of Christ was to make him an important
person--in fact, to make him an heir of Jesus Christ. It was to give
him a place at Lord’s supper. It was to take him out of the category of
heathenism and make it inconsistent to hold him a slave, for the Bible
made only the heathen a proper subject for slavery.

These were formidable consequences, certainly, and it is not strange
that the Christian slaveholders of that day viewed these consequences
with immeasurable horror. It was something more terrible and dangerous
than the Civil Rights Bill and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
to our Constitution. It was a difficult thing, therefore, at that day
to get the Negro into water.

Nevertheless, our learned doctor of divinity, like many of the same
class in our day, was equal to the emergency. He was able to satisfy
all important parties to the problem, except the Negro, and him it did
not seem necessary to satisfy.

The doctor was a skilled dialectician. He could not only divide the
word with skill, but he could divide the Negro into two parts. He
argued that the Negro had a soul as well as a body, and insisted that
while his body rightfully belonged to his master on earth, his soul
belonged to his Master in heaven. By this convenient arrangement,
somewhat metaphysical, to be sure, but entirely evangelical and
logical, the problem of Negro baptism was solved.

But with the Negro in the case, as I have said, the argument was not
entirely satisfactory. The operation was much like that by which the
white man got the turkey and the Indian got the crow. When the Negro
looked for his body, that belonged to his earthly master; when he
looked around for his soul, that had been appropriated by his heavenly
Master; and when he looked around for something that really belonged to
himself, he found nothing but his shadow, and that vanished into the
air, when he might most want it.

One thing, however, is to be noticed with satisfaction; it is this:
something was gained to the cause of righteousness by this argument. It
was a contribution to the cause of liberty. It was largely in favour
of the Negro. It was a plain recognition of his manhood, and was
calculated to set men to thinking that the Negro might have some other
important rights, no less than the religious right to baptism.

Thus, with all its faults, we are compelled to give the pulpit the
credit of furnishing the first important argument in favour of the
religious character and manhood rights of the Negro.

Dr. Godwin was undoubtedly a good man. He wrote at a time of much moral
darkness, and when property in man was nearly everywhere recognised as
a rightful institution. He saw only a part of the truth. He saw that
the Negro had a right to be baptized, but he could not all at once see
that he had a primary and paramount right to himself.

But this was not the only problem slavery had in store for the Negro.
Time and events brought another and it was this very important one:
Can the Negro sustain the legal relation of a husband to a wife? Can he
make a valid marriage contract in this Christian country?

This problem was solved by the same slave-holding authority, entirely
against the Negro. Such a contract, it was argued, could only be
binding upon men providentially enjoying the right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, and since the Negro is a slave and
slavery a divine institution, legal marriage was wholly inconsistent
with the institution of slavery.

When some of us at the North questioned the ethics of this conclusion,
we were told to mind our business, and our Southern brethren asserted,
as they assert now, that they alone are competent to manage this and
all other questions relating to the Negro. In fact, there has been
no end to the problems of some sort or other, involving the Negro in
difficulty.

Can the Negro be a citizen? was the question of the Dred Scott
decision. Can the Negro be educated? Can the Negro be induced to work
for himself without a master? Can the Negro be a soldier? Time and
events have answered these and all other like questions. We have among
us Negroes who have taken the first prizes as scholars; those who
have won distinction for courage and skill on the battle field; those
who have taken rank as lawyers, doctors and ministers of the gospel;
those who shine among men in every useful calling; and yet we are
called a problem--a tremendous problem; a mountain of difficulty; a
constant source of apprehension; a disturbing social force, threatening
destruction to the holiest and best interests of society. I declare
this statement concerning the Negro, whether by good Miss Willard,
Bishop Haygood, Bishop Fitzgerald, ex-Governor Chamberlain, or by any
and all others, as false and deeply injurious to the coloured citizens
of the United States.

       *       *       *       *       *

But, my friends, I must stop. Time and strength are not equal to the
task before me. But could I be heard by this great nation, I would
call to mind the sublime and glorious truths with which, at its
birth, it saluted and startled a listening world. Its voice, then,
was as the trump of an archangel, summoning hoary forms of oppression
and time honoured tyranny, to judgment. Crowned heads heard it and
shrieked. Toiling millions heard it and clapped their hands for joy.
It announced the advent of a nation, based upon human brotherhood and
the self-evident truths of liberty and equality. Its mission was the
redemption of the world from the bondage of ages. Apply these sublime
and glorious truths to the situation now before you. Put away your
race prejudice. Banish the idea that one class must rule over another.
Recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizens are as
worthy of protection as are those of the highest and your problem
will be solved, and--whatever may be in store for you in the future,
whether prosperity or adversity, whether you have foes without or foes
within, whether there shall be peace or war--based upon the eternal
principles of truth, justice and humanity, with no class having cause
for complaint or grievance, your Republic will stand and flourish for
ever.