A SOCIAL HISTORY
OF THE
American Negro

BEING

A HISTORY OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM
IN THE UNITED STATES

INCLUDING
A HISTORY AND STUDY OF THE
REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA

by BENJAMIN BRAWLEY
1921

TO THE MEMORY OF

NORWOOD PENROSE HALLOWELL

PATRIOT
1839-1914

Norwood Penrose Hallowell was born in Philadelphia April 13,
1839. He inherited the tradition of the Quakers and grew to
manhood in a strong anti-slavery atmosphere. The home of his
father, Morris L. Hallowell—the “House called Beautiful,” in
the phrase of Oliver Wendell Holmes—was a haven of rest and
refreshment for wounded soldiers of the Union Army, and hither
also, after the assault upon him in the Senate, Charles Sumner
had come for succor and peace. Three brothers in one way or
another served the cause of the Union, one of them, Edward N.
Hallowell, succeeding Robert Gould Shaw in the Command of the
Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers. Norwood
Penrose Hallowell himself, a natural leader of men, was Harvard
class orator in 1861; twenty-five years later he was the
marshal of his class; and in 1896 he delivered the Memorial Day
address in Sanders Theater. Entering the Union Army with
promptness in April, 1861, he served first in the New England
Guards, then as First Lieutenant in the Twentieth
Massachusetts, won a Captain’s commission in November, and
within the next year took part in numerous engagements, being
wounded at Glendale and even more severely at Antietam. On
April 17, 1863, he became Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, and on May 30 Colonel of the newly
organized Fifty-Fifth. Serving in the investment of Fort
Wagner, he was one of the first to enter the fort after its
evacuation. His wounds ultimately forced him to resign his
commission, and in November, 1863, he retired from the service.
He engaged in business in New York, but after a few years
removed to Boston, where he became eminent for his public
spirit. He was one of God’s noblemen, and to the last he
preserved his faith in the Negro whom he had been among the
first to lead toward the full heritage of American citizenship.
He died April 11, 1914.

PREFACE

In the following pages an effort is made to give fresh
treatment to the history of the Negro people in the United
States, and to present this from a distinct point of view, the
social. It is now forty years since George W. Williams
completed his History of the Negro Race in America, and
while there have been many brilliant studies of periods or
episodes since that important work appeared, no one book has
again attempted to treat the subject comprehensively, and
meanwhile the race has passed through some of its most critical
years in America. The more outstanding political phases of the
subject, especially in the period before the Civil War, have
been frequently considered; and in any account of the Negro
people themselves the emphasis has almost always been upon
political and military features. Williams emphasizes this point
of view, and his study of legal aspects is not likely soon to
be superseded. A noteworthy point about the history of the
Negro, however, is that laws on the statute-books have not
necessarily been regarded, public opinion and sentiment almost
always insisting on being considered. It is necessary
accordingly to study the actual life of the Negro people in
itself and in connection with that of the nation, and something
like this the present work endeavors to do. It thus becomes not
only a Social History of the race, but also the first formal
effort toward a History of the Negro Problem in America.

With this aim in mind, in view of the enormous amount of
material, we have found it necessary to confine ourselves
within very definite limits. A thorough study of all the
questions relating to the Negro in the United States would fill
volumes, for sooner or later it would touch upon all the great
problems of American life. No attempt is made to perform such a
task; rather is it intended to fix attention upon the race
itself as definitely as possible. Even with this limitation
there are some topics that might be treated at length, but that
have already been studied so thoroughly that no very great
modification is now likely to be made of the results obtained.
Such are many of the questions revolving around the general
subject of slavery. Wars are studied not so much to take note
of the achievement of Negro soldiers, vital as that is, as to
record the effect of these events on the life of the great body
of people. Both wars and slavery thus become not more than
incidents in the history of the ultimate problem.

In view of what has been said, it is natural that the method
of treatment should vary with the different chapters. Sometimes
it is general, as when we touch upon the highways of American
history. Sometimes it is intensive, as in the consideration of
insurrections and early effort for social progress; and
Liberia, as a distinct and much criticized experiment in
government by American Negroes, receives very special
attention. For the first time also an effort is now made to
treat consecutively the life of the Negro people in America for
the last fifty years.

This work is the result of studies on which I have been
engaged for a number of years and which have already seen some
light in A Short History of the American Negro and
The Negro in Literature and Art; and acquaintance with
the elementary facts contained in such books as these is in the
present work very largely taken for granted. I feel under a
special debt of gratitude to the New York State Colonization
Society, which, coöperating with the American Colonization
Society and the Board of Trustees of Donations for Education in
Liberia, in 1920 gave me opportunity for some study at first
hand of educational and social conditions on the West Coast of
Africa; and most of all do I remember the courtesy and
helpfulness of Dr. E.C. Sage and Dr. J.H. Dillard in this
connection. In general I have worked independently of Williams,
but any student of the subject must be grateful to that
pioneer, as well as to Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, who has made
contributions in so many ways. My obligations to such scholarly
dissertations as those by Turner and Russell are manifest,
while to Mary Stoughton Locke’s Anti-Slavery in
America—a model monograph—I feel indebted more than to any
other thesis. Within the last few years, of course, the
Crisis, the Journal of Negro History, and the
Negro Year-Book have in their special fields become
indispensable, and to Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Professor M.N.
Work much credit is due for the faith which has prompted their
respective ventures. I take this occasion also to thank
Professor W.E. Dodd, of the University of Chicago, who from the
time of my entrance upon this field has generously placed at my
disposal his unrivaled knowledge of the history of the South;
and as always I must be grateful to my father, Rev. E.M.
Brawley, for that stimulation and criticism which all my life
have been most valuable to me. Finally, the work has been
dedicated to the memory of a distinguished soldier, who, in his
youth, in the nation’s darkest hour, helped to lead a
struggling people to freedom and his country to victory. It is
now submitted to the consideration of all who are interested in
the nation’s problems, and indeed in any effort that tries to
keep in mind the highest welfare of the country itself.

BENJAMIN BRAWLEY. Cambridge, January 1, 1921.

SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE
AMERICAN NEGRO

CHAPTER I

THE COMING OF NEGROES TO AMERICA

1. African Origins

An outstanding characteristic of recent years has been an
increasing recognition of the cultural importance of Africa to
the world. From all that has been written three facts are
prominent: (1) That at some time early in the Middle Ages,
perhaps about the seventh century, there was a considerable
infiltration of Arabian culture into the tribes living below
the Sahara, something of which may to-day most easily be seen
among such people as the Haussas in the Soudan and the
Mandingoes along the West Coast; (2) That, whatever influences
came in from the outside, there developed in Africa an
independent culture which must not be underestimated; and (3)
That, perhaps vastly more than has been supposed, this African
culture had to do with early exploration and colonization in
America. The first of these three facts is very important, but
is now generally accepted and need not here detain us. For the
present purpose the second and third demand more attention.

The development of native African art is a theme of
never-ending fascination for the ethnologist. Especially have
striking resemblances between Negro and Oceanian culture been
pointed out. In political organization as well as certain forms
of artistic endeavor the Negro people have achieved creditable
results, and especially have they been honored as the
originators of the iron technique.¹ It has further been shown that
fetichism, which is especially well developed along the West
Coast and its hinterland, is at heart not very different
from the manitou beliefs of the American Indians; and it is
this connection that furnishes the key to some of the most
striking results of the researches of the latest and most
profound student of this and related problems.²

From the Soudan radiated a culture that was destined to
affect Europe and in course of time to extend its influence
even beyond the Atlantic Ocean. It is important to remember
that throughout the early history of Europe and up to the close
of the fifteenth century the approach to the home of the Negro
was by land. The Soudan was thought to be the edge of the then
known world; Homer speaks of the Ethiopians as “the farthest
removed of men, and separated into two divisions.” Later Greek
writers carry the description still further and speak of the
two divisions as Eastern and Western—the Eastern occupying the
countries eastward of the Nile, and the Western stretching from
the western shores of that river to the Atlantic Coast. “One of
these divisions,” says Lady Lugard, “we have to acknowledge,
was perhaps itself the original source of the civilization
which has through Egypt permeated the Western world…. When
the history of Negroland comes to be written in detail, it may
be found that the kingdoms lying toward the eastern end of the
Soudan were the home of races who inspired, rather than of
races who received, the traditions of civilization associated
for us with the name of ancient Egypt.”³

If now we come to America, we find the Negro influence upon
the Indian to be so strong as to call in question all current
conceptions of American archæology and so early as to suggest
the coming of men from the Guinea Coast perhaps even before the
coming of Columbus.⁴ The first natives of Africa to
come were Mandingoes; many of the words used by the Indians
in their daily life appear to be not more than corruptions
or adaptations of words used by the tribes of Africa; and
the more we study the remains of those who lived in America
before 1492, and the far-reaching influence of African
products and habits, the more must we acknowledge the
strength of the position of the latest thesis. This whole
subject will doubtless receive much more attention from
scholars, but in any case it is evident that the demands of
Negro culture can no longer be lightly regarded or brushed
aside, and that as a scholarly contribution to the subject
Wiener’s work is of the very highest importance.

2. The Negro in Spanish
Exploration

When we come to Columbus himself, the accuracy of whose
accounts has so recently been questioned, we find a Negro,
Pedro Alonso Niño, as the pilot of one of the famous three
vessels. In 1496 Niño sailed to Santo Domingo and he was also
with Columbus on his third voyage. With two men, Cristóbal de
la Guerra, who served as pilot, and Luís de la Guerra, a
Spanish merchant, in 1499 he planned what proved to be the
first successful commercial voyage to the New World.

The revival of slavery at the close of the Middle Ages and
the beginning of the system of Negro slavery were due to the
commercial expansion of Portugal in the fifteenth century. The
very word Negro is the modern Spanish and Portuguese
form of the Latin niger. In 1441 Prince Henry sent out
one Gonzales, who captured three Moors on the African coast.
These men offered as ransom ten Negroes whom they had taken.
The Negroes were taken to Lisbon in 1442, and in 1444 Prince
Henry regularly began the European trade from the Guinea Coast.
For fifty years his country enjoyed a monopoly of the traffic.
By 1474 Negroes were numerous in Spain, and special interest
attaches to Juan de Valladolid, probably the first of many
Negroes who in time came to have influence and power over their
people under the authority of a greater state. He was addressed
as “judge of all the Negroes and mulattoes, free or slaves,
which are in the very loyal and noble city of Seville, and
throughout the whole archbishopric thereof.” After 1500 there
are frequent references to Negroes, especially in the Spanish
West Indies. Instructions to Ovando, governor of Hispaniola, in
1501, prohibited the passage to the Indies of Jews, Moors, or
recent converts, but authorized him to take over Negro slaves
who had been born in the power of Christians. These orders were
actually put in force the next year. Even the restricted
importation Ovando found inadvisable, and he very soon
requested that Negroes be not sent, as they ran away to the
Indians, with whom they soon made friends. Isabella accordingly
withdrew her permission, but after her death Ferdinand reverted
to the old plan and in 1505 sent to Ovando seventeen Negro
slaves for work in the copper-mines, where the severity of the
labor was rapidly destroying the Indians. In 1510 Ferdinand
directed that fifty Negroes be sent immediately, and that more
be sent later; and in April of this year over a hundred were
bought in the Lisbon market. This, says Bourne,⁵ was the real beginning of the
African slave-trade to America. Already, however, as early
as 1504, a considerable number of Negroes had been
introduced from Guinea because, as we are informed, “the
work of one Negro was worth more than that of four Indians.”
In 1513 thirty Negroes assisted Balboa in building the first
ships made on the Pacific Coast of America. In 1517 Spain
formally entered upon the traffic, Charles V on his
accession to the throne granting “license for the
introduction of Negroes to the number of four hundred,” and
thereafter importation to the West Indies became a thriving
industry. Those who came in these early years were sometimes
men of considerable intelligence, having been trained as
Mohammedans or Catholics. By 1518 Negroes were at work in
the sugar-mills in Hispaniola, where they seem to have
suffered from indulgence in drinks made from sugarcane. In
1521 it was ordered that Negro slaves should not be employed
on errands as in general these tended to cultivate too close
acquaintance with the Indians. In 1522 there was a rebellion
on the sugar plantations in Hispaniola, primarily because
the services of certain Indians were discontinued. Twenty
Negroes from the Admiral’s mill, uniting with twenty others
who spoke the same language, killed a number of Christians.
They fled and nine leagues away they killed another Spaniard
and sacked a house. One Negro, assisted by twelve Indian
slaves, also killed nine other Christians. After much
trouble the Negroes were apprehended and several of them
hanged. It was about 1526 that Negroes were first introduced
within the present limits of the United States, being
brought to a colony near what later became Jamestown, Va.
Here the Negroes were harshly treated and in course of time
they rose against their oppressors and fired their houses.
The settlement was broken up, and the Negroes and their
Spanish companions returned to Hispaniola, whence they had
come. In 1540, in Quivira, in Mexico, there was a Negro who
had taken holy orders; and in 1542 there were established at
Guamanga three brotherhoods of the True Cross of Spaniards,
one being for Indians and one for Negroes.

The outstanding instance of a Negro’s heading in exploration
is that of Estévanico (or Estévanillo, or Estévan, that
is, Stephen), one of the four survivors of the ill-fated
expedition of De Narvaez, who sailed from Spain, June 17, 1527.
Having returned to Spain after many years of service in the New
World, Pamfilo de Narvaez petitioned for a grant, and
accordingly the right to conquer and colonize the country
between the Rio de las Palmas, in eastern Mexico, and Florida
was accorded him.⁶ His force originally consisted
of six hundred soldiers and colonists. The whole conduct of
the expedition—incompetent in the extreme—furnished one of
the most appalling tragedies of early exploration in
America. The original number of men was reduced by half by
storms and hurricanes and desertions in Santo Domingo and
Cuba, and those who were left landed in April, 1528, near
the entrance to Tampa Bay, on the west coast of Florida. One
disaster followed another in the vicinity of Pensacola Bay
and the mouth of the Mississippi until at length only four
men survived. These were Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca;
Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, a captain of infantry; Alonzo
del Castillo Maldonado; and Estévanico, who had originally
come from the west coast of Morocco and who was a slave of
Dorantes. These men had most remarkable adventures in the
years between 1528 and 1536, and as a narrative of suffering
and privation Cabeza de Vaca’s Journal has hardly an
equal in the annals of the continent. Both Dorantes and
Estévanico were captured, and indeed for a season or two
all four men were forced to sojourn among the Indians. They
treated the sick, and with such success did they work that
their fame spread far and wide among the tribes. Crowds
followed them from place to place, showering presents upon
them. With Alonzo de Castillo, Estévanico sojourned for a
while with the Yguazes, a very savage tribe that killed its
own male children and bought those of strangers. He at
length escaped from these people and spent several months
with the Avavares. He afterwards went with De Vaca to the
Maliacones, only a short distance from the Avavares, and
still later he accompanied Alonzo de Castillo in exploring
the country toward the Rio Grande. He was unexcelled as a
guide who could make his way through new territory. In 1539
he went with Fray Marcos of Nice, the Father Provincial of
the Franciscan order in New Spain, as a guide to the Seven
Cities of Cibola, the villages of the ancestors of the
present Zuñi Indians in western New Mexico. Preceding Fray
Marcos by a few days and accompanied by natives who joined
him on the way, he reached Háwikuh, the southern-most of the
seven towns. Here he and all but three of his Indian
followers were killed.

3. Development of the
Slave-Trade

Portugal and Spain having demonstrated that the slave-trade
was profitable, England also determined to engage in the
traffic; and as early as 1530 William Hawkins, a merchant of
Plymouth, visited the Guinea Coast and took away a few slaves.
England really entered the field, however, with the voyage in
1562 of Captain John Hawkins, son of William, who in October of
this year also went to the coast of Guinea. He had a fleet of
three ships and one hundred men, and partly by the sword and
partly by other means he took three hundred or more Negroes,
whom he took to Santo Domingo and sold profitably.⁷ He was richly laden going
homeward and some of his stores were seized by Spanish
vessels. Hawkins made two other voyages, one in 1564, and
another, with Drake, in 1567. On his second voyage he had
four armed ships, the largest being the Jesus, a
vessel of seven hundred tons, and a force of one hundred and
seventy men. December and January (1564-5) he spent in
picking up freight, and by sickness and fights with the
Negroes he lost many of his men. Then at the end of January
he set out for the West Indies. He was becalmed for
twenty-one days, but he arrived at the Island of Dominica
March 9. He traded along the Spanish coasts and on his
return to England he touched at various points in the West
Indies and sailed along the coast of Florida. On his third
voyage he had five ships. He himself was again in command of
the Jesus, while Drake was in charge of the
Judith, a little vessel of fifty tons. He got
together between four and five hundred Negroes and again
went to Dominica. He had various adventures and at last was
thrown by a storm on the coast of Mexico. Here after three
days he was attacked by a Spanish fleet of twelve vessels,
and all of his ships were destroyed except the Judith
and another small vessel, the Minion, which was so
crowded that one hundred men risked the dangers on land
rather than go to sea with her. On this last voyage Hawkins
and Drake had among their companions the Earls of Pembroke
and Leicester, who were then, like other young Elizabethans,
seeking fame and fortune. It is noteworthy that in all that
he did Hawkins seems to have had no sense of cruelty or
wrong. He held religious services morning and evening, and
in the spirit of the later Cromwell he enjoined upon his men
to “serve God daily, love one another, preserve their
victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company.” Queen
Elizabeth evidently regarded the opening of the slave-trade
as a worthy achievement, for after his second voyage she
made Hawkins a knight, giving him for a crest the device of
a Negro’s head and bust with the arms securely bound.

France joined in the traffic in 1624, and then Holland and
Denmark, and the rivalry soon became intense. England, with her
usual aggressiveness, assumed a commanding position, and, much
more than has commonly been supposed, the Navigation Ordinance
of 1651 and the two wars with the Dutch in the seventeenth
century had as their basis the struggle for supremacy in the
slave-trade. The English trade proper began with the granting
of rights to special companies, to one in 1618, to another in
1631, and in 1662 to the “Company of Royal Adventurers,”
rechartered in 1672 as the “Royal African Company,” to which in
1687 was given the exclusive right to trade between the Gold
Coast and the British colonies in America. James, Duke of York,
was interested in this last company, and it agreed to supply
the West Indies with three thousand slaves annually. In 1698,
on account of the incessant clamor of English merchants, the
trade was opened generally, and any vessel carrying the British
flag was by act of Parliament permitted to engage in it on
payment of a duty of 10 per cent on English goods exported to
Africa. New England immediately engaged in the traffic, and
vessels from Boston and Newport went forth to the Gold Coast
laden with hogsheads of rum. In course of time there developed
a three-cornered trade by which molasses was brought from the
West Indies to New England, made into rum to be taken to Africa
and exchanged for slaves, the slaves in turn being brought to
the West Indies or the Southern colonies.⁸ A slave purchased for one
hundred gallons of rum worth £10 brought from £20 to £50
when offered for sale in America.⁹ Newport soon had twenty-two
still houses, and even these could not satisfy the demand.
England regarded the slave-trade as of such importance that
when in 1713 she accepted the Peace of Utrecht she insisted
on having awarded to her for thirty years the exclusive
right to transport slaves to the Spanish colonies in
America. When in the course of the eighteenth century the
trade became fully developed, scores of vessels went forth
each year to engage in it; but just how many slaves were
brought to the present United States and how many were taken
to the West Indies or South America, it is impossible to
say. In 1726 the three cities of London, Bristol, and
Liverpool alone had 171 ships engaged in the traffic, and
the profits were said to warrant a thousand more, though
such a number was probably never reached so far as England
alone was concerned.¹⁰

4. Planting of Slavery in the
Colonies

It is only for Virginia that we can state with definiteness
the year in which Negro slaves were first brought to an English
colony on the mainland. When legislation on the subject of
slavery first appears elsewhere, slaves are already present.
“About the last of August (1619),” says John Rolfe in John
Smith’s Generall Historie, “came in a Dutch man of
warre, that sold us twenty Negars.” These Negroes were sold
into servitude, and Virginia did not give statutory recognition
to slavery as a system until 1661, the importations being too
small to make the matter one of importance. In this year,
however, an act of assembly stated that Negroes were “incapable
of making satisfaction for the time lost in running away by
addition of time”; ¹¹ and thus slavery gained a
firm place in the oldest of the colonies.

Negroes were first imported into Massachusetts from
Barbadoes a year or two before 1638, but in John Winthrop’s
Journal, under date February 26 of this year, we have
positive evidence on the subject as follows: “Mr. Pierce in the
Salem ship, the Desire, returned from the West Indies
after seven months. He had been at Providence, and brought some
cotton, and tobacco, and Negroes, etc., from thence, and salt
from Tertugos. Dry fish and strong liquors are the only
commodities for those parts. He met there two men-of-war, sent
forth by the lords, etc., of Providence with letters of mart,
who had taken divers prizes from the Spaniard and many
Negroes.” It was in 1641 that there was passed in Massachusetts
the first act on the subject of slavery, and this was the first
positive statement in any of the colonies with reference to the
matter. Said this act: “There shall never be any bond slavery,
villeinage, nor captivity among us, unless it be lawful
captives, taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly
sell themselves or are sold to us, and these shall have all the
liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established
in Israel requires.” This article clearly sanctioned slavery.
Of the three classes of persons referred to, the first was made
up of Indians, the second of white people under the system of
indenture, and the third of Negroes. In this whole matter, as
in many others, Massachusetts moved in advance of the other
colonies. The first definitely to legalize slavery, in course
of time she became also the foremost representative of
sentiment against the system. In 1646 one John Smith brought
home two Negroes from the Guinea Coast, where we are told he
“had been the means of killing near a hundred more.” The
General Court, “conceiving themselves bound by the first
opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin
of man-stealing,” ordered that the Negroes be sent at public
expense to their native country.¹² In later cases, however,
Massachusetts did not find herself able to follow this
precedent. In general in these early years New England was
more concerned about Indians than about Negroes, as the
presence of the former in large numbers was a constant
menace, while Negro slavery had not yet assumed its most
serious aspects.

In New York slavery began under the Dutch rule and continued
under the English. Before or about 1650 the Dutch West India
Company brought some Negroes to New Netherland. Most of these
continued to belong to the company, though after a period of
labor (under the common system of indenture) some of the more
trusty were permitted to have small farms, from the produce of
which they made return to the company. Their children, however,
continued to be slaves. In 1664 New Netherland became New York.
The next year, in the code of English laws that was drawn up,
it was enacted that “no Christian shall be kept in bond
slavery, villeinage, or captivity, except who shall be judged
thereunto by authority, or such as willingly have sold or shall
sell themselves.” As at first there was some hesitancy about
making Negroes Christians, this act, like the one in
Massachusetts, by implication permitted slavery.

It was in 1632 that the grant including what is now the
states of Maryland and Delaware was made to George Calvert,
first Lord Baltimore. Though slaves are mentioned earlier, it
was in 1663-4 that the Maryland Legislature passed its first
enactment on the subject of slavery. It was declared that “all
Negroes and other slaves within this province, and all Negroes
and other slaves to be hereinafter imported into this province,
shall serve during life; and all children born of any Negro or
other slave, shall be slaves as their fathers were, for the
term of their lives.”

In Delaware and New Jersey the real beginnings of slavery
are unusually hazy. The Dutch introduced the system in both of
these colonies. In the laws of New Jersey the word
slaves occurs as early as 1664, and acts for the
regulation of the conduct of those in bondage began with the
practical union of the colony with New York in 1702. The lot of
the slave was somewhat better here than in most of the
colonies. Although the system was in existence in Delaware
almost from the beginning of the colony, it did not receive
legal recognition until 1721, when there was passed an act
providing for the trial of slaves in a special court with two
justices and six freeholders.

As early as 1639 there are incidental reference to Negroes
in Pennsylvania, and there are frequent references after this
date.¹³ In this colony there were
strong objections to the importing of Negroes in spite of
the demand for them. Penn in his charter to the Free Society
of Traders in 1682 enjoined upon the members of this company
that if they held black slaves these should be free at the
end of fourteen years, the Negroes then to become the
company’s tenants.¹⁴ In 1688 there originated in
Germantown a protest against Negro slavery that was “the
first formal action ever taken against the barter in human
flesh within the boundaries of the United States.” ¹⁵ Here a small company of
Germans was assembled April 18, 1688, and there was drawn up
a document signed by Garret Hendericks, Franz Daniel
Pastorius, Dirck Op den Graeff, and Abraham Op den Graeff.
The protest was addressed to the monthly meeting of the
Quakers about to take place in Lower Dublin. The monthly
meeting on April 30 felt that it could not pretend to take
action on such an important matter and referred it to the
quarterly meeting in June. This in turn passed it on to the
yearly meeting, the highest tribunal of the Quakers. Here it
was laid on the table, and for the next few years nothing
resulted from it. About 1696, however, opposition to slavery
on the part of the Quakers began to be active. In the colony
at large before 1700 the lot of the Negro was regularly one
of servitude. Laws were made for servants, white or black,
and regulations and restrictions were largely identical. In
1700, however, legislation began more definitely to fix the
status of the slave. In this year an act of the legislature
forbade the selling of Negroes out of the province without
their consent, but in other ways it denied the personality
of the slave. This act met further formal approval in 1705,
when special courts were ordained for the trial and
punishment of slaves, and when importation from Carolina was
forbidden on the ground that it made trouble with the
Indians nearer home. In 1700 a maximum duty of 20s. was
placed on each Negro imported, and in 1705 this was doubled,
there being already some competition with white labor. In
1712 the Assembly sought to prevent importation altogether
by a duty of £20 a head. This act was repealed in England,
and a duty of £5 in 1715 was also repealed. In 1729,
however, the duty was fixed at £2, at which figure it
remained for a generation.

It was almost by accident that slavery was officially
recognized in Connecticut in 1650. The code of laws compiled
for the colony in this year was especially harsh on the
Indians. It was enacted that certain of them who incurred the
displeasure of the colony might be made to serve the person
injured or “be shipped out and exchanged for Negroes.” In 1680
the governor of the colony informed the Board of Trade that “as
for blacks there came sometimes three or four in a year from
Barbadoes, and they are usually sold at the rate of £22
apiece.” These people were regarded rather as servants than as
slaves, and early legislation was mainly in the line of police
regulations designed to prevent their running away.

In 1652 it was enacted in Rhode Island that all slaves
brought into the colony should be set free after ten years of
service. This law was not designed, as might be supposed, to
restrict slavery. It was really a step in the evolution of the
system, and the limit of ten years was by no means observed.
“The only legal recognition of the law was in the series of
acts beginning January 4, 1703, to control the wandering of
African slaves and servants, and another beginning in April,
1708, in which the slave-trade was indirectly legalized by
being taxed.”¹⁶ “In course of time Rhode
Island became the greatest slave-trader in the country,
becoming a sort of clearing-house for the other
colonies.”¹⁷

New Hampshire, profiting by the experience of the
neighboring colony of Massachusetts, deemed it best from the
beginning to discourage slavery. There were so few Negroes in
the colony as to form a quantity practically negligible. The
system was recognized, however, an act being passed in 1714 to
regulate the conduct of slaves, and another four years later to
regulate that of masters.

In North Carolina, even more than in most of the colonies,
the system of Negro slavery was long controlled by custom
rather than by legal enactment. It was recognized by law in
1715, however, and police regulations to govern the slaves were
enacted. In South Carolina the history of slavery is
particularly noteworthy. The natural resources of this colony
offered a ready home for the system, and the laws here
formulated were as explicit as any ever enacted. Slaves were
first imported from Barbadoes, and their status received
official confirmation in 1682. By 1720 the number had increased
to 12,000, the white people numbering only 9,000. By 1698 such
was the fear from the preponderance of the Negro population
that a special act was passed to encourage white immigration.
Legislation “for the better ordering of slaves” was passed in
1690, and in 1712 the first regular slave law was enacted. Once
before 1713, the year of the Assiento Contract of the Peace of
Utrecht, and several times after this date, prohibitive duties
were placed on Negroes to guard against their too rapid
increase. By 1734, however, importation had again reached large
proportions; and in 1740, in consequence of recent
insurrectionary efforts, a prohibitive duty several times
larger than the previous one was placed upon Negroes brought
into the province.

The colony of Georgia was chartered in 1732 and actually
founded the next year. Oglethorpe’s idea was that the colony
should be a refuge for persecuted Christians and the debtor
classes of England. Slavery was forbidden on the ground that
Georgia was to defend the other English colonies from the
Spaniards on the South, and that it would not be able to do
this if like South Carolina it dissipated its energies in
guarding Negro slaves. For years the development of Georgia was
slow, and the prosperous condition of South Carolina constantly
suggested to the planters that “the one thing needful” for
their highest welfare was slavery. Again and again were
petitions addressed to the trustees, George Whitefield being
among those who most urgently advocated the innovation.
Moreover, Negroes from South Carolina were sometimes hired for
life, and purchases were openly made in Savannah. It was not
until 1749, however, that the trustees yielded to the request.
In 1755 the legislature passed an act that regulated the
conduct of the slaves, and in 1765 a more regular code was
adopted. Thus did slavery finally gain a foothold in what was
destined to become one of the most important of the Southern
states.

For the first fifty or sixty years of the life of the
colonies the introduction of Negroes was slow; the system of
white servitude furnished most of the labor needed, and England
had not yet won supremacy in the slave-trade. It was in the
last quarter of the seventeenth century that importations began
to be large, and in the course of the eighteenth century the
numbers grew by leaps and bounds. In 1625, six years after the
first Negroes were brought to the colony, there were in
Virginia only 23 Negroes, 12 male, 11 female. ¹⁸ In 1659 there were 300; but
in 1683 there were 3,000 and in 1708, 12,000. In 1680
Governor Simon Bradstreet reported to England with reference
to Massachusetts that “no company of blacks or slaves” had
been brought into the province since its beginning, for the
space of fifty years, with the exception of a small vessel
that two years previously, after a twenty months’ voyage to
Madagascar, had brought hither between forty and fifty
Negroes, mainly women and children, who were sold for £10,
£15, and £20 apiece; occasionally two or three Negroes were
brought from Barbadoes or other islands, and altogether
there were in Massachusetts at the time not more than 100 or
120.

The colonists were at first largely opposed to the
introduction of slavery, and numerous acts were passed
prohibiting it in Virginia, Massachusetts, and elsewhere; and
in Georgia, as we have seen, it had at first been expressly
forbidden. English business men, however, had no scruples about
the matter. About 1663 a British Committee on Foreign
Plantations declared that “black slaves are the most useful
appurtenances of a plantation,” ¹⁹ and twenty years later the
Lords Commissioners of Trade stated that “the colonists
could not possibly subsist” without an adequate supply of
slaves. Laws passed in the colonies were regularly
disallowed by the crown, and royal governors were warned
that the colonists would not be permitted to “discourage a
traffic so beneficial to the nation.” Before 1772 Virginia
passed not less than thirty-three acts looking toward the
prohibition of the importation of slaves, but in every
instance the act was annulled by England. In the far South,
especially in South Carolina, we have seen that there were
increasingly heavy duties. In spite of all such efforts for
restriction, however, the system of Negro slavery, once well
started, developed apace.

In two colonies not among the original thirteen but
important in the later history of the United States, Negroes
were present at a very early date, in the Spanish colony of
Florida from the very first, and in the French colony of
Louisiana as soon as New Orleans really began to grow. Negroes
accompanied the Spaniards in their voyages along the South
Atlantic coast early in the sixteenth century, and specially
trained Spanish slaves assisted in the founding of St.
Augustine in 1565. The ambitious schemes in France of the great
adventurer, John Law, and especially the design of the
Mississippi Company (chartered 1717) included an agreement for
the importation into Louisiana of six thousand white persons
and three thousand Negroes, the Company having secured among
other privileges the exclusive right to trade with the colony
for twenty-five years and the absolute ownership of all mines
in it. The sufferings of some of the white emigrants from
France—the kidnapping, the revenge, and the chicanery that
played so large a part—all make a story complete in itself. As
for the Negroes, it was definitely stipulated that these should
not come from another French colony without the consent of the
governor of that colony. The contract had only begun to be
carried out when Law’s bubble burst. However, in June, 1721,
there were 600 Negroes in Louisiana; in 1745 the number had
increased to 2020. The stories connected with these people are
as tragic and wildly romantic as are most of the stories in the
history of Louisiana. In fact, this colony from the very first
owed not a little of its abandon and its fascination to the
mysticism that the Negroes themselves brought from Africa. In
the midst of much that is apocryphal one or two events or
episodes stand out with distinctness. In 1729, Perier, governor
at the time, testified with reference to a small company of
Negroes who had been sent against the Indians as follows:
“Fifteen Negroes in whose hands we had put weapons, performed
prodigies of valor. If the blacks did not cost so much, and if
their labors were 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 colony²⁰.” Not always, however, did
the Negroes fight against the Indians. In 1730 some
representatives of the powerful Banbaras had an
understanding with the Chickasaws by which the latter were
to help them in exterminating all the white people and in
setting up an independent republic²¹. They were led by a strong
and desperate Negro named Samba. As a result of this effort
for freedom Samba and seven of his companions were broken on
the wheel and a woman was hanged. Already, however, there
had been given the suggestion of the possible alliance in
the future of the Indian and the Negro. From the very first
also, because of the freedom from restraint of all the
elements of population that entered into the life of the
colony, there was the beginning of that mixture of the races
which was later to tell so vitally on the social life of
Louisiana and whose effects are so readily apparent even
to-day.

5. The Wake of the Slave-Ship

Thus it was that Negroes came to America. Thus it was also,
we might say, that the Negro Problem came, though it was not
for decades, not until the budding years of American
nationality, that the ultimate reaches of the problem were
realized. Those who came were by no means all of exactly the
same race stock and language. Plantations frequently exhibited
a variety of customs, and sometimes traditional enemies became
brothers in servitude. The center of the colonial slave-trade
was the African coast for about two hundred miles east of the
great Niger River. From this comparatively small region came as
many slaves as from all the rest of Africa together. A number
of those who came were of entirely different race stock from
the Negroes; some were Moors, and a very few were Malays from
Madagascar.

The actual procuring of the slaves was by no means as easy a
process as is sometimes supposed. In general the slave mart
brought out the most vicious passions of all who were in any
way connected with the traffic. The captain of a vessel had to
resort to various expedients to get his cargo. His commonest
method was to bring with him a variety of gay cloth, cheap
ornaments, and whiskey, which he would give in exchange for
slaves brought to him. His task was most simple when a
chieftain of one tribe brought to him several hundred prisoners
of war. Ordinarily, however, the work was more toilsome, and
kidnapping a favorite method, though individuals were sometimes
enticed on vessels. The work was always dangerous, for the
natives along the slave-coast soon became suspicious. After
they had seen some of their tribesmen taken away, they learned
not to go unarmed while a slave-vessel was on the coast, and
very often there were hand-to-hand encounters. It was not long
before it began to be impressed upon those interested in the
trade that it was not good business to place upon the captain
of a vessel the responsibility of getting together three or
four hundred slaves, and that it would be better if he could
find his cargo waiting for him when he came. Thus arose the
so-called factories, which were nothing more than warehouses.
Along the coast were placed small settlements of Europeans,
whose business it was to stimulate slave-hunting expeditions,
negotiate for slaves brought in, and see that they were kept
until the arrival of the ships. Practically every nation
engaged in the traffic planted factories of this kind along the
West Coast from Cape Verde to the equator; and thus it was that
this part of Africa began to be the most flagrantly exploited
region in the world; thus whiskey and all the other vices of
civilization began to come to a simple and home-loving
people.

Once on board the slaves were put in chains two by two. When
the ship was ready to start, the hold of the vessel was crowded
with moody and unhappy wretches who most often were made to
crouch so that their knees touched their chins, but who also
were frequently made to lie on their sides “spoon-fashion.”
Sometimes the space between floor and ceiling was still further
diminished by the water-barrels; on the top of these barrels
boards were placed, on the boards the slaves had to lie, and in
the little space that remained they had to subsist as well as
they could. There was generally only one entrance to the hold,
and provision for only the smallest amount of air through the
gratings on the sides. The clothing of a captive, if there was
any at all, consisted of only a rag about the loins. The food
was half-rotten rice, yams, beans, or soup, and sometimes bread
and meat; the cooking was not good, nor was any care taken to
see that all were fed. Water was always limited, a pint a day
being a generous allowance; frequently no more than a gill
could be had. The rule was to bring the slaves from the hold
twice a day for an airing, about eight o’clock in the morning
and four in the afternoon; but this plan was not always
followed. On deck they were made to dance by the lash, and they
were also forced to sing. Thus were born the sorrow-songs, the
last cry of those who saw their homeland vanish behind
them—forever.

Sometimes there were stern fights on board. Sometimes food
was refused in order that death might be hastened. When
opportunity served, some leaped overboard in the hope of being
taken back to Africa. Throughout the night the hold resounded
with the moans of those who awoke from dreams of home to find
themselves in bonds. Women became hysterical, and both men and
women became insane. Fearful and contagious diseases broke out.
Smallpox was one of these. More common was ophthalmia, a
frightful inflammation of the eyes. A blind, and hence a
worthless, slave was thrown to the sharks. The putrid
atmosphere, the melancholy, and the sudden transition from heat
to cold greatly increased the mortality, and frequently when
morning came a dead and a living slave were found shackled
together. A captain always counted on losing one-fourth of his
cargo. Sometimes he lost a great deal more.

Back on the shore a gray figure with strained gaze watched
the ship fade away—an old woman sadly typical of the great
African mother. With her vision she better than any one else
perceived the meaning of it all. The men with hard faces who
came to buy and sell might deceive others, but not her. In a
great vague way she felt that something wrong had attacked the
very heart of her people. She saw men wild with the whiskey of
the Christian nations commit crimes undreamed of before. She
did not like the coast towns; the girl who went thither came
not home again, and a young man was lost to all that Africa
held dear. In course of time she saw every native craft
despised, and instead of the fabric that her own fingers wove
her children yearned for the tinsel and the gewgaws of the
trader. She cursed this man, and she called upon all her
spirits to banish the evil. But when at last all was of no
avail—when the strongest youth or the dearest maiden had
gone—she went back to her hut and ate her heart out in the
darkness. She wept for her children and would not be comforted
because they were not. Then slowly to the untutored mind
somehow came the promise: “These are they which came out of
great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb…. They shall hunger no more,
neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them,
nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne
shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of
waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

Footnote 1: (return)

Note article “Africa” in New International
Encyclopedia, referring especially to the studies of
Von Luschan.

Footnote 2: (return)

Leo Wiener: Africa and the Discovery of America,
Vol. I, Innes & Sons, Philadelphia, 1920.

Footnote 3: (return)
A Tropical Dependency, James Nisbet & Co.,
Ltd., London, 1906, p. 17.

Footnote 4: (return)

See Wiener, I, 178.

Footnote 5: (return)
Spain in America, Vol. 3 in American Nation
Series, p. 270.

Footnote 6: (return)

Frederick W. Hodge, 3, in Spanish Explorers in the
Southern United States, 1528-1543, in “Original
Narratives of Early American History,” Scribner’s, New
York, 1907. Both the Narrative of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de
Vaca and the Narrative of the Expedition of Coronado, by
Pedro de Casteñada, are edited by Hodge, with illuminating
introductions.

Footnote 7: (return)

Edward E. Hale in Justin Winsor’s Narrative and
Critical History of America, III, 60.

Footnote 8: (return)

Bogart: Economic History, 72.

Footnote 9: (return)

Coman: Industrial History, 78.

Footnote 10:
(return)

Ballagh: Slavery in Virginia, 12.

Footnote 11:
(return)

Hening: Statutes, II, 26.

Footnote 12:
(return)

Coffin: Slave Insurrections, 8.

Footnote 13:
(return)

Turner: The Negro in Pennsylvania, 1.

Footnote 14:
(return)
Ibid., 21.

Footnote 15:
(return)

Faust: The German Element in the United States,
Boston, 1909, I, 45.

Footnote 16:
(return)

William T. Alexander: History of the Colored Race in
America, New Orleans, 1887, p. 136.

Footnote 17:
(return)

DuBois: Suppression of the Slave-Trade, 34.

Footnote 18:
(return)
Virginia Magazine of History, VII, 364.

Footnote 19:
(return)

Bogart: Economic History, 73.

Footnote 20:
(return)

Gayarré: History of Louisiana, I, 435.

Footnote 21:
(return)
Ibid., I, 440.

CHAPTER II

THE NEGRO IN THE COLONIES

The Negroes who were brought from Africa to America were
brought hither to work, and to work under compulsion; hence any
study of their social life in the colonial era must be
primarily a study of their life under the system of slavery,
and of the efforts of individuals to break away from the
same.

1. Servitude and Slavery

For the antecedents of Negro slavery in America one must go
back to the system of indentured labor known as servitude. This
has been defined as “a legalized status of Indian, white, and
Negro servants preceding slavery in most, if not all, of the
English mainland colonies.”²² A study of servitude will
explain many of the acts with reference to Negroes,
especially those about intermarriage with white people. For
the origins of the system one must go back to social
conditions in England in the seventeenth century. While
villeinage had been formally abolished in England at the
middle of the fourteenth century, it still lingered in
remote places, and even if men were not technically villeins
they might be subjected to long periods of service. By the
middle of the fifteenth century the demand for wool had led
to the enclosure of many farms for sheep-raising, and
accordingly to distress on the part of many agricultural
laborers. Conditions were not improved early in the
sixteenth century, and they were in fact made more acute,
the abolition of the monasteries doing away with many of the
sources of relief. Men out of work were thrown upon the
highways and thus became a menace to society. In 1564 the
price of wheat was 19s. a quarter and wages were 7d. a day.
The situation steadily grew worse, and in 1610, while wages
were still the same, wheat was 35s. a quarter. Rents were
constantly rising, moreover, and many persons died from
starvation. In the course of the seventeenth century paupers
and dissolute persons more and more filled the jails and
workhouses.

Meanwhile in the young colonies across the sea labor was
scarce, and it seemed to many an act of benevolence to bring
from England persons who could not possibly make a living at
home and give them some chance in the New World. From the very
first, children, and especially young people between the ages
of twelve and twenty, were the most desired. The London Company
undertook to meet half of the cost of the transportation and
maintenance of children sent out by parish authorities, the
understanding being that it would have the service of the same
until they were of age.²³ The Company was to teach
each boy a trade and when his freedom year arrived was to
give to each one fifty acres, a cow, some seed corn, tools,
and firearms. He then became the Company’s tenant, for seven
years more giving to it one-half of his produce, at the end
of which time he came into full possession of twenty-five
acres. After the Company collapsed individuals took up the
idea. Children under twelve years of age might be bound for
seven years, and persons over twenty-one for no more than
four; but the common term was five years.

Under this system fell servants voluntary and involuntary.
Hundreds of people, too poor to pay for their transportation,
sold themselves for a number of years to pay for the transfer.
Some who were known as “freewillers” had some days in which to
dispose of themselves to the best advantage in America; if they
could not make satisfactory terms, they too were sold to pay
for the passage. More important from the standpoint of the
system itself, however, was the number of involuntary servants
brought hither. Political offenders, vagrants, and other
criminals were thus sent to the colonies, and many persons,
especially boys and girls, were kidnapped in the streets of
London and “spirited” away. Thus came Irishmen or Scotchmen who
had incurred the ire of the crown, Cavaliers or Roundheads
according as one party or the other was out of power, and
farmers who had engaged in Monmouth’s rebellion; and in the
year 1680 alone it was estimated that not less than ten
thousand persons were “spirited” away from England. It is easy
to see how such a system became a highly profitable one for
shipmasters and those in connivance with them. Virginia
objected to the criminals, and in 1671 the House of Burgesses
passed a law against the importing of such persons, and the
same was approved by the governor. Seven years later, however,
it was set aside for the transportation of political
offenders.

As having the status of an apprentice the servant could sue
in court and he was regularly allowed “freedom dues” at the
expiration of his term. He could not vote, however, could not
bear weapons, and of course could not hold office. In some
cases, especially where the system was voluntary, servants
sustained kindly relations with their masters, a few even
becoming secretaries or tutors. More commonly, however, the lot
of the indentured laborer was a hard one, his food often being
only coarse Indian meal, and water mixed with molasses. The
moral effect of the system was bad in the fate to which it
subjected woman and in the evils resulting from the sale of the
labor of children. In this whole connection, however, it is to
be remembered that the standards of the day were very different
from those of our own. The modern humanitarian impulse had not
yet moved the heart of England, and flogging was still common
for soldiers and sailors, criminals and children alike.

The first Negroes brought to the colonies were technically
servants, and generally as Negro slavery advanced white
servitude declined. James II, in fact, did whatever he could to
hasten the end of servitude in order that slavery might become
more profitable. Economic forces were with him, for while a
slave varied in price from £10 to £50, the mere cost of
transporting a servant was from £6 to £10. “Servitude became
slavery when to such incidents as alienation, disfranchisement,
whipping, and limited marriage were added those of perpetual
service and a denial of civil, juridical, marital and property
rights as well as the denial of the possession of
children.”²⁴ Even after slavery was well
established, however, white men and women were frequently
retained as domestic servants, and the system of servitude
did not finally pass in all of its phases before the
beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Negro slavery was thus distinctively an evolution. As the
first Negroes were taken by pirates, the rights of ownership
could not legally be given to those who purchased them; hence
slavery by custom preceded slavery by statute. Little by little
the colonies drifted into the sterner system. The transition
was marked by such an act as that in Rhode Island, which in
1652 permitted a Negro to be bound for ten years. We have
already referred to the Act of Assembly in Virginia in 1661 to
the effect that Negroes were incapable of making satisfaction
for time lost in running away by addition of time. Even before
it had become generally enacted or understood in the colonies,
however, that a child born of slave parents should serve for
life, a new question had arisen, that of the issue of a free
person and a slave. This led Virginia in 1662 to lead the way
with an act declaring that the status of a child should be
determined by that of the mother,²⁵ which act both gave to
slavery the sanction of law and made it hereditary. From
this time forth Virginia took a commanding lead in
legislation; and it is to be remembered that when we refer
to this province we by no means have reference to the
comparatively small state of to-day, but to the richest and
most populous of the colonies. This position Virginia
maintained until after the Revolutionary War, and not only
the present West Virginia but the great Northwest Territory
were included in her domain.

The slave had none of the ordinary rights of citizenship; in
a criminal case he could be arrested, tried, and condemned with
but one witness against him, and he could be sentenced without
a jury. In Virginia in 1630 one Hugh Davis was ordered to be
“soundly whipped before an assembly of Negroes and others, for
abusing himself to the dishonor of God and the shame of
Christians, by defiling his body in lying with a Negro.”²⁶ Just ten years afterwards,
in 1640, one Robert Sweet was ordered “to do penance in
church, according to the laws of England, for getting a
Negro woman with child, and the woman to be whipped.”²⁷ Thus from the very beginning
the intermixture of the races was frowned upon and went on
all the same. By the time, moreover, that the important acts
of 1661 and 1662 had formally sanctioned slavery, doubt had
arisen in the minds of some Virginians as to whether one
Christian could legitimately hold another in bondage; and in
1667 it was definitely stated that the conferring of baptism
did not alter the condition of a person as to his bondage or
freedom, so that masters, freed from this doubt, could now
“more carefully endeavor the propagation of Christianity.”
In 1669 an “act about the casual killing of slaves” provided
that if any slave resisted his master and under the
extremity of punishment chanced to die, his death was not to
be considered a felony and the master was to be acquitted.
In 1670 it was made clear that none but freeholders and
housekeepers should vote in the election of burgesses, and
in the same year provision was taken against the possible
ownership of a white servant by a free Negro, who
nevertheless “was not debarred from buying any of his own
nation.” In 1692 there was legislation “for the more speedy
prosecution of slaves committing capital crimes”; and this
was reënacted in 1705, when some provision was made for the
compensation of owners and when it was further declared that
Negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves within the dominion were
“real estate” and “incapable in law to be witnesses in any
cases whatsoever”; and in 1723 there was an elaborate and
detailed act “directing the trial of slaves committing
capital crimes, and for the more effectual punishing
conspiracies and insurrections of them, and for the better
government of Negroes, mulattoes, and Indians, bond or
free.” This last act specifically stated that no slave
should be set free upon any pretense whatsoever “except for
some meritorious services, to be adjudged and allowed by the
governor and council.” All this legislation was soon found
to be too drastic and too difficult to enforce, and
modification was inevitable. This came in 1732, when it was
made possible for a slave to be a witness when another slave
was on trial for a capital offense, and in 1744 this
provision was extended to civil cases as well. In 1748 there
was a general revision of all existing legislation, with
special provision against attempted insurrections.

Thus did Virginia pave the way, and more and more slave
codes took on some degree of definiteness and uniformity. Very
important was the act of 1705, which provided that a slave
might be inventoried as real estate. As property henceforth
there was nothing to prevent his being separated from his
family. Before the law he was no longer a person but a
thing.

2. The Indian, the Mulatto, and the Free
Negro

All along, it is to be observed, the problem of the Negro
was complicated by that of the Indian. At first there was a
feeling that Indians were to be treated not as Negroes but as
on the same basis as Englishmen. An act in Virginia of 1661-2
summed up this feeling in the provision that they were not to
be sold as servants for any longer time than English people of
the same age, and injuries done to them were to be duly
remedied by the laws of England. About the same time a Powhatan
Indian sold for life was ordered to be set free. An interesting
enactment of 1670 attempted to give the Indian an intermediate
status between that of the Englishman and the Negro slave, as
“servants not being Christians, imported into the colony by
shipping” (i.e., Negroes) were to be slaves for their lives,
but those that came by land were to serve “if boys or girls
until thirty years of age; if men or women, twelve years and no
longer.” All such legislation, however, was radically changed
as a result of Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion of 1676, in which
the aid of the natives was invoked against the English
governor. Henceforth Indians taken in war became the slaves for
life of their captors. An elaborate act of 1682 summed up the
new status, and Indians sold by other Indians were to be
“adjudged, deemed, and taken to be slaves, to all intents and
purposes, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary
notwithstanding.” Indian women were to be “tithables,”²⁸ and they were required to
pay levies just as Negro women. From this time forth
enactments generally included Indians along with Negroes,
but of course the laws placed on the statute books did not
always bear close relation to what was actually enforced,
and in general the Indian was destined to be a vanishing
rather than a growing problem. Very early in the eighteenth
century, in connection with the wars between the English and
the Spanish in Florida, hundreds of Indians were shipped to
the West Indies and some to New England. Massachusetts in
1712 prohibited such importation, as the Indians were
“malicious, surly, and very ungovernable,” and she was
followed to similar effect by Pennsylvania in 1712, by New
Hampshire in 1714, and by Connecticut and Rhode Island in
1715.

If the Indian was destined to be a vanishing factor, the
mulatto and the free Negro most certainly were not. In spite of
all the laws to prevent it, the intermixture of the races
increased, and manumission somehow also increased. Sometimes a
master in his will provided that several of his slaves should
be given their freedom. Occasionally a slave became free by
reason of what was regarded as an act of service to the
commonwealth, as in the case of one Will, slave belonging to
Robert Ruffin, of the county of Surry in Virginia, who in 1710
divulged a conspiracy.²⁹ There is, moreover, on
record a case of an indentured Negro servant, John Geaween,
who by his unusual thrift in the matter of some hogs which
he raised on the share system with his master, was able as
early as 1641 to purchase his own son from another master,
to the perfect satisfaction of all concerned.³⁰ Of special importance for
some years were those persons who were descendants of Negro
fathers and indentured white mothers, and who at first were
of course legally free. By 1691 the problem had become acute
in Virginia. In this year “for prevention of that abominable
mixture and spurious issue, which hereafter may increase in
this dominion, as well by Negroes, mulattoes and Indians
intermarrying with English or other white women, as by their
unlawful accompanying with one another,” it was enacted that
“for the time to come whatsoever English or other white man
or woman being free shall intermarry with a Negro, mulatto,
or Indian man or woman, bond or free, shall within three
months after such marriage be banished and removed from this
dominion forever, and that the justices of each respective
county within this dominion make it their particular care
that this act be put in effectual execution.”³¹ A white woman who became the
mother of a child by a Negro or mulatto was to be fined £15
sterling, in default of payment was to be sold for five
years, while the child was to be bound in servitude to the
church wardens until thirty years of age. It was further
provided that if any Negro or mulatto was set free, he was
to be transported from the country within six months of his
manumission (which enactment is typical of those that it was
difficult to enforce and that after a while were only
irregularly observed). In 1705 it was enacted that no
“Negro, mulatto, or Indian shall from and after the
publication of this act bear any office ecclesiastical,
civil or military, or be in any place of public trust or
power, within this her majesty’s colony and dominion of
Virginia”; and to clear any doubt that might arise as to who
should be accounted a mulatto, it was provided that “the
child of an Indian, and the child, grandchild, or
great-grandchild of a Negro shall be deemed, accounted,
held, and taken to be a mulatto.” It will be observed that
while the act of 1670 said that “none but freeholders and
housekeepers” could vote, this act of 1705 did not
specifically legislate against voting by a mulatto or a free
Negro, and that some such privilege was exercised for a
while appears from the definite provision in 1723 that “no
free Negro, mulatto, or Indian, whatsoever, shall hereafter
have any vote at the election of burgesses, or any other
election whatsoever.” In the same year it was provided that
free Negroes and mulattoes might be employed as drummers or
trumpeters in servile labor, but that they were not to bear
arms; and all free Negroes above sixteen years of age were
declared tithable. In 1769, however, all free Negro and
mulatto women were exempted from levies as tithables, such
levies having proved to be burdensome and “derogatory to the
rights of freeborn subjects.”

More than other colonies Maryland seems to have been
troubled about the intermixture of the races; certainly no
other phase of slavery here received so much attention. This
was due to the unusual emphasis on white servitude in the
colony. In 1663 it was enacted that any freeborn woman
intermarrying with a slave should serve the master of the slave
during the life of her husband and that any children resulting
from the union were also to be slaves. This act was evidently
intended to frighten the indentured woman from such a marriage.
It had a very different effect. Many masters, in order to
prolong the indenture of their white female servants,
encouraged them to marry Negro slaves. Accordingly a new law in
1681 threw the responsibility not on the indentured woman but
on the master or mistress; in case a marriage took place
between a white woman-servant and a slave, the woman was to be
free at once, any possible issue was to be free, and the
minister performing the ceremony and the master or mistress
were to be fined ten thousand pounds of tobacco. This did not
finally dispose of the problem, however, and in 1715, in
response to a slightly different situation, it was enacted that
a white woman who became the mother of a child by a free Negro
father should become a servant for seven years, the father also
a servant for seven years, and the child a servant until
thirty-one years of age. Any white man who begot a Negro woman
with child, whether a free woman or a slave, was to undergo the
same penalty as a white woman—a provision that in course of
time was notoriously disregarded. In 1717 the problem was still
unsettled, and in this year it was enacted that Negroes or
mulattoes of either sex intermarrying with white people were to
be slaves for life, except mulattoes born of white women, who
were to serve for seven years, and the white person so
intermarrying also for seven years. It is needless to say that
with all these changing and contradictory provisions many
servants and Negroes did not even know what the law was. In
1728, however, free mulatto women having illegitimate children
by Negroes and other slaves, and free Negro women having
illegitimate children by white men, and their issue, were
subjected to the same penalties as in the former act were
provided against white women. Thus vainly did the colony of
Maryland struggle with the problem of race intermixture.
Generally throughout the South the rule in the matter of the
child of the Negro father and the indentured white mother was
that the child should be bound in servitude for thirty or
thirty-one years.

In the North as well as in the South the intermingling of
the blood of the races was discountenanced. In Pennsylvania as
early as 1677 a white servant was indicted for cohabiting with
a Negro. In 1698 the Chester County court laid it down as a
principle that the mingling of the races was not to be allowed.
In 1722 a woman was punished for promoting a secret marriage
between a white woman and a Negro; a little later the Assembly
received from the inhabitants of the province a petition
inveighing against cohabiting; and in 1725-6 a law was passed
positively forbidding the mixture of the races.³² In Massachusetts as early as
1705 and 1708 restraining acts to prevent a “spurious and
mixt issue” ordered the sale of offending Negroes and
mulattoes out of the colony’s jurisdiction, and punished
Christians who intermarried with them by a fine of £50.
After the Revolutionary War such marriages were declared
void and the penalty of £50 was still exacted, and not until
1843 was this act repealed. Thus was the color-line, with
its social and legal distinctions, extended beyond the
conditions of servitude and slavery, and thus early was an
important phase of the ultimate Negro Problem
foreshadowed.

Generally then, in the South, in the colonial period, the
free Negro could not vote, could not hold civil office, could
not give testimony in cases involving white men, and could be
employed only for fatigue duty in the militia. He could not
purchase white servants, could not intermarry with white
people, and had to be very circumspect in his relations with
slaves. No deprivation of privilege, however, relieved him of
the obligation to pay taxes. Such advantages as he possessed
were mainly economic. The money gained from his labor was his
own; he might become skilled at a trade; he might buy land; he
might buy slaves;³³ he might even buy his wife
and child if, as most frequently happened, they were slaves;
and he might have one gun with which to protect his
home.³⁴ Once in a long while he
might even find some opportunity for education, as when the
church became the legal warden of Negro apprentices.
Frequently he found a place in such a trade as that of the
barber or in other personal service, and such work accounted
very largely for the fact that he was generally permitted to
remain in communities where technically he had no right to
be. In the North his situation was little better than in the
South, and along economic lines even harder. Everywhere his
position was a difficult one. He was most frequently
regarded as idle and shiftless, and as a breeder of
mischief; but if he showed unusual thrift he might even be
forced to leave his home and go elsewhere. Liberty, the boon
of every citizen, the free Negro did not possess. For all
the finer things of life—the things that make life worth
living—the lot that was his was only less hard than that of
the slave.

3. First Effort for Social
Betterment

If now we turn aside from laws and statutes and consider the
ordinary life and social intercourse of the Negro, we shall
find more than one contradiction, for in the colonial era codes
affecting slaves and free Negroes had to grope their way to
uniformity. Especially is it necessary to distinguish between
the earlier and the later years of the period, for as early as
1760 the liberalism of the Revolutionary era began to be felt.
If we consider what was strictly the colonial epoch, we may
find it necessary to make a division about the year 1705.
Before this date the status of the Negro was complicated by the
incidents of the system of servitude; after it, however, in
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts alike, special
discrimination against him on account of race was given formal
recognition.

By 1715 there were in Virginia 23,000 Negroes, and in all
the colonies 58,850, or 14 per cent of the total
population.³⁵ By 1756, however, the
Negroes in Virginia numbered 120,156 and the white people
but 173,316.³⁶ Thirty-eight of the
forty-nine counties had more Negro than white tithables, and
eleven of the counties had a Negro population varying from
one-fourth to one-half more than the white. A great many of
the Negroes had only recently been imported from Africa, and
they were especially baffling to their masters of course
when they conversed in their native tongues. At first only
men were brought, but soon women came also, and the
treatment accorded these people varied all the way from
occasional indulgence to the utmost cruelty. The hours of
work regularly extended from sunrise to sunset, though
corn-husking and rice-beating were sometimes continued after
dark, and overseers were almost invariably ruthless, often
having a share in the crops. Those who were house-servants
would go about only partially clad, and the slave might be
marked or branded like one of the lower animals; he was not
thought to have a soul, and the law sought to deprive him of
all human attributes. Holiday amusement consisted largely of
the dances that the Negroes had brought with them, these
being accompanied by the beating of drums and the blowing of
horns; and funeral ceremonies featured African mummeries.
For those who were criminal offenders simple execution was
not always considered severe enough; the right hand might
first be amputated, the criminal then hanged and his head
cut off, and his body quartered and the parts suspended in
public places. Sometimes the hanging was in chains, and
several instances of burning are on record. A master was
regularly reimbursed by the government for a slave legally
executed, and in 1714 there was a complaint in South
Carolina that the treasury had become almost exhausted by
such reimbursements. In Massachusetts hanging was the worst
legal penalty, but the obsolete common-law punishment was
revived in 1755 to burn alive a slave-woman who had killed
her master in Cambridge.³⁷

The relations between the free Negro and the slave might
well have given cause for concern. Above what was after all
only an artificial barrier spoke the call of race and
frequently of kindred. Sometimes at a later date jealousy arose
when a master employed a free Negro to work with his slaves,
the one receiving pay and the others laboring without
compensation. In general, however, the two groups worked like
brothers, each giving the other the benefit of any temporary
advantage that it possessed. Sometimes the free Negro could
serve by reason of the greater freedom of movement that he had,
and if no one would employ him, or if, as frequently happened,
he was browbeaten and cheated out of the reward of his labor,
the slave might somehow see that he got something to eat. In a
state of society in which the relation of master and slave was
the rule, there was of course little place for either the free
Negro or the poor white man. When the pressure became too great
the white man moved away; the Negro, finding himself everywhere
buffeted, in the colonial era at least had little choice but to
work out his salvation at home as well as he could. More and
more character told, and if a man had made himself known for
his industry and usefulness, a legislative act might even be
passed permitting him to remain in the face of a hostile law.
Even before 1700 there were in Virginia families in which both
parents were free colored persons and in which every effort was
made to bring up the children in honesty and morality. When
some prosperous Negroes found themselves able to do so, they
occasionally purchased Negroes, who might be their own children
or brothers, in order to give them that protection without
which on account of recent manumission they might be required
to leave the colony in which they were born. Thus, whatever the
motive, the tie that bound the free Negro and the slave was a
strong one; and in spite of the fact that Negroes who owned
slaves were generally known as hard masters, as soon as any men
of the race began to be really prominent their best endeavor
was devoted to the advancement of their people. It was not
until immediately after the Revolutionary War, however, that
leaders of vision and statesmanship began to be developed.

It was only the materialism of the eighteenth century that
accounted for the amazing development of the system of Negro
slavery, and only this that defeated the benevolence of
Oglethorpe’s scheme for the founding of Georgia. As yet there
was no united protest—no general movement for freedom; and as
Von Holst said long afterwards, “If the agitation had been
wholly left to the churches, it would have been long before men
could have rightly spoken of ‘a slavery question.'” The
Puritans, however, were not wholly unmindful of the evil, and
the Quakers were untiring in their opposition, though it was
Roger Williams who in 1637 made the first protest that appears
in the colonies.³⁸ Both John Eliot and Cotton
Mather were somewhat generally concerned about the harsh
treatment of the Negro and the neglect of his spiritual
welfare. Somewhat more to the point was Richard Baxter, the
eminent English nonconformist, who was a contemporary of
both of these men. “Remember,” said he, in speaking of
Negroes and other slaves, “that they are of as good a kind
as you; that is, they are reasonable creatures as well as
you, and born to as much natural liberty. If their sin have
enslaved them to you, yet Nature made them your equals.” On
the subject of man-stealing he is even stronger: “To go as
pirates and catch up poor Negroes or people of another land,
that never forfeited life or liberty, and to make them
slaves, and sell them, is one of the worst kinds of thievery
in the world.” Such statements, however, were not more than
the voice of individual opinion. The principles of the
Quakers carried them far beyond the Puritans, and their
history shows what might have been accomplished if other
denominations had been as sincere and as unselfish as the
Society of Friends. The Germantown protest of 1688 has
already been remarked. In 1693 George Keith, in speaking of
fugitives, quoted with telling effect the text, “Thou shalt
not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped
from his master unto thee” (Deut. 23.15). In 1696 the Yearly
Meeting in Pennsylvania first took definite action in giving
as its advice “that Friends be careful not to encourage the
bringing in of any more Negroes; and that such that have
Negroes, be careful of them, bring them to meetings, have
meetings with them in their families, and restrain them from
loose and lewd living as much as in them lies, and from
rambling abroad on First-days or other times.”³⁹ As early as 1713 the Quakers
had in mind a scheme for freeing the Negroes and returning
them to Africa, and by 1715 their efforts against
importation had seriously impaired the market for slaves in
Philadelphia. Within a century after the Germantown protest
the abolition of slavery among the Quakers was practically
accomplished.

In the very early period there seems to have been little
objection to giving a free Negro not only religious but also
secular instruction; indeed he might be entitled to this, as in
Virginia, where in 1691 the church became the agency through
which the laws of Negro apprenticeship were carried out; thus
in 1727 it was ordered that David James, a free Negro boy, be
bound to Mr. James Isdel, who was to “teach him to read the
Bible distinctly, also the trade of a gunsmith” and “carry him
to the clerk’s office and take indenture to that
purpose.”⁴⁰ In general the English
church did a good deal to provide for the religious
instruction of the free Negro; “the reports made in 1724 to
the English bishop by the Virginia parish ministers are
evidence that the few free Negroes in the parishes were
permitted to be baptized, and were received into the church
when they had been taught the catechism.”⁴¹ Among Negroes, moreover, as
well as others in the colonies the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was active. As
early as 1705, in Goose Creek Parish in South Carolina,
among a population largely recently imported from Africa, a
missionary had among his communicants twenty blacks who well
understood the English tongue.⁴² The most effective work of
the Society, however, was in New York, where as early as
1704 a school was opened by Elias Neau, a Frenchman who
after several years of imprisonment because of his
Protestant faith had come to New York to try his fortune as
a trader. In 1703 he had called the attention of the Society
to the Negroes who were “without God in the world, and of
whose souls there was no manner of care taken,” and had
suggested the appointment of a catechist. He himself was
prevailed upon to take up the work and he accordingly
resigned his position as an elder in the French church and
conformed to the Church of England. He worked with success
for a number of years, but in 1712 was embarrassed by the
charge that his school fomented the insurrection that was
planned in that year. He finally showed, however, that only
one of his students was in any way connected with the
uprising.

From slave advertisements of the eighteenth century⁴³ we may gain many sidelights
not only on the education of Negroes in the colonial era,
but on their environment and suffering as well. One slave
“can write a pretty good hand; plays on the fife extremely
well.” Another “can both read and write and is a good
fiddler.” Still others speak “Dutch and good English,” “good
English and High Dutch,” or “Swede and English well.”
Charles Thomas of Delaware bore the following remarkable
characterization: “Very black, has white teeth … has had
his left leg broke … speaks both French and English, and
is a very great rogue.” One man who came from the West
Indies “was born in Dominica and speaks French, but very
little English; he is a very ill-natured fellow and has been
much cut in his back by often whipping.” A Negro named Simon
who in 1740 ran away in Pennsylvania “could bleed and draw
teeth pretending to be a great doctor.” Worst of all the
incidents of slavery, however, was the lack of regard for
home ties, and this situation of course obtained in the
North as well as the South. In the early part of the
eighteenth century marriages in New York were by mutual
consent only, without the blessing of the church, and burial
was in a common field without any Christian office. In
Massachusetts in 1710 Rev. Samuel Phillips drew up a
marriage formulary especially designed for slaves and
concluding as follows: “For you must both of you bear in
mind that you remain still, as really and truly as ever,
your master’s property, and therefore it will be justly
expected, both by God and man, that you behave and conduct
yourselves as obedient and faithful servants.”⁴⁴ In Massachusetts, however,
as in New York, marriage was most often by common consent
simply, without the office of ministers.

As yet there was no racial consciousness, no church, no
business organization, and the chief coöperative effort was in
insurrection. Until the great chain of slavery was thrown off,
little independent effort could be put forth. Even in the state
of servitude or slavery, however, the social spirit of the race
yearned to assert itself, and such an event as a funeral was
attractive primarily because of the social features that it
developed. As early as 1693 there is record of the formation of
a distinct society by Negroes. In one of his manuscript
diaries, preserved in the library of the Massachusetts
Historical Society,⁴⁵ Cotton Mather in October of
this year wrote as follows: “Besides the other praying and
pious meetings which I have been continually serving in our
neighborhood, a little after this period a company of poor
Negroes, of their own accord, addressed me, for my
countenance to a design which they had, of erecting such a
meeting for the welfare of their miserable nation, that were
servants among us. I allowed their design and went one
evening and prayed and preached (on Ps. 68.31) with them;
and gave them the following orders, which I insert duly for
the curiosity of the occasion.” The Rules to which Mather
here refers are noteworthy as containing not one suggestion
of anti-slavery sentiment, and as portraying the altogether
abject situation of the Negro at the time he wrote;
nevertheless the text used was an inspiring one, and in any
case the document must have historical importance as the
earliest thing that has come down to us in the nature of the
constitution or by-laws for a distinctively Negro
organization. It is herewith given entire:

Rules for the Society of Negroes. 1693.
    We the Miserable Children of Adam, and of Noah,
thankfully Admiring and Accepting the Free-Grace of GOD,
that Offers to Save us from our Miseries, by the Lord Jesus
Christ, freely Resolve, with His Help, to become the
Servants of that Glorious LORD.
    And that we may be Assisted in the Service of our
Heavenly Master, we now join together in a SOCIETY, wherein
the following RULES are to be observed.
    I. It shall be our Endeavor, to Meet in the
Evening after the Sabbath; and Pray together
by Turns, one to Begin, and another to Conclude the
Meeting; And between the two Prayers, a Psalm
shall be sung, and a Sermon Repeated.
    II. Our coming to the Meeting, shall never be without
the Leave of such as have Power over us: And we will
be Careful, that our Meeting may Begin and Conclude between
the Hours of Seven and Nine; and that we may
not be unseasonably Absent from the Families whereto
we pertain.
    III. As we will, with the help of God, at all Times
avoid all Wicked Company, so we will Receive none
into our Meeting, but such as have sensibly Reformed
their lives from all manner of Wickedness. And, therefore,
None shall be Admitted, without the Knowledge and Consent
of the Minister of God in this place; unto whom we
will also carry every Person, that seeks for
Admission among us; to be by Him Examined,
Instructed and Exhorted.
    IV. We will, as often as may be, Obtain some Wise and
Good Man, of the English in the Neighborhood, and
especially the Officers of the Church, to look in upon us,
and by their Presence and Counsel, do what they think
fitting for us.
    V. If any of our Number fall into the Sin of
Drunkenness, or Swearing, or Cursing,
or Lying, or Stealing, or notorious
Disobedience or Unfaithfulness unto their
Masters, we will Admonish him of his Miscarriage, and
Forbid his coming to the Meeting, for at least one
Fortnight; And except he then come with great Signs and
Hopes of his Repentance, we will utterly Exclude
him, with Blotting his Name out of our list.
    VI. If any of our Society Defile himself with
Fornication, we will give him our Admonition;
and so, debar him from the Meeting, at least half a Year:
Nor shall he Return to it, ever any more, without Exemplary
Testimonies of his becoming a New Creature.
    VII. We will, as we have Opportunity, set ourselves to
do all the Good we can, to the other Negro-Servants
in the Town; And if any of them should, at unfit Hours, be
Abroad, much more, if any of them should Run
away from their Masters, we will afford them no
Shelter: But we will do what in us lies, that they may
be discovered, and punished. And if any of us are
found Faulty in this matter, they shall be no longer of
us.
    VIII. None of our Society shall be Absent from
our Meeting, without giving a Reason of the Absence; and if
it be found, that any have pretended unto their
Owners, that they came unto the Meeting, when they
were otherwise and elsewhere Employed, we will faithfully
Inform their Owners, and also do what we can to
Reclaim such Person from all such Evil Courses for the
Future:
    IX. It shall be expected from every one in the Society,
that he learn the Catechism; And therefore, it shall be one
of our usual Exercises, for one of us, to ask the
Questions, and for all the rest in their Order, to
say the Answers in the Catechism; Either, The New
English Catechism, or the Assemblies Catechism,
or the Catechism in the Negro Christianised.

4. Early Insurrections

The Negroes who came to America directly from Africa in the
eighteenth century were strikingly different from those whom
generations of servitude later made comparatively docile. They
were wild and turbulent in disposition and were likely at any
moment to take revenge for the great wrong that had been
inflicted upon them. The planters in the South knew this and
lived in constant fear of uprisings. When the situation became
too threatening, they placed prohibitive duties on
importations, and they also sought to keep their slaves in
subjection by barbarous and cruel modes of punishment, both
crucifixion and burning being legalized in some early codes. On
sea as well as on land Negroes frequently rose upon those who
held them in bondage, and sometimes they actually won their
freedom. More and more, however, in any study of Negro
insurrections it becomes difficult to distinguish between a
clearly organized revolt and what might be regarded as simply a
personal crime, so that those uprisings considered in the
following discussion can only be construed as the more
representative of the many attempts for freedom made by Negro
slaves in the colonial era.

In 1687 there was in Virginia a conspiracy among the Negroes
in the Northern Neck that was detected just in time to prevent
slaughter, and in Surry County in 1710 there was a similar
plot, betrayed by one of the conspirators. In 1711, in South
Carolina, several Negroes ran away from their masters and “kept
out, armed, robbing and plundering houses and plantations, and
putting the inhabitants of the province in great fear and
terror”;⁴⁶ and Governor Gibbes more
than once wrote to the legislature about amending the Negro
Act, as the one already in force did “not reach up to some
of the crimes” that were daily being committed. For one
Sebastian, “a Spanish Negro,” alive or dead, a reward of £50
was offered, and he was at length brought in by the Indians
and taken in triumph to Charleston. In 1712 in New York
occurred an outbreak that occasioned greater excitement than
any uprising that had preceded it in the colonies. Early in
the morning of April 7 some slaves of the Carmantee and
Pappa tribes who had suffered ill-usage, set on fire the
house of Peter van Tilburgh, and, armed with guns and
knives, killed and wounded several persons who came to
extinguish the flames. They fled, however, when the Governor
ordered the cannon to be fired to alarm the town, and they
got away to the woods as well as they could, but not before
they had killed several more of the citizens. Some shot
themselves in the woods and others were captured. Altogether
eight or ten white persons were killed, and, aside from
those Negroes who had committed suicide, eighteen or more
were executed, several others being transported. Of those
executed one was hanged alive in chains, some were burned at
the stake, and one was left to die a lingering death before
the gaze of the town.

In May, 1720, some Negroes in South Carolina were fairly
well organized and killed a man named Benjamin Cattle, one
white woman, and a little Negro boy. They were pursued and
twenty-three taken and six convicted. Three of the latter were
executed, the other three escaping. In October, 1722, the
Negroes near the mouth of the Rappahannock in Virginia
undertook to kill the white people while the latter were
assembled in church, but were discovered and put to flight. On
this occasion, as on most others, Sunday was the day chosen for
the outbreak, the Negroes then being best able to get together.
In April, 1723, it was thought that some fires in Boston had
been started by Negroes, and the selectmen recommended that if
more than two Negroes were found “lurking together” on the
streets they should be put in the house of correction. In 1728
there was a well organized attempt in Savannah, then a place of
three thousand white people and two thousand seven hundred
Negroes. The plan to kill all the white people failed because
of disagreement as to the exact method; but the body of Negroes
had to be, fired on more than once before it dispersed. In 1730
there was in Williamsburg, Va., an insurrection that grew out
of a report that Colonel Spotswood had orders from the king to
free all baptized persons on his arrival; men from all the
surrounding counties had to be called in before it could be put
down.

The first open rebellion in South Carolina in which Negroes
were “actually armed and embodied”⁴⁷ took place in 1730. The plan
was for each Negro to kill his master in the dead of night,
then for all to assemble supposedly for a dancing-bout, rush
upon the heart of the city, take possession of the arms, and
kill any white man they saw. The plot was discovered and the
leaders executed. In this same colony three formidable
insurrections broke out within the one year 1739—one in St.
Paul’s Parish, one in St. John’s, and one in Charleston. To
some extent these seem to have been fomented by the
Spaniards in the South, and in one of them six houses were
burned and as many as twenty-five white people killed. The
Negroes were pursued and fourteen killed. Within two days
“twenty more were killed, and forty were taken, some of whom
were shot, some hanged, and some gibbeted alive.”⁴⁸ This “examplary punishment,”
as Governor Gibbes called it, was by no means effective, for
in the very next year, 1740, there broke out what might be
considered the most formidable insurrection in the South in
the whole colonial period. A number of Negroes, having
assembled at Stono, first surprised, and killed two young
men in a warehouse, from which they then took guns and
ammunition.⁴⁹ They then elected as captain
one of their own number named Cato, whom they agreed to
follow, and they marched towards the southwest, with drums
beating and colors flying, like a disciplined company. They
entered the home of a man named Godfrey, and having murdered
him and his wife and children, they took all the arms he
had, set fire to the house, and proceeded towards Jonesboro.
On their way they plundered and burned every house to which
they came, killing every white person they found and
compelling the Negroes to join them. Governor Bull, who
happened to be returning to Charleston from the southward,
met them, and observing them armed, spread the alarm, which
soon reached the Presbyterian Church at Wilton, where a
number of planters was assembled. The women were left in the
church trembling with fear, while the militia formed and
marched in quest of the Negroes, who by this time had become
formidable from the number that had joined them. They had
marched twelve miles and spread desolation through all the
plantations on their way. They had then halted in an open
field and too soon had begun to sing and drink and dance by
way of triumph. During these rejoicings the militia
discovered them and stationed themselves in different places
around them to prevent their escape. One party then advanced
into the open field and attacked the Negroes. Some were
killed and the others were forced to the woods. Many ran
back to the plantations, hoping thus to avoid suspicion, but
most of them were taken and tried. Such as had been forced
to join the uprising against their will were pardoned, but
all of the chosen leaders and the first insurgents were put
to death. All Carolina, we are told, was struck with terror
and consternation by this insurrection, in which more than
twenty white persons were killed. It was followed
immediately by the famous and severe Negro Act of 1740,
which among other provisions imposed a duty of £100 on
Africans and £150 on colonial Negroes. This remained
technically in force until 1822, and yet as soon as security
and confidence were restored, there was a relaxation in the
execution of the provisions of the act and the Negroes
little by little regained confidence in themselves and again
began to plan and act in concert.

About the time of Cato’s insurrection there were also
several uprisings at sea. In 1731, on a ship returning to Rhode
Island from Guinea with a cargo of slaves, the Negroes rose and
killed three of the crew, all the members of which died soon
afterwards with the exception of the captain and his boy. The
next year Captain John Major of Portsmouth, N.H., was murdered
with all his crew, his schooner and cargo being seized by the
slaves. In 1735 the captives on the Dolphin of London,
while still on the coast of Africa, overpowered the crew, broke
into the powder room, and finally in the course of their effort
for freedom blew up both themselves and the crew.

A most remarkable design—as an insurrection perhaps not as
formidable as that of Cato, but in some ways the most important
single event in the history of the Negro in the colonial
period—was the plot in the city of New York in 1741. New York
was at the time a thriving town of twelve thousand inhabitants,
and the calamity that now befell it was unfortunate in every
way. It was not only a Negro insurrection, though the Negro
finally suffered most bitterly. It was also a strange compound
of the effects of whiskey and gambling, of the designs of
abandoned white people, and of prejudice against the
Catholics.

Prominent in the remarkable drama were John Hughson, a
shoemaker and alehouse keeper; Sarah Hughson, his wife; John
Romme, also a shoemaker and alehouse keeper; Margaret Kerry,
alias Salinburgh, commonly known as Peggy; John Ury, a priest;
and a number of Negroes, chief among whom were Cæsar, Prince,
Cuffee, and Quack.⁵⁰ Prominent among those who
helped to work out the plot were Mary Burton, a white
servant of Hughson’s, sixteen years of age; Arthur Price, a
young white man who at the time of the proceedings happened
to be in prison on a charge of stealing; a young seaman
named Wilson; and two white women, Mrs. Earle and Mrs. Hogg,
the latter of whom assisted in the store kept by her
husband, Robert Hogg. Hughson’s house on the outskirts of
the town was a resort for Negroes, and Hughson himself aided
and abetted the Negro men in any crime that they might
commit. Romme was of similar quality. Peggy was a
prostitute, and it was Cæsar who paid for her board with the
Hughsons. In the previous summer she had found lodging with
these people, a little later she had removed to Romme’s, and
just before Christmas she had come back to Hughson’s, and a
few weeks thereafter she became a mother. At both the public
houses the Negroes would engage in drinking and gambling;
and importance also attaches to an organization of theirs
known as the Geneva Society, which had angered some of the
white citizens by its imitation of the rites and forms of
freemasonry.

Events really began on the night of Saturday, February 28,
1741, with a robbery in the house of Hogg, the merchant, from
which were taken various pieces of linen and other goods,
several silver coins, chiefly Spanish, and medals, to the value
of about £60. On the day before, in the course of a simple
purchase by Wilson, Mrs. Hogg had revealed to the young seaman
her treasure. He soon spoke of the same to Cæsar, Prince, and
Cuffee, with whom he was acquainted; he gave them the plan of
the house, and they in turn spoke of the matter to Hughson.
Wilson, however, when later told of the robbery by Mrs. Hogg,
at once turned suspicion upon the Negroes, especially Cæsar;
and Mary Burton testified that she saw some of the speckled
linen in question in Peggy’s room after Cæsar had gone
thither.

On Wednesday, March 18, a fire broke out on the roof of His
Majesty’s House at Fort George. One week later, on March 25,
there was a fire at the home of Captain Warren in the southwest
end of the city, and the circumstances pointed to incendiary
origin. One week later, on April 1, there was a fire in the
storehouse of a man named Van Zant; on the following Saturday
evening there was another fire, and while the people were
returning from this there was still another; and on the next
day, Sunday, there was another alarm, and by this time the
whole town had been worked up to the highest pitch of
excitement. As yet there was nothing to point to any connection
between the stealing and the fires. On the day of the last one,
however, Mrs. Earle happened to overhear remarks by three
Negroes that caused suspicion to light upon them; Mary Burton
was insisting that stolen goods had been brought by Prince and
Cæsar to the house of her master; and although a search of the
home of Hughson failed to produce a great deal, arrests were
made right and left. The case was finally taken to the Supreme
Court, and because of the white persons implicated, the summary
methods ordinarily used in dealing with Negroes were waived for
the time being.

Peggy at first withstood all questioning, denying any
knowledge of the events that had taken place. One day in
prison, however, she remarked to Arthur Price that she was
afraid the Negroes would tell but that she would not forswear
herself unless they brought her into the matter. “How
forswear?” asked Price. “There are fourteen sworn,” she said.
“What, is it about Mr. Hogg’s goods?” he asked. “No,” she
replied, “about the fire.” “What, Peggy,” asked Price, “were
you going to set the town on fire?” “No,” she replied, “but
since I knew of it they made me swear.” She also remarked that
she had faith in Prince, Cuff, and Cæsar. All the while she
used the vilest possible language, and at last, thinking
suddenly that she had revealed too much, she turned upon Price
and with an oath warned him that he had better keep his
counsel. That afternoon she said further to him that she could
not eat because Mary had brought her into the case.

A little later Peggy, much afraid, voluntarily confessed
that early in May she was at the home of John Romme, where in
the course of December the Negroes had had several meetings;
among other things they had conspired to burn the fort first of
all, then the city, then to get all the goods they could and
kill anybody who had money. One evening just about Christmas,
she said, Romme and his wife and ten or eleven Negroes had been
together in a room. Romme had talked about how rich some people
were, gradually working on the feelings of the Negroes and
promising them that if they did not succeed in their designs he
would take them to a strange country and set them free,
meanwhile giving them the impression that he bore a charmed
life. A little later, it appeared, Cæsar gave to Hughson £12;
Hughson was then absent for three days, and when he came again
he brought with him seven or eight guns, some pistols, and some
swords.

As a result of these and other disclosures it was seen that
not only Hughson and Romme but also Ury, who was not so much a
priest as an adventurer, had instigated the plots of the
Negroes; and Quack testified that Hughson was the first
contriver of the plot to burn the houses of the town and kill
the people, though he himself, he confessed, did fire the fort
with a lighted stick. The punishment was terrible. Quack and
Cuffee, the first to be executed, were burned at the stake on
May 30. All through the summer the trials and the executions
continued, harassing New York and indeed the whole country.
Altogether twenty white persons were arrested; four—Hughson,
his wife, Peggy, and Ury—were executed, and some of their
acquaintances were forced to leave the province. One hundred
and fifty-four Negroes were arrested. Thirteen were burned,
eighteen were hanged, and seventy-one transported.

It is evident from these events and from the legislation of
the era that, except for the earnest work of such a sect as the
Quakers, there was little genuine effort for the improvement of
the social condition of the Negro people in the colonies. They
were not even regarded as potential citizens, and both in and
out of the system of slavery were subjected to the harshest
regulations. Towards amicable relations with the other racial
elements that were coming to build up a new country only the
slightest measure of progress was made. Instead, insurrection
after insurrection revealed the sharpest antagonism, and any
outbreak promptly called forth the severest and frequently the
most cruel punishment.

Footnote 22:
(return)
New International Encyclopædia, Article
“Slavery.”

Footnote 23:
(return)

Coman: Industrial History, 42.

Footnote 24:
(return)
New International Encyclopædia, Article
“Slavery.”

Footnote 25:
(return)

Hening: Statutes, II, 170.

Footnote 26:
(return)

Hening: Statutes, I, 146.

Footnote 27:
(return)
Ibid., I, 552.

Footnote 28:
(return)

Hurd, commenting on an act of 1649 declaring all
imported male servants to be tithables, speaks as follows
(230): “Tithables were persons assessed for a
poll-tax, otherwise called the ‘county levies.’ At first,
only free white persons were tithable. The law of 1645
provided for a tax on property and tithable persons. By
1648 property was released and taxes levied only on the
tithables, at a specified poll-tax. Therefore by classing
servants or slaves as tithables, the law attributes to them
legal personality, or a membership in the social state
inconsistent with the condition of a chattel or
property.”

Footnote 29:
(return)

Hening: Statutes, III, 537.

Footnote 30:
(return)
Virginia Magazine of History, X, 281.

Footnote 31:
(return)

The penalty was so ineffective that in 1705 it was
changed simply to imprisonment for six months “without bail
or mainprise.”

Footnote 32:
(return)

Turner: The Negro in Pennsylvania, 29-30.

Footnote 33:
(return)

Russell: The Free Negro in Virginia, 32-33, cites
from the court records of Northampton County, 1651-1654 and
1655-1658, the noteworthy case of a free negro, Anthony
Johnson, who had come to Virginia not later than 1622 and
who by 1650 owned a large tract of land on the Eastern
Shore. To him belonged a Negro, John Casor. After several
years of labor Casor demanded his freedom on the ground
that from the first he had been an indentured servant and
not a slave. When the case came up in court, however, not
only did Johnson win the verdict that Casor was his slave,
but he also won his suit against Robert Parker, a white
man, who he asserted had illegally detained Casor.

Footnote 34:
(return)

Hening: Statutes, IV, 131.

Footnote 35:
(return)

Blake: History of Slavery and the Slave-Trade,
378.

Footnote 36:
(return)

Ballagh: Slavery in Virginia, 12.

Footnote 37:
(return)

Edward Eggleston: “Social Conditions in the Colonies,”
in Century Magazine, October, 1884, p. 863.

Footnote 38:
(return)

For this and the references immediately following note
Locke: Anti-Slavery in America, 11-45.

Footnote 39:
(return)
Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the
Testimony of the Religious Society of Friends against
Slavery and the Slave-Trade, 8.

Footnote 40:
(return)

Russell: The Free Negro in Virginia, 138-9.

Footnote 41:
(return)
Ibid., 138.

Footnote 42:
(return)

C.E. Pierre, in Journal of Negro History,
October, 1916, p. 350.

Footnote 43:
(return)

See documents, “Eighteenth Century Slave
Advertisements,” Journal of Negro History, April,
1916, 163-216.

Footnote 44:
(return)

Quoted from Williams: Centennial Oration, “The American
Negro from 1776 to 1876,” 10.

Footnote 45:
(return)

See Rules for the Society of Negroes, 1693, by
Cotton Mather, reprinted, New York, 1888, by George H.
Moore.

Footnote 46:
(return)

Holland: A Refutation of Calumnies, 63.

Footnote 47:
(return)

Holland: A Refutation of Calumnies, 68.

Footnote 48:
(return)

Coffin.

Footnote 49:
(return)

The following account follows mainly Holland, quoting
Hewitt.

Footnote 50:
(return)

The sole authority on the plot is “A Journal of the
Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy formed by
Some White People, in Conjunction with Negro and other
Slaves, for Burning the City of New York in America, and
Murdering the Inhabitants (by Judge Daniel Horsemanden).
New York, 1744.”

CHAPTER III

THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA

1. Sentiment in England and
America

The materialism of the eighteenth century, with all of its
evils, at length produced a liberalism of thought that was to
shake to their very foundations old systems of life in both
Europe and America. The progress of the cause of the Negro in
this period is to be explained by the general diffusion of
ideas that made for the rights of man everywhere. Cowper wrote
his humanitarian poems; in close association with the
romanticism of the day the missionary movement in religion
began to gather force; and the same impulse which in England
began the agitation for a free press and for parliamentary
reform, and which in France accounted for the French
Revolution, in America led to the revolt from Great Britain. No
patriot could come under the influence of any one of these
movements without having his heart and his sense of justice
stirred to some degree in behalf of the slave. At the same time
it must be remembered that the contest of the Americans was
primarily for the definite legal rights of Englishmen rather
than for the more abstract rights of mankind which formed the
platform of the French Revolution; hence arose the great
inconsistency in the position of men who were engaged in a
stern struggle for liberty at the same time that they
themselves were holding human beings in bondage.

In England the new era was formally signalized by an
epoch-making decision. In November, 1769, Charles Stewart, once
a merchant in Norfolk and later receiver general of the customs
of North America, took to England his Negro slave, James
Somerset, who, being sick, was turned adrift by his master.
Later Somerset recovered and Stewart seized him, intending to
have him borne out of the country and sold in Jamaica. Somerset
objected to this and in so doing raised the important legal
question, Did a slave by being brought to England become free?
The case received an extraordinary amount of attention, for
everybody realized that the decision would be far-reaching in
its consequences. After it was argued at three different
sittings, Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of England, in 1772
handed down from the Court of King’s Bench the judgment that as
soon as ever any slave set his foot upon the soil of England he
became free.

This decision may be taken as fairly representative of the
general advance that the cause of the Negro was making in
England at the time. Early in the century sentiment against the
slave-trade had begun to develop, many pamphlets on the evils
of slavery were circulated, and as early as 1776 a motion for
the abolition of the trade was made in the House of Commons.
John Wesley preached against the system, Adam Smith showed its
ultimate expensiveness, and Burke declared that the slavery
endured by the Negroes in the English settlements was worse
than that ever suffered by any other people. Foremost in the
work of protest were Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce,
the one being the leader in investigation and in the
organization of the movement against slavery while the other
was the parliamentary champion of the cause. For years,
assisted by such debaters as Burke, Fox, and the younger Pitt,
Wilberforce worked until on March 25, 1807, the bill for the
abolition of the slave-trade received the royal assent, and
still later until slavery itself was abolished in the English
dominions (1833).

This high thought in England necessarily found some
reflection in America, where the logic of the position of the
patriots frequently forced them to take up the cause of the
slave. As early as 1751 Benjamin Franklin, in his
Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, pointed
out the evil effects of slavery upon population and the
production of wealth; and in 1761 James Otis, in his argument
against the Writs of Assistance, spoke so vigorously of the
rights of black men as to leave no doubt as to his own
position. To Patrick Henry slavery was a practice “totally
repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong,” and in
1777 he was interested in a plan for gradual emancipation
received from his friend, Robert Pleasants. Washington desired
nothing more than “to see some plan adopted by which slavery
might be abolished by law”; while Joel Barlow in his
Columbiad gave significant warning to Columbia of the
ills that she was heaping up for herself.

Two of the expressions of sentiment of the day, by reason of
their deep yearning and philosophic calm, somehow stand apart
from others. Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia
wrote: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a
perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most
unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission
on the other…. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his
manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances…. I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that
his justice can not 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.”⁵¹ Henry Laurens, that fine
patriot whose business sense was excelled only by his
idealism, was harassed by the problem and wrote to his son,
Colonel John Laurens, as follows: “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. Not less than twenty thousand
pounds sterling would all my Negroes produce if sold at
public auction to-morrow. I am not the man who enslaved
them; they are indebted to Englishmen for that favor;
nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of
them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery. Great
powers oppose me—the laws and customs of my country, my own
and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say
if I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties,
but not insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time,
and leave the rest to a better hand.”⁵² Stronger than all else,
however, were the immortal words of the Declaration of
Independence: “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.” Within the
years to come these words were to be denied and assailed as
perhaps no others in the language; but in spite of all they
were to stand firm and justify the faith of 1776 before
Jefferson himself and others had become submerged in a
gilded opportunism.

It is not to be supposed that such sentiments were by any
means general; nevertheless these instances alone show that
some men at least in the colonies were willing to carry their
principles to their logical conclusion. Naturally opinion
crystallized in formal resolutions or enactments. Unfortunately
most of these were in one way or another rendered ineffectual
after the war; nevertheless the main impulse that they
represented continued to live. In 1769 Virginia declared that
the discriminatory tax levied on free Negroes and mulattoes
since 1668 was “derogatory to the rights of freeborn subjects”
and accordingly should be repealed. In October, 1774, the First
Continental Congress declared in its Articles of Association
that the united colonies would “neither import nor purchase any
slave imported after the first day of December next” and that
they would “wholly discontinue the trade.” On April 16, 1776,
the Congress further resolved that “no slaves be imported into
any of the thirteen colonies”; and the first draft of the
Declaration of Independence contained a strong passage
censuring the King of England for bringing slaves into the
country and then inciting them to rise against their masters.
On April 14, 1775, the first abolition society in the country
was organized in Pennsylvania; in 1778 Virginia once more
passed an act prohibiting the slave-trade; and the Methodist
Conference in Baltimore in 1780 strongly expressed its
disapproval of slavery.

2. The Negro in the War

As in all the greater wars in which the country has engaged,
the position of the Negro was generally improved by the
American Revolution. It was not by reason of any definite plan
that this was so, for in general the disposition of the
government was to keep him out of the conflict. Nevertheless
between the hesitating policy of America and the overtures of
England the Negro made considerable advance.

The American cause in truth presented a strange and
embarrassing dilemma, as we have remarked. In the war itself,
moreover, began the stern cleavage between the North and the
South. At the moment the rift was not clearly discerned, but
afterwards it was to widen into a chasm. Massachusetts bore
more than her share of the struggle, and in the South the
combination of Tory sentiment and the aristocratic social
system made enlistment especially difficult. In this latter
section, moreover, there was always the lurking fear of an
uprising of the slaves, and before the end of the war came
South Carolina and Georgia were very nearly demoralized. In the
course of the conflict South Carolina lost not less than 25,000
slaves,⁵³ about one-fifth of all she
had. Georgia did not lose so many, but proportionally
suffered even more. Some of the Negroes went into the
British army, some went away with the loyalists, and some
took advantage of the confusion and escaped to the Indians.
In Virginia, until they were stopped at least, some slaves
entered the Continental Army as free Negroes.

Three or four facts are outstanding. The formal policy of
Congress and of Washington and his officers was against the
enlistment of Negroes and especially of slaves; nevertheless,
while things were still uncertain, some Negroes entered the
regular units. The inducements offered by the English,
moreover, forced a modification of the American policy in
actual operation; and before the war was over the colonists
were so hard pressed that in more ways than one they were
willing to receive the assistance of Negroes. Throughout the
North Negroes served in the regular units; but while in the
South especially there was much thought given to the training
of slaves, in only one of all the colonies was there a
distinctively Negro military organization, and that one was
Rhode Island. In general it was understood that if a slave
served in the war he was to be given his freedom, and it is
worthy of note that many slaves served in the field instead of
their masters.

In Massachusetts on May 29, 1775, the Committee of Safety
passed an act against the enlistment of slaves as “inconsistent
with the principles that are to be supported.” Another
resolution of June 6 dealing with the same matter was laid on
the table. Washington took command of the forces in and about
Boston July 3, 1775, and on July 10 issued instructions to the
recruiting officers in Massachusetts against the enlisting of
Negroes. Toward the end of September there was a spirited
debate in Congress over a letter to go to Washington, the
Southern delegates, led by Rutledge of South Carolina,
endeavoring to force instructions to the commander-in-chief to
discharge all slaves and free Negroes in the army. A motion to
this effect failed to win a majority; nevertheless, a council
of Washington and his generals on October 8 “agreed unanimously
to reject all slaves, and, by a great majority, to reject
Negroes altogether,” and in his general orders of November 12
Washington acted on this understanding. Meanwhile, however,
Lord Dunmore issued his proclamation declaring free those
indentured servants and Negroes who would join the English
army, and in great numbers the slaves in Virginia flocked to
the British standard. Then on December 14—somewhat to the
amusement of both the Negroes and the English—the Virginia
Convention issued a proclamation offering pardon to those
slaves who returned to their duty within ten days. On December
30 Washington gave instructions for the enlistment of free
Negroes, promising later to lay the matter before Congress; and
a congressional committee on January 16, 1776, reported that
those free Negroes who had already served faithfully in the
army at Cambridge might reënlist but no others, the debate in
this connection having drawn very sharply the line between the
North and the South. Henceforth for all practical purposes the
matter was left in the hands of the individual colonies.
Massachusetts on January 6, 1777, passed a resolution drafting
every seventh man to complete her quota “without any exception,
save the people called Quakers,” and this was as near as she
came at any time in the war to the formal recognition of the
Negro. The Rhode Island Assembly in 1778 resolved to raise a
regiment of slaves, who were to be freed at enlistment, their
owners in no case being paid more than £120. In the Battle of
Rhode Island August 29, 1778, the Negro regiment under Colonel
Greene distinguished itself by deeds of desperate valor,
repelling three times the assaults of an overwhelming force of
Hessian troops. A little later, when Greene was about to be
murdered, some of these same soldiers had to be cut to pieces
before he could be secured. Maryland employed Negroes as
soldiers and sent them into regiments along with white men, and
it is to be remembered that at the time the Negro population of
Maryland was exceeded only by that of Virginia and South
Carolina. For the far South there was the famous Laurens plan
for the raising of Negro regiments.

In a letter to Washington of March 16, 1779, Henry Laurens
suggested the raising and training of three thousand Negroes in
South Carolina. Washington was rather conservative about the
plan, having in mind the ever-present fear of the arming of
Negroes and wondering about the effect on those slaves who were
not given a chance for freedom. On June 30, 1779, however, Sir
Henry Clinton issued a proclamation only less far-reaching than
Dunmore’s, threatening Negroes if they joined the “rebel” army
and offering them security if they came within the British
lines. This was effective; assistance of any kind that the
Continental Army could now get was acceptable; and the plan for
the raising of several battalions of Negroes in the South was
entrusted to Colonel John Laurens, a member of Washington’s
staff. In his own way Colonel Laurens was a man of parts quite
as well as his father; he was thoroughly devoted to the
American cause and Washington said of him that his only fault
was a courage that bordered on rashness. He eagerly pursued his
favorite project; able-bodied slaves were to be paid for by
Congress at the rate of $1,000 each, and one who served to the
end of the war was to receive his freedom and $50 in addition.
In South Carolina, however, Laurens received little
encouragement, and in 1780 he was called upon to go to France
on a patriotic mission. He had not forgotten the matter when he
returned in 1782; but by that time Cornwallis had surrendered
and the country had entered upon the critical period of
adjustment to the new conditions. Washington now wrote to
Laurens: “I must confess that I am not at all astonished at the
failure of your plan. That spirit of freedom which, at the
commencement of this contest, would have gladly sacrificed
everything to the attainment of its object, has long since
subsided, and every selfish passion has taken its place. It is
not the public but private interest which influences the
generality of mankind; nor can the Americans any longer boast
an exception. Under these circumstances, it would rather have
been surprising if you had succeeded; nor will you, I fear,
have better success in Georgia.”⁵⁴

From this brief survey we may at least see something of the
anomalous position occupied by the Negro in the American
Revolution. Altogether not less than three thousand, and
probably more, members of the race served in the Continental
army. At the close of the conflict New York, Rhode Island, and
Virginia freed their slave soldiers. In general, however, the
system of slavery was not affected, and the English were bound
by the treaty of peace not to carry away any Negroes. As late
as 1786, it is nevertheless interesting to note, a band of
Negroes calling themselves “The King of England’s soldiers”
harassed and alarmed the people on both sides of the Savannah
River.

Slavery remained; but people could not forget the valor of
the Negro regiment in Rhode Island, or the courage of
individual soldiers. They could not forget that it was a Negro,
Crispus Attucks, who had been the patriot leader in the Boston
Massacre, or the scene when he and one of his companions, Jonas
Caldwell, lay in Faneuil Hall. Those who were at Bunker Hill
could not fail to remember Peter Salem, who, when Major
Pitcairn of the British army was exulting in his expected
triumph, rushed forward, shot him in the breast, and killed
him; or Samuel Poor, whose officers testified that he performed
so many brave deeds that “to set forth particulars of his
conduct would be tedious.” These and many more, some with very
humble names, in a dark day worked for a better country. They
died in faith, not having received the promises, but having
seen them afar off.

3. The Northwest Territory and the
Constitution

The materialism and selfishness which rose in the course of
the war to oppose the liberal tendencies of the period, and
which Washington felt did so much to embarrass the government,
became pronounced in the debates on the Northwest Territory and
the Constitution. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War the
region west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi River,
north of the Ohio River, and south of Canada, was claimed by
Virginia, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. This
territory afforded to these states a source of revenue not
possessed by the others for the payment of debts incurred in
the war, and Maryland and other seaboard states insisted that
in order to equalize matters these claimants should cede their
rights to the general government. The formal cessions were made
and accepted in the years 1782-6. In April, 1784, after
Virginia had made her cession, the most important, Congress
adopted a temporary form of government drawn up by Thomas
Jefferson for the territory south as well as north of the Ohio
River. Jefferson’s most significant provision, however, was
rejected. This declared that “after the year 1800 there shall
be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said
states other than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted to have been personally guilty.”
This early ordinance, although it did not go into effect, is
interesting as an attempt to exclude slavery from the great
West that was beginning to be opened up. On March 3, 1786,
moreover, the Ohio Company was formed in Boston by a group of
New England business men for the purpose of purchasing land in
the West and promoting settlement; and early in June, 1787, Dr.
Manasseh Cutler, one of the chief promoters of the company,
appeared in New York, where the last Continental Congress was
sitting, for the concrete purpose of buying land. He doubtless
did much to hasten action by Congress, and on July 13 was
passed “An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the
United States, Northwest of the Ohio,” the Southern states not
having ceded the area south of the river. It was declared that
“There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
the said territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes,
whereof the parties shall be duly convicted.” To this was added
the stipulation (soon afterwards embodied in the Federal
Constitution) for the return of any person escaping into the
territory from whom labor or service was “lawfully claimed in
any one of the original states.” In this shape the ordinance
was adopted, even South Carolina and Georgia concurring; and
thus was paved the way for the first fugitive slave law.

Slavery, already looming up as a dominating issue, was the
cause of two of the three great compromises that entered into
the making of the Constitution of the United States (the third,
which was the first made, being the concession to the smaller
states of equal representation in the Senate). These were the
first but not the last of the compromises that were to mark the
history of the subject; and, as some clear-headed men of the
time perceived, it would have been better and cheaper to settle
the question at once on the high plane of right rather than to
leave it indefinitely to the future. South Carolina, however,
with able representation, largely controlled the thought of the
convention, and she and Georgia made the most extreme demands,
threatening not to accept the Constitution if there was not
compliance with them. An important question was that of
representation, the Southern states advocating representation
according to numbers, slave and free, while the Northern states
were in favor of the representation of free persons only.
Williamson of North Carolina advocated the counting of
three-fifths of the slaves, but this motion was at first
defeated, and there was little real progress until Gouverneur
Morris suggested that representation be according to the
principle of wealth. Mason of Virginia pointed out practical
difficulties which caused the resolution to be made to apply to
direct taxation only, and in this form it began to be generally
acceptable. By this time, however, the deeper feelings of the
delegates on the subject of slavery had been stirred, and they
began to speak plainly. Davie of North Carolina declared that
his state would never enter the Union on any terms that did not
provide for counting at least three-fifths of the slaves and
that “if the Eastern states meant to exclude them altogether
the business was at an end.” It was finally agreed to reckon
three-fifths of the slaves in estimating taxes and to make
taxation the basis of representation. The whole discussion was
renewed, however, in connection with the question of
importation. There were more threats from the far South, and
some of the men from New England, prompted by commercial
interest, even if they did not favor the sentiments expressed,
were at least disposed to give them passive acquiescence. From
Maryland and Virginia, however, came earnest protest. Luther
Martin declared unqualifiedly that to have a clause in the
Constitution permitting the importation of slaves was
inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and
dishonorable to the American character, and George Mason could
foresee only a future in which a just Providence would punish
such a national sin as slavery by national calamities. Such
utterances were not to dominate the convention, however; it was
a day of expediency, not of morality. A bargain was made
between the commercial interests of the North and the
slave-holding interests of the South, the granting to Congress
of unrestricted power to enact navigation laws being conceded
in exchange for twenty years’ continuance of the slave-trade.
The main agreements on the subject of slavery were thus finally
expressed in the Constitution: “Representatives and direct
taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may
be included within this Union, according to their respective
numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole
number of free persons, including those bound to servitude for
a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths
of all other persons” (Art. I, Sec. 2); “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 1808; but a tax or duty may be
imposed, not exceeding ten dollars on each person” (Art. I,
Sec. 9); “No person held to service or labor in one state,
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged
from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim
of the party to whom such service or labor may be due” (Art.
IV, Sec. 2). With such provisions, though without the use of
the question-begging word slaves, the institution of
human bondage received formal recognition in the organic law of
the new republic of the United States.

“Just what is the light in which we are to regard the
slaves?” wondered James Wilson in the course of the debate.
“Are they admitted as citizens?” he asked; “then why are they
not admitted on an equality with white citizens? Are they
admitted as property? then why is not other property admitted
into the computation?” Such questions and others to which they
gave rise were to trouble more heads than his in the course of
the coming years, and all because a great nation did not have
the courage to do the right thing at the right time.

4. Early Steps toward
Abolition

In spite, however, of the power crystallized in the
Constitution, the moral movement that had set in against
slavery still held its ground, and it was destined never wholly
to languish until slavery ceased altogether to exist in the
United States. Throughout the century the Quakers continued
their good work; in the generation before the war John Woolman
of New Jersey traveled in the Southern colonies preaching that
“the practice of continuing slavery is not right”; and Anthony
Benezet opened in Philadelphia a school for Negroes which he
himself taught without remuneration, and otherwise influenced
Pennsylvania to begin the work of emancipation. In general the
Quakers conducted their campaign along the lines on which they
were most likely to succeed, attacking the slave-trade first of
all but more and more making an appeal to the central
government; and the first Abolition Society, organized in
Pennsylvania in 1775 and consisting mainly of Quakers, had for
its original object merely the relief of free Negroes
unlawfully held in bondage.⁵⁵ The organization was forced
to suspend its work in the course of the war, but in 1784 it
renewed its meetings, and men of other denominations than
the Quakers now joined in greater numbers. In 1787 the
society was formally reorganized as “The Pennsylvania
Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief
of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage, and for
Improving the Condition of the African Race.” Benjamin
Franklin was elected president and there was adopted a
constitution which was more and more to serve as a model for
similar societies in the neighboring states.

Four years later, by 1791, there were in the country as many
as twelve abolition societies, and these represented all the
states from Massachusetts to Virginia, with the exception of
New Jersey, where a society was formed the following year. That
of New York, formed in 1785 with John Jay as president, took
the name of the Manumission Society, limiting its aims at first
to promoting manumission and protecting those Negroes who had
already been set free. All of the societies had very clear
ideas as to their mission. The prevalence of kidnaping made
them emphasize “the relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in
bondage,” and in general each one in addition to its executive
committee had committees for inspection, advice, and
protection; for the guardianship of children; for the
superintending of education, and for employment. While the
societies were originally formed to attend to local matters,
their efforts naturally extended in course of time to national
affairs, and on December 8, 1791, nine of them prepared
petitions to Congress for the limitation of the slave-trade.
These petitions were referred to a special committee and
nothing more was heard of them at the time. After two years
accordingly the organizations decided that a more vigorous plan
of action was necessary, and on January 1, 1794, delegates from
nine societies organized in Philadelphia the American
Convention of Abolition Societies. The object of the Convention
was twofold, “to increase the zeal and efficiency of the
individual societies by its advice and encouragement … and to
take upon itself the chief responsibility in regard to national
affairs.” It prepared an address to the country and presented
to Congress a memorial against the fitting out of vessels in
the United States to engage in the slave-trade, and it had the
satisfaction of seeing Congress in the same year pass a bill to
this effect.

Some of the organizations were very active and one as far
South as that in Maryland was at first very powerful. Always
were they interested in suits in courts of law. In 1797 the New
York Society reported 90 complaints, 36 persons freed, 21 cases
still in suit, and 19 under consideration. The Pennsylvania
Society reported simply that it had been instrumental in the
liberation of “many hundreds” of persons. The different
branches, however, did not rest with mere liberation; they
endeavored generally to improve the condition of the Negroes in
their respective communities, each one being expected to report
to the Convention on the number of freedmen in its state and on
their property, employment, and conduct. From time to time also
the Convention prepared addresses to these people, and
something of the spirit of its work and also of the social
condition of the Negro at the time may be seen from the
following address of 1796:

To the Free Africans and Other Free People of Color in
the United States.
    The Convention of Deputies from the Abolition Societies
in the United States, assembled at Philadelphia, have
undertaken to address you upon subjects highly interesting
to your prosperity.
    They wish to see you act worthily of the rank you have
acquired as freemen, and thereby to do credit to
yourselves, and to justify the friends and advocates of
your color in the eyes of the world.
    As the result of our united reflections, we have
concluded to call your attention to the following articles
of advice. We trust they are dictated by the purest regard
for your welfare, for we view you as Friends and
Brethren.
    In the first place, We earnestly recommend to
you, a regular attention to the important duty of public
worship; by which means you will evince gratitude to your
Creator, and, at the same time, promote knowledge, union,
friendship, and proper conduct among yourselves.
    Secondly, We advise such of you, as have not been
taught reading, writing, and the first principles of
arithmetic, to acquire them as early as possible. Carefully
attend to the instruction of your children in the same
simple and useful branches of education. Cause them,
likewise, early and frequently to read the holy Scriptures;
these contain, amongst other great discoveries, the
precious record of the original equality of mankind, and of
the obligations of universal justice and benevolence, which
are derived from the relation of the human race to each
other in a common Father.
    Thirdly, Teach your children useful trades, or to
labor with their hands in cultivating the earth. These
employments are favorable to health and virtue. In the
choice of masters, who are to instruct them in the above
branches of business, prefer those who will work with them;
by this means they will acquire habits of industry, and be
better preserved from vice than if they worked alone, or
under the eye of persons less interested in their welfare.
In forming contracts, for yourselves or children, with
masters, it may be useful to consult such persons as are
capable of giving you the best advice, and who are known to
be your friends, in order to prevent advantages being taken
of your ignorance of the laws and customs of our
country.
    Fourthly, Be diligent in your respective
callings, and faithful in all the relations you bear in
society, whether as husbands, wives, fathers, children or
hired servants. Be just in all your dealings. Be simple in
your dress and furniture, and frugal in your family
expenses. Thus you will act like Christians as well as
freemen, and, by these means, you will provide for the
distresses and wants of sickness and old age.
    Fifthly, Refrain from the use of spirituous
liquors; the experience of many thousands of the citizens
of the United States has proved that these liquors are not
necessary to lessen the fatigue of labor, nor to obviate
the effects of heat or cold; nor can they, in any degree,
add to the innocent pleasures of society.
    Sixthly, Avoid frolicking, and amusements which
lead to expense and idleness; they beget habits of
dissipation and vice, and thus expose you to deserved
reproach amongst your white neighbors.
    Seventhly, We wish to impress upon your minds the
moral and religious necessity of having your marriages
legally performed; also to have exact registers preserved
of all the births and deaths which occur in your respective
families.
    Eighthly, Endeavor to lay up as much as possible
of your earnings for the benefit of your children, in case
you should die before they are able to maintain
themselves—your money will be safest and most beneficial
when laid out in lots, houses, or small farms.
    Ninthly, We recommend to you, at all times and
upon all occasions, to behave yourselves to all persons in
a civil and respectful manner, by which you may prevent
contention and remove every just occasion of complaint. We
beseech you to reflect, that it is by your good conduct
alone that you can refute the objections which have been
made against you as rational and moral creatures, and
remove many of the difficulties which have occurred in the
general emancipation of such of your brethren as are yet in
bondage.
    With hearts anxious for your welfare, we commend you to
the guidance and protection of that Being who is
able to keep you from all evil, and who is the common
Father and Friend of the whole family of mankind.
    Theodore Foster, President. Philadelphia, January 6th,
1796. Thomas P. Cope, Secretary.

The general impulse for liberty which prompted the
Revolution and the early Abolition societies naturally found
some reflection in formal legislation. The declarations of the
central government under the Confederation were not very
effective, and for more definite enactments we have to turn to
the individual states. The honor of being the first actually to
prohibit and abolish slavery really belongs to Vermont, whose
constitution, adopted in 1777, even before she had come into
the Union, declared very positively against the system. In 1782
the old Virginia statute forbidding emancipation except for
meritorious services was repealed. The repeal was in force ten
years, and in this time manumissions were numerous. Maryland
soon afterwards passed acts similar to those in Virginia
prohibiting the further introduction of slaves and removing
restraints on emancipation, and New York and New Jersey also
prohibited the further introduction of slaves from Africa or
from other states. In 1780, in spite of considerable opposition
because of the course of the war, the Pennsylvania Assembly
passed an act forbidding the further introduction of slaves and
giving freedom to all persons thereafter born in the state.
Similar provisions were enacted in Connecticut and Rhode Island
in 1784. Meanwhile Massachusetts was much agitated, and
beginning in 1766 there were before the courts several cases in
which Negroes sued for their freedom.⁵⁶ Their general argument was
that the royal charter declared that all persons residing in
the province were to be as free as the king’s subjects in
Great Britain, that by Magna Carta no subject could be
deprived of liberty except by the judgment of his peers, and
that any laws that may have been passed in the province to
mitigate or regulate the evil of slavery did not authorize
it. Sometimes the decisions were favorable, but at the
beginning of the Revolution Massachusetts still recognized
the system by the decision that no slave could be enlisted
in the army. In 1777, however, some slaves brought from
Jamaica were ordered to be set at liberty, and it was
finally decided in 1783 that the declaration in the
Massachusetts Bill of Rights to the effect that “all men are
born free and equal” prohibited slavery. In this same year
New Hampshire incorporated in her constitution a prohibitive
article. By the time the convention for the framing of the
Constitution of the United States met in Philadelphia in
1787, two of the original thirteen states (Massachusetts and
New Hampshire) had positively prohibited slavery, and in
three others (Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island)
gradual abolition was in progress.

The next decade was largely one of the settlement of new
territory, and by its close the pendulum seemed to have swung
decidedly backward. In 1799, however, after much effort and
debating, New York at last declared for gradual abolition, and
New Jersey did likewise in 1804. In general, gradual
emancipation was the result of the work of people who were
humane but also conservative and who questioned the wisdom of
thrusting upon the social organism a large number of Negroes
suddenly emancipated. Sometimes, however, a gradual
emancipation act was later followed by one for immediate
manumission, as in New York in 1817. At first those who favored
gradual emancipation were numerous in the South as well as in
the North, but in general after Gabriel’s insurrection in 1800,
though some individuals were still outstanding, the South was
quiescent. The character of the acts that were really put in
force can hardly be better stated than has already been done by
the specialist in the subject.⁵⁷ We read:

Gradual emancipation is defined as the extinction of
slavery by depriving it of its hereditary quality. In
distinction from the clauses in the constitutions of
Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, which directly
or indirectly affected the condition of slavery as already
existing, the gradual emancipation acts left this condition
unchanged and affected only the children born after the
passage of the act or after a fixed date. Most of these
acts followed that of Pennsylvania in providing that the
children of a slave mother should remain with her owner as
servants until they reached a certain age, of from
twenty-one to twenty-eight years, as stated in the various
enactments. In Pennsylvania, however, they were to be
regarded as free. In Connecticut, on the other hand, they
were to be “held in servitude” until twenty-five years of
age and after that to be free. The most liberal policy was
that of Rhode Island, where the children were pronounced
free but were to be supported by the town and educated in
reading, writing, and arithmetic, morality and religion.
The latter clauses, however, were repealed the following
year, leaving the children to be supported by the owner of
the mother until twenty-one years of age, and only if he
abandoned his claims to the mother to become a charge to
the town. In New York and New Jersey they were to remain as
servants until a certain age, but were regarded as free,
and liberal opportunities were given the master for the
abandonment of his claims, the children in such cases to be
supported at the common charge…. The manumission and
emancipation acts were naturally followed, as in the case
of the constitutional provision in Vermont, by the attempts
of some of the slave-owners to dispose of their property
outside the State. Amendments to the laws were found
necessary, and the Abolition Societies found plenty of
occasion for their exertions in protecting free blacks from
seizure and illegal sale and in looking after the execution
and amendment of the laws. The process of gradual
emancipation was also unsatisfactory on account of the
length of time it would require, and in Pennsylvania and
Connecticut attempts were made to obtain acts for immediate
emancipation.

5. Beginning of Racial
Consciousness

Of supreme importance in this momentous period, more
important perhaps in its ultimate effect than even the work of
the Abolition Societies, was what the Negro was doing for
himself. In the era of the Revolution began that racial
consciousness on which almost all later effort for social
betterment has been based.

By 1700 the only coöperative effort on the part of the Negro
was such as that in the isolated society to which Cotton Mather
gave rules, or in a spasmodic insurrection, or a rather crude
development of native African worship. As yet there was no
genuine basis of racial self-respect. In one way or another,
however, in the eighteenth century the idea of association
developed, and especially in Boston about the time of the
Revolution Negroes began definitely to work together; thus they
assisted individuals in test cases in the courts, and when
James Swan in his Dissuasion from the Slave Trade made
such a statement as that “no country can be called free where
there is one slave,” it was “at the earnest desire of the
Negroes in Boston” that the revised edition of the pamphlet was
published.

From the very beginning the Christian Church was the race’s
foremost form of social organization. It was but natural that
the first distinctively Negro churches should belong to the
democratic Baptist denomination. There has been much discussion
as to which was the very first Negro Baptist church, and good
claims have been put forth by the Harrison Street Baptist
Church of Petersburg, Va., and for a church in Williamsburg,
Va., organization in each case going back to 1776. A student of
the subject, however, has shown that there was a Negro Baptist
church at Silver Bluff, “on the South Carolina side of the
Savannah River, in Aiken County, just twelve miles from
Augusta, Ga.,” founded not earlier than 1773, not later than
1775.⁵⁸ In any case special interest
attaches to the First Bryan Baptist Church, of Savannah,
founded in January, 1788. The origin of this body goes back
to George Liele, a Negro born in Virginia, who might justly
lay claim to being America’s first foreign missionary.
Converted by a Georgia Baptist minister, he was licensed as
a probationer and was known to preach soon afterwards at a
white quarterly meeting.⁵⁹ In 1783 he preached in the
vicinity of Savannah, and one of those who came to hear him
was Andrew Bryan, a slave of Jonathan Bryan. Liele then went
to Jamaica and in 1784 began to preach in Kingston, where
with four brethren from America he formed a church. At first
he was subjected to persecution; nevertheless by 1791 he had
baptized over four hundred persons. Eight or nine months
after he left for Jamaica, Andrew Bryan began to preach, and
at first he was permitted to use a building at Yamacraw, in
the suburbs of Savannah. Of this, however, he was in course
of time dispossessed, the place being a rendezvous for those
Negroes who had been taken away from their homes by the
British. Many of these men were taken before the magistrates
from time to time, and some were whipped and others
imprisoned. Bryan himself, having incurred the ire of the
authorities, was twice imprisoned and once publicly whipped,
being so cut that he “bled abundantly”; but he told his
persecutors that he “would freely suffer death for the cause
of Jesus Christ,” and after a while he was permitted to go
on with his work. For some time he used a barn, being
assisted by his brother Sampson; then for £50 he purchased
his freedom, and afterwards he began to use for worship a
house that Sampson had been permitted to erect. By 1791 his
church had two hundred members, but over a hundred more had
been received as converted members though they had not won
their masters’ permission to be baptized. An interesting
sidelight on these people is furnished by the statement that
probably fifty of them could read though only three could
write. Years afterwards, in 1832, when the church had grown
to great numbers, a large part of the congregation left the
Bryan Church and formed what is now the First African
Baptist Church of Savannah. Both congregations, however,
remembered their early leader as one “clear in the grand
doctrines of the Gospel, truly pious, and the instrument of
doing more good among the poor slaves than all the learned
doctors in America.”

While Bryan was working in Savannah, in Richmond, Va., rose
Lott Cary, a man of massive and erect frame and of great
personality. Born a slave in 1780, Cary worked for a number of
years in a tobacco factory, leading a wicked life. Converted in
1807, he made rapid advance in education and he was licensed as
a Baptist preacher. He purchased his own freedom and that of
his children (his first wife having died), organized a
missionary society, and then in 1821 himself went as a
missionary to the new colony of Liberia, in whose interest he
worked heroically until his death in 1828.

More clearly defined than the origin of Negro Baptist
churches are the beginnings of African Methodism. Almost from
the time of its introduction in the country Methodism made
converts among the Negroes and in 1786 there were nearly two
thousand Negroes in the regular churches of the denomination,
which, like the Baptist denomination, it must be remembered,
was before the Revolution largely overshadowed in official
circles by the Protestant Episcopal Church. The general
embarrassment of the Episcopal Church in America in connection
with the war, and the departure of many loyalist ministers,
gave opportunity to other denominations as well as to certain
bodies of Negroes. The white members of St. George’s Methodist
Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, however, determined to set
apart its Negro membership and to segregate it in the gallery.
Then in 1787 came a day when the Negroes, choosing not to be
insulted, and led by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, left the
edifice, and with these two men as overseers on April 17
organized the Free African Society. This was intended to be
“without regard to religious tenets,” the members being banded
together “to support one another in sickness and for the
benefit of their widows and fatherless children.” The society
was in the strictest sense fraternal, there being only eight
charter members: Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, Samuel Boston,
Joseph Johnson, Cato Freeman, Cæsar Cranchell, James Potter,
and William White. By 1790 the society had on deposit in the
Bank of North America £42 9s. id., and that it generally stood
for racial enterprise may be seen from the fact that in 1788 an
organization in Newport known as the Negro Union, in which Paul
Cuffe was prominent, wrote proposing a general exodus of the
Negroes to Africa. Nothing came of the suggestion at the time,
but at least it shows that representative Negroes of the day
were beginning to think together about matters of general
policy.

In course of time the Free African Society of Philadelphia
resolved into an “African Church,” and this became affiliated
with the Protestant Episcopal Church, whose bishop had
exercised an interest in it. Out of this organization developed
St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, organized in 1791 and formally
opened for service July 17, 1794. Allen was at first selected
for ordination, but he decided to remain a Methodist and Jones
was chosen in his stead and thus became the first Negro rector
in the United States. Meanwhile, however, in 1791, Allen
himself had purchased a lot at the corner of Sixth and Lombard
Streets; he at once set about arranging for the building that
became Bethel Church; and in 1794 he formally sold the lot to
the church and the new house of worship was dedicated by Bishop
Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church. With this general
body Allen and his people for a number of years remained
affiliated, but difficulties arose and separate churches having
come into being in other places, a convention of Negro
Methodists was at length called to meet in Philadelphia April
9, 1816. To this came sixteen delegates—Richard Allen, Jacob
Tapsico, Clayton Durham, James Champion, Thomas Webster, of
Philadelphia; Daniel Coker, Richard Williams, Henry Harden,
Stephen Hill, Edward Williamson, Nicholas Gailliard, of
Baltimore: Jacob Marsh, Edward Jackson, William Andrew, of
Attleborough, Penn.; Peter Spencer, of Wilmington, Del., and
Peter Cuffe, of Salem, N.J.—and these were the men who founded
the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Coker, of whom we shall
hear more in connection with Liberia, was elected bishop, but
resigned in favor of Allen, who served until his death in
1831.

In 1796 a congregation in New York consisting of James
Varick and others also withdrew from the main body of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1800 dedicated a house of
worship. For a number of years it had the oversight of the
older organization, but after preliminary steps in 1820, on
June 21, 1821, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was
formally organized. To the first conference came 19 preachers
representing 6 churches and 1,426 members. Varick was elected
district chairman, but soon afterwards was made bishop. The
polity of this church from the first differed somewhat from
that of the A.M.E. denomination in that representation of the
laity was a prominent feature and there was no bar to the
ordination of women.

Of denominations other than the Baptist and the Methodist,
the most prominent in the earlier years was the Presbyterian,
whose first Negro ministers were John Gloucester and John
Chavis. Gloucester owed his training to the liberal tendencies
that about 1800 were still strong in eastern Tennessee and
Kentucky, and in 1810 took charge of the African Presbyterian
Church which in 1807 had been established in Philadelphia. He
was distinguished by a rich musical voice and the general
dignity of his life, and he himself became the father of four
Presbyterian ministers. Chavis had a very unusual career. After
passing “through a regular course of academic studies” at
Washington Academy, now Washington and Lee University, in 1801
he was commissioned by the General Assembly of the
Presbyterians as a missionary to the Negroes. He worked with
increasing reputation until Nat Turner’s insurrection caused
the North Carolina legislature in 1832 to pass an act silencing
all Negro preachers. Then in Wake County and elsewhere he
conducted schools for white boys until his death in 1838. In
these early years distinction also attaches to Lemuel Haynes, a
Revolutionary patriot and the first Negro preacher of the
Congregational denomination. In 1785 he became the pastor of a
white congregation in Torrington, Conn., and in 1818 began to
serve another in Manchester, N.H.

After the church the strongest organization among Negroes
has undoubtedly been that of secret societies commonly known as
“lodges.” The benefit societies were not necessarily secret and
call for separate consideration. On March 6, 1775, an army
lodge attached to one of the regiments stationed under General
Gage in or near Boston initiated Prince Hall and fourteen other
colored men into the mysteries of Freemasonry.⁶⁰ These fifteen men on March
2, 1784, applied to the Grand Lodge of England for a
warrant. This was issued to “African Lodge, No. 459,” with
Prince Hall as master, September 29, 1784. Various delays
and misadventures befell the warrant, however, so that it
was not actually received before April 29, 1787. The lodge
was then duly organized May 6. From this beginning developed
the idea of Masonry among the Negroes of America. As early
as 1792 Hall was formally styled Grand Master, and in 1797
he issued a license to thirteen Negroes to “assemble and
work” as a lodge in Philadelphia; and there was also at this
time a lodge in Providence. Thus developed in 1808 the
“African Grand Lodge” of Boston, afterwards known as “Prince
Hall Lodge of Massachusetts”; the second Grand Lodge, called
the “First Independent African Grand Lodge of North America
in and for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” organized in
1815; and the “Hiram Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.”

Something of the interest of the Masons in their people, and
the calm judgment that characterized their procedure, may be
seen from the words of their leader, Prince Hall.⁶¹ Speaking in 1797, and having
in mind the revolution in Hayti and recent indignities
inflicted upon the race in Boston, he said:

When we hear of the bloody wars which are now in the
world, and thousands of our fellowmen slain; fathers and
mothers bewailing the loss of their sons; wives for the
loss of their husbands; towns and cities burnt and
destroyed; what must be the heartfelt sorrow and distress
of these poor and unhappy people! Though we can not help
them, the distance being so great, yet we may sympathize
with them in their troubles, and mingle a tear of sorrow
with them, and do as we are exhorted to—weep with those
that weep….
    Now, my brethren, as we see and experience that all
things here are frail and changeable and nothing here to be
depended upon: Let us seek those things which are above,
which are sure and steadfast, and unchangeable, and at the
same time let us pray to Almighty God, while we remain in
the tabernacle, that he would give us the grace and
patience and strength to bear up under all our troubles,
which at this day God knows we have our share. 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 hands; and the arrows of death are flying about your
heads; helpless old women have their clothes torn off their
backs, even to the exposing of their nakedness; and by whom
are these disgraceful and abusive actions committed? Not by
the men born and bred in Boston, for they are better bred;
but by a mob or horde of shameless, low-lived, envious,
spiteful persons, some of them not long since, servants in
gentlemen’s kitchens, scouring knives, tending horses, and
driving chaise. ‘Twas said by a gentleman who saw that
filthy behavior in the Common, that in all the places he
had been in he never saw so cruel behavior in all his life,
and that a slave in the West Indies, on Sundays or
holidays, enjoys himself and friends without molestation.
Not only this man, but many in town who have seen their
behavior to you, and that without any provocations twenty
or thirty cowards fall upon one man, have wondered at the
patience of the blacks; ’tis not for want of courage in
you, for they know that they dare not face you man for man,
but in a mob, which we despise, and had rather suffer wrong
than do wrong, to the disturbance of the community and the
disgrace of our reputation; for every good citizen does
honor to the laws of the State where he resides….
    My brethren, let us not be cast down under these and
many other abuses we at present labor under: for the
darkest 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. Nothing but the
snap of the whip was heard from morning to evening;
hanging, breaking on the wheel, burning, and all manner of
tortures inflicted on those unhappy people, for nothing
else but to gratify their masters’ pride, wantonness, and
cruelty: but blessed be 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.

An African Society was organized in New York in 1808 and
chartered in 1810, and out of it grew in course of time three
or four other organizations. Generally close to the social aim
of the church and sometimes directly fathered by the secret
societies were the benefit organizations, which even in the
days of slavery existed for aid in sickness or at death; in
fact, it was the hopelessness of the general situation coupled
with the yearning for care when helpless that largely called
these societies into being. Their origin has been explained
somewhat as follows:

Although it was unlawful for Negroes to assemble without the
presence of a white man, and so unlawful to allow a
congregation of slaves on a plantation without the consent of
the master, these organizations existed and held these meetings
on the “lots” of some of the law-makers themselves. The general
plan seems to have been to select some one who could read and
write and make him the secretary. The meeting-place having been
selected, the members would come by ones and twos, make their
payments to the secretary, and quietly withdraw. The book of
the secretary was often kept covered up on the bed. In many of
the societies each member was known by number and in paying
simply announced his number. The president of such a society
was usually a privileged slave who had the confidence of his or
her master and could go and come at will. Thus a form of
communication could be kept up between all members. In event of
death of a member, provision was made for decent burial, and
all the members as far as possible obtained permits to attend
the funeral. Here and again their plan of getting together was
brought into play. In Richmond they would go to the church by
ones and twos and there sit as near together as convenient. At
the close of the service a line of march would be formed when
sufficiently far from the church to make it safe to do so. It
is reported that the members were faithful to each other and
that every obligation was faithfully carried out. This was the
first form of insurance known to the Negro from which his
family received a benefit.⁶²

All along of course a determining factor in the Negro’s
social progress was the service that he was able to render to
any community in which he found himself as well as to his own
people. Sometimes he was called upon to do very hard work,
sometimes very unpleasant or dangerous work; but if he answered
the call of duty and met an actual human need, his service had
to receive recognition. An example of such work was found in
his conduct in the course of the yellow fever epidemic in
Philadelphia in 1793. Knowing that fever in general was not
quite as severe in its ravages upon Negroes as upon white
people, the daily papers of Philadelphia called upon the
colored people in the town to come forward and assist with the
sick. The Negroes consented, and Absalom Jones and William Gray
were appointed to superintend the operations, though as usual
it was upon Richard Allen that much of the real responsibility
fell. In September the fever increased and upon the Negroes
devolved also the duty of removing corpses. In the course of
their work they encountered much opposition; thus Jones said
that a white man threatened to shoot him if he passed his house
with a corpse. This man himself the Negroes had to bury three
days afterwards. When the epidemic was over, under date January
23, 1794, Matthew Clarkson, the mayor, wrote the following
testimonial: “Having, during the prevalence of the late
malignant disorder, had almost daily opportunities of seeing
the conduct of Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and the people
employed by them to bury the dead, I with cheerfulness give
this testimony of my approbation of their proceedings, as far
as the same came under my notice. Their diligence, attention,
and decency of deportment, afforded me, at the time, much
satisfaction.” After the lapse of years it is with something of
the pathos of martyrdom that we are impressed by the service of
these struggling people, who by their self-abnegation and
patriotism endeavored to win and deserve the privileges of
American citizenship.

All the while, in one way or another, the Negro was making
advance in education. As early as 1704 we have seen that Neau
opened a school in New York; there was Benezet’s school in
Philadelphia before the Revolutionary War, and in 1798 one for
Negroes was established in Boston. In the first part of the
century, we remember also, some Negroes were apprenticed in
Virginia under the oversight of the church. In 1764 the editor
of a paper in Williamsburg, Va., established a school for
Negroes, and we have seen that as many as one-sixth of the
members of Andrew Bryan’s congregation in the far Southern city
of Savannah could read by 1790. Exceptional men, like
Gloucester and Chavis, of course availed themselves of such
opportunities as came their way. All told, by 1800 the Negro
had received much more education than is commonly supposed.

Two persons—one in science and one in literature—because of
their unusual attainments attracted much attention. The first
was Benjamin Banneker of Maryland, and the second Phillis
Wheatley of Boston. Banneker in 1770 constructed the first
clock striking the hours that was made in America, and from
1792 to 1806 published an almanac adapted to Maryland and the
neighboring states. He was thoroughly scholarly in mathematics
and astronomy, and by his achievements won a reputation for
himself in Europe as well as in America. Phillis Wheatley,
after a romantic girlhood of transition from Africa to a
favorable environment in Boston, in 1773 published her Poems
on Various Subjects, which volume she followed with several
interesting occasional poems.⁶³ For the summer of this year
she was the guest in England of the Countess of Huntingdon,
whose patronage she had won by an elegiac poem on George
Whitefield; in conversation even more than in verse-making
she exhibited her refined taste and accomplishment, and
presents were showered upon her, one of them being a copy of
the magnificent 1770 Glasgow folio edition of Paradise
Lost, which was given by Brook Watson, Lord Mayor of
London, and which is now preserved in the library of Harvard
University. In the earlier years of the next century her
poems found their way into the common school readers. One of
those in her representative volume was addressed to Scipio
Moorhead, a young Negro of Boston who had shown some talent
for painting. Thus even in a dark day there were those who
were trying to struggle upward to the light.

Footnote 51:
(return)

“The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, issued under the
auspices of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association,” 20
vols., Washington, 1903, II, 226-227.

Footnote 52:
(return)

“A South Carolina Protest against Slavery (being a
letter written from Henry Laurens, second president of the
Continental Congress, to his son, Colonel John Laurens;
dated Charleston, S.C., August 14th, 1776).” Reprinted by
G.P. Putnam, New York, 1861.

Footnote 53:
(return)

Historical Notes on the Employment of Negroes in the
American Army of the Revolution, by G.H. Moore, New York,
1862, p. 15.

Footnote 54:
(return)

Sparks’s Washington, VIII, 322-323.

Footnote 55:
(return)

Locke: Anti-Slavery in America, 97.

Footnote 56:
(return)

See Williams: History of the Negro Race in
America, I, 228-236.

Footnote 57:
(return)

Locke, 124-126.

Footnote 58:
(return)

Walter H. Brooks: The Silver Bluff Church.

Footnote 59:
(return)

See letters in Journal of Negro History, January, 1916,
69-97.

Footnote 60:
(return)

William H. Upton: Negro Masonry, Cambridge, 1899,
10.

Footnote 61:
(return)

“A Charge Delivered to the African Lodge, June 24, 1797,
at Menotomy. By the Right Worshipful Prince Hall.”
(Boston?) 1797.

Footnote 62:
(return)

Hampton Conference Report, No. 8

Footnote 63:
(return)

For a full study see Chapter II of The Negro in
Literature and Art.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW WEST, THE SOUTH, AND THE WEST INDIES

The twenty years of the administrations of the first three
presidents of the United States—or, we might say, the three
decades between 1790 and 1820—constitute what might be
considered the “Dark Ages” of Negro history; and yet, as with
most “Dark Ages,” at even a glance below the surface these
years will be found to be throbbing with life, and we have
already seen that in them the Negro was doing what he could on
his own account to move forward. After the high moral stand of
the Revolution, however, the period seems quiescent, and it was
indeed a time of definite reaction. This was attributable to
three great events: the opening of the Southwest with the
consequent demand for slaves, the Haytian revolution beginning
in 1791, and Gabriel’s insurrection in 1800.

In no way was the reaction to be seen more clearly than in
the decline of the work of the American Convention of Delegates
from the Abolition Societies. After 1798 neither Connecticut
nor Rhode Island sent delegates; the Southern states all fell
away by 1803; and while from New England came the excuse that
local conditions hardly made aggressive effort any longer
necessary, the lack of zeal in this section was also due to
some extent to a growing question as to the wisdom of
interfering with slavery in the South. In Virginia, that just a
few years before had been so active, a statute was now passed
imposing a penalty of one hundred dollars on any person who
assisted a slave in asserting his freedom, provided he failed
to establish the claim; and another provision enjoined that no
member of an abolition society should serve as a juror in a
freedom suit. Even the Pennsylvania society showed signs of
faintheartedness, and in 1806 the Convention decided upon
triennial rather than annual meetings. It did not again become
really vigorous until after the War of 1812.

1. The Cotton-Gin, the New Southwest, and
the First Fugitive Slave Law

Of incalculable significance in the history of the Negro in
America was the series of inventions in England by Arkwright,
Hargreaves, and Crompton in the years 1768-79. In the same
period came the discovery of the power of steam by James Watt
of Glasgow and its application to cotton manufacture, and
improvements followed quickly in printing and bleaching. There
yet remained one final invention of importance for the
cultivation of cotton on a large scale. Eli Whitney, a graduate
of Yale, went to Georgia and was employed as a teacher by the
widow of General Greene on her plantation. Seeing the need of
some machine for the more rapid separating of cotton-seed from
the fiber, he labored until in 1793 he succeeded in making his
cotton-gin of practical value. The tradition is persistent,
however, that the real credit of the invention belongs to a
Negro on the plantation. The cotton-gin created great
excitement throughout the South and began to be utilized
everywhere. The cultivation and exporting of the staple grew by
leaps and bounds. In 1791 only thirty-eight bales of standard
size were exported from the United States; in 1816, however,
the cotton sent out of the country was worth $24,106,000 and
was by far the most valuable article of export. The current
price was 28 cents a pound. Thus at the very time that the
Northern states were abolishing slavery, an industry that had
slumbered became supreme, and the fate of hundreds of thousands
of Negroes was sealed.

Meanwhile the opening of the West went forward, and from
Maine and Massachusetts, Carolina and Georgia journeyed the
pioneers to lay the foundations of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,
and Alabama and Mississippi. It was an eager, restless caravan
that moved, and sometimes more than a hundred persons in a
score of wagons were to be seen going from a single town in the
East—”Baptists and Methodists and Democrats.” The careers of
Boone and Sevier and those who went with them, and the story of
their fights with the Indians, are now a part of the romance of
American history. In 1790 a cluster of log huts on the Ohio
River was named in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati. In
1792 Kentucky was admitted to the Union, the article on slavery
in her constitution encouraging the system and discouraging
emancipation, and Tennessee also entered as a slave state in
1796.

Of tremendous import to the Negro were the questions
relating to the Mississippi Territory. After the Revolution
Georgia laid claim to great tracts of land now comprising the
states of Alabama and Mississippi, with the exception of the
strip along the coast claimed by Spain in connection with
Florida. This territory became a rich field for speculation,
and its history in its entirety makes a complicated story. A
series of sales to what were known as the Yazoo Companies,
especially in that part of the present states whose northern
boundary would be a line drawn from the mouth of the Yazoo to
the Chattahoochee, resulted in conflicting claims, the last
grant sale being made in 1795 by a corrupt legislature at the
price of a cent and a half an acre. James Jackson now raised
the cry of bribery and corruption, resigned from the United
States Senate, secured a seat in the state legislature, and on
February 13, 1796, carried through a bill rescinding the action
of the previous year,⁶⁴ and the legislature burned
the documents concerned with the Yazoo sale in token of its
complete repudiation of them. The purchasers to whom the
companies had sold lands now began to bombard Congress with
petitions and President Adams helped to arrive at a
settlement by which Georgia transferred the lands in
question to the Federal Government, which undertook to form
of them the Mississippi Territory and to pay any damages
involved. In 1802 Georgia threw the whole burden upon the
central government by transferring to it all of her
land beyond her present boundaries, though for this she
exacted an article favorable to slavery. All was now made
into the Mississippi Territory, to which Congress held out
the promise that it would be admitted as a state as soon as
its population numbered 60,000; but Alabama was separated
from Mississippi in 1816. The old matter of claims was not
finally disposed of until an act of 1814 appropriated
$5,000,000 for the purpose. In the same year Andrew
Jackson’s decisive victories over the Creeks at Talladega
and Horseshoe Bend—of which more must be said—resulted in
the cession of a vast tract of the land of that unhappy
nation and thus finally opened for settlement three-fourths
of the present state of Alabama.

It was in line with the advance that slavery was making in
new territory that there was passed the first Fugitive Slave
Act (1793). This grew out of the discussion incident to the
seizure in 1791 at Washington, Penn., of a Negro named John,
who was taken to Virginia, and the correspondence between the
Governor of Pennsylvania and the Governor of Virginia with
reference to the case. The important third section of the act
read as follows:

And be it also enacted, That when a person held to
labor in any of the United States, or in either of the
territories on the northwest or south of the river Ohio,
under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of the
said states or territory, the person to whom such labor or
service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby
empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labor, and
to take him or her before any judge of the circuit or
district courts of the United States, residing or being
within the state, or before any magistrate of a county,
city or town corporate, wherein such seizure or arrest
shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of such
judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit
taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such
state or territory, that the person so seized or arrested,
doth, under the laws of the state or territory from which
he or she fled, owe service or labor to the person claiming
him or her, it shall be the duty of such judge or
magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant,
his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant
for removing the said fugitive from labor, to the state or
territory from which he or she fled.

It will be observed that by the terms of this enactment a
master had the right to recover a fugitive slave by proving his
ownership before a magistrate without a jury or any other of
the ordinary forms of law. A human being was thus placed at the
disposal of the lowest of courts and subjected to such
procedure as was not allowed even in petty property suits. A
great field for the bribery of magistrates was opened up, and
opportunity was given for committing to slavery Negro men about
whose freedom there should have been no question.

By the close of the decade 1790-1800 the fear occasioned by
the Haytian revolution had led to a general movement against
the importation of Negroes, especially of those from the West
Indies. Even Georgia in 1798 prohibited the importation of all
slaves, and this provision, although very loosely enforced, was
never repealed. In South Carolina, however, to the utter
chagrin and dismay of the other states, importation, prohibited
in 1787, was again legalized in 1803; and in the four years
immediately following 39,075 Negroes were brought to
Charleston, most of these going to the territories.⁶⁵ When in 1803 Ohio was carved
out of the Northwest Territory as a free state, an attempt
was made to claim the rest of the territory for slavery, but
this failed. In the congressional session of 1804-5 the
matter of slavery in the newly acquired territory of
Louisiana was brought up, and slaves were allowed to be
imported if they had come to the United States before 1798,
the purpose of this provision being to guard against the
consequences of South Carolina’s recent act, although such a
clause never received rigid enforcement. The mention of
Louisiana, however, brings us concretely to Toussaint
L’Ouverture, the greatest Negro in the New World in the
period and one of the greatest of all time.

2. Toussaint L’Ouverture, Louisiana, and
the Formal Closing of the Slave-Trade

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, it was not
long before its general effects were felt in the West Indies.
Of special importance was Santo Domingo because of the
commercial interests centered there. The eastern end of the
island was Spanish, but the western portion was French, and in
this latter part was a population of 600,000, of which number
50,000 were French Creoles, 50,000 mulattoes, and 500,000 pure
Negroes. All political and social privileges were monopolized
by the Creoles, while the Negroes were agricultural laborers
and slaves; and between the two groups floated the restless
element of the free people of color.

When the General Assembly in France decreed equality of
rights to all citizens, the mulattoes of Santo Domingo made a
petition for the enjoyment of the same political privileges as
the white people—to the unbounded consternation of the latter.
They were rewarded with a decree which was so ambiguously
worded that it was open to different interpretations and which
simply heightened the animosity that for years had been
smoldering. A new petition to the Assembly in 1791 primarily
for an interpretation brought forth on May 15 the explicit
decree that the people of color were to have all the rights and
privileges of citizens, provided they had been born of free
parents on both sides. The white people were enraged by the
decision, turned royalist, and trampled the national cockade
underfoot; and throughout the summer armed strife and
conflagration were the rule. To add to the confusion the black
slaves struck for freedom and on the night of August 23, 1791,
drenched the island in blood. In the face of these events the
Conventional Assembly rescinded its order, then announced that
the original decree must be obeyed, and it sent three
commissioners with troops to Santo Domingo, real authority
being invested in Santhonax and Polverel.

On June 20, 1793, at Cape François trouble was renewed by a
quarrel between a mulatto and a white officer in the marines.
The seamen came ashore and loaned their assistance to the white
people, and the Negroes now joined forces with the mulattoes.
In the battle of two days that followed the arsenal was taken
and plundered, thousands were killed in the streets, and more
than half of the town was burned. The French commissioners were
the unhappy witnesses of the scene, but they were practically
helpless, having only about a thousand troops. Santhonax,
however, issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves
who were willing to range themselves under the banner of the
Republic. This was the first proclamation for the freeing of
slaves in Santo Domingo, and as a result of it many of the
Negroes came in and were enfranchised.

Soon after this proclamation Polverel left his colleague at
the Cape and went to Port au Prince, the capital of the West.
Here things were quiet and the cultivation of the crops was
going forward as usual. The slaves were soon unsettled,
however, by the news of what was being done elsewhere, and
Polverel was convinced that emancipation could not be delayed
and that for the safety of the planters themselves it was
necessary to extend it to the whole island. In September (1793)
he set in circulation from Aux Cayes a proclamation to this
effect, and at the same time he exhorted all the planters in
the vicinity who concurred in his work to register their names.
This almost all of them did, as they were convinced of the need
of measures for their personal safety; and on February 4, 1794,
the Conventional Assembly in Paris formally approved all that
had been done by decreeing the abolition of slavery in all the
colonies of France.

All the while the Spanish and the English had been looking
on with interest and had even come to the French part of the
island as if to aid in the restoration of order. Among the
former, at first in charge of a little royalist band, was the
Negro, Toussaint, later called L’Ouverture. He was then a man
in the prime of life, forty-eight years old, and already his
experience had given him the wisdom that was needed to bring
peace in Santo Domingo. In April, 1794, impressed by the decree
of the Assembly, he returned to the jurisdiction of France and
took service under the Republic. In 1796 he became a general of
brigade; in 1797 general-in-chief, with the military command of
the whole colony.

He at once compelled the surrender of the English who had
invaded his country. With the aid of a commercial agreement
with the United States, he next starved out the garrison of his
rival, the mulatto Rigaud, whom he forced to consent to leave
the country. He then imprisoned Roume, the agent of the
Directory, and assumed civil as well as military authority. He
also seized the Spanish part of the island, which had been
ceded to France some years before but had not been actually
surrendered. He then, in May, 1801, gave to Santo Domingo a
constitution by which he not only assumed power for life but
gave to himself the right of naming his successor; and all the
while he was awakening the admiration of the world by his
bravery, his moderation, and his genuine instinct for
government.

Across the ocean, however, a jealous man was watching with
interest the career of the “gilded African.” None knew better
than Napoleon that it was because he did not trust France that
Toussaint had sought the friendship of the United States, and
none read better than he the logic of events. As Adams says,
“Bonaparte’s acts as well as his professions showed that he was
bent on crushing democratic ideas, and that he regarded St.
Domingo as an outpost of American republicanism, although
Toussaint had made a rule as arbitrary as that of Bonaparte
himself…. By a strange confusion of events, Toussaint
L’Ouverture, because he was a Negro, became the champion of
republican principles, with which he had nothing but the
instinct of personal freedom in common. Toussaint’s government
was less republican than that of Bonaparte; he was doing by
necessity in St. Domingo what Bonaparte was doing by choice in
France.”⁶⁶

This was the man to whom the United States ultimately owes
the purchase of Louisiana. On October 1, 1801, Bonaparte gave
orders to General Le Clerc for a great expedition against Santo
Domingo. In January, 1802, Le Clerc appeared and war followed.
In the course of this, Toussaint—who was ordinarily so wise and
who certainly knew that from Napoleon he had most to fear—made
the great mistake of his life and permitted himself to be led
into a conference on a French vessel. He was betrayed and taken
to France, where within the year he died of pneumonia in the
dungeon of Joux. Immediately there was a proclamation annulling
the decree of 1794 giving freedom to the slaves. Bonaparte,
however, had not estimated the force of Toussaint’s work, and
to assist the Negroes in their struggle now came a stalwart
ally, yellow fever. By the end of the summer only one-seventh
of Le Clerc’s army remained, and he himself died in November.
At once Bonaparte planned a new expedition. While he was
arranging for the leadership of this, however, the European war
broke out again. Meanwhile the treaty for the retrocession of
the territory of Louisiana had not yet received the signature
of the Spanish king, because Godoy, the Spanish representative,
would not permit the signature to be affixed until all the
conditions were fulfilled; and toward the end of 1802 the civil
officer at New Orleans closed the Mississippi to the United
States. Jefferson, at length moved by the plea of the South,
sent a special envoy, no less a man than James Monroe, to
France to negotiate the purchase; Bonaparte, disgusted by the
failure of his Egyptian expedition and his project for reaching
India, and especially by his failure in Santo Domingo, in need
also of ready money, listened to the offer; and the people of
the United States—who within the last few years have witnessed
the spoliation of Hayti—have not yet realized how much they owe
to the courage of 500,000 Haytian Negroes who refused to be
slaves.

The slavery question in the new territory was a critical
one. It was on account of it that the Federalists had opposed
the acquisition; the American Convention endeavored to secure a
provision like that of the Northwest Ordinance; and the Yearly
Meeting of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia in 1805
prayed “that effectual measures may be adopted by Congress to
prevent the introduction of slavery into any of the territories
of the United States.” Nevertheless the whole territory without
regard to latitude was thrown open to the system March 2,
1805.

In spite of this victory for slavery, however, the general
force of the events in Hayti was such as to make more certain
the formal closing of the slave-trade at the end of the
twenty-year period for which the Constitution had permitted it
to run. The conscience of the North had been profoundly
stirred, and in the far South was the ever-present fear of a
reproduction of the events in Hayti. The agitation in England
moreover was at last about to bear fruit in the act of 1807
forbidding the slave-trade. In America it seems from the first
to have been an understood thing, especially by the Southern
representatives, that even if such an act passed it would be
only irregularly enforced, and the debates were concerned
rather with the disposal of illegally imported Africans and
with the punishment of those concerned in the importation than
with the proper limitation of the traffic by water.⁶⁷ On March 2, 1807, the act
was passed forbidding the slave-trade after the close of the
year. In course of time it came very near to being a dead
letter, as may be seen from 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 on the
floor of Congress, the testimony of eye-witnesses, and the
complaints of home and foreign anti-slavery societies.
Fernandina and Galveston were only two of the most notorious
ports for smuggling. A regular chain of posts was
established from the head of St. Mary’s River to the upper
country, and through the Indian nation, by means of which
the Negroes were transferred to every part of the
country.⁶⁸ If dealers wished to form a
caravan they would give an Indian alarm, so that the woods
might be less frequented, and if pursued in Georgia they
would escape into Florida. One small schooner contained one
hundred and thirty souls. “They were almost packed into a
small space, between a floor laid over the water-casks and
the deck—not near three feet—insufficient for them to sit
upright—and so close that chafing against each other their
bones pierced the skin and became galled and ulcerated by
the motion of the vessel.” Many American vessels were
engaged in the trade under Spanish colors, and the traffic
to Africa was pursued with uncommon vigor at Havana, the
crews of vessels being made up of men of all nations, who
were tempted by the high wages to be earned. Evidently
officials were negligent in the discharge of their duty, but
even if offenders were apprehended it did not necessarily
follow that they would receive effective punishment.
President Madison in his message of December 5, 1810, said,
“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”; and on January 7, 1819, the Register
of the Treasury made to the House the amazing report 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.” A
supplementary and compromising and ineffective act of 1818
sought to concentrate efforts against smuggling by
encouraging informers; and one of the following year that
authorized 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 recaptured Africans, and that bore somewhat more fruit,
was in large measure due to the colonization movement and of
importance in connection with the founding of Liberia.

Thus, while the formal closing of the slave-trade might seem
to be a great step forward, the laxness with which the decree
was enforced places it definitely in the period of
reaction.

3. Gabriel’s Insurrection and the Rise of the
Negro Problem

Gabriel’s insurrection of 1800 was by no means the most
formidable revolt that the Southern states witnessed. In design
it certainly did not surpass the scope of the plot of Denmark
Vesey twenty-two years later, and in actual achievement it was
insignificant when compared not only with Nat Turner’s
insurrection but even with the uprisings sixty years before. At
the last moment in fact a great storm that came up made the
attempt to execute the plan a miserable failure. Nevertheless
coming as it did so soon after the revolution in Hayti, and
giving evidence of young and unselfish leadership, the plot was
regarded as of extraordinary significance.

Gabriel himself⁶⁹ was an intelligent slave
only twenty-four years old, and his chief assistant was Jack
Bowler, aged twenty-eight. Throughout the summer of 1800 he
matured his plan, holding meetings at which a brother named
Martin interpreted various texts from Scripture as bearing
on the situation of the Negroes. His insurrection was
finally set for the first day of September. It was well
planned. The rendezvous was to be a brook six miles from
Richmond. Under cover of night the force of 1,100 was to
march in three columns on the city, then a town of 8,000
inhabitants, the right wing to seize the penitentiary
building which had just been converted into an arsenal,
while the left took possession of the powder-house. These
two columns were to be armed with clubs, and while they were
doing their work the central force, armed with muskets,
knives, and pikes, was to begin the carnage, none being
spared except the French, whom it is significant that the
Negroes favored. In Richmond at the time there were not more
than four or five hundred men with about thirty muskets; but
in the arsenal were several thousand guns, and the
powder-house was well stocked. Seizure of the mills was to
guarantee the insurrectionists a food supply; and meanwhile
in the country districts were the new harvests of corn, and
flocks and herds were fat in the fields.

On the day appointed for the uprising Virginia witnessed
such a storm as she had not seen in years. Bridges were carried
away, and roads and plantations completely submerged. Brook
Swamp, the strategic point for the Negroes, was inundated; and
the country Negroes could not get into the city, nor could
those in the city get out to the place of rendezvous. The force
of more than a thousand dwindled to three hundred, and these,
almost paralyzed by fear and superstition, were dismissed.
Meanwhile a slave who did not wish to see his master killed
divulged the plot, and all Richmond was soon in arms.

A troop of United States cavalry was ordered to the city and
arrests followed quickly. Three hundred dollars was offered by
Governor Monroe for the arrest of Gabriel, and as much more for
Jack Bowler. Bowler surrendered, but it took weeks to find
Gabriel. Six men were convicted and condemned to be executed on
September 12, and five more on September 18. Gabriel was
finally captured on September 24 at Norfolk on a vessel that
had come from Richmond; he was convicted on October 3 and
executed on October 7. He showed no disposition to dissemble as
to his own plan; at the same time he said not one word that
incriminated anybody else. After him twenty-four more men were
executed; then it began to appear that some “mistakes” had been
made and the killing ceased. About the time of this uprising
some Negroes were also assembled for an outbreak in Suffolk
County; there were alarms in Petersburg and in the country near
Edenton, N.C.; and as far away as Charleston the excitement was
intense.

There were at least three other Negro insurrections of
importance in the period 1790-1820. When news came of the
uprising of the slaves in Santo Domingo in 1791, the Negroes in
Louisiana planned a similar effort.⁷⁰ They might have succeeded
better if they had not disagreed as to the hour of the
outbreak, when one of them informed the commandant. As a
punishment twenty-three of the slaves were hanged along the
banks of the river and their corpses left dangling for days;
but three white men who assisted them and who were really
the most guilty of all, were simply sent out of the colony.
In Camden, S. C, on July 4, 1816, some other Negroes risked
all for independence.⁷¹ On various pretexts men from
the country districts were invited to the town on the
appointed night, and different commands were assigned, all
except that of commander-in-chief, which position was to be
given to him who first forced the gates of the arsenal.
Again the plot was divulged by “a favorite and confidential
slave,” of whom we are told that the state legislature
purchased the freedom, settling upon him a pension for life.
About six of the leaders were executed. On or about May 1,
1819, there was a plot to destroy the city of Augusta,
Ga.⁷² The insurrectionists were to
assemble at Beach Island, proceed to Augusta, set fire to
the place, and then destroy the inhabitants. Guards were
posted, and a white man who did not answer when hailed was
shot and fatally wounded. A Negro named Coot was tried as
being at the head of the conspiracy and sentenced to be
executed a few days later. Other trials followed his. Not a
muscle moved when the verdict was pronounced upon him.

The deeper meaning of such events as these could not escape
the discerning. More than one patriot had to wonder just
whither the country was drifting. Already it was evident that
the ultimate problem transcended the mere question of slavery,
and many knew that human beings could not always be confined to
an artificial status. Throughout the period the slave-trade
seemed to flourish without any real check, and it was even
accentuated by the return to power of the old royalist houses
of Europe after the fall of Napoleon. Meanwhile it was observed
that slave labor was driving out of the South the white man of
small means, and antagonism between the men of the “up-country”
and the seaboard capitalists was brewing. The ordinary social
life of the Negro in the South left much to be desired, and
conditions were not improved by the rapid increase. As for
slavery itself, no one could tell when or where or how the
system would end; all only knew that it was developing apace:
and meanwhile there was the sinister possibility of the
alliance of the Negro and the Indian. Sincere plans of gradual
abolition were advanced in the South as well as the North, but
in the lower section they seldom got more than a respectful
hearing. In his “Dissertation on Slavery, with a Proposal for
the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of Virginia,” St.
George Tucker, a professor of law in the University of William
and Mary, and one of the judges of the General Court of
Virginia, in 1796 advanced a plan by which he figured that
after sixty years there would be only one-third as many slaves
as at first. At this distance his proposal seems extremely
conservative; at the time, however, it was laid on the table by
the Virginia House of Delegates, and from the Senate the author
received merely “a civil acknowledgment.”

Two men of the period—widely different in temper and tone,
but both earnest seekers after truth—looked forward to the
future with foreboding, one with the eye of the scientist, the
other with the vision of the seer. Hezekiah Niles had full
sympathy with the groping and striving of the South; but he
insisted that slavery must ultimately be abolished throughout
the country, that the minds of the slaves should be exalted,
and that reasonable encouragement should be given free
Negroes.⁷³ Said he: “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.”⁷⁴

On the other hand rose Lorenzo Dow, the foremost itinerant
preacher of the time, the first Protestant who expounded the
gospel in Alabama and Mississippi, and a reformer who at the
very moment that cotton was beginning to be supreme, presumed
to tell the South that slavery was wrong.⁷⁵ Everywhere he arrested
attention—with his long hair, his harsh voice, and his wild
gesticulation startling all conservative hearers. But he was
made in the mold of heroes. In his lifetime he traveled not
less than two hundred thousand miles, preaching to more
people than any other man of his time. Several times he went
to Canada, once to the West Indies, and three times to
England, everywhere drawing great crowds about him. In A
Cry from the Wilderness he more than once clothed his
thought in enigmatic garb, but the meaning was always
ultimately clear. At this distance, when slavery and the
Civil War are alike viewed in the perspective, the words of
the oracle are almost uncanny: “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!”

Footnote 64:
(return)

Phillips in The South in the Building of the
Nation, II, 154.

Footnote 65:
(return)

DuBois: Suppression of the Slave-Trade, 90.

Footnote 66:
(return)
History of the United States, I, 391-392.

Footnote 67:
(return)

See DuBois, 95, ff.

Footnote 68:
(return)

Niles’s Register, XIV, 176 (May 2, 1818).

Footnote 69:
(return)

His full name was Gabriel Prosser.

Footnote 70:
(return)

Gayarré: History of Louisiana, III, 355.

Footnote 71:
(return)

Holland: Refutation of Calumnies.

Footnote 72:
(return)

Niles’s Register, XVI, 213 (May 22, 1819).

Footnote 73:
(return)
Register, XVI, 177 (May 8, 1819).

Footnote 74:
(return)
Ibid., XVI, 213 (May 22, 1819).

Footnote 75:
(return)

For full study see article “Lorenzo Dow,” in
Methodist Review and Journal of Negro
History, July, 1916, the same being included in
Africa and the War, New York, 1918.

CHAPTER V

INDIAN AND NEGRO

It is not the purpose of the present chapter to give a
history of the Seminole Wars, or even to trace fully the
connection of the Negro with these contests. We do hope to show
at least, however, that the Negro was more important than
anything else as an immediate cause of controversy, though the
general pressure of the white man upon the Indian would in time
of course have made trouble in any case. Strange parallels
constantly present themselves, and incidentally it may be seen
that the policy of the Government in force in other and even
later years with reference to the Negro was at this time also
very largely applied in the case of the Indian.

1. Creek, Seminole, and Negro to 1817: The War
of 1812

On August 7, 1786, the Continental Congress by a definite
and far-reaching ordinance sought to regulate for the future
the whole conduct of Indian affairs. Two great districts were
formed, one including the territory north of the Ohio and west
of the Hudson, and the other including that south of the Ohio
and east of the Mississippi; and for anything pertaining to the
Indian in each of these two great tracts a superintendent was
appointed. As affecting the Negro the southern district was
naturally of vastly more importance than the northern. In the
eastern portion of this, mainly in what are now Georgia,
eastern Tennessee, and eastern Alabama, were the Cherokees and
the great confederacy of the Creeks, while toward the west, in
the present Mississippi and western Alabama, were the
Chickasaws and the Choctaws. Of Muskhogean stock, and
originally a part of the Creeks, were the Seminoles
(“runaways”), who about 1750, under the leadership of a great
chieftain, Secoffee, separated from the main confederacy, which
had its center in southwest Georgia just a little south of
Columbus, and overran the peninsula of Florida. In 1808 came
another band under Micco Hadjo to the present site of
Tallahassee. The Mickasukie tribe was already on the ground in
the vicinity of this town, and at first its members objected to
the newcomers, who threatened to take their lands from them;
but at length all abode peaceably together under the general
name of Seminoles. About 1810 these people had twenty towns,
the chief ones being Mikasuki and Tallahassee. From the very
first they had received occasional additions from the Yemassee,
who had been driven out of South Carolina, and of fugitive
Negroes.

By the close of the eighteenth century all along the
frontier the Indian had begun to feel keenly the pressure of
the white man, and in his struggle with the invader he
recognized in the oppressed Negro a natural ally. Those Negroes
who by any chance became free were welcomed by the Indians,
fugitives from bondage found refuge with them, and while Indian
chiefs commonly owned slaves, the variety of servitude was very
different from that under the white man. The Negroes were
comparatively free, and intermarriage was frequent; thus a
mulatto woman who fled from bondage married a chief and became
the mother of a daughter who in course of time became the wife
of the famous Osceola. This very close connection of the Negro
with the family life of the Indian was the determining factor
in the resistance of the Seminoles to the demands of the agents
of the United States, and a reason, stronger even than his love
for his old hunting-ground, for his objection to removal to new
lands beyond the Mississippi. Very frequently the Indian could
not give up his Negroes without seeing his own wife and
children led away into bondage; and thus to native courage and
pride was added the instinct of a father for the preservation
of his own.

In the two wars between the Americans and the English it was
but natural that the Indian should side with the English, and
it was in some measure but a part of the game that he should
receive little consideration at the hands of the victor. In the
politics played by the English and the French, the English and
the Spaniards, and finally between the Americans and all
Europeans, the Indian was ever the loser. In the very early
years of the Carolina colonies, some effort was made to enslave
the Indians; but such servants soon made their way to the
Indian country, and it was not long before they taught the
Negroes to do likewise. This constant escape of slaves, with
its attendant difficulties, largely accounted for the
establishing of the free colony of Georgia between South
Carolina and the Spanish possession, Florida. It was soon
evident, however, that the problem had been aggravated rather
than settled. When Congress met in 1776 it received from
Georgia a communication setting forth the need of “preventing
slaves from deserting their masters”; and as soon as the
Federal Government was organized in 1789 it received also from
Georgia an urgent request for protection from the Creeks, who
were charged with various ravages, and among other documents
presented was a list of one hundred and ten Negroes who were
said to have left their masters during the Revolution and to
have found refuge among the Creeks. Meanwhile by various
treaties, written and unwritten, the Creeks were being forced
toward the western line of the state, and in any agreement the
outstanding stipulation was always for the return of fugitive
slaves. For a number of years the Creeks retreated without
definitely organized resistance. In the course of the War of
1812, however, moved by the English and by a visit from
Tecumseh, they suddenly rose, and on August 30, 1813, under the
leadership of Weathersford, they attacked Fort Mims, a stockade
thirty-five miles north of Mobile. The five hundred and
fifty-three men, women, and children in this place were almost
completely massacred. Only fifteen white persons escaped by
hiding in the woods, a number of Negroes being taken prisoner.
This occurrence spurred the whole Southwest to action.
Volunteers were called for, and the Tennessee legislature
resolved to exterminate the whole tribe. Andrew Jackson with
Colonel Coffee administered decisive defeats at Talladega and
Tohopeka or Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River, and the
Creeks were forced to sue for peace. By the treaty of Fort
Jackson (August 9, 1814) the future president, now a major
general in the regular army and in command at Mobile, demanded
that the unhappy nation give up more than half of its land as
indemnity for the cost of the war, that it hold no
communication with a Spanish garrison or town, that it permit
the necessary roads to be made or forts to be built in any part
of the territory, and that it surrender the prophets who had
instigated the war. This last demand was ridiculous, or only
for moral effect, for the so-called prophets had already been
left dead on the field of battle. The Creeks were quite broken,
however, and Jackson passed on to fame and destiny at the
Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815. In April of this year
he was made commander-in-chief of the Southern Division.⁷⁶ It soon developed that his
chief task in this capacity was to reckon with the
Seminoles.

On the Appalachicola River the British had rebuilt an old
fort, calling it the British Post on the Appalachicola. Early
in the summer of 1815 the commander, Nicholls, had occasion to
go to London, and he took with him his troops, the chief
Francis, and several Creeks, leaving in the fort seven hundred
and sixty-three barrels of cannon powder, twenty-five hundred
muskets, and numerous pistols and other weapons of war. The
Negroes from Georgia who had come to the vicinity, who numbered
not less than a thousand, and who had some well kept farms up
and down the banks of the river, now took charge of the fort
and made it their headquarters. They were joined by some
Creeks, and the so-called Negro Fort soon caused itself to be
greatly feared by any white people who happened to live near.
Demands on the Spanish governor for its suppression were
followed by threats of the use of the soldiery of the United
States; and General Gaines, under orders in the section, wrote
to Jackson asking authority to build near the boundary another
post that might be used as the base for any movement that had
as its aim to overawe the Negroes. Jackson readily complied
with the request, saying, “I have no doubt that this fort has
been established by some villains for the purpose of murder,
rapine, and plunder, and that it ought to be blown up
regardless of the ground it stands on. If you have come to the
same conclusion, destroy it, and restore the stolen Negroes and
property to their rightful owners.” Gaines accordingly built
Fort Scott not far from where the Flint and the Chattahoochee
join to form the Appalachicola. It was necessary for Gaines to
pass the Negro Fort in bringing supplies to his own men; and on
July 17, 1816, the boats of the Americans were within range of
the fort and opened fire. There was some preliminary shooting,
and then, since the walls were too stubborn to be battered down
by a light fire, “a ball made red-hot in the cook’s galley was
put in the gun and sent screaming over the wall and into the
magazine. The roar, the shock, the scene that followed, may be
imagined, but not described. Seven hundred barrels of gunpowder
tore the earth, the fort, and all the wretched creatures in it
to fragments. Two hundred and seventy men, women, and children
died on the spot. Of sixty-four taken out alive, the greater
number died soon after.”⁷⁷

The Seminoles—in the West more and more identified with the
Creeks—were angered by their failure to recover the lands lost
by the treaty of Fort Jackson and also by the building of Fort
Scott. One settlement, Fowltown, fifteen miles east of Fort
Scott, was especially excited and in the fall of 1817 sent a
warning to the Americans “not to cross or cut a stick of timber
on the east side of the Flint.” The warning was regarded as a
challenge; Fowltown was taken on a morning in November, and the
Seminole Wars had begun.

2. First Seminole War and the Treaties of
Indian Spring and Fort Moultrie

In the course of the First Seminole War (1817-18) Jackson
ruthlessly laid waste the towns of the Indians; he also took
Pensacola, and he awakened international difficulties by his
rather summary execution of two British subjects, Arbuthnot and
Ambrister, who were traders to the Indians and sustained
generally pleasant relations with them. For his conduct,
especially in this last instance, he was severely criticized in
Congress, but it is significant of his rising popularity that
no formal vote of censure could pass against him. On the
cession of Florida to the United States he was appointed
territorial governor; but he served for a brief term only. As
early as 1822 he was nominated for the presidency by the
legislature of Tennessee, and in 1823 he was sent to the United
States Senate.

Of special importance in the history of the Creeks about
this time was the treaty of Indian Spring, of January 8, 1821,
an iniquitous agreement in the signing of which bribery and
firewater were more than usually present. By this the Creeks
ceded to the United States, for the benefit of Georgia, five
million acres of their most valuable land. In cash they were to
receive $200,000, in payments extending over fourteen years.
The United States Government moreover was to hold $250,000 as a
fund from which the citizens of Georgia were to be reimbursed
for any “claims” (for runaway slaves of course) that the
citizens of the state had against the Creeks prior to the year
1802.⁷⁸ In the actual execution of
this agreement a slave was frequently estimated at two or
three times his real value, and the Creeks were expected to
pay whether the fugitive was with them or not. All possible
claims, however, amounted to $101,000. This left $149,000 of
the money in the hands of the Government. This sum was not
turned over to the Indians, as one might have expected, but
retained until 1834, when the Georgia citizens interested
petitioned for a division. The request was referred to the
Commission on Indian Affairs, and the chairman, Gilmer of
Georgia, was in favor of dividing the money among the
petitioners as compensation for “the offspring which the
slaves would have borne had they remained in bondage.” This
suggestion was rejected at the time, but afterwards the
division was made nevertheless; and history records few more
flagrant violations of all principles of honor and
justice.

The First Seminole War, while in some ways disastrous to the
Indians, was in fact not much more than the preliminary
skirmish of a conflict that was not to cease until 1842. In
general the Indians, mindful of the ravages of the War of 1812,
did not fully commit themselves and bided their time. They were
in fact so much under cover that they led the Americans to
underestimate their real numbers. When the cession of Florida
was formally completed, however (July 17, 1821), they were
found to be on the very best spots of land in the territory. On
May 20, 1822, Colonel Gad Humphreys was appointed agent to
them, William P. Duval as governor of the territory being
ex-officio superintendent of Indian affairs. Altogether the
Indians at this time, according to the official count, numbered
1,594 men, 1,357 women, and 993 children, a total of 3,944,
with 150 Negro men and 650 Negro women and children.⁷⁹ In the interest of these
people Humphreys labored faithfully for eight years, and not
a little of the comparative quiet in his period of service
is to be credited to his own sympathy, good sense, and
patience.

In the spring of 1823 the Indians were surprised by the
suggestion of a treaty that would definitely limit their
boundaries and outline their future relations with the white
man. The representative chiefs had no desire for a conference,
were exceedingly reluctant to meet the commissioners, and
finally came to the meeting prompted only by the hope that such
terms might be arrived at as would permanently guarantee them
in the peaceable possession of their homes. Over the very
strong protest of some of them a treaty was signed at Fort
Moultrie, on the coast five miles below St. Augustine,
September 18, 1823, William P. Duval, James Gadsden, and
Bernard Segui being the representatives of the United States.
By this treaty we learn that the Indians, in view of the fact
that they have “thrown themselves on, and have promised to
continue under, the protection of the United States, and of no
other nation, power, or sovereignty; and in consideration of
the promises and stipulations hereinafter made, do cede and
relinquish all claim or title which they have to the whole
territory of Florida, with the exception of such district of
country as shall herein be allotted to them.” They are to have
restricted boundaries, the extreme point of which is nowhere to
be nearer than fifteen miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The United
States promises to distribute, as soon as the Indians are
settled on their new land, under the direction of their agent,
“implements of husbandry, and stock of cattle and hogs to the
amount of six thousand dollars, and an annual sum of five
thousand dollars a year for twenty successive years”; and “to
restrain and prevent all white persons from hunting, settling,
or otherwise intruding” upon the land set apart for the
Indians, though any American citizen, lawfully authorized, is
to pass and repass within the said district and navigate the
waters thereof “without any hindrance, toll or exactions from
said tribes.” For facilitating removal and as compensation for
any losses or inconvenience sustained, the United States is to
furnish rations of corn, meat, and salt for twelve months, with
a special appropriation of $4,500 for those who have made
improvements, and $2,000 more for the facilitating of
transportation. The agent, sub-agent, and interpreter are to
reside within the Indian boundary “to watch over the interests
of said tribes”; and the United States further undertake “as an
evidence of their humane policy towards said tribes” to allow
$1,000 a year for twenty years for the establishment of a
school and $1,000 a year for the same period for the support of
a gun- and blacksmith. Of supreme importance is Article 7: “The
chiefs and warriors aforesaid, for themselves and tribes,
stipulate to be active and vigilant in the preventing the
retreating to, or passing through, the district of country
assigned them, of any absconding slaves, or fugitives from
justice; and further agree to use all necessary exertions to
apprehend and deliver the same to the agent, who shall receive
orders to compensate them agreeably to the trouble and expense
incurred.” We have dwelt at length upon the provisions of this
treaty because it contained all the seeds of future trouble
between the white man and the Indian. Six prominent chiefs—Nea
Mathla, John Blunt, Tuski Hajo, Mulatto King, Emathlochee, and
Econchattimico—refused absolutely to sign, and their marks were
not won until each was given a special reservation of from two
to four square miles outside the Seminole boundaries. Old Nea
Mathla in fact never did accept the treaty in good faith, and
when the time came for the execution of the agreement he
summoned his warriors to resistance. Governor Duval broke in
upon his war council, deposed the war leaders, and elevated
those who favored peaceful removal. The Seminoles now retired
to their new lands, but Nea Mathla was driven into practical
exile. He retired to the Creeks, by whom he was raised to the
dignity of a chief. It was soon realized by the Seminoles that
they had been restricted to some pine woods by no means as
fertile as their old lands, nor were matters made better by one
or two seasons of drought. To allay their discontent twenty
square miles more, to the north, was given them, but to offset
this new cession their rations were immediately reduced.

3. From the Treaty of Fort Moultrie to the
Treaty of Payne’s Landing

Now succeeded ten years of trespassing, of insult, and of
increasing enmity. Kidnapers constantly lurked near the Indian
possessions, and instances of injury unredressed increased the
bitterness and rancor. Under date May 20, 1825, Humphreys⁸⁰ wrote to the Indian Bureau
that the white settlers were already thronging to the
vicinity of the Indian reservation and were likely to become
troublesome. As to some recent disturbances, writing from
St. Augustine February 9, 1825, he said: “From all I can
learn here there is little doubt that the disturbances near
Tallahassee, which have of late occasioned so much clamor,
were brought about by a course of unjustifiable conduct on
the part of the whites, similar to that which it appears to
be the object of the territorial legislature to legalize. In
fact, it is stated that one Indian had been so severely
whipped by the head of the family which was destroyed in
these disturbances, as to cause his death; if such be the
fact, the subsequent act of the Indians, however lamentable,
must be considered as one of retaliation, and I can not but
think it is to be deplored that they were afterwards
‘hunted’ with so unrelenting a revenge.” The word
hunted was used advisedly by Humphreys, for, as we
shall see later, when war was renewed one of the common
means of fighting employed by the American officers was the
use of bloodhounds. Sometimes guns were taken from the
Indians so that they had nothing with which to pursue the
chase. On one occasion, when some Indians were being marched
to headquarters, a woman far advanced in pregnancy was
forced onward with such precipitancy as to produce a
premature delivery, which almost terminated her life. More
far-reaching than anything else, however, was the constant
denial of the rights of the Indian in court in cases
involving white men. As Humphreys said, the great
disadvantage under which the Seminoles labored as witnesses
“destroyed everything like equality of rights.” Some of the
Negroes that they had, had been born among them, and some
others had been purchased from white men and duly paid for.
No receipts were given, however, and efforts were frequently
made to recapture the Negroes by force. The Indian,
conscious of his rights, protested earnestly against such
attempts and naturally determined to resist all efforts to
wrest from him his rightfully acquired property.

By 1827, however, the territorial legislature had begun to
memorialize Congress and to ask for the complete removal of the
Indians. Meanwhile the Negro question was becoming more
prominent, and orders from the Department of War, increasingly
peremptory, were made on Humphreys for the return of definite
Negroes. For Duval and Humphreys, however, who had actually to
execute the commissions, the task was not always so easy. Under
date March 20, 1827, the former wrote to the latter: “Many of
the slaves belonging to the whites are now in the possession of
the white people; these slaves can not be obtained for their
Indian owners without a lawsuit, and I see no reason why the
Indians shall be compelled to surrender all slaves claimed by
our citizens when this surrender is not mutual.” Meanwhile the
annuity began to be withheld from the Indians in order to force
them to return Negroes, and a friendly chief, Hicks, constantly
waited upon Humphreys only to find the agent little more
powerful than himself. Thus matters continued through 1829 and
1830. In violation of all legal procedure, the Indians were
constantly required to relinquish beforehand property in
their possession to settle a question of claim. On March
21, 1830, Humphreys was informed that he was no longer agent
for the Indians. He had been honestly devoted to the interest
of these people, but his efforts were not in harmony with the
policy of the new administration.

Just what that policy was may be seen from Jackson’s special
message on Indian affairs of February 22, 1831. The Senate had
asked for information as to the conduct of the Government in
connection with the act of March 30, 1802, “to regulate trade
and intercourse with the Indian tribes and to preserve peace on
the frontiers.” The Nullification controversy was in
everybody’s mind, and already friction had arisen between the
new President and the abolitionists. In spite of Jackson’s
attitude toward South Carolina, his message in the present
instance was a careful defense of the whole theory of state
rights. Nothing in the conduct of the Federal Government toward
the Indian tribes, he insisted, had ever been intended to
attack or even to call in question the rights of a sovereign
state. In one way the Southern states had seemed to be an
exception. “As early as 1784 the settlements within the limits
of North Carolina were advanced farther to the west than the
authority of the state to enforce an obedience of its laws.”
After the Revolution the tribes desolated the frontiers. “Under
these circumstances the first treaties, in 1785 and 1790, with
the Cherokees, were concluded by the Government of the United
States.” Nothing of all this, said Jackson, had in any way
affected the relation of any Indians to the state in which they
happened to reside, and he concluded as follows: “Toward this
race of people I entertain the kindest feelings, and am not
sensible that the views which I have taken of their true
interests are less favorable to them than those which oppose
their emigration to the West. Years since I stated to them my
belief that if the States chose to extend their laws over them
it would not be in the power of the Federal Government to
prevent it. My opinion remains the same, and I can see no
alternative for them but that of their removal to the West or a
quiet submission to the state laws. If they prefer to remove,
the United States agree to defray their expenses, to supply
them the means of transportation and a year’s support after
they reach their new homes—a provision too liberal and kind to
bear the stamp of injustice. Either course promises them peace
and happiness, whilst an obstinate perseverance in the effort
to maintain their possessions independent of the state
authority can not fail to render their condition still more
helpless and miserable. Such an effort ought, therefore, to be
discountenanced by all who sincerely sympathize in the fortunes
of this peculiar people, and especially by the political bodies
of the Union, as calculated to disturb the harmony of the two
Governments and to endanger the safety of the many blessings
which they enable us to enjoy.”

The policy thus formally enunciated was already in practical
operation. In the closing days of the administration of John
Quincy Adams a delegation came to Washington to present to the
administration the grievances of the Cherokee nation. The
formal reception of the delegation fell to the lot of Eaton,
the new Secretary of War. The Cherokees asserted that not only
did they have no rights in the Georgia courts in cases
involving white men, but that they had been notified by Georgia
that all laws, usages, and agreements in force in the Indian
country would be null and void after June 1, 1830; and
naturally they wanted the interposition of the Federal
Government. Eaton replied at great length, reminding the
Cherokees that they had taken sides with England in the War of
1812, that they were now on American soil only by sufferance,
and that the central government could not violate the rights of
the state of Georgia; and he strongly advised immediate removal
to the West. The Cherokees, quite broken, acted in accord with
this advice; and so in 1832 did the Creeks, to whom Jackson had
sent a special talk urging removal as the only basis of Federal
protection.

To the Seminoles as early as 1827 overtures for removal had
been made; but before the treaty of Fort Moultrie had really
become effective they had been intruded upon and they in turn
had become more slow about returning runaway slaves. From some
of the clauses in the treaty of Fort Moultrie, as some of the
chiefs were quick to point out, the understanding was that the
same was to be in force for twenty years; and they felt that
any slowness on their part about the return of Negroes was
fully nullified by the efforts of the professional Negro
stealers with whom they had to deal.

Early in 1832, however, Colonel James Gadsden of Florida was
directed by Lewis Cass, the Secretary of War, to enter into
negotiation for the removal of the Indians of Florida. There
was great opposition to a conference, but the Indians were
finally brought together at Payne’s Landing on the Ocklawaha
River just seventeen miles from Fort King. Here on May 9, 1832,
was wrested from them a treaty which is of supreme importance
in the history of the Seminoles. The full text was as
follows:

TREATY OF PAYNE’S LANDING,
MAY 9, 1832
    Whereas, a treaty between the United States and the
Seminole nation of Indians was made and concluded at
Payne’s Landing, on the Ocklawaha River, on the 9th of May,
one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, by James
Gadsden, commissioner on the part of the United States, and
the chiefs and headmen of said Seminole nation of Indians,
on the part of said nation; which treaty is in the words
following, to wit:
    The Seminole Indians, regarding with just respect the
solicitude manifested by the President of the United States
for the improvement of their condition, by recommending a
removal to the country more suitable to their habits and
wants than the one they at present occupy in the territory
of Florida, are willing that their confidential chiefs,
Jumper, Fuch-a-lus-to-had-jo, Charley Emathla, Coi-had-jo,
Holati-Emathla, Ya-ha-had-jo, Sam Jones, accompanied by
their agent, Major John Phagan, and their faithful
interpreter, Abraham, should be sent, at the expense of the
United States, as early as convenient, to examine the
country assigned to the Creeks, west of the Mississippi
River, and should they be satisfied with the character of
the country, and of the favorable disposition of the Creeks
to re-unite with the Seminoles as one people; the articles
of the compact and agreement herein stipulated, at Payne’s
Landing, on the Ocklawaha River, this ninth day of May, one
thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, between James
Gadsden, for and in behalf of the government of the United
States, and the undersigned chiefs and headmen, for and in
behalf of the Seminole Indians, shall be binding on the
respective parties.
    Article I. The Seminole Indians relinquish to the United
States all claim to the land they at present occupy in the
territory of Florida, and agree to emigrate to the country
assigned to the Creeks, west of the Mississippi River, it
being understood that an additional extent of country,
proportioned to their numbers, will be added to the Creek
territory, and that the Seminoles will be received as a
constituent part of the Creek nation, and be re-admitted to
all the privileges as a member of the same.
    Article II. For and in consideration of the
relinquishment of claim in the first article of this
agreement, and in full compensation for all the
improvements which may have been made on the lands thereby
ceded, the United States stipulate to pay to the Seminole
Indians fifteen thousand four hundred ($15,400) dollars, to
be divided among the chiefs and warriors of the several
towns, in a ratio proportioned to their population, the
respective proportions of each to be paid on their arrival
in the country they consent to remove to; it being
understood that their faithful interpreters, Abraham and
Cudjo, shall receive two hundred dollars each, of the above
sum, in full remuneration of the improvements to be
abandoned on the lands now cultivated by them.
    Article III. The United States agree to distribute, as
they arrive at their new homes in the Creek territory, west
of the Mississippi River, a blanket and a homespun frock to
each of the warriors, women and children, of the Seminole
tribe of Indians.
    Article IV. The United States agree to extend the
annuity for the support of a blacksmith, provided for in
the sixth article of the treaty at Camp Moultrie, for ten
(10) years beyond the period therein stipulated, and in
addition to the other annuities secured under that treaty,
the United States agree to pay the sum of three thousand
($3,000) dollars a year for fifteen (15) years, commencing
after the removal of the whole tribe; these sums to be
added to the Creek annuities, and the whole amount to be so
divided that the chiefs and warriors of the Seminole
Indians may receive their equitable proportion of the same,
as members of the Creek confederation.
    Article V. The United States will take the cattle
belonging to the Seminoles, at the valuation of some
discreet person, to be appointed by the President, and the
same shall be paid for in money to the respective owners,
after their arrival at their new homes; or other cattle,
such as may be desired, will be furnished them; notice
being given through their agent, of their wishes upon this
subject, before their removal, that time may be afforded to
supply the demand.
    Article VI. The Seminoles being anxious to be relieved
from the repeated vexatious demands for slaves, and other
property, alleged to have been stolen and destroyed by
them, so that they may remove unembarrassed to their new
homes, the United States stipulate to have the same
property (properly) investigated, and to liquidate such as
may be satisfactorily established, provided the amount does
not exceed seven thousand ($7,000) dollars.
    Article VII. The Seminole Indians will remove within
three (3) years after the ratification of this agreement,
and the expenses of their removal shall be defrayed by the
United States, and such subsistence shall also be furnished
them, for a term not exceeding twelve (12) months after
their arrival at their new residence, as in the opinion of
the President their numbers and circumstances may require;
the emigration to commence as early as practicable in the
year eighteen hundred and thirty-three (1833), and with
those Indians at present occupying the Big Swamp, and other
parts of the country beyond the limits, as defined in the
second article of the treaty concluded at Camp Moultrie
Creek, so that the whole of that proportion of the
Seminoles may be removed within the year aforesaid, and the
remainder of the tribe, in about equal proportions, during
the subsequent years of eighteen hundred and thirty-four
and five (1834 and 1835).
    In testimony whereof, the commissioner, James Gadsden,
and the undersigned chiefs and head-men of the Seminole
Indians, have hereunto subscribed their names and affixed
their seals.
    Done at camp, at Payne’s Landing, on the Ocklawaha
River, in the territory of Florida, on this ninth day of
May, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and of the
independence of the United States of America, the
fifty-sixth.
    (Signed) James Gadsden. L.S.
Holati Emathlar, his X mark.
Jumper, his X mark.
Cudjo, Interpreter, his X mark.
Erastus Rodgers.
B. Joscan.
Holati Emathlar, his X mark.
Jumper, his X mark.
Fuch-ta-lus-ta-Hadjo, his X mark.
Charley Emathla, his X mark.
Coi Hadjo, his X mark.
Ar-pi-uck-i, or Sam
Jones, his X mark.
Ya-ha-Hadjo, his X mark.
Mico-Noha, his X mark.
Tokose Emathla, or
John Hicks, his X mark.
Cat-sha-Tustenuggee, his X mark.
Holat-a-Micco, his X mark.
Hitch-it-i-Micco, his X mark.
E-na-hah, his X mark.
Ya-ha-Emathla-Chopco, his X mark.
Moki-his-she-lar-ni, his X mark.
    Now, therefore, be it known that I, Andrew Jackson,
President of the United States of America, having seen and
considered said treaty, do, by and with the advice and
consent of the Senate, as expressed by their resolution of
the eighth day of April, one thousand eight hundred and
thirty-four, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and
every clause and article thereof.
    In witness whereof, I have caused the seal of the United
States to be hereunto affixed, having signed the same with
my hand. Done at the city of Washington, this twelfth day
of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and thirty-four, and of the independence of the
United States of America, the fifty-eighth.
    (Signed) ANDREW JACKSON. By the President,
LOUIS MCLANE, Secretary of State.

It will be seen that by the terms of this document seven
chiefs were to go and examine the country assigned to the
Creeks, and that they were to be accompanied by Major John
Phagan, the successor of Humphreys, and the Negro interpreter
Abraham. The character of Phagan may be seen from the facts
that he was soon in debt to different ones of the Indians and
to Abraham, and that he was found to be short in his accounts.
While the Indian chiefs were in the West, three United States
commissioners conferred with them as to the suitability of the
country for a future home, and at Fort Gibson, Arkansas, March
28, 1833, they were beguiled into signing an additional treaty
in which occurred the following sentence: “And the undersigned
Seminole chiefs, delegated as aforesaid, on behalf of their
nation, hereby declare themselves well satisfied with the
location provided for them by the commissioners, and agree that
their nation shall commence the removal to their new home as
soon as the government will make arrangements for their
emigration, satisfactory to the Seminole nation.” They of
course had no authority to act on their own initiative, and
when all returned in April, 1833, and Phagan explained what had
happened, the Seminoles expressed themselves in no uncertain
terms. The chiefs who had gone West denied strenuously that
they had signed away any rights to land, but they were
nevertheless upbraided as the agents of deception. Some of the
old chiefs, of whom Micanopy was the highest authority,
resolved to resist the efforts to dispossess them; and John
Hicks, who seems to have been substituted for Sam Jones on the
commission, was killed because he argued too strongly for
migration. Meanwhile the treaty of Payne’s Landing was ratified
by the Senate of the United States and proclaimed as in force
by President Jackson April 12, 1834, and in connection with it
the supplementary treaty of Fort Gibson was also ratified. The
Seminoles, however, were not showing any haste about removing,
and ninety of the white citizens of Alachua County sent a
protest to the President alleging that the Indians were not
returning their fugitive slaves. Jackson was made angry, and
without even waiting for the formal ratification of the
treaties, he sent the document to the Secretary of War, with an
endorsement on the back directing him “to inquire into the
alleged facts, and if found to be true, to direct the Seminoles
to prepare to remove West and join the Creeks.” General Wiley
Thompson was appointed to succeed Phagan as agent, and General
Duncan L. Clinch was placed in command of the troops whose
services it was thought might be needed. It was at this
juncture that Osceola stepped forward as the leading spirit of
his people.

4. Osceola and the Second Seminole
War

Osceola (Asseola, or As-se-he-ho-lar, sometimes called
Powell because after his father’s death his mother married a
white man of that name⁸¹) was not more than thirty
years of age. He was slender, of only average height, and
slightly round-shouldered; but he was also well
proportioned, muscular, and capable of enduring great
fatigue. He had light, deep, restless eyes, and a shrill
voice, and he was a great admirer of order and technique. He
excelled in athletic contests and in his earlier years had
taken delight in engaging in military practice with the
white men. As he was neither by descent nor formal election
a chief, he was not expected to have a voice in important
deliberations; but he was a natural leader and he did more
than any other man to organize the Seminoles to resistance.
It is hardly too much to say that to his single influence
was due a contest that ultimately cost $10,000,000 and the
loss of thousands of lives. Never did a patriot fight more
valiantly for his own, and it stands to the eternal disgrace
of the American arms that he was captured under a flag of
truce.

It is well to pause for a moment and reflect upon some of
the deeper motives that entered into the impending contest. A
distinguished congressman,⁸² speaking in the House of
Representatives a few years later, touched eloquently upon
some of the events of these troublous years. Let us remember
that this was the time of the formation of anti-slavery
societies, of pronounced activity on the part of the
abolitionists, and recall also that Nat Turner’s
insurrection was still fresh in the public mind. Giddings
stated clearly the issue as it appeared to the people of the
North when he said, “I hold that if the slaves of Georgia or
any other state leave their masters, the Federal Government
has no constitutional authority to employ our army or navy
for their recapture, or to apply the national treasure to
repurchase them.” There could be no question of the fact
that the war was very largely one over fugitive slaves.
Under date October 28, 1834, General Thompson wrote to the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs: “There are many very likely
Negroes in this nation [the Seminole]. Some of the whites in
the adjacent settlements manifest a restless desire to
obtain them, and I have no doubt that Indian raised Negroes
are now in the possession of the whites.” In a letter dated
January 20, 1834, Governor Duval had already said to the
same official: “The slaves belonging to the Indians have a
controlling influence over the minds of their masters, and
are entirely opposed to any change of residence.” Six days
later he wrote: “The slaves belonging to the Indians must be
made to fear for themselves before they will cease to
influence the minds of their masters…. The first step
towards the emigration of these Indians must be the breaking
up of the runaway slaves and the outlaw Indians.” And the
New Orleans Courier of July 27, 1839, revealed all
the fears of the period when it said, “Every day’s delay in
subduing the Seminoles increases the danger of a rising
among the serviles.”

All the while injustice and injury to the Indians continued.
Econchattimico, well known as one of those chiefs to whom
special reservations had been given by the treaty of Fort
Moultrie, was the owner of twenty slaves valued at $15,000.
Observing Negro stealers hovering around his estate, he armed
himself and his men. The kidnapers then furthered their designs
by circulating the report that the Indians were arming
themselves for union with the main body of Seminoles for the
general purpose of massacring the white people. Face to face
with this charge Econchattimico gave up his arms and threw
himself on the protection of the government; and his Negroes
were at once taken and sold into bondage.

A similar case was that of John Walker, an Appalachicola
chief, who wrote to Thompson under date July 28, 1835: “I am
induced to write you in consequence of the depredations making
and attempted to be made upon my property, by a company of
Negro stealers, some of whom are from Columbus, Ga., and have
connected themselves with Brown and Douglass…. I should like
your advice how I am to act. I dislike to make or to have any
difficulty with the white people. But if they trespass upon my
premises and my rights, I must defend myself the best way I
can. If they do make this attempt, and I have no doubt they
will, they must bear the consequences. But is there no civil
law to protect me? Are the free Negroes and the Negroes
belonging to this town to be stolen away publicly, and in the
face of law and justice, carried off and sold to fill the
pockets of these worse than land pirates? Douglass and his
company hired a man who has two large trained dogs for the
purpose to come down and take Billy. He is from Mobile and
follows for a livelihood catching runaway Negroes.”

Such were the motives, fears and incidents in the years
immediately after the treaty of Payne’s Landing. Beginning at
the close of 1834 and continuing through April, 1835, Thompson
had a series of conferences with the Seminole chiefs. At these
meetings Micanopy, influenced by Osceola and other young
Seminoles, took a more definite stand than he might otherwise
have assumed. Especially did he insist with reference to the
treaty that he understood that the chiefs who went West were to
examine the country, and for his part he knew that when
they returned they would report unfavorably. Thompson then,
becoming angry, delivered an ultimatum to the effect that if
the treaty was not observed the annuity from the great father
in Washington would cease. To this, Osceola, stepping forward,
replied that he and his warriors did not care if they never
received another dollar from the great father, and drawing his
knife, he plunged it in the table and said, “The only treaty I
will execute is with this.” Henceforward there was deadly
enmity between the young Seminole and Thompson. More and more
Osceola made his personality felt, constantly asserting to the
men of his nation that whoever recommended emigration was an
enemy of the Seminoles, and he finally arrived at an
understanding with many of them that the treaty would be
resisted with their very lives. Thompson, however, on April 23,
1835, had a sort of secret conference with sixteen of the
chiefs who seemed favorably disposed toward migration, and he
persuaded them to sign a document “freely and fully” assenting
to the treaties of Payne’s Landing and Fort Gibson. The next
day there was a formal meeting at which the agent, backed up by
Clinch and his soldiers, upbraided the Indians in a very harsh
manner. His words were met by groans, angry gesticulations, and
only half-muffled imprecations. Clinch endeavored to appeal to
the Indians and to advise them that resistance was both unwise
and useless. Thompson, however, with his usual lack of tact,
rushed onward in his course, and learning that five chiefs were
unalterably opposed to the treaty, he arbitrarily struck their
names off the roll of chiefs, an action the highhandedness of
which was not lost on the Seminoles. Immediately after the
conference moreover he forbade the sale of any more arms and
powder to the Indians. To the friendly chiefs the understanding
had been given that the nation might have until January 1,
1836, to make preparation for removal, by which time all were
to assemble at Fort Brooke, Tampa Bay, for emigration.

About the first of June Osceola was one day on a quiet
errand of trading at Fort King. With him was his wife, the
daughter of a mulatto slave woman who had run away years before
and married an Indian chief. By Southern law this woman
followed the condition of her mother, and when the mother’s
former owner appeared on the scene and claimed the daughter,
Thompson, who desired to teach Occeola a lesson, readily agreed
that she should be remanded into captivity.⁸³ Osceola was highly enraged,
and this time it was his turn to upbraid the agent. Thompson
now had him overpowered and put in irons, in which situation
he remained for the better part of two days. In this period
of captivity his soul plotted revenge and at length he too
planned a “ruse de guerre.” Feigning assent to the
treaty he told Thompson that if he was released not only
would he sign himself but he would also bring his people to
sign. The agent was completely deceived by Osceola’s
tactics. “True to his professions,” wrote Thompson on June
3, “he this day appeared with seventy-nine of his people,
men, women, and children, including some who had joined him
since his conversion, and redeemed his promise. He told me
many of his friends were out hunting, whom he could and
would bring over on their return. I have now no doubt of his
sincerity, and as little, that the greatest difficulty is
surmounted.”

Osceola now rapidly urged forward preparations for war,
which, however, he did not wish actually started until after
the crops were gathered. By the fall he was ready, and one day
in October when he and some other warriors met Charley Emathla,
who had upon him the gold and silver that he had received from
the sale of his cattle preparatory to migration, they killed
this chief, and Osceola threw the money in every direction,
saying that no one was to touch it, as it was the price of the
red man’s blood. The true drift of events became even more
apparent to Thompson and Clinch in November, when five chiefs
friendly to migration with five hundred of their people
suddenly appeared at Fort Brooke to ask for protection. When in
December Thompson sent final word to the Seminoles that they
must bring in their horses and cattle, the Indians did not come
on the appointed day; on the contrary they sent their women and
children to the interior and girded themselves for battle. To
Osceola late in the month a runner brought word that some
troops under the command of Major Dade were to leave Fort
Brooke on the 25th and on the night of the 27th were to be
attacked by some Seminoles in the Wahoo Swamp. Osceola himself,
with some of his men, was meanwhile lying in the woods near
Fort King, waiting for an opportunity to kill Thompson. On the
afternoon of the 28th the agent dined not far from the fort at
the home of the sutler, a man named Rogers, and after dinner he
walked with Lieutenant Smith to the crest of a neighboring
hill. Here he was surprised by the Indians, and both he and
Smith fell pierced by numerous bullets. The Indians then
pressed on to the home of the sutler and killed Rogers, his two
clerks, and a little boy. On the same day the command of Major
Dade, including seven officers and one hundred and ten men, was
almost completely annihilated, only three men escaping. Dade
and his horse were killed at the first onset. These two attacks
began the actual fighting of the Second Seminole War. That the
Negroes were working shoulder to shoulder with the Indians in
these encounters may be seen from the report of Captain
Belton,⁸⁴ who said, “Lieut. Keays,
third artillery, had both arms broken from the first shot;
was unable to act, and was tomahawked the latter part of the
second attack, by a Negro”; and further: “A Negro named
Harry controls the Pea Band of about a hundred warriors,
forty miles southeast of us, who have done most of the
mischief, and keep this post constantly observed.” Osceola
now joined forces with those Indians who had attacked Dade,
and in the early morning of the last day of the year
occurred the Battle of Ouithlecoochee, a desperate encounter
in which both Osceola and Clinch gave good accounts of
themselves. Clinch had two hundred regulars and five or six
hundred volunteers. The latter fled early in the contest and
looked on from a distance; and Clinch had to work
desperately to keep from duplicating the experience of Dade.
Osceola himself was conspicuous in a red belt and three long
feathers, but although twice wounded he seemed to bear a
charmed life. He posted himself behind a tree, from which
station he constantly sallied forth to kill or wound an
enemy with almost infallible aim.

After these early encounters the fighting became more and
more bitter and the contest more prolonged. Early in the war
the disbursing agent reported that there were only three
thousand Indians, including Negroes, to be considered; but this
was clearly an understatement. Within the next year and a half
the Indians were hard pressed, and before the end of this
period the notorious Thomas S. Jessup had appeared on the scene
as commanding major general. This man seems to have determined
never to use honorable means of warfare if some ignoble
instrument could serve his purpose. In a letter sent to Colonel
Harvey from Tampa Bay under date May 25, 1837, he said: “If you
see Powell (Osceola), tell him I shall send out and take all
the Negroes who belong to the white people. And he must not
allow the Indian Negroes to mix with them. Tell him I am
sending to Cuba for bloodhounds to trail them; and I intend to
hang every one of them who does not come in.” And it might be
remarked that for his bloodhounds Jessup spent—or said he
spent—as much as $5,000, a fact which thoroughly aroused
Giddings and other persons from the North, who by no means
cared to see such an investment of public funds. By order No.
160, dated August 3, 1837, Jessup invited his soldiers to
plunder and rapine, saying, “All Indian property captured from
this date will belong to the corps or detachment making it.”
From St. Augustine, under date October 20, 1837, in a
“confidential” communication he said to one of his lieutenants:
“Should Powell and his warriors come within the fort, seize him
and the whole party. It is important that he, Wild Cat, John
Cowagee, and Tustenuggee, be secured. Hold them until you have
my orders in relation to them.”⁸⁵ Two days later he was able
to write to the Secretary of War that Osceola was actually
taken. Said he: “That chief came into the vicinity of Fort
Peyton on the 20th, and sent a messenger to General
Hernandez, desiring to see and converse with him. The sickly
season being over, and there being no further necessity to
temporize, I sent a party of mounted men, and seized the
entire body, and now have them securely lodged in the fort.”
Osceola, Wild Cat, and others thus captured were marched to
St. Augustine; but Wild Cat escaped. Osceola was ultimately
taken to Fort Moultrie, in the harbor of Charleston, where
in January (1838) he died.

Important in this general connection was the fate of the
deputation that the influential John Ross, chief of the
Cherokees, was persuaded to send from his nation to induce the
Seminoles to think more favorably of migration. Micanopy,
twelve other chieftains, and a number of warriors accompanied
the Cherokee deputation to the headquarters of the United
States Army at Fort Mellon, where they were to discuss the
matter. These warriors also Jessup seized, and Ross wrote to
the Secretary of War a dignified but bitter letter protesting
against this “unprecedented violation of that sacred rule which
has ever been recognized by every nation, civilized and
uncivilized, of treating with all due respect those who had
ever presented themselves under a flag of truce before the
enemy, for the purpose of proposing the termination of
warfare.” He had indeed been most basely used as the agent of
deception.

This chapter, we trust, has shown something of the real
nature of the points at issue in the Seminole Wars. In the
course of these contests the rights of Indian and Negro alike
were ruthlessly disregarded. There was redress for neither
before the courts, and at the end in dealing with them every
honorable principle of men and nations was violated. It is
interesting that the three representatives of colored peoples
who in the course of the nineteenth century it was most
difficult to capture—Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Negro, Osceola,
the Indian, and Aguinaldo, the Filipino—were all taken through
treachery; and on two of the three occasions this treachery was
practiced by responsible officers of the United States
Army.

Footnote 76:
(return)

In his official capacity Jackson issued two addresses
which have an important place in the history of the Negro
soldier. From his headquarters at Mobile, September 21,
1814, he issued an appeal “To the Free Colored Inhabitants
of Louisiana,” offering them an honorable part in the war,
and this was later followed by a “Proclamation to the Free
People of Color” congratulating them on their achievement.
Both addresses are accessible in many books.

Footnote 77:
(return)

McMaster, IV, 431.

Footnote 78:
(return)

See J.R. Giddings: The Exiles of Florida, 63-66;
also speech in House of Representatives February 9,
1841.

Footnote 79:
(return)

Sprague, 19.

Footnote 80:
(return)

The correspondence is readily accessible in Sprague,
30-37.

Footnote 81:
(return)

Hodge’s Handbook of American Indians, II,
159.

Footnote 82:
(return)

Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio. His exhaustive speech on
the Florida War was made February 9, 1841.

Footnote 83:
(return)

This highly important incident, which was really the
spark that started the war, is absolutely ignored even by
such well informed writers as Drake and Sprague. Drake
simply gives the impression that the quarrel between
Osceola and Thompson was over the old matter of emigration,
saying (413), “Remonstrance soon grew into altercation,
which ended in a ruse de guerre, by which Osceola
was made prisoner by the agent, and put in irons, in which
situation he was kept one night and part of two days.” The
story is told by McMaster, however. Also note M.M. Cohen as
quoted in Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine, Vol. II,
p. 419 (July, 1837).

Footnote 84:
(return)

Accessible in Drake, 416-418.

Footnote 85:
(return)

This correspondence, and much more bearing on the point,
may be found in House Document 327 of the Second Session of
the Twenty-fifth Congress.

CHAPTER VI

EARLY APPROACH TO THE NEGRO PROBLEM

1. The Ultimate Problem and the Missouri
Compromise

In a previous chapter⁸⁶ we have already indicated
the rise of the Negro Problem in the last decade of the
eighteenth and the first two decades of the nineteenth
century. And what was the Negro Problem? It was certainly
not merely a question of slavery; in the last analysis this
institution was hardly more than an incident. Slavery has
ceased to exist, but even to-day the Problem is with us. The
question was rather what was to be the final place in the
American body politic of the Negro population that was so
rapidly increasing in the country. In the answering of this
question supreme importance attached to the Negro himself;
but the problem soon transcended the race. Ultimately it was
the destiny of the United States rather than of the Negro
that was to be considered, and all the ideals on which the
country was based came to the testing. If one studied those
ideals he soon realized that they were based on Teutonic or
at least English foundations. By 1820, however, the young
American republic was already beginning to be the hope of
all of the oppressed people of Europe, and Greeks and
Italians as well as Germans and Swedes were turning their
faces toward the Promised Land. The whole background of
Latin culture was different from the Teutonic, and yet the
people of Southern as well as of Northern Europe somehow
became a part of the life of the United States. In this life
was it also possible for the children of Africa to have a
permanent and an honorable place? With their special
tradition and gifts, with their shortcomings, above all with
their distinctive color, could they, too, become genuine
American citizens? Some said No, but in taking this position
they denied not only the ideals on which the country was
founded but also the possibilities of human nature itself.
In any case the answer to the first question at once
suggested another, What shall we do with the Negro? About
this there was very great difference of opinion, it not
always being supposed that the Negro himself had anything
whatever to say about the matter. Some said send the Negro
away, get rid of him by any means whatsoever; others said if
he must stay, keep him in slavery; still others said not to
keep him permanently in slavery, but emancipate him only
gradually; and already there were beginning to be persons
who felt that the Negro should be emancipated everywhere
immediately, and that after this great event had taken place
he and the nation together should work out his salvation on
the broadest possible plane.

Into the agitation was suddenly thrust the application of
Missouri for entrance into the Union as a slave state. The
struggle that followed for two years was primarily a political
one, but in the course of the discussion the evils of slavery
were fully considered. Meanwhile, in 1819, Alabama and Maine
also applied for admission. Alabama was allowed to enter
without much discussion, as she made equal the number of slave
and free states. Maine, however, brought forth more talk. The
Southern congressmen would have been perfectly willing to admit
this as a free state if Missouri had been admitted as a slave
state; but the North felt that this would have been to concede
altogether too much, as Missouri from the first gave promise of
being unusually important. At length, largely through the
influence of Henry Clay, there was adopted a compromise whose
main provisions were (1) that Maine was to be admitted as a
free state; (2) that in Missouri there was to be no prohibition
of slavery; but (3) that slavery was to be prohibited in any
other states that might be formed out of the Louisiana Purchase
north of the line of 36° 30′.

By this agreement the strife was allayed for some years; but
it is now evident that the Missouri Compromise was only a
postponement of the ultimate contest and that the social
questions involved were hardly touched. Certainly the
significance of the first clear drawing of the line between the
sections was not lost upon thoughtful men. Jefferson wrote from
Monticello in 1820: “This momentous question, like a fire-bell
in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered
it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for
the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final
sentence…. I can say, with conscious truth, that there is not
a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve
us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The
cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a
bagatelle that would not cost me a second thought, if, in that
way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be
effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it
might be.”⁸⁷ For the time being, however,
the South was concerned mainly about immediate dangers; nor
was this section placed more at ease by Denmark Vesey’s
attempted insurrection in 1822.⁸⁸ A representative South
Carolinian,⁸⁹ writing after this event,
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.” Meanwhile
from a ratio of 43.72 to 56.28 in 1790 the total Negro
population in South Carolina had by 1820 come to outnumber
the white 52.77 to 47.23, and the tendency was increasingly
in favor of the Negro. The South, the whole country in fact,
was more and more being forced to consider not only slavery
but the ultimate reaches of the problem.

Whatever one might think of the conclusion—and in this case
the speaker was pleading for colonization—no statement of the
problem as it impressed men about 1820 or 1830 was clearer than
that of Rev. Dr. Nott, President of Union College, at Albany in
1829.⁹⁰ The question, said he, was
by no means local. Slavery was once legalized in New
England; and New England built slave-ships and manned these
with New England seamen. In 1820 the slave population in the
country amounted to 1,500,000. The number doubled every
twenty years, and it was easy to see how it would progress
from 1,500,000 to 3,000,000; to 6,000,000; to 12,000,000; to
24,000,000. “Twenty-four millions of slaves! What a drawback
from our strength; what a tax on our resources; what a
hindrance to our growth; what a stain on our character; and
what an impediment to the fulfillment of our destiny! Could
our worst enemies or the worst enemies of republics, wish us
a severer judgment?” How could one know that wakeful and
sagacious enemies without would not discover the vulnerable
point and use it for the country’s overthrow? Or was there
not danger that among a people goaded from age to age there
might at length arise some second Toussaint L’Ouverture,
who, reckless of consequences, would array a force and cause
a movement throughout the zone of bondage, leaving behind
him plantations waste and mansions desolate? Who could
believe that such a tremendous physical force would remain
forever spell-bound and quiescent? After all, however,
slavery was doomed; public opinion had already pronounced
upon it, and the moral energy of the nation would sooner or
later effect its overthrow. “But,” continued Nott, “the
solemn question here arises—in what condition will this
momentous change place us? The freed men of other countries
have long since disappeared, having been amalgamated in the
general mass. Here there can be no amalgamation. Our
manumitted bondmen have remained already to the third and
fourth, as they will to the thousandth generation—a
distinct, a degraded, and a wretched race.” After this
sweeping statement, which has certainly not been justified
by time, Nott proceeded to argue the expediency of his
organization. Gerrit Smith, who later drifted away from
colonization, said frankly on the same occasion that the
ultimate solution was either amalgamation or colonization,
and that of the two courses he preferred to choose the
latter. Others felt as he did. We shall now accordingly
proceed to consider at somewhat greater length the two
solutions that about 1820 had the clearest
advocates—Colonization and Slavery.

2. Colonization

Early in 1773, Rev. Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, called on
his friend, Rev. Ezra Stiles, afterwards President of Yale
College, and suggested the possibility of educating Negro
students, perhaps two at first, who would later go as
missionaries to Africa. Stiles thought that for the plan to be
worth while there should be a colony on the coast of Africa,
that at least thirty or forty persons should go, and that the
enterprise should not be private but should have the formal
backing of a society organized for the purpose. In harmony with
the original plan two young Negro men sailed from New York for
Africa, November 12, 1774; but the Revolutionary War followed
and nothing more was done at the time. In 1784, however, and
again in 1787, Hopkins tried to induce different merchants to
fit out a vessel to convey a few emigrants, and in the latter
year he talked with a young man from the West Indies, Dr.
William Thornton, who expressed a willingness to take charge of
the company. The enterprise failed for lack of funds, though
Thornton kept up his interest and afterwards became a member of
the first Board of Managers of the American Colonization
Society. Hopkins in 1791 spoke before the Connecticut
Emancipation Society, which he wished to see incorporated as a
colonization society, and in a sermon before the Providence
society in 1793 he reverted to his favorite theme. Meanwhile,
as a result of the efforts of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and
Granville Sharp in England, in May, 1787, some four hundred
Negroes and sixty white persons were landed at Sierra Leone.
Some of the Negroes in England had gained their freedom in
consequence of Lord Mansfield’s decision in 1772, others had
been discharged from the British Army after the American
Revolution, and all were leading in England a more or less
precarious existence. The sixty white persons sent along were
abandoned women, and why Sierra Leone should have had this
weight placed upon it at the start history has not yet told. It
is not surprising to learn that “disease and disorder were
rife, and by 1791 a mere handful survived.”⁹¹ As early as in his Notes
on Virginia, privately printed in 1781, Thomas Jefferson
had suggested a colony for Negroes, perhaps in the new
territory of Ohio. The suggestion was not acted upon, but it
is evident that by 1800 several persons had thought of the
possibility of removing the Negroes in the South to some
other place either within or without the country.

Gabriel’s insurrection in 1800 again forced the idea
concretely forward. Virginia was visibly disturbed by this
outbreak, and in secret session, on December 21, the
House of Delegates passed the following resolution: “That the
Governor⁹² be requested to correspond
with the President of the United States,⁹³ on the subject of purchasing
land without the limits of this state, whither persons
obnoxious to the laws, or dangerous to the peace of society
may be removed.” The real purpose of this resolution was to
get rid of those Negroes who had had some part in the
insurrection and had not been executed; but not in 1800, or
in 1802 or 1804, was the General Assembly thus able to
banish those whom it was afraid to hang. Monroe, however,
acted in accordance with his instructions, and Jefferson
replied to him under date November 24, 1801. He was not now
favorable to deportation to some place within the United
States, and thought that the West Indies, probably Santo
Domingo, might be better. There was little real danger that
the exiles would stimulate vindictive or predatory descents
on the American coasts, and in any case such a possibility
was “overweighed by the humanity of the measures proposed.”
“Africa would offer a last and undoubted resort,” thought
Jefferson, “if all others more desirable should fail.”⁹⁴ Six months later, on July
13, 1802, the President wrote about the matter to Rufus
King, then minister in London. The course of events in the
West Indies, he said, had given an impulse to the minds of
Negroes in the United States; there was a disposition to
insurgency, and it now seemed that if there was to be
colonization, Africa was by all means the best place. An
African company might also engage in commercial operations,
and if there was coöperation with Sierra Leone, there was
the possibility of “one strong, rather than two weak
colonies.” Would King accordingly enter into conference with
the English officials with reference to disposing of any
Negroes who might be sent? “It is material to observe,”
remarked Jefferson, “that they are not felons, or common
malefactors, but persons guilty of what the safety of
society, under actual circumstances, obliges us to treat as
a crime, but which their feelings may represent in a far
different shape. They are such as will be a valuable
acquisition to the settlement already existing there, and
well calculated to coöperate in the plan of
civilization.”⁹⁵ King accordingly opened
correspondence with Thornton and Wedderbourne, the
secretaries of the company having charge of Sierra Leone,
but was informed that the colony was in a languishing
condition and that funds were likely to fail, and that in no
event would they be willing to receive more people from the
United States, as these were the very ones who had already
made most trouble in the settlement.⁹⁶ On January 22, 1805, the
General Assembly of Virginia passed a resolution that
embodied a request to the United States Government to set
aside a portion of territory in the new Louisiana Purchase
“to be appropriated to the residence of such people of color
as have been, or shall be, emancipated, or may hereafter
become dangerous to the public safety.” Nothing came of
this. By the close then of Jefferson’s second administration
the Northwest, the Southwest, the West Indies, and Sierra
Leone had all been thought of as possible fields for
colonization, but from the consideration nothing visible had
resulted.

Now followed the period of Southern expansion and of
increasing materialism, and before long came the War of 1812.
By 1811 a note of doubt had crept into Jefferson’s dealing with
the subject. Said he: “Nothing is more to be wished than that
the United States would themselves undertake to make such an
establishment on the coast of Africa … But for this the
national mind is not yet prepared. It may perhaps be doubted
whether many of these people would voluntarily consent to such
an exchange of situation, and very certain that few of those
advanced to a certain age in habits of slavery, would be
capable of self-government. This should not, however,
discourage the experiment, nor the early trial of it; and the
proposition should be made with all the prudent cautions and
attentions requisite to reconcile it to the interests, the
safety, and the prejudices of all parties.”⁹⁷

From an entirely different source, however, and prompted not
by expediency but the purest altruism, came an impulse that
finally told in the founding of Liberia. The heart of a young
man reached out across the sea. Samuel J. Mills, an
undergraduate of Williams College, in 1808 formed among his
fellow-students a missionary society whose work later told in
the formation of the American Bible Society and the Board of
Foreign Missions. Mills continued his theological studies at
Andover and then at Princeton; and while at the latter place he
established a school for Negroes at Parsippany, thirty miles
away. He also interested in his work and hopes Rev. Robert
Finley, of Basking Ridge, N.J., who “succeeded in assembling at
Princeton the first meeting ever called to consider the project
of sending Negro colonists to Africa,”⁹⁸ and who in a letter to John
P. Mumford, of New York, under date February 14, 1815,
expressed his interest by saying, “We should send to Africa
a population partly civilized and christianized for its
benefit; and our blacks themselves would be put in a better
condition.”

In this same year, 1815, the country was startled by the
unselfish enterprise of a Negro who had long thought of the
unfortunate situation of his people in America and who himself
shouldered the obligation to do something definite in their
behalf. Paul Cuffe had been born in May, 1759, on one of the
Elizabeth Islands near New Bedford, Mass., the son of a father
who was once a slave from Africa and of an Indian mother.⁹⁹ Interested in navigation, he
made voyages to Russia, England, Africa, the West Indies,
and the South; and in time he commanded his own vessel,
became generally respected, and by his wisdom rose to a fair
degree of opulence. For twenty years he had thought
especially about Africa, and in 1815 he took to Sierra Leone
a total of nine families and thirty-eight persons at an
expense to himself of nearly $4000. The people that he
brought were well received at Sierra Leone, and Cuffe
himself had greater and more far-reaching plans when he died
September 7, 1817. He left an estate valued at $20,000.

Dr. Finley’s meeting at Princeton was not very well attended
and hence not a great success. Nevertheless he felt
sufficiently encouraged to go to Washington in December, 1816,
to use his effort for the formation of a national colonization
society. It happened that in February of this same year, 1816,
General Charles Fenton Mercer, member of the House of
Delegates, came upon the secret journals of the legislature for
the period 1801-5 and saw the correspondence between Monroe and
Jefferson. Interested in the colonization project, on December
14 (Monroe then being President-elect) he presented in the
House of Delegates resolutions embodying the previous
enactments; and these passed 132 to 14. Finley was generally
helped by the effort of Mercer, and on December 21, 1816, there
was held in Washington a meeting of public men and interested
citizens, Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House of
Representatives, presiding. A constitution was adopted at an
adjourned meeting on December 28; and on January 1, 1817, were
formally chosen the officers of “The American Society for
Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States.” At
this last meeting Henry Clay, again presiding, spoke in glowing
terms of the possibilities of the movement; Elias B. Caldwell,
a brother-in-law of Finley, made the leading argument; and John
Randolph, of Roanoke, Va., and Robert Wright, of Maryland,
spoke of the advantages to accrue from the removal of the free
Negroes from the country (which remarks were very soon to
awaken much discussion and criticism, especially on the part of
the Negroes themselves). It is interesting to note that Mercer
had no part at all in the meeting of January 1, not even being
present; he did not feel that any but Southern men should be
enrolled in the organization. However, Bushrod Washington, the
president, was a Southern man; twelve of the seventeen
vice-presidents were Southern men, among them being Andrew
Jackson and William Crawford; and all of the twelve managers
were slaveholders.

Membership in the American Colonization Society originally
consisted, first, of such as sincerely desired to afford the
free Negroes an asylum from oppression and who hoped through
them to extend to Africa the blessings of civilization and
Christianity; second, of such as sought to enhance the value of
their own slaves by removing the free Negroes; and third, of
such as desired to be relieved of any responsibility whatever
for free Negroes. The movement was widely advertised as “an
effort for the benefit of the blacks in which all parts of the
country could unite,” it being understood that it was “not to
have the abolition of slavery for its immediate object,” nor
was it to “aim directly at the instruction of the great body of
the blacks.” Such points as the last were to prove in course of
time hardly less than a direct challenge to the different
abolitionist organizations in the North, and more and more the
Society was denounced as a movement on the part of slaveholders
for perpetuating their institutions by doing away with the free
people of color. It is not to be supposed, however, that the
South, with its usual religious fervor, did not put much
genuine feeling into the colonization scheme. One man in
Georgia named Tubman freed his slaves, thirty in all, and
placed them in charge of the Society with a gift of $10,000;
Thomas Hunt, a young Virginian, afterwards a chaplain in the
Union Army, sent to Liberia the slaves he had inherited, paying
the entire cost of the journey; and others acted in a similar
spirit of benevolence. It was but natural, however, for the
public to be somewhat uncertain as to the tendencies of the
organization when the utterances of representative men were
sometimes directly contradictory. On January 20, 1827, for
instance, Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, speaking in the
hall of the House of Representatives at the annual meeting of
the Society, said: “Of all classes of our population, the most
vicious is that of the free colored. It is the inevitable
result of their moral, political, and civil degradation.
Contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to all around
them, to the slaves and to the whites.” Just a moment later he
said: “Every emigrant to Africa is a missionary carrying with
him credentials in the holy cause of civilization, religion,
and free institutions.” How persons contaminated and vicious
could be missionaries of civilization and religion was
something possible only in the logic of Henry Clay. In the
course of the next month Robert Y. Hayne gave a Southern
criticism in two addresses on a memorial presented in the
United States Senate by the Colonization Society.¹⁰⁰ The first of these
speeches was a clever one characterized by much wit and
good-humored raillery; the second was a sober arraignment.
Hayne emphasized the tremendous cost involved and the
physical impossibility of the whole undertaking, estimating
that at least sixty thousand persons a year would have to be
transported to accomplish anything like the desired result.
At the close of his brilliant attack, still making a veiled
plea for the continuance of slavery, he nevertheless rose to
genuine statesmanship in dealing with the problem of the
Negro, saying, “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.” William Lloyd
Garrison was untiring and merciless in flaying the
inconsistencies and selfishness of the colonization
organization. In an editorial in the Liberator, July
9, 1831, he charged the Society, first, with persecution in
compelling free people to emigrate against their will and in
discouraging their education at home; second, with falsehood
in saying that the Negroes were natives of Africa when they
were no more so than white Americans were natives of Great
Britain; third, with cowardice in asserting that the
continuance of the Negro population in the country involved
dangers; and finally, with infidelity in denying that the
Gospel has full power to reach the hatred in the hearts of
men. In Thoughts on African Colonisation (1832) he
developed exhaustively ten points as follows: That the
American Colonization Society was pledged not to oppose the
system of slavery, that it apologized for slavery and
slaveholders, that it recognized slaves as property, that by
deporting Negroes it increased the value of slaves, that it
was the enemy of immediate abolition, that it was nourished
by fear and selfishness, that it aimed at the utter
expulsion of the blacks, that it was the disparager of free
Negroes, that it denied the possibility of elevating the
black people of the country, and that it deceived and misled
the nation. Other criticisms were numerous. A broadside,
“The Shields of American Slavery” (“Broad enough to hide the
wrongs of two millions of stolen men”) placed side by side
conflicting utterances of members of the Society; and in
August, 1830, Kendall, fourth auditor, in his report to the
Secretary of the Navy, wondered why the resources of the
government should be used “to colonize recaptured Africans,
to build homes for them, to furnish them with farming
utensils, to pay instructors to teach them, to purchase
ships for their convenience, to build forts for their
protection, to supply them with arms and munitions of war,
to enlist troops to guard them, and to employ the army and
navy in their defense.”¹⁰¹ Criticism of the American
Colonization Society was prompted by a variety of motives;
but the organization made itself vulnerable at many points.
The movement attracted extraordinary attention, but has had
practically no effect whatever on the position of the Negro
in the United States. Its work in connection with the
founding of Liberia, however, is of the highest importance,
and must later receive detailed attention.

3. Slavery

We have seen that from the beginning there were
liberal-minded men in the South who opposed the system of
slavery, and if we actually take note of all the utterances of
different men and of the proposals for doing away with the
system, we shall find that about the turn of the century there
was in this section considerable anti-slavery sentiment.
Between 1800 and 1820, however, the opening of new lands in the
Southwest, the increasing emphasis on cotton, and the rapidly
growing Negro population, gave force to the argument of
expediency; and the Missouri Compromise drew sharply the lines
of the contest. The South now came to regard slavery as its
peculiar heritage; public men were forced to defend the
institution; and in general the best thought of the section
began to be obsessed and dominated by the Negro, just as it is
to-day in large measure. In taking this position the South
deliberately committed intellectual suicide. In such matters as
freedom of speech and literary achievement, and in genuine
statesmanship if not for the time being in political influence,
this part of the country declined, and before long the
difference between it and New England was appalling. Calhoun
and Hayne were strong; but between 1820 and 1860 the South had
no names to compare with Longfellow and Emerson in literature,
or with Morse and Hoe in invention. The foremost college
professor, Dew, of William and Mary, and even the outstanding
divines, Furman, the Baptist, of South Carolina, in the
twenties, and Palmer, the Presbyterian of New Orleans, in the
fifties, are all now remembered mainly because they defended
their section in keeping the Negro in bonds. William and Mary
College, and even the University of Virginia, as compared with
Harvard and Yale, became provincial institutions; and instead
of the Washington or Jefferson of an earlier day now began to
be nourished such a leader as “Bob” Toombs, who for all of his
fire and eloquence was a demagogue. In making its choice the
South could not and did not blame the Negro per se, for it was
freely recognized that upon slave labor rested such economic
stability as the section possessed. The tragedy was simply that
thousands of intelligent Americans deliberately turned their
faces to the past, and preferred to read the novels of Walter
Scott and live in the Middle Ages rather than study the French
Revolution and live in the nineteenth century. One hundred
years after we find that the chains are still forged, that
thought is not yet free. Thus the Negro Problem began to be,
and still is, very largely the problem of the white man of the
South. The era of capitalism had not yet dawned, and still far
in the future was the day when the poor white man and the Negro
were slowly to realize that their interests were largely
identical.

The argument with which the South came to support its
position and to defend slavery need not here detain us at
length. It was formally stated by Dew and others¹⁰² and it was to be heard on
every hand. One could hardly go to church, to say nothing of
going to a public meeting, without hearing echoes of it. In
general it was maintained that slavery had made for the
civilization of the world in that it had mitigated the evils
of war, had made labor profitable, had changed the nature of
savages, and elevated woman. The slave-trade was of course
horrible and unjust, but the great advantages of the system
more than outweighed a few attendant evils. Emancipation and
deportation were alike impossible. Even if practicable, they
would not be expedient measures, for they meant the loss to
Virginia of one-third of her property. As for morality, it
was not to be expected that the Negro should have the
sensibilities of the white man. Moreover the system had the
advantage of cultivating a republican spirit among the white
people. In short, said Dew, the slaves, in both the economic
and the moral point of view, were “entirely unfit for a
state of freedom among the whites.” Holland, already cited,
in 1822 maintained five points, as follows: 1. That the
United States are one for national purposes, but separate
for their internal regulation and government; 2. That the
people of the North and East “always exhibited an unfriendly
feeling on subjects affecting the interests of the South and
West”; 3. That the institution of slavery was not an
institution of the South’s voluntary choosing; 4. That the
Southern sections of the Union, both before and after the
Declaration of Independence, “had uniformly exhibited a
disposition to restrict the extension of the evil—and had
always manifested as cordial a disposition to ameliorate it
as those of the North and East”; and 5. That the actual
state and condition of the slave population “reflected no
disgrace whatever on the character of the country—as the
slaves were infinitely better provided for than the laboring
poor of other countries of the world, and were generally
happier than millions of white people in the world.” Such
arguments the clergy supported and endeavored to reconcile
with Christian precept. Rev. Dr. Richard Furman, president
of the Baptist Convention of South Carolina,¹⁰³ after much inquiry and
reasoning, arrived at the conclusion that “the holding of
slaves is justifiable by the doctrine and example contained
in Holy Writ; and is, therefore, consistent with Christian
uprightness both in sentiment and conduct.” Said he further:
“The Christian golden rule, of doing to others as we would
they should do to us, has been urged as an unanswerable
argument against holding slaves. But surely this rule is
never to be urged against that order of things which the
Divine government has established; nor do our desires become
a standard to us, under this rule, unless they have a due
regard to justice, propriety, and the general good…. A
father may very naturally desire that his son should be
obedient to his orders: Is he therefore to obey the orders
of his son? A man might be pleased to be exonerated from his
debts by the generosity of his creditors; or that his rich
neighbor should equally divide his property with him; and in
certain circumstances might desire these to be done: Would
the mere existence of this desire oblige him to exonerate
his debtors, and to make such division of his property?”
Calhoun in 1837 formally accepted slavery, saying that the
South should no longer apologize for it; and the whole
argument from the standpoint of expediency received eloquent
expression in the Senate of the United States from no less a
man than Henry Clay, who more and more appears in the
perspective as a pro-Southern advocate. Said he: “I am no
friend of slavery. But I prefer the liberty of my own
country to that of any other people; and the liberty of my
own race to that of any other race. The liberty of the
descendants of Africa in the United States is incompatible
with the safety and liberty of the European descendants.
Their slavery forms an exception—an exception resulting from
a stern and inexorable necessity—to the general liberty in
the United States.”¹⁰⁴ After the lapse of years
the pro-slavery argument is pitiful in its numerous
fallacies. It was in line with much of the discussion of the
day that questioned whether the Negro was actually a human
being, and but serves to show to what extremes economic
interest will sometimes drive men otherwise of high
intelligence and honor.

Footnote 86:
(return)

IV, Section 3.

Footnote 87:
(return)
Writings, XV, 249.

Footnote 88:
(return)

See Chapter VII, Section 1.

Footnote 89:
(return)

Holland: A Refutation of Calumnies, 61.

Footnote 90:
(return)

See “African Colonization. Proceedings of the Formation
of the New York State Colonization Society.” Albany,
1829.

Footnote 91:
(return)

McPherson, 15. (See bibliography on Liberia.)

Footnote 92:
(return)

Monroe.

Footnote 93:
(return)

Jefferson.

Footnote 94:
(return)
Writings, X, 297.

Footnote 95:
(return)
Writings, X, 327-328.

Footnote 96:
(return)
Ibid., XIII, 11.

Footnote 97:
(return)
Writings, XIII, 11.

Footnote 98:
(return)

McPherson, 18.

Footnote 99:
(return)

First Annual Report of American Colonization
Society.

Footnote 100:
(return)

See Jervey: Robert Y. Hayne and His Times,
207-8.

Footnote 101:
(return)

Cited by McPherson, 22.

Footnote 102:
(return)
The Pro-Slavery Argument (as maintained by the
most distinguished writers of the Southern states).
Charleston, 1852.

Footnote 103:
(return)

“Rev. Dr. Richard Furman’s Exposition of the Views of
the Baptists relative to the Coloured Population in the
United States, in a Communication to the Governor of South
Carolina.” Second edition, Charleston, 1833 (letter bears
original date, December 24, 1822).

Footnote 104:
(return)

Address “On Abolition,” February 7, 1839.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEGRO REPLY, I: REVOLT

We have already seen that on several occasions in colonial
times the Negroes in bondage made a bid for freedom, many men
risking their all and losing their lives in consequence. In
general these early attempts failed completely to realize their
aim, organization being feeble and the leadership untrained and
exerting only an emotional hold over adherents. In Charleston,
S.C., in 1822, however, there was planned an insurrection about
whose scope there could be no question. The leader, Denmark
Vesey, is interesting as an intellectual insurrectionist just
as the more famous Nat Turner is typical of the more fervent
sort. It is the purpose of the present chapter to study the
attempts for freedom made by these two men, and also those of
two daring groups of captives who revolted at sea.

1. Denmark Vesey’s Insurrection

Denmark Vesey is first seen as one of the three hundred and
ninety slaves on the ship of Captain Vesey, who commanded a
vessel trading between St. Thomas and Cape François (Santo
Domingo), and who was engaged in supplying the French of the
latter place with slaves. At the time, the boy was fourteen
years old, and of unusual personal beauty, alertness, and
magnetism. He was shown considerable favoritism, and was called
Télémaque (afterwards corrupted to Telmak, and then
to Denmark). On his arrival at Cape François, Denmark
was sold with others of the slaves to a planter who owned a
considerable estate. On his next trip, however, Captain Vesey
learned that the boy was to be returned to him as unsound and
subject to epileptic fits. The laws of the place permitted the
return of a slave in such a case, and while it has been thought
that Denmark’s fits may have been feigned in order that he
might have some change of estate, there was quite enough proof
in the matter to impress the king’s physician. Captain Vesey
never had reason to regret having to take the boy back. They
made several voyages together, and Denmark served until 1800 as
his faithful personal attendant. In this year the young man,
now thirty-three years of age and living in Charleston, won
$1,500 in an East Bay Street lottery, $600 of which he devoted
immediately to the purchase of his freedom. The sum was much
less than he was really worth, but Captain Vesey liked him and
had no reason to drive a hard bargain with him.

In the early years of his full manhood accordingly Denmark
Vesey found himself a free man in his own right and possessed
of the means for a little real start in life. He improved his
time and proceeded to win greater standing and recognition by
regular and industrious work at his trade, that of a carpenter.
Over the slaves he came to have unbounded influence. Among
them, in accordance with the standards of the day, he had
several wives and children (none of whom could he call his
own), and he understood perfectly the fervor and faith and
superstition of the Negroes with whom he had to deal. To his
remarkable personal magnetism moreover he added just the strong
passion and the domineering temper that were needed to make his
conquest complete.

Thus for twenty years he worked on. He already knew French
as well as English, but he now studied and reflected upon as
wide a range of subjects as possible. It was not expected at
the time that there would be religious classes or congregations
of Negroes apart from the white people; but the law was not
strictly observed, and for a number of years a Negro
congregation had a church in Hampstead in the suburbs of
Charleston. At the meetings here and elsewhere Vesey found his
opportunity, and he drew interesting parallels between the
experiences of the Jews and the Negroes. He would rebuke a
companion on the street for bowing to a white person; and if
such a man replied, “We are slaves,” he would say, “You deserve
to be.” If the man then asked what he could do to better his
condition, he would say, “Go and buy a spelling-book and read
the fable of Hercules and the wagoner.”¹⁰⁵ At the same time if he
happened to engage in conversation with white people in the
presence of Negroes, he would often take occasion to
introduce some striking remark on slavery. He regularly held
up to emulation the work of the Negroes of Santo Domingo;
and either he or one of his chief lieutenants clandestinely
sent a letter to the President of Santo Domingo to ask if
the people there would help the Negroes of Charleston if the
latter made an effort to free themselves.¹⁰⁶ About 1820 moreover, when
he heard of the African Colonization scheme and the
opportunity came to him to go, he put this by, waiting for
something better. This was the period of the Missouri
Compromise. Reports of the agitation and of the debates in
Congress were eagerly scanned by those Negroes in Charleston
who could read; rumor exaggerated them; and some of the more
credulous of the slaves came to believe that the efforts of
Northern friends had actually emancipated them and that they
were being illegally held in bondage. Nor was the situation
improved when the city marshal, John J. Lafar, on January
15, 1821, reminded those ministers or other persons who kept
night and Sunday schools for Negroes that the law forbade
the education of such persons and would have to be enforced.
Meanwhile Vesey was very patient. After a few months,
however, he ceased to work at his trade in order that all
the more he might devote himself to the mission of his life.
This was, as he conceived it, an insurrection that would do
nothing less than totally annihilate the white population of
Charleston.

In the prosecution of such a plan the greatest secrecy and
faithfulness were of course necessary, and Vesey waited until
about Christmas, 1821, to begin active recruiting. He first
sounded Ned and Rolla Bennett, slaves of Governor Thomas
Bennett, and then Peter Poyas and Jack Purcell. After Christmas
he spoke to Gullah Jack and Monday Gell; and Lot Forrester and
Frank Ferguson became his chief agents for the plantations
outside of Charleston.¹⁰⁷ In the whole matter of the
choice of his chief assistants he showed remarkable judgment
of character. His penetration was almost uncanny. “Rolla was
plausible, and possessed uncommon self-possession; bold and
ardent, he was not to be deterred from his purpose by
danger. Ned’s appearance indicated that he was a man of firm
nerves and desperate courage. Peter was intrepid and
resolute, true to his engagements, and cautious in observing
secrecy when it was necessary; he was not to be daunted or
impeded by difficulties, and though confident of success,
was careful in providing against any obstacles or casualties
which might arise, and intent upon discovering every means
which might be in their power if thought of beforehand.
Gullah Jack was regarded as a sorcerer, and as such feared
by the natives of Africa, who believe in witchcraft. He was
not only considered invulnerable, but that he could make
others so by his charms; and that he could and certainly
would provide all his followers with arms…. His influence
amongst the Africans was inconceivable. Monday was firm,
resolute, discreet, and intelligent.”¹⁰⁸ He was also daring and
active, a harness-maker in the prime of life, and he could
read and write with facility; but he was also the only man
of prominence in the conspiracy whose courage failed him in
court and who turned traitor. To these names must be added
that of Batteau Bennett, who was only eighteen years old and
who brought to the plan all the ardor and devotion of youth.
In general Vesey sought to bring into the plan those
Negroes, such as stevedores and mechanics, who worked away
from home and who had some free time. He would not use men
who were known to become intoxicated, and one talkative man
named George he excluded from his meetings. Nor did he use
women, not because he did not trust them, but because in
case of mishap he wanted the children to be properly cared
for. “Take care,” said Peter Poyas, in speaking about the
plan to one of the recruits, “and don’t mention it to those
waiting men who receive presents of old coats, etc., from
their masters, or they’ll betray us; I will speak to
them.”

With his lieutenants Vesey finally brought into the plan the
Negroes for seventy or eighty miles around Charleston. The
second Monday in July, 1822, or Sunday, July 14, was the time
originally set for the attack. July was chosen because in
midsummer many of the white people were away at different
resorts; and Sunday received favorable consideration because on
that day the slaves from the outlying plantations were
frequently permitted to come to the city. Lists of the recruits
were kept. Peter Poyas is said to have gathered as many as six
hundred names, chiefly from that part of Charleston known as
South Bay in which he lived; and it is a mark of his care and
discretion that of all of those afterwards arrested and tried,
not one belonged to his company. Monday Gell, who joined late
and was very prudent, had forty-two names. All such lists,
however, were in course of time destroyed. “During the period
that these enlistments were carrying on, Vesey held frequent
meetings of the conspirators at his house; and as arms were
necessary to their success, each night a hat was handed round,
and collections made, for the purpose of purchasing them, and
also to defray other necessary expenses. A Negro who was a
blacksmith and had been accustomed to make edged tools, was
employed to make pike-heads and bayonets with sockets, to be
fixed at the ends of long poles and used as pikes. Of these
pike-heads and bayonets, one hundred were said to have been
made at an early day, and by the 16th June as many as two or
three hundred, and between three and four hundred
daggers.”¹⁰⁹ A bundle containing some
of the poles, neatly trimmed and smoothed off, and nine or
ten feet long, was afterwards found concealed on a farm on
Charleston Neck, where several of the meetings were held,
having been carried there to have the pike-heads and
bayonets fixed in place. Governor Bennett stated that the
number of poles thus found was thirteen, but so wary were
the Negroes that he and other prominent men underestimated
the means of attack. It was thought that the Negroes in
Charleston might use their masters’ arms, while those from
the country were to bring hoes, hatchets, and axes. For
their main supply of arms, however, Vesey and Peter Poyas
depended upon the magazines and storehouses in the city.
They planned to seize the Arsenal in Meeting Street opposite
St. Michael’s Church; it was the key to the city, held the
arms of the state, and had for some time been neglected.
Poyas at a given signal at midnight was to move upon this
point, killing the sentinel. Two large gun and powder stores
were by arrangement to be at the disposal of the
insurrectionists; and other leaders, coming from six
different directions, were to seize strategic points and
thus aid the central work of Poyas. Meanwhile a body of
horse was to keep the streets clear. “Eat only dry food,”
said Gullah Jack as the day approached, “parched corn and
ground nuts, and when you join us as we pass put this crab
claw in your mouth and you can’t be wounded.”

On May 25¹¹⁰ a slave of Colonel
Prioleau, while on an errand at the wharf, was accosted by
another slave, William Paul, who remarked: “I have often
seen a flag with the number 76, but never one with the
number 96 upon it before.” As this man showed no knowledge
of what was going on, Paul spoke to him further and quite
frankly about the plot. The slave afterwards spoke to a free
man about what he had heard; this man advised him to tell
his master about it; and so he did on Prioleau’s return on
May 30. Prioleau immediately informed the Intendant, or
Mayor, and by five o’clock in the afternoon both the slave
and Paul were being examined. Paul was placed in
confinement, but not before his testimony had implicated
Peter Poyas and Mingo Harth, a man who had been appointed to
lead one of the companies of horse. Harth and Poyas were
cool and collected, however, they ridiculed the whole idea,
and the wardens, completely deceived, discharged them. In
general at this time the authorities were careful and
endeavored not to act hastily. About June 8, however, Paul,
greatly excited and fearing execution, confessed that the
plan was very extensive and said that it was led by an
individual who bore a charmed life. Ned Bennett, hearing
that his name had been mentioned, voluntarily went before
the Intendant and asked to be examined, thus again
completely baffling the officials. All the while, in the
face of the greatest danger, Vesey continued to hold his
meetings. By Friday, June 14, however, another informant had
spoken to his master, and all too fully were Peter Poyas’s
fears about “waiting-men” justified. This man said that the
original plan had been changed, for the night of Sunday,
June 16, was now the time set for the insurrection, and
otherwise he was able to give all essential
information.¹¹¹ On Saturday night, June
15, Jesse Blackwood, an aid sent into the country to prepare
the slaves to enter the following day, while he penetrated
two lines of guards, was at the third line halted and sent
back into the city. Vesey now realized in a moment that all
his plans were disclosed, and immediately he destroyed any
papers that might prove to be incriminating. “On Sunday,
June 16, at ten o’clock at night, Captain Cattle’s Corps of
Hussars, Captain Miller’s Light Infantry, Captain
Martindale’s Neck Rangers, the Charleston Riflemen and the
City Guard were ordered to rendezvous for guard, the whole
organized as a detachment under command of Colonel R.Y.
Hayne.”¹¹² It was his work on this
occasion that gave Hayne that appeal to the public which was
later to help him to pass on to the governorship and then to
the United States Senate. On the fateful night twenty or
thirty men from the outlying districts who had not been able
to get word of the progress of events, came to the city in a
small boat, but Vesey sent word to them to go back as
quickly as possible.

Two courts were formed for the trial of the conspirators.
The first, after a long session of five weeks, was dissolved
July 20; a second was convened, but after three days closed its
investigation and adjourned August 8.¹¹³ All the while the public
mind was greatly excited. The first court, which speedily
condemned thirty-four men to death, was severely criticized.
The New York Daily Advertiser termed the execution “a
bloody sacrifice”; but Charleston replied with the reminder
of the Negroes who had been burned in New York in 1741.¹¹⁴ Some of the Negroes blamed
the leaders for the trouble into which they had been
brought, but Vesey himself made no confession. He was by no
means alone. “Do not open your lips,” said Poyas; “die
silent as you shall see me do.” Something of the solicitude
of owners for their slaves may be seen from the request of
Governor Bennett himself in behalf of Batteau Bennett. He
asked for a special review of the case of this young man,
who was among those condemned to death, “with a view to the
mitigation of his punishment.” The court did review the
case, but it did not change its sentence. Throughout the
proceedings the white people of Charleston were impressed by
the character of those who had taken part in the
insurrection; “many of them possessed the highest confidence
of their owners, and not one was of bad character.”¹¹⁵

As a result of this effort for freedom one hundred and
thirty-one Negroes were arrested; thirty-five were executed and
forty-three banished.¹¹⁶ Of those executed, Denmark
Vesey, Peter Poyas, Ned Bennett, Rolla Bennett, Batteau
Bennett, and Jesse Blackwood were hanged July 2; Gullah Jack
and one more on July 12; twenty-two were hanged on a huge
gallows Friday, July 26; four more were hanged July 30, and
one on August 9. Of those banished, twelve had been
sentenced for execution, but were afterwards given
banishment instead; twenty-one were to be transported by
their masters beyond the limits of the United States; one, a
free man, required to leave the state, satisfied the court
by offering to leave the United States, while nine others
who were not definitely sentenced were strongly recommended
to their owners for banishment. The others of the one
hundred and thirty-one were acquitted. The authorities at
length felt that they had executed enough to teach the
Negroes a lesson, and the hanging ceased; but within the
next year or two Governor Bennett and others gave to the
world most gloomy reflections upon the whole proceeding and
upon the grave problem at their door. Thus closed the
insurrection that for the ambitiousness of its plan, the
care with which it was matured, and the faithfulness of the
leaders to one another, was never equalled by a similar
attempt for freedom in the United States.

2. Nat Turner’s Insurrection

About noon on Sunday, August 21, 1831, on the plantation of
Joseph Travis at Cross Keys, in Southampton County, in
Southeastern Virginia, were gathered four Negroes, Henry
Porter, Hark Travis, Nelson Williams, and Sam Francis,
evidently preparing for a barbecue. They were soon joined by a
gigantic and athletic Negro named Will Francis, and by another
named Jack Reese. Two hours later came a short, strong-looking
man who had a face of great resolution and at whom one would
not have needed to glance a second time to know that he was to
be the master-spirit of the company. Seeing Will and his
companion he raised a question as to their being present, to
which Will replied that life was worth no more to him than the
others and that liberty was as dear to him. This answer
satisfied the latest comer, and Nat Turner now went into
conference with his most trusted friends. One can only imagine
the purpose, the eagerness, and the firmness on those dark
faces throughout that long summer afternoon and evening. When
at last in the night the low whispering ceased, the doom of
nearly three-score white persons—and it might be added, of
twice as many Negroes—was sealed.

Cross Keys was seventy miles from Norfolk, just about as far
from Richmond, twenty-five miles from the Dismal Swamp, fifteen
miles from Murfreesboro in North Carolina, and also fifteen
miles from Jerusalem, the county seat of Southampton County.
The community was settled primarily by white people of modest
means. Joseph Travis, the owner of Nat Turner, had recently
married the widow of one Putnam Moore.

Nat Turner, who originally belonged to one Benjamin Turner,
was born October 2, 1800. He was mentally precocious and had
marks on his head and breast which were interpreted by the
Negroes who knew him as marking him for some high calling. In
his mature years he also had on his right arm a knot which was
the result of a blow which he had received. He experimented in
paper, gunpowder, and pottery, and it is recorded of him that
he was never known to swear an oath, to drink a drop of
spirits, or to commit a theft. Instead he cultivated fasting
and prayer and the reading of the Bible.

More and more Nat gave himself up to a life of the spirit
and to communion with the voices that he said he heard. He once
ran away for a month, but felt commanded by the spirit to
return. About 1825 a consciousness of his great mission came to
him, and daily he labored to make himself more worthy. As he
worked in the field he saw drops of blood on the corn, and he
also saw white spirits and black spirits contending in the
skies. While he thus so largely lived in a religious or
mystical world and was immersed, he was not a professional
Baptist preacher. On May 12, 1828, he was left no longer in
doubt. A great voice said unto him that the Serpent was loosed,
that Christ had laid down the yoke, that he, Nat, was to take
it up again, and that the time was fast approaching when the
first should be last and the last should be first. An eclipse
of the sun in February, 1831, was interpreted as the sign for
him to go forward. Yet he waited a little longer, until he had
made sure of his most important associates. It is worthy of
note that when he began his work, while he wanted the killing
to be as effective and widespread as possible, he commanded
that no outrage be committed, and he was obeyed.

When on the Sunday in August Nat and his companions finished
their conference, they went to find Austin, a brother-spirit;
and then all went to the cider-press and drank except Nat. It
was understood that he as the leader was to spill the first
blood, and that he was to begin with his own master, Joseph
Travis. Going to the house, Hark placed a ladder against the
chimney. On this Nat ascended; then he went downstairs,
unbarred the doors, and removed the guns from their places. He
and Will together entered Travis’s chamber, and the first blow
was given to the master of the house. The hatchet glanced off
and Travis called to his wife; but this was with his last
breath, for Will at once despatched him with his ax. The wife
and the three children of the house were also killed
immediately. Then followed a drill of the company, after which
all went to the home of Salathiel Francis six hundred yards
away. Sam and Will knocked, and Francis asked who was there.
Sam replied that he had a letter, for him. The man came to the
door, where he was seized and killed by repeated blows over the
head. He was the only white person in the house. In silence all
passed on to the home of Mrs. Reese, who was killed while
asleep in bed. Her son awoke, but was also immediately killed.
A mile away the insurrectionists came to the home of Mrs.
Turner, which they reached about sunrise on Monday morning.
Henry, Austin, and Sam went to the still, where they found and
killed the overseer, Peebles, Austin shooting him. Then all
went to the house. The family saw them coming and shut the
door—to no avail, however, as Will with one stroke of his ax
opened it and entered to find Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Newsome in
the middle of the room almost frightened to death. Will killed
Mrs. Turner with one blow of his ax, and after Nat had struck
Mrs. Newsome over the head with his sword, Will turned and
killed her also. By this time the company amounted to fifteen.
Nine went mounted to the home of Mrs. Whitehead and six others
went along a byway to the home of Henry Bryant. As they neared
the first house Richard Whitehead, the son of the family, was
standing in the cotton-patch near the fence. Will killed him
with his ax immediately. In the house he killed Mrs. Whitehead,
almost severing her head from her body with one blow. Margaret,
a daughter, tried to conceal herself and ran, but was killed by
Turner with a fence-rail. The men in this first company were
now joined by those in the second, the six who had gone to the
Bryant home, who informed them that they had done the work
assigned, which was to kill Henry Bryant himself, his wife and
child, and his wife’s mother. By this time the killing had
become fast and furious. The company divided again; some would
go ahead, and Nat would come up to find work already
accomplished. Generally fifteen or twenty of the best mounted
were put in front to strike terror and prevent escape, and Nat
himself frequently did not get to the houses where killing was
done. More and more the Negroes, now about forty in number,
were getting drunken and noisy. The alarm was given, and by
nine or ten o’clock on Monday morning one Captain Harris and
his family had escaped. Prominent among the events of the
morning, however, was the killing at the home of Mrs. Waller of
ten children who were gathering for school.¹¹⁷

As the men neared the home of James Parker, it was suggested
that they call there; but Turner objected, as this man had
already gone to Jerusalem and he himself wished to reach the
county seat as soon as possible. However, he and some of the
men remained at the gate while others went to the house half a
mile away. This exploit proved to be the turning-point of the
events of the day. Uneasy at the delay of those who went to the
house, Turner went thither also. On his return he was met by a
company of white men who had fired on those Negroes left at the
gate and dispersed them. On discovering these men, Turner
ordered his own men to halt and form, as now they were
beginning to be alarmed. The white men, eighteen in number,
approached and fired, but were forced to retreat.
Reënforcements for them from Jerusalem were already at hand,
however, and now the great pursuit of the Negro
insurrectionists began.

Hark’s horse was shot under him and five or six of the men
were wounded. Turner’s force was largely dispersed, but on
Monday night he stopped at the home of Major Ridley, and his
company again increased to forty. He tried to sleep a little,
but a sentinel gave the alarm; all were soon up and the number
was again reduced to twenty. Final resistance was offered at
the home of Dr. Blunt, but here still more of the men were put
to flight and were never again seen by Turner.

A little later, however, the leader found two of his men
named Jacob and Nat. These he sent with word to Henry, Hark,
Nelson, and Sam to meet him at the place where on Sunday they
had taken dinner together. With what thoughts Nat Turner
returned alone to this place on Tuesday evening can only be
imagined. Throughout the night he remained, but no one joined
him and he presumed that his followers had all either been
taken or had deserted him. Nor did any one come on Wednesday,
or on Thursday. On Thursday night, having supplied himself with
provisions from the Travis home, he scratched a hole under a
pile of fence-rails, and here he remained for six weeks,
leaving only at night to get water. All the while of course he
had no means of learning of the fate of his companions or of
anything else. Meanwhile not only the vicinity but the whole
South was being wrought up to an hysterical state of mind. A
reward of $500 for the capture of the man was offered by the
Governor, and other rewards were also offered. On September 30
a false account of his capture appeared in the newspapers; on
October 7 another; on October 8 still another. By this time
Turner had begun to move about a little at night, not speaking
to any human being and returning always to his hole before
daybreak. Early on October 15 a dog smelt his provisions and
led thither two Negroes. Nat appealed to these men for
protection, but they at once began to run and excitedly spread
the news. Turner fled in another direction and for ten days
more hid among the wheat-stacks on the Francis plantation. All
the while not less than five hundred men were on the watch for
him, and they found the stick that he had notched from day to
day. Once he thought of surrendering, and walked within two
miles of Jerusalem. Three times he tried to get away, and
failed. On October 25 he was discovered by Francis, who
discharged at him a load of buckshot, twelve of which passed
through his hat, and he was at large for five days more. On
October 30 Benjamin Phipps, a member of the patrol, passing a
clearing in the woods noticed a motion among the boughs. He
paused, and gradually he saw Nat’s head emerging from a hole
beneath. The fugitive now gave up as he knew that the woods
were full of men. He was taken to the nearest house, and the
crowd was so great and the excitement so intense that it was
with difficulty that he was taken to Jerusalem. For more than
two months, from August 25 to October 30, he had eluded his
pursuers, remaining all the while in the vicinity of his
insurrection.

While Nat Turner was in prison, Thomas C. Gray, his counsel,
received from him what are known as his “Confessions.” This
pamphlet is now almost inaccessible,¹¹⁸ but it was in great demand
at the time it was printed and it is now the chief source
for information about the progress of the insurrection.
Turner was tried November 5 and sentenced to be hanged six
days later. Asked in court by Gray if he still believed in
the providential nature of his mission, he asked, “Was not
Christ crucified?” Of his execution itself we read: “Nat
Turner was executed according to sentence, on Friday, the
11th of November, 1831, at Jerusalem, between the hours of
10 A.M. and 2 P.M. He exhibited the utmost composure
throughout the whole ceremony; and, although assured that he
might, if he thought proper, address the immense crowd
assembled on the occasion, declined availing himself of the
privilege; and, being asked if he had any further
confessions to make, replied that he had nothing more than
he had communicated; and told the sheriff in a firm voice
that he was ready. Not a limb or muscle was observed to
move. His body, after death, was given over to the surgeons
for dissection.”

Of fifty-three Negroes arraigned in connection with the
insurrection “seventeen were executed and twelve transported.
The rest were discharged, except … four free Negroes sent on
to the Superior Court. Three of the four were executed.” ¹¹⁹ Such figures as these,
however, give no conception of the number of those who lost
their lives in connection with the insurrection. In general,
if slaves were convicted by legal process and executed or
transported, or if they escaped before trial, they were paid
for by the commonwealth; if killed, they were not paid for,
and a man like Phipps might naturally desire to protect his
prisoner in order to get his reward. In spite of this, the
Negroes were slaughtered without trial and sometimes under
circumstances of the greatest barbarity. One man proudly
boasted that he had killed between ten and fifteen. A party
went from Richmond with the intention of killing every Negro
in Southampton County. Approaching the cabin of a free Negro
they asked, “Is this Southampton County?” “Yes, sir,” came
the reply, “you have just crossed the line by yonder tree.”
They shot him dead and rode on. In general the period was
one of terror, with voluntary patrols, frequently drunk,
going in all directions. These men tortured, burned, or
maimed the Negroes practically at will. Said one old woman
¹²⁰ of them: “The patrols were
low drunken whites, and in Nat’s time, if they heard any of
the colored folks prayin’ or singin’ a hymn, they would fall
upon ’em and abuse ’em, and sometimes kill ’em…. The
brightest and best was killed in Nat’s time. The whites
always suspect such ones. They killed a great many at a
place called Duplon. They killed Antonio, a slave of Mr. J.
Stanley, whom they shot; then they pointed their guns at him
and told him to confess about the insurrection. He told ’em
he didn’t know anything about any insurrection. They shot
several balls through him, quartered him, and put his head
on a pole at the fork of the road leading to the court….
It was there but a short time. He had no trial. They never
do. In Nat’s time, the patrols would tie up the free colored
people, flog ’em, and try to make ’em lie against one
another, and often killed them before anybody could
interfere. Mr. James Cole, High Sheriff, said if any of the
patrols came on his plantation, he would lose his life in
defense of his people. One day he heard a patroller boasting
how many Negroes he had killed. Mr. Cole said, ‘If you don’t
pack up, as quick as God Almighty will let you, and get out
of this town, and never be seen in it again, I’ll put you
where dogs won’t bark at you.’ He went off, and wasn’t seen
in them parts again.”

The immediate panic created by the Nat Turner insurrection
in Virginia and the other states of the South it would be
impossible to exaggerate. When the news of what was happening
at Cross Keys spread, two companies, on horse and foot, came
from Murfreesboro as quickly as possible. On the Wednesday
after the memorable Sunday night there came from Fortress
Monroe three companies and a piece of artillery. These commands
were reënforced from various sources until not less than eight
hundred men were in arms. Many of the Negroes fled to the
Dismal Swamp, and the wildest rumors were afloat. One was that
Wilmington had been burned, and in Raleigh and Fayetteville the
wildest excitement prevailed. In the latter place scores of
white women and children fled to the swamps, coming out two
days afterwards muddy, chilled, and half-starved. Slaves were
imprisoned wholesale. In Wilmington four men were shot without
trial and their heads placed on poles at the four corners of
the town. In Macon, Ga., a report was circulated that an armed
band of Negroes was only five miles away, and within an hour
the women and children were assembled in the largest building
in the town, with a military force in front for protection.

The effects on legislation were immediate. Throughout the
South the slave codes became more harsh; and while it was clear
that the uprising had been one of slaves rather than of free
Negroes, as usual special disabilities fell upon the free
people of color. Delaware, that only recently had limited the
franchise to white men, now forbade the use of firearms by free
Negroes and would not suffer any more to come within the state.
Tennessee also forbade such immigration, while Maryland passed
a law to the effect that all free Negroes must leave the state
and be colonized in Africa—a monstrous piece of legislation
that it was impossible to put into effect and that showed once
for all the futility of attempts at forcible emigration as a
solution of the problem. In general, however, the insurrection
assisted the colonization scheme and also made more certain the
carrying out of the policy of the Jackson administration to
remove the Indians of the South to the West. It also focussed
the attention of the nation upon the status of the Negro,
crystallized opinion in the North, and thus helped with the
formation of anti-slavery organizations. By it for the time
being the Negro lost; in the long run he gained.

3. The “Amistad” and “Creole”
Cases

On June 28, 1839, a schooner, the Amistad, sailed
from Havana bound for Guanaja in the vicinity of Puerto
Principe. She was under the command of her owner, Don Ramon
Ferrer, was laden with merchandise, and had on board
fifty-three Negroes, forty-nine of whom supposedly belonged to
a Spaniard, Don Jose Ruiz, the other four belonging to Don
Pedro Montes. During the night of June 30 the slaves, under the
lead of one of their number named Cinque, rose upon the crew,
killed the captain, a slave of his, and two sailors, and while
they permitted most of the crew to escape, they took into close
custody the two owners, Ruiz and Montes. Montes, who had some
knowledge of nautical affairs, was ordered to steer the vessel
back to Africa. So he did by day, when the Negroes would watch
him, but at night he tried to make his way to some land nearer
at hand. Other vessels passed from time to time, and from these
the Negroes bought provisions, but Montes and Ruiz were so
closely watched that they could not make known their plight. At
length, on August 26, the schooner reached Long Island Sound,
where it was detained by the American brig-of-war
Washington, in command of Captain Gedney, who secured
the Negroes and took them to New London, Conn. It took a year
and a half to dispose of the issue thus raised. The case
attracted the greatest amount of attention, led to
international complications, and was not really disposed of
until a former President had exhaustively argued the case for
the Negroes before the Supreme Court of the United States.

In a letter of September 6, 1839, to John Forsyth, the
American Secretary of State, Calderon, the Spanish minister,
formally made four demands: 1. That the Amistad be
immediately delivered up to her owner, together with every
article on board at the time of her capture; 2. That it be
declared that no tribunal in the United States had the right to
institute proceedings against, or to impose penalties upon, the
subjects of Spain, for crimes committed on board a Spanish
vessel, and in the waters of Spanish territory; 3. That the
Negroes be conveyed to Havana or otherwise placed at the
disposal of the representatives of Spain; and 4. That if, in
consequence of the intervention of the authorities in
Connecticut, there should be any delay in the desired delivery
of the vessel and the slaves, the owners both of the latter and
of the former be indemnified for the injury that might accrue
to them. In support of his demands Calderon invoked “the law of
nations, the stipulations of existing treaties, and those good
feelings so necessary in the maintenance of the friendly
relations that subsist between the two countries, and are so
interesting to both.” Forsyth asked for any papers bearing on
the question, and Calderon replied that he had none except “the
declaration on oath of Montes and Ruiz.”

Meanwhile the abolitionists were insisting that protection
had not been afforded the African strangers cast on
American soil and that in no case did the executive arm of the
Government have any authority to interfere with the regular
administration of justice. “These Africans,” it was said, “are
detained in jail, under process of the United States courts, in
a free state, after it has been decided by the District Judge,
on sufficient proof, that they are recently from Africa, were
never the lawful slaves of Ruiz and Montes,” and “when it is
clear as noonday that there is no law or treaty stipulation
that requires the further detention of these Africans or their
delivery to Spain or its subjects.”

Writing on October 24 to the Spanish representative with
reference to the arrest of Ruiz and Montes, Forsyth informed
him that the two Spanish subjects had been arrested on process
issuing from the superior court of the city of New York upon
affidavits of certain men, natives of Africa, “for the purpose
of securing their appearance before the proper tribunal, to
answer for wrongs alleged to have been inflicted by them upon
the persons of said Africans,” that, consequently, the
occurrence constituted simply a “case of resort by individuals
against others to the judicial courts of the country, which are
equally open to all without distinction,” and that the agency
of the Government to obtain the release of Messrs. Ruiz and
Montes could not be afforded in the manner requested. Further
pressure was brought to bear by the Spanish representative,
however, and there was cited the case of Abraham Wendell,
captain of the brig Franklin, who was prosecuted at
first by Spanish officials for maltreatment of his mate, but
with reference to whom documents were afterwards sent from
Havana to America. Much more correspondence followed, and Felix
Grundy, of Tennessee, Attorney General of the United States, at
length muddled everything by the following opinion: “These
Negroes deny that they are slaves; if they should be delivered
to the claimants, no opportunity may be afforded for the
assertion of their right to freedom. For these reasons, it
seems to me that a delivery to the Spanish minister is the only
safe course for this Government to pursue.” The fallacy of all
this was shown in a letter dated November 18, 1839, from B.F.
Butler, United States District Attorney in New York, to Aaron
Vail, acting Secretary of State. Said Butler: “It does not
appear to me that any question has yet arisen under the treaty
with Spain; because, although it is an admitted principle, that
neither the courts of this state, nor those of the United
States, can take jurisdiction of criminal offenses committed by
foreigners within the territory of a foreign state, yet it is
equally settled in this country, that our courts will take
cognizance of civil actions between foreigners
transiently within our jurisdiction, founded upon contracts or
other transactions made or had in a foreign state.” Southern
influence was strong, however, and a few weeks afterwards an
order was given from the Department of State to have a vessel
anchor off New Haven, Conn., January 10, 1840, to receive the
Negroes from the United States marshal and take them to Cuba;
and on January 7 the President, Van Buren, issued the necessary
warrant.

The rights of humanity, however, were not to be handled in
this summary fashion. The executive order was stayed, and the
case went further on its progress to the highest tribunal in
the land. Meanwhile the anti-slavery people were teaching the
Africans the rudiments of English in order that they might be
better able to tell their own story. From the first a committee
had been appointed to look out for their interests and while
they were awaiting the final decision in their case they
cultivated a garden of fifteen acres.

The appearance of John Quincy Adams in behalf of these
Negroes before the Supreme Court of the United States February
24 and March 1, 1841, is in every way one of the most beautiful
acts in American history. In the fullness of years, with his
own administration as President twelve years behind him, the
“Old Man Eloquent” came once more to the tribunal that he knew
so well to make a last plea for the needy and oppressed. To the
task he brought all his talents—his profound knowledge of law,
his unrivaled experience, and his impressive personality; and
his argument covers 135 octavo pages. He gave an extended
analysis of the demand of the Spanish minister, who asked the
President to do what he simply had no constitutional right to
do. “The President,” said Adams, “has no power to arrest either
citizens or foreigners. But even that power is almost
insignificant compared with that of sending men beyond seas to
deliver them up to a foreign government.” The Secretary of
State had “degraded the country, in the face of the whole
civilized world, not only by allowing these demands to remain
unanswered, but by proceeding, throughout the whole
transaction, as if the Executive were earnestly desirous to
comply with every one of the demands.” The Spanish minister had
naturally insisted in his demands because he had not been
properly met at first. The slave-trade was illegal by
international agreement, and the only thing to do under the
circumstances was to release the Negroes. Adams closed his plea
with a magnificent review of his career and of the labors of
the distinguished jurists he had known in the court for nearly
forty years, and be it recorded wherever the name of Justice is
spoken, he won his case.

Lewis Tappan now accompanied the Africans on a tour through
the states to raise money for their passage home. The first
meeting was in Boston. Several members of the company
interested the audience by their readings from the New
Testament or by their descriptions of their own country and of
the horrors of the voyage. Cinque gave the impression of great
dignity and of extraordinary ability; and Kali, a boy only
eleven years of age, also attracted unusual attention. Near the
close of 1841, accompanied by five missionaries and teachers,
the Africans set sail from New York, to make their way first to
Sierra Leone and then to their own homes as well as they
could.

While this whole incident of the Amistad was still
engaging the interest of the public, there occurred another
that also occasioned international friction and even more
prolonged debate between the slavery and anti-slavery forces.
On October 25, 1841, the brig Creole, Captain Ensor, of
Richmond, Va., sailed from Richmond and on October 27 from
Hampton Roads, with a cargo of tobacco and one hundred and
thirty slaves bound for New Orleans. On the vessel also, aside
from the crew, were the captain’s wife and child, and three or
four passengers, who were chiefly in charge of the slaves, one
man, John R. Hewell, being directly in charge of those
belonging to an owner named McCargo. About 9.30 on the night of
Sunday, November 7, while out at sea, nineteen of the slaves
rose, cowed the others, wounded the captain, and generally took
command of the vessel. Madison Washington began the uprising by
an attack on Gifford, the first mate, and Ben Blacksmith, one
of the most aggressive of his assistants, killed Hewell. The
insurgents seized the arms of the vessel, permitted no
conversation between members of the crew except in their
hearing, demanded and obtained the manifests of slaves, and
threatened that if they were not taken to Abaco or some other
British port they would throw the officers and crew overboard.
The Creole reached Nassau, New Providence, on Tuesday,
November 9, and the arrival of the vessel at once occasioned
intense excitement. Gifford went ashore and reported the
matter, and the American consul, John F. Bacon, contended to
the English authorities that the slaves on board the brig were
as much a part of the cargo as the tobacco and entitled to the
same protection from loss to the owners. The governor, Sir
Francis Cockburn, however, was uncertain whether to interfere
in the business at all. He liberated those slaves who were not
concerned in the uprising, spoke of all of the slaves as
“passengers,” and guaranteed to the nineteen who were shown by
an investigation to have been connected with the uprising all
the rights of prisoners called before an English court. He told
them further that the British Government would be communicated
with before their case was finally passed upon, that if they
wished copies of the informations these would be furnished
them, and that they were privileged to have witnesses examined
in refutation of the charges against them. From time to time
Negroes who were natives of the island crowded about the brig
in small boats and intimidated the American crew, but when on
the morning of November 12 the Attorney General questioned them
as to their intentions they replied with transparent good humor
that they intended no violence and had assembled only for the
purpose of conveying to shore such of the persons on the
Creole as might be permitted to leave and might need
their assistance. The Attorney General required, however, that
they throw overboard a dozen stout cudgels that they had. Here
the whole case really rested. Daniel Webster as Secretary of
State aroused the anti-slavery element by making a strong
demand for the return of the slaves, basing his argument on the
sacredness of vessels flying the American flag; but the English
authorities at Nassau never returned any of them. On March 21,
1842, Joshua R. Giddings, untiring defender of the rights of
the Negro, offered in the House of Representatives resolutions
to the effect that slavery could exist only by positive law of
the different states; that the states had delegated no control
over slavery to the Federal Government, which alone had
jurisdiction on the high seas, and that, therefore, slaves on
the high seas became free and the coastwise trade was
unconstitutional. The House, strongly pro-Southern, replied
with a vote of censure and Giddings resigned, but he was
immediately reëlected by his Ohio constituency.

Footnote 105:
(return)

Official Report, 19.

Footnote 106:
(return)

Official Report, 96-97, and Higginson, 232-3.

Footnote 107:
(return)

Official Report, 20. Note that Higginson, who was so
untiring in his research, strangely confuses Jack Purcell
and Gullah Jack (p. 230). The men were quite distinct, as
appears throughout the report and from the list of those
executed. The name of Gullah Jack’s owner was
Pritchard.

Footnote 108:
(return)

Official Report, 24. Note that this remarkable
characterization was given by the judges, Kennedy and
Parker, who afterwards condemned the men to death.

Footnote 109:
(return)

Official Report, 31-32.

Footnote 110:
(return)

Higginson, 215.

Footnote 111:
(return)

For reasons of policy the names of these informers were
withheld from publication, but they were well known, of
course, to the Negroes of Charleston. The published
documents said of the chief informer, “It would be a libel
on the liberality and gratitude of this community to
suppose that this man can be overlooked among those who are
to be rewarded for their fidelity and principle.” The
author has been informed that his reward for betraying his
people was to be officially and legally declared “a white
man.”

Footnote 112:
(return)

Jervey: Robert Y. Hayne and His Times, 131-2.

Footnote 113:
(return)

Bennett letter.

Footnote 114:
(return)

See City Gazette, August 14, 1822, cited by
Jervey.

Footnote 115:
(return)

Official Report, 44.

Footnote 116:
(return)

The figure is sometimes given as 37, but the lists total
43.

Footnote 117:
(return)

In “Horrid Massacre,” or, to use the more formal title,
“Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene
which was Witnessed in Southampton County (Virginia) on
Monday the 22d of August Last,” the list below of the
victims of Nat Turner’s insurrection is given. It must be
said about this work, however, that it is not altogether
impeccable; it seems to have been prepared very hastily
after the event, its spelling of names is often arbitrary,
and instead of the fifty-five victims noted it appears that
at least fifty-seven white persons were killed:

Footnote 118:
(return)

The only copy that the author has seen is that in the
library of Harvard University.

Footnote 119:
(return)

Drewry, 101.

Footnote 120:
(return)

Charity Bowery, who gave testimony to L.M. Child, quoted
by Higginson.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEGRO REPLY, II: ORGANIZATION AND AGITATION

It is not the purpose of the present chapter primarily to
consider social progress on the part of the Negro. A little
later we shall endeavor to treat this interesting subject for
the period between the Missouri Compromise and the Civil War.
Just now we are concerned with the attitude of the Negro
himself toward the problem that seemed to present itself to
America and for which such different solutions were proposed.
So far as slavery was concerned, we have seen that the remedy
suggested by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner was insurrection. It
is only to state an historical fact, however, to say that the
great heart of the Negro people in the South did not believe in
violence, but rather hoped and prayed for a better day to come
by some other means. But what was the attitude of those people,
progressive citizens and thinking leaders, who were not
satisfied with the condition of the race and who had to take a
stand on the issues that confronted them? If we study the
matter from this point of view, we shall find an amount of
ferment and unrest and honest difference of opinion that is
sometimes overlooked or completely forgotten in the questions
of a later day.

1. Walker’s “Appeal”

The most widely discussed book written by a Negro in the
period was one that appeared in Boston in 1829. David Walker,
the author, had been born in North Carolina in 1785, of a free
mother and a slave father, and he was therefore free.¹²¹ He received a fair
education, traveled widely over the United States, and by
1827 was living in Boston as the proprietor of a second-hand
clothing store on Brattle Street. He felt very strongly on
the subject of slavery and actually seems to have
contemplated leading an insurrection. In 1828 he addressed
various audiences of Negroes in Boston and elsewhere, and in
1829 he published his Appeal, in four articles; together
with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but
in particular, and very expressly, to those of the United
States of America. The book was remarkably successful.
Appearing in September, by March of the following year it
had reached its third edition; and in each successive
edition the language was more bold and vigorous. Walker’s
projected insurrection did not take place, and he himself
died in 1830. While there was no real proof of the fact,
among the Negro people there was a strong belief that he met
with foul play.

Article I Walker headed “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of
Slavery.” A trip over the United States had convinced him that
the Negroes of the country were “the most degraded, wretched
and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world
began.” He quoted a South Carolina paper as saying, “The Turks
are the most barbarous people in the world—they treat the
Greeks more like brutes than human beings”; and then from the
same paper cited an advertisement of the sale of eight Negro
men and four women. “Are we men?” he exclaimed. “I ask you, O!
my brothers, are we men?… Have we any other master but Jesus
Christ alone? Is He not their master as well as ours? What
right, then, have we to obey and call any man master but
Himself? How we could be so submissive to a gang of men, whom
we can not tell whether they are as good as ourselves, or not,
I never could conceive.” “The whites,” he asserted, “have
always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and
bloodthirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and
authority.” As heathen the white people had been cruel enough,
but as Christians they were ten times more so. As heathen “they
were not quite so audacious as to go and take vessel loads of
men, women and children, and in cold blood, through
devilishness, throw them into the sea, and murder them in all
kind of ways. But being Christians, enlightened and sensible,
they are completely prepared for such hellish cruelties.” Next
was considered “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance.”
In general the writer maintained that his people as a whole did
not have intelligence enough to realize their own degradation;
even if boys studied books they did not master their texts, nor
did their information go sufficiently far to enable them
actually to meet the problems of life. If one would but go to
the South or West, he would see there a son take his mother,
who bore almost the pains of death to give him birth, and by
the command of a tyrant, strip her as naked as she came into
the world and apply the cowhide to her until she fell a victim
to death in the road. He would see a husband take his dear
wife, not unfrequently in a pregnant state and perhaps far
advanced, and beat her for an unmerciful wretch, until her
infant fell a lifeless lump at her feet. Moreover, “there have
been, and are this day, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Baltimore, colored men who are in league with tyrants and who
receive a great portion of their daily bread of the moneys
which they acquire from the blood and tears of their more
miserable brethren, whom they scandalously deliver into the
hands of our natural enemies.” In Article III Walker considered
“Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of the
Religion of Jesus Christ.” Here was a fertile field, which was
only partially developed. Walker evidently did not have at hand
the utterances of Furman and others to serve as a definite
point of attack. He did point out, however, the general failure
of Christian ministers to live up to the teachings of Christ.
“Even here in Boston,” we are informed, “pride and prejudice
have got to such a pitch, that in the very houses erected to
the Lord they have built little places for the reception of
colored people, where they must sit during meeting, or keep
away from the house of God.” Hypocrisy could hardly go further
than that of preachers who could not see the evils at their
door but could “send out missionaries to convert the heathen,
notwithstanding.” Article IV was headed “Our Wretchedness in
Consequence of the Colonizing Plan.” This was a bitter
arraignment, especially directed against Henry Clay. “I appeal
and ask every citizen of these United States,” said Walker,
“and of the world, both white and black, who has any knowledge
of Mr. Clay’s public labors for these states—I want you
candidly to answer the Lord, who sees the secrets of your
hearts, Do you believe that Mr. Henry Clay, late Secretary of
State, and now in Kentucky, is a friend to the blacks further
than his personal interest extends?… Does he care a pinch of
snuff about Africa—whether it remains a land of pagans and of
blood, or of Christians, so long as he gets enough of her sons
and daughters to dig up gold and silver for him?… Was he not
made by the Creator to sit in the shade, and make the blacks
work without remuneration for their services, to support him
and his family? I have been for some time taking notice of this
man’s speeches and public writings, but never to my knowledge
have I seen anything in his writings which insisted on the
emancipation of slavery, which has almost ruined his country.”
Walker then paid his compliments to Elias B. Caldwell and John
Randolph, the former of whom had said, “The more you improve
the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their
minds, the more miserable you make them in their present
state.” “Here,” the work continues, “is a demonstrative proof
of a plan got up, by a gang of slaveholders, to select the free
people of color from among the slaves, that our more miserable
brethren may be the better secured in ignorance and
wretchedness, to work their farms and dig their mines, and thus
go on enriching the Christians with their blood and groans.
What our brethren could have been thinking about, who have left
their native land and gone away to Africa, I am unable to
say…. The Americans may say or do as they please, but they
have to raise us from the condition of brutes to that of
respectable men, and to make a national acknowledgment to us
for the wrongs they have inflicted on us…. You may doubt it,
if you please. I know that thousands will doubt—they think they
have us so well secured in wretchedness, to them and their
children, that it is impossible for such things to occur. So
did the antediluvians doubt Noah, until the day in which the
flood came and swept them away. So did the Sodomites doubt,
until Lot had got out of the city, and God rained down fire and
brimstone from heaven upon them and burnt them up. So did the
king of Egypt doubt the very existence of God, saying, ‘Who is
the Lord, that I should let Israel go?’ … So did the Romans
doubt…. But they got dreadfully deceived.”

This document created the greatest consternation in the
South. The Mayor of Savannah wrote to Mayor Otis of Boston,
demanding that Walker be punished. Otis, in a widely published
letter, replied expressing his disapproval of the pamphlet, but
saying that the author had done nothing that made him
“amenable” to the laws. In Virginia the legislature considered
passing an “extraordinary bill,” not only forbidding the
circulation of such seditious publications but forbidding the
education of free Negroes. The bill passed the House of
Delegates, but failed in the Senate. The Appeal even
found its way to Louisiana, where there were already rumors of
an insurrection, and immediately a law was passed expelling all
free Negroes who had come to the state since 1825.

2. The Convention Movement

As may be inferred from Walker’s attitude, the
representative men of the race were almost a unit in their
opposition to colonization. They were not always opposed to
colonization itself, for some looked favorably upon settlement
in Canada, and a few hundred made their way to the West Indies.
They did object, however, to the plan offered by the American
Colonization Society, which more and more impressed them as a
device on the part of slaveholders to get free Negroes out of
the country in order that slave labor might be more valuable.
Richard Allen, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, and the foremost Negro of the period, said: “We were
stolen from our mother country and brought here. We have tilled
the ground and made fortunes for thousands, and still they are
not weary of our services. But they who stay to till the
ground must be slaves. Is there not land enough in America,
or ‘corn enough in Egypt’? Why should they send us into a far
country to die? See the thousands of foreigners emigrating to
America every year: and if there be ground sufficient for them
to cultivate, and bread for them to eat, why would they wish to
send the first tillers of the land away? Africans have
made fortunes for thousands, who are yet unwilling to part with
their services; but the free must be sent away, and those who
remain must be slaves. I have no doubt that there are many good
men who do not see as I do, and who are sending us to Liberia;
but they have not duly considered the subject—they are not men
of color. This land which we have watered with our tears and
our blood is now our mother country, and we are well
satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and the gospel is
free.”¹²² This point of view
received popular expression in a song which bore the
cumbersome title, “The Colored Man’s Opinion of
Colonization,” and which was sung to the tune of “Home,
Sweet Home.” The first stanza was as follows:

To this sentiment formal expression was given in the
measures adopted at various Negro meetings in the North. In
1817 the greatest excitement was occasioned by a report that
through the efforts of the newly-formed Colonization Society
all free Negroes were forcibly to be deported from the country.
Resolutions of protest were adopted, and these were widely
circulated.¹²⁴ Of special importance was
the meeting in Philadelphia in January, presided over by
James Forten. Of this the full report is as follows:

At a numerous meeting of the people of color, convened at
Bethel Church, to take into consideration the propriety of
remonstrating against the contemplated measure that is to exile
us from the land of our nativity, James Forten was called to
the chair, and Russell Parrott appointed secretary. The intent
of the meeting having been stated by the chairman, the
following resolutions were adopted without one dissenting
voice:

WHEREAS, Our ancestors (not of choice) were the first
successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we their
descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the
blessings of her luxuriant soil, which their blood and
sweat manured; and that any measure or system of measures,
having a tendency to banish us from her bosom, would not
only be cruel, but in direct violation of those principles
which have been the boast of this republic,
    Resolved, That we view with deep abhorrence the
unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation
of the free people of color, by the promoters of this
measure, “that they are a dangerous and useless part of the
community,” when in the state of disfranchisement in which
they live, in the hour of danger they ceased to remember
their wrongs, and rallied around the standard of their
country.
    Resolved, That we never will separate ourselves
voluntarily from the slave population of this country; they
are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity, of
suffering, and of wrong; and we feel that there is more
virtue in suffering privations with them, than fancied
advantages for a season.
    Resolved, That without arts, without science,
without a proper knowledge of government to cast upon the
savage wilds of Africa the free people of color, seems to
us the circuitous route through which they must return to
perpetual bondage.
    Resolved, That having the strongest confidence in
the justice of God, and philanthropy of the free states, we
cheerfully submit our destinies to the guidance of Him who
suffers not a sparrow to fall without his special
providence.
    Resolved, That a committee of eleven persons be
appointed to open a correspondence with the honorable
Joseph Hopkinson, member of Congress from this city, and
likewise to inform him of the sentiments of this meeting,
and that the following named persons constitute the
committee, and that they have power to call a general
meeting, when they, in their judgment, may deem it proper:
Rev. Absalom Jones, Rev. Richard Allen, James Forten,
Robert Douglass, Francis Perkins, Rev. John Gloucester,
Robert Gorden, James Johnson, Quamoney Clarkson, John
Summersett, Randall Shepherd.
    JAMES FORTEN, Chairman.
    RUSSELL PARROTT, Secretary.

In 1827, in New York, was begun the publication of
Freedom’s Journal, the first Negro newspaper in the
United States. The editors were John B. Russwurm and Samuel E.
Cornish. Russwurm was a recent graduate of Bowdoin College and
was later to become better known as the governor of Maryland in
Africa. By 1830 feeling was acute throughout the country,
especially in Ohio and Kentucky, and on the part of Negro men
had developed the conviction that the time had come for
national organization and protest.

In the spring of 1830 Hezekiah Grice of Baltimore, who had
become personally acquainted with the work of Lundy and
Garrison, sent a letter to prominent Negroes in the free states
bringing in question the general policy of emigration.¹²⁵ received no immediate
response, but in August he received from Richard Allen an
urgent request to come at once to Philadelphia. Arriving
there he found in session a meeting discussing the wisdom of
emigration to Canada, and Allen “showed him a printed
circular signed by Peter Williams, rector of St. Philip’s
Church, New York, Peter Vogelsang and Thomas L. Jennings of
the same place, approving the plan of convention.”¹²⁶ The Philadelphians now
issued a call for a convention of the Negroes of the United
States to be held in their city September 15, 1830.

This September meeting was held in Bethel A.M.E. Church.
Bishop Richard Allen was chosen president, Dr. Belfast Burton
of Philadelphia and Austin Steward of Rochester
vice-presidents, Junius C. Morell of Pennsylvania secretary,
and Robert Cowley of Maryland assistant secretary. There were
accredited delegates from seven states. While this meeting
might really be considered the first national convention of
Negroes in the United States (aside of course from the
gathering of denominational bodies), it seems to have been
regarded merely as preliminary to a still more formal
assembling, for the minutes of the next year were printed as
the “Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of
the People of Color, held by adjournments in the city of
Philadelphia, from the sixth to the eleventh of June,
inclusive, 1831. Philadelphia, 1831.” The meetings of this
convention were held in the Wesleyan Church on Lombard Street.
Richard Allen had died earlier in the year and Grice was not
present; not long afterwards he emigrated to Hayti, where he
became prominent as a contractor. Rev. James W.C. Pennington of
New York, however, now for the first time appeared on the
larger horizon of race affairs; and John Bowers of Philadelphia
served as president, Abraham D. Shadd of Delaware and William
Duncan of Virginia as vice-presidents, William Whipper of
Philadelphia as secretary, and Thomas L. Jennings of New York
as assistant secretary. Delegates from five states were
present. The gathering was not large, but it brought together
some able men; moreover, the meeting had some distinguished
visitors, among them Benjamin Lundy, William Lloyd Garrison,
Rev. S.S. Jocelyn of New Haven, and Arthur Tappan of New
York.

The very first motion of the convention resolved “That a
committee be appointed to institute an inquiry into the
condition of the free people of color throughout the United
States, and report their views upon the subject at a subsequent
meeting.” As a result of its work this committee recommended
that the work of organizations interested in settlement in
Canada be continued; that the free people of color be annually
called to assemble by delegation; and it submitted “the
necessity of deliberate reflection on the dissolute,
intemperate, and ignorant condition of a large portion of the
colored population of the United States.” “And, lastly, your
Committee view with unfeigned regret, and respectfully submit
to the wisdom of this Convention, the operations and
misrepresentations of the American Colonization Society in
these United States…. We feel sorrowful to see such an
immense and wanton waste of lives and property, not doubting
the benevolent feelings of some individuals engaged in that
cause. But we can not for a moment doubt but that the cause of
many of our unconstitutional, unchristian, and unheard-of
sufferings emanate from that unhallowed source; and we would
call on Christians of every denomination firmly to resist it.”
The report was unanimously received and adopted.

Jocelyn, Tappan, and Garrison addressed the convention with
reference to a proposed industrial college in New Haven, toward
the $20,000 expense of which one individual (Tappan himself)
had subscribed $1000 with the understanding that the remaining
$19,000 be raised within a year; and the convention approved
the project, provided the Negroes had a majority of at
least one on the board of trustees. An illuminating address to
the public called attention to the progress of emancipation
abroad, to the fact that it was American persecution that led
to the calling of the convention, and that it was this also
that first induced some members of the race to seek an asylum
in Canada, where already there were two hundred log houses, and
five hundred acres under cultivation.

In 1832 eight states were represented by a total of thirty
delegates. By this time we learn that a total of eight hundred
acres had been secured in Canada, that two thousand Negroes had
gone thither, but that considerable hostility had been
manifested on the part of the Canadians. Hesitant, the
convention appointed an agent to investigate the situation. It
expressed itself as strongly opposed to any national aid to the
American Colonization Society and urged the abolition of
slavery in the District of Columbia—all of which activity, it
is well to remember, was a year before the American
Anti-Slavery Society was organized.

In 1833 there were fifty-eight delegates, and Abraham Shadd,
now of Washington, was chosen president. The convention again
gave prominence to the questions of Canada and colonization,
and expressed itself with reference to the new law in
Connecticut prohibiting Negroes from other states from
attending schools within the state. The 1834 meeting was held
in New York. Prudence Crandall¹²⁷ was commended for her
stand in behalf of the race, and July 4 was set apart as a
day for prayer and addresses on the condition of the Negro
throughout the country. By this time we hear much of
societies for temperance and moral reform, especially of the
so-called Phoenix Societies “for improvement in general
culture—literature, mechanic arts, and morals.” Of these
organizations Rev. Christopher Rush, of the A.M.E. Zion
Church, was general president, and among the directors were
Rev. Peter Williams, Boston Crummell, the father of
Alexander Crummell, and Rev. William Paul Quinn, afterwards
a well-known bishop of the A.M.E. Church. The 1835 and 1836
meetings were held in Philadelphia, and especially were the
students of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati commended for their
zeal in the cause of abolition. A committee was appointed to
look into the dissatisfaction of some emigrants to Liberia
and generally to review the work of the Colonization
Society.

In the decade 1837-1847 Frederick Douglass was outstanding
as a leader, and other men who were now prominent were Dr.
James McCune Smith, Rev. James W.C. Pennington, Alexander
Crummell, William C. Nell, and Martin R. Delany. These are
important names in the history of the period. These were the
men who bore the brunt of the contest in the furious days of
Texas annexation and the Compromise of 1850. About 1853 and
1854 there was renewed interest in the idea of an industrial
college; steps were taken for the registry of Negro mechanics
and artisans who were in search of employment, and of the names
of persons who were willing to give them work; and there was
also a committee on historical records and statistics that was
not only to compile studies in Negro biography but also to
reply to any assaults of note.¹²⁸

Immediately after the last of the conventions just
mentioned, those who were interested in emigration and had not
been able to get a hearing in the regular convention issued a
call for a National Emigration Convention of Colored Men to
take place in Cleveland, Ohio, August 24-26, 1854. The
preliminary announcement said: “No person will be admitted to a
seat in the Convention who would introduce the subject of
emigration to the Eastern Hemisphere—either to Asia, Africa, or
Europe—as our object and determination are to consider our
claims to the West Indies, Central and South America, and the
Canadas. This restriction has no reference to personal
preference, or individual enterprise, but to the great question
of national claims to come before the Convention.”¹²⁹ Douglass pronounced the
call “uncalled for, unwise, unfortunate and premature,” and
his position led him into a wordy discussion in the press
with James M. Whitfield, of Buffalo, prominent at the time
as a writer. Delany explained the call as follows: “It was a
mere policy on the part of the authors of these documents,
to confine their scheme to America (including the West
Indies), whilst they were the leading advocates of the
regeneration of Africa, lest they compromised themselves and
their people to the avowed enemies of their race.”¹³⁰ At the secret sessions, he
informs us, Africa was the topic of greatest interest. In
order to account for this position it is important to take
note of the changes that had taken place between 1817 and
1854. When James Forten and others in Philadelphia in 1817
protested against the American Colonization Society as the
plan of a “gang of slaveholders” to drive free people from
their homes, they had abundant ground for the feeling. By
1839, however, not only had the personnel of the
organization changed, but, largely through the influence of
Garrison, the purpose and aim had also changed, and not
Virginia and Maryland, but New York and Pennsylvania were
now dominant in influence. Colonization had at first been
regarded as a possible solution of the race problem; money
was now given, however, “rather as an aid to the
establishment of a model Negro republic in Africa, whose
effort would be to discourage the slave-trade, and encourage
energy and thrift among those free Negroes from the United
States who chose to emigrate, and to give native Africans a
demonstration of the advantages of civilization.”¹³¹ In view of the changed
conditions, Delany and others who disagreed with Douglass
felt that for the good of the race in the United States the
whole matter of emigration might receive further
consideration; at the same time, remembering old
discussions, they did not wish to be put in the light of
betrayers of their people. The Pittsburgh Daily Morning
Post of October 18, 1854, sneered at the new plan as
follows: “If Dr. Delany drafted this report it certainly
does him much credit for learning and ability; and can not
fail to establish for him a reputation for vigor and
brilliancy of imagination never yet surpassed. It is a vast
conception of impossible birth. The Committee seem to have
entirely overlooked the strength of the ‘powers on earth’
that would oppose the Africanization of more than half the
Western Hemisphere. We have no motive in noticing this
gorgeous dream of ‘the Committee’ except to show its
fallacy—its impracticability, in fact, its absurdity. No
sensible man, whatever his color, should be for a moment
deceived by such impracticable theories.” However, in spite
of all opposition, the Emigration Convention met. Upon
Delany fell the real brunt of the work of the organization.
In 1855 Bishop James Theodore Holly was commissioned to
Faustin Soulouque, Emperor of Hayti; and he received in his
visit of a month much official attention with some
inducement to emigrate. Delany himself planned to go to
Africa as the head of a “Niger Valley Exploring Party.” Of
the misrepresentation and difficulties that he encountered
he himself has best told. He did get to Africa, however, and
he had some interesting and satisfactory interviews with
representative chiefs. The Civil War put an end to his
project, he himself accepting a major’s commission from
President Lincoln. Through the influence of Holly about two
thousand persons went to Hayti, but not more than a third of
these remained. A plan fostered by Whitfield for a colony in
Central America came to naught when this leading spirit died
in San Francisco on his way thither.¹³²