The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918
by Various · English · Gutenberg #20906 · 1,056,417 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918
Author: Various
Release date: March 26, 2007 [eBook #20906]
Language: English
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THE JOURNAL
OF
NEGRO HISTORY
Volume III
1918
Table of Contents
Vol. III--January, 1918--No. 1
The Story of Josiah Henson W. B. HARTGROVE
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Negro BENJAMIN BRAWLEY
Palmares: The Negro Numantia CHARLES E. CHAPMAN
Slavery in California DELILAH L. BEASLEY
Documents
California Freedom Papers
Thomas Jefferson's Thoughts on the Negro
Some Undistinguished Negroes
Book Reviews
Notes
Vol. III--April, 1918--No. 2
Benjamin Banneker HENRY E. BAKER
George Liele and Andrew Bryan JOHN W. DAVIS
Fifty Years of Howard University - Part I DWIGHT O. W. HOLMES
Historical Errors of James Ford Rhodes JOHN R. LYNCH
Documents
Letters of Governor Edward Coles
Some Undistinguished Negroes
Book Reviews
Notes
Vol. III--July, 1918--No. 3
Slavery in Kentucky IVAN E. MCDOUGLE
Book Reviews
Notes
Vol. III--October, 1918--No. 4
Beginnings of Miscegenation of Whites and Blacks CARTER G. WOODSON
Gerrit Smith's Effort in Behalf of Negroes ZITA DYSON
The Buxton Settlement in Canada FRED LANDON
Fifty Years of Howard University - Part II DWIGHT O. W. HOLMES
Documents
What the Framers of the Federal Constitution
Thought of the Negro
Some Undistinguished Negroes
Book Reviews
Notes
THE JOURNAL
OF
NEGRO HISTORY
VOL. III--JANUARY, 1918--No. 1
THE STORY OF JOSIAH HENSON[1]
No one ever uttered a more forceful truth than Frederika Bremer when
she said in speaking to Americans: "The fate of the Negro is the
romance of your history." The sketches of heroes showing the life of
those once exploited by Christian men must ever be interesting to
those who would know the origin and the development of a civilization
distinctly American. In no case is this more striking than in that of
Josiah Henson, the man who probably was present to Harriet Beecher
Stowe's mind when she graphically portrayed slavery in writing "Uncle
Tom's Cabin."
Josiah Henson was born June 15, 1789, on a farm in Charles County,
Maryland, where his mother was hired out. His parents had six
children. The only recollection he had of his father was that of
seeing his right ear cut off, his head gashed and his back lacerated,
as a result of the cruel punishment inflicted upon him because he had
dared to beat the overseer of the plantation for brutally assaulting
the slave's wife. Because of becoming morose, disobedient and
intractable thereafter, Henson's father was sold to a planter in
Alabama and his relatives never heard of him again. His mother was
then brought back to the estate of her owner, a Doctor McPherson, who
was much kinder to his slaves. Dr. McPherson gave the youth his own
name, Josiah, and the family name Henson after Dr. McPherson's uncle,
who served in the Revolutionary War. Josiah showed signs of mental and
religious development under the pious care of his Christian mother and
for that reason became his master's favorite.
Upon the death of Doctor McPherson, however, it became necessary to
sell the estate and slaves to divide his property among his heirs. The
Henson family was then scattered throughout the country and worst of
all Josiah was separated from his mother, notwithstanding his mother's
earnest entreaty that her new master, Isaac Riley, should also
purchase her baby. Instead of listening to the appeal of this
afflicted woman clinging to his hands, he disengaged himself from her
with violent blows. She was then taken to Riley's farm in Montgomery
County. Josiah was purchased by a man named Robb, a tavern keeper
living near Montgomery Court-House. Both masters were unusually cruel,
in keeping with the tyrannical methods employed by planters of that
time. Because of ill health resulting from the lack of proper care,
Josiah became very sickly. He was then providentially restored to his
mother, having been offered to her owner by Robb for a small sum, for
the reason that it was thought that he would die.
His third master was "vulgar in his habits, unprincipled and cruel in
his general deportment and especially addicted to the vice of
licentiousness."[2] On his plantation Henson served as water-boy,
butler and finally as a field hand, experiencing the usual hardship of
the slave. He ate twice a day of cornmeal and salt herring, with a
little buttermilk and a few vegetables occasionally. His dress was
first a single garment, something like a long shirt reaching to the
ankles, later a pair of trousers and a shirt with the addition of a
woolen hat once in two or three years and a round jacket or overcoat
in the winter time. He slept with ten or a dozen persons in a log hut
of a single small room, with no other floor than the trodden earth,
and without beds or furniture. In spite of this, however, Henson grew
to be a robust lad, who at the age of fifteen could do a man's work.
Having too more mental capacity than most slaves, he was regarded as a
smart fellow. Hearing remarks like this about himself, Henson became
filled with ambition and pride, and aspired to a position of influence
among his fellows.
At times Henson would toil and induce his fellow slaves to work much
harder and longer than required to obtain from their master a kind
word or act, but these efforts usually produced no more from their
owner than a cold calculation of the value of Josiah to him. When,
however, the white overseer of this plantation was discharged for
stealing from his employer, Josiah had shown himself so capable that
he was made manager of the plantation. In this position his honest
management of the estate made him indispensable to his master also as
a salesman of produce in the markets of Georgetown and Washington. He
had during these years come under the influence of an anti-slavery
white man of Georgetown and had become a devout Christian with
considerable influence as a preacher among the slaves.
About this time, Josiah was serving his master in another capacity,
which brought upon him one of the greatest misfortunes of his life.
This was accompanying his master to town for protection and
deliverance when the owners of his order indulged in excessive
drinking and brawls in taverns. Sometimes in removing his master from
the midst of a fracas, he would have to handle his owner's opponent
rather roughly. On one occasion when Riley became involved in a
quarrel with his brother's overseer, Henson pushed the overseer down;
and falling while intoxicated the overseer suffered some injury. The
overseer decided to wreak vengeance on Henson for this. Finding
Henson on the way home one day the overseer assisted by three Negroes
attacked him, beating him unmercifully and left him on the ground
almost senseless with his head badly bruised and cut and with his
right arm and both shoulder blades broken. Being on a farm where no
physician or surgeon was usually called, Henson recovered with
difficulty under the kind treatment of his master's sister; but was
never able thereafter to raise his hands to his head. The culprit did
not suffer for this offense, as the court acquitted him on the grounds
of self-defense.
In the course of time Henson's master, Isaac Riley, lived so
extravagantly that he became involved in debt and lawsuits which
heralded his ruin. Seeing his estate would be seized, he intrusted to
Henson in 1825 the tremendous task of taking his 18 slaves to his
brother, Amos Riley, in Kentucky. Henson bought a one-horse wagon to
carry provisions and to relieve the women and children from time to
time. The men were compelled to walk altogether. Traveling through
Alexandria, Culpepper, Fauquier, Harper's Ferry and Cumberland, they
met on the way droves of Negroes passing in chains under the system of
the internal slave trade, while those whom Henson was conducting were
moving freely without restriction. On arriving at Wheeling, he sold
the horse and wagon and bought a boat of sufficient size to take the
whole party down the river. At Cincinnati some free Negroes came out
to greet them and urged them to avail themselves of the opportunity to
become free. Few of the slaves except Henson could appreciate this
boon offered them, but he had thought of obtaining it only by
purchase. Henson said: "Under the influence of these impressions, and
seeing that the allurements of the crowd were producing a manifest
effect, I sternly assumed the captain, and ordered the boat to be
pushed off into the stream. A shower of curses followed me from the
shore; but the Negroes under me, accustomed to obey, and, alas! too
degraded and ignorant of the advantages of liberty to know what they
were forfeiting, offered no resistance to my command." "Often since
that day," says he, "has my soul been pierced with bitter anguish at
the thought of having been thus instrumental in consigning to the
infernal bondage of slavery so many of my fellow-beings. I have
wrestled in prayer with God for forgiveness. Having experienced myself
the sweetness of liberty, and knowing too well the after misery of a
great majority of them, my infatuation has seemed to me an
unpardonable sin. But I console myself with the thought that I acted
according to my best light, though the light that was in me was
darkness."[3]
Henson finally arrived with these slaves at the farm of his master's
brother, five miles south of the Ohio and fifteen miles above the
Yellow Banks, on the Big Blackfords' Creek in Davies County, Kentucky,
April, 1825. Here the situation as to food, shelter and general
comforts was a little better than in Maryland. He served on this
plantation as superintendent and having here among more liberal white
people the opportunity for religious instruction, he developed into a
successful preacher, recognized by the Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church.
There he remained waiting for his master three years. Unable to
persuade his wife to move to Kentucky, however, his master decided to
abandon the idea and sent an agent to bring upon those slaves another
heartrending scene of the auction block, though Henson himself was
exempted. Henson saw with deepest grief the agony which he recollected
in his own mother and which he now unfortunately said in the persons
with whom he had long been associated. He could not, therefore,
refrain from experiencing the bitterest feeling of hatred of the
system and its promoters. He furthermore lamented as never before his
agency in bringing the poor creatures hither, if such had to be the
end of the expedition. Freedom then became the all-absorbing purpose
that filled his soul. He said that he stood ready to pray, toil,
dissemble, plot like a fox and fight like a tiger.
A new light dawned upon the dark pathway of Josiah Henson, however, in
1828. A Methodist preacher, an anti-slavery white man, talked with
Henson one day confidentially about securing freedom. He thereupon
suggested to Henson to obtain his employer's consent to visit his old
master in Maryland that he might connect with friends in Ohio along
the way and obtain the sum necessary to purchase himself. His employer
readily consented and with the required pass and a letter of
recommendation from his Methodist friend to a preacher in Cincinnati,
Henson obtained contributions to the amount of one hundred and sixty
dollars on arriving in that city, where he preached to several
congregations. He then proceeded to Chillicothe where the annual
Methodist Conference was in session, his kind friend accompanying him.
With the aid of the influence and exertions of his coworker Henson was
again successful. He then purchased a suit of comfortable clothes and
an excellent horse, with which he traveled leisurely from town to
town, preaching and soliciting as he went. He succeeded so well that
when he arrived at his old home in Maryland, he was much better
equipped than his master. This striking difference and the delay of
Henson along the way from September to Christmas caused his master to
be somewhat angry. Moreover, as his master had lost most of his slaves
and other property in Maryland, he was anxious to have Henson as a
faithful worker to retrieve his losses; but this changed man would
hardly subserve such a purpose.
The conditions which he observed around him were so much worse than
what he had for some time been accustomed to and so changed was the
environment because of the departure or death of friends and relatives
during his absence that Henson resolved to become free. He then
consulted the brother of his master's wife, then a business man in
Washington, whom he had often befriended years before and who was
angry with Henson's master because the latter had defrauded him out of
certain property. This friend, therefore, gladly took up with Henson's
master the question of giving the slave an opportunity to purchase
himself. He carefully explained to the master that Henson had some
money and could purchase himself and that if, in consideration of the
valuable services he had rendered, the master refused to do so, Henson
would become free by escaping to Canada. The master agreed then to
give him his manumission papers for four hundred and fifty dollars, of
which three hundred and fifty dollars was to be in cash and the
remainder in Henson's note. Henson's money and horse enabled him to
pay the cash at once. But his master was to work a trick on him. He
did not receive his manumission papers until March 3, 1827, and when
Henson started for Kentucky his master induced him to let him send his
manumission papers to his brother in Kentucky where Henson was
returning, telling him that some ruffian might take the document from
him on the way. In returning to Kentucky Henson was arrested several
times as a fugitive, but upon always insisting on being carried before
a magistrate he was released. He had no trouble after reaching
Wheeling, from which he proceeded on a boat to Davies County,
Kentucky.
Arriving at the Kentucky home, he was informed that the master had
misrepresented the facts as to his purchase. He had written his
brother that Henson had agreed to pay one thousand dollars for
himself, the balance-of the six hundred and fifty dollars to be paid
in Kentucky. As the only evidence he had, had been sent to his
master's brother, it was impossible for him to make a case against him
in court. Things went on in uncertainty for about a year. Then came a
complaint from his master in Maryland, saying that he wanted money and
expressing the hope that Henson would soon pay the next installment.
Soon thereafter Henson received orders to go with Amos Riley carrying
a cargo to New Orleans. This suggestion was enough. He contrived to
have his manumission papers sewed up in his clothing prior to his
departure on the flat boat for New Orleans. He knew what awaited him
and his mind rapidly developed into a sort of smoldering volcano of
pent-up feeling which at one time all but impelled him to murder his
white betrayers. Blinded by passion and stung by madness, Henson
resolved to kill his four companions, to take what money they had,
then to scuttle the craft and escape to the North. One dark night
within a few days' sail of New Orleans it seemed that the opportune
hour had come. Henson was alone on the deck and Riley and the hands
were asleep. He crept down noiselessly, secured an ax, entered the
cabin, and looking by aid of the dim light, his eye fell first on
Riley. Henson felt the blade of the ax and raised it to strike the
first blow when suddenly the thought came to him, "What! Commit
murder, and you a Christian?" His religious feeling and belief in the
wonderful providence of God prevented him.
Riley talked later of getting him a good master and the like but did
not disguise the effort to sell him. Fortunately, however, Amos Riley
was suddenly taken sick and becoming more dependent on Henson then,
than Henson had been on him, he immediately ordered Henson to sell the
flat boat and find passage for him home in a sick cabin at once.
Henson did this and succeeded by careful nursing to get Amos back to
his home in Kentucky alive. Although he confessed that, if he had sold
Henson, he would have died, the family showed only a realization of an
increased value in Henson rather than an appreciation of his valuable
services. He, therefore, decided to escape to Canada.
His wife, fearing the dangers, would not at first agree to go, but
upon being told that he would take all of the children but the
youngest, she finally agreed to set out with him. Knowing of the
hardships that they must have to experience, Henson practised
beforehand the carrying of the children on his back. They crossed the
river into Indiana and proceeded toward Cincinnati, finding it
difficult to purchase food in that State, so intensely did the people
hate the Negro there. After two weeks of hardship, exhausted they
reached Cincinnati. There they were refreshed and carried 30 miles on
the way in a wagon. They directed themselves then toward the Scioto,
where they were told they would strike the military road of General
Hull, opened when he was operating against Detroit.
They set out, not knowing that the way lay through a wilderness of
howling wolves and, not taking sufficient food, they did not pass
homes from which they could purchase supplies on the way. They did not
go far before his wife fainted, but she was soon resuscitated.
Finally, they saw in the distance persons whose presence seemed to be
the dark foreboding of disaster, but the fugitives pressed on. They
proved to be Indians, who, when they saw the blacks, ran away yelping.
This excited the fugitives, as they thought the Indians were yelling
to secure the cooperation of a larger number to massacre them. Farther
on they saw other Indians standing behind trees hiding. After passing
through such trials as these for some time they came to an Indian
village, the dwellers of which, after some fear and hesitation,
welcomed them, supplied their wants and gave them a comfortable wigwam
for the night. They were then informed that they were about
twenty-five miles from the lakes. After experiencing some difficulty
in fording a dangerous stream and spending another night in the woods
they saw the houses on the outskirts; of Sandusky.
Using good judgment, however, Henson did not go into the village at
once. When about a mile from the lake, He hid his family in the woods
and then proceeded to approach the town. Soon he observed on the left
side of the town a house from which a number of men were taking
something to a vessel. Approaching them immediately he was asked
whether or not he desired to work. He promptly replied in the
affirmative and it was not long before he was assisting them in
loading corn. He soon contrived to get in line next to the only Negro
there engaged and communicated to him his plans.[4]
He told the captain, who called Henson aside and agreed to assist him
in getting to Buffalo, the boat's destination, where the fugitives
would find friends. It was agreed that the vessel should leave the
landing and that a small boat should take the fugitives aboard at
night, as there were Kentucky spies in Sandusky that might apprehend
them. Henson said he watched the vessel leave the landing and then
lower a boat for the shore and in a few minutes his black friend and
two sailors landed and went with him to get his family. Thinking that
he had been captured his wife had grown despondent and had moved from
the spot where he left her. With a little difficulty, he found her,
but when she saw him approaching with those men, she was still more
frightened. She was reassured, however, and soon they were received on
board in the midst of hearty cheers. They arrived at Buffalo the next
evening too late to cross the river. The following morning they were
brought to Burnham and went on the ferry boat to Waterloo. The good
Captain Burnham paid the passage money and gave Henson a dollar
beside. They arrived in Canada on the 28th day of October, 1830.
Describing his exultation Henson said: "I threw myself on the ground,
rolled in the sand, seized handfuls of it and kissed them, and danced
round till, in the eyes of several who were present, I passed for a
madman. 'He's some crazy fellow,' said a Colonel Warren, who happened
to be there. 'O, no, master! don't you know? I'm free!' He burst into
a shout of laughter. 'Well I never knew freedom make a man roll in the
sand in such a fashion,' Still I could not control myself. I hugged
and kissed my wife and children, and, until the first exuberant burst
of feeling was over, went on as before."
He soon found employment there with one Mr. Hibbard, whom he served
three years and was lodged in a cabin better than that in Kentucky.
His family, however, had been so exposed that during the first winter
they almost died of sickness, but his employer was kind to him. Mr.
Hibbard taught Henson's son Tom, then twelve years of age. Tom's
achievements were soon such that instead of reading the Bible to his
father to assist him in preaching he taught his father to read.
Henson then entered the service of one Mr. Risely, who had experienced
more elevation of mind than Mr. Hibbard. With this advantage Henson
not only realized more fully than ever the ignorance in which he
lived, but became interested in the elevation of his people there, who
had been content with the mere making a livelihood rather than solving
the economic problems of freedom. A good many, thereafter, agreed to
invest their savings in land. In this they had the cooperation of Mr.
Risely. Henson set out, therefore, in 1834 to explore the country and
finally selected a place for a settlement to the east of Lake St.
Clair and Detroit river later called Colchester.
Henson thereafter directed his attention to those whom he had left in
bondage. If he felt any compunction of conscience for having conducted
the party of Maryland slaves through a free State without making an
effort to free them, he made up for that in later years. Addressing an
audience of Negroes some years later at Fort Erie, Pennsylvania, he
took occasion to remind them of their duty to assist in the
emancipation of their fellowmen in the South. In the audience was a
young man named James Lightfoot, who had fled from a plantation near
Maysville, Kentucky. Seeing his duty as never before, he approached
Father Henson to arrange for the rescue of his enslaved kinsmen.
Knowing the agony in which he was, Henson undertook the perilous task
of bringing them to Canada. Leaving his family alone he traveled on
foot through New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio into Kentucky. He had
little difficulty in finding the Lightfoots. On presenting them a
small token of the loved one, who, they were told, had gone to the
land of freedom, they exhibited no little excitement. Unfortunately,
however, Lightfoot's parents were so far advanced in years and his
sisters had so many children that they could not travel. As the young
men, who could have gone, were not anxious to be separated from their
loved ones, all declined the invitation to make this effort for
freedom at that time, promising to undertake it a year thereafter, if
Henson returned for them.
Henson agreed to do so and in the meantime went forty or fifty miles
into Bourbon County in the interior of Kentucky in quest of a large
party of Negroes who were said to be ready to escape. After a search
for about a week he discovered that there were about thirty fugitives
collected from various States. With them he started on the return trip
to Canada, traveling by night and resting by day. They contrived to
cross the Ohio river and reached Cincinnati in three days. There they
were assisted and directed to Richmond, Indiana, a settlement of
Quakers, who helped them on their way. After a difficult journey of
two weeks they reached Toledo and took passage for Canada, which they
reached in safety.
Henson then remained on his farm in Canada some months, but when the
appointed time for the delivery of the enslaved kinsmen of James
Lightfoot arrived, he set out again for Kentucky. He passed through
Lancaster, Ohio, where the people were very much excited over a
meteoric shower, thinking that the day of judgment had come. Henson
thought so too, but believing that he was promoting a righteous cause,
he kept on. On arriving at Portsmouth on the Ohio, he narrowly escaped
being detected by Kentuckians in the town. He resorted to the
stratagem of binding his head with dried leaves in a cloth and
pretended to be so seriously afflicted that he could not speak.
Arriving at Maysville, he had little difficulty in finding the slaves
whom he was seeking. The second person whom he met was Jefferson
Lightfoot, the brother of James Lightfoot for whom Henson was making
this trip. Saturday night, as usual, was set as the time for the
execution of this affair, for the reason that they would not be missed
until Monday and would, therefore, have a day ahead. They started from
Maysville in a boat, hoping to reach Cincinnati before daylight, but
the boat sprang a leak and the party narrowly escaped being drowned.
They procured another boat, however, and got within ten miles of
Cincinnati before daylight. To avoid being detected, they abandoned
the boat and proceeded to walk to Cincinnati, but faced another
difficulty when they reached the Miami, which at that point was too
deep to be forded. But in going up the river seeking a shallow place
they were seemingly led providentially by a cow that waded across
before them. As the weather was cold and they were in a state of
perspiration on wading through, the youngest Lightfoot was seized with
serious contractions, but recovered after receiving such ministrations
as could be given on the way. They were assisted in Cincinnati and the
next day started on their journey to Canada. They had not gone far
before the young Lightfoot became so seriously ill that he had to be
carried on a litter, and this became so irksome that he himself begged
to be left in the wilderness to die alone rather than handicap the
whole party with such good prospects for freedom. With considerable
reluctance, they acceded to his request, and sad indeed was the
parting. But before they had gone more than two miles on their journey
one of the brothers of the sick man suddenly decided to return, as he
could not suffer to have his brother die thus in the wilderness, and
be devoured by wolves. They returned and found the young man seemingly
in a dying condition. They at once decided to resume their journey and
had not gone far before they saw a Quaker whose _thee_ and _thou_ led
them to believe that he was their friend. They then told him their
story, which was sufficient. He immediately returned home, taking them
with him. The fugitives remained there for the night and arranged for
the boy to remain with the Quaker until he should recover. They were
then provided with a sack of biscuit and a supply of meat, with which
they set out again for Canada. After proceeding a little further they
met a white man, who became helpful to them in escaping the slave
hunters who were then on their trail. This man while working for an
employer who undertook to punish him had used violence and had to run
off. The party, knowing the increasing danger of capture, walked all
night, trying to cover the distance of forty miles. At daybreak they
reached a wayside tavern near Lake Erie and ordered breakfast. While
the meal was in preparation they quickly fell asleep. Just as the
breakfast was ready, however, Henson had the peculiar presentiment
that some danger was near and that he should at once leave the house.
After experiencing some difficulty in persuading the fugitives to
leave the tavern quickly they agreed to follow his orders. They had
hardly left the tavern when they heard the tramping of the horses of
the slave hunters. They hid themselves in some bushes nearby which
overlooked the road. The Lightfoots quickly recognized the slave
hunters and whispered their names to Henson as they passed by. This
was the critical moment of their lives. Had they remained in the house
a few minutes longer they would have been apprehended. Their white
friend proceeded to the door in advance of the landlord and when asked
as to whether he had seen any slaves said that he had, that there were
six of them and that they had gone toward Detroit. The slave-hunters
at once set out in that direction. The fugitives returned to the
house, devoured their breakfast immediately and secured the assistance
of the landlord, who hearing their piteous story agreed to take them
in his boat to Canada. In the language of Henson, "Their bosoms were
swelling with inexpressible joy as they mounted the seats of the boat,
ready, eager, to spring forward, that they might touch the soil of the
freeman. And when they reached the shore, they danced and wept for joy
and kissed the earth on which they first stepped, no longer _slaves_
but _freemen_."[5]
Within a short time thereafter the boy whom they had left in dying
condition on the way reached them on the free soil of Canada in good
health. And Frank Taylor, the master of these fugitives, on recovering
from an attack of insanity which apparently resulted from the loss of
these slaves was persuaded by his friends to free the remaining
members of the Lightfoot family, an act which he finally performed,
enabling them after a few years to join their loved ones beyond the
borders of the land of the slave. In this way Henson became
instrumental in effecting the escape of as many as one hundred and
eighteen slaves.[6]
The next important work was the establishment of the British American
Manual Labor Institute in connection with Reverend Hiram Wilson. After
working out a tentative plan, Wilson wrote James O. Fuller, residing
in the State of New York, and interested him in the free Negroes of
Canada West. On a trip to England Mr. Fuller raised $1,500 for this
purpose. A convention of the leading refugees in Canada West was then
called to decide exactly how this money should be spent. Henson urged
that it be appropriated to the establishment of a manual labor school,
where children could be taught the elements of knowledge which are
usually the courses of a grammar school; and where the boys could be
given, in addition, the practice of some mechanic art and the girls
could be instructed in those domestic arts which are the proper
occupations of their sex. Such a school he though would so equip the
Negro youth as to enable him to take over much of the work then being
done by white teachers. This was then necessary, owing to the
prejudice arising against the coeducation of the whites and blacks and
the stigma attached to teachers of Negroes. For this purpose two
hundred acres of land were bought on the river Sydenham. In 1842 the
school was established at Dawn, to which Henson moved with his family.
Henson traveled in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine in
the interest of the institution and obtained many gifts, especially
from Boston, the liberal people of which gave him sufficient funds to
maintain it some time.
In connection with this school there was established a saw-mill, the
building and the equipment of which was secured by Henson also from
philanthropists in Boston. These gentlemen were Rev. Ephraim Peabody,
Amos Lawrence, H. Ingersoll Bowditch, and Samuel Elliot. Henson then
proceeded to have walnut sawed in Canada and shipped to Boston. He
sold his first eighty thousand feet to Jonas Chickering, at forty-five
dollars a thousand. The second cargo was shipped to Boston via the St.
Lawrence and brought Henson a handsome profit. This business not only
became profitable to the persons directly interested in it but proved
to be an asset of the whole section.
In the course of time, however, the institution became heavily
indebted and some means of relief had to be found. At a meeting of the
trustees it was decided to separate the management of the mill from
that of the school. It was easy to find some one to take over the
school, but few dared to think of assuming the management of the mill,
which was indebted to the amount of seven thousand five hundred
dollars. Henson accepted the management of the latter on the condition
that Peter B. Smith would assume an equal share of the responsibility.
Henson then proceeded to England to raise funds to pay the debts of
the mill. Well supplied with letters of recommendation from some of
the most prominent men in the United States, he easily connected with
men of the same class in England. But before he could raise more than
seventeen hundred dollars, an enemy, jealous of his success,
circulated through the press the report that he was an imposter and
was not authorized to solicit funds for any such purpose.[7] This, of
course, frustrated his plans, but the English people were kind to him.
They sent an agent, John Scobell, to Canada to inquire into the
matter, Henson accompanying him. A thorough investigation of the
affairs of the institution was made and the charges were repudiated.
The person who circulated them even denied that he had done so. Upon
returning to England Mr. Scobell informed Henson that should he ever
desire to return to England, he would find in the hands of Amos
Lawrence, of Boston, a draft to cover his expenses. Henson did return
in 1851 and raised sufficient money to cancel the entire indebtedness
of the institution. He was compelled to return to Canada soon after
his arrival, however, on account of the fatal illness of his wife, who
passed away in 1852.
How Father Henson claimed to be the original Uncle Tom of Mrs. Stowe's
immortal story is more than interesting. Laboring in the anti-slavery
cause, Henson traveled in Canada and New England, where he was
welcomed to the pulpits of ministers of all denominations. Once when
he was in the vicinity of Andover, Massachusetts, Mrs. Stowe sent for
him and his traveling companion, Mr. George Clarke, a white gentleman
promoting the abolition of slavery by singing at anti-slavery
meetings. Mrs. Stowe became deeply interested in Henson's story and
had him narrate in detail the many varied experiences of his eventful
life. He told her, moreover, about the life of the slave in several
sections and the peculiarities of many slaveholders. Soon thereafter
appeared "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Henson said that the white slaves,
George and Eliza Harris, were his particular friends. Harris's real
name was Lewis Clark, who traveled and lectured with Henson in New
England. Clark and his wife lived in Canada and finally moved to
Oberlin to educate their children. Furthermore, Henson says there was
on his plantation a clear-minded, sharp Negro girl, Dinah, who was
almost like Mrs. Stowe's Topsy and that a gentleman Mr. St. Clair
lived in his neighborhood. Bryce Litton, who broke Henson's arms and
so maimed him for life that he could never thereafter touch the top of
his head, he thought, would well represent Mrs. Stowe's cruel Legree.
It has been denied that he was this hero.
When Henson was in England he had the good fortune to exhibit at the
World's Fair there some of his beautifully polished walnut lumber,
which Mr. Jonas Chickering sent over for him. The only exhibitor of
color, he attracted attention from many, among whom was Queen
Victoria, who in passing by was saluted by Henson, which salutation
was returned. She inquired as to whether the exhibit he had charge of
was his work. At the close of the exhibition Henson received a large
quarto bound volume describing the exhibits and listing the
exhibitors, among whom was found Josiah Henson. In addition he was
awarded a bronze medal, a beautiful picture of the Queen and royal
family of life size and several other objects of interest.
While in England Henson had the privilege of meeting some of its most
distinguished citizens. He introduced himself to the thinkers of the
country when, upon hearing an eminent man from Pennsylvania tell the
Sabbath-School Union that all classes in the United States
indiscriminately enjoyed religious instruction. Henson demanded a
hearing and successfully refuted the misrepresentation. Having a
standing invitation, he dined alternately with Samuel Morley and
George Hitchcock, Esq., of St. Paul's Church Yard. Upon meeting Lord
Grey, Henson was asked by the gentleman to go to India to introduce
the culture of cotton, promising him an appointment to an office
paying a handsome salary. Through Samuel Guerney, Henson had a long
interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was so impressed with
Henson's bearing and culture that he inquired as to the university
from which he was graduated. Henson replied, _The University of
Adversity_. After listening to Henson's experiences for more than an
hour he followed him to the door and begged him to come to see him
again. He then attended a large picnic of Sabbath-School teachers on
the grounds of Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister of England.
Sitting down to dinner, Henson was given the seat of honor at the head
of the table with such guests as Reverend William Brock, Honorable
Samuel M. Peto and Mr. Bess.
Near the end of his career Henson had many things to trouble him. The
divided management of the British American Manual Labor Institute and
the saw-mill proved a failure. The trustees who got control of it
promised to make something new of it but did not administer the
affairs successfully and they were involved in law suits there with
the Negroes, who endeavored to obtain control of it. It finally
failed, despite the fact that the court of chancery appointed a new
board of trustees and granted a bill to incorporate the institution as
Wilberforce University, which existed a few years.
Henson showed his patriotism in serving as captain to the second Essex
company of colored volunteers in the Canadian Rebellion, going to the
aid of the government which gave them asylum from slavery. His company
held Fort Maiden from Christmas until the following May and also took
the schooner _Ann_ with three hundred arms and two cannons, musketry
and provisions for the rebel troops. They held the fort until they
were relieved by the colonel of the 44th regiment from England. Then
came the Civil War. Henson was too old to go, but his relatives
enlisted. He was charged with having violated the foreign enlistment
act and was arrested and acquitted after some harrowing experiences.
Henson made a third trip to England near the close of his career. Many
of his friends had passed away, but he met his old supporter, Samuel
Morley. He made the acquaintance also of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton
Hart, R. C. L. Bevan, and Professor Fowler. But he was then the hero
of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The English people had read of him. They then
wanted to see him. He spoke at the Victoria Park Tabernacle and held
in London a farewell meeting in Spurgeon's Tabernacle. The buildings
were thronged to their utmost capacity and eager crowds on the outside
made desperate efforts to see him. He was then called to Scotland that
the people farther north might also see this hero. Just as Henson
reached Edinburgh the crowning honor of his life was to come. He
received a telegram from Queen Victoria inviting him to visit her the
following day. After addressing an unusually large audience, Henson
proceeded immediately to London. The next day he and his wife were
dined by a group of distinguished gentlemen and were then taken to
Windsor Castle, where they were presented to Queen Victoria. Her
majesty informed him that he had known of him ever since she was a
little girl. She expressed her surprise at seeing him look so
different from what she had imagined he would. She briefly discussed
with him the state of affairs in Canada, and in bidding him and his
wife farewell expressed her wish for his continued prosperity, gave
him a token of her respect and esteem, consisting of a full length
cabinet photograph of herself in an elegant easel frame of gold.
On his return to the United States Henson visited the old plantation
in Montgomery County near Rockville, Maryland, finding his old
master's wife still living. He then proceeded to Washington to see
again the old haunts which he frequented when serving as the market
man of his plantation. While in the National Capital he went to the
White House to call on his Excellency President Hayes, who chatted
with him about his trip across the sea while Mrs. Hayes showed
Henson's wife through the executive mansion. When he left the
President extended him a cordial invitation to call to see him again.
This was the last thing of note in his life. He returned to his home
in Canada and resumed the best he could the work he was prosecuting,
but old age and sickness overtook him and he passed away in 1881 in
the ninety-second year of his life.
W. B. HARTGROVE
FOOTNOTES:
[1] On account of ill health Mr. W. B. Hartgrove, who was preparing
this article, had to turn over his unfinished manuscript to the
editor, who completed it. The story is based on the "_Life of Josiah
Henson_," "_Father Henson's Story of His Own Life_" and "_Uncle Tom's
Story of His Life_."--THE EDITOR.
[2] Henson, "_Uncle Tom's Story of his Life_," p. 15.
[3] Henson, "_Uncle Tom's own Story of his Life_," p. 53.
[4] Henson gives this interesting conversation:
"How far is it to Canada?" He gave me a peculiar look, and in a minute
I saw he knew all. "Want to go to Canada? Come along with us, then.
Our captain's a fine fellow. We're going to Buffalo." "Buffalo; how
far is that from Canada?" "Don't you know, man? Just across the
river." I now opened my mind frankly to him, and told him about my
wife and children. "I'll speak to the captain," said he. He did so,
and in a moment the captain took me aside, and said, "The Doctor says
you want to go to Buffalo with your family." "Yes, sir." "Well why not
go with me?" was his frank reply. "Doctor says you've got a family."
"Yes, sir." "Where do you stop?" "About a mile back." "How long have
you been here." "No time," I answered, after a moment's hesitation.
"Come, my good fellow, tell us all about it. You're running away,
ain't you?" Henson saw that he was a friend, and opened his heart to
him. "How long will it take you to get ready?" "Be here in half an
hour, sir." "Well go along and get them." Off I started; but, before I
had run fifty feet, he called me back. "Stop," said he; "you go on
getting the grain in. When we get off, I'll lay to over opposite that
island, and send a boat back. There's a lot of regular nigger-catchers
in the town below, and they might suspect if you brought your party
out of the bush by daylight." I worked away with a will. Soon the two
or three hundred bushels of corn were aboard, the hatches fastened
down, the anchor raised, and the sails hoisted. I watched the vessel
with intense interest as she left her moorings. Away she went before
the free breeze. Already she seemed beyond the spot at which the
captain agreed to lay to, and still she flew along. My heart sank
within me; so near deliverance, and again to have my hopes blasted,
again to be cast on my own resources. I felt that they had been making
a mock of my misery. The sun had sunk to rest, and the purple and gold
of the west were fading away into gray. Suddenly, however, as I gazed
with weary heart the vessel swung round into the wind, the sails
flapped, and she stood motionless. A moment more, and a boat was
lowered from her stern, and with steady stroke made for the point at
which I stood. I felt that my hour of release had come. On she came,
and in ten minutes she rode up handsomely on the beach. My black
friend and two sailors jumped out, and we started on at once for my
wife and children. To my horror, they were gone from the place where I
left them. Overpowered with fear, I supposed they had been found and
carried off. There was no time to lose, and the men told me I would
have to go alone. Just at the point of despair, however, I stumbled on
one of the children. My wife it seemed, alarmed at my long absence,
had given up all for lost, and supposed I had fallen into the hands of
the enemy. When she heard my voice, mingled with those of the others,
she thought my captors were leading me back to make me discover my
family, and in the extremity of her terror she had tried to hide
herself. I had hard work to satisfy her. Our long habits of
concealment and anxiety had rendered her suspicious of every one; and
her agitation was so great that for a time she was incapable of
understanding what I said, and went on in a sort of paroxysm of
distress and fear. This, however, was soon over, and the kindness of
my companions did much to facilitate the matter."--Father Henson's
Story of his own Life, p. 121.
[5] Henson, "_Uncle Tom's Story of his Life_," p. 162.
[6] Years thereafter when taking dinner with a distinguished gentleman
in London the thought of enjoying such privileges while his only
brother was in slavery dawned suddenly and impressed itself so
forcefully upon him that he immediately arose from the table, unable
to eat. He soon returned to America and at once proceeded to devise
means to free his brother. Mr. William Chaplain, of New York, had
repeatedly urged him to flee by way of the underground railroad, but
he was so demoralized and stultified by slavery that he would not make
an effort. Mr. Chaplain made a second effort to induce him to escape
but he still refused. Henson finally arranged to sell the narrative of
his life to secure funds for his liberation. The book sold well in New
England and the requisite four hundred dollars being raised his
brother was freed and enabled to join him in Canada.--Father Henson's
_Story of his own Life_, pp. 209-212.
[7] _Liberator_, April 11, 1851.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING AND THE NEGRO
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a poetic artist who was intensely
concerned with the large human movements of the world and the age into
which she was thrown. Her whole life was one great heart-throb. While
the condition of her health and the nature of her early training were
such as to cultivate her rather bookish and romantic temperament, she
followed with eagerness the great social reforms in England in the
reign of William IV and the early years of Victoria; and _The Cry of
the Children_ and _The Cry of the Human_ indicated what was to be one
of her chief lines of interest. In her later years she threw herself
heart and soul into the cause of Italian independence and unity,
welcoming Napoleon III as a benefactor. Her political judgment was not
always sound: her distinguished husband could not possibly follow her
in her admiration for Napoleon, whom he regarded as to some extent at
least a charlatan, and Cavour simply represented his countrymen in his
amazement and chagrin at the terms of the Peace of Villafranca;
nevertheless the great heart of Elizabeth Barrett Browning was ever
moved by the demands of liberty, whether the immediate impulse was a
child in the sweatshops of England, an Italian wishing to be free of
Austria, or the exiled Victor Hugo, and there was no exaggeration in
the tribute placed on the wall of Casa Guidi after her death:
Qui scrisse e mori
Elizabetta Barrett Browning
che in cuore di donna conciliava
scienza di dotto e spirito di poeta
e fece del suo verso aureo anello
fra Italia e Inghilterra
pone questa lapide
Firenze grata
1861[8]
To such a woman the Negro, held in slavery in a great free republic,
made a ready appeal. The first concrete connection, however, was one
directly affecting the fortunes of the Barrett family. For some years
Mr. Barrett had made his home at a beautiful estate in Herefordshire
known as Hope End. He had inherited from his maternal grandfather a
large estate in Jamaica, where the families of both his parents had
been established for two or three generations. The abolition of
slavery in the British colonies in 1833 inflicted great financial
embarrassment upon him, as a result of which he was forced to sell
Hope End and to remove his family, first to Sidmouth in Devonshire,
and subsequently to London. Elizabeth Barrett foreshadowed this change
of fortunes in a letter to her friend Mrs. Martin dated Sidmouth, May
27, 1833:
The West Indians are irreparably ruined if the Bill passes. Papa
says that in the case of its passing, nobody in his senses would
think of even attempting the culture of sugar, and that they had
better hang weights to the sides of the island of Jamaica and
sink it at once.[9]
In September of the same year she wrote from Sidmouth to the same
friend as follows:
Of course you know that the late Bill has ruined the West
Indians. That is settled. The consternation here is very great.
Nevertheless I am glad, and always shall be, that the Negroes
are--virtually--free.[10]
It is some years before we find another reference so definite. Miss
Barrett in the meantime became Mrs. Browning and under the inspiration
of love and Italy gave herself anew to her work. The feeling for
liberty was constantly with her, as was to be seen from _Casa Guidi
Windows_ and _Poems before Congress_. About 1855, when she was on a
visit to England, through the work of Daniel D. Home, a notorious
American exponent of spiritualism, Mrs. Browning became interested in
the current fad, and gave to it vastly more serious attention than
most other initiates. Browning himself, while patient, was intolerably
irritated with those whom he regarded as imposing on his wife's
credulity, and delivered himself on the subject in _Mr. Sludge, 'the
Medium_.' Spiritualism, however, was a topic of never-failing interest
between Mrs. Browning and her American friend, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
whom she entertained in Italy. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ made a profound
impression upon her. In 1853 this book was still in the great flush of
its first success. On April 12, 1853, Mrs. Browning wrote from
Florence to Mrs. Jameson as follows:
Not read Mrs. Stowe's book! _But you must_. Her book is quite a
sign of the times, and has otherwise and intrinsically
considerable power. For myself, I rejoice in the success, both as
a woman and a human being. Oh, and is it possible that you think
a woman has no business with questions like the question of
slavery? Then she had better use a pen no more. She had better
subside into slavery and concubinage herself, I think, as in the
times of old, shut herself up with the Penelopes in the "women's
apartment," and take no rank among thinkers and speakers.
Certainly you are not in earnest in these things. A difficult
question--yes! All virtue is difficult. England found it
difficult. France found it difficult. But we did not make
ourselves an armchair of our sins. As for America, I honor
America in much; but I would not be an American for the world
while she wears that shameful scar upon her brow. The address of
the new president[11] exasperates me. Observe, I am an
abolitionist, not to the fanatical degree, because I hold that
compensation should be given by the North to the South, as in
England. The states should unite in buying off this national
disgrace.[12]
Under date Florence, December 11, 1854, Mrs. Browning wrote to Miss
Mitford as follows:
I am reading now Mrs. Stowe's _Sunny Memories_, and like the
naturalness and simplicity of the book much, in spite of the
provincialism of the tone of mind and education, and the really
wretched writing. It's quite wonderful that a woman who has
written a book to make the world ring should write so
abominably.[13]
More and more as the Civil War approached was Mrs. Browning depressed
by the thought of the impending conflict. Between June 7, 1860, and
July 25, 1861, she contributed to the recently established
_Independent_ eleven poems, chiefly on subjects of Italian liberty.
Sometimes, however, especially in the letters accompanying her poems,
she touched on themes somewhat closer to the American people. For the
issue of March 21, 1861, she wrote to the editor as follows:
My partiality for frenzies is not so absorbing, believe me, as to
exclude very painful consideration on the dissolution of your
great Union. But my serious fear has been, and is, not for the
dissolution of the body but the death of the soul--not of a
rupture of states and civil war, but at reconciliation and peace
at the expense of a deadly compromise of principle. Nothing will
destroy the Republic but what corrupts its conscience and
disturbs its fame--for the stain upon the honor must come off
upon the flag. _If, on the other hand, the North stands fast on
the moral ground, no glory will be like your glory_.... What
surprises me is that the slaves don't rise.
On this great subject Mrs. Browning found her husband in full sympathy
with her. Browning himself declared in a letter to an American,
September 11, 1861:
I have lost the explanation of American affairs, but I assure you
of my belief in the justice and my confidence in the triumph of
the great cause. For the righteousness of the principle I want no
information. God prosper it and its defenders.[14]
Two poems by Mrs. Browning at least have to do directly with the Negro
and American affairs. One was _A Curse for a Nation_ contributed to
the _Poems before Congress_ volume. The poet begins somewhat
self-consciously:
I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said "Write!
Write a Nation's curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea."
She protests her unwillingness to execute such a commission, for, she
says,
I am bound by gratitude
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.
The angel, however, beats down this unwillingness and the curse
follows, the second stanza reading:
Because yourselves are standing straight
In the state
Of Freedom's foremost acolyte,
Yet keep calm footing all the time
On writhing bond-slaves,--for this crime
This is the curse. Write.
At best, however, _A Curse for a Nation_ can hardly help impressing
one as a little forced. In rather higher poetic vein is the other
poem, _The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point_. This was contributed to
_The Liberty Bell_, a publication issued by the Boston Anti-Slavery
Bazar in 1848. Mrs. Browning feared that the poem might be "too
ferocious for the Americans to publish." The composition is
undoubtedly a strong one. It undertakes to give the story of a young
Negro woman who was bound in slavery, whose lover was crushed before
her face, who was forced to submit to personal violation, who killed
her child that so much reminded her of her white master's face, and
who at last at Pilgrim's Point defied her pursuers. With unusual
earnestness the poet has entered sympathetically into the subject. The
following stanzas are typical:
But _we_ who are dark, we are dark
Ah God, we have no stars!
About our souls in care and cark
Our blackness shuts like prison-bars;
The poor souls crouch so far behind
That never a comfort can they find
By reaching through the prison-bars.
* * * * *
Why, in that single glance I had
Of my child's face, ... I tell you all,
I saw a look that made me mad
The _master's_ look, that used to fall
On my soul like his lash ... or worse
And so, to save it from my curse,
I twisted it round in my shawl.
* * * * *
From the white man's house, and the black man's hut,
I carried the little body on;
The forest's arm did round us shut,
And silence through the trees did run:
They asked no question as I went,
They stood too high for astonishment,
They could see God sit on his throne.
* * * * *
(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift!--)
I wish you who stand there five abreast,
Each, for his own wife's joy and gift,
A little corpse as safely at rest
As mine in the mangoes: Yes, but _she_
My keep live babies on her knee,
And sing the song she likes the best.
In such a review as this of the connections between Mrs. Browning and
the Negro one can not help coming face to face with the question
whether her famous husband was not himself connected by blood with the
Negro race. The strain is hardly so pronounced as in men like
Alexandre Dumas or Leigh Hunt, and as in the case of Alexander
Hamilton, the point still seems to be waiting for final proof. The
assertion is persistent, however, and there can be little doubt that
such is the case. The standard life of Browning,[15] after wrestling
in vain with the problem, dismisses it as follows:
Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a
conviction, that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a
Creole in the strict sense of the term, that of a person born of
white parents in the West Indies, and that an unmistakable dash
of dark blood passed from her to her son and grandson. Such an
occurrence was, on the face of it, not impossible, and would be
absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I think I may add, to
that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and his father
were what we know them, and if Negro blood had any part in their
composition, it was no worse for them, and so much the better for
the Negro.
Aside from this last point, from the evidence that has been given,
while this of course has its limitations, we may safely assert that
with her large humanity and her enthusiasm for liberty, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning was one of the sturdiest defenders in England of the
cause of the American Negro at the time of the beginning of the Civil
War. It is to be regretted that she did not live to read the
Emancipation Proclamation and to see the Negro started on an era of
self-reliance and progress.
BENJAMIN BRAWLEY
FOOTNOTES:
[8] For the inscription we are indebted to the Cambridge edition of
the poems of Mrs. Browning, edited by Harriet Waters Preston, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston, p. xii. Translation: Here wrote and died Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, who united to a woman's heart the learning of a
savant and the inspiration of a poet, and made her verse a golden link
between Italy and England. This tablet was set by grateful Florence in
1861.
[9] _The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning_, edited by Frederic G.
Kenton, 2 vols., Macmillan, New York and London, 1898. Vol. I, p. 21.
[10] _Letters_, I, 23.
[11] _I. e._, Franklin Pierce.
[12] _Letters_, II, 110.
[13] _Letters_, II, 183.
[14] Quoted from _Browning Society Papers_, Part XII, by Elizabeth
Porter Gould in _The Brownings and America_, p. 55.
[15] Mrs. Sutherland Orr, _Life and Letters of Robert Browning_. 2
vols. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1891. Vol. I, p. 8.
PALMARES: THE NEGRO NUMANTIA
One of the most glorious achievements in the history of the Iberian
Peninsula was the long and desperate defence of Numantia against the
Roman legionaries sent to effect the destruction of the city. When the
beleaguered inhabitants could no longer maintain themselves, owing to
the shortage of food supplies, they burned the city, and those who
were not killed in battle with the Romans committed suicide. Scipio
Æmilianus, the Roman leader, entered Numantia to find nothing but
burning embers and piles of corpses.
This incident has an almost exact parallel in the history of
Brazil--only this time the heroes were Negroes, defending the capital
of one of the earliest and one of the strangest Negro republics in the
history of the world. The Portuguese, who were the first to introduce
Negro slavery into Europe, did not long delay in carrying the
institution to their colony of Brazil. It was in 1574 that the first
slave ship reached there. Thereafter, great numbers of Negroes were
brought, especially to northern Brazil, in the equatorial belt, to
work in the profitable sugar fields. No region of the Americas was so
accessible to the slave trade, for the Brazilian coast juts out into
the Atlantic Ocean directly opposite the Gulf of Guinea in Africa,
whence most of the slaves were procured. It is profitless here to go
into the question of the treatment of the slaves by their Portuguese
masters. Some were badly treated, and took the chance of flight to the
interior forest lands, rather than submit any longer. Various causes
prompted yet others to escape from the colonial plantations. Thus many
a _quilombo_, or Negro village of the forest, was formed. By far the
most famous of these was the _quilombo_ of Palmares, whose history is
the subject of this article.
In 1650, forty determined Negroes of the province of Pernambuco, all
of them natives of Guinea, rose against their masters, taking as much
as they could in the way of arms and provisions, and fled to the
neighboring forest. There they founded a _quilombo_ on the site of a
well-known Negro village of earlier days, which the Dutch had
destroyed. The tale of their escape was told throughout the province,
with the result that it was not long before the population of the new
_quilombo_ was greatly increased. Slaves and freemen were eager to
join their brethren in the forest. It seemed prudent, however, to go
farther away from the white settlements, lest the very strength of the
Negro town should invite annihilation or re-enslavement by the
planters. Thus it was that the inland site of Palmares, not far from
present-day Anadia, was chosen. A town was founded, and all seemed
well except for one thing--an essential to permanence was lacking, for
there were no women. A detachment of Negroes was sent on the romantic
mission of procuring wives for the colony. This party marched to the
nearest plantations, and, without stopping to discriminate, took all
the women it could find, black, mulatto, and white. Palmares was now
on a secure footing indeed.
At first, the inhabitants lived by a species of banditry, robbing the
whites whenever they could. Gradually, a more settled type of life
developed. The Negroes began to engage in agriculture, and at length
entered into something approximating peaceful relations with the
Portuguese settlements. Trade took the place of warfare, although fear
of the overgrown _quilombo_ was perhaps as much the motive on the part
of the whites as the desire for profits. A rustic republic of an
admirable type was formed for the maintenance of internal order and
external safety. Combining republican and monarchical features, they
elected a chief, or king, called the _Zombe_, who ruled with absolute
authority during the term of his life. The right of candidacy was
restricted to a group recognized as composing the bravest men of the
community. Any man in the state might aspire to this dignity, provided
he had Negro blood in his veins. There were other officials, both of a
military and of a civil character. In the interests of good order,
the _Zombes_ made laws imposing the death penalty for murder,
adultery, and robbery. Slavery existed, and in this respect there was
a curious custom. Every Negro who had won his freedom from the white
man, by whatever method, as for example by a successful flight to
Palmares, remained a free man. Those who were captured while in a
state of slavery, however, became slaves in Palmares. Thus the reward
of freedom was offered to those who should escape from the planters,
and a punishment was held out to those who would not, or could not, do
so. In course of time, the Negro republic expanded until it included a
number of towns. Palmares alone is said to have had a population of
20,000, and the number of fighting men in the whole republic was some
10,000. The capital city, Palmares, was surrounded by wooden walls,
made of the trunks of large trees. The city was entered by means of
three huge gates, on the tops of which were great platforms, always
well guarded.
For nearly half a century the little republic prospered. It was
perhaps only natural that the Portuguese settlers should wish to
destroy it, for it represented an alien force and an ever present
danger, certainly so far as their profits from the use of slave labor
went. At any rate, in the year 1696, Governor Caetano de Mello of
Pernambuco decided upon an expedition against Palmares. A strong force
was sent, but it was met by the Negroes and totally defeated. A
veritable army of some 7,000 men was now gathered, and placed under
the command of a competent soldier named Bernardo Vieira. This time,
the Portuguese troops were well provided with artillery, with which
the Negro republic could not be expected to cope. Palmares was
reached, but it was in no mood for surrender, and it was necessary to
begin a regular siege of the city. The defence was desperate. After
the Portuguese artillery had breached the walls in three places, their
infantry attacked in force. They entered the city, but had to take it,
foot by foot. At last, the defenders came to the center of Palmares,
where a high cliff impeded further retreat. Death or surrender were
now the only alternatives. Seeing that his cause was lost beyond
repair, the _Zombe_ hurled himself over the cliff, and his action was
followed by the most distinguished of his fighting men. Some prisoners
were indeed taken, but it is perhaps a tribute to Palmares, though a
gruesome one, that they were all put to death; it was not safe to
enslave these men, despite the value of their labor. Thus passed
Palmares, the Negro Numantia, most famous and greatest of the
Brazilian _qui-lombos_.
CHARLES E. CHAPMAN
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
SLAVERY IN CALIFORNIA
Slavery in California prior to the Mexican War was slavery in the
Spanish possessions. The Spaniards began with the enslavement of
Indians and later at the advice of De las Casas changed to that of
Negroes.[16] This system was first used in the West Indies and later
extended to other colonies. It is said that about the year 1537,
Cortes fitted out at the port of Tehuantepec, several small vessels,
provided with everything required for planting a colony and sailed
north to the head of the Gulf of California, transporting four hundred
Spaniards and three hundred Negro slaves, that he had assembled for
that purpose.[17] This is the first mention of Negro slavery in
California. After the founding of the Mission of San Carlos by the
president, Father Junipero Serra, with a community of twenty-three
friars, we read that the first interment in the cemetery was that of
Ignacio Ramirez, a former mulatto slave from San Antonio, who had
money to purchase his freedom.[18] There were too a number of Negro
slaves brought to California between these periods. They came on
trading ships and with various expeditions, which they usually
deserted after reaching the State. Hittell is wrong, therefore, in
saying that the first slave in California was brought there in 1825
when the wife of Antonio José de Cot, a Spaniard, brought with her a
slave girl named Juana, fourteen years of age, from Lima to San
Francisco. He doubted even that this was the first slave in California
for the lady expressed her intention to avail herself of the first
opportunity to leave.[19]
Spain did not especially bother about Negro slavery in her Pacific
coast territory for nearly two hundred years before the coming of the
Americans. She promised by the treaty of September 30, 1817, to
abolish the slave trade October 31, 1820, in all Spanish territory. In
1821, however, certain of the northern colonies of Spain in America
established their independence as the United States of Mexico.[5]
Three years later the importation of slaves from foreign countries was
prohibited and children of slave parents were declared free.
Notwithstanding this there set in considerable emigration from the
Southern States followed by an agitation for the acquisition of Texas.
In 1827, therefore, Coahuila and Texas were organized as a State with
a law prohibiting slavery. As this, however, did not check the
immigration, President Guerro issued a decree[20] in 1829 abolishing
slavery in Mexico on the occasion of the celebration of the
independence of Mexico and in 1830 ordered a military occupation of
the State to enforce the anti-slavery measure.[4] But the aggressive
southerner ever endeavoring to extend the territory of slavery had all
but won the day in Texas. In 1836 Texas declared itself a republic
with a constitution permitting the introduction of slavery and
forbidding the residence of free Negroes without the consent of its
Congress. Then came the Mexican War resulting in the defeat of Mexico
and the cession to the United States of a vast territory of which
California was the most valuable part.
It is clear, therefore, that at the time the United States government
acquired the territory of California from Mexico, slavery had been
abolished there nearly twenty years. The pro-slavery party, however,
did not consider this action of Mexico a finality in the settlement of
the slavery question in the new possessions. When a bill providing for
the purchase of this territory was laid before the house, David
Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, after consultation with other northern
democrats, offered the following amendment:
"Provided that an express and fundamental condition to the
acquisition of any territory from the republic of Mexico by the
United States, by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated
between them, and to the use by the executive of the moneys
herein appropriated, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
shall ever exist in any part of said territory, except for crime
whereof the party shall first be duly convicted."[21]
This proviso was adopted by a vote of 83 to 64. The bill carrying this
proviso was then reported to the Senate where followed a heated debate
which lasted until adjournment, the proviso being killed in the midst
of stormy scenes in Congress.[22] This discussion showed that few
statesmen believed that slavery would be profitable in California.
They were not unlike Daniel Webster who, while speaking on the
admission of the State of Texas, said that slavery was effectually
excluded from California and New Mexico by a law even superior to that
which admits and sanctions it in Texas. He meant the law of nature.
The physiographic conditions of the country would forever exclude
African slavery there; and it needed not the application of a proviso.
If the question was then before the Senate he would not vote "to add a
prohibition--to reaffirm an ordinance of nature, nor reenact the will
of God."[23]
The coming and going of the Negro in California did not especially
interest any one until the beginning of the immigration of the
forties. The subject of slavery in California was officially called to
the attention of the inhabitants through the issuance of a
proclamation by the Commander in Chief of the District in regard to
the unlawful enslaving of the Indians. He was endeavoring to protect
them, but they were enslaved[24] in spite of his efforts. The
legislature undertook to perpetuate this system by enacting a law
permitting the enslavement of Indians, the only condition upon the
master being a bond of a small sum, that he would not abuse or cruelly
treat the slaves. Under the provision of the same law, Indians could
be arrested as vagrants and sold to the highest bidder within
twenty-four hours after the arrest, and the buyer had the privilege of
the labor for a period not exceeding four months.[25] An Indian
arrested for a violation of a law could demand a jury trial, but could
not testify in his own behalf against a white person. If found guilty
of any crime, he could either be imprisoned or whipped, the whipping
not to exceed twenty-four lashes.[26]
Later there was a steady influx of southerners and their Negro slaves
into the territory of California, after the country was taken over by
the United States. Then came the question as to the enslavement of the
Negro. The situation became serious after the Congress of the United
States appropriated three millions of dollars for the purchase of the
new territory, and still more so after gold was discovered there.
Mexican rule ended with the cession of the territory to the United
States; and yet session after session of Congress adjourned without
giving California a territorial form of government. The question of
slavery in the newly acquired territory divided Congress so that they
could not decide the issue. Southern newspapers were advertising for
slave-owners to send names and the number of slaves they were taking
to California to found a _New Colony_.[27]
The settlers were divided. Some came because they either disliked
slavery, or were too poor to own slaves. They recognized the
possibilities for making California a free State and did not care to
be designated _Poor White Trash_ by masters who were being allowed to
fill the State with Negro slaves to constitute the basis of an
aristocracy like that in the South. There were other inhabitants in
California at the time who, being slave-owners, were southern
sympathizers. They were determined either to have slavery in
California or make a desperate effort before seeing the territory
given up as a free State.[28] It did not require very much
investigation, however, to show that the pro-slavery party was in the
minority. The editor of the _Californian_ said in May, 1848, that he
voiced the sentiments of the people in California in saying that
slavery was neither needed nor desired there. A correspondent of this
paper hoping to hold that section for free labor said: "If white labor
is too high for agriculture, laborers on contract may be brought from
China." Referring to the proposal to make the commonwealth a slave
State Buckelew said: "We have not heard one of our acquaintance in
this country advocate this measure and we are almost certain that
97-100 of the present population are opposed to it." Again it is
remarked in this paper: "We left the slave states because we did not
like to bring up a family in a miserable, can't-help-one's-self
condition," and dearly as he loved the union, he would prefer
California independent to seeing her a slave State.[29]
The lack of law and order and fear of the southern slave-owners with
their herds of Negro slaves finally led to the call of the
Constitutional Convention. The question of slavery there was not so
much debated in that body as was expected. Some excited pro-slavery
leaders were talking of an independent _Pacific Republic_. The
southern faction in the convention was led by a Mr. Gwyn, who
afterwards became a United States Senator from California, and the
northern element was ably represented by a Mr. Broderick, who later
was chosen State Senator.[30] The convention finally drafted their
constitution with a section which provided that "neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude unless for the punishment of crime shall ever be
tolerated in this state."
The pro-slavery faction in the convention was determined to have
slavery somewhere and had managed to have the eastern boundary of
California so designated that it extended as far as the Rocky
Mountains. This would have resulted in rejection by Congress, or a
division of the territory into a Northern and a Southern California,
giving the pro-slavery element a new State. The unwieldy boundary,
however, was discovered in time to have it changed, but not until
after much debate, which almost wrecked the constitution. The
California representatives elected by the convention left for
Washington, where they presented to Congress the constitution and the
petition of the California settlers asking for admission as a State.
There had never been a precedent for their act. Yet the settlers in
California felt perfectly justified, since it was their only safeguard
against the pro-slavery leaders who were bringing their slaves into
the territory.
Leaders at the national capital naturally hesitated, not knowing
whether or not the admission of California under the conditions thus
obtaining would aggravate or improve the national situation.
California, however, cared little about the national situation, as is
attested by the resolutions of 1850 to the effect: "That any attempts
by congress to interfere with the institution of slavery in any of the
territories of the United States would create just grounds of alarm
in many of the States of the union; and that such interference is
unnecessary, inexpedient, and in violation of good faith; since, when
any such territory applies for admission into the union as a state,
the people thereof alone have the right, and should be left free and
unrestrained, to decide such question for themselves." Broderick moved
the insertion of the following: "That opposition to the admission of a
state into the union with a constitution prohibiting slavery, on
account of such prohibition, is a policy wholly unjustifiable and
unstatesmanlike, and in violation of that spirit of concession and
compromise by which alone the federal constitution was adopted, and by
which alone it can be perpetuated." This amendment was adopted.[31]
After a debate of four months Congress admitted California as a free
State as one of five compromises. Jefferson Davis, however, repudiated
the idea of advantage to his section. He said: "Where is the
concession to the South? Is it in the admission, as a state, of
California, from which we have been excluded by congressional
agitation? Is it in the announcement that slavery does not and is not
to exist in the remaining territories of New Mexico and California? Is
it in denying the title of Texas to one half of her territory?" He
held that gold washing and mining was particularly adapted to slave
labor, as was agriculture that depended on irrigation.[32] The day
after the admission certain southern senators sent to that body a
_Protest_ against the injustice of the act of Congress, admitting
California as a free State. The Senate refused the clerk permission
either to read or record it. Whereupon the newspapers began publishing
articles of severe criticism and talked of dividing the Union.
Jefferson Davis went before the United States Senate and, addressing
it, called attention to these comments, adding that so much outside
criticism was doing more to divide the Union than the _Protest_ would
possibly do. Congress finally voted that the _Protest_ be
recorded.[33]
Was this to be a free State in every sense of the word? This was
the day when the slave power "was covertly grasping at the
Spanish-speaking countries beyond the Rio Grande, as it had at the
lands beyond the Sabine."[34] At first, it was not, for a good many
slaves were brought into the State. On April 1, 1850, an advertisement
appeared in the _Jackson Mississippian_ referring to _California, the
Southern Slave Colony_ and inviting citizens of slave-holding States,
wishing to go to California, to send their names, number of slaves,
time of contemplated departure, etc., to the _Southern Slave Colony_,
of Jackson, Mississippi. The design was to settle in the richest parts
of the State and to secure an uninterrupted enjoyment of slave
property. The colony was to comprise about 5,000 white persons and
10,000 slaves.
Another effort to extend slavery in this section came in the
unsuccessful filibustering expedition of the Tennessee lawyer, William
Walker, who undertook to establish to the south in Sonora, a State
with a constitution like that of Louisiana, basing his advocacy of
slavery on the lofty grounds of civilizing the blacks and liberating
the whites from manual labor. To explain the meaning of this
expedition Bancroft considers it sufficient to point out that
Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War at that time and that the Gadsden
purchase was then under consideration.[35] In 1852 Peachy of San
Joaquin introduced a resolution to allow fifty southern families to
immigrate into California with their slaves. Some of them came without
permission but on finding that they could not legally hold their
slaves, they sent a part of them back while others became free.
In 1852 the Legislature passed a rigid Fugitive Slave Law intending to
bar slavery from the State. The mischievous clause of this measure was
that all slaves who had escaped into or were brought to California
previous to the admission of the State to the Union were held to be
fugitives, and were liable to arrest under the law, although many of
them had been in the State several years, during which they had
accumulated considerable property. The pro-slavery element not only
profited by this, but the interpretation of this law by many of the
Judges enabled them to bring their slaves into the State, work them in
the mines, and return to the south and back to slavery with their
Negroes.[36]
If they did not wish the trouble of their return passage they
auctioned them off to the highest bidder. It also enabled them to
make fortunes by selling to the slaves their freedom, charging them
twice and often thrice the price he could have possibly brought on the
other side of the Rocky Mountains.[37] In certain southern counties of
the State it was unpopular to speak in behalf of the slaves. In 1855
Chase and Day, two Abolitionists of Alameda County, were ridden on a
rail, ducked and otherwise maltreated.[38] That same year expired the
Fugitive Slave Law which had been renewed from year to year to enable
slave-owners to reclaim fugitives who had sought refuge in that State
prior to its admission to the Union. Fearing that this might be
followed by other legislation hostile to their class, the Negroes held
a convention in San Francisco that year to discuss their rights, their
treatment by the white people, politics, principles and necessity of
education. The Fugitive Slave Law was not reenacted.
Many slaves, however, asserted their rights. Such was the case of
Archy, a slave brought by one Charles A. Stoval from Mississippi to
California in 1857. After hiring Archy out for some time Stoval
undertook to return him to Mississippi. Archy escaped and was arrested
as a fugitive. Stoval sued out a writ of habeas corpus for his
possession and the case came before the Supreme Court for
adjudication. Peter Burnett, formerly Governor, who had been appointed
justice of that court by Governor Johnson in 1857 and filled the
office until 1858, presided. As Burnett was a southern man, his
decision was foreshadowed. He decided that although Stoval could not
sustain the character of either a transient traveler or a visitor and
under the general law was not entitled to Archy, but he yet held that
there were circumstances connected with the particular case that might
exempt him from the operation of the rules laid down. One of the
circumstances was that Stoval was traveling for his health; another,
that he was short of means upon arrival in California; and still
another, that this was the first case of the kind. He, therefore,
ordered Archy to be turned over to Stoval. Joseph G. Baldwin, who
succeeded Burnett, characterized the decision as "giving the law to
the North and the Negro to the South."[39] After being delivered to
Stoval, Archy was taken to San Francisco, but his friends there sued
out a writ of habeas corpus for his liberation before Judge Thomas W.
Freelon, of the County of San Francisco. While this case was pending,
however, Stoval swore to a new affidavit that Archy escaped from him
in Mississippi and procured a warrant from George Pen Johnston, United
States Commissioner, for his arrest as a fugitive slave from
Mississippi. Archy was then discharged by Judge Freelon. He was
immediately rearrested and taken before George Pen Johnston, who
decided that Archy was in no sense a fugitive from Mississippi and
discharged him.[40]
The tendency to free the Negroes brought there checked the importation
of that class. The rights of the master to his slave, however, were
not easily relinquished and the institution of slavery in California
did not come to an end until 1872. Freedom, however, had to win and
the pro-slavery element had to change its policy. In 1856 and 1857
efforts were made to call a convention to change the constitution so
as to permit the importation of slaves, for with the expiration of the
Fugitive Slave Law in 1855, slave-owners who held minors had to return
them to slave States or let them go free. Since the Negroes brought
into the State could in most cases become free the pro-slavery party
then sought to get rid of the free Negro.
In his message to the legislature in 1850, Governor Burnett
recommended the exclusion of free Negroes. This was always Burnett's
hobby. He incorporated this into the laws of Oregon when he revised
them in 1844. Burnett had been brought up in the South and although he
had ceased to be a slaveholder, he could not think of living with
Negroes as freemen. The exclusion of the blacks too had a sort of
popular appeal in it. The legislature, however, was divided on the
question as to what should be done with the free Negro. A bill in
compliance with the wishes of the Governor was introduced but
defeated. Undaunted by this, however, the enemy of the free Negroes
won a victory in another quarter in enacting a law that no black or
mulatto person or Indian should be permitted to give evidence in any
action to which a white person was a party. The leaders of the Negroes
held another convention in 1856 to protest against this law. Another
bill providing for the prohibition of the immigration of free persons
of color into the State was introduced in 1858 and after much debate
put through both houses, but it never became a law. The black code, of
course, was abrogated after the Civil War.
DELILAH L. BEASLEY
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Bourne, "_Spain in America_," 271.
[17] _California Miscellany_, I, 9.
[18] Bancroft, "_History of California_," I, 175; _Place Notices_, I,
151.
[19] Hittell, "_History of California_," II, 115.
[20] Garrison, "_Westward Extension_," 26.
[21] _Cong. Globe_, 29 Cong., 2 Sess., 509.
[22] Garrison, "_Westward Extension_," 254-268, 284-314. _Cong.
Globe_, 29 Cong., 2d Sess., 178, 453, 455; 30 Cong., 1st Sess., 875,
989, 910, 1002-1005, 1062, 1081; 2d Sess., 216, 381.
[23] Tuthill, "_Hist. of California_," 312, 316.
[24] PROCLAMATION TO THE INHABITANTS OF CALIFORNIA.
It having come to the knowledge of the Commander in Chief of the
District that certain persons have been and still are imprisoning and
holding to service Indians against their will and without any legal
contract for service. It is thereby ordered that all persons so
holding or detaining Indians shall release them, and permit them to
return to their own homes. Unless they can make a contract with them
which shall be binding upon both parties. The Indian population must
not be regarded in the light of slaves, but it is deemed necessary
that the Indians within the settlement shall have employment, with the
right of choosing their own master and employment. Having made such a
choice they must abide by it, unless they can obtain permission in
writing to leave, or the Justice in their complaint shall consider
they have just cause to annull the contract and permit them to obtain
another employee. All Indians must be required to obtain service and
not be permitted to wander about the country in idleness in a
dissolute manner. If found doing so they will be liable to arrest and
punishment by labor on the public works at the direction of the
Magistrate. All officers, Civil or Military under my command are
required to execute the terms of this order and take notice of every
violation thereof.--Given at headquarters in Yerba Buena.--Signed,
John Montgomery. Sept. 15, 1846. Published for the Government of all
concerned. Washington A. Bartlett, Magistrate of San Francisco, Sept.
15, 1846.--_California Star_, Sept. 15, 1846.
[25] California Laws, 1849-50, p. 408.
[26] _Ibid._, p. 408.
[27] Bancroft, "_History of California_," VI, p. 313.
[28] _Ibid._, p. 313.
[29] _The Californian_, March 16 and Nov. 4, 1848.
[30] Bancroft, "_History of California_," p. 287.
[31] _Jour. Cal. Leg._, 1850, 372-373.
[32] _Cong. Globe_, 1849-50, App., pt. I, 149-157.
[33] Tuthill, "_History of California_," p. 320.
[34] Bancroft, "_History of California_," VI, pp. 252-253.
[35] _Ibid._, p. 595.
[36] Many Negroes were returned to slavery by the Courts. An owner of
slaves in Mississippi brought them voluntarily into California before
the adoption of the Constitution by the State. The slaves asserted
their freedom and for some months were engaged in business for
themselves. The owner under the provision of the Fugitive Slave Act of
1852 brought them before the Justice of Peace, who allowed the claim
of the owners and ordered them into his custody. The slaves then
petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus which came before the Supreme.
Court and after hearing the case the Court ordered that the writ be
dismissed and the slaves remanded to their owners.--_California
Reports_, II, 424-426.
The case of Alvin Coffey is equally as interesting. This account was
given by a lifelong friend of the subject.
Alvin Coffey was born in 1822, in Saint Louis, Missouri. He came to
California with his sick master, a Mr. Duvall, who landed in San
Francisco, September 1, 1849. They went to Sacramento, October 13,
1849. During the next eight months the slave earned for his master
$5,000, working in the mines, and by washing for the miners and mining
for himself after night, he earned $700 of his own. As the master
continued in poor health he decided to return with Alvin to Missouri
at the expiration of two years. When they reached Kansas City,
Missouri, the master sold Alvin to Nelson Tindle, first taking from
him the $5,000, earned for the master, and also the $700 earned for
himself.
Nelson Tindle took a great liking to Alvin and in a short time made
him overseer over a number of slaves. Alvin, however, longed to return
to California and, in order to earn his freedom, bought his time from
his master and took contracts to build railroads. One day Nelson
Tindle said to Alvin that he was too smart a man to be a slave and
ought to try and purchase his freedom. Whereupon Alvin told him if he
would let him return to California, he could easily earn enough money
to effect the purchase. Alvin was permitted to return to California,
and in a short time sent his master the $1,500 to pay for his freedom.
Alvin then undertook to earn the money to pay for the freedom of his
wife and daughters, who were slaves of Doctor Bassett, of Missouri. He
earned the required sum and returned for his family. After paying for
their freedom, he went with them to Canada, where he left his
daughters to be educated. He and his wife Mahalia came to California.
It cost him for the freedom of himself and family together with the
trips to and from California about $7000. See Bancroft, "_History of
California_," VI, p. 382.
[37] Some of these cases are more than interesting. Daniel Rodgers
came across the plains with his master from Little Rock, Arkansas,
worked in the mines in Sonora, California, during the day for his
master and at night for himself, earning and paying his master $1,100
for his freedom. Soon afterward the master returned with him to Little
Rock and sold him. A number of the leading white gentlemen of Little
Rock raised a sum of money, paid for his freedom and set him free.
William Pollock and wife from North Carolina came to California with
their master who located at Cold Springs, Coloma, California. He paid
$1,000 for himself and $800 for his wife. The money was earned by
washing for the miners at night and making doughnuts. They removed to
Placerville, California, and afterward earned their living as
caterers. In 1849, a slaveholder brought his slave to California. Not
wishing to take the Negro back to his native State, Alabama, he
concluded to sell him by auction. An advertisement was put in the
papers, the boy was purchased for $1,000, by Caleb T. Fay, a strong
abolitionist, who gave the boy his freedom.
A Mississippi slaveholder brought several slaves from that State and
promised to give them their freedom in two years. They all ran away
save one, Charles Bates, when they learned that they were already
free. The owner, finding mining did not pay, started east, taking
Charles with him. On the Isthmus of Panama, Charles was persuaded to
leave his master. He returned to California and to Stockton with his
true friend. On the street one day he was recognized by a party who
had lent money to Charles's master. The debtor got out an attachment
for the former slave as chattel property, and according to the State
law, the Negro was put up and sold at auction. A number of
anti-slavery men bought the boy for $750 and gave him his
freedom.--_California Reports_, I, 424-426.
[38] Bancroft, "_History of California_," VI, p. 716.
[39] Bancroft, "_History of California_," VI, p. 716.
[40] _Ibid._, VI, p. 716.
DOCUMENTS
CALIFORNIA FREEDOM PAPERS[41]
To determine the sources of the Negroes first brought into California
their treatment by the whites and the methods employed to obtain their
freedom no documents are more valuable than the manumission papers
found in the archives of that State. These throw much light also on
the personal history of Negroes, many of whom later became useful
citizens of that State.
E. H. TAYLOR
to
DENNIS AVIERY SLAVE RELEASE
TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN; This is to certify that Dennis Aviery
has been my Slave in the State of Georgia for about the term of
eight years but by virtue of money to me in hand paid he is free
and Liberated from all allegiance to my authority. Coloma
Eldorado county California Feb. 8, 1851
Witness GEORGE SOALL
STATE OF CALIFORNIA S.S.
ELDORADO CO.
On this eight day of February, A.D. 1851 personally appeared
before me the recorder of said County. E. H. Taylor, satisfactory
proved to me to be the person discribed in and who executed the
foregoing instrument of liberating his negro slave by the oath of
George Scall, a competent witness for that purpose by me duly
sworn and the said E. H. Taylor acknowledged that he executed the
same freely and voluntarily for the use and purposes therein
mentioned. In testimony the thereof, I, John A. Reichart;
Recorder for the said county have hereunto signed my name, and
affixed the seal of said office at Coloma this day of year first
above written
JOHN A. REICHART _Recorder of Eldorado county_
Filed for Recording February, 8, 1851 at 9, oclock A.M.
J. A. REICHART Recorder's office Record Book[42]
DEED OF MANUMISSION
SAMUEL GRANTHAN
to
ALECK LONG
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
ELDORADO COUNTY
Know all men by these presents that I Samuel Grantham of the
county and state aforesaid, acting by power of Attorney vested in
me by S. Oliver Grantham of St Louis, State of Missouri, acting
for and in behalf of said S. Oliver Granthan, and in
consideration of the sum of four hundred dollars to me in hand
paid the same to receive to the benefit of the said Oliver
Grantham have this day liberated, set free and fully and
effectually manumitted, Aleck Long. Heretofore a slave for
life--the lawful property of the said Thomas Granthan. The
description of said Aleck Long, being as follows to wit: about
fifty-seven years old; five feet, ten inches in height, gray hair
dark complexion with a scar on the inside of the left leg above
the ankle.--The said Aleck Long to enjoy and possess now and from
hence forth the full exercise of all rights, benefits and
privileges of a free man of color free of all or any claim to
servitude, slavery or service of the said S. A. Granthan, his
heirs, Executors, and assigns and all other persons claiming or
to claim forever.
In Testimony of this seal of Manumission, I have this day signed
my name and affixed my seal this 2nd day of March 1852.
SAMUEL A. GRANTHAN
_Attorney for State of California_
COUNTY OF ELDORADO.
Personally appeared before me William Palmer who makes oath and
says that Samuel Granthan, whose name appears in the accompanying
Seal of Manumission as a party thereto did freely voluntarily
and of his own will execute to and subscribe the same for the
uses and purpose therein contained.
Witness my hand and seal this day of March, 1852. A.D. at 4. P.M.
J. A. REICHART
_Recorder of Eldorado County California_
GAVEN D. HALL (S.S.)
_Judge of Eldorado county_
Eldorado county Recorder's office, Record Book.[43]
A. J. HOUSTIS
_County Judge of Humboldt County_[44]
FREE PAPERS OF THE SLAVE
WASHINGTON,-->from FRANKLIN STEWART
STATE OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF BUTTE--
Know all men by these presents that Franklin Stewart of the
County and State aforesaid do, for and in consideration of
seventeen years of faithful service of my slave Washington,
rendered by him in the State of Arkansas and Missouri, hereby set
free and emancipate him the said slave, his age about
thirty-three years, color slight copper and relinquish all rights
in the said slave Washington which I might be entitled to in law
or equity.
Given under my hand and seal this day 4th of May A.D. 1852
Eldorado county Recorder's office
Record Book, "A"
EMANCIPATION
TAYLOR BARTON
to
NEGRO BOB
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
ELDORADO COUNTY S.S.
Know all men to whom these presents shall come; That I, Taylor
Barton lately a citizen of the State of Missouri and owner of
slaves, do here by this instrument under my hand and seal given
this ninth day of October, in the year of our Lord eighteen
hundred and fifty one set free from bondage to me and all men my
slave Bob, and do declare him forever hereafter his own man
wherever he may go. Nevertheless I make this condition that the
said Bob shall remain with me as my slave faithful and obedient
unto me until the twenty-fifth day of December next, commonly
known as Christmas.
Witness my hand and seal on the day and date aforesaid this date.
TAYLOR BARTON (S.S.)
WILLIAM F. EMERSON December, 25th 1851
I do hereby, declare My Slave Bob, to be forever free from and
after this date. TAYLOR BARTON (S.S.)
In the presence of I. G. Canfield, _Justice of the Peace_.
Filed for Record
January 5th 1852, at 4.p.m.
JOHN A. REICHART, _Recorder of Eldorado County California_.[45]
ELDORADO
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
COUNTY OF MARIPOSA.
Know all men to whom these presents shall come that, I Thomas
Thorn of the State and County aforesaid being the rightful owner
of the Negro man Peter Green and entitled to his service as a
slave during his life have this day released and do by these
presents release him from any further service as a slave. And I
do by these presents from myself, my heirs, Executors and
Administrators declare him, the said Peter Green to be free to
act for himself and no longer under bonds as a slave. Provided
however that the said Peter Green, shall pay to me the sum of one
thousand dollars, good lawful money or work for and serve me from
the present time until one year from and after the first day of
April next being until the first day of April A.D. 1854
In Testimony whereof, I have here unto affixed my hand and Scroll
for Seal at Quartzburge this day 5th of February A.D. one
thousand eight hundred and fifty three.
THOMAS THORN (Seal)
In the presence of Benjamine F. Ropp. P. Cadell, jr. Joseph A.
Tiry I hereby notify that the above obligation has been complied
with and that Peter Green was legally discharged.
Given under my hand at Quarzburge this 7th day of August, A.D.
1855.
JAMES GIVENS
_Justice of the Peace._[46]
This indenture made and entered into this 14th day August, A.D.
1860 between A. J. Houstis as county Judge of Humboldt County for
and in behalf of a certain Indian boy called and known by the
name of "Smoky" of the first part and Austin Wiley, of the said
county of the second part. That Whereas the said Austin Wiley had
in his possession and under his control a certain Indian boy
named "Smoky" And whereas the said Austin Wiley avers that he
with the assistance of James Frint obtained said Indian of their
parents in Mattole valley of this county, by and with their
consent. And whereas the said Austin Wiley does now apply to me
as County Judge to bond and apprentice the said boy "Smoky" to
him according to law to learn the art of household duties about
his premises and in this respect to hold the relation of an
apprentice until he shall arrive at the lawful majority, the age
of twenty-five years, or for the term of seventeen years next
following this indenture, the boy being now considered eight
years of age. And whereas it appears to me that the second party
in this agreement has obtained this boy in a lawful manner
without fraud or oppression and that the boy "Smoky" therefore
comes justly under the first provision of the law providing for
apprenticeship approved April, 8th A.D. 1860.
Now therefore I, A. J. Houstis, County Judge Aforesaid, in
consideration of the premises and acting for and on behalf of the
said Indian boy "Smoky" do by these presents bind and apprentice
as above stated the said boy "Smoky" to Austin Wiley for and
during the term of seventeen years next following this indenture
entitling him according to law to have the care custody, control
and earnings of said boy during said period and all other
advantages and responsibilities growing out of this indenture and
apprenticeship, that the law contemplates. And the said Austin
Wiley, the second part in his agreement doth hereby agree,
obligate and bind himself that he will truly and faithfully
discharge all obligations on his part growing out of this
indenture according to law. That he will suitably clothe and
provide the necessaries of life for the said boy during his term
of indenture. That he will in all respects treat him in a human
manner. That he will not take him out of this state nor transfer
him to any party not known in this agreement without the consent
of legal authorities endorsed thereon and that in all respects
she will carry out every provision of law that contemplates the
safety, protection and well being of said boy.
In witness whereof the parties of this indenture hereunto set
their hand and seal this date first above written.
A.J.HOUSTIS
_County Judge_
First party
AUSTIN WILEY,
Second party
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
HUMBOLDT COUNTY
And now comes Austin Wiley and deposes as follows:
The statement made by me in the preamble to this indenture
refering to the age of the Indian boy "Smoky" and the manner in
which I obtained him are true to the best of my knowledge and
belief
AUSTIN WILEY
Sworn to and subscribed before me on this 14th day of August A.D.
1860
A. J. HOUSTIS
_County Judge of Humboldt County_.
STATE OF CALIFORNIA, } ss.
COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES. }
Before the Hon. Benjamin Hayes,
Judge of the District Court of
the 1st Judicial District, State
of California, County of Los Angeles.[47]
In the matter of Hannah and her children, Ann (and Mary, child of
Ann), Lawrence, Nathaniel, Jane, Charles, Marion, Martha and an
infant boy two weeks old, and of Biddy and her children Ellen,
Ann and Harriet, on petition for Habeas Corpus.
Now on this nineteenth day of January in the year of our Lord,
one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, the said persons above
named are brought before me, in the custody of the Sheriff of
said County, all except the said Hannah and infant boy two weeks
old, (who are satisfactorily shown to be too infirm to be brought
before me,) and except Lawrence (who is necessarily occupied in
waiting on his said Mother, Hannah) and Charles (who is absent in
San Bernardino County, but within the said Judicial District:)
and said Robert Smith, Claimant also appears with his Attorney,
Alonzo Thomas, Esq. And after hearing and duly considering the
said petition for Habeas Corpus and the return of said Claimant
thereto and all the proofs and allegations of the said parties
and all the proceedings previously had herein, it appearing
satisfactorily to the judge here, that all the said persons so
suing in this case, to-wit: Hannah and her said children and
Biddy and her said Children are persons of color, and that
Charles, aged now six years, was born in the Territory of Utah of
the United States, and Marion (aged four years,) Martha (aged two
years) Mary, daughter of the said Ann and aged two years and the
said infant boy aged two weeks, were born in the State of
California and that the said Hannah, Ann, Lawrence, Nathaniel,
Jane and Charles, as well as the said Biddy, Ellen, Ann and
Harriet, have resided with the said Robert Smith for more than
four years and since some time in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, in the State of California;
and it further appearing that the said Robert Smith left and
removed from the State of Mississippi more than eight years ago
with the intention of not returning thereto, but of establishing
himself as a resident in Utah Territory, and more than four years
ago left and removed from said Utah Territory, with the intention
of residing and establishing himself in the State of California
and has so resided in said last mentioned State since some time
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one.
And it further appearing by satisfactory proof to the Judge here,
that all the said persons of color are entitled to their freedom
and are free and cannot be held in slavery or involuntary
servitude, it is therefore adjudged that they are entitled to
their freedom, and are free forever. And it further appearing to
the satisfaction of the Judge here that the said Robert Smith
intends and is about to remove from the state of California,
where slavery does not exist, to the state of Texas, where
slavery of Negroes and persons of color does exist and is
established by the municipal laws, and intends to remove said
before mentioned persons of color to his own use, without the
free will and consent of all or any of the said persons of color,
whereby their liberty will be greatly jeopardized, and there is
good reason to apprehend and believe that they may be sold into
slavery or involuntary servitude, and the said Robert Smith is
persuading and enticing and seducing, said persons of color to go
out of the State of California and to be taken and removed
therefrom with the false promise held out to them that they will
be as free in the State of Texas as in the State of California.
And it further appearing that none of said persons of color can
read and write, and are almost entirely ignorant of the laws of
the State of California, as well as those of the State of Texas,
and of their rights, and that the said Robert Smith from his past
relations to them as members of his family, possesses and
exercises over them an undue influence in respect to the matter
of their said removal insomuch that they have been in duress and
not in possession and exercise of their free will so as to give a
binding consent to any engagement or arrangement with him. And it
further appearing that the said Hannah, is aged thirty-four
years, and her daughter, Ann, seventeen years, and all her other
children, to-wit: Lawrence, (aged from twelve to thirteen years)
Nathaniel (aged from ten to eleven years), Jane, (aged eight
years) Charles (aged six years) Marion (aged four years) Martha,
(aged two years) and said infant boy of Hannah aged two weeks, as
well as Mary (aged two years), daughter of said Ann, are under
the age of fourteen years and so under the laws of the State of
California are not competent to choose a Guardian for themselves;
and it further appearing that the said Biddy is aged thirty-eight
years, and the said Ellen is aged seventeen years, and the other
children of said Biddy, to-wit: Ann (aged from twelve to
thirteen) and Harriet (aged eight years) are under the age of
fourteen years, and so by the laws of the State of California are
not competent to choose a Guardian for themselves. It further
appearing that the said infant boy two weeks of age of Hannah is
of tender age and must be kept with his said mother Hannah, the
same is accordingly ordered, and said infant boy is entrusted to
his said mother hereby, and is ordered to appear with him before
the Judge here at the Court House in the City of Los Angeles on
next Monday January 1, 1856 at 10 o'clock A.M. of said day if
her health shall so permit and if not, as soon thereafter as may
be practicable of which the Sheriff of Los Angeles is hereby
notified to notify her the said Hannah and whereof the said
Robert Smith, being now in the Court has notice, it appearing
that she resides in his house and is under his control. And the
said Mary, child of Ann appearing to be of tender age, is
entrusted to the said Ann to be brought before the Judge here at
the time and place aforesaid to be dealt with according to law of
which the said Ann and the said Robert Smith have notice here,
and the said Martha being of tender years is entrusted to the
said Ann, her sister, to be brought before the Judge here at the
time and place aforesaid to be dealt with according to law of
which the said Ann and the said Robert Smith here have notice and
the said Hannah and Ann are appointed Special Guardians
respectively of the children so hereby entrusted to them, and
notified that it is their duty to obey all lawful orders of the
Judge here or of some competent Court touching the premises. And
the further hearing of this case as to the said Hannah and infant
boy and her child, Lawrence and her children Charles and Mary and
Martha is adjourned until said last mentioned time at the Court
House of the City of Los Angeles, and it is further ordered that
the said Nathaniel (aged from ten to twelve years) Jane (aged
eight years) Marion (aged four years) all children of said
Hannah, and said child Ann (aged from twelve to thirteen years)
and Harriet (aged eight years) are committed to the custody of
the Sheriff of Los Angeles County, David W. Alexander, Esq., as
especial Guardian until the further order of the Judge here or of
other Judge or Court of competent Jurisdiction to appoint General
Guardians of aforesaid Children last mentioned, and the said
Sheriff will leave in full liberty and discharge the said Biddy
and her child Ellen (aged Seventeen years) and the said Ann only
being required to obey the said order herinbefore made to appear
before the Judge here in manner and form as aforesaid. And it
further appearing that the said Charles is absent in San
Bernardino County, within said Judicial District. It is ordered
that Robert Clift, Esq. Sheriff of said County be and he is
hereby appointed Special Guardian of said Charles and as such
duly authorized and required to take said Charles in his custody
and him safely keep in such manner that said Charles shall not be
removed out of the State of California, but shall abide the
further order of the Judge here or other Judge or Court of
competent Jurisdiction touching his Guardianship. And it is
further ordered and adjudged that all the costs accrued in the
case up to the present date and in executing the present order of
the Judge here as to the production of the said Hannah and her
said infant two weeks old and said Lawrence, Martha and Mary
before the Judge here as aforesaid shall be paid by the Said
Robert Smith.
Given under my hand as Judge of the first Judicial District of
the State of California on this 19th day of January, A. D. 1856,
at the City of Los Angeles.
BENJAMIN HAYES,
_District Judge_.
On this 19th day of January appears the said Robert Smith by his
attorney, Alonzo Thomas, Esq., and moves the Judge hereto the
costs in this case which is taken under advisement until Monday
next at 10 o'clock, A.M.
BENJAMIN HAYES,
_District Judge_.
On this Monday, January 21st, 1856 the said Smith and the said
parties so ordered to appear as aforesaid do not appear and this
cause is continued until tomorrow at 10 o'clock, A.M.
BENJAMIN HAYES,
_District Judge_.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] These Documents were collected by Miss D. L. Beasley and M. N.
Work.
[42] _Miscellany_, p. 35.
[43] _Miscellany_, p. 545.
[44] This paper is from the collection of 105 in the Court House at
Eureka. Austin Wiley, whose name appears in the document, was later
appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California; and during
his term of office did much to bring to a satisfactory termination the
trouble then existing between the settlers and the natives.
[45] _Miscellany_, p. 541.
[46] These are freedom papers as recorded in the California County
Court records, and as they have been found by the California
Archivist, Mr. Owen Coy.
[47] This court record was obtained by Mr. W. N. Work.
THOMAS JEFFERSON'S THOUGHTS ON THE NEGRO
I
Jefferson, like a number of liberal-minded men of his time, execrated
the slave trade and as the following extracts will show held it as a
grievance against the British.
During the regal government we had, at one time, obtained a law
which imposed such a duty on the importation of slaves as
amounted nearly in a prohibition, when one inconsiderate
assembly, placed under a peculiarity of circumstance, repealed
the law. This repeal met a joyful sanction from the then reigning
sovereign, and no devices, no expedients which could ever be
attempted by subsequent assemblies (and they seldom met without
attempting them) could succeed in getting the royal assent to a
renewal of the duty. In the very first session held under the
republican government, the assembly passed a law for the
perpetual prohibition of the importation of slaves. This will, in
some measure, stop the increase of this great political and moral
evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a
complete emancipation of human nature.[48]
The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire
in those Colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in their
infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves
we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from
Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions,
and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have
been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative: Thus preferring
the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting
interests of the American States, and to the rights of human
nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.[49]
With the same thought as that of the views expressed above Jefferson
incorporated into the original Declaration of Independence an
indictment of George III as promoting the ruin of the colonies in
encouraging the slave trade. He said:
He (George III) has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the
persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating
and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur
miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical
warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the
CHRISTIAN KING of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market
where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his
negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or
to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of
horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now
exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to
purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering
the people upon whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former
crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes
which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.[50]
II
Influenced by the struggle for the rights of man, Jefferson seriously
advocated freeing the Negroes, that they too might work out their own
destiny on foreign soil. He did not think that it would be wise to
leave the freedmen in this country controlled by white men by whom he
believed they should not be assimilated.[51] The first time he had an
opportunity, therefore, he made an effort in this direction. This was
the case of his work in connection with the committee appointed to
revise the laws of Virginia, the report of which he prepared.
Jefferson said:
The bill reported by the revisers of the whole (Virginia) code
does not itself contain the proposition to emancipate all slaves
born after the passing the act; but an amendment containing it
was prepared, to be offered to the Legislature whenever the bill
should be taken up, and further directing, that they should
continue with their parents to a certain age, then to be brought
up, at the public expense, to tillage, arts or sciences,
according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen,
and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be
colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should
render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of
household and of the handicraft arts; seeds, pairs of the useful
domestic animals, &c., to declare them a free and independent
people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they
shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same
time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white
inhabitants; to induce them to migrate hither, proper
encouragements were to be proposed.[52]
Discussing the serious difficulties of the problem, he compared that
of the Romans with the situation in the colonies:
This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is
a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of
their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of
human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and
beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question; "What further
is to be done with them?" join themselves in opposition with
those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans
emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free,
might mix with, without straining the blood of his master. But
with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he
is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.[53]
Writing to John Lynch in 1811, Jeff arson gave his ideas as to the
possibility of successful African colonization.
You ask my opinion on the proposition of Mrs. Mifflin, to take
measures for procuring, on the coast of Africa, an establishment
to which the people of color of these States might, from time to
time be colonized, under the auspices of different governments.
Having long ago made up my mind on this subject, I have no
hesitation in saying that I have ever thought it the most
desirable measure which could be adopted, for gradually drawing
off this part of our population, most advantageously for
themselves as well as for us. Going from a country possessing all
the useful arts, they might be the means of transplanting them
among the inhabitants of Africa, and would thus carry back to the
country of their origin, the seeds of civilization which might
render their sojournment and sufferings here a blessing in the
end to that country.[54]
Nothing is more to be wished than that the United States would
themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast
of Africa. Exclusive of motives of humanity, the commercial
advantages to be derived from it might repay all its expenses.
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, not the early trial of it.[55]
I received in the first year of my coming into the administration
of the General Government, a letter from the Governor of Virginia
(Colonel Monroe), consulting me, at the request of the
Legislature of the State, on the means of procuring some such
asylum, to which these people might be occasionally sent. I
proposed to him the establishment of Sierra Leone, in which a
private company in England had already colonized a number of
negroes and particularly the fugitives from these States during
the Revolutionary War; and at the same time suggested, if this
could be obtained, some of the Portuguese possessions in South
America, as next most desirable. The subsequent Legislature
approving these ideas, I wrote, the ensuing year, 1802, to Mr.
King, our Minister in London, to endeavor to negotiate with the
Sierra Leone company a reception of such of these people as might
be colonized thither. He opened a correspondence with Mr.
Wedderbourne and Mr. Thornton, secretaries of the company, on the
subject, and, in 1803, I received through Mr. King the result,
which was that the colony was going on, but in a languishing
condition; that the funds of the company were likely to fail, as
they received no returns of profit to keep them up; that they
were, therefore, in treaty with their government to take the
establishment off their hands; but that in no event should they
be willing to receive more of these people from the United
States, as it was exactly that portion of their settlers which
had gone from hence, which, by their idleness and turbulence, had
kept the settlement in constant danger of dissolution, which
could not have been prevented but for the aid of the maroon
negroes from the West Indies, who were more industrious and
orderly than the others, and supported the authority of the
government and its laws ... The effort which I made with
Portugal, to obtain an establishment for them within their claims
in South America, proved also abortive.[56]
In this extract Jefferson goes a step further in presenting a scheme
for financing the project, giving even the exact amount which he
thought would suffice.
In the disposition of these unfortunate people, there are two
rational objects to be distinctly kept in view. First. The
establishment of a colony on the coast of Africa, which may
introduce among the aborigines the arts of cultivated life and
the blessings of civilization and science. By doing this, we may
make to them some retribution for the long course of injuries we
have been committing on their population. And considering that
these blessings will descend to the _nati natorum et qui
nascentur ab illis_, we shall in the long run have rendered them
perhaps more good than evil. To fulfil this object, the colony of
Sierra Leone promises well, and that of Mesurado adds to our
prospect of success. Under this view the Colonization Society is
to be considered as a missionary society, having in view,
however, objects more humane, more justifiable, and less
aggressive on the peace of other nations than the others of that
appelation. The second object, and the most interesting to us, as
coming home to our physical and moral characters, to our
happiness and safety, is to provide an asylum to which we can, by
degrees, send the whole of that population from among us, and
establish them under our patronage and protection, as a separate,
free and independent people, in some country and climate friendly
to human life and happiness. That any place on the coast of
Africa should answer the latter purpose, I have ever deemed
entirely impossible. And without repeating the other arguments
which have been urged by others, I will appeal to figures only,
which admit no controversy.[57]
There is, I think, a way in which (the removal of the slaves to
another country) can be done; that is by emancipating the
after-born, leaving them, on due compensation, with their
mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance, and
then putting them to industrious occupations until a proper age
for deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the
subject five and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able
to conceive any other practicable plan. It was sketched in the
_Notes of Virginia_. The estimated value of the new-born infant
is so low (say twelve dollars and fifty cents) that it would
probably be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce
the six hundred millions of dollars, the first head of expense,
to thirty-seven millions and a half; leaving only the expenses of
nourishment while with the mother, and of transportation.[58]
From what fund are these expenses to be furnished? Why not from
that of the lands which have been ceded by the very States now
needing this relief? And ceded on no consideration, for the most
part, but that of the general good of the whole. These cessions
already constitute one-fourth of the States of the Union. It may
be said that these lands have been sold; are not the property of
the citizens composing these States; and the money long ago
received and expended. But an equivalent of lands in the
territories since acquired may be appropriated to that object, or
so much, at least, as may be sufficient; and the object, although
more important to the slave States, is highly so to the others
also, if they were serious in their arguments on the Missouri
question. The slave States, too, if more interested, would also
contribute more by their gratutious liberation, thus taking on
themselves alone the first and heaviest item of expense.[59]
As the proper place for the colonization of emancipated blacks seemed
quite a problem, almost any seemingly desirable place was recommended.
Santo Domingo proved to be attractive after the bloody scenes of the
revolution had passed away.
In the plan sketched in the _Notes on Virginia_, no particular
place of asylum was specified; because it was thought possible
that in the revolutionary state of America, then commenced,
events might open to us some one within practicable distance.
This has now happened. Santo Domingo has become independent, and
with a population of that color only; and if the public papers
are to be credited, their Chief offers to pay their passage, to
receive them as free citizens, and to provide them employment.
This leaves, then, for the general confederacy, no expense but
that of nurture with the mother for a few years, and would call,
of course, for a very moderate appropriation of the vacant
lands.... In this way no violation of private right is
proposed.[60]
III.
In his _Notes on Virginia_ Jefferson discusses all of the phases of
slavery as they appeared to him at that time. He took up the
justification of the institution of slavery among the Romans, the
enslavement of the Indian and the Negroes, the cause of the increase
in slaves, and the effects of the same on both the masters and the
enslaved.[61]
An inhuman practice once prevailed in this country, of making
slaves of the Indians. This practice commenced with the Spaniards
with the first discovery of America.[62]
Under the mild treatment our slaves experience, and their
wholesome, though coarse food, this blot in our country increase
as fast, or faster than the whites.[63]
We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially,
the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that
of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were
confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost
the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted
indulgence to his slaves in this particular, took from them a
certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as
the free inhabitants.... The same Cato, on a principle of
economy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives
it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell
his old oxen, old wagons, old tools, old and diseased servants,
and everything else become useless.... The American slaves cannot
enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It
was the common practice to expose in the island Æsculapius, in
the Tiber, diseased slaves whose cure was likely to become
tedious. The Emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such
of them as should recover, and first declared that if any person
chose to kill rather than expose them, it should be deemed
homicide. The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has
existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be
punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who,
in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to
his fish for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular
method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture.
Here it has been thought better never to resort to their
evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same
house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here
punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is
required against his as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding
these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans,
their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled, too,
in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their
master's children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus, were slaves.
But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition
then, but nature which has produced the distinction. Whether
further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that
nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the
head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to
have done them justice.[64]
That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must
be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the
moral sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist,
probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor
of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a
fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of
right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of
conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a
problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the
religious precepts against the violation of property were not
framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may
not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from
him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the
relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of
moral right or wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the color
of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so two thousand six hundred
years ago.[65]
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 submissions on the
other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is
an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in
him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he
sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his
philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance
of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient
one that his child is present. But, generally, it is not
sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of
smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be
stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a
prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such
circumstances. And with what execrations should the statesman be
loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on
the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these
into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the _amor
patriae_ of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this
world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is
born to live and labor for another; in which he must lock up the
faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his
inhuman race, or entail his own miserable condition on the
endless generations proceeding from him.[66]
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have
removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the
people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they
are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for
my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice
cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and
natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an
exchange of situation is among possible events; that it may
become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no
attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.[67]
With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed.
For in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself who can make
another labor for him. This is so true that of the proprietors of
slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor.[68]
It is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject
through the various considerations of policy, or morals, of
history, natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they
will force their way into every one's mind.... The way, I hope,
is preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total
emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events,
to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their
extirpation.[69]
IV
During the early part of Jefferson's public career he did not have a
good opinion of the Negro and his possibilities. This is his attitude
as expressed in his _Notes on Virginia_ in 1782, whenever he referred
to the Negro. Ignorant of the fact that science shows that no race is
superior to another, Jefferson considered the blacks inferior to the
Indians, believed that they lacked literary ability, the finer senses
of other races and although exhibiting a little aptitude in music were
both physically and mentally inferior to the whites.
It will probably be asked, why not retain and incorporate the
blacks into the State, and thus save the expense of supplying by
importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave?
Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand
recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have
sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature
has made; and many other circumstances will divide us into
parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end
but in the extermination of the one or the other race.[70]
To these objections, which are political may be added others,
which are physical and moral. Whether the black of the negro
resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and
scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from
the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of
some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is
as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is
this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a
greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to
that eternal monotony, which reign in the countenances, that
immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the
other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry
of form, their own judgment in favor of the whites, declared by
their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of
the Oranootan for the black woman over those of his own species.
The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention
in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic
animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of color, figure,
and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a
difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body.
They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the
skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor. This
greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of
heat, and less of cold than the whites. Perhaps, too, a
difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late
ingenious experimentalist (Crawford) has discovered to be the
principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from
extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid
from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with
more of it.[71]
They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labor
through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to
sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out
with the first dawn of the morning.[72]
In general, their existence appears to participate more sensation
than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to
sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in
labor. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect,
must be disposed to sleep of course.[73]
Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which
render it doubtful whether Heaven has given life to us in mercy
or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.[74]
Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and
imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to
the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could
scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the
investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull,
tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to
Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the
same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not
apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right
to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of
education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move.
Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America.
Most of them, indeed, have been confined to tillage, to their own
homes, and their own society; yet many of them have been so
situated that they might have availed themselves of the
conversation of their masters; many of them have been brought up
to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always
been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally
educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and
sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had
before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The
Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve
figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They
will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove
the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants
cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime
oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their
imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that
a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration;
never saw ever an elementary trait of painting or sculpture.[75]
In music they are more generally gifted than the whites, with
accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable
of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the
composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated
harmony, is yet to be proved.[76]
Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in
poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no
poetry. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not
the imagination. Religion, indeed, has produced a Phyllis
Wheatley; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions
published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The
heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of
that poem.[77]
Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition
(than Phyllis Wheatley); yet his letters do more honor to the
heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of
friendship and general philanthropy, and show how great a degree
of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is
often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his style is easy
and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of
words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes
incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the
course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent
and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His
subjects should often have led him to a process of sober
reasoning; yet we find him always substituting sentiment for
demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first
place among those of his own color who have presented themselves
to the public judgment, yet when compare him with the writers of
the race among whom he lived and particularly with the epistolary
class in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to
enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes
the letters published under the name to be genuine, and to have
received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be
of easy investigation.[78]
The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first
instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by
every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect
merely of their condition in life.[79]
The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and
imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a
general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the
subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, to optical
glasses, to analysis by fire or by solvents. How much more then
where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where
it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of
its existence are various and variously combined; where the
effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to
calculation; let me all too, as a circumstance of great
tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of
men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may
perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that
though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the
races of black and or red men, they have never yet been viewed by
us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a
suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct
race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to
the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not
against experience to suppose that different species of the same
genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different
qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history, then, one
who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye
of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department
of man as distinct as nature has formed them?[80]
He was impressed, however, with the integrity of the Negroes and paid
them the following tribute:
Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their
respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous
instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their
better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and
unshaken fidelity.[81]
V
In later years it seems that Jefferson changed from his position of
certainty as to the inferiority of the Negro to that of doubt. At one
time he believed in the possibilities of the Negro and then again he
receded from that position to take up the argument that the blacks
lack the capacity with which the whites are endowed. Jefferson shows
that he was either ill-informed or insincere. Writing to General
Chastellux in 1785 concerning the future of the Negro Jefferson
remarked:
I have supposed the black man, in his present state might not be
in body and mind equal to the white man; but it would be
hazardous to affirm, that, equally cultivated for a few
generations, he would not become so.[82]
To Benjamin Banneker, the surveyor and astronomer, who was regarded by
some as his friend, he addressed the following in 1791:
Nobody wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit,
that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to
those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a
want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their
existence, both in Africa and America.... I have taken the
liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet,
Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and member of the
Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document to
which your color had a right for their justification against the
doubts which have been entertained of them[83]
Jefferson's letter to the Marquis de Condorcet presented Banneker's
attainments as evidence of the mental capacity of Negroes. He said:
We have now in the United States a Negro, the son of a black man
born in Africa and a black woman born in the United States, who
is a very respectable mathematician. I procured him to be
employed under one of our chief directors in laying out the new
Federal City on the Potomac and in the intervals of his leisure,
while on that work, he made an almanac for the next year, which
he sent me in his own handwriting, and which I enclose to you. I
have seen very elegant solutions of geometrical problems by him.
Add to this that he is a very worthy and respectable member of
society. He is a free man. I shall be delighted to see these
instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the
want of talents observed in them, is merely the effect of their
degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the
structure of the parts on which intellect depends[84]
In a letter to Banneker himself concerning the achievements of this
astronomer and mathematician, Jefferson said:
Nobody wishes more ardently than I do to see a good system
commenced for raising the condition both of their body and mind
to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their
present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be
neglected, will admit.[85]
A generation later he had, as this letter indicates, retained the
opinion that the possibilities of the Negroes were not necessarily
limited. To Henri Grégoire who had sent Jefferson a copy of his
_Litterature des Nègres_, he wrote:
Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do
to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself
entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted
to the negroes by nature, and to find that in this respect they
are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of
personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where
the opportunities for the development of their genius were not
favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed
them, therefore, with great hesitation; but whatever be their
degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir
Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not
therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this
subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and
hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an
equal footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray
you, therefore, to accept my thanks for the many instances you
have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that
race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the
day of their relief.[86]
Writing to Joel Barlow about the same time Jefferson showed a
different attitude. He said:
Bishop Grégoire wrote to me on the doubts I had expressed five or
six and twenty years ago, in the _Notes on Virginia_, as to the
grade of understanding of the negroes. His credulity has made him
gather up every story he could find of men of color (without
distinguishing whether black, or of what degree of mixture),
however slight the mention, or light the authority on which they
are quoted. The whole do not amount, in point of evidence, to
what we know ourselves of Banneker. We know he had spherical
trigonometry enough to make almanacs, but not without the
suspicion of aid from Ellicot, who was his neighbor and friend,
and never missed an opportunity of puffing him. I have a long
letter from Banneker, which shows him to have had a mind of very
common stature indeed. As to Bishop Grégoire, I wrote him a very
soft answer. It was impossible for doubt to have been more
tenderly or hesitantingly expressed than that was in the _Notes
on Virginia_, and nothing was or is further from my intentions,
than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I
have only expressed a doubt. St. Domingo will, in time, throw
light on the question.[87]
He did believe, however, in the industry of the Negroes and thought
that this virtue of theirs would make their colonization possible.
Concerning such a project he wrote Miss Fanny Wright in 1825:
An opinion is hazarded by some, but proved by none, that moral
urgencies are not sufficient to induce the negro to labor; that
nothing can do this but physical coercion. But this a problem
which the present age alone is prepared to solve by experiment.
It would be a solecism to suppose a race or animals created,
without sufficient foresight and energy to preserve their own
existence. It is disproved, too, by the fact that they exist, and
have existed through all the ages of history. We are not
sufficiently acquainted with all the nations of Africa, to say
that there may not be some in which habits of industry are
established, and the arts practiced which are necessary to render
life comfortable. The experiment now in progress in St. Domingo,
those of Sierra Leone and Cape Mesurado, are but beginning. Your
proposition has its aspects of promise also; and should it not
fully answer to calculations in figures, it may yet, in its
developments, lead to happy results.[88]
VI
Jefferson believed that the emancipation of the slaves could be
effected by legislation. To this end he made several noteworthy
efforts. In 1776 he submitted to the revolutionary convention in
Virginia a constitution in which was incorporated the clause
prohibiting slavery. He undertook also to induce the legislature of
Virginia to take this step in 1783, and as chairman of the committee
of the Congress of the Confederation appointed to draw up an ordinance
for the government of the Northwest Territory, he submitted a plan
providing that after the year 1800 neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude should exist there. These clauses and some comments thereon
follow:
No person hereafter coming into this country shall be held within
the same in slavery under any pretext whatever.--Proposed Va.
Constitution.[89]
The General Assembly (of Virginia) shall not have power to ...
permit the introduction of any more slaves to reside in this
State, or the continuance of slavery beyond the generation which
shall be living on the 31st day of December, 1800; all persons
born after that day being hereby declared free.[90]--Proposed
Constitution for Virginia.
After the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States,
otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted to have been personally
guilty.[91]--Proposed Ordinance of 1784.
"The clause respecting slavery," said he "was lost by an
individual vote only. Ten States were present. The four Eastern
States, New York and Pennsylvania, were for the clause. Jersey
would have been for it, but there were but two members, one of
whom was sick in his chambers. South Carolina, Maryland, and
Virginia! voted against it. North Carolina was divided, as would
have been Virginia, had not one of its delegates been sick in
bed."[92]
"I congratulate you" said he to a coworker, "on the law of your
state (South Carolina) for suspending the importation of slaves,
and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to
prevent it forever."[93]
VII
Jefferson seemed to get further from the idea of immediate
emancipation, looking upon it as a very serious problem. He tended, as
the following extracts will show, to advocate lightening the burden of
the slave, hoping that in the West Indies, where he thought the Negro
would eventually rule absolutely, the blacks might establish
governments to which freedmen gradually emancipated in the United
States might be sent to shape their own destiny.
Writing to Dr. Price concerning his anti-slavery pamphlet, Jefferson
said:
Southward of the Chesapeake, your pamphlet (against slavery) will
find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the
subject of slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake,
the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will
find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice; a
minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates
against the greater number, who have not the courage to divest
their families of a property which, however, keeps their
conscience unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake, you may find
here and there an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find here
and there a robber and murderer; but in no greater number. In
that part of America, there being but few slaves, they can easily
disencumber themselves of them; and emancipation is put into such
a train that in a few years there will be no slaves northward of
Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin
the redress of this enormity as in Virginia. This is the next
State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle
of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression; a conflict
wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx
into office of young men grown, and growing up. These have sucked
in the principles of liberty, as it were, with their mother's
milk; and it is to them I look with anxiety to turn the fate of
this question. Be not therefore discouraged. What you have
written will do a great deal of good.[94]
In his report to Congress of a conference with Count Vergennes,
Foreign Minister of France, on commerce, Jefferson wrote:
The British army, after ravaging the State of Virginia, had sent
off a very great number of slaves to New York. By the seventh
article of the treaty of peace, they stipulated not to carry away
any of these. Notwithstanding this, it was known, when they were
evacuating New York, that they were carrying away the slaves,
General Washington made an official demand of Sir Guy Carleton,
that he should cease to send them away. He answered, that these
people had come to them under promise of the King's protection,
and that that promise should be fulfilled in preference to the
stipulation in the treaty. The State of Virginia, to which nearly
the whole of these slaves belonged, passed a law to forbid the
recovery of debts due to British subjects. They declared, at the
same time, they would repeal the law, if Congress were of opinion
they ought to do it. But, desirous that their citizens should be
discharging their debts, they afterwards permitted British
creditors to prosecute their suits, and to receive their debts in
seven equal and annual payments for reimbursement.[95]
Jefferson's letter here to M. de Meunier on the passage of the
Ordinance of 1787 shows how he either shifted from his position of
regarding emancipation a serious problem to that of agitating against
slavery or that he varied his correspondence to suit the person
addressed.
There were ten States present; six voted unanimously for it,
three against it, and one was divided; and seven votes being
requisite to decide the proposition affirmatively, it was lost.
The voice of a single individual of the State which was divided,
or of one of those which were of the negative, would have
prevented this abominable crime from spreading itself over the
new country. Thus we see the fate of millions unborn hanging on
the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent in that awful
moment! But it is to be hoped it will not always be silent, and
that the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end
prevail.
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! who
can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself,
in vindication of his own liberty, and, the next moment, be deaf
to all those motives whose power supported him through his
trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which
is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in
rebellion to oppose.[96]
He seemed to regard it later as a problem to be solved only by
miraculous methods.
We must await with patience the workings of an overruling
Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of
these, our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears
shall be full, when their groans shall have involved heaven
itself in darkness, doubtless a God of justice will awaken to
their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their
oppressors, or, at length, by His exterminating thunder, manifest
His attention to the things of this world, and that they are not
left to the guidance of a blind fatality.[97]
Jefferson, however, seemed to have a kind feeling for the bondmen, as
these extracts will show.
I observe in your letter ... that the profits of the whole estate
(of Monticello) would be no more than the hire of the few negroes
hired out would amount to. Would it be better to hire more where
good masters could be got? Would it be better to hire plantations
and all, if proper assurance can be provided for the good usage,
of everything?[98]
I am miserable till I shall owe not a shilling. The moment that
shall be the case, I shall feel myself at liberty to do something
for the comfort of the slaves.[99]
The check on the tenants against abusing my slaves was, by the
former lease, that I might discontinue it on a reference to
arbitrators. Would it not be well to retain an optional right to
sue them for ill-usage of the slaves or to discontinue it by
arbitration, whichever you should choose at the time?[100]
As far as I can judge from the experiments which have been made
to give liberty to, or rather, to abandon persons whose habits
have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children.[101]
I am decided on my final return to America to try this
experiment. I shall endeavor to import as many Germans as I have
grown slaves. I will settle them and my slaves, on farms of fifty
acres each, intermingled, and place all on the footing of the
Metayers (Medietaini) of Europe. Their children shall be brought
up, as others are, in habits of property and foresight, and I
have no doubt but that they will be good citizens. Some of their
fathers will be so; others I suppose will need government. With
these all that can be done is to oblige them to labor as the
laboring poor of Europe do, and to apply to their comfortable
subsistence the produce of their labor, retaining such a moderate
portion of it as may be a just equivalent for the use of the
lands they labor, and the stocks and other necessary
advances.[102]
The inculcation (in your book) on the master of the moral duties
which he owes to the slave, in return for the benefits of his
service, that is to say, of food, clothing, care in sickness, and
maintenance under age and disability, so as to make him in fact
as comfortable and more secure than the laboring man in most
parts of the world, ... gives great merit to the work, and will,
I have no doubt, produce wholesome impressions.[103]
In the first or second session of the Legislature after I became
a member, I drew to this subject the attention of Colonel Bland,
one of the oldest, ablest, and most respected members, and he
undertook to move for certain moderate extensions of the
protection of the laws to these people. I seconded his motion
and, as a young member, was more spared in the debate; but he was
denounced as an enemy of his country, and was treated with the
grossest indecorum.[104]
My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them,
we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our
hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from ill usage,
require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by
freemen, and be led by no repugnances to abdicate them, and our
duties to them. The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if
that were for their good; and to commute them for other property
is to commit them to those whose usage of them we cannot
control.[105]
Jefferson was opposed to slavery, but he hesitated to take certain
steps against it because of public opinion.
I am very sensible of the honor you propose to me of becoming a
member of the society for the abolition of the slave trade. You
know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition, not
only of the trade, but of the condition of slavery; and certainly
nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that
object. But the influence and information of the friends to this
proposition in France will be far above the need of my
association. I am here as a public servant, and those whom I
serve, having never yet been able to give their voice against
this practice, it is decent for me to avoid too public a
demonstration of my wishes to see it abolished. Without serving
the cause here, it might render me less able to serve it beyond
the water. I trust you will be sensible of the prudence of those
motives, therefore, which govern my conduct on this
occasion.[106]
I have received a letter from Mr. Thomas Brannagan, ...
Philadelphia, asking my subscription to the work announced in the
enclosed paper.[107] The cause in which he embarks is so holy,
the sentiments he expresses in his letter so friendly, that it is
highly painful to me to hesitate on a compliance which appears so
small. But that is not its true character, and it would be
injurious even to his views, for me to commit myself on paper by
answering his letter. I have most carefully avoided every public
act of manifestation on that subject. Should an occasion ever
occur in which I can interpose with decisive effect, I shall
certainly know and do my duty with promptitude and zeal. But, in
the meantime, it would only be disarming myself of influence to
be taking small means. The subscription to a book on this subject
is one of those little irritating measures, which, without
advancing its end at all, would, by lessening the confidence and
good will of a description of friends composing a large body,
only lessen my powers of doing them good in the other great
relations in which I stand to the public. Yet, I cannot be easy
in not answering Mr. Brannagan's letter, unless he can be made
sensible that it is better I should not answer it; and I do not
know how to effect this, unless you would have the goodness ...
to enter into an explanation with him.[108]
We have received with great satisfaction notification of the
orders of his Catholic Majesty, not to permit that persons, held
in slavery within the United States, introduce themselves as free
persons into the Province of Florida.... As a consequence of the
same principles of justice and friendship, we trust that your
Excellency will permit, and aid the recovery of persons of the
same description, who have heretofore taken refuge within your
government.[109]
The governor of East Florida informs me that he has received the
King's orders, not to permit, under any pretext, that persons
held in slavery in the United States introduce themselves as
free, into the province of East Florida. I am happy that this
grievance, which had been a subject of great complaint from the
citizens of Georgia, is to be removed.[110]
Jefferson thought that the Negro republics of the West Indies would
become a safety valve for the United States.
I become daily more convinced that all the West India Islands
will remain in the hands of the people of color, and a total
expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place. It is high
time we should foresee the bloody scenes which our children
certainly, and possibly ourselves (south of the Potomac), have to
wade through and try to avert them.[111]
If something is not done, and soon done, we shall be the
murderers of our own children. The "_murmura venturos nautis
prudentia ventos_" has already reached us (from San Domingo); the
revolutionary storm, now sweeping the globe, will be upon us, and
happy if we make timely provision to give it an easy passage over
our land. From the present state of things in Europe and America,
the day which begins our combustion must be near at hand; and
only a single spark is wanting to make that day to-morrow. If we
had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier
operation to clear ourselves, but every day's delay lessens the
time we may take for emancipation. Some people derive hope from
the aid of the confederate States. But this is a delusion. There
is but one State in the Union which will aid us sincerely, if an
insurrection begins, and that one may, perhaps, have its own fire
to quench at the same time.[112]
As to the mode of emancipation, I am satisfied that that must be
a matter of compromise between the passions, the prejudices, and
the real difficulties which will each have its weight in that
operation. Perhaps the first chapter of this history, which has
begun in St. Domingo, and the next succeeding ones, will recount
how all the whites were driven from all the other islands, may
prepare our minds for a peaceable accommodation between justice,
policy and necessity; and furnish an answer to the difficult
question, whither shall the colored emigrants go? and the sooner
we put some plan under way, the greater hope there is that it may
be permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect.[113]
Jefferson finally despaired of seeing his emancipation scheme succeed.
I have long since given up the expectation of any early provision
for the extinguishment of slavery among us. There are many
virtuous men who would make any sacrifices to effect it, many
equally virtuous who persuade themselves either that the thing is
not wrong, or that it cannot be remedied, and very many with whom
interest is morality. The older we grow, the larger we are
disposed to believe the last party to be. But interest is really
going over to the side of morality. The value of the slave is
every day lessening; his burden on his master daily increasing.
Interest is, therefore, preparing the disposition to be just; and
this will be goaded from time to time by the insurrectionary
spirit of the slaves. This is easily quelled in its first
efforts; but from being local it will become general, and
whenever it does, it will rise more formidable after every
defeat, until we shall be forced, after dreadful scenes and
sufferings, to release them in their own way, which, without such
sufferings we might now model after our own convenience.[114]
VIII
Because of frequent insurrections in this country and the West Indies
there was much talk of establishing a penal colony to which the
leaders of such uprisings could be sent. With Gabriel's insurrection
in Virginia in 1800 in mind, James Monroe, then Governor of Virginia,
wrote Jefferson, asking him to support such a project, a resolution on
which had already passed the Virginia House of Delegates. Jefferson
wrote him the following:
Questions would arise whether the establishment of a (negro
penal) colony within our limits, and to become a part of our
Union, would be desirable to the State of Virginia itself, or to
other States--especially those who would be in its vicinity.
Could we procure lands beyond the limits of the United States to
form a receptacle for these people? On our northern boundary, the
country not occupied by British subjects, is the property of
Indian nations, whose title would have to be extinguished, with
the consent of Great Britain; and the new settlers would be
British subjects. It is hardly to be believed that either Great
Britain or the Indian proprietors have so disinterested a regard
for us, as to be willing to relieve us, by receiving such a
colony themselves.... On our western and southern frontiers,
Spain holds an immense country, the occupancy of which, however,
is in the Indian natives, except a few insulated spots possessed
by Spanish subjects. It is very questionable, indeed, whether the
Indians would sell? whether Spain would be willing to receive
these people? and nearly certain that she would not alienate the
sovereignty. The same question to ourselves would recur here
also, as did in the first case: should we be willing to have such
a colony in contact with us? However our present interests may
restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look
forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will
expand itself beyond those limits, and cover the whole northern,
if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same
language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can
we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that
surface. Spain, France, and Portugal hold possessions on the
southern continent, as to which I am not well enough informed to
say how far they might meet our views. But either there or in the
northern continent, should the constituted authorities ties of
Virginia fix their attention, of preference, I will have the
dispositions of those powers sounded in the first instance.[115]
Writing to Rufus King in 1802 Jefferson discussed in detail the
feasibility of the plan.
As the expense of so distant a transportation would be very
heavy, and might weigh unfavorably in deciding between the modes
of punishment, it is very desirable that it should be lessened as
much as is practicable. If the regulations of the place would
permit these emigrants to dispose of themselves, as the Germans
and others do who come to this country poor, by giving their
labor for a certain time to some one who will pay their passage;
and if the master of the vessel could be permitted to carry
articles of commerce from this country and take back others from
that, which might yield him a mercantile profit sufficient to
cover the expenses of the voyage, a serious difficulty would be
removed.[116]
The course of things in the ... West Indies appears to have given
a considerable impulse to the minds of the slaves in ... the
United States. A great disposition to insurgency has manifested
itself among them, which, in one instance, in the State of
Virginia, broke out into actual insurrection. This was easily
suppressed; but many of those concerned (between twenty and
thirty, I believe) fell victims to the law. So extensive an
execution could not but excite sensibility in the public mind,
and beget a regret that the laws had not provided for such cases,
some alternative, combining more mildness with equal efficiency.
The Legislature of the State ... took the subject into
consideration, and have communicated to me through the Governor
of the State, their wish that some place could be provided, out
of the limits of the United States, to which slaves guilty of
insurgency might be transported; and they have particularly
looked to Africa as offering the most desirable receptacle. We
might, for this purpose, enter into negotiations with the
natives, on some part of the coast, to obtain a settlement; and,
by establishing an African company, combine with it commercial
operations, which might not only reimburse expenses, but procure
profit also. But there being already such an establishment on
that coast by the English Sierra Leone Company, made for the
express purpose of colonizing civilized blacks to that country,
it would seem better, by incorporating our emigrants with
theirs, to make one strong, rather than two weak colonies. This
would be the more desirable because the blacks settled at Sierra
Leone, having chiefly gone from the States, would often receive
among those whom we should send, their acquaintances and
relatives. The object of this letter is to ask ... you to enter
into conference with such persons, private and public, as would
be necessary to give us permission to send thither the persons
under contemplation.... 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
will be a valuable acquisition to the settlement, ... and well
calculated to cooperate in the plan of civilization.
... The consequences of permitting emancipation to become
extensive, unless a condition of emigration be annexed to them,
furnish matter of solicitude to the Legislature of Virginia.
Although provision for the settlement of emancipated negroes
might perhaps be obtained nearer home than Africa, yet it is
desirable that we should be free to expatriate this description
of people also to the colony of Sierra Leone, if considerations
respecting either themselves or us should render it more
expedient. I pray you, therefore, to get the same permission
extended to the reception of these as well as the (insurgents).
Nor will there be a selection of bad subjects; the emancipations,
for the most part, being either of the whole slaves of the
master, or of such individuals as have particularly deserved
well. The latter are most frequent.[117]
IX
He was firm to the end in his effort to abolish the slave trade.
Whatever may have been the circumstances which influenced our
forefathers to permit the introduction of personal bondage into
any part of these States, and to participate in the wrongs
committed on an unoffending quarter of the globe, we may rejoice
that such circumstances, and such a sense of them, exist no
longer. It is honorable to the nation at large that their
Legislature availed themselves of the first practicable moment
for arresting the progress of this great moral and political
error.[118]
I congratulate you (Congress) on the approach of the period at
which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, to
withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further
participation in those violations of human rights which have been
so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and
which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our
country, have long been eager to proscribe. Although no law you
may pass can take prohibitory effect till the first day of the
year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening
period is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions
which cannot be completed before that day.[119]--Sixth Annual
Message.
X
In his old age Jefferson became decidedly less radical in his advocacy
of abolition, contenting himself with the utterances of the nature of
an academic deprecation of the evil, expressing the hope that in some
way it might be eradicated, but at the same time despairing of it.
Writing to Edward Coles, he said:
My sentiment on the subject of slavery of negroes have long since
been in possession of the public, and time has only served to
give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of
country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a
moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in
vain, and should have produced not a single effort, nay I fear
not much serious willingness to relieve them and ourselves from
our present condition of moral and political reprobation.... I
had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their
early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in
every breast, and had become, as it were, the vital spirit of
every American, that the generous temperament of youth, analogous
to the motion of the blood, and above the suggestions of avarice,
would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved
their love of liberty beyond their own share of it. But my
intercourse with them since my return (from Europe) has not been
sufficient to ascertain that they had made towards this point the
progress I had hoped.[120]
The hour of emancipation is advancing, in the march of time. It
will come; and whether brought on by the generous energy of our
own minds; or by the bloody process of St. Domingo, excited and
conducted by the power of our present enemy (England), if once
stationed permanently within our country, and offering asylum and
arms to the oppressed, is a leaf of our history not yet turned
over.[121]
From those of the former generation who were in the fulness of
age when I came into public life, which was while our controversy
with England was on paper only, I soon saw that nothing was to be
hoped. Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the
degraded condition, both bodily and mental, of those unfortunate
beings, not reflecting that that degradation was very much the
work of themselves and their fathers, few minds have yet doubted
but that they were as legitimate subjects of property as their
horses and cattle. The quiet and monotonous course of colonial
life had been disturbed by no alarm, and little reflection on the
value of liberty. And when alarm was taken at an enterprise on
their own, it was not easy to carry them to the whole length of
the principles which they invoked for themselves.[122]
As to the method by which this difficult work is to be effected,
if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no proposition
so expedient on the whole, as that of emancipation of those born
after a given day, and of their education and expatriation after
a given age.[123]
I hope you will reconcile yourself to your country and its
unfortunate condition; that you will not lessen its stock of
sound disposition by withdrawing your portion from the mass;
that, on the contrary, you will come forward in the public
councils, become the missionary of this doctrine truly Christian,
insinuate and inculcate it softly but steadily, through the
medium of writing and conversation; associate others in your
labors, and when the phalanx is formed, bring on the press the
proposition perseveringly until its accomplishment.[124]
Writing to David Barrow in 1815 about the preparation of slaves for
emancipation, Jefferson said:
Unhappily it is a case for which both parties require long and
difficult preparation. The mind of the master is to be apprized
by reflection, and strengthened by the energies of conscience,
against the obstacles of self interest to an acquiescence in the
rights of others; that of the slave is to be prepared by
instruction and habit for self-government, and for the honest
pursuits of industry and social duty. Both of these courses of
preparation require time, and the former must precede the latter.
Some progress is sensibly made in it; yet not so much as I had
hoped and expected. But it will yield in time to temperate and
steady pursuit, to the enlargement of the human mind, and its
advancement in science. We are not in a world ungoverned by the
laws and the power of a Superior Agent. Our efforts are in His
hand, and directed by it; and He will give them their effect in
his own time. Where the disease is most deeply seated, there it
will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern States it was
merely superficial, and easily corrected. In the Southern it is
incorporated with the whole system, and requires time, patience
and perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be
effected, and its process hastened, will be my last and fondest
prayer.[125]
In a letter to Dr. Thomas Humphreys in 1817, Jefferson expressed fear
about the purchase of slaves by the United States.
The bare proposition of purchase (of the slaves) by the United
States generally would excite infinite indignation in all the
States north of Maryland. The sacrifice must fall on the States
alone which hold them; and the difficult question will be how to
lessen this so as to reconcile our fellow citizens to it.
Personally, I am ready and desirous to make any sacrifice which
shall ensure their gradual but complete retirement from the
State, and effectually, at the same time, establish them
elsewhere in freedom and safety.[126]
I concur entirely in your leading principles of gradual
emancipation, of establishment on the coast of Africa, and the
patronage of our nation until the emigrants shall be able to
protect themselves.[127]
Jefferson saw in the extension of slavery that which had given the
institution a new aspect in lessening the difficulty by dividing it.
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 which 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. But, as
it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him,
nor safely let him go. Justice is in the one scale and
self-preservation in the other.[128]
Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one
State to another, would not make a slave of a single human being
who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater
surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally
facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing
the burden on a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence, too,
from this act of power would remove the jealousy excited by the
undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the
different descriptions of men composing a State, which nothing in
the Constitution has taken from them and given to the General
Government. Could Congress, for example, say that the non-freemen
of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate
into any other State?[129]
During the closing years of his life he expressed little hope of
seeing his plan of gradual emancipation carried out.
It was found that the public mind would not bear the proposition
(gradual emancipation), nor will it bear it even at this day
(1821). Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt
it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in
the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is
it less certain, that the two races, equally free, cannot live in
the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible
lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to
direct the process of emancipation and deportation, peaceably,
and in such slow degree, as that the evil will wear off
insensible, and their place be, _pari passu_, filled up by free
white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself
on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. We should
in vain look for an example in the Spanish deportation, or
deletion of the Moors. This precedent would fall far short of our
case.[130]
* * * * *
In 1769, I became a member of the legislature by the choice of
the country in which I live (Albemarle), and so continued until
it was closed by the Revolution. I made one effort in that body
for the permission of the emancipation of slaves, which was
rejected; and indeed, during the regal government, nothing
liberal could expect success. Our minds were circumscribed within
narrow limits, by an habitual belief that it was our duty to be
subordinate to the mother country in all matters of government,
to direct all our labors in subservience to her interests, and
even to observe a bigoted intolerance for all religions but hers.
The difficulties with our representatives were of habit and
despair, not of reflection and conviction. Experience soon proved
that they could bring their minds to rights on the first summons
of their attention. But the King's Council, which acted as
another house of legislature, held their places at will, and were
in most humble obedience to that will; the Governor, too, who had
a negative on our laws, held by the same tenure, and with still
greater devotedness to it; and, last of all, the royal negative
closed the last door to every hope of
ameloration.--Autobiography.[131]
The first establishment (of slavery) in Virginia which became
permanent, was made in 1607. I have found no mention of negroes
in the Colony until about 1650. The first brought here as slaves
were by a Dutch ship; after which the English commenced the
trade, and continued it until the Revolutionary war. That
suspended, _ipso facto_, their further importation for the
present, and the business of the war pressing constantly on the
legislature, this subject was not acted on finally until the year
'78, when I brought in a bill to prevent their further
importation. This passed without opposition, and stopped the
increase of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts
its final eradication.--Autobiography.[132]
Our only blot is becoming less offensive by the great improvement
in the condition and civilization of that race, who can now more
advantageously compare their situation with that of the laborers
of Europe. Still it is a hideous blot, as well from the
heteromorph peculiarities of the race, as that, with them,
physical compulsion to action must be substituted for the moral
necessity which constrains the free laborers to work equally
hard. We feel and deplore it morally and politically, and we look
without entire despair to some redeeming means not yet
specifically foreseen. I am happy in believing that the
conviction of the necessity of removing this evil gains ground
with time. Their emigration to the westward lightens the
difficulty by dividing it, and renders it more practicable on the
whole. And the neighborhood of a government of their color
promises a more accessible asylum than that from whence they
came.[133]
Showing the difficulty of purchase in case of the adoption of the
policy, Jefferson wrote Jared Sparks in 1824:
Actual property has been lawfully vested in that form (negroes)
and who can lawfully take it from the possessors?[134]
Who would estimate its blessed effects? I leave this to those who
will live to see their accomplishment, and to enjoy a beatitude
forbidden to my age. But I leave it with this admonition,--to
rise and be doing. A million and a half are within our control;
but six millions (which a majority of those now living will see
them attain), and one million of these fighting men, will say,
"we will not go."[135]
The separation of infants from their mothers would produce some
scruples of humanity. But this would be straining at a gnat, and
swallowing a camel.[136]
Jefferson became interested in the schemes of Miss Fanny Wright, who
was endeavoring to promote gradual emancipation through an
Emancipating Labor Society. He wrote her in 1825:
The abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never,
therefore, to be despaired of. Every plan should be adopted,
every experiment tried, which may do something towards the
ultimate object. That which you propose is well worthy of trial.
It has succeeded with certain portions of our white brethren,
under the care of a Rapp and an Owen; and why may it not succeed
with the man of color?
At the age of eighty-two, with one foot in the grave and the
other uplifted to follow it, I do not permit myself to take part
in any new enterprises, even for bettering the condition of man,
not even in the great one which is the subject of your letter,
and which has been through life that of my greatest
anxieties.[137] The march of events has not been such as to
render its completion practicable within the limits of time
allotted to me; and I leave its accomplishment as the work of
another generation.[138]
Although Jefferson lost hope of seeing his plans carried out, this
letter to Edward Everett, written near the close of his career, shows
that he had not changed his attitude.
On the question of the lawfulness of slavery, that is of the
right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of
another without his consent, I certainly retain my early
opinions. On that, however, of third persons to interfere between
the parties, and the effect of conventional modifications of that
pretension, we are probably nearer together.[139]
FOOTNOTES:
[48] Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 102.
[49] "_Rights of British America_," Ford edition of _Jefferson's
Writings_, I, p. 440.
[50] "This clause," says Jefferson, in his Autobiography (I, p. 19),
"was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had
never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the
contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren, also, I
believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their
people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty
considerable carriers of them to others."
[51] "Their amalgamation with the other color," said he, "produces a
degradation to which no lover of excellence in the human character can
innocently consent."--Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, IX, p.
478.
[52] Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, III, p. 243.
[53] _Ibid._, III, p. 250.
[54] Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, IX, p. 303.
[55] _Ibid._, IX, p. 304.
[56] Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, IX, p. 303.
[57] Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writings_, X, p. 290.
[58] {Transcriber's Note: Missing footnote text in original.}
[59] _Ibid._, X, p. 291.
[60] Ford edition of _Jefferson's Writ
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