In these days, when strong interests, embodied in fierce parties, are
clashing, one recalls the French proverb of those who make so much noise
that you cannot hear God thunder. It does not take much noise to drown
the notes of a violin; but go to the hill a fourth of a mile off, and
the noises shall die away at its base, whilst the music shall be heard.
Those who can remove themselves away from and above the plane of
party-din can hear God's modulated thunder in the midst of it, uttering
ever a "certain tune and measured music." And such can hear now the
great voice at the sepulchre's door of a race, saying, Come forth! This
war is utterly inexplicable except as the historic method of delivering
the African race in America from slavery, and this nation from the crime
and curse inevitably linked therewith in the counsels of God, which are
the laws of Nature. If the friends of freedom in the Government do
not understand this, it is plain enough that the myrmidons of slavery
throughout the land understand it. And hence it is that we are
witnessing their unremitting efforts to exasperate the prejudices of the
vulgar against the negro, and to prove degradation, and slavery to be
his normal condition. They point to his figure as sculptured on ancient
monuments, bearing chains, and claim that his enslavement is lawful as
immemorial custom; but as well point to the brass collars on our Saxon
forefathers' necks to prove _their_ enslavement lawful. The fact that
slavery belonged to a patriarchal age is the very reason why it is
impracticable in a republican age,--as its special guardians in this
country seem to have discovered. But this question is now scarcely
actual. The South, by its first blow against the Union and the
Constitution, whose neutrality toward it was its last and only
protection from the spirit of the age, did, like the simple fisherman,
unseal the casket in which the Afreet had been so long dwarfed. He is
now escaping. Thus far, indeed, he is so much escaped force; for he
might be bearing our burdens for us, if we only rubbed up the lamp which
the genie obeys. But whether we shall do this or not, it is very certain
that he is now emerging from the sea and the casket, and into it will
descend no more. Henceforth the negro is to take his place in the family
of races; and no studies can be more suitable to our times than those
which recognize his special capacity.
The questions raised by military exigencies have brought before the
public the many interesting facts drawn from the history of Hayti and
from our own Revolution, showing the heroism of the negro, though we
doubt whether they can surpass the stories of Tatnall, Small, and
others, which have led a high European authority to observe that in this
war no individual heroism among the whites has equalled that of the
blacks. But the forthcoming social questions concerning the negro will
be even more exciting than the military. What are we to expect from the
unsealed Afreet,--good or evil? It was whilst studying in this direction
that I came upon the few facts which relate to Benjamin Banneker,--facts
which, though not difficult of access, are scarcely known beyond the
district in Maryland where, on the spot where he was born, his unadorned
grave receives now and then a visit from some pilgrim of his own race
who has found out the nobleness which Jefferson recognized and Condorcet
admired.
Benjamin Banneker was born in Baltimore County, near the village of
Ellicott's Mills, in the year 1732. There was not a drop of the white
man's blood in his veins. His father was born in Africa, and his
mother's parents were both natives of Africa. What genius he had, then,
must be credited to that race. Benjamin's mother was a remarkable woman,
and of a remarkable family. Her name was Morton, before marriage, and a
nephew of hers, Greenbury Morton, was gifted with a lively and impetuous
eloquence which made its mark in his neighborhood. Of him it is related
that he once came to a certain election-precinct in Baltimore County
to deposit his vote; for, prior to the year 1809, negroes with certain
property-qualifications voted in Maryland. It was in this year, in which
the law restricting the right of voting to free whites was passed, that
Morton, who had not heard of its passage, came to the polls. When his
vote was refused, Morton in a state of excitement took his stand on
a door-step, and was immediately surrounded by the crowd, whom he
addressed in a strain of passionate and prophetic eloquence which bore
all hearts and minds with him. He warned them that the new law was a
step backward from the standard which their fathers had raised in
the Declaration, and which they had hoped would soon be realized in
universal freedom; that that step, unless retraced, would end in bitter
and remorseless revolutions. The crowd was held in breathless attention,
and none were found to favor the new law.
This man, we have said, was the nephew of Benjamin's mother. She was a
woman of remarkable energy, and after she was seventy years of age was
accustomed to run down the chickens she wished to catch. Her husband was
a slave when she married him, but it was a very small part of her life's
task to purchase his freedom. Together they soon bought a farm of one
hundred acres, which we find conveyed by Richard Gist to Robert Bannaky,
(as the name was then spelt,) and Benjamin Bannaky, his son, (then five
years old,) on the tenth of March, 1737, for the consideration of seven
thousand pounds of tobacco. The region in which Benjamin was born was
almost a wilderness; for in 1732 Elkridge Landing was of more importance
than Baltimore; and even in 1754 this city consisted only of some twenty
poor houses straggling on the hills to the right of Jones's Falls. The
residence of the Bannekers was ten miles into the wilderness from these.
It was under these unpromising circumstances that little Benjamin grew
up, his destiny being apparently nothing more than to work on the little
farm beside his poor and ignorant parents. When he was approaching
manhood, he went, in the intervals of toil, to an obscure and remote
country-school; for, until the cotton-gin made negroes too valuable on
the animal side for the human side to be allowed anything so perilous as
education, there were to be found here and there in the South fountains
whereat even negroes might slake their thirst for learning. At this
school Benjamin acquired a knowledge of reading and writing, and
advanced in arithmetic as far as "Double Position." Beyond these
rudiments he was entirely his own teacher. After leaving school he had
to labor constantly for his own support; but he lost nothing of what he
had acquired. It is a frequent remark that up to a certain point the
negroes learn even more rapidly than white children under the same
teaching, but that afterward, in the higher branches, they are slow,
and, some maintain, incapable. Young Banneker had no books at all, but
in the midst of his labor he so improved upon and evolved what he had
gained in arithmetic that his intelligence became a matter of general
observation. He was such an acute observer of the natural world, and had
so diligently observed the signs of the times in society, that it
is very doubtful whether at forty years of age this African had his
superior in Maryland.
Perhaps the first wonder amongst his comparatively illiterate neighbors
was excited, when, about the thirtieth year of his age, Benjamin made
a clock. It is probable that this was the first clock of which every
portion was made in America; it is certain that it was as purely his own
invention as if none had ever been made before. He had seen a watch, but
never a clock, such an article not being within fifty miles of him. The
watch was his model. He was a long time at work on the clock,--his chief
difficulty, as he used often to relate, being to make the hour, minute,
and second hands correspond in their motion. But at last the work was
completed, and raised the admiration for Banneker to quite a high pitch
among his few neighbors.
The making of the clock proved to be of great importance in assisting
the young man to fulfil his destiny. It attracted the attention of the
Ellicott family, who had just begun a settlement at Ellicott's Mills.
They were well-educated men, with much mechanical knowledge, and some of
them Quakers. They sought out the ingenious negro, and he could not have
fallen into better hands. It was in 1787 that Benjamin received from
Mr. George Ellicott Mayer's "Tables," Ferguson's "Astronomy," and
Leadbetter's "Lunar Tables." Along with these, some astronomical
instruments, also, were given him. Mr. Ellicott, prevented from telling
Benjamin anything concerning the use of the instruments for some time
after they were given, went over to repair this omission one day, but
found that the negro had discovered all about them and was already quite
independent of instruction. From this time astronomy became the great
object of Banneker's life, and in its study he almost disappeared from
the sight of his neighbors. He was unmarried, and lived alone in the
cabin and on the farm which he had inherited from his parents. He had
still to labor for his living; but he so simplified his wants as to
be enabled to devote the greater portion of his time to astronomical
studies. He slept much during the day, that he might the more devotedly
observe at night the heavenly bodies whose laws he was slowly, but
surely, mastering.
And now he began to have a taste of that persecution to which every
genius under similar circumstances is subject. He was no longer seen in
the field, where formerly his constancy had gained him a reputation for
industry, and some who called at his cabin during the day-time found him
asleep; so he began to be spoken of as a lazy fellow, who would come to
no good, and whose age would disappoint the promise of his youth. There
was a time when this so excited his neighbors against him that he had
serious fears of disturbance. A memorandum in his hand-writing, dated
December 18, 1790, states:--
"------ ------informed me that ------ stole my horse and great-coat,
and that the said ------ intended to murder me when opportunity
presented. ------ ------ gave me a caution to let no one come into my
house after dark."
The names were originally written in full; but they were afterward
carefully cancelled, as though Banneker had reflected that it was wrong
to leave on record an unauthenticated assertion against an individual,
which, if untrue, might prejudice him by the mere fact that it had been
made.
Very soon after the possession of the books already mentioned, Banneker
determined to compile an almanac, that being the most familiar use that
occurred to him of the information he had acquired. To make an almanac
was a very different thing then from what it would be now, when there is
an abundance of accurate tables and rules. Banneker had no aid whatever
from men or tables; and Mr. George Ellicott, who procured some tables
and took them to him, states that he had advanced far in the preparation
of the logarithms necessary for his purpose. A memorandum in his
calculations at this time thus corrects an error in Ferguson's
Astronomy:--
"It appears to me that the wisest men may at times be in error: for
instance, Dr. Ferguson informs us, that, when the sun is within 12° of
either node at the time of full, the moon will be eclipsed; but I find,
that, according to his method of projecting a lunar eclipse, there will
be none by the above elements, and yet the sun is within 11° 46' 11" of
the moon's ascending node. But the moon being in her apogee prevents the
appearance of this eclipse."