When they found that emancipation could not be prevented, numbers left
the islands. Some of those who remained did not dare to undress and go
to bed on the night of the 31st of July; and those who tried to sleep
were generally restless and easily startled.
But while masters and mistresses were dreading to hear screams and
alarms of fire, their emancipated slaves were flocking to the churches
to offer up prayers and hymns of thanksgiving.
In the island of Antigua there were thirty thousand slaves when the
midnight clock began to strive twelve, on the 31st of July, 1834; and
when it had done striking they were all free men and free women. It was
a glorious moment, never to be forgotten by them during the remainder of
their lives. The Wesleyan Methodists kept watch-night in all their
chapels. One of the missionaries who exhorted the emancipated people and
prayed with them thus described the solemn scene:--
"The spacious house was filled with the candidates for liberty. All was
animation and eagerness. A mighty chorus of voices swelled the song of
expectation and joy; and as they united in prayer, the voice of the
leader was drowned in the universal acclamations of thanksgiving and
praise and blessing and honor and glory to God, who had come down for
their deliverance. In such exercises the evening was spent, until the
hour of twelve approached. The missionary then proposed that when the
cathedral clock should begin to strike, the whole congregation should
fall on their knees, and receive the boon of freedom in silence.
Accordingly, as the loud bell tolled its first note, the crowded
assembly prostrated themselves. All was silence, save the quivering,
half-stifled breath of the struggling spirit. Slowly the tones of the
clock fell upon the waiting multitude. Peal on peal, peal on peal,
rolled over the prostrate throng, like angels' voices, thrilling their
weary heartstrings. Scarcely had the _last_ tone sounded, when
lightning flashed vividly, and a loud peal of thunder rolled through the
sky. It was God's pillar of fire. His trump of jubilee. It was followed
by a moment of profound silence. Then came the outburst. They shouted
'Glory! Hallelujah!' They clapped their hands, they leaped up, they fell
down, they clasped each other in their free arms, they cried, they
laughed, they went to and fro, throwing upward their unfettered hands.
High above all, a mighty sound ever and anon swelled up. It was the
utterance of gratitude to God.
"After this gush of excitement had spent itself, the congregation became
calm, and religious exercises were resumed. The remainder of the night
was spent in singing and prayer, in reading the Bible, and in addresses
from the missionaries, explaining the nature of the freedom just
received, and exhorting the people to be industrious, steady, and
obedient to the laws, and to show themselves in all things worthy of the
high boon God had conferred upon them.
"The 1st of August came on Friday; and a release from all work was
proclaimed until the next Monday. The great mass of the negroes spent
the day chiefly in the churches and chapels. The clergy and missionaries
throughout the island actively seized the opportunity to enlighten the
people on all the duties and responsibilities of their new relation. The
day was like a Sabbath. A Sabbath, indeed, when 'the wicked ceased from
troubling and the weary were at rest.'
"The most kindly of the planters went to the chapels where their own
people were assembled, and shook hands with them, and exchanged hearty
good wishes.
"At Grace Hill, a Moravian missionary station, the emancipated negroes
begged to have a sunrise meeting on the 1st of August, as they had been
accustomed to have at Easter; and as it was the Easter morning of their
freedom, the request was granted. The people all dressed in white, and
walked arm in arm to the chapel. There a hymn of thanksgiving was sung
by the whole congregation kneeling. The singing was frequently
interrupted by the tears and sobs of the melted people, until finally
they were overwhelmed by a tumult of emotion.
"There was not a single dance by night or day; not even so much as a
fiddle played. There were no drunken carousals, no riotous assemblies.
The emancipated were as far from dissipation and debauchery as they were
from violence and carnage. Gratitude was the absorbing emotion. From the
hill-tops and the valleys the cry of a disenthralled people went upward,
like the sound of many waters: 'Glory to God! Glory to God!'"
Mr. Bleby, one of the Methodist missionaries in Jamaica, thus describes
the same night in that island:--
"The church where the emancipated people assembled, at ten o'clock at
night, was very large; but the aisles, the gallery stairs, the
communion-place, the pulpit stairs, were all crowded; and there were
thousands of people round the building, at every open door and window,
looking in. We thought it right and proper that our Christian people
should receive their freedom as a boon from God, in the house of prayer;
and we gathered them together in the church for a midnight service. Our
mouths had been closed about Slavery up to that time. We could not quote
a passage that had reference even to _spiritual_ emancipation, without
endangering our lives. The planters had a law of 'constructive treason,'
that doomed any man to death who made use of language tending to excite
a desire for liberty among the slaves; and they found treason in the
Bible and sedition in the hymns of Watts and Wesley, and we had to be
very careful how we used them. You may imagine with what feelings I saw
myself emancipated from this thraldom, and free to proclaim 'liberty to
the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that were bound.' I
took for my text, 'Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all
the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you.'
"A few minutes before midnight, I requested all the people to kneel down
in silent prayer to God, as befitting the solemnity of the hour. I
looked down upon them as they knelt. The silence was broken only by sobs
of emotion, which it was impossible to repress. The clock began to
strike. It was the knell of Slavery in all the British possessions! It
proclaimed liberty to eight hundred thousand human beings! When I told
them they might rise, what an outburst of joy there was among that mass
of people! The clock had ceased to strike, and they were slaves no
longer! Mothers were hugging their babes to their bosoms, old
white-headed men embracing their children and husbands clasping their
wives in their arms. By and by all was still again, and I gave out a
hymn. You may imagine the feelings with which these people, just
emerging into freedom, shouted
'Send the glad tidings o'er the sea!
His chains are broke, the slave is free!'"
But though the dreaded 1st of August passed away so peacefully and
pleasantly, the planters could not get rid of the idea that their
laborers would not work after they were free. Mr. Daniell, who managed
several estates in Antigua, talking of the subject, two years
afterward, with an American gentleman from Kentucky, said: "I expected
some irregularities would follow such a prodigious change in the
condition of the negroes. I supposed there would be some relaxation from
labor during the week that followed emancipation; but on Monday morning,
I found all my hands in the field, not one missing. The same day I
received a message from another estate, of which I was proprietor, that
the negroes, to a man, had refused to go into the field. I immediately
rode to the estate, and found the laborers, with hoes in their hands,
doing nothing. Accosting them in a friendly manner, I inquired, 'What is
the meaning of this? How is it that you are not at work this morning?'
They immediately replied, 'It's not because we don't want to work,
massa; but we wanted to see you, first and foremost, to know what the
_bargain_ would be.' As soon as that matter was settled, the whole body
of negroes turned out cheerfully." Another manager declared that the
largest gang he had ever seen in the field, on his property, turned out
the week after emancipation. And such in fact was the universal
testimony of the managers throughout Antigua.
In the days of Slavery, it had always been customary to order out the
militia during the Christmas holidays, when the negroes were in the
habit of congregating in large numbers, to enjoy the festivities of the
season. But the December after emancipation, the Governor issued a
proclamation, that, "_in consequence of the abolition of Slavery_,"
there was no further need of taking that precaution. And it is a fact
that there have been no soldiers out at Christmas from that day to this.
Unfortunately the British government had been so far influenced by the
representations of the planters, that the plan of emancipation they
adopted was a gradual one. All children under six years old were
unconditionally free, the magistrates alone had power to punish, and no
human being could be sold. But the slaves, under the new name of
apprentices, were obliged to work for their masters six years longer
without wages, except one day and a half in the week, which the law
decreed should be their own. The number of hours they were to work each
day was also stipulated by law. This was certainly a great improvement
in their condition; but it was not all they had expected. They were
peaceable, and worked more cheerfully than they had done while they were
slaves; for now a definite date was fixed when they should own all their
time, and they knew that every week brought them nearer to it. Still
they felt that entire justice had not been done to them. Sometimes white
men asked them if they would work when they were entirely free. They
answered, "In Slavery time we work; now we work better; den how you tink
we work when we _free_, when we get _paid_ for work!" Sometimes people
said to them, "I suppose you expect to do just as you please when you
are your own masters?" They replied: "We 'spect to 'bey de law. In oder
countries where dey is all free dey hab de law. We couldn't get along
widout de law. In Slavery time, massa would sometimes slash we when we
do as well as we could; but de law don't do harm to anybody dat behaves
himself. 'Prenticeship is bad enough; but we know de law make it so, and
for peace' sake we will be satisfy. But we murmur in we minds."
In the island of Antigua, planters rejected the plan of apprenticeship.
They said, "If the negroes _must_ be free, let them be free at once,
without any more fuss and trouble." The result proved that they judged
wisely for their own interest, as well as for the comfort and
encouragement of their laborers. When the negroes found that they were
paid for every day's work, they put their whole hearts into it. So
zealous were they to earn wages, that they sometimes worked by
moonlight, or by the light of fires kindled among the dry cane-stalks.
In all respects, the change from the old order of things to the new went
on more smoothly in Antigua than it did anywhere else.
In the islands where apprenticeship was tried, the irritability of the
masters made it work worse than it would otherwise have done. All that
most of them seemed to care for was to get as much work out of their
servants as they could, during the six years that they were to work
without wages, and it vexed them that they could not use the lash
whenever they pleased. They took away various little privileges which
they had been accustomed to grant; while during four days and a half of
the week the apprentices received no wages to compensate them for the
loss of those privileges. Being deprived of the power to sell the
children, they refused to supply them with any food. In fact, they
contrived every way to make the colored people think they had better
have remained slaves. But if they called out, "Work faster, you black
rascal, or I'll flog you!" the apprentices would sometimes lose
patience, and answer, "You can't flog we now." That would make the
master very angry, and he would send the apprentice to a magistrate to
be punished for impudence. The magistrates were the associates of the
planters; they ate their good dinners, and rode about in their
carriages. Consequently, they were more inclined to believe them than
they were to believe their servants. The laborers became so well aware
of this, that they were accustomed to say to each other, "It's of no use
for us to apply to the magistrates. They are so poisoned by massa's
turtle-soup." It has been computed by missionaries that, in the course
of two years, sixty thousand apprentices received, among them all, two
hundred and fifty thousand lashes, besides fifty thousand other
legalized punishments, such as the tread-mill and the chain-gang.
The planters were full of complaints to travellers who visited the West
Indies. If they were asked, "Why don't you emancipate your laborers
entirely, and give them wages, as they do in Antigua,--they have no such
troubles there?" the prejudiced men would shake their heads and answer:
"Negroes will not work without being flogged. We must get what we can
out of them before 1840; for when they are their own masters they will
rob, murder, or starve, rather than labor."
Planters who manifested a more kind and considerate disposition had
pleasanter relations with their servants, and they never found any
difficulty in procuring as much labor as they wanted. Some made it easy
for their apprentices to buy the remainder of their time; and it was
soon observed that those who owned all their time worked faster and
better than those who were without that stimulus. The idea gained ground
that unconditional emancipation would be better both for masters and
servants. The Marquis of Sligo, the humane Governor of Jamaica, set a
good example by emancipating all his apprentices. People in England
began to petition Parliament to abolish the apprenticeship, on the
ground that it proved unsatisfactory and troublesome to all parties. The
result was that all the apprentices in the British West Indies were
made entirely free on the 1st of August, 1838. Mr. Phillippo, a Baptist
missionary in Jamaica, thus describes the observance of the day in that
island: "On the preceding evening, the missionary stations throughout
the island were crowded with people, filling all the places of worship.
They remained at their devotions till the day of liberty dawned, when
they saluted it with joyous acclamations. Then they dispersed through
the towns and villages, singing 'God save the queen,' and rending the
air with their shouts,--'Freedom's come!' 'We're free! we're free!' 'Our
wives and children are free!' During the day, the places of worship were
crowded to suffocation. The scenes presented exceeded all description.
Joyous excitement pervaded the whole island. At Spanish Town, the
Governor, Sir Lionel Smith, addressed the emancipated people, who formed
a procession of seven thousand, and escorted the children of the
schools, about two thousand in number, to the Government House. They
bore banners and flags with various inscriptions, of which the following
are samples: 'Education, Religion, and Social Order'; 'August First,
1838,--the Day of our Freedom'; 'Truth and Justice have at last
prevailed.' The children sang before the Government House, and his
Excellency made a speech characterized by simplicity and kindness, which
was received with enthusiastic cheers. The procession then escorted
their pastor to his house. In front of the Baptist Chapel were three
triumphal arches, decorated with leaves and flowers, and surmounted by
flags bearing the inscriptions, 'Freedom has come!' 'Slavery is no
more!' 'The chains are broken, Africa is free!' There were many flags
bearing the names of their English benefactors,--Clarkson, Wilberforce,
Sligo, Thompson, etc. When these were unfurled, the enthusiasm of the
multitude rose to the highest pitch. For nearly an hour the air rang
with exulting shouts, in which the shrill voices of two thousand
children joined, singing, 'We're free! we're free!' Several of the
kindly disposed planters gave rural _fetes_ to the laborers. Long tables
were spread in the lawns, arches of evergreens were festooned with
flowers, and on the trees floated banners bearing the names of those who
had been most conspicuous in bringing about this blessed result. Songs
were sung, speeches made, prayers offered, and a plentiful repast eaten."
Mr. Phillippo says: "The conduct of the newly emancipated peasantry
would have done credit to Christians of the most civilized country in
the world. They were clean in their persons, and neat in their attire.
Their behavior was modest, unassuming, and decorous in a high degree.
There was no crowding, no vulgar familiarity, but all were courteous and
obliging to each other, as members of one harmonious family. There was
no dancing, gambling, or carousing. All seemed to have a sense of the
obligations they owed to their masters, to each other, and to the civil
authorities. The masters who were present at these _fetes_ congratulated
their former dependents on the boon they had received, and hopes were
mutually expressed that all past differences and wrongs might be
forgiven."
On some of the estates where these festivals were held the laborers,
with few individual exceptions, went to work as usual on the following
day. _Many of them gave their first week of free labor as an offering of
good-will to their masters._ Thus the period from which many of the
planters had apprehended the worst consequences passed away in peace and
harmony.
It is now twenty-seven years since the laborers in the British West
Indies have been made entirely free; and the missionaries, the
magistrates, and even the masters agree that the laborers are much more
faithful and industrious under the new system than they were under the
iron rule of Slavery. It is true, some of the old planters growled as
long as they lived. They had always predicted that freedom would bring
ruin on all classes, and it vexed them to see the negroes behaving so
well. They, however, made the most of the fact that there was less sugar
made than in former years. It was their own fault. The emancipated
slaves wanted to stay and work on the plantations where they had always
lived. But the masters could not give up their old habits of meanness
and tyranny. Their laborers could scarcely support life with the very
small wages they received; and yet they took from them the little
patches of provision-ground which they had formerly had, and charged
them enormously high rent for their miserable little huts. It seemed as
if they wanted to drive them to robbery, that they might say, "We told
you it would be so, if you set them free."
But the freedmen disappointed them. Under all discouragements, they
persisted in behaving well. When they found that they could not get a
living on the old plantations where they wanted to stay, they went to
work on railroads, and wherever they could find employment. They laid up
as much as they could of their wages, and bought bits of land, on which
they built comfortable cabins for themselves, and laid out little
gardens. Their wives and children raised poultry and tended a cow, and
carried vegetables and butter and eggs to market, in baskets poised on
their heads. With the money thus earned they bought more land and added
to their little stock of furniture. Though the men received only from
eighteen to twenty-four cents a day, out of which they boarded
themselves, they were so industrious and saving that in four years the
freedmen in Jamaica alone had bought and paid for one hundred thousand
acres of land, and put up dwellings thereon. Mr. Phillippo states, that
during that time as many as two hundred new villages of freedmen were
formed. These villages generally received the names of benefactors, such
as Clarkson, Wilberforce, Thompson, &c. To their own little homes they
also gave names indicative of their gratitude and contentment. They
called them "Save Rent," "A Little of My Own," "Heart's Love," "Liberty
and Content," "Happy Retreat," "Jane's Delight," "Thank God to see It,"
&c.
Mr. Phillippo says:--
"These free villages are regularly laid out. The houses are small, many
of them built of stone or wood, with shingled roofs, green blinds, and
verandahs, to shield them from the sun. Most of them are neatly
thatched, and generally plastered and whitewashed both outside and in.
They now have looking-glasses, chairs, and side-boards decorated with
pretty articles of glass and crockery. Each dwelling has its little plot
of vegetables, generally neatly kept; and many of them have
flower-gardens in front, glowing with all the bright hues of the
tropics. The groups often presented are worthy of the painter's pencil
or the poet's song. Amid the stillness of a Sabbath evening, many
families, after their return from the house of God, may be seen gathered
together in the shadow of the trees, which overhang their cottages,
singing hymns, or listening to the reading of the Scriptures, with none
to molest or make them afraid."
Mr. Charles Tappan of Boston, who visited Jamaica several years after
emancipation, writes:--
"On landing at Kingston, I must confess I was half inclined to believe
the story so industriously circulated, that the emancipated slave is
more idle and vicious than any other of God's intelligent creatures; but
when I rode through the valleys and over the mountains, and found
everywhere an industrious, sober people, I concluded all the vagabonds
of the island had moved to the sea-shore, to pick up a precarious living
by carrying baggage, begging, &c.; and such, upon inquiry, I found to be
the fact. Wherever I went in the rural districts, I found contented men
and women, cultivating sugar-cane, and numerous vegetables and fruits,
on their own account. Their neat, well-furnished cottages compared well
with the dwellings of pioneers in our own country. I found in them
mahogany furniture, crockery and glass ware, and shelves of useful
books. I saw Africans, of unmixed blood, grinding their own sugar-cane
in their own mills, and making their own sugar.
"I attended a large meeting called to decide the question about inviting
a schoolmaster to settle among them. There was only one man who doubted
the expediency of taking the children from work and sending them to
school. One said, 'My little learning enabled me to see that a note,
given to me in payment for a horse was not written according to
contract.' Another said, 'I should have been wronged out of forty pounds
of coffee I sold in Kingston the other day, if I hadn't known how to
cipher.' Another said, 'I shall not have much property to leave my
children; but if they have learning they can get property.' Another
said, 'Those that can read will be more likely to get religion.' All
these people had been slaves, or were the children of slaves. I saw no
intoxicated person in Jamaica; and when it is considered that every man
there can make rum, it strikes me as very remarkable."