THE SLAVE-TRADE.
The slave-trade has been the great obstacle to the civilization of
Africa, the development of her resources, and the welfare of the Negro
race. The prospect of gain, which this traffic held out to the natives,
induced one tribe to make war upon another, burn the villages, murder
the old, and kidnap the young. In return, the successful marauders
received in payment gunpowder and rum, two of the worst enemies of an
ignorant and degraded people.
Fired with ardent spirits, and armed with old muskets, these people
would travel from district to district, leaving behind them smouldering
ruins, heart-stricken friends, and bearing with them victims whose
market value was to inflame the avaricious passions of the inhabitants
of the new world.
While the enslavement of one portion of the people of Africa by another
has been a custom of many centuries, to the everlasting shame and
disgrace of the Portuguese, it must be said they were the first to
engage in the foreign slave-trade. As early as the year 1503, a few
slaves were sent from a Portuguese settlement in Africa into the
Spanish colonies in America. In 1511 Ferdinand, the fifth king of
Spain, permitted them to be carried in great numbers.
Ferdinand, however, soon saw the error of this, and ordered the trade
to be stopped. At the death of the King, a proposal was made by
Bartholomew de las Cassas, the bishop of Chiapa, to Cardinal Ximenes,
who held the reins of the government of Spain till Charles V. came
to the throne, for the establishment of a regular system of commerce
in the persons of the native Africans. The cardinal, however, with a
foresight, a benevolence, and a justice which will always do honor to
his memory, refused the proposal; not only judging it to be unlawful to
consign innocent people to slavery at all, but to be very inconsistent
to deliver the inhabitants of one country over for the benefit of
another.
Charles soon came to the throne, the cardinal died, and in 1517 the
King granted a patent to one of his Flemish favorites, containing an
exclusive right of importing four thousand Africans into the islands
St. Domingo, Porto Rico, Cuba, and Jamaica. In 1562 the English, during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, commenced the importation of African
slaves, which were taken to Hispaniola by Sir John Hawkins. The trade
then became general. The French persuaded Louis XIII., then King of
France, that it would be aiding the cause of Christianity to import
the Africans into the colonies, where they could be converted to the
Christian religion; and the French embarked in the trade.
The Dutch were too sharp-eyed to permit such an opportunity to fill
their coffers to pass by, so they followed the example set by the
Portuguese, the English, and the French. The trade being considered
lawful by all countries, and especially in Africa, the means of
obtaining slaves varied according to the wishes of the traders.
Some whites travelled through the country as far as it was practical,
and bartered goods for slaves, chaining them together, who followed
their masters from town to town until they reached the coast, where
they were sold to the owners of ships. Others located themselves on the
coast and in the interior, and bought the slaves as they were brought
in for sale.
A chief of one of the tribes of the Guinea coast, who had been out
on a successful marauding expedition, in which he had captured some
two hundred slaves, took them to the coast, sold his chattels to the
captain of a vessel, and was invited on board the ship. The chief with
his three sons and attendants had scarcely reached the deck of the ship
when they were seized, hand-cuffed, and placed with the other Negroes,
which enabled the captain to save the purchase money, as well as adding
a dozen more slaves to his list.
Had this happened in the nineteenth century, it would have been
pronounced a “Yankee trick.”
Some large ships appeared at the slave-trading towns on the coast,
ready to convey to the colonies any slaves whose owners might see fit
to engage them. Their cargoes would often be made up of the slaves of
half a dozen parties, on which occasions the chattels would sometimes
become mixed, and cause a dispute as to the ownership. To avoid this,
the practice of branding the slaves on the coast before shipping them,
was introduced. Branding a human being on the naked body, the hot iron
hissing in the quivering flesh, the cries and groans of the helpless
creatures, were scenes enacted a few years ago, and which the African
slave-trader did not deny.
There on a rude mat, spread upon the ground,
A stalwart Negro lieth firmly bound;
His brawny chest one brutal captor smites,
And notice to the ringing sound invites;
Another opes his mouth the teeth to show,
As cattle-dealers aye are wont to do.
Hark, to that shrill and agonizing cry!
Gaze on that upturned, supplicating eye!
How the flesh quivers, and how shrinks the frame,
As the initials of her owner’s name
Burn on the back of that Mandingo girl;
Yet calmly do the smoke-wreaths upward curl
From his cigar, whose right unfaltering hand
Lights with a match the cauterizing brand,
The while his left doth the round shoulder clasp,
And hold his victim in a vise-like grasp.
As cruel as was the preparation before leaving their native land,
it was equalled, if not surpassed, by the passage on shipboard. Two
thousand human beings put on a vessel not capable of accommodating half
that number; disease breaking out amongst the slaves, when but a few
days on the voyage; the dead and the dying thrown overboard, and the
cries and groans coming forth from below decks is but a faint picture
of the horrid trade.
“All ready?” cried the captain;
“Ay, ay!” the seamen said;
“Heave up the worthless lubbers--
The dying and the dead.”
Up from the slave-ship’s prison
Fierce, bearded heads were thrust;
“Now let the sharks look to it--
Toss up the dead ones first!”
Slave-factories, or trading-pens, were established up and down the
coast. And although England for many years kept a fleet in African
waters, to watch and break up this abominable traffic, the swiftness of
the slavers, and the adroitness of their pilots, enabled them to escape
detection by gaining hiding-places in some of the small streams on the
coast, or by turning to the ocean until a better opportunity offered
itself for landing.
Calabar and Bonny were the two largest slave-markets on the African
coast. From these places alone twenty thousand slaves were shipped, in
the year 1806. It may therefore be safe to say, that fifty thousand
slaves were yearly sent into the colonies at this period; or rather,
sent from the coast, for many thousands who were shipped, never reached
their place of destination. During the period when this traffic
was carried on without any interference on the part of the British
government, caravans of slaves were marched down to Loango from the
distance of several hundred miles, and each able-bodied man was
required to bring down a tooth of ivory. In this way a double traffic
was carried on; that in ivory by the English and American vessels, and
the slaves by the Portuguese.
All who have investigated the subject, know that the rivers Benin,
Bonny, Brass, Kalabar, and Kameruns, were once the chief seats of this
trade. It is through these rivers that the Niger discharges itself into
the ocean; and as the factories near the mouths of these different
branches had great facility of access to the heart of Africa, it is
probable that the traffic was carried on more vigorously here than
anywhere else on the coast.
But the abolition of the slave-trade by England, and the presence of
the British squadron on the coast, has nearly broken up the trade.
The number of vessels now engaged in carrying on a lawful trade in
these rivers is between fifty and sixty; and so decided are the
advantages reaped by the natives from this change in their commercial
affairs, that it is not believed they would ever revert to it again,
even if all outward restraints were taken away. So long as the African
seas were given up to piracy and the slave-trade, and the aborigines
in consequence were kept in constant excitement and warfare, it was
almost impossible either to have commenced or continued a missionary
station on the coast for the improvement of the natives. And the fact
that there was none anywhere between Sierra Leone and the Cape of
Good Hope, previous to the year 1832, shows that it was regarded as
impracticable.[34]
Christianity does not invoke the aid of the sword; but when she can
shield from the violence of lawless men by the intervention of “the
powers that be,” or when the providence of God goes before and smoothes
down the waves of discord and strife, she accepts it as a grateful
boon, and discharges her duty with greater alacrity and cheerfulness.
Throughout all the region where the slave-trade was once carried on,
there is great decline in business, except where that traffic has been
replaced by legitimate commerce or agriculture. Nor could it well be
otherwise. The very measures which were employed in carrying on this
detestable traffic at least over three-fourths of the country, were
in themselves quite sufficient to undermine any government in the
world. For a long term of years the slaves were procured on the part of
these larger and more powerful governments by waging war against their
feebler neighbors for this express purpose; and in this way they not
only cut off all the sources of their own prosperity and wealth, but
the people themselves, while waging this ruthless and inhuman warfare,
were imbibing notions and principles which would make it impossible for
them to cohere long as organized nations.
The bill for the abolition of the British slave-trade received the
royal assent on March 25, 1807; and this law came into operation on and
after January 1, 1808. That was a deed well done; and glorious was the
result for humanity. To William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Granville
Sharp, and a few others, is the credit due for this great act.
Although the slave-trade was abolished by the British government, and
afterwards by the American and some other nations, the slave-trade
still continued, and exists even at the present day, in a more limited
form, except, perhaps, in Northern and Central Africa, and on the Nile.
In that section the trade is carried on in the most gigantic manner. It
begins every year in the month of August, when the traders prepare for
a large haul.
All the preparations having been completed, they ascend the Nile in a
regular squadron. Every expedition means war; and, according to its
magnitude, is provided with one hundred to one thousand armed men.
The soldiers employed consist of the miserable Dongolowie, who carry
double-barrelled shot-guns and knives, and are chiefly noted for their
huge appetites and love of marissa (beer). Each large dealer has his
own territory, and he resents promptly any attempt of another trader to
trespass thereon.
For instance, Agate, the most famous of all African slave-traders,
knew, and his men frequently visited, the Victoria Nyanza, long before
Speke ever dreamed of it. Agate’s station is now near the Nyanza, and
he keeps up a heavy force there, as indeed he does at all his stations.
When the expedition is ready, it moves slowly up to the Neam-Neam
country, for instance, and if one tribe is hostile to another, he joins
with the strongest and takes his pay in slaves. Active spies are kept
in liberal pay to inform him of the number and quality of the young
children; and when the chief believes he can steal one hundred he
settles down to work, for that figure means four thousand dollars. He
makes a landing with his human hounds, after having reconnoitred the
position,--generally in the night time. At dawn he moves forward on the
village, and the alarm is spread among the Negroes, who herd together
behind their aboriginal breastplates, and fire clouds of poisoned
arrows. The trader opens with musketry, and then begins a general
massacre of men, women, and children. The settlement, surrounded by
inflammable grass, is given to the flames, and the entire habitation
is laid in ashes. Probably out of the wreck of one thousand charred
and slaughtered people, his reserve has caught the one hundred coveted
women and children, who are flying from death in wild despair. They
are yoked together by a long pole, and marched off from their homes
forever. One-third of them may have the small-pox; and then with this
infected cargo the trader proceeds to his nearest station.
Thence the Negroes are clandestinely sent across the desert to
Kordofan, whence, they are dispersed over Lower Egypt and other
markets. It not unfrequently happens that the Negroes succeed in
killing their adversaries in these combats. But the blacks here are not
brave. They generally fly after a loss of several killed, except with
the Neam-Neams, who always fight with a bravery commensurate with their
renown as cannibals.
The statistics of the slave-trade are difficult to obtain with absolute
accuracy, but an adequate approximation may be reached. It is safe to
say that the annual export of slaves from the country lying between
the Red Sea and the Great Desert is twenty-five thousand a year,
distributed as follows: From Abyssinia, carried to Jaffa or Gallabat,
ten thousand; issuing by other routes of Abyssinia, five thousand; by
the Blue Nile, three thousand; by the White Nile, seven thousand. To
obtain these twenty-five thousand slaves and sell them in market, more
than fifteen thousand are annually killed, and often the mortality
reaches the terrible figure of fifty thousand. It is a fair estimate
that fifty thousand children are stolen from their parents every year.
Of the number forced into slavery, fifteen thousand being boys and ten
thousand girls, it is found that about six thousand go to Lower Egypt,
two thousand are made soldiers, nine thousand concubines, five hundred
eunuchs, five thousand cooks or servants, while ten thousand eventually
die from the climate, and three thousand obtain their papers of
freedom. They are dispersed over three million square miles of
territory, and their blood finally mingles with that of the Turk, the
Arab, and the European. The best black soldiers are recruited from the
Dinkas, who are strong, handsome Negroes, the finest of the White Nile.
The other races are thickly built and clumsy, and are never ornamental;
the Abyssinians, for whatever service and of whatever class, excel
all their rival victims in slavery. They are quiet and subdued, and
seldom treacherous or insubordinate. They prefer slavery, many of them,
to freedom, because they have no aspirations that are inordinate.
The girls are delicate, and not built for severe labor. Though born
and bred in a country where concubines are as legitimate and as much
honored as wives, they revolt against the terrors of polygamy.
In Abyssinia there is a feature of the slave-commerce which does not
seem to exist elsewhere. The natives themselves enslave their own
countrymen and countrywomen. Since the death of Theodore, the country
has been the scene of complex civil war. Each tribe is in war against
its neighbor; and when the issue comes to a decisive battle, the victor
despoils his antagonist of all his property, makes merchandise of the
children, and forwards them to the Egyptian post of Gallabat, where
they find a ready and active market. All along the frontier there is
no attempt to prevent slavery. It exists with the sanction of the
officials, and by their direct co-operation. Another profession is
that of secret kidnappers. The world knows little how much finesse and
depravity and duplicity are required in this business. The impression
is abroad, that the slave-trade provokes nothing more than murder,
theft, arson, and rape. But it is a disgraceful fact that some traders
habitually practice the most inhuman deception to accomplish their end.
They frequently settle down in communities and households in the guise
of benefactors, and while so situated they register each desirable boy
and girl, and afterward conspire to kidnap or kill them, as chance may
have it. Such is the story of the African slave-trade of to-day.
FOOTNOTE:
[34] Wilson’s “Western Africa.”