INTRODUCTION OF BLACKS INTO THE AMERICAN COLONIES.
Simultaneously with the landing of the Pilgrims from the Mayflower,
on Plymouth Rock, December 22d, 1620, a clumsy-looking brig, old and
dirty, with paint nearly obliterated from every part, slowly sailed
up the James River, and landed at Jamestown. The short, stout, fleshy
appearance of the men in charge of the vessel, and the five empty
sour-crout barrels which lay on deck, told plainly in what country the
navigators belonged.
Even at that early day they had with them their “native beverage,”
which, though not like the lager of the present time, was a drink
over which they smoked and talked of “Farderland,” and traded for
the negroes they brought. The settlers of Jamestown, and indeed, all
Virginia at that time, were mainly cavaliers, gentlemen-adventurers,
aspiring to live by their wits and other men’s labor. Few of the
pioneers cherished any earnest liking for downright persistent muscular
exertion, yet some exertion was urgently required to clear away the
heavy forest which all but covered the soil of the infant colony, and
to grow the tobacco which easily became the staple export by means of
which nearly everything required by its people but food was to be paid
for in England.
The landing of the twenty slaves from the Dutch brig was the signal
for all sorts of adventurers to embark in the same nefarious traffic.
Worn-out and unseaworthy European ships, brigs, barks, schooners,
and indeed, everything else that could float, no matter how unsafe,
were brought into requisition to supply the demand for means of
transportation in the new commerce.
Thousands of persons incarcerated in the prisons of the old world
were liberated upon condition that they would man these slave-trading
vessels. The discharged convicts were used in the slave factories on
the African coast, and even the marauding expeditions sent out from
the slave ships in search of victims were mainly made up of this vile
off-cast and scum of the prison population of England, France, Germany,
Spain, and Portugal. So great was the increase of this traffic, that
in a short time the importation in a single year amounted to forty
thousand slaves.
The immense growth of the slave population in the Southern States, soon
caused politicians to take sides for or against the institution. This,
however, did not manifest itself to any very great extent, until the
struggle for National Independence was over, and the people, North and
South, began to look at their interests connected with each section of
the country.
At the time that the Declaration of Independence was put forth, no
authentic enumeration had been made; but when the first census was
taken in 1791, the total number of slaves in what are now known as the
Northern States, was forty thousand three hundred and seventy; in the
Southern, six hundred and fifty-three thousand nine hundred and ten.
It is very common at this day to speak of our revolutionary struggle as
commenced and hurried forward by a union of free and slave colonies;
but such is not the fact. However slender and dubious its legal basis,
slavery existed in each and all of the colonies that united to declare
and maintain their Independence. Slaves were proportionately more
numerous in certain portions of the South; but they were held with
impunity throughout the North, advertised like dogs or horses, and sold
at auction, or otherwise, as chattels. Vermont, then a territory in
dispute between New Hampshire and New York, and with very few civilized
inhabitants, mainly on its southern and eastern borders, is probably
the only portion of the revolutionary confederation never polluted by
the tread of a slave.
The spirit of liberty, aroused or intensified by the protracted
struggle of the colonists against usurped and abused power in the
mother-country, soon found itself engaged in natural antagonism against
the current form of domestic despotism.
“How shall we complain of arbitrary or unlimited power exerted over
us, while we exert a still more despotic and inexcusable power over a
dependent and benighted race?” was very fairly asked. Several suits
were brought in Massachusetts--where the fires of liberty burned
earliest and brightest--to test the legal right of slaveholding;
and the leading Whigs gave their money and their legal services to
support these actions, which were generally on one ground or another,
successful. Efforts for an express law of emancipation, however,
failed, even in Massachusetts; the Legislature doubtless apprehended
that such a measure, by alienating the slaveholders, would increase the
number and power of the Tories; but in 1777, a privateer having brought
a lot of captured slaves into Jamaica, and advertised them for sale,
the General Court, as the legislative assembly was called, interfered,
and had them set at liberty. The first Continental Congress which
resolved to resist the usurpations and oppressions of Great Britain by
force, had already declared that our struggle would be “for the cause
of human nature,” which the Congress of 1776, under the lead of Thomas
Jefferson, expanded into the noble affirmation of the right of “all
men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” contained in the
immortal preamble to the Declaration of Independence. A like averment
that “all men are born free and equal,” was in 1780 inserted in the
Massachusetts Bill of Rights; and the Supreme Court of that State, in
1783, on an indictment of a master for assault and battery, held this
declaration a bar to slave-holding henceforth in the State.
A similar clause in the second Constitution of New Hampshire, was
held by the courts of that State to secure freedom to every child
born therein after its adoption. Pennsylvania, in 1780, passed an act
prohibiting the further introduction of slaves, and securing freedom
to all persons born in that State thereafter. Connecticut and Rhode
Island passed similar acts in 1784. Virginia, in 1778, on motion of Mr.
Jefferson, prohibited the further importation of slaves; and in 1782,
removed all legal restrictions on emancipation. Maryland adopted both
of these in 1783. North Carolina, in 1786, declared the introduction
of slaves into the State “of evil consequences and highly impolitic,”
and imposed a duty of £5 per head thereon. New York and New Jersey
followed the example of Virginia and Maryland, including the domestic
in the same interdict with the foreign slave-trade. Neither of these
states, however, declared a general emancipation until many years
thereafter, and slavery did not wholly cease in New York until about
1830, nor in New Jersey till a much later date. The distinction of free
and slave states, with the kindred assumption of a natural antagonism
between the North and South, was utterly unknown to the men of the
Revolution.