II

The story of the evolution of the status of the Negro in the North

during the first part of the nineteenth century can be easily told as

it was the result of forces the existence of which we have already

suggested. By far the most important among these were economic and

industrial. Lecky has said somewhere that the masses of men are

influenced far more by the practical implications of daily life in the

pursuit of their callings than they are by abstract ideas and this

finds abundant illustration in the attitude taken by the northern mind

upon the Negro. In Pennsylvania, where slavery existed in its mildest

form and where the moral sentiment of the community was best prepared

for its eradication, thanks to the persistent and effective campaign

of education begun by the Quakers as early as 1688 and prosecuted

under the leadership of such men as the saintly John Woolman and

Benezet, economic interests still played a more important part than

ethical.[291] Slavery flourished only where the plantation system was

profitable and this was not the case in Pennsylvania. The industrial

development of the State was in the direction of small farming,

manufacturing and commerce, all of which were uncongenial to slavery.

In the absence of paramount economic needs, slavery was unable to hold

its own against the moral idealism of the Quaker and the racial

antipathies of the German and the Scotch Irish.

Even in respect to New England the evidence is abundant that it was

economic rather than moral or religious influences that paved the way

to freedom for the slave. At the beginning it was the imperative

demand for labor that led to the enslavement of the Indian and Negro,

which the Puritan justified by an appeal to his high Calvinism. When

this demand ceased because of the increase of white labor and when the

diminished supply rendered it more difficult to get profitable slaves,

the same economic laws tended to encourage the freedom of the

slave.[292] "Fortunately for the moral development of our beloved

colonies," says Weeden, "the climate was too harsh, the social system

too simple, to engender a good economic employment of black labor. The

simple industrial methods of each New England homestead, described in

so many ways through these pages, make a natural barrier against an

alien social system including either black or copper-colored

dependents. The blacks soon dwindled in numbers, or dropped out from a

life too severe for any but the hardiest and firmest fibered

races."[293] When we see how during the constitutional convention of

1787 selfish economic interests led Massachusetts to enter into the

unholy alliance with the pro-slavery States of the far South to fix

upon another section of the country the nefarious slave-trade for

twenty years longer, we may perhaps conclude that it was after all

fortunate for the integrity of the Puritan conscience that slavery was

unprofitable as a domestic institution. The slave-trade ended in 1808

and during the years 1806, 1807 six hundred New England slavers

arrived at the port of Charleston alone.[294]

There seems to have been, on the whole, comparatively little express

legislation in the way of constitutional changes and few express acts

abolishing slavery in the North during this period.[295] The process

was a gradual one, proceeding by acts of manumission or gradual

abolition, the act of Pennsylvania in 1780 being typical. Slavery does

not appear to have ever been made illegal in Pennsylvania by express

law but died out in the natural course of events. Hence slaves were

found in this State well on toward the middle of the nineteenth

century.[296] This goes to show that the abolition of slavery and the

admission of the Negro to complete citizenship were the result of a

slow evolution of public sentiment. Moore even contends that slavery

was never formally abolished in Massachusetts until 1866 when it was

agreed on all hands that it was "considered as abolished."[297] Thus

the social mind, by a natural and normal development of democratic

ideals, arrived unconsciously at the point where it was impossible to

harmonize the status of the slave with the prevailing sentiments of

the community. The social mind was for this reason often far in

advance of the legal status of the Negro as determined by the laws

which represented earlier stages of opinion. A case in point is the

Massachusetts act of 1788, of which Moore says: "We doubt if anything

in human legislation can be found which comes nearer branding color as

a crime," and yet this law remained upon the statute books of the

State long after it had ceased to be in accord with the feelings and

practices of the community and was only repealed in 1834.[298] The

hesitancy of the legislators of the different free States to pass

express acts of abolition and thus formally to pronounce slavery

illegal may have been due in part to the fact that slavery was

sanctioned to a certain extent by the constitution and was the

"peculiar institution" around which centered the social and economic

life of a large number of sister States.

The great industrial expansion of the North and West toward the end of

the second decade of the century and the increase of population

through immigration in time reduced the Negro in the North in point of

number to an almost negligible factor. He was swept along with the

rising tide of the growing industrial democracy and shared in the

general benefits of citizenship accorded to all. But it would give a

very superficial idea of the real status of the Negro in the North

during this time if we were to base our judgments upon the statistics

of slave and free, the various acts for manumission or the vigorous

anti-slavery agitation from 1830 on. A closer acquaintance with the

actual conditions of the time shows that there was a striking contrast

between the theoretical rights and privileges which the Negro was

supposed to enjoy by virtue of the constitution and bills of rights

and those he really did enjoy.

This was a subject of frequent remark by foreigners travelling in

America. Captain Marryat, writing of conditions in Philadelphia in

1838, says, "Singular is the degree of contempt and dislike in which

the free blacks are held in all the free states of America. They are

deprived of their rights as citizens; and the white pauper who holds

out his hand for charity ... will turn away from a negro or

colored man with disdain."[299] DeTocqueville, in a remarkable

characterization of the relations between the races based upon his

observations in the early thirties, says that as the legal barriers

fall away in the free States those of race prejudice are drawn all the

sharper. Wherever the freemen have increased the gap has widened

between them and the whites. "The prejudice which repels the negroes

seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and

inequality is sanctioned by the manners while it is effaced from the

laws of the country. Though having the franchise the Negro may not

exercise the right for fear of his life;[300] his rights before the

law are pronounced upon by white judges only; his children may not

attend the same school with the white's and gold can not buy a ticket

for him in the same theater; he lies apart in the hospital, worships

at a different altar and must bury his dead in a different

cemetery."[301]

Harriet Martineau, writing in 1834-35 and commenting upon the

statement of a Boston gentleman that the Negroes were perfectly well

treated in New England in the matter of education, the franchise, and

otherwise, states that while they are nominally citizens, "yet their

houses and schools are pulled down,[302] and they can obtain no remedy

at law. They are thrust out of offices, and excluded from the most

honorable employments, and stripped of all the best benefits of

society by fellow-citizens who, once a year, solemnly lay their hands

on their hearts, and declare that all men are born free and equal, and

that rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the

governed."[303] Fanny Kemble, the English actress, writes in 1838-39

of the treatment of the free blacks at the North, "They are marked as

the Hebrew lepers of old, and are condemned to sit, like these

unfortunates, without the gates of every human and social sympathy.

From their own sable color, a pall falls over the whole of God's

universe to them, and they find themselves stamped with a badge of

infamy of Nature's own devising, at sight of which all natural

kindness of man to man seems to recoil from them. They are not slaves

indeed, but they are pariahs; debarred from all fellowship save with

their own despised race--scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your

streets, not tolerated as companions by the foreign menials in your

kitchens. They are free certainly but they are also degraded,

rejected, the offscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your

society; they are free from the chain, the whip, the enforced task and

unpaid toils of slavery; but they are not the less under a ban."[304]

There was in fact throughout this entire period a remarkable paradox

in the social mind of the North with regard to the Negro, for we find

everywhere the strongest antipathy to the Negro personally and general

discriminations against him socially and politically, united with the

greatest enthusiasm for his rights in the abstract. Even the best

spirits of the time did not escape it. Fanny Kemble relates of John

Quincy Adams, who became the very head and front of the anti-slavery

element in Congress,[305] that while discussing with her at a Boston

dinner-party the Shaksperean heroine Desdemona, he asserted "with a

most serious expression of sincere disgust, that he considered all her

misfortunes as a very just judgment upon her for having married a

'nigger.'"[306] About the time when Garrisonian abolition was at its

high tide, when Wendell Phillips was placing Toussaint l'Ouverture

above Caesar and Napoleon on the roll of fame, when Whittier,

Longfellow, and Lowell were lending their talents to the cause of

unalterable and inalienable rights of mankind, Jesse Chickering

published a "Statistical View of the Population of Massachusetts from

1765 to 1840," at the end of which he appended some very interesting

facts and conclusions as to the colored population of this State. He

stated that, owing partly to their race traits and partly to fixed and

immovable prejudices of the whites against them, the blacks are

deprived of sympathy and social enjoyments and reduced to a servile

and degraded condition of poverty and dependence (p. 137). Because of

this widespread prejudice against their color, "they cannot obtain

employment on equal terms with the whites, and wherever they go a

sneer is passed upon them, as if this sportive inhumanity were an act

of merit.... Thus, though their legal rights are the same as those of

the whites, their condition is one of degradation and dependence." In

spite of the vigorous agitation for the rights of the Negro which

stirred New England and the entire nation at this time, the writer

says "the prejudices which are now felt in this Commonwealth against

the people of color and the disadvantages under which they labor ...

we can hardly expect will soon be removed," though he is persuaded

that "this want of true sympathy, and this sense of degradation, must

operate on their sensibility and unfavorably affect their physical,

moral, and social condition, and shorten to them the duration of life"

(pp. 156, 157).

The anti-slavery movement in Pennsylvania never went to the

rhapsodical extremes we find in Massachusetts. It was from beginning

to end sane and reasonable and yet vigorous and unremittent.

Nevertheless, we find the same enthusiasm for the rights of the Negro

in the abstract combined with racial antipathy, social and political

discriminations, and even on more than one occasion mob violence in

the actual treatment of the Negro population of the State.[307]

Pennsylvania's interest in slavery, because of her position just to

the north of slaveholding States, was never allowed to lag even after

she had set all her slaves free. Her Negro population was constantly

being replenished from the South and largely by fugitive slaves. This

brought about much friction with Maryland, owing to the unwillingness

of Pennsylvanians to surrender the runaways. In spite of Federal law

the spirit of freedom made it unsafe for owners to hunt for their

escaped slaves in Pennsylvania, as the famous Christiana riot of 1851

shows, and brought the State to the verge of nullification,[308] to

such extremes were a peaceful and yet liberty-loving people ready to

go in their championship of the abstract rights of the oppressed

slave.

But while this was true, there is abundant evidence to show that by

the masses of the people the Negro was thoroughly disliked, persecuted

and relegated to an inferior social status by no means in harmony with

the doctrine of the inalienable and unalterable rights of man. Negroes

were set upon in the streets, beaten, cut and even stoned to death in

sheer wanton cruelty. In 1831 the refusal of New Haven, Connecticut,

to establish a Negro college was enthusiastically endorsed in

resolutions passed at a public meeting in Philadelphia, and in 1834,

1835, 1838, 1842 and 1849 this city was distracted by riots directed

against the Negroes. The houses of the Negroes were sacked, their

inmates beaten and mobs of whites and blacks fought through the

streets with clubs and stones.[309] "A careful study of each of these

riots," says Turner, "makes inevitable the deduction that the deep

underlying cause which made every one of them possible, and which

prepared them long before they burst forth, was a fierce, and at least

among the lower classes, an almost universal, hatred of the negro

himself."

How are we to explain this contradiction in dealing with the Negro?

Why did Pennsylvanians mob him, disfranchise him from 1838 to 1873,

seek to get rid of him by colonization and yet hide him from his

master and resolutely refuse to close to him the door of freedom even

in the face of Federal laws? The answer is one of fundamental

importance for the comprehension of the status of the Negro in the

social consciousness of the nation now as well as then. The people of

Pennsylvania had been educated for generations in the great traditions

of freedom. These traditions had their roots in the religious

emancipation of the reformation and gradually extended to the

political sphere and became endeared to the hearts of all Americans

through the struggle with Great Britain. Pennsylvanians had little

special love for the Negro but they loved these traditions dearly. In

a healthy democracy these traditions are inseparably united in the

thought of the average citizen with the personal sense of liberty. To

violate them is to violate that which lends validity to his own

conviction of his right to be free.

It will be said, of course, that in the social and political

restrictions placed upon the Negro as an actual member of the

community, these lofty ideals were negated. Rights that are granted in

theory but are denied in the actual give and take of social contacts

are not true rights. This was undoubtedly the case. But to register

this criticism does not by any means exhaust the situation. For these

so-called inalienable rights are not something that the individual is

born heir to as he is to his father's fortune. They are his

inalienably only by virtue of his potentiality for realizing them and

as such they exist only as possible forms of self-activity, functions

which by common consensus of opinion are conceded to each individual.

In a very real sense, therefore, they must be won or created by each

for himself. The individual or the group, which through ignorance or

inefficiency or thriftlessness or racial discrimination is

incapacitated for measuring up to the demands of an aggressive and

virile democracy, will inevitably find these inalienable and

unalterable rights merely a name so far as they are concerned. Actual

social status in existing American democracy is the result of a

balance of forces one of which is the individual's power of

self-assertion. In _der Kampf um's Recht_ the community imagines it

has done its utmost when it insists upon fair play. There was also the

inevitable friction due to the close contact of diverse race groups.

The Negro population of Pennsylvania was larger than that of any other

northern State. The presence of thousands of members of a different

race, to whom complete social assimilation through intermarriage was

refused, and who represented different standards of living and lower

industrial efficiency, led inevitably to group conflicts.

Just on the eve of the Civil War, therefore, the theoretical status

assigned the Negro in the social consciousness of the North and the

one very soon to be assured to him throughout the entire nation in

Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, insisted that he be included in

those broad and somewhat indefinite categories of rights embodied in

our national political symbols. The enthusiasm for these is to be

explained not so much from the objective and eternal nature of the

rights themselves as from the feeling that they represent a phase of

common social experience of fundamental importance for society as a

whole. Previous training in democratic traditions made men capable of

the noblest self-sacrifice in their loyalty to these ideas of freedom

and equality, but the fact of their being associated with the enslaved

Negro was accidental. No sooner had they assisted the runaway slave to

freedom than they forgot him. He was left to make good in the

autonomous, _laissez faire_ atmosphere of a vigorous democracy. Soon,

however, his economic helplessness and inefficiency, his ignorance of

the tense northern life aroused the same men who had helped him to

freedom to the realization that he was of an alien race, with

characteristics that made his social assimilation difficult. Where the

blacks were present in large numbers the situation was fraught with

the gravest difficulties of social adjustment. These were facts not

encouraging for the future of the two races in the nation. They should

have taught men that emancipation, instead of solving the problem,

would plunge the nation and particularly the South into a situation

the infinite difficulties of which were never dreamed of by the

enthusiastic champions of abstract human rights. DeTocqueville's

language, though written almost thirty years before the _débâcle_

came, sounds like a veritable prophecy. He felt that national

abolition was bound to come in the course of events. "I am obliged to

confess," he says however, "that I do not regard the abolition of

slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the

United States," for abolition will inevitably "increase the repugnance

of the white population for the men of color."[310]

It is well to remember, when we come to examine the status of the

Negro in the slave States, that slavery would naturally follow lines

of development determined by the economic, social and climatic

conditions of the sections concerned. These conditions, of course,

vary greatly throughout a region stretching from Maryland to Texas. As

late as the famous Dred Scott case, when slavery was limited to the

South, Justice Curtis could say, "the status of slavery embraces every

condition from that in which the slave is known to the law simply as a

chattel, with no civil rights, to that in which he is recognized as a

person for all purposes, save the compulsory power of directing and

receiving the fruits of his labor. Which of these conditions shall

attend the status of slavery, must depend upon the municipal law which

creates and upholds it."[311] A comparative study of the legislation

of all the slave States with regard to the Negro both as slave and

free will very clearly reveal the effect of these varying conditions

in the several States concerned.[312] Nothing is more necessary to a

calm and unprejudiced study of the institution of slavery than the

realization of this fact.

What then were the economic, climatic and social conditions in the

South which contributed to shape the attitude of the social mind of

the section toward the Negro? The dominant feature of the social and

economic life of the South of ante bellum days was the plantation.

This was the industrial unit comprising usually large land areas,

worked by slaves divided into groups, under strict supervision, with a

fixed routine of labor in the production of special commodities such

as tobacco, rice, sugar-cane or cotton. Two types of plantation life

developed even before the Revolution, the Virginian and the West

Indian, the latter confined at first to the coast line of South

Carolina and later covering the "Black Belt" of the far South. The

term "plantation" was originally synonymous with colony. Virginia was

the "plantation of the London Company"[313] but was later broken up

into smaller economic units which retained the name. By the beginning

of the eighteenth century the prevailing industrial system in Virginia

and Maryland was these small plantations or farms where Negro slaves

gradually took the place of white redemptioners and the prevailing

staple was tobacco. About the end of the seventeenth century the

Jamaican or West Indian type of plantation was introduced on the coast

region around Charleston. It consisted of larger estates cultivated by

thirty or more slaves, with few or no white laborers, the master and

his family often being the only whites present the year around. Fanny

Kemble's "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation," 1838-39,

gives an interesting though somewhat sombre picture of the conditions

prevailing on the rice plantations near Darien, Georgia.

Slavery, as an industrial institution, has flourished only in

countries with great natural resources, easy of access and affording

ready means of sustenance. The crops cultivated must be simple, such

as tobacco, rice or cotton, and hence admitting of easy mastery by the

slave as well as the efficient organization and direction of gangs of

laborers. The soil must be very fertile and unlimited in extent to

assure a profit on the unskilled routine labor of the slave, which

makes rotation of the crops impossible and soon exhausts the soil so

that the worn out lands must be abandoned for new. The industrial

cycle passed through by the great slave-estates of the West Indies

finds a parallel in the South, where the speedy exhaustion of a

fertile soil with the resulting necessity for a more scientific and

intensive agriculture, impossible under slavery, forced slaveholders

to open up new lands constantly. Hence the insatiable land hunger of

the slave power.[314]

There is evidence that at the end of the colonial period the older

lands of Virginia and Maryland, where slavery and the plantation

system had long existed, were approaching a period of decay. This was

the logical result of slavery. An industrial readjustment was taking

place involving the decline of the plantation system and with it the

decline of slavery. It was at this juncture that the fate of slavery,

and with it the destiny of the entire southwestern region, was

determined by a new factor, namely, the rise of the cotton culture.

But for the invention of the cotton-gin, and the improvements in

cotton manufacture that accompanied it, the economic forces already

militating against the patriarchal form of slavery in Virginia would

doubtless have brought about in time its peaceful abolition. As it

was, these discoveries created an industrial basis for the fostering

of slavery more dangerous than any pro-slavery legislation had been

and more sweeping and insidious than anti-slavery agitators could

possibly imagine. It opened up for the cultivation of the cotton

plant the vast fertile region extending from eastern North Carolina

through South Carolina, middle Georgia and Alabama to Mississippi,

Louisiana and Texas[315]. Here were found all the conditions mentioned

above as necessary to the success of slavery.

Within this vast region, however, there were variations of climate and

soil which made certain sections better adapted to slavery and the

plantation system than others. Between the foothills just to the south

of the Appalachian mountains and the flat sandy levels of the sea

coast lay a central rich alluvial region called the "black belt" at

first after the color of its soil and later after the color of the

majority of its inhabitants. This section was peculiarly well suited

to the growth of the cotton plant and here, after the pell-mell of

immigration which poured into the southwest with the development of

cotton culture began to take on the forms of a fixed social order,

arose those large cotton plantations which were the central feature of

southern ante-bellum civilization. The "black belt" included virtually

the whole of South Carolina, a strip through central Georgia and

south-central Alabama and the rich alluvial lands along the

Mississippi and Red rivers in the States of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Here the large plantations gradually absorbed the lands of the

frontiersmen and small farmers who had preceded them and spread over

all the lands where the gang labor of the slave system could be

prosecuted with profit[316].

This slave aristocracy of the "black belt," which determined the

social standards and shaped the morals and directed the political

policies of the South, was composed of a few powerful families who

through their wealth, social standing and talents for leadership

controlled the destinies of a vast section. Perhaps 500,000 out of a

total white population of 9,000,000 profited by slavery in 1860, but

out of this number some ten thousand families, including such

familiar names as Hampton, Rutledge, Brooks, Hayne, Lee, Mason, Tyler,

Wise, Polk, Breckenridge and Claibourne, really determined the

policies of the South[317]. Beneath the slave aristocracy were ranged

the other elements of society. First among these came the small

farmers, often owning a few slaves. Though having occupied the land

first, they were gradually crowded out by the competition of the large

slaveholders, who bought up their lands and forced them to occupy the

foothills to the north of the "black belt" in Georgia, Alabama and

Mississippi which were ill adapted to the plantation slave system.

Next came the thriftless and impecunious whites, variously known as

the "pine-landers" and "crackers" in Georgia, the "sand-hillers" of

South Carolina, or the "red-necks" of Mississippi. The lowest stratum

was composed of slaves with a slight intermixture of free Negroes.

Bagehot remarks that slavery "creates a set of persons born to work

that others may not work, and not to think in order that others may

think. Therefore, slave-owning nations, having time to think, are

likely to be more shrewd in policy, and more crafty in strategy[318]."

This is amply illustrated in the case of southern leaders. The sons of

the slaveholders received the best education the land could afford;

the plantation life gave a training in administration and leadership

and with leisure and natural political talent they looked to public

life for advancement. Those who showed ability in local or State

governments were advanced to the House or Senate so that by a process

of natural selection the slave-power at the South was able to develop

leaders, who not only moulded the public sentiment of the South itself

but shaped the policies of the nation for the better part of half a

century[319].

Thus, by a slow process of evolution, was built up in the "black

belt" of the South an industrial empire, based upon slavery, nominally

democratic, but in reality an oligarchy composed of a group of

talented men, united in their traditions, social standards and

political ideals by virtue of their common loyalty to the "peculiar

institution" of their section. It was democratic within its own

limits, chivalrous, cultured although it cherished ideals essentially

at variance with democratic institutions and bound in time to give

birth to a social consciousness that was incompatible with that

entertained by the rest of the nation. When the slave-power was

defeated at the polls in the election of 1860, secession was the

logical result.

The status of the Negro, both slave and free, was intimately

associated with this economic development of the far South. There is

much to indicate that the entire South gradually underwent a profound

change of attitude towards slavery in the three decades from 1800 to

1830. Slavery was generally looked upon as an evil by the southern

leaders of the time of the constitutional convention and for two

decades afterwards, perhaps. Mason of Virginia in the debates of 1787

stated that slavery discouraged the arts and manufactures, prevented

immigration of whites, exercised a most pernicious effect upon

manners, made every master a petty tyrant and would bring the judgment

of heaven down upon the country. Baldwin, speaking for Georgia, said

that "If left to herself, she may probably put an end to the

evil[320]." Jefferson's expressions against slavery were many and

pronounced[321], and there is reason for thinking that these ideas

were shared by many even in the far South. An editorial in the

_Milledgeville Journal_ of Georgia, January 1, 1817, has this

remarkable language: "With such a hint from a distinguished

philosopher (_i. e._, Jefferson), shall we not merit execration, if we

fail to provide in time an adequate remedy for this great and growing

evil, an evil which is always staring us in the face--which obtrudes

so frequently upon us in spite of ourselves, the most gloomy and awful

apprehension[322]." As late as 1826, when Edward Everett, of

Massachusetts, asserted before the House that slavery was sanctioned

by religion, John Randolph, of Virginia, himself a slaveholder,

replied: "Sir, I envy neither the head nor the heart of that man from

the North who rises here to defend slavery from principle[323]."

Apparently the first assertion of the usefulness and beneficence of

the institution from a southern man of political repute came from the

governor of South Carolina in 1830[324]. How then are we to explain

the profound change of sentiment indicated by the leading papers of

the South just before the war? _The Richmond Enquirer_, September 6,

1855, asserts: "Every moment's additional reflection but convinces us

of the absolute impregnability of the Southern position on this

subject. Facts, which can not be questioned, come thronging in support

of the true doctrine--that slavery is the best condition of the black

race in this country, and that the true philanthropists should rather

desire that race to remain in the state of servitude, than to become

free with the privilege of becoming worthless." The _Richmond

Examiner_, 1854, advises all southern men to act "as if the canopy of

heaven were inscribed with a covenant in letters of fire that the

negro is here, and here forever; is our property and ours forever; is

never to be emancipated; is to be kept hard at work, and in rigid

subjection all his days[325]." The _Daily Intelligencer_, of Atlanta,

January 9, 1860, states editorially: "Whenever we see a negro, we

presuppose a master and if we see him in what is commonly called a

'free state' we consider him out of his place. This matter of

manumission, or emancipation, now thank heaven less practiced than

formerly, is a species of false philanthropy, which we look upon as a

cousin german to Abolitionism--bad for the master, worse for

the slave." Calhoun pronounced slavery "the most solid and

durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political

institutions[326]." Hammond claimed, in a eulogy of slavery in the

Senate, March 4, 1858, that its "frame of society is the best in the

world." Jefferson Davis defended it as "a form of civil government for

those who by nature are not fit to govern themselves";[327] Mason, a

descendant of the great Mason of revolutionary days, described it as

"ennobling to both races."[328]

It is useless to try to explain these statements by attributing to

their authors moral perverseness; the explanation must be sought in

the conditions that surrounded them. We have already alluded to the

fact that our moral conceptions are absorbed from the social milieu in

which we are reared. The prevailing ideals of family, business, the

social, political or national group of which we happen to be members

we absorb as part of our "social copy" and build into the fabric of

our social selves. The larger the group and the more vital any given

ideal is considered by the group as a whole the greater will be its

hold upon the loyalty of the individual member. Everything conspired

to give to the social sanction of the slave-aristocracy an

authoritativeness and binding force without a parallel in the history

of the nation. Upon the basis of the slave as the industrial unit was

reared in the course of years a mass of _mores_ which conditioned the

entire world-view of the slave-owner. Economic methods, social

differentiations, political institutions, religious ideals, moral

values, local patriotism and pride, all took their color from the

"peculiar institution" of the section. To question its validity or to

deny its divine authority was to threaten the entire social order with

an _Umwerthung aller Werthe_ that to the southern mind was

unthinkable. The increase of the slave population and the ever

widening gap between white and black made it all the harder for the

white to consider schemes for emancipation or manumission which meant

economic and social chaos. The weight of accumulated traditions, the

hardening of social habits and even the constantly increasing economic

handicaps of the ruinous slave-labor made any change more difficult

and dangerous. Many, who would gladly be rid of slavery, found

themselves in the predicament described by Jefferson, "We have the

wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him

go."[329]

The status of the slave was determined directly by the rise of the

slave-power and on the whole shows, as was to be expected, a tendency

to treat the slave more and more as a chattel or, as Aristotle would

say, a "living tool." The general drift of the slave codes of the

various southern States was to negate the personality of the slave and

to fix his status as a part of an industrial system. The earliest of

the slave laws to be passed were of the nature of police regulations,

restricting the personal liberties of the blacks.[330] Of peculiar

interest are the laws with regard to emancipation and the status of

the free Negro, for the latter was a standing rebuke to slavery and a

fruitful source of discontent among the slaves. In 1822 a Charleston

writer says, "We look upon the existence of the Free Blacks among us

as the greatest and most deplorable evil with which we are unhappily

afflicted.... Our slaves when they look around them and see persons of

their own color enjoying a comparative degree of freedom and assuming

privileges beyond their own condition, naturally become dissatisfied

with their lot, until the feverish restlessness of this disposition

foments itself into insurrection and the 'black flood of long retained

spleen' breaks down every principle of duty and obedience."[331]

As early as 1800 South Carolina prohibited free Negroes and mulattoes

from entering the State. In 1822 they were required to have a guardian

and in 1825 were forbidden the use of firearms. By an act of 1841

emancipation of slaves was made unlawful and in 1860 free Negroes were

required to wear badges with their name and occupation.[332] In many

States emancipation was made unlawful and in Arkansas by an act of

1858 all free Negroes and mulattoes were required to leave the State

or be sold as slaves.[333] About 1830, and probably as a result of

abolition activity, acts were passed in practically all the southern

States prohibiting even the elementary forms of education to the slave

and placing heavy penalties upon whites who violated it. Thus the

status of the free Negro tended always to approximate that of the

slave. Moreover, a study of the evolution of the slave codes of each

State shows a gradual narrowing of the sphere of the slave and a

general drift towards the principle expressed in South Carolina law

that "Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law

to be _chattels personal_ in the hands of their owners and possessors

and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents,

constructions and purposes whatsoever."[334]

So far then as the relations of master and slave went, the law gave

the former complete control over the slave's time and labor, his food

and clothing, punishment, together with the right to turn him over to

an agent or sell his labor. The slave had no property rights in law,

could be sold, mortgaged, leased or disposed of in payment of debt;

the slave could not be party in a legal action against his master,

could not redeem himself, change his master or make a contract. His

status was hereditary and perpetual both for himself and his children.

In his civil status no slave could be a witness against a white or be

a party to a suit; he was deprived of the benefits of education and in

some States of religious instruction also.[335] The actual status of

the slave was, of course, subject to the varying conditions of the

different sections of a wide area of country, the status of the slave

on a Virginia or North Carolina farm being very different from that of

the field hand on a sugar or cotton plantation of the far South. The

slaveholders also were to a very large extent a law unto themselves.

"On our estates," says DeBow, "we dispense with the whole machinery of

public police and public courts of justice. Thus we try, decide, and

execute the sentences in thousands of cases, which in other countries

would go into the courts."[336] Fanny Kemble describes how she made

use of this autonomous position of the slaveholder on her own

plantation to teach her slave Aleck to read in violation of the

law.[337] This explains the great extremes in southern slavery and the

mistakes of writers who judge the institution as a whole by extreme

cases.[338]

Our conclusion as to the effect upon the Negro himself of slavery will

depend largely upon whether we stress his previous savage estate and

the gain made through contact with a superior civilization or the

inherent evils of slavery itself and their effect upon his character.

That the transition from African savagery to slavery was a gain for

the Negro in many respects will hardly be denied.[339] The field hand

of the plantation of the far South doubtless retained many of his most

primitive savage traits. Olmsted, an unprejudiced observer, describes

him as on the average a very poor and a very bad creature, "clumsy,

awkward, gross and elephantine in movement ... sly, sensual and

shameless in expression and demeanor." "He seems to be but an

imperfect man, incapable of taking care of himself in a civilized

manner, and his presence in large numbers must be considered a

dangerous circumstance to a civilized people."[340] And yet he

testifies that slavery improved the African Negro.[341]

The most beneficial effects were noticeable where the slave came in

constant contact with the whites. For this reason the household slaves

manifested a degree of intelligence and initiative far above that of

the untutored field hand; this contact with the white was in effect an

involuntary education. This appeared even in dress. "For though their

own native taste," says Kemble, "is decidedly both barbarous and

ludicrous, it is astonishing how very soon they mitigate it in

imitation of their white models." The mulattoes in Charleston were

often as well dressed as the whites.[342] The best witness to the

benefits derived from slavery was the fact that for a generation after

emancipation the older Negroes who received their training under the

old regime made the most faithful and consistent laborers when set

free.[343]

There were, however, other effects of slavery which offset its

advantages. The slave had no true home life and without this it is

impossible to train personality and character. The father felt no

responsibility for children that were not really his but his master's.

The mother merely discharged the animal functions of bearing and

rearing the child, all the finer instincts of motherhood being

prostituted to a selfish commercial end. The slave-mother, of course,

did not feel the pathos of the situation when pointing to her children

she said: "Look missis! little niggers for you and massa; plenty

little niggers for you and little missis." The slave lived perpetually

in an atmosphere of fawning and flattery by no means conducive to the

development of independent manhood either in himself or his master.

Being outside those social sanctions which keep the free man honest

and trustworthy he was often guilty of petty theft and deceit and the

law recognized the logical results of his status upon his character by

refusing to take the word of a slave against a freeman. The slave had

no social standing and no respect for himself or his fellow slaves and

hence exercised unbounded insolence and tyranny towards his fellows.

This gave to the social intercourse between slaves a flavor of

vulgarity and insincerity utterly incompatible with the development of

the finer instincts of personality.[344]

The essential injustice of slavery lies in withholding the legitimate

use of those means for self-development which are the inalienable

right of every creature born with potentialities for personality. It

becomes a national crime when the public conscience in any age

recognizes in a group or an individual potentialities for the exercise

of rights or the discharge of social functions with a rational regard

for the well-being of society as a whole, and yet through powerful

class interests refuses to give legal recognition to those rights. The

paradox of the slaveholder's position and the fundamental injustice of

it appear even in the slave codes and the arguments used in defense of

the "peculiar institution." The slave codes treated the slave in one

clause as a chattel, an irrational thing, and yet proceed to embody in

the same code regulations against learning to read and write, theft,

and murder, thus acknowledging that the slave is both rational and

moral. Laws against teaching slaves were passed in South Carolina in

1834, in Georgia, 1829, Louisiana, 1829, Alabama, 1830 and Virginia,

1849.

As a result of this negation of his personality the slave thought and

acted solely in terms of the social mind of the white. Hence the

prevailing idea of the slave, "massa can do no wrong."[345] The slave

had no social consciousness, no ethical code apart from that of the

white master; his self-determining powers of personality had no scope

for expression or development. He looked down with infinite scorn upon

the "poor white trash" which had no entrée into his master's circle

and he pitied the free Negro because his lack of a master gave him no

social standing. To have a Negro overseer was a disgrace. Olmsted

overheard the following conversation between two Negroes: "Workin' in

a tobacco factory all de year roun', an' come Christmas, only twenty

dollars! Workin' mighty hard too--up to twelve o'clock o'night very

often--_an' den to hab a nigger oberseah_!" "A nigger!" "Yes dat's it

yer see. Wouldn't care ef it warn't for dat. _Nothin' but a dirty

nigger! orderin' 'round, jes' as ef he was a wite man_."[346] To be

sure, on the basis of this submerged status of the slave, ties of the

greatest intimacy and affection often grew up between master and

slave. But the slave's personality was absorbed by that of his master.

Petty thefts, deceits and delinquencies of the slave were excused

because it was all in the family. The master even felt his slave's

acts to be morally his own and condoned them as he would his own

foibles. It should never be forgotten that when the Negro made the

transition from the artificial and quasi-social status of the slave to

a free democratic order, where individual worth and social efficiency

determine one's place in society, he was like a child taught to swim

with bladders and suddenly deprived of them.

"Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day

Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away."