When the rains began to slacken, a petty caravan now and then
straggled towards the coast; but, as I was only a new comer in the
region, and not possessed of abundant means, I enjoyed a slender share
of the trade. Still I consoled myself with the hope of better luck in
the dry season.
In the mean time, however, I not only heard of Joseph's safe arrival
at Matanzas, but received a clerk whom he dispatched to dwell in
Kambia while I visited the interior. Moreover, I built a boat, and
sent her to Sierra Leone with a cargo of palm-oil, to be exchanged for
British goods; and, finally, during my perfect leisure, I went to work
with diligence _to study_ the trade in which fortune seemed to have
cast my lot.
It would be a task of many pages if I attempted to give a full account
of the origin and causes of _slavery in Africa_. As a national
institution, it seems to have existed always. Africans have been
bondsmen every where: and the oldest monuments bear their images
linked with menial toils and absolute servitude. Still, I have no
hesitation in saying, that three fourths of the slaves _sent abroad_
from Africa are the fruit of native wars, fomented by the avarice and
temptation of our own race. I cannot exculpate any commercial nation
from this sweeping censure. We stimulate the negro's passions by the
introduction of wants and fancies never dreamed of by the simple
native, while slavery was an institution of domestic need and comfort
alone. But what was once a luxury has now ripened into an absolute
necessity; so that MAN, _in truth, has become the coin of Africa, and
the "legal tender" of a brutal trade_.
England, to-day, with all her philanthropy, sends, under the cross of
St. George, to convenient magazines of _lawful commerce_ on the coast,
her Birmingham muskets, Manchester cottons, and Liverpool lead, all of
which are righteously swapped at Sierra Leone, Acra, and on the Gold
coast, for Spanish or Brazilian bills on London. Yet, what British
merchant does not know the traffic on which those bills are founded,
and for whose support his wares are purchased? France, with her
_bonnet rouge_ and fraternity, dispatches her Rouen cottons,
Marseilles brandies, flimsy taffetas, and indescribable variety of
tinsel gewgaws. Philosophic Germany demands a slice for her
looking-glasses and beads; while multitudes of our own worthy traders,
who would hang a slaver as a pirate _when caught_, do not hesitate to
supply him indirectly with tobacco, powder, cotton, Yankee rum, and
New England notions, in order to bait the trap in which he _may_ be
caught! It is the temptation of these things, I repeat, that feeds the
slave-making wars of Africa, and forms the human basis of those
admirable bills of exchange.
I did not intend to write a homily on Ethiopian commerce when I begun
this chapter; but, on reviewing the substantial motives of the
traffic, I could not escape a statement which tells its own tale, and
is as unquestionable as the facts of verified history.
Such, then, may be said to be the _predominating_ influence that
supports the African slave-trade; yet, if commerce of all kinds were
forbidden with that continent, the customs and laws of the natives
would still encourage slavery as a domestic affair, though, of course,
in a very modified degree. The rancorous family quarrels among tribes
and parts of tribes, will always promote conflicts that resemble the
forays of our feudal ancestors, while the captives made therein will
invariably become serfs.
Besides this, the financial genius of Africa, instead of devising
bank notes or the precious metals as a circulating medium, has from
time immemorial, declared that a human creature,--_the true
representative and embodiment of labor_,--is the most valuable article
on earth. A man, therefore, becomes the standard of prices. A slave is
a note of hand, that may be discounted or pawned; he is a bill of
exchange that carries himself to his destination and pays a debt
bodily; he is a tax that walks corporeally into the chieftain's
treasury. Thus, slavery is not likely to be surrendered by the negroes
themselves as a national institution. Their social interests will
continue to maintain hereditary bondage; they will send the felon and
the captive to foreign _barracoons_; and they will sentence to
domestic servitude the orphans of culprits, disorderly children,
gamblers, witches, vagrants, cripples, insolvents, the deaf, the mute,
the barren, and the faithless. Five-sixths of the population is in
chains.[3]
To facilitate the sale of these various unfortunates or malefactors,
there exists among the Africans a numerous class of brokers, who are
as skilful in their traffic as the jockeys of civilized lands. These
adroit scoundrels rove the country in search of objects to suit
different patrons. They supply the body-guard of princes; procure
especial tribes for personal attendants; furnish laborers for farms;
fill the _harems_ of debauchees; pay or collect debts in flesh; and in
cases of emergency take the place of bailiffs, to kidnap under the
name of sequestration. If a native king lacks cloth, arms, powder,
balls, tobacco, rum, or salt, and does not trade personally with the
factories on the beach, he employs one of these dexterous gentry to
effect the barter; and thus both British cotton and Yankee rum ascend
the rivers from the second hands into which they have passed, while
the slave approaches the coast to become the ebony basis of a bill of
exchange!
It has sometimes struck me as odd, how the extremes of society almost
meet on similar principles; and how much some African short-comings
resemble the conceded civilizations of other lands!
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Dr. Lugenbeel's "Sketches of Liberia.": 1853. p. 45, 2d ed.