Concerning free persons of color in the United States, of whom
there were about 210,000, to 1,550,000 Negro slaves, in 1816, it
was asserted, in the petition of the Kentucky Abolition Society to
Congress, which asked that a suitable territory should be set apart as
asylum for emancipated Negroes and mulattoes, “that when emancipated
they were not allowed the privileges of free citizens and were
prohibited from emigrating to other States and Territories.”[41]
Certainly if their testimony could only be received in courts of
justice in cases, when not in opposition to the interests of the
whites, which was the situation in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, their
ability to protect themselves against injury from whites was seriously
affected, but, at the same time, that this tiny stream, trickling into
Ohio, was thus harshly dammed, the Negroes were pouring into South
Carolina in such numbers, that legislation against their introduction
from other States and Territories was passed.[42]
But again the same desire for ephemeral benefits to a class, which had
sufficed to overthrow a wise law in 1803, induced action for repeal
in 1818, and, with lamentable lack of foresight, the brilliant George
McDuffie led the fight for the repeal of the law of 1816.
By the census of 1810, the colored population of South Carolina was
200,919, the white only 214,196.
With the exception of Louisiana, just admitted, with a colored
population of 42,245, and a white population of 34,311, no State in the
Union had, proportionately to its white, as great a Negro population
as South Carolina. The increase of its colored population had been so
accelerated by the mischievous action of Governor Richardson and his
supporters in 1803, as to have increased almost two and a half times
as much as that of Maryland, the Negro population of which, as has
been before pointed out, was greater than that of South Carolina in
1790, and had increased from that day to 1800 in a greater proportion
compared to its white population, than South Carolina.
It is true the increase of the colored population of North Carolina had
also been very great; but, at the same time, the increase of the white
population had been much greater than in South Carolina, and it had had
originally so much larger a number of white inhabitants that they were
still more than double the number of blacks.
To a large and important portion of South Carolina’s legislators,
therefore, the evil of this continual increase of the Negro population
was apparent, and these under the leadership of Robert Y. Hayne, at
that time Speaker of the House, opposed the repeal of the law of 1816.
Unfortunately no Hooker was present to record his impressions of the
discussion, and all that we know of this great struggle is, that the
Act of 1816 was repealed after “one of the most eloquent and animated
debates that has taken place on the floor for many years.”[43] In the
Senate the repeal was only secured by a vote of 22 to 19.
In the year which followed came in Congress the first great sectional
struggle over the Missouri Question, involving the right of Southern
men to move into the Northwest with their slaves, with regard to which
some of them argued, that, in the long run, such diffusion of slaves
would not increase their number or result in the extension of slavery,
but rather tend to check the increase.
In his contemporaneous publication of speeches from both sides, the
editor of Niles’ Register regrets his inability to secure a copy of
the speech of William Lowndes, which, in all probability would have
been the most illuminating exposition of the Southern view, which could
have been submitted; but the speech of Tucker, of Virginia, does put
forward the idea as about stated; while Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, the
leading speaker on the Northern side, combats the same at sufficient
length to create the impression, that it was held by more than one. But
what is of greater interest is the distinct note of racial inferiority,
which Sergeant sounds loudly. It is not only objection to the Negro
slave; but to the Negro _per se_; ... “Nature has placed upon them an
unalterable mark ... They are and must forever remain distinct.”[44]
Senator Smith, who, by his vote in the South Carolina Legislature
in 1805 had most materially assisted in setting aside the South
Carolina law in opposition to African importation, while at the same
time fatuously declaring that he only did so because he thought it
impossible to prevent it, now, in the United States Senate, refused
all compromise, declaring that by sanctioning the slave trade in the
Constitution, the Federal Government was responsible for existing
conditions. But a compromise was effected, and in the year 1820, the
Union, then consisting of just double the number of the original
thirteen States, adjusted the difference on the Negro Question.
Geographically considered it was apparent that the black belt had
slipped a little lower down upon the body politic. The total colored
population of the Union was 1,771,856, more than half of whom were to
be found in the three States of Virginia, North Carolina and South
Carolina. In Virginia, 402,031; in South Carolina, 265,301; in North
Carolina, 219,629; a total of 886,961. Southwest of this section and
south of the Ohio River, the Negro population amounted to 529,856; but
in no State in the Union had the increase since 1800 been so enormous
as in South Carolina; for with an area and white population only
two-fifths of Virginia, the increase of the Negro population of the
two States had practically been the same, viz.: 156,538 for Virginia,
156,457 for South Carolina. Nor could any comforting reassurance have
been drawn from the fact that the percentage of increase of the same
species of population in the States of Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky
had been greater; for such had been accompanied, in these newer States,
with an even greater increase of their white population, and was based
upon an original Negro population very small indeed, when compared to
that of South Carolina in 1800. When comparison was made with Maryland,
on the other hand, where the number of Negroes had originally been
greater than in South Carolina, with the increase of the whites in
the three decades not so great, small as had been the increase of the
whites, it was yet greater than that of the colored, and originally the
proportion of whites had been greater.
From all these causes South Carolina was becoming in place of Virginia
the State most identified with the Negro question, in a section where
it was becoming a larger and more important property interest.
Yet, while the increase of the Negro population in the lower South
and Middle and Southwest had been very great, the census furnished no
evidence of that movement of Negroes from North to South which has been
so often alluded to. The Negro population of New York had increased
by more than 50 per cent; New Jersey by at least 43; Connecticut, 40;
and Delaware 38. Pennsylvania’s increase in the 30 years had been 200
per cent, and even in Massachusetts the increase had been 22 per cent.
The only State in which there had been a decrease, which could be
attributed to a movement to another section, was Rhode Island, and it
was not large enough to be considered, amounting in all to less than a
thousand. Considering the population of the Southern States, however,
the census afforded information well warranting the assumption that
from Virginia and Maryland between the years 1810 and 1820 some 30,000
colored people had moved out. In the same time the colored population
of North Carolina had increased by an accession of about 40,000; South
Carolina, 65,000; Georgia, 44,000; Alabama, 24,000; Mississippi,
16,000; Louisiana, 35,000; Tennessee, 37,000; and Missouri, 7,000;
the percentage of increase being, North Carolina 24 per cent; South
Carolina 32 per cent; Georgia 42 per cent; Mississippi 95 per cent;
Louisiana 55 per cent; Tennessee 80 per cent; Kentucky 58 per cent; and
Missouri nearly 300 per cent, with no basis with which to estimate the
42,000 of Alabama.
These figures establish a movement from Virginia and Maryland but also
from without, to the eight States of North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky,
averaging about 45 per cent increase in the decade, and with every
reasonable allowance for the movement from Virginia and Maryland and
New York, of which at least one-third must have gone to the Northwest
and Missouri, illegal importation must have been proceeding apace. Now,
if there was illegal importation, where would it be most likely to
occur?
In Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee; and there we find an increase
of nearly 85 per cent, or an addition to the Negro population of
something like 88,000.
These facts, therefore, disclose the weakness of the Southern argument
that the diffusion of slaves would not have resulted in any extension
of slavery. Theoretically it was a sound argument, that the slaves
being spread over the face of the country, they and their masters would
be brought more and more under the influences which would work against
slavery and for emancipation. But if illicit importation from abroad
was proceeding to any great extent, the premise upon which the argument
was based gave way, and this is what must have been the case, as has
been shown.
This is also where the argument of Prof. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips fails
to convince, when he expresses the opinion, that “the importance of
the repeal, in 1818, of the law which had prohibited the importation
of slaves from other States into South Carolina has been exaggerated.”
He bases his reason for this view upon the claim that “the Federal
Censuses show that the average rate of increase of the Negro population
in South Carolina between 1810 and 1860, was substantially smaller than
that of the Negroes in the United States at large, “which” he thinks,
“indicates that South Carolina was in that half century more of a slave
exporting than a slave importing State; and that a prohibition of slave
imports would have had no appreciable influence upon the ratio of
increase of her Negro population.”[45]
Unless it can be shown, however, that there were no accessions to
the Negro population of the United States from without, between the
periods selected by Prof. Phillips, the mere fact that the rate of
increase of the Negro population of South Carolina was substantially
smaller than that of the United States at large does not establish
that South Carolina was more of a slave exporting than importing State
for that period; for the greater increase without could well be due
to importation in great volume elsewhere, and that there was such
was asserted by many, notably by Henry Middleton, in Congress, the
very year of Hayne’s speech in the South Carolina Legislature against
importations from other States.[46] But apart from this, before this,
South Carolina had become the State with the largest Negro population
to its white population of all the States of the Union and that, the
rate of increase of her Negro population from this date, or even a
decade earlier, to 1860, “was substantially smaller than that of the
Negroes in the United States at large” was simply due to the tremendous
accessions of the Negro population of the four new cotton States:
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, superimposed upon a
Negro population originally much smaller than that of South Carolina.
The Negro population of those four States did in that period increase
1,384,555; but in the same time their white population increased
1,438,607; while in the same period the white and Negro population
of South Carolina increased respectively 53,860 and 147,028. And so
difficult was it to overcome this tremendous start attained by South
Carolina in these early fatal years, that in 1860 the excess of South
Carolina’s colored population over her white population was 121,029,
as compared with an excess of only 83,505 for Mississippi, the next
greatest. Undoubtedly in the period selected by Prof. Phillips many
Negro slaves passed out of South Carolina; but many whites did also;
for “from 1820 to 1860, South Carolina was a beehive from which swarms
were continually going forth to populate the newer growing cotton
States of the Southwest,” and “in 1860 there were then living in other
States 193,389 white persons born in South Carolina.”[47] In the half
century the average rate of increase of South Carolina whites was
between 7 and 8 per cent, colored 21. In Virginia and Maryland in 1810
the Negro population amounted to 668,515. It increased by 1860 by an
addition of 151,523. In South Carolina in 1810 the Negro population
amounted to 200,919, by 1860 it had received an addition of 212,401,
of which 64,382 had arrived in the decade of the repeal of the law
prohibiting importation from other States, and 58,021 in the following
decade. It is true that in the following decade from 1830 to 1840, the
increase of the Negro population of South Carolina was comparatively
slight, being only 11,992, but it was followed in the next decade by
again an increase of 58,630, while the white increase in the same two
decades was respectively 2,221 and 15,479.
But there was another way of measuring the importance of the repeal.
Necessarily with the inflowing tide came some such as Denmark Vesey
and Gullah Jack, slaves and free Negroes whose past was not known, and
according to the report of the Massachusetts legislative committee in
1821, dealing with only 6,740 free persons of color in the State,
among other “evils,” from such, appeared, _inter alia_:
2. Collecting in the large towns an indolent and disorderly and corrupt
population.
3. Substituting themselves in many labors and occupations which in the
end it would be more advantageous to have performed by the white and
native population of the State.[48]
It is apparent then, from this, as well as from the arguments of
Mr. Sergeant, that the real situation of the representatives of the
two sections, in the great Missouri debate, has never been put with
absolute accuracy. It was an assertion upon the part of the Southerners
of their right to carry their property with them wherever they went in
the Union, and upon the part of the Northerners a denial of this right.
It precipitated an argument whether extension and diffusion of slavery
meant the same thing, many Southern men, of eminence, contended that by
the process of diffusion there would be apt to be the beginning of the
end of slavery, and if there had been no illicit importation of slaves
possible, there would have been great merit in this suggestion. But
beyond all these arguments on the part of the Northerners, the Missouri
Question indicated opposition to the mere presence of the Negro, bond
or free, in the Northwest. He was an undesirable resident.
Up to this time, in the main, the attitude of the Southern statesmen
had been free from sectionalism. On the other hand, New England
had exhibited sectionalism, and it was New England’s deputies in
the Constitutional Convention, who joining with those of Maryland,
North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, had “formed a bargain,”
abrogating the slave trade in such a way as practically to recognize
slavery as a property interest secured by the Constitution. The
time allowed the slave trade had been long enough, as Madison had
said it would be. As great as had been the rate of increase of the
white population, it had been exceeded by that of the colored in the
proportions of 90 to 95 per cent. What Col. Mason had prophesied had
also come to pass. He had declared in 1787: “The Western people are
already calling out for slaves for their new lands and will fill that
country with slaves, if they can be got through South Carolina and
Georgia.”
They had been got no doubt in large numbers through South Carolina
and Georgia; but also, in all probabilities, through Louisiana, and
if not through, to some extent from, Maryland and Virginia. The Negro
population had in the West, in three decades sprung up from 16,322
to 385,825; while the seven States, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, held some
1,193,732 head of this species of property, representing an investment
of something like $477,492,800, stamped as property by having been made
dutiable under Federal law up to 1808. Such a property interest was
almost certain to produce a sectional policy for its protection, and
in the assertion of such a policy, South Carolina having the largest
stake and the most forceful representatives, would naturally take the
lead.
The consequences were that the broad national policy of Lowndes, from
this date gradually succumbed to the influences which forced Calhoun
away from it, despite his efforts to mould into one form a national and
sectional policy, based upon the declared recognition of slavery, in
place of, or in addition to, the implied recognition furnished by the
Constitutional compromise or “bargain” over the sanction of the slave
trade up to 1808. As the South drew together in support of slavery, the
overshadowing dimensions of its greatest exponent cast into oblivion
Barnwell, Hamilton and Alston, who had so clearly perceived the
dangers from its increase, and even reduced the proportions of men as
preëminently great as Lowndes and his successor, Robert Y. Hayne.
As long as the tariff held the center of the stage, the change was not
so clearly apparent; but with the settling down, after the explosion
of sentiment which nullification occasioned, the division between the
sections was unmistakable. From that period the Lower South presented
an unbroken front in defence of slavery, under the leadership of South
Carolina.
From 1800 the South had, to a great extent, directed the policies of
the Republic, and, in the persons of Lowndes, Cheves and Calhoun, South
Carolina had from 1813 to 1820 been a potent influence therein; but
the Missouri Compromise and Taylor’s election over Lowndes in 1820,
for the Speakership, marked the beginning of the change. No man saw it
more clearly than the great man whom Taylor defeated. His views on the
condition of affairs at this time is thus expressed by a contemporary:
“The Northern people had outstripped the Southern and desired to see
the offices of the Government in Northern hands. This inevitable result
Mr. Lowndes saw clearly forty years ago, and thought it wise for the
South to yield the hold she had so long possessed on political power,
when she was no longer able to retain it.”[49] The clear judgment of
Lowndes had revealed to him what the fatal brilliancy of Calhoun’s
intellect prevented him from perceiving, viz.: that there could not be
fashioned for the needs of imperfect humanity a perfectly symmetrical
policy. Lowndes had brought Webster and Clay together and pushed
through the tariff bill of 1816.[50]
Of that bill in reply to the fierce criticism that it was the worst
thing done since universal suffrage, he simply said, “neither was
altogether good, but the best possible for the time.” “He thought some
protection due to infant industries and that the question was, what
measure of protection do they require?” He held; “We are obliged to
leave some questions to posterity. We do our best with those that come
to us and future generations must bear their share of the trouble.”[51]
Accordingly, when the Baldwin bill of 1820 was brought forward,
“he opposed it on the ground that the increased duties were not
necessary.”[52] Before the tariff bill of 1824 could be presented, he
had passed away; but in his place, to share with Webster, the honors of
the splendid fight against it, South Carolina had sent up to Congress
Robert Y. Hayne, by Benton extolled as: “Of all the young generation of
statesmen coming on I consider him the safest, the most like William
Lowndes, and best entitled to future eminent lead.”[53]
How well Hayne lived up to this a study of his achievements exhibits.
But while so good a judge as the late Edward M. Shepard, in his Life
of Van Buren, ranks Hayne’s effort in the Senate, against the tariff
of 1824, as fully up to, if not beyond, that of Webster in the House,
scarcely any attention is paid to it by those historians who extoll the
speech of Webster.
Again, while almost every history deals at length with the Senatorial
debates, and elaborates Hayne’s speech on the Panama Mission in 1825,
absolutely no mention appears concerning the far more important
utterance with regard to the Colonization Society in 1827. Yet Hayne’s
speech, in his debate with Chambers over the Colonization Society, is
one of the most important utterances ever made by a Southern Statesman.
It indicates what was the prevailing view with regard to the Negro
Question, before the unfortunate episode of nullification, by which
Calhoun fastened upon the South the belief that slavery as it existed
in the Southern States, was a good. In the speech in 1827, Hayne first
showed the absurdity of the scheme of transporting the blacks to
Africa in such a number as to affect the situation. That the presence
of Negroes in the country was an evil, he did not attempt to deny,
but declared, “The progress of time and events is providing a remedy
for the evil.” He showed by statistics that the relative increase of
free white population was rising, while that of the colored, whether
bond or free, was diminishing, and that “while this process is going
on the colored classes are gradually diffusing themselves throughout
the country, and are making steady advances in intelligence and
refinement, and if half the zeal were displayed in bettering their
condition that is wasted in the vain and fruitless effort of sending
them abroad, their intellectual and moral improvement would be steady
and rapid.”[54] Why is it that this utterance of the leader of his
party in the Senate is never alluded to by historians? Is it because it
invites investigation as to the condition of the blacks in the Northern
and Western States at this period and for the twenty years which
followed? It is difficult to tell. But from this time the question took
a change. Subordinating to it the tariff and the interest in railroad
development, with the conditions created by nullification by 1833, the
State of South Carolina, and, by 1839, the South, was committed to the
view of Calhoun: “Our fate as a people is bound up in the question. If
we yield, we will be extirpated; but if we successfully resist, we will
be the greatest and most flourishing people of modern time. It is the
best substratum of population in the world, and one on which great and
flourishing Commonwealths may be most easily and safely reared.”[55]
And to this “Negro substratum population” policy both the tariff and
the railroad development of the South were accordingly subordinated
until Calhoun’s death, when Georgia, as a result of having outstripped
South Carolina in both men and material, stepped into the place of
leadership South Carolina could no longer fill, and with the ambitious
scheme of forcing slavery to the Pacific, in ten years, produced the
War Between the States.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 67.
[42] Statutes of S. C. Vol. 7, p. 451.
[43] _Charleston Courier_, Dec. 22, 1818. Jervey, Hayne, p. 80.
[44] Niles’ Register, Vol. 18, p. 383.
[45] American Hist. Review, Vol. 15, No. 3, p. 630.
[46] Suppression of Slave Trade, DuBois, p. 124.
[47] McCrady, S. C. Under Proprietary Govt. p. 1.
[48] Studies American Race Problem, Stone, p. 57. Robert Y. Hayne & His
Times, Jervey, p. 114.
[49] Grayson, Memoir of James L. Petigru, p. 116.
[50] _City Gazette_, Sept. 16, 1820.
[51] Ravenel, Life & Times of William Lowndes, p. 154-5.
[52] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 112.
[53] Benton, Thirty Years View, Vol. 2, p. 188.
[54] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, pp. 205-209. Abridgment of
Debates of Congress, Vol. 9, p. 303, _et seq._
[55] Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 368.