The title of a possible discussion of the Negro in Louisiana presents
difficulties, for there is no such word as Negro permissible in speaking of
this State. The history of the State is filled with attempts to define,
sometimes at the point of the sword, oftenest in civil or criminal courts,
the meaning of the word Negro. By common consent, it came to mean in
Louisiana, prior to 1865, slave, and after the war, those whose complexions
were noticeably dark. As Grace King so delightfully puts it, "The
pure-blooded African was never called colored, but always Negro." The _gens
de couleur_, colored people, were always a class apart, separated from and
superior to the Negroes, ennobled were it only by one drop of white blood
in their veins. The caste seems to have existed from the first introduction
of slaves. To the whites, all Africans who were not of pure blood were
_gens de couleur_. Among themselves, however, there were jealous and
fiercely-guarded distinctions: "griffes, briqués, mulattoes, quadroons,
octoroons, each term meaning one degree's further transfiguration toward
the Caucasian standard of physical perfection."[1]
Negro slavery in Louisiana seems to have been early influenced by the
policy of the Spanish colonies. De las Casas, an apostle to the Indians,
exclaimed against the slavery of the Indians and finding his efforts of no
avail proposed to Charles V in 1517 the slavery of the Africans as a
substitute.[2] The Spaniards refused at first to import slaves from Africa,
but later agreed to the proposition and employed other nations to traffic
in them.[3] Louisiana learned from the Spanish colonies her lessons of
this traffic, took over certain parts of the slave regulations and imported
bondmen from the Spanish West Indies. Others brought thither were Congo,
Banbara, Yaloff, and Mandingo slaves.[4]
People of color were introduced into Louisiana early in the eighteenth
century. In 1708, according to the historian, Gayarré, the little colony of
Louisiana, at the point on the Gulf of Mexico now known as Biloxi, in the
present State of Mississippi, had been in existence nine years. In 1708,
the population of the colony did not exceed 279 persons. The land about
this region is particularly sterile, and the colonists were little disposed
to undertake the laborious task of tilling the soil. Indian slavery was
attempted but found unprofitable and exceedingly precarious. So Bienville,
lacking the sympathy of De las Casas for the Indians, wrote his government
to obtain the authorization of exchanging Negroes for Indians with the
French West Indian islands. "We shall give," he said, "three Indians for
two Negroes. The Indians, when in the islands, will not be able to run
away, the country being unknown to them, and the Negroes will not dare to
become fugitives in Louisiana, because the Indians would kill them."[5]
Bienville's suggestion seems not to have met with a very favorable
reception. Yet, in 1712, the King of France granted to Anthony Crozat the
exclusive privilege for fifteen years of trading in all that immense
territory which, with its undefined limits, France claimed as Louisiana.
Among other privileges granted Crozat were those of sending, once a year, a
ship to Africa for Negroes.[6] When the first came, is not known, but in
1713 twenty of these Negro slaves from Africa are recorded in the census of
the little colony on the Mississippi.[7]
In 1717 John Law flashed meteor-wise across the world with his huge scheme
to finance France out of difficulty with his Mississippi Bubble. Among
other considerations mentioned in the charter for twenty-five years, which
he obtained from the gullible French government, was the stipulation that
before the expiration of the charter, he must transport to Louisiana six
thousand white persons, and three thousand Negroes, not to be brought from
another French colony. These slaves, so said the charter, were to be sold
to those inhabitants who had been two years in the colony for one half cash
and the balance on one year's credit. The new inhabitants had one or two
years' credit granted them.[8] In the first year, the Law Company
transported from Africa one thousand slaves, in 1720 five hundred, the same
number the next March, and by 1721 the pages of legal enactments in the
West Indies were being ransacked for precedents in dealing with this
strange population. But of all these slaves who came to the colony by June,
1721, but six hundred remained. Many had died, some had been exported. In
1722, therefore, the Mississippi Company was under constraint to pass an
edict prohibiting the inhabitants of Louisiana from selling their slaves
for transportation out of the colony, to the Spaniards, or to any other
foreign nation under the penalty of the fine of a thousand livres and the
confiscation of the Negroes.[9]
But already the curse of slavery had begun to show its effects. The new
colony was not immoral; it may best be described as unmoral. Indolence on
the part of the masters was physical, mental and moral. The slave
population began to lighten in color, and increase out of all proportion to
the importation and natural breeding among themselves. La Harpe comments in
1724 upon the astonishing diminution of the white population and the
astounding increase of the colored population.[10] Something was
undoubtedly wrong, according to the Caucasian standard, and it has remained
wrong to our own day.[11] The person of color was now, in Louisiana, a
part of its social system, a creature to be legislated for and against, a
person lending his dark shade to temper the inartistic complexion of his
white master. Now he began to make history, and just as the trail of his
color persisted in the complexion of Louisiana, so the trail of his
personal influence continued in the history of the colony, the territory
and the State.
Bienville, the man of far-reaching vision, saw the danger menacing the
colony, and before his recall and disgrace before the French court, he
published, in 1724, the famous Black Code.[12] This code followed the
order of that of the West Indies but contains some provisions to meet
local needs. The legal status of the slave was that of movable property of
his master. Children born of Negro parents followed the condition of their
mother. Slaves were forbidden to carry weapons. Slaves of different
masters could not assemble in crowds by day or night. They were not
permitted to sell "commodities, provisions, or produce" without permission
from their masters, and had no property which did not belong to their
masters. Neither free-born blacks nor slaves were allowed to receive gifts
from whites. They could not exercise such public functions as arbitrator
or expert, could not be partners to civil or criminal suits, could not
give testimony except in default of white people, and could never testify
against their masters. If a slave struck his master or one of the family
so as to produce a bruise or shedding blood in the face, he had to be put
to death. Any runaway slave who continued to be so from the day his master
"denounced" him suffered the penalty of having his ears cut off and being
branded on his shoulder with a fleur-de-lis. For a second offence the
penalty was to hamstring the fugitive and brand him on the other shoulder.
For the third such offence he suffered death. Freed or free-born Negroes
who gave refuge to fugitive slaves had to pay 30 livres for each day of
retention and other free persons 10 livres a day. If the freed or
free-born Negroes were not able to pay the fine, they could be reduced to
the condition of slaves and sold as such.
The slaves were socially ostracized. Marriage of whites with slaves was
forbidden, as was also the concubinage of whites and manumitted or
free-born blacks with slaves. The consent of the parents of a slave to his
marriage was not required. That of the master was sufficient, but a slave
could not be forced to marry against his will.
There were, however, somewhat favorable provisions which made this code
seem a little less rigorous. The slaves had to be well fed and the masters
could not force them to provide for themselves by working for their own
account certain days of the week and slaves could give information against
their owners, if not properly fed or clothed. Disabled slaves had to be
sent to the hospital. Husbands, wives, and their children under the age of
puberty could not be seized and sold separately when belonging to the same
master. The code forbade the application of the rack to slaves, under any
pretext, on private authority, or mutilation of a limb, under penalty of
confiscation of the slave and criminal prosecution of the master. The
master was allowed, however, to have his slave put in irons and whipped
with rods or ropes. The code commanded officers or justices to prosecute
masters and overseers who should kill or mutilate slaves, and to punish the
murder according to the atrocity of the circumstance.
Other provisions were still more favorable. The slaves had to be instructed
in the Catholic religion. Slaves appointed by their masters as tutors to
their children were held set free. Moreover, manumitted slaves enjoyed the
same rights, privileges and immunities that were enjoyed by those born
free. "It is our pleasure," reads the document, "that their merit in having
acquired their freedom shall produce in their favor, not only with regard
to their persons, but also to their property, the same effects that our
other subjects derive from the happy circumstance of their having been born
free."[13]
From the first appearance of the _gens de couleur_ in the colony of
Louisiana dates the class, the _gens de couleur libres_. The record of
the legal tangles which resulted from the attempts to define this race in
Louisiana is most interesting. Up to 1671, all Creoles, Mulattoes, free
Negroes, etc., paid a capitation tax. In February 12 of that year, M. de
Baas, Governor-General of Martinique, issued an order exempting the
Creoles. Those Mulattoes who were also designated as Creoles claimed the
same exemption and resisted paying the tax. M. Patoulet, Intendent,
rendered a decision in 1683 and said: "The Mulattoes and free Negroes
claimed to be exempt from the capitation tax: I have made them pay without
difficulty. I decide that those Mulattoes born in vice should not receive
the exemption, and that for the free Negro, the master could give him
freedom but could not give him the exemption that attaches to the whites
originally from France."[14] The next year, the Mulattoes refused to pay,
and the successor of Minister Patoulet, M. Michel Begou, asked for a law to
compel them.[15] In 1696, an agreement was reached exempting the Mulattoes
and Creoles, leaving only the free black subject to the tax.[16] But in
1712, a M. Robert, in a decision on a subject, again included the
Mulattoes, without, however, mentioning the Creoles, so that only the free
Negroes and Mulattoes paid.[17] Thus they were held as a class apart. A
free Negro woman, Magdelaine Debern, further contested the matter, and in
1724, in the colony of Louisiana, won a decision exempting free Negroes and
Mulattoes, and again placing them on the same footing with the Creole. The
Creoles had a decided advantage, however, because through the favor of
those in authority, there was always a disposition to exalt them.[18]
It is in the definition of the word Creole that another great difficulty
arises. The native white Louisianian will tell you that a Creole is a white
man, whose ancestors contain some French or Spanish blood in their veins.
But he will be disputed by others, who will gravely tell you that Creoles
are to be found only in the lower Delta lands of the state, that there are
no Creoles north of New Orleans; and will raise their hands in horror at
the idea of being confused with the "Cajans," the descendants of those Nova
Scotians whom Longfellow immortalized in Evangeline. Sifting down the mass
of conflicting definitions, it appears that to a Caucasian, a Creole is a
native of the lower parishes of Louisiana, in whose veins some traces of
Spanish, West Indian or French blood runs.[19] The Caucasian will shudder
with horror at the idea of including a person of color in the definition,
and the person of color will retort with his definition that a Creole is a
native of Louisiana, in whose blood runs mixed strains of everything
un-American, with the African strain slightly apparent. The true Creole is
like the famous gumbo of the state, a little bit of everything, making a
whole, delightfully flavored, quite distinctive, and wholly unique.
From 1724 to the present time, frequent discussions as to the proper name
by which to designate this very important portion of the population of
Louisiana waged more or less acrimoniously.[20] It was this Creole element
who in 1763 obtained a decision from Louis XV that all mixed bloods who
could claim descent from an Indian ancestor in addition to a white
outranked those mixed bloods who had only white and African ancestors.[21]
In Jamaica, in 1733, there was passed a law that every person who could
show that he was three degrees removed from a Negro ancestor should be
regarded as belonging to the white race, and could sit as a member of the
Jamaica Assembly.[22] In Barbadoes, any person who had a white ancestor
could vote. These laws were quoted in Louisiana and influenced legislation
there.[23]
Gov. Perier succeeded Bienville as Governor of Louisiana. His task was not
a light one; the colony staggered under "terror of attack from the Indians,
sudden alarms, false hopes, anxious suspense, militia levies, colonial
paper, instead of good money, industrial stagnation, the care of homeless
refugees, and worst of all, the restiveness of the slaves. The bad effects
of slave-holding began to show themselves." Many of the slaves had been
taken in war, and were fierce and implacable. Some were of that fiercest of
African tribes, the Banbaras. A friendliness, born of common hatred and
despair, began to show itself between the colored people and the fierce
Choctaw Indians surrounding the colony, when Gov. Perier planned a
master-stroke of diplomacy. Just above New Orleans lived a small tribe of
Indians, the Chouchas, who, not particularly harmful in themselves, had
succeeded in inspiring the nervous inhabitants of the city with abject
fear. Perier armed a band of slaves in 1729 and sent them to the Chouchas
with instructions to exterminate the tribe. They did their work with an
ease and dispatch that should have been a warning to their white masters.
In reporting the success of his plan Perier said: "The Negroes executed
their mission with as much promptitude as secrecy. This lesson taught them
by our Negroes, kept in check all the nations higher up the river."[24]
Thus, by one stroke the wily Governor had intimidated the tribes of
Indians, allayed the nervous fears of New Orleans, and effected a state of
hostility between the Indians and the Africans, who were beginning to be
entirely too friendly with each other. Then Perier used the slaves to make
the entrenchments about the city. Thus we have the first instance of the
arming of the Negro in Louisiana for the defense of the colony. On the 15th
of January, 1730, Gov. Perier sent a boat containing twenty white men and
six Africans to carry ammunition to the Illinois settlement up the
Mississippi river whence tales of massacre and cruelty by the Indians
filtered down.[25]
The arming of the slaves in defense of the whites gave impetus to the
struggle for their own freedom. In the massacre of the French by the
Natchez, at the village of that name, over three hundred women and slaves
were kept as prisoners, and in January of the same year which witnessed the
massacre of the Chouchas, the French surprised the Natchez Indians with the
intention of recovering their women and slaves, and avenging the death of
their comrades. Some of the Africans who had been promised their freedom if
they allied themselves with the Natchez Indians, fought against their
erstwhile masters, others were loyal, and helped the French. The battle
became an issue, as it were, between the slaves. Over one hundred of them
were recovered from the Indians.[26]
The first tribute we have paid to the black man as a soldier in Louisiana
was paid by Gov. Perier in this war in his dispatch to the French
government. "Fifteen negroes," he wrote, "in whose hands we had put
weapons, performed prodigies of valor. If the blacks did not cost so much,
and if their labors were not so necessary to the colony, it would be better
to turn them into soldiers, and to dismiss those we have, who are so bad
and so cowardly that they seem to have been manufactured purposely for this
colony."[27]
But the tiger had tasted blood. Perier's cruel logic was reactionary. Since
he had used blacks to murder Indians in order to make bad blood between the
races, the Indians retaliated by using blacks to murder white men. In
August of that same fateful year, the Chickasaws, who had given asylum to
the despoiled Natchez in order to curb the encroachments of the white men,
stirred the black slaves to revolt. We have noted before the prevalence of
the Banbara Negroes in the colony. It was they who planned the rebellion.
Their plan was, after having butchered the whites, to establish a Banbara
colony, keeping as slaves for themselves all blacks not of their nation.
The conspiracy was discovered by the hints of a woman in the revolt before
it had time to ripen, and the head of the revolt, a powerful black named
Samba with eight of his confederates was broken on the wheel, and the woman
hanged.[28]
Gov. Perier's administration did not lack interest. The next year, in 1731,
we find him still struggling with his old enemies, the Natchez. His
dispatches mention that a crew under one De Coulanges, with Indians and
free blacks had been massacred by the Indians. One dispatch has the
greatest interest for us, because of the expression "free blacks"[29] used.
Here is one of the great mysteries of the person of color in Louisiana.
Whence the free black? We are told explicitly that up to this time all
Negroes imported into Louisiana were slaves from Africa, for the West
Indian migration did not occur until a half century later. This dispatch
from Gov. Perier recalls articles in the Black Code of 1724, where explicit
directions are given for the disposition of the children of free blacks.
In the regulations of police under the governorship of the Marquis of
Vandreuil, 1750, there is an article regulating the attitude of free
Negroes and Negresses toward slaves. Here is the very beginning of that
aristocracy of freedom so fiercely and jealously guarded until this day, a
free person of color being set as far above his slave fellows as the white
man sets himself above the person of color. Three explanations for this
aristocracy seem highly probable: Some slaves might have been freed by
their masters because of valor on the battlefield, others by buying their
freedom in terms of money, and not a few slave women by their owners
because of their personal attractions. It makes little difference in this
story which of the three or whether all of the three were contributors to
the rise of this new class. It existed as early as 1724, twelve years after
the first recorded slave importation. It was in 1766 that some Acadians,
complaining of their treatment to the Governor Ulloa, represented that
Negroes were freemen while they were slaves.
Bienville returned to the colony as its governor in 1733, after an absence
of eight years, and it is recorded that in 1735, when he reviewed his
troops near Mobile while making preparations for an Indian war, he found
that his army from New Orleans consisted of five hundred and forty-four
white men, excluding the officers, and forty-five Negroes commanded by free
blacks.[30] Here we note free black officers of Negro troops in 1735. If
not actually the first regular Negro troops to appear in what is now the
United States, they were certainly the first to be commanded by Negro
officers.
The engagement with the Choctaw Indians was not altogether successful for
the French. Disaster succeeded disaster, and the day closed with the French
army deeply humiliated, and making a retreat as dignified as possible under
the circumstances. A number of the French officers, as Gayarré tells us,
stood under the shade of a gigantic oak discussing the defeat, and with
them Simon, a free black, the commander of the troop of Negroes. He was
deeply vexed because his troops had not stood fire, and expressed himself
with so much freedom and disgust, that the French officers kept bantering
him without mercy at the timidity of his soldiers, soothing their own
wounded pride by laughing at his mortification. Stung to the heart, Simon
finally exclaimed wrathfully, "A Negro is as brave as anybody and I will
show it to you." Seizing a rope which was dangling from one of the tents,
he rushed headlong toward one of the horses which were quietly slaking
their thirst under the protection of the Indian muskets. To reach a white
mare, to jump on her back with the agility of a tiger, and to twist around
her head and mouth the rope with which to control her, was the affair of an
instant. But that instant was enough for the apparently sleeping Indian
village to show itself awake, and to flash forth into a hail of bullets.
Away dashed Simon toward the Indian village, and back to the French camp
where he arrived safe amid the cheering acclamations of the troops, and
without having received a wound from the shots of the enemy.[31] This feat
silenced at once the jests of the French officers, of which Simon thought
himself the victim.[32]
The beginning of the Revolutionary war in 1776 found Louisiana a Spanish
province and the natives of the colony beginning to tolerate and even to
like their erstwhile hated Spanish masters. Don Bernardo de Galvez was
governor of the colony. His administration has a peculiar interest to us,
because it was during his rule that the Court of Madrid, fully alive to the
policy of extending the agriculture of Louisiana, issued a decree
permitting the introduction of Negroes into Louisiana by French vessels,
from whatever ports they might come.[33] This was the beginning of the
rapid migration from the West Indian islands.
While Andrew Jackson was still a child, Louisiana had a deliverer from the
British in the person of this brave Gov. Galvez. The strategical importance
of the Mississippi River and of New Orleans was at once apparent to the
British commanders, and Louisiana, being neutral territory, offered a most
fascinating field of operation. Galvez, in July, 1777, had secured
declaration of neutrality from the 25,000 or more Creeks, Choctaws and
Chickasaws, but even this did not seem to satisfy the combatants. New
Orleans was at the mercy of first the American troops and then the British.
The mediation of Spain between France and England having been rejected in
the courts of Europe, Spain decided to join France in the struggle against
Great Britain. So on May 8, 1779, Spain formally declared war against Great
Britain, and on July 8 authorized all Spanish subjects in America to take
their share in the hostilities against the English. No news could be more
welcome to the dashing young Galvez, to whom a policy of neutrality was
decidedly distasteful. He decided to forestall the attack on New Orleans,
which he had learned was to be made by the British, by attacking first, and
on August 26 gathered his little army together. From New Orleans, as
Gayarré tells, were 170 veteran soldiers, 330 recruits, 20 carabiniers, 60
militiamen, and 80 free blacks and mulattoes. On the way up the river, they
were reinforced by 600 men from the coast of "every condition and color,"
besides 160 Indians.[34]
On the march, the colored men and Indians were ordered to keep ahead of the
main body of troops, at a distance of about three quarters of a mile, and
closely to reconnoitre the woods. In capturing the two forts of Baton Rouge
and Natchez, which were held by the British, Galvez found a considerable
number of Negro slaves who had been armed by the British. Many of these
he set free. In his dispatch to his government at Madrid, Galvez reports
that the companies of free blacks and mulattoes, who had been employed in
all the false attacks, and who, as scouts and skirmishers, had proved
exceedingly useful, behaved on all occasions with as much valor and
generosity as the white soldiers.[35] But not alone were the exploits of
Galvez's little army celebrated in history. Poetry added her laurel
wreath to its crown. Julien Poydras de Lalande, known to all Louisianians
as Poydras, celebrated the victory in a poem, "The God of the Mississippi,"
wherein the brave deeds of the army, white and colored, are hailed in
French verse, lame and halting, it may be in places, but impartial in
its tribute.
The close of the Revolutionary war found the colony partially paralyzed as
to industry. During the Spanish domination the indigo industry declined,
tobacco was difficult to raise, and the production of cotton was not then
profitable. Sugar raising was the only other industry to which they could
turn. In 1751 the Jesuit fathers had received their first seed, or rather
layers, from Santo Domingo and from that time sugar-cane had been grown
with more or less success. But it was a strictly local industry. The
Louisianians were poor sugar-makers. The stuff was badly granulated and
very moist, and when in 1765 an effort was made to export some of the sugar
to France, it was so wet that half of the cargo leaked out of the ship
before it could make port. It was just at this psychological moment, in
1791 to 1794, when the planters of the lower Delta saw ruin staring them in
the face, that there came to the rescue of the colony a man of color, one
of the refugees from Santo Domingo, where the blacks had risen in 1791.
From the failure of this abortive attempt to emulate the spirit of the
white man, refugees flew in every direction, and Louisiana welcomed them,
if not exactly with open arms, at least with more indifference than other
colonies. And these black refugees were her saviors. For they had been
prosperous sugar-makers, and the efforts to make marketable sugar in
Louisiana, which had ceased for nearly twenty-five years, were revived. Two
Spaniards, Mendez and Solis, erected on the outskirts of New Orleans, the
one a distillery, the other a battery of sugar-kettles, and manufactured
rum and syrup. Still, the efforts were not entirely successful, until
Etienne de Boré appeared. Face to face with ruin because of the failure of
the indigo crop, he staked his all on the granulation of sugar. He enlisted
the services of these successful Santo Dominicans, and went to work. In all
American history there can be fewer scenes more dramatic than the one
described by careful historians of Louisiana, the day when the final test
was made and there was passed around the electrical word, "It
granulates!"[36]
That year de Boré marketed $12,000 worth of super or sugar. The agriculture
of the Delta was revolutionized; seven years afterwards New Orleans
marketed 2,000,000 gallons of rum, 250,000 gallons of molasses, and
5,000,000 pounds of sugar. It was the beginning of the commercial
importance of one of the most progressive cities in the country.
Imagination refuses to picture what would have been the case but for the
refugees from San Domingo.
But the same revolution which gave to Louisiana its prestige to the
commercial world, almost starved the province to death. In the year 1791,
the trade, which had flourished briskly between Santo Domingo and New
Orleans, was closed because of the uprising, and but for Philadelphia,
famine would have decimated the city. 1,000 barrels of flour were sent in
haste to the starving city by the good Quakers of Philadelphia. The members
of the Cabildo, the local council, prohibited the introduction of people of
color from Santo Domingo, fearing the dangerous ideas of the brotherhood of
man. But it was too late. The news of the success of the slaves in Santo
Domingo, and the success of the French Revolution, says Gayarré, had
penetrated into the most remote cabins of Louisiana, and in April, 1795, on
the plantation of the same Poydras who had sung the glory of the army of
Galvez, a conspiracy was formed for a general uprising of the slaves
throughout the parish of Pointe Coupée. The leaders were three white men.
The conspiracy failed because one of the leaders was incensed at his advice
not being heeded and through his wife the authorities were notified. A
struggle ensued, and the conspiracy was strangled in its infancy by the
trial and execution of the slaves most concerned in the insurrection. The
three white men were exiled from the colony.[37] This finally ended the
importation of slaves from the West Indies.