THE SLAVE AND THE FREEDMAN IN AMERICA
The importation of Negroes to the American mainland began about
1525, following the license for such traffic by Philip of Spain.
From that time, through Spanish and French companies chiefly; and
after the Spanish Armada, through English companies chiefly, the
trade in African slaves was vigorously pursued. While statistics are
unreliable, Stone approves the guess that “the number transported
to Spanish America may be said to have been somewhere between four
and seven millions; for English America, insular and continental,
about three millions during the century preceding the Revolution. The
number brought into the Thirteen Colonies may have been about three
hundred thousand.”
The first slaves (about twenty in number) were brought to our
colonies by a Dutch vessel which landed at Portsmouth, Va., in
1619, just twelve years after the first permanent settlement by
the English. This we have upon the authority of John Rolfe. Thus
the Negroes, though not of their own wills, were among the first
settlers of the new country. It is vain to discuss the question
of responsibility, or of moral culpability. However revolting to
the modern mind and heart, slavery was the inheritance of our
forefathers, practiced in every conceivable form, not only in
Africa, but among every people and in every land. When practiced
within racial lines, it extended all the way from the kindly,
household slave relations of the Romans, where slaves were sometimes
the teachers of their masters’ children, to the relations with
war-trophies to be sold or exploited as chattels. When practiced
inter-racially, the differences of race were apt to harden into
prejudice with its general indifference to the consequences of
cruelty. But in either case, it was the universal practice of heathen
and Christian peoples until a comparatively recent time. Moral
culpability did not enter into the reckoning of the ages preceding
ours, and responsibility was readily admitted or never questioned.
And this was true of our colonist forefathers who carried on the
slave traffic as sellers and buyers in the early days. Even after the
consciousness of the wrong of it had been awakened in many by the
experiences of slavery, they found themselves the victims of a system
of social life which they would gladly have escaped. This is equally
true of the southern and the northern colonists.
It was because of the rapid growth of this consciousness of the
wrong of slavery, naturally quickened by the advance of Democracy
during the eighteenth century, that the traffic was made illegal in
1807. It was also because so large and so respectable a number of
slave-holders realized themselves to be the victims of an inherited
system of social life from which they could find no satisfactory
means of escape, that the system took more and more the form of
humane feudalism in which, however, the vassals were workers and
not soldiers to be protected and not exposed to danger. And when
Emancipation came, there were not a few who felt and expressed it.
“It is not the Negroes who are emancipated, but the Whites; only we
cannot realize it until the last of our old people are gone.” And
this was true, for the Negro had yet to learn the art of freedom and
acquire its character before it could become the reality as well as
the blessing it should be. True, too, that the white man was not
yet emancipated, for he had still to fulfil the obligation to his
old people, many of them children as yet in development, loving and
beloved; and this, in many cases, he did to the last dollar and to
the last dust of meal, and to the last old servant laid to rest.
No one, except perhaps the political economist here or there, or some
fond soul of the olden time who has been asleep ever since, will
attempt to defend slavery; yet it is also difficult to understand
the philosopher, North or South, White or Negro who attaches nothing
but obloquy to it, and sees nothing that is good resulting from it.
Doctor Murphy’s opening chapter of _The Basis of Ascendency_ begins
with this true assertion: “It is so frequently assumed that the most
significant factor in the history of our negro population is the
factor of its exploitation, that a word of contradiction is never
quite out of place. Within its actual environment, whether North or
South, this population has suffered much, but it has received more.”
And emphasizing the inevitable co-partnership of the two races in
the task of progress which the White alone has been responsible for
forming, he adds: “It (the negro population) has become involved so
inextricably in the fate of a far more efficient social group, that
the conditions of progress within this stronger group have become the
conditions which must surround and advance the life and fortunes of
the weaker.”
Dr. Booker T. Washington is never an apologist for negro slavery, but
he recognizes a large fact when he sees, side by side with “the great
curse (of slavery) to both races,” this evident shaping of its ends.
“God, for two hundred and fifty years, in my opinion, prepared the
way for the redemption of the Negro through industrial development.”
It is the story of this redemption that must now occupy our interest.
Our first chapter sought to draw the picture of the Negro in Africa.
We then saw him as he has developed under conditions of more or less
segregation and self-government. Now we are to trace his development
under American conditions, described by visiting students of slavery
as the most kindly and humane ever experienced in such relations.
Thus the Englishman, Welby, wrote in 1820: “After traveling through
three Slave States, I am obliged to go back to the _theory_ to raise
any abhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an
instance of cruel treatment, nor could I discover anything to excite
commiseration in the faces or gait of the people of color. They
walk, talk, and appear, at least, as independent as their masters; in
animal spirits they have greatly the advantage.”
Again, Basil Hall wrote, in 1828: “I have no wish, God knows! to
defend slavery in the abstract; ... but ... nothing during my recent
journey gave me more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I
was gradually brought that the planters of the Southern States
of America, generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage
their estates with the least possible severity. I do not say that
undue severity is nowhere exercised; but the discipline taken upon
the average, as far as I could learn, is not more strict than is
necessary for the maintenance of a proper degree of authority,
without which the whole framework of society in that quarter would be
blown to atoms.”
Human nature is much the same the world over, and this display of
kindly humanitarianism, so noticeable to the traveling students,
was probably but the outgrowth of the early conditions of colonial
life. The settlers in a new land were beset with the problem of labor
to develop the new homesteads. English freemen would rarely engage
themselves for such wages as employers could afford to pay. What more
natural than that the laborers in England, willing and often anxious
to emigrate to the new land, should sell themselves for a period of
labor sufficient to pay passage, including a meagre wage while the
servitude lasted. Thus indentured servitude for the Colonies took
the place of the old system of apprenticeship so long in use in the
Old Country.
When negro slaves came in increasing numbers, the former relation
with indentured servants must certainly have entered, more or less,
into the interpretation of the relations of permanent servitude. Add
to this that all alike were surrounded with the possible, and often
aroused enmity of the Red Men, and with a constant peril of life, we
have factors which must greatly have strengthened and softened the
bond between White and Negro. In these and in many other conditions
of the earlier days of the settlements, one sees the conditions out
of which kindliness and affection were well-nigh certain to grow, and
the well-recognized mutual partnership of interests to develop.
And this is just what actually happened for the most part.
The growing sense of the mutual interest and dependence, and
responsibility constantly tended to develop a relationship similar
to that of the old patriarchate. The constant battle with the
primeval forest and undeveloped new lands—a battle to be waged
successfully only by the importation of laborers, untaught and
undisciplined—constantly tended also to develop the relation of the
teacher and the taught in the larger School of Nature. So the system
grew into the Family and the Trade School.
Let us dismiss, with one paragraph, that other unsightly, often
cruel, always condemnable side of slavery—the unfeeling, ruthlessly
selfish and contemptible business of the slave-trader, who sought
only to fill his purse with gold through the sale of “human
cattle”—that unspeakably loathsome estimate of the Negro as an animal
whose relationships were ignored, whose love was ridiculed, whose
sensibilities were despised and whose rights (for the rights were
there, even though the rights of a slave) were denied. Slavery did,
in some instances, present that aspect; but no one can read the story
without knowing that that side was the horrid incident, and not the
characteristic of the old feudal and patriarchal life. It was that
feature which often hindered the development, upon the best lines,
of the rude Negroes brought from Africa. It could not, however, stop
it. Our purpose being to trace this development, we are led into
pleasanter fields; for it is in the inner life of the White-Black
family and school, that the story of the culture of the wild graft is
written.
Professor Phillips, in his _American Negro Slavery_, tells us that
during the first half century after the introduction of slaves there
were comparatively few Negroes in the colony—Virginia—which received
the first importations. “They had,” he writes, “by far the best
opportunity which any of their race had been given in America, to
learn the white man’s ways and to adjust the lines of their bondage
into as pleasant places as might be. Their importation was, for the
time, on but an experimental scale, and even their legal status was,
during the early decades, indefinite.”
There was, as yet, neither law nor custom establishing slavery as an
institution. In fact it was custom that established the status of
permanent servitude, while the laws only recognized it in defining
the difference between the white indentured servant and the negro
purchased slave. This did not become a subject of legal enactment
until 1662. Prior to that time, Negroes were described as servants:
“A few as servants for terms of years; some were conceded, property
rights of a sort incompatible with the institution of slavery as
elaborated in later times. Some of the blacks were liberated by the
courts, as having served the terms fixed by their indentures or by
the custom of the country.” How much of trouble and distress would
have been saved had the forefathers developed their slave problems
after this precedent, rather than after that of their Spanish and
English neighbors of the South Atlantic Islands!
Some of the Negroes had become landowners by the middle of the
century, and some were themselves slave owners. More and more,
however, the owners of Negroes were holding them tenaciously, and
regarding them as salable property; and from, 1680 onward, the laws
for slave control became as definite as those in the Islands.
The charter and later settlement of the South Carolina Colony, in
1663, by Sir John Colleton of Barbadoes and his company, for the
purpose of attracting colonists from the English Islands, fixed the
general legal status of slavery upon the American Colonies. This was
made the more sure because in the first-settled coast regions of the
colony, rice, and later indigo, were introduced as the staple crops,
for the cultivation of which only Negroes could endure the necessary
swampy conditions. The owners, dwelling in the neighboring pine
elevations by night and in summer, went to their plantations only in
the day time and in the winter season.
Likewise, in the Northern Colonies, without exception, the system
found its way; first, through the enslaving of captive Indians, then,
by 1630, of Negroes also. While the traffic in slaves persisted for
a long time with Newport as the chief center, neither climatic nor
economic conditions were favorable to the system. In one way or
another, slavery declined, and the field presents little that is
valuable to our study.
The Revolutionary War, with the Declaration of Independence, and
its assertion of the freedom and equality of men as its justifying
principle and motive, produced a profound effect upon the mind of
America; not, indeed, sufficiently great to enable any State to enact
laws looking to gradual emancipation, but great enough to arouse
most of the Northern States and all of the Southern, except Georgia,
to prohibit, by the year 1787, the further importation of slaves
from beyond their borders. The Federal Congress was still, however,
inhibited for twenty years, from enacting such laws.
The action of the State tended to stabilize social life, by
reducing the number of strange Negroes from across the ocean;
and to strengthen the ties of masters and servants, by prolonged
association. The result was well-nigh universal in the Slave States
in spite of South Carolina’s repeal of its law, four years before
the Federal Act was passed at the close of 1807. Meanwhile the
introduction of cotton, in about 1790 as the chief crop of these
States, proved to be the greatest material factor in determining
the social and industrial life of the Eastern and Southern States,
especially the latter. Once firmly established, following Whitney’s
invention of the cotton gin in 1793, it almost as firmly established
the life of the Negro in his agricultural home.
The Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, and the expansion of sugar-planting
on a large scale, completed, for many generations, the cycle of
Southern agricultural industry. Since then, much has happened; but
agriculturally the Negro’s home is practically unchanged and his
development has been through a stable school of arts which ministered
to his rural life.
The pupils, we must bear in mind, came from many tribes of Africans.
Professor John McCrady, in the course of a lecture to his students
in Sewanee, said that he had clearly defined fourteen different
dialects spoken by the Negroes of the Sea Islands of South Carolina,
and did not doubt but that many more could be found by the student
of the Southern Negro. Not only were the dialects different, but
quite marked were the physical and mental characteristics. It is a
mistake to imagine that all Negroes are alike. The pupils of the
plantation school came to be known and rated personally just as the
pupils of any school must be; and so, too, the children of the large
patriarchal family.
The character of the plantation school was determined, partly by
the crops raised, partly by the nature of the land, partly by the
personality of the master and his foreman, partly by the number of
workers, and partly by the neighborhood customs. Some neighborhoods
operated on the gang system, dividing the workers into groups; others
on the task system, allotting so much as the labor of the day; while
still others used successfully both systems, often the former for
men, the latter for women and younger learners.
If the owner had but one or half a dozen families of servants he
usually labored with them at plough, or hoe, or wagon. If a greater
number, his time was fully occupied in planning the work, and
overseeing the workers. If the plantations were very large, the
organization was elaborate and complete. In every case, to the Negro,
as he came new from his African home and for long after, the school
was most valuable and every day brought lessons to body, mind and
soul. As the great majority of the old servants were congregated on
the larger plantations, it was there that most of the training was
received. Should the reader have access to one of a number of books
like _A Southern Planter_, by Mrs. S. D. Smedes, the reading will
be most delightful and not less instructive in its exact picture
of the old régime. Or if a visit could be paid to Alfred Holt
Stone’s Dunleith Plantation (a very fine sample of many like it)
in Washington County, Mississippi, there would be seen a perfect
likeness of the old life, under the much improved conditions (in
many respects) of free labor. For all that was best in the old
régime, the mutual interest, the personal attachments, the mutual
confidence, the pride in home, the loyalty and friendship between
master and servant, has been preserved in the descendants of both.
The statement just made and that which follows have been tested all
over the South, and never found wanting whenever the two races are
still found in the old homes. There never has been a place or time
when there were more Christian Whites and Christian Negroes more
earnestly interested in forming and keeping the highest and best
race-relations, and in seeking the best interests of both races
alike, than in the South at this present time. Unfortunately, they
are not all Christians who call the name of Christ.
The organization of a large plantation had to be very perfect if it
was to succeed in maintaining its great family. Phillips’ _American
Slavery_ presents many samples and, with minute detail, describes the
routine, interesting but not necessary to our study. One type will
sufficiently illustrate the educative value of all.
The division into crafts was essential where the plantation
represented a community well-nigh completely self-sustaining. There
was the agricultural department, so ordered as to provide the right
proportion of plowmen and hoe-hands, each with its foreman. In
every case the foreman or head-man was a Negro of marked ability
as a workman and leader, who was not a mere driver but a teacher.
Generally he exacted the task and demanded that it be well done.
Often he got what he wanted by tactful resource and consummate human
wisdom, as one of them expressed it, “I never discouraged, but him
that was hindmost I praised the most.” His leadership involved
every detail, both of prompt and well-done service, and of the care
of the tools; in the case of the plowman, the proper care of the
livestock and its management. There were the carpenter shops, where
all the wood-work was done; with the house carpenter, sometimes the
cabinetmaker, and always the toolmaker for the wood-work of plows,
wagons, etc. Often, in the beginning, they had been taught by white
experts fresh from their apprenticeships in England or Ireland. They
understood the care and seasoning of timbers and lumber, from the
cutting in the forest to the sawing and shaping in the shop. Under
them there were often one or more young apprentices who had shown
aptitude. The system, the exactness, the careful planning that no
want should be unsupplied when needed; the care to be ready for
instant repairs that other departments might not be delayed—all of
this was entrusted to the head of each department of carpentry, who
was a man to be trusted and relied upon; and the master, with mind
always busy looking forward and eyes seeing everything, knew it, as
in kindly confidential contact, he rather suggested and counselled
than ordered. Here is a little extract from a colloquy once heard in
a very busy time.
“Uncle Ned, where are those plow stocks? Didn’t I tell you we would
need them tomorrow”?
“Marse John, who is making dese plows? Don’t I know when dey is
needed”?
And with a chuckle, Marse John receives the retort of offended
dignity, and beats a retreat, having seen the various parts of the
plows, stacked in order, ready to be assembled in a trifle of time,
and proud of the old reliable.
There was the blacksmith’s shop, where everything was made, from
a nail to a lock and key, from a plow-shovel to a wagon-axle and
spindle, from a bridle-pit to steel stirrups. Gradually these were
replaced by manufactured articles; but to the last, any might be
repaired or replaced if necessity required.
The women had their tasks. There were the hoe-hands—women, boys, and
girls—to be taught under easy, short tasks, but with the care always
required by their foreman. There was the weave-room, where cotton
and wool were spun and woven into cloth for home use. The dyeing was
done at home. There was the sewing-room where, under the oversight
of the mistress, clothing in proper quantity was cut and made for
“top and bottom” wear. There was the day nursery where the young
mothers, busied with the half tasks allotted them, left their little
ones under the care of the older experienced women who, under the
mistress, were at times nurses, and at other times mid-wives.
Some plantations also had “the sick house” for severe cases; but, in
most cases, the sick were at home, visited regularly by master or
mistress or both, and by the family doctor where his attention was
needed. The last was often distant, and the master and mistress were
generally good substitutes, always supplied with simple remedies. The
day-nursery provided the opportunity for instruction in baby-farming,
which many a mistress used to great advantage. For instruction in
domestic service, the “Big House” was the school, and none better.
A southern negro boy would as soon have been disrespectful to his
father as “sassed” the dignified butler; a punishment would even more
certainly have followed the latter, if known. And the relation of
love between children and “Mammy,” and between family and servants,
is too charmingly commonplace to remark.
Dr. Washington, writing of God’s hand in it all, says: “First, He
made the southern white man do business with the Negro for 250 years
in a way that no one else has done business with him. If a southern
white man wanted a house or a bridge built, he consulted a negro
mechanic about the plan and the actual building of the house or
bridge. If he wanted a suit of clothes or a pair of shoes made, it
was to the negro tailor or shoemaker that he talked. Secondly, every
large plantation in the South was, in a limited way, an industrial
school. On these plantations, there were scores of young colored
men and women who were constantly being trained, not only as common
farmers, but as carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, plasterers,
brickmasons, engineers, bridge-builders, cooks, dress-makers,
housekeepers, etc. I would be the last to apologize for the curse of
slavery; but I am simply stating facts. This training was crude and
was given for selfish purposes; and did not answer the highest needs,
because there was the absence of brain-training in connection with
that of the hand.”
It is good to have the Negro speak for himself. The last sentence
would have been written differently by his white friend. Though given
for selfish purposes _in part_, the training was definitely also
for the good of the pupil; and while often crude, it was more often
very definitely expert. Some of the more skilled workers, in every
generation of the slavery days and in spite of adverse laws, were
taught to read and cipher; they drew their plans, estimated their
materials, and made their own calculations for the work in hand. Yet
it is also true that the laws against school-training, though never
fully obeyed, vastly hindered the general development of the race.
One other important division of farm economics should be mentioned,
i. e., the food supply, involving the raising of cattle, hogs and
poultry; the cure of meats; the storage of grain and vegetables, etc.
In all this there were plantation experts, as well as happy joyous
faces and overfed bodies at “hog-killin’ times.” In practically all
cases, Saturday was half-holiday, often utilized by the slaves in
their home-gardens or in other work yielding money to be spent at
their own pleasure. Poultry and eggs, the weaving of baskets or other
articles, were other sources of income. Not infrequently the Negroes
continued the crafts native to their tribes in Africa.
The houses of the servants, while far beyond those left behind
in the “Dark Continent,” and comfortable for the most part, were
certainly not the sort in which a high moral life could be taught.
Consisting often of only two rooms, sometimes three, the problem of
sleeping-quarters in them seemed a secondary consideration. And while
few planters of the olden days would admit less than a real interest
in the morals of their servants, practically none provided the means
of safeguarding them properly in the homes furnished. Yet it must be
said that these quarters were generally better than those which the
Negroes have provided for themselves “since freedom.”
We turn now to the old plantation as the patriarchal family, with its
valuable educative features in moral training and home-making. “The
Big House” was the name given by the Negroes to the master’s home,
whether a log house or a stately mansion. The servants’ quarters on
the large plantation were often in the form of a village, with its
streets, one or many, as the inhabitants required. Each house had
its garden, its “hen-house,” and generally its pig-sty; with its
fruit trees, serving both for shade and for food. Other features of
the village, the day nursery, etc.—have been mentioned. The system
of life was co-operative. With the exception of the garden truck,
the supplies came from the plantation storehouses and the flocks and
herds. Fish from the nearby streams, wild game, and native fruits of
field and forest, furnished additional food for all alike.
“The lives of Whites and Blacks,” as Professor Phillips writes, “were
partly segregate, partly intertwined. If any special links were
needed, the children supplied them. The white ones, hardly knowing
their mothers from their ‘mammies’ or their uncles by blood from
their ‘uncles’ by courtesy, had the freedom of the kitchen and the
cabins; and the black ones were their playmates in the shaded, sunny
yard, the livelong day. Together they were regaled with folklore
in the quarters; with the Bible and fairy stories in the “Big
House”; with pastry in the kitchen; with grapes at the _scuppernong_
vineyard; with melons at the spring-house; and with peaches in the
orchard. The half-grown boys were likewise as undiscriminating among
themselves as the dogs with which they chased rabbits by day and
’possums by night. Indeed, when the fork in the road of life was
reached, the white youths found something to envy in the freedom
of their fellows’ feet from the cramping weight of shoes, and the
freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With the
approach of maturity, came routine and responsibility for the whites;
routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of
each race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal
sense; some of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen;
but most of both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk
of a somewhat distinctive plantation type.
In amusements there was the same mingling and separation. Never a
fox-hunt or a rabbit-chase, but some bell-voiced Negroes were on
hand to “whoop-up the dogs,” and, with canny knowledge of the habits
of wild things, to guide the hunters, dogs and humans, to likely
lairs. Something like this was true of every outdoor sport. If the
Negroes gave a dance, the White were there to look on and applaud.
If there was a festivity at the “Big House,” there were sure to be
some favorites from the quarters to see and help. Who, that has heard
them, can ever forget the impromptu concerts swelling up from the
quarters on moonlight nights? Starting often with a single voice
from the stoop of a cabin, and traveling from house to house, until
the combined voices swelled upward and outward as a great, exquisite
organ filling all space—it was, in very truth, a human organ of God’s
fashioning. The memory brings melody.
Every step by the way was development from the savagery, often
cannibalism, of African inheritance, to the awakening kindliness due
to others, and the reverence for life as such. There were quarreling
and fighting to be prevented or stopped. Punishment was often
inflicted for such outbreaks. In some cases, the masters resorted to
athletics as both a training in self-control and a means of working
off surplus energy. Wrestling, boxing, racing and the like were
practiced under the eye of the master, who acted as judge of the
contest, and knew how to teach the contestants to compose ruffled
feelings. Whether at work or at play, the old system was a school
of training, under average conditions worth while; under the best
conditions most valuable.
Some of the tribes of Africa had already developed agriculture to
a degree. The American life immeasurably improved both method and
purpose. And what a wholly new conception of family and social life
was born in them! Polygamy had been too universally fashionable in
the old land to admit the ties of family. No fondling there of little
ones, no rejoicing in the growing lives; only the interest in the
chattel, to be sold if the child be a girl, if a boy, all ties gone
with the mother’s dried breast.
But, in the new life, love, long starved, re-awakened in tremendous
force. High human emotions were developed, released and expanded
under ever increasing kindly relations, growing more and more into
affectionate attachment which was tried by shot and shell, by hunger
and thirst, and not found wanting. This a South Carolinian wrote in
1852, a few years before the testing time of war: “Experience and
observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of
kindness from master to slave. With that ... slavery becomes a family
relation, next, in its attachments, to that of parent and child.” The
Negro did not write that—not many could—; but nearly all learned to
live it.
Conditions differing from those of the Negro in slavery existed, even
during the period of slavery, among a constantly growing number of
free Negroes who formed a distinct class both North and South. While
a very few free Negroes came into the colonies from the Islands,
and, in the early period, a larger number at the expiration of the
indentured service, this class was formed either by the purchase of
themselves by the Negroes, or through their manumission by generous
or grateful masters. Typical of the first, is “the deed signed by
Robert Daniell of South Carolina, in 1759, granting freedom to his
slave, David Wilson, in consideration of his faithful service, and of
£600 currency in hand paid.” Illustrative of the second, is “the will
of Thomas Stanford of New Jersey, in 1722, directing that, upon the
death of the testator’s wife, his negro man should have his freedom
if, in the opinion of three neighbors named, he had behaved well.”
It is to be noted, too, that the democratic philosophy of the
Revolutionary period, inevitably and immediately producing the
abolition movement, stimulated very greatly private manumissions
throughout the colonies, which persisted, in spite of reaction, to
the very end of slavery. Thus Philip Graham, of Maryland, made a deed
in 1787, by which his slaves were converted into servants for terms,
and in which he recited, as the reason, his conviction that “the
holding of his fellowmen in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the
golden law of God and the inalienable right of mankind, as well as to
every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place
in America.” About the same time, Richard Randolph, of the Roanoke
family, wrote to his guardian, “With regard to the division of the
estate, I want only to say that I want not a single Negro for other
purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every individual
thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say
nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant
an animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power.”
So many were the manumissions of which these are typical, that,
by 1790, there were more than 35,000 freedmen in the South. And
while the reasons assigned were changed in the Nineteenth Century,
liberations on a large scale were made. A unique sample was that of
John McDonogh, the most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day,
who made a bargain with his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by
which they were collectively to earn their freedom and their passage
to Liberia by their overtime work on Saturday afternoons. This labor
was to be done in McDonogh’s own service, and he was to keep account
of their earnings. They were entitled to draw upon this fund upon
approved occasions; but, since the contract was with the whole group
of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash, the others must draw
theirs _pro rata_, thereby postponing the common day of liberation.
Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the
master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of
the rest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule; and, after
some delay in embarkation, they left America in 1842, some eighty
in number, with their late master’s benediction. In concluding his
public narration, McDonogh wrote: “They have now sailed for Liberia,
the land of their fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt
satisfaction that a more virtuous people does not exist in any
country.”
There were also not a few families of Virginia and South Carolina
who, though not without difficulties, colonized their Negroes in
Ohio, and themselves, in some cases, began life afresh as pioneers in
a new country.
Sometimes the liberations were attended with romance, as, when Pierre
Chastang, of Mobile, was bought and freed by popular subscription in
recognition of public services in the war of 1812 and in the yellow
fever epidemic of 1819. Another outstanding figure was Sam whose
freedom was bought in reward for his saving the State Capitol from
burning, the Georgia Legislature providing $1800 by a special act for
this purpose. Negroes freed for meritorious service, and those buying
their own freedom, became ensamples of substantial worth to the free
population.
Among these freedmen there were some notable figures who, for one
cause or another, were highly esteemed in the locality in which
they lived. Just two examples must suffice. “In Georgia, the most
notable was Austin Dabney, who, as a mulatto youth, served in the
revolutionary army and attached himself ever after to the white
family who saved his life when he was wounded in battle. The Georgia
legislature, by special act, gave him a farm; he was welcomed in
the tavern circle of chatting lawyers whenever his favorite, Judge
Dooly, held court in his home village; and once, when the formality
of drawing his pension carried him to Savannah, the Governor of the
State, seeing him pass, invited him as a guest in his house.
In 1792, a Negro named Caesar, noted for his knowledge of curative
herbs, was liberated by purchase, the Assembly of South Carolina
voting the funds and, in addition, an annuity for life.
Thus, by purchase, manumission and natural growth, the 35,000 free
Negroes of 1790 grew to approximately a half million in 1860—about
equally divided between the North and the South. The chief
concentration was in the border States, the number rapidly decreasing
with increasing distance from the middle line. The climate and the
industrial repression in the far North were alike unwholesome to this
class; and the suspicion and stringent laws in the far South about
as much so. In both cases the Whites had the upper hand, and in both
cases they used their power after their own wills.
The lot of the freedmen was, indeed, a difficult one to bear. The
philosophy of the Negro, and the habit of association, were certainly
chief elements in the preservation of peace to a remarkable degree.
The well-to-do had their property at stake; the large majority of day
laborers, the unprosperous and inert, were satisfied simply to be
free. It was the smaller class, within the class, who represented the
progressive freedmen, the forerunners and prophets of the after-war
leaders and seers of the race. For these forerunners had already, in
their day, entered every large field of endeavor which engages the
race of today.
Among the Churches, in the North, with few exceptions, the freedman
was driven to form his own organizations; while, in the South, he
was encouraged to adopt the churches of the Whites; indeed, in the
South, few separate churches were provided by any denominations.
* * * * *
Among the fraternal organizations, he had none in the South in common
with the Whites; while, in the North, the Masons and Odd Fellows were
introduced, the latter through a negro initiate who had been received
in England. This most natural and important feature of negro social
life was, for the most part, supplied by their own secret societies.
These were very numerous all over the land, as they are at this day.
It is quite impossible to get accurately at the history of these
societies, so screened in secrecy. A mere glimpse may be had of their
purpose through the published notes on the “Union Band Society of New
Orleans,” 1860. Its motto was “Love, Union, Peace,” its officers were
of both sexes. Members were pledged to obey the laws of the Lodge,
and its officers were pledged to keep its secrets, to live in love
and union with its members, to visit one another and the sick, to
report illnesses of members, and to wear the regalia when required.
The Official Mother was required to assign nurses for the sick who
were looked after in every detail. Funeral expenses and the burial,
in minute detail, were provided for. (We may note, parenthetically,
that, while secret societies are the rule in every African tribe,
it is doubtful if these had more than a remote connection with the
societies in America.)
In the public schools, the negro freedmen were little regarded. In
the North, generally, they were debarred from the white schools, and
poorly provided with schools of their own; in the South, after 1840,
education was discouraged, and, in most communities, forbidden.
The Fugitive-Slave Law bred great irregularity and injustice to
the freedmen. The occasion was thus made for kidnapping the free
Negroes, transporting them to distant regions where identification
would be difficult, and the subsequent sale of the captives or their
involuntary servitude. Societies were established, here and there, to
prevent these heartrending tragedies. All the States had laws against
it, and practically no failure to convict is recorded when the
offender was brought to judgment. But the crime was so comparatively
easy, that the wonder is, that the freedmen increased so steadily and
normally.
An interesting phase of the life of the freedman is illustrated
by the census of urban workers. The United States Census of 1850
gives, in parallel columns, the occupations of free colored labor,
above 15 years of age, in New York and New Orleans, respectively.
In the former there were 3,337, and in the latter 1,792. New York
had 4 lawyers and 3 druggists, New Orleans none; the ministers were
21 to 1; the physicians, 9 to 4; merchants, 3 to 64; jewelers, 3
to 5; clerks, 7 to 61; teachers, 8 to 12. New Orleans also had 4
capitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 grocers, and 2 collectors,
while New York had none of these. New York had three times as many
barbers as New Orleans, and twice as many butchers; but, while New
Orleans had 355 carpenters, New York had only 12, and no masons as
against 278 for New Orleans. A like proportion was shown in all the
skilled trades.
In New York, one-third of the freedmen were unskilled laborers;
while, in New Orleans, barely a tenth were of this class. This was
due to the greater discrimination against colored labor in the
North, which was true then as now. The laws in various Northern
States excluded free immigrants, and discriminated against those who
were already in their borders. In industrial life, they were very
generally excluded from the trades. On the other hand, in the South,
while the laws were even more severe, they were interpreted far more
leniently, and the practice of the Whites was more kindly, with the
result revealed in the Census quoted.
In view of the difficult condition of the freedman, it is remarkable
that so few accepted the invitations, so widely given, to emigrate
to other and free lands. The Colonization Society offered facilities
to move to Liberia, beginning with 1819; the Haitien Government
offered special inducement in 1824 and again in 1859, even
promising free transportation and free lands to the French-speaking
Negroes of Louisiana. In 1840, an Immigration Society offered free
transportation to British Guiana. But few availed themselves of these
opportunities, preferring the ills they suffered, along with very
general security and prosperity to those they knew not of in the
distant lands.
It is also remarkable that so few real uprisings against the white
slave-holders should have occurred. These were generally led by the
freedmen, and many are reported; but, in most cases, the reports were
much like the flaring headlines of a modern newspaper, and must be
attributed to the nervous dread of such possibilities. This, more
than the few real happenings, led to the enactment of stringent
laws; but the generally harmonious life was rewarded with very lax
execution of such laws. In truth, the proportion of slave-holding,
free Negroes in some localities, such as New Orleans and Charleston,
too nearly approached that of the white slave-holders, to warrant a
persistent suspicion of danger. In spite of all these difficulties,
a few free Negroes of note, both men and women, appear in every
generation.
Dr. James Derham, born a slave in Philadelphia in 1762, became the
slave of a physician in New Orleans, who trained and used him as an
assistant. He bought his freedom, and became the first recognized
negro physician of whom there is record. “Dr. Benjamin Rush,” says
the _Negro Year Book_, “the celebrated physician, published an
account of Derham and spoke in the highest terms of his character and
skill as a physician.”
Dr. Kelly Miller tells us that “the first real impetus to bring free
Negroes in considerable numbers into the professional world, came
from the American Colonization Society which, in the early years,
flourished in the South, as well as in the North ... and undertook to
prepare professional leaders of their race for the Liberian Colony.”
The Society began its work about 1817, and sent teachers, trained
in the South and the North alike, to the Colony established shortly
after. Among these teachers were Doctors Taylor, Fleet, and DeGrasse.
A century earlier, Benjamin Banneker, born in Baltimore in 1731, was
the first man in America to make a clock which struck the hours.
Phyllis Wheatley, born in Africa, and brought to Boston where she was
sold to John Wheatley, and educated, wrote verses which were highly
endorsed. They were published in London, and covered a variety of
topics, religious and moral chiefly. To these names of Negroes who
attained distinction, should be added that of Daniel A. Payne, of
Baltimore, the founder of Union Seminary (consolidated in 1863 with
Wilberforce University), who became a Bishop of the African Methodist
Church. Others will appear in our study of the religious development
of the race.
Commercially, the freedmen were not without conspicuous examples
of thrift and material success. There was “John Jones, the colored
proprietor of a popular hotel in Charleston, who lived in the same
manner as his white patrons, accumulated property to the value
of some $40,000, and maintained a reputation for high business
integrity and talent.” Others there were among the free people of
that city, respected and prosperous, with considerable establishments
served by slaves. In New Orleans, a still larger number of wealthy
colored people lived. Thomy Lafon, a merchant and money lender, was
distinguished both for his wealth and philanthropy. He died about 30
years ago at the age of 82, leaving an estate valued at nearly half a
million, from which many charities benefited. Unfortunately, wealth
and good repute are not indissolubly united anywhere or among any
people; it is therefore pleasant to recall them wedded in the person
of a Negro.
Many of the freedmen were gifted in small trades, and even when laws
were passed excluding them from populous slave-areas, petitions were
common requesting that worthy ones might be permitted to remain. On
the seaboard, boating and fishing provided, on a small scale, both
a profitable and a free life for many. A few cases of large slave
and land-holding appear, particularly in Louisiana. Cyprian Ricard
bought at Sheriff’s Sale, in 1851, an estate in Iberville Parish,
at a cost of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. “Marie Metoyer,
of Nachitoches Parish, had fifty-eight slaves, and more than two
thousand acres of land when she died in 1840.” There were others in
Louisiana, as well as in South Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.
These conditions among the freedmen as well as the patriarchal system
on the plantations had their results in the development of the race.
Along with, and under the tuition of, the pioneers of America, the
Negro cleared the forests, drained the swamps, subdued the wild
lands, built the homes and absorbed the civilization of the older
race which he served. Here, as always, service of others was the
highest service of self; for, conscious or otherwise, all service
has its reaction upon the servers. What the older races got, through
the long, weary, successive preparations of the ages of stone and
wood and iron; of slave and feudal and chivalric and democratic eras;
that, in contact with the highest form of which America was capable,
the ablest and most diligent among the Negroes got through their
amazing capacity for absorption and adaptability. To those who know
the Negro best, this capacity for adaptation and absorption is still
unbelievable; while to those who know him remotely, it is a miracle,
unexplained or misconstrued. To the former—his white friends of the
South through three centuries of intimate association—the difficulty
is to understand what their eyes behold—a child-race of seventy years
ago already producing leaders who stand among their people as clear,
true ensigns of their race. To the latter—the man who knows the Negro
more remotely—the miracle is explained only upon the assumption
that the Negro is a Caucasian in black and not what God made him—a
Negro—with his own racial characteristics, able to absorb what is
best in the world, to build it unto himself and to stand before his
Master and before mankind in God and self-fashioned black manhood.
The scientific professions have been entered by ever-increasing
numbers and by increasingly better-trained men; by women, too, though
in smaller numbers. Doctors, lawyers, inventors, chemists, scholars,
editors, some worthy to rank high in their professions, and some
known on both sides of the ocean, are at once the pride of their
race, and the ministers to its many needs.
There were tribes in Africa, which produced men of decided artistic
talent, untrained. They are represented here in the coterie of
worthy sculptors and painters. All were musicians, rude doubtless
in their native haunts, but always plaintive. These, too, are here,
everywhere softened and sweetened in a gentler atmosphere, and in
highest culture producing a black Patti, a Fish Quartette, and others
of like gifts. It may not be to the credit of composer or player,
but the fashionable (and abominable) rag-time music is their gift
to the world. In poetry, Paul Lawrence Dunbar is universally read
and sung, and there are many others almost as worthy. In fiction, a
morning paper of December 14, 1921, announces the winner of the prize
of the Gincourt Academy, Paris, as René Moran, a negro novelist of
the Island of Martinique. America, in spite of blots, here and there,
has been kind to the Negro, has given him a chance, has helped him to
embrace it, has taught him much, and learned somewhat from him.