the greatness which she was destined to attain." Britain has risen,
while proud Rome, once the mistress of the world, has fallen; but
the image of the early Englishman in his chains, as carved twenty
centuries ago, is still to be seen upon her broken monuments. So has
Egypt fallen; and her sable sons and daughters have been scattered
into nearly every land where the white man has introduced slavery and
disgraced the soil with his footprint. As I gazed upon the beautiful
and classic obelisk of Luxor, removed from Thebes, where it had stood
four thousand years, and transplanted to the Place de la Concorde,
at Paris, and contemplated its hieroglyphic inscription of the noble
daring of Sesostris, the African general, who drew kings at his chariot
wheels, and left monumental inscriptions from Ethiopia to India, I felt
proud of my antecedents, proud of the glorious past, which no amount of
hate and prejudice could wipe from history's page, while I had to mourn
over the fall and the degradation of my race. But I do not despair;
for the negro has that intellectual genius which God has planted in
the mind of man, that distinguishes him from the rest of creation,
and which needs only cultivation to make it bring forth fruit. No
nation has ever been found, which, by its own unaided efforts, by some
powerful inward impulse, has arisen from barbarism and degradation to
civilization and respectability. There is nothing in race or blood,
in color or features, that imparts susceptibility of improvement to
one race over another. The mind left to itself from infancy, without
culture, remains a blank. Knowledge is not innate. Development makes
the man. As the Greeks, and Romans, and Jews drew knowledge from the
Egyptians three thousand years ago, and the Europeans received it from
the Romans, so must the blacks of this land rise in the same way. As
one man learns from another, so nation learns from nation. Civilization
is handed from one people to another, its great fountain and source
being God our Father. No one, in the days of Cicero and Tacitus, could
have predicted that the barbarism and savage wildness of the Germans
would give place to the learning, refinement, and culture which that
people now exhibit. Already the blacks on this continent, though kept
down under the heel of the white man, are fast rising in the scale
of intellectual development, and proving their equality with the
brotherhood of man.
In his address before the Colonization Society, at Washington, on
the 18th of January, 1853, Hon. Edward Everett said, "When I lived
in Cambridge, a few years ago, I used to attend, as one of the board
of visitors, the examinations of a classical school, in which was a
colored boy, the son of a slave in Mississippi, I think. He appeared
to me to be of pure African blood. There were at the same time two
youths from Georgia, and one of my own sons, attending the same school.
I must say that this poor negro boy, Beverly Williams, was one of the
best scholars at the school, and in the Latin language he was the best
scholar in his class. There are others, I am told, which show still
more conclusively the aptitude of the colored race for _every kind of
intellectual culture_."
Mr. Everett cited several other instances which had fallen under his
notice, and utterly scouted the idea that there was any general
inferiority of the African race. He said, "They have done as well as
persons of European or Anglo-American origin would have done, after
three thousand years of similar depression and hardship. The question
has been asked, 'Does not the negro labor under some incurable, natural
inferiority?' _In this, for myself, I have no belief._"
I think that this is ample refutation of the charge of the natural
inferiority of the negro. President Lincoln, in the interview to which
I have already referred, said, "But for your race among us there would
not be a war." This reminds me of an incident that occurred while
travelling in the State of Ohio, in 1844. Taking the stage coach at a
small village, one of the passengers (a white man) objected to my being
allowed a seat inside, on account of my color. I persisted, however, in
claiming the right which my ticket gave me, and got in. The objector at
once took a seat on a trunk on the top of the coach. The wire netting
round the top of the stage not being strong, the white passenger,
trunks and all, slid off as we were going down a steep hill. The top
passenger's shoulder was dislocated, and in his pain he cried out, "If
you had not been black, I should not have left my seat inside."
The "New York Herald," the "Boston Post," the "Boston Courier," and
the "New York Journal of Commerce," take the lead in misrepresenting
the effect which emancipation in the West Indies had upon the welfare
of those islands. It is asserted that general ruin followed the
black man's liberation. As to the British colonies, the fact is well
established that slavery had impoverished the soil, demoralized the
people, bond and free, brought the planters to a state of bankruptcy,
and all the islands to ruin, long before Parliament had passed the act
of emancipation. All the colonies, including Jamaica, had petitioned
the home government for assistance, ten years prior to the liberation
of their slaves. It is a noticeable fact, that the free blacks were the
least embarrassed, in a pecuniary point of view, and that they appeared
in more comfortable circumstances than the whites. There was a large
proportion of free blacks in each of the colonies, Jamaica alone having
fifty-five thousand before the day of emancipation. A large majority
of the West India estates were owned by persons residing in Europe,
and who had never seen the colonies. These plantations were carried on
by agents, overseers, and clerks, whose mismanagement, together with
the blighting influence which chattel slavery takes with it wherever
it goes, brought the islands under impending ruin, and many of the
estates were mortgaged in Europe for more than their value. One man
alone, Neil Malcomb, of London, had forty plantations to fall upon
his hands for money advanced on them before the abolition of slavery.
These European proprietors, despairing of getting any returns from the
West Indies, gladly pocketed their share of the twenty million pounds
sterling, which the home government gave them, and abandoned their
estates to their ruin. Other proprietors residing in the colonies
formed combinations to make the emancipated people labor for scarcely
enough to purchase food for them. If found idle, the tread-wheel, the
chain-gang, the dungeon, with black bread, and water from the moat, and
other modes of legalized torture, were inflicted upon the negroes.
Through the determined and combined efforts of the land owners, the
condition of the freed people was as bad, if not worse, for the first
three years after their liberation, than it was before. Never was an
experiment more severely tested than that of emancipation in the West
Indies.
Nevertheless, the principles of freedom triumphed; not a drop of blood
was shed by the enfranchised blacks; the colonies have arisen from
the blight which they labored under in the time of slavery; the land
has increased in value; and, above all, that which is more valuable
than cotton, sugar, or rice--the moral and intellectual condition of
both blacks and whites is in a better state now than ever before. Sir
William Colebrook, governor of Antigua, said, six years after the
islands were freed, "At the lowest computation, the land, without a
single slave upon it, is fully as valuable now as it was, including
all the slaves, before emancipation." In a report made to the British
Parliament, in 1859, it was stated that three fifths of the cultivated
land of Jamaica was the _bona fide_ property of the blacks. The land is
in a better state of cultivation now than it was while slavery existed,
and both imports and exports show a great increase. Every thing
demonstrates that emancipation in the West India islands has resulted
in the most satisfactory manner, and fulfilled the expectation of the
friends of freedom throughout the world.
Rev. Mr. Underhill, secretary of the English Baptist Missionary
Society, who has visited Jamaica, and carefully studied its condition,
said, in a recent speech in London, that the late slaves in that island
had built some two hundred and twenty chapels. The churches that
worship in them number fifty-three thousand communicants, amounting
to one eighth of the total population. The average attendance, in
other than the state churches, is ninety-one thousand--a fourth of the
population. One third of the children--twenty-two thousand--are in the
schools. The blacks voluntarily contribute twenty-two thousand pounds
(one hundred and ten thousand dollars) annually for religious purposes.
Their landed property exceeds five million dollars. Valuing their
cottages at only fifty dollars each, these amount to three million
dollars. They have nearly three hundred thousand dollars deposited in
the savings banks. The sum total of their property is much above eleven
million dollars. All this has been accumulated since their emancipation.
Thus it is seen that all parties have been benefited by the abolition
of negro slavery in the British possessions. Now we turn to our
own land. Among the many obstacles which have been brought to bear
against emancipation, one of the most formidable has been the series
of objections urged against it upon what has been supposed to be the
slave's want of appreciation of liberty, and his ability to provide for
himself in a state of freedom; and now that slavery seems to be near
its end, these objections are multiplying, and the cry is heard all
over the land, "What shall be done with the slave if freed?"
It has been clearly demonstrated, I think, that the enslaved of the
south are as capable of self-support as any other class of people in
the country. It is well known that, throughout the entire south, a
large class of slaves have been for years accustomed to hire their
time from their owners. Many of these have paid very high prices for
the privilege. Some able mechanics have been known to pay as high
as six hundred dollars per annum, besides providing themselves with
food and clothing; and this class of slaves, by their industry, have
taken care of themselves so well, and their appearance has been so
respectable, that many of the states have passed laws prohibiting
masters from letting their slaves out to themselves, because, as it was
said, it made the other slaves dissatisfied to see so many of their
fellows well provided, and accumulating something for themselves in the
way of pocket money.
The Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, whose antecedents have not been such as
to lead to the suspicion that he favors the free colored men, or the
idea of giving to the slaves their liberty, in his "South-Side View,"
unconsciously and unintentionally gives a very valuable statement
upon this particular point. Dr. Adams says, "A slave woman having had
three hundred dollars stolen from her by a white man, her master was
questioned in court as to the probability of her having had so much
money. The master said that he not unfrequently had borrowed fifty and
a hundred dollars from her himself, and added that she was always very
strict as to his promised time of payment." There was a slave woman
who had not only kept every agreement with her master--paying him
every cent she had promised--but had accumulated three hundred dollars
towards purchasing her liberty; and it was stolen from her, not by a
black man, but, as Dr. Adams says, by a white man.
But one of the clearest demonstrations of the ability of the slave
to provide for himself in a state of freedom is to be found in the
prosperous condition of the large free colored population of the
Southern States. Maryland has eighty thousand, Virginia seventy
thousand, and the other slave states have a large number. These free
people have all been slaves, or they are the descendants of those who
were once slaves; what they have gained has been acquired in spite of
the public opinion and laws of the south, in spite of prejudice, and
every thing. They have acquired a large amount of property; and it
is this industry, this sobriety, this intelligence, and this wealth
of the free colored people of the south, that has created so much
prejudice on the part of slaveholders against them. They have felt
that the very presence of a colored man, looking so genteelly and in
such a prosperous condition, made the slaves unhappy and discontented.
In the Southern Rights Convention which assembled at Baltimore, June
8, 1860, a resolution was adopted, calling on the legislature to pass
a law driving the free colored people out of the state. Nearly every
speaker took the ground that the free colored people must be driven out
to make the slave's obedience more secure. Judge Mason, in his speech,
said, "It is the thrifty and well-to-do free negroes, that are seen by
our slaves, that make them dissatisfied." A similar appeal was made to
the legislature of Tennessee. Judge Catron, of the Supreme Court of
the United States, in a long and able letter to the Nashville "Union,"
opposed the driving out of the colored people. He said they were
among the best mechanics, the best artisans, and the most industrious
laborers in the state, and that to drive them out would be an injury
to the state itself. This is certainly good evidence in their behalf.
The New Orleans "True Delta" opposed the passage of a similar law by
the State of Louisiana. Among other things it said, "There are a large
free colored population here, correct in their general deportment,
honorable in their intercourse with society, and free from reproach so
far as the laws are concerned, not surpassed in the inoffensiveness
of their lives by any equal number of persons in any place, north or
south."
A movement was made in the legislature of South Carolina to expel
the free blacks from that state, and a committee was appointed to
investigate the matter. In their report the committee said, "We find
that the free blacks of this state are among our most industrious
people; in this city (Charleston) we find that they own over two and a
half millions of dollars worth of property; that they pay two thousand
seven hundred dollars tax to the city."
Dr. Nehemiah Adams, whom I have already quoted, also testifies
to the good character of the free colored people; but he does it
unintentionally; it was not a part of the programme; how it slipped in
I cannot tell. Here it is, however, from page 41 of his "South-Side
View:"--
"A prosecuting officer, who had six or eight counties in his district,
told me that, during eight years service, he had made out about two
thousand bills of indictment, of which not more than twelve were
against colored persons."
Hatred of the free colored people, and abuse of them, have always been
popular with the pro-slavery people of this country; yet, an American
senator from one of the Western States--a man who never lost an
opportunity to vilify and traduce the colored man, and who, in his last
canvass for a seat in the United States Senate, argued that the slaves
were better off in slavery than they would be if set free, and declared
that the blacks were unable to take care of themselves while enjoying
liberty--died, a short time since, twelve thousand dollars in debt to a
black man, who was the descendant of a slave.
There is a Latin phrase--_De mortuis nil nisi bonum_. It is not saying
any thing against the reputation of Hon. Stephen A. Douglas to tell the
fact that he had borrowed money from a negro. I only find fault with
him that he should traduce the class that befriended him in the time
of need. James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, in a time of
great pecuniary distress, soon after establishing his paper, borrowed
three hundred dollars of a black man; and now he is one of our most
relentless enemies. Thus it is that those who fattened upon us often
turn round and traduce us. Reputation is, indeed, dear to every nation
and race; but to us, the colored people of this country, who have so
many obstacles to surmount, it is doubly dear:--
"Who steals my purse steals trash;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he who filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed."
You know we were told by the slaveholders, just before the breaking
out of the rebellion, that if we got into any difficulty with the
south, their slaves would take up arms and fight to a man for them.
Mr. Toombs, I believe, threatened that he would arm his slaves, and
other men in Congress from the slave states made the same threat. They
were going to arm the slaves and turn them against the north. They
said they could be trusted; and many people here at the north really
believed that the slave did not want his liberty, would not have it if
he could, and that the slave population was a very dangerous element
against the north; but at once, on the approach of our soldiers, the
slaves are seen, with their bundles and baskets, and hats and coats,
and without bundles or baskets, and without hats or coats, rushing
to our lines; demonstrating what we have so often said, that all the
slave was waiting for was the opportunity to get his liberty. Why
should you not have believed this? Why should you have supposed for a
moment, that, because a man's color differs a little from yours, he is
better contented to remain a slave than you would be, or that he has
no inclination, no wish, to escape from the thraldom that holds him so
tight? What is it that does not wish to be free?
"Go, let a cage with grates of gold,
And pearly roof, the eagle hold;
Let dainty viands be its fare,
And give the captive tenderest care;
But say, in luxury's limits pent,
Find you the king of birds content?
No; oft he'll sound the startling shriek,
And dash the cage with angry beak:
Precarious freedom's far more dear
Than all the prison's pampering cheer."
As with the eagle, so with man. He loves to look upon the bright day
and the stormy night; to gaze upon the broad, free ocean, its eternal
surging tides, its mountain billows, and its foam-crested waves; to
tread the steep mountain side; to sail upon the placid river; to wander
along the gurgling stream; to trace the sunny slope, the beautiful
landscape, the majestic forest, the flowery meadow; to listen to
the howling of the winds and the music of the birds. These are the
aspirations of man, without regard to country, clime, or color.
"What shall we do with the slave of the south? Expatriate him," say
the haters of the negro. Expatriate him for what? He has cleared up
the swamps of the south, and has put the soil under cultivation; he
has built up her towns, and cities, and villages; he has enriched the
north and Europe with his cotton, and sugar, and rice; and for this
you would drive him out of the country! "What shall be done with the
slaves if they are freed?" You had better ask, "What shall we do with
the slaveholders if the slaves are freed?" The slave has shown himself
better fitted to take care of himself than the slaveholder. He is the
bone and sinew of the south; he is the producer, while the master is
nothing but a consumer, and a very poor consumer at that. The slave
is the producer, and he alone can be relied upon. He has the sinew,
the determination, and the will; and if you will take the free colored
people of the south as the criterion, take their past history as a
sample of what the colored people are capable of doing, every one must
be satisfied that the slaves can take care of themselves. Some say,
"Let them alone; they are well cared for, and that is enough."
"O, tell us not they're clothed and fed--
'Tis insult, stuff, and a' that;
With freedom gone, all joy is fled,
For Heaven's best gift is a' that."
But it is said, "The two races cannot live together in a state of
freedom." Why, that is the cry that rung all over England thirty years
ago: "If you liberate the slaves of the West Indies, they can't live
with the whites in a state of freedom." Thirty years have shown the
contrary. The blacks and the whites live together in Jamaica; they are
all prosperous, and the island in a better condition than it ever was
before the act of emancipation was passed.
But they tell us, "If the slaves are emancipated, we won't receive
them upon an equality." Why, every man must make equality for himself.
No society, no government, can make this equality. I do not expect
the slave of the south to jump into equality; all I claim for him is,
that he may be allowed to jump into liberty, and let him make equality
for himself. I have some white neighbors around me in Cambridge; they
are not very intellectual; they don't associate with my family; but
whenever they shall improve themselves, and bring themselves up by
their own intellectual and moral worth, I shall not object to their
coming into my society--all things being equal.
Now, this talk about not letting a man come to this place or that, and
that we won't do this for him, or won't do that for him, is all idle.
The anti-slavery agitators have never demanded that you shall take the
colored man, any more than that you shall take the uncultivated and
uncouth white man, and place him in a certain position in society.
All I demand for the black man is, that the white people shall take
their heels off his neck, and let him have a chance to rise by his own
efforts.
The idea of colonizing the slaves in some other country, outside of the
United States, seems the height of folly. Whatever may be the mineral
wealth of a country, or the producing capabilities of the soil, neither
can be made available without the laborer. Four millions of strong
hands cannot be spared from the Southern States. All time has shown
that the negro is the best laborer in the tropics.
The slaves once emancipated and left on the lands, four millions of
new consumers will spring into existence. Heretofore, the bondmen have
consumed nothing scarcely from the north. The cost of keeping a slave
was only about nineteen dollars per annum, including food, clothing,
and doctors' bills. Negro cloth, negro shoes, and negro whips were
all that were sent south by northern manufacturers. Let slavery be
abolished, and stores will be opened and a new trade take place with
the blacks south. Northern manufacturers will have to run on extra
time till this new demand will have been supplied. The slave owner,
having no longer an inducement to be idle, will go to work, and will
not have time to concoct treason against the _stars and stripes_. I
cannot close this appeal without a word about the free blacks in the
non-slaveholding states.
The majority of the colored people in the Northern States descended
from slaves: many of them were slaves themselves. In education, in
morals, and in the development of mechanical genius, the free blacks
of the Northern States will compare favorably with any laboring class
in the world. And considering the fact that we have been shut out, by
a cruel prejudice, from nearly all the mechanical branches, and all
the professions, it is marvellous that we have attained the position
we now occupy. Notwithstanding these bars, our young men have learned
trades, become artists, gone into the professions, although bitter
prejudice may prevent their having a great deal of practice. When it is
considered that they have mostly come out of bondage, and that their
calling has been the lowest kind in every community, it is still more
strange that the colored people have amassed so much wealth in every
state in the Union. If this is not an exhibition of capacity, I don't
understand the meaning of the term. And if true patriotism and devotion
to the cause of freedom be tests of loyalty, and should establish one's
claim to all the privileges that the government can confer, then surely
the black man can demand his rights with a good grace. From the fall
of Attucks, the first martyr of the American revolution in 1770, down
to the present day, the colored people have shown themselves worthy of
any confidence that the nation can place in its citizens in the time
that tries men's souls. At the battle of Bunker Hill, on the heights of
Groton, at the ever-memorable battle of Red Bank, the sable sons of our
country stood side by side with their white brethren. On Lakes Erie and
Champlain, on the Hudson, and down in the valley of the Mississippi,
they established their valor and their invincibility. Whenever the
rights of the nation have been assailed, the negro has always responded
to his country's call, at once, and with every pulsation of his heart
beating for freedom. And no class of Americans have manifested more
solicitude for the success of the federal arms in the present struggle
with rebellion, than the colored people. At the north, they were among
the earliest to respond to the president's first proclamation, calling
for troops. At the south, they have ever shown a preference for the
_stars and stripes_. In his official despatch to Minister Adams, Mr.
Secretary Seward said,--
"Every where the American general receives his most useful and reliable
information from the negro, _who hails his coming as the harbinger of
freedom_."
THE BLACK MAN,
HIS GENIUS AND HIS ACHIEVEMENTS.
BENJAMIN BANNEKER.