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SLAVERY IN HISTORY,
BY
ADAM GUROWSKI.
Suum cuique.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY A.B. BURDICK.
145 NASSAU STREET.
1860.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by
ADAM GUROWSKI,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
To my Friend
JAMES S. WADSWORTH,
OF GENESEO.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction vii
I.
Egyptians 1
II.
Phoenicians 17
III.
Libyans 27
IV.
Carthaginians 31
V.
Hebrews, or Beni-Israel 35
VI.
Nabatheans 63
VII.
Assyrians and Babylonians 69
VIII.
Medes and Persians 75
IX.
Aryas--Hindus 81
X.
Chinese 89
XI.
Greeks 97
XII.
Romans--Republicans 125
XIII.
Romans--Political Slaves 149
XIV.
Christianity: its Churches and Creeds 165
XV.
Gauls 173
XVI.
Germans 183
XVII.
Longobards--Italians 199
XVIII.
Franks--French 207
XIX.
Britons, Anglo-Saxons, English 223
XX.
Slavi, Slavonians, Slaves, Russians 233
XXI.
Conclusion 251
For the first time in the annals of humanity, domestic slavery,
or the system of chattelhood and traffic in man, is erected into
a religious, social and political creed. This new creed has its
thaumaturgus, its temples, its altars, its worship, its divines, its
theology, its fanatical devotees; it has its moralists, its savants and
sentimentalists, its statesmen and its publicists. The articles of this
new faith are preached and confessed by senators and representatives
in the highest councils of the American people, as well as in the
legislatures of the respective States; they are boldly proclaimed by
the press, and by platform orators and public missionaries; in a word,
this new faith over-shadows the whole religious, social, intellectual,
political and economical existence of a large portion of the Republic.
The less fervent disciples consider domestic slavery as an eminently
practical matter, and regard those of an opposite opinion as abstruse
theorizers; and history is called in and ransacked for the purpose of
justifying the present by the past.
Well: history contains _all_ the evidences--multifarious and decisive.
It is asserted that domestic slavery has always been a constructive
social element: history shows that it has always been destructive.
History authoritatively establishes the fact that slavery is the most
corroding social disease, and one, too, which acts most fatally on the
slaveholding element in a community.
Not disease, but health, is the normal condition of man's physical
organism: not oppression but freedom is the normal condition of human
society. The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of nature or
the laws of hygiene. As an individual cannot with impunity violate
hygienic law--as nature _always_ avenges every departure from her
eternal order: so nations and communities cannot safely deviate from
the laws of history, still less violate them with impunity. History
positively demonstrates that slavery is not one of the natural laws of
the human race, any more than disorders and monstrosities are normal
conditions of the human body.
History demonstrates that slavery is not coeval with, nor inherent in,
human society, but is the offspring of social derangement and decay.
The healthiest physical organism may, under certain conditions, develop
from within, or receive by infection from without, diseases which are
coeval, so to speak, with the creation, and which hover perpetually
over animal life. The disease, too, may be acute or chronic, according
to the conditions or predispositions of the organism. History teaches
that domestic slavery may, at times, affect the healthiest social
organism, and be developed, like other social disorders and crimes, so
to speak, in the very womb of the nation. As the tendency of vigorous
health is to prevent physical derangements and diseases, so the
tendency of society in its most elevated conception is to prevent, to
limit, to neutralize, if not wholly to extirpate, all social disorders.
Not depravity and disease, but purity and virtue, are the normal
condition of the individual: not oppression but freedom is the normal
condition of society.
Some investigators and philosophers discover an identity between the
progressive development of the human body and the various stages of
human society--beginning with the embryonic condition of both. More
than one striking analogy certainly exists between physiological and
pathological laws, and the moral and social principles which ought
to be observed by man both as an individual, and in the aggregate
called society. Thus some of the pathologic axioms established by
Rokitansky[1] (the greatest of living pathologists) are equally
sustained by the history of nations.
"No formation is incapable of becoming diseased in one or more ways.
Several anomalies coexisting in an organ commonly stand to each other
in the relation of cause and effect. Thus, deviation in texture
determines deviation in size, in form."
The following pages will demonstrate that nations and communities may
become diseased in many ways; and that in proportion as their social
textures deviate from the normal, do they become more and more deformed
and demoralized.
"All anomalies of organization involving any anatomical change
manifest themselves as deviations in the quantity or quality of
organic creation, or else as a mechanical separation of continuity.
They are reducible to irregular number, size, form, continuity, and
contents."
Oppressions, tyrannies, domestic slavery, chattelhood, are so many
mechanical separations of continuity, which in the social organic
creation is liberty.
"General disease engenders the most various organs and textures
according to their innate, general or individual tendencies, either
spontaneously or by dint of some overpowering outward impulse, a local
affection which reflects the general disease in the peculiarity of its
products. The general disease becomes localized, and, so to speak,
represented in the topical affection."
Violence and oppression generated various and peculiar forms of
servitude, until nearly all of them ended in chattelhood, which many
are wont to consider as a topical affection of certain races and
nations. Declining Greece and Rome in the past, Russia under our own
eyes, serve as illustrations.
"A general disease not unfrequently finds in its localization a
perpetual focus of derivation, with _seeming_ integrity of the
organism in other respects."
So nations infected with slavery, nevertheless had brilliant epochs
of existence; and this "_seeming_ integrity of the organism" misleads
many otherwise averse to chattelhood, and makes them indifferent to its
existence.
"Where several diseases coexist in an individual, they are in part
_primary_, in part _secondary_ and subordinate, although homologous to
the former."
So many evils are the lot of human society, but almost all of them are
secondary and subordinate to oppression, violence, and slavery.
"_The issue of a local disease_ in health consists either in the
perfect re-establishment of the normal condition, or else in partial
recovery; more or fewer important residua and sequellæ of the disease
not incomparable with a tolerably fair state of health, remaining
entailed."
The history of the slow recovery of post-Roman Europe from domestic
bondage justifies the application of this pathologic axiom to the
social condition of nations.
"_Issue in death_: 1. Through exhaustion of power and of organic
matter."
The history of republican, but above all, of imperial Rome,
demonstrates that its decline and death were caused through the
extinction of freedom, free labor, and the free yeomanry, which in
every state constitutes _the power, the organic matter_ of a nation.
"2. Through the suspended function of organs essential to life,
through palsy, etc."
When the laboring classes are enslaved, the life of a nation is
speedily palsied.
"3. Through vitiation of the blood."
What blood is to the animal organism, sound social and political
principles are to society. When such principles become vitiated, the
nation is on the path of decline and death.
"The worst malformation is never so anomalous as not to hear the
general character of animal life, etc. Even an individual organ never
departs from its normal character so completely that amid even the
greatest disfigurement, this character should not be cognizable."
So often the enslaver and the slaveholding community may preserve
_some_ features of the normal human character, notwithstanding the
"disfigurement" produced.
"The excessive development of one part determines the imperfect and
retarded development of another, and the converse."
So the oligarchic development retards the growth and advancement of the
laboring classes, whether the hue be white or black: it prevents or
retards the culture and civilization of individuals and communities.
"Various and manifold as are the forms of monstrosity, some of them
recur with such uniformity of type as to constitute a regular series."
History shows that various as are the other social monstrosities,
domestic slavery always recurred with a filial uniformity of type.
"The genesis of malformation in the human body is still veiled in much
obscurity despite some progress made in science."
Social _teratology_, or the science of monstrosities, easily traces the
origin and genesis of domestic slavery.
A conscientious study of the records of bygone nations, as well as of
the events daily witnessed during a decennium, produced the following
pages. They complete what I said about slavery a few years ago.[2]
As then, so now, I am almost wholly unacquainted with anti-slavery
literature in any of its manifestations. I diligently sought for
information in the literary and political productions of pro-slavery
writers. Beside legislative enactments, political discussions, and
resolutions by Congress and the legislatures of the various Slave
States, and the messages of their respective governors, I read every
thing that came within my reach, even sermons, heaps of "De Bow's
Review" and "Fletcher's Studies on Slavery."[3] Ah!...
For years the rich resources of the Astor Library have facilitated
my general studies, and the information there sought and found was
enhanced by the kindest liberality experienced from Dr. Coggswell and
all his assistants.
And now let History unfold her records.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: A Manual of Pathological Anatomy, by Carl Rokitansky, M.D.
Translated from the German, by Edward Swaine, M.D., Fellow of the Royal
College of Physicians.]
[Footnote 2: "America and Europe," chap. X.]
[Footnote 3: Among the neutral publications on American slavery, the
most remarkable and instructive is the work entitled "The Law of
Freedom and Bondage in the United States," by John Codman Hurt.]
SLAVERY IN HISTORY.
I.
EGYPTIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Wilkinson_, _Rosellini_, _Lepsius_, _Uhlemann_, _Rénan_,
_Guttschmidt_, _Bugsch_, _Birch_, _De Rouget_, _Bunsen_, _etc._
In the gray twilight of history, the apparition that first distinctly
presents itself is _Egypt_--that land of wonders, standing on the
shores of the "venerable mother the Nile." The Egyptians already form
a fully-elaborated, organic social structure, nay, a powerful nation,
with a rich material and intellectual civilization, when as yet the
commonly accepted chronology begins to write only rudimental numbers.
It is indifferent (so far as the present investigation is concerned)
whether this Egyptian culture ascended or descended the Nile--whether
its cradle was Meroe, Elephantis, Syene, or Thebes--or whether it first
sprang up and expanded around Memphis. So, the first conquerors of
Egypt may have belonged to the Shemitic or to the Aryan stock--they
may have entered from Asia by the Isthmus of Suez, or by the Straits of
Bab-el-Mandeb and the Red Sea, landing first on some spot in Abyssinia
or Nubia; or, perhaps, the primitive civilizers of the valley of the
Nile were autochthones, who were conquered by foreign invaders. However
these things may have been, Egyptian civilization and culture clearly
bear the impress of indigenous development.
The founders of the Egyptian civil, social and religious
polity considered agriculture as the most sacred occupation of
mortals--transforming the roving savage into a civilized man. It was
the divine Osiris who first taught men the art of tilling the earth, if
indeed he was not its inventor. But the god forged not a fetter for the
farmer, and the Egyptian plough was not desecrated by the hands of a
slave.
The first rays of history reveal Egypt densely covered with farms,
villages, and cities, and divided into districts (_noma_), townships,
and communes--each having its distinct deity, and each most probably
self-governing, or at least self-administering: all this in the
earliest epoch, previous to the first dynasties of the Pharaohs, and
anterior to the division of the population into castes.
The division of a population into _castes_, however destructive it
may be to the growth of individuality and the highest freedom in man,
is neither domestic slavery nor chattelhood. These divisions and
sub-divisions originally consisted simply in training the individuals
to special occupations and functions, and so educating them in special
ideas; but not in making any one caste the property of any other. The
gradations of caste constituted no form of chattelhood whatever.
The principal castes were the princes, or Pharaohs, the priests, the
soldiers, and then the merchants, artificers, farmers and shepherds;
and each of these, again, had numerous subdivisions. Together they
directed and carried out all the functions, pursuits, and industries
necessary in a well-organized community.
In the sanctuary of the gods, and before the supreme power of the
Pharaohs and the law, the priest, the military officer or nobleman,
the merchant, the artisan, the daily laborer, the agriculturist,
the shepherd, even the swineherd (considered the lowest and most
unclean)--all were equal. They formed, so to say, circles rather
independent than encompassed by each other. All castes had equal civil
rights, and the same punishments were administered to the criminal
irrespective of the caste to which he might belong. In brief, in
the normal social structure of the Egyptians there existed no class
deprived of the social and civil rights enjoyed by all others, or
looked down upon as necessarily degraded or outlawed. The separation
between one caste and another, moreover, was neither absolute nor
impassable.
The ownership of the soil was unequally divided; but it was
principally distributed between the sovereign, the priests, and the
officer-soldiers. The latter were obliged, in consideration of the land
held, to perform military services to the prince--a sort of enfeoffment
like that which rose out of the chaos that succeeded the destruction of
the Roman world.
Peasants, agriculturists, and yeomen, formed the bulk of the indigenous
Egyptian population. The husbandmen either owned their homestead or
rented the lands from the king, the priesthood, or the military caste;
and they cultivated the generous soil either with their own hands or by
hired field-laborers; but chattels or domestic slaves were unknown.
The primary cause of social convulsions and disturbances is always to
be found in some great public calamity: such was the celebrated seven
years' famine during the administration of Joseph, which resulted in
concentrating in the hands of the Pharaohs numerous landed estates,
and these principally the farms of the poorer yeomanry. But even then,
no trace is to be discovered in history that any great proportion of
the agricultural population were enslaved. Their condition then became
similar, economically and socially, to that of the English peasantry
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and even if it finally
degenerated into something like the condition of the Fellahs, still
it was simply political oppression, and not chattelhood. The modern
Fellahs are serfs, enjoying all natural human rights of worship, family
and property; and are separated by a wide gulf from the chattelism
of modern slavery. If, like these Fellahs, the ancient Egyptians
were forced to bow before the arbitrary power of a sovereign, they at
least were not the personal property of an owner who had the power
arbitrarily to dispose of them as his interest or caprice might dictate.
The population constituting the Egyptian nation, and included in this
graded structure of castes, was of varied origin and descent, or,
according to a common form of statement, belonged to various races.
But the process of mixing the various ethnic elements with each other,
went on uninterruptedly during the almost countless centuries of the
historical existence of Egypt, including the epoch of its highest
political development and the brightest blossom of its culture and
civilization. In the remotest period of Egyptian society, the three
superior castes were of a different hue of skin from the others, and
some ethnologists and historians assign them a Shemitic or Japhetic
(_i.e._, Aryan) origin. But the optimates were not white but _red_, and
so they both considered and called themselves. All the other castes--as
artists, architects, merchants, mechanics, operatives, sailors,
agriculturists and shepherds--undoubtedly belonged to the African or
negro stock.
Egypt teemed with an active industrial population, which furnished
countless soldiers to the army during long centuries of victory.
Egyptian history embraces a long period of expansion. Many centuries
lay between the times of the Rhameses and of Necho, during which the
Egyptians conquered Nubia, Libya, and Syria, and reached Kolchis.
These armies could not be recruited--and positively _were not_--from
chattel slaves; for succeeding chapters will show that it was domestic
slavery far more than political which tore the sinews from the arms
of the nations of antiquity, and rendered defenceless their states,
empires and republics. If the officers of the Egyptian armies were
of a _red_ extraction, the rank and file was undoubtedly of the
negro family. Herodotus says that "the Egyptians were black and had
short, crisped hair," and that "the skulls of the Egyptians were by
far thicker than those of the Persians--so that they could scarcely
be broken by a big stone, while a Persian skull could be broken by a
pebble." Such were the elements, with so many, and such varied hues of
skin, or pigments mixed, which constituted the Egyptian people--which
formed a society so strong and compact that, for more than forty
centuries, its influence and existence constitute one of the most
significant phenomena of the antique world. These hybrid elements
elaborated a civilization called by modern ethnologists Cushitic or
Chamitic, in contradistinction to the Shemitic and to the Japhetic[4]
(or Aryan.) The pre-eminent active elements in this civilization were
the artists, merchants, and operatives. It was eminent for mathematical
and astronomical science, for architecture, the mechanic arts, and
a highly elaborated administration. And this Egyptian or Chamitic
civilization, too, preceded by many centuries the Shemitic and Aryan
cultures.
The origin of the denomination _Chamites_ and _Cushites_ has long
been the subject of numerous ethnologic researches, while comparative
philology, which has proved itself so potent in the solution of
innumerable race-problems, has also been interrogated. The question
is, by what name did the Egyptians call themselves or their land;
and what meaning did they attach to such names? K-M (whence _Kam_,
_Kem_, _Kemi_, _Cham_) signifies "the black land;" though, according
to Champollion, it implies "the pure land;" while others give it
the meaning of "the sceptre." At any rate, _Cham_ signifies "black"
in Egyptian and its ancient dialects--those of Thebes and Memphis,
for instance, as also in the Coptic. Egypt proper was called by its
inhabitants "the black land" on account of the appearance of its soil;
it was black in contradistinction to the _red_ land (or Descher,
_i.e._, "desert") which surrounded the Nile valley. The Hebrews
borrowed the word from the Egyptians, and transferred it from a
geographic to an ethnical name--or rather, perhaps, this application
was made by subsequent commentators on the Hebrew writings. Neither
was the denomination _Cush_ (Egyptian _Kus_, _Kês-i-or_, _Kăs_) used
by the Egyptians for their own land or people. They employed it, as
would appear, to denominate lands situated south of Egypt proper;
for the Egyptian viceroys who administrated the government of these
lands bore the title of "_Si suten n Kus_," or king-sons of Kush.
These lands were thickly inhabited by black and brown populations.
In the same way, the Hebrews (or Beni-Israel) used the denominations
_Cush_ and _Cushites_ in a generic sense for lands and tribes situated
south of them; and the term expanded with the peregrinations, forced
or voluntary, of the Arabs and Jews. First it was applied to lands
and tribes south of Mesopotamia (Naharaina), the birthplace of Heber
(Taber) and the Beni-Israel; and when they were in Egypt, either as
free or captive Hycksos, they applied the term _Cush_ to the region
of Meroe south of the Nile; and (according to Jewish writers) Sabäa,
in southern Arabia, was also inhabited by sons of Cush. It would be
difficult to determine to which language the word primarily belongs,
but, in all probability, early Shemitic writers transmitted it to the
ancient Armenians, just as they in turn transmitted it to western or
Christian writers. Herodotus used it; and his _Kissia_ is identical
with that of the Hebrews and Armenians. The denomination _Chute_,
_Chuzi_, _Cossaia_, _Cussaia_, of various dialects of Fore-Asia has
reference to the tribes of _Kuschani_, _Kusi_, _Cushites_. Hence
Cushites are to be found in Syria, Arabia and Africa.
In the phonetic character is found the expression M-S-R as a
designation for that land. It is synonymous with the Arabic _Misr_,
the Jewish _Mizraim_, _Mazor_, and the Syriac _Mezren_. Various
explanations are given of this word, according to the significations it
has in the various dialects. According to some it means "stronghold,"
while according to others, it signifies "extension;" by the Hebrews it
was applied to Egypt, or, as some commentators assert, to the Egyptians.
Other appellations for the land of Egypt are found in the hieroglyphs
and in phonetic groups. This is the case, for instance, with the group
_Nehi_, signifying the sycamore, which is believed to be indigenous in
Egypt.
None of these names, however, had any historical signification,
so that it still remains a mystery what the native name for the
primitive civilizers of the Nile valley was. As for the name _Egypt_,
_Egyptians_, this was bestowed on them by the Greeks; and some attempt
to deduce it from _Phtha_ or _Ptah_, a divinity of the city and
township of Memphis; and the denomination, _Land of Ptah_, is supposed
to have been used in a generic sense.
The advantage of thus exploring those historical and philological
labyrinths will make itself clear in succeeding chapters. Philology
has explained the signification of various other ancient ethnic
and national names, among others, "Hebrews," "Aryas" or "Aryans,"
"Pelasgi," "Greeks," "Canaanites," etc., and such explanations have
frequently proved of the highest value in letting us into the secret of
their origin, character, and the direction of their activity. But there
is no vestige of the antique language of the Egyptians that would lead
us to suppose that absolute distinctions of race, or chattelhood based
thereon, formed features of the primitive life in the Nile valley.
From various paintings, inscriptions, and philological data, science
has endeavored to reconstruct the ethnological conceptions entertained
by the Egyptians seventeen centuries B.C. The _red_ race occupied Egypt
(chiefly lower Egypt), Arabia, and part of Babylonia; the _yellow_ race
was spread over Palestine and Syria, reaching Africa; the _white_ race
stretched north and north-west of Egypt, inhabiting a part of Libya and
the islands of Rhodes, Cyprus, Crete, etc.; the _black and brown_ race
occupied Egypt, Abyssinia, Nubia, and Southern Arabia. _Nah es. u_ or
_Nah si. u_ was the name given to all negroes or blacks who were not
Egyptians, while to the whole red-colored race they applied the term
_ret_, _ret-u_, signifying "germ."
The Egyptian pantheon was of course the creation of the superior
priests. It made each human race the creation of a separate god; and
very probably all the numerous elements in the complicated social
structure of the Egyptians, that is, every caste or function, even
the lowest, which was still an integral part of the whole, had each
its separate deity. The creator of the black race was either a god
represented symbolically by a blackbird, or the god H'or (or Horos),
son of Osiris, and his avenger, who dwelt in the firmament with all the
other deities.
The negro physiognomy appears on the Egyptian monuments; and this not
only in the representations of common persons, but even in the case
of kings, as, for instance, those of the eighteenth and nineteenth
dynasties, in the statues of Totmes III. and Amenophis III. The
Egyptian king Sabakos was an Ethiopian by birth, and many other
Pharaohs married black African princesses--Nah es. u. There can be no
doubt of intermarriages having been common, between _red_ and _black_
Egyptians proper; and through such unions, legal and illegal, it was
that the brownish rather than entirely black color of the Egyptian
man of the people, as represented on the monuments, was produced. (A
similar slow but uninterrupted transition and modification may be
verified at the present day and under our own eyes--crisped hair, thick
skulls,[5] still prevailing). Finally, eunuchs are represented of a
yellowish hue, perhaps nearer in tint to that of the yellow than the
black race.
Some psychologic ethnologists affirm that the African or pure negro is
to be considered as constituting a passive race, requiring fecundation
by an active one. If this be the case, then the Egyptians solved
the question. The red and dominant race drew no impassable lines of
demarcation by chattelhood; and the black population formed the most
vital element of the social structure.
At the threshold of what our limited knowledge considers as positive
history, therefore, we meet a highly developed society and nation,
which for long centuries enjoyed a political existence, normal when
compared with contemporaneous and surrounding nations, and _domestic
slavery neither lay at the basis of the structure, nor formed an
integral element of Egyptian life_. In the monuments, paintings, and
inscriptions which remain as records and reminiscences of Egypt's
palmy ages, no traces are found in the regular national and domestic
economy, of agricultural or industrial labor which could have been
performed by slaves or chattels. Slaves and slavery existed in Egypt,
not as an intrinsic and integral part of society, but as an unhealthy
excrescence--not under the sanction of right or law, but as the result
of a violation of both. Egyptian slavery was an atonement for social
and personal crime--an abnormal monstrosity, and not the normal and
vital force of Egyptian activity. If slavery had been a normal social
institution, it would have had its deity and its rites; but, as
exclusively the result of a disease, it was regulated and dealt with as
such.
Egyptian slaves consisted of prisoners of war made on the field of
battle, or captives taken in forays made into neighboring or distant
countries. In early times, also, all strangers whom accident or
tempest threw on the shores of Egypt, and who had no claims to a legal
hospitality, were enslaved; for, for centuries Egypt was closed against
the intrusion of foreigners--certain merchants and traffickers only
being specially excepted. Furthermore, conquered countries paid their
tribute partly in children, who thus became slaves. All these slaves
were the property of the Pharaohs, who employed them in various ways,
distributed them to their officials, sold them to their subjects of all
castes, or to domestic and foreign traffickers. But the exportation
of slaves belongs to a later period--the epoch of Egypt's historical
decay. Slaves were imported, but not exported, as there was no special
economical slave-breeding for this or other purposes.
It is unnecessary to dwell on the generally known fact of the captivity
and enslavement of the Jews, or to detail the researches concerning
the Hycksos--first slaves, then masters and rulers, and finally again
overpowered and reduced to captivity. But beside these Shemites,
Hebrews--be they Hycksos or not--all other races and nations were at
some time or other captives and slaves in Egypt. The Pharaohs warred
with Asiatics, and especially with what is now called Caucasian races;
and the monuments show that red, white, and yellow slaves taken in war
were far more numerous than the blacks.
Egyptians condemned for any kind of criminal offence became slaves,
or were condemned to public hard labor. As equality before the law
prevailed in Egypt, a person belonging to the superior caste (red-skin)
was liable thus to become a slave in his own country. Contrary,
however, to the custom of almost the whole of antiquity, and even
of earlier Christian times, the Egyptians never reduced debtors to
personal slavery. A debtor was not personally responsible, and could
not be sold into slavery by his creditor.
Slaves of every kind might be redeemed and manumitted. They then
became equal to other Egyptians, as is evidenced by the marriage of
Joseph with a daughter of a high-priest, and by his eminent official
position. Children born from Egyptians and their slave women, whether
red, yellow, black or white, were equal in all rights, and shared the
inheritance with the legitimate offspring of the same father. The
father transmitted his own status to his children, according to a
custom general in the East, and ascending to the remotest antiquity.
Slaves worked in the mines, and were employed on every kind of hard
labor, but principally, and as far as possible, on those great and
almost indestructible public works and monuments that distinguished the
cities of the Nile. It was the pride of the Pharaohs to be enabled to
inscribe on the structure that the work was not performed by the hands
of Egyptians--referring to the hard work, such as carrying blocks,
raising and preparing material, digging canals, etc. All the servants
about the palace, sanctuary and villa were slaves. They belonged to
all races and colors, and as such are represented on the monuments. In
ancient, independent Egypt, therefore, slavery was, in the strictest
sense, limited to the household.
Such was Egypt, the most ancient of nations and civilizations. In
her, slavery was an incidental and abnormal condition, and did not
enter into the vitals of society during the long centuries that this
society stood foremost among nations and civilizations. In the last
stages of Egyptian history, however, domestic slavery did its terrible
work, helped by conquests by foreigners, by the overthrow of its
independence, by exactions, tributes, and all kinds of oppressions.
Then only was it that political slavery, or what is called oriental
despotism, became altogether fused with domestic slavery.
Various are the causes to which the decomposition and downfall of Egypt
are ascribed. Some assert that Egyptian society and civilization,
traversing all the stages of growth and development, logically ended
in senility, decrepitude and death. Others find in the division into
castes, one of the pre-eminent causes of the decline of Egypt. But,
baneful and destructive as is the organization into castes, it is a
blessing when compared with domestic slavery. The rigid organization
of the castes was a counter-poison, a check imposed upon the extension
of domestic slavery, preventing it from eating up the healthy agencies
of society. The caste system--and above all priestly caste--was, to a
great extent, a curb on the despotism of the Pharaohs. The castes for
many centuries prevented the fusion of the two greatest social plagues:
domestic and political slavery.
The all-powerful law of analogies--which in the course of these pages
will be more luminously exhibited from the fate of other empires and
civilizations--authorizes already the positive, and even axiomatic
assertion, that the almost unparalleled by long historical life of the
Egyptians, and the highly advanced state of their civilization, are
due exclusively to the fact, that domestic slavery and chattelhood
remained for a long time an abnormal outgrowth. It was not the basis of
domestic and national economy, not the object fit for the special care
of the legislator, and was not intertwined with the social, political
and intellectual life of the Egyptians.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: The term _Japhetic_ is rather confused and unscientific.
It is used here as being more popularly intelligible.]
[Footnote 5: Herodotus.]
II.
PHOENICIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Moevers, Rénan, Duncker, Ewald, Ezekiel, Proverbs of Solomon, etc._
Previous to any epoch settled by positive history, the Canaanites,
or Phoenicians, a highly civilized nation, dwelt in the land called
Palestine. They were an elderly branch of the Shemitic family;
their generic name embracing the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, and
Girgasites--all of whom the Greeks called _Phoenicians_. _Canaan_,
in the Shemitic dialects, signifies "lowland," as was Palestine,
in contradistinction to _Aram_, or the highlands of Mesopotamia
(_Naharajim_, _Nahirim_ of the Old Testament). _Canaan_, in Hebrew
proper, is sometimes synonymous with "merchant;" and the historical
development of the Phoenicians explains and justifies this
signification. The Greek name _Phoenicians_, is supposed by some to be
derived from _phoinizai_, "to kill," whence _Phoinikes_ (Phoenicians),
"bloody men." The Phoenicians, being very jealous of their maritime
trade, killed and in every way molested the navigators from other
lands who dared to follow their vessels or spy out their extensive
maritime establishments, factories, or connections. For this reason
the Greeks long considered the Tyrrenian seas as highly dangerous for
navigators, and as filled with rocks, monsters, and anthropophagi.
Other investigators, again, derive the Greek word Phoenicians from
their _ruddy_ complexion, or from their having first navigated the Red
Sea.
The primitive seats of the Phoenicians lay north and south of Syria.
From thence they are supposed to have emigrated to Palestine through
the northern part of Syria, while another column from the south
advanced from the delta on the Persian Gulf, anciently called _Assyrium
Stagnum_, or from the islands of Tyros (Tylos) and Arados, situated in
the above-named waters. Some writers suppose that an earthquake obliged
them to emigrate from these shores of the Erythrean or Red Sea (Persian
Gulf) of antiquity, and that their Greek name owes its origin to this
circumstance.
These wanderings through regions already thickly inhabited by various
tribes and nations, may have contributed to develop in these Shemites
that powerful mercantile propensity to which they chiefly owe their
historical immortality; then and there, too, they most probably began
the traffic in slaves, to which, if they were not its originators, they
certainly gave a new and powerful impulse. Thus, while the Phoenicians
figure in history as the earliest navigators and merchants, they must
also be written down in the light of having inaugurated, or at least,
greatly extended the accursed slave-trade.
No division into castes seems ever to have existed among the
Phoenicians. As a general rule, no traces of this social
circumscription are to be detected among the nations of pure or even
of mixed Shemitic stock which flourished in Fore-Asia--in Syria,
Babylon or Assyria. The Phoenician political organism embraced 1st, the
powerful ruling families; and 2dly, the subject classes--a division
similar to that of the _aristos_ and _demos_ which prevailed in Greece,
or to the patricians and plebeians of Rome. The land of Canaan was
originally cultivated by freeholders and yeomen. When one tribe subdued
another, or when the victors settled among the vanquished, the latter
were not enslaved; they became a kind of tribute-paying colonists, with
limited political privileges, but with full civil rights. They were at
liberty to hold real and personal property of every kind, just as much
as the ruling tribe or class. So also it was among all the Shemites,
and, with but few exceptions, among all the nations of antiquity.
Slaves, at this period, were employed only at hard labor in the cities
and in the household; they were as yet neither farmers, field-laborers,
nor mechanics. But, as already mentioned, the Phoenicians were the
great slave-traders, carriers and factors in the remotest antiquity,
and this both by land and sea. At a period of more than fourteen
centuries B.C., the Phoenicians covered all the shores around the Egean
and Mediterranean seas with their factories, strongholds and colonial
cities. Besides this, they stretched out even to the Euxine, while
their colonies studded, also, the Corinthian and Ionian gulfs (on the
sites of modern Patras and Lepanto), and extended on the Atlantic
coast even beyond Gibraltar. The records of the earliest wanderings of
these Canaanitish tribes into Africa, and even Greece, are preserved in
legends as the migrations of gods, demigods and heroes.
Thus the Phoenicians linked in a vast commercial chain Britain, Iberia
(Spain), and India; while the Guadalquiver, the Nile, the Euphrates,
the Tigris and the Indus, served as highways for their trading
enterprise. From Byblos, Tyre, Sidon and other emporiums, they sent
out caravans far and wide into Arabia and Fore-Asia. The products of
their art and industry were reputed most exquisite even as early as the
epoch of the Iliad, and they were vain enough to look on themselves as
the pivots of the world's prosperity, and the Scriptures repeatedly
mention the pride and denounce the vices of the Phoenician cities.
What their merchants bought or received in barter in Asia or in Egypt,
they exchanged for the rough products of Greece, Spain, Albion, Libya,
and the lands on the Euxine: these consisted principally of grains,
hides, copper, tin, silver, gold, and indeed all kinds of marketable
objects. Their central situation for the commerce of the known and
almost of the unknown world, especially favored the slave-trade.
Accordingly Phoenician slaves became more and more valuable, and a
continually extending market produced a constantly increasing demand.
In all probability the inland caravan excursions afforded the principal
supplies for their immense slave traffic; but they also bought, stole,
and kidnapped from every possible place and by every conceivable
stratagem--just as modern American slave-traders do. In this horrid
industry they visited every shore. They carried it on among the Greeks,
among the Barbarians of the Hellespont and the Pontus, among the
Iberians, Italians, Moors and other Africans. Natives of Asia were sold
to Greece and other European countries, while Syria and Egypt were
furnished with European slaves. The great majority of these slaves
belonged to what is called the Caucasian race, and negroes constituted
a comparatively insignificant part. In return for these white chattels
the Phoenicians bartered the products of Egypt and of Fore-Asia.
The Phoenicians, then, were the great, and, in all probability, the
exclusive slave-traders of those times. The traffic had its chief
centre in Byblos, Sidon and Tyre--the depots, bazaars, and storehouses
of which were always glutted with human merchandise.
In times positively historical, when Phoenicia had come to be the
mighty and flourishing emporium of the world's trade, foreign slaves
constituted the immense majority of the population of her cities--as
indeed was the case with most of the commercial cities of antiquity;
but none of them were so crowded with slaves as were Byblos, Tyre,
and Sidon. In consequence of this agglomeration, slavery gradually
crept from the market and the household into general industry and
agriculture. The slaves thus employed by the Phoenicians may be
classified as follows: 1. Slaves of luxury, living in the house of
the master; 2. Slaves employed in various branches of manufacture, as
weavers, dyers, and artisans of all kinds--as also in the manual labors
common to every maritime and commercial city; 3. Agricultural slaves.
This vast accumulation of slaves begat repeated and bloody revolts
during the whole historic existence of Phoenicia. The scanty and
comparatively insignificant fragments of her history which now
exist are filled with accounts of such revolts, generally ending as
most fearful tragedies. An uprising of this kind occurred in Tyre
about ten centuries B.C.; and history records, that at that time
the king, the aristocracy, all the masters, and even great numbers
of non-slaveholding freemen were slaughtered. The women, however,
were saved and married by the slaves; and thus many primitive
oligarchic families entirely disappeared. Frequent servile revolts
and insurrections of this kind resulted at length in the partial
emancipation of the slaves and their conquest of certain civil rights.
In keeping with the almost boundless accumulation of wealth in those
cities was the increase in the number of slaves. As a consequence,
the free laborers, artisans, and farmers became impoverished and
dispossessed; and, as was natural, they often joined the insurgent
bondmen. The oligarchs also sent out these poor freemen wherever
Phoenician ships could carry them, or wherever there was a chance of
establishing factories, cities, or colonies. Such was the common origin
of those primitive Phoenician settlements, which were scattered north
and west on almost every shore. In most regions, even in Libya, their
object was simply commercial and not at all of a conquering character.
At any rate the newcomers soon intermarried and mixed with the natives.
The slaveholding rulers were now forced to sustain a hired soldiery
to keep down the slaves--not for defence against an external but an
internal foe. Among these hirelings were the Carryians, Lydians,
Libyans, and Libyo-Phoenicians. To such motley mercenaries were they
obliged to intrust the security of their homes and municipalities.
At times this hireling soldiery joined the revolted slaves, and they
formed but a poor defence against the Egyptians, or against Assyrian,
Babylonian, Persian, and Alexandrian conquest. To all these empires
the Phoenician slaveholders were obliged to pay tribute, until finally
Alexander massacred or enslaved them all--slaveholders and slaves alike.
Already some of the violent pro-slavery militants in the slave section
of the United States express their purpose to invoke the aid of France
in their schemes of secession and conquest, and propose that their
cities and states be occupied by French garrisons. What a striking
analogy with the course of the fated Phoenicians! And if eventually
France should listen to their humble prayer and send defenders to these
terrified slave-masters, climatic reasons would induce her to furnish
such troops as are naturally fitted to bear the tropical heats of the
slave-coast--the malarious regions of Louisiana and South Carolina.
Such would be her Zouaves and Turcos--the Zouaves enemies of every
kind of slavery, and the Turcos negroes themselves. Where then would
be their defenders and their security? Every French soldier, even if
neither Zouave nor Turco, would, in all probability, side at once
with the oppressed against the oppressor. The prejudice of race, so
prevalent in America, is not a European characteristic: it did not
exist in antiquity; it does not prevail in Europe now.
It was not the existence of an oriental political despotism in
Phoenicia--it was _domestic slavery_, which, penetrating into industry
and agriculture, destroyed the richest, most enterprising, and most
daring community of remote antiquity. Cicero wrote their epitaph:
"_Fallacissimum esse genus Phoenicum, omnia monumenta vetustatis atque
omnes historia nobis prodiderunt._"
When, therefore, positive history slowly rises on the limitless horizon
of time, Phoenicia appears as an ominous illustration of how domestic
slavery, from an external social monstrosity, tends to become a chronic
but corrosive disease. And neither does the evidence of history end
with her. Over and over again will it be found that slavery, after
eating so deeply into the social organism as to become constitutional
and chronic, has the same ultimate issue, even as a virus slowly but
surely penetrates from the extremities into the vitals of the animal
organism.
The intermediate stages of such diseases and the process of the
symptoms are often modified in their outward manifestations to such
an extent as to lead even the keen observer astray. But it is only
he who can unerringly diagnosticate the _nature_ of the disease who
can ever become a great healer: he discovers the true character and
source of the malady, whatever may be its external complications, and
from whatever conditions and influences they may result. Some symptoms
may increase, others decrease in intensity and virulence in the
physiological as in the social disease--they are, however, secondary.
The parallel holds good--the principle remaining unchanged: life
becomes extinct for similar reasons in the animal as in the social and
political body.
Thus, in the history of the Phoenicians, and therefore, in the earliest
authentic epoch, a great historical and social law manifests itself
in full action. This activity it retains through all the subsequent
social and political catastrophes in the life of nations and empires,
down even to Hayti with her immortal Toussaint. _Slavery generates
bloody struggles._ Many of these have resulted in the slaves violently
regaining their liberty, while others have destroyed the whole
state--swallowing up the slaveholders in their own blood, or burying
them under the ruins of their own social edifice.
III.
LIBYANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Diodorus Siculus, Corippus, Moevers, etc._
The primitive social and intellectual condition of the populations
dwelling along the shores of Africa washed by the Mediterranean
sea, can only be inferred from their respective relations with the
Phoenicians and Carthaginians. Other sources of historical information
as to that remote period there are none, while later times also give
comparatively scanty satisfaction.