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WHITE SLAVERY
IN
THE BARBARY STATES.
BY
CHARLES SUMNER.
----Mutato nomine, de te
Fabula narratur.
HORACE
And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such
things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of
God?
EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, Chap. ii. v. 3.
BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR, AND WORTHINGTON.
LONDON: LOW AND COMPANY.
1853.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court
of the District of Massachusetts.
ORIGINAL DESIGNS BY BILLINGS.
ENGRAVED BY BAKER, SMITH, AND ANDREW.
STEREOTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.
GEO. C. RAND, PRINTER, CORNHILL.
[Illustration]
WHITE SLAVERY
in the
BARBARY STATES.
History has been sometimes called a gallery, where, in living forms, are
preserved the scenes, the incidents, and the characters of the past. It
may also be called the world's great charnel house, where are gathered
coffins, dead men's bones, and all the uncleanness of the years that
have fled. As we walk among its pictures, radiant with the inspiration
of virtue and of freedom, we confess a new impulse to beneficent
exertion. As we grope amidst the unsightly shapes that have been left
without an epitaph, we may at least derive a fresh aversion to all their
living representatives.
In this mighty gallery, amidst a heavenly light, are the images of the
benefactors of mankind--the poets who have sung the praise of virtue,
the historians who have recorded its achievements, and the good men of
all time, who, by word or deed, have striven for the welfare of others.
Here are depicted those scenes where the divinity of man has been made
manifest in trial and danger. Here also are those grand incidents which
attended the establishment of the free institutions of the world; the
signing of Magna Charta, with its priceless privileges of freedom, by a
reluctant monarch; and the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
the annunciation of the inalienable rights of man, by the fathers of our
republic.
On the other hand, in ignominious confusion, far down in this dark,
dreary charnel house is tumbled all that now remains of the tyrants, the
persecutors, the selfish men, under whom mankind have groaned. Here
also, in festering, loathsome decay, are the monstrous institutions or
customs, which the earth, weary of their infamy and injustice, has
refused to sustain--the Helotism of Sparta, the Serfdom of Christian
Europe, the Ordeal by Battle, and Algerine Slavery.
From this charnel house let me to-night draw forth one of these. It may
not be without profit to dwell on the _origin_, the _history_, and the
_character_ of a custom, which, after being for a long time a byword and
a hissing among the nations, has at last been driven from the world. The
easy, instinctive, positive reprobation, which it will receive from all,
must necessarily direct our judgment of other institutions, yet
tolerated in equal defiance of justice and humanity. I propose to
consider the subject of _White Slavery in Algiers_, or perhaps it might
be more appropriately called _White Slavery in the Barbary States_. As
Algiers was its chief seat, it seems to have acquired a current name
from that place. This I shall not disturb; though I shall speak of White
Slavery, or the Slavery of Christians, throughout the Barbary States.
If this subject should fail in interest, it cannot fail in novelty. I am
not aware of any previous attempt to combine its scattered materials in
a connected essay.
[Illustration]
The territory now known as the Barbary States is memorable in history.
Classical inscriptions, broken arches, and ancient tombs--the memorials
of various ages--still bear instructive witness to the revolutions which
it has encountered.[1] Early Greek legend made it the home of terror and
of happiness. Here was the retreat of the Gorgon, with snaky tresses,
turning all she looked upon into stone; and here also the garden of the
Hesperides, with its apples of gold. It was the scene of adventure and
mythology. Here Hercules wrestled with Antaeus, and Atlas sustained, with
weary shoulders, the overarching sky. Phoenician fugitives early
transported the spirit of commerce to its coasts; and Carthage, which
these wanderers here planted, became the mistress of the seas, the
explorer of distant regions, the rival and the victim of Rome. The
energy and subtlety of Jugurtha here baffled for a while the Roman
power, till at last the whole country, from Egypt to the Pillars of
Hercules, underwent the process of "annexation" to the cormorant
republic of ancient times. A thriving population and fertile soil
rendered it an immense granary. It was filled with famous cities, one of
which was the refuge and the grave of Cato, fleeing from the usurpations
of Caesar. At a later day, Christianity was here preached by some of her
most saintly bishops. The torrent of the Vandals, first wasting Italy,
next passed over this territory; and the arms of Belisarius here
obtained their most signal triumphs. The Saracens, with the Koran and
the sword, potent ministers of conversion, next broke from Arabia, as
the messengers of a new religion, and, pouring along these shores,
diffused the faith and doctrines of Mohammed. Their empire was not
confined even by these expansive limits; but, under Musa, entered Spain,
and afterwards at Roncesvalles, in "dolorous rout," overthrew the
embattled chivalry of the Christian world led by Charlemagne.
[Footnote 1: The classical student will be gratified and surprised by
the remains of antiquity described by Dr. Shaw, English chaplain at
Algiers in the reign of George the First, in his _Travels and
Observertions relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant_,
published in 1738.]
The Saracenic power did not long retain its unity or importance; and, as
we view this territory, in the dawn of modern history, when the
countries of Europe are appearing in their new nationalities, we discern
five different communities or states,--Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli,
and Barca,--the latter of little moment, and often included in Tripoli,
the whole constituting what was then, and is still, called the Barbary
States. This name has sometimes been referred to the Berbers, or
Berebbers, constituting a part of the inhabitants; but I delight to
follow the classic authority of Gibbon, who thinks[2] that the term,
first applied by Greek pride to all strangers, and finally reserved for
those only who were savage or hostile, has justly settled, as a local
denomination, along the northern coast of Africa. The Barbary States,
then, bear their past character in their name.
[Footnote 2: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. ix. chap. lvi.
p. 465.]
They occupy an important space on the earth's surface; on the north,
washed by the Mediterranean Sea, furnishing such opportunities of prompt
intercourse with Southern Europe, that Cato was able to exhibit in the
Roman Senate figs freshly plucked in the gardens of Carthage; bounded on
the east by Egypt, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south
by the vast, indefinite, sandy, flinty wastes of Sahara, separating them
from Soudan or Negroland. In the advantages of position they surpass
every other part of Africa,--unless we except Egypt,--communicating
easily with the Christian nations, and thus, as it were, touching the
very hem and border of civilization.
Climate adds its attractions to this region, which is removed from the
cold of the north and the burning heats of the tropics, while it is
enriched with oranges, citrons, olives, figs, pomegranates, and
luxuriant flowers. Its position and character invite a singular and
suggestive comparison. It is placed between the twenty-ninth and
thirty-eighth degrees of north latitude, occupying nearly the same
parallels with the Slave States of our Union. It extends over nearly the
same number of degrees of longitude with our Slave States, which seem
now, alas! to stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rio Grande. It is
supposed to embrace about 700,000 square miles, which cannot be far from
the space comprehended by what may be called the _Barbary States of
America_.[3] Nor does the comparison end here. Algiers, for a long time
the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat
of Christian slavery, and once branded by an indignant chronicler as
"the wall of the barbarian world," is situated near the parallel of 36 deg.
30' north latitude, being the line of what is termed the Missouri
Compromise, marking the "wall" of Christian slavery, in our country,
west of the Mississippi.
[Footnote 3: Jefferson, without recognizing the general parallel,
alludes to Virginia as fast sinking to be "the _Barbary_ of the
Union."--Writings, vol. iv. p. 333.]
[Illustration]
Other less important points of likeness between the two territories may
be observed. They are each washed, to the same extent, by ocean and sea;
with this difference, that the two regions are thus exposed on directly
opposite coasts--the African Barbary being bounded in this way on the
north and west, and our American Barbary on the south and east. But
there are no two spaces, on the surface of the globe, of equal extent,
(and an examination of the map will verify what I am about to state,)
which present so many distinctive features of resemblance; whether we
consider the parallels of latitude on which they lie, the nature of
their boundaries, their productions, their climate, or the "peculiar
domestic institution" which has sought shelter in both.
I introduce these comparisons in order to bring home to your minds, as
near as possible, the precise position and character of the territory
which was the seat of the evil I am about to describe. It might be
worthy of inquiry, why Christian slavery, banished at last from Europe,
banished also from that part of this hemisphere which corresponds in
latitude to Europe, should have intrenched itself, in both hemispheres,
between the same parallels of latitude; so that Virginia, Carolina,
Mississippi, and Texas should be the American complement to Morocco,
Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. Perhaps the common peculiarities of
climate, breeding indolence, lassitude, and selfishness, may account for
the insensibility to the claims of justice and humanity which have
characterized both regions.
The revolting custom of White Slavery in the Barbary States was, for
many years, the shame of modern civilization. The nations of Europe made
constant efforts, continued through successive centuries, to procure its
_abolition_, and also to rescue their subjects from its fearful doom.
These may be traced in the diversified pages of history, and in the
authentic memoirs of the times. Literature also affords illustrations,
which must not be neglected. At one period, the French, the Italians,
and the Spaniards borrowed the plots of their stories mostly from this
source.[4] The adventures of Robinson Crusoe make our childhood familiar
with one of its forms. Among his early trials, he was piratically
captured by a rover from Salle, a port of Morocco, on the Atlantic
Ocean, and reduced to slavery. "At this surprising change of
circumstances," he says, "from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was
perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father's prophetic
discourse to me, that I should be miserable, and have none to relieve
me, which I thought was so effectually brought to pass, that I could not
be worse." And Cervantes, in the story of Don Quixote, over which so
many generations have shaken with laughter, turns aside from its genial
current to give the narrative of a Spanish captive who had escaped from
Algiers. The author is supposed to have drawn from his own experience;
for during five years and a half he endured the horrors of Algerine
slavery, from which he was finally liberated by a ransom of about six
hundred dollars.[5] This inconsiderable sum of money--less than the
price of an intelligent African slave in our own Southern States--gave
to freedom, to his country, and to mankind the author of Don Quixote.
[Footnote 4: Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe, vol. iii.
chap. 29, p. 492.]
[Footnote 5: The exact amount is left uncertain both by Smollet and
Thomas Roscoe in their lives of Cervantes. It appears that it was five
hundred gold crowns of Spain, which, according to his Spanish
biographer, Navarrete, is 6770 reals, (_Vida de Cervantes_, p. 371.) The
real is supposed to be less than ten cents.]
[Illustration]
In Cervantes freedom gained a champion whose efforts entitle him to
grateful mention, on this threshold of our inquiry. Taught in the
school of slavery, he knew how to commiserate the slave. The unhappy
condition of his fellow-Christians in chains was ever uppermost in his
mind. He lost no opportunity of arousing his countrymen to attempts
for their emancipation, and for the overthrow of the "peculiar
institution"--pardon this returning phrase!--under which they groaned.
He became in Spain what, in our day and country, is sometimes called an
"Anti-Slavery Agitator"--not by public meetings and addresses, but,
according to the genius of the age, mainly through the instrumentality
of the theatre. Not from the platform, but from the stage, did this
liberated slave speak to the world. In a drama, entitled _El Trato de
Argel_, or Life in Algiers,--which, though not composed according to the
rules of art, yet found much favor, probably from its subject,--he
pictured, shortly after his return to Spain, the manifold humiliations,
pains, and torments of slavery. This was followed by two others in the
same spirit--_La Gran Sultana Dona Cattalina de Oviedo_, The Great
Sultana the Lady Cattalina of Oviedo; and _Los Banos de Argel_, The
Galleys of Algiers. The last act of the latter closes with the
statement, calculated to enlist the sympathies of an audience, that this
play "is not drawn from the imagination, but was born far from the
regions of fiction, in the very heart of truth." Not content with this
appeal through the theatre, Cervantes, with constant zeal, takes up the
same theme, in the tale of the Captive, in Don Quixote, as we have
already seen, and also in that of _El Liberal Amante_, The Liberal
Lover, and in some parts of _La Espanola Inglesa_, The English
Spanishwoman. All these may be regarded, not merely as literary labors,
but as charitable endeavors in behalf of human freedom.
[Illustration]
And this same cause enlisted also a prolific contemporary genius, called
by Cervantes "that prodigy," Lope de Vega, who commended it in a play
entitled _Los Cautivos de Argel_, The Captives of Algiers. At a later
day, Calderon, sometimes exalted as the Shakspeare of the Spanish
stage, in one of his most remarkable dramas, _El Principe Constante_,
The Constant Prince, cast a poet's glance at Christian slavery
in Morocco. To these works--belonging to what may be called the
literature of Anti-Slavery, and shedding upon our subject a grateful
light--must be added a curious and learned volume, in Spanish, on the
Topography and History of Algiers, by Haedo, a father of the Catholic
Church,--_Topografia y Historia de Argel por Fra Haedo_,--published in
1612; and containing also two copious Dialogues--one on Captivity (_de
la Captiudad_), and the other on the Martyrs of Algiers, (_de los
Martyres de Argel_). These Dialogues, besides embodying authentic
sketches of the sufferings in Algiers, form a mine of classical and
patristic learning on the origin and character of slavery, with
arguments and protestations against its iniquity, which may be explored
with profit, even in our day. In view of this gigantic evil,
particularly in Algiers, and in the hope of arousing his countrymen to
the generous work of emancipation, the good father exclaims,[6] in words
which will continue to thrill the soul,--so long as a single fetter
binds a single slave,--"Where is charity? Where is the love of God?
Where is the zeal for his glory? Where is desire for his service? Where
is human pity and the compassion of man for man? Certainly to redeem a
captive, to liberate him from wretched slavery, is the highest work of
charity, of all that can be done in this world."
[Footnote 6: Pp. 140, 141.]
[Illustration]
Not long after the dark experience of Cervantes, another person, of
another country and language, and of a still higher character, St.
Vincent de Paul, of France, underwent the same cruel lot. Happily for
the world, he escaped from slavery, to commence at home that long career
of charity--nobler than any glories of literature--signalized by various
Christian efforts, against duels, for peace, for the poor, and in every
field of humanity--by which he is placed among the great names of
Christendom. Princes and orators have lavished panegyrics upon this
fugitive slave; and the Catholic Church, in homage to his extraordinary
virtues, has introduced him into the company of saints. Nor is he the
only illustrious Frenchman who has felt the yoke of slavery. Almost
within our own day, Arago, the astronomer and philosopher,--devoted
republican, I may add also,--while engaged, early in life, in those
scientific labors, on the coast of the Mediterranean, which made the
beginning of his fame, fell a prey to Algerine slave dealers. What
science and the world have gained by his emancipation I need not say.
Thus Science, Literature, Freedom, Philanthropy, the Catholic Church,
each and all, confess a debt to the liberated Barbary slave. May they,
on this occasion, as beneficent heralds, commend the story of his
wrongs, his struggles, and his triumphs!
[Illustration]
These preliminary remarks properly prepare the way for the subject to
which I have invited your attention. In presenting it, I shall naturally
be led to touch upon the _origin of slavery_, and the principles which
lie at its foundation, before proceeding to exhibit the efforts for its
abolition, and their final success in the Barbary States.
I. The word _slave_, suggesting now so much of human abasement, has an
origin which speaks of human grandeur. Its parent term, _Slava_,
signifying _glory_, in the Slavonian dialects, where it first appears,
was proudly assumed as the national designation of the races in the
north-eastern part of the European continent, who, in the vicissitudes
of war, were afterwards degraded from the condition of conquerors to
that of servitude. The Slavonian bondman, retaining his national name,
was known as a _Slave_, and this term--passing from a _race_ to a
_class_--was afterwards applied, in the languages of modern Europe, to
all in his unhappy lot, without distinction of country or color.[7] It
would be difficult to mention any word which has played such opposite
parts in history--now beneath the garb of servitude, concealing its
early robes of pride. And yet, startling as it may seem, this word may
properly be received in its primitive character, in our own day, by
those among us who consider slavery essential to democratic
institutions, and therefore a part of the true _glory_ of the country!
[Footnote 7: Gibbon's Roman Empire, vol. x. chap. 55, p. 190.]
Slavery was universally recognized by the nations of antiquity. It is
said by Pliny, in a bold phrase, that the Lacedaemonians "invented
slavery."[8] If this were so, the glory of Lycurgus and Leonidas would
not compensate for such a blot upon their character. It is true that
they recognized it, and gave it a shape of peculiar hardship. But
slavery is older than Sparta. It appears in the tents of Abraham; for
the three hundred and eighteen servants born to him were slaves. It
appears in the story of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers to the
Midianites for twenty pieces of silver.[9] It appears in the poetry of
Homer, who stamps it with a reprobation which can never be forgotten,
when he says,[10]--
Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day
Makes man a slave takes half his worth away.
[Footnote 8: Nat. Hist. lib. vii. c. 57.]
[Footnote 9: Genesis xiv. 14; ibid, xxxvii. 28. By these and other texts
of the Scriptures, slavery, and even the _slave trade_, have been
vindicated. See Bruce's Travels in Africa, vol. ii. p. 319. After
quoting these texts, the complacent traveller says he "cannot think that
purchasing slaves is either cruel or unnatural."]
[Footnote 10: Odyssey, book xvii.]
In later days it prevailed extensively in Greece, whose haughty people
deemed themselves justified in enslaving all who were strangers to their
manners and institutions. "The Greek has the right to be the master of
the barbarian," was the sentiment of Euripides, one of the first of her
poets, which was echoed by Aristotle, the greatest of her
intellects.[11] And even Plato, in his imaginary republic, the Utopia of
his beautiful genius, sanctions slavery. But, notwithstanding these high
names, we learn from Aristotle himself that there were persons in his
day--pestilent abolitionists of ancient Athens--who did not hesitate to
maintain that liberty was the great law of nature, and to deny any
difference between the master and the slave; declaring openly that
slavery was founded upon violence, and not upon right, and that the
authority of the master was unnatural and unjust.[12] "God sent forth
all persons free; nature has made no man a slave," was the protest of
one of these dissenting Athenians against this great wrong. I am not in
any way authorized to speak for any Anti-slavery society, even if this
were a proper occasion; but I presume that this ancient Greek morality
substantially embodies the principles which are maintained at their
public meetings--so far, at least, as they relate to slavery.
[Footnote 11: Pol. lib. i. c. 1.]
[Footnote 12: Pol. lib. i. c. 3. In like spirit are the words of the
good Las Casas, when pleading before Charles the Fifth for the Indian
races of America. "The Christian religion," he said, "is equal in its
operation, and is accommodated to every nation on the globe. _It robs no
one of his freedom, violates none of his inherent rights, on the ground
that he is a slave by nature, as pretended_; and it well becomes your
Majesty _to banish_ so monstrous an oppression from your kingdoms in the
beginning of your reign, that the Almighty may make it long and
glorious."--Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p 379.]
It is true, most true, that slavery stands on force, and not on right.
It is one of the hideous results of war, or of that barbarism in which
savage war plays a conspicuous part. To the victor, it was supposed,
belonged the lives of his captives; and, by consequence, he might bind
them in perpetual servitude. This principle, which has been the
foundation of slavery in all ages, is adapted only to the rudest
conditions of society, and is wholly inconsistent with a period of real
refinement, humanity, and justice. It is sad to confess that it was
recognized by Greece; but the civilization of this famed land, though
brilliant to the external view as the immortal sculptures of the
Parthenon, was, like that stately temple, dark and cheerless within.
[Illustration]
Slavery extended, with new rigors, under the military dominion of Rome.
The spirit of freedom which animated the republic was of that selfish
and intolerant character which accumulated privileges upon the Roman
citizen, while it heeded little the rights of others. But, unlike the
Greeks, the Romans admitted in theory that all men were originally free
by the law of nature; and they ascribed the power of masters over slaves
not to any alleged diversities in the races of men, but to the will of
society.[13] The constant triumphs of their arms were signalized by
reducing to captivity large crowds of the subjugated people. Paulus
Emilius returned from Macedonia with an uncounted train of slaves,
composed of persons in every department of life; and at the camp of
Lucullus, in Pontus, slaves were sold for four drachmae, or seventy-two
cents, a head. Terence and Phaedrus, Roman slaves, have, however, taught
us that genius is not always quenched, even by a degrading captivity;
while the writings of Cato the Censor, one of the most virtuous
slaveholders in history, show the hardening influence of a system which
treats human beings as cattle. "Let the husbandman," says Cato, "sell
his old oxen, his sickly cattle, his sickly sheep, his wool, his hides,
his old wagon, his old implements, _his old slave, and his diseased
slave_; and if any thing else remains, let him sell it. _He should be a
seller, rather than a buyer._"[14]
[Footnote 13: Institute i. tit. 2.]
[Footnote 14: Re Rustica, Sec. 2.]
The cruelty and inhumanity which flourished in the republic, professing
freedom, found a natural home under the emperors--the high priests of
despotism. Wealth increased, and with it the multitude of slaves. Some
masters are said to have owned as many as ten thousand, while
extravagant prices were often paid, according to the fancy or caprice of
the purchaser. Martial mentions a handsome youth who cost as much as
four hundred sesteria, or sixteen thousand dollars.[15]
[Footnote 15: Ep. iii. 62.]
[Illustration]
It is easy to believe that slavery, which prevailed so largely in Greece
and Rome, must have existed in Africa. Here, indeed, it found a peculiar
home. If we trace the progress of this unfortunate continent, from those
distant days of fable, when Jupiter
did not disdain to grace
The feast of AEthiopia's blameless race,[16]
the merchandise in slaves will be found to have contributed to the
abolition of two hateful customs, once universal in Africa--the eating
of captives, and their sacrifice to idols. Thus, in the march of
civilization, even the barbarism of slavery is an important stage of
Human Progress. It is a point in the ascending scale from cannibalism.
[Footnote 16: Iliad, book i.]
In the early periods of modern Europe, slavery was a general custom,
which yielded only gradually to the humane influences of Christianity.
It prevailed in all the countries of which we have any record.
Fair-haired Saxon slaves from distant England arrested the attention of
Pope Gregory in the markets of Rome, and were by him hailed as _angels_.
A law of so virtuous a king as Alfred ranks slaves with horses and oxen;
and the chronicles of William of Malmesbury show that, in our mother
country, there was once a cruel slave trade in whites. As we listen to
this story, we shall be grateful again to that civilization which
renders such outrages more and more impossible. "Directly opposite," he
says,[17] "to the Irish coast, there is a seaport called Bristol, the
inhabitants of which frequently sent into Ireland to sell those people
whom they had bought up throughout England. They exposed to sale maidens
in a state of pregnancy, with whom they made a sort of mock _marriage_.
There you might see with grief, fastened together by ropes, whole rows
of wretched beings of both sexes, of elegant forms, and in the very
bloom of youth,--a sight sufficient to excite pity even in
barbarians,--daily offered for sale to the first purchaser. Accursed
deed! infamous disgrace! that men, acting in a manner which brutal
instinct alone would have forbidden, should sell into slavery their
relations, nay, even their own offspring." From still another
chronicler[18] we learn that, when Ireland, in 1172, was afflicted with
public calamities, the people, but _chiefly the clergy, (praecipue
clericorum,)_ began to reproach themselves, as well they might,
believing that these evils were brought upon their country because,
_contrary to the right of Christian freedom_, they had bought as slaves
the English boys brought to them by the merchants; wherefore, it is
said, the English slaves were allowed to depart in freedom.
[Footnote 17: Book ii. chap. 20, Life of St. Wolston.]
[Footnote 18: Chronica Hiberniae, or the Annals of Phil. Flatesbury in
the Cottonian Library, Domitian A. xviii. 10; quoted in Stephens on West
India Slavery, vol. i. p. 6]
[Illustration]
As late as the thirteenth century, the custom prevailed on the continent
of Europe to treat all captives, taken in war, as slaves. To this,
poetry, as well as history, bears its testimony. Old Michael Drayton, in
his story of the Battle of Agincourt, says of the French,--
For knots of cord to every town they send,
The captived English that they caught to bind;
_For to perpetual slavery they intend
Those that alive they on the field should find._
And Othello, in recounting his perils, exposes this custom, when he
speaks
Of being taken by the insolent foe,
_And sold to slavery_; of my redemption thence.
It was also held lawful to enslave any infidel or person who did not
receive the Christian faith. The early common law of England doomed
heretics to the stake; the Catholic Inquisition did the same; and the
laws of Oleron, the maritime code of the middle ages, treated them "as
dogs," to be attacked and despoiled by all true believers. It appears
that Philip le Bel of France, the son of St. Louis, in 1296, presented
his brother Charles, Count of Valois, with a _Jew_, and that he paid
Pierre de Chambly three hundred livres for another _Jew_; as if Jews
were at the time chattels, to be given away, or bought.[19] And the
statutes of Florence, boastful of freedom, as late as 1415, expressly
allowed republican citizens to hold slaves who were not of the Christian
faith; _Qui non sunt Catholicae fidei et Christianae_.[20] And still
further, the comedies of Moliere, _L'Etourdi_, _Le Sicilien_, _L'Avare_,
depicting Italian usages not remote from his own day, show that, at
Naples and Messina, even Christian women continued to be sold as slaves.
[Footnote 19: _Encyclopedie Methodique_, (Jurisprudence,) Art.
_Esclavage_.]
[Footnote 20: Biot, _De l'Abolition de l'Esclavage Ancien en Occident_,
p. 440; a work crowned with a gold medal by the Institute of France, but
which will be read with some disappointment.]
This hasty sketch, which brings us down to the period when Algiers
became a terror to the Christian nations, renders it no longer
astonishing that the barbarous states of Barbary,--a part of Africa, the
great womb of slavery,--professing Mohammedanism, which not only
recognizes slavery, but expressly ordains "chains and collars" to
infidels,[21] should maintain the traffic in slaves, particularly in
Christians who denied the faith of the Prophet. In the duty of constant
war upon unbelievers, and in the assertion of a right to the services or
ransom of their captives, they followed the lessons of Christians
themselves.
[Footnote 21: Koran, chap. 76.]
[Illustration]
It is not difficult, then, to account for the origin of the cruel custom
now under consideration. Its _history_ forms our next topic.
II. The Barbary States, after the decline of the Arabian power, were
enveloped in darkness, rendered more palpable by the increasing light
among the Christian nations. As we behold them in the fifteenth century,
in the twilight of European civilization, they appear to be little more
than scattered bands of robbers and pirates,--"the land rats and water
rats" of Shylock,--leading the lives of Ishmaelites. Algiers is
described by an early writer as "a den of sturdy thieves, formed into a
body, by which, after a tumultuary sort, they govern;"[22] and by still
another writer, contemporary with the monstrosity which he exposes, as
"the theatre of all cruelty and sanctuarie of iniquitie, holding
captive, in miserable servitude, one hundred and twenty thousand
Christians, almost all subjects of the King of Spaine."[23] Their habit
of enslaving prisoners, taken in war and in piratical depredations, at
last aroused against these states the sacred animosities of Christendom.
Ferdinand the Catholic, after the conquest of Granada, and while the
boundless discoveries of Columbus, giving to Castile and Aragon a new
world, still occupied his mind, found time to direct an expedition into
Africa, under the military command of that great ecclesiastic, Cardinal
Ximenes. It is recorded that this valiant soldier of the church, on
effecting the conquest of Oran, in 1509, had the inexpressible
satisfaction of liberating upwards of three hundred Christian
slaves.[24]
[Footnote 22: Harleian Miscellany, vol. v. p. 522--_A Discourse
concerning Tangiers._]
[Footnote 23: Purchas's Pilgrims, vol. ii. p. 1565.]
[Footnote 24: Prescott's History of Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. iii. p.
308; Purchas's Pilgrims, vol. ii. p. 813.]
[Illustration]
The progress of the Spanish arms induced the government of Algiers to
invoke assistance from abroad. At this time, two brothers, Horuc and
Hayradin, the sons of a potter in the Island of Lesbos, had become
famous as corsairs. In an age when the sword of the adventurer often
carved a higher fortune than could be earned by lawful exertion, they
were dreaded for their abilities, their hardihood, and their power. To
them Algiers turned for aid. The corsairs left the sea to sway the land;
or rather, with amphibious robbery, they took possession of Algiers and
Tunis, while they continued to prey upon the sea. The name of
Barbarossa, by which they are known to Christians, is terrible in modern
history.[25]
[Footnote 25: Robertson's Charles the Fifth, book v.; Haedo, _Historia
de Argel, Epitome de los Reyes, de Argel_.]
With pirate ships they infested the seas, and spread their ravages along
the coasts of Spain and Italy, until Charles the Fifth was aroused to
undertake their overthrow. The various strength of his broad dominions
was rallied in this new crusade. "If the enthusiasm," says Sismondi,
"which armed the Christians at an earlier day, was nearly extinct,
another sentiment, more rational and legitimate, now united the vows of
Europe. The contest was no longer to reconquer the tomb of Christ, but
to defend the civilization, the liberty, the lives, of Christians."[26]
A stanch body of infantry from Germany, the veterans of Spain and Italy,
the flower of the Castilian nobility, the knights of Malta, with a fleet
of near five hundred vessels, contributed by Italy, Portugal, and even
distant Holland, under the command of Andrew Doria, the great sea
officer of the age,--the whole being under the immediate eye of the
Emperor himself, with the countenance and benediction of the Pope, and
composing one of the most complete armaments which the world had then
seen,--were directed upon Tunis. Barbarossa opposed them bravely, but
with unequal forces. While slowly yielding to attack from without, his
defeat was hastened by unexpected insurrection within. Confined in the
citadel were many Christian slaves, who, asserting the rights of
freedom, obtained a bloody emancipation, and turned its artillery
against their former masters. The place yielded to the Emperor, whose
soldiers soon surrendered themselves to the inhuman excesses of war. The
blood of thirty thousand innocent inhabitants reddened his victory.
Amidst these scenes of horror there was but one spectacle that afforded
him any satisfaction. Ten thousand Christian slaves met him, as he
entered the town, and falling on their knees, thanked him as their
deliverer.[27]
[Footnote 26: Sismondi, _Histoire des Francais_, tom. xvii. p. 102.]
[Footnote 27: Robertson's Charles the Fifth, book v.]
In the treaty of peace which ensued, it was expressly stipulated on the
part of Tunis, that all Christian slaves, of whatever nation, should be
set at liberty without ransom, and that no subject of the Emperor should
for the future be detained in slavery.[28]
[Footnote 28: Ibid.]
[Illustration]
The apparent generosity of this undertaking, the magnificence with which
it was conducted, and the success with which it was crowned, drew to the
Emperor the homage of his age beyond any other event of his reign.
Twenty thousand slaves, freed by treaty, or by arms, diffused through
Europe the praise of his name. It is probable that, in this expedition,
the Emperor was governed by motives little higher than those of vulgar
ambition and fame; but the results with which it was crowned, in the
emancipation of so many of his fellow-Christians from cruel chains,
place him, with Cardinal Ximenes, among the earliest Abolitionists of
modern times.
This was in 1535. Only a few short years before, in 1517, he had granted
to a Flemish courtier the exclusive privilege of importing four thousand
blacks from Africa into the West Indies. It is said that Charles lived
long enough to repent what he had thus inconsiderately done.[29] Certain
it is, no single concession, recorded in history, of king or emperor,
has produced such disastrous far-reaching consequences. The Fleming sold
his privilege to a company of Genoese merchants, who organized a
_systematic_ traffic in slaves between Africa and America. Thus, while
levying a mighty force to check the piracies of Barbarossa, and to
procure the abolition of Christian slavery in Tunis, the Emperor, with a
wretched inconsistency, laid the corner stone of a new system of slavery
in America, in comparison with which the enormity that he sought to
suppress was trivial and fugitive.
[Footnote 29: Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade,
vol. i. p. 38.]
Elated by the conquest of Tunis, filled also with the ambition of
subduing all the Barbary States, and of extirpating the custom of
Christian slavery, the Emperor, in 1541, directed an expedition of
singular grandeur against Algiers. The Pope again joined his influence
to the martial array. But nature proved stronger than the Pope and
Emperor. Within sight of Algiers, a sudden storm shattered his proud
fleet, and he was obliged to return to Spain, discomfited, bearing none
of those trophies of emancipation by which his former expedition had
been crowned.[30]
[Footnote 30: Robertson's Charles the Fifth, book vi.; Harleian
Miscellany, vol. iv. p. 504;--A lamentable and piteous Treatise, very
necessarye for euerye Christen manne to reade, [or the Expedition of
Charles the Fifth,] truly and dylygently translated out of Latyn into
Frenche, and out of Frenche into English, 1542.]
[Illustration]
The power of the Barbary States was now at its height. Their corsairs
became the scourge of Christendom, while their much-dreaded system of
slavery assumed a front of new terrors. Their ravages were not confined
to the Mediterranean. They penetrated the ocean, and pressed even to the
Straits of Dover and St. George's Channel. From the chalky cliffs of
England, and even from the distant western coasts of Ireland,
unsuspecting inhabitants were swept into cruel captivity.[31] The
English government was aroused to efforts to check these atrocities. In
1620, a fleet of eighteen ships, under the command of Sir Robert Mansel,
Vice Admiral of England, was despatched against Algiers. It returned
without being able, in the language of the times, "to destroy those
hellish pirates," though it obtained the liberation of forty "poor
captives, which they pretended was all they had in the towne." "The
efforts of the English fleet were aided," says Purchas, "by a Christian
captive, which did swim from the towne to the ships."[32] It is not in
this respect only that this expedition recalls that of Charles the
Fifth, which received important assistance from rebel slaves; we also
observe a similar deplorable inconsistency of conduct in the government
which directed it. It was in the year 1620,--dear to all the descendants
of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock as an epoch of freedom,--while an
English fleet was seeking the emancipation of Englishmen held in bondage
by Algiers, that African slaves were first introduced into the English
colonies of North America--thus beginning that dreadful system, whose
long catalogue of humiliation and woes is not yet complete.[33]
[Footnote 31: Guizot's History of the English Revolution, vol. i. p. 69,
book ii.; Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. i p. 68. Sir George
Radcliffe, the friend and biographer of the Earl, boasts that the latter
"secured the seas from piracies, so as only one ship was lost at his
first coming, [as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland,] and no more all his time;
whereof every year before, not only several ships and goods were lost by
robbery at sea, but also Turkish men-of-war usually landed, and _took
prey of men to be made slaves_."--Ibid. vol ii. p. 434.]
[Footnote 32: "Purchas's Pilgrims, pp. 885, 886; Southey's Naval History
of England, vol. v. pp. 60-63. There was a publication especially
relating to this expedition, entitled Algiers Voyage, in a Journall or
briefe Repertory of all Occurrents hapning in the Fleet of Ships sent
out by the Kinge his most excellent Majestie, as well against the
Pirates of Algiers as others. London. 1621. 4to.]
[Footnote 33: Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 187.]
[Illustration]
The expedition against Algiers was followed, in 1637, by another, under
the command of Captain Rainsborough, against Sallee, in Morocco. At his
approach, the Moors desperately transferred a thousand captives, British
subjects, to Tunis and Algiers. "Some Christians, that were slaves
ashore, stole away out of the towne, and came swimming aboard."[34]
Intestine feud also aided the fleet, and the cause of emancipation
speedily triumphed. Two hundred and ninety British captives were
surrendered; and a promise was extorted from the government of Sallee to
redeem the wretched captives, sold away to Tunis and Algiers. An
ambassador from the King of Morocco shortly afterwards visited England,
and, on his way through the streets of London, to his audience at court,
was attended "by four Barbary horses led along in rich caparisons, and
richer saddles, with bridles set with stones; also some hawks; _many of
the captives whom he brought over going along afoot clad in white_."[35]
[Footnote 34: Osborne's Voyages--Journal of the Sallee Fleet, vol. ii.
p. 493. See also Mrs. Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii. chap. 4,
p. 219.]
[Footnote 35: Strafford's Letter and Despatches, vol. ii. pp. 86, 116,
129.]
The importance attached to this achievement may be inferred from the
singular joy with which it was hailed in England. Though on a limited
scale, it had been a _war of liberation_. The poet, the ecclesiastic,
and the statesman now joined in congratulations on its results. It
inspired the muse of Waller to a poem called _The Taking of Sallee_, in
which the submission of the slaveholding enemy is thus described:--
Hither he sends the chief among his peers,
Who in his bark proportioned presents bears,
To the renowned for piety and force
_Poor captives manumised_, and matchless horse.
It satisfied Laud, and filled with exultation the dark mind of
Strafford. "Sallee, the town, is taken," said the Archbishop in a letter
to the latter, then in Ireland, "and all the captives at Sallee and
Morocco delivered; _as many, our merchants say, as, according to the
price of the markets, come to ten thousand pounds, at least_."[36]
Strafford saw in the popularity of this triumph a fresh opportunity to
commend the tyrannical designs of his master, Charles the First. "This
action of Sallee," he wrote in reply to the Archbishop, "I assure you is
full of honor, and should, methinks, _help much towards the ready
cheerful payment of the shipping moneys_."[37]
[Footnote 36: Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. ii. p. 131.]
[Footnote 37: Ibid. p. 138.]
[Illustration]
The coasts of England were now protected; but her subjects at sea
continued the prey of Algerine corsairs, who, according to the historian
Carte,[38] now "carried their English captives to France, _drove them in
chains overland to Marseilles, to ship them thence with greater safety
for slaves to Algiers_." The increasing troubles, which distracted and
finally cut short the reign of Charles the First, could not divert
attention from the sorrows of Englishmen, victims to Mohammedan slave
drivers. At the height of the struggles between the King and Parliament,
an earnest voice was raised in behalf of these fellow-Christians in
bonds.[39] Waller, who was orator as well as poet, exclaimed in
Parliament, "By the many petitions which we receive from the wives of
those miserable captives at Algiers, (being between four and five
thousand of our countrymen,) it does too evidently appear, that to make
us slaves at home is not the way to keep us from being made slaves
abroad." Publications pleading their cause, bearing date in 1640, 1642,
and 1647, are yet extant.[40] The overthrow of an oppression so justly
odious formed a worthy object for the imperial energies of Cromwell; and
in 1655,--when, amidst the amazement of Europe, the English sovereignty
had already settled upon his Atlantean shoulders,--he directed into the
Mediterranean a navy of thirty ships, under the command of Admiral
Blake. This was the most powerful English force which had sailed into
that sea since the Crusades.[41] Its success was complete. "General
Blake," said one of the foreign agents of government, "has ratifyed the
articles of peace at Argier, and included therein Scotch, Irish,
Jarnsey, and Garnsey-men, and all others the Protector's subjects. He
has lykewys redeemed from thence al such as wer captives ther. _Several
Dutch captives swam aboard the fleet, and so escape theyr
captivity._"[42] Tunis, as well as Algiers, was humbled; all British
captives were set at liberty; and the Protector, in his remarkable
speech at the opening of Parliament in the next year, announced peace
with the "profane" nations in that region.[43]
[Footnote 38: Carte's History of England, vol. iv. book xxii. p. 231.]
[Footnote 39: Waller's Works, p. 271.]
[Footnote 40: Compassion towards Captives, urged in Three Sermons, on
Heb. xiii. 3, by Charles Fitz-Geoffrey, 1642. Libertas; or Relief to the
English Captives in Algiers, by Henry Robinson, London, 1647. Letters
relating to the Redemption of the Captive in Algiers, at Tunis, by
Edward Cason Laud, 1647. A Relation of Seven Years' Slavery under the
Turks of Algiers, suffered by an English Captive Merchant, with a
Description of the Sufferings of the Miserable Captives under that
Mercilest Tyranny, by Francis Knight, London, 1640. The last publication
is preserved in the Collection of Voyages and Travels by Osborne, vol.
ii. pp. 465-489.]
[Footnote 41: Hume says, (vol. vii. p. 529, chap, lxi.,) "No English
fleet, except during the Crusades, _had ever before sailed in those
seas_." He forgot, or was not aware of the expedition of Sir John Mansel
already mentioned, (_ante_, p. 224,) which was elaborately debated in
the Privy Council as early as 1617, three years before it was finally
undertaken, and which was the subject of a special work. See Southey's
Naval History of England, vol. v. pp. 149-157.]
[Footnote 42: Thurloe's State Papers, vol. iii. p. 527.]
[Footnote 43: 2 Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Cromwell, vol. ii. p.
235, part ix. speech v.]
[Illustration]
To my mind no single circumstance gives a higher impression of the
vigilance with which the Protector guarded his subjects than this
effort, to which Waller, with the "smooth" line for which he is
memorable, aptly alludes, as
_telling dreadful news
To all that piracy and rapine use_.