Part 8 (2/2)
”Cattle are fixed capital, and so are slaves: But slaves differ from cattle on the one hand, in yielding (from internal opposition) a less return for their maintenance; and from free laborers on the other hand, in not being acted upon by the inducements which stimulate production as an effort of mind as well as of body. In all three cases the labor is purchased. In free laborers and cattle, all the faculties work together, and to advantage; in the slave they are opposed; and therefore he is, so far as the amount of labor is concerned, the least valuable of the three. The negroes _can_ invent and improve--witness their ingenuity in their dwellings, and their skill in certain of their sports; but their masters will never possess their faculties, though they have purchased their limbs. Our true policy would be to divide the work of the slave between the ox and the hired laborer; we should get more out of the sinews of the one and the soul of the other, than the produce of double the number of slaves.”
As a matter of humanity, let it be remembered that men having more _reason_ than brutes, must be treated with much greater severity, in order to keep them in a state of abject submission.
It seems unnecessary to say that what is unjust and unmerciful, can never be expedient; yet men often write, talk, and act, as if they either forgot this truth, or doubted it. There is genuine wisdom in the following remark, extracted from the pet.i.tion of Cambridge University to the Parliament of England, on the subject of slavery: ”A firm belief in the Providence of a benevolent Creator a.s.sures us that no system, founded on the oppression of one part of mankind, _can_ be beneficial to another.”
But the tolerator of slavery will say, ”No doubt the system is an evil; but we are not to blame for it; we received it from our English ancestors. It is a lamentable _necessity_;--we cannot do it away if we would:--insurrections would be the inevitable result of any attempt to remove it”--and having quieted their consciences by the use of the word _lamentable_, they think no more upon the subject.
These a.s.sertions have been so often, and so dogmatically repeated, that many truly kind-hearted people have believed there was some truth in them. I myself, (may G.o.d forgive me for it!) have often, in thoughtless ignorance, made the same remarks.
An impartial and careful examination has led me to the conviction that slavery causes insurrections, while emanc.i.p.ation prevents them.
The grand argument of the slaveholder is that sudden freedom occasioned the horrible ma.s.sacres of St. Domingo.--If a word is said in favor of abolition, he shakes his head, and points a warning finger to St.
Domingo! But it is a remarkable fact that this same vilified island furnishes a strong argument _against_ the lamentable necessity of slavery. In the first place, there was a b.l.o.o.d.y civil war there before the act of emanc.i.p.ation was pa.s.sed; in the second place enfranchis.e.m.e.nt produced the most blessed effects: in the third place, no difficulties whatever arose, until Bonaparte made his atrocious attempt to _restore slavery_ in the island.
Colonel Malenfant, a slave proprietor, resident in St. Domingo at the time, thus describes the effect of sudden enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, in his Historical and Political Memoir of the Colonies:
”After this public act of emanc.i.p.ation, the negroes remained quiet both in the South and in the West, and they continued to work upon all the plantations. There were estates which had neither owners nor managers resident upon them, yet upon these estates, though abandoned, the negroes continued their labors where there were any, even inferior agents, to guide them; and on those estates where no white men were left to direct them, they betook themselves to the planting of provisions; but upon all the plantations where the whites resided, the blacks continued to labor as quietly as before.” Colonel Malenfant says, that when many of his neighbors, proprietors or managers, were in prison, the negroes of their plantations came to him to beg him to direct them in their work.
He adds, ”If you will take care not to talk to them of the restoration of slavery, but to talk to them of freedom, you may with this word chain them down to their labor. How did Toussaint succeed?--How did I succeed before his time in the plain of the Culde-Sae on the plantation Gouraud, during more than eight months after liberty had been granted to the slaves? Let those who knew me at that time, let the blacks themselves, be asked: they will all reply that not a single negro upon that plantation, consisting of more than four hundred and fifty laborers, refused to work: and yet this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline and the slaves the most idle of any in the plain. I inspired the same activity into three other plantations of which I had the management. If all the negroes had come from Africa within six months, if they had the love of independence that the Indians have, I should own that force must be employed; but ninety-nine out of a hundred of the blacks are aware that without labor they cannot procure the things that are necessary for them; that there is no other method of satisfying their wants and their tastes. They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so.”
Such was the conduct of the negroes for the first nine months after their liberation, or up to the middle of 1794. In the latter part of 1796, Malenfant says, ”the colony was flouris.h.i.+ng under Toussaint, the whites lived happily and in peace upon their estates, and the negroes continued to work for them.” General Lecroix, who published his ”Memoirs for a History of St. Domingo” in 1819, says, that in 1797 the most wonderful progress had been made in agriculture. ”The Colony,” says he, ”marched as by enchantment towards its ancient splendor: cultivation prospered; every day produced perceptible proof of its progress.”
General Vincent,[U] who was a general of brigade of artillery in St.
Domingo and a proprietor of estates in the island, was sent by Toussaint to Paris in 1801 to lay before the Directory the new const.i.tution which had been agreed upon in St. Domingo. He arrived in France just at the moment of the peace of Amiens, and found that Bonaparte was preparing an armament for the purpose of restoring slavery in St. Domingo. He remonstrated against the expedition; he stated that it was totally unnecessary and therefore criminal, for every thing was going on well in St. Domingo. The proprietors were in peaceable possession of their estates; cultivation was making rapid progress; the blacks were industrious and beyond example happy. He conjured him, therefore, not to reverse this beautiful state of things; but his efforts were ineffectual, and the expedition arrived upon the sh.o.r.es of St. Domingo.
At length, however, the French were driven from the island. Till that time the planters had retained their property, and then it was, and not till then, that they lost their all. In 1804, Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor; in process of time a great part of the black troops were disbanded, and returned to cultivation again. From that time to this, there has been no want of subordination or industry among them.”
[Footnote U: Clarkson's Thoughts, p. 2.]
The following account of Hayti at a later period is quoted from Mr.
Harvey's sketches of that island, during the latter part of the reign of Christophe:
”Those who by their exertions and economy were enabled to procure small spots of land of their own, or to hold the smaller plantations at an annual rent, were diligently engaged in cultivating coffee, sugar, and other articles, which they disposed of to the inhabitants of the adjacent towns and villages. It was an interesting sight to behold this cla.s.s of the Haytians, now in possession of their freedom, coming in groups to the market nearest which they resided, bringing the produce of their industry for sale; and afterwards returning, carrying back the necessary articles of living which the disposal of their commodities had enabled them to purchase; all evidently cheerful and happy. Nor could it fail to occur to the mind that their present condition furnished the most satisfactory answer to that objection to the general emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, founded on their alleged unfitness to value and improve the benefits of liberty.
”Though of the same race and possessing the same general traits of character as the negroes of the other West India islands, they are already distinguished from them by habits of industry and activity, such as slaves are seldom known to exhibit. As they would not suffer, so they do not require, the attendance of one acting in the capacity of a driver with the instrument of punishment in his hand.”
”In Guadaloupe, the conduct of the freed negroes was equally satisfactory. The perfect subordination which was established and the industry which prevailed there, are proved by the official Reports of the Governor of Guadaloupe, to the French government. In 1793 liberty was proclaimed universally to the slaves in that island, and during their ten years of freedom, their governors bore testimony to their regular industry and uninterrupted submission to the laws.”
”During the first American war, a number of slaves ran away from their North American masters and joined the British army. When peace came, it was determined to give them their liberty, and to settle them in Nova Scotia, upon grants of land, as British subjects and as free men. Their number, comprehending men, women and children, was two thousand and upwards. Some of them worked upon little portions of land as their own; others worked as carpenters; others became fishermen; and others worked for hire in various ways. In time, having embraced Christianity, they raised places of wors.h.i.+p of their own, and had ministers of their own from their own body. They led a harmless life, and gained the character of an industrious and honest people from their white neighbors. A few years afterwards, the land in Nova Scotia being found too poor to answer, and the climate too cold for their const.i.tutions, a number of them to the amount of between thirteen and fourteen hundred, volunteered to form a new colony which was then first thought of at Sierra Leone, to which place they were accordingly conveyed. Many hundreds of the negroes who had formed the West Indian black regiments were removed in 1819 to Sierra Leone, where they were set at liberty at once, and founded the villages of Waterloo, Hastings, and others. Several hundred maroons, (runaway slaves and their descendants,) being exiled from Jamaica, were removed in 1801 to Sierra Leone, where they were landed with no other property than the clothes which they wore and the muskets which they carried in their hands. A body of revolted slaves were banished from Barbadoes in 1816, and sent also to Sierra Leone. The rest of the population of this colony consists almost entirely of negroes who have been recaptured from slave s.h.i.+ps, and brought to Sierra Leone in the lowest state of misery, debility and degradation: naked, diseased, dest.i.tute, wholly ignorant of the English language, in this wretched, helpless condition, they have been suddenly made free, and put into possession at once of the rights and privileges of British subjects.
All these instances of sudden emanc.i.p.ation have taken place in a colony where the disproportion between black and white is more than a hundred to one. Yet this mixed population of suddenly emanc.i.p.ated slaves--runaway slaves--criminal slaves--and degraded recaptured negroes, are in their free condition living in order, tranquillity and comfort, and many of them in affluence.”
”During the last American war, seven hundred and seventy-four slaves escaped from their masters, and were at the termination of the war settled in Trinidad as free laborers, where they are earning their own livelihood with industry and good conduct. The following extract of a letter, received in 1829 from Trinidad by Mr. Pownall, will show the usefulness and respectability of these liberated negroes. 'A field negro brings four hundred dollars, but most of the work is done by free blacks and people from the main at a much cheaper rate; and as these are generally employed by foreigners, this accounts for their succeeding better than our own countrymen, who are princ.i.p.ally from the old islands, and are unaccustomed to any other management than that of slaves; however, they are coming into it fast. In Trinidad, there are upwards of fifteen thousand free people of color; _there is not a single pauper amongst them_; they live independently and comfortably, and nearly half of the property of the island is said to be in their hands.
It is admitted that they are highly respectable in character, and are rapidly advancing in knowledge and refinement.' Mr. Mitch.e.l.l, a sugar planter who had resided twenty-seven years in Trinidad, and who is the superintendent of the liberated negroes there, says he knows of no instance of a manumitted slave not maintaining himself. In a paper printed by the House of Commons in 1827, (No. 479,) he says of the liberated blacks under his superintendence, that each of them possessed an allotment of land which he cultivated, and on which he raised provisions and other articles for himself and his family; his wife and children aiding him in the work. A great part, however, of the time of the men (the women attending to the domestic menage) was freely given to laboring on the neighboring plantations, on which they worked not in general by the day, but by the piece. Mr. Mitch.e.l.l says that their work is well executed, and that they can earn as much as four s.h.i.+llings a day. If, then, these men who have land on which they can support themselves are yet willing to work for hire, how is it possible to doubt that in case of general emanc.i.p.ation, the freed negroes who would have no land of their own would gladly work for wages?”
”A few years ago, about one hundred and fifty negro slaves, at different times, succeeded in making their escape from Kentucky into Canada.
Captain Stuart, who lived in Upper Canada from 1817 to 1822, was generally acquainted with them, and employed several of them in various ways. He found them as good and as trustworthy laborers, in every respect, as any emigrants from the islands, or from the United States, or as the natives of the country. In 1828, he again visited that country, and found that their numbers had increased by new refugees to about three hundred. They had purchased a tract of woodland, a few miles from Amherstburgh, and were settled on it, had formed a little village, had a minister of their own number, color, and choice, a good old man of some talent, with whom Captain Stuart was well acquainted, and though poor, were living soberly, honestly and industriously, and were peacefully and usefully getting their own living. In consequence of the Revolution in Colombia, all the slaves who joined the Colombian armies, amounting to a considerable number, were declared free. General Bolivar enfranchised his own slaves to the amount of between seven and eight hundred, and many proprietors followed his example. At that time Colombia was overrun by hostile armies, and the masters were often obliged to abandon their property. The black population (including Indians) amounted to nine hundred thousand persons. Of these, a large number was suddenly emanc.i.p.ated, and what has been the effect? Where the opportunities of insurrection have been so frequent, and so tempting, what has been the effect? M. Ravenga declares that the effect has been a _degree of docility on the part of the blacks, and a degree of security on the part of the whites_, unknown in any preceding period of the history of Colombia.”
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