Part 8 (1/2)
On his conviction of stealing Richard Atkinson's bull, William Hill asked for the book, and was respited, for Virginia.
The records teem with such cases. Yet these were not the only representatives of indented servants. In the course of the various successive political upheavals which shook England, it chanced that many gentlemen of good birth and breeding were driven over to the colonies, to begin life there at the foot of the ladder. After Monmouth's Rebellion several hundred citizens, some of eminent standing, were sent to Virginia.
”Take care,” wrote the king, ”that they continue to serve for ten years at least, and that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem themselves by money or otherwise, until that term be fully expired.” Despite the royal warning, these exiles were pardoned before the term was ended, and became most useful and valuable citizens.
Well had it been for the Cavalier colonies had they adhered to this system of apprentices.h.i.+p and indented service. Their children and their children's children might then have sung of ”the n.o.bility of labor, the long pedigree of toil.” But with the widespread introduction of negro slavery, came the degradation of labor. The negro represented a despised caste. He labored; therefore labor was contemptible. Henceforth there was established an aristocracy of ease and wealth, resting on a foundation of unpaid labor.
With the establishment of slavery there grew up a more marked distinction of cla.s.ses among the whites. A wide gulf separated rich and poor. Devereux Jarratt, son of a Virginia carpenter, writes in his autobiography: ”We were accustomed to look upon gentlefolks as beings of a superior order.
For my part, I was quite shy of them and kept off a humble distance. A periwig in those days was a distinguis.h.i.+ng badge of gentlefolk; and when I saw a man riding the road with a wig on, it would so alarm my fears, and give me such a disagreeable feeling, that I dare say I would run as for my life.”
Thus society became stratified: At the top, the great landholders, below them the small planters aping the manners and customs of their rich neighbors, and underneath, the population composed of poor whites and overseers. The negroes were no more part of the social system than the oxen they drove a-field.
It is a curious commentary on the Scriptural principle of turning the other cheek to the smiter, that the Indians, who resisted the encroachments of the whites and waved the tomahawk in response to the echo of the Englishman's gun, were feared and respected, while the blacks, who yielded meekly to the yoke of servitude, met at best only a good-natured contempt.
The masters' consciousness of the injustice of slavery made them fearful of revolt and revenge, which the slaves had neither skill nor energy to plan. The whole machinery of the law was directed to the suppression of this imaginary danger. All gatherings of slaves were strictly forbidden.
If found at a distance from the plantations, any negro was subject to lashes on the bare back. It was not counted a felony to kill a slave while punis.h.i.+ng him. Negroes, and indented servants as well, who attempted to escape were whipped and branded on the cheek with the letter R, and on a repet.i.tion of the offence they might be put to death. No punishment was too severe for this crime of running away, curiously denominated in the old statutes ”stealth of one's self.” Among the enormous offences set forth in a Maryland Act of 1638 I find, ”Harboring or clokeing of another's servant without the knowledge and consent of the Master or Mistress.”
In spite of all precautions, a slave did succeed, now and then, in gaining his freedom. It is with great satisfaction that I read an old Act of a.s.sembly, setting forth that ”Whereas a negro named Billy, slave to John Tillit, has for several years unlawfully absented himself from his master's service, said Billy is p.r.o.nounced an outlaw, and a bounty of a thousand pounds of tobacco set on his head.” The bounty does not trouble me, for I feel sure that the craft and strength which made Billy an outlaw, kept him safe from the bolts aimed against him by the colonial legislature.
The statute-books of Maryland and Virginia are records of the barbarity into which injustice may drive a kindly, liberty-loving people who are forced into cruelty by the logic of events. Having taken the wrong road, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, the Cavaliers found the rocks ready to fall on them if they went forward, and the gulf yawning behind them if they tried to turn back.
It must never be forgotten in their behalf that they did try to turn about, when they saw their error. Their best men, over and over again, urged the prohibiting of slavery, and there is more than a probability that they would have won their cause, but for the att.i.tude of that country whose air was afterward p.r.o.nounced too pure to be breathed by a slave insomuch that his shackles fell off, when he touched the sh.o.r.e sacred to liberty. Yet, in 1695, this highly moral and philanthropic England declared in a statute, the opinion of its king and Parliament, that the slave-trade was highly beneficial to the kingdom and colonies. In 1712, Queen Anne boasted in her speech to Parliament, of her success in securing to England a new market for slaves in Spanish America. Jefferson testified that Virginia was constantly balked in her efforts to throw off slavery by the att.i.tude of the home government. Carolina attempted restriction and gained a rebuke. In 1775, the Earl of Dartmouth haughtily replied to a colonial agent, ”We cannot allow the colonies to check, or discourage in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation.”
Yet all the blame cannot be thrown on England. Had the colonies been as firm in defence of their duties, as they were when their rights were in question, England must have yielded. Virginia was the first State to enunciate the proposition of the equality of man, yet was blind to her own inconsistency. The leading supporters of the cause of liberty were themselves slave-owners. George Was.h.i.+ngton owned negroes. John Randolph had a bunk for his slave side by side with the bed of his pet horse.
Patrick Henry wrote with admirable candor: ”Believe me, I shall honor the Quakers for their n.o.ble efforts to abolish slavery; they are equally calculated to promote moral and political good. Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not--I _can_ not--justify it.” The great Southern statesman said that he trembled for his country when he remembered that G.o.d was just. Was.h.i.+ngton deplored the system, yet so closely were all commercial and political interests interwoven with it that it seemed impossible to disentangle them. Even philanthropy did not scorn its alliance. Whitefield expended the money raised by his eloquent preaching at Charleston, on a plantation with slaves to work it for the benefit of an orphan asylum.
The Church spread its surplice of protection over the inst.i.tution. Baptism was permitted to the slave, but with the distinct understanding that it was to make no difference in the condition of bondage of these brothers in Christ. One South Carolina clergyman ventured to preach on the duties of masters to their servants, but his congregation said to him: ”Sir, we pay you a genteel salary to read to us the prayers of the liturgy and to explain to us such parts of the Gospel as the rule of the Church directs, but we do not want you to teach us what to do with our blacks.”
The Northern colonies were freed from the curse of slaveholding as much by policy as by principle. They tried slave-owning, but, happily for them, it did not pay. The climate and the conditions of their industries forbade its spread among them. But their hands were not unstained. If they did not buy slaves, they sold them. There still exists, if Bishop Meade may be trusted, a bill of sale of a slave, bearing the signature of Jonathan Edwards.
Every year s.h.i.+ps were fitted out from Medford, Salem, or New Bedford, which sailed away loaded with rum to be exchanged in Africa for negroes, who in turn were sold for mola.s.ses, to be made into rum again. The transactions of one of these slavers are preserved in the History of Medford, and makes interesting reading for those who would hold up the Puritan as innocent of the transgression which stains the character of the Cavalier. The deadly parallel column tells its story, so that he who runs may read:
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. The Natives of Annamboe.
Per Contra. Cr.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1770. Gals
1770 Gals
Apr. 22 Apr. 22. To 1 hh. of rum 110
By 1 Woman Slave 110
May 1.
May 1. ” ” ” 130
By 1 Prime Woman Slave. 130
May 2.
May 2. ” ” ” 105
By 1 Boy Slave 4 ft. 1 in. 105
May 7.
May 7. ” ” ” 130
By 1 Boy Slave 4 ft. 3 in. 108
May 5.
May 5. Cash in gold 5 oz. 2
1 Prime Man Slave 5 oz. 2