CHAPTER XXIII. SOULOUQUE AS EMPEROR OF HAYTI.
General Riche, a griffe, or dark mulatto, was selected to fill the place left vacant by the flight of Boyer; and his ability, together with the universal confidence reposed in him by all classes, seemed to shadow forth a prosperous era for the republic. He had, however, done little more than enter upon his arduous duties, when he was carried off by a sudden malady, universally regretted by the entire population.
The Senate, whose duty it was to elect the president, gave a majority of their votes for Faustin Soulouque, on the first of March, 1847, and he was inaugurated into the position the same day.
Soulouque was a tall, good-natured, full-blooded negro, who, from the year 1804, when he was house-servant for General Lamarre, had passed through all the events of his country without leaving any trace of himself, whether good or bad. With no education, no ability, save that he was a great eater, he was the last man in the republic that would have been thought of for any office, except the one he filled.
True, in 1810, while his master, General Lamarre, was defending the Mole against Christophe, the former was killed, and Soulouque was charged to carry the general’s heart to Pétion, who made the servant a lieutenant in his mounted guard; and on Pétion’s death, he bequeathed him to Boyer, as a piece of furniture belonging to the presidential palace. Boyer made Soulouque first servant, under the title of “captain,” to his housekeeper. Here he grew fat, and was forgotten till 1843, when the revolution brought him into note. After serving a short time as president, his vanity induced Soulouque to aspire to be emperor, and that title was conferred upon him in the year 1849. In this silly step he took for his model Napoleon Bonaparte, according to whose court and camp Soulouque formed his own.
But the people of Hayti soon saw the sad mistake in the election of such a man to power, and his change of base aroused a secret feeling against the empire, which resulted in its overthrow, in 1859.
CHAPTER XXIV. GEFFRARD AS PRESIDENT OF HAYTI.
Fabre Geffrard was born at Cayes September 19, 1806. His father was General Nicholas Geffrard, one of the founders of Haytian independence. He became a soldier at the early age of fifteen, and after serving in the ranks, passed rapidly through several grades of promotion, until he obtained a captaincy. In 1843, when General Herard took up arms against President Boyer, he choose Geffrard for his lieutenant, who, by his skill and bravery, contributed largely to the success of the revolutionary army. As a reward for his valuable services, he received from the new government the brevet rank of general of brigade, and was commandant of Jacmel, and in 1845 he was named general of division. In 1849 he was appointed by Soulouque to take command of his Haytian army sent against the Dominicans, and in 1856 it fell to his lot, by the display of rare military talents, to repair in some measure the disasters attending the invasion of St. Domingo by the Haytian army, led by the emperor himself. Shortly after, Soulouque, moved thereto, doubtless, by jealousy of Geffrard’s well-earned fame, disgraced him; but the emperor paid dearly for this, for in December, 1858, Geffrard declared against him, and in January, 1859, Soulouque was overthrown, with his mock empire, and Geffrard proclaimed President of the Republic, which was restored.
He at once set himself vigorously to work to remedy the numerous evils which had grown up under the administration of his ignorant, narrow-minded, and cruel predecessor, and became exceedingly popular. He established numerous schools in all parts of the Republic, and gave every encouragement to agricultural and industrial enterprise generally. In 1861, he concluded a concordat with the Pope, creating Hayti an Archbishopric. Humane in his disposition, enlightened and liberal in his views, and a steady friend of progress, his rule, at one time, promised to be a long and prosperous one.
Geffrard was in color a griffe, and was fifty-two years of age when called to the presidency of Hayti. He was of middle height, slim in figure, of a pleasing countenance, sparkling eye, gray hair, limbs supple by bodily exercise, a splendid horseman, and liberal to the arts, even to extravagance. Possessing a polished education, he was gentlemanly in his conversation and manners. Soon after assuming the presidency, he resolved to encourage immigration, and issued an address to the colored Americans, which in point of sympathy and patriotic feeling for his race, has never been surpassed by any man living or dead.
It may be set down as a truism, that slavery, proscription, and oppression are poor schools in which to train independent, self-respecting freemen. Individuals so trained are apt to have all their aspirations, aims, ends, and objects in life on a level with the low, grovelling, and servile plane of a slavish and dependent mind; or if by chance that mind has grown restless under its fetters, and sighs for enfranchisement and liberty, it is apt to rush to the other extreme in its desires, and is led to covet those positions for which it has no proper qualifications whatever. The bent of the slavery-disciplined mind is either too low or too high. It cannot remain in equilibrium. It either cringes with all the dastard servility of the slave, or assumes the lordly airs of a cruel and imperious despot.
These things, therefore, being true of the victims of abject servitude, we have herein the key to the failure of the colored emigration to Hayti.
At the invitation of President Geffrard, in 1861, some of the colored citizens of the United States did accept the invitation and went out; but it would have been better for them and for Hayti had they remained at home. The majority of the emigrants ventured on the voyage to Hayti, because a free passage was given them by Geffrard; and the offer of the Haytian government to supply the emigrants with provisions until they could raise a crop, was a bait which these idlers could not withstand.
Men who had been failures in their own country, could scarcely be expected to meet with success by merely a trip across the sea.
What Hayti needed were men with stout hearts and hard hands, fitted for an agricultural life, determined upon developing the resources of the country. Men of the above type are to be found in our land, but they can easily make a living here, and have no cause to emigrate.
The liberal offer of the Haytian president to Americans and other blacks to come to the Island, and his general progressive efforts to elevate his people, were not appreciated by the Haytians, and the spirit of revolution which had so long governed the Island, soon began to manifest itself.
The several rebellions against the authority of President Geffrard, of Hayti, at length culminated in his overthrow and expulsion from the Island, and the elevation of his old enemy, Salnave, to the presidency. The rebellion, which was headed by Salnave, was begun in 1865. The rebels seized and held the town of Cape Haytian for several months, and were only finally driven out on its bombardment by the English man-of-war, Bull Dog, commanded by Captain Wake. Salnave was forced to leave Hayti and take refuge in St. Domingo. Captain Wake was called by the British government, and cashiered for his attack on Cape Haytian.
In his exile Salnave continued his efforts to revolutionize the country, and found many adherents, but few opportunities for an uprising. An attempt was made by his friends at Port au Prince on February 1, 1867; but Geffrard had been forewarned, and this attempt failed, and the ringleaders were captured and shot. The revolutionists did not despair, however, and on the night of February 22d a more successful effort was made; Geffrard was driven to seek safety in flight, and abdicating the presidency, went into exile in Jamaica. A Provisional Government was appointed, and Salnave, whom the people hailed as the “Garibaldi of Hayti,” and the “Deliverer of the People,” was appointed President on April 26, 1867. He however insisted that he would not accept the presidency except at the hands of the people. An election was therefore ordered and held. There were no rival candidates in the field, the other most distinguished participants in the revolution, Generals Nissage and Chevallier, conceding the presidential chair to Salnave with great good-will. He was unanimously elected, and on Sunday, May 12, was sworn into office.
CHAPTER XXV. SALNAVE AS PRESIDENT OF HAYTI.
President Salnave was a native of Cape Haytian, and was forty-one years of age when elevated to power. He was the son of French and Negro parents. He entered the army of Hayti in early youth, and was a major under Geffrard when the empire was overthrown. While holding the same commission under the Republic, Salnave projected the rebellion of 1865, and seized Cape Haytian, from which he was driven, as we have described. He was said to be a man of unusual intelligence, of progressive and liberal ideas, great energy of character, and brilliant results were expected from his administration.
However, obtaining supreme power by force, so common in Hayti, any one could see that Salnave’s government would be of short duration. The same influences as some of the men who aided him in driving out Geffrard, soon began secretly to work against the new president, and on the 18th of December, 1869, Salnave found himself shut up in his capital, and surrounded on all sides by his most bitter enemies. At last, on the 8th of January, 1870, the Haytian president sought safety in flight, but was captured by President Cabral, of Dominica, into whose government Salnave had taken refuge.
Delivered up to his own government by the Dominican president, Salnave was tried for high treason, condemned and shot. In personal appearance the defeated chief was a fine representative of the race. He was brown in complexion, hair black, soft, and wavy, education good, for the West Indies. Salnave was high-tempered, heedless, and even cruel. He was succeeded in the government of Hayti by General Nissage Saget, who seems to have the confidence of the people, and whom, it is hoped, he will have the power to unite.
CHAPTER XXVI. JAMAICA.
Jamaica, the chief of the British West India Islands, was discovered by Columbus on his second voyage, in May, 1494, and was taken from Spain by the English in May, 1655, during the reign of Oliver Cromwell. It thus became an appendage to the British crown, after it had been in the possession of Spain for one hundred and forty-six years. The number of slaves on the Island at this time was about fifteen hundred.
Morgan, a notorious pirate and buccaneer, was knighted and made governor of the Island in 1670. Lord Vaughan succeeded Morgan, and under his administration the African Company was formed, and the slave-trade legalized; Africans were imported in large numbers, and the development of the natural resources of Jamaica greatly increased the wealth of the planters.
The number of slaves annually imported into the Island amounted to sixteen thousand,[42] so that within thirty years the slave population had increased from ninety-nine thousand to upwards of two hundred thousand, whilst the total numerical strength of the whites did not exceed sixteen thousand.
From this time down to the year 1832, it presented a succession of wars, usurpations, crimes, misery, and vice; nor in this desert of human wretchedness is there one green spot on which the mind of a philanthropist would love to dwell; all is one revolting scene of infamy, bloodshed, and unmitigated woe; of insecure peace and open disturbance; of the abuse of power, and of the reaction of misery against oppression. In 1832 an insurrection of the slaves occurred, by which the lives of seven hundred slaves were sacrificed, and an expense, including property destroyed, of one hundred and sixty-two thousand pounds sterling.
The total importation of slaves from the conquest of the Island by the English to 1805, amounted to eight hundred and fifty thousand, and this added to forty thousand brought by the Spaniards, made an aggregate of eight hundred and ninety thousand, exclusive of all births, in three hundred years. The influence which the system of slavery spread over the community in Jamaica and the rest of the British West Indies, was not less demoralizing than in Hayti and the other islands.
Crimes which in European countries would have been considered and treated as a wanton insult to society at large, did not exclude the parties from the pale of respectable society, or generally operate to their disadvantage among the female portion of the community.
The reckless destroyers of female innocence and happiness united in the dance, mingled in public entertainments, and were admitted at the social board, and were on terms of intimacy with the younger branches of families.[43]
The intermediate colors between the whites[44] and pure blacks, were denominated as follows: A Sambo is the offspring of a mulatto woman by a black man; a mulatto is the child of a black woman and white man; a quadroon is the offspring of a mulatto by a white man, and a mestee is that of a quadroon woman by a white man. The offspring of a female mestee by a white man being above the third in lineal descent from the Negro ancestor, was white, in the estimation of the law, and enjoyed all the privileges and immunities of Her Majesty’s white subjects; but all the rest, whether mulattoes, quadroons, or mestees, were considered by the law as mulattoes or persons of color.
Although the people of Jamaica represented to the home government that the slaves were satisfied and happy, and would not accept their freedom were it offered them, a revolt of the blacks took place in 1832. More than fifty thousand were engaged in this effort to obtain the long-wished-for boon.
The man with whom the insurrection originated,—Samuel Sharp,—was a slave, and a member of the Baptist Church in Montego Bay. He was born in slavery, but he had never felt anything of the bitterness of slavery. He was born in a family that treated him indulgently; he was a pet, and was brought up as the playmate of the juvenile members of the family, and had opportunities of learning to read and for mental cultivation, to which very few of his fellow-slaves had access; and Sharp, above all this, was possessed of a mind worthy of any man, and of oratorical powers of no common order.
Sharp determined to free himself and his fellow-slaves. I do not know whether he was himself deceived, or whether he knowingly deceived his fellow-conspirators; but he persuaded a large number of them to believe that the British government had made them free, and that their owners were keeping them in slavery, in opposition to the wishes of the authorities in England. It so happened, that, just at that time, the planters themselves were pursuing a course which favored Sharp’s proceedings directly. They were holding meetings through the length and breadth of the Island, protesting against the interference of the home government with their property, passing very inflammatory resolutions, and threatening that they would transfer their allegiance to the United States, in order that they might perpetuate their interest in their slaves.
The insurrection was suppressed, and about two thousand of the slaves were put to death. This effort of the bondmen to free themselves, gave a new impetus to the agitation of the abolition movement, which had already begun under the auspices of Buxton, Allen, Brougham, and George Thompson, the successors of Clarkson, Wilberforce, Sharp, and Macaulay; and the work went bravely on. Elizabeth Heyrick, feeling that the emancipation of the slave could never be effected by gradual means, raised the cry of “Immediate emancipation.” She wrote: “Immediate emancipation is the object to be aimed at; it is more wise and rational, more politic and safe, as well as more just and humane, than gradual emancipation. The interests, moral and political, temporal and eternal, of all parties concerned, will be best promoted by immediate emancipation.”
The doctrine of immediate emancipation was taken up by the friends of the Negro everywhere, and Brougham, in Parliament, said:—
“Tell me not of rights; talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right; I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings, of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim.”
John Philpot Curran followed, in one of the finest speeches ever made in behalf of the rights of man. Said he,—
“I speak in the spirit of the British Law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil; which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion, incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.”
The name and labors of Granville Sharp have been overshadowed by those of other men, who reaped in the full, bright sunshine of success the harvest of popular admiration for the results of a philanthropic policy, of which Granville Sharp was the seed-sower. Zachary, Macaulay, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Buxton are regarded as the leaders of the great movement that emancipated the slaves of Great Britain. Burke and Wilkes are remembered as the enlightened advocates of the Independence of America; and these great names throw a shadow over the Clerk in the Ordnance, who, with high-souled integrity, resigned his place, and gave up a calling that was his only profession and livelihood, rather than serve a government that waged a fratricidal war, and who, in defiance of the opinions of the Solicitor and Attorney-General, and of the Lord Chief-Justice, opposed by all the lawyers, and forsaken even by his own professional advisers, undertook to search the indices of a law library, to wade through an immense mass of dry and repulsive literature, and to make extracts from all the most important Acts of Parliament as he went along; until, at the very time that slaves were being sold by auction in Liverpool and London, and when he could not find a single lawyer who agreed with his opinion, he boldly exclaimed, “God be thanked! there is nothing in any English law or statute that can justify the enslaving of others.”
Granville Sharp, in his boyhood a linen-draper’s apprentice, and afterwards a clerk in the Ordnance Department of England, one day, in the surgery of his brother, saw a negro named Jonathan Strong, lame, unable to work, almost blind, very ill, and turned adrift in the streets of London, by his master, a lawyer in Barbadoes. The assistance of Granville Sharp, and of his brother William, the surgeon, restored Jonathan Strong to health, and obtained for him a situation. Two years afterwards, the Barbadoes lawyer recognized his slave, strong, healthy, and valuable, serving as a footman behind a lady’s carriage, and he arrested the negro, and put him in prison, until there should be an opportunity to ship him for the West Indies.
Mr. Sharp appealed to the Lord Mayor, who, although he decided that he was incompetent to deal with the legal question of the black’s freedom, released Strong, because there was no offence charged against him.
And then—it was in 1767—now more than a hundred years ago—then began the protracted movement in England in favor of the slave. The master of Jonathan Strong immediately commenced an action against Granville Sharp, to recover possession of his negro, of whom he said he had been robbed: and Sharp drew up the result of his study of the question, in a plain, clear, and manly statement, which, after having been circulated some time in manuscript, was printed in 1769, and was headed, “On the injustice of tolerating slavery in England.”
It produced such an effect on the opinion of the public, that the lawyer abandoned his proceedings. Other cases soon tested the earnest philanthropy of the slaves’ friend. The wife of one Styles was seized and sent to Barbadoes. Sharp compelled the aggressor to bring the woman back. In 1776, Thomas Lewis was kidnapped and shipped for Jamaica. Sharp found him chained to the mainmast of a ship at Spithead, and by a writ of habeas corpus brought him before Lord Mansfield, the very judge whose opinion had been most strongly expressed in opposition to that entertained by Granville Sharp on the subject of slavery.
Lord Mansfield discharged the negro, because no evidence was adduced to show that he was ever nominally the property of the man who claimed him; but the great question of liberty or slavery remained as undecided as before. At this time the slave-trade was carried on openly in the streets of London, Bristol, and Liverpool.
Negro slavery was enforced by merchants, supported by lawyers, and upheld by judges; and that a clerk in a public office, without personal influence, and armed, only with integrity and moral courage, should, under such circumstances, assert, and, in the end, should prove, that the slave who sets his foot on British ground becomes at that instant free, is one of the most striking incidents in modern history.
An opportunity for bringing the conflicting opinions to an issue soon occurred. A negro named James Somerset had been taken to England and left there by his master, who afterwards wished to send him back to Jamaica. Sharp found counsel to defend the negro, and Lord Mansfield intimated that the case was one of such general concern, that he should take the opinions of all the judges upon it. The case was adjourned and readjourned, and was carried over from term to term; but at length Lord Mansfield declared the court to be clearly of opinion that “the claim of slavery never can be supported in England; that the power claimed never was in use in England nor acknowledged by law; and that, therefore, the man James Somerset, must be discharged.” By this judgment, the slave-trade in England was effectually abolished.
History affords no nobler picture than that of Granville Sharp. Standing alone, opposed to the opinions of the ablest lawyers, and the most rooted prejudices and customs of the times; fighting unassisted the most memorable battle for the constitution of his country, and for the liberties of British subjects, and by his single exertions gaining a most memorable victory.
On the 1st of August, 1838, eight hundred thousand African bondmen were made fully and unconditionally free; an act of legislation the most magnanimous and sublime in the annals of British history. Although the enemies of emancipation had predicted that murder and pillage would follow such an act, the conduct of the freed people was everything that the most ardent friends of the Negro could wish.
On the evening of the day preceding that which witnessed the actual bestowment of the inestimable boon on the apprentices of Jamaica, the towns and missionary stations throughout the Island were crowded with people especially interested in the event, and who, filling the different places of worship, remained in some instances performing different acts of devotion until the day of liberty dawned, when they saluted it with the most joyous acclamations. Others, before and after similar services, dispersed themselves in different directions throughout the town and villages, singing the national anthem and devotional hymns, occasionally rending the air with their acclamations of “Freedom’s come! We’re free, we’re free; our wives and our children are free!”
The conduct of the newly-emancipated peasantry everywhere, would have done credit to Christians of the most civilized country in the world. Their behavior was modest, unassuming, civil, and obliging to each other as members of one harmonious family.
Many of the original stock of slaves had been imported from amongst the Mandingoes, and Foulahs, from the banks of the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Rio Grande, the most refined and intellectual of the African tribes; and from the Congoes of Upper and Lower Guinea, the most inferior of the African race. The latter class brought with them all the vices and superstitions of their native land, and these had been cultivated in Jamaica.
The worst of these superstitious ideas was obeism, a species of witchcraft employed to revenge injuries, or as a protection against theft and murder, and in favor for gaining the love of the opposite sex. It consisted in placing a spell or charm near the cottage of the individual intended to be brought under its influence, or when designed to prevent the depredations of thieves, in some conspicuous part of the house, or on a tree; it was signified by a calabash or gourd, containing among other ingredients, a combination of different colored rags, cats’ teeth, parrots’ feathers, toads’ feet, egg-shells, fish-bones, snakes’ teeth, and lizards’ tails.[45]
Terror immediately seized upon the individual who beheld it, and either by resigning himself to despair, or by the secret communication of poison, in most cases death was the inevitable consequence. Similar to the influence of this superstition was that of their solemn curses pronounced upon thieves, but which would be too tedious to detail here. All of the Negro physicians of the olden times professed to have the gift of obeism, and were feared far more than they were loved.
Dreams and visions constituted fundamental articles of their religious creed. Some supernatural revelations were regarded as indispensable to qualify for admission to the full privileges of their community. Candidates were required, indeed, to dream a certain number of dreams before they were received to membership, the subjects of which were given them by their teachers.
The meetings of this fraternity were frequently prolonged through nearly half the night. The ministers enjoined on their followers the duty of fasting one or two days in the week, and encouraged a weekly meeting at each other’s houses, alternately, to drink “hot water” out of white tea-cups (the whole of the tea-table paraphernalia corresponding), which they designated by the absurd and inappropriate epithet of “breaking the peace.” To such a deplorable extent did they carry these superstitious practices, and such was the degree of ignorance on the part of both minister and people, that, in the absence of better information as to what was to be sung in their religious assemblies, they were in the habit of singing the childish story of “The house that Jack built.”
The missionaries, and especially the Baptists, who had been laboring against great disadvantages before the abolition of slavery, now that the curse was out of the way, did a noble work for the freed people. The erection of chapels all through the Island soon changed the moral and social condition of the blacks, as well as gave them a right idea of Christian duty.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] “Jamaica, Past and Present.” Phillippo.
[43] Phillippo.
[44] Phillippo.
[45] “Jamaica, Past and Present.” Phillippo.
CHAPTER XXVII. SOUTH AMERICA.
The Portuguese introduced slavery into Brazil about the year 1558, and the increase of that class of the population was as rapid as in any part of the newly discovered country. The treatment of the slaves did not differ from Jamaica, St. Domingo, and Cuba.
Brazil has given the death-blow to the wicked system which has been so long both her grievous burden and her foul disgrace. Henceforth, every child born in the empire is free, and in twenty years the chains will fall from the limbs of her last surviving slave. By this decree, nearly three million blacks are raised up from the dust; and though but few of this generation can hope to see the day of general emancipation, it is much for them to know that the curse which rested on the parents will no longer be transmitted to the children; it is something that the younger of them have a bright although distant future to look toward and to wait for. Very likely, too, the dying institution will not be suffered to linger out the whole of the existence which the new law accords to it; as the benefits of free labor to the whole country become appreciated fresh legislation may hasten the advent of national liberty and justice.
The first colonists enslaved the Indians; and, despite the futile measures of emancipation adopted by the Portuguese crown in 1570, in 1647, and in 1684, these unfortunate natives remained in servitude until 1755, and would perhaps have been held to this day, had they not proved very unprofitable. Negroes were accordingly imported from other Portuguese dominions, and a slave-trade with the African coast naturally sprang up, and is only just ended. Portugal bound herself by treaty with England, in 1815, to abolish the trade. Brazil renewed the obligation in her own name in 1826. Yet in 1839 it was estimated that eighty thousand blacks were imported every year; and, ten years later, the Minister of Foreign Affairs reported that the brutal traffic had only been reduced one-fourth. The energetic action of England, declaring in 1845 that Brazilian slave-ships should be amenable to English authorities, led to a long diplomatic contest, and threats of war; but it bore fruit in 1850 in a statute wherein Brazil assimilated the trade to piracy, and in 1852 the emperor declared it virtually extinct.
In the mean time, an opposition, not to the slave-trade alone, but to slavery, too, gradually strengthened itself within the empire. Manumission became frequent, and the laws made it very easy. A society was organized under the protection of the emperor, which, every year, in open church, solemnly liberated a number of slaves; and in 1856 the English Embassador wrote home that the government had communicated to him their resolution gradually to abolish slavery in every part of the empire. The grand step which they have now taken has no doubt been impelled by the example of our own country. It is one of the many precious fruits which have sprung, and are destined yet to spring, from the soil which we watered so freely with patriot blood.
Information generally, with regard to Brazil, is scanty, especially in connection with the blacks; but in all the walks of life, men of color are found in that country.
In the Brazilian army, many of the officers are mulattoes, and some of a very dark hue. The prejudice of color is not so prominent here, as in some other slaveholding countries.
CHAPTER XXVIII. CUBA AND PORTO RICO.
Cuba, the stronghold of Spain, in the western world, has labored under the disadvantages of slavery for more than three hundred years. The Lisbon merchants cared more for the great profits made from the slave-trade, than for the development of the rich resources of this, one of the most beautiful of the West India Islands, and therefore, they invested largely in that nefarious traffic. The increase of slaves, the demand for sugar and the products of the tropics, and the inducement which a race for wealth creates in the mind of man, rapidly built up the city of Havana, the capital of the Island. The colored population of Cuba, like the whites, have made but little impression on the world outside of their own southern home. There is, however, one exception in favor of the blacks. In the year 1830, there appeared in Havana a young colored man, whose mother had recently been brought from Africa. His name was Placido, and his blood was unmixed. Being with a comparatively kind master, he found time to learn to read, and began developing the genius which at a later period showed itself.
The young slave took an interest in poetry, and often wrote poems which were set to music and sung in the drawing-rooms of the most refined assemblies in the city. His young master, paying his addresses to a rich heiress, the slave was ordered to write a poem embodying the master’s passion for the young lady. Placido acquitted himself to the entire satisfaction of the lover, who copied the epistle in his own hand, and sent it on its mission. The slave’s compositions were so much admired that they found their way into the newspapers; but no one knew the negro as their author.
In 1838, these poems, together with a number which had never appeared in print, were entrusted to a white man, who sent them to England, where they were published and much praised for the talent and scholarly attainment which they evinced. A number of young whites, who were well acquainted with Placido, and appreciated his genius, resolved to purchase him, and present him his freedom, which was done in 1842.
But a new field had opened itself to the freed black, and he began to tread in its paths. Freedom for himself was only the beginning; he sighed to make others free.
The imaginative brain of the poet produced verses which the slaves sung in their own rude way, and which kindled in their hearts a more intense desire for liberty. Placido planned an insurrection of the slaves, in which he was to be their leader and deliverer; but the scheme failed.
After a hasty trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The fatal day came, he walked to the place of execution with as much calmness as if it had been to an ordinary resort of pleasure. His manly and heroic bearing excited the sympathy and admiration of all who saw him. As he arrived at the fatal spot, he began reciting the hymn, which he had written in his cell the previous night.
The free blacks in Cuba form an important element in her population, and these people are found in all the professions and trades. The first dentists are Blake and Coopat, mulattoes; the first musician, Joseito White, a mulatto; one of the best young ladies’ academies at present existing at Havana is personally conducted by an accomplished negro woman, Maria de Serra, to whom many a lady of high rank owes her social and intellectual accomplishments. The only Cuban who has distinguished herself as an actress on foreign stages is Dacoste, a mulatto; Covarrubias, the great comedian and lively writer, for many years the star of the Cuban stage, was also a mulatto; Francisco Manzano, the poet, was a negro slave.
The prompter of the theatre of St. John, of Porto Rico, is Bartolo Antique, a negro, so intelligent that the dramatic companies that come from Spain prefer him to their own prompters. The engineer of the only steamboat in Porto Rico is a colored man. The only artist worthy to be mentioned, in the same Island, is the religious painter, José Campeche, a mulatto. These are only a few known and acknowledged as colored, but should we search the sources of every family in Cuba and Porto Rico, we are sure that more or less, we could trace the African blood in the greatest number of our most illustrious citizens.
In Porto Rico, Dubois, a mulatto, paid the penalty of his head for his boldness and patriotism. There were in Cuba, in 1862, two hundred and twenty-one thousand four hundred and seventeen free colored people, and three hundred and sixty-eight thousand five hundred and fifty slaves. In Porto Rico, in the same year, there were two hundred and forty-one thousand and fifteen free colored people, and forty-one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six slaves.
When the English troops invaded the Island of Cuba, in 1762, the negroes behaved so well during the siege at Havana, that a large number of them received from Governor Prado’s hands, and in the name of the King, their letters of emancipation, in acknowledgment of their gallantry and good services.
CHAPTER XXIX. SANTO DOMINGO.
Although not strictly a Spanish possession, Santo Domingo may be counted in, with the people already enumerated in the West Indies. Its history is identical with that of Hayti. Forming a part of the same Island, and inhabited by blacks, mulattoes, and whites; and being part of the battle-ground upon which the negroes fought the French, in the revolution which freed the Island from its former masters. Santo Domingo has passed through all the scenes of blood and desolation, only in a milder form, that their neighbors of the other end of the Island have experienced. Santo Domingo has been under Spanish, French, and Haytian rule, and often a republic of her own, the latter of which she now enjoys.
It was during the government of Boyer that the Spanish or Dominican part of the Island was united with the French part. In relation to this matter, gross misrepresentations have been made;—it has been urged in defence of the Dominican claim to an independent government, an independence based upon nullification, that they were beaten down, trampled upon, and almost crushed before they would unite with a nation of blacks.
The facts are these: at the time of Boyer’s election, the Spanish part of the Island was independent, but its situation was most precarious; the war between Spain and her revolted provinces in South America was at its height, and the Columbian privateers which thronged the Caribbean sea were continually plundering the people along the shores of the Spanish coast; moreover, there were many persons in that division of the Island who were inclined to favor a union with the patriots of South America, but by far the largest number opposed this suggestion.
Such was the state of things at the commencement of Boyer’s administration. After maturely reflecting upon the difficulties by which they were surrounded, the feeble government of the Spanish part sought protection in a union with the Haytians, and Boyer was formally solicited by them to grant his consent to the annexation of the Eastern part. This request was complied with, and the Eastern region became a part and parcel of that republic.
Thus it is seen that the Dominicans adopted the Haytian government, not only voluntarily, but joyfully.
At the close of Boyer’s administration the Dominicans separated from the Haytians, and formed a republic, since which time the latter has made war upon the former, whenever an opportunity presented itself, and which has been the great cause of the poverty and want of development of both sections of the Island.
Herard, who succeeded Boyer in the government of Hayti, and who was president when the Dominicans seceded, was himself a mulatto, and there appeared to be no cause of difficulty, but the people of Santo Domingo wanted the change.
The Dominicans enjoyed a better state of civilization than their neighbors, and if let alone, would soon outstrip Hayti in everything pertaining to free and independent government.
But the Dominicans have to keep a large standing army, which takes most of their young men, and are always in an unsettled state, which greatly hinders the commercial and agricultural growth of the country.
Both Hayti and Santo Domingo will doubtless, at no distant day, fall into the hands of some more civilized nation or nations, for both are on the decline, especially as regards self-defence. Both are to-day at the mercy of nearly all other nations, and some day the “Doctor” will go in to look after the “Sick man.”
CHAPTER XXX. INTRODUCTION OF BLACKS INTO THE AMERICAN COLONIES.
Simultaneously with the landing of the Pilgrims from the Mayflower, on Plymouth Rock, December 22d, 1620, a clumsy-looking brig, old and dirty, with paint nearly obliterated from every part, slowly sailed up the James River, and landed at Jamestown. The short, stout, fleshy appearance of the men in charge of the vessel, and the five empty sour-crout barrels which lay on deck, told plainly in what country the navigators belonged.
Even at that early day they had with them their “native beverage,” which, though not like the lager of the present time, was a drink over which they smoked and talked of “Farderland,” and traded for the negroes they brought. The settlers of Jamestown, and indeed, all Virginia at that time, were mainly cavaliers, gentlemen-adventurers, aspiring to live by their wits and other men’s labor. Few of the pioneers cherished any earnest liking for downright persistent muscular exertion, yet some exertion was urgently required to clear away the heavy forest which all but covered the soil of the infant colony, and to grow the tobacco which easily became the staple export by means of which nearly everything required by its people but food was to be paid for in England.
The landing of the twenty slaves from the Dutch brig was the signal for all sorts of adventurers to embark in the same nefarious traffic. Worn-out and unseaworthy European ships, brigs, barks, schooners, and indeed, everything else that could float, no matter how unsafe, were brought into requisition to supply the demand for means of transportation in the new commerce.
Thousands of persons incarcerated in the prisons of the old world were liberated upon condition that they would man these slave-trading vessels. The discharged convicts were used in the slave factories on the African coast, and even the marauding expeditions sent out from the slave ships in search of victims were mainly made up of this vile off-cast and scum of the prison population of England, France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. So great was the increase of this traffic, that in a short time the importation in a single year amounted to forty thousand slaves.
The immense growth of the slave population in the Southern States, soon caused politicians to take sides for or against the institution. This, however, did not manifest itself to any very great extent, until the struggle for National Independence was over, and the people, North and South, began to look at their interests connected with each section of the country.
At the time that the Declaration of Independence was put forth, no authentic enumeration had been made; but when the first census was taken in 1791, the total number of slaves in what are now known as the Northern States, was forty thousand three hundred and seventy; in the Southern, six hundred and fifty-three thousand nine hundred and ten.
It is very common at this day to speak of our revolutionary struggle as commenced and hurried forward by a union of free and slave colonies; but such is not the fact. However slender and dubious its legal basis, slavery existed in each and all of the colonies that united to declare and maintain their Independence. Slaves were proportionately more numerous in certain portions of the South; but they were held with impunity throughout the North, advertised like dogs or horses, and sold at auction, or otherwise, as chattels. Vermont, then a territory in dispute between New Hampshire and New York, and with very few civilized inhabitants, mainly on its southern and eastern borders, is probably the only portion of the revolutionary confederation never polluted by the tread of a slave.
The spirit of liberty, aroused or intensified by the protracted struggle of the colonists against usurped and abused power in the mother-country, soon found itself engaged in natural antagonism against the current form of domestic despotism.
“How shall we complain of arbitrary or unlimited power exerted over us, while we exert a still more despotic and inexcusable power over a dependent and benighted race?” was very fairly asked. Several suits were brought in Massachusetts—where the fires of liberty burned earliest and brightest—to test the legal right of slaveholding; and the leading Whigs gave their money and their legal services to support these actions, which were generally on one ground or another, successful. Efforts for an express law of emancipation, however, failed, even in Massachusetts; the Legislature doubtless apprehended that such a measure, by alienating the slaveholders, would increase the number and power of the Tories; but in 1777, a privateer having brought a lot of captured slaves into Jamaica, and advertised them for sale, the General Court, as the legislative assembly was called, interfered, and had them set at liberty. The first Continental Congress which resolved to resist the usurpations and oppressions of Great Britain by force, had already declared that our struggle would be “for the cause of human nature,” which the Congress of 1776, under the lead of Thomas Jefferson, expanded into the noble affirmation of the right of “all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” contained in the immortal preamble to the Declaration of Independence. A like averment that “all men are born free and equal,” was in 1780 inserted in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights; and the Supreme Court of that State, in 1783, on an indictment of a master for assault and battery, held this declaration a bar to slave-holding henceforth in the State.
A similar clause in the second Constitution of New Hampshire, was held by the courts of that State to secure freedom to every child born therein after its adoption. Pennsylvania, in 1780, passed an act prohibiting the further introduction of slaves, and securing freedom to all persons born in that State thereafter. Connecticut and Rhode Island passed similar acts in 1784. Virginia, in 1778, on motion of Mr. Jefferson, prohibited the further importation of slaves; and in 1782, removed all legal restrictions on emancipation. Maryland adopted both of these in 1783. North Carolina, in 1786, declared the introduction of slaves into the State “of evil consequences and highly impolitic,” and imposed a duty of £5 per head thereon. New York and New Jersey followed the example of Virginia and Maryland, including the domestic in the same interdict with the foreign slave-trade. Neither of these states, however, declared a general emancipation until many years thereafter, and slavery did not wholly cease in New York until about 1830, nor in New Jersey till a much later date. The distinction of free and slave states, with the kindred assumption of a natural antagonism between the North and South, was utterly unknown to the men of the Revolution.
CHAPTER XXXI. SLAVES IN THE NORTHERN COLONIES.
The earliest account we have of slavery in Massachusetts is recorded in Josselyn’s description of his first visit to New England, in 1638. Even at that time, slave-raising on a small scale had an existence at the North. Josselyn says: “Mr. Maverick had a negro woman from whom he was desirous of having a breed of slaves; he therefore ordered his young negro man to sleep with her. The man obeyed his master so far as to go to bed, when the young woman kicked him out.”[46] This seems to have been the first case of an insurrection in the colonies, and commenced, too, by a woman. Probably this fact has escaped the notice of the modern advocates of “Woman’s Rights.” The public sentiment of the early Christians upon the question of slavery can be seen by the following form of ceremony, which was used at the marriage of slaves.
This was prepared and used by the Rev. Samuel Phillips, of Andover, whose ministry there, beginning in 1710, and ending with his death, in 1771, was a prolonged and eminently distinguished service of more than half the eighteenth century:—
“You, Bob, do now, in ye Presence of God and these Witnesses, Take Sally to be your wife;
“Promising, that so far as shall be consistent with ye Relation which you now Sustain as a servant, you will Perform ye Part of an Husband towards her: And in particular, as you shall have ye Opportunity & Ability, you will take proper Care of her in Sickness and Health, in Prosperity & Adversity;
“And that you will be True & Faithfull to her, and will Cleave to her only, so long as God, in his Providence, shall continue your and her abode in Such Place (or Places) as that you can conveniently come together. —— —— Do You thus Promise?
“You, Sally, do now, in ye Presence of God, and these Witnesses, Take Bob to be your Husband;
“Promising, that so far as your present Relation as a Servant shall admit, you will Perform the Part of a Wife towards him: and in particular,
“You Promise that you will Love him; And that as you shall have the Opportunity & Ability, you will take a proper Care of him in Sickness and Health; in Prosperity and Adversity:
“And you will cleave to him only, so long as God, in his Providence, shall continue his & your Abode in such Place (or Places) as that you can come together. —— —— Do you thus Promise? I then, agreeable to your Request, and with ye Consent of your Masters & Mistresses, do Declare that you have License given you to be conversant and familiar together as Husband and Wife, so long as God shall continue your Places of Abode as aforesaid; And so long as you Shall behave yourselves as it becometh servants to doe:
“For you must both of you bear in mind that you remain still, as really and truly as ever, your Master’s Property, and therefore it will be justly expected, both by God and Man, that you behave and conduct yourselves as Obedient and faithfull Servants towards your respective Masters & Mistresses for the Time being:
“And finally, I exhort and Charge you to beware lest you give place to the Devel, so as to take occasion from the license now given you, to be lifted up with Pride, and thereby fall under the Displeasure, not of Man only, but of God also; for it is written, that God resisteth the Proud but giveth Grace to the humble.
“I shall now conclude with Prayer for you, that you may become good Christians, and that you may be enabled to conduct as such; and in particular, that you may have Grace to behave suitably towards each Other, as also dutifully towards your Masters & Mistresses, Not with Eye Service as Men pleasers, ye Servants of Christ doing ye Will of God from ye heart, &c.
“[Endorsed]
“Negro Marriage.”
We have given the above form of marriage, verbatim et literatim.
In 1641, the Massachusetts Colony passed the following law:—
“There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage, or captivitie amongst us unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages, which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require. This exempts none from servitude, who shall be judged thereto by authority.”
In 1646, one James Smith, a member of a Boston church, brought home two negroes from the coast of Guinea, and had been the means of killing near a hundred more. In consequence of this conduct, the General Court passed the following order:—
“The General Court conceiving themselves bound by the first opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress for what is passed, and such a law for the future as may sufficiently deter all others belonging to us to have to do in such vile and odious courses, justly abhorred of all good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter with others unlawfully taken, be by the first opportunity at the charge of the country for the present, sent to his native country (Guinea) and a letter with him of the indignation of the Court thereabouts, and justice thereof desiring our honored Governor would please put this order in execution.”
From this time till about 1700, the number of slaves imported into Massachusetts was not large. In 1680, Governor Simon Bradstreet, in answer to inquiries from “the lords of his Majesty’s privy council,” thus writes:—
“There hath been no company of blacks or slaves brought into the country since the beginning of this plantation, for the space of fifty yeares, only one small vessell about two yeares since after twenty months’ voyage to Madagascar brought hither betwixt forty and fifty negroes, most women and children, sold for £10, £15, and £20 apiece, which stood the merchants in near £40 apiece one with another: now and then two or three negroes are brought hither from Barbadoes and other of His Majesty’s plantations, and sold here for about £20 apiece, so that there may bee within our government about one hundred, or one hundred and twenty, and it may bee as many Scots brought hither and sold for servants in the time of the war with Scotland, and most now married and living here, and about halfe so many Irish brought hither at several times as servants.”
The number of slaves at this period in the middle and southern colonies is not easily ascertained, as few books, and no newspapers were published in North America prior to 1704. In that year, the “Weekly News Letter” was commenced, and in the same year the “Society for the propagation of the Gospels in foreign parts opened a catechising school for the slaves at New York, in which city there were then computed to be about fifteen hundred Negro and Indian slaves,” a sufficient number to furnish materials for the “irrepressible conflict,” which had long before begun. The catechist, whom the Society employed, was “Mr. Elias Neau, by nation a Frenchman, who having made a confession of the Protestant religion in France, for which he had been confined several years in prison, and seven years in the galleys.” Mr. Neau entered upon his office “with great diligence, and his labors were very successful; but the negroes were much discouraged from embracing the Christian religion upon the account of the very little regard showed them in any religious respect. Their marriages were performed by mutual consent only, without the blessing of the church; they were buried by those of their own country and complexion, in the common field, without any Christian office; perhaps some ridiculous heathen rites were performed at the grave by some of their own people. No notice was given of their being sick, that they might be visited; on the contrary, frequent discourses were made in conversation that they had no souls, and perished as the beasts, and that they grew worse by being taught and made Christians.”[47]
From this time forward, the increase of slaves was very rapid in Virginia and South Carolina, and with this increase, discontent began to show itself amongst the blacks.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] John Josselyn.
[47] Joshua Coffin
CHAPTER XXXII. COLORED INSURRECTIONS IN THE COLONIES.
The first serious effort at rebellion by the slaves in the colonies, occurred in New York, in 1712; where, if it had not been for the timely aid from the garrison, the city would have been reduced to ashes. The next insurrection took place in South Carolina, in 1720, where the blacks in considerable numbers attacked the whites in their houses and in the streets.
Forces were immediately raised and sent after them, twenty-three of whom were taken, six convicted, three executed, and three escaped.
In October, 1722, about two hundred negroes near the mouth of the Rappahannock River, Virginia, got together in a body, armed with the intent to kill the people in church, but were discovered, and fled.
On the 13th of April, 1723, Governor Dummer issued a proclamation with the following preamble, viz:—
“Whereas, within some short time past, many fires have broke out within the town of Boston, and divers buildings have thereby been consumed: which fires have been designedly and industriously kindled by some villainous and desperate negroes, or other dissolute people, as appears by the confession of some of them (who have been examined by the authority), and many concurring circumstances; and it being vehemently suspected that they have entered into a combination to burn and destroy the town, I have therefore thought fit, with the advice of his Majesty’s council, to issue forth this proclamation,” etc.
On the 18th of April, 1723, Rev. Joseph Sewall preached a discourse, particularly occasioned “by the late fires yt have broke out in Boston, supposed to be purposely set by ye negroes.”
On the next day, April 19th, the Selectmen of Boston made a report to the town on the subject, consisting of nineteen articles, of which the following is No. 9:—
“That if more than two Indians, Negro or Mulatto Servants or Slaves be found in the Streets or Highways in or about the Town, idling or lurking together unless in the service of their Master or Employer, every one so found shall be punished at the House of Correction.”
So great at that time were the alarm and danger in Boston, occasioned by the slaves, that in addition to the common watch, a military force was not only kept up, but at the breaking out of every fire, a part of the militia were ordered out under arms to keep the slaves in order!!
In 1728, an insurrection of slaves occurred in Savannah, Georgia, who were fired on twice before they fled. They had formed a plot to destroy all the whites, and nothing prevented them but a disagreement about the mode. At that time, the population consisted of three thousand whites and two thousand seven hundred blacks.
In August, 1730, an insurrection of blacks occurred in Williamsburgh, Virginia, occasioned by a report, on Colonel Spotswood’s arrival, that he had directions from His Majesty to free all baptized persons. The negroes improved this to a great height. Five counties were in arms pursuing them, with orders to kill them if they did not submit.
In August, 1730, the slaves in South Carolina conspired to destroy all the whites. This was the first open rebellion in that State where the negroes were actually armed and embodied, and took place on the Sabbath.
In the same month, a negro man plundered and burned a house in Malden (Mass.,) and gave this reason for his conduct, that his master had sold him to a man in Salem, whom he did not like.
In 1731, Captain George Scott, of Rhode Island, was returning from Guinea with a cargo of slaves, who rose upon the ship, murdered three of the crew, all of whom soon after died, except the captain and boy.
In 1732, Captain John Major, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was murdered, with all his crew, and the schooner and cargo seized by the slaves.
In 1741, there was a formidable insurrection among the slaves in New York. At that time the population consisted of twelve thousand whites, and two thousand blacks. Of the conspirators, thirteen were burned alive, eighteen hung, and eighty transported.
Those who were transported were sent to the West India islands. As a specimen of the persons who were suitable for transportation, I give the following from the “Boston Gazette,” Aug. 17, 1761:—
“To be sold, a parcel of likely young Negroes, imported from Africa, cheap for cash. Inquire of John Avery. Also, if any person have any negro men, strong and hearty, though not of the best moral character, which are proper subjects of transportation, they may have an exchange for small negroes.”
In 1747, the slaves on board of a Rhode Island ship commanded by Captain Beers, rose, when off Cape Coast Castle, and murdered the captain and all the crew, except the two mates, who swam ashore.
In 1754, C. Croft, Esq., of Charleston, South Carolina, had his buildings burned by his female negroes, two of whom were burned alive!!
In September, 1755, Mark and Phillis, slaves, were put to death at Cambridge (Mass.,) for poisoning their master, Mr. John Codman of Charlestown. Mark was hanged, and Phillis burned alive. Having ascertained that their master had, by his will, made them free at his death, they poisoned him in order to obtain their liberty so much the sooner.
In the year 1800, the city of Richmond, Virginia, and indeed the whole slave-holding country were thrown into a state of intense excitement, consternation and alarm, by the discovery of an intended insurrection among the slaves. The plot was laid by a slave named Gabriel, who was claimed as the property of Mr. Thomas Prosser. A full and true account of this General Gabriel, and of the proceedings consequent on the discovery of the plot, has never yet been published. In 1831, a short account which is false in almost every particular, appeared in the Albany “Evening Journal,” under the head of “Gabriel’s Defeat.”
The following is the copy of a letter dated September 21, 1800, written by a gentleman of Richmond, Virginia, published in the “Boston Gazette,” October 6th:—
“By this time, you have no doubt heard of the conspiracy formed in this country by the negroes, which, but for the interposition of Providence, would have put the metropolis of the State, and even the State itself, into their possession. A dreadful storm, with a deluge of rain, which carried away the bridges, and rendered the water-courses everywhere impassable, prevented the execution of their plot. It was extensive and vast in its design. Nothing could have been better contrived. The conspirators were to have seized on the magazine, the treasury, the mills, and the bridges across James River. They were to have entered the city of Richmond in three places with fire and sword, to commence an indiscriminate slaughter, the French only excepted. They were then to have called on their fellow-negroes and the friends of humanity throughout the continent, by proclamation, to rally round their standard. The magazine, which was defenceless, would have supplied them with arms for many thousand men.
“The treasury would have given them money, the mills bread, and the bridges would have enabled them to let in their friends, and keep out their enemies. Never was there a more propitious season for the accomplishment of their purpose.
“The country is covered with rich harvests of Indian corn; flocks and herds are everywhere fat in the fields, and the liberty and equality doctrine, nonsensical and wicked as it is (in this land of tyrants and slaves), is for electioneering purposes sounding and resounding through our valleys and mountains in every direction. The city of Richmond and the circumjacent country are in arms, and have been so for ten or twelve days past. The patrollers are doubled through the State, and the Governor, impressed with the magnitude of the danger, has appointed for himself three aids-de-camp. A number of conspirators have been hung, and a great many more are yet to be hung. The trials and executions are going on day by day. Poor, deluded wretches! Their democratic deluders, conscious of their own guilt, and fearful of the public vengeance, are most active in bringing them to punishment.”