YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE

WRONG OF SLAVERY

THE RIGHT OF EMANCIPATION

THE FUTURE OF THE AFRICAN RACE
IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY
EOBEET DALE OWEN.

" Over the entire aurface of the globe the races who compel others to labor.
without laboring themselves, fall to decay." — Cochin.

PHILADELPHIA :
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1864.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the TJnited States for the l^astern
District of Pennsylvania.

PREFACl:.

It is little more^-than three years since the first in
surgent gun was fired against Fort Sumter : three
years, as we reckon time ; a generation, if we calculate
by the stirring events and far-reaching upheavals that
have been crowded into the eventful months.
Things move fast in days like these. "War changes
the legal relations of the combatants. "War," in its pro
gress, presents unlooked-for aspects of affairs, brings
upon us necessities, opens up obligations. The rebel
lion — creator and teacher as well as scourge and de
stroyer — confers new rights, discharges from old bonds,
imposes bounden duties.
Great questions come to the surface, — questions of
national policy, demanding solution. In deciding some
of these, we find little aid from precedent; for our
condition as a nation is, to a certain extent, unprece
dented. "We have been trying an experiment that never was
tried in the world before. "We have been trying to
maintain a democratic government over thirty mil
lions of people, of whom twenty millions existed under
one system, industrial and social, ten millions under

4 PREFACE.
another. The twenty millions, chiefly of one race, car
ried out among themselves a Declaration made eighty-
eight years ago touching the equal creation and the
inalienable rights of man. The ten millions consisted,
in nearly equal portions, of two races, — one the de
scendants of voluntary emigrants who came hither
seeking freedom and happiness in a foreign land; the
other deriving their blood from ancestors against
whom was perpetrated a terrible wrong, who came in
chains and were sold as chattels. From these forced
emigrants and their descendants were taken away
almost all human rights, the right of life and of per
petuating a race of bondsmen excepted. Laws denied
to them the rights of property, of marriage, of family,
of education, of self-defence. The master-race sought
to live by their labor.
The experiment we have been trying for more than
three-quarters of a century was, whether, over social
and industrial elements thus discordant, a republican
government, asserting freedom in thought, in speech,
in action, can be peacefully maintained.
Grave doubts, gloomy apprehensions, touching the
nation's Future, have clouded the hopes of our wisest
public men in days past. Even the statesmen of the
Eevolution saw on the horizon the cloud no bigger
than a man's hand. Gradually it rose and spread and
darkened. The tempest burst upon us at last.
Then some, faint-hearted and despairing of the Ee
public, prophesied that the good old days were gone
never to return. Others, stronger in hope and faith

PREFACE. 5
recognized, through the gloom, the correcting and re
forming hand of God. They acknowledged that the
experiment had failed; but they confessed also that it
ought never to have succeeded. In adversity men
look into their hearts, there to read lessons which
prosperity had failed to teach them.
The experiment ought never to have succeeded, be
cause it involved a grievous offence against Humanity
and Civilization. In peace, before the act of slave
holders made them public enemies, we scrupled to look
this offence in the face, seeing no remedy. But war,
which has its mission, opened our eyes and released
our hands. Times disturbed and revolutionary bring
their good as well as their evil. In sueh times abuses
ripen rapidly; their consequences mature, their ulti
mate results become apparent. We are reminded of
their transitory character. "We are reminded that,
although for the time and in a certain stage of human
progress some abuses may have their temporary use,
and for this, under God's economy, may have been
suifered to continue, yet all abuses have but a limited
life : the Eight only is eternal. Great, under such
circumstances, are our responsibilities; momentous
are the issues, for good or for evil, that hang upon our
decisions. In this small volume, which busy men may read in
a few hours, I have sought to bring together, in con
densed form, the facts and the law which bear upon
our present condition as a nation.
i»

b PEEFACE.
M.J task has led me over a vast field. In briefly
tracing, from its inception in this hemisphere, the rise
and progress of the great wrong which still threatens
the life of the nation, I have followed the fortunes of a
vast multitude, equal in number to the population,
loyal and disloyal, black and white, of these "United
States. I have sketched, by the light of authentic
documents, the dismal history of that multitude
through three centuries and a half; seeking out their
representatives, and inquiring into the numbers and
the condition of these, at the present day. In so
doing, I have arrived at conclusions which, to those
who have never looked closely into the subject, may
seem too marvellous for belief.
I invite a critical examination of my narrative and
of the documents and statistics upon which rest its
details and conclusions, not doubting that the candid
reader will become convinced of its substantial truth.
I have spared no pains to attain accuracy, well know
ing that thus only can I expect to bring home the
great lesson which such an episode in human history
is eminently fitted to teach.
Passing, then, from the story of the wrong to look
into its remedy, I have touched upon that inquiry in
its various legal and constitutional aspects : as, the
connection of slavery with the Constitution ; how far
that instrument admits, and how far it abstains from
admitting, the existence of such a system ; further, the
character of what is termed slave-property; the right
of emancipation in the insurrectionary States; the

PREFACE.

right of emancipation in the loyal slave States; the
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in the premises;
the effect of the President's Emancipation Proclama
tion as well upon slaves within our lines as upon slaves
still in the enemy's hands ; and the force of that Pro
clamation both during war and after its conclusion.
In the same connection, I have treated of Emancipa
tion as a great measure of national policy, essential to
the preservation inviolate of the Constitution, indis
pensable to the re-establishment of peace, inseparable
from the future maintenance, North and South, of
domestic tranquillity.
In concluding this branch of the subject, I have
spoken of Emancipation as a solemn national duty
whieh, now that the constitutional obstacle has been
removed, we cannot, consistently with what we owe
to God and man, neglect or postpone. I have shown
that our faith is pledged, and cannot be broken with
out bringing upon us the contempt of the civilized
world. Finally, after having traced the connection of the
two races in the past, and set forth the duty of one
race towards the other in the present, I have sought
to look forward and inquire how they are likely, when
both shall be free, to live together in the future;
whether we shall have a race among us unwilling or
unable to support itself; whether admixture of the
races, both being free, is probable or desirable;
whether, without admixture, the reciprocal social in
fluence of the races on each other promises good or

8 PREFACE.
evil; what are the chances that a base prejudice of
race shall diminish and disappear; and, lastly, whether,
in case the colored man shall outlive that prejudice,
disgraceful to us and depressing to him, and shall be
clothed by law with the same rights in search of which
we sought this "Western "World, .there will be any thing
in connection with his future in these TJnited States to
excite regret or inspire apprehension.
Ifto the lovers of the Union, to the friends of peace,
to the adherents of lawful authority, I shall have sup
plied, in authentic form, facts and arguments such as
may be employed to arouse the listless, to encourage
the desponding, and to strengthen our country's cause,
I shall ever be grateful for the opportunity that has
been afforded me to bring these pages before the
public. It is proper I should here state that, in March, 1863,
a commission — consisting of Colonel Janies McKay e,
of New York, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, of Boston, and
myself — was appointed by the Secretary of "War, to
examine and report upon the condition of the re
cently-emancipated freedmen of the TJnited States ; and
that many of the materials for this volume are due to
the joint investigations of that commission, and were
embodied in the Final Eeport,* prepared by myself as
chairman of the commission in question. I have to
* Two supplemental Reporta, referred to in this work, were prepared
and preaented to the War Department, — one by Colonel MoKaye, tho
other by Dr. Howo.

PREFACE. 9
add my acknowledgments to the Secretary of War for
the permission, kindly accorded to me, to use and pub
lish these in such form as I might judge proper.
To my colleagues I am indebted for valuable emen
dations and corrections; to Mr. Benjamin P. Hunt,
of Philadelphia, for the loan of part of his valuable
library, rich in works on West Indian history and
emancipation; and to the secretary of the commis
sion, Mr. George T. Chapman, for important aid in
the task of collecting and collating the historical and
statistical data upon which are based some of the
most important deductions set forth in the pages
which follow..

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAOE
Preface  3

PART I.
SLAVERY.
CHAPTER I.
As A Labor System  21
Estimation in which labor is held, a teat of civilization — False
ideas of labor fatal to human progress — Modified forms of
these — Worst form in Slave States.
CHAPTER II.
Enslavement or Indians  23
Introduction of slavery coeval with discovery of America —
It cauaed the extinction of a race — Isabella oppoaed to
slavery — Repartimientos — Spanish barbarities — A million
natives reduced to sixty thousand in fifteen years —
Treachery and blasphemy — The great calamity.
CHAPTER III.
StTBSTITlTTION OP THB AFRICAN FOR THE InDIAN  28
A good man goes aatray and repents — Las Casas' proposal
accepted — Germ of the slave-trade.
CHAPTER IV.
Number of Slaves shipped from Africa  32
"Wording of Asientos — Extent of slave-treaties — Important
official document — British slavers — Extent of slave-trade —
Deportation in three centuries and a half.
CHAPTER V.
How Slaves were obtained in Africa  40
Wara to obtain slaves — Kidnapping slaves — Criminals sold as
11

48

12 CONTENTS.
slaves— Gamblers lose themselves and are sold— Slaves re
jected by slavers put to death— Child rescued from death
—Who are responsible ?— British ministers not senti
mentalists—Testimony of Lord Palmerston— His deduction.
CHAPTER VI.
How Slaves were transported prom Africa 
Number of slaves carried per ton burden— Space allowed to
each— Sufferings on board slavers— Cruelties to women-
Effects of gale of wind— Scarcity of water— A dreadful
picture by a slave-surgeon— Official table, showing losa,
in transit, of twenty-three and two-thirds per cent. — Mor
tality among seamen on slavers— Mortality among alaves
in port — Mortality in battle and on slavers — Mortality iu
Africa — Fate of thirty-one millions of men, of whom three
millions thrown into Atlantic.
CHAPTER VII.
What became op the Imported Slaves  62
Statistical details more forcible than individual examples —
Decreaae of population in Jamaica and in Barbadoea —
Negro population in West Indies — in Cuba — in Porto Kico
— in Hayti — in Brazil — Intelligent mulattoes — Negro popu
lation in Mexico — in Central America — in Venezuela — in
New Granada — in Ecquador — in Peru — in Chili — in Bo
livia — in the Argentine Confederation — iu Paraguay —
Total in Central and South America — Total negroes and
their descendants in the Western Hemisphere — Great law
of the world arrested. CHAPTER VIII.
Strangely contrasting Fate op the Two diverging
Streams  84
Continental coloniea discouraged alavery — Virginia's inef
fectual proteat against it — A king the pillar of the slave-
trade — Importation of slaves into British colonies up to
1790 — Increase of colored population — Total slaves im
ported into United States — The half-million and the fifteen
millions — Whither each went, aud what was the fate of
each — Marvellous results,

CONTENTS. 13
CHAPTER IX. PAOE
Touching the Causes of certain Marvellous Results... 95
Chiefly due to influeuce of slave-trade — Unnatural element in
troduced — Its miachievous results — Efi'ects of absenteeism.
CHAPTER X.
Was there a Failure and a Success?  101
A plausible aUegation — Slavery in the Cotton and Sugar
States — Disintegration of family relation — Legal marriage
denied to slaves — Maternal relation disregarded — Noble
exception to general treatment of slaves — Popular songs —
Negroes on the sea-islands — Two causes for increase of
population — Causes which increased slave-population in
South — A habit in Southern States, at variance with cus
tom in West Indies, produces great difference of result as
to population — Increasing severity in last thirty years —
Patriarchal feature — Deprivation of human rights — Prac
tical effect of laws which give apparently equal protection
— The most dangerous of temptations — Jefferson on slavery
— Example of barbarity — Effects of slavery on slaveholder
— Characteristics of slave-society — Slavery modified in
Border States — Hardships endured by alavea hiring their
time — "What gentlemen descend to under a vitiating sys
tem — The home of a slave — Anomaly — Lamentable failure
of a system that arrests civilization — White Pariahs of the
South — A apecimen of the poor white — They who violate
rights of one race lose respect for rights of all — Slavery
and democracy incompatible — A prince for the South.
CHAPTER XI.
The Great Lesson  127
Increase or decrease, result fatal alike — Lesson apparent
from the first as to West Indies and South America, but
delayed as to United States — EebeUion the direct result of
characteristics produced by slavery — Slavery caused the
death of half a million of free men, and will impose on us
a debt nearly equal to that of Great Britain — Tendency of
slavery usually to destroy the slaves, always to lower the
character of the masters — Review of the facta stronger
than any argument.

133

136

14 CONTENTS.
PART II.
EMANCIPATION. CHAPTER I.
A Mixed Question of Constitutional and International
Law 
Importance of the question in its connection with the peace
and the honor of the country— International law as bind
ing as the Constitution— The International Code to be
humanely interpreted— A just war has for its object the
restoration of peaoe— But we may strike, through the sub
jects of a hostUe Government, at the Government itaelf.
CHAPTER II.
Constitutional Aspect of what is called Slate-Pro
perty 
How far ia slavery recognized by the Constitution ? — Laws
infringing rights must be unmistakably expressed, to in
duce a court of justice to. infer such an intent — Fugitive-
slave law provision — Two classes of claims to service and
labor — Certain rights of property recognized, but of what
kind ? — Is an apprentice or a slave an article of merchan-
<jise 1 — State action cannot determine the interpretation of
the Constitution — Claims to labor of slaves protected only
as far as are claims to labor of apprentices — Evident in
tention studiously to refrain from recognizing slavery, ex
cept as a claim to labor — A chief-justice's assertion irrele
vant and without foundation — Claims to service and labor
in the nature of debts or choses in acft'on— Popular phrase
ology misleads — ^Whither tha doctrine leads that slavery in
all ita phasea ia recognized by the Constitution — Clause re
garding representation— Is an apprentice a slave during
apprenticeship? — Magnitude of interests involved cannot
alter Constitution — Constitution does not recognize owner
ship of one human being in another — Under what circum
stances Emancipation is constitutional.
CHAPTER III.
The Constitutionality of Emancipation in the Insur
rectionary States  ^^j
Civil war defined — Inhabitants of nations engaged in civil

CONTENTS. 15

war are, in law, mutual enemies — Right to seize aud de
stroy enemies' property — We must capture tangible pro
perty before we own it — A debt or claim due by an in
habitant of a country to an enemy of the country may bo
taken and cancelled though the person of the debtor be not
in our posaesaion — Slavery not recognized, nor ita rights
provided for, by international law — Our precise case with
out a, precedent — Taking of claims to service and labor
justifiable on technical grounds as well as on general
principles — What is the proper authority to take and
cancel debta or claims ? — Powera of President aa com
mander-in-chief — ^Warnings given by two Proclamations ;
Emancipation declared by a third — The taking and cancel
ling of a vast amount of claims disturbs society, and can be
justified only by an object of commensurate importance — •
Review of situation, domestic and foreign, on January 1,
1863 — Need of all our resources — Numerical war-strength
of North and South apparently as three to one, really as
four to three — ^A nation ought to protect itself against
prospective danger — Especial duty to root out the cause
of war — Slavery the avowed cause — The "great philoso
phical truth" — Its supporters wise in their generation —
Slavery and the Constitutiou inviolate cannot coexist —
Abolition declared felony in South Carolina — -Burning of
Pennsylvania Hall — The South virtually demands a con
stitutional provision declaring an abolitionist ineligible to
the Presidency — Fugitive-slave law difficulties insuperable
— In all its aspects, slavery ia war — In case of foreign war,
slavery a fatal element — Lord Dunmore's proclamation —
Grandeur of object commensurate with magnitude of re
medy — Relation of the queation to humanity and civiliza
tion — Emancipation in Europe — The Christiau world de
clares that man is not a legitimate object of commerce —
Constitutional scruples retarded Emancipation among us —
Regard for law influenced perceptions of juatice — God
opened the closed way — The hearts of slaveholders hard
ened — The slaveholders become abolitionists — ^Our re
sponsibility in the future — The people freed three millions
of slaves — Illegal detention does not abrogate a law — Ne
cessity for Emancipation as great in peace as in war — No

FAO£

16 CONTENTS. PAGE
harm, but great benefit, to the slave-claimant, through
Emanoipation — It is our business, not his, to decide this
Third parties having taken vested rights, we cannot law
fully resume what we have granted— No " peculiar insti
tution" remaining to be left intact — No power under the
Constitutiou to enslave— Slavery oannot be restored except
by illegal violence — Shall we emulate the felon trader on
the Congo coast? — "The way of the transgressor is hard"
— National disgrace worse than national disaster — Eman
cipation in insurrectionary States legal aud irrevocable.
CHAPTER IV.
The Constitutionality of Emancipation in the Loyal
Slave States  183
Emancipation as necessary in loyal Slave Statea as in the in
surrectionary district — Anomalous state of things in nar
row border strip — Cannot be, and ought not to be, per
petuated — Demands of honor coincide with conditions of
safety — No honorable or prudent alternative but general
Emancipation — ^Private property may be taken, with com
penaation, for publio use — Congress may legally aboHsh
slavery — Proof of this — Congress has the right to decide
what measures are necessary and proper to reatore peace
— The choice of meana ia a legialative, not a judicial, ques
tion — It would be a usurpation of jurisdiction for the Su
preme Court to ait in judgment on measures of national
policy — Decision in the case of McCulloch against State
of Maryland — Congress the sole judge whether Emanci-
cipation is a necesaary aud proper measure — Intimate con
nection between slavery and the rebeUion — Compensated
Emanoipation in loyal Slave States iu accordance with law.
PART III.
THE FUTURE OP THE AFRICAN RACE IN THE UNITED
STATES.
CHAPTER L
Forebodings regarding the Fate op the Negro  iok
Evils that revolution only cau extirpate — De TocqueviUe on

CONTENTS. 17
PAOE
future of negro — A natural error — Effect of manhood in
negro troops — De Tocqueville's anticipations — Would be
reliable if premises correct — In justice only is security.
CHAPTER II.
Do WE need the Aid of the Negro as a Loyal Citizen? 198
What proportion of Southern whites are loyal ? — Is it aafe to
leave diafranchiaed a loyal half of a disaffected population ?
Will negro auffrage endanger or render degenerate our sys
tem ? — Slave injured by slavery — Slave wary and suspicious,  .
— Will the freedman, if voter, be the prey of the dema
gogue ? — Need stricter test thau accident of birth or color
— Is delay safe ? — Do we risk by immediate action ?
CHAPTER III.
Can the Negro, as Freedman, maintain himself?  203
Negro has aptitude for civilization — Will somewhere find his
appropriate position — Incident in proof that negroea do not
seek charity — Negroes hiring themselves and paying their
way — Average property of free negroes iu Louiaiana —
Negroea managing church property — A grouudleaa fear.
CHAPTER IV.
The Emancipated Negro will make the South his Home 209
A popular idea without foundation — Negro prefera the South
— Voluntary colonization impoaaible — Emancipation will
cause negroes to emigrate South — Proofs of this — Causes
destroying prejudice — Isolation of races to be avoided.
CHAPTER V.
Amalgamation  213
Mixed race physicaUy inferior — Evidence from Canada —
from British army — ^from census — False inference — Mor
tality among negroes much influenced by climate — Table
of comparative mortaUty — Amalgamation a physical evil,
likely to diminish by Emancipation.
CHAPTER VI.
Reciprocal Social Influence of the Races on each other 219
Characteristica of the two races — Negro free from spirit of
2*

18 CONTENTS. PAGE
revenge— Mutual influence for good of the races on each
other, if justice prevail. CHAPTER VII.
Importance, nationally, that the Negro be treated
WITH Justice  •  ^^^
To iU treat the negro is to give aid and comfort to the enemy
—It withdraws laborers from Northern farms— Its effects
resemble those of treason — Depth of baseness to ill treat
defenders of the Union — Negro must fight for freedom if
he is to obtain it — The worst scheme of false economy —
The crucial test of civilization is our treatment of the lowly
and feeble. CHAPTER VIII.
The Freedman needs mere Temporary Aid and Super
vision  226
Bisk that under guise of guardianship a sort of alavery may
reappear — Mere temporary aid needed by refugees — Half
way Emancipation a failure — No compulaory contracts nor
statutory rates of wages — Let the freedman learn to stand
alone. CHAPTER IX.
The Sum op our Duty towards the Negro Race  228
Give them a fair chance — Their best defence agaiust tyranny
in general laws, not in a special organization — Secure to
them rights of person aud property, relieve them of preju
dice, save them from virtual re-enslavement, and let them
take care of themselves — Thus their existence among ua
will be a national benefit.
Appendix  231
Note A. — Testimony in confirmation.
Note B.— Proposed form of Act of General Emancipation.
Index  239

PART I.
SLAVERY.
" There is one calamity which penetrated furtively into the world,
and which was at first scarcely distinguishable amidst the ordinary
abuses of power : it originated with an individual whose name history
has not preserved: it was wafted, lijte some accursed germ, upon a
portion of the soil ; but it afterwarda nurtured itself, grew without
effort, and spread naturally with the society to which it belonged.
This calamity is Slavery. Christianity suppressed slavery, but the
Christiana of the sixteenth century re-established it ; aa an exception,
indeed, to their social system, and restricted to one of the races of
mankind." — De Tocciueville.

19

PART I.
SLAVEEY.

CHAPTER I.
AS A LABOR SYSTEM.
The greatest social and political problems of the
world connect themselves, more or less intimately,
with the subject of labor. A people who regard work
as degradation, though arts and letters flourish among
them, are but emerging from barbarism. It has been
sometimes said, with much truth, that the grade of
civilization in a nation may be measured by the posi
tion which it accords to woman : a stricter test is the
degree of estimation in which labor is held there.
Our race, in its gradual advance from ignorance
and evil to comparative knowledge and good, has not
yet, even in countries the most favored, outlived an
error fatal to true progress. Sometimes avowedly,
more often practically, a certain stigma still attaches
to human labor; to that labor from which, in one
shape or other, the world receives every thing of
good, of useful, of beautiful, that charms the senses
or ministers to the wants of man ; to which we owe
life, and every thing that makes life desirable."
According to the structure of society in each country,
this error is modified in form. In certain nations of
21

22 DEGRADATION OF LABOR.
continental Europe the great line of social demarca
tion is drawn between the titled classes, whether noble
by birth or ennobled by royal creation, constituting
the privileged ; and all other persons, including mer
chants, though wealthy, and lawyers, though eminent,
and authors, though popular, constituting the unprivi
leged. More liberal England begins to admit within
the pale the distinguished and successful among the
professional classes, and from the mercantile and lite
rary ranks. We ourselves, professing to honor industry
and talking occasionally of the nobility of labor, have
opened somewhat wider, but only throughout a portion
of our Eepublic, the door which admits within the
precincts of respectability.
Only throughout a portion of our Republic. In
fifteen of these United States the opinions, the feel
ings, the practice of the inhabitants, as regards la
borers and labor itself, have been more perverted,
have been less civilized, than in the most despotic
countries of Europe.
In these States the class of working husbandmen
has been degraded, both as regards civil rights and
social position, below the Pariahs of India. This
cannot happen in any nation without producing re
sults fatal alike to its prosperity and to the moral
worth and essential dignity of its population. The
only doubt as to these results is, whether their in
fluence has been more pernicious on the enslavers or
on the enslaved.

INCEPTION OF WESTERN SLAVERY. 23
CHAPTER II.
ENSLAVEMENT OF INDIANS.
The introduction into our hemisphere of this terrible
element of social demoralization was almost coeval
with its discovery by Europeans. It was in October
of the year 1492 that Columbus first landed ; and it
was just eight years afterwards, in the month of Oc
tober, 1500, that Francis de Bovadilla was guilty of
two outrages : — one, the sending home, in chains, of
the Great Discoverer; the other, the reducing to bond
age of the gentle islanders whose fair land he dis
covered. Bovadilla "granted liberal donations of
Indians to all who applied for them."*
The first year of the sixteenth century saw intro
duced into America that baneful system, abhorrent to
Christian civilization, which was to spread and gather
numbers and strength and influence, until, after more
than three centuries and a half of evil growth, it was
to bring a million of combatants into the field, to sac
rifice on the field of battle hundreds of thousands of
lives and thousands of millions of treasure.
There is scarcely a page in history so replete with
horrors as that which records the inception of Slavery
in this hemisphere. That terrible abuse caused, in an
incredibly short period, the extinction of a race, — a race
whom all the historians of that day concur in repre
senting as the most kind and inoffensive and hospitable
* Robertson's History of Aiiierioa, London, 1792, vol. i. book 2, p. 222.
Herrera, General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America
(Stevens's tranalation), London, 1725, vol. i. p. 244.

24 THE REPARTIMIENTOS.
of mankind. Gold must be had; Columbus had been
disgraced because he had failed to send home a suffi-
ciency of it. His successors resolved to escape that
imputation. The mines must be worked; and the
forced labor of the feeble natives was employed to
work them.
After a time, royal sanction was obtained for the act.
Isabella,— just if severe,— who had issued orders that
the Indians should be free from servitude and from
molestation,* died in 1504 ; and in 1511 Ferdinand issued
a decree of his Privy Council, declaring that, " after
mature consideration of the Apostolic Bull and other
titles by which the crown of Castile claimed the right
to its possessions in the New World, the servitude of
the Indians was warranted both by the laws of God
and man."f
Thus was legalized that system of repartimientos,
under which there had been previously assigned to
each Spaniard, by an order on some cacique, a certain
number of natives, who were to be instructed in the
Catholio faith. What the character of their masters
and teachers was may be gathered from the fact that
Columbus himself, misled by his eagerness to people
the continent he had discovered, had recommended the
transportation to Hispaniola of malefactors convicted
of the less atrocious capital crimes. " The prisons of
Spain," says Eobertson, " were drained to collect mem
bers for the intended colony."J

* Ovando " was particularly charged by the queen that all the Indians
of Hispaniola should be ftee from servitude, and that none should molest
them." — Heereba, vol. i. p. 247. •
¦j" Robertson's History of Amerioa, vol. i. p. 307. This decree wa?
passed against the protest of the Dominicans, the abolitionists of those
days. J Robertson, vol. i. pp. 192, 193. Herrera, deo. i. lib. iii. u. 2.

SPANISH BARBARITIES. 25
We are not left to imagine the fate of the helpless
wretches confided to such hands. Irving tells us : —
" They [the Indians] were separated the distance of
several days' journey from their wives and children,
and doomed to intolerable labor of all kinds, extorted
by the cruel infliction of the lash. * * * 'When the
Spaniards who superintended the mines were at their
repasts,' says Las Casas, ' the famished Indians scram
bled like dogs for any bone thrown to them.' * * *
' If they fled from this incessant toil and barbarous
coercion, and took refuge in the mountains, they were
hunted like wild beasts, scourged in the most inhuman
manner, and laden with chains to prevent a second
escape.' "*
Las Casas' terrible history is full of horrors, of which
he himself was eye-witness. " I have found," says he,
"many dead in the road, others gasping under the
trees, and others, again, in the pangs of death, faintly
crying, ' Hunger ! hunger !' "f
" So intolerable," says Washington Irving, " were the
toils and suffering inflicted upon this weak and un
offending race, that they sank under them, dissolving,
as it were, from the face of the earth."{
There is no exaggeration in this statement, incredible
if it seem. Eobertson confirms it, giving some general
statistics on the subject. His words are : —
" The original inhabitants on whose labor the Span
iards in Hispaniola depended for their prosperity and
even their existence, wasted so fast that the extinction
of the whole race seemed to be inevitable. When
Columbus discovered Hispaniola, the number of its in-

* Irving's Columbus, vol. ii. p. 427.
f Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. ii. cap. 14, MS. Quoted by Irving.
t Irving's Columbus, vol. li. p. 428.

26 EXTINCTION OF A RACE,
habitants was computed to be at least a million. They
were reduced to sixty thousand in fifteen years."*
This was in 1507. Scarcely half a generation had
elapsed since Europeans had found these people weak
and ignorant indeed, but simple, cheerful, and happy;
and, in that brief period, so atrocious had been the
cruelty of their treatment that ninety-four out of every
hundred of the victims sank and perished under it !
But the picture, in all its blackness, is not yet filled
up. The deaths had increased with such frightful
rapidity that the common operations of life were
arrested thereby. The dead laborers had to be replaced
by fresh victims. And then it was that, as the culmi
nation of enormities that have left an indelible stain
on the Spanish name, an expedient was resorted to, into
the conception of which there entered not inhuman
barbarity alone, but treachery and blasphemy also.
This infamous expedient Is ascribed to Ovando. At
all events, under his Governorship, in 1508, the King
(Ferdinand) "was advised," says Herrera, "that the
Lucayo Islands^ being full of people, it would be con
venient to carry them over to Hispaniola that they
might be instructed in the Christian religion and civil
ized." Ferdinand, perhaps deceived by this artifice,
more probably willing to connive at an act of violence
which policy represented as necessary, gave his assent
to the proposal. Herrera informs us in what manner
it was carried into effect : —
" The Spaniards who went in the first ships told those
• Robertson's America, vol. i. p. 262. It is from Herrera, the most
correct and intelligent of the Spanish historians of that period, that
Robertson's calculation js taken. There seems no reason to discredit it.
Other historians estimate the number of original inhabitants much higher.
Benzoni puts it at two milUons.
f Now the Bahama Islands.

TREACHERY AND BLASPHEMY. 27
people that they came from Hispaniola, where the souls
of their parents, kindred, and friends lived at their
ease ; and if they would go see them, they should be
carried over in these ships. For it is certain that the
Indian nations believed that the soul is immortal, and
that, when the body was dead, it went to certain places
of delight, where it wanted for nothing that might give
ll satisfaction."*
" That simple people," says Eobertson, " listened with
wonder and credulity, and, fond of visiting their rela
tives and friends in that happy region, followed the
Spaniards with eagerness. By this artifice over forty
thousand were decoyed into Hispaniola to share in the
sufferings which were the lot of the inhabitants of that
island, and to mangle their groans and tears with that
wretched race of men. "f
By this expedient the nnmber of Indians in Hispa
niola was raised to one hundred thousand. But the work
of human destruction went on. Nine years later, to
' Wit, in 1517, Eoderigo Albuquerque, being appointed
principal officer to distribute the repartimientos, caused
an enumeration of the Indians to be made. The num
ber was found to be reduced to fourteen thousand. Six-
sevenths had perished in nine years! The survivors
were put up for sale in different lots. The secrets of
their prison-house what tongue can ever reveal ?
Such was the first advent in this hemisphere of that
system under which human labor is stigmatized as a
degradation. The mind cannot realize — the imagina
tion shrinks from conceiving — the atrocious barbarities
to which such a system must have given birth, ere a
race of men could have perished in a single generation
* Herrera, vol. i. p. 325.
t Robertson, Hist. Amer., vol. i. p. 263.

28 THE GREAT CALAMITY.
before it; a terrible attestation to the immeasurable
sufferings that may result from a single great crime.
Well has De TocqueviUe said : —
" There is one calamity which penetrated furtively
into the world, and which was at first scarcely distin
guishable amidst the ordinary abuses of power : it ori
ginated with an individual whose name history has not
preserved; it was wafted like some accursed germ upon
a portion of the soil; but it afterwards nurtured itself,
grew without effort, and spread naturally with the
society to which it belonged. This calamity is Slavery.
Christianity suppressed slavery, but the Christians of
the sixteenth century re-established it, — as an exception,
indeed, to their social system, and restricted to one of
the races of mankind."*
That another race was not subjected to it — that the
Indians of Hispaniola and ofthe adjacent islands escaped
perpetual servitude — is due not to the forbearance of
their oppressors, but to the tender mercies of Death,
the great liberator.

CHAPTEE III.
SUBSTITUTION OF THE AFRICAN FOR THE INDIAN.
An incident to whieh is popularly ascribed the first
substitution of the African negro for the native of His
paniola — the first introduction, therefore, among us of
that race who were to be thenceforth for centuries
branded with the mark of Cain — may teach us how hu
manity, in her aberrations, sometimes with the best in-
* Democracy in America, by De TocqueviUe (Cambridge edition, 1862)
vol. i. p. 467.

HUMANITY GOING ASTRAY. 29
tentions, aids in laying broad the foundations of misery
and of crime.
Bartolomeo de las Casas, a Dominican monk, had
accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. A man
of eminent benevolence and quick sensibilities, the suf
ferings of the downtrodden Indians produced upon him
a profound impression. After spending many years in
Hispaniola, in fruitless efforts to ameliorate the condi
tion of the natives, he returned to Spain previous to
the death of Ferdinand, was favorably received by that
monarch and by his minister the Cardinal Ximenes,
and succeeded in procuring the appointment of three
Superintendents of the Colonies, to whom he himself
was joined, with the well-earned title of " Protector of
the Indians." The mission, however, was of small avail.
The Spaniards of Hispaniola opposed every obstacle, re
presenting that without compulsion the Indians would
not labor, and that without their labor the colony could
not subsist. Finding no countenance in the island. Las
Casas again returned to Spain, where he arrived shortly
before the death of Ximenes, and found Charles Y. suc
cessor of Ferdinand.
Then it was, after a vain endeavor to procure the
freedom of the aborigines, that Las Casas, thinking
that a hardier race than they would suffer less as slaves,*
recommended to Ximenes the policy of supplying the
labor-market of Hispaniola with negroes from the
Portuguese settlements on the African coast.
This, though affirmed by Eobertson,! following Her-
* Herrera (deo. i. lib. 9, o. 5) affirms that one negro was considered
equal, as laborer, to four Indians.
t Robertson's History of Amerioa, vol. i. p. 321. The censure conveyed
in the words of this author, when he says of Las Casas, "In the warmth
of his zeal to save the aborigines from the yoke, he pronounced it to
be lawful and expedient to impose one still heavier on the Africans,"
3*

30 CONFESSION AND ATONEMENT.
rera, is denied by several modern authors of repute.
But the simple fact that Las Casas did make such a
proposal, though not until after a certain number of
African slaves had been imported into the New World,
is beyond denial, — seeing that it has been stated, and
nobly atoned fof, so far as frank acknowledgment of
error can atone, by Las Casas himself, writing his own
history shortly before his death, in that retirement to
which, after years of fruitless exertion in behalf of the
suffering natives, he betook himself. These, literally
translated, are his words: —
" This advice, that license be given to bring negro
slaves to these lands, the ecclesiastic Casas first gave,
not taking note of the injustice with which the Portu
guese seize them and make them slaves; whieh advice,
after he had reflected on the matter, he would not have
given for all he possessed in the world. For he always
held that they were made slaves unjustly and tyran
nically, seeing that the same rule applies in their case
as in that of the Indians. "f
implies, when given thus without explanation, too harsh a, judgment of
a good man. '
* Doelinger (Hist. Eool., vol. iii. sect. 160, p. 397) makes an argument,
with evidence adduced, in proof that the imputation is unjust. Cochin
discredits the charge, stating that in the debates whioh Las Casas was
forced to sustain against Quevedo, Bishop of Darien, and also against the
confessor and historian of Charles, Sepulveda, "this opinion is found
neither on his Ups nor on those of his adversaries." — Z'Abolition de
V Esclavage, vol. i. p. 286. The explanation of this may be, that by
that time he had repented the advice which a, few years before he had
given. "f " Esto aviso de que se diese licencia para traer esolavos negros & estas
tierrag, did primero el cHrigo Casas, no advirtiendo la injusticia con que
los Portugueses los toman y hacen esolavos ; el qual despues de que cay6
en ello no lo diera por quanto habia en el mundo. Porque siempro los tuvo
por injusta y tir£nicamente hechos esolavos : porque la misma razon es do
ellos que de los Indies." — Las CAsAa : Hist, de las Indiaa, lib. 3 torn. 2
oap. 101. Laa Casas hore speaks of himself in the third person.

FIRST STEP IN A QREAT WRONG. 31
Ximenes, whether from motives of policy or humanity,
rejected Las Casas' proposal, dying soon after.
Las Casas renewed the proposal, after Ximenes'
death, to the ministers of Charles, by whom it was
more favorably received. And, the officers of the " India
House of Seville" having i-ecommended four thousand
as the proper number to be sent,* the young king acted
upon the recommendation. In accordance with the
monopoly-favoring policy of that age, Charles granted
to one of his Flemish favorites a patent for the impor
tation into the colonies of four thousand negro slaves.
That patent was sold to a company of Genoese mer
chants, who, about the year 1517, carried it into effect.
This, as regards America, was the germ of a traffic,
the foulest blot on the history of Christendom ; a traffic
carried on, in defiance of law, human and divine, to ex
empt from labor one race of men at expense of brutal
degradation to another ; a traffic that has brought upon
the American hemisphere a moral curse worse than
war, pestilence, or famine, and which, as to every nation
that persists in it, leads, — ever must lead, — sooner or
later, by one way or another, to national ruin.
* " The suggestion of Las Casas was approved by the Chancellor and by
Adrian, the colleague of the late Cardinal (Ximenes), and indeed it is pro
bable that there was hardly a man of that time who would have seen fur
ther than the excellent clerigo did. Las Casas was asked what number of
negroes would suffice. He replied that he did not know; upon which a
letter was sent to the officers of the India House of Seville, to ascertain
the fit number, in their opinion. They said that four thousand would at
present suffice, — being one thousand for each of the islands, Hispaniola,
San Juan, Cuba, and Jamaica." — Oonquerora of the New World and their
Bondsmen, Lonc^on, 1852.

82 WORDING or ASIENTOS.
CHAPTEE IV.
NUMBER OF SLAVES SHIPPED FROM AFRICA.
The statistical details are lacking which might enable
us to form a strictly accurate numerical estimate of the
victims to this detestable trade, the operations of which
extended through three centuries and a half,— dimin
ishing, however, during the last quarter of a century,
and soon, we may confidently hope, to cease forever.
An approximating estimate of the number of negroes
transported to America is all that can now be obtained.
The asientos, treaties, or contracts of the Spanish
government for the supply of its American colonies
with slaves, commencing in 1517, were occasionally
granted throughout the sixteenth century, and multi
plied in the seventeenth and eighteenth. Some were to
individuals, some to companies, some to governments.
IsTothing more strongly marks the character of these
treaties for the delivery of human beings than the terms
employed in wording them. An asiento was granted,
in 1696, to the Portuguese Guinea Company, by which
that company bound itself to deliver to Spain, in her
transatlantic colonies, ten thousand tons of negroes.*
England, to designate the human chattels she agreed
to supply, employed a term such as vendors of broad
cloth or calico might use. By treaty with Spain, bearing
date March 26, 1713, his Britannic Majesty undertook
to introduce into Spanish America one hundred and
fourteen thousand pieces of India, of both sexes and all

* " Dies mil toneladaa de negros" is the expression in the original. Tbe
text ean be found in the Cantillo collection, p. 32.

SLAVE-TRADE TREATIES. 33
ages.* These various treaties, concluded in the name
of the Most Holy Trinity,f contained not one article,
not a single provision of any kind, for the humane
treatment or for the protection from outrage of the
human merchandise therein stipulated to be delivered. J
The extent of these treaties, and their lucrative cha
racter to the Spanish crown, may be gathered from the
following : —
"A single government, Spain, which assumes the
name of Catholic, concluded in less than two centuries
more than ten treaties to authorize, protect, and profit
by the transportation of more than half a million of
human beings. It levied on each of these human
heads, reckoning them by the piece or by the ton, a
tax which amounted in the aggregate to upwards of
fifty millions of franc8"§ (say ten millions of dollars).
The above treaties were with England, France, and
Portugal, — ^the grants to individuals and to companies
not being included.
In the middle of the eighteenth century the English
slave-trade, which up to that time had been more or
less of a monopoly, was thrown open. Statute 23
George II. (that is, in 1750) c. 31, after reciting that
the " African slave-trade is very advantageous to Great
Britain," enacts that "it shall be lawful for all His
Majesty's subjects to trade and traffic to and from any
* "Piezas de Indiaa" are the words in the Spanish text. — Abolition de
I'Eselavage, par Cochin, tom. ii. p. 286. This treaty gave England a mo
nopoly of the slave-trade to Spanish colonies for thirty years, — namely,
from 1713 to 1744.
t " BI nombre del santisima Trinidad."
} After enumerating the various aaientos made by Spain, Cochin says,
'¦ Dans tous ces trait6s, pas une disposition, pas une syllabe destinSe 3,
defendre ces malheureux contre les abus et les souffranoes." — Work cited,
vol. ii. p 288.
I Work cited, vol. ii. p. 288.

34 IMPORTANT OFFICIAL DOCUMENT.
port or place in Africa between the port of Sallee, in
South Barbary, and the Cape of Good Hope."
Great Britain, the first to abolish this infamous traffic,
was, previous to its abolition, the most extensively en
gaged in it. Her connection with it, the manner and
extent to which it was conducted, together with many
statistical details, imperfect indeed, but instructive as
far as they go, are set forth in a ponderous folio volume
published by official authority in the year 1789,— being
a " Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council, ap
pointed for the consideration of all matters relating to
trade and foreign plantations, submitting to His Ma
jesty's consideration the evidence and information they
have collected in consequence of His Majesty's Order
in Council, dated February 11, 1788, concerning the
present state of the trade to Africa, and particularly
the trade in slaves ; and concerning the effects and
consequences of this trade, as well in Africa and the
West Indies, as to the general commerce of this king
dom." There can be no safer document than this from which
to draw information such as it contains. The Lords
composing this Committee of Council gave the slave
holders ample opportunity to state their case, both by
testimony and argument. Three-fourths, at least, of the
witnesses examined are slave-dealers or captains of
slavers. They admit also, it is true, testimony and docu
mentary evidence (especially as to deaths of sailors on
slave-ships) offered by the celebrated Thomas Clarkson;
but they scrupulously abstain from all opinions in re
gard to the slave-trade and from all recommendations
or suggestions touching its abolition.
In this volume we find two estimates as to the num-^
ber of negroes then (namely, in 1788) annually carried
to the American colonies: the first puts it at eighty

SLAVERS FROM LIVERPOOL. 35
thousand annually; the second, containing a detailed
estimate of slaves annually sold at sixteen different
points on the African coast, suras up seventy-four thou
sand.* Of these one-half are said to be procured on the
Gold Coast, at Bonny and Kew Calabar and at Loango,
Melimba and Cabenda, — about thirty-eight thousand set
down as purchased by the British, twenty thousand by
the French, ten thousand by the Portuguese, and the
rest by the Danes and Dutch.
It would appear, from a statistical table given in
another part of the same volume, that these estimates
fall short ofthe truth. This table gives the total num
ber of vessels sailing annually from Liverpool from the
year 1751 to the year 1787, distinguishing the slavers
and giving their tonnage; from which it appears that
about one-tenth of all the vessels that sailed from that
port during the above thirty-six years were engaged in
the slave-trade, and that their tonnage ran up from a
little over five thousand tons in 1751 to about fifteen
thousand in 1786 and 1787.f But, as we shall show
hereafter, the number of slaves carried averaged over
two to a ton : consequently, British ships from the port
of Liverpool alone carried upwards of thirty thousand
annually. Another tablej shows that the tonnage of African
slavers from all the ports of Great Britain was, in 1787,
twenty-two thousand two hundred and sixty-three tons.
* The first is contained in the testimony of Mr. Penny (Report, Part I.
Sheet I) ; the second, in that of Mr. Norris (Report, Part I. Sheet K). The
table in detail is given Part IV. No. 14. The volume not being paged
(except as to a single brief document contained in it, to wit. Minutes of
Evidence before a Committee of the Whole House), more exact referencea
cannot be given.
f Lords of Council Report; Minutes of Evidence before Committee of the
Whole House, p. 49.
J Lords of Council Report, Part IV.No. 1.

36 FRENCH CALCULATIONS.
Consequently, the annual number of slaves transported
to America, at that time, in British bottoms, was up-
wards of forty-five thousand, instead of thirty-eight
thousand as estimated. In this proportion the total
estimate, including vessels of all countries, would be
run up to nearly ninety thousand slaves a year. It
would appear, from other evidence, that even this is
below the actual number.
The calculations produced before the French Com
mittee of Inquiry of 1848 place the number of slaves
exported from 1788 to 1840 at from one hundred thou
sand to one hundred and forty thousand a year, and
from 1840 to 1848 at from fifty thousand to eighty
thousand.* The rate after 1848 continued to diminish. Never
theless, in 1860 it was still nearly thirty thousand a
year.f These figures enable us to calculate, with approxi
mate accuracy, the extent of the slave-trade from 1788
to 1860; that is to say, for the seventy-two last years
of its course, thus : —
Annual deportation of slaves from the year 1788 to the year 1840,
say fifty-two years, at an average of one hundred and twenty
thousand a year  6,240,000
» See Cochin, vol. ii. p. 310.
Lord Palmerston, from his place in the House of Lords, July 26, 1844,
said, " According to the Report of Messrs. Vendervelt and Buxton, from
one hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand slaves
are landed annuaUy in America."
This calculation applied to the early years of the present centuiy.
t "When we remember that one hundred and forty thousand were yearly
carried away from Africa, while this year the number has not reached
thirty thousand, we shonld neither deny the progress nor abandon tho
hope of a complete suppression of this traffic." — Speech of Lord John Suseell,
in Parliament, June 8, 1860.
"At lefst thirty thousand slaves are annually imported into Cuba." —
Speech of Mr, Cave, in Parliament, June 8, 1860.

DEPORTATION IN SEVENTY-TWO YEARS. 37
Annual deportation from 1840 to 1848, say eight years, at an
average of sixty-five thousand a year  520,000
Annual deportation from 1848 to 1860, say twelve years, at an
average of thirty thousand a year  360,000
Total in seventy-two years  7,120,000
What annual rate we ought to assume as a fair ave
rage for the two centuries preceding 1788, during which,
as Cochin reminds us, "all Europe abandoned itself
openly to the negro slave-trade,"* it is somewhat diffi
cult to determine. In the Eeport by the Lords of the
Committee of Council, already referred to, is a tablef
showing the annual importation of slaves throughout
seventy-four years of that period (namely, from 1702 to
1775 both inclusive) into a single English colony, to
wit, the island of Jamaica. The total is four hundred
and ninety-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-
six, being an average of six thousand seven hundred
and twenty-six a year. Kor is there a regular increase;
for in the decade from 1720 to 1730 there were as many
imported as in the last ten years of the term, — the ave
rage for each ofthe years in either decade being about
seven thousand seven hundred.
But I shall hereafter furnish proof that to the num
ber of slaves delivered in the colonies we must add
at least twenty-five per cent, to obtain the number
shipped on the African coast. This would bring up the
annual average exported from Africa for Jamaica to
eight thousand four hundred and seven.
If we assume the total deportation of slaves from
Africa in the year 1788 to have been one hundred thou
sand, which is the French Committee's lowest estimate
*"Aa dix-septiSme et au dix-huitiSme siScle I'Europe entiSre se livre
ouvertement i. la traite des noirs." — Cochin, L' Abolition de I'Eselavage,
tom. ii. p. 281.
f Lords of Council Report, Jamaica, Appendix, Part III. Sheet P.
4

38 DEPORTATION IN THREE CENTURIES AND A HALF.
for any year from 1788 to 1840, and if we suppose that
there were annually exported, during each year of the
two centuries preceding 1788, two-fifths only of that
number, say forty thousand, we shall be assuming the
annual total throughout these two centuries at less than
five times the number that we know to have been an
nually exported during seventy-four years of that
period to supply the single island of Jamaica. So far
as, at this distance of time, and with the scanty mate
rials before us, one can judge, the estimate is a moderate
one.* Previous to the year 1588, that is to say, for eighty
years after the beginning of the negro slave-trade pro
bably about 1508, the true average is still more un
certain. The Spanish asientos of the sixteenth century
were usually for the delivery of from three thousand
to five thousand negroes annually. Let us assume the
entire slave-trade by all nations during that period at
five thousand negroes only, for each year.
Adopting the data above suggested, we obtain the
following general results : —
Total Deportation of Negroes hy t'he Slave-Trade, from the year 1508
to the year 1860.
From 1508 to 1588, eighty years, at an average of five thousand
a year  400,000
From 1588 to 1788, two hundred years, at an average of forty
thousand a year  8,000,000
From 1788 to 1860, seventy-two years, as already estimated.... 7,120,000
Total in three hundred and fifty-two years  15,520,000
* By a table, already referred to (Part IV. No. 1) in the Report of tho
Lords of Council, it appears that as early as 1701, one hundred and foar
British vessels were employed in the slave-trade. The number, however,
varied very widely in different years, the lowest nnmber (in 1715) being
but twenty-four, and the highest (in 1771) being one hundred and ninety-
two. The table was obtained from the Inspector-General of Imports and
Exports.

CALCULATIONS BY OTHER AUTHORS. 39
Upwards of fifteen millions and a half of human
beings forcibly torn from their native country, and
doomed to perpetual slavery — themselves and their
offspring — in a foreign land !*
* I have endeavored, in the above estimate, to avoid error, except it be
on the side of moderation. Very reputable authorities put tho importations
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries considerably higher than I
have assumed them. Bancroft, who appears to have carefully investigated
the matter, says : —
" The English slave-trade began to attain its great activity after the
Asiento treaty. [That treaty was dated March 26, 1713.] From 1680 to
1700, the English took from Africa about three hundred thousand negroes,
or about fifteen thousand a year. The number, during the continuance of
the Asiento, may be averaged not far from thirty thousand. [It continued
for thirty years, to wit, from 1713 to 1744.] Raynal considers the number
of negroes exported by all European nations from Africa before 1776, to
have been nine millions ; and the considerate German historian of the slave-
trade, Albert Hune, deems his statement too small. A careful analysis of
the colored population of America at different periods and the inference to
be deduced from the few authentic records of the numbers imported, cor
rected by a comparison with the authentic products of slave-labor, as ap
pearing in the annals of English commerce, seem to prove, beyond a doubt,
that even the estimate of Raynal is larger than the reality." — Bancroft's
Hiatory of the United States, vol. iii. p. 412.
Raynal's estimate, thought too low by Hiine, is nine millions up to 1776 ;
and, as the exportations averaged about eighty thousand a year from 1776
to 1788, that would give a million more, bringing his calculation up to ten
millimia if extended to 1788. But my estimate, as above, up to that year,
is but eight millions four hundred thousand, — that is, upwards of a million
and a half, or just sixteen per cent., below Raynal's.
Bancroft thinks that we shall not err much if in the century previous to
1776 we assume the number imported by the English to have been three
millions. But I have assumed the total imported by all nations in the two
centuries preceding 1788 to have been eight millions. Bancroft estimates
importation in a single century by one nation only at three millions, I esti
mate importation in two centuriea by all nationa at eight milliona. The
probability will be conceded that the former estimate is at a higher rate,
in proportion, than the latter.

40 SOURCES OF SUPPLY.

CHAPTEE V.
HOW SLAVES WERE OBTAINED IN AFRICA.
But we cannot attain to a just conception of the ag
gregate of evil and suffering produced by this gigantic
outrage upon human rights, nor of the loss of life at
tendant thereon, without considering, first, the mode
in which slaves were supplied to the European traders,
secondly, the manner in which they were transported
to their destination, and, thirdly, the result, especially
in its influence on population, in the slave colonies.
As to the two first subjects, the Eeport of the Lords
of Council — unimpeachable testimony — furnishes many
suggestive particulars.
It is proved, in the first place, that the sources whence
slaves were obtained on the African coast were, —
First. As prisoners of war.
The evidence as to this source of supply was obtained
from almost all the witnesses who had visited the African
coast. Major-General Eooke said, " When a ship arrived to
purchase slaves, the King of Demel sent to the chiefs
of the villages in his dominions to send him a given
number ; but if they were not to be procured on this
requisition, the king went to war till he got as many
as he wanted." During his stay at Goree of four or
five months, he heard of two battles being fought for
slaves.* Captain T. Wilson, employed on the business of Gov
ernment in 1783 and 1784, states, as to the kingdom
* Lords of Conncil Report, Part I. Sheet G.

WARS TO OBTAIN SLAVES. 41
of Demel, "When they were at war, they made pri
soners and sold them ; and when they were not at war
they made no scruple of taking any of their own sub
jects and selling them, even whole villages at once.
* * * He has been told that the King of Demel can
bring seventy thousand or eighty thousand men into
the field."*
Captain Hills : — " There was scarcely an evening in
which he did not see people go out in war-dresses to
obtain slaves from the neighboring villages." This was
at Goree.f
" The manner in which Sir George Tonge understood
that slaves became so is first as prisoners of war ; and
these he thinks are the greatest number." This was in
Senegal and Gambia ; " but the same account was given
to him all along the coast."J
The Eev. Mr. Newton : — " The greater number of
slaves are captives made in war."§
Mr. Dalrymple says, " One of the modes of making
slaves, adopted by the kings and great men, is by
breaking up a village, — that .is, setting fire to it and
seizing the people as they escape. This occurs some
times in a neighbor's territory, more frequently in
their own. The practice is notorious." The witness
speaks of Gambia and countries adjoining.||
Another mode of procuring slaves is akin to this.
They are panyared, to employ the phrase of the coun
try, — that is, kidnapped by individuals.
Dr. A. Sparrman, Inspector of the Eoyal Museum at
Stockholm, and a traveller in the interior of Africa,

* Lords of Council Report, Part I. Sheet Q.
•f Report cited. Part I. Sheet G.
X Report cited. Part I. Sheet H.
g Report cited. Part I. Sheet I.
II Report oited, Part I. Sheet G.
4*

42 KIDNAPPING SLAVES.
deposed, " They seize one another in the night when
they have an opportunity, and sometimes invite each
other to their houses and there detain and sell them to
the European traders. * * * The number of persons
so kidnapped is considerable. He himself witnessed
two instances."*
Mr. Falconbridge, surgeon of slaver, testifies. On
the windward coast the negroes are afraid of stirring
out at night, lest they be kidnapped. A woman, big
with child, told him she was caught as she was return
ing from a neighbor's house."!
Mr. Devoynes says, speaking of the Gold Coast,
" The greater part of the slaves are brought from the
interior : they are sold from hand to hand, and many
of them come a great distance, — it is said, from eight
hundred to nine hundred miles."J
The next source of supply is the selling of criminals.
The universal testimony is that the chief crimes for
which they are sold are adultery, theft, and witch
craft, — sometimes for murder. Occasionally they are
sold for debt. Some stake their liberty in gambling,
and are sold if they lose.
Admiral Edwards said, "Adultery is the crime for
which they are most usually sold. In this case the
person offended has a claim not only to the man and
woman offending, and to all their property, but also to
their family and slaves."§
Theft is common among them. One witness (Mr.
Dalzell) testifies that he purchased a son of his father,
who sold him to avoid the punishment which the son

* Lords of Council Report, Part I. Sheet G.
t Report cited, Part I. Sheet N.
i Report cited. Part I. Sheet K.
I Report cited. Part I. Sheet L.

GAMBLERS SOLD AS SLAVES. 43
had incurred for stealing from a white man; whieh,
the witness adds, " is never pardoned." This was in
the kingdom of Dahomey.*
A witness (Mr. Weaver) explained that "they under
stand by witchcraft the power of doing mischief by
supernatural means."f Another witness (Mr. Mathews)
testifies that, having refused to purchase a man sus
pected of witchcraft, who was offered to him for sale,
"they tied a stone around his neck and threw him
into the sea."i
The Eev. Mr. Baggs, chaplain to Commodore Thomp
son during two voyages (in 1783 and 1784), says, of the
African coast generally, "The revenue of the kings
of the country depends on the sale of slaves. They
therefore strain every nerve to accuse and condemn.
Their codes of law are made subservient to the slave-
trade."§ Mr. Penny deposes, " Some are made slaves in con
sequence of gaming, of which they are very fond. They
stake themselves ; first a leg, then an arm, lastly the
head; and when they have lost that, they surrender
themselves as slaves. If a man stake and lose a leg
only, he continues gambling until he has lost the whole
of himself, or is cleared."||
There is no evidence that slaves were bred for sale.
The concurrent testimony is against it.
There is abundant testimony in proof that as to
negroes offered for sale as slaves^ and rejected by the
slave-dealers on account of their state of health or

• Lords of Council Report, Part I. Sheet L.
¦f Report cited, Part I. Sheet L.
j Report oited, Part I. Sheet I.
J Report cited. Part I. Sheet N, 5.
I Report cited, Part I. Sheet I.

44 CHILD RESCUED FROM DEATH.
otherwise, their fate is usually a sad one. Even delay
in the market may cause their death.
The Eev. Mr. Baggs said, " He had proof that when
marauding parties come with their booty in slaves to
the coast, and find no vessel, they kill the slaves
because of the expense of sending them back."*
Mr. Falconbridge said, " He has seen slaves who
were offered for sale and refused cruelly beaten."f
Mr. Penny, who had made eleven voyages as captain
of slavers, deposes, " He has been repeatedly informed
that slaves bought for sale and rejected by the slave-
dealers on account of disease or otherwise are destroyed
as not worth their food."J
Sir George Tonge " saw a beautiful child, about five
years old, brought from the BuUam shore, opposite
Sierra Leone. As the child was too young to be an
object of trade, the persons who had him to sell gave
him no food, and threatened to throw him into the river.
Sir George, to save his life, offered a quarter-cask of
Madeira for him, whieh was accepted, — brought him to
England, and made a present of him to the Marquis of
Landsdown. He understood this child had been kid-
napped."§ Mr. Arnold, surgeon on board a slaver, testified,
" One day a woman, with a child in her arms, was
brought to us to be sold. The captain refused to pur
chase her, not wishing to be plagued with a child on
board : so she was taken back to shore. On the fol
lowing morning she was again brought to us, but
without the child, and apparently in great sorrow.

* Lords of Council Report, Part I. Sheet N, 5.
t Report cited, Part I. Sheet M.
X Report cited. Part I. Sheet I.
I Report cited. Part I. Sheet H.

WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE ? 45
The black trader admitted that the child had been
killed in the night to accommodate the sale."*
What a lifting of the veil upon a terrible series of
atrocities is there, even in these brief extracts, coldly
and dispassionately worded as they are ! For what a
catalogue of crimes were they responsible who sent
slavers to the African coast! What wars have they
not stirred up! What murders instigated! What
temptations have they not presented to the cupidity
of savage sovereign and subject alike! If the King of
Dahomey, or some other royal barbarian, perverted
criminal law to obtain convictions as a source of reve
nue, — if a black trader put to death the infant that the
mother might be salable, — who were the tempters to
such acts? who the original authors of this wicked
ness ? The horrors of the Middle Passage were sur
passed by those that necessarily preceded it.
The ministers of the British. Crown cannot be ac
cused of sentimentalism. They are no declaimers, no
propagandists, no extremists in speculative philan
thropy. Their humanity is tempered with moderation
and suggested by official evidence. Tet with what
perseverance have they labored, even to the present
day, after themselves abolishing the slave-trade in
1807, to procure its subsequent abolition by all civil
ized nations! Within twenty -five years — to wit, be
tween 1818 and 1842 — they concluded twenty-three
treaties on the subject, with Holland, Sweden, Den
mark, Eussia, Austria, Prussia, Naples, Tuscany, Sar
dinia, the Hanse Towns, the United States, Hayti,
Texas, Mexico, Colombia, New Granada, Venezuela,
Ecuador, Uruguay, Buenos Ayres, Chili, Peru, and
Bolivia. * Lords of Council Report, Part I. Sheet N, 4.

46 TESTIMONY OF A BRITISH MINISTER,
Lord Palmerston, speaking in the House of Lords in
1844, gave some of the reasons which stirred the Gov
ernment to move in this matter. He said :
" The negroes destined for the slave-trade are not
taken from the neighborhood where they are embarked.
A great number come from the interior. Many are
captives made in wars excited by thirst for the gaiii
procured by the sale of the prisoners. But the greatest
number arise frOm kidnapping expeditions, and an
organized system of man-stealing in the interior of
Africa. "When the time approaches to set out with the
slave-caravans for the coast, the kidnappers surround
a peaceful village at night, set it on fire, and seize on
the inhabitants, killing all who resist. If the village
attacked is situated on a mountain offering facilities
for flight, and the inhabitants take refuge in the
caverns, the kidnappers kindle large fires at the en
trance; and those who are sheltered there, placed
between death by suffocation and slavery, are forced
to give themselves up. If the fugitives take refuge on
the heights, the assailants render themselves masters
of all the springs and wells, and the unfortunates,
devoured by thirst, return to barter liberty for life.
" The prisoners made, they proceed to the choice.
The robust individuals of both sexes, and the children
of above six or seven years of age, are set aside to form
part of the caravan which is to be driven to the sea
shore. They rid themselves of the children under^gx^
years by killing them on the spot, and abandon the"
aged and infirm, thus condemning them to die of
hunger. " The caravan sets out. Men, women, and children
traverse the burning sands and rocky defiles of the
mountains of Africa barefoot and almost naked. The

AND HIS DEDUCTION THEREFROM. 47
feeble are stimulated by the whip; the strong are
secured by chaining them together or placing them
under a yoke. Many fall from exhaustion on the road,
and die, or become the prey of wild beasts.
" On reaching the sea-shore, they are penned up, and
crowded together in buildings called barracoons, where
they fall a prey to epidemics. Death often cruelly
thins their ranks before the arrival of a slave-trader."*
Lord Palmerston's general deduction from these
and other facts connected with the trade is contained
in the same speech. " It is calculated," he says, " that
of three negroes seized in the interior of Africa, to be
sent into slavery, but one reaches his destination : the
two others die in the course of the operations of the
slave-trade. Whatever may be the number yearly
lan(|ed, therefore, we must triple it to obtain the true
number of human beings which this detestable traffic
annually carries off from Africa."
A portion of the facts which form the data of such
a calculation remain to be considered, — the manner,
namely, of stowing and of treating negroes in slave-
ships, and the mortality thence resulting.

* Speech of Lord Palmerston, delivered in the House of Lords, July
26, 1844.

48 NUMBER OF SLAVES CARRIED
CHAPTEE VI.
HOW SLAVES WEBE TRANSPORTED FBOM AFRICA.
The Eeport ofthe Lords in Council, from which I have
already so copiously quoted, furnishes exact and con
clusive evidence as to the space commonly allowed to
slaves during their passage.
The vessels employed were usually from one hundred
to two hundred and fifty or three hundred tons burden,—
averaging, in early times, little over one hundred tons,
but towards the end ofthe eighteenth century being of
the capacity of one hundred and fifty or two hundred
tons. The universal testimony is that the average
number carried per ton was two persons and upwards.
John Anderson, master of slaver, "conceives that
two slaves to a ton cannot crowd a ship."
Sir George Tonge (of the British Navy) says, " The
usual allowance of space is two slaves to a ton, some
times three. If two were allowed to a ton, he thought
there would be room enough."
A bill had been introduced into Parliament, which
proposed to limit the number for each ton. Evidence
was taken as to its effect, resulting as follows.
James Penny had made eleven voyages as captain
of slaver He was asked, " If the blank of the bill is
filled with one and a half to a ton, will it, in your
opinion, tend to the abolition of the trade ?" Answer,
" I am clearly of opinion that it will."*
This witness handed in a table, of which the accuracy
was afterwards endorsed by Mr. Tarleton, a Liverpool
* Lords of Council Report, Minutes of Evidenoe, p. 41.

FOR EVERY TON BURDEN. 49
merchant extensively engaged in the slave-trade, ex
hibiting the estimate of profit or loss on a vessel of one
hundred tons, at different rates of slaves per ton. Here
it is : — •
I STERLING.
£. .. d.
At one man per ton, the loss is  590 1
At one man and a half per ton, the loss is  206 19 9
At two men per ton, the profit is  180 3 6
At two men and a half per ton, the profit is  761 5 6"*
James Jones, six years captain of a slaver, deposed,
"If a ship of two hundred tons does not purchase four
hundred slaves and more, she must certainly sink the
owners' money." He was asked, " What measurement
do the merchants allow for each slave ?" Answer, " In
a ship of two hundred tons and under, me/chants all
carry more than two slaves to each ton." Being asked
what width was allowed, at that rate, to each slave,
when stowed below, he answered, " A full-grown slave
takes sixteen inches in width ; smaller slaves, twelve to
fourteen inches. "f
John Matthews, seventeen years in the slave-trade,
was asked, " What space in length and breadth do you
consider sufficient for the health and comfort of the
negroes on board?" Answer, " The space they occupy
when they lie on their backs is always considered suffi
cient for them." When asked for the number of inches,
he at first refused to give it, saying he did not know.
Afterwards he gave fourteen and two-third inches as a
fair average. J
Another slave-captain (James Bowen) expressed a
different opinion. He said, " The average number of

* Lords of Council Report, Minutes of Evidence, p. 21.
t Report oited. Minutes of Evidenoe, pp. 44, 45.
X Report cited, Minute.s of Evidenoe, pp. 24, 25.
5

50 SPACE ALLOWED TO EACH SLAVE.
slaves carried is two to a ton. * * * Is of opimon
that the greatest number of slaves which a ship can
carry consistent with their preservation is not above one
per ton."*
James Penny, a part of whose evidence has already
been quoted, said, " The average allowance of width
to a slave is fourteen inches and two-thirds."
Captain Parrey was sent to Liverpool by Govern
ment, in 1788, to take the dimensions of ships employed
in the African trade. Apian and sections are given of
one of these, the Brooks, a ship of two hundred and
ninety-seven tons burden, well known in the trade.
The room said by her owners to be allowed for each
slave was —
For men, each, six feet by sixteen inches.
For women, each, five feet ten inches by sixteen
inches. For boys, each, five feet by fourteen inches.
For girls, each, four feet six inches by twelve inches.
At these rates Captain Parrey found that she could
carry four hundred and seventy slaves. But she did
carry six hundred and seven, being about two to a ton.
This reduces the width actually allowed to the men to
less than tioelve inches and a half, and the rest in pro-
portion.f What terrible glimpses of human suffering are fur
nished by these dry, mathematical details ! The slaver,

* Lords of Council Report, Part III. Sheet d.
f Mr. William James, who had made three voyages on slavers, testified
''that on board the Britannia the height between decks was about five
feet and a half. No slave whatever had room to turn himself when the
cargo was completed. The chief mate, boatswain, and an active young
man were employed in stowing or packing them together, — as in adjusting
their arms and lejrs and prescribing a fixed spaco for each." — Lords' Re
port, Part II. Sheet d, 7.

SUFFERINGS ON BOARD SLAVERS. 51
^to make money, must stow his human cargo with
twelve to sixteen inches only of board for each to lie
on! Lord Palmerston, speaking of African slave-ships,
strikingly says, " A negro has not as much room in
them as a corpse in a coffin."*
As the witnesses examined by the Lords in Council
were, for the most part, masters or surgeons of slavers
or merchants engaged in the trade, the results of this
frightful system only occasionally come to light. The
slaves, thus stowed away like so much inanimate cargo,
often felt their lives so grievous a burden that they
attempted suicide, sometimes by throwing themselves
overboard, sometimes by refusing all food. To prevent
the first mode of self-destruction, as well as to avoid the
dangers of insurrection, the men-slaves were always
put in irons, fastened two and two, the " chains being
locked, at different intervals, to the deck,"-]- and when
released and brought on deck, as they were every fine
day, were compelled, by fear of the lash, to exercise —
to dance, as the phrase of the trade was — in their
fetters. J As to the second mode of suicide, by self-
inflicted starvation, its frequency rendered it an object
of suspicion and of punishment. Captain Hall, a slave-
trader, deposes, "Has known instances of slaves being
punished for not eating, supposed to be from stubborn
ness, when in reality it was from indisposition; and in
some instances the slaves so punished have been found
dead next morning. "§
* Speech, already qnoted, of July 26, 1844.
f Testimony of John Newton, mate of slaver. — Lords' Report, Part IT.
Sheet b, 2.
X "While the slaves are upon deck, it is thought necessary that they
should take exercise, for which purpose the chief mate and boatswain aro
stationed with a cat-of-nine-tails, to compel them to dance, as it is called."
— Testimony of William Jones, Lords' Report, Part II. Sheet d, 7.
I Lords' Report, Part II. Sheet c, 2.

62 EFFECTS OF \. GALE OF WIND.
The women and children were not chained, and had
usually more liberty than the men. But a surgeon of
a slaver (Mr. James Arnold) thus indicates the spirit
in which they were sometimes treated. " When the
women were sitting by themselves below, he had heard
them singing, but always, at these times, in tears.
Their songs contained the history of their separation
from friends and country. These songs were so dis
agreeable to the captain that he has taken them up
and flogged them in so terrible a manner for no other
reason than this, that he (Mr. Arnold) has been a fort
night or three weeks in healing the incisions made."*
In severe weather, when the slaves could not be
brought on deck, the mortality was often frightful. An
instance is stated of " a schooner, which carried only
one hundred and forty slaves, meeting with a gale of
wind which lasted eighteen hours, and losing, in that
brief space of time, fifty slaves,"— upwards of one-third
of the whole number.
But worse misfortunes than storms sometimes over
took these poor wretches. Mr. William James testifies
as follows : — " In the year 1779, being master of the
Hound, sloop-of-war, and coming from theBay of Hon
duras to Jamaica, he fell in, off the Isle of Pines, with
two Liverpool Guineamen on the Middle Passage, com
manded by Captains Eingmaiden and Jackson, who had
very imprudently (but whether wilfully or not he can
not say) missed the island of Jamaica. Captain Nugent
gave them chase and came up with them. Mr. James,
upon boarding them, found them in great distress, both
on account of provisions and water. He asked the
captains (for both of them were on board one ship)
why they did not go into the watering-place at the

* Lords' Report, Part II. Sheet d, 2.

SCARCITY OF WATER. 53
west end of the Isle of Pines (near Cuba). They
replied that " they had attempted to get in, but got
into shoal water.'' He then asked thera what they
intended to have done with their slaves if thej' had
not fallen in with the Hound. They replied, " To make
them walk the plank," — that is, to jump overboard.
Mr. James asked them again, why they did not turn a
number of the slaves ou shore at the Isle of Pines and
endeavor to save the rest. They replied, again. " that
in such case they could not have recovered the in
surance, and that the rest would have gotten on
shore."* The supply of water usually taken appears to have
been very scanty. The same witness, speaking of his
experience on board the Britannia, says, " Their rooms
were so hot and intolerable that they were continually
calling out for water, and they generally came upon
deck in a sweat. * * * They were served twice a
day with water, which is given them in a pannikin
of tin, of such dimensions as to hold not quite half a
pint."t Dysentery and diseases of a similar character were
common among them. The details, as furnished by
eye-witnesses who have given their experience, are too
loathsome for reproduction. Mr. Falconbridge, a sur
geon in this trade, who published a work on this subject
in 1789, after giving a minute description of the scene
below, adds, "The deck or floor of their rooms re
sembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of
the human imagination to picture to-^tself a situation
more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves
fainted and were carried on deck, where some of them

» Lords' Report, Part II. Sheet d, 7.
t Report oited. Part II. Sheet d, 7.

54 EVIDENCE AS TO MORTALITY.
died, and the others were with difficulty restored. It
had nearly proved fatal to me also."*
That, under such a system, the average mortality
should be very great, can surprise no one. What the
true average was is somewhat difficult to determine.
That it was chiefly caused by the plan of packing
human beings, sometimes for days and nights together,
in a width of from twelve to sixteen inches each, is
certain. The Eev. John Newton, who in early life had
gone out as mate in a slaver, after stating that on his
first voyage they buried one-third of the number taken,
added that on a subsequent voyage they did not lose
one, — " the only instance of the kind that was ever
known," he admits. Being cross-questioned as to the
probable cause of this exceptional result, he said it was
to be ascribed to the fact that, " with room for two
hundred and twenty slaves, the number for which his
cargo waS calculated, they carried ninety only."
The mortality was least from the windward coast,
greatest from Bonny, Calabar, Benin, and Gaboon. In
dividual instances were frequently adduced by the
witnesses in which it was about five per cent. Occa
sionally a witness alleges that to be the average; but
this was in the windward trade. From the other points
named, they usually admit an average of ten per cent.
Mr. James Penny, eleven years a slave-captain, speak
ing of the trade generally, said, " On an average he esti
mated (from his own experience and the best inform
ation he could collect) that the mortality was one-
twelfth." The only official table on this subject given in the
Lords' Eeport indicates a much higher rate of mor
tality than that admitted by these slave-traders. This

* Faloonbridge's Account of the Slave-Trade, p. 31.

OFFICIAL TABLE OF MORTALITY.

55

table is taken from the books of the Board of Trade :
it exhibits the number of negroes shipped, and the
number delivered, throughout nine years, namely, from
1680 to 1688, both inclusive, by the "African Com
pany," and is from a statement made by the company
itself. It is as follows : —

Years.

Negroes
shipped.

Negroes
delivered.

Yearly loss
per cent.

Average loss
per cent.

1680 
1681 
1682 
1683 
1684 
1685 
1686 
1687 
1688 

5,1906,3276,330
9,0815,384 8,658
8,3556,6065,852

3,751
4,9894,494 6,4883,8456,3046,812
4,7774,936

27S21}2928i284
298 18S
Ut15S

Total...

60,783

46,394

23J

The mortality, it will be observed, was fourteen
thousand three hundred and eighty-nine out of sixty
thousand seven hundred and eighty -three shipped;
that is, twenty-three and two-thirds per cent.'*
The results from an official table like this, present
ing an average on so large a scale, are far more relia
ble than any deductions from isolated cases or indi
vidual testimony or opinion. The very witnesses who
spoke of five per cent, as the usual loss, when pressed
in cross-questioning, admitted far heavier losses to be
of frequent occurrence, — as John Newton, Archibald
Dalzell, Thomas Eldred. This last admitted that on a

* It is worthy of regard, in connection with this excessive mortality,
that it occurred among persons all taken in the very prime of life.

56 MORTALITY AMONG SEAMEN.
single voyage he lost half his slaves and half his
crew. The great crime avenged itself on those who aided
in its perpetration. The epidemics which prevailed
among the slaves were often communicated to the
sailors, exposed as they were on deck day and night,
and daily employed in occupations the most infectious
and revolting, cleansing the lower decks, and the like.
Sir George Tonge says, " A Guinea-ship seldom
returns with more than half her complement of sailors;
and he believes the annual loss of seamen in that trade
is equal to the manning of two ships-of-the-line."
The celebrated Thomas Clarkson supplied to the
Lords' Committee evidence on this point. He sub
mitted a table exhibiting the results as to eighty-eight
slavers that returned to Liverpool in the years 1786
and 1787. It showed that out of three thousand one
hundred and seventy sailors shipped, there came home
but fourteen hundred and twenty-eight, — less than one-
half Six hundred and forty-two (about twenty per
cent.) are recorded as having died. The rest had de
serted, or were left behind on account of siekness. Of
those who returned, many went to the hospital, and
never recovered their health.
Another table shows the deaths of seamen on twenty-
four West Indiamen, in a single voyage, to have been
six; while in twenty-four slavers it was two hundred
and sixteen. The average number of seamen employed
on slavers being thirty-six on each (as three thousand
one hundred and seventy on eighty-eight vessels, in
the table just referred to), the above is a mortality of
two hundred and sixteen out of eight hundred and
sixty-four, or just twenty-five per cent,
Mr. Clarkson shows, by other tables, that the loss
of seamen on board slavers is twenty times as wreat

RATE OF MORTALITY ON MIDDLE PASSAGE. 57
in proportion to numbers, as on board vessels in the
Petersburg or Newfoundland or Greenland trade; and
he adds an expression of his belief that " the annual
loss of seamen in English slave-traders is greater than
that in all other English trading-vessels put toge
ther."* So odious did this service become that seamen could
usually be obtained for it only by fraudulent means, —
through crimps and landlords of sailors' boarding-
houses, — though two months' wages (instead of the
usual month's pay) were offered in advance.
Upon the whole, it seems to be sufficiently esta
blished that the usual rate of mortality among sea
men was not less than twenty -five per cent, for each
voyage, — that is, during one year; for the rule of the
African slave-trade was one round voyage each year.
As to the mortality among the slaves, there seems
no good reason why we should not adopt the rate of
loss shown in the statement of the " African Com
pany" as the average on sixty thousand slaves shipped
in their vessels; namely, twenty-three and two-thirds per
cent. But even to this terrible mortality a material item
may have to be added.
Among the documents in the Lords' Eeport is a
Eeport, presented December 12, 1788, by a committee
of the Jamaica House of Assembly to that house.
This committee, desiring to avert the inferences as to
ill treatment of slaves, liable to be drawn from the great
decrease of the slave population of the island, made
inquiry " as to the number of new negroes that have
perished in the harbors of this island between the time
of their being reported at the custom-house and the
* Lords of Council Report, Part II. Sheet f, 3.

58 MORTALITY IN POET.
day of sale,— aK which are reported, in official books and
returns, as negroes actually imported." They found, from
the examination of a negro-factor (Mr. Lindo), that
" out of seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-
three negroes consigned to him in the years 1786, 1787,
and 1788, and reported at the custom-house, three hun
dred and sixty-three died in the harbor of Kingston
before the day of sale."* This gives a mortality of
about four and two-thirds per cent, on shipboard after
entry and before landing.
It does not clearly appear from the table of the Afri
can Company whether by " negroes delivered" they
mean those entered as arrived in the books of the office,
or those actually offered for sale. If the former, then
we have four and two-thirds per cent, to add to twenty-
three and two-thirds per cent, furnished in the African
Company's table, — making an aggrega.te'of twenty-eight
and one-third per cent, as the average mortality incident
to the passage.
What shall we say of the estimates of those slave-
dealers who would have us believe that the entire
average mortality among slaves on the terrible Middle
Passage amounted to but one-fifth of the mortality
among the crews of slavers, and only to about the per
centage which, by official documents, we find to have
taken place after the close of the voyage, during a few
days' delay in harbor previous to disembarkation ?
On the whole, whether this loss in harbor is to be
added to the African Company's estimate or not, it may
be confidently assumed that the mortality among slaves
imported from the Eastern to the Western hemisphere,
estimated from the time of shipping to that of landing,
did not fall short of from twenty to twenty-five per cent.
• Lords of Council Report, Part III. Sheet R.

MORTALITY IN BATTLE AND ON SLAVERS. 59
Lest we exaggerate, however, let us put it at twenty per
cent, only.*
It is considered a bloody battle when ten per cent.
of the combatants engaged are killed or vi^ounded.
The loss at Gettysburg did not amount to so high a
percentage. Nor, even when that proportion of killed
and wounded is reached, does the ultimate mortality
amount to five per cent.
Through what a frightful ordeal, then, were these
poor wretches, during their incarceration of eight or
ten weeks on board Christian-owned slavers, doomed
to pass ! Their ranks twice decimated in that brief
period; their numbers, without regard to age or sex,
thinned by death as the numbers of soldiers passing
through four sanguinary battles seldom are; not in
spired, as the soldier may be, by zeal in a cause ; not
sustained, as the soldier in battle is, by hope of victory;
their future dark, purposeless, despairing, as the pros
pect of pitiless slavery, ending only at death, could
make it ; what people, even under the harrow of pagan
victory, were ever made to endure what they endured!
And this crime of one portion of God's creatures
against another portion was committed not in the case
* It may not be wholly unnecessary to remind the reader, if he be not
familiar with the calculation of percentages, that if twenty per cent, of
the negroes received on board be the number lost on the Middle Passage,
while we must deduct that percentage from the total shipped to ascertain
the number landed in the colonies, we must add, not twenty, but twenty-five
per cent, to the number landed, if we wish to obtain the number shippad.
Thus, if the number of negroes shipped be one hundred, we obtain the
nnmber landed — namely, eighty — by deducting twenty per cent, from one
hundred ; but to these eighty we must add twenty-five per cent, on eighty,
iu order to obtain the original number shipped, — namely, one hundred.
The term Middle Passage is not to be understood as designating the
trans-oceanic route to the West Indies from any particular portion of the
slave-coast. "Middle Paasage, or Mid-paaaage, the passaf;e of a slave-
ship from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean." — Woreeater'e Dictionary.

60 MORTALITY IN AFRICA.
of thousands, not even of millions only : it was com
mitted, through the persistent barbarities of three cen-
turies and a half, in the case of tens of millions ! When
we consider the character of the means employed in
Africa to fill up tho slave-cargoes, the wasting wars
waged to procure prisoners, the marauding bands of
kidnappers firing villages and killing all who resisted,
the slaughter of those who were too young, and the
abandonment of those who were too old or infirm, to
be marketable, the deaths on the long desert-journey,
and again in the pestilence-invaded barracoons, and yet
again in the dungeons of the slave-ship, — when we
reflect upon all these prolific sources of mortality, we
shall not be inclined to consider Lord Palmerston
guilty of exaggeration when he calculated that we
must treble tbe number of slaves actually landed in
the colonies, to find the total of persons who were con
signed to death or slavery by the various operations of
the trade, from its inception in the Old World to its
close in the harbors of the New.
But, lest in this the British Premier should have ex
aggerated, let us assume that the number of those who
perished in Africa by slave-wars, marauding murders,
pestilence, and the extremity of hardship previous to
embarkation, was but equal to the number embarked;
in other words, let us, to obtain the entire number of
victims, lower the estimate to double the number only
that were actually received on board slave-ships. Then,
according to our previous calculation, assuming the
number shipped from Africa in the three and a half
centuries through which this traffic lasted to have been
fifteen millions and a half, we have thirty-one millions
as the total number of negroes who have been consigned
to death or to foreign elavery, that one race of men might
live by the labor of another.

FATE OF THIRTY-ONE MILLIONS OF MEN. 61
Thirty-one millions! a portion of mankind equal
in number to the entire inhabitants. Northern and
Southern, white and colored, of the United States !
Of these thirty -one millions, upwards of three millions
(a population equal to that of the United States when
Independence was declared) were cast into the At
lantic;* while less than twelve millions and a half
were landed in colonial ports and distributed to planters
from the auction-block.f
Never, in any three centuries of man's written his
tory, was the violation of a great principle alike in
political economy, in national morals, and in the reli
gion of Christ, followed by a succession of outrages
against God's creatures, — in numbers a vast nation, —
so openly sanctioned by public law and solemn treaty,
so shamelessly countenanced by public opinion, yet so
marked at every stage of its progress by tbose fiagrant
enormities which usually arouse loud-spoken indigna
tion, even when they do not stir to practical reform,
among mankind !

* The dead were thrown overboard even in port. Captain Cook, com
manding a trading-vessel on the east coast of Africa in 1836, 1837, and
1838, informed Mr. Fowell Buxton that slaves who " die on board, in ports,
are never interred on shore, but are invariably thrown overboard, when
they sometimes float backwards and forwards with the tide for a week,
should the sharks and alligators not devour them." — The African Slave-
Trade, by Thomas Fowell Buxton, London, 1839, p. 93.
t See, for confirmation of the moderation of these estimates. Appendix,
Note A.

62 FORCE or statistical details.
CHAPTEE VII.
WHAT BECAME OF THE IMPORTED SLAVES.
We have raised the curtain on but the first two
acts of the Great Tragedy, — the scene being laid, of the
first in Africa, ofthe second in the prison-slaver. The
third and last, opening on colonial plantations, remains
to be glanced at. We must say a few words as to the
treatment of those who survived death to beeome, in a
foreign land, slaves, and the progenitors of slaves.
The graphic recital of individual barbarities, authen
tic examples of which can be found without number,
are best calculated to stir indignation; but a doubt
may obtrude itself, in reading these, as to how far they
constitute the rule, and how far they are to be taken
as the exception only. Statistical details on a large
scale, grave and dispassionate though their language
be, addressed not to the heart, but to the reason, carry
with them a force of evidence far beyond that of indi
vidual example, — a force of evidence against which
sophistry strives in vain, — which compels conviction,
except when the mind is closed against all proof by
the hermetic influence of prejudice.
I select an example of such evidence, based on official
tables running through nearly three-quarters of a cen
tury, and bearing upon the character of slavery in the
principal English colony in the West Indies. The
character of England for humanity, as compared with
that of other owners of slave-colonies, — Spain, France,
Holland, — is not below the average; and, on that score,
the example may be assumed as fair.
To the Jamaica House of Assembly, convened by the

DECREASE OF POPULATION IN JAMAICA. 63
governor of the colony, August 6, 1702, a return was
made of the negroes and stock then on the island.
The number of slaves was forty-one thousand five
hundred and ninety-six.*
In the Eeport of the Lords in Council, from which
I have already so copiously extracted, is a tablef
giving the number of negroes annually imported into,
and exported from, the island of Jamaica, from the
year 1702 to the year 1775, both inclusive, — that is,
during seventy -four years : —
There were imported  497,736
There were exported  137,014
Leaving an addition, by importation, to the negro popu
lation of the island, in seventy-four years, of  360,722
These two items, of forty-one thousand five hundred
and ninety-six negroes in the island in 1702, and of
three hundred and sixty thousand seven hundred and
twenty-two imported from Africa from that time up
to 1775, — together four hundred and two thousand
three hundred and eighteen, — give the number of
negroes who would have been in the island in 1775, if
the population had neither augmented by natural
increase, nor diminished by mortality, in the previous
seventy-four years.
But, in point of fact, this population of four hundred
and two thousand three hundred and eighteen was
represented in 1775 by only one hundred and ninety-
two thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven sur
vivors. J It had diminished in three-quarters of a cen-
* Annals of Jamaica, by the Rev. G. W. Bridges, A.M., London, 1827,
vol. i. p. 331.
t Lords of Council Report, Part III., Jamaica, Sheet P.
X The Rev. Mr. Bridges, after quoting the table above given and stating
that, after deducting the negroes exported from thoso imported, three hun-

64 DECREASE OF POPULATION IN BARBADOES.
tury by two hundred and nine thousand five hundred
and thirty-one,— that is, to less than one-half
A similar table to that above referred to for Jamaica
is given for the British West Indian colony next in
importance, namely, the island of Barbadoes. It ex
tends, however, over seventeen years only, namely,
from 1764 to 1780, both inclusive.* It indicates a rate
of decrease in the slave population far greater even
than that in Jamaica.
It appears from the table that in 1764 there were
in the island seventy thousand seven hundred and six
negroes, — that there were imported in the next seven
teen years, namely, up to 1780, thirty-eight thousand
eight hundred and forty-three; no importations of
negroes in the last seven years of the period, nor any
exportations of them throughout the period, being
recorded. To seventy thousand seven hundred and six (the
number in 1764) add thirty-eight thousand eight hun
dred and forty-three (the number imported in seven
teen years), and we have one hundred and nine thou
sand five hundred and forty-nine as the number of
negroes who, if there had been no natural increase
or decrease of population, would have been alive in
1780. But in that year there were but sixty-eight
thousand two hundred and seventy alive on the island.

dred and sixty thousand seven hundred and twenty-two were left for the
supply of the island, adds that the number alive in 1775 was one hundred
and ninety-two thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven. — Work cited,
vol. ii. p. 456.
A resident for years in Jamaica, Mr. Bridges had access, through the
Duke of Manchester, governor of the island, to all important oCScial
documents. An apologist of slavery, he may be trusted as to any evidence
against it.
* Lords of Council Report, Part III., Barbadoes, Table A, No. 15.

EXACT STATISTICAL DETAILS LACKING. 65
At this rate of decrease, the population would have
diminished to one-half in twenty-three years.
But to obtain general results we must look to more
comprehensive estimates than these.
Unfortunately, there are to be found no full statisti
cal details which might enable us to calculate, with
accuracy, the number of negroes and their descendants
of mixed blood now on the Western Hemisphere. We
know that there were, in 1860, four millions four hun
dred and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and nine
in the United States.*
We know that in the West Indies, including Guiana,
there were emancipated by England, France, Denmark,
Sweden, and Holland, about nine hundred and fifteen
thousand slaves,^ and the usual estimate is, that to these
should be added one-fifth to obtain the present colored
* Preliminary Report of Eighth Census, p. 7.
f The total number emancipated was as follows: —
By England  770,390
" France  248,560
" Holland  45,000
•• Denmark  27,144
" Sweden  531
Total  1,091,625
Bnt of the slaves emancipated by England one hundred and two
thousand three hundred and sixty-three were not in the Western Hemi
sphere,— namely, at the Cape thirty -five thousand seven hundred, and in the
Mauritius sixty-six thousand six hundred and thirteen. There were also
among those liberated by France seventy -four thousand five hundred and
one in the Eastern Hemisphere,— namely, in the island of Bourbon sixty-
thousand six hundred and fifty-one, in Senegal len thousand three hun
dred and fifty, and in Nossi-bc three thousand five hundred. Deduetiiig
these two items of one hundred and two thousand three hundrerl and sixty-
three, and seventy-four thousand five hundred nnd one, from one million
ninety-one thousand six hundred and twenty-five, we have nine hun
dred and fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty-one as the total of
slaves emancipated, in the West Indies, including Guiana.
(J.:,

66 NEGRO POPULATION IN CUBA
population of these colonies. This would give one mil-
lion and ninety-eight thousand — or say, in round num
bers, one million one hundred thousand — as the entire
colored population of the West Indian colonies of
England, France, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden,* let
us say in 1860.
The census-returns of the Spanish West Indian colo
nies, still slave, are imperfect ; and the several estimates
of population in these islands vary widely. The most
authentic estimates, based on actual census-returns,
make the slave and free colored population of Cuba, as
late as 1853, a little more than half a million.f With
* This is, probably, a full estimate. There were freed in Jamaica three
hundred and eleven thousand and seventy slaves, — one-third of the whole
number emancipated in the West Indies. But by the census of 1844 the
total black and colored population of the island was but three hundred
and sixty-one thousand six hundred and fifty-seven, having diminished
in ten years nearly twenty thousand. Sewell (Ordeal of Free Labor itt
the British West Indies, New York, 1862, p. 245) says, "If the estimate
of mortality by cholera and small-pox within a few years be correct, I do
not believe, after making every allowance for a proper increase by birth,
that the black and colored population of Jamaica exceeds at the present
day three hundred and fifty thousand." This is but twelve per cent, more
than the number of slaves freed.
If Cochin's estimate of tho population of the West Indies be correct,
there were in the British West Indian colonies, in 1855, but eight hundred
and forty-five thousand, of whom between one hundred and forty thousand
and one hundred and fifty thousand were whites, — leaving say seven hun
dred thousand for the entire colored population. (Cochin, tom. i. p. 478
and pp. 366, 367.) But England emancipated in the West Indies six
hundred and seventy thousand slaves (Cochin, tom. i. p. 367), or within
thirty thousand as many as comprised, in 1855 (nccording to Cochin's
estimate), the entire colored population in her West Indian colonies.
The addition to the number of slaves emancipated in the West Indies
of one-filth, or twenty per cent., to make up the total colored population,
say in 1860, is evidently ample.
1 1 take these from a work published in 1855, entitled "Cuba," from tho
Spanish of Don J. M. de la Torre, edited by R. S. Fisher, statistical editor
of Colton's works. A table (p. 119) gives census-returns at intervals from
1775. The three last are—

AND IN PORTO RICO.

67

a fair allowance for increase since that date, we may
put it in 1860 at five hundred and thirty thousand.
Porto Eico, a fiourishing and increasing colony, con
tained, by a census-return of 1846,* four hundred and
forty-seven, thousand nine hundred and fourteen in
habitants, of whom about fifty -four per cent, were white,
leaving about two hundred and six thousand colored.
The rate of increase for the sixteen years preceding
was a little upwardt of two per cent, a year. As but
fifty or fifty-five thousand of the colored people in this
island are slaves, so that the gradual falling off of the
slave-trade would not very seriously affect the popula
tion, wo may suppose that some twenty-five per cent.
(say fifty-one thousand five hundred) have been added
since, — making, in all, two hundred and fifty-seven thou
sand five hundred for the entire colored population of
Porto Eico.

In 1846..
In 1849..
In 1853..

White.

425,767457,133 501,988

Free Colored
and Black.

149,226164,410
176,647

Slaves.

323,759
32.3,897330,425

Total.

898,752945,440
1,009,060

In 1846 there were four hundred and seventy-two thousand nine hun
dred and eighty-two free and slave; in 1853 there were five hundred and
seven thousand and seventy-two, — an increase in seven years of about
thirty -four thousand. If (as the supplies from the slave-trade have been
diminished) we put the increase since then at forty-three thousand, we
shall have five hundred and fifty thousand as the present total.
* "Porto Rico," by J. T. O'Neil, edited by R. S. Fisher, 1855, has re
turns from an early date. The three last are —
In 1830  330,051
In 1834  358,836
In 1846  447,914
In the census of 1834, the whites were fifty-four per cent, of the whole
population, the free colored being thirty-five per cent., and the slaves
eleven per cent.

68 POPULATION OF HAYTI.
This would give in the Spanish West Indian colonies
a colored population, in 1860, of seven hundred and
eighty-seven thousand five hundred.
I have not been able to find any official returns of
the population of Hayti later than 1826. In 1820, in a
' Memoire sur Saint-Dominique," by Lieutenant-General
Baron Pamphile de Lacroix, the population of the
island is put at five hundred and one thousand, of whom
only one thousand are set down as white.* In 1825,
M. Placide Justin estimated the population at seven
hundred thousand. f But in 1826, Charles Mackenzie,
British Consul-General in Hayti, obtained an official
population-return, not published, which had recently
been made to the Haytien Chamber of Commerce. It
gives the population of each commune separately,
making the total population of the island, at that time,
four hundred and twenty-three thousand and forty-
two. J This return Mr. Mackenzie considers more re
liable than any other. It affords proof how little trust
worthy are vague estimates of population, which usually
overrun the truth, in consequence, probably, of the de-
* The proportion of slaves at this time is said to be nine per cent. only.
The estimate is —
Blacks  480,000
Mulattoes  20,000
Whites  1,000
Total  601,000
t Notes on Hayti, by Charles Mackenzie, F. R. S., London, 1830, vol.
ii. p. 112.
X Notes on Hayti, above cited, vol. ii. pp. 113, 114.
The population is thus divided : —
Population of the Northwest and South (late French part of the
island)  351,819
Population ofthe East (Spanish part)  71 223
Total  423,042

NEGROES AND MULATTOES IN HAYTI. 69
sire of a nation or its Government, in the absence of an
undeniable census, to represent its numerical strength
as great as possible.
Some very partial returns of an authentic character,
furnished by Mackenzie,* give the rate of natural
increase in the population in certain communes at
about three-quarters of one per cent, only per annum.
But no trustworthy deductions can be made from
returns so limited. The actual rate of increase from
1836 to 1860 — thirty-four years — is probably double
this, say one and a half per cent, a year.
Allowing for omissions,"!" and for Mackenzie's opinion,
that the census given, though the most reliable docu
ment he could obtain, may be an under-e8timate,J let
us, instead of the total of four hundred and twenty-
three thousand and forty-two there given as the popu
lation in 1826, assume the black and colored popu
lation of Hayti in 1826 at Baron de Lacroix's estimate
of five hundred thousand, adding thereto, to bring it
up to 1860, one and a half per cent, a year for thirty-
four years, — that is, fifty-one per cent., — and we have
the total negro and mulatto population of the island
at seven hundred and fifty-five thousand.§
* These returns show an annual excess of births over deaths of eighty,
on an average of five years, in the commune of St. Jago, containing
eleven thousand and fifty-six inhabitants; and, again, a similar excess of
seventy-five per annum, on an average of six years, in the commune of
Cape Haytien, on twelve thousand one hundred and fifty-one inhabitants :
in neither case reaching three-quarters of one per cent. — Notea on Haiti,
vol. ii. pp. 117 and 119.
t Grands Bois, the residence of the Maroons, or refugee negroes, then
inhabiting the mountains whioh stretch from the neighborhood of Mire-
balais to the coast on the east of Jacmel, is omitted, as that wandering
people oould not be reached so as to enumerate them. Their number at
that time is commonly estimated at six thousand.
X Notes on Haiti, vol. ii. p. 116.
I Victor Scholcher, who, in 1842, published "Les Colonies Franfaises,"

70 ELEMENT OF UNCERTAINTY.
As respects Central and South America, any esti
mate of the nuraber of negroes and their descendants
of mixed blood must be founded on data still more
uncertain than those which relate to thc West Indies.
Not only are we without any census of modern date
to aid in the research, but an element of uncertainty
intervenes which even census-returns would fail to
dispel. The aboriginal Indian races and their de
scendants of mixed blood are in large proportion all
over this country, and are so blended in some portions
of it that it is impossible to distinguish between them
and the African mulatto of various shades.

is the author .of two volumes, published in 1843, entitled "Colonies
Etrangeres et Haiti." The spirit in which his works are written may he
judged from the motto, " It would be as easy to regulate humanely as
sassination as slavery;" and his opinions on Hayti are entitled to the
more weight as they are the result of a personal visit to that island, and
exploration of its interior. He says : —
" There has been no census taken for the last fifteen years. * * *
Though children swarm in the cabins, those who speak in good faith con
cur in the admission that the population does not increase. The govern
ment, indeed, puts the population at eight hundred thousand; but the
general opinion is that it does not exceed seven hundred thousand." —
Coloniea Etrangh-ca ct Haiti, vol. ii. pp. 264, 265. .
This is the judgment of one whose book is a defence of the Haytiena
and of their character, and who is evidently disposed to represent every
thing as favorably as truth will w.arrant.
Colton's Descriptive Atlas (1863) gives the entire population of the
island in 1860 at seven hundred and eight thousand five hundred. Somo
others put it as high as from eight hundred thousand to nine hundred
thousand. Upon the whole, the data here brought together induce
me to believe that these latter figures, like the government estimate to
whioh Scholcher alludes, are an exaggeration, and that, in estimating
the colored population of- tho isl.ind in 1860 at seven hundred and fifty-
five thousand, we are as likely to exceed tho actual amount as to fall
short of it. The number of whites in the island are scarcely worth
reckoning. Diligent, search has convinced me that reliablo documents as to the
actual population of this island are not to bo obtained.

POPULATION OF BRAZIL. 71
Brazil, the only considerable portion of the South
American continent in which slavery exists, contains,
of course, by far the larger number of negroes, — pro
bably four-fifths, or more, of all that are to be found
in Central or South America. Into this country slaves
were imported from Africa, in considerable numbers,
as late as fifteen years ago.*
A census, spoken of as official, bearing date-June 22,
1831, states the entire population at five millions thirty-
five thousand, of which two millions are set down as
slaves.f The free colored population is not given.
An estimate in the Penny Cyclopsedia puts the negro
population, in 1836, at two millions; namely, sixteen
hundred thousand slaves and four hundred thousand
free.J If the proportion here given between slave and
free be correct, and if the census of 1831 may be
trusted, the number of free colored of African descent
was then five hundred thousand. This would make
the entire colored population of African descent, in
1831, two millions five hundred thousand; that is, about
one-half of the whole population, the other half being
whites, Indians, and a mixed race sharing the Indian
blood. From the year 1831 to the year 1856 we find no
record of any population-returns claiming to be offl-
* M. de Souza, Brazilian Minister of Foreign Aflairs, stated, under date
May 14, 1853, that the number of slaves imported was —
In 1846  50,324
In 1847  56,172
In 1848  60,000
In 1849  54,000
He added that in 1852 the number imported had been reduced to seven
hundred. — Cochin, tom. ii. p. 238.
f Horner's Brazil and Uruguay, p. 71.
X Penny Cyclopsedia, Vol. V., art. Brazil.

72 POPULATION OF BRAZILIAN PROVINCES.
cial. In 1856 the Brazilian Government published
returns, summing up seven millions six hundred and
seventy-eight thousand, but not distinguishing the
races. The latest, and probably the most reliable, authority
on this subject is the work of Kidder and Fletcher on
Brazil, from which (page 612) the above returns are
taken.* These gentlemen believe the government
returns of 1856 to be an over-estimate; and they give,
as more trustworthy, a table made up from the esti
mates of Sr. Francisco Nunes de Souza, a native sta
tistician, quoted also by Ewbank. The table was pub
lished in the " Agricultor Braziliero." It is for 1856,
and sums up seven millions and forty thousand.f
* Kidder and Fletcher inform us, in their preface, that their " experi
ence in the Brazilian Empire embraces a period of twenty years ;" and
they add, "the authors have consulted every important work in French,
German, English, and Portuguese that could throw light on the history
of Brazil, and likewise various published Memoirs and Discourses read
before the flourishing Geographical and Historical Society at Rio de Ja
neiro. For statistics they have either personally examined the imperial
and provincial archives, or have quoted directly from Brazilian state
papers." — Brazil and the Braziliana, Preface, pp. 4, 5.
t In the province of Amazonas  30,000
" " Pari  190,000
" " Maranhao  280,000
" " Piauhy  170,000
" " CearS  350,000
" " Rio Grande do Norte  160,000
" " Parahiba  230,000
" " Pernambuco  800,000
" " Alag&as  210,000
" " Sergipe  180,000
" " Bahia  880,000
" " Espirito Santo  60,000
" " Rio de Janeiro  1,400,000
" " S.Paulo  680,000
Carried forward  5,620,000

PERCENTAGE OF SLAVES.

73

The same authors give us also estimates of the per
centage of slaves to the free population in one-half of
the provinces composing the empire. It is to be re
gretted that the proportion in the other half, the most
populous, containing more than three-fifths ofthe popu
lation, cannot be obtained. These estimates, we are
told, are " from the very careful computations of the
Hon. J. TJ. Petit, formerly United States Consul at Ma-
ranham." They show an aggregate of nine hundred
and forty-four thousand six hundred and twenty-three
slaves in a population of two millions six hundred and
eighty thousand.* The number' of free colored is not
given.

Brought forward  5,620,000
In the province of ParanS  70 000
" Santa Catharina  90,000
" Bio Grande  240,000
" Minas Geraes  800,000
" Goyaz  120,000
" Mato Grosso  100,000

Total population of Brazil  7,040,000
From Brazil and the Braziliana, already cited, p. 599.
* The details are as follows : —

Total Population.

Slave population
to free in the
proportion of

Number of
Slaves.

Pari  190,000

1 to 1.431
1 to 2.666
1 to 7.221
1 to 4.221
1 to 2.927
1 to 2.009
1 to 1.181
Ito .5
Ito .7
1 to 3.4
Total slaves 

78,167
46,372 19,462
40,222
45,836 19,940
641,907 15 000

Piauhy  170,000
Eio Grande do Norte  160,000

Alagdas  210,000
Sergipe  180,000
Espirito Santo  60,000
Rio de Janeiro  1,400,000

Santa Catharina  90,000

Goyaz  120,000
Mato Grosso  100,000

15,00022,727

2,680,000

944,623

.From Brazil and the Brazilians, p. 599.
7

74 VARIOUS POPULAR ESTIMATES.
To bring these estimates up to 1860, we must add
the increase of population during four years. The rate
of increase, deduced from the average of estimates
going back thirty years, is about one and three-quarters
per cent, a year, or seven per cent, in four years. This
gives us four hundred and ninety-two thousand eight
hundred, which, added to seven millions forty thou
sand, raises the total population of Brazil, in 1860, to
seven millions five hundred and thirty-two thousand
eight hundred, — an estimate which, in default of an
ofa.cial census, we adopt. It is somewhat above the
average of the current estimates of the day.*
If the proportion of slaves to free persons be the
same in the remaining ten provinces as in those esti
mated, then the total number of slaves in the empire

* Of popular estimates, found in modern gazetteers and descriptive
atlases, a few are a little above this, while others are considerably below
it. The average of these would make the population, in 1860, about seven
millions and a quarter only.
The Imperial Gazetteer puts the total, in 1854, at six millions sixty-five
thousand; Harper's Gazetteer, iu 1855, at six millions one hundred and
fifty thousand. Passing by McCuUoch's Gazetteer, where it is "vaguely
estimated at five millions," we have the estimate in Mitchell's Descriptive
Atlas of seven millions seven hundred thousand as the population in 1860.
Colton puts it, for the same year, at seven millions seven hundred and
eighty thousand.
Adding to the two first estimates at the rate of one and three-quarters
per cent, a year to bring them up to 1860, we have six millions seven hun
dred and one thousand three hundred, six millions six hundred and eighty-
eight thousand one hundred and thirty, seven millions seven hundred
thousand, and seven millions seven hundred and eighty-seven thousand,
as various estimates of the population in 1860. Averaging these, we have
seven millions two hundred and nineteen thousand one hundred and seven
as the total population of Brazil.
We are of opinion, however, that the estimate we have adopted, based
on the calculations of M. de Souza and endorsed by Messrs. Kidder and
Fletcher, aud which exceeds the above by three hundred and twenty-throe
thousand, is more reliable, and probably approaches nearly the truth.

HALF-BREED ABORIGINES NUMEROUS. 75
of Brazil was, in the year 1860, two millions six hun
dred and fifty-five thousand.
But, inasmuch as the largest proportions of slaves to
free persons are to be found in the populous provinces
on the Atlantic coast, and as three of these, to wit,
Pernambuco, Bahia, and Minas Geraes, each with a
population of eight hundred thousand or upwards, are
among the provinces not estimated, we think the above
total of two millions six hundred and fifty-five thou
sand slaves is probably somewhat too low, and that it
may bear an addition of ten per cent. This would give
for the empire of Brazil, in 1860, two millions nine hun
dred and twenty thousand five hundred slaves, — an
estimate which we believe to be as near the truth as
any thing we are likely to obtain.*
I find no reliable data in regard to the number of
free persons of African descent, of which the probable
reason is the great mixture of colored races. The abo
rigines of Brazil at the period of its conquest are said
to have numbered between four and five millions,f and
though, probably, not more than a fifth of that number
now survive, the half and quarter breeds are very
numerous. Ewbank gives an estimate by Senhor de Souza (the '
same writer, probably, whose calculation of later date
is relied on by Kidder and Fletcher), in which, putting
the total at about the same I have given, J he divides
* Cochin, accurate as he usually is, undoubtedly understates the number
of slaves in Brazil. Writing in 1861, he says, in one place, "More than
two millions," and in another he assumes two millions as the number.
" PrSs de 4,000,000 esclaves aux Etats-Unis, plus de 2,000,000 au Brgsil" is
his expression. And again, " Les 2,000,000 Afrioains, esclaves au Brgsil."
— Cochin, vol. ii. p. 237.
t Life in Brazil, by Thomas Ewbank, 1856, p. 430.
X The exact figures are seven millions three hundred and sixty thou
sand, and the date appears to be 1845. This is but forty thousand less

76 INTELLIGENT MULATTOES IN BRAZIL.
the population into two millions one hundred and sixty
thousand whites, three millions one hundred and twenty
thousand negro slaves, eight hundred thousand domes
ticated Indians,* one hundred and eighty thousand free
blacks, and one million one hundred thousand " free
colored." Unless all the Indian half and quarter breeds
are included in the class of " domesticated Indians,"
which is not likely, we cannot regard the "free colored"
as all of African blood.
On the other hand, it is certain that the nnmber of
free negroes and mulattoes in Brazil is large, — ^larger,
probably, than in any other slave country. " By the
Brazilian laws, a slave can go before a magistrate, have
his price fixed, and can purchase himself'f Large
numbers avail themselves of this privilege, and the
class of freemen is rapidly increasing. All writers
agree that more than half the population of Brazil
consists of persons of African descent, slave and free.
Under these circumstances, as it is my object not to
overstate the case, and therefore to avoid all under-

than his subsequent estimate for 1856. Ewbank says, "Nothing like
positive data was within this writer's reach." From De Souza's last cal
culation we may infer that he found his estimate for 1845 too high.
* A report by Councillor Vellosa, made in 1819 (quoted by Ewbank,
work cited, p. 430), giving the total population at four millions three hun
dred and ninety-six thousand three hundred and twenty-one, includes
" eight hundred thousand wild Indians."
f Brazil and the Brazilians, p. 133. The author adds, "Some of the
most intelligent men that I met with in Brazil — educated at Paris and
Coimbra^ — were of African descent, — -men whose ancestors were slaves.
Some of the closest students in the National Library are mulattoes. The
largest and most suocessful printing establishment in Rio— that of Sr. F.
Paulo Brito — is owned and directed by a mulatto. In the colleges, the
medical, law, and theological schools, there is no distinction of color. * * *
I was informed that a man of mental endowments, even if he had been a
slave, would be debarred from no official station, however high, unless it
might be that of Imperial Senator."

MIXED RACES IN SOUTH AMERICA. 77
estimates of the number of negroes who have survived
the horrors of the Middle Passage and the cruelties
of slavery, I assume De Souza's figures without any
deduction for Indian blood,— making the free negro
population of all shades one million two hundred and
eighty thousand.
This, added to the slaves, gives us as the population,
fi-ee and slave, of African descent, in the empire of
Brazil, for the year 1860, a total of four millions two
hundred thousand five hundred; leaving less than
three millions and a third for whites, Indians, and In
dian mixed races.
One item still remains, — the most vague and uncer
tain of any, — the number of negroes and mulattoes in
the free republics of Central and South America. In
all of these the aboriginal races and their descendants
vastly predominate. In all of them the mixture of
raee and gradations of color defy analysis. In none
of them has slavery had more than a comparatively
ephemeral existence. But, as negroes do not volun
tarily emigrate to the "Western Hemisphere, all the
negroes or mulattoes to be found in these countries
must be originally due to the slave-trade, with such
trifling additions as the straying off of slaves or of free
colored persons from the West Indies, or from Brazil,
may occasionally have made.
In Mexico the number of negroes seems to be accu
rately ascertained. The various estimates differ but a
few hundreds; none under six thousand and none over
seven thousand.* Let us assume the latter number as
the negro population of Mexico in 1860.
* Albert M. Gilliam, late United States Consul to California, in his
"Travels over the Table-Lands and Cordilleras of Mexico," 1846 (page
164), says, " The census of the population of Mexico, it is said, oannot be
accurately taken. From the various estimates made by those having the
7»

78 NEGRO POPULATION IN CENTRAL AMERICA,
In Central America, as in Mexico, the representa
tives of the African race are a very insignificant part
of the population. Squier, formerly Charge d'Affaires
of the United States to the Eepublics of Central Ame
rica, is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the very
best, authority on that point. He says, "The popula
tion of Central America, in the absence of reliable
data, can be calculated only approximately. * * * The
following table probably exhibits very nearly the exact
proportions in Central America, so far as they may be
deduced from existing data and from personal ob
servation : — *
"Whites  100,000
"Indians  1,109,000
"Mixed races  800,000
"Negroes  10,000
"Total  2,019,000."
This would give us, for Mexico and Central Ame-

best opportunities of knowing, a table was fumished me by a gentleman
¦who, from his long residence in the country and by some attention paid
to the subject, may be relied ou as measurably correct."
The table is as foUows : —
Indians  4,500,000
Other castes  3,000,000
Negroes  6,000
Total  7,506,000
Brantz Meyer, formerly Secretary of Legation to Mexico, iu his work
entitled "Mexico; Aztec, Spanish, and Republican," 1863 (vol. ii. page
43), estimates the different classes of the population thus : —
Indians  4,354,886
Whites  1,110,000
Mestizos  2,165,345
Negroes  6,600
Total  7,636,831
* Squier'B Notea on Centra} America, pp. 53, 54.

AND IN VENEZUELA AND ECQUADOR. 79
rica, seventeen thousand. Let us say, in round num
bers, twenty thousand.
If we pass io South America, we find in Yenezuela
— a country coterminous with the slave-colonies of
Guiana — a considerable number of negroes. Bonny
castle estimated, in 1818, that there were fifty-four
thousand negroes in Yenezuela.* Codazzi puts down,
in 1841, forty -nine thousand seven hundred and eighty-
two slaves.f Negroes were employed in the wars of
this republic, and in these many are said to have
perished. J It is certain that they have not increased
in late years. Bonnycastle's calculation for 1818 is
probably a full estimate for 1860. But we have put
the number at sixty thousand.
New Granada appears to contain a larger number
of negroes than any other of the South American re
publics. Cobb, in his " Historical Sketches of Slavery,"
puts the total, in 1853, at eighty thousand.§ BoUaert
— apparently one of the most reliable authorities, so
far as his researches extend — estimates that, in 1860,
there were of the Ethiopian race in New Granada
eighty thousand. 1| Colton, in his Descriptive Atlas,
1860, apparently following these authorities, puts the
population at two millions two hundred and forty-three
thousand and fifty-four, of whom eighty thousand were
negroes. I shall assume that to be the number.
In Ecquador the number 4s small. Bollaert sets it
down, for the year 1860, at seven thousand eight hun-

* Bonnycastle's Spanish America, vol. ii. p. 319.
f Codazzi's Geografia de Venezuela, 1841, p. 241.
X Colombia : its Preseut State, &o., by Col. Franois Hall, Hydrographer
in the service of Colombia, p. 15.
g Historical Sketches of Slavery, 1858, pp. 206, 207.
II Antiquarian, Ethnological, and other Researches in New Granada,
Eccjuador, Peru, and ChUi, by W. BoUaert, 1860, p. 7.

80 PERU, CHILI, AND BOLIVIA.
dred and thirty-one;* and Colton has the same esti
mate. In Peru the largest proportion of negroes is to be
found in the province of Lima. Hill estimates, for the
province, seven thousand five hundred ;f Dr. Von
Tschudi puts the slaves, in 1847, in the same province,
at four thousand seven hundred and ninety-two.J Bol
laert estimates the total negroes in Peru at forty thou-
8and.§ I cannot find, after much search, any estimate
that seems more reliable than this last.
In Chili there have never been more than a few
negroes, either free or slave. The usual remark ofthe
traveller (as Cobb, Schmidtmeyer, MoUina, and others)
is that very few negroes are to be found there. Bol
laert puts the number at thirty-one only; but this must
be an error ; for in 1825 slavery was abolished, without
difSculty or disturbance, it is true, which would indicate
that the number was small, — but it is not likely that so
small a number as Bollaert's estimate indicates would
be made the subject of legislation at all. I have put
down for Chili one thousand, which will probably cover
all that are to be found there at this time.
In Bolivia, in a population chiefly Indian, amount
ing to about two millions, we have no estimate what
ever. " Few pure Africans," says Colton. " Some few
Africans," says Bollaert. Probably three thousand
may cover the total amount.
In the Argentine Confederation, previous to the
* Work cited, p. 94.
•f- Travels in Peru and Mexico, 1860, vol. ii. p. 88.
X Travels in Peru, 1838-42, Dr. J. J. Von Tschudi, 1847, p. 64.
Of the above 4792, he says 2186 were males, and 3606 females. The
negro population of Peru does not appear to have been due directly to the
slave-trade. § Antiquarian, Ethnological, and other Researches in New Granada,
Ecquador, Peru, and Chili, by W. BoUaert, 1860, p. 115.

POPULATION IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. 81
revolution of July 9, 1816, slavery prevailed, and many
slaves had been imported, some directly to Buenos
Ayres, others through Brazil. At the present time,
the negroes in La Plata are not numerous. There are
a good many in Mendoza. The great mass of the
population, however, are Indians. If we put the total
number of negroes within the Confederation at twenty-
five thousand, we shall probably be above rather than
below the truth.
In Paraguay there are few negroes to be found.*
Five thousand will, I believe, cover the amount.
They are more numerous in Uruguay. To this re
public, previous to 1842, about which time slavery was
abolished, there had been brought negroes both directly
from Africa and also through Southern Brazil. One
writer estimates the number of negroes in Uruguay at
twenty thousand ;¦}¦ and, as I find in the various works
on this country no other estimate, I adopt this.
In Patagonia it would appear, from the various au
thorities, that no negroes are to be found.
Thus we have, for Mexico, Central America, and South
America, apart from Brazil, the following estimate : —
Mexico and Central America  20,000
Venezuela  60,000
New Granada  80,000
Ecquador  7,831
Peru  40,000
Chili  1,000
Bolivia  5,000
Argentine Confederation  25,000
Paraguay  5,000
Uruguay  20,000
Total  263,831
* Histoire du Paraguay, par Demersey, 1860, tome i. p. 374 : " Quelques
nSgres, en trfes-petit nombre."
t Medical Topography of Brazil and Uruguay, by G. R. B. Horner,
Surgeon, U. S. A., p. 184.

82 NEGROES IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE.
Bringing together these various results, we find an
approximating estimate of the number of negroes and
their descendants on the Western Continent, in the fol
lowing table : —
Number of Negroes and their descendants in the Western Ekmi-
sphere in the year 1860.
In the United States  4,435,708
In the English, French, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish West In
dies, including Guiana  1,100,000
In the Spanish West Indies  787,500
In the Island of Hayti  755,000
In the Empire of BrazU  4,200,500
In the rest of South America and in Central America  263,831
In Canada  20,000
Total  11,562,540
The total somewhat exceeds eleven millions and a
half But seeing that, after diligent search,* I have
been compelled to make up these estimates, especially
for South America, from scanty materials, and desiring
to put forth no argument founded on exaggerated data,
and therefore not to under-estimate the remnant re
maining alive, as descendants and representatives of
the negroes brought to America from Africa, I add a
quarter of a million to the sum of my estimate, and
will assume the number of negroes and their descend
ants in the "Western Hemisphere, in 1860, to have been
eleven millions eight hundred and twelve thousand five hun
dred and forty souls. This is, beyond question, not an
under-estimate of the actual number left.
"What is the conclusion, then, at which we are forced
to arrive ?
The fifteen millions and a half of poor wretches who
* For the statisticjs of the negro population of South America alone, I
have examined upwards of a hundred and fifty volumes.

GREAT LAW OF THE WORLD ARRESTED. 83
were sentenced by the slave-trade to transportation
and slavery in foreign lands, are now, after three cen
turies of servitude, represented, in these lands, by less
than four-fifths of their original number.
"When we consider the tendency to natural increase,
in human beings, which has gradually swelled the popu
lation of the world to its eight hundred or a thousand
millions, the above statement, as its stands, must be
confessed to embody a terrible condemnation of that
system which, as to a population half as large as that
of the United States, not only arrested, for eight or
ten generations of men, the operation of one of the
great laws of the world, but — without the life-destruc
tion of war,* without the deadly agencies of pestilence
or famine, — not, as we sometimes express it, by the visit
ation of God, but by the sole operation of man's crime
and the misery thence resulting — produced a retrogres
sion of numbers at a ratio which, had it spread over
the habitable earth, would have extinguished, in a few
centuries, all human existence.
But the matter has been very imperfectly presented
yet. The actual results were far more fatal than the
simple statement we have given serves to indicate. To
obtain an accurate and intelligible view of these results,
we must separate the fifteen millions and a half of ex
patriated Africans into two portions, and trace out the
separate destiny of each.
* There was, indeed, the war in Hayti whioh terminated, in 1804, in in
dependence. But the loss of life consequent thereon has been far more
th,an made up by the natural increase of the population of Hayti since it
became free. Humboldt calculated the population, in 1802, at three hun
dred and fifty thousand; and after the death of Dessalines, the first em
peror, it was rated at four hundred thousand. — Notea on Haiti, heretofore
cited, voL ii. p. 110. It has since nearly doubled.

84 THE TWO STREAMS.

CHAPTEE YIII.
STRANGELY CONTRASTING FATE OF THE TWO DIVERGING
STREAMS.
More than a third of the present representatives of
these fifteen millions and a half inhabit, it will be ob
served, the United States. Less than two-thirds are
scattered over the "West Indies, Central and South
America. But what proportion, let us inquire, of the negroes
shipped in slavers from Africa were the progenitors of
the present colored population of the United States,
and what proportion went to the "West Indies and to
Southern America?
Here, as in previous calculations, though the mate
rials be insufficient for absolute accuracy, we can ap
proximate the truth.
In the Eeport of the Lords of Council, so often
already referred to, there is but one table bearing on
the subject.* It exhibits the exportation of negroes
from the "West Indies (then the principal place of their
deposit and sale) for five years, namely, from 1783 to
1787, both inclusive, — showing that, in these five years,
out of twenty thousand seven hundred and seventy-
three negroes exported to all parts, thirteen hundred
and ninety -two went to the "States of America;" that
is, only about one-fifteenth of the whole, — or two hun
dred and seventy-eight annually.
Since so small a proportion out of the whole export
was directed to the United States, it is evident thttt
» Lords of Council Report, Part IV. Table No. 4.

PROTEST OF VIRGINIA AGAINST SLAVERY. 85
the demand for slaves at that time could not have been
great. Nor do we find, throughout the Eeport, any
allusion to a direct trade by slavers from the African
coast to the Continental colonies. Of course it existed,
but evidently not to a large extent. The public opinion,
as well as the legislation, ofthe colonies had uniformly
been against it.*
* The agency of the British Government in fastening slavery upon the
Continental colonies is well known. Bancroft has placed it distinctly on
record : —
" The inhabitants of Virginia were controlled by the central authority
on a subject of vital importance to themselves and their posterity. Their
haUs of legislation had resounded with eloquence directed against the ter
rible plague of negro slavery. Again and again they had passed laws
restraining the importation of negroes from Africa; but their laws were
disallowed. How to prevent them from protecting themselves against the
increase of the overwhelming evil was debated by the King in Council,
and on the 10th day of December, 1770, he issued an instruction, under
his own hand, commanding the governor, ' under pain of the highest dis
pleasure, to assent to no law by which the importation of slaves should
be, in any respect, prohibited or obstructed.' In April, 1772, this rigor
ous order was solemnly debated in the Assembly of Virginia. They
were very anxious for an Act to restrain the introduction of people the
number of whom already in the colony gave them just cause to apprehend
the most dangerous consequences. » * » Virginia resolved to address
the King himself, who in Council had cruelly compelled the toleration
of the nefarious traffic. They pleaded with him for leave to protect them
selves against the nefarious traffic, and these were the words : —
"'The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa
hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and, under its
present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear, will endanger
the very existence of yonr Majesty's American dominions. We are sensi
ble that some of your Majesty's subjects in Great Britain may reap emo
lument from this sort of traffic; but, when we oonsider that it greatly
retards the settlement of the colonies with more useful inhabitants, and
may, in time, have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope
that the interest of a few wiU be disregarded when placed in competition
with the security and happiness of such numbers of your Majesty's duti
ful and loyal subjects.
"'Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech
your Majesty to remove all those restraints on your Majesty's govemore
8

86 A KING THE PILLAR OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.
"The English Continental colonies,'' says Bancroft,
" were, in the aggregate, always opposed to the Afri
can slave-trade. Maryland, Virginia, even Carolina,
alarmed at the excessive production, and consequent
low price, of their staples, at the heavy debts incurred
by the purchase of slaves on credit, and at the danger
ous increase of the colored population, each showed an
anxious preference for the introduction of white men;
and laws designed to restrict importations of slaves
are scattered copiously along the records of colonial
legislation. The first Continental Congress which took
to itself powers of legislation gave a legal expression
to the well-formed opinion of the country by resolving
(April 6, 1776) that ' no slaves be imported into any of
the thirteen United Colonies.' "*

of this colony which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check
so very pemicious a commerce.'
" In this manner Virginia led the host who alike condemned slavery
and opposed the slave-trade. Thousands in Maryland and in New Jersey
were ready to adopt a simUar petition ; so were the Legislatures of North
Carolina, of Pennsylvania, of New York. Massachusetts, in its towns
and in its Legislature, unceasingly combated the condition, as well as the
sale, of slaves. There was no jealousy among one another in the strife
against th^ crying evil; Virginia harmonized all opinions, and repre
sented the moral sentiment and policy of them aU. When her prayer
reached England, Franklin, through the press, called to it the sympathy
of the people. Again and again it was pressed upon the attention of the
Ministers. But the Government of that day was less liberal than the tri
bunals; and, while a question respecting a negro from Virginia led the
courts of law to an axiom that as soon as any slave sets his foot on Eng
lish ground he becomes free, the King of England stood in the path of
humauity, and made himself the pillar of the slave-trade. Wherever in
the colonies a disposition was shown for its restraint, his servants were
peremptorUy ordered to maintain it without abatement." — Bancroft a His
tory ofthe United States, vol. vi. pp. 413, 414, 415.
In the entire history of Great Britain there is scarcely a more disgrace
ful page.
* Bancroft's United States, vol. iii. p. 411.

SLAVES IMPORTED IN COLONIAL DAYS. 87
As to the number of slaves actually imported during
colonial days, the same historian says : —
"It is not easy to conjecture how many negroes
were imported into the English Continental colonies.
The usual estimates far exceed the truth. Climate
came in aid of opinion to oppose the introduction of
them. * * * From the first they appear to have
increased, — though, owing to the inequality of the
sexes, not rapidly in the first generation. Previous to
the year 1740, there may have been introduced into
our country nearly one hundred and thirty thousand ;
before 1776, a few more than three hundred thousand."*
The Duke de Eochefoucault Liancourt, who travelled
in the United States in 1795, says, "Nearly twenty
vessels from the harbors of the United States are
employed in the importation of negroes to Georgia
and to the "West India Isles." The duke designates
the merchants of Ehode Island as the conductors of
what he calls the " accursed traffic,'' which they " are
determined to persevere in till the year 1808," the
period fixed by the Constitution when it is permitted
to abolish it; but, he observes, they ship only one
negro for every ton of the burden of their vessels,
whieh, moreover, he adds, " are small ones."f
The tables given in the Lords of Council's Eeport
show that a considerable portion of the slavers in those
days were but of a hundred tons burden. This was pro
bably the capacity ofthe Ehode Island slavers. If so,
the number of slaves annually carried by each was one
hundred only; making, in all, an annual importation
by them of two thousand slaves. But a portion of

» Bancroft's United States, vol. iii. p. 407.
t Travels by the Duke do Rochefoucault Liancourt, vol. ii. p. 292 (of
English translation).

88 IMPORTATION OF SLAVES UP TO 1790.
these went to the "West Indies,— another proof, it may
be remarked, that the demand at home was not great.
On the other hand, slaves may have been imported in
English bottoms ; some were in Dutch ; and it is true,
as already stated, that a few hundred slaves were
annually brought from the "West Indies.
Upon the whole, it seems a high estimate to put the
annual importation, for some years after the close of
the Eevolutionary "War, at three thousand. During
that war, as commercial intercourse with foreign na
tions was almost wholly suspended, few or no slaves
could have been imported ; and the trade was probably
resumed but gradually after the war. From 1776 to
1790 there were only six years when the trade could
be considered open. If we estimate that two thousand
five hundred were imported during each of these six
years, we have fifteen thousand as the importation
from 1776 to 1790.
Let us suppose Bancroft's " a few more than three
hundred thousand" to mean three hundred and ten
thousand, and we have the total number of slaves im
ported into the United States up to the year 1790, as
follows : —
Up to the year 1776  310,000
From the year 1776 to the year 1790  15,000
Total imported up to 1790  325,000
At this point we emerge, in a measure, into light.
The census commences. We know that the colored
population of the United States in 1790 was seven
hundred and fifty-seven thousand three hundred and
sixty-three, of whom fifty-nine thousand four hundred
and sixty-six were free. The three hundred and
twenty-five thousand that had been imported were in
that year represented by seven hundred and fifty-
seven thousand three hundred and sixty-three. The

INCREASE OF COLORED POPULATION. 89
colored population of the United States had already
considerably more than doubled itself by natural in
crease. At the end of the next decade — that is to say, in the
year 1800 — this population was one million one thou
sand four hundred and thirty-six ; having increased in
ten years at the rate of about thirty-two and a quarter
per cent.
How much of this accession was due to natural in
crease, and how much to slave-trade importation ?
The rate of increase among the colored population
of the United States has been, by the census, as fol
lows : —
Inthe decade from 1790^ to 1800  32.23 per cent.
do. 1800 to 1810  87.58 "
[Slave-trade ceases.]
In the decade from 1810 to 1820  28.68
do. 1820 to 1830  31.44
do. 1830 to 1840  23.41
do. 1840 to 1850  26.62
do. 1850 to 1860  21.90
During the first decade in which there was no dis
turbing element by importation of slaves, — to wit,
from 1810 to 1820, — the rate of increase was 28.58 ;
during the next decade, 31.44. Let us assume the for
mer as the rate of natural increase from 1790 to 1800.
Deducting it from the actual increase during that
period,— namely, 32.23,— we have a remainder of three
and two-thirds per cent, as the increase from Africa:
that would give twenty-seven thousand seven hundred
and seventy as the number of slaves imported in the
ten years from 1790 to 1800 ; or at the rate of two
thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven a year.
In the next decade, eight years of which only were
open to slave-importation, that importation appears
to have greatly increased. The colored population

90 SLAVES IMPORTED INTO LOUISIANA.
amount'ed, by the census of 1810, to one million three
hundred and seventy-seven thousand eight hundred
and ten ; exhibiting an increase, in the decade, at the
rate of 37.58 per cent. If, as before, we rate the
natural increase at 28.58, we shall have nine per cent.
on one million one thousand four hundred and thirty-
six (that is to say, ninety thousand one hundred and
twenty-three) of accession to the population in ques
tion, due to other causes than natural increase. But,
during this decade,— to wit, in 1803,— Louisiana, pur
chased from France, became a part of the Union; and
her colored population, free and slave, added forty-two
thousand two hundred and forty-five to the census-re
turns of 1810. Deduct this amount from ninety thou
sand one hundred and twenty-three, and we have
forty-seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-four as
the number of slaves that may have been directly im
ported into the United States in the eight years from
1800 to 1808 ; being at the rate of five thousand nine
hundred and eighty-five a year. The rate of importa
tion was evidently increasing with rapidity. For
tunate was it for our country and for the cause of
humanity that Congress availed itself of the constitu
tional provision which permitted, in 1808, the abolition
of the slave-trade.
Another item remains to be determined ere we can
complete our estimate of importation. Of the colored
population which Louisiana brought into the Union,
what proportion may we properly ascribe to the slave-
trade, and what proportion to natural increase ? The
total number at the date of purchase appears to have
been about thirty thousand.* To supply this number.

* By an accurate census of Louisiana, taken in 1785, the total popula
tion was twenty-eight thousand five hundred and thirty-seven ; of whom

PREVIOUS TO 1803. 91
how many had probably been imported under colonial
rule? Except as to difference of nationality in her owners,
Louisiana, previous to 1803, was not differently situated
from the Southern States of the Union. Part of the
same continent, coterminous in her chief boundaries,
with similar climate and general condition, there seems
no good reason to suppose that the natural increase of
her colored population had been at a rate much lower
than ours.
But, in 1800, our colored population had very nearly
about fourteen thousand were slaves, and one thousand free colored.
From that date there seems to have been no separate authentic census of
the colony until one was made in 1803 by the Consul of the United States
at New Orleans, under orders from the Department of State. From the
best documents he could obtain, he put the total population at forty -nino
thousand four hundred and seventy-three, but without separating whites
and blacks. See History of Louisiana from the Earliest Period, by Fran-
9ois-Xavier Martin, New Orleans, 1827, vol. ii. pp. 77, 78, and p.
Other authorities put it higher, — as Major Amos Stoddard, in his
" Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of Louisiana," p. 226. He admits
that there are no precise data to determine the population in 1803, but esti
mates fifty thousand seven hundred whites, and forty-two thousand six hun
dred colored, — together, upwards of ninety-three thousand. This, however,
is clearly an over-estimate; as our own official census of 1810 makes the
entire population of Louisiana in that year but seventy-six thousand five
hundred and fifty-six. At first sight, the consul's estimate -of forty-nine
thousand four hundred and seventy-three seems too low ; since, if it be
not, fifty per cent, was added to the population in the seven years from
1803 to 1810. This would seem improbable, but for the remarkable fact
that the entire population of Louisiana (chiefly, of course, by immigration
from other States of the Union and from Europe) doubled in the next de
cade; amounting, in 1820, to one hundred and fifty-two thousand nine
hundred and twenty-three.
As a medium term between these conflicting authorities, we may assume
the entire population in 1803 to be sixty thousaud, of whom half were
colored. This agrees with Mr. Carey's estimate. Speaking of the colored
population, Mr. Carey says, "Nearly thirty thousand were found in
Louisiana at her incorporation into the Union." — The Slave-Trade, Do-
meatie and Foreign, p. 17.

92 SLAVES IMPORTED INTO UNITED STATES.
trebled its original numbers. Let us suppose (to avoid
the chance of over-estimate) that in 1808 the slaves
and free colored people of Louisiana had only doubled
in number as compared to their African descendants.
That would give -fifteen thousand as the number im
ported into that colony up to the time when it became
part of the United States.*
Summing up these various items, we have the total
number of slaves imported into the United States up to
the date of the abolition of the slave-trade, as follows : —
Up to 1790, as before  325,000
From 1790 to 1800  27,770
From 1800 to 1810  47,884
Imported into Louisiana, previous to her purchase from France... 15,000
Total slaves imported into the United States  415,654f
* I ought here, in strictness, to add that proportion of the slave
and free colored population of Texas at the time of her admission which
may be supposed to have been due to the African slave-trade. But, in the
first place, it was small, — a very large proportion of the total (it was about
fifty-eight thousand five hundred in 1850, five years after annexation)
being undoubtedly due to natural increase ; secondly, we cannot tell how
many slaves may have been taken thither from the United States; and,
lastly, it is more than offset by the fugitive colored population of Canada
and the colonized population of Liberia, neither of which enter into the
United States Census, though both go to increase the total to which the
half-million slaves shipped in Africa for the United States had actually
BweUed in 1860.
X An industrious and pains-taking author, accustomed to statistics, makes
the total one-fifth less than this. Mr. H. C. Carey, in his " Slavery, Do
mestic and Foreign," Philadelphia, 1853, p. 18, after furnishing his reasons
for each separate estimate, sums up as follows : —
Prior to 1714  30,000
From 1715 to 1750  90,000
From 1751 to 1760  35,000
From 1761 to 1770  74,500
From 1771 to 1790  34,000
Subsequent to 1790  70,000
Total number imported up to 1808  333,500

THE HALF-MILLION AND THE FIFTEEN MILLIONS. 93
It is to be observed that this is an estimate, not
of the slaves that were exported from Africa, destined
to the United States, but of those that were actually
landed there. If the loss on the voyage was, as we
have estimated, twenty per cent.,* the above four hun
dred and fifteen thousand six hundred and fifty-four
negroes represent about five hundred and twenty thou
sand shipped on the African coast, whether directly for
this country or coming by way 6f the "West Indies, —
since five hundred and twenty thousand less twenty
per cent, is four hundred and sixteen thousand.
If tbe statement of the Duke de Eochefoucault f
that the Ehode Island slavers carried but one negro
for each ton burden may be relied on, the average
mortality on board slave-ships bound to North America
was likely to have been less than twenty per cent. It
would, probably, be safe to estimate that out of half a
million negroes shipped from Africa, the number above
estimated to have reached us may have been landed.
Eeferring, now, to our estimate of the number of
slaves taken from the African coast during the three
centuries and a half of the slave-trade, — ^namelj-, fifteen
millions five hundred and twenty thousand, — we may
assert, in round numbers, that half a million of these
went to our own country, chiefly during its colonial exist
ence, and fifteen millions to the West Indies and to South
and Central America.
"We have now the means of answering the following
questions : — ^What became of each of these two so un
equal divisions of this expatriated people ? "What has
I think Mr. Carey has estimated the rate of natural increase in early
days, say from 1714 to 1770, too high, — not allowing for the effect, then
sensibly felt, of that disproportion between the sexes, incident to the slave-
trade, to which we shall hereafter have oocasion to advert.
» See page 59, ante. t See page 87, ante.

94 MARVELLOUS DISPARITY OF RESULTS.
been the respective destiny of each? How are they
how represented ? The answer involves results so ex
traordinary, at first sight so incredible, — and, in effect,
even when thoroughly examined, so difficult of satis
factory explanation, — that I have devoted much time
and labor to the critical revision of the materials whence
my conclusions are drawn, before venturing to place
them on record.
This is the answer: The half-million shipped for
North America have increased nearly ninefold, —
being represented in 1860 by a population exceeding
four millions four hundred thousand; while the fifteen
MILLIONS sent TO THE "WeST InDIAN COLONIES AND TO
Southern America have diminished, from age to
AGE, until they are represented^^ now by less than
half their original number!*
How marvellous, beyond all human preconception,
are these results ! Had the fifteen millions whose lot
was cast in the southern portion of our hemisphere in
creased in the same proportion as the half-million who
* Those who may be tempted to object to this latter calculation, as based
in part on approximating estimates, would do well to bear iu mind that
it is fully borne out by another calculation, already given (pages 63, 64,
ante), and which is based upon official tables alone, — a calculation covering
a period of seventy-four years in the last century, and extending to the
entire negro population of the largest English West Indian colony, Jamaica,
throughout these seventy-four years : the results, in condensed view, being
as follows : —
Negroes in Jamaica in 1702  41,596
Negroes imported from 1702 to 1775  497,736
Deduct exported from 1702 to 1775  137,014
Leaving in the island imported slaves  300,722
Total in 1775, if population had been stationary  402,318
But the actual population in 1775 was  192,787
Showing a reduction, in three-quarters of a century, in the negro popu
lation of Jamaica, of more than one-half.

AN UNNATURAL ELEMENT INTRODUCED. 95
were carried to its northern continent, their descend
ants, instead of dwindling to half, would have been to
day a multitude numbering more than a hundred ¦ and
thirty millions of men ! ,

CHAPTEE IX.
TOUCHING THE CAUSES OP CERTAIN MARVELLOUS RESULTS.
"What is the explanation of this startling marvel ?
Is it to be found solely in the greater humanity with
which the negroes of the United States have been
treated, as compared with those of other slave coun
tries? A little research will show us that there were other
causes in operation to produce these strange results, —
causes chiefly due to the fact that the slave-trade to
the United States was brief in its duration and unim
portant in its operations, compared to the slave-trade
to the "West Indies and South America.
But wherever the operations of the slave-trade are
of great magnitude, the effect is to cheek the natural
increase of the slave population on plantations.
In the first place, it introduces an unnatural element
into that population, which it is proper here to set forth.
And to this element a portion of the decrease in the
negro population of the countries to which these esti
mates extend is indisputably to be ascribed.
The abnormality referred to is the uniform practice
of dealers, in selecting cargoes of negroes on the African
coast, to purchase a considerably larger proportion of
•males than females. All the witnesses agree in the
fact, though they differ as to the motive. , Some testify

96 AN AVERAGE OF FIVE MALE SLAVES
that it was more difficult to procure salable women
than men ; ascribing this to various causes, — as, to the
prevalence of polygamy in Africa, to the fact that
there were fewer female criminals than male criminals,
also that as to the chief offence for which criminals
were sold to slavery, namely, adultery, " it was some
times pardoned in the women, but never in the men."*
Other witnesses, however, affirm that there was no
difficulty in procuring as many female slaves as males.
Mr. Eldrid, captain of a slaver from Ehode Island,
testifies, " Female slaves can be procured on the coast
with more facility than male 8laves."f The true motive
is probably given by a slave-surgeon, Mr. Falconbridge,
who deposes, "On the coast of Africa the captains of
slave-ships never wish to purchase more than one-third
females. The planters in the "West Indies, in many
cases, prefer males, because they lose the labor of a
female in the latter end of pregnancy and for a little
time afterwards. "J
Most of the witnesses state the usual proportion be
tween the two to be three males for one female. The
Eev. Mr. Newton says, "The number of male slaves
purchased usually exceeded that of the females in the
proportion of four to three, and sometimes of two to
three."§ The exact average proportion appears to have been
between these two rates. In the Eeport of the Jamaica
House of Assembly, already quoted from,[| in which this

* Testimony of Mr. MUes, Lords' Eeport, Part I. Sheet 0. Mr. Weaver
(same page) aays, " Few wbmen are sold for any other crime than adultery,
and that is very often forgiven them."
t Lords' Report, Part I. Sheet N, 6.
X Ibid. Mr. Falconbridge made five voyages as surgeon.
i Ibid.
II Page 67, ante.

TO THREE FEMALE SLAVES IMPORTED. 97
disparity in the numbers of the sexes is adduced as a
chief cause of the decrease in their slave population,
tables are given showing the exact proportion in the
case of forty-nine thousand one hundred and thirty-five
negroes imported by the chief negro-factors into King
ston from 1764 to 1788. Of these, thirty thousand six
hundred and thirty-six were male and eighteen thou
sand five hundred and thirty-nine were female; the re
lative proportion being, as nearly as may be, five males
to three females.
Of each one thousand negroes imported, then, there
were, on the average, six hundred and twenty-five men
and three hundred and seventy-five women. Each
thousand, therefore, was only equal, so far as power of
reproduction was concerned, to a population of three
hundred and seventy-five men and three hundred and
seventy -five women ; in other words, to a normally con
stituted population of seven hundred and fifty.
It follows that as to any given "West Indian or other
slave population, kept up by constant supplies through
the slave-trade, we must deduct twenty-five per cent.,
or, in other words, take three-fourths only of its nominal
amount, on which to estimate its power of natural in
crease.* To this extent, then, the decrease of population in
the West Indies and South America is not to be wholly
ascribed to the more cruel treatment or more oppress-

* The Committee of the Jamaica House of Assembly from whose Report
the above is extracted, fall into a remarkable error. They deduct from
the whole number imported two-fifths, "to bring the sexes to an equality;"
that would be forty per cent., — reducing each thousand to six hundred.
But, as each thousand contained three hundred and seventy-flve women,
it was evidently equal in power of reproduction to a population of three
hundred and seventy -five men and three hundred and seventy-flve women;
in other words, to au ordinary population of seven hundred and fifty.
9

98 EFFECTS OF DISTURBANCE OF NATURAL LAW.
ive labor to which the slaves were subjected by the
planters, but to the policy pursued by the African slave-
traders in selecting their human cargoes.
That such a disturbance of a great natural law must
have produced immoral results, in an aggravated form,
cannot be doubted. As little doubtful is it that this im
morality was carried to an excess which still further
diminished the rate of natural increase.
As, however, it must be supposed that the slave-
traders brought to the market precisely the assortment
of cargo which they found the most salable, the above
abuse is chargeable indirectly to the planters them
selves. Had they desired on their plantations an equal
number of each sex, the slave-dealer would doubtless
have found means to supply it.*
The slave-trade had another, still more sinister, in
fluence. It is beyond a doubt that wherever that
trade prevailed it tended directly to aggravate the
condition and to shorten the lives of the plantation
slaves. This happened because it increased the tempt
ation to cruelty and overwork. An author who re
sided twenty years in Brazil, and who has dealt ten
derly with slavery, confesses : —
"Until 1850, when the slave-trade was effectually
put down, it was considered cheaper on the country
plantations to use up a slave in five or seven years and
* "Many of the largest and best sugar-estates on the island of Cuba
belong to the different ecclesiastical orders. Under the mask of discou
raging a vicious intercourse of tbe sexes, some of them religiously resolved
to purchase only male negroes, — a devout austerity which would appear
to have originated in the idea that men can do more work than women.
Deprived of eonneetions resulting from one of the chief laws of nature, and
driven to desperation, the unhappy negroes, not unlike the first Bomans,
have beeu known to 'fly to the neighboring estates, seize on the women
and carry them off to the mountains." — Hiatory ofthe Maroons, by R. C.
DalLis, London, 1803, vol ii. p. 60.

OTHER CAUSES OPERATED. 99
purchase another, than to take care of him. This I
had in the interior from native Brazilians, and my own
observation has confirmed it. But, since the inhuman
traffic with Africa has ceased, the price of slaves has
been enhanced, and the selfish motive for taking
greater care of them has been increased."*
Of the two influences to check population above
indicated as fiowing directly from the slave-ti-ade, the
first, connected with the disparity in the numbers of
the sexes, is totally insufficient to account for the
unexampled decrease in the fifteen millions of slaves
sent to the Gulf and to South America. Suppose that
entire population, when it left the shores of Africa, to
have been in the proportion of five men to three
women : its power of natural increase would have
equalled only that of a normally constituted popula
tion of eleven millions two hundred and fifty thousand.
But had the slaves in question actually numbered but
eleven and a quarter millions, and had they increased
in the same proj)ortion as the half-million shipped for
the United States have done, the census-return of
their descendants to-day would have been ninety-eight
millions, — more than three times the population, white
and black, of the United States.
The immoral influence of the disparity in the relative
numbers of the sexes already alluded to, and its tend
ency to check population, is here to be taken into
account. But that disparity prevailed among im
ported negroes only, and did not, of course, extend
beyond the first generation. Unquestionable as the
tendency of the influence in question was to diminish
the rate of natural increase, wo can receive it only as

* Brazil and the Brazilians, by Rev. D. P. Kidder, D.D., and the Rev.
J. C. Fletcher, 1857. It is Mr. Fletcher who writes the above.

100 EFFECTS OF ABSENTEEISM.
a partial element, not seriously affecting the general
result. Thus the marvellous variance in the fate of the two
divisions of negro immigrants is not explained, though
the exact figures are somewhat varied, by the dispro
portion of the sexes in these immigrants.
As to the second infiuence, growing out of the tempt
ation gradually to work to death laborers who can be
replaced any day by fresh purchases, it is hard to
believe that it should have exerted over human cupidity
so terrible a sway as to cause the reduction to seven
and a half millions of men of a population which, had
they been treated and had they thriven but as well
as the slaves of the United States, would have num
bered to-day ninety-eight millions of souls.
Climate may have had something to do in working
out the ultimate results; yet there is no evidence to
show that the climate of the "West Indies and of Brazil
is less suited, or more fatal, to the negro than that of
our Slave States.
A more infiuential circumstance, especially in the
"West India islands, was the habitual absenteeism of
many of the proprietors The slaves were left at the
mercy of overseers, often uncultivated and mercenary,
who had no interest in their preservation so long as
those who died could be profitably replaced by what
were called " new negroes." Most of these overseers
were unmarried men ; and writers on the condition of
the colonies frequently allude to the fact that, when
this was the case, the lack of feniale care and consider
ate forethought as regarded the slave mothers and
children had a very considerable influence in diminish
ing the population.
Upon the whole, however, it must be confessed that,

A PLAUSIBLE ALLEGATION. 101
while the general facts in this case are indisputable,
the explanations we have so far suggested seem
inadequate to account for the extraordinary results we
have disclosed.

CHAPTEE X.
WAS THERE A FAILURE AND A SUCCESS?
But the lesson taught to mankind by this stupen
dous crime is far beyond the marvel of its results.
Four years ago that lesson was, in part, foreshadowed
only, and could not have been fully read. To-daj' it is
written in terrible characters all over the history of
our country.
Four years ago it might have been said with a cer
tain plausibility that the experiment of human slavery
had two phases, — the phase of failure and the phase of
success. "With a certain plausibility only, it is true. There
has been success in this country, so far as the mere
physical increase of the slave population can attest the
fact, — no further. But population has increased in the
world in spite of ceaseless wars, in spite of constant
Vice and misery. It increased in famine-stricken Ire
land. It increased in England throughout the term of
that feudal system which made of the island one great
military camp. It increased in France throughout the
centuries of that old regime of which the insufferable
iniquities were at last requited by popular vengeance
and culminated in the first Eevolution.
It is to be admitted, however, that an annual in
crease, from natural causes alone, of two and three-
9«t

\

102 SYSTEM or NEGRO SLAVERY
quarters to three per cent., prevailing throughout a
term of years in any population (as among the slaves
of the United States from 1810 to 1830), indicates that
they have not been subjected to the extremity of hard
ship which marks the fate of negro slaves in other por
tions of this hemisphere. And as, even to the present
day, the rate of natural increase among slaves in this
country has been considerable, it may be fairly inferred
that slavery in the United States, even in its latter and
severer phase, has been, as a general rule, more merci
ful and lenient than in the West Indies and South
America. It will probably be claimed, in addition, that it indi
cates a very considerable amount of j)hysical comfort
and well-being. But any such admission would con
vey a false impression in regard to the actual condition
ofthe slave, esjDecially in the Cotton and Sugar States.
The investigations of the Government commission, of
which^ for a year past I have been a member, tho
roughly convince me that the statements made in our
Preliminary Eeport as to the condition of the slave
population of South Carolina apply substantially to
that of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and
Arkansas, and, with no very considerable modifica
tions, to Louisiana, to Florida, to a few portions of
North Carolina, and to the western half of Tennessee.
I repeat here, as applicable to the States above
named, that which, antecedent to more general exa
minations, we had predicated only of South Caro
lina : —
" This is one of the States in which the system of
negro slavery seems to have reached its furthest de
velopment, with the least modification from contact
with external civilization. There it appears to have
run out nearer to its logical consequences than in any

IN THE COTTON AND SUGAR STATES. 103
other we have visited. There it has been darkening
in its shades of inhumanity and moral degradation
from year to year, exhibiting, more and more, increased
cruelty, a more marked crushing out, in the case of
the negro race, of the humanizing relations of civilized
life, and a closer approach, in practice, to a monstrous
maxim, — the same which a chief-justice of the Supreme
Court, perverting history, alleges to have been the
sentiment of the civilized world when the United
States Constitution was adopted, and in the spirit of
which he assumes (in virtue of such perversion) that
Constitution to have been framed, — namely, that ' the
negro has no rights which the white man is bound to
respect.'* The evidence before the commission shows'"'^
that, half a century ago, its phase was much milder
than on the day when vSouth Carolina seceded. It is
the uniform testimony of all emancipated South G&vo-'^
linian slaves above the age of sixty, that their youth
was spent under a state of things which, compared to
that of the last thirty years, was merciful and con
siderate. As a general rule, these old men are more
bright and intelligent than the younger field-hands;
in many of whom a stolid, sullen despondency attests
the stupefying influence of slave-driving under its more
recent phase.
" The disintegration of the family relation is one of
the most striking and most melancholy indications of
this progress of barbarism. The slave was not per
mitted to own a family name : instances occurred in
which he was flogged for presuming to use one. He
did not eat with his children or with their mother :
'there was no time for that.' In portions of this State,

* Dred Scott va. John F. A. Sandford, December Term, 1856.— 23 Howard,
407.

104 MARRIAGE AMONG SLAVES.
at least, a family breakfast or dinner table was a thing
so little known among these people, that ever since
their enfranchisement it has been very difficult to
break them of the life-long habit that each should
clutch the dish containing his portion and skulk off
into a corner, there to devour it in solitude. The en
tire day, until after sunset, was spent in the field ; the
night in huts of a single room, where all ages and
both sexes herded promiscuously. Young girls of
fifteen — some of an earlier age — became mothers, not
only without marriage, but often without any pre
tence of fidelity to which even a slave could give that
name. The Church, it is true, interposed her protest;
but the master, save in exceptional cases, did not sus
tain it, tacitly sanctioning a state of morality under
which ties of habitual affection could not assume a
form dangerous or inconvenient to despotic rule.
" The men, indeed, frequently asked from their mas-
¦ ters the privilege of appropriating to themselves those
of the other sex. Sometimes it was granted; some
times, when the arrangement was deemed unprofit
able, it was refused. Some cases there were in which
a slaveholder, prompted by his own sense of morality
or religion, or urged thereto by a pious wife, suffered
these connections of his slaves to have the sanction of
religious ceremony. But it is evident that to connect
even with such a quasi -marriage the idea of sacredness
or religious duty was inconsistent with* that legal
policy of the Slave States which forbade to render in
dissoluble among slaves a relation which to-morrow it
might be for the interest of their owner to break up.
" The maternal relation was often as little respected
as the marital. On manj^ plantations, where the sys
tem was most thoroughly carried out, pregnancy neither

MATERNAL RELATION DISREGARDED. 105
exempted from corporal punishment* nor procured a
diminution of the daily task ; and it was a matter of
occasional occurrence that the woman was overtaken
by the pains of labor in the field, and the child born
between the cotton-rows. Humane masters, however,
were wont to diminish the task as pregnancy advanced,
and commonly gave three, occasionally four, weeks'
exemption from labor after childbirth. The mother
was usually permitted to suckle her child during three
months only; and the cases were rare in which relaxa
tion from labor was allowed during that brief period.
On the other hand, instances have occurred in which
the more severe drove the negress into the field within
forty-eight hours after she became a mother, there to
toil until the day of the next birth.
"A noble exception, among others, to such a system
of inhumanity, gratefully testified to by the negroes

* "Another of my visitors had a still more dismal story to tell. Her
name was Die : she had had sixteen chUdren, fourteen of whom were dead.
She had had four miscarriages : one had been caused from falling down
with a very heavy burden on her head, and one from her arms strained
up to be lashed. I asked her what she meant by having her arms tied
up. She said their hands were first tied together, sometimes by the
wrists, and sometimes — which was worse — by the thumbs, and they were
then drawn up to a tree or post, so as almost to swing them off the
ground, and then their clothes rolled round their waist, and a man with a
cow-hide stands and stripes them. I give you the woman's words. She
did not speak of this as any thing strange, unusual, or especially horrid
and abominable ; and when I said, ' Did they do this to you when you were
with child?' she simply replied, 'Yes, missis.' * » » I gave the woman
meat and flannel, which were what she came for, and remained choking
with Indignation and grief long after they had all left me to my most
bitter thoughts." — Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantationen
1838-39, by Frances Anne Kemble, p 200.
Mrs. Kemble says, elsewhere in her Joumal, " Never forget, in reading
the details I send you, that the people on this plantation are well off, and
consider themselves weU off, in comparison with the slaves on some of the
neighboring estates."

106 SLAVES IN THE SEA-lSLANDS.
who enjoyed it, was to be found on the plantation of
ex-Governor Aiken, one of the largest and most in
fluential planters in the State. His habitual clemency,
it is said, gave umbrage to many of his neighbor plant
ers, as endangering their authority under a severer rule.
" Under such a slave system as this, where humanity
is the exception, the iron enters deep into the souL
Popular songs are the expression of the inner life; and
the negro songs of South Carolina are, with scarcely an
exception, plaintive, despondent, and religious. When
there mingles a tone of mournful exaltation, it has
reference to the future glories of Zion, not to worldly
hopes. " If to the above details touching slave-life in this
State we add the fact that, because of the unhealthy
climate ofthe sea-islands offthe South Carolinian coast
(chiefly due, it is said, to causes which may be removed),
the least valuable and intelligent slaves were usually
placed there, — further, that, being much isolated in small
communities, theso slaves frequently had children of
whom the father and mother were near blood relatives,
producing deterioration of the race, — it can excite no
surprise that the negroes of South Carolina, as a class,
are inferior to those from more Northern States. An
intelligent negro from a northern county of North
Carolina, who had there learned the blacksmith's trade,
and had been hired to work on a railroad in South
Carolina, stated to the Commission that he never knew
what slavery really was until he left his native State.
While there, he was comparatively contented. Within
a month after he reached South Carolina, he deter
mined to risk his life in an attempt to escape."*

* Preliminary Report of the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission,
pp. 3 to 10. It was prepared by the Author.

TWO CAUSES FOR INCREASE OF POPULATION. 107
To judge whether a natural increase of population
is necessarily connected with physical comforts, it
behooves us to look to the interior slave-life of the
South, to the motives which encourage such increase,
and to the conditions which attach to it. We find these
well set forth by one who had the best opportunities to
observe, — having resided some five months on her hus
band's plantation in Georgia, and being in the habit of
recording, from day to day, events as they occurred.
It Ab doubtful whether there has been presented to
the public, in modern times, a more authentic or more
faithful chronicle of every-day life in the Cotton States
than is to be found in the Journal from which our ex
tract is taken. The writer had been conversing with a
negress who had formerly been a favorite house-servant,
and thus proceeds :—
" She named to me all her children, — an immense
tribe; and, by-the-by, E  , it has occurred to me that
whereas the increase of this ill-fated race is frequently
adduced as a proof of their good treatment and well-
being, it really and truly is no such thing, and springs
from quite other causes than the peace and plenty
which a rapidly increasing population is supposed to
indicate. * * * Peace and plenty are certainly causes
of human increase, and so is recklessness. Here it is
more than recklessness; for there are certain indirect
premiums held out to obey the early command of re
plenishing the earth, which do not fail to have their
full effect. In the fii-st place, none of the cares — those
noble cares, that holy thoughtfulness which lifts tho
human above the brute parent — are ever incurred here
either by father or mother. The relation, indeed, re
sembles, so far as circumstances can possibly make it
so, the short-lived connection between the animal and
its young. * * * But it is not only the absence of the

108 VARIOUS CAUSES WHICH TEND
conditions which God has affixed to the relation which
tends to encourage the reckless increase of the race;
they enjoy, by means of numerous children, certain
positive advantages. In the first place, every woman
who is pregnant, as soon as she chooses to make the
fact known to the overseer, is relieved from a certain
portion of her work in the field, which lightening of
labor continues, of course, as long as she is so burdened.
On the birth of a child, certain additions of clothing
and an additional weekly ration are bestowed on the
family; and these matters, small as they may seem,
act as powerful inducements to creatures who have
none ofthe restraining influences actuating them which
belong to the parental relation among all other people,
whether civilized or savage. Moreover, they have all
of them a most distinct and perfect knowledge of their
value to their owners as property; and a woman thinks,
and not much amiss, that the more frequently she adds
to the number of her master's live-stock by bringing
new slaves into the world, the more claims she will
have upon his consideration and good will. This was
perfectly evident to me from the meritorious air with
which the women always made haste to inform me of
the number of children they had borne, and the fre
quent occasions on which the older slaves would direct
my attention to their children, exclaiming, 'Look,
missis ! little niggers for you and massa ; plenty little
niggers for you and little missis.' "*
We have had abundant evidence of the correctness
of the view here taken. General Saxton, for example,
deposes : —

* Journal of a, Residence on » Georgian Plantation in 1838-39 by
Frances Anne Kemble, New York, 1863, pp. 69, 60.

TO INCREASE SLAVE POPULATION. 109
Question, — "Were the women, under the slave-system,
taught chastity as a religious duty?"
Answer, — " No, sir. They were taught that they must
have a child once a year."*
The prohibition against suckling their children longer
than three months is part of the same system. f The
result is that the slave families are usually very nume
rous. We found in South Carolina, among the freedmen,
several instances in which the mother had had twenty
children and upwards in as many years. The result
is disclosed, beyond possible denial, throughout Mrs.
Kemble's graphic volume. Excessive child-bearing,
coupled with ceaseless toil, — an interval of three weeks
only being allowed after childbirth, — these are conclu
sively shown to have been the source of shocking
diseases and terrible suffering to the female slaves. J
The argument to be deduced from the great natural
increase of the slave population in the United States
would be much stronger than it is, had the ratio of
increase, as it was during the two first decades after
* Preliminary Report, already cited, p. 13,
f Among the witnesses whose testimony is given in the Report of the
Lords in Council are several physicians residing in the island of Jamaica.
One of these, Adam Anderson, of the parish of St. Ann, testifies, " Great
losses are sustained in the increase of negroes from the length of time the
negro women continue their children at the breast, seldom less than two
years, and many of them more." — Lord's Report, Part III., Jamaica, Ap
pendix No. 7.
If this habit was common throughout the colonies, its effect, taken iu
connection with the custom so widely different in our Slave States, is. to be
enumerated as one among the most influential causes which went to pro
duce the great variance of results as to increase of slave population in the
West Indies and in the United States.
J Journal of a Residence in Georgia. See page 29; also 39, — avery
bad case; also pages 79, 122, 190, 191, 192, 196, 214, 215, 233, 251, with
very strong evidence; and many others. The whole work is a most dreary
picture, — a terrible daguerreotype of what daUy negro life was, in a Cotton
State, before the war. 10

110 INCREASING SEVERITY.
the abolition of the slave-trade, been kept up to the
present day.
But it has not been kept up. I have already had
occasion, in the extract cited from the Preliminary Ee
port of our Commission, to advert to the fact that the
system of slavery among us has been increasing in
severity and hardship from year to year, — especially for
thirty years past. A glance at the census shows that
statistics confirm what we had deduced from personal
observation. From 1830 the rate has been gradually
diminishing; for, as the Superintendent of the Census
remarks, " The greater apparent increase among slaves
from 1840 to 1850 is connected with the admission of
Texas in 1845."* In these thirty years the ratio of
natural increase has diminished over ten per cent, in
tho decade, or one per cent, a year.
At the same diminishing ratio, less tban quarter of
a century would have witnessed a state ofthings under
which the slave population would have been annually
decreasing. Whether it would have fallen still lower,
until, as in Jamaica and other West Indian islands, the
deaths had so far exceeded the births that in less than
a century half the population would have disappeared,
must now ever remain — let us thank God! — a matter
of conjecture.
The duration of slavery, as a system, in the United
States, has been but brief, as compared with its pro
longed existence in West Indian colonies. Here that
system had not borne its deadliest fruits. Here, espe
cially for four or five decades after the Eevolutionary
War, certain features of a patriarchalf character tended
to alleviate its harshness.

* Preliminary Report of Eighth Census, p. 7.
f We havc found indications of this iu taking the evidence of freedmen,

DEPRIVATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS. Ill
But, in all its various phases, that system which con
fers on ono race the fatal privilege of idleness at expense
of forced drudgery imposed upon another race, differs
rather in the degree than in the character of its results^
These results are^ as a general rule, wherever slavery
exists^ at all, essentially and degradingly evil, — evil to
the victim of the injustice, evil as certainly to the in-'
flicter of it; for there is no human crime that does not
recoil on the criminal.
Alike in the Slave States of the Union as in the colo
nies of the West Indies and in every other land in
which the system of slavery prevails, its victims may
be said to live deprived, directly or indirectly, of every
natural right.
One of the most universal objects of human desire
and of human endeavor is the acquisition of property.
But the laws of Slave States forbid that the slave shall
ever acquire any. The holiest of human relations is
marriage. But a slave cannot legally contract it. The
dearest of human ties are those of family. But a slave
may see them broken forever, without redress, any
hour of his life. Of all human privileges the highest
is the right of culture, of moral and mental improve
ment, of education. But to the slave the school is for
bidden ground, reading and writing are penal offences.
The most prized of personal rights is the right of self-

especially in the more northern Slave States. Mrs. Wilkinson, a colored
woman in Canada West, testified, " I was raised in Winchester, Virginia.
* -^- * I have seen a good deal of hard treatment of others, but never had
any myself. I was brought up like one of the family. I used to call my
master 'father' and the old lady 'mother,' until I came to this country.
That is the way I was raised." This woman was set free by her mistress
after her master's death. — Supplementary Report A, on the Rpfuyeea from
Slavery in Canada Weat, by one of our Commission, Dr. Samuel G. Howe,
p. 98.

112 PRACTICAL EFFECT OF LAWS
defence. But a slave has it not; he may not resist or
resent a blow, even if it endanger limb or life.
What remains to the enslaved race? Life to man?
Honor to woman? Any security for either? Nomi
nally, yes; actually, save in exceptional cases, no. In
the statute laws against murder or rape, the word white
is not to be found. Persons of either color appear to be
equally protected. But among the same statutes, in
every Slave State of the Union, is incorporated a pro
vision to the following or similar effect : —
"A negro, mulatto, Indian, or person of mixed blood,
descended from negro or Indian ancestors, to the third
generation inclusive, though one ancestor of each gene
ration may have been a white person, whether bond or
free, is incapable of being a witness in any case, civil
or criminal, except for or against each other."*
As far as regards the two worst crimes against the
person, the above provision is the exact equivalent of
the following : —
" Murder or rape by a white person, committed against
a negro, mulatto, Indian, or person of mixed blood, de
scended from negro or Indian ancestors, to the third
generation inclusive, though one ancestor of each gene
ration may have been a M'hite person, shall go unpun
ished, unless a white person shall have been present
and shall testify to the commission ofthe crime."
Thc apology for a law according to which a woman
^cannot testify against the violator of her person or a
son against the murderer of his father, is, that in a com
munity where negro slavery prevails, sueh a provision
is necessary for the safety of the white raee. The

» Code of Tennessee, 1858, § 3808, p. 687. I have selected this sec
tion from the code of one of the Middle States, as a. fair, average ex
ample.

WHICH GIVE, APPARENTLY, EQUAL PROTECTION. 113
same apology is adduced to justify the taking from the
slave tho right of property, of marriage, of family ties,
of education, of self-defence.
Tho apology may be valid. It may not be possible
to force one race to hopeless labor, thoy and thoir chil
dren after them, from sunrise till sunset, day after day,
year after year, till death, — thus to toil unrequited
save by the coarsest food and clothing, — in order that
another race may exist in idleness; it may not be pos
sible safely to carry on such a system without de
priving the laboring race of every right, civil and
social, and of every protection to life and property, for
which man has been struggling through all the centu
ries of history.
It may be one of the conditions of safety to the
master race, thus usurping the labor of their fellows,
that some of their own children should be as utterly
disfranchised as the imported African. The phrase
ology of the section we have quoted is very suggestive :
"to the third generation inclusive, though one ancestor
of each generation be white," are the words. The
white man makes the law, and his son, his grandson,
his great-grandson, so that these share, to the extent
of one-eighth, the blood of the attainted race, may,
whether slave or free, be murdered with impunity if
the murder be not committed in the presence of some
one without that eighth of taint. The white man
makes the law, and exposes the chastity of his own
daughter — fairer of skin, it may be, than himself — to^
brutal outrage, without possibility of bringing the ruf
fian who commits that outrage to justice, unless the
wretch, adding folly to infamy, selects his opportunity
when one of his own race happens to be within hear
ing or sight.
These may all be necessary conditions, without
ITS

114 THE MOST DANGEROUS OF TEMPTATIONS.
which, under the slave-system, domestic tranquillity
cannot be maintained.
Let us assume that in this matter the slaveholder is
in the right, and that while slavery exists these are
his conditions of safety. What then ? In what sense,
except a blasphemous one, can we pronounce that sys
tem to be successful which cannot maintain itself ex
cept in violation of every principle of justice and vir
tue which God has implanted in the heart of man, —
except by the abrogation as to an entire race of men
of those rights of property, of family, and of person,
to assert and maintain which, in all ages of the world,
good and brave men have willingly sacrificed life ?
But there are other conditions, not set forth in
statute law, with which the existence of slavery is
inseparably connected, — those, namely, which affect
the masters of slaves.
Of all forms of prayer none is more strictly adapted
to the nature and the wants ofman than this: — "Lead
us not into temptation." Men in the mass cannot be
habitually tempted with impunity. It was said of One
only that He was tempted like as we are, yet without
sin. But of all human temptations one of the strongest
and most dangerous is that which attends the posses
sion throughout life of arbitrary and irresponsible
power. As a rule, it is always abused. A beneficent
despotism is the rarest of exceptions. This is one of
the great lessons of history, upon which is based the
doctrine of popular rights and the theory of a repub
lican government.
Under no phase of society has the operation of the
law which connects sin with ceaseless temptation been
more apparent than in states where slavery prevails-
One of our greatest statesmen, himself a sufferer under

JEFFERSON ON SLAVERY. 115
the evils he deprecates, has set forth in strong terms
the practical results.
"There must, doubtless," said Jefferson, "be an un
happy influence on the manners of our people, pro
duced by the existence of slaverj' among us. Tho
whole commerce between master and slave is a per
petual exercise of the most boisterous passions, — the
most unremitting despotism on one part, and degra
ding submissions on the other. Our children see this,
and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal.
* * * The parent storms, the child looks on, catches
the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the
circle of smaller slaves, and, thus nursed, educated,
and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped
with its odious peculiarities. The man must be a pro
digy who can retain his manners and his morals under
such circumstances."*
It has been customary to illustrate the influence of
slavery on the dominant race by adducing individual
examples of barbarous cruelty exercised towards slaves
by their masters.^ These might be multiplied inde-
* Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, chapter on Customs and Manners, p. 270.
f A single example from among many that came to our notice may here
sufiice. It is selected as exhibiting the uncontrolled passion and fearful
inhumanity of that spirit, bred by arbitrary and irresponsible power, which
could visit with terrible punishment a light and venal offence. It was
testified to by an eye-witness, a respectable colored mechanic, Solomon
Bradley by name, who was employed for several years on the railroad
between Charleston and Savannah.
One morning this witness, going for a drink of water to a house near tho
line of the railroad, occupied by a Mr. Farraby, heard dreadful screams in
the door-yard. Looking through an aperture iu the board fence, he saw
a woman stretched, face downward, on the ground, her hands and feet
bound to stakes. Over her stood her master, striking her with a
leathern trace belonging to his carriage-harness. As the strokes fell,
the flesh of her back and legs was raised in welts and ridges. Occasionally,
when the poor creature cried out with insufferable pain, her tormentor

116

EXAMPLE OF BARBARITY.

finitely; but they are less conclusive of the effects in
separable from the system than the picture drawn by
Jefferson, the exact truth of which every one familiar
with the interior of Southern society will admit.
Slavery breeds imperiousness of manner, impatience
of contradiction or delay, ungovernable passion, con
tempt of labor. While it produces a certain carelessn ess
of wealth and easy profuseness in expenditure, it dis
courages hardy enterprise in useful fields. Habits of
regulated industry are seldom formed within the sphere
of its influence, — its tendencj' being to substitute for
kicked her iu the mouth, to silence her. When he had exhausted himself
by flogging, he oalled for sealing-wax and a lighted candle, and, melting
the wax, dropped it on the woman's lacerated back. Then, taking a riding-
whip and standing over the 'poor wretch, he deliberately picked off, by
switching, the hardened wax.
While this scene of torture was acted, Mr. Farraby's grown-up daughters
were looking on, from a window that opened on the yard.
Afterwards, Bradley made inquiry of the woman's fellow-servants as to
what crime she had committed, and was told that it consisted in burning
tho edges of tho waflied she had been cooking for breakfast!
"The sight of this thing," the witness added, "made me wUd, and I
could not work right that day. I prayed the Lord to help my people out
of their bondage."
This witness was born and brought up in a northern county of North
Carolina, where, he said, such cruelty was unheard of. Slaves were flogged
thero ; but if one broke away during the punishment, no attempt was made
to renew it.
What a fearful addition to the atrocities of this scene, that the young
women were witnesses of the ungovernable rage and savage cruelty of a
father! And what must have been the oharaeter of the father who could
thus expose himself before his children ? Tho least evU that could result
was that it excited within them detestation of their parent. More pro
bably the influence was brutalizing, — deadening in their young hearts the
sentiment of humanity, and preparing them to become themselves, in after
life, mercUess tyrants on the slightest provocation.
Outrages so gross may not have been common even iu South Carolina;
but, when they did occur, they passed unnoticed either by law or by publio
opinion. What must havo been the state of that society in which crimes
so grave were committed with utter impunity?

CHARACTERISTICS OF SLAVE SOCIETY. 117
these indolent fashions of dependence and of luxu
rious self-indulgence. It weakens the supremacy of
law, with its sobering and chastening influence. It
engenders, in young men especially, a spirit of reckless
daring, a sort of careless courage that takes little account
of human life, a love of violent excitement, sometimes
running into military ardor, and ever liable to take the
form of gambling, or intemperance, or that debasing
licentiousness which must needs prevail wherever, in
any class or race, female chastity is neither respected
by custom nor protected by law.
Hence a state of society in which, with manners often
cultivated, with an impulsive generosity and free hos-
pitalitj' to equals in station, there mingles a certain
essential barbarism, which not only shows itself habit
ually in the treatment of those occupying servile or
inferior positions, but also breaks out, towards others,
in bursts of temper so frequent and violent that the old
regulator in ages when force was law, — the wager of
battle, — in its modern form of duel, is openly sanctioned
by public opinion, as a necessary check to social insult
or lawless outrage.
These remarks apply in their full force to society as
it existed, at the time the Southern insurrection declared
itself, in the States we have designated as those in which
the slave-system has been fully developed, — the States
which first rebelled, — the States which will be the last
to return to their allegiance. No reflecting and dis
passionate observer who has sojourned in any of these
States long enough to become familiar with their
manners and morals and social condition will pro
nounce the view I have taken of the results of slavery
to be intemperate or unfair. Prom one or other of
these results no man or woman born and bred in a
slave community, no matter whether they learn to

118 SLAVERY MODIFIED IN BORDER STATES.
approve slavery or to hate it, can be reasonably ex
pected wholly to escajje.
It is true as to tho 3order States, where the tilled
estates more frequently assume thc aspect of farms
than of plantations, where the owner and his sons
sometimes work along with the slaves, and, even where
they do not actually work with them, yet personally
superintend their labor so as to recognize and take
interest in them as individual humau beings, it is true,
and should here be stated, as to these States, that the
phase of slavery there existing is sensibly modified,
and is divested, more by practice, however, than by
relaxation of law, of some of its most odious features.
On small estates especially, slaves in the Border States
often have, by sufferance, a certain amount of property,
continue to live, by sufferance, as if legally married,
are frequently trusted with important charges, are sent
to market with cattle or produce, are consulted in
regard to the management of the estate. Under such
circumstances they are greatly improved by coming
into daily contact with white persons ; and instances
occur in which they are treated by the family with as
much consideration as if their skin exhibited no tinge
of African blood.
In these States the chief aggravation of the system
is the inter-State slave-trade, the forcible separation of
families to fill up those melancholy gangs, assorted like
droves of cattle, and whose destination is to that mys
terious and undefined land, thc terror of the border
negro, known to him only as " down South."*
* This domestic slave-trade appears to have been increasing rather than
diminishing up to the commencement of the war. Judge Ballard, of Louis
ville, deposed, before our Commission, " A few years since, more cruelty, I
think, was tolerated by the sentiment of thc State than when I was a boy.
We saw, more frequently, negro gangs driven through the city. Formerly

INTERDICTIONS OF A SLAVE-CODE. 119
But even under this comparatively moderated phase
of slavery, the inherent injustice ofthe system exhibits
itself in the character of the yery indulgences which
in other Slave States are forbidden by law.* In visit
ing the colored population of Louisville, this pre
sented itself in a marked manner to the notice of our
Commission. I found living there many slaves who, as the usual
phrase is, had "hired their time." One ease was of a
slave woman, apparently fifty years of age, named
Charlotte. She had been hiring herself for more than
fifteen years. She had two children, one thirteen, the
other seventeen, both of whom worked in a tobacco-
factory. Their regular wages were two dollars a week
each; sometimes they did extra work, earning more.
She hired their time also. For herself and these two
children she paid her owner five doUars a week, — a dol
lar a week for herself, and two dollars a week for each
of the children. She had brought up these children
without any aid whatever from her master, feeding
a man did not like to be seen in that position ; but five or six years ago it
became quite common. There was no effort to conceal the thing. I recol
lect well that thirty years ago I knew a mau who was a physician in this
city, to be tried by his church for the offence (committed as administrator
of an estate) of unnecessarily separating, by sale, a slave from his wife."
Testimony taJcen by the Commission in Kentucky, pp. 38, 39.
* " No person shall hire to any slave his time ; nor shall any person
owning the legal or equitable title of any slave, absolutely or for a term
of time, his agent or attorney, or other person having the control of a slave,
wilfully permit or suffer such slave, —
"1. To own hogs, cows, horses, mules, or other like property.
''2. To trade in spirituous liquors, hogs, cows, horses, or mules, or pro
visions, or other like property.
"3. Nor, as if he were a free person of color, to live by himself.
"4. To hire himself out.
"5. To work and labor, — to spend his or her time, or to do other acts."
Code of Tennesaee, 1858, g 2685, p. 578.

120 HARDSHIPS ENDURED BY SLAVES
them, clothing them; and this she continued to do
even now, when her master took their wages. She
inhabited with them a single room in a tenement house,
about twelve feet square, paying her own rent. She
supported herself by washing. A large bed and an
ironing-table, which together filled up most of the
room, were piled with clothes prepared for ironing
when I entered.
This woman made no complaint, and did not appear
to regard her condition as one of unusual hardship.
The only thing she seemed to have expected from her
master was a little aid in sickness. In reply to a
question as to what he did for her, she answered, " My
master never gives me any thing, not even a little
medicine, no more than if I did not belong to him."
As her appearance indicated feeble health, I made
inquiry on that score, to which she replied that she
"Avas ailing," but that she "managed to keep up
enough to make her wages." She added, "I get
along well enough and keep the hire paid up; you
could not pay me to live at home if I could help my
self" 1 asked her if she had to pay the hire for her
boys in any event; and her reply was, "If the boys
make more than two dollars a week apiece, I get what
is over; if they don't make that, I have to make it
good to him; he has got to have it Saturday night,
sure." Another case was marked by an additional feature.
It was that of a slave woman, apparently about thirty-
five years of age. Coming upon her without any
notice of our visit, I found her in a room tidily kept
and herself decently dressed. She had been hiring
herself for eleven years, at seventy-two dollars a year
Her husband, she told me (of course he could not be
legally such), was a slave, and was hired by his master

WHO ARE PERMITTED TO HIRE THEIR TIME. 121
as cook in one of the Louisville hotels for three hun
dred dollars a year; out of this his master, she said,
gave him, once or twice a year, a five-dollar note, —
nothing else. There were in the room two bright,
intelligent-looking children, one a boy about ten years
old, the other a girl two or three years younger. One
might go, at a venture, into a dozen dwellings of jper
sons of tho middle class in fair circumstances, and not
find their children cleaner in person or more neatly
and suitably clad than were these two young slaves.
I expressed to the mother my satisfaction at their
appearance. Her face saddened, and she said, "The
white people have two of my children, and that boy is
about big enough to go."
I inquired how this was, and she informed mo that
her master left her children with her till they were
about eleven years old, and then took them home to
work. Up to that age she fed and clothed them at
her own expense. The last they had taken was a little
girl between eleven and twelve years old. Pour months
ago the mother had gone to the plantation to visit her,
not having seen her then for ten months; she had
saved a dress for the child, and took it with her. " I
knew," she said, " that she would need it, but I never
expected to find her as bad as she was; I could not
help crying when I saw her; she was not dressed as a
human creature should be; I took off her rags and
washed her. She was serving my young master, and
he had whipped the child so that you could not lay
your hand anywhere along her back where he had not
cut the blood out of her. I did all I could for her, and
dressed her, but I could not stay. [Here the poor
creature's eyes filled with tears.] I brought back the
rags my child was covered with; I have them yet."
I asked to see them. She went out, it seemed reluc-
11

122 WHAT GENTLEMEN DESCEND TO,
tantly, and brought a small bundle of filthy tatters,
which she appeared ashamed that I should see. " If I
could only have kept the children," she said, " I would
not have cared for all the rest. I liked so much to
have them clean and nice."
This woman made her living, as I ascertained, solely
by washing and ironing. She, like the other, had paid
her expenses of every kind, the doctor's bill inclusive.
Truly the tender mercies of slavery are cruel!
Under what other system would men, assuming to be
gentlemen, commit towards poor, hard-working women
such flagrant injustice as this?
In the first case, the woman Charlotte, in feeble
health, advancing in years, with no means of living
except labor in washing and ironing, pays to her mas
ter two hundred and sixty dollars a year for the privi
lege of supporting by such labor herself and her chil
dren. The man who received this human rental had
literally furnished no equivalent. For more than fif
teen years the woman had not received from him even
a little aid in sickness. The children for whom he
now demanded a yearly payment of a hundred dollars
each had cost him nothing. For fifteen years the
mother had fed and clothed them, cared for them in
sickness and in health; she continued, unrequited, to
feed and clothe them still. Who, if not that mother,
was entitled to their wages now? Who, except one in
whom slavery had blunted every perception alike of
justice and delicacj', would consent to receive and to
use money coming from such a source as that?
In the second case, three hundred and seventy-two
dollars annually had been paid for eleven years by the
woman and him whom she called her husband, the law
of the State forbidding that she should be his lawful
wife. Four thousand and ninety-two dollars the master

UNDER A VITIATING SYSTEM. 123
had receiviad from them in that time ; for which he had
rendered nothing except some ten dollars a year in the
form of a gratuity to the man. Was this four thousand
dollars considered by the master enough to take from
these two working-people ? The mother, in this case as
in the former one, had brought up her children at her own
expense, had fed them and had clothed and kept them
as any respectable yeoman might have been glad to
see his children clothed and kept. Were the father and
mother, after the payment of this four thousand dollars,
after the care and cost of bringing up these children,
suffered to enjoy the comfort of having them with them,
and the aid which, as they grew up, they might be able
to afford? No. While the children were a burden, that
burden was thrown on the mother, — she, too, as in the
other case, earning a living as washerwoman. As soon
as they were of an age to be of service, they were re
moved to the plantation. And how treated there ? The
young girl was taken, neatly and comfortably clad, from
her mother's care. One would have thought that the
most common regard for decency, to say nothing of
justice, would have suggested that the worse-than-
orphaned child should have been kept, as the servant
of a rich man, at least as reputably as the poor slave-
mother had kept her. Yet she was suffered to go about
the house, before her master's eyes, in filthy rags. One
would have supposed that the recollection of the four
thousand dollars received from the hard-working
parents might have risen up to save — if Christian feel
ing could not save — ^this poor child, deprived of natural
protectors, from brutal cruelty. Tet she was treated
as no man with the least pretence to humanity would
have treated a dumb beast.
Let no one say that these were cases of unusual hard
ship. The parties themselves evidently did not con-

124 THE HOME OF A SLAVE.
sider them such. There was no tone of querulous
complaint. The facts came out only in answer to my
direct inquiries; and neither of the women seemed to
consider herself especially to be pitied. Charlotte
thought a little hard ofit that her master did not send
her medicine when she was sick. The hire of her chil
dren did not seem to have suggested itself to her as any
injustice. Even the other said she would be willing to
part with the children if she only knew they were well
treated. Had she been suffered to retain them, her
gratitude to her master for his generosity would, it was
evident, have been unbounded. One could see that the
four thousand dollars subtracted from her own and her
husband's earnings never occurred to her except as a
usual thing.
Both women expressed the greatest satisfaction that
they were allowed to hire themselves. It was sufii-
ciently apparent that nothing short of compulsion
would cause either of them to return to what they still
called " home." What sort of home could that be, com
pared to which the privilege of hard labor at the wash-
tub, purchased by a weekly payment in money, — coupled
in one case with a similar payment for the children and
in the other with the loss of them, — was regarded as a
favor and a blessing ?
Let us not imagine that the masters, in these two
cases, were sinners above all men that dwelt in Ken
tucky. They may have been indulgent in their own
families, kind to tbeir white neighbors, honorable in
their business dealings, esteemed in society. The anom
aly is presented of men whose characters in one phase
entitle them to be called cultivated and civilized, yet
in another — to wit, in their dealings with a proscribed
race — exhibiting such utter disregard of the mild graces
of Christianity — merey, charity, long-suffering, kindness

THE WHITE PARIAHS OF THE SOUTH. 125
and good will to men — that it is not too harsh to say
they live in a state of semi-barbarism. Such results are
chargeable far less to the individuals who have thus
gone astray than to the system which has formed their
character. But a system has lamentably failed that
results in the arrest of human civilization and Christian
progress, in injury to the national character, and in
disregard, under any circumstances, of the natural and
inalienable rights of man.
Nor is the contempt engendered by this system
towards those occupying subordinate social positions
confined to the colored man. Under slavery there
grows up a class of white, as well as black. Pariahs.
A marked feature in Southern society is the temper
and demeanor of the wealthy slaveholder towards an
indigent portion of his own race, — the "poor whites,''
as they are called, of the South. Slavery is to them
the source of unmingled evil. Labor owned, competing
with labor hired, deprives them of the opportunity to
earn an honest livelihood. Labor degraded before
their eyes destroys within them all respect 'for in
dustry, extinguishes all desire by honorable exertion
to improve their condition. Doomed by habitual in
dolence to abject poverty, complacently ignorant, vilely
proud, it is doubtful whether there exists, in all civi
lized society, a class of men more deplorably situated.
And yet how fiercely have they been brought to fight
for the slave-masters who despise them, and for the
system which consigns them to degradation !*
* While visiting Nashville as commissioner, I encountered a notable
Bpecimen of the class I have been describing.
It was in the office of a gentleman charged with the duty of issuing
transportation and rations to indigent persons, — black and white. There
entered a rough, dirty, uncouth specimen of humanity, — tall, stout, and
wiry-looking, rude and abrupt in speech and bearing, and clothed in
11»

126 SLAVERY AND DEMOCRACY IMCOMPATIBLE.
Such a system is fraught with niischief politically as
well as morally. They who violate the rights of one
race of men lose a portion of their reverence for the
rights of all. It comes to this, that the peculiarities
of character stamped, more or less, on every country
in which slavery exists, are, in spirit and in practice,
adverse not to religion and civilization alone, but to
democracy also. No people exposed to the influences
which produce such peculiarities will ever be found
imbued with a universal sense of justice, with a, respect
for industry, with a disposition to grant to labor its just
position among mankind. Nor can any people subjected
to influences so deleterious ever be expected to remain, in
perpetuity, contented and happy under republican rule.*
threadbare homespun. In no civil tone, he demanded rations. While
the agent went to consult the Governor, I discovered from the man's
boastful manner that he was «. rebel deserter, who had " seen as much
of fighting as he wanted." When he was informed that all the rations
applicable to such a purpose were exhausted, he broke forth : — " What
am I to do, then ? How am I to get home ?"
" You oan have no difliculty," replied the agent. " It is but fifteen or
eighteen hours down the river [the Cumberland] by steamboat to where
you live ; I furnished you transportation ; you can work your way."
"Work my way !" (with a scowl of angry contempt.) "I never did a
stroke of work since I was born, and I never expect to, tiU my dying
day." The agent replied, quietly, " They will give you all yon want to eat
on board, if you only help them to wood."
" Carry wood !" he retorted, with an oath. " Whenever they ask me to
carry wood, I'll tell them they may set me on shore. I'd rather starve
for a week than to work for an hour. I don't want to live in a world
that I can't make a living out of without work.''
The insolent swagger with which this was said ought to havo been
seen to be fully appreciated. All over the man — in his tone, manner,
language, and degraded aspect — was stamped his class ; the most ignorant,
illiterate, and vulgar. Ho seemed fitted for no decent employment upon
earth except manual labor; and all labor he spurned as a degradation.
* "After dinner the conversation again turned on the resources and
power of the South, and on the determination of the people never to go

A PRINCE FOR THE SOUTH. 127
In no sense, then, neither political, moral, or religious,
can the experiment of slavery in these States be regarded
in any other light than as an utter failure.

CHAPTEE XI.
THE GREAT LESSON.

All this might have been said four years ago, in
reply to any argument that might then have been
adduced in support of the assertion that slavery,
though it failed in the West Indies and South America,
had succeeded in the United States.
But how instructive, how invaluable, the experience
of these eventful four years ! New views of the sub
jeet present themselves to-day. Aspects ofthe slavery
question, hidden until now, come conspicuously into the
light. History had previously recorded the social and
economical evils of the system. Now she has presented
to us its political consequences.
And now, therefore, going back to our starting-point
on the African coast, and following up, once more, the
two diverging branches of the great stream of slave-
immigration, flowing West, — the one branch bearing
half a million captives to this Northern continent, the
back into the Union. Then cropped out again the expression of regret for
the rebellion of 1776, and the desire that, if it came to the worst, England
would receive back her erring chUdren, or give them a prince under whom
they could secure a monarchical form of government. There is no doubt
about the earnestness with whioh these things are said." — My Diary, North
and South, by WiUiam Howard RusseU, 1S62, chapter xvii.
This wag in April, 1861, on u South Carolinian plantation. "The re-
hellion of 1776 ;" outspoken enough, certainly. Mr. Russell representa
these sentiments as then common in the South.

128 A GREAT LESSON DELAYED,
Other conveying fifteen millions to islands and a con
tinent farther South,— we are able, by the light of recent
experience, to present, more fully and clearly than ever
before, the comparative results in either case.
Increase or decrease, apparent success or undeniable
failure, the ultimate results have been fatal alike.
The fifteen millions despatched to the West Indian colo
nies and to South America never, as a population, took
healthy root in the lands to which they were banished.
They had no growth. From the first, and ever after,
century by century, they melted away under the in
fluences of the system that degraded and destroyed
them. Their fate, and the lesson it conveyed, were
immediate and apparent. God stamped the policy
which enslaved them, at every stage of its progress,
with his reprobation.
But as to the half-million that came among us, the
mark of Divine condemnation, apparently suspended
for a time, came in a different form at last. For a time
that half-million increased and multiplied and replen
ished the earth. For a time their masters were wealthy
and prosperous, as men usually rate prosperity. For a
time these masters increased in political power. They
held sway in the Eepublic. They controlled the Na
tional Legislature; they obtained a majority of the
public ofiiees. The end was delayed. And when it
came at last, it was the direct result of the peculiarities
of character impressed by slavery on its votaries. Im
perious and insubordinate, they rebelled against lawful
authority. Spurning wholesome control, they rejected
the President who was the choice of the majority.
Despising a working people, they sought to sever con
nection with the North, a race of unblushing laborers.
Seduced by evil habit into the belief that man's noblest
condition is to live by the exertions of others, they

BUT COME UPON US AT LAST. 129
undertook to erect a separate political system, of which
slavery was to be the corner-stone.
Thus did slavery bring on a civil war between
brethren of the same race and tongue and faith, — a
war wide-spread and embittered and desolating as
wars have seldom been. Thus will slavery have caused
the violent death, in the country which tolerated it, of
half a million of free people. Thus will slavery leave
behind it, in the country where it held its millions in
bonds, a public debt little short, it may be, of that
which loads down the industry of Great Britain.
If God, in his mercy, shall in the end preserve us
from results to which these deaths and losses are but
as dust in the balance; if our punishment does not
extend to dismemberment, anarchy, extinction as a
great nation ; if lookers-on from European courts are
not to moralize on the ignominious failure of the noblest
experiment to reconcile democratic liberty and public
order that was ever instituted by man ; let us remember
how narrowly we shall have escaped; let us call to
mind what days of gloom we have passed through,
how often, as the contest proceeded, victory has hung
even-balanced in the scale, and what a little thing,
amid the thousand contingencies which our short sight
calls chance, might have turned the issue against us
forever !
In our case, the Great Lesson was long delayed. But
how terrible in its actual results, how awfully impressive
in its possible consequences, when it came upon us at
last! The conclusion of the whole matter is this. Eeview-
ing, from its inception on this continent down to the
present hour, the history of that offence against hu
manity by which one race, in order to escape labor,
usurps by violence and appropriates to itself the labor

130 TENDENCIES OF SLAVERY.
of another, we find that the tendency of that usurpa
tion is always to debase the usurpers, and, usually, to
extinguish the laboring race, and that in the only
notable exception to this last rule the effects of this
sin against justice and mercy culminated in the bloodiest
civil war that ever arose among men, — of the horrors
and sufferings incident to which we cannot even now
see the end.
If a calm review of this terrible episode in modern
history bring no conviction that the crime which we
are now expiating in blood must be atoned for, as crime
can only be, by practical repentance, — by thrusting out
from among us the Wrong of the Age, — argument will
be unavailing. If, as all signs of the times appear to
indicate, the nation has already attained to this con
viction, then it behooves us to consider how we shall
carry it into effect, — whether and in what manner we
can effect emancipation by legal and constitutional
means. The consideration of these questions shall form the
subject of the following chapters.

PART II.

EMANCIPATION.
" To deliver an oppressed people is a noble fruit of victory."-
VaiteIt: Book III. 2 201.

131

PART IL
EMANCIPATIOK

CHAPTEE I.
A MIXED QUESTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND INTERNA
TIONAL LAW.
I PROPOSE to inquire whether the act or acts whereby
the slaves heretofore held in insurrectionary States were
declared free are, or are not, absolutely legal and irre
vocable. Seldom, throughout all history, has there been pre
sented to any nation, for its decision, a question of
greater import than this. Its solution involves not
alone the social destiny of three or four millions of
human beings, but also the permanent peace and the
national honor of one of the great Powers of the world.
It allies itself also, in an especial manner, to the pro
gress of civilization.
The events of the last three years have radically
changed the legal aspect of this subject. Questions
once purely constitutional have now become compli
cated with questions of international law.
A member of the commonwealth of Christendom,
our republic is bound by the acknowledged rules of
that unwritten code, governing the society of civilized
12 133

1S4 INTERNATIONAL CODE BECOMING MILDER.
nations, of which the foundation and the sufficient
authority is the common consent and usage of that
society.* We are as much bound by its rules as wo
are by the provisions of our Federal Constitution. In
proportion as civilization advanced, " it became," says
Sir James Macintosh, " almost as essential that Europe
ehould have a precise and comprehensive code of the
law of nations as that each country should have a
system of municipal law.""}"
Engaged in war, we must conform to the Law of
Nations, so far as that law regulates public rights and
duties during war. We must take from it, for example,
the extent of our rights as regards enemies' property,
and the limitations of these rights.
In interpreting the International Code, however, it
behooves us to bear in mind that, as its office is to foster
civilization in peace and to mitigate suffering and re
press outrage in war, the sentiment of Christendom,
taking practical form, has been gradually moulding its
rules from the more to the less severe. Thus, among
the Eomans, the rule that renders enemies' property
liable to confiscation was so harshly enforced that it
was made to apply to subjects of the enemy who, at
the breaking out of war, happened, innocently and by
the accident of travel or temporary commerce, to be
residing among them. But Grotius and Yattel argue
that, as these foreigners entered the country under the
sanction of public faith, the government which per
mitted this tacitly contracted that they should be pro
tected while there and allowed a reasonable time to
return, taking with them their movable effects. And
* We search in vain for any other authority for the Law of Nations than
js to be found in Grotius' favorite phrase, " Placuit gentibua." — De Jure
Belli et Pacia, 1. ii. cxviii. 4, s. 5.
t Lecture on the Law of Nature and Nations, by Sir James Macintosh.

MODERATION BUT NOT WEAKNESS. 135
this practice, from its evident justice, has now super
seded the stricter enforcement of the rule.
Beyond all doubt, as a nation holding itself second
to no other in its desire to aid the cause of humanity
and civilization, our practice in war ought to conform
to the milder and more enlightened phase of sentiment
sanctioned by modern publicists. But in so doing it
behooves us to see to it that the scruples of moderation
do not degenerate into weakness, defeating their own
object, and protracting the term of a war which is a
disgrace to the age if it be not regarded as God's
agency for a great purpose. We are guilty of culpable
negligence if we fail to employ all the means which are
legally and properly within our reach, to bring to a
close, at the earliest practicable day, the struggle which
now desolates and depopulates our land. There is no
just war which has not for its object (on a rightful
basis, it is true) the speedy restoration of peace.*
In pursuing that object, as the legal phrase is, vid
facti, in other words, by the compulsory means of war,
injury must be inflicted on the enemy. States, being
in the nature of vast corporations, are not, indeed,
liable to punishment ; but acts resembling punishment,
thou^ in fact but measures of self-defence, become
necessary, if we resort to war at all. " It is to be
remembered," says an able modern commentator on
International Law, " that, as the will of the subject is
bound up in that of his government, it may well be
that the consequences of the conduct of his rulers may
be attended with injury both to the person and pro
perty of the subject, and that the enemy is justified in
striking through them at the government from which

* "Bellum paeis causa suscipitur." — Grotii Proleg, 25, de Jure Belli et
Pacia, lib. i. c. i. s. i.

136 UNDER WHAT PHASE IS SLAVERY
he has received a wrong for which redress has been
denied."* The just limit, in this case, is set forth by Montes-
quieu. "Nations," says he, "owe to each other, in
peace, the greatest amount of good, and in war the
least amount of evil, that is compatible with their true
interests."f Guided by these general considerations, I proceed to
examine the question of Emancipation, legally con
sidered. In so doing, it may simplify the matter if I offer a few
preliminary observations.

CHAPTEE II.

CONSTITUTIONAL ASPECT OF WHAT IS CALLED SLAVE
PROPERTY.
There has been radical diversity of views on this
subject. Extreme opinions, on either side, have been
confidently urged, — one party alleging that the Federal
Constitution admitted and sanctioned property in human
beings, another, that its very preamble utterly excluded
that idea, and that none of its provisions recognized, or
could recognize, in any sense, rights of property that
are contrary alike to law and to morality.
We cannot reach clear ideas of the constitutionality
pf Emancipation, under any circumstances, until we
* Commentaries on International Law, by Robert Phillimore, M. P.,
vol. iii. p. 69.
¦f" "Le droit des gens est naturellement fondS sur ce principe, que les
diverses nations doivent dans la paix le plus de bien, et dans la guerre le
moins de mal, qu'il est possible, sans nuire a leurs veritables intfirlts." 
Montesquieu: De I'Eaprit des Lois, 1. i. c. iii.

RECOGNIZED BY THE CONSTITUTION ? 137
settle, in advance, under what phase and to what ex
tent the social relation known as slavery is recognized
(if it be recognized) by the Constitution of the United
States. And throughout the prosecution of such an
inquiry it behooves us to bear in mind tbe great funda
mental ideas of human liberty and natural rights to
give legal force to which that instrument was originally
framed. It behooves us, further, to keep in view a well-
established legal principle, founded on justice and iden
tified with civilization, laid down by the Supreme Court
of the United States in these words : — " Where rights
are infringed, where fundamental principles are over
thrown, where the general system of the law is departed
from, a legislative intention must be expressed with
irresistible clearness, to induce a court of justice to
suppose a design to effect such objects."*
The constitutional provision regarding the slave-
trade, cautious in its phraseology, was temporary only,
ceasing to operate after the year 1808, and need not,
therefore, be considered.
There are but two other provisions that bear on this
subject, familiar to all ; for they have been the theme of
a hundred excited discussions, — one, contained in the
fourth article and second section of the Constitution,
being in these words : —
"No person held to service or labor in one State,
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be dis
charged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered
up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor
may be due."
The claims to service or labor here referred to may

• United States against Fisher, 2 Cranch, 390.
12*

138 ARE APPRENTICES OR SLAVES
be for years or for life : both are included in the above
provision. In point of fact, there were existing, at the
time that provision was adopted (as there still exist),
both classes,— the first class, for a term of years, then
consisting, in part, of claims against foreign adults who
had bound themselves to service for a limited time to
repay the expenses of their emigration, but chiefly, aa
now, of claims to the service or labor of what were
called apprentices, usually white minors; the second,
for life, were claims to the service or labor of men,
women, and children of all ages, exclusively of African
descent, who were called slaves.
The first class of claims were found chiefly in Northern
States, the second chiefly in Southern. There was a
great disparity between the numbers of the two classes.
While the claims to service or labor for years numbered
but a few thousands, there were then held to service or
labor for life five or six hundred thousand persons; and
the number has since increased to about four millions.
The constitutional provision is, that persons from
whom, under the laws of any one State, service or labor
is due shall not be exonerated from the performance of
the same by the laws of any other State to which they
may escape. The apprentice, or the slave, shall in that
case, on demand of the proper claimant, be delivered
up. Such a provision involves the recognition of certain
rights of property; but of what kind?
Is the ownership of one human being by another
here involved ? Is the apprentice, or the slave, recog
nized in this clause as an article of merchandise ?
State laws regulating apprenticeship and slavery may
"give to the master of the apprentice, or of the slave,
the custody of the person and the right of corporal
punishment, in order the better to insure the perform-

ARTICLES OF MERCHANDISE? 139
ance of the labor due. These laws may declare that
an apprentice, or a slave, who strikes his master, shall
suffer death. They may provide that the testimony of
an apprentice, or of a slave, shall not be received in
any court of justice as evidence against his master.
They may make the claims to service or labor, whether
for years or for life, transferable by ordinary sale.
They may declare such claims to be, under certain cir
cumstances, of the nature of real estate. They may
enact that these claims shall be hereditary, both as re
gards the claimant and the person held to service; so
that heirs shall inherit them, and also so that the chil
dren of apprentices, or of slaves, shall, in virtue of their
birth, be apprentices or slaves. They may deny to the
slave, or to the apprentice, during the term of slavery
or of apprenticeship, legal marriage, education, the
ownership of property real and personal. But State
laws and State Constitutions, whatever their varying
provisions, cannot modify or affect, expressly or by im
plication, the Constitution ofthe United States. They
have no power, direct or indirect, over it. It controls
them. The Supreme Court has decided that "the Gov
ernment of the Union, though limited in its power, is
supreme within its sphere of action;'' and again, para
phrasing the Constitution itself, that " the laws of the
United States, when made in pursuance of the Consti
tution, form the supreme law of the land, any thing
in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding."* Therefore no State action can add to, or take from,
the Constitution of the United States. Therefore State
laws and State Constitutions, valid within their own
* McCuUoch against the State of Maryland, 4 Wheaton, Rep. p. 316.
Constitution of the United States, section 6.

140 EVIDENT INTENTION OF THE CONSTITUTION
municipal jurisdiction, are without force within the
proper sphere of Federal authority. They can neither
determine the interpretation of the Federal Constitu
tion, nor serve as commentary or explanation of its in
tent. It is an authority'superior to theirs ; and it is to
be interpreted by the words, fairly and candidly con
strued, of its framers.
These words deny to any State the right either to
pass laws or regulations discharging from service or
labor inhabitants of another State, held to such service,
who may have escaped therefrom, or to refuse, to the
proper claimant of such service, the surrender of the
fugitive by whom it is due. They do this. They do
nothing more. And this denial of the right, on the part
of any State of the Union, to defeat certain claims to
labor held by citizens of another, is a protection afforded
to all claims for labor alike, — to that of the master seek
ing a white apprentice, and to that of the master seek
ing a negro slave.
There is an evident intention, so far as words can
mark intention, to go no further. There is an evident
intention to refrain from any expression that might be
construed into an acknowledgment of slavery as a
social institution. Nothing could be more notorious
than the fact of its existence as such in many of the
States then about to be united in one Federal Union.
But the responsibility of that existence is studiously
left to the States who permit it. It is adverted to as a
fact, not sanctioned. If, while it exists, it is protected
in one of the incidents which belong alike to it and to
apprenticeship, the reason is to be found in the neces
sity of the case. It is evidently with no other intent
than to avert angry conflicts between State and State,
that an individual State is not permitted to release from

NOT TO RECOGNIZE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY. 141
involuntary labor any person who, by the municipal
rule of another State, is subjected to such labor.
This view of the case is fully borne out by the re
markable phraseology of the provision under considera
tion. The word slave, though then universally used to
designate a negro held to service or labor for life, is not
employed. We know, from the debates in the Con
vention which framed the Constitution, that this pecu
liarity was not accidental; nor can we overlook the
Inevitable inference thence to be deduced. This pro
vision does not recognize slavery except as it recog
nizes apprenticeship. African slavery, according to
the expressly selected words, and therefore according
to the manifest intent, of the framers of the Constitu
tion, is here recognized as a claim to the service or
labor of a negro, — nothing more, nothing else.
It avails not to allege, even if it were true, that iu
1787, when these words were written, a negro was com
monly considered property. Chief-Justice Taney, de
livering the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred
Scott case, asserts that in the thirteen colonies which
formed the Constitution, " a negro of the African race
was regarded as an article of property." If the opinion
expressed on this subject, by a large majority of those
who sat in deliberation in the various States, on the
adoption of the Federal Constitution, as recorded by
Eliot, is to be received, as it properly may be, in evi
dence to prove the probable opinions of their con
stituents on this subject, then has the chief-justice's
assertion no foundation in truth.* But, true or not, it
has no legitimate bearing on the argument. Let the
* Any one who will examine, as I did, a carefully-prepared abstract of
the opinions on slavery, favorable and unfavorable, expressed in the
various State Conventions during the debates on the adoption of the
Federal Constitution, may satisfy himself that this statement is correct.

142 SLAVERY, IN ITS CONSTITUTIONAL ASPECT,
facts as to popular opinions in Eevolutionary days be as
they may, they are but the opinions of individual colo
nists ; and these cannot be received as a basis of con
struction for the words, nor can they rebut the plain
intent, of a constitutional provision. It is not what
individual colonists believed, but what the framers of
the Constitution incorporated in that instrument, that
we have to deal with.
They avoided the use of the word " slave." They in
corporated the words "person held to service or labor."
They admitted the existence, under State laws, of the
claim to service or labor, none other, — a claim (regarded
in its constitutional aspect) in the nature of what the
law calls a chose in action, or, in other words, a species
of debt, — a thing to which, though it cannot be strictly
said to be in actual possession, one has a right.
In common parlance we employ words, in connection
with slavery, which imply much more than such a claim.
We say slaveholder and slave-owner ; we speak of the
institution of slavery; but we do not say apprentice-
holder or apprentice-owner, nor do we speak of the
Institution of apprenticeship. The reason, whether
valid or invalid, for such variance of phraseology in
speaking of the two classes of claims, is not to be found
in any admission, express or implied, in the provision
of the Constitution now under consideration. The
framers of that instrument employed one and the same
phrase to designate the master of the apprentice and
the master of the slave. Both are termed " the party
to whom service or labor may be due."
The employment of the popular phraseology referred
to, indicating social disabilities and a subjection of one
race to another, whieh originated in local legislation
alone, has had a tendency to mislead public opinion as
to the actual connection between slavery and the

A CLAIM OR SPECIES OF DEBT. 143
Federal Constitution. The mass of our people had
come to think, at last, not only that the claim to labor
was recognized, and was protected in cases where the
denial of that claim might have led to a dangerous con
flict of authority between States, — which was true, —
but also that the framers of the Federal Constitution,
straying off from the landmarks set up by the Decla
ration of Independence, had recognized as just, and had
pledged the nation to defend against all comers, a social
institution under which one human being became the
chattel of another, — ^which was false.
If we were to regard the Constitution as endorsing
slavery in all its changing phases, shaped by successive
State laws and institutions as these phases have been,
whither might not the doctrine have led us ? Among
the ancient Eomans the master had the power of life
and death over his slave. Let us suppose that South
Carolina had enacted, as she might have enacted, a
statute granting to her slaveholders this terrible power.
Is'the Federal Constitution, because of such statute, to
be understood as recognizing the doctrine that murder
is no crime if perpetrated on the person of a negro held
to labor? Instinctively we reject an inference so mon
strous that we must have lost all respect for the best
men of the Eevolutionary period before we could
adopt it.
The second and only other provision of the Consti
tution which refers to slaves (Article 1, Section 2)
remains to be considered, in these words : —
"Eepresentatives and direct taxes shall be appor
tioned among the several States which may be included
within this Union according to their respective numbers,
which shall be determined by adding to the whole
number of free persons, including those bound to service

144 STRICT INTERPRETATION NOT TO BB
for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed,
three-fifths of all other persons."
To avoid mistakes, it was deemed necessary to in
clude apprentices by express specification. Why this?
Every one would have felt it to be absurd, if the words
had been " the whole number of free persons, including
farm-laborers." But why absurd? Because persons
engaged in free labor are, beyond question, free persons.
Not so those " bound to service." While so bound, ap
prentices may be considered not free ; when the " term
of years," and with it the bondage to service, expires,
they become free, or, as the common phrase is, "their
own masters." It was necessary and proper, therefore,
to specify whether, in the enumeration of inhabitants,
they were to be estimated as free persons or as persons
not free.
But would there be any fairness in construing this
clause into an admission, by inference or otherwise,
that an apprentice, while " bound to service," is a slave?
Clearly not. He is a person not free for the time, be
cause another has a legal claim to his service or labor.
The Constitution admits this, — ^nothing more.
And so of slaves. " Other persons" they are called,
in contradistinction to " free persons," — therefore, per
sons not free ; and properly so called, seeing that, like
the apprentice before his term expires, they are " bound
to service," and that, unlike him, they remain thus
bound for life.
But unless we admit that the apprentice, bound to
service for a season, is a slave during that season, we
cannot justly allege that, by this provision of the Con
stitution, the negro, held to service or labor for life, ia
recognized as a slave.
A mere technical view of a great political question
is usually a contracted one, of little practical value, and

CONFOUNDED WITH MERE TECHNICALITY. 145
unbecoming a statesman. "Thc letter killeth, but the
spirit giveth life." Yet wc must not mistake for techni
cality a careful interpretation, distinctly warranted by
the terms employed, of a public instrument. Every
public instrument, by which the governed delegate
powers to those who govern, should be strictly con
strued. We know very well that the men who framed the
Constitution regarded a negro held to service or labor,
not, indeed (to speak of the majority of opinions), as a
chattel, but as a slave. It would be absurd to argue
that temporary claims to the number (let us suppose)
of thirty or forty thousand may compare in importance
with life-long claims to the number of four millions.
The first are of comparatively trifling moment, have
never moulded or greatly influenced society among us,
and might drop out of our social system without serious
disturbance. The latter constitute a system that has
roots deep-struck in the social structure of half our
country; that involves vast industrial interests; that
has gradually obtained influence so great and assumed
proportions so gigantic as to become apolitical element,
overshadowing and controlling. It cannot properly be
dealt with except after the gravest deliberation and the
most sedulous examination, in advance, of every step
we propose to take. It cannot be eradicated without
producing disturbances such as convulse a nation.
But it is none the less true that neither the number
of slaves nor the magnitude of the interests involved
can properly influence the judgment in determining the
just construction of a clause in the Constitution, or
properly set aside a fair deduction from the wording of
that clause as to its true spirit and intent. It is none
the less true that the framers of the Constitution, in
studiously avoiding the employment ofthe word " slave,"

146 QUESTION SIMPLY STATED.
undeniably abstained from admitting into that instru
ment any thing which the use of that word might have
implied. Therefore tho Constitution does not recog
nize the ownership of one human being in another.
In it we seek in vain any foundation for the doctrine
declared by Chief-Justice Taney, that persons held to
service or labor for life are articles of property or mer
chandise. In one restricted sense, and only in one, is slavery
recognized by the Constitution of the United States;
as a system under which one man, according to State
laws, may have a legal claim to the labor of another.
It follows that the question Avhether the Federal
Government has the right, under any circumstanees, to
emancipate slaves is more simply and more distinctly
stated when put in these words : Has the Federal Gov
ernment the right, under any circumstances, to take
and cancel claims to the service or labor of persons of
African descent, held, under State laws, in certain por
tions ofthe United States?
If there are circumstances and conditions under which
such claims can be legally taken and disposed of by the
Government, then, under these circumstances and con
ditions. Emancipation is constitutional. If there are
none such, it is unconstitutional.
This opens up the next branch of our inquiry. And,
as we are at war with one portion of the Slave States
and at peace with another portion, the question sub
divides itself accordingly. For the rules as to property
of an enemy during war differ entirely from those which
regard the property of peaceful citizens.
Let us, then, first examine the question in its connec
tion with the insurrectionary States.

LEGAL EFFECTS OF CIVIL WAR. 147

CHAPTEE III.
THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF EMANCIPATION IN THE
INSURRECTIONARY STATES.
Has the Federal Government the right to take and
cancel claims to service or labor held by inhabitants of
the insurrectionary States ?
An antecedent question is: Are these inhabitants,
without distinction as to individual loyalty or disloyalty,
and because of their residence within a given territory,
enemies ofthe United States?
Vattel has treated, as fully and as humanely as any
other writer on international law, of the rules of that
law so far aa they apply to civil war. He says : —
"When, in a republic, the nation is divided into two
opposite factions and both sides take up arms, this is
called a civil war. * * * A civil war breaks the bands
of society and government, or, at least, suspends their
force and effect. It produces in the nation two distinct
parties, who consider each other as enemies. * * *
These parties stand in precisely the same predicament
as two nations who engage in a contest and have re
course to arms."*
In accordance with these views, the Supreme Court
has decided that, because of the present insurrection,
there exists civil war. The opinion of the court, de
livered in March of last year, is as follows : —
"When the regular course of justice is interrupted by
revolt, rebellion, or insurrection, so that the courts of
justice cannot be kept open, civil war exists, and hos
tilities may be prosecuted on the same footing as if
» The Law of Nations, by Vattel, Book III. |§ 292, 203.

148 WHO ARE ENEMIES, IN LAW?
those opposing the Government were foreign enemies
invading the land."*
When one nation is engaged in war against another,
all the inhabitants of the latter, without regard to their
opinions as to the justice of the war on the part of their
own Government, become enemies of the former. If
Great Britain, siding with the South, were to declare
war against us, John Bright, though he might retain
the same friendly sentiments which he now entertains
towards this country, would be, in law, the enemy of
the United States.
Vattel sets forth this principle in plain and explicit
terms : —
" When the sovereign or ruler of the State declares
war against another sovereign, it is understood that
the whole nation declares war against another nation.
Hence these two nations are enemies, and all the sub
jects of the one are enemies to all the subjects of the
other."t Strictly in accordance with the above, the Supreme
Court has given its opinion in the case already referred
to. After reciting that the territory " held in hostility
to the United States" has a " defined boundary,"! '^i'ich
can be crossed only by force, the court adds : —
* Claimants of Schooners BrUliant, <to. vs. United States, March Term,
1863. Opinion by Grier, J. — Amer, Law Register, AprU, 1863, p. 338.
t Vattel, Book III. § 70.
X This boundary, earlier defined by the respective acts of secession, was
officially declared by proclamation of the President, issued under date of
July 1, 1862. This was done in accordance with a requisition contained
in the second section of an aot of Congress, approved June 7, 1862. The
list includes eleven States, reckoning Eastern Virginia as one. It does not
include Western Virginia, nor Maryland, nor Delaware, nor Kentucky, nor
Missouri. Nothing here said, therefore, applies to the constitutional rights
of the inhabitants of any of these States. To a proper understanding of
the legal points involved, it is indispensable to bear in mind which States
are, in the eye of the law, insurrectionary, and which are not.

enemies' PROPERTY MAY BE TAKEN. 149
"All persons residing within this territory, whose
property may be used to increase the revenues of tho
hostile power, are, in this contest, liable to be treated
as enemies. * * * Whether property be liable to cap
ture as enemies' property does not, in any manner,
depend upon the jDersonal allegiance of the owner."*
According to this decision, property of every kind
held by residents of the insurrectionary States, no
matter what their personal sentiments or political pro
clivities may be, is enemies' property. It becomes such
in virtue of the domicil of the owner, and of the fact
that it " may be used to increase the revenues of the
hostile power."
It follows that so much of the law of nations as
relates to the right of a belligerent to take or destroy
the property of an enemy applies in this case to the
property of every inhabitant of the insurrectionary
States, without regard to his individual loyalty or dis
loyalty. What are the rules of international law which bear
upon this matter ?
Grotius lays down the principle on the broadest
ground. He says : —
" Moreover, by the law of nations, not only he who
carries on war for just cause, but also any one engaged
in regular war, may, without limit or measure, take
and appropriate what belongs to the enemy; so that
both he, and all who claim under him, are to be de
fended in possession thereof "f
* Case oited, Claimants of Schooners BriUiant, &o., Amer. Law Register
for April, 1863, pp. 343, 344.
f " Ceterum jure gentium non tantum is qui ex justS, caus^ bellum gerit, sed
et quivis in bello solenni et sine fine modoque dominus fit eorum quse hosti
eripit, eo sensu nimirum ut a gentibus omnibus et ipse et qui ftb eo titulum
habent in possessione rerum talium tuendi sint." — Grotius, 1. iii. c. vi. s. 2.
13*

150 WE PROPOSE TO CANCEL CLAIMS,
Vattel is quite as explicit. He says : —
" We have a right to deprive our enemy of his pos
sessions, of every thing which may augment his strength
and enable him to make war. This every one endea
vors to accomplish in the manner most suitable to him.
Whenever we have an opportunity, we seize on the
enemy's property, and convert it to our own use ; and
thus, besides diminishing the enemy's power, we aug
ment our own, and obtain at least a partial indemni
fication or equivalent, either for what constitutes the
subject of the war, or for the expenses and losses in
curred in its prosecution."*
The Supreme Court, in the case already cited, endorses
this well-known principle of international law : —
" The right of one belligerent not only to coerce the
other by direct force, but also to cripple his resources
by the seizure or destruction of his property, is a neces
sary result of a state of war."f
These authorities settle the question as to the legality
of one enemy taking or destroying the personal property
of another.
In a general way, however, a belligerent does not
become the legal owner of any personal property be
longing to his enemy so long as it is still in that enemy's
hands. To obtain a right to it, he must reduce it to
possession. " Owner of all property taken from the
enemy," says Grotius. " We seize on the enemy's pro
perty and convert it to our own use," says Vattel. The
Supreme Court employs a similar phrase, authorizing
" the seizure or destruction of enemies' property." Until
we seize the horses on which the enemy has mounted
his cavalry, or the muskets which he has placed in the

» Vattel, Book IIL ? 161.
t Case cited, Amer. Law Register for April, 1863, p. 341.

NOT TO SEIZE TANGIBLE PROPERTY. 151
hands of his soldiers, they are not ours. As to tangible
property, such as horses and muskets, we must capture
before we owu.
When we propose to take and cancel enemies' claims
to service, — in other words, to emancipate the slaves of
our enemies,— does the rule hold good ? Must we obtain
possession of the persons of these slaves before we can
declare them to be free of their bondage ?
In this case, the question is not of seizing and de
stroying tangible property belonging to the enemy.
Even if a slave were an article of merchandise, we do
not propose to ourselves the possession and the destruc
tion of that article. If we did, it could not be ours to
possess until we captured it, nor to destroy until the
laws against murder were repealed.
The property with which we propose to deal, and of
which we seek to deprive our enemies, is property of a
character \ ery different to that of property in horses
or muskets. It consists of a right, or claim, — the only
right over a slave by a master which is recognized in
the Constitution, — the claim to that slave's service or
labor. This is, strictly speaking, a species of property in the
nature of a demand, to be satisfied in the future. It is
a debt, of a peculiar nature, it is true, — not payable in
money, not recoverable by suit in court, enforced by
physical means, — but still essentially a debt. Service or
labor is due. It is, indeed, an involuntary debt, not
growing out of contract between debtor and creditor,
but yet as binding as State laws can make it, — as prac
tically binding, within the State which enacted these
laws, as the debt an artisan might contract if he gave,
in payment of property brought, his promissory note for
so many months' labor. It is a debt due by an inhabit-

152 INTANGIBLE PROPERTY CANNOT BE SEIZED.
ant of thc United States to an enemy of the United
States.* Property of this description, being of an intangible
character, cannot be physically seized or destroyed. It
is evident, therefore, that the usual rule that the seizure,
by physical force, of enemies' property must precede
our ownership of the same, can have no practical ap
plication in this case.
But debts can be confiscated; and, after being con
fiscated, they can be cancelled so that the debtor shall
be forever free of the same. Nor is there in the inter
national code any rule or law to the effect that, before
such confiscation'or cancelling, the person of the debtor
shall be seized, or that the debt cannot be confiscated
or cancelled while the debtor is in the enemy's country.
If there be legal authority to confiscate, that suffices.
Is there legal authority in this case ? Has the Gov
ernment of the United States, at war with the holders
of these claims, the right to confiscate them ?
Vattel, in defining what is to be considered as enemies'
property liable to confiscation, says : —
* The question is not mooted here whether, because of the existing civil
war, slaves held within the insurrectionary States are, iu law, enemies or
not. We have seen that the principle on which the inhabitants of the in
surrectionary States, without reference to personal loyalty, are held to be
enemies, is, first, because of their domicil, and secondly, because their pro
perty may be used to increase the revenue of the hostile power. But slaves
are persons acting under duress; they have no voluntary domicil, aud can
not legally hold any property, real or personal.
In any event, though by international law the government may right
fully hold all the inhabitants of the insurrectionary States as enemies, it
is not compelled to hold them as such. It may undoubtedly waive its
right as to the whole or any part of them.
The question is a new one, that has never, probably, been decided by tho
courts. Its decision is immaterial to the present argument. A debt due
to an enemy by any inhabitant of the United States, whether friend or
enemy, may lawfully be confiscated. That is good law, and that suffices
in the present case.

AUTHORITIES FOR CONFISCATING DEBTS. 153
"Among the things belonging to the enemy are like
wise incorporeal things,— all his rights, claims, and
debts."* The expression is of the most comprehensive charac
ter; "all his rights, claims, and debts;" embracing be
yond possible question, the claims or debts we have
now under consideration. We shall search in vain for
any special recognition of the right to confiscate that
peculiar species of claim, — seeing that neither common
law nor international law recognizes the existence of
human slavery, or provides rules for its treatmqnt
during war. We can be governed, therefore, only by
the general rule as to confiscation of claims or debts.
But that is explicit and all-sufficient.
Chief-Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion of
the Supreme Court in thc case of "Amity Brown versus
The United States,'' said : —
" The right of the sovereign to confiscate debts being
precisely the same with the right to confiscate other
property found within the country, the operation of a
declaration of war on debts and on other property found
within this country must be the same.""|"
Justice Story, though dissenting from the opinion of
the court in this case, concurs in the above principle.
These are his words : —
"I take upon me to say, that no jurist of reputation
can be found who has denied the right of confiscation
of enemies' debts. "J
There are no exceptions to this rule which apply to
the case we are considering. It is true that, by the
modern and milder interpretation of the law of nations.

» Vattel, Book IIL ? 77.
t Amity Brown vs. The United States, 3 Curtis, p. 48.
X Case cited, 3 Curtis, p. 61.

154 WE ARE JUSTIFIED ON TECHNICAL GROUNDS
there are certain relaxations as to the power of confis
cating the rights, claims, or debts of an enemy; for ex
ample, in the case of rights granted by a third party to
whom it is not a matter of indifference in whose hands
they are vested.* Nor is it any longer the law, though
it used to be, that sums of money due by neutral na
tions to our enemy can be confiscated as other property.f
Nor are the debts of alien enemies, contracted in the
country during peace, to be deemed confiscate solely in
virtue of a declaration of war.J But none of these ex
ceptions, nor any others recognized by the law of na
tions, have reference to the present case, in which the
question regards debts due to the enemy by inhabitants
of our own country. Sueh debts are, beyond all con
troversy, liable to confiscation.
It is to be conceded that the precise case, as it here
presents itself, may be regarded as sui generis. A par
allel case cannot, probably, be found in all history, — a
case in which, during a civil w.ir, a question touching-
tbe confiscation and cancelling of certain claims or
debts due by one portion of the inhabitants of an insur
rectionary district to another portion of the same rises
to the grandeur of a great measure involving not only
the peace, but the national existence, of the Power
which proposes to confiscate. This could only occur
when, as in the present instance, these claims consti
tute the basis of a vast labor-system endangering do
mestic tranquillity and imperilling the national unity
and life.
A case so unique might well be regarded as demand
ing the establishment of a precedent. The courts might
«- Vattel, Book III. § 77.
-f- 1 Chitty's Commercial Law, p. 423. 1 Chitty's Law of Nations, pp.
82 to £0.
X Amity Brown is. United States, 3 Curtis, p. 46.

AS WELL AS ON GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 155
well be called upon to decide it on the broad principle
that whatever is essential to the preservation of the
national life, the Government may lawfully do; just as
an individual may, without imputation of murder, take
the life of an assailant, when such killing is necessary
to save his own life. But it is satisfactory to reach the
conclusion that the right to adopt this great measure
of national self-defence can be justified even on techni
cal grounds, as involving a confiscation never before
exercised, perhaps, by a belligerent, on so grand a scale,
but in strict conformity to the law of nations in the
premises. It is, therefore, in every view of the subject, lawful
to seize or confiscate and cancel that large class of
enemies' debts known, in the language of the Consti
tution, as " claims to service and labor." It is lawful,
by the proper authority, to confiscate these not only
when the debtor is within our own lines, but in what
ever portion of our country he may happen to be.
What is the proper authority in this case ? By whom
can these claims be legally cancelled ?
Evidently, by the same authority which may legally
seize and appropriate any other property ofthe enemy.
Primarily, then, by the sovereign or law-making power
of the government, and secondly, when the exigencies
of war demand it, by the duly-constituted military
authority. But the chief military authority of the United States
is vested, by the Constitution, in the President.
"The President shall bo Commander-in-Chief of the
Army and Navy ofthe United States, and ofthe Militia
ofthe several States, when called-into the actual service
ofthe United States."* « Article II. Section 2.

156 POWERS AND ACTS OF THE PRESIDENT
The President, then, is a proper authority,— -not, in
deed, as President, but as Commander-in-Chief As
such he has legal power, by himself or through his
subordinate officers, to take, and to destroy or to use,
personal property belonging to the enemy. As such
he is sole judge of the exigencies which render neces
sary such taking and such destruction or use.
In the exercise of this discretion he is not amenable
under any provision of the Constitution. The Consti
tution, in making him commander-in-chief, neither
designated nor restricted his powers as such; but it
conferred upon him, by implication, all the powers
appertaining, by the usage and law of nations, to that
office. Strictly speaking, the only constitutional ques
tion which can be raised in this connection is as to
whether the person so taking and destroying enemies'
property was, at the time, legally commander-in-chief
He is responsible for the manner of exercising this
power under the law of nations; and, as the law of
nations is to be construed in the interests of humanity
and civilization, he is responsible in case his acts should
outrage these great Christian principles. Humanity
forbids us to lay waste a country, to sack towns and
villages, to burn or pillage dwellings, to destroy public
edifices not military. Humanity bids us respect' tho
private property of non-combatant enemies, so far as
this is compatible with the exigencies of war. If a
commander-in-chief violate these rules, which civiliza
tion, in its progress, has dictated, it is an offence, not
against the Constitution, but against international law.
The legality of his acts may be called in question, not
their constitutionality.
What was the manner in which the President, as
commander-in-chief, took and cancelled the claims to

AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 157
involuntary labor owned by inhabitants of the insur
rectionary States ?
On the 25th of July, 1862, in pursuance of the sixth
section ofthe act of July 17, 1862, commonly called the
" Confiscation Act," the President issued a proclamation
warning all insurgents to return to their allegiance
within sixty days, on pain of certain forfeitures and
seizures. This warning proving ineffectual, the President,
when the sixty days' notice had expired, issued a second
proclamation, declaring that the slaves held within any
State which, on the 1st of January then succeeding,
should still be in rebellion against the United States,
" shall be then, thenceforth, and forever free."
On the 1st of January, 1863, "by virtue ofthe power
in him vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and
Navy of the United States," he declared certain States,
— namely, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ala
bama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Virginia, — certain parishes in Louisiana and certain
counties in Virginia excepted, — to be then in rebellion
against the United States ; and he further declared that
all slaves in the said ten States, with the exceptions
aforesaid, " are, and henceforward shall be, free."
In the last-mentioned proclamation the President
recites that it is issued " in time of actual armed rebel
lion against the authority and government ofthe United
States;" and, further, that Emancipation is declared
"as a fit and necessary war-measure for suppressing
said-rebellion." The number of claims to involuntary labor which
this j)roclamation declared to be cancelled was about
three millions. The forfeiture, under the war-power,
of so great an amount of property, tho cancelling of
so vast a number of claims, disturbing, as it must, tho
14

158 CONDITION OF NATIONAL AFFAIRS,
social and commercial elements throughout a large and
populous country, requires, for its justification, an ob
ject commensurate in grandeur with the magnitude of
the measure itself.
What was tbat object ?
" All that a man hath," we are told, " will he give
for his life." And this is as true of nations as of indi
viduals. No higher or greater object can be proposed
to any people than the maintenance of its national
unity, which is its national life.
At the time when the President, as commander-in-
chief, issued his Proclamation of Emancipation, the
life of the nation was imminently threatened.
A civil war, of proportions more gigantic than any
which history records, had been raging in our country
for more than a year and a half The contending
parties had put into the field upwards of a million of
combatants. We of the North had already expended,
or contracted to expend, full a thousand millions of
dollars. The war had been carried on with varying
success, — now the Federal arms triumphant, now the
Confederate. Northern councils were divided, and
there was a loud clamor for peace, on terms the ac
ceptance of which could but result in perpetual war.
So far as foreign nations had declared themselves,
cither by official acts or by the expression of public
opinion, it appeared to be rather in favor of the
Southern insurgents than of the established Govern
ment. The contest had, till then, assumed no higher
character than that of one portion of a great nation
striving to secede from the main body of the same and
establish a separate independence ; and, in an effort of
that character, if no higher principle be involved the
sympathy of the world is usually with the weaker
party.

WHEN EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION WAS ISSUED. 159
In such a conjuncture, the best and wisest among us
saw before them a protracted war, a doubtful issue.
The bravest confessed to themselves that we had need
of all our resources, even to the uttermost, in order to
avert the breaking up of the great American Unioni
into such petty, discordant sovereignties as are to be
found in more southern portions of our hemisphere;
into belligerent fragments, with the standing and in
fluence, perhaps, of Venezuela or Costa Eica, of Nica
ragua or Ecuador.
We had need of all our resources, even to the utter
most. Had we at that timo employed them all ? Had
we not, up to that time, left in the hands of our ene
mies, with scarcely an effort to disturb it, one of the
chief elements of their military strength? — nay, an
element so overwhelmingly influential in its practical
results, that, according to its management, against us
or in our favor, might be the ultimate issue of the war,
— defeat if we neglected it, victory if we improved the
opportunity ? Let us look closely to this.
By the census of 1860, the number of white males
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five was, in the
loyal States, about four millions ; in the disloyal States,
about a million three hundred thousand, — lef us say,
about three to one. The disparity seems great; but,
as a basis of military strength, the calculation is wholly
fallacious; forthe disloyal States contained, when the
insurrection broke out, three millions and a half of
people* who were not insurgents, who did not volun
tarily assist in the rebellion, but who were compelled
by force to render it most efficient aid.
Out ofthe above four millions, the North had to pro-
* The eleven States who passed ordinances of secession contained, by
the census of 1860, three mUlions fivo hundred and twenty-one thousand
one hundred and ten slaves.

160 MILITARY STRENGTH, NORTH AND SOUTII.
vide soldiers and (with inconsiderable exceptions, not
usually extending to field-labor) laborers also.
Not so in the South. Her million three hundred
thousand had more than their own number to aid them
in military as well as agricultural labor ; for, as among
slaves both sexes are employed, from an early age to a
late period of life, in the field, the number of laborers
out of three millions and a half of slaves may fairly be
put at two millions. Let us estimate three hundred
thousand of these as employed in domestic service and
other occupations followed by women among us, and
we have seventeen hundred thousand plantation-hands,
male and female, each one of whom counts against a
Northern laborer on farm or in workshop, or a Northern
soldier laboring on intrenchment or fortification ; each
one of whom, staying at home to labor, liberates a
white man for active military duty in the field.
To oue million three hundred thousand add one mil
lion seven hundred thousand, and we have three mil
lions as tho total, in the insurgent States, of numerical
force available in this war; that is, of soldiers to fight
and laborers to support the nation while fighting.
Then, supposing the negroes all loyal to their mas
ters, or at least remaining to labor for them, the com
parative military strength, so far as it is indicated by
poj)ulation, was as four in the North to three in the
South. If we take into account the fact that ours were the
invading and attacking forces, while the insurgents
had the advantage of acting upon their own territory,
near to their sujoplies, with short inside lines of com
munication, and on the defensive, it need not surprise
us that, after the lapse of a year and eight months of
uniutcrmitting war, the seale still remained in the
balance, neither side yet hopelessly depressed.

A VAST ELEMENT OF WAR-STRENGTH. 161
Under such a condition of national affairs, when
there was question of claims, held by the enemy, upon
which rested his powers to supply his armies with the
necessaries of life, it was incumbent upon us to go
much further than to inquire whether the commander-
in-chief had the right to take, and declare forfeited,
these claims. The true and fit question is, whether,
without a fiagrant violation of official duty^ he had the
right to refrain from taking them.
"You have no oath," our present Chief Magistrate
said, addressing, in his Inaugural, the insurgents
already in arms against lawful authority, — "you have
no oath registered in heaven to destroy this Govern
ment; while I have the most solemn one to preserve,
protect, and defend it."
Can we suppose a grosser violation of that solemn
oath, than would have been the failure to employ the
appropriate means, sanctioned by the law of nations,
gradually to withdraw from the enemy half his mili
tary strength ? Has a President done his best to pre
serve the Government, to protect the people, until he
shall have done this? Charged with the lives of mil
lions, with the putting down of a gigantic rebellion
and the restoring of tranquillity to the land, what right
had our commander-in-chief, in the hour of utmost need,
to scorn a vast element of war-strength placed within
his reach and at his disposal ? And, if he had refused
to avail himself of such an element, would he not have
been righteously held responsible for tho hopes he
blighted and the lives he cast away ?*
* In this argument I have confined myself, in terms, to the pro
clamation of the President as authority sufficient to make Emancipation
in the insurrectionary States legal and irrevocable. The argument, how
ever, is equally applicable to tho Acts of Congress on this subject; which
acts have, besides, other grounds of validity, unnooosaary here to recite.
11*

162 AN IMPORTANT AND LEGITIMATE OBJECT.
Under such a state of things, it was eminently and
imperatively the duty of the President, " as a fit and
necessary war-measure for suppressing the rebellion,"
to declare free all the slaves held by the enemy in the
insurrectionary States, not merely to emancipate those
among them who might succeed in making their escape
and coming within our military lines. The important
and legitimate object was to present to those still held
in duress a strong and proper motive to sever all con
nection with the insurgents, to abstain from giving aid
and comfort to the insurrection, and to seek refuge
from the superior force which compelled them to give

The chief provision by Congress is contained in the ninth section of the
Aot of July 17, 1862, commonly called the " Confiscation Act," as fol
lows : —
^'That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion
against the Government of the United States, or who shall give aid or
comfort thereto, escaping from sueh persons and taking refuge within the
lines of the army : and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted
by them and coming under the control of the Government of the United
States ; and all slaves of such persons found or being within any place occu
pied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by forcea of the United States,
shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servi
tude, and not again held as slaves."
By the decision of the Supreme Court, already cited, aH the inhabitants
of the insurrectionary States are, in law, persons "engaged in rebellion;"
therefore all refugee slaves from insurrectionary States are, by this statute,
declared free.
Further, as all the insurrectionary States have been " occupied by rebel
forces," and aa wc may reasonably conclude that, if we prevail against the
South, all these Statea not already " occupied by forces of the United
States" will hereafter be so occupied, it foUows that, by the operation of
this law, all the slaves in the insurrectionary States, even if no Emanci
pation Proclamation had ever been issued, would, before the end of the
war, have probably been entitled to freedom.
Strictly in the spirit of the above statute, and going only so far beyond
it as to declare slaves in portions of the insurrectionary States not yet
" occupied by forces of the United States" to be free in advance of suoh
occupation, was the President's action in the premises.

FORESIGHT AND PRECAUTION NATIONAL DUTIES. 163
such aid and comfort, by fleeing to that portion of the
country where lawful authorit}- prevailed.
Another great principle is involved. Every publicist
of repute has set forth (what common sense suggests),
as among the most important of national rights and
duties, the rule that a nation — especially a nation en
gaged in war — ought to protect itself not only against
immediate, but against prospective, dangers. Deriving
all rights attendant on conquest "from justifiable self-
defence," Vattel says, —
"When the conqueror has subdued a hostile nation,
he may, if prudence so require, render her incapable
of doing mischief with the same ease in future. * * *
If the safety of the State lies at stake, our precaution
and foresight cannot be extended too far. Must we
delay to avert our ruin till it has become inevitable ?
* * * An injury gives a right to jjrovide for our future
safety, by depriving the unjust aggressor of the means
of injuring us."*
If, then, any of our enemy's possessions have been
the special agency by which he has been enabled to
injure us; if such possessions will still afford him the
means to " do us mischief with the same ease in the
future;" if thereby "the safety of the State lies at
stake ;" is it not an imperative duty to extend our pre
caution and foresight into coming years ? Are we not
bound by every consideration of enlightened states
manship to " deprive our unjust aggressor of the means
of injuring us" hereafter ?
The caso has not yet been fully stated. Not only
have these possessions in our enemies' hands been the
very sinews of war, but they were the original cause
of the insurrection itself The insurgents themselves,
« Vattel, Book III. J 201, 44, 45.

164 THE SOUTHERN CORNER-STONE.
who best know their own motives, tell us this. One of
the most honest and intelligent among them, selected as
their Vice-President, — Alexander H. Stephens, — speak
ing for them before a vast audience at Savannah, a few
days after his election, publicly said, —
"Negro slavery was the immediate cause of the late
rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his fore
cast, had anticipated this, as the rock upon which the
old Union would split."
These possessions have caused one rebellion. Shall
they remain in the hands of the insurgents to cause
another ? Can they remain in such hands without a
certainty of that very result ? In other words, can we
reconstruct the Eepublic half free and half slave, yet
preserve, under the operation of these conflicting labor-
systems, permanent peace ? Let us take a jjractical
view of this.
Alexander H. Stephens, adverting, in the address
already quoted from, to slavery, as having been re
garded by the leading Eevolutionary statesmen to be
" wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically,"
says, " This stone, which was rejected by the first
builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our
new edifice." And he adds, " Slavery is the natural
and moral [normal ?] condition ofthe negro. This our
new government is the first in the history of the world,
based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral
truth."* This is the creed, self-expounded by its advocates,
which is professed by the Southern slaveholder. Con
cede its truth, and South Carolina's Declaration of In
dependence"!" i^ ^ document stamped with forecast, and
* Address of Alexander H. Stephens, already quoted. See Putnam's
Rebellion Record, vol. i., Documents, p. 45.
t " Declaration of Causes which induced thc Secession of South Caro-

SLAVERY MAINTAINERS WISE IN THEIR GENERATION. 165
entitled to commendation. Whoever drafted it ran out
his premises to their logical results. The convention
that adopted it saw their way before them, and did not,
like their weak sympathizers in the North, expect in
compatibilities. Having set up their " great philosophical truth," the
corner-stone of their political system, they saw clearly
that they must insure it respect, that thoy must pro
tect it from attack or condemnation ; and they perceived
that this could not be done if they maintained fellow
ship with the North. " The non-slaveholding States,"
they declare, " have denounced as sinful the institution
of slavery." This, from citizens of the same Eepublic,
they cannot permit ; nor, except by secession from the
non-slaveholding States, can they prevent it. " All
hope of remedy," — thus their Declaration concludes, —
" all hope of remedj^ is rendered vain by the fact that
public opinion atthe North has invested a great political
error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious
belief" Wise, in their generation, were South Carolina and
the States that followed her lead ! Building their sys
tem of government upon a "great philosophical and
moral truth," which (unfortunately, they will say) the
rest of the civilized world still regards as a flagrant
moral falsehood, they can maintain the stabihty of their
political edifice only by debarring all questions, all dis
cussions, that might assault and endanger its founda
tions. As in despotic monarchies it was found neeessary
to declare it to be treason, punishable as a capital offence,
to question the right divine of kings, so in a slave em
pire they see it to be indispensable to forbid, on pain

lina " adopted Dec. 21, 1860. See Putnam's Rebellion Record, vol. I.,
Documents, pp. 3, 4.

166 MAINTENANCE OF SLAVERY AND
of death, all opinions touching the sinfulness, or incon
sistency M'ith religion, of slavery. Twenty-five years
ago, they declared, from their places in Congress, that,
in spite of the Federal Government, every abolitionist
they caught should die a felon's death.* It was no idle
menace, as numerous murders for opinion's sake, com
mitted in the South before the war, terribly attest.
Let us not blame the men, except it be for seeking to
uphold the monstrous system handed down to them by
their forefathers. They must resist the Federal author
ity to maintain that system. They must violate the
constitutional provision which forbids to abridge " the
liberty of speech or of the press :" self-defence and its
necessities compel them. They found this necessary
before the war, in order to save slavery from destruc
tion : the necessity will be increased beyond measure
if slavery remain after its close. Now that the Presi
dent's Proclamation of Emancipation has stirred up, in
every Southern plantation, the latent longing for free
dom, the dangers to their slave-system from propa
gandism will be increased a hundredfold.
It follows that in this Eepublic, if reconstructed half
slave, half free, no man known to be opposed in princi
ple to slavery will be able to cross Mason and Dixon's
line without imminent risk of life. South of that Jine
the constitutional provision touching the liberty of
speech and of the press will remain inoperative. A
felon's death will await every resident or traveller in
* " Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina, if we
can catch him, we will try him, and notwithstanding all the interference
of all the governments on earth, including the Federal Government, we
will hang him." — Senator Preston, in debate in United States Senate, Janu
ary, 1838.
" If chance throw an abolitionist in our way, he may expect a felon's
death." — Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, in United States Senate,
1836.

OF THE CONSTITUTION INCOMPATIBLE. 167
the South who prints or who utters, in public or in
private, any denial that slavery is just and moral, any
assertion that religion does not sanction it. The Con
stitution guarantees the right thus to print, thus to
speak. The Federal Government is bound to maintain
that constitutional right. But it cannot maintain it in
a Eepublic half slave, half free. What then ? Slavery
and the Constitution inviolate cannot coexist. We must
give up the one or the other.*
* Events have occurred among us here in the North, which, if it be pain
ful, it is also useful, to recall, seeing that they serve as beacons to mark
the dangers of the path we have been pursuing, and the incompatibility
of slavery and free speech. Such an one waa the burning, by a mob,
twenty-eight yeara ago, in a free State, of a public buUding devoted to
free discussion.
Pennsylvania Hall, a handsome public edifice situated in Sixth Street,
near Cherry, Philadelphia, costing upwards of forty thousand dollars, waff
opened, before a respectable audience of three thousand persons, of whom
the majority were ladies, on the 14th of May, 1838,— the managers an
nouncing that it was dedicated to " free discussion of the principles of
liberty and equality of civU rights." It continued open four days only, to
crowded audiences throughout, the subjects discussed being slavery, the
rights of the Indian, temperance, and requited labor. On the evening of
the fourth day the building was destroyed.
I take the account of this act of vandalism from an official source, — the
"Report of the Committee on Police," read in CouncUs July 5, 1838 (PhUa
delphia, L. R. BaUey, 1838).
On the evening of the third day, May 16, while Angelina Grimke Weld
was speaking, the "house waa assaulted by a ruthlesa mob, who broke the
windowa, alarmed the women, and diaturbed the meeting by yeUing, stamp
ing, and throwing brickbats and other missUes through the windows."
{Report, pp. 15, 16.) No persona were arreated, " as an attempt to carry
away the prisoners might lead to a successful rescue."
May 17th, the managers caUed upon the Mayor (John Swift) to "protect
them and their property in the exercise of their constitutional right peace
ably to assemble and discuss any subject of general interest." The Mayor
(p. 17) said, "He could give them no assurance, if they persisted in their
evening meetings, that the police was able to afford them adequate pro
tection ;" but " he would do all in hia power."
In the evening before the meeting, he went up to the buUding, found a

168 CAUSES FOR SECESSION MUST REMAIN
But if we abandon the inviolability of the Constitu
tion, if we attempt to perpetuate a state of things under
which one of the most important provisions of the
organic law which binds us together as a nation is
habitually and openly outraged, if we surrender one
of those sacred privileges to maintain which freemen
first settled America, — a privilege the possession of
which, more than of any one human right, distinguishes
the citizen of a constitutional government from the
subject of a despotism, a privilege which, beyond all
others, is indispensable to human progress itself, — if we
basely consent to such humihation, can our Eepublic
maintain either the respect of the world without or

crowd and a man haranguing them against the abolitionists, entered the
HaU, and advised the managers not to hold their meeting. To thia they
assented, and the keys of the building were given up to the police. The
Mayor returned home.
Later in the evening news waa brought to him that an attack had com
menced on the Hall. He collected a body of police and marched to the
spot, " where the work of destruction was in rapid progress." He exclaimed
to the crowd, " la there nobody here to support the law ?" But the only
response was an assault on the police (p. 23). Two or three resolute men,
who entered the building to protect it, were seized and ejected ; the furni
ture was piled up and set on fire, and the crowd " directed the fire-engines
not to play upon the HaU, or else their engines and hose would be de
stroyed" (p. 24). The building, with all it contained, was burned to the
ground. The feature in this case which indicates most strongly the dangerous
influence of a perverted public opinion, is the feeble and apologetic tone
in which the Report from which I have been quoting condemns the act.
It speaks of Philadelphia as " having been selected as the rallying-point
of men known among na only as restless agitators" (p. 14), and winds up
thus : — " However excusable the excitement might be, it can never be
tolerated without jeoparding our dearest rights" (p. 27).
All the details of the proceedings within the Hall, during its brief ex
istence, showing that the speakers proposed reform through constitutional
means only, — by "the ballot-box and petition," — together with a fuU
account of its deatruction, will be found in a small volume entitled the
" History of Pennsylviinia Hall," PhUadelphia, Merrihew & Gunn, 1838.

AS LONG AS SLAVERY REMAINS. 169
domestic tranquillity within? Certainly not. The
North, now that her spirit is up, would not endure it
for a moment. It would inevitably result in war.
Let us pass to another matter. In South Carolina's
"Declaration of Causes" for secession, one of the chief
(set forth as justifying and necessitating separation) is
" the election of a man to the high office of President
of the United States whose opinions and purposes are
hostile to slavery." This, it is declared, the slave-
holding States cannot permit, because, whenever it shall
occur, " the Federal Government will have become their
enemy." To satisfy a slaveholding South so that she shall
permit us again to unite with her, it is evident that we
must do one of two things : either consent so to amend
the Constitution that no man shall be eligible as Presi
dent " whose opinions and purposes are hostile to
slavery," or else make up our minds to a second insur
rection the first time a President with such opinions
happens to be elected. The constitutional amendment,
our first alternative, would bo an infamy, if it were a
possibility; the second alternative is renewed war.
But the very head and front of our former offending
against the South remains yet untouched, — the loose
manner, to wit, in which she alleges that the fugitive-
slave law has heretofore been enforced. This our of
fence was so grievous in the eyes of South Carolina
that she put it forth in her Declaration as the first and
in itself the all-sufficient cause for separation, adding,
" Thus the constitutional compact has been deliberately
broken, and South Carolina is released from her obli
gation."* * Declaration of Causes, already quoted. Rebellion Record, vol. i.,
Documenta, p. 4.

170 A FUGITIVE-SLAVE LAW HENCEFORTH.
What chance, even the remotest, is there that, with
Slavery and Freedom in political partnership, this rock
of offence will be avoided hereafter? Let us for a mo
ment imagine that the Emancipation Proclamation had
no force in law. Nevertheless, it has been promulgated;
its glad tidings have penetrated to the remotest haunts
of Southern slavery. To the slave it is a reality. In
his heart it has called up the assurance — the fervent
hope, at least — that, if hecan but once elude the vigi
lance of his master, there is yet freedom for him on this
side ofthe gravfe. That hope once awakened through
out the length and breadth ofthe insurrectionary States,
can it ever again be put to rest ? Is it not certain that
under its promptings — no matter how firmly we might
re-establish slavery by law — these bondmen would
cross, the border by thousands, for hundreds that have
sought refuge among us till now ? And when they do
pass into that land whose President proclaimed them
free men, and where twenty abolitionists are to be
found now for every one who was there on the day
Fort Sumter fell, will there be increased cheerfulness,
greater willingness to aid in their rendition, than there
was before the war began? What a mockery is the
question ! On what a foundation of quicksand do they
build, who found their hopes of future peace on the ex
pectation that a fugitive-slave law will be more strin
gently enforced in the future than in the past, — on the
vain dream that Northern spirit, whether flushed with
victory or maddened by defeat, will find no occupation
more noble than to pursue and secure poor fugitives
deluded by a national promise basely broken, and who
had been urged to flight by belief in our humanity and
confidence in our truth !
In such a state of feeling, under such a state of things,
can we doubt the inevitable results ? Shall we escape

INVOLVES RENEWED WAR. 171
border raids after fleeing fugitives ? No sane man will
expect it. Are we to suffer these ? We are disgraced.
Are we to repel them ? It is a renewal of hostilities.
Turn which way we will, slavery is war. There is —
in the very nature of things there can be — no security
for peace or loyalty from a Slave State. The only
practicable road to domestic tranquillity open to us
now is through Emancipation.
But, in deciding a matter of such vast gravity as this,
it behooves us to look to our relations with foreign na
tions, as well as to those between our own States.
That slavery is an element of weakness in war was
denied three years ago by those Northern men who
were in the habit of regarding it as a sacred thing,
which to touch, even in an enemy's hands, was profane.
No statesman will deny it now. The rebellion will be
put down : through the clouds of war we see already
the beginning of the end. But if the three millions of
slaves, gradually coming over to us and swelling the
ranks of our liberating armies, had been three millions
of free men, loyal to the South, — if the population of
the Southern States, without regard to color, had been
a unit in this struggle, — should we have defeated them
in their effort for recognition ? If history speak truth,
we should not. Never, since the world began, did nine
millions of people band together, resolutely inspired
by' the one idea of achieving their independence, yet
fail to obtain it. It is not a century since one-third of
the number successfully defied Great Britain.
The present is teaching, and the future will teach
more clearly yet, that slavery is an element of mili
tary weakness. We have taught that lesson to Europe.
In case of foreign war, with slavery still existing among
us, will she fail to remember and to apply it ? In such
a case, will England, will France, will any European

172 SLAVERY AN ELEMENT OF WEAKNESS
Power, save, perhaps, lagging Spain, respect an insti
tution which they all regard as a national crime, — a
crime for which many of them have atoned by repent
ance and at heavy cost ? In the case of foreign hos
tilities, would not Lord Dunmore's proclamation* be
reproduced in a far more dangerous form, with a far
more fatal effect ?
It is certain that it would. But this is the least of
our dangers in such a contingency. In case of a foreign
war, with master and slave still constituting a portion
of our population, with whom will the masters side ? —
with us, the detested Yankees, or with those European
potentates, ail-but publicly invited already to forgive
the undutiful doings of 1776 and to send a royal scion
to reign over them ?;j" Like causes continued produce
like results. If we subdue the slave-masters, leaving
them slave-masters still, can we exj)ect that they will
abstain from plotting foreign war that they may gain
by it ? And if they succeed in the treasonable plot,
can we suppose that they will refrain from seeking
their own advantage by an alliance with the enemy?
If we expose ourselves to these dangers, patent to
common sense, we shall deserve our fate. To foreign
as well as to domestic tranquillity, the only practicable
path is through general Emancipation.
In other words, as we would hasten, by every lawful
* In this well-known document, after declaring against all persons who
failed to resort to His Majesty's standard, " forfeiture of life and confisca
tion of lands," Lord Dunmore proceeds, " And I do hereby further declare
all indented servants, negroes, or others (appertaining to rebels), free, that
are able and wiUing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's troops aa
soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this colony to a proper
sense of their duty to His Majesty's orown and dignity."
The proclamation was dated November 7, 1775.
X See note on page 126 (chapter on Slavery), ante,— being the testimony,
as to thia matter, of William Howard Russell.

AND OP DANGER IN CASE OF FOREIGN WAR. 17o
and proper means, the advent of peace ; as we would
obtain, before this contest closes, a guaranty against
its renewal; as we would protect ourselves, by prudent
foresight and precaution, against foreign complications
involving dismemberment of the nation, — and what
duties, during war, more imperative than these ? — we
must take and cancel our enemies' claims to service
and labor. That service feeds our enemy; that labor
supplies his commissariat. Deprived of it, his power
to injure us is taken from him; possessed of it, he re
mains our enemy — dangerous in peace, still more dan
gerous in war — while grass grows and water runs.
Is not the grandeur of the object, then, commen
surate with the magnitude of the remedy ? If that
remedy produce temporary disturbance of social and
political elements throughout half our country, is not
the alternative the dismemberment of that countrj'-
itself, — its loss of unity, its loss of peace, its final de
cline and fall as one of the great Powers of the world ?
So far, the argument has been one of policy alone ;
selfish, in one sense, it may be called, since it takes
into account the interests of one only out of the two
races which inhabit our country; an argument, too,
sound and unanswerable if it be, which does not reach
the full dignity of the subjeet, since it has not treated
it in its relation to the progress of civilization and
humanity, and to the national honor, ever intimately
connected with the national life.
Opinions adverse to the lawfulness of slavery have,
for a century past, been spreading and swelling iuto
action throughout the civilized world. They have
taken practical form and shape, — they have become
law, — till not a nation in Europe, Christian or Moham
medan, Spain alone excepted, stands out against them.
15»

174 REASONS WHY THE UNITED STATES
England led the way. In 1834 she emancipated all
her slaves. King Oscar of Sweden followed her example
in 1846; then came Denmark, in 1847; France, in 1848;
Portugal, in 1856; the vast empire of Eussia, in 1862;
finally, with nearly thirty years' experience in English
colonies and fifteen years' experience in those ot France
before her eyes, plain, practical, unimaginative Hol
land, by a vote in her Chambers of forty-five to seven,
gave freedom, with compensation, to her forty-five
thousand slaves; liberating them on the 1st of July
last. The opinions which gave rise to these national acts
are gradually finding place among the maxims of inter
national law, as expounded by modern commentators.
Phillimore, a reputable authority, says : —
" There is a kind of property which it is equally un
lawful for States as for individuals to possess, — property
in man. A being endowed with will, intellect, passion,
and conscience cannot be acquired and alienated, bought
and sold, by his fellow-beings, like an inanimate or un
reflecting and irresponsible thing. The Christian world
has slowly but irrevocably arrived at the attainment
of this great truth. * * * The black man is no more
capable of being a chattel than the white man. The
negro and the European have equal rights. Neither
are among the ' res positce in commercio' in which it is
lawful for States or individuals to traffic."*
The United States, prompt, in other matters, to take
part with the foremost and freest nations in asserting
the principles of liberty and human rights, have lagged
behind Europe on the subject of negro emancipation.
The chief reason is that a regard for law conflicted

* Commentaries npon International Law, by Robert Phillimore, M. P.,
London, 1853, vol. i. p. 316.

DID NOT SOONER EMANCIPATE. 175
with a regard for liberty. To the American citizen the
Constitution stands in the place occupied, under the
monarchical system, by the sovereign iu person. It is
the highest object of his loyalty. His veneration for
that instrument went so far as to influence his percep
tions of justice. A majority in the North have always
held it to be a great wrong that human beings and their
descendants forever should be held in bondage. Up to
the time when this war made the slaveholders in eleven
States our enemies, we acquiesced in that wrong, lest,
in the endeavor to remedy it, greater evils might follow.
Though it be true that, before the war, the legality of
the slaveholder's claim to service or labor was denied,
on humanitarian grounds, yet a construction of the
Constitution adverse to such denial, and acquiesced in
by the nation throughout two generations, was held
by most men to be sufficient reason why the claim in
question should be regarded as private property and
respected as such. The majority held to the opinion
that it could not be taken except by a violation of the
Constitution, — in other words, by a revolutionary act.
They felt that though revolutionary acts become a jus
tifiable remedy upon great occasions, as in 1776, yet
they are usually replete with peril; that it is easy to
pass the limit of regulated authority, but impossible
to estimate the dangers we may encounter when that
guardian limit is once transgressed.
That, in the minds of many Northern men, cupidity,
excited sometimes by supposed commercial advantages,
sometimes by selfish political calculations, came in aid
of constitutional scruple, may jrt)t be denied; and, -so
far as that motive prevailed, our complicity, as a people,
is without palliation. But cupidity, commercial or po
litical, was not the dominant motive ; nor, but for the
restraint of the Constitution, would sordid considera-

176 iVIL OVERRULED FOR GOOD.
tions have prevented the nation from shaking off the
incubus which oppressed it.
Slavery, therefore, moral wrong as it is, was tolerated
by the majority as one ofthe articles in a great national
compromise which it was unlawful and perilous to vio
late. If, before the South had trampled under foot
compromise and Constitution, those who directed the
Federal Government, taking the initiative, had striven
to eradicate the growing evil, the effort would have
been vain ; for they could not have carried the people
with them. To human eyes there seemed, in this gene
ration at least, no way out.
But God, who overrules evil for good, opened the
way. They, the chief architects of the Great Wrong
of the age, in whose hands alone seemed to have been
left the power to hasten its downfall, have madly per
sisted in the very course that is leading, swiftly and
inevitably, to that result. In the early stage of the
war, Congress and the President proposed, and the
majority of the nation expected, as the issue of this
contest, a mere rehabilitation, with Southern laws and
Southern institutions reacknowledged in their pristine
form. In this the President and the North were sin
cere. Again and again warning was given, and the
return of the insurgents to their loyal duty on these
conditions was urged upon them. But their hearts were
hardened, and they would not. By their obstinate per
versity they closed the door against themselves. They
persevered in their conspiracy against public law until
Emancipation became an imperative measure of self-
defence. They persevered until public opinion, revo
lutionized, demanded that measure as the only sure
guaranty in the future for national safety and national
peace. They, the slaveholders, became the abolitionists
of slavery. Let us not take credit to ourselves for

IT IS NOW CONSTITUTIONAL TO EMANCIPATE 177
generous philanthropy. The South, reckless and blind,
was herself the unwitting agent. And thus, in the
providence of God, the very effort, by armed treason,
to perpetuate an abuse has given us at once the will
and the right to effect its eradication.
The time has come when it is constitutional to redress
that abuse. No law restrains us. Henceforth we are
responsible if, in the race for human freedom, we lag,
with Spain, behind the rest of the civilized world.
Henceforth we are responsible, before God and man,
if, having at last become free to carry out in practice
the noble declaration of our forefathers, that life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness are among tho inalienable
rights of man, we basely refuse or neglect to do so.
We have a greater responsibility still. We are as
one having an oath upon his soul. The maxim is well
known that he who legally acts by another is himself
the actor. The legal acts of the President are the acts
of the nation. It was the people of the United States
who, on the first day of January, eighteen hundred and
sixty-three, set free three millions of men.
The deed is dono, — lawfully, righteously done. Its
validity is as well established as that of any other
public act.
But to establish its validity is to establish the status,
as freeman, of every person that was held as a slave,
in the insurrectionary districts named, on the first day
of the year eighteen hundred and sixty -three, whether
he shall have physically escaped from bondage or not.
"All persons held as slaves" within these districts aro
the words. Is the deed valid? The words stand. Is
it invalid ? It cannot free a single slave.
The argument, therefore, is unavailing that many of
these people are still worked as slaves by persons
setting at defiance the constitutional jurisdiction and

178 MORAL AND POLITICAL NECESSITIES.
the national will. A law set at defiance for the time
is not thereby abrogated. In disturbed times, cases of
illegal detention frequently occur. Such are these
cases. But, in the eye of the law, the persons thus
illegally detained have the rights of freemen, and the
radical bayonet must enforce these rights.
Equally unavailing is the allegation that, as the Pro
clamation was but a war-measure, and therefore of
force and virtue commensurate only with the war, its
operation will cease when the immediate necessity
which caused and justified it ceases, — that is, when
peace is restored.
The exigency is as great in peace as in war. There
are moral and national, as well as physical, necessities.
" America," said the great Earl of Chatham during a
memorable debate in the House of Lords in 1770,
" was settled upon ideas of liberty."* In these ideas
it was that our fathers founded the Eepublic. In these
ideas alone can we, their descendants, maintain it.
The political necessity that nevermore, within these
United States, shall life-long claims to service and
labor be held by inhabitants thereof, will bc as great
when peace returns as it is now while war rages.
Always morally unjust, this property has shown itself
to be nationally dangerous. But a species of pro
perty that endangers the safety of a nation must not
be left in the hands of its citizens, whether in peace or
war. Nor can it be pleaded that the taking of this pro
perty, vast as is its amount, is an act committed
regardless of mercy to the vanquished, an act of harsh

* W. S. Johnson's Report of Chatham's Speech, in his letter to Governor
Trumbull, of Connecticut, January 10, 1770 : quoted by Bancroft in his
History of the United States, vol. vl. p. 323.

SLAVEHOLDER NOT INJURED. 179
severity, much less a deed of plunder, — no, nor yet a
measure of punishment. Far from offending against
any principle of humanity in destroying such pro
perty, — in other words, in cancelling life-long claims
to service and labor, — the inhumanity would have been
to refrain from destroying it.
Nor do we harm the slave-claimant, but greatly
benefit him, by cancelling these claims. In point of
fact, it is incalculably to his advantage — socially, pecu
niarily, politically — to be without them. While he
retains them, there will be between him and us a lack
of the conditions necessary to a true union; there will
be no loyal, concurrent sentiment of citizenship. But
a forced union of States "without the conditions under
which alone concurrence of ideas and affections is
possible, would be a measure unworthy of a states
man. Slaveholders and freemen can never, in these
States, act together in friendship again. Therefore,
for his own sake, the slaveholder must cease to be
such. Are we impertinently interfering in his business —
— arrogantly and improperly assuming to judge what
is best for him — when we determine this ? Not at all.
The business is emphatically our own; for it intimately
concerns our national existence. In deciding it as
we see fit, there is neither impropriety nor arrogance,
but proper precaution and prudent foresight. If he
had refrained from levying war against his govern
ment, he would have had the right to judge and to
act in this affair. As it is, he has lost it; and we have
now the right and the power to decide the matter,
not he.
But, in the second place, our power is restricted to
the abrogation of these claims, and it ceases there. As
a trust for a special object is exhausted with the exe-

180 WE CANNOT REVOKE OUR ACTION
cution of that object, so is the authority of the Pre
sident, being in the nature of a trust, in this case. His
object was to restore and render stable the national
unity. To effect that great object— to preserve from
permanent dismemberment the country over which he
presides  he enfranchised three millions of its inhabit
ants. Under this act of his, third parties took vested
rio-hts. Under the inducements of this act of his, third
parties took refuge within our lines, enlisted in our
armies, fought in our battles. We had a right to con
fer these vested rights ; we had a right to present these
inducements ; we had a right to accept this aid. But,
having done all this, we have no right to resume what
we have granted. We had a right to act : we have no
authority to revoke our action. To enslave is not a
power under the Constitution. No offlcer or depart
ment of the Government can exercise it. From that
stain, at least, we are free. Were it otherwise, our
Government would be the scorn of the age, a disgrace
to Christendom.*
We have lost, by our own solemn act, the right
henceforth to talk of reconstruction with the " pecu
liar institution" of the South left intact. Such lan
guage is now but a mischievous mystification. If the
South conquer, she may, by superior force, hold as
slaves those who, by our laws, are free men. But, for
us, there is no longer, in any of the insurrectionary

* That the Supreme Court of the United States has no right to sit in
judgment upon, or to reverse, a great measure of national policy, is aa
certain as that the powers of that court are judicial, not legislative. We
do not argue this point at length here, because it comes up more appro
priately in the chapter treating of the constitutionality of Emancipation
in the loyal Slave States. There the argument will be found at length,
with references to the decisions of that court itself which bear upon this
subject.

WITHOUT INCURRING NATIONAL DISGRACE. 181
States, a peculiar institution to bo left intact. We may
build up anew that institution, in violation of law, it
is true, — for neither the President nor Congress nor
any judicial tribunal in the land has any more au
thority to consign a freedman to slavery than they
havo to hang him without crime or trial, — but we may
build it up if we have power enough, or connive at it
if we are shameless enough, just as a highwayman may
seize a purse, or a burglar carry off a basket of silver
ware. Whether, when we shall have suffered vanquished
Treason to dictate her own terms ; whether, when we
shall have stooped to purchase — ^not peace, for God's
best blessing cannot be so purchased — but a worthless
truce, as brief as treacherous, by an act of usurpation
that assumes to sign away the liberties of three mil
lions of free people; — whether, when we shall have
done this great thing, we shall have any right to set
up for more honest or more virtuous than the felon
trader who makes a midnight descent on the Congo
coast and steals thence three or four hundred wretches
to crowd the hold of his slave-ship, — that will be a
question to be settled, at our leisure, with our own
consciences. " The way of the transgressor is hard." It is better
to lose fortune than fair fame; and national disgrace
is worse than national disaster. A convict, when he is
known and remembered as such, may, because of the
stain that attaches to him, toil faithfully through half
a lifetime ore men take him again by the hand. And
a people, stamped by their own public records as law
less and forsworn, may travel a long and a weary road
— a reproach, the while, and a byword among nations
— ere they can take an honored stand once moro among
the civilized Powers of the earth.
16

182 SUMMARY.
In concluding this branch of the subject, I briefly
group together the propositions that have been ad
vanced. The inhabitants of the insurrectionary States are,
in contemplation of law, without exception, public
enemies. Property belonging to an enemy may, by the law
of nations, be seized by the proper military authority
and appropriated or destroyed.
In like manner, claims or debts due by a public
enemy to an inhabitant of this country may be seized
and cancelled.
The claims to service or labor upon which rests
negro slavery are, in contemplation of the Consti
tution, in the nature of debts or choses in action, and
may, when held by an enemy, be declared null and
void. These claims, because of the labor which they com
mand, constitute a chief resource of the insurgents for
carrying on the war, and therefore essentially tend to
protract it; for which reason it was the duty of the
commander-in-chief to take and cancel them.
The interests growing out of these claims have been
the cause of the present insurrection, and there can be
no sufficient guaranty for peace while they exist ; for
which reason also it becomes a duty to declare them
null and void.
These claims involve a great moral wrong which the
insurrection has made it legal to redress ; and we are
now responsible, as a nation, if we fail to redress it by
their abrogation.
The President's Proclamation of Emancipation was
legal and righteous; it was the act of the nation, and
cannot, lawfully, nor without violating the national
faith, solemnly pledged, be revoked.

EMANCIPATION MUST BE GENERAL. 183
Therefore the emancipation of all the slaves in the
insurrectionary portions of the Union was an act legal
and irrevocable.

CHAPTEE IV.
THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF EMANCIPATION IN THE
LOYAL SLAVE STATES.
As the slaveholders of the insurrectionary States,
now at war with the United States, are public enemies,
while the slaveholders of the Border or non-insurrec
tionary Slave States are friends, entitled to all the rights
of citizens, the question touching the right to confiscate
and cancel the claims to service and labor held by the
former is essentially a different question, based on dif
ferent principles, from the question whether we have
a constitutional right to take and cancel the same class
of claims held by the latter.
In the preceding pages it has been shown —
That slavery was the cause of the present insurrec
tion. That if slavery be suffered to continue in existence,
it will remain a constant menace to the integrity of
our Government, and an inevitable source of future
war. And that, therefore, prudence and foresight require
that, for the sake of the national unity and national
peace, slavery be forever abolished throughout these
United States.
Though the military necessity be more urgent in tho
insurgent States, seeing that every slave taken or
escaping from bondage is one laborer less to supply tho

184 WE CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT MAINTAIN
enemy's commissariat, yet the general proposition is as
true of the Border States as of those in rebellion. In
deed, fugi tiv e-slave-law difficulties, of all others the most
likely to bring on a war, would chiefly arise through
refugees from Border States.
The slaves of disloyal owners in these States have
already been emancipated by act of Congress. There
remain in bondage, under State laws, certainly less than
three-quarters of a million, scattered over a long nar
row border-strip, bounded on the north by free States
and on the south by States whence slavery has been
legally banished, or else dotted in isolated parishes or
counties intermixed with enfranchised slaves.
Can we maintain in perpetuity so anomalous a con
dition of things? Clearly not. At every step embar
rassments innumerable obstruct our progress. No
industry, no human sagacity, would suffice to determine
tho ten thousand confiicting questions that must arise
out of such a chaos. Must the history of each negro
be followed back so as to determine his status, whether
slave or free? If negroes emancipated in insurrec
tionary States aro sold as slaves into Border States, or
into excepted parishes or counties, can we expect to trace
the transaction? If slaves owned in Border States, or
in excepted parishes or counties, are sold to loyal men
in insurrectionary States, are they still slaves, or do
they become free? Are we to admit or to deny the
constitutionality of Border State laws which arrest,
and imprison as vagrants, and sell into slavery to pay
expenses of arrest and imprisonment, free negro emi
grants from insurrectionary States ?* But why multiply

* If, hereafter, Attorney-General Bates's decision, that a free negro is a
citizen, be sustained by the Supreme Court, then, should the question
come up before it, the State laws above referred to will be declared un-

SLAVERY IN A NARROW BORDER-STRIP. 185
instances? The longer this twilight of groping transi
tion lasts, it will be only confusion the worse confounded.
To respect and to protect such a straggling remnant
of slavery would be practically impossible, if it were
desirable ; and — aside from its being an old root of bitter
ness left in the ground to sprout and bear fruit in the
future as it "has borne fruit in the past — no freedman
can be assured of his liberty while there remains a spot
within the Union where he can be held as a slave.
If we would act as statesmen, having in view the
peace and safety of our country through all future time,
we must meet the great difficulty before us broadly,
effectually, honestly, and in accordance with tho dic
tates of Christianity and civilization. The demands of
honor coincide with the conditions of safety. To satisfy
both, we have a great duty to perform. It is to follow
the noble example of England, and France, and Sweden,
and Denmark, and Portugal, and Eussia, and Holland.
It is to enact, not merely that all persons held as slaves
who happened, on the 1st of January, 1863, to be within
certain insurrectionary limits, shall be free, — thus leav
ing a narrow belt of slavery to divide our country in
two, and to separate the freed States ofthe South from
the free States ofthe North, — it is not merely to carry
out this fragmentary and imperfect scheme; it is not
to do, for the cause of humanity, only what we cannot
help doing; it is not merely to deprive the enemy in
this present war of the means that augment his strength
and enable him to protract the contest: it is, by taking
a brave, bold stand for Human Liberty, irrespective of
race or color, to lay deep and firm the foundations of
constitutional. But, meanwhUe, they have not been so declared, and are
in force.
The neo-ro-exoluding laws of Indiana and Illinois are in the aame cate
gory. 16*

186 CONGRESS MAY TAKE PRIVATE
that domestic tranquillity which endures from genera
tion to generation only for those nations whose people
walk in the paths of justice and mercy, approved in the
sight of God and man.
It is to enact once and forever the emancipation of
every slave that treads the soil of the United States.
In the progress of this insurrectionary upheaval, we
have reached a point at which there is neither honorable
nor prudent alternative left.
Does any constitutional difficulty stand in the way ?
The laAV or custom of all civilized nations, based on
considerations of public utility, authorizes the taking
of private property, with just compensation, for public
use, when important public interests demand it. We
are familiar with the operations of such a rule. When
a conflagration in a city threatens to spread far, houses
in the line of its progress may be seized and destroyed
by the authorities, in order to arrest it; and the owners
are not held to have been wronged, if they are paid
for such losses under an equitable appraisement. The
opening of a street in improving a city, the running
of a railroad, are held in this and other countries to
be objects of sufficient importance to justify what the
French law calls " appropriation forcee pour cause d'utilite
publique," This principle is expressly recognized by the Consti
tution. In that instrument there is an admission of
the right to take private property, with just compen
sation made, for public use.* And it will not be argued
that a claim of one inhabitant of the United States to
the service of another, whether for a term of years or
for life, is a species of property which has been consti
tutionally exempted from such appropriation. It is
* Amendments to the Constitution, Article 5.

I^ROPERTY FOR PUBLIC USE. 187
evident that, if a claim to the service of a slave cannot
constitutionally be so taken and cancelled, neither can
tho claim to the service of an apprentice.
Thus the right to declare compensated emancipation
in the United States is clear, provided important public
interests demand it. But we have already shown that
the public interests demanding such a measure, in this
case, are the highest and the most vital that ever pre
sented themselves to the councils of a nation.
The right referred to is vested in the National Legis
lature. If technical proof of this be demanded, it is to
be found in a few brief prlDpositions.
1. The Constitution (section 8) confers on Congress
certain essential powers, — as, to collect taxes, without
which no government can be suj)ported.
2. The Constitution (same section) authorizes Con
gress to "make all laws that shall be necessary and
proper for carrying into execution" theso powers.
3. All insurrection, extending over eleven of the
United States, prevents, throughout a considerable por
tion of the Union, the possibility of carrying into exe
cution the essential powers thus granted to Congress.
4. Because of the resistance offered by the insur
rectionary States to these constitutional powers, it
becomes the duty of Congress to pass all laws that are
necessary and proper not only, by successfully termi
nating the war, to enforce theso powers in the present,
but to secure their supremacy in the future, — in other
words, to insure permanent obedience to the laws,
thus averting anarchy.
All this will be conceded; but a question remains.
Who is to judge what laws are necessary and proper
to carry into execution the powers expressly conferred
on Congress by the Constitution, and which are thus
obstructed and defeated ?

188 CONGRESS IS SOLE JUDGE OF THE MEANS
Or, to put directly the case in point : if Congress,
sharing the deep conviction that has come over the
nation as this contest proceeded, should reach the
conclusion that there is no effectual means to secure,
throughout the future, peaceful obedience to the laws,
except the eradication of slavery, and should act accord
ingly, is such action constitutional and final ? In the
selection of the means to effect this constitutional object,
is Congress the sole judge of their propriety and neces
sity ? Or is the question as to the fftness of these means
a judicial as well aa a legislative question ?
We must discriminate hefe. It would undoubtedly
be competent for the Supreme Court, if the question
came legitimately before it, to decide, in any special
case, whether Congress has the right, under the Con
stitution, to take private property, with just compen
sation, for public use. That is a judicial question. But
when a vast system of claims is to be thus taken for a
great political end, when this is done as the only effectual
means to preserve the integrity of the Union, or to bring
a war to a successful issue, or to establish lasting peace,
and when the matter to be decided is whether this
taking is the most wise or appropriate means to secure
these all-important objects, — that is a question of states
manship, of governmental discretion, of political expe
diency, and, therefore, purely legislative. It is not
competent for the Supreme Court to sit in judgment
on the wisdom of a great measure of national policy.
Whenever the judicial branch of the Government
assumes, and is permitted to exercise, such a power,
the Government itself will be in the hands, not of the
representatives of the people, elected by the people,
but of a few men (at the present ten only) nominated
by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and holding
their offices for life. The trust which, by the Consti-

TO EFFECT A CONSTITUTIONAL OBJECT. 189
tution, is committed to the personal judgment and dis
cretion of the National Legislature, and for which the
members of that Legislature are responsible only to
their constituents, the people, will havo been usurped
by another branch of the Government, to which the
Constitution assigns no such trust, grants no such dis
cretion. Nothing would be more radically subversive of our
institutions than such a usurpation of jurisdiction. If
it were consummated, we should be living under an
oligarchy, not under a republic.
But we need be under no apprehension that it ever
will be. The Supreme Court itself, speaking by the
mouth of one of its most distinguished presiding
officers, has expressly disclaimed the possession of any
such authority.
In the well-known case of McCulloch against the
State of Maryland,* Chief-Justice Marshall delivered
the decision of the Supreme Court; and by that de
cision the following principles were established : —
1. The construction of the words "necessary and
proper," as employed by the framers of the Constitu
tion, in the above connection. The Chief-Justice says, —
" The term ' necessary' does not import an absolute
physical necessity so strong that one thing to which
another may be termed necessary cannot exist with
out that other."
2. As to the degree of the necessity which renders
constitutional a law framed to carry a constitutional
power into execution, the rule by this decision is, —
" If a certain means to carry into effect any of the
powers expressly given by the Constitution to the

• February Term, 1819. 4 Wheaton's Rep., 316. Unwilling here to
multiply words, I pray reference to the decision itself.

190 CONGRESS IS SOLE JUDGE OF THE
Government of the Union be an appropriate measure,
not prohibited by the Constitution, the degree of its
necessity is a question of legislative discretion, not of
judicial cognizance."
3. But still more explicitly is the question answered,
who is to be the judge of the approi^riateness and
necessity of the means to be employed, thus : —
" The Government which has a right to do an act,
and has imposed upon it the duty of performing that
act, must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed
to select the means."
Thus, then, the matter stands. The powers to lay
and collect taxes, to exercise authority over forts and
arsenals of the United States, to suppress insurrection,
and various others equally essential, are expressly
given by the Constitution to Congress. It is the right
and duty of Congress to carry these powers into effect.
In case of obstruction or defeat of existing laws framed
to that intent, it is the right and duty of Congress to
select such moans and pass such additional laws as
may be necessary and proper to overcome such ob
struction and enforce obedience to such laws. Theso
means must not be prohibited by the Constitution ;
but whether they are the most prudent or the most
effectual means, or in what degree they are necessary,
aro matters over which the Supreme Court has no
jurisdiction. As Chief-Justice Marshall has elsewhere
in this decision expressed it, for the Supreme Court to
undertake to inquire into the degree of their neces
sity, " would be .to pass the line which circumscribes the
judicial dei^artment and to tread on legislative ground."
There must, of course, be congruity or relevancy be
tween the power to be enforced and the moans pro
posed to enforce it. While Congress is to judge the
degree of necessity or propriety of these means, they

NECESSITY OF GENERAL EMANCIPATION. 191
must not be such as to be devoid of obvious connection
with the object to be attained.
In this case, the objects to be attained are the en
forcement ofthe laws, the suppression of the rebellion,
the restoration and preservation of peace, and the
maintenance of the national unity.
But these laws are resisted, and this insurrection
prevails, and the national unity is violated, in those
States, and in those States only, in which the life-long
claims to the service or labor of persons of African de
scent are held under State laws. In States where
these claims are comparatively few, — as in Delaware,
Maryland, Missouri, — disaffection only prevails ; while ;
in States where the number of slaves approaches or
exceeds that of whites, — as in South Carolina, Ala-'
bama, Georgia, — insurrection against lawful authority
is flagrant and outspoken ; the insurrectionary acts of
these States being avowedly based on the allegation
that slavery is not safe under the present constitu
tionally-elected President, and that its permanent pre
servation can be insured by the disruption of the
national unity alone.*
All this is matter of history. And there would be
as much propriety in denying the connection between
the sun and the light of day as that between slavery
and the rebellion.
This point settled, nothing remains to be determined
except the question whether, under existing circum
stances, emancipation be or be not the policy most
fitting and wise, the policy best calculated to assure,
in the future, the peaceful execution of the law. And
this, " according to the dictates of reason" (to repeat
Chief-Justice Marshall's words), must be left to Con-
* The official proof of thie assertion has already been furnished.

192 SUMMARY.
gress to decide. If Congress believes that Emancipa
tion is no longer a question of sectional interference,
but of national preservation, it has the right to judge,
and the constitutional right to act upon that judgment.
If Congress believes that, in order to enforce law and
suppress insurrection, it is necessary and proper to
take and cancel all claims to life-long service or labor
held in the Slave States, and if claims to service or
labor, whether for years or for life, held by one in
habitant of the United States against another, be a
species of property not specially exempted by the Con
stitution from seizure for public use, then an act of
compensated Emancipation is strictly constitutional*
The substance of the argument here made amounta
to this, — ^that, as to th^ claims to _ service or lallQr_hy
persons of African descent held hy inhabitants ofjn-
surrectionary States or by disloyal inhabitants_of.other
States, it is lawful to confiscate and cancel them -with-
out compensation; while, as to such claims held by
loyal men in non-insurrectionary States, it is legal to
take them, making just, compensation.
In other words, in the former case uncompensated
Emancipation, in the latter compensated Emancipa
tion, is in accordance with law and permitted by the
Constitution. That is the legal aspect. In a humanitarian view,
Emancipation is one of the highest duties of Christian
civilization. * For a propoied form of an Aot of General Emanoipation, see Appen
dix, Note B.

PART III.
THE FUTURE OP THE AFRICAN RACE IN
. THE UNITED STATES.
" Were the benefits of civilization to be partial, not universal, it
•would be only a bitter mockery and cruel injustice." — Duchatel.

17 193

PART III.

THE FUTURE OF THE AFRICAN RACE IN
THE UNITED STATES.

CHAPTEE I.
FOREBODINGS REGARDING THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
Among the problems connected with the future of
our country, the destiny of the African race among us
is one of the most important. And on no other great
national question have more erroneous ideas prevailed,
both among ourselves and among those who have looked
on, even with favoring eyes, watching the progress of
our republican experiment.
There are evils so vast and radical that nothing short
of a bloody revolution has hitherto been found suffi
cient to extirpate them. So, the eradication of slavery
throughout a country containing four millions of slaves,
estimated by their masters as property worth twelve
or fifteen hundred millions of dollars. So, — a difficulty
greater still, — the eradication of that prejudice of race
and color which first suggested to the cupidity of white
men the exaction of forced labor from negroes, and has
ever since been fed and fostered through the influence
of the abuse to which it gave birth.
Such a revolution may bring about changes of national
195

196 GREAT MEN NOT ALWAYS PRESCIENT.
opinion and national condition which wise and philo
sophical writers had pronounced to be beyond the limits
of possibility. Thus De TocqueviUe, when , in his work
on American Democracy, he said, —
" To induce the whites to abandon the opinion they
have conceived of the moral and intellectual inferiority
of their former slaves, the negroes must change ; but
as long as this opinion exists, they cannot change."*
This would make the future of the American negro,
free or slave, absolutely hopeless; but po absolutely
hopeless future exists, under the economy of God, in
this world of progress.
There never were sufficient reasons for saying this.
But to say it to-day would be far more inexcusable than
to have said it when De TocqueviUe -wrote. We bave
gathered, during the vast ujiheavals of the last three
years, such experience as ages of undisturbed monotony
might fail to furnish. Events have occurred wbich no
human foresight could anticipate. Contingencies have
arisen which not only convulse our political world, but
stir to their foundations the social elements of society
around us.
The whites have changed, and are still rapidly chang
ing, their opinion of the negro. " And the negro, in his
new condition as freedman, is himself, to some extent,
a changed being. No one circumstance has tended so
much to these results as the display of manhood in

* Democracy in America, by Alexis de TocqueviUe, Cambridge edition,
1862, vol. i. p. 459.
De Tocqueville's chapter on the blaok population of the United States is
one of the saddest and dreariest ever penned by a statesman. How juat
hia observation (p. 457) that " of all the iUs which threaten the future of
the Union, the most formidable arises from the presence of a black popu
lation upon its territory" ! He saw the impending danger. Ia it strange
that, living when he did, he could not see the way out?

DE tocqueville's ANTICIPATIONS. 197
negro soldiers. Though there are higher qualities than
strength and physical courage, yet, in our present stage
of civilization, there are no qualities which command,
from the masses, more respect.
But De TocqueviUe could never have imagined, even
as a remote possibility, the raising and equipping, in
the United States, of a hundred thousand negro troops.
His anticipations turned in a different direction. He
did not look forward to an insurrection of the whites
against the Government: he predicted an insurrection
of slaves against their masters. He predicted, further,
that emancipation itself would not avert this catas
trophe; but this last prediction was based upon the
assumption that, free or slave, the whites would never
accord to the blacks their rights as freemen. He
says : —
"I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the
abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the
struggle of the two races in the Southern States. The
negroes may long remain slaves without complaining;
but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they
will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their
civil rights."*
If De Tocqueville's premises were just, we might
admit his conclusion. We cannot expect, in a demo
cratic republic, to maintain domestic tranquillity, if we
deprive millions of freemen of their rights as such.
Public opinion may not, at the present time, have
reached this conviction, but it is fast approaching it.
Three-fourths of the States might not to-day, but ere
long they will, pass some such amendment to the Con
stitution as this : —
" Slavery shall not be permitted, and no discrimina-

* Democracy in America, vol. i. p. 486.
17»

198 WHAT PROPORTION OF SOUTHERN WHITES
tion shall be made, as to the civil or political rights of
persons, because of color."
Whenever we shall have so amended the Constitution,
the path before us will be plain and safe. But short of
entire justice there is no permanent security.

CHAPTEE II.

DO WE NEED THE AID OF THE NEGRO AS A LOYAL
CITIZEN ?
In the immediate exigencies of our present situation
is to be found strong additional motive for such an act.
It would be, under any circumstances, a thing anoma
lous and repugnant to our system of government that
four and a half millions of the governed, free citizens
like the rest, should remain permanently taxed and not
represented. But, aside from the essential injustice of
this, its political results merit our gravest consideration.
At the close of the war, after the waste in battle of
human life, and the further diminution in the South of
her white population by emigration to Europe and to
Mexico, the inhabitants of the insurrectionary portion
of the Union will, we may assume, be nearly equally
divided between the races. How will these inhabitants
stand divided as to loyalty?
This is a question which it is impossible to answer
with precision, except as to the colored people. They,
with exceptions so rare that they are hardly worth
taking into account, are all loyal, — as our commission,
coming into contact with them in every portion of the
Union where they can be reached, abundantly verified.
But in what state of mind will the close of the present

MAY BE ESTIMATED AS LOYAL? 199
contest leave the vanquished ? Not only as to those
who engaged from the first heartily in the war, but as
to that larger number whose sympathies, after the strife
commenced, gradually became enlisted in what they
called the cause ofthe South, inducing them to join the
rebel ranks without compulsion , — can we seriously doubt
the present state of their feelings towards us ? Will
these be less bitter if we quell this rebellion? Submis
sion is not conversion. The sword conquers ; it does
not convince. Time alone can allay the wide-spread
irritation which so embittered and protracted a struggle
as this must needs leave behind it. And, meanwhile,
to whom shall we be able to trust for re-establishment
of order and maintenance of loyalty in the jiacificated
districts? To the Union men of the South, who, with
their lives in their hands, resisted, through good and
through bad report, the torrent of secession which in
undated their land ? Who can doubt their zeal and their
courage? But what is their number? Is it a half, or
a third, or a fourth, of the whole number of Southern
whites ?
The inevitable, doubtless, has great power over all
men. From a hopeless cause there are numerous de
serters. But will not many of these be weak and un
reliable? And, when all are reckoned, will not two-
thirds, three-fourths, remain only sullenly acquiescent ?
All thoughtful men will give to such considerations
much weight, and will acknowledge, with earnest
anxiety, the difficulties that lie before us. They will
admit it to be one of the great questions of the day,
whether (leaving the abstract right or wrong of the
case untouched) we can prudently or safely, for our
own sakes, withhold from the freedman his political
rights, and thus leave disfranchised, at a critical junc
ture in our history, a loyal half of a disturbed and dis-

200 IS THE NEGRO, INJURED BY SLAVERY,
affected population. They will ask themselves whether,
as we have found need of the negro as a soldier to aid
in quelling the rebellion, we do not require his assist
ance as pressingly, in the character of a loyal citizen,
in reconstructing, on a permanently peaceful and
orderly basis, the insurrectionary States.
The doubt which naturally suggests itself in opposi
tion is, not whether loyal votes are urgently needed,
but whether by admitting the freedman to suffrage we
may not seriously lower the average character of the
constituency which, under our democratic system, elects
to office State representatives. Congressmen, municipal
authorities, a President, and other subordinate magis
trates, and whether by such a step we do not risk the
failure, or the degeneracy, of our rejmblican system.
It will suggest itself that the negro, while in slavery,
was debarred from education, and that at this day few
of the freedmen can either read or write. In addition
to the ignorance resulting from this disability, we find
vices among slaves just freed, which appertain to their
former condition. Men who own no property do not
learn to respect the rights of property. Men who are
subjected to despotic rule acquire the habit of shielding
themselves from arbitrary punishment by lying. Men
who have never worked for themselves learn to shirk
work which is to enure solely to the benefit of others.
All this is to be taken into account. But with the
extirpation of the cause the effect gradually ceases.
In point of fact, it has been already found (as our com
mission satisfactorily verified) that the vices abovo
referred to are not deeply rooted, and that eaeh may be
gradually eradicated by a proper appeal to the self-
respect of tho newly-made freedman and by a strict
recognition of his rights. He is found quite ready to
copy whatever he believes are the obligations connected

FITTED TO EXERCISE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE? 201
with the rights of what he looks up to as" the superior
race, even if these prove a restraint upon the habits of
license belonging to his former condition. He is found
willing, also, to work for moderate wages if promptly
paid,* docile and easily managed, not given to quarrel
ling, of temperate habits, cheerful and uncomplaining
if treated with justice and common humanity.
It should be remembered, too, in estimating his
capacity to exercise political rights, that slavery had
rendered him wary and suspicious. The habit of the
slave is, while assenting to whatever his master says,
secretly to hold to his own opinion, and to act upon it
whenever opportunity offers. His sagacity is deve
loped. I do not think the freedman will be found a
ready tool for the political demagogue.
Upon the whole, we shall find it difficult to bring
any argument against recognizing the political rights
ofthe negro which does not apjily against the principle
of universal suffrage itself. Many regard the result of
that principle as a practical failure, adducing in proof
the fact that there are tens of thousands of voters
among us incompetent and unworthy to act as such.
Some have sought to obtain purity of elections by
weeding out all foreign-born voters. But if suffrage

* Captain Hooper, the acting superintendent at Port Royal under
General Saxton, having charge of some seventeen thousand refugees,
testified before our commission : —
Queation. — " Do these people work wiUingly for wages ?"
Answer. — "I never knew a case, where a colored man had reasonable
security for getting wages, — even moderate wages, — that he was not will
ing to work."
Such cases, however, occur, as other witnesses testify ; but the general
rule, as we had abundant evidence to prove, is as Captain Hooper states it.
Whenever we found complaints of idleness, or refusal to work, they were
referable, in nine cases out of ten, to the fact that payment for labor was
delayed for months, sometimes never mado at all.

202 IS DELAY SAFE?
is to be restricted by qualification, we must seek some
stricter test of honesty and competence than the acci
dent either of birth or of color.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would seem not
unreasonable that we should delay the recognition of
the freedman's right to suffrage for a time, until edu
cation and habits of freedom had prepared him to
exercise it. We might delay if domestic tranquillity
prevailed, if the loyalty of those States chiefly inha
bited by the negro were unquestioned. We might
delay if we could dispense with his aid. But I am
able to make no reliable calculation according to which
we can dispense with it. ^hen we shall first proceed
to reconstruction, one-third of all the white population
of the South is a full estimate for the proportion we
are likely to find honestly and earnestly disposed to
aid us in the work; that is, one-sixth only of the
entire population, white and colored. But can we
safely proceed to organize a republican government in
any country on the basis of one-sixth of its population?
Should we evince common sense in attempting to do so,
when we can have three-sixths more to aid that small
band of Southern loj-alists in their arduous task?
God, who made the liberation of the negro the con
dition under whieh alone we could succeed in this war,
has now, in his providence, brought about a position of
things under which it would seem that a full recog
nition of that negro's rights as a citizen becomes indis
pensable to stability of government in peace.
In view of such considerations, it is difficult to resist
the conclusion that, before receiving back into political
fellowship tho insurgent portions of the Union, it
should be legally established, as one of the principles
imperative in reconstruction, that all freemen shall
be legally secured in equal rights, — thus practically

NEGRO HAS APTITUDE FOR CIVILIZATION. 203
carrying out the section of the Constitution which
provides that the United States shall guarantee to
every State a republican form of government.
From the observations made in various sections of
our country which as a member of our commission it
became my duty to visit, I do not believe that in ac
cepting this necessary aid we incur risk of admitting
into our system of government an element of deterio
ration.

CHAPTEE III.
CAN THE NEGRO, AS FREEDMAN, MAINTAIN HIMSELF?
My own observations, together with the evidence
obtained from persons having much experience among
freedmen, justify the conclusion that the African race,
as found among us, lacks no essential aptitude for
civilization, yields willingly to its restraints, and
enters with alacrity upon its duties. His personal
rights as a freedman once recognized in law and as
sured in practice, there is little reason to doubt that
the negro will become a useful member of the great
industrial family of nations. Once released from the
disabilities of bondage, he will somewhere find, and
will maintain, his own appropriate social position.
What that precise position will bc — whether we
shall find a fair proportion of our colored population
worthy competitors with whites in departments of art
and science and literature — we have at this time no
means of determining. The essential is, that the en
franchised negro is as capable of taking care of him
self and his family as any other portion of our people.

204 STRIKING INCIDENT IN PROOF THAT
On no one point have our commission found more con
vincing testimony than on this.
In the cities of New Orleans, Washington, Balti
more, Louisville, St. Louis, and elsewhere, we found a
numerous free colored population supporting them
selves, under grievous and depressing disabilities,*
without any aid whatever even from those legal sources
appointed for the relief of indigent whites. They are
not admitted to almshouses. They obtain no county
or parish relief Scarcely any beggars are found
among them. Like the Quakers, they maintain their
own poor. When a case occurs in which a family is
unable to meet the expenses of sickness, or perhaps
the cost of a funeral, it is among themselves alone
that a subscription-paper (usually called a "pony
purse") passes, in aid of the sufferers.
A striking incident, illustrative of this peculiarity
among them, came to the knowledge of our commis
sion when visiting St. Louis. At the commencement
of the war there were about five thousand free colored
people in that city. During a portion of the years 1861
and 1862, in consequence of the disturbed condition
* Mr. Jamea Speed, an eminent lawyer of LouisvUle, testified : — " We
have a law which makes it felony for a free negro to go out of the
State and return to it; but I have never known a conviction under it
here. I have heard of two prosecutions under it in another part of the
State of which one resulted in a conviction." — Testimony taken in Ken
tucky, p. 29.
Washington Spaulding (colored) deposed : — " The mother ofa young
colored man, who lived here [in LouisviUe], moved across the river, and,
being on her death-bed, sent for him; but, on account of the law, he
could not go, and did not attend the funeral." — Testimony taken in Keti-
iucJcy, p. 78.
Another law, equaUy oppressive, prevailing and enforced in Kentucky.
and other Slave States, is, that no free colored man shall keep a store or
shop of any kind, or a tavern. What an unheard-of disability would a
white man consider such a prohibition as that !

NEGROES DO NOT SEEK CHARITABLE AID. 205
of Missouri and tho frequent raids which desolated
that State, great distress prevailed, and many persons
from tho country, both white and colored, took refuge
in St. Louis. Wages fell to twenty-five cents a day;
and even at that low rate labor was scarce.
Under these circumstances, the suffering was so
general that great exertions were made for its relief.
For many months throughout these two years the city
expended two hundred dollars a month to keep the
unemployed from starving, and, in the winter season,
from freezing. The Provident Association spent five
thousand dollars; the Society of St. Vincent de Paul,
ten thousand. Private individuals contributed largely.
In the management of these various charities no dis
crimination was made as to color. The total number
relieved was about ten thousand, and out of that num
ber two persons only were colored. There were but
two applications for relief from colored persons, — both
women; one bed-ridden, the other a cripple. These
facts were communicated to the commission by the
Eegister of the city of St. Louis^ — a gentleman who
was himself one of the managers in the distribution of
the relief-funds referred to.* The testimony of all the
gentlemen concerned in the management of the various
relief-societies was, he said, to the same effect, — that
" the colored people asked for nothing."
The same was found true among the free negroes in
Canada West, as was ascertained by one of the mem
bers of the commission who visited that country and
took voluminous testimony as to the character and
condition of the refugees who have settled there.f

* Testimony of R. A. Watt, City Register of St. Louis.— (Testimony taken
by the Commission in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, pp. 145, 146.)
t Supplemental Report (A) on the Refugees in Canada West, pp. 60, 102.
18

206 FACTS GOING TO PROVE THAT
It would be difficult to find stronger proof of the
ability and willingness of poor blacks to maintain
themselves than is shown in cases where they "hire
themselves," as it is called, and still pay their way.
We have given two examples of this in the chapter on
"Slavery;"* and they but represent hundreds of simi
lar cases to be found in all the chief cities of the South.
In the one, it will be remembered, a mother paid two
hundred and sixty dollars a year to be allowed the pri
vilege of supporting herself and two children by wash
ing. What white washerwoman would like to under
take that ? In the other case, a man and his wife paid
three hundred and seventy -two dollars a year, through
out eleven years, for permission to labor and to feed
and clothe their children until they were old enough
to work ; and then they were taken from them. How
few white laborers would stand up at all under the
burden of such a capitation-tax ! How few, under cir
cumstances of such cruel discouragement, would have
maintained, as these two slaves did, a comfortable home,
tidily kept, and children clean, well clad, and thriving !
One hears current among slaveholders the assertion
that negroes, emancipated and left to themselves, are
worthless and helpless, and are sure, in the end, to be
oome a burden on the community. But the commission
has not found, in a single locality occupied by numbers
of free negroes, proof that there is truth in such an
opinion ; on the contrary, the actual facts are against
it. In many free States, colored immigrants are re
quired by law to give bond that they will not become
a county charge. There is no class of day-laborers
from whom, with equal justice, the same demand might
not be made.

* See pages 119-122, anle.

FREE NEGROES OAN SUPPORT THEMSELVES. 207
There came to the knowledge of our commission, in
New Orleans, a fact which, more strikingly perhaps
than any other we have met with, bears testimony to
the ability of the colored population, when emanci
pated, to take care of themselves.*
The commission ascertained that the free colored
people of Louisiana, in the year 1860, paid taxes on an
assessment of thirteen millions. But, by the census
of 1860, the free colored population of that State is
put at eighteen thousand six hundred and forty-seven.
This would give an average, for each person, of about
seven hundred dollars of property.
It is probable, however, that the actual average is
considerably less than this. Those best informed on
the subject expressed to a member of the commission
who visited New Orleans tho opinion that the census-
return was below the truth, and that in 1860 there
were probably in Louisiana twenty-five thousand free
colored persons. Assuming this to be the actual num
ber, then the average wealth of each is five hundred and
twenty dollars.
But the average amount of property to each person
throughout the loyal Free States is estimated at four
hundred and eighty-four dollars only.f It follows that
the free colored people of Louisiana arc, on the ave
rage, richer, by seven and a half per cent., than the
people of the Northern States. And this occurs, it
should be remembered, under many civil disabilities,
which are a great pecuniary injury, seriously restrict
ing the means of accumulating property.
* Supplemental Picport (B) on the Lower Mississippi, by James McKaye.
f See, for the above estimates of average wealth and of population,
"National Almanac for 1863," pp. 147, 309. The average wealth in Great
Britain and Ireland is seven hundred and seven dollars for each person. —
Same Almanac, p. 146.

208 NEGROES MANAGING CHURCH PROPERTY.
It is not as individuals only, but, so far as they have
had opportunity to show it, in a collective capacity,
that these people appear to manage well. We have
the following testimony from a well-known and re
spected citizen of Louisville : —
Question. — " Throughout the State do the colored
people manage their own church affairs ?"
Answer, — "Entirely. Nobody has any thing to do
with them but themselves. Here is a curious fact to
show what their capacity is. A great many of the
churches now owned by them had been failures in the
hands of white people. The negroes bought and paid
for them, and have improved them very much since
the purchase. Mr. Adams's church is a much finer one
now than when we sold it to them. Mr. Smethern's
church was built by white people, who were not able
to pay for it, and was then bought by the negroes.
Nobody would suppose it now to be the same house,
its appearance is so much changed for the better. And
that is very common. They have much taste about
such things."*
Upon the whole, no fear is more groundless than
that the result of Emancipation will be to throw the
negroes as a burden on the community.

* The deponent is Dr. T. S. Bell. — (Testimony taken by the Commission
in Kentucky, p. 17.)

A POPULAR IDEA DEVOID OF FOUNDATION. 209

CHAPTEE IV.
THE EMANCIPATED NEGRO WILL MAKE THE SOUTH
HIS HOME.
There is another popular idea, in regard to the effect
of Emancipation, which has been used for political
effect. This idea is based on an imaginary state of
things which happens to be the very reverse of the
truth. It is alleged that so soon as the negroes are
freed they will swarm to the North in search of work,
and thus become the competitors of the laboring
whites. Beyond all doubt they have a right to do
this ; and, if they did, no just man would complain of
it. But, in point of fact, no such thing will happen,
unless Emancipation be denied.
Of this the commission collected abundant proof:
for example, in visiting the freedmen of South Caro
lina. General Saxton, who had there eighteen thou
sand emancipated slaves under his care, offered them
papers to go North, but not one availed himself of the
offer. They are equally averse to the idea of emi
grating to Africa.* Colonization, except by force (and
that would be an outrage), is utterly impracticable.
These feelings are universal among them. The local
attachments of the negro are eminently strong, and
the Southern climate suits him far better than ours.

* The following testimony waa taken by the commission in LouisvUle : —
Colonel Hodges, who had lived all his life among slaves, deposed,
" The State of Kentucky has appropriated five thousand dollars a year for
several yeara to aid the Colonization Society in sending off tho free blacks,
but they have never been able to get more than Uvo to apply." — Testimony
taken in Kentucky, p. 104. 18*

210 A FREE SOUTH FULL OF ATTRACTION.
If we could suppose slavery re-established in the insur
rectionary States, the North would indeed be flooded
with fugitives fieeing from bondage, and the fears of
competition in labor sought to be excited in the minds
of Northern working-men might then have some
plausible foundation. But, if Emancipation be carried
out, the stream of negro emigration will be from the
North to the South, not from the South to the Northern
States. The only attraction which the North, with its
winters of snow and ice, offers to the negro, is that it
is free soil. Let the South once offer the same attrac
tion, and the temjjtation of its genial climate, coupled
with the fact that there the blacks almost equal the
whites in number, will be irresistible. A few years
will probably see more than half the free negro popu
lation now residing among us crossing Mason and
Dixon's line, to join the emancipated freedmen of the
South. A primary law governing the voluntary move
ments of peoples is that of thermal lines.
The commission found overwhelming evidence, as to
the truth of the above opinion, in Canada West. Among
the refugees there, there is not a single feeling so strong
or so nearly universal as their longing to return to the
Southern land of their birth, at the earliest moment
when they shall be assured that it is purged from
slavery. One of the commission thus states the result
of his observations : —
" If slavery is utterly abolished in the United States,
no more colored people will emigrate to Canada, and
most of those now there will soon leave it. There can
be no doubt about this. Among the hundreds who
spoke about it, only one dissented from the strong ex
pression of desire to ' go home.' In their belief too
they agreed with the Eev. Mr. Kinnard, one of their
clergy, who said to us, ' If freedom is established in

FOR THE NEGRO. 21]
the United States, there will be one great black
streak reaching from here to the uttermost parts of
the South.' "*
Even those who, by years of toil, have obtained com
fortable, well-stocked farms worth ten or twenty thou
sand dollars, avowed their determination to abandon
all — to sell out and depart — as soon as they could do
so without imperilling their personal freedom.
Emancipation will directly tend to denude the North
of its negro population. One circumstance that will
materially hasten this result is that the personal preju
dice against negroes, as a race, is stronger in the North
ern than in the Southern States, and at least as strong
in Canada as in any portion of the Union. Of this our
commission had sufficient proof.
Mr. George Brown, a member of the Canadian Par
liament, deposed, before the commission, "I think the
prejudice against the colored peoj)le is stronger here
than in the States. "f
Mr. Sinclair, of Chatham (Canada West), said, " Many
ofthe colored people, even in this town, say that, if they
could have the same privileges in the States that they
have here, they would not remain here a moment. * * *
In this county there is one township (that of Orford)
where no colored man is allowed to settle."J
The colored people of Canada themselves testified to
the same effect. Mrs. Brown, of St. Catherine's, deposed,
"I find more prejudice here than I did in York State.
When I was at home, I could go anywhere; but here, —
my goodness ! you get an insult on every side."§
Mrs. Susan Boggs (colored), also of St. Catherine's,
said, " If it was not for the queen's law, we would be

» Supplemental Report (A) on Refugees in Canada West, p. 28.
t Ibid. p. 43. X Ibid. p. 43. | Ibid. p. 44.

212 ISOLATION OF RACES TO BE AVOLDED.
mobbed here, and could not stay in this house.^ The
prejudice is a great deal, worse here than it is in the
States."* A colored woman living in a cabin near Colchester
said " she was from Virginia, and the prejudice was a
'heap' stronger in Canada than at home." "The peo
ple," she added, " seemed to think the blacks weren't
folks, anyway." She was anxious to go back.f
The home of the American negro is in the Southern
States. Let it be made a free home, and he will seek
— he will desire — no other.
Whether, as a freedman in a Southern home, the
negro will live down the cruel prejudice which has fol
lowed him, increasing in virulence, to a British province,
some^ with De TocqueviUe, will continue to doubt. But
powerful agencies are at work in his favor, — some of
terrible character. Such were the New York riots.
Such, more recently, were the atrocities committed at
Fort Pillow.
We have found ourselves called upon to interpose in
favor of the outraged and l^e unprotected. But such
interposition tends to create, even in minds of ordinary
sensibility, good will and sympathy towards the sufferers
whom one interposes to protect.
It will have a tendency to increase harmony between
the two races, if the colored people, whether in the
North or the South, refrain from settling in colonies or
suburbs by themselves; for such separation tends to
keep up alienation of feeling and to nourish the preju
dices of race. They will do well, therefore, to mingle
their dwellings or farms with those of the whites; for
the effect of this will be to take off the edge of national
prejudice and weaken the feeling which regards them
as a separate and alien race.
* Supplemental Report (A), p. 45. -|- Ibid. p. 68.

EVIDENCE FROM CANADA. 213

CHAPTEE V.
AMALGAMATION.
Some may be of opinion that the effect of such com
mingling will be to introduce amalgamation between
the races; others, that such amalgamation is the natural
and proper solution of the problem. I believe neither
the one nor the other.
In the first place-, such evidence in this matter as our
commission has obtained goes to show that, at least in
a Northern climate, the mixed race is inferior, in phy
sical power and in health, to the pure race, black or
white. A member of our commission' carefully investi
gated the condition of the refugees of mixed blood in
Canada, and took evidence as to their health, physical
stamina, and power of increase. He found them mostly
of lymphatic temperament, with marks of scrofulous
or strumous disposition, as shown in the pulpy appear
ance of portions of the face and neck, in the spongy
gums and glistering teeth. There is a general preva
lence of phthisical diseases.*
Dr. Mack, of St. Catherine's, testified, " The mixed race
are the most unhealthy, and the pure blacks the least
so. The disease they suffer most from is pulmonary.
Where there is not real fubercular affection ofthe lungs,
there are bronchitis and pulmonary affections. I have
the idea that they die out wben mixed, and that this
climate will completely efface them; I think the pure
blacks will live."f
» Supplemental Report (A), p. 21. t Ibid. p. 23.

214 free colored population of the NORTH
General Tullock, of the British Army, one of the
authors of four volumes of military statistics, writes to
one of the members of our commission, "The mulatto
race are seldom employed in our army, chiefly owing
to the want of that physical stamina which renders the
pure negro better fitted for the duties of a soldier or a
laborer."* Dr. Fisher, of Maiden, Canada, thinks that the mu
lattoes of Canada cannot maintain their numbers with
out assistance from emigration.f
This is in accordance with the census-returns of the
free colored population in some of the Northern States,
where most of them are of mixed .blood. A member
of the commission prepared a table of the births, mar
riages, and deaths among the colored population of
Boston for eight years, — namely, from 1855 to 1862, both
inclusive. It shows three hundred and four births,
three hundred and sixteen marriages, and five hundred
deaths. In every one of these years the deaths exceeded
the births, and in 1855, 1858, and 1860, the births were
less than the marriages. This is the more remarkable
when we take into account what the register of the
city, in furnishing the above table, states, — namely, that
the number of marriages among the colored people was
fifty per cent, more, in proportion to population, than
among the whites, — ^being among the former 1 in 58, and
among the latter only 1 in 87.54.J
The United States census for 1860 shows, in several
of the other States, similar results. In Providence, the
deaths among the free colored are over four per cent.
a year. In Philadelphia, during the six months pre
ceding the census, there were among these people one
hundred and forty-eight births to three hundred and

> Supplemental Report (A), p. 26. f Ibid. p. 26. J Ibid. pp. 23, 24.

SHOW SMALL RATE OF INCREASE. 215
six deaths, — the deaths being more than double the
births.* The same census shows that the total free colored
population of the Union has increased about one per
cent, a year during the last decade; and this includes
slaves liberated, and slaves escaped from their masters,
during that period. The actual rate of natural increase
is certainly less than half that of the slaves, which
from 1850 to 1860 was 23.38 per cent., — say two and a
third per cent, annually.
It is sometimes inferred from this that the slaves live
in greater comfort than the free colored people, and
that the latter cannot take as good care of themselves
as masters take of their slaves. But the facts which
have come to our knowledge touching the actual con
dition of these two classes, the slave and the free colored,
are wholly at variance with any such conclusion. We
believe the chief reason of the small rate of increase ,j
to be, that the proportion of mulattoism among the free
colored is much greater than among slaves, and that
the mulattoes, certainly in northern latitudes, are less
healthy and prolific than the pure blacks.
In support of the opinion that the same may be pre
dicated of these two classes in Southern States, it may
be alleged that a cold climate is, in all probability, as
little suited to the pure black, originally from the torrid
zones of Africa', as to the mulatto, with a cross of Anglo-
Saxon blood; and that if, even in such a climate, the
mortality among the mixed race is greater than among
pure blacks, the climate is not likely to be the sole
cause. It is certain, however, that both as regards blacks
and mulattoes, their mortality as compared with whites *
» Preliminary Report of the Eighth Census, 1860, p. 6.

216 MORTALITY AMONG COLORED PEOPLE.
essentially depends upon climate. As this is an im
portant matter, our commission spent considerable
time and labor in collecting reliable statistics which
throw light upon it.* The table on the opposite page
— the most exhaustive summary, probably, that has yet
been made public, in connection with this subject— was
carefully made up from the materials obtained.
The total sum of white lives upon which the above
calculations are based, is, as will be observed, upwards
of thirty-seven millions, — of colored lives, upwards of
three millions ; while the deaths among whites are over
one million, and among the colored over a hundred
thousand. The general inference from records on so
large a scale may be taken as substantially correct,
even if we admit the probability of partial inaccuracies
in some of the returns.
Thus we reach several interesting facts. The rate
of annual deaths among the whites is less than two and
three-quarters per cent., or about one to every thirty-
seven of the living; among the colored about three
and a half per cent., or one in every twenty-eight
[or, exactly, 1 in 37.57 whites against 1 in 28.54
colored]. I remark, further, that the mortality diminishes as
we approach our own time, — in Boston especially. In
that city, between 1725 and 1774, the average annual
mortality was, among whites, 1 in 29.10, and, among
colored, 1 in 14.9; whereas from 1855 to 1862 it was
but 1 in 43 among whites, and 1 in 31 among colored.
This accords with the well-known fact that the average

* In this they have been greatly aided by Dr. Edward Jarvis, of Boston.
That gentleman not only kindly opened to the commission the treasures
of his valuable statistical library, but has personally superintended some
of the researches touching this matter.

M
<i friPSo
g
o n

ra6?e 0/ Comparative Mortality among 'White and Colored Persons in Eleven Cities

of the United States.

Period.

No. of
years.

Sum of Annual Population.

Number of Deatlis.

Pop. to one Death.

Place.

WMte.

Colored.

White.

Colored.

White.

Colored.

Boston 

1725 to 1774, 1

57 3
24 38 7
42 381230 4S 3

689,000
1,188,452 65,259
958,028
15,427,466 530,682
12,466,457 4,294,476 455,754457,756 547,523 24,126

59,500 15,620 4,746
36,349
531,544 5,466
760,996
' 859,025 126,305523,536121,343 8,043

23,75027,522 1,550
20,744
479,879 14,013
269,824 107,623 8,869
13,94532,143 1,406

4,000 500179
1,306
20,428 120
26,397 26,551 2,723
16,868 6,277 428

29.10
43.1842.09
46.25 32.1437.8646.22 39.90 51.38
32.83 17.0317.17

14.90
31.24

1855-59, 1861-62. J 
1861-62-63 
1840 to 1863 

New Bedford 

26.5127.05

New York 

1821, 1824-29, 1831-36, 1838-62..
1854-58,1862-63 
1821 to 1862 

25.39

Buffalo 
Philadelphia 

45.55* 28.45

1818, 1824-25, 1827-29, 1833-34,
1836 63 

32.34
Washington 
Charleston 
New Orleans 
Memphis 
1849-60 
1828-57 
1849-50, 1856, and § of 1855, 1860.
1851-53 
46.36t 31.03 19.51 18.79
Eleven cities, total
37,104,879
3,031,473
i,00I,268
106,217
37.57
Per ct.
2.699
28.54
Per ct;
3.503
* This being the' sole exception, among Northern cities, to what seems the general rule, to wit : that the mortality among
blacks is much greater than among whites, we may reasonably suppose some inaccuracy in returns.
•f The great apparent salubrity among both classes in Washington is not, probably, to be ascribed either to the climate
or the mode of life, but to the fact that a large proportion of the population are mere sojourners there, for a few yeara
during the working period of life, when the rate of mortality is lowest.
218 AMALGAMATION A PHYSICAL EVIL AKD
length of life in the United States is greater in this
century than it was in the last.
Again, the table shows that the mortality among
blacks in the Northern cities is considerably greater
than among whites; while in the Southern cities it
averages about the same.
As the returns from which this table is compiled do
not distinguish between blacks and mulattoes, it gives
us no information as to the relative mortality among
these two classes. On that point it behooves us to
abstain from confident generalizing in the absence of
more exact and more extended statistical data.
This, however, we may say : — It would appear that
there are certain races of men the cross between which
produces a race quite equal to either of the progeni
tors. This is said to be true of the Turk and the
African. It may be that the Anglo-Saxon and the
African, extreme varieties, are less suited to each
other, and that the mixed race degenerates. Indeed,
so far as a limited range of facts go, there seems a pro
bability in favor ofthe opinion expressed by a member
of the commission, that " the mulatto, considered in
his animal nature, lacks the innervation and spring of
the pure blacks and whites," and that "the organic
inferiority is shown in less power of resisting destruc
tive agencies, in less fecundity and less longevity."*
If this be so, then amalgamation of these two races
is in itself a physical evil injurious to both, — a practice
which ought to be discouraged by public opinion, and
avoided by all who consider it a duty, as parents, to
transmit to their offspring the best conditions for
sound health and physical well-being. Like other evils
* Supplemental Eeport (A), p. 27.

LIKELY TO DI.MINISH BY EMANCIPATION. 219
of the kind, however, this is beyond the legitimate
reach of legislation.
I believe that the effect of general emancipation will
be to discourage amalgamation. It is rare in Canada ;
and public opinion there, among blacks as well as
whites, is against it.
Bishop Green, of the Methodist Church, Canada, de
posed, " Tou do not see any of our respectable people
here marrying any persons but their own associates."
John Kinney, an intelligent colored man, said, " The
majority of the colored people don't like the inter
marriage of colored and white people." Colonel Ste
venson said, " The colored people don't like to have
one of their color marry a white woman." Such mar
riages do occur in Canada, but they are rare.*
De TocqueviUe had already remarked that emanci
pation, which might be supposed to favor amalgama
tion, does, in point of fact, repress it.f
Amalgamation, in its worst form, is the offspring of
slavery. The facts seem to indicate that, with the
abolition of slavery, it will materially diminish, though
it may be doubted whether it will ever wholly dis
appear.

CHAPTEE VI.

RECIPROCAL SOCIAL INPLTJENCE OP THE RACES ON
EACH OTHER.
Aside from this apparently injurious mingling of
blood, the social influence of the two races on eaeh
other so soon as their reciprocal relations are based
» Supplemental Report (A), pp. 30, 31.
X Democracy in Amerioa, vol. i. p. 462.

220 CHARACTERISTICS OP TWO RACES. '
on justice, will, beyond question, be mutually bene
ficial. There are elements in the character of eaeh
calculated to exert a happy influence on the other.
Tbe Anglo-Saxon raee, witb great force of character,
much mental activity, an unflagging spirit of enter
prise, has a certain hardness, a stubborn will, only
moderate geniality, a lack of habitual cheerfulness.
Its intellectual powers are stronger than its social in
stincts. The head predominates over the heart. There
is little that is emotional in its religion. It is not de
void of instinctive devotion; but neither is such devo
tion a ruling element. It is a race more calculated to
call forth respect than Idve; better fitted to do than
to enjoy.
The African- race is in many respects the reverse
of this. Genial, lively, docile, emotional, the affec
tions rule; the social instincts maintain the ascend
ant. Except under cruel repression, its cheerfulness
and love of mirth overflow with the exuberance of
childhood. It is devotional by feeling. It is a know
ing rather than a thinking race. Its perceptive facul
ties are stronger than its reflective powers. It is well
fitted to occupy useful stations in life, — but such as re
quire quick observation rather than comprehensive
views or strong sense. It is little given to stirring en
terprise, but rather to quiet accumulation. It is not a
race that will ever take a lead in the material improve
ment of the world ; but it will make for itself, when
ever it has fair play, respectable positions, comfortable
homes.*

* " The surest sign of their thrift is the appearance of their dwelling-
houses, farms, stock, tools, and the like. In these, moreover, we find en
couraging signa for the negro, because they show that he feels so strongly
the family instinct and the desire to possesa land and a dwelling-place."  '
Supplemental Report {A), p. 62.

NEGRO NOT REVENGEFUL. 221
As regards the virtues of humility, loving-kindness,
resignation under adversity, reliance on Divine Provi
dence, this race exhibits these, as a general rule, in a
more marked manner than does the Anglo-Saxon.
Nor do we find among them a spirit of revenge or
bloodthirstiness or rancorous ill will towards their
oppressors.* The exceptions to this rule, notwith
standing the great temptations to which the race have
been exposed, are very rare. No race of men appears
better to have obeyed the injunction not to return evil
for evil, or to have acted more strictly in the spirit of
the text, " Vengeance is raine ; I will repay, saith the
Lord." "With time, as civilization advances, these Christian •
graces of meekness and long-suffering will be rated
higher than the world rates them now. With time, if
we but treat these people in a Christian spirit, we
shall have our reward. The softening influence of
their genial spirit, diffused throughout the community,
will make itself felt as an element of improvement in
the national character.
And, on the other hand, they will learn much and '-
gain much from us. They will gain in force of cha
racter, in mental cultivation, in self-reliance, in enter-

* " Canada is full of men and women who in the first half of their lives
¦were witnesses and sufferers of suoh indignities and wrongs as would burn
into most white men's souls and make them pass the last half iu plotting
vengeance. Not so these people. They cherish no spirit of vengeance, and
seem to have no grudge against their oppressors. The memory and re
cital of their wrongs do not arouse such bitter feelings and call out such
maledictions as would certainly be heard from white men of similar expe
rience. A single instance only is recollected in which a feeling of unsatia-
fied vengeance was manifested; but many are recalled where the old
master and mistress were spoken of with kindness, and regret expreased
that they would not be seen again." — Supplemental Report (A), pp.
97, 98. 19»

222 EFFECTS, IN A MILITARY POINT OP VIEW,
prise, in breadth of views, and in habits of generaliza
tion. Our influence over them, if we treat them well,
will be powerful for good.*

CHAPTEE VII.

IMPORTANCE, NATIONALLY, THAT THE NEGRO BE TEEATED
WITH JUSTICE.
The last sentence contains an important proviso.
If we treat them well ! Every thing depends upon
that. There depends upon it not alone the future of
four millions and a half of people, native-born, and
who will remain, for good or for evil, in the land of
their birth, but also, looking to the immediate present,
there depends, to a certain extent, the likelihood of
thoroughly and speedily putting down the present
rebellion. Every aggression, every act of injustice committed
by a Northern man against unoffending fugitives from
despotism, every insult offered by the base prejudice
of our race to a colored man because of his African de
scent, is not only a breach of humanity, an offence
against civilization, but it is also an act which gives
aid and comfort to the enemy. The report of it goes
abroad, — penetrates into the enemy's country. So far
as its influence there extends, the effect is to deter the
slave from leaving his master, — therefore to secure to
* Mr. MoCuUum, principal of the High School, Hamilton, Canada, said,
" Colored people brought up among whites look better than others.
Their rougher, harsher features disappear. I think that colored children
brought up among white people look better than their parents."  Supple-
mental Report {A), p. 79.

OP ILL-TREATING NEGROES. 223
that master a bread-producer, and, by the same act,
to deprive the Union of a colored soldier, and force
the Government to withdraw a laborer, in his stead,
from a Northern farm.
The practical effect, therefore, of abuse and injury to
colored people, in these days, is not alone to disgrace
the authors of such acts, but to compel conscription,
and to strip the North — already scant of working-
hands — of the laborers and the artisans that remain to
her. Thousands of fields owned by white men may
remain untilled, thousands of hearths owned by white
men may be made desolate, — all as the direct result of
the ill treatment of the colored race.
Such a spirit is not treasonable, in the usual sense
of that term ; yet its results are the same as those of
treason itself. It becomes, therefore, in a military ,
point of view, of the highest importance that all
wanton acts of aggression by soldiers or civilians,
whether against refugees or against free negroes here
tofore settled in the North, should be promptly and
resolutely repressed, and the penalties of the law in
every such case rigorously enforced. A prudent re
gard for our own safety and welfare, if no higher
motive prompt, demands the taking of such pre
caution. "We have imposed upon ourselves an additional obli
gation to see justice and humanity exercised towards
these people, in accepting their services as soldiers. It
would be a degree of baseness of which I hope our
country is incapable, to treat with contumely the de
fenders of thc Union, — the men who shall have con
fronted death on the battle-field, side by side with the
bravest of our own race, in a struggle in which the
stake is the existence, in peace and in their integrity,
of these United States.

224 NEGRO MUST FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
We are unjust to our enemies if we deny that this
struggle has been a hard-fought one, contested bravely
and with varying success. A people with an element
of semi-barbarism in their society, giving birth to
habits of violence and of lawless daring, are in some
respects better prepared for war than one which stands
on a higher plane of Christian civilization.
There is an additional reason why a considerable
portion of the Union armies should be made up of
persons of African descent. The eradication of negro
slavery has become a necessity of our national exist
ence. But the history of the world furnishes no ex
ample of an enslaved race which won its freedom
without exertion of its own. That the indiscriminate
massacres of a servile insurrection have been sjpared
us, as addition to the horrors of a civil war, is due, it
would seem, rather to that absence of revenge and
bloodthirstiness which characterizes this race, than to
the lack either of courage or of any other quality that
makes the hardy combatant ; for these the negro ap
pears, so far as we have tried him in civilized warfare,
to possess. And in such warfare it is fitting that the
African race seek its own social salvation. The negro
must fight for emancipation if ho is to be eman
cipated. If, then, emancipation be the price of national unity
and of peace, and if a people, to be emancipated, must
draw the sword in their own cause, then is the future
welfare of the white race in our country indissolubly
connected with an act of justice, on our part, towards
people of another race; then is it the sole condition
under which we may expect — and, if history sijeak
truth, the sole condition under which we shall attain 
domestic tranquillity, that wc shall give the negro an
opportunity of working out, on those battle-fields that

IF HE IS TO OBTAIN IT. 225
are to decide our own national destiny, Ms destiny,
whether as slave or as freedman, at the same time.
But, to give full scope to the energies of this race in
war, we must not treat them as step-children. It is so
manifestly just, to say nothing of the evident expe
diency for the benefit of the service, that no discrimi
nation should be made, either as to pay or in any
other respect, between the white and the colored sol
dier, that I deem it hardly necessary to express the
conviction that of all petty schemes of false economy
such discrimination against the colored soldier is the
worst. Performing the same duties, subjected to the
same fatigues, marshalled on the same battle-fields, side
by side with the white soldier, and exposing, like him,
his life for his country, one would think that the innate
sense of right would preclude the necessity of a single
argument on the subject. "What probability of future
harmony between the races, if we begin our connection
with the new-made freedmen by such an act of flagrant
injustice 1
Let us beware the temptation to treat the colored
people with less than even justice because they have
been, and still are, lowly and feeble. Let us bear in
mind that with governments, as with individuals, the
crucial test of civilization and sense of justice is their
treatment of the weak and the dejiendent.
God is offering to us an opportunity of atoning, in
some measure, to the African for our former complicity
in his wrongs. For our own sakes as well as for his,
let it not be lost. As we would that He should bo to us
and to our children, so let us bo to those whose dearest
interests are by His providence committed, for the time,
to our charge.

226 A SERIOUS RISK.

CHAPTEE VIII.

THE FREEDMAN NEEDS MERE TEMPORARY AID OE SU
PERVISION.
As regards the question what amount of aid and in
terference is necessary or desirable to enable the freed
men to tide over the stormy transition from slavery to
freedom, it is certain that there is as much danger in
doing too much as in doing too little. The risk is
serious that, under the guise of guardianship, slavery,
in a modified form, may be practically restored. Those
who have ceased only perforce to be slaveholders will
be sure to unite their efforts to effect just such a pur
pose. It should be the earnest object of all friends of
liberty to anticij)ate and prevent it. Benevolence itself,
misdirected, may play into the hands of freedom's ene
mies; and those whose earnest endeavor is the good of
the freedman may unconsciously contribute to his vir
tual re-enslavement.
The refugees from slavery, when they first cross our
lines, need temporary aid, but not more than indigent
Southern whites fleeing from secessionism, — both being
sufferers from the disturbance of labor and the destruc
tion of its products incident to war. The families of
colored men, hired as military laborers or enlisted as
soldiers, need protection and assistance, but not more
than the families of white men similarly situated. For
cibly deprived of education in a state of slavery, the
freedmen have a claim upon us to lend a helping hand
until they can organize schools for their children. But
they will soon take tho labor and expense out of our
hands ; for these people pay no charge more willingly

NO HALF FREEDO.M. 227
than that which assures them that their children shall
reap thoso advantages of instruction which were denied
to themselves.
If we organize a Freedman's Bureau, it should be
borne in mind that we need its agency as a temporary
alleviation, not because these people are negroes, only
because they are men who have been, for generations,
deprived of their rights.
Extensive experience in the "West Indies has proved
that Emancipation, when it takes place, should be un
conditional and absolute. The experiment of a few
years' apprenticeship, plausible in theory, proved in
practice a failure so injurious in its effects that the
provincial legislatures, though they had been opposed
to the abolition of slavery, voted, after trial, for the abo
lition of apprenticeship.
The freedman should be treated at once as any other
free man. He should be subjected to no compulsory
contracts as to labor. There should not be, directly or
indirectly, any statutory rates of wages. There should
be no interference between the hirers and the hired.
Nor should any restrictions be imposed in regard to the
local movements of these people, except such regula
tions incident to war, relative to vagrancy or otherwise,
as apply equally to whites. The natural laws of supply
and demand should be left, in all cases, to regulate rates
of compensation and places of residence.
"When freedmen shall have voluntarily entered into
any agreement to work, they may, at first, usefully be
aided in reducing that agreement to writing, and, for a
time, we may properly see to it that such freedmen do
not suffer from ill treatment or failure of contract on
the part of their employers, and that they themselves
perform their duty in the premises.
But all aid given to these people should be regarded

228 GIVE THE FREEDMAN A FAIR CHANCE
as a temporary necessity; all supervision over them
should be provisional only, and advisory in its charac
ter. The sooner they can learn to stand alone and to
make their own unaided way, the better both for our
race and for theirs.

CHAPTEE IX.
THE SUM OF OUR DUTY TOWARDS THE NEGRO RACE.
The essential is, that we secure to them the means
of making thoir own way, — that we give them, to use
the familiar phrase, "a fair chance." • If, like whites,
they are to be self-supporting, then, like whites, they
ought to have those rights, civil and political, without
which they are but laboring as a man labors with hands
bound. There will, for somo time to come, be a tendency, on
the part of many among those who have heretofore
held them in bondage, still to treat them in an unjust
and tyrannical manner. The effectual remedy for this
is not special enactments, or a special permanent or
ganization, for the protection of colored people, but the
safeguard of general laws, applicable to all, against
fraud and oppression.
The sum of our recommendations is this. Offer the
freedmen temporary aid and counsel, until they become
a little accustomed to their new sphere of life ; secure
to thom, by law, their just rights of person and pro
perty; relieve them, by a fair and equal administration
of justice, from the depressing influence of disgraceful
prejudice; above all, guard them against the virtual

AND LET HIM TAKE CARE OP HIMSELF. 229
restoration of slavery, in any form, under any pretext;
and then let them take care of themselves.
If we do this, the future of the African race in this
country will be conducive to its prosperity and asso
ciated with its well-being. There will be nothing con
nected with it to excite regret or inspire apprehension.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A. (Page 61.)
Since the calculations in the text relative to the mortality-
chargeable to the African slave-trade and to the number of
slaves imported were made, some confirmatory documents
have come under my observation.
I had assumed, as the average deportation of slaves, one
hundred and twenty thousand a year from 1788 to 1840 ; and
sixty-five thousand a year only from 1840 to 1848 (pp. 36 and
37). Mr. Buxton, in his African Slave-Trade, after supplying
elaborate details, thus sums up the total for 1839, the year in
which he wrote : —
"I hmit myself to the facts which I have established, —
namely : —
That there are at the present time annually im
ported into Brazil  78,-333
That the annual importations into Cuba amount to 60,000
That there have been captured  8,294
And I assume that the casualties amount to  3,373
Making together  150,000*"
This estimate is for those actually landed. As Mr. Buxton
estimates (p. 169) the number lost on the passage at twenty-
five per cent, on those landed (or thirty-seven thousand five
hundred out of one hundred and fifty thousand), this gives

*¦ The African Slave-Trade, by Thomas Fowell Buxton, London, 1839,
p. 26. 231

232 APPENDIX.
his estimate of the deportation from Africa in the year 1839 at
one hundred and eighty-seven thousand five hundred.
And this was at the time when two nations only, Brazil and
Spain, remained as customers of the slaver. The estimate is
at least double mine.
Mr. Buxton's estimate agrees with mine in the calculation
that for every negro shipped, another "must have been sacri
ficed in the seizure, march, and detention." — p. 169.
He calculates, further, that of those actually landed, "twenty
per cent, die in the seasoning." — p. 169.
He quotes the celebrated "William Pitt, as saying, during the
debate on the slave-trade in 1791, "The evidence before the
House as to the mortality was perfectly clear ; for it would be
found in that dreadful catalogue of deaths in consequence of
the seasoning and the Middle Passage, which the House had
been condemned to look into, that one-half die." — pp. 160, 161.
Various travellers in Africa furnish items going to show the
loss of life in Africa, as compared to the slaves obtained.
Denham, the noted traveller, says, " In one instance twenty
thousand were killed for sixteen thousand carried away into
elavery." In another case, " prohablyrnore than douhle" the number
of those captured were killed ly ihe captors.*
Dr. Holroyd, an African traveller who returned from Nubia
and Cordofan in 1838, wrote, under date January 14, to Mr.
Buxton: — "There is not only a terrible waste of life in the
attempts to capture the negroes, but after they are seized
there is so much of ill usage and brutality that I have been
assured no less than thirty per cent, perish in the first ten
days after their seizure." — Buxton's African Slave-Trade, p. 84.
The Eev. John Newton, Eector of St. Mary's, "Woolworth,
who in early life was engaged in the slave-trade, and after
wards published a work on the subject, after expressing the
opinion that the " far greater part of the wars in Africa would
cease if Europeans would cease to tempt them by offering
goods for slaves," adds, "Ibelieve ihe captives reserved for sale are
fewer than ihe slain." — Newton on the Slave-Trade, London, 1788,
p. 30.
* Denham &, Clapperton'a Travels in Africa, London, 1826, pp. 116, 214.

APPENDIX. 233
Evidence of a similar character might be indefinitely mul
tiplied. But I close with an incident related, from personal
observation, by one of our own countrymen. Mr. Ashman,
agent of the American Colonial Society, writing from Liberia
in 1823, says : —
" The following incident I relate not for its singularity, for
similar events take place, perhaps, every month in the year,
but it has fallen under my own observation, and I can vouch
for its authenticity. King Boatswain, our most powerful sup
porter and steady friend among the natives, received a quan
tity of goods on trust from a French slaver, for which he
stipulated to pay young slaves. He makes it a point of honor
to be punctual to his engagements. The time was at hand
when he expected the return of the slaver, and he had not
the slaves. Looking around on the peaceful tribes about him
for his victims, he singled out the Queaks, a small agricultural
and trading people, of most inoffensive character. His war
riors were skilfully distributed to the different hamlets, and,
making a simultaneous assault on the sleeping occupants in
the dead of the night, accomplished, without difficulty or
resistance, in one hour, the annihilation of the whole tribe !
Every adult man and woman was murdered, — every hut fired !
Very young children generally shared the fate of their parents.
The boys and girls alone were reserved to pay the Frenchman."
— Ashman's Life, New York, 1835, p. 160.

20*

231 APPENDIX.

NOTE B. (Page 192.)
An act of general emancipation, with appropriate preamble,
might be couched somewhat in the terms following : —
A Bill to Emancipaie Persons of African Descent held to Service or
Labor in certain of ihe United Slates.
"Whereas there is now flagrant, in certain of the United
States, an insurrection of proportions so gigantic that there
has been required, to hold it in check, an increase of the army
and navy of the United States to an extent seldom paralleled
in the history of the world ;
And whereas, because of the said insurrection, the execution
of the laws for collecting taxes, and of various other laws of
the United States, heretofore enacted by the Congress in the
just exercise of their constitutional powers, has been, for more
than two years past, and still is, obstructed and defeated
throughout the insurrectionary States ;
And whereas it is the right and duty of the Congress to
make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into execution the said constitutional powers ;
And whereas the said insurrectionary portions of the Union
consist exclusively of States wherein persons of African descent
are held in large numbers to involuntary service or labor, the
white inhabitants thereof basing their insurrectionary acts
upon the assumption that the security and perpetuation of
such involuntary servitude require the disruption of the na
tional unity, and the establishment, on a portion of the
domain of the United States, of a separate and independent
government ;
And whereas a large portion of the said persons of African
descent, so held in servitude, contribute greatly, so long as
such involuntary services are thus exacted from them, to the
aid and comfort of the said insurgents, laboring for their

APPENDIX. 235
behoof on their fortifications and for the supply of their
commissariat, and otherwise giving strength and support to
various insurrectionary acts ;
And whereas, in an emergency so urgent as that which is
now patent to the world, it is the duty of the Congress to
•place at the disposal of the Executive branch of the Govern
ment, for the common defence, the utmost power, civil and
military, of the country, and to employ every means not for
bidden by the usages of civilized warfare, and not in violation
of the Constitution, that is placed within their reach, in order
to repress and to bring to a speedy termination the present
protracted and desolating insurrection ;
And whereas it appears, from the above recitals, that the
existence, within any portion of the United States, of a labor-
system which recognizes the claims of one race of men to the
involuntary services of another race (always a moral wrong)
has now shown itself to be destructive of the supremacy of
the laws, and a constant menace to the Government, and that
the continuance of such labor-system imminently jeopardizes
the integrity of the Union, and has become incompatible with
the domestic tranquillity of the country ;
And whereas it has thus become evident that claims to the
involuntary service or labor of persons of African descent
ought not to be possessed by any inhabitant of the United
States, but should, in the just exercise of the power which
inheres in every independent government to protect itself
from destruction by seizing and destroying any private pro
perty of its citizens or subjects which imperils its own exist
ence, be taken, for public use, from their present possessors,
and abrogated and annulled,— just compensation being made
to so many of the said possessors of such claims, not being
nor having been publio enemies, as may demand it, and as
may by their loyalty be entitled thereto, for the claims so
abrogated and annulled ;
And whereas the President of the United States, by Procla
mation of January 1, 1863, did declare that all persons held as
slaves within the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Missis
sippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Caro
lina and Virginia (certain parishes in Louisiana and certain

236 APPENDIX.
counties in Virginia excepted) were on that day, and thence
forth forever should be, free ; therefore
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress
assembled. That the action of the President, as Commander-in-
Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in issuing
his Proclamation of January 1, 1863, as a fit and necessary war
measure for the suppression of the existing insurrection, is
hereby approved and endorsed, and the emancipation of the
slaves thereby effected is recognized and declared to be an act
just, legal, and irrevocable.
Sec. 2. And be ii further enacted. That from and after the fourth
of July next, all claims to the service or labor of persons -of
African descent, who shall then be held to involuntary labor
in any of the States of the Union under the laws thereof, be
and the same are hereby taken by the Government of the
United States. And the said claims are hereby abrogated and
annulled. And all persons of African descent within the
United States who shall, on the said fourth day of July next,
be held to involuntary service or labor except for crime of
which the party shall have been legally convicted, shall be
released and emancipated from such claims in as full and
complete a manner as if the same had never existed; the
said release and emancipation to take effect from and after
the said fourth day of July, thenceforth and for evermore.
Sec 3. And be ii further enacted. That the faith of the United
States be and the same is hereby pledged for tbe payment of
just compensation to all persons who shall, on the said fourth
day of July, hold such claims to service or labor ; provided, that
such persons shall make application for such compensation
in form and manner hereinafter to be prescribed ; and pro
vided, further, that such persons are not nor have not been,
in law, public enemies of the United States ; and provided,
further, that said persons shall have been, throughout the
present insurrection, true and loyal to the Government of the
United States, and shall not, directly or indirectly, have in
cited to insurrectionary acts, or given aid or comfort to any
persons engaged in the insurrection aforesaid.
An act couched in the terms here proposed could not be

APPENDIX. 237
declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court without a
reckless reversal of principles as well established, and of as
high authority, as any which form the basis of constitutional
law, nor without an encroachment on legislative ground so
flagrant that it might well subject those members of the
court who should give it their official sanction to impeach
ment, on the charge of usurpation.

INDEX.

Abolition punished as felony in Slave States, 166.
Absenteeism in Weat Indies, injurious efi'ect of, 100.
Abuse and injury to negroes tends to denude tlie North of laborers, 223.
African felon trader, shall we emulate him ? 181.
African race among us, character of, 203.
African race among us, their probable position in the future, 203, 204;.
African race, characteristics of, 220, 221.
Aid and interference, what amount of these doea the negro need ? 226.
Amalgamation injurious and to be discouraged, 218, 219.
Amalgamation, in worst form, ofi'spring of slavery, 219.
Amalgamation, question discussed, 213 to 219.
Amendment to Constitution regarding slavery and discrimination as to
color, 197, 198.
Anglo-Saxon race, characteristics of, 220.
Anomalous atate of things in Border Slave States, 184.
Anomaly presented of men, civilized in one phase, semi-barbarous in an
other, 124, 125.
Anti-slavery President, South declares the election of one juat cause for
aeceasion, 169.
Apprentice or slave, is either an article of merch.indise ? 138.
Arbitrary power, a temptation always replete with danger, 114.
Argentine Confederation, negro population of, 80, 81.
Asientos, or slave-treaties, wording of, 32.
Barbadoes, decrease of negro population in, 64.
Barbarity, example of, in South Carolina, 115, 116.
Bolivia, negro population of, 80.
Border States, slavery modified in, 118.
Brazil, negro population of, 71 to 76.
Brazilian laws favoring emancipation, 76.
British Government, agency of, in forcing slave-trade on its American
coloniea, 85.
Calamity, the great, 28.
Canada, atrong prejudice of color there, 211.
Cause, an influential, of variant results as to increase of negro population
in the West Indies and in the United States, 109.
Causes of certain marvellous results, 95.
Central Amerioa, negro population of, 77, 78.
Character, Southern, effecta of slavery upon it, 116.
Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon and of African race, 220, 221.
Characteristics of slave society, 117.
Charity, negroes do not seek, 204, 205. 239

240 INDEX.
Chastity, lack of, among slaves, 104, 109.
Chastity of negreaa, in slavery, no protection for, 112, 113.
Child-bearing, excessive, in Cotton States, cause of much suff'ering, 109.
Child killed to render raother salable, 44.
Child rescued from death, 44.
Chili, negro population of, 80.
Church property well managed by negroes, 208.
Claims, or debts, of an enemy can be confiscated or p.nnuUed, 153, 154.
Claims to service or labor may be for years or for lifo; first class found
only in South; second chiefly in North, 138.
Colonization, except by force, impossible,^09.
Color, no discrimination as to, in a proposed amendment to the Constitu
tion, 197, 198.
Colored population, increase of, in United States, 89.
Compensated emancipation in Border Slave States constitutional, 187, 192.
Competition of negro as laborer, in the North, false ideas regarding, 209,
210.
Condition of national aff'airs when Emancipation Proclamation waa issued,
16S, 159.
Congress, law of, regarding emancipation, 162.
Congress sole judge ofthe means to effect a constitutional ohject, 188, 189.
Constitution inviolate and slavery cannot coexist, 167.
Constitution, under what phase does it recognize slavery? 137.
Constitutional, now, to emancipate, 177.
Constitutionality of emancipation in loyal Slave States, 183.
Criminals sold as slaves, 42.
Crucial test of civilization, the treatment of the lowly and feeble, 225.
Cuba, negro population of, 66.
Dance, slaves compelled to, on slaver, by fear of lash, 51.
Deaths by slave-trade in Africa, compared to number of slaves shipped, 00.
Debt, immense public, brought upon us by slavery, 129.
Debt, or claim, due by inhabitant of United States to enemy of United
States, may be cancelled, no matter whether the debtor be in the
enemy's country or not, 152, 155.
Debt, or claim, of an enemy, may be cancelled by commander-in-chief, if
exigency of war demand it, 156.
Debts, or claims, of an enemy oan be confiscated or annulled, 153, 154.
Deck of slaver, terrible picture of, 63.
Deed done and cannot be recalled, 177.
De TocqueviUe, his opinion on the future of the negro iu United States,
196, 197.
Difficulty, the great, before us should be broadly and boldly mot, 185.
Disparity in relative numbers of each sex, among imported slaves, 95 to 98.
"Down South," the terror of the Border negro, 118.
Ecquador, negro population of, 79.
Emancipation by European Powers, 173, 174.
Emancipation does not injure slaveholders, 179.
Emancipation, gradual, a failure, 227.
Emancipation in insurrectionary States, 147.
Emancipation in insurrectionary States, summary of arguments showing
ita constitutionality, 182.
Emancipation in loyal Slave States, constitutionality of, 183.
Emancipation justified on technical grounds as well as on general princi
ples, 154, 155.

INDEX. 241
Emancipation one of the highest dutiea of Christian civilization, 192.
Emancipation our business now, not the slaveholder's, 179.
Emancipation, President's action regarding, 157.
Emancipation, question regarding right of, simply stated, 145.
Emancipation, why not sooner declared by United States, 175.
Enemies of United States, who are, in law, 147, 148.
Enemies, property of, whether it may be taken, 149, 150.
Enslave, to, not a constitutional power, 180.
Evidence, law as to negro, virtuaUy gives impunity to murder and rape,
112, 113.
EvU overruled for good, 176.
Family relation, disintegration of, by slavery, 103.
Fate of thirty-one millions of men, 61.
Female slavea brutaUy punished for ainging mournful songs of home, 52.
Foreign war, in case of, slavery a dangerous element of weakness, 172, 173.
Free South future home of negro, 210, 211, 212.
Free speech, right of, can citizens pf a republic abandon it? 168.
Freedman needed as a loyal citizen, as well as soldier, 198.
Freedman, the sooner he learna to take care of himself the better, 228.
Freedman, what amount of aid and supervision does he need ? 226, 227.
Freedmen, the effectual remedy for their protection, not special enactments,
but general laws against fraud and oppression, 228.
Fugitive-slave clause in Constitution, its exact character and extent, 138,
140.
Fugitive-slave law, can it be maintained in the future? 169, 170.
Future of African race in United States, 195.
Gale, fatal effects of, on board slaver, 52.
Gamblers, losing themselves, aold as slaves, 43.
George III. issues order in Council, compelling slave-trade, 85.
Grandeur of object commensurate with magnitude of remedy, 173.
Great lesson, immediate in one case, delayed in another, 128.
Hardships endured by slaves who hired their time: one example, 119, 120;
another, 120, 121.
Hayti, population of, 68, 69.
Hiring their time, by slaves in Kentucky, 119.
Home of a slave, 124.
Humanity going astray, 29.
Human rights, almost all, denied by slavery. 111, 112.
HI treatment of negro produces results simUar to those of treason, 222,
223.
Importance, iu a mUitary point of view, that the negro be weU tieated,
223.
Increase, rate of, among free colored population of North, smaU, 215.
Inevitable, the, has great power over opinions, 199.
Influeuce of the two races on each other, under a just system, wUl be bene
ficial, 221, 222.
Interdictions of a slave code, 119.
Inter-State slave-trade, from Border States, 118.
Isolation of races to be avoided, 212.
Jamaica, decrease of slave population in, 63, 94.
Jefferson's opinion of the effect, upon the master, of slavery, 115.
21

242 INDEX.
Kidnapping slaves in Africa, 42.
King, a, the pUlar of the slave-trade, 86.
Labor and laborers degraded in Slave States, 22.
Labor, estimation of, test of civilization, 21.
Las Casas' error and atonement, 30.
Law of nations, spirit of, becoming milder, 134.
Law of nations, we are bound by, 134.
Law set at defiance is not thereby abrogated, 178.
Laws, practical effect of, which give, apparently, equal protection, 112, 113.
Lesson, the great, 127.
Life of slave apparently, but not really, protected by law, 112, 113.
Louisiana, free colored population of, their wealth, 207.
Loyal men, what proportion of, in Southern whites, 199.
Loyalty of colored people, 198, 199.
Lucayo islanders treacherously deceived, 27.
Magnitude of interests involved cannot alter a just interpretation of the
Constitution, 145.
Manhood in negro soldiers, effect of, 196, 197.
Marriage, legal, not permitted between slaves, 104.
Marvellous disparity of results aa to increase of negro population, 94.
Maternal relation disregarded, as to slaves, 104, 105.
McCulloch againat State of Maryland, principles decided in that case, 189.
Mexico, negro population of, 77, 78.
Middle Pasaage, the, 48.
Military strength, North and South, 160.
Minister, testimony of a British, 46.
Ministers, British, not sentimentalists, 45.
Moderation, scruples of, must not degenerate into weakness, 135.
Monarchy, Southerners express desire for it, 126, 127.
Mortality among free negroes in Northern States, 214, 215, 216; table, 217,
Mortality among seamen on slavers, 56, 57.
Mortality among slaves in port, 58.
Mortality, comparative, in battle and on slavers, 59.
Mortality, comparative, of whites and blacks, important table of, 217.
Mortality in Africa, connected with slave-trade, 60.
Mortality in United States greater last century than in present century,
216, 218.
Mortality on Middle Passage, 54, 55, 67, 58.
Mulattoes, intelligent, in Brazil, 76.
Mulattoes not maintaining their numbers by natural increase in northem
climate, 214.
Mulattoes physically inferior to blacks or whites, 213, 214, 218.
Murder of a slave by a white man not usually punishable by law, 112, 113.
National affairs, condition of, when Emancipation Proclamation was issued,
158, 159.
Negro, can he maintain himself as freedman ? 203 to 208.
Negro, ill treatment of, similar in results to treason, 222, 223.
Negro must fight for freedom, if he is to obtain it, 224, 225.
Negro not revengeful, 221.
Negro race, the sum of our duty towards them, 228.
Npgro race, their future in this country, if justice prevaU, wUl be associated
with the nation's prosperity, 229.
Negro soldier should be, iu all respects, treated aa a white soldier, 225.

INDEX. 243
Negro wiU emigrate South, when emancipation is assured, 210 to 212.
Negro willing to work, 201.
New Granada, negro population of, 79.
No absolutely hopeless condition in this world, 196.
Obligation, additional, to see justice done to a race whom we have accepted
aa soldiers, 223.
Opportunity, that should be embraced, to atone for wrong, 225.
" Other persons," in contradistinction to free persons, what that means,
144.
Palmerston, Lord, his deduction, 47.
Paraguay, negro population of, 81.
Patriarchal feature in slavery, 110, 111.
Peculiar institution, none remaining now in South, to be left intact, 180,
181.
People, the, of the United States, freed three millions of men, 177.
Pennsylvania Hall, burning of, 167, 168
Peru, negro population of, 80
Poor whites of the South. 125 ; a notable example of one, 126.
Popular songs among negroes in Cotton States plaintive, despondent, and
religious, 106.
Population, increase of, arrested, 83
Population, negro, in Argentine Confederation, 80, 81.
" " in Bolivia, 80.
" " in Brazil, 71 to 76.
" " in Central America, 77, 78.
" " in ChUi, 80.
" " in Cuba, 66.
" " in Ecquador, 79.
" " iu Hayti, 68, 69.
" " in Mexico, 77, 78.
" " in New Granada, 79.
" " in Paraguay, 81.
" " in Peru, 80.
" " in Porto Rico, 67.
" " in Uruguay, 81.
" " in Venezuela, 79.
" " in West Indies, 66.
" " total in Central and South Amerioa, 81.
" •• total in Western Hemisphere, 82.
Population, two causes for increase of, 107, 108.
Porto Eico, negro population of, 67.
Prayer, a form of, strictly adapted to nature and wants of man, 114.
Pregnancy of a slave does not exonerate from corporal punishment, exam
ple, 104, 106.
Prejudice aa to color strong in Canada, 211, 212.
Prejudice as to color, will it disappear ? 212.
President, had he the right to refrain from emanoipatmg ? 161.
President, his action as to emancipation, 157.
President responsible as commander-in-chief under law of nations, 156.
Prince, a, for the South, 126, 127.
Private property may lawfully be taken for publio use, 186.
Proclamation of Emancipation as valid after the war as during tho war,
178.
Property of enemies, whether it may be taken, 149, 150.

244 INDEX.
Property of enemy, if tangible, must be seized, before it becomes ours,
150, 151.
Prospective dangers, a nation should protect itself against, 163.
Question as to the right of emancipation simply stated, 146.
Race, extinction of a, 26.
Regard for law conflicted, in the past, with regard for liberty, 174, 175.
Repartimientos, or assignment of Indians, 24.
Responsibility of slave-trade, to whom chargeable, 45.
Revenge, feeling of, rarely found in negro, 221.
Review of facts the strongest argument, 130.
Right of free speech, can citizens of a republic abandon it? 168.
Sea-islands, slaves in, an inferior class, 106.
Seizure of tangible property of enemies necessary to confer possession,
150, 151.
Separation of races tends to keep up alienation, 212.
Slaveholders became the abolitionists of slavery, 176.
Slaveholders not injured by emancipation, 179.
Slaveholders, to maintain slavery, must violate the Constitution, 166.
Slavery, amendment to Constitution regarding, 197.
Slavery and the Constitution inviolate oannot coexist, 167.
Slavery as it affects the master, 114.
Slavery, cause of war: Jefferson predicted thia; Stephens acknowledged
it, 164.
Slavery, danger that it may be virtually restored, under another name,
226 ; this should be guarded against, 228, 229.
Slavery declared unlawful by the Christian world, 174.
Slavery deprives of almost all human rights, 111, 112.
Slavery, disintegration of family relation by, 103.
Slavery, evident intention of framers of Constitution, not to recognize it
as a social institution, 141.
Slavery, in all its phases, evil to the victim and to tbe inflicter. 111.
Slavery, in its constitutional aspect, a claim, or species of debt, 142.
Slavery in United States milder than in West Indies, 102.
Slavery, in what restricted sense the Constitution recognizes it, 146.
Slavery is war. 171.
Slavery, ita effect upon Southern character, 116.
Slavery-maintainers wise in their generation, 166.
Slavery modified in Border States, 118.
Slavery of Indians, sanctioned by royal edict, 24.
Slavery, plausible allegation that it has a phase of faUure and a phase of
success, 101.
Slavery seemed to prosper for a time, 128.
Slavery, severity of, increased in United Statea during last thirty years,
103, 110.
Slavery should be utterly uprooted, 186.
Slavery, system of, in Cotton and Sugar States, 102 to 106.
Slavery, terrible conditions, involving immunity to crime, necessary for
its safe maintenance, 113.
Slavery, under what phase ia it recognized by tho Constitution ? 137.
Slavery, Western, inception of, 23.
Slavery, whither the doctrine that the Constitution endorses it, leads, 143.
Slavers, British, number of, 35.
Slavea are thrown overboard to'save insurance, 58.

INDEX. 245
Slaves, average number carried, per ton burden, 48.
Slaves, how obtained in Africa, 40.
Slaves in the handa of the rebels legaUy free, 178.
Slaves, number of, emancipated in AVest Indies, 65.
Slaves, number of, exported from Africa in seventy-two years, 37.
Slaves, number of, exported from Africa in three centuries and a half, 38.
Slaves, number of, imported in colonial days, 87.
Slaves, number of, imported into United States up to 1808, 92.
Slaves, on slavers, chained to each other and to the deek, 51.
Slaves, once freed, cannot, except by illegal violence, be re-enslaved, 179.
180.
Slaves, rejected by slavers, often put to death, 44.
Slaves, space allowed to each, on slaver, 50.
Slave-trade, germ of, 31.
Slave-trade, sinister influence of, in aggravating condition of slaves on
plantations, 98.
Slave-treaties, wording of, 32.
Some evils can be extirpated by revolution only, 195.
Songa of home, female slaves brutally punished by captain of slaver for
singing, 52.
South America, negro population of, 81.
South, the future home of the freedmen, 210.
Spanish barbarities to Indians, 25.
State action cannot add to, or take from, the Constitution, 139.
Statistical details, their force as testimony, 62.
Statutory rates of wages for negro, wrong, 227.
Streams, the two diverging, 84, 127.
Streams, two diverging, their proportionate numbers, 93.
Strict interpretation of Constitution not to be confounded with mere tech
nicality, 145.
Substitution, as slave, of African for Indian, 28.
Suffrage, negro, 200, 201, 202.
Summary of arguments showing constitutionality of emanoipation in in
surrectionary States, 182.
Supervision of negro should be temporary only, 228.
Supreme Court cannot sit in judgment on a great meaaure of national
policy, 188, 189, 190.
Taney, Chief-Justice, hia unfounded aasertion, 141.
Technical view of a great question unbecoming a statesman, 144, 145.
Tender mercies of alavery are cruel, 122.
They who violate the rights of one race of men lose a portion of their
reverence for the rights of all, 126.
Three million negroes thrown into the Atlantic, 61.
Unnatural element introduced, its motive and its immoral reaulta, 95 to
98.
Uruguay, negro population of, 81. , ^, ^ , ^,^
Usurpation, by one race, of labor of another, debases the usurpers, usually
extinguishes the laborers, sometimes causes bloody war, 129, 130.
¦Vast element of war-strength, 161.
Venezuela, negro population of, 79.
War, a just, has for its object to restore peaoe, 135.
AVari civil, brought upon us by slavery, 129.
91 :s

246 INDEX.
War, during, we may have to strike at the Government of an enemy through
individuals, 135.
War, foreign, in case of, slavery a dangerous element of weakness, 172,
173.
War, source of supply of slaves, 41.
War-strength, a vast element of, 161.
AVater, scarcity of, on slavers, 63.
AVay of the transgressor is hard, 181.
We cannot, and ought not to, maintain slavery in a narrow Border strip,
184, 185.
Western Hemisphere, negro population of, 82.
West Indies, negro population of, 66.
What gentlemen descend to, under a vitiating system, 122, 123.
White Pariaha of the South, 125.
AVhy the United States did not sooner emancipate, 175.
World, great law of, arrested, 83.
Ximenes, Cardinal, declines Las Casas' proposal to import Africans into
West Indies, 31.

THE END.