"In his general orders of January 21, prior to breaking camp, Gen. Jackson complimented the various regiments and commands, saying of the two bodies of colored volunteers: 'They have not disappointed the hopes that were formed of their courage and perseverence in the performance of their duty. Majs. Lacoste and Daquin, who commanded them, have deserved well of their country.'

"REWARDS HELD UP

"Yet, although these colored troops were commended for their coolness and bravery under fire, especially in the memorable engagement of December 23 when they were attached to Coffee's brigade, which opened the series of battles, recognition for their services, by way of pension and bounty, was withheld for several years after their discharge from the service and then was granted only after an opinion had been given by William Wirt, Attorney General of the United States at that time, that they might legally be so recompensed.

"When the colored troops enlisted the act of Congress of December 24, 1811, provided a bounty of $16, with three months' pay, and a grant of 160 acres of land to those who had served five years, the same amount of land to the heirs of those killed in battle, and the same amount of land to the heirs of those who had died in the service after having served five years. The act of January 11, 1812, carried like provisions, and the act of December 10, 1814, again carried the provisions, except that the amount of land granted was doubled.

"After the colored troops were mustered out, application was made in their behalf for recognition under these acts, especially for the bounty of 320 acres of land, but it was not until 1823 that their claims were recognized.

"JACKSON PRAISED TROOPS

"This apathy and long delay ensued notwithstanding the fact that under date of December 27, 1814, Gen. Jackson had reviewed the first engagement in a report in which he spoke highly of the men of color attached to Coffee's brigade. He said in this engagement a number of prisoners were taken, and the British loss was about 100. On the night of the 23d of December, in the engagement below New Orleans, the British left 100 killed, and 230 wounded, their loss in prisoners taken making their total loss that night about 400.

"Again, reporting on the battle of January 8, Gen. Jackson said that the enemy advanced in two strong columns, and that 'they were received with a firmness which defeated all their hopes. For upward of an hour the firing was incessant, but the enemy at length fled in confusion from the field, their losses including Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham.' Under date of January 19 Gen. Jackson informed the War Department that the enemy had decamped, leaving eighty of their wounded and fourteen pieces of heavy artillery, and that he believed Louisiana was then 'clear.'

"ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OPINION

"It was to J. C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, that William Wirt, then Attorney General, wrote, under date of March 27, 1823, declaring that it was not, in his opinion, in the power of the government to deny the colored troops and their heirs the emoluments of their service in the army. Mr. Wirt's letter is as follows:

"'Sir: Had I been called on a priori to give a construction to the several acts of Congress, which are the subject of Mr. Cutting's letters of the 21st of May, 1821, and 30th of January, 1823, of Maj. Charles J. Nourse's of the 20th of January, 1823, and Mr. J. W. Murray's of the 22d of December, 1822, I should have had no hesitation in expressing the opinion that it was not the intention of Congress to incorporate negroes and people of color with the army, any more than with the militia of the United States. But the acts of Congress, under which this body of people of color are understood to have been raised during the late war, uses no other terms of description as to the recruits than that they shall be 'effective, able-bodied men' (act 24th December, 1811), 'for completing the existing military establishment,' and act 11th January, 1812, 'to raise an additional military force,' of 'free, effective, able-bodied men' (act December 10, 1814), 'making further provision for filling the ranks of the army of the United States.'

"ALL REQUIREMENTS FULFILLED

"As either of these descriptions was satisfied by the persons of color in question; as the recruiting officers, who were quoad hoc the agents of the United States, recruited these persons on a contract for the pay and bounty stipulated by law, as the officers of government recognize them as a part of the army, by their regular returns of this corps, who received, till the close of the war, the same pay and rations with other troops, were subject to the same military law and performed the same military services, it seems to me that a practical construction has been given to the law in this particular, from which it is not in the power of the government justly to depart.

"I think, therefore, that they ought to receive the promised land bounty. But, without some further and more explicit declaration of the purpose of Congress, I would not recommend a repetition of such contracts on any future occasion on laws worded like those under consideration; by which I mean, not merely the three laws which I have cited, but the whole military system of the United States, militia included."

* * * * *

Mrs. R. L. Pendleton has published the new edition of the Life and Works of Phillis Wheatley by G. Herbert Renfro. This volume contains a sketch of G. Herbert Renfro and a much more detailed sketch of the life of Phillis Wheatley by this writer. It contains the correspondence of the poetess and a larger number of her poems than we find in some of the other editions of her works. The book is well printed and nicely bound and may be purchased for the small sum of $1.50 from R. L. Pendleton, 1216 You St., Washington, D. C.

* * * * *

Longmans and Company have published A. J. McDonald's Trade, Politics and Christianity in Africa and the East. It is a valuable contribution to the British colonial policy.

H. O. Newland's Sierra Leone; its People, Products and Secret Societies has come from the press of Bale, Sons and Donnelson. The author is a student of sociology and knows much about West Africa. To this is appended 44 pages of information on Sierra Leone by H. Hamel Smith.

In the Hands of Senoussi has been published by Mrs. Gwatkin Williams. This book is a collection of facts compiled from the diary of Captain R. Gwatkin Williams, giving an account of nineteen weeks of captivity of the survivors of H. M. S. Tara in the Libyan Desert.

The tales of General Botha's desert march in Southwest Africa have been published as Sun, Sand and Sin by Hodder and Stoughton.

Articles of interest on Africa recently published are Islam on the Congo by W. J. W. Roome in the Moslem World, L'Islam en Mauritanie et au Senegale in the Revue du Monde Musulman and Observations on the Northern Section of the Tanganyika-Nile Rift Valley by Captain C. H. Stigand in the Geographical Journal.

The Early History of Cuba, 1492-1586, by I. A. Wright, has been published by MacMillan Company. The book shows evidence of extensive research and scholarly treatment.

The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History is making extensive preparation to bring together during the last week in August all persons who are now seriously interested in the study of Negro history. It is hoped that a large number of members may be able to attend and that interest in the work may extend throughout the country. Some of the leading historians of the United States will be invited to address this body.



THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. II—JULY, 1917—NO. 3



THE FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY

What to do with the Negro population has almost always been a question before the American people. Since the early date of 1714 its removal to some territory beyond the limits of the United States or to an unsettled area of our public lands has been advocated. During the century which followed the earliest mention of deportation, its advocates published their plans as individual propaganda, sought the approbation of religious and humanitarian organizations, and in one or two instances tried to secure favorable State or national action on them. But throughout this long period of one hundred years no concerted action was taken: the period is characterized by sporadic origins and isolated efforts; and these early projectors of plans to remove the Negro were the trailmakers in a pioneering movement which culminated in a national organization.[234]

Obviously private enterprise alone could make little headway in the actual colonization of the Negroes in a territory sufficiently distant to be beyond the pale of the white population. The one item of expense was too serious a handicap for individual initiative to overcome. Besides the case of Captain Izard Bacon of Virginia, who temporarily removed his fifty-two freedmen to Pennsylvania to await a favorable time for sending them over sea,[235] and of Mary Matthews of King George's County, Virginia, who by will emancipated her slaves and provided for their removal to a place where they could enjoy their liberty,[236] there is but one significant example of actual colonization under individual auspices. This occurred in 1815 when Paul Cuffe took thirty-eight Negroes to the western coast of Africa.[237] This dramatic event in Negro deportation, owing to the wide publicity given to it, stimulated activity anew in colonization ventures.

We shall now review these new schemes and show how representatives of the transportation movement assembled in Washington city, and having enlisted in their cause men most distinguished in the councils of the nation, formed the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States, an organization still in existence but now known as the American Colonization Society and having as a monument to its checkered career, the free Negro republic, Liberia, on the western coast of Africa.

To begin with, it is well to point out that Thomas Jefferson, whose advocacy of Negro colonization dates from 1773, replied in 1811, to a request for his opinion on Ann Mifflin's proposition to make a settlement of colored people on the west coast of Africa under the auspices of the different States, that he considered it "the most desirable measure which could be adopted for gradually drawing off" the black population; and he added: "nothing is more to be wished than that the United States should themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of Africa."[238] It requires little effort to appreciate the weight of this Ex-President's opinion, and colonizationists later gave wide publicity to it in order to strengthen their cause.[239]

Additional deportation sentiment is found in the recommendations of the Union Humane Society, an anti-slavery organization founded in 1815, in Ohio, by Benjamin Lundy. Two planks in the program of the Society are noteworthy: first, it emphasized the necessity of common action by all forces interested in the amelioration of the Negro race; and, second, it recommended as a basis for common action the removal of the Negroes beyond the pale of the white man.[240]

While the Union Humane Society was silent on national aid, the Kentucky Colonization Society came out in strong terms for it. Taking advantage of the close of the War of 1812 and of the existence of vast tracts of unappropriated lands in the United States, and realizing that the number of free blacks daily increased, and that the territory open to them for residence was greatly restricted owing to the prohibitory legislation existing in many States, this Society, at its annual meeting, held in Frankfort, October 18 and 19, 1815, petitioned Congress that a suitable territory "be laid off as an asylum for all those negroes and mulattoes who have been, and those who may hereafter be, emancipated within the United States; and that such donations, allowances, encouragements, and assistance be afforded them as may be necessary for carrying them thither and settling them therein; and that they be under such regulations and government in all respects as your wisdom shall direct."[241]

Another manifestation of sentiment for removing the Negroes to a distant territory is found in a series of resolutions passed by the Virginia Assembly on December 21, 1816. These resolutions were introduced and sponsored by Charles Fenton Mercer, a slaveholder. In the spring of 1816, he accidentally discovered the secret action of the Assembly, taken in 1800, just after the Negro insurrection of that year, the upshot of which was two resolutions directing the Governor to correspond with the President of the United States for the purpose of securing somewhere a suitable territory for the colonization of emancipated slaves and free Negroes[242]. It was too near the end of the session when Mercer found these resolutions for him to present a program to the Assembly. In the interim, however, Mercer broke the bar of secrecy, interviewed Francis S. Key, of Georgetown, and Elias B. Caldwell, of Washington city, and with their advice drew up some resolutions to introduce in the Assembly at its next session. Moreover, while in the North that summer for the purpose of the recuperation of his health, having made known his plan, he received "promises of pecuniary aid, and of active cooperation."[243] At the next session of the Virginia Assembly, Mercer introduced his resolutions, the purport of which asked the national government to find a territory on the North Pacific on which to settle free blacks and those afterwards emancipated in Virginia. These resolutions having been amended by the Senate to read on the North Pacific or the African Coast were passed by the Assembly on December 21, 1816, the very day on which the first public meeting of deportationists was held in Washington and out of which grew the American Colonization Society.

A year later, speaking before this organization, Mercer stated his reasons for supporting deportation. "Many thousand individuals in our native State, you well know Mr. President, are restrained from manumitting their slaves, as you and I are, by the melancholy conviction that they cannot yield to the suggestions of humanity without manifest injury to their country." He held that the rapidly increasing free black population endangered the peace of the State and impaired in a large section the value of slave property. What banditti, consisting of the degraded, idle, and vicious free blacks, "sally forth from their coverts, beneath the obscurity of night, and plunder the rich proprietors of the valleys. They infest the suburbs of the towns and cities, where they become the depositories of stolen goods, and, schooled by necessity, elude the vigilance of our defective police."[245] Thus a Virginia slaveholder saw in Negro colonization a means to relieve the State of a dangerous population, to increase the value of slave property and to make possible manumission by that class of slaveholders in which he put himself.

A concurrent expression on Negro deportation, but apparently an independent one, is connected with the name of Robert Finley, of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. A graduate of Princeton, a teacher, a Presbyterian pastor, Finley was in 1816 made president of the University of Georgia, at Athens, where he died the following year at the age of forty-five. As early as 1814 he wrote "a very particular friend in Philadelphia" his ideas on Negro colonization.[246] On February 15, 1815, he wrote a letter to John O. Mumford, of New York City, in which he argued for the removal of the free blacks. He said in part: "Everything connected with their condition, including their color, is against them; nor is there much prospect that their state can ever be greatly ameliorated, while they shall continue among us. Could not the rich and benevolent devise means to form a colony on some part of the Coast of Africa, similar to the one at Sierra Leone, which might gradually induce many free blacks to go there and settle, devising for them the means of getting there, and of protection and support till they were established? Ought not Congress to be petitioned to grant them a district in a good climate, say on the shores of the Pacific Ocean? Our fathers brought them here, and we are bound if possible to repair the injuries inflicted by our fathers. Could they be sent to Africa, a three-fold benefit would arise. We should be cleared of them; we should send to Africa a population partially civilized and christianized for its benefits; our blacks themselves would be put in better condition. Think much on this subject, then please write me again when you have leisure."[247]

Reverend Mr. Finley participated in a colonization meeting held in Princeton, New Jersey, November 6, 1816, which drew up a memorial urging the legislature to use its influence in securing the adoption of some deportation scheme by Congress. The memorialists recognized that many slaves had been emancipated; that the same principles that prompted past manumissions would gradually effect the freedom of all others; that freedmen should be able "to rise to that condition to which they are entitled by the laws of God and nature"; therefore, they should be separated from the whites and placed in a favorable situation, possibly Africa.[248]

A third concurrent manifestation of colonization activity is connected with the name of Samuel J. Mills, whose indefatigable energy and unselfish devotion to all causes missionary are scarcely paralleled in history. Whether as an undergraduate at Williams College or as a graduate student at Yale or Andover Theological Seminary, he was feverishly active in projecting plans for Christian missionary work. His mother said: "I have consecrated this child to the service of God as a missionary,"[249] and surely he was faithful to death to this dedication. He was the leader of the Society of Inquiry Respecting Missions, founded in 1810, an organization which favored African colonization.[250] As soon as his college work was over he made a missionary tour through the Middle West and South, under the auspices of the Society for Propagating the Gospel,[251] and in 1814-15 he made a second tour.[252] He is credited with having originated the American Bible Society, the United Foreign Missionary Society, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He took a deep interest in the movement which about this time sent men to India, Ceylon, the Sandwich Islands, and to the various tribes of the American Indians. He had a hand in the formation of the Foreign Mission school at Cornwall, Connecticut, and the establishment of the African School at Parsippany, New Jersey, is directly attributed to him.

When Mills made his tour through the West and South he not only preached the Gospel and distributed Bibles, he studied the condition of the Negro as well. "We must save the Negroes or the Negroes will ruin us," he concluded. He was convinced that if some disposition could be made of the free Negroes, many slaveholders would gladly emancipate their slaves. With this in view, he sought to procure a district in Ohio, Indiana, or Illinois where the blacks might be colonized. In this way he could test his principle and develop leaders for a more extended settlement in the far West or in Africa.[253] This plan did not mature, but he continued to recommend emigration both to the blacks and whites and to provide for the training of Negro teachers and preachers. The young missionary established a school under the care of the synod of New York and New Jersey at Parsippany in the latter state, which was to "qualify young men of color for teachers of schools and preachers of the gospel, in hope of exerting an influence in correcting morals and manners of their brethren in cities and large towns; and also to raise up teachers for these people, should an effort be made to settle them by themselves, either in this country or abroad." Some gave to aid the school as an auxiliary to the colonization effort, who would not have given, had not that view been presented. "I am confident," Mills wrote (in 1817), "that the people of color now in this country, that is, many of them, will be settled by themselves, either in this country or abroad. The teachers who may be raised up will promote this object. Whether they remain in this country or not, much must be done to qualify them for living in society by themselves."[254]

One of the earliest movements in which an effort was made to adopt some particular plan of operation was at Georgetown, District of Columbia, in March, 1816. The meeting was called by a resident of Georgetown, then a little village, and several citizens of the neighboring States were present and took part in the discussion.[255]

Other expressions favorable to the deportation of Negroes were made about this time. At a meeting in Greene County, Tennessee, composed of delegates of the Manumission Society, emancipation was recommended "and if thought best, that a colony be laid off for their reception as they become free."[256] Dr. Jesse Torrey, Jr., a physician, writing a few days before the passage of the Virginia resolutions, advocated the transfer of the Negroes to some distant American Territory. He thought, since Congress had done nothing toward such a movement, public subscriptions from beneficent societies and individuals should be solicited with which to purchase a suitable site for a colony and meet the expense of transportation.[257] Hezekiah Niles, the great compiler, said he had thought on colonization from his youth up.[258] An editorial in a Georgia newspaper dated January 1, 1817, said deportation was seriously agitated in different parts of the country. The Georgia editor believed that free blacks were dangerous to the welfare of society and that the gradual reduction of the number of slaves was imperative to the public good. "We must choose between our own destruction and general emancipation," said the Georgian. "If the government will find means of conveying out of the country such slaves as may be emancipated and would likewise purchase annually a certain number, particularly females for transportation, it is believed our black population would soon become harmless if not extinct. To the importance of such an object, the expense will bear no comparison; and a more favorable period than at present for its accomplishment can scarcely be expected."[259]

The Georgia editor was right. On the very day that his editorial went to press, a representative body of men were in conference on this subject at Washington city; and as a result of their deliberation the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States (later known as the American Colonization Society) was organized. The leading advocates of Negro deportation looked to the city of Washington as the strategic place to advance their cause. The earliest arrival was Robert Finley, who reached the capital about the beginning of the month of December, 1816. He had spent the greater part of the fall maturing plans for bringing the cause before the people. It is highly probable that he knew nothing about the plans of other advocates nor of the action of the Virginia Assembly. Upon his arrival at Washington he immediately began to call on Congressmen, the Cabinet officials, the President, and, in fact, on any one whom he could interest.[260]

Finley was in communication with Paul Cuffe, the only practical colonizationist in America. His expeditions to Africa and England, and especially the transportation of Negroes to Sierra Leone, in 1815, were noted in the press as far west as Louisville, Kentucky,[261] and those interested in further efforts along this line were in touch with him. Samuel C. Aiken, of Andover, had written him on July 23, 1816, and Jedekiah Morse four days later.[262] Finley wrote Cuffe, December 5, on the back of the printed memorial to the New Jersey Legislature, undoubtedly the work of the Princeton meeting of the previous November, for information about Sierra Leone, information to be used by him and others interested in the free people of color. He also asked if Cuffe thought some other part of Africa more desirable for a settlement than Sierra Leone and stated that "the great desire of those whose minds are impressed with this subject is to give an opportunity to the free people of color to rise to their proper level and at the same time to provide a powerful means of putting an end to the slave trade and sending civilization and Christianity to Africa."[263] Cuffe was unable to reply to this letter before January 8. He gave Finley the information he desired and recommended in the event of a general deportation the Cape of Good Hope as a location for a settlement.[264]

In a printed pamphlet, "Thoughts on the Colonization of Free Blacks,"[265] which Finley wrote about this time and which he was distributing in Washington, is contained the line of argument he was using. He said: "At present, as if by divine impulse, men of virtue, piety, and reflection, are turning their thoughts to this subject, and seem to see the wished-for plan unfolding, in the gradual separation of the black from the white population, by providing for the former, some suitable situation, where men may enjoy the advantages to which they are entitled by nature and their Creator's will." He argued for the practicability of establishing a colony either in the "Wild Lands" of America or in Africa, but he thought Africa the more desirable as this location would prevent conflicts with the remaining slave population, and avoid foreign intrigues. He held that Africa had the advantage of being the real home of the Negro, of having the existing settlements in Sierra Leone formed by English philanthropists and by Paul Cuffe. On the other hand, requiring explorations, diplomatic negotiations and great expense, it offered greater obstacles than a location within America. But Finley was not disheartened, believing, as he did, in the justice of the cause and in the wisdom of Congress to devise some means to lighten, perhaps to repay, the cost. He continued by saying: "Many of the free people of color have property sufficient to transport, and afterward to establish themselves. The ships of war might be employed occasionally in this service, while many Negroes themselves could be induced to procure a passage to the land of their independence. The crews of the national ships which might be from time to time at the colony, would furnish at least a part of that protection which would be necessary for the settlers; and in a little time the trade which the colony would open with the interior, would more than compensate for every expense, if the colony were wisely formed." The Negroes, Finley thought, would gladly go, for they long after happiness and have the common pride and feelings of men. Already, he pointed out, an association of free blacks existed in Philadelphia whose purpose was to correspond with Sierra Leone and investigate the possibilities of an immigration. Finley held that colonization would gradually reduce slavery, because provision being made for the emancipated slaves, masters would manumit them.

Samuel J. Mills, "having been providentially made acquainted"[266] with this movement, about the close of November left New York, where he was working among the poor, immediately for Washington. What he, as well as the other workers, did there, is pretty well indicated by Congressman Elijah J. Mills of Massachusetts in a letter to his wife, under date of December 25: "Among the great and important objects to which our attention is called, a project is lately started for settling, with free blacks which abound in the South and West, a colony, either on the coast of Africa, or in some remote region in our own country. It has excited great interest, and I am inclined to think that in the course of a few years it will be carried into effect. I enclose you an address which is in circulation here upon the subject. Agents are attending from different parts of the United States, soliciting Congress to take the subject up immediately, and I was this morning called upon by a Mr. Mills (a young clergyman who was at New Orleans with Smith), who is very zealously engaged in the work. He is an intelligent young man, and appears completely devoted to the great work of diffusing the blessings of Christianity to those who are ignorant of it."[267]

The first general conference that the colonization workers had in Washington was in the nature of a "prayer meeting"[268] held in the home of Elias B. Caldwell, a brother-in-law of Finley, clerk of the United States Supreme Court, and afterward secretary of the American Colonization Society. This meeting, which both Mills and Finley attended, was "for the purpose of imploring the divine direction, on the evening of the following day, when the expediency of forming a Colonization Society was to be publicly discussed."[269] The enthusiasm of Finley at this time was almost boundless; he would give five hundred dollars of his own scanty means to insure its success; when some, thinking the project foolhardy, laughed at it, he declared, "I know the scheme is from God."[270] The efficacy of prayer bore the traditional fruit, for whereas persons "were brought there from curiosity, or by the solicitation of their friends, viewing the scheme as too chimerical for any national being to undertake [nevertheless] a great change"[271] was produced on them.

According to their plans, Congressman Charles Marsh, of Vermont, having made the necessary arrangements,[272] the colonizationists held on the next evening, December 21, 1816, in the Davis Hotel, a public meeting, attended by citizens of Washington, Georgetown, Alexandria, and other parts of the country. Among the men of note present, not heretofore mentioned, were Henry Clay, Francis S. Key, Bishop William Meade, John Randolph, and Judge Bushrod Washington.[273] Niles reports the attendance "numerous and respectable, and its proceedings fraught with interest."[274] The avowed object of the meeting was for the "purpose of considering the expediency and practicability of ameliorating the condition of the Free People of Color now in the United States, by providing a Colonial Retreat, either on this continent or that of Africa."[275]

Henry Clay, the chairman of the meeting, pointed out in his remarks that no attempt was being made "to touch or agitate in the slightest degree, a delicate question, connected with another portion of the colored population of this country. It was not proposed to deliberate upon or consider at all, any question of emancipation, or that which was connected with the abolition of slavery. It was upon that condition alone he was sure, that many gentlemen from the South and West, whom he saw present, had attended, or could be expected to cooperate. It was upon that condition only that he himself had attended."[276]

The principal address was delivered by Elias B. Caldwell, the Princeton schoolmate of Charles Fenton Mercer. He argued for the expediency and practicability of African colonization. It was expedient because the free blacks have a demoralizing influence on our civil institutions; they can never enjoy equality among the whites in America; only in a district by themselves will they ever be happy. To colonize them in America would invite the possibility of their making common cause with the Indians and border nations, and furnish an asylum for fugitives and runaway slaves. Africa seemed the best place to send them: there was a settlement already in Sierra Leone, the climate was agreeable to the colored man's constitution, they could live cheaply there, and above all other reasons, they could carry civilization and Christianity to the Africans. While the expense would be greater than that connected with a settlement on the American Continent yet, in order to make atonement for the wrongs done Africa, America should contribute to this object both from the treasury of the national government and from the purse of private individuals. With the promise of equality, a homestead, and a free passage, no black would refuse to go. In concluding his speech he said: "It is for us to make the experiment and the offers; we shall then, and not till then, have discharged our duty. It is a plan in which all interests, all classes, and descriptions of people may unite, in which all discordant feelings may be lost in those of humanity, in promoting 'peace on earth and good will to man.'"[277]

Robert Wright of Maryland, having pointed out some difficulties, gave colonization his approbation with the hope that there would arise for gradual emancipation some plan in which slaves would be prepared for freedom, and slaveholders would be remunerated out of the funds of the nation.[278]

It appeared to John Randolph of Roanoke that "it had not been sufficiently insisted on with a view to obtain the cooperation of all the citizens of the United States, not only that this meeting does not in any wise affect the question of Negro Slavery, but, as far as it goes, must materially tend to secure the property of every master in the United States over his slaves." He considered the free black "a great evil," "a nuisance," and "a bug-bear to every man who feels an inclination to emancipate his slaves." "If a place could be provided for their reception," said Randolph, "and a mode of sending them hence, there were [sic] hundreds, nay thousands of citizens" who would manumit their slaves.[279] Randolph's characterization of the free black was generally approved by the leaders in this movement. Caldwell used "degraded" and "ignorant" in describing this class of people. Mills said: "It will transfer to the coast of Africa the blessings of religion and civilization; and Ethiopia will soon stretch out her hands to God."[280]

One finds it difficult to explain how the colonizationists could argue that one of their objects was to remove a dangerous element from our population and at the same time take civilization and Christianity to Africa. No doubt it was expected that the Negroes who attended the schools, established principally by Mills, would become efficient leaders of their fellows. It is highly probable also that the arguments were designed for different sections of the country and different classes of people—to remove the dangerous element would make a strong appeal to the slaveholder and the South, for it was believed that the free black contaminated and ruined the slave; to civilize and Christianize Africa would appeal to churchmen and religious bodies, and this argument could be used in the North. To return to Africa people who could contribute to her betterment; indeed, to return to Africa the descendants of her enslaved sons and daughters improved by contact with the civilization of the whites would be a recompense to that continent for the wrongs perpetrated, during a period of two hundred years, on her population. It was only America's moral obligation, said the colonizationists, to return the black population to Africa.

Another object the deportationists had in mind was to stop the slave trade. They believed that the existence of a settlement in Africa would deter the slaveholder from securing his cargo in human beings. It would also furnish the opportunity needed to develop a commerce in legitimate articles of trade between Africa and America and other parts of the world. It was also hoped by the leaders of this deportation movement to remove the great obstacle to the abolition of slavery. Now that provision was made for the freedmen the slaveholder felt at liberty to manumit his slaves. To quote Mills again: "It is confidently believed by many of our best and wisest men, that, if the plan proposed succeeds, it will ultimately be the means of exterminating slavery in our country."[281]

The charge was made later, especially by the Abolitionists, that the movement was a deeply laid device for making slavery more secure than ever. They took great delight in referring to Randolph's remark, made at the first public meeting of the deportationists, that colonization would tend "to secure the property of every master in the United States over his slaves." Subsequently the management of the Society itself recognized the force of this remark as a quotation from the eighty-second report will show: "It was this ill-omened utterance of a solitary member of the Society, who appears to have taken very little if any part in its subsequent proceedings, that afterward gave the impracticable abolitionists a text for the most vituperative and persistent assaults upon the Society and its purpose."[282] Randolph's remark is not only qualified by the fact that he took "very little if any part in its subsequent proceedings" but also by his prediction that thousands of slaveholders, when assured of a place to send the Negroes, would emancipate their slaves because they would then be relieved from their care. With all this, however, Randolph claimed the colonization movement had nothing to do with abolition.

And it must also be remembered that the eccentric Randolph was only one man among a large group of men who were interested in the deportation movement. In this large group two, Mills and Finley, religious patriots, stand head and shoulders above all the others, both of whom, Mills, particularly, hoped to provide a method for the abolition of slavery. Moreover, the Abolitionists should have observed that the name of Daniel Webster appeared among the signers of the constitution as well as the name of Ferdinando Fairfax[283] and especially that of William Thorton.[284] Fairfax and Thorton were excellent representatives of deportation schemes, proposed in the eighteenth century and deliberately designed to remove from our country all Negroes both free and slave. It seems, therefore, safe to conclude that the colonization movement of 1816-17 was at that time sincere in its purpose and straightforward in its aims.

Therefore with humanitarian aims the colonizationists at their first public meeting, December 21, 1816, passed resolutions favorable to the formation of an association for the purpose of deporting the free blacks to Africa or elsewhere, and appointed a committee to draw up and present a memorial to Congress requesting measures for securing a suitable territory for a settlement, and another committee to prepare a constitution and rules to govern the association when formed.[285] Having taken this action, they decided to adjourn until the following Saturday, December 28, at six o'clock.

According to this arrangement "citizens of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, and many others" met in the Hall of the House of Representatives of the United States and adopted a Constitution.[286] By provision of the Constitution the Association was "The American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States" and its exclusive object "to promote and execute a plan for colonizing (with their consent) the Free People of Color residing in our Country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem most expedient." Every citizen of the United States was eligible to membership upon the payment of one dollar, the annual dues, or as amended a few days later, thirty dollars for life membership. Provision was made for the usual officers and for the formation of auxiliary societies to this parent organization.[287] The first annual meeting was fixed for Wednesday, January 1, 1817.

On this date the colonizationists met in Davis's Hotel, Henry Clay again presiding. Bushrod Washington was elected President of the Society, equally noted men were chosen for the other officers,[288] and on motion of the Honorable John C. Herbert of Maryland, Reverend Robert Finley was "requested to close the meeting with an address to the Throne of Grace"[289] which he did, it being "his last public act in the last public meeting"[290] for the organization and success of the American Colonization Society.

HENRY NOBLE SHERWOOD, PH.D.

STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, LA CROSSE, WIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[234] For an extended account of the plans proposed before 1816, for removing the colored population, see H. N. Sherwood, "Early Negro Deportation Projects," in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, II, 485 ff.

[235] Niles' Register, XVII, 30. Some of the slaves of James Smith, a Methodist preacher of Virginia, had accompanied their quondam master to Ohio in 1798. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, Publications, XVI, 348-352.

[236] Documentary History of American Industrial Society, II, 161, 162.

[237] This story has been told by the writer, "Paul Cuffe and his Contribution to the American Colonization Society," in Mississippi Valley Historical Society, Proceedings, VI, 370-402.

[238] Thomas Jefferson, Writings (Ford ed., New York, 1892-1899).

[239] American Colonization Society, First Annual Report (Washington, 1817), 6, 7.

[240] "The Life of Benjamin Lundy" (Philadelphia, 1847), 16. The manuscript record is in the archives of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society.

[241] American State Papers, Miscellaneous, II, 278, 279. The Petition reached Congress January 18, 1816. It was referred to the Committee on the Public Lands and reported on adversely. Annals of Congress, 14th Cong., 1st session, 691.

[242] These resolutions are printed in American State Papers, Miscellaneous, I, 464.

[243] Archibald Alexander, "A History of Colonization on the West Coast of Africa" (Philadelphia, 1846), 75-76; Niles' Register, XI, 275, 296; James Mercer Garnett, "Biographical Sketch of Charles Fenton Mercer" (Richmond, Va., 1911), 15.

[244] Mercer's resolutions were passed by the House of Delegates, December 14, 1816, passed with amendment by the Senate, December 20, and concurred in by the House, December 21. Annals of Congress, 15th Congress, 1st session, II, 1774. Indiana, Georgia and Tennessee, all a little later, passed similar resolutions. American Quarterly, IV, 397.

[245] American Colonization Society, First Annual Report, 8.

[246] Isaac V. Brown, "Biography of the Reverend Robert Finley, of Basking Ridge, N. J." (Philadelphia, 1857), 60.

[247] Printed in Brown, Finley, 60, 61. See also African Repository, II, 2, 3, and Matthew Carey, "Letters on Colonization and its Probable Results addressed to C. F. Mercer," Philadelphia, 1834, 7.

[248] Niles' Register, XI, 260. Colonel Ercuries Beatty president at the meeting. The committee appointed to secure signatures to the memorial consisted of the following names: Elisha Clark, John G. Schenck, Dr. E. Stockton, Dr. J. Van Cleve, and Robert Voorhees. Byron Sunderland in his "Liberian Colonization," Liberian Bulletin, No. 16, 18, says this meeting was virtually a failure. The memorial may be found in the Cuffe manuscripts. It was sent to Paul Cuffe by Robert Finley when the latter was in Washington seeking to bring about some general deportation movement.

[249] Gardiner Spring, "Memoir of Samuel John Mills" (Boston and New York, 1829), 10.

[250] Sunderland, "Liberian Colonization," Liberian Bulletin, No. 16, 18.

[251] Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, Second Series, II, 1.

[252] Report of a missionary tour through that part of the United States which lies west of the Allegheny Mountains (Andover, 1815).

[253] Thomas C. Richards, "Samuel J. Mills, Missionary, Pathfinder, Pioneer and Promoter" (Boston, 1906), 190, 191; Spring, "Memoir of Mills," 129.

[254] Spring, "Memoir of Mills," 125, 126; African Repository, I, 276. A school based on these principles was established in New York also, in October, 1816. While the above quotation was written by Mills in July, 1817, it is a fair representation of his idea for several years previous.

[255] An editorial in the North American Review, XXXV, 126.

[256] Niles' Register, XIV, 321. Thomas Doan, Aaron Coppock, James Boyd, Joseph Coin, and Elihu Embree signed such a statement.

[257] Jesse Torrey, Jr., "A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States: with Reflections on the Practicability of Restoring the Moral Rights of the Slave, without Impairing the Legal Privileges of the Possessor; and a Project of a Colonial Asylum for Free Persons of Colour: including Memoirs of Facts on the Interior Traffic in Slaves, and on Kidnapping" (Philadelphia, 1817), 27-30.

[258] Niles' Register, XIII, 180.

[259] "Documentary History of American Industrial Society," II, 157, 158.

[260] African Repository, I, 23.

[261] See the Western Courier (Louisville, Kentucky), for October 26, 1815.

[262] Paul Cuffe manuscripts in the Public Library, New Bedford, Mass. Paul Cuffe to Samuel C. Aiken, August 7, 1816; Paul Cuffe to Jedekiah Morse, August 10, 1816.

[263] Ibid., Robert Finley to Paul Cuffe, December 5, 1816, Finley asked that the reply if mailed to him at Washington be sent in care of his brother-in-law, Elias B. Caldwell.

[264] Ibid., Paul Cuffe to Robert Finley, January 8, 1817.

[265] Printed in Brown, Finley, 66 ff. The pamphlet was written before he came to Washington.

[266] Spring, "Memoir of Mills," 131.

[267] Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, First Series, XIX, 20.

[268] African Repository, I, 2, 3. Referring to Caldwell in an address at an annual meeting of the Society, January 20, 1827, Clay said: "It is now a little upwards of ten years since a religious, amiable and benevolent resident of this city, first conceived the idea of planting a colony, from the United States, of free people of color, on the western shores of Africa. He is no more, and the noblest eulogy that could be pronounced on him would be to inscribe upon his tomb, the merited epitaph, 'Here lies the projector of the American Colonization Society.'" Clay was historically mistaken. Similar things were said of Mills and Finley. This speech may be found in pamphlet form in the Library of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society.

[269] Spring, "Memoir of Mills," 131, 139, 140.

[270] Brown, Finley, 65, 66.

[271] Ibid., "A Respectable Resident of the District of Columbia to Brown," 64, 65.

[272] Sunderland, "Liberian Colonization," Liberian Bulletin, No. 16, 19.

[273] Virginia Historical Society, Collections, VI, 26; Niles' Register, XI, 296.

[274] Niles' Register, XI, 296.

[275] Manuscript Record of the Meeting, Library of Congress. Copy furnished by the American Colonization Society.

[276] The National Intelligencer reported the meeting. The substance of Clay's remarks is printed in Archibald Alexander, "A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa" (Philadelphia, 1849), 77-82; in J. Tracy, "A View of Exertions Lately Made for the Purpose of Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States, in Africa, or Elsewhere" (Washington, 1817), 4 ff.

[277] Alexander, "A History of Colonization," 82-87; Tracy, "A View of Exertions," 4-11. For a criticism of all the speeches before this meeting see David Walker, "An Appeal" (Boston, 1830), 50 ff.

[278] Torrey, "A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery," 69.

[279] Torrey, "A View of Exertions," 9, 10; Walker, "Appeal," 57.

[280] Spring, "Memoir of Mills, Samuel J. Mills to Ebenezer Burgess," July 30, 1817, 136.

[281] Ibid., 136.

[282] American Colonization Society, Eighty-second report, 7.

[283] See the American Museum, December, 1790, 285-286, for his plan.

[284] Thorton's activities have been related by H. N. Sherwood, "Early Negro Deportation Projects," in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March, 1916, 502-505.

[285] The committee for the memorial consisted of: E. B. Caldwell, John Randolph, Richard Rush, Walter Jones, Francis S. Key, Robert Wright, James H. Blake and John Peter. The committee for the Constitution: Francis S. Key, Bushrod Washington, E. B. Caldwell, James Breckenridge, Walter Jones, Richard Rush, and W. G. D. Worthington.

[286] Mills wrote Cuffe, December 26, 1816, informing him of the activities in Washington and asked for information about Africa. He added a postscript: "If the general government were to request you to go out for the purpose of exploring in your own vessel would you engage in this service if offered proper support?" Cuffe Manuscripts, Samuel J. Mills to Paul Cuffe, December 26, 1916.

[287] The signers of this Constitution are given by Sunderland, "Liberian Colonization," Liberian Bulletin, No. 16, 20, as follows:

Signers of American Colonization Society, December 28, 1816.

H. Clay Jno. Loockerman John Taylor E. B. Caldwell Jno. Woodside Overton Carr Thos. Dougherty Wm. Dudley Diggs P. H. Wendover Stephen B. Balch Thos. Carberry F. S. Key Jno. Chambers, Jr. Samuel J. Mills Charles Marsh Thos. Patterson Geo. A. Carroll David M. Forest John Randolph of Roanoke W. G. D. Worthington John Wiley Rob't H. Goldsborough John Lee Nathan Lufborough Wm. Thornton Richard Bland Lee William Meade George Clark D. Murray William H. Wilmer James Laurie Robert Finley Geo. Travers J. T. Stull B. Allison Edm. I. Lee Dan'l Webster B. L. Lear John P. Todd J. C. Herbert W. Jones Bushrod Washington Wm. Simmons J. Mason E. Forman Mord. Booth Ferdinand Fairfax J. S. Shaaf V. Maxsy Geo. Peter



[288] The other officers were as follows:

William H. Crawford of Georgia Henry Clay of Kentucky William Phillips of Massachusetts Col. Henry Rutgers of New York John E. Howard } Samuel Smith } of Maryland John C. Herbert } John Taylor of Caroline, of Virginia Andrew Jackson of Tennessee Robert Ralston } Richard Rush } of Pennsylvania

John Mason of the District of Columbia Robert Finley of New Jersey

These were the thirteen vice presidents.

Elias B. Caldwell, Secretary William G. D. Worthington, Recorder David English, Treasurer

Francis S. Key Walter Jones John Laird Rev. Dr. James Laurie Rev. Stephen B. Balch Rev. Obadiah B. Brown James H. Blake John Peter Edmund I. Lee William Thorton Jacob Hoffman Henry Carroll

These composed the Board of Managers.

[289] Manuscript Records of the Meeting.

[290] Brown, Finley, 65, 66.



THE EVOLUTION OF SLAVE STATUS IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

II

The story of the evolution of the status of the Negro in the North during the first part of the nineteenth century can be easily told as it was the result of forces the existence of which we have already suggested. By far the most important among these were economic and industrial. Lecky has said somewhere that the masses of men are influenced far more by the practical implications of daily life in the pursuit of their callings than they are by abstract ideas and this finds abundant illustration in the attitude taken by the northern mind upon the Negro. In Pennsylvania, where slavery existed in its mildest form and where the moral sentiment of the community was best prepared for its eradication, thanks to the persistent and effective campaign of education begun by the Quakers as early as 1688 and prosecuted under the leadership of such men as the saintly John Woolman and Benezet, economic interests still played a more important part than ethical.[291] Slavery flourished only where the plantation system was profitable and this was not the case in Pennsylvania. The industrial development of the State was in the direction of small farming, manufacturing and commerce, all of which were uncongenial to slavery. In the absence of paramount economic needs, slavery was unable to hold its own against the moral idealism of the Quaker and the racial antipathies of the German and the Scotch Irish.

Even in respect to New England the evidence is abundant that it was economic rather than moral or religious influences that paved the way to freedom for the slave. At the beginning it was the imperative demand for labor that led to the enslavement of the Indian and Negro, which the Puritan justified by an appeal to his high Calvinism. When this demand ceased because of the increase of white labor and when the diminished supply rendered it more difficult to get profitable slaves, the same economic laws tended to encourage the freedom of the slave.[292] "Fortunately for the moral development of our beloved colonies," says Weeden, "the climate was too harsh, the social system too simple, to engender a good economic employment of black labor. The simple industrial methods of each New England homestead, described in so many ways through these pages, make a natural barrier against an alien social system including either black or copper-colored dependents. The blacks soon dwindled in numbers, or dropped out from a life too severe for any but the hardiest and firmest fibered races."[293] When we see how during the constitutional convention of 1787 selfish economic interests led Massachusetts to enter into the unholy alliance with the pro-slavery States of the far South to fix upon another section of the country the nefarious slave-trade for twenty years longer, we may perhaps conclude that it was after all fortunate for the integrity of the Puritan conscience that slavery was unprofitable as a domestic institution. The slave-trade ended in 1808 and during the years 1806, 1807 six hundred New England slavers arrived at the port of Charleston alone.[294]

There seems to have been, on the whole, comparatively little express legislation in the way of constitutional changes and few express acts abolishing slavery in the North during this period.[295] The process was a gradual one, proceeding by acts of manumission or gradual abolition, the act of Pennsylvania in 1780 being typical. Slavery does not appear to have ever been made illegal in Pennsylvania by express law but died out in the natural course of events. Hence slaves were found in this State well on toward the middle of the nineteenth century.[296] This goes to show that the abolition of slavery and the admission of the Negro to complete citizenship were the result of a slow evolution of public sentiment. Moore even contends that slavery was never formally abolished in Massachusetts until 1866 when it was agreed on all hands that it was "considered as abolished."[297] Thus the social mind, by a natural and normal development of democratic ideals, arrived unconsciously at the point where it was impossible to harmonize the status of the slave with the prevailing sentiments of the community. The social mind was for this reason often far in advance of the legal status of the Negro as determined by the laws which represented earlier stages of opinion. A case in point is the Massachusetts act of 1788, of which Moore says: "We doubt if anything in human legislation can be found which comes nearer branding color as a crime," and yet this law remained upon the statute books of the State long after it had ceased to be in accord with the feelings and practices of the community and was only repealed in 1834.[298] The hesitancy of the legislators of the different free States to pass express acts of abolition and thus formally to pronounce slavery illegal may have been due in part to the fact that slavery was sanctioned to a certain extent by the constitution and was the "peculiar institution" around which centered the social and economic life of a large number of sister States.

The great industrial expansion of the North and West toward the end of the second decade of the century and the increase of population through immigration in time reduced the Negro in the North in point of number to an almost negligible factor. He was swept along with the rising tide of the growing industrial democracy and shared in the general benefits of citizenship accorded to all. But it would give a very superficial idea of the real status of the Negro in the North during this time if we were to base our judgments upon the statistics of slave and free, the various acts for manumission or the vigorous anti-slavery agitation from 1830 on. A closer acquaintance with the actual conditions of the time shows that there was a striking contrast between the theoretical rights and privileges which the Negro was supposed to enjoy by virtue of the constitution and bills of rights and those he really did enjoy.

This was a subject of frequent remark by foreigners travelling in America. Captain Marryat, writing of conditions in Philadelphia in 1838, says, "Singular is the degree of contempt and dislike in which the free blacks are held in all the free states of America. They are deprived of their rights as citizens; and the white pauper who holds out his hand for charity ... will turn away from a negro or colored man with disdain."[299] DeTocqueville, in a remarkable characterization of the relations between the races based upon his observations in the early thirties, says that as the legal barriers fall away in the free States those of race prejudice are drawn all the sharper. Wherever the freemen have increased the gap has widened between them and the whites. "The prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and inequality is sanctioned by the manners while it is effaced from the laws of the country. Though having the franchise the Negro may not exercise the right for fear of his life;[300] his rights before the law are pronounced upon by white judges only; his children may not attend the same school with the white's and gold can not buy a ticket for him in the same theater; he lies apart in the hospital, worships at a different altar and must bury his dead in a different cemetery."[301]

Harriet Martineau, writing in 1834-35 and commenting upon the statement of a Boston gentleman that the Negroes were perfectly well treated in New England in the matter of education, the franchise, and otherwise, states that while they are nominally citizens, "yet their houses and schools are pulled down,[302] and they can obtain no remedy at law. They are thrust out of offices, and excluded from the most honorable employments, and stripped of all the best benefits of society by fellow-citizens who, once a year, solemnly lay their hands on their hearts, and declare that all men are born free and equal, and that rulers derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."[303] Fanny Kemble, the English actress, writes in 1838-39 of the treatment of the free blacks at the North, "They are marked as the Hebrew lepers of old, and are condemned to sit, like these unfortunates, without the gates of every human and social sympathy. From their own sable color, a pall falls over the whole of God's universe to them, and they find themselves stamped with a badge of infamy of Nature's own devising, at sight of which all natural kindness of man to man seems to recoil from them. They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs; debarred from all fellowship save with their own despised race—scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not tolerated as companions by the foreign menials in your kitchens. They are free certainly but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society; they are free from the chain, the whip, the enforced task and unpaid toils of slavery; but they are not the less under a ban."[304]

There was in fact throughout this entire period a remarkable paradox in the social mind of the North with regard to the Negro, for we find everywhere the strongest antipathy to the Negro personally and general discriminations against him socially and politically, united with the greatest enthusiasm for his rights in the abstract. Even the best spirits of the time did not escape it. Fanny Kemble relates of John Quincy Adams, who became the very head and front of the anti-slavery element in Congress,[305] that while discussing with her at a Boston dinner-party the Shaksperean heroine Desdemona, he asserted "with a most serious expression of sincere disgust, that he considered all her misfortunes as a very just judgment upon her for having married a 'nigger.'"[306] About the time when Garrisonian abolition was at its high tide, when Wendell Phillips was placing Toussaint l'Ouverture above Caesar and Napoleon on the roll of fame, when Whittier, Longfellow, and Lowell were lending their talents to the cause of unalterable and inalienable rights of mankind, Jesse Chickering published a "Statistical View of the Population of Massachusetts from 1765 to 1840," at the end of which he appended some very interesting facts and conclusions as to the colored population of this State. He stated that, owing partly to their race traits and partly to fixed and immovable prejudices of the whites against them, the blacks are deprived of sympathy and social enjoyments and reduced to a servile and degraded condition of poverty and dependence (p. 137). Because of this widespread prejudice against their color, "they cannot obtain employment on equal terms with the whites, and wherever they go a sneer is passed upon them, as if this sportive inhumanity were an act of merit.... Thus, though their legal rights are the same as those of the whites, their condition is one of degradation and dependence." In spite of the vigorous agitation for the rights of the Negro which stirred New England and the entire nation at this time, the writer says "the prejudices which are now felt in this Commonwealth against the people of color and the disadvantages under which they labor ... we can hardly expect will soon be removed," though he is persuaded that "this want of true sympathy, and this sense of degradation, must operate on their sensibility and unfavorably affect their physical, moral, and social condition, and shorten to them the duration of life" (pp. 156, 157).

The anti-slavery movement in Pennsylvania never went to the rhapsodical extremes we find in Massachusetts. It was from beginning to end sane and reasonable and yet vigorous and unremittent. Nevertheless, we find the same enthusiasm for the rights of the Negro in the abstract combined with racial antipathy, social and political discriminations, and even on more than one occasion mob violence in the actual treatment of the Negro population of the State.[307] Pennsylvania's interest in slavery, because of her position just to the north of slaveholding States, was never allowed to lag even after she had set all her slaves free. Her Negro population was constantly being replenished from the South and largely by fugitive slaves. This brought about much friction with Maryland, owing to the unwillingness of Pennsylvanians to surrender the runaways. In spite of Federal law the spirit of freedom made it unsafe for owners to hunt for their escaped slaves in Pennsylvania, as the famous Christiana riot of 1851 shows, and brought the State to the verge of nullification,[308] to such extremes were a peaceful and yet liberty-loving people ready to go in their championship of the abstract rights of the oppressed slave.

But while this was true, there is abundant evidence to show that by the masses of the people the Negro was thoroughly disliked, persecuted and relegated to an inferior social status by no means in harmony with the doctrine of the inalienable and unalterable rights of man. Negroes were set upon in the streets, beaten, cut and even stoned to death in sheer wanton cruelty. In 1831 the refusal of New Haven, Connecticut, to establish a Negro college was enthusiastically endorsed in resolutions passed at a public meeting in Philadelphia, and in 1834, 1835, 1838, 1842 and 1849 this city was distracted by riots directed against the Negroes. The houses of the Negroes were sacked, their inmates beaten and mobs of whites and blacks fought through the streets with clubs and stones.[309] "A careful study of each of these riots," says Turner, "makes inevitable the deduction that the deep underlying cause which made every one of them possible, and which prepared them long before they burst forth, was a fierce, and at least among the lower classes, an almost universal, hatred of the negro himself."

How are we to explain this contradiction in dealing with the Negro? Why did Pennsylvanians mob him, disfranchise him from 1838 to 1873, seek to get rid of him by colonization and yet hide him from his master and resolutely refuse to close to him the door of freedom even in the face of Federal laws? The answer is one of fundamental importance for the comprehension of the status of the Negro in the social consciousness of the nation now as well as then. The people of Pennsylvania had been educated for generations in the great traditions of freedom. These traditions had their roots in the religious emancipation of the reformation and gradually extended to the political sphere and became endeared to the hearts of all Americans through the struggle with Great Britain. Pennsylvanians had little special love for the Negro but they loved these traditions dearly. In a healthy democracy these traditions are inseparably united in the thought of the average citizen with the personal sense of liberty. To violate them is to violate that which lends validity to his own conviction of his right to be free.

It will be said, of course, that in the social and political restrictions placed upon the Negro as an actual member of the community, these lofty ideals were negated. Rights that are granted in theory but are denied in the actual give and take of social contacts are not true rights. This was undoubtedly the case. But to register this criticism does not by any means exhaust the situation. For these so-called inalienable rights are not something that the individual is born heir to as he is to his father's fortune. They are his inalienably only by virtue of his potentiality for realizing them and as such they exist only as possible forms of self-activity, functions which by common consensus of opinion are conceded to each individual. In a very real sense, therefore, they must be won or created by each for himself. The individual or the group, which through ignorance or inefficiency or thriftlessness or racial discrimination is incapacitated for measuring up to the demands of an aggressive and virile democracy, will inevitably find these inalienable and unalterable rights merely a name so far as they are concerned. Actual social status in existing American democracy is the result of a balance of forces one of which is the individual's power of self-assertion. In der Kampf um's Recht the community imagines it has done its utmost when it insists upon fair play. There was also the inevitable friction due to the close contact of diverse race groups. The Negro population of Pennsylvania was larger than that of any other northern State. The presence of thousands of members of a different race, to whom complete social assimilation through intermarriage was refused, and who represented different standards of living and lower industrial efficiency, led inevitably to group conflicts.

Just on the eve of the Civil War, therefore, the theoretical status assigned the Negro in the social consciousness of the North and the one very soon to be assured to him throughout the entire nation in Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, insisted that he be included in those broad and somewhat indefinite categories of rights embodied in our national political symbols. The enthusiasm for these is to be explained not so much from the objective and eternal nature of the rights themselves as from the feeling that they represent a phase of common social experience of fundamental importance for society as a whole. Previous training in democratic traditions made men capable of the noblest self-sacrifice in their loyalty to these ideas of freedom and equality, but the fact of their being associated with the enslaved Negro was accidental. No sooner had they assisted the runaway slave to freedom than they forgot him. He was left to make good in the autonomous, laissez faire atmosphere of a vigorous democracy. Soon, however, his economic helplessness and inefficiency, his ignorance of the tense northern life aroused the same men who had helped him to freedom to the realization that he was of an alien race, with characteristics that made his social assimilation difficult. Where the blacks were present in large numbers the situation was fraught with the gravest difficulties of social adjustment. These were facts not encouraging for the future of the two races in the nation. They should have taught men that emancipation, instead of solving the problem, would plunge the nation and particularly the South into a situation the infinite difficulties of which were never dreamed of by the enthusiastic champions of abstract human rights. DeTocqueville's language, though written almost thirty years before the debacle came, sounds like a veritable prophecy. He felt that national abolition was bound to come in the course of events. "I am obliged to confess," he says however, "that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the United States," for abolition will inevitably "increase the repugnance of the white population for the men of color."[310]

It is well to remember, when we come to examine the status of the Negro in the slave States, that slavery would naturally follow lines of development determined by the economic, social and climatic conditions of the sections concerned. These conditions, of course, vary greatly throughout a region stretching from Maryland to Texas. As late as the famous Dred Scott case, when slavery was limited to the South, Justice Curtis could say, "the status of slavery embraces every condition from that in which the slave is known to the law simply as a chattel, with no civil rights, to that in which he is recognized as a person for all purposes, save the compulsory power of directing and receiving the fruits of his labor. Which of these conditions shall attend the status of slavery, must depend upon the municipal law which creates and upholds it."[311] A comparative study of the legislation of all the slave States with regard to the Negro both as slave and free will very clearly reveal the effect of these varying conditions in the several States concerned.[312] Nothing is more necessary to a calm and unprejudiced study of the institution of slavery than the realization of this fact.

What then were the economic, climatic and social conditions in the South which contributed to shape the attitude of the social mind of the section toward the Negro? The dominant feature of the social and economic life of the South of ante bellum days was the plantation. This was the industrial unit comprising usually large land areas, worked by slaves divided into groups, under strict supervision, with a fixed routine of labor in the production of special commodities such as tobacco, rice, sugar-cane or cotton. Two types of plantation life developed even before the Revolution, the Virginian and the West Indian, the latter confined at first to the coast line of South Carolina and later covering the "Black Belt" of the far South. The term "plantation" was originally synonymous with colony. Virginia was the "plantation of the London Company"[313] but was later broken up into smaller economic units which retained the name. By the beginning of the eighteenth century the prevailing industrial system in Virginia and Maryland was these small plantations or farms where Negro slaves gradually took the place of white redemptioners and the prevailing staple was tobacco. About the end of the seventeenth century the Jamaican or West Indian type of plantation was introduced on the coast region around Charleston. It consisted of larger estates cultivated by thirty or more slaves, with few or no white laborers, the master and his family often being the only whites present the year around. Fanny Kemble's "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation," 1838-39, gives an interesting though somewhat sombre picture of the conditions prevailing on the rice plantations near Darien, Georgia.

Slavery, as an industrial institution, has flourished only in countries with great natural resources, easy of access and affording ready means of sustenance. The crops cultivated must be simple, such as tobacco, rice or cotton, and hence admitting of easy mastery by the slave as well as the efficient organization and direction of gangs of laborers. The soil must be very fertile and unlimited in extent to assure a profit on the unskilled routine labor of the slave, which makes rotation of the crops impossible and soon exhausts the soil so that the worn out lands must be abandoned for new. The industrial cycle passed through by the great slave-estates of the West Indies finds a parallel in the South, where the speedy exhaustion of a fertile soil with the resulting necessity for a more scientific and intensive agriculture, impossible under slavery, forced slaveholders to open up new lands constantly. Hence the insatiable land hunger of the slave power.[314]

There is evidence that at the end of the colonial period the older lands of Virginia and Maryland, where slavery and the plantation system had long existed, were approaching a period of decay. This was the logical result of slavery. An industrial readjustment was taking place involving the decline of the plantation system and with it the decline of slavery. It was at this juncture that the fate of slavery, and with it the destiny of the entire southwestern region, was determined by a new factor, namely, the rise of the cotton culture. But for the invention of the cotton-gin, and the improvements in cotton manufacture that accompanied it, the economic forces already militating against the patriarchal form of slavery in Virginia would doubtless have brought about in time its peaceful abolition. As it was, these discoveries created an industrial basis for the fostering of slavery more dangerous than any pro-slavery legislation had been and more sweeping and insidious than anti-slavery agitators could possibly imagine. It opened up for the cultivation of the cotton plant the vast fertile region extending from eastern North Carolina through South Carolina, middle Georgia and Alabama to Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas[315]. Here were found all the conditions mentioned above as necessary to the success of slavery.

Within this vast region, however, there were variations of climate and soil which made certain sections better adapted to slavery and the plantation system than others. Between the foothills just to the south of the Appalachian mountains and the flat sandy levels of the sea coast lay a central rich alluvial region called the "black belt" at first after the color of its soil and later after the color of the majority of its inhabitants. This section was peculiarly well suited to the growth of the cotton plant and here, after the pell-mell of immigration which poured into the southwest with the development of cotton culture began to take on the forms of a fixed social order, arose those large cotton plantations which were the central feature of southern ante-bellum civilization. The "black belt" included virtually the whole of South Carolina, a strip through central Georgia and south-central Alabama and the rich alluvial lands along the Mississippi and Red rivers in the States of Mississippi and Louisiana. Here the large plantations gradually absorbed the lands of the frontiersmen and small farmers who had preceded them and spread over all the lands where the gang labor of the slave system could be prosecuted with profit[316].

This slave aristocracy of the "black belt," which determined the social standards and shaped the morals and directed the political policies of the South, was composed of a few powerful families who through their wealth, social standing and talents for leadership controlled the destinies of a vast section. Perhaps 500,000 out of a total white population of 9,000,000 profited by slavery in 1860, but out of this number some ten thousand families, including such familiar names as Hampton, Rutledge, Brooks, Hayne, Lee, Mason, Tyler, Wise, Polk, Breckenridge and Claibourne, really determined the policies of the South[317]. Beneath the slave aristocracy were ranged the other elements of society. First among these came the small farmers, often owning a few slaves. Though having occupied the land first, they were gradually crowded out by the competition of the large slaveholders, who bought up their lands and forced them to occupy the foothills to the north of the "black belt" in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi which were ill adapted to the plantation slave system. Next came the thriftless and impecunious whites, variously known as the "pine-landers" and "crackers" in Georgia, the "sand-hillers" of South Carolina, or the "red-necks" of Mississippi. The lowest stratum was composed of slaves with a slight intermixture of free Negroes.

Bagehot remarks that slavery "creates a set of persons born to work that others may not work, and not to think in order that others may think. Therefore, slave-owning nations, having time to think, are likely to be more shrewd in policy, and more crafty in strategy[318]." This is amply illustrated in the case of southern leaders. The sons of the slaveholders received the best education the land could afford; the plantation life gave a training in administration and leadership and with leisure and natural political talent they looked to public life for advancement. Those who showed ability in local or State governments were advanced to the House or Senate so that by a process of natural selection the slave-power at the South was able to develop leaders, who not only moulded the public sentiment of the South itself but shaped the policies of the nation for the better part of half a century[319].

Thus, by a slow process of evolution, was built up in the "black belt" of the South an industrial empire, based upon slavery, nominally democratic, but in reality an oligarchy composed of a group of talented men, united in their traditions, social standards and political ideals by virtue of their common loyalty to the "peculiar institution" of their section. It was democratic within its own limits, chivalrous, cultured although it cherished ideals essentially at variance with democratic institutions and bound in time to give birth to a social consciousness that was incompatible with that entertained by the rest of the nation. When the slave-power was defeated at the polls in the election of 1860, secession was the logical result.

The status of the Negro, both slave and free, was intimately associated with this economic development of the far South. There is much to indicate that the entire South gradually underwent a profound change of attitude towards slavery in the three decades from 1800 to 1830. Slavery was generally looked upon as an evil by the southern leaders of the time of the constitutional convention and for two decades afterwards, perhaps. Mason of Virginia in the debates of 1787 stated that slavery discouraged the arts and manufactures, prevented immigration of whites, exercised a most pernicious effect upon manners, made every master a petty tyrant and would bring the judgment of heaven down upon the country. Baldwin, speaking for Georgia, said that "If left to herself, she may probably put an end to the evil[320]." Jefferson's expressions against slavery were many and pronounced[321], and there is reason for thinking that these ideas were shared by many even in the far South. An editorial in the Milledgeville Journal of Georgia, January 1, 1817, has this remarkable language: "With such a hint from a distinguished philosopher (i. e., Jefferson), shall we not merit execration, if we fail to provide in time an adequate remedy for this great and growing evil, an evil which is always staring us in the face—which obtrudes so frequently upon us in spite of ourselves, the most gloomy and awful apprehension[322]." As late as 1826, when Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, asserted before the House that slavery was sanctioned by religion, John Randolph, of Virginia, himself a slaveholder, replied: "Sir, I envy neither the head nor the heart of that man from the North who rises here to defend slavery from principle[323]."

Apparently the first assertion of the usefulness and beneficence of the institution from a southern man of political repute came from the governor of South Carolina in 1830[324]. How then are we to explain the profound change of sentiment indicated by the leading papers of the South just before the war? The Richmond Enquirer, September 6, 1855, asserts: "Every moment's additional reflection but convinces us of the absolute impregnability of the Southern position on this subject. Facts, which can not be questioned, come thronging in support of the true doctrine—that slavery is the best condition of the black race in this country, and that the true philanthropists should rather desire that race to remain in the state of servitude, than to become free with the privilege of becoming worthless." The Richmond Examiner, 1854, advises all southern men to act "as if the canopy of heaven were inscribed with a covenant in letters of fire that the negro is here, and here forever; is our property and ours forever; is never to be emancipated; is to be kept hard at work, and in rigid subjection all his days[325]." The Daily Intelligencer, of Atlanta, January 9, 1860, states editorially: "Whenever we see a negro, we presuppose a master and if we see him in what is commonly called a 'free state' we consider him out of his place. This matter of manumission, or emancipation, now thank heaven less practiced than formerly, is a species of false philanthropy, which we look upon as a cousin german to Abolitionism—bad for the master, worse for the slave." Calhoun pronounced slavery "the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions[326]." Hammond claimed, in a eulogy of slavery in the Senate, March 4, 1858, that its "frame of society is the best in the world." Jefferson Davis defended it as "a form of civil government for those who by nature are not fit to govern themselves";[327] Mason, a descendant of the great Mason of revolutionary days, described it as "ennobling to both races."[328]

It is useless to try to explain these statements by attributing to their authors moral perverseness; the explanation must be sought in the conditions that surrounded them. We have already alluded to the fact that our moral conceptions are absorbed from the social milieu in which we are reared. The prevailing ideals of family, business, the social, political or national group of which we happen to be members we absorb as part of our "social copy" and build into the fabric of our social selves. The larger the group and the more vital any given ideal is considered by the group as a whole the greater will be its hold upon the loyalty of the individual member. Everything conspired to give to the social sanction of the slave-aristocracy an authoritativeness and binding force without a parallel in the history of the nation. Upon the basis of the slave as the industrial unit was reared in the course of years a mass of mores which conditioned the entire world-view of the slave-owner. Economic methods, social differentiations, political institutions, religious ideals, moral values, local patriotism and pride, all took their color from the "peculiar institution" of the section. To question its validity or to deny its divine authority was to threaten the entire social order with an Umwerthung aller Werthe that to the southern mind was unthinkable. The increase of the slave population and the ever widening gap between white and black made it all the harder for the white to consider schemes for emancipation or manumission which meant economic and social chaos. The weight of accumulated traditions, the hardening of social habits and even the constantly increasing economic handicaps of the ruinous slave-labor made any change more difficult and dangerous. Many, who would gladly be rid of slavery, found themselves in the predicament described by Jefferson, "We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go."[329]

The status of the slave was determined directly by the rise of the slave-power and on the whole shows, as was to be expected, a tendency to treat the slave more and more as a chattel or, as Aristotle would say, a "living tool." The general drift of the slave codes of the various southern States was to negate the personality of the slave and to fix his status as a part of an industrial system. The earliest of the slave laws to be passed were of the nature of police regulations, restricting the personal liberties of the blacks.[330] Of peculiar interest are the laws with regard to emancipation and the status of the free Negro, for the latter was a standing rebuke to slavery and a fruitful source of discontent among the slaves. In 1822 a Charleston writer says, "We look upon the existence of the Free Blacks among us as the greatest and most deplorable evil with which we are unhappily afflicted.... Our slaves when they look around them and see persons of their own color enjoying a comparative degree of freedom and assuming privileges beyond their own condition, naturally become dissatisfied with their lot, until the feverish restlessness of this disposition foments itself into insurrection and the 'black flood of long retained spleen' breaks down every principle of duty and obedience."[331]

As early as 1800 South Carolina prohibited free Negroes and mulattoes from entering the State. In 1822 they were required to have a guardian and in 1825 were forbidden the use of firearms. By an act of 1841 emancipation of slaves was made unlawful and in 1860 free Negroes were required to wear badges with their name and occupation.[332] In many States emancipation was made unlawful and in Arkansas by an act of 1858 all free Negroes and mulattoes were required to leave the State or be sold as slaves.[333] About 1830, and probably as a result of abolition activity, acts were passed in practically all the southern States prohibiting even the elementary forms of education to the slave and placing heavy penalties upon whites who violated it. Thus the status of the free Negro tended always to approximate that of the slave. Moreover, a study of the evolution of the slave codes of each State shows a gradual narrowing of the sphere of the slave and a general drift towards the principle expressed in South Carolina law that "Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever."[334]

So far then as the relations of master and slave went, the law gave the former complete control over the slave's time and labor, his food and clothing, punishment, together with the right to turn him over to an agent or sell his labor. The slave had no property rights in law, could be sold, mortgaged, leased or disposed of in payment of debt; the slave could not be party in a legal action against his master, could not redeem himself, change his master or make a contract. His status was hereditary and perpetual both for himself and his children. In his civil status no slave could be a witness against a white or be a party to a suit; he was deprived of the benefits of education and in some States of religious instruction also.[335] The actual status of the slave was, of course, subject to the varying conditions of the different sections of a wide area of country, the status of the slave on a Virginia or North Carolina farm being very different from that of the field hand on a sugar or cotton plantation of the far South. The slaveholders also were to a very large extent a law unto themselves. "On our estates," says DeBow, "we dispense with the whole machinery of public police and public courts of justice. Thus we try, decide, and execute the sentences in thousands of cases, which in other countries would go into the courts."[336] Fanny Kemble describes how she made use of this autonomous position of the slaveholder on her own plantation to teach her slave Aleck to read in violation of the law.[337] This explains the great extremes in southern slavery and the mistakes of writers who judge the institution as a whole by extreme cases.[338]