CHAPTER I -- Slavery.
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 position 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 everything of good, of useful, of beautiful, that charms the senses or ministers to the wants of man; to which we owe life, and everything that makes life desirable.
According to the structure of society in each country this error is modified in form. In certain nations of continental Europe the great line of social demarcation is drawn between the titled classes, whether noble by birth or ennobled by royal creation, constituting the privileged and all other persons, including merchants, though wealthy, and lawyers, though eminent, and authors, though popular, constituting the unprivileged. More liberal England begins to admit within the pale the distinguished and successful among the professional classes, and from the mercantile and literary 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 Republic, 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 feelings, the practice of the inhabitants, as regards laborers 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 results 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 influence has been more pernicious on the enslavers or on the enslaved.
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 afterward, in the month of October, 1500, that Francis de Bobadilla was guilty of two outrages: One, the sending home in chains of the great discoverer; the other, the reducing to bondage of the gentle islanders whose fair land he discovered. Bobadilla "granted liberal donations of Indians to all who applied for them."
The first year of the sixteenth century saw introduced into America that baneful system, abhorrent to Christian civilization, which was to spread and to 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 sacrifice, 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 representing as the most kind and inoffensive and hospitable of mankind. Gold must be had. Columbus had been disgraced because he had failed to send home a sufficiency 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."
Thus was legalized that system of repartimientos, under which there had been previously assigned to each Spaniard, by an order on some cazique, a certain number of natives, who were to be instructed in the Catholic faith. What the character of their masters and teachers was may be gathered from the fact that Columbus himself had recommended the transportation to Hispaniola of malefactors convicted of the less atrocious capital crimes. "The prisons of Spain," says Robertson, "were drained to collect members for the intended colony."
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 scrambled 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 eyewitness. "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!'"
"So intolerable," says Washington Irving, "were the toils and suffering inflicted upon this weak and unoffending 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. Robertson confirms it, giving some general statistics on the subject. He tells us:The original inhabitants, on whose labor the Spaniards 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 inhabitants was computed to be at least 1,000,000. They were reduced to 60,000 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 94 out of every 100 of these 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 culmination of enormities that have left an indelible stain on the Spanish name, an expedient was resorted to, in the conception of which, to inhuman barbarity, treachery and blasphemy were superadded.
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 convenient to carry them over to Hispaniola that they might be instructed in the Christian religion and civilized." 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 these 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 it satisfaction.
"That simple people," says Robertson, "listened with wonder and credulity; and fond of visiting their relatives and friends in that happy region, followed the Spaniards with eagerness. By this artifice over 40,000 were decoyed into Hispaniola to share in the sufferings which were the lot of the inhabitants of that island, and to mingle their groans and tears with that wretched race of men."
By this expedient the number of Indians in Hispaniola was raised to 100,000. But the work of human destruction went on. Nine years later, to wit, in 1517, Roderigo Albuquerque, being appointed principal officer to distribute the repartimientos, caused an enumeration of the Indians to be made. The number was found to be reduced to 14,000. Six-sevenths had perished in nine years! The survivors were put up to 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 imagination 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 before it; a terrible attestation to the immeasurable sufferings that may result from a single great crime. Well has De Tocqueville said: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 like some accursed germ upon a portion of the soil; but it afterward 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 of the adjacent islands escaped perpetual servitude, is due, not to the forbearance of their oppressors, but to the tender mercies of death--the great liberator.
An incident, to which is popularly ascribed the first substitution of the African negro for the native of Hispaniola--the first introduction, therefore, into our hemisphere of that race who were to be thenceforth, for centuries, branded with the mark of Cain--may teach us how humanity, in her aberrations sometimes, with the best intentions, 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 sufferings of the down-trodden Indians produced upon him a profound impression. After spending many years in Hispaniola in fruitless efforts to ameliorate the condition of the natives, he returned to Spain previously 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, representing 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 V successor 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 Robertson, following Herrera, 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 for, 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 Portuguese seize them and make them slaves; which 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 tyranically, seeing that the same rule applies in their case as in that of the Indians.
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 recommended 4,000 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 importation into the colonies of 4,000 negro slaves. That patent was sold to a company of Genoese merchants, 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 exempt 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. For well has Augustin Cochin said, "Over the entire surface of the globe the races who compel others to labor without laboring themselves fall to decay."
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; diminishing, 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 assientos, treaties, or contracts of the Spanish Government for the supply of its American colonies with slaves, commencing in 1517, were occasionally granted through the sixteenth century and multiplied in the seventeenth and eighteenth. Some were to individuals, some to companies, some to governments.
Nothing more strongly marks the character of these treaties for the delivery of human beings than the terms employed in wording them. An assiento was granted in 1696 to the Portuguese Guinea Company, by which that company bound itself to deliver to Spain in her transAtlantic colonies 10,000 tons of negroes. England, to designate the human chattels she agreed to supply, employed a term such as vendors of broadcloth or calico might use. By treaty with Spain, bearing date March 26, 1713, his Britannic Majesty undertook to introduce into Spanish America 114,000 pieces of India, of both sexes and all ages. These various treaties, concluded in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, 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.
The extent of these treaties and their lucrative character 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 upward of 50,000,000 francs (say $10,000,000).
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 93, 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 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 engaged 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, appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to trade and foreign plantations, submitting to His Majesty'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 kingdom."
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 the most 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 documentary evidence (especially as to deaths of sailors on slave ships) offered by the celebrated Thomas Clarkson; but they scrupulously abstained from all opinions in regard to the slave-trade and from all recommendations or suggestions touching its abolition. In this volume we find two estimates as to the number of negroes then annually carried to the American colonies; the first puts it at 80,000 annually; the second, containing a detailed estimate of slaves annually sold at sixteen different points on the African coast, sums up 74,000. Of these, one-half are said to be procured on the Gold Coast, at Bonny and New Calabar, and at Loango, Melimba, and Cabenda; about 38,000 set down as purchased by the British, 20,000 by the French, 10,000 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 of the truth. This table gives the total number 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 5,000 tons in 1751 to about 15,000 in 1786 and 1787. But, as we shall show hereafter, the number of slaves carried averaged over two to a ton; consequently British ships front the port of Liverpool alone carried upward of 30,000 annually.
Another table shows that the tonnage of African slavers from all the ports of Great Britain was, in 1787, 22,263 tons. Consequently the annual number of slaves transported to America, at that time, in British bottoms, was upward of 45,000, instead of 38,000, as estimated. In this proportion the total estimate, including vessels of all countries, would be run up to nearly 90,000 slaves a year. The figures seem to indicate that even this is below the actual number.
The calculations produced before the French Committee of Inquiry of 1848 place the number of slaves exported from 1788 to 1840 at from 100,000 to 140,000 a year, and from 1840 to 1848 at from 50,000 to 80,000.
The rate after 1848 continued to diminish. Nevertheless, in 1860 it was still nearly 30,000 a year.
These figures enable us to calculate with approximate 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 120,000 a year6,240,000 Annual deportation of slaves from 1840 to 1848---say, eight years,
at an average of 65,000 a year520,000 Annual deportation of slaves from 1848 to 1860---say, twelve years,
at an average of 30,000 a year360,000 Total in seventy-two years 7,120,000 What annual rate we ought to assume as a fair average 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 difficult to determine. In the report by the Lords of the Committee of Council, already referred to, is a table 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 497,736, being an average of 6,726 a year. Nor 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 average for each of the years in either decade being about 7,700.
But we shall hereafter furnish proof that to the number of slaves delivered in the colonies we must add at least 25 per cent. to obtain the number shipped on the African coast. This would bring up the annual average exported from Africa for Jamaica to 8,407.
If we assume the total deportation of slaves from Africa in the year 1788 to have been 100,000, which is the French committee's lowest estimate 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 40,000, we shall be assuming the annual total throughout these two centuries at less than five times the number that we know to have been annually 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 materials before us, one can judge, the estimate is a moderate one.(a)
Previous to the year 1588--that is to say, for eighty years after the beginning of the negro slave-trade in 1518--the true average is still more uncertain. The Spanish assientos of that period were usually for the delivery of from 3,000 to 5,000 negroes annually. Let us assume the entire slave-trade by all nations during that period at 5,000 negroes only for each year.Adopting the data above suggested we obtain the following general results:
Total deportation of negroes by the slave-trade from the year 1518 to the year 1860.
From 1518 to 1588, 80 years [sic], at an average of 5,000 a year 400,000 From 1588 to 1788, 200 years, at an average of 40,000 a year 8,000,000 From 1788 to 1860, 72 years, as already estimated 7,120,000 Total in 342 years 15,520,000 Upward 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 (b)
(a) By a table, already referred to (Part IV, No. 1), in the report of the Lords of Council, it appears that as early as 1701 104 British vessels were employed in the slave-trade. The number, however, varied very widely in different years, the lowest number (in 1715) being but 24, and the highest (in 1771) being 192. The table was obtained from the inspector-general of imports and exports.
(b) The Commission have endeavored in the above estimate to avoid error, except it be on the side of moderation. Very reputable authorities put the importations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries considerably higher than we 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 Assiento Treaty. (That treaty was dated March 26, 1713.) From 1680 to 1700 the English took from Africa about 300,000 negroes, or about 15,000 a year. The number during the continuance of the assiento may be averaged not far from 30,000. (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 9,000,000, and the considerate German historian of the slave-trade, Albert Hüne, 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, corrected by a comparison with the authentic products of slave labor, as appearing 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 History of the United States, Vol. 3, p. 412.)
Raynal's estimate, thought too low by Hüne, is 9,000,000 up to 1776, and, as the exportations averaged about 80,000 a year from 1776 to 1788, that would give 1,000,000 more, bringing his calculations up to 10,000,000 if extended to 1788. But our estimate as above, up to that year, is but 8,400,000; that is, upward of 1,500,000, or just 16 per cent. below Rayhal'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 3,000,000. But the Commission have assumed the total imported by all nations in the two centuries preceding 1788 to have been 8,000,000. Bancroft estimates importation in a single century by one nation only at 3,000,000. We estimate importation in two centuries by all nations at 8,000,000. The probability will be conceded that the former estimate is at a higher rate, in proportion, than the latter.But we cannot attain to a just conception of the aggregate of evil and suffering produced by this gigantic outrage upon human rights, nor of the loss of life attendant 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 report 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 Rooke said: "When a ship arrived to purchase slaves, the King of Derneh 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 Gorée of four or five months he heard of two battles being fought for slaves.
Capt. T. Wilson, employed on the business of Government in 1783 and 1784, states as to the Kingdom of Derneh: "When they were at war they made prisoners and sold them, and when they were not at war they made no scruple of taking any of their own subjects and selling them, even whole villages at once. * * * He has been told that the King of Derneh can bring 70,000 or 80,000 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 Gorgée.
"The manner in which Sir George Yonge 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."
The Rev. 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 sometimes in a neighbor's territory; more frequently in their own. The practice is notorious."
The witness speaks of Gambia and countries adjoining.(a) Another mode of procuring slaves is akin to this. They are "panyared," to employ the phrase of the country; that is, kidnaped by individuals.
Dr. A. Sparrman, inspector of the Royal Museum at Stockholm and a traveler in the interior of Africa, 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 kidnaped is considerable. He himself witnessed two instances."
Mr. Falconbridge, a slave-trader, testifies: "On the windward coast the negroes are afraid of stirring out at night lest they be kidnaped. A woman, big with child, told him she was caught as she was returning 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 from a great distance--it is said from 800 to 900 miles."
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 witchcraft; 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 had incurred for stealing from a white man, which, the witness adds, "is never pardoned." This was in the Kingdom of Dahomey.
A witness (Mr. Weaver) explained that "they understand by witchcraft the power of doing mischief by supernatural means." Another witness (Mr. Matthews) testifies that having refused to purchase a man suspected of witchcraft, who was offered to him for sale, "they tied a stone around his neck and threw him into the sea."
The Rev. Mr. Baggs, chaplain to Commodore Thompson 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 consequence 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 are 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 otherwise, their fate was usually a sad one. Even delay in the market often caused their death.
The Rev. Mr. Baggs said "he had proof that when marauding parties come with their booty in slaves to the coast and find no vessels, they kill the slaves because of the expense of sending them back."
Mr. Falconbridge, a slave-trader, said "he had seen slaves who were offered for sale and refused cruelly beaten."
Mr. Penny, who had made eleven voyages as captain of slavers, deposes: "He has been repeatedly informed that slaves brought for sale, and rejected by the slave-dealers on account of disease or otherwise, are destroyed as not worth their food."
Sir George Yonge "saw a beautiful child, about five years old, brought from the Bullam 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, which was accepted; brought him to England and made a present of him to the Marquis of Lansdowne. He understood this child had been kidnaped."
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 purchase her, not wishing to be plagued with a child on board. So she was taken back to shore. On the following morning she was again brought to us, Out without the child and apparently in great sorrow. 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 revenue; 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 wickedness? The horrors of the middle passage were surpassed by those that necessarily preceded it.
The ministers of the British Crown 'cannot be accused of sentimentalism. They are no declaimers; no propagandists; no extremists in speculative philanthropy. Their humanity is tempered with moderation and suggested by official evidence. Yet 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 civilized nations. Within twenty-five years, to wit, between 1818 and 1842, they concluded twenty-three treaties on the subject--with Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Naples, Tuscany, Sardinia, the Hanse Towns, the United States, Hayti, Texas, Mexico, Colombia, New Granada, Venezuela, Ecuador, Uruguay, Buenos Ayres, Chili, Peru, and Bolivia.
Lord Palmerston, speaking in the House of Lords in 1844, gave some of the reasons which stirred the government 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 gain procured by the sale of the prisoners. But the greatest number arise from kidnaping 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 kidnapers 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 kidnapers kindle large fires at the entrance, 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 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 six 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 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 landed, 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.
The report of the Lords in Council, from which we have already so copiously quoted, furnishes evidence the most exact and conclusive as to the space commonly allowed to slaves during their passage.
The vessels employed were usually from 100 to 250 or 300 tons burden, averaging in early times little over 100 tons, but toward the end of the eighteenth century being of the capacity of 150 or 200 tons. The universal testimony is, that the average number carried per ton was two persons and upward.
John Anderson, master of slaver, conceives that two slaves to a ton cannot crowd a ship. Sir George Yonge (of the British Navy) says the usual allowance of space is two slaves to a ton, sometimes 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 afterward indorsed by Mr. Tarleton, a Liverpool merchant extensively engaged in the slave-trade, exhibiting the estimate of profit or loss on a vessel of 100 tons at different rates of slaves per ton. Here it is:
Ł s d At one man per ton, the loss is 590 1 0 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 200 tons does not purchase 400 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 200 tons and under, merchants 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."
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 sufficient for them." When asked for the number of inches, he at first refused to give it, saying he did not know; afterward he gave fourteen and two-third inches as a fair average.
Another slave captain (James Bowen) expressed a different opinion. He said: "The average number of slaves carried is two to a ton. * * * Is of opinion that the greatest number of slaves which a ship can carry consistent with their preservation is not above one per ten."
James Penny, a part of whose evidence has already been quoted, said: "The average allowance of width to a slave is fourteen and two-thirds inches."
Captain Parrey was sent to Liverpool by Government in 1788 to take the dimensions of ships employed in the African trade. A plan and sections are given of one of these, the Brooks, a ship of 297 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 470 slaves. But she did carry 607, being about two to a ton. This reduces the width actually allowed to the men to less than twelve inches and a half; and the rest in proportion.
What terrible glimpses of human suffering are furnished by these dry mathematical details. The slaver, 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 came 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,"(b) 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. As to the second mode of suicide, by self-inflicted starvation, its frequency rendered it an object of suspicion and of punishment. Captain Hull, a slave-trader, deposes: "Has known instances of slaves being punished for not eating, supposed to be from stubbornness, when in reality it was from indisposition; and in some instances the slaves so punished have been found dead next morning."
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 disagreeable 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 fortnight 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 140 slaves meeting with a gale of wind which lasted eighteen hours, and losing, in that brief space of time, 50 slaves," upward of one-third of the whole number.
But worse misfortunes than storms sometimes overtook these poor wretches. Sir. William James testifies as follows: "In the year 1779, being master of the Hound, sloop-of-war, and coming from the bay of Honduras to Jamaica, he fell in, off the Isle of Pines, with two Liverpool Guineamen on the middle passage, commanded by Captains Ringmaiden and Jackson, who had very imprudently (but whether willfully or not he cannot 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 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 them what they intended to have done with their slaves if they 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 on 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 insurance, 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." 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. Falcon-bridge, a surgeon 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 resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture to itself a situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves fainted and were carried on deck, where some of them 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 Rev. 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 220 slaves, the number for which his cargo was calculated, they carried 90 only."
The mortality was least from the windward coast, greatest from Bonny, Calabar, Benin, and Gaboon. Individual instances were frequently adduced by the witnesses in which it was about 5 per cent. Occasionally 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 10 per cent. Mr. James Penny, eleven years a slave captain, speaking of the trade generally, said, "on an average he estimated (from his own experience and the best information he could collect) that the mortality was one-twelfth."
The only official table on this subject given in the Lords' Report indicates a much higher rate of mortality than that admitted by these slave-traders. This 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 Company," and is from a statement made by the company itself. It is as follows:A = Negroes shipped. C = Yearly loss. B = Negroes delivered. D = Average loss.
Years A B C D Percent Percent 1680 5,190 3,751 27 2/3 --- 1681 6,327 4,989 21 1/7 --- 1682 6,330 4,494 29 --- 1683 9,081 6,488 28 --- 1684 5,384 3,845 28 --- 1685 8,658 6,304 29 3/4 --- 1686 8,355 6,812 18 2/5 --- 1687 5,606 4,777 14 4/5 --- 1638 5,852 4,936 15 2/3 --- Total 60,783 46,394 --- 23 2/3 [Actual total-Ed.] Negroes delivered-46,396
The mortality, it will be observed, was 14,389 out of 60,783 shipped; that is 23 2/3 per cent. The results from an official table like this, presenting an average on so large a scale, are far more reliable than any deductions from isolated cases or individual testimony or opinion. The very witnesses who spoke of 5 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 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 Yonge 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 submitted 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 3,170 sailors shipped there came home but 1,428, less than one-half; 642 (about 20 per cent.) are recorded as having died. The rest had deserted or were left behind on account of sickness. Of those who returned many went to the hospital and never recovered their health.
Another table shows the deaths of seamen on 24 West Indiamen, in a single voyage, to have been 6, while in 24 slavers it was 216. The average number of seamen employed on slavers being 36 on each (as 3,170 on 88 vessels in the table just referred to), the above is a mortality of 216 out of 864, or just 25 per cent.
Mr. Clarkson shows by other tables that the loss of seamen on board slavers is twenty times as great 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 together."
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 established that the usual rate of mortality among seamen was not less than 25 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 Company" as the average on 60,000 slaves shipped in their vessels, namely, 23 2/3 per cent.
But even to this terrible mortality a material item may have to be added:
Among the documents in the Lords' Report is a report 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 customhouse and the day of sale, all 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 7,873 negroes consigned to him in the years 1786, 1787, and 1788, and reported at the customhouse, 363 died in the harbor of Kingston before the day of sale." This gives a mortality of about 4 2/3 per cent. on shipboard after entry and before landing.
It does not clearly appear from the table of the African 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 4 2/8 per cent. to add to 22 2/3 per cent. furnished in the African Company's table; making an aggregate of 28 1/3 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 percentage 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 20 to 25 per cent. Lest we exaggerate, however, let us put it at 20 per cent. only. (c)(c) It may not be wholly unnecessary to remind the reader, if he be not familiar with the calculation of percentages, that if 20 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 20 but 25 per cent. to the number landed if we wish to obtain the number shipped. Thus, if the number of negroes shipped be 100, we obtain the number landed, namely, 80, by deducting 20 per cent. from 100; but to those 80 we must add 25 per cent. on 80 in order to obtain the original number shipped, namely, 100.
The term "middle passage" is not to be understood as designating the transoceanic route to the West Indies from any particular portion of the slave coast. "Middle passage, or mid-passage; the passage of a slave ship from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean." (Worcester's Dictionary.)It is considered a bloody battle when 10 per cent. of the combatants engaged are killed or wounded. 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 5 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 inspired, 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 prospect 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 of thousands, not even of millions only; it was committed through the persistent barbarities of three centuries and a half, in the case of tens of millions! When we consider the character of the means employed in Africa to fill up the slave cargoes; the wasting wars waged to procure prisoners; the marauding bands of kidnapers 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 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 the number of slaves actually landed in the colonies to find the total of persons who were consigned 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 exaggerated, 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 15,500,000, we have 31,000,000 as the total number of negroes who have been consigned to death or to foreign slavery that one race of men might live by the labor of another. 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 31,000,000 upward of 3,000,000 (a population equal to that of the United States when independence was declared) were east into the Atlantic, while less than 12,500,000 were landed in colonial ports and distributed to planters from the auction block.
Never in any three centuries of man's written history, was the violation of a great principle, alike in political economy, in national morals, and in the religion 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 those flagrant enormities which usually arouse loud-spoken indignation, even when they do not stir to practical reform, among mankind.
But we have raised the curtain on but the first two acts of the great tragedy, the scene being laid of the first in Africa, of the 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 become, in a foreign land, slaves and the progenitors of slaves.
The graphic recital of individual barbarities, authentic 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 individual 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.
We select an example of such evidence, based on official tables running through nearly three-quarters of a century, 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 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 41,596.
In the report of the Lords in council, from which we have already so copiously extracted, is a table (c) 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.
Imported 497,736 Exported 137,014 Leaving an addition, by importation, to the negro
population of the island, in seventy-four year, of360,722 These two items of 41,596 negroes in the island in 1702, and of 360,722 imported from Africa from that time up to 1775--together, 402,318--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 402,318 was represented in 1775 by only 192,787 survivors. (a) It had diminished in three-quarters of a century by 209,531; 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 extends, however, over seventeen years only, namely, from 1764 to 1780, both inclusive. (b) 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 70,706 negroes; that there were imported in the next seventeen years, namely, up to 1780, 38,843, no importations of negroes in the last seven years of the period nor any exportations of them throughout the period being recorded. To 70,706 (the number in 1764) add 38,843 (the number imported in seventeen years) and we have 109,549 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 68,270 alive on the island. 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 statistical 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 4,435,709 in the United States. (c)
We know that in the West Indies, including Guiana, there were emancipated by England, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Holland about 915,000 slaves; (d) and the usual estimate is, that to these should be added one-fifth to obtain the present colored population of these colonies. This would give 1,098,000--or say, in round numbers, 1,100,000---as the entire colored population of the West Indian colonies(a) The Rev. Mr. Bridges, after quoting the table above given, and stating that after deducting the negroes exported from those imported, 360,722 were left for the supply of the island, adds that the number alive in 1775 was 192.787. (Work cited, Vol. 2, p. 456. )
A resident for years in Jamaica, Mr. Bridges had access, through the Duke of Manchester, Governor of the island, to all important official documents. An apologist of slavery, he may be trusted as to any evidence against it.(b) Lords of Council Report, Part III, Barbadoes, Table A, No. 15.
(c) Preliminary Report of Eighth Census, p. 7.
(d) The total number emancipated was as follows:
England 770,390 France 248,560 Holland 45,000 Denmark 27,144 Sweden 531 Total 1,091,625 But of the slaves emancipated by England 102,363 were not in the Western Hemisphere, namely, at the Cape 35,700, and in the Mauritius 66,613. There were also among those liberated by France 74,501, in the Eastern Hemisphere, namely, in the island of Bourbon 60,651, in Senegal 10,350, and in Nossi-be 3,500. Deducting these two items of 102,363 and 74,501 from 1,091,625 we have 914,661 as the total of slaves emancipated in the West Indies, including Guiana.
of England, France, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, (a) let us say in 1860.
The census returns of the Spanish West Indian colonies, 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; (b) with a fair allowance for increase since that date, we may put it in 1860 at 530,000. Porto Rico, a flourishing and increasing colony, contained, by a census return of 1846, (c) 447,914 inhabitants, of whom about 54 per cent. were white, leaving about 206,000 colored. The rate of increase for the sixteen years preceding was a little upward of 2 per cent. a year. As but 50,000 or 55,000 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 population, we may suppose that some 25 per cent. (say 51,500) have been added since; making in all 257,500 for the entire colored population of Porto Rico.
This would give in the Spanish West Indian colonies a colored population in 1860 of 787,500.
We have not been able to find any official returns of the population of Hayti later than 1826. In 1890, in a "Memoire sup Saint Dominique,"(a) This is probably a full estimate. There were freed in Jamaica 311,070 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 361,657, having diminished in ten years nearly 20,000. Sewell (Ordeal of Free Labor in the British West Indies, New York, 1862, p. 245) says: "If the estimate of mortality by cholera and smallpox 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 350,000." This is but 12 per cent. more than the number of slaves freed. If Cochin's estimate of the population of the West Indies be correct, there were in the British West Indian colonies in 1855 but 845,000, of whom between 140,000 and 150,000 were whites, leaving, say, 700,000 for the entire colored population. (Cochin, Tom. 1, p. 478 and pp. 366, 367.) But England emancipated in the West Indies 670,000 slaves (Cochin, Tom. 1, p. 367), or within 30,000 as many as comprised in 1855 (according 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-fifth, or 20 per cent., to make up the total colored population, say in 1860, is evidently ample.(b) I take these from a work published in 1855, entitled "Cuba," from the 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:
Year White Free colored
and blackSlaves Total In 1846 425,767 149,226 323,759 898,752 In 1849 457,133 164,410 323,897 945,440 In 1853 501,988 176,647 330,425 1,009,060 In 1846 there were 472,982 [sic] free and slave; in 1853 there were 507,072, an increase in seven years of about 34,000. If (as the supplies from the slave-trade have been diminished) we put the increase since then at 43,000, we shall have 550,000 as the present total.
(c) Porto Rico, by J. T. O'Neil, edited by R. S. Fisher, 1855, has returns from an early date. The three last are:
1830 330,051 1834 358,836 1846 447,914 In the census of 1834 the whites were 54 per cent. of the whole population, the free colored being 35 per cent., and the slaves 11 per cent. The proportion of slaves at this time is said to be 9 per cent. only.
by Lieut. Gen. Baron Pamphile de Lacroix, the population of the island is put at 501,000, of whom only 1,000 are set down as white. (a) In 1825 M. Placide Justin estimates the population at 700,000. (b) 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 423,042. (c) This return Mr. Mackenzie considers more reliable than any other. It affords proof how little trustworthy are vague estimates of population, which usually overrun the truth, in consequence probably of the desire 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, (d) give the rate of natural increase in the population in certain communes at about three-quarters of 1 per cent. only per annum. But no trustworthy deductions can be made from returns so limited. The actual rate of increase from 1836 [1826] to 1860---thirty-four years--is probably double this, say 1 per cent. a year.
Allowing for omissions (e) and for Mackenzie's opinion that the census given, though the most reliable document he could obtain, may be an underestimate,(f) let us, instead of the total of 423,042, there given as the population in 1826, assume the black and colored population of Hayti in 1826 at Baron de Lacroix's estimate of 500,000, adding thereto, to bring it up to 1860, 1 per cent. a year for thirty-four years-that is, 51 per cent.--and we have the total negro and mulatto population of the island at 755,000. (g)(a) The estimate is:
Blacks 480,000 Mulattoes 20,000 Whites 1,000 Total 501,000 (b) Notes on Hayti, by Charles Mackenzie, F. R. S., London, 1830, Vol. 2, p. 112.
(c) Notes on Hayti, above cited, Vol. 2, pp. 113, 114. The population is thus divided:
Population of the north, west, and south (late French part) of the island 351,819 Population of the east (Spanish part) 71,223 Total 423,042 (d) These returns show an annual excess of births over deaths of eighty on an average of five years, in the commune of Saint Jago, containing 11,056 inhabitants; and again, a similar excess of 75 per annum, on an average of six years, in the commune of Cape Haytien, on 12,151 inhabitants; in neither case reaching three-quarters of 1 per cent. (Notes on Hayti, Vol. 2, pp. 117, 119.)
(e) Grands Bois, the residence of the Maroons or refugee negroes, then inhabiting the mountains which stretch from the neighborhood of Mirebalais to the coast on the east of Jacmel, is omitted, as that wandering people could not be reached, so as to enumerate them. Their number at that time is commonly estimated at 6,000.
(f) Notes on Hayti, Vol. 2, p. 116.
(g) Victor Scho1cher, who in 1842 published Les Colonies Francaises, is the author of two volumes, published in 1843, entitled Colonies Etranngeres et Haiti. The spirit in which his works are written may be judged from the motto: "It would be as easy to regulate humanely assassination 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 concur in the admission that the population does not increase. The Government, indeed, puts the population at 800,000, but the general opinion is that it does not exceed 700,000." (Colonies Etrangeres et Haiti, Vol. 2, pp. 264, 265.)
This is the judgment of one whose book is a defense of the Haytiens and of their character, and who is evidently disposed to represent everything as favorably as truth will warrant. Colton's Descriptive Atlas (1863) gives the entire population of the island in 1860 at 708,500. Some others put it as high as from 800,000 to 900,000. Upon the whole, the data here brought together induce us to believe that these latter figures, like the government estimates to which Schölcher alludes, are an exaggeration; and that in estimating the colored population of the island in 1860 at 755,000 we are as likely to exceed the actual amount as to fall short of it. The number of whites in the island are scarcely worth reckoning.
Diligent search has convinced us that reliable documents as to the actual population of this island are not to be obtained.As respects Central and South America, any estimate of the number of negroes and their descendants of mixed blood must be founded on data still more uncertain than those which relate to the 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 descendants 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.
Brazil, the only considerable portion of the South American continent in which slavery exists, contains, of course, by far the larger number of negroes, probably 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)
A census, Spoken of as official, bearing date June 22, 1831, states the entire population at 5,035,000, of which 2,000,000 are set down as slaves. (b) The free colored population is not given.
An estimate in the Penny Cyclopedia puts the negro population in 1836 at 2,000,000, namely, 1,600,000 slaves and 400,000 free. (c) If the proportion here given between slaves and free be correct, and if the census of 1831 may be trusted, the number of free colored of African descent was then 500,000. This would make the entire colored population of African descent in 1831 2,500,000; 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 official. In 1856 the Brazilian Government published returns, summing up 7,678,000, 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 (p. 612) the above returns are taken.(d) These gentlemen believe the government(a) M. de Souza, Brazilian minister of foreign affairs, stated, under date May 14, 1853, that the number of slaves imported was:
1846 50,324 1847 56,172 1848 60,000 1849 54,000 He added that in 1852 the number imported had been reduced to 700. (Cochin, Tom. 2, p. 238.)
(b) Homer's Brazil and Uruguay, p. 71.
(c) Penny Cyclopedia, Vol. 5, Art. Brazil.
(d) Kidder and Fletcher inform us in their preface that their "experience 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 Janeiro. For statistics they have either personally examined the imperial and provincial archives, or have quoted directly from Brazilian State papers." (Brazil and the Brazilians, Preface, pp. 4, 5.)
returns of 1856 to be an overestimate; and they give, as more trustworthy, a table, made up from the estimates of Senor Francisco Nunes de Souza, a native statistician, quoted also by Ewbank. The table was published in the Agricultor Braziliero. It is for 1856, and sums up 7,040,000. (a)
The same authors give us also estimates of the percentage of slaves to the free population in one-half of the provinces composing the empire. It is to be regretted that the proportion in the other half, the most populous, containing more than three-fifths of the population, cannot be obtained. These estimates, we are told, are "from the very careful computation of the Hon. J. W. Petit, formerly U.S. consul at Maranham." They show an aggregate of 944,623 slaves in a population of 2,680,000. (b) The number of free colored is not given. 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 1 3/4 per cent. a year, or 7 per cent. in four years. This gives us 492,800; which, added to 7,040,000, raises the total population of Brazil in 1860 to 7,532,800; an estimate which, in default of an official census, we adopt. It is somewhat above the average of the current estimates of the day.(c)
If the proportion of slaves to free persons be the same in the remaining(a) In the Province of--
Amazonas 30,000 Pará 190,000 Maranhao 280,000 Piauhy 170,000 Ceará 350,000 Rio Grande do Norte 160,000 Parahiba 230,000 Pernambuco 800,000 Alagôas 210,000 Sergipe 180,000 Bahia 880,000 Espirito Santo 60,000 Rio de Janeiro 1,400,000 Sao Paulo 680,000 Paraná 70,000 Santa Catharina 90,000 Rio Grande do Sul 240,000 Minas-Geraes 800,000 Matto Grosso 100,000 Goyaz 120,000 Total population of Brazil 7,040,000 (From Brazil and the Brazilians, already cited, p. 599.)
(b) The details are as follows:
T = Total population, S = Slave population to free in the proportion of-- , N = Number of slaves.
T
S
N
Pará 190,000 1 to 1.431 78,157 Piauhy 170,000 1 to 2.666 46,372 Rio Grande do Norte 160,000 1 to 7.221 19,462 Alagôas 210,000 1 to 4.221 40,222 Sergipe 180,000 1 to 2.927 45,836 Espirito Santo 60,000 1 to 2.009 19,940 Rio do Janeiro 1,400,000 1 to 1.181 641,907 Santa Catharina 90,000 1 to .5 15,000 Goyaz 120,000 1 to .7 15,000 Matto Grosso 100,000 1 to 3.4 22,727 Total 2,680,000 ---
944,623 (From Brazil and the Brazilians, p. 599.)
(c) 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 7,250,000 only.
The Imperial Gazetteer puts the total in 1854 at 6,065,000; Harper's Gazetteer in 1855 at 6,150,000. Passing by McCulloch's Gazetteer, where it is "vaguely estimated at 5,000,000," we have the estimate in Mitchell's Descriptive Atlas of 7,700,000 as the population in 1860. Colton puts it for the same year at 7,780,000. Adding to the two first estimates at the rate of 1 3/4 per cent. a year to bring them up to 1860, we have 6,701,300, 6,688,130, 7,700,000, and 7,787,000 as various estimates of the population in 1860. Averaging these, we have 7,219,107 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 indorsed by Messrs. Kidder and Fletcher, and which exceeds the above by 323.000, is more reliable and probably approaches nearly the truth.ten provinces as in those estimated, then the total number of slaves in the Empire of Brazil was in the year 1860 2,655,000.
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 800,000 or upward, are among the provinces not estimated, we think the above total of 2,655,000 slaves is probably somewhat too low, and that it may bear an addition of 10 per cent. This would give for the Empire of Brazil in 1860 2,920,500 slaves; an estimate which we believe to be as near the truth as anything we are likely to obtain. (a)
We 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 aborigines of Brazil at the period of its conquest are said to have numbered between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000, (b) 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 Senor 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 we have given,(c) he divides the population into 2,160,000 whites, 3,120,000 negro slaves, 800,000 domesticated Indians,(d) 180,000 free blacks, and 1,100,000 "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 number 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."(e) 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 our object not to overstate the case, and therefore to avoid all underestimates of the number of negroes(a) Cochin, accurate as he usually is, undoubtedly understates the number of slaves in Brazil. Writing in 1861, he says in one place "more than 2,000,000," and in another he assumes 2,000,000 as the number. "Pres de 4,000,000 esclaves aux Etats Unis, plus de 2,000,000 au Bresil," is his expression. And again: "Les 2,000,000 Africains, esclaves au Bresil." (Cochin, Vol. 2, p. 237.)
(b) Life in Brazil, by Thomas Ewbank, 1856, p. 430.
(c) The exact figures are 7,360,000, and the date appears to be 1845. This is but 40,000 less than his subsequent estimate for 1856. Ewbank says: "Nothing like positive data was within this writer's reach." From De Souza's last calculation we may infer that he formed his estimate for 1845 too high.
(d) A report by Councillor Vellosa, made in 1819 (quoted by Ewbank, work cited, p. 430), giving the total population at 4,396,321, includes "800,000 wild Indians."
(e) 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 successful printing establishment in Rio, that of Sr. F. Paulo Brite, 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."
who have survived the horrors of the middle passage and the cruelties of slavery, we will assume De Souza's figures, without any deduction for Indian blood, making the free negro population of all shades 1,280,000. This, added to the slaves, gives us as the population, free and slave, of African descent in the Empire of Brazil for the year 1860 a total of 4,200,500, leaving less than three millions and a third for whites, Indians, and Indian mixed races. One item still remains, the most vague and uncertain 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 race and gradations of color defy analysis. In none of them has slavery had more than a comparatively ephemeral existence. But as negroes do not voluntarily 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 accurately ascertained. The various estimates differ but a few hundreds; none under 6,000, and none over 7,000. (a) Let us assume the latter number as the negro population of Mexico in 1860.
In Central America, as in Mexico, the representatives of the African race are a very insignificant part of the population. Squier, formerly charge d'affaires of the United States to the Republics of Central America, is undoubtedly one of the best, if not the very best, authority on that point. He says: "The population 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 observation :(b)
Whites 100,000