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Title: The Story of Slavery
Author: Booker T. Washington
Release Date: March 13, 2014 [EBook #45125]
Language: English
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INSTRUCTOR LITERATURE SERIES
The Story of Slavery
_By Booker T. Washington_
President of Tuskegee Institute; author of
"Up From Slavery," Etc.
_With Biographical Sketch_
PUBLISHED JOINTLY BY
F. A. OWEN PUB. CO., DANSVILLE, N. Y.
HALL & McCREARY, CHICAGO, ILL.
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
F. A. OWEN PUBLISHING CO.
_The Story of Slavery_
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
BY EMMETT J. SCOTT
Booker T. Washington, the author of the following sketch of slavery in
America, was himself born a slave, and the story of his life begins
where "The Story of Slavery" leaves off. He was born about 1858 or 1859
on a plantation near Hales Ford, Va., about twenty-five miles east of
the city of Roanoke, in a region which, now almost deserted, was in
slavery days a flourishing tobacco country. A few years ago he was
invited to speak at the annual fair at Roanoke, and took advantage of
the opportunity to drive out to the old plantation to visit again the
scene of his childhood. He met there several members of the Burroughs
family to which he had formerly belonged, and with them he went through
the old Burroughs house, which is standing, and talked over the old
days.
It was while he was living there that he was awakened one morning to
find his mother kneeling on the earth floor of the little cabin in which
they lived, praying that "Lincoln and his armies might be successful and
that one day she and her children might be free." It was here a little
later on, as he tells us in the book, "Up From Slavery," in which he has
related the story of his life, that he heard the announcement that he
and all the other slaves were free.
"I recall," he says, "that some man who seemed to be a stranger and who
was undoubtedly a United States official, made a little speech and then
read a rather long paper--the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After
the reading we were told that we were all free and could go where we
pleased.
"My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her
children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us
what it all meant; that this was the day for which she had so long been
praying, but fearing she would never live to see.
"For some minutes," he continues, "there was great rejoicing, and
thanksgiving and wild scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of
bitterness. In fact, there was pity among the slaves for our former
owners. The wild rejoicing of the emancipated colored people lasted but
a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their
cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of
being free, of having charge of themselves and their children, of having
to plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of
them. To some it seemed, now that they were in actual possession of it,
freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find.
Gradually one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves began to
wander back to the 'big house' to have whispered conversations with
their former owners as to their future."
Thus it was that freedom came to Washington and so it came, perhaps, to
some three and one-half millions of others on their plantations
throughout the South.
Shortly after the "surrender," as the Southern people say, young
Washington made a long journey across the mountains with his mother to
West Virginia where his stepfather was then living, and it was in Malden
he grew up to young manhood. Malden is situated in the mining region of
West Virginia, and after a time young Washington went to work in the
mines. It was while he was working down in the coal mines of West
Virginia that he one day overheard one of the miners reading from a
paper concerning a school at Hampton, Virginia, where a Negro in earnest
would be given a chance to work his way through school. He determined at
once that he would seek out and find that school. So it was that a few
months later he set out afoot across the mountain in the direction of
Richmond to find his way to Hampton Institute. In his remarkable
biography he has described how he made that journey; how he arrived
hungry and penniless in the city of Richmond; how he slept for several
nights under the sidewalk in Richmond until he was able to earn enough
money to reach the famous school of which he had read.
In this same biography he has told, also, of how the teacher in charge,
who was very doubtful about admitting him at first, finally, in place of
asking him any questions about what he had learned in school, set him to
work sweeping and dusting the schoolroom.
"I swept that recitation room three times," he said, "then I got a
dusting cloth and I dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the
walls, every bench, table and desk, I went over four times with my
dusting cloth. I had the feeling that my future depended upon the way I
dusted that room."
When he had finished the teacher came and looked very critically over
the results of his work. Then she said: "I guess you will do," and that
was his entrance examination. This rather peculiar entrance examination
illustrates the spirit of the institution in which Booker Washington
gained his first forward preparation for life.
At the time that young Washington entered Hampton Institute, General
Armstrong, the founder of the school, was engaged in a great and
interesting experiment. His purpose was to create a school which would
give the sons of the freedmen education in character as well as in
books. Booker Washington saw that this education was the thing above all
others that the masses of the Negro people needed at this time, and
realized better than any other of the graduates of the institution the
significance and bearing of the work that General Armstrong was trying
to do. He made up his mind then that he would go out into some part of
the South and establish a school which would do for other members of his
race what Hampton had done for him. His opportunity came when a call
came to Hampton for a man to take charge of a school at Tuskegee,
Alabama. It was thus in 1881 that the famous Tuskegee Institute came to
be started.
This school, which was started on July 4, 1881, in a little shanty
church, with one teacher and thirty students, has grown until it now has
a student body of 1600, with 165 teachers and officers, 103 buildings
and property to the value of $1,500,000.
In 1895 Mr. Washington was invited to speak at the Atlanta Cotton States
Exposition on Negroes Day. In that speech he made an appeal for peace
between the races, and formulated a program for mutual cooperation
between black and white which has been the basis of all his efforts
since that time.
From that time on his fame has grown steadily, both in this country and
abroad. In 1896 Harvard University conferred upon him the honorary
degree of Master of Arts for service in the education of his race. He
has received numerous other honors since that time and has spoken in
every state of the Union in favor of Negro education. A few years ago
when he went abroad he was invited to dinner by the King of Denmark. In
April, 1912, there was held under his leadership at Tuskegee an
international conference on the Negro to which representatives came from
many parts of Africa as well as the West Indies and South America. The
result of this was a plan to form a permanent international organization
to study the Negro problem in all parts of the world and hold meetings
triennially.
Mr. Washington is the author of several books in addition to his
autobiography, "Up From Slavery," which has been translated into every
civilized language in the world, including Japanese.
The most noted of these books are, "Working with the Hands," "The Story
of the Negro," in two volumes, "My Larger Education," and "The Man
Farthest Down," which is a record of a journey of observation and study
of the working and peasant peoples of Europe.
[Illustration: Booker T. Washington]
The Story of Slavery
I
It was one hot summer's day in the month of August 1619, as the story
goes, that a Dutch man-of-war entered the mouth of the James River, in
what is now the State of Virginia, and, coming in with the tide, dropped
anchor opposite the little settlement of Jamestown. Ships were rare
enough to be remembered in that day, even when there was nothing
especially remarkable about them, as there was about this one. But this
particular ship was so interesting at the time, and so important because
of what followed in the wake of its coming, that it has not been
forgotten to this day. The reason for this is that it brought the first
slaves to the first English settlement in the New World. It is with the
coming of these first African slaves to Jamestown that the story of
slavery, so far as our own country is concerned, begins.
Although the coming of the first slave ship to what is now the United
States is still remembered, the name of the ship and almost everything
else concerning the vessel and its strange merchandise has been
forgotten. Almost all that is known about it is told in the diary of
John Rolfe, who will be remembered as the man who married the Indian
girl, Pocahontas. He says, "A Dutch man-of-war that sold us twenty
Negars came to Jamestown late in August, 1619." An old record has
preserved some of the names of those first twenty slaves, and from other
sources it is known that the ship sailed from Flushing, Holland. But
that is almost all that is definitely known about the first slave ship
and the first slaves that were brought from Africa to the United States.
The first slaves landed in Virginia were not, by any means, the first
slaves that were brought to the New World. Fifty years before Columbus
landed on the island of San Salvador, the first African slaves were
brought from the West Coast of Africa to Spain, and we know from
historical references and records that Negro slavery had become firmly
established in Spain before Columbus made his first voyage. It was,
therefore, natural enough that the Spanish explorers and adventurers,
following close upon the heels of Columbus in search of gold, should
bring their Negro servants with them.
It seems likely, from all that we can learn, that a few Negroes were
sent out to the West Indies as early as 1501, only eleven years after
the discovery of America and one hundred and twenty years before the
first cargo of slaves was landed in Jamestown. Four years later, in a
letter dated September 15, 1505, written by King Ferdinand to one of his
officials in Hispaniola, which we now call Hayti, he says among other
things: "I will send you more Negro slaves as you request. I think there
be an hundred."
Thus early was Negro slavery introduced into the New World and what do
you suppose was the reason, or rather the excuse, for bringing black men
to America at this time?
It was to save from slavery the native Indians. A good priest by the
name of Las Casas, who accompanied the first Spanish explorers and
conquerors, found that the native people, the Indians, were fast dying
out under the cruel tasks put upon them by their Spanish conquerors.
Unaccustomed to labor, they could not endure the hardships of working in
the mines. The Negroes, on the contrary, had, in many cases, been slaves
in their own country, and had been accustomed to labor. At the same time
it was said that one Negro could do the work of four Indians. So it was
that this good man, out of pity for the enslaved Americans, proposed
that the black people of Africa should be brought over to take their
places.
Thus the traffic in African slaves began, and in the course of the next
three hundred years many millions of black people were carried across
the ocean and settled in slave colonies in the New World. They were
brought to America, first of all, to work in the mines, and afterwards
more of them were brought to do the almost equally difficult pioneer
work on the plantations. Thus, in all hard labor of clearing and
draining the land, building roads and opening up the New World to
cultivation and to civilization, the black man did his part.
It has been estimated that no less than 12,000,000 slaves were
transplanted from Africa to America to supply the demand for labor in
the West Indies, in South America and in the United States, during the
centuries that the white people of Europe were seeking to establish
their civilization in the Western World.
Perhaps as many as 12,000,000 more, who were taken in the wars and raids
in Africa, died on the way to the coast, or in the terrible "middle
passage," as the journey from the coast of Africa to that of America was
called. Many of those captured and sold in Africa, who did not die on
the high seas in the crowded and stifling hold of the ships into which
they were thrust, did not survive what was known as the "seasoning
process," after they were landed in America.
Roughly speaking, it is safe to say that not less than 24,000,000 human
beings were snatched from their homes in Africa and sold into slavery,
to help in building up the world in which we live today in America.
Although African slavery was introduced into America at first in order
to save from extinction the native people of the West Indies, who were
not strong enough to endure the hardships of slavery, it is sad to
recall that the slavery of the Negro did not serve to preserve the
Indian, for it was but a comparatively few years after the Spaniards
landed in the West Indies before nearly all the native tribes had been
swept away. There are today in the West Indies only a few remnants of
the Indians whom Columbus met when he first landed in America.
The black man, on the other hand, in spite of the hardships he has
endured, has not only survived but has greatly increased in numbers. So
greatly has the black man increased that in the West Indies today the
black population far outnumbers all other races represented among the
inhabitants. Altogether, it is estimated there are now about 24,591,000
Negroes in North and South America and the West Indies. Of this number
10,000,000 are in the United States.
II
The story of the first American voyage to Africa to obtain slaves of
which there is any definite record, is that of a certain Captain Smith,
commanding the ship, Rainbowe, and sailing from Boston. Captain Smith
had sailed to Madeira with a cargo of salt fish and staves and, on the
way home, he touched on the coast of Guinea for slaves. There happened
to be very few slaves for sale at the moment and on this account,
Captain Smith, together with the masters of some London slave ships
already on the ground, conspired together to pick a quarrel with some of
the natives, so as to have an excuse to attack their village and carry
off the prisoners made as slaves. Captain Smith's share of the booty was
two slaves with whom he returned to Boston.
It happened, however, that when he reached home he got into a quarrel
with the ship's owners over the proceeds of the voyage, and, in the
lawsuits which resulted, the story of the manner in which the slaves
were obtained was told in court. Thereupon one of the magistrates
charged Captain Smith with a "threefold offence--murder, man-stealing
and Sabboth breaking." He was acquitted of all three charges on the
ground that these crimes were committed in Africa, but, as a result of
the trial, the slaves were returned to their homes.
This story is interesting, for one reason because it shows that, in the
early days of the slave trade, the barter and sale of Negro slaves, so
long as it was conducted in an honest and orderly way, according to the
accepted customs and manners of trade, was not considered a wrong or
wicked business.
At first the slave traders purchased slaves only from the native chiefs.
These slaves were generally prisoners who had been taken in the tribal
wars. In some cases they were men or women who had been sold for debt.
There were, also, other ways in which one black man in Africa might hold
another in slavery.
Very soon, however, the ordinary sources of supply of slaves was not
sufficient to meet the demand of the American trade. Then traders became
less scrupulous. They began buying from any one who had a man or woman
for sale. This encouraged kidnapping. Not infrequently the man who
brought a gang of slaves to the coast to be sold would himself be
kidnapped and sold by other men before he could return home. Sometimes
the traders, after they had purchased a gang or a "coffle" of slaves, as
they were called, would invite the traders on board ship in order to
entertain them. Then, after they were under the influence of liquor,
they would put chains upon them and carry them away with the very slaves
the traders themselves a few hours before had sold.
As time went on, and the demand for slave labor increased, the men
engaged in this cruel traffic became hardened to its cruelty and the
West Coast of Africa became one vast hunting ground. Men and women were
tracked and hunted as if they were wild beasts. It grew so bad at length
that the conscience of the civilized world was aroused. Then, one by
one, the nations of the world began to prohibit the traffic. England,
which had formerly been one of the nations most deeply involved in this
evil business, now became the leader in the attempt to put a stop to it.
The importation of slaves was prohibited in the United States in 1808,
but that did not put an end to the importation of slaves. For, after the
invention of the cotton gin at the close of the eighteenth century by
Eli Whitney, a Connecticut school master, slaves were needed more than
ever, to plant and till and pick the cotton which had now become much
more valuable than before.
Although it was no longer lawful to import slaves, they were smuggled
into the country. As late as 1860 the famous yacht, Wanderer, which had
at one time been owned by a member of the New York Yacht Club, brought
into the United States 450 slaves, and it has been estimated that as
many as 15,000 slaves were smuggled into the different Southern ports in
the year 1858.
At this time it had become the custom to gather great numbers of slaves
at different points along the coast of Africa, in what were called
barracoons. These were nothing more or less than strong stockades made
by planting trees close together in the ground so as to form a strong
enclosure from which there was no escape. In these barracoons slaves
captured in the interior were held until they were ready to be shipped.
Swift sailing vessels, which travelled so fast that, once they escaped
the vigilance of the war ships stationed along the coast, they could
never be overtaken, were used to carry the slaves from the coast of
Africa to that of America.
These vessels would hover about in the neighborhood of one of these
slave barracoons until the coast was clear; then swiftly the living
cargo would be hurried aboard, and the vessel would put on all sail and
make all possible haste to put itself and its human freight beyond the
reach of the police ships.
Usually these slave ships were provided with a lower, or what was called
a "slave deck," beneath the ordinary deck of the ship. In some
instances, in order to escape suspicion, the ship would have no
permanent slave deck but such a deck would be hastily arranged after the
vessel arrived in the neighborhood of one of the slave barracoons. In
such cases the ordinary cargo would be put in the bottom of the ship and
then, above this and from three to five feet beneath the ordinary deck,
a second deck would be hastily improvised. Here as many slaves would be
stowed away as could be possibly crowded into the narrow space.
It is only necessary to read the descriptions of the methods by which
this traffic was carried on to understand the horrible suffering to
which the slaves were subjected during this middle passage. In many
instances, when brought out on deck for a little air, the slaves had to
be chained to keep them from jumping overboard.
Sometimes a pestilence would break out on one of these ships and the
whole cargo, consisting of three or four hundred slaves, would be lost.
It is said that the yellow fever was brought to America by slaves. There
are instances, also, where the captain of a slave ship jettisoned, that
is to say, threw over-board, a whole ship-load of slaves to escape being
caught by the ships that were pursuing him.
When a slave ship reached the shore of America there were snug harbors
at various points along the coast into which one of these swift sailing
vessels could always hide until its cargo of slaves had been discharged.
The island upon which the present city of Galveston is built was once a
refuge for slave pirates and slave smugglers. The coast of Louisiana is
full of shallow bays, which reach far into the land, and they were a
favorite resort for slave smugglers. Here was the hiding place of the
Barataria pirates who were long famous as slave smugglers.
Mobile Bay was one of the points at which a slave cargo was
occasionally landed. It is said that the hull of the very last slave
ship, the Lawrence, which was captured and burned by the Federal troops
during the first year of the Civil War, may still be seen hidden away in
the swamps and marshes east of Mobile.
There is still living in the suburbs of Mobile a little colony of
Africans who were brought over on this last slave ship. When they were
released by the Federal officers they settled here. It is said that
there are old men living in this settlement who still speak an African
language, but their children have all grown up to be good Americans.
Once a ship load of slaves was landed on the American coast, they were
immediately divided and scattered in every direction. Some were taken to
one plantation, others to another, and so on until all were disposed of.
Soon they were so thoroughly intermingled with the great body of slaves
that all trace of them was lost. At least it was rare that anyone ever
did trace the cargo of slaves after it was once landed, although slave
ships were frequently captured on the high seas.
When slavers were captured red-handed on the high seas by the United
States or English navies, an effort was made to return the slaves to
their homes in Africa. As this was not practical the English government
established at Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa, a station to
which they sent all liberated slaves. It was in this manner, that what
is now one of the most thriving English colonies on the west coast of
Africa was started.
The story of the slave trade is one of the darkest chapters in the
history of the Western World, for though it began in the comparatively
harmless way already described, it grew steadily worse until in its last
stages even those familiar with slavery in its worst form came to look
upon it with shame.
And yet, in spite of all the suffering that it entailed, and in spite
of its degrading effect upon the people who engaged in it, we can see,
as we look back upon it now, that some good has come out of it. It
served, for one thing, to bring a large number of the savage people of
Africa into closer contact with the enlightenment and civilization of
the Western World. In the end, it aroused in the minds of some of the
best people in Europe and America a new interest in Africa and led
hundreds of good Christian people to give up the security of their
comfortable homes and give their lives to the task of uplifting and
educating the neglected races of the Dark Continent.
Among the first and greatest of those who gave their lives for this
purpose was the missionary, David Livingstone, who did more than anyone
else to arouse the world to the iniquities of the African slave trade.
III
Although, slavery was introduced into Virginia as early as 1619 it was
not until nearly one hundred years later that African slaves began to be
brought into the English colonies in any very large numbers. For nearly
a century the bulk of the rough labor in the field and in the forest was
performed, not by Negro slaves, but by white bond servants, who were
imported from England and sold like other merchandise in the markets of
the colonies.
In 1673, for example, the average price of a bond servant in the
colonies, so the historian Bancroft tells us, was ten pounds. At this
same time a Negro slave was worth twenty-five pounds.
It was often that the almshouses and prisons of England were emptied in
order to furnish laborers for America. It should be remembered, however,
that many of the persons who were sent out as bond servants to America
were political prisoners, and some of these were persons of quality.
When there was a civil war in England the victorious party frequently
disposed of its prisoners by sending them to the colonies as bond
servants, or even as slaves. Thousands of Irish Catholics were sent over
to America in this way, and it is said that the hardships which these
unfortunate bondsmen suffered on the voyage was hardly less than those
endured by the African slaves.
It should be remembered, also, in the case of these white bond servants,
as in that of the Negro slaves, the sale of human beings began
innocently enough. At the time the English colonies were planted in
America there was comparatively little free labor anywhere, and
especially was this true of farm labor.
The freedom and independence which seem now to be the natural rights of
everyone were enjoyed by very few among the masses of the laboring
people in Europe one hundred or two hundred years ago. At that time
nearly everyone who worked with his hands was bound, in one way or
another, to a master who had control over his actions to an extent which
amounted to something like servitude. But it was to the man on the soil
and in the country that freedom has everywhere come most slowly. In
fact, it was not until the middle of the last century that the complete
emancipation of the serfs took place in Western Europe. It was not until
1861, two years before Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation set
the American Negroes free, that the Russian serfs were emancipated.
It is necessary to remember these facts if we wish to understand how it
came about that the slavery of the black man and the servitude of the
white man came to be established in this country.
When the first bond servants were sent to America it was not intended
that they should be transferred and sold from one owner to another. It
was merely intended that they should be bound to labor for the man who
paid their passage money until that sum had been repaid. Gradually,
however, in their eagerness to obtain labor, people lost sight of the
fact that the merchandise they were selling was human beings. It was not
long, therefore, before the bond servant was rated among the other
property, the horses, the sheep and the cattle, in the inventories of
the estate, and he could be disposed of by will and deed along with the
remainder of the stock on the plantation.
At first the only legal distinction between the bond servant and the
Negro slave was that the one was a servant for a period of years and the
other was a servant for life. In the long run, however, this distinction
made a great difference. In the first place, as the number of these bond
servants who became free increased there grew up in the colonies a
considerable body of citizens who had known the trials and hardships of
servitude. These people naturally sympathized with those of their own
class and this created a sentiment against white servitude.
The case of the Negro, however, was different. He was a man of a
different race and he was doomed to perpetual servitude. The result was,
as time went on, it came to be regarded as the natural vocation and
destiny of the man with the black skin to be the servant and the slave
of the white man.
One thing that helped to fix the status of the black man, and which
finally resulted in the passing away of white servitude in favor of
Negro slavery, was the fact that the Negro was better fitted to perform
the hard pioneer work which the time demanded. Particularly was this
true in the more Southern colonies, like Georgia and the Carolinas.
In South Carolina an effort had been made to reestablish serfdom as it
had existed in England one hundred years before. In Georgia, it was at
first hoped, by prohibiting slavery to establish a system of free labor.
In both instances the effort failed and, after a very few years, Negro
slavery was as firmly established in Georgia as it had been in the
neighboring state of South Carolina.
Still later, efforts were made to establish white servitude in Louisiana
and large numbers of German "redemptioners," as they were called, were
brought over for this purpose. In a very few years these colonists had
been swept away by disease.
In one of the reports setting forth "the true state" of the colony of
Georgia it was said that, "hardly one-half of the servants of working
people were able to do their masters or themselves the least labor: and
the yearly sickness of each servant, generally speaking, cost his master
as much as would have maintained a Negro for four years."
With the introduction of rice planting the necessity of employing
Africans was doubled, because, as it was said, "white servants would
have exhausted their strength in clearing a spot for their own graves."
Thus it came about that Negro slavery grew up on the mainland to replace
the servitude of the white man, just as it had grown up in the West
Indies to take the place of the slavery of the native Indians.
It most not be assumed, however, that the Negro slaves, because they
were better able than the white man to stand the hardships of labor in
the New World, did not suffer from the effects of the work they were
compelled to do. The truth is that so many of them died that the stock
of slaves had to be continually replenished. In some parts of the
country it was even said of the slave, as one hears it sometimes said of
horses, that it paid to work them to death. It was a rule on some of the
plantations that the stock of slaves was to be renewed every seven
years.
One of the effects of the passing away of white servitude was to make
the distance between the free white man and the black slave seem greater
than ever. There grew up in the minds of white people, and, to a certain
extent, in the minds of black people, the notion that slavery was the
natural condition of the Negro just as freedom was the natural condition
of the white man. People began to feel that the black man did not have
the same human feelings as the white man; that his pains and his sorrows
were somehow not as real and did not have to be considered in the same
way that one would consider these same feelings in a white man. All this
sentiment of the one race for the other entered into the system of
slavery and made it what it became finally before it was abolished as a
result of the Civil War.
What this system really was can not be best shown by any account of the
cruelties that were sometimes practiced upon slaves, because these
cruelties were not practiced by the best masters and were not supported
by public sentiment.
The best expression of the innate wrong of slavery will be found in the
decision of a Chief Justice of South Carolina in the case of a man who
had been tried for beating his slave. In this decision, which affirmed
the right of the master to inflict any kind of punishment upon a slave,
short of death, it is stated that, in the whole history of slavery there
has been no prosecution of a master for punishing his slave.
It had been said in the course of the trial of this case that the
relations of the master and slave were like those of parent and child.
Justice Ruffin, in delivering the decision, said that this was not so.
The object of a parent in training his son, for example, was to fit him
to live the life of a free man, and, as a means to that end, he gave him
moral and intellectual instruction. There was, said the Justice, no
sense in addressing moral instruction to a slave. He said:
"The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public
safety; the subject, one doomed in his own person and his posterity to
live without knowledge and without the capacity to make anything his
own, and to toil that another may reap the fruit. What moral
consideration shall be addressed to such a being to convince him, what
it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and know can never
be true--that he is thus to labor upon a principle of natural duty or
for the sake of his own personal happiness. Such services can only be
expected from one who has no will of his own, who surrenders his will in
implicit obedience to that of another. Such obedience is the consequence
only of uncontrolled authority over the body. There is nothing else
which can operate to produce the effect. The power of the master must be
absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect."
In making this decision Justice Ruffin did not attempt to justify the
rule he had laid down on moral grounds. "As a principle of right," he
said, "every person must repudiate it, but in the actual condition of
things it must be so; there is no remedy. This discipline belongs to the
state of slavery. It constitutes the curse of slavery both to the bond
and free portion of our population."
Thus it is clear that at the bottom of slavery is the idea that one
man's evil is or can be some other man's good.
IV
Although there was much of evil connected with slavery, much that tended
to weaken the master as well as to injure the slave, there was also a
brighter, kindlier side to the life of the slave which is not always
understood.
There was, for example, a great deal of difference between the life of a
slave on a plantation in Virginia, where master and slaves grew up
together as members of one household, and the life of a slave on a
similar plantation further South. In either case a large plantation was
always a little kingdom in itself, and in this little kingdom the black
man and the white man frequently learned to live together on terms of
intimacy and friendship such as would scarcely have been possible under
other conditions.
On one of these large plantations there were usually several types, or
one might almost say castes, among the slaves. There were first of all
the house servants, many of whom had grown up from childhood in the "Big
House" or mansion of the master. These servants usually became in time
very much attached to their masters and their master's children and were
often regarded as much a part of the household as any other member of
the family. It was to this class that the old servants belonged, of whom
so many interesting stories are told, illustrating the devotion of the
slaves to their masters.
One of the stories that has been repeated in more than one Southern
family relates how the old Southern servant followed his master to war;
watched over and cared for him faithfully during all the hardships of
the campaign, and finally, when that master had fallen in battle,
carried him back to his home to be buried.
There are many instances, also, of which one does not so often hear, in
which the friendship and devotion of the old servants to their master's
family continued after the Civil War was over and slavery was abolished.
Not infrequently these old slaves continued to work for their masters in
freedom much as they had done in slavery. Sometimes when the master's
family became poor, the former slave secretly supported them.
There is a story of one man who had agreed before the war broke out to
buy his freedom from his master for a certain sum. After freedom came he
continued to make the payments just the same until the entire sum was
paid, because he knew his master's family was poor and needed the money.
Another class of slaves on the big plantation was composed of the
artisans and skilled workmen of every kind, for every one of these large
plantations was organized, as nearly as possible, so as to provide for
every want of its inhabitants.
Beneath this class of skilled laborers there were the field hands, who
did all the common work under the direction of an overseer, sometimes
with the help of Negro "drivers."
In addition to all the others there was usually on every large
plantation a slave preacher, who might at the same time be a trusted
employee of one kind or another. He was at any rate a natural leader
among his own people, and often a man of great influence and authority
among the slaves, and was frequently a sort of intermediary between them
and their master.
The conditions of slavery were harder, as a rule, on the big plantations
farther South. These regions were usually peopled by a class of
enterprising persons who had come, perhaps, from Virginia or some of
the older slave states. They had removed to the new country in order to
find virgin soil, on which large fortunes were made in raising cotton.
In these regions, especially where the slaves were left in charge of an
overseer, whose sole function was to make the plantation pay, the slaves
came to be treated a great deal more like the mules and the rest of the
stock on the plantation. They were treated as if their whole reason for
existence consisted in the ability of their owners to use them to make
corn, cotton and sugar.
In spite of the bad reputation which the plantations in the far South
had among the slaves of Virginia, and in spite of the horror which all
the slaves in the border states had of being "sold South," there were
many plantations like those of Joseph and Jefferson Davis, the President
of the Southern Confederacy and his brother, where the relations between
the master and slave were as happy as one could ask or expect, under the
circumstances.
The history of the Davis family and of the two great plantations, the
"Hurricane" and the "Brierfield," which they owned in Mississippi, is
typical. In 1818 Joseph Davis, who was the elder brother of Jefferson,
and at that time a young lawyer in Vicksburg, took his father's slaves
and went down the river to a place now called Davis' Bend. He was
attracted thither by the rich bottom land, which was frequently
overflowed by the spring floods of the Mississippi.
At this time there were no steamboats on the Mississippi and the country
was wild and lonely. In a few years, with the aid of his slaves, Mr.
Davis succeeded in building up a plantation of about 5,000 acres, which
soon became known as one of the largest and richest in the whole State
of Mississippi, where there were many large and rich plantations.
Some years after the settlement at Davis' Bend, Joseph Davis was joined
by his brother Jefferson, who lived for several years on the adjoining
plantation, known as the "Brierfields."
Joseph Davis had peculiar notions about the government of his slaves. It
was a maxim with him that, "the less people are governed, the more
submissive they will be to control."
This idea he attempted to carry out in the government of his slaves.
Thus he instituted on the plantation a certain measure of
self-government. For example, his plantation, like that of his brother
Jefferson, was turned over, so far as its agricultural operations were
concerned, almost wholly into the hands of one of his slaves. Under the
direction of this man the land was surveyed, the levees constructed and
the buildings erected. This same man was allowed to conduct a store of
his own. He bought and sold goods, not only among the hands on the
plantation, but among the hands on other plantations. Sometimes Mr.
Davis himself was several hundred dollars in debt to him for goods
purchased.
Mr. Davis also instituted a jury system for the trial of minor offences
committed by his slaves. In a court thus constituted a jury of slaves
passed judgment on their fellows, Mr. Davis reserving for himself,
however, the pardoning power. When a slave could do better for himself
at some other form of work than day labor he was allowed the liberty to
do so, giving in money, or other equivalent, the worth of ordinary
service in the field. There was at one time a school on the plantation,
taught by a poor white man, in which the white children from the Big
House as well as some of the children of the more favorite slaves went
to school together.
In this novel and statesman-like way Joseph Davis sought to carry out
his notion of making the plantation, as near as possible under the
circumstances, a little self-governing community. After freedom came it
was Joseph Davis' plan to keep all his former slaves on the plantation
and, as they grew in intelligence and ability to care for themselves, to
make them its owners. To this end he sold the plantation to the man who
had been his overseer. This man, with his two sons, all of whom had
formerly been slaves on the plantation, continued for a number of years
to carry on the work of the plantation until, as the result of losses,
due to overflow, it became apparent they would not be able to pay the
heavy interest charges which the purchase of the place had entailed and
were thus forced to give up the experiment.
It is a mistake to assume that life for the slave on the plantation was
always one of unremitting labor. In a humble way the slaves had their
seasons of rejoicing and festivity. There were the usual weekly meetings
in the plantation churches, where they had sermons, sometimes by a white
minister, but more often by one of their own number. It was here that
those beautiful old plantation melodies sprang up, in which the slaves
poured out, in rude but picturesque language and in simple plaintive
melodies, what lay deepest and heaviest on their hearts.
Sometimes at night, around the fireside, they listened to those quaint
and homely stories which have been preserved in classic form in the
Tales of Uncle Remus.
"Hog-killing" was a sort of annual festival among the slaves, and the
occasional cornshuckings were always a joyous event in which both master
and servants, each in their separate ways, took part.
These cornshucking bees took place during the last of November or the
first of December, and were a sort of prelude to the festivities of the
Christmas season. After all the corn had been gathered it would be
piled up in the shape of a great mound. Then invitations would be sent
around by the master of one of the large plantations to the neighboring
plantations, inviting them and their slaves to be present on a certain
night. In response to these invitations as many as one or two hundred
men, women and children would come together.
After all were assembled around the pile of corn some one, who had
already gained a reputation as a leader in singing, would climb on top
of the mound and begin at once, in a clear loud voice, to sing. He sang
a song of the cornshucking season, making up the words very largely as
he went along. All the others gathered at the base of the mound and
joined of course in the chorus. The whole proceeding had a good deal of
the flavor of the campmeeting and some of the music was weird and wild.
One of the songs that used to be sung on occasions like this ran about
as follows:
Massa's niggers am slick and fat,
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Shine just like a new beaver hat,
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Refrain:--
Turn out here and shuck dis corn,
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Biggest pile o' corn seen since I was born,
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Jones's niggers am lean an' po';
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Don't know whether dey get 'nough to eat or no,
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Refrain:--
Turn out here and shuck dis corn;
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Biggest pile o' corn seen since I was born,
Oh! Oh! Oh!
Half the charm of Southern life was made by the presence of the Negro.
The homes that had no Negro servants were dreary by contrast with those
that did.
The native quality of the Negro, his natural sympathy, cheerfulness and
good humor, and above all his fidelity to his master and his master's
children, helped to make slavery, for both white man and black man, a
very much more tolerable institution than it would otherwise have been.
Almost all that has been said of slavery, whether good or bad, is
probably true as far as it goes. The institution had its heartless and
its human side, and, since slavery is no more, it is perhaps better to
close this story with this brighter and more cheerful view.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of Slavery, by Booker T. Washington
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