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Title: The Gift of Black Folk
The Negroes in the Making of America
Author: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Contributor: Edward F. McSweeney
Release Date: September 27, 2021 [eBook #66398]
Language: English
Produced by: Nick Wall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIFT OF BLACK FOLK ***
THE
GIFT _of_ BLACK FOLK
_The Negroes in the
Making of America_
by
W. E. BURGHARDT DUBOIS
PH. D. (HARV.)
Author of “The Souls of Black Folk,” “Darkwater,” etc.
Editor of _The Crisis_
_Introduction by_
EDWARD F. McSWEENEY, LL. D.
[Illustration]
1924
THE STRATFORD CO., _Publishers_
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Copyright, 1924
By THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
Foreword i
Prescript 33
I The Black Explorers 35
II Black Labor 52
III Black Soldiers 80
IV The Emancipation of Democracy 135
V The Reconstruction of Freedom 184
VI The Freedom of Womanhood 259
VII The American Folk Song 274
VIII Negro Art and Literature 287
IX The Gift of the Spirit 320
FOREWORD
It is not uncommon for casual thinkers to assume that the United States
of America is practically a continuation of English nationality.
Our speech is English and the English played so large a part in our
beginnings that it is easy to fall more or less consciously into the
thought that the history of this nation has been but a continuation and
development of these beginnings. A little reflection, however, quickly
convinces us that at least there was present French influence in the
Mississippi Valley and Spanish influence in the southeast and southwest.
Everything else however that has been added to the American nationality
is often looked upon as a sort of dilution of more or less doubtful
value: peoples that had to be assimilated as far as possible and made
over to the original and basic type. Thus we continually speak of Germans
and Scandinavians, of Irish and Jews, Poles, Austrians and Hungarians;
and, with few exceptions, we regard the coming of the Negroes as an
unmitigated error and a national liability.
It is high time that this course of our thinking should be changed.
America is conglomerate. This is at once her problem and her
glory—perhaps indeed her sole and greatest reason for being. Her physical
foundation is not English and while it is primarily it is not entirely
European. It represents peculiarly a coming together of the peoples of
the world. American institutions have been borrowed from England and
France in the main, but with contributions from many and widely scattered
groups. American history has no prototype and has been developed
from the various racial elements. Despite the fact that our mother
tongue is called English we have developed an American speech with its
idiosyncrasies and idioms, a speech whose purity is not to be measured
by its conformity to the speech of the British Isles. And finally the
American spirit is a new and interesting result of divers threads of
thought and feeling coming not only from America but from Europe and Asia
and indeed from Africa.
This essay is an attempt to set forth more clearly than has hitherto
been done the effect which the Negro has had upon American life. Its
thesis is that despite slavery, war and caste, and despite our present
Negro problem, the American Negro is and has been a distinct asset to
this country and has brought a contribution without which America could
not have been; and that perhaps the essence of our so-called Negro
problem is the failure to recognize this fact and to continue to act as
though the Negro was what we once imagined and wanted to imagine him—a
representative of a subhuman species fitted only for subordination.
A moment’s thought will easily convince open minded persons that the
contribution of the Negro to American nationality as slave, freedman
and citizen was far from negligible. No element in American life has
so subtly and yet clearly woven itself into the warp and woof of our
thinking and acting as the American Negro. He came with the first
explorers and helped in exploration. His labor was from the first the
foundation of the American prosperity and the cause of the rapid growth
of the new world in economic and social importance. Modern democracy
rests not simply on the striving white men in Europe and America but also
on the persistent struggle of the black men in America for two centuries.
The military defense of this land has depended upon Negro soldiers from
the time of the Colonial wars down to the struggle of the World War. Not
only does the Negro appear, reappear and persist in American literature
but a Negro American literature has arisen of deep significance, and
Negro folk lore and music are among the choicest heritages of this land.
Finally the Negro had played a peculiar spiritual rôle in America as a
sort of living, breathing test of our ideals and an example of the faith,
hope and tolerance of our religion.
THE RACIAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNITED STATES
By EDW. F. MCSWEENEY, LL. D.
In a general way, the Racial Contribution Series in the Knights of
Columbus historical program is intended as a much needed and important
contribution to national solidarity. The various studies are treated by
able writers, citizens of the United States, each being in full sympathy
with the achievements in this country of the racial group of whom he
treats. The standard of the writers is the only one that will justify
historical writing;—the truth. No censorship has been exercised.
No subject now actively before the people of the United States has been
more written on, and less understood, than alien immigration. Until
1819, there were no official statistics of immigration of any sort; the
so-called census of 1790 was simply a report of the several states of
their male white population under and over 16 years of age, all white
females, slaves, and others. Statements as to the country of origin of
the inhabitants of this country were, in the main, guesswork, with the
result that, while the great bulk of such estimates was honestly and
patriotically done, some of the most quoted during the present day were
inspired, obviously to prove a predetermined case, rather than to recite
the ascertained fact.
From the beginning the dominant groups in control in the United
States have regarded each group of newer arrivals as more or less
the “enemy” to be feared, and, if possible, controlled. A study of
various cross-sections of the country will show dominant alien groups
who formerly had to fight for their very existence. With increased
numerical strength and prosperity they frequently attempted to do to
the later aliens, frequently even of their own group, what had formerly
been done to them:—decry and stifle their achievements, and deny them
opportunity,—the one thing that may justly be demanded in a Democracy,—by
putting them in a position of inferiority.
To attempt, in this country, to set up a “caste” control, based on the
accident of birth, wealth, or privilege, is a travesty of Democracy. When
Washington and his compatriots, a group comprising the most efficiently
prepared men in the history of the world, who had set themselves
definitely to form a democratic civilization, dreamed of and even planned
by Plato, but held back by slavery and paganism, they found their sure
foundations in the precepts of Christianity, and gave them expression
in the Declaration of Independence. The liberty they sought, based on
obedience to the law of God as well as of man, was actually established,
but from the beginning it has met a constant effort to substitute
some form of absolutism tending to break down or replace democratic
institutions.
What may be called, for want of a better term, the colonial spirit, which
is the essence of hyphenism, has persisted in this country to hamper
national progress and national unity. Wherever this colonial spirit shows
itself it is a menace to be fought, whether the secret or acknowledged
attachment binds to England, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Greece or
any other nation.
Jefferson pointed out that we have on this soil evolved a new race of
men who may inexactly be called “Americans”. This term, as a monopoly of
the United States, is properly objected to by our neighbors, North and
South—yet it has a definite meaning for the world.
During the Great War one aspect of war duty was to direct the labor
activities growing out of the war, to divert labor from “non-essential”
to “essential” industry and to arbitrate and mediate on wage matters.
It was found necessary to study and to analyze the greatly feared, but
infrequently discovered “enemy alien”; and as a preparation for this
duty, with the assistance of several hundred local agents, the population
of Massachusetts was separated into naturally allied groups based on
birth, racial descent, religious, social and industrial affiliations.
The astonishing result was that, counting as “native Americans” only
the actual descendants of all those living in Massachusetts in 1840,
of whatever racial stock prior to that time, only two-sevenths, even
with the most liberal classification, came within the group of colonial
descent, while the remaining five-sevenths were found in the various
racial groups coming later than 1840. More than this: While the
“Colonial” group had increased in numbers for three decades after 1840,
in 1918 they were found actually to be fewer in number than in 1840, a
diminution due to excess of deaths over births, proceeding in increasing
ratio.
Membership in the Society of Mayflower descendants is eagerly sought as
the hallmark of American ancestry. In anticipation of the tercentenary
of the Mayflower-coming in 1620, about a dozen years ago a questionnaire
was sent to every known eligible for Mayflower ancestry, and the replies
were submitted to the experts in one of the national universities for
review and report. When this report was presented later, it contained the
statement that, considering the prevailing number of marriages in this
group, and children per family,—when the six-hundredth celebration of the
Pilgrims’ Landing is held in 2220, three hundred years hence, a ship the
size of the original Mayflower will be sufficient to carry back to Europe
all the then living Mayflower descendants.
The future of America is in the keeping of the 80 per cent. of the
population, separate in blood and race from the colonial descent group.
Love of native land is one of the strongest and noblest passions of which
a man is capable. Family life, religion, the soil which holds the dust
of our fathers, sentiment for ancestral property, and many other bonds,
make the ties of home so strong and enduring, and unite a man’s life so
closely with its native environment, that grave and powerful reasons must
exist before a change of residence is contemplated. Escape from religious
persecution and political tyranny were unquestionably the chief reasons
which induced the early comers to America to brave the dangers of an
unknown world. Yet that very intolerance against which this was a protest
soon began to be exercised against all those unwilling to accept in their
new homes the religious leadership of those in control.
It is not necessary to go into the persecutions due to religious bigotry
of the colonial period. While the spirit of liberty was in the free air
of the colonies and would finally have secured national independence, it
is not possible to underestimate the support brought to the revolting
colonials because of the attitude of Great Britain in allowing religious
freedom to Canada after it had been taken from the French. After the
victory of New Orleans, a spirit of national consciousness on a
democratic basis was built up and the narrow spirit of colonialism and
of religious intolerance was to a great degree repudiated by the people,
when they had become inspired with the American spirit,—only to be
revived later on.
The continued manifestation of intolerance has been the most persistent
effort in our national life. It has done incalculable harm. It is
apparently deep-rooted, an active force in almost every generation.
Present in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, stopped temporarily for two decades
by the Civil War, it has recurred subsequently again and again; revived
since the Armistice, it is unfortunately shown today in as great a
virulence and power of destructiveness as at any time during the last
hundred years.
After the 70’s, as the aliens became numerically powerful and began to
demand political representation, movements based on religious prejudice
were started from time to time, some of which came to temporary
prominence, later to die an inglorious death; but all these movements
which attempted to deprive aliens of their right of freedom to worship
were calculated to bring economic discontent and to add to the measure of
national disunion and unhappiness.
Sixty years ago[1] the bigoted slogan was “_No Irish need apply_.” During
the World War, the principal attack was on the German-American citizens
of this country, whose fathers had come here seeking a new land as a
protest against tyranny. Today the current attempt is to deprive the
Jews[2] of the right to educational equality. In short, while there have
been spasmodic manifestations of movements based on intolerance in many
countries, the United States has the unenviable record for continuous
effort to keep alive a bogey based on an increasing fear of something
which never existed, and cannot ever exist in this country.
For a hundred years the potent cause which has poured millions of human
beings into the United States has been its marvellous opportunities,
and unprecedented economic urge. Ever since 1830 a graphic chart of the
variations in immigration from year to year will reflect the industrial
situation in the United States for the same period. In 1837, the total
immigration was 79,430.[3] After the panic of that year it decreased in
1838 to 38,914.[4] In 1842, it increased to 104,565,[5] but a business
depression in 1844 caused it to shrink to 78,615.[6] Thus the influx of
aliens increased or decreased according to the industrial conditions
prevalent here. The business prosperity of the United States was not only
the urge to entice immigrants hither, but it made their coming possible
as they were helped by the savings of relatives and friends already here.
The English were not immigrants, but colonists, merely going from one
part of national territory to another. With few exceptions, the majority
of the early colonists came from England. The first English settlement
was made in Virginia under the London Company in 1607. It took twelve
years of hard struggling to establish this colony on a permanent basis.
The New England region was settled by a different class of colonists.
Plymouth was the first settlement, in 1620, followed in 1630 by the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later absorbed the Plymouth settlement.
Population, after the first ten years, increased rapidly by natural
growth, and soon colonies in Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Connecticut
resulted from the overflow in the original settlements.
While this English settlement was going on North and South, the Dutch,
under the Dutch West India Company, took possession of the region
between, and founded New Netherlands and New Amsterdam, later New York
City. Intervening, as it did, between their Northern and Southern
colonies, New Netherlands, which the English considered a menace, was
seized by the English during a war with Holland, and became New York and
New Jersey.
Early in the seventeenth century there was a substantial French
immigration to the Dutch colonies. There was a constant stream of French
immigration to the English colonies in New England and in Virginia by
many of the Huguenots who had originally emigrated to the West Indies.
In 1681, Penn settled Pennsylvania under a royal charter and thus the
whole Atlantic coast from Canada to Florida became subject to England.
During the colonial period, England contributed to the population of the
colonies. But, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the coming of
the English to New England was practically over. From 1628 to 1641 about
20,000 came from England to New England, but for the next century and a
half more persons went back to Old England than came from there to New
England.[7] Due to the relaxing of religious persecution of dissenting
Protestants in England, the great formerly impelling force to seek a new
home across the ocean in America had ceased.
In 1653 an Irish immigration to New England, much larger in numbers
than the original Plymouth Colony, was proposed. Bristol merchants,
who realized the necessity of populating the colonies to make them
prosperous, treated with the government for men, women and girls to be
sent to the West Indies and to New England.[8] At the very fountain head
of American life we find, therefore, men and women of pure Celtic blood
from the South of Ireland, infused into the primal stock of America.
But these apparently were only a drop in this early tide of Irish
immigration.[9]
No complete memorial has been transmitted of the emigrations that took
place from Europe to America, but (from the few illustrative facts
actually preserved) they seem to have been amazingly copious. In the
years 1771-72, the number of emigrants to America from the North of
Ireland alone amounted to 17,350. Almost all of these emigrated at their
own charge; a great majority of them were persons employed in the linen
manufacture, or farmers possessed of some property which they converted
into money and carried with them. Within the first fortnight of August,
1773, there arrived at Philadelphia 3,500 emigrants from Ireland, and
from the same document which has recorded this circumstance it appears
that vessels were arriving every month freighted with emigrants from
Holland, Germany, and especially from Ireland and the Highlands of
Scotland.[10]
That many Irish settled in Maryland is shown by the fact that in 1699 and
again a few years later an act was passed to prevent too great a number
of Irish Papists being imported into the province.[11] Shipmasters were
required to pay two shillings per poll for such. “Shipping records of
the colonial period show that boatload after boatload left the southern
and eastern shores of Ireland for the New World. Undoubtedly thousands
of their passengers were Irish of the native stock.”[12] So besides the
so-called Scotch-Irish from the North of Ireland, the distinction always
being Protestantism, not race, it is indisputable that thousands, Celtic
in race and Catholic in religion, came to the colonies. These newcomers
made their homes principally in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland,
the Carolinas and the frontiers of the New England colonies. Later
they pushed on westward and founded Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. An
interesting essay by the well-known writer, Irvin S. Cobb, on _The Lost
Irish Tribes in the South_ is an important contribution to this subject.
The Germans were the next most important element of the early population
of America. A number of the artisans and carpenters in the first
Jamestown colony were of German descent. In 1710, a body of 3,000 Germans
came to New York—the largest number of immigrants supposed to have
arrived at one time during the colonial period.[13] Most of the early
German immigrants settled in New Jersey, the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania.
It has been estimated that at the end of the colonial period the number
of Germans was fully two hundred thousand.
Though the Irish and the Germans contributed most largely to colonial
immigration, as distinguished from the English, who are classed as the
Colonials, there were other races who came even thus early to our shores.
The Huguenots came from France to escape religious persecution. The
Jews, then as ever, engaged in their age-old struggle for religious and
economic toleration, came from England, France, Spain and Portugal. The
Dutch Government of New Amsterdam, fearing their commercial competition,
ordered a group of Portuguese Jews to leave the colony, but this decision
was appealed to the home Government at Holland and reversed, so that
they were allowed to remain. On the whole, their freedom to live and to
trade in the colonies was so much greater than in their former homes that
there were soon flourishing colonies of Jewish merchants in Newport,
Philadelphia and Charleston.
In 1626 a company of Swedish merchants organized, under the patronage of
the Great King Gustavus Adolphus, to promote immigration to America. The
King contributed four hundred thousand dollars to the capital raised, but
did not live to see the fruition of his plans. In 1637, the first company
of Swedes and Finns left Stockholm for America. They reached Delaware
Bay and called the country New Sweden. The Dutch claimed, by right of
priority, this same territory and in 1655 the flag of Holland replaced
that of Sweden. The small Swedish colony in Delaware came under Penn’s
rule and became, like Pennsylvania, cosmopolitan in character.
The Dutch in New York preserved their racial characteristics for more
than a hundred years after the English conquest of 1664. At the end of
the colonial period, over one-half of the 170,000 inhabitants of New York
were descendants of the original Dutch.
Many of the immigrants who came here in the early days paid their
own passage. However, the actual number of such is only a matter of
conjecture. From the shipping records of the period we do know positively
that thousands came who were unable to pay. Shipowners and others who
had the means furnished the passage money to those too poor to pay for
themselves, and in return received from these persons a promise or bond.
This bond provided that the person named in it should work for a certain
number of years to repay the money advanced. Such persons were called
“indentured servants” and they were found throughout the colonies,
working in the fields, the shops and the homes of the colonists. The
term of service was from five to seven years. Many found it impossible
to meet their obligations and their servitude dragged on for years.
Others, on the contrary, became free and prosperous. In Pennsylvania
often there were as many as fifty bond servants on estates. The condition
of indentured servants in Virginia “was little better than that of
slaves. Loose indentures and harsh laws put them at the mercy of their
masters.”[14] This seems to have been their fate in all the colonies, as
their treatment depended upon the character of their masters.
Besides these indentured servants who came here voluntarily, a large
number of early settlers were forced to come here. The Irish before
mentioned are one example. In order to secure settlers, men, women and
children were kidnapped from the cities and towns and “spirited away” to
America by the companies and proprietors who had colonies here. In 1680
it was officially computed that 10,000 were sent thus to American shores.
In 1627, about 1,500 children were shipped to Virginia, probably orphans
and dependents whom their relatives were unwilling to support.[15]
Another class sent here were convicts, the scourings of English centers
like Bristol and Liverpool. The colonists protested vehemently against
this practise, but it was continued up to the very end of the colonial
period, when this convict tide was diverted to “Botany Bay.”
In 1619, another race was brought here against their will and sold into
slavery. This was the Negro, forced to leave his home near the African
equator that he might contribute to the material wealth of shipmasters
and planters. Slowly but surely chattel slavery took firm root in the
South and at last became the leading source of the labor supply. The
slave traders found it very easy to seize Negroes in Africa and make
great profits by selling them in Southern ports. The English Royal
African Company sent to America annually between 1713 and 1743 from
5,000 to 10,000 slaves.[16] After a time, when the Negroes were so
numerous that whole sections were overrun, the Southern colonies tried
ineffectually to curb the trade. Virginia in 1710 placed a duty of five
pounds on each slave but the Royal Governor vetoed the bill. Bills of
like import were passed in other colonies from time to time, but the
English crown disapproved in every instance and the trade, so lucrative
to British shipowners, went on. At the time of the Revolution, there were
almost half a million slaves in the colonies.[17] The exact proportions
of the slave trade to America can be but approximately determined. From
1680 to 1688 the African Company sent 249 ships to Africa, shipped there
60,783 Negro slaves, and after losing 14,387 on the middle passage,
delivered 46,396 in America. The trade increased early in the eighteenth
century, 104 ships clearing for Africa in 1701; it then dwindled until
the signing of the Assiento, standing at 74 clearances in 1724. The
final dissolution of the monopoly in 1750 led—excepting in the years
1754-57, when the closing of Spanish marts sensibly affected the trade—to
an extraordinary development, 192 clearances being made in 1771. The
Revolutionary War nearly stopped the traffic, but by 1786 the clearances
had risen again to 146.
To these figures must be added the unregistered trade of Americans and
foreigners. It is probable that about 25,000 slaves were brought to
America each year between 1698 and 1707. The importation then dwindled
but after the Assiento rose to perhaps 30,000. The proportion of these
slaves carried to the continent now began to increase. Of about 20,000
whom the English annually imported from 1733 to 1766, South Carolina
alone received some 3,000. Before the Revolution the total exportation to
America is variously estimated as between 40,000 and 100,000 each year.
Bancroft places the total slave population of the continental colonies
at 59,000 in 1714; 78,000 in 1727; and 293,000 in 1754. The census of
1790 showed 697,897 slaves in the United States. Not all the Negroes who
came to America were slaves and not all remained slaves. There were the
following free Negroes in the decades between 1790 and 1860:
1790 59,557
1800 108,435
1810 186,446
1820 233,634
1830 319,599
1840 386,293
1850 434,495
1860 488,070
Immigration of Negroes is still taking place, especially from the West
Indies. It has been estimated that there are the following foreign-born
Negroes in the United States:
1890 19,979
1900 20,336
1910 40,339
1920 75,000
In 1790, Negroes were one-fifth of the total population; in 1860 they
were one-seventh; in 1900 one-ninth;[18] today they are approximately
one-tenth.
With the beginning of the national era—1783—all peoples subsequently
coming to the United States must be classed as immigrants. During the
first years of our national life, no accurate statistics of immigration
were kept. The Federal Government took no control of the matter and the
State records are incomplete and unreliable. A pamphlet published by the
Bureau of Statistics in 1903, _Immigration into the United States_, says,
“The best estimates of the total immigration into the United States prior
to the official count puts the total number of arrivals at not to exceed
250,000 in the entire period between 1776 and 1820.”
From 1806 to 1816, the unfriendly relations which existed between the
United States and England and France precluded any extensive immigration
to this country. England maintained and for a time successfully enforced
the doctrine that “a man once a subject was always a subject.” The
American Merchant Service, because of the pay and good treatment given,
was very attractive to English sailors and a very great enticement to
them to come to America and enter the American service. However, the
fear of impressment deterred many from so doing. The Blockade Decrees
of England against France in 1806 and the retaliation decrees of France
against England in that same year were other influences which retarded
immigration. These decrees were succeeded by the British Orders in
Council, the Milan Decree of Napoleon, and the United States law of 1809
prohibiting intercourse with both Great Britain and France.
In 1810, the French decrees were annulled and American commerce began
again with France, only to have the vessels fall into the hands of the
British. Then came the War of 1812. The German immigration suffered
greatly from this condition of affairs, as the Germans sailed principally
from the ports of Liverpool and Havre. At these points ships were more
numerous and expenses less heavy. In December, 1814, a few days before
the Battle of New Orleans, a treaty of peace was concluded between the
United States and England and after a few months immigration was resumed
once more.
In 1817, about 22,240 persons arrived at ports of the United States from
foreign countries. This number included American citizens returning from
abroad. In no previous year had so many immigrants come to our shores.
In 1819 a law was passed by Congress and approved by the President
“regulating passenger ships and vessels.” In 1820, the official history
of immigration began. The Port Collectors then began to keep records
which included numbers, sexes, ages, and occupations of all incoming
persons. However, up to 1856, no distinction was made between travellers
and immigrants.
Immigration increased from 8,358 in 1820—of which 6,024 came from Great
Britain and Ireland—to 22,633 in 1831.[19] The decade of the twenties
was a time of great industrial activity in the United States. The Erie
Canal was built, other canals were projected, the railroads were started,
business increased by leaps and bounds. As a consequence, the demand
for labor was imperative and Europe responded. During the entire period
of our early national life, the United States encouraged the coming of
foreign artisans and laborers as the necessity for strength, skill and
courage in the upbuilding of our country began to be realized.
From 1831 the number of immigrants steadily increased until from
September 30, 1849, to September 30, 1850, they totaled 315,334[20] The
largest increases during those years were from 1845 to 1848, when the
famine in Ireland and the revolution in Germany drove thousands to the
shores of free America. These causes continued to increase the number of
arrivals until in 1854 the crest was attained with 460,474[21]—a figure
not again reached for nearly twenty years.
From September 30, 1819, when the official count of immigrants began to
be taken, to December 31, 1855, a total of 4,212,624 persons of foreign
birth arrived in the United States.[22] Of these Bromwell, who wrote
in 1856 a work compiled entirely from official data, estimates that
1,747,930 were Irish.[23] Next comes Germany,[24] with 1,206,087; England
third with 207,492; France fourth with 188,725.
The exodus of the Irish during those famine years furnishes one of the
many examples recorded in history of a subject race driven from its home
by the economic injustice of a dominant race. Later, we see the same
thing true in Austria-Hungary where the Slavs were tyrannized by the
Magyars; again we find it in Russia where the Jew sought freedom from the
Slav; and once again in Armenia and Syria where the native people fled
from the Turk.
After 1855, the tide of immigration began to decrease steadily. During
the first two years of the Civil War, it was less than 100,000.[25] In
1863, an increase was noticeable again and 395,922[26] immigrants are
recorded in 1869.
During all these years up to 1870, the great part of the immigration was
from Northern Europe. The largest racial groups were composed of Irish,
Germans, Scandinavians and French. About the middle of the nineteenth
century French-speaking Canadians were attracted by the opportunities for
employment in the mills and factories of New England.
The number of Irish coming here steadily decreased after 1880 until
it has fallen far below that of other European peoples. Altogether,
the total Irish immigration from 1820 to 1906 is placed at something
over 4,000,000, thus giving the Irish second place as contributors to
the foreign-born population of the United States. The Revolution of
1848 was the contributing cause of a large influx of Germans, many of
whom were professional men and artisans. From 1873 to 1879 there was
great industrial depression in Germany and consequently another large
immigration to America took place. Since 1882, there has also been a
noticeable decline in German immigrants. From 1820 to 1903, a total of
over 5,000,000 Germans was recorded as coming to the United States.[27]
In the period from 1880 to 1910 immigration from Italy totaled 4,018,404.
It will be remembered that the law requiring the registration of outgoing
aliens was not passed until 1908, and it may, therefore, be estimated
that 3,000,000 represents the total number of arrivals from Italy, who
remained here permanently.
After 1903, up to the outbreak of the Great War, the number of alien
arrivals steadily increased. In 1905, it was more than 1,000,000; in
1906, it passed the 1,100,000 mark and in 1907 the 1,200,000 mark; in
1913 and 1914, the total number for each year exceeded 1,400,000.[28]
During the ten years from 1905 to 1915, nearly 12,000,000 aliens landed
in the United States, a yearly average of 1,200,000 arrivals. These
alone form more than 37 per cent. of all recorded immigration since 1820
and make up about 88 out of every 100 of our present total foreign-born
population.[29] Until interrupted by the European War, the immigration
to the United States was the greatest movement of the largest number
of peoples that the world has ever known. Of course, there have been
economic upheavals from time to time which have noticeably affected
this movement. The Civil War, as before noted, and financial panics and
industrial depressions in our country interrupted the incoming tide
repeatedly. The Great War with its social and economic upheaval had a
tremendous effect on our immigration. The twelve months following the
declaration of war shows the smallest number of alien arrivals since
1899. The number was slightly over 325,000. The statistics compiled by
the Federal Bureau of Immigration show that by far the greater part of
the immigrants who come to the United States are from Europe. Of the
1,403,000 alien immigrants who came here in 1914, about 1,114,000 were
from Europe; about 35,000 came from Asia; the remainder, about 254,000,
came from all other countries combined, principally Canada, the West
Indies, and Mexico. Eighty out of every 100, therefore, came from Europe.
As many as sixty of that eighty came from the three countries of Italy,
Austria-Hungary and Russia. Italy sent 294,689; Austria-Hungary was
second with 286,059; Russia contributed 262,409. From all of England,
Ireland, Scotland and Wales came only 88,000 or about 6 out of every 100;
and from Norway, Sweden and Denmark came about 31,000 or 2 out of every
100.
Greece, France, Portugal, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Spain, Turkey, the
Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Roumania contributed virtually all
the remainder of our 1914 immigrants from Europe, given in the order of
importance.
However, we should bear in mind always that the country of origin or
nationality or jurisdiction (as determined by political boundaries) is
not always identical with race. Immigration statistics have followed
national or political boundaries. Take the immigrants from Russia. The
statistics say that 262,000 arrived from that country in 1914. But of
this number, less than 5 out of every 100 are Russians; the rest or 95
out of every 100, are Hebrews, Poles, Lithuanians, Finns and Germans.
Austria-Hungary was another country made of a medley of races. The
Germanic Austrians who ruled Austria and the Hungarian Magyars who ruled
Hungary were less than one-half of the total population of the one time
Austria-Hungary.
The record of alien arrivals from Poland is not accurate because it is
divided into three national statistical divisions—Russia, Germany and
Austria-Hungary. The best estimate is that the total Polish arrivals to
the United States since 1820 approximates 2,500,000.
The Slav, the Magyar, the German, the Latin, and the Jew were all in
Austria-Hungary and moreover, these were all numerously subdivided. The
most numerous of the Slavs are the Czechs and Slovaks. These gave the
United States in 1914 a combined immigration of 37,000. Poles, Ruthenians
and Roumanians also came here from northern Austria, and from the
vicinity of the Black Sea came Roumanians more Latin than Slavic. Besides
these, the one time dual kingdom sent Jews, Greeks and Turks.
Although the most important Slavic country of Europe is Russia, yet it
was from Austria-Hungary that we received most of our Slavic immigrants.
In 1914, as many as 23 out of every 100 of our total immigration were
Slavic, and the larger part of this racial group which reached 319,000
that year, came from Austria-Hungary.
That mere recording of country or origin does not give accurate racial
information is illustrated in the case of the many Greeks under Turkish
rule, and the large number of Armenians found in almost all large Turkish
towns. The Armenians are probably the most numerous of the immigrants
from Asia. In 1914, the total immigration from Turkey was about 20,000,
but the actual Turkish immigration was only 3,000. The remaining 27,000
were Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians, Montenegrins, Syrians, Armenians and
Hebrews.[30]
The “country of origin” tells us almost nothing about the large Hebrew
immigration which comes to the United States. The Jew comes from many
countries. The greater part of all our recent Jewish immigration comes
from Russia, from what is called the “Jewish Pale of Settlement” in the
western part of that country. Other Jews come from Austria, Roumania,
Germany and Turkey. In 1914, the Jews were the fourth largest in numbers
among our immigrants, nearly 143,000.[31]
We must also bear in mind that all of these millions who came to America
do not remain with us. There is a constant emigration going on, a
departure of aliens back to their native land either for a time, or for
all time. Up to 1908, the Bureau of Immigration kept no record of the
“ebb of the tide” but since that time vessels taking aliens out of the
United States, are obliged by law to make a list containing name, age,
sex, nationality, residence in the United States, occupation, and time
of last arrival of each alien passenger, which must be filed with the
Federal Collector of Customs.
The first year of this record, 1908, followed the financial panic of
October, 1907, and due to the economic conditions prevalent in the United
States a very large emigration to Europe was disclosed.
The records show also that the volume of emigration, like that of
immigration, varies from year to year. Just as prosperity here increases
immigration, “bad” times increase emigration from our shores.
There was a time when emigration was so slight that it was of little
importance, but since the early nineties it has assumed large
proportions. After the panic of 1907, for months a larger number left the
country than came into it, and thousands and thousands swarmed the ports
of departure awaiting a chance to return home. In the earlier years,
the immigrant sometimes spent months making the journey here. Besides
the difficulty of the trip, ocean transportation was more expensive.
Therefore, the earlier immigrants came to remain, to make homes here
for themselves and their children. The Irish, the Germans, the early
Bohemians, the Scandinavians, and in fact all the early comers brought
their families and their “household goods”, ready to settle down for all
time and to become citizens of their adopted country.
A large number of the alien arrivals of recent years come here initially
with only a vague intention of remaining permanently, and these make up
the large emigration streaming constantly from our ports. However, it
is only fair to say that eventually many of these people come back to
America and become permanent residents. Anyone who has had experience at
our ports of entry can substantiate the statement that during a period of
years the same faces are seen incoming again and again.
Although immigrants have come by millions into the United States,
and have been the main contributing cause of its wonderful national
expansion, yet opposition to their coming has manifested itself strongly
at different times.
In the colonial period the people objected, and rightly, to the maternal
solicitude which England evidenced by making the colonies the dumping
ground for criminals and undesirables. However, these objections were
disregarded and convicts and criminals continued to come while the
colonies remained under British rule.
After the national era, immigration was practically unrestricted down
to 1875. At different periods there were manifestations of a strong
desire to restrict immigration, but Congress never responded with
exclusion laws. The alien and sedition laws of 1798 had for their
object the removal of foreigners already residents in the United
States. The naturalization laws passed that same year, lengthening the
time of residence necessary for citizenship to fourteen years, were
another severe measure against resident aliens. The native American
and the Know-nothing uprisings were still other indications of that
same spirit of antagonism to the alien based on religious grounds. This
religious antagonism in many of the States took the form of opposition
to immigration itself and a demand for restrictions. But this all
proved futile, for the National Government recognized the necessity of
settling the limitless West. Then, too, another subject loomed large and
threatening at this time, and engrossed the attention of the people away
from the dire evils which the Irish and the Catholics would precipitate
upon “our free and happy people”. This was the State Rights and Slavery
question; and soon the country forgot immigration in the throes of the
Civil War.
By an act of March 3, 1875, the National Government made its first
attempt to restrict immigration; this act prohibited the bringing in
of alien convicts and of women for immoral purposes. On May 6, 1882,
Congress passed and the President approved another act “to regulate
immigration”, by which the coming of Chinese laborers was forbidden
for ten years. The story which led up to this Act of Congress is a
long one, and the details cannot be given here. Briefly, conditions in
California following the Burlingame treaty of 1868, owing to the influx
of Chinese labor, resulted in the organization of a workingman’s party
headed by Dennis Kearney, and forced the Chinese question as one of the
dominant issues of State politics. Resolutions embodying the feelings of
the people on Chinese immigration were presented to the Constitutional
Convention of 1879. The State Legislature enacted laws against this
immigration. Subsequently pressure was brought to bear on the National
Government, a new treaty with China was negotiated, and finally the law
of 1882 was passed by Congress, restricting for ten years the admission
of Chinese laborers, both skilled and unskilled, and of mine workers also.
Ever since the passage of this law, the Federal Government has pursued
a more restrictive and exclusive immigration policy. The next law was
passed in August, 1882, prohibiting the immigration of “any convict,
lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself
without becoming a public charge.” Then, in 1885, came another act
known as the “Alien Contract Labor Law”, forbidding the importation
and immigration of foreigners and aliens under contract or agreement
to perform labor in the United States. In 1891 came the law called the
“Geary Act” which amended “the various acts relative to immigration and
the importation of aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor”.
This act extended Chinese exclusion for another ten years, and required
the Chinese in the country to register and submit to the Bertillon test
as a means of identification. In 1893 two acts were passed; one which
gave the quarantine service greater powers and placed additional duties
upon the Public Health Service, and another which properly enforced
the existing immigration and contract labor laws. In 1902 the law
of exclusion was made permanent against Chinese laborers. So, since
1875, the United States has passed laws excluding Chinese entirely and
virtually excluding the Japanese, and both these races are ineligible to
citizenship. In 1907, an act was passed “to regulate the immigration of
Aliens into the United States”, which excluded imbeciles, epileptics,
those so defective either physically or mentally that they might become
public charges; children under sixteen not with a parent, etc.
A far more restrictive measure known as the “literacy” or “educational”
test has been before Congress at different times and has, on three
different occasions, failed to become a law. President Cleveland vetoed
it in 1897, Taft in 1913, and Wilson in 1915. All three Presidents
objected to this bill principally on the ground that it was such “a
radical departure” from all previous national policy in regard to
immigration. President Wilson’s veto of 1917 was overcome and the bill
became a law by a two-thirds majority vote of both houses. This law
requires that entering aliens must be able to read the English language
or some other language or dialect. The one thing which the literacy test
was designed to accomplish—to decrease the volume of immigration—was
brought about suddenly and unexpectedly by the European War. From the
opening of the war, the number of immigrants steadily decreased until,
for the year ending June 30, 1916, it was only 298,826[32] and for the
year ending June 30, 1917, only 110,618.[33] Then it began again to
increase steadily until for the year ending June 30, 1920, it reached a
total of 430,001.[34]
On June 3, 1921, an emergency measure known as the three per cent.
law was passed. This act provided that the number of aliens of any
nationality who could be admitted to the United States in any one year
should be limited to three per cent. of the number of foreign-born
persons of such nationality resident in the United States as determined
by the census of 1910. Certain ones were not counted, such as foreign
government officials and their families and employees, aliens in
transit through the United States, tourists, aliens from countries
having immigration treaties with the United States, aliens who have
lived for one year previous to their admission in Canada, Newfoundland,
Mexico, Central America, or South America, and aliens under eighteen
who have parents who are American citizens. More than twenty per cent.
of a country’s full quota could not be admitted in one month except in
the case of actors, artists, lecturers, singers, nurses, clergymen,
professors, members of the learned professions or domestic servants who
could always come in even though the month’s or the year’s quota had been
used.
A well organized effort is under way in the Congress which began its
session in December 1923, to reduce the quota to two per cent. of the
immigrants recorded as coming to the United States in 1890. This bill,
which will probably be passed, is being opposed vigorously, by the
Jews and Italians who are immediately the particular racial groups
to be affected, but since neither the Jews nor Italians, separately
or collectively, have political strength to be a voting factor to be
considered, except in a half dozen of the industrial states, the passage
of the bill seems to be inevitable.
The recent immigration restriction laws make a decided break with past
national history and tradition. There is little doubt that these laws
are in part the fruit of an organized movement which, especially since
the war, is attempting to classify all aliens, except those of one
special group, as “hyphenates” and “mongrels”. These laws are haphazard,
unscientific, based on unworthy prejudice and likely, ultimately, to be
disastrous in their economic consequences. The present three per cent.
immigration law is not based on any fundamental standard of fitness. Once
the percentage of maximum admissions is reached, in any given month, the
next alien applying for entrance may be a potential Washington, Lincoln
or Edison to whom the unyielding process of the law must deny admission.
Such laws, worked out under the hysteria of “after war psychology”, seem
to be one of the instances, so frequent in history, where Democracy must
take time to work out its own mistakes.
Under the circumstances, there is all the more reason that the priceless
heritage of racial achievement by the descendants of various racial
groups in the United States be told.
The United States has departed a long way from the policy which was
recorded in 1795 by the series of coins known as the “Liberty and
Security” coins, on which appeared the words “A Refuge for the Oppressed
of all Nations”.
ARRIVALS OF ALIEN PASSENGERS AND IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED
STATES FROM 1820 TO 1892
Prepared by the Bureau of Statistics and published in 1893 by
the Government Printing Office.
=====================================================================
1821 to 1831 to 1841 to
Countries Whence Arrived 1830 1840 1850
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Austria-Hungary
Belgium 27 22 5,074
Denmark 169 1,063 539
France 3,497 45,575 77,262
Germany 6,761 152,454 434,626
Italy 408 2,253 1,870
Netherlands 1,078 1,412 8,251
Norway and Sweden 91 1,201 13,903
Russia and Poland 91 646 656
Spain and Portugal 2,622 2,954 2,759
Switzerland 3,226 4,821 4,644
========= ========= =========
United Kingdom
England(a) 22,167 73,143 263,332
Scotland 2,912 2,667 3,712
Ireland 50,724 207,381 780,719
Total United Kingdom 75,803 283,191 1,047,763
========= ========= =========
All other countries of Europe 43 96 165
--------- --------- ---------
Total Europe 98,816 495,688 1,597,502
========= ========= =========
British North American Possessions 2,277 13,624 41,723
Mexico 4,817 6,599 3,271
Central America 105 44 368
South America 531 856 3,579
West Indies 3,834 12,301 13,528
--------- --------- ---------
Total America 11,564 33,424 62,469
=====================================================================
=====================================================================
1851 Jan. 1 Fiscal
to 1861 Years
Dec. 31, to June 1871 to
Countries Whence Arrived 1860 30, 1870 1880
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Austria-Hungary 7,800 72,969
Belgium 4,738 6,734 7,221
Denmark 3,749 17,094 31,771
France 76,358 35,984 72,206
Germany 951,667 787,468 718,182
Italy 9,231 11,728 55,759
Netherlands 10,789 9,102 16,541
Norway and Sweden 20,931 109,298 211,245
Russia and Poland 1,621 4,536 52,254
Spain and Portugal 10,353 8,493 9,893
Switzerland 25,011 23,286 28,293
========= ========= =========
United Kingdom
England(a) 385,643 568,128 460,479
Scotland 38,331 38,768 87,564
Ireland 914,119 435,778 436,871
Total United Kingdom 1,338,093 1,042,674 984,914
========= ========= =========
All other countries of Europe 116 210 656
--------- --------- ---------
Total Europe 2,452,657 2,064,407 2,261,904
========= ========= =========
British North American Possessions 59,309 153,871 383,269
Mexico 3,078 2,191 5,362
Central America 449 96 210
South America 1,224 1,396 928
West Indies 10,660 9,043 13,957
--------- --------- ---------
Total America 74,720 166,597 403,726
=====================================================================
=====================================================================
Fiscal Fiscal
Years Years
1881 to 1891 and
Countries Whence Arrived 1890 1892 Total
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Austria-Hungary 353,719 151,178 585,666
Belgium 20,177 7,340 51,333
Denmark 88,132 21,252 163,769
France 50,464 13,291 379,637
Germany 1,452,970 244,312 4,748,440
Italy 307,309 138,191 526,749
Netherlands 53,701 12,466 113,340
Norway and Sweden 568,362 107,157 1,032,188
Russia and Poland 265,088 192,615 517,507
Spain and Portugal 6,535 5,657 49,266
Switzerland 81,988 14,219 185,488
========= ========= =========
United Kingdom
England(a) 657,488 104,575 2,534,955
Scotland 149,869 24,077 347,900
Ireland 655,482 111,173 3,592,247
Total United Kingdom 1,462,839 239,825 6,475,102
========= ========= =========
All other countries of Europe 10,318 4,954 16,548
--------- --------- ---------
Total Europe 4,721,602 (b)1,152,457 14,845,038
========= ========= =========
British North American Possessions 392,802 (c) 1,046,875
Mexico 1,913 (c) 27,231
Central America 462 576 2,310
South America 2,304 1,344 12,162
West Indies 29,042 5,673 98,038
--------- --------- ---------
Total America 426,523 7,593 1,186,616
=====================================================================
Alien Passengers from October 1, 1820, to December 31, 1867, and
Immigrants from January 1, 1868, to June 30, 1892.
(a) Includes Wales and Great Britain not specified. According to William
J. Bromwell’s _History of Emigration to the United States_, published in
1856 by Redfield of New York, 1,000,000 of this number were from Ireland,
which is probably accurate. During and after the Irish famine large
numbers of Irish who could not find money for the passage to the United
States did find it possible to go to England to work in coal mines,
factories, and in seasonal agricultural employment; the money secured
from which enabled them to embark for the United States from various
English ports, which explains Bromwell’s estimate.
(b) Includes 777 from Azores and 5 from Greenland.
(c) Immigrants from British North American Possessions and Mexico are not
included since July 1, 1885.
Author’s Note: Official statistics of immigration to the United States
began in 1819, so that statements as to the number of aliens arriving
prior to that time are largely guesswork.
The “panic” of 1893 had the effect to turn the alien tide the other
way—back to Europe. Official statistics as to aliens returning from the
United States were not required by law until 1908.
The quarter of a century which has passed since the character of alien
arrivals to the United States beginning in the forties, changed so
markedly in the decade of 1880 to 1890, is not long enough for accurate
analysis of the economic, political and social influence on the United
States of the coming of these newer races, so that the statistical
records here given do not extend beyond 1892.
THE GIFT OF BLACK FOLK
PRESCRIPT
Who made America? Who made this land that swings its empire from the
Atlantic to the Sea of Peace and from Snow to Fire—this realm of New
Freedom, with Opportunity and Ideal unlimited?
Now that its foundations are laid, deep but bare, there are those as
always who would forget the humble builders, toiling wan mornings and
blazing noons, and picture America as the last reasoned blossom of mighty
ancestors; of those great and glorious world builders and rulers who know
and see and do all things forever and ever, amen! How singular and blind!
For the glory of the world is the possibilities of the commonplace and
America is America even because it shows, as never before, the power of
the common, ordinary, unlovely man. This is real democracy and not that
vain and eternal striving to regard the world as the abiding place of
exceptional genius with great black wastes of hereditary idiots.
We who know may not forget but must forever spread the splendid sordid
truth that out of the most lowly and persecuted of men, Man made America.
And that what Man has here begun with all its want and imperfection, with
all its magnificent promise and grotesque failure will some day blossom
in the souls of the Lowly.
CHAPTER I
THE BLACK EXPLORERS
How the Negro helped in the discovery of America and gave his
ancient customs to the land.
Garcia de Montalvo published in 1510 a Spanish romance which said:
“Know ye that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called
California very near the Terrestrial Paradise which is peopled with black
women without any men among them, because they were accustomed to live
after the fashion of the Amazons. They were of strong and hardy bodies,
of ardent courage and of great force.”[35]
The legend that the Negro race had touched America even before the
day of Columbus rests upon a certain basis of fact: First, the Negro
countenance, clear and unmistakable, occurs repeatedly in Indian
carvings, among the relics of the Mound Builders and in Mexican
temples.[36] Secondly, there are evidences of Negro customs among the
Indians in their religious worship; in their methods of building defenses
such as the mounds probably were; and particularly in customs of trade.
Columbus said that he had been told of a land southwest of the Cape Verde
Islands where the black folk had been trading and had used in their trade
the well known African alloy of gold called guanin.[37]
“There can be no question whatever as to the reality of the statement in
regard to the presence in America of the African pombeiros[38] previous
to Columbus because the guani is a Mandingo word and the very alloy is
of African origin. In 1501 a law was passed forbidding persons to sell
guanin to the Indians of Hispaniola.”[39]
Wiener thinks “The presence of Negroes with their trading masters in
America before Columbus is proved by the representation of Negroes in
American sculpture and design, by the occurrence of a black nation at
Darien early in the 16th century, but more specifically by Columbus’
emphatic reference to Negro traders from Guinea, who trafficked in a gold
alloy, guanin, of precisely the same composition and bearing the same
name, as frequently referred to by early writers in Africa.”[40]
And thirdly, many of the productions of America which have hitherto been
considered as indigenous and brought into use especially by the Indians,
may easily have been African in origin, as for instance, tobacco, cotton,
sweet potatoes and peanuts. It is quite possible that many if not all
of these came through the African Negro, being in some cases indigenous
to Negro Africa and in other cases transmitted from the Arabs by the
Negroes. Tobacco particularly was known in Africa and is mentioned in
early America continually in connection with the Negroes. All of these
things were spread in America along the same routes starting with the
mingling of Negroes and Indians in the West Indies and coming up through
Florida and on to Canada. The Arawak Indians, who especially show the
effects of contact with Negroes, and fugitive Negroes, together with
Negroid Caribs, migrated northward and it was they who led Ponce de Leon
to search for the Fountain Bimini where old men became young.[41]
Oviedo says that the sweet potato “came with that evil lot of Negroes and
it has taken very well and it is profitable and good sustenance for the
Negroes of whom there is a greater number than is necessary on account of
their rebellions.”[42] In the same way maize and sugar cane may have been
imported from Africa.
Further than this the raising of bread roots, manioc, yam and sweet
potatoes may have come to America from Guinea by way of Brazil. From
Brazil the culture of these crops spread and many of the words referring
to them are of undoubted African origin.
Negroes probably reached the eastern part of South America from the West
Indies while others from the same source went north along the roads
marked by the Mound Builders as far as Canada.
“The chief cultural influence of the Negro in America was exerted by a
Negro colony in Mexico, most likely from Teotihuacan and Tuxtla, who may
have been instrumental in establishing the city of Mexico. From here
their influence pervaded the neighboring tribes and ultimately, directly
or indirectly, reached Peru.”[43]
The mounds of the “Mound Builders” were probably replicas of Negro forts
in Africa. “That this tendency to build forts and stockades proceeded
from the Antilles, whence the Arawaks had come in the beginning of the
sixteenth century, is proved by the presence of similar works in Cuba.
These are found in the most abandoned and least-explored part of the
island and there can be little doubt that they were locations of fugitive
Negro and Indian stockades, precisely such as were in use in Africa.
It is not possible to prove the direct participation of the Negroes in
the fortifications of the North American Indians, but as the civilizing
influence on the Indians to a great extent proceeded from Cuba over
Florida towards the Huron Country in the north, the solution of the
question of the Mound Builders is to be looked for in the perpetuation of
Arawak or Carib methods, acquired from the Negroes, as well attested by
Ovando’s complaint in 1503 that the Negroes spoiled the manners of the
Indians; and transferred to the white traders, who not only adopted the
methods of the Indians, but frequently lived among the Indians as part of
them, especially in Brazil where we have ample documentary evidence of
the fact.”[44]
All this is prehistoric and in part conjectural and yet it seems
reasonable to suppose that much in custom, trade and religion which has
been regarded as characteristic of the American Indian arose from strong
Negro influences of the pre-Columbian period.
After the discovery of America by Columbus many Negroes came with the
early explorers. Many of these early black men were civilized Christians
and sprung from the large numbers of Negroes imported into Spain and
Portugal during the fifteenth century, where they replaced as laborers
the expelled Moors. Afterward came the mass of slaves brought by the
direct African slave trade.
From the beginning of the fifteenth century mention of the Negro in
America becomes frequent. In 1501 they were permitted to enter the
colonies; in 1503 the Governor of Hispaniola sought to prohibit their
transportation to America because they fled to the Indians and taught
them bad manners. By 1506 they were coming again because the work of one
Negro was worth more than that of four Indians. In 1518 the new sugar
culture in Spain and the Canary Islands began to be transferred to the
West Indies and Negroes were required as laborers. In 1521 Negroes were
not to be used on errands because they incited Indians to rebellion and
the following year they rose in rebellion on Diego Columbus’ mill. In
1540, in Quivera, Mexico, there was a Negro priest and in 1542 there were
at Guamango, Mexico, three Brotherhoods of the True Cross of Spaniards,
one of which was of Negroes and one of Indians.
Thus the Negro is seen not only entering as a laborer but becoming a
part of the civilization of the New World. Helps says: “Very early in
the history of the American Continent there are circumstances to show
that Negroes were gradually entering into that part of the New World.
They constantly appear at remarkable points in the narrative. When the
Marquis Pizarro had been slain by the conspirators, his body was dragged
to the Cathedral by two Negroes. The murdered Factor, Illan Suarez, was
buried by Negroes and Indians. After the battle of Anaquito, the head of
the unfortunate Viceroy, Blasco Nunez Vela, was cut off by a Negro. On
the outbreak of the great earthquake at Guatemala, the most remarkable
figure in that night’s terrors was a gigantic Negro, who was seen in
many parts of the city, and who assisted no one, however much he was
implored. In the narrative of the return of Las Casas to his diocese, it
has been seen that he was attended by a Negro. And many other instances
might be adduced, showing that, in the decade from 1535 to 1545, Negroes
had come to form part of the household of the wealthier colonists. At the
same time, in the West Indian Islands which had borne the first shock
of the conquest, and where the Indians had been more swiftly destroyed,
the Negroes were beginning to form the bulk of the population; and the
licenses for importation were steadily increasing in number.”[45]
Continually they appear with the explorers. Nuflo de Olana, a Negro,
was with Balboa when he discovered the Pacific Ocean,[46] and afterward
thirty Negroes helped Balboa direct the work of over 500 Indians in
transporting the material for his ships across the mountains to the South
Sea.[47]
Cortes carried Negroes and Indians with him from Cuba to Mexico and one
of these Negroes was the first to sow and reap grain in Mexico. There
were two Negroes with Velas in 1520 and 200 black slaves with Alvarado
on his desperate expedition to Quito. Almagro and Valdivia in 1525 were
saved from death by Negroes.[48]
As early as 1528 there were about 10,000 Negroes in the New World. We
hear of one sent as an agent of the Spanish to burn a native village in
Honduras. In 1539 they accompanied De Soto and one of them stayed among
the Indians in Alabama and became the first settler from the old world.
In 1555 in Santiago de Chile a free Negro owns land in the town. Menendez
had a company of trained Negro artisans and agriculturalists when he
founded St. Augustine in 1565 and in 1570 Negroes founded the town of
Santiago del Principe.
In most of these cases probably leadership and initiative on the part
of the early Negro pioneers in America was only spasmodic or a matter
of accident. But this was not always true and there is one well-known
case which, despite the propaganda of 400 years, survives as a clear
and important instance of Negro leadership in exploration. This is
the romantic story of Stephen Dorantes or as he is usually called,
Estevanico, who sailed from Spain in 1527 with the expedition of
Panfilo de Narvaez.[49] This fleet of five vessels and 600 colonists
and soldiers started from Cuba and landed in Tampa Bay in 1582. But
disaster followed disaster until at last there were but four survivors
of whom one was Estevanico “an Arab Negro from Azamor on the Atlantic
coast of Morocco”; he is elsewhere described as “black” and a “person of
intelligence.” Besides him there was his master Dorantes and two other
Spaniards, de Vaca and Maldonado.[50] For six years these men maintained
themselves by practicing medicine among the Indians, and were the first
to reach Mexico from Florida by the overland route.
Estevanico and de Vaca went forward to meet the outposts of the Spaniards
established in Mexico. Estevanico returned with an escort and brought on
the other two men. The four then went west to the present Mexican cities,
Chihuahua and Sonora and reached Culiacan, the capital of the state of
Sinaloa, in April, 1536.
Coronado was governor of Sinaloa and on hearing the story of the
wanderers, he immediately hastened with them to the viceroy, Mendoza,
in the city of Mexico. They told the viceroy not only of their own
adventures but what they had heard of the rich lands toward the North and
of the cities with houses four and five stories high which were really
the Pueblos of New Mexican Indians. Mendoza was eager to explore these
lands. He had already heard something about them and he and Cortes had
planned to make the exploration together but could not agree upon terms.
Cortes therefore hurried to fit out a small fleet in 1537. He took 400
Spaniards and 300 Negroes, sailed up the Gulf of California and called
the country “California”. He then returned to Spain for the last time.
Meantime, de Vaca and Maldonado after several unsuccessful attempts
also went to Spain leaving Dorantes and Estevanico. Dorantes refused to
take part in the proposed expedition to the North but sold his slave
Estevanico to Mendoza. Certain Franciscan Monks joined the expedition and
Fray Marcos de Niza became the leader, having already had some experience
in exploration in Peru. Estevanico, because of his knowledge of the
Indian language and especially of the sign language, was the guide, and
the party started North for what the viceroy dreamed were the Seven
Cities of Cibola. They left March 7th, 1539, and arrived at Vacapa in
central Sinaloa on the 21st. Fray Marcos, probably from timidity, sent
Estevanico on ahead with an escort of Indians whom he could send back
as messengers.[51] The Negro marked his journey by large wooden crosses
and in this way with Estevanico far ahead they traveled for two weeks
until suddenly Fray Marcos was met by a fleeing band of badly frightened
Indians who told him that Estevanico had reached Cibola and had been
killed. Fray Marcos named the country “El Nuevo Reyno de San Francisco”
but being himself scared, distributed among the Indians everything which
his party had in their packs, except the vestments for saying Mass, and
traveling by double marches, returned to Mexico.
Meantime let us follow the adventure of Estevanico: Knowing how much
depended upon appearance in that unknown and savage land, Estevanico
traveled in magnificence, decorated with bells and feathers and carrying
a symbolic gourd which was recognized among the Indian tribes thereabouts
as a symbol of authority. When he reached the Pueblos, the Indian chiefs
were in a quandary. First of all they recognized in Estevanico’s retinue,
numbers of their ancient Indian enemies. Secondly, they were frightened
because Estevanico informed them “that two white men were coming behind
him who had been sent by a great Lord and knew about the things in the
sky and that they were coming to instruct them in divine matters.” They
had good reason to fear that this meant the onslaught of some powerful
enemy. And, moreover, they were puzzled because this black man came
as a representative of white men: “The Lord of Cibola, inquiring of
him whether he had other brethren, he answered that he had an infinite
number and that they had a great store of weapons with them and that they
were not very far thence. When they heard this, many of the chief men
consulted together and resolved to kill him that he might not give news
unto these brethren where they dwelt[52] and that for this cause they
slew him and cut him into many pieces, which were divided among all the
chief Lords that they might know assuredly that he was dead....”
This climax is still told in a legend current among the Zuni Indians
today: “It is to be believed that a long time ago, when roofs lay over
the walls of Kya-ki-me, when smoke hung over the housetops, and the
ladder rounds were still unbroken in Kya-ki-me, then the black Mexicans
came from their abodes in Everlasting Summer-land. One day, unexpectedly,
out of Hemlock Canon they came, and descended to Kya-ki-me. But when
they said they would enter the covered way, it seems that our ancients
looked not gently at them; for with these black Mexicans came many
Indians of So-no-li, as they call it now, ... who were enemies of our
ancients. Therefore, these our ancients, being always bad-tempered, and
quick to anger, made fools of themselves after their fashion, rushing
into their town and out of their town, shouting, skipping and shooting
with their sling-stones and arrows and tossing their war-clubs. Then the
Indians of So-no-li set up a great howl, and thus they and our ancients
did much ill to one another. Then and thus was killed by our ancients,
right where the stone stands down by the arroyo of Kya-ki-me, one of the
black Mexicans, a large man with chilli lips [i. e., lips swollen from
eating chilli peppers] and some of the Indians they killed, catching
others. Then the rest ran away, chased by our grandfathers, and went back
toward their country in the Land of Everlasting Summer....”[53]
The village reached by Estevanico was Hawi-kih as it was called by the
Indians and Grenada as the Spaniards named it. It is fifteen miles
southwest of the present village of Zuni and is thus within New Mexico
and east of the boundary between New Mexico and Arizona. Thus Estevanico
was the first European to discover Arizona and New Mexico. Fray Marcos
returned with Coronado and came as far as the village in 1540 while
Mendoza sent others to pursue explorations that same year within the
present confines of Arizona and they brought back various stories of the
death of Estevanico.
After that for 40 years explorations rested until 1582 when again the
Spaniards entered the territory. With all the Spanish explorers in
Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Kansas, there were Negro slaves
and helpers but none with the initiative, perseverance and success of
Estevanico.
In the after pioneering that took place in later days in the great
western wilderness, the Negro was often present. There was a black man
with Lewis and Clark in 1804; Jacob Dodson, a free Negro of Washington,
volunteered to accompany Fremont in his California expedition of 1843.
He was among the 25 persons selected by Fremont to accompany him in
the discovery of Clamath Lake and also in his ride from Los Angeles to
Monterey. Among the early settlers of California coming up from Mexico
were many Negroes and mulattoes.[54]
William Alexander Leidsdroff was the most distinguished Negro pioneer of
California and at one time lived in the largest house in San Francisco.
He owned the first steamship sailing in San Francisco Bay, and was a
prominent business man, a member of the City Council and treasurer
and member of the school committee. H. H. Bancroft says: “William
Alexander Leidsdroff, a native of Danish West Indies, son of a Dane by a
mulattress, who came to the United States as a boy and became a master of
vessels sailing between New York and New Orleans, came to California as
manager of the ‘Julia Ann,’ on which he made later trips to the Islands,
down to 1845.” His correspondence from 1845, when he became United States
Vice-Consul is a valuable source of historical information. Many Negroes
came in the rush of the “forty-niners” as pioneers and miners as well as
slaves.
The Negro’s work as a pioneer extends down until our day. The late
Commodore Peary who discovered the North Pole said: “Matthew A. Henson,
my Negro assistant, has been with me in one capacity or another since my
second trip to Nicaragua in 1887. I have taken him on each and all of my
expeditions, except the first, and also without exception on each of my
farthest sledge trips. This position I have given him primarily because
of his adaptability and fitness for the work, and secondly on account of
his loyalty. He is a better dog driver and can handle a sledge better
than any man living, except some of the best Esquimo hunters themselves.”
This leaves Henson today as the only living human being who has stood at
the North Pole.
CHAPTER II
BLACK LABOR
How the Negro gave his brawn and brain to fell the forests,
till the soil and make America a rich and prosperous land.
The primary reason for the presence of the black man in America was, of
course, his labor and much has been written of the influence of slavery
as established by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English. Most
writers have written of slavery as a moral and economic evil or of the
worker, white and black, as a victim of this system. In this chapter,
however, let us think of the slave as a laborer, as one who furnished
the original great labor force of the new world and differed from modern
labor only in the wages received, the political and civil rights enjoyed,
and the cultural surroundings from which he was taken.
Negro labor has played a peculiar and important part in the history of
the modern world. The black man was the pioneer in the hard physical work
which began the reduction of the American wilderness and which not only
hastened the economic development of America directly but indirectly
released for other employment, thousands of white men and thus enabled
America to grow economically and spiritually at a rate previously
unparalleled anywhere in history. It was black labor that established
the modern world commerce which began first as a commerce in the bodies
of the slaves themselves and was the primary cause of the prosperity of
the first great commercial cities of our day. Then black labor was thrown
into the production of four great crops—tobacco, sugar, rice and cotton.
These crops were not new but their production on a large cheap scale was
new and had a special significance because they catered to the demands of
the masses of men and thus made possible an interchange of goods such as
the luxury trade of the Middle Ages catering to the rich could not build.
Black labor, therefore, beneath these crops became an important part of
the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Moreover the black slave brought into common labor certain new spiritual
values not yet fully realized. As a tropical product with a sensuous
receptivity to the beauty of the world he was not as easily reduced to be
the mechanical draft-horse which the northern European laborer became.
He was not easily brought to recognize any ethical sanctions in work as
such but tended to work as the results pleased him and refused to work
or sought to refuse when he did not find the spiritual returns adequate;
thus he was easily accused of laziness and driven as a slave when in
truth he brought to modern manual labor a renewed valuation of life.
The Negro worked as farm hand and peasant proprietor, as laborer, artisan
and inventor and as servant in the house, and without him, America as we
know it, would have been impossible.
The numerical growth of the Negro population in America indicates his
economic importance. The exact number of slaves exported to America
will never be known. Probably 25,000 Negroes a year arrived in America
between 1698 and 1707. After 1713 this rose to 30,000 and by 1775 to
over 40,000 a year. The American Revolution stopped the trade, but it
was revived afterward and reached enormous proportions. One estimate is
that a million Negroes came in the sixteenth century, three million in
the seventeenth, seven million in the eighteenth and four million in the
nineteenth or fifteen million in all. Certainly at least ten million came
and this meant sixty million killed and stolen in Africa because of the
methods of capture and the horror of the middle passage. This, with the
Asiatic trade, cost black Africa a hundred million souls.[55] Bancroft
places the total slave population of the continental colonies at 59,000
in 1714, 78,000 in 1727, and 293,000 in 1754.
In the West Indies the whole laboring population early became Negro or
Negro with an infiltration of Indian and white blood. In the United
States at the beginning of our independent national existence, Negroes
formed a fifth of the population of the whole nation. The exact figures
are:[56]
PERCENTAGE NEGRO IN THE POPULATION
United States South
1920 9.9 26.1
1910 10.7 29.8
1900 11.6 32.3
1890 11.9 33.8
1880 13.1 36.0
1870 12.7 36.0
1860 14.1 36.8
1850 15.7 37.3
1840 16.8 38.0
1830 18.1 37.9
1820 18.4 37.2
1810 19.0 36.7
1800 18.9 35.0
1790 19.3 35.2
If we consider the number of Negroes for each 1,000 whites, we have:
United States South
1920 110 369
1910 120 426
1900 132 480
1890 136 512
1880 152 564
1870 145 562
1860 165 582
1850 186 595
1840 203 613
1830 221 610
1820 225 592
1810 235 579
1800 233 539
1790 239 543
The proportion of Negroes in the North was small, falling from 3.4% in
1790 to 1.8% in 1910. Nevertheless even here the indirect influence of
the Negro worker was large. The trading colonies, New England and New
York, built up a lucrative commerce based largely on the results of his
toil in the South and in the West Indies, and this commerce supported
local agriculture and manufacture. I have said in my _Suppression of the
Slave Trade_: “Vessels from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
and, to a less extent from New Hampshire, were early and largely
engaged in the carrying slave-trade. ‘We know,’ said Thomas Pemberton
in 1795, ‘that a large trade to Guinea was carried on for many years by
the citizens of Massachusetts Colony, who were the proprietors of the
vessels and their cargoes, out and home. Some of the slaves purchased in
Guinea, and I suppose the greatest part of them, were sold in the West
Indies.’ Dr. John Eliot asserted that ‘it made a considerable branch
of our commerce.... It declined very little until the Revolution.’ Yet
the trade of this colony was said not to equal that of Rhode Island.
Newport was the mart for slaves offered for sale in the North, and a
point of reshipment for all slaves. It was principally this trade that
raised Newport to her commercial importance in the eighteenth century.
Connecticut, too, was an important slave-trader, sending large numbers
of horses and other commodities to the West Indies in exchange for
slaves, and selling the slaves in other colonies.
“This trade formed a perfect circle. Owners of slavers carried slaves to
South Carolina, and brought home naval stores for their ship-building; or
to the West Indies and brought home molasses; or to other colonies, and
brought home hogsheads. The molasses was made into the highly prized New
England rum, and shipped in these hogsheads to Africa for more slaves.
Thus the rum-distilling industry indicated to some extent the activity of
New England in the slave-trade. In May, 1752, one Captain Freeman found
so many slavers fitting out that, in spite of the large importations of
molasses, he could get no rum for his vessel. In Newport alone twenty-two
stills were at one time running continuously; and Massachusetts annually
distilled 15,000 hogsheads of molasses into this ‘chief manufacture.’”[57]
In New York and New Jersey Negroes formed between 7 and 8% of the total
population in 1790, which meant that they were probably 25% of the labor
force of those colonies, especially on the farms.
The growth of the great slave crops shows the increasing economic value
of Negro labor. In 1619, 20,000 pounds of tobacco went from Virginia to
England. Just before the Revolutionary War, 100 million pounds a year
were being sent, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, 800
millions were raised in the United States alone. Sugar was a luxury for
the rich and physicians until the eighteenth century, when it began to
pour out of the West Indies. By the middle of the nineteenth century a
million tons of cane sugar were raised each year and this had increased
to nearly 3 millions in 1900. The cotton crop rose correspondingly.
England, the chief customer at first, consumed 13,000 bales in 1781,
572,000 in 1820, 871,000 in 1830 and 3,366,000 in 1860. The United States
raised 6 million bales in 1880, and at the beginning of the twentieth
century raised 11 million bales annually.
This tremendous increase in crops which formed a large part of modern
commerce was due primarily to black labor. At first most of this labor
was brute toil of the lowest sort. Our estimate of the value of this work
and what it has done for America depends largely upon our estimate of
the value of such toil. It must be confessed that, measured in wages and
in public esteem, such work stands low in America and in the civilized
world. On the other hand the fact that it does stand so low constitutes
one of the greatest problems of social advance. Hard manual labor, and
much of it of a disagreeable sort, must for a long time lie at the
basis of civilized life. We are continually transmitting some of it to
machines, but the residuum remains large. In an ideal society it would
be highly-paid work because of its unpleasantness and necessity; and
even today, no matter what we may say of the individual worker or of the
laboring class, we know that the foundation of America is built on the
backs of the manual laborer.
This was particularly true in the earlier centuries. The problem of
America in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the problem of
manual labor. It was settled by importing white bond servants from
Europe, and black servants from Africa, and compelling the American
Indians to work. Indian slavery failed to play any great part because the
comparatively small number of Indians in the West Indies were rapidly
killed off by the unaccustomed toil or mingled their blood and pooled
their destinies with the Negroes. On the continent, on the other hand,
the Indians were too powerful, both in numbers and organization, to be
successfully enslaved. The white bond servants and the Negroes therefore
became the main laboring force of the new world and with their toil the
economic development of the continent began.
There arose a series of special laws to determine the status of laborers
which became the basis of the great slave codes. As the free European
white artisans poured in, these labor codes gradually came to distinguish
between slavery based on race and free labor. The slave codes greatly
weakened the family ties and largely destroyed the family as a center
of government or of economic organization. They made the plantation
the center of economic life and left more or less religious autonomy.
They provided punishment by physical torture, death or sale, but they
always left some minimum of incentive by which the slave could have the
beginnings of private possession.
In this way the economic organization was provided by which the middle
classes of the world were supplied with a cheap sweetening material
derived from sugar cane; a cheap luxury, tobacco; larger quantities
of rice; and finally, and above all, a cheap and universal material
for clothing, cotton. These were things that all men wanted who had
anything to offer in labor or materials for the satisfaction of their
wants. The cost of raising them was a labor cost almost entirely because
land in America was at that time endless in fertility and extent. The
old world trade therefore which sought luxuries in clothing, precious
metal and stones, spices, etc., for the rich, transformed itself to a
world-wide trade in necessities incomparably richer and bigger than its
medieval predecessor because of its enormous basis of demand. Its first
appearance was in the slave trade where the demand for the new American
crops showed itself in a demand for the labor necessary to raise them;
thus the slave trade itself was at the bottom of the rise of great
commerce, and the beginning of modern international commerce. This trade
stimulated invention and was stimulated by it. The wellbeing of European
workers increased and their minds were stimulated. Economic and political
revolution followed, to which America fell heir. New immigrants poured
in. New conceptions of religion, government and work arose and at the
bottom of it all and one of its efficient causes was the toil of the
increasing millions of black slaves.
As the nation developed this slave labor became confined more and more
to the raising of cotton, although sugar continued to be the chief crop
in the West Indies and Louisiana, and rice on the southeast coast and
tobacco in Virginia. This world importance of cotton brought an economic
crisis: Rich land in America, adapted to slave methods of culture, was
becoming limited, and must either be increased or slavery would die an
economic death. On the other hand, beside the plantation hands, there
had grown up a large class of Negro servants and laborers who were
distributed both north and south. These laborers in particular came into
competition with the white laborer and especially the new immigrants.
This and other economic causes led to riots in Philadelphia, New York and
Cincinnati and a growing conviction on the part of a newly enfranchised
white workingmen that one great obstacle in America was slave labor,
together with the necessarily low status of the freedmen. These economic
reasons overthrew slavery.[58]
After the legal disappearance of slavery its natural results remained in
the mass of freedmen who had been trained in the necessary ignorance and
inefficiency of slave labor. On such a foundation it was easy to build
and emphasize race prejudice. On the other hand, however, there was still
plenty of work for even the ignorant and careless working man, so that
the Negro continued to raise cotton and the other great crops and to do
throughout the country the work of the unskilled laborer and the servant.
He continued to be the main laboring force of the South in industrial
lines and began to invade the North.
His full power as a labor reservoir was not seen until the transformation
of the World War. In a few short months 500,000 black laborers came
North to fill the void made by the stoppage of immigration and the
rush of white working men into the munitions industry. This was simply
a foretaste of what will continue to happen. The Negro still is the
mightiest single group of labor force in the United States. As this labor
grows more intelligent, self-conscious and efficient, it will turn to
higher and higher grades of work and it will reinforce the workingman’s
point of view.[59]
It must not be assumed, however, that the labor of the Negro has been
simply the muscle-straining unintelligent work of the lowest grade. On
the contrary he has appeared both as personal servant, skilled laborer
and inventor. That the Negroes of colonial times were not all ignorant
savages is shown by the advertisements concerning them. Continually
runaway slaves are described as speaking very good English; sometimes
as speaking not only English but Dutch and French. Some could read and
write and play musical instruments. Others were blacksmiths, limeburners,
bricklayers and cobblers. Others were noted as having considerable
sums of money.[60] In the early days in the South the whole conduct of
the house was in the hands of the Negro house servant; as butler, cook,
nurse, valet and maid, the Negro conducted family life.
Thus by social contact and mingling of blood the Negro house servant
became closely identified with the civilization of the South and
contributed to it in many ways. For a long time before emancipation the
house servant had been pushing steadily upward; in many cases he had
learned to read and write despite the law. Sometimes he had entered the
skilled trades and was enabled by hiring his time to earn money of his
own and in rare cases to buy his own freedom. Sometimes he was freed and
sent North and given money and land; but even when he was in the South
and in the family and an ambitious menial, he influenced the language and
the imagination of his masters; the children were nursed at the breast
of black women, and in daily intercourse the master was thrown in the
company of Negroes more often than in the company of white people.
From this servile work there went a natural development. The private
cook became the public cook in boarding houses, and restaurant keeper.
The butler became the caterer; the “Black Mammy” became the nurse, and
the work of all these in their various lines was of great influence. The
cooks and caterers led and developed the art of good-eating throughout
the South and particularly in cities like New Orleans and Charleston;
and in northern cities like Philadelphia and New York their methods of
cooking chicken and terrapin, their invention of ice cream and their
general good taste set a standard which has seldom been surpassed in the
world. Moreover, it gave economic independence to numbers of Negroes. It
enabled them to educate their children and it furnished to the abolition
movement a class of educated colored people with some money who were
able to help. After emancipation these descendants of the house servant
became the leading class of American Negroes. Notwithstanding the social
stigma connected with menial service and still lingering there, partially
because slaves and freedmen were so closely connected with it, it is
without doubt one of the most important of the Negro’s gifts to America.
During the existence of slavery all credit for inventions was denied the
Negro slave as a slave could not take out a patent. Nevertheless Negroes
did most of the mechanical work in the South before the Civil War and
more than one suggestion came from them for improving machinery. We are
told that in Virginia: “The county records of the seventeenth century
reveal the presence of many Negro mechanics in the colony during that
period, this being especially the case with carpenters and coopers.”[61]
As example of slave mechanics it is stated that among the slaves of
the first Robert Beverly was a carpenter valued at £30, and that Ralph
Wormeley, of Middlesex county, owned a cooper and a carpenter each valued
at £35. Colonel William Byrd mentions the use of Negroes in iron mining
in 1732. In New Jersey slaves were employed as miners, ironworkers,
sawmill hands, house and ship carpenters, wheelwrights, coopers, tanners,
shoemakers, millers and bakers, among other employments, before the
Revolutionary War. As early as 1708 there were enough slave mechanics
in Pennsylvania to make the freemen feel their competition severely. In
Massachusetts and other states we hear of an occasional artisan.[62]
During the early part of the nineteenth century the Negro artisans
increased. The Spanish Governor Salcedo, early in the nineteenth century,
in trying to keep the province of Louisiana loyal to Spain, made the
militia officers swear allegiance and among them were two companies of
colored men from New Orleans “who composed all the mechanics which the
city possessed.”[63]
Later, black refugees from San Domingo saved Louisiana from economic
ruin. Formerly, Louisiana had had prosperous sugar-makers; but these
industries had been dead for nearly twenty-five years when the attempt
to market sugar was revived. Two Spaniards erected near New Orleans, a
distillery and a battery of sugar kettles and began to manufacture rum
and syrup. They had little success until Etienne de Boré, a colored San
Dominican, appeared. “Face to face with ruin because of the failure
of the indigo crop, he staked his all on the granulation of sugar. He
enlisted the services of these successful San Dominicans and went to
work. In all American history there can be fewer scenes more dramatic
than the one described by careful historians of Louisiana, the day when
the final test was made and the electrical word was passed around, ‘It
granulates!’”
De Boré sold $12,000 worth of sugar that year. Agriculture in the Delta
began to flourish and seven years later New Orleans was selling 2,000,000
gallons of rum, 250,000 gallons of molasses and 5,000,000 pounds of
sugar. It was the beginning of the commercial reign of one of the great
commercial cities of America and it started with the black refugees from
San Domingo.[64]
In the District of Columbia many “were superior mechanics.” Olmsted, in
his journeys through the slave states just before the Civil War, found
slave artisans in all the states. In Virginia they worked in tobacco
factories, ran steamboats, made barrels, etc. On a South Carolina
plantation he was told by the master that the Negro mechanic “exercised
as much skill and ingenuity as the ordinary mechanics that he was used
to employ in New England.” In Charleston and some other places they were
employed in cotton factories. In Alabama he saw a black carpenter—careful
and accurate calculator and excellent workman; he was bought for $2,000.
In Louisiana he was told that master mechanics often bought up slave
mechanics and acted as contractors. In Kentucky the slaves worked in
factories for hemp-bagging, and in iron work on the Cumberland river, and
also in tobacco factories. In the newspapers advertisements for runaway
mechanics were often seen, as, for instance a blacksmith in Texas, “very
smart”; a mason in Virginia, etc. In Mobile an advertisement read “good
blacksmiths and horseshoers for sale on reasonable terms.”[65]
Such men naturally showed inventive genius, here and there. There is a
strong claim that the real credit for the invention of the cotton gin is
due to a Negro on the plantation where Eli Whitney worked. Negroes early
invented devices for handling sails, corn harvesters, and an evaporating
pan for refining sugar. In the United States patent office there is a
record of 1500 inventions made by Negroes and this is only a part of
those that should be credited to Negroes as the race of the inventor is
not usually recorded.
In 1846 Norbert Rillieux, a colored man of Louisiana, invented and
patented a Vacuum pan which revolutionized the method of refining sugar.
He was a machinist and engineer of fine reputation, and devised a system
of sewerage for New Orleans which the city refused to accept because of
his color.
Sydney W. Winslow, president of the United Shoe Machinery Company, laid
the foundation of his great organization by the purchase of an invention
by a native of Dutch Guiana named Jan E. Matzeliger. Matzeliger was the
son of a Negro woman and her husband, a Dutch engineer. He came to
America as a young man and worked as a cobbler in Philadelphia and Lynn.
He died in 1889 before he had realized the value of his invention.
Matzeliger invented a machine for lasting shoes. It held the shoe on
the last, gripped and pulled the leather down around the sole and heel,
guided and drove the nails into place and released a completed shoe from
the machine. This patent was bought by Mr. Winslow and on it was built
the great United Shoe Machinery Company, which now has a capital stock
of more than twenty million dollars, and employs over 5,000 operatives
in factories covering 20 acres of ground. This business enterprise is
one of the largest in our country’s industrial development. Since the
formation of this company in 1890, the product of American shoe factories
has increased from $200,000,000 to $552,631,000, and the exportation of
American shoes from $1,000,000 to $11,000,000. This development is due to
the superiority of the shoes produced by machines founded on the original
Matzeliger type.[66] The cost of shoes has been cut in half, the quality
greatly improved, the wages of workers increased, the hours of labor
diminished, and all these factors have made “the Americans the best shod
people in the world.”
After Matzeliger’s death his Negro blood was naturally often denied, but
in the shoe-making districts the Matzeliger type of machine is still
referred to as the “Nigger machine”; or the “Niggerhead” machine; and
“A certified copy of the death certificate of Matzeliger, which was
furnished the writer by William J. Connery, Mayor of Lynn, on October
23rd, 1912, states that Matzeliger was a mulatto.”[67]
Elijah McCoy is the pioneer inventor of automatic lubricators for
machinery. He completed and patented his first lubricating cup in
1872 and since then has made some fifty different inventions relating
principally to the automatic lubrication of machinery. He is regarded
as the pioneer in the art of steadily supplying oil to machinery in
intermittent drops from a cup so as to avoid the necessity for stopping
the machine to oil it. His lubricating cup was in use for years on
stationary and locomotive machinery in the West including the great
railway locomotives, the boiler engines of the steamers on the Great
Lakes, on transatlantic steamships, and in many of our leading factories.
“McCoy’s lubricating cups were famous thirty years ago as a necessary
equipment in all up-to-date machinery, and it would be rather interesting
to know how many of the thousands of machinists who used them daily had
any idea then that they were the invention of a colored man.”[68]
Another great Negro inventor was Granville T. Woods who patented more
than fifty devices relating to electricity. Many of his patents were
assigned to the General Electric Company of New York, the Westinghouse
Company of Pennsylvania, the American Bell Telephone Company of Boston
and the American Engineering Company of New York. His work and that of
his brother Liates Wood has been favorably mentioned in technical and
scientific journals.
J. H. Dickinson and his son S. L. Dickinson of New Jersey have been
granted more than 12 patents for devices connected with player pianos. W.
B. Purvis of Philadelphia was an early inventor of machinery for making
paper bags. Many of his patents were sold to the Union Paper Bag Company
of New York.
Today the Negro is an economic factor in the United States to a degree
realized by few. His occupations were thus grouped in 1920:[69]
The men were employed as follows:
in agriculture 1,566,627
in extraction of minerals 72,892
in manufacturing and mechanical industries 781,827
in transportation 308,896
in trade 129,309
in public service 49,586
in professional service 41,056
in domestic and personal service 273,959
in clerical occupations 28,710
The women were employed as follows:
in agriculture 612,261
in manufacturing and mechanical industries 104,983
in trade 11,158
in professional service 39,127
in domestic and personal service 790,631
in clerical occupations 8,301
A list of occupations in which at least 10,000 Negroes were engaged in
1920 is impressive:
MALES
Farmers 845,299
Farm laborers 664,567
Garden laborers 15,246
Lumber men 25,400
Coal miners 54,432
Masons 10,606
Carpenters 34,217
Firemen (not locomotive) 23,152
Laborers 127,860
Laborers in chemical industries 17,201
Laborers in cigar and tobacco factories 12,951
Laborers in clay, glass and stone industries 18,130
Laborers in food industries 24,638
Laborers in iron and steel industries 104,518
Laborers in lumber and furniture industries 103,154
Laborers in cotton mills 10,182
Laborers in other industries 80,583
Machinists 10,286
Semi-skilled operatives in food industries 11,160
Semi-skilled operatives in iron and steel industries 22,916
Semi-skilled operatives in other industries 14,745
Longshoremen 27,206
Chauffeurs 38,460
Draymen 56,556
Street laborers 35,673
Railway laborers 99,967
Delivery men 24,352
Laborers in coal yards, warehouses, etc. 27,197
Laborers, etc., in stores 39,446
Retail dealers 20,390
Laborers in public service 29,591
Soldiers, sailors 12,511
Clergymen 19,343
Barbers, etc. 18,692
Janitors 38,662
Porters not in stores 59,197
Servants 80,209
Waiters 31,681
Clerks except in stores 14,014
Messengers 12,587
FEMALES
Farmers 79,893
Farm laborers 527,937
Dressmakers and seamstresses 26,961
Semi-skilled operatives in cigar and tobacco factories 13,446
Teachers 29,244
Hairdressers and manicurists 12,660
Housekeepers and stewards 13,250
Laundresses not in laundries 283,557
Laundry operatives 21,084
Midwives and nurses (not trained) 13,888
Servants 401,381
Waiters 14,155
This has been the gift of labor, one of the greatest that the Negro has
made to American nationality. It was in part involuntary, but whether
given willingly or not, it was given and America profited by the gift.
This labor was always of the highest economic and even spiritual
importance. During the World War for instance, the most important single
thing that America could do for the Allies was to furnish them with
materials. The actual fighting of American troops, while important, was
not nearly as important as American food and munitions; but this material
must not only be supplied, it must be transported, handled and delivered
in America and in France; and it was here that the Negro stevedore troops
behind the battle line—men who received no medals and little mention and
were in fact despised as all manual workers have always been despised,—it
was these men that made the victory of the Allies certain by their
desperately difficult but splendid work. The first colored stevedores
went over in June, 1917, and were followed by about 50,000 volunteers. To
these were added later nearly 200,000 drafted men.
To all this we must add the peculiar spiritual contribution which the
Negro made to Labor. Always physical fact has its spiritual complement,
but in this case the gift is apt to be forgotten or slurred over. This
gift is the thing that is usually known as “laziness”. Again and again
men speak of the laziness of Negro labor and some suppose that slavery of
Negroes was necessary on that account; and that even in freedom Negroes
must be “driven”. On the other hand and in contradiction to this is the
fact that Negroes do work and work efficiently. In South Africa and in
Nigeria, in the Sudan and in Brazil, in the West Indies and all over
the United States Negro labor has accomplished tremendous tasks. One
of its latest and greatest tasks has been the building of the Panama
Canal. These two sets of facts, therefore, would seem to be mutually
contradictory, and many a northern manager has seen the contradiction
when, facing the apparent laziness of Negro hands, he has attempted to
drive them and found out that he could not and at the same time has
afterward seen someone used to Negro labor get a tremendous amount
of work out of the same gangs. The explanation of all this is clear
and simple: The Negro laborer has not been trained in modern organized
industry but rather in quite a different school.
The European workman works long hours and every day in the week because
it is only in this way that he can support himself and family. With
the present organization of industry and methods of distributing the
results of industry any failure of the European workingman to toil hard
and steadily would mean either starvation or social disgrace through
the lowering of his standard of living. The Negro workingman on the
other hand came out of an organization of industry which was communistic
and did not call for unlimited toil on the part of the workers. There
was work and hard work to do, for even in the fertile tropical lands
the task of fighting weeds, floods, animals, insects and germs was no
easy thing. But on the other hand the distribution of products was much
simpler and fairer and the wants of the people were less developed. The
black tropical worker therefore looked upon work as a necessary evil
and maintained his right to balance the relative allurements of leisure
and satisfaction at any particular day, hour or season. Moreover in the
simple work-organization of tropical or semi-tropical life individual
desires of this sort did not usually disarrange the whole economic
process or machine.[70]
The white laborer therefore brought to America the habit of regular,
continuous toil which he regarded as a great moral duty. The black
laborer brought the idea of toil as a necessary evil ministering to the
pleasure of life. While the gift of the white laborer made America rich,
or at least made many Americans rich, it will take the psychology of
the black man to make it happy. New and better organization of industry
and a clearer conception of the value of effort and a wider knowledge
of the process of production must come in, so as to increase the wage
of the worker and decrease rent, interest, and profit; and then the
black laborer’s subconscious contribution to current economics will be
recognized as of tremendous and increasing importance.
CHAPTER III
BLACK SOLDIERS
How the Negro fought in every American war for a cause that was
not his and to gain for others a freedom which was not his own.
1. COLONIAL WARS
The day is past when historians glory in war. Rather, with all thoughtful
men, they deplore the barbarism of mankind which has made war so large a
part of human history. As long, however, as there are powerful men who
are determined to have their way by brute force, and as long as these
men can compel or persuade enough of their group, nation or race to
support them even to the limit of destruction, rape, theft and murder,
just so long these men will and must be opposed by force—moral force if
possible, physical force in the extreme. The world has undoubtedly come
to the place where it defends reluctantly such defensive war, but has no
words of excuse for offensive war, for the initiation of the program of
physical force.
There is, however, one further consideration: the man in the ranks
has usually little chance to decide whether the war is defensive or
offensive, righteous or wrong. He is called upon to put life and limb
in jeopardy. He responds, sometimes willingly with uplifted soul and
high resolve, persuaded that he is under Divine command; sometimes by
compulsion and by the iron of discipline. In all cases he has by every
nation been given credit; and certainly the man who voluntarily lays
down his life for a cause which he has been led to believe is righteous
deserves public esteem, although the world may weep at his ignorance and
blindness.
From the beginning America was involved in war because it was born in
a day of war. First, there were wars, mostly of aggression but partly
of self-defense, against the Indians. Then there was a series of wars
which were but colonial echoes of European brawls. Next the United States
fought to make itself independent of the economic suzerainty of England.
After that came the conquest of Mexico and the war for the Union which
resolved itself in a war against slavery, and finally the Spanish War and
the great World War.
In all these wars the Negro has taken part. He cannot be blamed for
them so far as they were unrighteous wars (and some of them were
unrighteous), because he was not a leader: he was for the most part a
common soldier in the ranks and did what he was told. Yet in the majority
of cases he was not compelled to fight. He used his own judgment and he
fought because he believed that by fighting for America he would gain
the respect of the land and personal and spiritual freedom. His problem
as a soldier was always peculiar: no matter for what America fought and
no matter for what her enemies fought, the American Negro always fought
for his own freedom and for the self-respect of his race. Whatever the
cause of war, therefore, his cause was peculiarly just. He appears,
therefore, in American wars always with double motive,—the desire to
oppose the so-called enemy of his country along with his fellow white
citizens, and before that, the motive of deserving well of those citizens
and securing justice for his folk. In this way he appears in the earliest
times fighting with the whites against the Indians as well as with the
Indians against the whites, and throughout the history of the West Indies
and Central America as well as the Southern United States we find here
and there groups of Negroes fighting with the whites. For instance: in
Louisiana early in the eighteenth century when Governor Perier took
office, the colony was very much afraid of a combination between the
Choctaw Indians and the fierce Banbara Negroes who had begun to make
common cause with them. To offset this, Perier armed a band of slaves in
1729 and sent them against the Indians. He says: “The Negroes executed
their mission with as much promptitude as secrecy.” Later, in 1730, the
Governor sent twenty white men and six Negroes to carry ammunition to the
Illinois settlement up the Mississippi River. Perier says fifteen Negroes
“in whose hands we had put weapons performed prodigies of valor. If the
blacks did not cost so much and if their labor was not so necessary to
the colony it would be better to turn them into soldiers and to dismiss
those we have who are so bad and so cowardly that they seem to have
been manufactured purposely for this colony.” But this policy of using
the Negroes against the Indians led the Indians to retaliate and seek
alliance with the blacks and in August 1730, the Natchez Indians and the
Chickshaws conspired with the Negroes to revolt. The head of the revolt,
Samba, with eight of his confederates was executed before the conspiracy
came to a head. In 1733, when Governor Bienville returned to power, he
had an army consisting of 544 white men and 45 Negroes, the latter with
free black officers.[71]
In the colonial wars which distracted America during the seventeenth and
early part of the eighteenth centuries the Negro took comparatively small
part because the institution of slavery was becoming more settled and
the masters were afraid to let their slaves fight. Notwithstanding this,
there were black freedmen who voted and were enrolled in the militia
and went to war, while some masters sent their slaves as laborers and
servants. As early as 1652 a law of Massachusetts as to the militia
required “Negro, Scotchmen and Indians” to enroll in the militia.
Afterward the policy was changed and Negroes and Indians were excluded
but Negroes often acted as sentinels at meeting-house doors. At other
times slaves ran away and enlisted as soldiers or as sailors, thus often
gaining their liberty. The New York _Gazette_ in 1760 advertises for a
slave who is suspected of having enlisted “in the provincial service.” In
1763 the Boston _Evening Post_ was looking for a Negro who “was a soldier
last summer.” One mulatto in 1746 is advertised for in the Pennsylvania
_Gazette_. He had threatened to go to the French and Indians and fight
for them. And in the Maryland _Gazette_, 1755, gentlemen are warned that
their slaves may run away to the French and Indians.[72]
2. THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
The estimates of the Negro soldiers who fought on the American side of
the Revolutionary War vary from four to six thousand, or one out of every
50 or 60 of the colonial troops.
On August 24, 1778, the following report was made of Negroes in the
Revolutionary Army:[73]
Sick On
Brigades Present Absent Command Total
North Carolina 42 10 6 58
Woodford 36 3 1 40
Muhlenburg 64 26 8 98
Smallwood 20 3 1 24
2nd Maryland 43 15 2 60
Wayne 2 .. .. 2
2nd Pennsylvania 33 1 1 35
Clinton 33 2 4 62
Parsons 117 12 19 148
Huntington 56 2 4 62
Nixon 26 .. 1 27
Paterson 64 13 12 89
Late Learned 34 4 8 46
Poor 16 7 4 27
---- ---- ---- ----
Total 586 98 71 755
Alex. Scammell, _Adj. Gen._
This report does not include Negro soldiers enlisted in Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire and other States not mentioned nor
does it include those who were in the army at both earlier and later
dates. Other records prove that Negroes served in as many as 18 brigades.
It was a Negro who in a sense began the actual fighting. In 1750 William
Brown of Framingham, Mass., advertised three times for “A Molatto Fellow
about 27 Years of Age, named _Crispas_, 6 Feet 2 Inches high, short
Curl’d Hair.” This runaway slave was the same Crispus Attucks who in
1779 led a mob on the 5th of March against the British soldiers in the
celebrated “Boston Massacre.”
Much has been said about the importance and lack of importance of this
so-called “Boston Massacre.” Whatever the verdict of history may be,
there is no doubt that the incident loomed large in the eyes of the
colonists. Distinguished men were orators on the 5th of March for years
after, until that date was succeeded by the 4th of July. Daniel Webster
in his great Bunker Hill oration said: “From that moment we may date the
severance of the British Empire.”
Possibly these men exaggerated the actual importance of a street brawl
between citizens and soldiers, led by a runaway slave; but there is no
doubt that the colonists, who fought for independence from England,
thought this occasion of tremendous importance and were nerved to great
effort because of it.
Livermore says: “The presence of the British soldiers in King Street
excited the patriotic indignation of the people. The whole community was
stirred, and sage counsellors were deliberating and writing and talking
about the public grievances. But it was not for the ‘wise and prudent’ to
be first to act against the encroachments of arbitrary power. ‘A motley
rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish Teagues and outlandish
Jack tars,’ (as John Adams described them in his plea in defense of the
soldiers) could not restrain their emotion or stop to enquire if what
they _must do_ was according to the letter of the law. Led by Crispus
Attucks, the mulatto slave, and shouting, ‘The way to get rid of these
soldiers is to attack the main guard; strike at the root; this is the
nest’; with more valor than discretion they rushed to King Street and
were fired upon by Captain Preston’s company. Crispus Attucks was the
first to fall; he and Samuel Gray and Jonas Caldwell were killed on
the spot. Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr were mortally wounded. The
excitement which followed was intense. The bells of the town were rung.
An impromptu town meeting was held and an immense assembly gathered.
Three days after, on the 8th, a public funeral of the Martyrs took place.
The shops in Boston were closed and all the bells of Boston and the
neighboring towns were rung. It is said that a greater number of persons
assembled on this occasion than ever before gathered on this continent
for a similar purpose. The body of Crispus Attucks, the mulatto, had been
placed in Faneuil Hall with that of Caldwell, both being strangers in the
city. Maverick was buried from his mother’s house in Union Street, and
Gray from his brother’s in Royal Exchange Lane. The four hearses formed
a junction in King Street and then the procession marched in columns six
deep, with a long file of coaches belonging to the most distinguished
citizens, to the Middle Burying Ground, where the four victims were
deposited in one grave over which a stone was placed with the inscription:
‘Long as in Freedom’s cause the wise contend,
Dear to your country shall your fame extend;
While to the world the lettered stone shall tell
Where Caldwell, Attucks, Gray and Maverick fell.’
“The anniversary of this event was publicly commemorated in
Boston by an oration and other exercises every year until our
National Independence was achieved, when the Fourth of July
was substituted for the Fifth of March as the more proper day
for a general celebration. Not only was the event commemorated
but the martyrs who then gave up their lives were remembered
and honored.”[74]
The relation of the Negro to the Revolutionary War was peculiar. If his
services were used by the Colonists this would be an excuse for the
English to use the Indians and to emancipate the slaves. If he were not
used not only was this source of strength to the small loyal armies
neglected but there still remained the danger that the English would bid
for the services of Negroes. At first then the free Negro went quite
naturally into the army as he had for the most part been recognized as
liable to military service. Then Congress hesitated and ordered that
no Negroes be enlisted. Immediately there appeared the determination
of the Negroes, whether deliberately arrived at or by the more or less
unconscious development of thought under the circumstances, to give their
services to the side which promised them freedom and decent treatment.
When therefore Governor Dunmore of Virginia and English generals like
Cornwallis and Clinton made a bid for the services of Negroes, coupled
with promises of freedom, they got considerable numbers and in the case
of Dunmore one Negro unit fought a pitched battle against the Colonists.
The Continental Congress took up the question of Negroes in the Army
in September, 1775. A committee consisting of Lynch, Lee and Adams
reported a letter which they had drafted to Washington. Rutledge of South
Carolina moved that Washington be instructed to discharge all Negroes
whether slave or free from the army, but this was defeated. October 8th
Washington and other generals in council of war, agreed unanimously
that slaves should be rejected and a large majority declared that they
refuse free Negroes. October 18th, the question came up again before the
committee consisting of Benjamin Franklin, General Washington, certain
deputies, governors and others. This council agreed that Negroes should
be rejected and Washington issued orders to this effect November 12th,
1775. Meantime, however, Dunmore’s proclamation came and his later
success in raising a black regiment which greatly disturbed Washington.
In July, 1776, the British had 200 Negro soldiers on Long Island and
later two regiments of Negroes were raised by the British in North
Carolina. The South lost thousands of Negroes through the British. In
Georgia a corps of fugitives calling themselves the “King of England
Soldiers” kept attacking on both sides of the Savannah River even after
the Revolution and many feared a general insurrection of slaves.
The colonists soon began to change their attitude. Late in 1775,
Washington reversed his decision and ordered his recruiting officers
to accept free Negroes who had already served in the army and laid the
matter before the Continental Congress. The Committee recommended that
these Negroes be reenlisted but no others. Various leaders advised that
it would be better to enlist the slaves, among them Samuel Hopkins,
Alexander Hamilton, General Greene, James Madison. Even John Laurens of
South Carolina tried to make the South accept the proposition.[75]
Thus Negroes again were received into the American army and from that
time on they played important rôles. They had already distinguished
themselves in individual cases at Bunker Hill. For instance, fourteen
white officers sent the following statement to the Massachusetts
Legislature on December 5, 1775: “The subscribers beg leave to report to
your Honorable House (which we do in justice to the character of so brave
a man) that under our own observation we declare that a Negro man named
Salem Poor, of Colonel Frye’s regiment, Captain Ames’ company, in the
late battle at Charlestown, behaved like an experienced officer as well
as an excellent soldier. To set forth particulars of his conduct would
be tedious. We only beg leave to say, in the person of this said Negro,
centers a brave and gallant soldier. The reward due to so great and
distinguished a character we submit to the Congress.”[76]
They afterward fought desperately in Long Island and at the battle of
Monmouth. Foreign travellers continually note the presence of Negroes in
the American army.
Less known however is the help which the black republic of Haiti offered
to the struggling Colonists. In December 1778 Savannah was captured
by the British, and Americans were in despair until the French fleet
appeared on the coast of Georgia in September 1779. The fleet offered to
help recapture Savannah. It had on board 1900 French troops of whom 800
were black Haitian volunteers. Among these volunteers were Christophe,
afterward king of Haiti, Rigaud, André, Lambert and others. They were a
significant and faithful band which began by helping freedom in America,
then turned and through the French revolution freed Haiti and finally
helped in the emancipation of South America. The French troops landed
below the city with the Americans at their right and together they made
an attack. American and French flags were planted on the British outposts
but their bearers were killed and a general retreat was finally ordered.
Seven hundred and sixty Frenchmen and 312 Americans were killed and
wounded. As the army began to retreat the British general attacked the
rear, determined to annihilate the Americans. It was then that the black
and mulatto freedmen from Haiti under the command of Viscount de Fontages
made the charge on the English and saved the retreating Americans. They
returned to Haiti to prepare eventually to make that country the second
one in America which threw off the domination of Europe.[77]
Some idea of the number of Negro soldiers can be had by reference to
documents mentioning the action of the States. Rhode Island raised
a regiment of slaves, and Governor Cooke said that it was generally
thought that at least 300 would enlist. Four companies were finally
formed there at a cost of over £10,000. Most of the 629 slaves in New
Hampshire enlisted and many of the 15,000 slaves in New York. Connecticut
had Negroes in her regiments and also a regiment of colored soldiers.
Maryland sought in 1781 to raise 750 Negro troops. Massachusetts had
colored troops in her various units from 72 towns in that State. “In view
of these numerous facts it is safe to conclude that there were at least
4,000 Negro soldiers scattered throughout the Continental Army.”[78]
In a debate in Congress in 1820 two men, one from the North and one
from the South, gave the verdict of that time on the value of the Negro
in the Revolutionary War. William Eustis of Massachusetts said: “The
war over and peace restored, these men returned to their respective
States, and who could have said to them on their return to civil life
after having shed their blood in common with the whites in the defense
of the liberties of the country, ‘You are not to participate in the
rights secured by the struggle or in the liberty for which you have been
fighting?’ Certainly no white man in Massachusetts.”
Charles Pinckney of South Carolina said: that the Negroes, “then were, as
they still are, as valuable a part of our population to the Union as any
other equal number of inhabitants. They were in numerous instances the
pioneers and, in all, the laborers of your armies. To their hands were
owing the erection of the greatest part of the fortifications raised for
the protection of our country; some of which, particularly Fort Moultrie,
gave at that early period of the inexperience and untried valor of our
citizens, immortality to American arms: and, in the Northern States
numerous bodies of them were enrolled into and fought by the sides of the
whites, the battles of the Revolution.”[79]
In 1779 in the war between Spain and Great Britain, the Spanish Governor
of Louisiana, Galvez, had in his army which he led against the British,
numbers of blacks and mulattoes who he said “behaved on all occasions
with as much valor and generosity as the whites.”[80]
3. THE WAR OF 1812
In the War of 1812 the Negro appeared not only as soldier but
particularly as sailor and in the dispute concerning the impressment
of American sailors which was one of the causes of the war, Negro
sailors repeatedly figured as seized by England and claimed as American
citizens by America for whose rights the nation was apparently ready to
go to war. For instance, on the Chesapeake were three Negro sailors
whom the British claimed but whom the Americans declared were American
citizens,—Ware, Martin and Strachen. As Bryant says: “The citizenship
of Negroes was sought and defended by England and America at this time
but a little later it was denied by the United States Supreme Court that
Negroes could be citizens.” On demand two of these Negroes were returned
to America by the British government; the other one died in England.
Negroes fought under Perry and Macdonough. On the high seas Negroes were
fighting. Nathaniel Shaler, captain of a privateer, wrote to his agent in
New York in 1813:
“Before I could get our light sails on and almost before I could
turn around, I was under the guns, not of a transport but of a large
frigate! And not more than a quarter of a mile from her.... Her first
broadside killed two men and wounded six others.... My officers conducted
themselves in a way that would have done honor to a more permanent
service.... The name of one of my poor fellows who was killed ought to be
registered in the book of fame, and remembered with reverence as long as
bravery is considered a virtue. He was a black man by the name of John
Johnson.... When America has such tars, she has little to fear from the
tyrants of the ocean.”[81]
A few Negroes were in the northern armies. A Congressman said in 1828: “I
myself saw a battalion of them—as fine martial looking men as I ever saw
attached to the northern army in the last war (1812) on its march from
Plattsburg to Sacketts Harbor where they did service for the country with
credit to New York and honor to themselves.”[82]
But it was in the South that they furnished the most spectacular instance
of participation in this war. Governor Claiborne appealed to General
Jackson to use colored soldiers. “These men, Sir, for the most part,
sustain good characters. Many of them have extensive connections and much
property to defend, and all seem attached to arms. The mode of acting
toward them at the present crisis, is an inquiry of importance. If we
give them not our confidence, the enemy will be encouraged to intrigue
and corrupt them.”[83]
September 21, 1814, Jackson issued a spirited appeal to the free Negroes
of Louisiana: “Through a mistaken policy, you have heretofore been
deprived of a participation in the glorious struggle for national rights
in which our country is engaged. This no longer shall exist.
“As sons of freedom, you are now called upon to defend our most
inestimable blessing. As Americans, your country looks with confidence to
her adopted children for a valorous support as a faithful return for the
advantages enjoyed under her mild and equitable government. As fathers,
husbands and brothers, you are summoned to rally around the standard of
the Eagle, to defend all which is dear in existence.... In the sincerity
of a soldier and the language of truth I address you.”[84]
He promised them the same bounty as whites and they were to have colored
non-commissioned officers. There was some attempt to have Jackson tone
down this appeal and say less of “equality,” but he refused to change his
first draft.
The news of this proclamation created great surprise in the North but not
much criticism. Indeed, things were going too badly for the Americans.
The Capitol at Washington had been burned, the State of Maine was in
British hands, enlistment had stopped and Northern States like New York
were already arming Negroes. The Louisiana legislature, a month after
Jackson’s proclamation, passed an act authorizing two regiments of “men
of color” by voluntary enlistment. Slaves were allowed to enlist and were
publicly manumitted for their services. There were 3200 white and 430
colored soldiers in the battle of New Orleans. The first battalion of 280
Negroes was commanded by a white planter, La Coste; a second battalion
of 150 was raised by Captain J. B. Savary, a colored man, from the San
Dominican refugees, and commanded by Major Daquin who was probably a
quadroon.
Besides these soldiers slaves were used in throwing up the famous cotton
bale ramparts, which saved the city, and this was the idea of a black
slave from Africa, who had seen the same thing done at home. Colored men
were used to reconnoitre, and the slave trader Lafitte brought a mixed
band of white and black fighters to help. Curiously enough there were
also Negroes on the other side, Great Britain having imported a regiment
from the West Indies which was at the head of the attacking column moving
against Jackson’s right, together with an Irish regiment. Conceive this
astounding anomaly!
The American Negro soldiers were stationed very near Jackson and his
staff. Jackson himself in an address to the soldiers after the battle,
complimenting the “embodied militia,” said:
“To the Men of Color.—Soldiers! From the shores of Mobile I collected
you to arms,—I invited you to share in the perils and to divide the
glory of your white countrymen. I expected much from you; for I was not
uninformed of those qualities which must render you so formidable to an
invading foe. I knew that you could endure hunger and thirst and all the
hardships of war. I knew that you loved the land of your nativity and
that, like ourselves, you had to defend all that is most dear to man. But
you surpass my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities,
that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.”[85]
In the celebration of the victory which followed in the great public
square, the Place d’Armes, now Jackson Square, the colored troops shared
the glory and the wounded prisoners were met by colored nurses.[86]
4. THE CIVIL WAR
There were a few Negroes in the Mexican War but they went mostly as
body servants to white officers and there were probably no soldiers and
certainly no distinct Negro organizations. The Negro, therefore, shares
little of the blood guilt of that unhallowed raid for slave soil.
At the time of the Civil War when the call came for volunteers free
Negroes everywhere offered their services to the Northern States and
everywhere their services were declined. Indeed, it was almost looked
upon as insolence that they should offer to fight in this “white man’s
war.” Not only was the war to be fought by white men but desperate effort
was made to cling to the technical fact that this was a war to save the
Union and not a war against slavery. Federal officials and northern
army officers made effort to reassure the South that they were not
abolitionists and that they were not going to touch slavery.[87]
Meantime there began to crystallize the demand that the real object of
the war be made the abolition of slavery and that the slaves and colored
men in general be allowed to fight for freedom.
This met bitter opposition. The New York _Herald_ voiced this August
5, 1862. “The efforts of those who love the Negro more than the Union
to induce the President to swerve from his established policy are
unavailing. He will neither be persuaded by promises nor intimidated
by threats. Today he was called upon by two United States Senators
and rather peremptorily requested to accept the services of two Negro
regiments. They were flatly and unequivocally rejected. The President
did not appreciate the necessity of employing the Negroes to fight the
battles of the country and take the positions which the white men of
the nation, the voters, and sons of patriotic sires, should be proud to
occupy; there were employments in which the Negroes of rebel masters
might well be engaged, but he was not willing to place them upon an
equality with our volunteers who had left home and family and lucrative
occupations to defend the Union and the Constitution while there were
volunteers or militia enough in the loyal States to maintain the
Government without resort to this expedient. If the loyal people were not
satisfied with the policy he had adopted, he was willing to leave the
administration to other hands. One of the Senators was impudent enough to
tell the President he wished to God he would resign.”
In the spring of 1862 General Hunter was sent into South Carolina
with less than 11,000 men and charged with the duty of holding the
whole seacoast of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. He asked for
re-enforcement but was told frankly from Washington, “Not a man from the
North can be spared.” The only way to guard the position was to keep
long lines of entrenchment thrown up against the enemy. General Hunter
calmly announced his intention of forming a Negro regiment to help him.
They were to be paid as laborers by the quartermaster but he expected
eventually to have them recognized as soldiers by the government. At
first he could find no officers. They were shocked at being asked to
command “niggers.” Even non-commissioned officers were difficult to find.
But eventually the regiment was formed and became an object of great
curiosity when on parade. Reports of the first South Carolina infantry
were sent to Washington but there was no reply. Then suddenly the matter
came up in Congress and Hunter was ordered to explain whether he had
enlisted fugitive slaves and upon what authority. Hunter immediately sent
a sharp reply:
“To the first question, therefore, I reply: That no regiment of ‘fugitive
slaves’ has been, or is being, organized in this department. There is,
however, a fine regiment of loyal persons whose late masters are fugitive
rebels—men who everywhere fly before the appearance of the National flag,
leaving their loyal and unhappy servants behind them, to shift as best
they can for themselves. So far, indeed, are the loyal persons composing
the regiment from seeking to evade the presence of their late owners,
that they are now one and all endeavoring with commendable zeal to
acquire the drill and discipline requisite to place them in a position
to go in full and effective pursuit of their fugacious and traitorous
proprietors.
“The experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been
a complete and even marvellous success. They are sober, docile, attentive
and enthusiastic, displaying great natural capacities in acquiring the
duties of the soldier. They are now eager beyond all things to take the
field and be led into action; and it is the unanimous opinion of the
officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this
climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal
to the similar regiments so long and so successfully used by the British
authorities in the West India Islands.
“In conclusion, I would say, it is my hope—there appearing no possibility
of other reinforcements, owing to the exigencies of the campaign in
the peninsula—to have organized by the end of next fall and to be able
to present to the government from 48,000 to 50,000 of these hardy and
devoted soldiers.”[88]
The reply was read in Congress amid laughter despite the indignation of
the Kentucky Congressman who instituted the inquiry.
Protests now came from the South but no answer was forthcoming and
despite all the agitation the regiment remained until at last Hunter was
officially ordered to raise 50,000 black laborers of whom 5,000 might be
armed and dressed as soldiers.
Horace Greeley stated the case clearly August 20, 1862 in his “Prayer of
Twenty Million”:[89]
“On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one
disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who
does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the
same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile—that
the rebellion if crushed out tomorrow would be renewed within a year if
slavery were left in full vigor—that army officers who remain to this day
devoted to slavery can at best be but half-way loyal to the Union—and
that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened
peril to the Union....
“I close as I began, with the statement that what an immense majority
of the loyal millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank,
declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more
especially of the Confiscation Act. That Act gives freedom to the slaves
of rebels coming within our lines or whom those lines may at any time
enclose,—we ask you to render it due obedience by publicly requiring all
your subordinates to recognize and obey it. The rebels are everywhere
using the late anti-Negro riots in the North—as they have long used your
officers’ treatment of Negroes in the South—to convince the slaves that
they have nothing to hope from a Union success—that we mean in that case
to sell them into bitter bondage to defray the cost of the war. Let them
impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant and credulous
bondsmen, and the Union will never be restored—never. We cannot conquer
ten millions of people united in solid phalanx against us, powerfully
aided by northern sympathizers and European allies. We must have scouts,
guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers and choppers from the blacks of
the South—whether we allow them to fight for us or not—or we shall be
baffled and repelled.”
A month later, September 22, Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation. He had considered this step before and his
final decision was caused, first, by a growing realization of the immense
task that lay before the Union armies and, secondly, by the fear that
Europe was going to recognize the Confederacy, since she saw as between
North and South little difference in attitude toward slavery.
The effect of the step was undoubtedly decisive for ultimate victory,
although at first it spread dismay. Six of the Northern States went
Democratic in the fall elections and elsewhere the Republicans lost
heavily. In the army some officers resigned and others threatened to
because “The war for the Union was changed into a war for the Negro.”
In the South men like Beauregard urged the raising of the “Black Flag”
while Jefferson Davis in his third annual message wrote: “We may well
leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent
Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellowmen of all countries to
pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of
an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are
doomed to extermination.”[90]
With emancipation foreshadowed the full recognition of the Negro soldier
was inevitable. In September 1862 came a black Infantry Regiment from
Louisiana and later a regiment of heavy artillery and by the end of
1862 four Negro regiments had enlisted. Immediately after the signing
of the Emancipation Proclamation came the Kansas Colored volunteers and
the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment. A Bureau was established in
Washington to handle the colored enlistments and before the end of the
war 178,975 Negroes had enlisted.
“In the Department [of War] the actual number of Negroes enlisted was
never known, from the fact that a practice prevailed of putting a live
Negro in a dead one’s place. For instance, if a company on picket or
scouting lost ten men, the officer would immediately put ten new men in
their places and have them answer to the dead men’s names. I learn from
very reliable sources that this was done in Virginia, also in Missouri
and Tennessee. If the exact number of men could be ascertained, instead
of 180,000 it would doubtless be in the neighborhood of 220,000 who
entered the ranks of the army.”[91]
General orders covering the enlistment of Negro troops were sent out from
the War Department October 13, 1863. The Union League in New York city
raised 2,000 black soldiers in 45 days, although no bounty was offered
them and no protection promised their families. The regiment had a
triumphal march through the city and a daily paper stated: “In the month
of July last the homes of these people were burned and pillaged by an
infuriated political mob; they and their families were hunted down and
murdered in the public streets of this city; and the force and majesty
of the law were powerless to protect them. Seven brief months have passed
and a thousand of these despised and persecuted men marched through the
city in the garb of the United States soldiers, in vindication of their
own manhood and with the approval of a countless multitude—in effect
saving from inevitable and distasteful conscription the same number of
those who hunted their persons and destroyed their homes during those
days of humiliation and disgrace. This is noble vengeance—a vengeance
taught by Him who commanded, ‘Love them that hate you; do good to them
that persecute you.’”
The enlistment of Negroes caused difficulty and friction among the
white troops. In South Carolina General Gilmore had to forbid the white
troops using Negro troops for menial service in cleaning up the camps.
Black soldiers in uniform often had their uniforms stripped off by white
soldiers.
“I attempted to pass Jackson Square in New Orleans one day in my uniform
when I was met by two white soldiers of the 24th Conn. They halted me and
then ordered me to undress. I refused, when they seized me and began to
tear my coat off. I resisted, but to no good purpose; a half dozen others
came up and began to assist. I recognized a sergeant in the crowd, an
old shipmate on board of a New Bedford, Mass., whaler; he came to my
rescue, my clothing was restored and I was let go. It was nothing strange
to see a black soldier _à la_ Adam come into the barracks out of the
streets.”[92] This conduct led to the killing of a portion of a boat’s
crew of the U. S. Gunboat Jackson, at Ship Island, Miss., by members of a
Negro regiment stationed there.
Then, too, there was contemptible discrimination in pay. While white
soldiers received $13 a month and clothing, Negro soldiers, by act of
Congress, were given $10 a month with $3 deducted for clothing, leaving
only $7 a month as actual pay. This was only remedied when the 54th
Massachusetts Infantry refused all pay for a year until it should be
treated as other regiments. The State of Massachusetts made up the
difference between the $7 and $13 to disabled soldiers until June 16,
1864, when the government finally made the Negroes’ pay equal to that of
the whites.
On the Confederate side there was a movement to use Negro soldiers
fostered by Judah Benjamin, General Lee and others. In 1861 a Negro
company from Nashville offered its services to the Confederate states and
free Negroes of Memphis were authorized by the Committee of Safety to
organize a volunteer company. Companies of free Negroes were raised in
New Orleans,—“Very well drilled and comfortably uniformed.” In Richmond
colored troops were also raised in the last days. Few if any of these
saw actual service. Plantation hands from Alabama built the redoubts
at Charleston, and Negroes worked as teamsters and helpers throughout
the South. In February, 1864, the Confederate congress provided for the
impressment of 20,000 slaves for menial service, and President Davis
suggested that the number be doubled and that they be emancipated at
the end of their service. Before the war started local authorities
had in many cases enrolled free Negroes as soldiers and some of these
remained in the service of the Confederacy. The adjutant general of
the Louisiana militia issued an order which said “the Governor and the
Commander-in-Chief, relying implicitly upon the loyalty of the free
colored population of the city and State, for the protection of their
homes, their property and for southern rights, from the population of
a ruthless invader, and believing that the military organization which
existed prior to February 15, 1862, and elicited praise and respect for
the patriotic motives which prompted it, should exist for and during the
war, calls upon them to maintain their organization and hold themselves
prepared for such orders as may be transmitted to them.” These native
guards did not leave the city when the Confederates did and explained to
General Butler that they dared not refuse to work with the Confederates
and that they hoped by their service to gain greater equality with
the whites and that they would be glad now to join the Union forces.
Two weeks after the fall of Sumter colored volunteers passed through
Georgia on their way to Virginia. There were 16 or more companies. In
November, 1861, a regiment of 1,400 free colored men were in the line of
march at New Orleans. The idea of calling the Negroes grew as the power
of the Confederacy waned and the idea of emancipation as compensation
spread. President Davis said “Should the alternative ever be presented
of subjugation or of the employment of slaves as soldiers there seems no
reason to doubt what should be our decision.”
There was, of course, much difference of opinion. General Cobb said “If
slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong,” while
a Georgian replied “Some say that Negroes will not fight, I say they
will fight. They fought at Ocean Pond, Honey Hill and other places.”
General Lee, in January ’64, gave as his opinion that they should employ
them without delay. “I believe with proper regulations they may be made
efficient soldiers.” He continued, “Our chief aim should be to secure
their fidelity. There have been formidable armies composed of men having
no interest in the cause for which they fought beyond their pay or the
hope of plunder. But it is certain that the surest foundation upon which
the fidelity of an army can rest, especially in a service which imposes
hardships and privations, is the personal interest of the soldier in the
issue of the contest. Such an interest we can give our Negroes by giving
immediate freedom to all who enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to
the families of those who discharge their duties faithfully (whether they
survive or not), together with the privilege of residing at the South. To
this might be added a bounty for faithful service.”
Finally, March 13, 1865, it was directed that slaves be enrolled in the
Confederate army, each state to furnish its quota of 300,000. Recruiting
officers were appointed, but before the plan could be carried out Lee and
Johnson surrendered.[93]
The central fact which we forget in these days is that the real question
in the minds of most white people in the United States in 1863 was
whether or not the Negro really would fight. The generation then living
had never heard of the Negro in the Revolution and in the War of 1812,
much less of his struggles and insurrections before. From 1820 down to
the time of the war a determined and far-reaching propaganda had led most
men to believe in the natural inferiority, cowardice and degradation of
the Negro race. We have already seen Abraham Lincoln suggest that if arms
were put into the hands of the Negro soldier it might be simply a method
of arming the rebels. The New York _Times_ discussed the matter soberly,
defending the right to employ Negroes but suggesting four grounds which
might make it inexpedient; that Negroes would not fight, that prejudice
was so strong that whites would not fight with them, that no free Negroes
would volunteer and that slaves could not be gotten hold of and that the
use of Negroes would exasperate the South. “The very best thing that can
be done under existing circumstances, in our judgment, is to possess our
souls in patience while the experiment is being tried. The problem will
probably speedily solve itself—much more speedily than heated discussion
or harsh criminations can solve it.”
This was in February 16, 1863. It was not long before the results of
using Negro troops began to be reported and we find the _Times_ saying
editorially on the 31st of July: “Negro soldiers have now been in
battle at Port Hudson and at Milliken’s Bend in Louisiana; at Helena
in Arkansas, at Morris Island in South Carolina, and at or near Fort
Gibson in the Indian Territory. In two of these instances they assaulted
fortified positions and led the assault; in two they fought on the
defensive, and in one they attacked rebel infantry. In all of them
they acted in conjunction with white troops and under command of white
officers. In some instances they acted with distinguished bravery, and in
all they acted as well as could be expected of raw troops.”
On the 11th of February, 1863, the news columns of the _Times_ were still
more enthusiastic. “It will not need many such reports as this—and there
have been several before it—to shake our inveterate Saxon prejudice
against the capacity and courage of Negro troops. Everybody knows
that they were used in the Revolution, and in the last war with Great
Britain fought side by side with white troops, and won equal praises
from Washington and Jackson. It is shown also that black sailors are on
equal terms with their white comrades. If on the sea, why not on the
land? No officer who has commanded black troops has yet reported against
them. They are tried in the most unfavorable and difficult circumstances,
but never fail. When shall we learn to use the full strength of the
formidable ally who is only waiting for a summons to rally under the flag
of the Union? Colonel Higginson says: ‘No officer in this regiment now
doubts that the successful prosecution of this war lies in the unlimited
employment of black troops.’ The remark is true in a military sense, and
it has a still deeper political significance.
“When General Hunter has scattered 50,000 muskets among the Negroes of
the Carolinas, and General Butler has organized the 100,000 or 200,000
blacks for whom he may perhaps shortly carry arms to New Orleans, the
possibility of restoring the Union as it was, with slavery again its
dormant power, will be seen to have finally passed away. The Negro is
indeed the key to success.”
The Negroes began to fight and fight hard; but their own and peculiar
characteristics stood out even in the blood of war. A Pennsylvania
Major wrote home: “I find that these colored men learn everything that
pertains to the duties of a soldier much faster than any white soldiers
I have ever seen.... They are willing, obedient, and cheerful; move with
agility, and are full of music.”[94]
Certain battles, carnivals of blood, stand out and despite their horror
must not be forgotten. One of the earliest encounters was the terrible
massacre at Fort Pillow, April 18, 1863. The fort was held with a
garrison of 557 men, of whom 262 were colored soldiers of the 6th United
States Heavy Artillery. The Union commander refused to surrender.
“Upon receiving the refusal of Major Booth to capitulate, Forrest gave
a signal and his troops made a frantic charge upon the fort. It was
received gallantly and resisted stubbornly, but there was no use of
fighting. In ten minutes the enemy, assaulting the fort in the centre,
and striking it on the flanks, swept in. The Federal troops surrendered;
but an indiscriminate massacre followed. Men were shot down in their
tracks; pinioned to the ground with bayonet and sabre. Some were clubbed
to death while dying of wounds; others were made to get down upon their
knees, in which condition they were shot to death. Some were burned
alive, having been fastened into the buildings, while still others were
nailed against the houses, tortured and then burned to a crisp.”[95]
May 27, 1863, came the battle of Port Hudson. “Hearing the firing
apparently more fierce and continuous to the right than anywhere else,
I turned in that direction, past the sugar house of Colonel Chambers,
where I had slept, and advanced to near the pontoon bridge across the Big
Sandy Bayou, which the Negro regiments had erected, and where they were
fighting most desperately. I had seen these brave and hitherto despised
fellows the day before as I rode along the lines, and I had seen General
Banks acknowledge their respectful salute as he would have done that of
any white troops; but still the question was—with too many—‘Will they
fight?’
“General Dwight, at least, must have had the idea, not only that they
were men, but something more than men, from the terrific test to which
he put their valor. Before any impression had been made upon the
earthworks of the enemy, and in full face of the batteries belching forth
their 62-pounders, these devoted people rushed forward to encounter
grape, canister, shell, and musketry, with no artillery but two small
howitzers—that seemed mere popguns to their adversaries—and no reserve
whatever.
“Their force consisted of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards (with colored
field officers) under Lieutenant-Colonel Bassett, and the 3d Louisiana
Native Guards, Colonel Nelson (with white field officers), the whole
under command of the latter officer.
“On going into action they were 1,080 strong, and formed into four lines,
Lieutenant-Colonel Bassett, 1st Louisiana, forming the first line, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Finnegas the second. When ordered to charge up
the works, they did so with the skill and nerve of old veterans (black
people, be it remembered who had never been in action before). Oh, but
the fire from the rebel guns was so terrible upon the unprotected masses,
that the first few shots mowed them down like grass and so continued.
“Colonel Bassett being driven back, Colonel Finnegas took his place,
and his men being similarly cut to pieces, Lieutenant-Colonel Bassett
reformed and recommenced; and thus these brave people went in from
morning until 3:30 P.M., under the most hideous carnage that men ever
had to withstand, and that very few white ones would have had nerve to
encounter, even if ordered to.
“During this time, they rallied, and were ordered to make six distinct
charges, losing 37 killed, and 155 wounded, and 116 missing,—the
majority, if not all, of these being, in all probability, now lying dead
on the gory field, and without the rites of sepulture; for when, by flag
of truce, our forces in other directions were permitted to reclaim their
dead, the benefit, through some neglect, was not extended to these black
regiments.
“The deeds of heroism performed by these colored men were such as the
proudest white men might emulate. Their colors are torn to pieces by
shot and literally bespattered by blood and brains. The color-sergeant
of the 1st Louisiana, on being mortally wounded, hugged the colors to
his breast, when a struggle ensued between the two color-corporals on
each side of him, as to who should have the honor of bearing the sacred
standard, and during this generous contention one was seriously wounded.
One black lieutenant actually mounted the enemy’s works three or four
times, and in one charge the assaulting party came within fifty paces of
them. Indeed, if only ordinarily supported by artillery and reserve, no
one can convince us that they would not have opened a passage through the
enemy’s works.
“Captain Callioux of the 1st Louisiana, a man so black that he actually
prided himself upon his blackness, died the death of a hero, leading on
his men in the thickest of the fight.”[96]
In July 13, 1863, came the draft riot in New York when the daily papers
told the people that they were called upon to fight the battles of
“niggers and abolitionists,” when the governor did nothing but “request”
the rioters to await the report of his demand that the President suspend
the draft. Meantime the city was given over to rapine and murder,
property destroyed, Negroes killed and the colored orphans’ asylum burned
to the ground and property robbed and pillaged.
At that very time in South Carolina black soldiers were preparing to take
Fort Wagner, their greatest battle. It will be noted that continually
Negroes were called upon to rescue lost causes, many times as a sort of
deliberate test of their courage. Fort Wagner was a case in point. The
story may be told from two points of view, that of the white Unionist and
that of the Confederate. The Union account says:
“The signal given, our forces advanced rapidly towards the fort, while
our mortars in the rear tossed their bombs over their heads. The 54th
Massachusetts (a Negro Regiment) led the attack, supported by the 6th
Connecticut, 48th New York, 3rd New Hampshire, 76th Pennsylvania, and
the 9th Maine Regiments.... The silent and shattered walls of Wagner
all at once burst forth into a blinding sheet of vivid light, as though
they had suddenly been transformed by some magic power into the living,
seething crater of a volcano! Down came the whirlwind of destruction
along the beach with the swiftness of lightning! How fearfully the
hissing shot, the shrieking bombs, the whistling bars of iron, and the
whispering bullet struck and crushed through the dense masses of our
brave men! I never shall forget the terrible sound of that awful blast of
death, which swept down, shattered or dead, a thousand of our men. Not
a shot had missed its aim. Every bolt of steel, every globe of iron and
lead, tasted of human blood....
“In a moment the column recovered itself, like a gallant ship at sea when
buried for an instant under the immense wave.
“The ditch is reached; a thousand men leap into it, clamber up the
shattered ramparts, and grapple with the foe, which yields and falls back
to the rear of the fort. Our men swarm over the walls, bayoneting the
desperate rebel cannoneers. Hurrah! the fort is ours!
“But now came another blinding blast from concealed guns in the rear of
the fort, and our men went down by scores.... The struggle is terrific.
Our supports hurry up to the aid of their comrades, but as they reach the
ramparts they fire a volley which strikes down many of our men. Fatal
mistake! Our men rally once more; but, in spite of an heroic resistance,
they are forced back again to the edge of the ditch. Here the brave Shaw,
with scores of his black warriors, went down, fighting desperately.”
When asking for the body of Colonel Shaw, a confederate major said: “We
have buried him with his niggers.”
The Confederate account is equally eloquent.
“The carnage was frightful. It is believed the Federals lost more men on
that eventful night than twice the entire strength of the Confederate
garrison.... According to the statement of Chaplain Dennison the
assaulting columns, in two brigades, commanded by General Strong and
Colonel Putnam (the division under General Seymour), consisted of the
54th Massachusetts, 3rd and 7th New Hampshire, 6th Connecticut and 100th
New York, with a reserve brigade commanded by General Stephenson. One of
the assaulting regiments was composed of Negroes (the 54th Massachusetts)
and to it was assigned the honor of leading the white columns to the
charge. It was a dearly purchased compliment. Their Colonel (Shaw) was
killed upon the parapet and the regiment almost annihilated, although
the Confederates in the darkness could not tell the color of their
assailants.”[97]
At last it was seen that Negro troops could do more than useless or
helpless or impossible tasks, and in the siege of Petersburg they were
put to important work. When the general attack was ordered on the 16th of
June, 1864, a division of black troops was used. The Secretary of War,
Stanton himself, saw them and said:
“The hardest fighting was done by the black troops. The forts they
stormed were the worst of all. After the affair was over General Smith
went to thank them, and tell them he was proud of their courage and dash.
He says they cannot be exceeded as soldiers, and that hereafter he will
send them in a difficult place as readily as the best white troops.”[98]
It was planned to send the colored troops under Burnside against the
enemy after the great mine was exploded. Inspecting officers reported to
Burnside that the black division was fitted for this perilous work. The
white division which was sent made a fiasco of it. Then, after all had
been lost Burnside was ready to send in his black division and though
they charged again and again they were repulsed and the Union lost over
4,000 men killed, wounded and captured.
All the officers of the colored troops in the Civil War were not white.
From the first there were many colored non-commissioned officers, and
the Louisiana regiments raised under Butler had 66 colored officers,
including one Major and 27 Captains, besides the full quota of
non-commissioned colored officers. In the Massachusetts colored troops
there were 10 commissioned Negro officers and 3 among the Kansas troop.
Among these officers was a Lieutenant-Colonel Reed of North Carolina,
who was killed in battle. In Kansas there was Captain H. F. Douglas, and
in other United States’ volunteer regiments were Major M. H. Delaney
and Captain O. S. B. Wall; Dr. A. T. Augusta, surgeon, was brevetted
Lieutenant-Colonel. The losses of Negro troops in the Civil War, killed,
wounded and missing has been placed at 68,178.
Such was the service of the Negro in the Civil War. Men say that the
nation gave them freedom, but the verdict of history is written on the
Shaw monument at the head of Boston Common:
THE WHITE OFFICERS
Taking Life and Honor in their Hands—Cast their lot with
Men of a Despised Race Unproved in War—and Risked Death as
Inciters of a Servile Insurrection if Taken Prisoners, Besides
Encountering all the Common Perils of Camp, March, and Battle.
THE BLACK RANK AND FILE
Volunteered when Disaster Clouded the Union Cause—Served
without Pay for Eighteen Months till Given that of White
Troops—Faced Threatened Enslavement if Captured—Were Brave in
Action—Patient under Dangerous and Heavy Labors and Cheerful
amid Hardships and Privations.
TOGETHER
They Gave to the Nation Undying Proof that Americans of African
Descent Possess the Pride, Courage, and Devotion of the Patriot
Soldier—One Hundred and Eighty Thousand Such Americans Enlisted
Under the Union Flag in MDCCCLXIII-MDCCCLXV.
5. THE WAR IN CUBA
In the Spanish-American War four Negro regiments were among the first
to be ordered to the front. They were the regular army regiments, 24th
and 25th Infantry, and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. President McKinley
recommended that new regiments of regular army troops be formed among
Negroes but Congress took no action. Colored troops with colored officers
were formed as follows: The 3rd North Carolina, the 8th Illinois, the 9th
Battalion, Ohio and the 23rd Kansas. Regiments known as the Immunes,
being immune to Yellow fever, were formed with colored lieutenants and
white captains and field officers, and called the 7th, 8th, 9th and
10th United States Volunteers. In addition to those there were the
6th Virginia with colored lieutenants and the 3rd Alabama with white
officers. Indiana had two companies attached to the 8th Immunes. None
of the Negro volunteer companies reached the front in time to take part
in battle. The 8th Illinois formed a part of the Army of Occupation and
was noted for its policing and cleaning up of Santiago. Colonel John R.
Marshall, commanding the 8th Illinois, and Major Charles Young, a regular
army commander, both colored, were in charge of the battalion.
The colored regular army regiments took a brilliant part in the war.
The first regiment ordered to the front was the 24th Infantry. Negro
soldiers were in the battles around Santiago. The Tenth Cavalry made an
effective attack at Las Quasimas and at El Caney on July 1 they saved
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders from annihilation. The 24th Infantry volunteered
in the Yellow fever epidemic and cleaned the camp in one day. _Review of
Reviews_ says: “One of the most gratifying incidents of the Spanish War
has been the enthusiasm that the colored regiments of the regular army
have aroused throughout the whole country. Their fighting at Santiago
was magnificent. The Negro soldiers showed excellent discipline, the
highest qualities of personal bravery, very superior physical endurance,
unfailing good temper, and the most generous disposition toward all
comrades-in-arms, whether white or black. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders have
come back singing the praises of the colored troops. There is not a
dissenting voice in the chorus of praise.... Men who can fight for their
country as did these colored troops ought to have their full share of
gratitude and honor.”
6. CARRIZAL
In 1916 the United States sent a punitive expedition under General
Pershing into Mexico in pursuit of the Villa forces which had raided
Columbus, New Mexico. Two Negro regiments, the 10th Cavalry and the 24th
Infantry, were a part of his expedition. On June 21, Troop C and K of
the 10th Cavalry were ambushed at Carrizal by some 700 Mexican soldiers.
Although outnumbered almost ten to one, these black soldiers dismounted
in the face of a withering machine-gun fire, deployed, charged the
Mexicans and killed their commander.
This handful of men fought on until, of the three officers commanding
them, two were killed and one was badly wounded. Seventeen of the men
were killed and twenty-three were made prisoners. One of the many
outstanding heroes of this memorable engagement was Peter Bigstaff, who
fought to the last beside his commander, Lieutenant Adair. A Southern
white man, with no love for blacks, wrote:
“The black trooper might have faltered and fled a dozen times, saving
his own life and leaving Adair to fight alone. But it never seemed to
occur to him. He was a comrade to the last blow. When Adair’s broken
revolver fell from his hand the black trooper pressed another into it,
and together, shouting in defiance, they thinned the swooping circle of
overwhelming odds before them.
“The black man fought in the deadly shambles side by side with the white
man, following always, fighting always as his lieutenant fought.
“And finally, when Adair, literally shot to pieces, fell in his tracks,
his last command to his black trooper was to leave him and save his life.
Even then the heroic Negro paused in the midst of that Hell of carnage
for a final service to his officer. Bearing a charmed life, he had
fought his way out. He saw that Adair had fallen with his head in the
water. With superb loyalty the black trooper turned and went back to the
maelstrom of death, lifted the head of his superior, leaned him against a
tree and left him there dead with dignity when it was impossible to serve
any more.
“There is not a finer piece of soldierly devotion and heroic comradeship
in the history of modern warfare than that of Henry Adair and the black
trooper who fought by him at Carrizal.”[99]
7. THE WORLD WAR
Finally we come to the World War the history of which is not yet written.
At first and until the United States entered the war the Negro figured
as a laborer and a great exodus took place from the South as we have
already noted. Some effort was made to keep the Negro from the draft but
finally he was called and although constituting less than a tenth of the
population he furnished 13% of the soldiers called to the colors. The
registry for the draft had insulting color discriminations and determined
effort was made to confine Negroes to stevedore and labor regiments under
white officers. Most of the Negro draftees were thus sent to the Service
of Supplies where they were largely under illiterate whites and suffered
greatly. Finally a camp for training Negro officers was established and
nearly 700 Negroes commissioned, none of them, however, above the rank of
captain; Charles Young, the highest ranking Negro graduate of West Point
and one of the best officers in the army was kept from the front, because
being already a colonel with a distinguished record he would surely have
become a general if sent to France.
Two Negro divisions were planned, the 92nd and the 93rd. The 93rd was to
be composed of the Negro National Guard regiments all of whom had some
and one all Negro officers. The latter division was never organized as
a complete division but four of its regiments were sent to France and
encountered bitter discrimination from the Americans on account of their
Negro officers. They were eventually brigaded with the French and saw
some of the hardest fighting of the war in the final drive toward Sedan.
They were cited in General Orders as follows by General Goybet:[100]
“In transmitting to you with legitimate pride the thanks and
congratulations of the General Garnier Duplessis, allow me, my
dear friends of all ranks, Americans and French, to thank you
from the bottom of my heart as a chief and a soldier for the
expression of gratitude for the glory which you have lent our
good 157th Division. I had full confidence in you but you have
surpassed my hopes.
“During these nine days of hard fighting you have progressed
nine kilometers through powerful organized defenses, taken
nearly 600 prisoners, 15 guns of different calibers, 20
minnewerfers, and nearly 150 machine guns, secured an enormous
amount of engineering material, an important supply of
artillery ammunition, brought down by your fire three enemy
aeroplanes.
“Your troops have been admirable in their attack. You must be
proud of the courage of your officers and men; and I consider
it an honor to have them under my command.
“The bravery and dash of your regiment won the admiration of
the 2nd Moroccan Division who are themselves versed in warfare.
Thanks to you, during those hard days, the Division was at all
times in advance of all other divisions of the Army Corps. I am
sending you all my thanks and beg you to transmit them to your
subordinates.
“I called on your wounded. Their morale is higher than any
praise.
GOYBET.”
The 92nd Division encountered difficulties in organization and was never
assembled as a Division until it arrived in France. There it was finally
gotten in shape and took a small part in the Argonne offensive and in the
fight just preceding the armistice. Their Commanding General said:[101]
“Five months ago today the 92nd Division landed in France.
“After seven weeks of training, it took over a sector in the front line,
and since that time some portion of the Division has been practically
continuously under fire.
“It participated in the last battle of the war with creditable success,
continuously pressing the attack against highly organized defensive
works. It advanced successfully on the first day of the battle,
attaining its objectives and capturing prisoners. This in the face of
determined opposition by an alert enemy, and against rifle, machine-gun
and artillery fire. The issue of the second day’s battle was rendered
indecisive by the order to cease firing at eleven A.M.—when the armistice
became effective.”
With the small chance thus afforded Negro troops nevertheless made a
splendid record and especially those under Negro officers. If they had
had larger opportunity and less organized prejudice they would have
done much more. Perhaps their greatest credit is from the fact that
they withstood so bravely and uncomplainingly the barrage of hatred
and offensive prejudice aimed against them. The young Negro officers
especially made a splendid record as to thinking, guiding leaders of an
oppressed group.
Thus has the black man defended America from the beginning to the World
War. To him our independence from Europe and slavery is in no small
degree due.
CHAPTER IV
THE EMANCIPATION OF DEMOCRACY
How the black slave by his incessant struggle to be free has
broadened the basis of democracy in America and in the world.
Help in exploration, labor unskilled and to some extent skilled, and
fighting, have been the three gifts which so far we have considered as
having been contributed by black folk to America. We now turn to a matter
more indefinite and yet perhaps of greater importance.
Without the active participation of the Negro in the Civil War, the
Union could not have been saved nor slavery destroyed in the nineteenth
century.[102] Without the help of black soldiers, the independence of
the United States could not have been gained in the eighteenth century.
But the Negro’s contribution to America was at once more subtle and
important than these things. Dramatically the Negro is the central thread
of American history. The whole story turns on him whether we think of
the dark and flying slave ship in the sixteenth century, the expanding
plantations of the seventeenth, the swelling commerce of the eighteenth,
or the fight for freedom in the nineteenth. It was the black man that
raised a vision of democracy in America such as neither Americans nor
Europeans conceived in the eighteenth century and such as they have not
even accepted in the twentieth century; and yet a conception which every
clear sighted man knows is true and inevitable.
1. DEMOCRACY
Democracy was not planted full grown in America. It was a slow growth
beginning in Europe and developing further and more quickly in America.
It did not envisage at first the man farthest down as a participant in
democratic privilege or even as a possible participant. This was not
simply because of the inability of the ignorant and degraded to express
themselves and act intelligently and efficiently, but it was a failure
to recognize that the mass of men had any rights which the better class
were bound to respect. Thus democracy to the world first meant simply
the transfer of privilege and opportunity from waning to waxing power,
from the well-born to the rich, from the nobility to the merchants.
Divine Right of birth yielded the Divine Right of wealth. Growing
industry, business and commerce were putting economic and social power
into the hands of what we call the middle class. Political opportunity
to correspond with this power was the demand of the eighteenth century
and this was what the eighteenth century called Democracy. On the
other hand, both in Europe and in America, there were classes, and
large classes, without power and without consideration whose place in
democracy was inconceivable both to Europeans and Americans. Among
these were the agricultural serfs and industrial laborers of Europe and
the indentured servants and black slaves of America. The white serfs,
as they were transplanted in America, began a slow, but in the end,
effective agitation for recognition in American democracy. And through
them has risen the modern American labor movement. But this movement
almost from the first looked for its triumph along the ancient paths of
aristocracy and sought to raise the white servant and laborer on the
backs of the black servant and slave. If now the black man had been
inert, unintelligent, submissive, democracy would have continued to mean
in America what it means so widely still in Europe, the admission of the
powerful to participation in government and privilege in so far and only
in so far as their power becomes irresistible. It would not have meant a
recognition of human beings as such and the giving of economic and social
power to the powerless.
It is usually assumed in reading American history that whatever the
Negro has done for America has been passive and unintelligent, that he
accompanied the explorers as a beast of burden and accomplished whatever
he did by sheer accident; that he labored because he was driven to
labor and fought because he was made to fight. This is not true. On the
contrary, it was the rise and growth among the slaves of a determination
to be free and an active part of American democracy that forced American
democracy continually to look into the depths; that held the faces of
American thought to the inescapable fact that as long as there was a
slave in America, America could not be a free republic; and more than
that: as long as there were people in America, slave or nominally free,
who could not participate in government and industry and society as
free, intelligent human beings, our democracy had failed of its greatest
mission.
This great vision of the black man was, of course, at first the vision
of the few, as visions always are, but it was always there; it grew
continuously and it developed quickly from wish to active determination.
One cannot think then of democracy in America or in the modern world
without reference to the American Negro. The democracy established in
America in the eighteenth century was not, and was not designed to be, a
democracy of the masses of men and it was thus singularly easy for people
to fail to see the incongruity of democracy and slavery. It was the
Negro himself who forced the consideration of this incongruity, who made
emancipation inevitable and made the modern world at least consider if
not wholly accept the idea of a democracy including men of all races and
colors.
2. INFLUENCE ON WHITE THOUGHT
Naturally, at first, it was the passive presence of the Negro with his
pitiable suffering and sporadic expression of unrest that bothered
the American colonists. Massachusetts and Connecticut early in the
seventeenth century tried to compromise with their consciences by
declaring that there should be no slavery except of persons “willingly
selling themselves” or “sold to us.” And these were to have “All the
liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in
Israel.” Massachusetts even took a strong stand against proven “man
stealing”; but it was left to a little band of Germans in Pennsylvania,
in 1688, to make the first clear statement the moment they looked upon
a black slave: “Now, though they are black, we cannot conceive there is
more liberty to have them slaves than it is to have other white ones.
There is a saying that we shall do to all men like as we will be done to
ourselves, making no difference of what generation, descent or color they
are. Here is liberty of conscience which is right and reasonable. Here
ought also to be liberty of the body.”[103]
In the eighteenth century, Sewall of Massachusetts attacked slavery.
From that time down until 1863 man after man and prophet after prophet
spoke against slavery and they spoke not so much as theorists but as
people facing extremely uncomfortable facts. Oglethorpe would keep
slavery out of Georgia because he saw how the strength of South Carolina
went to defending themselves against possible slave insurrection rather
than to defending the English colonies against the Spanish. The matter
of baptizing the heathen whom slavery was supposed to convert brought
tremendous heart searchings and argument and disputations and explanatory
laws throughout the colonies. Contradictory benevolences were evident as
when the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel sought to convert the
Negroes and American legislatures sought to make the perpetual slavery of
the converts sure.
The religious conscience, especially as it began to look upon America
as a place of freedom and refuge, was torn by the presence of slavery.
Late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth centuries pressure
began to be felt from the more theoretical philanthropists of Europe
and the position of American philanthropists was made correspondingly
uncomfortable. Benjamin Franklin pointed out some of the evils of
slavery; James Otis inveighing against England’s economic tyranny
acknowledged the rights of black men. Patrick Henry said that slavery
was “repugnant to the first impression of right and wrong” and George
Washington hoped slavery might be abolished. Thomas Jefferson made the
celebrated statement: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect
that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that considering
numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of
fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it
may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no
attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.”[104]
Henry Laurens said to his son: “You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery.
I was born in a country where slavery had been established by British
kings and parliaments, as well as by the laws of that country ages before
my existence. I found the Christian religion and slavery growing under
the same authority and cultivation. I nevertheless disliked it. In former
days there was no combating the prejudices of men supported by interest;
the day I hope is approaching when, from principles of gratitude as well
as justice, every man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness
to comply with the golden rule.”[105]
The first draft of the Declaration of Independence harangued King George
III of Britain for the presence of slavery in the United States:
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him; captivating and carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of Infidel powers, is the warfare
of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open market
where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this
execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no
fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise
in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived
them, by murdering the people on whom we also obtruded them; thus paying
off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with
crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”[106]
The final draft of the Declaration said: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident:—that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed.”
It was afterward argued that Negroes were not included in this general
statement and Judge Taney in his celebrated decision said in 1857:
“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of
an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white
race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that
they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that
the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his
benefit....”[107]
This _obiter dictum_ was disputed by equally learned justices. Justice
McLean said in his opinion:
“Our independence was a great epoch in the history of freedom; and while
I admit the Government was not made especially for the colored race,
yet many of them were citizens of the New England States, and exercised
the rights of suffrage when the Constitution was adopted; and it was
not doubted by any intelligent person that its tendencies would greatly
ameliorate their condition.”[108]
Justice Curtis also said:
“It has been often asserted, that the Constitution was made exclusively
by and for the white race. It has already been shown that in five of the
thirteen original States, colored persons then possessed the elective
franchise and were among those by whom the Constitution was ordained
and established. If so, it is not true, in point of fact, that the
Constitution was made exclusively by the white race. And that it was made
exclusively for the white race is, in my opinion, not only an assumption
not warranted by anything in the Constitution, but contradicted by its
opening declaration, that it was ordained and established by the people
of the United States, for themselves and their posterity. And, as free
colored persons were then citizens of at least five States, they were
among those for whom and whose posterity the Constitution was ordained
and established.”[109]
After the Revolution came the series of State acts abolishing slavery,
beginning with Vermont in 1777; and then came the pause and retrogression
followed by the slow but determined rise of the Cotton Kingdom. But even
in that day the prophets protested. Hezekiah Niles said in 1819: “We are
ashamed of the thing we practice; ... there is no attribute of Heaven
that takes part with us, and we know it. And in the contest that must
come, and will come, there will be a heap of sorrows such as the world
has rarely seen.”[110] While the wild preacher, Lorenzo Dow, raised his
cry from the wilderness even in Alabama and Mississippi, saying: “In
the rest of the Southern States the influence of these Foreigners will
be known and felt in its time, and the seeds from the HORY ALLIANCE
and the DECAPIGANDI, who have a hand in those grades of Generals, from
the Inquisitor to the Vicar General and down.... The STRUGGLE will be
DREADFUL! The CUP will be BITTER! and when the agony is over, those who
survive may see better days! FAREWELL!”[111] Finally came William Lloyd
Garrison and John Brown.
3. INSURRECTION
It may be said, and it usually has been said, that all this showed
the natural conscience and humanity of white Americans protesting and
eventually triumphing over political and economic temptations. But to
this must be added the inescapable fact that the attitude, thought and
action of the Negro himself was in the largest measure back of this heart
searching, discomfort and warning; and first of all was the physical
force which the Negro again and again and practically without ceasing
from the first days of the slave trade down to the war of emancipation,
used to effect his own freedom.
We must remember that the slave trade itself was war; that from
surreptitious kidnapping of the unsuspecting it was finally organized so
as to set African tribes warring against tribes, giving the conquerors
the actual aid of European or Arabian soldiers and the tremendous
incentive of high prices for results of successful wars through the
selling of captives. The captives themselves fought to the last ditch.
It is estimated that every single slave finally landed upon a slave
ship meant five corpses either left behind in Africa or lost through
rebellion, suicide, sickness, and murder on the high seas. This which is
so often looked upon as passive calamity was one of the most terrible and
vindictive and unceasing struggles against misfortune that a group of
human beings ever put forth. It cost Negro Africa perhaps sixty million
souls to land ten million slaves in America.
The first influence of the Negro on American Democracy was naturally
force to oppose force—revolt, murder, assassination coupled with running
away. It was the primitive, ancient effort to avenge blood with blood,
to bring good out of evil by opposing evil with evil. Whether right or
wrong, effective or abortive, it is the human answer to oppression which
the world has tried for thousands of years.
Two facts stand out in American history with regard to slave
insurrections: on the one hand, there is no doubt of the continuous
and abiding fear of them. The slave legislation of the Southern States
is filled with ferocious efforts to guard against this. Masters were
everywhere given peremptory and unquestioned power to kill a slave or
even a white servant who should “resist his master.” The Virginia law of
1680 said: “If any Negro or other slave shall absent himself from his
master’s service and lie, hide and lurk in obscure places, committing
injuries to the inhabitants, and shall resist any person or persons that
shall by lawful authority be employed to apprehend and take the said
Negro, that then, in case of such resistance, it shall be lawful for
such person or persons to kill the said Negro or slave so lying out and
resisting.”[112]
In 1691 and in 1748, there were Virginia acts to punish conspiracies and
insurrections of slaves. In 1708 and in 1712 New York had laws against
conspiracies and insurrections of Negroes. North Carolina passed such
a law in 1741, and South Carolina in 1743 was legislating “against the
insurrection and other wicked attempts of Negroes and other slaves.” The
Mississippi code of 1839 provides for slave insurrections “with arms in
the intent to regain their liberty by force.” Virginia in 1797 decreed
death for any one exciting slaves to insurrection. In 1830 North Carolina
made it a felony to incite insurrection among slaves. The penal code of
Texas, passed in 1857, had a severe section against insurrection.[113]
Such legislation, common in every slave state, could not have been based
on mere idle fear, and when we follow newspaper comment, debates and
arguments and the history of insurrections and attempted insurrections
among slaves, we easily see the reason. No sooner had the Negroes landed
in America than resistance to slavery began.
As early as 1503 the Governor of Hispaniola stopped the transportation
of Negroes “because they fled to the Indians and taught them bad manners
and they could never be apprehended.” In 1518 in the sugar mills of Haiti
the Negroes “quit working and fled whenever they could in squads and
started rebellions and committed murders.” In 1522 there was a rebellion
on the sugar plantations. Twenty Negroes from Diego Columbus’ mill fled
and killed several Spaniards. They joined with other rebellious Negroes
on neighboring plantations. In 1523 many Negro slaves “fled to the
Zapoteca and walked rebelliously through the country.” In 1527 there was
an uprising of Indians and Negroes in Florida. In 1532 the Wolofs and
other rebellious Negroes caused insurrection among the Carib Indians.
These Wolofs were declared to be “haughty, disobedient, rebellious and
incorrigible.” In 1548 there was a rebellion in Honduras and the Viceroy
Mendoza in Mexico writes of an uprising among the slaves and Indians
in 1537.[114] One of the most remarkable cases of resistance was the
establishment and defense of Palmares in Brazil where 40 determined
Negroes in 1560 established a city state which lived for nearly a half
century growing to a population of 20,000 and only overthrown when 7,000
soldiers with artillery were sent against it. The Chiefs committed
suicide rather than surrender.[115]
Early in the sixteenth century and from that time down until the
nineteenth the black rebels whom the Spanish called “Cimarrones” and whom
we know as “Maroons” were infesting the mountains and forests of the
West Indies and South America. Gage says between 1520 and 1530: “What
the Spaniards fear most until they get out of these mountains are two
or three hundred Negroes, Cimarrones, who for the bad treatment they
received have fled from masters in order to resort to these woods; there
they live with their wives and children and increase in numbers every
year, so that the entire force of Guatemala (City) and its environments
is not capable to subdue them.” Gage himself was captured by a mulatto
corsair who was sweeping the seas in his own ship.[116]
The history of these Maroons reads like romance.[117] When England took
Jamaica, in 1565, they found the mountains infested with Maroons whom
they fought for ten years and finally, in 1663, acknowledged their
freedom, gave them land and made their leader, Juan de Bolas, a colonel
in the militia. He was killed, however, in the following year and from
1664 to 1778 some 3,000 black Maroons were in open rebellion against
the British Empire. The English fought them with soldiers, Indians, and
dogs and finally again, in 1738, made a formal treaty of peace with
them, recognizing their freedom and granting them 25,000 acres of land.
The war again broke out in 1795 and blood-hounds were again imported.
The legislature wished to deport them but as they could not get their
consent, peace was finally made on condition that the Maroons surrender
their arms and settle down. No sooner, however, had they done this
than the whites treacherously seized 600 of them and sent them to Nova
Scotia. The Legislature voted a sword to the English general, who made
the treaty; but he indignantly refused to accept it. Eventually these
Maroons were removed to Sierra Leone where they saved that colony to the
British by helping them put down an insurrection.
In the United States insurrection and attempts at insurrection among
the slaves extended from Colonial times down to the Civil War. For the
most part they were unsuccessful. In many cases the conspiracies were
insignificant in themselves but exaggerated by fear of the owners. And
yet a record of the attempts at revolt large and small is striking.
In Virginia there was a conspiracy in 1710 in Surrey County. In 1712 the
City of New York was threatened with burning by slaves. In 1720 whites
were attacked in the homes and on the streets in Charleston, S. C. In
1730 both in South Carolina and Virginia, slaves were armed to kill the
white people and they planned to burn the City of Boston in 1723. In
1730 there was an insurrection in Williamsburg, Va., and five counties
furnished armed men. In 1730 and 1731 homes were burned by slaves in
Massachusetts and in Rhode Island and in 1731 and 1732 three ships crews
were murdered by slaves. In 1729 the Governor of Louisiana reported that
in an expedition sent against the Indians, fifteen Negroes had “performed
prodigies of valor.” But the very next year the Indians, led by a
desperate Negro named Samba, were trying to exterminate the whites.[118]
In 1741 an insurrection of slaves was planned in New York City, for which
thirteen slaves were burned, eighteen hanged and eighty transported. In
1754 and 1755 slaves burned and poisoned certain masters in Charleston,
S. C.[119]
4. HAITI AND AFTER
On the night of August 23, 1791, the great Haitian rebellion took
place. It had been preceded by a small rebellion of the mulattoes who
were bitterly disappointed at the refusal of the planters to assent to
what the free Negroes thought were the basic principles of the French
Revolution. When 450,000 slaves joined them, they began a murderous
civil war seldom paralleled in history. French, English and Spaniards
participated. Toussaint, the first great black leader, was deceived,
imprisoned and died perhaps by poisoning. Twenty-five thousand French
soldiers were sent over by Napoleon Bonaparte to subdue the Negroes and
begin the extension of his American empire through the West Indies and up
the Mississippi valley. Despite all this, the Negroes were triumphant,
established an independent state, made Napoleon give up his dream
of American empire and sell Louisiana for a song:[120] “Thus, all of
Indian Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and
Montana and the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all
of Washington and Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a
despised Negro. Praise if you will, the work of Robert Livingston or a
Jefferson, but today let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L’Ouverture
who was indirectly the means of America’s expansion by the Louisiana
Purchase of 1803.”[121]
The Haitian revolution immediately had its effect upon both North and
South America. We have read how Haitian volunteers helped in the American
revolution. They returned to fight for their own freedom. Afterward when
Bolivar, the founder of five free republics in South America, undertook
his great rebellion in 1811 he at first failed. He took refuge in
Jamaica and implored the help of England but was unsuccessful. Later in
despair he visited Haiti. The black republic was itself at that time in
a precarious position and had to act with great caution. Nevertheless
President Pétion furnished Bolivar, soldiers, arms and money. Bolivar
embarked secretly and again sought to free South America. Again he
failed and a second time returned to Haiti. Money and reinforcements
were a second time furnished him and with the help of these achieved the
liberation of Mexico and Central America.
Thus black Haiti not only freed itself but helped to kindle liberty
all through America. Refugees from Haiti and San Domingo poured into
the United States both colored and white and had great influence in
Maryland and Louisiana.[122] Moreover the news of the black revolt
filtered through to the slaves in the United States. Here the chains of
slavery were stronger and the number of whites much larger. As I have
said in another place: “A long, awful process of selection chose out the
listless, ignorant, sly and humble and sent to heaven the proud, the
vengeful and the daring. The old African warrior spirit died away of
violence and a broken heart.”[123]
Nevertheless a series of attempted rebellions took place which can be
traced to the influence of Haiti. In 1800 came the Prosser conspiracy
in Virginia which planned a force of 11,000 Negroes to march in three
columns in the city and seize the arsenal. A terrific storm thwarted
these men and thirty-six were executed for the attempt. In 1791 Negroes
of Louisiana sought to imitate Toussaint leading to the execution of
twenty-three slaves. Other smaller attempts were made in South Carolina
in 1816 and in Georgia in 1819. In 1822 came the celebrated attempt of
Denmark Vesey, an educated freedman who through his trade as carpenter
accumulated considerable wealth. He spoke French and English and was
familiar with the Haitian revolution, the African Colonization scheme
and the agitation attending the Missouri compromise. He openly discussed
slavery and ridiculed the slaves for their cowardice and submission; he
worked through the church and planned the total annihilation of the men,
women and children of Charleston. Thousands of slaves were enrolled but
one betrayed him and this led to the arrest of 137 blacks of whom 35 were
hanged and 37 banished. A white South Carolinian writing after this plot
said: “We regard our Negroes as the Jacobins of the country, against whom
we should always be upon our guard and who although we fear no permanent
effects from any insurrectionary movements on their part, should be
watched with an eye of steady and unremitted observation.”[124]
Less than ten years elapsed before another insurrection was planned and
partially carried through. Its leader was Nat Turner, a slave born in
Virginia in 1800. He was precocious and considered as “marked” by the
Negroes. He had experimented in making paper, gun powder and pottery;
never swore, never drank and never stole. For the most part he was a
sort of religious devotee, fasting and praying and reading the Bible.
Once he ran away but was commanded by spirit voices to return. By 1825
he was conscious of a great mission and on May 12, 1831, “a great voice
said unto him that the serpent was loosed, that Christ had laid down
the yoke.” He believed that he, Nat Turner, was to lead the movement
and that “the first should be last and the last first.” An eclipse of
the sun in February, 1831 was a further sign to him. He worked quickly.
Gathering six friends together August 21, they made their plans and then
started the insurrection by killing Nat’s master and the family. About
forty Negroes were gathered in all and they killed sixty-one white men,
women and children. They were headed toward town when finally the whites
began to arm in opposition. It was not, however, until two months later,
October 30, that Turner himself was captured. He was tried November 5 and
sentenced to be hanged. When asked if he believed in the righteousness
of his mission he replied “Was not Christ crucified?” He made no
confession.[125]
T. R. Grey—Turner’s attorney—said “As to his ignorance, he certainly
had not the advantages of education, but he can read and write and for
natural intelligence and quickness of apprehension is surpassed by
few men I have ever seen. Further the calm, deliberate composure with
which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his
fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm; still bearing the stains of
the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered
with chains, yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven; with a
spirit soaring above the attributes of man, I looked on him and my blood
curdled in my veins.”[126]
Panic seized the whole of Virginia and the South. Military companies
were mobilized, both whites and Negroes fled to the swamps, slaves were
imprisoned and even as far down as Macon, Ga., the white women and
children were guarded in a building against supposed insurrections.
New slave codes were adopted, new disabilities put upon freedmen, the
carrying of fire arms was especially forbidden. The Negro churches in
the South were almost stopped from functioning and the Negro preachers
from preaching. Traveling and meeting of slaves was stopped, learning to
read and write was forbidden and incendiary pamphlets hunted down. Free
Negroes were especially hounded, sold into slavery or driven out and a
period of the worst oppression of the Negro in the land followed.
In 1839 and 1841 two cases of mutiny of slaves on the high seas caused
much commotion in America. In 1839 a schooner, the Amistad, started
from Havana for another West Indian port with 53 slaves. Led by a black
man, Cinque, the slaves rose, killed the captain and some of the crew,
allowed the rest of the crew to escape and put the two owners in irons.
The Negroes then tried to escape to Africa, but after about two months
they landed in Connecticut and a celebrated law case arose over the
disposition of the black mutineers which went to the Supreme Court of
the United States. John Quincy Adams defended them and won his case.
Eventually money was raised and the Negroes returned to Africa. While
this case was in the court the brig Creole in 1841 sailed from Richmond
to New Orleans with 130 slaves. Nineteen of the slaves mutinied and
led by Madison Washington took command of the vessel and sailed to the
British West Indies. Daniel Webster demanded the return of the slaves
but the British authorities refused.
During these years, rebellion and agitation among Negroes, and agitation
among white friends in Europe, was rapidly freeing the Negroes of the
West Indies and beginning their incorporation into the body politic—a
process not yet finished but which means possibly the eventual
development of a free black and mulatto republic in the isles of the
Caribbean.
It may be said that in most of these cases the attempts of the Negro to
rebel were abortive, and this is true. Yet it must be remembered that in
a few cases they had horrible success; in others nothing but accident or
the actions of favorite slaves saved similar catastrophe, and more and
more the white South had the feeling that it was sitting upon a volcano
and that nothing but the sternest sort of repression would keep the Negro
“in his place.” The appeal of the Negro to force invited reaction and
retaliation not only in the South, as we have noted, but also in the
North. Here the common white workingman and particularly the new English,
Scotch and Irish immigrants entirely misconceived the writhing of the
black man. These white laborers, themselves so near slavery, did not
recognize the struggle of the black slave as part of their own struggle;
rather they felt the sting of economic rivalry and underbidding for home
and job; they easily absorbed hatred and contempt for Negroes as their
first American lesson and were flattered by the white capitalists, slave
owners and sympathizers with slavery into lynching and clubbing their
dark fellow victims back into the pit whence they sought to crawl. It was
a scene for angels’ tears.
In 1826 Negroes were attacked in Cincinnati and also in 1836 and 1841. At
Portsmouth, Ohio, nearly one-half of the Negroes were driven out of the
city in 1830 while mobs drove away free Negroes from Mercer County, Ohio.
In Philadelphia, Negroes were attacked in 1820, 1830 and 1834, having
their churches and property burned and ruined. In 1838 there was another
anti-Negro riot and in 1842, when the blacks attempted to celebrate
abolition in the West Indies. Pittsburg had a riot in 1839 and New York
in 1843 and 1863.[127]
Thus we can see that the fear and heart searchings and mental upheaval of
those who saw the anomaly of slavery in the United States was based not
only upon theoretical democracy but on force and fear of force as used
by the degraded blacks, and on the reaction of that appeal on southern
legislatures and northern mobs.
5. THE APPEAL TO REASON
The appeal of the Negro to democracy, however, was not entirely or
perhaps even principally an appeal of force. There was continually the
appeal to reason and justice. Take the significant case of Paul Cuffee of
Massachusetts, born in 1759, of a Negro father and Indian mother. When
the selectmen of the town of Dartmouth refused to admit colored children
to the public schools, or even to make separate provision for them, he
refused to pay his school taxes. He was duly imprisoned, but when freed
he built at his own expense a school house and opened it to all without
race discrimination. His white neighbors were glad to avail themselves of
this school as it was more convenient and just as good as the school in
town. The result was that the colored children were soon admitted to all
schools. Cuffee was a ship owner and trader, and afterward took a colony
to Liberia at his own expense.[128] Again Prince Hall, the Negro founder
of the African Lodge of Masons which the English set up in 1775, aroused
by the revolution in Haiti and a race riot in Boston said in 1797:
“Patience, I say, for were we not possessed of a great measure of it you
could not bear up under the daily insults you meet with in the streets
of Boston; much more on public days of recreation, how are you shamefully
abused, and that at such a degree that you may truly be said to carry
your lives in your own hands....
“My brethren, let us not be cast down under these and many other abuses
we at present labor under; for the darkest hour is before the break of
day. My brethren, let us remember what a dark day it was with our African
brethren six years ago, in the French West Indies.... But blessed be to
God, the scene is changed, they now confess that God hath no respect of
persons, and therefore receive them as their friends and treat them as
brothers. Thus doth Ethiopia begin to stretch forth her hand from a sink
of slavery to freedom and equality.”[129]
A more subtle appeal was made by seven Massachusetts Negroes on
taxation without representation. In a petition to the General Court
of Massachusetts in 1780 they said: “We being chiefly of the African
extract, and by reason of long bondage and hard slavery, we have been
deprived of enjoying the profits of our labor or the advantage of
inheriting estates from our parents, as our neighbors the white people
do, having some of us not long enjoyed our own freedom; yet of late,
contrary to the invariable custom and practice of the country, we have
been, and now are, taxed both in our polls and that small pittance of
estate which, through much hard labor and industry, we have got together
to sustain ourselves and families withall. We apprehend it therefore, to
be hard usage, and will doubtless (if continued) reduce us to a state
of beggary, whereby we shall become a burden to others, if not timely
prevented by the interposition of your justice and power.
“Your petitioners further show, that we apprehend ourselves to be
aggrieved, in that, while we are not allowed the privilege of free men
of the State, having no vote or influence in the election of those that
tax us, yet many of our color (as is well known) have cheerfully entered
the field of battle in the defence of the common cause, and that (as we
conceive) against similar exertion of power (in regard to taxation) too
well known to need a recital in this place.”[130]
Perhaps though the most startling appeal and challenge came from David
Walker, a free Negro, born of a free mother and slave father in North
Carolina in 1785. He had some education, had traveled widely and
conducted a second-hand clothing store in Boston in 1827. He spoke to
various audiences of Negroes in 1828 and the following year published
the celebrated “Appeal in four articles, together with a preamble to
the Colored Citizens of the World but in particular and very expressly
to those of the United States of America.” It was a thin volume of 76
octavol pages, but it was frank and startlingly clear:
“Can our condition be any worse? Can it be more mean and abject? If there
are any changes, will they not be for the better though they may appear
for the worst at first? Can they get us any lower? Where can they get
us? They cannot treat us worse; for they well know the day they do it
they are gone. But against all accusations which may or can be preferred
against me, I appeal to heaven for my motive in writing—who knows that my
object is if possible to awaken in the breasts of my afflicted, degraded
and slumbering brethren a spirit of enquiry and investigation respecting
our miseries and wretchedness in this Republican land of Liberty!!!!
“My beloved brethren:—The Indians of North and South America—the
Greeks—the Irish, subjected under the King of Great Britain—the Jews,
that ancient people of the Lord—the inhabitants of the Islands of the
Sea—in fine, all the inhabitants of the Earth, (except, however, the sons
of Africa) are called men and of course are and ought to be free.—But
we, (colored people) and our children are brutes and of course are and
ought to be slaves to the American people and their children forever—to
dig their mines and work their farms; and thus go on enriching them from
one generation to another with our blood and our tears!!!!
“I saw a paragraph, a few years since, in a South Carolina paper, which,
speaking of the barbarity of the Turks, it said: ‘The Turks are the most
barbarous people in the world—they treat the Greeks more like brutes than
human beings.’ And in the same paper was an advertisement which said:
‘Eight well built Virginia and Maryland Negro fellows and four wenches
will positively be sold this day to the highest bidder!’
“Beloved brethren—here let me tell you, and believe it, that the Lord our
God as true as He sits on His throne in heaven and as true as our Saviour
died to redeem the world, will give you a Hannibal, and when the Lord
shall have raised him up and given him to you for your possession, Oh!
my suffering brethren, remember the divisions and consequent sufferings
of Carthage and of Haiti. Read the history particularly of Haiti and
see how they were butchered by the whites and do you take warning. The
person whom God shall give you, give him your support and let him go
his length and behold in him the salvation of your God. God will indeed
deliver you through him from your deplorable and wretched condition under
the Christians of America. I charge you this day before my God to lay
no obstacle in his way, but let him go.... What the American preachers
can think of us, I aver this day before my God I have never been able to
define. They have newspapers and monthly periodicals which they receive
in continual succession but on the pages of which you will scarcely ever
find a paragraph respecting slavery which is ten thousand times more
injurious to this country than all the other evils put together; and
which will be the final overthrow of its government unless something is
very speedily done; for their cup is nearly full.—Perhaps they will laugh
at or make light of this; but I tell you, Americans! that unless you
speedily alter your course, you and your Country are gone!
“Do you understand your own language? Hear your language proclaimed to
the world, July 4, 1776—‘We hold these truths to be self evident—that
ALL men are created EQUAL!! That they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness!!! Compare your own language above, extracted
from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders
inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our
fathers and on us—men who have never given your fathers or you the least
provocation!!!
“Now Americans! I ask you candidly, was your suffering under Great
Britain one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical as you have rendered
ours under you? Some of you, no doubt, believe that we will never throw
off your murderous government and provide new guards for our future
‘security’. If Satan has made you believe it, will he not deceive you?”
The book had a remarkable career. It appeared in September, was in a
third edition by the following March and aroused the South to fury.
Special laws were passed and demands made that Walker be punished. He
died in 1830, possibly by foul play.
6. THE FUGITIVE SLAVE
Beside force and the appeal to reason there was a third method which
practically was more effective and decisive for eventual abolition, and
that was the escape from slavery through running away. On the islands
this meant escape to the mountains and existence as brigands. In South
America it meant escape to the almost impenetrable forest.
As I have said elsewhere:[131]
“One thing saved the South from the blood sacrifice of Haiti—not, to be
sure, from so successful a revolt, for the disproportion of races was
less, but from a desperate and bloody effort—and that was the escape of
the fugitive.
“Along the Great Black Way stretched swamps and rivers and the forests
and crests of the Alleghanies. A widening, hurrying stream of fugitives
swept to the havens of refuge, taking the restless, the criminal and the
unconquered—the natural leaders of the more timid mass. These men saved
slavery and killed it. They saved it by leaving it to a false seductive
dream of peace and the eternal subjugation of the laboring class. They
destroyed it by presenting themselves before the eyes of the North and
the world as living specimens of the real meaning of slavery.”
“Three paths were opened to the slaves: to submit, to fight or to run
away. Most of them submitted, as do most people everywhere, to force and
fate. To fight singly meant death and to fight together meant plot and
insurrection—a difficult thing, but one often tried. Easiest of all was
to run away, for the land was wide and bare and the slaves were many.
At first they ran to the swamps and mountains and starved and died. Then
they ran to the Indians and in Florida founded a nation, to overthrow
which cost the United States $20,000,000 and more in slave raids known as
the Seminole ‘wars.’ Then gradually, after the War of 1812 had used so
many black sailors to fight for free trade that the Negroes learned of
the North and Canada as cities of refuge, they fled northward.”
From the sixteenth century Florida Indians had Negro blood, but from
early part of the nineteenth century the Seminoles gained a large new
infiltration of Negro blood from the numbers of slaves who fled to them
and with whom they intermarried. The first Seminole war, therefore,
in 1818 was not simply a defense of the frontiers against the Indians
and a successful raid to drive Spain from Florida, it was also a slave
raid by Georgia owners determined to have back their property. By 1815
Negroes from Georgia among the Creeks and Seminoles numbered not less
than 11,000 and were settled along the Appalachicola river, many of them
with good farms and with a so-called Negro “fort” for protection. The war
was disastrous to Negroes and Indians but not fatal and in 1822 some 800
Negroes were counted among the Indians who inhabited the new territory
seized from Spain. Pressure to secure alleged fugitives and Negroes from
the Indians was kept up for the next three years and the second Seminole
war broke out because the whites treacherously seized the mulatto wife of
the Indian chief Osceola. The war broke out in 1837 and its real nature,
as a New Orleans paper said in 1839, was to subdue the Seminoles and
decrease the danger of uprisings “among the serviles.” Finally after a
total cost of twenty million dollars the Indians were subdued and moved
to the West and a part of the Negroes driven back into slavery, but not
all.[132]
Through the organization which came to be known as the Underground
Railroad, thousands of slaves escaped through Kentucky and into the
Middle West and thence into Canada and also by way of the Appalachian
Mountains into Pennsylvania and the East. Not only were they helped by
white abolitionists but they were guided by black men and women like
Joshua Henson and Harriet Tubman.
Beside this there came the effort for emigration to Africa which was very
early suggested. Two colored men sailed from New York for Africa in 1774
but the Revolutionary War stopped the effort thus begun. The Virginia
legislature in secret session after Gabriel’s insurrection in 1800,
tried to suggest the buying of some land for the colonization of free
Negroes, following the proposal of Thomas Jefferson made in 1781. Paul
Cuffee, mentioned above, started the actual migration in 1815 carrying
nine colored families, thirty-eight persons in all, to Sierra Leone at
an expense of $4,000 which he paid himself. Finally came the American
Colonization Society in 1817 but it was immediately turned from a real
effort to abolish slavery gradually into an effort to get rid of free
Negroes and obstreperous slaves. Even the South saw it and Robert Y.
Hayne said in Congress: “While this process is going on, the colored
classes are gradually diffusing themselves throughout the country and are
making steady advances in intelligence and refinement and if half the
zeal were displayed in bettering their condition that is now wasted in
the vain and fruitless effort of sending them abroad, their intellectual
and moral improvement would be steady and rapid.”
7. BARGAINING
The Negro early learned a lesson which he may yet teach the modern world
and which may prove his crowning gift to America and the world: Force
begets force and you cannot in the end run away successfully from the
world’s problems. The Negro early developed the shrewd foresight of
recognizing the fact that as a minority of black folk in a growing white
country, he could not win his battle by force. Moreover, for the mass of
Negroes it was impracticable to run away and find refuge in some other
land.
Even the appeal to reason had its limitations in an unreasoning land. It
could not unfortunately base itself on justice and right in the midst
of the selfish, breathless battle to earn a living. There was however a
chance to prove that justice and self interest sometimes go hand in hand.
Force and flight might sometimes help but there was still the important
method of co-operating with the best forces of the nation in order to
help them to win and in order to prove that the Negro was a valuable
asset, not simply as a laborer but as a worker for social uplift, as an
American. Sometimes this co-operation was in simple and humble ways and
nevertheless striking. There was, for instance, the yellow fever epidemic
in Philadelphia in 1793. The blacks were not suffering from it or at
least not supposed to suffer from it as much as the whites. The papers
appealed to them to come forward and help with the sick. Led by Jones,
Gray and Allen, Negroes volunteered their services and worked with the
sick and in burying the dead, even spending some of their own funds in
the gruesome duty. The same thing happened much later in New Orleans,
Memphis and Cuba.
In larger ways it must be remembered that the Abolition crusade itself
could not have been successful without the co-operation of Negroes.
Black folk like Remond, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth, were
not simply advocates for freedom but were themselves living refutations
of the whole doctrine of slavery. Their appeal was tremendous in its
efficiency and besides, the free Negroes helped by work and money to
spread the Abolition campaign.[133]
In addition to this there was much deliberate bargaining,—careful
calculation on the part of the Negro that if the whites would aid them,
they in turn would aid the whites at critical times and that otherwise
they would not. Much of this went on at the time of the Revolution and
was clearly recognized by the whites.
Alexander Hamilton (himself probably of Negro descent) said in 1779:
“The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us
fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience;
and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will
furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious
tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice. But it should be
considered that if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy
probably will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they
will hold out will be to offer them ourselves. An essential part of the
plan is to give them their freedom with their muskets. This will secure
their fidelity, animate their courage, and, I believe, will have a good
influence upon those who remain by opening a door to their emancipation.
This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me to wish
the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity and true policy
equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate class of men.”[134]
Dr. Hopkins wrote in 1776: “God is so ordering it in His providence that
it seems absolutely necessary something should speedily be done with
respect to the slaves among us in order to our safety and to prevent
their turning against us in our present struggle in order to get their
liberty. Our oppressors have planned to gain the blacks and induce them
to take up arms against us by promising them liberty on this condition;
and this plan they are prosecuting to the utmost of their power.... The
only way pointed out to prevent this threatening evil is to set the
blacks at liberty ourselves by some public acts and laws; and then give
them proper encouragement to labor or take arms in the defense of the
American cause, as they shall choose. This would at once be doing them
some degree of justice and defeating our enemies in the scheme they are
prosecuting.”[135]
When Dunmore appealed to the slaves of Virginia at the beginning of the
Revolution, the slave owners issued an almost plaintive counter appeal:
“Can it, then, be supposed that the Negroes will be better used by the
English who have always encouraged and upheld this slavery than by their
present masters who pity their condition; who wish, in general, to make
it easy and comfortable as possible; and who would, were it in their
power, or were they permitted, not only prevent any more Negroes from
losing their freedom but restore it to such as have already unhappily
lost it?”[136]
In the South, where Negroes for the most part were not received as
soldiers, the losses of the slaveholders by defection among the slaves
was tremendous. John Adams says that the Georgia delegates gave him “a
melancholy account of the State of Georgia and South Carolina. They said
if one thousand regular troops should land in Georgia and their commander
be provided with arms and clothes enough and proclaim freedom to all
the Negroes who would join his camp, twenty thousand Negroes would join
it from the two provinces in a fortnight. The Negroes have a wonderful
art of communicating intelligence among themselves; it will run several
hundreds of miles in a week or fortnight. They said their only security
was this,—that all the King’s friends and tools of Government have large
plantations and property in Negroes, so that the slaves of the Tories
would be lost as well as those of the Whigs.”[137]
Great Britain, after Cornwallis surrendered, even dreamed of reconquering
America with Negroes. A Tory wrote to Lord Dunmore in 1782:
“If, my Lord, this scheme is adopted, arranged and ready for being put
in execution, the moment the troops penetrate into the country after the
arrival of the promised re-enforcements, America is to be conquered with
its own force (I mean the Provincial troops and the black troops to be
raised), and the British and Hessian army could be spared to attack the
French where they are most vulnerable....”
“‘What! Arm the slaves? We shudder at the very idea, so repugnant to
humanity, so barbarous and shocking to human nature,’ etc. One very
simple answer is, in my mind, to be given: Whether it is better to
make this vast continent become an acquisition of power, strength and
consequence to Great Britain again, or tamely give it up to France who
will reap the fruits of American independence to the utter ruin of
Britain? ... experience will, I doubt not, justify the assertion that
by embodying the most hardy, intrepid and determined blacks, they would
not only keep the rest in good order but by being disciplined and under
command be prevented from raising cabals, tumults, and even rebellion,
what I think might be expected soon after a peace; but so far from
making even our lukewarm friends and secret foes greater enemies by this
measure, I will, by taking their slaves, engage to make them better
friends.”[138]
On the other hand, the Colonial General Greene wrote to the Governor of
South Carolina the same year:
“The natural strength of the country in point of numbers appears to me
to consist much more in the blacks than in the whites. Could they be
incorporated and employed for its defence, it would afford you double
security. That they would make good soldiers, I have not the least doubt;
and I am persuaded the State has it not in its power to give sufficient
re-enforcements without incorporating them either to secure the country
if the enemy mean to act vigorously upon an offensive plan or furnish a
force sufficient to dispossess them of Charleston should it be defensive.”
This spirit of bargaining, more or less carefully carried out, can be
seen in every time of stress and war. During the Civil War certain groups
of Negroes sought repeatedly to make terms with the Confederacy. Judah
Benjamin said at a public meeting in Richmond in 1865:
“We have 680,000 blacks capable of bearing arms and who ought now to
be in the field. Let us now say to every Negro who wishes to go into
the ranks on condition of being free, go and fight—you are free. My
own Negroes have been to me and said, ‘Master, set us free and we’ll
fight for you.’ You must make up your minds to try this or see your
army withdrawn from before your town. I know not where white men can be
found.”[139]
Robert E. Lee said: “We should not expect slaves to fight for prospective
freedom when they can secure it at once by going to the enemy in whose
service they will incur no greater risk than in ours. The reasons that
induce me to recommend the employment of Negro troops at all render the
effect of the measures I have suggested upon slavery immaterial and in
my opinion the best means of securing the efficiency and fidelity of the
auxiliary force would be to accompany the measure with a well-digested
plan of gradual and general emancipation. As that will be the result of
the continuance of the war and will certainly occur if the enemy succeed,
it seems to me most advisable to adopt it at once and thereby obtain all
the benefits that will accrue to our cause.
“The employment of Negro troops under regulations similar to those
indicated would, in my opinion, greatly increase our military strength
and enable us to relieve our white population to some extent. I think we
could dispense with the reserve forces except in cases of emergency. It
would disappoint the hopes which our enemies have upon our exhaustion,
deprive them in a great measure of the aid they now derive from black
troops and thus throw the burden of the war upon their own people. In
addition to the great political advantages that would result to our
cause from the adoption of a system of emancipation, it would exercise a
salutary influence upon our Negro population by rendering more secure the
fidelity of those who become soldiers and diminishing inducements to the
rest to abscond.”[140]
At the time of the World War there was a distinct attitude on the part of
the Negro population that unless they were recognized in the draft and
had Negro officers and were not forced to become simply laborers, they
would not fight and while expression of this determination was not always
made openly it was recognized even by an administration dominated by
Southerners. Especially were there widespread rumors of German intrigue
among Negroes, which had some basis of fact.
Within the Negro group every effort for organization and uplift was
naturally an effort toward the development of American democracy.
The motive force of democracy has nearly always been the push from
below rather than the aristocratic pull from above; the effort of the
privileged classes to outstrip the surging forward of the bourgeoisie has
made groups and nations rise; the determination of the “poor whites” in
the South not to be outdone by the “nigger” has been caused by the black
man’s frantic efforts to rise rather than by any innate ambition on the
part of the lower class of whites. It was a push from below and it made
the necessity of recognizing the white laborer even more apparent. The
great democratic movement which took place during the reign of Andrew
Jackson from 1829-1837 was caused in no small degree by the persistent
striving of the Negroes. They began their meeting together in conventions
in 1830, they organized migration to Canada.[141] In the trouble with
Canada in 1837 and 1838 Negro refugees from America helped to defend
the frontiers. Bishop Loguen says: “The colored population of Canada at
that time was small compared to what it now is; nevertheless, it was
sufficiently large to attract the attention of the government. They were
almost to a man fugitives from the States. They could not, therefore,
be passive when the success of the invaders would break the only arm
interposed for their security, and destroy the only asylum for African
freedom in North America. The promptness with which several companies
of blacks were organized and equipped, and the desperate valor they
displayed in this brief conflict, are an earnest of what may be expected
from the welling thousands of colored fugitives collecting there, in the
event of a war between the two countries.”[142]
In America during this time they sought to establish a manual training
college, they established their first weekly newspaper and they made
a desperate fight for admission to the schools. They helped thus
immeasurably the movement for universal popular education, joined the
anti-slavery societies and organized churches and beneficial societies;
bought land and continued to appeal. Wealthy free Negroes began to appear
even in the South, as in the case of Jehu Jones, proprietor of a popular
hotel in Charleston, and later Thomé Lafon of New Orleans who accumulated
nearly a half million dollars and eventually left it to Negro charities
which still exist. In the North there were tailors and lumber merchants
and the guild of the caterers; taxable property slowly but surely
increased.
All this in a peculiar way forced a more all-embracing democracy upon
America, and it blossomed to fuller efficiency after the Civil War.
CHAPTER V
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF FREEDOM
How the black fugitive, soldier and freedman after the Civil
War helped to restore the Union, establish public schools,
enfranchise the poor white and initiate industrial democracy in
America.
There have been four great steps toward democracy taken in America:
The refusal to be taxed by the English Parliament; the escape from
European imperialism; the discarding of New England aristocracy; and the
enfranchisement of the Negro slave.
What did the Emancipation of the slave really mean? It meant such
property rights as would give him a share in the income of southern
industry large enough to support him as a modern free laborer; and such
a legal status as would enable him by education and experience to bear
his responsibility as a worker and citizen. This was an enormous task
and meant the transformation of a slave holding oligarchy into a modern
industrial democracy.
Who could do this? Some thought it done by the Emancipation Proclamation
and the 13th amendment and Garrison with naive faith in bare law abruptly
stopped the issue of the _Liberator_ when the slave was declared “free.”
The Negro was not freed by edict or sentiment but by the Abolitionists
backed by the persistent action of the slave himself as fugitive, soldier
and voter.
Slavery was the cause of the war. There might have been other questions
large enough and important enough to have led to a disruption of the
Union but none have successfully done so except slavery. But the North
fought for union and not against slavery and for a long time it refused
to recognize that the Civil War was essentially a war against Negro
slavery. Abraham Lincoln said to Horace Greeley as late as August, 1862,
“If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the
same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object
is to save the Union and not either to save or destroy slavery.”
Despite this attitude it was evident very soon that the Nation was
fighting against the symptom of disease and not against the cause. If we
look at the action of the North taken by itself, we find these singular
contradictions: They fought for the Union; they suddenly emancipated the
slave; they enfranchised the Freedmen; they abandoned the Freedmen. If
now this had been the deliberate action of the North it would have been a
crazy program; but it was not. The action of the American Negro himself
forced the nation into many of these various contradictions; and the
motives of the Negro were primarily economic. He was trying to achieve
economic emancipation. And it is this fact that makes Reconstruction one
of the greatest attempts to spread democracy which the modern world has
seen.
There were in the South in 1860, 3,838,765 Negro slaves and 258,346
free Negroes. The question of land and fugitive slaves had precipitated
the war: that is, if slavery was to survive it had to have more slave
territory, and this the North refused. Moreover if slavery was to survive
the drain of fugitive slaves must stop or the slave trade be reopened.
The North refused to consider the reopening of the slave trade and only
half-heartedly enforced the fugitive slave laws.
No sooner then did the war open in April, 1861, than two contradictory
things happened: Fugitive slaves began to come into the lines of the
Union armies at the very time that Union Generals were assuring the South
that slavery would not be interfered with. In Virginia, Colonel Tyler
said “The relation of master and servant as recognized in your state
shall be respected.” At Port Royal, General T. W. Sherman declared that
he would not interfere with “Your social and local institution.” Dix in
Virginia refused to admit fugitive slaves within his lines and Halleck in
Missouri excluded them. Later, both Buell at Nashville and Hooker on the
upper Potomac allowed their camps to be searched by masters for fugitive
slaves.[143]
Against this attitude, however, there appeared, even in the first year
of the War, some unanswerable considerations. For instance three slaves
escaped into General Butler’s lines at Fortress Monroe just as they were
about to be sent to North Carolina to work on Confederate fortifications.
Butler immediately said “These men are contraband of war, set them at
work.” Butler’s action was sustained.[144] But when Fremont, in August
freed the slaves of Missouri under martial law, declaring it an act
of war, Lincoln hastened to repudiate his action;[145] and the same
thing happened the next year when Hunter at Hilton Head, S. C. declared
“Slavery and martial law in a free country ... incompatible.”[146]
Nevertheless here loomed difficulty and the continued coming of the
fugitive slaves increased the difficulty and forced action.
The year 1862 saw the fugitive slave recognized as a worker and helper
within the Union lines and eventually as a soldier bearing arms.
Thousands of black men during that year, of all ages and both sexes,
clad in rags and with their bundles on their backs, gathered wherever
the Union Army gained foothold—at Norfolk, Hampton, at Alexandria and
Nashville and along the border towards the West. There was sickness and
hunger and some crime but everywhere there was desire for employment.
It was in vain that Burnside was insisting that slavery was not to be
touched and that McClellan repeated this on his Peninsular Campaign.
A change of official attitude began to appear as indeed it had to. When
for instance General Saxton, with headquarters at Beauford, S. C., took
military control of that district, he began to establish market houses
for the sale of produce from the plantations and to put the Negroes to
work as wage laborers. When, in the West, Grant’s army occupied Grand
Junction, Mississippi and a swarm of fugitives appeared, naked and
hungry, some were employed as teamsters, servants and cooks and finally
Grant appointed a “Chief of Negro affairs” for the entire district
under his jurisdiction. Crops were harvested, wages paid, wood cutters
swarmed in forests to furnish fuel for the Federal gun-boats, cabins were
erected and a regular “Freedmen’s Bureau” came gradually into operation.
The Negroes thus employed as regular helpers and laborers in the army,
swelled to more than 200,000 before the end of the war; and if we count
transient workers and spies who helped with information, the number
probably reached a half million.
If now the Negro could work for the Union Army why could he not also
fight? We have seen in the last chapter how the nation hesitated and then
yielded in 1862. The critical Battle of Antietam took place September
17th and the confederate avalanche was checked. Five days later, Abraham
Lincoln proclaimed that he was going to recommend an appropriation
by Congress for encouraging the gradual abolition of slavery through
payment for the slaves; and that on the following January 1st, in all the
territory which was still at war with the United States, he proposed to
declare the slaves free as a military measure.[147] Thus the year 1862
saw the Negro as an active worker in the army and as a soldier.
This fact together with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1st,
made the year 1863 a significant year. Not only were most of the
slaves legally freed by military edict but by the very fact of their
emancipation the stream of fugitives became a vast flood. The Army had to
organize departments and appoint officials for the succor and guidance of
these fugitives in their work; relief on a large scale began to appear
from the North and the demand of the Negro for education began to be felt
in the starting of schools here and there.
“The fugitives poured into the lines and gradually were used as laborers
and helpers. Immediately teaching began and gradually schools sprang up.
When at last the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and Negro soldiers
called for, it was necessary to provide more systematically for Negroes.
Various systems and experiments grew up here and there. The Freedmen
were massed in large numbers at Fortress Monroe, Va., Washington, D. C.,
Beaufort and Port Royal, S. C., New Orleans, La., Vicksburg and Corinth,
Miss., Columbus, Ky., Cairo, Ill., and elsewhere. In such places schools
immediately sprang up under the army officers and chaplains. The most
elaborate system, perhaps, was that under General Banks in Louisiana.
It was established in 1863 and soon had a regular Board of Education,
which laid and collected taxes and supported eventually nearly a hundred
schools with ten thousand pupils, under 162 teachers. At Port Royal,
S. C., were gathered Edward L. Pierce’s ‘Ten Thousand Clients’.... In
the west, General Grant appointed Colonel John Eaton, afterwards United
States Commissioner of Education to be Superintendent of Freedmen
in 1862. He sought to consolidate and regulate the schools already
established and succeeded in organizing a large system.”[148]
The Treasury Department of the Government, solicitous for the cotton
crop, took charge of certain plantations in order to encourage the
workers and preserve the crop. Thus during the Spring of 1863, there were
groups of Freedmen and refugees in long broken lines between the two
armies reaching from Maryland to the Kansas border and down the coast
from Norfolk to New Orleans.
In 1864 a significant action took place: the petty and insulting
discrimination in the pay of white and colored soldiers was stopped.
The Negro began to be a free man and the center of the problem
of Emancipation became land and organized industry. Eaton, the
Superintendent of Freedmen reports, July 15, for his particular district:
“These Freedmen are now disposed of as follows: In military service as
soldiers’ laundresses, cooks, officers’ servants and laborers in the
various staff departments, 41,150; in cities, on plantations and in
freedmen’s villages and cared for, 72,500. Of these 62,300 are entirely
self-supporting—the same as any individual class anywhere else—as
planters, mechanics, barbers, hackmen, draymen, etc., conducting on
their own responsibility or working as hired laborers. The remaining
10,200 receive subsistence from the government. Three thousand of them
are members of families whose heads are carrying on plantations and have
under cultivation 4,000 acres of cotton. They are to pay the government
for their subsistence from the first income of the crop. The other 7,200
include the paupers, that is to say, all Negroes over and under the
self-supporting age, the crippled and sick in hospitals, of the 113,650,
and those engaged in their care. Instead of being unproductive this class
has now under cultivation 500 acres of corn, 970 acres of vegetables
and 1,500 acres of cotton besides working at wood-chopping and other
industries. There are reported in the aggregate over 100,000 acres of
cotton under cultivation. Of these about 7,000 acres are leased and
cultivated by blacks. Some Negroes are managing as high as 300 or 400
acres....”[149]
The experiment at Davis Bend, Mississippi, was of especial interest:
“Late in the season—in November and December, 1864,—the Freedmen’s
Department was restored to full control over the camps and plantations
on President’s Island and Palmyra or Davis Bend. Both these points had
been originally occupied at the suggestion of General Grant and were
among the most successful of our enterprises for the Negroes. With
the expansion of the lessee system, private interests were allowed to
displace the interest of the Negroes whom we had established there under
the protection of the government, but orders issued by General N. J. T.
Dana, upon whose sympathetic and intelligent co-operation my officers
could always rely, restored to us the full control of these lands. The
efforts of the freedmen on Davis Bend were particularly encouraging, and
this property under Colonel Thomas’ able direction, became in reality the
“Negro Paradise” that General Grant had urged us to make of it.”[150]
The United States Treasury went further in overseeing Freedmen and
abandoned lands and appointed special agents over “Freedmen’s home
colonies.” Down the Mississippi Valley, General Thomas issued a
lengthy series of instructions covering industry. He appointed three
Commissioners to lease plantations and care for the employees; fixed the
rate of wages and taxed cotton. At Newbern, N. C., there were several
thousand refugees to whom land was assigned and about 800 houses rented.
After Sherman’s triumphant March to the Sea, Secretary Stanton himself
went to Savannah to investigate the condition of the Negroes.
It was significant that even this early Abraham Lincoln himself was
suggesting limited Negro suffrage. Already he was thinking of the
reconstruction of the states; Louisiana had been in Union hands for two
years and Lincoln wrote to Governor Hahn, March 13th, 1864: “Now you are
about to have a convention, which, ... will probably define the elective
franchise. I barely suggest, for your private consideration, whether
some of the colored people may not be let in, as, for instance, the very
intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks.
They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel
of liberty within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion,
not to the public, but to you alone.”[151]
Here again the development had been logical. The Negroes were voting
in many Northern states. At least one-half million of them were taking
part in the war, nearly 200,000 as armed soldiers. They were beginning
to be reorganized in industry by the army officials as free laborers.
Naturally the question must come sooner or later: Could they be expected
to maintain their freedom, either political or economic, unless they had
a vote? And Lincoln with rare foresight saw this several months before
the end of the war.
The year 1865 brought fully to the front the question of Negro suffrage
and Negro free labor. They were recognized January 16th, when Sherman
settled large numbers of Negroes on the Sea Islands. His order said:
“The Islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the
rivers for thirty miles from the sea, and the country bordering the St.
John’s river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of
the Negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the
President of the United States.
“At Beaufort, Hilton Head, Savannah, Fernandina, St. Augustine, and
Jacksonville, the blacks may remain in their chosen or accustomed
vocations but on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be
established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and
soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole
and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people
themselves, subject only to the United States military authority and
the acts of Congress. By the laws of war and orders of the President of
the United States the Negro is free, and must be dealt with as such.
He cannot be subjected to conscription or forced military service,
save by the written orders of the highest military authority of the
department, under such regulations as the President or Congress may
prescribe. Domestic servants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other
mechanics, will be free to select their own work and residence, but the
young and able-bodied Negroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers
in the service of the United States, to contribute their share towards
maintaining their own freedom, and securing their rights as citizens of
the United States.
“Whenever three respectable Negroes, heads of families shall desire to
settle on lands, and shall have selected for that purpose an island
or a locality clearly defined, within the limits above designated,
the Inspector of Settlements and Plantations will himself, or by such
subordinate officer as he may appoint, give them a license to settle
such island or district, and afford them such assistance as he can to
enable them to establish a peaceful agricultural settlement. The three
parties named will subdivide the land, under the supervision of the
Inspector, among themselves and such others as may choose to settle near
them, so that each family shall have a plot of not more than forty (40)
acres of tillable ground, and when it borders on some water channel,
with not more than 800 feet water front, in the possession of which land
the military authorities will afford them protection until such time
as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their
title.”[152]
On March 3, 1865 the Nation came to the parting of the ways. Two measures
passed Congress on this momentous date. First, a Freedmen’s Bank was
incorporated at Washington “to receive on deposit therefore, by or on
behalf of persons heretofore held in slavery in the United States or
their descendants, and investing the same in the stocks, bonds, Treasury
notes, or other securities of the United States.”[153] The first year it
had $300,000 of deposits and the deposits increased regularly until in
1871 there were nearly $20,000,000. Also on March 3rd, the Freedmen’s
Bureau Act was passed. The war was over. Sometime the South must have
restored home rule. When that came what would happen to the freedmen?
These paths were before the nation:
1. They might abandon the freedman to the mercy of his former masters.
2. They might for a generation or more make the freedmen the wards of
the nation—protecting them, encouraging them, educating their children,
giving them land and a minimum of capital and thus inducting them into
real economic and political freedom.
3. They might force a grant of Negro suffrage, support the Negro voters
for a brief period and then with hands off let them sink or swim.
The second path was the path of wisdom and statesmanship. But the country
would not listen to such a comprehensive plan. If the form of this Bureau
had been worked out by Charles Sumner today instead of sixty years ago,
it would have been regarded as a proposal far less revolutionary than
the modern labor legislation of America and Europe. A half-century ago,
however, and in a country which gave the _laisser-faire_ economics
their extremest trial the Freedmen’s Bureau struck the whole nation as
unthinkable save as a very temporary expedient and to relieve the more
pointed forms of distress following war. Yet the proposals of the Bureau
as actually established by the laws of 1865 and 1866 were both simple and
sensible:
1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts.
2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen’s best friend.
3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.
4. To establish schools.
5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor stations,
etc.
How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom
with less than this is hard to see. Of course even with such tutelage
extending over a period of two or three decades the ultimate end had to
be enfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen
who attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had
neither object nor guarantee.
Naturally the Bureau was no sooner established than it faced implacable
enemies. The white South naturally opposed to a man because it
practically abolished private profit in the exploitation of labor. To
step from slave to free labor was economic catastrophe in the opinion of
the white South: but to step further to free labor organized primarily
for the laborers’ benefit, this not only was unthinkable for the white
South but it even touched the economic sensibilities of the white
North. Already the nation owed a staggering debt. It would not face any
large increase for such a purpose. Moreover, who could conduct such an
enterprise? It would have taxed in ordinary times the ability and self
sacrifice of the nation to have found men in sufficient quantity who
could and would have conducted honestly and efficiently such a tremendous
experiment in human uplift. And these were not ordinary times.
Nevertheless a bureau had to be established at least temporarily as a
clearing house for the numberless departments of the armies dealing with
freedmen and holding land and property in their name.
As General Howard, the head of the Bureau said, this Bureau was really a
government and partially ruled the South from the close of the war until
1870. “It made laws, executed them and interpreted them. It laid and
collected taxes, defined and punished crime, maintained and used military
force and dictated such measures as it thought necessary and proper for
the accomplishment of its varied ends.” Its establishment was a herculean
task both physically and socially, and it accomplished a great work
before it was repudiated. Carl Schurz in 1864 felt warranted in saying,
“Not half of the labor that has been done in the South this year, or will
be done there next year, would have been or would be done but for the
exertions of the Freedmen’s Bureau.... No other agency, except one placed
there by the national government, could have wielded the moral power
whose interposition was so necessary to prevent the Southern society
from falling at once into the chaos of a general collision between its
different elements.”[154]
The nation knew, however, that the Freedmen’s Bureau was temporary. What
should follow it? The attitude of the South was not reassuring. Carl
Schurz reported that: “Some planters held back their former slaves on
their plantations by brute force. Armed bands of white men patrolled the
country roads to drive back the Negroes wandering about. Dead bodies
of murdered Negroes were found on and near the highways and by-paths.
Gruesome reports came from the hospitals—reports of colored men and women
whose ears had been cut off, whose skulls had been broken by blows, whose
bodies had been slashed by knives or lacerated by scourges. A number of
such cases I had occasion to examine myself. A veritable reign of terror
prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negro found scant justice in
the local courts against the white man. He could look for protection only
to the military forces of the United States still garrisoning the ‘states
lately in rebellion’ and to the Freedmen’s Bureau.”
The determination to reconstruct the South without recognizing the Negro
as a voter was manifest. The provisional governments set up by Lincoln
and Johnson were based on white male suffrage. In Louisiana for instance,
where free Negroes had wealth and prestige and had furnished thousands of
soldiers under the proposed reconstruction and despite Lincoln’s tactful
suggestion—“Not one Negro was allowed to vote, though at that very time
the wealthy, intelligent free colored people of the State paid taxes
on property assessed at $15,000,000 and many of them were well known
for their patriotic zeal and love for the Union. Thousands of colored
men whose homes were in Louisiana served bravely in the national army
and navy and many of the so-called Negroes in New Orleans could not be
distinguished by the most intelligent strangers from the best class of
white gentlemen either by color or manner, dress or language; still, as
it was known by tradition and common fame that they were not of pure
Caucasian descent, they could not vote.”[155]
Johnson feared this Southern program and like Lincoln suggested limited
Negro suffrage. August 15th, 1865, he wrote to Governor Sharkey of
Mississippi: “If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons
of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English
and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate
valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes
thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example
the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety and
you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of
color, upon the same basis with the free States. I hope and trust your
convention will do this.”[156]
The answer of the South to all such suggestions was the celebrated “Black
Codes”: “Alabama declared ‘stubborn or refractory servants’ or ‘those
who loiter away their time’ to be ‘vagrants’ who could be hired out at
compulsory service by law, while all Negro minors, far from being sent
to school, were to be ‘apprenticed’ preferably to their father’s former
‘masters and mistresses.’ In Florida it was decreed that no Negro could
‘own, use or keep any bowie-knife, dirk, sword, firearms or ammunition of
any kind’ without a license from the Judge of Probate. In South Carolina
the Legislature declared that ‘no person of color shall pursue the
practice of art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic or shopkeeper
or any other trade or employment besides that of husbandry or that of
servant under contract for labor until he shall have obtained a license
from the Judge of the District Court.’ Mississippi required that ‘if a
laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of
his term of service without just cause, he shall forfeit his wages for
that year.’ Louisiana said that ‘every adult freed man or woman shall
furnish themselves with a comfortable home and visible means of support
within twenty days after the passage of this act’ and that any failing to
do so should ‘be immediately arrested’, delivered to the court and ‘hired
out’ by public advertisement, to some citizen, being the highest bidder,
for the remainder year.”[157]
These Codes were not reassuring to the friends of freedom. To be sure it
was not a time to expect calm, cool, thoughtful action on the part of the
South. Its economic condition was pitiable. Property in slaves to the
extent perhaps of two thousand million dollars had suddenly disappeared.
One thousand five hundred more millions representing the Confederate war
debt, had largely disappeared. Large amounts of real estate and other
property had been destroyed, industry had been disorganized, 250,000 men
had been killed and many more maimed. With this went the moral effect of
an unsuccessful war with all its letting down of social standards and
quickening of hatred and discouragement—a situation which would make it
difficult under any circumstances to reconstruct a new government and
a new civilization. Moreover any human being of any color “doomed in
his own person and his posterity to live without knowledge and without
capacity to make anything his own and to toil that another may reap the
fruits,” is bound on sudden emancipation to loom like a great dread on
the horizon.
The fear of Negro freedom in the South was increased by its own
consciousness of guilt, yet it was reasonable to expect from it something
more than mere repression and reaction toward slavery. To some small
extent this expectation was fulfilled: the abolition of slavery was
recognized and the civil rights of owning property and appearing as a
witness in cases in which he was a party were generally granted the
Negro; yet with these went such harsh regulations as largely neutralized
the concessions and gave ground for the assumption that once free from
Northern control the South would virtually re-enslave the Negro. The
colored people themselves naturally feared this and protested, as in
Mississippi, “against the reactionary policy prevailing and expressing
the fear that the Legislature will pass such proscriptive laws as will
drive the freedmen from the State or practically re-enslave them.”[158]
As Professor Burgess (whom no one accuses of being Negrophile) says:
“Almost every act, word or gesture of the Negro not consonant with
good taste and good manners as well as good morals was made a crime or
misdemeanor, for which he could first be fined by the magistrates and
then be consigned to a condition of almost slavery for an indefinite time
if he could not pay the bill.”
All things considered, it seems probable that if the South had been
permitted to have its way in 1865 the harshness of Negro slavery would
have been mitigated so as to make slave trading difficult and to make it
possible for a Negro to hold property if he got any and to appear in some
cases in court; but that in most other respects the blacks would have
remained in slavery. And no small number of whites even in the North
were quite willing to contemplate such a solution.
In October, the democratic platform of Louisiana said “This is a
government of white people,” and although Johnson reported in December
that Reconstruction was complete in North and South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, yet everyone
knew that the real problems of Reconstruction had just begun. The war
caused by slavery could be stopped only by a real abolition of slavery.
It was as though the Germans invading France had found flocking to their
camps the laboring forces of the invaded land, poor and destitute, but
willing to work and willing to fight. What would have been the attitude
of the successful invader when the war was ended? Gratitude alone
counseled help for the Freedmen; wisdom counseled a real abolition of
slavery; so far slavery had not been abolished in spite of the fact that
the 13th Amendment proposed in February had been proclaimed in December.
Freedom and citizenship were primarily a matter of state legislation;
and emancipation from slavery was an economic problem—a question of work
and wages, of land and capital—all these things were matters of state
legislation. Unless then something was done to insure a proper legal
status and legal protection for the Freedmen, the so-called abolition
of slavery would be but a name. Furthermore there were grave political
difficulties: According to the celebrated compromise in the Constitution,
three-fifths of the slaves were counted in the Southern states as a basis
of representation and this gave the white South as compared with the
North a large political advantage. This advantage was now to be increased
because, as freemen, the whole Negro population was to be counted and
still the voting was confined to whites. The North, therefore, found
themselves faced by the fact that the very people whom they had overcome
in a costly and bloody war were now coming back with increased political
power, with determination to keep just as much of slavery as they could
and with freedom to act toward the nation that they had nearly destroyed,
in whatever way the deep hatreds of a hurt and conquered people tempted
them to act. All this was sinister and dangerous. Assume as large minded
and forgiving an attitude as one could, either the abolition of slavery
must be made real or the war was fought in vain.
The Negroes themselves naturally began to insist that without political
power it was impossible to accomplish their economic freedom. Frederick
Douglass said to President Johnson: “Your noble and humane predecessor
placed in our hands the sword to assist in saving the nation and we do
hope that you, his able successor, will favorably regard the placing in
our hands the ballot with which to save ourselves.” And when Johnson
demurred on account of the hostility between blacks and poor whites, a
committee of prominent colored men replied:
“Even if it were true, as you allege, that the hostility of the blacks
toward the poor whites must necessarily project itself into a state of
freedom, and that this enmity between the two races is even more intense
in a state of freedom than in a state of slavery, in the name of heaven,
we reverently ask, how can you, in view of your professed desire to
promote the welfare of the black man, deprive him of all means of defense
and clothe him, whom you regard as his enemy, in the panoply of political
power?”[159]
Again as the Negro fugitive slave was already in camp before the nation
was ready to receive him and was even trying to drive him back to his
master; just as the Negro was already bearing arms before he was legally
recognized as a soldier; so too he was voting before Negro suffrage was
contemplated; to cite one instance at Davis Bend, Mississippi. “Early in
1865 a system was adopted for their government in which the freedmen
took a considerable part. The Bend was divided into districts, each
having a sheriff and judge appointed from among the more reliable and
intelligent colored men. A general oversight of the proceedings was
maintained by our officers in charge, who confirmed or modified the
findings of the court. The shrewdness of the colored judges was very
remarkable, though it was sometimes necessary to decrease the severity of
the punishment they proposed. Fines and penal service on the Home Farm
were the usual sentences they imposed. Petty theft and idleness were the
most frequent causes of trouble, but my officers were able to report
that exposed property was as safe on Davis Bend as it would be anywhere.
The community distinctly demonstrated the capacity of the Negro to take
care of himself and exercised under honest and competent direction the
functions of self-government.”[160]
Carl Schurz said in his celebrated report: “The emancipation of the
slaves is submitted to only in so far as chattel slavery in the old form
could not be kept up. But although the freedman is no longer considered
the property of the individual master, he is considered the slave of
society and all independent State legislation will share the tendency to
make him such.
“The solution of the problem would be very much facilitated by enabling
all the loyal and free labor elements in the South to exercise a healthy
influence upon legislation. It will hardly be possible to secure the
freedman against oppressive class legislation and private persecution
unless he be endowed with a certain measure of political power.”
To the argument of ignorance Schurz replied: “The effect of the extension
of the franchise to the colored people upon the development of free labor
and upon the security of human rights in the South being the principal
object in view, the objections raised on the ground of the ignorance of
the freedmen become unimportant. Practical liberty is a good school....
It is idle to say that it will be time to speak of Negro suffrage when
the whole colored race will be educated, for the ballot may be necessary
to him to secure his education.”[161]
Thus Negro suffrage was forced to the front, not as a method of
humiliating the South; not as a theoretical and dangerous gift to the
Freedmen; not according to any preconcerted plan but simply because of
the grim necessities of the situation. The North must either give up
the fruits of war, keep a Freedmen’s Bureau for a generation or use
the Negro vote to reconstruct the Southern states and to insure such
legislation as would at least begin the economic emancipation of the
slave.
_In other words the North being unable to free the slave, let him try to
free himself. And he did, and this was his greatest gift to this nation._
Let us return to the steps by which the Negro accomplished this task.
In 1866, the joint committee of Congress on Reconstruction said that in
the South: “A large proportion of the population had become, instead
of mere chattels, free men and citizens. Through all the past struggle
these had remained true and loyal and had, in large numbers, fought on
the side of the Union. It was impossible to abandon them without securing
them their rights as free men and citizens. The whole civilized world
would have cried out against such base ingratitude and the bare idea is
offensive to all right thinking men. Hence it became important to inquire
what could be done to secure their rights, civil and political.”
The report then proceeded to emphasize the increased political power of
the South and recommended the Fourteenth Amendment, since: “It appeared
to your committee that the rights of these persons by whom the basis
of representation had been thus increased should be recognized by the
General Government. While slaves, they were not considered as having any
rights, civil or political. It did not seem just or proper that all the
political advantages derived from their becoming free should be confined
to their former masters who had fought against the Union and withheld
from themselves who had always been loyal.”[162]
Nor did there seem to be any hope that the South would voluntarily change
its attitude within any reasonable time. As Carl Schurz wrote: “I deem it
proper, however, to offer a few remarks on the assertion frequently put
forth, that the franchise is likely to be extended to the colored man by
the voluntary action of the southern whites themselves. My observation
leads me to a contrary opinion. Aside from a very few enlightened men,
I found but one class of people in favor of the enfranchisement of the
blacks: it was the class of Unionists who found themselves politically
ostracised and looked upon the enfranchisement of the loyal Negroes as
the salvation of the whole loyal element.... The masses are strongly
opposed to colored suffrage; anybody that dares to advocate it is
stigmatized as a dangerous fanatic.
“The only manner in which, in my opinion, the southern people can be
induced to grant to the freedmen some measure of self-protecting power
in the form of suffrage, is to make it a consideration precedent to
‘readmission’.”[163]
During 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau received over a million dollars mostly
from the Freedmen’s fund, sales of crop, rent of lands and buildings
and school taxes. The chief expenditure was in wages, rent and schools.
It was evident that the Negro was demanding education. Schools arose
immediately among the refugees and Negro soldiers. They were helped by
voluntary taxation of the Negroes and then by the activity of Northern
religious bodies. Seldom in the history of the world has an almost
totally illiterate population been given the means of self-education in
so short a time. The movement started with the Negroes themselves and
they continued to form the dynamic force behind it. “This great multitude
arose up simultaneously and asked for intelligence.” There can be no
doubt that these schools were a great conservative steadying force to
which the South owes much. It must not be forgotten that among the agents
of the Freedmen’s Bureau were not only soldiers and politicians but
school teachers and educational leaders like Ware and Cravath.
In 1866, nearly 100,000 Negroes were in the schools under 1300 teachers
and schools for Negroes had been opened in nearly all the southern
states. A second Freedmen’s Bureau act was passed extending the work of
the Bureau, and the Freedmen’s Bank which had been started in 1865 and
had by 1866 twenty branches and $300,000 in savings.
Congress came to blows with President Johnson. His plan of reconstruction
with white male suffrage was repudiated and the 14th Amendment was
proposed by Congress which was designed to force the South to accept
Negro suffrage on penalty of losing a proportionate amount of their
representation in Congress. The 14th Amendment was long delayed and did
not in fact become a law until July, 1868. Meantime, Congress adopted
more drastic measures. By the Reconstruction Acts, the first of which
passed March 2nd, the South was divided into five military districts,
Negro suffrage was established for the constitutional conventions and the
14th Amendment made a prerequisite for readmission of states to the Union.
What was the result? No language has been spared to describe the results
of Negro suffrage as the worst imaginable. Every effort of historical
and social science and propaganda have supported this view; and its
acceptance has been well nigh universal, because it was so clearly to the
interests of the chief parties involved to forget their own shortcomings
and put the blame on the Negro. As a colored man put it, they closed
the “bloody chasm” but closed up the Negro inside. Yet, without Negro
suffrage, slavery could not have been abolished in the United States
and while there were bad results arising from the enfranchisement of
the slaves as there necessarily had to be, the main results were not
bad. Let us not forget that the white South believed it to be of vital
interest to its welfare that the experiment of Negro suffrage should
fail ignominiously and that almost to a man the whites were willing to
insure this failure either by active force or passive resistance; that
beside this there were, as might be expected in a day of social upheaval,
men, white and black, Northern and Southern, only too eager to take
advantage of such a situation for feathering their own nests. The results
in such case had to be evil but to charge the evil to Negro suffrage is
unfair. It may be charged to anger, poverty, venality and ignorance, but
the anger and poverty were the almost inevitable aftermath of war; the
venality was much more reprehensible as exhibited among whites than among
Negroes, and while ignorance was the curse of the Negroes, the fault was
not theirs and they took the initiative to correct it.
Negro suffrage was without doubt a tremendous experiment but with all
its manifest failure it succeeded to an astounding degree; it made the
immediate re-establishment of the old slavery impossible and it was
probably the only quick method of doing this; it gave the Freedmen’s sons
a chance to begin their education. It diverted the energy of the white
South from economic development to the recovery of political power and
in this interval—small as it was—the Negro took his first steps toward
economic freedom. It was the greatest and most important step toward
world democracy of all men of all races ever taken in the modern world.
Let us see just what happened when the Negroes gained the right to vote,
first in the conventions which reconstructed the form of government and
afterward in the regular state governments. The continual charge is made
that the South was put under Negro government—that ignorant ex-slaves
ruled the land. This is untrue. Negroes did not dominate southern
legislatures, and in only two states did they have a majority of the
legislature at any time. In Alabama in the years of 1868-69 there were
106 whites and 27 Negroes in the legislature; in the year 1876 there were
104 whites and 29 Negroes. In Arkansas, 1868-69 there were 8 Negroes
and 96 whites. In Georgia there were 186 whites and 33 Negroes. In
Mississippi, 1870-1, there were 106 whites and 34 Negroes and in 1876,
132 whites and 21 Negroes. In North Carolina, 149 whites and 21 Negroes;
in South Carolina 1868-69, 72 whites and 85 Negroes and in 1876, 70
whites and 54 Negroes. In Texas, 1870-71 there were 110 whites and 10
Negroes. In Virginia, 1868-69, 119 whites and 18 Negroes and in 1876, 112
whites and 13 Negroes.[164]
“Statistics show, however, that with the exception of South Carolina and
Mississippi, no state and not even any department of a state government
was ever dominated altogether by Negroes. The Negroes never wanted and
never had complete control in the Southern states. The most important
offices were generally held by white men. Only two Negroes ever served
in the United States Senate, Hiram R. Revells and B. K. Bruce; and only
twenty ever became representatives in the House and all these did not
serve at the same time, although some of them were elected for more than
one term.”[165]
The Negroes who held office, held for the most part minor offices and
most of them were ignorant men. Some of them were venal and vicious but
this was not true in all cases. Indeed the Freedmen were pathetic too in
their attempt to choose the best persons but they were singularly limited
in their choice. Their former white masters were either disfranchised or
bitterly hostile or ready to deceive them. The “carpet-baggers” often
cheated them; their own ranks had few men of experience and training. Yet
some of the colored men who served them well deserve special mention:
Samuel J. Lee, a member of the South Carolina legislature, was considered
by the whites as one of the best criminal lawyers of the state. When
he died local courts were adjourned and the whole city mourned. Bishop
Isaac Clinton who served as Treasurer of Orangeburg, S. C. for eight
years was held in highest esteem by his white neighbors and upon the
occasion of his death business was suspended as a mark of respect. In
certain communities Negroes were retained in office for years after
the restoration of Democratic party control as, for example Mr. George
Harriot in Georgetown, S. C. who was Superintendent of Education for the
county. Beaufort, South Carolina, retained Negroes as sheriffs and school
officials.
J. T. White who was Commissioner of Public Works and Internal
Improvements in Arkansas; M. W. Gibbs who was Municipal Judge in Little
Rock, and J. C. Corbin, who was State Superintendent of Schools in
Arkansas, had creditable records.[166] John R. Lynch, when speaker of
Mississippi House of Representatives, was given a public testimonial by
Republicans and Democrats and the leading Democratic paper said: “His
bearing in office had been so proper and his rulings in such marked
contrast to the partisan conduct of the ignoble whites of his party
who have aspired to be leaders of the blacks, that the conservatives
cheerfully joined in the testimonial.”[167]
Of the colored treasurer of South Carolina, Governor Chamberlain said:
“I have never heard one word or seen one act of Mr. Cardoza’s which did
not confirm my confidence in his personal integrity and his political
honor and zeal for the honest administration of the State Government. On
every occasion and under all circumstances he has been against fraud and
jobbery and in favor of good measures and good men.”[168]
Jonathan C. Gibbs, a colored man and the first State Superintendent of
Instructions in Florida, was a graduate of Dartmouth. He established
the system and brought it to success, dying in harness in 1874. The
first Negro graduate of Harvard College served in South Carolina, before
he became chief executive officer of the association that erected the
Grant’s Tomb in New York.
In Louisiana we may mention Acting-Governor Pinchback, and
Lieutenant-Governor Dunn, and Treasurer Dubuclet who was investigated
by United States officials. E. P. White, afterward Chief Justice of the
United States, reported that his funds had been honestly handled. Such
men—and there were others—ought not to be forgotten or confounded with
other types of colored and white Reconstruction leaders.
Between 1871 and 1901, twenty-two Negroes sat in Congress—two as senators
and twenty as representatives; three or four others were undoubtedly
elected but were not seated. Ten of these twenty-two Negroes were college
bred: Cain of South Carolina was trained at Wilberforce and afterward
became bishop of the African Methodist Church; Revels was educated at
Knox College, Illinois, or at a Quaker Seminary, in Indiana; Cheatham
was a graduate of Shaw; Murray was trained at the University of South
Carolina; Langston was a graduate of Oberlin; five others were lawyers of
whom the most brilliant was Robert Brown Elliott; he was a graduate of
Eton College, England; Rapier was educated in Canada and O’Hara studied
at Howard University; Miller graduated from Lincoln and White from Howard
University. The other twelve men were self-taught: one was a thriving
merchant tailor, one a barber, three were farmers, one a photographer,
one a pilot and one a merchant.[169]
Of those who served in the Senate, one served an unexpired term and the
other six years. In the House, one representative served one term from
Virginia. From North Carolina one served one term and two, two terms.
Georgia was represented by a Negro for one term and Mississippi for two
terms. South Carolina had eight representatives, two of them served five
terms, three two terms, and the rest one term. Beside these there were
other Negro office holders who were fully the peers of white men; and
those without formal training in the schools were in many cases men of
unusual force and native ability.
James G. Blaine who served with nearly all these men approved of sending
them to Congress: “If it is to be viewed simply as an experiment, it was
triumphantly successful. The colored men who took seats in both Senate
and House did not appear ignorant or helpless. They were as a rule
studious, earnest, ambitious men whose public conduct—as illustrated by
Mr. Revels and Mr. Bruce in the Senate and by Mr. Rapier, Mr. Lynch and
Mr. Rainey in the House would be honorable to any race. Coals of fire
were heaped on the heads of all their enemies when the colored men in
Congress heartily joined in removing the disabilities of those who had
before been their oppressors, and who, with deep regret be it said, have
continued to treat them with injustice and ignominy.”[170]
He cites the magnanimity of Senator Rainey: “When the Amnesty Bill
came before the House for consideration, Mr. Rainey of South Carolina,
speaking for the colored race whom he represented said: ‘It is not the
disposition of my constituents that these disabilities should longer
be retained. We are desirous of being magnanimous; it may be that we
are so to a fault. Nevertheless we have open and frank hearts towards
those who were our oppressors and taskmasters. We foster no enmity now,
and we desire to foster none, for their acts in the past to us or to
the Government we love so well. But while we are willing to accord them
their enfranchisement and here today give our votes that they may be
amnestied, while we declare our hearts open and free from any vindictive
feelings toward them, we would say to those gentlemen on the other side
that there is another class of citizens in the country who have certain
rights and immunities which they would like you, sirs, to remember and
respect.... We invoke you gentlemen, to show the same kindly feeling
towards us, a race long oppressed, and in demonstration of this humane
and just feeling, I implore you, give support to the Civil Rights Bill,
which we have been asking at your hands, lo! these many days.”[171]
The chief charge against Negro governments has to do with property. These
governments are charged with attacking property and the charge is true.
This, although not perhaps sensed at the time, was their real reason
for being. The ex-slaves must have land and capital or they would fall
back into slavery. The masters had both; there must be a transfer. It
was at first proposed that land be confiscated in the South and given to
the Freedmen. “Forty Acres and a Mule” was the widespread promise made
several times with official sanction. This was perhaps the least that
the United States Government could have done to insure emancipation, but
such a program would have cost money. In the early anger of the war, it
seemed to many fair to confiscate land for this purpose without payment
and some land was thus sequestered. But manifestly with all the losses
of war and with the loss of the slaves it was unfair to take the land of
the South without some compensation. The North was unwilling to add to
its tremendous debt anything further to insure the economic independence
of the Freedmen. The Freedmen therefore themselves with their political
power and with such economic advantage as the war gave them, tried to get
hold of land.
The Negro party platform of 1876, in one state, advocated “division of
lands of the state as far as practical into small farms in order that
the masses of our people may be enabled to become landholders.” In the
Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, a colored man said: “One
of the greatest of slavery bulwarks was the infernal plantation system,
one man owning his thousand, another his twenty, another fifty thousands
acres of land. This is the only way by which we will break up that
system, and I maintain that our freedom will be of no effect if we allow
it to continue. What is the main cause of the prosperity of the North.
It is because every man has his own farm and is free and independent.
Let the lands of the South be similarly divided. I would not say for one
moment they should be confiscated but if sold to maintain the war, now
that slavery is destroyed, let the plantation system go with it. We
will never have true freedom until we abolish the system of agriculture
which existed in the Southern States. It is useless to have any schools
while we maintain the stronghold of slavery as the agricultural system
of the country.”[172] This question kept coming up in the South Carolina
convention and elsewhere. Such arguments led in South Carolina to a
scheme to buy land and distribute it and some $800,000 was appropriated
for this purpose.
In the second place, property was attacked through the tax system. The
South had been terribly impoverished and was saddled with new social
burdens. Many of the things which had been done well or indifferently by
the plantations—like the punishment of crime and the care of the sick
and the insane, and such schooling as there was, with most other matters
of social uplift were, after the war, transferred to the control of the
state. Moreover the few and comparatively indifferent public buildings
of slavery days had been ruined either by actual warfare or by neglect.
Thus a new and tremendous burden of social taxation was put upon the
reconstructed states.
As a southern writer says of the state of Mississippi: “The work
of restoration which the government was obliged to undertake, made
increased expenses necessary. During the period of the war, and for
several years thereafter, public buildings and state institutions were
permitted to fall into decay. The state house and grounds, the executive
mansion, the penitentiary, the insane asylum, and the buildings for the
blind, deaf and dumb, were in a dilapidated condition and had to be
extended and repaired. A new building for the blind was purchased and
fitted up. The reconstructionists established a public school system
and spent money to maintain and support it, perhaps too freely, in view
of the impoverishment of the people. When they took hold, warrants
were worth but sixty or seventy cents on the dollar, a fact which
made the price of building materials used in the work of construction
correspondingly higher.”[173]
In addition to all this there was fraud and stealing. There were white
men who cheated and secured large sums. Most of $800,000 appropriated for
land in South Carolina was wasted in graft. Bills for wine and furniture
in South Carolina were enormous; the printing bill of Mississippi was
ridiculously extravagant. Colored men shared in this loot but they at
least had some excuse. We may not forget that among slaves stealing
is not the crime that it becomes in free industry. The slave is victim
of a theft so hateful that nothing he can steal can ever match it. The
freedmen of 1868 still shared the slave psychology. The larger part of
the stealing was done by white men—Northerners and Southerners—and we
must remember that it was not the first time that there had been stealing
and corruption in the South and that the whole moral tone of the nation
had been ruined by war. For instance:
In 1839 it was reported in Mississippi that ninety per cent of the
fines collected by sheriffs and clerks were unaccounted for. In 1841
the State Treasurer acknowledged himself “at a loss to determine the
precise liabilities of the state and her means of paying the same.” And
in 1839 the auditor’s books had not been posted for eighteen months,
no entries made for a year, and no vouchers examined for three years.
Congress gave Jefferson College, Natchez, more than 46,000 acres of land;
before the war this whole property had “disappeared” and the college
was closed. Congress gave to Mississippi among other states, the “16th
section” of the public lands for schools. In thirty years the proceeds
of this land in Mississippi were embezzled to the amount of at least one
and a half millions of dollars. In Columbus, Mississippi a receiver of
public monies stole $100,000 and resigned. His successor stole $55,000
and a treasury agent wrote: “Another receiver would probably follow in
the footsteps of the two. You will not be surprised if I recommend him
being retained in preference to another appointment.” From 1830 to 1860
southern men in federal offices alone embezzled more than a million
dollars—a far greater sum then than now.
There might have been less stealing in the South during Reconstruction
without Negro suffrage but it is certainly highly instructive to remember
that the mark of the thief which dragged its slime across nearly every
great Northern State and almost up to the presidential chair could not
certainly in those cases be charged against the vote of black men. This
was the day when a national Secretary of War was caught stealing, a vice
president presumably took bribes, a private secretary of the president,
a chief clerk of the Treasury, and eighty-six government officials stole
millions in the Whiskey frauds; while the “Credit Mobilier” filched
millions and bribed the government to an extent never fully revealed; not
to mention less distinguished thieves like Tweed.
Is it surprising that in such an atmosphere a new race learning the a-b-c
of government should have become the tools of thieves? And when they
did, was the stealing their fault or was it justly chargeable to their
enfranchisement? Then too, a careful examination of the alleged stealing
in the South reveals much: First, there is repeated exaggeration. For
instance, it is said that the taxation in Mississippi was fourteen times
as great in 1874 as in 1869. This sounds staggering until we learn that
the State taxation in 1869 was only ten cents on one hundred dollars
and that the expenses of government in 1874 were only twice as great as
in 1860 and that too with a depreciated currency. It could certainly
be argued that the State government in Mississippi was doing enough
additional work in 1874 to warrant greatly increased cost. The character
of much of the stealing shows who were the thieves. The frauds through
the manipulation of State and railway bonds and of bank notes must have
inured chiefly to the benefit of experienced white men and this must
have been largely the case in the furnishing and printing frauds. It was
chiefly in the extravagance for “sundries and incidentals” and direct
money payments for votes that the Negroes received their share. The
character of the real thieving shows that white men must have been the
chief beneficiaries and that as a former South Carolina slaveholder said:
“The legislature, ignorant as it is, could not have been bribed without
money; that must have been furnished from some source that it is our
duty to discover. A legislature composed chiefly of our former slaves
has been bribed. One prominent feature of this transaction is the part
which native Carolinians have played in it, some of our own household men
whom the State, in the past, has delighted to honor, appealing to their
cupidity and avarice make them the instruments to effect the robbery of
their impoverished white brethren. Our former slaves have been bribed by
these men to give them the privilege by law of plundering the property
holders of the state.”[174]
Even those who mocked and sneered at Negro legislators brought now and
then words of praise: “But beneath all this shocking burlesque upon
Legislative proceedings we must not forget that there is something very
real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all shame, not
all burlesque. They have a genuine interest and a genuine earnestness
in the business of the assembly which we are bound to recognize and
respect.... They have an earnest purpose, born of conviction that their
conditions are not fully assured, which lends a sort of dignity to their
proceedings. The barbarous, animated jargon in which they so often
indulge is on occasion seen to be so transparently sincere and weighty
in their own minds that sympathy supplants disgust. The whole thing is
a wonderful novelty to them as well as to observers. Seven years ago
these men were raising corn and cotton under the whip of the overseer.
Today they are raising points of order and questions of privilege. They
find they can raise one as well as the other. They prefer the latter. It
is easier and better paid. Then, it is the evidence of an accomplished
result. It means escape and defence from old oppressors. It means
liberty. It means the destruction of prison walls only too real to them.
It is the sunshine of their lives. It is their day of jubilee. It is
their long promised vision of the Lord God Almighty.”[175]
But with the memory of the Freedmen’s Bank before it, America should
utter no sound as to Negro dishonesty during reconstruction. Here from
the entrenched philanthropy of America with some of the greatest names
of the day like Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Simon P. Chase, A.
A. Low, Gerritt Smith, John Jay, A. S. Barnes, S. G. Howe, George L.
Stearns, Edward Atkinson, Levi Coffin and others, a splendid scheme was
launched to help the Freedmen save their pittance and encourage thrift
and hope. On the covers of the pass books is said: “This is a benevolent
institution and profits go to the depositors or to educational purposes
for the Freedmen and their descendants. The whole institution is under
the charter of Congress and receives the commendation of the President,
Abraham Lincoln.” With blare of trumpet it was chartered March 3rd, 1865;
it collapsed in hopeless bankruptcy in 1873. It had received fifty-six
millions of dollars in deposits and failed owing over three millions
most of which was never repaid. A committee of Congress composed of both
Democrats and Republicans said in 1876:
“The law lent no efficacy to the moral obligations assumed by the
trustees, officers, and agents and the whole concern inevitably became
as a ‘whited sepulchre’.... The inspectors ... were of little or no
value, either through the connivance and ignorance of the inspectors or
the indifference of the trustees to their reports.... The committee of
examination ... were still more careless and inefficient, while the board
of trustees, as a supervising and administrative body, intrusted with
the fullest power of general control over the management, proved utterly
faithless to the trust reposed in them....
“The depositors were of small account now compared with the personal
interest of the political jobbers, real estate pools, and fancy-stock
speculators, who were organizing a raid upon the Freedmen’s money
and resorted to ... amendment of the charter to facilitate their
operations.... This mass of putridity, the District government, now
abhorred of all men, and abandoned and repudiated even by the political
authors of its being, was represented in the bank by no less than five
of its high officers ... all of whom were in one way or other concerned
in speculations involving a free use of the funds of the Freedmen’s
Bank. They were high in power, too, with the dominant influence in
Congress, as the legislation they asked or sanctioned and obtained, fully
demonstrated. Thus it was that without consulting the wishes or regarding
the interests of those most concerned—the depositors—the vaults of the
bank were literally thrown open to unscrupulous greed and rapacity.
The toilsome savings of the poor Negroes hoarded and laid by for a
rainy day, through the carelessness and dishonest connivance of their
self-constituted guardians, melted away....”[176]
Even in bankruptcy the institution was not allowed to come under the
operation of the ordinary laws but was liquidated and protected by a
special law, the liquidators picking its corpse and the helpless victims
being finally robbed not only of their money but of much of their faith
in white folk.
Let us laugh hilariously if we must over the golden spittoons of South
Carolina but let us also remember that at most the freedmen filched bits
from those who had all and not all from those who had nothing; and that
the black man had at least the saving grace to hide his petty theft by
enshrining the nasty American habit of spitting in the sheen of sunshine.
With all these difficulties and failings, what did the Freedmen in
politics during the critical years of their first investment with the
suffrage accomplish? We may recognize three things which Negro rule gave
to the South:
1. Democratic government.
2. Free public schools.
3. New social legislation.
Two states will illustrate conditions of government in the South before
and after Negro rule. In South Carolina there was before the war a
property qualification for office holders, and in part, for voters.
The Constitution of 1868, on the other hand, was a modern democratic
document starting (in marked contrast to the old constitution) with a
declaration that “We, the People,”[177] framed it and preceded by a
broad Declaration of Rights which did away with property qualifications
and based representation directly on population instead of property.
It especially took up new subjects of social legislation, declaring
navigable rivers free public highways, instituting homestead exemptions,
establishing boards of county commissioners, providing for a new
penal code of laws, establishing universal manhood suffrage “without
distinction of race or color,” devoting six sections to charitable and
penal institutions and six to corporations, providing separate property
for married women, etc. Above all, eleven sections of the Tenth Article
were devoted to the establishment of a complete public school system.
So satisfactory was the constitution thus adopted by Negro suffrage
and by a convention composed of a majority of blacks that the States
lived twenty-seven years under it without essential change and when the
constitution was revised in 1895, the revision was practically nothing
more than an amplification of the Constitution of 1868. No essential
advance step of the former document was changed except the suffrage
article to disfranchise Negroes.
In Mississippi the Constitution of 1868 was, as compared with that before
the war, more democratic. It not only forbade distinctions on account
of color but abolished all property qualifications for jury service and
property and educational qualifications for suffrage; it required less
rigorous qualifications for office; it prohibited the lending of the
credit of the State for private corporations—an abuse dating back as far
as 1830. It increased the powers of the governor, raised the low State
salaries, and increased the number of state officials. New ideas like
the public school system and the immigration bureau were introduced and
in general the activity of the State greatly and necessarily enlarged.
Finally that was the only constitution of the State ever submitted to
popular approval at the polls. This constitution remained in force
twenty-two years.
In general the words of Judge Albion W. Tourgee, “a carpet-bagger,” are
true when he says of the Negro governments: “They obeyed the Constitution
of the United States and annulled the bonds of states, counties and
cities which had been issued to carry on the war of rebellion and
maintain armies in the field against the Union. They instituted a public
school system in a realm where public schools had been unknown. They
opened the ballot box and jury box to thousands of white men who had
been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced
home rule in the South. They abolished the whipping post, the branding
iron, the stocks and other barbarous forms of punishment which had up to
that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about twenty to
two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant in the sums
appropriated for public works. In all of that time no man’s rights of
person were invaded under the forms of law. Every Democrat’s life, home,
fireside and business were safe. No man obstructed any white man’s way to
the ballot box, interfered with his freedom of speech or boycotted him,
on account of his political faith.”[178]
A thorough study of the legislation accompanying these constitutions and
its changes since would, of course, be necessary before a full picture
of the situation could be given. This has not been done but so far as my
studies have gone I have been surprised at the comparatively small amount
of change in law and government which the overthrow of Negro rule brought
about. There were sharp and often hurtful economies introduced, marking
the return of property to power, there was a sweeping change in officials
but the main body of Reconstruction legislation stood.
There is no doubt but that the thirst of the black man for knowledge—a
thirst which has been too persistent and durable to be mere curiosity
or whim—gave birth to the public free school system of the South. It
was the question upon which the black voters and legislators insisted
more than anything else and while it is possible to find some vestiges
of free schools in some of the Southern States before the war yet a
universal, well established system dates from the day that the black
man got political power. Common school instruction in the South, in the
modern sense of the term, was begun for Negroes by the Freedmen’s Bureau
and missionary societies, and the State public school systems for all
children were formed mainly by Negro Reconstruction governments.
The earlier state constitutions of Mississippi “from 1817 to 1864
contained a declaration that ‘Religion, morality and knowledge being
necessary to good government, the preservation of liberty and the
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever
be encouraged.’ It was not, however, until 1868 that encouragement
was given to any general system of public schools meant to embrace
the whole youthful population.” The Constitution of 1868 makes it the
duty of the legislature to establish “a uniform system of free public
schools by taxation or otherwise for all children between the ages of
five and twenty-one years.” In Alabama the Reconstruction Constitution
of 1868 provided that “It shall be the duty of the Board of Education
to establish throughout the State in each township or other school
district which it may have created, one or more schools at which all
children of the state between the ages of five and twenty-one years may
attend free of charge.” Arkansas in 1868, Florida in 1869, Virginia
in 1870, established school systems. The Constitution of 1868 in
Louisiana required the general assembly to establish “at least one free
public school in every parish,” and that these schools should make no
“distinction of race, color or previous condition.” Georgia’s system was
not fully established until 1873.
We are apt to forget that in all human probability the granting of Negro
manhood suffrage was decisive in rendering permanent the foundation
of the Negro common school. Even after the overthrow of the Negro
governments, if the Negroes had been left a servile caste, personally
free but politically powerless, it is not reasonable to think that
a system of common schools would have been provided for them by the
Southern states. Serfdom and education have ever proven contradictory
terms. But when Congress, backed by the nation, determined to make the
Negroes full-fledged voting citizens, the South had a hard dilemma before
her; either to keep the Negroes under as an ignorant proletariat and
stand the chance of being ruled eventually from the slums and jails, or
to join in helping to raise these wards of the nation to a position of
intelligence and thrift by means of a public school system.[179]
The “carpet-bag” governments hastened the decision of the South and
although there was a period of hesitation and retrogression after the
overthrow of Negro rule in the early seventies, yet the South saw that
to abolish Negro schools in addition to nullifying the Negro vote would
invite Northern interference; and thus eventually every Southern state
confirmed the work of the Negro legislators and maintained the Negro
public schools along with the white.
Finally, in legislation covering property the wider functions of the
State, the punishment of crime and the like, it is sufficient to say that
the laws on these points established by Reconstruction legislatures were
not only different and even revolutionary to the laws of the older South,
but they were so wise and so well suited to the needs of the new South
that in spite of a retrogressive movement following the overthrow of the
Negro governments, the mass of this legislation with elaboration and
development still stands on the statute books of the South.
Reconstruction constitutions, practically unaltered, were kept in
Florida, 1868-1885 17 years
Virginia, 1870-1902 32 years
South Carolina, 1868-1895 27 years
Mississippi, 1868-1890 22 years
Even in the case of states like Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and
Louisiana, which adopted new constitutions to signify the overthrow
of Negro rule, the new constitutions are nearer the model of the
Reconstruction document than they are to the previous constitutions. They
differ from the Negro constitutions in minor details but very little in
general conception.
Here then on the whole was a much more favorable result of a great
experiment in democracy than the world had a right to await. But
even on its more sinister side and in the matter of the ignorance of
inexperience and venality of the colored voters there came signs of
better things. The theory of democratic government is not that the will
of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of
average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best
course by bitter experience. This is precisely what the Negro voters
showed indubitable signs of doing. First, they strove for schools to
abolish their ignorance, and second, a large and growing number of them
revolted against the carnival of extravagance and stealing that marred
the beginning of Reconstruction and joined with the best elements to
institute reform; and the greatest stigma on the white South is not
that it opposed Negro suffrage and resented theft and incompetence, but
that when it saw the reform movement growing and even in some cases
triumphing, and a larger and larger number of black voters learning to
vote for honesty and ability, it still preferred a Reign of Terror to
a campaign of education and disfranchised Negroes instead of punishing
rascals.
No one has expressed this more convincingly than a Negro who was himself
a member of the Reconstruction legislature of South Carolina and who
spoke at the convention which disfranchised him, against one of the
onslaughts of Tillman:
“The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling up of
the State debt; of jobbery and speculation during the period between
1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice eloquent
enough nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable gifts bestowed
upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro legislators—the laws
relative to finance, the building of penal and charitable institutions
and, greatest of all, the establishment of the public school system.
Starting as infants in legislation in 1869, many wise measures were not
thought of, many injudicious acts were passed. But in the administration
of affairs for the next four years, having learned by experience the
result of bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touching
every department of state, county, municipal and town governments. These
enactments are today upon the statute books of South Carolina. They stand
as living witnesses of the Negro’s fitness to vote and legislate upon the
rights of mankind.
“When we came into power, town governments could lend the credit of
their respective towns to secure funds at any rate of interest that the
council saw fit to pay. Some of the towns paid as high as twenty percent.
We passed an act prohibiting town governments from pledging the credit
of their hamlets for money bearing a greater rate of interest than five
percent.
“Up to 1874, inclusive, the State Treasurer had the power to pay out
State funds as he pleased. He could elect whether he would pay out the
funds on appropriations that would place the money in the hands of the
speculators, or would apply them to appropriations that were honest and
necessary. We saw the evil of this and passed an act making specific
levies and collections of taxes for specific appropriations.
“Another source of profligacy in the expenditure of funds was the law
that provided for and empowered the levying and collecting of special
taxes by school districts, in the name of the schools. We saw its evil
and by a Constitutional amendment provided that there should only be
levied and collected annually a tax of two mills for school purposes,
and took away from the school districts the power to levy and to collect
taxes of any kind. By this act we cured the evils that had been inflicted
upon us in the name of the schools, settled the public school question
for all time to come and established the system upon an honest financial
basis.
“Next, we learned during the period from 1869 to 1874 inclusive, that
what was denominated the floating indebtedness, covering the printing
schemes and other indefinite expenditures, amounted to nearly $2,000,000.
A conference was called of the leading Negro representatives in the
two Houses together with the State Treasurer, also a Negro. After this
conference we passed an act for the purpose of ascertaining the bona fide
floating debt and found that it did not amount to more than $250,000 for
the four years; we created a commission to sift that indebtedness and to
scale it. Hence when the Democratic party came into power they found the
floating debt covering the legislative and all other expenditures, fixed
at the certain sum of $250,000. This same class of Negro legislators,
led by the State Treasurer, Mr. F. L. Cardoza, knowing that there were
millions of fraudulent bonds charged against the credit of the State,
passed another act to ascertain the true bonded indebtedness and to
provide for its settlement. Under this law, at one sweep, those entrusted
with the power to do so, through Negro legislators, stamped six millions
of bonds, denominated as conversion bonds, ‘fraudulent.’ The commission
did not finish its work before 1876. In that year when the Hampton
government came into power, there were still to be examined into and
settled under the terms of the act passed by us and providing for the
legitimate bonded indebtedness of the State, a little over two and a half
million dollars worth of bonds and coupons which had not been passed upon.
“Governor Hampton, General Hagood, Judge Simonton, Judge Wallace and
in fact, all of the conservative thinking Democrats aligned themselves
under the provision enacted by us for the certain and final settlement
of the bonded indebtedness and appealed to their Democratic legislators
to stand by the Republican legislation on the subject and to confirm it.
A faction in the Democratic party obtained a majority of the Democrats
in the legislature against settling the question and they endeavored to
open up anew the whole subject of the State debt. We had a little over
thirty members in the House and enough Republican senators to sustain the
Hampton conservative faction and to stand up for honest finance, or by
our votes to place the debt question of the old State into the hands of
the plunderers and speculators. We were appealed to by General Hagood,
through me, and my answer to him was in these words: ‘General, our people
have learned the difference between profligate and honest legislation.
We have passed acts of financial reform, and with the assistance of God,
when the vote shall have been taken, you will be able to record for the
thirty-odd Negroes, slandered though they have been through the press,
that they voted solidly with you all for the honest legislation and the
preservation of the credit of the State.’ The thirty-odd Negroes in
the legislature and their senators by their votes did settle the debt
question and saved the State $13,000,000.
“We were eight years in power. We had built school houses, established
charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiary system,
provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jails
and court houses, rebuilt the bridges and re-established the ferries.
In short, we had reconstructed the State and placed it upon the road
to prosperity and, at the same time, by our acts of financial reform,
transmitted to the Hampton government an indebtedness not greater by more
than $2,500,000 than was the bonded debt of the State in 1868, before the
Republican Negroes and their white allies came into power.”[180]
So too in Louisiana in 1872 and in Mississippi later the better element
of the Republicans triumphed at the polls and joining with the Democrats
instituted reforms, repudiated the worst extravagances and started toward
better things. But unfortunately there was one thing that the white South
feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance and incompetency, and that
was Negro honesty, knowledge and efficiency.
Paint the “carpet-bag” governments and Negro rule as black as may be, the
fact remains that the essence of the revolution which the overturning
of the Negro governments made was to put these black men and their
friends out of power. Outside the curtailing of expenses and stopping
of extravagance, not only did their successors make few changes in the
work which these legislatures and conventions had done, but they largely
carried out their plans, followed their suggestions and strengthened
their institutions. Practically the whole new growth of the South has
been accomplished under laws which black men helped to frame thirty years
ago. I know of no greater compliment to Negro suffrage, and no greater
contribution to real American democracy.[181]
The counter revolution came but it was too late. The Negro had stepped
so far into new economic freedom that he could never be put back into
slavery; and he had widened democracy to include not only a goodly and
increasing number of his own group but the mass of the poor white South.
The economic results of Negro suffrage were so great during the years
from 1865 to 1876 that they have never been overthrown. The Freedmen’s
Bureau came virtually to an end in 1869. General Howard’s report of
that year said: “In spite of all disorders that have prevailed and the
misfortunes that have fallen upon many parts of the South, a good degree
of prosperity and success has already been attained. To the oft-repeated
slander that the Negroes will not work and are incapable of taking care
of themselves, it is a sufficient answer that their voluntary labor has
produced nearly all the food that supported the whole people, besides
a large amount of rice, sugar and tobacco for export, and two millions
of bales of cotton each year, on which was paid into the United States
Treasury during the years 1866 to 1867 a tax of more than forty millions
of dollars ($40,000,000). It is not claimed that this result was wholly
due to the care and oversight of this Bureau but it is safe to say as it
has been said repeatedly by intelligent Southern white men, that without
the Bureau or some similar agency, the material interests of the country
would have greatly suffered and the government would have lost a far
greater amount than has been expended in its maintenance....
“Of the nearly eight hundred thousand (800,000) acres of farming land
and about five thousand (5,000) pieces of town property transferred to
this Bureau by military and treasury officers, or taken up by assistant
commissioners, enough was leased to produce a revenue of nearly four
hundred thousand dollars ($400,000). Some farms were set apart in
each state as homes for the destitute and helpless and a portion was
cultivated by freedmen prior to its restoration....
“Notice the appropriations by Congress:
For the year ending July 1st, 1867 $6,940,450.00
For the year ending July 1st, 1868 3,936,300.00
For the relief of the destitute citizens in
District of Columbia 40,000.00
For relief of destitute freedmen in the same 15,000.00
For expenses of paying bounties in 1869 214,000.00
For expenses for famine in Southern states and
transportation 1,865,645.00
For support of hospitals 50,000.00
Making a total received from all sources of $12,961,395.00
“Our expenditures from the beginning (including assumed accounts of the
‘Department of Negro Affairs’ from January 1st, 1865, to August 31,
1869) have been eleven million two hundred and forty-nine thousand and
twenty-eight dollars and ten cents ($11,249,028.10). In addition to
this cash expenditure the subsistence, medical supplies, quartermasters
stores, issued to the refugees and freedmen prior to July 1st, 1866, were
furnished by the commissary, medical and quartermasters department, and
accounted for in the current expenses of those departments; they were
not charged to nor paid for by my officers. They amounted to two million
three hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight dollars
and seventy-two cents ($2,330,788.72) in original cost; but a large
portion of these stores being damaged and condemned as unfit for issue
to troops, their real value to the Government was probably less than one
million dollars ($1,000,000). Adding their original cost to the amount
expended from appropriations and other sources, the total expenses of
our Government for refugees and freedmen to August 31, 1869, have been
thirteen million five hundred and seventy-nine thousand eight hundred
and sixteen dollars and eighty-two cents ($13,579,816.82). And deducting
fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) set apart as a special relief fund for
all classes of destitute people in the Southern states, the real cost
has been thirteen million twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and sixteen
dollars and eighty-two cents ($13,029,816.82).”[182]
By 1875, Negroes owned not less than 2,000,000 and perhaps as much as
4,000,000 acres of land and by 1880 this had increased to 6,000,000.
Notwithstanding the great step forward that the Negro had made this
sinister fact faced him and his friends: he formed a minority of the
population of the South. If that population was solidly arrayed against
him his legal status was in danger and his economic progress was going
to be difficult. It has been repeatedly charged that the action of the
Negro solidified Southern opposition; and that the Negro refusing to
listen to and make fair terms with his white neighbors, sought solely
Northern alliance and the protection of Northern bayonets. This is not
true and is turning facts hindside before. The ones who did the choosing
were the Southern master class. When they got practically their full
political rights in 1872 they had a chance to choose, if they would, the
best of the Negroes as their allies and to work with them as against the
most ruthless elements of the white South. Gradually there could have
been built up a political party or even parties of the best of the black
and white South. The Negroes would have been more than modest in their
demands so long as they saw a chance to keep moving toward real freedom.
But the master class did not choose this, although some like Wade Hampton
of South Carolina, made steps toward it. On the whole, the masters
settled definitely upon a purely racial line, recognizing as theirs
everything that had a white skin and putting without the pale of sympathy
and alliance, everything of Negro descent. By bitter and unyielding
social pressure they pounded the whites into a solid phalanx, but in
order to do this they had to give up much.
In the first place the leadership of the South passed from the hands of
the old slave owners into the hands of the newer town capitalists who
were largely merchants and the coming industrial leaders. Some of them
represented the older dominant class and some of them the newer poor
whites. They were welded, however, into a new economic mastership, less
cultivated, more ruthless and more keen in recognizing the possibilities
of Negro labor if “controlled” as they proposed to control it. This new
leadership, however, did not simply solidify the South, it proceeded to
make alliance in the North and to make alliance of the most effective
kind, namely economic alliance. The sentimentalism of the war period had
in the North changed to the recognition of the grim fact of destroyed
capital, dead workers and high prices. The South was a field which could
be exploited if peaceful conditions could be reached and the laboring
class made sufficiently content and submissive. It was the business then
of the “New” South to show to the northern capitalists that by uniting
the economic interests of both, they could exploit the Negro laborer and
the white laborer—pitting the two classes against each other, keeping
out labor unions and building a new industrial South which would pay
tremendous returns. This was the program which began with the withdrawal
of Northern troops in 1876 and was carried on up to 1890 when it gained
political sanction by open laws disfranchising the Negro.
But the experiment was carried on at a terrific cost. First, the Negro
could not be cowed and beaten back from his new-found freedom without a
mass of force, fraud and actual savagery such as strained the moral fibre
of the white South to the utmost. It will be a century before the South
recovers from this _débacle_ and this explains why this great stretch of
land has today so meager an output of science, literature and art and can
discuss practically nothing but the “Negro” problem. It explains why the
South is the one region in the civilized world where sometimes men are
publicly burned alive at the stake.
On the other hand, even this display of force and hatred did not keep
the Negro from advancing and the reason for this was that he was in
competition with a white laboring class which, despite all efforts and
advantages could not outstrip the Negroes and put them wholly under
their feet. By judiciously using this rivalry, the Negro gained economic
advantage after advantage, and foothold after foothold until today
while by no means free and still largely deprived of political rights,
we have a mass of 10,000,000 people whose economic condition may be
thus described: If we roughly conceive of something like a tenth of the
white population as below the line of decent free economic existence, we
may guess that a third of the black American population of 12 millions
is still in economic serfdom, comparable to condition of the submerged
tenth in cities, and held in debt and crime peonage in the sugar, rice
and cotton belts. Six other millions are emerging and fighting, in
competition with white laborers, a fairly successful battle for rising
wages and better conditions. In the last ten years a million of these
have been willing and able to move physically from Southern serfdom to
the freer air of the North.
The other three millions are as free as the better class of white
laborers; and are pushing and carrying the white laborer with them in
their grim determination to hold advantages gained and gain others.
The Negro’s agitation for the right to vote has made any step toward
disfranchising the poor white unthinkable, for the white vote is needed
to help disfranchise the blacks; the black man is pounding open the doors
of exclusive trade guilds; for how can unions exclude whites when Negro
competition can break a steel strike? The Negro is making America and
the world acknowledge democracy as feasible and desirable for all white
folk, for only in this way do they see any possibility of defending their
world wide fear of yellow, brown and black folk.
In a peculiar way, then, the Negro in the United States has emancipated
democracy, reconstructed the threatened edifice of Freedom and been a
sort of eternal test of the sincerity of our democratic ideals. As a
Negro minister, J. W. C. Pennington, said in London and Glasgow before
the Civil war: “The colored population of the United States has no
destiny separate from that of the nation in which they form an integral
part. Our destiny is bound up with that of America. Her ship is ours; her
pilot is ours; her storms are ours; her calms are ours. If she breaks
upon a rock, we break with her. If we, born in America, cannot live upon
the same soil upon terms of equality with the descendants of Scotchmen,
Englishmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Hungarians, Greeks and Poles,
then the fundamental theory of America fails and falls to the ground.”
This is still true and it puts the American Negro in a peculiar strategic
position with regard to the race problems of the whole world. What do
we mean by democracy? Do we mean democracy of the white races and the
subjection of the colored races? Or do we mean the gradual working
forward to a time when all men will have a voice in government and
industry and will be intelligent enough to express the voice?
It is this latter thesis for which the American Negro stands and has
stood, and more than any other element in the modern world it has slowly
but continuously forced America toward that point and is still forcing.
It must be remembered that it was the late Booker T. Washington who
planned the beginning of an industrial democracy in the South, based
on education, and that in our day the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, nine-tenths of whose members are Negroes,
is the one persistent agency in the United States which is voicing a
demand for democracy unlimited by race, sex or religion. American Negroes
have even crossed the waters and held three Pan-African Congresses
to arouse black men through the world to work for modern democratic
development. Thus the emancipation of the Negro slave in America becomes
through his own determined effort simply one step toward the emancipation
of all men.
CHAPTER VI
THE FREEDOM OF WOMANHOOD
How the black woman from her low estate not only united two
great human races but helped lift herself and all women to
economic independence and self-expression.
The emancipation of woman is, of course, but one phase of the growth
of democracy. It deserves perhaps separate treatment because it is an
interesting example of the way in which the Negro has helped American
democracy.
In the United States in 1920 there were 5,253,695 women of Negro descent;
over twelve hundred thousand of these were children, another twelve
hundred thousand were girls and young women under twenty, and two and a
half million were adults. As a mass these women have but the beginnings
of education,—twelve percent of those from sixteen to twenty years of
age were unable to write, and twenty-eight percent of those twenty-one
years of age and over. These women are passing through, not only a moral,
but an economic revolution. Their grandmothers married at twelve and
fifteen, but in 1910 twenty-seven percent of these women who had passed
fifteen were still single.
Yet these black women toil and toil hard. There were in 1910 two and a
half million Negro homes in the United States. Out of these homes walked
daily to work two million women and girls over ten years of age,—one
half of the colored female population as against a fifth in the case of
white women. These, then, are a group of workers, fighting for their
daily bread like men; independent and approaching economic freedom! They
furnished a million farm laborers, 80,000 farmers, 22,000 teachers,
600,000 servants and washerwomen, and 50,000 in trades and merchandizing.
In 1920, 38.9% of colored women were at work as contrasted with 17.2%
of native white women. Of the colored women 39% were farming and 50% in
service.
The family group, however, which is the ideal of the culture into which
these folk have been born, is not based on the idea of an economically
independent working mother. Rather its ideal harks back to the sheltered
harem with the mother emerging at first as nurse and homemaker, while the
man remains the sole breadwinner. Thus the Negro woman more than the
women of any other group in America is the protagonist in the fight for
an economically independent womanhood in modern countries. Her fight has
not been willing or for the most part conscious but it has, nevertheless,
been curiously effective in its influence on the working world.
This matter of economic independence is, of course, the central fact in
the struggle of women for equality. In the earlier days the slave woman
was found to be economically as efficient as the man. Moreover, because
of her production of children she became in many ways more valuable;
but because she was a field hand the slave family differed from the
free family. The children were brought up very largely in common on the
plantation, there was comparatively small parental control or real family
life and the chief function of the woman was working and not making a
home. We can see here pre-figured a type of social development toward
which the world is working again for similar and larger reasons. In
our modern industrial organization the work of women is being found as
valuable as that of men. They are consequently being taken from the home
and put into industry and the rapidity by which this process is going on
is only kept back by the problem of the child; and more and more the
community is taking charge of the education of children for this reason.
In America the work of Negro women has not only pre-figured this
development but it has had a direct influence upon it. The Negro woman as
laborer, as seamstress, as servant and cook, has come into competition
with the white male laborer and with the white woman worker. The fact
that she could and did replace the white man as laborer, artisan and
servant, showed the possibility of the white woman doing the same thing,
and led to it. Moreover, the usual sentimental arguments against women
at work were not brought forward in the case of Negro womanhood. Nothing
illustrates this so well as the speech of Sojourner Truth before the
second National Woman Suffrage Convention, in 1852.
Sojourner Truth came from the lowest of the low, a slave whose children
had been sold away from her, a hard, ignorant worker without even a name,
who came to this meeting of white women and crouched in a corner against
the wall. “Don’t let her speak,” was repeatedly said to the presiding
officer. “Don’t get our cause mixed up with abolition and ‘niggers’.”
The discussion became warm, resolutions were presented and argued. Much
was said of the superiority of man’s intellect, the general helplessness
of women and their need for courtesy, the sin of Eve, etc. Most of the
white women, being “perfect ladies,” according to the ideals of the time,
were not used to speaking in public and finally to their dismay the black
woman arose from the corner. The audience became silent.
Sojourner Truth was an Amazon nearly six feet high, black, erect and with
piercing eyes, and her speech in reply was to the point:
“Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and
lifted ober ditches, and to have the best places every whar. Nobody eber
help me into carriages, or ober mud puddles, or gives me any best place”
(and raising herself to her full height and her voice to a pitch like
rolling thunder, she asked), “and ai’n’t I a woman? Look at me! Look
at my arm!” (And she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her
tremendous muscular power.) “I have plowed, and planted, and gathered
into barns, and no man could head me—and ai’n’t I a woman? I could work
as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear de lash
as well—and ai’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern and seen ’em
mos’ all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s
grief, none but Jesus heard—and ai’n’t I a woman? Den dey talks ’bout
dis ting in de head—what dis dey call it?” (“Intellect,” whispered some
one near.) “Dat’s it honey. What’s dat got to do with women’s rights or
niggers’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart,
wouldn’t ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?” ...
She ended by asserting that “If de fust woman God ever made was strong
enough to turn the world upside down, all ’lone, dese togedder” (and she
glanced her eye over us,) “ought to be able to turn it back and get it
right side up again, and now dey is asking to do it, de men better let
’em....”
“Amid roars of applause, she turned to her corner, leaving more than one
of us with streaming eyes and hearts beating with gratitude. She had
taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the slough
of difficulty, turning the whole tide in our favor. I have never in my
life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish
spirit of the day and turned the jibes and sneers of an excited crowd
into notes of respect and admiration. Hundreds rushed up to shake hands,
and congratulate the glorious old mother and bid her God speed on her
mission of ‘testifying again concerning the wickedness of this ’ere
people’.”[183]
Again and in more concrete ways the Negro woman has influenced America
and that is by her personal contact with the family—its men, women and
children. As housekeeper, maid and nurse—as confidante, adviser and
friend, she was often an integral part of the white family life of the
South, and transmitted her dialect, her mannerisms, her quaint philosophy
and her boundless sympathy.
Beyond this she became the concubine. It is a subject scarcely to be
mentioned today with our conventional morals and with the bitter racial
memories swirling about this institution of slavery. Yet the fact remains
stark, ugly, painful, beautiful.
Let us regard it dispassionately, remembering that the concubine is as
old as the world and that birth is a biological fact. It is usual to
speak of the Negro as being the great example of the unassimiliated
group in American life. This, of course, is flatly untrue; probably of
the strains of blood longest present in America since the discovery by
Columbus, the Negro has been less liable to absorption than other groups;
but this does not mean that he has not been absorbed and that his blood
has not been spread throughout the length and breadth of the land.
“We southern ladies are complimented with the names of wives; but we are
only the mistresses of seraglios,” said a sister of President Madison;
and a Connecticut minister who lived 14 years in Carolina said: “As it
relates to amalgamation, I can say, that I have been in respectable
families (so-called), where I could distinguish the family resemblance in
the slaves who waited upon the table. I once hired a slave who belonged
to his own uncle. It is so common for the female slaves to have white
children, that little is ever said about it. Very few inquiries are made
as to who the father is.”[184]
One has only to remember the early histories of cities like Charleston
and New Orleans to see what the Negro concubine meant and how she
transfigured America. Paul Alliot said in his reflections of Louisiana in
1803: “The population of that city counting the people of all colors is
only twelve thousand souls. Mulattoes and Negroes are openly protected by
the Government. He who strikes one of those persons, even though he had
run away from him, would be severely punished. Also twenty whites could
be counted in the prisons of New Orleans against one man of color. The
wives and daughters of the latter are much sought after by the white men,
and white women at times esteem well-built men of color.”[185] The same
writer tells us that few white men marry, preferring to live with their
slaves or with women of color.
A generation later the situation was much the same in spite of reaction.
In 1818, a traveler says of New Orleans: “Here may be seen in the same
crowds, Quadroons, Mulattoes, Samboes, Mustizos, Indians and Negroes; and
there are other commixtures which are not yet classified.”[186]
“The minor distinctions of complexion and race so fiercely adhered to
by the Creoles of the old regime were at their height at this time. The
glory and shame of the city were her quadroons and octoroons, apparently
constituting two aristocratic circles of society, the one as elegant
as the other, the complexions the same, the men the same, the women
different in race, but not in color, nor in dress nor in jewels. Writers
on fire with the romance of this continental city love to speak of the
splendors of the French Opera House, the first place in the country where
grand opera was heard, and tell of the tiers of beautiful women with
their jewels and airs and graces. Above the orchestra circle were four
tiers; the first filled with the beautiful dames of the city; the second
filled with a second array of beautiful women, attired like those of
the first, with no apparent difference; yet these were the octoroons and
quadroons, whose beauty and wealth were all the passports needed. The
third was for the _hoi polloi_ of the white race, and the fourth for the
people of color whose color was more evident. It was a veritable sandwich
of races.”[187]
Whatever judgment we may pass upon all this and however we may like or
dislike it, the fact remains that the colored slave women became the
medium through which two great races were united in America. Moreover
it is the fashion to assume that all this was merely infiltration
of white blood into the black; but we must remember it was just as
surely infiltration of black blood into white America and not even an
extraordinary drawing of the color line against all visible Negro blood
has ever been able to trace its true limits.
There is scarcely an American, certainly none of the South and no Negro
American, who does not know in his personal experience of Americans
of Negro descent who either do not know or do not acknowledge their
African ancestry. This is their right, if they do know, and a matter
of but passing importance if they do not. But without doubt the
spiritual legacy of Africa has been spread through this mingling of
blood. First, of course, we may think of those more celebrated cases
where the mixed blood is fairly well known but nevertheless the man has
worked and passed as a white man. One of the earliest examples was that
of Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton was a case in point of the
much disputed “Creole” blood. Theoretically the Creole was a person of
European descent on both sides born in the West Indies or America; but
as there were naturally few such persons in earlier times because of the
small number of European women who came to America, those descendants of
European fathers and mulatto mothers were in practice called “Creole”
and consequently it soon began to be _prima facie_ evidence, in the
West Indies, that an illegitimate child of a white father was of Negro
descent. Alexander Hamilton was such an illegitimate child. He had
colored relatives whose descendants still live in America and he was
currently reported to be colored in the island of Nevis. Further than
this, of course, proof is impossible. But to those who have given careful
attention to the subject, little further proof is needed.
To this can be added a long list of American notables,—bishops, generals
and members of Congress. Many writers and artists have found hidden
inspiration in their Negro blood and from the first importation in the
fifteenth century down to today there has been a continual mingling
of white and Negro blood in the United States both within and without
the bonds of wedlock that neither law nor slavery nor cruel insult and
contempt has been able to stop.
Besides these influences in economics and the home there has come the
work of Negro women in revolt which cannot be forgotten. We mention two
cases.
Harriet Tubman was a woman absolutely illiterate, who, from 1849 down to
the Civil War, spent her time journeying backward and forward between
the free and slave states and leading hundreds of black fugitives into
freedom. Thousands of dollars were put upon her head as rewards for her
capture; and she was continually sought by northern abolitionists and
was a confidant of John Brown. During the War, she acted as a spy, guide
and nurse and in all these days, worked without pay or reward. William
H. Seward said: “A nobler, higher spirit or truer, seldom dwells in the
human form,” and Wendell Phillips added: “In my opinion there are few
captains, perhaps few colonels who have done more for the loyal cause
since the War began and few men who did before that time more for the
colored race than our fearless and most sagacious friend, Harriet.”
Abraham Lincoln gave her ready audience.[188]
Quite a different kind of woman and yet strangely effective and
influential was Mammy Pleasants of California. Here was a colored
woman who became one of the shrewdest business minds of the State. She
anticipated the development in oil; she was the trusted confidant of many
of the California pioneers like Ralston, Mills and Booth and for years
was a power in San Francisco affairs. Yet, she held her memories, her
hatreds, her deep designs and throughout a life that was perhaps more
than unconventional, she treasured a bitter hatred for slavery and a
certain contempt for white people.
As a field hand in Georgia she had attracted the attention of a planter
by her intelligence and was bought and sent to Boston for training. Here
she was made a household drudge and eventually married Alexander Smith
who was associated with Garrison and the abolitionists. With $50,000
from his estate, she came to California and made a fortune. The epitaph
which she wanted on her tombstone was, “She was a friend of John Brown.”
When she first heard of the projects of Brown she determined to help
him and April 5, 1858, when John Brown was captured at Harper’s Ferry,
they found upon him a letter reading: “The ax is laid at the foot of the
tree; when the first blow is struck there will be more money to help.”
This was signed by three initials which the authorities thought were
“W. E. P.”—in fact they were “M. E. P.” and stood for Mammy Pleasants.
She had come East the spring before with a $30,000 United States draft
which she changed into coin and meeting John Brown in Chatham or Windsor,
Canada, had turned this money over to him. It was agreed, however, that
he was not to strike his blow until she had helped to arouse the slaves.
Disguised as a jockey, she went South and while there heard of Brown’s
raid and capture at Harper’s Ferry. She fled to New York and finally
reached California on a ship that came around Cape Horn, sailing in the
steerage under an assumed name.
Mammy Pleasants “always wore a poke bonnet and a plaid shawl,” and she
was “very black with thin lips” and “she handled more money during
pioneers days in California than any other colored person.”[189]
Here then, we have the types of colored women who rose out of the black
mass of slaves not only to guide their own folk but to influence the
nation.
We have noted then the Negro woman in America as a worker tending to
emancipate all women workers; as a mother nursing the white race and
uniting the black and white race; as a conspirator urging forward
emancipation in various sorts of ways; and we have finally only to
remember that today the women of America who are doing humble but on the
whole the most effective work in the social uplift of the lowly, not so
much by money as by personal contact, are the colored women. Little is
said or known about it but in thousands of churches and social clubs,
in missionary societies and fraternal organizations, in unions like the
National Association of Colored Women, these workers are founding and
sustaining orphanages and old folk homes; distributing personal charity
and relief; visiting prisoners; helping hospitals; teaching children;
and ministering to all sorts of needs. Their work, as it comes now and
then in special cases to the attention of individuals of the white world,
forms a splendid bond of encouragement and sympathy, and helps more than
most realize in minimizing racial difficulties and encouraging human
sympathy.[190]
CHAPTER VII
THE AMERICAN FOLK SONG
How black folk sang their sorrow songs in the land of their
bondage and made this music the only American folk music.
“Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God
himself stamped on her bosom; the human spirit in this new world has
expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by
fateful chance the Negro folk-song—the rhythmic cry of the slave—stands
today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful
expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been
neglected, it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but
notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of
the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.”[191]
Around the Negro folk-song there has arisen much of controversy and of
misunderstanding. For a long time they were utterly neglected; then every
once in a while and here and there they forced themselves upon popular
attention. In the thirties, they emerged and in tunes like “Near the lake
where droop the willow” and passed into current song or were caricatured
by the minstrels. Then came Stephen Foster who accompanied a mulatto maid
often to the Negro church and heard the black folk sing; he struck a new
note in songs like “Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Folks at Home” and “Nellie
was a Lady.” But it was left to war and emancipation to discover the real
primitive beauty of this music to the world.
When northern men and women who knew music, met the slaves at Port Royal
after its capture by Federal troops, they set down these songs in their
original form for the first time so that the world might hear and sing
them. The sea islands of the Carolinas where these meetings took place
“with no third witness” were filled with primitive black folk, uncouth
in appearance, and queer in language, but their singing was marvellous.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Miss McKim and others collected these
songs in 1867, making the first serious study of Negro American music.
The preface said:
“The musical capacity of the Negro race has been recognized for so many
years that it is hard to explain why no systematic effort has hitherto
been made to collect and preserve their melodies. More than thirty
years ago those plantation songs made their appearance which were so
extraordinarily popular for a while; and if ‘Coal-black Rose,’ ‘Zip
Coon’ and ‘Ole Virginny nebber tire’ have been succeeded by spurious
imitations, manufactured to suit the somewhat sentimental taste of our
community, the fact that these were called ‘Negro melodies’ was itself a
tribute to the musical genius of the race.
“The public had well-nigh forgotten these genuine slave songs, and with
them the creative power from which they sprung, when a fresh interest
was excited through the educational mission to the Port Royal Islands in
1861.”[192]
Still the world listened only half credulously until the Fisk Jubilee
Singers sang the slave songs “so deeply into the world’s heart that
it can never wholly forget them again.” The story of the Fisk Jubilee
singers is romantic. In abandoned barracks at Nashville hundreds of
colored children were being taught and the dream of a Negro University
had risen in the minds of the white teachers. But even the lavish
contribution for missionary work, which followed the war, had by 1870
begun to fall off. It happened that the treasurer of Fisk, George L.
White, loved music. He began to instruct the Fisk students in singing
and he used the folk-songs. He met all sorts of difficulties. The white
people of the nation and especially the conventional church folk who were
sending missionary money, were not interested in “minstrel ditties.” The
colored people looked upon these songs as hateful relics of slavery.
Nevertheless, Mr. White persisted, gathered a pioneer band of singers and
in 1871 started north.
“It was the sixth day of October in the year of our Lord, one thousand
eight hundred and seventy-one, when George L. White started out from
Fisk School with his eleven students to raise money, that Fisk might
live. Professor Adam K. Spence, who was principal of the school, gave
Mr. White all the money in his possession save one dollar, which he
held back, that the treasury might not be empty. While friends and
parents wept, waved, and feared, the train puffed out of the station.
All sorts of difficulties, obstacles, oppositions and failures faced
them until through wonderful persistence, they arrived at Oberlin, Ohio.
Here the National Council of Congregational Churches was in session.
After repeated efforts, Mr. White gained permission for his singers to
render one song. Many of the members of the Council objected vigorously
to having such singers. During the time of the session the weather
had been dark and cloudy. The sun had not shone one moment, it had not
cast one ray upon the village. The singers went into the gallery of the
church, unobserved by all save the moderator and a few who were on the
rostrum. At a lull in the proceeding, there floated sweetly to the ears
of the audience the measures of ‘Steal Away to Jesus.’ Suddenly the sun
broke through the clouds, shone through the windows upon the singers,
and verily they were a heavenly choir. For a time the Council forgot its
business and called for more and more. It was at this point that Henry
Ward Beecher almost demanded of Mr. White that he cancel all engagements
and come straight to his church in Brooklyn....”
The New York papers ridiculed and sneered at Beecher’s “nigger
minstrels.” But Beecher stuck to his plan and it was only a matter of
hearing them once when audiences went into ecstasies.
“When the Metropolitan newspapers called the company ‘Nigger Minstrels,’
Mr. White was face to face with a situation as serious as it was
awkward. His company had no appropriate name, and the odium of the title
attributed by the New York newspapers pained him intensely. If they were
to be known as ‘Nigger Minstrels,’ they could never realize his vision;
they were both handicapped and checkmated, and their career was dead....
The suggestiveness of the Hebrew Jubilee had been borne in upon his mind
and with joy of a deep conviction he exclaimed, ‘Children, you are the
Jubilee Singers’.”[193]
For seven years the career of this company of Jubilee Singers was a
continual triumph. They crowded the concert halls of New England; they
began to send money back to Fisk; they went to Great Britain and sang
before Queen Victoria, Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Gladstone. Gladstone
cried: “It’s wonderful!” Queen Victoria wept. Moody, the evangelist,
brought them again and again to his London meetings, and the singers
were loaded with gifts. Then they went to Germany, and again Kings and
peasants listened to them. In seven years they were able to pay not
only all of their own expenses but to send $150,000 in cash to Fisk
University, and out of this money was built Jubilee Hall, on the spot
that was once a slave market. “There it stands, lifting up its grateful
head to God in His heaven.”
For a long time after some people continued to sneer at Negro music. They
declared it was a “mere imitation,” that it had little intrinsic value,
that it was not the music of Negroes at all. Gradually, however, this
attitude has completely passed and today critics vie with each other in
giving tribute to this wonderful gift of the black man to America.
Damrosch says: “The Negro’s music isn’t ours, it is the Negro’s. It
has become a popular form of musical expression and is interesting,
but it is not ours. Nothing more characteristic of a race exists, but
it is characteristic of the Negro, not the American race. Through it a
primitive people poured out its emotions with wonderful expressiveness.
It no more expresses our emotions than the Indian music does.”
Recently, numbers of serious studies of the Negro folk-song have been
made. James Weldon Johnson says: “In the ‘spirituals,’ or slave songs,
the Negro has given America not only its only folk-songs, but a mass of
noble music. I never think of this music but that I am struck by the
wonder, the miracle of its production. How did the men who originated
these songs manage to do it? The sentiments are easily accounted for;
they are, for the most part, taken from the Bible. But the melodies,
where did they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet, and others so
wonderfully strong. Take, for instance, ‘Go Down, Moses’; I doubt that
there is a stronger theme in the whole musical literature of the world.
“It is to be noted that whereas the chief characteristic of Ragtime is
rhythm, the chief characteristic of the ‘spirituals’ is melody. The
melodies of ‘Steal Away to Jesus,’ ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ ‘Nobody
Knows de Trouble I See,’ ‘I couldn’t hear Nobody Pray,’ ‘Deep River,’
‘O, Freedom Over Me,’ and many others of these songs possess a beauty
that is—what shall I say? Poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime
the Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen response to the
sheer joy of living; in the ‘spirituals’ he voiced his sense of beauty
and his deep religious feeling.”[194]
H. E. Krehbiel says: “There was sunshine as well as gloom in the life
of the black slaves in the Southern colonies and States, and so we have
songs which are gay as well as grave; but as a rule the finest songs are
the fruits of suffering undergone and the hope of the deliverance from
bondage which was to come with translation to heaven after death. The
oldest of them are the most beautiful, and many of the most striking
have never yet been collected, partly because they contained elements,
melodic as well as rhythmical, which baffled the ingenuity of the early
collectors. Unfortunately, trained musicians have never entered upon the
field, and it is to be feared that it is now too late. The peculiarities
which the collaborators on ‘Slave Songs of the United States’
recognized, but could not imprison on the written page, were elements
which would have been of especial interest to the student of art.
“Is it not the merest quibble to say that these songs are not American?
They were created in America under American influences and by people who
are Americans in the same sense that any other element of our population
is American—every element except the aboriginal.... Is it only an African
who can sojourn here without becoming an American and producing American
things; is it a matter of length of stay in the country? Scarcely that;
or some Negroes would have at least as good a claim on the title as the
descendants of the Puritans and Pilgrims. Negroes figure in the accounts
of his voyages to America made by Columbus.... A year before the English
colonists landed on Plymouth Rock Negroes were sold into servitude in
Virginia.”[195]
The most gifted and sympathetic student of the folk-song in Africa and
America was Natalie Curtis, and it is scarcely necessary to add to what
she has so carefully and sympathetically written. She has traced the
connection between African and Afro-American music which has always been
assumed but never carefully proven. The African rhythm, through the use
of the drum as a leading instrument, produced musical emphasis which we
call syncopation. Primitive music usually shows rhythm and melody of the
voice sung in unison. But in Africa, part singing was developed long
before it appeared in Europe. The great difference between the music of
Africa and the music of Europe lies in rhythm; in Europe the music is
accented on the regular beats of the music while in Africa the accents
fall often on the unstressed beats. It is this that coming down through
the Negro folk-song in America has produced what is known as ragtime.
Mrs. Curtis Burlin shows that the folk-song of the African in America
can be traced direct to Africa: “As a creator of beauty the black man is
capable of contributing to the great art of the world.
“The Negro’s pronounced gift for music is today widely recognized. That
gift, brought to America in slave-ships, was nurtured by that mother of
woe, human slavery, till out of suffering and toil there sprang a music
which speaks to the heart of mankind—the prayer-song of the American
Negro. In Africa is rooted the parent stem of that out-flowering of Negro
folk-song in other lands.
“Through the Negro this country is vocal with a folk-music intimate,
complete and beautiful. It is the Negro music with its by-product of
‘ragtime’ that today most widely influences the popular song-life of
America, and Negro rhythms have indeed captivated the world at large. Nor
may we foretell the impress that the voice of the slave will leave upon
the art of the country—a poetic justice, this! For the Negro everywhere
discriminated against, segregated and shunned, mobbed and murdered—he
it is whose melodies are on all our lips, and whose rhythms impel our
marching feet in a ‘war for democracy.’ The irresistible music that wells
up from this sunny and unresentful people is hummed and whistled, danced
to and marched to, laughed over and wept over, by high and low and rich
and poor throughout the land. The downtrodden black man whose patient
religious faith has kept his heart still unembittered, is fast becoming
the singing voice of all America. And in his song we hear a prophecy of
the dignity and worth of Negro genius.”[196]
The Negro folk-song entered the Church and became the prayer song and
the sorrow song, still with its haunting melody but surrounded by the
inhibitions of a cheap theology and a conventional morality. But the
musical soul of a race unleashed itself violently from these bonds and
in the saloons and brothels of the Mississippi bottoms and gulf coast
flared to that crimson license of expression known as “ragtime,” “jazz”
and the more singular “blues” retaining with all their impossible words
the glamour of rhythm and wild joy. White composers hastily followed with
songs like “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” and numerous successors
in popular favor.
Out of ragtime grew a further development through both white and black
composers. The “blues,” a curious and intriguing variety of love song
from the levees of the Mississippi, became popular and was spread by the
first colored man who was able to set it down, W. C. Handy of Memphis.
Other men, white and colored, from Stephen Foster to our day, have
taken another side of Negro music and developed its haunting themes
and rippling melody into popular songs and into high and fine forms of
modern music, until today the influence of the Negro reaches every part
of American music, of many foreign masters like Dvorak; and certainly no
program of concert music could be given in America without voicing Negro
composers and Negro themes.
We can best end this chapter with the word of a colored man: “But there
is something deeper than the sensuousness of beauty that makes for the
possibilities of the Negro in the realm of the arts, and that is the soul
of the race. The wail of the old melodies and the plaintive quality that
is ever present in the Negro voice are but the reflection of a background
of tragedy. No race can rise to the greatest heights of art until it has
yearned and suffered. The Russians are a case in point. Such has been
their background in oppression and striving that their literature and
art are today marked by an unmistakable note of power. The same future
beckons to the American Negro. There is something very elemental about
the heart of the race, something that finds its origin in the African
forest, in the sighing of the night wind, and in the falling of the
stars. There is something grim and stern about it all, too, something
that speaks of the lash, of the child torn from its mother’s bosom, of
the dead body riddled with bullets and swinging all night from a limb by
the roadside.”[197]
CHAPTER VIII
NEGRO ART AND LITERATURE
How the tragic story of the black slave has become a central
theme of the story of America and has inspired literature and
created art.
The Negro is primarily an artist. The usual way of putting this is to
speak disdainfully of his “sensuous” nature. This means that the only
race which has held at bay the life destroying forces of the tropics,
has gained therefrom in some slight compensation a sense of beauty,
particularly for sound and color, which characterizes the race. The Negro
blood which flowed in the veins of many of the mightiest of the Pharaohs
accounts for much of Egyptian art, and indeed Egyptian civilization owes
much in its origin to the development of the large strain of Negro blood
which manifested itself in every grade of Egyptian society.
Semitic civilization also had its Negroid influences, and these
continually turn toward art as in the case of black Nosseyeb, one of the
five great poets of Damascus under the Ommiades, and the black Arabian
hero, Antar. It was therefore not to be wondered at that in modern days
one of the greatest of modern literatures, the Russian, should have been
founded by Pushkin, the grandson of a full blooded Negro, and that among
the painters of Spain was the mulatto slave, Gomez. Back of all this
development by way of contact, come the artistic sense of the indigenous
Negro as shown in the stone figures of Sherbro, the bronzes of Benin,
the marvelous hand work in iron and other metals which has characterized
the Negro race so long that archaeologists today, with less and less
hesitation, are ascribing the discovery of the welding of iron to the
Negro race.
Beyond the specific ways in which the Negro has contributed to American
art stands undoubtedly his spirit of gayety and the exotic charm which
his presence has loaned the parts of America which were spiritually free
enough to enjoy it. In New Orleans, for instance, after the war of 1812
and among the free people of color there was a beautiful blossoming of
artistic life which the sordid background of slavery had to work hard
to kill. The “people of color” grew in number and waxed wealthy. Famous
streets even today bear testimony of their old importance. Congo Square
in the old Creole quarter where Negroes danced the weird “Bamboula” long
before colored Coleridge-Taylor made it immortal and Gottschalk wrote
his Negro dance. Camp street and Julia street took their names from
the old Negro field and from the woman who owned land along the Canal.
Americans and Spanish both tried to get the support and sympathy of the
free Negroes. The followers of Aaron Burr courted them.
“Writers describing the New Orleans of this period agree in presenting a
picture of a continental city, most picturesque, most un-American, and as
varied in color as a street of Cairo. There they saw French, Spaniards,
English, Bohemians, Negroes, mulattoes, varied clothes, picturesque white
dresses of the fairer women, brilliant cottons of the darker ones. The
streets, banquettes, we should say, were bright with color, the nights
filled with song and laughter. Through the scene, the people of color add
the spice of color; in the life, they add the zest of romance.”[198]
Music is always back of this gay Negro spirit and the folk song which the
Negro brought to America was developed not simply by white men but by the
Negro himself. Musicians and artists sprung from the Louisiana group.
There was Eugene Warburg who distinguished himself as a sculptor in
Italy. There was Victor Sejour who became a poet and composer in France,
Dubuclet became a musician in Bordeaux and the seven Lamberts taught
and composed in America, France and Brazil. One of the brothers Sydney
was decorated for his work by the King of Portugal. Edmund Dèdè became a
director of a leading orchestra in France.[199]
Among other early colored composers of music are J. Hemmenway who lived
in Philadelphia in the twenties; A. J. Conner of Philadelphia between
1846-57 published numbers of compositions; in the seventies Justin
Holland was well known as a composer in Cleveland, Ohio; Samuel Milady,
known by his stage name as Sam Lucas, was born in 1846 and died in 1916.
He wrote many popular ballads, among them “Grandfather’s Clock Was Too
Tall For The Shelf.” George Melbourne, a Negro street minstrel, composed
“Listen to the Mocking-Bird,” although a white man got the credit. James
Bland wrote “Carry me Back to Ole Virginny”; Gussie L. Davis composed
popular music at Cincinnati.[200]
Coming to our day we remember that the Anglo-African Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor received much of his inspiration from his visits to
the American Negro group; then comes Harry T. Burleigh, perhaps the
greatest living song writer in America. Among his works are “Five Songs”
by Laurence Hope; “The Young Warrior,” which became one of the greatest
of the war songs; “The Grey Wolf” and “Ethiopia Saluting the Colors.” His
adaptations of Negro folk-songs are widely known and he assisted Dvorak
in his “New World Symphony.” R. Nathaniel Dett has written “Listen to
the Lambs,” a carol widely known, and “The Magnolia Suite.” Rosamond
Johnson wrote “Under the Bamboo Tree” and a dozen popular favorites
beside choruses and marches. Clarence Cameron White has composed and
adapted and Maud Cuney Hare has revived and explained Creole music.
Edmund T. Jenkins has won medals at the Royal Academy in London. Among
the colored performers on the piano are R. Augustus Lawson, who has often
been soloist at the concerts of the Hartford Philharmonic Orchestra;
Hazel Harrison, a pupil of Busoni; and Helen Hagen who took the Sanford
scholarship at Yale. Carl Diton is a pianist who has transcribed many
Negro melodies. Melville Charlton has done excellent work on the organ.
Then we must remember the Negro singers, the “Black Swan” of the early
19th century whose voice compared with Jenny Lind’s; the Hyer sisters,
Flora Batson, Florence Cole Talbert, and Roland W. Hayes, the tenor
whose fine voice has charmed London, Paris and Vienna and who is now one
of the leading soloists of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
The Negro has been one of the greatest originators of dancing in the
United States and in the world. He created the “cake walk” and most of
the steps in the “clog” dance which has so enthralled theatre audiences.
The modern dances which have swept over the world like the “Tango” and
“Turkey Trot” originated among the Negroes of the West Indies. The Vernon
Castles always told their audiences that their dances were of Negro
origin.[201]
We turn now to other forms of art and more particularly literature. Here
the subject naturally divides itself into three parts: _first_, the
influence which the Negro has had on American literature,—and _secondly_,
the development of a literature for and by Negroes. And lastly the number
of Negroes who have gained a place in National American literature.
From the earliest times the presence of the black man in America has
inspired American writers. Among the early Colonial writers the Negro was
a subject as, for instance, in Samuel Sewall’s “Selling of Joseph,” the
first American anti-slavery tract published in 1700. But we especially
see in the influence of the Negro’s condition in the work of the masters
of the 19th century, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier,
James Russell Lowell, Walt Whitman, Julia Ward Howe, Harriet Beecher
Stowe and Lydia Maria Child. With these must be named the orators Wendell
Phillips, Charles Sumner, John C. Calhoun, Henry Ward Beecher. In our own
day, we have had the writers of fiction, George U. Cable, Thomas Nelson
Page, Thomas Dixson, Ruth McEnery Stewart, William Dean Howells, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson.
It may be said that the influence of the Negro here is a passive
influence and yet one must remember that it would be inconceivable to
have an American literature, even that written by white men, and not have
the Negro as a subject. He has been the lay figure, but after all, the
figure has been alive, it has moved, it has talked, felt and influenced.
In the minds of these and other writers how has the Negro been portrayed?
It is a fascinating subject which I can but barely touch: in the days
of Shakespeare and Southerne the black man of fiction was a man, a
brave, fine, if withal over-trustful and impulsive, hero. In science he
was different but equal, cunning in unusual but mighty possibilities.
Then with the slave trade he suddenly became a clown and dropped
from sight. He emerged slowly beginning about 1830 as a dull stupid
but contented slave, capable of doglike devotion, superstitious and
incapable of education. Then, in the abolition controversy he became a
victim, a man of sorrows, a fugitive chased by blood-hounds, a beautiful
raped octoroon, a crucified Uncle Tom, but a lay figure, objectively
pitiable but seldom subjectively conceived. Suddenly a change came after
Reconstruction. The black man was either a faithful old “Befoh de wah”
darky worshipping lordly white folk, or a frolicking ape, or a villain,
a sullen scoundrel, a violator of womanhood, a low thief and misbirthed
monster. He was sub-normal and congenitally incapable. He was represented
as an unfit survival of Darwinian natural selection. Philanthropy and
religion stood powerless before his pigmy brain and undeveloped morals.
In a “thousands years”? Perhaps. But at present, an upper beast. Out of
this today he is slowly but tentatively, almost apologetically rising—a
somewhat deserving, often poignant, but hopeless figure; a man whose
only proper end is dramatic suicide physically or morally. His trouble
is natural and inborn inferiority, slight by scientific measurement
but sufficient to make absolute limits to his possibilities, save in
exceptional cases.
And here we stand today. As a normal human being reacting humanly to
human problems the Negro has never appeared in the fiction or the science
of white writers, with a bare half dozen exceptions; while to the white
southerner who “knows him best” he is always an idiot or a monster,
and he sees him as such, no matter what is before his very eyes. And
yet, with all this, the Negro has held the stage. In the South he is
everything. You cannot discuss religion, morals, politics, social life,
science, earth or sky, God or devil without touching the Negro. It is
a perennial and continuous and continual subject of books, editorials,
sermons, lectures and smoking car confabs. In the north and west while
seldom in the center, the Negro is always in the wings waiting to appear
or screaming shrill lines off stage. What would intellectual America do
if she woke some fine morning to find no “Negro” Problem?
Coming now to the slowly swelling stream of a distinct group literature,
by and primarily for the Negro, we enter a realm only partially known
to white Americans. First, there come the rich mass of Negro folk lore
transplanted from Africa and developed in America. A white writer, Joel
Chandler Harris, first popularized “Uncle Remus” and “Brer Rabbit” for
white America; but he was simply the deft and singularly successful
translator—the material was Negroid and appears repeatedly among the
black peasants and in various forms and versions. Take for instance the
versions of the celebrated tar-baby story of Joel Chandler Harris. C.
C. Jones took down a striking version apparently direct from Negro lips
early in the 19th century:
“‘Do Buh Wolf, bun me: broke me neck, but don’t trow me in de brier
patch. Lemme dead one time. Don’t tarrify me no mo.’ Buh Wolf yet bin
know wuh Buh Rabbit up teh. Eh tink eh bin guine tare Bur Rabbit hide
off. So, wuh eh do? Eh loose Buh Rabbit from de spakleberry bush, an eh
tek um by de hine leg, an eh swing um roun’, en eh trow um way in de tick
brier patch fuh tare eh hide and cratch eh yeye out. De minnit Buh Rabbit
drap in de brier patch, eh cock up eh tail, eh jump, an holler back to
Buh Wolf: ‘Good bye, Budder! Dis de place me mammy fotch me up,—dis de
place me mammy fotch me up.’ An eh gone before Buh Wolf kin ketch um. Buh
Rabbit too scheemy.”
The Harris version shows the literary touch added by the white man. But
the Negro version told by Jones has all the meat of the primitive tale.
Next we note the folk rhymes and poetry of Negroes, sometimes
accompanying their music and sometimes not. A white instructor in English
literature at the University of Virginia says:
“Of all the builders of the nation the Negro alone has created a species
of lyric verse that all the world may recognize as a distinctly American
production.”
T. W. Talley, a Negro, has recently published an exhaustive collection of
these rhymes. They form an interesting collection of poetry often crude
and commonplace but with here and there touches of real poetry and quaint
humor.[202]
The literary expression of Negroes themselves has had continuous
development in America since the eighteenth century.[203] It may however
be looked upon from two different points of view: We may think of the
writing of Negroes as self-expression and as principally for themselves.
Here we have a continuous line of writers. Only a few of these, however
would we think of as contributing to American literature as such and
yet this inner, smaller stream of Negro literature overflows faintly at
first and now evidently more and more into the wider stream of American
literature; on the other hand there have been figures in American
literature who happen to be of Negro descent and who are but vaguely to
be identified with the group stream as such. Both these points of view
are interesting but let us first take up the succession of authors who
form a group literature by and for Negroes.
As early as the eighteenth century, and even before the Revolutionary
War the first voices of Negro authors were heard in the United States.
Phyllis Wheatley, the black poetess, was easily the pioneer, her first
poems appearing in 1773, and other editions in 1774 and 1793. Her
earliest poem was in memory of George Whitefield. She was honored by
Washington and leading Englishmen and was as a writer above the level of
her American white contemporaries.
She was followed by Richard Allen, first Bishop of the African Methodist
Church whose autobiography, published in 1793 was the beginning of
that long series of personal appears and narratives of which Booker
T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” was the latest. Benjamin Banneker’s
almanacs represented the first scientific work of American Negroes, and
began to be issued in 1792.
Coming now to the first decades of the nineteenth century we find some
essays on freedom by the African Society of Boston, and an apology for
the new Negro church formed in Philadelphia. Paul Cuffe, disgusted with
America, wrote an early account of Sierra Leone, while the celebrated
Lemuel Haynes, ignoring the race question, dipped deeply into the New
England theological controversy about 1815. In 1829 came the first
full-voiced, almost hysterical, protest against slavery and the color
line in David Walker’s Appeal which aroused Southern legislatures to
action. This was followed by the earliest Negro conventions which issued
interesting minutes; two appeals against disfranchisement in Pennsylvania
appeared in this decade, one written by Robert Purvis, who also wrote a
biography of his father-in-law, Mr. James Forten, and the other appeal
written by John Bowers and others. The life of Gustavus Vassa, also known
by his African name of Olaudah Equiana, was published in America in 1837
continuing the interesting personal narratives.
In 1840 some strong writers began to appear. Henry Highland Garnet and
J. W. C. Pennington preached powerful sermons and gave some attention
to Negro history in their pamphlets: R. B. Lewis made a more elaborate
attempt at Negro history. Whitfield’s poems appeared in 1846, and William
Wells Brown began a career of writing which lasted from 1847 until after
the Civil War. He began his literary career by the publication of his
“Narrative of a Fugitive Slave” in 1847. This was followed by a novel in
1853, “Sketches” from abroad in 1855, a play in 1858, “The Black Man” in
1863, “The Negro in the American Rebellion” in 1867, and “The Rising Son”
in 1874. The Colored Convention in Cincinnati and Cleveland published
reports in this decade and Bishop Loguen wrote his life history. In
1845 Douglass’ autobiography made its first appearance, destined to run
through endless editions until the last in 1893. Moreover it was in 1841
that the first Negro magazine appeared in America, edited by George
Hogarth and published by the A. M. E. Church.
In the fifties James Whitfield published further poems, and a new poet
arose in the person of Frances E. W. Harper, a woman of no little ability
who died lately; Martin R. Delaney and William Cooper Nell wrote further
of Negro history, Nell especially making valuable contributions of the
history of the Negro soldiers. Three interesting biographies were added
in this decade to the growing number; Josiah Henson, Samuel C. Ward and
Samuel Northrop; while Catto, leaving general history came down to the
better known history of the Negro church.
In the sixties slave narratives multiplied, like that of Linda Brent,
while two studies of Africa based on actual visits were made by Robert
Campbell and Dr. Alexander Crummell; William Douglass and Bishop Daniel
Payne continued the history of the Negro church, and William Wells Brown
carried forward his work in general Negro history. In this decade, too,
Bishop Tanner began his work in Negro theology.
Most of the Negro talent in the seventies was taken up in politics;
the older men like Bishop Wayman wrote of their experiences; Sojourner
Truth added her story to the slave narratives. A new poet arose in the
person of A. A. Whitman, while James Monroe Trotter was the first to take
literary note of the musical ability of his race. Robert Brown Elliott
stirred the nation by his eloquence in Congress. The Fisk edition of the
Songs of the Jubilee Singers appeared.
In the eighties there are signs of unrest and conflicting streams of
thought. On the one hand the rapid growth of the Negro church is shown
by the writers on church subjects like Moore and Wayman. The historical
spirit was especially strong. Still wrote of the Underground Railroad;
Simmons issued his interesting biographical dictionary, and the greatest
historian of the race appeared when George W. Williams issued his
two-volume history of the Negro Race in America. The political turmoil
was reflected in Langston’s Freedom and Citizenship, Fortune’s Black and
White, and Straker’s New South, and found its bitterest arraignment in
Turner’s pamphlets; but with all this went other new thought: Scarborough
published “First Greek Lessons”; Bishop Payne issued his Treatise on
Domestic Education, and Stewart studied Liberia.
In the nineties came histories, essays, novels and poems, together with
biographies and social studies. The history was represented by Payne’s
History of the A. M. E. Church, Hood’s One Hundred Years of the A. M.
E. Zion Church, Anderson’s sketch of Negro Presbyterianism and Hagood’s
Colored Man in the M. E. Church; general history of the older type
was represented by R. L. Perry’s Cushite and of the newer type in E.
A. Johnson’s histories, while one of the secret societies found their
historian in Brooks; Crogman’s essays appeared and Archibald Grimke’s
biographies. The race question was discussed in Frank Grimke’s published
sermons, social studies were made by Penn, Wright, Mossell, Crummell,
Majors and others. Most notable, however, was the rise of the Negro
novelist and poet with national recognition: Frances Harper was still
writing and Griggs began his racial novels, but both of these spoke
primarily to the Negro race; on the other hand, Chesnutt’s six novels
and Dunbar’s inimitable works spoke of the whole nation. J. T. Wilson’s
“Black Phalanx,” the most complete study of the Negro soldier, came in
these years.
Booker T. Washington’s work began with his address at Atlanta in 1895,
“Up From Slavery” in 1901, “Working with the Hands” in 1904, and “The Man
Farthest Down” in 1912. The American Negro Academy, a small group, began
the publication of occasional papers in 1897 and has published a dozen
or more numbers including a “Symposium on the Negro and the Elective
Franchise” in 1905, a “Comparative Study of the Negro Problem” in 1899,
Love’s “Disfranchisement of the Negro” in 1899, Grimke’s Study of Denmark
Vesey in 1901 and Steward’s “Black St. Domingo Legion” in 1899. Since
1900 the stream of Negro writing has continued. Dunbar has found a
successor in the critic and compiler of anthologies, W. S. Braithwaite;
Booker T. Washington has given us his biography and Story of the Negro;
Kelly Miller’s trenchant essays have appeared in book form and he has
issued numbers of critical monographs on the Negro problem with wide
circulation. Scientific historians have appeared in Benjamin Brawley and
Carter Woodson and George W. Mitchell. Sinclair’s Aftermath of Slavery
has attracted attention, as have the studies made by Atlanta University.
The Negro in American Sculpture has been studied by H. F. M. Murray.
The development in poetry has been significant, beginning with Phyllis
Wheatley.[204] Jupiter Hammon came in the 18th century, George M. Horton
in the early part of the 19th century followed by Frances Harper who
began publishing in 1854 and A. A. Whitman whose first attempts at epic
poetry were published in the seventies. In 1890 came the first thin
volume of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the undoubted laureate of the race, who
published poems and one or two novels up until the beginning of the 20th
century. He was succeeded by William Stanley Braithwaite whose fame rests
chiefly upon his poetic criticism and his anthologies, and finally by
James Weldon Johnson, Claud McKay who came out of the West Indies with a
new and sincere gift, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Johnson and Jessie Fauset.
Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., Langston Hughes, Roscoe C. Jamison and Countée
Cullen have done notable work in verse. Campbell, Davis and others have
continued the poetic tradition of Negro dialect.
On the whole, the literary output of the American Negro has been both
large and creditable, although, of course, comparatively little known;
few great names have appeared and only here and there work that could be
called first class, but this is not a peculiarity of Negro literature.
The time has not yet come for the great development of American Negro
literature. The economic stress is too great and the racial persecution
too bitter to allow the leisure and the poise for which literature calls.
“The Negro in the United States is consuming all his intellectual energy
in this gruelling race-struggle.” And the same statement may be made
in a general way about the white South. Why does not the white South
produce literature and art? The white South, too, is consuming all of its
intellectual energy in this lamentable conflict. Nearly all of the mental
efforts of the white South run through one narrow channel. The life of
every southern white man and all of his activities are impassably limited
by the ever present Negro problem. And that is why, as Mr. H. L. Mencken
puts it, in all that vast region, with its thirty or forty million people
and its territory as large as half a dozen Frances or Germanys, “there is
not a single poet, not a serious historian, not a creditable composer,
not a critic good or bad, not a dramatist dead or alive.”
On the other hand, never in the world has a richer mass of material been
accumulated by a people than that which the Negroes possess today and are
becoming increasingly conscious of. Slowly but surely they are developing
artists of technic who will be able to use this material. The nation
does not notice this for everything touching the Negro has hitherto been
banned by magazines and publishers unless it took the form of caricature
or bitter attack, or was so thoroughly innocuous as to have no literary
flavor. This attitude shows signs of change at last.
Most of the names in this considerable list except those toward the last
would be unknown to the student of American literature. Nevertheless they
form a fairly continuous tradition and a most valuable group expression.
From them several have arisen, as I have said, to become figures in the
main stream of American literature. Phyllis Wheatley was an American
writer of Negro descent just as Dumas was a French writer of Negro
descent. She was the peer of her best American contemporaries but she
represented no conscious Negro group. Lemuel Haynes wrote for Americans
rather than for Negroes.
Dunbar occupies a unique place in American literature. He raised a
dialect and a theme from the minstrel stage to literature and became
and remains a national figure. Charles W. Chesnutt followed him as a
novelist, and many white people read in form of fiction a subject which
they did not want to read or hearken to. He gained his way unaided and
by sheer merit and is a recognized American novelist. Braithwaite is a
critic whose Negro descent is not generally known and has but slightly
influenced his work. His place in American literature is due more to his
work as a critic and anthologist than to his work as a poet. “There is
still another rôle he has played, that of friend of poetry and poets. It
is a recognized fact that in the work which preceded the present revival
of poetry in the United States, no one rendered more unremitting and
valuable service than Mr. Braithwaite. And it can be said that no future
study of American poetry of this age can be made without reference to
Braithwaite.”
Of McKay’s poems, Max Eastman writes that it “should be illuminating to
observe that while these poems are characteristic of that race as we most
admire it—they are gentle, simple, candid, brave and friendly, quick of
laughter and of tears—yet they are still more characteristic of what is
deep and universal in mankind. There is no special or exotic kind of
merit in them, no quality that demands a transmutation of our own natures
to perceive. Just as the sculptures and wood and ivory carvings of the
vast forgotten African Empires of Ife and Benin, although so wistful in
their tranquility, are tranquil in the possession of the qualities of all
classic and great art, so these poems, the purest of them, move with a
sovereignty that is never new to the lovers of the high music of human
utterance.”[205]
The later writers like Jean Toomer, Claud McKay, Jessie Fauset and others
have come on the stage when the stream of Negro literature has grown to
be of such importance and gained so much of technique and merit that
it tends to merge into the broad flood of American literature and any
notable Negro writer became _ipso facto_ a national writer.
One must not forget the Negro orator. While in the white world the human
voice as a vehicle of information and persuasion has waned in importance
until the average man is somewhat suspicious of “eloquence,” in the Negro
world the spoken word is still dominant and Negro orators have wielded
great influence upon both white and black from the time of Frederick
Douglass and Samuel Ward down to the day of J. C. Price and Booker T.
Washington. There is here, undoubtedly, something of unusual gift and
personal magnetism.
One must note in this connection the rise and spread of a Negro
press—magazines and weeklies which are voicing to the world with
increasing power the thought of American Negroes. The influence of this
new force in America is being recognized and the circulation of these
papers aggregate more than a million copies.
On the stage the Negro has naturally had a most difficult chance to be
recognized. He has been portrayed by white dramatists and actors, and for
a time it seemed but natural for a character like Othello to be drawn, or
for Southerne’s Oroonoko to be presented in 1696 in England with a black
Angola prince as its hero. Beginning, however, with the latter part of
the 18th century the stage began to make fun of the Negro and the drunken
character Mungo was introduced at Drury Lane.
In the United States this tradition was continued by the “Negro
Minstrels” which began with Thomas D. Rice’s imitation of a Negro
cripple, Jim Crow. Rice began his work in Louisville in 1828 and had
great success. Minstrel companies imitating Negro songs and dances
and blackening their faces gained a great vogue until long after the
Civil War. Negroes themselves began to appear as principals in minstrel
companies after a time and indeed as early as 1820 there was an
“African company” playing in New York. No sooner had the Negro become
the principal in the minstrel shows than he began to develop and uplift
the art. This took a long time but eventually there appeared Cole and
Johnson, Ernest Hogan and Williams and Walker. Their development of a new
light comedy marked an epoch and Bert Williams was at his recent death
without doubt the leading comedian on the American stage.
In the legitimate drama there was at first no chance for the Negro in the
United States. Ira Aldridge, born in Maryland, had to go to Europe for
opportunity. There he became associated with leading actors like Edmund
Keene and was regarded in the fifties as one of the two or three greatest
actors in the world. He was honored and decorated by the King of Sweden,
the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia. He
had practically no successor until Charles Gilpin triumphed in “The
Emperor Jones” in New York during the season 1920-21.
Efforts to develop a new distinctly racial drama and portray the dramatic
struggle of the Negro in America and elsewhere have rapidly been made.
Mrs. Emily Hapgood made determined effort to initiate a Negro theatre.
She chose the plays of Ridgeley Torrence, a white playwright, who wrote
for the Negro players “Granny Maumee” and “The Rider of Dreams,” pieces
singularly true to Negro genius. The plays were given with unusual merit
and gained the highest praise.
This movement, interrupted by the war, has been started again by the
Ethiopian Players of Chicago and especially by the workers at Howard
University where a Negro drama with Negro instructors, Negro themes and
Negro players is being developed. One of the most interesting pageants
given in America was written, staged and performed by Negroes in New
York, Philadelphia and Washington.
Charles Gilpin had been trained with Williams and Walker and other
colored companies. He got his first chance on the legitimate stage by
playing the part of Curtis in Drinkwater’s “Abraham Lincoln.” Then he
became the principal in O’Neill’s wonderful play and was nominated by the
Drama League in 1921 as one of the ten persons who had contributed most
to the American theatre during the year. Paul Robeson and Evelyn Preer
are following Gilpin’s footsteps.
There is no doubt of the Negro’s dramatic genius. Stephen Graham writes:
“I visited one evening a Negro theatre where a musical comedy was going
on—words and music both by Negroes. It opened with the usual singing and
dancing chorus of Negro girls. They were clad in yellow and crimson and
mauve combinations with white tapes on one side from the lace edge of the
knicker to their dusky arms. They danced from the thigh rather than from
the knee, moving waist and bosom in unrestrained undulation, girls with
large, startled seeming eyes and uncontrollable masses of dark hair.... A
dance of physical joy and abandon, with no restraint in the toes or the
knees, no veiling of the eyes, no half shutting of the lips, no holding
in of the hair. Accustomed to the very aesthetic presentment of the
Bacchanalia in the Russian ballet, it might be difficult to call one of
those Negro dancers a Bacchante, and yet there was one whom I remarked
again and again, a Queen of Sheba in her looks, a face like starry night,
and she was clad slightly in mauve, and went into such ecstacies during
the many encores that her hair fell down about her bare shoulders, and
her cheeks and knees, glistening with perspiration, outshone her eyes....
I had seen nothing so pretty or so amusing, so bewilderingly full of life
and color, since Sanine’s production of the ‘Fair of Sorochinsky’ in
Moscow.”
Turning now to painting, we note a young African painter contemporary
with Phyllis Wheatley who had gained some little renown. Then a half
century ago came E. M. Banister, the center of a group of artists forming
the Rhode Island Art Club, and one of whose pictures took a medal at the
Centennial Exposition in 1876.
William A. Harper died in 1910. His “Avenue of Poplars” took a prize of
$100 at the Chicago Art Institute. William Edward Scott studied in Paris
under Tanner. His picture “La Pauvre Voisine” was hung in the salon in
1910 and bought by the government of the Argentine Republic. Another
picture was hung in Paris and took first prize at the Indiana State Fair,
and a third picture was exhibited in the Royal Academy in London. Lately
Mr. Scott has specialized in mural painting. His work is found in ten
public schools in Chicago, in four in Indianapolis and in the latter city
he decorated two units in the City Hospital with 300 life sized pictures.
In many of these pictures he has especially emphasized the Negro type.
Richard Brown, Edwin Harleston, Albert A. Smith, Laura Wheeler and a
number of rising young painters have shown the ability of the Negro in
this line of art; but their dean is, of course, Henry Ossawa Tanner.
Tanner is today one of the leading painters of the world and universally
is so recognized. He was born an American Negro in Pittsburgh in 1859,
the son of an African Methodist minister; he studied at the Academy of
Fine Arts in Philadelphia and became a photographer in Atlanta. Afterward
he taught at Clark University in Atlanta. In all this time he had sold
less than $200 worth of pictures; but finally he got to Paris and was
encouraged by Benjamin Constant. He soon turned toward his greatest
forte, religious pictures. His “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” was hung in
the salon in 1896 and the next year the “Raising of Lazarus” was bought
by the French government and hung in the Luxembourg. Since then he has
won medals in all the greatest expositions, and his works are sought by
connoisseurs. He has recently received knighthood in the French Legion of
Honor.
In sculpture we may again think of two points of view,—first, there is
the way in which the Negro type has figured in American sculpture as, for
instance, the libyan Sybil of W. A. Story, Bissell’s Emancipation group
in Scotland, the Negro woman on the military monument in Detroit, Ball’s
Negro in the various emancipation groups, Ward’s colored woman on the
Beecher monument, the panel on the Cleveland monument of Scofield, Africa
in D. C. French’s group in front of the Custom’s House in New York City,
Calder’s black boy in the Nations of the West group in the Panama-Pacific
exhibition and, of course, the celebrated Shaw monument in Boston.[206]
On the other hand, there have been a few Negro sculptors, three of whom
merit mention: Edmonia Lewis, who worked during the Civil War, Meta
Warrick Fuller, a pupil of Rodin, and May Howard Jackson, who has done
some wonderful work in the portraying of the mulatto type.
To appraise rightly this body of art one must remember that it represents
mainly the work of those artists whom accident set free; if the artist
had a white face his Negro blood did not militate against him in the
fight for recognition; if his Negro blood was visible white relatives may
have helped him; in a few cases ability was united to indomitable will.
But the shrinking, modest, black artist without special encouragement had
little or no chance in a world determined to make him a menial. Today the
situation is changing. The Negro world is demanding expression in art and
beginning to pay for it. The white world is able to see dimly beyond the
color line. This sum of accomplishment then is but a beginning and an
imperfect indication of what the Negro race is capable of in America and
in the world.
Science, worse luck, has in these drab days little commerce with art
and yet for lack of better place a word may drop here of the American
Negro’s contribution. Science today is a matter chiefly for endowed
fellowships and college chairs. Negroes have small chance here because
of race exclusion and yet no scientist in the world can today write
of insects and ignore the work of C. H. Turner of St. Louis; or of
insanity and forget Dr. S. C. Fuller of Massachusetts. Ernest Just’s
investigations of the origin of life make him stand among the highest
two or three modern scientists in that line and the greatest American
interpreter of Wasserman reactions is a colored man; Dr. Julien H. Lewis
of the University of Chicago, is building a reputation in serology. There
are also a number of deft Negro surgeons including Dr. Dan Williams who
first sewed up a wounded human heart. The great precursors of all these
colored men of science were Thomas Derham and Benjamin Banneker.
Derham was a curiosity more than a great scientist measuring by absolute
standards, and yet in the 18th century and at the age of twenty-six he
was regarded as one of the most eminent physicians in New Orleans. Dr.
Rush of Philadelphia testified to his learning and ability.
Benjamin Banneker was a leading American scientist. He was the grandson
of an English woman and her black slave. Their daughter married a Negro
and Benjamin was their only son. Born in 1731 in Maryland he was educated
in a private school with whites and spent his life on his father’s farm.
He had taste for mathematics and early constructed an ingenious clock.
He became expert in the solution of difficult mathematical problems,
corresponding with interested persons of leisure.
Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Marquis de Condorcet: “We now have in the
United States a Negro, the son of a black man born in Africa and a black
woman born in the United States, who is a very respectable mathematician.
I procured him to be employed under one of our chief directors in laying
out the new Federal City on the Potomac and in the intervals of his
leisure, while on that work, he made an almanac for the next year, which
he sent me in his own handwriting and which I enclose to you. I have
seen very elegant solutions of geometrical problems by him. Add to this
that he is a very worthy and respectable member of society. He is a
free man. I shall be delighted to see these instances of moral eminence
so multiplied as to prove that the want of talents observed in them,
is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding
from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect
depends.”[207]
Banneker became greatly interested in astronomy. He made a number of
calculations and finally completed an almanac covering the year 1792. A
member of John Adams’ cabinet had this almanac published in Baltimore.
This patron, James McHenry, said that the almanac was begun and finished
without outside assistance except the loan of books “so that whatever
merit is attached to his present performance, is exclusively and
peculiarly his own.” The publishers declared that the almanac met the
approbation of several of the most distinguished astronomers of America.
The almanac was published yearly until 1802. When the City of Washington
was laid out in 1793 under Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant, President
Washington at the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson appointed Banneker as
one of the six commissioners. He performed a most important part of the
mathematical calculations of the survey and sat in conference with the
other commissioners. Later he wrote essays on bees and studied methods
to promote peace, suggesting a Secretary of Peace in the president’s
cabinet. He “was a brave looking pleasant man with something very noble
in his appearance.” His color was not jet black but decided Negroid. He
died in 1806, with both an American and European reputation and was among
the most learned men of his day in America.
CHAPTER IX
THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT
How the fine sweet spirit of black folk, despite superstition
and passion has breathed the soul of humility and forgiveness
into the formalism and cant of American religion.
Above and beyond all that we have mentioned, perhaps least tangible but
just as true, is the peculiar spiritual quality which the Negro has
injected into American life and civilization. It is hard to define or
characterize it—a certain spiritual joyousness; a sensuous, tropical love
of life, in vivid contrast to the cool and cautious New England reason; a
slow and dreamful conception of the universe, a drawling and slurring of
speech, an intense sensitiveness to spiritual values—all these things and
others like to them, tell of the imprint of Africa on Europe in America.
There is no gainsaying or explaining away this tremendous influence of
the contact of the north and south, of black and white, of Anglo Saxon
and Negro.
One way this influence has been brought to bear is through the actual
mingling of blood. But this is the smaller cause of Negro influence.
Heredity is always stronger through the influence of acts and deeds and
imitations than through actual blood descent; and the presence of the
Negro in the United States quite apart from the mingling of blood has
always strongly influenced the land. We have spoken of its influence in
politics, literature and art, but we have yet to speak of that potent
influence in another sphere of the world’s spiritual activities: religion.
America early became a refuge for religion—a place of mighty spaces and
glorious physical and mental freedom where silent men might sit and
think quietly of God and his world. Hither out of the blood and dust of
war-wrecked Europe with its jealousies, blows, persecutions and fear
of words and thought, came Puritans, Anabaptists, Catholics, Quakers,
Moravians, Methodists—all sorts of men and “isms” and sects searching for
God and Truth in the lonely bitter wilderness.
Hither too came the Negro. From the first he was the concrete test of
that search for Truth, of the strife toward a God, of that body of belief
which is the essence of true religion. His presence rent and tore and
tried the souls of men. “Away with the slave!” some cried—but where away
and why? Was not his body there for work and his soul—what of his soul?
Bring hither the slaves of all Africa and let us convert their souls,
this is God’s good reason for slavery. But convert them to what? to
freedom? to emancipation? to being white men? Impossible. Convert them,
yes. But let them still be slaves for their own good and ours. This was
quibbling and good men felt it, but at least here was a practical path,
follow it.
Thus arose the great mission movements to the blacks. The Catholic Church
began it and not only were there Negro proselytes but black priests and
an order of black monks in Spanish America early in the 16th century.
In the middle of the 17th century a Negro freedman and charcoal burner
lived to see his son, Francisco Xavier de Luna Victoria, raised to head
the Bishopric of Panama where he reigned eight years as the first native
Catholic Bishop in America.
In Spanish America and in French America the history of Negro religion is
bound up with the history of the Catholic Church. On the other hand in
the present territory of the United States with the exception of Maryland
and Louisiana organized religion was practically and almost exclusively
Protestant and Catholics indeed were often bracketed with Negroes for
persecution. They could not marry Protestants at one time in colonial
South Carolina; Catholics and Negroes could not appear in court as
witnesses in Virginia by the law of 1705; Negroes and Catholics were held
to be the cause of the “Negro plot” in New York in 1741.
The work then of the Catholic Church among Negroes began in the United
States well into the 19th century and by Negroes themselves. In
Baltimore, for instance, in 1829, colored refugees from the French West
Indies established a sisterhood and academy and gave an initial endowment
of furniture, real estate and some $50,000 in money. In 1842 in New
Orleans, four free Negro women gave their wealth to form the Sisters of
the Holy Family and this work expanded and grew especially after 1893
when a mulatto, Thomy Lafon, endowed the work with over three quarters
of a million dollars, his life savings. Later, in 1896, a colored man,
Colonel John McKee of Philadelphia, left a million dollars in real estate
to the Catholic Church for colored and white orphans.
Outside of these colored sisterhoods and colored philanthropists, the
church hesitated long before it began any systematic proselyting among
Negroes. This was because of the comparative weakness of the church in
early days and later when the Irish migration strengthened it the new
Catholics were thrown into violent economic competition with slaves and
free Negroes, and their fight to escape slave competition easily resolved
itself into a serious anti-Negro hatred which was back of much of the
rioting in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. It was not then until
the 20th century that the church began active work by establishing a
special mission for Negroes and engaging in it nearly two hundred white
priests. This new impetus was caused by the benevolence of Katherine
Drexel and the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Notwithstanding all this
and since the beginning of the 18th century only six Negroes have been
ordained to the Catholic priesthood.
The main question of the conversion of the Negro to Christianity in the
United States was therefore the task of the Protestant Church and it
was, if the truth must be told, a task which it did not at all relish.
The whole situation was fraught with perplexing contradictions; Could
Christians be slaves? Could slaves be Christians? Was the object of
slavery the Christianizing of the black man, and when the black man was
Christianized was the mission of slavery done and ended? Was it possible
to make modern Christians of these persons whom the new slavery began
to paint as brutes? The English Episcopal Church finally began the
work in 1701 through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
It had notable officials, the Archbishop of Canterbury being its first
president; it worked in America 82 years, accomplishing something but
after all not very much, on account of the persistent objection of the
masters. The Moravians were more eager and sent missionaries to the
Negroes, converting large numbers in the West Indies and some in the
United States in the 18th century. Into the new Methodist Church which
came to America in 1766, large numbers of Negroes poured from the first,
and finally the Baptists in the 18th century had at least one fourth of
their membership composed of Negroes, so that in 1800 there were 14,000
black Methodists and some 20,000 black Baptists.[208]
It must not be assumed that this missionary work acted on raw material.
Rather it reacted and was itself influenced by a very definite and
important body of thought and belief on the part of the Negroes.
Religion in the United States was not simply brought to the Negro by
the missionaries. To treat it in that way is to miss the essence of the
Negro action and reaction upon American religion. We must think of the
transplanting of the Negro as transplanting to the United States a
certain spiritual entity, and an unbreakable set of world-old beliefs,
manners, morals, superstitions and religious observances. The religion
of Africa is the universal animism or fetishism of primitive peoples,
rising to polytheism and approaching monotheism chiefly, but not wholly,
as a result of Christian and Islamic missions. Of fetishism there is much
misapprehension. It is not mere senseless degradation. It is a philosophy
of life. Among primitive Negroes there can be, as Miss Kingsley reminds
us, no such divorce of religion from practical life as is common in
civilized lands. Religion is life, and fetish an expression of the
practical recognition of dominant forces in which the Negro lives. To him
all the world is spirit. Miss Kingsley says: “It is this power of being
able logically to account for everything that is, I believe, at the back
of the tremendous permanency of fetish in Africa, and the cause of many
of the relapses into it by Africans converted to other religions; it is
also the explanation of the fact that white men who live in the districts
where death and danger are everyday affairs, under a grim pall of
boredom, are liable to believe in fetish, though ashamed of so doing. For
the African, whose mind has been soaked in fetish during his early and
most impressionable years, the voice of fetish is almost irresistible
when affliction comes to him.”[209]
At first sight it would seem that slavery completely destroyed every
vestige of spontaneous social movement among the Negroes; the home had
deteriorated; political authority and economic initiative was in the
hands of the masters; property, as a social institution, did not exist
on the plantation; and, indeed, it is usually assumed by historians and
sociologists that every vestige of internal development disappeared,
leaving the slaves no means of expression for their common life, thought,
and striving. This is not strictly true; the vast power of the priest
in the African state still survived; his realm alone—the province of
religion and medicine—remained largely unaffected by the plantation
system in many important particulars. The Negro priest, therefore, early
became an important figure on the plantation and found his function as
the interpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and
as the one who expressed, rudely, but picturesquely, the longing and
disappointment and resentment of a stolen people. From such beginnings
arose and spread with marvellous rapidity the Negro church, the first
distinctively Negro American social institution. It was not at first
by any means a Christian Church, but a mere adaptation of those
heathen rites which we roughly designate by the term Obe Worship or
“Voodooism.” Association and missionary effort soon gave these rites a
veneer of Christianity, and gradually, after two centuries, the Church
became Christian, with a simple Calvinistic creed, but with many of
the old customs still clinging to the services. It is this historic
fact that the Negro Church today bases itself upon the sole surviving
social institution of the African fatherland, that accounts for its
extraordinary growth and vitality. We easily forget that in the United
States today there is a Church organization for every sixty Negro
families. This institution, therefore, naturally assumed many functions
which the other harshly suppressed social organs had to surrender; the
Church became the center of amusements, of what little spontaneous
economic activity remained, of education, and of all social intercourse,
of music and art.[210]
For these reasons the tendency of the Negro worshippers from the very
first was to integrate into their own organizations. As early as 1775
distinct Negro congregations with Negro ministers began to appear here
and there in the United States. They multiplied, were swept away,
effort was made to absorb them in the white church, but they kept on
growing until they established national bodies with Episcopal control or
democratic federation and these organizations today form the strongest,
most inclusive and most vital of the Negro organizations. They count in
the United States four million members and their churches seat these four
million and six million other guests. They are houses in 40,000 centers,
worth $60,000,000 and have some 200,000 leaders.
On the part of the white church this tendency among the Negroes met with
alternate encouragement and objection: encouragement because they did not
want Negroes in their churches even when they occupied the back seats or
in the gallery; objection when the church became, as it so often did, a
center of intelligent Negro life and even of plotting against slavery.
There arose out of the church the first leaders of the Negro group; and
in the first rank among these stands Richard Allen.[211]
Richard Allen was born in 1760 as a slave in Philadelphia and was
licensed to preach in 1782. He was ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury
and he led the Negroes in their secession from St. George’s Church in
Philadelphia when they tried to stop black folk from praying on the main
floor. He formed first the Free African Society and finally established
Bethel Church.
As this church grew and multiplied it became the African Methodist
Episcopal Church which now boasts three quarters of a million members.
Allen was its first bishop. With Allen was associated Absalom Jones, born
a slave in Delaware in 1746. He became the first Negro priest in the
Episcopal Church. John Gloucester became the pioneer Negro minister among
colored Presbyterians and gave that church his four sons as ministers.
George Leile became a missionary of the American Negroes to the Negroes
of Jamaica and began missionary work on that island while Lott Carey
in a similar way became a missionary to Africa. Then came Nat Turner,
the preacher revolutionist. James Varick, a free negro of New York who
was the first bishop of the black Zion Methodist revolt, and afterward
there followed the stream of Negro leaders who have built and led the
organization of colored churches. But this is only part of the story.
It will be seen that the development of the Negro church was not separate
from the white. Black preachers led white congregations, white preachers
addressed blacks. In many other ways Negroes influenced white religion
continuously and tremendously. There was the “Shout,” combining the
trance and demoniac possession as old as the world, and revivified and
made widespread by the Negro religious devotees in America. Methodist and
Baptist ways of worship, songs and religious dances absorbed much from
the Negroes and whatever there is in American religion today of stirring
and wild enthusiasm, of loud conversions and every day belief in an
anthropomorphic God owes its origin in a no small measure to the black
man.
Of course most of the influence of the Negro preachers was thrown into
their own churches and to their own people and it was from the Negro
church as an organization that Negro religious influence spread most
widely to white people. Many would say that this influence had little
that was uplifting and was a detriment rather than an advantage in that
it held back and holds back the South particularly in its religious
development. There is no doubt that influences of a primitive sort and
customs that belong to the unlettered childhood of the race rather than
to the thinking adult life of civilization crept in with the religious
influence of the slave. Much of superstition, even going so far as
witchcraft, conjury and blood sacrifice for a long time marked Negro
religion here and there in the swamps and islands. But on the other hand
it is just as true that the cold formalism of upper class England and
New England needed the wilder spiritual emotionalism of the black man to
weld out of both a rational human religion based on kindliness and social
uplift; and whether the influence of Negro religion was on the whole good
or bad, the fact remains that it was potent in the white South and still
is.
Several black leaders of white churches are worth remembering.[212]
Lemuel Hayes was born in Connecticut in 1753 of a black father and white
mother. He received his Master of Arts from Middlebury College in 1804,
was a soldier in the Revolution and pastored various churches in New
England. “He was the embodiment of piety and honesty.” Harry Hosier, the
black servant and companion of Bishop Asbury, was called by Dr. Benjamin
Rush, the greatest orator in America. He travelled north and south and
preached to white and black between 1784 and his death in 1810.
John Chavis was a full-blooded Negro, born in Granville county, N. C.,
near Oxford, in 1753. He was born free and was sent to Princeton, and
studied privately under Dr. Witherspoon, where he did well. He went to
Virginia to preach to Negroes. In 1802, in the county court, his freedom
and character were certified to and it was declared that he had passed
“through a regular course of academic studies” at what is now Washington
and Lee University. In 1805 he returned to North Carolina, where he, in
1809 was made a licentiate in the Presbyterian Church and preached. His
English was remarkably pure, his manner impressive, his explanations
clear and concise. For a long time he taught school and had the best
whites as pupils—a United States senator, the sons of a chief justice
of North Carolina, a governor of the state and many others. Some of his
pupils boarded in his family, and his school was regarded as the best in
the State. “All accounts agree that John Chavis was a gentleman” and he
was received socially among the best whites and asked to table. In 1830
he was stopped from preaching by the law. Afterward he taught school for
free Negroes in Raleigh.
Henry Evans was a full-blooded Virginia free Negro, and was the pioneer
of Methodism in Fayetteville, N. C. He found the Negroes there, about
1800, without religious instruction. He began preaching and the town
council ordered him away; he continued and whites came to hear him.
Finally the white auditors outnumbered the black, and sheds were erected
for Negroes at the side of the church. The gathering became a regular
Methodist Church, with a white and Negro membership, but Evans continued
to preach. He exhibited “rare self-control before the most wretched of
castes! Henry Evans did much good, but he would have done more good had
his spirit been untrammelled by this sense of inferiority.”[213]
His dying words uttered as he stood, aged and bent beside his pulpit, are
of singular pathos:
“I have come to say my last word to you. It is this: None but Christ.
Three times I have had my life in jeopardy for preaching the gospel to
you. Three times I have broken ice on the edge of the water and swam
across the Cape Fear to preach the gospel to you; and, if in my last
hour I could trust to that, or anything but Christ crucified, for my
salvation, all should be lost and my soul perish forever.”
Early in the nineteenth century, Ralph Freeman was a slave in Anson
county, N. C. He was a full-blooded Negro, and was ordained and became an
able Baptist preacher. He baptised and administered communion, and was
greatly respected. When the Baptists split on the question of missions he
sided with the anti-mission side. Finally the law forbade him to preach.
The story of Jack of Virginia is best told in the words of a Southern
writer:
“Probably the most interesting case in the whole South is that of an
African preacher of Nottoway county, popularly known as ‘Uncle Jack,’
whose services to white and black were so valuable that a distinguished
minister of the Southern Presbyterian Church felt called upon to memorize
his work in a biography.
“Kidnapped from his idolatrous parents in Africa, he was brought over
in one of the last cargoes of slaves admitted to Virginia and sold
to a remote and obscure planter in Nottoway county, a region at that
time in the backwoods and destitute particularly as to religious life
and instruction. He was converted under the occasional preaching of
Rev. Dr. John Blair Smith, President of Hampden-Sidney College, and of
Dr. William Hill and Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton, then young
theologues, and by hearing the scriptures read. Taught by his master’s
children to read, he became so full of the spirit and knowledge of the
Bible that he was recognized among the whites as a powerful expounder of
Christian doctrine, was licensed to preach by the Baptist Church, and
preached from plantation to plantation within a radius of thirty miles,
as he was invited by overseers or masters. His freedom was purchased by
a subscription of whites, and he was given a home and a tract of land
for his support. He organized a large and orderly Negro church, and
exercised such a wonderful controlling influence over the private morals
of his flock that masters, instead of punishing their slaves, often
referred them to the discipline of their pastor, which they dreaded far
more.
“He stopped a heresy among the Negro Christians of Southern Virginia,
defeating in open argument a famous fanatical Negro preacher named
Campbell, who advocated noise and ‘the spirit’ against the Bible, winning
over Campbell’s adherents in a body. For over forty years and until he
was nearly a hundred years of age, he labored successfully in public and
private among black and whites, voluntarily giving up his preaching in
obedience to the law of 1832, the result of ‘Old Nat’s war.’...
“The most refined and aristocratic people paid tribute to him, and he
was instrumental in the conversion of many whites. Says his biographer,
Rev. Dr. William S. White: ‘He was invited into their houses, sat with
their families, took part in their social worship, sometimes leading the
prayer at the family altar. Many of the most intelligent people attended
upon his ministry and listened to his sermons with great delight. Indeed,
previous to the year 1825, he was considered by the best judges to be the
best preacher in that county. His opinions were respected, his advice
followed, and yet he never betrayed the least symptoms of arrogance or
self-conceit. His dwelling was a rude log cabin, his apparel of the
plainest and coarsest materials.’ This was because he wished to be fully
identified with his class. He refused gifts of better clothing saying
‘These clothes are a great deal better than are generally worn by people
of my color, and besides if I wear them I find shall be obliged to think
about them even at meeting’.”
All this has to do with organized religion.
But back of all this and behind the half childish theology of formal
religion there has run in the heart of black folk the greatest of human
achievements, love and sympathy, even for their enemies, for those
who despised them and hurt them and did them nameless ill. They have
nursed the sick and closed the staring eyes of the dead. They have given
friendship to the friendless, they have shared the pittance of their
poverty with the outcast and nameless; they have been good and true and
pitiful to the bad and false and pitiless and in this lies the real
grandeur of their simple religion, the mightiest gift of black to white
America.
Above all looms the figure of the Black Mammy, one of the most pitiful
of the world’s Christs. Whether drab and dirty drudge or dark and
gentle lady she played her part in the uplift of the South. She was an
embodied Sorrow, an anomaly crucified on the cross of her own neglected
children for the sake of the children of masters who bought and sold
her as they bought and sold cattle. Whatever she had of slovenliness or
neatness, of degradation or of education she surrendered it to those who
lived to lynch her sons and ravish her daughters. From her great full
breast walked forth governors and judges, ladies of wealth and fashion,
merchants and scoundrels who lead the South. And the rest gave her memory
the reverence of silence. But a few snobs have lately sought to advertise
her sacrifice and degradation and enhance their own cheap success by
building on the blood of her riven heart a load of stone miscalled a
monument.
In religion as in democracy, the Negro has been a peculiar test of white
profession. The American church, both Catholic and Protestant, has been
kept from any temptation to over-righteousness and empty formalism by
the fact that just as Democracy in America was tested by the Negro, so
American religion has always been tested by slavery and color prejudice.
It has kept before America’s truer souls the spirit of meekness and self
abasement, it has compelled American religion again and again to search
its heart and cry “I have sinned;” and until the day comes when color
caste falls before reason and economic opportunity the black American
will stand as the last and terrible test of the ethics of Jesus Christ.
Beyond this the black man has brought to America a sense of meekness
and humility which America never has recognized and perhaps never will.
If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek
shall inherit the earth they have not often let their presence be known.
On the other hand it has become almost characteristic of America to look
upon position, self assertion, determination to go forward at all odds,
as typifying the American spirit. This is natural. It is at once the
rebound from European oppression and the encouragement which America
offers physically, economically and socially to the human spirit. But
on the other hand, it is in many of its aspects a dangerous and awful
thing. It hardens and hurts our souls, it contradicts our philanthropy
and religion; and here it is that the honesty of the black race, its
hesitancy and heart searching, its submission to authority and its deep
sympathy with the wishes of the other man comes forward as a tremendous,
even though despised corrective. It is not always going to remain; even
now we see signs of its disappearance before contempt, lawlessness and
lynching. But it is still here, it still works and one of the most
magnificent anomalies in modern human history is the labor and fighting
of a half-million black men and two million whites for the freedom of
four million slaves and these same slaves, dumbly but faithfully and not
wholly unconsciously, protecting the mothers, wives and children of the
very white men who fought to make their slavery perpetual.
This then is the Gift of Black Folk to the new world. Thus in singular
and fine sense the slave became master, the bond servant became free and
the meek not only inherited the earth but made that heritage a thing of
questing for eternal youth, of fruitful labor, of joy and music, of the
free spirit and of the ministering hand, of wide and poignant sympathy
with men in their struggle to live and love which is, after all, the end
of being.
POSTSCRIPT
Listen to the Winds, O God the Reader, that wail across the whip-cords
stretched taut on broken human hearts; listen to the Bones, the bare
bleached bones of slaves, that line the lanes of Seven Seas and beat
eternal tom-toms in the forests of the laboring deep; listen to the
Blood, the cold thick blood that spills its filth across the fields and
flowers of the Free; listen to the Souls that wing and thrill and weep
and scream and sob and sing above it all. What shall these things mean, O
God the Reader? You know. You know.
FOOTNOTES
[1] In the fifties it was customary for the merchants, etc., to have
posted at their door a list of help wanted. Many of these help wanted
signs were accompanied by another which read “No Irish need apply.”
During the Civil War there was an Anti-Draft song with a refrain to the
effect that when it came to drafting they did not practice “No Irish need
apply.”
[2] “Americans only” in a real estate advertisement today usually means
“No Jews need apply.” It sometimes means Irish (i. e., Catholic) also.
[3] Wm. J. Bromwell, _History of Immigration to United States_, p. 96.
[4] _Ibid._, p. 100.
[5] _Ibid._, p. 116.
[6] _Ibid._, p. 124.
[7] _Commercial Relations of the United States_, 1885-1886, Appendix III,
p. 1967.
[8] “The Commissioners for Ireland gave them orders upon the governors
of garrisons, to deliver to them prisoners of war; upon the keepers of
gaols, for offenders in custody; upon masters of workhouses, for the
destitute in their care ‘who were of an age to labor, or if women were
marriageable and not past breeding’; and gave directions to all in
authority to seize those who had no visible means of livelihood, and
deliver them to these agents of the Bristol sugar merchants, in execution
of which latter direction Ireland must have exhibited scenes in every
part like the slave hunts in Africa. How many girls of gentle birth have
been caught and hurried to the private prisons of these man-catchers none
can tell. Messrs. Sellick and Leader, Mr. Robert Yeomans, Mr. Joseph
Lawrence, and others, all of Bristol, were active agents. As one instance
out of many: Captain John Vernon was employed by the Commissioners for
Ireland, into England, and contracted in their behalf with Mr. David
Sellick and Mr. Leader under his hand, bearing date the 14th September,
1653, to supply them with two hundred and fifty women of the Irish
nation above twelve years, and under the age of forty-five, also three
hundred men above twelve years of age, and under fifty, to be found in
the country within twenty miles of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, Waterford
and Wexford, to transport them into New England.” J. P. Prendergast, _The
Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland_, London, 1865. 2d. ed., pp. 89-90.
[9] “It is calculated that in four years (1653-1657) English firms of
slave-dealers shipped 6,400 Irish men and women, boys and maidens, to the
British colonies of North America.” A. J. Thebaud, _The Irish Race in the
Past and Present_, N. Y., 1893, p. 385.
[10] Rev. T. A. Spencer, _History of the United States_, Vol. I, p. 305.
[11] Henry Pratt Fairchild, _Immigration: A world movement, and its
American significance_, N. Y., 1913, p. 47. See also _Archives of
Maryland_, Vol. 22, p. 497.
[12] Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, _History of the United States_, N. Y.,
1921, p. 11.
[13] Fairchild, p. 35.
[14] Henry Cabot Lodge, _A Short History of the English Colonies in
America_, N. Y., 1881, p. 70.
[15] Beard, p. 15.
[16] Beard, p. 16.
[17] W. E. Burghardt DuBois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, Harvard
Historical Studies, No. 1, p. 5.
[18] John R. Commons, _Races and Immigrants in America_, N. Y., 1907, p.
53.
[19] Adam Seybert, _Statistical Annals of the United States_, Phila.,
1818, p. 29.
[20] Young, _Special Report on Immigration_, Phila., 1871, p. 5.
[21] Bromwell, p. 145.
[22] _Ibid._, p. 16.
[23] _Ibid._, p. 18.
[24] _Ibid._, pp. 16-17.
[25] Young, p. 6.
[26] _Ibid._, p. 6.
[27] _Special Consular Reports_, Vol. 30, p. 8.
[28] _Immigration and Emigration_, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Washington, 1915, p. 1099.
[29] _Ibid._
[30] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1915.
[31] _Ibid._
[32] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1918, p. 208.
[33] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1920, p. 400.
[34] _Reports of Department of Labor_, Washington, 1921, p. 365.
[35] From a Spanish Romance called _La Sergas de Espladian_, by Garcia
de Montalvo, published in 1510; translated in Beasley’s _The Negro Trail
Blazers of California_, p. 18.
[36] Cf. Wiener, _Africa and the Discovery of America_, Vol. 1, pp.
169-70, 172, 174-5; Vol. 3, p. 322; Thurston, _Antiquities of Tennessee_,
etc., 1890, p. 105; De Charnay, _Ancient Cities of the New World_ (trans.
by Gonino and Conant, 1887), pp. 132ff.; Kabell, _America för Columbus_,
1892, p. 235.
[37] J. B. Thacher, _Christopher Columbus_, 1903, Vol. 2, pp. 379-80;
_Raccolta di documenti e studi publicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana
pel quarto centenario dalla scoperta dell’ America_, parte I, Rome, 1892,
Vol. 1, p. 96.
[38] i. e., Negro Traders.
[39] Thacher, Vol. 2, pp. 379, 380; Wiener, Vol. 2, pp. 116-17.
[40] Wiener, Vol. 3, p. 365.
[41] _Memoir of Hernando de Essalante Fontanedo, respecting Florida_,
translated from the Spanish by Buckingham Smith, Washington, 1854.
[42] Oviedo y Valdes, _Historia general_, etc., Vol. 1, p. 286.
[43] Wiener, Vol. 3, p. 365.
[44] Wiener, Vol. 1, p. 190.
[45] Helps, _Spanish Conquest in America_, Vol. 4, p. 401.
[46] J. F. Rippy in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 6, p. 183.
[47] Helps, Vol. 1, p. 421.
[48] Rippy, _loc. cit._
[49] The following narrative is based on: H. O. Flipper, _Did a Negro
discover Arizona and New Mexico_ (contains a translation of parts of the
narrative of Pedro de Castaneda de Majera); Pedro de Castaneda, “Account
of the Expedition to Cibola which took place in the year 1540....”
translated in _Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States_ (J.
F. Jameson Ed.); Beasley, _Trail Blazers of California_, Chapter 2;
Rippy, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 6, pp. 183ff.; _American
Anthropologist_, Vol. 4.
[50] A fifth survivor, a Spaniard, stayed with the Indians and was
afterward found by DeSoto.
[51] Another story is that Estevanico and the Monks did not get on well
together.
[52] The story that Estevanico was killed because of his greed is
evidently apocryphal.
[53] Legends of the Zuni Pueblos of New Mexico quoted in Lowery _Spanish
Settlements in the United States, 1513-1561_, pp. 281-82.
[54] Cf. Beasley, Chapter 10.
[55] Cf. Du Bois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_; Du Bois, _The Negro_
(Home University Library).
[56] United States Census, _Negro Population 1790-1915_; Fourteenth
Census, Vol. 3.
[57] Du Bois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, Chapter 4.
[58] Cf. Du Bois, _The Philadelphia Negro_, Chapter 4.
[59] Cf. Woodson, _A Century of Negro Migration_; E. J. Scott: _Negro
Migration During the War_.
[60] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, p. 163.
[61] Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, Vol. 2, pp. 405-6.
[62] Atlanta University Publications: Cf. _The Negro Artisan_, 1902-1912,
and _Economic Cooperation among Negro Americans_, 1907.
[63] Alice Dunbar Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 52.
[64] Alice Dunbar Nelson, in the _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, p.
375.
[65] Olmsted, _A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, Journey through
Texas_, and _Journey in the Back Country_.
[66] Prior to the Matzeliger machine the McKay machine was patented,
designed for making the heaviest and cheapest kind of men’s shoes. The
Matzeliger machine was designed for light work, women’s shoes, etc., and
was the most important invention necessary to the formation of the United
Shoe Machinery Company.
[67] H. E. Baker, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, pp. 21ff.
[68] Baker: _The Colored Inventor_, p. 7.
[69] U. S. Census of 1920. Wilcox-Du Bois, _Negroes in the United States_
(U. S. Census bulletin No. 8, 1904).
[70] Olivier, _White Capital and Coloured Labor_, Chapter 8, London, 1906.
[71] Alice Dunbar Nelson, _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, pp. 369,
370, 371.
[72] Cf. Livermore, _Opinion of the Founders of the Republic_, etc., part
2; _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, p. 198ff.
[73] G. H. Moore, _Historical Notes_, etc., N. Y., 1862.
[74] Livermore, pp. 115-16.
[75] Cf. Livermore and Moore as above; also _Journal of Negro History_,
Vol. 1, pp. 114-20.
[76] Livermore, p. 122. See also the account of Peter Salem, _do._, pp.
118-21.
[77] T. G. Steward, in _Publications American Negro Academy_, No. 5, p.
12.
[78] W. B. Hartgrove, _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, pp. 125-9.
[79] Wilson, _Black Phalanx_, p. 71.
[80] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1, pp. 373-4; Gayarre’s _History of
Louisiana_, Vol. 3, p. 108.
[81] Niles’ _Register_, Feb. 26, 1814.
[82] Wilson, _Black Phalanx_, p. 88.
[83] Alice Dunbar-Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 58.
[84] Niles’ Register, Vol. 7, p. 205.
[85] Niles’ Register, Vol. 7, pp. 345-6.
[86] Dunbar-Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, pp. 59-60.
[87] Williams, _Negro Race in America_, Vol. 2, pp. 244ff.
[88] Williams, _Negro Race in America_, Vol. 2, pp. 280-82.
[89] New York _Tribune_, Aug. 19, 1862.
[90] Williams, Vol. 2, p. 271.
[91] Wilson, p. 123.
[92] Wilson, p. 132.
[93] Wesley, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 4, pp. 239ff.
[94] New York _Tribune_, Nov. 14, 1863; Williams, Vol. 2, p. 347.
[95] Williams, Vol. 2, p. 360.
[96] New York _Times_, June 13, 1863.
[97] Wilson, pp. 250-54.
[98] Williams, Vol. 2, p. 338.
[99] John Temple Graves in _Review of Reviews_.
[100] MS. Copies of orders.
[101] MS. Copies of orders.
[102] At least this was the opinion of Abraham Lincoln—cf. Wilson’s
_Black Phalanx_, p. 108.
[103] Thomas, _Attitude of Friends toward Slavery_, p. 267 and Appendix.
[104] Jefferson’s Writings, Vol. 8, pp. 403-4.
[105] George Livermore, _Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on
Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers_, Boston, 1862, p. 61.
[106] Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 1, pp. 23-4.
[107] Howard’s Reports, Vol. 19.
[108] Howard’s Reports, pp. 536-8.
[109] Howard’s Reports, pp. 572-3, 582.
[110] Niles’ Register, Vol. 16, May 22, 1819.
[111] Benjamin Brawley, _A Social History of the American Negro_, New
York, 1921, p. 90.
[112] Hening’s Statutes.
[113] John C. Hurd, _The Law of Freedom and Bondage_, Boston, 1858-1862.
[114] Wiener, _Africa and the Discovery of America_, Vol. 1, pp. 155-8.
[115] C. E. Chapman in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 3, p. 29.
[116] J. Kunst, _Negroes in Guatemala_, _Journal of Negro History_, Vol.
1, pp. 392-8.
[117] Cf. Bryan Edward’s _West Indies_, 4th Edition, Vol. 1, pp. 337-98.
[118] Gayarre, _History of Louisiana_, Vol. 1, pp. 435, 440.
[119] Du Bois’ _Slave Trade_, pp. 6, 10, 22, 206; J. Coppin, _Slave
Insurrections_, 1860; Brawley, _Social History_, pp. 39, 86, 132.
[120] Cf. T. G. Steward, _The Haitian Revolution_.
[121] DeWitt Talmadge in the _Christian Herald_, Nov. 28, 1906; Du Bois’
_Slave Trade_, Chapter 7.
[122] Cf. Dunbar-Nelson in the _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 1.
[123] Du Bois, _John Brown_, p. 81.
[124] A. H. Grimke, _Right on the Scaffold in Occasional Papers_, No. 7,
American Negro Academy.
[125] Brawley, p. 140; T. W. Higginson, _Atlantic Monthly_, Vol. 8, p.
173.
[126] I. W. Cromwell, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 5, pp. 208ff.
[127] Cf. Du Bois’ _Philadelphia Negro_, Chapter 4; Woodson’s _Negro in
our History_, pp. 140-1.
[128] Brawley, pp. 123-4; _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, pp. 209-28.
[129] Brawley, p. 71.
[130] Williams’ _Negro Race_, Vol. 2, p. 126.
[131] Du Bois’ _John Brown_, pp. 82ff.
[132] Cf. Joshua R. Giddings, _Exiles of Florida_, Columbus, Ohio, 1858.
[133] Among the first subscribers to Garrison’s _Liberator_ were free
Negroes and one report is that the very first paid subscriber was a
colored Philadelphia caterer.
[134] Livermore, p. 170.
[135] Livermore, pp. 125-6.
[136] Force’s Archives, 4th series, Vol. 3, p. 1387.
[137] Works of John Adams, Vol. 2, p. 428.
[138] Livermore, pp. 183, 184.
[139] Wilson, pp. 491-92.
[140] J. T. Wilson, _The History of the Black Phalanx_, Hartford, 1897,
p. 490.
[141] Cf. Cromwell, _Negro In American History_, Chapter 2.
[142] J. W. Loguen, _As a Slave and as a Freeman_, p. 344.
[143] George W. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_, New
York, 1882, Vol. 1, Chapter 15.
[144] Williams, Vol. 1, pp. 250-1.
[145] Williams, Vol. 2, pp. 255-7.
[146] Williams, Vol. 1, pp. 257-9.
[147] Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Sept. 22, 1862.
[148] Atlanta University Publications, Atlanta, Ga., 1906, No. 8, p. 23.
[149] John Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, New York, 1907, p.
134.
[150] Eaton, 165.
[151] Walter L. Fleming, _Documentary History of Reconstruction_,
Cleveland, Ohio, 1907, Vol. 1, p. 112.
[152] Fleming, Vol. 1, pp. 350-1.
[153] Fleming, Vol. 2, p. 382.
[154] Report of Carl Schurz to President Johnson, in Senate Exec. Doc.
No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.
[155] Brewster, _Sketches of Southern Mystery, Treason and Murder_, p.
116.
[156] McPherson, _Reconstruction_, p. 19.
[157] Atlanta University Publications, Atlanta, Ga., 1901, No. 6, p. 36.
[158] October 7, 1865.
[159] McPherson, pp. 52, 56.
[160] A. U. Publications, No. 12, p. 38; Cf. also Fleming, Vol. 1, P. 355.
[161] Schurz’ Report.
[162] House Reports, No. 30, 39th Congress, 1st Session.
[163] Schurz’ Report.
[164] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 5, p. 238.
[165] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 7, pp. 127ff.
[166] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 7, p. 424.
[167] Jackson, Miss., _Clarion_, April 24, 1873.
[168] Walter Allen, _Governor Chamberlain’s Administration in South
Carolina_, New York, 1888, p. 82.
[169] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 7, pp. 127ff.
[170] Blaine, _Twenty Years in Congress_, Vol. 2, p. 515.
[171] Blaine, _Twenty Years in Congress_, pp. 513-14.
[172] Fleming, Vol. 1, pp. 450-1.
[173] J. W. Garner, _Reconstruction in Mississippi_, New York, 1901, p.
322.
[174] Warley in _Brewster’s Sketches_, p. 150.
[175] A Liberal Republican’s description of the S. C. Legislature in
1871, Fleming, Vol. 2, pp. 53-4.
[176] Fleming, Vol. 1, pp. 382ff.
[177] Some of the Reconstruction Constitutions preceding Negro Suffrage
showed tendencies toward democratization among the whites.
[178] Chicago Weekly _Inter-Ocean_, Dec. 26, 1890.
[179] Cf. Atlanta University Pub. No. 6 and No. 16.
[180] This speech was made in the South Carolina Constitutional
Convention of 1890 which disfranchised the Negro, by the Hon. Thomas
E. Miller, ex-congressman and one of the six Negro members of the
Convention. The Convention did not have the courage to publish it in
their proceedings but it may be found in the Occasional Papers of the
American Negro Academy No. 6, pp. 11-13.
[181] Cf. W. E. B. Du Bois, _Reconstruction_ (American Historical Review,
XV, No. 4, p. 871).
W. E. B. Du Bois, _Economics of Negro Emancipation_ (Sociological Review,
Oct., 1911, p. 303).
[182] O. O. Howard, _Autobiography_, New York, 1907, Vol. 2, pp. 361-7,
371-2.
[183] Testimony of the presiding officer, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, in
“_Narrative of Sojourner Truth_,” 1884, pp. 134-5.
[184] Goodell, _Slave Code_, p. 111.
[185] Robertson, _Louisiana under the Rule of Spain_, Vol. 1, pp. 67,
103, 111; Dunbar-Nelson, in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 56.
[186] Dunbar-Nelson, _loc. cit._
[187] Dunbar-Nelson, _op. cit._, p. 62; Martineau, _Society in America_,
p. 326ff.
[188] Brownie’s Book, March, 1921.
[189] Beasley, _Negro Trail Blazers_, pp. 95-7.
[190] Cf. Annual Reports National Association of Colored Women; Atlanta
University Publications, No. 14.
[191] Du Bois, _Souls of Black Folk_, Chapter No. 14.
[192] W. F. Allen and others, _Slave Songs of the United States_, New
York, 1867.
[193] G. D. Pike, _The Jubilee Singers_, New York, 1873.
[194] James Weldon Johnson, _Book of American Negro Poetry_, New York,
1922.
[195] H. E. Krehbiel, _Afro-American Folksongs_, New York, 1914; cf. also
John W. Work, _Folksong of the American Negro_, Nashville, Tenn., 1915.
[196] Natalie Curtis-Burlin, _Negro Folksongs_, 4 books, 1918-19; _Songs
and Tales from the Dark Continent_, 1920.
[197] Benjamin Brawley, _Negro in Literature and Art_.
[198] Alice Dunbar-Nelson in _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 2, p. 55.
[199] Washington, _Story of the Negro_, Vol. 2, pp. 276-7.
[200] Cf. Benjamin Brawley, _The Negro in Literature and Art_, New York,
1921.
[201] Cf. Preface to James Weldon Johnson’s _The Book of American Negro
Poetry_, New York, 1922.
[202] T. W. Talley, _Negro Folk Rhymes_.
[203] Cf. W. E. B. Du Bois, _The Negro in Literature and Art_ (Annals
American Academy, Sept., 1913).
[204] A. A. Schomberg, _A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro
Poetry_, New York, 1916.
[205] Preface to Claud McKay’s _Harlem Shadows_.
[206] Cf. Freeman H. M. Murray, _Emancipation and the Freed in American
Sculpture_, Washington, D. C., 1916.
[207] _Journal of Negro History_, Vol. 3, p. 99ff. Later, Jefferson
writing to an American thought Banneker had “a mind of very common
stature indeed”.
[208] Charles C. Jones, _Religious Instruction of the Negroes_, Savannah,
1842.
[209] M. H. Kingsley, _West African Studies_.
[210] Atlanta University Publications, _The Negro Church_, 1903.
[211] Richard Allen, _Life, Experience and Gospel Labors_, Philadelphia,
1880.
[212] Cf. Carter G. Woodson, _The History of the Negro Church_,
Washington, D. C., 1921; Atlanta University Publications, _The Negro
Church_; and J. E. Bassett, _Slavery in North Carolina_.
[213] Bassett, pp. 58-9.
INDEX
Adair, Lieut., 129, 130
Adams, John, 87, 90, 159, 176, 177, 317
Adolphus, King Gustavus, 11
Aldridge, Ira, 310
Alexander, Dr. Archibald, 335
Allen, 173, 298, 329, 330
Allen, Walter, 220, 276
Alliot, Paul, 266
Almagro, 42
Alvarado, 42
Ames, Capt., 92
Anderson, 302
André, 92
Antar, 288
Atkinson, Edward, 232
Attucks, Crispus, 86, 87, 88
Augusta, Dr. A. T., 125
Baker, H. E., 72, 73
Balboa, 42
Ball, 314
Bancroft, H. H., 50, 55
Banister, E. M., 313
Banks, General, 118
Banneker, Benjamin, 298, 316, 317, 318
Bassett, Lieut.-Col., 119, 332, 334
Batson, Flora, 291
Beard, Charles A. & Mary R., 9, 12, 16
Beasley, 43, 49, 272
Beauregard, 137
Beecher, Henry Ward, 278, 293
Benjamin, Judah, 179
Beverly, Robert, 67
Bienville, Governor, 83
Bigstaff, Peter, 129
Bissell, 314
Blaine, James G., 222, 223, 224
Bland, James, 290
Bolas, Juan de, 151
Bolivar, 154, 155
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 153, 154
Booth, Major, 117, 271
Boré, Etienne de, 68
Bowers, John, 299
Braithwaite, W. S., 303, 304, 307
Brawley, Benjamin, 146, 153, 158, 162, 163, 285, 290, 303
Brent, Linda, 301
Brewster, 203
Bromwell, 17
Brooks, 302
Brown, John, 146, 270, 271, 272
Brown, Richard, 313
Brown, William, 86, 301, 299
Browne, 271
Bruce, B. K., 67, 218, 223
Bryant, William Cullen, 232
Buell, 187
Burgess, Prof., 206
Burleigh, Harry T., 290, 291
Burlin, Mrs. Curtis, 283, 284
Burnside, 124
Burr, Aaron, 289
Butler, General, 112, 116, 187
Byrd, Col., 67
Cable, George U., 293
Cain, 221
Calder, 314
Caldwell, Jonas, 87, 88
Calhoun, John C., 293
Callioux, Capt., 120
Campbell, Robert, 301, 304, 336
Carey, Lott, 330
Carr, Patrick, 87
Castaneda, Pedro de, 43
Castle, Vernon, 292
Catto, 300
Chamberlain, Governor, 220
Chambers, Colonel, 118
Chapman, C. E., 150
Charlton, Melville, 291
Chase, Simon P., 232
Chavis, John, 332, 333
Cheatham, 221
Chesnutt, Charles W., 303, 307
Child, Lydia Marcia, 293
Christophe, 92
Church, A. M. E., 300
Cinque, 159
Claiborne, Governor, 97
Clark, 49
Cleveland, 26
Clinton, Bishop Isaac, 89, 219
Cobb, General, 112
Cobb, Irvin S., 10
Coffin, Levi, 232
Cole, 310
Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel, 289, 290
Columbus, 35, 36, 37, 40, 265, 282
Commons, John R., 15
Conant, 36
Conner, A. J., 290
Connery, William J., 72
Constant, Benjamin, 314
Cooke, Governor, 93
Cooper, Peter, 232
Coppin, J., 153
Corbin, J. C., 220
Cardoza, F. L., 220-246
Cornwallis, 89, 177
Coronado, 44, 49
Cortes, 42, 45
Cotter, Joseph C. Jr., 304
Cravath, 214
Crogman, 302
Cromwell, J. W., 158, 182
Crummell, Dr. Alexander, 301, 302
Cuffee, Paul, 162, 172, 299
Cullen, Countée, 304
Curtis, Justice, 144
Curtis, Natalie, 282
Cushite, R. L. Perry, 302
Damrosch, 280
Dana, Gen. N. J. T., 193
Daquin, Major, 99
Davis, 304
Davis, Pres., 111, 112
Davis, Gussie L., 290
Davis, Jefferson, 107
De Charnay, 36
Dèdè, Edmund, 290
Delaney, Major M. H., 125
Delaney, Martin R., 300
Dennison, Chaplain, 123
Derham, Thomas, 316
De Soto, 43, 44
Dett, R. Nathaniel, 291
Dickinson, J. H., 73
Dickinson, S. L., 73
Diton, Carl, 291
Dix, 187
Dixon, Thomas, 293
Dodson, Jacob, 49
Dorantes, Stephen, 43, 44, 45
Douglas, Captain H. F., 125
Douglass, Frederick, 174, 208, 300, 301, 308
Dow, Lorenzo, 145
Drexel, Katherine, 324
Drinkwater, 311
DuBois, W. E. B., 13, 55, 58, 63, 153, 155, 161, 169, 249, 274, 297
DuBois, Wilcox, 73
Dubuclet, 221, 290
Dumas, 306
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 303, 304, 306
Dunmore, Governor, 89, 90, 176, 177
Dunn, Lieut.-Gov., 221
Duplessis, General Garnier, 131
Dvorak, 285, 291
Dwight, General, 118
Eaton, Col. John, 191, 193
Eastman, Max, 307
Edison, 28
Edward, Bryan, 151
Eliot, Dr. John, 57
Elliott, Robert Brown, 221, 301
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 293
Equiana, Olaudah (See Gustavus Vassa)
Estevanico, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49
Eustis, William, 94
Evans, Henry, 333, 334
Fairchild, Henry Pratt, 9
Fauset, Jessie, 304, 308
Finnegas, Lieut.-Col. Henry, 119
Fleming, Walter L., 194, 197, 226, 232, 234
Flipper, H. O., 43
Fontages, Viscount de, 93
Force, 176
Forrest, 117
Foster, Stephen, 275, 285
Forten, James, 299
Franklin, Benjamin, 90, 141
Freeman, Captain, 58
Freeman, Ralph, 334
Fremont, 49
French, D. C., 314
Frye, Colonel, 92
Fuller, Meta Warrick, 315
Gabriel, 172
Gage, Mrs. Frances D., 151, 264
Galvez, 95
Garner, J. W., 227
Garnet, Henry Highland, 299
Garrison, 174, 271
Garrison, William Lloyd, 146, 185
Gayarre, 95, 153
Geary, 25
Gibbs, Jonathan C., 220
Gibbs, M. W., 220
Giddings, Joshua R., 171
Gilmore, General, 109
Gilpin, Charles, 310, 311
Gladstone, 279
Gloucester, John, 330
Gomez, 288
Gonino, 36
Goodell, 266
Gottschalk, 289
Goybet, General, 131, 132
Graham, Stephen, 311
Grant, General, 188, 191, 193
Graves, John Temple, 130
Gray, Samuel, 87, 88, 173
Greeley, Horace, 105, 185
Greene, General, 91, 178
Grey, T. R., 158
Griggs, 302
Grimke, A. H., 156, 302
Grimke, Frank, 302, 303
Hagen, Helen, 291
Hagood, General, 246, 247, 302
Hahn, Governor, 194
Hall, Prince, 162
Halleck, 187
Hamilton, Alexander, 91, 174, 269
Hammon, Jupiter, 304
Hampton, Governor, 246
Hampton, Wade, 283
Handy, W. C., 285
Hapgood, Mrs. Emily, 310
Hare, Maude-Cuney, 291
Harleston, Edwin, 313
Harper, Frances E. W., 300, 302, 304
Harper, William A., 313
Harriot, George, 29, 94
Harris, Joel Chandler, 295, 296
Harrison, Hazel, 291
Hartgrove, W. B., 94
Hayes, Roland W., 292
Hayne, Robert Y., 172
Haynes, Lemuel, 299, 306, 332
Helps, 42
Hemmenway, J., 290
Hening, 148
Henry, Patrick, 141
Henson, Joshua, 171, 300
Henson, Matthew A., 50, 51
Higginson, Colonel, 116, 158, 275, 293
Hill, Dr. William, 335
Hogarth, George, 300
Hogan, Ernest, 310
Holland, Justin, 290
Hood, 302
Hooker, 187
Hope, Lawrence, 291
Hopkins, Samuel, 91, 175
Horton, George M., 304
Hosier, Harry, 332
Howard, General, 144, 145, 200, 249, 252
Howe, Julia Ward, 293
Howells, William Dean, 293
Hughes, Langston, 304
Hunter, General, 102, 103, 105, 116, 187
Hurd, John C., 148
Hyer, Sisters, 291
Jackson, General, 97, 99, 115, 182, 220
Jackson, M. Howard, 315
Jamison, J. F., 43
Jamison, Roscoe C., 304
Jay, John, 232
Jefferson, Thomas, 3, 141, 143, 154, 172, 317
Jenkins, Edmund T., 291
Johnson, E. A., 302
Johnson, Fenton, 304
Johnson, Georgia, 304
Johnson, James Weldon, 280, 292, 314
Johnson, John, 96, 113
Johnson, President, 201, 202, 203, 207, 208, 209, 214, 281
Johnson, Rosamond, 291
Jones, 173, 183, 330
Jones, C. C., 296, 325
Just, Ernest, 316
Kabell, 36
Keene, Edmund, 310
King George, 3rd of Britain, 142
Kingsley, Miss, 326, 327
Krehbiel, H. E., 281, 282
Kunst, J., 151
La Coste, 99
Lafitte, 99
Lafon, Thomé, 183, 323
Lambert, 92, 291
Langston, 22, 302
Las Casas, 42
Laurens, Henry, 141
Laurens, John, 91
Lawrence, Joseph, 8
Lawson, A. Augustus, 291
Leader, 8
Lee, Samuel J., 219
Leile, George, 330
Leon, Ponce de, 38
L’Enfant, Major Pierre, 318
Lewis, 49
Lewis, Edmonia, 315
Lewis, Julien H., 316
Lewis, R. B., 299
Lind, Jenny, 291
Lincoln, Abraham, 28, 106, 114, 135, 185, 187, 189, 195, 202, 203,
233, 271
Livermore, 84, 87, 89, 91, 92, 142, 175, 176, 178, 194
Livingston, Robert, 154
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 12
Loguen, Bishop, 182, 300
Low, A. A., 232
Lowell, James Russell, 293
Lucas, Sam (See Samuel Milady)
Lynch, 90
Lynch, John R., 220, 223
Macdonough, 96
Madison, James, 91
Majors, 302
Maldonado, 44, 45
Marcos, Fray, 45, 46, 49
Marquis de Condorcet, 317
Marshall, Colonel John R., 127
Martin, 96
Martineau, 268
Matzeliger, Jan E., 70, 71, 72
Maverick, Samuel, 87, 88
McCoy, Elijah, 72
McHenry, James, 318
McKay, 71, 304, 307
McKay, Claud, 308
McKee, Colonel John, 323
McKim, Miss, 275
McKinley, President, 126
McLean, Justice, 144
McClellan, 188
McPherson, 203, 209
McSweeney, Edw. F., Introduction to series
Melbourne, George, 290
Mencken, H. L., 305
Mendoza, 44, 45, 49, 150
Menendez, 43
Milady, Samuel, 290 (See Sam Lucas also)
Miller, Kelly, 303
Miller, Hon. Thomas E., 248
Mills, 271
Mitchell, George W., 303
Montalvo, Garcia de, 35
Moody, 279
Moore, G. H., 85, 91
Mossell, 302
Murray, 221
Murray, Freeman H. M., 304, 315
Narvaez, Panfilo de, 43
Nell, William Cooper, 300
Nelson, Alice Dunbar, 68, 69, 83, 97, 100, 145, 155, 267, 268, 289
Nelson, Colonel, 119
Niles, 97, 98, 100, 145
Northrop, Samuel, 300
Nosseyeb, 287
Oglethorpe, 140
O’Hara, 222
Olana, Nuflo de, 42
Olivier, 79
Olmsted, 69, 70
O’Neill, 311
Osceola, 171
Otis, James, 141
Ouverture, Toussaint le, 154, 156
Ovando, 39
Oviedo, 38
Page, Thomas Nelson, 293
Payne, Bishop Daniel, 301, 302
Peary, Commodore, 50
Pemberton, Thomas, 57
Penn, 7, 302
Pennington, J. W. C., 257, 299
Perier, Governor, 82, 83
Perry, 96
Pétion, President, 154
Phillips, Wendell, 270, 293
Pierce, Edward L., 191
Pike, G. D., 279
Pinchback, 221
Pinckney, Charles, 94
Pizarro, Marquis, 41
Plato, 2
Pleasants, Mammy, 271, 272
Poor, Salem, 92
Portugal, King of, 290
Preer, Evelyn, 311
Prendergast, J. P., 8
Preston, Captain, 87
Price, J. C., 308
Purvis, Robert, 299
Purvis, W. L., 73
Pushkin, 288
Putnam, Colonel, 123
Rainey, 223
Ralston, 271
Rapier, 221, 223
Redmond, 174
Reed, Lieut.-Col., 125
Revels, 221, 223
Revells, Hiram R., 218
Rice, Thomas D., 309
Rigaud, 92
Rillieux, Robert, 70
Rippy, J. F., 42, 43
Robertson, 267
Robeson, Paul, 311
Rodin, 315
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 316, 332
Rutledge, 90
Salcedo, Governor, 67
Samba, 83
Sanine, 312
Savary, J. B. Capt., 99
Saxton, General, 188
Scammell, Alexander, 85
Scarborough, 302
Schomberg, A. A., 304
Schurz, Carl, 201, 210, 211, 213, 214
Scofield, 314
Scott, William Edward, 313
Sejour, Victor, 289
Sellick, 8
Sewall, 140
Seward, William H., 140
Seybert, Adam, 16
Seymour, General, 123
Shaftesbury, Lord, 279
Shakespeare, 293
Shaler, Governor, 203
Sharkey, Governor, 203
Sherman, General T. W., 187, 194
Shaw, Colonel, 123, 315
Simmons, 301
Simonton, Judge, 246
Sinclair, 303
Smith, Albert A., 313
Smith, Alexander, 271
Smith, Buckingham, 38
Smith, General, 124
Smith, Gerritt, 232
Smith, Rev. John Blair, 335
Southerne, 293, 309
Spence, Adam K., 277
Spencer, Rev. T. A., 9
Stanton, 124, 194
Stearns, George L., 232
Stephenson, General, 123
Steward, 93, 154, 303
Stewart, Ruth M., 293, 302
Story, W. A., 314
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 293
Strachen, 96
Straker, 302
Strong, Gen., 123
Suarez, Illan, 41
Sumner, Charles, 198, 293
Talbert, Cole, 291
Talley, T. W., 297
Talmadge, DeWitt, 154
Taney, Judge, 143
Tanner, Bishop, 301, 313
Thacher, J. C., 36
Thebaud, A. J., 8
Thomas, General, 140, 193, 194
Thurston, 36
Tillman, 243
Toomer, Jean, 308
Tourgee, Judge Albion W., 237
Trotter, James Monroe, 301
Truth, Sojourner, 174
Tubman, Harriet, 171, 270, 271
Turner, C. H., 316
Turner, Nat., 157, 158, 302, 330
Tyler, Col., 186
Vaca de, 44, 45
Valdivia, 42
Vassa, Gustavus, 279 (See Olaudah Equiana)
Varick, James, 330
Vela, Blasco Nunez, 41, 42
Vernon, Capt. John, 8
Vesey, Denmark, 156
Victoria, Francisco Xavier de, 322
Victoria, Queen, 279
Walker, David, 164, 168, 299, 310, 311
Wall, Capt. O. S. B., 125
Wallace, Judge, 246
Warburg, Eugene, 289
Ward, Samuel C., 300, 308, 314
Ware, 214
Work, John W., 282
Warley, 231
Washington, 2, 38, 89, 102, 103, 115, 141, 298, 318
Washington, Booker T., 258, 298, 303, 308
Washington, Madison, 159
Wayman, Bishop, 301
Webster, Daniel, 86, 160
Wiener, 36, 37, 38, 40, 150
Wesley, 113
Wheatley, Phyllis, 298, 304, 306, 312
Wheeler, Laura, 313
White, Clarence Cameron, 291
White, E. P., 221
White, George L., 276, 277, 278
White, J. L., 219
White, Dr. William S., 336
Whitfield, James, 299, 300
Whitefield, George, 298
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 293
Whitman, A. A., 301, 304
Whitman, Walt, 293
Whitney, Eli, 70
Williams, 101, 104, 107, 117, 118, 124, 164, 187, 301, 310, 311
Williams, Bert, 310
Williams, Dr. Dan, 316
Wilson, 26, 95, 97, 108, 110, 124, 135, 179, 181, 303
Winslow, Sydney W., 70, 71
Witherspoon, D., 332
Wood, Liates, 73
Woods, Granville T., 73
Woodson, Carter, 64, 161, 303, 332
Wormeley, Ralph, 67
Wright, 302
Yeomans, Robert, 8
Young, Major Charles, 17, 18, 127, 131
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