Read Ebook: Essay on the Principles of Translation by Woodhouselee Alexander Fraser Tytler Lord

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The German nations of the shores of the Baltic carried on the desolating traffic. Russia recognized slavery and carried on a slave trade through her merchantmen.

The Turks forbade the enslaving of Mussulmans, but sold Christian and other captives into slavery. Christian and Moor, for seven hundred years in the doubtful struggle in Western Europe, respectively, doomed their captives to slavery.

Columbus, whose glory as the discoverer of this continent we proclaim, on a return voyage carried five hundred native Americans to Spain, a present to Queen Isabella, and American Indians were sold into foreign bondage, as "spoils of war," for two centuries.

The Saxon carried slavery in its most odious form into England, where, at one time, not half the inhabitants were absolutely free, and where the price of a man was but four times the price of an ox.

In time, however, the spirit of Christianity, pleading the cause of humanity, stayed slavery's progress, and checked the slave traffic by appeals to conscience.

Efficacious as the Christian religion has been to destroy or mitigate evil, it has failed to render the so-called Christian slaveholder better than the pagan, or to improve the condition of the bondsmen.

Rome, once the mistress of the world, cased as a nation to live; her greatness and her glory, her slave markets and her slaves, all gone together and forever.

Germany, France, Spain, and other slave nations renounced slavery barely in time to escape the general national doom.

England heard the warning cry just in time to save the kingdom from the impending common destiny of slave nations.

The argument that the institution of slavery was sanctified by age ceased, long since, to be satisfying to those who learned justice and mercy in the light of Christian love, and who could read, not only that human slavery had existed from the earliest times, but that it had existed without right, only by the power of might, not sanctioned by reason and natural justice, and that in its train a myriad of coincident evils, crimes, and immoralities had taken birth and flourished, blasting both master and slave and the land they inhabited, and that God's just and retributive judgment has universally been visited on all nations and peoples continuing to maintain and perpetuate it.

Murder has existed in the world since Cain and Abel met by the altar of God, yet no sane person for that reason justifies it. So slavery has stalked down the long line of centuries, cursing and destroying millions with its damning power, but time has not sanctioned it into a right. The longer it existed the more foul became the blot upon history's pages, and the deeper the damnation upon humanity it wrought.

The nations of the ancient world either shook off slavery in attempts to wash away its bloody stain, or slavery wiped them from the powers of the earth. So of the more modern nations.

Our Republic, boastful of its free institutions, of its constitutional liberty, of its free schools and churches, of its glories in the cause of humanity, its patriotism, resplendent history, inventive genius, wealth, industry, civilization, and Christianity, maintained slavery until it was only saved from its common doom of slave nations by the atoning sacrifice of its best blood and the mercy of an offended God.

Sir John Hawkins' success coming to the notice of the avaricious and ambitious Queen Elizabeth, she, five years later , became the open protector of a new expedition and sharer in the nefarious traffic, thus becoming a promoter, abettor, and participant in all its crimes.

To the "African Company," for a long period, was granted by England a monopoly of the slave trade, but it could not be confined to this company. In 1698, England exacted a tariff on the slave cargoes of her subjects engaged in the trade.

England did not confine her trade to the West Indies. In 1750, it was shown in the English Parliament that 46,000 negroes were annually sold to English colonies.

As early as 1565, Sir John Hawthorne and Menendez imported negroes as slaves into Florida, then a Spanish possession, and with Spain's sanction many were carried into the West Indies and sold into slavery.

Epistle to Philemon.

Rev. Frederick A. Ross, D. D. , a celebrated Presbyterian minister, was arrested in 1862 at Huntsville, Alabama, while it was occupied by the Union forces, for praying from the pulpit for the success of secession.

Parson Brownlow was a Union man in 1861, was much persecuted at his home in Knoxville, Tenn., later advocated emancipation.

Slavery and the slave trade, in spite of the teachings of the Koran, grew up in Mohammedan countries. The traffic in slaves, however, had been frequently proclaimed against by the Ottoman Porte.

II INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY INTO THE COLONIES

One year later the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, bringing with them stern religious convictions and severe morals which soon ripened into written laws and were likewise woven into social, political, and religious life, the resultant effect of which, on human existence in America, is never to end. One year later still, cotton was first planted in the virgin soil of America, where it grew to perfection, and thenceforth becoming the staple production, made slavery and slave-breeding profitable to the slaveholder.

But the African slave trade, early found to be extremely profitable, and hence popular, did not cease. England, then as now, the most enterprising of commercial nations on the high seas, engrossed the trade, in large part, from 1680 to 1780. In 1711, there was established a slave depot in New York City on or near what is now Wall Street; and about the same time a depot was established for receiving slaves in Boston, near where the old Franklin House stood. From New England ships, and perhaps from others, negroes were landed and sent to these and other central slave markets.

But few of these freshly stolen negroes were sold to Northern slaveholders. Slave labor was not even then found profitable in the climate of the North. The bondsman went to a more southern clime, and to the cotton, rice, and tobacco fields of the large plantations of the South.

As late as 1804-7, negroes from the coast of Africa were brought to Boston, Bristol, Providence, and Hartford to be sold into slavery.

Shipowners of all the coast colonies, and later of all the coast States of the United States, engaged in the slave trade.

But it was among the planters of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas that slaves proved to be most profitable. The people in these sections were principally rural; plantations were large, not subject to be broken up by frequent partition, if at all. The crops raised were better suited to cultivation by slaves in large numbers; and the hot climate was better adapted to the physical nature of the African negro.

The first inhabitants of the South preferred a rural life, and on large plantations. The Crown grants to early proprietors favored this, especially in the Virginia and Carolina colonies. The Puritans did not love or foster slavery as did the Cavalier of the South. Castes or classes existed among the Southern settlers from the beginning, which, with other favoring causes, made it easier for slavery to take root and prosper, and ultimately fasten itself upon and become a dominating factor in the whole social and political fabric of the South. Slavery there soon came to be considered of paramount importance in securing a high social status or a high, so-called, civilization.

While slavery died out from local and natural causes, if not wholly for moral, social, and religious reasons, in the States north of Maryland, it flourished and ripened into strength and importance in States south, casting a controlling influence and power over the whole of the United States socially, and for the most part dominating the country politically. The greatest statesmen and brightest intellects of the North, though convinced of the evils of slavery and of its fatal tendencies, were generally too cowardly to attack it politically, although but about one fifth of the whole white population of the slave states in 1860, or perhaps at any time, was, through family relationship, or otherwise, directly or indirectly interested in slaves or slave labor.

Old political parties were in time disrupted, and new ones were formed on slavery issues.

The slavery question rent in twain the Methodist Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. The followers of Wesley and Calvin divided on slavery. It was always essentially an aristocratic institution, and hence calculated to benefit only a few of the great mass of freemen.

In 1860, there was in the fifteen slave States a white population of 8,039,000 and a slave population of 3,953,696. Of the white population only 384,884 were slaveholders, and, including their families, only about 1,600,000 were directly or indirectly interested in slaves or their labor. About 6,400,000 of the whites in these States had, therefore, no interest in the institution, and yet they were wholly subordinated to the few who were interested in it.

Curiously enough, slavery continued to exist, until a comparatively recent period, in many of the States that had early declared it abolished. The States formed out of the territory "Northwest of the River Ohio" cannot be said to have ever been slave States. The sixth section of the Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery forever therein. The slaves reported in such States were only there by tolerance. They were free of right. The Constitution of Illinois, as we shall presently see, did not at first abolish slavery; only prohibited the introduction of slaves.

The rebellion of the thirteen colonies in 1776 and the war for independence did not grow out of slavery; that war was waged neither to perpetuate nor to abolish it. The Puritan and Cavalier, the opponents and the advocates of slavery and the slave trade, alike, fought for independence, and, when successful, united in the purpose to foster and build up an American Republic, based on the sovereignty of individual citizenship, but ignoring the natural rights of the enslaved negro.

The following table, compiled from the United States Census Reports, may be of interest.

It shows the number of slaves reported in each State and Territory of the United States at each Federal census.

It is curious to note that 1621 dates the first bringing into Virginia and America bee-hives for the production of honey.

The following letter of Cotton Mather will show the Puritan's intolerance of Wm. Penn and his Society of Friends, and the prevailing opinion in his time on slavery and the slave trade.

"Cotton Mather."

Slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia by law of Congress, passed April 16, 1862.

President Lincoln's proclamation of January 1, 1863, emancipated all slaves in the seceded States to the number of 3,063,395; those remaining were freed by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, December 18, 1865.

"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in the transportation thither, . . . determined to keep open a market where white men should be bought and sold; he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce."

"Our Northern brethren . . . felt a little tender under these censures: for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been considerable carriers of them to others."

Jefferson said King George preferred the advantage:

"of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice."

While it is not true, as has often been claimed, that England is solely responsible for the introduction of slavery into her American colonies, it is true that her King and Parliament opposed almost every attempt to prohibit it or to restrict the importation of slaves. Colonial legislative enactments of Virginia and other colonies directed against slavery were vetoed by the King or by his command by his royal governors. Such governors were early forbidden to give their assent to any measure restricting slavery in the American colonies, and this policy was pursued until the colonies became independent.

While slavery was deeply seated in the colonies and had many advocates, including noted divines, who preached the "divinity of slavery," there were, in 1776, and earlier, many great men, South as well as North, who looked confidently to an early emancipation of slaves, and who were then active in suppressing the African slave trade, among whom were Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, and the two Adamses.

Washington presided at a "Fairfax County Convention," before the Revolution. It resolved that "no slaves ought to be imported into any of the British colonies"; and Washington himself expressed "the most earnest wish to see an entire stop forever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade."

The Continental Congress of 1776 resolved, "that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies."

There had then been imported by the cruel traffic above 300,000 blacks, bought or stolen from the African shore; and the blacks then constituted twenty per cent. of the total population, a greater per centum than at any time since.

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