PARALLEL BETWEEN SLAVERY IN ALGIERS AND IN OUR OWN COUNTRY.
I should do injustice to truth, if I did not suspend for one moment the narrative of this Anti-Slavery movement, to exhibit the pointed parallel then recognized between slavery in Algiers and slavery in our own country. It belongs to this history. Conscience could not plead for the emancipation of white fellow-citizens, without confessing in the heart, perhaps to the world, that every consideration, every argument, every appeal for the white man, told with equal force for the wretched colored brother in bonds. Thus the interest awakened for the slave in Algiers embraced also the slave at home. Sometimes they were said to be alike in condition; sometimes, indeed, it was openly declared that the horrors of our American slavery surpassed that of Algiers.
John Wesley, the oracle of Methodism, who had become familiar with slavery in our Southern States, addressing those engaged in the negro slave-trade, declared as early as 1774: "You have carried the survivors into the vilest slavery, never to end but with life,—such slavery as is not found among the Turks at Algiers."[107] Another writer in 1794, when sympathy with the American captives was at its height, presses the parallel in pungent terms. "For this practice of buying and selling slaves," he says, "we are not entitled to charge the Algerines with any exclusive degree of barbarity. The Christians of Europe and America carry on this commerce one hundred times more extensively than the Algerines. It has received a recent sanction from the immaculate Divan of Britain. Nobody seems even to be surprised by a diabolical kind of advertisements which for some months past have frequently adorned the newspapers of Philadelphia. The French fugitives from the West Indies have brought with them a crowd of slaves. These most injured people sometimes run off, and their master advertises a reward for apprehending them. At the same time we are commonly informed that his sacred name is marked in capitals on their breasts,—or, in plainer terms, it is stamped on that part of the body with a red-hot iron. Before, therefore, we reprobate the ferocity of the Algerines, we should inquire whether it is not possible to find in some other region of this globe a systematic brutality still more disgraceful."[108]
Not long after the address to the clergy by the captives in Algiers, a voice came from New Hampshire, in a tract entitled "Tyrannical Libertymen, a Discourse upon Negro Slavery in the United States, composed at —— in New Hampshire on the late Federal Thanksgiving Day,"[109] which does not hesitate to brand American slavery in terms of glowing reprobation. "There was a contribution upon this day," it says, "for the purpose of redeeming those Americans who are in slavery at Algiers,—an object worthy of a generous people. Their redemption, we hope, is not far distant. But should any person contribute money for this purpose which he had cudgelled out of a negro slave, he would deserve less applause than an actor in the comedy of Las Casas.... When will Americans show that they are what they affect to be thought,—friends to the cause of humanity at large, reverers of the rights of their fellow-creatures? Hitherto we have been oppressors, nay, murderers!—for many a negro has died by the whip of his master, and many have lived when death would have been preferable. Surely the curse of God and the reproach of man is against us. Worse than the seven plagues of Egypt will befall us. If Algiers shall be punished seven fold, truly America seventy and seven fold." These words might not impertinently be uttered in our present debates.
To this excitement we are indebted for the story of "The Algerine Captive," which, though now forgotten, was among the earliest literary productions of our country, reprinted in London at a time when few American books were known abroad. Published anonymously, it is recognized as from the pen of Royall Tyler, afterwards Chief Justice of Vermont. In the form of a narrative of personal adventures, extending through two volumes, a slave of Algiers depicts the horrors of his condition. In this regard it is not unlike the recent story of "Archy Moore," displaying the horrors of American slavery. The narrator, while engaged as surgeon on board a ship in the African slave-trade, has an opportunity which he does not neglect. After describing the reception of the poor negroes, he says: "I cannot reflect on this transaction yet, without shuddering. I have deplored my conduct with tears of anguish; and I pray a merciful God, the Common Parent of the great family of the universe, who hath made of one flesh and one blood all nations of the earth, that the miseries, the insults, and cruel woundings I afterwards received, when a slave myself, may expiate for the inhumanity I was necessitated to exercise towards these my brethren of the human race."[110] He further records his meditations and resolves, while yet a captive of the Algerines. "Grant me," he says, from the depths of his own misfortune, "once more to taste the freedom of my native country, and every moment of my life shall be dedicated to preaching against this detestable commerce. I will fly to our fellow-citizens in the Southern States; I will, on my knees, conjure them, in the name of humanity, to abolish a traffic which causes it to bleed in every pore. If they are deaf to the pleadings of Nature, I will conjure them, for the sake of consistency, to cease to deprive their fellow-creatures of freedom, which their writers, their orators, representatives, senators, and even their constitutions of government, have declared to be the unalienable birthright of man."[111] This is sound and significant.
Not merely in the productions of literature and in fugitive essays was such comparison presented; it was set forth on an important occasion in the history of our country, by one of her most illustrious citizens. The opportunity occurred in a complaint against England for carrying away from New York certain negroes, in alleged violation of the treaty of 1783. In an elaborate paper, John Jay, at that time Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the Confederation, says: "Whether men can be so degraded, as, under any circumstances, to be with propriety denominated goods and chattels, and under that idea capable of becoming booty, is a question on which opinions are unfortunately various, even in countries professing Christianity and respect for the rights of mankind." He then proceeds in words worthy of special remembrance at this time: "If a war should take place between France and Algiers, and in the course of it France should invite the American slaves there to run away from their masters, and actually receive and protect them in their camp, what would Congress, and indeed the world, think and say of France, if, on making peace with Algiers, she should give up those American slaves to their former Algerine masters? Is there any other difference between the two cases than this, namely, that the American slaves at Algiers are WHITE people, whereas the African slaves at New York were BLACK people?" Introducing these sentiments, the Secretary remarks: "He is aware he is about to say unpopular things; but higher motives than personal considerations press him to proceed."[112] Words worthy of John Jay!
The same comparison was also instituted by the Abolition Society of Pennsylvania, in an address to the Convention which framed the National Constitution. "The sufferings of our American brethren groaning in captivity at Algiers," it says, "Providence seems to have ordained to awaken us to a sentiment of the injustice and cruelty of which we are guilty towards the wretched Africans."[113] Shortly afterwards it was again brought forward by Dr. Franklin, in an ingenious apologue, with all his peculiar humor, simplicity, logic, and humanity. As President of the same Abolition Society which had already addressed the Convention, he signed a memorial to the earliest Congress under the Constitution, praying it "to countenance the restoration of liberty to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage," and to "step to the very verge of the power vested in them for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men."[114] In the congressional debates on the presentation of this memorial,—memorable not only for its intrinsic importance as a guide to the country, but as the final public act of a chief among the founders of our national institutions,—several attempts were made to justify slavery and the slave-trade. The last and almost dying energies of Franklin were excited. In a remarkable document, written only twenty-four days before his death, and published in the journals of the time, he gave a parody of a speech actually delivered in Congress,—transferring the scene to Algiers, and putting the congressional eloquence in the mouth of a corsair slave-dealer, inveighing before the Divan against a petition from the Purists or Abolitionists of Algiers. All the arguments adduced in favor of negro slavery are applied by the Algerine orator with equal force to justify the plunder and enslavement of whites.[115] With this protest against a great wrong, Franklin died.
Most certainly we are aided in appreciation of American slavery, when we know that it was likened, by characters like Wesley, Jay, and Franklin, to the abomination of slavery in Algiers. But whatever may have been the influence of this parallel on the condition of the black slaves, it did not check the rising sentiments of the people against White Slavery.