VII.
I propose to conclude the subject of “The Prospects of the Freedmen of Hilton Head” with this article, and believe that the prospects of the one are the prospects of the whole population of freedmen throughout the South.
Political economy must stand most prominent as the leading feature of this great question of the elevation of the negro—and it is a great question—in this country, because, however humane and philanthropic, however Christian and philanthropic we may be, except we can be made to see that there is a prospective enhancement of the general wealth of the country,—a pecuniary benefit to accrue by it to society,—the best of us, whatever our pretensions, could scarcely be willing to see him elevated in the United States.
Equality of political rights being the genius of the American government, I shall not spend time with this, as great principles will take care of themselves, and must eventually prevail.
Will the negroes be able to obtain land by which to earn a livelihood? Why should they not? It is a well-known fact to the statisticians of the South that two thirds of the lands have never been cultivated. These lands being mainly owned by but three hundred and twelve thousand persons (according to Helper)—one third of which was worked by four millions of slaves, who are now freemen—what better can be done with these lands to make them available and unburdensome to the proprietors, than let them out in small tracts to the freedmen, as well as to employ a portion of the same people, who prefer it, to cultivate lands for themselves?
It is a fact—probably not so well known as it should be—in political economy, that a given amount of means divided among a greater number of persons, makes a wealthier community than the same amount held or possessed by a few.
For example, there is a community of a small country village of twenty families, the (cash) wealth of the community being fifty thousand dollars, and but one family the possessor of it; certainly the community would not be regarded as in good circumstances, much less having available means. But let this amount be possessed by ten families in sums of five thousand dollars each, would not this enhance the wealth of the community? And again, let the whole twenty families be in possession of two thousand five hundred dollars each of the fifty thousand, would not this be still a wealthier community, by placing each family in easier circumstances, and making these means much more available? Certainly it would. And as to a community or village, so to a state; and as to a state, so to a nation.
This is the solution to the great problem of the difference between the strength of the North and the South in the late rebellion—the North possessing the means within itself without requiring outside help, almost every man being able to aid the national treasury; everybody commanding means, whether earned by a white-wash brush in black hands, or wooden nutmegs in white: all had something to sustain the integrity of the Union. It must be seen by this that the strength of a country—internationally considered—depends greatly upon its wealth; the wealth consisting not in the greatest amount possessed, but the greatest available amount.
Let, then, such lands as belong to the government, by sale from direct taxation, be let or sold to these freedmen, and other poor loyal men of the South, in small tracts of from twenty to forty acres to each head of a family, and large landholders do the same,—the rental and sales of which amply rewarding them,—and there will be no difficulty in the solution of the problem of the future, or prospects of the freedmen, not only of Hilton Head, but of the whole United States.
This increase of the wealth of the country by the greater division of its means is not new to New England, nor to the economists of the North generally. As in Pennsylvania, many years ago, the old farmers commenced dividing their one hundred and one hundred and fifty acre tracts of lands into twenty-five acres each among their sons and daughters, who are known to have realized more available means always among them—though by far greater in numbers—than their parents did, who were comparatively few. And it is now patent as an historic fact, that, leaving behind them the extensive evergreen, fertile plains, and savannas of the South, the rebel armies and raiders continually sought the limited farms of the North to replenish their worn-out cavalry stock and exhausted commissary department—impoverished in cattle for food, and forage for horses.
In the Path Valley of Pennsylvania, on a single march of a radius of thirty-five miles of Chambersburg, Lee’s army, besides all the breadstuffs that his three thousand five hundred wagons (as they went empty for the purpose) were able to carry, captured and carried off more than six thousand head of stock, four thousand of which were horses. The wealth of that valley alone, they reported, was more than India fiction, and equal to all of the South put together. And whence this mighty available wealth of Pennsylvania? Simply by its division and possession among the many.
The Rothschilds are said to have once controlled the exchequer of England, compelling (by implication) the premier to comply with their requisition at a time of great peril to the nation, simply because it depended upon them for means; and the same functionaries are reported, during our recent struggle, to have greatly annoyed the Bank of England, by a menace of some kind, which immediately brought the institution to their terms. Whether true or false, the points are sufficiently acute to serve for illustration.
In the apportionment of small farms to the freedmen, an immense amount of means is placed at their command, and thereby a great market opened, a new source of consumption of every commodity in demand in free civilized communities. The blacks are great consumers, and four millions of a population, before barefooted, would here make a demand for the single article of shoes. The money heretofore spent in Europe by the old slaveholders would be all disbursed by these new people in their own country. Where but one cotton gin and a limited number of farming utensils were formerly required to the plantation of a thousand acres, every small farm will want a gin and farming implements, the actual valuation of which on the same tract of land would be several fold greater than the other. Huts would give place to beautiful, comfortable cottages, with all their appurtenances, fixtures, and furniture; osnaburgs and rags would give place to genteel apparel becoming a free and industrious people; and even the luxuries, as well as the general comforts, of the table would take the place of black-eye peas and fresh fish, hominy and salt pork, all of which have been mainly the products of their own labor when slaves. They would quickly prove that arduous and faithfully fawning, miserable volunteer advocate of the rebellion and slaveholder’s rule in the United States,—the London Times,—an arrant falsifier, when it gratuitously and unbidden came to the aid of its kith and kin, declaring that the great and good President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would not be accepted by the negroes; “that all Cuffee wanted and cared for to make him happy was his hog and his hominy;” but they will neither get land, nor will the old slaveholders give them employment. Don’t fear any such absurdity. There are too many political economists among the old leading slaveholders to fear the adoption of any such policy. Neither will the leading statesmen of the country, of any part, North or South, favor any such policy.
We have on record but one instance of such a course in the history of modern states. The silly-brained, foolhardy king of France, Louis V., taking umbrage at the political course of the artisans and laborers against him, by royal decree expelled them from the country, when they flocked into England, which readily opened her doors to them, transplanting from France to England their arts and industry; ever since which, England, for fabrics, has become the “workshop of the world,” to the poverty of France, the government of which is sustained by borrowed capital.
No fears of our country driving into neighboring countries such immense resources as emanate from the peculiar labor of these people; but when worst comes to worst, they have among them educated freemen of their own color North, fully competent to lead the way, by making negotiations with foreign states on this continent, which would only be too ready to receive them and theirs.
Place no impediment in the way of the freedman; let his right be equally protected and his chances be equally regarded, and with the facts presented to you in this series of seven articles as the basis, he will stand and thrive, as firmly rooted, not only on the soil of Hilton Head, but in all the South,—though a black,—as any white, or “Live Oak,” as ever was grown in South Carolina, or transplanted to Columbia.
These articles were published from September to December consecutively, with two weekly exceptions, until the command of the department was assumed by Major General Daniel E. Sickles. They were formerly published anonymously: until then the major was not at liberty to exercise the full functions of his office as a representative of the bureau, as more would be accomplished by concealing the author’s name. Feeling free from a restraint which, while it may have been enjoyed by others, was distasteful to him, at last he ventured for the first time to give official publicity to these articles, as will be seen by the following letter:—
Triple Alliance.—The Restoration of the South.—Salvation of its Political Economy.
The restoration of the industrial prosperity of the South is certain, if fixed upon the basis of a domestic triple alliance, which the new order of things requires, invites, and demands.
Capital, land, and labor require a copartnership. The capital can be obtained in the North; the land is in the South, owned by the old planters; and the blacks have the labor. Let, then, the North supply the capital (which no doubt it will do on demand, when known to be desired on this basis), the South the land (which is ready and waiting), and the blacks will readily bring the labor, if only being assured that their services are wanted in so desirable an association of business relations, the net profits being equally shared between the three,—capital, land, and labor,—each receiving one third, of course. The net has reference to the expenses incurred after gathering the crop, such as transportation, storage, and commission on sales.
Upon this basis I propose to act, and make contracts between the capitalist, landholder, and laborer, and earnestly invite, and call upon all colored people,—the recent freedmen,—also capitalists and landholders within the limits of my district, to enter at once into a measure the most reasonable and just to all parties concerned, and the very best that can be adopted to meet the demands of the new order and state of society, as nothing can pay better where the blacks cannot get land for themselves.
I am at liberty to name Rev. Dr. Stoney (Episcopal clergyman), Joseph J. Stoney, Esq., Dr. Crowell, Colonel Colcock (late of the Southern army)—all the first gentlemen formerly of wealth and affluence in the State; and Major Roy, of the United States Regular Army, Inspector General of the department; Colonel Green, commanding district, and Lieutenant Colonel Clitz, commanding post, also of the regular army, each having friends interested in planting, who readily indorse this new partnership arrangement. Of course it receives the approval of Major General Saxton.
I am, sir, very respectfully,
Your most obedient servant,
M. R. Delany,
Major & A. S. A. Commissioner Bureau R. F. A. L.
Hilton Head, December 7, 1865.
The planters of the islands and upland districts, recognizing the advantages of the bureau in their midst, when conducted by an efficient officer, consulted him when occasion required.
Among them was Colonel Colcock, with whom he had, on one occasion, an extended interview, previous to the publication of the foregoing article, in which interview the following resulted:—
Hilton Head, December 8, 1865.
Major M. R. Delany, A. S. A. C. Bureau R. F. A. L.
Major: I wish to employ sixty laborers on my homestead place on Colleton River, and two hundred on Spring Island, and will thank you to engage them for me, on the basis of the contract which I showed you on Friday. In engaging labor, you will please give the preference to the freedmen who formerly resided on these islands, provided there is nothing objectionable in their character.
Try to arrange it so that each family will average three field hands, as I have house-room to accommodate them on that basis.
Yours respectfully,
C. J. Colcock.
Headquarters Bureau R. F. A. L.,
Hilton Head, S. C., December 11, 1865.
Colonel C. J. Colcock, late of the Southern Army.
Colonel: I received your communication on Saturday last, desiring to know whether or not two hundred and sixty laborers, or cultivators, can be obtained on the basis of copartnership of capital, land, and labor, or what I term the domestic triple alliance, embracing a series of articles drawn up by yourself, as the conditions of your contract.
I reply most positively, that you may confidently rely upon such aid in your business arrangements, as the people are waiting, ready and willing, to consummate such contracts as this plan proposes, alike advantageous to all the parties interested.
I may here be permitted to suggest in this connection, that there are generosity and liberality of feeling in the North towards the South, in its present position, scarcely believed by southern people; and all the North asks is, that their neighbors be disposed to do right, and they may obtain anything in reason, financially, that is desirable.
I have taken the liberty to suggest several modifications in the articles of agreement which you present, to prevent misconstruction or ambiguity, and added one more article, which I consider important (Art. 14). I name this, that it may not be thought that you have assumed to prescribe what should suit the people, but that the injunction of frugality and economy may come from themselves, through their own representative.
I am, colonel, very respectfully, yours,
M. R. Delany,
Major and A. S. A. C.
CHAPTER XXIX.
GENERAL SICKLES.
Major Delany was opposed openly in every advanced step he made, as stated before; hence, to accomplish any new measure of his relative to his office, he was compelled to resort to strategy. Before, oppositions of various characters were placed in his way, but he never permitted himself to be disturbed by them. He was actually forbidden to address the freedmen on public occasions concerning their rights; he spoke through the voice of the press, to the public at large, of their wrongs, and it found an echo in every loyal and generous heart. His color made him objectionable to many at that post as an officer, and his scathing denunciations of injustice rendered to the helpless and uneducated people who constantly challenged their consideration, showing him to be no mean opponent, rendered him still more objectionable.
Now he was at liberty to act freely; having an acceptable basis on which to begin his work, though late in the season, his prospect of usefulness appeared in its most promising light.
It was not long after the appearance of his “Triple Alliance Contract” that the following telegram was sent by order of the distinguished commander of the Department of South Carolina, since of the Second Military District.
Charleston, December 18, 1865.
To Major Delany, 104th U. S. C. T.
General Sickles desires to see you at Charleston as soon as possible.
W. L. M. Burger, A. A. G.
The brilliant record written in unmistakable characters by this great neophyte to Liberty, as military lawgiver of the Carolinas, vies with the glory which encircled him at Gettysburg.
When the history of these eventful times shall have been compiled, the most pleasing development of the late revolution will be noted in the invaluable service given to the cause of human rights by those who previously opposed it. The ardor of these converts gave renewed zeal to the faithful; conspicuous among these, in letters as imperishable as their deeds, will be found the name of this gallant commander.
A few days after the reception of the telegram found Major Delany reporting his presence at the quarters of Major General Sickles. Of him he wrote afterwards, “I consider the gallant general who contributed so much to the victory at Gettysburg, a most liberal-minded statesman. His massive intellect at once grasped with vivid comprehension the entire range of political economy, domestic and social relations. In this interview he reviewed the situation thoroughly, giving me the details of instructions which were embodied in an order.” This recognition, after previous discouragements, of his earnest efforts, from sources least expected, was certainly gratifying.
The general, in giving the instructions to him, said, “I cannot go myself,” pointing to the remnant of the limb which he contributed to the nation’s life at Gettysburg; “it requires an active person, and one in whom I can place reliance. You will be my representative. And I shall crush whatever dares to oppose you in your duties,” he added, rising and straightening himself upon his crutches, as is characteristic of him, and suiting a gesture to the word.
Immediately after the interview with the commanding general, Major Delany returned to his post at Hilton Head, to make arrangements for starting on his tour of inspection. In this capacity he was de facto the military representative from the headquarters.
The discerning general had his attention drawn on several occasions to the many abuses, both by the civil and military, of the person and property of blacks and whites. He could not fail to notice, when he assumed command of the department, that the bureau was unpopular with a large class, comprising Northerners and Southerners—its friends and officers hated; and with the exception of orders which came directly from the assistant commissioner, discouragements were placed in the way, of such nature, that the entire social arrangement was threatened with neglect. It will be remembered that at this time the status of the bureau was not definitely settled, and its authority could be, and was, disputed by any ordinary military official. Thus, in order to check the growing evil, it was necessary that a proper inspection should be made by one familiar with the system of the bureau, and yet, in order to be respected, with a military authority; hence the appointment of Major Delany by General Sickles.
The following order was furnished him: the instructions therein given, being strictly adhered to, resulted satisfactorily, as will be shown.
Headquarters Department of South Carolina,
Charleston, S. C., December 21, 1865.
Special Orders. No. 148.
IV. Major M. R. Delany, 104th United States Colored Infantry, will proceed at once to the Military District of Port Royal, and the Sea Islands in the Military District of Charleston, South Carolina, and inspect, and report upon the condition of the population therein, according to the instructions received from the major general commanding. Commanding officers will afford Major Delany all necessary facilities.
The quartermaster’s department will furnish the necessary transportation.
By command of
Major General D. E. Sickles.
W. L. M. Burger, Asst. Adjt. Gen.
While on the eve of setting out on his tour of inspection, a report had reached Hilton Head that the negroes of Port Royal Island had matured an insurrection, to take place on Christmas night, their headquarters being Beaufort. At first no person paid sufficient attention to a rumor so silly; but finally it magnified into an alarm, which caused the major to be sought out by many of the white citizens and some of the military, and requested to take a detachment of troops, and make Beaufort his first point of inspection. This was Christmas Eve.
Believing that “the better part of valor is discretion,” and to make assurance doubly sure, he at once made a requisition for a detachment of the 21st United States Colored Troops, then doing duty at the post. A part of Company E was detailed, under command of a sergeant, with other assistant non-commissioned officers. On Christmas night the transport steamer Sampson, Dennett, master, was ordered, which carried him to Beaufort, though, in consequence of a fog, he did not reach that point till five o’clock the next morning; not in time to quell an insurrection of the evening before, but in good season to learn from the “rising inhabitants,” that among the most quiet and pleasant evenings of the year was that which had just given place to the morning; and the insurrection-haunted whites of the island could again repose in peace, until the next report would awake them.
Completing his official duties at Beaufort, the next point of importance was Edisto, where he went by advice of Major General Sickles. Here he met, at the headquarters of Captain Batchelor, commanding a detachment of United States forces, a delegation of the old planters, at the head of which was Jacob Jenkins Mikell, Esq., formerly one of the largest cotton-growers of Sea Island.
The 1st of January found him here, and he attended an immense gathering of the freed men at their emancipation celebration. He addressed them, and in the course of his advice endeavored to disabuse their minds of the expectation of obtaining land, which he foresaw, and believed from the course of events then transpiring, would not be realized. On account of this advice he was misrepresented by ignorant, though well-meaning, as well as mischievous and designing persons, the latter induced, doubtless, by their mercenary proclivities. The people were led to believe that he was opposed to their interest, and in that of the planters. But the greater portion of these freedmen have since learned whether or not his advice on that occasion was in their favor or that of others.
By the force of his genius and acquirements, as well as position, he had compelled the old planters of Carolina to extend a recognition to him such as no black had ever before received; so that, while visiting many of the plantations of Edisto, so thoroughly had slavery done its work, that his advice to them only served to arouse their suspicions. John’s, James’s, and Wadmalaw Islands were barely touched upon; but the advice given was strictly guarded, in order to be effective.
He turned towards Charleston soon after, and reported his observation to the major general commanding, and paid his respects to the commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
The detachment of troops which had accompanied him had acted only thus far as a guard of honor, he having had no occasion, happily, for their service.
While he was reporting in Charleston, the order was received relieving Major General Saxton of his command. The people, not having a knowledge of his noble successor, Major General Robert K. Scott, were anxiously excited.
The following Sabbath, three days after the news of his removal was received, a large meeting of the colored people, indiscriminately, was called at Zion’s Church, for the purpose of expressing their gratitude to the general for his steadfast adherence to their interest, and their unfeigned regret at his removal.
At this meeting the general, his family, and a part of his staff, with other military officers, including the black major, were present. The speeches and resolutions on this occasion gave evidence of their appreciation of the character of that distinguished military philanthropist; and at a subsequent meeting some testimonials were presented by the people, and the scholars of the Saxton and Morris Street Schools, in simple acknowledgment of his official services, and of their personal attachment to him.
Knowing the suspicion and dissatisfaction with which the freedmen and colored people generally in South Carolina look upon such changes respecting those whose friendship they have enjoyed, or those upon whose impartial sense of justice they are willing to abide, the days of General Saxton’s removal, in remembrance of their unbounded attachment and devotion, and the scenes attending it, remain in the mind as one of the most touching reminiscences of our war.
After the great Saxton meeting, the major prepared for setting out for his post at Hilton Head. On arriving on Monday morning at the wharf, he was met by Brigadier General Bennett, with two companies of colored troops, just boarding the transport steamer Canonicus, en route for Mount Pleasant and Sullivan’s Island, for four companies more, on an expedition on the Ashley River, to a plantation about ten miles distant, to quell an “insurrection of the negroes.” This offspring of a haunted southern mind having in hot haste reached the headquarters, the major general commanding deemed it advisable to take measures to quiet all apprehension by the presence of forces on the spot, and with his characteristic deliberation, in order to remove all unfavorable impressions as to the intentions of the military towards the freedmen, he requested that Major Delany should accompany the expedition, so that whatever action might have been necessary, his presence among them would indicate that it was executed under the most favorable circumstances.
Sending back his baggage in charge of his orderly, he embarked with the brigadier general. On reaching the plantation, they found the only evidence of an insurrection, was an attempt that had been made by some persons to effect an unjust contract, which the freedmen refused to receive, and declared their intention to abandon the place before they would submit. The military applauded their action, as there was no violence accompanying it, and their verdict, “You did right,” settled everything further on the part of the aggressors. The major introduced to their consideration, and finally placed them fairly on, his system of land, labor, and capital, or triple alliance system. There being no further need of military intervention, they returned to Charleston, happy at the result of their passive victory. We would have cause for gratulations if future military expeditions into other places on similar bases of equality and right, and claims settled between oppression and oppressed, rich and poor, had terminated as happily as did that.
The major, having accomplished his mission, set out that afternoon for Hilton Head, to resume his functions.
CHAPTER XXX.
RESTORING DOMESTIC RELATIONS.
On Delany’s return to his post, encouraged by the approval of the commanding general, he again turned his attention to resuscitating the lulled industrial powers of the people, by vigorously urging and aiding, in his official capacity, the reproduction of the staples which were once the traffic of the South.
The triple alliance system had now become popular, and his office was always thronged by those seeking advice, of all classes, blacks and whites, ex-slaves and ex-slaveholders.
This will be more readily comprehended when it is remembered that the freedmen had shown a determination that they would never again work for these ex-slaveholders.
In his interviews with either party, he never omitted to remind them that there existed no longer either slaves or slaveholders,—their relation to each other being essentially changed; that all were American citizens, and equal before the law; that the war having reduced many to poverty, unless some exertion should be made, starvation would soon ensue; and this while they had the support and self-sustenance within their own reach, by a mere alliance of their efforts. It had been done before; it could be repeated in their case. Under the old régime, the master supported the slave by the slave’s own production, which also supported the owner; hence the support was reciprocal by mutual dependence. The condition of each being changed, a union of interests was now required to bring prosperity to the country. The freedman was now to be a partner, having an equal share, and controlling his own affairs. This would induce him to be more self-reliant. His observation of the labor systems of other countries had given him experience. He explained in the clearest terms to them, that, throughout the world, the only established order of wealth and prosperity to a people was through the proper union of land, labor, and capital.
He frequently urged upon them that the blacks and whites were the social and political element of the South, and must continue the basis of her wealth by a union of their efforts and strength; that the displacement of the white southern planters for northern capitalists, would not be found desirable, as it would result in substituting for the black laborers, the poor whites from the North, relatives of the rich capitalists, or immigrants, while it was desirable that northern capitalists should unite with southern proprietors, and northern mechanical skill and intelligence be incorporated among the southerners, rich and poor. By this means the South would obtain her true civilization.
On this subject the editors of the New South, recognizing the success of the endeavors of this indefatigable work, and justly popular officer, pay the following deserved tribute to him in the issue of January 27, which was but the public sentiment concerning his administration:—
“The Labor Question.—We are happy to report a continued improvement in this neighborhood. The freed-people—men, women, and children—are beginning to display, not only a willingness, but an anxiety, to get to work at once, as the time for cotton-planting will soon be over. While we are writing, several hundred are congregated around Major Delany’s quarters, who acts as medium between the employers and employees, and carefully adjusts all points of difference.”
An incident relative to his simple and decisive mode of disposing of cases is related.
The case was brought up a few weeks after his appointment in the Bureau, by a former slave-owner against her ex-slave. In deciding cases in which the freedmen are the aggressors, whatever may be his opinion in regard to their claims to the consideration of the planters, he ignores both color and condition, aiming solely to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.
An intelligent-looking middle-aged woman, accompanied by her husband and two male friends, entered his office, apparently laboring under great excitement, followed by an intelligent-looking black youth. The lady being politely handed a seat, the major inquired her business, judging her, from her manner of acting, to be the complainant in the case. About this time horses were being sold in that section at very high prices, the most ordinary commanding from one hundred to a hundred and seventy-five dollars. The complainant had just left the Provost Court, where a horse, her favorite, and only remaining property left from the late war, having been seized upon by the young lad,—a former “chattel,” “Jim,”—had been restored to her in conformity with a current order of the government. But Jim persistently refused to return the property, declaring in the hearing of the judge, as he left the court, he would kill the horse the moment they should attempt to take him away.
They had been advised for protection to repair to the quarters of Major Delany.
The major gave his attention to both sides, and satisfying himself as to the proceeding, he decided that the case was regular and valid, and that, the decision of the Provost Court being just, the parties should comply with its demands ordering the young man to give it up. The horse, meanwhile, stood tied to the fence, directly opposite the window where sat the major at his desk. The lady hesitated to leave the office.
“Go and take your horse, madam,” said he.
“Where is the guard?” inquired the lady.
“What guard, madam?”
“The guard to protect me and my property,” she answered.
“You need no protection; you, being just from the interior, forget that hostilities have ended,” said the major.
“Yes, but he’ll kill the horse—he swore that he would, and I know that he’ll do it.”
“Take your horse, madam,” said he, becoming impatient at her hesitancy, “and don’t be alarmed at the idle talk of a disappointed boy.”
“Major,” said she, “I will not go without protection. I know Jim well, and if you knew him as well as I do, you wouldn’t talk that way; I must have a guard, or my horse will be lost, and all my trouble and expense in coming down here, and my only dependence, gone.”
Turning to the woman and young man at the same time, with that stern expression that his brow sometimes assumes, said he, “Madam, do you really suppose that the power which put down the masters, compelling them to submit at discretion, is not sufficient to control one of their former slaves—an idle, babbling black boy?”
The young man, giving vent to laughter, which he evidently did to disguise his chagrin, replied, “Major, I ain’t going to trouble the horse; she kin have um.” The parties, being assured of this, left the office with better feelings towards each other, we trust, than when they entered.
CHAPTER XXXI.
GENERAL ROBERT K. SCOTT.
The affairs of the Bureau promised a change in the advent of its new chief, in the person of Brevet Major General Scott. He entered upon the duties of his office in a most spirited and independent manner.
In many respects, it was thought, his administration was better adapted to the times than was the former general’s. The rebels, encouraged by the smiles of their friends in high places, were fast resuming their old practices, and the status of the Bureau was scarcely recognized. General Scott having had some insight into the southern character while a prisoner in Charleston, during the war, his administration was looked upon with terror by the unrepentant chivalry of South Carolina; and it was not long before the difference was felt by them between the mild administration of West Point’s accomplished soldier and that of the bluff western general.
On assuming the duties of his office, the general, accompanied by a portion of his staff, made a tour of inspection through his department, visiting every officer on duty, previous to reappointing him.
On this occasion the major’s post received attention, and the satisfactory expressions of the general gave a new impetus, if possible, to both officers and laborers in their respective spheres. The plans by which he had accomplished so much in the department were submitted to his inspection, and received his indorsement.
We present here the contract written expressly for his district, and rigidly enforced by him, though in many cases all the articles signed by the contracting parties would be simply an acknowledgment of his triple alliance contract:—
Article I. This contract between Justice Goodman and the freedmen, whose names are hereunto affixed, is on the basis of an equal partnership between Capital, Land, and Labor—each receiving one third of the proceeds of the productions of the cultivated plantation of Homestead Farm, Beaufort District, South Carolina, and to continue till January 1, 1867.
Article II. Each laborer is to receive (besides the privilege of firewood, with team and vehicle to haul it, and one acre of land to each family) one third of all that he or she is able to produce by cultivation, clear of all expenses except those incurred in the transportation and sale of the staple, as freight and commission on storage and sales, they supporting themselves and families; the proprietor making all advances of provisions or rations on credit (if required), finding all dwellings for the contractors, supplying all farming utensils, vehicles, machinery, sufficient working stock; and no labor is to be performed by hand or by a person that can better be done by animal labor or machinery.
Article III. All restrictions and obligations legally binding contracting parties in the fulfilment of their articles of agreement are implied in this article, and all damage for injury or loss of property by carelessness is to be paid by fair and legal assessment.
Article IV. Negligence of duty in cultivation, so as to become injurious to the proprietor or other contracting parties, either by loss in the production of staple, or example in conduct or precedent, may, by investigation, cause a forfeiture of the interest of such person in their share of the crop. Any contractor taking the place of one dismissed shall succeed to all of their rights and claims on the part of the crop left by them; otherwise it shall be equally divided between those who work it.
Article V. All Thanksgiving Days, Fast Days, “holidays,” and national celebration days are to be enjoyed in all cases by contractors, without being regarded as a neglect of duty or violation of contract.
Article VI. Good conduct and good behavior of the freedmen towards the proprietor, good treatment of animals, and good care of tools, utensils, &c., and good and kind treatment by the proprietor to the freedmen, will be strictly required by the authorities; and all dwellings and immediate premises of freedmen must be kept neat and clean, subject to inspection and fine for neglect by such sanitary arrangements as the government may make.
Article VII. No sutler stores will be permitted on the place, and nothing sold on account except the necessaries of life, that such as good, substantial food and working clothes, conducive to health and comfort, at cost, that no inducements may be given for spending earnings improperly. Spirituous liquors will not be permitted.
Article VIII. All accounts must be entered in a pass-book, to be kept by each family or individual for the purpose, that no advantage be taken by incorrect charges; and no account against them will be recognized except such entry be made. No tobacco charges above fifty cents a month will be recognized by the Bureau. In all cases of the loss of their account-books, then the account in the proprietor’s books must be taken to date of loss, when another pass-book must be obtained, and entries of accounts made as before.
Article IX. In all cases where an accusation is made against a person, the proprietor or his agent, one of the contractors or freedmen selected by themselves, and a third person chosen by the two,—provided neither of these three is biassed or prejudiced against the accused,—shall be a competent council to investigate and acquit the accused; but in all cases where a decision is to be made to dismiss or forfeit a share of the crop, the officer of the Bureau, or some other competent officer of the government, must preside in the council of trial, and make the decision in the case. When the proprietor is biassed or prejudiced against an accused person, he must name a person to take his place in the council who shall neither be biassed nor prejudiced against the accused.
Witness our hands and signs this 17th day of February, 1866.
He still indicated, by his unflagging energy and industry, as well as equitable measures, his consciousness of the immense responsibilities resting upon him.
This only served to redouble his zeal and activity, as this trait is in consonance with his character generally. In more than one instance in other days, while the political horizon seemed to increase in gloom, the man seems to have loomed up more conspicuously in proportion to the exigency of the situation. Always actuated by his insatiable though laudable ambition, Major Delany leads an age in advance where others of his own people, possessed of abilities and acknowledged courage, would even hesitate to follow.
In his official duties so conscientiously did he perform his part, and so firm was he in his high-toned native pride, and honesty against bribery and partiality, that he received aid from many of those whose duties were not altogether in the same channel. Among them he mentions particularly his indebtedness to Major J. P. Roy, 6th United States Infantry, inspector general of the Department South, Colonel J. D. Green, 6th United States Infantry, commanding district, and Colonel, now General H. B. Clitz, 6th United States Infantry, then commanding the post at Hilton Head, now Charleston. They facilitated and aided him in his official duties, as well as ameliorated the condition of the freedmen and suffering whites, refugees, and ex-slaveholders: all of these came under his department, and were constantly referred to him when not voluntarily applying. The editors of the New South, who took note of his movements, again make mention of him, in their issue of the 3d of February:—
“Major M. R. Delany, the ‘black major’ of the Freedmen’s Bureau, is now on the right track. Comprehending the situation of affairs, he has seized at once upon its difficulties, and is doing a noble work for his race. His sympathies are, of course, with those of his own color; but, being a man of large experience, highly educated, and eminently conscientious, he does not allow prejudice to sway him one way or the other, and, consequently, he has a wonderful influence for good over the freedmen. He tells them to go to work at once; that labor surely brings its own reward; and that after one more good crop is gathered, they will find their condition much better than at present. And he tells the planters they must be kind and just to their laborers, if they would quickly bring order out of chaos, and establish a prosperity far beyond what they ever dreamed of in the dark and dreadful era of slavery.
“Our whole community here is taking heart. One obstacle after another, to thorough regeneration, is being removed. As the planters succeed in procuring laborers, their credit is improved, and the merchants of this place come forward to assist the onward movement. Agricultural implements, seed, subsistence, and the various wants of a plantation, are being much more liberally supplied than they were a month ago. We all look forward to a large measure of success the present season.”
Meanwhile, the “muster out” of the major was being talked of, which was occasioned by the disbanding of his organization. But the following telegram from the headquarters of the department quieted the rumor for at least a time.
Headquarters Department of South Carolina,
Charleston, February 3, 1866.
To the Commanding Officer, District of Port Royal.
The major general commanding directs that Major M. R. Delany, 104th United States Colored Troops, remain, until further orders, in the performance of the duties in which he is now employed, by special orders from these headquarters. He will not for the present rejoin his regiment.
W. L. M. Burger,
Asst. Adjt. Gen.
Indorsement on above Telegram.
Headquarters, District of Port Royal,
Second Separate Brigade,
Hilton Head, S. C., February 3, 1866.
Respectfully referred to Major Delany, 104th U. S. C. T., B. R. F. & A. L., for his information and guidance.
By order of
A. G. Bennett,
Lt. Col. 21st U. S. C. T., Commanding District.
Charles F. Richards, 1st Lt. &. A. D. C.
The interest created in his department was an acknowledged success. He had attempted and succeeded in organizing a system of labor in a place where it was previously almost wholly unknown—leaving the employee to the tender mercy of his employer, but upon equal terms. He could see order and harmony arising out of chaos and discord. He was partially satisfied, for one of his favorite measures was popular, originating from a black, for the good of the inhabitants of his district, blacks as well as whites.
His methods, and the successes attending, attracted the attention, as well as challenged the admiration, of the people in and around his post. A brother officer, bearing witness to his indefatigable labor, called attention to it, in his report to the commanding general of the Carolinas, which report induced the general to request the department at Washington to continue him in the service after his regiment should be mustered out.
By such recognition of his services and ability, emanating as it did from that distinguished commander, the black major received another offering at the shrine of his boundless ambition, which none knows better than himself how to value. Just in connection with this, we are reminded of an expression of a distinguished divine in regard to him. “Well for this country,” said he, “that Martin Delany is not a white man, for he has the ambition of a devil.” But when we reflect that the motive power of that conspicuous trait of his character is solely for the sake of his race, and utterly devoid of personal selfishness, one sees the beauty of the halo encircling his dusky brow, instead of the deformity of the cloven foot.
The following is the letter to which reference is made:—
Headquarters Department South Carolina,
Charleston, S. C., January 30, 1866.
General: I have the honor to invite your attention to the following extract from a recent report of Major J. P. Roy, 6th United States Infantry, and Acting Inspector General of this department, regarding the services of Major M. R. Delany, 104th United States Colored Troops:—
“Before closing this report, I desire to bear testimony to the efficient and able manner in which Major Delany, 104th United States Colored Troops, and agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau, is performing his duties. I took occasion several times during my stay to go to his office, and hear him talk and explain matters to the freedmen. Being of their own color, they naturally reposed confidence in him. Upon the labor question he entirely reflected the views of the major general commanding, and seemed in all things to give them good and sensible advice. He is doing much good, and in the event of his regiment being mustered out, I hope he may be retained as an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau.”
I have also received the same satisfactory reports from other sources, and concurring in the foregoing suggestions of Major J. P. Roy, I must respectfully recommend that Major M. R. Delany be, for the present, retained in the service of the United States. I have ordered his muster out to be postponed until a reply is received to this communication.
I have the honor to remain, general,
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed) D. E. Sickles,
Major General Commanding.
To Brig. Gen. E. D. Townsend, A. A. G., War Dept.
Headquarters. Department of South Carolina,
Charleston, S. C., January 31, 1866.
Official.
W. L. M. Burger,
Brevet Lt. Col. & A. A. G.
Copy furnished Major M. R. Delany for his information.
This was soon after followed by one demonstrative of the liberality of the major general commanding, showing the great distance he had cast from him his early Tammany Hall political education, recognizing only the true and broad republican principles of our better civilization. It redounds to his credit, and is another evidence of the impartial justice of the great secretary of war in affairs of the government, and appreciation of merit in its officers, regardless of former notions which seemed to underlie the basis of its principles. This order is fully explanatory of the retention of the black major in the service so long.
A report had been freely circulated by some persons that the old planters had petitioned the general to retain him, as he was “high in their favor.” The latter clause is admissible, as even among that peculiar class there are men who are liberal enough, by virtue of their acquirements, to respect and appreciate the dignified manhood and high moral character of the negro officer. The planters can offer no allurement sufficient to tempt him to their special interest. They cannot promise power to him, as they are devoid of it, and his own incorruptible integrity to the government is known to have caused him to peremptorily refuse all offers, on the most advantageous terms, to even enter into any speculations of cotton, or any other staple. The following order is sufficient to prove the falsity of the report.
War Department, Adjutant General’s Office,
Washington, February 8, 1866.
Major General D. E. Sickles, Comm’g Dept. of South Carolina, Headquarters, Charleston, S. C.
General: I have respectfully to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 30th ultimo, recommending that Major M. R. Delany, 104th Regiment United States Colored Troops, be retained in service, and in reply thereto, I am directed by the Secretary of War, to say that this is authority for the retention of that officer in service, until further orders from the War Department.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
(Signed) C. W. Foster,
Asst. Adjt. Gen. Vols.
Headquarters, Department South Carolina,
Charleston, S. C., February 12, 1866.
Official copy.
W. L. M. Burger,
Asst. Adjt. Gen.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE PLANTERS AND THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU.
As the season for contracting with the freedmen of the islands approached, the old planters from the main land and sea islands could be seen hastening to the quarters of the “black major” for consultation with him.
The picture of the statesman warrior of St. Domingo, surrounded by the conquered and impoverished planters of the island, dictating terms to them, was again reproduced in our time, with the black officer in the foreground as the chief figure, giving law to the planters of South Carolina.
Without the assistance of the Bureau, the planters would have been unable to proceed at any time after the war, and that section of the country would have presented a most deplorable aspect. For the freedmen, in view of their past condition, were naturally suspicious of their offers, and, partly resting on the promises held out of lands being given to them, were with difficulty persuaded to accept employment from them. And the often repeated tales of cruelty, with the many evidences of glaring fraud, practised upon those who had been employed immediately after the war, helped to give an odium to the planters which threatened to interfere greatly with the reproduction of their cotton and rice. After the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau by Congress, the presence of a competent sub-commissioner, whom neither threats nor bribes could move, supported by the strong arm of the Bureau, could check these malpractices and adjust all difficulties between them. And in this mediatorial character he was placed, without the slightest deviation from his principles, or assuming more to himself than was guaranteed by his position: respected by the planters, trusted and regarded by the freedmen with a sentiment of pride mingled with reverence, he has, by this means, wrought out incalculable advantages to the cause of reconstruction, and given to these islands the germs of a civilization previously unknown, while in his own administration he has given to the country abundant demonstration of the negro capability for government.
The planters at first disliked the presence of the Bureau in their midst; but powerless to retard its operations, and witnessing its impartial administration, and the growing prosperity of their district, as the result, have reconciled themselves, and some have even acknowledged it as a success. Thus we find the quarters of the major visited for consultation by the representatives of a class, prior to the war, the most bitter opponents of black men’s rights, and many who were conspicuous in the late rebellion, in the interest of the confederacy. There might have been seen Colonel Charles J. Colcock, who commanded the Confederate cavalry at Honey Hill against General Hatch; Colonel Jos. Stoney, Rev. James Stoney, Colonel E. M. Seabrook, who commanded at the fortification before the capture of Hilton Head; Mr. Hayward, J. W. Pope, upon whose lands the batteries were found erected at the capture of Hilton Head; Major Manning Kirk, Drs. Seabrook, Kirk, and Pritchard, Ellis, and Crowell, besides many of the younger planters of the families of the Barnwells, Rhetts, Fripps, Elliots, and Fullers, including the young General Stephen Elliot, who commanded at Fort Sumter, and Jacob Jenkins Mikell, the famous Edisto planter of the long staple cotton. While the affairs of the Bureau were thus being conducted by him, General Scott divided the state into sub-districts, assigning an officer to each. Hilton Head had now been visited three times by the general, and on each occasion the quarters of the major were officially visited, previous to the following order being received, which is another indication of the satisfaction of his immediate commander in regard to his official conduct:—
Headquarters, State of South Carolina,
Charleston, S. C., June 11, 1866.
General Orders. No. 5.
Extract.
III. The Military Reservation of Hilton Head and its Dependencies, known as the Islands of Hilton Head, together with Dawfuskie, Bull, and Pinckney Islands, are hereby announced as the territorial limits of, and will constitute the Bureau District of Hilton Head, with Major M. R. Delany, U. S. C. T., as Sub-Assistant Commissioner, in charge, with headquarters at Hilton Head.
By command of
Brevet Major General R. K. Scott.
H. W. Smith, Brevet Lt. Col. Ass’t. Adj. Gen.
Official.
H. W. Smith,
Assistant Adjutant General.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
DOMESTIC ECONOMY.
Around Major Delany’s district, there being evidence of an abundant harvest, the movements of persons designing to reap large profits, to the detriment of the freedmen, were apparent. With a view of frustrating their designs, he suggested proper measures to obviate the difficulty, which we find in his general report made to headquarters, dated March 1, 1867, for the year 1866. Therein he gave his views, showing the necessity of important changes in the industrial pursuits of the freedmen; also the measures put forward by him for their financial protection.
“It was apparent from observation and experience that the custom of renting the lands to speculators, who sub-let them to freedmen, or employed them to work at disadvantageous rates—that these poor people, at the end of the planting year, habitually came out with nothing—nay, worse than nothing, as those working them in shares having provision supplied from the stores of the speculators, or renting the lands, and obtaining them on credit from such stores. When the crops were realized, they paid them all away to these stores for the scanty mouthfuls they received on credit during cultivation—finding themselves with nothing—in rags, and debt for “balance due” on the books of these first-hand lessees and supply speculators. And those who had a little chance of raising crops for themselves to advantage, were equally the victims of the petty brokers and cotton traders (resulting from their superior business knowledge and intelligence, and the almost entire absence of such qualifications on the part of the freedmen), their cotton being sacrificed in the market. It was evident from these facts that there could be but little or no chances for the freedmen or refugees to compete with bidders or lessees of the land, let at the highest cash price (frequently above their value in this district), except by an adoption of some measure for their protection, whereby a portion of their scanty earnings could be saved, and the lands let to them at prices suited to their means, in preference to speculators and capitalists.
“To this end I recommend the establishment of a freedmen’s cotton agency, to be attended by a competent agent, where all could have their cotton deposited on consignment, culled (assorted), ginned, packed (bagged), and sold at the highest cash market value, in Charleston; they realizing, the profits themselves, instead of the speculators.
“To make such an establishment profitable to them, the expenses should be as moderate as possible, and less than the usual rates of charges in commission houses. Hence, to accomplish this, a suitable building was obtained from the quartermaster’s department (free of rent, of course), and those freedmen possessing foot-gins requested to put them up in the establishment, where they might be used in ginning the cotton brought, charging twenty per cent., or one fifth less than the market price for ginning, and receiving, when not worked by themselves, one fourth of the proceeds of the gin, the freedman who worked receiving the other three fourths as his compensation, thus making them self-sustaining as well as self-reliant.
“The agent supplied the bagging, and received, as compensation for the advances thus made, the pay for the weight of the bag, deducted from the price of the bag of cotton. This will be understood in mercantile circles, as bagging is always worth the price of an equal weight of cotton.
“The next effort, officially, was to secure to them the advantages of the lands at a ‘first-hand’ low rate, as they were now able to raise the money among themselves, by which to secure leases. To accomplish this, interviews and correspondence were had with the United States Direct Tax Commissioners, who, being without instructions, were awaiting the action of Congress and government in relation to the division and assignment of land on the tenure of Lieutenant General Sherman’s field order, No. 15. After mature consideration, as the season for planting was rapidly approaching, and the people clamorous and anxious to go to work, preparing for cultivation, I concluded to divide responsibilities with the commissioner, and let the lands to the freedmen at one dollar an acre, for the year 1867.
“They had been advised to prepare for leasing them at two dollars an acre, the leases to be made to one man on each plantation, who would receive and pay over their money, and see to a proper apportioning of the land. In less than three weeks from the time that notice to this effect was given, upwards of three thousand dollars in cash and cotton vouchers were deposited with the bureau to secure leases, and fourteen plantations taken with the extreme satisfaction of paying back to each individual one half of his money. This last act of the commissioners crowns their official doings with discretion and liberality, which should entitle them to at least the thanks of the friends of humanity, if not respectful consideration of Congress.”
The action of the major in this direction was approved and commended by his superior officers, and resulted in proving so far successful. His duties gave indications of further extension at this time, by the following document, issued from the war department, and reissued from the headquarters of the assistant commissioner subsequently:—
Headquarters Assistant Commissioner,
Bureau R. F. & A. L., South Carolina,
Charleston, S. C., Feb. 19, 1867.
The following circular letter is republished for the information of officers and agents of the Bureau R. F. and A. L., in this state:—
Circular Letter.
War Department, Bureau R. F. & A. L.,
Washington, February 12, 1867.
To Brevet Major General R. K. Scott, Assistant Commissioner, Charleston, S. C.
It has become apparent that the designation of the several officers of this Bureau should indicate the nature of the duty which each is to perform, and that such designation should be uniform throughout the jurisdiction of this Bureau.
Each state will be divided into sub-districts, of the proper number of counties, in the discretion of the assistant commissioner. The officers in charge of each will be empowered to exercise and perform within their respective sub-districts all the powers and duties of assistant commissioners, except such as by regulations devolve upon assistant commissioners themselves, and these officers will be designated sub-assistant commissioners.
Any officer or agent serving under the direction of the sub-assistant shall be denominated an agent, except those serving in staff department and as clerks.
All officers authorized to disburse the funds of this Bureau shall be designated disbursing officers.
Major General O. O. Howard,
Commissioner.
Brevet Major General R. K. Scott, Assistant Commissioner.
Official.
Edward L. Deane,
Brevet Major & A. A. A. Gen.
Soon after the publication of the “circular letter,” the State of South Carolina, by order of the major general commanding, was divided into twenty-four sub-districts. Major Delany’s administration of affairs in the spheres previously assigned him, receiving the confidence of the assistant commissioner, his province was extended, as the following order will show:—
Headquarters, Assistant Commissioner,
Bureau R. F. & A. L., South Carolina,
Charleston, S. C., February 20, 1867.
General Orders. No. 3.
Extract.
XI. The Sub-District of Hilton Head will comprise the Islands of Hilton Head, Pinckney, Savage, Bull, Dawfuskie, and Long Pine: headquarters at Hilton Head; Major M. R. Delany, United States Colored Troops, sub-assistant commissioner.
By order of
Brevet Major General R. K. Scott,
Assistant Commissioner.
Official.
Edward L. Deane,
Brevet Major & A. A. A. Gen.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CIVIL AFFAIRS.—PRESIDENT JOHNSON.
Major Delany was fully cognizant of the exceeding delicacy of his position, filling, as he was, a position of trust and honor such as no man of his race had ever yet obtained under the general government; and how easily it could be compromised in his case! yet his old ardor in contributing his efforts in building up any measure, or uprooting whatever opposition presented itself in the onward march of his race, remained unabated.
Notwithstanding his position in the army, yet to every one aware of his life-long consecration to the interests of his race, there would be no hesitancy on their part to decide on which side he would be found in any matter in which he should choose between them and his position. While he studiously avoided the general discussion of politics, he was by no means indifferent to the political aspect of the times, and aided, in his position as the military official, as he had formerly done in deeds as the civilian. Thus, while in Beaufort awaiting orders, the subject of reconstruction being under popular discussion, he perceived that the claims of the colored people were evaded; and that the sacrifice of lives made in countless battle-fields by dusky warriors, that the country might be saved, was valueless and unappreciated. His moral courage urged him to remonstrate, even though his position should be compromised. To this end he addressed the following to President Johnson, which afterwards found its way into print:—
To His Excellency President Johnson:
Sir: I propose, simply as a black man,—one of the race most directly interested in the question of enfranchisement and the exercise of suffrage,—a cursory view of the basis of security for perpetuating the Union.
When the compact was formed, the British—a foreign nation—threatened the integrity and destruction of the American colonies. This outside pressure drove them together as independent states, and so long as they desired a Union,—appreciating the power of the enemy, and comprehending their own national strength,—it was sufficient security against any attempt at a dissolution or foreign subjugation.
So soon, however, as, mistaking their own strength, or designing an alliance with some other power, a portion of those states became dissatisfied with the Union, and recklessly sought its dissolution by a resort to the sword, so nearly equally divided were the two sections, that foreign intervention or an exhausting continuance of the struggle would most certainly have effected a dissolution of the Union.
But an element, heretofore latent and unthought of,—a power passive and unrecognized,—suddenly presented itself to the American mind, and its arm to the nation. This power was developed in the blacks, heretofore discarded as a national nonentity—a dreg or excrescence on the body politic. Free, without rights, or slaves, mainly,—therefore things constructively,—when called to the country’s aid they developed a force which proved the balance precisely called for, and essentially necessary as an elementary part of the national strength. Without this force, or its equivalent, the rebellion could not have been subdued, and without it as an inseparable national element, the Union is insecure.
What becomes necessary, then, to secure and perpetuate the integrity of the Union, is simply the enfranchisement and recognition of the political equality of the power that saved the nation from destruction in a time of imminent peril—a recognition of the political equality of the blacks with the whites in all of their relations as American citizens. Therefore, with the elective franchise, and the exercise of suffrage in all of the Southern States recently holding slaves, there is no earthly power able to cope with the United States as a military power; consequently nothing to endanger the national integrity. Nor can there ever arise from this element the same contingency to threaten and disturb the quietude of the country as that which has just been so happily disposed of. Because, believing themselves sufficiently able, either with or without foreign aid, the rebels drew the sword against their country, which developed a power in national means—military, financial, and statesmanship—that astonished the world, and brought them to submission. Hence, whatever their disposition or dissatisfaction, the blacks, nor any other fractional part of the country, with the historic knowledge before them of its prowess, will ever be foolhardy enough to attempt rebellion or secession. And their own political interest will ever keep them true and faithful to the Union, thereby securing their own liberty, and proving a lasting safe-guard as a balance in the political scale of the country.
As the fear of the British, as an outside pressure, drove, and for a time kept and held the Union together, so will the fear of the loss of liberty and their political status, as an element in this great nation, serve as the outside pressure necessary to secure the fidelity of the blacks to the Union. And this fidelity, unlike that of the rebels, need never be mistrusted; because, unlike them, the blacks have before them the proofs of the power and ability of the Union to maintain unsullied the prestige of the national integrity, even were they, like them, traitorously disposed to destroy their country, or see it usurped by foreign nations.
This, sir, seems to me conclusive, and is the main point upon which I base my argument against the contingency of a future dissolution of the American Union, and in favor of its security.
I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient servant,
M. R. Delany,
Major 104th U. S. C. T.
Port Royal Island, S. C., July 25, 1866.
On another occasion from his island post he stood an interested listener to the sounds which the breeze bore up to him, telling of the plans of reconstruction towards the Southern States. Impatient, he watched for the action of the leaders of colored people themselves on this momentous question, but as yet saw no evidence of it.
In his position as an officer in the service of the government, and a civil magistrate, as all officers of the Bureau necessarily are, he was contributing a giant’s help to the cause, which, in view of the limited sphere apportioned his race, rendered him an invaluable auxiliary.
The political horizon had suddenly become overcast; the rôle of the executive was changed to that of Pharaoh instead of “Moses,” and he beheld with joy the general uprising of the colored people in their strength to avert the threatening ruin.
It was an occasion long to be remembered, and suggestive of a moral which should not be lost sight of by the American people. They sent from every section of the Union delegated representatives of their own race to the national capital, near the government, to “lobby” for their claims in the great American body politic, as at this time these claims were fast being evaded, if not actually ignored.
It is not yet forgotten the visit of the delegates to the president; his remarks on the occasion, with the advice to place their cause before the people; or the able manner in which the noble Douglass replied to him, and the subsequent ringing appeal which he made resound through the land to reach the people.
Major Delany, anxious to identify himself with the movement, though absent from the immediate scene, showed his entire coöperation with them in the following letter, which he addressed to them:—
Bureau R. F. A. L.,
Port Royal, Hilton Head Island, S. C.,
February, 22, 1866.
To Messrs. G. T. Downing, William Whipper, Frederick Douglass, John Jones, L. H. Douglass, and others, Colored Delegation representing the Political Interests of the Colored People of the United States, now near the Capital and Government, Washington, D. C.
My dear Brothers: I have been watching with deep interest your movements at Washington, near the government of your country. I need not repeat to you that which you all know, and that which we have oft repeated to each other privately, in council, and through the public journals,—we are one in interest and destiny in America. I am with you; yea, if your intentions, designs, purposes, matter, and manner continue the same as those presented to the chief magistrate of the nation, then I am with you always, even to the end. Be mild, as is the nature of your race; be respectful and deferential, as you will be; and dignified as you have been; but be determined and persevering. Your position before the saged president, and reply after you left him, challenges the admiration of the world. At least it challenges mine, and as a brother you have it.
Do not misjudge the president, but believe, as I do, that he means to do right; that his intentions are good; that he is interested, among those of others of his fellow-citizens, in the welfare of the black man. That he loves Cæsar none the less, but Rome more. Do not expect too much of him—as black men, I mean. Do not forget that you are black and he is white. Make large allowances for this, and take this as the stand-point. Whatever we may think of ourselves, do not forget that we are far in advance of our white American fellow-citizens in that direction. Remember that men are very differently constituted, and what one will dread and shun another will boldly dare and venture; where one would succeed another might fail. Not far from where I am at present posted on the coast of South Carolina, there are several inlets, of which I will name two—Edisto and St. Helena. Of these, one pilot will shun one, and another the other, each taking his vessel easily through that which he enters; while another will not venture into either, but prefers—especially during a storm—to go outside to sea for the safety of the vessel; all reaching, timely, their destination, Hilton Head, in safety.
Here, what one shuns as a danger another regards as a point of safety; and that which one dreads another dares. What General Sherman succeeded in, General Meade might have failed in; while General Grant may have prosecuted either with success. Men must be measured and adjudged according to their temperaments and peculiar constitutional faculties.
Do not grow weary nor discouraged, neither disheartened nor impatient. Do not forget God. Think, O think how wonderfully he made himself manifest during the war. Only think how he confounded, not only the wisdom of the mighty of this land, but of the world, making them confess that he is the Lord, high over all, and most mighty. He still lives. Put your trust in him. As my soul liveth, you will reap if you faint not. Wait! “The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but he that endureth to the end.” Bide your time.
Since we last met in council great changes have taken place, and much has been gained. The battle-cry has been heard in our midst, a terrible contest of civil war has raged, and a death-struggle for national life summoned every lover of the Union to the combat. We among our fellow-citizens received the message, and eagerly obeyed the call. Our black right arms were stripped, our bosoms bared, and we stood in the front rank of battle. Slavery yielded, the yoke was broken, the manacles shattered, the shackles fell, and we stood forth a race redeemed! Instead of despair, “Glory to God!” rather let us cry. In the cause of our country you and I have done, and still are doing, our part, and a great and just nation will not be unmindful of it. God is just. Stand still and see his salvation.
“Be patient in your misery;
Be meek in your despair;
Be patient, O be patient!
Suffer on, suffer on!”
Your brother in the cause of our common country,
M. R. Delany.
Before the immediate reapers themselves could discern the whitening harvest, he had within sight other fields in which to lead them.
For their protection, and at the same time to facilitate the duties of the Bureau, he established a police system, each plantation or settlement having its distinct body of policemen, not exceeding five. This included the chief, or, as called by the freedmen, “headman,” who made choice of his assistants, who reported, and were responsible to him for their action; the chief, in turn, monthly reporting to Major Delany. And all such cases as could not be settled by the chief of police were immediately reported to him at headquarters. As it was mutually beneficial, causing each to respect the right of the other, this arrangement found favor with both planters and freedmen. It was practically demonstrating the reality of the new social relation. It was designed by him to prove the fitness of the ex-slave to perform his part in the duties of the civil, with equal ability to that displayed in the military service of the government, while it would seem to make him more self-reliant, and desirous of controlling his own affairs as a free man. It proved a success.
After its adoption, Brigadier General Nye, commanding the district at that time, witnessing its utility, at once approved of it. And it continued uninterrupted through all the succeeding commands.
Their vigilance in detecting fraud and other unlawful practices, it was acknowledged, far exceeded the military police. Nothing seemed to escape them. Indeed, it was often said their adroitness in detection was such as might be coveted by a New York detective.
They were frequently called upon by the military authorities to accomplish work which strictly belonged to the soldier police, but in which they had failed.
It was a matter of general regret that there was no remuneration provided for these men, who had so cheerfully and faithfully served the country, aiding in establishing order where otherwise anarchy might have ensued.
CHAPTER XXXV.
EDUCATIONAL INTERESTS.
Of the military gentlemen stationed at the post of Hilton Head, the major writes thus: “In addition to these high-toned military gentlemen, already named as aiding me, and making easy as well as pleasant the duties of my office in the bureau, I with pleasure acknowledge my indebtedness to Lieutenant Colonel Thompson, Assistant Provost Marshal General, Lieutenant Colonel Bennett, 21st United States Colored Troops, and Lieutenant Colonel O. Moore, who expelled John Morgan from Ohio, Colonel Douglass Frazer, of the 104th United States Colored Troops, and Brevet Brigadier General Nye, of the 29th Maine Volunteers, all commanding at the post. Captain Henry Sharpe, of the 21st United States Colored Troops, Lieutenant Hermon, Lieutenant Tracy, 29th Maine Volunteers, and Provost Major H. E. Whitfield, 128th United States Colored Troops, Assistant Provost Judges, and Lieutenant C. F. Richards, 21st United States Colored Troops, Assistant Adjutant General Lieutenant Jones, and Lieutenant Blanchard, 21st United States Colored Troops, and that excellent gentleman, now President of Florida Land and Lumber Company, Dr. J. M. Hawkes, Surgeon 21st United States Colored Troops. It is due, as a military courtesy, that I should make this record of the names of gentlemen who came forward at a time when most required, and aided in measures so important to the new life upon which a large portion of the political and social element of the nation was just entering.”
As bearing a close relation to his official duties, we give in this connection the subjoined correspondence, being a letter of thanks from that distinguished philanthropist, the Rev. George Whipple, formerly professor of mathematics in Oberlin College, in behalf of the American Missionary Association. This, coming from such an Association, is deemed of sufficient importance to show the general character of the major in whatever position he is placed,—ever untiring in his efforts to aid the cause of humanity, and unselfish in his aim.
New York, July 5, 1867.
Major M. R. Delany, Bureau of R. F. & A. L., Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Dear Major: Several of our teachers have reported your attention to their interests, and many acts of kindness in ministering to their comfort.
In their behalf and at their request, and in the behalf and at the request of my associates in these rooms, I beg of you to accept our and their thanks for your oft-repeated kindnesses to them, and your continued interest in our great work. As you have given them more—“a cup of cold water” in the name of a disciple, may you receive a disciple’s reward.
Permit me to add the assurance that I take great pleasure in being the agent of our friends in this matter. My cordial thanks accompany theirs.
Yours in behalf of the poor and needy,
George Whipple,
Corresponding Secretary.
The graceful reply to the letter of the Association is worthy of admiration, replete with loyalty and gratitude to the noble band, who for long years have labored without faltering for the well being of his race.
Headquarters Prov. Dist., Hilton Head,
Port Royal, S. C., July 18, 1867.
Professor George Whipple, Cor. Sec. A. M. A., 53 John St., New York.
My dear Sir: Your very kind letter in behalf of the teachers and your Christian associates in the rooms of your great institution was received by the last mail here.
Permit me to state that I have done nothing more, in my attentions to the excellent self-sacrificing and intelligent ladies and gentlemen continually sent to this district, to labor for the moral elevation of my once oppressed and degraded, but now, thank God, disinthralled brethren, in the new social relations which this wonderful dispensation of divine Providence has brought about in fulfilment of his promise, and the promotion of his own glory, than my simple duty. If I have done that, I shall feel satisfied and thankful.
If my acts have been worthy of their and your acceptance, I feel that I may have done something feebly in return towards repaying the long years of untiring labor, anxiety, hazard, and pecuniary loss of the Phillipses, Garrisons, Whipples, Browns, Motts, McKims, Burleighs, Wrights, Pillsburys, Fosters, Leavitts, Wilsons, Sumners, Stevenses, Hales, Wades, Giddingses, Whittiers, Parkers, Lovejoys, the Chases, Pinneys, Collinses, Cheevers, Bellows, Beechers, Stowes, Elders Mahans, Phinneys and Tappans, Rankins, Joselyns, Smiths, Goodells, and Adamses, and others of your race, for the outraged and down-trodden of mine. For this I deserve no thanks. But in my heart of hearts I not only thank you for tender, Christian-like expressions in conveying to me their sentiments, but in return for the patient endurance of yourself and such as those named, for your incessant labors for the overthrow of American slavery, the superstition and heathen regeneration and civilization of foreign lands, all of which are peopled by the colored races, your continued efforts in their behalf, and the elevation of man.
Please convey to the teachers and your Association my heartfelt gratitude for their expressions of kindness towards me, and accept for yourself, dear Professor, my highest personal regards and esteem,
M. R. Delany.
In his report to the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau concerning the school system, the reform which he advocated was not without deliberation, as demonstrated by a circumstance in his own experience. After his failures in authorship, the Central American expedition project, and railroad improvement, in consequence of all being attempted at the same time, as if to redeem that unsuccessful period of his singularly active life of its appearance of uselessness, a position entirely new in his rôle presented itself.
The principalship of a colored school was offered to him by a committee of the seventh ward. At first he declined, as he contemplated resuming the practice of medicine, his legitimate and choice profession. But the board insisting, as the school by law was compelled to open within a week, and no teacher had been secured, he accepted on conditions that he should be relieved in one month, or so soon as a teacher could be obtained.
He took charge at once, and organized what was then one of the most unmanageable schools, a great portion of the pupils being large boys and girls. The rules laid down by the board allowed whipping, while they forbade suspension or dismissal of the pupils from school. To flog a pupil, he alleged, was an evidence of the incapacity for governing on the part of the teacher, and that when it was evident a pupil could not be restrained without resorting to such measures, he was unfit to be among the others.
He notified the directors of his objections to their rule. He regarded it as barbarous, rendering the school-house repulsive and objectionable, instead of being associated with pleasant and profitable memories. Therefore, if they desired him to take the school, he would conduct it in his own way.
They yielded to him in the manner of government. This resulted in binding the pupils to him by ties of sincere devotion, and he remained for thirteen months instead of the one month agreed upon at first. When he resigned, it was a source of regret among both pupils and directors. Teaching, though he loved it as a continual medium of imparting knowledge to the young, yet it was confining him to a sphere too limited for the grasp of his desires. In this capacity he will be remembered by some of the now adult inhabitants of Pittsburg, and his excellent assistant, now the wife of one of the professors of the College of Liberia.
We here insert a portion of his report bearing upon his observation of the schools of his district, and an extract from his last annual report, made to headquarters of the assistant commissioner, for the year 1867, ending the last of August, the close of the planting season. The report is replete with suggestions, and equal to the demands of the time. If the suggestions made be carried out, there would accrue a vast amount of good, rendering the laborer less dependent on others, and more frugal, whereas, in pursuing his former line of labor, he was kept at disadvantage on account of the expenses to be kept up before the sale of cotton, the staple, in the cultivation of which the freedmen use all their time, money, and labor.
Even to make this an effective and self-sustaining measure, the local habits of the occupants must be essentially changed. Instead of the former old plantation people remaining on the places as a local preference, which generally allows but an average of five (5) acres to the family, the lands must be let in portions of not less than twenty (20) acres to each family before they can be made available to their support. This would necessitate a general scattering, or greater division of the people, causing at first quite a change of places with many. To do justice to the people as an available, sociable, or domestic element, no one hundred acres of farming land should be occupied by more than five (5) families, thus allowing twenty (20) acres to the family, which, in the light of domestic or political economy, is little enough. Less than this is to place them in a position of hazardous uncertainty and anxiety, and encourage idleness and improvidence, by inducing the thriftless to settle under circumstances which must make them burdensome to the thrifty and provident. By this course the aged and otherwise needy and deserving helpless could be easily aided by their neighbors, without, as now, being over-burdensome.
It is very evident that the entire system of cultivation will have to be changed, both in the method of doing it, and more especially the produce raised, to suit and meet the change in the social system and the demands and status of these new possessors and permanent residents of small farms or gardens. Every month in the year but one (December) may be made productive of some vegetable for provision, or family use, whereby the people may be independent in subsistence. It is a settled matter that in this country cotton can only be profitably produced by extensive cultivation and large capital, under favorable circumstances; consequently it is a loss of time and labor for the freedmen to plant cotton with their limited means of land and materials, as the ground to them can be put to a much more useful and profitable purpose.
I am preparing the people in this sub-district to this end, and believe that against the approaching leasing year they will be quite willing and ready to enter into the new system of habitation and occupancy.
During the current year there have been no rations issued in this sub-district, except two hundred (200) bushels of corn from the Southern Relief Association, and five hundred (500) bushels of corn, and one thousand (1000) pounds of bacon, of the Congressional appropriation; assigned through the Commissary of Subsistence Bureau, Charleston.
The example and precepts of the teachers have been such as to merit my most hearty approval. But there is one custom as yet common to schools, and almost regarded as an essential part of training, and which I most heartily desire should be done away with. I refer to whipping children as a correction in school. It is simply a relic of ignorance, and should not be tolerated by intelligence. And while this is tolerated, teachers will resort to it as the easiest and to them least troublesome mode of correction.
A teacher either is, or is not, adapted to teaching. If properly adapted, she could and should teach without whipping. If she cannot correct and control her pupils without whipping, then it only proves that she is not adapted to teaching, and all such should seek other employment. This is not a reflection on any particular teacher or teachers, but a condemnation of the general customs of schools. A school-house should be made a place of the most pleasurable resort and agreeable associations to children, but certain it is that in no wise can this be the case where the great hickory, thong, leather strap, or bridle-rein meets, as it enters the school-house, the child’s eye as it does the eye of the visitor, reminding one, as it must the other, of entering the presence of the old plantation overseer in waiting for his victim.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CONCLUSION.
The order for mustering out the remaining volunteer officers was long anticipated, and anxiously looked for by these officers, and by none more than by Major Delany, who, as sub-assistant commissioner of the Bureau distinct of Hilton Head would be affected by this. At last it was received, as will be seen by the following document. While upon this subject, a humorous anecdote, bearing on this subject, may be related.
While awaiting the order, about the middle of December, he visited the headquarters of the assistant commissioner at Charleston.
On entering the department of the adjutant general, a group of officers surrounded the desk of the acting adjutant, who, at the time, was reading out the names of the officers mustered out by special orders, which had just been received from the war department that morning, erasing them from the roster suspended on the wall before him, among which was his own name.
“How is this, major?” asked the chief clerk; “I do not see your name among them. Do you report regularly?”
“I do; my report for this month was sent on now more than ten days,” he replied.
“How is it that you are not among these named in the special order just received?” inquired the acting assistant adjutant general, with much interest.
“I suppose,” said the major, very quaintly, “that I am in the position of the old black man, a devoted Second Adventer, during the Millerite excitement, who, disposing of his earthly effects, betook himself to a cellar, with simply food and fuel sufficient to sustain him comfortably, the season being winter. While waiting, a snow storm came on, the drift completely embanking that side of the street, burying everything beneath it.
“Thus isolated, and enveloped in darkness for several days, except the light of his little fire, without the sound of a footstep or voice above, the old man believed that the final consummation of all things had taken place, and he was actually left in his tomb.
“Presently the scavengers reached his cellar door, when, first hearing footsteps, succeeded by scraping and prying, then light ushering in through the cracks as the snow was removed. Suddenly bursting up the cellar door, the old man exclaimed, ‘Is de end come?’ Being answered in the negative, ‘O!’ said he, ‘I thought de end was come, an’ all you white folks was gone up, an’ forgot dis old black saint.’ Now,” concluded the major, turning to the assistant adjutant general, “I suppose de end is come, an’ all you white folks is gone up, an’ forgot dis black saint,” amidst a roar of laughter among the officers.
A few days after this an order came from Washington, retaining Brevet Major General Scott in the service, as assistant commissioner, on the staff of Major General Canby, commanding the Second Military District, by whose advice and generous indorsement the retention of Major Delany was recommended to General Canby, and by which he has been retained in the service.
Thus, in addition to the established duties of his office, he is now the disbursing officer of soldiers’ claims for the sub-district of Hilton Head.
This is another testimony, as exhibited by different commanders, of the ability and usefulness of this officer in retaining him. But while fully appreciating these repeated recognitions of his service to the government by these high officials, giving it the full value of its civil and political worth, construing it to a desire of recognizing the true status of the colored race as American citizens by the continuance of their only representative, as an incumbent and military officer in this prominent and honorable position of the government, Major Delany says, “By this change or modification in its jurisdiction the Bureau loses nothing, but otherwise its status and prestige is thereby enhanced.
“Previous to this an important difficulty presented itself. A large force of volunteer officers must be kept up in a time of peace,—which is contrary to the jurisprudence of all highly civilized nations,—or the volunteer officers must be mustered out, and thus leave an important arm of the war department without the necessary administrative government.
“To impose the duties of the Bureau on the officers of the regular army, would be to entail duties which they could not care to have upon them, and, therefore, for the most part, neglect. To employ civilians, would bring them directly under the military men, wholly ignorant of the details, import, and meaning of military orders and duties. To employ those who have been commissioned officers in the service, competent for the duties, would involve an expense equal, at least, to that already incurred by the volunteer officers now on duty.
“The only course left the government in carrying out the well-regulated custom of reducing the army to a true peace basis, by doing away with an independent volunteer force in time of peace, was to place the bureau under the regular army.
“This virtually places Major General O. O. Howard on the staff of General Grant; Brevet Major General R. K. Scott, and all other assistant commissioners, de facto, on the staffs of the major generals commanding the military districts; brings the entire volunteer officers, retained in the service, under and subject to, without being in, the regular army; and cements a perfect harmony between these two branches of the government which nothing can detract.
“In this stride of statesmanship, will it be presumed that the American army, or the military branch of the government, has no statesmen as competent counsellors of the executive?”
Headquarters Second Military District,
Charleston, S. C., December 4, 1867.
General Orders. No. 140.
The following general orders, from the headquarters of the army, are republished for the information and guidance of all concerned.
Headquarters of the Army, Adjt. Gen. Office,
Washington, November 26, 1867.
General Orders. No. 101.
The following orders have been received from the War Department, and will be duly executed:—
Extract.
Par. III. All volunteer officers now retained in service will be mustered out, to take effect January 1, 1868, except the commissioner and the disbursing officers of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
By command of
General Grant.
E. D. Townsend, Asst. Adjt. Gen.
By command of
Brevet Major General Ed. R. S. Canby.
Official.
Louis V. Caziarc,
Aid-de-Camp, Act’g Asst. Adjt. Gen.
Headquarters Second Military District,
Charleston, S. C., December 6, 1867.
General Orders. No. 145.
The following arrangement of the troops in this district will be carried into effect with as little delay as possible.
Extract.
In addition to duties with which they are charged by existing orders, commanding officers of posts are designated as sub-assistant commissioners of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, for the districts embraced within the territorial limits of their commands, and will exercise all the functions of officers of that bureau, except so far as relates to the administration and control of the funds or property of the bureau.
Extract.
All officers and agents of the bureau, who may be on duty within the territorial limits of any post, will report to its commander, and will be governed by his instructions in all that relates to the protection of persons and property, under the laws of the United States, the regulations of the bureau, and the orders of the district commander. In all that relates to the details of administration, they will report as heretofore to the assistant commissioner for the state in which they are stationed. The assistant commissioners for the States of North and South Carolina, respectively, will furnish the commanders of posts with the names and stations of the officers and agents of the bureau on duty within the limits of their respective commands, and with a statement of any special duties they may have been charged with in relation to the protection of person and property. They will also, by conference or correspondence with the post commander, determine what officers or agents of the bureau can be relieved or discharged, and report the same to district headquarters.
By command of
Brevet Major General Ed. R. S. Canby.
Official.
Louis V. Caziarc,
Aid-de-Camp, Act’g Asst. Adjt. Gen.
Headquarters Asst. Comr. Bureau Refugees,
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, District of S. C.,
Charleston, S. C., December 19, 1867.
Major M. R. Delany, Asst. Sub-Asst. Comr.
Major: In accordance with the provisions of general orders No. 145, C. S., Second Military District, I am directed by the assistant commissioner to inform you that your designation and limits of your district are as follows:—
You will hereafter be designated as Assistant Sub-Assistant Commissioner for Hilton Head, Savage, Bull, Dawfuskie, Pinckney, and Long Pine Islands, and will report to Brevet Brigadier General H. B. Clitz, port of Charleston, and sub-assistant commissioner, subject to existing orders and instructions.
I am, major, very respectfully,
Your most obedient servant,
Edward L. Deane,
Brevet Major, A. D. C., & A. A. A. Gen.
Headquarters Asst. Comr. Bureau Refugees,
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, Dist. of S. C.,
Charleston, S. C., February 8, 1868.
Major M. R. Delany, Acting Sub-Assistant Commissioner, Hilton Head, S. C.
Major: The following copy of indorsement from War Department, Adjutant General’s Office, dated January 28, 1868, is respectfully furnished for your information.
Respectfully returned to Major General O. O. Howard, Commissioner. Major M. R. Delany, 104th United States Colored Troops, having been reported in your letter of November 30, 1867, as on duty in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, as a disbursing officer, was retained in service under the provisions of General Orders 101, November 26, 1867, from this office.
(Signed) Thomas M. Vincent,
Asst. Adjt. Gen.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
H. Neide,
Brevet Major, 1st Lieut. 44th Infantry,
Act’g Asst. Adjt. Gen.
With this last order we will bring this volume to a close. We have endeavored to narrate the career of an individual of our time, living and still working in our midst, the extent of whose labors, and the great ability demonstrated in their execution, cannot be thoroughly understood or felt, without first having known the great struggle and anxiety entailed in its accomplishment. This we have attempted to give, but found it no easy task; therefore we have simply narrated the events of his singularly active life, allowing the reader to deduce his own comments.
At this writing, Major Delany is still in the service of the government, as sub-assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, while many of the volunteer officers have been mustered out, under order of the department at Washington.
In his retention, is shown the recognition and the thorough appreciation of the indefatigable zeal and great ability displayed by the black officer, especially as in conjunction with his former duties others, in which greater responsibilities are entailed, are assigned to him. His efficient labors in the department render him a distinct character from his surroundings, while his administrative qualities attract the attention of friends and foes alike, as unprecedented in the history of his race in this country. While comments may vary, they unite in saying, “There is still a latent amount of greatness within the man, which has not yet been called forth.”
To his lofty aspirations, and great originality of thoughts, together with his real earnestness in everything he undertakes, and his iron will to pursue to completion, we trace the secret of his success in this field.
Illustrating in his career entire personal sacrifice for the accomplishment of a grand purpose, no character has been produced by our civilization in comparison with which this remarkable man would be deemed inferior. Men have died for the freedom and elevation of the race, and thereby have contributed more to advance the cause than would their living efforts, while others have lived for it, and under circumstances where death would have been easier. Such describes Martin Delany. Nature marked him for combat and victory, and not for martyrdom. His life-long service, from which neither poverty nor dangers could deter him, his great vitality and energy under all and every circumstance, which have never abated, proclaim this truth. His life furnishes a rare enthusiasm for race not expected in the present state of American society, occasioned by his constant researches into anything relative to their history. No living man is better able to write the history of the race, to whom it has been a constant study, than he; as it is considered by the most earnest laborers in the same sphere that few, if any, among them, have so entirely consecrated themselves to the idea of race as his career shows. His religion, his writings, every step in life, is based upon this idea. His creed begins and ends with it—that the colored race can only obtain their true status as men, by relying on their own identity; that they must prove, by merit, all that white men claim; then color would cease to be an objection to their progress—that the blacks must take pride in being black, and show their claims to superior qualities, before the whites would be willing to concede them equality. This he claims as the foundation of his manhood. Upon this point Mr. Frederick Douglass once wittily remarked, “Delany stands so straight that he leans a little backward.”
Such is the personal history of an individual of the race, whose great strength of character, amid the multitudinous agencies adverse to his progress, has triumphantly demonstrated negro capability for greatness in every sphere wherein he has acted.
The late revolution has resulted in bringing the race to which he belongs into prominence. They have begun their onward march towards that higher civilization promised at the close of the war. Let no unhallowed voice be lifted to stay their progress; then, with all barriers removed, the glorious destiny promised to them can be achieved. And then our country, continuing to recognize merit alone in her children, as shown in the appointment of the black major of Carolina, will add renewed strength to her greatness. Begirt with loyal hearts and strong arms, the mission of our revolution shall embrace centuries in its march, securing the future stability of our country, and proclaiming with truthfulness the grandeur of republican institutions to the civilization of Christendom.
APPENDIX.
POLITICAL WRITINGS.
Having given thus far, in a most impartial manner, the services of Major Delany; endeavoring to concede all that rightfully belongs to him, without debarring others of their dues; claiming, as we have in this work, for him always an advanced position; to bear out this statement more fully, we add some selections from his published political works, which will show that his administration in a military capacity but reflected the brilliancy kindled about the civilian.
The most remarkable feature of the greater portion of the writings is, that they constitute the present essential principles which form the basis of the reconstruction of the South, and ultimately for the nation at large. These are definitely and significantly expressed in paragraphs 6th, 7th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 18th, and 22d of the Platform or Declaration of Sentiments, and also in his paper on the Political Destiny of the Colored Races, &c.
These are the writings to which reference has been previously made, and were presented before, and adopted by the Cleveland Convention of 1854, without modification of any kind.
On the appearance of these, numerous comments were drawn from the leading daily journals of the country. From the Pittsburg Daily Post, of October 18, 1854 (a pro-slavery paper), we quote the following:—
“Dr. M. R. Delany, of Pittsburg, was the chairman of the committee that made this report to the convention. It was, of course, adopted. If Dr. D. drafted this report, it certainly does him much credit for learning and ability, and cannot fail to establish for him a reputation for vigor and brilliancy of imagination never yet surpassed.” Not being able to continue long in this vein, it concludes: “It is a vast conception, of impossible birth. The committee seem entirely to have overlooked the strength of the ‘powers on the earth’ that would oppose the Africanization of more than half the western hemisphere.”
In their singular adaptability to the extraordinary events now challenging the highest intelligence of the land for their permanent adjustment, they will be regarded as reflecting no ordinary credit on the colored race for one of their number to adduce such thoughts as are contained in these on National Polity and Individual Rights, published as they were some thirteen years ago, hence prior to the present discussions upon the new issues. While the position he claimed and sentiments expressed are most thoroughly anti-slavery, they are unlike in their issues, and manner of presenting such, as well as far in advance of the then most radical, with few noble exceptions, and now in harmony with the requirements of the times. Then they were looked upon as extremely impracticable measures and sentiments. Now they will testify to the fitness of the colored people for the present right they claim; as these issues, instead of finding them unprepared, as their political enemies proclaim, it has found theories promulgated by a black representative, standing in the midst of this mighty political combat, side by side with the most advanced of his white brothers on either continent.
Whatever the seeming tenor of the advice and feelings which thrill through these productions, it should be remembered they were written at a time when the present state of the country was scarcely expected to be realized, in our age, even by the radicals; penned within sight of slave renditions into bondage, when his manhood was humiliated by the legal ordeal under which the colored people of the United States were placed by that most infamous of enactments, the Fugitive Slave Law.
After the publication of his paper on the Destiny of the Colored Race in America,[7] a committee, selected for the purpose, sent a copy to each member of the Congress, of which Mr. Frank Blair was a member, he having acknowledged its receipt by letter to Mr. J. M. Whitfield, one of the committee, and in which he broached the subject he afterwards made the theme of his lecture which surprised the country from the boldness of the position taken. By comparing the scheme put forth during the year 1844-5, in favor of Central and South American emigration, and the brilliant effort of Mr. Frank P. Blair in its behalf, including his great lecture before the Boston Lyceum, we venture to assume that it was suggested by the paper herein presented.
In the recent report of his African explorations, the following curious document we quote, as among his political works. To the discerning historical reader it will be read with interest, while its significance will become in time more appreciable.
African Commission.
The president and officers of the General Board of Commissioners, viz., W. H. Day, A. M., President, Matisen F. Bailey, Vice-President, George W. Brodie, Secretary, James Madison Bell, Treasurer, Alfred Whipple, Auditor, Dr. Martin R. Delany, Special Foreign Secretary, Abram D. Shadd, James Henry Harris, and Isaac D. Shadd, the executive council in behalf of the organization for the promotion of the political and other interests of the colored inhabitants of North America, particularly the United States and Canada.
To all unto whom these letters may come, greeting: The said General Board of Commissioners, in executive council assembled, have this day chosen, and by these presents do hereby appoint and authorize Dr. Martin Robison Delany, of Chatham County of Kent, Province of Canada, Chief Commissioner, and Robert Douglass, Esq., Artist, and Professor Robert Campbell, Naturalist, both of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of the United States of America, to be Assistant Commissioners; Amos Aray, Surgeon, and James W. Prinnel, Secretary and Commercial Reporter, both of Kent County, Canada West, of a scientific corps, to be known by the name of
The Niger Valley Exploring Party.
The object of this expedition is to make a topographical, geological, and geographical examination of the Valley of the River Niger, in Africa, and an inquiry into the state and condition of the people of that valley, and other parts of Africa, together with such other scientific inquiries as may by them be deemed expedient, for the purposes of science, and for general information; and without any reference to, and with the board being entirely opposed to, any emigration there as such. Provided, however, that nothing in this instrument be so construed as to interfere with the right of the commissioners to negotiate, in their own behalf, or that of any other parties or organization, for territory.
The Chief Commissioner is hereby authorized to add one or more competent commissioners to their number, it being agreed and understood that this organization is, and is to be, exempted from the pecuniary responsibility of sending out this expedition.
Dated at the office of the Executive Council, Chatham, County of Kent, Province of Canada, this thirtieth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight.
By the President,
- William Howard Day.
- Isaac D. Shadd, Vice-President.[8]
- George W. Brodie, Secretary.
While the Commission is worthy of a place among his political writings, the next in order, and of equal importance, furnishing another evidence of his adaptability to circumstances, the essential characteristic to his success, as well as that which has always been the secret of the success of all men in public life, is his treaty made with the king and chiefs of Abbeokuta, in view of advancing the future prosperity of his fatherland. We give the treaty, extracted from page 35th of his “Official Report.”
The Treaty.
This treaty, made between His Majesty Okukenu, Alake, Somoye, Ibashorum, Sokenu, Ogubonna, and Atambola, Chiefs, and Balaguns of Abbeokuta, on the first part, and Martin Robison Delany, and Robert Campbell, of the Niger Valley Exploring Party, commissioners from the African race of the United States and the Canadas, in America, on the second part, covenants:
Art. 1. That the king and chiefs, on their part, agree to grant and assign unto the said commissioners, on behalf of the African race in America, the right and privilege of settling, in common with the Egba people, on any part of the territory belonging to Abbeokuta not otherwise occupied.
Art. 2. That all matters requiring legal investigation among settlers be left to themselves, to be disposed of according to their own custom.
Art. 3. That the commissioners, on their part, also agree that the settlers shall bring with them, as an equivalent for the privileges above accorded, intelligence, education, a knowledge of the arts and sciences, agriculture, and other mechanical and industrial occupations, which they shall put into immediate operation, by improving the lands, and in other useful avocations.
Art. 4. That the laws of the Egba people shall be strictly respected by the settlers; and, in all matters in which both parties are concerned, an equal number of commissioners, mutually agreed upon, shall be appointed, who shall have power to settle such matters.
As a pledge of our faith, and sincerity of our hearts, we each of us hereunto affix our hand and seal, this twenty-seventh day of December, Anno Domini one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine.
- His Mark, × Okukenu, Alake,
- His Mark, × Somoye, Ibashorum,
- His Mark, × Sokenu, Balagun,
- His Mark, × Ogubonna, Balagun,
- His Mark, × Atambala, Balagun,
- His Mark, × Oguseye, Ariaba,
- His Mark, × Agtabo, Balagun, O. S. O.
- His Mark, × Ogudemu, Ageoki,
- M. R. Delany,
- Robert Campbell.
Witness, Samuel Crowther, Jun.
Attest, Samuel Crowther, Sen.
Says the report on the Niger Valley Exploration, “On the next evening, the 28th, the king, with the executive council of chiefs and elders, met at the palace in Aka, when the treaty was ratified by a unanimous approval. Such general satisfaction ran through the council, that the great chief, his highness Ogubonna, mounting his horse, then at midnight, hastened to the residence of the surgeon Crowther, aroused the father, the missionary, and author, and hastily informed him of the action of the council.”
An event of revenge, from prejudice to his race, was of great personal loss to himself, occasioned by the burning of Wilberforce College, the first and only thoroughly literary institution of that capacity owned and controlled solely by the colored people of this country. This happened on the memorable night of the 14th of April, 1866; he having had in the third story of the right wing of the edifice a room as a depository of valuables, among which were his entire collection of African curiosities, collected during his tour, together with his entire European and African correspondence, and that with distinguished Americans after his return home. In this conflagration it was a loss entailed to him, never to be remedied, as these were the collections of twenty years. Besides correspondence, there were manuscripts, by which we are deprived of some of his finest productions.
The following papers are of a recent date:—
Reflections on the War.
One important fact developed during this gigantic civil war, and which could not have escaped the general and mature intelligent observer as a result of the struggle, and so contrary to concessions under the old relations of the Union, is, that no great statesmen were produced on the part of the South; although at the commencement, at the Montgomery Convention, or Provisional Congress, August, 1861, their independence was declared, and consequently must have been fully matured, not a measure was put forth of national import to sustain their cause, except the issue of the cotton bonds thrown upon the foreign market—a cheat so consistent with the Mississippi bond repudiation of Mr. Jefferson Davis, that it is not difficult to determine the source of that financial scheme, which, of itself, was an ordinary commercial measure, of every-day transaction, enlarged to meet the occasion of a “national want.”
Previous to the war, it was generally conceded that by far the ablest statesmen in the service of the nation came from the South. And doubtless this may have been so, for a long period of the government, after the close of the revolutionary struggle; because, the people of the North, caring for little else than business, of personal interests, and local legislation, few men could be found among them willing to devote more than one term in Congress, or the executive departments of the government; while the policy of the South was to continue the same men as long as possible in the councils, in consequence of their domestic relations affording them ample time and leisure in their absence from home to mature their plans of ascendency.
During the revolutionary period, which may be reckoned from the Albany Continental Congress, in 1754, to the Peace Congress at Ghent, 1814, both grand political divisions, north and south of Mason and Dixon’s line, show with equal brilliancy in the national forum.
After the treaty of peace with Great Britain, gradually the leading spirits passed away, either by death or withdrawal from public life, till Clay, Calhoun, Adams, and Benton appeared for many years as the only dependence of the country in questions and measures of great national import.
These master spirits continued their career till they, in turn, one by one, left the stage of action, the last terminating in 1852, by the death of Mr. Webster.
Of this galaxy, the Hons. John Quincy Adams, of the House of Representatives, and Henry Clay, of the Senate, were the leaders of international measures; Senators Daniel Webster and Thomas H. Benton, those of national import; while Senator John C. Calhoun was especially confined to that of state rights sovereignty. During the existence of these, there were other men of note and distinction, all of whom have left the stage of action. Of the great personages above named, all, excepting Senator Benton, have held the portfolio of first minister of state; and it is notorious, that although Senator Calhoun’s was under President James K. Polk, 1844, a period most auspicious for the display of statesmanship, as great and vital questions of national and international polity were prominent before the country and the world,—such as the extension of territory, and the annexation of Texas,—not a measure was put forth by Mr. Calhoun to meet the exigencies of the occasion and the times. Indeed, that senator, outside of “state sovereignty” and South Carolina, as history bears witness, as a statesman, was a failure.
The social polity of the North being based upon labor, and that of the South on leisure, depending on slave labor for maintenance, as an almost natural consequence, the North neglected as much as possible places of honor in the nation,—the army, and navy,—conceding these, as a matter of course, in all good faith, to its brethren of the South. In good faith the concession was certainly made, because the North then as heartily approved of slavery as the South.
Foreign intervention being permanently settled, and no longer any dread of a common enemy, the South accepted the indifference of the North, and commenced preparations for her own independence. This was probably maturing shortly after the battle of New Orleans (1815), till the election of James Buchanan, 1856; or, more historically, from the treaty of Ghent, 1814, to the Ostend Congress, in 1854.
When the civil war commenced, it was alarmingly apparent that the South had by far the best officers, the North having few trustworthy, or those of military experience. And while the army was routed, and the enemy gaining strength at home and abroad, the masterly ability of statesmanship of the North not only challenged the respect and admiration of the world by the wisdom of the great executive head of the government, but intricate questions of the greatest international policy were raised, met, sustained, and established; military and financial measures created by the ministers of state, war, and the treasury, never yet equalled by any nation.
During the time immediately succeeding the revolutionary period,—from 1815 to 1851,—with the exception of representatives from Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware, in the persons of Hons. Thomas H. Benton, Henry Clay, Reverdy Johnson, and John M. Clayton, every great measure of national interest was represented by gentlemen of the North. So completely had the state rights question engrossed the attention of the South, that nothing could be elicited in the halls of Congress from that side of the house, of whatever import the question, but “Old Dominion” and “first families,” “South Carolina and state rights,” “Georgia and negro slaves,” “Alabama and cotton,” “Louisiana, slaves, and sugar,” “Mississippi negro traders,” “Arkansas and amen with abolition,” “Texas and bowie knives.” These appeared to be the only rejoinders given, and arguments made for many years past, in the councils of the nation, by representatives from the South.
Absorbed entirely in the one erroneous idea of state sovereignty, thinking of nothing besides this, neither fearing nor caring for anything else, then is a degeneracy in statesmanship much to be wondered at on the part of the South? Certainly not. It is but charity to the South to admit of finding a solution of their deficiencies in the statement of these grave and important truths.
Was there any one man or measure, either in or out of the whole Southern establishment, civil or military, approaching those of the North? Not one. I am fully aware that “comparisons are odious;” that these features of observations are “in bad taste,” and that it will be adjudged ungenerous to make such allusions to our fallen and subjugated fellow-countrymen. I fully appreciate the extent of the objection; but when it is remembered that many of this very class of Southerners,—the old leading politicians are straining their intellects to prove the inferiority and incapacity of my race to high social and intellectual attainments,—the objector will, at least, find an explanation, if not justification, in the strictures.
I admit there are many excellent gentlemen in the South, and many have, through the press of the country, acknowledged their approval of the great principles of equality before the law, liberty and justice, and the natural inalienable rights of all men by birth; but I must be permitted to place my record, if not measure my steel, against those who tauntingly dare challenge me. It was the Hon. Daniel Webster, who, long years ago, on the floor of the United States Senate, on the very subject of disparagement, told Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, in reply to his assertion, “The gentleman from Massachusetts has found more than his match” in debate with Senator Benton,—“Sir, where there are blows to be received, there must be blows given in return.”
The International Policy of the World towards the African Race.
One of the highest pretensions set up in favor of the enslavement of the African race is its inferiority. If the Britons, Caledonians, Hibernians, and others of the Celtic as well as Teuton and pure Caucasian races had never been enslaved; if Caractacus, the king and proudest prince the British ever had up to that period, had not been led in chains, and sold by order of Julius Cæsar, with many other British slaves, in the public market of Rome; if the British nobles, long years ago, had not written of their own peasantry, that they were incapable of elevation; if they had not recorded and passed enactments against the Scotch and Irish, that they were innately inferior, and totally insusceptible of instruction and civilization, calling them “heathen dogs, only fit for slaves of the lowest order;” if a general system of serfdom, known as the Feudal System, had not existed generally among the white races for ages through all Europe, before a black slave was ever known among the whites; if the whites had not been held in slavery many centuries longer than were the blacks; and finally, if Russia had not, just within the last three years (1864), emancipated her forty-two millions of slaves,—ten times more than the African slaves in the United States, allowing four millions to the South,—then there would be some semblance of honesty and sincerity in the continued plea of justice for ages of wrong and crime against an unoffending, helpless people.
Through all times white slavery had existed among the nations of Europe, and as civilization advanced, and the lower classes became more elevated, the difficulty became more apparent in perpetuating the system. What to do, and how to remedy the evil, was a question of paramount importance. To suppress the approach of civilization, and keep down the rising aspirations of the common people, could not be well determined. The genius of social and political economy were put to the test to divine the desired end to be attained. Legislative and royal decrees could not reach it; the march of man and the light of intellect kept in advance of legal injunctions.
In 624—twelve hundred and forty-three years ago, and twelve hundred and thirty-nine before the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln—the Saracens or Arabs gained access to Africa, controlling the commerce for seven hundred and fifty-eight years, being the only foreigners accessible to, and holding a friendly intercourse with, the people.
In the year 1487, Bartholomew Diaz, of Portugal, discovered the Cape of Good Hope, calling it Cabo del Tormentoso—“the Cape of Storms.” On reporting to his sovereign the discovery, with all of its prospects, the king cried out, “No, let us not call it ‘Cabo del Tormentoso,’ but rather let us call it Cabo del Buen Speremza!—the Cape of Good Hope!” And it was a good hope to Portugal, because it must be remembered that access to Africa, by communication with the western coast, was then to Europeans unknown; the only intercourse being from the north by the Barbary States, and through the interior by caravans, all of which purported to reach the eastern part of the continent by that way.
The year 1482 was an eventful period to the African race, and I here record, for the first time probably in which it has ever been given to the world (except the authority herein quoted), the startling facts that the enslavement of the African race was the result of a determination on the part of at least four, and probably more, of the strongest, the most enlightened and polished nations at the time, to make the African race supplant, by substituting it for European slavery. These nations were, Spain, England, France, and Portugal.
And I should not feel, whatever I may have effectually done, that my work had been more than half completed, did I not, as a wronged and outraged son of Africa, give to the world this crowning act of infamy against a people, the facts of which have ever been closely concealed, and even denied, while thousands of the world’s good people have no knowledge that such facts ever transpired.
The demands for ameliorating the condition of the whites pressed heavily in all parts of Europe, as the elevated wealthy noble could not longer bear to see the ignorant poor of his kinsmen degraded. To longer deny them the right of elevation, was to disparage the genius, and degrade the whole Caucasian race. To remedy this, a race must be chosen foreign to their own, and as different as possible in external characteristics. For this dreadful purpose the African was selected as the victim of an international conspiracy. A political conspiracy of malice aforethought, prompted by avarice and the love of lucre. During the memorable events that thrilled with emotion the communities of every country in 1862, in the midst of our national struggle, the Rev. Felix, Archbishop of Orleans, France, in a pastoral, sent forth to exhort the people of France and the French Catholics of the United States to support the position taken by President Lincoln, in pronouncing his malediction against the cause of the South, said, “It is the teaching of experience that the slavery of the day—the slavery of the blacks—has an origin and a consequence equally detestable. Its origin was the Treaty, the ignoble and cruel bargain, condemned by Pius II. in 1482, by Paul III. in 1557, by Urban VIII. in 1539, by Benedict XIV. in 1741, by Gregory XVI. in 1839.” His revelation should startle Christendom, and none would question the historical accuracy of the facts in the case, when coming from such a trustworthy source as the reverend and honored Archbishop of Orleans.
Objections were many and serious on the part of the common classes to the introduction of this new people as a domestic element into European countries. But notwithstanding this, there would, doubtless, have been many sent, if a timely relief had not been afforded by the discovery of America in 1492. So lucrative became this traffic in a foreign people, running through many years, and engrossed by the most elevated, as elsewhere referred to, that in 1518, James I. made it the basis of the revenue, if not the wealth of England. The people of the New World—Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch—made this race their “hope and expectation.”
Whole fleets of merchantmen, from every nation in Europe, environed Africa, to subjugate her people. Powerful naval forces were also brought against her, and national representatives, in the persons of their emissaries, prowled along and about her entire coast, sowing the seeds of discord, and a baser corruption among those of the already corrupted natives, inciting them to war, and the devastation of their homes.
Every vestige of civilization was driven from the coast, the interior placed under fearful apprehensions, the entire social system deranged, the progress of improvement suspended, and permanent establishments abandoned. With the entire white world against her, is it not clear why Africa, in the last twelve centuries, has not kept pace with the civilization of the age? Certainly it is. But there are those who still affect to doubt the former civilization of Africa, and dispute that race as the authors of her ancient arts and sciences. Why dispute it? If the African race were not the authors, what race were? Why are not the same arts and sciences found in some other portion of the globe than Africa? Why confined to this quarter of the world? The identity of one people with another has its strongest evidence in the characteristics, habits, manners, customs, especially in moral and religious sentiments, peculiar to themselves, even after all traces by language are lost.
It is simply ridiculous for ethnologists to claim the few Bebers who are found in and about Egypt, as the remnants of the ancient Africans, and erectors of the mighty pyramids, and authors of the hieroglyphics. The present Bebers of Egypt are none other than mixed bloods of the ancient Egyptians who once inhabited it,—who were pure blacks,—and Saracens who had conquered the country by conquest B. C. 146, and without any prestige, except that inherited from the Ishmaelitish or Arab side of their ancestry—avarice and treachery. I mean not to be unkind in stating this, but simply to paint facts in a strong light.
Certainly the general character of this (the Arabian) race of men has been known through all times. And although they had given the world in literature the nine numerals in arithmetic, a chirography, and a religion which necessarily has some beautiful philosophy, yet there is little comparison in any of these to the literature of ancient Africa. I believe it is not pretended that the Arabians have any peculiar order of architecture; and I hope not to be regarded uncharitable if I suspect the cunning Arab, instead of originating, as having stolen the nine numerals of our common arithmetic from the Alexandrian Museum, destroyed by them in the memorable conflagration. It was clever in them to do so, and keep it to themselves; and I shall not raise the voice of envy against them.
The most striking character of the ancient Africans was their purity of morals and religion. Their high conception and reverence of Deity was manifested and acknowledged in everything they did. They are known in history as having been the most scrupulous of all races, and conscientious in their dealings. In this I have reference to the Ethiopians, of whom the inhabitants of Egypt were lineal descendants by colonization or emigration down the valley of the Nile, and settlement in the territory at its mouths; being identical in all their characteristics of a “black skin and woolly hair,” even as described as late as the time of Herodotus, “the father of history,” the learned Grecian philosopher who travelled and resided among them during twenty-five years.
A people or race possessing in a high degree the great principles of pure ethics and true religion, a just conception of God, necessarily inherit the essential principles of the highest civilization. And is it not a known and conceded fact by all who are at all conversant with the true character of the African, that he excels all other races in religious sentiments, and adaptation to domestic usages, wherever found? In this I will not even except the Caucasian race, because those characteristics in the African are in such striking contrast to the same in the Caucasian, that they are regarded by him as exaggerations and extravagances. Indeed such is the susceptibility and adaptation of the African to the civilization of the times and places in which he may be found, that the Caucasian, instead of looking upon it in approved comparison with that which he admires in his own race, has, by usage of a policy, become accustomed to undervalue it as a mere “imitation.” Can imitation give intellectual ability for acquirements? If it enables a parrot or split-tongued crow to gabble words by imitation of sound without any conception of meaning; if it enables a monkey or an ourang-outang to “come down from a tree and tie gloves on others’ hands,” to go back leaving it unable either to loosen the strings, or climb the tree to escape the artful huntsman, in imitation of what he did to insnare it; or “thrusting a hand into a jug of figs, grabbing it full,” and thus holding on to the figs, screams, endeavoring to take the hand out full, until caught, not having intellect to let go the figs; does it make him capable of high intellectual attainment, such as languages, chirography, arithmetic, philosophy, mathematics, the sciences of war, music, painting, sculpture, political science, and polite literature?
Let the traducers of the African race, those who affect to believe that his faculties consist in mere “imitation,” answer this inquiry. Even in the Southern States, terribly crushed and shattered as has been for centuries the true African character, these lurking faculties for the higher attainments rising superior to the fetters which bound the body of the possessor, would occasionally burst forth like the sudden illumination of a brilliant meteor, startling the midnight gazer while all was enshrined in darkness around. Whether in the person of the distinguished orator and advocate of his race, Frederick Douglass of Maryland, or an Ellis, the negro blacksmith linguist, or George Madison Washington of Virginia, or Blind Tom of Alabama, the musician and pianist, now surprising the world, Elizabeth Greenfield of Mississippi, the celebrated “Black Susan,”—all slaves when developed,—these great truths of African susceptibility are incontrovertible. With one more point this treatise shall have ended. But subsequent to its completion, and very recently, a high functionary, at the head of one the greatest nations of modern times, in an elaborate argument on the subject, having seen fit to make it history, by recording, as part of an official document, the following declaration, I deem it as treacherous to the African race, to which I wholly belong, if I did not place as permanently on record an equally bold and defiant declaration—a proof to the contrary. Says this sage and statesman,—
“The peculiar qualities which should characterize any people who are fit to decide upon the management of public affairs for a great state have seldom been combined. It is the glory of white men to know that they have had these qualities in sufficient measure to build upon this continent a great political fabric, and to preserve its stability for more than ninety years, while in every other part of the world all similar experiments have failed. But if anything can be proved by known facts, if all reasoning upon evidence is not abandoned, it must be acknowledged that, in the progress of nations, negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, whenever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.” Instead of the assertion, that in the progress of the nations the negro has shown less capacity for government than any other race of people, that no independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands, I shall commend a reply to this predicate, by the proposition that the negroes were foremost in the progress of time; first who developed the highest type of civilization. National civil government and the philosophy of religion were borrowed by the white races from the negro. And if the learned jurist will go back to school-boy days, he will remember what time has evidently caused him to forget.
In the days of Egyptian greatness one dynasty existed, evidently, for more than one thousand years. This is known to Holy Writ as the government of the Pharaohs. During the reign of these princes, the sovereigns repeatedly were chosen from Egyptian and Ethiopian families. By Ethiopian families, is meant the going out of the kingdom of Ethiopia to select from a royal family the ruler, just as Great Britain goes into Germany to select from a family a sovereign for the throne.
Among these mighty princes were Menes, or Misraim, Sesostris, Osiris, and the Rameses, the last of which was the dynasty name numerically recorded I., II., III., and so on. Rameses I., the greatest of the princes, was the god-man, and none other than Jupiter-Ammon. In him was the beautiful and symbolic idea of the attributes of Deity,—the Christian’s God,—first developed. The person of the Deity, Rameses I., was represented as a human being of robust proportions, having a “bushy, woolly head, with ram’s horns.” His position, seated on a throne of gold and ivory, ivory base and golden floor; in his left hand a sceptre, the right grasping a thunderbolt. At his side was the Phœnix, in its well-known attitude. This last symbolic attribute is sometimes, indeed generally, spoken of by writers as an “eagle with extended wings,” which is evidently an error, from all the facts connected with the god Jupiter, and Rameses II., his successor; besides, the eagle was not an ideal, symbolic bird of religion in Africa. It is suggestive of combat and carnality instead of purity, the successor being styled by the ever-devoted Africans, “Rameses the Ever-living, Always-living Rameses”—his name occurring twice in the salutation.
Here, in this ideal symbol of a God, was also the identity of man; ivory representing durability, gold, purity, the sceptre, authority, and the thunderbolt, power; the ram’s head, innocence, decision, and caution against too near approach. In a word, none must presume to attempt to speak face to face with the Deity, as death would be the result; as it is a well-known characteristic of a ram, while innocent as a sheep, he will instantly attack any head, man’s or beast’s, that approaches his.
Another beautiful symbolic attribute of Jupiter-Ammon,—Rameses I.,—which afterwards personified Rameses II., was the Phœnix. This bird, like many ancient images, was allegorical or ideal. It was described as similar to an eagle, larger, and beautiful; with breast, wings, and tail of a brilliant gold tint; a crown of solid gold crest capped its head, the rest of the body covered with green. It never flew, but always walked with stately step and dignity. There was but one known to have an existence, and the beginning was never known. It produced no young, but was itself from the beginning a full-grown bird. It lived, and lived, and lived on, from generation to generation, through ages and periods, and periods and ages, till, seeming weary of life, it built a nest of fagots and brush picked up, which was long constructing; sat upon it when finished, laid a golden egg in time; the egg ignited the nest into a burning mass; the bird continuing to sit, threw up its wings and head in great excitement, and was consumed in the flames; when in the ashes was left a ball, out of the ball came forth a worm, from this worm instantly sprang another Phœnix, which lived on like the first, to transfigurate or reproduce itself again in time.
There were still other symbolic representatives of Deity among them, Rameses II. being also called Apis, and represented as an ox or a bull; while Rameses III. was called Osiris, and represented as a dog—the ox or bull, as the attribute of patience, endurance, and strength; the dog, as faithfulness and watchfulness.
Is it not clear that much of the philosophy of our theology was borrowed from their mythology? Whence the “great white throne” upon which God sits; the “golden pavement,” the “thunders” of his wrath, “Behold the Lamb of God,” “Our God is a consuming fire,” “No man can look upon God and live,” “A self-creating God,” with numerous kindred quotations which might be made from the Scriptures?
The Africans, as is well known, were great herdsmen; a great part of their wealth and available currency consisting in their live stock; every family, however limited their circumstances, having a flock of sheep or goats, and both more or less; this running through to the present day, where, in recent travels on that continent, the writer met, in the first large city, a dairyman, who, every morning, milked eighty cows, and farther in the interior, towards Soudan, the dairy which supplied him every morning milked two hundred cows. And among the higher families, as nobles, chiefs, and princes, from five to ten thousand head, the property of one person or family, is commonly met with. Dr. Livingstone speaks of meeting with kings, even in that least civilized interior region of his explorations, who possessed as many as forty thousand cattle. These herds are watched by faithful attendants,—men when large, or women when small, with the indispensable shepherd dog, which is generally black. In speaking of the riches of Job, the man of Uz, the Scriptures tell us that his cattle were on a “thousand hills.”
Can it not be conceived that the God who was thus bountiful in bestowing such wealth might be symbolized by the property itself and the means of its protection? Hence Jupiter Ammon or Rameses I., as a ram or sheep; Sesostris, or Rameses II., as a bull or ox—Apis; Osiris or Rameses III. as dog or jackal.
There was also another beautiful symbolic personification in this—three persons in one. For it is a striking and remarkable fact, as must be noticed by all antiquarians, that these three persons inseparably appear, both by inscription and in statuary—Rameses, Sesostris, Osiris—sheep, ox, dog. Here are innocence, patience, faith, and charity or love, as none so loving as a dog. And how typical of the true African character!
It was shown that the authors of this beautiful and pure religious doctrine were black. This will not be disputed, when it is remembered that Moses took one of the daughters of Jethro, prince and priest of Midian, to wife, and the Scriptures inform us that she was an “Ethiopian woman;” Aaron and Miriam, the brother and sister of Moses, entering into strife with him about it. Not, as it is concluded by modern civilization, because she was black, but because she was identical with their oppressors and recent masters the objection was made.
It is very evident that the highest conception of the Jewish religion is that which was borrowed from Africa during the Israelitish bondage in Egypt, transmitted through them to the present, and developed in the metaphysical theology of the age.
And it will not do to call this “mummery,” since later, in June, 1867, the President of the United States took part in the consecration of a hall, erected in part to the perpetuation of this African symbolic philosophy and religion.
The capital city of this great people in Africa was Thebais, commonly called Thebes, supposed to contain two millions of inhabitants, surrounded by a wall with one hundred gates, twenty-five at each point of the compass. On the occasion of his Asiatic conquest, Sesostris, or Rameses II., went out of the city with ten thousand infantry and two hundred chariots, with charioteers armed for war, from each gate at one time, having an aggregate of one million two hundred thousand warriors. The conquest of this proud and mighty prince was carried to the banks of the River Indus, conquering every nation as he passed; where he set his memorable pillars, with the peculiar inscription, “Sesostris, the king of kings, has conquered the world to the banks of the Indus;” when he evacuated the country, and returned to his own, having vindicated the prestige and dignity of his name.
Who were the builders of the everlasting pyramids, catacombs, and sculptors of the sphinxes? Were they Europeans or Caucasians, Asiatics or Mongolians? Will it be at once conceded that the authors of the symbolic mythology and hieroglyphic science are identical? Upon this point there is but one opinion. The inventors or authors of the one were the builders or architects of the other.
Among what race of men, and what country of the globe, do we find traces of these singular productions, but the African and Africa? None whatever. It is in Africa the pyramids, sphinxes, and catacombs are found; here the hieroglyphics still remain. Among the living Africans traces of their beautiful philosophy and symbolic mythology still exist. In the interior their architecture and hieroglyphics are still the subjects of their art. Through all time the arts of a people have been among the clearest evidences of identity.
Asia has her several peculiar orders of architecture, the Chinese and Japan being identical; that among the Hindoos the type of the others. Europe has her Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite, with Gothic, and other modifications of modern orders.
If the originators and builders of the pyramids and sphinxes had been Asiatics, is it not certain that the same architecture would have been found in Asia? of Europeans, in Europe? There is nothing more certain than it would; and the entire absence of all traces of the purely African architecture, arts, and symbolic religion and mythology among other races and in other countries than the Africans and Africa, makes it simply preposterous for the white race to claim these as productions of their own.
Would the Asiatic or the European, who had erected the architectural monuments in Africa, have lost their arts? Would they not have originated another as they returned to their original homes? Do the fixed, especially original, arts of a people leave them simply by a change of countries? Certainly not; as among the greatest advantages to be gained by emigration is the arts that are taken by the people to a country. And had the architectures of Africa been an importation, originated by or among any other people than themselves, is it not one of the most striking known to history by ages of experience, that it would have been found in some other country among the descendants of the originators and authors, and not been found in Africa alone, and peculiar to the African race? Were they Persians who had succeeded by conquest in Africa? Were they Greeks under Alexander? Were they Greeks and Romans who made their advent into Egypt with Antony? or those who fled in dismay under Pompey, after the famous defeat of Pharsalia? or Jews under tetrarch governments? Certainly not; as all of them, from the Persian to the Jewish advent, found these arts and sciences there. And is it not known to history that Egypt was the “cradle of the earliest civilization,” propagating the arts and sciences, when the Grecians were an uncivilized people, covering their persons with skins and clothing, anterior to the existence of the she-wolf with Romulus the founder of Rome?
On the invasion of the Saracens, A. C. 146 years, the African library, known as the “Alexandrian Museum,” was known to contain in manuscript seven hundred thousand volumes. The secretiveness of the Africans was a matter of history for ages known to the world, their arts and sciences being held as sacred, and propagated with the greatest caution. The kings and priests were the first recipients; the nobles and gentlemen the other. All Egypt and Ethiopia regarded this library as the “hope and expectation” of their countries.
The value of the collection will be estimated by remembrance of its age and manner of obtaining, printing then being unknown to the world. The age of the library, from its first collections, was coequal with the first dawn of science among them.
And had this immense fountain of knowledge been transmitted to posterity, the African would have had a history and a name. And I repeat, with emphasis, that the loss of the African library was a catastrophe unequalled in the age of the world, as bearing on the destiny of a people and a race.
But the “Museum” was made the centre of attraction; the Saracen invaders surrounded the stupendous edifice; orders were given that not a relic be preserved; the flambeau was the weapon of attack; assault and fire was the command,—when the accumulated literature, art and science, of four thousand years’ collection, sent fire and smoke towards the heavens, more destructive in its consequences than the world had ever before witnessed! The African library, the depository of the earliest germs of social, civil, political, and national progress, the concentrated wisdom of ages, stood in flames! Fourteen days burning, the building in ruins, and the light of science and civilization, for generations, was extinguished, and Africa became a prey to avarice, imposture, and oppression!
So enlightened, polished, and humane were this race, that after the birth of Jesus, subsequent to the downfall of Egypt by the Saracens, the “warning of the Lord to Joseph” was to take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until they are all dead who seek the child’s life. Nor can it be denied that the African race were that which the “Spirit of the Lord” meant, because, notwithstanding Saracen subjugation in Egypt, the African polity, civilization, and humanity still prevailed. Besides, it is a historically known fact that Greeks and Jews were with the Romans in government and sentiments against this Messiah, the promised king of the Jews; all conspiring for his deposition in the event of his coming. It will also be remembered that after the crucifixion and ascension, that Africa was the only country which held prestige enough to send a national representative to “Jerusalem to worship” under the Christian doctrine, as propagated by the scattered and terror-stricken apostles; the Ethiopian eunuch, a man of great authority, and chief lord of her majesty, Queen Candace’s, royal treasury.
One word more, and I close a review already too elaborate; but driven by necessity to the defence of my race, duty compelled me to the point where I cease. Would any other race than the African, in the symbolical statues of the sphinxes, have placed the great head of a negro woman, on the majestic body of a lion, as an ideal representation of their genius?
If it be the “glory of the white race to know that they have had these qualifications in sufficient measure to build upon this continent a great political fabric,” it is also the glory of the black race to know that they have had these qualities in sufficient measure to build a great political fabric long before the whites, imparting to them the first germs of civilization, and enlightening the world by their wisdom. And the most momentous, extraordinary international conspiracy against the African race, which this memento commenced to expose, has never been by convention annulled nor abrogated, and, therefore, still stands optional with either party to continue or withdraw; it is fondly and confidently hoped will not be encouraged nor induced to continue by an equally extraordinary, if not momentous, official denunciation against that race, from the executive of one of the most powerful nations existing on this globe.
And in behalf of my race, once proud, polished, and elevated,—at the feet of whose philosophers the learned and eminent of the world sought wisdom, as did “Herodotus, the father of history,” and others,—may I fondly hope that another generation will not pass away till Africa, in and by her own legitimate children, gives evidence of a national regeneration, breathing forth with fervid and holy aspirations in the religious sentiments of her native heart and beautiful words of one of her own native languages: Bi-Olorum Pellu—“the Lord has been merciful to us.”
And in behalf of my emancipated brethren in America, may the blessings of that God, whose signal promise must and will be fulfilled, despite political official anathema, rest upon the devoted head and in the holy heart of the most eminent prelate, Father Felix, Archbishop of Orleans in France.
Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent.
To the Colored Inhabitants of the United States:—
Fellow-Countrymen: The duty assigned us is an important one, comprehending all that pertains to our destiny and that of our posterity, present and prospectively. And while it must be admitted that the subject is one of the greatest magnitude, requiring all that talents, prudence, and wisdom might adduce, and while it would be folly to pretend to give you the combined result of these three agencies, we shall satisfy ourselves with doing our duty to the best of our ability, and that in the plainest, most simple, and comprehensive manner.
Our object, then, shall be to place before you our true position in this country (the United States), the improbability of realizing our desires, and the sure, practicable, and infallible remedy for the evils we now endure.
We have not addressed you as citizens,—a term desired and ever cherished by us,—because such you have never been. We have not addressed you as freemen, because such privileges have never been enjoyed by any colored man in the United States. Why, then, should we flatter your credulity, by inducing you to believe that which neither has now, nor never before had, an existence? Our oppressors are ever gratified at our manifest satisfaction, especially when that satisfaction is founded upon false premises; an assumption on our part of the enjoyment of rights and privileges which never have been conceded, and which, according to the present system of the United States policy, we never can enjoy.
The political policy of this country was solely borrowed from, and shaped and modelled after, that of Rome. This was strikingly the case in the establishment of immunities, and the application of terms in their civil and legal regulations.
The term citizen, politically considered, is derived from the Roman definition, which was never applied in any other sense—cives ingenui; which meant, one exempt from restraint of any kind. (Cives, a citizen; one who might enjoy the highest honors in his own free town,—the town in which he lived,—and in the country or commonwealth; and ingenui, freeborn—of GOOD EXTRACTION.) All who were deprived of citizenship—that is, the right of enjoying positions of honor and trust—were termed hostes and peregrini; which are public and private enemies, and foreigners, or aliens to the country. (Hostis, a public, and sometimes private, enemy; and peregrinus, an alien, stranger, or foreigner.)
The Romans, from a national pride, to distinguish their inhabitants from those of other countries, termed them all “citizens,” but, consequently, were under the necessity of specifying four classes of citizens: none but the cives ingenui being unrestricted in their privileges. There was one class, called the jus quiritium, or the wailing or supplicating citizen; that is, one who was continually moaning, complaining, or crying for aid or succor. This class might also include within themselves the jus suffragii, who had the privilege of voting, but no other privilege. They could vote for one of their superiors—the cives ingenui—but not for themselves.
Such, then, is the condition, precisely, of the black and colored inhabitants of the United States; in some of the states they answering to the latter class, having the privilege of voting, to elevate their superiors to positions to which they need never dare aspire or even hope to attain.
There has, of late years, been a false impression obtained, that the privilege of voting constitutes, or necessarily embodies, the rights of citizenship. A more radical error never obtained favor among an oppressed people. Suffrage is an ambiguous term, which admits of several definitions. But according to strict political construction, means simply “a vote, voice, approbation.” Here, then, you have the whole import of the term suffrage. To have the “right of suffrage,” as we rather proudly term it, is simply to have the privilege—there is no right about it—of giving our approbation to that which our rulers may do, without the privilege, on our part, of doing the same thing. Where such privileges are granted—privileges which are now exercised in but few of the states by colored men—we have but the privilege granted of saying, in common with others, who shall, for the time being, exercise rights, which, in him, are conceded to be inherent and inviolate: like the indented apprentice, who is summoned to give his approbation to an act which would be fully binding without his concurrence. Where there is no acknowledged sovereignty, there can be no binding power; hence, the suffrage of the black man, independently of the white, would be in this country unavailable.
Much might be adduced on this point to prove the insignificance of the black man, politically considered, in this country, but we deem it wholly unnecessary at present, and consequently proceed at once to consider another feature of this important subject.
Let it then be understood, as a great principle of political economy, that no people can be free who themselves do not constitute an essential part of the ruling element of the country in which they live. Whether this element be founded upon a true or false, a just or an unjust basis, this position in community is necessary to personal safety. The liberty of no man is secure who controls not his own political destiny. What is true of an individual is true of a family, and that which is true of a family is also true concerning a whole people. To suppose otherwise, is that delusion which at once induces its victim, through a period of long suffering, patiently to submit to every species of wrong; trusting against probability, and hoping against all reasonable grounds of expectation, for the granting of privileges and enjoyment of rights which never will be attained. This delusion reveals the true secret of the power which holds in peaceable subjection all the oppressed in every part of the world.
A people, to be free, must necessarily be their own rulers; that is, each individual must, in himself, embody the essential ingredient—so to speak—of the sovereign principle which composes the true basis of his liberty. This principle, when not exercised by himself, may, at his pleasure, be delegated to another—his true representative.
Said a great French writer, “A free agent, in a free government, should be his own governor;” that is, he must possess within himself the acknowledged right to govern: this constitutes him a governor, though he may delegate to another the power to govern himself.
No one, then, can delegate to another a power he never possessed; that is, he cannot give an agency in that which he never had a right. Consequently, the colored man in the United States, being deprived of the right of inherent sovereignty, cannot confer a franchise, because he possesses none to confer. Therefore, where there is no franchise, there can neither be freedom nor safety for the disfranchised. And it is a futile hope to suppose that the agent of another’s concerns will take a proper interest in the affairs of those to whom he is under no obligations. Having no favors to ask or expect, he therefore has none to lose.
In other periods and parts of the world, as in Europe and Asia, the people being of one common, direct origin of race, though established on the presumption of difference by birth, or what was termed blood, yet the distinction between the superior classes and common people could only be marked by the difference in the dress and education of the two classes. To effect this, the interposition of government was necessary; consequently the costume and education of the people became a subject of legal restriction, guarding carefully against the privileges of the common people.
In Rome the patrician and plebeian were orders in the ranks of her people—all of whom were termed citizens (cives)—recognized by the laws of the country; their dress and education being determined by law, the better to fix the distinction. In different parts of Europe, at the present day, if not the same, the distinction among the people is similar, only on a modified, and in some kingdoms, probably more tolerant or deceptive policy.
In the United States our degradation being once—as it has in a hundred instances been done—legally determined, our color is sufficient, independently of costume, education, or other distinguishing marks, to keep up that distinction.
In Europe when an inferior is elevated to the rank of equality with the superior class, the law first comes to his aid, which, in its decrees, entirely destroys his identity as an inferior, leaving no trace of his former condition visible.
In the United States, among the whites, their color is made, by law and custom, the mark of distinction and superiority; while the color of the blacks is a badge of degradation, acknowledged by statute, organic law, and the common consent of the people.
With this view of the case,—which we hold to be correct,—to elevate to equality the degraded subject of law and custom, it can only be done, as in Europe, by an entire destruction of the identity of the former condition of the applicant. Even were this desirable, which we by no means admit, with the deep-seated prejudices engendered by oppression, with which we have to contend, ages incalculable might reasonably be expected to roll around before this could honorably be accomplished; otherwise, we should encourage, and at once commence, an indiscriminate concubinage and immoral commerce of our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters, revolting to think of, and a physical curse to humanity.
If this state of things be to succeed, then, as in Egypt, under the dread of the inscrutable approach of the destroying angel, to appease the hatred of our oppressors, as a license to the passions of every white, let the lintel of each door of every black man be stained with the blood of virgin purity and unsullied matron fidelity. Let it be written along the cornice in capitals, “The will of the white man is the rule of my household.” Remove the protection to our chambers and nurseries, that the places once sacred may henceforth become the unrestrained resort of the vagrant and rabble, always provided that the licensed commissioner of lust shall wear the indisputable impress of a white skin.
But we have fully discovered and comprehended the great political disease with which we are affected, the cause of its origin and continuance; and what is now left for us to do is to discover and apply a sovereign remedy, a healing balm to a sorely diseased body—a wrecked but not entirely shattered system. We propose for this disease a remedy. That remedy is emigration. This emigration should be well advised, and like remedies applied to remove the disease from the physical system of man, skilfully and carefully applied, within the proper time, directed to operate on that part of the system whose greatest tendency shall be to benefit the whole.
Several geographical localities have been named, among which rank the Canadas. These we do not object to as places of temporary relief, especially to the fleeing fugitive,—which, like a palliative, soothes, for the time being, the misery,—but cannot commend them as permanent places upon which to fix our destiny, and that of our children, who shall come after us. But in this connection we would most earnestly recommend to the colored people of the United States generally, to secure, by purchase, all of the land they possibly can while selling at low rates, under the British people and government; as that time may come, when, like the lands in the United States territories generally, if not as in Oregon and some other territories and states, they may be prevented entirely from settling or purchasing them,—the preference being given to the white applicant.
And here we would not deceive you by disguising the facts that, according to political tendency, the Canadas, as all British America, at no very distant day, are destined to come into the United States.
And were this not the case, the odds are against us, because the ruling element there, as in the United States, is, and ever must be, white; the population now standing, in all British America, two and a half millions of whites to but forty thousand of the black race, or sixty-one and a fraction whites to one black!—the difference being eleven times greater than in the United States,—so that colored people might never hope for anything more than to exist politically by mere sufferance; occupying a secondary position to the whites of the Canadas. The Yankees from this side of the lakes are fast settling in the Canadas, infusing, with industrious success, all the malignity and negro-hate inseparable from their very being, as Christian democrats and American advocates of equality.
Then, to be successful, our attention must be turned in a direction towards those places where the black and colored man comprise, by population, and constitute by necessity of numbers, the ruling element of the body politic; and where, when occasion shall require it, the issue can be made and maintained on this basis; where our political enclosure and national edifice can be reared, established, walled, and proudly defended on this great elementary principle of original identity. Upon this solid foundation rests the fabric of every substantial political structure in the world, which cannot exist without it; and so soon as a people or nation lose their original identity, just so soon must that nation or people become extinct. Powerful though they may have been, they must fall. Because the nucleus which heretofore held them together, becoming extinct, there being no longer a centre of attraction, or basis for a union of the parts, a dissolution must as naturally ensue as the result of the neutrality of the basis of adhesion among the particles of matter.
This is the secret of the eventful downfall of Egypt, Carthage, Rome, and the former Grecian states, once so powerful—a loss of original identity; and with it, a loss of interest in maintaining their fundamental principles of nationality.
This, also, is the great secret of the present strength of Great Britain, Russia, the United States, and Turkey; and the endurance of the French nation, whatever its strength and power, is attributable only to their identity as Frenchmen.
And doubtless the downfall of Hungary, brave and noble as may be her people, is mainly to be attributed to the want of identity of origin, and, consequently, a union of interests and purpose. This fact it might not have been expected would be admitted by the great Sclave in his thrilling pleas for the restoration of Hungary, when asking aid, both national and individual, to enable him to throw off the ponderous weight placed upon their shoulders by the House of Hapsburg.
Hungary consisted of three distinct “races”—as they called themselves—of people, all priding in, and claiming rights based on, their originality,—the Magyars, Celts, and Sclaves. On the encroachment of Austria, each one of these races, declaring for nationality, rose up against the House of Hapsburg, claiming the right of self-government, premised on their origin. Between the three a compromise was effected; the Magyars, being the majority, claimed the precedence. They made an effort, but for the want of a unity of interests—an identity of origin—the noble Hungarians failed. All know the result.
Nor is this the only important consideration. Were we content to remain as we are, sparsely interspersed among our white fellow-countrymen, we never might be expected to equal them in any honorable or respectable competition for a livelihood. For the reason that, according to the customs and policy of the country, we for ages would be kept in a secondary position, every situation of respectability, honor, profit, or trust, either as mechanics, clerks, teachers, jurors, councilmen, or legislators, being filled by white men, consequently our energies must become paralyzed or enervated for the want of proper encouragement.
This example upon our children, and the colored people generally, is pernicious and degrading in the extreme. And how could it otherwise be, when they see every place of respectability filled and occupied by the whites, they pandering to their vanity, and existing among them merely as a thing of conveniency?
Our friends in this and other countries, anxious for our elevation, have for years been erroneously urging us to lose our identity as a distinct race, declaring that we were the same as other people; while at the very same time their own representative was traversing the world, and propagating the doctrine in favor of a universal Anglo-Saxon predominance. The “universal brotherhood,” so ably and eloquently advocated by that Polyglot Christian Apostle[9] of this doctrine, had established as its basis a universal acknowledgment of the Anglo-Saxon rule.
The truth is, we are not identical with the Anglo-Saxon, or any other race of the Caucasian or pure white type of the human family, and the sooner we know and acknowledge this truth the better for ourselves and posterity.
The English, French, Irish, German, Italian, Turk, Persian, Greek, Jew, and all other races, have their native or inherent peculiarities, and why not our race? We are not willing, therefore, at all times and under all circumstances to be moulded into various shapes of eccentricity, to suit the caprices and conveniences of every kind of people. We are not more suitable to everybody than everybody is suitable to us; therefore, no more like other people than others are like us.
We have, then, inherent traits, attributes, so to speak, and native characteristics, peculiar to our race, whether pure or mixed blood; and all that is required of us is to cultivate these, and develop them in their purity, to make them desirable and emulated by the rest of the world.
That the colored races have the highest traits of civilization, will not be disputed. They are civil, peaceable, and religious to a fault. In mathematics, sculpture and architecture, as arts and sciences, commerce and internal improvements as enterprises, the white race may probably excel; but in languages, oratory, poetry, music, and painting, as arts and sciences, and in ethics, metaphysics, theology, and legal jurisprudence,—in plain language, in the true principles of morals, correctness of thought, religion, and law or civil government, there is no doubt but the black race will yet instruct the world.
It would be duplicity longer to disguise the fact that the great issue, sooner or later, upon which must be disputed the world’s destiny, will be a question of black and white, and every individual will be called upon for his identity with one or the other. The blacks and colored races are four sixths of all the population of the world; and these people are fast tending to a common cause with each other. The white races are but one third of the population of the globe,—or one of them to two of us,—and it cannot much longer continue that two thirds will passively submit to the universal domination of this one third. And it is notorious that the only progress made in territorial domain, in the last three centuries, by the whites, has been a usurpation and encroachment on the rights and native soil of some of the colored races.
The East Indies, Java, Sumatra, the Azores, Madeira, Canary, and Cape Verde Islands; Socotra, Guardifui, and the Isle of France; Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Barca, and Egypt in the North, Sierra Leone in the West, and Cape Colony in the South of Africa; besides many other islands and possessions not herein named; Australia, the Ladrone Islands, together with many others of Oceanica; the seizure and appropriation of a great portion of the Western Continent, with all its islands, were so many encroachments of the whites upon the rights of the colored races. Nor are they yet content, but, intoxicated with the success of their career, the Sandwich Islands are now marked out as the next booty to be seized in the ravages of their exterminating crusade.
We regret the necessity of stating the fact, but duty compels us to the task, that, for more than two thousand years, the determined aim of the whites has been to crush the colored races wherever found. With a determined will they have sought and pursued them in every quarter of the globe. The Anglo-Saxon has taken the lead in this work of universal subjugation. But the Anglo-American stands preëminent for deeds of injustice and acts of oppression, unparalleled, perhaps, in the annals of modern history.
We admit the existence of great and good people in America, England, France, and the rest of Europe, who desire a unity of interests among the whole human family, of whatever origin or race.
But it is neither the moralist, Christian, nor philanthropist whom we now have to meet and combat, but the politician, the civil engineer, and skilful economist, who direct and control the machinery which moves forward, with mighty impulse, the nations and powers of the earth. We must, therefore, if possible, meet them on vantage ground, or, at least, with adequate means for the conflict.
Should we encounter an enemy with artillery, a prayer will not stay the cannon shot, neither will the kind words nor smiles of philanthropy shield his spear from piercing us through the heart. We must meet mankind, then, as they meet us—prepared for the worst, though we may hope for the best. Our submission does not gain for us an increase of friends nor respectability, as the white race will only respect those who oppose their usurpation, and acknowledge as equals those who will not submit to their oppression. This may be no new discovery in political economy, but it certainly is a subject worthy the consideration of the black race.
After a due consideration of these facts, as herein recounted, shall we stand still and continue inactive—the passive observers of the great events of the times and age in which we live; submitting indifferently to the usurpation by the white race of every right belonging to the blacks? Shall the last vestige of an opportunity, outside of the continent of Africa, for the national development of our race, be permitted, in consequence of our slothfulness, to elude our grasp, and fall into the possession of the whites? This, may Heaven forbid. May the sturdy, intelligent Africo-American sons of the Western Continent forbid.
Longer to remain inactive, it should be borne in mind, may be to give an opportunity to despoil us of every right and possession sacred to our existence, with which God has endowed us as a heritage on the earth. For let it not be forgotten that the white race—who numbers but one of them to two of us—originally located in Europe, besides possessing all of that continent, have now got hold of a large portion of Asia, Africa, all North America, a portion of South America, and all of the great islands of both hemispheres, except Paupau, or New Guinea, inhabited by negroes and Malays, in Oceanica; the Japanese Islands, peopled and ruled by the Japanese; Madagascar, peopled by negroes, near the coast of Africa; and the Island of Hayti, in the West Indies, peopled by as brave and noble descendants of Africa as they who laid the foundation of Thebias, or constructed the everlasting pyramids and catacombs of Egypt,—a people who have freed themselves by the might of their own will, the force of their own power, the unfailing strength of their own right arms, and their unflinching determination to be free.
Let us, then, not survive the disgrace and ordeal of Almighty displeasure, of two to one, witnessing the universal possession and control by the whites of every habitable portion of the earth. For such must inevitably be the case, and that, too, at no distant day, if black men do not take advantage of the opportunity, by grasping hold of those places where chance is in their favor, and establishing the rights and power of the colored race.
We must make an issue, create an event, and establish for ourselves a position. This is essentially necessary for our effective elevation as a people, in shaping our national development, directing our destiny, and redeeming ourselves as a race.
If we but determine it shall be so, it will be so; and there is nothing under the sun can prevent it. We shall then be but in pursuit of our legitimate claims to inherent rights, bequeathed to us by the will of Heaven—the endowment of God, our common Parent. A distinguished economist has truly said, “God has implanted in man an infinite progression in the career of improvement. A soul capacitated for improvement ought not to be bounded by a tyrant’s landmarks.” This sentiment is just and true, the application of which to our case is adapted with singular fitness.
Having glanced hastily at our present political position in the world generally, and the United States in particular,—the fundamental disadvantages under which we exist, and the improbability of ever attaining citizenship and equality of rights in this country,—we call your attention next to the places of destination to which we shall direct emigration.
The West Indies, Central and South America, are the countries of our choice, the advantages of which shall be made apparent to your entire satisfaction. Though we have designated them as countries, they are, in fact, but one country, relatively considered, a part of this, the Western Continent. As now politically divided, they consist of the following classification, each group or division placed under its proper national head:—
In addition to these there are a number of smaller islands, belonging to the Little Antilles, the area and population of which are not known, many of them being unpopulated.
These islands, in the aggregate, form an area—allowing 40,000 square miles to Hayti and her adjunct islands, and something for those the statistics of which are unknown—of about 103,000, or equal in extent to Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and little less than the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the principality of Wales.
The population being, on the above date, 1840, 3,115,000 (three millions one hundred and fifteen thousand), and allowing an increase of ten per cent. in ten years, on the entire population, there are now 3,250,000 (three millions two hundred and fifty thousand) inhabitants, who comprise the people of these islands.
| Central America. | |
|---|---|
| Population in 1840. | |
| Guatemala, | 800,000 |
| San Salvador, | 350,000 |
| Honduras, | 250,000 |
| Costa Rica, | 150,000 |
| Nicaragua, | 250,000 |
These consist of five states, as shown in the above statistics, the united population of which, in 1840, amounted to 1,800,000 (one million eight hundred thousand) inhabitants. The number at present being estimated at 2,500,000 (two and a half millions), shows in thirteen years, 700,000 (seven hundred thousand), being one third and one eighteenth of an increase in population.
| South America. | ||
|---|---|---|
| Square miles. | Population in 1840. | |
| New Grenada, | 450,000 | 1,687,000 |
| Venezuela, | 420,000 | 900,000 |
| Ecuador, | 280,000 | 600,000 |
| Guiana, | 160,000 | 182,000 |
| Brazil, | 3,390,000 | 5,000,000 |
| North Peru, | 300,000 | 700,000 |
| South Peru, | 130,000 | 800,000 |
| Bolivia, | 450,000 | 1,716,000 |
| Buenos Ayres, | 750,000 | 700,000 |
| Paraguay, | 88,000 | 150,000 |
| Uruguay, | 92,000 | 75,000 |
| Chili, | 170,000 | 1,500,000 |
| Patagonia, | 370,000 | 30,000 |
The total area of these states is 7,050,000 (seven millions and fifty thousand) square miles; but comparatively little (450,000 square miles) less than the whole area of North America, in which we live.
But one state in South America, Brazil, is an abject slaveholding state; and even here all free men are socially and politically equal, negroes and colored men partly of African descent holding offices of honor, trust, and rank, without restriction. In the other states slavery is not known, all the inhabitants enjoying political equality, restrictions on account of color being entirely unknown, unless, indeed, necessity induces it, when, in all such cases, the preference is given to the colored man, to put a check to European assumption and insufferable Yankee intrusion and impudence.
The aggregate population was 14,040,000 (fourteen millions and forty thousand) in 1840. Allowing for thirteen years the same ratio of increase as that of the Central American states,—being one third (4,680,000),—and this gives at present a population of 18,720,000 in South America.
Add to this the population of the Antilles and Guatemala, and this gives a population in the West Indies, Central and South America, of 24,470,000 (twenty-four millions four hundred and seventy thousand) inhabitants.
But one seventh of this population, 3,495,714 (three millions four hundred and ninety-five thousand seven hundred and fourteen) being white, or of pure European extraction, there is a population throughout this vast area of 20,974,286 (twenty millions nine hundred and seventy-four thousand two hundred and eighty-six) colored persons, who constitute, from the immense preponderance of their numbers, the ruling element, as they ever must be, of those countries.
There are no influences that could be brought to bear to change this most fortunate and Heaven-designed state and condition of things. Nature here has done her own work, which the art of knaves nor the schemes of deep-designing political impostors can ever reach. This is a fixed fact in the zodiac of the political heavens, that the blacks and colored people are the stars which must ever most conspicuously twinkle in the firmament of this division of the Western Hemisphere.
We next invite your attention to a few facts, upon which we predicate the claims of the black race, not only to the tropical regions and south temperate zone of this hemisphere, but to the whole continent, North as well as South. And here we desire it distinctly to be understood, that, in the selection of our places of destination, we do not advocate the southern scheme as a concession, nor yet at the will nor desire of our North American oppressors; but as a policy by which we must be the greatest political gainers, without the risk or possibility of loss to ourselves. A gain by which the lever of political elevation and machinery of national progress must ever be held and directed by our own hands and heads, to our own will and purposes, in defiance of the obstructions which might be attempted on the part of a dangerous and deep-designing oppressor.
From the year 1492, the discovery of Hispaniola,—the first land discovered by Columbus in the New World,—to 1502, the short space of ten years, such was the mortality among the natives, that the Spaniards, then holding rule there, “began to employ a few” Africans in the mines of the island. The experiment was effective—a successful one. The Indian and the African were enslaved together, when the Indian sunk, and the African stood.
It was not until June the 24th, of the year 1498, that the continent was discovered by John Cabot, a Venetian, who sailed in August of the previous year, 1497, from Bristol, under the patronage of Henry VII., King of England.
In 1517, the short-space of but fifteen years from the date of their introduction, Carolus V., King of Spain, by right of a patent, granted permission to a number of persons annually to supply the islands of Hispaniola (St. Domingo), Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Rico with natives of Africa, to the number of four thousand annually. John Hawkins, a mercenary Englishman, was the first person known to engage in this general system of debasing our race, and his royal mistress, Queen Elizabeth, was engaged with him in interest, and shared the general profits.
The Africans, on their advent into a foreign country, soon experienced the want of their accustomed food, and habits, and manner of living.
The aborigines subsisted mainly by game and fish, with a few patches of maize, or Indian corn, near their wigwams, which were generally attended by the women, while the men were absent engaged in the chase, or at war with a hostile tribe. The vegetables, grains, and fruits, such as in their native country they had been accustomed to, were not to be obtained among the aborigines, which first induced the African laborer to cultivate “patches” of ground in the neighborhood of the mining operations, for the purpose of raising food for his own sustenance.
This trait in their character was observed and regarded with considerable interest; after which the Spaniards and other colonists, on contracting with the English slave dealers—Captain Hawkins and others—for new supplies of slaves, were careful to request that an adequate quantity of seeds and plants of various kinds, indigenous to the continent of Africa, especially those composing the staple products of the natives, be selected and brought out with the slaves to the New World. Many of these were cultivated to a considerable extent, while those indigenous to America were cultivated with great success.
Shortly after the commencement of the slave trade under Elizabeth and Hawkins, the queen granted a license to Sir Walter Raleigh to search for uninhabited lands, and seize upon all unoccupied by Christians. Sir Walter discovered the coast of North Carolina and Virginia, assigning the name “Virginia” to the whole coast now comprising the old Thirteen States.
A feeble colony was here settled, which did not avail much, and it was not until the month of April, 1607, that the first permanent settlement was made in Virginia, under the patronage of letters patent from James I., King of England, to Thomas Gates and associates. This was the first settlement of North America, and thirteen years anterior to the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock.
And we shall now introduce to you, from acknowledged authority, a number of historical extracts, to prove that previous to the introduction of the black race upon this continent but little enterprise of any kind was successfully carried on. The African or negro was the first available contributor to the country, and consequently is by priority of right, and politically should be, entitled to the highest claims of an eligible citizen.
“No permanent settlement was effected in what is now called the United States, till the reign of James the First.”—Ramsay’s Hist. U. S., vol. i. p. 38.
“The month of April, 1607, is the epoch of the first permanent settlement on the coast of Virginia, the name then given to all that extent of country which forms thirteen states.”—Ib. p. 39.
The whole coast of the country was at this time explored, not for the purpose of trade and agriculture,—because there were then no such enterprises in the country, the natives not producing sufficient of the necessaries of life to supply present wants, there being consequently nothing to trade for,—but, like their Spanish and Portuguese predecessors, who occupied the islands and different parts of South America, in search of gold and other precious metals.
Trade and the cultivation of the soil, on coming to the New World, were foreign to their intention or designs, consequently, when failing of success in that enterprise, they were sadly disappointed.
“At a time when the precious metals were conceived to be the peculiar and only valuable productions of the New World, when every mountain was supposed to contain a treasure and every rivulet was searched for its golden sands, this appearance was fondly considered as an infallible indication of the mine. Every hand was eager to dig.…
“There was now,” says Smith, “no talk, no hope, no work; but dig gold; wash gold, refine gold. With this imaginary wealth the first vessel returning to England was loaded, while the culture of the land and every useful occupation was totally neglected.
“The colonists thus left were in miserable circumstances for want of provisions. The remainder of what they had brought with them was so small in quantity as to be soon expended, and so damaged in course of a long voyage as to be a source of disease.
“... In their expectation of getting gold, the people were disappointed, the glittering substance they had sent to England proving to be a valueless mineral. Smith, on his return to Jamestown, found the colony reduced to thirty-eight persons, who, in despair, were preparing to abandon the country. He employed caresses, threats, and even violence in order to prevent them from executing this fatal resolution.”—Ramsay’s Hist. U. S., pp. 45, 46.
The Pilgrims or Puritans, in November, 1620, after having organized with solemn vows to the defence of each other, and the maintenance of their civil liberty, made the harbor of Cape Cod, landing safely on “Plymouth Rock” December 20th, about one month subsequently. They were one hundred and one in number, and from the toils and hardships consequent to a severe season, in a strange country, in less than six months after their arrival, “forty persons, nearly one half of their original number,” had died.
“In 1618, in the reign of James I., the British government established a regular trade on the coast of Africa. In the year 1620 negro slaves began to be imported into Virginia, a Dutch ship bringing twenty of them for sale.”—Sampson’s Historical Dictionary, p. 348.
It will be seen by these historical reminiscences, that the Dutch ship landed her cargo at New Bedford, Massachusetts,—the whole coast, now comprising the old original states, then went by the name of Virginia, being so named by Sir Walter Raleigh, in honor of his royal mistress and patron, Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England, under whom he received the patent of his royal commission, to seize all the lands unoccupied by Christians.
Beginning their preparations in the slave trade in 1618, just two years previous,—allowing time against the landing of the first emigrants for successfully carrying out the project,—the African captives and Puritan emigrants, singularly enough, landed upon the same section of the continent at the same time (1620), the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and the captive slaves at New Bedford, but a few miles, comparatively, south.
“The country at this period was one vast wilderness. The continent of North America was then one continued forest … There were no horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, or tame beasts of any kind … There were no domestic poultry … There were no gardens, orchards, public roads, meadows, or cultivated fields … They often burned the woods that they could advantageously plant their corn … They had neither spice, salt, bread, butter, cheese, nor milk. They had no set meals, but eat when they were hungry, or could find anything to satisfy the cravings of nature. Very little of their food was derived from the earth, except what it spontaneously produced … The ground was both their seat and table … Their best bed was a skin … They had neither iron, steel, nor any metallic instruments.”—Ramsay’s Hist., pp. 39, 40.
We adduce not these extracts to disparage or detract from the real worth of our brother Indian,—for we are identical as the subjects of American wrongs, outrages, and oppression, and therefore one in interest,—far be it from our designs. Whatever opinion he may entertain of our race,—in accordance with the impressions made by the contumely heaped upon us by our mutual oppressor, the American nation,—we admire his, for the many deeds of heroic and noble daring with which the brief history of his liberty-loving people is replete. We sympathize with him, because our brethren are the successors of his in the degradation of American bondage; and we adduce them in evidence against the many aspersions heaped upon the African race, avowing that their inferiority to the other races, and unfitness for a high civil and social position, caused them to be reduced to servitude.
For the purpose of proving their availability and eminent fitness alone—not to say superiority, and not inferiority—first suggested to Europeans the substitution of African for that of Indian labor in the mines; that their superior adaptation to the difficulties consequent to a new country and different climate made them preferable to Europeans themselves; and their superior skill, industry, and general thriftiness in all that they did, first suggested to the colonists the propriety of turning their attention to agricultural and other industrial pursuits than those of mining operations.
It is evident, from what has herein been adduced,—the settlement of Captain John Smith being in the course of a few months reduced to thirty-eight, and that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth from one hundred and one to fifty-seven in six months,—that the whites nor aborigines were equal to the hard, and to them insurmountable, difficulties which then stood wide-spread before them.
An endless forest, the impenetrable earth,—the one to be removed, and the other to be excavated; towns and cities to be built, and farms to be cultivated,—all presented difficulties too arduous for the European then here, and entirely unknown to the native of the continent.
At a period such as this, when the natives themselves had fallen victims to the tasks imposed upon them by the usurpers, and the Europeans also were fast sinking beneath the influence and weight of climate and hardships; when food could not be obtained, nor the common conveniences of life procured; when arduous duties of life were to be performed, and none capable of doing them, save those who had previously, by their labors, not only in their own country, but in the new, so proven themselves capable, it is very evident, as the most natural consequence, the Africans were resorted to for the performance of every duty common to domestic life.
There were no laborers known to the colonists, from Cape Cod to Cape Lookout, than those of the African race. They entered at once into the mines, extracting therefrom the rich treasures which for a thousand ages lay hidden in the earth; when, plunging into the depths of the rivers, they culled from their sandy bottoms, to the astonishment of the natives and surprise of the Europeans, minerals and precious stones, which added to the pride and aggrandizement of every throne in Europe.
And from their knowledge of cultivation,—an art acquired in their native Africa,—the farming interests in the North and planting in the South were commenced with a prospect never dreamed of before the introduction on the continent of this most interesting, unexampled, hardy race of men. A race capable of the endurance of more toil, fatigue, and hunger than any other branch of the human family.
Though pagans for the most part in their own country, they required not to be taught to work, and how to do it; but it was only necessary to bid them work, and they at once knew what to do, and how it should be done.
Even up to the present day, it is notorious that in the planting states the blacks themselves are the only skilful cultivators of the soil, the proprietors or planters, as they are termed, knowing little or nothing of the art, save that which they learn from the African husbandman; while the ignorant white overseer, whose duty is to see that the work is attended to, knows still less.
Hemp, cotton, tobacco, corn, rice, sugar, and many other important staple products, are all the result of African skill and labor in the southern states of this country. The greater number of the mechanics of the South are also black men.
Nor was their skill as herdsmen inferior to their other proficiencies, they being among the most accomplished trainers of horses in the world.
Indeed, to this class of men may be indebted the entire country for the improvement South in the breed of horses. And those who have travelled in the southern states could not have failed to observe that the principal trainers, jockeys, riders, and judges of horses were men of African descent.
These facts alone are sufficient to establish our claim to this country, as legitimate as that of those who fill the highest stations by the suffrage of the people.
In no period since the existence of the ancient enlightened nations of Africa have the prospects of the black race been brighter than now; and at no time during the Christian era have there been greater advantages presented for the advancement of any people than at present those which offer to the black race, both in the eastern and western hemispheres; our election being in the western.
Despite the efforts to the contrary, in the strenuous endeavors for a supremacy of race, the sympathies of the world, in their upward tendency, are in favor of the African and black races of the earth. To be available, we must take advantage of these favorable feelings, and strike out for ourselves a bold and manly course of independent action and position; otherwise, this pure and uncorrupted sympathy will be reduced to pity and contempt.
Of the countries of our choice, we have stated that one province and two islands were slaveholding places. These, as before named, are Brazil in South America, and Cuba and Porto Rico in the West Indies. There are a few other little islands of minor consideration: the Danish three, Swedish one, and Dutch four.
But in the eight last referred to, slavery is of such a mild type, that, however objectionable as such, it is merely nominal.
In South America and the Antilles, in its worst form, slavery is a blessing almost, compared with the miserable degradation of the slaves under our upstart, assumed superiors, the slaveholders of the United States.
In Brazil color is no badge of condition, and every freeman, whatever his color, is socially and politically equal, there being black gentlemen, of pure African descent, filling the highest positions in state under the emperor. There is, also, an established law by the Congress of Brazil, making the crime punishable with death for the commander of any vessel to bring into the country any human being as a slave.
The following law has passed one branch of the General Legislative Assembly of Brazil, but little doubt being entertained that it will find a like favor in the other branch of that august general legislative body:—
“1. All children born after the date of this law shall be free.
“2. All those shall be considered free who are born in other countries, and come to Brazil after this date.
“3. Every one who serves from birth to seven years of age, any of those included in article one, or who has to serve so many years, at the end of fourteen years shall be emancipated, and live as he chooses.
“4. Every slave paying for his liberty a sum equal to what he cost his master, or who shall gain it by honorable gratuitous title, the master shall be obliged to give him a free paper, under the penalty of article one hundred and seventy-nine of the criminal code.
“5. Where there is no stipulated price or fixed value of the slave, it shall be determined by arbitrators, one of which shall be the public promoter of the town.
“6. The government is authorized to give precise regulations for the execution of this law, and also to form establishments necessary for taking care of those who, born after this date, may be abandoned by the owners of slaves.
“7. Opposing laws and regulations are repealed.”
Concerning Cuba, there is an old established law, giving any slave the right of a certain legal tender, which, if refused by the slaveholder, he, by going to the residence of any parish priest, and making known the facts, shall immediately be declared a freeman, the priest or bishop of the parish or diocese giving him his “freedom papers.” The legal tender, or sum fixed by law, we think does not exceed two hundred and fifty Spanish dollars. It may be more.
Until the Americans intruded themselves into Cuba, contaminating society wherever they located, black and colored gentlemen and ladies of rank mingled indiscriminately in society. But since the advent of these negro-haters, the colored people of Cuba have been reduced nearly, if not quite, to the level of the miserable, degraded position of the colored people of the United States, who almost consider it a compliment and favor to receive the notice or smiles of a white.
Can we be satisfied, in this enlightened age of the world, amid the advantages which now present themselves to us, with the degradation and servility inherited from our fathers in this country? God forbid. And we think the universal reply will be, We will not!
Half a century brings about a mighty change in the reality of existing things and events of the world’s history. Fifty years ago our fathers lived. For the most part they were sorely oppressed, debased, ignorant, and incapable of comprehending the political relations of mankind—the great machinery and motive-power by which the enlightened nations of the earth were impelled forward. They knew but little, and ventured to do nothing to enhance their own interests beyond that which their oppressors taught them. They lived amidst a continual cloud of moral obscurity; a fog of bewilderment and delusion, by which they were of necessity compelled to confine themselves to a limited space—a known locality—lest by one step beyond this they might have stumbled over a precipice, ruining themselves beyond recovery in the fall.
We are their sons, but not the same individuals; neither do we live in the same period with them. That which suited them, does not suit us; and that with which they may have been contented, will not satisfy us.
Without education, they were ignorant of the world, and fearful of adventure. With education, we are conversant with its geography, history, and nations, and delight in its enterprises and responsibilities. They once were held as slaves; to such a condition we never could be reduced. They were content with privileges; we will be satisfied with nothing less than rights. They felt themselves happy to be permitted to beg for rights; we demand them as an innate inheritance. They considered themselves favored to live by sufferance; we reject it as a degradation. A subordinate position was all they asked for; we claim entire equality or nothing. The relation of master and slave was innocently acknowledged by them; we deny the right as such, and pronounce the relation as the basest injustice that ever scourged the earth and cursed the human family. They admitted themselves to be inferiors; we barely acknowledge the whites as equals, perhaps not in every particular. They lamented their irrecoverable fate, and incapacity to redeem themselves and their race. We rejoice that, as their sons, it is our happy lot and high mission to accomplish that which they desired, and would have done, but failed for the want of ability to do.
Let no intelligent man or woman, then, among us be found at the present day, exulting in the degradation that our enslaved parents would gladly have rid themselves had they had the intelligence and qualifications to accomplish their designs. Let none be found to shield themselves behind the plea of our brother bondmen in ignorance, that we know not what to do, nor where to go. We are no longer slaves, as were our fathers, but freemen; fully qualified to meet our oppressors in every relation which belongs to the elevation of man, the establishment, sustenance, and perpetuity of a nation. And such a position, by the help of God our common Father, we are determined to take and maintain.
There is but one question presents itself for our serious consideration, upon which we must give a decisive reply: Will we transmit, as an inheritance to our children, the blessings of unrestricted civil liberty, or shall we entail upon them, as our only political legacy, the degradation and oppression left us by our fathers?
Shall we be persuaded that we can live and prosper nowhere but under the authority and power of our North American white oppressors? that this (the United States) is the country most, if not the only one, favorable to our improvement and progress? Are we willing to admit that we are incapable of self-government, establishing for ourselves such political privileges, and making such internal improvements as we delight to enjoy, after American white men have made them for themselves?
No! Neither is it true that the United States is the country best adapted to our improvement. But that country is the best in which our manhood—morally, mentally, and physically—can be best developed; in which we have an untrammelled right to the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty; and the West Indies, Central and South America, present now such advantages, superiorly preferable to all other countries.
That the continent of America was designed by Providence as a reserved asylum for the various oppressed people of the earth, of all races, to us seems very apparent.
From the earliest period after the discovery, various nations sent a representative here, either as adventurers and speculators, or employed laborers, seamen, or soldiers, hired to work for their employers. And among the earliest and most numerous class who found their way to the New World were those of the African race. And it has been ascertained to our minds, beyond a doubt, that when the continent was discovered, there were found in the West Indies and Central America tribes of the black race, fine looking people, having the usual characteristics of color and hair, identifying them as being originally of the African race; no doubt, being a remnant of the Africans who, with the Carthaginian expedition, were adventitiously cast upon this continent, in their memorable adventure to the “Great Island,” after sailing many miles distant to the west of the “Pillars of Hercules,”—the present Straits of Gibraltar.
We would not be thought to be superstitious, when we say, that in all this we can “see the finger of God.” Is it not worthy of a notice here, that while the ingress of foreign whites to this continent has been voluntary and constant, and that of the blacks involuntary and but occasional, yet the whites in the southern part have decreased in numbers, degenerated in character, and become mentally and physically enervated and imbecile; while the blacks and colored people have studiously increased in numbers, regenerated in character, and have grown mentally and physically vigorous and active, developing every function of their manhood, and are now, in their elementary character, decidedly superior to the white race? So, then, the white race could never successfully occupy the southern portion of the continent; they must, of necessity, every generation, be repeopled from another quarter of the globe. The fatal error committed by the Spaniards, under Pizarro, was the attempt to exterminate the Incas and Peruvians, and fill their places by European whites. The Peruvian Indians, a hale, hardy, vigorous, intellectual race of people, were succeeded by those who soon became idle, vicious, degenerated, and imbecile. But Peru, like all the other South American states, is regaining her former potency, just in proportion as the European race decreases among them. All the labor of the country is performed by the aboriginal natives and the blacks, the few Europeans there being the merest excrescences on the body politic—consuming drones in the social hive.
Had we no other claims than those set forth in a foregoing part of this address, they are sufficient to induce every black and colored person to remain on this continent, unshaken and unmoved.
But the West Indians, Central and South Americans, are a noble race of people; generous, sociable, and tractable—just the people with whom we desire to unite; who are susceptible of progress, improvement, and reform of every kind. They now desire all the improvements of North America, but being justly jealous of their rights, they have no confidence in the whites of the United States, and consequently peremptorily refuse to permit an indiscriminate settlement among them of this class of people; but placing every confidence in the black and colored people of North America.
The example of the unjust invasion and forcible seizure of a large portion of the territory of Mexico is still fresh in their memory; and the oppressive disfranchisement of a large number of native Mexicans, by the Americans,—because of the color and race of the natives,—will continue to rankle in the bosom of the people of those countries, and prove a sufficient barrier henceforth against the inroads of North American whites among them.
Upon the American continent, then, we are determined to remain despite every opposition that may be urged against us.
You will doubtless be asked,—and that, too, with an air of seriousness,—why, if desirable to remain on this continent, not be content to remain in the United States. The objections to this—and potent reasons, too, in our estimation—have already been clearly shown.
But notwithstanding all this, were there still any rational, nay, even the most futile grounds for hope, we still might be stupid enough to be content to remain, and yet through another period of unexampled patience and suffering, continue meekly to drag the galling yoke and clank the chain of servility and degradation. But whether or not in this God is to be thanked and Heaven blessed, we are not permitted, despite our willingness and stupidity, to indulge even the most distant glimmer of a hope of attaining to the level of a well-protected slave.
For years we have been studiously and jealously observing the course of political events and policy on the part of this country, both in a national and individual state capacity, as pursued towards the colored people. And he who, in the midst of them, can live without observation, is either excusably ignorant, or reprehensibly deceptious and untrustworthy.
We deem it entirely unnecessary to tax you with anything like the history of even one chapter of the unequalled infamies perpetrated on the part of the various states, and national decrees, by legislation, against us. But we shall call your particular attention to the more recent acts of the United States; because, whatever privileges we may enjoy in any individual state, will avail nothing when not recognized as such by the United States.
When the condition of the inhabitants of any country is fixed by legal grades of distinction, this condition can never be changed except by express legislation. And it is the height of folly to expect such express legislation, except by the inevitable force of some irresistible internal political pressure. The force necessary to this imperative demand on our part we never can obtain, because of our numerical feebleness.
Were the interests of the common people identical with ours, we, in this, might succeed, because we, as a class, would then be numerically the superior. But this is not a question of the rich against the poor, nor the common people against the higher classes, but a question of white against black—every white person, by legal right, being held superior to a black or colored person.
In Russia, the common people might obtain an equality with the aristocracy, because, of the sixty-five millions of her population, forty-five millions are serfs or peasants; leaving but twenty millions of the higher classes—royalty, nobility, and all included.
The rights of no oppressed people have ever yet been obtained by a voluntary act of justice on the part of the oppressors. Christians, philanthropists, and moralists may preach, argue, and philosophize as they may to the contrary: facts are against them. Voluntary acts, it is true, which are in themselves just, may sometimes take place on the part of the oppressor; but these are always actuated by the force of some outward circumstances of self-interest equal to a compulsion.
The boasted liberties of the American people were established by a constitution, borrowed from and modelled after the British magna charta. And this great charter of British liberty, so much boasted of and vaunted as a model bill of rights, was obtained only by force and compulsion.
The barons, an order of noblemen, under the reign of King John, becoming dissatisfied at the terms submitted to by their sovereign, which necessarily brought degradation upon themselves,—terms prescribed by the insolent Pope Innocent III., the haughty sovereign Pontiff of Rome,—summoned his majesty to meet them on the plains of the memorable meadow of Runnymede, where, presenting to him their own Bill of Rights—a bill dictated by themselves, and drawn up by their own hands—at the unsheathed points of a thousand glittering swords, they commanded him, against his will, to sign the extraordinary document. There was no alternative: he must either do or die. With a puerile timidity, he leaned forward his rather commanding but imbecile person, and with a trembling hand and single dash of the pen, the name KING JOHN stood forth in bold relief sending more terror throughout the world than the mystic handwriting of Heaven throughout the dominions of Nebuchadnezzar, blazing on the walls of Babylon. A consternation, not because of the name of the king, but because of the rights of others, which that name acknowledged.
The king, however, soon became dissatisfied, and determining on a revocation of the act,—an act done entirely contrary to his will,—at the head of a formidable army spread fire and sword throughout the kingdom.
But the barons, though compelled to leave their castles, their houses and homes, and fly for their lives, could not be induced to undo that which they had so nobly done—the achievement of their rights and privileges. Hence the act has stood throughout all succeeding time, because never annulled by those who willed it.
It will be seen that the first great modern Bill of Rights was obtained only by a force of arms: a resistance of the people against the injustice and intolerance of their rulers. We say the people—because that which the barons demanded for themselves, was afterwards extended to the common people. Their only hope was based on their superiority of numbers.
But can we, in this country, hope for as much? Certainly not. Our case is a hopeless one. There was but one John, with his few sprigs of adhering royalty; and but one heart, at which the threatening points of their swords were directed by a thousand barons; while in our case, there is but a handful of the oppressed, without a sword to point, and twenty millions of Johns or Jonathans—as you please—with as many hearts, tenfold more relentless than that of Prince John Lackland, and as deceptious and hypocritical as the Italian heart of Innocent III.
Where, then, is our hope of success in this country? Upon what is it based? Upon what principle of political policy and sagacious discernment do our political leaders and acknowledged great men—colored men we mean—justify themselves by telling us, and insisting that we shall believe them, and submit to what they say—to be patient, remain where we are; that there is a “bright prospect and glorious future” before us in this country! May Heaven open our eyes from their Bartimean obscurity.
But we call your attention to another point of our political degradation—the acts of state and general governments.
In a few of the states, as in New York, the colored inhabitants have a partial privilege of voting a white man into office. This privilege is based on a property qualification of two hundred and fifty dollars worth of real estate. In others, as in Ohio, in the absence of organic provision, the privilege is granted by judicial decision, based on a ratio of blood, of an admixture of more than one half white; while in many of the states there is no privilege allowed, either partial or unrestricted.
The policy of the above-named states will be seen and detected at a glance, which, while seeming to extend immunities, is intended especially for the object of degradation.
In the State of New York, for instance, there is a constitutional distinction created among colored men,—almost necessarily compelling one part to feel superior to the other,—while among the whites no such distinctions dare be known. Also, in Ohio, there is a legal distinction set up by an upstart judiciary, creating among the colored people a privileged class by birth! All this must necessarily sever the cords of union among us, creating almost insurmountable prejudices of the most stupid and fatal kind, paralyzing the last bracing nerve which promised to give us strength.
It is upon this same principle, and for the self-same object, that the general government has long been endeavoring, and is at present knowingly designing to effect a recognition of the independence of the Dominican Republic, while disparagingly refusing to recognize the independence of the Haytien nation—a people four fold greater in numbers, wealth, and power. The Haytiens, it is pretended, are refused because they are negroes; while the Dominicans, as is well known to all who are familiar with the geography, history, and political relations of that people, are identical—except in language, they speaking the Spanish tongue—with those of the Haytiens; being composed of negroes and a mixed race. The government may shield itself by the plea that it is not familiar with the origin of those people. To this we have but to reply, that if the government is thus ignorant of the relations of its near neighbors, it is the height of presumption, and no small degree of assurance, for it to set up itself as capable of prescribing terms to the one, or conditions to the other.
Should they accomplish their object, they then will have succeeded in forever establishing a barrier of impassable separation, by the creation of a political distinction between those peoples, of superiority and inferiority of origin or national existence. Here, then, is another stratagem of this most determined and untiring enemy of our race—the government of the United States.
We come now to the crowning act of infamy on the part of the general government towards the colored inhabitants of the United States—an act so vile in its nature, that rebellion against its demands should be promptly made in every attempt to enforce its infernal provisions.
In the history of national existence, there is not to be found a parallel to the tantalizing insult and aggravating despotism of the provisions of Millard Fillmore’s Fugitive Slave Bill, passed by the Thirty-third Congress of the United States, with the approbation of a majority of the American people, in the year of the Gospel of Jesus Christ eighteen hundred and fifty.
This bill had but one object in its provisions, which was fully accomplished in its passage, that is, the reduction of every colored person in the United States—save those who carry free papers of emancipation, or bills of sale from former claimants or owners—to a state of relative slavery; placing each and every one of us at the disposal of any and every white who might choose to claim us, and the caprice of any and every upstart knave bearing the title of “commissioner.”
Did any of you, fellow-countrymen, reside in a country, the provisions of whose laws were such that any person of a certain class, who, whenever he, she, or they pleased, might come forward, lay a claim to, make oath before (it might be) some stupid and heartless person, authorized to decide in such cases, and take, at their option, your horse, cow, sheep, house and lot, or any other property, bought and paid for by your own earnings,—the result of your personal toil and labor,—would you be willing, or could you be induced by any reasoning, however great the source from which it came, to remain in that country? We pause, fellow-countrymen, for a reply.
If there be not one yea, of how much more importance, then, is your own personal safety than that of property? Of how much more concern is the safety of a wife or husband, than that of a cow or horse; a child, than a sheep; the destiny of your family, to that of a house and lot?
And yet this is precisely our condition. Any one of us, at any moment, is liable to be claimed, seized, and taken into custody by any white, as his or her property—to be enslaved for life—and there is no remedy, because it is the law of the land! And we dare predict, and take this favorable opportunity to forewarn you, fellow-countrymen, that the time is not far distant, when there will be carried on by the white men of this nation an extensive commerce in the persons of what now compose the free colored people of the North. We forewarn you, that the general enslavement of the whole of this class of people is now being contemplated by the whites.
At present, we are liable to enslavement at any moment, provided we are taken away from our homes. But we dare venture further to forewarn you, that the scheme is in mature contemplation, and has even been mooted in high places, of harmonizing the two discordant political divisions in the country by again reducing the free to slave states.
The completion of this atrocious scheme only becomes necessary for each and every one of us to find an owner and master at our own doors. Let the general government but pass such a law, and the states will comply as an act of harmony. Let the South but demand it, and the North will comply as a duty of compromise.
If Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts can be found arming their sons as watch-dogs for Southern slave hunters; if the United States may, with impunity, garrison with troops the court-house of the freest city in America; blockade the streets; station armed ruffians of dragoons, and spiked artillery in hostile awe of the people; if free, white, high-born and bred gentlemen of Boston and New York are smitten down to the earth,[10] refused an entrance on professional business into the court-houses, until inspected by a slave hunter and his counsel, all to put down the liberty of the black man, then, indeed, is there no hope for us in this country!
It is, fellow-countrymen, a fixed fact, as indelible as the covenant of God in the heavens, that the colored people of these United States are the slaves of any white person who may choose to claim them!
What safety or guarantee have we for ourselves or families? Let us, for a moment, examine this point.
Supposing some hired spy of the slave power residing in Illinois, whom, for illustration, we shall call Stephen A., Counsellor B., a mercenary hireling of New York, and Commissioner C., a slave catcher of Pennsylvania, should take umbrage at the acts or doings of any colored person or persons in a free state; they may, with impunity, send or go on their knight errantry to the South (as did a hireling of the slave power in New York—a lawyer by profession), give a description of such person or persons, and an agent with warrants may be immediately despatched to swear them into slavery forever.
We tell you, fellow-countrymen, any one of you here assembled—your humble committee who report to you this paper—may, by the laws of this land, be seized, whatever the circumstances of his birth, whether he descends from free or slave parents—whether born north or south of Mason and Dixon’s line—and ere the setting of another sun, be speeding his way to that living sepulchre and death-chamber of our race—the curse and scourge of this country—the southern part of the United States. This is not idle speculation, but living, naked, undisguised truth.
A member of your committee has received a letter from a gentleman of respectability and standing in the South, who writes to the following effect. We copy his own words:—
“There are, at this moment, as I was to-day informed by Colonel W., one of our first magistrates in this city, a gang of from twenty-five to thirty vagabonds of poor white men, who, for twenty-five dollars a head, clear of all expenses, are ready and willing to go to the North, make acquaintance with the blacks in various places, send their descriptions to unprincipled slaveholders here,—for there are many of this kind to be found among the poorer class of masters,—and swear them into bondage. So the free blacks, as well as fugitive slaves, will have to keep a sharp watch over themselves to get clear of this scheme to enslave them.”
Here, then, you have but a paragraph in the great volume of this political crusade and legislative pirating by the American people over the rights and privileges of the colored inhabitants of the country. If this be but a paragraph,—for such it is in truth,—what must be the contents when the whole history is divulged! Never will the contents of this dreadful record of crime, corruption, and oppression be fully revealed, until the trump of God shall proclaim the universal summons to judgment. Then, and then alone, shall the whole truth be acknowledged, when the doom of the criminal shall be forever sealed.
We desire not to be sentimental, but rather would be political; and therefore call your attention to another point—a point already referred to.
In giving the statistics of various countries, and preferences to many places herein mentioned, as points of destination in emigration, we have said little or nothing concerning the present governments, the various state departments, nor the condition of society among the people.
This is not the province of your committee, but the legitimate office of a Board of Foreign Commissioners, whom there is no doubt will be created by the convention, with provisions and instructions to report thereon, in due season, of their mission.
With a few additional remarks on the subject of the British Provinces of North America, we shall have done our duty, and completed, for the time being, the arduous, important, and momentous task assigned to us.
The British Provinces of North America, especially Canada West,—formerly called Upper Canada,—in climate, soil, productions, and the usual prospects for internal improvements, are equal, if not superior, to any northern part of the continent. And for these very reasons, aside from their contiguity to the northern part of the United States,—and consequent facility for the escape of the slaves from the South,—we certainly should prefer them as a place of destination. We love the Canadas, and admire their laws, because, as British Provinces, there is no difference known among the people—no distinction of race. And we deem it a duty to recommend, that for the present, as a temporary asylum, it is certainly advisable for every colored person, who, desiring to emigrate, and is not prepared for any other destination, to locate in Canada West.
Every advantage on our part should be now taken of the opportunity of obtaining LANDS, while they are to be had cheap, and on the most easy conditions, from the government.
Even those who never contemplate a removal from this country of chains, it will be their best interest and greatest advantage to procure lands in the Canadian Provinces. It will be an easy, profitable, and safe investment, even should they never occupy nor yet see them. We shall then be but doing what the whites in the United States have for years been engaged in—securing unsettled lands in the territories, previous to their enhancement in value, by the force of settlement and progressive neighboring improvements. There are also at present great openings for colored people to enter into the various industrial departments of business operations: laborers, mechanics, teachers, merchants, and shop-keepers, and professional men of every kind. These places are now open, as much to the colored as the white man, in Canada, with little or no opposition to his progress; at least in the character of prejudicial preferences on account of race. And all of these, without any hesitancy, do we most cheerfully recommend to the colored inhabitants of the United States.
But our preference to other places over the Canadas has been cursorily stated in the foregoing part of this paper; and since the writing of that part, it would seem that the predictions or apprehensions concerning the Provinces are about to be verified by the British Parliament and Home Government themselves. They have virtually conceded, and openly expressed it—Lord Brougham in the lead—that the British Provinces of North America must, ere long, cease to be a part of the British domain, and become annexed to the United States.
It is needless—however much we may regret the necessity of its acknowledgment—for us to stop our ears, shut our eyes, and stultify our senses against the truth in this matter; since, by so doing, it does not alter the case. Every political movement, both in England and the United States, favors such an issue, and the sooner we acknowledge it, the better it will be for our cause, ourselves individually, and the destiny of our people in this country.
These Provinces have long been burdensome to the British nation, and her statesmen have long since discovered and decided as an indisputable predicate in political economy, that any province as an independent state, is more profitable in a commercial consideration to a country than when depending as one of its colonies. As a child to the parent, or an apprentice to his master, so is a colony to a state. And as the man who enters into business is to the manufacturer and importer, so is the colony which becomes an independent state to the country from which it recedes.
Great Britain is decidedly a commercial and money-making nation, and counts closely on her commercial relations with any country. That nation or people which puts the largest amount of money into her coffers, are the people who may expect to obtain her greatest favors. This the Americans do; consequently—and we candidly ask you to mark the prediction—the British will interpose little or no obstructions to the Canadas, Cuba, or any other province or colony contiguous to this country, falling into the American Union; except only in such cases where there would be a compromise of her honor. And in the event of a seizure of any of these, there would be no necessity for such a sacrifice; it could readily be avoided by diplomacy.
Then there is little hope for us on this continent, short of those places where, by reason of their numbers, there is the greatest combination of strength and interests on the part of the colored race.
We have ventured to predict a reduction of the now nominally free into slave states. Already has this “reign of terror” and dreadful work of destruction commenced. We give you the quotation from a Mississippi paper, which will readily be admitted as authority in this case:—
“Two years ago a law was passed by the California legislature, granting one year to the owners of slaves carried into the territory previous to the adoption of the constitution, to remove them beyond the limits of the state. Last year the provision of this law was extended twelve months longer. We learn by the late California papers that a bill has just passed the Assembly, by a vote of 33 to 21, continuing the same law in force until 1855. The provisions of this bill embraces slaves who have been carried to California since the adoption of her constitution, as well as those who were there previously. The large majority by which it passed, and the opinions advanced during the discussion, indicates a more favorable state of sentiment in regard to the rights of slaveholders in California than we supposed existed.”—Mississippian.
No one who is a general and intelligent observer of the politics of this country, will after reading this, doubt for a moment the final result.
At present there is a proposition under consideration in California to authorize the holding of a convention to amend the constitution of that state, which doubtless will be carried into effect; when there is no doubt that a clause will be inserted, granting the right to hold slaves at discretion in the state. This being done, it will meet with general favor throughout the country by the American people, and the policy be adopted on the state’s rights principle. This alone is necessary, in addition to the insufferable Fugitive Slave Law, and the recent nefarious Nebraska Bill,—which is based upon this very boasted American policy of the state’s rights principle,—to reduce the free to slave states, without a murmur from the people. And did not the Nebraska Bill disrespect the feelings and infringe upon the political rights of Northern white people, its adoption would be hailed with loud shouts of approbation, from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco.
That, then, which is left for us to do, is to secure our liberty; a position which shall fully warrant us against the liability of such monstrous political crusades and riotous invasions of our rights. Nothing less than a national indemnity, indelibly fixed by virtue of our own sovereign potency, will satisfy us as a redress of grievances for the unparalleled wrongs, undisguised impositions, and unmitigated oppression which we have suffered at the hands of this American people.
And what wise politician would otherwise conclude and determine? None, we dare say. And a people who are incapable of this discernment and precaution are incapable of self-government, and incompetent to direct their own political destiny. For our own part, we spurn to treat for liberty on any other terms or conditions.
It may not be inapplicable, in this particular place, to quote, from high authority, language which has fallen under our notice since this report has been under our consideration. The quotation is worth nothing, except to show that the position assumed by us is a natural one, which constitutes the essential basis of self-protection.
Said Earl Aberdeen recently, in the British House of Lords, when referring to the great question which is now agitating Europe, “One thing alone is certain, that the only way to obtain a sure and honorable peace, is to acquire a position which may command it; and to gain such a position, every nerve and sinew of the empire should be strained. The pickpocket who robs us is not to be let off because he offers to restore our purse;” and his lordship might have justly added, “should never thereafter be intrusted or confided in.”
The plea, doubtless, will be, as it already frequently has been raised, that to remove from the United States, our slave brethren would be left without a hope. They already find their way in large companies to the Canadas, and they have only to be made sensible that there is as much freedom for them South as there is North; as much protection in Mexico as in Canada; and the fugitive slave will find it a much pleasanter journey and more easy of access, to wend his way from Louisiana and Arkansas to Mexico, than thousands of miles through the slaveholders of the South and slave-catchers of the North to Canada. Once into Mexico, and his farther exit to Central and South America and the West Indies would be certain. There would be no obstructions whatever. No miserable, half-starved, servile Northern slave-catchers by the way, waiting, cap in hand, ready and willing to do the bidding of their contemptible Southern masters.
No prisons nor court-houses, as slave-pens and garrisons, to secure the fugitive and rendezvous the mercenary gangs, who are bought as military on such occasions. No perjured marshals, bribed commissioners, nor hireling counsel, who, spaniel-like, crouch at the feet of Southern slaveholders, and cringingly tremble at the crack of their whip. No, not as may be encountered throughout his northern flight, there are none of these to be found or met with in his travels from the Bravo del Norte to the dashing Orinoco—from the borders of Texas to the boundaries of Peru.
Should anything occur to prevent a successful emigration to the south—Central, South America, and the West Indies—we have no hesitancy, rather than remain in the United States, the merest subordinates and serviles of the whites, should the Canadas still continue separate in their political relations from this country, to recommend to the great body of our people to remove to Canada West, where, being politically equal to the whites, physically united with each other by a concentration of strength; when worse comes to worse, we may be found, not as a scattered, weak, and impotent people, as we now are separated from each other throughout the Union, but a united and powerful body of freemen, mighty in politics, and terrible in any conflict which might ensue, in the event of an attempt at the disturbance of our political relations, domestic repose, and peaceful firesides.
Now, fellow-countrymen, we have done. Into your ears have we recounted your own sorrows; before your own eyes have we exhibited your wrongs; into your own hands have we committed your own cause. If these should prove inadequate to remedy this dreadful evil, to assuage this terrible curse which has come upon us, the fault will be yours and not ours; since we have offered you a healing balm for every sorely aggravated wound.
- Martin R. Delany, Pa.
- William Webb, Pa.
- Augustus R. Green, Ohio.
- Edward Butler, Mo.
- H. S. Douglas, La.
- A. Dudley, Wis.
- Conaway Barbour, Ky.
- Wm. J. Fuller, R. I.
- Wm. Lambert, Mich.
- J. Theodore Holly, N. Y.
- T. A. White, Ind.
- John A. Warren, Canada.