CHAPTER II.
ANCIENT AND MODERN SLAVERY.
"Slavery is as ancient as War, and War as human nature."
Voltaire.
"That execrable sum of all villainies, commonly called the slave trade."
John Wesley, 1792.
The earliest records of the human race begin with accounts of slavery. The first slave was probably a war captive whose life had been spared, and slavery probably originated when the nations emerging from the savagery of early times discovered that the prisoner captured in war could render to the conqueror more service alive than dead; and it became a very early custom that all persons captured in war and not ransomed by their fellows should remain the property of the conqueror to be used by him at will or sold to others. It is seen that slavery in its inception was in some degree an innocent and humane institution, because it saved many lives and resulted in much development in building, agriculture and the crude manufacturing of early times.
It is convenient to divide the history of slavery into two epochs, ancient and modern, although there are times in the history of several nations when ancient slavery assumed the modern form. The ancient slaves were the prisoners captured in war, the hereditary slaves, and persons who, by the laws of their country, became slaves by the commission of crime or inability to meet their debts. Modern slavery assumed a more brutal aspect. Here the slave was not the result of wars, but the direct object of them, and we find nations engaged in the shameful traffic of deliberately declaring war upon a foreign and inoffensive people for the purpose of obtaining possession of their bodies to carry them away for sale in foreign countries. The modern slave for four centuries was a distinct article of commerce, quoted and bargained for in the markets and reckoned on as a medium of exchange.
For the history of ancient slavery we turn first to Egypt, and find abundant evidence of the use of slaves from the very earliest times. Egypt thrived, and its native population was overflowing; but notwithstanding this, thousands of slaves were brought into the country by the early Wars of Conquest. Most of these slaves, for lack of other work, were put to labor on vast monuments, buildings, shrines and temples. The great Pyramid of Gizeh, near Memphis, the smaller pyramids near it and the ruins near Thebes, and the Karnak, still remain as mysterious and wonderful records of the skill of the Egyptian builders, and as mute evidence of the use of vast numbers of slaves.
In the quaint diction of early biblical history is told the manner of the Egyptian use of slaves. We learn how Joseph was treacherously sold by his brethren into Egyptian captivity, but gaining favor, was placed in the house of his master, and how, in later years, when famine waxed sore in the land of Canaan, Joseph's father, Jacob, and his brethren and their flocks went into Egypt and prayed to Pharaoh for permission to dwell there, and partly through the influence of Joseph were given permission to live in the country of Goshen. The Israelites grew and multiplied until the land was filled with them, but new Kings ruled in Egypt, hostile to them, and their lives were made bitter with hard bondage and compulsory work in mortar and brick, "and they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses."
When the Hebrews, under the guidance of Moses, left Egypt, they took slaves with them, and in their subsequent history we find a record of the use of two classes of slaves, the Hebrew born and those of alien blood. The Hebrew slave usually became such by selling himself on account of his poverty, or because it was imposed upon him as a punishment for crime. He could claim his liberty at the end of six years, but not so with the alien, who was in bondage for life. Jerusalem was built, and after many years captured by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who razed the city and carried the upper classes of the Hebrews captive to Babylon, where they remained in a condition of servitude until the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, who, as a political measure, permitted the Hebrews to return to their homes and rebuild Jerusalem. Egypt went down to rise no more before the new power of the Persians, who, in turn, gave way to the Greeks, and they to the Romans. Throughout the history of the ancient people, the Egyptians, the Syrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Medes and Persians, slavery developed in the same general way; the prisoner of war was held in slavery and reduced to the lowest caste, and this we find true in China, Ancient India and in the history of the Aztecs.
Slaves were used in Greece, especially so at Athens, where, at the height of the city's power, there were four times as many slaves as citizens. The slaves took a prominent part in the domestic and public economy, being used as agricultural laborers, and as artificers and servants, and by the State as policemen and soldiers. Sparta possessed very few slaves, probably only enough to supply the demand for domestic servants. With the rapid progress of the Greeks came an increased use of slaves, and the wars not being sufficient to supply the demand, an open slave trade was soon established. In Greece arose to its height that peculiar form of slavery practiced by the early Hebrews, wherein foreigners violating laws, and Greeks themselves, if unable to meet their debts, were sold with their families into slavery. This brought about such a threatening state of affairs that by the wise laws of Solon this form of slavery was abolished. This peculiar slavery also existed in the early days of Rome, but in the third century before Christ it was also abolished.
In the Roman Empire slavery existed from the earliest times, and was carried to an excess not known before or since in the history of slavery. The wonderful and rapid rise of the Romans in power, domain and wealth led to a moral and political degeneracy which demanded the increased use of slaves in all branches of domestic and public life. Here, as in Greece, the Wars of Conquest bringing in, as they did, vast numbers of slaves, failed to supply the demand, and here again, as in Greece, the slave trade, with its acts of piracy, was established to obtain a supply, and the occupation of the professional slave hunter and slave dealer became fully recognized and were the forerunners of similar acts in the history of Negro slavery many centuries later. The abuses brought on by the Roman system of slavery led to such decay and corruption in the Empire that it became an easy prize for the Teutonic tribes, and Rome of the West fell to rise no more, about the middle of the fifth century.
Then probably began the Feudal system, which practically abolished the ancient form of slavery, and in its place the lower classes of the population were put in the semi-servile condition of serfs and villeins to their Feudal Lords. This system spread in Germany, France, England and Russia, but by the time of the capture of Constantinople in 1453 by the Turks, Feudalism, the last relic of slavery in Western Europe, was almost extinct, and was gradually assuming a very mild form in the other countries, when suddenly and unexpectedly slavery was revived and perpetuated in a new, its modern form, by a singular and interesting series of events which brought about the ruthless bondage of an entire people to nations whom they had never offended.
Portugal, Spain and England were mainly responsible for fastening the evils of Negro Slavery on the New World. The Portuguese first began the modern traffic in negro slaves; the Spaniards introduced them into America, and the English engaged in and encouraged, more than any other nation, the infamous slave trade, to supply the New World demand.
In a strange way Christianity was indirectly responsible for the beginning of negro slavery in its modern form. For many centuries prior to the discovery of America the Mohammedans and Christians had been arrayed against each other in western Europe, and the struggles for the mastery had aroused the most implacable hatred between the foes, and the almost inevitable fate of the captives, whether taken by Christian or Mohammedan, was slavery for life. Fifty-one years before the discovery of America some Portuguese sailors, coasting along the shores of Morocco, took captive a few Moors and brought them to Portugal. This event led to the beginning of modern slavery, for in the following year, 1442, these captive Moors, at their own request, were exchanged for negroes, which they procured from Africa. It appears that Prince Henry of Portugal had made many ineffectual attempts to convert these Moors, and their obstinate refusal made acceptable an exchange for negroes, "for whatever number he should get he would gain souls, because they might be converted to the Faith, which could not be done with the Moors," said the Prince. With what sincerity this argument was advanced cannot be known, but it is certain that the beginning of modern slavery was justified by this crafty philanthropy, not only in Portugal but later in the Spanish Colonies, where the same argument was advanced by Columbus and accepted by the Spanish Monarchs to ease their minds while it filled their treasuries. It is also certain that in a very short time, whether to be Christianized or not, shipload after shipload of the unfortunate Africans were brought to Portugal and a regular slave trade, with all its sickening horrors, was established, the Crown receiving one-fifth of the proceeds as its royal share. Soon Spain engaged in the traffic, and then the event happened, the discovery of America, which startled Europe, and opened up a vast new country to whatever good or evil its conquerors might choose to plant.
Strangely enough the very events which led to the discovery of the New World operated to firmly establish the beginning of what was to be its greatest curse. With the capture of Constantinople in 1453 by the Turks and the cutting off of that way to the Indies, increased efforts were made to discover a new route, and the first attempts were down the west coast of Africa. The Portuguese were the most active mariners at that time and took the most prominent part in these new voyages, and while they did not meet with complete success, they discovered a country thronged with the people, who, by the circumstances already related, were practically doomed to slavery. So promising was this base of supplies that about the year 1485 the Portuguese established a Colony at Benin, on the west coast of Africa, for the purpose of more actively carrying on the slave trade, and this was the first of those permanent fortified places established in Africa by the Christian countries of the world as stations where, by the blackest of cruelties and crimes, they might obtain large and immediate supplies of this new article of commerce. From the time of the establishment of this first Colony to the year 1807, when Great Britain and the United States prohibited the slave trade (a period of 322 years), Africa was desolated and her people abducted, sold and murdered by the Christian people of the earth; and indeed for many years after its prohibition the slave trade was carried on, notwithstanding that it became piracy to do so, punishable by death, so profitable had the business become and so rapacious and insensate those who engaged in it.
Thus was the slave monster, a gigantic and hideous Frankenstein, created by the Christian nations, and long after, when it obtained its full growth, it was to fright them, retard their progress and result in dreadful retribution. The slave district began with the River Senegal on the west coast of Africa and continued a distance of fully 3000 miles to Cape Negro. The enormous sum of cruelty and wickedness which attended the slave trade throughout this vast territory can never be known, but may be partially imagined when we know that at its height fully 80,000 persons were torn from their homes annually, with all the attendant horrors of rapine, murder and the worst crimes of mankind.
The evil thus begun and fostered in Europe needed only a new impetus to make it grow beyond all bounds; owing to economical conditions, it would probably have died out in western Europe had it not been for the discovery of America, which almost immediately opened up a new and enormous market for slaves. The first Spanish settlement in the West Indies was called Hispaniola, now the Island of Haiti, and this Colony became the scene of the first use of negro slaves in the New World. A cruel fate seemed to be working out the enslavement of the African, for it is almost certain that Columbus in his first voyages did not take with him any slaves, and there seemed to be no thought of using them in this new Colony during the first few years after the discovery. The first negroes were brought to Hispaniola about eight years after Columbus landed, but they were few in number, and it was probably not contemplated to use them in the fields and mines, for the Spaniards had an immense and almost inexhaustible supply of free labor at hand in the native population, who, by the avarice of the Spaniards, were almost immediately enslaved and compelled to work in the mines and on the farms. So greedy were the Spaniards to acquire sudden wealth, and so numerous the natives, that their lives were reckoned of no value, and so heartlessly cruel and inhuman was their treatment that the population of the island, which is given as about 800,000 in 1492, had decreased, it is estimated, one-third four years later, and twenty years later the native population is given as only 14,000. These figures are probably greatly exaggerated, but making all allowances they tell a frightful story.
The benevolent Las Casas, aroused by the frightful cruelties to the natives and their rapid destruction, began his successful opposition to Indian slavery; but, without knowing or intending it, his success was at the fearful cost of the Africans, who now began to be imported in large numbers to take the place of Indian slaves, and it was shortly discovered that one negro could do the work of four or five natives. Thus a new and growing market opened for slaves, and the slave trade of the New World became so profitable that Charles V. of Spain, desiring to reap the greatest benefit from it, granted, for a consideration, an exclusive right for eight years of supplying four thousand slaves per year to the Spanish Colonies. This seems to have been the first monopoly on the slave trade, but soon other nations were attracted by the ease and profit of the business, and the Dutch and English began early to engage their energies in the trade, and the latter, with their superior methods, greatly increased its profit and popularity. William Hawkins was the first Englishman to begin the slave trade, and made a trip to Guinea in 1530. In 1562 his son, John Hawkins, who was knighted later for his services by Queen Elizabeth, followed in his father's steps and carried away three hundred slaves to San Domingo. This voyage was repeated in 1564 and 1567 with great profit, and soon England had entered and was committed fully to the business. One hundred and fifty years later the traffic in negro slaves was considered the most profitable branch of British commerce.
Thus it is seen that prior to the discovery of America negro slavery had begun in western Europe, and, like some dread scourge, lay in wait for new fields in which to operate; and we have seen how it was permitted to enter so early into the history of the New World. From the islands of the West Indies the Spaniards went to the mainland, and with them went slavery; and as more territory was discovered the use of slaves was more in demand and they were brought over in almost incredible numbers. This history is not further concerned with the development of slavery in other countries, or with the horrifying details of the slave trade which grew up to supply the enormous demand of the New World, except as it affected this country.
How slavery became established in the United States, how it dominated the first attempts of the Colonies to organize a strong Federal Government, and how, after a series of compromises, seeking to settle a question which could only be settled by its abolition, it resulted in the organization of a great opposition political party, the first success of which was followed by the bloodiest civil war in all history, will now be the direct subject of our inquiry.