III
There are a multitude of men and women at the North who do not know that slavery ever really existed at the North. They may accept it historically in a dim, theoretical sort of way, as we accept the fact that men and women were once hanged for forgery or for stealing a shilling; but they do not take it in as a vital fact.
It may possibly aid the solution of our problem if it be shown that New England had quite as much to do with the establishment of African slavery on this continent as had the South, though it survived longest in the latter section; that slavery at the North was, while it continued, as rigorous a system as ever it was at the South; that abolition was at the North in the main deemed as illegal, and its advocates encountered as much obloquy there as at the South; that the emancipation of the slaves was effected not by the Northern people at large, but by a limited band of enthusiasts and in the wise providence of God; that the emancipation proclamation was not based on the lofty moral principle of universal freedom, to which it has been the custom to accredit it, but was a war-measure, resorted to only on “necessity of war,” and as a means of restoring the Union. Further, that the investment of the Negro with the elective franchise was not the result of a high moral sentiment founded on the rights of man, but was effected in a spirit of heat if not of revenge, and under a misapprehension of the true bearing of such an act; that the Negro has not used the power vested in him for the advantage of himself or of anyone else, but in a reckless, unreasonable, and dangerous way; that while there have been cases of injustice to him, in the main the restraints thrown around him at the South have been merely such as were rendered necessary to preserve the South from absolute and irretrievable ruin; that the same instincts under which the South has acted prevail at the North; that the Negro has been and is being educated by the South to an extent far beyond his right to claim, or the ability of the white race to contribute to it; that he is as yet incapable, as a race, of self-government. And finally, that unless the white race continues to assert itself and retains control, a large section of the nation will become hopelessly Africanized, and American civilization relapse and possibly perish.
Slavery was until within, historically speaking, a very recent period, as much a Northern institution as it was a Southern one; it existed in full vigor in all of the original thirteen colonies, and while it existed it was quite as rigorous a system at the North as at the South. Every law which formed its code at the South had its counterpart in the North, and with less reason; for while there were at the South not less than 600,000 slaves—Virginia having, by the census of 1790, 293,427—there were at the North, by the census of 1790, less than 42,000.
Regulations not wholly compatible with absolute freedom of will are necessary concomitants of any system of slavery, especially where the slaves are in large numbers; and it should move the hearts of our brethren at the North to greater patience with us that they, too, are not “without sin.”
Massachusetts has the honor of being the first community in America to legalize the slave-trade and slavery by legislative act; the first to send out a slave-ship, and the first to secure a fugitive-slave law.
Slavery having been planted on this continent (not by the South, as has been reiterated until it is the generally received doctrine, but by a Dutch ship, which in 1619 landed a cargo of “twenty negers” in a famished condition at Jamestown), it shortly took general root, and after a time began to flourish. Indeed, it flourished here and elsewhere, so that in 1636, only seventeen years later, a ship, The Desire, was built and fitted out at Marblehead as a slaver, and thus became the first American slave-ship, but by no means the last. In the early period of the institution it was conceived that as it was justified on the ground that the slaves were heathen, conversion to Christianity might operate to emancipate them. In Virginia, the leading Southern colony, it was adjudicated that this did not so operate; but long prior to that, and while it was the accepted theory, Negroes are shown, by the church records, to have been baptized. In Massachusetts, at that time, baptism was expressly prohibited.
The fugitive-slave law, which proved ultimately and naturally so powerful an excitant in the history of slavery, and which is generally believed to have been the product of only Southern cupidity and brutality, had its prototype in the Articles of the Confederation of the United Colonies of New England (19th May, 1643), in which Massachusetts was the ruling colony.
Many of the good people of Massachusetts, in their zeal and their misapprehension of the facts, have been accustomed to regard their own skirts as free from all taint whatsoever of the accursed doctrine of property in human beings, and have been wont to boast that slavery never existed by virtue of law in that grand old Commonwealth, and that certainly no human creature was ever born a slave on her sacred soil. For refutation one need go no further than the work of Mr. George H. Moore, entitled “History of Slavery in Massachusetts.”[67] Mr. Moore was librarian of the Historical Society of New York, and corresponding member of the Historical Society of Massachusetts. He says, page 19, citing Commonwealth vs. Aves, 18 Pick., Shaw, C. J.: “It has been persistently asserted and repeated by all sorts of authorities, historical and legal, up to that of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth, that ‘slavery to a certain extent seems to have crept in; not probably by force of any law, for none such is found or known to exist.’” “In Mr. Sumner’s famous speech in the Senate, June 28, 1854, he boldly asserted that ‘in all her annals no person was ever born a slave on the soil of Massachusetts’; and, says he, ‘if in point of fact the issue of slaves was sometimes held in bondage, it was never by sanction of any statute law of colony or commonwealth.’”
“And,” says Mr. Moore further, “recent writers of history in Massachusetts have assumed a similar lofty and positive tone on this subject. Mr. Palfrey says: ‘In fact, no person was ever born into legal slavery in Massachusetts.’[68] Mr. Justice Gray, in an elaborate historical note to the case of Oliver vs. Sale, Quincy’s R. 29, says: ‘Previously to the adoption of the State Constitution in 1780, Negro slavery existed to some extent and Negroes held in slavery might be sold; but all children of slaves were by law free.’”
Is it any ground for wonder that with these apparently authoritative statements ever iterated and reiterated before them, the people of Massachusetts should really have believed that no child had ever been born into slavery on the sacred soil of Massachusetts, and that slavery itself only existed to “some extent”?
Mr. Moore, with authorities in hand, shows that these declarations are unfounded, and states the uncomfortable but real facts. He quotes the ninety-first article of “The Body of Liberties,” which appears in the first edition under the head of “Liberties of Forreiners & Strangers,” and in the second edition, that of 1660, under the title of “Bond-Slavery.”
“91. There shall never be any bond-slaverie, villinage or captivity amongst us unles it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are SOLD TO US. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authoritie.”[69]
After showing the evolution of this law, Mr. Moore, on page 18, says:
“Based on the Mosaic Code, it is an absolute recognition of slavery as a legitimate status, and of the right of one man to sell himself, as well as that of another man to buy him. It sanctions the slave-trade and the perpetual bondage of Indians and Negroes, their children and their children’s children, and entitles Massachusetts to precedence over any and all other colonies in similar legislation. It anticipates by many years anything of the sort to be found in the statutes of Virginia or Maryland or South Carolina, and nothing like it is to be found in the contemporary codes of her sister colonies in New England.”[70]
Chief-Justice Parsons, in the leading Massachusetts case of Winchendon vs. Hatfield in error, referring to the dictum of C. J. Dana in a previous case, that a Negro born in that colony prior to the Constitution of 1780 was free, though born of slave parents, admits candidly: “It is very certain that the general practice and common usage had been opposed to this opinion.”
These and other authorities cited by Mr. Moore would seem to place the matter absolutely beyond all question.