Slavery in History

by Adam Gurowski

The authority of the Scriptures is invoked as absolute sanction for the enslavement of one branch of the human family; and the theological right to enslave the African is based on the well-known words of Noah: "Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." The general import of these words, however, even in the strictest construction, has rather a reference to their degradation as a caste—exemplified in the case of the swineherds among the Egyptians, or the Çudras (Soudras) among the Hindus—either of which, however, were chattels deprived of human and family rights.

Modern criticism, guided chiefly by the light of comparative philology and ethnology, has established beyond any doubt the genuine meaning of the patriarchal names of Scripture. Down to Abraham, or at the utmost to Terah his father, all those names bear an ethnical or geographical signification. Abraham, however, is an historical person, and with him positive Jewish history opens.

Moses and the other writers of the book of Genesis were educated among the highly learned and scientific Egyptians; and in Palestine they came in contact with a highly advanced civilization among the Canaanites or Phœnicians, Arabians, and Nabatheans, who were then in the full tide of life and action. From these kindred Shemitic peoples the Hebrews learned the use of written characters; and many of the scientific discoveries of these epochs are dimly preserved in the Mosaic record, as also the general outlines of the ethnic knowledge of the age. Moses and the other writers did but record the various geographic and ethnic names which came to their ears, and for this no inspiration was necessary. Modern scientific criticism, guided by the inductions of reason—that grandest product of the hand of God—now infuses living spirit into what was for ages a dead and incomprehensible letter. This can be easily elucidated by a few examples. The word Ham, or Erez-Cham, has no root or meaning in Hebrew or any other Shemitic dialect; it was doubtless borrowed from the Egyptians, and to Egypt must we go for the solution of its signification. Other Biblical names, as, for example, Eber, Pheleg or Peleg, Reu or Rehu, Serug and Nahor, represent distinct Shemitic tribes, or, as the record tropically styles them, kingdoms and states, of Mesopotamia (Naharaina). Eber, or more properly, Heber (whence our "Hebrews"), signifies "the stranger" or "a person from the other side," that is, one who came from a foreign region. Aram also implies an immigrant from the other side of the Euphrates. So, likewise Misraim (the Misr or M-R of the Egyptians), Cush, Phut and Lud, constituted distinct tribes and nations in widely distant regions, and perhaps even belonged to different races, according to accepted schemes of ethnology. Lud answers to the Libyan Lewatah, the Leguatan of the Byzantine writers, and the classical Garaman. Phut and Lud belong to Africa; they are brothers of Mizraim, or its nearest ethnic relations in the remotest antiquity, or perhaps closely allied but independent tribes—as the Scriptures generally record tribes and states politically and geographically independent. Phut and Lud are also mentioned as the allied troops of the Egyptians, or of the Syrians. Finally Lud (Ludim) descends from Mizraim; so it may be that they were a branch of the Egyptian stem, just as the Irish are an offshoot of the Gallo-Celtic stock, or the Anglo-Saxons of the Teutonic trunk.

The curse of Noah was hurled against Canaan. The philological and ethnic signification of this name has already been explained. The Canaanites, although themselves but an elder branch of the Shemitic family, were the enemies of Beni-Israel, who conquered them and drove them from their land and homes. There is thus a manifest logic in the writer of this part of Genesis condemning them to eternal servitude—for it was written after the subjugation of the Canaanites. Indeed, the same policy of enslavement was pursued by almost all the ancient conquering nations in the flush of their victorious battles; and so, in later times, did the Longobards of Italy, the Goths and Franks in Gaul and Spain, the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, and the Normans in England and Ireland.

There seems to be no scientific doubt that the cursed Canaanites were of the same family and stock as the Hebrews. After the most searching and conscientious investigations in ethnology and philology, it is impossible to regard the Canaanites or Phœnicians as other than Shemites; and with this also coincide the Scriptures—their land of Canaan is not in Africa. Who the Cushites of antiquity were, has likewise been already pointed out. And if, as some have attempted to prove, the ancient Egyptians were not of the African race (according to our modern designation), then they were the Chamites, Cushites, etc., of Scripture. How, through them, the curse can be shown to reach the genuine African, requires an effort of casuistry repulsive both to logic and fact—nay, to the baldest common sense. Not the dimmest shadow of authority can be tortured from the Scriptures for the enslavement of the black or negro race. With somewhat sounder logic has this curse of Canaan been applied, even in Christian times, and among European nations, to classes kept in bondage by masters belonging to the same race. Slavery, indeed, has been the common fate, in successive epochs, of all human races and families; and the oppressor has never been wanting in a pious plea. The so-called nobility of the mediæval Christian ages considered the burghers and subdued laborers as being of impure and degraded blood, and all over Europe they were held to be the descendants of Ham. (Some old aristocratic European families even now consider all who are not nobles to be of the degraded caste). According to this construction of the Noachic curse, the foul taint even now circulates not in the vein of the African slave, but in the veins of the tyrants who oppress him. Neither the Egyptians, Phœnicians, Hebrews, nor, indeed, any nation of antiquity, considered any special race or tribe as absolutely predestined to eternal bondage. This abominable conception is a putrid growth from mental, social and moral decay. Even Moses had a black woman for his wife (not his concubine), and, nevertheless, was admitted to converse with Jehovah.

The present historical investigation aims not at the vindication of the African: science and history do this triumphantly for all honest and intelligent minds. These pages have but in view to exhibit the terrific havoc and devastation which domestic slavery brings on all races, nations and civilizations, and to point out the complete analogy of slavery as it existed in the past with that which still blasts our country and our age. The leprosy of early Egypt, Syria and Judea, was the same as that which existed long centuries afterward in western Europe; and so also is it with the social leprosy of the ages. And as, in special conditions, a disease may assume a more deadly intensity, so also do social maladies at times show themselves with increased virulence. In antiquity, domestic slavery seized hold of all races and all social and civil conditions: it was not exclusively fastened on any special race. It may be for this reason that it ate but slowly into the marrow of the antique civilizations. Now modern sophistry attempts to give a divine and moral sanction to chattel slavery, and bases its justice on the absolute and predestined inferiority of the black race. But the natural work of slavery in destroying manhood, morals and intellect, progresses with terrible rapidity in this country, and is here receiving its most mournful illustration.

But what is the testimony of the highest scientific generalization on this question, of the natural inferiority of the African? All the authoritative names in comparative anatomy and physiology—Owen, Flourens, Bachman, Muller, Haenle, Pritchard, Wagner, Vogt and Draper, among them—together with men of the mental calibre and scientific attainments of William and Alexander von Humboldt—men of every variety of scientific theory, and discussing the question from every possible stand-point—universally deny the existence of any absolute inferiority of the negro race, or even any essential difference or line of demarcation between the races at all! The physiological and craniological differences which are so easily observed, do not amount to a difference of species; and cerebral physiology makes no essential distinction between the brain of a white man—even an Anglo-Saxon—and that of a negro.

Still more groundless are the current assertions concerning the mental inferiority of the African race. If such an inferiority really exists at the present day, it is, at the utmost, but transient and conditional in its nature. It can only be such an inferiority as for countless centuries characterized the northern races in contrast to the southern. While the former roved and fought as savages in the wilds and forests, the latter were elaborating grand and harmonious civilizations. It is difficult to imagine what would have been the condition of the Germans—aye, even of the Anglo-Saxons—what kind of civilization they would have inaugurated—without their Christian, Roman and Gallo-Celtic inoculation. If it be urged that certain African tribes are less susceptible of culture, or less endowed with intellectual qualities and capacities than certain white tribes or their offshoots—is it not also the case that the offspring from the same parents may have widely varying powers, tendencies and capacities; and that diverse tribes and nations springing from the same ethnic source, have played very different parts in the drama of universal history?

In the remotest antiquity, the great Gallo-Celtic stem actively influenced the destinies of Europe, and a part of Asia; yet it is only eighty years since the historian Pinckerton, speaking of Ireland and the Irish—those purest Celtic remains, said: "It is indeed a matter of supreme indifference at what time the savages of a continent peopled a neighboring island" (Ireland). This remark it would be difficult to justify—although there are even now many Englishmen who consider the genuine Irish an inferior race, and one, too, incapable of any high development.