That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

“Queen Elizabeth lent her own ship, the ‘Jesus,’ to Sir John Hawkins, for the African slave-trade, and also owned shares in the African Company. By these investments she made more than the Dutchman’s one per cent to supply herself with pin-money and to provide those innumerable court dresses we read of.

“When the ship ‘Jesus’ was near the equator the water gave out and the four hundred slaves came very near perishing from thirst. The pious Hawkins wrote in his log, ‘The Almighty God would not suffer his elect to perish.’

“What a combination! The ship ‘Jesus’ named after the Redeemer of mankind, not the enslaver, carrying kidnapped men and women to slavery; this pious captain calling himself the ‘elect’ of God and the owner of the ship ‘Good Queen Bess,’ as she is styled!

“If there was a meaner or more damnable business than capturing people to sell them as slaves I have not heard of it. The horrors of the whole business from beginning to end was awful. The details were sickening and makes one ashamed of humanity. Such things are enough to make men skeptical, whether God watches over the events of the world. The most astounding part of it is that Christian people claimed it was for the Glory of God! ‘O, religion! What crimes have been committed in thy name!’

“Did you ever think of the power of profits in controlling the tastes, judgments and consciences of mankind?

“Slavery was confined mainly to the southern states and created a different kind of people and a different condition of society from that of the northern states. These owners of their fellow men, traffickers in human flesh and blood, claimed to be gentlemen, as they did not have to labor for a livelihood. They assumed to be the aristocracy of the whole country and so affiliated with the aristocracy of England. They certainly had much in common. Both despised labor for themselves, but enjoyed it in others for their sole benefit. These aristocrats of the South, with plenty of money they never earned, could be educated, travel abroad and acquired a kind of culture with pride and arrogance, while they treated the poor whites among them as ‘trash,’ not much better than their ‘niggers,’ just as the aristocracy in England treat the lower classes. All was game to them within their reach. Nearly every boy over fifteen had his wench and the owners of slaves, like a lustful aristocracy, gave free reign to their fancies and desires, and did not scruple even to sell their own flesh and blood in the auction slave marts as they sold their cattle and cotton.

“It is not surprising then, that the aristocracy of the South and of England should have similar tastes and a liking for each other. The result was that in our civil war, waged solely on account of slavery, our worst enemies were the aristocracy of England. They would have swallowed African slavery, head and tail, with all its abominations for the sake of aiding their fellow aristocrats. It is to the middle class, the working people of England, that we are indebted for the non-recognition of the southern confederacy as an independent government. As it was, armed vessels were built and fitted out in the ports of England to destroy our commerce and with the connivance of her government. This was her way of being neutral.

“Many Englishmen made fortunes by sending blockade runners from England to furnish supplies for the South. They have told me this, rubbing their hands with great satisfaction at their skill in outwitting the ‘Yankees.’ Can they expect the ‘Yankees’ to forget these things when sometime a nation or colony may give their lion’s tail a twist? The bill for their little fun in being neutral was however settled, and the bitterest pill probably that John ever swallowed was when he had to pay fifteen millions of dollars for the destruction caused by his Alabama.

“All this is history and we would not refer to it but for the over-bearing arrogance and assumption of these islanders. When they ever treat us civilly it is with a patronizing air. If there is anything which I think a true man dislikes it is to be patronized, for this insinuates an inferiority in the one receiving the patronage. With this spirit the English often refer to their colonizing America. We admit, to the shame of England, that some of our earliest settlers were obliged to leave that country to escape persecution and death but their settlement in America was compulsory. Large numbers, ‘Puritans,’ as they were styled, were deported, not for any crimes, but for their belief that they had a right to worship God according to their own consciences. Just one instance. A cargo of 841 human beings were sent to the West Indies to be sold as slaves. These, mind you, were not negroes, but white English people. They were not suffered to go on deck and in the holds below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death. The Queen of England had an interest in this shipment. The profits which she shared in the cargo after making a large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during the passage cannot be estimated at less than a thousand guineas. This is the statement of an English historian, not an American.

“But the fact is that some of our best people were from Holland. Manhattan Island, now New York, was settled by them, and for many years there was not an English speaking person in that settlement, and many of the old wealthy families now in New York are descendants of the Hollanders. At the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when fifty thousand of the best people of France were exiled, many of them went to the United States. Another large class are the descendants of the Scotch-Irish who had to flee from the tyranny of England, while the Irish now in America outnumber those in Ireland itself. The minority of the people are the descendants of the English.