Music found expression in the vibrating chord tempered with the dull thumping of drums in their characteristic rhythm which could be heard for miles during the night and in the peculiar songs and chants of the Negroes. To the white man who could not understand their customs it was barbaric and rude and was treated with indifference and at times with contempt. But it has been shown by Mrs. Kemble, who was a keen observer during her residence in Georgia, that the Negro songs had merit and that there was something mystic which could not easily open itself—its peculiar musical charm—to the white man. This music and chants were common to every part of America where the sons of Africa had been carried by the slave hunters, and even to this day musical instruments, peculiar to the original tribes, are extant in many of the islands beyond the seas.
During the evening slave seances took place when the master thought everything was silent and calm, because the field work had been satisfactorily performed and the harvest had been gathered and there was a profit which would carry him to Europe to squander it in riotous living. But at night, like the firefly, the Negro was recreated and refreshed in song his soul, and dreamed of a future freedom from the involuntary thraldom of which he was a victim.
The story tellers gathered a motley crowd around them and the hours of eventide were spent in instructive recitals of the Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit and other folk-lore stories, the heritage of African minds. These stories are known in every vale and dale of joy and tears in America; they have soothed the hours of toil and consoled the broken-hearted. "They have been called the traditional literature of Africa. Some of the Uncle Remus stories would form no bad addition to the fairy stories of the world. But the race of old mammies or nurses who used to tell them to delighted youthful audiences is fast passing away"—in fact, have passed away—and we are satisfied, not knowing any better, to read them in the modern reconstructed form as given by Joel Chandler Harris and other poor imitators who have won fame and honor in the field of literature without incurring the onerous charge of imitation. Bosman refers to the Old Mammy or Anancy stories in his work on Africa, and it is said that in Accra "there are men who have a repertoire almost as copious as the Arabian Nights, and to which Europeans listen with curiosity and wonder, if not with admiration." Richard Burton was a great man and a distinguished writer, who agrees with Koelle, who says, "I was amongst them in their native land, on the soil which the feet of their fathers have trod, and heard them deliver in their own native tongue stirring extempore speeches, adorned with beautiful imagery, of half an hour or an hour's duration; or when I was writing from their dictation, sometimes two hours in succession, without having to correct a word or alter a construction in twenty or thirty pages; or when in Sierre Leone I attended examinations of the sons of liberated slaves (from America) in algebra, geometry, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc.—then, I confess, any other idea never entered my mind but that I had to do with real men". (Wit and Wisdom from West Africa.")
In Brazil, the Negro chieftain, Henrique Diaz, is revered for the able assistance which he rendered in checking the incursions of the Dutch, and Koster in his travels through that country speaks of Negro and mulatto regiments known as the Henrique regiments in memory of so worthy and capable a leader.
In the city of Paramaribo the Negro Gramman Quacy had the good fortune in 1730 to discover the valuable properties of the root known by the name of Quacie bitter. In 1761 it was made known to Linnaeus by d'Ahlbergand, the Swedish naturalist who had written a treatise upon it.
During the years 1811-12 the British government had reports from their various possessions in America exclusive of Jamaica, showing a slave population of 343,859 and 27,259 free men of color, so that about eight per cent of the total colored population were free. When we consider the handicap that slaves had under English law with its intricate and involved questions of entail we can appreciate the efforts of these reputed savages to have been able not only to achieve their freedom but to succeed in becoming an integral part of the country, with an eagle's foothold in agriculture.
Porto Bello and Cartagena in Colombia were the ports of entry for the slave trade, the channel by which not only Panama was supplied with Negroes but from whence the traders were allowed to bring with them such quantity of provisions as was thought necessary both for their own use and that of their slaves of both sexes. Here was the Appian road through which the Spaniards carried the slaves into Peru to work the gold mines; and they became so useful that in the celebrated Sanabria mines Negroes were used exclusively during the night and Indians in the day time. Ulloa, during his visit to Lima, found that people of African descent formed the greater part of the population of Lima, and they were, as a rule, mechanics and worked side by side with the Europeans who did not consider the contact disgraceful to them, since cleanliness was the ruling passion of the Negroes.
General Pelage, "an agricultural slave" when General Moore stormed St. Lucia, was Governor of Guadeloupe until 1803, when he resigned and returned to France to lead his soldiers against Spain, where he was killed at the head of his regiment.
It is a remarkable fact that the first native American to be consecrated a Bishop was a Negro. He was Right Reverend Francisco Xavier de Luna y Victoria, Bishop of Panama, of which see he took possession in August, 1751. He founded and maintained the cathedral at his own expense, and was later removed to the see of Trujillo in Peru. His mother, who had been a slave devoted her time to the sale of charcoal in order to attain her ambition to see her son become an eminent man. This devotion has been characteristic of the African woman and every reward and praise won on the new continent has been due to her sacrifices.
In the Spanish countries under the more liberal manumission laws a very much higher proportion of free people of color existed from the very earliest times. In Cuba of the total population in 1811 about 274,000 were whites, 212,000 slaves and 114,000 free persons of color, rather less than two slaves to one freeman. In the United States at the same time the slave population of 1,191,364 is more than six times the free population of 186,446 (total U. S., 7,239,814). The conditions in Cuba were characteristic of the Spanish and Portuguese countries and explained the total abolition of slavery as well as the more rapid assimilation of the colored people in the economic and political life of those countries.