Abolition a Sedition, by a Northern Man

by Calvin Colton

First, we observe, that the African race, in the Middle, Western, and more Southern parts of the Continent, have for many centuries, or from time immemorial, been most barbarous and degraded, and in the practice of domestic slavery on the largest scale and in the most inhuman forms, entirely independent of the effects of the slave traffic by exportation from Africa to America.

“It is evident,” says Mungo Park, “that the system of slavery which prevails in Africa is of no modern date. It probably had its origin in the remote ages of antiquity, before the Mohammedans explored a path across the desert. How far it is maintained and supported by the slave traffic, which for two hundred years the nations of Europe have carried on with the natives of the Coast, it is neither within my province, nor in my power to explain. If my sentiments should be desired concerning the effect of a discontinuance of this commerce on the manners of the natives, I should have no hesitation in saying, that in the present unenlightened state of their minds, my opinion is, the effect would neither be so extensive nor so beneficial as many wise and worthy persons fondly expect.”

Park estimates the domestic slavery of Africa, on an average, at three fourths, and Lander at four fifths, of the population. Some travellers have gone much higher, and we have seen it put down at nine tenths.

“In a speech delivered in the British House of Commons, by Mr. Henniker, in 1789, the speaker asserts, that a letter had been received by George III. from one of the most powerful of the African potentates, the Emperor of Dehomey, which exemplifies the notions of the Africans about the right to kill and enslave prisoners of war. He (the Emperor) stated: ‘That as he understood King George was the greatest of white kings, so he thought himself the greatest of black ones.’ He said, that he could lead 500,000 armed men into the field, that being the pursuit to which all his subjects were bred, the women only staying at home to plant and manure the earth. He had himself fought two hundred and nine battles, with great reputation and success, and had conquered the great king of Ardah. The king’s head was to this day preserved with the flesh and hair; the heads of his generals were distinguished by being placed on each side of the doors of their Fetiches; with the heads of the inferior officers they paved the space before the doors; and the heads of the common soldiers formed a sort of fringe or outwork round the walls of the palace. Since this war he had experienced the greatest good fortune; and he hoped in good time to be able to complete the outwalls of all his great houses, to the number of seven, in the same manner.

“Mr. Norris, who visited this Empire, testifies to the truth of this letter. He found the palace of the Emperor an immense assemblage of cane and mud tents, enclosed by a high wall. The skulls and jaw bones of enemies slain in battle, formed the favorite ornaments of the palaces and temples. The king’s apartments were paved, and the walls and roofs stuck over, with these horrid trophies. And if a farther supply appeared at any time desirable, he announced to his general, that his house wanted thatch, when a war for that purpose was immediately undertaken.”[10]

[10] Professor Dew’s Review &c.

“All these unfortunate beings,” prisoners of war, says Park, “are considered as strangers and foreigners, who have no right to the protection of the law, and may be treated with severity, or sold to a stranger, according to the pleasure of their owners. There are indeed, regular markets, where slaves of this description are bought and sold; and the value of a slave in the eye of an African purchaser increases in proportion to the distance from his native kingdom; for, when slaves are only a few days journey from the place of their nativity, they frequently effect their escape; but when one or more kingdoms intervene, escape being more difficult, they are more readily reconciled to their situation. On this account the unhappy slave is often transferred from one dealer to another, until he has lost all hope of returning to his native kingdom.

“A battle is fought; the vanquished never think of rallying again; the inhabitants become panic-struck; and the conquerors have only to bind the slaves, and carry off the victims and their plunder. Such of their prisoners as through age or infirmity are unable to endure fatigue, or are found unfit for sale, are considered useless, and I have no doubt are put to death. The same fate commonly awaits chiefs, or any other persons who have taken a distinguished part in the war.”

The Rev. Stephen Kay, Corresponding member of the South African Institution &c., gives a most heart rending account of the horrid barbarities of war; of the great extent and atrocities of slavery; of the extreme degradation and hardships of females, who are always regarded and treated as slaves, and no longer valued when they become useless; of modes of torture and killing too shocking to be narrated; all of which, and many other atrocities of African barbarism, are the common scenes of those regions of Africa which he visited. Major Laing is to the same point, and various other travellers that have found motives to visit Africa, or to penetrate into its interior. There is no diversity of testimony on the subject, but one common voice going out upon the world, through a variety of channels, running back for ages, and from numerous and remote sections of that dark and cruel Continent, all certifying to their extreme barbarism and brutal degredation, with scarcely a gleam of intellectual light, or social comfort, beaming out from their history. Do not the readers of Mungo Park recollect the story of poor Nealee? Does not the world know the fate of Park himself, and of Lander? And are not the testimonies abundant to the barbarous treachery and atrocious cruelty of the race, independent of the effects of that European traffic in human flesh and blood, which began, between two and three hundred years ago, to draw off a fraction of this immense amount of human misery, which could scarcely be increased by the agonies and suffocations of “the middle passage”? It was, indeed, this very state of things which presented temptations and opened the door to that traffic, which transplanted a portion of the African race to the Islands and Continent of this Western hemisphere. It is to the Africans themselves, that this trade owes its origin—to their barbarism, to their everlasting trade in war, and the glutting of their own marts with the blood and sinews of their own flesh all to the sore evil of this Continent, and to the inexpiable scandal of Christian Europe, that the flood gates of African barbarism were let out upon these Western Isles and shores, to gratify the lust of gain in those monsters who carried on and profited by the traffic, and to entail a long protracted curse on the less guilty, though not innocent, tenants of this new world.

The continuance of this traffic, and the inhuman over-working of this race in the South American and West Indian Colonies appertaining to the Governments of Europe, are too notorious to require recitation. We are more concerned to notice the history and character of that slavery which is to be found in our own Republic, as the result of that trade which disgraced Christendom, and imposed on the Nations that tolerated and patronized it a fearful responsibility.