An unhappy incident is mentioned by the historian, which attests how little the French at that time, even while engaged in securing the redemption of their own countrymen, cared for the cause of general freedom. An officer of the triumphant fleet, receiving the Christian slaves surrendered to him, observed among them many English, who, with national vainglory, maintained that they were set at liberty out of regard to the king of England. At once the Frenchman summoned the Algerines, and, returning the foolish captives into their hands, said: "These people pretend that they have been delivered in the name of their monarch. Mine does not take the liberty to offer them his protection. I return them to you. It is for you to show what you owe to the king of England."[60] The Englishmen were hurried again to prolonged slavery. The power of Charles the Second was impotent in their behalf, as was the sense of justice and humanity in the French officer or the Algerine slave-masters.
I cannot pause to develop the course of other efforts by France; nor can I dwell upon the determined conduct of Holland, one of whose greatest naval commanders, Admiral de Ruyter, in 1661, enforced at Algiers the emancipation of several hundred Christian slaves.[61] The inconsistency which we have before remarked appears also in these two powers. Both, while using their best endeavors for the freedom of their white people, were cruelly engaged selling blacks into distant American slavery,—as if every word of reprobation fastened upon the piratical, slave-driving Algerines did not return in eternal judgment against themselves.
REDEMPTION OF WHITE SLAVES.
Thus far I have followed the history of military expeditions. War has been our melancholy burden. But peaceful measures were employed to procure the redemption of slaves, and money sometimes accomplished what was vainly attempted by the sword. In furtherance of this object, missions were often sent which could not be disregarded. These sometimes had a formal diplomatic organization; sometimes they consisted of fathers of the Church, who held it a sacred office to open the prison-doors and let the captives go free.[62] It was through the intervention of superiors of the Order of the Holy Trinity, dispatched to Algiers by Philip the Second of Spain, that Cervantes obtained his ransom; in 1580.[63] Expeditions of commerce often served to promote similar designs of charity; and England, forgetting or distrusting all her sleeping thunder, sometimes condescended to barter articles of merchandise for the liberty of her subjects.[64]
Private effort often secured the liberation of slaves. Friends at home naturally exerted themselves, and many families were straitened by generous contributions for this purpose. The widowed mother of Cervantes sacrificed the entire pittance that remained to her, including the dowry of her daughters, to aid the emancipation of her son. An Englishman, of whose doleful captivity there is a record in the memoirs of his son, obtained his redemption through the earnest efforts of his wife at home. "She resolved," says the story, "to use all the means that lay in her power for his freedom, though she left nothing for herself and children to subsist upon. She was forced to put to sale, as she did, some plate, gold rings, and bracelets, and some part of her household goods, to make up his ransom, which came to about one hundred and fifty pounds sterling."[65] In 1642 four French brothers were ransomed at the price of six thousand dollars. At this same period the sum exacted for the poorest Spaniard was "a thousand shillings," while the Genoese, "if under twenty-two years of age, were freed for a hundred pounds sterling."[66] These charitable efforts were aided by the co-operation of benevolent persons. George Fox interceded for several Quakers, slaves in Algiers, writing "a book to the Grand Sultan and the king at Algiers, wherein he laid before them their indecent behavior and unreasonable dealings, showing them from their Alcoran that this displeased God, and that Mahomet had given them other directions." Here was the customary plainness of the Quaker. Some time elapsed before an opportunity was found to redeem them; "but in the mean while they so faithfully served their masters, that they were suffered to go loose through the town, without being chained or fettered."[67]
As early as the thirteenth century, under the sanction of Pope Innocent the Third, an important association was organized to promote emancipation. This was known as the Society of the Fathers of Redemption.[68] During many successive generations its blessed labors were continued, amidst the praise and sympathy of generous men. History, undertaking to recount its origin, and filled with a grateful sense of its extraordinary merits, attributed it to the inspiration of an angel in the sky, clothed in resplendent light, holding a Christian captive in the right hand and a Moor in the left. The pious Spaniard who narrates the marvel earnestly declares that this institution of beneficence was the work, not of men, but of the great God alone; and he dwells, with more than the warmth of history, on the glory filling the lives of its associates, surpassing far that of a Roman triumph; for they share the name as well as the labors of the Redeemer of the world, to whose spirit they are heirs, and to whose works they are successors. "Lucullus," he says, "affirmed that it were better to liberate a single Roman from the hands of the enemy than to gain all their wealth; but how much greater the gain, more excellent the glory, and more than human is it to redeem a captive! For whosoever redeems him liberates him not alone from one death, but from death in a thousand ways, and those ever present, and also from a thousand afflictions, a thousand miseries, a thousand torments and fearful travails, more cruel than death itself."[69] The genius of Cervantes has left a record of his gratitude to this Antislavery Society,[70]—herald of others whose mission is not yet finished. Throughout Spain annual contributions for it continued to be taken during many years. Nor in Spain only did it awaken sympathy. In Italy and France also it labored successfully; and as late as 1748, inspired by a similar catholic spirit, if not by its example, a proposition appeared in England to "form a society to carry on the truly charitable design" of emancipating sixty-four English slaves in Morocco.[71]
CONSPIRACIES FOR FREEDOM.
War and ransom were not the only agents. Even if history were silent, it is impossible to suppose that slaves of African Barbary endured their lot without struggles for freedom.
"Since the first moment they put on my chains,