I introduce these comparisons that I may bring home to your minds, as nearly as possible, the precise position and character of the territory which was the seat of the evil I am about to describe. It might be worthy of inquiry, why Christian slavery, banished at last from Europe, banished also from that part of this hemisphere which corresponds in latitude to Europe, should have intrenched itself in both hemispheres between the same parallels of latitude, so that Virginia, Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas should be the American complement to Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. Perhaps common peculiarities of climate, breeding lassitude, indolence, and selfishness, may account for that insensibility to the claims of justice and humanity which have characterized both regions.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF WHITE SLAVERY.
The revolting custom of White Slavery in the Barbary States was for many years the shame of modern civilization. The nations of Europe made constant efforts, continued through successive centuries, to procure its abolition, and also to rescue their subjects from its fearful doom. These may be traced in diversified pages of history, and in authentic memoirs. Literature affords illustrations which must not be neglected. At one period, the French, the Italians, and the Spaniards borrowed the plots of their stories from this source.[4]
The adventures of Robinson Crusoe make our childhood familiar with one of its forms. Among his early trials was his piratical capture by a rover from Sallee, a port of Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean, and reduction to slavery. "At this surprising change of my circumstances," says Crusoe, "from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father's prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable and have none to relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually brought to pass that it could not be worse." And Cervantes, in the story of Don Quixote, over which so many generations have shaken with laughter, turns aside from its genial current to give the narrative of a Spanish captive who had escaped from Algiers. The author is supposed to have drawn from his own experience; for during five years and a half he endured the horrors of Algerine slavery, from which he was finally liberated by a ransom of less than seven hundred dollars.[5] This inconsiderable sum of money—scarcely the price of an ordinary African slave in our own Southern States—gave to freedom, to his country, and to mankind the author of Don Quixote.
In Cervantes freedom gained a champion whose efforts entitle him to grateful mention on this threshold of our inquiry. Taught in the school of slavery, he knew how to commiserate the slave. The unhappy condition of his fellow-Christians in chains was ever uppermost in his mind. He lost no opportunity of inciting attempts for their emancipation, and for the overthrow of the "peculiar institution"—pardon the recurring phrase!—under which they groaned. He became in Spain what, in our day and country, is sometimes called an "anti-slavery agitator,"—not by public meetings and addresses, but, according to the genius of the age, mainly through the theatre. Not from the platform, but from the stage, did this liberated slave speak to the world. In a play entitled El Trato de Argel, or Life in Algiers—which, though not composed according to rules of art, found much favor, probably from its subject—he pictured, shortly after his return to Spain, the manifold humiliations, pains, and torments of slavery. This was followed by two other plays in the same spirit,—La Gran Sultana Doña Cathalina de Oviedo, and Los Baños de Argel, or, The Galleys of Algiers. The last act of the latter closes with the statement, calculated to enlist the sympathies of an audience, that "this play is not drawn from the imagination, but was born far from the regions of fiction, in the very heart of truth." More could not be said of a tale of Slavery in our day. Not content with this appeal through the theatre, Cervantes, with constant zeal, takes up the same theme in the tale of "The Captive" which he introduces into Don Quixote, and also in that of El Amante Liberal, and in some parts of La Española Inglesa. All these may be regarded not merely as literary labors, but as charitable efforts in behalf of human freedom.
This same cause enlisted a contemporary genius, prolific beyond precedent, called by Cervantes "that great prodigy of Nature," Lope de Vega, who freely borrowed from it in a play entitled Los Cautivos de Argel. At a later day, Calderon, sometimes exalted as the Shakespeare of the Spanish stage, in one of his most remarkable dramas, El Principe Constante, cast a poet's glance at Christian slavery in Morocco. To these works, belonging to what may be called the literature of Anti-Slavery, and shedding upon our subject a grateful light, must be added a curious and learned volume on the Topography and History of Algiers (Topographia e Historia de Argel), by Haedo, a Spanish father of the Catholic Church, published in 1612, and containing also two copious Dialogues,—one on Captivity (de la Captividad), and the other on the Martyrs of Algiers (de los Martyres de Argel). These Dialogues, besides embodying authentic sketches of suffering in Algiers, form a mine of classical and patristic learning on the origin and character of slavery, with arguments and protestations against its iniquity, which may be explored with profit even in our day. In view of this gigantic evil, particularly in Algiers, and in the hope of arousing his countrymen to the generous work of emancipation, the good father exclaims, in words which must thrill the soul so long as a single fetter binds a single slave: "Where is charity? Where is the love of God? Where is the zeal for his glory? Where is desire for his service? Where is human pity, and the compassion of man for man? Certainly, to redeem a captive, to liberate him from wretched slavery, is the highest work of charity, of all that can be done in this world."[6] The reports of the good fathers who visited this land of bondage for the redemption of captives testify likewise. One of these thus speaks from the depths of the heart: "The charity of Jesus Christ obliges us; and I question not but that whosoever had seen those miseries I have been a witness to, and the deplorable condition I left our captives in, would have no less ardent a desire to relieve them."[7]
Not long after the bitter experience of Cervantes, another person, of another country and language, and of a higher character, St. Vincent de Paul, one of the saintly glories of France, encountered the same cruel lot. Happily for the world, he escaped from slavery, to commence at home that long career of charity—nobler than any fame of literature—signalized by various Christian efforts against duels, for peace, for the poor, and in every field of humanity, by which he is enrolled among the great names of Christendom. Princes and orators have lavished panegyrics upon this fugitive slave; and the Catholic Church, in homage to his extraordinary virtues, has numbered him with the saints. Nor is he the only illustrious Frenchman who has felt the yoke of slavery. Arago, astronomer and philosopher,—devoted republican also,—while on the coast of the Mediterranean, engaged in those scientific labors which made the beginning of his fame, came within the clutch of Algerine slave-dealers. What science and the world gained by his liberation I need not say.
Thus Science, Literature, Freedom, Philanthropy, the Catholic Church, each and all, owe a debt to the liberated Barbary slave. Let them, on this occasion, as beneficent heralds, commend the story of his wrongs, his struggles, and his triumphs!