CHAPTER XXX.
SLAVERY DURING THE REVOLUTION.
1775-1783.
Progress of the Slave-Trade.—A Great War for the Emancipation of the Colonies from Political Bondage.—Condition of the Southern States during the War.—The Virginia Declaration of Rights.—Immediate Legislation against Slavery demanded.—Advertisement from "The Independent Chronicle."—Petition of Massachusetts Slaves.—An Act preventing the Practice of holding Persons in Slavery.—Advertisements from "The Continental Journal."—A Law passed in Virginia limiting the Rights of Slaves.—Law emancipating all Slaves who served in the Army.—New York promises her Negro Soldiers Freedom.—A Conscientious Minority in Favor of the Abolition of the Slave-Trade.—Slavery flourishes during the Entire Revolutionary Period.
THE thunder of the guns of the Revolution did not drown the voice of the auctioneer. The slave-trade went on. A great war for the emancipation of the colonies from the political bondage into which the British Parliament fain would precipitate them did not depreciate the market value of human flesh. Those whose hearts were not enlisted in the war skulked in the rear, and gloated over the blood-stained shekels they wrung from the domestic slave-trade. While the precarious condition of the Southern States during the war made legislation in support of the institution of slavery impolitic, there were, nevertheless, many severe laws in force during this entire period. In the New England and Middle States there was heard an occasional voice for the oppressed; but it was generally strangled at the earliest moment of its being by that hell-born child, avarice. On the 21st of September, 1776, William Gordon of Roxbury, Mass., wrote,—
The Virginians begin their Declaration of Rights with saying,'that all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive themselves or their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty.' The Congress declare that they 'hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.' The Continent has rung with affirmations of the like import. If these, Gentlemen, are our genuine sentiments, and we are not provoking the Deity, by acting hypocritically to serve a turn, let us apply earnestly and heartily to the extirpation of slavery from among ourselves. Let the State allow of nothing beyond servitude for a stipulated number of years, and that only for seven or eight, when persons are of age, or till they are of age: and let the descendants of the Africans born among us, be viewed as free-born; and be wholly at their own disposal when one-and-twenty, the latter part of which age will compensate for the expense of infancy, education, and so on."
No one gave heed. Two months later, Nov. 14, there appeared in "The Independent Chronicle" of Boston a plan for gradual emancipation; and on the 28th of the same month, in the same paper there appeared a communication demanding specific and immediate legislation against slavery. But all seemed vain: there were few moral giants among the friends of "liberty for all;" and the comparative silence of the press and pulpit gave the advocates of human slavery an easy victory.
Boston, the home of Warren, and the city that witnessed the first holy offering to liberty, busied herself through all the perilous years of the war in buying and selling human beings. The following are but a few of the many advertisements that appeared in the papers of the city of Boston during the war:—[622]
From "The Independent Chronicle," Oct. 3, 1776:—