The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

It has been necessary to refer thus briefly to the history of slavery because of the strangely prevalent opinion that when peace was restored within the United States, and slavery finally abolished there, slavery no longer existed in the world. True, it was known that there was a sort of domestic service, chiefly of women, akin to slavery, practised in China, Persia, and some minor Oriental countries; but that was thought to be all. It came, therefore, as a rude shock to civilised humanity when travellers of unquestionable veracity, such as Dr. Livingstone, Sir Samuel Baker, and Henry M. Stanley, demonstrated that the slave trade not only still existed throughout vast regions in Africa, but was rampant there in its most atrocious aspect. At first it was hardly realised that the labours of Granville Sharpe, Clarkson, and Wilberforce, the monetary sacrifices of England, and the devastating war in America had, taken together, fallen so far short of complete triumph. But the evidence was overwhelming that such was indeed the case, the Soudan, the Upper Nile, and the basins of the Congo and the great lakes—more than a third of all Africa, exceeding in area the whole of Europe—being still the field of the iniquity. The Sultans of petty states in the Soudan were shown to be, for the most part, chiefs of ferocious Arab tribes who thrived by raiding Central African villages and carrying off their inhabitants, whom they sold for slaves. The cruelties attending their marauding operations were too great to admit of exaggeration. “All over Africa,” wrote Schweinfurth, a German traveller, “dried human skeletons show where the slave-trader has passed.”

A Picture in Words.

Acting under heavy pressure brought to bear upon it by the anti-slavery humanitarians in England the British Government coerced the Khedive of Egypt into signing a convention having for its object the suppression of slavery within his dominions. In order to carry out the engagement into which he had entered, the Khedive appointed General Gordon Governor of the Soudan, and that remarkable man, during the six years that he held that office, displayed so much energy and skill that he succeeded in utterly eradicating the evil throughout the entire region placed under his control. Nevertheless, the general result was not so good as had been hoped for; the slave-traders, despoiled of their hunting-grounds in the Egyptian Soudan, pursuing their nefarious occupation with redoubled vigour on Lake Tanganyika and the Upper Congo. With what extremity of horror they conducted their operations has been so graphically described by a Belgian merchant, M. Hodister, that we make no apology for quoting his account in full.

It is four o’clock in the morning [says M. Hodister]. A great calm prevails, only the soft and melancholy cry of the African owl is to be heard. The village sentinels are either withdrawn, or squatting low, asleep; the houses are closed; every one sleeps; all is repose; the sense of security is absolute. Suddenly the sound of a gun, then cries of terror are raised, breaking the great silence, followed by a fusillade, which seems to come from all sides, piercing the straw walls. The boatmen have fired, leaving their canoes to their women; they have rushed forward, attacking the village in front, while the others are assailing it from the rear. The inhabitants, suddenly roused from their sleep, rush terrified from their houses. They are panic-stricken, and forget wives, children, everything. Their one thought is of flight—to conceal themselves in the wood. The panic is at its height; rifle shots, horrible cries, resound, mixing with the shrieks of fear from the women and children. Then follow the stifled noise of a struggle at close quarters, of falling bodies, a suppressed groan, sharp cries of agony. The ground shakes under the tread of the combatants and fugitives. Soon afterwards appears a star in the blackness of the night, and a dry, crackling sound is heard. It is a detached hut fired by the enemy to light them in their work without the risk of burning the whole village. Before doing that, they wish to pillage it. Meanwhile, a few of the inhabitants have seized their weapons and attempt some resistance; but in a little time this is overcome by superior numbers. To the noise of the fight succeed the cries of the prisoners, of the wounded and the dying. The horizon lightens; the sun has risen suddenly and illumined this field of carnage and desolation. Then the Arabs kill the wounded, bind their prisoners, and begin to plunder the village. Every house is visited and despoiled of its contents. Where in the evening there had been a pretty village, surrounded by a plantation like a covering of verdure, a gay and happy population, there is now a great black, empty spot; for on the completion of the sack the village had been set on fire and burned to the ground. Men, women, and children, tied together promiscuously, corpses strewing the ground, blood puddles emitting an acrid smell, and the assassins, horrible in their war paint, which during the struggle has run with their sweat and blood, complete the picture.

Bound together in groups by stout cords around their waists and necks, the wretched procession of captives, often two or three thousand in number, was, after an incident such as this, marched to the coast. Generally, at least a third of them died by the way. The sick and the lamed, unable to maintain the desired pace, were weeded out at each halting-place and ruthlessly butchered by their captors.

A Herculean Task.

It will require no very inventive imagination to appreciate the magnitude of the difficulties confronting the Belgian pioneers in their effort to suppress slavery, carried on with such ferocious brutality over an area so vast as Central Africa. Yet that was but one of several tasks enjoined upon them by their King; but it was first in order and importance, and until it was accomplished little or no progress in other respects could be hoped for. “Crime is not punished as an offence against God, but as prejudicial to society,” says the historian Froude. King Leopold saw in the crime of slavery both the offence to God and the prejudice to man, and was prepared to exert his utmost energy and, if necessary, expend the last franc of his private fortune, to stamp out the evil. In this heroic endeavour his Majesty was ably seconded by his minister, the distinguished Baron Lambermont, who has recorded his opinion of slavery in these words: “The slave trade is the very denial of every law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high treason against humanity. It ought to be repressed wherever it can be reached, on land as well as by sea.”

Native Potters at Work (Aruwimi).

It is not claimed that there is anything original in the sentiment that animates this well-expressed sentence. Similar views to those of Baron Lambermont have been held by all great thinkers since the establishment of the Christian religion; but it is referred to in this place as an additional proof, if any were needed, of the high moral purpose underlying the enterprise of the King of the Belgians, and to show how that moral purpose was sympathised with and shared by his Majesty’s ministers and the Belgian people.