It is generally admitted that the treatment of slaves by their masters was mild and humane. There were instances of cruelty, of course. Cruelty forever lurks as a hideous possibility in the mildest system of slavery; it is part of its innermost essence. In every community there are brutes unfit to have the custody of their fellow-creatures. Such a ruffian was the Rev. Samuel Gray, who had his runaway black boy tied to a tree and flogged to death. Separation of families also occurred, though much less frequently than in later times. But cases of cruelty were on the whole rare. The cultivation of tobacco was not such a drain upon human life as the cultivation of sugar in the West Indies, or the raising of indigo and rice in South Carolina. It created a kind of patriarchal society in which the master felt a genuine interest in the welfare of his slaves. “The solicitude exhibited by John Page of York was not uncommon: in his will he instructed his heirs to provide for the old age of all the negroes who descended to them from him, with as much care in point of food, clothing, and other necessaries as if they were still capable of the most profitable labour.”[154] The historian, Robert Beverley, writing in 1705, tells us that “the male servants and the slaves of both sexes are employed together in tilling and manuring the ground, in sowing and planting corn, tobacco, etc. Some distinction indeed is made between them in their clothes and food; but the work of both is no other than what the overseers, the freemen, and the planters themselves do.... And I can assure you with a great deal of truth that generally their slaves are not worked near so hard, nor so many hours in a day, as the husbandmen and day-labourers in England.” As for cruelty, he exclaims, with honest fervour, “no people more abhor the thoughts of such usage than the Virginians, nor take more precaution to prevent it.”[155]
Fears of insurrection.
Cruel laws.
Nevertheless, a state of enforced servitude is something which human nature does not willingly endure. A slave-holding community must provide for catching runaways and suppressing or preventing insurrections. It is one of the remarkable facts in American history that there have been so few insurrections of negroes. There have been, however, occasional instances and symptoms which have kept slave-owners in dread and given rise to harsh legislation. In 1687 a conspiracy among the blacks on the Northern Neck was detected just in time to prevent the explosion.[156] In 1710 a similar plot in Surry County was betrayed by one of the conspirators, whom the assembly proceeded to reward by giving him his freedom with permission to remain in the colony.[157] The fears engendered by such discoveries are revealed in the statute book. Slaves were not allowed to be absent from their plantations without a ticket-of-leave signed by their master. The negro who could not show such a passport must receive twenty lashes, and was liable to be treated as a fugitive or “outlying” slave. Such runaways were formally outlawed; a proclamation issued by two justices of the peace was read on the next Sunday by the parish clerk from the door of every church in the county, after which anybody might seize the fugitive and bring him home, or kill him if he made any resistance. In the latter event the master was indemnified from the public funds. At the discretion of the county court, such mutilation might be inflicted upon the outlying negro as to protect white women against the horrible crime which then as now he was prone to commit.[158] In 1701 we find an act of the assembly directed against “one negro man named Billy,” who “has severall years unlawfully absented himselfe from his masters services, lying out and lurking in obscure places, ... devouring and destroying stocks and crops, robing the houses of and committing and threatening other injuryes to severall of his majestye’s good and leige people.” It was enacted that whosoever should bring in the said Billy alive or dead should receive a thousand pounds of tobacco in reward, and if dead, his master’s loss should be repaired with four thousand pounds. Anybody who should aid or harbour Billy was to be adjudged guilty of felony.[159] No penalty was attached to the murder of a slave by his master; but if he were killed by any one else, the master could recover his value, just as in case of damage done to a dog or a horse. Slaves were not allowed to have fire-arms or other weapons in their possession; “and whereas many negroes, under pretence of practising physic, have prepared and exhibited poisonous medicines, by which many persons have been murdered, and others have languished under long and tedious indispositions, and it will be difficult to detect such pernicious and dangerous practices if they should be permitted to exhibit any sort of medicine,” it was enacted that any slave who should prepare or administer any medicine whatsoever, save with the full knowledge and consent of the master or mistress, should suffer death.[160] The testimony of a slave could not be received in court except when one of his own race was on trial for life; then, if he should be found to testify falsely, he was to stand for an hour with one ear nailed to the pillory, and then be released by slicing off the ear; the same process was then repeated with the other ear, after which the ceremony was finished at the whipping-post with nine-and-thirty lashes on the bare back, “well laid on.”[161] Stealing a slave from a plantation was a capital offence.[162] No master was allowed to emancipate one of his slaves, except for meritorious services, in which case he must obtain a license from the governor and council. If a slave were set free without such a license, the church-wardens could forthwith arrest him and sell him at auction, appropriating the proceeds for the parish funds, and thereby lightening the taxes.[163] When a license was granted, the master received the usual indemnity, and by an act of 1699 the freedman was required to quit the colony within six months;[164] for obviously the presence of a large number of free blacks in the same community with their enslaved brethren was a source of danger. They were apt, moreover, to become receivers of stolen goods, and their shiftless habits made them paupers.[165] Nevertheless there were some free negroes in the colony, and at one time they even appear to have had the privilege of voting, for an act of 1723 deprived them of it; but no free negroes, whether men or women, were exempt from taxation.[166]
Taking slaves to England.
Lord Mansfield’s decision.
Since gentlemen from the North American colonies and from the West Indies not unfrequently visited England, and sometimes remained there for months or years, it was quite natural that they should take with them household slaves to whose personal attendance they were accustomed. In course of time the question thus arose whether the arrival of a slave upon the free soil of England worked his emancipation. According to Virginia law it did not.[167] The opinion expressed in 1729 by Lord Talbot, the attorney-general, and supported by Lord Hardwicke, agreed with the Virginia theory. These eminent lawyers held that mere arrival in England was not enough to free a slave without some specific act of emancipation, but Chief Justice Holt expressed a contrary opinion. Meanwhile masters kept carrying negroes to London until in 1764 the “Gentleman’s Magazine” asserted (surely with wild exaggeration) that no less than 20,000 were domiciled there. Escape was so easy for them that their owners felt obliged to put collars on them, duly inscribed with name and address. In 1685 the “London Gazette” advertised Colonel Kirke’s runaway black boy, upon whose silver collar the colonel’s arms and cipher were engraved; in 1728 the “Daily Journal” informs us that a stray negro has on his collar the inscription, “My Lady Bromfield’s black in Lincoln’s Inn Fields;” and in the “London Advertiser,” 1756, a goldsmith in Westminster announces that he makes “silver padlocks for Blacks’ or Dogs’ collars.” Colonel Kirke and Lady Bromfield were not American visitors, but residents in London, and there is evidence, not abundant but sufficient, that negroes were now and then bought and sold there for household service. When the forger John Rice was hanged at Tyburn in 1763, his effects were sold at auction, and a black boy brought £32. A similar sale at Richmond in 1771 was mentioned in terms of severe condemnation by the “Stamford Mercury.”[168] However the English people may have sanctioned the establishment of slavery beyond sea, they were not disposed to tolerate it at home; and in the sixty years withal since the treaty of Utrecht, the public conscience had grown tender on the subject. The days of Clarkson and Wilberforce were at hand. A cry was raised by the press, a test case was brought before the King’s Bench, and in 1772 Lord Mansfield pronounced the immortal decision that “as soon as a slave sets foot on the soil of the British islands he becomes free.”
Jefferson on slavery.
It is not long after this that we find Thomas Jefferson—himself the kindest of masters, and familiar with slavery in its mild Virginia form—thus writing about it: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.... The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.... With the morals of the people their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion, indeed, are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of the nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”[169]
Sexual immoralities.