Remorseless as the gulf that yawns below,
Is he who toils upon the wafting flood,
A Christian broker in the trade of blood!”
But it was not avarice in the crew of the slave ship alone which incited and drove this iniquitous business. The prime movers were the owners of the estates to be worked. Had those men been unwilling to grow rich upon unrewarded toil, the slaver never would have sailed to Africa and plundered its shores. But the piratical crew and the purchasers of the victims of their nefarious traffic were in a villainous co-partnership.
When the slaver had reached its destination and had anchored off the slave coast, the following methods were employed in securing a cargo. 1st. Declarations of friendship were made and many of the unsuspecting natives were induced, out of curiosity or for trade, to go aboard the vessel, and when there were suddenly confined and permitted no more to return. 2d. Parties of the crew were sent out to surprise and carry off innocent children and youth as they went to the fields or gathered in groups to play in the groves. Think of the anguish of those African mothers and of the distress of their affrighted children! 3d. Villages were fired in the night, and as many of the defenseless inhabitants as could be captured by force of arms were carried off. 4th. The chiefs of different tribes were hired to act as the agents of the slaver in procuring slaves. Rum, of which all savages are extremely fond, was the principal incentive. Inflamed by this demon, the native chiefs made war upon each other, and sold the prisoners captured to the traders for a fresh supply of rum.
The African slave trade was commenced on a small scale a few years before the discovery of America. We learn from the Encyclopedia Americana “that, in 1434, a Portuguese captain name Alonzo Gonzales, landed in Guinea, and carried away some colored lads, whom he sold advantageously to Moorish families settled in the South of Spain. Six years after, he committed a similar robbery, and many merchants imitated the practice, and built a fort to protect the traffic.”
After a discovery of the Gold Mines of America, quite a number of negroes were imported, first by the Portuguese then by the Spaniards, to labor in those mines. In 1511 Ferdinand, King of Spain, authorized the importation of a large number. About this period it is said, and generally believed that Bartolomeo las Cas, a Catholic Priest, influenced by a feeling of pity toward the Indians, whom the Spaniards were enslaving, proposed to Ximenes the regular importation of negroes. Whether this be true or not, Charles the V. in 1517, granted the privilege to Lebresa, of importing 4000 slaves to America annually. Lebresa sold his right to import to Genoese merchants, for about $25,000. These merchants now commenced the slave trade in earnest.
Sir John Hawkins has the honor of being the first English captain who engaged in the business of stealing negroes. In 1556 he made an unsuccessful effort at negro catching near Cape Verd. He made another effort at a different point; and after burning the towns, was so bravely resisted by the inhabitants, that he lost seven men, and only captured ten. He continued his depredations until his ship was loaded with human beings, which he sold in America.[1] The trade was now vigorously prosecuted by the christian nations of Europe. It is said that Charles the V., Louis XIII. and Queen Elizabeth had some trouble with their consciences about this horrible trade, but they were quieted by the argument that it brought the African into a good situation to be converted! Pope Leo X. declared that “not only the christian religion but nature itself cried out against a State of slavery.”
These feeble expressions of disapprobation were scarcely heard and the trade went on vigorously—cupidity triumphing over conscience and silencing almost, for many years, the voice of humanity and religion.
An extract from a sermon preached on the slave trade by President Edwards, in the year 1791 will now be quoted. At the time this good man lifted his voice against this traffic, it will be remembered that it was authorized by the Constitution of the United States, and was a source of great profit to those engaged in it.