Anti-slavery catechism

by Lydia Maria Child

A. It is admitted to be so. Southerners often declare that it takes six slaves to do what is easily performed by half the number of free laborers. Henry Clay says, “It is believed that slave-labor would no where be employed in the farming portions of the United States, if the proprietors were not tempted to raise slaves by the high price of the Southern market, which keeps it up in their own;” and he says the effects of introducing slavery into Kentucky have been to keep them in the rear of their non-slave-holding neighbors, in agriculture, manufactures, and general prosperity. General Washington, when writing to Sir John Sinclair on the comparative value of the soil in Pennsylvania and Virginia, ascribes the very low price of land in Virginia to the existence of slavery among them. John Randolph declared that Virginia was so impoverished by slavery, that slaves would soon be advertising for runaway masters. A distinguished writer on political economy says: “The slave system inflicts an incalculable amount of human suffering, for the sake of making a wholesale waste of labor and capital.”

Q. But the masters say the negroes would cut their throats, if they were emancipated.

A. It is safer to judge by uniform experience than by the assertions of the masters, who, even if they have no intention to deceive, are very liable to be blinded by having been educated in the midst of a bad system. Listen to facts on this subject. On the 10th of October, 1811, the Congress of Chili decreed that every child born after that day should be free. In April, 1812, the government of Buenos Ayres ordered that every child born after the 1st of January, 1813, should be free. In 1821, the Congress of Colombia emancipated all slaves who had borne arms in favor of the Republic, and provided for the emancipation, in eighteen years, of the whole slave population, of 900,000. In September, 1829, the government of Mexico granted immediate and entire emancipation to every slave. In all these instances, not one case of insurrection or of bloodshed has ever been heard of, as the result of emancipation.

In St. Domingo no measures were taken gradually to fit the slaves for freedom. They were suddenly emancipated during a civil war, and armed against British invaders. They at once ceased to be property, and were recognized as human beings. Col. Malefant, who resided on the island, informs us, in his Historical and Political History of the Colonies, that, “after this public act of emancipation, the negroes remained quiet both in the south and west, and they continued to work upon all the plantations. The colony was flourishing. The whites lived happily and in peace upon their estates, and the negroes continued to work for them.” General Lacroix, in his Memoirs of St. Domingo, speaking of the same period, says: “The colony marched as by enchantment towards its ancient splendor; cultivation prospered; every day produced perceptible proofs of its progress.” This prosperous state of things lasted about eight years, and would perhaps have continued to the present day, had not Bonaparte, at the instigation of the old French planters, sent an army to deprive the blacks of the freedom they had used so well. The enemies of abolition are always talking of the horrors of St. Domingo, as an argument to prove that emancipation is dangerous; but historical facts prove that the effort to restore slavery occasioned all the bloodshed in that island; while emancipation produced only the most peaceful and prosperous results.

In June, 1794, Victor Hugo, a French republican general, retook Guadaloupe from the British, and immediately proclaimed freedom to all the slaves. They were 85,000 in number, and the whites only 13,000. No disasters occurred in consequence of this step. More than seven years after this, the Supreme Council of Guadaloupe, in an official document, alluding to the tranquillity which reigned throughout the island, observed: “We shall have the satisfaction of having given an example, which will prove that all classes of people may live in perfect harmony with each other, under an administration which secures justice to all classes.” In 1802, Bonaparte sent a powerful French force, and again reduced the island to slavery, at the cost of about 20,000 negro lives.

In July, 1828, thirty thousand Hottentots in Cape Colony were emancipated from their long and cruel bondage, and admitted by law to all the rights and privileges of the white colonists. Outrages were predicted, as the inevitable consequence of freeing human creatures so completely brutalized as the poor Hottentots; but all went on peaceably; and, as a gentleman facetiously remarked, “Hottentots as they were, they worked much better for Mr. Cash, than they had ever done for Mr. Lash.”

Q. But they say the British have had difficulties in their West Indies.

A. The enemies of the cause have tried very hard to get up a “raw-head and bloody-bones” story; but even if you take their own accounts, you will find that they have not been able to adduce any instances of violence in support of their assertions. The real facts are these: The measure was not carried in a manner entirely satisfactory to the English abolitionists. Their knowledge of human nature, combined with the practical evidence afforded by history, led them to conclude that immediate and unqualified emancipation was safest for the master, as well as just to the slave; but the planters raised such a hue and cry concerning bloodshed and insurrection, that the British government determined to conciliate them by a gradual abolition of slavery. It was ordained that the slaves should work six years longer without wages, under the name of apprentices; but no punishment could be inflicted without the special order of magistrates. The colonies had a right to dispense with the apprenticeship system if they pleased; but out of the seventeen West India colonies, Antigua and Bermuda were the only ones that chose to do so. The act of Parliament provided that each apprentice should work for his master forty and a half hours a week, and have the rest of the time to himself. The masters were not satisfied with this; and they tried, by a series of petty vexations, to coerce the apprentices into individual contracts to work fifty hours in a week. While the people had been slaves, they were always allowed cooks to prepare their meals, a person to bring water to the gang during the hot hours, and nurses to tend the little children while their mothers were at work in the field; but because the Abolition Act did not expressly provide that these privileges should be continued, the masters saw fit to take them away. Each apprentice was obliged to quit his or her work, and go, sometimes a great distance, to the cabin to cook his meals, instead of having it served up in the field; and the time taken up in this operation was to be made up out of the apprentices’ own time. No water was allowed to be brought to quench their thirst; the aged and infirm, instead of being left, as formerly, to superintend the children under the shade, were ordered out into the burning fields; and mothers were obliged to toil at the hoe with their infants strapped at their backs. In addition to all these annoyances, the planters obtained a new proclamation from the governor, by which they were authorized to require extra labor of the apprentices in times of emergency, or whenever they should deem it necessary, in the cultivation, gathering, or manufacture of the crop, provided they repaid them an equal time at a convenient season of the year. This was very much like taking from a New England laborer the month of July, and paying it back to him in January. The negroes had behaved extremely well when emancipation was first proclaimed, and universally showed a disposition to be orderly, submissive, and thankful; but this system of privation and injustice soon created discontent. They knew that they were to receive no wages, however industrious they might be; and they were well aware that their masters no longer had a right to flog them. A bad stimulus to labor had been removed, without supplying a good one in its place. In three of the colonies, the apprentices refused to work on the terms required by their masters. In Jamaica, a very small military force was sent into one parish, and only on one occasion; but no violence was offered on either side; for the apprentices confined themselves to passive resistance—merely refusing to work on the required terms. In St. Christophers, difficulties of a similar kind occurred; but no outrage of any kind was committed. In one fortnight all the trouble was at an end; and out of twenty thousand apprentices, only thirty were found to be absent from their work; and some of these were supposed to be dead in the woods. In Demarara, the principal difficulty occurred. The laborers assembled together, and marched round with a flag staff; but the worst thing they did was to beat a constable with their fists. It is a solemn fact that a few fisty cuffs with a constable are the only violence to persons or property, that has been attempted by the eight hundred thousand slaves emancipated in the British Colonies!