"There was not a single dance by night or day; not even so much as a fiddle played. There were no drunken carousals, no riotous assemblies. The emancipated were as far from dissipation and debauchery as they were from violence and carnage. Gratitude was the absorbing emotion. From the hill-tops and the valleys the cry of a disenthralled people went upward, like the sound of many waters: 'Glory to God! Glory to God!'"
Mr. Bleby, one of the Methodist missionaries in Jamaica, thus describes the same night in that island:—
"The church where the emancipated people assembled, at ten o'clock at night, was very large; but the aisles, the gallery stairs, the communion-place, the pulpit stairs, were all crowded; and there were thousands of people round the building, at every open door and window, looking in. We thought it right and proper that our Christian people should receive their freedom as a boon from God, in the house of prayer; and we gathered them together in the church for a midnight service. Our mouths had been closed about Slavery up to that time. We could not quote a passage that had reference even to spiritual emancipation, without endangering our lives. The planters had a law of 'constructive treason,' that doomed any man to death who made use of language tending to excite a desire for liberty among the slaves; and they found treason in the Bible and sedition in the hymns of Watts and Wesley, and we had to be very careful how we used them. You may imagine with what feelings I saw myself emancipated from this thraldom, and free to proclaim 'liberty to the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that were bound.' I took for my text, 'Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you.'
"A few minutes before midnight, I requested all the people to kneel down in silent prayer to God, as befitting the solemnity of the hour. I looked down upon them as they knelt. The silence was broken only by sobs of emotion, which it was impossible to repress. The clock began to strike. It was the knell of Slavery in all the British possessions! It proclaimed liberty to eight hundred thousand human beings! When I told them they might rise, what an outburst of joy there was among that mass of people! The clock had ceased to strike, and they were slaves no longer! Mothers were hugging their babes to their bosoms, old white-headed men embracing their children and husbands clasping their wives in their arms. By and by all was still again, and I gave out a hymn. You may imagine the feelings with which these people, just emerging into freedom, shouted
'Send the glad tidings o'er the sea!
His chains are broke, the slave is free!'"
But though the dreaded 1st of August passed away so peacefully and pleasantly, the planters could not get rid of the idea that their laborers would not work after they were free. Mr. Daniell, who managed several estates in Antigua, talking of the subject, two years afterward, with an American gentleman from Kentucky, said: "I expected some irregularities would follow such a prodigious change in the condition of the negroes. I supposed there would be some relaxation from labor during the week that followed emancipation; but on Monday morning, I found all my hands in the field, not one missing. The same day I received a message from another estate, of which I was proprietor, that the negroes, to a man, had refused to go into the field. I immediately rode to the estate, and found the laborers, with hoes in their hands, doing nothing. Accosting them in a friendly manner, I inquired, 'What is the meaning of this? How is it that you are not at work this morning?' They immediately replied, 'It's not because we don't want to work, massa; but we wanted to see you, first and foremost, to know what the bargain would be.' As soon as that matter was settled, the whole body of negroes turned out cheerfully." Another manager declared that the largest gang he had ever seen in the field, on his property, turned out the week after emancipation. And such in fact was the universal testimony of the managers throughout Antigua.
In the days of Slavery, it had always been customary to order out the militia during the Christmas holidays, when the negroes were in the habit of congregating in large numbers, to enjoy the festivities of the season. But the December after emancipation, the Governor issued a proclamation, that, "in consequence of the abolition of Slavery," there was no further need of taking that precaution. And it is a fact that there have been no soldiers out at Christmas from that day to this.
Unfortunately the British government had been so far influenced by the representations of the planters, that the plan of emancipation they adopted was a gradual one. All children under six years old were unconditionally free, the magistrates alone had power to punish, and no human being could be sold. But the slaves, under the new name of apprentices, were obliged to work for their masters six years longer without wages, except one day and a half in the week, which the law decreed should be their own. The number of hours they were to work each day was also stipulated by law. This was certainly a great improvement in their condition; but it was not all they had expected. They were peaceable, and worked more cheerfully than they had done while they were slaves; for now a definite date was fixed when they should own all their time, and they knew that every week brought them nearer to it. Still they felt that entire justice had not been done to them. Sometimes white men asked them if they would work when they were entirely free. They answered, "In Slavery time we work; now we work better; den how you tink we work when we free, when we get paid for work!" Sometimes people said to them, "I suppose you expect to do just as you please when you are your own masters?" They replied: "We 'spect to 'bey de law. In oder countries where dey is all free dey hab de law. We couldn't get along widout de law. In Slavery time, massa would sometimes slash we when we do as well as we could; but de law don't do harm to anybody dat behaves himself. 'Prenticeship is bad enough; but we know de law make it so, and for peace' sake we will be satisfy. But we murmur in we minds."
In the island of Antigua, planters rejected the plan of apprenticeship. They said, "If the negroes must be free, let them be free at once, without any more fuss and trouble." The result proved that they judged wisely for their own interest, as well as for the comfort and encouragement of their laborers. When the negroes found that they were paid for every day's work, they put their whole hearts into it. So zealous were they to earn wages, that they sometimes worked by moonlight, or by the light of fires kindled among the dry cane-stalks. In all respects, the change from the old order of things to the new went on more smoothly in Antigua than it did anywhere else.
In the islands where apprenticeship was tried, the irritability of the masters made it work worse than it would otherwise have done. All that most of them seemed to care for was to get as much work out of their servants as they could, during the six years that they were to work without wages, and it vexed them that they could not use the lash whenever they pleased. They took away various little privileges which they had been accustomed to grant; while during four days and a half of the week the apprentices received no wages to compensate them for the loss of those privileges. Being deprived of the power to sell the children, they refused to supply them with any food. In fact, they contrived every way to make the colored people think they had better have remained slaves. But if they called out, "Work faster, you black rascal, or I'll flog you!" the apprentices would sometimes lose patience, and answer, "You can't flog we now." That would make the master very angry, and he would send the apprentice to a magistrate to be punished for impudence. The magistrates were the associates of the planters; they ate their good dinners, and rode about in their carriages. Consequently, they were more inclined to believe them than they were to believe their servants. The laborers became so well aware of this, that they were accustomed to say to each other, "It's of no use for us to apply to the magistrates. They are so poisoned by massa's turtle-soup." It has been computed by missionaries that, in the course of two years, sixty thousand apprentices received, among them all, two hundred and fifty thousand lashes, besides fifty thousand other legalized punishments, such as the tread-mill and the chain-gang.