In spite of all precautions, a slave did succeed, now and then, in gaining his freedom. It is with great satisfaction that I read an old Act of Assembly, setting forth that “Whereas a negro named Billy, slave to John Tillit, has for several years unlawfully absented himself from his master’s service, said Billy is pronounced an outlaw, and a bounty of a thousand pounds of tobacco set on his head.” The bounty does not trouble me, for I feel sure that the craft and strength which made Billy an outlaw, kept him safe from the bolts aimed against him by the colonial legislature.
The statute-books of Maryland and Virginia are records of the barbarity into which injustice may drive a kindly, liberty-loving people who are forced into cruelty by the logic of events. Having taken the wrong road, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim, the Cavaliers found the rocks ready to fall on them if they went forward, and the gulf yawning behind them if they tried to turn back.
It must never be forgotten in their behalf that they did try to turn about, when they saw their error. Their best men, over and over again, urged the prohibiting of slavery, and there is more than a probability that they would have won their cause, but for the attitude of that country whose air was afterward pronounced too pure to be breathed by a slave insomuch that his shackles fell off, when he touched the shore sacred to liberty. Yet, in 1695, this highly moral and philanthropic England declared in a statute, the opinion of its king and Parliament, that the slave-trade was highly beneficial to the kingdom and colonies. In 1712, Queen Anne boasted in her speech to Parliament, of her success in securing to England a new market for slaves in Spanish America. Jefferson testified that Virginia was constantly balked in her efforts to throw off slavery by the attitude of the home government. Carolina attempted restriction and gained a rebuke. In 1775, the Earl of Dartmouth haughtily replied to a colonial agent, “We cannot allow the colonies to check, or discourage in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation.”
Yet all the blame cannot be thrown on England. Had the colonies been as firm in defence of their duties, as they were when their rights were in question, England must have yielded. Virginia was the first State to enunciate the proposition of the equality of man, yet was blind to her own inconsistency. The leading supporters of the cause of liberty were themselves slave-owners. George Washington owned negroes. John Randolph had a bunk for his slave side by side with the bed of his pet horse. Patrick Henry wrote with admirable candor: “Believe me, I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery; they are equally calculated to promote moral and political good. Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not—I can not—justify it.” The great Southern statesman said that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just. Washington deplored the system, yet so closely were all commercial and political interests interwoven with it that it seemed impossible to disentangle them. Even philanthropy did not scorn its alliance. Whitefield expended the money raised by his eloquent preaching at Charleston, on a plantation with slaves to work it for the benefit of an orphan asylum.
The Church spread its surplice of protection over the institution. Baptism was permitted to the slave, but with the distinct understanding that it was to make no difference in the condition of bondage of these brothers in Christ. One South Carolina clergyman ventured to preach on the duties of masters to their servants, but his congregation said to him: “Sir, we pay you a genteel salary to read to us the prayers of the liturgy and to explain to us such parts of the Gospel as the rule of the Church directs, but we do not want you to teach us what to do with our blacks.”
The Northern colonies were freed from the curse of slaveholding as much by policy as by principle. They tried slave-owning, but, happily for them, it did not pay. The climate and the conditions of their industries forbade its spread among them. But their hands were not unstained. If they did not buy slaves, they sold them. There still exists, if Bishop Meade may be trusted, a bill of sale of a slave, bearing the signature of Jonathan Edwards.
Every year ships were fitted out from Medford, Salem, or New Bedford, which sailed away loaded with rum to be exchanged in Africa for negroes, who in turn were sold for molasses, to be made into rum again. The transactions of one of these slavers are preserved in the History of Medford, and makes interesting reading for those who would hold up the Puritan as innocent of the transgression which stains the character of the Cavalier. The deadly parallel column tells its story, so that he who runs may read:
| Dr. | The Natives of Annamboe. | Per Contra. | Cr. | |||
| 1770. | Gals | 1770 | Gals | |||
| Apr. 22 | ||||||
| Apr. | 22. | To 1 hh. of rum | 110 | By 1 Woman Slave | 110 | |
| May 1. | ||||||
| May | 1. | """ | 130 | By 1 Prime Woman Slave. | 130 | |
| May 2. | ||||||
| May | 2. | """ | 105 | By 1 Boy Slave 4 ft. 1 in. | 105 | |
| May 7. | ||||||
| May | 7. | """ | 130 | By 1 Boy Slave 4 ft. 3 in. | 108 | |
| May 5. | ||||||
| May | 5. | Cash in gold 5 oz. | 2 | 1 Prime Man Slave 5 oz. | 2 | |
| May 5. | ||||||
| " | 5. | """2 oz. | } | 3 | 1 Old Man for a Lingister | 3 oz. |
| " | 5. | 2 doz. of snuff1 oz. | ||||
The negroes thus brought to the American colonies were not of one race. A slaver often carried men of different languages, habits, and characteristics, perhaps hereditary enemies. Some were jet black, some mahogany-colored, and others still of a tawny yellow, with flat noses and projecting jaws. This last type belonged to the low, swampy ground at the Niger’s delta, and marked the race most adapted to the cultivation of the rice in its swamps, so fatal to white laborers. All this diversity among the negroes accounts for their lack of power and energy to combine in a struggle for freedom. “The negroes that have been slaves in their own country,” Hugh Jones says, “make the best servants; for they that have been kings and great men there, are generally lazy, haughty and obstinate.” Alas, for these poor magnates from Heathendom!