The slave trade

by Theodore D. Jervey

Unless it can be shown, however, that there were no accessions to the Negro population of the United States from without, between the periods selected by Prof. Phillips, the mere fact that the rate of increase of the Negro population of South Carolina was substantially smaller than that of the United States at large does not establish that South Carolina was more of a slave exporting than importing State for that period; for the greater increase without could well be due to importation in great volume elsewhere, and that there was such was asserted by many, notably by Henry Middleton, in Congress, the very year of Hayne’s speech in the South Carolina Legislature against importations from other States.[46] But apart from this, before this, South Carolina had become the State with the largest Negro population to its white population of all the States of the Union and that, the rate of increase of her Negro population from this date, or even a decade earlier, to 1860, “was substantially smaller than that of the Negroes in the United States at large” was simply due to the tremendous accessions of the Negro population of the four new cotton States: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, superimposed upon a Negro population originally much smaller than that of South Carolina. The Negro population of those four States did in that period increase 1,384,555; but in the same time their white population increased 1,438,607; while in the same period the white and Negro population of South Carolina increased respectively 53,860 and 147,028. And so difficult was it to overcome this tremendous start attained by South Carolina in these early fatal years, that in 1860 the excess of South Carolina’s colored population over her white population was 121,029, as compared with an excess of only 83,505 for Mississippi, the next greatest. Undoubtedly in the period selected by Prof. Phillips many Negro slaves passed out of South Carolina; but many whites did also; for “from 1820 to 1860, South Carolina was a beehive from which swarms were continually going forth to populate the newer growing cotton States of the Southwest,” and “in 1860 there were then living in other States 193,389 white persons born in South Carolina.”[47] In the half century the average rate of increase of South Carolina whites was between 7 and 8 per cent, colored 21. In Virginia and Maryland in 1810 the Negro population amounted to 668,515. It increased by 1860 by an addition of 151,523. In South Carolina in 1810 the Negro population amounted to 200,919, by 1860 it had received an addition of 212,401, of which 64,382 had arrived in the decade of the repeal of the law prohibiting importation from other States, and 58,021 in the following decade. It is true that in the following decade from 1830 to 1840, the increase of the Negro population of South Carolina was comparatively slight, being only 11,992, but it was followed in the next decade by again an increase of 58,630, while the white increase in the same two decades was respectively 2,221 and 15,479.

But there was another way of measuring the importance of the repeal. Necessarily with the inflowing tide came some such as Denmark Vesey and Gullah Jack, slaves and free Negroes whose past was not known, and according to the report of the Massachusetts legislative committee in 1821, dealing with only 6,740 free persons of color in the State, among other “evils,” from such, appeared, inter alia:

2. Collecting in the large towns an indolent and disorderly and corrupt population.

3. Substituting themselves in many labors and occupations which in the end it would be more advantageous to have performed by the white and native population of the State.[48]

It is apparent then, from this, as well as from the arguments of Mr. Sergeant, that the real situation of the representatives of the two sections, in the great Missouri debate, has never been put with absolute accuracy. It was an assertion upon the part of the Southerners of their right to carry their property with them wherever they went in the Union, and upon the part of the Northerners a denial of this right. It precipitated an argument whether extension and diffusion of slavery meant the same thing, many Southern men, of eminence, contended that by the process of diffusion there would be apt to be the beginning of the end of slavery, and if there had been no illicit importation of slaves possible, there would have been great merit in this suggestion. But beyond all these arguments on the part of the Northerners, the Missouri Question indicated opposition to the mere presence of the Negro, bond or free, in the Northwest. He was an undesirable resident.

Up to this time, in the main, the attitude of the Southern statesmen had been free from sectionalism. On the other hand, New England had exhibited sectionalism, and it was New England’s deputies in the Constitutional Convention, who joining with those of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, had “formed a bargain,” abrogating the slave trade in such a way as practically to recognize slavery as a property interest secured by the Constitution. The time allowed the slave trade had been long enough, as Madison had said it would be. As great as had been the rate of increase of the white population, it had been exceeded by that of the colored in the proportions of 90 to 95 per cent. What Col. Mason had prophesied had also come to pass. He had declared in 1787: “The Western people are already calling out for slaves for their new lands and will fill that country with slaves, if they can be got through South Carolina and Georgia.”

They had been got no doubt in large numbers through South Carolina and Georgia; but also, in all probabilities, through Louisiana, and if not through, to some extent from, Maryland and Virginia. The Negro population had in the West, in three decades sprung up from 16,322 to 385,825; while the seven States, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, held some 1,193,732 head of this species of property, representing an investment of something like $477,492,800, stamped as property by having been made dutiable under Federal law up to 1808. Such a property interest was almost certain to produce a sectional policy for its protection, and in the assertion of such a policy, South Carolina having the largest stake and the most forceful representatives, would naturally take the lead.

The consequences were that the broad national policy of Lowndes, from this date gradually succumbed to the influences which forced Calhoun away from it, despite his efforts to mould into one form a national and sectional policy, based upon the declared recognition of slavery, in place of, or in addition to, the implied recognition furnished by the Constitutional compromise or “bargain” over the sanction of the slave trade up to 1808. As the South drew together in support of slavery, the overshadowing dimensions of its greatest exponent cast into oblivion Barnwell, Hamilton and Alston, who had so clearly perceived the dangers from its increase, and even reduced the proportions of men as preëminently great as Lowndes and his successor, Robert Y. Hayne.

As long as the tariff held the center of the stage, the change was not so clearly apparent; but with the settling down, after the explosion of sentiment which nullification occasioned, the division between the sections was unmistakable. From that period the Lower South presented an unbroken front in defence of slavery, under the leadership of South Carolina.

From 1800 the South had, to a great extent, directed the policies of the Republic, and, in the persons of Lowndes, Cheves and Calhoun, South Carolina had from 1813 to 1820 been a potent influence therein; but the Missouri Compromise and Taylor’s election over Lowndes in 1820, for the Speakership, marked the beginning of the change. No man saw it more clearly than the great man whom Taylor defeated. His views on the condition of affairs at this time is thus expressed by a contemporary: “The Northern people had outstripped the Southern and desired to see the offices of the Government in Northern hands. This inevitable result Mr. Lowndes saw clearly forty years ago, and thought it wise for the South to yield the hold she had so long possessed on political power, when she was no longer able to retain it.”[49] The clear judgment of Lowndes had revealed to him what the fatal brilliancy of Calhoun’s intellect prevented him from perceiving, viz.: that there could not be fashioned for the needs of imperfect humanity a perfectly symmetrical policy. Lowndes had brought Webster and Clay together and pushed through the tariff bill of 1816.[50]