This cannot be denied. It has been, as we have shown, admitted both by Dr. Wayland and Dr. Channing.[195] But while the end is approved, the means are not liked. Few of the abolitionists are disposed to offer any substitute for our method. They are satisfied merely to pull down and destroy, without the least thought or care in regard to consequences. Dr. Channing has, however, been pleased to propose another method, for securing the industry of the black and the prosperity of the State. Let us then, for a moment, look at this scheme.
The black man, says he, should not be owned. He should work, but not under the control of a master. His overseer should be appointed by the State, and be amenable to the State for the proper exercise of his authority. Now, if this learned and eloquent orator had only looked one inch beneath the surface of his own scheme, he would have seen that it is fraught with the most insuperable difficulties, and that its execution must needs be attended with the most ruinous consequences.
Emancipate the blacks, then, and let the State undertake to work them. In the first place, we must ignore every principle of political economy, and consent to the wildest and most reckless of experiments, ere we can agree that the State should superintend and carry on the agricultural interests of the country. But suppose this difficulty out of the way, on what land would the State cause its slaves to be worked? It would scarcely take possession of the plantations now under improvements; and, setting aside the owners, proceed to cultivate the land. But it must either do this, or else leave these plantations to become worthless for the want of laborers, and open new ones for the benefit of the State! In no point of view could a more utterly chimerical or foolish scheme be well conceived. If we may not be allowed to adhere to our own plan, we beg that some substitute may be proposed which is not fraught with such inevitable destruction to the whole South. Otherwise, we shall fear that these self-styled friends of humanity are more bent on carrying out their own designs than they are on promoting our good.
But what is meant by the freedom of the emancipated slaves, on which so many exalted eulogies have been pronounced? Its first element, it is plain, is a freedom from labor[196]—freedom from the very first law of nature. In one word, its sum and substance is a power on the part of the freed black to act pretty much as he pleases. Now, before we expend oceans of enthusiasm on such a freedom, would it not be well to see how he would be pleased to act?
Dr. Channing has told us, we are aware, of the "indomitable love of liberty," which had been infused into the breast of "fierce barbarians" by their native wildernesses.[197] But we are no great admirers of a liberty which knows no law except its own will, and seeks no end except the gratification of passion.[198] Hence, we have no very great respect for the liberty of fierce barbarians. It would make a hell on earth. "My maxim," exclaims Dr. Channing, "is anything but slavery!" Even slavery, we cry, before a freedom such as his!
This kind of freedom, it should be remembered, was born in France and cradled in the revolution. May it never be forgotten that the "Friends of the Blacks" at Boston had their exact prototypes in "les Amis des Noirs" of Paris. Of this last society Robespierre was the ruling spirit, and Brissot the orator. By the dark machinations of the one,[199] and the fiery eloquence of the other, the French people—la grande nation—were induced, in 1791, to proclaim the principle of equality to and for the free blacks of St. Domingo. This beautiful island, then the brightest and most precious jewel in the crown of France, thus became the first of the West Indies in which the dreadful experiment of a forced equality was tried. The authors of that experiment were solemnly warned of the horrors into which it would inevitably plunge both the whites and the blacks of the island. Yet, firm and immovable as death, Robespierre sternly replied, then "Perish the colonies rather than sacrifice one iota of our principles!"[200] The magnificent colony of St. Domingo did not quite perish, it is true; but yet, as every one, except the philanthropic "Ami des Noirs" of the present day, still remembers with a thrill of horror, the entire white population soon melted, like successive flakes of snow, in the furnace of that freedom which a Robespierre had kindled.
The atrocities of this awful massacre have had, as the historian has said,[201] no parallel in the annals of human crime. "The negroes," says Alison, "marched with spiked infants on their spears instead of colors; they sawed asunder the male prisoners, and violated the females on the dead bodies of their husbands." The work of death, thus completed with such outbursts of unutterable brutality, constituted and closed the first act in the grand drama of Haytien freedom.
But equality was not yet established. The colored men, or mulattoes, beheld, with an eye burning with jealousy, the superior power and ascendency of the blacks. Hence arose the horrors of a civil war. Equality had been proclaimed, and anarchy produced. In this frightful chaos, the ambitious mulattoes, whose insatiable desire of equality had first disturbed the peace of the island, perished miserably beneath the vengeance of the very slaves whom they had themselves roused from subjection and elevated into irresistible power. Thus ended the second act of the horrible drama.
This bloody discord, this wild chaos of disgusting brutalities, of course terminated not in freedom, but in a military despotism. With the subsequent wars and fearful destruction of human life our present inquiry has nothing to do. We must confine our attention to the point before us, namely, the kind of freedom achieved by the blacks of St. Domingo. We have witnessed the two great manifestations of that freedom; we shall now look at its closing scene. This we shall, for obvious reasons, present in the language of an English author.
"An independent negro state," says he, "was thus established in Hayti; but the people have not derived all the benefits which they sanguinely expected. Released from their compulsory toil, they have not yet learned to subject themselves to the restraints of regular industry. The first absolute rulers made the most extraordinary efforts to overcome the indolence which soon began to display itself. The Code Rural directed that the laborer should fix himself on a certain estate, which he was never afterward to quit without a passport from the government. His hours of labor and rest were fixed by statute. The whip, at first permitted, was ultimately prohibited; but as every military officer was allowed to chastise with a thick cane, and almost every proprietor held a commission, the laborer was not much relieved. By these means Mr. Mackenzie supposes that the produce of 1806 was raised to about a third of that of 1789. But such violent regulations could not continue to be enforced amid the succeeding agitations, and under a republican régime. Almost all traces of laborious culture were soon obliterated; large tracts, which had been one entire sugar garden, presented now only a few scattered plantations."[202]
