The Right Way the Safe Way / Proved by Emancipation in the British West Indies, and Elsewhere

by Unknown

Mr. Thome says: "While we were at Garden River Valley, we attended service in the Baptist Chapel, on the summit of a high mountain, overlooking the sea. Seen from the valley below, it appears to topple on the brink of a frightful precipice. As we ascended the steep and winding road, we saw throngs of apprentices, coming from many miles round, in every direction. The men halted in the thick woods to put on their shoes, which they brought in their hands up the mountain, and the women to draw on their white stockings. Mr. Kingdon, the pastor asked us to address his people, and we cannot soon forget the scene that followed. We had scarcely uttered a sentence, expressive of our sympathy with their condition, and our interest in their temporal and spiritual welfare, before the whole audience began to weep. Some sobbed, others cried aloud; insomuch that for a time we were unable to proceed. When we spoke of it afterwards to their pastor, he said, 'The idea that a stranger and a foreigner should take an interest in their welfare stirred the deep fountains of their hearts. They are so unaccustomed to hear such language from white people, that it fell upon them like rain on the parched earth.'"

JAMAICA BETWEEN 1837 AND 1846.

As time passed on, the conviction deepened in the minds of magistrates, missionaries, and the more reflecting among the planters, that slavery, by its very nature, did not admit of any modification. The apprenticeship system proved "hateful to the slave, obnoxious to the master, and perplexing to the magistrates." Some of the apprentices bought their time; and their orderly, industrious habits afterward confirmed the growing impression that entire emancipation was the best policy. The Marquis of Sligo, the humane and just Governor of Jamaica, was a large proprietor, and he manifested his sentiments by liberating all his apprentices. His example had great influence. Public opinion was again roused in England. Petitions from all classes poured into Parliament, begging that the apprenticeship might be abolished; on the ground that the planters had violated the contract; that they did not use the system as a preparation for freedom, but for purposes of continued oppression. The result of these combined influences was that the field-laborers were not held in apprenticeship till 1840, but were entirely emancipated, with the household slaves, on the first day of August, 1838. Rev. James Phillippo, Baptist Missionary in Jamaica, thus describes the day: "On the preceding evening, the missionary stations throughout the island were crowded with people, filling all the places of worship. They remained at their devotions till the day of liberty dawned, when they saluted it with joyous acclamations. Then they dispersed through the towns and villages, singing 'God save the queen' and rending the air with their shouts: 'Freedom's come!' 'We're free! We're free!' 'Our wives and children are free!' During the day, the places of worship were crowded to suffocation. The scenes presented exceeded all description. Joyous excitement pervaded the whole island. At Spanish Town, the Governor, Sir Lionel Smith, addressed the emancipated people, who formed a procession of 7,000, and escorted the children of the schools, about 2,000 in number, to the Government House. They bore banners and flags with various inscriptions, of which the following are samples. 'Education, Religion, and Social Order.' 'August First, 1838; the Day of our Freedom.' 'Truth and Justice have at last prevailed.' The children sang before the Government House, and His Excellency made a speech characterized by simplicity and affection, which was received with enthusiastic cheers. The procession then escorted their pastor to his house. In front of the Baptist Chapel were three triumphal arches, decorated with leaves and flowers, and surmounted by flags, bearing the inscriptions, 'Freedom has come!' 'Slavery is no more!' 'The chains are broken, Africa is free!' The enthusiasm of the multitude was wound up to the highest pitch. They wanted to greet all the flags; many of which bore the names of their benefactors, 'Sturge,' 'Brougham,' 'Sligo,' etc. The flags were unfurled, and for nearly an hour the air rang with exulting shouts, in which the shrill voices of the 2,000 children joined: 'We're free! We're free!' 'Our wives and our children are free!'"

Several of the kindly disposed planters gave rural fêtes to the laborers. Long tables were spread in the lawns; arches of evergreens were festooned with flowers; and on the trees floated banners, bearing the names of those who had been most conspicuous in bringing about this blessed result. Songs were sung, speeches made, prayers offered, and a plentiful repast eaten. Mr. Phillippo says: "The conduct of the newly emancipated peasantry would have done credit to Christians of the most civilized country in the world. They were clean in their persons, and neat in their attire. Their behavior was modest, unassuming, and decorous in a high degree. There was no crowding, no vulgar familiarity, but all were courteous and obliging to each other, as members of one harmonious family. There was no dancing, gambling, or carousing. All seemed to have a sense of the obligations they owed to their masters, to each other, and to the civil authorities. The masters who were present at these fêtes congratulated their former dependents on the boon they had received, and hopes were mutually expressed that all past differences and wrongs might be forgiven. Harmony and cheerfulness smiled on every countenance; and the demon of discord disappeared, for a season. On some of the estates where these festivals were held, the laborers, with few individual exceptions, went to work as usual on the following day. Many of them gave their first week of free labor as an offering of good-will to their masters. Thus the period, from which many of the planters had apprehended the worst consequences, passed away in peace and harmony. Not a single instance of violence or insubordination, of serious disagreement or of intemperance, occurred in any part of the island."

After this safe transition to a better state of things, the public were informed of no troubles in Jamaica for several years, except deficiency of labor, and diminished production of sugar. Pro-slavery presses, both in England and America, eagerly proclaimed these deficiencies as the results of emancipation. But enough has been already said to prove, to any candid and reflecting mind, that these effects were attributable to other causes. First. Emancipation found nearly all the estates on the island heavily mortgaged; most of them for more than they were worth. The compensation money, received from the British government, was soon swallowed up, the planters hardly knew how. It helped them to pay off a portion of their long-accumulating arrears, but left them still involved in pecuniary difficulties. Many of them had not money to pay for labor; and some, who had it, retained too much of the spirit of slave-holding to be scrupulous about paying the negroes for their work. Rev. Mr. Bleby says: "I know hundreds of colored laborers in Jamaica, who labored on the sugar plantations, and were defrauded of their wages. I knew a man who had a salary of one thousand pounds ($4,845) from an office under government, who employed two or three hundred laborers several months, then took the benefit of the Insolvent Act, and never paid them a cent. One of those great planting attorneys, who had fifty or sixty estates under his management, boasted to a friend of mine, that he made them profitable, by cheating the laborers out of half their wages, by one method or another. Is it surprising that the colored people should prefer to raise produce on a few acres of their own, to working on the plantations without wages? I was in Kingston when the railroad was made. It was done entirely by the colored people. The manager told me he could not desire laborers to work better. And what was the reason? Every Saturday night he paid them their wages."

Second. The tenure by which land was held was very precarious, as has already been explained by Governor Hincks. Planters in such a perverse state of mind as many were in Jamaica, were, of course, not slow to avail themselves of this instrument of oppression. When the emancipated laborers hired a hut and a bit of land on the estates where they had been accustomed to work, they were required to pay rent several times over. According to the statement of the Rev. Mr. Bleby, "The employer, would say to the husband, 'You must pay in labor, for the rent of your house.' Then he would say the same to the wife; and perhaps to other adult members of the family. Thus they managed to get rent paid twice, and sometimes four times over." If the tenant expressed dissatisfaction, or gave offence in any way, or if his capricious landlord merely wanted to make him feel that he was still in his power, he was ejected at once, and obliged to take for his crops whatever the despotic employer saw fit to value them at. Such tyrannical proceedings were common all over the island. If a majority of the planters had intended to drive the negroes away from their estates, and force them "to skulk in the woods and live upon yams," as they had predicted, they could not have adopted a policy better suited to their purpose. The negroes, notwithstanding their strong local attachments, were driven from the sugar estates by these persecutions; but they did far better than "skulk in the woods, and retrograde to barbarism," as I shall presently show.

Rev. Mr. Phillippo, writing in 1843, says: "The planters persisted in their designs, and, at last multitudes of laborers were compelled to sacrifice their feelings of attachment to their domiciles, and to establish themselves in freeholds of their own. Hence, and from no other cause, arose those reports of insolence and idleness, so widely and perseveringly circulated against the peasantry. It is delightful to add that the injustice and impolicy of such conduct have now become generally manifest; so that the causes of mutual dissatisfaction are now, to a considerable extent, extinct."

An intelligent gentleman in St. Thomas said to Mr. Thome, "The planters have set their hearts upon the ruin of the island, and they will be sorely disappointed, if it shouldn't come." But this disappointment was in reserve for them, and no ingenuity of theirs could prevent it. As individuals, they suffered for their blind and narrow policy; but public prosperity began to move steadily onward.

The Lord Bishop of Jamaica, in a circular recommending the establishment of schools for the emancipated peasantry, dated November, 1838, makes the following statement: "The peaceable demeanor of the objects of our instruction, and their generally acknowledged good behavior, are the natural fruits of being made better acquainted with the saving truths of the gospel; and no stronger proof can be given of their desire to obtain this knowledge than the fact that their choice in fixing their settlements is often influenced by the opportunities afforded for acquiring moral and religious instruction for themselves and their children."

Early in 1839, Sir Lionel Smith, Governor of the island, made the following statement, in an official document: "I have sent numerous testimonies to England, to show that where labor has been encouraged by fair remuneration and kind treatment, it has nowhere been wanting."