"By virtue of our Apostolic office, we warn and admonish in the Lord all Christians of whatever conditions they may be, and enjoin upon them that for the future, no one shall venture unjustly to oppress the Indians, Negroes or other men whoever they may be, to strip them of their property, or reduce them into servitude, or give aid or support to those who commit such excesses or carry on that infamous traffic by which the blacks, as if they were not men, but mere impure animals reduced like them into servitude, contrary to the laws of justice and humanity, are bought, sold and devoted to endure the hardest labor. Wherefore, by virtue of our Apostolic authority, we condemn all these things as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name."[489]
Probably the most memorable statement of the history and Catholic position on slavery is the beautiful letter which Pope Leo XIII, in 1888, addressed to the Brazilian Bishops, exhorting them to banish from their country the remnants of slavery—a letter to which the Bishops responded with their most energetic efforts. Some generous slave-owners freed their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the Church. Catholic Brazil emancipated its slaves without war or bloodshed. The following are some extracts from the Pope's letter:
"The condition of slavery, in which a considerable part of the human family has been sunk in squalor and affliction now for many centuries, is deeply to be deplored; for the system is one wholly opposed to that which was originally ordained by God and by nature. The Supreme Author of all things so decreed that man should exercise a sort of royal dominion over beasts and cattle and fish and fowl, but never that man should exercise a like dominion over his fellow-man. * * * * * * * * * Monuments, laws, institutions, through a continuous series of ages, teach and splendidly demonstrate the great love of the Church towards slaves, whom in their miserable condition, she never left destitute of protection, and always to the best of her power alleviated. Therefore, praise and thanks are due to the Catholic Church, since she has merited it in the prosperity of nations, by the very great beneficence of Christ, our Redeemer and banisher of slavery, and cause of true liberty, fraternity and equality among men. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, when the base stain of slavery was almost blotted out from among Christian nations, the Catholic Church took the greatest care that the evil germs of such depravity should nowhere revive. Therefore, she directed her provident vigilance to the newly-discovered regions of Africa, Asia and America, for a report had reached her that the leaders of the expeditions, Christians though they were, were wickedly making use of their arms and ingenuity to establish and impose slavery on those innocent nations. Indeed, since the crude nature of the soil which they had to overcome, nor less the wealth of metals which had to be extracted by mining, required very hard work, unjust and inhuman plans were entered into; for a new traffic was begun, slaves being transported for that purpose from Ethiopia, which at that time, under the name of the slave trade, too much occupied those colonies."[490]
The fact that the Catholic Church has been a leader of mankind to light and Christian liberty is attested by leading non-Catholic scholars and historians. The historian Lecky, who holds no brief for Catholicism, says: "The Catholic Church was the very heart of Christendom and the spirit that radiated from her penetrated into all the relations of life. Catholicism laid the very foundations of modern civilization. Herself the most admirable of all organizations, there was formed beneath her influence, a vast network of organizations—political, municipal and social—which supplied a large proportion of the materials of almost every modern structure. In the transition from slavery to serfdom, and in the transition from serfdom to liberty, she was the most zealous, the most unwearied and the most efficient agent."[491] The French Protestant Guizot says: "There can be no doubt that the Catholic Church struggled resolutely against the great vices of the social state—against slavery, for instance. These facts are so well known that it is needless for me to enter into details."[492]
Speaking of the development of the colored race under Catholic influence, Dr. Blyden, a noted Negro scholar, wrote in Frazer's Magazine for May, 1870, the following words, which he afterwards incorporated into his Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race:
"The thoughtful and cultivated Protestant Negro, though he may, ex animo, subscribe to the tenets of the particular denomination to which he belongs, as approaching nearest to the teaching of God's word, yet he cannot read history without feeling a deep debt of gratitude to the Roman Catholic Church. The only Christian Negroes who have had the power to successfully throw off oppression and maintain their position as freemen were Roman Catholic Negroes—the Haitiens; and the greatest Negro the Christian world has yet produced was a Roman Catholic—Toussaint L'Ouverture. In the ecclesiastical system of modern, as was the case in the military system of ancient Rome, there seems to be a place for all races and colors. At Rome the names of Negroes, males as well as females, who have been distinguished for piety and good works, are found in the calendar under the designation of saints."[493]
Coming to America, we find that from the beginning of our history, the Christian forces, which in the past strove to civilize and Christianize the old world, have exerted themselves in behalf of the oppressed in the New World. Catholic missionaries have always felt constrained to carry out the injunction of the Divine Savior to his apostles, "Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature."[494] Their object was not to gain gold or worldly fortune, but to bring the light of Christian truth to the minds of savage aborigines; to win souls to Christ. To those missionaries, as the Church teaches, the souls of the children of all races are equally precious in the sight of God, whatever may be their individual or racial character. It is for this that they left in young manhood, their relatives and comfortable homes, with a probability of never returning. In early ages, they brought Christianity and civilization to peoples and nations of the lands of the Eastern Hemisphere. After the discovery of the New World by Columbus, they were with the explorers of North and South America. From about 1615 we find them laboring among the Indian tribes from Quebec in Canada to California in the West. Intrepid apostles like Marquette, Breheuf, Menard, Millet, Lallemant, Jogues, Le Moyne, Dablon, Garnier, and a host of others like them blazed the way through the wilderness to labor and suffer and die for the salvation of the Indians. They made records in the service of Christ among the Hurons, Algonquins, Iroquois and Mohawks. To the South, in Florida, Spanish Franciscans fell victims to the treachery of Creeks and Seminoles. In the middle of the last century, before the coming of the settlers, Father De Smet spent nearly forty years among the tribes of the great Western plains and in the Rocky Mountain region. Other missionaries in Western Canada penetrated the North as far as the Arctic Circle. In the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century, a frail and slender man, in the person of the learned and saintly Archbishop Charles J. Seghers, journeyed thousands of miles, to bring the message of the Master to the red men in the vast territory of distant Alaska. In California, Arizona and Texas, the traveler meets with many evidences and monuments of the work of early Spanish Catholic missionaries among the Indians. The records show that in some instances, the missionaries were accompanied by Negroes. Probably the first Negro whose name is recorded in North American history is that of Estevan, or Stephen, who accompanied Father Marcos de Niza, in 1536, on a missionary expedition into the territory of the present States of Arizona and New Mexico.[495]
It is at a later period, however, than that of these early missionaries, that the coming of the Negro as a notable part of the population of the American Colonies begins. This growth takes its rise with the revival of the slave trade in America after the first importation of slaves brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. There was long a demand for laborers, and thus an increasing number of slaves were brought from Africa to the various colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, from Massachusetts to Louisiana. British ships at that time supplied not only English colonies with slave labor, but also those of France and Spain.[496] Catholic colonists were confined to Maryland and Louisiana. They also had slaves in their homes and on their plantations, but it is known that they provided for their religious needs and were obliged by their religion to regard their slaves as human beings and not as mere chattels. Under Lord Baltimore's government in the English Colony of Maryland, the Catholic Proprietary himself tells us in his answer to the Lords in 1676, concerning the law that had been enacted "to encourage the baptizing and the instructing of those kinds of servants in the faith of Christ."[497] There had been remissness towards the slaves in this respect among other sections of the population, but such denominations were spurred to action by the example of Catholics. The work of Spanish and French missionaries, as Dr. Woodson points out, influenced the education of the Negro throughout America.[498] The freedom and welfare of the unhappy slaves were especially promoted in the famous "Code Noir," the most humane legislation in their behalf which had been devised before the repeal of slavery. In 1724, M. de Bienville drew up the "Code Noir," containing all the legislation applicable to slaves in Louisiana, which remained in force until 1803. This code, signed in the name of the King, and inspired by Catholic teaching and practice, was probably based on a similar code, which was promulgated in 1685, in Santo Domingo, by Louis XIV, King of France. The Edict ordained that all slaves be instructed and that they be admitted to the sacraments and rites of the Roman Catholic Church. It allowed the slave time for instruction, worship and rest, not only every Sunday, but every festival usually observed by the Church. It prohibited under severe penalties all masters and managers from corrupting their female slaves, and provided for the Christian marriage of the slave. It did not allow the Negro, husband, wife or infant children, to be sold separately. It forbade the use of torture or immoderate and inhuman punishments. It obliged the owners to maintain their old and decrepit slaves. If the Negroes were not fed or clothed as the law prescribed, or if they were in any way cruelly treated, they might apply to the procurer, who was obliged by his office to protect them. A somewhat similar edict, known as the Spanish Code, was promulgated in the Spanish West Indies in 1789.
At the time of the Revolutionary War such Catholic patriots as Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, the Polish General Kosciuszko, and General Lafayette, of France, gave evidence of their interest in the improvement of the Negro. Kosciuszko provided in his will that the property which he acquired in America should be used for the purchase of slaves to be educated for higher service and citizenship.[499] Lafayette persistently urged that the blacks be educated and emancipated.[500]
The impression seems to prevail in some quarters that the Catholic Church in the United States has been indifferent to the welfare of the Negro. Sir Harry H. Johnston in his work, The Negro in the New World, rather unjustly asserts that the Church maintains "nothing in the way of Negro education and has never at any time shown particular sympathy or desire to help the Negro slave." At the same time he acknowledges that the Roman Catholic Church in the West Indies and South America has been the great opponent of slavery. Johnston states "that the infractions of the Code Noir," and the increased mal-treatment of slaves and free mulattoes did not take place until the Catholic order of Jesuits had been expelled from Saint Dominique about 1766. Here, as in Brazil, and Paraguay, they had exasperated the white colonists by standing up for the natives or the Negro slaves; and in Hispaniola they had endeavored to exact from the local government a full application of the various slave-protecting edicts. Whatever faults and mistakes they may have been guilty of in the nineteenth century, the Jesuits played, for two hundred years, a noble part in acting as a buffer between the Caucasian on the one hand, and the backward peoples on the other.[501]