Slavery & Four Years of War (Vol.1&2) - A Political History of Slavery in the United States Together With a Narrative of the Civil War

II. INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY INTO THE COLONIES

In August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war sailed up the James River in Virginia, landed and sold to the colony at Jamestown twenty negroes as slaves. This event marked the beginning of negro slavery in English-American colonies. Two centuries and a half did not suffice to put an end the Ethiopian slavery and the evils of a traffic begun on so small a scale.

One year later (1620) the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, bringing with them stern religious convictions and severe morals which soon ripened into written laws and were likewise woven into social, political, and religious life, the resultant effect of which, on human existence in America, is never to end. One year later still, cotton was first planted in the virgin soil of America, where it grew to perfection, and thenceforth becoming the staple production, made slavery and slave-breeding profitable to the slaveholder.

The earliest importation of negro slaves into New England was to
Providence Isle in the shp Desire (1637).

From Boston, Mass. (1645), the first American ship from the colonies set sail to engage in the stealing of African negroes. Massachusetts then held, under sanction of law, a few blacks and Indians in bondage. But slavery did not flourish in New England. It was neither profitable nor in consonance with the judgment of the people generally. The General Court of Massachusetts, as early as 1646, "bearing witness against the heinous crimes of man-stealing, ordered the recently imported negroes to be restored, at the public charge, to their native country, with a letter expressing the indignation of the General Court." Unfortunately, persons guilty of stealing men could not be tried for crimes committed in foreign lands.

But the African slave trade, early found to be extremely profitable, and hence popular, did not cease. England, then as now, the most enterprising of commercial nations on the high seas, engrossed the trade, in large part, from 1680 to 1780. In 1711, there was established a slave depot in New York City on or near what is now Wall Street; and about the same time a depot was established for receiving slaves in Boston, near where the old Franklin House stood. From New England ships, and perhaps from others, negroes were landed and sent to these and other central slave markets.

But few of these freshly stolen negroes were sold to Northern slaveholders. Slave labor was not even then found profitable in the climate of the North. The bondsman went to a more southern clime, and to the cotton, rice, and tobacco fields of the large plantations of the South.

As late as 1804-7, negroes from the coast of Africa were brought to Boston, Bristol, Providence, and Hartford to be sold into slavery.

Shipowners of all the coast colonies, and later of all the coast
States of the United States, engaged in the slave trade.

But it was among the planters of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas that slaves proved to be most profitable. The people in these sections were principally rural; plantations were large, not subject to be broken up by frequent partition, if at all. The crops raised were better suited to cultivation by slaves in large numbers; and the hot climate was better adapted to the physical nature of the African negro.

The first inhabitants of the South preferred a rural life, and on large plantations. The Crown grants to early proprietors favored this, especially in the Virginia and Carolina colonies. The Puritans did not love or foster slavery as did the Cavalier of the South. Castes or classes existed among the Southern settlers from the beginning, which, with other favoring causes, made it easier for slavery to take root and prosper, and ultimately fasten itself upon and become a dominating factor in the whole social and political fabric of the South. Slavery there soon came to be considered of paramount importance in securing a high social status or a high, so-called, civilization.

But we have, by this brief résumé, sufficiently shown that the responsibility for the introduction and maintenance of slavery and the slave trade does not rest exclusively on any of our early colonies, North or South, nor on any one race or nationality of the world; it remains now to show, in a summary way, how slavery and the slave trade were treated and regarded by the different sections of the United States after allegiance to England was thrown off.

While slavery died out from local and natural causes, if not wholly for moral, social, and religious reasons, in the States north of Maryland, it flourished and ripened into strength and importance in States south, casting a controlling influence and power over the whole of the United States socially, and for the most part dominating the country politically. The greatest statesmen and brightest intellects of the North, though convinced of the evils of slavery and of its fatal tendencies, were generally too cowardly to attack it politically, although but about one fifth of the whole white population of the slave states in 1860, or perhaps at any time, was, through family relationship, or otherwise, directly or indirectly interested in slaves or slave labor.

Old political parties were in time disrupted, and new ones were formed on slavery issues.

The slavery question rent in twain the Methodist Episcopal and Presbyterian churches. The followers of Wesley and Calvin divided on slavery. It was always essentially an aristocratic institution, and hence calculated to benefit only a few of the great mass of freemen.

In 1860, there was in the fifteen slave States a white population of 8,039,000 and a slave population of 3,953,696. Of the white population only 384,884 were slaveholders, and, including their families, only about 1,600,000 were directly or indirectly interested in slaves or their labor. About 6,400,000 (80 per cent.) of the whites in these States had, therefore, no interest in the institution, and yet they were wholly subordinated to the few who were interested in it.

Curiously enough, slavery continued to exist, until a comparatively recent period, in many of the States that had early declared it abolished. The States formed out of the territory "Northwest of the River Ohio" cannot be said to have ever been slave States. The sixth section of the Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery forever therein. The slaves reported in such States were only there by tolerance. They were free of right. The Constitution of Illinois, as we shall presently see, did not at first abolish slavery; only prohibited the introduction of slaves.

The rebellion of the thirteen colonies in 1776 and the war for independence did not grow out of slavery; that war was waged neither to perpetuate nor to abolish it. The Puritan and Cavalier, the opponents and the advocates of slavery and the slave trade, alike, fought for independence, and, when successful, united in the purpose to foster and build up an American Republic, based on the sovereignty of individual citizenship, but ignoring the natural rights of the enslaved negro.

The following table, compiled from the United States Census Reports, may be of interest.

It shows the number of slaves reported in each State and Territory of the United States at each Federal census.

North

1790

1800

1810

1820

1830

1840

1850

1860

Cal. . . . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

Conn. . . . . .

2,759

951

310

97

25

17

. . .

. . .

Ills. . . . . .

. . .

. . .

168

917

747

331

. . .

. . .

Ind. . . . . .

. . .

135

237

190

3

3

. . .

. . .

Iowa . . . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

16

. . .

. . .

Kansas . . . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

2

Maine . . . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

2

. . .

. . .

. . .

Mass. . . . . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . . .

1

. . .

. . .

. . .

...

Mich. . . . . .

. . .

. . .

24

. . .