The Middle Period, 1817-1858. John William Burgess
of the Revolution—Slavery and the Constitution of 1787—Reaction against the Humanitarian Principles of the Revolution—Abolition of the Foreign Slave-trade by Congress—Cotton Culture and the Cotton-gin—The Effect of the Return to the Arts of Peace upon the Ideas Concerning Slavery—Slavery During the War of 1812 and the Years just before and just after this War—Slavery in the Louisiana Territory—Slavery in the territory West of North Carolina and Georgia—Slavery in Louisiana a Different Question from Slavery in the North Carolina and Georgia Cessions—Interest in Slavery in Maryland and Virginia Increased by the Acquisition of Louisiana—The Domestic Slave-trade—The Relation of Slavery to the Diplomacy of the United States.
It is not easy to define the term slavery in the abstract without unfitting it for application to the great majority of the systems of servitude which have ever existed. Especially will it be difficult to gain a correct conception of the relation between the white man and the negro in North America previous to 1860 by means of such a definition.
The institution of negro slavery in the United States was an historical growth, which was in some respects unique. We shall, therefore, do better to follow the main stages of that development than to attempt at the outset any definition whatsoever. We may, in this manner, build up a true description of it, and escape the error frequently contained in the brevity of a definition and in the nature of an abstract proposition.
| First appearance of slavery in the British North American colonies. Early theory of the benefits of slavery. |
It began its existence, like most institutions and relations, as a social custom. Most of the historians record the appearance of a Dutch merchant ship at Jamestown, in the year 1619, having negroes on board, and inform us that twenty of them were sold to the colonists. What title the Dutch traders had to such property, exactly what they sold to the colonists, and what rights the colonists acquired in or over such property, were defined, guaranteed, and secured by no existing statutes. If any of the parties to the transaction reflected upon these subjects at all, they must have supposed that the right of possession and the freedom of contract covered the whole case. There is certainly no evidence that any of these parties, or anybody else, had the faintest conception that the law of any state, or any principle of natural justice, or of reason, was violated or impaired by the procedure or the results of the procedure. It was a firmly and universally established opinion of the time that the attachment of infidels to Christians in a relation of servant to master was vastly beneficial to the infidel, certainly so when the infidel was also a barbarian, and was taken out of slavery to a barbarian master, as was the case in respect to almost all of the negroes brought to the English colonies in North America.
We cannot dismiss this opinion as one of the errors of the dark ages. It lives to-day as a principle of modern political science and practical politics, under the form of statement that civilized people have the right and duty to impose civilization upon uncivilized populations by whatever means they may deem to be just and proper.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the negroes transferred from slavery in Africa to slavery in the English-American colonies themselves felt the amelioration of their condition, and were, in general, entirely contented with their new lot.
| The earliest legal recognition of slavery in the colonies. |
The relation was established in the Northern colonies, as well as in the Southern, in the early years of their existence, and it was in Massachusetts rather than in Virginia that it first received legal recognition, and began to be changed from a purely domestic institution by suffering governmental regulation. In the Massachusetts "Fundamentals," or "Body of Liberties," passed by the General Court in 1641, the slavery of negroes and Indians, and the slave-trade, were expressly legalized. In fact, so far as the colonists themselves were responsible for the introduction of negro slavery among them, the impartial historian must place the greater blame upon a Northern colony. Its citizens were first to develop commerce, and it was their ships which brought the slave cargoes from the coasts of Africa to all of the colonies.
| Northern colonies not well adapted to negro labor. The Southern colonies well adapted to negro labor. |
The negroes were not, however, fitted for labor in the Northern colonies. In the first place, it was too cold for them to thrive there. A warm, moist air is the natural climate for the negro. In the second place, the work to be done in these sections was not suited to his capacity. The Northern colonies had not, indeed, at that early day, developed the finer forms of industry which have subsequently distinguished that part of the country. They were then, as to their internal pursuits, almost as completely agricultural as the colonies of the South. But their farming required a great deal more of intelligence, thrift, and industry in the laborer than the negro of that day possessed. The country was broken, the good soil was limited in amount, the weather was capricious, and the management of the crops demanded judgment and discretion. On the other hand, the vast level areas of good soil, the warm, uniform climate, and the simple crops of the Southern colonies furnished the conditions favorable to the employment of negro labor.
| Negro slavery a temporary necessity in the South. |
It is not easy to see how the rich swamp-lands of these colonies could ever have been reclaimed and made tributary to the civilization of the world in any way but by the employment of negro labor. And it is no easier to see how the pure negro could then have been brought to do this great work save through slavery to the white race, save by being forced to contribute the muscular effort, under the direction of the superior intelligence of the white race, to the realization of objects determined by that superior intelligence. The negro is proof against malaria, and thrives under the burning sun. The white man is destroyed by the former and greatly disabled by the latter. And the pure negro would not at that period of his development labor voluntarily. These were the elements of the problem which confronted those who undertook to subject the vast marshes of the Southern colonies to cultivation and to prepare them for the production of their most valuable contributions to the comforts of civilized man. The solution of the problem was negro slavery.
| Was negro slavery an error and an evil from the first? |
We are most of us inclined, at this day, to hold that this was an erroneous solution, and that we could have discovered a better one; but it was the solution which was reached, and we shall be wiser if we seek to understand it clearly, instead of wasting our energies in its condemnation, remembering that many of the things of the past, which, from the point of view of the present, we are prone to regard as error, and even as sin, are only anachronisms. In fact, those who founded the colony of Georgia thought then that they had a better solution of the problem. They prohibited slavery at the outset from that colony. In fourteen years they came to regard this act as a great mistake, and the noblest spirits among them acknowledged themselves in error, and joined in the movement for the introduction of negro