Part 942

"The reign of Alexander II. [who succeeded Nicholas in 1855], like that of Alexander I., began with an outburst of reform enthusiasm in the educated classes. … The serfage question, which Nicholas had always treated most tenderly, was raised in a way that indicated an intention of dealing with it boldly and energetically. Taking advantage of a petition presented by the Polish landed proprietors of the Lithuanian provinces, praying that their relations with their serfs might be regulated in a more satisfactory way—meaning, of course, in a way more satisfactory for the proprietors—the Emperor authorized committees to be formed in that part of the country 'for ameliorating the condition of the peasants,' and laid down the general principles according to which the amelioration was to be effected. … This was a decided step, and it was immediately followed by one still more significant. His Majesty, without consulting his ordinary advisers, ordered the Minister of the Interior to send to the Governors all over European Russia copies of the instructions forwarded to the Governor-General of Lithuania, praising the supposed generous, patriotic intentions of the Lithuanian landed proprietors, and suggesting that, perhaps, the landed proprietors of other provinces might express a similar desire. The hint was, of course, taken, and in all provinces where serfage existed emancipation committees were formed. … There were, however, serious difficulties in the way. The emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question, capable of being solved instantaneously by an Imperial ukase. It contained very complicated problems, affecting deeply the economic, social, and political future of the nation. … It was universally admitted that the peasants should not be ejected from their homes, though their homesteads belonged legally to the proprietors; but there was great diversity of opinion as to how much land they should in future enjoy, by what tenure they should in future hold it, and how the patriarchal, undefined authority of the landlords should be replaced. … The main point at issue was whether the serfs should become agricultural labourers dependent economically and administratively on the landlords, or should be transformed into a class of independent communal proprietors. The Emperor gave his support to the latter proposal, and the Russian peasantry acquired privileges such as are enjoyed by no other peasantry in Europe."

_Alexander II. (Eminent Persons: Biographies, reprinted from The Times)._

{2918}

"On the 3d of March, 1861 (February, 19, O. S.), the emancipation act was signed. The rustic population then consisted of 22,000,000 of common serfs, 3,000,000 of appanage peasants, and 23,000,000 of crown peasants. The first class were enfranchised by that act: and a separate law has since been passed in favor of these crown peasants and appanage peasants, who are now as free in fact as they formerly were in name. A certain portion of land, varying in different provinces according to soil and climate, was affixed to every 'soul'; and government aid was promised to the peasants in buying their homesteads and allotments. The serfs were not slow to take this hint. Down to January 1, 1869, more than half the enfranchised male serfs have taken advantage of this promise: and the debt now owing from the people to the crown (that is, to the bondholders) is an enormous sum."

_W. H. Dixon, Free Russia, chapter 51._

"Emancipation has utterly failed to realize the ardent expectations of its advocates and promoters. The great benefit of the measure was purely moral. It has failed to improve the material condition of the former serfs, who on the whole are [1888] worse off than they were before the Emancipation. The bulk of our peasantry is in a condition not far removed from actual starvation—a fact which can neither be denied nor concealed even by the official press."

_Stepniak, The Russian Peasantry, chapter 1._

ALSO IN: _A. Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, part 1, book 7._

SLAVERY: Modern: Indians. Barbarity of the Spaniards in America, and humane labors of Las Casas.

"When Columbus came to Hispaniola on his second voyage [1493], with 17 ships and 1,500 followers, he found the relations between red men and white men already hostile, and in order to get food for so many Spaniards, foraging expeditions were undertaken, which made matters worse. This state of things led Columbus to devise a notable expedient. In some of the neighbouring islands lived the voracious Caribs. In fleets of canoes they would swoop upon the coasts of Hispaniola, capture men and women by the score, and carry them off to be cooked and eaten. Now Columbus wished to win the friendship of the Indians about him by defending them against these enemies, and so he made raids against the Caribs, took some of them captive, and sent them as slaves to Spain, to be taught Spanish and converted to Christianity, so that they might come back to the islands as interpreters, and thus be useful aids in missionary work. It was really, said Columbus, a kindness to these cannibals to enslave them and send them where they could be baptized and rescued from everlasting perdition; and then again they could be received in payment for the cargoes of cattle, seeds, wine, and other provisions which must be sent from Spain for the support of the colony. Thus quaintly did the great discoverer, like so many other good men before and since, mingle considerations of religion with those of domestic economy. It is apt to prove an unwholesome mixture. Columbus proposed such an arrangement to Ferdinand and Isabella, and it is to their credit that, straitened as they were for money, they for some time refused to accept it. Slavery, however, sprang up in Hispaniola before anyone could have fully realized the meaning of what was going on. As the Indians were unfriendly and food must be had, while foraging expeditions were apt to end in plunder and bloodshed, Columbus tried to regulate matters by prohibiting such expeditions and in lieu thereof imposing a light tribute or tax upon the entire population of Hispaniola above 14 years of age. As this population was dense, a little from each person meant a good deal in the lump. The tribute might be a small piece of gold or of cotton, and was to be paid four times a year. … If there were Indians who felt unable to pay the tribute, they might as an alternative render a certain amount of personal service in helping to plant seeds or tend cattle for the Spaniards. No doubt these regulations were well meant, and if the two races had been more evenly matched, perhaps they might not so speedily have developed into tyranny. As it was, they were like rules for regulating the depredations of wolves upon sheep. Two years had not elapsed before the alternative of personal service was demanded from whole villages of Indians at once. By 1499 the island had begun to be divided into repartimientos, or shares. One or more villages would be ordered, under the direction of their native chiefs, to till the soil for the benefit of some specified Spaniard or partnership of Spaniards; and such a village or villages constituted the repartimiento of the person or persons to whom it was assigned. This arrangement put the Indians into a state somewhat resembling that of feudal villenage; and this was as far as things had gone when the administration of Columbus came abruptly to an end." Queen Isabella disapproved, at first, of the repartimiento system, "but she was persuaded to sanction it, and presently in 1503 she and Ferdinand issued a most disastrous order. They gave discretionary power to Ovando [who succeeded Columbus in the governorship] to compel Indians to work, but it must be for wages. They ordered him, moreover, to see that Indians were duly instructed in the Christian faith. … The way in which Ovando carried out the order about missionary work was characteristic. As a member of a religious order of knights, he was familiar with the practice of encomienda, by which groups of novices were assigned to certain preceptors to be disciplined and instructed in the mysteries of the order. The word encomienda means 'commandery' or 'preceptory,' and so it came to be a nice euphemism for a hateful thing. Ovando distributed Indians among the Spaniards in lots of 50 or 100 or 500, with a deed worded thus: 'To you, such a one, is given an encomienda of so many Indians, and you are to teach them the things of our holy Catholic Faith.' In practice, the last clause was disregarded as a mere formality, and the effect of the deed was simply to consign a parcel of Indians to the tender mercies of some Spaniard, to do as he pleased with them. If the system of repartimientos was in effect serfdom or villenage, the system of encomiendas was unmitigated slavery. Such a cruel and destructive slavery has seldom, if ever, been known. The work of the Indians was at first largely agricultural, but as many mines of gold were soon discovered they were driven in gangs to work in the mines. … In 1500 Ovando was recalled. … Under his successor, Diego Columbus, there was little improvement. The case had become a hard one to deal with. {2919} There were now what are called 'vested rights,' the rights of property in slaves, to be respected. But in 1510 there came a dozen Dominican monks, and they soon decided, in defiance of vested rights, to denounce the wickedness they saw about them." Generally, the Spaniards who enjoyed the profit of the labor of the enslaved Indians hardened their hearts against this preaching, and were enraged by it; but one among them had his conscience awakened and saw the guiltiness of the evil thing. This was Bartolomé de Las Casas, who had joined the colonists at Hispaniola in 1502 and who had entered the priesthood in 1510. He owned slaves, whom he now set free, and he devoted himself henceforth to labors for the reformation of the system of slavery in the Spanish colonies. In 1516 he won the ear of Cardinal Ximenes, who appointed a commission of Hieronymite friars "to accompany Las Casas to the West Indies, with minute instructions and ample powers for making investigations and enforcing the laws. Ximenes appointed Las Casas Protector of the Indians, and clothed him with authority to impeach delinquent judges or other public officials. The new regulations, could they have been carried out, would have done much to mitigate the sufferings of the Indians. They must be paid wages, they must be humanely treated and taught the Christian religion. But as the Spanish government needed revenue, the provision that Indians might be compelled to work in the mines was not repealed. The Indians must work, and the Spaniards must pay them. Las Casas argued correctly that so long as this provision was retained the work of reform would go but little way. Somebody, however, must work the mines; and so the talk turned to the question of sending out white labourers or negroes. … At one time the leading colonists of Hispaniola had told Las Casas that if they might have license to import each a dozen negroes, they would coöperate with him in his plans for setting free the Indians and improving their condition. … He recalled this suggestion of the colonists, and proposed it as perhaps the least odious way out of the difficulty: It is therefore evident that at that period in his life he did not realize the wickedness of slavery so distinctly in the case of black men as in the case of red men. … In later years he blamed himself roundly for making any such concessions. Had he 'sufficiently considered the matter,' he would not for all the world have entertained such a suggestion for a moment. … The extensive development of negro slavery in the West Indies … did not begin for many years after the period in the career of Las Casas with which we are now dealing, and there is nothing to show that his suggestion or concession was in any way concerned in bringing it about." The fine story of the life and labours of Las Casas,—of the colony which he attempted to found on the Pearl Coast of the mainland, composed of settlers who would work for themselves and not require slaves, and which was ruined through the wicked lawlessness of other men,—of the terrible barbarians of the "Land of War" whom he transformed into peaceful and devoted Christians,—cannot be told in this place. His final triumphs in the conflict with slavery were:

1. In 1537, the procuring from Pope Paul III. of a brief "forbidding the further enslavement of Indians under penalty of excommunication."

2. In 1542, the promulgation of the New Laws by Charles V., the decisive clause in which was as follows: "'We order and command that henceforward for no cause whatever, whether of war, rebellion, ransom, or in any other manner, can any Indian be made a slave.'

This clause was never repealed, and it stopped the spread of slavery. Other clauses went further, and made such sweeping provisions for immediate abolition that it proved to be impossible to enforce them. … The matter was at last compromised by an arrangement that encomiendas should be inheritable during two lives, and should then escheat to the crown. This reversion to the crown meant the emancipation of the slaves. Meanwhile such provisions were made … that the dreadful encomienda reverted to the milder form of the repartimiento. Absolute slavery was transformed into villenage. In this ameliorated form the system continued."

_J. Fiske, The Discovery of America, chapter 11 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _Sir A. Helps, Spanish Conquest in America._

_Sir A. Helps, Life of Las Casas._

_G. E. Ellis, Las Casas (Narrative and Critical History of America, volume 2, chapter 5)._

_H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States, volume 1, chapter 5._

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1442-1501. Its beginning in Europe and its establishment in Spanish America.

"The peculiar phase of slavery that will be brought forward in this history is not the first and most natural one, in which the slave was merely the captive in war, 'the fruit of the spear,' as he has figuratively been called, who lived in the house of his conqueror and laboured at his lands. This system culminated among the Romans; partook of the fortunes of the Empire; was gradually modified by Christianity and advancing civilization; declined by slow and almost imperceptible degrees into serfage and vassalage; and was extinct, or nearly so, when the second great period of slavery suddenly uprose. This second period was marked by a commercial character. The slave was no longer an accident of war. He had become the object of war. He was no longer a mere accidental subject of barter. He was to be sought for, to be hunted out, to be produced; and this change accordingly gave rise to a new branch of commerce. Slavery became at once a much more momentous question than it ever had been, and thenceforth, indeed, claims for itself a history of its own."

_Sir A. Helps, The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery, book 1, chapter 1._

"The first negroes imported into Europe after the extinction of the old pagan slavery were brought in one of the ships of Prince Henry of Portugal, in the year 1442. There was, however, no regular trade in negroes established by the Portuguese; and the importation of human beings fell off, while that of other articles of commerce increased, until after the discovery of America. Then the sudden destruction of multitudes of Indians in war, by unaccustomed labour, by immense privations, and by diseases new to them, produced a void in the labour market which was inevitably filled up by the importation of negroes. Even the kindness and the piety of the Spanish monarchs tended partly to produce this result. {2920} They forbade the enslaving of Indians, and they contrived that the Indians should live in some manner apart from the Spaniards; and it is a very significant fact that the great 'Protector of the Indians,' Las Casas, should, however innocently, have been concerned with the first large grant of licenses to import negroes into the West India Islands. Again, the singular hardihood of the negro race, which enabled them to flourish in all climates, and the comparative debility of the Indians, also favoured this result. The anxiety of the Catholic Church for proselytes combined with the foregoing causes to make the bishops and monks slow to perceive the mischief of any measure which might tend to save or favour large communities of docile converts."-

_Sir A. Helps, The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery, book 21, chapter 5 (volume 4)._

The first notice of the introduction of negro slaves in the West Indies appears in the instructions given in 1501 to Ovando, who superseded Columbus in the governorship.

_Sir A. Helps, The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery, book 3, chapter 1 (volume 1)._

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1562-1567. John Hawkins engages England in the traffic.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1562-1567.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1609-1755. In colonial New York.

"From the settlement of New York by the Dutch in 1609, down to its conquest by the English in 1664, there is no reliable record of slavery in that colony. That the institution was coeval with the Holland government, there can be no historical doubt. During the half-century that the Holland flag waved over the New Netherlands, slavery grew to such proportions as to be regarded as a necessary evil. … The West India Company had offered many inducements to its patroons. And its pledge to furnish the colonists with 'as many blacks as they conveniently could,' was scrupulously performed. … When New Netherlands became an English colony, slavery received substantial official encouragement, and the slave became the subject of colonial legislation. … Most of the slaves in the Province of New York, from the time they were first introduced, down to 1664, had been the property of the West India Company. As such they had small plots of land to work for their own benefit, and were not without hope of emancipation some day. But under the English government the condition of the slave was clearly defined by law and one of great hardships. On the 24th of October, 1684, an Act was passed in which slavery was for the first time regarded as a legitimate institution in the Province of New York under the English government." After the mad excitement caused by the pretended Negro Plot of 1741 (see NEW YORK: A. D. 1741) "the legislature turned its attention to additional legislation upon the slavery question. Severe laws were passed against the Negroes. Their personal rights were curtailed until their condition was but little removed from that of the brute creation. We have gone over the voluminous records of the Province of New York, and have not found a single act calculated to ameliorate the condition of the slave."

_G. W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America, volume 1, chapter 13._

A census of the slaves in the Province of New York was made in 1755, the record of which has been preserved for all except the most important counties of New York, Albany and Suffolk. It shows 67 slaves then in Brooklyn.

_Doc. History of New York, volume 3._

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1619. Introduction in Virginia.

See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1619.

SLAVERY: Modern: Negro: A. D. 1638-1781. Beginning and ending in Massachusetts.

In the code of laws called the Body of Liberties, adopted by the General Court of Massachusetts in 1641, there is the following provision (Article 91): "There shall never be any Bond Slavery, Villinage, or Captivity amongst us, unless it be lawful Captives taken in just Wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves, or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God, established in Israel concerning such persons, doth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority."

_Massachusetts Historical Society Collection, volume 28, page 231._

"No instance has been discovered of a sale by one man of himself to another, although the power of doing this was recognized in the Body of Liberties. But of sales by the way of punishment for crime, under a sentence of a court, there are several instances recorded. … Of captives taken in war and sold into slavery by the colony, the number appears to have been larger, though it is not easy to ascertain in how many instances it was done. As a measure of policy, it was adopted in the case of such as were taken in the early Indian wars. … It was chiefly confined to the remnants of the Pequod tribe, and to such as were taken in the war with King Philip. …

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1637, and 1676-1678.