Part 4

The difficulty surrounding a proper understanding of any question consists in the fact that self-interest is more than likely to enter to darken the vision. It is seldom that men differ about matters or have a difficulty in understanding matters which do not affect their vanity, their pride, their ambition or their material belongings. The truth concerning any matter which is the subject of controversy can be reached with accuracy in proportion as it is free from these matters. A question of justice, opportunity and humane consideration for persons wholly or partly of African origin is influenced entirely by considerations of the kind just mentioned. If men were not obsessed by the phantom of race superiority and of local vanity and group consciousness, and more than all by the propensity to make gain out of the misfortunes and injustices of conditions, what is known as the Negro question would vanish into thin air. All forms of oppression, caste, proscription and distinction have their origin in the desire and purpose of a man or set of men to improve their condition at the expense of others. If it had not been believed and indeed demonstrated that the subjection of the black man would prove economically profitable to the white man or that he would gain some other fancied advantage from the degradation of the black man we should never have had African slavery together with its attendant chain of ills which afflict the body politic even unto this hour.

That oppression and tyranny wrong both those who practice them and those upon whom they are inflicted is proved by illustrations taken both from the field of economics and the field of intellectual and moral consciousness. In all those parts of the world where all the people approach most nearly a common standard of economic, intellectual and moral excellence there we find the greatest advance in that which we call civilization, for the want of a better term to describe human progress and advance. Wherever we find any considerable group of people residing in the same or contiguous territory who do not enjoy equality of right and opportunity in those things which governments are instituted to conserve, we find that the greater group which denies them these inalienable rights paralyzed in its economic, intellectual and moral growth. On no other ground can we account for the emphatic differences in achievement, in literature, art, science, invention, and economic progress between the white people of the North and the white people of the South. Reasoning from analogy and from the examples which history gives of the achievement of the white race in the world it would be the most reasonable thing to expect that due to variety of soil, favorableness of climate, and the general beneficence of nature, that the white people living in the zone comprising what is commonly designated as the Southern States would excel their Northern brethren in all the arts and achievements of civilization. We should naturally expect to find there the poets, the painters, the sculptors, the inventors and the great organizers of enterprise. Elsewhere in the world in the midst of similar conditions of soil and climate, we find the white race excelling and leading the world in these particulars. The white people inhabiting the South are of the same ethnic type, and have in general the same group consciousness and aspiration. How else can we account for the fact that they have contributed less than their kinsmen in proportion to numbers to the sum of human knowledge, happiness and liberty, if not by the fact that they have suffered the inevitable handicap incident to an environment in which large numbers of human beings suffer inequality and subordination?

But for the difference which has been historically accentuated in North America between white and black which difference has inflicted much of suffering upon both races, it would not be necessary to consider such a subject as the citizenship status of the free Negro prior to 1860. Before the Constitution of the United States was amended by the addition thereto of the Fourteenth Amendment the statement that "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States" was the only definite deliverance to be found in that instrument in relation to the subject of citizenship. In other words there was no national definition of citizenship, and up to the time of the deliverance of the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, there had been no comprehensive treatment of the subject in adjudications by the Supreme Court of the United States. The mention of the term "citizens" in the Constitution in the quotation just given indicates that it had a meaning of such generally accepted significance that definition was not necessary. Presumably citizenship conveyed then, as it conveys now, an idea exactly the opposite of that conveyed by the term slavery. A slave everywhere in the world was understood to be a person who was absolved from allegiance, and was not due protection as that term is ordinarily understood, and who could not invoke ordinary legal process nor own property; a citizen was a person who owed allegiance, was entitled to protection, had the right to invoke all the processes of the law, could become the owner of property, and possibly, if not a woman or a child, exercise the right of the elective franchise. Such was the common understanding of the term citizen at the adoption of the Constitution, and such is substantially the understanding of that term at the present date. However, due to the presence of the Negro in the body politic, the exigencies of the situation suggested an interpretation of the term citizen which might not otherwise have existed, but for the presence of the Negro. The exigency grew out of the fact that toward the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth there

grew into the minds of men the conception that slavery was a condition appertaining to black men alone, that color was an unmistakable proof of the condition of a slave, and that the fact that one was of African descent carried with it this inevitable social degradation. In the decisions of the courts of a number of the States we find this principle enunciated. In North Carolina the Supreme Court of that State, in 1828, decided that "The presumption of slavery arises from a black African complexion." In 1839, the Supreme Court of Indiana, in passing upon the constitutionality of the law entitled: "An act concerning free Negroes and Mulattoes and slaves," held that where a Negro laid claim to freedom the burden of proof was on him to show it inasmuch as persons of the African race were presumed to be slaves. In 1842, the Supreme Court of Ohio decided that under the law of that State "Color alone is sufficient to indicate a Negro's inability to testify against a white man. It has always been admitted that our political institutions embrace the white population only. Persons of color were not recognized as having any political existence; they had no agency in our political organizations, and possessed no political rights under it. Two or three of the States form exceptions. The constitutions of fourteen expressly exclude persons of color; and in the balance of the States they are excluded on the grounds that they were never recognized as part of the body politic." (Thatcher vs. Hawk, 4th Ohio, Rep., 351.) While this opinion expressed a widely prevalent sentiment at that time I have been unable to find a decision of any court in any of the original thirteen States north of Maryland, except Connecticut, which expresses this view. In their moral and intellectual nature the inhabitants of Connecticut exhibit many wide differences from the inhabitants of the rest of New England. These citations show how thoroughly the conception of the difference arising from the difference of color was imbedded in the mind at that time. Such instances of judicial interpretation were to be found in all of the slave States, and in those States which were carved out of the northwest territory, which Virginia ceded to the general government in 1787. In this connection it is pertinent to observe that it is the most natural thing in the world that the States carved out of this northwest territory should have followed not only the legal system of the parent State, but should have adopted many of its practices and modes of thought, and passed them on to succeeding generations.

From the quotations already made it can be seen that to be a colored person was to suffer from the presumption of being a slave, and that to be a free colored person was to be in a condition not of freedom, but of lessened servitude. To be a free colored person was not to possess the citizenship of the world any more than to be a Christian today is evidence that one is an imitator of Christ. In actual practice the term "free colored person" embraced the idea of freedom from personal service to a specified owner and little else, particularly in the slave-holding States. The attitude of these States is well expressed in the following quotation from John C. Calhoun: "I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together the relation now existing in the slave-holding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good--a positive good. I fearlessly assert that the existing relations between the two races in the South forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions (Works of Calhoun, Vol. 2, p. 630)." Thus by legal enactment, judicial interpretation and orderly expressed public opinion, race if it be African was the badge of inferiority and slavery. This was generally true throughout the country and yet a careful and somewhat thorough examination of the statutes, legal decisions, and systematic treatises relating to the law of slavery will convince any fair-minded person that the term free colored person carried with it less of negation of right in the Northern States where slavery had ceased to exist than in the Southern States where it still flourished.

At the close of the revolution, slavery existed in most of the colonies, if not all, and their statute books contained laws relating to that condition, and to the condition of "free persons of color." However, as time passed and the institution of slavery disappeared, we find these laws disappearing or becoming greatly modified or mitigated in their provisions. For instance, March 26, 1783, Massachusetts passed a law forbidding an African or Negro to tarry within the commonwealth for a longer time than two months unless such person could produce a certificate from the secretary of State of which such person claimed to be a citizen, showing that he was such, and that where such persons did not have the required certificate they should be ordered to depart from the State, and upon failure to do so be committed to any house of correction, and that such punishment should be repeated whenever and as often as the order to depart was disobeyed. This law was repealed, however, in 1786. It seems that slavery was abolished in Massachusetts by operation of the constitution of 1780, which declares that "All men are born free and equal." Harry St. George Tucker, president of the Virginia Court of Appeals, said in 1833, speaking of this constitutional utterance, that "We should be disposed to take this declaration less as an abstraction than we regard that which is contained in our own bill of rights" (5th Leigh Rep., 622). By 1786, it appears that Massachusetts had abolished all distinctions in law based on race except that in relation to marriage, which appears to have been repealed in 1843. In 1833, Connecticut enacted a law forbidding the setting up or establishment of any school, academy or literary institution for the instruction or education of colored persons who were not inhabitants of the State. This law was repealed in 1838. The constitution of Rhode Island of 1843, conferred the elective franchise on persons of the male sex qualified by residence and property without distinction of color. In New Hampshire the constitution of 1783 contains the principle that all men are born equally free, and no distinction on account of color is found in any of her statutes except in a law of 1792, which specified that enlistment in the militia should be confined to white people. In the law of 1857, relating to the subject of militia, color is not mentioned. Neither in the constitution nor laws of Vermont does one find for this period any distinction based on color, so that in Vermont the term "free colored person" had no existence and consequently no meaning. In Maine no distinctions based on color are to be found for the period under consideration either in the constitution or the statutes. In Pennsylvania colored people exercised the elective franchise and enjoyed full citizenship with the whites up to 1838, when the elective franchise, by the constitution of that year, was confined to whites. Presumably free colored people exercised the suffrage in New Jersey up to 1844, as there appears no limitation of suffrage on account of color prior to its mention in the constitution of that year. New York, in an act of the legislature of 1799, provided for gradual emancipation of the slaves, and by an act of 1811 it required "free colored people" to carry certificates of their freedom as proofs of their claim thereto. In 1814 the legislature of the State authorized the raising of two regiments of colored soldiers to be officered by white men. In 1823, Negroes who resided in the State three years and possessed a free-hold estate of the assessed value of two hundred and fifty dollars were entitled to exercise the elective franchise, a requirement not imposed upon white people.

It is interesting to note that up to 1723, free colored people appear to have exercised the elective franchise equally with the whites in Virginia. The colonial constitution of that year limited its exercise to white people, and the free colored people never voted again until the adoption of the Underwood or reconstruction constitution. Besides this, contrary to conditions above described in the Northern States the laws in relation to free colored people grew harsher and harsher until 1831, when we find a statute prohibiting meetings for teaching free Negroes or mulattoes reading or writing. In 1832, free Negroes were forbidden to preach the gospel. In 1834 free Negroes were forbidden to immigrate into the State. In 1838 free Negroes leaving the State to be educated were forbidden to return. In 1851, the constitution of Virginia of that year, in Sec. 5, Art. 19, provided: That slaves hereafter emancipated shall forfeit their freedom by remaining in the commonwealth more than twelve months, and in 1856, the legislature of Virginia passed an act providing that free Negroes might voluntarily make agreements to become slaves and that such agreement should be binding.

In North Carolina free colored people seem to have exercised most of the rights of white people including that of voting, until 1835, when the right to vote was confined to persons of the white race. In all of the slave States the free colored man was hampered by legislative provisions exactly like or very similar to those just cited as existing in Virginia. In none of these States could free colored people hold the legal title to real property, in none of them did they have the right of public assembly, the right to bear arms or the right to carry on collectively the work of education. In few of them did they even have the right to preach the gospel, and where they did preach it was by favor and permission, and not by right. Of all these Southern slave-holding States Maryland ruled its free colored people with something suggestive of humanity.

It will be seen from this hasty and unsatisfactory review of a great mass of statutes, decisions, and treatises that the condition of the free colored man north of Mason and Dixon's line improved in the main from the close of the revolution to 1860, and that south of Mason and Dixon's line his condition grew worse from the close of the revolution down to 1860.

In the West, where new States were forming, there was, of course, the distinction of race. The settlers who went into these new communities went there to establish white communities and they passed laws forbidding the immigration of free colored people into them. We find statutes in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Kansas, and Oregon, forbidding the immigration of free Negroes. It seems, however, that there was never a very strong public sentiment insisting upon the enforcement of these laws. As a matter of fact there was a small active and effective sentiment which practically nullified the existence of them, for in all of these States we find, especially after the enactment of the fugitive slave law of 1850, a most friendly sentiment toward the unfortunate colored man whether slave or free.

The study of the statutes and conditions of more than a half century ago is not only a matter of curiosity, but a matter of very practical concern, since in these latter days another body of laws, and legal decisions based upon distinction of race have come into existence, and yet others are threatened.

Arthur A. Schomburg. The Economic Contribution by the Negro to America

The services rendered by Negroes in America from the discovery of the islands beyond the Pillars of Hercules by Christopher Columbus to the end of the eighteenth century, make a chapter of history transcending in importance anything which has taken place in the old world. The quaint times and scarcity of willing men among the aboriginal Indians to help the Spaniards to despoil their lands in the rapacious quest of gold brought about the early ruin of flourishing communities of aboriginal tribes in the several islands. So alarming was this state of affairs that Father Las Casas, known as the Apostle of the Indians, interceded in their behalf at the Spanish court in order to ameliorate their unfortunate condition. He pleaded for Negroes to take their places as the blacks were a very hardy and robust race; to this plea the great and humanitarian Cardinal Ximenes was opposed; for he could not justify the substitution of one race for another in what was in itself a wrong. The Cardinal having been overruled, the Slave Trade was instituted and the first Negroes were brought to Santo Domingo. They were not the untutored savages we are expected to believe from modern histories. There existed in Sevilla, Spain, as early as 1475, a large number of Negro slaves, who had been brought from the coasts of North Africa and Guinea, and their one-fifth tribute to the coffers of the state formed a very nice sum of money. This practice of importing Negroes, which had been in vogue during the Arab dominion of Spain, continued to increase to such an extent that when in the year of 1474 a royal decree still extant chronicles the appointment of a Negro known as Juan de Valladolid as mayor of the Negro colony situated in the outskirts of the said city. From this colony of Negroes who could speak the Spanish language, and were familiar with their customs, came the first batch of slaves shipped to Santo Domingo. It must also be borne in mind that 45 years before, in 1370, King Henry of Portugal had commenced his explorations, the Catalans and Normans had frequented the coasts of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer, and according to Diego Ortiz de Zuniga, it is known that from the times of Archbishop Gonzalo de Mena (1400) there existed Negro slaves in Sevilla. There is no reason to doubt that a large number of their descendants had already been born in Europe prior to 1500, because the royal dispensations in that year state that the immigration of Negro slaves to Santo Domingo was prohibited except in case of those who were born while in possession of Christians. These historical facts induce us to believe that during that period there was in Europe a larger number of Negroes than we generally suppose or care to believe.

At the time that the slave trade had commenced to occupy the mind of the Hawkins malefactors and the British nation under Queen Elizabeth, Barbarossa had already subjected the mulatto King of Morocco to the payment of a tribute of $1,000,000 in gold dust--and 40 Negro merchants without any hesitation helped the king out of the dangers that confronted his people. When the Moor Zegri was humiliated by the Spanish Commander Cisneros in 1499 and the Arab books destroyed in Granada, Marmol states that less than 1,025,000 tomes on religion, politics, jurisprudence, manuscripts illuminated and worked in silver and gold were consigned to the fires. There remained 3,000 Moorish soldiers under command of a Negro captain whose intrepid heroism and valor was shown by the charges and counter charges he was able to repel. When unable to prevent the utter annihilation of his band by superior forces under Cifuentes, the Negro captain refused to surrender and jumped headlong from a fort. (Alcatara's History, Granada, pp. 165-6.) And this happened seven years after the discovery of America by Columbus.

The conditions of the new world were such that the Spaniards who had spent most of their wealth in the unprofitable civil and Arab wars, lost no time after hearing wonderful stories of untold wealth to requisition not only the Negroes of Seville, but to embark in the lucrative enterprise of human Negroes from the West Coast of Africa, and ships which were engaged in man-hunting poured their human freight into Hispaniola. It was not long after that the Spanish Negroes belonging to Diego Columbus, revolted, and the first insurrection, taking place among the very property of the discoverer's offspring, was suppressed by the military after killing the leaders. The prosperity of the colonies soon became apparent in the enormous number of Spanish ships with their precious cargoes arriving in the Spanish ports. The Spanish people were wild and in an ecstasy of joy to engage in the colonial enterprise, and as ships entered upon the perilous voyages of discovery the Africans were gathered to do the work for which no historian or economist has given them the credit which is their due for blazing the path of wealth into which the nations of Europe have ridden upon the lucrative backs of the Africans. The clearing of the forests from dangerous animals and poisonous insects, making with the awakening of each succeeding spring the virgin earth a paradise that has supported millions of European parasites; the working of the mines for precious metals that fed the envy of other powerful nations which questioned the right of the Spaniards to conquest under the banner of the Christian Church, and induced them to scramble and fight for their colonial honors.