Chapter 33

Black ... Davis then got up, and, as usual, talked a great deal and said very little. The general tenor of the harangue, however, was that if they expelled Robertson they would establish a precedent that would work harm for the party. They would be opening a door that they might not be able to shut when they wanted to. That Republican material was scarce, and if they punished this man it would discourage other white carpet-baggers from coming down and help lead the party in this State.

Freeman of Charleston, then followed in a strong speech against Robertson. He said that the question was one of peculiar significance. It was whether the colored men of the State were able to lead themselves, and capable of upholding their self-respect. He had remained silent until he had heard the defence entirely exhausted, and he was forced to say that the accused had in his defence done nothing but make an admission that the charges were true. He then read a letter of Robertson's dated June 2d. This, he said, was a confidential letter, and no public servant had the right to write such confidential letters to put money in their own pockets. If he (Robertson) knew that it was the character of these Northern firms to defraud the people of the different States, as he says he did, then why did he go to them? If he knew that they were swindlers, why did he go to them to strike a bargain for the State. Robertson had cast an insult upon the colored men that would not be tolerated by any other race upon the face of the globe. He had flung out to the world the insinuation--nay, the assertion--that the colored members of the Legislature were for sale on every question. He hoped that the colored members would assert their self-respect and hurl back the charge with scorn, and show to the world that they had some sense of honor, and will not be duped by unprincipled carpet-baggers any longer.

Whipper then followed in a harangue in support of Robertson, taking the old ground that the letters were not certified to, and incompetent as testimony, &c., and wound up with a customary slash at _The News and Courier_.

Mr. Brayton, of Aiken, followed Whipper in a strong technical argument in support of Robertson, in which he claimed that the form of trial was illegal, and the testimony was insufficient and ex parte; not touching upon the guilt or innocence of Robertson at all.

The accusers and defenders had exhausted their rhetoric and the patience of their audience and themselves, so a vote was taken on the question of expulsion, and resulted as follows--56 yeas and 25 nays. A few moments later and the hall was silent and in darkness.

Nesbit and Pinckney, however, it seems, hadn't had enough of the fight inside, but went to abusing each other about the course they had pursued. Pinckney voted for expulsion and Nesbit against it, and after some words they went to bruising each other in a way that must have shocked the effigy of the father of their country, around whose bronze form they shinned so mildly. The entertainment broke up, however, before the gladiators had entirely demolished each other.

The discussion of the Robertson matter in the House, if it has done nothing else, has very clearly demonstrated that the majority of the colored people of the State are tired of their carpet-bagger leaders, and do not propose to be led by them any longer.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] These articles were arranged by Monroe N. Work.

BOOK REVIEWS

_Fifty Years in the Gospel Ministry._ By THEOPHILUS GOULD STEWARD. The African Methodist Episcopal Book Concern, 631 Pine Street, Philadelphia, 1922. Pp. 520.

This is an autobiography covering the period from 1864 to 1914. It carries an introduction by Dr. Reverdy C. Ransom, the editor of the _African Methodist Episcopal Church Review_. Inasmuch as it is the record of a distinguished minister in one of the leading Negro denominations, it throws much light on this period, not only in ecclesiastical affairs but in matters touching the life and development of this race during that period. This is apparent to one observing that the book covers the author's twenty-seven years in the pastorate, sixteen years as a chaplain in the United States army, seven years as a professor in Wilberforce University, two of his trips to Europe and one to Mexico. The book is illustrated, but it has no index.

Taking up the work of the General Conference of 1864, the author says much to give the reader an insight into the characters and efforts of the leading churchmen of his denomination at that time. Among those passing in review are Bishops Quinn, Payne, and Nazrey, and others like H. M. Turner and Alexander W. Wayman who later became bishops of that denomination. Then follows his trip South, when the author had the opportunity to participate in the early efforts for the uplift of the freedmen, serving in Georgia and in South Carolina. He then tells how he arose to a position of usefulness and later served larger groups of communicants in Philadelphia and the District of Columbia. Referring to his record as a chaplain in the United States army, the author shows a larger acquaintance with the leading Negro statesmen through whom he obtained the position. The account of his services in this capacity, both in this country and abroad, and especially in the Philippine Islands, sets forth information, not only as to what that portion of the world was doing, but the reaction of this educated Negro to this panorama. Other interesting experiences appear in the account of his extensive travels.

The value of the book is incalculable when one takes into consideration the dearth of such literature bearing on Negroes. This work takes rank with the recent volume of Bishop Coppin entitled _Unwritten History_, for certainly there are to be found therein interesting romances taken from the life of the Negro and recorded by one of the race in the manner in which these things were impressed upon him and found expression in his mind. This is the sort of literature for which the public has patiently waited and it is devoutly to be desired that other churchmen may find time to leave a written record like these of Bishop Coppin and Chaplain Steward. For anyone desirous of studying the history of the Negro in its various ramifications, such works are indispensable.

_The Negro in Literature and Art._ By BENJAMIN BRAWLEY. Duffield and Company, New York, 1921. Pp. 197.

This is a revised edition of Professor Brawley's work which appeared in 1918. It follows the general outline of the first edition and sets forth additional facts but not sufficient to justify this claim to revision. The work is biographical, largely devoted to the narrative of the careers of Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnutt, W. E. B. Dubois, William Stanley Braithwaite, Frederick Douglass, Booker Washington, Henry O. Tanner, Meta Warrick Fuller, and Charles S. Gilpin. The unsatisfactory short sketch of Gilpin constitutes the best claim of the work to that of a revised edition.

While this work does not show by historic or philosophical development the evolution of the Negro mind as expressed in the achievements of the race in literature and art, it has some value. To have a publisher place before the public the sketches of so many prominent Negroes who might otherwise remain unknown to the public is a service to be appreciated. The world has too long considered the Negro a human machine restricted to drudgery. Any successful effort, therefore, to bring before the public from time to time the achievements of worthy Negroes, although it may be a repetition of what may be well known to the better informed few, must be welcomed as an undertaking having a direct bearing on popularizing the record of a neglected seventh of the population of the world.

Let us hope, however, that in the near future some other author, grasping more correctly the needs of the time, may set forth in literary form the interesting story of how history has been influenced by the Negro during the various stages of the world's progress and especially how the Negro of today functions efficiently in the life of Europe and America. The public will welcome too a work treating the eloquent appeals of Negro orators, the beautiful poetry voicing the strivings of this oppressed group, and its peculiar philosophy of life constructed while enduring the ordeal of racial proscription.

_The Free Negro in Maryland, 1634-1860._ By JAMES M. WRIGHT. Longmans, Green and Company, New York; P. S. King and Son, Ltd., London, 1921. Pp. 362.

This is a study in a neglected field of American history. Hitherto very little has been done to inform the world as to the actual contribution of the free Negro prior to the Civil War. Few persons realize that there were half a million such Negroes in the United States at that time. It is a mistake, therefore, to consider this better selected group of the race so insignificant as not to influence the history of the communities in which they lived. A number of histories have been written since the Civil War, however, with a view to meeting this need for a treatment of this neglected group. There have appeared John H. Russell's _Free Negro in Virginia_ and Brackett's _The Negro in Maryland_. But unfortunately such works have been too rigidly restricted to the discussion of the Negro's legal, social, and religious status as determined by the laws enacted for these purposes in the South rather than to the study of the free Negro himself. As it is well known that many of these laws were never enforced, we are still at sea as to what the free Negro actually was and what he was doing.

While Professor Wright has not altogether succeeded in meeting the requirements for this more scientific study of the free Negro, he has done his task much better than those who have hitherto invaded this field. In addition to covering the ground of other such studies he has undertaken to give the historic background and by statistical method he has presented valuable information as to the apprenticeship of Negro children, the occupations and wages of free Negroes, their acquisition of property, their education and their religious strivings.

In his long-drawn-out conclusion he does not seem to have an altogether favorable impression as to the rôle played by the free Negro in the State of Maryland. He shows that the Negro was led to despise himself in keeping with the policy of regarding the white man as the superior and the Negro as the inferior. Professor Wright says, however, that the perpetuation of such a handicap for the most needy part of the population was probably not sound social policy. Upon the whites the effects were first to cause at least a formal realization of race solidarity, and secondly, to intensify class lines within the ranks, although not to define the "poor whites" as rigidly as in certain of the sister slave States. On the whole, Professor Wright believes that the free Negro was an asset to the State, but one laden with many of the characteristics of a liability. "The managers of the corporate body to which he (the Negro) belonged," says the writer, "would have been relieved, could they have written him as an item off their accounts. Nevertheless the sympathetic personal attachment of many whites to individual negro servants, whether slave or free, was permanent." Thus ends an informing book with several misconceptions, but nevertheless fraught with valuable facts.

_Batouala._ By RENÉ MARAN. Albin Michel, Editor. Paris, 1921. Pp. 189.

This is a novel which was awarded the Goncourt prize in 1921. Inasmuch as it is socially historical, it contains many facts throwing light on the conditions of Africa. Born on the Island of Martinique where the conditions of colonial rule were different from those obtaining in Africa, the scenes of which inspired this indictment of the white man's civilization, René Maran doubtless found the situation there so revolting that it evoked from him this work. Without concealing the faults of the natives, Maran discusses the robber concession companies in Africa, forced labor, high taxes and exorbitant prices for goods sold to the natives. Inasmuch as there were no railroads or "pack animals," the Negroes themselves were impressed into a "pack-man system" which together with the Tsetse fly has worked havoc in Africa. The author maintains that this "pack carrying" has caused the death of more than one million Negroes and cites as evidence that in one town the blacks rebelled against this portage service because it was considered better to die than to undergo such a hardship. The book is intended to emphasize the importance of remedying these abuses and suggests as the proper reform that the concessions granted these private companies should be withdrawn and that nature should be given the opportunity to repair the damage done by white men.

This is a stirring note from a man of African blood speaking for Africa from the point of view of the native himself. It is a distinct contribution in that we have a different view from that appearing in the works of white men who have travelled through that continent, seeing it from the outside and then only "through a glass darkly." The cause of truth in that quarter is now fortunate in having there a number of intelligent Africans who, after having been trained in the mission schools and in the best universities of Europe and America, are now beginning to give the other phase of the social, economic, and political questions in Africa. Many of the conditions which have long obtained in that continent have continued for the reason that persons on the outside who might have been struck with holy horror, had such been known, have never learned and, therefore, can hardly realize that such appalling conditions exist. For this valuable contribution, not only from the literary point of view, but from that of the investigator of social and economic problems, the public must feel indebted to René Maran.

NOTES

The first Spring Conference of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History was held in the city of New York on April 3d and 4th. There was a preliminary mass meeting on Sunday, the 2d, at the Mother A. M. E. Zion Church, where Mr. James F. Morton, Prof. John R. Hawkins, and Dr. C. G. Woodson delivered addresses which were enthusiastically received.

On Monday and Tuesday, the 3d and 4th, when the actual meeting began, a larger number of persons from afar were present. The day sessions were held at the 135th Street Branch Library where, on Tuesday morning, Dr. George E. Haynes, Secretary of the Race Commission of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ, opened the discussion of the question "Why one race should know the other one." Other persons participating in the discussion and giving additional information as to the bright prospects for the cooperation of the races in the country were Bishop R. A. Carter, and Cleveland Allen who availed himself of the opportunity to emphasize the importance of placing the bust of Frederick Douglass in the New York Hall of Fame.

At the first evening session held at the Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn the following evening there was a large attendance. The meeting was opened by preliminary remarks by the Director. He was followed by Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard University who delivered an informing address on "Involuntary Servitude." Remarks as to the importance of this organization and how the work may be more successfully prosecuted were made by Bishop R. A. Carter of the C. M. E. Church, Bishop Lee of the A. M. E. Z. Church and by Dr. George Frazier Miller, Dr. H. H. Proctor, Dr. W. H. Brown, and Rev. J. B. Adams.

On the following day, the morning session opened with a discussion on "How to promote the Study of Negro History in the Schools," led by Mr. Thomas C. Williams of the Bordentown Industrial School. He brought forward valuable statistics out of his own experience as a teacher in this field and presented several suggestions and plans for the promotion of this work. There followed some discussion of an informing nature by Dr. I. Garland Penn, Secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Church Board of Education for Negroes, and by Dr. W. Y. Bell, who spoke of his researches in the sources bearing on the history of the Negro in Africa.

The Conference closed with an evening session at the Mother A. M. E. Zion Church where addresses were delivered by Dr. I. Garland Penn and Dr. C. G. Woodson. The address of Dr. Penn dealt primarily with the Negro as a factor in church history. Beginning with the early struggles of the denominations and their relations to the Negroes, Dr. Penn enlightened the audience on facts which are not generally known to the public. He closed his informing address with the expression of faith in the importance of the church as a factor in the progress of the Negro. The address by the Director had to do primarily with the history of the Negro by cycles, showing the varying attitude of the white man toward the Negro and the successful efforts of the Negroes to rise in the midst of trying difficulties and to convince the world of their worth. On the whole, this first Spring Conference was a success and justified itself as an innovation.

* * * * *

The Quadrennial Address of the Bishops of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church to the Fourteenth Session of the General Conference, held in St. Louis on the 3d of May, contains not only the information bearing on the church but a valuable retrospect as to the conditions among the Negroes after the World War. Among other topics are mentioned racial retrospect, race prejudice and race superiority, the aftermath of the war, the church and world conditions, and the reaction of white Christianity to lawlessness.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. VII--OCTOBER, 1922--NO. 4

BRAZILIAN AND UNITED STATES SLAVERY COMPARED

A GENERAL VIEW

Whether the Teutonic races are superior to the Latin races is a mooted question, subject to prejudiced points of view. However, there is no doubt that there actually exists a great difference in the institutions of religion, law, language, customs, fashions, and moral precepts between, let us say, the Anglo-Saxon and the Portuguese. In other words, the English nation has evolved an English way of living, just as the Portuguese have adapted themselves to governing society, attacking nature in their own way.

Now assume that these two nationalities with their unlike national habits and traditions are planted in the new world. Assume the one as living in a warm temperate clime, and the other under equatorial conditions. Assume that the first nationality is self-sufficient to establish a colony, and opposed to intermarriage with other races; and then imagine the second case, where there exist a few colonists in womanless settlements with consequent marriages between the native and European common, and a large half-breed population as the result. With such diversities in national character, in the make-up of the individuals, in natural and social environment, could we expect the two peoples to react similarly to a given social institution? No wonder then, that slavery in the English colonies of North America was very much unlike the institution as it existed in Brazil.

Brazil was being tilled by slave labor long before the settlement of Jamestown, and still boasted of hordes of slaves on its plantations as late as a quarter century after the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States had been issued. As early as 1585, Pernambuco could claim 10,000 African slaves and Bahia something like three or four thousand,[1] whereas the first shipment of slaves to the English colonies in America was introduced into Jamestown harbor by a Dutch ship as late as August, 1619.[2]

In Brazil the slave trade received an impetus as a result of royal restrictions and Jesuits' opposition to the enslavement of Indians, thereby compelling the more law-abiding and docile settlers to turn from exploiting the native labor and to seek its labor supply from Africa.[3] The labor demands of the great sugar plantations, cotton fields, tobacco lands, and later the mines, kept the slave poachers on the Guinea and Angola Coast busy, so that by the middle of the eighteenth century slaves were entering Brazil on a vast scale. From 1759 to 1803, according to Keller, the colonial registers give as consigned from Angola to Brazil 642,000 Negroes. Thus, by 1800 fully one half of the total Brazilian population of 3,200,000 was slave, and by 1818 there were 1,930,000 slaves besides some 526,000 free Negroes and mulattoes, in all about sixty-three per cent of the total.[4] By the middle of the nineteenth century there was something like three millions of slaves out of a population of seven and a half millions. Lord Palmerston estimated the total number of slaves in the sixties as being 3,000,000;[5] whereas a writer in the "Revue des deux Mondes" puts the number between 2,500,000 and 4,000,000.[6] Dawson quotes the number of slaves in 1856 as being approximately 2,500,000 or forty per cent of the total population.[7] Apparently there is no actual census available on the number of slaves for this period. Needless to say, the slaves easily comprised from forty to fifty per cent of the population, and if we add all those of mixed blood we have a majority of the inhabitants of Brazil.

Now let us turn to the Old South. Slavery we know progressed somewhat in the southern colonies, and to a negligible extent in the New England colonies. The "Asiento" in 1713, by which Great Britain at the close of the War of Spanish Succession secured the right to supply the colonies of Spain with 4,800 slaves annually,[8] augmented the slave trade throughout the new world. Negroes were in demand in the rice areas, cotton fields, and tobacco plantations. In 1710 there were only 50,000 slaves in the United States, the number increased to 220,000 in 1750, to 464,000 in 1770,[9] until by the year 1790 they numbered 697,624.[10] This number constituted one-fifth of our total population.

Slavery, however, was not a venerated institution in the Southland in the eighteenth century. In fact, it was rather supported through the force of habit and the fear of the results of emancipation. Then came Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. The South went cotton mad. The United States now became the world's producer of raw cotton. Henceforth, slavery was held "the indispensable economic instrument of southern society."[11]

In the first half of the nineteenth century, then, American slavery was at its height. By 1850 the slaves numbered 3,204,313, about a few thousand less than Brazil, which at the opening of the century had so far led it in the number of slaves held.[12] Blake, writing in 1857, shows that by the last census, however, unlike Brazil, the proportion of black to white was not great, being in the neighborhood of fourteen per cent. However, taking the nation in sections, the ratio of black to white in the South was one to two, whereas in the North it was but one to sixty-eight.[13]