Part 7

[Footnote 130: Haedo, _Historia_, pp. 139, 140. Besides the illustrations of the hardships of White Slavery already introduced, I refer briefly to the following: Edinburgh Review, vol. xxvi. pp. 452-454; Croker's Letter, pp. 11-13; Quarterly Review, vol. xv. p. 145; Eaton's Life, p. 100; Noah's Travels, p. 366.]

In nothing are the impiety and blasphemy of this custom more apparent than in the auctions of human beings, where men were sold to the highest bidder. Through the personal experience of a young English merchant, Abraham Brown, afterwards a settler in Massachusetts, we may learn how these were conducted. In 1655, before the liberating power of Cromwell had been acknowledged, he was captured, together with a whole crew, and carried into Sallee. His own words, in his memoirs still preserved, will best tell his story.[131] "On landing," he says, "an exceeding great company of most dismal spectators were led to behold us in our captivated condition. There was liberty for all sorts to come and look on us, that whosoever had a mind to buy any of us on the day appointed for our sale together in the market, might see, as I may say, what they would like to have for their money; whereby we had too many comfortless visitors, both from the town and country, one saying he would buy this man, and the other that. To comfort us, we were told by the Christian slaves already there, if we met with such and such patrons, our usage would not be so bad as we supposed; though, indeed, our men found the usage of the best bad enough. Fresh victuals and bread were supplied, I suppose to feed us up for the market, that we might be in some good plight against the day we were to be sold. And now I come to speak of our being sold into this doleful slavery. It was doleful in respect to the time and manner. As to the time, it was on our Sabbath day, in the morning, about the time the people of God were about to enjoy the liberty of God's house; this was the time our bondage was confirmed. Again, it was sad in respect to the manner of our selling. Being all of us brought into the market-place, we were led about, two or three at a time, in the midst of a great concourse of people, both from the town and country, who had a full sight of us, and if that did not satisfy, they would come and feel of your hand, and look into your mouth to see whether you are sound in health, or to see, by the hardness of your hand, whether you have been a laborer or not. The manner of buying is this: He that bids the greatest price hath you; they bidding one upon another until the highest has you for a slave, whoever he is, or wherever he dwells. As concerning myself, being brought to the market in the weakest condition of any of our men, I was led forth among the cruel multitude to be sold. As yet being undiscovered what I was, I was like to have been sold at a very low rate, not above L15 sterling, whereas our ordinary seamen were sold for L30 and L35 sterling, and two boys were sold for L40 apiece; and being in this sad posture led up and down at least one hour and a half, during which time a Dutchman, that was our carpenter, discovered me to some Jews, they increased from L15 to L75, which was the price my patron gave for me, being 300 ducats; and had I not been so weakened, and in these rags, (indeed, I made myself more so than I was, for sometimes, as they led me, I pretended I could not go, and did often sit down;) I say, had not these things been, in all likelihood I had been sold for as much again in the market, and thus I had been dearer, and the difficulty greater to be redeemed. During the time of my being led up and down the market, I was possessed with the greatest fears, not knowing who my patron might be. I feared it might be one from the country, who would carry me where I could not return, or it might be one in and about Sallee, of which we had sad accounts; and many other distracting thoughts I had. And though I was like to have been sold unto the most cruel man in Sallee, there being but one piece of eight between him and my patron, yet the Lord was pleased to cause him to buy me, of whom I may speak, to the glory of God, as the kindest man in the place."

[Footnote 131: MS. Memoirs.]

This is the story of a respectable person, little distinguished in the world. But the slave dealer applied his inexorable system without distinction of persons. The experiences of St. Vincent de Paul did not differ from those of Abraham Brown. That eminent character, admired, beloved and worshipped by large circles of mankind, has also left a record of his sale as a slave.[132] "Their proceedings," he says, "at our sale were as follows: After we had been stripped, they gave to each one of us a pair of drawers, a linen coat, with a cap, and paraded us through the city of Tunis, where they had come expressly to sell us. Having made us make five or six turns through the city, with the chain at our necks, they conducted us back to the boat, that the merchants might come to see who could eat well, and who not; and to show that our wounds were not mortal. This done, they took us to the public square, where the merchants came to visit us, precisely as they do at the purchase of a horse or of cattle, making us open the mouth to see our teeth, feeling our sides, searching our wounds, and making us move our steps, trot and run, then lift burdens, and then wrestle, in order to see the strength of each, and a thousand other sorts of brutalities."

[Footnote 132: _Biographie Universelle_, art. Vincent de Paul.]

And here we may refer again to Cervantes, whose pen was dipped in his own dark experience. In his Life in Algiers, he has displayed the horrors of the white slave market. The public crier exposes for sale a father and mother with their two children. They are to be sold separately, or, according to the language of our day, "in lots to suit purchasers." The father is resigned, confiding in God; the mother sobs; while the children, ignorant of the inhumanity of men, show an instinctive trust in the constant and wakeful protection of their parents--now, alas! impotent to shield them from dire calamity. A merchant, inclining to purchase one of the "little ones," and wishing to ascertain his bodily condition, causes him to open his mouth. The child, still ignorant of the doom which awaits him, imagines that the inquirer is about to extract a tooth, and, assuring him that it does not ache, begs him to desist. The merchant, in other respects an estimable man, pays one hundred and thirty dollars for the youngest child, and the sale is completed. Thus a human being--one of those children of whom it has been said, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven"--is profanely treated as an article of merchandise, and torn far away from a mother's arms and a father's support. The hardening influence of custom has steeled the merchant into insensibility to this violation of humanity and justice, this laceration of sacred ties, this degradation of the image of God. The unconscious heartlessness of the slave dealer, and the anguish of his victims, are depicted in the dialogue which ensues after the sale.[133]

MERCHANT.

Come hither, child; 'tis time to go to rest.

JUAN.

_Signor, I will not leave my mother here, To go with any one._

MOTHER.

_Alas! my child, thou art no longer mine, But his who bought thee._

JUAN.

_What! then, have you, mother, Forsaken me?_

MOTHER.

_O Heavens! how cruel are ye!_

MERCHANT.

_Come, hasten, boy._

JUAN.

Will you go with me, brother?

FRANCISCO.

I cannot, Juan, 'tis not in my power;-- May Heaven protect you, Juan!

MOTHER.

O my child, My joy and my delight, God won't forget thee!

JUAN.

O father! mother! whither will they bear me Away from you?

MOTHER.

Permit me, worthy Signor, To speak a moment in my infant's ear. Grant me this small contentment; very soon I shall know nought but grief.

MERCHANT.

What you would say, Say now; to-night is the last time.

MOTHER.

To-night Is the first time my heart e'er felt such grief.

JUAN.

_Pray keep me with you, mother, for I know not Whither he'd carry me._

MOTHER.

_Alas, poor child! Fortune forsook thee even at thy birth._ The heavens are overcast, the elements Are turbid, and the very sea and winds Are all combined against me. _Thou, my child, Know'st not the dark misfortunes into which Thou art so early plunged, but happily Lackest the power to comprehend thy fate._ What I would crave of thee, my life, since I Must never more be blessed with seeing thee, Is that thou never, never wilt forget To say, as thou wert wont, thy _Ave Mary_; For that bright queen of goodness, grace, and virtue Can loosen all thy bonds and give thee freedom.

AYDAR.

Behold the wicked Christian, how she counsels Her innocent child! You wish, then, that your child Should, like yourself, continue still in error.

JUAN.

_O mother, mother, may I not remain? And must these Moors, then, carry me away?_

MOTHER.

_With thee, my child, they rob me of my treasures._

JUAN.

O, I am much afraid!

MOTHER.

'Tis I, my child, Who ought to fear at seeing thee depart. Thou wilt forget thy God, me, and thyself. What else can I expect from thee, abandoned At such a tender age, amongst a people Full of deceit and all iniquity?

CRIER.

_Silence, you villainous woman! if you would not Have your head pay for what your tongue has done._

[Footnote 133: This translation is borrowed from Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe, by Roscoe, vol. iii. p. 381. There is a letter of "John Dunton, Mariner," addressed to the English Admiralty in 1637, which might furnish the foundation of a similar scene. "For my only son," he says, "is now a slave in Algier, and but ten years of age, and like to be lost forever, without God's great mercy and the King's clemency, which, I hope, may be in some manner obtained."--Osborne's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 492.]

From this scene we gladly avert the countenance, while, from the bottom of our hearts, we send our sympathies to the unhappy sufferers. Fain would we avert their fate; fain would we destroy the system of slavery, that has made them wretched and their masters cruel. And yet we would not judge with harshness an Algerine slave owner. He has been reared in a religion of slavery; he has learned to regard Christians, "guilty of a skin not colored like his own," as lawful prey; and has found sanctions for his conduct in the injunctions of the Koran, in the custom of his country, and in the instinctive dictates of an imagined self-interest. It is, then, the "peculiar institution" which we are aroused to execrate, rather than the Algerine slave masters, who glory in its influence, and,

so perfect is their misery, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely than before.

But there is reason to believe that the sufferings of the white slaves were not often greater than is the natural incident of slavery. There is an important authority which presents this point in an interesting light. It is that of General Eaton, for some time consul of the United States at Tunis, and whose name is not without note in the painful annals of war. In a letter to his wife, dated at Tunis, April 6, 1799, and written amidst opportunities of observation such as few have enjoyed, he briefly describes the condition of this unhappy class, illustrating it by a comparison less flattering to our country than to Barbary. "Many of the Christian slaves," he says, "have died of grief, and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death. Alas! remorse seizes my whole soul, when I reflect that this is, indeed, a copy of the very barbarity which my eyes have seen in my own native country. And yet we boast of liberty and national justice. How frequently have I seen in the Southern States of our own country weeping mothers leading guiltless infants to the sales with as deep anguish as if they led them to the slaughter, and yet felt my bosom tranquil in the view of these aggressions upon defenceless humanity! But when I see the same enormities practised upon beings whose complexion and blood claim kindred with my own, I curse the perpetrators, and weep over the wretched victims of their rapacity. _Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among the professing Christians of civilized America_; and yet here sensibility bleeds at every pore for the wretches whom fate has doomed to slavery."[134]

[Footnote 134: Eaton's Life, p. 145.]

Such testimony would seem to furnish a decisive standard or measure of comparison by which to determine the character of White Slavery in the Barbary States. But there are other considerations and authorities. One of these is the influence of the religion of these barbarians. Travellers remark the generally kind treatment bestowed by Mohammedans upon slaves.[135] The lash rarely, if ever, lacerates the back of the female; the knife or branding iron is not employed upon any human being to mark him as the property of his fellow-man. Nor is the slave doomed, as in other countries, where the Christian religion is professed, to unconditional and perpetual service, without prospect of _redemption_. Hope, the last friend of misfortune, may brighten his captivity. He is not so walled around by inhuman institutions as to be inaccessible to freedom. "And unto such of your slaves," says the Koran, in words worthy of adoption in the legislation of Christian countries, "as desire a written instrument, allowing them to redeem themselves on paying a certain sum, write one, if ye know good in them, and give them of the riches of God, which he hath given you."[136] Thus from the Koran, which ordains slavery, come lessons of benignity to the slave; and one of the most touching stories in Mohammedanism is of the generosity of Ali, the companion of the Prophet, who, after fasting for three days, gave his whole provision to a captive not more famished than himself.[137]

[Footnote 135: Wilson's Travels, p. 93; Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxviii. p. 403; Noah's Travels, p. 302; Quarterly Review, vol. xv. p. 168; Shaler's Sketches of Algiers, p. 77.]

[Footnote 136: Sale's Koran, chap. 24, vol. ii. p. 194. The right of redemption was recognized by the Gentoo laws. Halhed's Code, cap. 8, Sec. 1, 2. It was unknown in the British West Indies while slavery existed there. Stephens on West India Slavery, vol. ii. pp. 378-384. It is also unknown in the Slave States of our country.]

[Footnote 137: Sales's Koran, vol. ii. p. 474, note.]

Such precepts and examples doubtless had their influence in Algiers. It is evident, from the history of the country, that the prejudice of race did not so far prevail as to stamp upon the slaves and their descendants any indelible mark of exclusion from power and influence. It often happened that they arrived at eminent posts in the state. The seat of the Deys, more than once, was filled by humble Christian captives, who had tugged for years at the oar.[138]

[Footnote 138: Haedo, _Historia de Argel_, p. 122; Quarterly Review, vol. xv. pp. 169, 172; Shaler's Sketches of Algiers, p. 77; Short Account of Algiers, pp. 22, 25. It seems to have been supposed, that, according to the Koran, the condition of slavery ceased when the party became a Mussulman. Penny Cyclopaedia, art. _Slavery_; Noah's Travels, p. 302; Shaler's Sketches, p. 69. In point of fact, freedom generally followed conversion; but I do not find any injunction on the subject in the Koran.]

Nor do we feel, from the narratives of captives and of travellers, that the condition of the Christian slave was rigorous beyond the ordinary lot of slavery. "The Captive's Story" in Don Quixote fails to impress the reader with any peculiar horror of the life from which he had escaped. It is often said that the sufferings of Cervantes were among the most severe which even Algiers could inflict.[139] But they did not repress the gayety of his temper; and we learn that in the building where he was confined there was a chapel or oratory, in which mass was celebrated, the sacrament administered, and sermons regularly preached by captive priests.[140] Nor was this all. The pleasures of the theatre were enjoyed by these slaves; and the farces of Lope de Rueda, a favorite Spanish dramatist of the time, served, in actual representation, to cheer this house of bondage.[141]

[Footnote 139: _De los peores que en Argel auia._ Haedo, _Historia de Argel_, p. 85; Navarrete, _Vida de Cervantes_, p. 361.]

[Footnote 140: Roscoe's life of Cervantes, p. 303.]

[Footnote 141: _Banos de Argel._]

The experience of the devoted Portuguese ecclesiastic, Father Thomas, illustrates this lot. A slave in Morocco, he was able to minister to his fellow-slaves, and to compose a work on the Passion of Jesus Christ, which has been admired for its unction, and translated into various tongues. At last liberated through the intervention of the Portuguese ambassador, he chose to remain behind, notwithstanding the solicitations of relatives at home, that he might continue to instruct and console the unhappy men, his late companions in bonds.[142]

[Footnote 142: _Biographie Universelle_, art. Thomas de Jesus; Digby's Board Stone of Honor, Tancredus, Sec. 9, p. 181.]

Even the story of St. Vincent de Paul, so brutally sold in the public square, is not without its gleams of light. He was bought by a fisherman, who was soon constrained to get rid of him, "having nothing so contrary except the sea." He then passed into the hands of an old man, whom he pleasantly describes as a chemical doctor, a sovereign maker of quintessences, very humane and kind, who had labored for the space of fifty years in search of the philosopher's stone. "He loved me much," says the fugitive slave, "and pleased himself by discoursing to me of alchemy, and then of his religion, to which he made every effort to draw me, promising me riches and all his wisdom." On the death of this master, he passed to a nephew, by whom he was sold to still another person, a renegade from Nice, who took him to the mountains, where the country was extremely hot and desert. A Turkish wife of the renegade becoming interested in him, and curious to know his manner of life at home, visited him daily at his work in the fields, and listened with delight to the slave, away from his country and the churches of his religion, as he sang the psalm of the children of Israel in a foreign land: "By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion."[143]

[Footnote 143: _Biographie Universelle_, art. Vincent de Paul.]

The kindness of the slave master often appears. The English merchant Abraham Brown, whose sale at Sallee has been already described, makes known, in his memoirs, that, after he had been carried to the house of his master, his wounds were tenderly washed and dressed by his master's wife, and "indeed the whole family gave him comfortable words." He was furnished with a mat to lie on, "and some three or four days after provided with a shirt, such a one as it was, a pair of shoes, and an old doublet." His servile toils troubled him less than "being commanded by a negro man, who had been a long time in his patron's house a freeman, at whose beck and command he was obliged to be obedient for the doing of the least about the house or mill;" and he concludes his lament on this degradation as follows: "Thus I, who had commanded many men in several parts of the world, must now be commanded by a negro, who, with his two countrywomen in the house, scorned to drink out of the water pot I drank of, whereby I was despised of the despised people of the world."[144]

[Footnote 144: MS. Memoirs.]

At a later day we are furnished with another authentic picture. Captain Braithwaite, who accompanied the British minister to Morocco in 1727, in order to procure the liberation of the British captives, after describing their comfortable condition, adds, "I am sure we saw several captives who lived much better in Barbary than ever they did in their own country. Whatever money in charity was sent them by their friends in Europe was their own, unless they defrauded one another, which has happened much oftener than by the Moors. Several of them are rich, and many have carried considerable sums out of the country, to the truth of which we are all witnesses. Several captives keep their mules, and some their servants; and yet this is called insupportable slavery among Turks and Moors. But we found this, as well as many other things in this country, strangely misrepresented."[145]

[Footnote 145: Braithwaite's Revolutions in Morocco, p. 353.]

These statements--which, to those who do not place freedom above all price, may seem, at first view, to take the sting even from slavery--are not without support from other sources. Colonel Keatinge, who, as a member of a diplomatic mission from England, visited Morocco in 1785, says of this evil there, that "it is very slightly inflicted, and as to any labor undergone, it does not deserve the name;"[146] while Mr. Lempriere, who was in the same country not long afterwards, adds, "To the disgrace of Europe, the Moors treat their slaves with humanity."[147] In Tripoli, we are told, by a person for ten years a resident, that the same gentleness prevailed. "It is a great alleviation to our feelings," says the writer, speaking of the slaves, "to see them easy and well dressed, and, so far from wearing chains, as captives do in most other places, they are perfectly at liberty."[148] We have already seen the testimony of General Eaton with regard to slavery in Tunis; while Mr. Noah, one of his successors in the consulate of the United States at that place, says, "In Tunis, from my observation, the slaves are not severely treated; they are very useful, and many of them have made money."[149] And Mr. Shaler, describing the chief seat of Christian slavery, says, "In short, there were slaves who left Algiers with regret."[150]

[Footnote 146: Keatinge's Travels, p. 250; Quarterly Review, vol. xv. p. 146. See also Chenier's Present State of Morocco, vol. i. p. 192; ii. p. 369.]

[Footnote 147: Lempriere's Tour, p. 290. See also pp. 3, 147, 190, 279.]

[Footnote 148: Narrative of Ten Years' Residence at Tripoli, p. 241.]

[Footnote 149: Noah's Travels, p. 368.]

[Footnote 150: Shaler's Sketches, p. 77.]