Virginia grew only tobacco, South Carolina grew mainly rice. Moreover, the spectacle of the free laborer working on the same soil and at the same task, would be fatal to that resignation and that complete moral and intellectual subjection, which alone can make slave labor possible. Thus the cheaper and more efficient system obtained the mastery so completely that by the beginning of the eighteenth century slave and negro had become well-nigh synonymous terms. The new system, indeed, did not win the day wholly without a struggle. A Virginian clergyman writing in 1724 deplores the number of negroes and the consequent discouragement to the poorer class of white emigrants. In South Carolina more than one attempt was made to stem the tide. In 1678 an Act was passed offering a bounty on the importation of indented white servants, Irish only excepted. That they were designed to counteract the influx of black slaves is shown by the provision that they were to be distributed among the planters, one to every six negroes. In 1712 a more elaborate attempt was made in the same direction. An Act was passed which declared in its preamble the importance of increasing the numbers of the population. A bounty of fourteen pounds a head was offered for the importation of British subjects between twelve and thirty years of age. They were not to be criminals, and any attempt to evade this condition was to be punished by a fine of twenty-five pounds. This seems to have had some immediate result, since five years later it was found necessary to pass an Act for the better government of white servants, of whom great numbers had lately come over. In 1719 the Assembly took the further step of imposing a duty of forty pounds on all imported negroes. Had this measure been carried it must have put an end to the slave trade as far as South Carolina was concerned. It is sad to think that such a measure was frustrated by the cupidity and jealousy of the English government. But it had become a settled maxim of colonial policy to allow the provincial assemblies no control over external trade, and in all commercial legislation to regard the profit of the English merchant rather than the social and industrial well-being of the colonists. The Proprietors and the crown were for once united, and the measure was vetoed." 1 Hugh Jones, as above quoted. Cf. p. 123. • Ib., p. 312. FEELING ABOUT SLAVERY. 389 If the colonists were not wholly blind to the economical mischiefs of slavery, there are no traces of that opposition to it on Moral feeling about slavery. humane grounds which we meet with at a later day. Here and there, indeed, the more obvious evils incidental to slavery called forth a protest. Thus Morgan Godwyn, in his "Negroes' Advocate," published in 1680, urges the claims of the slave to be treated as a being capable of religious influences and amenable to moral laws, and denounces the cruelty of West India planters with the fervor of a Las Casas. In Sothern's play of "Oroonoko" and in Addison's adaptation of the story of Yarico we may trace a dim foreshadowing of later feeling. Baxter, too, in his "Christians' Directory," reminds the slave-master that he can have but a limited dominion over beings with souls, and that God is their absolute owner. But with all these writers it is the abuse of slavery that is denounced, the cruelty and injustice which attach themselves as excrescences to the system. It needed the teaching of time to show that the whole system was a corrupt one, fatal to the social well-being of a community because fatal to free industry and to the purity of domestic life. about The moral evils of the new system did not appear in their full horror till a later day, yet we can trace the germs of them from Legislation the very outset. The indented servant was not unslavery. frequently the subject of humane interference, both from the colonial legislatures and from the English government. Culpepper's instructions tell him to induce the Assembly to pass an Act for the protection of servants, and he replies that the laws at present extant are sufficient for the purpose, but that between bad servants and bad masters the matter is beset with difficulties. The Maryland Assembly of 1715, which applied itself specially to the whole question, passed an enactment for the same purpose.1 The terms leave it doubtful whether the Act was intended to include negroes or whether its benefits were limited to indented servants. Be that as it may, in the generality of cases where legislation dealt with the negro, it was only to confirm and perpetuate the barrier between the two races. From the outset there was a sharp distinction between the negro and the indented servant. No hereditary disqualification attached to the latter. He was not one of a race of bondsmen. With the 1 Bacon's Laws of Maryland. negro slavery descended from parent to child. Nor was there any prospect of a fusion between the races. In Maryland and Virginia mixed marriages were strictly forbidden. At the same time those unlawful unions between the races, which at a later day invested slavery with its worst evils, were prohibited under severe penalties. In Virginia, as early as 1637, a white man was obliged to do public penance for having intercourse with a negro woman.3 In 1691 a law was passed enacting that if any white woman had a child by a negro she should be fined fifteen pounds, or, in default of payment, be sold for five years. In Maryland any sort of union was strictly forbidden. The white settlers of either sex who, of free choice, lowered themselves to the level of the servile race, were treated as having thereby incurred the penalties which attached to that race. The separation was not merely of status, but of color. The free man, black or white, who had intercourse with a woman of the opposite race, was to become a slave for seven years. Nay, more: if a free negro woman had a child by a man of her own race, even though free, she was to revert to a state of slavery. In other words, she could only obtain her freedom by renouncing her race. Among the imperfect records of legislation in South Carolina we find enactments of the same purport. The language in which these offenses are formally described forcibly illustrates the feeling with which they were regarded. Such unions are "unnatural and inordinate."7 The white man who so offended "defiled his body" and "abused himself to the dishonor of God and shame of Christianity." We find traces, too, of that watchful dread which in after times became so strongly marked and so repulsive a feature of slavery. In 1687 we find Lord Howard reporting to the Lords of Plantations that a negro plot had been discovered, and commenting on the dangerous liberty granted to slaves of walking abroad on Saturdays and Sundays, and meeting at the funerals of their friends.” In Maryland an Act passed in 1715 forbade any negro to go three miles without a pass, or to carry a gun beyond the limits of his master's plantation.1o 1 Beverley, p. 235. Bacon, 1715, ch. xliv. 23. Hening, vol. iii. p. 453. Bacon, 1715, ch. xliv. 25; 1717, ch. xiii. 5. Hening, vol. i. p. 552. Bacon, 1715, ch. xliv. 26-8. Trott, Laws of South Carolina, vol. i. p. 318. Report from Howard. Colonial Entry Book, No. lxxxv. ♦ Ib., vol. ii. p. 87. Trott, vol. i. p. 318. ch. xliv. 33. 10 Bacon, 1715, status of GENERAL EFFECTS OF SLAVERY. 391 At one time, indeed, it seemed as if the condition of the negro was destined to be even more hopelessly degraded. The plantReligious ers in Virginia and Maryland withheld baptism from the negro. their slaves under the belief that it would be illegal to hold Christian men in bondage. When Culpepper sought to fulfill that part of his instructions which specially ordered the conversion of the negroes, he was met by this difficulty. He seems, however, to have given the planters an authoritative assurance that conversion to Christianity would in no way affect the status of the slave, and he was able to tell the English government that negroes were daily christened. The same difficulty arose in Maryland and in Carolina, and in each colony it was necessary for the government expressly to declare that baptism did not carry with it any claim to freedom.2 fluence of It is not too much to say that the whole order of southern soci ety, its manner of life and forms of industry, were fashioned by General in slavery. We have already seen how the early condislavery. tions of Virginian life tended to throw the land of the colony into the hands of a few large proprietors. That tendency was confirmed and intensified by slavery. For slave labor can only be employed profitably in large gangs, and such gangs can only be worked on wide territories and in the hands of great capitalists. In Maryland we hear of thirteen hundred slaves belonging to a single master.3 In Virginia nine hundred seems to be the largest number recorded. The peculiar industry of Carolina, rice-growing, adapted itself better to moderate-sized holdings. Thirty slaves, we are told, was the average staff of a plantation' ment of an In this way the possession of slaves did for the southern colo. nies what land does for long-settled countries. Where land is Develop- abundant and labor and cattle dear, there is no likeliaristocracy. hood of a landed aristocracy growing up. No one will care to acquire land when he can extract no profit from it. If the titular supremacy over land is valued as among the highlanders of Scotland, it is not for the sake of the soil itself, but of certain rights over the clansmen which that supremacy carries with it. Thus in primitive society cattle is the measure of wealth, and the rich man is not he who can let land, but he who can supply 1 Colonial Entry Book, No. lxxxii. pp. 90, 140. Cf. Hugh Jones, p. 70. 2 Bacon, 1715, ch. xliv. 24. Trott, vol i. p. 213. & Terra Mariæ, p. 201. 4 Hugh Jones, p. 37. Description of South Carolina, in Carroll, ii. 202. his inferiors with live stock. If the southern colonies had de pended on free labor a tract of land in Virginia or Maryland would have been a merely nominal property. Slavery came in as the one means by which the capitalist could assert his superiority over the man who owned nothing but his own labor. The result was the establishment of a landed aristocracy, a result which was facilitated by the tastes and tendencies which the southern colonists had carried to their new homes. But it must be remembered that the southern planter was primarily a slaveholder and only incidentally a landowner. His estate was merely a needful condition for utilizing the capital which he had invested in human labor. Social life of the Southern Thus grew up that strange form of life peculiar to slave-holding states, such as the southern colonies of America and the West Indian islands. Each plantation became a separate community, well-nigh independent and self-supporting. There colonies. were no towns and consequently no shops. The freeman rebelled against the idea of becoming a laborer, and thus there were no artisans. Beyond the rough clothing of the slaves, almost every necessary of life was brought from England. Clothes, shoes, household furniture, crockery, even wooden bowls, were imported.1 Such was the lack of mechanical skill that we even hear of the timber for a house being sent in the rough to England, and returned fashioned and ready to be put together.2 Fifty years later Jefferson wrote, "While we have land to labor let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench or twirling a distaff." 3 Want of In this state of things is to be found an explanation of a phenomenon which meets us at every turn in Virginian history. Almost from its earliest days the community relapsed into coinage.. a state of barter. Constant efforts were made to enforce payment in coin but in vain. In 1645 the Assembly fixed a legal value for Spanish coins and entertained proposals for a copper coinage of its own. We have seen how Culpepper attempted to combine the functions of a reforming governor and a successful speculator. All these attempts failed, as any attempt must fail which seeks to force upon a community by enactment an article which it does not want. Tobacco, as the staple product of 1 Beverley, p. 255. See, too, the account of Virginia in the New General Atlas, 1721. Calendar of Virginian State Papers, by W. P. Palmer. Introduction, p. lv. State of Virginia, p. 275. • See page 263. |