History of the Negro Race in America Volume I Part 45

The home government thought it wise to build up Georgia out of white men, who could develop its resources, and bear arms in defence of British possessions along an extensive border exposed to a pestiferous foe. But the Board of Trade soon found this an impracticable scheme, and the colonists themselves began to clamor "for the use of negroes."[517] The first pet.i.tion for the introduction and use of Negro slaves was offered to the trustees in 1735. This prayer was promptly and positively denied, and for fifteen years they refused to grant all requests for the use of Negroes. They adhered to their prohibition in letter and spirit. Whenever and wherever Negroes were found in the colony, they were sold back into Carolina. In the month of December, 1738, a pet.i.tion, addressed to the trustees, including nearly all the names of the foremost colonists, set forth the distressing condition into which affairs had drifted under the enforcement of the prohibition, and declared that "the use of negroes, with proper limitations, which, if granted, would both occasion great numbers of white people to come here, and also to render us capable to subsist ourselves, by raising provisions upon our lands, until we could make some produce fit for export, in some measure to balance our importations." But instead of securing a favorable hearing, the pet.i.tion drew the fire of the friends of the prohibition against the use of Negroes. On the 3d of January, 1739, a pet.i.tion to the trustees combating the arguments of the above-mentioned pet.i.tion, and urging them to remain firm, was issued at Darien. This was followed by another one, issued from Ebenezer on the 13th of March, in favor of the position occupied by the trustees. A great many Scotch and German people had settled in the colony; and, familiar with the arts of husbandry, they became the ardent supporters of the trustees. James Habersham, the "_dear fellow-traveller_," of Whitefield, exclaimed,--

"I once thought, it was unlawful to keep negro slaves, but I am now induced to think G.o.d may have a higher end in permitting them to be brought to this Christian country, than merely to support their masters. Many of the poor slaves in America have already been made freemen of the heavenly Jerusalem, and possibly a time may come when many thousands may embrace the gospel, and thereby be brought into the glorious liberty of the children of G.o.d. These, and other considerations, appear to plead strongly for a limited use of negroes; for, while we can buy provisions in Carolina cheaper than we can here, no one will be induced to plant much."

But the trustees stood firm against the subtle cunning of the politicians, and the eloquent pleadings of avarice.

On the 7th October, 1741, a large meeting was held at Savannah, and a pet.i.tion drawn, in which the land-holders and settlers presented their grievances to the English authorities in London. On the 26th of March, 1742, Mr. Thomas Stephens, armed with the memorial, as the agent of the memorialists, sailed for London. While the doc.u.ment ostensibly set forth their wish for a definition of "the tenure of the lands," really the burden of the prayer was for "_Negroes_." He presented the memorial to the king, and his Majesty referred it to a committee of the "Lords of Council for Plantation Affairs." This committee transferred a copy of the memorial to the trustees, with a request for their answer. About this time Stephens presented a pet.i.tion to Parliament, in which he charged the trustees with direliction of duty, improper use of the public funds, abuse of their authority, and numerous other sins against the public welfare. It created a genuine sensation. The House resolved to go into a "committee of the whole,"

to consider the pet.i.tions and the answer of the trustees. The answer of the trustees was drawn by the able pen of the Earl of Egmont, and by them warmly approved on the 3d of May, and three days later was read to the House of Commons. A motion prevailed "that the pet.i.tions do lie upon the table," for the perusal of the members, for the s.p.a.ce of one week. At the expiration of the time fixed, Stephens appeared, and all the pet.i.tions of the people of Georgia to the trustees in reference to "the tenure of lands," and for "the use of negroes," were laid before the honorable body. In the committee of the whole the affairs of the colony were thoroughly investigated; and, after a few days session, Mr. Carew reported a set of resolutions, being the sense of the committee after due deliberation upon the matters before them:--

"That the province of Georgia, in America, by reason of its situation, may be an useful barrier to the British provinces on the continent of America against the French and Spaniards, and Indian nations in their interests; that the ports and harbors within the said province may be a good security to the trade and navigation of this kingdom, that the said province, by reason of the fertility of the soil, the healthfulness of the climate, and the convenience of the rivers, is a proper place for establishing a settlement, and may contribute greatly to the increasing trade of this kingdom; that it is very necessary and advantageous to this nation that the colony of Georgia should be preserved and supported; that it will be an advantage to the colony of Georgia to permit the importation of rum into the said colony from any of the British colonies; that the pet.i.tion of Thomas Stephens contains false, scandalous and malicious charges, tending to asperse the characters of the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, in America."

When the resolution making the importation of rum lawful reached a vote, it was amended by adding, "As also the use of negroes, who may be employed there with advantage to the colony, under proper regulations and restrictions." It was lost by a majority of nine votes. A resolution prevailed calling Thomas Stephens to the bar of the House, "to be reprimanded on his knees by Mr. Speaker," for his offence against the trustees.

On the next day Stephens, upon his bended knees at the bar of the House of Commons, before the a.s.sembled statesmen of Great Britain, was publicly reprimanded by the speaker, and discharged after paying his fees. Thus ended the attempt of the people of the colony of Georgia to secure permission, over the heads of the trustees, to introduce slaves into their service.

The dark tide of slavery influence was dashing against the borders of the colony. The people were discouraged. Business was stagnated.

Internal dissatisfaction and factional strife wore hard upon the spirit of a people trying to build up and develop a new country. Then the predatory incursions of the Spaniards, and the threatening att.i.tude of the Indians, unnerved the entire Province. In this state of affairs white servants grew insolent and insubordinate. Those whose term of service expired refused to work. In this dilemma many persons boldly put the rule of the trustees under foot, and hired Negroes from the Carolinas. At length the trustees became aware of the clandestine importation of Negroes into the colony, and thereupon gave the magistrates a severe reproval. On the 2d of October, 1747, they received the following reply:--

"We are afraid, sir, from what you have wrote in relation to negroes, that he Honourable Trustees have been misinformed as to our conduct relating thereto; for we can with great a.s.surance a.s.sert, that this Board has always acted an uniform part in discouraging the use of negroes in this colony, well knowing it to be disagreeable to the Trustees, as well as contrary to an act existing for the prohibition of them, and always give it in charge to those whom we had put in possession of lands, not to attempt the introduction or use of negroes. But notwithstanding our great caution, some people from Carolina, soon after settling lands on the Little Ogeechee, found means of bringing and employing a few negroes on the said lands, some time before it was discovered to us, upon which they thought it high time to withdraw them, for fear of being seized, and soon after withdrew themselves and families out of the colony, which appeals to us at present to be the resolution of divers others."[518]

It was charged that the law-officers knew of the presence of Negroes in Georgia; that their standing and constant toast was, "_the one thing needful_" (Negroes); and that they themselves had surrept.i.tiously aided in the procurement of Negroes for the colony.

The supporters of the colonists grew less powerful as the struggle went forward. The most active grew taciturn and conservative. The advocates of Negro labor became bolder, and more acrimonious in debate; and at length the champions of exclusive white labor shrank into silence, appalled at the desperation of then opponents. The Rev.

Martin Bolzius, one of the most active supporters of the trustees, wrote those gentlemen on May 3, 1748:--

"Things being now in such a melancholy state, I must humbly beseech your honors, not to regard any more our of our friend's pet.i.tions against negroes."

The Rev. George Whitefield and James Habersham used their utmost influence upon the trustees to obtain a modification of the prohibition against "the use of negroes." On the 6th of December, 1748, Rev. Whitefield, speaking of a plantation and Negroes he had purchased, wrote the trustees:--

"Upwards of five thousand pounds have been expended in that undertaking, and yet very little proficiency made in the cultivation of my tract of land, and that entirely owing to the necessity I lay under of making use of white hands. Had a negro been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans, without expending above half the sum which has been laid out. An unwillingness to let so good a design drop, and having a rational conviction that it must necessarily, if some other method was not fixed upon to prevent it--these two considerations, honoured gentlemen, prevailed on me about two years ago, through the bounty of my good friends, to purchase a plantation in South Carolina, where negroes are allowed. Blessed be G.o.d, this plantation has succeeded; and though at present I have only eight working hands, yet in all probability there will be more raised in one year, and with a quarter the expense, than has been produced at Bethesda for several years last past. This confirms me in the opinion I have entertained for a long time, that _Georgia never can or will be a flourishing province without negroes are allowed_."[519]

The sentiment in favor of the importation of Negro slaves had become well-nigh unanimous. The trustees began to waver. On the 10th of January, 1749, another pet.i.tion was presented to the trustees. It was carefully drawn, and set forth the restrictions under which slaves should be introduced. On the 16th of May following, it was read to the trustees; and they resolved to have it "presented to His Majesty in council." They also asked that the prohibition against the introduction of Negroes, pa.s.sed in "1735, be repealed." The Earl of Shaftesbury, at the head of a special committee, draughted a bill repealing the prohibition. On the 26th of October, 1749, a large and influential committee of twenty-seven drew up and signed a pet.i.tion urging the immediate introduction of slavery, with certain limitations. The paper was duly attested, and returned to the trustees. The opposition to the introduction of slavery into the colony of Georgia had been conquered; and, after a long and bitter struggle, slavery was firmly and legally established in this the last Province of the English in the Western world. The colonists were jubilant.

The charter under which the trustees acted expired by limitation in 1752, and a new form of government was established under the Board of Trade. The royal commission appointed a governor and council. One of the first ordinances enacted by them was one whereby "all offences committed by slaves were to be tried by a single justice, without a jury, who was to award execution, and, in capital cases, to set a value on the slave, to be paid out of the public treasury." At the first session of the a.s.sembly in 1755, a law was pa.s.sed "_for the regulation and government of slaves_." In 1765 an Act was pa.s.sed establishing a pa.s.s system, and the rest of the legislation in respect to slaves was a copy of the laws of South Carolina.

The history of slavery in Georgia during this period is unparalleled and incomparably interesting. It ill.u.s.trates the power of the inst.i.tution, and shows that there was no Province sufficiently independent of its influence so as to expel it from its jurisdiction.

Like the Angel of Death that pa.s.sed through Egypt, there was no colony that it did not smite with its dark and destroying pinions. The dearest, the sublimest, interests of humanity were prostrated by its defiling touch. It shut out the sunlight of human kindness; it paled the fires of hope; it arrested the development of the branches of men's better natures, and peopled their lower being with base and consuming desires; it placed the "_Golden Rule_" under the unholy heel of time-servers and self-seekers; it made the Church as secular as the Change, and the latter as pious as the former: it was a gigantic system, at war with the civilization of the Roundheads and Puritans, and an intolerable burden to a people who desired to build a new nation in this New World in the West.

FOOTNOTES:

[514] Stephens's Journal, vol. iii. p. 281.

[515] Freedom and Bondage, vol. i. p. 310, note.

[516] Stevens's Hist. of Georgia, vol. i. p. 289.

[517] Bancroft, vol. iii. 12th ed. p. 427.

[518] Stevens's Hist. of Georgia, vol. i. p. 307.

[519] Whitefield's Works, vol. ii. pp. 90, 105, 208.

Part III.

_THE NEGRO DURING THE REVOLUTION._

CHAPTER XXVI.

MILITARY EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES.

1775-1780.

"Many black soldiers were in the service during all stages of the war."--SPARKS.

THE COLONIAL STATES IN 1715.--RATIFICATION OF THE NON-IMPORTATION ACT BY THE SOUTHERN COLONIES.--GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESENTS RESOLUTIONS AGAINST SLAVERY, IN A MEETING AT FAIRFAX COURT-HOUSE, VA.--LETTER WRITTEN BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO DEAN WOODWARD, PERTAINING TO SLAVERY.--LETTER TO THE FREEMEN OF VIRGINIA FROM A COMMITTEE, CONCERNING THE SLAVES BROUGHT FROM JAMAICA.--SEVERE TREATMENT OF SLAVES IN THE COLONIES MODIFIED.--ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT IN "THE BOSTON GAZETTE" OF THE RUNAWAY SLAVE CRISPUS ATTUCKS.--THE BOSTON Ma.s.sACRE.--ITS RESULTS.--CRISPUS ATTUCKS SHOWS HIS LOYALTY.--HIS SPIRITED LETTER TO THE TORY GOVERNOR OF THE PROVINCE.--SLAVES ADMITTED INTO THE ARMY.--THE CONDITION OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY.--SPIRITED DEBATE IN THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, OVER THE DRAUGHT OF A LETTER TO GEN. WASHINGTON.--INSTRUCTIONS TO DISCHARGE ALL SLAVES AND FREE NEGROES IN HIS ARMY.--MINUTES OF THE MEETING HELD AT CAMBRIDGE.--LORD DUNMORE'S PROCLAMATION.--PREJUDICE THE SOUTHERN COLONIES.--NEGROES IN VIRGINIA FLOCK TO THE BRITISH ARMY.--CAUTION TO THE NEGROES PRINTED IN A WILLIAMSBURG PAPER.--THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION ANSWERS THE PROCLAMATION OF LORD DUNMORE.--GEN. GREENE, IN A LETTER TO GEN. WASHINGTON, CALLS ATTENTION TO THE RAISING OF A NEGRO REGIMENT ON STATEN ISLAND.--LETTER FROM A HESSIAN OFFICER.--CONNECTICUT LEGISLATURE ON THE SUBJECT OF EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES AS SOLDIERS.--GEN. VARNUM'S LETTER TO GEN. WASHINGTON, SUGGESTING THE EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES, SENT TO GOV. COOKE.--THE GOVERNOR REFERS VARNUM'S LETTER TO THE GENERAL a.s.sEMBLY.--MINORITY PROTEST AGAINST ENLISTING SLAVES TO SERVE IN THE ARMY.--Ma.s.sACHUSETTS TRIES TO SECURE LEGAL ENLISTMENTS OF NEGRO TROOPS.--LETTER OF THOMAS KENCH TO THE COUNCIL AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, BOSTON, Ma.s.s.--NEGROES SERVE IN WHITE ORGANIZATIONS UNTIL THE CLOSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.--NEGRO SOLDIERS SERVE IN VIRGINIA.--MARYLAND EMPLOY NEGROES.--NEW YORK Pa.s.sES AN ACT PROVIDING FOR THE RAISING OF TWO COLORED REGIMENTS.--WAR IN THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES.--HAMILTON'S LETTER TO JOHN JAY.--COL.

LAURENS'S EFFORTS TO RAISE NEGRO TROOPS IN SOUTH CAROLINA.--PROCLAMATION OF SIR HENRY CLINTON INDUCING NEGROES TO DESERT THE REBEL ARMY.--LORD CORNWALLIS ISSUES A PROCLAMATION OFFERING PROTECTION TO ALL NEGROES SEEKING HIS COMMAND.--COL. LAURENS IS CALLED TO FRANCE ON IMPORTANT BUSINESS.--HIS PLAN FOR SECURING BLACK LEVIES FOR THE SOUTH UPON HIS RETURN.--HIS LETTERS TO GEN. WASHINGTON IN REGARD TO HIS FRUITLESS PLANS.--CAPT. DAVID HUMPHREYS RECRUITS A COMPANY OF COLORED INFANTRY IN CONNECTICUT.--RETURN OF NEGROES IN THE ARMY IN 1778.

The policy of arming the Negroes early claimed the anxious consideration of the leaders of the colonial army during the American Revolution. England had been crowding her American plantations with slaves at a fearful rate; and, when hostilities actually began, it was difficult to tell whether the American army or the ministerial army would be able to secure the Negroes as allies. In 1715 the royal governors of the colonies gave the Board of Trade the number of the Negroes in their respective colonies. The slave population was as follows:--

NEGROES. | NEGROES.

New Hampshire 150 |Maryland 9,500 Ma.s.sachusetts 2,000 |Virginia 23,000 Rhode Island 500 |North Carolina 3,700 Connecticut 1,500 |South Carolina 10,500 New York 4,000 | ------ New Jersey 1,500 | Total 58,850 Pennsylvania and Delaware 2,500 |

Sixty years afterwards, when the Revolution had begun, the slave population of the thirteen colonies was as follows:--

NEGROES. | NEGROES.

Ma.s.sachusetts 3,500 |Maryland 80,000 Rhode Island 4,373 |Virginia 165,000 Connecticut 5,000 |North Carolina 75,000 New Hampshire 629 |South Carolina 110,000 New York 15,000 |Georgia 16,000 New Jersey 7,600 | ------- Pennsylvania 10,000 | Total 501,102 Delaware 9,000 |

Such a host of beings was not to be despised in a great military struggle. Regarded as a neutral element that could be used simply to feed an army, to perform fatigue duty, and build fortifications, the Negro population was the object of fawning favors of the white colonists. In the NON-IMPORTATION COVENANT, pa.s.sed by the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, on the 24th of October, 1774, the second resolve indicated the feeling of the representatives of the people on the question of the slave-trade:--

"2. We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slave-trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[520]

It, with the entire covenant, received the signatures of all the delegates from the twelve colonies.[521] The delegates from the Southern colonies were greatly distressed concerning the probable att.i.tude of the slave element. They knew that if that ignorant ma.s.s of humanity were inflamed by some act of strategy of the enemy, they might sweep their homes and families from the face of the earth. The cruelties of the slave-code, the harsh treatment of Negro slaves, the lack of confidence in the whites everywhere manifested among the blacks,--as so many horrid dreams, hara.s.sed the minds of slaveholders by day and by night. They did not even possess the courage to ask the slaves to remain silent and pa.s.sive during the struggle between England and themselves. The sentiment that adorned the speeches of orators, and graced the writings of the colonists, during this period, was "the equality of the rights of all men." And yet the slaves who bore their chains under their eyes, who were denied the commonest rights of humanity, who were rated as chattels and real property, were living witnesses to the insincerity and inconsistency of this declaration. But it is a remarkable fact, that all the Southern colonies, in addition to the action of their delegates, ratified the Non-Importation Covenant. The Maryland Convention on the 8th of December, 1774; South Carolina Provincial Congress on the 11th January, 1775; Virginia Convention on the 22d March, 1775; North Carolina Provincial Congress on the 23d of August, 1775; Delaware a.s.sembly on the 25th of March, 1775 (refused by Gov. John Penn); and Georgia,--pa.s.sed the following resolves thereabouts:--

"1. _Resolved_, That this Congress will adopt, and carry into execution, all and singular the measures and recommendations of the late Continental Congress.

"4. _Resolved_, That we will neither import or [nor]

purchase any slave imported from Africa or elsewhere after this date."

Meetings were numerous and spirited throughout the colonies, in which, by resolutions, the people expressed their sentiments in reference to the mother country. On the 18th of July, 1774, at a meeting held in Fairfax Court-House, Virginia, a series of twenty-four resolutions was presented by George Washington, chairman of the committee on resolutions, three of which were directed against slavery.

"17 _Resolved_. That it is the opinion of this meeting, that, during our present difficulties and distress, no slaves ought to be imported into any of the British colonies on this continent; and we take this opportunity of declaring our most earnest wishes to see an entire stop for ever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade....