The Negro Part 10

X THE WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA

That was a wonderful century, the fifteenth, when men realized that beyond the scowling waste of western waters were dreams come true. Curious and yet cra.s.sly human it is that, with all this poetry and romance, arose at once the filthiest inst.i.tution of the modern world and the costliest. For on Negro slavery in America was built, not simply the abortive cotton kingdom, but the foundations of that modern imperialism which is based on the despising of backward men.

According to some accounts Alonzo, "the Negro," piloted one of the ships of Columbus, and certainly there was Negro blood among his sailors. As early as 1528 there were nearly ten thousand Negroes in the new world. We hear of them in all parts. In Honduras, for instance, a Negro is sent to burn a native village; in 1555 the town council of Santiago de Chile voted to allow an enfranchised Negro possession of land in the town, and evidently treated him just as white applicants were treated. D'Allyon, who explored the coast of Virginia in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, used Negro slaves (who afterward revolted) to build his ships and help in exploration; Balboa had with him thirty Negroes, who, in 1513, helped to build the first ships on the Pacific coast; Cortez had three hundred Negro porters in 1522.

Before 1530 there were enough Negroes in Mexico to lead to an insurrection, where the Negroes fought desperately, but were overcome and their ringleaders executed. Later the followers of another Negro insurgent, Bayano, were captured and sent back to Spain. Negroes founded the town of Santiago del Principe in 1570, and in 1540 a Negro slave of Hernandez de Alarcon was the only one of the party to carry a message across the country to the Zunis of New Mexico. A Negro, Stephen Dorantes, discovered New Mexico. This Stephen or "Estevanico" was sent ahead by certain Spanish friars to the "Seven Cities of Cibola." "As soon as Stephen had left said friars, he determined to earn all the reputation and honor for himself, and that the boldness and daring of having alone discovered those villages of high stories so much spoken of throughout that country should be attributed to him; and carrying along with him the people who followed him, he endeavored to cross the wilderness which is between Cibola and the country he had gone through, and he was so far ahead of the friars that when they arrived at Chichilticalli, which is on the edge of the wilderness, he was already at Cibola, which is eighty leagues of wilderness beyond." But the Indians of the new and strange country took alarm and concluded that Stephen "must be a spy or guide for some nations who intended to come and conquer them, because it seemed to them unreasonable for him to say that the people were white in the country from which he came, being black himself and being sent by them."[76]

Slaves imported under the Asiento treaties went to all parts of the Americas. Spanish America had by the close of the eighteenth century ten thousand in Santo Domingo, eighty-four thousand in Cuba, fifty thousand in Porto Rico, sixty thousand in Louisiana and Florida, and sixty thousand in Central and South America.

The history of the Negro in Spanish America centered in Cuba, Venezuela, and Central America. In the sixteenth century slaves began to arrive in Cuba and Negroes joined many of the exploring expeditions from there to various parts of America. The slave trade greatly increased in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and after the revolution in Hayti large numbers of French emigrants from that island settled in Cuba. This and Spanish greed increased the harshness of slavery and eventually led to revolt among the Negroes. In 1844 Governor O'Donnell began a cruel persecution of the blacks on account of a plot discovered among them.

Finally in 1866 the Ten Years' War broke out in which Negro and white rebels joined. They demanded the abolition of slavery and equal political rights for natives and foreigners, whites and blacks. The war was cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y but ended in 1878 with the abolition of slavery, while a further uprising the following year secured civil rights for Negroes.

Spanish economic oppression continued, however, and the leading chiefs of the Ten Years' War including such leaders as the mulatto, Antonio Maceo, with large numbers of Negro soldiers, took the field again in 1895. The result was the freeing of Cuba by the intervention of the United States.

Negro regiments from the United States played here a leading role. A number of leaders in Cuba in political, industrial, and literary lines have been men of Negro descent.

Slavery was abolished by Guatemala in 1824 and by Mexico in 1829.

Argentine, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay ceased to recognize it about 1825. Between 1840 and 1845 it came to an end in Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecquador. Bolivar, Paez, Sucre, and other South American leaders used Negro soldiers in fighting for freedom (1814-16), and Hayti twice at critical times rendered a.s.sistance and received Bolivar twice as a refugee.

Brazil was the center of Portuguese slavery, but slaves were not introduced in large numbers until about 1720, when diamonds were discovered in the territory above Rio Janeiro. Gradually the seaboard from Pernambuco to Rio Janeiro and beyond became filled with Negroes, and although the slave trade north of the equator was theoretically abolished by Portugal in 1815 and south of the equator in 1830, and by Brazil in these regions in 1826 and 1830, nevertheless between 1825 and 1850 over a million and a quarter of Negroes were introduced. Not until Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 did the importation wholly cease. Brazilian slavery allowed the slave to purchase his freedom, and the color line was not strict. Even in the eighteenth century there were black clergy and bishops; indeed the Negro clergy seem to have been on a higher moral level than the whites.

Insurrection was often attempted, especially among the Mohammedan Negroes around Bahia. In 1695 a tribe of revolted slaves held out for a long time.

In 1719 a widespread conspiracy failed, but many of the leaders fled to the forest. In 1828 a thousand rose in revolt at Bahia, and again in 1830.

From 1831 to 1837 revolt was in the air, and in 1835 came the great revolt of the Mohammedans, who attempted to enthrone a queen. The Negroes fought with furious bravery, but were finally defeated.

By 1872 the number of free Negroes had very greatly increased, so that emanc.i.p.ation did not come as a shock. While Mohammedan Negroes still gave trouble and were in some cases sent back to Africa, yet on the whole emanc.i.p.ation was peaceful, and whites, Negroes, and Indians are to-day amalgamating into a new race. "At the present moment there is scarcely a lowly or a highly placed federal or provincial official at the head of or within any of the great departments of state that has not more or less Negro or Amer-Indian blood in his veins."[77]

Lord Bryce says, "It is hardly too much to say that along the coast from Rio to Bahia and Pernambuco, as well as in parts of the interior behind these two cities, the black population predominates.... The Brazilian lower cla.s.s intermarries freely with the black people; the Brazilian middle cla.s.s intermarries with mulattoes and Quadroons. Brazil is the one country in the world, besides the Portuguese colonies on the east and west coasts of Africa, in which a fusion of the European and African races is proceeding unchecked by law or custom. The doctrines of human equality and human solidarity have here their perfect work. The result is so far satisfactory that there is little or no cla.s.s friction. The white man does not lynch or maltreat the Negro; indeed I have never heard of a lynching anywhere in South America except occasionally as part of a political convulsion. The Negro is not accused of insolence and does not seem to develop any more criminality than naturally belongs to any ignorant population with loose notions of morality and property.

"What ultimate effect the intermixture of blood will have on the European element in Brazil I will not venture to predict. If one may judge from a few remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the intellectual standard. One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians I have known had some color; and other such cases have been mentioned to me. a.s.sumptions and preconceptions must be eschewed, however plausible they may seem."[78]

A Brazilian writer said at the First Races Congress: "The cooperation of the _metis_[79] in the advance of Brazil is notorious and far from inconsiderable. They played the chief part during many years in Brazil in the campaign for the abolition of slavery. I could quote celebrated names of more than one of these _metis_ who put themselves at the head of the literary movement. They fought with firmness and intrepidity in the press and on the platform. They faced with courage the gravest perils to which they were exposed in their struggle against the powerful slave owners, who had the protection of a conservative government. They gave evidence of sentiments of patriotism, self-denial, and appreciation during the long campaign in Paraguay, fighting heroically at the boarding of the ships in the naval battle of Riachuelo and in the attacks on the Brazilian army, on numerous occasions in the course of this long South American war. It was owing to their support that the republic was erected on the ruins of the empire."[80]

The Dutch brought the first slaves to the North American continent. John Rolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia "a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars."[81] This was probably one of the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading companies which early entered into the developed and the lucrative African slave trade. Although the Dutch thus commenced the continental slave trade they did not actually furnish a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside the West Indies. A small trade had by 1698 brought a few thousand to New York and still fewer to New Jersey.

The Dutch found better scope for slaves in Guiana, which they settled in 1616. Sugar cane became the staple crop, but the Negroes early began to revolt and the Dutch brought in East Indian coolies. The slaves were badly treated and the runaways joined the revolted Bush Negroes in the interior.

From 1715 to 1775 there was continuous fighting with the Bush Negroes or insurrections, until at last in 1749 a formal treaty between sixteen hundred Negroes and the Dutch was made. Immediately a new group revolted under a Mohammedan, Arabi, and they obtained land and liberty. In 1763 the coast Negroes revolted. They were checked, but made terms and settled in the interior. The Bush Negroes fought against both French and English to save Guiana to the Dutch, but Guiana was eventually divided between the three. The Bush Negroes still maintain their independence and vigor.

The French encouraged settlements in the West Indies in the seventeenth century, but at last, finding that French immigrants would not come, they began about 1642 to import Negroes. Owing to wars with England, slaves were supplied by the Dutch and Portuguese, although the Royal Senegal Company held the coveted Asiento from 1701 to 1713.

It was in the island of Hayti, however, that French slavery centered.

Pirates from many nations, but chiefly French, began to frequent the island, and in 1663 the French annexed the eastern part, thus dividing the island between France and Spain. By 1680 there were so many slaves and mulattoes that Louis XIV issued his celebrated Code Noir, which was notable in compelling bachelor masters, fathers of slave children, to marry their concubines. Children followed the condition of the mother as to slavery or freedom; they could have no property; harsh punishments were provided for, but families could not be separated by sale except in the case of grown children; emanc.i.p.ation with full civil rights was made possible for any slave twenty years of age or more. When Louisiana was settled and the Alabama coast, slaves were introduced there. Louisiana was transferred to Spain in 1762, against the resistance of both settlers and slaves, but Spain took possession in 1769 and introduced more Negroes.

Later, in Hayti, a more liberal policy encouraged trade; war was over and capital and slaves poured in. Sugar, coffee, chocolate, indigo, dyes, and spices were raised. There were large numbers of mulattoes, many of whom were educated in France, and many masters married Negro women who had inherited large properties, just as in the United States to-day white men are marrying eagerly the landed Indian women in the West. When white immigration increased in 1749, however, prejudice arose against these mulattoes and severe laws were pa.s.sed depriving them of civil rights, entrance into the professions, and the right to hold office; severe edicts were enforced as to clothing, names, and social intercourse. Finally, after 1777, mulattoes were forbidden to come to France.

When the French Revolution broke out, the Haytians managed to send two delegates to Paris. Nevertheless the planters maintained the upper hand, and one of the colored delegates, Oge, on returning, started a small rebellion. He and his companions were killed with great brutality. This led the French government to grant full civil rights to free Negroes, Immediately planters and free Negroes flew to arms against each other and then, suddenly, August 22, 1791, the black slaves, of whom there were four hundred and fifty-two thousand, arose in revolt to help the free Negroes.

For many years runaway slaves had hidden in the mountains under their own chiefs. One of the earliest of these chiefs was Polydor, in 1724, who was succeeded by Macandal. The great chief of these runaways or "Maroons" at the time of the slave revolt was Jean Francois, who was soon succeeded by Bia.s.sou.

Pierre Dominic Toussaint, known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, joined these Maroon bands, where he was called "the doctor of the armies of the king,"

and soon became chief aid to Jean Francois and Bia.s.sou. Upon their deaths Toussaint rose to the chief command. He acquired complete control over the blacks, not only in military matters, but in politics and social organization; "the soldiers regarded him as a superior being, and the farmers prostrated themselves before him. All his generals trembled before him (Dessalines did not dare to look in his face), and all the world trembled before his generals."[82]

The revolt once started, blacks and mulattoes murdered whites without mercy and the whites retaliated. Commissioners were sent from France, who asked simply civil rights for freedmen, and not emanc.i.p.ation. Indeed that was all that Toussaint himself had as yet demanded. The planters intrigued with the British and this, together with the beheading of the king (an impious act in the eyes of Negroes), induced Toussaint to join the Spaniards. In 1793 British troops were landed and the French commissioners in desperation declared the slaves emanc.i.p.ated. This at once won back Toussaint from the Spaniards. He became supreme in the north, while Rigaud, leader of the mulattoes, held the south and the west. By 1798 the British, having lost most of their forces by yellow fever, surrendered Mole St. Nicholas to Toussaint and departed. Rigaud finally left for France, and Toussaint in 1800 was master of Hayti. He promulgated a const.i.tution under which Hayti was to be a self-governing colony; all men were equal before the law, and trade was practically free. Toussaint was to be president for life, with the power to name his successor.

Napoleon Bonaparte, master of France, had at this time dreams of a great American empire, and replied to Toussaint's new government by sending twenty-five thousand men under his brother-in-law to subdue the presumptuous Negroes, as a preliminary step to his occupation and development of the Mississippi valley. Fierce fighting and yellow fever decimated the French, but matters went hard with the Negroes too, and Toussaint finally offered to yield. He was courteously received with military honors and then, as soon as possible, treacherously seized, bound, and sent to France. He was imprisoned at Fort Joux and died, perhaps of poison, after studied humiliations, April 7, 1803.

Thus perished the greatest of American Negroes and one of the great men of all time, at the age of fifty-six. A French planter said, "G.o.d in his terrestrial globe did not commune with a purer spirit."[83] Wendell Phillips said, "Some doubt the courage of the Negro. Go to Hayti and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had and ask them what they think of the Negro's sword. I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave trade in the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for the English, La Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture."

The treacherous killing of Toussaint did not conquer Hayti. In 1802 and 1803 some forty thousand French soldiers died of war and fever. A new colored leader, Dessalines, arose and all the eight thousand remaining French surrendered to the blockading British fleet.

The effect of all this was far-reaching. Napoleon gave up his dream of American empire and sold Louisiana for a song. "Thus, all of Indian Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana and the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of Washington and Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a despised Negro.

Praise, if you will, the work of a Robert Livingstone or a Jefferson, but to-day let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was indirectly the means of America's expansion by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803."[84]

With the freedom of Hayti in 1801 came a century of struggle to fit the people for the freedom they had won. They were yet slaves, crushed by a cruel servitude, without education or religious instruction. The Haytian leaders united upon Dessalines to maintain the independence of the republic. Dessalines, like Toussaint and his lieutenant Christophe, was noted in slavery days for his severity toward his fellows and the discipline which he insisted on. He had other characteristics of African chieftains. "There were seasons when he broke through his natural sullenness and showed himself open, affable, and even generous. His vanity was excessive and manifested itself in singular perversities."[85] He was a man of great personal bravery and succeeded in maintaining the independence of Hayti, which had already cost the Frenchmen fifty thousand lives.

On January 1, 1804, at the place whence Toussaint had been treacherously seized and sent to France, the independence of Hayti was declared by the military leaders. Dessalines was made governor-general for life and afterward proclaimed himself emperor. This was not an act of grandiloquence and mimicry. "It is truer to say that in it both Dessalines and later Christophe were actuated by a clear insight into the social history and peculiarities of their people. There was nothing in the const.i.tution which did not have its companion in Africa, where the organization of society was despotic, with elective hereditary chiefs, royal families, polygamic marriages, councils, and regencies."[86]

The population was divided into soldiers and laborers. The territory was parceled out to chiefs, and the laborers were bound to the soil and worked under rigorous inspection; part of the products were reserved for their support, and the rest went to the chiefs, the king, the general government, and the army. The army was under stern discipline and military service was compulsory. Women did much of the agricultural labor.

Under Toussaint the administration of this system was committed to Dessalines, who carried it out with rigor; it was afterward followed by Christophe. The latter even imported four thousand Negroes from Africa, from whom he formed a national guard for patrolling the land. These regulations brought back for a time a large part of the former prosperity of the island.

The severity with which Dessalines enforced the laws soon began to turn many against him. The educated mulattoes especially objected to submission to the savage African _mores_. Dessalines started to suppress their revolt, but was killed in ambush in October, 1806.

Great Britain now began to intrigue for a protectorate over the island and the Spanish end of the island threatened attack. These difficulties were overcome, but at a cost of great internal strain. After the death of Dessalines it seemed that Hayti was about to dissolve into a number of petty subdivisions. At one time Christophe was ruling as king in the north, Petion as president at Port au Prince, Rigaud in the south, and a semi-brigand, Goman, in the extreme southwest. Very soon, however, the rivalry narrowed down to Petion and Christophe. Petion was a man of considerable ability and did much, not simply for Hayti, but for South America. Already as early as 1779, before the revolution in Hayti, the Haytian Negroes had helped the United States. The British had captured Savannah in 1778. The French fleet appeared on the coast of Georgia late that year and was ordered to recruit men in Hayti. Eight hundred young freedmen, blacks and mulattoes, offered to take part in the expedition, and they fought valiantly in the siege and covered themselves with glory.

It was this legion that made the charge on the British and saved the retreating American army. Among the men who fought there was Christophe.

When Simon Bolivar, Commodore Aury, and many Venezuelan families were driven from their country in 1815, they and their ships took temporary refuge in Hayti. Notwithstanding the embarra.s.sed condition of the republic, Petion received them and gave them four thousand rifles with ammunition, provisions, and last and best a printing press. He also settled some international quarrels among members of the groups, and Bolivar expressed himself afterward as being "overwhelmed with magnanimous favors."[87]

Petion died in 1818 and was succeeded by his friend Boyer. Christophe committed suicide the following year and Boyer became not simply ruler of western Hayti, but also, by arrangement with the eastern end of the island, gained the mastery there, where they were afraid of Spanish aggression. Thus from 1822 to 1843 Boyer, a man of much ability, ruled the whole of the island and gained the recognition of Haytian independence from France and other nations.

France, under Charles X, demanded an indemnity of thirty million dollars to reimburse the planters for confiscated lands and property. This Hayti tried to pay, but the annual installment was a tremendous burden to the impoverished country. Further negotiations were entered into. Finally in 1838 France recognized the independence of the republic and the indemnity was reduced to twelve million dollars. Even this was a large burden for Hayti, and the payment of it for years crippled the island.

The United States and Great Britain in 1825-26 recognized the independence of Hayti. A concordat was arranged with the Pope for governing the church in Hayti, and finally in 1860 the church placed under the French hierarchy. Thus Boyer did unusually well; but his necessary concessions to France weakened his influence at home, and finally an earthquake, which destroyed several towns in 1842, raised the superst.i.tious of the populace against him. He resigned in 1843, leaving the treasury well filled; but with his withdrawal the Spanish portion of the island was lost to Hayti.

The subsequent history of Hayti since 1843 has been the struggle of a small divided country to maintain political independence. The rich resources of the country called for foreign capital, but outside capital meant political influence from abroad, which the little nation rightly feared. Within, the old antagonism between the freedman and the slave settled into a color line between the mulatto and the black, which for a time meant the difference between educated liberalism and reactionary ignorance. This difference has largely disappeared, but some vestiges of the color line remain. The result has been reaction and savagery under Soulouque, Dominique, and Nord Alexis, and decided advance under presidents like Nissage-Saget, Solomon, Legitime, and Hyppolite.

In political life Hayti is still in the sixteenth century; but in economic life she has succeeded in placing on their own little farms the happiest and most contented peasantry in the world, after raising them from a veritable h.e.l.l of slavery. If modern capitalistic greed can be restrained from interference until the best elements of Hayti secure permanent political leadership the triumph of the revolution will be complete.

In other parts of the French-American dominion the slaves achieved freedom also by insurrection. In Guadeloupe they helped the French drive out the British, and thus gained emanc.i.p.ation. In Martinique it took three revolts and a civil war to bring freedom.

The English slave empire in America centered in the Bermudas, Barbadoes, Jamaica and the lesser islands, and in the United States. Barbadoes developed a savage slave code, and the result was attempted slave insurrections in 1674, 1692, and 1702. These were not successful, but a rising in 1816 destroyed much property under the leadership of a mulatto, Washington Franklin, and the repeal of bad laws and eventual enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the colored people followed. One Barbadian mulatto, Sir Conrad Reeves, has held the position of chief justice in the island and was knighted. A Negro insurrection in Dominica under Farcel greatly exercised England in 1791 and 1794 and delayed slave trade abolition; in 1844 and 1847 further uprisings took place, and these continued from 1853 to 1893.

The chief island domain of English slavery was Jamaica. It was Oliver Cromwell who, in his zeal for G.o.d and the slave trade, sent an expedition to seize Hayti. His fleet, driven off there, took Jamaica in 1655. The English found the mountains already infested with runaway slaves known as "Maroons," and more Negroes joined them when the English arrived. In 1663 the freedom of the Maroons was acknowledged, land was given them, and their leader, Juan de Bolas, was made a colonel in the militia. He was killed, however, in the following year, and from 1664 to 1738 the three thousand or more black Maroons fought the British Empire in guerrilla warfare. Soldiers, Indians, and dogs were sent against them, and finally in 1738 Captain Cudjo and other chiefs made a formal treaty of peace with Governor Trelawney. They were granted twenty-five hundred acres and their freedom was recognized.

The peace lasted until 1795, when they rebelled again and gave the British a severe drubbing, besides murdering planters. Bloodhounds again were imported. The Maroons offered to surrender on the express condition that none of their number should be deported from the island, as the legislature wished. General Walpole hesitated, but could get peace on no other terms and gave his word. The Maroons surrendered their arms, and immediately the whites seized six hundred of the ringleaders and transported them to the snows of Nova Scotia! The legislature then voted a sword worth twenty-five hundred dollars to General Walpole, which he indignantly refused to accept. Eventually these exiled Maroons found their way to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in time to save that colony to the British crown.[88]

The pressing desire for peace with the Maroons on the part of the white planters arose from the new sugar culture introduced in 1673. A greatly increased demand for slaves followed, and between 1700 and 1786 six hundred and ten thousand slaves were imported; nevertheless, so severely were they driven, that there were only three hundred thousand Negroes in Jamaica in the latter year.

Despite the Moravian missions and other efforts late in the eighteenth century, unrest among the Jamaica slaves and freedmen grew and was increased by the anti-slavery agitation in England and the revolt in Hayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes of northwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of the emanc.i.p.ation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half million dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there.

The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free, for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. There ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials sent out in these days were arbitrary and corrupt. Little was done for the ma.s.s of the people and there was outrageous over-taxation. Nevertheless the backwardness of the colony was attributed to the Negro. Governor Eyre complained in 1865 that the young and strong were good for nothing and were filling the jails; but a simultaneous report by a missionary told the truth concerning the officials. This aroused the colored people, and a mulatto, George William Gordon, called a meeting. Other meetings were afterward held, and finally the Negro peasantry began a riot in 1861, in which eighteen people were killed, only a few of whom were white.