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diff --git a/77013-0.txt b/77013-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a91807 --- /dev/null +++ b/77013-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2845 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77013 *** + + + + + + TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE + + Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. + + Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=. + + Footnotes are moved to the end of the book. + + Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book. + + + + +[Illustration: Drawn by Emma Roche. + +Abaché.] + + + + + Historic Sketches of + the South + + + By + + Emma Langdon Roche + + + _Drawings and Photographs by Author_ + + + The Knickerbocker Press + New York + 1914 + + + + + COPYRIGHT + BY + EMMA LANGDON ROCHE + 1914 + + + The Knickerbocker Press, New York + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I. BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY 1 + + II. EARLY LEGISLATION AGAINST THE SLAVE TRAFFIC 19 + + III. ILLEGAL TRAFFIC IN SLAVES 49 + + IV. PREPARATIONS FOR “CLOTILDE’S” VOYAGE 65 + + V. THE CAPTURE OF THE TARKARS 74 + + VI. VOYAGE OF THE “CLOTILDE” 84 + + VII. THE RETURN 92 + + VIII. THE TARKARS AT DABNEY’S PLANTATION 98 + + IX. TARKAR LIFE IN AMERICA 103 + + X. IMPRESSIONS OF ALABAMA IN 1846[1] 129 + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + + PAGE + + ABACHÉ _Frontispiece_ + Drawn by Emma Roche. + + POLEETE 73 + Drawn by Emma Roche. + + ABACHÉ AND KAZOOLA 79 + + MAP DRAWN BY KAZOOLA 89 + (_1_) Tarkar Village. (_2_) Dahomey’s Land. (_3_) + Wavering line showing stealthy march of Dahomeyans + through forest. (_4_) Route by which captive + Tarkars were taken to the sea. (_5_), (_6_), (_7_), (_8_), + Eko, Budigree, Adaché, Whydah, towns through + which Tarkars passed. (_9_) River. (_10_) Beach + and sea. + + KAZOOLA 97 + Drawn by Emma Roche. + + WRECK OF THE “CLOTILDE.” 103 + + CHARLEE 109 + + OLOUALA 117 + Drawn by Emma Roche. + + CHARLEE, HEAD OF THE TARKARS 127 + Drawn by Emma Roche. + + KAZOOLA 131 + + ZOOMA, THE LAST TARKBAR 139 + + + + +Historic Sketches of the South + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY + + +To fully understand the opposition of thought wherein our +“irrepressible conflict” had its inception and lay so long in embryo, +to burst forth at last in the awful and bloody travail of a nation +divided and at arms, some knowledge of the history and psychology +of the peoples who settled the American colonies is necessary; for +a nation’s cataclysms are not spontaneously generated, but are the +result of forces which though for generations are silent and hidden +are gathering strength under the evils of superstition, oppression, or +fanaticism, and only need such an explosive as the tongue of a Danton, +Robespierre, Garrison, Beecher, or Stowe to hurl the people into death +and desolation. + +The early settlers who have left their impress on American life and +character were of the same country and traditions, but their manners +and ideals had been developed by the opposing forces which began to +stir England during the Renaissance--a hundred and fifty years before +the Reformation--forces of which our own Civil War seems as direct +a sequence as were the religio-political feuds of the 16th and 17th +century England. In the New World the exponents of these contrasting +forces were divided for the first century and a half by what afterwards +became known as Mason’s and Dixon’s Line and by vast areas of +uninhabited wilderness. + +Virginia was no Mecca for the religiously or politically oppressed, but +drew to her soldiers of fortune--men impelled by a spirit of adventure, +or those who for some delinquency wished to lose their identity in the +vast, unknown New World; among them were many gentlemen who more often +than not possessed the vices and follies of a corrupt age. The first +who became permanent settlers were divided on the outward voyages by +jealousies and dissensions. These differences were carried into the +colony; aggravated by the greed and selfishness of those placed in +authority, they became greater hardships than the illness, starvation, +and Indian treacheries which hampered early progress. There were “poor +gentlemen, Tradesmen, Servingmen, libertines, and such like, ten times +more fit to spoyle a Commonwealth, than either begin one, or but helpe +to maintain one. For when neither the feare of God, nor the law, nor +shame, nor displeasure of their friends could rule them here, there is +small hope ever to bring one in twenty of them ever to be good there. +Notwithstanding, I confesse divers amongst them, had better mindes and +grew much more industrious than was expected.”[2] Amid treacheries and +deceits, John Smith stands forth a hero. Through his thought and action +the colony not only survived the vicissitudes of fire, starvation, and +massacre, but was saved from itself, for the evils of its own lawless, +disturbing elements were greater dangers than those which came from +without. The hope of gold was ostensibly the colony’s _raison d’être_: +“The worst of all was our gilded refiners with their golden promises +made all men their slaves in hope of recompenses; there was no talke, +no hope, no worke, but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, loade gold, +such a bruit of gold, that one mad fellow desired to be buried in the +sands least they should by their art make gold of his bones.” This +search for gold proved futile; in 1615 the land was parceled off to +each settler in fifty-acre lots, tobacco was planted, and thus began +Virginia’s prosperity. + +Tobacco was introduced into Europe by the first Columbian voyagers +and into England by Raleigh and Drake. Despite the strong social and +religious pressure--even King James instituting a propaganda which +led him to write the _Counterblast to Tobacco_--the habit spread with +alarming rapidity, and was not confined to the men alone; chewing +and smoking were indulgences common to the older women, while snuff +was the favorite with the younger ones. This new taste created a +demand which increased Virginia’s population and greatly extended her +cultivated fields. Women were scarce, and the planters growing rich had +a natural desire to return to England. This, however, was obviated by +the importation of widows and virgins who were shipped to the colony +as any other cargo. The nature of this bartering, which is unique in +American history, may best be described from a letter, dated August +21, 1621, which accompanied one of these cargoes of colonial dames: +“We send you in this ship one widow and eleven maids for wives for the +people of Virginia. There hath been especial care had in the choice of +them, for there hath not any one of them been received, but upon good +recommendations. + +“In case they can not be presently married, we desire that they be put +in several households that have wives, till they can be provided with +husbands. There are near fifty more which are shortly to come, are sent +by our most honorable lord and treasurer, the Earl of Southampton (the +patron of Shakspere), and certain worthy gentlemen, who taking into +consideration that the plantations can never flourish till families be +planted, and the respects of wives and children fix these people on +the soil, therefore have given this fair beginning for the reimbursing +those charges. It is ordered, that every man that marries them give +one hundred and twenty pounds of the best leaf tobacco for each of them. + +“Though we are desirous that the marriage be free according to the law +of nature, yet we would not have these maids deceived and married to +servants, but only to such freemen or tenants as have means to maintain +them. We pray you, therefore to be as a father to them in this business +not enforcing them to marry against their wills.” + +Labor for the ever-increasing fields was another problem confronting +the planter. King James decided that the London Company should solve +this by transporting to Virginia English convicts, who thus removed +from old environments and temptations might form a valuable industrial +asset. Only one shipload of a hundred was sent, for about the same +time a Dutch man-of-war arrived at Jamestown (August, 1619) and twenty +negro slaves were sold to the planters. Qualms about such a transaction +could scarcely be expected, for through all historic times it was only +as a slave that the negro had been associated with other races. In +ancient times he had been subservient to the Egyptians, bought for +the Carthaginian galleys; slave to Assyrian, Arabian, Indian, Greek, +Etruscan, and Roman; and in early Christian centuries sold by the +Venetians to the Moors of Spain.[3] + +When the existence of new lands became known and labor was needed +for their development, the negro’s native country became a hunting +ground where he was not only stalked by the Dutch and Portuguese, +but by the French and English who also had posts for that purpose in +Africa. In fact the English, including therein the colonists of New +England, became more extensively engaged in the traffic than all other +slave-trading European nations combined. Compunctions about slavery +as about many other things came only with the moral awakening of a +later generation. “Scarcely any one seems to have regarded the trade +as wrong. Theologians had so successfully labored to produce a sense +of the amazing, I might almost say generical, difference between those +who were Christians and those who were not, that to apply to the latter +the principles that were applied to the former, would have been deemed +a glaring paradox. If the condition of the negroes in this world was +altered for the worse, it was felt that their prospects in the next +were greatly improved. Besides, it was remembered that, shortly after +the deluge Ham had behaved disrespectfully to his drunken father, and +it was believed that the Almighty had, in consequence, ordained negro +slavery.”[4] The utility of the negro being at once proven, African +slavery had become something of an institution in Virginia, before the +_Mayflower_ with its handful of men, women, and children landed on +Plymouth Rock. + +The stern, uncompromising attitude of these people in whom there was +no quibbling with right or wrong as they perceived it, which gave them +the physical courage to endure persecution, mutilation, and even death, +was the result of the religious agitations which began in England with +Wycliffe and were directed against the oppressions and corruptions +which flourished within the Church’s powerful organization. Though +suppressed, the leaven had sifted down to the people who, stultified by +centuries of grossest superstition, had silently and patiently borne +the yoke. In the stirrings of this religious Renaissance the book that +reached them was Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible; this gave to them +the Semitic conception of God--the one God--which the voices of those +“primitive Puritans the Prophets” had saved from the obliterating +dangers of idolatry and superstition. The stolid somberness of the +Northern races responded to the majestic swing of this wonderful +collection of Hebrew documents which traced a people’s struggles and +thought development. Some of its characters as Huxley says of “Jepthah, +Gideon, and Sampson are men of the old heroic stamp, who would look +as much in place in a Norse Saga as where they are.” Stray chapters +sometimes came into the possession of some yeoman who was fortunate +enough to read; in silence and secrecy, when the day’s work was done, +there would gather round him eager listeners. To know what this book’s +message meant to them, one needs but read their subsequent history. +To hear it, possess it, and believe it, they suffered the diabolical +tortures and fiendish perpetrations which at once made martyrs and +tyrants of men, and which laid in England the foundation of what Ranke +calls the “heroic age of Protestantism in Western Europe.” Of this +breed were the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. Their inherent independence +had been fostered by a long exile in Leyden; there the old Teutonic +spirit of freedom had survived, and had given her men that sublime +courage and determination, when besieged by the Duke of Alva and +starving, “that rather than yield they would devour their left arms +to enable them to continue the defense with their right.”[5] Leyden +afterwards became a haven for those of other countries who, breaking +from prescribed thought, dared to act accordingly. It was also a +university center; political and religious tenets were subjects of +common debate. Robinson who became one of the Pilgrim fathers took an +active part in these discussions. + +To these exiles the New World became a hope. Though homeless, they were +loyal to James. While petitioning the London Company for lands, they +begged of him the freedom to there worship God according to their own +consciences. Though this was not actually granted it was permitted. +An unkindly fate seemed to preside over their voyage--buffeting +storms drove them farther north than their proposed destination; some +historians state they were purposely steered out of their course by +their Dutch pilot, and were forced to land on Plymouth Rock. + +By a solemn covenant entered into aboard ship, they agreed that while +they would be faithful to the English Crown, the polity they would +establish among themselves would be an ideal state--a community of +interests--fascinating as expounded by Plato, More, and Rousseau, but +unfeasible for human nature as yet evolved since complete barbarism. +United by a common faith--gloomy, austere--putting aside as mortal +sin all the joys of life--forced to endure together in a wild, bleak, +strange land, starvation, disease, frightful cold, and the terror of +hostile Indians, by whom they would have probably been exterminated +had not a deadly pestilence broken out among these savages--possibly +no better opportunity for such an experiment has ever been offered +civilized man. But among them too was the natural inequality of +individuals which will probably always render futile and unenduring +similar sociological experiments. + +The Puritan settlements were gradually augmented by the persecuted from +their native land, and it would seem that they could at last possess +the religious security and contentment for which they had so long +clamored, but dissent had become second nature; combativeness seemed +essential to zeal, and as there was no Established or Roman Church +at which to hurl themselves, their own tenets became mooted points; +bitter differences arose. They showed themselves as intolerant in the +New World as they had been intolerable in the Old, and those without +the might to prove their right were driven forth. In this manner +Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire were settled. Much of +their later history has to do with religious bickerings, mutilations, +and witch-burnings. It was an outgrowth of this same spirit which +confronted the South for thirty years before the final rupture which +resulted in the War of Secession. + +Thus from the beginning the North and the South were necessarily +distinctive; settled under different circumstances, the one drew +from England the stern, severe, and rigorously religious, while the +other became the habitat for the Puritan’s opposite--the impecunious +gentleman, the roistering cavalier, the insolvent debtor, and the +Catholic nobleman--a class in which there had been a very general +“reversion from virtuous and noble manhood to the lewdness of the +ape and the cunning ferocity of the tiger.”[6] In the New World all +alike were brought face to face with a great, overshadowing nature +which presented the diversified physical conditions along which each +section’s economic development would tend. Agriculture in austere New +England would have been a too uneven wrestling with nature; existence +wrought from the soil meant unending toil and often heart-breaking +disappointment, so the New Englander’s pursuits became mercantile and +seafaring--occupations in which the negro could be of little value, but +following England’s initiative he found the slave-trade profitable, and +the Southern planter a ready buyer. To repress Nature’s exuberance, +the fields of tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and cane required man’s +watchful care, and the negro, inured through all previous generations +to the sun and rain, the jungle and the swamp, properly directed, +became, and still is, the ideal laborer for work of the soil. + +Since then our “mental endyses” have been many; we have associations +for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and sympathetic and indignant +thrills pass through us at sight of ill-treatment to one of these, so +we cannot bring our attitude of to-day or of the last hundred years +to judge the beginnings of American slavery. To 16th and 17th century +Europeans it was palpable that the difference between the negro and +the man-like apes was no greater than that existing between the negro +and themselves, and it was debatable “with that brutishness which +commonly appeareth in all their actions whether the people generally +may be thought to be men in the skins of beasts; or beasts created in +the likenesse and shape of man.”[7] The sentimentality which obtained +some years ago and which led to such bitter hatred and seems almost +maudlin when that phase of the question in which the indescribable +wretchedness of the negro in his native land is considered--his gross +and pitiable superstitions, his indifference to death and his regard +for cruelty as a virtue; what slavery did for him seems analogous to +what we suppose primitive man accomplished with the wolf--adopted it +from the wild and made of it a faithful, domestic animal. True, the +motives were utility and gain, but who can deny the mighty uplift in +value and sagacity, both for the dog and the negro? Among the African +tribes described in Pigafetta’s account of Lopez’s _African Travels_ +(1598), and spoken of by Heylyn in his _Cosmographie_ (1657), are the +Anziques, “the cruellest Cannibals in the world; for they do not onely +eat their Enemies, but their friends and Kinsfolk. And that they may be +sure not to want these Dainties, they have shambles of man’s flesh, as +in other parts of Beef and Mutton. So covetous withall, that if their +Slaves will yield but a penny more when sold joynt by joynt than if +sold alive, they will cut them out, and sell them upon the shambles. +Yet with these barbarous qualities they have many good ... of so great +fidelity to their masters and to those which trust them, that they +will rather choose to be killed than either abuse the trust, or betray +their Masters. For that cause more esteemed by the Portugals than +other Slaves.” So even the most bloodthirsty possessed potentially the +quality of faithfulness, which when he was removed from his natural +environment--where for thousands of years he had not progressed--made +all his later development possible, and which aside from the cases +where there has been an infusion of white or Indian blood, is largely +responsible for what the best type of American negro is to-day. It was +this quality, fostered by care and kindness, that has filled Southern +tradition with touching and oftentimes heroic incidents of the slave’s +devotion. When the old differences of Puritan and Cavalier, under other +guises, called men to arms, it was to the fidelity of these blacks that +the Southerner trusted wife, children, and home. That this trust was +seldom violated is sufficient encomium for master and slave. Under the +régime established in many places, after emancipation had converted the +“slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperized man” (Huxley), when he +was incited to open rebellion and nameless atrocities, to what sorrows +would the desolated South have been subjected, had the old status +of master and slave been different? Had the South been guilty of the +charges laid to her door, despite Klu-Klux Klans and other precautions, +the negro’s temper would have been much the same as that of the French +canaille, who during the Commune “drank blood to vomit crime.” They had +shown, in the San Domingo insurrections, that revenge lay within their +nature. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +EARLY LEGISLATION AGAINST SLAVERY + + +The Cavalier and adventurer in working out their destiny in the New +World became purged of the foibles that continued to debauch their +compeers in England; among their descendants of a few generations were +those men of unimpeachable honor and integrity of purpose who will be +held forever as the highest types of American chivalry and manhood. +Those of Virginia, with whom colonial slavery was most ancient, were +the first to be aroused to the full ethical significance of the +evil--to the grave injustice to the unfortunate lower race, and to +the detriment to the moral nature of the higher. They were the first +to attempt to legislate against the evil. In 1770, Virginia protested +against the importation of slaves, but to no avail as royalty itself +was financially interested in the traffic. At the meeting of the +delegates from each county of Virginia held at Williamsburg in August, +1774, to consider British oppression and indignities, the second +article of the protest resolved and agreed upon bore upon the slave +traffic: “We will neither ourselves import nor purchase any slave, or +slaves, imported by any person, after the first day of November next, +either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place.” This meeting +was a full one, and among the one hundred and eight signers--all +prominent in Virginia life and annals--are Peyton Randolph, Richard +Henry Lee, George Washington, Benjamin Harrison, Patrick Henry, Thomas +Jefferson, Thomas Marshall, Thomas Randolph, and Francis Lightfoot +Lee. The instructions of Thomas Jefferson, with whom the abolition +of slavery was always a great aim, to the Virginia delegates to the +first Congress (August, 1774), voiced the sentiments of Virginia’s +most thoughtful men: “For the most trifling reason, and sometimes for +no reason at all, His Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary +tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of +desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily introduced in their +infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we +have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. +Yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by +imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition have been hitherto +defeated by His Majesty’s negative; thus preferring the immediate +advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the +American States, and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by +this inhuman practise.” + +Not only was every effort of the Southern colonists opposed by +England’s monarch, but with the breaking out of open hostilities his +agents were commissioned to arm and instigate the slaves against their +masters.[8] Many lured by the promise of land and freedom flocked to +the British standard; they were sent into Nova Scotia. Suffering from +cold and becoming discontented by the non-fulfillment of the promises +of aggrandizement, they were finally sent to Sierra Leone, which in +the following seventy-five years received the thousands taken by the +British from the slavers. + +During this fearful crisis, Virginia’s spirit towards these misguided +people was one of mercy and humanitarianism. At the next convention +it was resolved: “Whereas Lord Dunmore, by his proclamation, dated on +board the ship _William_ off Norfolk, the 7th day of November, 1775, +hath offered freedom to such able-bodied slaves as are willing to +join him, and take up arms against the good people of this colony, +giving encouragement to a general insurrection, which may induce a +necessity of inflicting the severest punishments upon these unhappy +people already deluded by his base and insiduous arts, and whereas, +by an act of the general assembly now in force in this colony, it +is enacted, that all negro, or other slaves, conspiring to rebel or +make insurrection, shall suffer death, and be excluded all benefit of +clergy--we think it proper to declare, that all slaves who have been, +or shall be seduced by his lordship’s proclamation, or others to desert +their masters’ service and take up arms against the inhabitants of +this colony, shall be liable to such punishment as shall hereafter be +directed by the convention. And to the end that all such, who have +taken this unlawful and wicked step, may return in safety, to their +duty, and escape the punishment due their crimes, we hereby promise +pardon to them, surrendering themselves to Colonel William Woodford or +any other commander of our troops, and not appearing in arms after the +publication hereof. And we do further earnestly recommend it to all +humane and benevolent persons in the colony, to explain and make known +this offer of mercy to those unfortunate people.” + +About this time, some feeling against American slavery, but more +against the “aristocratic spirit of Virginia and the Southern +colonists,” stirred England, and a general enfranchisement of the +slaves was proposed. Edmund Burke, in his famous speech of March 22, +1775, on the “Conciliation with America,” touches on the incongruity +of such a proposition of freedom coming from England: “Slaves as these +unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are from slavery, +must they not a little suspect the offer of freedom from that very +nation, one of whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their +refusal to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of freedom +from England would come rather oddly, shipped to them in an African +vessel, which is refused entry into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, +with a cargo of three hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious to +see the Guinea captain attempt at the same instant to publish his +proclamation of liberty and to advertise the sale of slaves.” + +After throwing off the British yoke, the abolition of the slave traffic +and of slavery was still a paramount issue with these men of Virginia, +and in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had drafted a +clause relative to the moral obliquity; this clause, “reprobating the +enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to +South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the +importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue +it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under +these censures; for though their people had few slaves themselves, yet +they had been very considerable carriers of them to others.”[9] + +The disposition to emancipate was strongest in Virginia. In 1778, when +Jefferson introduced a bill into the Assembly to stop the further +importation of slaves either by land or sea--a fine of one thousand +pounds to be imposed upon any transgressor--it was passed without +opposition and temporarily decreased the evil, but the time was not +ripe for so philanthropic an innovation, and the bill was repealed +by a later Assembly. Many of the younger men, however, were imbued +with a realization of the evil, especially those who at William and +Mary’s College, had come under the influence of George Wythe, and it +was to these that many looked for the ultimate righting of the wrong. +Adumbrations of a future catastrophe broke upon Jefferson, but in +that period of patriotism, his almost prophetic vision saw not the +dim, distant conflict as one arising out of the inherent differences +of North and South, though this came to sadden his declining years, +but rather as one of race against race: “Indeed I tremble for my +country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep +forever; that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a +revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among +possible events.” The hope of eradicating negro slavery before it took +a too vital hold upon the needs and institutions of his land stirred +his patriotic and spiritual zeal; throughout a long life he took a +vigorous stand against its growth. In 1784, when Virginia gave to the +United States her portion of the Northwest Territory, it was Jefferson, +assisted by Chase and Howell, who drafted and ardently advocated the +ordinance that “after the year 1800 there should be neither slavery +nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in +punishment of crime.” This was defeated, but led to the Ordinance of +1787 which forever excluded slavery from the territory northwest of the +Ohio River. + +At the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787, +Jefferson urged as a step towards the ultimate ending of slavery, +the immediate abolition of the importation, but Pinckney of South +Carolina moved that the traffic be extended until 1808, and he was +seconded by Gorman of Massachusetts. The motion carried in all the New +England States, in South Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland; Virginia, +Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware were against it. This exigency +of extending it for twenty years was a subject of grave apprehension +to many thoughtful and patriotic men who were slave owners, among them +Jefferson, Washington, and Madison; though the attitude of the last +was frequently ambiguous about many questions, he commits himself very +fully on this clause of the Constitution in _The Federalist_: “It were +doubtless to be wished that the power of prohibiting the importation +of slaves had not been postponed until 1808, or, rather, that it had +been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult +to account either for the restriction on the general government or +for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be +considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period +of twenty years may terminate forever within these States, a traffic +which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern +polity.” + +It may be assumed that the majority of those engaged in framing the +Constitution regarded slavery as a domestic problem nearing its +end, and it was a policy which at that time received more vehement +denunciation from men of the South than those of the North, probably +because a part of the North was actively engaged in the traffic and +that the humanitarians of the South, born in the midst of slavery, +were not only awake to the ethical significance of the evil, but were +averse to raising within their midst thousands of an alien race. That +the disposition to discontinue all avenues which led to a continuation +of slavery was not more general was incomprehensible to Jefferson, and +absolutely out of harmony with the spirit of freedom which permeated +American life: “What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine +is man! who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death +itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf +to all those motives whose power supported him through trial, and +inflict on his fellow-men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with +more misery, than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. +But we must await, with patience, the workings of an over-ruling +Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of those, +our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full, +when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness, +doubtless, a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by +diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or at length, +by his exterminating thunder, manifest his attention to the things +of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind +fatality.”[10] + +This constitutional postponement did not even settle the question +temporarily. The Quakers presented a memorial for the abolition of the +slave trade to the very first Congress (1790). This was reported by a +committee to the whole House; and after various amendments was returned +with the following: + +“1st, That migration or importation of such persons, as any of the +States now existing shall think proper to admit, can not be prohibited +by Congress prior to the year 1808. + +“2d, That Congress have no authority to interfere in emancipation +of slaves or in the treatment of them within any of the States; it +remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulations +therein, which humanity and true polity may require.” + +This was a perilous and critical time--a time of trial for the new +Constitution--when the States, watchful and alert, were jealous +of their rights, and the Quakers’ action was regarded by many as +a flagrant violation of those rights. Washington considered their +petition inopportune, especially as the question had been recently +disposed of and was contained in an article of the Constitution, and +so expressed himself in a letter: “The memorial of the Quakers [and +a very malapropos one it was] has at length been put to sleep, and +will scarcely awake before the year 1808.” However, the Quakers’ +attitude was not equivocal, as was that of the Puritan New Englander. +Their petition grew from earnest convictions--convictions which were +deep-rooted before they came to America, for they had expressed their +repugnance to the English slave trade in 1671, and after coming to +America had discouraged participation in slavery as early as 1696; in +1776 they placed their ultimatum upon it by excluding from membership +any Quaker slaveholder. + +This constitutional extension of the slave traffic closed +all possibility of the question ever being settled amicably. +Short-sightedness can scarcely be charged to those responsible, for at +that time there was no thought of an acquisition of territory on the +south and southwest, and the cultivation of cotton was still in its +infancy. Before another decade Eli Whitney had invented the cotton-gin; +this gave an impetus to the growing of cotton; agriculture in the +South was revolutionized. To make way for the industry Georgia ceded +her western territory to the United States and a tide of Southern +immigration from the older centers of Virginia and the Carolinas +rapidly flowed into Alabama and Mississippi. The wanderlust of a +hardy, pioneer ancestry was in these men’s veins. Accompanied often +by gentle families, their household goods, and their negroes they +started overland. By long and tedious journeyings, across mountain, +stream, and swamp--through seemingly boundless stretches of majestic +pines--sometimes encountering hostile Indians and again exchanging +friendly courtesies with the friendly Choctaws and Chickasaws, they +reached the new frontier, and established themselves along the river +courses. Others came by sailing vessels, and passing through the French +and Spanish cities of Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans, followed +the river courses into the interior. The log cabins which sprang up +in the wilderness, were soon supplanted by comfortable, substantial +homes frequently built of brick made upon the plantations or of +hand-hewn lumber; each became a nucleus of activities around which all +things necessary for the maintenance of life were produced. On the +well-ordered plantations the African was not only field laborer and +faithful domestic, but became cobbler, mason, carpenter, and a spinner +and weaver of cotton and wool. In this virgin region, far removed +from the life and influences of the older States, there grew up a +vital and mutual dependence between master and slave; as such, each +was necessary to the other; but it was not a combination out of which +sentiments for the ultimate freedom of the negro were apt to grow; and +it was these who were farthest removed from the later machinations +of the Abolitionists, who were most bitter and strenuous in their +opposition. In this close relation which in all but rare exceptions was +a kindly one, the Southerner came to know the negro as the negro then +could not know himself, realized his limitations, directed him along +useful lines, and knew how rapidly he would revert were the civilizing +and humanizing influence of slavery as it existed in the South removed. +In later years when Southerners stood before a questioning world, there +was no sophistry in the protests of those who declared that slavery was +beneficial, and it was an argument resting upon truth that the Southern +negro’s condition was happier than that of the laboring classes in +other parts of the world. + +European events also conspired towards an extension of slavery. After +the French troops, already depleted by yellow fever, were defeated by +the negro insurgents at San Domingo, Napoleon realized the uncertainty +of France retaining the great Louisiana Territory which had been +but recently repossessed from Spain. To circumvent the English, who +had long coveted this domain, Napoleon, in 1803, offered it to the +United States for fifteen million dollars. American settlers along +the Mississippi had already experienced difficulties with the Spanish +who claimed complete control of the Mississippi River south of the +Yazoo, and though Congress had been given no constitutional prerogative +for acquiring new territory, Jefferson, who was then President, saw +the varied importance of this acquisition, and successfully and with +very little criticism directed the negotiations. This brought into +the United States, not only a vast terra incognita, but an extensive +Franco-Spanish civilization stretching along the Gulf of Mexico, with +French outposts scattered along the great river systems and reaching +into the very heart of America. + +The divergence of this civilization from that of English colonization +was not only racial, but its tone had been qualified by the spirit in +which the settlements had been made and the polity adopted by each. It +possessed nothing of New England’s austerity, or of Virginia’s somewhat +stolid stateliness, but was characterized by a graceful picturesqueness +and a delightful bonhomie. The black-robed priest if not the pathfinder +who blazed the way for French settlements was usually the comrade and +companion of those who did. Religion and settlement went hand in hand. +None of the torturing and enslaving methods used by the Puritans to +force upon the natives a cold, stern religion, unattractive even to +other Christian sects, or by the Spanish in Mexico and Florida, were +resorted to by the French. Wherever there was a priest, Mass began the +day. The mystic ceremony, performed in the dewy freshness of early +morning within the forest’s depths, or on a strip of sandy beach beside +the mighty waters; the solemn gestures of the celebrant and the adoring +attitude of the worshippers appealed to the Indian imagination, and the +French were soon importuned to invoke their Great Spirit to aid the red +man, to bring rain or to heal the sick or wounded. + +From Mobile, the oldest and for many years the chief French +settlement, the genius of Iberville and Bienville Lemoyne, aided by +ardent and indefatigable missioners, reached out to remote Indian +tribes, conciliating and binding them as allies. They dealt fairly +with the Indian, but in cases of treachery used the Indian’s own +method of punishment. From the Indians they also adopted the custom of +making slaves of hostile captives. Negro slavery also existed in these +settlements from very early years, for in the quaint baptismal register +of 1704-1778, forming a part of the archives of the Catholic Cathedral +of Mobile, is recorded the baptism of two negro children belonging to +Bienville in 1707, and in the same year a negro woman belonging to him +bore the first negro child born on the Gulf coast.[11] + +Gold was not found, nor did the French settlements on the Gulf lay in +the wake of the treasure-ladened Spanish galleons, but the climate was +benign, the lands rich, and the forests afforded an abundance of food, +and in times of scarcity Bienville sometimes quartered his soldiers +among the friendly natives. There was leisure for the amenities, +and the priest and nun who had given up life and ambition in the Old +World were not only the spiritual advisers and educators of the young +of New France, but as missioners guided and instructed the Indian and +the slave. Their institutions became asylums for the sick and desolate +of any race, and to their influence may be traced the easy, happy +condition of the negro slave among the French of Louisiana. There was +that in the temperament of these French which while appropriating the +Indian’s and negro’s usefulness at the same time beguiled and won them. +An incident of a slave’s heroic loyalty to the French is related by +Gayarré in his _Louisiana_. After the French settlements passed under +Spanish control, New Orleans revolted, and the leaders were sentenced +to be shot; Jeannot the negro hangman cut off his right arm rather than +raise it against a Frenchman. + +In March, 1724, Bienville issued a code, one clause of which forbade +marriages between whites and blacks. Such marriages had taken place, +and had given rise to what afterwards became an extensive Afro-Latin +population. In many places along the Gulf coast it is among these +so-called Creoles who have clung to their original habitations along +the river banks, the creeks, and bays, that the old French names are +found and a patois spoken. The result of this amalgamation did not seem +mongrel, but distinctive, and in their local history, covering two +hundred years, during which time they have lived under five different +flags, there has been a pride of race which has kept the original +strain pure. Deeply religious, they have been characterized by honesty, +frugality, and industry. They were never slaves, but were in many +instances slave owners. + +A Société des Amis des Noirs had been formed in Paris, in 1788. Its +object was to end the slave trade and slavery, especially in San +Domingo from which came many reports of cruelty and oppression. A +little later, France in establishing the rights and equality of man +passed through her awful revolution. Though Louisiana was in constant +touch and sympathy with France, among her peaceful, pleasure-loving +people no sentiment about negro freedom or equality seems to have been +evolved. When this great territory passed into the United States, it +carried with it its institution of slavery, which, established as it +was in the habits and thoughts of these people, strengthened slavery’s +hold upon the South, pushed further away, and complicated with added +difficulties the fulfillment of the hope of those great Southerners who +had looked for its gradual and peaceful termination. In the government +of this new territory we again meet with the large vision of Jefferson +and his desire to curtail slavery. Outside importations were forbidden, +and only slaves who had been brought to this country before 1798 +could be carried by their masters for the purpose of settlement into +Louisiana. All others carried in would be freed and the penalty for +each offense would be three hundred dollars. + +To prepare the seafaring interests for the statute of 1808, and to lead +American sentiment to its acceptance, Congress in the early part of +the same year (1803) prohibited after April 1, 1803, the importation +of any persons of color, or the entry of any vessels containing such +persons into those States whose laws already debarred such importation. +Indians were not included in this prohibition. The penalty for the +first violation was a fine of one thousand dollars for every such +person, one half to be appropriated to the United States and the other +to be given to the informer. For the latter offense, the vessel and +all appurtenances were to be confiscated by the United States, one +half the net proceeds to be given to such “person or persons on whose +information the seizure of such forfeiture shall be made.”[12] + +When New Jersey abolished slavery in 1804, this statute obtained in +all the Northern States. In their economy slavery was an incubus. This +statute imposed no financial sacrifice on individuals, for in most +cases the relatively few slaves had been transferred and sold in the +South. Though there were threatening party differences, as yet there +seems no general feeling against slavery in those States to which +it was peculiar, and such sentiments as were entertained were more +abstract than those common in the South itself.[13] Many Northern +fortunes had been built upon the slave trade; though prohibiting the +importation into their own States, numbers were still actively engaged +in the traffic--and the Southern States were the only ports legally +open to them, for an act forbidding the direct or indirect importation +of slaves into foreign countries had become a United States statute +in 1794. The South itself seldom engaged in this traffic--it was a +degradation to which her aristocratic tendencies could not stoop; a +“nigger-trade” was taboo; and though slave vessels plied to and from +her ports, they were usually a part of Yankee enterprise. + +Jefferson, to whom the question had so long been a momentous one, +welcomed the time when the traffic would end, and in his sixth annual +message to Congress, December 2, 1806, rejoiced “on the approach of +the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally, +to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further +participation in those violations of human rights which have so long +continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the +morality, the reputation, and the best interests of the country have +long been eager to proscribe.” With the first of January, 1808, it +became unlawful for any person of color to be imported into the United +States or her territory; any person aiding or abetting such traffic to +be fined five thousand dollars; also “any citizen of the United States, +building, fitting out, equipping, loading or otherwise preparing +or sending away any ship or vessel, knowing that the same shall be +employed in such trade or business” shall pay twenty thousand dollars, +a part to go to the United States and another to any person or persons +who shall prosecute the offender. Every vessel found engaged in the +traffic was to be “seized, prosecuted, and condemned in any of the +circuit courts or district courts where the said ship or vessel may +be found or seized.” The President was authorized to use the naval +and revenue forces to enforce the statute. They were to cruise on the +coast of the United States and her territories; to seize and bring to +port vessels contravening the provisions of the act, the captain or +commander to be prosecuted before any court of the United States having +jurisdiction thereof; and if convicted to be fined not more than ten +thousand dollars, and to be subject to imprisonment to not more than +four years.[14] + +These and further enactments of a like nature ended constitutionally +the slave traffic in the United States. Many New Englanders had nothing +further to gain; there was no legitimate financial emolument now +standing between them and a realization of the ethical side of the +slave question. Instead of lending a conservative help to those of the +South who hoped by gradual and conciliatory methods to loose slavery’s +growing hold upon their institutions, through a curious psychological +metamorphosis they began to look askance upon the South and its +institution of slavery, and to affiliate in thought with the abolition +movement which under Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others was stirring +England; forgetting in their zeal that the wrongs which Clarkson and +Wilberforce were championing were the wrongs of which England and +New England as slave traders had been the chief perpetrators. This +growing sentiment was seized upon by politicians and played upon for +party purposes. It was with increased apprehension that they saw the +extension of the slave interests which the purchase of Louisiana had +necessitated, and the further representation these interests would +be given as new States were formed from the slave territory. For a +decade this jealousy was kept within safe bounds by any preponderance +of representation being checkmated and balanced by the formation of a +Free State. Yet this feeling was becoming rapidly contagious, spreading +to many who had not previously thought of slavery, or who regarded it +as a domestic policy to be settled by the Slave States individually +and exclusively. With the development of the Missouri controversy, +the temperamental divergence born of several centuries of turmoil and +turbulence in England, and too deep-rooted to be really dead, roused +from the anesthesia of united effort against a common enemy and a +subsequent enthusiasm for Union, and stood forth definitely defined +as North and South. Forgetful of the give and take necessary for +the harmonious existence of polities as of individuals, the country +was still not large enough or the political interests sufficiently +varied, for such differences to be conducive to well-being. In his +Presidential farewell Washington warned his countrymen against a +geographical division of interests: “In contemplating the causes which +may disturb our Union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern, that +any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by +_geographical discrimination_, ... northern and southern ... Atlantic +and western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that +there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the +expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is +to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot +shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings +which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien +to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal +affection.” To Jefferson, aged and waiting, this Missouri controversy +and its adjustment, was the alarum in which he heard the death-knell +of the Union, and in a letter to John Holmes, dated Monticello, April +22, 1820, he so expresses himself: “I thank you, dear sir, for the copy +you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents +on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had +for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to +public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a +passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not far distant. But +this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and +filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the death-knell of +the Union. It is hushed indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve +only, not the final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a +marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to +the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new +irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with conscious +truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than +I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practical +way. The cession of that kind of property (for so it is misnamed) is +a bagatelle, which would not cost me a second thought, if in that +way a general emancipation and _expatriation_ could be effected; and +gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But, as it is, +we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely +let him go. Justice is in one scale and self-preservation in the other. +Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one Free +State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who +would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface +would make them individually happier, and proportionately facilitate +the accomplishment of their emancipation, by dividing the burden on +a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence, too, from this act +of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of +Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of +men comprising a State. This certainly is the exclusive right of every +State, which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them, and +given to the General Government. Could Congress, for example, say that +the non-freemen of Connecticut could be freemen, or that they shall not +emigrate to another State? + +“I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice +of themselves of the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and +happiness to their country, is to be thrown away, by the unwise and +unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be +that I shall not live to weep over it. If they would dispassionately +weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle, +more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause +before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of +treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful +advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and +respect.” + + + + +CHAPTER III + +ILLEGAL TRAFFIC IN SLAVES + + +Legislation against habits which by an evolution of sentiment have +become moral issues is always followed by flagrant violations, for +men are usually loth to acquiesce in things which they consider a +curtailment of their livelihood. For a century and a half, the slave +traffic had been an immense source of revenue for a large class of +citizens. Despite the constitutional prohibition, the imposition of +heavy fines and the offer of large rewards, the traffic in negroes +continued to flourish--nor was it carried on with any great degree of +surreptitiousness. Vessels intended for this purpose were built with a +reference to speed and were probably the fleetest craft afloat. + +In the early years of the Union the revenue and naval forces were +necessarily small and the coast a vast and sparsely inhabited one. +Algerian pirates called for a part of their strength, and their +energies were again directed against the British in 1812; pirates +harassed commerce off the South Atlantic States and in the Gulf of +Mexico--Lafitte establishing a kingdom at Barataria, an island in the +lower Mississippi, from which sailed many piratical expeditions, and +where a brisk trade in slaves was carried on. Though our naval force +seemed inadequate it had been singularly successful against these +outside adversaries. These preoccupations seem scarcely sufficient +excuse for the flourishing condition of the illegal traffic in slaves. +Money, politics, and indifference appear to have been a trinity that +glossed over rottenness then as now. Obscure harbors and lonely shores +were not always the destination of these hell-craft, but they sailed +to and from the principal seaport towns. With scarcely an exception +they were fitted up by New Englanders and New Yorkers and manned by +down-east seamen; Rhode Island led with Connecticut, Massachusetts +and New York as close seconds. The West Indies and Brazil offered a +market, and some found their way into Southern ports, where, through +the co-operation of an equally criminal class of Southerners, the +unfortunate, contraband humans were sold. + +While the middle passage before 1808 was a veritable inferno, it was +afterwards characterized by a barbarity which should have sickened +the soul of all humanity, yet the voice and sentiment of humane, +law-abiding Americans were not strong enough to make this traffic +impossible. Cyrus King in a speech on the Missouri Question, in 1819, +described the shameless situation: “It well might be supposed that the +slave trade would in practice be extinguished; that virtuous men would +by their abhorrence stay its polluted march and the wicked would be +overawed by its potent punishment, but unfortunately the case is far +otherwise. We have but melancholy proofs from unquestionable sources +that it is still carried on with all the implacable ferocity--and +insatiable rapacity--of former times. Avarice has grown more subtile +in its evasions; and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite +quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American +citizens are steeped up to their very mouths (I scarcely use too bold a +figure) in this stream of iniquity? They throng the coasts of Africa +under the stained flags of Spain and Portugal, sometimes selling abroad +their ‘cargoes of despair,’ and sometimes bringing them into some of +our Southern ports, and there, under the forms of law, defeating the +purpose of the law itself, and legalizing their inhuman but profitable +adventures.” + +Those so unfortunate as to have been brought into any of the Southern +States were by the Constitution “subject to any regulations, not +contravening the provisions of the act, which the legislatures of the +several states or territories at any time hereafter may make, for +disposing of any such negro, mulatto, or person of color.” As some +extenuation for those Southern States, let it be asked, What was to +be done with these unfortunate Africans? Barbarians all--often of the +lowest type--and sometimes cannibals--could they be given freedom? The +attention of thinking men was early directed to the status of the free +black; how to place him to his own best advantage that his position +as a citizen would not be equivocal; and to avoid arousing by his +idle example or designing machinations, discord, dissatisfaction, +and even mutiny among the slaves. In 1803, a colonization plan was +discussed in the Virginia Assembly; this led to a correspondence on +the subject between Madison, who was then Governor, and President +Jefferson. Out of this was born in 1816, what soon became a very active +organization, the American Colonization Society. After negotiations, +lands were secured on the west coast of Africa at Cape Mesurada. There +the society established a colony to which such free blacks as desired +might be conveyed, and which was also to receive the Africans taken +from slavers, or those found to have been smuggled into the country +by traders. During all the years of the society’s activities the +unfortunates reached by their clemency were small in proportion to +those surreptitiously sold into bondage; this was due to the powerful +abettors--often legalized ones--of the traffic. A lack of intelligent +forethought was responsible for disheartening results in their early +efforts at colonization. But the society’s efforts at home were +more successful by fostering a spirit against the trade, and it was +instrumental in regulating the laws in some of the Southern States +which were so ambiguous as to aid rather than crush the trade.[15] In +1819, Congress stipulated that contraband Africans were to be taken +from State jurisdiction to become wards of the Government, and the +President was authorized to make “such regulations and arrangements +as he may deem expedient for the safe-keeping, support, and removal +beyond the limits of the United States, of all such negroes, mulattoes, +or persons of color, as may be so delivered and brought within their +jurisdiction. And to appoint a proper person or persons, residing upon +the coast of Africa, as agent or agents for receiving negroes, etc., +delivered from on board vessels, seized in the prosecution of trade +by commanders of the United States armed vessels.” In 1819, Congress +acting upon a memorial presented by the Colonization Society, declared +the slave traffic to be piracy punishable with death. In this same +year the statute of 1809 was enlarged and made more stringent and the +President was empowered to send armed vessels along the African coast. +One hundred thousand dollars was appropriated for this purpose. + +Rigid legislation only multiplied the horrors, without curtailing the +evil. With death as the penalty, when there was danger of apprehension, +it was not uncommon for the whole cargo to be thrown into the sea. +This, compared with the tortures of frequent passages, was almost +humane. To escape the terrors, numbers would embrace death if given the +opportunity. Yet the trade was highly profitable even if three out of +four cargoes were lost. + +By the Treaty of Ghent (1815), the United States and Great Britain +agreed separately and individually to use their influence to suppress +the trade. Yet later the United States threw sheltering arms around +those of her citizens whom Britain had reason to suspect--maritime +rights, the statement that Southern slave owners might make voyages +accompanied by their slaves, or the plea of slave hands on merchant +ships--often protected malefactors. After Parliament abolished slavery +from the British colonies, the American brig _Comet_ was stranded off +the Bahamas (1830), as was the _Encomium_ in 1834 and the _Enterprise_ +in 1835; slaves were found aboard in each case and liberated by the +English. Americans raised a loud cry. After a correspondence covering +nearly ten years Great Britain agreed to pay for the Africans, and +admonished her colonies on the southern borders of the United States to +“maintain good neighborhood.” As the years went by and all so-called +efforts proved ineffectual, England, with a sincere desire to end the +traffic, developed an assumption that it was her especial privilege, +and inaugurated a right of search, or visit, against the very nature +of which it was imperative that the United States should protest. In +many cases this necessity became unavoidably another protection for +malefactors. As the flags of various countries were constantly used +to cover the traffic, England in 1803 united with Russia, France, +Austria, and Prussia for the suppression, and acquired supervision +along the African coast, maintaining a right of search. America was +not approached on this subject, though Lord Palmerston boldly declared +to the world England’s right to “visit” American merchantmen (Aug. +13, 1841). This was later sustained by Lord Aberdeen (Oct. 13, 1841). +America’s attitude toward the situation was awaited with great interest +by European Powers. Such an assumption could not be tolerated--America +had already suffered too much from British assumption--and President +Tyler in his message to Congress protested that “however desirous the +United States may be for the suppression of the slave trade, they +cannot consent to any interpolations of the maritime code at the mere +will and pleasure of other governments. We deny the right of any such +interpolation to any one, or all the nations of earth without our +consent.... American citizens prosecuting a lawful commerce on the +African seas, under the flag of their country, are not responsible +for the abuse or unlawful use of that flag by others; nor can they +rightfully, on account of any such alleged abuses, be interrupted, +molested, or detained while in the ocean; and if thus molested and +detained while pursuing honest voyages in the usual way and violating +no laws themselves, they are unquestionably entitled to indemnity.”[16] + + +Lord Aberdeen in his correspondence with Mr. Stephenson (Oct. 13, +1841) had admitted that it would be an infringement of public law, +to visit and search American vessels during times of peace, if that +right were not granted by treaty. “But no such right is asserted. We +sincerely desire to respect the vessels of the United States, but we +may reasonably expect to know what it is we respect. Doubtless the flag +is prima facie evidence of nationality of the vessel; and, if this +evidence were in its nature conclusive and irrefragible, it ought to +preclude all further inquiry. But it is sufficiently notorious that +the flags of all nations are liable to be assumed by those who have no +right or title to bear them. Mr. Stephenson himself fully admits the +extent to which the American flag has been employed for the purpose +of covering this infamous traffic. The undersigned joins with Mr. +Stephenson in deeply lamenting the evil; and he agrees with him in +thinking the United States ought not to be considered responsible for +the abuse of their flag. But if all inquiry be resisted, even when +carried no further than to ascertain the nationality of the vessel, and +impunity be claimed for the most lawless and desperate of mankind, +in the commission of the fraud the undersigned greatly fears that it +may be regarded as something like an assumption of that responsibility +which has been deprecated by Mr. Stephenson.... + +“The undersigned, although with pain, must add, that if such visit lead +to the proof of the American origin of the vessel, and that she was +avowedly engaged in the trade, exhibiting manacles, fetters, and other +usual implements of torture, or had even a number of those unfortunates +on board, no British officer could interfere further. He might give +information to the cruisers of the United States, but it could not be +in his power to arrest or impede the prosecution of the voyage and the +success of the undertaking.” + +The question called for a diplomatic correspondence. In 1842, Lord +Ashburton was sent as special minister to the United States, empowered +to settle the Northwest Boundary, and other questions of controversy. +The result of his conference with Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, +was a treaty between Great Britain and the United States known as the +Ashburton Treaty and as the Treaty of Washington. By the eighth article +each stipulated to “maintain on the African coast an adequate squadron, +to carry in all not less than eighty guns, to enforce separately and +respectively the laws, rights, and obligations of the two countries for +the suppression of the slave trade.” + +There was also the realization that as long as certain countries +offered open markets for slaves, the temptation to malefactors would +be so great that their efforts would be more or less ineffectual; by +the ninth article both countries agreed to “unite in all becoming +representations and remonstrances with any and all powers within whose +dominions such markets are allowed to exist,” and that “they will urge +upon all such powers the propriety and duty of closing such markets +effectually, at once and forever.” + +Americans, among others, continued to brazenly carry on the trade; as +the gap between the North and the South widened, it was carried on with +renewed vigor. The Abolitionists’ thoughts were focused on conditions +in the South, and failed to note the flourishing trade carried on +under their very eyes from the ports of New England and New York. +Inhabitants of these places were constantly being found implicated, +but by lack of proof, or through some technicality, they were seldom +convicted. Officials, who were either conniving or indifferent, aided +them in their lucrative trade. As late as 1858, a brisk trade was +carried on; statistics show that in that year eighty-five slavers were +fitted out and sailed from New York alone, and these successfully +captured and sold into slavery fifteen thousand Africans. Sometimes +they were sent into the South. The schooner _Wanderer_ in the fall +of 1858 surreptitiously landed three hundred at Brunswick, Georgia; +they were taken up the Savannah River and sold. In October, of the +same year, an alleged slave bark, _Isle de Cuba_, was taken in custody +at Boston, and her crew held as witnesses under a thousand-dollar +bond; later they and Captain Dobson were discharged. In November, +the schooner _Madison_ was taken by the United States marshal at New +York. She was intended for the slave trade, was sold at auction, and +bought in for Eddy & Gardener of Salem, Mass., for sixteen hundred +dollars. Evidence pointed that she was bound for Salem to be fitted +out as a slaver when captured. In September the _Echo_ was captured +by a revenue cutter and taken to Charleston as the nearest port; +Charleston was very active in her efforts to restrain the trade. The +_Echo_ was commanded by Captain Townsend of Rhode Island--the queen of +the slave-trading States. The Africans were cared for at Charleston +until the Colonization Society could take charge of them. They were +the wildest barbarians--men and women were alike nude, though this was +no evidence that they had been accustomed to going so in their native +land, as their clothes were usually taken from them by their captors. +Some of the charitable ladies provided clothing for them. Among all +these unfortunates there was but one article of clothing--a glove--and +this was worn with great pride and distinction by a tall, handsome +negress. Hoop-skirts were then in vogue, and this woman was dressed by +the ladies in full regalia. Entranced, she danced and shrieked with +delight, pushing the hoop-skirt on one side to see it stick out on the +other. + +Many violations might be cited. Sometimes ships reported deserted +vessels on the high seas--vessels whose manacles and wooden spoons +told a gruesome tragedy. An article in the New York _World_, in 1859, +described some of the methods by which the slavers escaped punishment: +“The slave trader takes care to cross the ocean without a national +flag or purpose of any kind. The reason for this is that if captured, +no court can condemn them for piracy. The vessels may be condemned and +the negroes liberated by the captor, but the crew can be punished only +by the nation under whose flag the offense was committed. No flag, the +crew escapes.” Slavers no longer left America with manacles, gewgaws, +and fire-water, but carried money. Once on the African coast they +could buy from English or other vessels the articles needed for trade. +The bargain struck, the crew that made the outward voyage was usually +discharged, and a new one of adventurous spirit procured on the African +coast. + +Thirteen years after the ratification of the Ashburton Treaty, when +England made reclamations on the Brazilian Government for innumerable +violations of her treaties, the reply of the Emperor was “if Great +Britain would find the real culprits, she must go to the ports of +Boston and New York to find them.”[17] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +PREPARATIONS FOR CLOTILDE’S VOYAGE + + +In 1858, Mobile had been for almost a century and a half one of the +important Gulf coast ports. Picturesquely situated at the head of +a lagoon-like bay, the craft of many nations dropped anchor in her +waters. Somewhat past the heyday of youth, her buildings mellowed by +time and her streets shaded by trees, she wore an air that was calm +and comfortable, and her homes and public buildings bespoke a settled +prosperity. Survivors of primitive and pioneer life might be seen +about the streets; some Indians lingered on and with baskets strapped +across their shoulders sold _filé_ and sassafras about the streets, +while white-covered “Chickasaha” wagons, drawn by from six to twenty +oxen, came slowly and laboriously down Spring Hill and St. Stephen’s +roads, bringing staples from the interior to the Mobile markets. The +district near the river and towards the northern part of the town was +given over to commerce and occupied by cotton warehouses--low-lying, +monotonous structures of brick. The river boats carried on a brisk +trade and Mobile’s export to foreign countries was large. Life about +the wharves which was usually busy--and often gay--became very +stirring during the latter part of 1858 and 1859. It drew upon itself +the attention of the United States Government, elicited a special +proclamation from the President, and a vigilant watch by United States +officials. + +In the early fifties, during one of Nicaragua’s chronic revolutions, +General Walker had been invited by the democrats of Leon to unite +with them against the aristocrats of Granada. Many Alabamians joined +him in this expedition and shed their blood for the cause. Walker +gained supreme power, but his glory was short-lived. The opposing +forces united and compelled him to leave. In 1857, President Buchanan +recognized him as President of Nicaragua, and addressed him as such. +His adventurous exploit met with general acclamation. But when Walker +announced that Nicaragua would be open to Southern colonization, +admitting slaves, it was like flaunting a red rag before a maddened +populace; the abolitionism of the North, already unrestrained in its +fanaticism and jealous hatred, backed by Northern commercialism caused +a rapid reversion of feeling. Walker, the erstwhile hero, was denounced +as a filibuster, and Southerners were accused of attempting to +establish a Southern Republic along the Gulf of Mexico that they might +spread slavery and reopen the slave traffic. + +In 1858, Walker prepared to make good his previous claims. The +collectors of the ports of New Orleans and Mobile were ordered not to +clear vessels for Nicaraguan ports, before first communicating with the +Government of Washington. Vessels carrying passengers and receiving +every protection of the Government still sailed from Eastern ports to +San Juan del Norte. Mobile and New Orleans felt the trade of the South +to be seriously crippled by this discrimination. In a special message, +the President denounced the “leaders of former illegal expeditions who +had expressed their intention of open hostilities against Nicaragua,” +and particularly against one “who is now at Mobile, which has been +designated as the rendezvous and place of departure for San Juan del +Norte.” He enjoined all the Government officers, “civil and military, +to be active, vigilant, and faithful in suppressing these illegal +enterprises.” This message was received with indignation throughout +the whole of the lower South. Mobilians gathered in groups about the +streets and on the new post-office steps, and excitedly discussed +the President’s proclamation. They were in sympathy with Walker and +many were contributing funds towards the expedition. Espousal of his +cause became an issue in the mayoral election. Further excitement +was generated by the attitude of Judge Campbell, his charge to the +grand jury, and his emphasis of the President’s order for officials +to be “vigilant, active, and faithful.” Citizens regarded this as +espionage and as a personal affront to their fellow townsman, Robert H. +Smith, collector of the port. The discovery of a Government spy--one +General Wilson from Ohio--and a minion of Judge Campbell--who was +seen “sneaking about the wharves and warehouses of the city, to find +something contraband of Abolition interest and Abolition policy,” +provoked the citizens to further anger. “As a next step we shall +have our servants paid to report the words which drop from us at the +table.”[18] + +Rebellion was already rampant in the South. The temperament of Southern +men was unfailingly daring--adventure appealed to their imaginations +and risk was a game to be played. In the midst of this excitement, +an expedition was preparing, money was being contributed, and the +schooner _Susan_ fitted out. Harry Maury, socially and financially +prominent, was in command. When ready to sail she was refused clearing +papers, but Maury weighed anchor and sailed down the bay, preparatory +to joining the fleet. The revenue cutter _McClelland_ pursued, brought +her to, and boarded her and demanded her papers. Maury said he did not +expect to receive them until he reached the fleet. The captain of the +_McClelland_ then claimed the _Susan_ as a prize for the Government; +Maury refused to consider her as such. Lieutenant White was placed +aboard with orders to take her to Dog River Bar and to hold her there +as prize. Maury nonchalantly replied that he did not object to White +remaining aboard as his guest. The next day both vessels sailed about +the bay, but the captain, under orders from the custom-house at Mobile, +warned Maury that if he attempted to sail away the _Susan_ would be +sunk. At dark the captain ordered both boats to drop anchor for the +night. About eleven o’clock, a heavy mist arose, the _Susan_ weighed +anchor and slipped noiselessly away, carrying aboard Lieutenant +White. The _Mobile Register_, voicing the sentiments of the citizens, +wished for the voyage “that the breezes be prosperous and the fates +propitious.” When two hundred miles out in the Gulf, Lieutenant White +was transferred to the bark _Oregon_ and sent back to New Orleans, +where he stated that he had received every courtesy while aboard the +_Susan_. He reported that she carried besides her crew, two hundred and +forty men, Minie balls, and Mississippi rifles. The _Susan_ was wrecked +on a coral reef off Honduras. The subsequent adventures of her men is a +thrilling narrative. They were received by the governor of Bay Island, +who upon hearing of their predicament sent them back to Mobile in Her +Majesty’s steam-sloop _Basilisk_. + +With the birth and fruition of such adventures, Mobile’s river-front +naturally became an exciting place. About this time a group of men were +one day standing on the wharf discussing the efforts the Government +was finally making to suppress the slave trade, the vigilance which +was being exerted, and the impossibility for a vessel equipped for +such a purpose to evade officials. There was some betting--a favorite +pastime of the day--and Captain Tim Meaher, a steamboat builder and +river-man, who was standing near, wagered that he could send a slaver +to the coast of Africa and bring through the port of Mobile a cargo of +slaves. The wager was taken up and the stakes were large. This is the +tradition which is given in connection with the _Clotilde’s_ voyage. +It may have been true or it may have been invented to give color and +palliation to what proved to be the last cargo of slaves brought into +the United States, but it is certain that this was only one of the +voyages made under the auspices of the Meahers and Captain Foster. Of +these there are still rumors among the older people, and the widow of +Captain Foster, innocent and trustful, hoped until her recent death to +get from the United States about thirty thousand dollars which would +have been Foster’s share in the _Gipsy_--a slaver which with her cargo +was captured by Government officials and which was valued by those +interested in her at four hundred thousand dollars. + +There were three of the Meaher brothers--Tim, Jim, and Burns. They +were natives of Maine, and possessed the New England love of the +water and taste for the slave trade. Captain Foster was born in Nova +Scotia of English parentage. His people were all seafaring--sailors, +captains, and builders of boats--and possibly his proclivities were +also inherited. These men were interested in a mill and a ship-yard at +the mouth of Chickasabogue, three miles above Mobile. The _Clotilde_, +the _Susan_, the _Gipsy_, and other boats which were engaged in the +river trade, in filibustering expeditions, the slave trade, and as +blockade-runners during the Civil War were built there. The _Clotilde_, +because of her fleetness, was selected to make the voyage to the slave +coast. She was the personal property of Foster and had been designed +and built by him. + +[Illustration: Drawn by Emma Roche. + +Poleete.] + +Once arriving on the African coast there was little trouble in +procuring a cargo of slaves, for it had long been a part of the +traders’ policy to instigate the tribes against each other and in this +manner keep the markets stocked. News of the trade was often published +in the papers. The Meahers and Foster could have sought nothing more +enlightening or to their purpose than an item published in the _Mobile +Register_, November 9, 1858: “From the west coast of Africa we have +advice dated September 21st. The quarreling of the tribes on Sierra +Leone River rendered the aspect of things very unsatisfactory. The King +of Dahomey was driving a brisk trade in slaves at from fifty to sixty +dollars apiece at Whydah. Immense numbers of negroes were collected +along the coast for export.” Foster, with a crew of northern men, +sailed directly for Whydah. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE CAPTURE OF THE TARKARS + + +The slaves who constituted the _Clotilde’s_ cargo and who have become +historic by being the last brought into the United States were captured +by Dahomey’s warriors and Amazons on one of their cruel excursions. For +many years the tribe of Dahomey had been a scourge to the weaker and +more peaceable tribes whose domains lay near the Gold Coast or in the +interior away from the coast of Guinea. Cruel, stealthy war was their +occupation--a war of surprise which aroused sleeping villages to the +horrors of fire, plunder, and capture. The older victims were usually +killed. Sometimes they were permitted to live and to see their young +and strong overpowered, bound, and led into captivity--a captivity +from which there could be no hope of return, for the prisoners were +conveyed to the coast, sold to the slavers, and carried across the +sea to strange, alien lands. The King of Dahomey’s house was built +of skulls and his drinking cups were the skulls of fallen chiefs. In +the early part of the nineteenth century one of the Dahomey kings +organized a battalion of women warriors--a race rare in history but not +especially unique in African annals. Early cosmographies record of the +King of Inhamban: “It is affirmed that he hath a strong battalion of +Amazons, a warlike race of women who inhabit about the Lake of Zambre, +and the outskirts of Zanzibar; compared by some for their fidelity and +prowess to the Turkish Janizaries.”[19] Like the Greek Amazons those +of Inhamban and Dahomey were recruited by incursions upon neighboring +tribes. + +The Tarkar village was situated many miles inland. Poleete, one of +the old survivors, says it was “many days from the water,” meaning +thereby the sea. They were a peace-loving, agricultural people, +raising hogs, sheep, and cows, and planting corn, beans, and yams. +Their chief industry was the production of palm oil. Nature had been +lavish--the lands were wonderfully fertile, requiring little work and +no fertilizer; the fragrance of ripening fruits filled the forests. +The Tarkar dwellings were of superior quality and had the advantage of +withstanding fire. They were built of mud; the process of construction +has been described by two of the survivors--Poleete and Kazoola. First +a circular trench was dug and a wall of mud four feet high and a foot +and a half thick laid; this was left until thoroughly dry. Another four +feet was laid upon this, which was also left to dry. Then a third layer +of four feet was laid making their dwellings about twelve feet high. +When thoroughly dry, branches were cut, the roof thatched and covered +with mud. + +The Tarkars were not without laws, and had a sort of court of justice +over which the King presided. Each of the old survivors lays especial +stress upon honesty as a tribal characteristic. Stealing was almost +unknown; all worked and had what was needed; houses were never locked +and possessions seldom disturbed. All an individual’s wealth “might be +hung upon a tree or accidentally left--others of the tribe knew they +had not put it there--that it was not theirs--so disturbed it not.” +“Suppose I had left my purse in town in the public square. To-day I +have not the time to go for it--nor to-morrow--am I worried? No, for +I know when I go I will find it where I left it. Could you do that in +America?” (Kazoola). As there was no reason or excuse for stealing, +when one among them committed a theft, it was more through a spirit of +braggadocio. The culprit would be taken before the King who would say, +“You are strong--you have two arms to work--you suffer for nothing--why +have you stolen?” The defendant would be imprisoned, and the Tarkars +say that if he lived to get out he would steal no more. + +Death was always meted to the murderer--rank having no weight with +justice. Poleete explained that if the King’s son committed murder, +death would fall to him as to the commoner. “Money don’t plea you +there” (Poleete). The manner of execution was decapitation--the +implement a sword. To illustrate the inexorable nature of their laws, +the following was narrated by Kazoola: “The Law in Tarkar. If it would +be my son. He kills a man. I have money--I want to buy my son. I go +before the King, and say ‘Oh, King, my son has killed, but I have +money.’ The King would reply, ‘Here is the Law, read.’ I read and say, +‘Yes, King, the Law says Death.’ And the King would answer, ‘That is +the Law, and I am the King. Shut your eyes, give up your son--money +cannot buy.’” + +The Tarkars were polygamists, sometimes having as many as three wives, +but never any more. The conditions of life were so easy they could +afford the luxury. There was no need to support the wives, for the +women had the same amount of property as the men and did the same +work. Jealousy among the wives was unknown; the first wife selected +the second and the second the third, etc. This custom has been lucidly +explained by Kazoola and Olouala. “Kazoola has been married about +three years. His wife says, ‘Kazoola, I am growing old--I am tired--I +will bring you another wife.’ Before speaking thus, she has already +one in mind--some maid who attracts her and who Kazoola has possibly +never seen. The wife goes out and finds the maid--possibly in the +marketplace--and asks, ‘You know Kazoola?’ The maid answers, ‘I have +heard of him.’ The wife then says, ‘Kazoola is good--he is kind--I +would like you to be his wife.’ The maid answers, ‘Come with me to +my parents.’ They go together; questions are exchanged and if these are +satisfactory, the parents say, ‘We give our girl into your keeping--she +is ours no more--be good to her.’” The wife and the maid return +together to Kazoola’s house. The wife introduces the maid to Kazoola, +shows her how to look after things as she has done, then sits down to +take her days of rest and works no more. The relation of the husband +to the wives was that of protector. Once married, a man dared not look +upon women other than his wives, for the punishment was very great. To +justify their native custom of polygamy, the Christianized Tarkars now +cite the example of David and Solomon. + +[Illustration: Abaché and Kazoola.] + +They believed in the spirits of departed relatives; to these the +“day was as night and the night as the day.” To these spirits their +actions were known. The Tarkars also possessed dualistic ideas of a +future life. There was a Spirit of Good--Ahla-ahra, to whom by doing +right their actual, daily life would be something of a consecration; +and there was a Spirit of Evil--Ahla-bady-oleelay. “Do right and you +will go to Ahla-ahra; do wrong, you go to Ahla-bady-oleelay.” While +not exactly Nature-worshipers, they were Nature-fearers; they did not +propitiate by prayer or any kind of ceremonial these Spirits of Good +and Evil, but believed their powers were manifested in the wind, the +cloud that covered the sun, and in the thunder and the lightning. +Before these last the Tarkars trembled, and were filled with fear; they +would cross their arms over their breasts and cowering, cry out, “We +will be good!” + +“In Africa different places, like Mobile, Montgomery, New Orleans--each +have a different tribe speaking a different language. Suppose the tribe +at New Orleans comes to the one at Mobile and says, ‘You have fruit +and corn and cattle--you must give me half.’ You at Mobile say, ‘No, +go back and raise your own cattle and corn.’ And they say, ‘If you do +not give us cattle and corn, we will make war on you.’ They go back to +their own country and talk among themselves. ‘You know that tribe at +Mobile. We demanded half their crops and cattle--they refused; we will +make war upon them. But they have strong soldiers. We will go through +the country, surround the village at the break of day.’”[20] Thus did +the Dahomeyans plan their attack upon the Tarkars. One morning just +at the break of day, the fiends of Dahomey--and the female warriors +were the most cruel--broke upon the unsuspecting Tarkars. Some of the +men were already astir and had gone into the fields to work while the +day was yet cool. These were all killed; had one escaped he would +have aroused the sleeping village, and the women and small children +might have made their escape. They were aroused from slumber and in a +few minutes death or captivity was upon them; even the infants were +torn from their mothers’ breasts and carried away. Those who were +not killed were overpowered. Dahomey’s Amazons vanquished the most +stalwart men and bound them as captives. The Tarkars relate that in +their paint and war clothes Dahomey’s women soldiers could not be +distinguished from the men. The Dahomeyans cut off the heads of their +dead victims, leaving the bodies where they had fallen. The heads +were to be taken home as evidence of individual valor and as trophies +to be hung on the Dahomey huts. Human faces could express no more +anguish than those of the old Tarkars when they speak of this awful +experience. One of the trials and tragedies of their march to the coast +was the dangling heads of their relatives and friends. When these grew +offensive the Dahomeyans stopped the march that they might smoke the +heads. As they passed near one of Dahomey’s villages, at a curve in +the big road, they caught sight of fresh heads raised on poles above +the huts and of skulls, grinning white. With the captives there were +some people of other tribes--friends who had been visiting in the +Tarkar village--Tarkbar, Goombardi, Filanee, and Ejasha. (These tribal +names are spelled as pronounced by the surviving Tarkars.) Kazoola +has drawn a map of the route taken by Dahomey and of the march to the +sea, which he claims any of his tribe would recognize. The towns they +passed through on their march to the sea were Eko, Budigree (Badragy?), +Adaché, and Whydah. This last the Tarkars sometimes call Gréfé. There +they remember a white house on the river-bank; behind this was a +stockade wherein they were held prisoners about three weeks, at the end +of which time Captain Foster came. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE VOYAGE + + +Captain Foster boarded at the Vanderslice home (afterwards marrying +one of the daughters) in the Meaher settlement. This was about three +miles from Mobile and a mile from the ship-yard at the mouth of +Chickasabogue. When starting for Africa, he left home by night, slung +his bag of gold across his shoulder, and went alone through the woods +to the river where the _Clotilde_ lay. He pulled out a part of the +cabin bulk-head and concealed his gold behind it. He then picked up +his crew, got under way, and passed out of the Gulf of Mexico without +incident or mishap. When on the Atlantic he was alarmed to find by +the stars that the _Clotilde_ was drifting out of her course. He knew +no cause, and she continued to drift. One night he lay on his bunk, +sleepless and wondering. Like an inspiration the thought came that +the hidden gold was too near the compass. He arose, moved the gold, +and the needle swung into position. A terrific hurricane blew him to +the Cape Verde Islands, where he had to stop for repairs. The crew +mutinied. They threatened that if he did not promise more pay, they +would inform the officials of the purpose of his voyage. Foster did +not hesitate to comply, for promises cost nothing and he sometimes +found it unnecessary to keep them. His wife in relating this incident +remarked that the captain had always said that “promises were like +pie-crust--made to be broken.” He made friends with the Portuguese +officials and the United States Consul, and as a part of his policy +presented handsome shawls and ornaments to their wives. These had been +bought in Mobile and stowed away to be used in such emergencies. No +questions were asked Foster. The repairs finished, he sailed away. He +arrived safely in the Gulf of Guinea and had to anchor more than a mile +out and be taken ashore in a small boat which was built to cut through +the surf. When about to pass through a breaker, a warning would be +given to Foster to hold his nose. On reaching shore he was placed in +a hammock and conveyed by six stalwart blacks to the presence of a +prince of Dahomey--a great, stout black, weighing over three hundred +pounds. This prince was hospitable in his attentions and entertained +Foster with the sights of Whydah. One which he did not relish was a +large square enclosure in which were thousands of snakes. Walking among +these creatures was both trying and disgusting. They were kept for +religious ceremonials. + +This prince wished to make a present to Foster, so asked him to select +for himself a native--one that the “superior wisdom and exalted taste” +of Foster designated the finest specimen. Gumpa was his choice, Foster +making this selection with the intention of flattering the prince to +whom Gumpa was nearly related. This accounts for the presence of one +of Dahomey’s tribe in the African settlement near Mobile. He became +known as African Peter and was a conspicuous figure in the life of the +settlement. He used to tell his story in the simple phrase, “My people +sold me and your people bought me.” + +After many hospitalities, Foster was taken to the stockade where the +Tarkars were imprisoned. They were placed in circles composed of ten +men or ten women, Foster standing in the middle. This was another trial +for the unfortunates, and Kazoola says, in language which any one could +understand, “He looka, an’ looka, an’ looka. Then he point to one.” The +one indicated would be taken out of the circle and placed to one side; +then Foster would point to another, who would be placed with the one +already selected. Foster picked out one hundred and thirty, after which +he got into the hammock and was conveyed across the river to the beach. +Behind him marched the Tarkars, chained one behind the other. They had +to wade, the water coming up to their necks. On the beach they had +their first view of the sea, and the realization that they had to go +out into it was another horror. They wore clothes made of cotton--the +same they had worn when captured--but as they stepped into the small +boats which were to take them to the _Clotilde_, the Dahomeyans, always +vicious and avaricious, tore their garments from them, saying “You go +where you can get plenty of clothes.” Men and women alike were left +entirely nude, and this fact is still a humiliation to the Tarkars. +They regard the accusations of some American negroes that they were a +naked people as a great indignity. + +As the Tarkars were taken aboard the _Clotilde_, they were put into +the hole. In this respect the _Clotilde_ was better equipped than most +slavers; the usual space in which the “middle passage” was made was +from two and a half to three feet in height, and the miserable captives +were stowed away much as sardines are packed in cans, without even room +to sit up. The hole of the _Clotilde_ was deep enough to permit of the +men of lesser stature to stand erect. The top of the hole was shut down +and the Tarkars were left in darkness to grieve and wonder. + +When a hundred and sixteen had been brought aboard, Foster went up into +the rigging with his glasses to look about the harbor. He saw that all +of Dahomey’s vessels were flying black flags. He hurried down and gave +orders to leave all slaves who were not yet aboard; to weigh anchor and +to get immediately under way. The treacherous Dahomeyans dealt also +in piracy, and were making ready to bear down upon the _Clotilde_, +recapture the slaves, and take Foster and the crew prisoners. The +_Clotilde_ made her escape. When out some miles, the _Clotilde_ was +sighted by an English cruiser. The slaver was a small craft, and Foster +by using a favorite tactic--an elusive tacking--evaded the English. +Once in the wake of the trade-winds the _Clotilde_ sailed towards her +destination at a lively speed. + +[Illustration: =Map Drawn by Kazoola.= + +(_1_) Tarkar Village. (_2_) Dahomey’s Land. (_3_) Wavering line showing +stealthy march of Dahomeyans through forest. (_4_) Route by which +captive Tarkars were taken to the sea. (_5_), (_6_), (_7_), (_8_), Eko, +Budigree, Adaché, Whydah, towns through which Tarkars passed. (_9_) +River. (_10_) Beach and sea.] + +At the end of the thirteenth day the Africans were removed from their +close, dark quarters. Their limbs were so cramped and numbed they +refused to obey their wills, so they were supported by some of the +crew and walked around the deck until the use of their limbs returned. +Tottering on deck, to their astonished, terror-stricken eyes the sea +stretched all around them: “We looka, an’ looka, an’ looka--nothin’ but +sky and water. Whar we com’ from, we do not know--whar we go, we do not +know” (Kazoola). One day they saw islands. The Tarkars say that on the +twentieth day, Foster seemed uneasy; that he always had his glasses to +his eyes; that he climbed the mast, and looked for a long time; then he +came hurriedly down, ordered the sails down, threw out the anchors, +and ordered the Tarkars back into the hole. Thus the _Clotilde_ lay +until night. + +The Tarkars were naturally close observers; during the voyage they seem +to have been particularly alert. They noted the varying colors of the +sea--how at first it was blue, then green and how they passed through +water that seemed blood-red. Foster was kind to them. They could eat +the food--hunger makes anything palatable. Though their mental anguish +was great, they suffered physically only for water. About a gill was +given them at morning and at evening, and this tasted of vinegar. +During such voyages, it was necessary that the water be conserved. +Their only relief came when they caught rain in their parched hands and +mouths. + +When the _Clotilde_ sailed into American waters, the Africans were +put into the hole--there to remain until relief came in capture or a +successful landing. Three days before they landed, when the _Clotilde_ +lay waiting behind the islands in Mississippi Sound and near the lower +end of Mobile Bay, a bunch of green boughs was brought to them to show +that the voyage was almost at an end. + +To make the hiding more secure, the _Clotilde_ was dismasted. Then +Foster got into a small boat, rowed by four sailors to go to the +western shore of Mobile Bay, intending to send word to Meaher that the +_Clotilde_ had arrived. His approach was regarded with suspicion by +some men ashore, and he was fired upon. Waving a white handkerchief +their doubts were allayed and he offered fifty dollars for a conveyance +which would take him to Mobile. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE RETURN + + +The time of waiting had been an anxious one. The Meahers realized +the risk. There had always been some, but during the absence of the +_Clotilde_ great agitation had become rife throughout the country, +and one of the things the Government had at last undertaken to do was +to wipe out at once and forever the illegal traffic in slaves. The +destination and purpose of the _Clotilde_ had been noised about, and +Meaher realized that officials were watching his movements. Aside from +the _Clotilde’s_ capture, he had little to fear, for every vestige of +the conservatism which had so long held in restraint the abolitionism +of the North and the temper of the South had disappeared; the two +sections had drifted so far apart as to be virtually two countries; +war clouds were looming large upon the horizon and differences had +gone so far there could be no reconciliation. Garrison’s voice was +ringing through the North characterizing Southerners as “thieves and +robbers, men-stealers, and women-whippers” and calling loudly, “how +can two walk together, except they agree? The slaveholder with his +hands dripping in blood--will I make a compact with him? The man who +plunders cradles--will I say to him ‘Brother, let us walk together in +unity?’ The man who to gratify his lust or his anger, scourges women +with the lash till the soil is red with blood--will I say to him, ‘Give +me your hand; let us form a glorious union?’” Charges which were as +a scourge to Southerners; goaded and angered, many began to talk of +reopening the slave traffic. The question was agitated in Congress--a +number of papers advocating it, not all of which were of the South. +The New York _Day Book_, May 17, 1859, came out strongly for it. “Of +course no one can suppose we doubt the right of bringing negroes from +Africa if they are needed. It is simply a question of expediency, and +there can be no doubt our laws making it piracy must be blotted out +of the Statute Books. They are not only ridiculous, but utterly and +wholly contemptible,” etc. From the point of view of a large class +of Southerners these arguments were not fallacious. Yet they were +retrogressive and their revival put the South out of harmony with +ethical and intellectual progress, and defeated the hopes of those of +larger vision. Early in 1859 the Mobile papers lent their support to +the question. Mobilians, like all of the South, were tried to their +utmost, and Meaher knew if all due secrecy was observed, he had little +to fear from them. + +Captain Foster reached Mobile on a Sunday morning in August (1859) +with the secret that the _Clotilde_ lay behind the islands in +Mississippi Sound. Arrangements had long been made that a tug should +lie in readiness to go at a moment’s notice down Mobile Bay to tow +the _Clotilde_ and her cargo to safety. When the news came, the tug’s +pilot was attending service at St. John’s Church. Captain Jim Meaher +and James Dennison--a negro slave--hurried to the church. Dennison +remained outside while Meaher went in to call the pilot. The three +hastened down to the wharf, and were soon aboard the tug _Billy Jones_, +steaming rapidly down the bay. Late afternoon found them nearing +the _Clotilde_, but they waited for the darkness. The most dangerous +part of the adventure was still ahead--the trip up Mobile Bay. At +the mouth the marshes and islands offered protection; if they could +once reach the delta of the Mobile River, with its desolate stretches +of marsh, its deep rivers and intricate bayous, safety was almost +assured. But the bay lay smilingly open between two long arms of land. +Her wonderful beauty under the gorgeous August sunset was lost upon +the watchers; they prayed for the light to fade and for mysterious +night with its enshrouding darkness. At last as if loath to die, the +color was gone; sea and sky melted together into almost impenetrable +grayness. They ceased their vigils and fell to a quick activity; lines +were thrown, the _Clotilde_ made fast, and the trip up the bay was +begun. Her wooded shores had echoed the voices of many peoples and the +sounds from many craft, but never any more epoch-making--those from +the last slave ship--the voyage nearing its finish which ended forever +among Anglo-Saxon people the darkest blot upon their civilization. +The chugging sound of the tug’s machinery filled the Tarkars with +terrified wonder; at last they concluded that it was the swarming of +bees. + +Time was precious and the darkness doubly so; much was still to be done +before day with its light should come. These hours might mean life or +death. The trip up the bay was safely made. The tug avoided the Mobile +River channel, slipped behind the light-house on Battery Gladden, +into Spanish River. This lay in the midst of the marsh and with its +circuitous windings was not more than ten miles long. As the _Clotilde_ +passed opposite Mobile the clock in the old Spanish tower struck +eleven, and the watchman’s voice floated over the city and across the +marshes, “Eleven o’clock and all’s well.” + +The _Clotilde_ was taken directly to Twelve-Mile Island--a lonely, +weird place by night. There the _R. B. Tainey_[21] waited; lights were +smothered, and in the darkness quickly and quietly the _Clotilde’s_ +cargo of one hundred and sixteen negroes was transferred to the +steamboat, taken up the Alabama River to John Dabney’s plantation below +Mount Vernon and not far from the shadow of the fort, where they were +landed before noon of the next day. + +[Illustration: Drawn by Emma Roche. + +Kazoola.] + +At Twelve-Mile Island the crew of Northern sailors again mutinied. +Captain Foster, with a six shooter in each hand, went among them, +discharged them, and ordered them to “hit the grit and never be seen in +Southern waters again.” They were placed aboard the tug. Meaher bought +tickets and saw that they boarded a train for the North. The _Clotilde_ +was scuttled and fired, Captain Foster himself placed seven cords of +light wood upon her. Her hull still lies in the marsh at the mouth of +Bayou Corne and may be seen at low tide. Foster afterwards regretted +her destruction as she was worth more than the ten Africans given him +by the Meahers as his booty. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE TARKARS AT DABNEY’S PLANTATION + + +Dabney’s plantation lay in the cane brake country--a part of the river +region, so-called from the miles of towering cane. It was a wilderness, +every part strangely alike, in which even those most familiar with +it could be easily lost. Here, according to the narrative of James +Dennison, the slave who was left in charge and who afterwards married +Kanko--one of their number--and of the surviving Tarkars, they were +kept for eleven days, but in a state of constant change, being +transferred each day from one part of the swamp to another. They were +allowed to speak only in whispers, for there was a chance that some +one passing on the river might hear strange voices. At the end of the +eleventh day clothes were brought to them and they were put aboard the +steamer _Commodore_ and carried to The Bend in Clark County, where +the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers meet and where Burns Meaher had a +plantation. + +There they were lodged each night under a wagon shed, and driven each +morning before daybreak back into the swamp, where they remained until +dark. Understanding no word and knowing not what was expected of them, +they were made to know the driver’s wishes by a shooing sound--such +as would drive chickens or geese. In this strange land, among strange +faces and an unknown tongue, the Tarkars say that at first they almost +grieved themselves to death. + +Meaher sent word secretly to those disposed to buy. They were piloted +to the place of concealment by Jim Dennison. The Africans were placed +in two long rows, the women on one side and the men on the other--the +buyers standing between, and carefully examining them--even looking +at their teeth. Those selected would be put to one side, and when the +purchaser was ready to depart, he would make his ownership known to +them by waving his hand around the group selected, then bringing it to +his breast. The Tarkars could not understand these transactions--they +only knew their numbers were gradually growing less. Day after day they +saw some of their kinsmen or comrades led away--to what fate they knew +not. Some were sold and taken to Selma. Of their march through the +woods one pathetic and picturesque incident has come to me. As they +marched through the strange land--tired, dejected, friendless--knowing +not where they were going or what would be their destiny--a circus, +moving from place to place, chanced to pass along the country road. +To avoid danger or suspicion, the Africans were concealed behind the +bushes with their backs to the passing show. As it passed, one of the +elephants trumpeted; joy transformed the Tarkars, spread over their +features, and ran through their limbs. To them the sound was as a cry +from home, and as with one voice, gesticulating, tears streaming from +their eyes, they shouted: “Elé, Elé! Argenacou, Argenacou!” (“Home, +Home! Elephant, Elephant!”) Of this small band--two still live--a man +and wife--and those of the tribe near Mobile still receive news of them +now and then. + +As time passed and the Tarkars continued inconsolable, Captain Tim +Meaher recommended that they be put to some kind of work. They look +back upon this as the first happy episode of their life in the new +land. When they were taken into the fields for the first time, their +astonishment was very great when they saw civilization’s agricultural +methods. “We astonish to see the mule behind the plow to pull” +(Kazoola). The contrast in fertility made them feel that the American +soil was accursed and their own blessed. There they had but to scratch +the top soil and whatever they planted grew; but in America there +was nothing but “work, work, work.” The Tarkar would stand for no +mistreatment. Once an overseer attempted something which the women +considered as such and he was overpowered by them and given a sound +thrashing. Naturally of agricultural and industrious habits they soon +came to understand Southern crops and were very successful in raising +corn, cotton, beans, peas, cane, pumpkins, etc. This experience was of +great advantage to them when they were afterwards thrown upon their own +resources. Their homes to-day are characterized by excellent gardens +and many varieties of fruit trees. + +After war was declared there was little danger of exposure, and the +Africans belonging to Foster, to Jim and Tim Meaher were taken to the +Meaher settlement, at what is known to-day as Magazine Point, where +they were kindly treated by their respective owners. Those left at +Burns Meaher’s plantation tell of great hardship. When they first +arrived they were given one pair of shoes and never any more. Before +daybreak they were sent to the fields to work and kept hard at it until +night, when they returned home by torchlight. After the surrender, +these joined the others of their tribe at Magazine Point. + +[Illustration: Wreck of the “Clotilde.”] + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +TARKAR LIFE IN AMERICA + + +Magazine Point--the site of Meaher’s mill and ship-yard--though but +three miles from Mobile, was inaccessible, except by water or a +circuitous route of some miles by land. Between the two places lay an +impenetrable swamp and forest. Red clay hills rolled away from the +northern border of this jungle, diversifying the strip of country +between Three Mile Creek and Chickasabogue. This extensive area was +known as Meaher’s hummock and was thickly wooded by a suburb forest +of native trees--pine, cypress, bays, magnolias, beech, junipers, +gums, and oaks. These had sheltered the goings and comings of many +peoples. This place had been beloved by the Indians; some still +lingered on among what the Tarkars called the “high trees,” living +in their pine-bark tepees. During the Spanish régime it had been +included in the grant of land known as the St. Louis tract, and Dr. +Charles Mohr points out in his _Plant Life in Alabama_ that it must +have been a feeding place for migratory birds, for tropical plants are +found there which are not known to other parts of the coast. Near the +mouth of Chickasabogue, overlooking the river, there is a prehistoric +shell-mound, overgrown by patriarchal live-oaks, hundreds of years old, +and on this the Tarkars had their first dwellings. Much has been told +and written by casual visitors of the queer rites and superstitions of +“Africa-Town”--the little cluster of huts which have long since been +abandoned--none of which is substantiated by fact or by the actual +knowledge of those who have known and appreciated the Tarkars. But +nothing has been told of the other superstitions with which this region +fairly reeks. + +Until the saw-mills became so active there were old beeches near +Chickasabogue and Hog Bayou, bearing seventeenth, eighteenth, and +early nineteenth century dates and curious signs which substantiated +the belief of the credulous and imaginative that through this district +there was much hidden treasure--treasure buried by early adventurers, +by the pirates, and in later times by members of the Copeland gang--and +safely guarded by the spirits of those who had concealed it. Though +this tract is now largely cleared and settled, these traditions and +ghost stories are still told and believed by the negroes, creoles, and +ignorant whites. Poinquinette, an old creole fisherman and a repository +of interesting lore, has related some of his personal encounters with +the Magazine Point ghosts, and so real are they to him, and so vivid +his narrative, that his listeners are thrilled with a sort of belief. +By a dream it was once made known to him and several companions +(Nelson, Sales, Moody, Ebernezar Fisher, and a man named Robinson) +that there was a treasure buried just below Turner & Oats’s mill. The +spot was thickly wooded--high trees and low shrubs--yet not so dense +that they could not see about them--even a bird was visible as it flew +through the brush. They went early one Friday morning and began digging +at seven o’clock. Almost as soon as their spades touched the earth, the +woods began to resound with voices--child voices--and they wondered +where children’s voices could come from, but went on with their +digging. As the excavation progressed, the sounds came nearer--there +were calling and crying and hissing--until finally the voices were +right at them and surrounding them. They could hear the voices but +could see nothing. Then the voices passed by them with a whirr and back +again into the bushes where they were still heard. By this time the +hole was some ten feet deep. Nelson Sales, who had had more experience +with spirits than the others, offered to go back into the woods and +talk to the voices. He was confronted by a fearful apparition--a great +blue bull with eyes of fire and a tail as large as a hogshead. It +dashed passed him, charged across the hole, and as it went over threw +all the earth back, completely filling the excavation. They were all +thoroughly frightened and would not go back until they could get the +negress Clara Randall, from Charleston. Poinquinette was loud in his +praises of this woman, who could see and talk to spirits and was not +afraid of them. + +She built a tent and camped alone for three days and nights at the +scene of their labor. She set a table, provided with milk from a white +cow, wine, and honey--inveigling the invisible ones and tempting them +by food to give up the secret of the buried treasure. At the end of +the third day her persuasions prevailed, and the spirits reluctantly +made known the place. Next morning she walked to the spot and placed +her foot where the men should dig. They fell to work and had not dug +more than twenty minutes, before the top of the treasure-box was +uncovered. They rapidly cleared the earth from around it and there lay +before their eager wondering eyes a cedar chest which measured five +feet in length, two and a half feet wide, and two and a half feet deep. +It contained three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold, and +Ebernezar Fisher, over-zealous and over-anxious, bored two holes in it +with an auger. While he was boring the second, the woman warned him to +stop--that the spirits were regretting their revelation--but Ebernezar, +who was of stubborn temperament, bored on unheedful of her warning. It +was a bright day--not a cloud in the sky--the sunlight filtered through +the trees and fell in strong beams upon the auger. The other men, +standing to one side, watched it glinting on the steel. Again the woman +warned Fisher, and as she spoke his arm was wrenched from the auger. +Almost at the same instant a black cloud swept across the sky, an awful +gust of wind bent the great trees until they looked as if they would +break, a crash of thunder and a blinding flash of lightning and the +box disappeared! Then all was clear and bright again. It was a spirit +storm--purely local, and seen only by the searchers after treasure. +“Then all of us had to come away like sick cats and with aching hearts, +because we hated to see a treasure like that disappear. It’s there +somewhere to-day--and wherever it is, Ebernezar Fisher’s auger is still +sticking in it.” + +Another time they received intimation that they should go to Meaher’s +hummock and hunt a mound and some trees bearing marks like an inverted +E; then walk so many feet in a certain direction and dig. On this +occasion they took old Adam Boone, a negro who was supposed to have +found many hidden treasures. They found the marked trees and the mound, +which was six or seven feet high and looked as if it had been built +by man. They had just arrived, identified the spot, and were grouped +around it talking. Ebernezar Fisher, who was tall, stood with the butt +of his gun resting on the ground, and held it with one hand near the +end of the barrel. Both hammers were down. Old Adam Smith was saying, +“I’ve been hearin’ of this place a long time. They say several men were +killed and buried here.” As the last words were uttered, one barrel of +Fisher’s gun went off, and he was so startled that he threw it from +him; Charlie Tell who was sitting on the ground near him caught it +and as he did so the other barrel went off. Needless to add that the +seekers for gold left the spot as quickly as they could and have never +gone back again. + +[Illustration: Charlee.] + +There are places in the woods and among the hills where no one can +go--unless very brave and then not to stay long--for there are sounds +as of the march of soldiers, the clank of their swords, and the orders +of the captains. Whoever goes to these places will have to fight the +spirits and there is no hope of overpowering them, for they change +their forms into those of many “varmints” and especially do they affect +the ones that the intruder most fears. + +Some of these superstitions were repeated to the Tarkars with the +hope of drawing them out and learning just what they believed. They +accepted them and Olouala offered the solution of the spirits’ faithful +guardianship as it had been explained to him by American negroes. To +make this guardianship effective the promise must be obtained during +the life of the body. “Suppose some one has a treasure he wishes to +conceal--perhaps to bury. He may pick out you who he has never seen +before. Perhaps he asks, ‘Do you want to earn ten dollars?’ Of course +you do, so you go with him. After he gets to the place where he wishes +to bury the gold, he says, ‘I have a treasure here which I wish to +bury. But I have to go away--will you promise to watch it until I come +back?’ You unsuspectingly promise and as you do so you are killed +and your body buried with the treasure that your spirit may guard +it forever.” Instead of a person a faithful and intelligent dog or +horse may be sacrificed. This, however, is not a Tarkar superstition, +but is common to our negro and creole population. The Tarkars during +their long residence have explored every foot of this region in their +searches for game, berries, fruits, and herbs and they have never +had any encounters with the Magazine Point ghosts or any intimation +of their presence. Kazoola, however, naïvely intimated that he would +prefer not to know where they were located, as he might have occasion +to go to these places, and if he did not know where these ghosts were +supposed to be, he would not be annoyed or frightened by seeing them. + +The life of the Tarkars in America has not been characterized by the +superstitions ascribed to them; instead their history has been one of +hard work, coöperation, self-sacrifice, and a deep longing for home. +Their progress has been deeply interesting. Almost entirely cut off +from white influence--and that with which they came in contact during +their early years in this country could scarcely inspire them with +confidence, for they are keenly watchful and observed the advantage +which one white took over another--yet protected by our laws, they have +worked out their destiny with much more success and honor to themselves +than the generality of American-born negroes or of the free blacks who +were carried by the American Colonization Society back to Africa, and +whose interests have been guarded and furthered by philanthropists. + +When the Tarkars first came to Magazine Point all days were alike to +them; they went about doing on Sundays as on other days. Some American +negroes who had become interested in them and who were really their +friends requested them not to work on Sundays but to gather all their +women and children and go with them. They were thus introduced to a +church. There they were told that the God who lived in the sky had +sent a book to the people of the earth, telling them how they must +live. Simple and believing, they readily accepted what was told. The +Old Testament and the dualistic dogma of a God and a Devil made the +same appeal to them that it had to the American negro--there was the +ready response of the primitive imagination to a primitive story. In +them they found an amplification of the gropings of their own minds +into the spiritual. It soothed their sorrows and gave them hope. +Their faith became a simple one, and that of the few old survivors +is one of resignation, hope, and a perfect trust. Poleete has said: +“We know not why these troubles came upon us, but we are all God’s +children--we not always see the way, but his hands guide us and +shape our ends.” Kazoola, in speaking of the death of his wife and +of all his children, likened God to the doctor who “gives us bad +medicine--it’s hard to swallow, but the doctor gives it to us to do us +good. We don’t understand why.” Though Kazoola has an intense longing +for home, he regards his advent to America as a part of the goodness +of God and enjoys telling how after Foster had bought him at Whydah, +he was stolen by one of Dahomey’s men and hidden under the white +house. While concealed, he heard the surf upon the beach. Urged by +an innate curiosity about the mechanism of things, he stole from his +hiding-place and climbed upon the stockade fence; “I hear the noise +of the sea on shore, an’ I wanta see what maka dat noise, an’ how dat +water worka--how it fell on shore an’ went back again. I saw some of +my people in a little boat and I holler to them. Then Captain Foster +spied me, an’ he say, ‘Oh hee! Oh hee!’ an’ pulla me down. An’ I was +the last to go. Supposy I been lef’ behind--what become of Kazoola? Or +supposy de ship turna over, an’ de sharks eat us. Oh Lor’! God is good!” + +Mrs. Foster, who always lived near the Tarkars, said they have always +been gentle, amiable, and honest and much better than the average +American negro; that it was their perseverance and religious zeal which +built the several churches which are now at Magazine Point. There +was only one among them who proved unregenerate--old Zooma who still +lives--but she belonged to another tribe, the Tarkbar, and presents +totally different characteristics; also different color, physical +development, and tribal marks. She has been seen to make a cross and +spit in the middle of it. The others do not seem to understand her +motive. + +After the surrender the Tarkars wished to go back to their own country +but had no money. They concluded to save. They worked in the mills for +a dollar a day, but could not save without help, so they said to their +wives, “Now we want to go home and it takes a lot of money. You must +help us save. You see fine clothes--you must not crave them.” The +wives promised and replied: “_You_ see fine clothes and new hats--now +don’t you crave them either. We will work together.” They made six +dollars a week. Of this they could save two dollars, sometimes three, +but they had rent to pay and found they could not get ahead that way, +for it would take a lot of money to get home. Among themselves they +talked over the injustice of their position--how Meaher had brought +them from their native land and how they now had neither home nor +country. Kazoola, who seems to have always been a spokesman, concluded +he would present their case to Meaher. Soon after he was cutting timber +(just back of where the schoolhouse now stands), Captain Tim Meaher +came along and sat upon a felled tree. Kazoola recognized this to be +his opportunity, stopped work, and stood looking at Meaher, all his +emotion speaking through his expressive face. The captain looked up +from the stick he was whittling and struck by the sorrow in the man’s +face asked: + +“Kazoola, what makes you so sad?” + +“I grieve for my home.” + +“But you’ve got a good home.” + +“Captain Tim, how big is Mobile?” + +“I don’t know, I’ve never been to the four corners.” + +“If you give Kazoola all Mobile, that railroad, and the banks of Mobile +Kazoola does not want them for this is not home.” + +When the old man tells this his face reflects overwhelming grief--in +his eyes there is the far-away vision of home, and in a low voice he +moans, “Oh Lor’! Oh Lor’!” Then he regains himself and goes on with his +narrative. + +“Captain Tim, you brought us from our country where we had land and +home. You made us slaves. Now we are free, without country, land, or +home. Why don’t you give us a piece of this land and let us build for +ourselves an African Town?” + +Kazoola relates Meaher’s reply very dramatically. + +“Thou fool! Thinkest thou I will give you property upon property? You +do not belong to me now!” + +The Tarkars concluded to buy. When one reached this conclusion, the +others said: “If you are going to buy, we will too.” They bought +property from Meaher, who made them no concessions. They worked and +saved, going half clad and living upon half rations. Though accustomed +in their own country to Nature’s luxuries, they now lived on molasses +and corn-bread or mush (boiled corn-meal). The men worked in the mills +and their wives helped by planting gardens and fruit trees and becoming +venders of fruit and vegetables. Their Tarkar home began to be a +chimera; day after day new ties pushed it farther away. + +[Illustration: Drawn by Emma Roche. + +Olouala.] + +Having no head of the tribe, and understanding that in a country of +different institutions a king would be incongruous, they selected +Charlee (Orsey, in Tarkar), Gumpa (African Peter), and Jaybee as judges +to preside over the colony, to arbitrate their differences, and direct +their lives. When disagreements came up, word would be sent each member +that there would be a meeting at a certain place after dark--their only +leisure time--possibly at the home of one of the judges.[22] + +The offenders would be given a hearing before the whole colony--each +side would be weighed and each reprimanded with a warning to “go +and keep the peace.” If they again broke it, or renewed their +disagreements, they were punished--Jaybee, Gumpa, or Charlee +administering a whipping to the culprits. Of these judges, there +lives to-day only Charlee, who has passed the century mark and is[23] +tottering on the brink of the grave. Yet the nine surviving Tarkars, +and each of these has seen his three-score years and ten, look upon +him as the head, observe his admonitions, and never disobey him. His +face is one of the most kindly and he is known among his people as +never having disputed or disagreed with any one. As old as they are, if +Charlee told them they could not do a thing, no matter how strong the +desire, they would not disobey. The judges were not considered above +reproach. If any of the colony saw one of them doing that which was +wrong, he would be rebuked: “We saw you do this thing. It is not right. +How do you expect us to do right if you do not show us the way?” + +About ten years after the close of the Civil War, when the South was +still largely under carpetbag régime, interest in elections was intense +and the outcome of vital importance to the community. Opposing parties +used almost any means at their command to obtain votes. Meaher went +among the Tarkars, explaining the methods and significance of voting +and urging them to vote the Democratic ticket. He was followed by some +Republicans who promised them great rewards. They talked this new thing +over among themselves and concluded that by voting the Republican +ticket they would gain much good. On election day, Olouala, Poleete, +and Kazoola walked, one behind the other (a Tarkar custom), to the +polls at Whistler. Meaher was there; he pointed them out, “See those +Africans? Don’t let them vote--they are not of this country.” They +were refused so walked to McGuire’s, but Meaher who had been watching +them and knew their persistency, had ridden ahead and forestalled +them; they were again refused. This only whetted their desire and +their determination, and they walked on down St. Stephen’s Road to the +next voting place. Arriving there, Meaher was just getting off his +horse. “Don’t let those Africans vote--they have no right--they are +not of this country.” Defeated again, the three now wanted to vote so +badly, that they put their hands together, raised them to the sky, +and prayed God that He would permit them to vote. Strengthened, they +walked on to Mobile and at the polls on St. Francis Street told their +experience. They were informed that by paying one dollar they could +vote. This they did and received a paper which they still treasure. It +was their one experience in politics, and it was satisfying for they +accomplished what they had set out to do, though the great promises +never materialized. + +Of the one hundred and sixteen Africans who were brought to this +country in the _Clotilde_, there are only eight living: five women, +Abaché (Clara Turner), Monabee (Kitty Cooper), Shamber, Kanko (who +married Jim Dennison), and Zooma; and three men, Poleete, Kazoola +(Cudjoe Lewis), and Olouala (Orsey Kan). Their Tarkar names have been +used in this narrative at their request. They love them and with some +pathos asked that they be used, because in some way these names might +drift back to their native home, where some might remember them. +This small fragment gathers on Sundays after church at the home of +Poleete, Kazoola, or Abaché and discuss among themselves the things +pertaining to their welfare, and they never part without speaking of +their African home and telling some incident of that beloved place. +Kazoola says he often thinks that if he had wings he would fly back; +then he remembers that all he has lies in American soil--the wife who +came from his native land, who was his helpmate and companion through +the many years, and all his children. It was at some of these Sunday +afternoon gatherings that he made the parables about his wife, Albiné +(Celie), which are a solace to him in his sorrow and loneliness. The +Sunday after her death, the Tarkars were sitting with Kazoola in his +home. He sat with head bowed down, grief-stricken, and speaking no +word. They said, “Lift up your head, Kazoola, and speak with us.” +Kazoola lifted his head; “I will make a parable. Kazoola and Albiné +have gone to Mobile together. They get on the train to go home and sit +side by side. The conductor comes along and says to Kazoola, ‘Where +are you going to get off?’ and Kazoola replies, ‘Mount Vernon.’ The +conductor then asks Albiné, ‘Where are you going to get off?’ and she +replies ‘Plateau.’[24] Kazoola surprised, turns to Albiné and asks, +‘Why, Albiné! How is this? Why do you say you are going to get off at +Plateau?’ She answers, ‘I must get off.’ The train stops and Albiné +gets off. Kazoola stays on--he is alone. But old Kazoola has not +reached Mount Vernon yet--he is still journeying on.” + +On the next Sunday they were again gathered at Kazoola’s house; again +he sat with bowed head, and again they asked him to lift up his head +and make another parable. + +“Suppose Charlee comes to my house and wants to go on to Poleete’s. He +has an umbrella which he leaves in my care. When he comes back he asks +for his umbrella--must I give it to him or must I keep it?” + +The listening Tarkars cried out, “No, Kazoola! You cannot keep it--it +is not yours!” + +And Kazoola answered, “Neither could I keep Albiné; she was just left +in my care.”[25] + +Kazoola never married again; he sees Albiné everywhere about the +house. Everything reminds him of her. One day he was working in his +corn-patch, weeding out superfluous stalks. He came to two growing +together--the root of one intertwined with the other. He started to +pull one out, but something within told him to stop, that thus had he +and Albiné grown together and one stalk could not be pulled up without +hurting the other. So he saved the two, giving them especial care, and +he was rewarded by each bearing four ears of corn. These he was going +to save for seed and grieves that a cow should have gotten in and +destroyed them. The old man is cheerful--even merry--possessing a keen +sense of humor and a lively imagination. To appreciate him fully he +must be surprised at his home. There he will be found probably working +in his garden barefooted, trousers rolled up above his knees; his +costume clean but a marvelous piece of patchwork, even the old derby +upon his head a much mended one. His patches need elicit no sympathy, +for patching is an accomplishment in which he takes keen delight; even +in the old days when his Albiné was alive, she would wash his clothes +and lay them aside for him to patch during the evenings when the day’s +work was done. + +The Tarkars range in color from light to a very dark brown. All bear +upon their faces the Tarkar tribal marks--two lines between the eyes +and three on the cheek. While quite distinct, these marks are not +disfiguring. Their teeth bear the marks of family and of kinship and +vary in each. The process of marking the teeth was by pecking with a +stone implement. The lower corners of Poleete’s two front teeth where +they meet are pecked off, forming a wedge-shaped opening like an +inverted V. When Kazoola’s teeth are closed, on one side there is a +circular opening which was formed by cutting off parts of a half-dozen +teeth. Six of Abaché’s upper front teeth are trimmed to make a convex +opening. The Tarkars differ in feature from the American negro; it +is a subtle difference but runs through the whole face. Their heads +differ structurally--the line from the forehead to the chin is nearer +straight. They have more top head and there is a fullness indicating +plenty of intelligence--a possession they have exhibited in their neat +homes and thrifty lives. Some of them have even learned to read; this +was taught them by their children who have profited by the public +schools. Poleete’s constant companion is a small, much worn New +Testament. Their countenances naturally vary with their temperaments. +Abaché’s and Kazoola’s are as open as a book--intensely emotional and +capable of expressing very deep feeling. None have gotten over the +shock of their early experience. When these are referred to there +comes into Kazoola’s and Abaché’s faces unspeakable and indescribable +anguish. Poleete’s is like a mask, unchanging, unscrutable, except for +the eyes, and these--small, deep-set, watchful--are almost uncanny. + +Among themselves they speak the Tarkar language. Their English is very +broken and is not always intelligible even to those who have lived +among them for many years. It has more the sound of the dialect spoken +by Italians than that spoken by the negroes. They make almost constant +use of the “a” sound as a terminal--looka, pulla, worka, etc. Their +sentences are short and vivid. The few words of old Gumpa, “My people +sold me and your people bought me,” accompanied by his expression, told +his whole history. + +They are extremely clean both about their persons and their homes, +and one of their strongest objections to the average American negro +is uncleanliness. Abaché parts her hair in the middle and combs it +neatly back. She uses face powder, because it is refreshing and leaves +a cleanly feeling. The other women are very old and feeble, except +Kanko who, though old, works as a man. Her especial occupation is the +breeding and raising of a fine strain of hogs. The Tarkars are very +considerate of each other, and their intercourse is marked by kindness, +charity, and harmony. + +[Illustration: Drawn by Emma Roche. + +Charlee, Head of the Tarkars.] + +In strong contrast to the Tarkars is old Zooma, who is possibly the +last Tarkbar. Rendered almost helpless by a century and more of +years and many pounds of superfluous flesh, she sits for the most part +silent and brooding in her squalid hut. If near the door or window +there are no softening shadows, and the light reveals all her fat, +brutal old ugliness--an ugliness, accentuated by disfiguring tribal +marks--three deep gashes meeting at the bridge of the nose, and running +diagonally across each cheek. Her underlip hangs away as if it had +been subjected in her native land to some kind of African beautifying +process. Her hair is white and the skin of her hands and feet wrinkled, +resembling in texture that of an elephant, and bearing the curious +gray color seen in the complexions of very old negroes. It is almost +impossible to understand her broken phrases, but a daughter acts as +interpreter. Brooding, she is pathetic; aroused and speaking of home +she is tragic. She has in common with the Tarkars the same pitiful +history and the same despair, without their resignation. For each and +all, Heaven could hold no promise so rapturous as just one last vision +of home. Such a vision that comes as they sit together, which bows +their old heads, lays silent fingers upon their lips, and speaks to +their aching hearts of perpetual summer, fertile lands, abundance of +fruit--of youth, plenty, and peace--their Land of Long Ago. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +IMPRESSIONS OF ALABAMA IN 1846[26] + + +The trip of Lafayette through this country in the twenties was more or +less spectacular, and the places he visited are to-day pointed out as +historic, yet only twenty years later Lyell, whose name will go down +the ages linked with Goethe, Lamarck, and Darwin, covered much the +same ground, and it is only in scientific works that one is reminded +of the fact. In recent reading, after meeting with several references +to his stay in Alabama, I became interested, and it was with intense +delight that I was carried back and saw our own section through the +eyes of that wonderful observer and thinker. All awe of Charles Lyell, +scientist and arch-destroyer of the anthropocentric idea which for so +many centuries fettered the world of thought, was at once dispelled, +for there was that in his charming geniality that makes the “whole +world kin”--even a Charles Lyell and the pine-woods squatter, whose +hospitality he often accepted when on geologic excursions. + +Lyell made two trips to the United States--the first in 1841-42, which +furnished material for his _Travels in North America_. He came as far +south as Savannah. His _Travels in the United States_ is the record of +his second visit, when Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana +formed a part of his itinerary. Aside from the geologic importance of +these two works, there could scarcely be a more faithful portrayal +of American manners, customs, and peculiarities. They were largely +instrumental in ameliorating British animosity by giving the English a +better and kindlier understanding of Americans. At the time of their +publication, they naturally found in this country a circulation only +among the few, and are now rare books. His observations on the social +conditions that made the South unique and that have been obliterated +during the lapse of a half century are deeply interesting to the +student of to-day. + +[Illustration: Kazoola.] + +On January 15, 1846, we find Lyell and his wife entering Macon, +Georgia, by train. His eye was immediately attracted by “a wooden +edifice of very peculiar structure and picturesque form, crowning one +of the hills.” Learning that it was a blockhouse that had been in real +service as a fort against Indians only twenty-five years before, when +this frontier knew not the white man’s habitat, it was with a mixed +feeling of amusement and incongruity that he received the information +that a conspicuous building nearby was a “female seminary, lately +established by the Methodists, where all young ladies take degrees.” + +From Macon to Columbus, Georgia, he had his first experience in a +Southern stage-coach which, while novel, must have proved far from +comfortable, for he did not forget to record the jolts caused by +miserable roads and reckless driving. Leaving Columbus he was soon +in the undulating pine-lands of Alabama, the monotony of which was +frequently broken by swamps of palmetto and magnolia. The spirit of +the pines must have sung to him, too, for the “sound of the wind in +the boughs of the long-leaved pine” always reminded him of the “waves +breaking on a distant shore, and it was agreeable to hear it swelling +gradually, then dying away as the breeze rose and fell.” Near Chehaw, +the stage stopped at a log cabin in the woods for the passengers to +dine. It did not look promising, and Lyell was ready to “put up with +bad fare,” but on entering found on the table “a wild turkey roasted, +venison steaks, and a partridge-pie, all the product of the neighboring +forest.” Noticing the stumps of many pines, he counted the rings of +annual growth to ascertain how long it would take to replace such a +forest. The oldest tree that he examined measured four feet in diameter +at three feet above the base, and showed three hundred and twenty +rings. He also found the ravines that are common throughout Southern +Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to be of recent formation and caused +by deforestation, showing the tertiary regions and also part of the +cretaceous strata which have “always been as destructible as now” to +have been from the beginning covered with dense forests. Where the +trees have been cut, the sun’s heat on the clay often causes cracks, +and when the rains come in semi-tropical torrents these deepen until +such ravines as are familiar to Mobilians about Spring Hill are the +result--only they are of more rapid growth. + +At Chehaw they took train for Montgomery. Even at that early time, +and in a region “where the schoolmaster has not been much abroad,” we +meet the prototype of the newsboy of to-day; Lyell’s picture of him +unconcernedly jumping on and off moving trains is the “butcher-boy” we +all know. One boy was calling out in the midst of a pine-barren, “a +novel by Paul de Kock--the Bulwer of France--all the go!--more popular +than the Wandering Jew.” Lyell, having bought newspapers promiscuously +throughout the many States he visited, found our press to be in every +way on an equal with that of Great Britain. A large portion of the +papers was “devoted to literary extracts, to novels, travels, tales, +and often more serious subjects.” + +Reaching Montgomery, he remained there a few days examining the +geologic formations and remains of that region. It was his intention +to go directly to Tuscaloosa, only one hundred miles distant by land, +but every one advised him that he would at that season save both time +and money by taking an eight hundred mile trip down the Alabama River +by boat to Mobile, and up again on the Tombigbee. The _Amaranth_ was +scheduled to leave at ten o’clock, January 28, 1846. Accustomed to +Northern punctuality, they went down on time, and learned with some +annoyance that she might not sail until the next day. It was his first +sight of our “magnificent Southern river boats.” He and Mrs. Lyell made +up their minds to look on it as “their inn and read and write there” +and were soon enjoying “its luxuries which Southern manners and a hot +climate require.” He describes very fully the peculiar construction +which adapts the boats to rivers which rise and fall rapidly. When +recording that some of them could float in two feet of water, he adds, +“but they cannot quite realize the boast of a western captain, that he +could sail wherever it was damp.” + +It would be too much to write in detail of all the things which +interested Lyell, for nothing seems to have escaped him. At each +landing, however, he collected many cretaceous fossils, so concluded +to stop a few days at Claiborne, whose bluff had long been known to +geologists as “classic ground,” having already yielded four hundred +species of tertiary shells, belonging to the Eocene formation. He +notes, too, the finding of a fossil zeuglodon in the same cliff by +Mr. Hale of Mobile. “The morning after our arrival, January 29th, the +thermometer stood at eighty degrees F. in the shade, and the air was +as balmy as an English summer day. Before the house stood a row of +Pride-of-India trees ladened with bunches of yellow berries. I had +often been told by the negroes that the American robin ‘got drunk’ on +this fruit, and we now had an opportunity of witnessing its narcotic +properties; for we saw some children playing with one of these birds +before the house, having caught it after it had eaten freely of these +berries. My wife, seeing that the robin was in no small danger of +perishing, bought it of the children for some sugar-plums, and it +soon revived in our room, and flew out of the window. In the evening +we enjoyed a sight of one of those glorious sunsets, the beauty of +which in these latitudes is so striking, when the clouds and sky are +lighted up with streaks of brilliant yellow, red, and green, which, if +a painter should represent faithfully, might seem as exaggerated and +gaudy as the colors of an American forest in autumn when compared with +European woods.” + +He crossed the river to visit the Blounts at Woodlawn. Leaving his wife +with Mrs. Blount, he went with Mr. Blount by carriage to Clarksville, +where the enormous fossil zeuglodons had been found. “The district we +passed through was situated in the fork of the Alabama and Tombeckbee +rivers, where the aboriginal forest was only broken here and there by a +few clearings. At Macon my attention was forcibly called to the newness +of things by my friend’s pointing out to me the ground where there had +been a bloody fight with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and how the clerk +of the Circuit Court was the last survivor of those who had won the +battle.” The Indian paths, still tractable through the forests near +Tuscaloosa, awakened the same feeling. On his return he and his wife +crossed to Claiborne to await the Mobile steamer, and he expresses his +pleasure at finding it, the _Amaranth_, commanded by his “old friend +Captain Bragdon.” + +Reaching Mobile, the Tuscaloosa steamer was ready to start, so they +were soon northward bound on the Tombeckbee, then so high “that the +trees of both banks seemed to be growing in a lake.” Arriving at +Tuscaloosa where there was a “flourishing college” he was met by Mr. +Brumley, the professor of chemistry who at once conducted him to the +outlying coal-fields. He found the coal, even of the strata exposed to +the surface to be “excellent quality and highly bituminous.” Here there +is a bit of justification in Huxley’s criticism of Lyell’s aversion +“to look beyond the veil of stratified rocks,” for while he notes +with seeming satisfaction the imprints of the fossil plants in the +black shale to be exactly the same as those existing in the “ancient +coal-measures of Europe and America,” there is no foreshadowing of +the explanation given by recent geology and astronomy, that even as +late as the early carboniferous era, there were no seasons, the earth +being wrapped in a uniform, vaporous warmth greater than the heat now +existing in the tropics; a heat which came not from the sun, but the +earth itself. One proof lies in the fact that irrespective of latitude, +the same organic remains are found--their nearest of kin of to-day +living only in the tropics; also that there are no rings of annual +growth in carboniferous tree-life. + +Lyell and Professor Brumley extending their wanderings, “entered about +thirty-three miles northeast of Tuscaloosa a region called Rooke’s +Valley, where rich beds of iron-stone and lime-stone bid fair, by +their proximity to the coal, to become one day a source of great +mineral wealth.” He was not only indebted to Professor Brumley for +much scientific information, but also to Mr. Bernard, the teacher of +astronomy, who showed him some “double stars and constellations not +visible in England,”--the telescope a recent acquisition from London. +Mrs. Lyell also made many friends in Tuscaloosa, among them two ladies +who were reading as a “pastime Goethe and Schiller in the original.” + +From Tuscaloosa to Mobile Lyell had splendid chances of studying the +geological character of the country, and he frequently expresses +appreciation of the courtesy and assistance always given him throughout +Alabama, contrasting it with the “ignorant wonder” the fossil hunter +inspires in unfrequented districts of England, France, and Italy. +He was anxious to examine the calcareous bluff at St. Stephen’s. Night +fell before they reached it, but Captain Lavargy stopped, said he could +take on wood, gave him a boat and two negroes bearing pine torches, +thus making it possible for him to thoroughly explore the whole cliff +and find many fossils. + +[Illustration: Zooma, the Last Tarkbar.] + +Mobile again claims him on February 21, 1846, and flaunts her spring +forwardness by touches of green on the cypress and cotton trees, and +scarlet seed-vessels on the rubra. “In the gardens there were jonquils +and snow-drops in flower, and for the first time, we saw that beautiful +evergreen, the yellow-jessamine, in full bloom, trailed along the wall +of Dr. Hamilton’s house.” Anxious for his first sight of the Gulf of +Mexico, he drove with Dr. Hamilton, the Presbyterian minister, to the +light-house (situated on Choctaw Point and washed away by the storm +of 1852), and, from the tower had a “splendid view of the city to +the North, and to the South the noble bay of Mobile, fourteen miles +across.” He then went to the bay which lay “smooth and unruffled, +the woods coming down everywhere to its edge.” He noted the immense +amount of driftwood, dug up bivalve-shelled gnathodons that live in our +mud-banks, and that will in future ages indicate the position of our +rivers. He found Mobile to be built upon a deposit of these shells, +the stratification of which proved that it had been thrown up by the +waves. Our delta, in the soft mud of which cattle are frequently mired +and which receives carcasses washed down by the rivers and thrown up +by the sea, exemplifies the formation of such regions as the Fayûm of +Egypt--the elephant’s ancestral home--now covered by desert sands, but +which is each day yielding priceless treasure to the paleontologist. + +On February 23d, the _James L. Day_, bound for New Orleans, “sailed out +of the beautiful bay of Mobile in the evening,” carrying aboard Charles +Lyell and his wife. + +At the time of Lyell’s visit, Alabama lay struggling in the grasp of +that spirit of unrest which from the most remote antiquity as often +obsessed people of the Aryan race, calling them ever westwards towards +the setting sun. Everywhere he met “movers”--Texas masking as the +Promised Land, beckoning to the cultured as to the ignorant. Adventure +prompted many, others knew not why they were going, some were “eaten +out by their negroes,” and one informant said: “If we remain here, we +are reduced to the alternative of high taxes to pay the interest of +money so improvidently borrowed from England, or to suffer the disgrace +of repudiation, which would be doubly shameful, because the money was +received in hard cash, and lent out, often rashly by the State to +farmers for agricultural improvements. Besides, all the expenses of the +Government were in reality defrayed during several years by borrowed +money and the burthen of the debt thrown on posterity. The facility +with which your English capitalists, in 1821, lent their cash to a +State from which the Indians were not yet expelled without reflecting +on the migratory nature of the white population is astonishing. The +planters, who got the grants of your money and spent it, have nearly +all of them moved off and settled beyond the Mississippi.” But Lyell +had faith in Alabama’s natural resources, which he felt were so great +that only a moderate amount of economy would be necessary to surmount +all embarrassments. + +Texas and the probability of war with England over the Oregon Question +were topics discussed on every hand. Lyell would hear the English +adversely criticized and such boasts as “we have whipped them twice, +and should whip them a third time,” but where his nationality was +known, he says, “never once were any speeches, uncourteous in their +tone towards my country, uttered in my hearing.” + +On his geologizing trips, which would have oftentimes been hard on +any one not riding his own hobby, he was forced to stop where night +overtook him, so that even the habits of the “crackers” became familiar +to him. “In many houses I hesitated to ask for water or towels, for +fear of giving offense ... nor could I venture to ask any one to rub a +thick coat of mud off my trousers, lest I should be thought to reflect +on members of the family, who had no idea of indulging in such luxuries +themselves. I felt the want of a private bed-room, but very soon came +to regard it as a privilege to be allowed even a bed to myself.” +In his wanderings, he also met “clay-eaters”[27]--a people curious +in their cravings for certain kinds of clay. Their peculiar green +complexion indicating anemia, which usually terminates in dropsy, was +formerly considered a sequence to the gratification of this abnormal +appetite, but is now supposed to be a result of a pathogenic parasite +found in the small intestine.[28] The type is still a most familiar one +in the hill-country just west of Mobile. + +When dubious about safety from highwaymen, Lyell was assured that in +the South this class was unknown; the working class being the slave +class there was no poor made desperate by want. And that the Texas wars +had relieved the different communities of their dare-devil spirits. + +Lyell was often amused and astonished at the Southerner’s loyal support +of an ultra-Democratic notion of white equality, which in practice must +have been thoroughly uncongenial to all classes concerned. He visited +a lawyer at his country home--the family a cultivated one, used to the +best society of a large city--but the host regarded it as an obligation +to invite Lyell’s driver, who was half Indian, to sit down to the table +with them. Perhaps a consciousness that this boasted equality was +more or less fictitious may have been responsible for the vindictive +envy which flourished in the midst of this “aristocratic democracy.” +A jealousy so intense that a gentleman growing rich and settling in +a quiet part of the country was apt to have his fences pulled down, +cattle turned out to roam, and other indignities perpetrated. Many +anecdotes of the genuineness and prevalence of this feeling were told +to Lyell. The daughter of a member of the Legislature visited Mobile, +had a dress made with flounces according to the latest fashion, and +on her return home wore it to a ball. At the next election her father +was defeated, and on asking a former supporter the cause received the +reply, “Do you think they would vote for you, after your daughter came +to the ball in them fixings?” + +Lyell found drunkenness very common, yet heard many speak of the great +temperance reform, it being no longer considered an insult to refuse +to drink with one’s host. While he saw no cruelty to slaves, he felt +that when drunkenness was so general among the owners their power might +often be an abusive one. He states that it was not the object of his +visit to study slavery, but his interesting observations would fill a +chapter and are characterized by a keenness and fairness which make +them very valuable. The stories told him by disgruntled and misinformed +Northerners had prepared him for blood-curdling atrocities, but +throughout Alabama he saw the negro in many phases: in his churches, +about his pleasures, and at his occupations that ranged from farmhand +to mechanic; in the slave-market, as the indulged domestic, and as +the faithful and cheerful follower of his master into new and unknown +regions; and on no occasion had he reason to suspect maltreatment. +When speaking to a Northern man of his favorable impressions, he was +told that “great pains had been taken by the planters to conceal the +true state of things”--that he had been “propitiated by hospitable +attentions.” Lyell found his own experience corroborated in a +_Tradesman’s Journal_, written by William Thompson, a Scotch weaver, +who supported himself by his trade as he journeyed through the South. + +After seeing what contact with the whites had done for the negro, Lyell +entertained very sanguine hopes of the race’s intellectual and moral +possibilities, and was impatient of what seemed to him unjust laws +which restricted the black educationally and politically. His two-sided +attitude is a bit disarming, but is explained by himself. “We are often +thrown into opposite states of mind and feeling, according as the +interest of the white or negro happens, for the moment, to claim our +sympathy.” But the following words embody an unbiased and a beautiful +tribute to the influence of the Southerners: “In spite of prejudice +and fear, and in defiance of stringent laws enacted against education, +three million of a more enlightened and progressive race are brought +into contact with an equal number of laborers lately in a savage state, +and taken from a continent where the natives have proved themselves, +for many thousand years, to be singularly unprogressive. Already their +taskmasters have taught them to speak, with more or less accuracy, +one of the noblest of languages, to shake off many old superstitions, +to acquire higher ideals of morality, and habits of neatness and +cleanliness, and have converted thousands of them to Christianity. Many +they have emancipated, and the rest are gradually approaching to the +condition of the ancient serfs of Europe half a century or more before +their bondage died out. + +“All this has been done at an enormous sacrifice of time and money; +an expense, indeed, which all the Governments of Europe and all the +Christian missionaries, whether Romanist or Protestant, could never +have effected in five centuries. Even in the few States which I have +already visited since I crossed the Potomac, several hundred thousand +whites of all ages, among whom the children are playing by no means +the least effective part, are devoting themselves with greater or less +activity to these involuntary educational exertions.” + + +THE END + + + + +[1] _Reprinted from “South Atlantic Quarterly,” July, 1908._ + +[2] Smith’s _Historie of Virginia_. + +[3] “Their features are recorded by their ancient enemies, never by +themselves, Egyptian kings, who from earliest times of antiquity, +came often into collision with the blacks, and had them figured as +defeated enemies, as prisoners of war, and as subject nations bringing +tribute. Their grotesque features, so much differing from the Egyptian +type, made them a favorite subject for sculptural supports of thrones, +chairs, vases, etc.; or painted under the soles of sandals, of which +instances abound in museums as well as in the larger works on Egypt.... +The other artistical nations of antiquity knew little of the negro +race. They did not come before Solomon’s epoch into immediate and +constant contact with it. We see soon after, however, a negro in an +Assyrian battle scene of the time of Sargon, at Korsabad. He might +have been exported from Memphis by Phœnician slave-dealers to Asia, +where he fell fighting for his master against the Assyrians.... On the +remarkable relief of the tomb of Darius Hystaspes, at Persepolis, we +have the negro as a representative of Africa. The Greeks seldom drew +the blacks; still, on beautiful vases of the British Museum, we meet +with the well known negro features in a battle scene. Another such vase +with the representation of Hercules slaying negroes has been published +by Mecali. Etruscan potters, who liked to draw Oriental types, molded +vases in the shape of a negro head and coupled it sometimes with the +head of white males or females. The British Museum contains several of +these very characteristic utensils.... We possess effigies of negroes +drawn by six different nations of antiquity: Egyptians, Assyrians, +Persians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, from about the eighteenth +century B.C. to the first centuries of our era, which all speak for the +unalterable constancy of the negro type such as in our day.”--Nott and +Gliddon’s _Indigenous Races of the Earth_. + +[4] Lecky, _Rationalism in Europe_. + +[5] Ranke, _History of the Popes_. + +[6] Dean Farrar. + +[7] Heylyn’s _Cosmographie_, 1657. + +[8] “You may observe, by my proclamation, that I offer freedom to +the blacks of all rebels that join me, in consequence of which there +are between two and three hundred already come in, and those I form +into corps as fast as they come in, giving them white officers and +non-commissions in proportion.”--Letter from Lord Dunmore to General +Howe, dated Williamsburg, Va., Nov. 30, 1775. + +[9] _Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson._ + +[10] Jefferson’s observations to Meunier. + +[11] Hamilton’s _Colonial Mobile_. + +[12] United States Statutes at Large. + +[13] “The Reverend Mr. Coffin of New England who is now here soliciting +donations for a college in Green County, in Tennessee, tells me that +when he first determined to engage in this enterprise, he wrote a +paper recommendatory of the enterprise, which he meant to get signed +by clergymen, and a similar one for persons in a civil character, +at the head of which he wished Mr. Adams to put his name, he being +then President, and the application going only for his name and not a +donation. Mr. Adams, after reading the paper and considering, said, +He saw no possibility of continuing the union of the States; that +their dissolution must necessarily take place; that he therefore saw +no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote a literary +institution in the South; that it was in fact giving strength to those +who were to be their enemies; and therefore he would have nothing to do +with it.”--Thomas Jefferson, _The Anas_, Dec. 13, 1803. + +[14] United States Statutes at Large. + +[15] _North American Review_, February, 1824. + +[16] Right of Search, Daniel Webster. + +[17] _Journal de Commercio_, Rio, May 26, 1856. + +[18] _Mobile Register_, December, 1858. + +[19] Heylyn’s _Cosmographie_, 1657. + +[20] _Narrative of Kazoola._ + +[21] The _R. B. Tainey_ was owned by the Meahers, and is described in +advertisements of that time as a “new, elegant, and light-weight summer +packet; Captain Jim Meaher. Side-wheeler, drawing eight inches of water +with elegant and spacious staterooms and large well-ventilated cabins, +carrying one hundred and fifty passengers.” She had been named for +Chief Justice Tainey who had handed down the famous Dred Scott decision. + +[22] These meetings probably account for the reports which have been +recurrent that the Tarkars met secretly and practiced barbaric rites. + +[23] Charlee too has recently passed away, 1914. + +[24] Mount Vernon is some miles beyond Plateau. + +[25] When Albiné first came to America she was very fat and refused +to eat except just enough to keep her alive. When she grew to have +confidence in the whites, she confided to Mrs. Foster, “Albiné not eat +when she first come to America, because Albiné know she fat an’ did not +want white people to eat her.” + +[26] Reprinted from _South Atlantic Quarterly_, July, 1908. + +[27] There is very little literature about this class which is found in +many parts of the world, and even that consists mostly of references to +them by travelers and ethnologists. The fullest account with which I +am familiar is an article by my uncle, the late Frank L. James, Ph.D., +M.D., “The Geophagi, or Dirt Eaters,” which appeared in the _National +Druggist_, of March, 1900. Microscopic examinations made by him of the +“dirt” used by our Alabama, Georgia, and Carolina geophagians showed +it to be a ferruginous argilla about ten per cent. diatomaceous. The +“dirt eaters” of the various countries do not eat any kind of clay, but +uniformly affect an argillaceous substance, containing more or less +infusorial matter. + +[28] Since the first publication of this article, hookworm +investigations and treatment have become common in all infected +districts of the South. + + + + + TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE + Illustrations Index: “Eko, Budigree, Abaché, Whydah” + changed to “Eko, Budigree, Adaché, Whydah” + Illustrations Index: Description of “Zooma, The Last Tarkbar” + moved to “Map Drawn by Kazoola” + Page 16: “with that bruitishness which” changed to + “with that brutishness which” + Page 35: “Whereever there was a priest” changed to + “Wherever there was a priest” + Page 69: “drop from us at the table” changed to + “drop from us at the table.” + Page 75: “prowess to the Turkish Janizaries” changed to + “prowess to the Turkish Janizaries.” + Page 123: “root of one interwined with” changed to + “root of one intertwined with” + Page 124: “Six of Abache’s upper front” changed to + “Six of Abaché’s upper front” + + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77013 *** |