The Journal of Negro History
Chapter 132 : EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM GOVERNOR COLES TO JOHN RUTHERFORD I give you many thanks, m

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM GOVERNOR COLES TO JOHN RUTHERFORD

I give you many thanks, my dear Sir, for your long and truly affectionate letter of February, and a.s.sure you, I feel great contrition for having so long delayed the expression of them, and of saying how much gratified I was at perusing your kind letter, and the glad tidings it gave me of the health and happiness of our dear Emily and her little ones; and also the pleasure I have since derived at finding from the newspapers in what a flattering manner your fellow citizens have elected you to represent them in the Legislature.

I am greatly gratified at your election, not only from the regard I have for you as a man, etc., and the consequent interest I take in, and the pleasure I derive from your success; but I am particularly so in seeing men of your principles in relation to negro Slavery in the Councils of Virginia, as it cheers me with the hope that something will soon be done to repudiate the unnatural connection which has there so long existed between the freest of the free and the most slavish of slaves.

Even if it were feasible, from the extraordinary apathy in the great ma.s.s of the people, and the zeal displayed by many to perpetuate the evil, I could not hope for speedy emanc.i.p.ation, but I do trust for the honor as well as interest of the State that ameliorating laws will be speedily pa.s.sed, which will gradually have the effect of reconciling and habituating the masters, and preparing the slaves for a change which, as Mr.

Jefferson says, must sooner or later take place with or without the consent of the masters. It behooves Virginia to move in this great question; and it is a solemn duty which her politicians owe to their country, to themselves, and to their posterity, to look ahead and make provision for the future, and secure the peace, prosperity and glory of their country.

The policy of Virginia for some years past has been most unfortunate. So far from acting as if Slavery were an evil which ought to be gotten rid of, every measure which could be taken has been taken to perpetuate it, as if it were a blessing. Her political pilots have acted like the inexperienced navigator, who, to get rid of the slight inconvenience of the safety-valves have hermetically sealed them, not foreseeing that the inevitable consequence will be the bursting of the boiler, and dreadful havoc among all on board. No law has been pa.s.sed under the _commonwealth_ to ameliorate the black code of the _colony_ of Virginia; on the contrary, new laws have been pa.s.sed, adding to the oppression of the unfortunate negroes, and which have not only abridged the rights of humanity, but of the citizen. Such is the character of the law which restricts and to a great degree prohibits the master from manumitting his slave. The idea should be ever present to the politicians of Virginia, that the state of Slavery is an unnatural state, and cannot exist forever; it must come to an end by consent or by force; and if by consent, it must from all experience, as from the nature of things, be preceded by ameliorating laws, which will have the effect of gradually and imperceptibly loosening the bonds of servitude.

Nothing is more erroneous than the idea which is entertained by many, that ameliorating laws, and especially manumissions, are productions of insurrections among the slaves. The history of the British and Spanish West Indies shows that in those Islands where they have prevailed most, the slaves have behaved best, and insurrections have occurred oftenest where the slaves have been most oppressed and manumissions most restricted. Indeed, we never hear of insurrections in the Spanish Islands, where the slaves are most under the protection of the law, and where there are no restrictions on manumissions. Virginia should repeal the law against emanc.i.p.ation, prohibit the domestic slave-trade--which is nearly allied in all its odious features to the African slave trade--restrict the power of the master in disposing of his slaves, by preventing him from separating the child from its parent, the husband from his wife, etc., and if possible, connect the slave under proper modifications to the soil, or at least to the vicinity of his birth; instruct the slaves especially in the duties of Religion; extend to them the protection of the laws, and punish severity in the master, and when cruelly exercised by him, it should vest the right in the slave to his freedom; or to be sold at an a.s.sessed valuation. These and many other provisions might be adopted which would have a most salutary effect, and especially the Spanish provision, which gives the right to the slave to buy a portion of his time as soon as he can procure the means, either by his own labor or by the bounty of others; thus, for instance, suppose a negro worth $600 on paying $100, he is ent.i.tled to one day in each week, and so on. In connection with the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, I should provide for the removal by bounty and otherwise, of free negroes from the country, as the natural difference, and unfortunate prejudice existing between the whites and blacks would make it the interest of both to be separated. This subject, is too big for a letter, and I can only add, that if I could see ameliorating laws adopted, if I did not live to see the emanc.i.p.ation, I should at least die with the happy consolation of believing that measures were in progress for the consummation of ultimate justice to the descendants of the unfortunate African; and that my country, and the descendants of my family, if not my nephews and nieces, would lie down in peace and safety, and would not have entailed on them an unnatural and odious system, productive of strife, enmity and war, between themselves and their domestics. I was in hopes to have been able by this time to have informed you and my other friends of the result of the malicious suit inst.i.tuted against me for freeing my negroes, and which is pending in our Supreme Court. The case was argued last week, but the court has adjourned to the 1st Monday of January, next, without deciding it. I was much disappointed in not getting a decision; I have however but little fear as to the result.

FOOTNOTES:

[230] These letters are taken from E. B. Washburne's _Sketch of Edward Coles, Second Governor of Illinois, and of the Slavery Struggle of 1823-1824_.

[231] _Ibid._, p. 18.

[232] Jefferson's reply was published in THE JOURNAL OP NEGRO HISTORY, Vol. III, p. 83.

[233] The last paragraph of Mr. Birkbeck's letter cannot but excite admiration. The quotation from Horace applied with great force to the case of Governor Coles:

"Neither the ardor of citizens ordering base things, nor the face of the threatening tyrant shakes a man just and tenacious of principle from his firm intentions."

SOME UNDISTINGUISHED NEGROES

SOLOMON HUMPHRIES. Traveling through this country in 1833 at the very time when free Negroes were being denounced as an evil of which this country should by all means rid itself, C. D. Arfwedson found in Macon, Georgia a thrifty free Negro named Solomon Humphries, well known by all cla.s.ses including local officials and even the governor of the State. Humphries had by dint of energy acquired his freedom and had made himself an a.s.set in his community. He was then keeping a large grocery store and had more credit than many other merchants in the town, for he had acc.u.mulated about $20,000 worth of property. He had a neat and comfortably furnished home, presided over by his wife, an intelligent woman of color, who was often seen driving with him in his own unostentatious carriage. He was sought by the wealthiest people of the city whom he lavishly entertained at his home, doing them the honor of waiting on them in person himself, although he had a number of slaves who could have rendered this service. Making it a rule to be especially hospitable to strangers, he invited Arfwedson to be his guest while in the city; but on account of having planned to go to Columbus that day, Arfwedson could not accept his invitation.--_Arfwedson's United States and Canada in 1833 and 1834_, I, p. 425.

A NEGRO COLONIZATIONIST. While the American Colonization Society was being denounced by the free Negroes of the North, many blacks of the same status in the South had a different att.i.tude toward the movement, especially during the twenties before it had been discovered that Liberia was not suitable for a civilized people. One of the Negroes of the South to be won to this movement was a free man of color named Creighton, a slave owner of Charleston, South Carolina. He had acc.u.mulated considerable wealth and had begun to feel that it would be better for him to spend his remaining days in a land of freedom.

Several other free blacks were induced to go with him. In disposing of his property he offered his slaves, the alternative of being liberated on the condition of accompanying him on his expedition or of remaining in this country to be sold as other property. Only one of his slaves could be prevailed upon to accept freedom on these terms and go with him to Liberia. Creighton then closed up his business in Charleston, purchased for the enterprise a schooner _The Calypso_ and set sail for Africa, October 17, 1821.--_Niles Register_, XXI, p. 163; taken from _The New York Commercial Advertiser_.

A MORALIST. A white cooper called upon a Negro who owned a fine farm near Cincinnati and expressed a desire to purchase some stave timber from him. The Negro inquired as to what use the cooper would make of it. The latter replied that he had a contract to make some whisky barrels.

"Well, Sir," was the prompt reply, "I have the timber and want the money, but no man can purchase a single stave or hoop pole, or a particle of grain from me for that purpose."

The cooper, of course, became unusually angry on receiving such a stern reproof and contemptuously addressed this man of color, calling him a "n.i.g.g.e.r."

"That is very true," mildly replied the Negro. "I can't help that, but I _can_ help selling my timber to make whisky barrels, and I mean to do it."--_The Weekly Herald and Philanthropist_, May 13, 1846.

A BENEVOLENT NEGRO. Before the Northwest Territory became disturbed by the influx of free Negroes and fugitives running away from persecution in the South, there had been enough trouble with white vagrants to lead to drastic laws for the protection of certain communities.

Michigan, which did not until 1827 pa.s.s a measure dealing especially with undesirable Negroes, had prior to this time a law providing for selling idle and dissolute persons at auction. At one of the sales in 1821 a Negro bought a white man and ordered him to follow his master, and the order was obeyed. But the benevolent black took his servant to the steamboat, paid his pa.s.sage and restored him his freedom, making himself satisfied with sending the white vagrant out of the territory.--_Niles Register_, XXI, p. 214.

BOOK REVIEWS

_Harvard Studies._ I. _Varia Africana._ I. ORIC BATES, Editor, F. H.

STERNS, a.s.st. Editor. Introduction by THEODORE ROOSEVELT. The African Department of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, Cambridge, 1917. Quarto. Pp. 292.

In the introduction to the Harvard African studies ex-President Roosevelt describes the enterprise which this volume represents as "the first serious attempt by Americans to contribute to the real study of the African." He might have added, with almost equal truth, that it is the first serious attempt by Americans to study the Negro.

Books have been written by Americans about the black man. Howard University, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., has a library of such books. There are other private collections, some of them running into several thousand volumes. Most of them are written in a controversial spirit. Many of them are theological, seeking to show, on the basis of scriptural quotations, that the social status of the black man is pre-ordained and eternally fixed. Others are pseudo-scientific attempts to solve the race problem by showing that the black man is not quite human.

Some of them seek to prove, on the basis of anthropological data, that the Negro has no soul, hence efforts to Christianize him are hopeless.--Many more are written by Negroes to preserve some record of their meager history, or to defend the race against the monstrous attacks upon its humanity.

Such books are interesting and valuable as records of the sentiments and att.i.tudes which the racial struggle has called forth in the black man and in the white. The strange distortions of fact and opinion which they record are significant, not so much for what they tell us of the Negro, as for what they reveal of the intensity of the racial conflict, and of the nature of the pa.s.sions involved. Most books on the Negro in America published prior to 1900, and some books written since that time, are mainly valuable as source books for the social psychologist and the students of human nature. As literature they represent a melancholy anthology. As records of human nature, under the strains and stresses of a tragic although peaceful conflict, they have a new and fascinating interest. It is in this sense that we can say, spite of all that has been written, that there are no scientific studies of the American Negro, there are only materials awaiting scientific interpretation.

It must be regarded as an event of the first importance, therefore, that an inst.i.tution of the authority of Harvard University and the Peabody Museum proposes to publish a series of studies intended to cover the whole wide range of native African life and to extend these studies eventually to the descendants of the African peoples in America. No study of the Negro in America will be complete which does not take account of the African background of the race. On the other hand, no attempt to a.s.sess the qualities and capacities of the native African, living in his isolated and primitive environment, will be adequate which does not take account of the Negro's progress under the conditions of a civilized environment. As a matter of fact the Africans are the only contemporaneous primitive people who have anywhere achieved race consciousness and civilization without losing their racial ident.i.ty. As a consequence almost every fundamental process and stage of civilization, from the most primitive to the most cosmopolitan man, is somewhere represented in the contemporary life of the Negro in Africa and America. It is this fact which lends significance to the present volume, since these studies propose to cover eventually the whole range of Negro life in Africa and America, so far as that can be done within the limits of the anthropological sciences. An editorial note at the end of this first volume describes the plan and scope of the proposed series of publications.

The Harvard African Studies is designed to consist of annual volumes--under the t.i.tle of Varia Africana--made up of miscellaneous papers, and of occasional monographs presenting the results of original field or laboratory research.

The scope of the volumes may be defined as African anthropology in the widest sense. Only original papers are desired, but these may be of any length compatible with their presentation in a volume which is essentially in the nature of a journal, and may deal with any of the following subjects: psychology, archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, sociology, ethno-geography, religion, folklore, or technology. A range so wide must perforce be limited in some directions, and the editors have therefore decided upon the exclusion of purely historical papers, even when the latter embody the political records of native tribes. As an exception to this rule, the editors may be willing, under certain circ.u.mstances, to accept historical material which, by establis.h.i.+ng the presence of this or that group of people in a certain locality, or by throwing light on the nature or date of a migration, bears on racial questions and problems of primitive culture.

The series is open to papers of a non-controversial character dealing with a topic sadly in need of more scientific treatment--we refer to the question of the American Negro. The anthropometrist, the sociologist, and the folklorist have in this direction a field of research which, if approached with adequate knowledge, can be made to yield invaluable results. As these results cannot but be of practical importance, the editors are particularly anxious to have an opportunity of presenting them.

As a further indication of the method and purpose of these studies the editors emphasize that an effort will be made not only to add to the ma.s.s of information already extant in the writings of explorers, traders, and missionaries, but to correlate and organize the information already existing.

Travelers, missionaries, administrators, and scientists have published a vast amount of valuable information regarding the various peoples and regions in Africa. As yet, however, there has been comparatively little correlation of this evidence. Now that the day of the reconnaissance explorer is essentially past, and we begin to receive accurate and detailed studies of single tribes, it is highly desirable to have the great ma.s.s of published material carefully sifted, so that the future student and investigator may be able to make his efforts as productive as possible.

From even a few such doc.u.ments, it might be possible to plot cultural areas, as has been done for North America--the areas in question being regions of fairly uniform culture, marked off with some sharpness from other such areas. It would then appear whether the African areas depended on geographic conditions, on plant or animal distributions, or on the superior inventive genius of certain tribes or races. On the other hand, it might appear that the whole culture area hypothesis was untenable, and that within any given geographic area, or within any given tribe, there would exist elements of culture which were adopted at widely differing times and belonged to different culture levels.

Thus, a true stratification of cultures might be exposed. Yet again, it might be found that people living in similar environments tended to develop a like culture regardless of any contact or close ethnic affinities.

At the present moment the task of correlating existing material in such a way as to test the validity of current theories and presuppositions of the anthropological sciences is quite as important as that of adding to existing collections of information. In this way only can the ma.s.s of information now extant be made available for the use of students in the secondary social sciences, like sociology and political science, which are dealing with immediate and practical problems. It is only in this way, for example, that the knowledge we have gained of the Negro in Africa will contribute to the solution of the race problem in America.

Interesting as is the prospect which opens with the first volume of the African Studies, the untechnical reader will probably be more impressed with imposing appearance of the volume, with the character of its ill.u.s.tration and its general typographical appearance than with its contents. These consist of twelve articles of an average length of 23 pages dealing with the following types: _Siwan customs_, _Oral surgery in Egypt during the Old Empire_, _Wors.h.i.+p of the Dead as practiced by some African Tribes_, _The Paleoliths of the Eastern Desert_, _Notes on the Nungu Tribe_, _Na.s.sawara Province_, _A study of the Ancient Speech of the Canary Islands_, _Benin Antiquities in the Peabody Museum_, _The Utendi of Mwana Kupon_, _Notes on Egyptian Saints_, _Dafr Gourds_, _An Inscription from Gebel Barkal_, and _Ancient Egyptian Fis.h.i.+ng_.

Perhaps the most interesting of these articles, for the sociologist, is that of R. H. Blanchard ent.i.tled _Notes an Egyptian Saints_.

Sainthood, as the author remarks, "is not a difficulty of achievement in the Islamic world." Every hamlet has its shrine and in the larger villages there will usually be found two or three such sanctuaries.

Once a year, on his birthday, a festival and religious fair in honor of the saint is held. The primitive character of these religious celebrations is attested by the orgiastic and often licentious performances that accompany them. For example on the occasion of the festival of el-Hamal et-Rayah, a purely local celebrity, "the whole adult male population of the town, in defiance of all orthodox Moslem sentiment, intoxicated themselves with whatever alcoholic beverages they could procure. Half a dozen prost.i.tutes, hired for the occasion, set up their booths or tents in the town, and received all comers.

There was among the revelers a great deal of horseplay of the most licentious character, particularly in the vicinity of the booths if the _sharamit_. Drunken men were dragged into the lanes by their friends, and there left lying, exposed to the village wags and wits.

In 1914 this festival was modified by Government, which suppressed the more offensive features of the celebration."

One of the most interesting of these saints referred to was "an old Negro slave well known for his long, harmless, pious life." It is generally held that the body of a man who has during his life attained an unusual degree of sanct.i.ty is gifted with a supernatural power which is often exerted on those who carry his bier to the grave. The supernatural power of this old Negro saint was attested to in the following peculiar way: "Having died toward evening, he would not, on any account, have himself buried the same evening, and the bearers, in spite of all their shouting of _la ilah ill Alllah_ (sic), could not bring the corpse to the graveyard. It remained therefore, all night in the house (though the people do not like to keep a corpse at night), watched by a mult.i.tude of people praying. Next morning also it could not be buried for a long time, the blessed dead compelled the bearers to go through all the streets of the town, till at last, on the recommendations of the governor, the higher officials carried the bier to the grave, even the Turkish soldiers could not accomplish it. The whole town was in uproar. The Mohammadans say the angels exercise this coercive power. The Christians believe it is the devil."

It seems probable, as the author suggests, that we have in these religious festivals in honor of a local celebrity surviving examples of localized and more primitive type of religious cult which has not yet been wholly superseded by the religion of Islam, with its wider outlook and more rational conceptions of life. The notes here recorded suggest at once questions which can only be answered by further investigation and by comparison of the materials gathered in this region with those that are now being brought to light in other fields.

It is the purpose of the Harvard African studies to answer these questions, so far as they can be answered by a study of African life.