The Middle Period, 1817-1858

to Negro Labor-The Southern Colonies well Adapted to Negro Labor-Negro Slavery a Temporary Necessity in the South-Was Negro Slavery an Error and an Evil from the first?-Slavery Legislation in the Sout

ainst the Humanitarian Principles of the Revolution-Abolition of the Foreign Slave-trade by Congress-Cotton Culture and the Cotton-gin-The Effect of the Return to the Arts of Peace upon the Ideas Concerning Slavery-Slavery During the War of 1812 and the Years just before and just after this War-Slavery in the Louisiana Territory-

y of the systems of servitude which have ever existed. Especially will it be difficult to gain a correct conception

ter to follow the main stages of that development than to attempt at the outset any definition whatsoever. We may, in this manner, build up a

appear

in the

h Am

oni

theory

ts of

guaranteed, and secured by no existing statutes. If any of the parties to the transaction reflected upon these subjects at all, they must have supposed that the right of possession and the freedom of contract covered the whole case. There is certainly no evidence that any of these parties, or anybody else, had the faintest conception that the law of any state, or any principle of natural justice, or of reason, was violated or impaired b

political science and practical politics, under the form of statement that civilized people have the right and

rica to slavery in the English-American colonies themselves felt the amelioratio

rliest

gnit

ver

colo

suffering governmental regulation. In the Massachusetts "Fundamentals," or "Body of Liberties," passed by the General Court in 1641, the slavery of negroes and Indians, and the slave-trade, were expressly legalized. In fact, so far as the colonists themselves were responsible

ern c

ell a

gro l

Sout

nies

pte

o la

oped the finer forms of industry which have subsequently distinguished that part of the country. They were then, as to their internal pursuits, almost as completely agricultural as the colonies of the South. But their farming required a great deal more of intelligence, thrift, and industry in the laborer than the negro of that day possessed. Th

slav

ary ne

he S

d to contribute the muscular effort, under the direction of the superior intelligence of the white race, to the realization of objects determined by that superior intelligence. The negro is proof against malaria, and thrives under the burning sun. The white man is destroyed by the former and greatly disabled by the latter. And the pure negro would not

egro

ror a

rom th

ondemnation, remembering that many of the things of the past, which, from the point of view of the present, we are prone to regard as error, and even as sin, are only anachronisms. In fact, those who founded the colony of Georgia thought then that they had a better solution o

legisl

thern c

negro slavery in the Southern colonies. And that more rapid and pronounced development directs us rather to the

rt

qu

nt

he mother. Rights and status in such a condition of society are, therefore, transmitted through the female line. Partus sequitur ventrem is the rule not only of the civil law, but of every system of law regulating the accidents of descent among people where the mingling of the sexes is not controlled by civilized marriage. Insuperable

niti

lave

uld no longer suffice. The colonists of that day were too conscientious to cut the knot of this difficulty by denying Christian baptism to any one seeking it. They considered it their prime duty to lead the heathen to the knowledge of Christ. It is evident that their consciences were greatly troubled over the questi

t of th

as fi

ginia s

the time when they were purchased or procured, nor free in England or some other Christian country, to be slaves. Exception was made of Turks and Moors in amity with the King. This statute, taken together

le

iti

sl

e ordinary courts, either as party or witness; that a slave could own no property; that a slave owed obedience to the master, who might force the slave to labor, and chastise the slave even to the extreme of so injuring the slave that the slave

nd

wa

age

of

ught and of legislation, at that juncture, was toward attaching the slave to the soil, which would have been a step upward in a course, which, if consistently followed, would have made the slave a serf. But the still prevailing rules, which allowed the slav

relat

lave

d powers of the community in regard to the institution began to claim attention. The public peace and welfare m

plantation of his master without a pass from his master, or lift his hand against a Christian; that a sheriff should arrest a runaway slave on the warrant of

y his slave at any place where there was no Christian overseer, and required that any mast

ral obje

respect

he beginning of the decade before the Revolution. It was perhaps more sever

to hold the slave in obedience and force him, if necessary, to labor, and to protect the public peace a

the slave. We must remember, however, that the first stages in the legalization of any relation sometimes make

nd the Re

the right

ry, and this change of idea produced great modifications in the law of slavery, all of which tended not on

tion in the doctrine of human rights rather than in that of national rights. The philosophy of the eighteenth century was a humanitarian outburst. Politically and legally it is summed up in the very misleading propositions that all men are born equal and are endowed with freedom, and that the people have the right to change or abolish existing government at thei

proh

n s

rtat

it prohibited any further importation of slaves, and repeated the prohibition two years later. These acts

er, as well as in many other matters of national concern; and when the Confederate Congress succeeded the Continental Congress, it did so

of slave

n Commo

the be

Revol

antially by her constitution of 1780. Pennsylvania provided for gradual emancipation by a statute of the same year. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New

Ordi

1

io River. The power to enact the Ordinance could not even be derived by the most generous principles of implication from any provision in the Articles of Confederation. To justify the exercise of it by the Confederate Congress it is necessary to go back to the general principle of political science that,

federation, or between them and the "States" to be formed out of that territory in the future,

avery that the common consciousness of the age acquiesced in this most latitudinarian construction of the power

ry an

ution o

framing the national Constitution of 1787. The attitude which the nation would assume in this new instrument of its organic law toward

islature of Maryland upon the work of the Convention of 1787, a very significant passage concerning the existing views upon slavery occurs. He wrote: "At this time we do not generally hold this commerce" (the slave-trade) "in so

the House of Representatives and in the Presidential Electoral Colleges. The second was commercial in its nature. It forbade the Congress to prohibit, before the year 1808, the migration or importation of such persons as the existing "States" might see fit to admit. The third was a direct guarantee of slave property. It required the surrender to his master of

ion a

umani

cipl

evolu

avery existed wherever it was inhabited, was added to the domain of the Union. The District of Columbia, the seat of the general Government, was made a slave-holding community, through the adoption by Congress of the laws of Maryland as the code of the District. A fugitive slave-law was passed by Congress, which enabled any white man to seize, as his slave, any man of color, and bring him before any magistrate, and, upon proof satisfactory to the latter, to demand such papers and certificates as would

itio

fo

ve-

ongr

interests. The Congress resisted the importunities of the Indiana leaders, and after giving South Carolina a reasonable time to re-enact her law abolishing the fore

on c

d

ton

ffect

to th

ace u

conc

av

There is no doubt that such was the main cause of the great change of view in regard to the question of negro slavery which the country experienced between 1790 and 1810, but it was not the sole cause. It was inevitable that, when the men of that era passed out of the excited state of mind and feeling produced by the War with the motherland, and came to the task of re-establishing the relations of peace and every-day life and business, they should regain a calmness of judgment, a respect for vested rights, and a regard for customary relations, which placed the political philosophy of 1776 under many limitations and qualifications, some of which, certainly, were sound and valuable. It is only when we take all of these considerations together that we comprehend the reasoning of the men of the first decade of this century upon the great question. They saw a great interest developing which was bringing wealth and comfort into an impoverished country. They knew that it could be then sustained only by negro labor. They did not believe that

nited States. We think now that they might have done better, and some of the more unsympathetic critics of our history affirm that they did nothing of any consequence, and that in what they did do they acted with a consciously deceptive purpo

during

, and t

efore

this

n Council, the Napoleonic decrees, the Jeffersonian embargo, and the War of 1812, reduced the exportation in cotton from about fifty millions of pounds in 1807 to less than twenty millions of pounds in 1814. The pecuniary interest in t

ery

ana te

efore this date, slavery had been abolished in France by the National Assembly. It is certainly a question, then, whether the re-establishment of French supremacy over Louisiana in 1800 did not produce the abolition of slavery there. It will be remembered that France was at that moment subject to the consular government of Bonaparte, and that the Consul was not an enthusiast for the revolutionary ideals. He did not disturb the custom of slave-holding in Louisiana, and when he ceded

en one of a purely diplomatic or international character. There would have been no question of constitutional power involved. The

f the United States immigrating into the Territory of Orleans, for the purpose of actual settlement, to take their slaves with them, and provided that the French laws in force at the date of the division should continue in the northern part until repealed or modified by the Governor and judges of Indiana Territory. Any danger to slavery in this district of Louisiana, which might be contained in the power vested by Congress in the Governor and

status of the new Commonwealth. It was, both in fact and in law, a slave-holding Commonwealth; and the custom of slave-holding was perpetuated in the newly named Territory by the provision in the Act

in the t

of

a and G

y them to the United States. Whatever we may think of the binding force of any such agreement from a legal point of view, certainly from an ethical point of view i

in Lou

nt ques

y in t

lina

ia ce

y of cession of 1803, by which the United States Government obligated itself to France to protect the property of the inhabitants of the province. But the Government of the United States was under no obligation to any citizen of the United States, or to any Commonwealth of the Union, to keep this Treaty inviolate. It may be affirmed, then, that th

st in

rylan

ia inc

acqui

ouis

re-enlivened. Maryland and Virginia were already, in 1807, overstocked with slaves. The opening up of the virgin lands of the Southwest to the immigration of masters and slaves f

dome

e-tr

to be kept in their old homes and suffer for the want of the necessaries of life, and that the distribution of the slave population over a larger area would make future emancipation easier, and less dangerous to the supremacy of the white race. There was a certain force in this reasoning. The ma

try in the older Commonwealths, acted as a vast bribe upon the ideas of men in regard to the questi

elati

ery

macy

ed S

e toward slavery in the administration of the international affairs of the country. The cardinal political principle of the slave-holding statesmen, at that period, was that slavery was a "State" matter with which the United States Government had no concern, and in regard to which it had no powers. This appeal to the Government to voic

ue that this doctrine rests upon a national view of the federal system of government in the United States, a view which the slave-holding statesmen did not later share. From their later particularistic principle of the fundamental character of the Union, such a general protectorate over "State" interests by the United States Government against foreign countries could hardly be inferred from the Consti

the case, and it secured from the British Government compensation to the masters for t

polity from the point of view of their domestic institutions. It is not strange, then, that from this point of time onward the powerful institution of negro slavery recognized more and more clearly its natural relations to all of these questions of internal policy and law, and sought more and more determinedly to bring the political system and the policies of the United State