The Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois

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

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

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

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

The effect of all this was far-reaching. Napoleon gave up his dream of
American empire and sold Louisiana for a song. "Thus, all of Indian
Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana and
the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of Washington and
Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a despised Negro.
Praise, if you will, the work of a Robert Livingstone or a Jefferson, but
to-day let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was
indirectly the means of America's expansion by the Louisiana Purchase of
1803."[84]

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

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

The population was divided into soldiers and laborers. The territory was
parceled out to chiefs, and the laborers were bound to the soil and worked
under rigorous inspection; part of the products were reserved for their
support, and the rest went to the chiefs, the king, the general
government, and the army. The army was under stern discipline and
military service was compulsory. Women did much of the agricultural labor.
Under Toussaint the administration of this system was committed to
Dessalines, who carried it out with rigor; it was afterward followed by
Christophe. The latter even imported four thousand Negroes from Africa,
from whom he formed a national guard for patrolling the land. These
regulations brought back for a time a large part of the former prosperity
of the island.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Despite the Moravian missions and other efforts late in the eighteenth
century, unrest among the Jamaica slaves and freedmen grew and was
increased by the anti-slavery agitation in England and the revolt in
Hayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes of
northwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of the
emancipation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a half
million dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there.
The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free,
for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. There
ensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials sent out
in these days were arbitrary and corrupt. Little was done for the mass of
the people and there was outrageous over-taxation. Nevertheless the
backwardness of the colony was attributed to the Negro. Governor Eyre
complained in 1865 that the young and strong were good for nothing and
were filling the jails; but a simultaneous report by a missionary told the
truth concerning the officials. This aroused the colored people, and a
mulatto, George William Gordon, called a meeting. Other meetings were
afterward held, and finally the Negro peasantry began a riot in 1861, in
which eighteen people were killed, only a few of whom were white.

The result was that Governor Eyre tried and executed by court-martial 354
persons, and in addition to this killed without trial 85, a total of 439.
One thousand Negro homes were burned to the ground and thousands of
Negroes flogged or mutilated. Children had their brains dashed out,
pregnant women were murdered, and Gordon was tried by court-martial and
hanged. In fact the punishment was, as the royal commissioners said,
"reckless and positively barbarous."[89]

This high-handed act aroused England. Eyre was not punished, but the
island was made a crown colony in 1866, and given representation in the
legislature in 1886.

In the island of St. Vincent, Indians first sought to enslave the fugitive
Negroes wrecked there, but the Negroes took the Carib women and then drove
the Indian men away. These "black Caribs" fought with Indians, English,
and others for three quarters of a century, until the Indians were
exterminated. The British took possession in 1763. The black Caribs
resisted, and after hard fighting signed a treaty in 1773, receiving
one-third of the island as their property. They afterward helped the
French against the British, and were finally deported to the island of
Ruatan, off Honduras. In Trinidad and British Guiana there have been
mutinies and rioting of slaves and a curious mingling of races.

Other parts of South America must be dismissed briefly, because of
insufficient data. Colombia and Venezuela, with perhaps eight million
people, have at least one-third of their population of Negro and Indian
descent. Here Simon Bolivar with his Negro, mulatto, and Indian forces
began the war that liberated South America. Central America has a smaller
proportion of Negroids, perhaps one hundred thousand in all. Bolivia and
Peru have small amounts of Negro blood, while Argentine and Uruguay have
very little. The Negro population in these lands is everywhere in process
of rapid amalgamation with whites and Indians.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] H.O. Flipper's translation of Castaneda de Nafera's narrative.

[77] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, p. 109.

[78] Bryce: _South America_, pp. 479-480.

[79] I.e., mulattoes.

[80] _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 381.

[81] Smith: _General History of Virginia_.

[82] La Croix: _Memoires sur la Revolution_, I, 253, 408.

[83] Marquis d'Hermonas. Cf. Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, p. 158.

[84] DeWitt Talmage, in Christian Herald, November 28, 1906.

[85] Aimes: _African Institutions in America_ (reprinted from _Journal of
American Folk Lore_), p. 25.

[86] Brown: _History of San Domingo_, II, 158-159.

[87] See Leger: _Hayti_, Chap. XI.

[88] Cf. Chapter V, p. 69.

[89] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_.

XI THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES

There were half a million slaves in the confines of the United States when
the Declaration of Independence declared "that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The
land that thus magniloquently heralded its advent into the family of
nations had supported the institution of human slavery for one hundred and
fifty-seven years and was destined to cling to it eighty-seven years
longer.

The greatest experiment in Negro slavery as a modern industrial system was
made on the mainland of North America and in the confines of the present
United States. And this experiment was on such a scale and so
long-continued that it is profitable for study and reflection. There were
in the United States in its dependencies, in 1910, 9,828,294 persons of
acknowledged Negro descent, not including the considerable infiltration of
Negro blood which is not acknowledged and often not known. To-day the
number of persons called Negroes is probably about ten and a quarter
million. These persons are almost entirely descendants of African slaves,
brought to America in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries.

The importation of Negroes to the mainland of North America was small
until the British got the coveted privilege of the Asiento in 1713. Before
that Northern States like New York had received some slaves from the
Dutch, and New England had early developed a trade by which she imported a
number of house servants. Ships went out to the African coast with rum,
sold the rum, and brought the slaves to the West Indies; there they
exchanged the slaves for sugar and molasses and brought the molasses back
to New England, to be made into rum for further exploits. After the
Asiento treaty the Negro population increased in the eighteenth century
from about 50,000 in 1710 to 220,000 in 1750 and to 462,000 in 1770. When
the colonies became independent, the foreign slave trade was soon made
illegal; but illicit trade, annexation of territory and natural increase
enlarged the Negro population from a little over a million at the
beginning of the nineteenth century to four and a half millions at the
outbreak of the Civil War and to about ten and a quarter millions in 1914.

The present so-called Negro population of the United States is:

1. A mixture of the various African populations, Bantu, Sudanese,
west-coast Negroes, some dwarfs, and some traces of Arab, Berber, and
Semitic blood.

2. A mixture of these strains with the blood of white Americans through a
system of concubinage of colored women in slavery days, together with some
legal intermarriage.

The figures as to mulattoes[90] have been from time to time officially
acknowledged to be understatements. Probably one-third of the Negroes of
the United States have distinct traces of white blood. This blending of
the races has led to interesting human types, but racial prejudice has
hitherto prevented any scientific study of the matter. In general the
Negro population in the United States is brown in color, darkening to
almost black and shading off in the other direction to yellow and white,
and is indistinguishable in some cases from the white population.

Much has been written of the black man in America, but most of this has
been from the point of view of the whites, so that we know of the effect
of Negro slavery on the whites, the strife among the whites for and
against abolition, and the consequent problem of the Negro so far as the
white population is concerned.

This chapter, however, is dealing with the matter more from the point of
view of the Negro group itself, and seeking to show what slavery meant to
them, how they reacted against it, what they did to secure their freedom,
and what they are doing with their partial freedom to-day.

The slaves landing from 1619 onward were received by the colonies at first
as laborers, on the same plane as other laborers. For a long time there
was in law no distinction between the indented white servant from England
and the black servant from Africa, except in the term of their service.
Even here the distinction was not always observed, some of the whites
being kept beyond term of their service and Negroes now and then securing
their freedom. Gradually the planters realized the advantage of laborers
held for life, but they were met by certain moral difficulties. The
opposition to slavery had from the first been largely stilled when it was
stated that this was a method of converting the heathen to Christianity.
The corollary was that when a slave was converted he became free. Up to
1660 or thereabouts it seemed accepted in most colonies and in the English
West Indies that baptism into a Christian church would free a Negro slave.
Masters therefore, were reluctant in the seventeenth century to have their
slaves receive Christian instruction. Massachusetts first apparently
legislated on this matter by enacting in 1641 that slavery should be
confined to captives in just wars "and such strangers as willingly sell
themselves or are sold to us,"[91] meaning by "strangers" apparently
heathen, but saying nothing as to the effect of conversion. Connecticut
adopted similar legislation in 1650, and Virginia declared in 1661 that
Negroes "are incapable of making satisfaction" for time lost in running
away by lengthening their time of services, thus implying that they were
slaves for life. Maryland declared in 1663 that Negro slaves should serve
_durante vita_, but it was not until 1667 that Virginia finally plucked up
courage to attack the issue squarely and declared by law: "Baptism doth
not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom, in
order that diverse masters freed from this doubt may more carefully
endeavor the propagation of Christianity."[92]

The transplanting of the Negro from his African clan life to the West
Indian plantation was a social revolution. Marriage became geographical
and transient, while women and girls were without protection.

The private home as a self-protective, independent unit did not exist.
That powerful institution, the polygamous African home, was almost
completely destroyed, and in its place in America arose sexual
promiscuity, a weak community life, with common dwelling, meals, and child
nurseries. The internal slave trade tended further to weaken natural ties.
A small number of favored house servants and artisans were raised above
this--had their private homes, came in contact with the culture of the
master class, and assimilated much of American civilization. This was,
however, exceptional; broadly speaking, the greatest social effect of
American slavery was to substitute for the polygamous Negro home a new
polygamy less guarded, less effective, and less civilized.

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