The Journal of Negro History_ Volume 4_ 1919 Various 2081 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Journal
of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the
United States and most other parts of the world at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You
may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook
or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in
the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

Author: Various

Release date: April 15, 2007 [eBook #21093]

Language: English

Other information and formats:
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21093

Credits: Produced by Curtis Weyant, Richard J. Shiffer
and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, VOLUME 4, 1919 ***

Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as
faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant
spellings and other inconsistencies. Text that has been
changed to correct an obvious error is noted at the end
of this ebook. Also, the transcriber added the Table of
Contents.

The Journal
of
Negro History

Volume IV

1919

Contents
Vol IV—January, 1919—No. 1

Primitive Law and the Negro Roland G. Usher
Charles H.
Lincoln's Plan for Colonizing Negroes
Wesley
Lemuel Haynes W. H. Morse
The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada Fred Landon
Documents
Benjamin Franklin and Freedom
Proceedings of a Mississippi Migration Convention in
1879
How the Negroes were Duped
Remarks on this Exodus by Federick Douglass
The Senate Report on the Exodus of 1879
Some Undistinguished Negroes
Book Reviews
Notes

Vol IV—April, 1919—No. 2

The Conflict and Fusion of Cultures Robert E. Park
The Company of Royal Adventurers George F. Zook
Book Reviews
Notes

Vol IV—July, 1919—No. 3

Negroes in the Confederate Army Charles H. Wesley
Legal Status of Negroes in Tennessee William Lloyd Imes
Negro Life and History in our Schools C. G. Woodson
Grégoire's Sketch of Angelo Solimann F. Harrison Hough

Documents
Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918
Book Reviews
Notes

Vol IV—October, 1919—No. 4

Labor Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917 E. Ethelred Brown
The Life of Charles B. Ray M. N. Work
The Slave in Upper Canada W. R. Riddell
Documents
Notes on Slavery in Canada
Additional Letters of Negro Migrants of 1916-1918
Book Reviews
Notes
Biennial Meeting of Association

The Journal
of
Negro History

Vol. IV—January, 1919—No. 1

PRIMITIVE LAW AND THE NEGRO
The psychology of large bodies of men is a surprisingly
difficult topic and it is often true that we are inclined to seek
the explanation of phenomena in too recent a period of
human development. The truth seems to be that ideas
prevail longer than customs, habits of dress or the ordinary
economic processes of the community, and the ideas are the
controlling factors. The attitude of the white man in this
country toward the Negro is the fact perhaps of most
consequence in the Negro problem. Why is it that still there
lingers a certain unwillingness, one can hardly say more, in
the minds of the best people to accept literally the platform of
the Civil War? Why were the East St. Louis riots possible? I
am afraid that a good many of the Negro race feel that there
is a distinct personal prejudice or antipathy which can be
reached or ought to be reached by logic, by reason, by an
appeal to the principles of Christianity and of democracy. For
myself I have always felt that if the premises of Christianity
were valid at all, they placed the Negro upon precisely the
same plane as the white man; that if the premises of
democracy were true for the white man, they were true for
the black. There should be no artificial distinction created by
law, and what is much more to the purpose, by custom
simply because the one man has a skin different in hue than
the other. Nor should the law, once having been made equal,
be nullified by a lack of observance on the part of the whites
nor be abrogated by tacit agreements or by further legislation
subtly worded so as to avoid constitutional requirements.

Each man and woman should be tested by his qualities and
achievements and valued for what he is. I am sure no Negro
asks for more, and yet I am afraid it is true, as many have
complained, that in considerable sections of this country he
receives far less.

I have long believed that we are concerned in this case with
no reasoned choice and with no explainable act, but with an
unconscious impulse, a subconscious impulse possibly, with
an illogical, unreasonable but powerful and in-explainable
reaction of which the white man himself is scarcely conscious
and yet which he feels to be stronger than all the impulses
created in him by reason and logic. What is its origin? Is
there such a force? I think most will agree there is such an
instinctive aversion or dislike.

I am inclined to carry it back into the beginnings of the race,
back to the period of pre-historic law and to that
psychological origin which antedates the records of history, in
the strict sense, to that part of racial history indeed where
men commonly act rather than write. The idea of prehistoric
law is that obligation exists only between people of the same
blood. Originally, charitable and decent conduct was
expected only of people of the same family. Even though the
family was by fact or fiction extended to include some
hundreds or even thousands of people, the fact was still true.
The law which bound a man limited his good conduct to a
relatively few people. Outside the blood kin he was not
bound. He must not steal from his relatives, but if he stole
from another clan, his relatives deemed it virtue. If he
committed murder, he should be punished within his clan, but
protected, if possible, by his clan, if he murdered someone

outside it. The blood kin became the definite limitation of the
ideas of right and responsibility. This was true between
whites. All whites were not members of any one man's blood
kin.

Palpably more true was this distinction between the Negro
and the white man. The Negro could not by any fiction be
represented as one of the blood kin. The Romans extended
the legal citizenship to cover all white men in their dominions.
It was the fictitious tie of the blood kin, but its plausibility was
due to the fact that they were all white. I do not remember to
have seen any proof that the Negro inhabitants of the Roman
African colonies were considered Roman citizens. This is
one of the oldest psychological lines in human history; the
rights which a man must concede to another are limited by
the relationship of blood. Prima facie there could be no blood
relationship between the Negro and the white man. There
could therefore be no obligation on the white man's part to
the Negro in prehistoric law. This notion has, I think, endured
in many ways down to the present day as a subconscious,
unconscious factor behind many very vital notions and ideas.
Is it not true that international law has been, more often than
not, a law between white men?

The next point I hesitate somewhat to make because it is
difficult to state without over-emphasis and without saying
more than one means. I think it probable that in one way or
another the idea of Christianity became connected with the
notion of the blood kin and in that sense limited to the blood
kin of those to whom Jesus came. Everyone is familiar with
the Jewish notion that Jesus was their own particular
Messiah, and that the Gentiles were foreclosed claims upon

him. As Christianity grew, it grew still among the white
nations, and the notion of it was not, I think, extended for a
good many centuries to any except white people. The
premises of Christianity unquestionably included the Negro,
but the notion of the blood kin excluded him, and Christianity,
like other religious ideas, was limited to the people who first
created it and to those who were actually or by some
plausible fiction their kin in blood. The idea of the expansion
of the blood kin by adoption either of an individual or of a
community of individuals was very old and thoroughly well
established, but I think the idea never was applied to
Negroes, Indians, or Chinamen except in unfrequent cases
of individuals. A volume would be required to bring forward all
the available evidence regarding this idea, and another
perhaps to examine and develop it, to consider and weigh
the pros and meet the cons. But it will perhaps suffice for
present purposes to throw out the idea for consideration
without an attempt at more considerable defense.

Another fact which has been most difficult to explain has
been the continued lynchings of Negroes not merely for
crimes against women, but for all sorts of other crimes, large
and small. Here the traces of primitive law are very much
clearer. Lynching is after all nothing more nor less than the
old self-help. The original notion was that the individual
should execute the law himself when he could, and that he
was entitled in case of crime to assistance from the
community in the execution of the law upon the offender.
Murder, arson, rape and the theft of cattle were the particular
crimes for which self-help by the individual and by the
community in his assistance were authorized by primitive
law. The preliminaries and formularies were very definite, but

they do not look to us of the present day like procedure. It is
true, however, that there are very few lynchings in which
these formulas have not been unconsciously followed. There
must be a hue and cry and pursuit along the trail. The
murderer must be immediately pursued. The person against
whom the crime is committed or his next of kin must raise an
immediate outcry, and they and the neighbors must proceed
at once in pursuit. If they caught the criminal within a
reasonable distance or within a reasonable time, they then
were endowed by primitive law with the right to execute
justice upon him themselves. Commonly the criminal was
hanged (even for theft) when caught in the act, but barbarous
punishments were not uncommon. That was legal procedure,
provided the cry was raised, the pursuit undertaken, and the
criminal caught within a reasonable number of hours or days
as the case might be. The mob had the right to execute the
law, and it is not often that lynchings take place long periods
after the commission of the crime. Such for many centuries
was the law in Europe for whites. Self-help applied in
particular to men of different tribes or communities who were
not of the same blood kin.

If self-help applied under certain conditions within the blood
kin as it unquestionably did, that is to say, within the law, it
applied with greater force to all classes and offenders who
were outside the blood kin and were outside the law. If a
stranger or an alien came within the community bounds and
did not sound his horn, community law sanctioned his instant
killing by anyone who met him. Men could not peaceably
enter the precincts of the German tribes as late as the year
500 or 600 A.D. without being liable to instant death unless
they complied with certain definite formularies. Until within

five hundred years, the stranger was practically without rights
in any country but his own, and might be dealt with violently
by individuals or bodies of citizens. One has but to remember
the tortures visited upon the Jews in all European countries
with impunity to realize the truth of the doctrine of self-help
when applied to strangers. There was literally no law to
govern the situation. The courts did not deal with it, no
penalties were provided for the restraining of individuals or of
the community at large, dealing with strangers until a
relatively recent time.

Is it not true that the difference in blood between the Negro
and the white man has caused a survival of this notion of
self-help, today illogical, unreasonable, absurd, but powerful
none the less despite its technical infraction of the law of the
land? Is not the lynching of a Negro or of a white man simply
the old primitive self-help with the hue and cry and the
execution of the victim when caught by the mob or by the
sheriff's posse? There is perhaps no field of speculation so
fascinating as this of the survival of bygone customs,
traditions, and notions, in present society. At the same time
he will be a poor and uncritical student who will not recognize
the ease of erecting vast structures upon slender
foundations. My purpose in this article is not to allege the
necessary truth of this proposition, but, if possible, to
stimulate along different lines than has been common the
researches of those who are interested in the psychological
attitude of the white man toward the Negro.

There will be no doubt those who will exclaim that if I am
right in this analysis of the problem—indeed, if there be any
reasonable modicum of truth in what I say—then the solution

of the problem will be difficult in the extreme. The whole
method of attack upon it will be altered. A long educational
campaign will become the main feature, intended to expose
the true basis of the white man's denial of real equality to the
Negro race. It will look like a battle too long to be waged with
courage because the victory will be far in the future. I do not
agree. The attack, if properly directed, and vigorously
followed up, will, like the assault of the woman suffragists
upon equally ancient instinctive promptings, be unexpectedly
successful. The walls of the fortress are thin and the
defenders the wraiths of a dim past.

Roland G. Usher.

LINCOLN'S PLAN FOR COLONIZING
THE EMANCIPATED NEGROES[1]
The colonization of the emancipated slaves had been one of
the remedies for the difficulties created by the presence of
freedmen in the midst of slave conditions. The American
Colonization Society was founded in 1816 with the object of
promoting emancipation by sending the freedmen to Africa.
Some of the slave States, moreover, had laws compelling the
freedmen to leave the State in which they had formerly
resided as slaves. With an increasingly large number
securing legal manumission, the problem caused by their
presence became to the slaveholding group a most serious
one. The Colonization Society, therefore, sought to colonize
the freedmen on the west coast of Africa, thus definitely
removing the problem which was of such concern to the
planters in slaveholding States.

The colony of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, was
chosen as a favorable one to receive the group of freed
slaves. Branches of the Colonization Society were organized
in many States and a large membership was secured
throughout the country. James Madison and Henry Clay were
among its Presidents. Many States made grants of money
and the United States Government encouraged the plan by
sending to the colony slaves illegally imported. But to the
year 1830 only 1,162 Negroes had been sent to Liberia. The
full development of the cotton gin, the expansion of the

cotton plantation and the consequent rise in the price of
slaves forced many supporters of both emancipation and
colonization to lose their former ardor.

As the antebellum period of the fifties came on these
questions loomed larger in the public view. The proposition
for colonizing free Negroes grew in favor as the slavery
question grew more acute between the sections. Reformers
favored it, public men of note urged its adoption and finally,
as the forensic strife between the representatives of the two
sections of the country developed in intensity, even
distinguished statesmen began to propose and consider the
adoption of colonization schemes.[2]

Abraham Lincoln, as early as 1852, gave a clear
demonstration of his interest in colonization by quoting
favorably in one of his public utterances an oft-repeated
statement of Henry Clay,—"There is a moral fitness in the
idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have
been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and
violence."[3] In popular parlance, however, Lincoln is not a
colonizationist. He has become not only the Great
Emancipator but the Great Lover of the Negro and promoter
of his welfare. He is thought of, popularly always, as the
champion of the race's equality. A visit to some of our
emancipation celebrations or Lincoln's birthday observances
is sufficient to convince one of the prevalence of this
sentiment. Yet, although Lincoln believed in the destruction of
slavery, he desired the complete separation of the whites and
blacks.

Throughout his political career Lincoln persisted in believing
in the colonization of the Negro.[4] In the Lincoln-Douglas
debates the beginning of this idea may be seen. Lincoln said:
"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to
do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to
free all the slaves and send them to Liberia—to their own
native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me
that, whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be
in this, in the long run its sudden execution is impossible. If
they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in
the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and
surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in
many times ten days. What then? Free them all and keep
them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this
betters their condition? I think that I would not hold one in
slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to
denounce people upon. What next? Free them and make
them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will
not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know that those
of the great mass of whites will not. Whether this feeling
accords with sound judgment is not the sole judgment, if
indeed it is any part of it."[5]

A few years later in a speech in Springfield, Lincoln said:[6]
"The enterprise is a difficult one, but where there is a will
there is a way, and what colonization needs most is a hearty
will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and
self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right,
and at the same time favorable to, or at least not against our
interests to transfer the African to his native clime, and we
shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be."[7] It
is apparent, therefore, that before coming to the presidency,

Lincoln had quite definite views on the matter of colonization.
His interest arose not only with the good of the freedmen in
view, but with the welfare of the white race in mind, as he is
frank enough to state.

After being made President, the question of colonization
arose again. Large numbers of slaves in the Confederate
States not only became actually free by escape and capture
but also legally free through the operation of the confiscation
acts. In this new condition, their protection and care was to a
considerable extent thrown upon the government. To solve
this problem Lincoln decided upon a plan of compensated
emancipation which would affect the liberation of slaves in
the border States, and he further considered the future of the
recently emancipated slaves and those to be freed.[8]

Taking up this question in his first annual message, he said:
"It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored
people already in the United States could not so far as
individuals may desire be included in such colonization,"
(meaning the colonization of certain persons who were held
by legal claims to the labor and service of certain other
persons, and by the act of confiscating property used for
insurrectory purposes had become free, their claims being
forfeited). "To carry out the plan of colonization may involve
the acquiring of territory, and also the appropriation of money
beyond that to be expended in the territorial acquisition.
Having practiced the acquisition of territory for nearly sixty
years, the question of constitutional power to do so is no
longer an open one to us.... On this whole proposition,
including the appropriation of money with the acquisition of
territory, does not the expediency amount to absolute

necessity—that without which the government itself cannot
be perpetuated?"[9]

Congress responded to this recommendation in separate
acts, providing in an act, April 16, 1862, for the release of
certain persons held to service or labor in the District of
Columbia, including those to be liberated by this act, as may
desire to emigrate to the Republic of Hayti or Liberia, or such
other country beyond the limits of the United States, as the
President may determine, provided the expenditure does not
exceed one hundred dollars for each immigrant.[10] The act
provided that the sum of $100,000 out of any money in the
Treasury should be expended under the direction of the
President to aid the colonization and settlement of such
persons of African descent now residing in the District of
Columbia.[11] It further provided that later, on July 16, an
additional appropriation of $500,000 should be used in
securing the colonization of free persons.[12] A resolution
directly authorizing the President's participation provided
"that the President is hereby authorized to make provision for
the transportation, colonization and settlement in some
tropical country beyond the limits of the United States, of
such persons of the African race, made free by the provisions
of this act, as may be willing to emigrate, having first
obtained the consent of the government of said country to
their protection and settlement within the same, with all the
rights and privileges of freemen."[13] The consent of Congress
was given under protest and opposition from some individual
members. Charles Sumner in and out of Congress attacked
the plan with vigor,[14] but in spite of this opposition the
recommendation was carried.

On several occasions Lincoln seized the opportunity to
present his views and plans to visiting groups and
committees. On July 16, 1862, when the President was
desirous of securing the interest of the border State
representatives in favor of compensated emancipation the
plan for colonization came to light. His appeal to these
representatives was: "I do not speak of emancipation at once
but of a decision to emancipate gradually. Room in South
America for colonization can be obtained cheaply and in
abundance, and when numbers shall be large enough to be
company and encouragement to one another the freed
people will not be so reluctant to go."[15]

Again on the afternoon of August 14, 1862, the President
gave an audience to a committee of men of color at the
White House. They were introduced by Rev. J. Mitchell,
Commissioner of Emigration. E. M. Thomas, the chairman,
remarked that they were there by invitation to hear what the
executive had to say to them. Having all been seated the
President informed them that a sum of money had been
appropriated by Congress and placed at his disposal for the
purpose of aiding colonization in some country, of the people,
or a portion of those of African descent, thereby making it his
duty as it had been for a long time his inclination to favor that
cause. "And why," he asked, "should the people of your race
be colonized and where? Why should they leave this
country? You and we are different races. We have between
us a broader difference than exists between almost any other
two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but
this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as
I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them, by living
among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word

we suffer on each side. If this is admitted it affords a reason
why we should be separated. If we deal with those who are
not free at the beginning and whose intellects are clouded by
slavery we have very poor material to start with. If intelligent
colored men, such as are before me, would move in this
matter much might be accomplished. It is exceedingly
important that we have men at the beginning capable of
thinking as white men and not those who have been
systematically opposed."

The place the President proposed at this time was a colony
in Central America, seven days' run from one of the
important Atlantic ports by steamer. He stated that there was
great evidence of rich coal mines, excellent harbors, and that
the new colony was situated on the highways from the
Atlantic or Caribbean to the Pacific Oceans. He told this
delegation of men to take their full time in making a reply to
him. The delegation withdrew, and we are unable to discover
any information regarding the reply. Evidently the group of
men never returned to make reply to the appeal of the
President.[16]

In the Second Annual Message December 1, 1862, more
practical suggestions were made to Congress by the
President. Says he: "Applications have been made to me by
many free Americans of African descent to favor their
emigration, with a view to such colonization as was
contemplated in recent acts of Congress. Other parties at
home and abroad—some upon interested motives, others
upon patriotic considerations, and still others influenced by
philanthropic sentiments have suggested similar measures;
while on the other hand several of the Spanish American

Republics have protested against the sending of such
colonies to their respective territories. Under these
circumstances I have declined to move any such colony to
any State without first obtaining the consent of the
government, with an agreement on its part to receive and
protect such emigrants in all the rights of freemen. I have at
the same time offered to several States situated within the
tropics, or having colonies there to negotiate with them,
subject to the advice and consent of the Senate, to favor the
voluntary emigration of persons of that class to their
respective territories upon conditions which shall be equal,
just and humane. Liberia and Hayti are as yet the only
countries to which colonies of African descent from here
could go with certainty of being received and adopted as
citizens; and I regret to say such persons contemplating
colonization do not seem so willing to go to those countries
as to some others, nor so willing as I think their interest
demands. I believe, however, opinion among them in this
respect is improving; and that ere long there will be an
augmented and considerable migration to both countries
from the United States."

Later in the same message Congress is requested to
appropriate money and prepare otherwise for colonizing free
colored persons with their own consent at some place
without the United States. The President continues: "I cannot
make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor
colonization and yet I wish to say there is an objection urged
against free colored persons remaining in the country, which
is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious. It is insisted
that their presence would injure and displace white labor and
white laborers. Is it true then that colored people can

displace any more white labor by being free than by
remaining slaves? If they stay in their old places they jostle
no white laborers; if they leave their old places they leave
them open to white laborers. Logically then there is neither
more nor less of it. Emancipation even without deportation
would probably enhance the wages of white labor and very
surely would not reduce them. Reduce the supply of black
labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country and
by precisely so much you increase the demand for and
wages of white labor."[17]

Pursuant to the power given the President, negotiations were
begun with the foreign powers having territory or colonies
within the tropics, through the Secretary of State, W. H.
Seward, mainly to ascertain if there was any desire on the
part of these governments for entering into negotiation on the
subject of colonization. Negotiations were to be begun only
with those powers which might desire the benefit of such
emigration. It was suggested that a ten years' treaty should
be signed between the United States and the countries
desiring immigration. The latter were required to give specific
guarantees for "the perpetual freedom, protection and equal
rights of the colonies and their descendants." Before and
after the transmission of the proposals to foreign countries,
propositions came from the Danish Island of St. Croix in the
West Indies, the Netherland Colony of St. Swinam, the
British Colony of Guiana, the British Colony of Honduras, the
Republic of Hayti, the Republic of Liberia, New Granada and
Ecuador. The Republics of Central America, Guatemala,
Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, objected to such
emigration as undesirable.[20]

Great Britain rejected the proposal as a governmental
proposition on the ground that it might involve the
government in some difficulty with the United States
government because of fugitives, and therefore expressed
her disagreement with such a convention. Seward had
asserted that there was no objection to voluntary emigration;
the government of British Honduras and Guiana then
appointed immigration agents who were to promote the
immigration of laborers by using Boston, New York and
Philadelphia as emigration ports.

The President came to be of the firm opinion that emigration
must be voluntary and without expense to those who went.
This was repeatedly asserted according to reports of the
Cabinet meeting by Gideon Wells.[21] The Netherlands
sought to secure a labor supply for the colony of Swinan for a
term of years, using the freedmen as hired laborers. Seward
objected to the acceptance of such a proposal.

Of all the propositions offered President Lincoln seemed
satisfied with two—one was for the establishment of a colony
in the harbor of Chiriqui in the northeastern section of the
State of Panama,[22] near the republics of New Granada and
Costa Rica. The situation seemed favorable not only
because of the ordinary advantages of soil and climate but
also because of its proximity to a proposed canal across the
Isthmus of Darien and because of its reputedly rich coal
fields. There were two objections to this plan. One was the
existence of a dispute over territory between the republics of
Costa Rica and Granada. The other grew out of a specific
examination of the coal fields by Professor Henry of the
Smithsonian Institute.[23] His report doubted the value of the

coal bed and advised a more thorough examination before
closing the purchase. Before the project could be examined a
more acceptable proposition appeared. In addition it also
developed that there was opposition to Negro emigration
from several of the States of Central America.[24]

An effort was then made to establish a colony on the island
of A'Vache in the West Indies. This colony was described in a
letter to the President by Bernard Kock, represented to be a
business man. This site was described as the most beautiful,
healthy and fertile of all the islands belonging to the Republic
of Hayti, and in size of about one hundred square miles. "As
would be expected," writes Kock, "in a country like this, soil
and climate are adapted for all tropical production,
particularly sugar, coffee, indigo, and more especially cotton
which is indigenous. Attracted by its beauty, the value of its
timber, its extreme fertility and its adaptation for cultivation, I
prevailed on President Geffrard of Hayti to concede to me
the island, the documentary evidence of which has been
lodged with the Secretary of the Interior."[25]

On December 31, 1862, there was signed a contract by
which, for a compensation of $50 per head, Kock agreed to
colonize 5,000 Negroes, binding himself to furnish the
colonies with comfortable homes, garden lots, churches,
schools and employ them four years at varying rates. He
further agreed to obtain from the Haytian government a
guarantee that all such emigrants and their posterity should
forever remain free, and in no case be reduced to bondage,
slavery or involuntary servitude except for crimes; and they
should specially acquire, hold and transmit property and all
other privileges of persons common to inhabitants of a

country in which they reside. It would be further stipulated
that in case of indigence resulting from injury, sickness or
age, any such emigrants who should become pauperous
should not thereupon be suffered to perish or come to want,
but should be supported and cared for as is customary with
similar inhabitants of the country in which they should be
residents.[26]

Kock also proposed a scheme to certain capitalists in New
York and Boston. This had nothing to do with the contract
with the President. He proposed to transport 500 of these
emigrants at once, begin work on the plantations, and by the
end of the following September—a period of eight or nine
months—he estimated that this group could raise a crop of
1,000 bales of cotton. It was planned that the colonists
should secure from the island a profit of more than 600 per
cent in nine months. Kock estimated his necessary expenses
as $70,000, and all expense incurred by freighting ships and
collecting immigrants was to be borne by the government. It
soon became known to the government that Kock had
sought the aid of capitalists and money makers. Suspicion as
to the honesty of his purposes was then aroused. It was
finally discovered also that he was in league with certain
confederates to hand over slaves to him as captured
runaways on the condition of receiving a price for their return.
Lincoln investigated the matter and discovered that Kock was
a mere adventurer and the agreement with him was
cancelled.[27]

A certain group of capitalists, whose names are not
mentioned, then secured the lease from Kock and entered
into contract with the government through the Secretary of

the Interior, April 6, 1863.[28] Under this agreement a shipload
of colonists from the contrabands at Fortress Monroe, said to
number 411-435, were embarked.[29] An infectious disease
broke out through the presence on board of patients from the
military hospital on Craney Island and from twenty to thirty
died. On the arrival in the colony no hospitals were ready, no
houses were provided, and the resulting conditions were
appalling. Kock was sent along as Governor, and he is said
to have put on the air of a despot and by his neglect of the
sick and needy to have made himself obnoxious.

Rumors of the situation came to the President and he sent a
special agent, D. C. Donnohue, who investigated the matter
and made a report. Donnohue elaborately described the
deplorable situation of the inhabitants, the wretched condition
of the small houses and the prevalence of sickness. He
further reported that the Haytian government was unwilling
that emigrants should remain upon the island and that the
emigrants themselves desired to return to the United States.
Acting upon the report, the President ordered the Secretary
of War to dispatch a vessel to bring home the colonists
desiring to return.[30] On the fourth of March the vessel set
sail and landed at the Potomac River opposite Alexandria on
the twentieth of the same month. On the twelfth of March,
1864, a report was submitted to the Senate showing what
portion of the appropriation for colonization had been
expended and the several steps which had been taken for
the execution of the acts of Congress.[31] On July 2, 1864,
Congress repealed its appropriation and no further effort was
made at colonization.[32]

The failure of this project did not dim the vision of the
successful colonization of the freed slaves in the mind of
President Lincoln. As late as April, 1865, according to report,
the following conversation is said to have ensued between
the President and General Benjamin F. Butler: "But what
shall we do with the Negroes after they are free?" inquired
Lincoln. "I can hardly believe that the South and North can
live in peace unless we get rid of the Negroes. Certainly they
cannot, if we don't get rid of the Negroes whom we have
armed and disciplined and who have fought with us, to the
amount, I believe, of some 150,000 men. I believe that it
would be better to export them all to some fertile country with
a good climate, which they could have to themselves. You
have been a staunch friend of the race from the time you first
advised me to enlist them at New Orleans. You have had a
great deal of experience in moving bodies of men by water—
your movement up the James was a magnificent one. Now
we shall have no use for our very large navy. What then are
our difficulties in sending the blacks away?... I wish you
would examine the question and give me your views upon it
and go into the figures as you did before in some degree as
to show whether the Negroes can be exported." Butler
replied: "I will go over this matter with all diligence and tell
you my conclusions as soon as I can." The second day after
that Butler called early in the morning and said: "Mr.
President, I have gone very carefully over my calculations as
to the power of the country to export the Negroes of the
South and I assure you that, using all your naval vessels and
all the merchant marines fit to cross the seas with safety, it
will be impossible for you to transport to the nearest place
that can be found fit for them—and that is the Island of San
Domingo, half as fast as Negro children will be born here."[33]

This completes all of the evidence obtainable concerning
Lincoln's thought and plan for the colonization of the slaves
freed by his proclamation. From the earliest period of his
public life it is easily discernable that Abraham Lincoln was
an ardent believer and supporter of the colonization idea. It
was his plan not only to emancipate the Negro, but to
colonize him in some foreign land. His views were presented
not only to interested men of the white race, but to persons of
color as well. As may have been expected, the plan for
colonization failed, both because in principle such a plan
would have been a great injustice to the newly emancipated
race, and in practice it would have proved an impracticable
and unsuccessful solution of the so-called race problem.

Charles H. Wesley.

Footnotes:
[1] Cf. Chapter XVII, Nicolay and Hay, Abraham
Lincoln, a History.

[2] President Fillmore in his last message to Congress
proposed a plan for Negro colonization and advocated
its adoption. This part of his message was suppressed
on the advice of his cabinet; but even had this not
been done, there is no reason to suppose that the plan
would have been adopted. President Buchanan made
arrangements with the American Colonization Society
for the transportation of a number of slaves captured
on the slaver, Echo, in 1858.

[3] Eulogy on Henry Clay, delivered in the State House
at Springfield, Illinois, July 16, 1852. The quotation

here noted is taken from a speech by Henry Clay
before the American Colonization Society, 1827.
Lincoln continued: "If as friends of colonization hope,
the present and coming generations of our countrymen
shall by any means succeed in freeing our land from
the dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same
time in restoring a captive people to their long lost
fatherland with bright prospects for the future, and this
too so gradually that neither races nor individuals shall
have suffered by the change, it will be a glorious
consummation." The Works of Abraham Lincoln,
Federal Edition, edited by A.B. Lapsley, VIII, pp. 173-
174.

[4] "The political creed of Abraham Lincoln embraced
among other tenets, a belief in the value and promise
of colonization as one means of solving the great race
problem involved in the existence of slavery in the
United States.... Without being an enthusiast, Lincoln
was a firm believer in Colonization." Nicolay and Hay,
Abraham Lincoln—A History, VI, p. 354.

[5] Speech at Peoria, Ill., in reply to Douglas. Life and
Works of Abraham Lincoln, II, Early Speeches.
Centenary Edition, edited by M.M. Miller. The Lincoln-
Douglas Debates, October 16, 1854; p. 74.

[6] In the same speech, Lincoln said: "I have said that
the separation of the races is the only perfect
preventive of amalgamation.... Such separation, if ever
effected at all, must be effected by Colonization." The
Works of Abraham Lincoln, Federal Edition, edited by
A. B. Lapsley, II, p. 306.

[7] Nicolay and Hay, Speeches, Letters and State
Papers, Abraham Lincoln, I, p. 235. Lincoln's

Springfield Speech, June 26, 1857.

[8] Ibid., VI, p. 356.

[9] Richardson, Messages and Papers of the
Presidents, VI, p. 54. First Annual Message, December
3, 1861.

[10] Section XI of Act approved April 16, 1862.

[11] Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, VI, p. 356. Act
approved July 16, 1862.

[12] Raymond, Life, Public Services and State Papers,
p. 504.

[13] Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, VI, p. 357.

[14] Charles Sumner in a speech before a State
Committee in Massachusetts, said: "A voice from the
west—God save the west—revives the exploded
theory of colonization, perhaps to divert attention from
the great question of equal rights. To that voice, I reply,
first, you ought not to do it, and secondly, you cannot
do it. You ought not to do it, because besides its
intrinsic and fatal injustice, you will deprive the country
of what it most needs, which is labor. Those freedmen
on the spot are better than mineral wealth. Each is a
mine, out of which riches can be drawn, provided you
let him share the product, and through him that general
industry will be established which is better than
anything but virtue, and is, indeed, a form of virtue. It is
vain to say that this is a white man's country. It is the
country of man. Whoever disowns any member of the
human family as brother disowns God as father, and
thus becomes impious as well as inhuman. It is the
glory of republican institutions that they give practical

form to this irresistible principle. If anybody is to be
sent away, let it be the guilty and not the innocent."—
Charles Sumner's Complete Works, XII, Section 3, p.
334.

[15] Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham
Lincoln, II, p. 205. Nicolay and Hay, A History of
Abraham Lincoln, VI, p. 356.

[16] Raymond, Life, Public Services and State Papers
of Abraham Lincoln, p. 504. Nicolay and Hay,
Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, VIII, p. 1.

[17] Richardson, The Messages and Papers of the
President, 1789-1897, p. 127. Complete Works of
Abraham Lincoln, VIII, p. 97.

[18] A section of the emancipation proclamation states
that it is the President's purpose upon the next meeting
of Congress to recommend the adoption of a practical
measure so that the effort to "colonize persons of
African decent with their consent, upon this continent
or elsewhere with the previously obtained consent of
the governments existing there," will be continued.
Nicolay and Hay, A History, VI, p. 168.

[19] It is interesting to note that the colored population
seemed very little in favor of colonization. "It is
something singular that the colored race—those in
reality most interested in the future destinies of Africa
—should be so lightly affected by the evidences
continually being presented in favor of colonization."
The National Intelligencer, October 23, 1850. But an
address issued by the National Emigration Convention
of Colored people held at Cleveland, Ohio, urged the
colored inhabitants of the United States seriously to

consider the question of migrating to some foreign
clime. See also Journal of Negro History, "Attitude of
Free Negro on African Colonization," I.

[20] Diplomatic Correspondence, Part I, p. 202. Nicolay
and Hay. Complete Works, p. 357.

[21] "Mr. Bates was for compulsory deportation. The
Negro would not," he said, "go voluntary." "He had
great local attachment but no enterprise or persistency.
The President objected unequivocally to compulsion.
The emigration must be voluntary and without expense
to themselves. Great Britain, Denmark and perhaps
other powers would take them. I remarked there was
no necessity for a treaty which had been suggested.
Any person who desired to leave the country could do
so now, whether white or black, and it was best to have
it so—a voluntary system; the emigrant who chose to
leave our shores could and would go where there were
the best inducements." Diary of Gideon Wells, I, p.
152.

[22] Cf. Account by Charles K. Tuckerman, Magazine
of American History, October, 1886.

[23] Joseph Henry said to Assistant Secretary of State,
September 5, 1862: "I hope the government will not
make any contracts in regard to the purchase of the
Chiriqui District until it has been thoroughly examined
by persons of known capacity and integrity. A critical
examination of all that has been reported on the
existence of valuable beds of coal in that region has
failed to convince me of the fact." Chiriqui is described
in report Number 148, House of Representatives, 37th
Congress, Second Session, July 16, 1862, by John
Evans, geologist.

[24] "There was an indisposition to press the subject of
Negro Emigration to Chiriqui at the meeting of the
Cabinet against the wishes and remonstrances of the
states of Central America." Diary of Gideon Wells, I, p.
162.

[25] Manuscript Archives of the Department of the
Interior.

[26] Nicolay and Hay, A History, VI, p. 361.

[27] Richardson, Message and Papers of the
President, I, p. 167.

[28] Nicolay and Hay, A History, VI, p. 362.

[29] Complete records to substantiate this statement
have not been discovered.

[30] Lincoln addressed thus the Secretary of War,
February 1, 1864: "Sir; You are directed to have a
transport ... sent to the colored colony of San Domingo
to bring back to this country such of the colonists there
as desire to return. You will have a transport furnished
with suitable supplies for that purpose and detail an
officer of the quartermaster department, who under
special instructions to be given shall have charge of
the business. The colonists will be brought to
Washington unless otherwise hereafter directed to be
employed and provided for at the camps for colored
persons around that city. Those only will be brought
from the island who desire to return and their effects
will be brought with them."

[31] Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works, II, p. 477.

[32] Statutes at Large, XIII, p. 352.

[33] Butler's Reminiscences, pp. 903-904.

LEMUEL HAYNES
Lemuel Haynes was born July 18, 1753, at West Hartford,
Conn. He was a man of color, his father being of "unmingled
African extraction, and his mother a white woman of
respectable ancestry in New England." She was then a hired
girl in the employ of a farmer who had a neighbor to whom
belonged the Negro to whom the woman became attached.
Haynes took neither the name of his father nor of his mother,
but probably that of the man in whose home he was born. It
is said that his mother, in a fit of displeasure with her host for
some supposed neglect, called her child by the farmer's
name. Mr. Haynes took the young mother to task, and while
yet the baby was but a few days old, she disappeared. As
she was the daughter of a Tolland County farmer, Mr. Haynes
shielded the family from disgrace by having the child take his
name with that of Lemuel which in Hebrew signifies
"consecrated to God." The mother never had anything to do
with her child, and it is said she married a white man, and
lived a respectable life. Lemuel providentially met his mother
once in an adjoining town, at the house of a relative, fondly
expecting that he would receive some kind attentions from
her. He was sadly disappointed, however, for she eluded the
interview. Catching a glimpse of her at length when she was
attempting to escape from him he accosted her in the
language of severe but merited rebuke.

Mr. Haynes kept Lemuel till he was five months old, and then
had him "bound out" to Deacon David Rose, of Granville,

Massachusetts, a man of singular piety. There Lemuel grew
up, and lived for thirty-two years. One condition of his
indenture was that, in common with other children, he should
enjoy the usual advantage of a district school education. Yet,
as schools of that section were decidedly backward, his early
opportunities for instruction were very limited. Like other
farmer boys, however, he was instructed in the fundamentals
of education and the principles of religion. His duties often
kept him from school, or caused him to arrive at a late hour.
Yet he said, "As I had the advantage of attending a common
school equal with other children, I was early taught to read,
to which I was greatly attached and could vie with almost any
of my age."[1] He soon formed the habit of studying the Bible
and early made a profession of faith in the Christian religion.
While young he was baptized by the Reverend Jonathan
Huntington.

He quickly mastered the studies of the district school but he
struggled forward, becoming his own teacher and subjecting
his mind to unremitting and severe discipline. The scarcity of
books was one of the severest difficulties which he had to
encounter. There was no public library in the place. The
Bible, Psalter, spelling-book, and perhaps a volume or two of
sermons, comprised the library of the intellectual people of
those towns. But says he: "I was constantly inquiring after
books, especially in theology. I was greatly pleased with the
writings of Watts and Doddridge, and with Young's Night
Thoughts. My good master encouraged me in the matter."[2]

There came a turning point in Haynes's life when in 1775 the
excellent and pious Mrs. Rose died. She had been more to
him than an employer. Adopting him as her own son in early

infancy, she tenderly trained him up to intellectual and
Christian manhood. Speaking of this, Haynes said: "Soon
after I came of age, God was pleased to take my mistress
away, to my inexpressible sorrow. It caused me bitter
mourning and lamentation."[3] Prostrated thus, he sought
relief from his affliction in the service of the continental army.

Lemuel Haynes was a patriot of the Revolution. He early
imbibed those great principles respecting "the rights of man,"
in defense of which the colonies fought Great Britain. In 1774
he enlisted as a minute man. Under the regulations of this
enlistment he was required to spend one day in the week in
manual exercises, and to hold himself in readiness for actual
service, but soon after the battle at Lexington the following
year he joined the regular army at Roxbury. The next year he
volunteered to join the expedition to Ticonderoga to expel the
enemy. Referring to this service in an address some years
later Haynes said: "Perhaps it is not ostentatious in the
speaker to observe that in early life he devoted all for the
sake of freedom and independence, and endured frequent
campaigns in their defense, and has never viewed the
sacrifice too great. And should an attack be made on this
sacred ark, the poor remains of life would be devoted to its
defense."

After the close of his northern campaign he returned to his
former home to engage in agricultural pursuits. But while
thus engaged he little anticipated the designs of Providence
concerning him. Improving his leisure hours, he had made
considerable progress in the study of theology. At length he
selected his text, and composed a sermon, without education
or teacher. It happened thus: In the family of Deacon Rose,

the evening preceding the Sabbath was customarily devoted
to family instruction and religious worship. Haynes was
occasionally asked to read from the sermons of Watts,
Whitefield, Doddridge or Davies. Called upon to read as
usual one evening, he slipped into the book his own sermon
which he had written, and read it to the family. Greatly
delighted and edified by this sermon read with unusual
vivacity and feeling, Deacon Rose, who was then blind,
inquired: "Lemuel, whose work is that which you have been
reading? Is it Davies's sermon, or Watts's, or Whitefield's?"
Haynes blushed and hesitated, but at last was obliged to
confess the truth—"It's Lemuel's sermon."[4]

It was then discovered that in this young man was the
promise of usefulness. The community encouraged him to
look forward to the Christian ministry. Referring to this, he
said: "I was solicited by some to obtain a collegiate
education, with a view to the gospel ministry. A door was
opened for it at Dartmouth College, but I shrunk at the
thought. Reverend Mr. Smith encouraged me with many
others. I was at last persuaded to attend to studying the
learned languages. I was invited (1779) by the Reverend
Daniel Farrand, of Canaan, Connecticut, to visit him. I
accordingly did. With him I resided some time, studying the
Latin language."[5]

How long he studied under Mr. Farrand is not known. He
devoted a part of his time to belles lettres and the writing of
sermons. While with Mr. Farrand, Haynes composed a poem
which was surreptitiously taken from his desk and afterward
delivered by a plagiarist at a certain college on the day of
commencement. During these years he labored in the field to

defray the expense of board and tuition, but the mind of this
student underwent unusual development for which Mr.
Haynes retained to the end of life a grateful remembrance of
his friend and patron.

After making an extensive study of the Latin language, he felt
a desire to study Greek that he might read the New
Testament in the original, but he had no means to prosecute
this study. While in doubt as to how he could attain so
desirable an end the Reverend William Bradford, of
Wintonbury, a small parish composed, as its name imports,
of a part of three towns, Winsor, Farmington and Symsbury,
offered to instruct him in the Greek language. This
benefactor promised also to secure there for Mr. Haynes a
school paying him sufficient money to defray his expenses.
Mr. Haynes said: "I exerted myself to the utmost to instruct
the children of my school, and found I gave general
satisfaction. The proficiency I made in studying the Greek
language I found greatly exceeded the expectations of my
preceptor."[6] He was thus serving as a "spiritual teacher in a
respectable and enlightened congregation in New England,
where he had been known from infancy only as a servant
boy, and under all the disabilities of his humble extraction."
"That reverence which it was the custom of the age to accord
to ministers of the gospel," says his biographer, "was
cheerfully rendered to Mr. Haynes."[7] All classes and ages
were delighted with the sweet, animated eloquence of the
man. In consideration of his talents Middlebury College later
conferred upon him the degree of master of arts.[8]

This led friends to advise that he should be licensed to
preach, and on November 29, 1780, after "an examination in

the languages, sciences, doctrines and experimental
religion," he was licensed and preached intelligently from
Psalm 96:1. He was ordained soon thereafter. Then came an
early call to begin his ministry at the Congregational meeting
house at Middle Granville, where he labored five years,
preaching eloquently with zeal. The time was one of moral
darkness with intemperance, profanity and infidelity rife.
Strange doctrines intruded. Vice came boldly forward, but,
like a rock, the young minister stood by his Lord and faith.

Among the pious in the church was Bessie Babbitt. She was
a woman of considerable education and was engaged as a
teacher in her town. Looking to Heaven for guidance, she
was led, with consistent delicacy, to offer her heart to her
pastor. He commended the proposal to God in prayer, and
consulted other ministers. Knowing his birth and race, he
sought their counsel. They advised in favor, and on
September 22, 1773, they were married. There began then
their happy married life which was blessed with nine children.
[9]

From his small retired parish, among the companions of his
childhood, he was called to Torrington, Connecticut, where
he continued preaching two years to large audiences.[10] It is
said that at Torrington a leading citizen was much displeased
that the church should have "a nigger minister," and, to show
his disrespect, this man went to church and sat with his hat
on his head. "He hadn't preached far," said he, "when I
thought I saw the whitest man I ever knew in that pulpit, and I
tossed my hat under the pew."

The number of communicants increased during the term of
his residence in Torrington. Some of the most respectable
families from adjoining towns, particularly from Goshen,
became his warmest friends, who constantly attended on his
ministry. His biographer says: "The aged refer to his ministry
with many delightful recollections. He was held in high
estimation, especially by the church, and was esteemed by
all classes as "an apt and very ready man in the pulpit." The
mere mention of his name even now, after the lapse of half a
century, seems to renew in their minds interesting
associations. The church and society were strengthened by
his labors, and many wished to retain him as their permanent
pastor. The sensibility of a few individuals prevented, it is
said, the accomplishment of their desires.

His eloquence and Christian nobility won him much attention
and led to his being called to the pastorate of the
Congregational Church in West Rutland, Vermont. The town
was a country seat, and the church was one of importance.
Then in the meridian of life, rich with the spirit and devoted to
his calling, he was singularly successful; and while there
were those who saw in him "that colored minister," all knew
his pure white soul. The first year of his pastorate he
received forty-two members by profession. In 1803 there
came a great revival, and there were one hundred and three
conversions, together with one hundred and fifty in the
adjoining town of Pittsfield. Five years later there was
another revival and Haynes received one hundred and nine.
Naturally he was in demand by other churches as a revival
preacher.

At this time New England was in a very backward state. The
genial influence of science and religion had not been
generally felt. There was no college in Vermont and its only
academy was the one at Norwich, near Dartmouth College.
There were not more than four or five Congregational
ministers on the west side of the Green Mountains. A
religious revival of considerable extent, under the preaching
of Reverend Jacob Wood and others, had resulted in the
formation of small churches. Certain parts of Connecticut
were not much more advanced. In 1804 the Connecticut
Missionary Society, therefore, appointed Mr. Haynes to labor
in the destitute sections of Vermont. In 1809 he was
appointed to a similar service by the Vermont Missionary
Society. In this capacity Haynes became a great factor in the
religious awakening throughout New England at that time.

In 1814 he was fraternal delegate from the Vermont to the
Connecticut Ministers' Association at Fairfield. On his way
thither he stopped on Sunday at New Haven, where, at the
Blue Church (formerly Dr. Edwards'), he preached a sermon
to a crowded house, having in the audience President Dwight
of Yale and many distinguished people. At Fairfield the
association insisted on his preaching the annual sermon.

Haynes soon exhibited evidences of being no ordinary man.
He readily engaged in the heated theological discussion of
his time, taking first rank as a theologian.[11] His most
interesting debate was that with the famous Hosea Ballou,
whom Haynes vanquished in his famous sermon based on
the text, Ye shall not surely die. Many strange doctrines were
then abroad. A writer says: "The Stoddardian principle of
admitting moral persons, without credible evidence of grace,

to the Lord's Supper, and the half-way covenant by which
parents, though not admitted to the Lord's Supper, were
encouraged to offer their children in baptism, prevailed in
many of the churches. Great apathy was prevalent among
professing Christians, and the ruinous vices of profaneness,
Sabbath-breaking and intemperance were affectingly
prevalent among all classes. The spark of evangelical piety
seemed to be nearly extinct in the churches. Revivals of
religion were scarcely known except in the recollections of a
former age. Some of the essential doctrines of grace were
not received even by many in the churches.[12] Respecting
the operations of the Holy Spirit, Mr. Haynes adopted the
same principles as Edwards and Whitefield. He became
effective in dispelling some of these clouds of doubt, bringing
the people back to a more righteous conduct. Out of it he
emerged a man of fame.

Happy as was this apostle in his work at Rutland the violent
political controversy of his time was divided between two
militant parties with one of which every freeman felt that he
should be allied. Imbued with the spirit of the American
Revolution, Haynes could not be neutral. "In principle," says
his biographer, "he was a disciple of Washington and,
therefore, favored those measures conducive of national
government."[13] As party spirit rapidly developed into deeply
rooted rancor, sharp differences of opinion led to controversy
in his parish. Invited to preach on political occasions and in
some cases to the public through the press, he discussed
political affairs with such keenness and sarcasm that
unprincipled parasites in his community were much
disturbed. In one of his discourses he used the following
expression: "A dissembler is one proud of applause—will

advertise himself for office—dazzling the public man with
high pretext, like aspiring Absolom, 'Oh that I were made
judge in the land, that every man might come unto me and I
would do him justice.' Such subjects to applause and
hypocrisy will, even when the destinies of their country are at
stake, be to a commonwealth what Arnold was to American
freedom or Robespierre to a French Republic."[14]

It was not long before political excitement disturbed the
harmony between the pastor and the people in West
Rutland. On certain occasions Haynes was treated with
unkindness and even with abuse by unprincipled men.
Scandalous reports concerning him were circulated and he
was denounced with profane language. But he gloried in
tribulations, knowing that "tribulations worketh patience and
patience experience and experience hope and hope maketh
not ashamed." Observing the signs of the times, therefore,
and governed by prayerful deliberation he felt that he should
sever his connection with his church in Rutland. Accordingly,
on the 27th of April, 1818, at a council convened to consider
the serious question the pastoral relation was by mutual
consent dissolved.

Haynes was then invited to preach in Manchester, Vermont,
a desirable town west of the Green Mountains. Because of
his reputation as a preacher here Haynes had the helpful
contact of the Honorable Richard Skinner, who in early life
was elected a member of Congress and afterwards served
as a judge of the Supreme Court and finally as Governor of
Vermont. He associated also with Joseph Burr, the liberal
benefactor of several literary and religious institutions.

In 1822 Haynes removed from Manchester to Granville, New
York. He had enjoyed the support of the best people in that
New England community and had usually found them a
generous and enlightened people. Under his ministration at
Manchester the church was much enlarged, but he was now
declining in intellectual vivacity and realized that, although
there was entire harmony between him and the people in
Manchester, they should have a younger man. His church
accordingly yielded to the desire of the Congregational
Church in Granville, New York, and he took leave of Vermont
to preach in another State.

In going to Granville, Haynes connected with the renowned
Deacon Elihu Atkins, of Granville, with whom he had
corresponded for more than thirty years. There had been a
cherished intimacy between them from their youth. Atkins
had for years relied upon the convincing instruction which he
endeavored to obtain through correspondence with Haynes.
These letters show the tenderness and the watchfulness of a
pastor over a flock, which reminds one of the relation existing
between Paul and the aged Philemon. During the eleven
years which he spent at Granville, his congregation was
decidedly edified. Thousands of persons giving evidence of
their piety, joined the church and lived above reproach. While
laboring among these people he died in the year 1833.

Thus passed away the man who was regarded by those who
knew him as a worker of unusual ability and a preacher of
power. Says his biographer: "Although the tincture of his
skin, and all his features bore strong indications of his
paternal original, yet in his early life there was a peculiar
expression which indicated the finest qualities of mind. Many,

on seeing him in the pulpit, have been reminded of the
inspired expression, 'I am black, but comely.' In his case the
remarkable assemblage of grace which was thrown around
his semi-African complexion, especially his eye, could not fail
to prepossess the stranger in his favor."[15]

He was a man of a feeling heart, always sensibly affected at
the sight of human suffering. His sensibility knew no bounds.
He exhibited quickness of perception and had the advantage
of a never-failing memory. The confidence generally reposed
in him by both ministers and the people credit him with
having mature judgment. Although lacking in what is
commonly known as classical education, as he never
penetrated very far into the Greek and Latin classics, his
mind was decidedly literary. He read the Latin language fairly
well but had never read more than the Greek testament and
Septuagint. He was well read, however, in the English
classics and his discourses show taste for the beauties of
poetry and elegant composition.

Haynes was always industrious, his early habits having been
formed in the rigid pursuits of business. At home he was a
man of the highest domestic virtue. His family government
was strictly parental, based on reason and principle, not on
passion or blind indulgence. He was always strict, ever
adhering to a standard of the most Puritanic order. Having
early formed the high ideals of uprightness, no man could
ever bring against him the charge of dishonesty. Above all he
was a man of consistent piety and resignation to the will of
God.

His dying testimony was: "I love my wife, I love my children,
but I love my Saviour better than all." A plain marble marks
his grave. On it is this inscription, prepared by himself:

"Here lies the dust of a poor hell-deserving sinner, who ventured
into eternity trusting wholly on the merits of Christ for salvation.
In the full belief of the great doctrines he preached while on
earth, he invites his children and all who read this, to trust their
eternal interest on the same foundation."

So lived and died one of the noblest of the New England
Congregational ministers of a century ago. Of illegitimate
birth, and of no advantageous circumstances of family, rank
or station, he became one of the choicest instruments of
Christ. His face betrayed his race and blood, and his life
revealed his Lord.

W. H. Morse.

Hartford, Conn.

Footnotes:
[1] Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of the
Rev. Lemuel Haynes, p. 36.

[2] Ibid., p. 38.

[3] The pious Deacon Rose lived some years
thereafter and had the pleasure of seeing Lemuel a
distinguished man. See Cooley, Sketches of the Life
and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes, p. 40.

[4] Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of the
Rev. Lemuel Haynes, p. 48.

[5] Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of the
Rev. Lemuel Haynes, p. 60.

[6] Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of the
Rev. Lemuel Haynes, p. 63.

[7] Ibid., p. 66.

[8] Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 677.

[9] Ibid., p. 678.

[10] Special Report of the United States Commissioner
of Education, 1871, p. 342.

[11] Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to
1861, p. 280.

[12] Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of the
Rev. Lemuel Haynes, p. 67.

[13] Ibid., p. 169; Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, XLIX, p. 234.

[14] Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of the
Rev. Lemuel Haynes, p. 170.

[15] Cooley, Sketches of the Life and Character of the
Rev. Lemuel Haynes, pp. 372-373.

THE ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY OF
CANADA
The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada was one of the forms in
which the abolition sentiment of the province of Upper
Canada made its contribution to the final settlement of the
great issue in the neighboring country. Though founded
comparatively late in the struggle, it was, after all, rather the
union of forces long active than the creation of some new
weapon to aid the battle. The men and women who
composed its membership were abolitionists long before the
society was founded. Its purpose was solely to bring united
effort to bear upon the great task and the great responsibility
that fell upon Canada when the passing of the Fugitive Slave
Bill drove the Negroes from the North into Canada by the
hundreds, if not by the thousands. With newcomers arriving
every day, destitute, friendless and more or less dazed by
the experiences through which they had passed, it was no
small task that these Canadian abolitionists had undertaken
to care for the fugitives, give them opportunities for education
and social advancement and enable them to show by their
own efforts that they were capable of becoming useful
citizens.

The society had its birth in Toronto in February, 1851. There
had been attempts before this to found such an organization
but they had come to nothing. By 1851, however, the
situation in the United States had changed and the effect had

at once shown itself in Canada, so that the time was ripe for
the bringing into one body of the various individuals who had
been showing themselves the friends of the slave. The
Society of Canada continued active right through the fifties
and early sixties, not resting until the aim for which it had
been founded had been accomplished. With the close of the
Civil War there was a large emigration of Negroes back to
their own land where their freedom had been bought in
blood, and the need of any large organization to look after
their welfare as a race gradually ceased. During its period of
active work, however, the society spread out from Toronto to
all the larger cities and towns where there was a Negro
population, and in both educational and relief work showed
itself an energetic body. Included in its active membership
were some of the best-known men in the province and as its
organ it had an outstanding newspaper, The Globe, of
Toronto.

The meeting held in Toronto was large and enthusiastic. The
Globe of Toronto of March 1, gives almost five columns to the
report of the proceedings. The mayor of the city acted as
chairman and the opening prayer was made by Rev. Dr.
Michael Willis, the principal of Knox Presbyterian Theological
College. A series of four resolutions were proposed and
endorsed. The first of these declared as a platform of the
society that "slavery is an outrage on the laws of humanity"
and that "its continued practice demands the best exertions
for its extinction." A second resolution, proposed by Dr. Willis,
declared the United States slave laws "at open variance with
the best interests of man, as endowed by our great creator
with the privilege of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
A third resolution expressed sympathy with the abolitionists

in the United States, while the fourth and concluding
resolution proposed the formation of the Anti-Slavery Society
of Canada. "The object," it declared, "shall be to aid in the
extinction of slavery all over the world by means exclusively
lawful and peaceable, moral and religious, such as by the
diffusing of useful information and argument, by tracts,
newspapers, lectures and correspondence, and by
manifesting sympathy with the houseless and homeless
victims of slavery flying to our soil."

Rev. Dr. Willis was chosen as the first president, an office
which he filled during the whole of the period of the struggle.
Rev. William McClure, a Methodist clergyman of the New
Connection branch, was named as secretary, with Andrew
Hamilton as treasurer and Captain Charles Stuart,
corresponding secretary. A large committee was also named
including, among others, George Brown, editor of The Globe,
and Oliver Mowat, later a premier of the province of Ontario.

The aims of the society, as set forth in the resolution of
organization, called for both educational and relief work. No
time was lost in beginning each of these. Within a month
after the founding of the society it was holding public
meetings, both in Toronto and elsewhere throughout the
province. The speakers included George Thompson, the
noted English abolitionist; Fred Douglass, the Negro orator,
and Rev. S. J. May, of Syracuse. Some hostility developed,
The Patriot charging George Thompson with being an
abolitionist for sordid motives, while The Leader called him a
"hireling." Thompson, defending himself, declared that if he
had sold his talents, as charged, he would not be found
fighting the slaves' battle but would be sitting by the side of

bloated prostitution in Washington." There were even some
clerical critics of the society and its work. The Church, a
denominational publication, took the ground that Canada was
not bound in any way to denounce "compulsory labor." It was
quite sufficient to welcome the slave when he came to
Canada. To this The Globe replied that it was "truly
melancholy to find men in the nineteenth century teaching
doctrines which are only fit for the darkest ages."[1]

All through these earlier years of the society's history the
public meetings were continued, much use being made of
men like Rev. S. R. Ward and Rev. J. W. Loguen, who had
known at first hand what slavery meant to their race. Rev. S.
R. Ward was appointed an agent of the society in 1851 and
traveled the province over, giving the facts with regard to
slavery to awaken Canadian sentiment against it and asking
aid and kindness for the fugitives then coming to the country
in large numbers. Mr. Ward was instrumental in forming
branches and auxiliaries of the society at a number of places
and has left on record his own impressions of the efforts that
were put forth on behalf of the refugees.[2]

The Globe, under Brown as editor, was a stout ally. Brown's
personal interest in the fugitives was marked. His private
generosity to the needy has been recorded by one of his
biographers but greater service was rendered through the
columns of his paper. He was outspoken in denunciation of
anything that savored of an alliance with slavery. Canada, he
believed, should stand four square against the whole system
of human bondage. "We, too, are Americans," he declared
on one occasion. "On us, as well as on them, lies the duty of

preserving the honor of the continent. On us, as on them,
rests the noble trust of shielding free institutions."[3]

Relief work in Toronto was looked after by a Ladies' Auxiliary,
this being the general practice wherever branches were
organized. The wives of the officers of the general or parent
society figured largely in the work at Toronto. During the first
year of the work in that city more than $900 was raised by
the Ladies' Auxiliary. The report for 1853-5 says: "During the
past inclement winter much suffering was alleviated and
many cases of extreme hardship prevented. Throughout the
year the committee continued to observe the practice of
appointing weekly visitors to examine into the truth of every
statement made by applicants for aid. In this way between
200 and 300 cases have been attended to, each receiving
more or less according to their circumstances."[4] A night
school opened in Toronto gave to the younger men and
women an opportunity to get a little education.

The Canadian Society, at an early date in its history, entered
into working relations with the anti-slavery societies of Great
Britain and the United States. At the first anniversary
meeting, held in March, 1852, a letter was presented from
Lewis Tappan, secretary of the American and Foreign Anti-
Slavery Society, enclosing a resolution of the executive of the
American society to the effect that the committee had heard
of the formation of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada at
Toronto with much satisfaction, and that they would be
pleased to maintain correspondence with this society and
unite their efforts for the promotion of the great cause of
human freedom on this continent and throughout the world.
At the same meeting there were read messages of greeting

from S. H. Gay, secretary of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, and from John Scoble, secretary of the British and
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.[5] At this first anniversary
meeting the society was able to report a change in public
sentiment toward its aims. At the start there had been
coldness and some prejudice but this had largely
disappeared and some who had formerly been hostile were
now supporters.

The colonization question was before the society in its early
period. In August, 1851, Toronto was visited by Rev. S.
Oughten, a Jamaican, and later by William Wemyss
Anderson, also of Jamaica. The question was also brought to
the attention of the government of the province and the
Governor-General asked the executive of the society to
tender its opinion of the plan. Their decision was altogether
unfavorable to colonization whether in Trinidad or Jamaica.
With regard to Trinidad their opinion was that slavery in a
modified form still existed there. Jamaica, they thought, had
nothing to attract the refugee more than Canada, and the
society was placed on record as approving the findings of the
Great North American convention of colored people, which
had met in Toronto the preceding September, to the effect
that western Canada was the most desirable place of resort
for colored people on the American continent, and that
colored people in the United States should emigrate to
Canada rather than to the West Indies or Africa, since in
Canada they would be better able to assist their brethren
flying from slavery. With regard to the American Colonization
Society the finding of the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society was
that its professions of promoting the abolition of slavery were
"altogether delusive." It had originated with slaveholders and

was protected by them to rid the country of free Negroes. "A
colonization and a bitter, pro-slavery man are almost
convertible terms," it was stated.[6]

The attitude taken by the church bodies in Canada towards
this new movement is of interest. In general there was not
much active support. George Brown brought forward a
resolution at the 1852 meeting, deploring the indifference of
some church bodies. Dr. Willis had been instrumental in
getting the Presbyterians in line, a strong stand having been
taken by the synod which declared by resolution that slavery
was "inhuman, unjust and dishonoring to the common
creator as it is replete with wrong to the subjects of such
oppression." A second resolution called upon churches
everywhere to testify against legislation which violated the
commands of God and declared that the synod must
condemn any alliance between religion and oppression, no
matter how the latter might be bolstered up by the use of
Scripture.

At the 1857 meeting the attitude of the churches was again
to the front. Dr. Willis thought it was time that every church
synod and conference in Canada should give up one day of
its sessions to prayer and humiliation over the presence of
human slavery so nearby. It was the duty of all the churches
to remonstrate on this question. Rev. Dr. Dick, who followed,
declared that the church was "the bulwark of the system."
There were churches in Canada which fraternized with those
in the United States that patronized slavery. He was equally
outspoken on the attitude of the Sons of Temperance in
deciding, against his protest, to shut out Negroes from its
membership. There were several protests at this 1857

meeting against some slight evidences of race prejudice.
Rev. Mr. Barrass said that, as the Negroes in Toronto set an
example to the whites in morality, there was the less reason
for any prejudice. Thomas Henning, the secretary of the
society, probably put the matter right when he pointed out
that talk of prejudice must not be understood as general.
Negroes were not excluded from the schools, and the laws
were administered to white and black alike. He drew
attention to the dismissal of a magistrate who had been
suspected of conniving at the return of a fugitive, as also to
the case of a member of Parliament who had sought to have
Negro immigration stopped and had been simply laughed at.

Necessity for action along industrial lines to provide suitable
employment for the fugitives was emphasized by the
Canadian Anti-Slavery Society and efforts were made to give
the black man a fair chance in his new home. The question
of cheap land for the immigrants was also kept to the front
with the idea of making the refugees more self-dependent
and preventing them from congregating in the cities and
towns. Some idea of the extent of the relief work being
carried on at this time may be gained from the statement
presented at the 1857 meeting which showed disbursements
of more than $2,200, a total of over 400 having been
relieved.

Reference has been made to the support given the society
by The Globe, of Toronto. For this George Brown was given
the credit but it must be said in justice that no small share of
the credit for The Globe's attitude should go to the lesser
known brother, Gordon Brown, who was regarded by many
as really more zealous for abolition than George Brown. This

was tested during the Civil War period when the turn of
sentiment against the North in Canada brought much
criticism upon The Globe. There was a disposition on the
part of George Brown to grow lukewarm in his support of the
North, but Gordon Brown never wavered and is said to have
threatened on one occasion to leave the paper if there were
any more signs of hauling down the colors. When the war
was over American citizens in Toronto presented Gordon
Brown with a gold watch suitably inscribed, an indication
possibly of the opinion of that day with regard to his services.

One duty of the American anti-slavery societies which fell but
lightly on the Canadian society was the watching of
legislation and the courts to see that the Negro obtained his
rights. It was rare indeed that anything of this kind called for
action in Canada, the only case of any importance that arose
being that of the Negro, Anderson, whose return to Missouri
was sought on a charge of killing his master in 1853. A slave
catcher from Missouri recognized him in Canada in 1860 and
had him arrested. The case was fought out in the courts,
twice going against the Negro and then being appealed to
the English Court of Queen's Bench, which granted a writ of
habeas corpus. Anderson was defended by Gerrit Smith and
the case attracted great attention throughout Canada. The
executive of the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society kept the case
well under observation and made its position quite clear by a
resolution declaring that principles of right and humanity
should prevail. In the end Anderson was acquitted.

The sentiment that was created in Canada by the friends of
the fugitive in the decade before the Civil War had its effect
when that struggle began. Sir John Macdonald, premier of

Canada, made careful investigation to find out how many
Canadians were in the northern armies and placed the
number at 40,000.[7] The spirit that animated the youth of the
North in this moral struggle was powerful in the minds of
many of these young Canadians. There was present in
Canada not a little of the feeling of responsibility for the
honor of the continent that George Brown voiced and both by
peaceful means and by the sword the people of the British-
American province to the North had their part in striking off
the shackles from the slave in the South.

Fred Landon.

Public Librarian,
London, Canada

Footnotes:
[1] The Globe, April 1, 1851.

[2] Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Slave.

[3] Lewis, George Brown, p. 114.

[4] Drew, North Side View of Slavery, p. 328.

[5] Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, First Annual
Report, p. 10.

[6] First Annual Report, pp. 12-13.

[7] Letters of Goldwin Smith, p. 377.

DOCUMENTS
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND FREEDOM

Of the fathers of the republic who first saw the evils of
slavery, none made a more forceful argument against the
institution than Benjamin Franklin. A man of lowly estate
himself, he could not sympathize with the man who felt that
his bread should be wrung from the sweat of another's brow.
Desiring to see the institution abolished, Franklin early
connected himself with the anti-slavery forces of
Pennsylvania and maintained this attitude of antagonism
toward it until his death. His printing press was placed at the
disposal of the pamphleteers who by their method
endeavored to influence public opinion, and as a means of
effecting the liberation of the blacks he cooperated with
others in educating them as a preparation for citizenship.

His first effort to promote the education of the Negroes was
the assistance he gave the work established by Dr. Thomas
Bray, who passed a large part of his life in performing deeds
of benevolence and charity. This philanthropist became
acquainted at the Hague with M. D'Allone, who approved and
promoted his schemes. M. D'Allone, during his lifetime, gave
to Dr. Bray a considerable sum of money, which was to be
applied to the conversion of Negroes in America. At his death
he left an additional sum of nine hundred pounds for the
same object. Dr. Bray formed an association for the
management and proper disposal of these funds. He died in

1730, and the same trust continued to be executed by a
company of gentlemen, called "Dr. Bray's Associates."
Franklin was for several years one of these workers.

Writing about this work, he said to a friend:
I have not yet seen Mr. Beatty, nor do I know where to write to
him. He forwarded your letter to me from Ireland. The paragraph
of your letter, inserted in the papers, related to the negro school.
I gave it to the gentlemen concerned, as it was a testimony in
favor of their pious design. But I did not expect they would print
it with your name. They have since chosen me one of the
Society, and I am at present chairman for the current year. I
enclose you an account of their proceedings.[1]

Franklin's argument against slavery was economic as well as
moral. He said:

It is an ill-grounded opinion that, by the labor of slaves, America
may possibly vie in cheapness of manufactures with Britain. The
labor of slaves can never be so cheap here as the labor of
working men is in Britain. Any one may compute it. Interest of
money is in the colonies from six to ten per cent. Slaves, one
with another, cost thirty pounds sterling per head. Reckon then
the interest of the first purchase of a slave, the insurance or risk
on his life, his clothing and diet, expenses in his sickness and
loss of time, loss by his neglect of business (neglect is natural to
the man who is not to be benefited by his own care or diligence),
expense of a driver to keep him at work, and his pilfering from
time to time, almost every slave being by nature a thief, and
compare the whole amount with the wages of a manufacturer of
iron or wool in England, you will see that labor is much cheaper
there than it ever can be by Negroes here. Why then will
Americans purchase slaves? Because slaves may be kept as
long as a man pleases, or has occasion for their labor; while

hired men are continually leaving their masters (often in the
midst of his business and setting up for themselves).[2]

The Negroes brought into the English sugar islands have greatly
diminished the whites there; the poor are, by this means,
deprived of employment, while a few families acquire vast
estates, which they spend on foreign luxuries, and educating
their children in the habit of those luxuries; the same income is
needed for the support of one that might have maintained one
hundred. The whites who have slaves, not laboring, are
enfeebled, and therefore not so generally prolific; the slaves
being worked too hard, and ill fed, their constitutions are broken
and the deaths among them are more than the births; so that a
continual supply is needed from Africa. The northern colonies,
having few slaves, increase in whites. Slaves also pejorate the
families that use them; the white children become proud,
disgusted with labor, and, being educated in idleness, are
rendered unfit to get a living by industry.[3]

As the following letter indicates, Franklin was in close touch
with one of the most ardent anti-slavery men of his day,
Anthony Benezet, whose pamphlets he often published:

London, 22 August, 1772.

Dear Friend,

I made a little extract from yours of April 27th, of the number of
slaves imported and perishing, with some close remarks on the
hypocrisy of this country, which encourages such a detestable
commerce by laws for promoting the Guinea trade; while it
piqued itself on its virtue, love of liberty, and the equity of its
courts, in setting free a single Negro. This was inserted in the
London Chronicle, of the 20th of June last.

I thank you for the Virginia address, which I shall also publish
with some remarks. I am glad to hear that the disposition
against keeping Negroes grows more general in North America.
Several pieces have been lately printed here against the
practice, and I hope in time it will be taken into consideration
and suppressed by the legislature. Your labors have already
been attended with great effects. I hope, therefore, you and your
friends will be encouraged to proceed. My hearty wishes of
success attend you, being ever, my dear friend, yours
affectionately,

B. Franklin.[4]

The same sentiments of Franklin are expressed in the
following letter to Dean Woodward in 1773:

London, 10 April, 1773.

Reverend Sir,

Desirous of being revived in your memory, I take this
opportunity, by my good friend Mrs. Blacker, of sending you a
printed piece, and a manuscript, both on a subject you and I
frequently conversed upon with concurring sentiments, when I
had the pleasure of seeing you in Dublin. I have since had the
satisfaction to learn, that a disposition to abolish slavery prevails
in North America, that many of the Pennsylvanians have set
their slaves at liberty, and that even the Virginia Assembly have
petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing
the importation of more into that colony. This request, however,
will probably not be granted, as their former laws of that kind
have always been repealed, and as the interest of a few
merchants here has more weight with government than that of
thousands at a distance.[5]

The following letter from Richard Price attests Franklin's
interest and efforts in behalf of the slaves:

Hackney, 26 September, 1787.

My dear Friend,

I am very happy when I think of the encouragement which you
have given me to address you under this appellation. Your
friendship I reckon indeed one of the distinctions of my life. I
frequently receive great pleasure from the accounts of you,
which Dr. Rush and Mr. Vaughan send me. But I receive much
greater pleasure from seeing your own hand.

I have lately been favored with two letters, which have given me
this pleasure, the last of which acquaints me, that my name has
been added to the number of the corresponding members of the
Pennsylvania Society for Abolishing Negro Slavery, of which you
are president, and also brought me a pamphlet containing the
constitution and the laws of Pennsylvania, which relate to the
object of the Society. I hope that you and the Society will accept
my thanks, and believe that I am truly sensible of the honor
done me. As for any services I can do, they are indeed but
small; for I find, that, far from possessing, in the decline of life,
your vigor of body and mind, every kind of business is becoming
more and more an incumbrance to me. At the same time, the
calls of business increase upon me, as you will learn in some
measure from the Report at the end of the Discourse, which you
will receive with this letter.

A similar institution to yours, for abolishing Negro slavery, is just
formed in London, and I have been desired to make one of the
acting committee, but I have begged to be excused. I have sent
you some of their papers. I need not say how earnestly I wish
success to such institutions. Something, perhaps, will be done

with this view by the convention of delegates. This convention,
consisting of many of the first men, in respect of wisdom and
influence, in the United States, must be a most august and
venerable assembly. May God guide their deliberations. The
happiness of the world depends, in some degree, on the result. I
am waiting with patience for an account of it.[6]

At the instigation of Franklin, the Pennsylvania Society for
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free
Negroes Unlawfully held in Bondage[7] published this
address:
It is with peculiar satisfaction we assure the friends of humanity,
that, in prosecuting the design of our association, our
endeavours have proved successful, far beyond our most
sanguine expectations.

Encouraged by this success, and by the daily progress of that
luminous and benign spirit of liberty, which is diffusing itself
throughout the world, and humbly hoping for the continuance of
the divine blessing on our labors, we have ventured to make an
important addition to our original plan, and do therefore
earnestly solicit the support and assistance of all who can feel
the tender emotions of sympathy and compassion or relish the
exalted pleasure of beneficence.

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that
its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may
sometimes open a source of serious evils.

The unhappy man, who has long been treated as a brute
animal, too frequently sinks beneath the common standard of
the human species. The galling chains, that bind his body, do
also fetter his intellectual faculties, and impair the social
affections of his heart. Accustomed to move like a mere
machine, by the will of a master, reflection is suspended; he has

not the power of choice; and reason and conscience have but
little influence over his conduct, because he is chiefly governed
by the passion of fear. He is poor and friendless; perhaps worn
out by extreme labor, age, and disease.

Under such circumstances, freedom may often prove a
misfortune to himself, and prejudicial to society.

Attention to emancipated black people, it is therefore to be
hoped, will become a branch of our national policy; but, as far as
we contribute to promote this emancipation, so far that attention
is evidently a serious duty incumbent on us, and which we mean
to discharge to the best of our judgment and abilities.

To instruct, to advise, to qualify those, who have been restored
to freedom, for the exercise and enjoyment of civil liberty, to
promote in them habits of industry, to furnish them with
employments suited to their age, sex, talents, and other
circumstances, and to procure their children an education
calculated for their future situation in life; these are the great
outlines of the annexed plan, which we have adopted, and
which we conceive will essentially promote the public good, and
the happiness of these our hitherto too much neglected fellow-
creatures.

A plan so extensive cannot be carried into execution without
considerable pecuniary resources, beyond the present ordinary
funds of the Society. We hope much from the generosity of
enlightened and benevolent freemen, and will gratefully receive
any donations or subscriptions for this purpose, which may be
made to our treasurer, James Starr, or to James Pemberton,
chairman of our committee of correspondence.

Signed, by order of the Society,

B. Franklin, President.

Philadelphia, 9th of November, 1789.

Writing to John Wright in London in 1789, Franklin showed
that he never neglected the movement to abolish the slave
trade:

Philadelphia, 4 November, 1789.

I wish success to your endeavours for obtaining an abolition of
the Slave Trade. The epistle from your Yearly Meeting, for the
year 1768, was not the first sowing of the good seed you
mention; for I find by an old pamphlet in my possession, that
George Keith, near a hundred years since, wrote a paper
against the practice, said to be "given forth by the appointment
of the meeting held by him, at Phillip James's house, in the city
of Philadelphia, about the year 1693"; wherein a strict charge
was given to Friends, "that they should set their Negroes at
liberty, after some reasonable time of service, &c., &c." And
about the year 1728, or 1729, I myself printed a book for Ralph
Sandyford, another of your Friends in this city, against keeping
Negroes in slavery, two editions of which he distributed gratis.
And about the year 1736 I printed another book on the same
subject for Benjamin Lay, who also professed being one of your
Friends, and he distributed the books chiefly among them. By
these instances it appears, that the seed was indeed sown in
the good ground of your profession, though much earlier than
the time you mention, and its springing up to effect at last,
though so late, is some confirmation of Lord Bacon's
observation, that a good motion never dies; and it may
encourage us in making such, though hopeless of their taking
immediate effect.[8]

Footnotes:

[1] The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Correspondence,
VII, pp. 201-202.

[2] Ibid., II, p. 314.

[3] The Works of Benjamin Franklin, II, p. 316.

[4] Ibid., VIII, pp. 16-17.

[5] Works of Benjamin Franklin, VIII, p. 42.

[6] Works of Benjamin Franklin, X, p. 320.

[7] Ibid., II, p. 515.

[8] Works of Benjamin Franklin, X, p. 403.

ON THE SLAVE TRADE

"Dr. Franklin's name, as President of the Abolition Society,
was signed to the memorial presented to the House of
Representatives of the United States, on the 12th of
February, 1789, praying them to exert the full extent of power
vested in them by the Constitution, in discouraging the traffic
of the human species. This was his last public act. In the
debates to which this memorial gave rise, several attempts
were made to justify the trade. In the Federal Gazette of
March 25th, 1790, there appeared an essay, signed
Historicus, written by Dr. Franklin, in which he communicated
a Speech, said to have been delivered in the Divan of
Algiers, in 1687, in opposition to the prayer of the petition of
a sect called Erika, or Purists, for the abolition of piracy and
slavery. This pretended African speech was an excellent
parody of one delivered by Mr. Jackson, of Georgia. All the

arguments urged in favor of Negro slavery are applied with
equal force to justify the plundering and enslaving of
Europeans. It affords, at the same time, a demonstration of
the futility of the arguments in defense of the slave-trade, and
of the strength of mind and ingenuity of the author, at his
advanced period of life. It furnishes, too, a no less convincing
proof of his power of imitating the style of other times and
nations, than his celebrated Parable against Persecution.
And as the latter led many persons to search the Scriptures
with a view to find it, so the former caused many persons to
search the bookstores and libraries for the work from which it
was said to be extracted."—Dr. Stuber.

To the Editor of the Federal Gazette.[1]

March 23d, 1790.

Sir,

Reading last night in your excellent paper the speech of Mr.
Jackson in Congress against their meddling with the affair of
slavery, or attempting to mend the condition of the slaves, it put
me in mind of a similar one made about one hundred years
since by Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of
Algiers, which may be seen in Martin's Account of his
Consulship, anno 1687. It was against granting the petition of
the sect called Erika, or Purists, who prayed for the abolition of
piracy and slavery as being unjust. Mr. Jackson does not quote
it; perhaps he has not seen it. If, therefore, some of its
reasonings are to be found in his eloquent speech, it may only
show that men's interests and intellects operate and are
operated on with surprising similarity in all countries and

climates, whenever they are under similar circumstances. The
African's speech, as translated, is as follows:

"Allah Bismillah, &c. God is great, and Mahomet is his Prophet.

"Have these Erika considered the consequences of granting
their petition? If we cease our cruises against the Christians,
how shall we be furnished with the commodities their countries
produce, and which are so necessary for us? If we forbear to
make slaves of their people, who in this hot climate are to
cultivate our lands? Who are to perform the common labors of
our city, and in our families? Must we not then be our own
slaves? And is there not more compassion and more favor due
to us as Mussulmen, than to these Christian dogs? We have
now above fifty thousand slaves in and near Algiers. This
number, if not kept up by fresh supplies, will soon diminish, and
be gradually annihilated. If we then cease taking and plundering
the infidel ships, and making slaves of the seamen and
passengers, our lands will become of no value for want of
cultivation; the rents of houses in the city will sink one half; and
the revenue of government arising from its share of prizes be
totally destroyed! And for what? To gratify the whims of a
whimsical sect, who would have us, not only forbear making
more slaves, but even manumit those we have.[2]

"But who is to indemnify their masters for the loss! Will the state
do it? Is our treasury sufficient? Will the Erika do it? Can they do
it? Or would they, to do what they think justice to the slaves, do
a greater injustice to the owners? And if we set our slaves free,
what is to be done with them? Few of them will return to their
countries; they know too well the greater hardships they must
there be subject to; they will not embrace our holy religion; they
will not adopt our manners; our people will not pollute
themselves by intermarrying with them. Must we maintain them
as beggars in our streets, or suffer our properties to be the prey
of their pillage? For men accustomed to slavery will not work for

a livelihood when not compelled. And what is there so pitiable in
their present condition? Were they not slaves in their own
countries?

"Are not Spain, Portugal, France, and the Italian states
governed by despots, who hold all their subjects in slavery,
without exception? Even England treats its sailors as slaves; for
they are, whenever the government pleases, seized, and
confined in ships of war, condemned not only to work, but to
fight, for small wages, or a mere subsistence, not better than our
slaves are allowed by us. Is their condition then made worse by
their falling into our hands? No; they have only exchanged one
slavery for another and I may say a better; for here they are
brought into a land where the sun of Islamism gives forth its
light, and shines in full splendor, and they have an opportunity of
making themselves acquainted with the true doctrine, and
thereby saving their immortal souls. Those who remain at home
have not that happiness. Sending the slaves home then would
be sending them out of light into darkness.[3]

"I repeat the question, What is to be done with them? I have
heard it suggested, that they may be planted in the wilderness,
where there is plenty of land for them to subsist on, and where
they may flourish as a free state; but they are, I doubt, too little
disposed to labor without compulsion, as well as too ignorant to
establish a good government, and the wild Arabs would soon
molest and destroy or again enslave them. While serving us, we
take care to provide them with everything, and they are treated
with humanity. The laborers in their own country are, as I am
well informed, worse fed, lodged, and clothed. The condition of
most of them is therefore already mended, and requires no
further improvement. Here their lives are in safety. They are not
liable to be impressed for soldiers, and forced to cut one
another's Christian throats, as in the wars of their own countries.
If some of the religious mad bigots, who now tease us with their
silly petitions, have in a fit of blind zeal freed their slaves, it was

not generosity, it was not humanity, that moved them to the
action; it was from the conscious burthen of a load of sins, and a
hope, from the supposed merits of so good a work, to be
excused from damnation.[4]

"How grossly are they mistaken to suppose slavery to be
disallowed by the Alcoran! Are not the two precepts, to quote no
more, 'Masters, treat your slaves with kindness; Slaves, serve
your masters with cheerfulness and fidelity,' clear proofs to the
contrary? Nor can the plundering of infidels be in that sacred
book forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given
the world, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who
are to enjoy it of right as fast as they conquer it. Let us then hear
no more of this detestable proposition, the manumission of
Christian slaves, the adoption of which would, by depreciating
our lands, and houses, and thereby depriving so many good
citizens of their properties, create universal discontent, and
provoke insurrections, to the endangering of government and
producing general confusion. I have therefore no doubt, but this
wise council will prefer the comfort and happiness of a whole
nation of true believers to the whim of a few Erika, and dismiss
their petition."

The result was, as Martin tells us, that the Divan came to this
resolution: "The doctrine, that plundering and enslaving the
Christians is unjust, is at best problematical; but that it is the
interest of this state to continue the practice, is clear; therefore
let the petition be rejected."

And it was rejected accordingly.

And since like motives are apt to produce in the minds of men
like opinions and resolutions, may we not, Mr. Brown, venture to
predict, from this account, that the petitions to the Parliament of
England for abolishing the slave-trade, to say nothing of other

legislatures, and the debates upon them, will have a similar
conclusion? I am, Sir, your constant reader and humble servant,

Historicus.[5]

Footnotes:
[1] The Works of Benjamin Franklin, II, p. 517.

[2] Ibid., II, pp. 518-519.

[3] The Works of Benjamin Franklin, II, pp. 519-520.

[4] The Works of Benjamin Franklin, II, pp. 520-521.

[5] Ibid., II, p. 521.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF A MISSISSIPPI
MIGRATION CONVENTION IN 1879[1]
The convention of the planters of the Mississippi Valley, which
has attracted the attention of the entire county, ever since the
call for its assembly was published, met in this city, this morning.
Delegates from all sections of the country are present and more
are expected. The original intention was to hold the meeting of
the convention in the Operahouse, but owing to the large crowd
present, and the warm weather, the place of meeting was
changed to the Concert Garden.

At half past twelve Judge Farrar called the meeting to order, and
requested Gen. W. R. Miles to act as temporary chairman. On
taking the chair the General delivered a short address and then
announced that the convention would proceed to permanent
organization.

A committee of twenty on permanent organization was
appointed.

While the committee was out the convention was addressed by
Judge H. Simrall, of Mississippi, and Hon. Henry S. Foote, of
Louisiana.

The following gentlemen were elected permanent officers of the
convention:

President—Gen. W. R. Miles, of Yazoo county.

Vice-presidents—T. F. Cassell, of Tennessee; James Hill, of
Jackson, Mississippi; H. B. Robinson, of Arkansas; David
Young, of Louisiana.

Secretary—A. W. Crandall, Louisiana.

Assistant Secretaries—Jno. A. Galbreth, Jackson; J. D.
Webster, Washington county.

Sergeant at Arms—J. B. Pegram, Vicksburg.

Assistant sergeant at Arms—J. W. Crichloy, Vicksburg; George
Volker, Vicksburg; G. W. Walton, Vicksburg; Wesley Crayton,
Vicksburg.

After appointing a committee on credentials, the convention took
a recess until three o'clock.

Second Day

The convention was called to order by the president at half past
nine.

Col. W. L. Nugent, chairman of the committee, presented the
following preamble and resolutions:

Mr. President. Your committee on resolutions beg leave
respectfully to report that they have inquired into the causes
which have given rise to the recent exodus of our colored
population, as far as possible within the limited time allowed,
and while these causes are difficult to ascertain, owing to the
exceptional cases of all kinds brought to their attention, they
believe the following to include those which may be considered
prominent:

1st. The low price of cotton and the partial failure of the crop of
the past year.

2d. The irrational system of planting adopted in some sections,
whereby labor was deprived of intelligence to direct it, and the
presence of economy to make it profitable.

3d. The vicious system of credit fostered by laws permitting
laborers and tenants to mortgage crops before they were grown
or even planted.

4th. The apprehension on the part of many colored people,
produced by insidious reports circulated among them, that their
civil and political rights are endangered, or are likely to be.

5th. The hurtful and false rumors, diligently disseminated, that
by emigrating to Kansas, the colored people would obtain lands,
mules and money from the government without cost to
themselves, and become independent forever.

It is a matter of astonishment to your committees that the
colored people could be induced to credit the idle stories
circulated of a promised land, where their wants would be
supplied, and their independence secured, without exertion on
their part. It was going to the extent of ignorance and credulity to
credit them; and yet evidences of an undoubted character was
furnished your committee as to this matter. It is one of the
factors in a movement the end of which we cannot now

forecaste. There are in the State of Mississippi alone five million
five hundred thousand acres of land belonging to the United
States now subject to homestead entries. Any thrifty colored
man in the South can pre-empt one hundred and sixty acres of
this land at the moderate cost of about eighteen dollars. Lands
in Kansas cannot be acquired for less. In no part of the civilized
world can unskilled labor secure a larger return, by honest toil,
than among us, but idleness accompanied by extravagance
produces suffering and want here as elsewhere.

Your committee believes that the legislation of our States should
be shaped so as to foster habits of industry among the colored
people, elevate the standard of social morals, and improve and
preserve our common school system.

Diverse views have been expressed by parties equally desirous
of reaching the same conclusion: To ascertain grievances and
apply as far as it can be done by us, the proper redress. If the
single purpose of all was to accomplish this result, without the
influences which our past experiences have engendered to
expect it, this might be done; but it can only be done with full
knowledge of all the facts. That errors have been committed by
the whites and blacks alike as each in turn have controlled the
government of the States here represented, may be safely
admitted. Disregarding the past, burying its dead with it,
standing upon the living present, and looking hopefully to the
future which is before us, your committee think their duty
accomplished when they have adopted and reported these
resolutions:

Resolved, That the interests of planters and laborers, landlords
and tenants are identical; and that they must prosper or suffer
together; and that it is the duty of the planters and landlords of
the States here represented to devise and adopt some contract
system with laborers and tenants by which both parties will

receive the full benefit of labor governed by intelligence and
economy.

Resolved, That this convention does affirm that the colored race
has been placed by the constitution of the United States and the
States here represented, of the laws thereof, on a plane of
absolute legal equality with the white race; and does declare
that the colored race shall be accorded the practical enjoyment
of all rights, civil and political, guaranteed by the said
constitution and laws.

Resolved, That, to this end, the members of this convention
pledge themselves to use whatever of power and influence they
possess, to protect the colored race against all dangers in
respect to the fair expression of their wills at the polls, which
they may apprehend may result from fraud, intimidation or "bull
dozing," on the part of the whites. And as there can be no liberty
of action without freedom of thought, they demand that all
elections shall be fair and free and that no repressive measure
shall be employed by the colored people to deprive their own
race of any part of the fullest freedom in the exercise of the
highest right of citizenship.

Resolved, That the unrestricted credit system pervading the
States here represented, based upon liens and mortgages on
stock and crops to be grown in the future, followed by a failure
of that crop, has provoked distrust, created unrest, and
disturbed their entire laboring population. All laws authorizing
liens on crops for advances constituted on articles other than
those of prime necessity at moderate profits, where such
advances are made by landlords, planters or merchants, should
be discontinued and repealed.

Resolved, That this convention call upon the colored people
here represented to contradict the false reports circulated
among and impressed upon the more ignorant and credulous; to

instruct them that no lands nor mules nor money await them in
Kansas or elsewhere without labor or price and to report to the
civil authorities all persons engaging in disseminating any such
reports.

Resolved, That it is the constitutional right of the colored people
to migrate where they please, and to whatever State they may
select for their residence; but this convention urges them to
proceed on their movement towards migration as reasonable
human beings, providing in advance, by economy and effective
labor, the means for transportation and settlement, and sustain
their reputation for honesty and fair dealing, by preserving intact
until completion the contracts for labor and leasing, which they
have made. If, when they have done this, they still desire to
leave, all obstacles to their departure be removed; all
practicable assistance will be afforded to them, and their places
will be supplied with other and contented labor.

Your committee believe that if the views employed in the
foregoing resolutions are practically carried out by the people of
both races, in good faith, the disquiet of our people will subside.
We appeal to the people of both races, in the States here
represented, to aid us in carrying these resolutions into effect,
and to report to the authorities all violations of the laws and all
interference with private rights.

W. L. Nugent,
Chairman.

Gov. Foote moved to amend by substituting other resolutions,
and addressed the convention in support of his motion.

Speeches were made in favor of the original resolutions by
Judge Simrall, Hon. James Hill, Capt. W. B. Pittman, Mr.
Robinson, of Arkansas, and Col. Nugent.

At the conclusion of Col. Nugent's address the resolutions were
adopted unanimously and the convention adjourned sine die.

Footnotes:
[1] These proceedings appeared in The Vicksburg
Commercial Daily Advertiser, May 5, 1879.

HOW THE NEGROES WERE DUPED[1]
Washington Letter to New York Herald.

Gorgeously illuminated chromo-lithographs of Kansas scenes
have been distributed among the blacks. The gentleman who
has seen some of these chromos writes that the most ravishing
presentment of rural life in Kansas is depicted. The Negroes
look on the State as a second paradise, compared with which
old Canaan is a Florida swamp. One of these pictures, entitled
"A Freedman's Home," represents a fine landscape, with fields
of ripening grain stretching away to the setting sun.

In the foreground, illuminated by a marvelous sunset, stood the
freedman's home. It was a picturesque cottage with gables,
dormer windows and wide verandas. French windows reached
down to the floor, and through the open casements appeared a
seductive scene in the family sitting room. The colored father,
who had just returned from his harvest fields, sat in an easy
chair reading a newspaper, while the children and babies
rollicked on the floor of the piazza. Through the open door of the
kitchen the colored wife could be seen directing the servants
and cooks who were preparing the evening meal. In the parlor,
however, was the most enchanting feature, for at a grand piano
was poised the belle of the household, and beside the piano
where she was playing stood her colored lover, devouring her
with his eyes while he abstractedly turned the leaves of her
music. Just to one side of the dwelling appeared a commodious

barn and carriage house and workmen busily engaged in putting
in order their reapers and mowers for the following day.

In one of these pictures, "Old Auntie" sits on the veranda knitting
stockings while she gazes on herds of buffalo and antelope,
which are feeding on the prairies beyond the wheat fields.
Approaching the gate a handsome colored man is seen coming
in from the hunt, with a dead buck and a string of wild turkeys
slung over his shoulders. These agricultural cartoons, in vivid
coloring, the writer reports are doing much to influence the
minds of the more ignorant Negroes.

Footnotes:
[1] This appeared in The Vicksburg Commercial Daily
Advertiser, May 6, 1879.

REMARKS ON THIS EXODUS BY
FREDERICK DOUGLASS[1]

Washington, May 6.

Fred. Douglass, marshal of the District, is out in a very strong
letter, published in the National View, the new Greenback organ
here, vigorously opposing the emigration of Negroes from the
South. He earnestly advises the colored men to remain at home.

The letter has caused a good deal of annoyance among the
leading Republicans, who have been vigorously working up this
movement, believing that it was a godsend to them and would
be a strong issue in future campaigns.

Fred. Douglass winds up his letter as follows:

"I am opposed to this exodus, because it is an untimely
concession to the idea that white people and colored people
cannot live together in peace and prosperity unless the whites
are a majority and control the legislation and hold the offices of
the State. I am opposed to this exodus, because it will pour
upon the people of Kansas and other Northern States a
multitude of deluded, hungry, homeless people to be supported
in a large measure by alms. I am opposed to this exodus,
because it will enable our political adversaries to make
successful appeals to popular prejudice (as in the case of the
Chinese) on the ground that these people, so ignorant and
helpless, have been imported for the purpose of making the
North solid by outvoting intelligent white Northern citizens. I am
opposed to this exodus, because 'rolling stones gather no
moss;' and I agree with Emerson that the men who made Rome
or any other locality worth going to see stayed there. There is, in
my judgment, no part of the United States where an industrious
and intelligent man can serve his race more wisely and
efficiently than upon the soil where he was born and reared and
is known. I am opposed to this exodus because I see in it a
tendency to convert colored laboring men into traveling tramps,
first going North because they are persecuted, and then
returning South because they have been deceived in their
expectations, which will excite against themselves and against
our whole race an increasing measure of popular contempt and
scorn. I am opposed to this exodus because I believe that the
conditions of existence in the Southern States are steadily
improving, and that the colored man there will ultimately realize
the fullest measure of liberty and equality accorded and secured
in any section of our common country.

Footnotes:
[1] This appeared in The Vicksburg Commercial Daily
Advertiser, May 7, 1879.

THE SENATE REPORT ON THE EXODUS OF
1879

Hearing of the commotion among the Negroes in Louisiana
and Mississippi in 1879, Senator D. W. Voorhees, of Indiana,
offered the following resolution which was accepted:
Whereas, large numbers of Negroes from the Southern States,
and especially from the State of North Carolina, are migrating to
the Northern States, and especially to the State of Indiana; and,

Whereas, it is currently alleged that they are induced to do so by
the unjust and cruel conduct of their white fellow citizens toward
them in the South; therefore,

Be it Resolved, That a committee of five members of this body
be appointed by its presiding officer, whose duty it shall be to
investigate the causes which have led to the aforesaid
migration, and to report the same to the Senate; and said
committee shall have power to send for persons and papers,
compelling the defense of witnesses, and to sit at any time.[1]

Thereupon Senator William Windom, of Minnesota, offered
the following amendment which led to the discussion of all
sorts of phases of the race problem and finally to a majority
and minority report on the exodus:[2]
And Be it Therefore Resolved, That in case said committee shall
find that said migration of colored people from the South has
been caused by cruel and unjust treatment or by the denial or
abridgement of personal or political rights, have so far inquired
and reported to the Senate, first; what, if any, action of Congress
may be necessary to secure to every citizen of the United States
the full and free enjoyment of all rights guaranteed by the

constitution; second; where the peaceful adjustment of the
colored race of all sectional issues may not be best secured by
the distribution of the colored race through their partial migration
from those States and congressional districts where, by reason
of their numerical majority, they are not allowed to freely and
peacefully exercise the rights of citizenship; and third; that said
committee shall inquire and report as to the expediency and
practicability of providing such territory or territories as may be
necessary for the use and occupation of persons who may
desire to migrate from their present homes in order to secure
the free, full, and peaceful enjoyment of their constitutional
rights and privileges.[2a]

Report

The Select Committee, appointed by the Senate to investigate
the causes which have led to the migration of the Negroes from
the Southern States to the Northern States, having duly
considered the same, beg leave to submit the following report:[3]

On the 18th day of December, 1879, the Senate passed the
following resolution:

Whereas, large numbers of Negroes from the Southern States
are emigrating to the Northern States; and,

Whereas, it is currently alleged that they are induced to do so by
the unjust and cruel conduct of their white fellow-citizens
towards them in the South, and by the denial or abridgement of
their personal and political rights and privileges; therefore,

Be it Resolved, That a committee of five members of this body
be appointed by its presiding officer, whose duty it shall be to
investigate the causes which have led to the aforesaid
emigration, and to report the same to the Senate; and said
committee shall have power to send for persons and papers,
and to sit at any time.

In obedience to this resolution the committee proceeded to take
testimony on the 19th day of January, and continuing from time
to time until 153 witnesses had been examined, embracing
persons from the States of North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, and Indiana.
Much of this testimony is of such a character as would not be
received in a court of justice, being hearsay, the opinions of
witnesses, &c., but we received it with a view to ascertaining, if
possible, the real state of facts in regard to the condition of the
Southern colored people, their opinions and feelings, and the
feelings and opinions of their white neighbors. We think it clearly
established from the testimony that the following may be said to
be the causes which have induced this migration of the colored
people from various portions of the South to Northern States,
chiefly to Kansas, and Indiana: That from North Carolina, the
State to which we first directed our attention, was undoubtedly
induced in a great degree by Northern politicians, and by Negro
leaders in their employ, and in the employ of railroad lines.

Examining particularly into the condition of the colored men in
that State, it was disclosed by the testimony of whites and
blacks, Republicans and Democrats, that the causes of
discontent among those people could not have arisen from any
deprivation of their political rights or any hardship in their
condition. A minute examination into their situation shows that
the average rate of wages, according to the age and strength of
the hand for field labor, was from eight to fifteen dollars per
month, including board and house to live in, garden and truck
patches, around the house, fire-wood, and certain other
privileges, all rent free.

These, added to the extra labor which could be earned by hands
during the season of gathering turpentine and resin, or of
picking cotton made the general average of compensation for
labor in that State quite equal to if not better than in any
Northern State to which these people were going, to say nothing

of the climate of North Carolina, which was infinitely better
adapted to them.

The closest scrutiny could detect no outrage or violence inflicted
upon their political rights in North Carolina for many years past.
They all testified that they voted freely; that their votes were
counted fairly; that no improper influence whatsoever was
exerted over them; and many were acquiring real estate, and
were enjoying the same privileges of education for their children,
precisely, that the whites were enjoying.

It was also disclosed by the testimony that there existed aid
societies in the city of Washington, in the city of Topeka, Kans.,
Indianapolis, and elsewhere throughout the West, whose
avowed object was to furnish aid to colored men migrating to the
West and North; and notwithstanding that the agents and
members of these societies generally disclaimed that it was their
intention to induce any colored men to leave their homes, but
only to aid in taking care of them after they had arrived, yet it
was established undeniably, not only that the effect of these
societies and of the aid extended by them operated to cause the
exodus originally, but that they stimulated it directly by
publishing and distributing among the colored men circulars
artfully designed and calculated to stir up discontent. Every
single member, agent, friend, or sympathizer with these
societies and their purposes were ascertained to belong to the
Republican party, and generally to be active members thereof.
Some of the circulars contained the grossest misrepresentation
of facts, and in almost all cases the immigrants expected large
aid from the government of clothes, or land, or money or free
transportation, or something of that kind. Hundreds of them, on
given days at various points in the South, crowded to the depots
or to the steamboat landings upon a rumor that free
transportation was to be furnished to all who would go. It was
also disclosed by the testimony on the part of some very candid
and intelligent witnesses that their object in promoting this

exodus of the colored people was purely political. They thought
it would be well to remove a sufficient number of blacks from the
South, where their votes could not be made to tell, into close
States in the North, and thus turn the scale in favor of the
Republican party.

Wages, rents, method of cropping on shares, &c., were inquired
into in all of the Southern States mentioned, and the fact
ascertained that the aggregate was about the same as in North
Carolina. In most of the Southern States, where wages were
higher than in North Carolina, expenses were also higher, so
that the aggregate, as before stated, was about the same.

One cause of complaint alleged as a reason for this exodus of
the colored people from the South was their mistreatment in the
courts of justice. Directing our attention to this the committee
have ascertained that in many of the districts of the South the
courts were under entire Republican control—judges,
prosecuting attorneys, sheriffs, &c., and that there were
generally as many complaints from districts thus controlled as
there were from districts which were under the control of the
Democratic officials; and that the whole of the complaints taken
together might be said to be such as are generally made by the
ignorant who fail to receive in courts what they think is justice.

Your committee found no State or county in the South, into
which this investigation extended, where colored men were
excluded from juries either in theory or in practice; they found no
county or district in the South where they were excluded, either
in theory or practice, from their share in the management of
county affairs and of the control of county government. On the
contrary, whenever their votes were in a majority we found that
the officers were most generally divided among the black
people, or among white people of their choice. Frequently we
found the schools to be controlled by them, especially that
portion of the school fund which was allotted to their race, and

the complaints which had been so often made of excessive
punishment of the blacks by the courts as compared with the
whites upon investigation in nearly all cases, proved to be either
unfounded in fact or that if there was an apparent excess of
punishment of a black man the cause was ascertained to be in
the nature of the crime with which he was charged, or the
attendant circumstances.

The educational advantages in the South, the committee regret
to say, were found to be insufficient, and far inferior to those of
most of the States of the North, but such as they were we found
in every case that the blacks had precisely the same
advantages that the whites enjoyed; that the school fund was
divided among them according to numbers; that their teachers
were quite as good, and chosen with as much care; that their
schools existed as many months in the year; in short, the same
facilities were afforded to the blacks as were to the whites in this
respect; and that these schools were generally supported by the
voluntary taxation imposed by the legislatures composed of
white men, levied upon their own property for the common
benefit.

With regard to political outrages which have formed the staple of
complaint for many years against the people of the South, your
committee diligently inquired, and have to report that they found
nothing or almost nothing new. Many old stories were revived
and dwelt upon by zealous witnesses, but very few indeed
ventured to say that any considerable violence or outrage had
been exhibited toward the colored people of the South within the
last few years, and still fewer of all those who testified upon this
subject, and who were evidently anxious to make the most of it,
testified to anything as within their own knowledge. It was all
hearsay, and nothing but hearsay, with rare exceptions.

Many of the witnesses before us were colored politicians, men
who make their living by politics, and whose business it was to

stir up feeling between the whites and blacks; keep alive the
embers of political hatred; and were men of considerable
intelligence, so that what they failed to set forth of outrages
perpetrated against their race may be safely assumed not to
exist. Many, on the contrary, were intelligent, sober, industrious,
and respectable men, who testified to their own condition, the
amount of property that they had accumulated since their
emancipation, the comfort in which they lived, the respect with
which they were regarded by their white neighbors. These
universally expressed the opinion that all colored men who
would practice equal industry and sobriety could have fared
equally well; and in fact their own condition was ample proof of
the treatment of the colored people by the whites of the South,
and of their opportunities to thrive, if they were so determined.
Some of these men owned so much as a thousand acres of real
estate in the best portions of the South; many of them had
tenants of their own, white men, occupying their premises and
paying them rent; and your committee naturally arrived at the
conclusion that if one black man could attain to this degree of
prosperity and respectable citizenship, others could, having the
same capacity for business and practicing the same sobriety
and industry.

Your committee also directed their attention to the complaints
frequently made with regard to the laws passed in various
States of the South relating to landlord and tenant, and to the
system adopted by many planters for furnishing their tenants
and laborers with supplies. We found, upon investigation of
these laws, and of the witnesses in relation to their operation,
that as a general rule they were urgently called for by the
circumstances in which the South found itself after the war. The
universal adoption of homestead and personal property
exemption laws deprived poor men of credit, and the landlord
class, for its own protection, procured the passage of these laws
giving them a lien upon the crop made by the tenant until his
rents and his supplies furnished for the subsistence of the

tenant and his family had been paid and discharged; and while
upon the surface these laws appeared to be hard and in favor of
the landlord, they were, as was actually testified by many
intelligent witnesses, quite as much or more in favor of the
tenant, as it enabled him to obtain credit, to subsist himself and
his family, and to make a crop without any means whatsoever
but his own labor. It was alleged also that in many instances
landlords, or if not landlords then merchants, would establish
country stores for furnishing supplies to laborers and tenants,
and the laborer, having no money to go elsewhere or take the
natural advantages of competition, was forced to buy at these
stores at exorbitant prices.

Your committee regret to say that they found it to be frequently
the case that designing men, or bad and dishonest men, would
take advantage of the ignorance or necessity of the Negroes to
obtain these exorbitant prices; but at the same time your
committee is not aware of a spot on earth where the cunning
and unscrupulous do not take advantage of the ignorant; and
cannot regard it as a sufficient cause for these black people
leaving their homes and going into distant States and among
strangers unless they had a proper assurance that the State to
which they were going contained no dishonest men, or men who
would take such advantage of them. Your committee feel bound
to say, however, in justice to the planters of the South, that this
abuse is not at all general nor frequent; and that as a general
rule while exorbitant prices are exacted sometimes from men in
the situation of the blacks, yet the excuse for it is the risk which
planter and merchant run. Should a bad crop year come, should
the Army worm devour the cotton, or any other calamity come
upon the crop, the landlord is without his rent, the storekeeper is
without his pay, and worse than all the laborer is without a
means of subsistence for the next year. It is hoped and believed
that when the heretofore disturbed condition of the people of the
South settles down into regularity and order, the natural laws of
trade and competition will assert themselves and this evil will be

to a great extent remedied, whilst the diffusion of education
among the colored people will enable them to keep their own
accounts and hold a check upon those who would act
dishonestly towards them.

On the whole, your committee express the positive opinion that
the condition of the colored people of the South is not only as
good as could have been reasonably expected, but is better
than if large communities were transferred to a colder and more
inhospitable climate, thrust into competition with a different
system of labor, among strangers who are not accustomed to
them, their ways, habits of thought and action, their
idiosyncrasies, and their feelings. While a gradual migration,
such as circumstances dictate among the white races, might
benefit the individual black man and his family as it does those
of the white race, we cannot but regard this wholesale attempt
to transfer a people without means and without intelligence,
from the homes of their nativity in this manner, as injurious to
the people of the South, injurious to the people and the labor
system of the State where they go, and, more than all, injurious
to the last degree to the black people themselves. That there is
much in their condition to be deplored in the South no one will
deny; that that condition is gradually and steadily improving in
every respect is equally true. That there have been clashings of
the races in the South, socially and politically, is never to be
denied nor to be wondered at; but when we come to consider
the method in which the people were freed, as the result of a
bitter and desolating civil war; and that for purposes of party
politics these incompetent, ignorant, landless, homeless people,
without any qualifications of citizenship, without any of the ties of
property or the obligations of education, were suddenly thrown
into political power, and the effort was made not only to place
them upon an equality with their late masters, but to absolutely
place them in front and hold them there by legislation, by military
violence, and by every other means that could possibly be
resorted to; when we consider these things no philosophical

mind can behold their present condition, and the present
comparative state of peace and amity between the two races,
without wonder that their condition is as good as it is.

No man can behold this extraordinary spectacle of two people
attempting to reconcile themselves in spite of the interference of
outsiders, and to live in harmony, to promote each other's
prosperity in spite of the bitter animosities which the sudden
elevation of the one has engendered, without the liveliest hope
that if left to themselves, the condition of the former subject race
will still more rapidly improve, and that the best results may be
reasonably and fairly expected.

Your committee is further of the opinion that all the attempts of
legislation; that all the inflammatory appeals of politicians upon
the stump and through the newspapers; that the wild and
misdirected philanthropy of certain classes of our citizens; that
these aid societies, and all other of the influences which are so
industriously brought to bear to disturb the equanimity of the
colored people of the South and to make them discontented with
their position, are doing them a positive and almost incalculable
injury, to say nothing of pecuniary losses which have thus been
inflicted upon Southern communities.

Your committee is further of opinion that Congress having
enacted all the legislation for the benefit of the colored people of
the South which under the Constitution it can enact, and having
seen that all the States of the South have done the same; that
by the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of
the various States these people are placed upon a footing of
perfect equality before the law, and given the chance to work out
their own civilization and improvements, any further attempts at
legislation or agitation of the subject will but excite in them
hopes of exterior aid that will be disappointing to them, and will
prevent them from working out diligently and with care their own
salvation; that the sooner they are taught to depend upon

themselves, the sooner they will learn to take care of
themselves; the sooner they are taught to know that their true
interest is promoted by cultivating the friendship of their white
neighbors instead of their enmity, the sooner they will gain that
friendship; and that friendship and harmony once fully attained,
there is nothing to bar the way to their speedy civilization and
advancement in wealth and prosperity, except such as hinder all
people in that great work.

D. W. Voorhees.
Z. B. Vance.
Geo. II. Pendleton.

Report of the Minority

The undersigned, a minority of the committee appointed under
resolution of the Senate of December 15, 1879, to investigate
the causes which have led to the emigration of Negroes from
the Southern to the Northern States, submit the following report:
[4]

In the month of December last a few hundred colored men,
women, and children, discontented with their condition in North
Carolina, and hoping to improve it, were emigrating to Indiana.

This movement, though utterly insignificant in comparison with
the vastly greater numbers which were moving from other
Southern States into Kansas, seemed to be considered of very
much more importance, in certain quarters, on account of its
alleged political purposes and bearing. The theory upon which
the investigation was asked was that the emigration into the
State of Indiana was the result of a conspiracy on the part of
Northern leaders of the Republican party to colonize that State
with Negroes for political purposes. The utter absurdity of this
theory should have been apparent to everybody, for if the
Republican party, or its leaders, proposed to import Negroes

into Indiana for political purposes, why take them from North
Carolina? Why import them from a State where the Republicans
hope and expect to carry the election, when there were
thousands upon thousands ready and anxious to come from
States certainly Democratic. Why transport them by rail at heavy
expense half way across the continent when they could have
taken them from Kentucky without any expense, or brought
them up the Mississippi River by steamers at merely nominal
cost? Why send twenty-five thousand to Kansas to swell her
40,000 Republican majority, and only seven or eight hundred to
Indiana? These considerations brand with falsehood and folly
the charge that the exodus was a political movement induced by
Northern partisan leaders? And yet to prove this absurd
proposition the committee devoted six months of hard and
fruitless labor, during which they examined one hundred and
fifty-nine witnesses, selected from all parts of the country, mainly
with reference to their supposed readiness to prove said theory,
expended over $30,000 and filled three large volumes of
testimony.

The undersigned feel themselves authorized to say that there is
no evidence whatever even tending to sustain the charge that
the Republican party, or any of its leaders, have been
instrumental, either directly or indirectly, in aiding or encouraging
these people to come from their homes in the South to any of
the Northern States. A good deal of complaint was made that
certain "aid societies" in the North had encouraged and aided
this migration, and a futile attempt was made to prove that these
societies were acting in the interest of the Republican party.
Upon inquiry, however, it was ascertained that their purposes
were purely charitable and had no connection whatever with any
political motive or movement. They were composed almost
wholly of colored people, and were brought into existence solely
to afford temporary relief to the destitute and suffering emigrants
who had already come into the Northern and Western States.

In the spring of 1879 thousands of colored people, unable
longer to endure the intolerable hardships, injustice, and
suffering inflicted upon them by a class of Democrats in the
South, had, in utter despair, fled panic-stricken from their homes
and sought protection among strangers in a strange land.
Homeless, penniless, and in rags, these poor people were
thronging the wharves of Saint Louis, crowding the steamers on
the Mississippi River, and in pitiable destitution throwing
themselves upon the charity of Kansas. Thousands more were
congregating along the banks of the Mississippi River, hailing
the passing steamers, and imploring them for a passage to the
land of freedom, where their rights of citizens were respected
and honest toil rewarded by honest compensation. The
newspapers were filled with accounts of their destitution, and
the very air was burdened with the cry of distress from a class of
American citizens flying from persecutions which they could not
longer endure. Their piteous tales of outrage, suffering and
wrong touched the hearts of the more fortunate members of
their race in the North and West, and aid societies, designed to
afford temporary relief, and composed largely, almost wholly, of
colored people, were organized in Washington, Saint Louis,
Topeka, and in various other places. That they were organized
to induce migration for political purposes, or to aid or to
encourage these people to leave their homes for any purpose,
or that they ever contributed one dollar to that end, is utterly
untrue, and there is absolutely nothing in the testimony to
sustain such a charge. Their purposes and objects were purely
charitable. They found a race of wretched miserable people
flying from oppression and wrong, and they sought to relieve
their distress. The refugees were hungry, and they fed them: in
rags, and they clothed them; homeless, and they sheltered
them; destitute, and they found employment for them—only this
and nothing more.

The real origin of the exodus movement and the organizations
at the South which have promoted it are very clearly stated by

the witnesses who have been most active in regard to it.

Henry Adams, of Shreveport, Louisiana, an uneducated colored
laborer, but a man of very unusual natural abilities, and, so far
as the committee could learn, entirely reliable and truthful,
states that he entered the United States Army in 1866 and
remained in it until 1869; that when he left the Army he returned
to his former home at Shreveport, and, finding the condition of
his race intolerable, he and a number of other men who had
also been in the Army set themselves to work to better the
condition of their people.

In 1870—

He says—

a parcel of us got together and said we would organize
ourselves into a committee and look into affairs and see the true
condition of our race, to see whether it was possible we could
stay under a people who held us in bondage or not.

That committee increased until it numbered about five hundred
and Mr. Adams says:

Some of the members of the committee was ordered by the
committee to go into every State in the South where we had
been slaves, and post one another from time to time about the
true condition of our race, and nothing but the truth.

In answer to the question whether they traveled over various
States he said:

"Yes, sir; and we worked, some of us, worked our way from
place to place, and went from State to State and worked—some
of them did—amongst our people, in the fields, everywhere, to
see what sort of a living our people lived—whether we could live
in the South amongst the people that held us as slaves or not.

We continued that on till 1874. Every one paid his own
expenses, except the one we sent to Louisiana and Mississippi.
We took money out of our pockets and sent him, and said to him
you must now go to work. You can't find out anything till you get
amongst them. You can talk as much as you please, but you got
to go right into the field and work with them and sleep with them
to know all about them."

I think about one hundred or one hundred and fifty went from
one place or another.

Q. What was the character of the information that they gave
you? A. Well, the character of the information they brought to us
was very bad, sir.

Q. Do you remember any of these reports that you got from
members of your committee?—A. Yes, sir; they said in several
parts where they was that the land rent was still higher there in
that part of the country than it was where we first organized it,
and the people was still being whipped, some of them, by the
old owners, the men that had owned them as slaves, and some
of them was being cheated out of their crops just the same as
they was there.

Q. Was anything said about their personal and political rights in
these reports as to how they were treated?—A. Yes; some of
them stated that in some parts of the country where they voted
they would be shot. Some of them stated that if they voted the
Democratic ticket they would not be injured.

Q. Now let us understand more distinctly, before we go any
further, the kind of people who composed that association. The
committee, as I understand you, was composed entirely of
laboring people?—A. Yes, sir.

Q Did it include any politicians of either color, white or black?—
A. No politicianers didn't belong to it, because we didn't allow
them to know nothing about it, because we was afraid that if we
allowed the colored politicianers to belong to it he would tell it to
the Republican politicianers, and from that the men that was
doing all this to us would get hold of it too, and then get after us.

Q. About what time did you lose all hope and confidence that
your condition could be tolerable in the Southern States?—A.
Well we never lost all hopes in the world till 1877.

Q. Why did you lose all hope in that year?—A. Well, we found
ourselves in such condition that we looked around and we seed
that there was no way on earth, it seemed, that we could better
our condition there, and we discussed that thoroughly in our
organization in May. We said that the whole South—every State
in the South—had got into the hands of the very men that held
us slaves—from one thing to another—and we thought that the
men that held us slaves was holding the reins of government
over our heads in every respect almost, even the constable up
to the governor. We felt we had almost as well be slaves under
these men. In regard to the whole matter that was discussed it
came up in every council. Then we said there was no hope for
us and we had better go.

Q. You say, then, that in 1877 you lost all hope of being able to
remain in the South, and you began to think of moving
somewhere else?—A. Yes; we said we was going if we had to
run away and go into the woods.

Q. About how many did this committee consist of before you
organized your council? Give us the number as near as you can
tell.—A. As many as five hundred in all.

Q. The committee, do you mean? A. Yes; the committee has
been that large.

Q. What was the largest number reached by your colonization
council, in your best judgment?—A. Well, it is not exactly five
hundred men belonging to the council that we have in our
council, but they all agreed to go with us and enroll their names
with us from time to time, so that they have now got at this time
ninety-eight thousand names enrolled.

Q. Then through that council, as sort of subscribers to its
purpose and acts and for carrying out its objects, there were
ninety-eight thousand names?—A. Yes; ninety-eight thousand
names enrolled.

Q. In what parts of the country were these ninety-eight thousand
people scattered?—A. Well some in Louisiana—the majority of
them in Louisiana—and some in Texas, and some in Arkansas.
We joins Arkansas.

Q. Were there any in Mississippi?—A. Yes, sir; a few in
Mississippi.

Q. And a few in Alabama?—A. Yes, sir; a few in Alabama, too.

Q. Did the organization extend at all into other States farther
away?—A. O, yes, sir.

Q. Have you members in all the Southern States?—A. Not in
every one, but in a great many of the others.

Q. Are these members of that colonization council in
communication as to the condition of your race, and as to the
best thing to be done to alleviate their troubles?—A. O, yes.

Q. What do you know about inducements being held out from
politicians of the North, or from politicians anywhere else, to

induce these people to leave their section of country and go into
the Northern or Western States?—A. There is nobody has
written letters of that kind, individually—not no white persons, I
know, not to me, to induce anybody to come.

Q. Well, to any of the other members of your council?—A. No, I
don't think to any of the members. If they have, they haven't said
nothing to me about it.

It appears also from the evidence of Samuel L. Perry, of North
Carolina, a colored man, who accompanied most of the
emigrants from that State to Indiana, and who had more to do
with the exodus from that quarter than any other man, that the
movement had its origin as far back as 1872, as the following
questions and answers will show:

Q. You have heard a good deal of this testimony with reference
to this exodus from North Carolina. Now begin at the beginning
and tell us all you know about it.—A. Well, the beginning, I
suppose, was in this way: The first idea or the first thing was, we
used to have little meetings to talk over these matters. In 1872
we first received some circulars or pamphlets from O. F. Davis,
of Omaha, Nebraska.

Q. In 1872?—A. Yes, sir; in 1872—giving a description of
government lands and railroads that could be got cheap; and we
held little meetings then; that is, we would meet and talk about it
Sunday evenings—that is, the laboring class of our people—the
only ones I knew anything about; I had not much to do with the
big professional Negroes, the rich men. I did not associate with
them much, but I got among the workingmen, and they would
take these pamphlets and read them over.

Mr. Perry says that the feeling in favor of migrating subsided
somewhat, but sprung up again in 1876. From that time down to
1879 there were frequent consultations upon the subject, much

dissatisfaction expressed respecting their condition, and a
desire to emigrate to some part of the West. He says about "that
time I was a subscriber to the New York Herald, and from an
article in that paper the report was that the people were going to
Kansas, and we thought we could go to Kansas, too; that we
could get a colony to go West. That was last spring. We came
back and formed ourselves into a colony of some hundred
men." They did not, however, begin their westward movements
until the fall of 1879, when it being ascertained by the railroad
companies that a considerable number of people were
proposing to migrate from North Carolina to the West, several
railroad companies, notably the Baltimore and Ohio, offered to
certain active and influential colored men $1 per head for all the
passengers they could procure for the respective competing
lines.

By reference to this evidence, part 3, page 136, it will be seen
that the emigration movement in Alabama originated as far back
as the year 1871, when an organization of colored people,
called the State Labor Union, delegated Hon. George F. Marlow
to visit Kansas, and other parts of the West, for the purpose of
examining that country and reporting back to a future convention
his views as to the expediency of removing thereto. A
convention of colored people was held again in 1872, at which
Mr. Marlow made the following glowing report of the condition of
things in Kansas and the inducements that State offered to the
colored people. He said:

In August, 1871, being delegated by your president for the
purpose, I visited the State of Kansas, and here give the results
of my observations, briefly stated.

It is a new State, and as such possesses many advantages over
the old.

It is much more productive than most other States.

What is raised yields more profit than elsewhere, as it is raised
at less expense.

The weather and roads enable you to do more work here than
elsewhere.

The climate is mild and pleasant.

Winters short and require little food for stock.

Fine grazing country; stock can be grazed all winter.

The population is enterprising, towns and villages spring up
rapidly and great profits arise from all investments.

Climate dry, and land free from swamps.

The money paid to doctors in less healthy regions can here be
used to build up a house.

People quiet and orderly, schools and churches to be found in
every neighborhood, and ample provision for free schools is
made by the State.

Money, plenty, and what you raise commands a good price.

Fruits of all kinds easily grown and sold at large profits.

Railroads are being built in every direction.

The country is well watered.

Salt and coal are plentiful.

It is within the reach of every man, no matter how poor, to have
a home in Kansas. The best lands are to be had at from $2 to
$10 an acre, on time. The different railroads own large tracts of
land, and offer liberal inducements to emigrants. You can get

good land in some places for $1.25 an acre. The country is
mostly open prairie, and level, with deep, rich soil, producing
from forty to one hundred bushels of corn and wheat to the acre.
The corn grows about eight or nine feet high, and I never saw
better fruit anywhere than there.

The report was adopted.

The feeling of the colored people in that State in 1872 was well
expressed by Hon. Robert H. Knox, of Montgomery, a prominent
colored citizen, who, in addressing the convention, spoke as
follows:

I have listened with great attention to the report of the
commissioner appointed by authority of the State Labor Union to
visit Kansas, and while I own the inducements held out to the
laboring man in that far-off State are much greater than those
enjoyed by our State, I yet would say let us rest here awhile
longer; let us trust in God, the President, and Congress to give
us what is most needed here, personal security to the laboring
masses, the suppression of violence, disorder, and kukluxism,
the protection which the Constitution and laws of the United
States guarantee, and to which as citizens and men we are
entitled. Failing in these, it is time then, I repeat, to desert the
State and seek homes elsewhere where there may be the
fruition of hopes inaugurated when by the hand of Providence
the shackles were stricken from the limbs of four million men,
where there may be enjoyed in peace and happiness by your
own fireside the earnings of your daily toil.

Benjamin Singleton, an aged colored man, now residing in
Kansas, swears that he began the work inducing his race to
migrate to that State as early as 1869, and that he has brought
mainly from Tennessee, and located in two colonies—one in
Cherokee County, and another in Lyons County, Kansas—a
total of 7,432 colored people. The old man spoke in the most

touching manner of the sufferings and wrongs of his people in
the South, and in the most glowing terms of their condition in
their new homes; and when asked as to who originated the
movement, he proudly asserted, "I am the father of the exodus."
He said that during these years since he began the movement
he has paid from his own pocket over $600 for circulars, which
he has caused to be printed and circulated all over the Southern
States, advising all who can pay their way to come to Kansas. In
these circulars he advised the colored people of the advantages
of living in a free State, and told them how well the emigrants
whom he had taken there were getting on. He says that the
emigrants whom he has taken to Kansas are happy and doing
well. The old man insists with great enthusiasm that he is the
"Whole cause of the Kansas immigration," and is very proud of
his achievement.

Here, then, we have conclusive proof from the Negroes
themselves that they have been preparing for this movement for
many years. Organizations to this end have existed in many
States, and the agents of such organizations have traveled
throughout the South. One of these organizations alone kept
one hundred and fifty men in the field for years, traveling among
their brethren and secretly discussing this among other means
of relief. As stated by Adams and Perry, politicians were
excluded, and the movement was confined wholly to the working
classes.

The movement has doubtless been somewhat stimulated by
circulars from railroad companies and State emigration societies
which have found their way into the South, but these have had
comparatively little effect. The following specimen of these
emigration documents, which was gotten up and circulated by
Indiana Democrats, printed at a Democratic printing office, and
written by a Democrat, in our judgment appeals more strongly to
the imagination and wants of the Negro than any we have been
able to find:

In every county of the State there is an asylum where those who
are unable to work and have no means of support are cared for
at the public expense.

Laborers who work by the month or by the year make their own
contract with the employer, and all disputes subsequently arising
are settled by legal processes in the proper courts, everybody
being equal before the law in Indiana. The price of farm labor
has varied considerably in the last twenty years. About $16 per
month may be assumed as about the average per month, and
this is understood to include board and lodging at the farm-
house. This amount is paid in current money at the end of each
month, unless otherwise stipulated in the contract. Occasionally
a tenement house is found on the larger farms, where a laborer
lives with his family, and either rents a portion of the farm or
cultivates it on special contract with the landlord. With us there
is no class of laborers as such. The young man who today may
be hired as a laborer at monthly wages, may in five years from
now be himself a proprietor, owning the soil he cultivates and
paying wages to laborers. The upward road is open to all, and
its highest elevation is attainable by industry, economy, and
perseverance.

Sixteen dollars per month, with board! Everybody equal before
the law! No class of laborers as such! The hired man of today
himself the owner of a farm in five years! No cheating of tenants,
but everything paid in current money. And if all this will not
attract the Negro he is told there is an "asylum in every county"
to which he can go when unable to support himself. The
document also promises to everybody "free schools" in "brick or
stone school-houses," and says they have "2,000,000 greater
school fund than any State in the Union." These Democratic
documents have been circulated by the thousand, and
doubtless many of them have found their way into the Negro
cabins of North Carolina. It is not surprising that the Negro looks
with longing eyes to that great and noble State.

Causes of the Exodus

There is surely some adequate cause for such a movement.
The majority of the committee have utterly failed to find it, or, if
found, to recognize it. When it was found that any of their own
witnesses were ready to state causes which did not accord with
their theory they were dismissed without examination, as in the
cases of Ruby and Stafford, and a half dozen others who were
brought from Kansas, but who on their arrival here were found
to entertain views not agreeable to the majority.

We regret that a faithful and honest discussion of this subject
compels a reference to the darkest, bloodiest, and most
shameful chapter of our political history. Gladly would we avoid
it, but candor compels us to say that the volume which shall
faithfully record the crimes which, in the name of Democracy,
have been committed against the citizenship, the lives, and the
personal rights of these people, and which have finally driven
them in utter despair from their homes, will stand forever without
a parallel in the annals of Christian civilization. In discussing
these sad and shameful events, we wish it distinctly understood
that we do not arraign the whole people nor even the entire
Democratic party of the States in which they have occurred. The
colored and other witnesses all declare that the lawlessness
from which they have suffered does not meet the approval of the
better class of Democrats at the South. They are generally
committed by the reckless, dissolute classes who unfortunately
too often control and dominate the Democratic party and dictate
its policy. We have no doubt there are many Democrats in the
South who deeply regret this condition of things, and who would
gladly welcome a change, but they are in a helpless, and we
fear a hopeless, minority in many sections of that country.

The unfortunate and inexcusable feature of the case is that,
however much they may deplore such lawlessness, they have
never, so far as we can learn, declined to accept its fruits. They

may regret the violence and crimes by which American citizens
are prevented from voting, but they rejoice in the Democratic
victories which result therefrom. So long as they shall continue
thus to accept the fruits of crime, the criminals will have but little
fear of punishment or restraint, and the lawless conduct which is
depopulating some sections of their laboring classes will go on.
There is another unfortunate feature of this matter. So long as
crimes against American citizenship shall continue to suppress
Republican majorities, and to give a "solid South" to the
Democracy, there will be found enough Democrats at the North
who will shut their eyes to the means by which it is
accomplished, and seek to cover up and excuse the conduct of
their political partisans at the South.

This is well illustrated by the report of the majority of the
committee. In the presence of most diabolic outrages clearly
proven; in the face of the declaration of thousands of refugees
that they had fled because of the insecurity of their lives and
property at the South, and because the Democratic party of that
section had, by means too shocking and shameful to relate,
deprived them of their rights as American citizens; in the face of
the fact that it has been clearly shown by the evidence that
organizations of colored laborers, one of which numbered
ninety-eight thousand, have existed for many years and
extending into many States of the South, designed to improve
their condition by emigration—in the face of all these facts the
majority of the committee can see no cause for the exodus
growing out of such wrongs, but endeavor to charge it to the
Republicans of the North.

In view of this fact, it is our painful duty to point out some of the
real causes of this movement. It is, however, quite impossible to
enumerate all or any considerable part of the causes of
discontent and utter despair which have finally culminated in this
movement. To do so would be to repeat a history of violence
and crime which for fifteen years have reddened with the blood

of innocent victims many of the fairest portions of our country; to
do so would be to read the numberless volumes of sworn
testimony which have been carefully corded away in the crypt
and basement of this Capitol, reciting shocking instances of
crime, crying from the ground against the perpetrators of the
deeds which they record. The most which we can hope to do
within the limits of this report is to present a very few facts which
shall be merely illustrative of the conditions which have driven
from their homes, and the graves of their fathers an industrious,
patient, and law-abiding people, whom we are bound by every
obligation of honor and patriotism to protect in their personal
and political rights and privileges.

We begin with the State of North Carolina because the migration
from that State has been comparatively insignificant, and also
because the conditions there are more favorable to the colored
race than in any of the other cotton States of the South. Owing
to the lack of funds, and to the time employed in the
examination of witnesses called by the majority the Republican
members of the committee summoned no witnesses from the
State of North Carolina, and were obliged to content themselves
with such facts as could be obtained from one or two persons
who happened to be in this city, and such other facts as were
brought out upon cross-examination of the witnesses called by
the other side. By the careful selection of a few well-to-do and
more fortunate colored men from that State, the majority of the
committee secured some evidence tending to show that a
portion of the Negroes of North Carolina are exceptionally well
treated and contented, and yet upon cross-examination of their
own witnesses facts were disclosed which showed that, even
there, conditions exist which are ample to account for the
migration of the entire colored population.

There are three things in that State which create great
discontent among the colored people: First, the abridgment of
their rights of self-government; second, their disadvantages as

to common schools; third, discriminations against them in the
courts; and, fourth, the memory of Democratic outrages. Prior to
Democratic rule the people of each county elected five
commissioners, who had supervision over the whole county, and
who chose the judges of elections. The Democrats changed the
constitution so as to take this power from the people, and gave
to the general assembly authority to appoint these officers. This
they regard not only as practically depriving them of self-
government, but, as stated by one of the witnesses, Hon. R. C.
Badger, as placing the elections, even in Republican townships,
wholly under the control of the Democrats, who thereby "have
the power to count up the returns and throw out the balance for
any technicality, exactly as Garcelon & Co. did in Maine." This
creates much dissatisfaction, because they believe they are
cheated out of their votes. The Negro values the ballot more
than anything else, because he knows that it is his only means
of defense and protection. A law which places all the returning
boards in the hands of his political opponents necessarily and
justly produces discontent.

Next to the ballot the Negro values the privileges of common
schools, for in them he sees the future elevation of his race. The
prejudice even in North Carolina against white teachers of
colored schools seems to have abated but little since the war.
Mr. Badger, when cross-examined on this point, said:

Q. Is there any prejudice still remaining there against white
teachers of colored schools?—A. I think there is.

Q. Will you explain it?—A. I cannot explain it, except by the
prejudices between the races.

Q. You mean, white persons teaching a colored school lose
social status?—A. Yes, sir.

Q. Now, a white lady who comes from the North and teaches a
colored school, to what extent is she tabooed?—A. I don't think
she would have any acquaintances in white society.

Q. Would she be any quicker invited into white society than a
colored woman?—A. Just about the same.

This fact contains within itself a volume of testimony. It shows
that the Negro is still regarded as a sort of social and political
pariah, whom no white person may teach without incurring
social ostracism and being degraded to the level of the social
outcast he or she would elevate in the scale of being. Is it
surprising that the Negro is dissatisfied with his condition and
desires to emigrate to some country where his children may
hope for better things?

The most serious complaints, however, which are made against
the treatment of colored citizens of North Carolina is that justice
is not fairly administered in the courts as between themselves
and the whites. On this point the evidence of Mr. R. C. Badger
reveals a condition of things to which no people can long
submit. Here is his illustration of the manner in which justice is
usually meted out as between the Negroes and the whites:

Q. How about the discrimination in the courts as between the
whites and blacks?—A. That is principally in matters of larceny.
In such cases the presumption is reversed as to the Negro. A
white man can't be convicted without the fullest proof, and with
the Negroes, in matters between themselves, such as assault
and battery, they get as fair a trial as the whites. At the January
term of our court Judge Avery presided. A white man and a
colored woman were indicted for an affray. The woman was in
her husband's barn getting out corn; they were going to move,
and the white man came down there and said, "You seem to
have a good time laughing here this morning," and she said,
yes, she had a right to laugh. He said, "You are getting that corn

out, and you would have made more if you had stuck to your
husband." She seemed to be a sort of termagant, and she said
nobody said that about her unless you told them. He made
some insulting remark, and she made something in return to
him, and he took a billet of wood and struck her on the shoulder,
and he pulled a pistol and beat her with it, and she went for him
to kill him. They found the man not guilty and they found her
guilty, but Judge Avery set the verdict aside and ordered the
case nolle prossed against her.

Q. Do you think that is a fair sample of the justice they get?—A.
Yes, sir.

Q. Do you think they will convict a colored woman in order to get
a chance to turn loose a white man?—A. Yes, sir.

Mr. Badger was not our witness. He was called by the majority,
but he is a gentleman of high character, the son of an ex-
member of this body, and thoroughly acquainted with the
condition of things in his State. He puts the case just mentioned
as a "fair sample" of North Carolina justice toward the Negro. It
is true the judge set aside the verdict, but this does not change
the fact that before a North Carolina jury the Negro has but little
hope of justice.

Back of all these things lies the distrust of Democracy which
was inspired during the days when the "Kuklux," the "White
Brotherhood," the Universal Empire, and the "Stonewall Guard"
spread terror and desolation over the State in order to wrest it
from Republicanism to Democracy. The memory of those dark
days and bloody deeds, the prejudice which still forbids white
ladies to teach colored schools, and denies "even-handed"
justice in the courts, and the usurpations which place the
returning boards all in the hands of Democrats, have inspired a
feeling of discontent which has found expression in the efforts of
a few to leave the State. These facts, taken in connection with

the bonus of one dollar per head offered by the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad Company (a Democratic corporation represented
by a Democratic agent) to leading colored men who would
secure passengers for their road, has led to the emigration of
some seven or eight hundred colored people from that State,
and the only wonder is that thousands instead of hundreds have
not gone.

Louisiana and Mississippi

The States of Louisiana and Mississippi have furnished the
larger portion of the migration to Kansas, and as the conditions
which caused the exodus are the same in both of these States,
we may speak of them together. No single act of wrong has
inspired this movement, but a long series of oppression,
injustice, and violence, extending over a period of fifteen years.
These people have been long-suffering and wonderfully patient,
but the time came when they could endure it no longer and they
resolved to go. We can convey no adequate idea of what they
endured before adopting this desperate resolve, but will mention
a few facts drawn from well authenticated history, from sworn
public documents, and from the evidence taken by the Exodus
Investigating Committee. Writing under date of January 10,
1875, General P. H. Sheridan, then in command at New
Orleans, says:

Since the year 1866 nearly thirty-five hundred persons, a great
majority of whom were colored men, have been killed and
wounded in this State. In 1868 the official records show that
eighteen hundred and eighty-five were killed and wounded.
From 1868 to the present time no official investigation has been
made, and the civil authorities in all but a few cases have been
unable to arrest, convict or punish the perpetrators.
Consequently there are no correct records to be consulted for
information. There is ample evidence, however, to show that
more than twelve hundred persons have been killed and

wounded during this time on account of their political
sentiments. Frightful massacres have occurred in the parishes
of Bossier, Caddo, Catahoula, Saint Bernard, Saint Landry,
Grant, and Orleans.

He then proceeds to enumerate the political murders of colored
men in the various parishes, and says:

"Human life in this State is held so cheaply that when men are
killed on account of political opinions, the murderers are
regarded rather as heroes than criminals in the localities where
they reside."

This brief summary is not by a politician, but by a distinguished
soldier, who recounts the events which have occurred within his
own military jurisdiction. Volumes of testimony have since been
taken confirming, in all respects, General Sheridan's statement,
and giving in detail the facts relating to such murders, and the
times and circumstances of their occurrence. The results of the
elections which immediately followed them disclose the motives
and purposes of their perpetrators. These reports show that in
the year 1868 a reign of terror prevailed over almost the entire
State. In the parish of Saint Landry there was a massacre from
three to six days, during which between two and three hundred
colored men were killed. "Thirteen captives were taken from the
jail and shot, and a pile of twenty-five dead bodies were found
burned in the woods." The result of this Democratic campaign in
the parish was that the registered Republican majority of 1,071
was wholly obliterated, and at the election which followed a few
weeks later not a vote was cast for General Grant, while
Seymour and Blair received 4,787.

In the parish of Bossier a similar massacre occurred between
the 20th and 30th of September, 1868, which lasted from three
to four days, during which two hundred colored people were
killed. By the official registry of that year the Republican voters

in Bossier parish numbered 1,938, but at the ensuing election
only one Republican vote was cast.

In the parish of Caddo during the month of October, 1868, over
forty colored people were killed. The result of that massacre was
that out of a Republican registered vote of 2,894 only one was
cast for General Grant. Similar scenes were enacted throughout
the State, varying in extent and atrocity according to the
magnitude of the Republican majority to be overcome.

The total summing-up of murders, maimings, and whippings
which took place for political reasons in the months of
September, October and November, 1868, as shown by official
sources, is over one thousand. The net political results achieved
thereby may be succinctly stated as follows: The official
registration for that year in twenty-eight parishes contained
47,923 names of Republican voters, but at the Presidential
election, held a few weeks after the occurrence of these events
but 5,360 Republican votes were cast, making the net
Democratic gain from said transactions 42,563.

In nine of these parishes where the reign of terror was most
prevalent out of 11,604 registered Republican votes only 19
were cast for General Grant. In seven of said parishes there
were 7,253 registered Republican votes, but not one was cast at
the ensuing election for the Republican ticket.

In the years succeeding 1868, when some restraint was
imposed upon political lawlessness and a comparatively
peaceful election was held, these same Republican parishes
cast from 33,000 to 37,000 Republican votes, thus
demonstrating the purpose and the effects of the reign of
murder in 1868. In 1876 the spirit of violence and persecution,
which in parts of the State had been partially restrained for a
time, broke forth again with renewed fury. It was deemed
necessary to carry that State for Tilden and Hendricks, and the

policy which had proved so successful in 1868 was again
invoked and with like results. On the day of general election in
1876 there were in the State of Louisiana 92,996 registered
white voters and 115,310 colored, making a Republican majority
of the latter of 22,314. The number of white Republicans was far
in excess of the number of colored Democrats. It was, therefore,
well known that if a fair election should be made the State would
go Republican by from twenty-five to forty thousand majority.
The policy adopted this time was to select a few of the largest
Republican parishes and by terrorism and violence not only
obliterate their Republican majorities, but also intimidate the
Negroes in the other parishes. The testimony found in our public
documents, and records shows that the same system of
assassinations, whippings, burnings, and other acts of political
persecution of colored citizens which had occurred in 1868 was
again repeated in 1876 and with like results.

In fifteen parishes where 17,726 Republicans were registered in
1876 only 5,758 votes were cast for Hayes and Wheeler, and in
one of them (East Feliciana), where there were 2,127
Republicans registered, but one Republican vote was cast. By
such methods the Republican majority of the State was
supposed to have been effectually suppressed and a
Democratic victory assured. And because the legally constituted
authorities of Louisiana, acting in conformity with law and
justice, declined to count some of the parishes thus carried by
violence and blood, the Democratic party, both North and South,
has ever since complained that it was fraudulently deprived of
the fruits of victory, and it now proposes to make this grievance
the principal plank in the party platform.

On the 6th of December, 1876, President Grant in a message to
Congress transmitted the evidence of these horrible crimes
against the colored race, committed in the name and in the
interest of the Democracy. They are not mere estimates nor
conjectures, but the names of the persons murdered, maimed

and whipped, and of the perpetrators of the crimes, the places
where they occurred, and the revolting circumstances under
which they were committed, are all set forth in detail. This
shocking record embraces a period of eight years, from 1868 to
1876, inclusive, and covers ninety-eight pages of fine type,
giving an average of about one victim to each line. We have not
counted the list, but it is safe to say that it numbers over four
thousand.

These crimes did not end in 1876 with the accession of the
Democracy to control of the State administration. The witnesses
examined by your committee gave numerous instances of like
character which occurred in 1878. Madison Parish may serve as
an illustration. This parish, which furnished perhaps the largest
number of refugees to Kansas, had been exceptionally free from
bull-dozing in former years. William Murrell, one of the
witnesses called by the committee, states the reasons for the
exodus from that parish as follows:

You have not read of any exodus yet as there will be from that
section this summer, and the reason for it is that, for the first
time since the war in Madison Parish last December, we had
bull-dozing there. Armed bodies of men came into the parish—
not people who lived in the parish, but men from Ouachita
Parish and Richland Parish; and I can name the leader who
commanded them. He was a gentleman by the name of Captain
Tibbals, of Ouachita Parish, who lives in Monroe, who was
noted in the celebrated massacre there in other times. His very
name among the colored people is sufficient to intimidate them
almost. He came with a crowd of men on the 28th of December
into Madison Parish, when all was quiet and peaceable. There
was no quarrel, no excitement. We had always elected our
tickets in the parish, and we had put Democrats on the ticket in
many cases to satisfy them. There were only 238 white voters
and about 2,700 colored registered voters.

Mr. Murrell says that David Armstrong, who was president of
third ward Republican club, a man who stood high in the
community, and against whom no charge was made except that
of being a Republican, made the remark:

"What right have these white men to come here from
Morehouse Parish, and Richland Parish, and Franklin Parish to
interfere with our election?" And some white men heard of it and
got a squad by themselves and said, "We'll go down and give
that nigger a whipping." So Sunday night, about ten o'clock, they
went to his house to take him out and whip him. They saw him
run out the back way and fired on him. One in the crowd cried
out, "Don't kill him!" "It is too late, now," they said, "he's dead."
The Carroll Conservative, a Democratic newspaper, published
the whole thing; but the reason they did it was because we had
one of their men on our ticket as judge, and they got sore about
it, and we beat him. They killed Armstrong and took him three
hundred yards to the river, in a sheet, threw him in the river, and
left the sheet in the bushes.

Proceeding with the account of that transaction, Mr. Murrell
swears that the colored people had heard that the bulldozers
were coming from the surrounding parishes, and that he and
others called on some of the leading Democrats in order to
prevent it, but all in vain. He says:

We waited on Mr. Holmes, the clerk of the court, and we said to
him, "Mr. Holmes, it is not necessary to do any bulldozing here;
you have the counting machinery all in your hands, and we
would rather be counted out than bulldozed; can't we arrange
this thing? I made a proposition to him and said, "You know I am
renominated on the Republican ticket, but I will get out of the
way for any moderate Democrat you may name to save the
State and district ticket. We will not vote for your State ticket;
you cannot make the colored people vote the State ticket; but if
you will let us have our State ticket we will give you the local

offices." We offered them the clerk of the court, not the sheriff,
and the two representatives. We told him we would not give
them the senator, but the district judge and attorney. After this
interview Holmes sent us to Dr. Askew, ex-chairman of the
Democratic committee, and he said to me, "Now, Murrell, there
is no use talking, I advise you to stand from under. When these
men get in here we can't control them. We like you well enough
and would not like to see you hurt. I will see you to-night at Mr.
Holmes." We had an interview with Mr. Holmes and made this
proposition, and Holmes asked me this question: "Murrell, you
know damned well the niggers in this parish won't vote the
Democratic ticket—there is no use to tell me you will give us the
clerk of the court, you know the niggers won't do it. You can't
trust the niggers in politics; all your eloquence and all the
speeches you can make won't make these niggers vote this
ticket or what you suggest, even if we was to accept it. No, by
God, we are going to carry it. Why," said he, "there is more
eloquence in double-barreled shot-guns to convince niggers
than there is in forty Ciceros." I said to him, "Well, do you
suppose the merchants and planters will back you up," and he
said, "O, by God, they have got nothing to do with it. We have
charge of it. We three men, the Democratic committee, have full
power to work."

The result of this "work" was, as stated by the witness, and not
disputed by any one before the committee, that in this parish,
containing 2,700 registered Republican voters, and only 238
Democrats, the Democrats returned a majority of 2,300. The
witness, who was a candidate on the Republican ticket, swears
that not more than 360 votes were cast. Democratic shot-gun
eloquence did its "work," as prophesied by Mr. Askew, ex-
chairman of the Democratic committee, but it also served as a
wonderful stimulus to migration from Madison Parish.

We cite this case for two reasons: First, because it has been
said that the Negroes have not emigrated from bulldozed

parishes; and, secondly, because it serves as an illustration of
the many similar cases which were given to the committee.

We desire also to invite attention to the evidence of Henry
Adams, a colored witness from Shreveport, La. Adams is a man
of very remarkable energy and native ability. Scores of
witnesses were summoned by the majority of the committee
from Shreveport but none of them ventured to question his
integrity or truthfulness. Though a common laborer, he has
devoted much of his time in traveling through Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Texas, working his way and taking notes of the
crimes committed against his race. His notes, written in terse
and simple language, embraced the names of six hundred and
eighty-three colored men who have been whipped, maimed or
murdered within the last eight years, and his statement of these
crimes covers thirty-five pages of closely printed matter in the
report. We are sure no one can read it without a conviction of its
truthfulness, and a feeling of horror at the barbarous details he
relates. Adams is the man who has organized a colonization
council, composed of laboring colored people, and rigidly
excluding politicians, which numbers ninety-eight thousand who
have enrolled themselves with a view to emigration from that
country as early as possible. He details the character and the
purpose of the organization and the efforts it has made to obtain
relief and protection for its members. "First," he says, "we
appealed to the President of the United States to help us out of
our distress, to protect us in our rights and privileges. Next, we
appealed to Congress for a territory to which we might go and
live with our families. Failing in that," says he, "our other object
was to ask for help to ship us all to Liberia, Africa, somewhere
where we could live in peace and quiet. If that could not be
done," he adds, "our idea was to appeal to other governments
outside of the United States to help us to get away from the
United States and go and live there under their flag." What a
commentary upon our own boasted equality and freedom!
Finding no relief in any direction, they finally resolved to

emigrate to some of the Northern States. He says they had
some hope of securing better treatment at home until 1877,
when "we lost all hopes and determined to go anywhere on
God's earth, we didn't care where; we said we was going if we
had to run away and go into the woods." Perhaps we can best
summarize the condition of affairs in Louisiana and the causes
of the exodus from that State, as the Negroes themselves
regarded them, by quoting a brief extract from the report of the
business committee to the colored State convention held in New
Orleans on the 21st of April, 1879:

New Orleans, April 21, 1879.

Mr. President: Your committee on business have the honor to
submit this their final report. Discussing the general and
widespread alarm among the colored people of Louisiana,
including so potent a fear that in many parishes, and in others
perhaps largely to follow, there is an exodus of agricultural labor
which indicates the prostration and destruction of the productive,
and therefore essentially vital, interests of the State. The
Committee find that the primary cause of this lies in the absence
of a republican form of government to the people of Louisiana.
Crime and lawlessness existing to an extent that laughs at all
restraint, and the misgovernment naturally induced from a State
administration itself the product of violence, have created an
absorbing and constantly increasing distrust and alarm among
our people throughout the State. All rights of freemen denied
and all claims to a just recompense for labor rendered or
honorable dealings between planter and laborer disallowed,
justice a mockery, and the laws a cheat, the very officers of the
courts being themselves the mobocrats and violators of the law,
the only remedy left the colored citizens in many of parishes of
our State today is to emigrate. The fiat to go forth is irresistible.
The constantly recurring, nay, ever-present, fear which haunts
the minds of these our people in the turbulent parishes of the

State is that slavery in the horrible form of peonage is
approaching; that the avowed disposition of men in power to
reduce the laborer and his interest to the minimum of
advantages as freemen and to absolutely none as citizens has
produced so absolute a feat that in many cases it has become a
panic. It is flight from present sufferings and from wrongs to
come.

Here are the reasons for the exodus as stated by the colored
people themselves. In view of the facts which we have stated,
and of the terrible history which we cannot here repeat, does
any one believe their statement of grievances is overdrawn? Is
there any other race of freemen on the face of the earth who
would have endured and patiently suffered as they have? Is
there any other government among civilized nations which
would have permitted such acts to be perpetrated against its
citizens?

We will not dwell upon the conditions which have driven these
people from Mississippi. It would be but a repetition of the
intolerance, persecutions, and violence which have prevailed in
Louisiana. The same Democratic "shot-gun eloquence" which
was so potent for the conversion of colored Republicans in the
one has proven equally powerful in the other. The same
"eloquence" which wrested Louisiana from Republicans also
converted Mississippi. And in both the same results are visible in
the determination of the colored people to get away.

Nearly all the witnesses who were asked as to the causes of the
exodus answered that it was because of a feeling of insecurity
for life and property; a denial of their political rights as citizens;
long-continued persecutions for political reasons; a system of
cheating by landlords and storekeepers which rendered it
impossible for them to make a living no matter how hard they
might work; the inadequacy of school advantages, and a fear

that they would be eventually reduced to a system of peonage
even worse than slavery itself.

On the latter point they quoted the laws of Mississippi, which
authorize the sheriff to hire the convicts to planters and others
for twenty-five cents a day to work out the fine and cost, and
which provide that for every day lost from sickness he shall work
another to pay for his board while sick. Under these laws they
allege that a colored man may be fined $500 for some trifling
misdemeanor, and be compelled to work five or six years to pay
the fine; and that it is not uncommon for colored men thus hired
out to be worked in a chain gang upon the plantations under
overseers, with whip in hand, precisely as in the days of slavery.
And some of the witnesses declared that if an attempt be made
to escape they are pursued by blood-hounds, as before the war.

Henry Ruby, a witness summoned by the majority of the
committee, swore that in Texas, under a law similar to that in
Mississippi, a colored man had been arrested for carrying a "six-
shooter" and fined $65, including costs, and that he had been at
work nearly three years to pay it. The laws of that State do not
fix the rate for hiring, but "county convicts" may be hired at any
price the county judge may determine. He mentioned the case
of a colored woman who was hired out for a quarter of a cent a
day. Describing this process of hiring, he says:

They call these people county convicts, and if you have got a
farm you can hire them out of the jail. They have got that
system, and the colored men object to it. I know some of these
men who have State convicts that they hire and they work them
under shotguns. A farmer hires so many of the State, and they
are under the supervision of a sergeant with a gun and nigger-
hounds to run them with if they get away. They hire them and
put them in the same gang with the striped suit on, and, if they
want, the guard can bring them down with his shotgun! Then
they have these nigger-hounds, and if one of them gets off and

they can't find him they take the hounds, and from a shoe or
anything of the kind belonging to the convict they trail him down.

Q. Are these the same sort of blood-hounds they used to have
to run the Negroes with?—A. Yes, sir.

These things need no comment. To the Negro they are painfully
suggestive of slavery. Is it a wonder that he has resolved to go
where peonage and blood-hounds are unknown?

Several witnesses were called from Saint Louis and Kansas,
who had conversed with thousands of the refugees, and who
swore that they all told the same story of injustice, oppression
and wrong. Upon the arrival of the first boat-loads at Saint Louis,
in the early spring of 1879, the people of that city were deeply
moved by the evident destitution and distress which they
presented, and thousands of them were interviewed as to the
causes which impelled them to leave their homes at that
inclement season of the year. In the presence of these people,
and with a full knowledge of their condition and of the flight, a
memorial to Congress was prepared, and signed by a large
number of the most prominent and most respectable citizens of
Saint Louis, embracing such names as Mayor Overholtz (a
Democrat), Hon. John F. Dillon, judge of the United States
circuit court, ex-United States Senator J.B. Henderson and
nearly a hundred other leading citizens, in which the condition
and grievances of the refugees are stated as follows:

The undersigned, your memorialists, respectfully represent that
within the last two weeks there have come by steamboats up
the Mississippi River, from chiefly the States of Louisiana and
Mississippi, and landed at Saint Louis, Mo., a great number of
colored citizens of the United States, not less than twenty
hundred and composed of men and women, old and young, and
with them many of their children.

This multitude is eager to proceed to Kansas, and without
exception, so far as we have learned, refuse all overtures or
inducements to return South, even if their passage back is paid
for them.

The condition of the great majority is absolute poverty; they are
clothed in thin and ragged garments for the most part, and while
here have been supported to some extent by public, but mostly
by private charity.

The older ones are the former slaves of the South; all now
entitled to life and liberty.

The weather from the first advent of these people in this
Northern city has been unusually cold, attended with ice and
snow, so that their sufferings have been greatly increased, and if
there was in their hearts a single kind remembrance of their
sunny Southern homes they would naturally give it expression
now.

We have taken occasion to examine into the causes they
themselves assign for their extraordinary and unexpected
transit, and beg leave to submit herewith the written statements
of a number of individuals of the refugees, which were taken
without any effort to have one thing said more than another, and
to express the sense of the witness in his own language as
nearly as possible.

The story is about the same in each instance: a great privation
and want from excessive rent exacted for land, connected with
murder of colored neighbors and threats of personal violence to
themselves. The tone of each statement is that of suffering and
terror. Election days and Christmas, by the concurrent
testimony, seem to have been appropriated to killing the smart
men, while robbery and personal violence in one form and
another seem to have run the year round.

We submit that the great migration of Negroes from the South is
itself a fact that overbears all contradiction and proves
conclusively that great causes must exist at the South to
account for it.

Here they are in multitudes, not men alone, but women and
children, old, middle-aged, and young, with common consent
leaving their old homes in a natural climate and facing storms
and unknown dangers to go to Northern Kansas. Why? Among
them all there is little said of hope in the future; it is all of fear in
the past. They are not drawn by the attractions of Kansas; they
are driven by the terrors of Mississippi and Louisiana. Whatever
becomes of them, they are unanimous in their unalterable
determination not to return.

There are others coming. Those who have come and gone on to
Kansas must suffer even unto death, we fear; at all events more
than any body of people entitled to liberty and law, the
possession of property, the right to vote, and the pursuit of
happiness, should be compelled to suffer under a free
government from terror inspired by robbery, threats, assaults,
and murders.

We protest against the dire necessities that have impelled this
exodus, and against the violation of common right, natural and
constitutional, proven to be of most frequent occurrences in
places named; and we ask such action at the hands of our
representatives and our government as shall investigate the full
extent of the causes leading to this unnatural state of affairs and
protect the people from its continuance, and not only protect
liberty and life, but enforce law and order.

It is intolerable to believe that with the increased representation
of the Southern States in Congress those shall not be allowed

freely to cast their ballots upon whose right to vote that
representation has been enlarged. We believe no government
can prosper that will allow such a state of injustice to the body of
its people to exist, any more than society can endure where
robbery and murder go unchallenged.

The occasion is, we think, a fit one for us to protest against a
state of affairs thus exhibited in those parts of the Union from
which these Negroes come, which is not only most barbarous
toward the Negro, but is destructive to the constitutional rights of
all citizens of our common country.

Accompanying this memorial are numerous affidavits of the
refugees fully confirming all its statements.

As to the future of the exodus we can only say that every
witness, whose opinion was asked upon this point, declared that
it has only begun, and that what we have seen in the past is
nothing compared to what is to come, unless there shall be a
radical change on the part of Democrats in the South. They say
that the Negro has no confidence in the Democratic party, and
that if a Democratic President shall be elected there will be a
general stampede of the colored race.

There is but one remedy for the exodus—fair treatment of the
Negro. If the better class of white men in the South would retain
the colored labor, they must recognize his manhood and his
citizenship, and restrain the vicious and lawless elements in
their midst. If Northern Democrats would check the threatened
inundation of black labor into their States, they must recognize
the facts which have produced the exodus and unite with us in
removing its causes.

We present in conclusion the following brief summary of the
results of the investigation:

First: This movement was not instigated, aided or encouraged
by Republican leaders at the North. The only aid they have ever
given was purely as a matter of charity, to relieve the distress of
the destitute and suffering emigrants who had already come to
the North.

Second. Not one dollar has ever been contributed by anybody at
the North to bring these people from their homes. On the
contrary, the only contributions shown to have been made for
such purpose were made by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company, a Democratic corporation which employed agents to
work up the emigration from North Carolina, paying $1 per head
therefor.

Third. It is not proven that the emigrants are dissatisfied in their
new homes and wish to return to the South. On the contrary, a
standing offer to pay their expenses back to the South has not
induced more than about three hundred out of thirty thousand to
return.

Fourth. It is not proven that there is no demand for their labor at
the North, for nearly all those who have come have found
employment, and even in Indiana hundreds of applications for
them were presented to the committee.

Fifth. It is not proven that there is any sufficient reason for the
grave political apprehensions entertained in some quarters, for it
was shown by Mr. Dukehart, who sold all the tickets to those
who came from North Carolina, that not more than two hundred
voters had gone to Indiana.

Sixth. The exodus movement originated entirely with the colored
people themselves, who for many years have been organizing
for the purpose of finding relief in that way, and the colored
agents of such organizations have traveled all over the South
consulting with their race on this subject.

Seventh. A long series of political persecutions, whippings,
maimings and murders committed by Democrats and in the
interest of the Democratic party, extending over a period of
fifteen years, has finally driven the Negro to despair, and
compelled him to seek peace and safety by flight.

Eighth. In some States a system of convict hiring is authorized
by law, which reinstates the chain-gang, the overseer, and the
bloodhound substantially as in the days of slavery.

Ninth. A system of labor and renting has been adopted in some
parts of the South which reduces a Negro to a condition but little
better than that of peonage and which renders it impossible for
him to make a comfortable living, no matter how hard he may
work.

Tenth. The only remedy for the exodus is in the hands of
Southern Democrats themselves, and if they do not change their
treatment of the Negro and recognize his rights as a man and a
citizen, the movement will go on, greatly to the injury of the labor
interests of the South, if not the whole country.

William Windom.
Henry W. Blair.

Footnotes:
[1] Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 2d Session,
X, p. 155.

[2] Ibid., pp. 155-170.

[2a] Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 2d
Session, X, p. 170.

[3] Reports of Committees of Senate of the United
States for the First and Second Sessions of the Forty-
Sixth Congress, 1879-80, VII, pp. iii-xiii.

[4] Report of the Committee of the Senate of the
United States for the First and Second Sessions of the
Forty-Sixth Congress, 1879-80, VII, pp. viii-xxv.

SOME UNDISTINGUISHED NEGROES
Mr. J. H. Latrobe, corresponding secretary of the Maryland
Colonization Society and later President of the American
Colonization Society, has left the following story:

"It was while I was reading in the same room with General
Harper that there entered one day a tall, gaunt, square-
shouldered, spare, light mulatto, who announced himself as
Abel Hurd. He was a Bostonian by birth, and a seaman by
profession. In a voyage to the East his vessel had been
captured by the Malays, and he alone, if I recollect rightly,
escaped death, owing to his complexion. He had a varied
fortune; had at one time been in Cochin-China, again in
Tibet, and, after passing some twenty years in the East, had
returned to America, and was looking out for employment.
Some one had heard how deeply interested General Harper
was in Africa and African colonization, and had sent Hurd to
him. About this time there was a great doubt as to the mouth
of the Niger; whether it was to be found at the bottom of the
Bight of Benin, and whether it was not identical with the
Congo, or Zaire, south of the line. This was a question in
which General Harper was interested, and he determined to
fit out Hurd and send him northward from Liberia until he
struck the river, which he was then to follow to its mouth, and
I was deputed to superintend the outfit.

"Hurd's idea was to take as little baggage with him as
possible, and to rely upon the resources of his wit and

ingenuity in making his way among the interior tribes. He had
had a vast experience, and he directed his own equipment. I
do not recollect all that he was furnished with, but I recollect
having devised a hollow cane, in the top of which was a
compass and the tube of which contained papers and
pencils. These were to be resorted to when the compass and
materials openly were lost. I think I wrote, at General
Harper's dictation, a letter of instructions. Had Hurd lived and
succeeded, he would have anticipated the Landers, Richard
and John, who explored the Niger in 1832-34. He arrived
safely in Liberia, and made several short excursions into the
interior, but he had a theory that it was necessary to train
himself for the great journey. Abstinence was a part of his
training. It was a mistake. He took the acclimating fever, and,
although he recovered from the first attack, he had a relapse
brought on by some imprudence and died."[1]

Charles H. Webb.—During the years when the American
Colonization Society was preparing to establish a colony of
freedmen in Africa, it early became evident that the mere
transportation of the blacks to their native home would mean
little in establishing them in life. It was, therefore, necessary
to organize schools in which Negroes desiring to be
colonized could be trained in agriculture, mechanical arts and
even in the professions. Among the first to qualify in the field
of medicine was Charles H. Webb. In his examinations he
exhibited evidences of ripe scholarship and much proficiency
in his chosen field. He set sail for Liberia in 1834, after
having completed his medical studies, which he had pursued

under the direction of the American Colonization Society for a
number of years. In the following autumn, however, he fell a
victim to the local fever aggravated by some imprudence on
his part and died before he could render his people much
service.[2]

A Shrewd Negro.—A Kentucky slave, named Jim, with the
humiliation of slavery rankling in his breast, resolved to make
an effort to gain freedom. At last the opportunity came and he
started for the Ohio River. There he told his story to a
sympathetic member of his race, offering him a part of his
money, if he would row him across to the Indiana shore. He
was directed to George De Baptist, a free man of color, who
was then living in Madison but removed soon afterwards to
Detroit, Michigan. The master of the slave arrived in town
with a posse and diligently searched it for the Negro. His
sympathizers contrived, however, to avoid the slave hunters
and the fugitive was conducted through the corn fields and
byways to a depot of the Underground Railroad. He rested a
few days at the station kept by William Byrd, of Union
County, Indiana. From that point he was speedily forwarded
northward until he reached Canada.

Appreciating as he had never done before the real value of
freedom, he longed to do something to confer this great boon
upon his wife and children whom he left behind him in
Kentucky. He soon found a way to solve this problem. He
said to himself, "I'll go to old Massa's plantation, and I'll make
believe I am tired of freedom. I'll tell old Massa a story that

will please him; then I will go to work hard and watch for a
chance to slip away my wife and children."

His master was greatly surprised one morning to see Jim
return home. In answer to the many questions propounded to
him, he gave the explanation which he had planned. He told
his master that he found that Canada was no place for
Negroes, and that it was too cold and that they could not
earn any money there. He spoke of how the Negroes were
cheated by the whites and subjected to other humiliations,
which made him tired of his freedom. His master was very
much pleased with the story, spoke pleasantly to him and
permitted him to work among his slaves and those of his
neighbors as a missionary to convince the blacks of the folly
of escaping to Canada.

The slave resumed his usual labor, working during that fall
and winter but planning at the same time a second flight. In
the spring he succeeded in bringing together his wife and
children and a few of his slave friends on the Indiana side of
the Ohio River. He reached the first station of the
Underground Railway with his party numbering fourteen and
hurried them from point to point until they reached the home
of Levi Coffin in Indiana. They were hotly pursued and had
narrow escapes, but by wise management they made their
way through Spartansburg, Greenville and Mercer County,
Ohio, to Sandusky, from which they crossed over to Canada.
[3]

B. F. Grant.[4]—I was born in the State of Pennsylvania, Little
Britain Township, Lancaster County, Sunday morning, August
12, 1838. I am the son of the late Henry and Charlotte Grant.

My father was born a slave in the State of Maryland in Cecil
County. He was freed at the age of nineteen, upon the death
of his master. My mother was born of free parents in Harford
County, Maryland. Both came in their youth to Pennsylvania,
where they were married. Of that union there were born
twelve children, eight boys and four girls. The subject of this
sketch was the fifth son of the family.

In 1844 my father moved with his family from Lancaster to
York County, across the Susquehanna River. I was then
between five and six years old.

The first political event that I remember was the Presidential
campaign of Henry Clay and James K. Polk in 1844. In the
fall of that year each party had a pole raising at Peach
Bottom, York County, Pennsylvania. Mother took us to see
the pole raising and then the people were all shouting for
Henry Clay, but soon after that I remember hearing them
singing a song::

"Oh poor cooney Clay,
The white house was never made for you
And home you better stay."

Polk was elected, and soon after the inauguration of
President Polk in 1845 the great controversy over the
Mexican War and Negro slavery arose. The Negro question
was the topic of the day, both in and out of Congress and

among all classes. This continued until in 1846, when the
war broke out between the United States and Mexico, and
lasted two years.

When it was over the United States had the victory. Then the
slaveholders of the South, with the copperheads of the North,
tried to force their slaves or their slave influence into every
State and territory of the United States. So great became the
agitation and excitement that the poor slaves became
restless and uneasy over their condition, and they
commenced to run away by the thousands from the Southern
States. They made for the free States and Canada. This
gave rise to what was known as the Underground Railroad.

This brings me to consider what I call my boyhood days.
Having passed my childhood, I now began to think, feel and
consider that I was a human being as well as the white boys
who surrounded me, living on farms just as I lived. Therefore
I began to believe that I had the same God-given rights that
they had, and was not born to be kicked around like a dog
any more than they were.

About this time I began to attend the so-called public school.
I well remember those school days, for they made a lasting
impression upon my mind. If God had not had mercy on the
poor little Negro who attended the public school of
Pennsylvania in those days, I know not what would have
become of me; for the poor white trash from the teacher
down had no mercy upon him. They were upon him like
vultures upon their prey, ready to devour him at any time for
any cause.

I will mention only a few things which the little Negro had to
endure, simply because he was a Negro. He was not
permitted to drink from the same bucket or cup as the white
children. He was compelled to sit back in the corner from the
fire no matter how cold the weather might be. There he must
wait until the white children had recited. If the cold became
too intense to endure, he must ask permission of the teacher,
stand by the fire a few minutes to warm and then return to
the same cold corner. I have sat in an old log school house
with no chinking between the logs until my heels were frost-
bitten and cracked open. Sometimes we had a poor white
trashy skunk that would sit in the school room and call us
"niggers" or "darkeys." If the little Negro got his lesson at all,
he got it; if not, it was all the same.

For seven long years, 1844 to 1851, my father lived about
five miles from the Maryland line and about one mile from the
Susquehanna River. That is where I saw some of the evils of
the institution called slavery. Sometimes I wondered whether
there was any God for the Negro.

My father was one of the members of the Underground
Railroad. I well remember some of the members of that club
which used to meet at our house. They were Robert Fisher,
Lige Sarkey, Isaac Waters, Henry W. Grant, Isaac Fields,
Thomas Clarke and others who used to meet and make their
arrangements to convey the fugitives across the
Susquehanna River. The night was never too dark or the
storm never too severe for those brave, noble-hearted,
courageous men to do their work. They did not fear death.
Although they were uneducated men ignorant of the letter,
they were directed by a Higher Power. The hand of God led

them, and so they succeeded in carrying off hundreds, nay I
might truthfully say thousands from the counties of Cecil,
Harford and Baltimore. All lived to be old men.

After the Mexican War the Southern slaveholders and
copperheads of the North got it into their heads to extend
slavery throughout the borders of the United States. Robt.
Toombs, one of the noted fire-eaters of the South, said he
would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill
Monument. In 1848 came the crisis of the Presidential
election. The Mexican War was over and the country had a
vast amount of territory added to her southern borders. The
cotton gin had been invented, and cotton had come into
great demand. It was as good as gold. The Negro, therefore,
was in great demand.

Presidential nominations were made. The Whigs nominated
Gen. Taylor, and the Democrats nominated Lewis Cass. The
Whig candidate was successful. While Gen. Taylor was a
Southern man, he was somewhat opposed to the extension
of slavery, and, therefore, not a favorite of the nullifiers of the
South. He did not live long. Then they got their dupe, the
Vice-President, Millard Fillmore, a northern man, but a red-
hot copperhead who stood in with the South. I can well
remember those times when all the fire-eating leaders of the
South and the poor dirty trash of the North got their desire
when that poor dupe of a President allowed the mischievous
fugitive slave act to become a law of the land. This law was a
curse to the nation, an outrage upon the poor Negro and
suffering humanity. This bill gave the poor Negro no
protection in the land of his birth, a country boasting of being
the land of the brave and the home of the free. These terms,

however, were nothing but bombast; they would just come
and take a freeman and carry him into absolute slavery
without judge or jury.

I can well remember the Christiana riot. I was not living far
from there at that time. Those were the days that tried the
poor Negro's soul, and were a disgrace to the white man. I
was then about fifteen years old and we had to suffer
everything but death, and sometimes that; for the slave
hunters were like their bloodhounds, always upon the
Negro's track. There were daily riots between the slaves and
Negro hunters.

While quite young, and claiming to be a Christian, too, I was
almost ready to say with Job, "Cursed was the night wherein
I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man
child conceived." My disgust at the treatment given my
people made me resolve to leave the country and to go to
Liberia, Africa, because the fugitive slave law was too
obnoxious for me both in principle and practice. Because of
the outbreak of the Civil War, however, I failed to carry out
this plan.

Now I recall my third Presidential election. The candidates
were Gen. Winfield Scott and Franklin Pierce. Pierce was the
Democratic candidate and he overwhelmingly defeated Gen.
Scott, which placed the Democrats in absolute power. All the
fire-eaters of the South with the copperheads of the North
held full sway, arrayed against the anti-slavery party of the
North and East, and backed by the President, the Supreme
Court and Congress. The world knows the condition of the
country at that time. The Negro's condition during all of that

administration recalls to my memory a picture too dark to
attempt to describe.

During this administration there was a man by the name of
Dred Scott, owned by an army officer named Emerson. He
took Scott into a free territory; this slave, Scott, sued for his
freedom; the case was carried from court to court until it
reached the Supreme Court, which handed down that
opinion known throughout the world as the Dred Scott
decision. It meant that a Negro had no rights that a white
man was bound to respect; that he was of an inferior order,
and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in
social or political relation; and so far inferior that they need
not be respected, but might be reduced to slavery for the
white man's benefit. This decision placed the damnation seal
on the poor Negro in the United States. It left him absolutely
without help.

In 1856 opened the great political drama. The candidates
were James Buchanan, the Democrat, John C. Fremont,
Republican, and ex-Vice-President Millard Fillmore, of the
Know Nothing Party. James Buchanan, the Democrat, was
elected; the world knows the consequences of the next four
years in and out of Congress. Death and destruction were in
the path. We had John Brown's insurrection, the Christiana
riot, the tragic death of Lovejoy, and hundreds of other
events which I cannot mention at this time.

In 1860 the Presidential campaign came off. The candidates
were Abraham Lincoln, Republican, John C. Breckenridge,
Southern Democrat, and S. A. Douglass, Northern Democrat,

with John Bell, Union Democrat. This was a hot contest.
Lincoln was elected.

Then came the Great Rebellion. On April 12, 1862, in
company with my brother, John H. Grant, we left our home in
York Co., Pa., for Washington, D. C., then the center of war
activities. Both of us found employment as teamsters in the
Quartermaster's Department. On June 15 we were
transferred into Gen. Pope's Army in Virginia. We were
relieved of our teams and put to herding horses and mules
throughout Gen. Pope's campaign. After Pope was defeated
at the second battle of Bull Run, I returned to Washington
and went back to driving my team. In 1863 I was transferred
to the woodcutter department as an outside clerk and put to
measuring wood which was cut every two weeks. I also
looked after the commissary. I was there until the
Confederates ran us out in June.

I returned to Washington, D. C., and began my Christian and
literary work. I was converted sixty-five years ago, and joined
the A. M. E. Z. Church, then called Wesley Church. Rev.
Abner Bishop was the pastor. The church was in Peach
Bottom Township, York County, Pennsylvania.

I have been always a lover of the Sunday School work. My
interest continues to this day. There is one little incident in
my Sunday School work which I will relate. When I was a
boy, with another young boy like myself, we found that our
Sunday School needed some literature. We succeeded in
collecting some money, and Moses Jones and I found that
the nearest place to get the books was Lancaster City, about
twenty-five miles from the church. Undaunted, we took the

money and walked to Lancaster, and back again with the
books. Some of those books remained a great many years in
the library of that school.

I am the man who opened the first free school to colored
boys in the District of Columbia. This was in the basement of
the old Mt. Zion Church in 1863 under the Friends'
Association of Philadelphia, of which Mr. H. M. Laing, of that
city, was president. I also opened a school to freedmen in
Fairfax County, Virginia, at Bull Run. After being there about
three months, one of the Freedmen's Bureau Officers came
over from Manassas and placed me and my school back
under the direction of the Friends' Association and the same
Mr. Laing was still its president. I remained there two years.

When I opened the school it was a little log cabin built as a
headquarters by the Confederates. They were encamped
there in the spring or rather the winter of 1861-62. While I
was teaching at Bull Run, Prof. John M. Langston was
appointed to a position in the Freedmen's Bureau. I became
acquainted with him, interested him in my work and he
secured me one hundred and fifty dollars to assist in building
there a house for two purposes, a church and a school. In
this school I gave the founder of the Manasses Industrial
School, Miss Jennie Dean, her first lessons. Now after the
lapse of fifty years, the Bull Run School is still standing as
one of the public schools of Fairfax County, Virginia.

While teaching in the Bull Run School I was elected a
delegate to the first National Negro Convention after the Civil
War. This met in the Israel Church, Washington, D. C., in
1868. This church was then A. M. E. Zion, but now C. M. E.

There I met some of the leading Negroes of the world.
Among them were Hon. Frederick Douglass, Prof. John M.
Langston, Rev. Henry H. Garnett, C. L. Remond, Robert
Purvis, Geo. T. Downing, Geo. B. Vashon, Rev. Wm. Howard
Day, Prof. Bassett, Robt. W. Elliot, Bishop Henry M. Turner,
Prof. Isaac C. Weaver, Richard Clarke, John Jones, Prof. O.
M. Green, Geo. W. White, P. H. Martin, John R. Lynch, and
A. R. Green. These were some of the lights in that
convention. Hon. Fred. Douglass was elected president, with
Rev. H. L. Garnett as vice-president.

After two years at Bull Run, I returned to the District of
Columbia, where I became acquainted with a white
gentleman named Edmond Tewney, from the State of Maine,
who came to the District as one of the founders of Wayland
Seminary. As there was some misunderstanding between
him and some of the other members of the faculty, he left the
school, and organized another, known as the National
Theological Institution for the Instruction of Young Colored
Men and Women for preachers and teachers.

I became associated with that school, and was an assistant
teacher and a pupil at the same time. It was a Baptist
institution, and some of those who afterward became the
most able Baptist preachers in the city attended that school.
Some of them were Rev. John D. Brooks, Rev. James
Jefferson, Rev. Edward Willis, Rev. M. J. Laws, Rev. J. M.
Johnson, Rev. Henry Lee, and many others who did great
good for God's church and for suffering humanity.

I will return to my church and Sunday School work in the
District of Columbia and its vicinity. I was the Church Clerk

for Union Wesley A. M. E. Z. Church for twenty-five years,
and the superintendent of its Sunday School for thirty years.

I have been acquainted with all the bishops of that Church
and a great many of its leading elders since I joined the
church in 1853, sixty-five years ago. Some of the worthy
prelates and leaders who have been my warm personal
friends are: Bishops J. J. Clinton, J. J. Moore, C. C. Petty, C.
R. Harris, J. W. Hood, J. W. Smith, J. Logan, J. W. Small,
and Elders J. Harvey Anderson, Geo. W. Adams, Thos.
Betters, R. J. Daniels, R. S. G. Dyson, and many others who
have gone from my mind at this writing. I have had much of
joy and happiness in my church life.

I am still in the Master's service. I am at present District
Sunday School Superintendent of the Washington District of
the Philadelphia and Baltimore Conference of the A. M. E. Z.
Church. On August 12, 1918, I was eighty years old.

Mary L. Mason.

Footnotes:
[1] Semmes, John H. B. Latrobe, pp. 140-142.

[2] The African Repository, X, 104, and XII, 18.

[3] Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 139-144.

[4] This personal narrative was secured from B.F.
Grant, of Washington, D. C., by Miss Mary L. Mason.

BOOK REVIEWS
American Negro Slavery. By Ulrich Bonnell Phillips. A
Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro
Labor as determined by the Plantation Regime. D.
Appleton and Company, New York and London, 1918.
Pp. 529.

This book is both more and less than a history of slavery in
America. It transcends the limit of the average treatise in this
field in that it shows how the institution influenced the
economic history of America in all its ramifications. It falls far
short of being a complete history of slavery for the reason of
the neglect of many aspects by the author. The book is
successful as a compilation or digest of the sources of the
history of slavery cast in the mind of a man of southern birth
and northern environment in manhood.

The author furnishes adequate background for this work in
tracing the slave trade, beginning with the exploitation of
Guinea and proceeding to a detailed consideration of the
maritime traffic. Slavery as it existed in the West Indies is
portrayed in his account of the sugar industry. In the
continental colonies it appears in his treatment of the tobacco
industry, rice culture and the interests of the northern
colonies. He shows how the struggle for the rights of man
resulted in a sort of reaction against slavery in the North and
the so-called prohibition of the African slave trade.

In his discussion of the introduction of cotton and the
domestic slave trade, there are few facts which cannot be
obtained from several standard works. His treatment of types
of plantations, with reference to their management, labor,
social aspects and tendencies, is more informing. The
contrast between town and country slaves, the discussion of
free Negroes, slave crime and the force of the law, do not
give us very much that is new. On the whole, however, the
book is a valuable piece of research giving a more intensive
treatment of economic slavery than any other single volume
hitherto published.

On the other hand, the book falls far short of giving a
complete history of the institution of slavery. In the first place,
the book is too much of a commercial account. The slaves
are mentioned as representing both persons and property,
but this treatise lacks proportion in that it deals primarily with
the slaves as property in the cold-blooded fashion that the
southerners usually bartered them away. Very little is said
about the blacks themselves, seemingly to give more space
to the history of the whites, who profited by their labor, just as
one would in writing a history of the New England fisheries
say very little about the species figuring in the industry, but
more about the life of the people participating in it. It is
evident that although a southerner, Mr. Phillips has lived so
far from the Negroes that he knows less about them than
those who have periodically come into contact with them but
on certain occasions have given the blacks serious study.
This is evidenced by Mr. Phillips' own statement when he
says in his preface, that "a generation of freedom has
wrought less transformation in the bulk of the blacks than
might casually be supposed." This failure to understand what

the Negroes have thought and felt and done, in other words,
the failure to fathom the Negro mind, constitutes a defect of
the work.

Another neglected aspect of the book is the failure of the
author to treat adequately the anti-slavery movement. It was
not necessary for him to give an extensive treatment of
abolition but it is impossible to set forth exactly what the
institution was without giving sufficient space to this attitude
of a militant minority toward it. It was certainly proper for the
author to say more about the northerners and southerners
who arrayed themselves in opposition to the institution. In his
chapter on the economic views of slavery this aspect was
mentioned but not properly amplified. Some references to it
elsewhere, of course, appear in parts of the book but,
considering the importance of this phase of the history of
slavery in America, one can say it has been decidedly
neglected. The author, as he says in his preface, avoided
"polemic writings, for their fuel went so much to heat that
their light upon the living conditions is faint." It was not
necessary also to avoid the controversy in which these
writers participated. No one will gainsay the fact that persons
who engage in controversy cannot be depended upon to tell
the truth, but if the slavery dispute largely influenced the
history of the country, it should have adequate treatment in a
history of this kind.

John H. B. Latrobe and His Times. By John E. Semmes. The
Norman, Remington Company, Baltimore, Maryland. Pp.

595. Price $6.00.

This is an extensive biography of a man born in Philadelphia
and, after some adventures elsewhere, transplanted to
Baltimore, where he became one of the first citizens of the
land. His career as a cadet at West Point, his study and
practice of law, his business interests, his travels and
connections with learned and humanitarian societies all
bespeak the many-sidedness of a useful citizen. The work
contains a Latrobe genealogy and a topical index. It is well
illustrated and exhibits evidences of much effort on the part
of the author.

The part of the book most interesting to students of Negro
history, however, is the chapter on African colonization, a
subject which engaged the attention of Latrobe for many
years and for which he became an influential promoter in
serving as corresponding secretary of the Maryland
Colonization Society and as president of the American
Colonization Society. Although only one chapter of the book
is devoted to this aspect of Mr. Latrobe's biography, it figured
as largely in his life as any other public interest. He said: "I
cannot now recall in order all that I did for it. It was the one
thing then, and has ever been the one thing outside of my
lawyer's calling, to which I have devoted myself." His
biographer says that he spent about one quarter of his
working hours during ten years of his life in advocating
colonization. Dr. Daniel C. Gilman, President of Johns
Hopkins University, said at a meeting of the Maryland
Historical Society held in Latrobe's memory that "probably his
greatest distinction outside of his professional life was

acquired in promoting the cause of African colonization in
ante-bellum days."

The author, however, instead of informing the reader as to
what Latrobe did for colonization, laments the failure of this
enterprise and endeavors to show that colonization or
segregation in some form must be the solution of the Negro
problem. In the chapter mentioned above he refers to this
important work of Latrobe, not to set forth what he actually
accomplished in this field, but to give the author's views. He
proceeds to quote Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay and
Abraham Lincoln, and finally Horace Grady and Bishop H. M.
Turner on colonization, with a view to convincing the reader
that although Mr. Latrobe's effort at colonizing the Negroes in
Africa failed, it must eventually be brought about since the
two races will not happily live together and then the great
work of Latrobe will stand out as an achievement rather than
as a failure. This branching off into opinion rather than into a
scientific treatment of facts renders the biography incomplete
so far as it concerns one of the larger aspects of Latrobe's
life. The reader must, therefore, go to the papers of Latrobe
to trace his connection with colonization with a view to
determining exactly how largely this interest figured in the life
of a successful lawyer and business man and the extent to
which he interested the people throughout the country. The
public will, therefore, welcome a more scholarly biography of
J. H. B. Latrobe.

The Mulatto in The United States. By Edward Byron Reuter.
Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, Boston, 1918.
Pp. 417. Price $2.50 net.

This is the first work to deal especially with the people of
color and will, therefore, attract some attention. It is chiefly
valuable for the discussion which it will arouse rather than for
the information given. It is an unscientific compilation of facts
collected from a few sources by a man who has devoted
some time to the study of the Negro but just about enough to
misunderstand the race. His chief shortcoming consists in his
misinformation. For scientific purposes the book has no
value.

In the beginning of the work there is a discussion of mixed
blood races in the old world, concluding with a treatment of
the same in the West Indies and America. Considering the
mulatto the key to the race problem in America, Mr. Reuter
undertakes to show the extent of race mixture, its nature and
growth. He discusses the intermarriage of the races, unlawful
polygamy, intermarriage with Indians, intermixture during
slavery and concubinage of black women with white men. He
seems to know nothing of the numerous facts easily
accessible in various works, which show that during slavery
there was also a concubinage of white women with black
men. In the next place, the author treats the Negro of today,
depending mainly on a few unreliable sources of information
such as the proceedings of certain Negro conventions, a
Negro newspaper and the few books specially devoted to
Negro history. In this it appears that he does not know that
the chief sources of Negro history are not books bearing

such titles, for the history of the race has not yet been
written.

Mr. Reuter's conclusions are fundamentally wrong for the two
reasons that he does not know who the mulattoes are and,
although taking cognizance of the fact that science has
uprooted the idea of racial inferiority, he is loath to abandon
the contention that the mulatto is superior to the Negro. For
example, in his chapter on leading men of the Negro race, in
which he specifies whether they are blacks or mulattoes, he
has classified as mulattoes a large number of Negroes who
have practically no evidences of white blood and are
commonly referred to throughout the country as the blacks of
the Negro race. The title of the book, therefore, should not be
The Mulatto but The Negro. It would then establish nothing
as it does. Upon the careers of these black persons he has
supported his theories as to the superiority of the mulatto.
This encourages him, therefore, to intimate that because of
their proximity to the racial characteristics of the white race
they are in some respects superior to the blacks. Here we
have the return of the ante-bellum proslavery philosopher
disguised as a scientific investigator.

The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky. By Asa Earl Martin,
Assistant Professor of American History, The
Pennsylvania State College. The Standard Printing
Company of Louisville, Kentucky, 1918. Pp. 165.

In this volume there is an effort to bring out something new in
the history of slavery. The author is mindful of the tendency
of most writers of the history of slavery to direct their
attention to the radical movements associated with the
names of the leading abolitionists. His effort is to treat that
neglected aspect of slavery having to do with the work of the
gradual emancipationists. "These men, unlike the followers
of Garrison, who were restricted to the free States," said he,
"were found in all parts of the Union. They embraced great
numbers of leaders in politics, business and education, and
while far more numerous in the free than in the slave States,
they nevertheless included a large and respectable element
in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri."
He has in mind here, of course, the conservative
slaveholders of the border States who had for a number of
years felt that slavery was an economic evil of which the
country should rid itself gradually by systematic efforts.
Feeling that they contributed in the end a great deal to the
downfall of the regime and in some respects exercised as
much influence as the abolitionists, he has undertaken to set
their story before the world.

The author begins with the first attack upon slavery, the early
anti-slavery movement in Kentucky, the colonizationist idea,
the work of the anti-slavery societies, and the efforts of the
church to exterminate the evil. In the eighth and ninth
chapters he treats more seriously the main question at issue,
namely, exactly how men of that slave-holding
commonwealth persistently endeavored to find a more
rational means of escaping the baneful effects of the
institution. His important contribution, therefore, is that
abolition found little favor in Kentucky while gradual

emancipation moved the hearts of men of both parties and
even of slave-holders. How the struggle between these pro-
slavery and anti-slavery parties culminated in 1849 in the
defeat of the latter, is the concluding portion of the book. He
shows that Kentucky exceeded most of the border slave
States in permitting the freer and more extensive discussion
of that question than any of the other commonwealths
similarly situated.

Professor Martin's work, therefore, is a complement of Dr. I.
E. McDougle's Slavery in Kentucky. Whereas Professor
Martin deals primarily with the work of the gradual
emancipationists, Dr. I. E. McDougle directs his attention
largely to some other aspects of the question. Both of these
works may be read with profit. In them the whole question
has been adequately discussed and there will not soon be a
need for further investigation in this field.

NOTES
Within a few years from the time the United States army will
be reduced to a peace status, the Association for the Study
of Negro Life and History will publish a scientific history of the
Negro soldiers in the great war. As this effort will require a
large outlay, it is earnestly desired that persons interested in
the propagation of the truth will give this movement their
support. A campaign for funds has begun and the
encouragement hitherto received indicates that the amount
necessary to finance this enterprise will be secured.

At present it is impossible to indicate exactly the extent of
this work. It will be first necessary to make an extensive
research into all of the sources of information as to the
Negroes' participation in the war and when the data thus
collected will have been properly digested, a more detailed
description of the work may be forecasted. It is safe to say,
however, that the work will consist of several volumes written
by the Director of Research.

This same interest is set forth, as follows, in an item
appearing in the December number of the Crisis:

"The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People has appropriated funds and commissioned the Director

of Publications and Research to collect the data and compile a
history of the Negro in the Great War.

"Dr. DuBois has invited a number of Negro scholars, soldiers
and officials to form an Editorial Board, which will be able to
issue an authentic, scientific and definitive history of our part in
this war.

"The personnel of this board will be announced later. Meantime,
we want the active coöperation of every person who can and will
help. We want facts, letters and documents, narratives and
clippings. Let us all unite to make the record complete.
Correspondence may be directed to this office."

The following important announcement appeared in the
December number of the Crisis:

Tercentenary

The husband of Pocahontas wrote in 1619: "About the last of
August came a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty
Negars." From this beginning sprang the present twelve
million Americans of Negro descent.

Next August will mark the Three Hundredth Anniversary of
this vast transplantation of a race, which ranks easily as one
of the most significant movements of mankind. Such an
event can hardly be "celebrated," for it connoted too much of
misery and human sorrow. On the other hand, it is too stern
and meaningful a happening to be forgotten. For this reason,
a group of thirty-three colored men met in New York, October
19, 1918, at the invitation of a committee appointed by the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

They determined to inaugurate "A Solemn Memorial of the
Tercentenary of the Transplanting of the Negro race to the
United States." In order, however, to give all sections and
interests of the Negro race adequate voice and
representation in these plans, this committee set about
choosing a Committee of "Three Hundred and More," in
whose hands the Memorial will take final shape. This
Committee is now being chosen and will meet in New York
early in January, 1919.

The Linchoten Vereeniging has published for Mr. E. C.
Godee Mossbergen two volumes of Reizen in Zuid-Afrika in
de Hollandse Tijd.

From the press of Longsman two volumes bearing on Africa
have been published. One is by Sir Hugh Clifford, entitled the
German Colonies, with special relation to the native
population of Africa. The other, by H. C. O'Neill, is the War in
Africa and the Far East, dealing largely with the conquest of
the German colonies.

Houghton, Mifflin and Company have published a study
entitled Lincoln in Illinois by Miss Octavia Roberts. This work

is largely a compilation of the recollections of his
contemporaries.

To extend the work of the Association the Director of
Research is now making an effort to secure the cooperation
of five persons who, like Mr. Julius Rosenwald, will contribute
$400 annually to the support of this cause. Mr. Moorfield
Storey and Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge have each pledged
themselves to give this amount. It is earnestly hoped that
other philanthropists will subscribe.

The Journal
of
Negro History

Vol. IV—April, 1919—No. 2

THE CONFLICT AND FUSION OF
CULTURES WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO THE NEGRO[1]
Under ordinary circumstances the transmission of the social
tradition is from the parents to the children. Children are born
into society and take over its customs, habits, and standards
of life simply, naturally, and without conflict. But it will at once
occur to any one that the life of society is not always
continued and maintained in this natural way, by the
succession of parents and children. New societies are
formed by conquest and by the imposition of one people
upon another. In such cases there arises a conflict of cultures
and as a result the process of fusion takes place slowly and
is frequently not complete. New societies are frequently
formed by colonization, in which case new cultures are
grafted on to older ones. The work of missionary societies is
essentially one of colonization in this sense.

Finally we have societies growing up, as in the United States,
by immigration. These immigrants, coming as they do from
all parts of the world, bring with them fragments of divergent
cultures. Here again the process of assimilation is slow, often
painful, not always complete. In the case where societies are
formed and maintained by adoption, that is by immigration,
the question arises: How far is it possible for a people of a
different race and a different culture to take over the
traditions and social inheritance of another and an alien

people? What are the conditions which facilitate this
transmission and, in general, what happens when people of
different races and cultures are brought together in the
intimate relations of community life?

These questions have already arisen in connection with the
education of the Negro in America and with the work of
foreign missions. If the schools are to extend and rationalize
the work they are already doing in the Americanization of the
immigrant peoples, questions of this sort may become actual
in the field of pedagogy. This paper is mainly concerned with
the Negro, not because the case of the Negro is more urgent
than or essentially different from that of the immigrant, but
because the materials for investigation are more accessible.

Admitting, as the anthropologists now seem disposed to do,
that the average native intelligence in the races is about the
same, we may still expect to find in different races certain
special traits and tendencies which rest on biological rather
than cultural differences. For example, over and above all
differences of language, custom or historic tradition, it is to
be presumed that Teuton and Latin, the Negro and the Jew—
to compare the most primitive with the most sophisticated of
peoples—have certain racial aptitudes, certain innate and
characteristic differences of temperament which manifest
themselves especially in the objects of attention, in tastes
and in talents. Is the Jewish intellectual, for example, a
manifestation of an original and peculiar endowment of the
Jewish race or is he rather a product of traditional interest
and emphasis characteristic of Jewish people—a
characteristic which may be explained as an accommodation
to the long-continued urban environment of the race?[2] Is the

Negro's undoubted interest in music and taste for bright
colors, commonly attributed to the race, to be regarded as an
inherent and racial trait or is it merely the characteristic of
primitive people? Is Catholicism to be regarded as the
natural manifestation of the Latin temperament as it has
been said that Protestantism is of the Teutonic?

Here are differences in the character of the cultural life which
can scarcely be measured quantitatively in terms of gross
intellectual capacity. Historical causes do not, it seems,
adequately account for them. So far as this is true we are
perhaps warranted in regarding them as modifications of
transmitted tradition due to innate traits of the people who
have produced them. Granted that civilization, as we find it,
is due to the development of communication and the
possibility of mutual exchange of cultural materials, still every
special culture is the result of a selection and every people
borrows from the whole fund of cultural materials not merely
that which it can use but which, because of certain organic
characteristics, it finds stimulating and interesting.

The question then resolves itself into this: How far do racial
characteristics and innate biological interests determine the
extent to which one racial group can and will take over and
assimilate the characteristic features of an alien civilization?
How far will it merely take over the cultural forms, giving
them a different content or a different inflection? This
problem, so far as it is related to the lives of primitive
peoples, has already been studied by the ethnologists.
Rivers, in his analysis of the cultures of Australian people,
has found that what we have hitherto regarded as primitive
cultures are really fusions of other and earlier forms of

culture.[3] The evidence of this is the fact that the fusion has
not been complete. In the process of interchange it frequently
happens that what Rivers calls the "fundamental structure" of
a primitive society has remained unchanged while the
relatively formal and external elements of alien culture only
have been taken over and incorporated with it.

There are indications also that, where cultural borrowings
have taken place, the borrowed elements have for the people
who have taken them over a meaning different from what
they had for the people from whom they were borrowed. W.J.
McGee, in an article entitled "Piratical Acculturation," has
given an interesting illustration of this fact.[4] McGee's
observations of the Beri Indians go to show that they imitated
the weapons of their enemies, but that they regarded them
as magical instruments and the common people did not even
know their names. There are numerous other illustrations of
this so-called "piratical acculturation" among the
observations of ethnologists. It is said that the Negroes in
Africa, when they first came into possession of the white
man's guns, regarded them as magical instruments for
making a noise and used them, as the Germans used the
Zeppelins and the newspapers, merely to destroy the
enemy's morale.

No doubt the disposition of primitive peoples is to conceive
everything mystically, or animistically, to use the language of
ethnology, particularly where it concerns something strange.
On the other hand, when the primitive man has encountered
among the cultural objects to which civilization has
introduced him, something which he has been able to make
immediately intelligible to himself, he has at once formed a

perfectly rational conception of it. Some years ago at
Lovedale, South Africa, the seat of one of the first successful
industrial mission schools, there was an important ceremony
to which all the native African chiefs in the vicinity were
formally invited. It was the introduction and demonstration of
the use of the plow, the first one that had ever been seen in
those parts. The proceedings were followed with great
interest by a large gathering of natives. When the
demonstration was finished one old chief turned to his
followers and said with great conviction: "This is a great thing
which the white man has brought us. One hoe like that is
worth as much as ten wives." An African chief could hardly
have expressed appreciation of this one fundamental device
of our civilization in more pragmatic or less mystical terms.
The wise old chief grasped the meaning of the plow at once,
but this was because he had been pre-adapted by earlier
experience to do so.

It is the subjective, historic and ultimately, perhaps, racial and
temperamental factor in the lives of peoples which makes it
difficult, though not impossible, perhaps, to transmit political
and religious institutions to people of a different racial type
and a different social tradition. William James' essay, "On a
Certain Blindness in Human Beings," in which he points out
how completely we are likely to miss the point and mistake
the inner significance of the lives of those about us, unless
we share their expedience, emphasizes this fact. If then the
transmission and fusion of cultures is slow, incomplete and
sometimes impossible, it is because the external forms, the
formulas, technical devices of every social tradition can be
more easily transmitted than the aims, the attitudes,
sentiments and ideals which attach to them are embodied in

them. The former can be copied and used; the latter must be
appreciated and understood.

For a study of the acculturation process, there are probably
no materials more complete and accessible than those
offered by the history of the American Negro. No other
representatives of a primitive race have had so prolonged
and so intimate an association with European civilization,
and still preserved their racial identity. Among no other
people is it possible to find so many stages of culture existing
contemporaneously. It has been generally taken for granted
that the Negro brought a considerable fund of African
tradition and African superstition from Africa to America. One
not infrequently finds in the current literature and even in
standard books upon the Negro, references to voodoo
practices among the Negroes in the Southern States. As a
matter-of-fact the last authentic account which we have of
anything approaching a Negro nature worship in the United
States took place in Louisiana in 1884. It is described by
George W. Cable in an article on "Creole Slave Songs" which
appeared in the Century Magazine in 1886. In this case it
seems to have been an importation from the West Indies. I
have never found an account of a genuine instance of
voodoo worship elsewhere in the United States, although it
seems to have been common enough in the West Indies at
one time.

My own impression is that the amount of African tradition
which the Negro brought to the United States was very small.
In fact, there is every reason to believe, it seems to me, that
the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind
him almost everything but his dark complexion and his

tropical temperament. It is very difficult to find in the South
today anything that can be traced directly back to Africa. This
does not mean that there is not a great deal of superstition,
conjuring, "root doctoring" and magic generally among the
Negroes of the United States. What it does mean is that the
superstitions we do find are those which we might expect to
grow up anywhere among an imaginative people, living in an
intellectual twilight such as exists on the isolated plantations
of the Southern States. Furthermore, this superstition is in no
way associated, as it is in some of the countries of Europe,
southern Italy for example, with religious beliefs and
practices. It is not part of Negro Christianity. It is with him, as
it is with us, folk-lore pure and simple. It is said that there are
but two African words that have been retained in the English
language. One of these is the word Buckra, from which
comes Buckra Beach in Virginia. This seems remarkable
when we consider that slaves were still brought into the
United States clandestinely up to 1862.[5]

The explanation is to be found in the manner in which the
Negro slaves were collected in Africa and the manner in
which they were disposed of after they arrived in this country.
The great markets for slaves in Africa were on the West
Coast, but the old slave trails ran back from the coast far into
the interior of the continent, and all the peoples of Central
Africa contributed to the stream of enforced emigration to the
New World. In the West Indies a good deal was known
among slave-traders and plantation owners about the
character and relative value of slaves from different parts of
Africa, but in the United States there was less knowledge
and less discrimination. Coming from all parts of Africa and
having no common language and common tradition, the

memories of Africa which they brought with them were soon
lost.

There was less opportunity in the United States also than in
the West Indies for a slave to meet one of his own people,
because the plantations were considerably smaller, more
widely scattered and, especially, because as soon as they
were landed in this country, slaves were immediately divided
and shipped in small numbers, frequently no more than one
or two at a time, to different plantations. This was the
procedure with the very first Negroes brought to this country.
It was found easier to deal with the slaves, if they were
separated from their kinsmen.

On the plantation they were thrown together with slaves who
had already forgotten or only dimly remembered their life in
Africa. English was the only language of the plantation. The
attitude of the slave plantation to each fresh arrival seems to
have been much like that of the older immigrant towards the
greenhorn. Everything that marked him as an alien was
regarded as ridiculous and barbaric.[6] Furthermore, the slave
had in fact very little desire to return to his native land. I once
had an opportunity to talk with an old man living just outside
of Mobile, who was a member of what was known as the
African colony. This African colony represented the cargo of
one of the last slave ships successful in landing in this
country just at the opening of the war. The old man
remembered Africa and gave me a very interesting account
of the way in which he was captured and brought to America.
I asked him if he had ever wished to return. He said that a
missionary who had been in their country and spoke their
language had visited them at one time. This missionary

offered to send them back to Africa and even urged them to
go. "I told him," said the old man, "I crossed the ocean once,
but I made up my mind then never to trust myself in a boat
with a white man again."

The fact that the Negro brought with him from Africa so little
tradition which he was able to transmit and perpetuate on
American soil, makes that race unique among all peoples of
our cosmopolitan population. Other peoples have lost, under
the disintegrating influence of the American environment,
much of their cultural heritage. None have been so utterly cut
off and estranged from their ancestral land, traditions and
people. It is just because of this that the history of the Negro
offers exceptional materials for determining the relative
influence of temperamental and historical conditions upon
the process by which cultural materials from one racial group
are transmitted to another; for, in spite of the fact that the
Negro brought so little intellectual baggage with him, he has
exhibited a rather marked ethnical individuality in the use and
interpretation of the cultural materials to which he has had
access.

The first, and perhaps the only distinctive institution which
the Negro has developed in this country is the Negro church,
and it is in connection with his religion that we may expect to
find, if anywhere, the indications of a distinctive Afro-
American culture. The actual conditions under which the
African slaves were converted to Christianity have never
been adequately investigated. We know, in a general way,
that there was at first considerable opposition to admitting
the Negro into the church because it was feared that it would
impair the master's title to his slaves. History records too that

the house servants were very early admitted to churches and
that in many cases masters went to considerable pains to
instruct those servants who shared with them the intimacy of
the household.[7] It was not, however, until the coming of the
new, free and evangelistic types of Christianity, the Baptists
and the Methodists, that the masses of the black people, that
is, the plantation Negroes, found a form of Christianity that
they could make their own.

How eagerly and completely the Negro did take over the
religion of these liberal denominations may be gathered from
some of the contemporary writings, which record the
founding of the first Negro churches in America. The first
Negro church in Jamaica was founded by George Liele,
shortly after the close of the Revolutionary War. George Liele
had been a slave in Savannah, but his master, who was a
Tory, emigrated to Jamaica upon the evacuation of that city.
Andrew Bryan in Savannah was one of Liele's congregation.
He was converted, according to the contemporary record, by
Liele's exposition of the text "You must be born again!" About
eight months after Liele's departure, Andrew began to preach
to a Negro congregation, "with a few white." The colored
people had been permitted to erect a building at Yamacraw,
but white people in the vicinity objected to the meetings and
Bryan and some of his associates were arrested and
whipped. But he "rejoiced in his whippings" and holding up
his hand declared "he would freely suffer death for the cause
of Jesus Christ." Bryan's master interceded for him and "was
most affected and grieved" at his punishment. He gave Bryan
and his followers a barn to worship in, after Chief Justice
Osbourne had given them their liberty. This was the origin of
what was probably the first Negro church in America.

George Liele and Andrew Bryan were probably not
exceptional men even for their day. The Rev. James Cook
wrote of Bryan: "His gifts are small but he is clear in the
grand doctrines of the Gospel. I believe him truly pious and
he has been the instrument of doing more good among the
poor slaves than all the learned doctors in America."[8] The
significant thing is that, with the appearance of these men,
the Negroes in America ceased to be a mission people. At
least, from this time on, the movement went on of its own
momentum, more and more largely under the direction of
Negro leaders. Little Negro congregations, under the
leadership of Negro preachers, sprang up wherever they
Were tolerated. Often they were suppressed, more often they
were privately encouraged. Not infrequently they met in
secret.

In 1787 Richard Allen and Absolom Jones had formed in
Philadelphia the Free African Society, out of which four years
later, in 1790, arose the first separate denominational
organization of Negroes, the African Methodist-Episcopal
Church. George Liele, Andrew Bryan, Richard Allen, and the
other founders of the Negro church were men of some
education, as their letters and other writings show. They had
had the advantage of life in a city environment and the
churches which they founded were in all essentials faithful
copies of the denominational forms as they found them in the
churches of that period.

The religion of the Negroes on the plantation was then, as it
is today, of a much more primitive sort. Furthermore, there
were considerable differences in the cultural status of
different regions of the South and these differences were

reflected in the Negro churches. There was at that time, as
there is today, a marked contrast between the Upland and
the Sea Island Negroes. Back from the coast the plantations
were smaller, the contact of the master and slave were more
intimate. On the Sea Island, however, where the slaves were
and still are more completely isolated than elsewhere in the
South, the Negro population approached more closely to the
cultural status of the native African. The Sea Islands were
taken possession of in the first years of the war by the
Federal forces and it was here that people from the North
first came in contact with the plantation Negro of the lower
South. They immediately became interested in the manners
and customs of the Island Negroes, and from them we have
the first accurate accounts of their folk-lore and sayings.

The Sea Island Negroes speak a distinct dialect and retain
certain customs which are supposed to be of African origin. It
is, however, in their religious practices that we have the
nearest approach to anything positively African. This has
undoubtedly the characteristics of primitive ritual. But this
does not mean that it is African in origin. It seems to me more
likely that it is to be interpreted as a very simple and natural
expression of group emotion, which is just beginning to
crystallize and assume a formal character. The general tone
of these meetings is that of a religious revival in which we
expect a free and uncontrolled expression of religious
emotion, the difference being that in this case the expression
of the excitement is beginning to assume a formal and
ritualistic character.

In the voodoo practices, of which we have not any accurate
records, the incantations that were pronounced by the

priests, contain strange, magic words, scraps of ancient
ritual, the meanings of which are forgotten. Lafcadio Hearne,
who knew the Negro life of Louisiana and Martinique
intimately and was keen on the subject of Negro folk-lore,
has preserved for us this scrap from an old Negro folk song
in which some of these magic words have been preserved.
Writing to his friend Edward Krehbiel he says:

"Your friend is right, no doubt about the
'Tig, tig, malaborn
La Chelerna che tango
Redjoum!'

"I asked my black nurse what it meant. She only laughed and
shook her head. 'Mais c'est voodoo, ca; je n'en sais rien!' 'Well,'
said I, 'don't you know anything about Voodoo songs?' 'Yes,' she
answered, 'I know Voodoo songs; but I can't tell you what they
mean.' And she broke out into the wildest, weirdest ditty I ever
heard. I tried to write down the words; but as I did not know what
they meant I had to write by sound alone, spelling the words
according to the French pronunciation."[9]

So far as I know there are, among the plantation hymns, no
such remains of ancient ritual, mystical words whose
meanings are unknown, no traces whatever of African
tradition. If there is anything that is African about the
Negroes' Christianity, it is not African tradition but the African
temperament which has contributed it. I assume, therefore,
that what we find in the most primitive form of Negro
Christianity is not the revival of an older and more barbaric
religion but the inception of a new and original form of
Christianity.

An interesting fact in regard to the religious practices of the
Negroes of the Sea Islands, which has not, so far as I know,
been recorded in any of the descriptions of that people, is the
existence among them of two distinct religious institutions;
namely, the church and the "praise house." The praise house
is the earlier institution and represents apparently a more
primitive and more characteristically Negro or African type. In

slavery days, the church was the white man's place of
worship. Negroes were permitted to attend the services and
there was usually a gallery reserved for their use. Churches,
however, were relatively few and not all the slaves on the
plantation could attend at any one time. Those who did
attend were usually the house servants. On every large
plantation, however, there was likely to be, and this was
characteristic of the Sea Island plantations, a "praise house"
where the slaves were permitted to worship in their own
peculiar way. It was here that the "shout" took place. After the
Civil War, churches were erected and regular congregations
of the Negro denominations were formed. The Negro
churches, however, never wholly displaced the praise houses
on Port Royal and some of the other islands. It is a singular
fact that today, among the Negroes of Port Royal, at any
rate, no one is converted in church. It is only in the praise
houses that Negroes get religion. It is only through the praise
house that one enters the church. The whole process
involves, as I have been informed, not merely an
"experience," the precise nature of which is not clear, but
also an examination by the elders to determine whether the
experience is genuine, before candidates are admitted in
good standing as members of the congregation.

On the whole the plantation Negro's religion was a faithful
copy of the white man's. It was content rather than the form
which suffered sea change in the process of transmission
from the white man to the black. What this content was, what
new inflection and color the Negro slave imparted to the
religious forms which he borrowed from his master we may,
perhaps, gather from a study of the plantation hymns. These
folksongs represent, at any rate, the naive and spontaneous

utterance of hopes and aspirations for which the Negro slave
had no other adequate means of expression. The first and
most interesting account we have of these Negro spirituals is
that of Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his Army Life in
a Black Regiment.[10] He collected them from the lips of his
own black soldiers as they sang them about the campfire at
night. He was almost the first to recognize that these rude
plantation hymns represented a real literature, the only
literature the American Negro has produced, until very recent
times.

Col. Higginson has compared the Negro spirituals to the
Scotch ballads and to the folk songs of other races. It is,
however, not so much their similarities as their differences
which are interesting and significant. Negro folk songs are
ruder and more primitive. The verses, often but not always
rhymed, are, as in the case of the example given below,
composed almost entirely of single phrases, followed by a
refrain, which is repeated again with slight modifications,
ending, not infrequently, in an exclamation.
An' I couldn't hear nobody pray,
O Lord!
Couldn't hear nobody pray.
O—way down yonder
By myself,
I couldn't hear nobody pray.

In the valley,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
On my knees,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
With my burden,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,

An' my Saviour,
Couldn't hear nobody pray.

O Lord!
I couldn't hear nobody pray,
O Lord!
Couldn't hear nobody pray.
O—way down yonder
By myself,
I couldn't hear nobody pray.

Chilly waters,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
In the Jordan,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
Crossing over,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
Into Canaan,
Couldn't hear nobody pray.

In Negro folk songs the music and expression are everything.
The words, often striking and suggestive, to be sure,
represent broken fragments of ideas, thrown up from the
depths of the Negroes' consciousness and swept along upon
a torrent of wild, weird and often beautiful melody. One
reason the verses of the Negro folk songs are so broken and
fragmentary is that the Negroes were not yet in secure
possession of the English language. Another explanation is
the conditions under which they were produced. The very
structure of these verses indicate their origin in the
communal excitement of a religious assembly. A happy
phrase, a striking bit of imagery, flung out by some individual
was taken up and repeated by the whole congregation.
Naturally the most expressive phrases, the lines that most

adequately voiced the deep unconscious desires of the
whole people, were remembered longest and repeated most
frequently. New lines and variations were introduced from
time to time. There was, therefore, a process of natural
selection by which the best, the most representative verses,
those which most adequately expressed the profounder and
more permanent moods and sentiments of the Negro were
preserved and became part of the permanent tradition of the
race.

Negro melodies still spring up on the plantations of the South
as they did in the days of slavery. The Negro is, like the
Italian, an improviser, but the songs he produces today have
not, so far as my knowledge goes, the quality of those he
sang in slavery. The schools have introduced reading, and
this, with the reflection which writing enforces, is destroying
the folk songs of the Negro, as it has those of other races.

Not only are the Negro folk songs more primitive—in the
sense I have indicated—than the folk songs of other peoples
with which we are familiar but the themes are different. The
themes of the Scotch ballads are love and battles, the
adventures and tragedies of a wild, free life. The Negro
songs, those that he has remembered best, are religious and
other worldly. "It is a singular fact," says Krehbiel, "that very
few secular songs—those which are referred to as 'reel
tunes,' 'fiddle songs,' 'corn songs' and 'devil songs,' for which
slaves generally expressed a deep abhorrence, though many
of them no doubt were used to stimulate them while in the
fields—have been preserved while 'shout songs' and other
'speritchils' have been kept alive by the hundred."[11]

If it is the plantation melodies that, by a process of natural
selection, have been preserved in the traditions of the Negro
people, it is probably because in these songs they found a
free and natural expression of their unfulfilled desires. In the
imagery of these songs, in the visions which they conjure up,
in the themes which they again and again renew, we may
discern the reflection of dawning racial consciousness, a
common racial ideal.

The content of the Negro folk songs has been made the
subject of a careful investigation by Howard Odum in his
Study of the Social and Mental Traits of the Negro. He says:
"The Negro's fancies of 'Heaven's bright home' are scarcely
exceeded by our fairy tales. There are silver and golden
slippers, crowns of stars, jewels and belts of gold. There are
robes of spotless white and wings all bejeweled with
heavenly gems. Beyond the Jordan the Negro will outshine
the sun, moon and stars. He will slip and slide the golden
street and eat the fruit of the trees of paradise.... With rest
and ease, with a golden band about him and with palms of
victory in his hands and beautiful robes, the Negro will
indeed be a happy being.... To find a happy home, to see all
the loved ones and especially the Biblical characters, to see
Jesus and the angels, to walk and talk with them, to wear
robes and slippers as they do, and to rest forever, constitute
the chief images of the Negro's heaven. He is tired of the
world which has been a hell to him. Now on his knees, now
shouting, now sorrowful and glad, the Negro comes from
'hanging over hell' to die and sit by the Father's side."[12]

In the imagery which the Negro chooses to clothe his hopes
and dreams, we have, as in the musical idiom in which he

expresses them, reflections of the imagination and the
temperament of Africa and the African. On the other hand, in
the themes of this rude rhapsodical poetry—the House of
Bondage, Moses, the Promised Land, Heaven, the
apocalyptic visions of Freedom—but freedom confined
miraculously and to another world—these are the reflections
of the Negro's experience in slavery.

The Negro's songs of slavery have been referred to by Du
Bois in his Soul of Black-Folk as sorrow songs, and other
writers have made the assertion that all the songs of the
slaves were in a plaintive minor key. As a matter of fact,
investigation has shown that actually less than twelve per
cent of Negro songs are in a minor.[13] There are no other folk
songs, with the exception of those of Finland, of which so
large a percentage are in the major mood. And this is
interesting as indicating the racial temperament of the Negro.
It tends to justify the general impression that the Negro is
temperamentally sunny, cheerful, optimistic. It is true that the
slave songs express longing, that they refer to "hard trials
and great tribulations," but the dominant mood is one of
jubilation, "Going to sing, going to shout, going to play all
over God's heaven."

Other worldliness is not peculiar to the religion of the slave. It
is a trait which the slave encountered in the religion of his
master. But in the Negro's conception of religion it received a
peculiar emphasis. In fact, these ecstatic visions of the next
world, which the Negro slave songs portrayed with a
directness and simplicity that is at once quaint and pathetic,
are the most significant features of the Negro's songs of
slavery.

It is interesting to note in this connection that nowhere in
these songs do we discover the slightest references to Africa.
They reflect no memories of a far off happier land. Before the
Negro gained his emancipation Africa had, so far as he was
concerned, almost ceased to exist. Furthermore, the whole
tone and emphasis of these songs and of all other religious
expressions of the American Negro are in marked contrast
with the tone and emphasis of African religious ideas. The
African knew of the existence of another world, but he was
not interested in it. The world, as the African understood it,
was full of malignant spirits, diseases and forces with which
he was in constant mortal struggle. His religious practices
were intended to gain for him immunity in this world, rather
than assurance of the next. But the Negro in America was in
a different situation. He was not living in his own world. He
was a slave and that, aside from the physical inconvenience,
implied a vast deal of inhibition. He was, moreover, a
constant spectator of life in which he could not participate;
excited to actions and enterprises that were forbidden to him
because he was a slave. The restlessness which this
situation provoked found expression, not in insurrection and
rebellion—although, of course, there were Negro
insurrections—but in his religion and in his dreams of another
and freer world. I assume, therefore, that the reason the
Negro so readily and eagerly took over from the white man
his heaven and apocalyptic visions was because these
materials met the demands of his peculiar racial
temperament and furnished relief to the emotional strains
that were provoked in him by the conditions of slavery.

So far as slavery was responsible for the peculiar
individuality of the Negro's religion we should expect that the

racial ideals and racial religion would take on another and a
different character under the influence of freedom. This,
indeed, is what seems to me is taking place. New ideals of
life are expressed in recent Negro literature and slowly and
imperceptibly those ideas are becoming institutionalized in
the Negro church and more particularly in the cultural ideals
of the Negro school. But this makes another chapter in the
history of Negro culture in America.

I have sought in this brief sketch to indicate the
modifications, changes and fortune which a distinctive racial
temperament has undergone as a result of encounters with
an alien life and culture. This temperament, as I conceive it,
consists in a few elementary but distinctive characteristics,
determined by physical organization and transmitted
biologically. These characteristics manifest themselves in a
genial, sunny and social disposition, in an interest and
attachment to external, physical things rather than to
subjective states and objects of introspection; in a disposition
for expression rather than enterprise and action. The
changes which have taken place in the manifestations of this
temperament have been actuated by an inherent and natural
impulse, characteristic of all living things, to persist and
maintain themselves in a changed environment. Such
changes have occurred as are likely to take place in any
organism in its struggle to live and to use its environment to
further and complete its own existence.

The general principle which the Negro material illustrates is
that the racial temperament selects out of the masses of
cultural materials, to which it had access, such technical,
mechanical and intellectual devices as meet its needs at a

particular period of its existence. It clothes and enriches itself
with such new customs, habits, and cultural forms as it is
able, or permitted to use. It puts into these relatively external
things, moreover, such concrete meanings as its changing
experience and its unchanging racial individuality demand.

Everywhere and always the Negro has been interested
rather in expression than in action; interested in life itself
rather than in its reconstruction or reformation. The Negro is,
by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist
like the Jew, nor a brooding introspective like the East Indian,
nor a pioneer and frontiersman like the Anglo-Saxon. He is
primarily an artist, loving life for its own sake. His metier is
expression rather than action. The Negro is, so to speak, the
lady among the races.

In reviewing the fortunes of the Negro's temperament as it is
manifested in the external events of the Negro's life in
America, our analysis suggests that this racial character of
the Negro has exhibited itself everywhere in something like
the rôle of the wish in the Freudian analysis of dream life.
The external cultural forms which he found here, like the
memories of the individual, have furnished the materials in
which the racial wish, that is, the Negro temperament, has
clothed itself. The inner meaning, the sentiment, the
emphasis, the emotional color which these forms assumed
as the result of their transference from the white man to the
Negro, these have been the Negro's own. They have
represented his temperament—his temperament modified,
however, by his experience and the tradition which he has
accumulated in this country. The temperament is African, but
the tradition is American.

I present this thesis merely as a hypothesis. As such its value
consists in its suggestion of a point of view and program for
investigation. I may, however, suggest some of the obvious
practical consequences. If racial temperament—particularly
when it gets itself embodied in institutions and in
nationalities, that is, social groups based upon race—is so
real and obdurate a thing that education can only enrich and
develop it but not dispose of it, then we must be concerned
to take account of it in all our schemes for promoting
naturalization, assimilation, Americanization, Christianization,
and acculturation generally.

If it is true that the Jew, as has been suggested, just because
of his intellectuality is a natural born idealist, internationalist,
doctrinaire, and revolutionist, while the Negro, because of his
natural attachment to known, familiar objects, places and
persons, is preadapted to conservatism and to local and
personal loyalties: if these things are true, we shall eventually
have to take account of them practically. It is certain that the
Negro has uniformly shown a disposition to loyalty, during
slavery to his master, and during freedom to the South and
the country as a whole. He has maintained this attitude of
loyalty, too, under very discouraging circumstances. I once
heard Kelly Miller, the most philosophical of the leaders and
teachers of his race, say in a public speech that one of the
greatest hardships the Negro suffered in this country was
due to the fact that he was not permitted to be patriotic.

Of course, all these alleged racial characteristics have a
positive as well as a negative significance. Every race, like
every individual, has the vices of its virtues. The question
remains still to what extent so-called racial characteristics are

actually racial, that is, biological, and to what extent they are
the effect of environmental conditions. The thesis of this
paper, to state it again, is: (1) That fundamental
temperamental qualities, which are the basis of interest and
attention, act as selective agencies and as such determine
what elements in the cultural environment each race will
select, in what region it will seek and find its vocation, in the
larger social organization; (2) that, on the other hand,
technique, science, machinery, tools, habits, discipline and
all the intellectual and mechanical devices with which the
civilized man lives and works, remain relatively external to
the inner core of significant attitudes and values which
constitute what many call the will of the group. This racial will
is, to be sure, largely social, that is modified by social
experience, but it rests ultimately upon a complex of inherited
characteristics, which are racial.

It follows from what has been said that the individual man is
the bearer of a double inheritance. As a member of a race,
he transmits by interbreeding a biological inheritance. As a
member of society or a social group, on the other hand, he
transmits by communication a social inheritance. The
particular complex of inheritable characters, which
characterizes the individuals of a racial group constitutes the
racial temperament. The particular group of habits,
accommodations, sentiments, attitudes and ideals
transmitted by communication and education constitute a
social tradition. Between this temperament and this tradition
there is, as has been generally recognized, a very intimate
relationship. My assumption is that temperament is the basis
of the interests; that as such it determines in the long run the
general run of attention, and this, eventually, determines the

selection in the case of an individual of his vocation, in the
case of the racial group of its culture. That is to say,
temperament determines what things the individual and the
groups will be interested in; what elements of the general
culture, to which they have access, they will assimilate; what,
to state it in pedagogical terms, they will learn.

It will be evident at once that where individuals of the same
race and hence the same temperament are associated, the
temperamental interests will tend to reinforce one another,
and the attention of members of the group will be more
completely focused upon the specific objects and values that
correspond to the racial temperament. In this way racial
qualities become the basis for nationalities, a nationalistic
group being merely a cultural and eventually a political
society founded on the basis of racial inheritances. On the
other hand, when racial segregation is broken up and
members of a racial group are dispersed and isolated, the
opposite effect will take place. This explains the phenomena
which have frequently been the subject of comment and
observation, that the racial characteristics manifest
themselves in an extraordinary way in large homogeneous
gatherings. The contrast between a mass meeting of one
race and a similar meeting of another is particularly striking.
Under such circumstances characteristic racial and
temperamental differences appear that would otherwise pass
entirely unnoticed.

When the physical unity of a group is perpetuated by the
succession of parents and children, the racial temperament,
including fundamental attitudes and values which rest on it,
are preserved intact. When however, society grows and is

perpetuated by immigration and adaptation, there ensues, as
a result of miscegenation, a breaking up of the complex of
the biologically inherited qualities which constitute the
temperament of the race. This again initiates changes in the
mores, traditions and eventually in the institutions of the
community. The changes which proceed from modification in
the racial temperament will, however, modify but slightly the
external forms of the social traditions but they will be likely to
change profoundly their content and meaning. Of course,
other factors, individual competition, the formation of classes,
and especially the increase of communication, all coöperate
to complicate the whole situation and to modify the effects
which would be produced by racial factors working in
isolation. All these factors must be eventually taken account
of, however, in any satisfactory scheme of dealing with the
problem of Americanization by education. This is, however, a
matter for more complete analysis and further investigation.

Robert E. Park

Footnotes:
[1] This address was delivered before the American
Sociological Society convened in annual session at
Richmond in 1918.

[2] "The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of
Human Behavior in the City Environment," American
Journal of Sociology, V, 44, March, 1915, p. 589.

[3] Rivers, "Ethnological Analysis of Cultures," Nature,
Vol. I, 87, 1911.

[4] W. J. McGee, Piratical Acculturation.

[5] There is or was a few years ago near Mobile a
colony of Africans who were brought to the United
States as late as 1860. It is true, also, that Major R. R.
Moton, who has succeeded Booker T. Washington as
head of Tuskegee Institute, still preserves the story
that was told him by his grandmother of the way in
which his great-grandfather was brought from Africa in
a slave ship.

[6] Domestic Manners and Social Condition of the
White, Coloured and Negro Population of the West
Indies, by Mrs. Carmichael, Vol. I. (London, Wittaker,
Treacher and Co.), p. 251.

"Native Africans do not at all like it to be supposed that
they retain the customs of their country and consider
themselves wonderfully civilized by being transplanted
from Africa to the West Indies. Creole Negroes
invariably consider themselves superior people, and
lord it over the native Africans."

[7] The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts was founded in 1701 and the efforts to
Christianize the Negro were carried on with a great
deal of zeal and with some success.

[8] Journal of Negro History, Vol. I, 1916, p. 70.

[9] Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and
National Music, by Henry Edward Krehbiel. (New York
and London, G. Schirmer), p. 37. From a letter of
Lafcadio Hearne.

[10] Army Life in a Black Regiment, by Thomas
Wentworth Higginson. Boston, Fields, Osgood and

Co., 1870.

[11] Krehbiel, Afro-American Folksongs, p. 16.

[12] Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law,
edited by The Faculty of Political Science of Columbia
University, Vol. 37, New York, 1910, No. 3—Social and
Mental Traits of the Negro, by Howard W. Odum,
Ph.D., p. 91.

[13] Krehbiel, Afro-American Folksongs.

THE COMPANY OF ROYAL
ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND
TRADING INTO AFRICA, 1660-1672
INTRODUCTION

The English commercial companies trading to the west coast
of Africa during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
have practically escaped the attention of historical students.
Doubtless this neglect is the result of the little importance
which has until recently been attached to African territory
since the abolition of the slave trade. Previous to that time
the west coast of Africa vied with the East Indies for popular
attention, and the English African companies often appeared
to be but little less important than the great East India
Company.

The cause for the popular esteem of the African coast during
the earlier centuries was the intimate connection which the
slave trade had with the development of the English
plantations in the West Indies. About the middle of the
seventeenth century the growing of sugar cane and other
products in the West Indies began to open up enormous
possibilities which, it was universally agreed, could be
realized only by the extensive use of Negro slaves. At the
restoration of Charles II in 1660 the English commercial class
directly supported and assisted by the king's courtiers
determined to secure as large a portion of the West African

coast as possible. To reach this end they organized that year
The Company of the Royal Adventurers into Africa. This
decision at once brought the company into conflict with the
Dutch West India Company, which, during the twenty years
of domestic trouble in England, had all but monopolized the
desirable portion of the West African coast.

It happened therefore that the Company of Royal
Adventurers played a very important part in the events which
led up to the Anglo-Dutch war of 1665-67. The war resulted
in the financial ruin of the company which was in existence
only about eleven years, at the end of which time it was
succeeded by the much larger and better organized Royal
African Company.

It has seemed to the author as if the English African
companies were a very profitable field of historical
investigation. Therefore, the present dissertation on the
Company of Royal Adventurers will be followed shortly by a
history of the Royal African Company, 1672-1752.

For assistance in writing the history of the Royal Adventurers
Trading into Africa I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to
the librarians, and officials of the British Record Office, the
British Museum, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Rijks
Archief at The Hague, and the Cornell University Library. To
Professor R. C. H. Catterall, now deceased, I am greatly
indebted for reading the manuscript of this book, and for
many valuable suggestions. Above all, I wish to express my
deep appreciation to my wife, Susie Zook, for her unfailing
inspiration and her constant assistance in the writing of this
book.

CHAPTER I

Early Dutch and English Trade to West Africa

In 1581 the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands
declared their independence of Spain. As the intrepid Dutch
sailors ventured out from their homeland they met not only
the ships of their old master, Philip II, but those of the
Portuguese as well. Since the government of Portugal had
just fallen into the hands of Philip II the Dutch ships could
expect no more consideration from Portuguese than from
Spanish vessels. Notwithstanding the manifest dangers the
prospects of obtaining the coveted products of the
Portuguese colonies inspired the Dutch to such a great
extent that in 1595 Bernard Ereckson sailed to the west
coast of Africa, at that time usually called Guinea. There he
and the Dutch who followed him discovered that the
Portuguese had long occupied the trading points along the
coast, and had erected forts and factories wherever it
seemed advisable for the purpose of defense and trade. The
Dutch merchants and sailors turned their dangerous situation
into an opportunity to despoil the weakened Portuguese of
their forts and settlements in Africa.

On August 25, 1611, the Dutch made a treaty with a native
prince by which a place called Maurée was ceded to them. In
the following year they erected a fort at that place which they
named Fort Nassau.[1] Shortly after this, in 1617, they bought
the island of Goree at Cape Verde from the natives in that
region. Four years later the West India Company was
formed, its charter including not only the West Indies and

New Amsterdam but also the west coast of Africa. This new
organization found much in the new world to occupy its
attention but it did not neglect the Guinea coast. The Dutch
realized that the African trade was indispensable to their
West India colonies as a means of supplying slave labor.
Hostilities, therefore, were continued against the Portuguese
who still had possession of the principal part of the African
trade. In 1625 the Dutch made a vigorous attempt to capture
the main Portuguese stronghold at St. George d'Elmina
which had been founded on the Gold Coast in 1481.[2] They
were unsuccessful at that time but in 1637 Prince Maurice of
Nassau with 1,200 men succeeded in capturing this base of
the Portuguese trade.[3] In 1641 a ten years' truce was
signed between Portugal and the United Provinces, but
before the news of the truce had reached the coast of
Guinea the Dutch had taken another of the Portuguese
strongholds at Axim which, according to the terms of the
treaty, they were permitted to retain. From these various
places factories were settled along the coast, and treaties
made with the native rulers. Furthermore, in the treaty of
peace, August 6, 1661, the Dutch retained the forts and
factories which they had conquered from the Portuguese on
the African coast.[4] After the truce of 1641 and the peace of
1661, therefore, the Dutch regarded themselves as having
succeeded to the exclusive claims of the Portuguese to a
large portion of the west coast of Africa including a monopoly
of the trade to the Gold Coast.[5]

Although it was the Dutch who succeeded in depriving the
Portuguese of the most important part of the West African
coast, the interest shown by the English in this region can be
traced back to a much earlier date. In 1481, when two

Englishmen were preparing an expedition to the Guinea
coast, John II, king of Portugal, despatched an ambassador
to the English king, to announce the overlordship of Guinea
which he had recently assumed, and to request that the two
Englishmen should refrain from visiting the Guinea coast.
Edward IV complied with this request.[6] Thereafter no
English expedition to Guinea was attempted until 1536 when
William Hawkins, father of the famous John Hawkins, made
the first of three voyages to Africa during which he also
traded to Brazil. Again in 1553 Hawkins sent an expedition to
the Gold Coast. Near Elmina the adventurers sold some of
their goods for gold, and then proceeded to Benin where they
obtained pepper, or "Guinea graines," and elephants' teeth.
After losing two-thirds of the crew from sickness the
expedition returned to England.[7] In the following year
another expedition under Hawkins' direction secured several
slaves in addition to a large amount of gold and other
products.[8] Also, in the years 1555, 1556, 1557, William
Towrson made three voyages to the Guinea coast in which
his ships were harassed by the Portuguese, who attempted
to prevent them from trading. English cloth and iron wares
were in such demand, however, that notwithstanding this
opposition a lucrative trade was obtained.[9]

Beginning with 1561 Queen Elizabeth lent her influence and
assistance to a series of voyages to the African coast. Not
only did she permit the use of four royal vessels for the first
expedition but she spent five hundred pounds in provisioning
them for the voyage. The value of the goods sent to Africa in
these vessels was five thousand pounds. According to the
arrangement Queen Elizabeth received one-third of the
profits, which amounted to one thousand pounds.[10] In the

year 1563 similar arrangements were made with the queen
for another voyage to the Gold Coast, during which there
was considerable trouble with the Portuguese.
Notwithstanding this opposition the ships succeeded in
returning to England with a quantity of elephants' teeth and
Guinea grains.[11] In 1564, an expedition composed of three
ships, one of which belonged to Queen Elizabeth, was
particularly unfortunate. One of these ships was blown up,
while the other two were attacked by the Portuguese and
probably had to return without obtaining any African
products.[12]

In these voyages to Guinea the English trade had been in
exchange for gold, elephants' teeth and pepper. Trading for
slaves had scarcely occurred to these early adventurers.
Nevertheless, as early as 1562, John Hawkins sailed for
Sierra Leone with three vessels, and there captured three
hundred Negroes whom he sold to the Spaniards in
Hispaniola.[13] The success of this voyage was so great that
in 1564 there was fitted out a second slave raiding expedition
in which one of the queen's ships, the Jesus, was employed.
As before, Hawkins sold his slaves in the West Indies, this
time with some difficulty, because the Spanish officials, who
were forbidden to have any trade with foreigners, regarded
the Englishmen as pirates.[14]

Again, in 1567, Hawkins was on his way to Guinea. By
playing off one set of natives against another he procured
about 450 slaves and once more set out for the Spanish
Indies. Although at first the voyage promised to be
successful, he was later set upon by a number of Spanish

ships and barely escaped with his life and one badly wrecked
vessel.[15]

Hawkins' voyages to Africa are worthy of note because he
was the first Englishman to engage in the slave trade. To be
sure, his piratical seizure of free Negroes broke all the rules
of honorable dealing long recognized on the African coast. As
a result of his actions the natives held all Englishmen in great
distrust for a number of years.[16] The unregulated method of
carrying on the African trade, pursued up to this time, ceased
to a certain extent when Queen Elizabeth granted the first
patent of monopoly to the west coast of Africa, May 3, 1588.

The charter of 1588 gave to certain merchants of Exeter,
London and other places in England for ten years an
exclusive trade to that portion of West Africa lying between
the Senegal and Gambia rivers. The great slave and gold
producing country of the Gold Coast remained open to all
traders. It was therefore evident that, instead of continuing
the slave raiding projects of Hawkins, the company intended
to resume the exchange of English manufactures for African
products. According to its charter the company was not
required to pay duties in England either on imports or
exports.[17] Although nothing is known of the success of this
company, the patent was regarded as of sufficient
importance for the earl of Nottingham and others to obtain a
continuation of the monopoly.[18]

Since the charter of these Senegal adventurers did not
prevent anyone from resorting to the Gold Coast and the
regions to the east thereof, two voyages were made to
Benin, one in 1588 and another in 1590.[19] In 1592 certain

English merchants received a patent from the queen
authorizing them to trade to certain specified portions of
Africa.[20] The trade to Africa continued in this desultory
fashion until 1618. At that time a patent comprising the whole
explored western coast of Africa south of the territory of the
Barbary Company was granted to some thirty persons,
among whom the most important was Sir William St. John,
who was said to have built the first English fort in Africa.[21]
The early years of their trade, which consisted in the
exchange of English for African products, was especially
unfortunate. Vessels were either lost or brought back small
returns. After 1621 it was difficult to procure fresh additions of
capital. To add to this trying situation, the House of
Commons attacked the company's monopoly and, later,
voted it to be a grievance. Thereafter, although the company
sometimes issued licenses for the African trade, the
interlopers who resorted to Africa quite freely, usually did not
deem it necessary to obtain them.[22]

The moving spirit of the next company, which received a
patent in 1631, was Sir Nicholas Crispe, who had been a
successful interloper during the life of the previous company.
In 1624 he had built the first permanent English settlement at
Kormentine. Although not incorporated, this company
enjoyed for thirty-one years a monopoly of trade to all the
region lying between Cape Blanco and the Cape of Good
Hope. Just previous to the Civil War Charles I confirmed the
charter for twenty years. The company's monopoly was
looked on with disfavor by the leaders of the Puritan party,
however, and in 1649 the company was summoned before
the Council of State, where it was accused of having
procured its charter by undue influences. Later, the

company's case was considered by the committee of trade,
and finally, on April 9, 1651, the Council of State
recommended that the company's monopoly to that part of
West Africa extending from a point twenty miles north of
Kormentine to within twenty miles of the Sierra Leone River
be continued for fourteen years.[23]

This company also suffered numerous misfortunes on the
African coast. A factory which the English had set up at Cape
Corse in April, 1650, was seized the following year by some
Swedes who for several years thereafter made it the seat of
their trade in Guinea.[24] Notwithstanding this fact the Swedes
permitted the English to retain a lodge at Cape Corse with
which the agents at Kormentine sometimes traded.[25] Even
after the place was seized by Hendrik Carloff, a Danish
adventurer, in 1658, the English seem to have been allowed
to remain at Cape Corse. By this time, however, the English
African Company had become unable to support its factories
on the coast of Guinea. Therefore they were turned over to
the English East India Company, and became occasional
stopping places for its vessels on their way to and from the
East Indies.

Footnotes:
[1] Jonge, Johan Karel Jakob de, De Oorsprong van
Neerland's Bezittingen op de Kust van Guinea, p. 16.

[2] Gramberg, J. S. G., Schetsen van Afrika's
Westcust, p. 12.

[3] Jonge, Oorsprong van Neerland's Bezittingen, pp.
18, 19, 20.

[4] In return for this concession the Dutch evacuated
Brazil. Dumont, J., Corps Universel Diplomatique du
Droit des Gens, VI, part 2, p. 367.

[5] De Gids, "Derde Serie," Zesde Jaargang, IV, 385.

[6] Hakluyt, Richard, The Principal Navigations,
Voyages, Traffiques, & Discourses of the English
Nation, VI, 123, 124.

[7] Ibid., VI, 145-162.

[8] Ibid., VI, 154-177.

[9] Ibid., VI, 177-252.

[10] Queen Elizabeth's profit may have been only five
hundred pounds, as it seems likely that the five
hundred pounds which she spent in provisioning the
ships should be subtracted from the one thousand
pounds which she received. Scott, W.R., The
Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish
Joint Stock Companies to 1720, II, 6.

[11] Hayluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 258-261.

[12] Ibid., VI, 262.

[13] Ibid., X, 7, 8.

[14] Ibid., X, 9-63.

[15] Ibid., X, 64-74.

[16] For example, the expedition of George Fenner to
Africa in 1566. He had a great deal of trouble with the
natives. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 266-284.

[17] Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 443-450, patent
of Queen Elizabeth, May 3, 1588.

[18] Scott, Joint Stock Companies, II, 10.

[19] Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 450-458, 461-
467.

[20] Ibid., VII, 102.

[21] Scott, Joint Stock Companies, II, 11.

[22] Ibid., II, 12, 13.

[23] Ibid., II, 14-16.

[24] S. P. (State Papers), Holland, 178, f. 123, undated
paper concerning the title of the English to Cape
Corse; A. C. R. (Records of the African Companies),
169: 69, deposition of Thomas Crispe, February 5,
1685/6; Dammaert, Journal (Journal gehouden bij
Louijs Dammaert ungewaren met 't schip Prins
Willem), September 19, 1652 (N. S.).

[25] Remonstrantie, aen de Ho. Mo. Heeren de Staten
Generael der Vereenighde Nederlanden, p. 18;
Dammaert, Journal, September 19, 1652, May 18,
1653, December 7, 19, 1655, April 22 1656 (N. S.).

CHAPTER II

The Royal Adventurers in England

On account of the collapse of the king's cause at the death of
Charles I, Prince Rupert, with his small fleet of royal vessels,
was driven about from one part of the world to another. In
1562 he sought refuge in the Gambia River,[1] where he
listened to stories told by natives of rich gold mines in that
region. For a number of years the Negroes had brought gold
from the inland of Africa to the Dutch on the Gold Coast.
There seemed every reason to believe that the source of this
gold supply was none other than that described by the
natives of the Gambia River, and that it might be discovered
somewhere in that region. Prince Rupert was so much
impressed with the possibility of finding these mines that his
voyage to Guinea was still vivid in his memory when Charles
II assumed the throne in 1660. In the duke of York and other
royal courtiers he found a group of willing listeners who
determined to form a company for the purpose of sending an
expedition to the Gambia to dig for gold. As early as October
3, 1660, the plans were formulated. Each member was
required to invest at least £250 in the undertaking[2]. On
December 18, 1660, the king, who was pleased with the
adventurers for having "undertaken so hopeful an
enterprise," granted them a charter[3] under the name of "The
Company of the Royal Adventurers into Africa."[4]

By this charter the Royal Adventurers received the land and
the adjacent islands on the west coast of Africa from Cape
Blanco to the Cape of Good Hope, for a period of one
thousand years beginning with "the making of these our
Letters Patents if the ... grant (made to Crispe's company in
1631) be void and determined." If, however, the former
charter was still regarded as in force, the grant to the Royal
Adventurers was to be effective upon the surrender or the

expiration of the former company's privileges.[5] A committee
of six men, the earl of Pembroke, Lord Craven, Sir George
Carteret, William Coventry, Sir Ellis Leighton and Cornelius
Vermuyden, was named to have charge of the company's
affairs. No mention was made of the office of governor or of
any court of directors. Apparently it was thought that the
committee of six could direct all of the company's affairs. In
Africa, this committee was empowered to appoint the
necessary agents and officials and to raise and maintain
whatever soldiers were necessary to execute martial law.
The company had the right to admit new members if it
desired. The king himself reserved the privilege of becoming
an adventurer at any time and to invest an amount of money
not exceeding one-sixteenth of the company's stock.

Furthermore, it was provided that the king "shall have, take
and receive two third parts of all the gold mines which shall
be seized possesed and wrought in the parts and places
aforesaid, we ... paying and bearing two third parts of all the
charges incident to the working and transporting of the said
gold." The company was to have the other third and bear the
remainder of the expense. That this provision was not a
matter of mere form, as in so many of the royal charters, is
evident from the stimulus which had led to the formation of
the company. Indeed in one part of the charter the purpose of
the company is presented as "the setting forward and
furthering of the trade intended (redwood, hides, elephants'
teeth) in the parts aforesaid and the encouragement of the
undertakers in discovering the golden mines and setting of
plantations there." The trade in slaves was not mentioned in
the charter.

Even before they had obtained this charter the organizers of
the new company induced the king to lend them five of his
Majesty's ships. These vessels, the "Henrietta," "Sophia,"
"Amity," "Griffin" and "Kingsale," were loaded with goods,
tools and chemicals necessary for the working of the
projected gold mines. Captain Robert Holmes, who had been
with Prince Rupert in 1652, was given charge of the
expedition; but the goods and necessities were consigned to
William Usticke and two other factors of the company.[6] In
December, 1660, the five vessels set out on their voyage to
the Gambia River, where they arrived in the following March.
There Holmes seized the island of St. André, then occupied
by a feeble number of the subjects of the duke of Courland.
Since the latter place was protected by a small fort the
English began preparations to make it the seat of their
operations in that region. Not long after they arrived,
however, a fire destroyed the fortification and a large part of
the goods which had been brought from England. Under
these circumstances they chose to abandon that island, and
to settle on two others which were better situated for defense
and trade. These they named Charles Island and James
Island in honor of their royal patrons. The latter was by far
the most advantageously situated, and became the main
stronghold of the English in the northern part of Africa during
all the history of the African companies. Holmes probably
remained on the Gambia until about the first of May when he
departed with one or two of the ships for England. In July as
much of a cargo as possible was loaded on the "Amity"
which finally arrived in England, after its crew had been
depleted by disease.[7]

Information regarding the success of the mining project of
this expedition is almost totally lacking, but it seems certain
that nothing was done to discover the hoped-for gold mines.
The climate affected the men so adversely, that it is
altogether unlikely that they even attempted to look for the
mines. The small cargo carried back by the various ships,
most of which seems to have been on the "Amity," probably
represents the only tangible results of the expedition. These
goods, consisting of elephants' teeth, wax and hides sold for
£1,567.8s.,[8] whereas the outlay for the expedition was
probably between £4,000 and £4,500.[9]

This sum does not include £2,640.8s.8d. expense which was
incurred to send another of the king's ships, the
"Blackamoor," to the Gold Coast, in June, 1661.[10] The
"Blackamoor" was followed in April, 1662, by the "Swallow"
which, together with its cargo, cost the Royal Adventurers
£1,l01.2s.ld.[11] Later in the year the three ships, "Charles,"
"James" and "Mary," were sent to the Gold Coast at an
expense of about £5,000.[12] By September, 1662, £17,400
had been subscribed by various persons to obtain the
cargoes for the ships which had been dispatched to the coast
of Guinea. Of this amount £800 had been promised by the
king; £3,600 by the duke of York; £400 by the queen Mother;
£400 by the duchess of Orleans; £800 by Prince Rupert; and
£800 by the duke of Buckingham. Of the £17,400 subscribed
all but about £1,000 had been paid by October 20, 1662.
From this investment the company had received no returns
except the £1,567.8s. from the first expedition, while the
three last vessels, the "Charles," "James" and "Mary" had not
yet arrived at the Gold Coast on their ill-fated voyage.[13]

Up to this time there had been no uniformity about the
amounts invested, and no definite times at which the several
amounts subscribed, were due. It was assumed that money
would be forthcoming from the members whenever it was
needed to dispatch ships to the coast. About the middle of
September, 1662, it was decided to pursue a more
businesslike policy. A list of subscribers for shares at four
hundred pounds each was opened, and by the 15th of
January, 1663, the amount of this second subscription was
£17,000.[14] The stimulus for obtaining this added
subscription was the fact that, at the same time, the company
was agitating for a new charter, which was granted by the
king, January 10, 1663.[15]

Experience had shown that the previous charter was
inadequate, not only respecting the means of raising funds to
carry on the company's business, but also on account of the
lack of any other officers to direct its affairs than the
committee of six. By general consent of the patentees, and
those who had later subscribed to the stock, it had been
decided to surrender the charter of 1660 for one conferring
more extensive privileges on the corporation. The charter
obtained January 10, 1663, answered these requirements.
The name was changed to "The Company of Royal
Adventurers of England Trading into Africa." The territory
included in the charter reached to the Cape of Good Hope as
in the previous patent, but the northern limit was extended
from Cape Blanco to Cape Sallee on the coast of Morocco.

The new charter contained the same provisions in regard to
the discovery of gold mines as the charter of 1660. By this
time, however, the adventurers had discovered that the

Negro trade could be made very lucrative. In this charter,
therefore, they obtained "the whole, entire and only trade for
the buying and selling bartering and exchanging of for or with
any Negroes, slaves, goods, wares and merchandises
whatsoever to be vented or found at or within any of the
Cities" on the west coast of Africa. The charter provided that
there should be no trading on the African coast except by the
company in its corporate capacity, and that any one guilty of
transgressing these rules should be liable to forfeiture of his
ship and goods.[16]

The charter also required the shareholders to elect a
governor, subgovernor, deputy governor and a court of
assistants; but that the routine business of the company
should be conducted by a smaller committee corresponding
to the committee of six of the previous company. The duke of
York was elected governor, in which capacity he continued to
serve during the company's entire existence. Thirty-six men
were chosen annually to compose the court of assistants.
There was also an executive committee of seven which was
responsible to the court of assistants.[17]

While the company was endeavoring to obtain this new
charter an unsuspected difficulty arose. It will be
remembered that in 1631 Sir Nicholas Crispe and others had
received a patent to a portion of the west coast of Africa for
thirty-one years. The first charter of Charles II to the Royal
Adventurers in December, 1660, had been granted a year
and a half previous to the expiration of Crispe's patent. In
recognition of this fact the charter of the Royal Adventurers
provided that if the former patent was not void, the new
charter was not to be effective until its surrender or

expiration. At first Crispe made no complaint about the
transgression of his rights, probably because the first
expedition under Captain Holmes had gone to the Gambia
region in which place Crispe had no interests. When it
became apparent that the company intended to carry its
activities further south, however, he appeared before the
Privy Council on November 22, 1661, and asked to have his
interest confirmed in the trade and settlements at Kormentine
and in the region of the Sierra Leone and Sherbro rivers.[18]
On December 20, 1661, his case was heard before the Privy
Council, at which time the case was referred to the Lord High
Treasurer.[19] The matter was neglected and finally dropped.

Crispe found it impossible to prevent the ships of the Royal
Company from transgressing the regions mentioned in his
charter. About the time at which his charter expired (June 25,
1662), he agreed to transfer all his interests in the
fortifications at Kormentine and elsewhere to the Royal
Adventurers. Although this agreement has not been found,
there was apparently nothing in it which bound the company
to remunerate Crispe and his associates, because later,
August, 1662, he petitioned the king for compensation for the
forts and lodges which had been transferred to the Royal
Adventurers. At first the king was favorable to Crispe's
request in view of the service which he had rendered in
building up the Guinea trade.[20] Later, neither the king nor
the Royal Adventurers seem to have paid any attention to
Crispe's plea for compensation.[21]

In later years the report was persistently spread that at the
time when the agreement was made with Crispe the Privy
Council had ordered the Royal Adventurers to pay him

£20,000 in lieu of all his interests on the coast, and that the
company had "seemed to acquiesce" in the order.[22] It does
not seem possible that this assertion can be true in view of
the foregoing facts, and of the absolute lack of mention of
any such thing in the books of the company. Over a year
later, August 15, 1664, Crispe presented a paper of an
unknown character to which the court of assistants refused to
give any notice.[23] It seems likely that this paper had nothing
to do with the African forts, but that it was submitted in
connection with a controversy over some African goods,
which were said to belong to the members of Crispe's
company[24]. The entire lack of any other evidence of trouble
between Crispe and the company leads one to think that no
contract for such compensation was ever made[25]. Moreover,
that he was not averse to the success of the Royal
Adventurers is shown by the fact that he himself subscribed
£2,000 in 1663 to the stock of the company[26].

It is unnecessary to follow in detail the number of ships which
were fitted out for the company's trade after it received its
second charter in January, 1663. Suffice it to say that very
active measures were undertaken, especially by the duke of
York, who faithfully attended the weekly meetings of the court
of assistants which were held in his apartments at Whitehall.
The earl of Clarendon voiced the sentiments of these
enthusiastic courtier-merchants when he said that, providing
all went well, the Company of Royal Adventurers would "be
found a Model equally to advance the Trade of England with
that of any other company, even that of the East-Indies[27]."

If this prediction was to be realized it was necessary to have
a greater stock than the first and second subscriptions had

provided. Therefore a public declaration was issued inviting
any of the king's subjects in England to subscribe for shares
of not less than four hundred pounds each, one-half of each
share to be paid by December 1, 1663, and the other one-
half by March 1, following. The conditions of subscription
provided that seven years after the first date, a committee
from the adventurers should be chosen to make a fair
valuation of the stock of the company. Each shareholder was
then to be allowed to receive the value of his stock in money
if he so desired. Thereafter this action was to be repeated
every three years with the same privileges of withdrawal from
the company.[28] Later, as a means of inducing those with
smaller means to subscribe for stock, the company permitted
subscriptions as small as fifty pounds, providing they were
paid within eight days. Whenever any person subscribed
more than four hundred pounds, he was allowed to pay the
excess in eight quarterly payments beginning with the 24th of
June, 1663.[29] By offering these inducements the third
subscription amounted to £34,000 divided among about
forty-five shareholders.[30]

On the 25th of August of the same year, however, it was
necessary to seek for a fourth subscription which amounted
to £29,000,[31] payment of which could be made in eight
quarterly sums if desired. For all those who would pay the
third and fourth subscriptions promptly, a discount of ten per
cent, was offered. By these four subscriptions the stock of
the company appeared on September 4, 1663, to be
£102,000.[32] Of this amount it is probable that about £57,425
had been paid, which left unpaid subscriptions amounting to
£44,775.[33] In addition to the money obtained by the sale of
shares the company had borrowed about £21,000. With the

money obtained from these two sources approximately
twenty-five ships were sent to the coast of Africa from
December, 1662, to September, 1663.[34] From these
voyages there were very unsatisfactory returns, and the
company again found itself in a critical financial condition.

This unfortunate situation was largely the result of opposition,
which its ships and factors had encountered from the Dutch
West India Company on the coast of Guinea. For a long time
this opposition bade fair to prevent the company from
obtaining a share in the African trade. In view of this situation
the king dispatched Sir Robert Holmes upon a second
expedition to Africa in 1663 with orders to protect the
company's rights. As a further means of encouragement
Charles II ordered all gold imported from Africa by the Royal
Company to be coined with an elephant on one side, as a
mark of distinction from the coins then prevalent in England.
[35] These coins were called "Guineas"; they served to

increase the reputation and prestige of the company.
Moreover, the king with many of his courtiers made important
additions to their stock in the third and fourth subscriptions.
[36]

From September 4, 1663, to the following March there are no
records of the company, but a petition of the adventurers to
the king in March, 1664,[37] shows that notwithstanding its
financial difficulties the company had during the previous
year sent to Africa forty ships and goods to the value of
£160,000.[38] To follow the company's financial history from
this time on is a difficult task in view of inadequate sources.
In the balance sheet of September 4, 1663, the company's
stock was entered as £102,000 and its debts as about

£21,000. When the news of Holmes' great success on the
Gold Coast began to arrive in England, the company
increased its preparations to open an extensive African trade.
Therefore on May 10, 1664, an attempt was made to collect
the unpaid stock subscriptions, and an invitation was
extended to all members to lend one hundred pounds to the
company for each share of four hundred pounds which they
held. Notwithstanding the bright prospects which the
company had at this time, its strenuous attempt to raise the
loan produced only £15,650.[39]

In September, 1664, an attempt was made to increase the
stock of the company by £30,000. Although the duke of York
and many others added to their shares on this occasion,[40]
only £18,200 was subscribed.[41] By this addition the stock of
the Royal Adventurers amounted to £120,200 at about which
sum it remained during the remainder of the company's
history.[42]

Although the company had not obtained as much money as
had been hoped for in the last subscription, it anticipated
great success in its trade, until vague rumors began to
circulate that Admiral DeRuyter had been sent to Africa to
undo the conquest made by Captain Holmes. In the last part
of December, 1664, these rumors were confirmed. In a
petition to the king of January 2, 1665[43], the company
declared that its trade had already increased to such an
extent that over one hundred ships were employed, and that
a yearly return of from two to three hundred thousand
pounds might reasonably be expected[44].

On account of the injuries inflicted by DeRuyter on the
African coast much of the anticipated loss of goods and
vessels was realized. In all, the company lost the cargoes of
eight ships; of the forts only Cape Corse remained. Under
these ruinous circumstances it was not thought advisable to
dispatch at once the goods which had been accumulated at
Portsmouth[45]. Accordingly the company's vessels were
unloaded and several of them were taken into the King's
service.[46] The duke of York used what little money was on
hand to apply on the company's debt in order that the
company's expenses from interest might be reduced.[47]
Because of the Anglo-Dutch war and the fact that the
company had no money, it could do nothing but send an
occasional ship to Africa loaded with some of the goods left
at Portsmouth. From this time on the company's trading
activity was confined to such scattered voyages.[48]

On January 11, 1666,[49] the court of assistants discussed the
proposition of granting trading licenses to private individuals.
While no action seems to have been taken at that time, it
ultimately became the practise of the company to grant such
a freedom of trade. On April 9, 1667, a resolution was
adopted empowering the committee of seven to issue trading
licenses in return for a payment of three pounds per ton.[50]
These licenses were obtained by those who desired to carry
on trade in their own ships, and also by officers of the
company's ships who wished to engage in private
adventures. During the course of the war one hears of many
such grants to various individuals, among whom was Prince
Rupert.[51]

The practise of issuing licenses was interrupted for a short
time at the conclusion of the Anglo-Dutch war by a feeble
attempt to revive the company's activities. An effort was
made to collect arrears on the subscriptions,[52] and on
August 21, 1667, the general court ordered that an additional
subscription should be opened, and that no more trading
licenses should be granted.[53] The only result of this effort
was that the duke of York and several others accepted stock
of the company in lieu of the bonds which they held.[54] In
view of this fact it was decided, January 20, 1668, to resume
the policy of granting licenses.[55]

In comparison with the trade conducted by the private
adventurers that of the company became quite insignificant.
Since the company had much difficulty in supporting its
agents on the African coast it ordered, August 28, 1668, that
in the future those who received licenses should agree to
carry one-tenth of their cargo for the company's account.[56] It
was difficult for the company to raise the small sum of money
necessary to buy this quota of goods. No one was willing to
invest money in the stock of a bankrupt company, and
certainly few were desirous of making loans to it when there
seemed practically no chance of repayment. In the latter part
of 1668 and in the year 1669, several attempts were made to
collect the early subscriptions which remained unpaid.[57]
This effort was attended with very little success, because the
company had ceased to be of importance.[58]

One of the reasons why the company's business was
practically neglected during these last years was because
many of its members began to trade to Africa as private
individuals. A number of men even went so far as to project

an organization entirely separate from the company. Finally,
in 1667, several members offered to raise a stock of £15,000
to carry on trade to the region of the Gambia River.[59] This
proposal was debated by the general court and finally
referred to a committee with the stipulation that if adopted the
company should be concerned in the stock of the new
organization to the extent of £3,000.[60] This arrangement
could not be consummated in 1667,[61] but on November 27,
1668, a similar proposition was adopted.[62]

An organization to be known as the Gambia Adventurers was
to have the sole trade to northern Africa for a period of seven
years, beginning with January 1, 1669. For this privilege they
were to pay the Company of Royal Adventurers £1,000
annually, and to be responsible for the expense of the forts
and settlements in that region. These places were to be kept
in good repair by the Gambia Adventurers, who were to
receive compensation from the Royal Company for any
settlements.[63] A suggestion for carrying on the trade to the
Gold Coast in a similar way received no attention from the
general court. The Gambia Adventurers occupied the same
house in London with the company, and there seems little
doubt but that its members consisted largely of those
stockholders of the Royal Adventurers who belonged
primarily to the merchant class.[64] It is extremely difficult to
estimate the success of the Gambia Adventurers, since their
records, if any were kept, have not been preserved. In all
probability their trade was largely confined to the important
products of the Gambia region, namely elephants' teeth,
hides and wax, although several of their ships are known to
have gone to the West Indies with slaves.

Since many of the company's stockholders were interested in
the Gambia venture the company's business on the Gold
Coast was greatly neglected. During the year 1669 the
company's trade became so insignificant that, at the
suggestion of the king, Secretary Arlington asked the
company if it intended to continue the African trade.[65] In
answer the company recounted the losses incurred in the
Anglo-Dutch war which, it declared, had made it necessary to
grant licenses to private traders in order to maintain the forts
and factories in Africa. It asked the king to assist the
company by paying his subscription, by helping to recover its
debts in Barbados, and by granting royal vessels for the
protection of the African coast. With such encouragement the
company declared that it would endeavor to raise a new
stock to carry on the African trade.[66] Receiving no answer to
their appeal the members of the company considered various
expedients, one of which was to lease the right of trade on
the Gold Coast;[67] another was to endeavor to obtain new
subscriptions to the company's stock, which seemed
impossible because of the fear that the money would be
used toward paying the company's debts, and not for the
purpose of trade.[68] In fact, it had been only too evident for
several years that no additions could be made to the present
worthless stock of the company. If the company desired to
continue its activities, it would be necessary to have an
entirely new stock unencumbered with the claims of old
creditors. The main problem confronting the company
therefor e was to make an agreement with its clamorous
creditors.

On May 18, 1671, a general court of the adventurers
approved of a proposition to form a new joint stock under the

old charter.[69] The stock of the shareholders, which at this
time amounted to £120,200, was to be valued at ten per cent
and so reduced to £12,020; this was to form the first item in
the new stock. In regard to the company's debts, which
amounted to about £57,000, rather severe measures were
attempted. Two-thirds of the debts, or £38,000, was, as in the
case of the stock, reduced to one-tenth, or £3,800, which
was to form the second item in the new stock. The other one-
third of the debts, or £19,000, was to be paid to the creditors
in full out of the money subscribed by the new shareholders.
[70] Adding the cash payment of £19,000 and estimating at

par the £3,800 which they were to have in the new stock, the
creditors were to receive a little less than thirty-five per cent,
of their debts. If they did not accept this arrangement it was
proposed to turn over the company's effects to them, and to
secure an entirely new charter from the king. As anticipated
the plan was unsatisfactory to many of the creditors, because
the company proposed to pay the £19,000 in six monthly
installments after the subscription for the new joint stock was
begun.[71] On October 28, 1671, the preamble and articles
under which the new subscription was to be made were
approved by the general court, and notice was given to the
refractory creditors that they must accept the arrangement
within ten days or the king would revoke the company's
patent.[72] Although the trouble with the creditors had not
been adjusted, subscriptions on the new stock began
November 10, 1671. A few weeks later there was held a
general court of the new subscribers, at which Sir Richard
Ford, one of the most important members of the company
and also of the new subscribers, declared that "they should
not differ for small matters."[73] Thereupon it was resolved to
grant the creditors forty per cent on their debts and the

shareholders, as in the previous plan, ten per cent, on their
stock.[74] This made a total payment of £34,000 divided as
follows: £22,800, forty per cent of the company's debts,
which amounted to £57,000; and £11,200, ten per cent of the
paid subscriptions, which amounted to about £112,000.[75] In
lieu of this payment the stockholders were to cede to the new
subscribers the forts and other property in Africa and all the
payments due from the Gambia Adventurers during the four
remaining years of their contract.

As has been said the articles of subscription were adopted
October 28, 1671. They provided for a stock of £100,000
under the old charter, which should be paid to the treasurer
of the company in ten monthly payments ending September
25, 1672. As a matter of fact the subscription reached the
sum of £110,100. It was also provided that every new
subscriber should have one vote in the general court for each
one hundred pound share, but that no one should be an
officer of the company, unless he had subscribed for four
hundred pounds in shares. The subgovernor and the deputy
governor were to be aided by a court of assistants, reduced
to twenty-four in number, and by a select committee of five
instead of the committee of seven as formerly. On January
10, 1672, there was held a general court of the new
subscribers, at which the duke of York was elected governor;
Lord Ashley, subgovernor; and John Buckworth, deputy
governor.[76] The duke of York and Lord Ashley were well
known for their interest in colonial affairs. According to the
terms of the subscription the deputy governor was to be a
merchant and a member of the committee of five, which
provision indicated plainly that the company expected
Buckworth to manage its business affairs.

Although the new subscription had been made to replace the
stock of the old adventurers, there is little evidence that it
was regarded as necessary to obtain a new charter. Since
the creditors still refused to be satisfied with the concession
of forty per cent on their debts, however, the new subscribers
hesitated to pay their money which might be used to pay off
the old debts.[77] It therefore became necessary to carry out
the previous threat against the creditors to induce the king to
grant a new charter to the present subscribers, which was
done September 27, 1672.[78] This action finally convinced
the creditors that they could obtain no better terms than had
been offered, and therefore they agreed to accept them and
also to surrender all their rights to the patentees of the new
charter which was being issued. That the attitude of the
creditors was not the only moving force toward a new charter
is probable, because the old charter was not adequate to
meet the needs of the Royal African Company which was to
follow.

Footnotes:
[1] At one time Prince Rupert had been governor of the
African company founded in 1631. Jenkinson, Hilary,
"The Records of the English African Companies."
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Third
Series, VI, 195.

[2] Pepys, Diary (The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited
by Henry B. Wheatley), I, 253.

[3] That some expense attached to the procuring of
such charters appears from an item of £133.10s.3d.
which the company incurred for this charter. A. C. R.,

1221, April 12, 1661. Wherever possible the volume
and page of the company's books will be given, but
since they have not all been paged the only other
method of reference is by dates.

[4] Carr, Cecil T., "Select Charters of Trading
Companies, 1530-1707," Publications of the Selden
Society, XXVIII, 172-177.

[5] According to the charter of 1660 the former patent
had been granted June 25, 1631. It would therefore
expire June 25, 1662, if it was not surrendered before
that time.

[6] A. C. R., 309, 1221. The records of the first few
ventures are to be found in these two volumes of the
company's books. Number 309 is the original book, the
other being practically a copy of it. In some cases,
however, the latter is more complete. These two books
have been practically overlooked in the cataloging of
the company's records, one of them being labelled,
"Ship's Journal." They contain the only information we
have of the financial condition of the first company as
kept by Thomas Holder, treasurer of the company. The
greater part of the two books is taken up with lists and
costs of various goods which were sent to Africa.

[7] Admiralty Papers, Navy Board, In-Letters, 6, loose
leaf order of the factors of the Royal Adventurers on
the Gambia River, July 19, 1661. With this order there
is a certificate dated January 3, 1661/2, to the effect
that thirty-eight of the crew of the "Amity" had died on
the way to Guinea and during the time they were on
the Gambia River.

[8] A. C. R., 1221, October 20, 1662.

[9] It is impossible to determine the exact amount
which was invested in goods, etc.

[10] A. C. R., 1221, June 20, 1661.

[11] Ibid., April 30, 1662.

[12] Ibid., 309, September 26, 1662

[13] A. C. R., 309, September 26, October 20, 1662.
Only £560 of the king's subscription of £800 was paid,
according to the list found under the first of the above
dates. This may be a slight error, as warrants were
issued for the payment of £580 at various times in
1661 and 1662. C.S.P., Treas. Bks. (Calendar of State
Papers, Treasury Books), 1660-1667, pp. 312, 314,
383. This does not include a warrant for £300, which
was probably used in the first expedition under Captain
Holmes, but which for some reason is omitted in the
company's books. C. S. P., Treas. Bks., 1660-1667, p.
107.

[14] A. C. R., 309, October 20, 1662, January 15,
1663. Afterward £3,200 was added to this, making
£20,800 in all in the second subscription. A. C. R., 309,
August 25, 1663.

[15] Carr, Select Charters of Trading Companies, pp.
178-181.

[16] There were also provisions similar to those
contained in the first charter for the government of the
company's "plantations" (factories) in Africa. The
clause allowing the king to subscribe one-sixteenth of
the stock was omitted, but he could become a
shareholder at any time.

[17] The charter had provided that the executive
committee should be composed of seven men if
twenty-four assistants were elected and thirteen if
thirty-six were chosen. A.C.R., 75: 29, 31, 41, 44, 49,
51, 68, 72, 93.

[18] P.C.R. (Register of the Privy Council), Charles II,
2: 451.

[19] Ibid., 2: 502.

[20] Egerton MSS., 2538, f. 109, C. C. to Secretary
Nicholas, August 11, 1662. Folio 110 contains a note
without date or signature saying that the matter was
referred to the Lord High Treasurer and others.

[21] The earl of Clarendon declares in his History of
Charles II that, upon the return of the ships from the
first expedition, the company "compounded" with Sir
Nicholas Crispe for his "propriety" in the fort at
Kormentine. This is untrue, since it has just been
shown that it was not until the middle of 1662 that he
agreed to transfer his property to the Royal
Adventurers and that it was afterward that Crispe
endeavored to get the king's approval to grant him
compensation. Clarendon may have remembered that
the king was favorable to the proposition and therefore
assumed that such a contract had been made. Hyde,
Edward, First Earl of Clarendon. The History of the
Reign of King Charles the Second, from the
Restoration to the end of the year 1667 (edited by J.
Shebbeare), p. 197.

[22] This charge was put forward in a pamphlet,
probably published in 1709, called Sir John Crispe's
Case in Relation to the Forts in Africa. In this pamphlet

the assertion is made that the Privy Council had a full
hearing of the matter on July 29, 1662, and ordered
the Royal Adventurers to pay Crispe £20,000 by an
export duty of 2½ per cent on goods sent to Africa. An
examination of the Privy Council Register shows no
order of that kind on that date or at any subsequent
time.

[23] A.C.R., 75, August, 15, 1664.

[24] In January, 1663, the Royal Adventurers made an
agreement with several members of Crispe's company
providing for the transfer to England of their
merchandise and personal effects which were still on
the coast of Africa. Whether this second contract
contained anything about compensation for the forts it
is impossible to say, since this agreement also has not
been preserved. Admiralty High Court, Examinations
134. Answers of Edward M. Mitchell and Ellis Leighton,
May 10, 20, 1664.

[25] That Sir Nicholas Crispe felt the losses he had
incurred in Guinea appears from his will of 1666, in
which he directed the following inscription to be
erected to his memory: "first discovered and settled the
Trade of Gold in Africa and built there the Castle of
Cormentine," and thus "lost out of purse" more than
£100,000. Crisp, Frederick A., Family of Crispe, I, 32.

[26] A. C. R., 309, June 25, September 4, 1663. Upon
the latter date it appears that only £1300 of his
subscription was paid.

[27] Clarendon, History of the Reign of Charles II, p.
198.

[28] The Several Declarations of the Company of
Royal Adventurers of England trading into Africa,
January 12, 1662 (O. S.).

[29] Ibid.

[30] A. C. R., 309, June 25, August 25, 1663.

[31] Ibid., 309, August 25, 1663.

[32] Ibid., 309, the balance of the company's books on
September 4, 1663.

[33] These figures are arrived at by a careful
examination of the various sums paid to Thomas
Holder, the treasurer. As it is not always possible to be
sure that the payments were made for stock, too much
dependence cannot be put in the figures, especially
when the sum arrived at by adding the items which
appear to be owing the company for stock in the
balance of September 4, 1663, amount to £52,000.
This is of course several thousand pounds more than
the sum arrived at by the former computation, but here
again it is not possible to estimate exactly the money
owing the company for stock and for other things.

[34] This number is arrived at by a careful perusal of
the first book kept by the company, number 309.
Sometime in 1664 the company submitted a petition to
the king in which it speaks of having sent over forty
ships to the coast during the previous year and of
supplying them with cargoes amounting to more than
£160,000. C.O. (Colonial Office) 1: 17, f. 255, petition
of the Royal Adventurers to (the king, 1664).

[35] C. S. P., Col. (Calendar of State Papers, Colonial,
America and West Indies), 1661-1668, p. 175, warrant

to officers of the king's mint, December 24, 1663.
Another evidence of special favor was a grant made by
the king in 1664 giving the Royal Company the sole
privilege of holding lotteries in the king's dominions for
three years. The company does not seem to have
used it. C. S. P., Dom. (Calendar of State Papers,
Domestic), 1666-1667, pp. 531, 532, Blanquefort and
Hamilton to the king, February 25, 1667.

[36] In the third subscription the king's share was
£5,200; in the fourth, £2,000. A. C. R., 309, June 25,
August 25, 1663. The king's subscription with that of
the queen for £400 seem never to have been paid,
although a warrant was issued to the Lord High
Treasurer, June 27, 1663, to pay the amount from the
customs receipts.

[37] Upon this date, book number 309 was balanced
and the items carried to another volume, which has
been lost. In March, 1664, the resolutions of the
general court and the court of assistants begin in
number 75 of the company's books. While it is
fortunate that these resolutions for the remaining
history of this company have been preserved, they do
not furnish adequate information regarding the
company's financial condition at various times.

[38] C. O. 1: 17, f. 255, petition of the Royal
Adventurers to (the king, March, 1664).

[39] A. C. R., 75: 7, 8, orders of the general court, May
10, 20, 1664.

[40] C. S. P., Dom., 1664-1665, p. 7, Robert Lye to
Williamson, September 13, 1664.

[41] A. C. R., 75: 21, 22.

[42] The total of the stock is shown by adding the five
subscriptions:
October, 1660, to September, 1662, first subscription £17,400
October, 1662, to January, 1663, second subscription 20,800
June, 1663, to August, 1663, third subscription 34,600
August, 1663, fourth subscription 29,200
September, 1664, fifth subscription 18,200
Total £120,200

[43] S. P., Dom. (State Papers, Domestic), Charles II,
110, f. 18; C. O. 1: 19, ff. 7, 8.

[44] The financial status of the company at this time
was as follows:
Assets:
£ sd
Ships and factories in Africa 125,962.6.2
Debts owing to the company in the colonies 49,895.0.0
Goods, ammunition, etc., at Portsmouth 48,000.0.0
Total 223,857.6.2
Stock of the company:
Amount subscribed 120,200.0.0
Amount paid (about) 103,000.0.0
Amount unpaid (about) 17,200.0.0
Debts, owing on bonds, etc. (about) 100,000.0.0
Losses:
From DeRuyter at Cape Verde 50,000.0.0
Anticipated from DeRuyter at other places 125,912.6.2
Total 175,912.6.2

[45] A. C. R., 75: 37, John Berkley and others to ——,
November 4, 1665.

[46] S. P., Dom., Charles II, 186: 1.

[47] A. C. R., 75: 37, Berkley and others to ——,
November 4, 1665.

[48] On April 6, 1666, the king, in response to a petition
from the Royal Adventurers, granted to the company a
ship called the "Golden Lyon" which had been
captured from the Dutch by Sir Robert Holmes in 1664.
C. S. P., Col., 1661-1668, p. 370, the king to duke of
York, March 28, 1666.

[49] A. C. R., 75: 40.

[50] Ibid., 75: 52.

[51] Ibid., 75: 57. A part of the debts had been incurred
on the common seal of the company and part on the
personal security of the committee of seven.

[52] A. C. R., 75: 56, 58. An attempt was made to
induce the king to pay his subscription. On the other
hand, the company owed the king a considerable sum
for the ships which it had used from time to time. S. P.,
Dom., Charles II, 199: 14.

[53] A. C. R., 75: 58.

[54] Ibid., 75: 59.

[55] Ibid., 75: 70.

[56] Ibid., 75: 77.

[57] Ibid., 75: 85, 88.

[58] The duke of Buckingham, however, paid his
arrears, which led the duke of York to remark, "I will
give the Devil his due, as they say the Duke of
Buckingham hath paid in his money to the Company."
Pepys, Diary, VIII, 142.

[59] A. C. R., 75: 61.

[60] Ibid., 75: 62, 63.

[61] It seems certain, however, that these men who
were interested in the Gambia trade made some other
arrangements at that time by means of which a certain
amount of goods was sent to that place. A. C. R., 75:
82, 83.

[62] A. C. R., 75: 83.

[63] Ibid., 75: 82.

[64] As opposed to those who were from the king's
court.

[65] A. C. R., 75:90, 91.

[66] O. S. P., Dom., 1668-1669, p. 459, August 25,
1669.

[67] A. C. R., 75: 94.

[68] C. O. 268: I, charter of the Royal African
Company, September 27, 1672.

[69] In the previous April a bill had been introduced into
the House of Lords to incorporate the company by act
of Parliament. On account of the various plans under
consideration there was no procedure with the bill. L. J.
(Journal of the House of Lords), XII: 480; H. M. C.
(Historical Manuscripts Commission), report 9, pt. 2, p.
9b; H. L. MSS. (House of Lords, Manuscripts), draft act
to incorporate the Company of Royal Adventurers of
England Trading into Africa, April 6, 1671.

[70] A. C. R., 75: 101, 102. See also the proposals for
a resettlement of the company's affairs in S.P., Dom.,
Charles II, 67, ff. 341, 342.

[71] A. C. R., 75: 106, 107.

[72] Ibid., 75: 108.

[73] British Husbandry and Trade, II, 14.

[74] A. C. R., 76: 52, the preamble under which the
subscriptions were made as amended December 19,
1671, article 4; ibid., 75: 111.

[75] Ibid., 76, October 22, 1674. A report of a
committee says that there was about £22,000 of the
old subscriptions which had not been paid.

[76] Ibid., 100: 50.

[77] C. O. 268: 1, charter of the Royal African
Company, September 27, 1672.

[78] Ibid.

CHAPTER III

On the West Coast of Africa

In 1660 all the colonial powers of Europe held the west coast
of Africa in great esteem, not only because it produced gold,
but also because it was regarded as a necessary adjunct to
the colonies in the West Indies for the supply of Negro
slaves. During their long war with Spain and Portugal the
Dutch acquired a large portion of the West African coast,

including the main fortress of St. George d'Elmina. This fact
led them to regard themselves as having succeeded to the
exclusive claims of the Portuguese on the Guinea coast[1].
With this end in view the Dutch agreed in the treaty of August
6, 1661, to return Brazil to the Portuguese as compensation
for the forts and settlements which they had seized on the
coast of Guinea[2]. Although the Dutch played the most
prominent part in depriving the Portuguese of the trade to
Guinea, the English, French, Swedes, Danes, and
Courlanders, all obtained a minor commerce to Africa which
they very jealously guarded. In a country so remote from the
laws and civilization of Europe personal quarrels often arose
among the subjects of these different nations, who were
inclined to obtain what they could by fair means or foul. They
magnified these petty quarrels[3] to such an extent that they
continually led to international complication.

The European trade in Africa was confined mainly to the
regions of the Gold Coast and the Gambia Iver. Near the
mouth of the Gambia River the subjects of the duke of
Courland had bought an island from the natives in 1651. On
this island they built a small fort, called St. André, from which
they traded to several factories up the river[4]. Besides the
Courlanders, the French and the Dutch carried on a very
precarious trade on the river. In the early part of 1659, as a
result of the war in the northern part of Europe, the duke of
Courland became a prisoner of the king of Sweden. Under
these circumstances the Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch
West India Company[5] induced the Duke's commissioner,
Henry Momber, to enter into a contract turning over to it all
the duke's possessions in the Gambia River. The Dutch were
to maintain the factories and to enjoy the trade until the duke

was able to resume possession. The contract was of very
doubtful value, since Momber himself admitted that he had
no power to make it, but notwithstanding this fact he
undertook to carry out its terms[6]. Shortly after the Dutch
took possession of the island belonging to the duke of
Courland it was surprised and plundered by a French pirate
who, in return for a consideration, handed it over to a
Gröningen merchant of the Dutch West India Company. The
Gröningen chamber of this company was not anxious to
retain the island and therefore signified to Momber its
willingness to return it to Courland. Momber, who feared to
have caused the displeasure of the duke by his contract, was
glad to regain the island in June, 1660. Notwithstanding this
fact, several ships belonging to the Amsterdam chamber of
the West India Company entered the Gambia River and took
possession of the island, keeping the Courlanders prisoners
for a month. The natives, however, interfered in behalf of the
Courlanders and the Dutch were finally compelled to retire to
Cape Verde, leaving Otto Steele, the duke's commander, in
possession[7].

It was during this state of affairs on the African coast that the
Company of Royal Adventurers was organized in England. It
received its charter December 18, 1660. In the same month,
Captain Robert Holmes sailed from England in command of
the five royal ships which composed the first expedition. In
March, 1661, he arrived at Cape Verde where he at once
informed the Dutch commander that he had orders from
Charles II to warn all persons of whatsoever nation that the
right of trade and navigation from Cape Verde to the Cape of
Good Hope belonged exclusively to the king of England.
Holmes ordered the Dutch to vacate their forts and to

abandon the coast within six or seven months[8]. Thereupon
he seized the island of Boa Vista, one of the Cape Verde
group claimed by the Dutch since 1621. Later he sent a
frigate into the mouth of the Gambia. Otto Steele, the
Courland commander of Fort St. André, unable to discern
whether friend or foe was approaching, fired upon the frigate.
Holmes considered this an insult[9], and two days later sent a
note to Steele requiring him to surrender the island to the
English within ten days. At first Steele refused to obey,
maintaining that the fort was the rightful possession of the
duke of Courland. Thereupon Holmes threatened to level the
fort to the ground. Steele realized that with so few men and
supplies resistance was useless, and therefore he complied
with Holmes' demands.[10] The English assumed possession
of the island, but after a fire had destroyed nearly all the fort
and its magazine,[11] they chose to abandon it, and to settle
on two other islands which they named Charles Island and
James Island respectively in honor of their royal patrons. In
this way the English gained their first possessions in the
Gambia River.

When Captain Holmes left England the Dutch ambassadors
in London informed the States General that he had gone to
the "reviere Guijana" where he would build a fort, establish a
trade and search for gold mines. This announcement was
immediately sent to the West India Company which had
received the more authentic advice that the English ships
were on the way to the Gambia River. The West India
Company urged that the Dutch ambassadors in London be
instructed to inquire more fully as to the purposes of the
expedition, and to prevent if possible anything being done to
the prejudice of the company.[12] The ambassadors learned

that the English maintained that all nations had a right to
trade on the Gambia River, and that other nations than the
Dutch had forts there.[13] On the other hand, the West India
Company maintained that it had traded on the Gambia River
ever since its formation and that, since the contract with the
duke of Courland, it had been in complete possession of the
river.[14] After receiving this statement the States General
requested their ambassadors in London to see that the
company's forts and lodges in the Gambia River were not
disturbed.[15] When the news of Holmes' exploit and his
reported warning to the Dutch commander to evacuate the
entire African coast reached the United Netherlands, the
West India Company at once lodged a complaint with the
States General.[16] At their suggestion the Dutch
ambassadors obtained an audience with Charles II, who
assured them that neither he nor his officers had given any
order for the injury which had been done to the subjects of
the United Netherlands, much less to possess any of their
forts. The king also assured them that, if Holmes had
committed any unjust action, he and his officers should be
exemplarily punished.[17] Sir George Downing, the English
envoy extraordinary at The Hague, further declared that
Holmes had very strict instructions not to disturb the subjects
of the United Netherlands or those of any other nation, and
that, if anything to the contrary had been done, it was without
the least authority.[18] Finally on August 14, 1661, Charles II
declared to the States General that their friendship was very
dear to him and that he would under no circumstances
violate the "Droit de Gens."[19] With all this extravagant
profession of good will no definite assurance was given the
Dutch that the islands of St. André and Boa Vista would be
restored to them. On August 16, Downing wrote to the earl of

Clarendon that the island of St. André did not belong to the
Dutch at all, but to the duke of Courland, and that an answer
to this effect could be returned to the Dutch ambassadors if
they objected to Holmes' actions. Furthermore, Downing
intimated that the duke could probably be induced to resign
his claims to the English.[20]

Meanwhile, Captain Holmes, who was responsible for this
unpleasant international complication, had returned from
Guinea. Since he suffered no punishment for his violent
actions on the African coast except the loss of his salary,[21]
the Dutch ambassadors in London reminded the king that on
August 14, 1661, he had absolutely disclaimed the
proceedings of Holmes.[22] They requested, therefore, that
Holmes be called to account for his actions, that Fort St.
André be restored, that reparation for damages be made,
and that in the future the king's subjects observe the laws of
nations more regularly.[23] Holmes was ordered before the
Privy Council to answer to the charges of the ambassadors,
[24] but no effort was made to force him to respond. The duke

of York kept him busy with the fleet where he incurred some
official displeasure, by failing to require a Swedish ship to
strike colors to his Majesty's ships in English seas, and was
therefore required to be detained until further order.[25]
Having extricated himself from this trouble Holmes finally
appeared before the Privy Council in January, 1662,[26] where
he offered "many reasons" in justification of his actions in
Guinea.[27] He easily satisfied the king and the members of
the Privy Council, which is not surprising since many of these
men had helped to organize and finance the expedition.

By this time it had become apparent that Charles II did not
intend to make immediate restitution of St. André to the
Dutch. This was in accordance with Downing's advice "to be
6 or 8 months in examining the matter" before making a
decision.[28] The longer the English retained possession of
the island the less likely the Dutch were to regain it. Finally,
the duke of Courland sent a representative, Adolph Wolfratt,
to London to insist upon the restitution of his possessions.
Originally the English had apparently supported the claims of
the duke of Courland, but it developed that they were no
more inclined to return St. André to the duke of Courland
than to the Dutch. The matter dragged on until November 17,
1664, when a contract was made between Charles II and the
duke whereby the latter surrendered all his rights on the
Gambia River. In return he received certain trading privileges
there and the island of Tobago in the West Indies.[29]

When one proceeds from the Cape Verde region to the Gold
Coast one finds that Dutch influence was especially strong.
From Elmina and other forts the Dutch commanded the
largest portion of the trade along this coast. However, the
Danes, Swedes and English had long maintained a
commerce on the Gold Coast where they also had
established a number of factories. In 1658, Hendrik Carloff,
an adventurer carrying a Danish commission, attacked and
made himself master of Cape Corse which had been in the
possession of the Swedes since 1651. After entering into
friendly relations with the Dutch at Elmina,[30] Carloff returned
to Europe, leaving his lieutenant, Samuel Smits, in charge of
the fort. Fearing that the Swedes and the English, who had
entered into an alliance, might endeavor to regain Cape
Corse, Carloff advised Smits to surrender the fort to Jasper

van Heusden, director general of the West India Company on
the Gold Coast. The instructions were unnecessary, as Smits
had surrendered Cape Corse to the Dutch on April 15, 1659.
In return for this fort Smits and one of his compatriots
received 5,000 and 4,000 gulden respectively.[31]

At the time when Hendrik Carloff seized Cape Corse the
English had there[32] a factory to which they traded from their
main fort at Kormentine.[33] On May 1, 1659, very soon after
the Dutch obtained possession of the place, the English
factory with all its goods was burned by the natives, perhaps
at the instigation of the Dutch. The Hollanders, however,
were not without misfortunes of their own, for after
disavowing Smits' contract, the Danes sent a new expedition
to Guinea which seized a hill commanding Cape Corse, on
which they built the fort of Fredericksburg. Furthermore, the
Swedes who had been dispossessed of Cape Corse by the
Danes with the assistance of natives, toward the end of
1660, drove the Dutch out of Cape Corse. Since the Swedes
were insignificant in number the fort very shortly fell into the
control of the vacillating Negro inhabitants.

As soon as the natives obtained possession of Cape Corse
they permitted the English to rebuild their factory at that
place. An agreement was also made by which, upon the
payment of a certain sum of money, the fort was to be
surrendered to the English.[34] Since the Dutch maintained
that Cape Corse belonged exclusively to them by reason of
their contract with the Danes, they determined to prevent the
English from obtaining possession of it. Furthermore, in order
to exclude other Europeans from trading to any part of the
Gold Coast, the Dutch declared a blockade on the whole

coast, in which Komenda and other villages as well as Cape
Corse were situated. To carry out this policy they kept
several ships plying up and down the coast.

The Dutch then proceeded to capture the following English
ships for endeavoring to trade on the Gold Coast: the
"Blackboy," April, 1661; the "Daniel," May, 1661; the
"Merchant's Delight,"[35] August, 1661; the "Charles," August,
1661; the "Paragon," October, 1661; the "Ethiopian,"
January, 1662. In addition to these injuries the Dutch forbade
the English at Kormentine to trade with the factory at Cape
Corse, which warning was no sooner given than the factory
was mysteriously destroyed by fire a second time, May 22,
1661. The English bitterly complained that this misfortune
was due to the instigation of the Dutch.[36]

In like manner the Dutch captured a Swedish ship and
interfered with the trade of the Danes to their fort of
Fredericksburg,[37] which action greatly incensed the Danish
African Company. Since voluntary satisfaction for these
injuries could not be expected, Simon de Petkum, the Danish
resident in London, caused the arrest of a Dutch West India
ship, the "Graf Enno," which was one of the main offenders
in seizing Danish as well as English ships on the Guinea
coast.[38] The case was brought before the Admiralty Court,
and judgment of condemnation was rendered in favor of the
Danes.[39]

At The Hague, Sir George Downing now had a great
opportunity to vent his remarkable store of epithets on the
Dutch for their violent actions against English vessels in
Guinea. He complained to the States General "that the

people of this contry doe everywhere as oppertunity offers
sett upon, rob and spoyle" the English subjects; and that
these things were being done not only by the West India
Company but even by ships of war belonging to the Dutch
government. Downing threatened that the king would "give
order for the seizing of a proportionable number and value of
ships and merchandises belonginge to this contrey and
distribute them amongst them accordinge ... to their
respective losses, and will take care that noe ships bee
seized but such as belong to those provinces, and to such
townes in those provinces, to which the ships belonged that
did commit these violences and robberies."[40] In this way
Downing hoped to set the non-maritime towns and provinces
of the Netherlands against those which were interested in
commerce, and thus to secure a cessation of the seizures.
Upon one occasion in the time of Cromwell he had used this
method successfully. Downing declared too that, to obtain
justice in the United Provinces, it was necessary for the
Dutch to realize that his Majesty would have satisfaction for
injuries done "if not by faire means, by force."[41]

The Dutch ignored Downing's demands, even though on
June 6, 1662, he reminded them of their unjust actions on
the Gold Coast.[42] In all probability they were trusting to
obviate all difficulties in the commercial treaty then being
negotiated at London. In August, a new complaint was made
to the States General[43] concerning the seizure of the
English ship, "Content," off the Cape Verde Islands.[44]
Shortly thereafter, the States General declared with respect
to the English ship, "Daniel," seized in 1661, that it was a
gross misrepresentation for the owner to maintain that the
master and crew of the ship were English. Furthermore, the

Dutch advanced proof that the ship had been fitted out with a
cargo in Amsterdam, and had afterwards attempted to pass
as an English ship, in order to escape being seized as an
interloper by the West India Company.[45]

Further consideration regarding these seizures was
postponed indefinitely by the 15th article of the commercial
treaty entered into between the United Provinces and
England in September, 1662.[46] In accordance with its
provisions the ships which the Dutch had seized on the
African coast were included in the lists of damages which the
English submitted against the United Provinces. Thereafter
the ships formed no important part in the negotiations
between the two nations.

Thus far the Company of Royal Adventurers which had sent
out the expedition under Captain Robert Holmes had not
been more active on the Gold Coast than numerous private
traders of England. The seizure of ships by the Dutch had
been a matter of much apprehension to all the traders on the
coast, but from now on it mainly concerned the Royal
Adventurers. The company was anxious to establish new
forts and factories in Africa in order to build up a lucrative
trade. Its agents therefore began to erect a lodge at Tacorary,
a village not far from Cape Corse. The Dutch, although they
had not succeeded in recovering Cape Corse from the
natives, considered that the fort and the surrounding territory
belonged to them. On May 24, 1662, they bade the English
to desist from further invasion of their rights at Tacorary or
any other place under Dutch obedience.[47] The English,
however, disregarded the Dutch protest and notwithstanding
their opposition the factory was completed.[48] In less than a

month from this time the natives drove the Dutch out of their
factory in Comany.[49] Thereupon the Dutch determined to
continue even more vigorously their policy of blockading the
whole coast and, by cutting off the trade of the natives with
the English, to force the Negroes into subjection and to
recover Comany and the fort at Cape Corse.

In October, 1662, two ships of the Royal Adventurers, the
"Charles" and the "James," were prevented from trading to
Komenda by the "Golden Lyon" and two other Dutch men-of-
war.[50] When asked as to the reason for this interruption of
trade the Dutch general, Dirck Wilree, replied that he had
caused the ports of Comany and Cape Corse to be
blockaded until the natives rendered satisfaction for the
injuries which they had committed against the Dutch.[51]
When the two English ships continued their effort to trade at
Cape Corse and other villages, the "Golden Lyon" followed
them from place to place, and on one occasion seized a
small skiff which was attempting to land some goods.
Discouraged at the treatment accorded to them the English
officers finally gave up the attempt to trade on the Gold
Coast, and returned home with their ships, after delivering to
the Dutch a solemn protest against the injuries which they
had suffered.[52]

When Secretary Williamson informed Sir George Downing of
the misfortunes of the two ships, "Charles" and "James," and
asked him to interfere in behalf of the Royal Company at The
Hague, Downing promised to do what he could, but since he
was so well acquainted with the Dutch method of treating
such complaints he did not anticipate favorable results. "God
help them," he declared, "if they (the Royal Company)

depend upon paper relief." With the duke of York at the head
of the Company and the king as well as many of his courtiers
greatly concerned in its welfare, he considered that it would
be well cared for. "Whatever injuries the Dutch do them," he
exclaimed, "let them be sure to do the Dutch greater, & then
let me alone to mediate between them, but without this all
other wayes will signify not a rush."[53]

Downing demanded of the States General whether Dirck
Wilree had been given any authority to blockade the entire
coasts of Comany and to forbid all English trade with the
natives.[54] In this way he hoped either to have the States
General disavow Wilree's action or to raise the question
whether the West India Company had a right to institute such
a blockade. In letters to Clarendon and Bennet, Downing
maintained that the Dutch were accustomed both in West
Africa and in the East Indies, to declare war on the natives
and to cut them off from all trade with foreigners until they
agreed to sell their goods only to the Dutch. Downing
declared that the English had already lost a great deal of
trade on account of such impositions, and that if they were
continued the East India and African companies would be
ruined. "Pay them in their own kind & sett their subjects a
crying as well as his Majties, & you will have a very faire
correspondence, & they will take heed what they doe, and
his Majtie shall be as much honored & loved here as he hath
been dispised, for they love nor honor none but them that
they thinck both can & dare bite them."[54a] After urging the
king to take immediate action concerning their ships the
members of the Royal Company requested Downing "to
drive the States to the most positive reply." They declared
that any answer would, at least, expedite matters, and "if

those states will owne that Wilrey had their orders to warrant
his action, wee will hope, it may begett some parelel
resolution of state here. If they disclaim it, and leave their
West India Company to be responcible, they will send us to a
towne where there is noe house, unlesse wee pay ourselves,
per legem talionis."[55]

In answer to Downing's memorial concerning the "Charles"
and the "James" the West India Company confined itself to a
justification of Wilree's actions, and omitted to say anything
about the authority by which they had been committed.[56]
Although Downing insisted that a definite answer be given
him on this point, the States General also evaded the issue
by maintaining that nothing had been done by the company
but what justice and necessity required. They supported the
company in its contention that Cape Corse and Comany
were effectually blockaded, and therefore the ships "Charles"
and "James" had no right to trade there.[57]

Such a justification of the West India Company's actions
could scarcely be satisfactory to Downing or to those in
charge of foreign affairs in England. The Royal Company
was very much concerned also lest the Dutch would continue
to interrupt the ships which it sent to the Gold Coast. To add
to this adverse condition news arrived that, about the first of
June, 1663,[58] the Dutch had at last succeeded in regaining
possession of Cape Corse. At this there was much
satisfaction in Holland. Downing wrote that since the Dutch
now had the two important castles of Elmina and Cape
Corse, commanding the most important trade in all Guinea,
they intended to prohibit all other nations from trading to that
region.[59] Over this turn of events there was great

disappointment among the members of the Royal Company,
who had confidently expected to obtain Cape Corse from the
natives. In fact, they had intended to make Cape Corse their
main stronghold and at that place establish their principal
trade.[60]

Charles II decided that it was time to come to the assistance
of the Royal Company, and on September 5, 1663, he lent
three of his ships to it for a voyage to Africa.[61] Later, he also
ordered several additional royal vessels commanded by Sir
Robert Holmes to accompany these ships. The preparation
and departure of the fleet was short and remained a close
secret with the officials immediately concerned.

The king instructed Holmes to protect the company's agents,
ships, goods, and factories from all injury; and to secure a
free trade with the natives. Also, he declared, "If (upon
consultacon with such commandrs as are there present) you
judge yourself strong enough to maintaine the right of his
Matie's subjects by force, you are to do it, and to kill, sink,
take, or destroy such as oppose you, & to send home such
ships as you shall so take." If the two ships "Golden Lyon"
and "Christiana," the first of which was the chief assailant of
the company's ships "Charles" and "James" in November,
1662, were encountered. Holmes was instructed to seize
them. All other ships which had committed such injuries on
the vessels of the Royal Company[62] were likewise to be
seized and taken to England. On his arrival at the mouth of
the Gambia River in January, 1664, Holmes discovered that
since his visit in 1661 the relations of the Dutch and English
had been anything but friendly. The English commander on
Charles Island had given Petro Justobaque and other Dutch

factors from Cape Verde permission to trade up and down
the river. Holmes heard that they had endeavored to stir up
the native king of Barra against the English in December,
1661.[63] On the 21st of June, 1662, Justobaque with a ship
again appeared on the Gambia. In order to compel him to
recognize the English rights on the river, the English
commander at James Island fired at the ship. The Dutch ship
paid no heed to the demand of the English and returned the
fire until it was a safe distance away. A few days later when
returning to Cape Verde the English shot away the main
mast of the Dutch ship, but Justobaque managed to escape.
[64]

Although these incidents had happened more than a year
and a half before Holmes' arrival at James Island, he was
incensed at the actions of the Dutch. When it was reported to
him that a large Dutch vessel had arrived at Cape Verde, he
assumed that it was the "Golden Lyon" which had sailed from
Holland about the same time as he had departed from
England. Several English ships were expected on the
Gambia and for fear of their capture by the "Golden Lyon,"
Holmes sailed at once for Cape Verde where, according to
his statement, without any provocation he was fired upon by
the Dutch. Holmes returned the fire, and after suffering some
damage withdrew from the attack. On the following morning
he was surprised, he declared, to see that the Dutch had
hung out a white flag and were sending a boat to him offering
to surrender the fort. He called a council which, after
considering the former hazards of the English trade on the
Gambia, decided "that the better to protect our trade for a
tyme and sooner to bring in Hollander's West India Compa to