The American Slave Trade (Spears)/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
SLAVER LEGISLATION IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES
If there is any chapter in our history that is likely to make a patriotic student an utter pessimist, it is the chapter relating to American slave legislation. No other chapter is so disheartening; none can excite such indignation and contempt. But if we consider that at last, after two hundred and forty-two years of oppression and robbery, a time came when we did, by legal enactment, recognize that a negro man was entitled at least to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we shall not be without hope that a time may yet come when we shall fully understand and act upon the Divine command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self."
That the British Government, in the interest of British shipping, did, in the eighteenth century, try to encourage the slave-trade is abundantly proved by many other facts than the appropriations, amounting to £90,000, which Parliament granted, between 1729 and 1750, for building, repairing, and supporting forts and slave-pens on the coast of Africa. But whether the American colonies virtuously struggled to resist and suppress the slave-traflic during those years is another matter entirely.
To begin with the facts in the matter, we find that in New York in 1709 a tariff duty of £3 per head was laid on all negroes imported from any other place than an African port, and this is said to have been prohibitive.
In connection with this take the letter of the Earl of Bellemont to the Lords of Trade:
"I should advise the sending for negroes to Guinea, which I understand are bought there and brought hither, all charges whatever being bourne, for £10 a piece, New York money. . . . If it were practical for the King to be the merchant and that the whole management of this undertaking were upon his account, were it so, there would be profit of at least £50 per cent.' (Vol. IV. Col. Doc.)
The tax was laid to promote a direct trade. In 1716 a tariff then imposed was explained by Governor Hunter. (Vol. V., N. Y. Col. Doc.)
"The duties laid on negroes from ye other colonies are intended to encourage their own shipping and discourage their importing of refuse and sickly negroes here from other colonies, which they commonly do."
The fact is that while New York State eventually abolished slavery, it never put so much as a spray of sea-weed under the bows of slave-ships owned by her citizens.
In Rhode Island, as early as 1708, a tax of £3 per head was laid on all negroes imported. This tax has been called a restraint on the trade and it has been quoted to show that the Rhode Islanders even thus early showed a glimmering sense of the moral character of the slave-trade. The fact is the tax was laid to enable the Colonial Government to obtain a share of the profits of the trade, and Newport streets were first paved out of the proceeds of that tax.
Moore, in his "Slavery in Massachusetts," points out that in 1701 the representatives from Boston were "desired [by the voters] to promote the encouraging the bringing of white servants, and to puta period to negroes being slaves." That looks like a real desire to abolish slavery, even though no legislation followed on the desire; but the truth is, the Boston voters were animated solely by business principles, as shall be pointed out in connection with similar legislation in New Jersey.
Moreover "the law of 1703 (two years later) chapter 2, was in restraint of the ‘Manumission, Discharge or Setting free' of 'Molatto or Negro slaves'."? The close-fisted slave-owners had begun "to manumit aged or infirm slaves, to relieve the master from the charge of supporting them."
In 1705 Massachusetts again enacted slaver laws. One clause of the bill imposed a tax of £4 on each slave imported. This looks something like a restraint of the trade, but a further examination of the act shows that it was "for the Better Preventing of a spurious or mixt Issue." It is shocking to learn that the young men of Puritan blood were so fond of the black Briseises. Another clause of the bill provided for an entire rebate of the tax if the slaves were exported after having been entered at the custom house. The act was really designed to enable the colony to share in the profits of the slave-trade, and to encourage slavers in making Boston a clearinghouse, so to speak, for the slave-trade of the whole continent.
Du Bois notes that the middle colony and southern ports allowed a rebate of not more than one-half the duty of reshipment of slaves; but the student must not fail to consider this in its proper light. It was not a question of morals — of a desire to suppress the slavetrade. The middle and southern ports were merely less anxious to promote sea-traffic — they were less under the influence of ship-owners.
It appears that New Jersey really strove to prohibit the trade in 1713, by a duty of £10. This law looks quite a little like an honest attempt to extirpate the traffic. It certainly was not the expression of a desire to participate in the profits, or to promote shipping, or to interfere with the trade of other colonies. But on looking at the real reason we find (Vol. IV. New Jersey Archives) that it was "calculated to Encourage the Importation of white Servants for the better Peopeling that Country."
It was seen clearly in New Jersey, and also in other colonies (though dimly in some of them) that white servants of a character to become enterprising citizens, when their term of slavery was ended, were likely to be of more benefit to a community with a climate like that of any of the northern colonies than African slaves would be. The negro was to be a slave for life — a mere laborer whose value was as that of a horse. But a large proportion of the white slaves became, at last, business men who would develop the natural resources of the country, and build the nation.
And all this is to say, with emphasis, that the prohibitive legislation of New Jersey, as of some other communities, was based strictly on business considerations. The only question really was, Which in the end will pay best — white or black servants?
In Pennsylvania the first law to impose a prohibitive tax was passed in 1712, and the bill itself sets forth the object in view. It began: ‘‘ Whereas divers Plots and Insurrections have frequently happened, not only in the Islands, but on the Mainland of America, by Negroes, which have been carried on so far that several of the inhabitants have been barbarously Murthered, an Instance whereof we have lately had in our Neighboring Colony of New York," etc. The act ended by imposing a duty of £20.
For fear the slaves whom they dominated might rise to secure liberty and avenge uncounted injuries, the people of Pennsylvania decided that no more slaves should come in. It was the sheer cowardice of conscious tyrants that animated those Pennsylvania legislators.
A similar state of affairs was developed in South Carolina very early — in 1698 — when it was said that "the great number of negroes which of late have been imported into this collony may endanger the safety thereof," and a special law to encourage the importation of white servants was passed. A few years later, when the King of Spain and the Queen of England went into the slave-trade in partnership, heavy duties were laid on imported negroes, because ‘‘ the number of Negroes do extremely increase," and "the safety of the said Province is greatly endangered." In 1717 a duty of £40 currency was laid, and this cut down importations so much that a duty of £10 was instituted for all others in 1719. In 1734 there were 22,000 slaves to less than 8,000 whites in South Carolina, and this state of affairs was exceedingly alarming to the whites, especially as insurrections had been attempted.
An insurrection at Stono under a negro called Cato led to a prohibitive duty of £100 laid for a time on imported negroes. Again in 1760 the importation was prohibited through fear.
Georgia was first established by charitable Englishmen as a refuge for a lot of people who were imprisoned for debt — in trouble through misfortune only. The charter was granted June 9, 1732. It was to be "a silk, wine, oil and drug growing colony." And negro slavery was absolutely prohibited.
T. Rundle, one of the trustees of the corporation, in a sermon preached at St. George's, February 17, 1733, said: "Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions." To this Oglethorpe himself, the colony's chief promoter, added that the slave-trade was "against the gospel as well as the fundamental law of England," and that "we refused as Trustees to make a law permitting such a horrid crime."
In view of the regulations covering rum and negro slaves, Du Bois, the distinguished historian of the negro race, is moved to say that "in Georgia we have an example of a community whose philanthropic founders sought to impose upon it a code of morals higher than the colonists wished."
The fact is, however, that Oglethorpe was Deputy Governor of the Royal African Company, the company chartered to monopolize the slave-trade under the famous Assiento contract with Spain — the company which agreed to deliver 4,800 slaves per year, or 144,000 slaves in all, in the Spanish colonies alone, during the course of thirty years, and which did deliver many more than 4,800 slaves into the American colonies in the very year when Oglethorpe made a speech on the slave-trade declaring it a "horrid crime." He also owned a plantation near Parachucla, South Carolina, forty miles north of the Savannah River, that was worked by slaves. Oglethorpe proclaimed (as many an American did after him) that the slave-trade was "horrid," but he was one of the most active participants in it known to his age. The conclusion reached by Stevens in his "History of Georgia" is irresistible. "*It was policy and not philanthropy which prohibited slavery'? in the settlement of Georgia. The policy was the desire to place a buffer — perhaps one should rather say a sentinel troop — between the Spanish forces of Florida and the English colony of Carolina. The Carolina people felt that their slaves were an element of great weakness should the Spanish come as invaders. A colony of white men only would serve as an outpost that the Spaniards would fear and respect.
But Georgia did not prosper as a settlement of whites only, and slaves were, at last, introduced, at the urgent demand of the colonists.
To omit further details of colonial policy it may be said generally that, with the exception of Georgia, every colony did at one time and another impose taxes on imported negro slaves, and that in some cases the so-called restraint amounted to prohibition.
See page 78.