Still another example of the South's willingness to limit the growth of slavery in the United States, every Southern state except South Carolina had made further importation of African slaves illegal prior to such measures being passed by Congress. South Carolina repealed its law against the importation of African slaves because of its inability to police its many rivers and lengthy shoreline against Yankee slave traders. In 1808, the year appointed by the Constitution for an act to prevent further importation of African slaves into the United States, the anti-slave trade bill passed with representatives from only two Southern states (Virginia and South Carolina) and two Northern states (Vermont and New Hampshire) voting against the bill.
There are a few little-known facts about early American slavery that demonstrate the willingness of the South to promote the abolition of slavery. One overlooked fact is that in the two decades after the adoption of the United States Constitution (1788), manumission (the voluntary freeing of slaves by a slaveholder) doubled each decade in the South. An example of this spirit of freedom was demonstrated when Robert Carter freed more than five hundred slaves in 1791. George Washington manumitted his slaves on his death, which was not an uncommon practice. The willingness of masters to free their slaves upon their death occurred frequently during the early part of the antebellum South. John Randolph of Roanoke, the father of Southern Nationalism, freed four hundred slaves at his death in
The first attempt to bring about the abolition of slavery was instituted in 1817 with the founding of the American Colonization Society. This organization was formed by slaveholders in Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland. During the nineteenth century in the United States, both in the North and in the South, the theory of Negro inferiority was widely accepted. Most white people doubted the ability of free black people to cope with the demands of an industrial-age society. Modern Americans are acquainted with Jefferson's words about freedom for American slaves, "Nothing is more clearly written in the book of fate than that these people will be free." These stirring words are engraved on Jefferson's memorial in Washington. But the stonecutters put a period at the end of that remark, whereas Jefferson had placed a semicolon and went on to state, "And it is equally certain that the two races will never live in a state of equal freedom under the same government, so insurmountable are the barriers which nature, habit, and opinions have established between Even the most "enlightened" philosopher of the American Revolution held the view of Negro inferiority that was common throughout all European societies at that time. Nevertheless, up until the year of his death, Jefferson also held the view that slavery should be abandoned. Eleven months prior to his death, Jefferson stated, "The abolition of the evil [slavery] is not impossible; it ought never to be despaired of."l2 Jefferson's view of the black slaves and slavery in general is reflected in his Notes on the State of Virginia, `Proposed Revision of Constitution of Virginia.' Jefferson states:
To emancipate all slaves born after the passing the act. The bill reported by the revisers does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then to be brought up, at the public expense, to tillage, arts, or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of household and of the handicrafts arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c., to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce them to migrate hither proper encouragements were to be proposed. It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the State, and thus save the expense of supplying by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave?
Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties; and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral.
A black, after hard labor through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites.... Love seems with [them] to be sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether Heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labor. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does reflect must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.... Never yet could I find that it black had uttered it thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch.13
These comments, by one of America's most celebrated "enlightened" leaders, demonstrates the common nineteenth-century view of the African in America. Jefferson and the vast majority of' Americans, North or South, did not believe that emancipation of the slaves could be accomplished without removing the African after freedom. This view was held by United States presidents from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln.
Nor was this view of African inferiority in European society held only by Americans. The French writer Alexis de Tocqueville noted:
You ►nay set the negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all; we scarcely acknowledge the common features of mankind in this child of debasement whom slavery has brought amongst its. His plhysiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his taste low; and we are almost inclined to look upon hint as a being intermediate between man and the brutes. The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have three prejudices to contend against, which are less easy to attack, and far less easy to conquer, than the mere fact of servitude: the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of
With society at large holding the view of black racial inferiority, it was difficult to promote the abolition of slavery. If the black population were freed, they would become free citizens in a European society. This was unacceptable to Northerners and Southerners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus, in an effort to overcome fears of creating a free black underclass in the United States, the American Colonization Society urged the freeing of slaves and their subsequent removal to their ancestral homeland, Africa. In 1822 this society was instrumental in establishing the African nation of Liberia.' To this day, the capital of Liberia has been Monrovia. That city was named in honor of a Southern slaveholder, President James Monroe, who was also a strong supporter of the effort to end slavery in the United States.
In America today, most people view the abolition movement as a Northern idea and cause; thus, the South is viewed as the deadly foe of abolitionism. In the defense of truth, it will b
e demonstrated that the movement for the abolition of slavery was not just a Northern idea. Indeed, some of the first abolition societies were formed in the South with the assistance of Southern slaveholders. Both slaveholders and non-slaveholders in the South were active in the early Southern abolition movement. Having been educated and indoctrinated by America's liberal establishment, most Americans find these facts shocking. But even more shocking to modern minds is the fact that by 1827 fully four-fifths of all the abolition organizations and four-fifths of the members of those organizations were from the South.11 The fact that there was little or no difference between the North and South over the issue of slavery has been noted by Southern historian Francis B. Simkins: "Before 1820 there was little difference between the North and the South in the volume and vigor of antislavery expression."17 Governor John Randolph of Virginia even condemned earlier Virginians for "copying a civil institution [slavery] from savage
Early in the history of the United States, it was not uncommon for Northerners to work with Southerners to promote the end of slavery. For example, William Rawle of Pennsylvania was, until his death, president of the Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.]" Maryland at that time was truly a Southern state, having more than a hundred thousand slaves within its borders.20 Even though Rawle was a Northerner, Southerners worked closely with him in promoting a common goal (that is, the abolition of slavery). It should be obvious to any thinking person that as long as Northerners and Southerners worked together, with mutual respect and understanding, there was positive movement for the abolition of slavery. It was not Northern abolitionists such as Rawle who caused such a fright and negative reaction to abolitionism in the South. That would come later in the form of the Radical Abolitionists.
The desire for the removal of the system of slavery in Virginia was so strong that by 1832 its legislature was seriously debating the issue of the abolition of slavery.21 This history of Southern abolitionism goes all the way back to the colonial period. In the eighteenth century the elected government of Virginia passed laws to curb the influx of slaves. The effort of these Virginians was thwarted by the British rulers. Reverend P. Fontaine of Virginia noted:
Our Assembly, foreseeing the ill consequences of importing such numbers among us, hath often attempted to lay a duty upon them which would amount to a prohibition, such as ten or twenty pounds a head; but no governor dare pass such a law, having instructions to the contrary from the Board of Trade at home. By this means they are forced upon us, whether we will or not. This plainly shows the African Company hath the advantage of the colonies, and may do as it pleases with the ministrv.22
It should be noted that the governor who would not sign a bill to limit the importation of more African slaves was a royally appointed agent. In other words, he was neither elected nor appointed by the people of Virginia; he was performing his duties as directed by the king, not by Virginians. The following extract from a petition to the king of England by the House of Burgesses of Virginia will demonstrate how the early inhabitants of Virginia felt about the importation of more slaves.
The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present encouragement, we have too much reason to fear will endanger the very existence of your majesty's American dominions.
We are sensible that some of your majesty's subjects of Great Britain may reap emoluments from this sort of traffic, but when we consider that it greatly retards the settlement of the colonies with more useful inhabitants, and may, in time, have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope that the interest of a few will be disregarded when placed in competition with the security and happiness of such numbers of your majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects.
Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your majesty to remove all those restraints on your majesty's governors of this colony, which inhibit their assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce.23
Unfortunately, this petition had no effect in curbing the influx of African slaves into the colony of Virginia. This is one reason that Thomas Jefferson inserted into the text of the Declaration of Independence the complaint that the king refused the colonies the right to prevent the introduction of slaves by "the inhuman use of the royal negative."
In a span of seventy-three years, the House of Burgesses of Virginia passed no less than twenty-three resolutions, acts, and/or bills that tended to limit or prohibit the continued importation of African slaves into Virginia.24 Likewise, in 1760 South Carolina attempted to put a limit on the radical increase in the importation of slaves into that colony, only to be rebuffed by the king. The colony of Georgia was the first American colony to adopt a constitution prohibiting the importation of slaves. In 1798 the state of Georgia prohibited the further importation of slaves into that state, a full ten years before the Federal Congress did At the time of Jefferson's writing of the Declaration of Independence, one charge that he desired to level against the king was that the king pursued a policy on the importation of African slaves that went against the wishes of the people of the colonies. The part of the declaration that was removed by the votes of New England states: "By prompting our negroes to rise in arms among us; those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his negative, he had refused us permission to exclude by Unfortunately, the major charge against King George was stricken from the declaration. Perhaps, in striking the clause from the Declaration of Independence, the financial greed of Yankee slave traders was being considered. It might be pointed out here that in 1776, the British government was attempting to do the very same thing that Abraham Lincoln's government attempted to do in 1862. Both King George and Abraham Lincoln were attempting to instigate a slave rebellion. They were attempting to cause the slave population to rise up and butcher the families of the "Rebel" forces. These were the very same slaves that the king's men and Lincoln's men had sold to the people of the South.
The fear of a slave uprising had always been a reality in any slave society; the North and the South were no different. The brutal massacre of the white population in Haiti and Santo Domingo during those successful slave uprisings was a constant source of fear for many Southerners. White non-slaveholders as well as white slaveholders felt victimized by the demands of Radical Abolitionists insisting on immediate abolition of slavery. This demand was often linked with the threat of "servile insurrection," or slave uprising.
If Southerners and Northerners were attempting to end slavery early in the history of the United States, what happened to change this feeling of good will? Two factors can be pointed to as major reversals in the attempt to end slavery in the South. The first factor is a Yankee by the name of Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin in 1793. Before the invention of Whitney's cotton gin, cotton fiber was removed from cotton seed by hand. This was a very difficult and time-consuming process. It took a slave all day to produce one pound of cotton fiber. It required five hundred slave-days of labor to produce the fiber for one five-hundred-pound bale of cotton. While living on a Georgia plantation, Whitney invented a machine that cut that workload to a mere fraction of what it once was, and thus revolutionized the cotton industry. When operated by hand, the machine could do the work of ten slaves. When operated by horsepower, it could do the work of fifty slaves. This development made cotton production immensely profitable. As often happens, despite the best of intentions, much harm can be done. The unintentional result of Whitney's invention was that the slaves now had a new and very lucrative job description: the production of cotton. And as would become obvious, cotton was best grown in the South.
With fortunes to be made both by Southern planters and Northern shippers and industrialists, moral qualms about the enslavement of an "inferior" class of people quickly abated. Not only did the South gain by this process, but all of the United States were benefiting from Southern agriculture. By 1850 two-thirds of America's exports, many of them carried in Northern sh
ips, came from the fields of the South.27 During this time, Southern slaveholders questioned the honesty of Northerners who condemned the South for making profits from slave-grown produce, while Yankees in textile mills, shipping, and banks were making profits from the very same slave-grown produce.
In 1791, before the invention of the cotton gin, America's total cotton production was a mere four hundred bales. By 1810, the production was up to 177,824 bales; in 1830, production was at 732,218 bales; and by 1860, it was at 3,841,416 bales or two-thirds of the world's cotton production. From four hundred bales to almost four million bales in less that seventy years, thanks largely to a Yankee with good
Even with fortunes to be made and maintained by cotton production, the movement to abolish slavery in the South was a viable movement until the second decade of the nineteenth century. The death knell to the Southern abolition movement was heard across the South when the Radical Abolitionists of the North demanded immediate abolition of slavery with no compensation to slaveholders. Here is seen a movement by the people of one section of the United States who were dedicated to destroying a system of labor in another section of the country that had been recognized as legitimate by the Founding Fathers, both North and South. No longer was the movement to abolish slavery a mutual endeavor by all Americans; rather, it had now become the focus of sectional dispute. Still worse, as the issue of slavery became politicized, feelings on both sides of the issue began to harden. At that point rational discussion and positive movement for the elimination of slavery in America died. Southern historian John S. Tilley notes, "The record has disclosed that a reaction set in concurrently with the advent of the group known as abolitionists.... [I]n the thinking of the abolitionist, the slave-owner was an inhumane
Myths of American Slavery Page 3
