NOTES TO CHAPTER IIIToC

NOTES TO CHAPTER IIIToC

Note 1

"The history of slavery and the slave trade after 1820 must be read in the light of the industrial revolution through which the civilized world passed in the first half of the nineteenth century. Between the years 1775 and 1825 occurred economic events and changes of the highest importance and widest influence. Though all branches of the industry felt the impulse of this new industrial life, yet, if we consider single industries, cotton manufacture has, during the nineteenth century, made the most magnificent and gigantic advances."

This fact is easily explained by the remarkable series of inventions that revolutionized this industry between 1738 and 1830, including Arkwright's, Watt's, Compton's, and Cartwright's epoch making contrivances. The effect which these inventions had on the manufacture of cotton goods is best illustrated by the fact that in England, the chief cotton market of the world, the consumption of raw cotton rose steadily from 13,000 bales in 1781, to 572,000 in 1820, to 871,000 in 1830, and to 3,366,000 in 1860. Very early, therefore, came the query whence the supply of raw cotton was to come. Tentative experiments on the rich, broad fields of the Southern United States, together with the indispensable invention of Whitney's cotton gin, soon answered this question. A new economic future was opened up to this land, and immediately the whole South began to extend its cotton culture, and more and more to throw its whole energy into this one staple.

Here it was that the fatal mistake of compromising with slavery in the beginning, and of the policy of laissez-faire pursued thereafter, became painfully manifest; for, instead now of a healthy, normal, economic development along proper industrial lines, we have the abnormal and fatal rise of a slave-labor, large-farming system, which, before it was realized, had so intertwined itself with and braced itself upon the economic forces of an industrial age, that a vast and terrible civil war was necessary to displace it. The tendencies to a patriarchal serfdom, recognized in the age of Washington and Jefferson, began slowly but surely to disappear; and in the second quarter of the century Southern slavery was irresistibly changing from a family institution to an industrial system.

DuBois, "Suppression of the Slave Trade," p. 151.

A list of the chief inventions most graphically illustrates the above:—

1738, John Jay, fly shuttle. John Wyatt, spinning by rollers.

1748, Lewis Paul, carding machine.

1760, Robert Kay, drop box.

1769, Richard Arkwright, water-frame and throstle. James Watt, steam-engine.

1772, James Lees, improvements on carding-machine.

1775, Richard Arkwright, series of combinations.

1779, Samuel Compton, mule.

1785, Edmund Cartwright, power-loom.

1803-4, Radcliffe and Johnson, dressing-machine.

1817, Roberts, fly-frame.

1818, William Eaton, self-acting frame.

1825-30, Roberts, improvements on mule.

Cf. Baines, "History of the Cotton Manufactures," pp. 116-23; "Encyclopædia Britannica," 9th ed., article "Cotton."

Note 2

In 1832, Alabama declared that "any person or persons who shall attempt to teach any free person of color or slave to spell, read, or write, shall, upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum not less than $250, nor more than $500."

Georgia, in 1770, fined any person who taught a slave to read or write twenty pounds. In 1829 the State enacted:

"If any slave, Negro or free person of color, or any white person, shall teach any other slave, Negro or free person of color to read or write, either written or printed characters, the same free person of color or slave shall be punished by fine and whipping, or fine or whipping, at the discretion of the court; and if a white person so offend, he, she or they shall be punished with a fine not exceeding $500 and imprisonment in the common jail at the discretion of the court."

In 1833 this law was put into the penal code, with additional penalties for using slaves in printing offices to set type. These laws were violated sometimes by individual masters, and clandestine schools were opened for Negroes in some of the cities before the war. In 1850 and thereafter there was some agitation to repeal these laws and a bill to that effect failed in the Senate of Georgia by two or three votes.

Louisiana, in 1830, declared that "All persons who shall teach or permit or cause to be taught any slave to read or write shall be imprisoned not less than one month nor more than twelve months."

Missouri, in 1847, passed an act saying that "No person shall keep or teach any school for the instruction of Negroes or mulattoes in reading or writing in this state."

North Carolina had schools supported by free Negroes up until 1835, when they were abolished by law.

South Carolina, in 1740, declared: "Whereas, the having of slaves taught to write or suffering them to be employed in writing may be attended with inconveniences, be it enacted, that all and every person and persons whatsoever who shall hereafter teach or cause any slave or slaves to be taught, or shall use or employ any slave as a scribe in any manner of writing whatever, hereafter taught to write, every such person or persons shall for every such offense forfeit the sum of £100 current money."

In 1800 and 1833 the teaching of free Negroes was restricted: "And if any free person of color or slave shall keep any school or other places of instruction for teaching any slave or free person of color to read or write, such free person of color or slave shall be liable to the same fine, imprisonment and corporal punishment as by this act are imposed and inflicted on free persons of color and slaves for teaching slaves to write." Other sections prohibited white persons from teaching slaves. Apparently whites might teach free Negroes to some extent.

Virginia, in 1819, forbade "all meetings or assemblages of slaves or free Negroes or mulattoes mixing and associating with such slaves, ... at any school or schools for teaching them reading and writing, either in the day or night." Nevertheless free Negroes kept schools for themselves until the Nat Turner Insurrection, when it was enacted, 1831, that "all meetings of free Negroes or mulattoes at any school-house, church, meeting-house or other place, for teaching them reading and writing, either in the day or night, under whatsoever pretext, shall be deemed and considered an unlawful assembly." This law was carefully enforced.

In the Northern States few actual prohibitory laws were enacted, but in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere, mob violence frequently arose against Negro schools, and in Connecticut the teaching of Negroes was restricted as follows in 1833: "No person shall set up or establish in this state any school, academy or other literary institution for the instruction or education of colored persons who are not inhabitants of this State, or harbor or board, for the purpose of attending or being taught or instructed in any such school, academy or literary institution any colored person who is not an inhabitant of any town in this State, without the consent, in writing, first obtained, of a majority of the civil authority, and also of the select-men of the town in which each school, academy or literary institution is situated." This was especially directed against the famous Prudence Crandall school, and was repeated in 1838.

Ohio decreed, in 1829, that "the attendance of black or mulatto persons be specifically prohibited, but all taxes assessed upon the property of colored persons for school purposes should be appropriated to their instruction and no other purpose." This prohibition was enforced, but the second clause was a dead letter for twenty years. Cf. Atlanta University Publications, No. 6.

Note 3

Cf. Cairnes' "Slave Power."

Note 4

Stephen A. Douglas said "that there was not the shadow of doubt that the slave-trade had been carried on quite extensively for a long time back, and that there had been more slaves imported into the Southern States, during the last year, than had ever been imported before in any one year, even when the slave-trade was legal. It was his confident belief, that over fifteen thousand slaves had been brought into this country during the past year (1859). He had seen, with his own eyes, three hundred of those recently-imported, miserable beings, in a slave-pen in Vicksburg, Miss., and also large numbers at Memphis, Tenn." It was currently reported that depots for these slaves existed in over twenty large cities and towns in the South, and an interested person boasted to a senator, about 1860, that "twelve vessels would discharge their living freight upon our shores within ninety days from the 1st of June last," and that between sixty and seventy cargoes had been successfully introduced in the last eighteen months. (Cf. DuBois: "Slave Trade," ch. xi.)

Note 5

Cf. Olmsted's "Journeys" and Helper's "Impending Crisis."

Note 6

Has not the time come for characterizing war plainly and ceasing to envelope it in a haze of sentimental lies? We have near worshiped the Civil War for a generation, when in truth it was a disgrace to civilization and we know it.

Note 7

Cf. Blaine: "Twenty Years in Congress"; "American Political Science Review," Vol. 1, pp. 44-61; e.g., "South Carolina, besides thus minutely regulating the labor of Negroes under contract, prohibited them from practicing the 'art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic, or shopkeeper,' or any other trade or business on their own account without paying an annual license fee to the district judge. And no Negro could obtain a license who had not served a term of 'apprenticeship' at the trade. Tennessee also required licenses; and Mississippi required Negroes to have written evidence of their home and employment. Mississippi also prohibited the renting or leasing of any land to Negroes, except in incorporated towns and cities." Louisiana had perhaps the most outrageous provisions.

Note 8

Albion W. Tourgee said: "They instituted a public school system in a region where public schools had been unknown. They opened the ballot-box and the jury-box to thousands of white men who had been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. They introduced home rule in the South. They abolished the whipping-post, the branding-iron, the stocks and other barbarous forms of punishment which had up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from about twenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant in the sums appropriated for public works. In all that time no man's rights of person were invaded under the forms of law." Thomas E. Miller, a Negro member of the late Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, said: "The gentleman from Edgefield (Mr. Tillman) speaks of the piling of the State debt; of jobbery and peculation during the period between 1869 and 1873 in South Carolina, but he has not found voice eloquent enough nor pen exact enough to mention those imperishable gifts bestowed upon South Carolina between 1873 and 1876 by Negro legislators—the laws relative to finance, the building of penal and charitable institutions, and, greatest of all, the establishment of the public school system. Starting as infants in legislation in 1869, many wise measures were not thought of, many injudicious acts were passed. But in the administration of affairs for the next four years, having learned by experience the result of bad acts, we immediately passed reformatory laws touching every department of state, county, municipal and town governments. These enactments are to-day upon the statute books of South Carolina. They stand as living witnesses of the Negro's fitness to vote and legislate upon the rights of mankind."

Cf. Love's "Disfranchisement of the Negro," p. 10.

Note 9

Cf. "The Economic Future of the Negro," in papers and proceedings of the eighteenth Annual Meeting, American Economic Association, pp. 219-42.

Note 10

See Alabama Laws on Labor Contracts.

Note 11

See Laws of Alabama, 1906-1907.

Note 12

See Laws of South Carolina, 1906-1907.

Note 13

Cf. Bulletin Number 8, 12th United States Census.

Note 14

This statement when made was challenged by a Virginia rector. Let John Sharp Williams, minority leader of the House of Representatives answer him.

"It is the physical presence of the Negro which constitutes the Negro problem and the race issue. It is not the fact that the Negro can vote in the South, because, as a matter of fact, he cannot and does not. The Negro problem would be just as troublesome as it is to-day if the fifteenth amendment were repealed. The fifteenth amendment touches it only on its political or voting side, where the trouble is cured already in the South. It is true that the Negro does vote in Ohio, Illinois and New Jersey and various other places. But the people of those states could to-morrow, if they wanted to, get rid of his vote, just as we have got rid of it in Mississippi. The very fact that they have not done it is proof of the fact that they do not want to do it, and that very fact is the death-blow of the Vardaman agitation."

Negroes are disfranchised by legal and illegal methods and by unfair administration of the law. The "white" primary is a wide-spread subterfuge: to the democratic primary election all white men are admitted without question, and no Negro under any circumstances. The verdict of the primary is then registered in a farce "election." In Atlanta, e.g., at the "election" 700 votes are cast in a city of 100,000! The success of the "white" primary depends of course (a) on the illegal power of the party chiefs to exclude any votes they choose on any pretext and (b) on the absolute and unfair control of election machinery and returns by one party and (c) on public acquiescence in this travesty on popular government.

Note 15

The Atlanta riot had two distinct phases: first, Saturday, the killing of innocent and surprised Negroes by a white mob; then a lull when blacks rapidly armed themselves; finally the attempt to renew the assault by a crowd mingled with county policemen, who were repulsed by a fierce defense by Negroes; these Negroes were afterward acquitted of murder by a southern jury. The number of white and black killed in that encounter will never be known, but it stopped the riot. Cf. "World To-Day," Nov. 1906.

Note 16

The executive officials of the miners in Alabama consist of four whites and four Negroes.

Note 17

Ten good references on the economic history of the Negro and slavery are:

1. Kemble, Fanny, "A Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation," N.Y., 1863. 337 pp. 12mo.

2. Olmsted, F.L., "A Journey in the Sea Board Slave States," N.Y., 1856. 723 pp. 12mo.

3. Cairnes, J.E., "The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs," London, 1862. 304 pp., 2d ed. N.Y. 410 pp.

4. United States 12th Census, Bulletin No. 8: "Negroes in United States," by W.F. Wilcox and W.E.B. DuBois, Wash., 1904, 333 pp.

5. "The Philadelphia Negro" (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania) 520 pp. Ginn.

6. "The Suppression of the Slave Trade" (Harvard Historical Monographs, No. 1) 335 pp. Longmans, 1896.

7. Atlanta University Publications:

No. 3, "Efforts for Social Betterment," 66 pp. 1898.

No. 4, "The Negro in Business," 77 pp. 1899.

No. 7, "The Negro Artisan," 192 pp. 1902.

8. Bulletins of the United States Department of Labor.

Nos. 10, 14, 22, 32, 35, 37, 38, 48.

9. United States: Report of the Industrial Commission 1901-2, 19 vols.

10. Proceedings of the American Economic Association, 1906.