Chapter 4: The Negro and the Rights of Man
Chapter IV: The Negro and The Rights of Man
After the patriarchal form of slavery became engrafted upon our civilization, the world-wide struggle for the rights of man worked a decided improvement in the condition of the Negro. There had always been some opposition to slavery from the very time it was first introduced. [40] The founders of Pennsylvania undertook to rid that colony of the perpetual servitude of the imported blacks by providing that the children should become free at the age of fourteen. Efforts were at first made to keep the institution out of Georgia, for the reason that slaves were not vigorous enough to furnish defense for a frontier colony and would starve the poor white laborers. William Usselinx proposed to prohibit its introduction in the Swedish colonies, because African slave labor would be less profitable than that of the Europeans.

More striking than these arguments were those of the Puritans and Quakers, based on religious principles. The religious element believed in slavery as connected in some way with religion. Although not advocates of social equality for the blacks, the New England colonists believed in equality before God
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and, therefore, in the freedom of the body. Having the same idea, Roger Williams protested against the enslavement of Pequot Indians in 1637. John Eliot and Cotton Mather attacked the institution because of its abuses. In 1701 Justice Sewell presented his convincing argument against it in his essay entitled The Selling of Joseph. The Puritans felt that slavery was the particular offense that called down the avenging wrath of God, and not wishing to make money of it, sought at first to restrict it to lawful captives taken in just wars. They felt that it was perilous to salvation in that the souls of the captives were often neglected.

Among the Quakers, who unlike the Puritans, believed in social equality as well as equality before God, the antislavery movement met with more success. The Quakers noticed especially the cruel treatment of slaves and the vices resulting from the system. They also endeavored to prove that the system was prejudicial to the interests of all in that it prevented the poor whites from finding employment, promoted idleness among the rich, cut off the immigration of industrious Europeans, and precluded the prosperity of whites already in the land.

These religious antislavery attacks, of course, were met by various other arguments. Some said that Negroes were slaves because of the curse of Canaan; others because they were ignorant and wicked, and might, therefore, rejoice over their opportunity to be led to Christ through enslavement by the Christian white race. Ralph Sandiford inquired: "If these Negroes are slaves of slaves, whose slaves must their masters be?" [41] Elihu Coleman, replying to the argument that Negroes should be enslaved because of their wickedness, said: "If that plea would do, I believe that they need not go far
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for slaves as now they do." [42] Seeing that the difference of race was the main thing, the Quakers of Germantown, Pennsylvania, said: "Now, though they are black, we cannot conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, than it is to have other white ones. There is a saying that we shall do to all men like as we will be done to ourselves, making no difference of what generation, descent or color they are. Here is liberty of conscience which is right and reasonable. Here ought also to be liberty of the body." [43] This argument was further elaborated by George Keith, John Hepburn, William Burling and Benjamin Lay, all of whom were men of influence in shaping the thought of the Quakers.

This protest against slavery tended to become more and more religious. Sandiford said: "Shall we go to Africa for bread and lay the burden which appertains to our bodily support on their shoulders? Is this washing one another's feet, or living by the Gospel, or maintaining liberty and property? And to live on another's labor by force and oppression, is this loving mercy? And to keep them slaves to us and our posterity to all eternity, is this walking humbly with God?" [44] Denouncing all slaveholders as sinners, Benjamin Lay said: "Slaves are bound to them; so are they to the Devil, and stronger, for as death loosens one, it fastens the other in eternal Torment if not repented and forsaken." He styled as a sort of devils that preach to hell rather than to Heaven those ministers who, in leaving their homes on Sunday to preach the "Gospel of glad tidings to all men and liberty to the captives, directed the slaves to
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work to maintain them in pride, idleness, laziness and fullness of bread, and sins of Sodom." [45]

These arguments were not merely empty protests but ideas translated into action by the Quakers. They promoted manumission by individual owners, and by 1713 worked out a definite scheme for the liberation of the Africans and their restoration to their native land, after having been prepared beforehand by instruction in religion and the fundamentals of education. Their protests against the purchase of Africans seriously impaired the market for slaves in Philadelphia by 1715, and decidedly checked the importation of slaves into Pennsylvania in 1743.

In later years the work of the Quakers became more effective. Most of the slaves of Quakers in New England and the Middle States were by moral suasion and religious coercion manumitted by the time of the American Revolution and in the Southern States not long after the close of the century. No such effective work was accomplished by any other body of Christians. Among the Congregationalists there were heard such protests as that of Samuel Hopkins of Newport and that of Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale College. Samuel Webster of Salisbury, and Nathaniel Niles and William Gordon of Roxbury also attacked the evil, but their group did not then make an organized effort for the extermination of the system.

These efforts in later years became more successful, not so much because of the forceful preachments of the sects but on account of the new impetus given the movement by forces set to work during the period following the French and Indian War and culminating in the spread of the nascent social doctrine which effected the American Revolution. The British,
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as a result of the military triumph of Wolfe at Quebec and Clive in India, had come into possession of vast territory. Parliament, under the leadership of Grenville, Townshend and North, hoped to incorporate these conquests into the empire and compel them to defray the expenses incident to the execution of the plan by enforcing the Navigation Acts, which had all but fallen into desuetude. Long since accustomed to freedom from such restraint, the colonists began to seek in law and history facts with which they disputed the right of Parliament to tax America, and on the basis of which they set forth theories justifying the religious, economic and political freedom of man.

During this period the colonists of the more democratic order obtained first toleration and finally religious freedom for their more popular sects. These were the Quakers, Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians. Most of these at that time accepted the Negroes as human beings and undertook to accord them the privileges of men. For the Negroes this meant larger opportunities for religious development and intellectual progress, and finally, citizenship in the more liberal colonies, when political leaders imbued with the idea of the unalienable rights of man joined these religious bodies in the struggle for the freedom of the Negroes. These efforts of religious groups, formerly operating independently along parallel lines, finally culminated as one united movement when political leaders, impelled by the spirit of universal liberty, joined hands with theologians and humanitarians to translate these theories into vigorous action.

In this struggle appeared some of the most forceful and logical protagonists who united the religious protests with that of the rights-of-man theory justifying universal liberty. In 1767 Nathaniel Appleton insisted that the slaves should not only "be treated with a respect agreeable" but that the institution should be abolished.
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If the West Indies, as some then contended, could not be cultivated without slave labor, "let them sink then," said he, "for it is more honorable to seek a support by begging than by theft." [46] Anthony Benezet, a French Huguenot, who, in Philadelphia, became a member of the Society of Friends because of their antagonism to slavery, boldly attacked the institution and the slave trade as inconsistent with man's natural rights. John Woolman, one of the fathers of the Friends, carried the rights-of-man theory to its logical conclusion, insisting that liberty is the right of all men, and that slaves being fellow-creatures of their masters had a natural right to be free to discharge the functions of citizenship.

Playing their part in the antislavery drama, the Presbyterians took the position that slavery was wrong because it subjected the will of the slave to that of the master. The Baptists often attacked the institution with such zeal that some of them became known as the Emancipating Baptists. The Methodist Episcopal Church, influenced by John Wesley, declared at its conference in 1786: "We view it as contrary to the golden law of God and the prophets, and the unalienable rights of mankind, as well as every principle of the Revolution, to hold in deepest abasement, in a more abject slavery than is perhaps to be found in any part of the world, except America, so many souls that are capable of the image of God." [47] Strenuous efforts were then made to excommunicate slaveholders and especially those known as ministers. [48]

This success, however, was not necessarily due to the
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work of the clergy of the liberal sects. It was their effort supported by these political leaders who applied the principles of the Declaration of Independence to the Negro. The same theological doctrines and political theories which impelled the colonists to rise against the home country to establish the free government and religious liberty for which they left their homes in Europe, caused them also to contend that it was wrong for the whites to exploit the blacks. In many cases the foremost advocates of the rights of the colonists were also advocates of the right of the Negroes to be free, although there were many who contended that the principles of the Declaration of Independence did not apply to the Negroes, as slaves were not constituent members of our society.

Finding it difficult to harmonize their holding men in bondage with the assertion of the right of all men to be free, however, the revolutionary leaders boldly met the question. When James Otis was arguing the case of the Writs of Assistance, showing the immunity of the colonists from such violation of the laws of nature, he did not forget the Negroes, who, he said, should also be freed. It is little wonder, then, that John Adams, who heard the argument, shuddered at the doctrine taught and the consequences that might be derived from such premises. Patrick Henry soon discovered that his own denunciation of the clergy and other agents of royalty in America was broad enough to establish the right of the Negro to freedom, and later expressed himself accordingly.

Thomas Jefferson, the philosopher of the Revolution, found among other grounds for the justification of the revolt aganst Great Britain that the King had promoted the slave trade. Jefferson incorporated into his original draft of the Declaration of Independence
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an indictment of George III to the effect that he had violated the "most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." Though not so outspoken, there stood with Jefferson almost all of the fathers of the American Revolution, even those in the South, like Henry Laurens, George Wythe, George Mason, and George Washington.

This new interest in the Negro during the American Revolution secured to the race an appreciable share in defending the liberty of the country. [49] One cause of the Boston Massacre was that a slave, out of love of country, insulted a British officer. In the clash itself Crispus Attucks, another Negro, was one of the first four to shed blood in behalf of American liberty. During the war numbers of Negroes, like Lemuel Haynes, served as minute men and later as regulars in the ranks, side by side with white men. Peter Salem distinguished himself at Bunker Hill by killing Major Pitcairn, a number of other Negroes heroically rescued Major Samuel Lawrence, and Salem Poore of Colonel Frye's regiment acquitted himself with such honor at the battle of Charlestown that fourteen American officers commended him to the Continental Congress.

The organization of Negro soldiers on a larger scale as separate units soon followed after some opposition. The reasons for timidity in this respect are various. Having the idea that the Negroes were savages who should not be permitted to take part in a struggle between white men, Massachusetts protested against the enlistment of Negroes. The Committee of
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Safety, of which John Hancock and Joseph Ward were members, had the opinion that as the contest then between Great Britain and her colonies respected the liberties and privileges of the latter, the admission of any persons but freemen as soldiers would be inconsistent with the principles supported and would reflect dishonor on the colony. Although this action did not seemingly affect the enlistment of free persons of color, Washington, in taking command of

the army at Cambridge, prohibited the enlistment of all Negroes. The matter was discussed in the Continental Congress and as a result Washington was instructed by that body to discharge all Negroes, whether slave or free. When the enlistment of Negroes came up again in the council of the army, it was unanimously agreed to reject slaves and by a large majority to refuse Negroes altogether. By these instructions, Washington, as commander of the army, was governed late in 1775.
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Many of the colonists who desired to avail themselves of the support of the Negroes were afraid to set the example, thinking that the British might outstrip them in playing the same game and might arm both the Indians and Negroes faster than the colonies could. A few were of the opinion that the Negroes, seizing the opportunity, might go over to Great Britain, as was the case with the delegates from Georgia to the Continental Congress, who had grave fears for the safety of the South. They believed that if one thousand regular troops should proclaim freedom to all Negroes, twenty thousand of them would join the British in a fortnight.

As a matter of fact, they had good reason for so thinking. When Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia, was driven from the colony by the patriots, he summoned to his support several hundred Negroes to assist him in regaining his power, promising them freedom from their masters. The British contemplated organizing a Negro regiment in Long Island. Sir Henry Clinton proclaimed in 1779 that all Negroes in arms should be purchased from their captors for the public service and that every Negro who might desert the "Rebel Standard" should have security to follow within the British lines any occupation which he might think proper.

These plans, moreover, were in some parts actually carried out. The British made an effort to embody two Negro regiments in North Carolina. Between 1775 and 1783 the State of South Carolina lost 25,000 Negroes, who went over to the British. Probably three-fourths of all the Negroes then in Georgia were lost to the Americans. One-third of the men by whom Fort Cornwallis was garrisoned at the siege of Augusta were Negroes loyal to the English. A corps of fugitive slaves calling themselves the King of England's soldiers harassed for several years
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the people living on the Savannah River, and there was much fear that the rebuffed free Negroes of New England would do the same for the colonists in their section.

It was necessary, therefore, for the leaders of the country to recede from this position of refusing to enlist Negroes. Washington within a few weeks revoked his order prohibiting their enlistment. The committee in the Continental Congress considering the matter recommended the reënlistment of those Negroes who had

served faithfully, and Congress was disposed to leave the matter to the commonwealths, not wishing to infringe upon what they called States' rights. Most men of foresight, however, approved the recognition of the Negro as a soldier. James Madison suggested that the slaves be liberated and armed. Hamilton, like General Greene, urged that slaves be given their freedom with the sword, to secure their fidelity, animate their courage, and influence those remaining in bondage by an open door to their emancipation.
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Henry Laurens of South Carolina, then in eternal dread of the disaffection of the slaves, said he would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind to a state which would be a proper gradation between abject slavery and perfect liberty, and would have a corps of such men uniformly clad and equipped to operate against the British. John Laurens, the son of Henry Laurens, was permitted by the Continental Congress to undertake such enlistment in South Carolina, but when he brought his plan before the legislature he was defeated by a "triple-headed monster that shed the baneful influence of avarice, prejudice and pusillanimity in all our assemblies." [50]
In other parts of the country, however, the interest in the Negro was such that they regained the former standing in the army. Free Negroes enlisted in Virginia, and so many slaves deserted their masters for the army that the State enacted in 1777 a law providing that no Negro should be enlisted unless he had a certificate of freedom. But later many Virginia slaves, with the promise of freedom, were sent to the army as substitutes for freemen, and to prevent masters of such Negroes from reënslaving them, the State passed an act of emancipation, proclaiming freedom to all who had enlisted and served their term faithfully, and empowered them to sue in forma pauperis, should they thereafter be unlawfully held.

In his strait at Valley Forge, Washington was induced by General Varnum to enlist a battalion of Negroes in Rhode Island to fill his depleted ranks. The Rhode Island assembly acceded to this request, giving every effective slave the liberty to don the uniform on the condition that upon his passing muster
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he would become absolutely free and entitled to all the wages, bounties, and encouragements given to any other soldier. Connecticut undertook to raise a Negro regiment, and New York in 1780, promising masters the usual bounty land to purchase their slaves, proclaimed freedom to all bondmen thus enlisting for three years. This sort of action governed the enlistment of Negroes in New Hampshire, where it operated to exterminate slavery. In 1781 Maryland resolved to raise 750 Negroes to be incorporated with the other troops. Massachusetts, at the suggestion from Thomas Kench, considered the question of organizing in separate battalions the Negroes serving in the ranks among white men, thinking that in units by themselves they would exhibit a better esprit de corps and that a larger number would enlist; but as the suggestion led to a heated debate in the legislature and to blows in the coffee houses of Boston, nothing definite was done.

In estimating the services rendered by the black troops of the American Revolution, observers and officers were loud in their praise. Speaking of the valor displayed by the Rhode Island regiment, the Marquis de Chastellux said: "At the passage of the ferry I met a detachment of the Rhode Island regiment, the same corps we had with us last summer, but they
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since have been recruited and clothed. The greater part of them are Negroes or mulattoes; but they are strong, robust men and those I have seen had a very good appearance." Referring to the behavior of Negroes who fought under General Greene, Lafayette said that in trying to carry the commander's position the enemy repeated the attempt three times and was often repulsed with great bravery. One hundred and forty-four of the soldiers holding this field were Negroes. Speaking of the troops who took part in the battle of Long Island, Dr. Harris, a veteran, said: "Had they been unfaithful or even given way before the enemy, all would have been lost. Three times in succession they were attacked with more desperate valor and fury by well-trained disciplined troops and three times did they successfully repel the assault, and thus preserved our army from capture." Negro troops sacrificed themselves to the last man in defending Colonel Greene in 1781 when he was attacked at Point Bridge, New York. Referring to the battle of Monmouth, Bancroft said, "Nor may history omit to record that of the Revolutionary patriots who on that day offered their lives for their country more than 700 black men fought side by side with the white." According to Lecky, "the Negroes proved excellent soldiers in a hard-fought battle that secured the retreat of Sullivan when they three times drove back a large body of Hessians."
Some of these Negro soldiers emerged from the Revolution as heroes. A Negro slave of South Carolina rendered Governor Rutledge such valuable services in this war that by special act of the legislature in 1783 his wife and children were liberated. Because of his unusual fortitude and valor in battle, the State and the people of Georgia honored Austin Dabney, a mulatto, who took a conspicuous part in many skirmishes in the South. Fighting under Elijah Clark, he was severely wounded by a bullet which in passing through his body wounded him for life. He received
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a pension from the United States Government and was by an act of the legislature of Georgia given a tract of land. He subsequently accumulated considerable property, attained a position of usefulness among his white neighbors, had the respect and confidence of high officials, and died mourned by all.

The result of the increasing interest in the Negro was that with the exception of South Carolina and Georgia, a decided step forward in the extermination of slavery was taken during the revolutionary epoch. The black codes were considerably moderated and laws facilitating manumission were passed in most of the colonies. Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts exterminated the institution by constitutional provision; Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania washed their hands of the stain by gradual emancipation acts; and the Continental Congress excluded the evil from the Northwest Territory by the Ordinance of 1787. [51] So sanguine did the friends of universal freedom become that they thought that slavery of itself would later gradually pass away in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina.

To prepare the freedmen for this new opportunity,
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schools were established in almost all large groups in towns and cities. Efforts were made to apprentice such blacks to trades, to place them in the higher pursuits of labor, and to develop among them a class of small farmers who might be settled on unoccupied lands west of the Alleghanies. In fact, this was the halcyon day of the Negro race prior to its emancipation. Up to the closing years of the American Revolution never had so much been done in behalf of the blacks, never had there been such opportunities for developing their power to function as citizens. And so much of an impetus was then given to the cause of the Negroes that despite the reaction following this epoch they retained their citizenship intact in most parts of the North and even late in parts of the South, as was the case in North Carolina, where the Negroes voted until 1834.

The first impulse to general improvement of the Negroes came through the new sects, which in this social upheaval attained not only toleration but freedom. As there was less ground for antagonism to the development of the Negroes in this direction, many of them became socially equal with the white communicants, and some Negro churchmen trained by pious whites preached to audiences of the Caucasian race. Among these was Jacob Bishop, who so impressed his co-workers that he was at the close of the century made pastor of the first Baptist church (white) of Portsmouth, Virginia. William Lemon was at this time preaching to a white congregation at Pettsworth or Gloucester, Virginia. Some recognition by whites was given during these years to Henry Evans and Ralph Freeman of North Carolina, Harry Hosier of Philadelphia, Black Harry of St. Eustatius, and Lemuel Haynes, an intelligent Negro preacher to white people in Connecticut. Andrew Bryan, contemporary with
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Jacob Bishop, preached occasionally to the whites, but devoted his life to religious work among his own people. He was the successor to George Liele, who, under the rule of the British in Savannah, had founded the first Baptist church of that city. He went with them to Jamaica, where he established the first Baptist church in that colony. Bryan's task, however, was not so easy as that of Liele. The Americans who succeeded the British in authority at Savannah, persecuted Bryan, whipping him whenever he attempted to preach. In the course of time, however, he obtained the support of a few kind-hearted whites, who interceded in his behalf and secured for him the permission to preach without interruption. His work, thereafter, made progress, and extended to Augusta through the coöperation of Henry Francis and others.

In the circle of intellectual Negroes there stood out two characters more prominent than these churchmen. These were Phyllis Wheatley [52] and Benjamin Banneker. [53] Phyllis Wheatley was a slave in a Boston family that gave her every opportunity for improvement. After receiving instruction for a few years she mastered the fundamentals of education and made unusual
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advancement in the study of Latin and History. In the very beginning of her career she exhibited the tendency to write poetry. While present-day criticism would not classify her as a poet, she was, in her time, a writer of such interesting verse that she was brought into contact with some of the best thinkers of that period. All of them were not seriously impressed with her actual contribution to literature, but they had to concede that she had decidedly demonstrated that Negroes had possibilities beyond that of being the hewers of wood and drawers of water for another race.

Benjamin Banneker was a character of more genius than that with which many of his white contemporaries were endowed. Born in Maryland, of a white woman and black father, he was free, and at that time exercised most of the privileges accorded white men. He was in a position to attend an elementary school, and upon the moving of the well known Ellicotts to his neighborhood about the time he was reaching his majority; Banneker had made such advancement in science and mathematics that Mr. George Ellicott supplied him with books. Studying these works, Banneker developed into one of the most noted astronomers and mathematicians of his time. He was the first of all Americans to make a clock, and published one of the first series of almanacs brought out in
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the United States. These meritorious achievements made him so prominent that he was sought and received by some of the most prominent men of the United States. Among these were James McHenry, once Vice-President of the United States, and Thomas Jefferson. The latter was so impressed with his worth that he secured for him a place on the commission that surveyed and laid out Washington in the District of Columbia.

Notes

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Note from page 51: 40 For a lengthy discussion see M. S. Locke's Antislavery in America from the Introduction of the African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade, pp. 1-157; and C. G. Woodson's The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, Ch. III. Valuable information may be obtained from The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I, pp. 49-68; Vol. II, pp. 37-50, 83-95, 126-138.

Note from page 52: 41 Ralph Sandiford, Brief Examination, Ch. IV, p. 5.

Note from page 53: 42 Elihu Coleman, Testimony, p. 17.

Note from page 53: 43 Germantown Friends' Protest against Slavery in A. B. Hart's American History Told by Contemporaries, Vol. II, section 102, pp. 291-293.

Note from page 53: 44 Ralph Sandiford's Brief Examination.

Note from page 54: 45 Benjamin Lay, All Slave-Keepers Apostates, pp. 92-93.

Note from page 56: 46 Nathaniel Appleton, Considerations on Slavery, p. 19.

Note from page 56: 47 Lucius Matlock, History of American Slavery and Methodism, p. 29.

Note from page 56: 48 While the Quakers, however, discouraged the growth of the institution among their people, and actually exterminated it, the other sects kept the question in its agitated state until it finally divided several of them before the Civil War.

Note from page 58: 49 This military history is well treated in W. B. Hartgrove's The Negro Soldier in the American Revolution, in The Journal of Negro History. Vol. I. pp. 110-131.

Note from page 62: 50 Sparks, Writings of George Washington, VIII, 322, 323.

Note from page 66: 51 This prohibitory clause was:
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor may be lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.
Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid: That the resolutions of the 23d of April, 1784. relative to the subject of this ordinance, be, and the same are hereby, repealed, and declared null and void.
Done by the United States, in Congress assembled, the 13th day of July in the year of our Lord 1787, and of their sovereignty and independence the twelfth.

Note from page 68: 52 R. R. Wright, Phyllis Wheatley.

Note from page 68: 53 Henry E. Baker, Benjamin Banneker in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. III, pp. 99-118.