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THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA
Published electronically by its author, Norman Coombs, and
Project Gutenberg.
(C 1993) by Norman Coombs

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This text is based on the original publication:



THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA
The Immigrant Heritage of America
By Norman Coombs
Publisher: Twayne, (c 1972)



Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction (ommitted from electronic version)


PART ONE   From Freedom to Slavery

1. African Origins
     The Human Cradle
     West African Empires
     The Culture of West Africa

2, The Human Market
     The Slave Trade
     Caribbean Interlude

3. Slavery As Capitalism
     The Shape of American Slavery
     North American and South American Slavery
     Slavery and the Formation of Character
     Slave Response

4. All Men Are Created Equal
     Slavery and the American Revolution
     Slave Insurrections
     Growing Racism


Part Two.  Emancipation without Freedom

5. A Nation Divided
     Black Moderates and Militants
     White Liberals
     Growth of Extremism

6. From Slavery to Segregation
     Blue, Gray, and Black
     Reconstruction and Its Failure
     The New Racism

7. Racism and Democracy
     Fighting Jim Crow
     Making the World Safe for Democracy
     Urban Riots
     The Klan Revival


Part Three. The Search For Equality

8. The Crisis of Leadership
     The Debate Over Means and Ends
     Booker T. Washington: The Trumpet of Conciliation
     W. E. B. DuBois: The Trumpet of Confrontation
     Marcus Garvey: The Trumpet of Pride
     A. Philip Randolph: The Trumpet of Mobilization

9. The New Negro
     Immigration and Migration
     Harlem: "The Promised Land"
     The Negro Renaissance
     Black Nationalism

10. Fighting Racism at Home and Abroad
     Hard Times Again
     The Second World War
     The U.S. and the U.N.

11. Civil Rights and Civil Disobedience
     Schools and Courts
     The Civil Rights Movement

12. The Black Revolt
     Civil Disorders
     Black Power

Epilogue

Notes and References (ommitted from electronic version)
Bibliography (ommitted from electronic version)
Index (ommitted from electronic version)



Preface

During the last several years, the study of American history
has turned a new direction.  Previously, it emphasized how the
various immigrant groups inAmerica shed their divergent heritages
and amalgamated into a new nationality. More recently, scholars
and laymen alike have become more sensitive to the ways in
which these newcomers have kept aspects from their past alive,
and there is a new awareness of the degree to which ethnicity
continues as a force within America.

Most of the original settlers were British, Protestant, and
white. Many of the later arrivals differed from them, in one or
more ways. History books usually depicted these new waves of
immigrants as assimilating almost fully into American society.
However, recent writings have put more stress on the ethnic
diversities which remain and on the rich variety of contributions
which were made to the American scene by each new nationality.

This volume depicts the immigrants from Africa as one among
the many elements which created present-day America. On the one
hand, they differ from the other minorities because they came
involuntarily, suffered the cruelties of slavery, and were of another
color. All of this made their experience unique. On the other hand,
they shared much in common with the other minorities, many of
whom also felt like aliens in their new land.

Throughout most of American history, political power has been
held tightly by the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant majority.
Historical presentations which stressed the political component,
thereby tended to leave the later immigrants in the background.
However, because these newcomers did not assimilate fully into the
mainstream of America, they maintained some of their ethnic
identity and made fresh and unique contributions to American life.
A socio-cultural approach to history, through highlighting society
and culture rather than politics, brings these minorities into proper
focus.

This study of Afro-Americans seeks to describe the character
and culture which they produced for themselves in America. It also
points to the many important contributions which they have made
to American cultural life. The spotlight is on what they felt and
thought, on the attitudes they developed, and on their increasingly
vocal protests against the unfair treatment which they believed
was directed at them.

Besides taking a socio-cultural approach to the subject, this
book is deliberately interpretive rather than being merely a
narrative of events. It is reasonably brief in the hope that it
will appeal to interested laymen. At the same time, it contains a
number of footnotes so that either scholars or laymen, wanting to
check their thoughts against the interpretation presented here,
can readily use this book as a guide to further reading. (Note the
footnotes are not in this electronic version.)

If at times the treatment of the white majority seems harsh, it
is because, in my opinion, it is still necessary for Americans to
take a long, cold look at the chilling facts which have too often
been ignored. Yet, times and people do change. Race relations in
America are not today what they were a century ago. The progress
of history may not be the wide highway moving steadily and
smoothly upward as many have believed, but the racial picture in
America has altered and will continue to do so- -sometimes for the
better, sometimes for the worse. Nevertheless, it is only by knowing
ourselves that we can intelligently face our crises. I hope that this
volume will assist the reader as he struggles with this difficult
task.

Norman Coombs
September, 1971



Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep appreciation to the National
Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and to the Rochester
Institute of Technology for providing me with much of the time
which made this research possible. I am also indebted to
Professors Benjamin Quarles and Merle Curti for kindly reading
and commenting on the manuscript. My thanks are also extended to
my father, Earl Coombs, for his invaluable assistance in helping
with the hours of painstaking research demanded by such a
project. Miss Dorothy Ruhl provided the detailed, careful labor
necessary to help prepare the manuscript for the printer, and
Mrs. Doris Kist performed the demanding task of proofreading it.
I also want to thank Cecyle S. Neidle, the editor of the
Immigrant Heritage of America series, for her helpful supervision
and advice. Finally, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my wife,
Jean, for typing the manuscript, for a host of other
miscellaneous tasks and,
above all, for her forbearance and encouragement.

N. C.



Part One   From Freedom to Slavery



CHAPTER 1
African Origins


The Human Cradle

THREE and a half centuries of immigration have injected
ever-fresh doses of energy and tension into the American
bloodstream. As diverse peoples learned to live together, they
became a dynamo generating both creativity and conflict. One of
the most diverse elements in American life was introduced when
Africans were forcibly brought to the American colonies. The
American experiment had begun and consisted mainly of white men
with a European heritage. The African was of a different color,
had a different language, a different religion, and had an entirely
different world view. But perhaps the most striking contrast was
that, while the European came voluntarily in search of greater
individual opportunity, the African came in chains. Because the
European was the master and thereby the superior in the
relationship, he assumed that his heritage was also superior.
However, he was mistaken, because the African had a rich
heritage of importance both to himself and to mankind. When
people interact intimately over a long period of time, the
influences are reciprocal. This is true even when their relationship
is that of master and slave.

To trace the importance of the African heritage one must go
back millions of years. Evidence is accumulating to the effect that
Africa is the cradle of mankind. Professor Louis Leakey argues that
Africa was important in the development of mankind in three
ways. First, some thirty or forty million years ago, the basic stock
which eventually gave rise to both man and the ape came into
existence in the vicinity of the Nile Valley. Second, some twelve
or fourteen million years ago, the main branch which was to lead
to the development of man broke away from the branch leading to
the ape. Third, about two million years ago, in the vicinity of East
Africa, true man broke away from his now extinct manlike cousins.
The present species of man-Homo Sapiens--developed through a
complex process of natural selection from a large number of different
manlike creatures-hominids.

One of the most numerous of the early hominids was
Australopithecus Africanus who originated in Africa. Although he
also did some hunting, he lived mainly by collecting and eating
vegetables. One of the things that identified him as a man was his
utilization of primitive tools. He had a pointed stone which may
have been used to sharpen sticks, and these sticks were probably
used for digging roots to augment his food supply.  Leakey believes
that Homo Habilis, who lived in East Africa about two million
years ago, was the immediate ancestor of man and the most
advanced of all the hominids. Although the hominids spread far
outside of Africa, it is clear that they originate  there and that it
was in Africa that true man first emerged. As Darwin predicted a
century ago, Africa has been found to be the father of mankind.

For many thousands of years, Homo Sapiens and the other
hominids lived side by side in Africa as elsewhere. By ten
thousand years ago, however, all the hominids had disappeared.
Scholars believe that this was the result of the gradual absorption
of all the other hominids by the more biologically advanced Homo
Sapiens. This process may explain the appearance of variations
within Homo Sapiens. At various times and places, as Homo
Sapiens absorbed other hominid strains, differences within Homo
Sapiens developed. In any case it is clear that the various types of
man came into existence very early. In Africa, this process led to
the development of three main types: the brownish-yellow Bush-
men in the south, the darker Negroes throughout most of the
continent and the Caucasoid Mediterranean types in the north.

Most of the concepts, held even by scholars about the nature and
origin of races, are being proven inaccurate. Anthropological
literature used to suggest that skin color in some groups was a
possible indication of Mongoloid influences or that the thin,
straight lips common in another group could be envisioned as a
Caucasoid feature. However, it has become increasingly obvious
that an analysis based on specific single traits such as these is
always a poor indication of either racial origin or of racial contact.
In fact, they could just as likely be the result of spontaneous and
local variations within a given population grouping. In contrast,
recent anthropological research is putting less emphasis on bone
measurement and shape and, instead, is turning increasingly to
technical analysis particularly through the examination of blood
types.

Making and using tools are what differentiate man from
animals. The earliest tools which have survived the wear of time
were made of stone. As man's techniques of handling stone
improved, so did his tools. The hand axe, a large oval of chipped
flint varying in size and weight, came into common usage about
half a millon years ago, and it has been found in much of Europe,
Asia, and Africa. This too seems to have had an African origin.
While scholars are not certain about its use, it was probably used
for killing animals and for chopping meat.

The first achievement which radically altered man's condition
was the invention of tools. The second achievement was his
learning of primitive agriculture which transformed the hunter into
the farmer. The domestication of animals and the planting and
cultivating of crops had begun in the Near East, but the practice
shortly spread to the Nile Valley in Northeast Africa. At the
same time, farming communities sprang up throughout the Sahara
which, at that time, was going through one of its wet phases. This
made it well-suited to early agriculture. Farming permitted men to
live together in communities and to pursue a more sedentary way of
life. Actually, some Africans had already adopted a sedentary
community life before the arrival of farming. Making hooks from
bones led to the development of a few fishing communities near
present-day Kenya.

As the communities along the Nile grew in size and number,
society began to develop a complex urban civilization. By 3,200
B.C.  the communities along the Nile had become politically
united under the first of a line of great pharaohs. These early
Egyptians undoubtedly were comprised of a racial mixture. The
ancient Greeks viewed the Egyptians as being dark in complexion,
and it has been estimated that the Egyptian population at the
beginning was at least one-third Negro. Herodotus says that it was
impossible to tell whether the influence of the Egyptians on the
Ethiopians was stronger than that of the Ethiopians on the
Egyptians.

What Herodotus and the Greeks referred to as Ethiopia was, in
fact, the kingdom of Kush. It was located up the Nile from Egypt.
As the Egyptian empire grew in strength and wealth, it strove to
expand its power over its neighbors. Egypt sent several military
expeditions south along the Nile to try to conquer the black people
of Kush. They failed and the Kushites, in turn, endeavored to
extend their power over Egypt. In 751 B.C., Kush invaded Egypt
and, shortly thereafter, conquered it. This occupation of Egypt
lasted for over a hundred years, until both the Kushites and the
Egyptians were defeated by an invading army from Assyria in 666
B.C. At that point, the Kushites returned to the safety of their
homeland.

The Kushites and the Egyptians had been defeated by a
superior technology. While they were fighting with weapons made
of copper and bronze, the Assyrians fought with iron. Methods of
smelting and working iron had been developed centuries before by
the Hittites who lived in Asia Minor. The use of iron spread across
the Near East, becoming the basis for the Assyrian power. After
their defeat in 666 B.C., the Kushites and the Egyptians rapidly
adopted the new iron technology. The coming of the Iron Age to
Africa meant the production of better weapons and tools. Better
weapons provided safety from hostile foes and protection from
ferocious beasts. Better axes meant that man could live in densely
forested regions where he had not been able to live before. Better
farm implements meant that more food could be grown with less
work, this again encouraged the development of denser population
centers.

By 300 B.C., Kush had become an important iron-producing
center. Its capital, Meroe located on the upper Nile, developed into
a thriving commercial and industrial city. Archeological diggings
have unearthed the remains of streets, houses, sprawling palaces,
and huge piles of slag left from its iron industry. When scholars
are able to decipher the Kushitic writings much more will be
known about the culture and way of life of this early black empire.
In the first century A.D. a Kushite official, whom the Bible refers
to as the Ethiopian eunuch, was converted to Christianity by the
apostle Philip while returning from a visit to Jerusalem. Shortly,
Christianity spread throughout the entire kingdom. When Kush
was defeated by the Axumites, founders of modern Ethiopia,
several smaller Nubian, Christian kingdoms survived. Not until
the sixteenth century, after almost a thousand years of pressure,
did Islam gain supremacy in western Sudan. Ethiopia, shortly after
defeating Kush, also became Christianized, and survived as a
African only  Christian island in a Moslem sea. In fact, Ethiopia
has remained an independent, self-governing state until the present,
with the brief exception of the Italian occupation between 1936 and
1941.

The development of man and civilization in Africa was not
limited merely to the area in the Northeast. There is much
evidence of cultural contact between people in all parts of the
continent. When the Sahara began to dry out about 2000 B.C., the
population was pushed out from there in all directions, thereby
forcing the spread of both people and cultures. Even then, the
Sahara did not become a block to communication as has been
thought. There is clear evidence that trade routes continued to be
used even after the Sahara became a desert. Scholars also have
found that, shortly after the Iron Age reached North Africa, iron
tools began to appear throughout the entire continent, and, within
few centuries, iron production was being carried on at a number of
different locations. At about the same time, sailors from the far
East brought the yam and the banana to the shores of Africa.
These fruits spread rapidly from the east coast across most of the
continent, becoming basic staples in the African diet. New tools and
new crops rapidly expanded the food supply and thereby provided
a better way of life.


West African Empires

Although West Africa had been inhabited since the earliest
times, about two thousand years ago several events occurred which
injected new vigor into the area. The first event had been
thedrying of the Sahara, which had driven new immigrants into
West Africa and, from the admixture of these new people with the
previous inhabitants, a new vitality developed. Then, the
introduction of the yam and the banana, as previously noted,
significantly increased the food supply. Finally, the developments
of iron tools and of iron work further increased the food supply and
also provided better weapons. This permitted increased military
power and political expansion. These were the necessary
ingredients that led to the building of three large and powerful
empires: Ghana, Mali and Songhay. Commerce was another factor
which contributed to their development. Governmental control of a
thriving trade in both gold and salt provided the wealth and
power necessary for establishing these large empires.

Unfortunately, our knowledge about West Africa's early history
is severely limited by the lack of written records from that period.
In recent years, archaeologists have been unearthing increasing
amounts of material which contribute to our knowledge of early
Africa. West Africans tended to build their cities from nondurable
materials such as wood, mud, and grass. The area does have a rich
oral tradition, including special groups of trained men dedicated to
its development and maintenance. As oral history is always open to
modification and embellishment, with no means available for
checking the original version, this material must be used
cautiously. Nevertheless, when employed in conjunction with other
sources, it does provide a rich source of information.

The earliest written records were provided by the Arabs who
developed close contact with West Africa by 800 A.D. After that,
West Africans began using Arabic themselves to record their own
history. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europeans began
regular contact with West Africa, and they left a wide variety of
written sources. While most of these early Europeans were not men
of learning, many of their records are still valuable to the student
of history.

Ghana was already a powerful empire, with a highly complex
political and social organization, when the Arabs reached it about
800 A,D. An Arabic map of 830 A.D. has Ghana marked on it, and
other contemporary Arabic sources refer to Ghana as the land of
gold. From this time on, a thriving trade developed between Ghana
and the world of Islam, including the beginnings of a slave trade.
However, this early slave trade was a two-way affair. Al-Bakri, a
contemporary Arab writer, was impressed with the display of
power and affluence of the Ghanaian king. According to him, the
king had an army of two hundred thousand warriors which
included about forty thousand men with bows and arrows. (Modern
scholars know that the real power of the Ghanaian army was due
not to its large numbers as much as to its iron- pointed spears.) Al-
Bakri also described an official audience at the royal palace in
which the king, the Ghana, was surrounded by lavish trappings of
gold and silver and was attended by many pages, servants, large
numbers of faithful officials, provincial rulers, and mayors of
cities. On such occasions, the king heard the grievances of his
people and passed judgMent on them. Al- Bakri also describes
lavish royal banquets which included a great deal of ceremonial
ritual.

The power of the king, and therefore of the empire, was based on
his ability to maintain law and order in his kingdom. This
provided the development of a flourishing commerce, and it was by
taxing all imports and exports that the king was able to finance
his government. The key item in this financial structure was the
regulation of the vast gold resources of West Africa, and it was by
controlling its availability that the king was also able to
manipulate its value. However, after the eleventh century, the
Ghanaian empire was continually exposed to harassment from a
long series of Arabic holy wars. Over a long period of time, the
power of the king was reduced until the empire of Ghana finally
collapsed. From its ashes emerged the basis for the creation of a
new and even larger empire: the empire of Mali.

Mali, like Ghana, was built on gold. While Ghana had been under
attack by the Arabs from outside, various peoples from within
struck for their own freedom. The Mandinka people, who had been
the middlemen in the gold trade and who had received protection
from the king of Ghana, achieved their independence in 1230 A.D.
They went on to use their position in the gold trade to build an
empire of their own. The peak of their influence and power was
achieved in the early fourteenth century under MansaKankan Musa
who ruled Mali for a quarter of a century. He extended its
boundaries beyond those of Ghana to include such important trading
cities as Timbuktu and Gao, encompassing an area larger than that
controlled by the European monarchs of that day. This empire also
was based on its ability to provide stable government and a
flourishing economy. An Arab traveler, Ibn Batuta, shortly after
Musa's death, found complete safety of travel throughout the
entire empire of Mali

Mansa Musa and, for that matter, the entire ruling class of Mali
had converted to Islam. This intensified the contacts between West
Africa and the Islamic world. Although several of these kings
made pilgrimages to Mecca, the most spectacular was the one by
Mansa Musa in 1324. On his way there, he made a prolonged visit
to Cairo. While there, both his generosity in giving lavish gifts of
gold to its citizens and his extravagant spending poured so much
gold into the Cairo market that it caused a general inflation. It
was estimated by the Arabs that his caravan included some sixty
thousand people and some five hundred personal slaves. Mansa
Musa took a number of Arabic scholars and skilled artisans  back to
West Africa with him. These scholars enhanced the university of
Timbuktu which was already widely known as a center of Islamic
studies. Now, besides exchanging material goods, West Africa and
the Arabs became involved in a steady exchange of scholars and
learning.

The success of Mali in bringing law and order to a large portion of
West Africa was responsible for its decline. Having experienced
the advantages of political organization, many localities sought
self-government. In fact, Mansa Musa had overextended the empire.
A skilled ruler like himself could manipulate it, but those who
followed were not adequate to the challenge. Movements for self-
government gradually eroded central authority until by 1500 Mali
had lost its importance as an empire. Although the period of its
power and prosperity was respectable by most world empire
standards, it was short-lived compared to the history of the
previous empire of Ghana. Again, a new empire was to emerge from
the ruins of the previous one.

The Songhay empire was based on the strength of the important
trading city of Gao. This city won its independence from Mali as
early as 1375, and, within a century, it had developed into an
empire.  Songhay carried on a vigorous trade with the outside
world and particularly with the Arabic countries. The ruling class,
in particular, continued to follow the religion of Islam, but it is
generally believed that the masses of the population remained
faithful to the more traditional West African religions based on
fetishism and ancestor worship.  Two of the more powerful rulers
were Suni Ali, who began his 28-year reign in 1464, and Askia
Mohammed, who began his 36-year reign in 1493. Askia
Mohammed was also known as Askia the Great. The security of
Songhay was undermined when Arabs from Morocco invaded and
captured the key trading city of Timbuktu in 1591. Thus ended the
last of the three great empires of West Africa.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that those parts of West
Africa which remained outside of these three empires fulfilled the
usual European image of primitive savagery. On the contrary, a
number of other small yet powerful states existed throughout the
entire period. If this had not been so, the Europeans, as they
arrived in the fifteenth century, could have pillaged West Africa
at will. Instead, the Europeans were only able to establish trading
stations where local kings permitted it. With the exception of a
few raiding parties which seized Africans and carried them off as
slaves, most slave acquisition was done through hard bargaining
and a highly systematized trading process. The Europeans were
never allowed to penetrate inland, and they found that they
always had to treat the African kings and their agents as business
equals. Many of the early European visitors, in fact, were
impressed by the luxury, power, trading practices, skilled crafts,
and the complex social structure which they found in Africa. Only
in some parts of East Africa, where the states were unusually
small, were the Portuguese able to pillage and conquer at will.
While many Europeans may have thought of Africa as being filled
with ignorant savages, those who reached its shores were
impressed instead with its vigorous civilization.


The Culture of West Africa

An African should not have to find it necessary to make apologies
for his civilization. However, Europeans and Americans have come
to believe, at least in their subconscious minds, that civilization
can be equated with progress in science and technology. Because the
Africans lagged far behind the Europeans in the arts of war and of
economic exploitation, the Europeans believed at the Africans must
be uncivilized savages. Africa, like the rest of the world outside
Europe, had not made the break-through in science, technology, and
capitalism which had occurred in Europe. Nevertheless, they had
their own systems of economics, scholarship, art, and religion as
well as a highly complex social and political structure. There are
common elements which run throughout the entire continent of
Africa, but to gain the best insight into the background of the
American slaves, West African culture can be isolated and studied
by itself.

The West African economy was a subsistence economy, and
therefore people were basically satisfied with the status quo and
saw no point in accumulating wealth. Also in a subsistence economy,
there is little need for money, and most trade was done through
barter. Because there was no money, there was no wage labor.
Instead, labor was created either through a system of domestic
slavery or through a complex system of reciprocal duties and
obligations. However, West African slavery was more like the
European system of serfdom than it was like modern slavery.

Within this subsistence economy, each tribe or locality tended to
specialize in certain fields of agriculture or manufacture which
necessitated a vigorous and constant trade between all of them.
However, within the trading centers, money had come into regular
use. It usually took the form of cowrie shells, iron bars, brass rings,
or other standard items of value. Systems of banking and credit
had also been developed, but even those involved in money,
banking, and trade had a noncapitalist attitude towards wealth.
They enjoyed luxury and the display of affluence, but they had no
concept of investing capital to increase overall production.

West Africa also carried on a vigorous trade with the outside
world. When the Europeans arrived, they discovered, as had the
Arabs before them, that the West Africans could strike a hard
bargain. They had developed their own systems of weights and
measures and insisted on using them. Europeans who failed to treat
the king or his agent fairly, found that the Africans simply refused
to deal with them again. Trade was always monopolized by the
king, and he appointed specific merchants to deal with foreign
businessmen. As previously noted, it was by the control and
taxation of commerce That the king financed his government and
maintained his power.

The strength and weaknesses of the West African economy can be
seen by a cursory glance at a list of its main exports and imports.
West African exports included gold, ivory, hides, leather goods,
cotton, peppercorn, olive oil, and cola.  While some of these items
were only exported for short distances, others found their way over
long distances. West African gold, for example, was exported as far
away as Asia and Northern Europe. Some English coins of the
period were minted with West African gold. West African imports
included silks from Asia, swords, knives, kitchen-ware, and trinkets
from the primitive industrial factories of Europe as well as horses
and other items from Arabia. Two other items of trade became all
important for the future--the exportation of slaves and the
importation of guns and gunpowder.

West African manufacturing demonstrated a considerable amount of
skill in a wide variety of crafts. These included basket-weaving,
pottery making, woodworking and iron-working. Archeological
evidence shows that West Africans were making pottery and
terracotta sculpture as much as two thousand years ago, Three-
dimensional forms seem to have held a particular interest for West
African artists. During the last century, art critics have  gone
beyond considering this art as "primitive" and have begun to
appreciate its aesthetic qualities. In fact, in recent years, African
art has had considerable influence on contemporary artists.

The two forms of African art best known outside Africa are music
and the dance. African music contrasts with European music in its
use of a different scale and in concentrating less on melodic
development and more on the creation of complex and subtle
rhythmic patterns. Musicians used to view African music as simple
and undeveloped, but now musicologists admit that African
rhythms are more complex and highly developed than rhythms in
European music. Africans like to sing and to develop songs for all
occasions: religious songs, work songs, and songs for leisure. African
singing is also marked by the frequent use of a leader and a chorus
response technique. African dance, like its music, builds on highly
complex rhythmic patterns. It too is closely related to all parts of
the African's daily life. There are dances for social and for ritual
occasions. The most common use of the dance was as an integral part
of  African religious rites.

African religion has usually been defined as fetish worship-the
belief that specific inanimate objects are inhabited by spirits
endowed with magical powers. While this view of African religion
is partly true, it obscures more than it clarifies. The fetish is
believed to have some powers of its own, but, in general, it derived
them from its close association with a dead ancestor. Behind the
fetish was the religion of ancestor worship, and the fetish is better
understood as a religious symbol. Ancestor worship was also part of
the African's strong family ties and his powerful kinship patterns.
Behind the realm of this fetish and ancestor worship lay another
world of distant and powerful deities who had control over the
elemental natural forces of the universe. While this religion might
be described as primitive, it cannot be viewed as simplistic. It
involved a series of complex ideas about fetishes, ancestors, and
deities which required a high degree of intelligence.

The intricacies of theology, law, medicine, and politics made it
necessary to develop a complex system of oral education. Europeans,
who tended to identify knowledge with writing, had long assumed
that, because there was no written language in early Africa, there
could be no body of knowledge. After the arrival of Islam, Arabic
provided a written form within which West African ideas could be
set down.

Only recently have scholars become aware of the libraries and the
many publications to be found in West Africa. Two of these books
were responsible for providing historians with detailed
information about the customs and social structure of the area. One
was the Tarikh al-Fattiish, the chronicle of the seeker after
knowledge, written by Mahmud Kati in the early fifteenth century.
The other was the Tarikh al-Sudan, the chronicle of the Western
Sudan, written by Abd al-Rahman as-Sadi about the beginning of
the seventeenth century.

The society of West Africa was stratified in several different
ways. It was divided in terms of differing occupations: farmers,
merchants, priests, scholars, laborers, and a wide variety of
craftsmen. The social ranking assigned to these occupation divisions
varied according to the importance of each occupation.

Society was also divided in terms of clans, families, and villages.
At the same time, there was a hierarchical division based on the
varying degrees of political power each group exercised within its
society. Some had the power to become chiefs and rulers. Some had
the right to choose and depose rulers, and others could limit and
define the rights of the rulers. However, almost everywhere there
was a clear trend toward increasing centralized authority and
decreasing popular participation. The centralization of power in
West Africa never reached the extremes of absolute monarchy
which occurred in Europe, and there was never the same need for
revolutionary social changes to revive democratic participation
within African society.

In an old Asante ritual, connected with the enthronement of a ruler,
the people pray that their ruler should not be greedy, should not
be hard of hearing, should not act on his own initiative nor
perpetuate personal abuse nor commit violence on his people,
While the right to rule was generally passed on from generation to
generation within a single family, the power did not immediately
and automatically fall on the eldest son within that family.
Instead, another family had the power to select the next ruler from
among a large number of potential candidates within the ruling
family. If the ruler who was selected ruled unwisely and unfairly,
he could also be deposed. Here was a distinct limitation on royal
absolutism.

In a similar way, there were limitations on the centralization of
economic power. While valuable land in Europe had been captured
and controlled by private ownership and was the possession of a
powerful minority, land in West Africa still belonged to the
community. A powerful family had the right to control and
supervise the use of the land for the welfare of the community,
and, undoubtedly, this power could be misused. Such a family
assigned land to its users along with certain tenure safeguards
which operated to limit even the power of the family. Those using
the land who did not fulfill their obligations to the community by
utilizing it properly and wisely, could have the land taken away
from them. It might then be given to someone else. Both in
economics and in politics, historical custom and precedent has
limited minority power and has protected the welfare of the
community. Nevertheless, community power and wealth has come
to be divided into two major divisions: the rich and powerful few
and the poor and powerless majority. Though the elite ruled and
the masses served, rights and obligations which limited the
amount of exploitation were always in existence.

One of the signs of the trend toward the increasing centralization
of power within the society of West Africa was the development of
a professional army. The gigantic armies of Ghana had been
conscripted from the common citizenry. As the ruling class in West
Africa adopted Islam and as its desire to increase its power
continued to undermine local tradition and custom, there was more
need for a professional army which would owe its total allegiance
to the ruler.

Also, changes in military technology required a skilled and
carefully trained army. Horses were expensive and could only be
used efficiently by men who were expert riders and who knew how
use a horse in a combat situation. Even more, with the arrival the
Europeans in the fifteenth century, West Africa was introduced to
guns and gunpowder. These, too, were expensive required  trained
soldiers to make good use of them. While the new  military
technology had increased the ruler's freedom from popular control,
it made him increasingly dependent on and subject to European
interests. The African ruler's desire for guns and the European's
desire for slaves went hand in hand.



CHAPTER 2
The Human Market



The Slave Trade

Neither slavery nor the slave trade came to West Africa with
the arrival of the Portuguese in the middle of the fifteenth
century. To the contrary, both institutions had a very long
history. A two-way slave trade had existed between the West
Africans and the Arabs for centuries. In view of the social
structure of both societies, sociologists believe that the Arabs
could make use of more slaves than could the West Africans.
Therefore, West Africa probably exported more slaves than it
imported.

Slaves, besides being common laborers, were often men
of considerable skill and learning, Slavery was not a badge of
human inferiority. Thus, the first slaves procured by the
Europeans from Africa were displayed as curiosities and as proof
of affluence. While, especially at the beginning, some slaves
were taken by force, most of the African slaves acquired by the
Europeans were obtained in the course of a peaceful and regular
bargaining process.

When the Portuguese arrived in West Africa, they found a
thriving economy which had already developed its own bustling
trading centers. Before long, a vigorous trade opened up between
the Portuguese and the West Africans. Slaves were only one of a
great variety of exports, and guns were only one of a large
variety of imports. One of the ways in which the slave trade came
to cripple the West African economy was that slaves became
almost the exclusive African export. The more the Africans sought
to fulfill the Europeans' thirst for slaves, the more they needed
guns with which to procure slaves, and to protect themselves
from being captured and sold into slavery. Therefore, the
Euro-African trade, instead of further stimulating the African
economy, actually limited production of many items and drained
it of much of its most productive manpower.

The rulers, who had voluntarily and unwittingly involved
themselves in this gigantic trade, soon found themselves trapped.
Those who wanted to eliminate or reduce the trade in slaves and
who preferred to develop other aspects of a trading economy,
found themselves helpless. A ruler who would not provide the
Europeans with the slaves they desired was then bypassed by all
the European traders. Besides losing the revenue from this trade,
his own military position was weakened. Any ruler who did not
trade slaves for guns could not have guns. Without guns, he would
have difficulty in protecting himself and his people. Any ruler
or people who could not provide adequate self-defense could be
captured and sold into slavery. Once begun, the Africans found
themselves enmeshed in a vicious system from which there seemed to
be no escape. The only possibility for escape would have been the
development of some kind of African coalition, but each petty
ruler as too concerned with his own power to be able to
contemplate federated activity. European greed fed African greed,
and vice a versa.

In the beginning, African slaves were carried back to Portugal
and other parts of Europe to be used as exotic domestic servants.
In some cases, they were also used as farm laborers. Parts of
Portugal were suffering from a distinct shortage of farm
laborers, and Africans filled the void. At the beginning of the
sixteenth century, in some sections of rural Portugal as much as
one third of local population was African in origin.

Even so, European labor needs could not support much of a
slave trade for long. The enclosure system was under way,
changing farming techniques, and it had created a labor surplus.
However, at the same time, emerging capitalism financed
explorations in Africa, Asia, and the western hemisphere. African
sailors were involved in most of these explorations including
Columbus's voyage in 1492. New World gold provided the economic
basis for even more rapid European expansion. When the New World
came to be viewed by the hungry capitalists as having a potential
for agricultural exploitation, New World labor needs expanded
astronomically. At first these needs were filled by surplus labor
from Europe or by exploiting the local Indian populations. When
these labor sources proved to be inadequate, the exploitation of
slave labor from Africa was the obvious answer.

While the Portuguese were the first to reach the shores of West
Africa and the first to bring African slaves back to Europe,
neither they nor the Spaniards ever dominated the slave trade
which followed. In 1493, as European exploration of the world
moved into high gear, the Pope published a Bull dividing the
world yet to be explored into two parts. His intention was to
limit competition and conflict between the rulers of Spain and
Portugal and to prevent undue hostility between his two main
supporters.

However, this left the other European powers, officially, with
no room for overseas expansion. While these powers refused to
acknowledge the legality of the Bull and soon became involved in
exploration and colonization in spite of it, they also tended to
become more involved than did Portugal or Spain in some of the
by-products of colonization, such as the slave trade. When the
Spaniards began to use slaves in their American colonies,
the Dutch, French, and British were only too eager to provide
the transportation. Before long, they too had colonies and slaves
of their own.

The triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the New
World, was one of the most lucrative aspects of the mercantile
economy. Mercantilism sought to keep each country economically
self-sufficient. Within this framework the role of the colony was
to provide the mother country with raw materials which it could
not produce for itself and to be a market for the consumption of
many of the manufactured goods produced within the mother
country.

This triangular trade began in Europe with the purchase
of guns, gunpowder, cheap cotton, and trinkets of all kinds.
These were shipped to the coast of West Africa and unloaded at a
trading station. At key points along the coast, the European
nations had made treaties with the local rulers allowing them to
set up trading stations and slave factories. At this point, the
European traders entered into hard bargaining sessions with the
representatives of the local ruler in which the manufactured
goods from Europe, especially guns, were traded for African
slaves. When the deal was completed, the slaves were loaded on
the ship, and the captain set sail for the New World.

Upon arrival in the West Indies, another bargaining process was
begun. Here the slaves were traded for local agricultural
products which were wanted in Europe. Then the ships were loaded
with tobacco, sugar, and other West Indian produce and returned
to Europe for still another sale and another profit. At every
point along the route, large sums of money were made. A profit
of at east one hundred percent was expected. Vast wealth was
obtained through the slave trade, and this money was reinvested
in the developing industrial revolution. Thereby the Africans
unwittingly helped to finance the European industrial revolution
which widened the technological gap between Africa and Europe.

The African slave was sometimes a criminal, but, more often than
not, he was captured in battle. As the slave trade grew and with
it the need for more slaves, the number of these battles
increased. Clearly, many battles were being fought solely for the
purpose of acquiring slaves who could then be sold to the
European traders. Sometimes, too, the slave might have been the
political enemy of the ruler or of some other powerful person.

The slaves were then marched to trading stations along the coast
where a European agent, who resided at the station, inspected
them and negotiated their purchase. The inspection was
humiliating and degrading procedure. Men, women, and children
usually appeared stark naked and underwent the close
scrutiny of the agent and sometimes a physician. After the
trauma of capture and the shame of inspection, the slaves were
regimented into crowded quarters at the trading station or
"factory" to wait for the next shipment to leave. They had to be
supervised very closely as many tried to escape and others tried
to commit suicide.

When a ship was ready to sail, the slaves were chained together
and marched down to the shore. There they were bundled into large
canoes and were paddled through the crashing breakers to where
the slave ship was waiting. Slaves have told how they began the
voyage in trepidation, being frightened by the sight of the
"white devils" who, they had heard, liked to eat Africans. Then
the long voyage commenced. Conditions here were even
more crowded than at the "factory." Slaves were generally kept
below deck with no sunshine or fresh air. They were crowded so
close  together that there was never any standing room and often
not even sitting room. Again, they had to be supervised closely
as many tried to starve themselves to death or to jump overboard.
However, the greatest loss of slave property was due to disease,
The ship's captain feared that disease would whittle away his
profits, and, even more, he worried that it would attack him and
his crew. When the passage was completed, and the West Indies
had been safely reached, the slave again had to undergo the same
kind of degrading inspection and sale which had occurred in
Africa, but this time he had to experience the torment in a
strange and distant land.

While the economic profits in the slave trade were great, so
were the human losses. Statistics concerning the slave trade are
often inaccurate or missing. However, it is generally agreed that
at least fifteen million Africans, and perhaps many more, became
slaves in the New World. About nine hundred thousand were
brought in the sixteenth century, three million in the
seventeenth century, seven million in the eighteenth century, and
another four million in the nineteenth century.

The mortality rate among these new slaves ran very high. It is
estimated that some five percent died in Africa on the way to the
coast, another thirteen percent in transit to the West Indies,
and still another thirty percent during the three-month seasoning
period in the West Indies.  This meant that about fifty percent
of those originally captured in Africa died either in transit or
while being prepared for servitude.

Even this statistic, harsh as it is, does not tell the whole
story of the human cost involved in the slave trade. Most slaves
were captured in the course of warfare, and many more Africans
were killed in the course of this combat. The total number of
deaths, then, ran much higher than those killed en route. Many
Africans became casualty statistics, directly or indirectly,
because of the slave trade. Beyond this, there was the untold
human sorrow and misery borne by the friends and relatives of
those Africans who were torn away from home and loved ones and
were never seen again.

Statistics concerning profits in the slave trade are also
difficult to obtain. Profits often ran as high as two or three
hundred percent, and were an important part of the European
economy. These profits provided much of the capital which helped
to spur on the industrial revolution.  When Queen Elizabeth, in
1562, heard that one of her subJects, John Hawkins, had become
involved in the slave trade, she was very critical and commented
that he would have to pay a very high price for dealing in human
lives. However, when she was confronted with a copy of his
profit ledger, her moral indignation softened, and she quickly
became one of the members of the corporation. Some merchants
were hit hard by the risks accompanying the slave trade and
suffered financial disaster.  The possible profits were so high,
however, that other merchants were always eager to venture into
this field and new capital was ever lacking.

The industrial revolution, which was partly financed by the slave
trade, eventually abolished the need for slavery. The
humanitarian outcry against both the slave trade and slavery
which occurred at the end of the eighteenth century and swelled
in the early nineteenth century, became a significant force as
the need for slave labor diminished. In the beginning, as
previously noted, the Europeans were not powerful enough to seize
slaves at will or to invade the African kingdoms. But the
industrial revolution had immeasurably widened the power gap
between Europe and Africa. By the time the slave trade ended, and
European adventurers had found new ways to achieve gigantic
capital gains, Europe had achieved a power advantage sufficient
to invade Africa at will.

As European interests in colonizing Africa increased, the
European powers, at the middle of the nineteenth century, were
also tearing one another apart in the process of this
competitive expansion, In order to avoid further misfortune, the
great powers of Europe met at the conference of Berlin in 1885.
Without troubling to consult with any Africans, they drew lines
on a map of Africa dividing it among themselves. It took only a
very few years for a map drawing to become a physical reality.
When the Europeans had finished exploiting Africa through the
slave trade and had greatly weakened its societies, they invaded
Africa in order to exploit its nonhuman material resources.


Caribbean Interlude

Most of the Africans, who were enslaved and brought to the New World,
came to the American colonies after a period of seasoning in the
Caribbean islands. To the Europeans who had settled in America
the Colonies were their new home and they strove to develop a
prosperous and secure society in which to live and raise their
families. They hesitated to bring their slaves directly from
Africa as they believed that Africans were brutal, barbaric
savages who would present a real danger to the safety and security
of their new homes. Instead, they preferred to purchase slaves
who had already been tested and broken.

In contrast to this, Europeans who had gone to the Caribbean
islands did not consider the New World as their new home. The
island plantations were to be exploited to provide the wealth with
with which their owners could return to Europe and live like
gentlemen. Many of them did not bring their families to the islands,
or, when they did, their stay was a temporary one. Therefore, they
were more willing than were the Americans to purchase slaves
directly from Africa. Moreover, because their sole interest in the
islands was economic profit, they could make a double profit by
selling their seasoned slaves as well as selling their plantation
produce. While the Africans' stay in the Caribbean, obviously, was
not part of their African heritage, it was part of the experience
which they brought with them to the Colonies. Many of the events
which occurred in the Caribbean islands had important
repercussions in the American Colonies.

A quarter of a century after Columbus had discovered the New
World, the first African slaves were brought to the West Indies
to supplement the inadequate labor supply. The Indians who
lived on the islands were few in number and had had no
experience in plantation agriculture. As the shortage of labor
became severe, the plantation owners began to import criminals
and were willing to accept the poor and the drunks who had been
seized from the streets of European ports.

There was also a continual stream of indentured servants, but
this influx was nowhere nearly large enough to fill the growing
labor demands. The advantage of African slaves over indentured
servants was that they could be purchased outright for life.
Moreover, the Africans had no contacts in the European capitals
through which they could bring pressure to bear against the
abuses of the plantation masters. In fact, African slaves really
had no rights which the master was obliged to respect. The supply
of African labor seemed to be endless, and many masters found it
cheaper to overwork a slave and to replace him when he died,
rather than take care of him while he lived. In short, the
plantation experience was a brutalizing one.

In the beginning, the major plantation crop had been tobacco, It
could be grown efficiently on small plantations of twenty or
thirty acres. The tobacco plant needed constant, careful
attention throughout the season, and this meant that the number
of raw, unskilled laborers that was needed was relatively small.

However, when the new colony of Virginia entered the tobacco
field in the early seventeenth century, it was able to produce
larger quantities of tobacco at a lower price. The Caribbean
islands were hit by a severe economic depression. The Dutch came
with a solution. They had previously conquered parts of northern
Brazil from the Portuguese, and there they had learned the
techniques of plantation sugar production. It could only be
carried on efficiently with plantations of two or three hundred
acres, and it required large numbers of unskilled laborers both
to plant and harvest the crop and to refine the sugar. The Dutch,
then, brought sugar cane to the West Indies. This gave them a new
plantation crop, and it also gave them a new outlet for the slave
trade which, at that point in history, they had come to dominate.

The development of the sugar cane economy in the West Indies
produced a basic social revolution. The small tobacco farmers did
not have the capital to develop the large sugar plantations.
Some of them went into other occupations, but most of them
returned to Europe. The new labor needs were filled by a gigantic
increase in the importation of African slaves. The ratio of
whites to blacks within the islands changed markedly within a
matter of one or two decades. The white population consisted of
a handful of exceedingly wealthy plantation owners and another
handful of white plantation managers. Many of the slaves soon
learned new skills associated with sugar manufacturing, thus
reducing the need for white labor even further. The rising demand
for slaves meant an expansion of the slave trade, and, as West
Indian slaves had a high mortality rate and a low birthrate,
this meant a continually thriving slave trade.

As the ratio between whites and blacks widened, the problem of
controlling the slaves grew more serious. Brute force was the
only answer. The European governments had tried to solve the
problem by requiring the plantation owners to hire a specified
number of white workers. However, many owners found it cheaper
to pay the fine than to comply with this regulation.

In 1667, the British Parliament passed a series of black codes
intended to control the slaves in the Caribbean colonies. Other
colonial powers followed their example. The law stated that a
slave could not be away from the plantation on a Sunday and that
he was not permitted to carry any weapons. It also specified
that, if he were to strike a Christian, he could be whipped. If
he did it a second time, he could be branded on the face.
However, if a master, in the process of punishing a slave,
accidentally beat him to death, this master could not be fined or
imprisoned.

Because the Europeans did not view the islands as their home,
there was always a shortage of white women. One of the results
of this was the development of an ever-growing class of
mulattoes. More and more of them were granted their freedom. While
these freedmen did not receive equal treatment with the whites,
they were careful to preserve the advantages they held over the
slaves. Many of them served in the militia to help keep the
slaves under control. However, the threat of slave revolts
continued. The greater the possibility of success, the greater
the probability that slaves would take the risk of starting a
revolt. All of the islands in the West Indies had a history of
slave rebellion.

Undoubtedly, the most outstanding slave revolt in the western
hemisphere took place in Haiti. During the French revolution,
concepts of the rights of man spread from France to her colonies.
In Haiti, the free mulattoes petitioned the French revolutionary
government for their rights. The Assembly granted their request.
However, the French aristocrats in Haiti refused to follow the
directives of the Assembly. At this point, two free mulattoes,
Vincent Oge and Jean Baptiste Chavannes, both of whom had
received an education in Paris, led a mulatto rebellion. The
Haitian aristocrats quickly and brutally suppressed it.

By this time, however, the concepts of the rights of man had
spread to the slave class. In 1791, under the leadership of
Toussaint l'Ouverture, the slaves began a long and bloody revolt
of their own. Slaves flocked to Toussaint's support by the
thousands until he had an army much larger than any that had
fought in the American revolution, This revolt became entangled
with the French revolution and the European wars connected with
it. Besides fighting the French, Toussaint had to face both
British and Spanish armies. None of them was able to suppress the
revolt and to overthrow the republic which had been established
in Haiti.

After Napoleon came to power in France, he sent a gigantic
expedition under Leclerc to reestablish French authority in Haiti.
While he claimed to stand for the principles of the revolution,
Napoleon's real interest in Haiti was to make it into a base from
which to rebuild a French empire in the western hemisphere.
Toussaint lured this French army into the wilderness where the
soldiers, who had no immunity to tropical diseases, were hit very
hard by malaria and yellow fever.

Toussaint was captured by trickery, but his compatriots carried
on the fight for independence. Finally, Napoleon was forced to
withdraw from the struggle. One of the results of his failure to
suppress the slave revolt in Haiti was his abandonment of his New
World dreams and his willingness to sell Louisiana to the United
States. Unfortunately, this meant new areas for the expansion of
the plantation economy and slavery. In other words, the Haitian
revolution was responsible for giving new life to the institution
of slavery inside America.

American plantation owners were faced with a dilemma. The
Louisiana Purchase, resulting from the revolution in Haiti,
greatly expanded the possibilities of plantation agriculture.
This meant a greater need for slave labor. However, they were not
sure from which source to purchase these slaves. They hesitated
to bring new slaves directly from Africa. They were also loath to
bring seasoned slaves from the Caribbean. Events in Haiti had
demonstrated that these Caribbean slaves might not be as docile
as previously had been believed. Certainly, Americans did not
want repetition of the bloody Haitian revolt within their own
borders. Greedy men still bought slaves where they could, but
many American slave owners were deeply disturbed and began to
give serious thought to terminating the importation of African
slaves to America.

***

CHAPTER 3
Slavery as Capitalism



The Shape of American Slavery

The slave system in America was unique in human history.
Sometimes slaves were treated cruelly; at other times with
kindness. They were more often used as a sign of affluence, a way
of displaying one's wealth and of enjoying luxury, rather than as
the means for the systematic accumulation of wealth. Previously,
slavery had existed in hierarchical societies in which the slave
was at the bottom of a social ladder, the most inferior in a
society of unequals. While each society normally preferred to
choose its slaves from alien people, it did not limit its
selection exclusively to the members of any one race. Slave
inferiority did not lead necessarily to racial inferiority. In
contrast to this, slavery in America was set apart by three
characteristics: capitalism, individualism, and racism.

Capitalism increased the degree of dehumanization and
depersonalization implicit in the institution of slavery. While
it had been normal in other forms of slavery for the slave to be
legally defined as a thing, a piece of property, in America he
also became a form of capital. Here his life was regimented to
fill the needs of a highly organized productive system
sensitively attuned to the driving forces of competitive free
enterprise. American masters were probably no more cruel and no
more sadistic than others, and, in fact, the spread of
humanitarianism in the modern world may have made the opposite
true. Nevertheless, their capitalistic mentality firmly fixed
their eyes on minimizing expenses and maximizing profits. Besides
being a piece of property, the American slave was transformed
into part of the plantation machine, a part of the ever-growing
investment in the master' mushrooming wealth.

The development of slavery in America resulted from the
working of economic forces and not from climatic or geographic
conditions.  When the first twenty Africans reached Virginia in
1619, the colony was comprised of small plantations dependent on
free white labor. While some historians believe that these
immigrants were held in slavery from the beginning, most think
they were given the status of indentured servants.  English law
contained no such category as slavery, and the institution did
not receive legal justification in the colony until early in the
1660s. Although the fact of slavery had undoubtedly preceded its
legal definition, there was a period of forty years within which
the Africans had some room for personal freedom and individual
opportunity. Rumors of deplorable working conditions and of
indefinite servitude were reaching England and discouraging the
flow of free white labor. To counter this, a series of acts were
passed which legally established the rights of white labor, but
they did nothing to improve the status of the African. In fact,
their passage pushed them relentlessly towards the status of
slave.

The price of tobacco declined sharply in the 1660s and drove the
small white farmer to the wall. Only those with enough capital to
engage in large-scale operations could continue to make a profit.
In order to fill the need for the huge labor supply required
large-scale agriculture, the colonial legislature passed laws
giving legal justification to slavery. At the same time, Charles
II granted a royal charter establishing a company to transport
African slaves across the ocean and thereby increasing the supply
 of slaves available to the colonial planter.

Until this time, the number of Africans in the colony
had been very small, but thereafter their numbers grew rapidly. The
African slaves provided the large, dependable, and permanent
supply of labor which these plantations required.  The small white
planter and the free white laborer found the road to economic success had
become much more difficult. To be a successful planter meant that
he had to begin with substantial capital investments. Capitalist
agriculture substantially altered the social structure of the
colony. On one hand, it created a small class of rich and
powerful white planters. On the other, it victimized the small
white planters, or white laborers, and the ever-growing mass of
African slaves.

 The second unique factor in American slavery was the growth of
individualism. While this democratic spirit attracted many
European immigrants, it only served to increase the burden of
slavery for the African. Instead of being at the bottom of the
social ladder, the slave in America was an inferior among equals.
A society which represented itself as recognizing individual
worth and providing room for the development of talent, rigidly
organized the entire life of the slave and gave him little
opportunity to develop his skills. In America, a person's worth
became identified with economic achievement. To be a success in
Virginia was to be a prosperous planter, and white individualism
could easily become white oppression leaving no room for black
individualism. The existence of slavery in a society which
maintained its belief in equality was a contradiction which men
strove diligently to ignore.

Perhaps this contradiction can be partly understood by
seeing the way in which individual rights had come into being in
English society. Instead of springing from a belief in abstract
human rights, they were an accumulation of concrete legal and
political privileges which had developed since Magna Charta.
Viewing it in this light, it may have been easier for the white
colonists to insist on their rights while denying them to the
slaves. Nevertheless, the existence of slavery in the midst of a
society believing in individualism increased its dehumanizing
effects.

The third characteristic which set American slavery apart was
its racial basis. In America, with only a few early and
insignificant exceptions, all slaves were Africans, and almost
all Africans were slaves. This placed the label of inferiority
on black skin and on African culture. In other societies, it had
been possible for a slave who obtained his freedom to take his
place in his society with relative ease. In America, however,
when a slave became free, he was still obviously an African. The
taint of inferiority clung to him.

Not only did white America become convinced of white superiority
and black inferiority, but it strove to impose these racial
beliefs on the Africans themselves. Slave masters gave a great
deal of attention to the education and training of the ideal
slave, In general, there were five steps in molding the character
of such a slave: strict discipline, a sense of his own
inferiority, belief in the master's superior power, acceptance
of the master's standards, and, finally, a deep sense of his own
helplessness and dependence. At every point this education was
built on the belief in white superiority and black inferiority.
Besides teaching the slave to despise his own history and
culture, the master strove to inculcate his own value system
into the African's outlook. The white man's belief in the African's
 inferiority paralleled African self hate.

Slavery has always been an evil institution, and being a slave
has always been undesirable. However, the slave in America was
systematically exploited for the accumulation of wealth. Being a
slave in a democracy, he was put outside of the bounds of
society.  Finally, because his slavery was racially defined, his
plight was incurable. Although he might flee from slavery, he
could not escape his race.


North American and South American Slavery

Slavery, as it existed in British North America, contained
interesting points of comparison and contrast with the slave
system existing in Portuguese and Spanish South America. Although
both institutions were geared to the needs of capitalistic
agriculture, the rights and privileges of the South American
planter were restricted and challenged at many points by the
traditional powers the Crown and the Church. On one hand,
capitalism, unimpeded by other powerful institutions, created a
closed slave system which regimented the totality of the slave's
life. On the other hand, through the clash of competing
institutions, the slave as been left with a little opportunity in
which he could develop as a person.

In the seventeenth century, while the British colonies were being
established in North America and their slave system was being
created, the English Crown underwent a series of severe shocks
including two revolutions. Although it eventually emerged secure,
the monarchy managed to survive only by making its peace with the
emerging commercial and industrial forces. These same crises
undermined the authority of the Church as a powerful institution
in society. The nonconformist sects were the stronghold of the
merchant class and spread rapidly in the American colonies.
There, instead of being a check on the commercial spirit, the
Church itself had become dominated by the middle class. Equally
important is the fact that in colonial America the level of
religious life was very low. Most colonists, with the exception
of the original founders who had fled religious persecution, did
not come for religious freedom but for economic advancement. When
some Virginians at the end of the seventeenth century, petitioned
the government to build a college for the training of ministers,
they were told to forget about the cure of souls and instead to
cure tobacco.  The result was that the planter class,
unchallenged by any other powerful institutions, was free to
shape a slave system to meet its labor needs. In any conflict
which arose between personality rights and property rights the
property rights of the master were always protected.

In contrast, the South American planter would not have such a
free hand in shaping his own affairs. The Renaissance and
Reformation had not made the same impact on Spain and Portugal
as they did on the rest of Western Europe. Consequently,
secularization and commercialization had not progressed as far in
eroding the traditional power and prestige of the Crown and the
Church. Although both institutions readily compromised with
capitalist interests and strove to develop a working alliance
with them, neither the Crown nor the Church in Spain and
Portugal had ever been taken over by the commercial interests.

Both Spain and Portugal had had continuous contact with slavery
extending back into ancient times. Roman law as well as the
Church fathers had concerned themselves with it, and these
concepts had been incorporated into Spanish and Portuguese
law. Also, slaves continued to exist in both countries down
to modern times. Therefore, when Portugal began importing slaves
from West Africa in the fifteenth century, the institution of
slavery was already in existence. Before long, significant
numbers of African slaves were to be found in both Portugal and
Spain. When the South American planters began importing slaves,
slavery already had a framework and a tradition within which the
planter had to operate .

The Spanish Crown devoted a great deal of time and energy to the
supervision of its overseas possessions. Instead of permitting
considerable local autonomy as the British did, the Spanish
Council of the Indies in Madrid assumed a stance of illiberal,
paternal, bureaucratic control. From the point of view of the
colonial capitalists, the cumbersome royal bureaucracy was
always involved in troublesome meddling which impeded their
progress. As part of the careful management of its colonies, the
Crown strove to control the operation of the slave trade.
Similarly, it was concerned with the treatment of the African
slaves within the colonies. The Spanish Crown included the slaves
as persons instead of relegating them solely to the status of
property at the disposal of their owners.

The Church, as a powerful institution, jealously guarded its
right to be the guardian and protector of social morality.
Besides being concerned with influencing individual behavior, the
Church insisted that it was a social institution with the right
to interfere in matters relating to public morals. In fact, it
was through this role that the Church was able to exercise its
worldly powers.  While condemning slavery as an evil and warning
that it endangered those who participated in it, the Church found
it expedient to accept slavery as a labor system. However, it
insisted that the African slaves must be Christianized. Missionaries
were sent to the trading stations on the African coast where the
captives were baptized and catechized. The Church feared that the
purity of the faith might be undermined by the infusion of pagan
influences.  Then, when a slave ship reached the New World, a
friar boarded the ship and examined the slaves to see that the
requirements had been met. The Church also insisted that the slaves
become regular communicants, and it liked to view itself as the
champion of their human rights.

The degree to which the individual rights of the slave were either
protected or totally suppressed provides a clearer insight to the
differences between North American and South American slavery.
The laws outlining the rights of slaves have been traditionally
placed into four categories: term of servitude, marriage and the
family, police and disciplinary powers, and, finally, property
and other civil rights.

In both systems the term of servitude was for life, and the
child's status was inherited from its mother. Children of slave
mothers were slaves, and children of free mothers were free
regardless of the status of the father. Inherited lifetime
slavery was the norm.

Manumission--granting freedom--was infrequent in British
North America. Occasionally, masters who had fathered slave
children would later give them their freedom. A few other slaves
were able to purchase their own freedom although, strictly
speaking, this was a legal impossibility. The slave was not able
to own property according to the law, and this meant that the
money with which he purchased his freedom had always belonged to
his master.  Obviously, he could only do this with his master's
fullest cooperation.

In South America, however, manumission was much more frequent.
This practice received highly favorable social sanction, and
masters often celebrated national holidays, anniversaries,
birthdays, and other special events by manumitting one or more
of their favorite slaves.

The law also defended the right of the slave to purchase his own
freedom. He had the right to own property and could accumulate
funds with which he might eventually achieve his dream.  He also
had the right to demand that his master or the courts set a
fixed price for his purchase which he could then pay over a
period of years. Sundays and holidays were for the slave to use
as he saw fit, and, in some cases, he was also guaranteed a
couple of hours every day for his own use. During this time he
could sell his services and save the proceeds. The law also
stated that parents of ten or more children were to be set free.
Finally, slaves could be freed by the courts as the result of
mistreatment by their masters.

While there was much sentiment in North America supporting
marriages among slaves, and there was much animosity against
masters who separated families through sale, the law was
unambiguous on this point. Slaves were property, and therefore
could not enter into contracts including contracts of marriage.
Jurists also noted that to prevent the sale of separate members
of a family would lower the sale price, and this was to tamper
with a man's property. Therefore, property rights had to be
placed above marriage rights. In contrast, in South America the
Church insisted that slave unions be brought within the sacrament
of marriage. The Church also strove to limit promiscuous
relationships between slaves as well as between masters and
slaves, and it encouraged marriage instead of informal mating.
Also, the law forbade the separate sale of members of the family,
husband, wife, and children under the age of ten.

The general thrust of the laws outlining police and disciplinary
powers in North America was to entrust complete jurisdiction to
the master. One judge had laid down the law that the master's
power must be absolute in order to render slave obedience
perfect, and, although the courts were empowered to discipline
slaves in certain situations, the masters generally acted as
judges, juries, and dispensers of punishments. In those rare
cases where the law did protect the slave against extreme
mistreatment, its protection was nullified by the universal
proscription against any slave or Black person testifying in
court against any white. The court also had assumed that it was
irrational for a man to destroy his own property, and, therefore,
it was impossible for a master to commit premeditated murder
against one of his own slaves.

However, in South America the court exercised much more
Jurisdiction over the slave. Crimes committed by a slave were
prosecuted by the court, and, if a slave was murdered, this case
was prosecuted by the court as if the victim had been a free man.
The law also made a more concerted attempt to protect the slave
against mistreatment by his master. A certain type of state
lawyer was an official protector of the slaves; he received
regular reports on slave conditions from priests as well as from
special investigative officials who had been appointed by the
state for this purpose.  Mistreatment could lead both to the
freedom of the slave and to the imprisoning of the master. The
law had devised an ingenious system whereby the fine was divided
equally between the judge, the informer, and the state treasury.

Finally, the slave in North America could not own property and
had absolutely no civil rights. The.law clearly stated that he
could neither own, inherit, or will property nor engage in buying
and selling except at the pleasure of his master. In contrast,
the slave in South America could own property, could engage in
buying and selling, and was guaranteed Sundays, holidays, and
other times which to work for his own advancement. In short, the
law implied that while the master could own a man's labor, he
could not own the man as a person

It is not easy to make a final comparison between these two slave
systems. South American masters often evaded the law and would be
exceedingly brutal, and North American masters were often much
more lenient than the law required. Conditions moreover, were
usually more severe in South America, and this fact may have
worsened the actual material situation of South American slave.
Nevertheless, in North America the slave was consistently treated
as a "thing." In South America there was some attempt to treat
him as a man. This fact made a profound difference in the way in
which the two systems affected the  slave as an individual, and
in the way in which they impinged upon the development of his
personality.


Slavery and the Formation of Character

The study of American slavery, frequently consisting of a heated
debate concerning the institution's merits, has, in recent
years, branched into new directions. Scholars have become engaged
in the comparative examination of differing slave systems such as
those of North and South America. More recently, Stanley M.
Elkins has begun an inquiry into the impact of a slave system in
forming the individual character of the slaves within that
system. In his provocative study, Slavery: A Problem in American
Institutional and Intellectual Life, he has made some interesting
comparisons between the American slave system and the German
concentration camps and has endeavored to account for their
respective impacts on character formation through the social-
psychological theories of personality formation.

In Elkins's thinking, the concentration camps were a modern
example of a rigid system controlling mass behavior. Because some
of those who experienced them were social scientists trained in
the skills of observation and analysis, they provide a basis for
insights into the way in which a particular social system can
influence mass character. While there is also much literature
about American slavery written both by slaves and masters, none
of it was written from the viewpoint of modern social sciences.
However, Elkins postulates that a slave type must have existed
as the result of the attempt to control mass behavior, and he
believes that this type probably bore a marked resemblance to the
literary stereotype of "Sambo." Studying concentration camps and
their impact on personality provides a tool for new insights into
the working of slavery, but, warns Elkins, the comparison can
only be used for limited purposes. Although slavery was not
unlike the concentration camp in many respects, the concentration
camp can be viewed as a highly perverted form of slavery, and
both systems were ways of controlling mass behavior

The "Sambo" of American slave literature was portrayed as being
docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronically
given to lying and stealing. He was a child figure, often
demonstrating infantile silliness and exaggeration, exasperating
but lovable and, above all, utterly dependent on and attached to
his master. The master explained this behavior as the result of
the slave's race or of his primitive African culture.

While assuming that many slaves did approximate the character of
"Sambo," Elkins absolutely rejects any racial or cultural
explanation. Modern African studies have not led to any evidence
of a "Sambo" type in Africa. Similarly, the literature of South
America does not contain any figure comparable to him.
Apparently, "Sambo" was not merely the result of slavery, but he
was the result of the unique form of slavery which developed in
North America. Unrestricted in his powers by institutions such as
the crown and the Church, the American slave master had gained
total control of his slave property. In a desire to maximize the
profits of his investment, he strove to develop the perfect
slave. Although the slave might endeavor to conform externally
while maintaining his inner integrity, eventually his performance
as an ideal slave must have affected the shape of his
personality. Modern existentialism has argued that how we behave
determines what we are, and it is in this sense that the
controlled behavior in the concentration camp and its impact on
personality formation provide an illuminating parallel to the
study of American slavery.

The experienced gained in the German concentration camps during
the Second World War showed that it was possible to induce
widespread infantile behavior in masses of adults. Childlike action
 extended beyond obedience to the guards and showed that a basic
character transformation had occurred. Previous social-psychological
theory stressed the ways in which an individual's personality was
shaped during his earliest childhood years and emphasized the
tenacity with which these early traits resisted attempt at alteration.
Personality theory was not  adequate to what occurred in the camps.

The concentration camp experience began with what has become
labeled as shock procurement. As terror was one of the
many tools of the system, surprise late-night arrests were the
favorite technique. Camp inmates generally agreed that the train
ride to the camp was the point at which they experienced the
first brutal torture. Herded together into cattle cars, without
adequate space, ventilation, or sanitary conditions, they had to
endure the horrible crowding and the harassment of the guards.
When they reached the camp, they had to stand naked in line and
undergo a detailed examination by the camp physician. Then, each
was given a tag and a number. These two events were calculated
to strip away one's identity and to reduce the individual to an
item within an impersonal system.

One's sense of personhood was further undermined by the fact
that there was never any privacy. The individual had lost both
his identity and his power.  Everything was done to him or for
him, but nothing was ever done by him. The guards had the power
to dispense food, clothing, shelter, punishment, and even death
Prisoners had to request permission to use the sanitary
facilities, and permission was not always forthcoming. As the
inmates were not sentenced for specified periods of time, they
tended to view camp life as having a limitless future.

In a relatively short time, this experience of total dependence
developed characteristics of infantile behavior in those
prisoners who managed to avoid the extermination chambers. A
childish humor and infantile giggling were common. Boasting and
lying were widely practiced. Patterns of hero worship emerged,
and the guards became the heroes. The prisoners came to accept
their values including their German nationalism and
anti-Semitism.  Some even altered their uniforms to resemble those
of the guards, and they slavishly followed orders beyond
necessity. Attempts at resistance were very rare, and, when the
liberating American forces arrived at the end of the war, they
were surprised that there was not some attempt at mass revenge.

In comparison, the African who became an American slave
underwent an experience which had some marked similarities to
those of the German concentration camp. He too underwent a kind
of shock procurement. Although millions of men became
slaves, the event was unique to each man. Usually, he had been
captured in the course of warfare which, in itself, was a
humiliation. After being chained together and marched to the
coast, his horror must have increased when he realized that he
was being sold to Europeans. It was widely believed by Africans
that white men were cannibals. At the coastal station, he also
had to endure the humiliation of a naked inspection by a
physician. This was followed by a lengthy transoceanic trip
which must have exceeded the horrors of the train ride to the
concentration camp. The crowded unsanitary conditions in the
slave ships were at least as bad as those in the cattle cars, and
the Africans also were beaten and harassed to keep them docile.

Moreover, the trip itself was much rougher and longer. After
undergoing another inspection, the African was purchased and had
to face lifetime of bondage in an alien environment. He was
stripped of identity, given a new name, and he was taught to
envision himself and his African heritage as inferior and
barbaric. The White master insisted on total obedience and
created a situation of utter dependence. He supplied food, clothing,
shelter, discipline, and he was in a position to control the slave's
friends and mating.  The "Sambo" of literature mirrored reality,
this life of dependency created infantile characteristics in many
of the slaves and taught them to reject their past while adopting
the values of their masters. The American slave system, besides
exploiting the Africans labor, possessed and violated his
person.

Three schools of mass behavior have been suggested as
explanations: Freudian psychology, the interpersonal theories of
Henry Stack Sullivan, and role psychology. Freudian psychology
has put total emphases on early childhood experiences and is the
least suited for this purpose. It could be argued that the shock
procurement and the total detachment from previous life which it
achieved both in the concentration camps and in American slavery
emptied the super-ego or conscience of its contents. Then, the
creation of total dependence which followed could have resulted
in infantile regression. This would account for the childlike
behavior of both "Sambo" and the camp inmates. The slave master
the camp guard, each in his own way, became a father figure, and
the respective victims internalized the value system of this
symbolic father.

The interpersonal school of psychology states that the
determining factor in influencing personality development can be
found in the estimation and expectation of "significant others."
Those responsible for the physical and emotional security of an
individual are his "significant others." For a child these are
his parents. As he matures, the number of "significant others" in
one's experience increases. This permits one to make decisions of
one's own and to develop some individuality.

However, the child has already internalized the estimations and
expectations of his parents, and this tends to shape his
personality for rest of his life. Still, acquiring new
"significant others" as adult can be important in reshaping the
adult personality. Both the American slaves and the camp
prisoners were thrust into situations in which they had a new
single "significant other." This was a situation similar to that
of childhood, and it could have had the same impact in shaping
personality. All previous "significant others" had been made
insignificant, and, in each case, the estimations and
expectations of this new -'significant other" became
internalized into the personality of the victims.

Role psychology holds the most promise for explaining the impact
of a social situation in determining the development of
individual personality. In role psychology the individual and
society can be compared to the actor and the theater. Society
provides the individual with a number of roles, and the
individual's behavior is his performance, the way in which he
plays them.

Normally, each individual plays a number of roles simultaneously.
While some are pervasive and extensive in scope, others are limited
 and transitory, The role of man or woman is extensive, but that
of customer or student is transitory. Society also endows some roles
with considerable clarity, while leaving others open to individual
interpretation, The roles people play and the way in which they play
them determine personality. Within American slavery as well as
within the German concentration camps, the number of roles available
were severely limited, and both the slave master and the camp guard defined
them very clearly. Both demanded a precise and careful
performance. There were those whose performance was faultless in
playing their roles. While the concentration camp guard
guaranteed its performance through terror and torture, the slave
master usually used more subtle means. Besides punishment for
missed cues, masters displayed considerable fondness for slaves
who played their part well. By restricting role availability and
by carefully defining the performance, society could create a
group personality type, and, through changing roles, society
could change personality.

Although the innovative use of personality types has
further illuminated the nature of the American slave system, it
has tended to blur the individual experiences and contributions
of millions of Africans into a vague amorphous abstraction. The
technique has provided important insights into the plight of the
slave as the victim of a dehumanizing system, but it tends to
obscure the active participation of Africans in American life.
Further, it is a crude generalization which, in fact, included
many types within it. While most slaves were plantation field
hands, there were many  whose lives followed different lines and
for whom slavery was a very different experience. Some slaves
departed sharply enough from the "Sambo" image to become leaders
in insurrections. These men were usually urban slaves possessing
unusual talents, and thereby escaping much of the emasculation
which the typical slave had to endure.

Emphasizing the slave as the victim of the slave system further
reduces him to a passive object by insisting that the slave was
effectively detached from his African heritage. Many scholars,
including Elkins, believe that the attempt to discover
Africanisms in America by researchers such as Melville J.
Herskovits has led to trivial and insignificant results. This
belief is reinforced by the example of the German concentration
camps. There, people from wide variety of social and educational
backgrounds reacted in highly similar ways. Apparently the
individual had been detached from his prior life, and his
reactions to the camp were shaped in standardized manner.
Similarly, it is argued, the slave was stripped of his heritage,
so that none of his African background could influence his life
in America. His personality and behavior were shaped exclusively
by the unique form of American slavery.

However, if we apply the experiences gained in the Chinese
prisoner-of-war camps during the Korean War, some doubts on
this point can be raised. While Americans from a wide variety of
social and educational backgrounds behaved with a marked
similarity to each other, thereby appearing to prove that their
previous experiences were irrelevant to their reactions to the camp,
there was, to the contrary, a significant difference between the
behavior the American and Turkish prisoners who had both been
fighting the Korean War. The morale of the American prisoners
was easily broken, and each one strove to look out for himself even
at expense of his comrade's life. In contrast, the Turks maintained
military discipline and group solidarity. This evidence would seem
indicate that, while individual differences were insignificant, cultural
differences did influence adjustment to the camp situation.

There are also grounds to believe that different value systems
influenced the way in which contrasting cultures adjusted to
slavery.  While the African made the adjustment successfully,
the American Indian, when he was enslaved, did not.  The African's
agricultural labor had contained many similarities to the work
required on the plantation, but the Indian, accustomed to a migratory
hunting existence, was totally unprepared for plantation slavery.
He found nothing in it to sustain his values or his will to live, and he
was unable to make the adjustment.

If the African's agricultural background helped his adaptation
to American slavery, then we must assume that his detachment
from his heritage was not complete. Perhaps, besides influencing
his life as a slave, his African background may have found its
way into other aspects of American society. However, it would
seem that because the African came to believe in his own
inferiority, there must have been very little conscious attempt
to keep his culture alive. Certainly, the recent Black Power
movement, which intended to revive pride in race and in the past,
bears eloquent testimony to the degree to which any conscious
link with the African past had been suppressed. Nevertheless,
mental and emotional habit can continue without any conscious
intention, and habits of this kind are important for the
formation of personality, Moreover, it is possible that the image
of "Sambo" as an exasperating child may tell as much about the
mentality of the white master who perpetuated the picture as it
does about the slave whom it depicted. Perhaps the picture of
the childlike slave is also a reverse image of the sober,
patronizing white master whose life was rooted in austerity. To
such a man spontaneity and exuberance might well have
seemed infantile.

The life of a slave did not give him much opportunity to create
artifacts which could later be catalogued as evidence of African
influence. However, he did create a unique music. While Negro
spirituals were not imported directly from Africa, they were more
than an attempt to copy the master's music. They represent
highly complex fusion of African and European music, of African
and European religion, and of African and European emotion.
Blues and jazz, which emerged at a later date, represent a
similar creative tension. They clearly evolve from the experience
of the African in America and include in them elements which can
be traced directly to Africa. Jazz is now viewed throughout the
world as American music. It demonstrates the fact that the
African immigrant was not totally detached from his heritage and
that he has made significant contributions to American culture.
While American slavery did violate the person of the slave, some
Africans, in the face of it all, managed to maintain some sense of
individuality and manhood.


Slave Response

Undoubtedly, the slave's most common response to his condition
was one of submission. There was no hope of his returning to
Africa, and there was no realistic expectation that the situation
would be significantly altered. The hopelessness of his plight
created a deep sense of apathy. However, even this acceptance of
his master's values may have reflected African influences. It was
common for a defeated tribe in West Africa to adopt the gods of
its victors within the framework of its own religion. This
attitude would have facilitated the African's adjustment to
slavery in an alien culture.

The majority of slaves worked in the fields on large plantations.
The majority of them were herded into large work gangs,
supervised by overseers, and carefully directed in the
accomplishment of whatever task was necessary for that day.
Others were regularly assigned to a specific task without
constant supervision and were held responsible for its
completion. In this way it was possible for them to develop some
sense of initiative. House slave were usually better off than
field hands, but, because they lived in such proximity to their
masters, they were much quicker to adopt the master's values and
tended to be more obsequious.

Another significant group of slaves, both on the plantation and
in the city, developed their talents and became skilled
craftsmen: barbers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and a wide variety
of other trades. Masters who could not fully utilize the skills
of such a craftsman rented their property to their neighbors. In
some cases, master permitted the slave to be responsible for
hiring himself out and allowed him to keep some of the profits.
The variety of experiences permitted within slavery allowed
significant variations in the types of slaves who emerged.

Even apparently submissive slaves developed techniques of passive
resistance. The laziness, stealing, lying, and faked illnesses,
which were usually attributed to the slave's childlike behavior,
may have been deliberate ways of opposing the system. Masters
complained that many of their slaves were chronic shirkers. When
slaves dragged their feet while working, it was seen as evidence
of their inferiority. When white union workers behave
similarly, it is labeled a slowdown.

Other slaves appear to have indulged in deliberate mischief,
trampling down crops, breaking tools, and abusing livestock.  A
southern physician, Dr. Cartwright, concluded that this behavior
was symptomatic of a mental disease peculiar to Africans. He
labeled the disease Dysaethesia Aethiopica and insisted that
masters were wrong in thinking that it was merely rascality.  He
also concluded that the slave's chronic tendency to run away was
in reality the symptom of yet another African disease,
Drapetomania, which he believed would eventually be medically
cured.

Finally, some slaves engaged in active resistance. Most of the
slave insurrections in America were very small, and most were
unsuccessful. The three best known insurrections were those led
by Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner. These revolts
will be treated more fully in the next chapter.

The masters consistently refused to see examples of passive or
active resistance as signs of manhood. Lying and stealing were
never interpreted as passive resistance, but were always
attributed to an inferior savage heritage, as was slave violence.
Prosser, Vesey, and Turner, instead of being numbered among the
world's heroes fighting for the freedom of their people, were
usually represented as something closer to savages, criminals,
or psychopaths. Modern historical scholarship has been influenced
by the interpretation of slave behavior, which stressed the
impact of the system on the slave, rather than his response to
it. Consequently, it has failed to give proper recognition to
African contributions to American life.



Chapter 4
All Men Are Created Equal



Slavery and the American Revolution

"How is it," asked Samuel Johnson, "that we hear the loudest
yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"  The British author
was only one of many Europeans who thought it strange that a nation
run by slave owners should be so noisily demanding its own freedom.
This same bitter inconsistency was embodied in the death of Crispus
Attucks.  A mulatto slave who had run away from his Massachusetts
master in 1750, he spent the next twenty years working as a seaman and
living in constant fear of capture and punishment.  In 1770, he, with
four others, was killed in the Boston Massacre.  Ironically, the first
man to die in the Colonial fight for freedom was both an Afro-American
and a runaway slave. His death became symbolic of what was to be an
underlying question in the years to come: "What place would there be
for the African in America once the colonies gained freedom from the
old world?"

The Quakers were the first group in America to attack slavery.
In his book Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, John
Woolman contended that no one had the right to own another human
being.  In 1758 the Philadelphia yearly meeting said that slavery was
inconsistent with Christianity, and in 1775 Quakers played a dominant
role in the formation of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of
Slavery, the first antislavery society in America.

As the colonists began to agitate for their own freedom, many of
them became increasingly aware of the contradiction involved in
slaveholders fighting for their own freedom.  "To contend for
liberty," John Jay wrote, "and to deny that blessing to others
involves an inconsistency not to be excused."  James Otis maintained
that the same arguments which were used to defend the rights of the
colonists against Britain could be used with at least equal force
against the colonists by their slaves.  "It is a clear truth," he
said, "that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will
soon care little for their own."

In the same vein, Abigail Adams wrote her husband: "It always
appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we
are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right
to freedom as we have."  Perhaps the most radical statement was made
by the Reverend Isaac Skillman in 1773.  Again, comparing the struggle
of the colonists with that of the slaves, he said that it was in
conformity with natural law that a slave could rebel against his
master.

In 1774 the Continental Congress did agree to a temporary
termination of the importation of Africans into the colonies, but, in
reality, this was a tactical blow against the British slave trade and
not an attack against slavery itself.  In an early draft of the
Declaration of Independence, the British king was attacked for his in
involvement in the slave trade, and he was charged with going against
human nature by violating the sacred rights of life and liberty.
However, this section was deleted.  Apparently, Southern delegates
feared that this condemnation of the monarch reflected on them as
well.

Although neither slavery nor the slave trade was mentioned in the
Declaration, it did maintain that all men were created equal and
endowed with the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This seeming ambivalence concerning the future of slavery on the part
of the Continental Congress left Samuel Johnson's ironic question
about American hypocrisy unanswered.  From a logical point of view,
the Declaration of Independence either affirmed the freedom of the
African immigrant, or it denied his humanity.  Because each state
continued almost as a separate sovereign entity, the Declaration of
Independence became a philosophical abstraction, and the status of the
African in America was determined independently by each.

Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, put teeth into
Johnson's bitter question.  In 1775 he offered to grant freedom to any
slave who ran away from his master and joined the British army.
Earlier that year, in spite of the fact that both slaves and free men
had served at Lexington and Concord, the colonists had shown an
increasing reluctance to have any blacks serving in their Army.  The
Council of War, under Washington's leadership, had unanimously
rejected the enlistment of slaves and, by a large majority, it had
opposed their recruitment altogether.  However, the eager response of
many slaves to Lord Dunmore's invitation gradually compelled the
colonists to reconsider their stand.  Although many colonists felt
that the use of slaves was inconsistent with the principles for which
the Army was fighting, all the colonies, with the exception of Georgia
and South Carolina, eventually recruited slaves as well as freedmen.
In most cases, slaves were granted their freedom at the end of their
military service.  During the war some five thousand blacks served in
the Continental Army with the vast majority coming from the North.

In contrast to later practice, during the Revolution the armed
services were largely integrated with only a few segregated units.
While the vast majority of Afro-American troops fighting in the
Revolutionary War will always remain anonymous, there were several who
achieved distinction and made their mark in history.  Both Prince
Whipple and Oliver Cromwell crossed the Delaware with Washington on
Christmas Day in 1776.  Lemuel Haynes, later a pastor of a white
church, served at the Battle of Ticonderoga.  According to many
reports, Peter Salem killed the British major, John Pitcairn, at the
Battle of Bunker Hill.

Gradually, the colonies were split into two sections by differing
attitudes towards slavery.  In 1780 the Pennsylvania Legislature
passed a law providing for the gradual abolition of slavery.  The
Preamble to the legislation argued that, considering that America had
gone to war for its own freedom, it should share that blessing with
those who were being subjected to a similar state of bondage in its
midst.  Three years later the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided that
slavery was contrary to that state's constitution and that it violated
the natural rights of man.  Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and
New York all passed laws providing for gradual emancipation.  Although
the liberal philosophy of the revolution did lead these states to end
slavery, most Northern citizens were not genuinely convinced that
natural law had conferred full equality on their Afro-American
neighbors.  Racial discrimination remained widespread.

At the same time, the Southern states which were dependent on
slavery for their economic prosperity showed little interest in
applying the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence to either
the slaves or the free blacks in their midst.  If anything, the
passage of stiffer black codes increased the rights of the masters
while diminishing those of slaves and freedmen.  Some Southern states
had qualms about the advisability of continuing the slave trade, but
this did not mean that they had doubts about the value of slavery.
Rather, the number of slave insurrections which swept through South
America, highlighted by the bloody revolt in Haiti, led them to fear
possible uprisings at home.  They had always been cautious about
bringing unbroken slaves directly from Africa, and now they were also
afraid to import unruly slaves from South America.

In 1783 Maryland passed a law prohibiting the importation of
slaves, and in 1786 North Carolina drastically increased the duty on
the importation of slaves, thereby severely reducing the flow.  The
Federal Government finally took action to terminate the slave trade in
1807, but a vigorous, illegal trade continued until the Civil War.
The first sectional conflict over slavery had taken place at the
Constitutional Convention.  Those Northerners who had hoped to see
slavery abolished by this new constitution were quick to realize that
such a document would never be approved by the South.  Most of the
antislavery forces concluded that it was necessary to put the Union
above abolition.

While the Constitution did not specifically mention slavery, it
did legally recognize the institution in three places.  First, there
was a heated debate over the means of calculating representation to
the House.  Southern spokesmen wanted as many delegates as possible
and preferred that slaves be counted.  Northerners, wanting to
restrict Southern representation, insisted that slaves not be counted.
Some of them pointed out that it was an insult to whites to be put on
an equal footing with slaves.  The compromise which was framed in
Article I, Section 2, was that a slave should be counted as
three-fifths of a man.

Second, the antislavery elements tried to make their stand at the
convention by attacking the slave trade.  However, while many Southern
states were opposed to the trade, the issue became entangled in power
politics.  South Carolina, which had few slaves, believed that the
termination of the slave trade would force up the price of slaves and
place her at a severe disadvantage in comparison with Virginia which
already had a large slave supply.  It argued that Virginia would be
artificially enriched to the disadvantage of the other Southern
states.  The states of the North and middle South were again forced to
compromise, and, in Article II, Section 9, they agreed that the trade
would be permitted to continue for another twenty years.

The third capitulation occurred in Article IV, Section 2, which
as the Fugitive Slave Provision.  It stated that a slave who ran away
and reached a free state, did not thereby obtain his freedom.
Instead, that state was required, at the master's request, to seize
and return him.

In fact, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were
afraid that the revolutionary ideology of freedom and equality had
unwisely and unintentionally unleashed a social revolution.  Southern
planters envisioned the end of slavery on which their wealth was
based.  Northern capitalists were opposed to the liberal and
democratic land laws which the people were demanding.  The economic
leaders in both sections of the country believed that there was a need
to protect property rights against these new revolutionary human
rights.  While the Northern states strove to stabilize society in
order to build a flourishing commerce, the Southern states tightened
their control over their slaves fearing that insurrections from South
America or ideas about freedom and equality from the American
Revolution itself might inspire a serious slave rebellion.


Slave Insurrections

From the time that the first African was captured until the
completion of Emancipation, slaves struck out against the institution
in one way or another.  Herbert Aptheker has recorded over hundred
insurrections.  Although most slave revolts in America were small and
ineffective, there were three in particular which chilled Southern
hearts.  These were led by Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat
Turner and occurred within the short span between 1800 and 1831.
Toussaint l'Ouverture in Haiti had previously demonstrated that slaves
could be victorious over large European armies, and the American
colonists had taught by their example in the American Revolution that
violence in the service of freedom was justifiable.  The gradual
abolition of slavery which was occurring in the Northern states gave
hope that the institution in America might be terminated altogether.
However, the slaves saw little reason to believe that their Southern
masters would follow the example of the Northerners in abolishing
slavery.  Many of the slaves came to accept that if the institution
was to be destroyed, it would have to be done by the slaves
themselves.

In August, 1800, Gabriel Prosser led a slave attack on Richmond,
Virginia.  During several months of careful planning and organizing,
the insurrectionists had gathered clubs, swords, and other crude
weapons.  The intention was to divide into three columns: one to
attack the penitentiary which was being used as an arsenal, another to
capture the powder house, and a third to attack the city itself.  If
the citizens would not surrender, the rebels planned to kill all of
the whites with the exception of Quakers, Methodists, and Frenchman.
Apparently, Prosser and his followers shared a deep distrust of most
white men. When they had gathered a large supply of guns and powder,
and taken over the state's treasury, the rebels calculated, they would
be able to hold out for several weeks.  What they hoped for was that
slaves from the surrounding territory would join them and, eventually,
that the uprising would reach such proportions as to compel the whites
to come to terms with them.

Unfortunately for the plotters, on the day of the insurrection a
severe storm struck Virginia, wiping out roads and bridges.  This
forced a delay of several days.  In the meantime, two slaves betrayed
the plot, and the government took swift action.  Thirty-five of the
participants, including Prosser, were executed.  As the leaders
refused to divulge any details of their plans, the exact number
involved in the plot remains unknown.  However, rumor had it that
somewhere between two thousand and fifty thousand slaves were
connected with the conspiracy.  During