The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862

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Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach of tide, a boom checks
the march of this formidable body. The owners step forward and claim
their slicks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses and a
dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse
pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip.
Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The
logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen
junket. So ends the log-book.

"Maine," said our host, the Damster of Umbagog, "was made for
lumbering-work. We never could have got the trees out, without these
lakes and dams."

[To be continued.]

TO WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM,

AFTER SEEING TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIM.

The trumpet, now on every gale,
For triumph or in funeral-wail,
One lesson bloweth loud and clear
Above war's clangor to my ear.

The blood that flows in bounding veins,
The blood that ebbs with lingering pains,
Springs living from the self-same heart:
Courage and patience act one part.

Doers and sufferers of God's will
Tread in each other's footprints still;
Soldier or saint hath equal mind,
When vows of truth the spirit bind.

Two portraits light my chamber-wall,
Hero and martyr to recall;
Lines of a single face they keep,
To make beholders glow or weep.

With gleaming hilt, girt for the fray
Freedom demands, he cannot stay:
Forward his motion, keen his glance:
'Tis victory painted in a trance.

But, lo! he turns, he folds his hands;
With farther, softening gaze he stands;
His sword is hidden from his eyes;
His head is bent for sacrifice.

Through looks that match each varied thought
Of holy work or offering brought,
Upon the sunbeam's shifting scroll
Shines out alike the steady soul.

Young leader! quick to win a name
Coeval with thy country's fame,
For either fortune thou wast born,--
The crown of laurel or of thorn.

THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO.

CHAPTER III.

CARIB SLAVES--INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES--LAS CASAS--DECAY OF SAN
DOMINGO.

Among the natives captured by the Spaniards in the neighboring islands
and upon the Terra Firma, as the South-American coast was
called,--were numerous representatives of Carib tribes, who had been
released by Papal dispensation from the difficulties and anxieties of
freedom in consequence of their reputation for cannibalism. This
vicious taste was held to absolve the Spaniards from all the
considerations of policy and mercy which the Dominicans pressed upon
them in the case of the more graceful and amiable Haitians. But we do
not find that Las Casas himself made any exception of them in his
pleadings for the Indians;[1] for, though he does not mention
cannibalism in the list of imputed crimes which the Spaniards held as
justification in making war upon the natives to enslave them, he
vindicates them from other charges, such as that of sacrificing
infants to their idols. The Spaniards were touched with compassion at
seeing so many innocent beings perish before arriving at years of
discretion, and without having received baptism. They argued that such
a practice, which was worse than a crime, because it was a theological
blunder, could not be carried on in a state of slavery. "This style
of reasoning," says Las Casas, "proves absolutely nothing; for God
knows better than men what ought to be the future destiny of children
who die in the immense countries where the Christian religion is
unknown. His mercy is infinitely greater than the collective charity
of mankind; and in the interim He permits things to follow their
ordinary course, without charging anybody to interfere and prevent
their consequences by means of war."[2]

The first possessors of Hayti were startled at the multitude of human
bones which were found in some of the caverns of the island, for they
were considered as confirming the reports of cannibalism which had
reached them. These ossuaries were accidental; perhaps natives seeking
shelter from the hurricane or earthquake were overwhelmed in these
retreats, or blocked up and left to perish. We have no reason to
believe that the caves had been used for centuries. And even the
Caribs did not keep the bones which they picked, to rise up in
judgment against them at last, clattering indictments of the number of
their feasts. Nor do they seem to have shared the taste of the old
Scandinavian and the modern Georgian or Alabamian, who have been known
to turn drinking-cups and carve ornaments out of the skeletons of
their enemies.

But they liked the taste of human flesh. The difference between them
and the Spaniard was merely that the latter devoured men's flesh in
the shape of cotton, sugar, gold. And the native discrimination was
not altogether unpraiseworthy, if the later French missionaries can be
exonerated from national prejudice, when they declare that the Caribs
said Spaniards were meagre and indigestible, while a Frenchman made a
succulent and peptic meal. But if he was a person of a religious
habit, priest or monk, woe to the incautious Carib who might dine upon
him! a mistake in the article of mushrooms were not more fatal. Du
Tertre relates that a French priest was killed and smoke-dried by the
Caribs, and then devoured with satisfaction. But many who dined upon
the unfortunate man, whom the Church had ordained to feed her sheep
less literally, died suddenly: others were afflicted with
extraordinary diseases. Afterwards they avoided Christians as an
article of food, being content with slaying them as often as possible,
but leaving them untouched.

The Caribs were very impracticable in a state of slavery. Their
stubborn and rigid nature could not become accommodated to a routine
of labor. They fled to the mountains, and began marooning;[3] but they
carried with them the scar of the hot iron upon the thigh, which
labelled them as natives in a state of war, and therefore reclaimable
as slaves. The Dominicans made a vain attempt to limit this branding
to the few genuine Caribs who were reduced to slavery; but the custom
was universal of marking Indians to compel them to pass for Caribs,
after which they were sold and transferred with avidity, the
authorities having no power to enforce the legal discrimination. The
very existence of this custom offered a premium to cruelty, by
furnishing the colonists with a technical permission to enslave.

But the supply could not keep up with the insatiable demand. The great
expeditions which were organized to sweep the Terra Firma and the
adjacent islands of their population found the warlike Caribs
difficult to procure.[4] The supply of laborers was failing just at
the period when the colonists began to see that the gold of Hayti was
scattered broadcast through her fertile soil, which became transmuted
into crops at the touch of the spade and hoe. Plantations of cacao,
ginger, cotton, indigo, and tobacco were established; and in 1506 the
sugar-cane, which was not indigenous, as some have affirmed, was
introduced from the Canaries. Vellosa, a physician in the town of San
Domingo, was the first to cultivate it on a large scale, and to
express the juice by means of the cylinder-mill, which he invented.[5]
The Government, seeing the advantages to be derived from this single
article, offered to lend five hundred gold piastres to every colonist
who would fit up a sugar-plantation. Thus stimulated, the cultivation
of the cane throve so, that as early as 1518 the island possessed
forty sugar-works with mills worked by horse-power or water. But the
plantations were less merciful to the Indians than the mines, and in
1503 there began to be a scarcity of human labor.

At this date we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the
colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early
in the fifteenth century. "Ortiz de Zunigo, as Humboldt reports, with
his usual exactness, says distinctly that 'blacks had been already
brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,' consequently
before 1406. 'The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western
coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five
years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his
series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'"[6]

But the practice of buying and selling slaves in Europe can be traced
as far back as the tenth century, when fairs were established in all
the great cities. Prisoners of war, representing different nations at
different times, according to the direction which the love of piracy
and conquest took, were exposed at those great periodical sales of
merchandise to the buyers who flocked from every land. The Northern
cities around the Baltic have the distinction of displaying these
human goods quite as early as Venice or any commercial centre of the
South: the municipal privileges and freedom of those famous cities
were thus nourished partly by a traffic in mankind, for whose sake
privilege and right are alone worth having. Seven thousand Danish
slaves were exposed at one fair held in the city of Mecklenburg at the
end of the twelfth century. They had the liberty of being ransomed,
but only distinguished captives could be saved in that way from being
sold. The price ranged from one to three marks. It is difficult to
tell from this how valuable a man was considered, for the relation of
the mark to other merchandise, or, in other words, the value of the
currency, cannot be represented by modern sums, which are only
technically equivalent,--as a mark, for instance, was then held equal
to eight ounces of silver.[7] That was not exorbitant, however, for
those times, and shows that men were frequently exposed for sale. The
merchants of Bristol used to sell a great many captives into Ireland;
but it is recorded that the Irish were the first Christian people who
agreed at length to put a stop to this traffic by refusing to have any
more captives brought into their country. The Church had long before
forbidden it; and there are no grounds for supposing that any other
motive than humanity induced the Irish people to show this superiority
to the conventions of the age.[8]

From the essay by Schoelcher, entitled "The Slave-Trade and its
Origin," which has been prepared with considerable research, we gather
that the first negroes seen in Portugal were carried there in
1441. Antonio Gonzales was the name of the man who first excited his
countrymen by offering for sale this human booty which he had
seized. All classes of people felt a mania like that which turns the
tides of emigration to Australia and California. Nothing was desired
but the means of equipping vessels for the coast of Guinea. Previously
to this a few Guanches from the Canaries had been exposed for sale in
the markets of Lisbon and Seville, and there were many Moorish slaves
in Spain, taken in the wars which preceded the expulsion of that
nation. But now there was a rapid accumulation of this species of
property, fed by the inexhaustible soil of Africa, whence so many
millions of men have been reaped and ploughed into the soils of other
lands.

In 1443, an expedition of six caravels, commanded by a gentleman of
the Portuguese court, went down the coast on one of these ventures,
ostensibly geographical, but really mercenary, which then excited the
popular enterprise. It managed to attack some island and to make a
great number of prisoners. The same year a citizen of Lisbon fitted
out a vessel at his own expense, went beyond the Senegal, where he
seized a great many natives, discovered Cape Verde, and was driven
back to Lisbon by a storm.

Prince Henry built the fort of Mina upon the Gold Coast, and made it a
depot for articles of Spanish use, which he bartered for slaves. He
introduced there, and upon the island of Arguin, near Cape Blanco, the
cultivation of corn and sugar; the whole coast was formally occupied
by the Portuguese, whose king took the title of Lord of Guinea. Sugar
went successively to Spain, Madeira, the Azores, and the West Indies,
in the company of negro slaves. It was carried to Hayti just as the
colonists discovered that negroes were unfit for mining. Charlevoix
says that the magnificent palaces of Madrid and Toledo, the work of
Charles V., were entirely built by the revenue from the entry-tax on
sugar from Hayti.

At first, all prisoners taken in war, or in attacks deliberately made
to bring on fighting, were sold, whatever their nation or color. This
was due to the Catholic theory that all unbaptized people were
infidels. But gradually the same religious influence, moved by some
scruples of humanity, made a distinction between negroes and all other
people, allowing only the former to become objects of traffic, because
they were black as well as heathen. Thus early did physiology come to
the aid of religion, notifying the Church of certain physical
peculiarities which seemed to be the trade-marks of the Creator, and
perpetual guaranties, like the color of woods, the odor of gums, the
breadth and bone of draught-cattle, of their availability for the
market. What renown has graced the names of Portuguese adventurers,
and how illustrious does this epoch of the little country's life
appear in history! Rivers, bays, and stormy headlands, long reaches of
gold coast and ivory coast, and countries of palm-oil, and strange
interiors stocked with new forms of existence, and the great route to
India itself, became the charter to a brilliant fame of this mercenary
heroism. Man went as far as he was impelled to go. While the stimulus
continued, and the outlay was more than equalled by the income and the
glory, unexplored regions yielded up their secrets, and the Continent
of Africa was established by this insignificant nation to be for
centuries the vast slave-nursery of the world.

When the habit of selling men began to be restricted to the selling of
negroes, companies were formed to organize this business and to have
it carried on with economy. The Portuguese had a monopoly of the trade
for a long time. They went up and down the African coast, picking
quarrels with the natives when the latter did not quarrel enough among
themselves to create a suitable supply of captives. Slaves were in
great demand in Spain, and quite numerous at Seville. The percentage
which the Portuguese exacted induced the Spaniards at length to enter
into the traffic, which they did, according to Zunigo, in 1474.

At that time negroes were confined, like Jews, to a particular quarter
of a Spanish city. They had their places of worship, their own
regulations and police. "A _Cedula_ [order] of November 8, 1474,
appoints a negro named Juan de Valladolid mayoral of the blacks and
mulattoes, free and slaves, in Seville. He had authority to decide in
quarrels and regular processes of law, and also to legalize marriages,
because, says the _Cedula_, 'it is within our knowledge that you
are acquainted with the laws and ordinances.' He became so famous that
people called him _El Conde Negro_, The Black Count, and his name
was bestowed upon one of the streets of the negro quarter."

Thus men were born in Europe into a condition of slavery before
1500. In that year the introduction of negroes into Hayti was
authorized, provided they were born in Spain in the houses of
Christian masters. Negroes who had been bred in Morisco[9] families
were not allowed to be carried thither, from a well-grounded fear that
the Moorish hatred had sunk too deeply into a kindred blood.

A great many slaves were immediately transported to Hayti; for in
1503, "Ovando, the Governor-General of the Indies, who had received
the instructions of 1500, asked the court 'not to send any more
negroes to Espanola, because they often escaped to the Indians, taught
them bad habits, and could never be retaken.'"

Schoelcher seems to think that these first slaves were so difficult to
manage because they had been reared in a civilized country; and he
notices that Cardinal Ximenes, who was well acquainted with the
Spanish negro, constantly refused to authorize a direct slave-trade
with Hayti, because it would introduce into the colony so many
enterprising and prolific people, who would revolt when they became
too numerous, and bring the Spaniards themselves under the yoke. This
was an early presentiment of the fortune of Hayti, but it was not
justly derived from an acquaintance with the Spanish-bred negro alone;
for the negroes who were afterwards transported to the colony directly
from Africa had the same unaccommodating temper, which frequently
disconcerted the Cardinal's theory that an African should be born and
bred in a Christian city to render him unfit for slavery. This
unclerical native prejudice against working for white men is so
universal, and has been so consistently maintained for three hundred
years, as to present a queer contradiction to those divine marks which
set him apart for that condition. The Cardinal attributed, in fact, to
intercourse with the spirit of his countrymen that disposition of the
negro which seems to be derived from intercourse with the spirit of
his Creator.

No sooner did the negro enter the climate of Hayti, and feel that more
truculent and desolating one of the Spanish temper, than he began to
revolt, to take to the mountains, to defend his life, to organize
leagues with Caribs and other natives. The colonists were often slain
in conflicts with them. The first negro insurrection in Hayti occurred
in November, 1522. It began with twenty Jolof negroes belonging to
Diego Columbus; others joined them; they slew and burned as they went,
took negroes and Indians along with them, robbed the houses, and were
falling back upon the mountains with the intent to hold them
permanently against the colony. Oviedo is enthusiastic over the action
of two Spanish cavaliers, who charged the blacks lance in rest, went
through them several times with a handful of followers, and broke up
their menacing attitude. They were then easily hunted down, and in six
or seven days most of them were hanging to the trees as warnings. The
rest delivered themselves up. In 1551, Charles V. forbade negroes,
both free and slave, from carrying any kind of weapon. It was
necessary subsequently to renew this ordinance, because the slaves
continued to be as dexterous with the _machete_ or the sabre as
with the hoe.

Humboldt and others have alluded to a striking prediction made by
Girolamo Benzoni, an Italian traveller who visited the islands and
Terra Firma early in the sixteenth century, and witnessed the
condition and temper of the blacks. It is of the clearest kind. He
says,[10] after speaking of marooning in Hayti,--_"Vi sono molti
Spagnuoli che tengono per cosa certa che quest' Isola in breve tempo
sara posseduta da questi Mori. Et per tanto gli governatori tengono
grandissima vigilanza"_ etc.: "There are many Spaniards who hold it
for certain that in a brief time this island will fall into the hands
of the Africans. On this account the governors use the greatest
vigilance." He goes on to remark the fewness of the Spaniards, and
afterwards gives his own opinion to confirm the Spanish anticipation.
Nothing postponed the fulfilment of this natural expectation till the
close of the eighteenth century, but the sudden decay into which the
island fell under Spanish rule, when it became no longer an object to
import the blacks. Many Spaniards left the island before 1550, from
an apprehension that the negroes would destroy the colony. Some
authorities even place the number of Spaniards remaining at that time
as low as eleven hundred.

The common opinion that Las Casas asked permission for the colonists
to draw negroes from Africa, in order to assuage the sufferings of the
Indians, does not appear to be well-founded. For negroes were drawn
from Guinea as early as 1511, and his proposition was made in 1517.
The Spaniards were already introducing these substitutes for the
native labor, regardless of the ordinance which restricted the
possession of negroes in Hayti to those born in Spain. It is not
improbable that Las Casas desired to regulate a traffic which had
already commenced, by inducing the Government to countenance it. His
object was undoubtedly to make it easier for the colonists to procure
the blacks; but it must have occurred to him that his plan would
diminish, as far as possible, the miseries of an irregular transfer of
the unfortunate men from Africa. (See Bridge's _Jamaica, Appendix,
Historical Notes on Slavery._ The Spaniards had even less scruple
about their treatment of the negroes than of the Indians, alleging in
justification that their own countrymen sold them to the traders on
the Guinea coast!)

The horrors of a middle passage in those days of small vessels and
tedious voyages would have been great, if the number of slaves to be
transported had not been limited by law. There is no direct evidence,
however, that Las Casas made his proposition out of any regard for the
negro. Charles V. resolved to allow a thousand negroes to each of the
four islands, Hayti, Ferdinanda, Cuba, and Jamaica. The privilege of
importing them was bestowed upon one of his Flemish favorites; but he
soon sold it to some Genoese merchants, who held each negro at such a
high price that only the wealthiest colonists could procure
them. Herrera regrets that in this way the prudent calculation of Las
Casas was defeated.

This was the first license to trade in slaves. It limited the number
to four thousand, but it was a fatal precedent, which was followed by
French, Spanish, and Dutch, long after the decay of the Spanish part
of Hayti, till all the islands, and many parts of Central America,
were filled with negroes.

It is pleasanter to dwell upon those points in which the brave and
humane Las Casas surpassed his age, and prophesied against it, than
upon those which he held in common with it, as he acquiesced in its
instinctive life. At first it seems unaccountable that the argument
which he framed with such jealous care to protect his Indians and
recommend them to the mercy of Government was not felt by him to apply
to the negroes with equal force. Slavery uses the same pretexts in
every age and against whatsoever race it wishes to oppress. The
Indians were represented by the colonists as predestined by their
natural dispositions, and by their virtues as well as by their vices,
to be held in tutelage by a superior race: their vices were excuses
for colonial cruelty, their virtues made it worth while to keep the
cruelty in vigorous exercise. In refuting this interested party, Las
Casa anticipates the spirit and reasoning of later time. He was the
first to utter anti-slavery principles in the Western hemisphere. We
have improved upon his knowledge, but have not advanced beyond his
essential spirit, for equity and iniquity always have the same leading
points to make through their advocates. When we see that such a man
as Las Casas was unconscious of the breadth of his own philanthropy,
we wonder less at the liability of noble men to admit some average
folly of their age. This is the ridiculous and astonishing feature of
their costume, the exceptional bad taste which their spiritual
posterity learn to disavow.

The memory of Las Casas ought to be cherished by every true democrat
of these later times, for he announced, in his quality of Protector of
the Indian, the principles which protect the rights of all men against
oppressive authority. He was eager to convince a despotic court that
it had no legal or spiritual right to enslave Indians, or to deprive
them of their goods and territory. In framing his argument, he applied
doctrines of the universal liberty of men, which are fatal to courts
themselves; for they transfer authority to the people, who have the
best of reasons for desiring to be governed well. It is astonishing
that the republicanism of Las Casas has not been more carefully noted
and admired; for his writings show plainly, without forced
construction or after-thought of the enlightened reader, that he was
in advance of Spain and Europe as far as the American theory itself
is. Our Declaration of the Rights of Man shows nothing which the first
Western Abolitionist had not proclaimed in the councils and
conferences of Seville.

It is worth while to show this as fully as the purpose of this article
will admit. One would expect to find that he counselled kings to
administer their government with equal regard to the little and the
great, the poor and the rich, the powerful and the miserable; for this
the Catholic Church has always done, and has held a lofty theory
before earthly thrones, not-withstanding its own ambitious
derelictions. But Las Casas tells the Supreme Council of the Indies
that no charge, no servitude, no labor can be imposed upon a people
without its previous and voluntary consent; for man shares, by his
origin, in the common liberty of all beings, so that every
subordination of men to princes, and every burden imposed upon
material things, should be inaugurated by a voluntary pact between the
governing and the governed; the election of kings, princes, and
magistrates, and the authority with which they are invested to rule
and to tax, anciently owed their origin to a free determination of
people who desired to establish thereby their own happiness; the free
will of the nation is the only efficient cause, the only immediate
principle and veritable source of the power of kings, and therefore
the transmission of such power is only a representative act of a
nation giving free expression to its own opinion. For a nation would
not have recourse to such a form of government, except in accordance
with its human instinct, to secure the advantage of all; nor does it,
in thus delegating power, renounce its liberty, or have the intention
of submitting to the domination of another, or of conceding his right
to impose burdens and contributions without the consent of those who
have to bear them, or to command anything that is contrary to the
general interest. When a nation thus delegates a portion of its power
to the sovereign, it is not done by subscribing any written contract
or transaction, because primitive right presides, and there are
natural reserves not expressed by men, such as that of preserving
intact their individual independence, that of their property, and the
right of never submitting to a privation of good or an establishment
of taxes without a previous consent. People existed before kings and
magistrates. Then they were free, and governed themselves according to
their untrammelled intent. In process of time people make kings, but
the good of the people is the final cause of their existence. Men do
not make kings to be rendered miserable by their rule, but to derive
from them all the good possible. Liberty is the greatest good which a
people can enjoy: its rights are violated every time that a king,
without consulting his people, decrees that which wounds the general
interest; for, as the intention of subjects was not to grant a prince
the ability to injure, all such acts ought to be considered unjust and
altogether null. "Liberty is inalienable, and its price is above that
of all the goods of this world."[11]

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