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

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Las Casas follows the fashion of his time in resting all his glorious
axioms upon the authority of men and councils. He quotes Aristotle,
Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, the different Popes, the Canons, and the
Scriptures; but it is astonishing to find how democratic they all are
to the enthusiastic Bishop, or rather, how the best minds of all ages
have admitted the immutable principles of human nature into their
theology and metaphysics. When will the Catholic Church, which has
nourished and protected so many noble spirits, express in her average
sentiment and policy their generous interpretations of her religion,
and their imputations to her of being an embodiment of the universal
religion of mankind?

Men complained of Las Casas for being severe and unsparing in his
speech. In this respect, of calling the vices and enormities of
Slavery by their simple names, and of fastening the guilt of special
transactions not vaguely upon human nature, but directly upon the
perpetrators who disgraced the nature which they shared, he also
anticipated the privilege and ill-repute of American Abolitionists. He
told what he saw, or what was guarantied to him by competent
witnesses. His cheek grew red when it was smitten by some fierce
outrage upon humanity, and men could plainly read the marks which it
left there. Nor did they easily fade away; he held his branded cheek
in the full view of men, that they might be compelled to interpret the
disgrace to which they were so indifferent. Men dislike to hear the
outcries of a sensitive spirit, and dread to have their heathenism
called by Christian names. How much better it would be, they think, if
philanthropy never made an attack upon the representatives of cruelty!
they would soon become converted, if they were politely let alone. No
doubt, all that the supporters of any tyranny desire is to be let
alone. They delight in abstract delineations of the vices of their
system, which flourishes and develops while moral indignation is
struggling to avoid attacking it where only it is dangerous, in the
persons of its advocates. If there were nothing but metaphysical
wickedness in the world, how effective it would be never to allude to
a wicked man! If Slavery itself were the pale, thin ghost of an
abstraction, how bloodless this war would be! Fine words, genteel
deprecation, and magnanimous generality are the tricks of
villany. Indignant Mercy works with other tools; she leaps with the
directness of lightning, and the same unsparing sincerity, to the spot
to which she is attracted. What rogue ever felt the clutch of a stern
phrase at his throat, with a good opinion of it? Shall we throttle the
rascal in broad day, or grope in the dark after the impersonal weasand
of his crime?

And those amiable people who think to regenerate the world by
radiating amenity are the choice accomplices of the villains. They
keep everything quiet, hush up incipient disturbances, and mislead the
police. No Pharisee shall be called a Devil's child, if they can help
it: they say "Fie!" to the scourge of knotted cord in the temple, or
eagerly explain that it was used only upon the cattle, who cannot, of
course, rebel. "These people who give the fine name of prudence to
their timidity, and whose discretion is always favorable to
injustice!"[12]

"I have decided to write this history," says Las Casas, in his "Memoir
upon the Cruelty of the Spaniards," "by the advice of many pious and
God-fearing persons, who think that its publication will cause a
desire to spring up in many Christian hearts to bring a prompt remedy
to these evils, as enormous as they are multiplied." He designates
the guilty governors, captains, courtiers, and connects them directly
with their crimes. He does not say that they were gentlemen or
Christians: "these brigands," "executioners," "barbarians," are his
more appropriate phrases. If he had addressed them as gentlemen, the
terrible scenes would have instantly ceased, and the system of
_Repartimientos_ would have been abandoned by men who were only
waiting to be converted by politeness! He calls that plan of
allotting the natives, and reducing them to Spanish overseership,
"atrocious." Yet for some time it was technically legal: it was
equivalent to what we call constitutional. So that it was by no means
so bad as the anarchical attack which Las Casas made upon it! He tells
where an infamous overseer was still living in Spain,--or at least, he
says, "his family was living in Seville when I last heard about him."
What a disgraceful attack upon an individual! how it must have hurt
the feelings of a respectable family!--"How malignant!" cried the
_hidalgos_; "How coarse!" the women; and "How ill-judged!" the
clergy. He speaks of Cortes with contempt: why should he not? for he
was only the burglar of a kingdom. But we read these sincere pages of
Las Casas with satisfaction. The polished contemporaries of
Abolitionists turn over the pages of antique denunciation, and their
lymph really quickens in their veins as they read the prophetic
vehemence of an Isaiah, the personality of a Nathan, the unmeasured
vernacular of Luther, the satire and invective of all good upbraiders
of past generations, until they reach their own, which yet waits for a
future generation to make scripture and history of its speech and
deeds. Time is the genial critic that effaces the contemporary glosses
of interested men. It rots away the ugly scaffolding up which the bold
words climbed, and men see the beautiful and tenacious arch which only
genius is daring enough and capable to build. It is delightful to
walk across the solid structure, with gratitude and taste in a
glow. We love to read indictments of an exploded crime which we have
learned to despise, or which we are committing in a novel form.

Charlevoix takes up this complaint of the imprudence of Las Casas,
and, to illustrate it, thinks that he could not have anticipated the
bad effects of the publication of his "Memoir upon the Cruelty of the
Spaniards," for it appeared during the war with the revolted
Netherlands, and was translated into Dutch by a Frenchman. "Nothing,"
he says, "so animated those people to persist in their rebellion, as
the fear, that, if they entered into any accommodation with Spain,
they would be served as the natives had been in the American
Provinces, who were never so badly oppressed as when they felt most
secure upon the faith of a treaty or convention." If the book of Las
Casas really lent courage and motive to that noble resistance, as it
undoubtedly did by confirming the mistrust of Spanish rule in the Low
Countries, the honorable distinction should be preserved by history.

While a bad institution is still vigorous and aggressive, the divine
rage of conscientious men is not so exhilarating. A different style of
thought, like that which prevailed among the French missionaries to
the Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is more
acceptable to colonial susceptibility. A South-side religion is a
favorable exposure for delicate and precarious products like indigo,
sugar, coffee, and cotton. Las Casas had not learned to wield his
enthusiastic pen in defence of the negro; but when the islands became
well stocked with slaves, later Catholics eagerly reproduced the
arguments of the Spanish _encomiendas_, and vindicated afresh the
providential character of Slavery. "I acknowledge," says one, "and
adore with all humility the profound and inconceivable secrets of God;
for I do not know what the unfortunate nation has committed to deserve
that this particular and hereditary curse of servitude should be
attached to them, as well as ugliness and blackness." "It is truly
with these unfortunates that the poet's saying is verified,--

"'Dimidium mentis Jupiter illis aufert,'--

"as I have remarked a thousand times that God deprives slaves of half
their judgment, lest, recognizing their miserable condition, they
should be thrown into despair. For though they are very adroit in many
things which they do, they are so stupid that they have no more sense
of being enslaved than if they had never enjoyed liberty. Every land
becomes their country, provided they find enough to eat and drink,
which is very different from the state of mind of the daughters of
Zion, who cried, on finding themselves in a foreign country,--
'_Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena?_'"[13]

Another missionary, in describing his method of administering baptism,
says: "After the customary words, I add, 'And thee, accursed spirit, I
forbid in the name of Jesus Christ ever to dare to violate this sacred
sign which I have just made upon the forehead of this creature, whom
He has bought with His blood.' The negro, who comprehends nothing of
what I say or do, makes great eyes at me, and appears confounded; but
to reassure him, I address to him through an interpreter these words
of the Saviour to St. Peter: 'What I do thou knowest not now; but thou
shalt know hereafter.'"

He complains that they do not appear to value the mystery of the
Trinity as a necessary means of salvation: the negro does not
understand what he is made to repeat, any more than a parrot. And here
the knowledge of the most able theologian will go a very little
ways. "Still, a missionary ought to think twice before leaving a man,
of whatever kind, to perish without baptism; and if he has scruples
upon this point, these words of the Psalmist will reassure his mind:
'_Homines et jumenta salvabis, Domine_': 'Thou, Lord, shall save both
man and cattle!'"[14]

Father Labat is scandalized because the English planters refused to
have their slaves baptized. Their clergymen told him, in excuse, that
it was unworthy of a Christian to hold in slavery his brother in
Christ. "But may we not say that it is still more unworthy of a
Christian not to procure for souls bought by the blood of Jesus Christ
the knowledge of a God to whom they are responsible for all that they
do?" This idea, that the negroes had been first bought by Christ, must
have been consoling and authoritative to a planter. The missionary has
not advanced upon the Spanish theory, that baptism introduced the
natives into a higher life.[15] "However," says Labat, "this notion of
the English does not affect them, whenever they can get hold of our
negroes. They know very well that they are Christians, they cannot
doubt that they have been made by baptism their brothers in Christ,
yet that does not prevent them from holding them in slavery, and
treating them like those whom they do not regard as their
brothers."[16] This English antipathy to baptizing slaves, for fear of
recognizing them as men by virtue of that rite, appears to have
existed in the early days of the North-American Colonies. Bishop
Berkeley, in his "Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our
Foreign Plantations," etc., alludes to the little interest which was
shown in the conversion of negroes, "who, to the infamy of England and
scandal of the world, continue heathen under Christian masters and in
Christian countries; which could never be, if our planters were
rightly instructed and made sensible that they disappointed their own
baptism by denying it to those who belong to them." This receives an
explanation in a sermon preached by the Bishop in London, where he
speaks of the irrational contempt felt for the blacks in the
Plantation of Rhode Island, "as creatures of another species, who had
no right to be instructed or admitted to the sacraments. To this may
be added an erroneous notion that the being baptized is inconsistent
with a state of slavery. To undeceive them in this particular, which
had too much weight, it seemed a proper step, if the opinion of his
Majesty's attorney and solicitor-general could be procured. This
opinion they charitably sent over, signed with their own hands; which
was accordingly printed in Rhode Island, and dispersed throughout the
Plantation. I heartily wish it may produce the intended effect."[17]

In a speech upon West-Indian affairs, which Lord Brougham delivered in
the House of Commons in 1823, there is some account of the religious
instruction of the slaves as conducted by the curates. He alludes in
particular to the testimony of a worthy curate, who stated that he had
been twenty or thirty years among the negroes, "and that no single
instance of conversion to Christianity had taken place during that
time,--all his efforts to gain new proselytes among the negroes had
been in vain; all of a sudden, however, light had broken in upon their
darkness so suddenly that between five and six thousand negroes had
been baptized in a few days. I confess I was at first much surprised
at this statement. I knew not how to comprehend it; but all of a
sudden light broke in upon my darkness also. I found that there was a
clue to this most surprising story, and that these wonderful
conversions were brought about, not by a miracle, as the good man
seems himself to have really imagined, and would almost make us
believe, but by a premium of a dollar a head paid to this worthy
curate for each slave that he baptized!"

We return to Las Casas once more, to state precisely his complicity in
the introduction of the race whose sorrows have been so fearfully
avenged by Nature in every part of the New World. Many of the writers
who have treated of these transactions, as Robertson, for instance,
have accused Las Casas, on the strength of a passage in Herrera, of
having originated the idea that the blacks could be profitably
substituted for the Indians. It is supposed, that, in his eagerness to
save the Indians from destruction, he sought also to save colonial
interests, by procuring still a supply of labor from a hardier and
less interesting race. Thus his indignation at the rapid extinction of
the Indians appears sentimental; to indulge his fancy for an amiable
race, he was willing to subject another, with which he had no graceful
associations, to the same liabilities. We have seen, however, that
the practice of carrying negroes to Hayti was already established,
seven years before Las Casas suggests his policy. The passage from
Herrera has been misunderstood, as Llorente, Schoelcher, the Abbe
Gregoire, and others, conclusively show. That historian says that Las
Casa, disheartened by the difficulties which he met from the colonists
and their political and ecclesiastical friends at home, had recourse
to a new expedient, to solicit leave for the Spaniards to trade in
negroes, "in order that their labor on the plantations and in the
mines might render that of the natives less severe." This proposition,
made in 1517, has been wrongly supposed to signalize the first
introduction of blacks into America. Nor was Las Casas the first to
make this proposition; for another passage of Herrera discloses that
three priests of St. Jerome, who had been despatched to the colony by
Cardinal Ximenes, for the experiment of managing it by a Board instead
of by a Governor, recommended in 1516 that negroes should be sent out
to stock the plantations, in order to diminish the forced labor of the
natives. This was a concession by the Jeromites to the public opinion
which Las Casas had created.[18] Negroes already existed there; the
priests perceived their value, and that the introduction of a greater
number would both improve the colony and diminish the anti-slavery
agitation of the Dominicans. The next year this project was taken up
by Las Casas, borrowed from the Jeromites as the only alternative to
preserve a colony, to relieve the natives, and to keep the people
interested in the wholesome reforms which he was continually urging
upon the colonial administration.

He had no opportunity to become acquainted with the evils of negro
slavery, but it is strange that he did not anticipate them. It was
taken for granted by him that the blacks were enslaved in Africa, and
he accepted too readily the popular idea that their lot was improved
by transferring them from barbarous to Christian masters. Their number
was so small in Hayti, and the island fell so suddenly into decay,
that no formidable oppression of them occurred during his lifetime to
replace his recollections of the horrors of Indian servitude. His plan
did not take root, but it was remembered. Thus the single error of a
noble man, committed in the fulness of his Christian aspirations, and
at the very moment when he was representing to a generation of hard
and avaricious men the divine charity, betrayed their victims to all
the nations that sought wealth and luxury in the West, and pointed out
how they were to be obtained. His compromise has the fatal history of
all compromises which secure to the present a brief advantage, whose
fearful accumulation of interest the future must disgrace, exhaust,
and cripple itself to pay.

In 1519 the colony had already begun to decay, though all the external
marks of luxury and splendor were still maintained. That was the date
of a famous insurrection of the remnant of Indians, who occupied the
mountains, and defended themselves for thirteen years against all the
efforts of the Spaniards to reduce them. It was hardly worth while to
undertake their subjection. Adventurers and emigrants were already
leaving San Domingo to its fate, attracted to different spots of the
Terra Firma, to Mexico and Peru, by the reported treasures. That
portion of the colony which had engaged in agriculture found Indians
scarce and negroes expensive. There was no longer any object in
fitting out expeditions to reinforce the colony, and repair the waste
which it was beginning to suffer from desertion and disease. The war
with the natives was ignominiously ended by Charles V. in 1533, who
found that the colony was growing too poor to pay for it. He
despatched a letter to the cacique who had organized this desperate
and prolonged resistance, flattered him by the designation of Dom
Henri[19] and profuse expressions of admiration, sent a Spanish
general to treat with him, and to assign him a district to inhabit
with his followers. Dom Henri thankfully accepted this pacification,
and soon after received Las Casas himself, who had been commissioned
to assure the sole surviving cacique and representative of two million
natives that Spain was their friend! At last the Protector of the
Indians has the satisfaction of meeting them with authoritative
messages of peace. And this was the first salutation of Dom Henri,
after his forty years' experience of Spanish probity, and thirteen
years of struggle for existence: "During all this war, I have not
failed a day to offer up my prayers, I have fasted strictly every
Friday, I have watched with care over the morals and the conduct of my
subjects, I have taken measures everywhere to prevent all profligate
intercourse between the sexes";[20] thus nobly trying to recommend
himself to the good Bishop, who had always believed in their capacity
for temporal and spiritual elevation. He retired to a place named
Boya, a dozen leagues from the capital. All the Indians who could
prove their descent from the original inhabitants of the island were
allowed to follow him. A few of them still remained in 1750; their
number was only four thousand when Dom Henri led them away from
Spanish rule to die out undisturbed.[21]

After its passionate and blood-thirsty life, the colony was sinking to
sleep, not from satiety nor exhaustion, for the same race was holding
its orgies in other countries, but from inability to gather fuel for
its excesses. A long list of insignificant governors is the history of
the island for another century. They did nothing to improve the
condition of the inhabitants, whose distress was sometimes severe; but
they continued to embellish the capital, which Oviedo described to
Charles V. as rivalling in solidity and beauty any city in Spain. He
wrote in 1538, and possessed a beautiful residence in the plain of
St. John. The private houses were built substantially, in several
stories, of stone, embowered in charming gardens; the public edifices,
including the cathedral, displayed all the strength and rich
ornamentation which had been common for a hundred years in the Spanish
cities. There were several well-endowed convents, and a fine
hospital. When Sir Francis Drake took possession of San Domingo in
1586, he attempted to induce the inhabitants, who had fled into the
country, to pay an enormous ransom for their city, by threatening to
destroy a number of fine houses every day till it was paid. He
undertook the task, but found that his soldiers were scarcely able to
demolish more than one a day, and he eventually left the city not
materially damaged.

Antonio Herrera, in his "Description of the West Indies," gives the
number of inhabitants of the city in 1530 as six hundred, and says
that there were fourteen thousand Castilians, many of them nobles, who
carried on the different interests of the colony. He has a list of
seventeen towns, with brief descriptions of them.

It appears by this that the island had speedily recovered from the ill
reports of the early emigrants, many of whom returned to Spain broken
in purse and person, with excesses of passion and climate chronicled
in their livid faces[22]. There was a period when everybody who could
get away from the colony left it in disgust, and with the expectation
that it would soon become extinct. It was to prevent such a
catastrophe, which would have effectually terminated the explorations
of Columbus, that he proposed to the Government, in 1496, to commute
the punishments of all criminals and large debtors who were at the
time in prison to a perpetual banishment to the island, persons
convicted of treason or heresy being alone excepted. The advice was
instantly adopted, without a thought of the consequences of
reinforcing the malignant ambition of the colony with such
elements. Persons capitally convicted were to serve two years without
wages; all others were to serve on the same terms for one year; and
they went about with the ingenious clog of a threat of arrest for the
old crimes in case they returned to Europe.

The Government improved upon the hint of Columbus by decreeing that
all the courts in Spain should condemn to the mines a portion of the
criminals who would in the course of nature have gone to the
galleys.[23] Thus a new country, which invited the benign organization
of law and religion, and held out to pure spirits an opportunity
richer than all its crops and mines, was poisoned in its cradle. What
wonder that its vigor became the aimless gestures of madness, that a
bloated habit simulated health, and that decrepitude suddenly fell
upon the uneasy life?

At the same time it was expressly forbidden to all commanders of
caravels to receive on board any person who was not a born subject of
the crown of Castile. This was conceived in the exclusive colonial
policy of the time. It was a grotesque idea to preserve nationality by
insisting that even criminals must respect the Spanish birthright.
History counts the fitful pulses of this bluest blood of Europe,
and hesitates to declare that such emigrants misrepresented
the mother-country.

But after the middle of the sixteenth century, the inhabitants were
pillaged by the public enemies of the mother-country, and by private
adventurers of all lands. And yet, in 1587, the year after Drake's
expedition, their fleet carried home 48 quintals of cassia, 50 of
sarsaparilla, 134 of logwood, 893 chests of sugar, each weighing 200
pounds, and 350,444 hides of every kind. There is no account of
indigo, and the cultivation of cotton had not commenced. Coffee was
first introduced at Martinique during the reign of Louis XIV., who
died in 1715. Its cultivation was not commenced in Jamaica till
1725.[24]

The negroes whom Hawkins procured on his first voyage to Africa were
carried by him to San Domingo. This was in 1563, the date of England's
first venture in the slave-trade. The English had sent vessels to the
African coast as early as 1551, on private account, for gold and
ivory; but as they had no West-Indian colony, and the trade in slaves
was a monopoly, they had no object to increase the risks of a voyage
which infringed upon the Portuguese right to Africa by carrying
negroes away. Vessels were fitted out in 1552 and 1553 to trade for
ivory and pepper; in the two following years the English interest in
Africa increased, and a negro was occasionally carried away and
brought to England.[25] This appears to have been the first
circumstance which attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth, and
drew remonstrances from her before it became clear that a good deal of
money could be made out of such transactions. She blamed Captain
Hawkins, who had succeeded by treachery and violence in getting hold
of three hundred negroes whom he carried to San Domingo, and disposed
of in the ports of Isabella, Puerto-de-Plata, and Monte Christi. Her
virtue was proof against this first speculation, although it was an
exceedingly good one, for Hawkins filled his three vessels with hides,
ginger, and a quantity of pearls, and freighted two more with hides
and other articles which he sent to Spain. It was after his third
voyage, in 1567, when he sold his negroes in Havana at a profit
greater than he could derive from the decaying San Domingo, that the
Queen forgot her scruples, and gave Hawkins a crest symbolical of his
wicked success: "a demi-Moor, in his proper color, bound with a cord,"
made plain John a knight.[26]

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