P. V. N. Myers - "A General History for Colleges and High Schools"

Therese de Dillmont - "Encyclopedia of Needlework"

G. A. Henty - "Forest & Frontiers"

Carl Lumholtz - "Through Central Borneo:"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917

V >> Various >> The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917




In this feeling of Christian sympathy and fellowship for the slave who
professed Christianity undoubtedly lay potentialities for the
betterment of his conditions. Had there been favorable economic and
political forces working to bring these notions of equality more and
more to the consciousness of men, just as the storm and stress of
political struggle forced them to espouse the doctrines of inalienable
human rights, doubtless freedom would have come to the slave with the
growing sense of the wider implications of democracy. Certainly had
there prevailed in the South economic and social forces similar to
those in the North, the emancipation of the Negro would have taken
place naturally and normally in both sections. That Locke and his
contemporaries felt no incongruity between their ideas of liberty and
the existence of slavery must be attributed to the fact that the full
social implications of their doctrines had not yet been brought home
to them by industrial development. They accepted the status of the
slave as a matter of course in the existing agricultural order.

It is easy to see in Virginia, the chief slave-holding State of the
earlier period, how economic interests in time narrowed the sphere of
action and finally counteracted entirely the tendency of religion to
extend to the slave the ideal of freedom. In the act of 1670, the
first which dealt with slaves in Virginia, the enfranchising effect of
conversion was limited to servants imported from Christian lands; thus
were excluded at once the great majority of Negroes who came, of
course, from Africa. The few Negroes brought in from Christian lands,
such as England and the West Indies, were assigned by the act to the
status of servants from which many attained freedom. It was inevitable
that, in Virginia and the southern colonies especially, the religious
notion that profession of Christianity made a difference in status
should disappear before the more practical principle of race and
color. By the time of the Revolution the matter of religion had
practically disappeared as a factor in the status of the slave,[152]
except in so far as it continued in the form of the vicious ethical
dualism which asserted that the slave could enjoy equality and freedom
in the spiritual sphere while enduring physical bondage. This provided
an effective salve for many a pious slaveholder's conscience.

At the time of the American Revolution before the real problem of
slavery was felt, except in the minds of a few prophetic spirits such
as Jefferson, we can still detect two clearly marked tendencies. At
the South economic forces were combining with the social and racial
conditions to fix the status of slave as the normal condition of the
Negro, a most portentous fact for the future of that section. At the
North economic and social conditions were pointing already towards a
gradual emancipation of the slave in a democratic order that was
becoming more and more conscious of the full significance of the ideas
of freedom and equality.

What was the effect upon the status of the slave North and South of
the struggle for independence and the adoption of a declaration to the
effect that all men are free and equal and possessed of certain
inalienable rights?[153] In Pennsylvania from the very beginning of
the war of independence interest in the manumission of slaves
increased until it finally culminated in the act of 1780, an "Act for
the Gradual Abolition of Slavery," by adopting which Pennsylvania
became the first State to pass an abolition law.[154] The preamble of
this act asserts it to be the duty of Pennsylvanians to give
substantial proof of their gratitude for deliverance from the
oppression of Great Britain "by extending freedom to those of a
different color but the work of the same Almighty hand." Previous to
1776 discussion had been going on also in Massachusetts looking to the
abolition of slavery and in 1777 there was introduced an act with the
preamble declaring that "the practice of holding Africans and the
children born of them, or any other persons in slavery, is
unjustifiable in a civil government, at a time when they are asserting
their natural freedom."[155] This act never became law and it is an
interesting commentary upon conditions in the North, and especially in
New England, that in Massachusetts slavery was not abolished by
legislation but by the slow working of public sentiment. The assembly
of Rhode Island, likewise, prefaced an act against the importation of
slaves in 1774 by asserting that those who were struggling for the
preservation of their rights and liberties, among which that of
personal freedom is greatest, must be willing to extend a like liberty
to others.[156] Similar agitation and legislation were going on in
almost all the Northern and Middle States under the stimulus of the
spirit of freedom of the time.[157]

It is easy to note a change in the mental atmosphere as we pass to the
States farther south. The Assembly of Delaware tabled indefinitely a
bill of 1785 for the gradual abolition of slavery, and Maryland in her
declaration of rights adopted in 1776 restricted the enjoyment of
certain rights _to freemen only_. A petition introduced in the House
of Burgesses of Virginia in 1785, asking for general emancipation on
the ground that slavery was contrary to the principles of religion and
the ideas of freedom on which the government was founded, was read and
rejected without an opposing voice; Washington remarked in a letter to
Lafayette that it could hardly get a hearing.[158] In fact, there is
evidence for believing that, while leading men such as Jefferson,
Madison, Washington, Mason and Pinkney saw the evil of slavery and
wished heartily to rid their States of it, the mass of the citizens of
Maryland and Virginia did not wish to do away with the institution
either because of social habits and economic interests, or because
they felt unable to cope with the problem of an emancipated black
population. It must be remembered that in Maryland there were three
slaves to five whites, in Virginia and Georgia the numbers were about
equal, in South Carolina there were two slaves to one white, while in
Massachusetts there were sixty whites to one slave.[159] In the States
farther south, the Carolinas and Georgia, no change or attempted
change in the status of the slave seems to have occurred. The force
of social and economic habits was already too strong for the movings
of the spirit of freedom to affect the status of the slave.

The leaders of the time realized this only too well. Patrick Henry,
writing to a Quaker in 1773, said that slavery was "as repugnant to
humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive of
liberty. Every thinking honest man rejects it as speculation, but how
few in practice from conscientious motives! Would any one believe that
I am a master of slaves of my own purchase? _I am drawn along by the
general inconvenience of living without them._"[160] Jefferson in a
letter written in 1815 expressed the hope that slavery would in time
yield "to the enlargement of the human mind, and its advancement in
science," but he confessed also that "where the disease is most deeply
seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern
States it was merely superficial and easily corrected; in the
Southern, it is incorporated with the whole system, and requires time,
patience and perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally
be effected and its progress hastened, will be my last and fondest
prayer."[161]

Little light is gained as to the position occupied by the slave in the
social mind from the discussions and debates of the constitutional
convention of 1787, although slavery is tacitly recognized in the
clauses on representation and taxation, the extension of the
slave-trade, and the regulation of fugitive slaves. In connection with
the basis of representation and taxation the question arose whether
the slave was a person or a chattel, but it was debated not with the
view of bringing out what the consensus of opinion of the nation at
large was but rather with a view to the political exigencies of the
situation. The individual States had never been inclined nor did they
now propose to surrender to the Union the right to determine the
status of persons within their limits so that the debates were begun
with the general concession of the fact that slavery existed in some
of the States, that it would in all probability continue to exist, and
that the future of the institution was primarily a problem that
belonged to the individual States where it was found.

The problem facing the members of the convention was, therefore, to
provide a system of representation that would ensure political
equality to all sections and at the same time safeguard the peculiar
conditions and social and economic institutions of each State. To base
representation entirely upon the number of the free population would
give an undue preponderance to the free States, while to base it upon
all, both slave and free, would give an undue advantage to the five
slave States. Hence the rather queer compromise that representation
"shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons,
including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding
Indians not taxed, _three fifths of all other persons_"--"all other
persons" being a euphemism for "slaves," a term which does not occur
in the document. By this measure the slave was made to be only three
fifths of a full social unit, or three fifths of a man. This would
seem to imply that in the social consciousness of the nation at large
the slave was part chattel and part person and this doubtless was the
fact. Certainly this is not the last instance where a tendency has
manifested itself to assign to the Negro a sort of intermediary status
between a chattel and a full social unit. The question came up in 1829
in the Virginia constitutional convention in the struggle between the
slaveholding eastern and the free western section of that State.[162]
Doubtless one reason for the refusal of Congress to reduce the
representation of the Southern States, after the legislation of a few
years ago, that practically disfranchised the Negro in the far South,
has been an unwillingness thus to lend national sanction to the
inferior political as well as social status to which this legislation
has at least for the time being reduced the Negro.

The clause in the constitution which subjected its framers to the
bitterest criticism at the hands of anti-slavery agitators is that
which requires that a "person held to service"--the term "slave" is
here avoided also--in one State and escaping to another shall be
delivered up on claim of the party to whom the service is due. In view
of the interests to be reconciled this clause was undoubtedly
necessary to union.[163] If the free States were to become a place of
refuge for escaping slaves it meant disaster for the States in which
the institution of slavery existed and they insisted upon this as a
self-protective measure. The constitution recognized the right of each
State to preserve the integrity of its own domestic institutions. "It
can never too often be called to mind," says Rhodes, "that the
political parties of the Northern States and their senators and
representatives in Congress, scrupulously respected the constitutional
protection given to the peculiar institution of the South, until, by
her own act, secession dissolved the bonds of union."[164] The tragedy
of the situation lay in the fact that the political necessities of the
time made unavoidable this strange union between freedom and slavery,
the fundamental incompatibility of which the expanding national life
was bound to make clear to the minds of men.

Looking back on this momentous period we are struck with what Lecky
calls "the grotesque absurdity of slaveowners signing a Declaration of
Independence which asserted the inalienable right of every man to
liberty and equality."[165] That the contradiction existed, that it
was felt by men like Jefferson, and that it was destined to become
more prominent in the mind of the nation as the implications and
applications of the great ideas of freedom and equality were enriched
and enlarged in the expanding life of a virile democracy, can not be
denied. But it may be remarked in the defense of our Revolutionary
fathers that they were facing the practical problem of effecting
national unity and that "it is a tendency of the Anglo-Saxon race to
take the expedient in politics when the absolute right can not be
had."[166] They compromised on slavery and on the whole wisely.
Moreover, the history of the development of great moral and political
concepts indicates that men often formulate principles the logical
implications of which are not grasped until new problems and the
demand for new social adjustments emerge. The great moral categories
of courage, temperance and justice first received scientific
formulation at the hands of the Greeks; the ever swelling stream of
human civilization has vastly enriched and enlarged these conceptions
but without altering their essential meaning. When the idea of liberty
which in 1776 included only one class, namely, those who owned the
property and administered the government of the nation, was expanded
so as to include every member of the social order, at that moment
slavery was doomed.

JOHN M. MECKLIN,

_Professor in the University of Pittsburgh_


FOOTNOTES:

[122] "Democracy in America," Vol. I, pp. 30, 361 ff, 369, 370,
Colonial Press edition.

[123] Turner, "The Negro in Pennsylvania," pp. 1 and 19.

[124] Bracket, "The Negro in Maryland," p. 26.

[125] Steiner, "History of Slavery in Connecticut," p. 12.

[126] Cooley, "A Study of Slavery in New Jersey," p. 12.

[127] Moore, "Notes on the History of Slavery in Mass.," p. 5.

[128] Ballagh, "A History of Slavery in Virginia," p. 8.

[129] _Ibid._, p. 30.

[130] Ballagh, _op. cit._, p. 28.

[131] _Ibid._, p. 11.

[132] McCrady, "Slavery in the Province of South Carolina, 1670-1770,"
pp. 631 ff of the Report of the American Historical Association for
1895.

[133] Sir H.H. Johnston, "The Negro in the New World," pp. 217, 218.

[134] Turner, _op. cit._, p. 40; see also DuBois, "The Suppression of
the African Slave Trade," Chs. III and IV.

[135] "Ferdinand and Isabella," Part II, Ch. 8.

[136] Moore, "History of Slavery in Massachusetts," pp. 2, 10.

[137] Brackett, _op. cit._, p. 20; Ballagh, _op. cit._, p. 36.

[138] Ballagh, _op. cit._, pp. 47 ff.

[139] Stephenson, "Race Distinction in American Law"; R. S. Baker,
"Following the Color Line."

[140] Ritchie, "Natural Rights," p. 3; see also in this connection
Jellinek, "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens," and
Scherger, "The Evolution of Modern Liberty."

[141] Jellinek, "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen,"
p. 56.

[142] Jellinek, _op. cit._, p. 84.

[143] Jellinek, _op. cit._, pp. 88, 89.

[144] Moore, _op. cit._, pp. 2, 30.

[145] _Ibid._, p. 58.

[146] Cotton Mather, who sanctioned slavery, evidently had this in
mind as the following observations show: "We know not when or how
these Indians first became inhabitants of this mighty continent, yet
we may guess that probably the devil decoyed these miserable savages
hither, in hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never
come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them."
(Quoted by Moore, _op. cit._, p. 31.)

[147] Moore, _op. cit._, pp. 58, 71.

[148] Ballagh, _op. cit._, pp. 46, 47.

[149] Dabney, _Defence of Virginia_, pp. 158 ff.

[150] McCrady, _op. cit._, p. 644; for the text of the constitution
see Perley Poore, "The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial
Charters and other Organic Laws of the United States," Part II, pp.
1397 ff.

[151] Brackett, _op. cit._, p. 30.

[152] Ballagh, _op. cit._, pp. 46 ff.

[153] Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789," pp. 263 ff. of
"Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States," edited by
Jameson, 1889.

[154] Turner, _op. cit._, p. 79.

[155] Moore, _op. cit._, p. 182.

[156] Johnston, _op. cit._, p. 22.

[157] Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, etc.," pp. 296 ff.

[158] _Ibid._, p. 305.

[159] _Ibid._, p. 265.

[160] Quoted by Merriam, "The Negro and the Nation," p. 19.

[161] Wks., VI, 456; IX, 515, Ford Ed.

[162] Greeley, "The American Conflict," I, p. 109 ff.

[163] Curtis, "Constitutional History of the United States," I, p.
606.

[164] History of the United States, I, p. 24.

[165] Lecky, "A History of England in the Eighteenth Century," VI, p.
282.

[166] Rhodes, "History of the United States," I, p. 18.




JOHN WOOLMAN'S EFFORTS IN BEHALF OF FREEDOM


Pioneers of epoch-making reforms are seldom accorded the reward they
merit. Later apostles usually obscure the greatness of their
predecessors, and posterity is prone to overlook the pristine
achievements of those who first had the vision. Such is the case of
John Woolman, a poor, untutored shopkeeper of New Jersey. He was among
the foremost to visualize the wrongs of human slavery, but his real
significance as an abolitionist has been greatly dimmed by the
subsequent deeds of such apostles as Garrison, Phillips, and Lincoln.

John Woolman's career as an apostle of freedom dates from his first
appearance in the ministry of the Society of Friends, an organization
commonly known as the Quakers, founded by George Fox in England during
the middle of the seventeenth century. Shortly after the organization
of this society, many of the members migrated to New England and the
Middle Atlantic Colonies. Others were exiled by Charles II to the West
Indies.[167] Paradoxical as it may seem, these earliest Friends,
though distinguishing themselves from other Christian sects by their
special stress on immediate teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit,
had no scruples against keeping slaves. As a matter of fact, there was
a prevalent conviction that Christianity indorsed slavery.[168]

This anomalous indifference to the enslaved Negro's condition remained
almost constant until 1742. A few sporadic attempts, to be sure, were
made to discountenance slavery, but popular opinion, incited by
greed, favored the institution. In 1671, for example, George Fox,
during his visit to Barbadoes, admonished slaveholders to train their
slaves in the fear of God; and further admonished the overseers "to
deal gently and mildly with their Negroes, and not use cruelty towards
them as the manner of some hath been and is, and after certain years
of servitude make them free."[169] Four years later, William Edmundson
complained against the unjust treatment of slaves, but was brought,
for his pains, before the Governor, on the charge of "endeavoring to
excite an insurrection among the blacks."[170] In 1688 the German
Quakers of Germantown, Pennsylvania, sent to the Yearly Meeting for
the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Colonies a protest against "the buying
and keeping of Negroes."[171] The matter was taken under advisement,
but not until eight years later did the Yearly Meeting advise against
"bringing in any more Negroes." The Chester Quarterly Meeting,
however, insisted upon the adoption of definite measures against slave
traffic, but the Society never manifested any enthusiasm for such
legislation. The Friends were themselves slaveholders, and
slaveholders were rapidly increasing their wealth and power through
slavery; so they felt no pressing need of reform. The Yearly Meetings,
therefore, like many modern congresses, dextrously dodged the grave
issue of Negroes' rights, and merely expressed an opinion meekly
opposed to the importation of the blacks, and a desire that "Friends
generally do, as much as may be, avoid buying such Negroes as shall
hereafter be brought in, rather than offend any Friends who are
against it; yet this is only caution and not censure."[172] Not until
1742 was any appreciable influence exerted on the Friends against
slavery. A storekeeper of Mount Holly, New Jersey, requested his clerk
to prepare a bill of sale of a Negro woman whom he had sold. The
thought of writing such an instrument greatly oppressed the clerk. He
complied, however, but afterwards told both the employer and the
customer that he considered slave-keeping inconsistent with the
Christian religion.[173] The clerk who ventured such an opinion was
John Woolman.

John Woolman was born in Northampton, in Burlington County, West
Jersey, in the year 1720. His youthful struggle against wickedness was
in many respects similar to Bunyan's. The fear of God seized him in
early boyhood, and an intense religious fervor characterized his
future career. Though this fervor was undoubtedly an innate tendency,
it owed its development partly to the early guidance of pious parents;
for Woolman's father was, without doubt, a devout Christian. Every
Sunday after meeting, the children were required to read the Holy
Scriptures or some religious books. Here, no doubt, was the beginning
of Woolman's religious devotion to the teachings of the Bible.[174] At
times, during his youth, he apparently forgot these earliest
teachings, but he never wandered too far to be reproved by his
conscience. When he reached the age of sixteen, his will was finally
subdued, and he learned the lesson that youth seldom learns,--that
"all the cravings of sense must be governed by a Divine principle." He
tells us that he became convinced that "true religion consisted in an
inward life, wherein the heart doth love and reverence God, the
Creator, and learns to exercise true justice and goodness, not only
toward all men, but also toward the brute creatures."[175]

All this time Woolman lived with his parents and worked on the
plantation. His schooling was, consequently, meagre, but he gave a
generous portion of his leisure to his self-improvement. At the age of
twenty-one, he left home to tend shop and keep books for a baker in
Mount Holly. Meanwhile, his religious fervor was growing more intense,
and with it his genuine philanthropy. The inevitable sequence of his
accelerated enthusiasm for spreading the teachings of Christianity was
his entrance into the Christian ministry.[176]

In 1746 Woolman accompanied his beloved friend, Isaac Andrews, on a
tour through Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina. It was on this journey
that he beheld for the first time the miseries of slavery.[177] He
became so depressed with what he saw that on his return he wrote an
essay on the subject, publishing it in 1754. The essay appeared under
the elongated title of "Some Considerations on the Keeping of
Negroes Recommended to the Professors of Christianity of Every
Denomination."[178] The theme of Woolman's discussion is the
Brotherhood of Man. "All men by nature," he argues, "are equally
entitled to the equity of the Golden Rule, and under indispensable
obligations to it."[179] The whole discussion, which is an appeal to
the Friends to be mindful of the teachings of the Bible, glows with
the religious zeal which was so eminently characteristic of the
author. It is replete with such Biblical references as are sure to
have a wholesome effect upon a religious sect like the Society of
Friends.

Woolman made a second visit in 1757 to the Southern meetings of the
Society of Friends. Again he beheld the miseries of slavery and became
greatly alarmed at the extension of the system. Everywhere he turned,
he saw slaves. What pained him most was the presence of slaves in the
homes of Friends. He declined, therefore, to accept the hospitality of
his several hosts, feeling that the acceptance of such courtesies
would be an indorsement or encouragement of the evil.[180] Meanwhile,
he held confidential talks with Friends on the subject of slavery. On
one occasion, when a colonel of the militia berated the Negroes'
slothful disposition, Woolman replied that free men, whose minds are
properly on their business, find a satisfaction in improving,
cultivating, and providing for their families; whereas Negroes,
laboring to support others, and expecting nothing but slavery during
life, have not the same inducement to be industrious. Again, when
another slaveholder gave the wretchedness of Negroes, occasioned by
intestine wars, as a justification of slave-traffic, Woolman answered
that, if compassion for the Africans, on account of their domestic
troubles, was the real motive of buying them, the spirit of tenderness
should incite the Friends to use the Negroes kindly, as strangers
brought out of affliction. Many other arguments were urged in defence
of slavery, among which number was the oft-repeated notion that the
Africans' color subjects them to, or qualifies them for, slavery,
inasmuch as they are descendants of Cain who was marked with this
color, because he slew his brother Abel.[181] In short, a large portion
of Woolman's time during this second journey was given over to
answering such arguments. He travelled in the two months, during which
he was out, about eleven hundred and fifty miles. His efforts were not
without fruit, for he made a profound impression on many of the
honest-hearted.

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