EMANCIPATION 
 
 
 . 
 
WEST INDIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 F. B. SANBORN. 
 
 CONCORD, MASS. 
 March, 1862. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with finding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/emancipationinweOOsanb 
 
EMANCIPATION 
 
 ■z 
 
 IN THE 
 
 WEST INDIES. 
 
 The substance of the following Essay was given in the form of a Lecture at 
 €oncord, and afterwards in Boston, where it was printed in The Pine and Palm . 
 The writer has likewise furnished eight articles for the Springfield Republican , em- 
 bodying the same views, but presented in a different form. He wishes, in this way, 
 to contribute to the public information concerning a matter unhappily but little 
 understood even in New England. Doubtless there are errors in these pages, but 
 they are not those of intention. 
 
 Concord, March 21th, 1862. 
 
 Sidney Smith mentions a critic who would 
 never read a book till after he had' reviewed 
 it; “because,” he said, “reading is apt to 
 bias the mind.” King James I. used to 
 wonder that his judges could decide any case 
 after they had heard both sides; “for if I 
 hear but the one party,” said he. “my judg- 
 ment is clear ; but when they have both told 
 their story, by my saul ! I canna tell what to 
 say.” Something like the wisdom of these 
 two sages seems to have taken possession of 
 the American mind on the question of Eman- 
 cipation. There are people enough to ad- 
 vance the theory ; there are more than enough 
 to denounce it, and cry out on its dangers 
 and horrors; but few of either party have 
 taken the trouble to inform themselves of the 
 facts. For the abolition of Slavery is not a 
 mere theory, like the hypothesis of an open 
 sea at the North Pole, which they say Lieut. 
 Maury believed in, because he heard there 
 were whales in Baffin’s Bay, with their noses 
 pointing to the north, — no, it is a great his- 
 torical fact, and we are to judge of it as we 
 do of other facts, less by the arguments ad- 
 vanced in its favor than by the results which 
 have attended it. Let us consider, then, this 
 most important topic— Emancipation as a Fact, 
 not as a Theory, — confining the inquiry to 
 Negro Emancipation in the West Indies. 
 
 What should we think of a man who 
 
 should today gravely raise the question 
 whether the Atlantic can be crossed by steam- 
 ships, — whether a Sharpe’s rifle, is better 
 than a crossbow, or a power press than a 
 monk’s inkhorn and sheepskin V Should we 
 not imagine he had strayed away from Ken- 
 tucky or the office of the Boston Courier ? 
 Yet the facts which prove the safety and 
 profit of Emancipation are less recent than 
 the success of ocean steamships, against 
 which Lardner prophesied in vain ; nay, they 
 are older than the bold contrivances of Ful- 
 ton, which, within half a century, have revo- 
 lutionized commerce and maritime warfare. 
 They lie at our very door ; we have only to 
 look at them to be convinced. 
 
 Yet, so inveterate are the prejudices which 
 our unfortunate political and commercial sins 
 have brought upon us, that not one person in 
 a hundred, it is safe to say. is acquainted 
 with the truth of the West Indian experiment 
 of freedom In the British, French, and 
 Danish West Indies, and in Hayti, together 
 with the South African colonies of Bourbon, 
 Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope, about 
 1600 000 slaves of the African race, have 
 been set free since 1792, or within* seventy 
 years. Of these, half a million were libera- 
 ted in Ilayti, in 1793 ; 100 000 more in the 
 same island a few years later; 770 3?0 by 
 England, in 1834-5 ; and about 260 000 by 
 
4 
 
 France, Denmark, and Sweden, in 1848. 
 It is. then, 14 years since the last act of lib- 
 eration, 28 since the most important one, 
 and 69 since the first. There still remain in 
 Slavery, about 6750 000 Africans on the 
 continent and islands of America ; that is to 
 say, nearly 4C00 000 in the United States, 
 nearly 2000 000 in Brazil, 750 000 in Cuba, 
 and Porto Rico, and 50 000 in the Dutch 
 possessions. 
 
 The slaves ot St. Domingo were set free 
 under martial law, amid the disorders of the 
 first French Revolution ; those of Great 
 Britain were led into liberty in time of pro- 
 found peace, by carefully prepared statutes ; 
 those of France and Denmark during the 
 Revolutionary year of 1848, but without the 
 interposition of martial law. We have here, 
 then, all the possible conditions of a commu- 
 nity, — peace, war, and that intermediate 
 state which we call Revolution. If the ex- 
 periment had failed in any of these cases, we 
 might think it owing to peculiar circum- 
 stances ; if it had failed in all we might 
 think the policy a mistaken one,. at least, so 
 far as these Islands are concerned ; if it has 
 succeeded in all, shall we not say it will also 
 succeed every where ? Let it be noticed that 
 the number of slaves set free is about two- 
 fifths of those in this country ; or, to be more 
 exact, as many as are now in the States of 
 Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, 
 Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, 
 Texas, and Florida. But while the 1 600- 
 000 freedmen occupied an area of less than 
 800 000 square miles, these ten States have 
 an area of 600 000 square miles, — a circum- 
 stance very favorable to Emancipation ; while 
 the climate of none of them is such as to ex- 
 clude the white man from active labors, as in 
 the West Indies. 
 
 At the period of emancipation, St. Domin- 
 go presented a condition of things somewhat 
 like our own at this moment, but much more 
 like what ours may be a year hence if we do 
 not avail ourselves of the teachings of expe- 
 rience. For three years the colony had been 
 torn by civil wars between the whites and 
 rnulattoes, in which the negroes had taken 
 little part. The Spaniards, in alliance with 
 the revolted slaves of 1791, and in the inter- 
 est of the exiled Bourbons, had invaded the 
 country, and occupied several important 
 places. The English, then as now eager to 
 destroy a commercial rival, were in treaty 
 with .the planters to invade the island also. 
 The French Republic, represented in St. Do- 
 
 mingo by two commissioners, Sonthonax and 
 Polvercl, was on the point of losing the rich 
 colony. The commissioners had but a thou- 
 sand French soldiers, a few hundred mulat- 
 toes, and the fragment of loyal slaveholders, 
 to oppose so many enemies. At this crisis, 
 by a bold act of justice, the very thought of 
 which they had repelled four months before, 
 they brought to the French cause the power- 
 ful aid of 500 000 negroes. On the 29th of 
 August, 1793, they declared all the slaves 
 free. Just three weeks after, the English 
 troops landed, but it was too late. On the 
 4th of February, 1794, the National Con- 
 vention confirmed the proclamation of the 
 Commissioners, and abolished slavery in the 
 other colonies. In June of the same year, 
 Toussaint L’Ouverture, with 5000 men, 
 who till then had fought under the Spanish 
 flag, forced himself into the chief city, re- 
 leased the French General, and put himself 
 and his negro soldiers at the orders pf the 
 Republic. From that hour the fortune of 
 the war was changed. The English were 
 driven out, (1798) the Spanish retired, and 
 early in 1801, Toussaint proclaimed the 
 French Republic in the Spanish portion of 
 the Island, already ceded to France by the 
 treaty of 1795, thus confirming the liberation 
 of 100 000 more slaves who had been own- 
 ed by the Spaniards. 
 
 In the meantime, war alone had not occu- 
 pied the great genius of this negro warrior 
 and statesman. Having become virtually 
 Governor of the colony, in 1796 he had set 
 himself to the task of organizing free labor, 
 — a work begun by the French Commission- 
 ers in 1794. Sonthonax, returning from 
 an absence in France, in 1796, was astonished 
 at the prosperity which he saw. After the 
 expulsion of the English, in 1798, Toussaint 
 recalled the fugitive planters, gave them their 
 former slaves for hired laborers, and opened 
 the ports to free trade. To direct and enforce 
 his regulations, he put the whole Island under 
 military government, and supported his sys- 
 tem of labor, when resisted, by the bayonet. 
 The fruits of this sagacious policy were in- 
 stantly visible. Commerce returned to the 
 unfortunate Island ; labor flourished ; the 
 planters grew rich ; the condition of the la- 
 borers was wonderfully improved ; the Gov- 
 ernment was respected, and every thing 
 promised well for the future. 
 
 Suddenly, all this prosperity was again 
 destroyed — not by the negroes, who had cre- 
 ated it — but by the stupendous folly of Na- 
 

 5 
 
 « . 
 
 poleon. Yielding to the urgency of the emi- 
 grant planters, and of Josephine, herself a 
 creole of Martinique, in 1802 Napoleon sent 
 an immense army to St. Domingo, treach- 
 erously seized Toussaint, and imprisoned him 
 in France, where he soon died of neglect. 
 At the same time, he reestablished Slavery 
 and the Slave Trade in all the French colo- 
 nies except St. Domingo, proposing to do so 
 there when he should have conquered it. But 
 his vast armies were destroyed by war and 
 disease, and in 1804 the French were finally 
 driven from the Island 
 
 Since then, the fortunes of Hayti have 
 been various, but, on the whole, creditable 
 to her people ; especially when we remember 
 that when she gained her independence, near- 
 ly half her people were slaves, who had been 
 imported from Africa, and that nine-tenths of 
 them had only the vicious training of slavery 
 to fit them to be citizens. They have in- 
 creased in population and in wealth, in spite 
 of the exactions of France and Spain, and 
 our own most illiberal treatment of them. 
 Their Government has been more stable than 
 that of Mexico, or the South American Re- 
 publics ; their institutions show an honest 
 effort for liberty, under the restraints of law ; 
 their literature, though scanty, will endure a 
 comparison with that of Cuba or of Canada. 
 
 But whatever have been the misfortunes of 
 Hayti, Emancipation was not their cause. 
 They began three years before the slaves 
 were freed ; they ceased when the negro 
 Toussaint acquired power ; they began again 
 when Napoleon, in 1802 reestablished the 
 old curse of slavery. 
 
 “The evil that men do lives after them.” 
 
 It was Slavery, not Freedom, that ruined 
 the fair hopes of St. Domingo ; it .will be 
 Freedom, not Slavery, that will restore her 
 to her ancient and over-estimated splendor. 
 She may 'yet be our most faithful ally, our 
 best friend, and, to the delight of Milk street 
 and Wall street, our unlimited customer.* 
 Both justice and policy require us to recog- 
 nize her independence, and to offer her our 
 alliance and protection. It is now a ques- 
 tion whether she shall belong to us or to 
 Spain, from whose encroaching hand we 
 have more to fear, than even from the inso- 
 lence and avarice of England. Spain is no 
 longer a feeble State ; with Mexico, Cuba, 
 and Hayti in her possession, she would be- 
 
 *“The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls.” — 
 £merson. 
 
 X 
 
 come a commercial power of the first rank ; 
 shall we allow it ? 
 
 Such was the first great experiment of ne- 
 gro Emancipation ; now for the second. 
 
 In the very midst of the “Horrors of St. 
 Domingo” the English Abolitionists were 
 waging their war against the slave trade. 
 On the 5th of May, 1778, Mr. Pitt brought 
 forward in Parliament his motion against it ; 
 a year later, Wilberforce made his first 
 speech against it, supported by Pitt, Fox, 
 and Burke. Clarkson and the Quakers had 
 moved still earlier ; and Zachary Macaulay, 
 father of the brilliant historian, joined with 
 them. In 1807 their efforts abolished the 
 infamous traffic, a year before it was ended 
 here by act of Congress. Christian VII. of 
 Denmark had still earlier, in 1792, forbidden 
 his subjects to take part in it. In 1823 Mr. 
 Canning’s resolutions, looking to the final 
 abolition of slavery itself, passed the House 
 of Commons, supported there, and in the na- 
 tion at large, by Wilberforce, Buxton, the 
 two Macaulays, Lord Broughan, and many 
 other illustrious men. 
 
 In 1833, by act of Parliament, after long 
 discussion, slavery was declared forever 
 abolished in all the British colonies. This 
 law went into effect, on the 1st of August 
 1834, in all the colonies save Mauritius, 
 where it took effect February 1st., 1835. 
 It provided, for an intermediate state between 
 slavery and entire freedom, a system of ap- 
 prenticeship, which was to continue for six 
 years. In effect it continued but four years, 
 being found to work badly, like all measures 
 of gradual Emancipation ; and all the ne- 
 groes became unconditionally free on the 1st 
 of August, 1838, in the West Indies, and 
 on the first of March, 1839, in Mauritius. 
 The small island of Antigua, however, had at 
 first chosen immediate freedom, rejecting the 
 supposed advantages of apprenticeship, which 
 system, it should be said, the English Abo- 
 litionists had not favored. It was a conces- 
 sion to the slaveholders, and like all such 
 concessions had only bad results. 
 
 The number of slaves thus set free, was 
 770 390 ; they were scattered through nine- 
 teen colonies, controlled by a strong central 
 government ; the measures for their liberation 
 had been preparing for ten years, and were 
 carried out by humane and resolute govern- 
 ors, in a time of universal peace. These 
 circumstances show the strongest contrast in 
 almost every particular, to the events 
 
6 
 
 * • 
 
 1798, in St. Domingo ; naturally, we should 
 expect a greater success than there ; what 
 have the results been ? Ask this question of 
 the first man you meet, and ten to one his 
 answer will be, ‘Emancipation in the British 
 Colonies is a failure.” Ask him how he 
 knows this, and he will tell you “be has 
 heard so, — everybody say so.” Ask him to 
 give you figures and facts for it, and he is 
 silent. He has not, and the American peo- 
 ple generally, have not taken the trouble to 
 spend an hour in the examination of a mat- 
 ter far more important to us, than it has ever 
 been to England. But without authority, 
 without investigation, in the very face and 
 eyes of notorious facts, he continues to repeat 
 what is at once a mistake and a slander. 
 And why ? Because in this, as in so many 
 other points, public opinion has been under 
 the control of those insolent planters and 
 their commercial allies at the North, from 
 whose tyranny we are now, thank God ! fast 
 freeing ourselves. “It isopinion, not truth,” 
 said Sir Walter Raleigh, “that travelleth the 
 world without passport.” Forgetting the 
 prejudices which we have learned from slav- 
 ery, let us take the testimony, — not of plant- 
 ers arid slave-drivers ; not of vulgar politi- 
 cians, aiming at the White House, nor of 
 those profound sages, the traders in cotton 
 and sugar, — no, but of figures, — those im- 
 partial reporters, who can neither vote nor 
 hold office, nor buy and sell in any market, 
 but whose silent statement the slaveholder 
 dreads and hates more than all argu- 
 ments. 
 
 Let it be said, first, that emancipation was 
 feared and denounced by most of the white 
 colonists, whose fears were shared to some ex- 
 tent by the British government. No Ken- 
 tucky Congressman, or New York secessionist 
 can exceed in terrors or threats the “West India 
 Body of Merchants and Planters ” resident 
 in England, during the year 1883. These 
 noblemen and gentlemen* interested in the 
 sugar trade, predicted as a consequence of 
 any measure of emancipation, “a commercial 
 crisis unparalleled in the history of the em- 
 pire;” “an extreme danger to the lives and 
 properties of the free persons resident in the 
 colonies;” “confusion and anarchy;” “whole 
 districts, indeed whole colonies,” they said, 
 “might be completely depopulated;” they 
 could see nothing in the law proposed “but 
 confiscation of property, and the prospect of 
 all those calamities which must result from a 
 
 dissolution of the ties which connect the col- 
 onies with the British Empire.”* 
 
 They declared further, that it “is not even 
 calculated to advance the comforts and well- 
 being of the negro, that it endangers the con- 
 tinuance of the colonies as dependencies of 
 the British Crown, and utterly destroys the 
 possibility of their productive cultivation;” 
 that it would “throw the black population 
 back into a state of barbarism.”! 
 
 These gloomy forebodings have a too fa- 
 miliar sound. How did the event justify 
 them? The colonies are still loyal to the 
 British Crown, as we know to our cost; they 
 are more productive than before emancipa- 
 tion ; no such commercial crisis took place ; 
 the population instead of diminishing at the 
 rate of 5000 annually, as it had done from 
 1820 to 1834, is increasing ; and the negroes 
 have made extraordinary advances in wealth, 
 civilization, and morality. There has certain- 
 ly been a decrease in the sugar crop, and 
 there have been many other changes, but of 
 these emancipation has been but in part the 
 cause. 
 
 The British Government did not neglect 
 to guard against the imagined dangers. 
 They sent out additional troops, and created 
 a special police ; they made careful provision, 
 as was thought, for the supply of labor ; and 
 under the name of indemnity, they distrib- 
 uted nearly $100 000 000 among the plant- 
 ers, out of which the laborers’ wages could 
 be paid, until the new system had been 
 fairly tested. 
 
 The first results of Emancipation aston- 
 ished every one. In Antigua, where the 
 slaves instantly became their own masters, 
 the public quiet was completely undisturbed. 
 The first of August happened to fall on Fri- 
 day, and it was wisely resolved by the mas- 
 ters, to give their 30 000 slaves a holiday 
 until Monday, the 4th. These three days 
 were spent by the negroes — first, in prayer 
 and thanksgiving to God for their great de- 
 liverance — then, in expressions of joy and 
 congratulation among themselves. On Mon- 
 day, with few exceptions, they returned to 
 their homes, took up the shovel and the hoe 
 again, and have ever since continued to be 
 peaceful citizens. In the other islands there 
 were similar events ; scarcely a riot occurred, 
 and not a single white man lost his life. The 
 only sufferers were a few rash negroes, at 
 Trinidad and St. Christopher’s, who attempted 
 
 ♦Proceedings of West India Body, pp. 9, 48, 49, 88. (Lon- 
 don, 1833.) tlbid, pp. 96 r 134. 
 
1 
 
 a combination against the authorities. In 
 Trinidad, one negro was hanged, and a few 
 others sentenced to hard labor ; in St. Chris- 
 topher’s, four or five were transported for life. 
 In only one colony was martial law pro- 
 claimed ; nor have there since been any seri- 
 ous outbreaks among the negroes, though this 
 is the twenty-eighth year of their freedom. 
 Yet, in Jamaica alone, from 1800-32, there 
 had been five insurrections, of which the last, 
 in the winter of 1831-32, cost the lives of 
 500 negroes, and involved a destruction of 
 property, amounting to six or seven millions 
 of dollars. Peace, therefore, was the first 
 effect of Freedom. 
 
 So much for the fears of murder and pil- 
 lage entertained by the colonists. The sec- 
 ond great evil which they feared, was a com- 
 plete cessation of labor, or such irregularity 
 as to derange all the operations of business. 
 In some colonies, and especially in Jamaica, 
 this fear has been partly realized ; in others, 
 as in Antigua, Barbadoes, the Bahamas, noth- 
 ing of the kind has occurred. Now as the 
 same cause ought always to produce the same 
 effect, may we not suspect that the diminu- 
 tion of labor in Jamaica and elsewhere, is 
 due to other causes than the emancipation of 
 the laborer ? At any rate, may we not find 
 some other reason for it, than the native idle- 
 ness of the negro, of which Mr. Carlyle and 
 a host of shallowers writes, say so much ? 
 May it not spring from a feeling which the 
 Anglo-Saxon of all men ought to respect, 
 since he has so much of it, — Earth-hunger — 
 a desire to own land, and not to be the ser- 
 vant of another man ? A committee of the 
 House of Commons in 1842, asserted that 
 this was the case. They said : 
 
 “Labor has diminished because the blacks 
 have devoted themselves to work more profit- 
 able for them than field work, and because 
 they have generally been able, especially in 
 the larger colonies, to purchase lands without 
 difficulty, to live comfortably, and enrich 
 themselves without being obliged to give 
 the planters more than three or four days of 
 seven hours in each week. The low price of 
 land, the ill-will of the planters, the harsh- 
 ness of the laws which establish the relation 
 between the laborer and his employer, — 
 these have been the chief causes of the diffi- 
 culties experienced.”* 
 
 To the same effect, Francis Hincks, Gov- 
 
 * See Cochin’s Abolition de L'Esclovoge , Tome I. p. 404. 
 Wo have translated from the French, not having access to 
 the Blue Book in question. 
 
 ernor-in-Chief of the Windward Islands, said 
 in 1859 “There has been a considerable 
 withdrawal of labor from sugar cultivation, 
 in Jamaica. Among the causes, next to the 
 tenure of land, the insolvency of the proprie- 
 tors has been the chief. The only wonder is, 
 that with such a land tenure as exists in the 
 West Indies, a single laborer remains on the 
 sugar estates.” Mr. Sewell, a Canadian by 
 birth, now an American citizen, who visited 
 Jamaica in 1860, and who has written a book 
 of high value, on the Labor Question in the 
 West Indies, $ speaks in the same tone ; 
 “All the impartial testimony that I could ob- 
 tain in Jamaica,” he says, “summed up a 
 crushing contradiction to the unqualified pre- 
 tension of the planter, that the negro would 
 not work. And when I asked the negro 
 himself, why he preferred the toil of the mine 
 (eight hours in the day and six days in the 
 week) to the comparatively eas} 7 labor of the 
 plantation, his explanation was very simple — 
 ‘Buckra don’t pay.’ ” Be it remembered 
 that Mr. Sewell is no abolitionist. 
 
 But let us see how great is the evil com- 
 plained of. Certainly if idleness has in- 
 creased in the British colonies, it will show 
 itself by diminished imports and exports ; 
 for fhe foreign and domestic trade of a coun- 
 try is the sure index of its industry. First 
 let us consider the sugar crop alone, in which 
 the alleged diminution has been greatest. 
 There is no doubt that the sugar crop of Ja- 
 maica, and of several of the other colonies, 
 has much decreased since emancipation. 
 But it must not be forgotten that this de- 
 crease began so long ago as 1807, and con- 
 tinued steadily until 1853, when it seemed to 
 be checked, and there is now, we are told, a 
 slight gain. We must bear in mind, too, 
 that the negroes in Jamaica have decreased, 
 since 1807, nearly twenty per cent., and that 
 the sugar monopoly, which the colonies en- 
 joyed has been entirely superseded by the 
 modern English theories of Free Trade, 
 while the planters have been all this time in 
 a state of chronic bankruptcy, far worse than 
 the financial condition of our Southern States. 
 Remembering all these things, we find by the 
 sure evidence of Arithmetic that all the 
 British sugar colonies produced, during the 
 four last years of slavery, a yearly average 
 of 4 377 971 cwt ; in the four years of ap- 
 
 t See Anti- Slavery Standard (N. Y.) Sept. 24, 1859, for a 
 report of this speech, made at London, Aug. 1st, 1859. 
 
 X The ordeal of Free Labor in the British West Indies. 
 By Wm. G. Sewell. N. Y, 18(31. p.286. 
 
8 
 
 prenticeship, 4 038 321 cwt., a loss of 8 1-2 
 per cent. ; in the first six years of freedom 
 3 120 765 cwt., — a loss of 40 per cent.; 
 hut in 1847, 4 393 946 cwt., — a slight gain 
 over the last years of slavery. In the two 
 last years of slavery they exported to Great 
 Britain 8 471744 cwt; in 1856-7 they ex- 
 ported 8 736 654 cwt ; a gain of 3 per cent. 
 Leaving Jamaica out of view, and also 
 Mauritius, where the crop has immensely in- 
 creased, by reason of the immigration of 
 Coolies, we find that the remaining fifteen 
 sugar colonies produced in the three last 
 years of slavery 7 405 849 cwt, ; in the 
 three years 1855-6-7, 7 427 618 cwt., — a 
 slight gain. From 1827 to 1855 the ton- 
 nage of vessels entering at eight of these 
 islands — the only ones reported! — had in- 
 creased more than six per cent. 
 
 If the colonies which have been well man- 
 aged are considered, we shall find a still more 
 marked gain. 
 
 The four colonies of Antigua, Barbadoes, 
 Guiana, and Trinidad, exported, in the last 
 four years of slavery, an annual average of 
 *187 000 000 pounds of sugar; from 1856 
 to 1860, they have annually exported 265- 
 000 000 pounds, — an increase of 41 per 
 cent. For fourteen years before emancipa- 
 tion, the same colonies imported an average 
 of $8 840 000; in 1859, they imported 
 $14 600 000, — an increase of 65 per cent. 
 It is true that in Barbadoes and Trinidad, 
 the population has largely increased, but by 
 no means in this ratio ; in Guiana and An- 
 tigua, there are fewer people than in 1822. 
 
 Some of the single colonies show results 
 still more astonishing. 
 
 Take Antigua, for example, — the island 
 where the slaves were immediately emanci- 
 pated. For the fourteen years before Eman- 
 cipation, the annual imports averaged $600- 
 000; for 1859, the imports were $1 280- 
 000, or more than double, while its exports 
 have increased more than 25 per cent. In 
 this instance, free labor has had a fair field 
 from the start, and all has gone well ; in 
 Barbadoes, Grenada, Mauritius, and, indeed, 
 most of the colonies, the same is true, though 
 in a less degree. On the whole, we can say 
 that the evils resulting from the scarcity of 
 labor were never so great as had been feared, 
 and in many islands did not exist at all ; 
 they were by no means owing wholly to 
 Emancipation, and they will soon be entirely 
 removed. 
 
 §Edinburgh Review, April, 1859. 
 
 But we may be told that the prosperity of 
 Cuba is a proof of the advantages of slavery. 
 Nobody denies that Cuba has made, and is 
 making, great advances in wealth. Her ex- 
 ports have risen from $12 000 000 in 1828, 
 to $34 000 000 in 1858 ;|| her imports in 
 the same time, from $17 000 000 to $39- 
 000,000. Her population has increased 
 nearly as fast. In 1828, it was 704 487 ; 
 in 1858, it was at least 1,400,000, of whom 
 half were probably slaves. There has been 
 a similar increase in Porto Bico, the other 
 colony of Spain ; but there, the proportion 
 of slaves to the whole population, is only 
 about one-eighth. Both these islands, how- 
 ever, are comparatively thinly settled ; espe- 
 cially Cuba, whose population is but 33 to 
 the square mile, or about the same as New 
 Hampshire. Jamaica, on the contrary, has 
 68, and Barbadoes 843, to the square mile. 
 The abundance of land, together with the 
 fertility of the soil, its favorable position for 
 commerce, and the greater liberality of Spain’s 
 commercial policy in recent years, will ex- 
 plain the rapid growth of Cuba, which, after 
 all, is only a quarter part of the growth of 
 Iowa, within the last fifteen years. Let us 
 see if there is not some delusion about the 
 wealth of Cuba ; let us apply a more certain 
 test. How much value per man, for her 
 whole population, will the trade of Cuba 
 show for 1858 ? We answer, $52. Now, the 
 trade of the French West Indies, which we 
 are told have been ruined by Emancipa- 
 tion, as well as the British colonies, gives 
 a yearly average of $68 per man, from 
 1852 to 1858. The imports of Cuba 
 for 1858, are $27.85 per head; those 
 of Antigua, for 1859, are $36.57 per 
 head. In 1857, the whole trade of Great 
 Britain with her West India colonies, was 
 over $52 000 000, giving a greater sum per 
 head than Cuba can show. Where, then, 
 are the boasted advantages of Slavery ? Yet 
 in Cuba, Slavery is said to be mild, and the 
 proportion of whites to blacks is nearly four 
 times as great as in the British colonies. 
 We may add that in the fabulous prosperity 
 of St. Domingo, before the French Devolu- 
 tion, her exports and imports are set at about 
 $40 000 000, giving about the same average 
 per head as in Antigua in 1859. 
 
 || Cochin — Tome II., p., 191. 
 
 To this careful French writer, we have been much in- 
 debted for statistics, concerning the results of Emancipa- 
 tion. Ilad he thrown these more into a tabular form, he 
 would have much increased the value of his book. Schoel- 
 cher’s volumes are still of great authority, though pub- 
 lished fifteen or twehty years ago. 
 
9 
 
 So much for the “ruin” of the British 
 colonies, and the prosperity of the Spanish. 
 Let us now turn to the last argument of the 
 British planters ; that Emancipation would 
 barbarize the negro. Nor have we dwelt so 
 long on the pecuniary results of Emancipa- 
 tion because we regard those as the most im- 
 portant ; but because they have been most 
 frequently called in question. We believe 
 most firmly in that good old maxim of the 
 Democratic party, “the greatest good of the 
 greatest number,” — interpreting it to mean 
 “the greatest good of all.” So even if the 
 100 000 whites in the British colonies had 
 been pecuniarily ruined by Emancipation, 
 and the prosperity of the colonies destroyed, 
 we think we could have endured it with forti- 
 tude, on the assurance that the 800 000 
 negroes and mulattoes were immeasurably 
 the gainers. Now the whites have not been 
 ruined as a whole, and their own folly is the 
 chief cause of what troubles have come upon 
 them since 1834. Leaving them for the 
 present out of the question, let us consider 
 the moral and social condition of the negroes 
 since Emancipation. Here the testimony is 
 all one way, and of the strongest kind. 
 True, Mr. Carlyle sneers at “Quashee” lying 
 in the sun, with his “pumpkin,” and “his 
 saccharine juices,” — but a sneer is not testi- 
 mony nor argument. Did not Mr. Carlyle 
 once make a rather plain statement about 
 “eighteen million of bores,” and did any 
 American believe him ? 
 
 Because a crabbed Scotchman does not 
 fancy the color, or the features, or the dialect 
 of some of his fellow-men, are we to disbe- 
 lieve our own eyes and ears, and reject all 
 history till he has manipulated it ? 
 
 In November 1838, Lord Glenelg, who had 
 been Colonial Secretary, wrote :* “Up to this 
 time the results of the great experiment of 
 abolition have justified the liveliest hopes of 
 its authors and advocates. After having ex- 
 amined carefully the evils that have attended 
 its execution, it seems to me that they must 
 be in great measure attributed to the old co- 
 lonial system. Whoever has reflected on hu- 
 man nature, and the history of slavery, must 
 have expected that such a reform could not 
 be brought about without embarassments. I 
 am happy, then, to be able to say that in a 
 short period of time there has been a progress 
 in the social condition which will increase the 
 happiness of mankind, and of which history 
 affords no greater example.” 
 
 ♦Quoted by Cochin— Tome I. p., 379. 
 
 In 1842 a committee of the House of Com- 
 mons, reported thus : 
 
 “The great act of Emancipation of slaves 
 in the West India colonies has produced the 
 most favorable effects, so far as concerns the 
 physical and social condition of the black 
 population. As to their moral condition, 
 their improvement is more than proved by 
 their constantly increasing eagerness for re- 
 ligious and secplar instruction, by their de- 
 sire, more and more perceptible, to assume 
 the obligations of marriage, and fulfil the 
 duties of domestic life ; by the reformation 
 of their morals and their rapid progress in civi- 
 lization ; finally, by the value which they now 
 attach to the acquisition of property and a 
 position of independence.”! 
 
 In 1840 a commission of French peers, 
 deputies, and official persons was appointed 
 to examine into the results of British Eman- 
 cipation, and report a project for the French 
 colonies. At the head of this commission 
 was the now venerable Duke de Broglie, 
 whose position among French philanthropists, 
 is like Lord Brougham’s, in England ; among 
 its members, were the great De Tocqueville, 
 who had already made a report in favor of 
 Emancipation ; (1839) Admiral Mackau, 
 Hippolyte Passy, De Tracy, and other emi- 
 nent statesman. They continued their in- 
 quiries until March 1843, when their report 
 was presented, written by the Duke de 
 Broglie, After quoting largely from Eng- 
 lish documents, they say :$ 
 
 “Nobody any longer pretends that the 
 blacks are a savage, unsocial race, ready to 
 lay waste the country the instant they are 
 unchained. The event has quieted these ap- 
 prehensions; the negroes, on the contrary, 
 are a very gentle, very obedient, and wonder- 
 fully easy to govern. All the documents 
 which we have examined, agree on this point. 
 We must cease, no less, to represent them as 
 an abject, idle, stupid race, insensible to the 
 pleasures which activity and industry pro- 
 cure, and incapable of the least effort to ac- 
 quire them. All the documents published 
 by the English Government, entirely confirm 
 this assertion. All the negroes have shown 
 the most lively sense of the blessings of civi- 
 lization ; all have been prompt to do what is 
 necessary to obtain them, and most of them 
 have succeeded. We have shown what a 
 prodigious increase has taken place in the 
 importation of goods for their use. They 
 
 t Quoted in the Due de Broglie’s Report. 
 
 t This Report in two quarto volumes, is a marvel of faith- 
 ful and impartial labor. 
 
10 
 
 havo everywhere become artisans, farmers, 
 freeholders ; they have built houses, cleared 
 lands, founded villages ; and if any one will 
 take the trouble to examine the answers made 
 to the circular questions asked by the English 
 Government, in 1839 and 1840, he will see 
 that these answers are uniform, and that all 
 the colonial authorities agree that the condi- 
 tion of the black peasantry is equal or supe- 
 rior to that of the richest and happiest peas- 
 antry of Europe.” 
 
 M. Jules Lechevalier, a French writer of 
 some note who had visited all these islands, 
 and the Southern States of America, testified 
 before this commission. He said, # “Eman- 
 cipation has worked marvellous results for 
 the negro. I can find no other word to ex- 
 press what I think about this. Education, 
 religion, and liberty make a man of the ne- 
 gro, such as nobody would recognize — an en- 
 tirely new being. For my part I answer, 
 Emancipation is very successful. The respect 
 and attachment of the negroes for the English 
 Government has become a sentiment of re- 
 ligion. Thus a black will not name the king 
 
 o o 
 
 without taking off his hat. If you ask him 
 who is the author of the liberty which he has 
 gained, he will reply, “God and the king.” 
 It should be noticed that this witness was un- 
 friendly to the Abolitionists. Mr. Burnley, 
 for forty years a planter in Trinidad, was in- 
 troduced by his friend De Tocqueville. 
 Said he : t 
 
 “I confess that the majority of the planters 
 expected disorders ; but that was not the 
 opinion of reflecting people. For, setting 
 aside the natural mildness of the negroes, 
 what reasonable ground was there to expect 
 violence from men whose moral and social 
 position was being changed for the better ? 
 What caused doubt and anxiety to the intel- 
 ligent colonists was how to keep up the sup- 
 ply of labor. On this point we confess today, 
 for the most part, that our fears were exag- 
 gerated, and we believe that the blacks will 
 work like the whites when they are subjected 
 to the same necessities.” 
 
 We should do the subject an injustice, 
 were we to omit here the testimony of Mr. 
 Emerson to the same point. We quote from 
 his address on the 1st of August 1843, an 
 admirable essay which, it is much to be re- 
 gretted is out of print. 
 
 ♦Report. 1st Part pp. 49-62. 
 
 t3d Part p. 38th, Tome I. 
 
 “It was the sarcasm of Montesquieu, X ‘It 
 would not do to suppose that negroes were 
 men, lest it should turn out that whites were 
 not;’ for the white has for ages done what 
 he could to keep the negro in that hoggish 
 state. It now appears that the negro race is, 
 more than any other, susceptible of rapid 
 civilization. The Emancipation is observed 
 in the island to have wrought for the negro a 
 benefit as sudden as when a thermometer 
 is brought out of the shade into the sun. It 
 has given him eyes and ears. He is now the 
 principal, if not the only, mechanic in the 
 West Indies, and is, besides, an architect, a 
 physician, a lawyer, a magistrate, an editor, 
 and a valued and increasing political power. Ӥ 
 
 A more recent authority, Mr. Sewell, 
 brings the evidence down to 1860. “I 
 think,” says he, (p. 254,) “that the position 
 of the Jamaica peasant, in 1860, is a stand- 
 ing rebuke to those who, wittingly or unwit- 
 tingly, encourage the vulgar lie that the Af- 
 rican cannot possibly be elevated. Very 
 large numbers work as merchants, mechan- 
 ics, and tradesmen, and not a few of the ex- 
 slaves of Jamaica, or their children, are 
 members of the Legislature, and fill respon- 
 sible offices under Government. In the As- 
 sembly alone, there are seventeen black and 
 colored men, out of a total of forty-seven. 
 The whole people of Jamaica work ; — I am 
 utterly amazed at the progress they have 
 made.” 
 
 Anthony Trollope confirms most of these 
 statements, in his flippant and shallow book, 
 “The West Indies, and the Spanish Main.” 
 
 But we will not leave the matter to rest 
 on authority, however illustrious or abundant ; 
 we will bring forward the evidence that this 
 improvement has taken place. 
 
 There are three chief tests of civilization : 
 (1.) The security of life ; (2.) The security 
 of property, and the value attached to it; 
 (3.) The sanctity of marriage and the posi- 
 tion of woman. Now, these three tests can 
 be applied rigorously by means of statistics, 
 and we find them all verified with increasing 
 force in the West Indies. 
 
 It is hardly needful to say that in slavery 
 the right of property is constantly violated 
 towards the slave, and often towards the 
 master ; while marriage, properly speaking, 
 
 +See Cochin — Tome II. p. 433, who quotes thus : “II est 
 impossible que nous supposions que ces gens-U soient des 
 hommes, parceque, si nous les supposions des hommes, on 
 commencerait k croire que nous ne sommes pas nous-memcs 
 chretiens.” Esprit des Lois, Lib. XV. 
 
 §See Conway’s “Dial,” Cincinati, 1861. 
 
11 
 
 hardly exists at all. A slave cannot hold I 
 property by any sure title, nor secure to 
 himself his own wife and children. The 
 vices thus engendered, continue to poison so- 
 ciety long after slavery is destroyed. 
 
 It is the universal testimony of travellers, 
 that life is more secure in the British colonies, 
 than during slavery. In the French colo- 
 nies, we have some exact statistics Before 
 Emancipation, 47 out of every 100 crimes 
 brought before the court, were crimes against 
 the person ; after Emancipation, the propor- 
 tion fell to 21 out of every 100. 
 
 So, too, in regard to property. No doubt 
 there are more cases of theft tried in the 
 courts now than in the days when every 
 planter and overseer held court on his own 
 premises, and administered speedy justice 
 with the cat. But all who know, bear wit- 
 ness that there is less thieving As for the 
 increased value attached to property, we see 
 that by the eagerness which the negroes 
 show to become proprietors and taxpayers. 
 In St. Vincent there were in 1834, 22 266 
 slaves, out of a total population of 27 000 ;|| 
 there are now about 30 000 in all, of whom 
 1,500 are whites. The returns for 1857 
 show that 8209 persons were then living in 
 their own houses, built by themselves since 
 emancipation. Within the last twelve years 
 from ten to twelve thousand acres have been 
 brought under cultivation by small proprie- 
 tors, owning from one to five acres; and 
 there are no paupers in the island. In Gre- 
 nada, out of a population of 33 000, the 
 small proprietors, of whom there were none 
 before 1830, now number 2000, and there 
 are 4573 who pay direct taxes. In the 
 whole Island there are only sixty paupers. 
 In Tobago there are 15 500 black and col- 
 ored persons, of whom 2500 are freeholders, 
 and 2800 pay direct taxes. In St. Lucia 
 the black and colored people number over 
 24 000, of whom 2045 are freeholders, and 
 4603 pay taxes. In Antigua, out of 36,- 
 000 inhabitants, 15 644 were living in 1858 
 in houses built since emancipation, and there 
 were but 299 paupers in the island. In 
 Jamaica, 50 000 persons have become pro- 
 prietors since emancipation. So much for 
 the second test. 
 
 In the four French colonies, from 1837 to 
 1847, there were 1754 marriages of slaves 
 in a population of 235 000 ; in nine years 
 after emancipation there were 38 468 mar- 
 
 HCochin, and Sewell, pp. 79-80. 
 
 riages, or about twenty-five times as many. 
 From all the Islands we have similar accounts. 
 
 Judged by these tests, then, civilization is 
 making swift progress among the negroes of 
 the Antilles, instead of the barbarism pre- 
 dicted by the planters. 
 
 We come now to the third experiment of 
 abolition, — that of 1848, in the French and 
 Banish colonies. It should be said, in pass- 
 ing, that we have omitted to notice the eman- 
 cipation of negro slaves in Columbia. Guate- 
 mala, Mexico, and the South American re- 
 publics, all which took place between 1821 
 and 1830. We have not dwelt on these 
 facts, nor have we included the slaves in the 
 number mentioned above, because we have 
 found so few data concerning them. Their 
 number must have been some hundreds of 
 thousands ; the only evidence we have found 
 respecting the condition of the freedmen, is 
 in the testimony of Vice Admiral Fleming, 
 in 1832, before the House of Commons.* 
 
 The Admiral visited Caraccas in 1828, 
 seven years after emancipation there, and 
 again afterwards; he says: “My opinion, 
 from what I saw, is, that the black popula- 
 tion are making rapid progress toward civili- 
 zation. They maintain themselves perfectly 
 well, without any assistance, either from their 
 former masters, or from the Government.” 
 “General Peyanga, one of the Generals at 
 Caraccas, was a perfectly black man, a com- 
 plete negro ; he was a very well educated 
 person, and well read in Spanish literature ; 
 he was a very extraordinary man. Many 
 English officers were serving under him ; I 
 knew many other black officers of very con- 
 siderable acquirements, in Caraccas.” Ad- 
 miral Fleming, be it observed, was an officer 
 in the Spanish Navy, and had peculiar facili- 
 ties for learning the condition of the people 
 of Columbia. Gen. Bolivar had brought 
 about emancipation, having previously freed 
 his own slaves. Doubtless, the same testi- 
 mony might he given, concerning Mexico 
 and the other Spanish republics. It is well 
 known that the independence of Texas was 
 secured mainly by American slaveholders, 
 who were unwilling to submit to the Mexican 
 law against slavery. 
 
 We have already mentioned how slavery 
 was abolished by the National Convention 
 of France, and restored by Napoleon at the 
 cost of the richest of all the colonies — St. 
 Domingo. English conquests still farther 
 
 * Quoted in The Tourist” (London) March 25, 1833. 
 
12 
 
 reduced the French possessions, so that, at 
 the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, 
 they counted but four colonies: Guadaloupe, 
 Guiana, and Martinique in the West Indies, 
 and the Isle of Bourbon, since called Reun- 
 ion, near Madagascar. In all these were 
 slaves, and though the slave trade was 
 nominally abolished in 1815, it contin- 
 ued, especially in Bourbon, till 1830. 
 The Revolution of J uly, in that year, 
 gave an impulse to emancipation by raising 
 to power some of those formerly conspicuous 
 as friends of abolition ; among them the aged 
 and illustrious Lafayette. This noble enthu- 
 siast, as early as 1785, had sent an agent 
 named Richepray to Cayenne, to buy land 
 for the home of emancipated slaves ; a gene- 
 rous scheme of the young Marquis, to which 
 Washington, by letter, gave his hearty ap- 
 proval. f But the work begun by Lafayette, 
 and by Louis XVI. was left to be completed 
 by a third generation. From 1831 to 1840, 
 a succession of laws mitigating the condition 
 of the French slaves, and restricting the 
 power of the master, testified to the wishes 
 of the government of Louis Philippe. These 
 laws were advocated by famous men, first 
 among whom the Duke de Broglie deserves 
 to be named. Guizot, Barrot, De Tracy, 
 De Tocqueville, Lamartine, Passy, Monta- 
 lembert, Remusat, added their reputation and 
 their eloquence to the cause. In 1840, 
 (March 26), the grand commission, to which 
 reference has already been made, was ap- 
 pointed. A majority of its members, among 
 whom was De Tocqueville, were in favor of 
 simultaneous emancipation after a delay of 
 ten years for preparation ; the minority wish- 
 ed for gradual emancipation. 
 
 A law, carrying out some of these plans, 
 was passed in 1845, warmly supported by 
 Count Gasparin, whose recent book, “The 
 Uprising of a Great People,” shows his sin- 
 gular knowledge of our affairs, and his affec- 
 tion for our country. But such was the in- 
 fluence of the handful of slaveholders, and 
 their mercantile partners, in the seaports of 
 France, that they contrived to delay the final 
 act of liberation till after the Revolution of 
 1848. 
 
 Revolutions are not friendly to old abuses. 
 One of the first acts of the Provisional Gov- 
 ernment (4th of March, 1848) was to ap- 
 
 tSee Cochin, Tome I. p. 7. The fact is published more at 
 length in Mr. Sumner’s lecture on Lafayette, given in Bos- 
 ton, October, 1860, wherein he quotes Washington’s letter. 
 
 point a commission to prepare a law of 
 Emancipation. 
 
 At the head of this body, Victor Schoel- 
 cher was named ; an earnest Abolitionist, a 
 brilliant writer, who had twice visited the 
 West Indies, and thoroughly examined their 
 condition, concerning which his books are 
 still the best authority. The Secretary was 
 Wallon, himself an earnest writer on the 
 same and kindred subjects.* 
 
 The new law was passed on the 27th of 
 April, 1848, and took effect in May. In the 
 Danish colonies of St. John, St. Thomas, 
 and Santa Cruz, Emancipation was pro- 
 claimed by the humane Governor, Van 
 Scholten, in July of the same year. The 
 whole number of slaves for whom indemnity 
 was paid by France, was 248 560, (includ- 
 ing 14 000 in the petty colonies of Senegal 
 and Nossi Be) ; the whites numbered about 
 40 000, and the free colored people 100 000. 
 In the Danish islands there were, in 1835, f 
 27 134 slaves, 8922 free colored persons, 
 and 7 122 whites ; in 1848, there were prob- 
 ably about 26 000 slaves. What have been 
 the consequences of freedom in these colo- 
 nies ? 
 
 Let it first be said that in the French isl- 
 ands, the slaves were not only set free, but 
 were at once admitted to all the rights of ci- 
 tizens under the new Republic. They were 
 invited to vote at the elections of 1848, and 
 they did so; they were allowed to sit on 
 juries, to bear arms; in short, to assume all 
 the duties of the citizen. The English law, 
 on the contrary, had made every step of the 
 freed slave upward, a slow and costly one. 
 The result showed the greater wisdom of the 
 English method, or, at least, the more fortu- 
 nate circumstances of its trial. 
 
 The year 1848 passed with few troubles ; 
 but in the next year there were serious dis- 
 turbances at Guadaloupe and Martinique, in 
 which the new-made freemen were concerned. 
 Yet the injury done was far less than in the 
 Jamaica revolt of 1832 ; not a hundredth 
 part so great as that inflicted by Richepanse, 
 in 1802, when, at the command of Napoleon, 
 he reestablished slavery in Guadaloupe, at a 
 cost of 20 000 negro lives.! 1848-49, were 
 years of Revolution, and the French islands 
 escaped as lightly as the European States. 
 
 * The other members were Mestro, Perrinon, Gatine, 
 Gaumont, (a clock-maker,) and Percin. See Cochin, Tome 
 I., p. 76. 
 
 t Cochin, Tome I., page 461-2. Schoelcher, Colonies 
 Etrangeres et Haiti. Tome II.. p. 5. 
 
 $ See The Tourist, Feb. 18, 1833. 
 
13 
 
 There was a derangement of commerce and 
 agriculture for a few years. The trade of 
 the colonies fell off 40 per cent, in 1848, as 
 compared with 1847, which was a very pros- 
 perous year. At the same time, the trade of 
 France fell off 25 per cent. From 1848-53 
 there is a falling off of 10 per cent., as com- 
 pared with the five years before Emancipa- 
 tion ; but in the five subsequent years, from 
 1852-57, there is a gain of nearly 50 per 
 cent., and the four colonies are steadily gain- 
 ing in wealth and numbers. We have al- 
 ready spoken of the effect of slavery to di- 
 minish population in the West Indies. Since 
 emancipation, this tendency has been checked 
 in the French colonies, though it still con- 
 tinues in some of the English islands. The 
 population of the French possessions, in 
 1836, was 376 296; in 1846, it had fallen 
 to 374 548; in 1856, it had risen to 387- 
 821, exclusive of immigration^ 
 
 The Dutch colony of Guiana, where slaves 
 are still held, gives a most atrocious example 
 of this loss of population.]! About 1800 
 there were 80 000 slaves there, producing an 
 annual value of $7 000 000 ; in 1845 there 
 were but 43,285 slaves and 9712 free 
 blacks ; a decrease of 46 per cent, in 45 
 years, or, if we include the free blacks, of 34 
 per cent. But these 43 000 slaves only pro- 
 duced in 1845 a value of $700 000. Of 
 917 plantations 636 have been abandoned. IT 
 and the production has fallen away nine-tenths; 
 yet Emancipation has never troubled the 
 Dutch sugar growers. 
 
 From the Danish colonies since Emancipa- 
 tion we have few statistics, but those are all 
 favorable to freedom. We know that St. 
 Thomas is a rich emporium, and that Santa 
 Cruz flourishes. Some disorders, by which the 
 negroes were the greatest sufferers, attended 
 emancipation ; but they were occasioned by 
 the ill temper of the planters, and were soon 
 quieted by the excellent government. For 
 the past ten years we hear no tidings of tu- 
 mult or distress from them. 
 
 In 1859 when Theodore Parker visited 
 Santa Cruz and St. Thomas, a member of 
 his family wrote thus of the freed slaves: |||| 
 
 “I often think how delighted you would 
 be with the results of Emancipation, as we see 
 them all around us, and have abundant op- 
 portunity to examine them ; twenty thousand 
 
 § Cochin, Tome I., p. 276. 
 
 ||See Cochin, II.. p 267. 
 
 ITEdinburgh Review, April, 1S59. 
 
 Ill|27th Report of the Am. A. S. Society, N. Y., 3861— p. 
 309-10. 
 
 people raised at once from the condition of 
 cattle to that of responsible beings, — pro- 
 tected and assisted, if need be, by the Gov- 
 ernment. The thrifty and industrious al- 
 ready succeed in laying up enough to put 
 them forward in the world, build a comforta- 
 ble little home in town, and bring their 
 children up to trades. They have great 
 pride in being independent. . . . Tfiey 
 
 are gradually acquiring a pride of matrimony. 
 A noble young man here, an Episcopal 
 minister, has established a day school for 
 the colored children of his parish, and I was 
 never so pleased with any school I have ever 
 visited. The progress has been surprising 
 indeed.” 
 
 “Here, as elsewhere,” says Cochin, “Slav- 
 ery did no good, and Emancipation no harm. 
 A hurricane, or the change of a single degree 
 in the thermometer, would have had an in- 
 fluence more hurtful and more lasting, than 
 the fortunate release of 25 000 or 30 000 
 men, unjustly enslaved.” 
 
 In the single Swedish island of St. Bar- 
 tholomew, there were in 1846, 531 slaves, 
 out of a population of 1700. These have all 
 since been freed by purchase gradually made 
 by King Oscar, $10 000 a year having been 
 voted for this purpose by the Swedish Par- 
 liament. We have no information about the 
 effects ; if they had been bad, we should, no 
 doubt, have heard of it. 
 
 We have now spoken of the condition of 
 all the West India Islands where Emancipa- 
 tion has taken place. It has been shown 
 that all from which we have statistics, except 
 Jamaica and Hayti, are more wealthy than 
 during slavery, and that all, without excep- 
 tion, are increasing their trade and produc- 
 tion ; that the ruin of Hayti and Jamaica, so 
 far as it exists, is owing to many other causes 
 than Emancipation, — chiefly in the one case, 
 to the cruel policy of Napoleon, and the un- 
 generous course of France, Spain, and the 
 United States, — and in the other, to the folly 
 of the planters, and the evils begotten by 
 slavery. It has been shown, too, how delu- 
 sive is the assumed prosperity of Cuba and 
 Porto Rico — islands now passing through the 
 hot fit of the slaveholding fever, but which 
 must soon be let blood by Emancipation, a a 
 in Hayti, or pass into the ague fit and mel- 
 ancholy decline of the Dutch colonies, which 
 slavery still curses. It has been shown that 
 the negro is not bloodthirsty, that he is not 
 idle, that he is capable of civilization. Let 
 us add that he is not a pauper, — contraiy to 
 
14 
 
 the theories of many Americans, who fear to 
 do an act of justice, lest we of the North 
 shall be overrun by black . paupers from the 
 South. No, the paupers of the South are 
 clothed in soft raiment, and live delicately, 
 and are, or would be, in Kings’ houses. It 
 is a curious, but well attested fact, that 
 among the free colored people of the British 
 West Indies, in 1826, the proportion of 
 paupers was one in 370, while among the 
 whites it was one in 40.* In many places, 
 the proportion was still more surprising. In 
 Barbadoes, there were 14 500 whites, and 
 4500 free blacks ; there were 996 white pau- 
 pers, and one black one ! In Berbice, there 
 were two colored paupers out of 900, and sev- 
 enteen white ones out of 600. In J amaipa, the 
 free colored were to the whites as two to one, 
 while the white paupers were to the colored, 
 as two to one. In Massachusetts, in 1855, 
 the number of paupers was one in 148. No 
 return was made of colored paupers, but we 
 are told that the returns of Philadelphia, 
 where there were in 1850, about 20 000 col- 
 ored persons, show a much greater proportion 
 of white, than of colored paupers. 
 
 Many authorities have already been quoted 
 to show the happy results of Emancipation, 
 and we have been careful to take the testi- 
 mony of enemies as well as friends. Let us 
 add a few more to the list. 
 
 In 1839, De Tocqueville wrote thus ;f 
 “Many persons, preoccupied by the recollec- 
 tions of St. Domingo, are led to believe that 
 the Emancipation of the slaves will occasion 
 bloody collisions between the two races, 
 whence the expulsion or the massacre of the 
 whites may soon follow. Everything leads 
 to the belief that these fears are imaginary , 
 or at least , much exaggerated. Nothing 
 which has taken place in the English colonies 
 leaves room to suppose that Emancipation 
 would be accompanied with the disasters 
 which are dreaded.” 
 
 In the Encyclopedia Britannica, a work of 
 the highest authority, occurs this passage in 
 the article on Slavery, published in 1859 : 
 
 “There can be but one opinion regarding 
 the results of Emancipation entertained by 
 any man who will dispassionately investi- 
 gate the condition of the colored populations 
 in the West Indies ; and that opinion will 
 redound, in the highest degree, to the sa- 
 
 * Blue Book, May 9, 1826. Quoted in The Tourist 1832. 
 
 t Report on the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colo- 
 nies. By Alexis De Tocqueville. (Translation) Boston, 1840. 
 p. 26. This is a pamphlet of 64 pages. 
 
 gacity of those who then advocated the de- 
 liverance of the slave. England, by freeing 
 her slaves, performed a politic, as well as a 
 very just act.” 
 
 Mr. Sewell, who has already been quoted, 
 says, at the close of his book, written in 1860 : 
 “The act of British Emancipation has been 
 widely abused ; but its detractors must live 
 among the people it disenthralled, if they 
 would learn the value at which it can be es- 
 timated. Time, which develops the freedom 
 that act created, adds continually to its lustre. 
 Freedom, when allowed fair play, injured 
 the prosperity of none of these West Indian 
 colonies. It saved them from a far deeper 
 and more lasting depression than any they 
 have yet known. It was a boon conferred 
 upon all classes of society ; upon planter and 
 upon laborer; upon commerce and agricul- 
 ture ; upon industry and education ; upon 
 morality and , religion. And if a perfect 
 measure of success remains to be achieved, 
 let not freedom be condemned ; for the ob- 
 stacles to be overcome were great, and -the 
 workers few and unwilling.” 
 
 The Hon. Charles Francis Adams, in a 
 letter written July 21st, 1860, says : 
 
 “West India Emancipation is gravely pro- , 
 nounced a failure. I have heard it so de- 
 scribed on the floor of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. The only reason given, is that 
 the British Islands do not produce so many 
 pounds of coffee and sugar as they did when 
 they could force them out of the bones and 
 muscles of slaves. Now mankind may, by 
 possibility, be tolerably well off, and yet do 
 entirely without coffee and sugar. But how 
 can they be happy without good security for 
 their right to seek happiness in their own 
 way? . . . Yet they tell us, because 
 
 coffee and sugar fail there is no good in 
 Emancipation. If, by reason of this failure, 
 it could be shown that there was misery and 
 famine in the land, that starvation was in a 
 fair way to turn the garden into a wilder- 
 ness, I should be ready to concede something 
 to the argument. But I hear of no such 
 thing as that.” 
 
 The Hon. Charles Sumner, in a letter of 
 July 30th, 1860, says : 
 
 “Well proved facts vindicate completely 
 the policy of Emancipation, even if it were 
 not commanded by the simplest rules of mor- 
 ality. . . . Two different Governors- of this 
 island (Jamaica) 1 have assured me that, with 
 
 +See New York Independent of March 20, for an impor- 
 tant letter of Gov. Hinks on this point. 
 
15 
 
 all their experience there, they looked upon 
 Emancipation as a blessing.” 
 
 Here ends our chapter on the West In- 
 dies. What inference can be drawn from all 
 this ? 
 
 We answer — First : That Emancipation 
 in the United States is safe. If it was so in 
 Jamaica, where the whites were as one to fif- 
 teen, will it not be in Maryland, where they 
 are more than three to one, in Kentucky, 
 where they are nearly four to one, in Mis- 
 souri, where they are nearly ten to one ? 
 
 Second : It will he politic. If the free- 
 ing of half a million of slaves in 1793, 
 saved St. Domingo from falling into the 
 hands of England, the freeing of four mil- 
 lions, in 1862, may save the Cotton States 
 from a like fate, which even our recent and 
 brilliant victories perhaps may hasten. 
 
 Third : It must not he attended hy forced 
 colonization. If the great want of the West 
 Indies is labor, with what expectation can we 
 ship out of our Southern States two-thirds of 
 the laboring population ? Immigration is 
 the demand in the West Indias, it would be 
 folly for us to try emigration. 
 
 Fourth. It must not he gradual , hut im- 
 mediate and complete. If the experience of 
 Antigua and Jamaica teaches anything, it 
 teaches that simultaneous and entire emanci- 
 pation is the safest, the cheapest, and the 
 wisest course. 
 
 Fifth. It will attract more white men to 
 the South than it will send hlack men to the 
 North. This is the opinion of a sensible fu- 
 gitive, to whom we owe the statement ; but 
 the history of immigration to the West In- 
 dies, and to Mauritius and Bourbon proves 
 it true. Why should the negroes come here 
 after emancipation? On the contrary, reasons 
 both of climate anchof political economy will 
 carry them South in great numbers, not only 
 from the border States, but from the North 
 and from Canada. 
 
 Finally, these facts prove, what no man of 
 lofty virtue ever can doubt, — That justice is 
 always expedient , 
 
 The Greeks had a story which devout old 
 Herodotus has preserved, that Glaucus, the 
 
 Spartan, wishing to commit an injustice, and 
 to confirm it by an oath, asked of the oracle 
 if he might do so. “Glaucus, son of Epicy- 
 des!” answered the priestess, in her solemn 
 chant, “for the present perjury is profitable, 
 and theft ; swear, then, for death lies in wait 
 for the just and the unjust. But there is a 
 nameless child of perjury, without hands, 
 without feet, yet swiftly she pursues till she 
 clutches and destroys thy race, and all thy 
 house. But the race of the just man flour- 
 ishes forever.” 
 
 Thus the oracle. “And now,” adds the 
 narrator, “there is no descendant of Glaucus 
 at all, noi any branch of the stock of Glaucus ; 
 but he has been cast forth from Sparta, root 
 and branch.” 
 
 Centuries earlier, the wise Athenian law- 
 giver, in grave verse, which Demosthenes 
 loved to quote, had warned bis countrymen 
 of the same truth.* 
 
 My soul, Athenians, prompts me to relate 
 What miseries upon injustice wait. 
 
 Riches by theft, and cozenage to possess, 
 
 The sacred bounds of Justice ye transgress ; 
 
 W r ho silent sees the present, knows the past, 
 
 And will revenge these injuries at last. 
 
 But Justice all things orderly designs, 
 
 And in strict fetters the unjust confines. 
 
 What’s sour she sweetens, and allays what cloys. 
 Wrong she repels, ill in the growth destroys, 
 
 Softens the stubborn, the unjust reforms, 
 
 And in the State calms all seditious storms. 
 
 Bitter dissensions by her rule supprest, 
 
 Who wisely governs all things for the best. 
 
 And earlier yet, the stern warnings of the 
 Hebrew sage, who led forth his despised peo- 
 ple from the oppression of Egypt, had an- 
 nounced the eternal law with no doubtful 
 voice : 
 
 “Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not 
 keeping his commandments and his judgments, and his sta- 
 tutes which I command this day ; lest when thou hast eaten 
 and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt there- 
 in ; 
 
 And when thy flocks and thy herds multiply, and thy 
 silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is 
 multiplied ; , 
 
 Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord 
 thy God. . . . And thou say in thine heart, my power and 
 the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth. 
 
 And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, 
 I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. 
 
 As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your 
 face, so shall ye perish ; because ye would not be obedient 
 unto the voice of the Lord your God.” — [Deuteronomy viii. 
 11 - 20 . 
 
 ♦Demosthenes. False Legation, 256. Stanley’s Trans- 
 lation in the History of Philosophy. 
 
 \