CHAPTER I.
THE NEGRO AND THE WHITE MAN AS MASTER AND SLAVE.
Slavery
arose at an early period of the world's history, out of the accident of capture
in war. It was found by savages more profitable to make slaves out of prisoners
of war than to kill them. The history of all the oriental nations, including
the Jews, shows that they had their slaves. Reading the Homeric poems, passages
are often found testifying that he who was made a prisoner was also made a
slave. Aristotle defended the institution. So did Plato, he only asking that no
Greek should be so placed.
In
fact all of the Greek philosophers refused to believe the holding of one's
fellow man in bondage wrong, on the score of morals. Aristotle declared that the
institution was just and right, on the ground of a diversity of race, dividing
mankind into the free and the bond by nature. The civilized world denies the
doctrines of these ancient minds, as witnessed by acts of manumission wherever
Christianity is known.
Let
no man think that American slavery was the first, the only or even the most
severe. By this I would not be guilty of apologizing for its presence in this
country or for those men, among the many who held slaves, who so wickedly
abused that institution. But duty compels the statement which is now made:
Others, than Negroes have been skives. Others than Negroes have suffered the
extreme and brutal affliction which often repaid the obedient service of those
poor individuals who happened to be under the "ban."
Such
were the Helots in Sparta, the Penestae in Thessaly, the Bithynians at
Byzantium and the Thracians of Thrace. Grecian history teaches that these were
slaves, that these were freed, and that these became the equals, in every respect,
of those who
once
held them in bondage. Can our slavery be compared with theirs? The Helots, the
Penestae and the Bithynians, though being the property and at the disposal of
their owners, could not be sold out of the country or separated from their
families, and were even capable of acquiring property. It is said that numbers of
them were encouraged in cultivating their intellects,
especially
where proven to have natural ability. None of these slaves were Negroes.
The
Thracian parents who sold their children into slavery were not of the Hamitic
line. Strabo declares that notwithstanding these Thracians' degradation and
notorious barbarousness, both
as
to language and manners, still to these prehistoric Thracians belong the Muses
and the cultivation of music, Orpheus, Musaeus Thamyris and Eumolpus; thus
proving that it does not necessarily follow that the man enslaved is inferior
intellectually to the enslaver. It is impossible, however, in a talk so limited
to treat, as elaborately as desired, Grecian slavery. It was said by
Demosthenes that the slave in Athens was better off than the free citizen of
many other countries.
ROMAN
SLAVERY differed in many particulars from that of Greece. All men, by natural
law in Rome, were free; and to be anything else was contrary to that law.
However, by the law of nations, a captive, instead of being slain, was called servus
quasi servatus. Also a free man had power to sell himself. The early history of
the Romans tells us that the owner had the power of punishing and even putting
to death his slave. Whenever Vedius Pollio got mad he dashed such slaves as
displeased him into his
fish
ponds to feed his lampreys, and when the polite Augustus, the emperor, was told
about this slave-holder's conduct, the severest punishment the emperor
inflicted upon him was the destruction of the pond.
Under
Claudius extreme cruel treatment of slaves was forbidden, and in selling them
parents could not be separated from children; the same was true concerning
brothers and sisters. The children of a female slave followed the status of the
mother. A slave could not contract marriage, and no legal relation was
recognized between parent and child. The harboring of a runaway slave was
illegal. Persons in good circumstances kept an immense number, one person often
owning two hundred; to have a large number being a matter of ostentation.
Originally,
as here, the slave was allowed to own nothing, he and all he acquired being his
master's. But when a slave commenced to work in the “trades", as in this
country, a certain part of his gains was given him as his own, which he might
keep until it amounted to sufficient to purchase his freedom. Justinian and
Christianity did much towards the overthrow and extinction of slavery, but
failed to accomplish it, and slavery continued even after the fall of the
empire.
During
the middle ages this "curse" merged into a mitigated condition called
serfdom, which prevailed all over Europe, the taint of which has not even yet
been entirely wiped out. Though early modern times stopped the selling of
slaves in Europe, the Mohammedan nations would, as often as they captured a
Christian of Europe, sell him into Asia or Africa. Many of the brightest minds
of Europe can trace their ancestry back to the home of the serf. Instead of
being ashamed of his low condition, he is thankful that he is not despised because
of a God-fixed position, but honored because he is found to possess innate
qualities powerful enough to lift him up out of the black night of serfdom into
the broad daylight of citizenship.
The
slaves of the Romans were not Negroes. The term of slave is taken from the word
Slavonic: the Slavonians, many of them being made bondsmen, were called by the name
slave.
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