The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-05-05
DEATH OF THE GREAT SLAVE KING.
From the Daily News

| W. G. s.
| DEATH OF THE GREAT SLAVE KING.
| From the Daily News.
We have this morning to announce the death
of a sovereign. A black, woolly-headed poten-
tate was he, it is true, but nevertheless a no.
table monarch trained and experienced war
rior-a king whose deeds resounded far and
wide. He had a court, a nobility, treasury,
an army, and policy; he had shed more
blood than greater kings, and had ambitions
of his own he raised his State to external i'm
| portance, made treaties, concluded alliances,
| and brought himself within the vortex of Eu-
ropean diplomacy. In his time, too, he had
| thwarted, by his conduct and measures the
policy of England, and incurred the displeasure
of Lord Palmerston who opposed his proceed
| ings, threatened him with chastisement, resist
| ed the extension of his dominions, and sup
| piled the smaller communities, whose independ-
ence was assailed, with arms and munitions
of war. Latterly he became an object of at
traction to France. Louis Napoleon sought
his friendship and commercial intercourse, sent
mission to his capital, and presented him
with brass field pieces wherewith to astonish
his subjects. English travellers, functionaries,
and naval officers, too, visited him, were hospi
tably entertained, despite international differ
ences, and, returning after fruitless discussions
from his court, published narratives of his
dreadful deeds, that have given him world
wide name, and enrolled him amongst the
monsters of humanity. 1t is the demise of
Gezo, the Slave King of Dahomey, that we re-
cord. The exact date when the event occurred
is not given in the letters before us, but the
news is brought with such particulars, by the
last mail from the west coast of Africa, that no
doubt can be entertained that Geo is gathered
to his fathers, and that his son reigns in his
stead.
Geo deserved the odium and detestation
which he so abundantly obtained all the more
that he was both able and sagacious. For up
wards of fve-and-twenty years he supplied all
the demands Of the Spanish and Portuguese
slave dealers who infested the Blight of Benin,
ravaging and devastating the interior far and
wide by his slave hunts to obtain victims for
his European customers. He organized and
led these internal forayS and cruelties on the
largest scale Africa has known, and annually
sold without remorse or scruple his own cOun-
trymen in tens of thousands for expectation.
His horrible cruelties arrested the progress of
Africa, fed the wretchedness and mortality of
the middle passage, and, by depopuating Ne
groland, promoted the immense material pros
perity of Cuba and Brazil. His policy, and
the wealth he derived from it. excited the
cupidity of his neighbors, and from Whydah to
Lagos the slave trade became the business of
the whole population. When GEO succeeded
to his patrlmonlal throne, the adjacent country
was inhabited by independent communities of
the Egbas, and 1t was on them he pcrpetrated
his earlier atrocities. He attacked them, burnt
their towns, carried off their choicest people.
and when his own violence was unsuccessful,
his intrigue introduced civil war, which com
pleted their ruin.
have counted" writes the American mis-
sionary, Bowen-perhaps thebest recent author
ity-" the sites of eighteen desolated towns
within distance of sixty miles between Bada-
CRY and Abeokuta- legitimate result of the
slave trade. The whole Yoruba country is full
of depopulated towns, some of which were even
larger than Abeokuta is at present. Of all the
places visited by the Landers, only Ishukki,
IzbObo, Ikishi, and few villages remain
Jenna was destroyed few weeks after my ar
rival in the country. Other and still larger
towns have lately fallen. At one of these
called Oke-Oddan, the Dahomey army killed
or captured 10000 people, on which occasion
the King presented Domingo the SLAYER, with
500 slaves. The whole number of people de-
stroyed IN this section of country within the
last fifty years cannot be less than 5OO,OOOP'|
In these figures there is of course not a little
exaggeration; but making every allowance for
GEO must have been enormous. ri
While, however, the interior without the
limits of Dahomey suffered by these slave wars
dlsorganization and anarchy, the towns on the
coast for season hourished. Whydah, Porto
Novo, Badagry, and Lagos, rose in population,
carried on great commerce in human flesh
were the seats of large establishments, and
grew rapidly in wealth. But their ill-gotten
riches and fictitious prosperity brought about
their own ruin they were nests and dens of
robbers, thieves, and pirates; scenes of tumult
disorder, and violence, werssof constant occur
renee; Badagry, which boosted of 10000 in
habitants, was burnt down in cut-throat affair
amongst its own lawless population /; the whole
Blight was closely blockaded by English cruis
ers and Lagos was destroyed by British
bombardment. The liberated Africans of Sierra
Leone founded the town Of Abeokuta, establish
ed IN the interior an anti-slave-trade interest,
were encouraged by English missionaries. and
supported by English assistance. This brought
on Abeokuta the wrath of GEO: AGAIN and
again he attacked the new communities often
his assaults and sieges were repulsed; until at
last, IN 1851, the Slave King was completely
routed under its mud walls, and from that
time his power declined. British policy pre-
vailed on the coast; Lagos, under the influence
OF our consuis, Beecroft and Campbell, (both
and profitable lawful commerce; roads were
opened up into the interior; peace being es-
tablished, industry took to honest courses and
from Whydah to Lagos, the commerce in palm
superseded the slave trade, and increased at a
rate nothing less than marvellous, and even
uezo sought, however grimly, to regain his di-
mlnlshed revenues by participating in it.
Gezo was, however, never converted or recon
ciled to legitimate commerce; he repulssd all
our diplomatic advances, rejected an anti-slave
treaty, denounced our cruising system, COM
planned that we had deprived him of his reve-
nues, and was ever on the alert to revive the
traffic. Thus disposed, he at once responded
to the French scheme of emigration, and glad
ly received at Abomi French mission. But
the French prices for negroes were too low to
yield him profit; and although the slave trade
was partially revived, to the serious injury of
lawful commerce, he had no large operations
with the French he preferred the greater
liberality of his old friends and connections
the Spanish and Portuguese dealers in men.
At last his dismal reign is over; and his death
has been incurred and his funeral celebrated by
the entire slaverade interest ofthe coast and the