The Greenville times. [volume] (Greenville, Miss.) 1868-1917, 1888-05-19


Europe, and the discovery of America
in the year 1892 lent an impetus which
was great beyond measure. Spain,
France, Germany, England, nearly. if
not all of Europe embarked in the
traffic, and African slavery flourlshed
in them and their colonies. Queen
Isabella, of Spain. Queen Elizabeth.
Charles ii, James ii and Queen Anne
were eonspieuously interested as indi-
viduals in the large profits divided
from il and in the American colonies
approval of the African slave trade be-
came test of loyalty to the home
government. The massing of Africans
in America awakened grave fears in
the colonists, but protest was useless
the traffic was profitable to the Mother
countries engaged in il and their col
onial allies. In the congress of 1916
this traffic was made one of the
grounds of complaint against the Brit
ish government, but in the adoption of
the Federal constitution in 1887 in
dubitable proof is furnished of the
strange and intense power of the slave
trade, in the union of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts and Connecticut with
Georgia and South Carolina to pro-
long the traffic till the year 1908.
Certainly an odd association in the
light of subsequent events in our
country's history. African slavery
was greatly promoted by the invention
of the cotton gin in 1892, the
Georgia cession in 1903, the Louisi-
ana purchase in 1903, as well as by
the wide, increasing and active market
for slave crops-cotton, rice, sugar and
tobacco. In 1908 the trade was for
hidden by law, and was by statute de-
clared piracy but in proof of the actu-
al state of the public mind. no convic-
ton was had under the law until the
trial and conviction of Nathaniel Cor
don in New York in 1861. At the
time Of the adoption of the Federal
constitution the entire North was
slave territory except possibly Massa-
chusetts, but the institution by reason
of climate and economic cause was un-
profitable there, gradual emancipation
was ultimately accomplished, and their
negroes sold South, where already the
negro was the most highly valued of all
property. Amid the tugging vicissi-
tudes of my life as cotton planter, |
have often felt il had been better at
this epoch-making time had our Sun
nyland been wrapt in snow icy as
Himilaya.
Surely the peculiar origin of this
traffic in human life, its rapid and ir-
resistiblc progress, the inevitable con-
centration of the negroes, from physical
and economic causes, in the south, the
emancipation of them as mill
tary necessity in terrific inter-
necinc war of which they were the
cause, must impress the thoughtful
student of history that the chapter
which opened in 1442 and still far
from completion, has been indited by
an intelligence mightier than human.
But why in the counsels of God IL was
ordered that your ancestor and mine
should be the compulsory educator of
a heather race, and the knotty problem
of their development should devolve
upon us to be transmitted to our chill
dren's children; why in the ways of a
wise Providence the advancement of
the Southern white man is thus handi-
capped beyond any people in any time
or history, can alone be unfolded by
Him who designed it. There is some
thing higher and deeper in our cxcep-
tional social condition than is dreamed
of in the dusty arena of vituporatHc
partisan politics. As emancipation has
progressed every customer of the
African SLAYER has been compensated
in some way, for the loss of his proper.
| ty except the Southern owner. From
him his negro slaves were violently
wrenched, and not only freed, but in.
vested with political power from
which he was excluded. Were the
wreck of his fortune and the nefarious
oppression of carpetbaggery part OF
the tuition needed for the performance
of an allotted task +? Surely these can
not be tortured into divine punish
ments We are taught to believe that
divine punishment is absolute justice
and that justice is the primal attribute
of God. Why should the legal owner
by lawful purchase or inheritance
suffer divine wrath, and the guilty cap
tor and the trafiicker escape! Can this
be true when to-day in New and Old
England luxury and refinement, litera-
ture, the fine arts, even theology, draw
material sustenance from well garnered
boards laid up from the African slave
trade. The nautical brethren, and
kinsmen of our fathers were shrewd
enough to invest their quick multiply
ing ducats in something more stable
than their own living, heather, stolen
merchandise and the goodly inherit.
ance of their children attests the bust
ness sagacity of the sire.
The cardinal, distinguishing princi-
pie of African slavery, the negro's ra-
cial inferiority, was the accepted view
of the civilized world. Draper voiced
the almost universal sentiment When
he wrote that physical circumstances
"incapacitate the negro, who can never
invent an alphabet nor an arithmetic
and whose theology never passes be
yond the stage of sorcery.' The i'm
ported negro, in the compulsory rela
ton of slave to an anglo-Saxon master
was taught the English language, stop
ped from the practices of heathendom
and gradually inducled into the Chris
tan church. with forid view of hea
ven and a very intense conception 0
hell. Ills offspring became more ad
vanced than the native African sire
and so the process went lis was th'
chattel of his master, fed. clothed ant
governed in all things by him, an,
could not have appraised the PLANES
necessary by the money value of hi
own labor The most that can be SAT-
of him at the time of his emancipation
is that. as a race, he had become par
TALLY civilized. The North viewed hi
presence with great alarm, and thi
sentiment there is well voiced in tn
, vote of Illinois in August, 1862, ol
the eve of the emancipation proclana
, ton. to EXCLUDE them from that Stat,
\ L n "a AT r.. \.