Chapter IV: Part 4

When Governor Botetourt (pronounced after the English fashion, _Bottatot_) came over to Virginia, he took the oath of office here at Williamsburg, and rode in state in a great coach drawn by six milk-white horses. After the oath had been administered, a grand supper was given in his honor at the Raleigh Tavern. _The Gazette_ gives a full account of the affair. An ode was sung, beginning:

"He comes! His Excellency comes
To cheer Virginia's plains.
Fill, your brisk bowls, ye loyal sons,
And sing your loftiest strains!
Be this your glory, this your boast,
Lord Botetourt's the favorite toast.
Triumphant wreaths entwine!
Fill your bumpers swiftly round,
And make your spacious rooms resound
With music, joy and wine!"

The air being ended, the recitative took up the strain of effusive compliment:

"Search every garden, strip the shrubby bowers,
And strew his path with sweet autumnal flowers!
Ye virgins, haste; prepare the fragrant rose
And with triumphant laurels crown his brows!"

The virgins thus called forth, appeared from their "shrubby bowers," bearing roses and laurel, and singing, as they advanced toward the hero of the evening:

"See, we've stripped each flowery bed--
Here's laurels for his lordly head,
And while Virginia is his care,
May he protect the virtuous fair!"

As I looked on Lord Botetourt's statue, and marked its moss-covered figure and its fatuously smiling face, robbed of its nose by the stone of contempt, I remembered this festival, and mused on the vicissitudes of fame.

In the year 1752 a new delight was opened to the provincials. Hallam's company of comedians came over in _The Charming Sally_ to act for them. A playbill of that year announces that "at the new theatre in Annapolis by the company of comedians, on Monday next, being the sixth of this instant July, will be performed _The Busy Body_, likewise a farce called _The Lying Valet_. To begin precisely at 7 o'clock. Tickets to be had at the printing-office. No persons to be admitted behind the scenes. Box seats 10s., pit 7s. 6d, gallery 5s." A later bill announces that "children in laps will not be admitted."

The favorite plays given by Hallam's Company seem to have been--

"The Suspicious Husband," "Othello," "The Mock Doctor," "Romeo and Juliet," "The Devil To Pay," "A Bold Stroke for a Wife," and "Miss In Her Teens; or, A Medley of Lovers."

Our squeamish age would find much to shock, and perhaps little to amuse, in many of those old plays. Congreve's shameless muse set the pace, and the Nell Gwynns of the stage kept it. If we wonder that our ancestors could listen and look, will not our descendants wonder equally at us?

Before Hallam and his company came over to set up a professional standard, amateur theatricals were the rage. The Virginia _Gazette_ in 1736 announces a performance of "_The Beaux' Stratagem_ by the gentlemen and ladies of this county," and also that the students of the college are to give _The Tragedy of Cato_ at the theatre. Somehow, Addison's tragedies seem further removed from our sympathies than Congreve's comedies, and we turn with relief to a form of amusement always in fashion and forever modern, the time-honored entertainment of feasting.

In 1744, a grand dinner was given by Governor Gooch to visiting statesmen at Annapolis. William Black, who was present, records in his journal that "Punch was served before dinner, which was sumptuous, with wines in great abundance, followed by strawberries and ice-cream, a great rarity." These public banquets were momentous affairs, demanding a sound digestion and a steady head in those guests who wished to live to dine another day. Chastellux gives a vivid account of their customs. "The dinner," he writes, "is served in the American or, if you will, in the English fashion, consisting of two courses, one comprehending the entrées, the roast meat and the warm side-dishes; the other, the sweet pastry and confectionery. When this is removed, the cloth is taken off, and apples, nuts, and chestnuts are served. It is then that healths are drunk." This custom of drinking healths, he finds pleasant enough, inasmuch as it serves to stimulate and prolong conversation. But he says, "I find it an absurd and truly barbarous practice, the first time you drink, and at the beginning of the dinner, to call out successively to each individual, to let him know you drink his health. The actor in this ridiculous comedy is sometimes ready to die with thirst, whilst he is obliged to inquire the names, or catch the eyes, of twenty-five or thirty persons."

The woes of the diner and winer do not, it seems, end with this general call, for he is constantly called, and having his sleeve pulled, to attract his attention, now this way, now that. "These general and partial attacks end in downright duels. They call to you from one end of the table to the other: 'Sir, will you permit me to drink a glass of wine with you?'"

Allowing for some exaggeration on the part of the lively Frenchman, it is easy to see what quantities of Madeira and "Phyall" must have been drunk in those tournaments of courtesy, and I do not wonder to read in the journal of a young woman of the eighteenth century: "The gentlemen are returned from dinner. Both tipsy!"

"The Tuesday Club," of Maryland, had many a jovial supper together. Their toasts always began with "The Ladies," followed by "The King's Majesty," and after that "The Deluge." I find a suggestive regulation made by this club, that each member should bring his own sand-box, "to save the carpet."

Parson Bacon sanctified these convivial meetings by his presence and was, by all accounts, the ringleader of the boisterous revels. Jonathan Boucher, another clergyman, but of a very different type, was a great clubman too. He was one of the leading spirits of "The Hommony Club," whose avowed object was "to promote innocent mirth and ingenious humor."

The days of women's clubs were still in the far future, and the chief excitement of the ladies was an occasional ball. The Maryland assemblies began at six o'clock in the evening, and were supposed to end at ten, though the young folks often coaxed and cajoled the authorities into later hours. Card parties were part of the entertainment, and whist was enlivened by playing for money. The supper was often furnished from the ladies' kitchens and the gentlemen's gamebags, and was a tempting one. The costumes were rich and imposing. A witness of one of these Maryland balls writes: "The gentlemen, dressed in short breeches, wore handsome knee-buckles, silk stockings, buckled pumps, etc. The ladies wore--God knows what; I don't!"

Dancing and music were the chief branches of the eighteenth-century maiden's education. I can fancy, as I read that "Patsy Custis and Milly Posey are gone to Colonel Mason's to the dancing-school," how they held up their full petticoats, and pointed out the toes of their red-heeled shoes, and dreamed of future conquests, although for one of them the tomb was already preparing its chill embrace.

For women, life in town was pleasant enough with its tea-drinkings, its afternoon visits, and its evening assemblies, but on the plantations far from neighbors time must often have hung heavy on their hands. Yet even there, pleasures could be found, or made. When evening shut down over the lonely manor-houses along the Chesapeake, the myrtleberry candles were lighted, the slender-legged mahogany tables drawn out, and the Colonial dames seated themselves to an evening of cards. Small stakes were played for to heighten the interest of "Triumph, Ruff and Honors," "Gleke," or "Quadrille;" and when these lost their charm, there was the spinet to turn to.

In those primitive days people still loved melody. "A little music" was called for with enthusiasm, and given without hesitation. There was no scientific criticism to be feared when the young men and maidens "raised a tune." Their list of songs was not long; but familiarity lent a deeper charm than novelty. "Gaze not on Swans" was a favorite in the seventeenth century. "Push about the Brisk Bowl," while well enough at the hunt supper table, was banished from the drawing-room in favor of "Beauty, Retire!" a song beginning--

"Beauty, retire! thou dost my pitty move;
Believe my pitty and then trust my love."

The writer does not make it quite clear why he wishes Beauty to retire, nor why she moves his pity. In fact, the case seems quite reversed in the last stanza:

"With niew and painfulle arts
Of studied warr I breake the hearts
Of half the world; and shee breakes mine;
And shee, and shee, and _shee_ breakes mine!"

Through the lapse of more than one century, we hear the echo of those young voices, rising and falling in the air and counter of the quaint old melodies.

Oh, those shadowy corners of candle-lighted rooms, those spinets, those duos and trios, those ruffled squires and brocaded dames!--where are they now?

His Man-Servants and His Maid-Servants

"JOVE _fixed it certain
That whatever day
Makes a man slave,
Takes half his worth away_"]

A New England farmhouse and a Southern plantation:--What a contrast the two presented in colonial days! In the homes of Massachusetts and Connecticut, the notable housewife was up before light, breaking the ice over the water, of a winter morning, preparing with her own hands the savory sausages and buckwheat cakes for the men's breakfast, and setting the house in order. To her it fell to take charge of the wool from the back of the sheep till it reached the back of her boy; carding, spinning, weaving, dyeing the wool, cutting the cloth, and sewing the seams, scouring floors and washing dishes; all these duties fell to the share of the Puritan Priscillas. Yet, when evening fell, when the dishes were shelved on the dresser, these busy housewives, in their sanded kitchens, with the firelight reflected from their shining tins, were not to be pitied, even in comparison with their more luxuriously attended sisters in Maryland or Virginia.

Life at the South was at once grander and shabbier, than in New England. The Southerner's ease-loving nature had the power to ignore detail; and it is attention to detail which brings well-being to the household and wrinkles to the housekeeper. A thousand slaves could not take the place of one woman of "faculty." In fact, the more shiftless, lazy negroes there were, the less order and tidiness prevailed. But order and tidiness were not indispensable to happiness there and then, and the sum of human enjoyment was large on those old plantations, in spite of shiftlessness and slavery. Of that restless ambition which corrodes modern life, men had little, women had none, and servants less than none. The negro was a true child of the tropics, and with food and sunshine enough, was merry as the day is long.

A healthy negro, on a prosperous estate, under the charge of a gentleman, not under the bane of an overseer, came perhaps as near to animal cheerfulness as mortal often does. The master enjoyed that serenity and leisure which freedom from manual labor gives; his children grew up, each with a personal retainer attached to himself with the old feudal loyalty; the lady of the house was again the old Saxon _hlaefdige_, who gave out the bread to the tribe of servants day by day. Yet with all the brightness which can be thrown into the picture, slavery was a curse alike to slave and slave-owner, on account both of what it brought and what it took away.

It is strange to note how silently and unperceived the black cloud of slavery stole over the Colonial Cavalier. A casual entry in John Rolfe's journal records: "About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold vs twenty Negars." Before the arrival of this fatal vessel life-servitude was unknown. The system of apprenticeship, and what would now be called contract labor, prevailed. These indented white servants were either transported convicts, sold for a season to the planters, or, like the Maryland _redemptioners_, poor immigrants, who contracted to serve for a period of time equivalent to the cost of their passage, which was prepaid to the master of the ship on which they came.

The work of these indented servants was not excessive. "Five dayes and a halfe in the summer," said one who knew the situation from experience, "is the allotted time that they worke and, for two months, when the sun predominates in the highest pitch of his heat, they claim an antient and customary Priviledge, to repose themselves three hours in the day, within the house. In Winter they do little but hunt and build fires."

The Sot-Weed Factor gives a much less rose-colored account of the life of a redemptioner. A woman-servant in the poem, looking back on her life in England, exclaims:

"Not then a slave for twice two year,
My cloathes were fashionably new,
Nor were my shifts of linnen blue.
But things are changed: Now at the Hoe
I daily work and Barefoot go,
In weeding corn, or feeding Swine
I spend my melancholy time."

A "melancholy time" many of the redemptioners must have had in their enforced service; but if the master proved too severe, the indented servant had the privilege of selecting another, and the original employer was indemnified for his loss. Susan Frizell, who had run away from her master, was recaptured and brought before the court for punishment; but her accounts of ill-usage so moved the authorities, that they remitted the extra term of service to which running away had made her liable, and only demanded that she should earn under a new master the five hundred pounds of tobacco to be paid to her old employer. The bystanders were so touched by poor Susan's pitiful situation that they collected six hundred pounds on the spot, and sent Susan on her way rejoicing, with a capital of one hundred pounds of tobacco to give her a new start in the world.

The law provided that the servant, when his time of service expired, should receive a portion of goods sufficient to make him an independent freeman, who might rise to be a councillor or an assemblyman. A Colonial statute directs that "at the end of said terme of service, the master or mistress of such servant shall give unto such man or maid-servant, 3 barrels, a hilling hoe and a felling axe; and to a man-servant, one new cloth suite, one new shirte, 1 new paire shoes, and a new Monmouth capp; and to a maid-servant, 1 new pettycoat and waistcoat, 1 new smock, 1 pair new shoes, 1 pair new stockings and the cloaths formerly belonging to the servant."

The advantage of this system of indented service lay in its gradual absorption of the immigrant population, who thus had time to understand the laws and institutions of their new country before they became in their turn citizens and lawmakers. The disadvantage lay in the encouragement it gave to kidnapping. Many children and young people in the seaboard towns of England were beguiled, or carried by force, on shipboard, to be sold as servants in the colonies. The kidnappers, or "spirits," as they were commonly called, served as bugaboos in many an English nursery to frighten naughty children into obedience under threat of being spirited away to America.

Howells' "State-Trials" contains a pitiful account of the experiences of a young nobleman sold as a white servant in Virginia through the plot of his covetous uncle, who wanted his property. The nephew is a mere child when he begins his apprenticeship in the provinces, but, by a series of attempts to escape, he prolongs his term of service till, when he finally succeeds in getting back to England to claim his own from the treacherous uncle, he is a man grown, and as difficult of recognition as the Tichborne claimant. The great majority of the first indented servants sent over, however, were convicts ripe for the jail or the gallows, and only respited to be transported to the colonies, which long suffered from the introduction of such a class of citizens.

The records of Middlesex County, England, tell their own story:

_3 April, 15 James I._

Stephen Rogers, for killing George Watkins against the form of Statute
of the first year of King James, convicted of manslaughter, was
sentenced to be hung, but at the instance of Sir Thomas Smith, Kn't,
was reprieved in the interest of Virginia, because he was a carpenter.

_6 August, 16 James I._

On his conviction of incorrigible vagabondage Ralph Rookes was
reprieved at Sheriff Johnson's order so that he should be sent to
Virginia.

_28 April, 18 James I._

On her conviction by a Jury of stealing divers goods of Mary Payne,
Elizabeth Handsley was reprieved for Virginia.

_31 st May, 18 James I._

On his conviction of stealing Richard Atkinson's bull, William Hill
asked for the book, and was respited, for Virginia.

The records teem with such cases. Yet these were not the only representatives of indented servants. In the course of the various successive political upheavals which shook England, it chanced that many gentlemen of good birth and breeding were driven over to the colonies, to begin life there at the foot of the ladder. After Monmouth's Rebellion several hundred citizens, some of eminent standing, were sent to Virginia. "Take care," wrote the king, "that they continue to serve for ten years at least, and that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem themselves by money or otherwise, until that term be fully expired." Despite the royal warning, these exiles were pardoned before the term was ended, and became most useful and valuable citizens.

Well had it been for the Cavalier colonies had they adhered to this system of apprenticeship and indented service. Their children and their children's children might then have sung of "the nobility of labor, the long pedigree of toil." But with the widespread introduction of negro slavery, came the degradation of labor. The negro represented a despised caste. He labored; therefore labor was contemptible. Henceforth there was established an aristocracy of ease and wealth, resting on a foundation of unpaid labor.

With the establishment of slavery there grew up a more marked distinction of classes among the whites. A wide gulf separated rich and poor. Devereux Jarratt, son of a Virginia carpenter, writes in his autobiography: "We were accustomed to look upon gentlefolks as beings of a superior order. For my part, I was quite shy of them and kept off a humble distance. A periwig in those days was a distinguishing badge of gentlefolk; and when I saw a man riding the road with a wig on, it would so alarm my fears, and give me such a disagreeable feeling, that I dare say I would run as for my life."

Thus society became stratified: At the top, the great landholders, below them the small planters aping the manners and customs of their rich neighbors, and underneath, the population composed of poor whites and overseers. The negroes were no more part of the social system than the oxen they drove a-field.

It is a curious commentary on the Scriptural principle of turning the other cheek to the smiter, that the Indians, who resisted the encroachments of the whites and waved the tomahawk in response to the echo of the Englishman's gun, were feared and respected, while the blacks, who yielded meekly to the yoke of servitude, met at best only a good-natured contempt.

The masters' consciousness of the injustice of slavery made them fearful of revolt and revenge, which the slaves had neither skill nor energy to plan. The whole machinery of the law was directed to the suppression of this imaginary danger. All gatherings of slaves were strictly forbidden. If found at a distance from the plantations, any negro was subject to lashes on the bare back. It was not counted a felony to kill a slave while punishing him. Negroes, and indented servants as well, who attempted to escape were whipped and branded on the cheek with the letter R, and on a repetition of the offence they might be put to death. No punishment was too severe for this crime of running away, curiously denominated in the old statutes "stealth of one's self." Among the enormous offences set forth in a Maryland Act of 1638 I find, "Harboring or clokeing of another's servant without the knowledge and consent of the Master or Mistress."

In spite of all precautions, a slave did succeed, now and then, in gaining his freedom. It is with great satisfaction that I read an old Act of Assembly, setting forth that "Whereas a negro named Billy, slave to John Tillit, has for several years unlawfully absented himself from his master's service, said Billy is pronounced an outlaw, and a bounty of a thousand pounds of tobacco set on his head." The bounty does not trouble me, for I feel sure that the craft and strength which made Billy an outlaw, kept him safe from the bolts aimed against him by the colonial legislature.

The statute-books of Maryland and Virginia are records of the barbarity into which injustice may drive a kindly, liberty-loving people who are forced into cruelty by the logic of events. Having taken the wrong road, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, the Cavaliers found the rocks ready to fall on them if they went forward, and the gulf yawning behind them if they tried to turn back.

It must never be forgotten in their behalf that they did try to turn about, when they saw their error. Their best men, over and over again, urged the prohibiting of slavery, and there is more than a probability that they would have won their cause, but for the attitude of that country whose air was afterward pronounced too pure to be breathed by a slave insomuch that his shackles fell off, when he touched the shore sacred to liberty. Yet, in 1695, this highly moral and philanthropic England declared in a statute, the opinion of its king and Parliament, that the slave-trade was highly beneficial to the kingdom and colonies. In 1712, Queen Anne boasted in her speech to Parliament, of her success in securing to England a new market for slaves in Spanish America. Jefferson testified that Virginia was constantly balked in her efforts to throw off slavery by the attitude of the home government. Carolina attempted restriction and gained a rebuke. In 1775, the Earl of Dartmouth haughtily replied to a colonial agent, "We cannot allow the colonies to check, or discourage in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation."

Yet all the blame cannot be thrown on England. Had the colonies been as firm in defence of their duties, as they were when their rights were in question, England must have yielded. Virginia was the first State to enunciate the proposition of the equality of man, yet was blind to her own inconsistency. The leading supporters of the cause of liberty were themselves slave-owners. George Washington owned negroes. John Randolph had a bunk for his slave side by side with the bed of his pet horse. Patrick Henry wrote with admirable candor: "Believe me, I shall honor the Quakers for their noble efforts to abolish slavery; they are equally calculated to promote moral and political good. Would any one believe that I am master of slaves of my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not--I _can_ not--justify it." The great Southern statesman said that he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just. Washington deplored the system, yet so closely were all commercial and political interests interwoven with it that it seemed impossible to disentangle them. Even philanthropy did not scorn its alliance. Whitefield expended the money raised by his eloquent preaching at Charleston, on a plantation with slaves to work it for the benefit of an orphan asylum.

The Church spread its surplice of protection over the institution. Baptism was permitted to the slave, but with the distinct understanding that it was to make no difference in the condition of bondage of these brothers in Christ. One South Carolina clergyman ventured to preach on the duties of masters to their servants, but his congregation said to him: "Sir, we pay you a genteel salary to read to us the prayers of the liturgy and to explain to us such parts of the Gospel as the rule of the Church directs, but we do not want you to teach us what to do with our blacks."

The Northern colonies were freed from the curse of slaveholding as much by policy as by principle. They tried slave-owning, but, happily for them, it did not pay. The climate and the conditions of their industries forbade its spread among them. But their hands were not unstained. If they did not buy slaves, they sold them. There still exists, if Bishop Meade may be trusted, a bill of sale of a slave, bearing the signature of Jonathan Edwards.

Every year ships were fitted out from Medford, Salem, or New Bedford, which sailed away loaded with rum to be exchanged in Africa for negroes, who in turn were sold for molasses, to be made into rum again. The transactions of one of these slavers are preserved in the History of Medford, and makes interesting reading for those who would hold up the Puritan as innocent of the transgression which stains the character of the Cavalier. The deadly parallel column tells its story, so that he who runs may read:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. The Natives of Annamboe. | Per Contra. Cr.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1770. Gals|1770 Gals
|Apr. 22
Apr. 22. To 1 hh. of rum 110 | By 1 Woman Slave 110
|May 1.
May 1. " " " 130 | By 1 Prime Woman Slave. 130
|May 2.
May 2. " " " 105 | By 1 Boy Slave 4 ft. 1 in. 105
|May 7.
May 7. " " " 130 | By 1 Boy Slave 4 ft. 3 in. 108
|May 5.
May 5. Cash in gold 5 oz. 2 | 1 Prime Man Slave 5 oz. 2
|May 5.
" 5. " " " 2 oz. } 3 | 1 Old Man for a Lingister 3 oz.
" 5. 2 doz. of snuff 1 oz. } |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The negroes thus brought to the American colonies were not of one race. A slaver often carried men of different languages, habits, and characteristics, perhaps hereditary enemies. Some were jet black, some mahogany-colored, and others still of a tawny yellow, with flat noses and projecting jaws. This last type belonged to the low, swampy ground at the Niger's delta, and marked the race most adapted to the cultivation of the rice in its swamps, so fatal to white laborers. All this diversity among the negroes accounts for their lack of power and energy to combine in a struggle for freedom. "The negroes that have been slaves in their own country," Hugh Jones says, "make the best servants; for they that have been kings and great men there, are generally lazy, haughty and obstinate." Alas, for these poor magnates from Heathendom!

The Cavaliers did not find the problem of domestic service solved by life-ownership of servants. Colonel Fitzhugh writes Mr. John Buckner in 1680: "I hope you will make an abatement for your Dumb Negro that you sold me. Had she been a new Negro, I must have blamed my fate, not you; but one that you had two years, I must conclude you knew her qualities, which is _bad at work, worse at talking_. You took advantage of the softness of my messenger to quit your hands of her."

In spite of this unsuccessful experiment, we find him two years later making another venture in human live-stock, by ordering John Withers to buy "Mr. Walton's Boy for £20, or £54 with him and 2 others, unlesse you can make a better bargain." Poor Colonel Fitzhugh might well be discouraged, for he had tried every kind of servant, black and white, bond and free, without satisfactory results. "I would have you," he writes in despair to a sea captain in England, "bring me in a good housewife. I do not intend or mean to be brought in, as the ordinary servants are, but to pay her passage and agree to give her fifty shillings or three pounds a year during the space of five years, upon which terms, I suppose, good servants may be had, because they have their passage clear, and as much money as they can have there. _I would have a good one or none._ I look upon the generality of wenches you bring in as not worth keeping."

So the Colonial Cavaliers found trouble in their households with servants of any race or color, and the gentle nature of the blacks proving specially adaptable to servitude, and purchase money seeming so much less than wage-money, they gradually did away with other service. Every plantation had its negro-quarters, where crowds of pickaninnies swarmed in the sunshine outside the little cabins with scarcely more clothing on than their parents had worn in their African jungle. The bread of Indian corn was baked on the hoe over a smoky fire, or in the ashes. When the day's work was done, the negroes sat, with their banjos or rude musical instruments, playing accompaniments to their strange, weird music, a mixture of reminiscences of barbarism and the hymns they caught from the "New Lights"; or they spent the evening more merrily, dancing jigs to the twanging of a broken fiddle. They were, on the whole, a careless, happy race, taking no thought for the morrow, content to accept food and clothing at the hands of "Massa and Missus," and, for the rest, to work when they must, shirk when they could, and carry a merry heart through life. The outward circumstances of their lot were hard. Anbury, in his American travels, observed their condition closely and described it with what we must believe impartial accuracy. The life of these field-hands was much more severe than that of the household servants, both because the work itself was harder, and because it was ruled by the overseer, usually a brute. It is of these field negroes that Anbury is writing, when he says: "They are called up at daybreak, and seldom allowed to swallow a mouthful of hominy or hoecake, but are driven out into the field immediately, where they continue at hard labor without intermission till noon, when they go to their dinners and are seldom allowed an hour for that purpose. Their meals consist of hominy and salt, and if their master is a man of humanity, touched by the finer feelings of love and sensibility, he allows them twice a week a little fat, skimmed milk, rusty bacon or salt herring to relish this miserable and scanty fare.... After they have dined they return to labor in the field till dusk in the evening. Here one naturally imagines the daily labor of these poor creatures over; not so. They repair to the tobacco-houses, where each has a task of _stripping_ allotted, which takes up some hours; or else they have such a quantity of Indian corn to husk, and if they neglect it, are tied up in the morning, and receive a number of lashes from those unfeeling monsters, the overseers. When they lay themselves down to rest, their comforts are equally miserable and limited, for they sleep on a bench, or on the ground with an old scanty blanket, which serves them at once for bed and covering. Their clothing is not less wretched, consisting of a shirt and trousers of coarse, thin, hard, hempen stuff in the Summer, with an addition of a very coarse woolen jacket, breeches, and shoes in Winter." Yet, in spite of toil and privation, these negroes, so the traveller testifies, are jovial and contented.

It seems incomprehensible to us that the noble, sensitive, kindly Southern gentleman saw all these things in silence; that even when they had no share in the beating of the wayfarer, they still passed by on the other side with the priest or the Levite and offered no succor. Yet, do we not do the same thing every day? We know that the faces of the poor are ground while the rich prosper, that the animal world is abused and tortured, yet because we think ourselves powerless, we strive to make ourselves callous, and turn away our eyes that we may not see where we cannot help.

Many there were who had the courage as well as the impulse to protest. One of the firmest and the ablest of these was Jefferson. He had the insight to perceive not only the injustice to the slave, but the injury to the slaveholder. "There must, doubtless," he writes, "be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of his passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances."

Yet we are constantly meeting such prodigies in the history of the Cavalier. Men whose pure lives, gentle manners, and courtesy to high and low, whose unselfishness and cheerful benignity may be matched against those of the hardest-working Puritan or the most radical upholder of the equal rights of man. The old _noblesse oblige_ principle still held sway. Governor Gouch, of Virginia, being once on a time reproached for having returned the bow of a negro, replied in the good old Cavalier spirit: "I should be much ashamed that a negro should have better manners than I." The field hands were kept at a distance, but the house-servants were admitted to the closest intimacy, especially when acting in the capacity of maids and nurses. Many a golden head was laid for comfort on the black breast of some faithful Mammy, while the childish sorrows were poured into her listening ear, and many a gray-haired woman recalled as her truest friend, the humble slave whose life had been devoted to her service.

An entry in Washington's journal shows how well he understood the nature of the negro, and how wisely and firmly he dealt with it. One day four of his servants were employed at carpentering, but without accomplishing anything. Instead of scolding, Washington sat himself calmly down to watch their work. Stimulated by his presence, they went on briskly. The wise master noted the work and the time, and then informed them that just so much must be done in his absence. It was owing to such management that the products of the Mount Vernon plantation ranked so high that all barrels marked with the name of George Washington passed the inspectors without examination.

Here, if anywhere, was a man who might be trusted with arbitrary power over his fellow-men, yet he was one of the most outspoken in opposition to slavery; and he, like Jefferson, realized the terrible strain on the character of the master. Woe to the man who lives constantly with inferiors! He is doomed never to hear himself contradicted, never to be told unwelcome truth, never to sharpen his wits and learn to control his temper by argument with equals. The Colonial Cavaliers were little kings, and they proved the truth of the saying of the royal sage of Rome, that the most difficult of tasks is to lead life well in a palace.

His Church

Williamsburg Church BRUTON PARISH.]

"_Mixe not holy thinges with profane!_" so runs the inscription on the quaint old silver chalice used in the communion service of the Jamestown church.

Had the advice been heeded, the history of the Colonial Church of England would not have been the sorry story it is. In point of fact, holy and profane things are so mixed in its chronicles that it is hard to write of it without seeming levity and flippancy. To call the differences between the parsons and their parishes in the Southern Colonies a struggle, would be to dignify it beyond the warrant of truth. It was simply a series of squabbles without ennobling principle on either side. Yet, in the beginning, better things promised. Great attention was paid to religious forms and observances, and the earliest laws are devoted to the regulation of church affairs.

In the year after the landing of the settlers, Edward Maria Wingfield, first president of the council in Virginia, was brought to trial accused of various high crimes and misdemeanors. Among the charges against him was one of atheism. The most damaging evidence against him was the absence of a Bible from his belongings. He himself felt that this was a point needing explanation, which he made by saying that he had "sorted" many books to take with him to Virginia, and was sure that a Bible was among them, but that in the course of his journey he had found "the truncke" somehow broken open, and the Bible "ymbeasiled."

In rebuttal of evidence showing general godlessness and lack of respect for the Sabbath, he explained that on the Sunday in question, Indian allarums had detained every one at the palisade "till the daie was farre spent." Then, he goes on to say: "the preacher, Master Hunt, did aske me if it weare my pleasure to have a sermon. He said he was prepared for it. I made answer that our men were weary and hungry, and that if it pleased him wee would spare him till some other tyme."

The tact of this reply should certainly have scored a point in Wingfield's defence, especially as he adds: "I never failed to take such noates by wrighting out of his doctrine as my capacity could comprehend, _unless some raynie day hindered my endeavour_."

These excuses, however, were not satisfactory to his judges, and the other charges against him proving only too well-founded, he was deposed from the council, and was glad enough to slip off back to England at the first chance. Three years later, Dale of the iron hand came over fresh from the Netherlands, and put religion, like everything else, under martial law. The captain of the watch was made a sort of tithing-man, whose business it was to preserve order and encourage godliness at the point of the bayonet. It was his duty, half an hour before divine service, morning and evening, to shut the ports and place sentinels, and, the bell having tolled for the last time, to search all the houses, and to command every one (with the exception of the sick and hurt) to go to church. This done, he followed the guards with their arms into the church, where he laid the keys before the governor. On Sunday he was ordered to see that the day was noways profaned by any disorders.

The Ancient Planters were strict Sunday keepers. The earliest law decrees "The Sabbath to be kept holy, that no journeys be made except in case of emergent necessitie on that day, that no goods bee laden in boates, nor shooteing in gunns or the like tending to the prophanation of the day." The offender who disobeys this decree is sentenced to pay a fine of a hundred pounds of tobacco or "be layd in the stocks."

Henry Coleman was excommunicated for forty days for scornful speeches, and putting on his hat in church. The minister as well as the church was protected by law from irreverence and disrespect. In 1653, it was ordered by the court that, for slandering Rev. Mr. Cotton, "Henry Charlton make a pair of stocks and set in them several Sabbath-days during divine service, and then ask Mr. Cotton's forgiveness for using offensive and slanderous words concerning him." A few years later, Mary Powell, for slandering a minister, was sentenced to receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders, and to be banished the country. I tremble to think what would have been the fate, had he fallen into episcopal hands, of the Puritan who spoke of bishops as "proud, popish, presumptuous, paltry, pestilent, and pernicious prelates;" and further as "impudent, shameless, and _wainscot-faced_." I, for one, should have voted to take something from his punishment, on the ground of his supplying the world with a new and most expressive phrase.

Maryland, liberal in all sectarian matters, strictly forbade calling names such as "Heretick, Schismatick, Idolator, Papist, Antinomian, etc.," and sentenced the offender to a fine of ten shillings. She also dealt summarily with unbelievers. Her assembly ordained that "whatsoever person or persons shall deny the Holy Trinity, or shall utter reproachful speeches concerning the Trinity or any of the said persons thereof, shall be punished with death and confiscation of land and goods to the Lord Proprietary."

The first church in America was a very simple affair, an old rotten tent set up in the Jamestown marsh under the pines and hemlocks. The soft May weather made even so much shelter unnecessary, and it was replaced by an awning stretched between the rustling boughs. But busy as the settlers were, they set to work at once on a chapel built of logs and covered with sedge and dirt, which in turn was replaced by a church of timber, fifty feet long, by more than twenty in breadth. This finally was replaced by the brick building whose ruined arches alone remain to tell its story.

When Lord De la Warre arrived in Virginia and found the colonists in desperate straits, he wisely occupied their attention by setting them to repair and refurnish the wooden church then in existence, and to decorate it with flowers. Here during his government he worshipped in a degree of state more fitting for a cathedral than for a wooden chapel in the wilderness. He went to church in full dress, attended by his lieutenant-general, admiral, vice-admiral, master of the horse and the rest of the council, with a guard of fifty halberd-bearers in red cloaks behind him. When the service ended, the procession filed out with as much solemnity as it had entered, and escorted the Governor to his house.

Religious observances played an important part in the early days of the settlement. The first statute made by an early legislative assembly, requires that in every plantation some house or room be specially dedicated to the worship of God, sequestered and set apart for that purpose, and not to be of any temporal use whatever.

It is curious, in view of this last clause, to find it recorded of the House of Burgesses itself: "The most convenient place wee could finde to site in was the quire of the churche." Surely no place could have been more appropriate for the gathering of the first free assembly of the people in America, and it was equally fitting that their proceedings should open with a prayer for guidance in the path which was destined to be darker and more difficult than they knew. "Forasmuch as men's affaires doe little prosper when God's service is neglected," a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister, "that it would please God to guide and sanctifie all our proceedings to His owne glory and the good of this Plantation."

If the church of that time was devoted to temporal uses, religious services were not confined within its walls. Alexander Whitaker, the apostle of Virginia, writes home that he _exercises_ at the house of the governor, Sir Thomas Dale, every Saturday night. This "exercising," or hearing of the catechism, with prayer and song, in private houses, was a matter of necessity in days when a parish covered a space hardly to be crossed in a day's journey, with the roads or bridle-paths choked with undergrowth, and blocked by fallen logs. The Rev. Mr. Forbes seems to have been of a complaining nature, yet he rouses one's sympathy when he tells of the difficulties under which he labored.

"My parish," he says, "extendeth LX miles in length, in breadth about XI." Over this distance were scattered some four hundred families, to whom he was expected to minister. "Sometimes," he goes on plaintively, "after I have travelled Fifty Miles to Preach at a Private House, the weather happening to prove bad on the day of our meeting so that very few met, or else being hindred by Rivers and Swamps rendred impassable with much rain, I have returned with doing of nothing to their benefit or mine own satisfaction."

Few clergymen of that day and region took their duties so seriously. They were for the most part quite willing to have service read by some deputy-priest or layman in the "chapels of ease;" or if they must officiate, they chose some sermon from Thomas Fuller or Jeremy Taylor, or, as a last resort, constructed one at small expense of labor on a scaffolding of headings resting on an underpinning of text. A fine example of this method of sermon-building I find in the discourse sent home by the pious Whitaker. He takes as his text, "Cast thy bread upon the waters," and expounds it after this fashion:

"1. The dutie to be performed: _Cast thy bread._ Be liberal to all.

"2. The manner of bestowing alms: By _casting_ it away.

"3. What is to be given? _Bread_; all things needful, yes, and of the best kind.

"4. Who may be liberal? Even those that have it. It must be _thy_ bread--thine own.

"5. To whom we must be liberal: To all; yea to the _Waters_."

This kind of sermon had the double advantage of being easy for the preacher, and restful to the congregation. It went along at a comfortable jog-trot, like a family horse, and the hearer was in no danger of being hurled over the head of revival eloquence into lurid threats of future punishment. If the preachers of the Church of England did not kindle spiritual ardor, at least they did not keep children awake o' nights, nor frighten nervous women into hysterics.

While these drowsy discourses were going on in the Southern colonies, the Puritan divine in the New England pulpit was throwing off such cheerful observations as these: "Every natural man and woman is born full of all sin, as full as a toad is of poison, as full as ever his skin can hold; mind, will, eyes, mouth; every limb of his body and every piece of his mind." The future awaiting such a wretch, he sets forth vividly: "Thou canst not endure the torments of a little kitchen-fire on the tip of thy finger, not one-half hour together. How wilt thou bear the fury of this infinite, endless, consuming fire in body and soul!" To these inspiring doctrines of the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, another Puritan preacher added his conviction that "there are infants in hell not a span long."

To the credit of the Colonial Church of England be it recorded that no such sentiments disgraced its pulpit and made its Sabbath terrible to little children. The day was one of innocent enjoyment, and the church building was dear to generation after generation, as a peaceful and memory-hallowed spot. The early settlers had little money to spend in adorning their churches, yet from the beginning there was a great difference between the bare and square wooden New England meeting-house and the quaint Southern church of brick or stone, recalling in every line the beloved parish churches of Old England. The churchmen, unlike the Puritans, found no sin in beauty or adornment. St. John's Church at Hampton bore the royal arms carved on its steeple. Colonel Springer left by his will one thousand pounds of tobacco to pay for having the Lord's Prayer and Commandments put up in the new church at Northampton. By a statute of 1660, parishes are enjoined to provide at their own cost a great church Bible and two books of Common Prayer in folio for the minister and "clark"; also communion-plate, pulpit-cloth, and cushion, "that all things may be done orderly and decently in the church."

In the next century, there is a record of an order sent to England for gold-leaf to enrich a chancel, which was to be made gorgeous with an original painting of an angel holding back a crimson curtain, draped with a golden cord and tassel.

The pulpits in the old churches were placed at an angle, if the church were in the form of a cross; or if the building were an oblong on one side. These pulpits were so high that, unless the preacher were very tall, nothing could be seen by the congregation but the top of his head. Bishop Meade confesses that when he was to speak from one of these old box-pulpits, he would often hurry to church before his hearers, in order to pile up bricks or boards on which to stand. The good bishop must sometimes have found his thoughts sadly distracted from the sermon by the necessity of keeping his balance on his improvised platform.

The sharp distinction of classes, which was so marked a feature of the Cavalier Colonies, showed itself even in church. Certain pews were set apart and marked "Magistrates" and "Magistrates' Ladies." Into these the great folks marched solemnly on Sundays, followed by their slaves bearing prayer-books, and never suspecting that their conduct was at variance with gospel principles. The great families kept their private pews for generations, and held firmly to their privileges. Matthew Kemp, as churchwarden, was commended by his vestry for displacing "a presuming woman, who would fain have taken a pew above her degree." In the very earliest church, Lord De la Warre's seat was upholstered in green velvet with a green "cooshoon;" Governor Spotswood's pew in Bruton Parish Church at Williamsburg was raised from the floor, and covered with a canopy, while the interior was ornamented with his name in gilt letters. In 1750, it was ordered by the vestry of St. Paul's Church, Norfolk, that "three captains and Mr. Charles Sweeny be allowed to build a gallery reaching from the gallery of Mr. John Taylor to the school-boys' gallery, to be theirs and their heirs' forever."

Washington's pew was an ample square, fitted with cushions for sitting and kneeling. The Puritans would have thought it a glaring iniquity to pay such heed to creature comfort in the house of God. They would have been more in sympathy with the Virginia dame of high degree who, in tardy atonement for her pride, directed that her body be buried under the pavement in the aisle occupied by the poor of the church, that they might trample on her dust. Such gloomy and ascetic associations with the house of God were rare at the South. The church was a centre of cheerfulness, and the Sabbath was supposed to be a day of innocent enjoyment. All work was frowned upon as inconsistent with a due observance of its sanctity, however; and the Grand Jury in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1704, presented Thomas Simms, for travelling on the road on Sunday with a loaded beast, William Montague and Garrett Minor for bringing oysters ashore on the Sabbath, James Senis for swearing and cursing on the holy day; but outside such restrictions as these, no Blue Laws enforced gloom as part of the decorum of Sunday-keeping.

When the church-bell, hung usually from the bough of a tree, began to ring for service, the roads were filled with worshippers moving churchward, full of peace and good-will. First might be seen the young men on horseback, with the tails of their coats carefully pinned in front, to protect them from the sweat of their horses' flanks. Lumbering slowly after these equestrians came the great family-coaches, from which the ladies are assisted by the dismounted gallants. Every young damsel is planning some social festivity. Before or after service, invitations are given, and visits of weeks in length are arranged at the church door. It is to be feared that these colonial maidens sometimes allow their thoughts to wander in sermon-time, from their quaint little prayer-books, with their uneven type and crooked f's, and that they are thinking of dinners while they confess themselves sinners. But their levity is not treated severely by the priest, for he is as eager for his Madeira as his young parishioners are eager for their minuet.