Chapter X: The Pale Messenger (3)

Other incidents, growing out of the servant's role, tended to make the condition of servitude more rigid. In order to make the system of labor under the Company successful, Lord Delaware, in 1610, organized the colony into a "labor force under commanders and overseers"; and close watch over the men and their work was accordingly maintained. "The colonists were marched to their daily work in squads and companies under officers, and the severest penalties were prescribed for a breach of discipline or neglect of duty. A persistent neglect of labor was to be punished by galley service from one to two years. Penal servitude was also instituted; for 'petty offences' they worked 'as slaves in irons for a term of years'"; and there were whipping, "hangings, shooting, breaking on the wheel, and even burning alive."[8]

It may be observed from references made to this early servitude that, generally, it was harsh. We read: "Having most of them served the colony six or seven years in that 'general slavery'"; "'three years slavery' to the colony"; "noe waye better than slavery"; "rather than be reduced to live under like government we desire his Magestie that Commissioners may be sent over with authority to hang us"; and "Sold as a d---- slave."[9] Undoubtedly, these references are not all true; yet, they are not altogether false. At least they indicate that the conditions of this servitude approached slavery.[10] Out of these, informal "slavery" and unsettled conditions of early servitude, indented servitude developed.

As a general rule, every advantage was taken of the servant by the servant-dealers and masters. Opportunity to hold the servant longer than the period allowed by law or to extend his service was not infrequently seized upon, for the laxity of the system and the need of labor in the colonies made this a natural consequence. During the first period of servitude, the term of service in many cases was not prescribed in the indentures; and sometimes servants were brought over without indentures, or with only verbal contracts.[11] Thus trouble about the length of their term of service arose, especially in connection with the servants who did not have indentures. Circumstances indicate that in the interpretation of law and the facts, the master generally triumphed.[12] It was in 1638-39 that Maryland took the first definite step to prevent unfair treatment of servants by their masters. In 1654 it became necessary again to pass a law determining the servant's age and length of service. Virginia enacted similar measures in 1643 and 1657. Still, when the servants were ignorant, "which was usually the case," or could not speak the English language, the master took advantage of their shortcomings.[13] Notwithstanding the repeated efforts of the courts and assembly to protect the servant in his relation to the master, the lucrative practice of extending a servant's term, which became customary in the case of Indian and Negro servants, proved a significant factor in the degradation of white servitude.

Under the system of servitude, the conduct of the servant necessarily bore a close relation to the interests of the master. When the servant stole, ran away, "unlawfully assembled" or "plotted," indulged in fornication, spent unusual time in social intercourse, or was secretly married, the master as a rule suffered some loss. And for protection of the master, methods of punishment were resorted to, the character, definiteness, and attendant circumstances of which tended to reduce the servant to the status of a slave.

As the servant had no money with which to pay fines, some other method of punishment had to be used. Corporal punishment of a harsh character appears to have been established. Practiced at first by individuals, it soon became a general custom, and finally found its way into the laws of the colonies. During the period prior to indented servitude, instances of severe whipping of servants are numerous.[14] The first colony law which gave the master the privilege of regulating the servant's conduct in this manner, however, appeared in 1619.[15] Corporal punishment then gradually gained ground and won sanction by the colonial courts. A law in Virginia provided in 1662 "for the erecting of a whipping post in every county" and the General Assembly of this colony, in 1688, reassured the master of his right to whip the servant. All along this right was so much abused[16] that it was restrained in Virginia. In 1705 an act ordered the master not to whip the servant "immoderately"; and to whip a Christian white servant naked, an order from a justice of peace had to be obtained.[17] Several other colonies similarly restrained the right to whip.[18]

Another method of punishment that gradually hardened the conditions of servitude was the addition of time to the term of the servant. This evidently originated in the custom of the Company to prescribe as penalty for offense "service to the colony in public work."[19] This method of punishment was extensively used throughout the colonies. Sometimes the length of additional service was left to the discretion of the master, but this was so abused that the government saw fit to make regulations, which, however, themselves were not free from harshness.[20]

At first the servants undoubtedly enjoyed the right of marriage, but as this proved a source of much inconvenience and loss to the master, since the men servants lost time, stole food and other provisions, and the women servants lost time during pregnancy and in rearing children, laws restricting marriage of servants were enacted in the colonies. In Virginia, in 1643, this right was legally restricted. When the servants were secretly married, in some cases the man had to "serve out his or their tyme or tymes with his or their masters--after serve his master a complete year more for such offense committed" while the woman-servant had to double her time of service.[21] In other cases, as in North Carolina, the servants were required to serve one year.[22] Further restriction of the right of marriage appeared in Virginia in 1662. When a woman-servant and a Negro slave were married in Maryland, the woman was, in some instances, reduced to slavery, as she was required to serve her master during the life of her husband.[23] The effect of this law was, in certain instances, to complete practically the transition from servitude to slavery. Children resulting from such marriages were either made slaves for life, or required to serve until they were thirty years of age. Fornication also was made punishable by an addition of time. The woman-servant, who gave birth to illegitimate offspring, received an addition of time of one and a half to two and a half years.[24] When the offspring was by a Negro, mulatto, or Indian, she was required to serve the colony or the master for an additional time of four, five, or seven years. The children in these cases were bound out for thirty-one years.[25] With marriage restricted as it was, the family life of the servants was likely to be disorderly. Morals of servants were notably loose, and masters sometimes took advantage of their position to corrupt their servants still further.[26]

The servants were also restricted in political affairs. In the earliest period of servitude in the colonies, servants, as "inhabitants," enjoyed with the other "inhabitants" whatever suffrage there was.[27] Later on, however, this rare privilege dwindled to _nil_. For the "first sixteen years of the settlement" in Massachusetts the servants exercised the franchise.[28] In Virginia they voted until 1646 and the freedservant until 1670.[29] In Maryland in 1636, in the first assembly of the colony, only "freemen" seemed to hold sway.[30] Disfranchisement became the rule, however, after the middle of the seventeenth century.[31] The very noticeable scarcity of information on the servant's exercise of the suffrage seems to suggest that as a matter of understanding he did not enjoy the franchise. Evidently there prevailed a certain suspicion concerning not only the servant's ability to use the suffrage, but also his proper use of it; and this attitude was also always fairly pronounced toward the recently freedservant.[32]

The final remedy of the servant, then, was flight. From the beginning of indented servitude, the servants invariably deserted their master's service. While in all cases they did not run away on account of abuses, the practice brought on abuses and other incidents which, during the first part of servitude, became more and more intolerable.

The number of runaways increased as the servants continued coming in. It was comparatively easy for them to escape to the more northern colonies, since the country about them was convenient for hiding and clandestine traveling; and the fugitives themselves, on account of having no physical characteristics distinguishable from those of the other colonists, could not easily be identified.[33] Thus North Carolina became popularly known as the "Refuge of Runaways" and that colony, Maryland, and the Dutch plantations were to fugitive servants what Massachusetts, Ohio, and Canada were later to runaway slaves.[34] The "under-ground railroad," too, had a forerunner in the early period of indentured servitude.[35] Methods of dealing with the runaways necessarily grew more strict, and precautions similar to those of slavery inevitably appeared. "Unlawful assembling," "plotting," and tentative insurrections became a source of apprehension.[36] Then came methods of pursuit, return, and punishment of the fugitives. Sometimes the master made the pursuit; at other times the sheriff and his posse did it; and often the constable with a search warrant went in quest of the fugitive. Everyone who traveled was required to have a pass or a certificate of freedom to show his status;[37] and this no doubt afforded the servants a means of using forgery to facilitate their escape to freedom.[38] Again, whenever it was possible, advertisements for runaways were put in the newspapers.[39] During this time, too, there were enacted colonial statutes providing for the return of fugitives by one colony to the other. Colonial governments often accused each other of unduly holding and protecting the runaways.[40]

The greatest abuses in servitude occurred in the punishment of fugitive servants. These abuses, moreover, gradually increased in number and intensified in character.[41] The expense of the servant's capture, return, and loss of time from work, and the desire to prevent running away led to stringent punishment and evident abuses.[42] In Virginia before 1643, some runaways were punished with "additional terms from two to seven years, served in irons, to the public."[43] The act of 1643 in Virginia provided that runaways from their "master's service shall be lyable to make satisfaction by service at the end of their tymes by indenture (vizt.) double the tyme of service soe neglected, and in some cases more if the commissioners ... find it requisite and convenient."[44] The laws of 1639 and of 1641-42 made running away in Maryland punishable with death, but the proprietor or governor could commute this penalty to servitude of seven years or less.[45] Corporal punishment, too, scathed the fugitives.[46]

Plainly, then, the fugitive servant tended to assimilate the status of the servant to that of the slave and tended to become mere property. The servant could be transferred as property from one person to another, for from the beginning his services were bought and sold. The custom of purchasing and disposing of apprentices and servants was early practiced in Virginia and out of this practice grew the more definite and far-reaching custom of signing the servant's contract. Begun in 1623, it was resented by servants and deprecated by England; and yet with no question of its legality, the selling of servants' time became a common practice.[47] Later on, upon securing the servant in England, the indenture was often made out to the shipmaster or his assigns, and the servant was sold by him to the planters in America. To sell the servants, merchants were sometimes invited on board the ship, where they could look over the human cargo and select those who were desirable. Often it happened that the servants were brought over without indentures. They were made to believe that their lot would be made easy by the master who would buy them.[48] These, too, were sold by the captain to the highest bidder.[49] That the servants were dealt with in this way eventually made the indentures as a rule negotiable, and this led to further degradation of the servants' status. The theory that the servant's time was property was tenable as late as 1756 in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, for during the war with the French and Indians, when the governments and officers were recruiting the servants of the masters, the masters protested, resisted, and won.[50]

The servant, then, gradually became property, not principally because of a tendency to consider the Negro servant as such, but because of the incidents necessarily arising from the methods which had to be used to make white servitude possible in the colonies. These methods, then, the custom of using them, and finally the tentative legal sanction of them, were fairly well practiced before the Negro's arrival and long before he was considered as chattel.[51]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial Institution_, p. 42.

[2] Doyle, _Hist. of Eng. Col. in Am._, p. 385.

[3] Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, p. 42.

[4] McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, pp. 9, 60, 61, 63.

[5] Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 15.

[6] _Ibid._, pp. 19, 31, 24.

[7] "We see, then, that the colonist, while in theory only a Virginia member of the London Company, and entitled to equal rights and privileges with other members or adventurers, was, from the nature of the case, practically debarred from exercising these rights.... He was kept by force in the colony, and could have no communication with his friends in England.... Under the arbitrary administration of the Company and of its deputy governors he was as absolutely at its disposal as a servant at his master's. His conduct was regulated by corporal punishment or more extreme measures. He could be hired out by the Company to private persons, or by the Governor for his personal advantage." _Ibid._, p. 26.

[8] _Ibid._, p. 23.

[9] Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, pp. 23, 24, 25, 43 note.

[10] McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, pp. 48, 49.

[11] _Ibid._, pp. 38, 43; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, pp. 40, 49.

[12] "Where no contract but a verbal one existed there was always room for controversy between master and servant, each trying to prove an agreement that would be to his advantage." _Ibid._, p. 50.

[13] "Where the servants were ignorant, which was usually the case, it was to the advantage of the master that there should be no written contract, as there was then a chance of extending the term of service." McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 44.

"The Palatines and other German races, who, in the later years formed nearly all of the servant population, knew little of the laws and language and were an easy prey to the abuses of traders and harsh masters. They had been used to very little liberty at home and were slow to assert their rights in America." _Ibid._, p. 61.

[14] Ante, p. 268.

[15] Henning, _Statutes at Large_, I, pp. 127, 130, 192; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 45.

[16] _Ibid._, p. 77.

[17] _Ibid._, pp. 58, 59.

[18] Bassett, _Slavery and Servitude in the Col. of N. C._, p. 81.

[19] "In this we have the germ of addition of time, a practice which later became the occasion of a very serious abuse of the servants rights by the addition of terms altogether incommensurate with the offenses for which they were imposed." Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 45.

[20] Henning, _Statutes at Large_, I, p. 438, II, p. 114, III, pp. 87, 140, 450; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 57.

[21] Henning, _Statutes at Large_, p. 257; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, pp. 50-51.

[22] Bassett, _Slavery and Servitude in the Col. of N. C._, p. 34.

[23] "Instead of preventing such marriages, this law enabled avaricious and unprincipled masters to convert many of their servants to slaves. While this act continued in force, it did more to lower the standard of servitude than any other law passed during the whole period." McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, pp. 68-69.

[24] Turner, _The Negro in Penn._, p. 30; Bassett, _Slavery and Servitude in the Col. of N. C._, p. 83; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 57.

[25] _Ibid._, 57; Bassett, _Slavery and Servitude in the Col. of N. C._, pp. 83-84; Turner, _The Negro in Penn._, p. 30; McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 70.

[26] "If she should be delivered of a child by her master during this period she should be sold by the church wardens for the benefit of the church for one year after the term of service.... Here again there was no punishment for the seducing master. It is also evident that the sin of the servant would be an advantage of the master, since he would thereby secure her service for a longer period. We have not the least evidence that such a thing did happen, yet it is possible that a master might for this reason have compassed the sin of his serving-woman." Bassett, _Slavery and Servitude in the Col. of N. C._, pp. 83-84.

"By the acts giving the master additions of time for the birth of a bastard child to his servant a premium was actually put upon immorality, and there appear to have been masters base enough to take advantage of it." Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 79.

The master also encouraged marriage between servants and Negroes. McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 68.

[27] Hurd, _Law of Freedom and Bondage_, I, p. 228 note.

[28] _Ibid._, p. 255.

[29] _Ibid._, pp. 232, 254; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 93.

[30] Hurd, _Law of Freedom and Bondage_, I, p. 248.

[31] Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 90.

[32] "Thus the liberated servant became an idler, socially corrupt, and often politically dangerous." Doyle, _Eng. Cols in Am._, I, p. 387.

"By the temporary disfranchisement of the servant during his term, common after the middle of the 17th century, a serious public danger was avoided. There could be no guarantee, of the judicious exercise of the suffrage with this class who, for the most part, had never enjoyed the privilege before. Their servitude may be regarded as preparing them for a proper appreciation of suffrage when obtained, and the duties of citizenship...." Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 90 note.

[33] "To facilitate discovery, habitual runaways had their hair cut 'close around their ears' and 'were branded on the cheek with the letter R.'" Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 55 note.

[34] _Ibid._, pp. 53-54.

[35] McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 53.

[36] Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, pp. 53, 60.

[37] _Ibid._, p. 54; McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 54.

[38] _Ibid._, p. 55.

[39] _Ibid._, p. 50.

[40] _Ibid._, pp. 52-53; Bassett, _Slavery and White Servitude in the Col. of N. C._, p. 79; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 54.

[41] McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 54.

[42] "Statute after statute was passed regulating the punishment and providing for the pursuit and recapture of runaways; but although laws became severer and finally made no distinction in treatment of runaway servants and slaves, it was impossible to entirely put a stop to the habit so long as the system itself lasted." _Ibid._, p. 56; Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, pp. 52, 57.

[43] _Ibid._, p. 57.

[44] _Ibid._, pp. 57-58; Henning, _Statutes at Large_, II, p. 458.

[45] McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, pp. 51-52.

[46] Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, p. 59.

[47] "As a result, (my comma) the idea of the contract and of the legal personality of the servant was gradually lost sight of in the disposition to regard him as a chattel and a part of the personal estate of his master, which might be treated and disposed of very much in the same way as the rest of the estate. He became thus rated in inventories of estate, and was disposed of both by will and by deed along with the rest of the property." Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, pp. 43, 44.

[48] Eddis, _Letters from Am._, p. 72.

[49] Example of the advertisement of the arrival of a servantship: "Just Arrived in the Sophia, Alexander Verdeen, Master, from Dublin, Twenty stout, healthy Indented Men Servents Whose Indentures will be disposed of on reasonable Terms, by the Captain on board, or the subscribers ..., etc." McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 42.

[50] _Ibid._, pp. 39, 40, 42, 52, 85-89.

[51] Ballagh, _White Servitude in the Col. of Va._, pp. 31, 33, 68; Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, pp. 39-40; Russell, _The Free Negro in Va._, pp. 46-47.

THE GRADUAL TRANSITION OF NEGRO SERVITUDE INTO NEGRO SLAVERY

The status of the Negro in British America was at first that of a servant. He was not held for life, but set at liberty after a term of service. It was his service, not himself, that was the property or chattel of another, and his offspring was not subject to servitude. Again, he had privileges similar to and in some cases identical with those of the other servants; in many cases the rules which governed other servants governed him as well. In short, the Negro was not the "absolute possession" of another.[1] Moreover, it was some years before he became a slave. Distinctly during this time, his status went through a gradual process of transition inevitable in the development of subjection in the colonies.[2]

"Servant" becomes "servant for life" and "perpetual servant" in colonial laws. The progress of extending the Negro servant's term is generally observed in the language of the laws of the colonies. It appears that as the servants went into slavery, "what is termed perpetual was substituted for limited service, while all the predetermined incidents of servitude, except such as referred to ultimate freedom, continued intact." Later the terms "servant for life," "perpetual servant" and "bond servant" were used interchangeably with "slave" and the words "servant" and "slave" and their liabilities were joined in the same enactments.[3] It was some time before the word "slave" was clearly and definitely used, and the servant who became slave lost all the earmarks of a servant.[4]

The practice of holding the servant after the expiration of his term was more characteristic of black servitude than white. As the Negroes increased in numbers, this practice increased. As white servitude declined, the assurance of labor waned. The extension of the Negro's term, then, for a few years longer and eventually to life service appeared a logical as well as a necessary step for the masters to take.[5] Moreover, since the public was often led to believe that when at liberty the Negroes were an uncontrollable and probably dangerous element of the population, extension of their terms in servitude gradually gained public approval.[6] Hence, the Negro servant was held whenever the occasion demanded and the opportunity presented itself.

In illustrating the gradual transition into slavery through repeated holding and attempts at holding the Negro servants for life, court cases of Virginia may be taken as typical. Brass, a Negro, whose master, a ship captain, had died, was, upon being threatened with enslavement, assigned by the General Court in 1625 as servant to the governor of the colony instead of as slave to the company of his late master's ship.[7] John Punch, who ran away in company with three white servants, was adjudged by the court, in 1640, to serve his master the "time of his natural life" while the white servants were given four additional years to serve. Anthony Johnson, a Negro to whom attention has already been called, owned a large tract of land on the Eastern Shore. In 1640 he became involved in a suit for holding John Castor, another Negro, seven years overtime. It appears that Castor was set free. Later, however, Johnson brought suit against Robert Parker, a white man, for harboring Castor as if he were a free man; and the court decided that Castor return to his master, Johnson, evidently for service for life. Sometime before 1644, a mulatto boy named Emanuel, a servant, was sold "as a slave forever" but later was adjudged by the Assembly "no slave and but to serve as other Christian servants do." In 1673, a servant, who had been unlawfully detained beyond his five-year period, won judgment against his master, George Light; the Negro servant was set free and received his freedom dues from the master.[8] In 1674 Philip Cowan petitioned the governor for freedom on the ground that Charles Lucas kept him three years overtime and then compelled him by threats to sign an indenture for twenty years.[9]

Other indications of holding the Negro servant may be shown. In Pennsylvania, Negro servants were invariably given a longer term of service than the white servants and often held after the expiration of the term;[10] so extensive was the practice of holding these servants that, in 1682 and 1693, laws were enacted against it.[11] In Georgia a road to slavery was paved by extending the servants' terms. Negroes were brought out of North Carolina into Georgia by white servants who, becoming tired of servitude, had these blacks serve out their unexpired terms with the Georgia masters. As this worked well the masters lengthened the term of the Negro servants to life.[12] In fact, on account of the reciprocal influence of white servitude and Negro servitude, wherever white servants were taken advantage of and held longer, Negro servants were subjected to harsher treatment and longer extension of term.

The mulatto class in the colonies constituted an element through which transition of Negro servitude into slavery is apparent. As the mulattoes were looked upon as the result of an "abominable mixture" of the races and as representing a troublesome element in society, local laws and colonial statutes were gradually enacted to check and control them.[13] The statutes first aimed at serving as a deterrent upon the women, and hence arose the doctrine of _partus sequitur ventrem_, which imposed the mother's status upon the offspring. However, the first statute to this effect, the act of 1662 in Virginia, was largely enacted because of fornication of Englishmen and Negro women.[14] Statutes enunciating this doctrine were enacted in the other colonies as follows: Maryland, 1663; Massachusetts, 1698; Connecticut and New Jersey, 1704; Pennsylvania and New York, 1706; South Carolina, 1712; Rhode Island, 1728; and North Carolina, 1741.[15] Thus not only Negro mulattoes, that is, the offspring of white men and Negro women, were prevented from becoming servants, but those who were already either freemen or servants were gradually reduced to slavery. To check the growth of the mulatto class, particularly through the intermixture and intermarriage of Negro men and white women, a Virginia law in 1691 provided that the woman be fined, or sold into service for five years, or given five years of added time, and the mulatto be bound out for thirty years.[16] In Maryland, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, similar laws were passed.[17] The mulatto, then, in one case was reduced from freeman and servant to slave, and in the other case made a servant for thirty or more years.[18] Thus the debasing of the status of the mulatto helped the transition to slavery.

Just as the fugitive white servant repeatedly gave occasion, through incidents growing out of his capture, return, and deterrence, to lower the status of the servant until it assumed the character of slavery, so the fugitive Negro servant made his lot harder and influenced the extension of his term to perpetuity. The Negro servant, unlike either the Indian or white servant, obviously had little to tempt him to run away from his master; his physical characteristics made detection easy, there was no free Negro population to which he could escape, the unfamiliar country around him held but poor prospects for his making a livelihood more easily than under his master, and the strangeness of his situation undoubtedly had much to do with his acceptance of it. Yet the Negro as a servant did run away. It is very probable that the practice of running away to the Indians began when he was a servant.[19] Again, it appears that he ran away not infrequently in company with white servants. In Virginia, in 1640, John Punch, a Negro servant, ran away in company with two white servants. The three were overtaken in Maryland and brought back to Virginia for trial. The court ordered that the white servants' terms be lengthened four years, and that Punch, the Negro servant, "shall serve his master or his assigns for the time of his natural life."[20]

The transition of servitude to slavery, moreover, is distinctly noticed in the change in the conception of property in the service of the Negro to that of property in his person.[21] Like that of the white and Indian servants, the Negro's service through contract, implied and expressed, was owned by the master. This ownership, however, consisted of only the right of the master to the service of the servant. Gradually, as this service necessarily became involved in wills, estates, taxation, and business transactions, the person of the servant instead of his service came more and more to be regarded, both in custom and in law, as property, so that eventually the servant, himself, was considered personal estate. Thus he was "rated in inventories of estates, was transferable both _inter vivos_ and by will, descended to the executors and administrators, and was taxable." While he was now a "contractual person," he still retained such incidents of personality as rights of limited protection, personal freedom, and possession of property.[22] As the service of the servant became more and more regarded and treated as a form of property, his personality was completely lost sight of, and his term was extended to the time of his natural life.[23] Easily, then, the Negro servant regarded at first a part of the personal estate came at length to be regarded as a chattel real.

T. R. DAVIS

WALDEN COLLEGE,
NASHVILLE, TENN.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ante, p. 266.

[2] Local conditions and circumstances dictated and directed the form of subjection. For this same reason, both servitude and slavery differed in different sections of the country. Nieboer brings out the local character of subjection when he holds that slavery does not exist as formally among fishing and hunting peoples as among agricultural and that subjection is milder in an open country than in a closed. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial Institution_, p. 55.

[3] Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, p. 37.

[4] It is not meant that all Negroes became servants and then slaves. Many Negroes became servants and followed the course of servants while others became slaves and remained slaves. At any period, however, during his first three-quarter century at least in the colonies, the most pronounced status of the Negro consisted of a cross-section of a transition from servitude to slavery.

[5] On the significance of the expiration of the white servant's term, Bruce has this to say: "Unless the planter had been careful to make provision against their departure by the importation of other laborers, he was left in a helpless position without men to reap his crops or to widen the area of his new grounds.... Perhaps in a majority of cases, his object was to obtain laborers whom he might substitute for those whose term were on the point of expiring. It was this constantly recurring necessity which must have been the source of much anxiety and annoyance as well as heavy pecuniary outlay, that led the planters to prefer youths to adults among the imported English agricultural servants, for while their physical strength might have been less, yet the periods for which they were bound extended over a longer time." Bruce, _Econ. Hist. of Va._, II, pp. 58-59.

[6] Ballagh, _Hist, of Slavery in Va._, pp. 37-38. "Negro servants were sometimes compelled by threats and browbeating to sign indentures for longer terms after they had served out their original terms." (Russell, _The Free Negro in Va._, p. 33.) Indian servants, too, were held and reduced to slaves whenever possible. Lauber, _Indian Slavery in Colonial Times_, pp. 196-201.

[7] Ballagh, _Hist, of Slavery in Va._, pp. 29, 30, 31.

[8] Russell, _The Free Negro in Va._, pp. 32, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38-39.

[9] "Petition of a negro for redress To the Rt. Hon'ble Sir William Berkeley, Knt., Goverr and Cap. Genl of Virga, with the Hon. Councell of State. The Petiti'on of Phillip Corven, a negro, in all humility showeth: That yor petr being a servant to Mrs. Annye Beazley, late of James, City County, widow, deed. The said Mrs. Beazley made her last will and testament in writing, under her hand and seal, bearing date of April, An Dom. 1664, ... that yor petr by the then name of negro boy Philip, should serve her cousin, ... the terme of eight yeares ... and then should enjoy his freedom and be paid three barrels of corne and a sute of clothes." Cowen was sold, it appears, to Lucas who kept him and forced him to sign the long indenture. Palmer, _Calendar of State Papers_, I, p. 10.

Russell corrects "Corven" to "Cowan," _The Free Negro in Va._, p. 34.

[10] "This practice of holding negroes for a longer term than white persons, which lasted for a longer time than had originally been contemplated, since it was allowed to apply to negroes brought into Pennsylvania from other states, bade fair to perpetuate itself and last longer still." Turner, _The Negro in Penn._, pp. 93, 95, 99-100.

[11] _Ibid._, 95.

[12] Stevens, _Hist. of Ga._, I, p. 306.

[13] Henning, _Statutes at Large_, pp. 145, 146, 252, 433, 551, 552; _Ibid._, II, 115; _Ibid._, III, 87, 453; Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, p. 57; Turner, _The Negro in Penn._, pp. 112-113; McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, pp. 67-70.

[14] Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, p. 57; McCormac, _White Servitude in Md._, p. 67.

[15] Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, p. 39.

[16] _Ibid._, pp. 57-58.

[17] Stroud, _Laws Relating to Slavery_, pp. 8-9; Turner, _The Negro in Penn._, pp. 24-25, 92; Moore, _Notes on the Hist. of Slavery in Mass._, p. 54.

[18] The transition is exhibited in another case still more completely. "This position rendered them especially eligible for gross purposes, both in their intimate contact with the negroes and in their relations to their employers. The law had unwittingly set a premium upon immorality, as the female mulatto not only added an additional term to her period of service, but her offspring was by a law of 1723 in its turn forced to serve the master until the age of thirty-one years. Such mulatto servants, then, were scarcely better off as to prospective freedom than the negro slave. Custom tended to reduce them to a state of slavery. About the middle of the eighteenth century (circa 1765) the practice arose of actually disposing of their persons by sale, both in the colony and without, as slaves. So flagrant was the practice that further legislation was demanded to check the illegal proceeding by appropriate penalties. It would appear that the offenders were those who were entitled to the mulattoes only as servants, but used the power of intimidation or deceit, which could be easily practiced in the case of minor bastards born in their service." Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, pp. 59-60.

[19] From the very first, the Indians and Negroes as servants came in contact. Also, there seems to have been a "common bond of union" between Indians and Negroes. Again the colony laws concerning runaway servants generally took care of the Negro and Indian servants in the same act. Russell, _The Free Negro in Va._, pp. 128-129; Lauber, _Indian Slavery in Colonial Times_, pp. 218, 220-221.

[20] Russell, _The Free Negro in Va._, pp. 29-30.

[21] "With the change of the status of servitude to the status of slavery, certain of the attributes of the former condition were continued and connected with the latter chief of these, and the fundamental idea on which the change was effected, was the conception of property right which, from the idea of the ownership of an individual's service resting upon contract implied or expressed, came to be that of ownership of an individual's person." Lauber, _Indian Slavery in Colonial Times_, p. 215.

[22] Ballagh, _Hist. of Slavery in Va._, pp. 39-40.

[23] Lauber, _Indian Slavery in Colonial Times_, pp. 226, 227, 230; Turner, _The Negro in Penn._, p. 25. "With the loss of the ultimate right to freedom, the contractual element and the incidents essential to it were swept away, and as the idea of personality was obscured, the conception of property gained force, so that it became an easy matter to add incidents more strictly defining the property right and insuring its protection."

THREE ELEMENTS OF AFRICAN CULTURE

The passion for self expression is one of the most potent factors in social development. No problem of social philosophy yields to a satisfactory solution where the passion for expression is not regarded as a requisite factor. This principle is operative in the life of the individual, the race, and the nation. All human achievements are directly traceable to some inward urge, and evolution, as a theory, is but the universalization of this principle. Civilization, whether in its more perfected stages or whether in its manifestations that are crude and rudimentary, is essentially a measure of human expression. The inward urge that drives mankind onward has a variety of manifestations and the difference in the number of these manifestations is the measure of differences between various civilizations, and between civilization and barbarism or savagery. The impulse that moves the saintly worshipper in St. Peter's to kiss the rosary as he kneels low-bowed and earnest before the high altar is the same that moves the aborigine in Zululand to dance in frenzied ecstacies around his devil-bush. That there are various degrees of self-expression, with a maximum in this nation and age, and a minimum in that, is a fact that is as undeniable as it is obvious; but that there are impulses of cultural possibilities which are lavished upon some races while totally withheld from others is a thesis which finds no sanction in history or archaeology.

Archaeology is the guiding light in which we grope in our attempt to explore the life of ancient man. In Europe and in Asia we have unearthed numerous evidences of prehistoric cultures. There may have been surprise at the antiquity and variety but certainly not at the location, for it was highly probable that the present high civilization of Europe and Asia had risen from the ruins of older ones; yet it cannot be longer doubted that when archaeology as a searchlight was turned upon Africa there was occasion of surprise when that Dark Land yielded evidences of a civilization that antedated the arrival of the European. It would be just as hard to designate the African cultures as purely Negro as to designate the European cultures as purely Teuton. However, a study of African culture promises richer results when it can be identified with certain Negro tribes or such Negroid tribes as have a large extraction of Negro blood. The findings of archaeology have not only a backward look but also a meaning for the future and especially is this true of African cultures, which not only throw light upon the past of the black man but may also become prophetic of his future. It shall be the purpose of this treatise to analyze the African cultures so as to disclose their essential elements and to compare these elements with their counterparts in European cultures.

Once attention had been directed towards Africa, there arose numerous archaeological expeditions and especially noteworthy were the findings of those from Germany and England, the two European countries which had the most ambitious schemes of colonization. In details there is not always agreement among the various archaeological explorers; but, in the main, there is a unanimity that is marvelous and especially is this true when there is evidenced such keen rivalry that is at bottom doubtless economic.

What are the essential elements of civilization? What are the cultural manifestations which constitute the _sine qua non_ of human progress? What is the "irreducible minimum" of civilization? A studied answer must include ethics, art and government, for without any one of these no social order can claim for itself an approach to civilization. The cultures of nations and races must be expressive of these cardinal elements of social expression. In investigating African cultures and their essential elements it is deemed best to dwell at greatest length on the positive aspects of these cultural manifestations. To attempt a negative exposition of the primitive cultures of any people will not reveal any worthwhile criterion of its worth especially when the scope of investigation is limited to three essential elements of culture. If ethics, art and government constitute the irreducible minimum of civilization which is manifested in certain cultural aspects, it is clear at the outset that specialization in ethics, art and government is the measure of a people's advancement.

I. ETHICS

Of the African peoples let us consider first their ethics. It can hardly be doubted that it was an important step in man's upward journey when he reached what anthropologists have called "the dawn of mind" but it was no less momentous an event when there was within him the dawn of morality. Morality is the highest defensive weapon which mankind can wield. So important has it become in the struggle for existence that, to man, the highest form of greatness is a moral greatness. That the highest civilizations of history have been grounded in moral strength has become an historical postulate, but what of the races and nations that live beyond their pale? Were the Africans in their crude and primitive surroundings moral beings? Tillinghast and Beauvais would doubtless answer in the negative. The former in his _The Negro in Africa and America_ is loud in his criticism of the ethical standards of the African, in fact he seriously doubts the advisability of saying that the tribes of Africa have an awakened moral sense. Frobenius, however, comes forward with an assertion to the contrary, asserting: "I cannot do otherwise than say, that these human creatures are the chastest and most ethically disposed of all the national groups in the world which have become known to me."[1] In justice to the other "national groups" we may say that Frobenius here doubtless overdraws the virtues of the Yoruban tribes, yet his assertions when taken with ever so much reserve would lead to the conclusion that the Africans have considerable moral sense. Frobenius leaves no doubt that the Yorubans are a mixed people, although certain degrees of mixtures of people are found everywhere; and the fact that they are mixed alone will not vitiate the validity of Yoruban civilization as a phase of African culture. Roscoe in writing of the Baganda tribes has been as careful to impress us with their blackness as Frobenius has been to indicate the Yoruban mixture. He says: "Sex profligacy is open and thought to be no wrong. They thought it no moral wrong to indulge the sex desire."[2] Yet Roscoe further says: "The most stringent care was exercised by the king and chiefs, but it proved inefficient to keep the sexes apart, while horrible punishment meted out to the delinquents when caught seemed to lend zest to the danger incurred."[3] The significant thing in Roscoe's account is not the open sex profligacy but the "stringent care exercised by kings and chiefs" and the "horrible punishment meted out to offenders." After all, there is abundant evidence that even in Baganda there is some ethical standard.

Roscoe continues: "Theft is not common among the people for they were deterred from stealing by fear of punishment which was certain to follow."[4] The very fact that there was fear of punishment is indicative of some conception of social morality. Fear as a preventive of crime is not the most commendable incentive to morality, but it is one that must be employed in all civilizations; for man is first an animal then a moral being. The fear referred to does not prove that the Baganda has the highest type of morality, but it proves that they have a type and this is significant for primitive peoples. The low standard in anything may be prophetic of higher ones which are approachable only by means of the lower ones as stepping stones. This is true in art, science and religion. The fact that the Bagandas were "hospitable and liberal and that real poverty did not exist"[5] shows the presence of a social consciousness which in many ways evidences a standard of ethics. According to Roscoe the thief was killed on the spot, death for adultery was certain;[6] yet he attempts to maintain his thesis as to their lack of morality in these words: "The moral ideas of the people are crude, it was not wrongdoing but detection that they feared; men were restrained from committing crimes through fear of the power of the gods."[7] It is obvious that "detection" is to be feared only where there are detectives and these are present only when they have been called forth in response to some social demands.

There is still other light to be turned on the ethical status of the African tribes. Bent, more sympathetic towards the natives of Mashonaland, delivers himself thus: "Not only has Khama established his reputation for honesty; but he is supposed to have inoculated his people with the same virtue. I must say that I looked forward with great interest to seeing a man with so wide a reputation for integrity and enlightenment as Khama in South Africa. Somehow one's spirit of skepticism is on the alert on such occasions and especially when a Negro is the case in point; and I candidly admit that I advanced towards Palapwe fully prepared to find Ba Mangwato a rascal and hypocrite and I left his capital after a week's stay there one of his fervent admirers."[8] But Dent adds: "Doubtless on the traversed roads and large centers where they are brought into contact with traders and would-be civilizers of the race, these people become thieves and vagabonds, but in their primitive state the Makalangas are naturally honest, exceedingly courteous in manner."[9]

It is plain to the impartial critic that judged by our ethical standards the peoples commended above would fall far short; but this is no less true with the earliest civilization of historic times. Standards not only vary from age to age but from people to people. In arguing to support the thesis that in Africa the lowliest tribes had some ethical standard, it is not necessary to prove that these standards compare favorably or unfavorably with those of modern times. Such is beside the question and with the testimony of the English and German archaeologists before us we are safe in saying that the African tribes had an ethical standard and thus the potentials of a civilization based upon morality. Neither can it be proved that the ethical standards of the tribes of Baganda, Mashonaland and Yoruba are without worth because they differ in so many particulars from our own. Later we shall attempt to show just why there is such disparity between their ethics and ours. Furthermore, it is not necessary to prove that ethical contacts with Europeans affords no basis for the tribesmen but it is reasonable to suppose that the ethics of the African tribes had possibilities the same as the earliest nations of Europe and Asia; and if contacts with Europeans be argued against the proposition that the Africans evolved an ethical standard, the same argument may be used to bedim the glory of our own civilization.

We, therefore, contend that whatever possibilities lie with the people who can evolve an ethical standard surely must lie with the African. It is true that the happy faculty of coordinating ethics with ideals has made nations great and civilizations splendid, and that such faculty evidenced itself in the long-dark continent of Africa. The principle of evolution is just as operative in the world of ethics as in the world of physical sciences. Ethics must grow and outgrown ethics is ethics notwithstanding. The most rabid critic does not deny to Africa ethical origins, but such authorities as Tillinghast and Beauvais would deny their practical worth. These men criticize the standard rather than deny that there are ethical manifestations of culture. Ellwood in his Sociology and Social Problems contends that the regulation of sex relations has been the greatest achievement of man. Granting the truth of this statement, we have evidences that the African made desperate efforts to regulate sex relations both by a kind of public opinion and by punishment; for Roscoe says: "It was looked upon as a great disgrace to a family if a girl was with child prior to marriage."[10] We are certain that there was "marriage" and this itself is an indication that an attempt had been made to regulate the all-important matter of sex. Roscoe further held that "the marriage vow was binding."[11] Both those writers who commended the ethics of the Africans and those who belittled their standard, then, are essentially agreed to the fact of their ethics. Although there were wide variations in the standards of different tribes, we are abundantly justified in assuming that the ethics of the Africans was as susceptible to improvement as our own. The more advanced standards were prophetic of still more advanced ones.

II. ART

What a man admires is an infallible index to his innermost soul. Whether in the adornment of some temple or the crude markings upon primitive pottery, man is ever striving to express himself in his labors. Strange to say that though the passion for self-expression is dominant in human activities, the art of expression is still in its infancy. We may divide human artifacts into two classes, namely, those of utility and those of aestheticism. That the latter has a form of utility we should in no case deny but as to the utility of aesthetics we deem it beside the point here to discuss. When we use the term "art" in this treatise it will have the specific meaning of the attempt on the part of man to express his emotions; or his attempt to satisfy the aesthetic cravings in the soul. That there are such cravings is a fact which is universally conceded. That there are many evidences of such attempts among all civilized lands none will deny. That man's attempts at artistic expression is a criterion of his civilization is an historic fact. There can be no civilization without its concomitants of aesthetics. Man seeks beauty for beauty's sake, and he alone of the animals gives evidence of such propensity to a pronounced degree. In song, upon canvas, and in marble, humanity has poured forth its innermost soul of sentiments inexpressibly sublime. There is no passion, no object that has not at some time inflamed the soul and moved some mortal to the abode of the gods.

What have the explorers in Darkest Africa found to indicate that the Africans loved the beautiful? What have the Africans to show as specimens of fine art? The music of Negro peoples has become proverbial. In so far as song is an expression of aesthetic propensities the African abundantly qualifies as a lover of art. Whether the strength of a Wagner or the melody of a Beethoven; whether the melody of a southern plantation or a concert in Symphony Hall, the principle of the music is the same. The crude instruments of which the explorer tells us are mute testimonials of the African's attempts to express himself in song and music. There were to be found in the Bagandaland, according to Roscoe, drums for dancing and the "royal" drum was elaborately decorated, thus showing a combination of sight and soul appreciation for beauty. He said that the harp and stringed fife were also found in this same tribe. The pottery found in this region was glazed and figures painted thereon indicated beyond doubt artistic design of no mean order. The basketry had various figures worked through the skillful manipulation of the bark fibres. Roscoe asserts that polychrome paintings were much in evidence among the Baganda tribes and their work in ivory corresponded favorably with the same kind of work found in Europe during the Neolithic Age. Whether fine art was indigenous is not a pertinent question but the significant thing is that Roscoe found these tribes actually giving expression to what seemed to be a well-developed sense of the beautiful.