My Native Land eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 354 pages of information about My Native Land.

My Native Land eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 354 pages of information about My Native Land.

CHAPTER XIV.

BEFORE EMANCIPATION AND AFTER.

First Importation of Negro Slaves into America—­The Original Abolitionists—­A Colored Enthusiast and a Coward—­Origin of the word “Secession”—­John Brown’s Fanaticism—­Uncle Tom’s Cabin—­Faithful unto Death—­George Augustus Sala on the Negro who Lingered too long in the Mill Pond.

The American negro is such a distinct character that he cannot be overlooked in a work of this nature.  Some people think he is wholly bad, and that although he occasionally assumes a virtue, he is but playing a part, and playing it but indifferently well at that.  Others place him on a lofty pedestal, and magnify him into a hero and a martyr.

But the Afro-American, commonly called a “nigger” in the South, is neither the one nor the other.  He is often as worthless as the “white trash” he so scornfully despises, and he is often all that the most exacting could expect, when his surroundings and disadvantages are taken into consideration.  Physiologists tell us that man is very largely what others make him, many going so far as to say that character and disposition are three parts hereditary and one part environment.  If this is so, a good deal of allowance should be made.  It is less than 300 years since the first negroes were brought over to this country, and it is but little more than thirty years since slavery was abolished.  Hence, from both the standpoints of descent and environment, the negro is at a great disadvantage, and he should hardly be judged by the common standard.

It was in the year 1619 that a Dutch ship landed a cargo of negroes from Guinea, but that was not really the first case of slavery in this country.  Prior to that time paupers and criminals from the old world had voluntarily sold themselves into a species of subjection, in preference to starvation and detention in their own land; but this landing in 1619 seems to have really introduced the colored man into the labor world and market of America.

We need not trace the history of the negro as a slave at any length.  That he was occasionally abused goes without saying, but that his condition was approximately as bad as a majority of writers have attempted to prove is not so certain.  It was the policy of the slave owner to get as much work out of his staff as he possibly could.  He knew from experience that the powers of human endurance were necessarily limited, and that a man could not work satisfactorily when he was sick or hungry.  Hence, even on the supposition that all slave owners were without feeling, it is obvious that self-interest must have impelled them to keep the negro in good health, and to prevent him from losing strength from hardship and want.

On some plantations the lot of the slave was a hard one, but on others there was very little complaining or cause for complaint.  Thousands of slaves were better off by far than they have been subsequent to liberation, and it is a fact that speaks volumes for the much discussed and criticized slaveholders, that numbers of emancipated slaves refused to accept their freedom, while many more, who went away delighted at the removal of withstraint, came back of their own option very soon after, and begged to be allowed to resume the old relations.

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My Native Land from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.