V. CHAP. of the Mississippi valley, Cortereal and Vasquez de Ayllon, Porcallo and Soto, with private adventurers, whose names and whose crimes may be left unrecorded, transported the natives of North America into slavery in Europe and the Spanish West Indies. The glory of Columbus himself did not escape the stain; 1494. enslaving five hundred native Americans, he sent them to Spain, that they might be publicly sold at Seville.1 1500. The generous Isabella commanded the liberation of the Indians held in bondage in her European possessions.2 Yet her active benevolence extended neither to the Moors, whose valor had been punished by slavery, nor to the Africans; and even her compassion for the New World was but the transient feeling, which relieves the miserable who are in sight, not the deliberate application of a just principle. For the June commissions for making discoveries, issued a few days before and after her interference to rescue those whom July Columbus had enslaved, reserved for herself and Ferdinand a fourth part of the slaves which the new 1501. kingdoms might contain. The slavery of Indians was recognized as lawful.^ 5 and 5. 3 The practice of selling the natives of North America into foreign bondage continued for nearly two centuries; and even the sternest morality pronounced the sentence of slavery and exile on the captives whom the field of battle had spared. The excellent Winthrop enumerates Indians among his bequests.5 The articles of the early New England confederacy class persons among the spoils of war. A scanty remnant of the 1 Irving's Columbus, b. viii. c. v. Navarette, ii. 245, and again, ii. 249. 4 See a cédula on a slave contract, in Navarette, iii. 514, 515, given June 20, 1501. 5 Winthrop's N. E., ii. 360. NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE WEST INDIES. 2 3 169 V. Pequod tribe in Connecticut, the captives treacher- CHAP. ously made by Waldron in New Hampshire, the harmless fragments of the tribe of Annawon, the orphan offspring of King Philip himself, were all doomed to the same hard destiny of perpetual bondage. The clans of Virginia and Carolina,5 for more than a hundred years, were hardly safe against the kidnapper. The universal public mind was long and deeply vitiated. It was not Las Casas who first suggested the plan of transporting African slaves to Hispaniola; Spanish slaveholders, as they emigrated, were accompanied by their negroes. The emigration may at first have been contraband; but a royal edict soon permitted negro 1501 slaves, born in slavery among Christians, to be transported to Hispaniola. Thus the royal ordinances of Spain authorized negro slavery in America. Within two years, there were such numbers of Africans in 1503. Hispaniola, that Ovando, the governor of the island, entreated that the importation might no longer be permitted. The Spanish government attempted to disguise the crime, by forbidding the introduction of negro slaves, who had been bred in Moorish families, and allowing only those who were said to have been instructed in the Christian faith, to be transported to the West Indies, under the plea that they might assist in converting the infidel nations. But the idle pretence was soon abandoned; for should faith in Christianity be punished by perpetual bondage in the 7 1 Winthrop's N. E., i. 234. 2 Belknap's Hist. of N. Hampshire, i. 75, Farmer's edition. 3 Baylies' Plymouth, iii. 190. 4 Davis, on Morton's Memorial, 454, 455. Baylies' Plymouth, iii. 190, 191. 5 Hening, i. 481, 482. The act, forbidding the crime, proves, what VOL. I 22 is indeed undisputed, its previous ex- 6 Herrera, d. i. l. iv. c. xii. 7 Irving's Columbus, Appendix, No. 26, iii. 372, first American edition. 8 Herrera, d. i. l. vi. c. xx. CHAP. colonies? And would the purchaser be scrupulously V. inquisitive of the birthplace and instruction of his laborers? Besides, the culture of sugar was now successfully begun; and the system of slavery, already riveted, was not long restrained by the scruples of men 1510. in power. King Ferdinand himself sent from Seville fifty slaves' to labor in the mines; and, because it was said, that one negro could do the work of four Indians, the direct traffic in slaves between Guinea and His1511. paniola was enjoined by a royal ordinance, and de1512-3 liberately sanctioned by repeated decrees. Was it 3 not natural that Charles V., a youthful monarch, surrounded by rapacious courtiers, should have readily 1516. granted licenses to the Flemings to transport negroes to the colonies? The benevolent Las Casas, who had seen the native inhabitants of the New World vanish away, like dew, before the cruelties of the Spaniards, who felt for the Indians all that an ardent charity and the purest missionary zeal could inspire, and who had seen the African thriving in robust health under the 1517. sun of Hispaniola, returning from America to plead the cause of the feeble Indians, in the same year which saw the dawn of the Reformation in Germany, suggested the expedient," that negroes might still further be employed to perform the severe toils which they alone could endure. The avarice of the Flemings greedily seized on the expedient; the board of trade 1 Herrera, d. i. l. viii. c. ix. 3 Irving's Columbus, iii. 372. 5 The merits of Las Casas have troversy seems now concluded. Irving's Columbus, iii. 367-378. Navarette, Introduccion, s. lviii. lix. The Memoir of Las Casas still exists in manuscript. Herrera, d. ii. l. ii. c. xx. Robertson's America, b. iii. It may yet gratify curiosity to compare Grégoire, Apologie de B. Las Casas, in Mem. de l'Inst. Nat. An. viii.; and Verplanck, in N. Y. Hist. Coll. iii. 49-53, and 103-105. OPINIONS ON SLAVERY. 171 V. at Seville was consulted, to learn how many slaves CHAP would be required. It had been proposed to allow four for each Spanish emigrant; deliberate calculation fixed the number esteemed necessary at four thousand. The very year in which Charles V. sailed with a powerful expedition against Tunis, to check the piracies of the Barbary states, and to emancipate Christian slaves in Africa, he gave an open legal sanction to the African slave-trade. The sins of the Moors were to be revenged on the negroes; and the monopoly,' for eight years, of annually importing four thousand slaves into the West Indies, was eagerly seized by La Bresa, a favorite of the Spanish monarch, and was sold to the Genoese, who purchased their cargoes of Portugal. We shall, at a later period, have occasion to observe a stipulation for this lucrative monopoly, forming an integral part in a treaty of peace, established by a European Congress; shall witness the sovereign of the most free state in Europe stipulating for a fourth part of its profits; and shall trace its intimate connection with the first in that series of wars which led to the emancipation of America. Thus a hasty benevolence, too zealous to be just, attempted to save the natives of America by sanctioning an equal oppression of another race. But covetousness, and not a mistaken benevolence, established the slave-trade, which had nearly received its development before the charity of Las Casas was heard in defence of the Indians. Reason, policy, and religion, alike condemned the 3 1 Herrera, d. ii. 1. ii. c. xx. 2 Inter dominum et servum nulla amicitia est; etiam in pace belli tamen jura servantur. Quintus Curtius, 1. vii. c. viii. John Locke, who sanctioned slavery in Carolina, gives a similar definition of it. "The perfect condition of slavery is the state of war continued between a 3 See A. Q. Review, for Dec. CHAP. traffic. A series of papal bulls had indeed secured to V. the Portuguese the exclusive commerce with Western June 2 Africa; but the slave-trade between Africa and America was, I believe, never expressly sanctioned by the see of Rome. The spirit of the Roman church was against it. Even Leo X., though his voluptuous life, making of his pontificate a continued carnival, might have deadened the sentiments of humanity and justice, declared,' that "not the Christian religion only, but nature herself, cries out against the state of slavery." 1537. And Paul III., in two separate briefs, imprecated a 10. curse on the Europeans who should enslave Indians, or any other class of men. It even became usual for Spanish vessels, when they sailed on a voyage of discovery, to be attended by a priest, whose benevolent duty it was, to prevent the kidnapping of the aborigines. The legislation of independent America has been emphatic in denouncing the hasty avarice which entailed the anomaly of negro slavery in the midst of liberty. Ximenes, the gifted coadjutor of Ferdinand and Isabella, the stern grand inquisitor, the austere but ambitious Franciscan, saw in advance the danger which it required centuries to reveal, and refused to sanction the introduction of negroes into Hispaniola ; believing that the favorable climate would increase their numbers, and infallibly lead them to a successful revolt. A severe retribution has manifested his sa gacity: Hayti, the first spot in America that received 5 1 Grahame's United States, ii. 18. Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave-Trade, i. 35, American edition. Clarkson, i. 33, 34, says that Charles V. lived to repent his permission of slavery, and to order emancipation. The first is probable; yet Herrera, d. ii. l. ii. c. xx., denounces not slavery, but the monopoly of the slave-trade. 2 See the brief, in Remesal, Hist. de Chiappa, 1. iii. c. xvi. xvii. 3 T. Southey's West Indies, i. 126. 4 Walsh's Appeal, 306-342. Belknap's Correspondence with Tucker, i. Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 190 -211. 5 Irving, iii. 374, 375. |
