During the century previous to 1776, English and colonial slavers had carried into the West Indies and to English colonies nearly 3,000,000 negroes; and it is estimated that a quarter of a million more died of cruel treatment on shipboard, and their bodies were cast into the sea.
The words of the Declaration: "We hold these truths to be self- evident: That _all men are created equal;_ that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are _life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,_" were not accepted in fact as a charter of freedom for the enslaved African, but it remained for a Chief-Justice of the United States (Taney) more than eighty years later (March 5, 1857), in the Dred Scott decision, that did so much (as we will hereafter show) to disrupt the Union, to say:
"The language used in the Declaration of Independence shows that neither the cla.s.s of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used."
And the Chief-Justice said further:
"They [the negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to a.s.sociate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."
Quoting the Declaration, "_that all men are created equal_," he continued:
"The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this Declaration."
Notwithstanding this interpretation of the Declaration, free negroes fought for American independence at Bunker Hill; and although later it was decided that colored men should not be accepted as enlisted soldiers, General Washington did accept them, and thereafter they served in his army to the end of the war,(13) notably in large numbers at Yorktown.
The Royal Governor of Virginia in vain tried to induce slaves to revolt against their masters by promising them their freedom.
During Lord Howe"s march through Pennsylvania it is said the slaves prayed for his success, believing he would set them free.
The British Parliament discussed a measure to set the slaves in the colonies free with a view to weaken their masters" ardor for freedom. In Rhode Island slaves were, by law, set free on condition that they enlisted in the army for the war.
(10) Parton"s _Life of Jefferson_, p. 138.
(11) _History Ready Reference_, etc., vol. iv., p. 2923.
(12) Sparks"s _Life of Washington_, vol. ii., p. 494.
(13) Bancroft, _History of the United States_, vol. iv., 223,322.
IV CONTINENTAL CONGRESS--ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 1774-1789
The Continental Congress, which a.s.sembled for the first time, September 5, 1774, at Carpenters" Hall, Philadelphia, a.s.sumed few powers, and its proceedings were, until the adoption by it of the Declaration of Independence, little more than protests against British oppression. Nor was any central government formed on the adoption of the Declaration. That Congress continued, by common agreement, to direct affairs, though, in the beginning, possessing no delegated political or governmental powers.
Slavery existed in the colonies or States prior to the Declaration by the connivance of British colonial authorities without the sanction of and against English law; and after the Declaration, by mere toleration as an existing domestic inst.i.tution, not even by virtue of express colonial or State authority.
In 1772 Lord Mansfield, from the Court of the King"s Bench, announced that slavery could not exist under the English Const.i.tution.
The Articles of Confederation did nothing more than formulate, in a weak way, a government for the United States, solely through a Congress to which was delegated little political power. This Congress continued to govern (if government it could be called) until the Const.i.tution went into effect, March 4, 1789.
The "_Articles of Confederation_," adopted (July 9, 1778) by the Continental Congress of the thirteen original States in the midst of the Revolution, were substantially silent on slavery. They const.i.tuted in all respects a weak and impotent instrument. But they recognized the existence of slavery by speaking of _free_ citizens (Art. 4).
They provided for a "Confederation and perpetual Union" between the thirteen States, but provided no power to raise revenue, levy taxes, or enforce law, save with the consent of nine of the States.
The government created had power to contract debts, but no power to pay them; it could levy war, raise armies and navies, but it could not raise revenue to sustain them; it could make treaties, but could not compel their observance by the States; it could make laws, but could not enforce them.
Washington said of it:
"The Confederation appears to be little more than a shadow without the substance, and Congress a nugatory body."
Chief-Justice Story said:
"There was an utter want of all coercive authority to carry into effect its own const.i.tutional measures."
The Articles were, professedly, not in the interest of the whole people.
They provided only for a "_league_" of states, guaranteeing to each state-rights in all things.
Art. IV. runs thus:
"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States of this Union, the _free_ inhabitants of each of these States, _paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted_, shall be ent.i.tled to all the privileges and immunities of _free_ citizens in the several States,"
etc.
What a cla.s.sification of persons for exception from the privileges of government!
_Free_ negroes were not of the excepted cla.s.s. Nor were criminals, unless they became fugitives from justice.
For ten years the new Republic existed under these Articles by the tolerance of a people bound together by the spirit of liberty and the cohesion of patriotism.
The Articles created no status for slavery, nor did they interfere with it in the States. They made no provision for a fugitive-slave law, if, indeed, such a law was dreamed of until after the Const.i.tution went into effect.
The Articles of Confederation provided no executive head, no supreme judiciary, and they provided for no perfect legislative body, organized on the principle of checks and restraints, possessed of true republican representation. Congress--the sole governing power --was composed of one body, each State sending not less than two or more than seven representatives. The voting in this body was done by States, each State having one vote.
It therefore soon became necessary to frame and adopt a new organic act, supplementing the many deficiencies of these Articles.
V ORDINANCE OF 1787
The memorable Congress of 1776 was willing to do much to the end that slavery might be restricted, hence, as we have seen, it resolved "_that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies_."
Had it been possible thus early to stop effectually the slave trade, and to prevent the extension of slavery to new territory, slavery would have died out. Jefferson sought, shortly after the treaty of peace, to prohibit slavery extension, and to this end he prepared and reported an Ordinance (1784) prohibiting slavery _after the year 1800_ in all the territory then belonging to the United States above the parallel of 31 North lat.i.tude, which included what became the princ.i.p.al parts of the slave States of Alabama and Mississippi, all of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the whole Northwest Territory. In 1784 the United States owned no territory south of 31 North lat.i.tude.
This Ordinance of freedom was lost by a single vote. Had that one vote been reversed, what a "h.e.l.l of agony" would have been closed, and what a sea of blood would have been saved! Slavery would have died in the hands of its friends and the new Republic would have soon been free in _fact_ as well as name.
Jefferson, though himself a slaveholder, was desperately in earnest in advocacy of this Ordinance, and, speaking of its prohibitory slave-clause two years later, he wrote:
"The voice of a single individual would have prevented that abominable crime. Heaven will not always be silent; the friends to the rights of human nature will in the end prevail."(14)
The most important victory for freedom in the civil history of the United States (until the Rebellion of 1861) was the Ordinance of 1787, reported by Nathan Dane,(15) of Ma.s.sachusetts, as a subst.i.tute for the defeated one just referred to, but differing from it in two important respects:
(1) It applied only to the territory northwest of the River Ohio recently (March 1, 1784) ceded to the United States by Virginia;
(2) It prohibited slavery at once and forever therein. Its sixth section is in these words:
"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."
But it has been, with much force, claimed by those who denied the binding character of this Ordinance, that as it was an act of the old Congress under the Articles of Confederation, and established a territorial form of government, not in all respects in conformity with the Const.i.tution, it was necessarily superseded by it.
This view was general on the meeting of the First Congress (1789) under the Const.i.tution, but the Ordinance, so dear to the hearts of Jefferson and other lovers of liberty, was early attended to.