Circa1865

The following is a glimpse of the Debates in the House of Representatives of the US during the First Session of the Fourth Congress, Part II, upon the subject of the British Treaty. Members of the House, especially those of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania were surprised that compensation for the loss of slaves by Americans during the war was not within the document. The following was written by William Renwick Riddell of Toronto, September 24, 1927.

Post-Revolution Dispute over Slaves

When Britain accepted the Treaty, Washington proclaimed it on February 2, 1796, and sent a copy to both Senate and House.

In reading these debates I was struck by the prominence given to the claims for Negroes taken away [by the British] in 1783 and earlier. This was not one of the matters as to which [negotiator] John Jay was instructed to be insistent . . . But the greatest number of protests in the House were concerning these Negroes.

Mr. Maclay of Pennsylvania, on April 14, gave as his first objection to the treaty “that it did not provide for the loss of the Negroes” (p.34). Mr. S. Lyman of Massachusetts thought that Jay should have told the British Minister at the very first interview: “You have carried off our Negroes” (p.52).

Mr. Nicholas of Virginia complained that “of the Negroes [carried off by British troops] nothing is said in the present Treaty. Some Representatives, like Mr. Hillhouse of Connecticut, thought “Negroes, horses and other property were . . . placed on the same footing and that it was as much a violation of the Treaty to carry away a horse as a Negro.” He asked, “will any man say after reviewing the circumstances, that the 7^th Article was meant to secure the restitution of Negroes and other property taken in the course of the War?”

Mr. Findley of Pennsylvania considered that “the claim for recompense for Negroes was as strong as that for the recovery of British debts and as equitable (p.177).” Mr. Holland of North Carolina thought it strange that in things that were self-evident, there should be so great a difference of opinion and that the war-emancipated Negroes should be returned to their former masters in America (p.99). Mr. Gallatin of Pennsylvania agreed and said that the British ministry had agreed to this interpretation during Mr. Adma’s embassy, but the American ‘negotiator (Jay) had for the sake of peace waived that claim.

At his day we might ask ourselves, what would be thought of the United States if they had sent back South . . . the slaves emancipated by Lincoln? In the end, for the sake of peace Britain in 1826 paid $1,204, 960 for those slaves taken, though none were returned to the US.”

(Great Britain, Canada and the Negro. Journal of Negro History, Carter G. Woodson, ed., Vol. XIII, No. 2, April 1928. pp. 188-180)

Before condemning the American South for its use of African labor in its agricultural production, one must first highlight the roles of the African tribes who sold their own people into slavery. One must add to this the Portuguese, Spanish, British and French – and later New Englanders who conducted the transatlantic slave trade. Below, prominent Wilmington attorney and Attorney General of the Confederate States, lamented postwar the inauguration of slavery into Carolina by British Colonial Governor Yeamans.

A Most Portentous Event

“We draw a veil over the sad scenes enacted there, but we recall the fact that it was not until after the slave traders of the North had received full value of their human merchandise from their Southern brethren that our neighbors began to realize the enormity of the institution of slavery.

With reference to the introduction of slavery into Carolina by the Colonial Governor John Yeamans, from Barbados in 1671, the late George Davis said:

‘This seems to be a simple announcement of a very commonplace fact; but it was the little cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. It was the most portentous event of all our early history. For Yeaman’s carried with him from Barbados his negro slaves; and that was the first introduction of African slavery into Carolina. (Bancroft, V2, p. 170; Rivers, p169.)

If, as he sat by the camp-fire in that lonely Southern wilderness, Yeamans could have gazed with prophetic vision down the vista of two hundred years, and seem the stormy and tragic end of that which he was then so quietly inaugurating the beginning, must he not have exclaimed to Ophelia, as she beheld the wreck of her heart’s young love:

“ ‘O, woe is me! To have seen what I have seen, see what I see’”!

(Tales and Traditions of the Lower Cape Fear, 1661-1896. James Sprunt. LeGwin Brothers, Printers & Publishers, 1896.

It is said that England in 1861 ran twice as many spindles as all other countries combined, with Lancashire at the center. The London Times editorial of September 19, 1861, stated that one-fifth of the entire British population was held to be dependent, directly or indirectly, upon the prosperity of Southern cotton, which accounted for 80 percent of the total English importation of raw cotton. Additional cotton was sent north to the busy cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts.

And it cannot be forgotten that it was Massachusetts tinkerer Eli Whitney who brought forth the cotton gin. This invention replaced the slow method of pulling seeds by hand, increased cotton crop yield and helped perpetuate African slavery in America.

Cotton for the North and England

“For ten years past whenever Southern threats of secession had been indulged in, the writers and politicians of that section had expanded upon cotton as the one great wealth-producing industry of America and as the one produce which would compel European acquiescence in American policy, whether of the union, before 1860, or if the South, if she should decide upon independence.”

A writer in DeBow’s Review declared “the South annually throws upon the world for the poor & the naked, [and] we are doing more to advance civilization . . . than all the canting philanthropists of New England & Old England will do in centuries. Slavery is the backbone of the Northern commercial as it is of the British manufacturing system . . .”

Before the Civil War was underway Charles Greville wrote to Clarendon: “Any war will be almost sure to interfere with [the South’s) cotton crops, and this is really what affects us and what we care about. With all our virulent abuse of slavery and slave-owners, and our continual self-laudation on that subject, we are just as anxious for, and as much interested in, the prosperity of the slavery interest in the Southern States, as the Caribbean, as the Carolinian and Georgian planters themselves, and all Lancashire would deplore a successful insurrection of the slaves [by northern abolitionists], if such a thing were possible.”

(Great Britain and the American Civil War. Volume II. Ephraim Douglass Adams. Alpha Editions, 2018 (original 1924), pp. 300-301)

The Puritans and New England’s Slave Trade

The New England Puritans warred upon and sold into West Indian slavery the local inhabitants they didn’t kill in the process. The native inhabitant’s land was forfeited and divided among the victors, whose later prosperity was largely the result of a profitable triangular slave trade with Africans shipped to the West Indies sugar plantations. New England slave ship construction was highly profitable and lured many Liverpool shipwrights away from home, and during one period the little village of Newport, Rhode Island was the haven for 150 slave-trade vessels. From Delaware to Georgia, each State was indebted to New England for its slave labor.

In the 1820s the Puritan descendants discovered a “Higher Law” and denounced the 1789 compact they then agreed to as “a covenant with Death and an agreement with Hell.” This was heard despite the millions in profits made by New England textile mills fed by the cotton picked by slaves they had sold to Southern planters – a process made more efficient and profitable by a 1790’s invention of Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney.

(The Puritans. Thomas Manson Norwood, 1875. Virginia Heritage Foundation, pp. 63-65)

New York City in 1712

[The population of New York City in 1741] “numbered only about ten thousand, one-fifth of which [were] negroes, who were slaves. Their education being wholly neglected, they were ignorant and debased, and addicted to almost every vice. They were besides, restive under their bondage and the severe punishments often inflicted upon them., which caused their master’s a great deal of anxiety.

Not isolated as an inland plantation, but packed in a narrow space, they had easy communication with each other and worse than all, with the reckless and depraved crews of the vessels that came into port.

It is true, the most stringent measures were adopted to prevent them from assembling together; yet, in spite of every precaution, there would now and again come to light some plan or project that would fill white New Yorkers with alarm. They felt half the time as though walking on the crust of a volcano, and hence were in a state of mind to exaggerate every danger and give credit to every sinister rumor.

Only thirty years before occurred such an outbreak as they now feared. On the 7^th of April 1712, the house of Peter Van Tilburgh was set on fire by negroes, which was evidently meant as a signal for a general revolt.

The cry of “fire” roused the neighboring inhabitants, and the rushed out toward the blazing building. They saw . . . in the red light of the flames, a band of negroes armed with guns and knives . . . who fired and then rushed on them with their knives, killing several on the spot. The rest, leaving the building to the mercy of the flames, ran to the fort on the Battery and roused the Governor who ordered a cannon to be fired from the ramparts to alarm the town. The soldiers hurried forward towards the fire while more negroes joined the rioters, who stood firm until the gleam of bayonets and a single musket volley forced them to flee toward what is now Wall Street.

The scattered white inhabitants the rioters encountered were attacked with their knives, killing and wounding several as the black mob made for the nearby woods and swamps. Some, finding themselves closely pressed and all avenues of escape closed off, deliberately shot themselves, preferring such a death to the one they knew awaited them. How many [colored] were killed and captured during the morning, the historian does not tell us. We can only infer that the number must have been great, from the statement he incidentally makes, that “during the day nineteen more were taken, tried and executed – some that turned State’s evidence were transported. Eight or ten whites had been murdered,” and many more wounded.

It was a terrible event and remembered by the present inhabitants with horror and dismay. Many middle-aged men, in 1741, were young men at the time and remembered the fearful excitement that prevailed then.”

(The Great Riots of New York: 1712 to 1873. Joel Tyler Headley. Dover Publications, pp. 26-28)

John W. Burgess of Pulaski, Tennessee was 17 years old when invading northern armies occupied his State. When Southern cavalry came to enlist him for the State’s defense, his Rhode Island-born father encouraged John to escape into the woods and northern-held western Tennessee. Reaching occupied Jackson, he and an accomplice were enlisted as scouts to lead northern cavalry against Gen. Bedford Forrest.

At war’s end John attended Amherst College in Massachusetts and became acquainted with newspaper editor Franklin Sanborn. The latter, like Burgesses father, were abolitionist northerners who had regained their sense of morality regarding Africa’s people and distanced themselves from New England’s transatlantic slave-trading past.

Treason in the South

“There was another cause of great mental distress to me in the situation in which I found myself. I was regarded by most of those whom I had grown up as a traitor to my country. It was entirely useless for me to say I recognized only the United States as my country and regarded the secession of Tennessee and its connection with the Southern Confederacy as void acts . . . Their political horizon was bounded by the frontiers of their State and their only conception of sovereignty was “State rights.”

They would turn their faces away from me with undisguised contempt and hatred whenever we met, and I was made to feel full well that I must never fall alive into the hands of the Confederate military. In such case, I was entirely and fully aware that I would not have been accorded the honor of facing the firing squad but would have been hung from the first limb which could have been reached.

In constant danger of capture or abduction, I spent many anxious days and sleepless nights reflecting upon my possible, and at times seemingly probably fate.”

(Reminiscences of an American Scholar, John W. Burgess, Columbia University Press, 1934; pp. 32-33)

Secession or a War of Rebellion?

The Possibility Foreseen by the Continental Congress. W.A. Lederer of Philadelphia.

“The voluntary withdrawal of a State, or group of States, from a Union, or any other political body is generally known as secession, notwithstanding the reasons and procedures leading up to this decision. In 1905, Norway seceded from the Scandinavian Union of some ninety years standing, which act was considered a peaceful separation from Sweden.

In 1776, the thirteen colonies separated from the motherland, which act, being settled with arms, but successfully, is known as the Revolution of ’76, or the first War of Independence. The year 1861 witnessed the outbreak of the second War of Independence, as we may justly name it, which received the offensive name given by the victor, the War of the Rebellion. (Commonly spoken, a revolution is a successful rebellion and thus had the thirteen colonies been unsuccessful, that war would have been known as the War of Rebellion, notwithstanding the causes).

To the truthful and sincere historian, the War of 1861-1865 is known as the War Between the States, its purpose being the prevention of the peaceful separation and secession of the Southern States from the 1789 Union. To the informed and educated American, therefore, secession means the justified act of a peaceful separation of economically two different sections of the Union.”

Mr. Lederer continued his review of the newly independent States and the issue of slavery and the North’s important role in perpetuating the institution. He wrote:

“Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence was “considerate and courteous, yet Voltaire-like as he caustically refers to the slave trade of the pious Yankee, and rather than cause a disruption of the drive for independence, he omitted this” from his final draft. In explaining this omission regarding African slavery: “It was struck out in compliance with South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain slave importation . . . Our Northern brethren also, felt a little tender toward those censures; for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”

(W.A. Lederer, Confederate Veteran, September, 1930, pp. 337-338)

Famed orator and debater Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina served as South Carolina Senator 1823-1832, governor of that State 1832-1834, and mayor of Charleston 1836-1837.  He famously debated Daniel Webster of Massachusetts in Congress in early 1830 over concerns that the federation’s government was attracting too much revenue, accumulating too much debt and trending toward consolidation. Hayne further reminded Webster of New England’s infamous trading with the enemy and threats of secession during the War of 1812.

Robert Hayne and Daniel Webster

“If there be one State in this Union (and I say it not in a boastful spirit) that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina.

Sir, from the very commencement of the Revolution, up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made; no service she has ever hesitated to perform.”

“What sir, was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? Sir, I honor New England for her conduct in the glorious struggle . . . [but] I think equal honor is due the South. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create commercial rivalship, they might have found in their situation a guarantee that their trade would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But trampling on all considerations, either of interest or of safety, [the South] rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of freedom. Never was there exhibited, in the history of the world, higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering and heroic endurance, than by the whigs of Carolina, during that Revolution.”

And the War of 1812, called in derision by New England, said Hayne, “the southern war,” what was the conduct of South Carolina? The war was for the protection of northern shipping and New England seamen.

‘What interest had the South in that contest? If they sat down coldly to calculate the value of their own interests involved in it, they would have found they had everything to lose and nothing to gain. But sir, with that generous devotion to country so characteristic of the South, they only asked if the rights of any portion of their fellow-citizens had been invaded; and when told that northern ships and New England seamen had been arrested on the common highway of nations, they felt that the honor of the country was assailed . . . they resolved to seek, in open war, for a redress of those injuries which it did not become freemen to endure.’

The conduct of Massachusetts, declared Hayne, was in that war so unpatriotic and disgraceful, her acts in opposing the war so shameless, that “her own legislature, but a few years ago, actually blotted them out from the records as a stain upon the honor of the country.”

(The True Daniel Webster. Sydney George Fisher. J.B. Lippincott Company. 1911, pp. 254-255)

Famed orator and debater Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina served as South Carolina Senator 1823-1832, governor of that State 1832-1834, and mayor of Charleston 1836-1837.  He famously debated Daniel Webster of Massachusetts in Congress in early 1830 over concerns that the federation’s government was attracting too much revenue, accumulating too much debt and trending toward consolidation. Hayne further reminded Webster of New England’s infamous trading with the enemy and threats of secession during the War of 1812.

South Carolina’s Devotion to the Union

“If there be one State in this Union (and I say it not in a boastful spirit) that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina.

Sir, from the very commencement of the Revolution, up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made; no service she has ever hesitated to perform.”

“What sir, was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? Sir, I honor New England for her conduct in the glorious struggle . . . [but] I think equal honor is due the South. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create commercial rivalship, they might have found in their situation a guarantee that their trade would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But trampling on all considerations, either of interest or of safety, [the South] rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of freedom. Never was there exhibited, in the history of the world, higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering and heroic endurance, than by the whigs of Carolina, during that Revolution.”

And the War of 1812, called in derision by New England, said Hayne, “the southern war,” what was the conduct of South Carolina? The war was for the protection of northern shipping and New England seamen.

‘What interest had the South in that contest? If they sat down coldly to calculate the value of their own interests involved in it, they would have found they had everything to lose and nothing to gain. But sir, with that generous devotion to country so characteristic of the South, they only asked if the rights of any portion of their fellow-citizens had been invaded; and when told that northern ships and New England seamen had been arrested on the common highway of nations, they felt that the honor of the country was assailed . . . they resolved to seek, in open war, for a redress of those injuries which it did not become freemen to endure.’

The conduct of Massachusetts, declared Hayne, was in that war so unpatriotic and disgraceful, her acts in opposing the war so shameless, that “her own legislature, but a few years ago, actually blotted them out from the records as a stain upon the honor of the country.”

(The True Daniel Webster. Sydney George Fisher. J.B. Lippincott Company. 1911, pp. 254-255)

New York’s Governor Horatio Seymour, a Democrat, firmly believed that conscription was unconstitutional as the federal government was to depend upon the States to furnish needed troops. He charged Lincoln’s draft with bringing disgrace upon the American name and shamed his administration. Seymour further declared that neither the President nor the Congress had a right ‘to force men to take part in the ungodly conflict which is distracting the land.’ Seymour also charged – and proved – that Lincoln levied higher draft quotas upon New York’s Democratic voting districts as part of a ‘manifest design to reduce the Democratic majority of voters.’ In short, the draft was designed, it appeared to Seymour, ‘to take Democrats into the army and exempt Republicans.’

New York City’s bloody draft riot which began July 11, 1863, ended the lives of some 120 residents as blue-coated soldiers hurried from Gettysburg opened fire on them with muskets and cannon. At least five black men were hung as demonstrators denounced Lincoln’s emancipation war. Strong anti-draft riots occurred across the State to include Buffalo, and throughout the north.

In Boston, though the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Colored Regiment was available, Gov. John Andrew feared that the sight of colored soldiers might excite his white citizenry. This colored regiment contained nearly 400 men enticed mostly from Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania to count toward Massachusetts troop quota and leave white residents at home. Only 22 soldiers were Massachusetts residents; 3 were Canadians. The black soldiers were hurried away and replaced with white men.

The governor’s fears were realized on July 14, 1863, when nearly a thousand angry residents – many of them women and children – gathered in front of the city’s Cooper Street Armory. After they hurled paving bricks at the wooden doors, a nervous officer inside ordered a field cannon loaded with grapeshot wheeled to the door and opened fire on the crowd, killing at least 14 and maiming many more.

This senseless slaughter of civilians recalled the massacre just over 93 years earlier, when British soldiers fired into a crowd of three hundred jeering and rock-throwing Boston residents. Eight were killed and five wounded. The post-riot investigation featured future US president John Adams representing the British soldiers.

(Lincoln and the War Governors. William B. Hesseltine. Alfred A. Knopf. 1948, pg. 305)