Page:Emancipation in the West Indies.djvu/4
poleon. Yielding to the urgency of the emi- grant planters, and of Josephine. herself a creole of Martinique, in 1802 Napoleon sent an immense army to St. Domingo, treach- erously seized Toussaint, and imprisoned him in France, where he soon died of neglect. At the same time, he reestablished Slavery and the Slave Trade in all the French colo- Res except St. Domingo, proposing to do so there when he should have conquered it. But his vast armies were destroyed by war and disease, and in 1804 the French were finally driven from the Island
Since then, the fortunes of Hayti have been various, but, on the whole, creditable to her people; especially when we remember that when she gained her independence, near- ly half her people were slaves, who had been imported from Africa, and that nine-tenths of them had only the vicious training of slavery to fit them to be citizens. They have in- creased in population and in wealih, in spite of the exactions of France and Spain, and our own most illiberal treatment of them. Their Government has been more stable than that of Mexico, or the South American Re-. publics; their institutions show an honest. effort for liberty, under the restraints of law; their literature, though scanty, will endure a comparison with that of Cuba or of Canada.
But whatever have been the misfortunes of Hayti, Emancipation was not their cause. They began three years before the slaves were freed; they ceased when the negro Toussaint acquired power; they began again when Napoleon, in 1802 reëstablished the old curse of slavery.
"The evil that men do lives after them."
It was Slavery. not Freedom. that ruined the fair hopes of St. Domingo; it will be Freedom. not. Slavery, that will restore her to her ancient and over-estimated splendor. She may yet be our most faithful ally, our best friend, and, to the delight of Milk street and Wall street, our unlimited customer.* Both justice and policy require us to recog aize her independence, and to offer her our alliance and protection. It is now a gues- tion whether she shall belong to us or to Spain, from whose encroaching hand we have more to fear, than even from the inso- lence and avarice of England. Spain is no longer a feeble State; with Mexico, Cuba, and Hayti in her possession, she would be- come a commercial power of the first rank; shall we allow it?
Such was the first great experiment of negro Emancipation: now for the second.
In the very midst of the "Horrors of St. Domingo" the English Abolitionists were waging their war against the slave trade. On the 5th of May, 1778, Mr. Pitt brought forward in Parliament his motion against it; a year later. Wilberforce made his first speech against it. supported by Pitt. Fox, and Burke. Clarkson and the Quakers had moved still earlier; and Zachary Macaulay, father of the brilliant historian, joined with them. In 1807 their efforts abolished the infamous traffic, a year before it was ended here by act of Congress. Christian VI. of Denmark had still earlier, in 1792, forbidden his subjects to take part in it. In 1823 Mr. Canning's resolutions, looking to the final abolition of slavery itself, passed the House of Commons, supported there, and in the nation at large, by Wilberforce, Buxten, the two Macaulays, Lord Broughan, and many other illustrious men.
In 1833, by act of Parliament, after long discussion, slavery was declared forever abolished in all the British colonies. This law went into effect, on the 1st of August 1834, in all the colonies save Mauritius, where it took effect February 1st., 1835. It provided, for an intermediate state between slavery and entire freedom, a system of ap- prenticeship, which was to continue for six years. In effect it continued but four years, being found to work badly, like all measures of gradual Emancipation; and all the negroes became unconditionally free on the 1st of August, 1838. in the West Indies, and on the first of March. 1889, in Mauritius. The small island of Antigua, however, had at first chosen immediate freedom, rejecting the supposed advantages of apprenticeship, which system, it should he said, the English Abolitionists had not favored. It was a concession to the slaveholders, and like all such concessions had only had results. The number of slaves thus set free, was 770,390; they were scattered through nineteen colonies, controlled by a strong central government; the measures for their liberation had been preparing for ten years, and were carried out by humane and resolute governors, in a time of universal peace. These circumstances show the strongest contrast in almost every particular, to the events of
- r1 The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls."--Emerson.