After the American Century
Occasionally I find an interesting document while doing my research. Often it has nothing to do with what I am looking for. But rather than let these documents go entirely, I will now reproduce selected items from time to time. The first one is from the Davenport Daily Gazette, Iowa, during the American Civil War. It concerns slavery, and as one can see from the accompanying map, the slave concerned was living in the cotton growing area of Arkansas.
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| Slave crops, 1860 |
Monday
Morning
September 1, 1862
September 1, 1862
White
Slavery.
A
Correspondent writing from Helena, Arkansas, says:
I
was greatly surprised the other day by the declaration of a person with whom I
had been conversing in the post office of this place, when, in reply to a
suggestion of mine about his loyalty, he answered, “Why, my dear Sir, I am a
slave. I belong to Dr.____,” I looked in his face, unable to believe my own
eyes. His complexion was whiter than my own; his eyes a blue gray; his hair and
features Caucasian; his language free from Negro dialect. I asked him again,
“Is it possible that you are a slave? Why don’t you go North and claim the
privileges of a free man?” He answered, I have a wife and children, and I
don’t want to go till I can take them with me. I have been allowed by my
master to enjoy a measure of freedom, and to possess a little property of my
own. As soon as I can realize something of this property I intend, while the
opportunity exists, to secure the freedom of myself and family.”
Our
conversation had commenced upon a written document which he had been showing me,
and which he could read as well a myself. When he left me I wondered greatly
that such a man, at least 40 years of age, evidently a gentleman and a
Christian, could be held a slave, and another white man be allowed to take his
wages for naught in a Christian community. And then I remembered that the modern
doctrine of the South, as taught by the Richmond Enquirer and other expounders
of the system, is that slavery is not based upon complexion or race, but that
capital should own labor, and the best condition of society is that in which the
entire laboring population are slaves. This is the doctrine on which the leaders
of this rebellion are striving to establish a Southern Confederacy, and
thousands of laboring men in the South are blindly led to give it their aid by
fighting against the Government of their fathers from mere sectional hatred and
prejudice.
