The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918

Dear Friend: The last intelligence from Philadelphia is, that the great question which has so long agitated your State, and which had a bearing so important upon the common interests of humanity, and justice, has been determined. Happy for your commonwealth! Creditable for our country! Slavery will not be permitted to overrun Illinois! The result of the conflict is truly joyous; you have said to the moral plague, "Thus far, but no farther, shalt thou come."

My warmest congratulations are tendered on this great event, though I know how inferior all exterior circumstances must be in comparison with the heart-solacing reward which is reaped by thy devotedness in this noble cause.

Since I have been at my summer residence, I have received several numbers of an Illinois newspaper, and a pamphlet from the same quarter, all which contained highly interesting matter relative to the question then undecided in your State; I presume I am indebted to thy kindness for those documents, for which I feel greatly obliged. The letter of Thos. Jefferson addressed to thyself, is very interesting, and I have it in contemplation to cause it to be printed in a tract form, for general distribution, provided such use of it, may be altogether agreeable to thee.

I have indulged myself with a hope that it may be within the range of probability, that thee will make a visit to Philadelphia ere long. Not anything would give me more pleasure than thy presence in our city, and that gratification would be increased by thy making my house thy home. I have much more to communicate than I have leisure now to put on paper, as we are today preparing to return, on the morrow, to our house in town.

With sincere regard I remain thy friend,

    Roberts Vaux.

Governor Coles to Roberts Vaux

My Dear Sir:—When I had the happiness to enjoy your society last summer in Philadelphia, you were so kind as to express a wish to hear from me on my return to this State. I should long since have fulfilled the promise then made you to comply with this request which I felt was as flattering to me, as it was kind in you; but for a mass of business which had accumulated during my absence, the preparation for the meeting, and the labor and interruption attendant on the session of the Legislature, which adjourned a few days since; and the novel and extraordinary efforts made by some of my old political opponents to supplant me in the office of Governor, by thrusting in my place the Lieutenant-Governor a zealous and thorough-going advocate of Slavery. I had heard nothing of this intention (for although many letters were written to me, it so happened not one ever came to hand, or has since been heard of) until I reached Louisville on my way home, when I was told by a friend that he had been informed by a distinguished opponent of mine that it had been determined that I should not be permitted to resume the office of Governor. On my arriving in the State, I found that there had been several caucuses held in different places, by what are called the knowing ones, for the purpose of devising the best mode of proceeding, and of organizing their forces to act against me. All the Executive officers of the State recognizing me as Governor, I found no difficulty in entering at once on the duties of the office. The Lieutenant-Governor, however, still remained at the seat of Gov't, contending that I had vacated the office by my absence from the State, and that he was, under the constitution, the acting Governor. On the meeting of the Supreme Court, he applied for a mandamus against the Secretary of State. The court refused the mandamus on an incidental point, and got rid of the main question without deciding it. Soon after this the General Assembly met, and efforts were made to induce it to recognize the Lieutenant as the acting Governor; but these efforts having failed, he made a communication to both Houses, setting forth his claims to the office of Governor, and asking to be heard by himself or counsel in support of them. Nothing was done with this communication, there being only one member in each House openly in favor of the Lieutenant-Governor's pretensions. There would doubtless have been more if there had been any prospect of ousting me. I attribute the unexpected unanimity to the circumstance of the question having been stirred in time to afford the people an opportunity of making known their opinions and feelings to their Representatives previous to their leaving home to take their seats in the Legislature. The current of public opinion on this question was too strong in my favor to be resisted by any but a most desperate antagonist. This effort of my opponents has recoiled very much to my advantage, in weakening their popularity, and adding to the strength of mine.

You will recollect my having shown you last summer some strictures, which I had been induced to publish on the judge's opinion in the malicious suit which had been instituted against me for freeing my negroes, in consequence of several extraordinary errors of fact, as well as of law, which it contained, and the unusual pains taken by the judge to publish and circulate these errors to my injury. Two actions have been instituted against me for this publication—one by the court—the other in the name of the judge as an individual, in which he has laid his damages at $5,000. The former is to be tried at Edwardsville next month—the latter at this place in April. The original suit, or mother of the judge's twin-suits, is still pending in our Supreme Court, and is expected will be decided at the June term. I trust I shall get rid of all of these suits in the course of the spring and summer. I feel the more anxious to do so as they are the first suits, that ever were instituted against me.

I have not heard anything of the pamphlets which you were so good as to promise to send me. I shall go to St. Louis in about a month, when I hope to receive them. I see noticed in the public prints a new pamphlet, published by G. and C. Carville, at New York, on the emancipation and removal of the slaves of the U. S. If you could conveniently lay your hands on this pamphlet, you would confer a favor on me by sending it to me by mail. May I ask the favor of you to hand to Mr. Fry the enclosed five dollar note, and request him to forward the National Gazette to William Wilson (Chief Justice of the State), Carmi, White county, Illinois.

I beg you to present my kind regards to Mrs. Vaux, and to accept my grateful acknowledgments for your very kind and truly friendly attentions to me while in Philadelphia; and permit me again to renew to you the assurance of my obligations to you for the services rendered to humanity and to Illinois during the late vile effort to prostitute their rights and character and to repeat that the virtuous and benevolent interest you evinced on that occasion will ever endear you to

    Edward Coles.

Governor Coles to A. Cowles

Dear Sir:—Believing that I should have been able to prove that I had not libeled Judge McRoberts, and explain how the Grand Jury had been induced to present me for so doing, it was with great regret that I heard you had thought proper to dismiss the prosecution. Fearing that some malicious person may misrepresent this transaction at some future day, when those who now understand it may have forgotten many of the details in relation to it, or perhaps be dead, or have removed from the country, I have determined to ask the favor of you to give me a written answer to the following questions:

Did you summon or request Judge McRoberts to appear before the Grand Jury, which presented me for libeling him?

Did not Judge McRoberts request to see the indictment before it was delivered to the Grand Jury, and did he not examine and alter it, and if so what were the alterations made by him?

Did you ask Mr. Blackwell to aid you in the prosecution of me, and do you know whether he was employed by Judge McRoberts to do so?

As you have expressed the opinion verbally to several persons, that I had not libeled Judge McRoberts, I ask the favor of you to give me your opinion in writing, whether the matter contained in the indictment was a libel?

With great respect, I am &c., &c.,

    Edward Coles.

A. Cowles, Esq.,

Circuit Attorney,

Edwardsville.

P. S.—Why was not Judge McRoberts returned as a witness, on the back of the indictment?

Extract from a Letter from Governor Coles to John

Rutherford

I give you many thanks, my dear Sir, for your long and truly affectionate letter of February, and assure you, I feel great contrition for having so long delayed the expression of them, and of saying how much gratified I was at perusing your kind letter, and the glad tidings it gave me of the health and happiness of our dear Emily and her little ones; and also the pleasure I have since derived at finding from the newspapers in what a flattering manner your fellow citizens have elected you to represent them in the Legislature.

I am greatly gratified at your election, not only from the regard I have for you as a man, etc., and the consequent interest I take in, and the pleasure I derive from your success; but I am particularly so in seeing men of your principles in relation to negro Slavery in the Councils of Virginia, as it cheers me with the hope that something will soon be done to repudiate the unnatural connection which has there so long existed between the freest of the free and the most slavish of slaves.

Even if it were feasible, from the extraordinary apathy in the great mass of the people, and the zeal displayed by many to perpetuate the evil, I could not hope for speedy emancipation, but I do trust for the honor as well as interest of the State that ameliorating laws will be speedily passed, which will gradually have the effect of reconciling and habituating the masters, and preparing the slaves for a change which, as Mr. Jefferson says, must sooner or later take place with or without the consent of the masters. It behooves Virginia to move in this great question; and it is a solemn duty which her politicians owe to their country, to themselves, and to their posterity, to look ahead and make provision for the future, and secure the peace, prosperity and glory of their country.

The policy of Virginia for some years past has been most unfortunate. So far from acting as if Slavery were an evil which ought to be gotten rid of, every measure which could be taken has been taken to perpetuate it, as if it were a blessing. Her political pilots have acted like the inexperienced navigator, who, to get rid of the slight inconvenience of the safety-valves have hermetically sealed them, not foreseeing that the inevitable consequence will be the bursting of the boiler, and dreadful havoc among all on board. No law has been passed under the commonwealth to ameliorate the black code of the colony of Virginia; on the contrary, new laws have been passed, adding to the oppression of the unfortunate negroes, and which have not only abridged the rights of humanity, but of the citizen. Such is the character of the law which restricts and to a great degree prohibits the master from manumitting his slave. The idea should be ever present to the politicians of Virginia, that the state of Slavery is an unnatural state, and cannot exist forever; it must come to an end by consent or by force; and if by consent, it must from all experience, as from the nature of things, be preceded by ameliorating laws, which will have the effect of gradually and imperceptibly loosening the bonds of servitude.

Nothing is more erroneous than the idea which is entertained by many, that ameliorating laws, and especially manumissions, are productions of insurrections among the slaves. The history of the British and Spanish West Indies shows that in those Islands where they have prevailed most, the slaves have behaved best, and insurrections have occurred oftenest where the slaves have been most oppressed and manumissions most restricted. Indeed, we never hear of insurrections in the Spanish Islands, where the slaves are most under the protection of the law, and where there are no restrictions on manumissions. Virginia should repeal the law against emancipation, prohibit the domestic slave-trade—which is nearly allied in all its odious features to the African slave trade—restrict the power of the master in disposing of his slaves, by preventing him from separating the child from its parent, the husband from his wife, etc., and if possible, connect the slave under proper modifications to the soil, or at least to the vicinity of his birth; instruct the slaves especially in the duties of Religion; extend to them the protection of the laws, and punish severity in the master, and when cruelly exercised by him, it should vest the right in the slave to his freedom; or to be sold at an assessed valuation. These and many other provisions might be adopted which would have a most salutary effect, and especially the Spanish provision, which gives the right to the slave to buy a portion of his time as soon as he can procure the means, either by his own labor or by the bounty of others; thus, for instance, suppose a negro worth $600 on paying $100, he is entitled to one day in each week, and so on. In connection with the emancipation of slaves, I should provide for the removal by bounty and otherwise, of free negroes from the country, as the natural difference, and unfortunate prejudice existing between the whites and blacks would make it the interest of both to be separated. This subject, is too big for a letter, and I can only add, that if I could see ameliorating laws adopted, if I did not live to see the emancipation, I should at least die with the happy consolation of believing that measures were in progress for the consummation of ultimate justice to the descendants of the unfortunate African; and that my country, and the descendants of my family, if not my nephews and nieces, would lie down in peace and safety, and would not have entailed on them an unnatural and odious system, productive of strife, enmity and war, between themselves and their domestics. I was in hopes to have been able by this time to have informed you and my other friends of the result of the malicious suit instituted against me for freeing my negroes, and which is pending in our Supreme Court. The case was argued last week, but the court has adjourned to the 1st Monday of January, next, without deciding it. I was much disappointed in not getting a decision; I have however but little fear as to the result.

SOME UNDISTINGUISHED NEGROES

Solomon Humphries. Traveling through this country in 1833 at the very time when free Negroes were being denounced as an evil of which this country should by all means rid itself, C. D. Arfwedson found in Macon, Georgia a thrifty free Negro named Solomon Humphries, well known by all classes including local officials and even the governor of the State. Humphries had by dint of energy acquired his freedom and had made himself an asset in his community. He was then keeping a large grocery store and had more credit than many other merchants in the town, for he had accumulated about $20,000 worth of property. He had a neat and comfortably furnished home, presided over by his wife, an intelligent woman of color, who was often seen driving with him in his own unostentatious carriage. He was sought by the wealthiest people of the city whom he lavishly entertained at his home, doing them the honor of waiting on them in person himself, although he had a number of slaves who could have rendered this service. Making it a rule to be especially hospitable to strangers, he invited Arfwedson to be his guest while in the city; but on account of having planned to go to Columbus that day, Arfwedson could not accept his invitation.—Arfwedson's United States and Canada in 1833 and 1834, I, p. 425.

A Negro Colonizationist. While the American Colonization Society was being denounced by the free Negroes of the North, many blacks of the same status in the South had a different attitude toward the movement, especially during the twenties before it had been discovered that Liberia was not suitable for a civilized people. One of the Negroes of the South to be won to this movement was a free man of color named Creighton, a slave owner of Charleston, South Carolina. He had accumulated considerable wealth and had begun to feel that it would be better for him to spend his remaining days in a land of freedom. Several other free blacks were induced to go with him. In disposing of his property he offered his slaves, the alternative of being liberated on the condition of accompanying him on his expedition or of remaining in this country to be sold as other property. Only one of his slaves 3could be prevailed upon to accept freedom on these terms and go with him to Liberia. Creighton then closed up his business in Charleston, purchased for the enterprise a schooner The Calypso and set sail for Africa, October 17, 1821.—Niles Register, XXI, p. 163; taken from The New York Commercial Advertiser.

A Moralist. A white cooper called upon a Negro who owned a fine farm near Cincinnati and expressed a desire to purchase some stave timber from him. The Negro inquired as to what use the cooper would make of it. The latter replied that he had a contract to make some whisky barrels.

"Well, Sir," was the prompt reply, "I have the timber and want the money, but no man can purchase a single stave or hoop pole, or a particle of grain from me for that purpose."

The cooper, of course, became unusually angry on receiving such a stern reproof and contemptuously addressed this man of color, calling him a "Nigger."

"That is very true," mildly replied the Negro. "I can't help that, but I can help selling my timber to make whisky barrels, and I mean to do it."—The Weekly Herald and Philanthropist, May 13, 1846.

A Benevolent Negro. Before the Northwest Territory became disturbed by the influx of free Negroes and fugitives running away from persecution in the South, there had been enough trouble with white vagrants to lead to drastic laws for the protection of certain communities. Michigan, which did not until 1827 pass a measure dealing especially with undesirable Negroes, had prior to this time a law providing for selling idle and dissolute persons at auction. At one of the sales in 1821 a Negro bought a white man and ordered him to follow his master, and the order was obeyed. But the benevolent black took his servant to the steamboat, paid his passage and restored him his freedom, making himself satisfied with sending the white vagrant out of the territory.—Niles Register, XXI, p. 214.

BOOK REVIEWS

Harvard Studies. I. Varia Africana. I. Oric Bates, Editor, F. H. Sterns, Asst. Editor. Introduction by Theodore Roosevelt. The African Department of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, Cambridge, 1917. Quarto. Pp. 292.

In the introduction to the Harvard African studies ex-President Roosevelt describes the enterprise which this volume represents as "the first serious attempt by Americans to contribute to the real study of the African." He might have added, with almost equal truth, that it is the first serious attempt by Americans to study the Negro.

Books have been written by Americans about the black man. Howard University, Washington, D. C., has a library of such books. There are other private collections, some of them running into several thousand volumes. Most of them are written in a controversial spirit. Many of them are theological, seeking to show, on the basis of scriptural quotations, that the social status of the black man is pre-ordained and eternally fixed. Others are pseudo-scientific attempts to solve the race problem by showing that the black man is not quite human. Some of them seek to prove, on the basis of anthropological data, that the Negro has no soul, hence efforts to Christianize him are hopeless.—Many more are written by Negroes to preserve some record of their meager history, or to defend the race against the monstrous attacks upon its humanity.

Such books are interesting and valuable as records of the sentiments and attitudes which the racial struggle has called forth in the black man and in the white. The strange distortions of fact and opinion which they record are significant, not so much for what they tell us of the Negro, as for what they reveal of the intensity of the racial conflict, and of the nature of the passions involved. Most books on the Negro in America published prior to 1900, and some books written since that time, are mainly valuable as source books for the social psychologist and the students of human nature. As literature they represent a melancholy anthology. As records of human nature, under the strains and stresses of a tragic although peaceful conflict, they have a new and fascinating interest. It is in this sense that we can say, spite of all that has been written, that there are no scientific studies of the American Negro, there are only materials awaiting scientific interpretation.

It must be regarded as an event of the first importance, therefore, that an institution of the authority of Harvard University and the Peabody Museum proposes to publish a series of studies intended to cover the whole wide range of native African life and to extend these studies eventually to the descendants of the African peoples in America. No study of the Negro in America will be complete which does not take account of the African background of the race. On the other hand, no attempt to assess the qualities and capacities of the native African, living in his isolated and primitive environment, will be adequate which does not take account of the Negro's progress under the conditions of a civilized environment. As a matter of fact the Africans are the only contemporaneous primitive people who have anywhere achieved race consciousness and civilization without losing their racial identity. As a consequence almost every fundamental process and stage of civilization, from the most primitive to the most cosmopolitan man, is somewhere represented in the contemporary life of the Negro in Africa and America. It is this fact which lends significance to the present volume, since these studies propose to cover eventually the whole range of Negro life in Africa and America, so far as that can be done within the limits of the anthropological sciences. An editorial note at the end of this first volume describes the plan and scope of the proposed series of publications.

The Harvard African Studies is designed to consist of annual volumes—under the title of Varia Africana—made up of miscellaneous papers, and of occasional monographs presenting the results of original field or laboratory research.

The scope of the volumes may be defined as African anthropology in the widest sense. Only original papers are desired, but these may be of any length compatible with their presentation in a volume which is essentially in the nature of a journal, and may deal with any of the following subjects: psychology, archæology, ethnography, linguistics, sociology, ethno-geography, religion, folklore, or technology. A range so wide must perforce be limited in some directions, and the editors have therefore decided upon the exclusion of purely historical papers, even when the latter embody the political records of native tribes. As an exception to this rule, the editors may be willing, under certain circumstances, to accept historical material which, by establishing the presence of this or that group of people in a certain locality, or by throwing light on the nature or date of a migration, bears on racial questions and problems of primitive culture.

The series is open to papers of a non-controversial character dealing with a topic sadly in need of more scientific treatment—we refer to the question of the American Negro. The anthropometrist, the sociologist, and the folklorist have in this direction a field of research which, if approached with adequate knowledge, can be made to yield invaluable results. As these results cannot but be of practical importance, the editors are particularly anxious to have an opportunity of presenting them.

As a further indication of the method and purpose of these studies the editors emphasize that an effort will be made not only to add to the mass of information already extant in the writings of explorers, traders, and missionaries, but to correlate and organize the information already existing.

Travelers, missionaries, administrators, and scientists have published a vast amount of valuable information regarding the various peoples and regions in Africa. As yet, however, there has been comparatively little correlation of this evidence. Now that the day of the reconnaissance explorer is essentially past, and we begin to receive accurate and detailed studies of single tribes, it is highly desirable to have the great mass of published material carefully sifted, so that the future student and investigator may be able to make his efforts as productive as possible.