The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921

Be faithful to the obligations of the marriage covenant. Be diligent in your respective callings, so that you may not disappoint the expectations of those who have confided in you, and in the capacity of domestics or hired servants, shew yourselves faith-ful; remembering that no situation in life is disgraceful in itself, but that upon your own conduct, will depend the estimation in which you will be held by others; and if you perform your duty with fidelity, you will be respected and esteemed. Be just in all your dealings, and strictly punctual in the performance of all your promises; so shall you gain the approbation and the confidence of your white neighbours, and justify the conduct of those who have laboured for your emancipation.

Let an especial attention be had to keep a regular record of your marriages, and of the births of your children, by which their ages may at any time be legally established;—this will be of essential service to you in placing them out as apprentices and prevent impositions being practised upon you. Finally—be sober; be watchful over every part of your conduct, keeping constantly in view, that the freedom of many thousands of your colour, who still remain in slavery, will be hastened and promoted by your leading a life of virtue and sobriety.[131 - Minutes of the American Convention Abolition Societies, 1818. Pages 43 and 47.]

SOME UNDISTINGUISHED NEGROES

Juan Bautista Cesar

A few years ago a bookseller handed me a book of MSS. papers for classification. I noted that they belonged to some military court or the archives of a Spanish Audiencia having jurisdiction in New Spain. Most of them had something to do with Texas when it was part of Mexico and belonged to the kingdom of Spain. These papers were of the highest historical value in so far as Texas was concerned. My curiosity was aroused by the original transcript of a court martial called upon to judge the transgressions of the Anglo-Americans, as they were called in those days. From these papers Philip Nolan, around whom a halo of false patriotism still lingers, was nothing more or less in the judgment of the court martial than a horse thief. It was the practice of Nolan, Bean, Fero and others to make periodical incursions across the State and stampede home, domestic, and wild horses for their mutual benefit. On this occasion the Spaniards were prepared for the malefactors and when surrounded in their provisional fort they refused at first to surrender, but the killing of Nolan put an end to all resistance and Elias Bean, David Fero and the Negro Cesar were put in St. Charles jail to await the slow machinery of the Spanish courts. Bean and Fero attempted to escape from the jail. One of these patriots became intimate with the jailer's wife and his intercepted notes showed him a depraved specimen of humanity. Among the papers examined was a deposition of Nolan's slave known in the histories of Texas by the name of Cesar, under the Spanish correct form he takes the proper name of Juan Bautista Cesar, a native of Grenada, when the island belonged to France. He was a professed Christian belonging to the Roman Catholic faith. So that during the dawn of the incipient difficulties surrounding Texas, therefore, when becoming part of the United States, there figured a Negro the tool of his master, in common with Nolan and others, reputed horse thieves, the patriots whose depredations were as annoying to the Mexicans in 1804 as Villa's bandit incursions (during 1914-20) are reprehensible to Americans.

The manuscript follows:

Juan Bautista Cesar.

En el referido Presidio de San Carlos en el mismo dia, mes y año arriba citado el nominado Sr. Capitán hizo comparacer ante si al Interprete José Jesús de los Santos y al Negro Juan Bautista, conocido con el nombre de Cesar á quienes juramento en debida forma ante mí el Escribano y bajo lo cual prometió el primero traducir fielmente lo que declara et expresáda Juan Bautista y este decir verdad en lo que supiere y fuere preguntado y siendo por su Nombre, y Patria y Religión. Dijo que se llama Juan Bautista Cesar, que es natural de las islas Francesas que llaman la Granada y que es Católico Apostolico Romano.

Preguntado si sabe porqué está preso: dijo. Que sabe se haya preso por haber acompañado á su amo Dn. Felipe Nolan en la entrada que hizo á la Provincia de Texas.

Preguntado si no ha habido algun noevo motivo para que la prision se le agrave; Dijo que no sabe si habia habido algun motivo para tenerlo en el calabozo en donde ahora existe privandolo del alivio que ántes disfrutaba de tener todo el Presidio por Cárcel.

Preguntado que es lo que sabe de la fuga que intentaron hacer los Anglo-Americanos compañeros de Nolan. Dijo; Que la fuga si la intentaron los, Anglo Americanos se la han ocultado al declarante pues jámas le han comunicado cosa alguna relativa á ella y antes bien ha observado que cuando hablan entre sí los expresados Anglo-Americanos y el declarante se presenta, luega callan y solo continuan hablando cosas diferentes: que el diá que pusieron al que declara en el calabozo en union de Elias Bean y David Fero oyo el declarante que David pregunto a Elias que si habia escrito alguna carta á Chihuahua y respondiendole Elias que si, le contestó David ya verás como por eso nos ponen en el calabozo y te apostara una oreja que es asi; que nada mas has oido ni visto nunca sobre la fuga de que se trata: Que el declarante desde que se murió su amo Nolan siempre ha sido mirado con desprecio por los Anglo-Americanos compañeros de aquel y por lo mismo le ha quadrado mas alojarse siempre con los Españoles como se verificó cuando lo pusieron en el calabozo que dormia con tres de los Españoles.

Preguntado si sabe o ha oíds que lesl Anglo-Americanos tuviesen prevenidas Armas y municiones de boca y guerra para meditar su fuga intentarla: Dijo que nada sabe sobre lo que contiene la Pregunta, no ha oido cosa alguna sobre el particular.

Preguntado si tiene algo mas que declarar sobre el particular: Dijo que no tiene mas que declarar sobre el particular y que lo dicho es la verdad a cargo del juramento que lleva hecho en que se afirmó y ratificó despues de enterado por el Interprete de lo que contiene esta su declarencion y por no saber escribir pusieron ambos la señar de cruz firmando dicho señor y el presente Escribano.

(Firmado) Texada       X       X       Ante mi Jose Cano

Provincia de la Nueve Vizcaya Año de 1804. Diligencias practicadas de órden del Sr. Comandants General en la Fuga que intentaron hacer los Anglo-Americanos. Comisionado el Capiten Dn Antonio Garcia de Texada.

    Arthur A. Schomburg.

A Benevolent Slaveholder of Color

John Barry Meachum, a free man of color, became prominent as pastor of the African Baptist Church at St. Louis. Meachum was born a slave, but obtained his liberty by his own industry. By his hard earnings he purchased his father, a slave, and Baptist preacher in Virginia. He was then a resident of Kentucky, where he married a slave, and where he professed religion.

Soon thereafter his wife's master removed to Missouri, and Meachum followed her, arriving at St. Louis, with three dollars, in 1815. Being a carpenter and a cooper, he soon obtained employment, purchased his wife and children, commenced preaching, and was ordained in 1825. During subsequent years he purchased, including adults and children, about twenty slaves, but he never sold them again. His method was to place them in service, encourage them to form habits of industry and economy, and when they had paid for themselves, he set them free. In 1835 he built a steamboat, which he provided with a library, and from which he excluded the use and sale of intoxicating drinks. He was then worth about $25,000.

He was not less enterprising in religious matters. The church of which he was pastor, consisted of about 220 members of whom 200 were slaves. A large Sabbath school, a temperance society, a deep-toned missionary spirit, good order and correct habits among the slave population in the city, strict and regular discipline in the church, were among the fruits of his arduous, persevering labor.[132 - The Liberator, December, 10, 1836.]

BOOK REVIEWS

The Republic of Liberia. By R. C. F. Maughan, F.R.G.S. and F.Z.S., etc., H. B. M., Consul-General at Monrovia. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919. Pp. 299. Price $6.50.

This work is a general description of the Negro Republic, with its history, commerce, agriculture, flora, fauna, and present methods of administration. The book contains several maps and thirty-seven illustrations. The more interesting topics as to history and administration appear first and those of the statistically scientific and commercial order come nearer to the end.

The book was written in 1918 before the United States took sufficient interest in the republic to bring about certain epoch-making changes. The United States has since offered the country a loan of five million dollars and with the approval of Great Britain and France and with the request of the Liberian Government has consented to become the sole adviser in Liberian affairs. Since then Hon. C. D. B. King, who became President of Liberia in January 1920, has participated in the world's peace conference and visited Europe and America, where the heads of nations have assured him of deeper interest in Liberia than they have heretofore manifested.

This book was written from a point of view decidedly different from that of most writers on Liberia, whose tone is that of "gentle melancholy," descanting "upon the country and the people to whom it belongs as with a pen dipped in sighs." Instead of criticising he has in most cases merely described. Where criticisms have crept in they have been given in a spirit of sympathetic friendship. He finds in the country, therefore, much to admire and praise and an economic situation "which will assuredly bid fair, when normal conditions shall have returned to us once more, to attain to a measure of gratifying expansion and progress." He believes that Liberia will then be in a position "of having her feet placed firmly upon the ladder which should bring her in time to great heights. The author concedes that the rung which Liberia has already reached is not a high one perhaps, "but the way before her seems plain and unmistakable." He believes that the present guidance from the outside guarantees these most sanguine expectations in as much as the foreigners controlling the financial policy of the little republic are hard-working men who have already set the house somewhat in order. This, supplemented by a liberal policy of internal improvements, will result in the prosperity of the whole land.

In discussing this phase of the administration of Liberian affairs, the author does not bring out any particular resentment on the part of the natives as to foreign interference. The native officials welcome helpful advice and when not given they sometimes seek it. The author himself came into contact with a number of functionaries who frankly asked him to tell them what he thought of their methods. Except so far as such foreign guidance may bring financial relief, however, it is doubtful that these natives so easily yield to this sort of domination; for many Liberians are to-day endeavoring to get rid of the American loan which they fear may lead to conquest like that in Haiti. On the whole, however, this work comes nearer to the true portraiture of the Liberian situation than most volumes in this field.

The United States in Our Own Times, 1865-1920. By Paul Haworth, Ph.D. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. Pp. vii, 563.

The publication of this volume is justified by the author on the ground that in as much as an important object of history study is to enable one to understand the present, greater emphasis than hitherto must be laid on the period since the Civil War. Hoping then to supply the need of students who desire to know our own country in our own times the author has directed his attention to the problems of the new day, to social and industrial questions which have attained importance since the Civil War, and which, as the author views it, served as a break between these two distinct periods in our history.

Briefly stated, the author covers a little better than usually the field in which many others have recently written. There appears the aftermath of the Rebellion, then the drama of Reconstruction followed by national development making possible a new era, the changing order, the revival of the Democratic Party, hard times, free silver, troubles with Spain, imperialism, Roosevelt and the Panama Canal, the New West, Progressivism, the "New Freedom," "Watchful Waiting," the World War, and the Peace Conference. The book is well illustrated with useful maps showing the West in 1876, the Cuba and Porto Rican campaigns, the Philippines, Mexico, West Indies, and Central America, the percentage of foreign-born whites in the total population in 1910, the percentage of Negroes in the total population in 1910, the Western Front in 1918, and the United States in 1920.

Discussing thus a period during which the most important problems before the American people has been how to segregate the Negroes within the law, the author touched here and there the so-called Negro question. While Dr. Haworth has not shown all of the breadth of mind expected in an historian he has been much more liberal than the pseudo-historians who endeavor merely to justify the proscription of the freedmen on the basis of so-called racial inferiority. Dr. Haworth does occasionally mention a Negro as having said or done something worthy of notice. In the average Reconstruction history there is no personal mention of the Negro except for the purpose to condemn him and to advise him how to make himself acceptable to his so-called superiors.

In his last chapter which he calls "A Golden Age in History" he says some things which we do not find in the works of the would-be historians of this period. On page 509 he writes: "A historian ought not to suppress uncomfortable facts, and it is undeniable that the treatment of the Negroes forms a blot on America's fair name. In parts of the South they are kept in a state of practical serfdom; in all cities they are herded into unsanitary districts; they are denied equal opportunities for advancement; and not infrequently they are maltreated and murdered by brutal mobs. It is true that individual Negroes, by fiendish assaults on white women, now and then rouse men to frenzy, but statistics show that only about a fifth of the lynchings of Negroes are because of the 'usual crime.' Burning at the stake is never justifiable under any circumstance, and it is undeniable that in race riots scenes of horror have been enacted that are a disgrace to American civilization. Such scenes are sadly out of place in a nation that proclaims itself the special champion of liberty and justice and which enlists in a crusade 'to make the world safe for democracy.'"

The American Colonization Society, 1817-1840. By Early Lee Fox, Ph.D., Professor of History in Randolph-Macon College. Baltimore. The John Hopkins Press, 1919. Pp. viii, 231.

This is another study made under the direction of the Johns Hopkins University faculty of Historical and Political Science and like many others of this order lies in the field of southern history and is written from the ex parte point of view. It does not cover the whole history of the American Colonization Society but restricts itself to that period when it was largely a southern enterprise primarily interested in getting rid of the Negro. Throughout the story there is too much effort to evade eloquent facts, too much effort to excuse the sins of the South by showing that the North itself was once slaveholding and slavetrading. On the whole, however, the author has in the use of such valuable material as the manuscripts and especially the letters of the American Colonization Society brought to light significant facts which the historian will be glad to use more advantageously.

After a brief introduction the book treats of the free Negro and the slave. Then comes the chapter on the organization, purpose, and early record of the Society. Attention is next directed to the conflict between the colonizationists and the abolitionists. Colonization is afterward discussed in connection with emancipation and finally with the African slave trade. Throughout the whole treatise there is a defense of the "lofty" motives of the men who labored so hard for the expatriation of the Negroes. As the author sees it, although the Society did not send many Negroes to Africa, it was after all a success; for it had a bearing on the emancipation of slaves, and on the suppression of the African slave trade. Abolitionists, attacking this undertaking based upon national sentiment, were endangering the union by their propaganda founded upon sectional sentiment. Colonization, therefore, was just because it was "born out of a desire to unite the North and the South in the settlement of the Negro problem." The purpose of the treatise then is to (page 127) "set forth the true aims of orthodox Colonizationists, or from another point to demonstrate that their aims were as sincerely expressed as sound policy would admit, and that, where motives were concealed, they were concealed in order to secure the freedom of the slaves."

Written from this point of view the dissertation becomes too much of a polemic to be accepted as a scientific treatise. Too much space is devoted to the task of unifying the widely different views of the colonizationists, too much effort is made to contrast the methods of the colonizationists with those of the abolitionists. The author does not seem to realize or at least fails to admit that the abolitionists were radical reformers seeking to eradicate the cause of social disease whereas the colonizationists were merely treating the symptoms of the malady in undertaking the impossible task of transplanting a whole race.

The general argument of the author in favor of the beneficence of colonization is not convincing. There is no authority for the contention that colonization promoted emancipation when the records show that the majority of slaveholders who supported it had in mind the expatriation of the free Negroes who among the bondmen were a living testimony against slavery. To say that colonization might check the slave trade by establishing one small colony in Africa is about as unsound, contended some free Negroes in 1831, as to argue that "a watchman in the city of Boston would prevent thievery in New York; or that the custom house officers there would prevent goods being smuggled into any other part of the United States." It is an insult to the intelligence of men who have seriously considered history to say that colonization was so built upon national sentiment as to have a direct bearing on the preservation of the Union when the colonizationists differed widely among themselves in the very beginning and finally divided just as the abolitionists, who at one time had also a national standing, in that most anti-slavery societies were once found in the South. Until Negro history, therefore, has been removed from the hands of those using it to whitewash their ancestors the world must still lack knowledge as to how the progress of mankind has been influenced by the Negro.

The Voice of the Negro. By Robert T. Kerlin, Professor of English at the Virginia Military Institute. New York, E. P. Dutton and Company, 1920. Pp. xii, 188.

The purpose of this book may best be expressed in the words of the author himself, when he says, in the preface: "The following work is a compilation from the colored press of America for the four months [July 1st to November 1st, 1919] immediately succeeding the Washington riot. It is designed to show the Negro's reaction to that and like events following, and to the World War and the discussion of the Treaty. It may, in the Editor's estimation, be regarded as a primary document in promoting a knowledge of the Negro, his point of view, his way of thinking upon race relations, his grievances, his aspirations, his demands." A book of such purport, especially when coming from the pen of a white man, must attract attention, and if the newspapers and periodicals from which the various extracts are chosen may be called truly representative, as in this case they are, the compiler has performed a distinct service in the field of American History.

Professor Kerlin has culled his clippings from eighty current Negro periodicals, published from Massachusetts to Georgia, and ranging from the startlingly radical to the most hide-bound conservative type. He has used only articles written by Negroes in Negro publications, has sorted them and grouped them under ten heads, entitled respectively: The Colored Press, The New Era, The Negro's Reaction to the World War, The Negro's Grievances and Demands, Riots, Lynchings, The South and the Negro, The Negro and Labor Unionism and Bolshevism, Negro Progress, and The Lyric Cry,—a remarkable assortment of first-hand information concerning Negro thought with regard to each topic.

Professor Kerlin makes no attempt to interpret the material of his book; he merely presents it. It is for him who reads also to read between the lines. It is doubtless impossible to choose any one expression that will accurately represent Negro thought as caught in these pages, yet four lines of poetry included in the book will serve as well as any:

"We would be manly—proving well our worth,
Then would not cringe to any god on earth.
..........
"We would be peaceful, Father,—but when we must,
Help us to thunder hard the blow that's just!"

This is the Voice of the Negro which Professor Kerlin intimates cannot go unheeded.

The book might have been made more useful by the addition of an alphabetical and topical index of the periodicals used.

    D. A. Lane.

NOTES

The following account of the centenary celebration of St. Philip's Episcopal Church from the New York World of November 14, 1920, will be interesting to all persons interested in Negro history:

"The Right Rev. Charles Sumner Burch, D.D., Bishop of New York, and the Right Rev. Henry Beard Delany, D.D., Suffragan Bishop of North Carolina, will participate in the centennial celebration at St. Philip's Church, No. 212 West 134th Street, the Rev. H. C. Bishop, rector, which will begin to-day.

"One hundred years ago Nov. 14 St. Philip's Church was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York. The event is significant, for it antedated the Civil War by forty-one years and the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln by forty-five years. It is not only, nor primarily, an ecclesiastical event, but a political and social one as well, inasmuch as this act of Legislature recognized and confirmed the citizenship of the petitioners, showing that these colored Episcopalians were an integral part of the body politic.