The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 65, March, 1863

As soon as the slaves were procured, by sale on shipboard, by auction, or by scramble, they received the private marks of their owners. Each planter had a silver plate, perforated with his letter, figure, or cipher, which he used to designate his own slaves by branding. If two planters happened to be using the same mark, the brand was placed upon different spots of the body. The heated plate, with an interposing piece of oiled or waxed paper, was touched lightly to the body; the flesh swelled, and the form of the brand could never be obliterated. Many slaves passed from one plantation to another, being sold and resold, till their bodies were as thick with marks as an obelisk. How different from the symbols of care in the furrowed face and stooping form of a free laborer, where the history of a humble home, planted in marriage and nursed by independent sorrow, is printed by the hand of God!

By this fusion of native races a Creole nation of slaves was slowly formed and maintained. The old qualities were not lost, but new qualities resulted from the new conditions. The bozal negro was easily to be distinguished from the Creole. Bozal is from the Spanish, meaning muzzled, that is, ignorant of the Creole language and not able to talk. 12 Creole French was created by the negroes, who put into it very few words of their native dialects, but something of the native construction, and certain euphonic peculiarities. It is interesting to trace their love of alliteration and a concord of sounds in this mongrel French, which became a new colonial language. The bright and sparkling French appears as if submitted to great heat and just on the point of running together. There is a great family of African dialects in which a principal sound, or the chief sound of a leading word, appears in all the words of a sentence, from no grammatical reason at all, but to satisfy a sweetish ear. It is like the charming gabble of children, who love to follow the first key that the tongue strikes. Mr. Grout13 and other missionaries note examples of this: Abantu bake bonke abakoluayo ba hlala ba de ba be ba quedile, is a sentence to illustrate this native disposition. The alliteration is sometimes obscured by elisions and contractions, but never quite disappears. Mr. Grout says: "So strong is the influence of this inclination to concord produced by the repetition of initials, that it controls the distinction of number, and quite subordinates that of gender, and tends to mould the pronoun after the likeness of the initial element of the noun to which it refers; as, Izintombi zake zi ya hamba, 'The daughters of him they do walk.'" These characteristics appear in the formation of the Creole French, in connection with another childlike habit of the negro, who loves to put himself in the objective case, and to say me instead of I, as if he knew that he had to be a chattel.

The article un, une, could not have been pronounced by a negro. It became in his mouth nion. The personal pronouns je, tu, il, were converted into mo, to, ly, and the possessive mon, ton, son into à moue, à toue, à ly, and were placed after the noun, which negro dialects generally start their sentences with. Possessive pronouns had the unmeaning syllable quien before them, as, Nous gagné quien à nous, for Nous avons les nôtres; and demonstrative pronouns were changed in this way: Mo voir z'animaux là yo, for J'ai vu ces animaux, and Ci la yo qui té vivre, for Ceux qui ont vécu. A few more examples will suffice to make other changes clear. A negro was asked to lend his horse; he replied, Mouchée (Monsieur), mo pas gagné choual, mais mo connais qui gagné ly; si ly pas gagné ly, ly faut mo gagné ly, pour vous gagné: "Massa, me no got horse, but me know who got um; if him no got um, him get me um for you." Quelquechose becomes quichou; zozo = oiseau; gourneé = combattre; gueté = voir; zombi = revenant; bougé = demeurer; helé = appeler, etc.14

The dialect thus formed by the aid of traits common to many negro tribes was a solution into which their differences fell to become modified; when the barriers of language were broken down, the common African nature, with all its good and evil, appeared in a Creole form. The forced labor, the caprice of masters, and the cruel supervision of the overseers engendered petty vices of theft, concealment, and hypocrisy. The slave became meaner than the native African in all respects; even his passions lost their extravagant sincerity, but part of the manliness went with it. Intelligence, ability, adroitness were exercised in a languid way; rude and impetuous tribes became more docile and manageable, but those who were already disposed to obedience did not find either motive or influence to lift their natures into a higher life. An average slave-character, not difficult to govern, but without instinct to improve, filled the colony. A colonist would hardly suspect the fiery Africa whose sun ripened the ancestors of his slaves, unless he caught them by accident in the midst of their voluptuous Calenda, or watched behind some tree the midnight orgy of magic and Fetichism. A slave-climate gnawed at the bold edges of their characters and wore them down, as the weather rusted out more rapidly than anywhere else all the iron tools and implements of the colony. The gentler traits of the African character, mirth and jollity, affectionateness, domestic love, regard and even reverence for considerate masters, were the least impaired; for these, with a powerful religiosity, are indigenous, like the baobab and palm, and give a great accent to the name of Africa. What other safeguard had a planter with his wife and children, who lived with thirty slaves or more, up to six hundred, upon solitary plantations that were seldom visited by the maréchaussée, or rural police? The root of such a domination was less in the white man's superiority than in the docile ability of those who ought to have been his natural enemies. "Totidem esse hostes quot servos" said Seneca; but he was thinking of the Scythian and Germanic tribes. A North-American Indian, or a Carib, though less pagan than a native African, could never become so subdued. Marooning occurred every day, and cases of poisoning, perpetrated generally by Ardra negroes, who were addicted to serpent-worship, were not infrequent; but they poisoned a rival or an enemy of their own race as often as a white man. The "Affiches Américaines," which was published weekly at Port-au-Prince, had always a column or two describing fugitive negroes; but local disturbances or insurrectionary attempts were very rare: a half-dozen cannot be counted since the Jolofs of Diego Columbus frightened Spaniards from the colony. If this be so in an island whose slaves were continually reinforced by native Africans, bringing Paganism to be confirmed by a corrupt Catholicism, where every influence was wanton and debased, and the plantation-cruelties, as we shall shortly see, outheroded everything that slave-holding annals can reveal, how much less likely is it that we shall find the slave insurrectionary in the United States, whence the slave-trade has been excluded for nearly two generations, and where the African, modified by climate, and by religious exercises of his own which are in harmony with his native disposition and enjoin him not to be of a stout mind, waits prayerfully till liberty shall be proclaimed! If the slaveholder ever lived in dread, it was not so much from what he expected as from what he knew that he deserved. But the African is more merciful than the conscience of a slaveholder. Blessed are these meek ones: they shall yet inherit earth in America!

France was always more humane than her colonies, for every rising sun did not rekindle there the dreadful paradox that sugar and sweetness were incompatible, and she could not taste the stinging lash as the crystals melted on her tongue.15 An ocean rolled between. She always endeavored to protect the slave by legislation; but the Custom of Paris, when it was gentle, was doubly distasteful to the men who knew how impracticable it was. Louis XIII. would not admit that a single slave lived in his dominions, till the priests convinced him that it was possible through the slave-trade to baptize the Ethiopian again. Louis XIV. issued the famous Code Noir in 1685, when the colonists had already begun to shoot a slave for a saucy gesture, and to hire buccaneers to hunt marooning negroes at ten dollars per head. 16

The Code Noir was the basis of all the colonial legislation which affected the condition of the slave, and it is important to notice its principal articles. We have only room to present them reduced to their essential substance.

Negroes must be instructed in the Catholic religion, and bozals must be baptized within eight days after landing. All overseers must be Catholic. Sundays and fête days are days of rest for the negro; no sale of negroes or any other commodity can take place on those days.

Free men who have children by slaves, and masters who permit the connection, are liable to a fine of two thousand pounds of sugar. If the guilty person be a master, his slave and her children are confiscated for the benefit of the hospital, and cannot be freed.

If a free man is not married to any white person during concubinage with his slave, and shall marry said slave, she and her children shall become enfranchised.

No consent of father and mother is essential for marriage between slaves, but no master can constrain slaves to marry against their will.

If a slave has a free black or colored woman for his wife, the male and female children shall follow the condition of the mother; and if a slave-woman has a free husband, the children shall follow his condition.

The weekly ration for a slave of ten years old and upwards consists of five Paris pints of manioc meal, or three cassava loaves, each weighing two and a half pounds, with two pounds of salt beef, or three of fish, or other things in proportion, but never any tafia17 in the place of a ration; and no master can avoid giving a slave his ration by offering him a day for his own labor. Weaned children to the age of ten are entitled to half the above ration. Each slave must also have two suits of clothes yearly, or cloth in proportion.

Slaves who are not properly nourished and clothed by their masters can lodge a complaint against them. If it be well-founded, the masters can be prosecuted without cost to the slave.

Slaves who are old, infirm, diseased, whether incurable or not, must be supported. If they are abandoned by masters, they are to be sent to the hospital, and the masters must pay six sols daily for their support.

A slave's testimony can be received as a statement to serve the courts in procuring light elsewhere; but no judge can draw presumption, conjecture, or proof therefrom.

The slave who strikes his master or mistress, or their children, so as to draw blood, or in the face, may be punished even with death; and all excesses or offences committed by slaves against free persons shall be severely punished, even with death, if the case shall warrant.

Any free or enfranchised person who shall shelter a fugitive shall be fined three hundred pounds of sugar for each day.

A slave who is condemned to death shall be valued before execution, and the estimated price paid to the master, provided the latter has not made a pretended complaint.

Masters may chain and whip their slaves, but not mutilate, torture, or kill them.

If a master or overseer shall kill a slave, he shall be prosecuted; but if he can convince the court of cause, he may be discharged without pardon from the King.

Masters who are twenty years old can free their slaves at will or by testamentary act, without being held to give a reason for it; and if a slave is named by testament a general legatee, or an executor, or guardian of children, he shall be considered enfranchised.

An enfranchised slave shall be regarded as free as any person born in France, without letters of naturalization; he can enjoy the advantages of natives everywhere, even if he was born in a foreign country.

An enfranchised slave must pay singular respect to his ancient master, his widow, and children; an injury done to them will be punished more severely than if done to others. But he is free, and quit of all service, charge, and tenure that may be pretended by his former master, either respecting his person or property and succession.

An enfranchised slave shall enjoy the same rights, privileges, and immunities as if he had been born free. The King desires that he may merit his acquired liberty, and that it may confer upon him, as well in his person as estate, the same effects which the blessing of natural liberty confers upon French subjects.

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The last article, and all that related to enfranchisement, are notable for their political effect upon the colony. The free mulattoes interpreted the liberal clauses of the Code into an extension of the rights of citizenship to them, as the natural inference from their freed condition. The lust of masters and the defencelessness of the slave-woman sowed thickly another retribution in the fated soil.

The custom of enfranchising children of mixed blood, and sometimes their mothers, commenced in the earliest times of the French colonies, when the labor of engagés was more valuable than that of slaves, and the latter were objects of buccaneering license as much as of profit. The colonist could not bear to see his offspring inventoried as chattels. In this matter the nations of the South of Europe appear to atone for acts of passion by after-thoughts of humanity. The free descendants of mulattoes who were enfranchised by French masters in Louisiana, and who form a respectable and flourishing class in that State, now stand beneath the American flag at the call of General Butler. But the Anglo-American alone seems willing to originate a chattel and to keep him so. His passion will descend as low for gratification as a Frenchman's or a Spaniard's, but his heart will not afterwards mount as high.

Acts of enfranchisement required at first the sanction of the Government, until in 1682 the three sovereign courts of St. Christophe, Martinique, and Guadeloupe offered the project of a law which favored enfranchisements; it led to the articles upon that subject in the Edict of 1685, quoted above, which sought at once to restrain the license of masters and to afford them a legal way to be humane and just.18

In 1703 there were only one hundred and fifty freed persons in San Domingo. In 1711 a colonial ordinance proscribed every enfranchisement which did not have the approbation of the colonial government. The King sanctioned this ordinance in 1713, and declared that all masters who neglected the formality should lose their slaves by confiscation.

In 1736 the number of freed slaves, black and mulatto, was two thousand. The Government, alarmed at the increase, imposed a sum upon the master for each act of enfranchisement, in the hope to check his license. But the master evaded this and every other salutary provision; the place and climate, so distant from the Custom of Paris, where men dishonored only complexions like their own, lent occasion and immunity. Colonial Nature was more potent than paper restrictions. In 1750 there were four thousand freed persons.

But the desire of enfranchising children was so great that the colonists evaded all the regulations, which multiplied yearly, by taking their slaves to France, where they became free as soon as their feet pressed the soil. The only measure which the Government could devise to meet this evasion was to forbid all men of color to contract marriages in France.

In 1787 the free persons of color in San Domingo numbered 19,632. In 1790 their numbers were 25,000.

In 1681 the white inhabitants of San Domingo numbered four thousand; but in 1790, notwithstanding a constant tide of emigration from Europe, they numbered only thirty thousand.

The number of slaves at the same time was about four hundred thousand, a number which represents the violent removal of several millions of black men from Africa: some writers not anti-slavery reckon this tremendous crime of the white man at ten millions!

What a climate, and what a system, in which only the mulatto thrives!

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Thus far we have traced the causes and elements, of Nature, race, and policy, the passions and peculiarities of many kinds of men, which culminated at length, in no fair forms of humanity nor beneficent institutions, but in the foremost sugar-plantation of the world, whose cane-rows were planted and nourished by the first of crimes, whose juice was expressed by over-hasty avarice and petulant ambition that could not be satisfied unless the crime preserved features as colossal as the passion of the hour.

We are now in a condition to perceive that the Horrors of San Domingo were those of suicide. Bloody licentiousness lays violent hands upon its life. Its weaknesses were full of fatal vigor, lust poisoned the humanity which it inspired, the soil of the buccaneer could raise nothing which was not exuberant with vengeance. Slave-Insurrection was a mere accidental episode in the closing scenes of this bad and blundering career.

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A LONDON SUBURB

One of our English summers looks, in the retrospect, as if it had been patched with more frequent sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords; but I believe that it may be only a moral effect,—a "light that never was on sea nor land,"—caused by our having found a particularly delightful abode in the neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, however, I was compelled to solve the problem of living in two places at once,—an impossibility which I so far accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, out of men's sight and knowledge on one side of England, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been there all along. It was the easier to get accustomed to our new residence, because it was not only rich in all the material properties of a home, but had also the home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is of too intangible a character to be let even with the most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend had given us his suburban residence, with all its conveniences, elegancies, and snuggeries,—its drawing-rooms and library, still warm and bright with the recollection of the genial presences that we had known there,—its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if we could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a trust,—its lawn and cozy garden-nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous idea of an English home,—he had transferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and take our case during his summer's absence on the Continent. We had long been dwelling in tents, as it were, and morally shivering by hearths which, heap the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no blaze could render cheerful. I remember, to this day, the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English fireside, and watched the chill and rainy twilight of an autumn day darkening down upon the garden; while the portrait of the preceding occupant of the house (evidently a most unamiable personage in his lifetime) scowled inhospitably from above the mantel-piece, as if indignant that an American should try to make himself at home there. Possibly it may appease his sulky shade to know that I quitted his abode as much a stranger as I entered it. But now, at last, we were in a genuine British home, where refined and warm-hearted people had just been living their daily life, and had left us a summer's inheritance of slowly ripened days, such as a stranger's hasty opportunities so seldom permit him to enjoy.

Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of all the world, (which, as Americans have at present no centre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul's Cathedral,) it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed about by the turbulence of the vast London-whirlpool. But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haven more attractive than anything that the great town could offer. I already knew London well; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so far as it was capable of satisfaction) that mysterious yearning—the magnetism of millions of hearts operating upon one—which impels every man's individuality to mingle itself with the immensest mass of human life within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens and inclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid the city-uproar, the markets, the foggy streets along the river-side, the bridges,—I had sought all parts of the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and indiscriminating curiosity; until few of the native inhabitants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners as myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my prime purpose and achievement were to lose my way, and so to find it the more surely) had brought me, at one time or another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned localities that I had read about, and which had made London the dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than my dream; for there is nothing else in life comparable (in that species of enjoyment, I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of London. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling there, as nowhere else in the world,—though afterwards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard to Rome; and as long as either of those two great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and of the Present, a man's native soil may crumble beneath his feet without leaving him altogether homeless upon earth.

Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I was in a manner free of the city, and could approach or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it happened, that, living within a quarter of an hour's rush of the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener tempted to spend a whole summer-day in our garden than to seek anything new or old, wonderful or commonplace, beyond its precincts. It was a delightful garden, of no great extent, but comprising a good many facilities for repose and enjoyment, such as arbors and garden-seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, poppies, geraniums, sweet-peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had always a vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim sky of England has a most happy effect on the coloring of flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same texture; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the exuberance of English verdure had a greater charm than any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger for natural beauty might be satisfied with grass and green leaves forever. Conscious of the triumph of England in this respect; and loyally anxious for the credit of my own country, it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains the English gardeners are fain to throw away in producing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples,—as, for example, in this very garden, where a row of unhappy trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a cruel and unattainable purpose of compelling them to produce rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an English fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in flavor with a Yankee turnip.

The garden included that prime feature of English domestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, carefully shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on which we sometimes essayed to practise the time-honored game of bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without a perception that it involves a very pleasant mixture of exercise and ease, as is the case with most of the old English pastimes. Our little domain was shut in by the house on one side, and in other directions by a hedge-fence and a brick wall, which last was concealed or softened by shrubbery and the impaled fruit-trees already mentioned. Over all the outer region, beyond our immediate precincts, there was an abundance of foliage, tossed aloft from the near or distant trees with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. The effect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch that we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a wooded seclusion; only that, at brief intervals, we could hear the galloping sweep of a railway-train passing within a quarter of a mile, and its discordant screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Blackheath Station. That harsh, rough sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of the great world summoning me forth. I know not whether I was the more pained or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neighborhood of London; for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with children in the grass, when there were so many better things for an enlightened traveller to do,—while, at the same time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness, to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On the whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour, and only wish that I could have spent twice as many in the same way; for the impression in my memory is, that I was as happy in that hospitable garden as the English summer-day was long.