Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the MakingOrth, Samuel Peter
History
Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making
Orth, Samuel Peter
Immigrants -- United States; United States -- Emigration and immigration
thousands of able-bodied Africans were landed on American soil, alien
to everything they found there.
These slaves were kidnaped from many tribes. "In our negro
population," says Tillinghast, "as it came from the Western Coast of
Africa, there were Wolofs and Fulans, tall, well-built, and very
black, hailing from Senegambia and its vicinity; there were hundreds
of thousands from the Slave Coast--Tshis, Ewes, and Yorubans,
including Dahomians; and mingled with all these Soudanese negroes
proper were occasional contributions of mixed stock, from the north
and northeast, having an infusion of Moorish blood. There were other
thousands from Lower Guinea, belonging to Bantu stock, not so black in
color as the Soudanese, and thought by some to be slightly superior to
them."[9] No historian has recorded these tribal differences. The new
environment, so strange, so ruthless, swallowed them; and, in the
welter of their toil, the black men became so intermingled that all
tribal distinctions soon vanished. Here and there, however, a careful
observer may still find among them a man of superior mien or a woman
of haughty demeanor denoting perhaps an ancestral prince or princess
who once exercised authority over some African jungle village.
Slavery was soon a recognized institution in every American colony. By
1665 every colony had its slave code. In Virginia the laws became
increasingly strict until the dominion of the master over his slaves
was virtually absolute. In South Carolina an insurrection of slaves in
1739, which cost the lives of twenty-one whites and forty-four blacks,
led to very drastic laws. Of the Northern colonies, New York seems to
have been most in fear of a black peril. In 1700 there were about six
thousand slaves in this colony, chiefly in the city, where there were
also many free negroes, and on the large estates along the Hudson.
Twice the white people of the city for reasons that have not been
preserved, believing that slave insurrections were imminent, resorted
to extreme and brutal measures. In 1712 they burned to death two
negroes, hanged in chains a third, and condemned a fourth to be
broken on the wheel. In 1741 they went so far as to burn fourteen
negroes, hang eighteen, and transport seventy-one.
In New England where their numbers were relatively small and the laws
were less severe, the negroes were employed chiefly in domestic
service. In Quaker Pennsylvania there were many slaves, the proprietor
himself being a slave owner. Ten years after the founding of
Philadelphia, the authorities ordered the constables to arrest all
negroes found "gadding about" on Sunday without proper permission.
They were to remain in jail until Monday, receiving in lieu of meat or
drink thirty-nine lashes on the bare back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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