The Journal of Negro History, Volume 1, January 1916Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 1, January 1916
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
In this study the author found nothing "to indicate that there was any
movement or any serious discussion of the advisability of abolishing
slavery or devising any plan that would eventually lead to it." In that
State there never were many anti-slavery inhabitants. The Quakers who came
into the State soon left and the Germans, who at first abstained from
slavery, finally yielded. There probably was an academic deprecation of the
evils of the institution but hardly any tendency toward agitation; and if
there had been such, the promoters would not have secured support among the
leading people. A few men like Judge O'Neall favored the emancipation of
worthy slaves, but the agitation from without gave this sentiment no chance
to grow. Yet the author is anxious not to leave the impression that, had it
not been for outside interference, slavery in South Carolina would have
been modified. This would not have happened, he contended, because unlike
the States of North Carolina and Virginia, South Carolina did not find
slaves less valuable. The condition of the slave in the upper country was
better than that in the low lands, but no section of the State showed signs
of abolition.
This work is a well-documented dissertation. It has an appendix containing
valuable documents, and a critical bibliography of the works consulted. It
could have been improved by digesting documents which appear almost in full
throughout the work. Another defect is that it has no index.
C. B. WALTER.
_Gouldtown_. By William Steward, A.M., and REV. Theophilus G. Steward, D.D.
J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1913. 237 pages. $2.50.
There are hundreds of thousands of mulattoes in the United States. Anyone
interested in this group of the American people will find many illuminating
and suggestive facts in Gouldtown. It is the history of the descendants of
Lord Fenwick, who was a major in Oliver Cromwell's army, and of Gould a
Negro man. Fenwick's will of 1683 contains the following: "I do except
against Elizabeth Adams of having any ye leaste part of my estate, unless
the Lord open her eyes to see her abdominable transgression against him, me
and her good father, by giving her true repentance, and forsaking yt
_Black_ yt hath been ye ruin of her, and becoming penitent for her sins;
upon yt condition only I do will and require my executors to settle five
hundred acres of land upon her." Elizabeth did not forsake this Negro by
the name of Gould and the remarkable mulatto group of Gouldtown is the
result of this marriage. Gouldtown is a small settlement in southwest New
Jersey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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