The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918

The persistence of Clay in his avowed convictions on the subject of slavery and emancipation in Kentucky was kept up in spite of the fact that within a few days after the publication of his plan of emancipation throughout Kentucky the House of Representatives at Frankfort by the unanimous vote of 93 to 0 declared that "we the representatives of the people of Kentucky, are opposed to abolition or emancipation of slavery in any shape or form whatever, except as now provided by the laws and constitution of the state."427 This was their answer to the plea set forth by Clay and strange to say the same group of men voted unanimously at the same session to return Clay for six years more to the United States Senate.

A convention of the so-called "Friends of Constitutional Reform" had been held at the State capital on February 5, 1849, and had drawn up a series of twelve resolutions on the several questions which were to be debated in the constitutional convention. They made mention incidentally of the desired reforms in connection with slavery stating "that we do not desire or contemplate any change in the relative condition of master and slave in the new Constitution, and intend a firm and decided resistance to any such change. We have no objection to a proper provision for colonizing the present free blacks, and those who shall hereafter be set free, but protest against abolition or emancipation without the consent of the owner, unless upon full compensation and colonization."428

This element dominated the convention. The body not only ignored any plan of emancipation but drew the reins of the existing institution tighter than ever before by incorporating in the Bill of Rights the famous phrase that "the right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatsoever." Such a statement was, however, not brought on by the words of Clay, but was a direct answer to the "higher law than the constitution" plea of the abolitionists.429 The convention amended the standard article on slavery with a section to the effect that the "General Assembly should pass laws providing that any free negro or mulatto immigrating to, and any slave thereafter emancipated in, and refusing to leave that State, should be deemed guilty of a felony, punished by confinement in the penitentiary."

The obvious purpose of this amendment was to reduce the number of Negroes in the State. Accordingly every slave emancipated was forced to leave the State and the Negro population was decreased just so much every time any slaves were set free. The convention was thus willing to do something towards eliminating the Negro, but was not in favor of any scheme of a general gradual liberation of the slaves. The necessary legislative act for carrying out the provision of the constitution was enacted March 24, 1851.430 This law only went half way in that it only prevented those Negroes who had been freed in Kentucky from living in the State. It was not until March 3, 1860, that the prohibition was extended to all free Negro immigration into the State.431 An interesting development of this policy was shown in the enactment of the legislature in 1863 which declared it unlawful for any Negro or mulatto claiming to be free under the Emancipation Proclamation to migrate to or remain in the State. Any Negro violating this law was to be treated as a runaway slave.432

The desire of the State authorities to eliminate the free Negro was accompanied by constructive measures in behalf of the emancipated slave. On March 3, 1856, the State legislature passed a law appropriating $5,000 annually to aid the Kentucky Colonization Society in the transportation of free Negroes to Liberia.433 The universal sentiment of the time was that the salvation of the Negro race rested in their elimination from the State even as free men and their transportation to their native African soil. Henry Clay of all others was the most persistent advocate of colonization.

We have seen that the general trend of public opinion from about 1798 had been progressively in favor of gradual emancipation provided it was coupled with some form of colonization which would remove the liberated Negroes from the State. Public sentiment, however, received a serious set-back about 1838 with the beginning of the Underground Railroad system and the incoming of the abolitionist literature. In a speech in the Kentucky legislature of 1838 James T. Morehead, one of the leading anti-slavery statesmen of the State, portrayed the coming of the newer era in the history of Kentucky slavery when the people would make more strenuous efforts to hold firmly to the slavery institution. Morehead pictured the popular mind in these words: "Any man who desires to see slavery abolished—any friend of emancipation, gradual or immediate– who supposes for a moment that now is the time to carry out this favorite policy, must be blind to the prognostics that lower from every quarter of the political sky. Sir, the present is not the period to unmanacle the slave in this or any other state of the Union. Four years ago you might have had some hope. But the wild spirit of fanaticism has done much to retard the work of emancipation and to rivet the fetters of slavery in Kentucky.... The advocates of abolition—the phrenzied fanatics of the North, neither sleep nor slumber. Their footsteps are even now to be seen wherever mischief can be perpetrated—and it may be that while the people of Kentucky are reposing in the confidence of fancied security, the tocsin of rebellion may resound through the land—the firebrand of the incendiary may wrap their dwellings in flames—their towns and cities may become heaps of ashes before their eyes and their minds drawn off from all thoughts of reforming the government to consider the means necessary for their self-preservation—the protection of their families and all that is dear to men."434

Such was the idea of one of the most prominent public men of Kentucky and such became in time the opinion of the average citizen who had come to believe in gradual emancipation as the hope and solution of the Negro problem in the State. The future course of events regarding slavery in Kentucky is to be explained by this radical change of mind. Thus did the wise and constructive plans of the gradual emancipationists come to naught with the incoming of the radical abolitionist movement which the Kentucky populace thought would bring about a civil insurrection among the slaves in their own State. The abolitionists misunderstood the gradual emancipation movement in Kentucky and really fanned the flame of the pro-slavery sentiment that came in its place.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Negro in Literature and Art. By Benjamin Brawley. Duffield and Company, New York, 1918. Pp. 176. Price $1.25.

This is an effort to put in succinct form an estimate of the Negro's efforts in the creative world. The style of the book is largely biographical. The opening chapter deals with Negro genius. Then around such Negroes as Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chestnutt, W. E. B. DuBois, William Stanley Braithwaite, Meta Warrick Fuller, Henry O. Tanner, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington are grouped most of the facts as to the achievements of the Negroes in art, literature, and science. In the appendix there is a dissertation on the Negro in American fiction. A helpful bibliography and a short index are also added.

This book is unique in that it is the first work devoted exclusively to this aspect of Negro history. It undertakes "to treat somewhat more thoroughly than has ever before been attempted the achievement of the Negro in the United States along literary and artistic lines, judging this by absolute rather than by partial or limited standards." The work is the result of studies begun by the author years ago and published in booklet form in 1910 as The Negro in Literature and Art. The substance of this treatise is found also in Professor Brawley's A Short History of the American Negro. Certain articles included therein have already been published in the Springfield Republican, The Southern Workman, and the Dial. The appearance of this work in the new form is justified by the author on the ground that the constantly increasing material in this field has so changed his viewpoint that the time seemed ripe for a more intensive review.

The purpose of the author is a lofty one. Here we see the effort to inform the public that there is among Negroes a growing scholarship which must be reckoned with in determining the thought of this country. It is to convince the public that the Negro mind is functioning along all lines of thought known to other races of achievement. The purpose, too, is to set forth to Negroes examples of successful men and women in this field to serve them as an incentive to contribute to thought. Professor Brawley has, therefore, written an interesting book which should attract all persons desiring to understand those forces at work in the Negro mind and the manner in which they have found expression.

C. G. Woodson

Negro Folk Songs. By Natalie Curtis Burlin. Book I. New York and Boston, G. Schirmer. Pp. 42. Price 50 cents.

The unique features of Natalie Curtis Burlin's notation of Negro folk-songs, collected in the South, are their complete truth to the original folk-song, spirit and letter. The spontaneous part-singing of groups of Negroes is a rare phenomenon in folk-music, for most simple people sing only a unisono melody. Mrs. Curtis Burlin, unlike most former collectors, has recorded not only the melody and words, but the whole choral folk-song, as sung in the South, with all its different voices. To secure entire accuracy in so difficult a task, a phonograph was used and the work was mainly accomplished in all its wealth of octave at Hampton Institute, Virginia, under the auspices of which the collection was undertaken and for the benefit of which the publications are made. Not content with a by-ear approximation only of the folk-song, Mrs. Burlin gave especial care to the notation of every nuance of Negro singing—organic and rhythmic. The changing nuance syncopations that give such expressive accent to the different solo verses sung by the Negro "leader" have all been caught and put upon paper. Doctor Talcott Williams, of the New York School of Journalism, says that the example of this reverent and scholarly work marks a new era in the collecting of Negro folk-music in this country.

The words of the songs—true folk-poems—have been noted in dialect with the same truth to Negro rendering as the music. Furthermore, the syllables stressed in the music are stressed in the written poem as well; for in the mind of the Negro authors, words and music were one spontaneous creation, and it is the music that gives to the words the accent, instead of the words forming the basis of the accentuation of the music, as with us. This reproduction in verse of the original Negro rhythms which are full of unexpected emphasis and captivating syncopation forms a new departure in the manner of writing Negro poems and it is believed that modern poets and writers of vers libre will find interest in the richness and variety of Negro rhythms here shown.

Each song is prefaced by a few paragraphs of descriptive text and the dedications of the different records to men who have helped to advance the Negro summarize, in a sense, the progress of the race since emancipation.

The recording of Negro folk-songs was prefaced by Mrs. Burlin by a year's study of the native music of Africa. Doubleday, Page & Co. will bring out in the autumn her book entitled Songs From the Dark Continent, containing the results of careful study of native folk-lore and music told and sung by two African boys (one a Zulu and the other from the Ndan tribe) who had come directly to Hampton Institute from the Dark Continent. This book plainly proves the relationship of American Negro music to its parent stem in Africa, and reveals the poetic as well as musical gifts latent in the black race.

The Black Man's Part in the War. By Sir H. H. Johnston. Simpkin Marshall, London, 1917.

Taking into consideration that the United Kingdom now rules 50,000,000 of Africans who are well represented in the battle line by the thousands of Negroes fighting to make democracy safe in the world of the white man, from which the blacks are excluded, this sympathetic writer here endeavors to give these soldiers of color credit for their unselfish services. The highest tribute which he pays them is that their loyalty is incontestable. The writer, therefore, makes an appeal in behalf of safeguarding their interests and reasonably preserving their independence after the war. Having in mind the new alignments of trade, he sees the Africans as the producers of the tropical products which white men will need. Their future loyalty in the competitive commercial world after the war is also necessary to the salvation of the English people in the tropics and at home.

The writer believes too that to secure this necessary loyalty the natives must be given political recognition. The rights of the black man as a citizen of the empire must be affirmed wherever the territories have been under British rule long enough to acquire a very British tone in language, education and ideals. He hopes also that the present tendency of the natives of the late German possessions to prefer the rule of the British to that of their former masters may be further accentuated by the efforts of Englishmen to treat these natives with more consideration. The writer advocates also a fair division of land where the two races are brought into contact with each other as in Rhodesia.

To strengthen the claims he makes for the recognition of the black man the writer has well illustrated his book with plates showing the advancement of Negroes to arouse interest in their behalf. The book is, of necessity, incomplete, as the war has not yet ended; but, on the whole, students of Negro life and history will find it profitable to read this broad enlightened working program for changing the white man's attitude toward a large part of the human family which not only has done him no great wrong, but has borne his burdens when he has been about to fall beneath the load.

History of the Civil War. By James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., D.Litt. McMillan Company, New York. 1861-1865. Pp. 454.

Mr. Rhodes has covered this ground in detail in his History of the United States in seven volumes. But this work is not an abridgment of the three volumes of that history dealing with the Civil War. Since writing his first history he has had access to much new material and many valuable treatments of certain periods of the Civil War. He has, therefore, considered it necessary to bring out this new volume that he may show the bearing of these new facts on his grasp of this period of our history.

Influenced by the dominant thought of the present war, Mr. Rhodes treats such conditions as unpreparedness, the privations of the war, lack of tea and coffee, the lack of bread and meat, the difficulty of transportation, conscription, high prices, loans, high taxation, and consequent distress. The Negroes are necessarily mentioned in the discussion of slavery in the territories, the attempted slavery compromises, Lincoln's handling of the question, the effect on them of the movements of the armies, and the efforts at emancipation leading up to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Mention is also made of the conduct of the slaves who accompanied the Confederates and of those who followed and fought with the Union army.

Mr. Rhodes is here at his best, that is, when writing on the Civil War. But this seems to be mere chance. He writes a good history of the Civil War because he happens to be a Unionist, and no one has yet proved that the Union cause was wrong. He is after all an impressionable historian, accepting almost anything he picks up, but embellishing it so well as to win the American public, whose scholarship has not yet performed the task of publishing an authentic history of the Civil War from the viewpoint of treating the records scientifically. When Rhodes elsewhere takes up the Negro in the Reconstruction he shows his lack of ability as an historian in accepting almost everything which he has heard or read about the Negro and in branding, therefore, as mistakes and failures all of the efforts to elevate the Negro to the dignity of citizenship and to deal with him as a human being.

NOTES

William Bernard Hartgrove, one of the five members who participated in the organization of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in Chicago in 1915, died at Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the twenty-fourth of April. In his death the Association lost a substantial supporter and friend. He was an unselfish, wide-awake and enterprising teacher, endeavoring always to be instrumental in the uplift of the Negro. During the last ten years of his life he devoted much of his time and means to the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, serving the local branch most of that period as secretary. When the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History was organized he was among the first to see its possibilities and to give it financial as well as moral support. He made himself useful in assisting the editor in his arduous duties during the days when the work was in the making. He contributed to the Journal Of Negro History, moreover, a number of articles, among which are: The Story of Maria Louise Moore and Fannie M. Richards, The Negro Soldier in the American Revolution, and The Story of Josiah Henson.

Mention of the slave Archy in Miss Beasley's Slavery in California has called forth from a relative of his the following short sketch:

Archy's mother was named Maria. Maria had four children: Archy, Candace, Pompey and Quitman. (I am the daughter of Candace.) At the time Charles A. Stoval took Archy to California, Maria with her other children were with Simeon Stoval, the father of Chas. A. Stoval.

Chas. A. Stoval had been graduated in medicine and had returned home to begin practice, but his health having failed him, he went to California, taking my Uncle Archy with him. My grandmother Maria heard through the relatives of Stoval of Archy during the time Stoval remained in California. But near the close of the Civil War, Chas. A. Stoval returned to Mississippi and remained there until his death a few years later. After Stoval came back from California, my grandmother never heard any more of her son Archy, except when she once heard that he was with the Indians, who were treating him for some kind of sickness. Whether he died or whether this rumor was put out to keep the Stovals from trying to steal him and bring him back to Mississippi I have never been able to learn. My grandmother Maria continued to search for Archy, by writing several times to San Francisco, but without success. She died in 1884. Pompey and Quitman continued to live near Jackson, Miss., where Quitman died some time ago. Pompey was still alive when I last heard of him.

Mrs. R. A. Hunt

German East Africa, by A. F. Calvert, has been published by Werner Laurie, London.

Messrs. Routledge, of London, will soon bring out a volume of Select Constitutional Documents Illustrating the History of South Africa.

Dr. H. K. W. Kumm's history of modern missionary work has appeared with imprint of MacMillan with the title African Missionary Heroes and Heroines.

Doubleday, Page and Company announce the appearance of Education and Life, by Doctor Francis Greenwood Peabody, of Harvard University. This is a short history of Hampton Institute during the last fifty years, prepared at the request of the trustees.

The Journal of Negro History

Vol. III—October, 1918—No. 4

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MISCEGENATION OF THE WHITES AND BLACKS

Although science has uprooted the theory, a number of writers are loath to give up the contention that the white race is superior to others, as it is still hoped that the Caucasian race may be preserved in its purity, especially so far as it means miscegenation with the blacks. But there are others who express doubt that the integrity of the dominant race has been maintained.435 Scholars have for centuries differed as to the composition of the mixed breed stock constituting the Mediterranean race and especially about that in Egypt and the Barbary States. In that part of the dark continent many inhabitants have certain characteristics which are more Caucasian than negroid and have achieved more than investigators have been willing to consider the civilization of the Negro. It is clear, however, that although the people of northern Africa cannot be classed as Negroes, being bounded on the south by the masses of African blacks, they have so generally mixed their blood with that of the blacks that in many parts they are no nearer to any white stock than the Negroes of the United States.

This miscegenation, to be sure, increased toward the south into central Africa, but it has extended also to the north and east into Asia and Europe. Traces of Negro blood have been found in the Malay States, India and Polynesia. In the Arabian Peninsula it has been so extensive as to constitute a large group there called the Arabised Negroes. But most significant of all has been the invasion of Europe by persons of African blood. Professor Sergi leads one to conclude that the ancient Pelasgii were of African origin or probably the descendants of the race which settled northern Africa and southern Europe, and are therefore due credit for the achievements of the early Greek and Italian civilizations.436

There is much evidence of a further extension of this infusion in the Mediterranean world.

"Recent discoveries made in the vicinity of the principality of Monaco and others in Italy and western France," says MacDonald, "would seem to reveal … the actual fact that many thousand years ago a negroid race had penetrated through Italy into France, leaving traces at the present day in the physiognomy of the peoples of southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and western France, and even in the western parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. There are even at the present day some examples of the Keltiberian peoples of western Scotland, southern and western Wales, southern and western Ireland, of distinctly negroid aspect, and in whose ancestry there is no indication whatever of any connection with the West Indies or with Modern Africa. Still more marked is this feature in the peoples of southern and western France and of the other parts of the Mediterranean already mentioned."437

Because of the temperament of the Portugese this infusion of African blood was still more striking in their country. As the Portugese are a good-natured people void of race hate they did not dread the miscegenation of the races. One finds in southern Portugal a "strong Moorish, North African element" and also an "old intermixture with those Negroes who were imported thither from Northwest Africa to till the scantily populated southern provinces."438 This miscegenation among the Portugese easily extended to the New World. Then followed the story of the Caramarii, the descendants of the Portugese, who after being shipwrecked near Bahia arose to prominence among the Tupinambo Indians and produced a clan of half-castes by taking to himself numerous native women.439 This admixture served as a stepping stone to the assimilation of the Negroes when they came.

There immigrated later into Brazil other settlers who, mixing eagerly with the Amerindians, gave rise to a race called Mamelucos who began to mix maritally with the imported Negro women. The French and Dutch too in caring for their offspring by native women promoted the same. "They educated them, set them free, lifted them above servitude, and raised them socially to the level of the whites"440 so that today generally speaking there are no distinctions in society or politics in Brazil. Commenting on this condition in Brazil, Agassiz said: "This hybrid class, although more marked here because the Indian is added, is very numerous in all cities; perhaps, the fact, so honorable to Brazil, that the free Negro has full access to all privileges of any free citizen, rather tends to increase than to dimmish that number." After emancipation in Brazil in 1888, the already marked tendency toward this fusion of the slave and the master classes gradually increased.441