The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920

During the Revolutionary War, the British commanders, Sir Henry Clinton in particular, had made it a point to invite the slaves to the British line and many had accepted the invitation. No few of these refugees were of material service to the British troops in various ways both menial and otherwise. At the peace Washington demanded the return of these quondam slaves.543 Sir Guy Carleton refused but made a careful inventory of them with full description, name, former master, etc., so that Washington might claim compensation from the British Government, if he saw fit.544 In addition to these slaves somewhere about 3,000 freed Negroes accompanied the British troops on their withdrawal from New York, nearly all coming to Nova Scotia. Many of these after suffering great hardships were sent to Sierra Leone on the West Coast of Africa in 1792. Some remained in the province where their descendants are found until this day; but not in any very great numbers. The Loyalists, however, retained their property in their own slaves; and immigration was encouraged by the Act of 1790.545

The trade in Negroes was very brisk for some years. For example, on June 24, 1783, the Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Chronicle advertised for sale a Negro woman, "25 years of age, a good house servant." On December 11, 1783, Captain Alexander Campbell late of the South Carolina Loyalists sold to Captain Thomas Green late of the Royal Nova Scotia Foot a Negro woman named Nancy for £40. Nancy two years later was sold by Green to Abraham Forst of Halifax and a year later still with her child Tom to Gregory Townsend.

A shipment was made by John Wentworth from Halifax to Surinam, Dutch Guiana, of nineteen Negro slaves, "all American born or well seasoned … perfectly stout, healthy, sober, orderly, industrious and obedient." These, said he, "I have had christened and would rather have liberated them than send them to any estate that I am not sure of their being treated with care and humanity which I shall consider as the only favour that can be done to me on this occasion" by his correspondent.546

On October 29, 1787, John Rapalje, a Royalist, sent from Brookligne (Brookland or Brooklyn Ferry) to George Leonard by desire of his (R's) father a Negro woman named Eve about 35 years and her child named Suke about 15 to sell as he himself cannot go to Nova Scotia. Eve was one of the best servants "perfectly sober, honest" and the only fault she had was her near sight.

The records show occasional manumission also. In 1784 the inventory of the estate of John Porter late of Cornwallis, a Negro man is valued at £80. That same year Charles Montague of Halifax says: "I have only one Negro, named Francis; he is to have his freedom." In May 1787, Margaret Murray, widow of Halifax by her will manumitted her two Negro women Marianne and Flora; and (when he was 21) her Negro boy Brutus. From the records of a trial at Shelburne, in a magistrate's court in 1788 it appears that one Jesse Gray of Argyle had sold a Negro woman for 100 bushels of potatoes. At a trial the ownership by Gray was proved and the sale confirmed.

We now come to the times of a Chief Justice whose heart was set on destroying slavery in the province of Nova Scotia, therein wholly differing from the Chief Justice of New Brunswick, George Duncan Ludlow, who had received his appointment on the separation of that province in 1784. The forward-looking jurist was Thomas Andrew Strange who became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1791.547 The same impulse for liberty which about this time was noted in the upper country manifested itself from time to time by the sea. Slaves ran away from their masters; the masters pursued and imprisoned them. Some blacks claimed freedom without fleeing. When a writ of habeas corpus came up in the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Strange did his best to avoid giving a decision. He knew that slavery was lawful but he knew it was detestable and he pursued a course which did not require him to stultify himself but which would nevertheless confer substantial benefits upon the black claiming liberty.

He endeavored in every case to bring the parties to an agreement to sign articles whereby the master would have the services of the Negro for a stated time, after the expiration of which the Negro received his freedom. When the master refused this, as sometimes there was a refusal, the Chief Justice required the matter to be tried by a jury, which usually found for the Negro.548

The practice adopted was like the practice in cases of alleged villenage in England. It was recognized that slavery might exist in Nova Scotia, but it was made as difficult as possible for the master to succeed on the facts. Except the act already mentioned there was no statute recognizing slavery and an attempt in 1787 to incorporate such a recognition in the statute law failed of success by a large majority. The existing act, too, was given what seems a very forced and unnatural interpretation so as to emasculate it of any authority in that regard.

Salter Sampson Blowers, the Attorney General, fully agreed with the Chief Justice's plan. On one occasion he threatened to prosecute a person for sending a Negro out of the province against his will.549 The Negro managed to get back and the master acknowledged his right, so that no proceedings were necessary. After a number of verdicts for the alleged slaves, masters were generally very willing to enter into articles whereby the slave after serving faithfully for a fixed number of years was given his freedom.

After Blowers became Chief Justice, 1797,550 he continued Chief Justice Strange's practice with marked results. In one case of which he tells where he had discharged a black woman from the Annapolis gaol on habeas corpus and an action had been brought, the plaintiff proved that he had bought her in New York; but the Chief Justice held that he had not proved the right of the seller so to dispose of her and directed the jury to find for the defendant which they promptly did.

Slavery continued, however. Almost every year we find records of sales, advertisements for runaway slaves, bequests of slaves, &c., till almost the end of the first decade of the 19th century, the latest known bill of sale is dated March 21, 1807 and transfers a "Negro Woman named Nelly of the age of twenty five or thereabout." It was, however, decadent and from about the beginning of the 19th century was quite as much to the advantage of the Negro in many cases as that of the master.

A final effort to legalize slavery in Nova Scotia was made in 1808. Mr. Warwick, member for Digby Township, presented a petition from John Taylor and other slave owners setting up that the doubts entertained by the courts rendered their property useless and that the slaves were deserting and defying their masters. They asked for an act securing them their property or indemnifying them for their loss. Thomas Ritchie member for Annapolis introduced a bill to regulate Negro servants within the province. The bill passed its second reading January 11, 1808, but failed to become law; and the attempt was never renewed.

New Brunswick was separated from Nova Scotia in 1784. The Chief Justice of that province was not as averse from slavery as his brother of Nova Scotia. One of the most interesting and celebrated cases came before the Supreme Court of New Brunswick in Hilary Term, February 1800. Captain Stair Agnew who had been an officer in the Queen's Rangers settled opposite Fredericton. He was a man much thought of as is shown by his being chosen for thirty years to represent York County in the Legislature. He owned a slave Nancy Morton551 who claimed her freedom and whom apparently he had put in charge of one Caleb Jones. A writ of habeas corpus was obtained directed to Jones and the matter was arranged to be argued before the full court of four judges. For the applicant appeared Ward Chipman552 and Samuel Denny Street for the master, Jonathan Bliss, Attorney General of the province, Thomas Wetmore, John Murray Bliss, Charles J. Peters and Witham Botsford, all men of ability and eminence. On the Bench were Chief Justice Ludlow and Puisne Justices Allen, Upham and Saunders.

The addresses of the Attorney-General and Mr. Chipman are extant. The former divided his speech into thirty-two heads; the latter took eighty pages of foolscap for his. The arguments were extremely able and exhaustive,553 everything in history, morals and decided cases being brought to bear. The case took two full days to argue and after careful consideration the court divided equally, the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Upham affirming the right of the master and Mr. Justice Allan and Mr. Justice Saunders held for the alleged slave.

The return of Jones to the writ was that Nancy "was at the time of her birth and ever since hath been a female Negro slave or servant for life born of an African Negro slave and before the removal of the said Caleb Jones from Mary Land to New Brunswick was and became by purchase the lawful and proper Negro slave or servant for life of him the said Caleb Jones …, that the said Caleb Jones in the year of our Lord 1785 brought and imported the said … Nancy his Negro slave or servant for life into the Province of New Brunswick … and has always hitherto held the said … Nancy as his proper Negro slave or servant for life … or by laws he has good right and authority to do...."554

The Chief Justice based his opinion on what he called the "Common Law of the Colonies"—and although that expression was ridiculed at the time and has been since, there is no difficulty in understanding it. He meant custom recognized as law not contained in an express legislative enactment. In that sense a modern lawyer will agree that he was right. Practically all the English colonies had slavery thoroughly recognized and often without or before legislation; and all the well known legal maxims asserted the cogency of such custom.555 Mr. Justice Allen considered that no human power could justify slavery—and his brother Saunders agreed with him. It would seem that these judges were concerned with what the law should be, the others with what it actually was.556

In the result the return was held sufficient and the master had his slave. But the decision of the divided court had its effect. Agnew reconveyed Nancy to William Bailey from whom he had bought her and she bound herself to serve for fifteen years, then to receive her freedom.557 The result of this case was that while slavery was not formally abolished, it before many years practically ceased to exist.558

Prince Edward Island was called Isle St. Jean until 1798. In this island slavery had the same history as in the other maritime provinces. Shortly after the peace Negro slaves were brought into the Island by their United Empire Loyalist masters. As late as 1802 we find recorded the sale of "a Mulatto boy three years old called Simon" for £20, Halifax currency, then £18 sterling, and a gift of "one Mulatto girl about five years of age named Catherine." We also find Governor Fanning (1786-1804), freeing his two slaves and giving one of them, Shepherd, a farm.

In Cape Breton which was separate from 1784 to 1820, Negro slaves were found as early as the former date: "Cesar Augustus, a slave and Darius Snider, black folks, married 4th September 1788," "Diana Bestian a Negro girl belonging to Abraham Cuyler Esq" was buried September 15, 1792 and a Negro slave was killed in 1791 by a blow from a spade when trying to force his way into a public ball in Sydney.559 In this province, too, slavery met the same fate.

There is now to be mentioned an interesting series of circumstances.560 During the War of 1812-15 the British navy occupied many bays and rivers in United States territory and in some cases troops were landed where there was a slave population. These forces came into possession of many slaves, mostly voluntary fugitives, some seduced and some taken by violence from their masters. Admiral Cochrane in April 1814 issued a proclamation inviting all those who might be disposed to emigrate from the United States for the purpose of becoming free settlers in some of "His Majesty's Colonies" to come with their families on board of the British men of war and offering them the choice of joining the British forces or being sent as free settlers to a British possession. He did not say "slaves" but no one could mistake the meaning.561 Negroes came in droves. Some were taken to the Bahamas and the Bermudas where their descendants are to be found until this day; many were taken to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.562

When the Treaty of Peace was concluded at Ghent, December 24, 1814 the United States did not forget the slaves who had got away from the home of liberty. Article 1 provided for the delivery up of all places taken by either party without carrying away any property captured "or any slaves or other private property." The United States demanded the restoration of "all slaves and other private property which may now be in possession of the forces of His Britannic Majesty." The British officers refused to surrender the slaves contending that the real meaning of the treaty did not cover the case. At length in 1818 a convention was entered into that it should be left to the Emperor of Russia563 to decide whether the United States by the true intent of Article 1 was entitled to the restitution or full compensation for the slaves.

In 1822 the Emperor decided in favor of the United States. Thereupon the next year (1824) a mixed commission of two commissioners and two arbitrators determined the average value to be allowed as compensation;564 for slaves taken from Louisiana $580: from Alabama Georgia and South Carolina, $390; from Virginia, Maryland and all other States $280.

The commissioners adjourned for the purpose of enabling evidence to be obtained as to the numbers. Clay submitted to the British Government that 3601 slaves had been taken away but was willing for a settlement to accept the price of 1650. Britain declined, but the commissioners failed to agree and finally by diplomacy in 1827 Britain agreed to pay £250,000 or $1,204,960 in full for slaves and other property. Thus Britain assured the freedom of more than 3,000 slaves and paid for them, a fitting prelude to the great Act of 1833 whereby she freed 800,000 slaves and paid £20,000,000 for the privilege.565

CHAPTER VIII

General Observations

The curse of Negro slavery affected the whole English speaking world; and that part of the world where it was commercially profitable resisted its abolition. The British part of this world does not need to assert any higher sense of justice and right than had those who lived in the Northern States; and it may well be that had Negro slave service been as profitable in Canada as in the Cotton States, the heinousness of the sin might not have been more manifest here than there. Nevertheless we must not too much minimize the real merit of those who sought the destruction of slavery. Slaves did not pay so well in Canada as in Georgia, but they paid.

It is interesting to note the various ways in which slavery was met and finally destroyed. In Upper Canada, the existing slaves, 1793, remained slaves but all those born thereafter were free, subject to certain conditions of service. There was a statutory recognition of the existing status and provision for its destruction in the afterborn. This continued slavery though it much mitigated its severity and secured its downfall in time. But there were slaves in Upper Canada when the Imperial Act of 1833 came in force. The Act of 1793 was admittedly but a compromise measure; and beneficial as it was it was a paltering with sin.

In Lower Canada, there was no legislation, and slavery was never formally abolished until the Imperial Act of 1833; but the courts decided in effect if not in form that a master had no rights over his slave, and that is tantamount to saying that where there is no master there is no slave. The reasoning in these cases as in the Somerset case may not recommend itself to the lawyer but the effect is undoubtedly, "Slaves cannot live in Lower Canada."

In Nova Scotia, there was no decision that slavery did not exist. Indeed the course of procedure presupposed that it did exist, but the courts were astute to find means of making it all but impossible for the alleged master to succeed; and slavery disappeared accordingly.

In New Brunswick the decision by a divided court was in favor of the master; but juries were of the same calibre and sentiments in New Brunswick as in Nova Scotia and the same results were to be anticipated, if Nova Scotian means were used; and the slave owners gave way.

In the old land, judicial decision destroyed slavery on the British domain; but conscience and sense of justice and right impelled its destruction elsewhere by statute; and the same sense of justice and right impelled the Parliament of Great Britain to recompense the owners for their property thus destroyed. If there be any more altruistic act of any people in any age of the world's history I have failed to hear or read of it.

In the United States, slavery was abolished as a war measure. Lincoln hating slavery as he did would never have abolished it, had he not considered it a useful war measure. No compensation was paid, of course.566 Everywhere slavery was doomed and in one way or another it has met a deserved fate.

William Renwick Riddell

Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario,

Osgood Hall, Toronto,

February 5, 1920

BOOK REVIEWS

Africa and the Discovery of America. Volume I. By Leo Wiener, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Innes & Sons, Philadelphia, Pa., 1920. Pp. i-xix, 1-290.

The present volume is the first of a series in which Professor Wiener will show that Arabicised Negroes, chiefly Mandingoes, brought to America as slaves, profoundly influenced the culture of the Indians, and were an important, if not always direct factor in establishing the modus vivendi between the Indians and the Europeans, which made practicable the colonization of the New World.

The book is packed with valuable data, newly discovered, and brought together for the first time. It should be read slowly, and read through at least twice before judgment is passed on it. With the first reading comes a shock. One learns that the Journal of the First Voyage, and the First Letter of Columbus are literary frauds, though containing material which came from Columbus's own pen, and that tobacco, manioc, yams, sweet potatoes and peanuts are not gifts of the Indian to the European. Yet with a more intimate study of the subject matter, the conviction increases that the author has built upon the bed-rock of fact, and that his position is unassailable.

It is impossible, within the limits of a review, to do more than to emphasise the most important of his discoveries. In his studies of the First Letter, and of the Journals giving account of the first and the second voyages of Columbus, Professor Wiener seeks to determine how much testimony they give pertaining to Indian names and things, after the elimination of all that is not Indian. The non-Indian elements are of two sorts; the names of the Islands, and the words for "gold," etc. Columbus, dominated by the fixed idea, that, sailing westward, he would find a short cut to India, China and Japan, began with the first sight of land, to be engrossed with the task of identifying each newly discovered country with some island or district of the Far East, named on his maps. He was an ignorant man, though he knew Ptolemy and Marco Polo by heart, credulous, uncritical, not consciously dishonest, but unready to correct false impressions caused by his ignorance and gullibility. His notes, as may be seen from a reproduction of a page of his manuscripts (facing p. 38), were in an execrable hand. The forger of the Journal of the First Voyage was no puzzle expert, and made mistakes in deciphering scrawls. Thus, for example, the note Giaua min., i.e., Java minor, was read Guanahin, the same destined to masquerade as Guanahani, the Indian name of the first island sighted on October 12, 1492.

Perhaps the best specimen of such ghost-words in the Journal is the name Carib. This is nothing but Marco Polo's Cambalu, the capital of the Grand Khan, successively misread as Canibal, Caniba, Cariba. So also, "canoe" is a ghost-word, traced to a misreading of scaphas as canoas in the manuscript, or the Gothic text of the Latin version of the First Letter. It is interesting to learn that maize, in the forms masa, maza, ultimately from Portuguese mararoca, is the African name for Guinea corn. The transference of the name from Guinea corn to Indian corn, "rests on a misunderstanding of a passage in Peter Martyr's First Decade" (p. 123).

The question arises whether or not there had been a colony of Europeans, with African slaves in America, before the arrival of Columbus.

Fray Ramon Pane, Oviedo, and Las Casas give conico as the Indian word for "farm, plantation." This is clearly the Mandingo kunke "farm." The Indian word for "golo," according to the Journal entry for January 13, 1493, is caona. It is found also in the name of Cacique Caonabo, called in the Journal of the Second Voyage "master of mines,"—the name being explained in the Libretto as "lord of the house of gold." Now the words for "gold" in the Negro languages are mostly derived from Arabic dinār, which, through Hausa zinaria, and Pul kanyera, reaches Vei as kani. Evidently canoa, written also guani, is nothing but this Vei word. In "Cacique Caonabo," we have three Mande words in juxtaposition. Cacique is not far removed from kuntigi, Soso kundzi, "chief,"—caona, that is kani, is "gold," and boi, from Arabic beii, bai, is "house." The chance that three such words should be identical in the dissimilar languages of Africa and America, is nil. The words are African, though represented as belonging to the spoken language of the New World. Moreover, Ramon Pane, in the account he wrote for Columbus of the Indian religion, gives as Indian words, the Mande toto, "frog," and the Malinke kobo, "bug." What is more important, he imputes to the Indians, a knowledge of the terrible West African itch, or craworaw, which he calls by the supposed Indian name caracaracol. The critic faces a dilemma. Either Ramon Pane lied, or he told the truth. Either he fabricated stories of Indians, which he drew from books or manuscript relations by Spanish and Portuguese traders, who were writing about Negroes in Africa, or there had been in Hispaniola, a pre-Columbian colony of European adventurers, with their African slaves, who taught the Indians the Negro words for "farm, gold, frog, bug, itch," etc., and also African folk-lore. No other hypothesis is possible.

The documentary and philological history of tobacco smoking and the cultivation of edible roots, shows additional convincing evidence of the influence of Africa on the culture of America in the colonial period. Columbus never saw the Indians smoking tobacco. According to the Journal of the First Voyage, on October 15, 1492, an Indian brought him a ball of earth and certain precious dried leaves. On November 16, two Spaniards reported that the Indians, carrying firebrands and leaves, used them to "take incense." In the Journal of the Second Voyage, Columbus (this part of the Journal is definitely ascribed to him by his son) writes of Indians spreading powder on a table, and sniffing it through a forked reed, thereby becoming intoxicated. Now the first account is suspiciously like a book-story of Oriental hashish-taking.—the second has no implication of smoking at all, while the third describes nothing but the process of taking a sternutatory. Indeed this last account is clearly based on a book account, in which there was a play on the Arabic words tubbāq "styptic" and tabaq "table." Ramon Pane, when he tells of Indians sniffing the powder, calls it caboba, a mere Italianisation of the Arabic qasabah "reed," transferring the name of the inhaler to the drug. Smoking tobacco through a forked reed of the sort described, has been proved by trial, to be impossible. As late as 1535, Oviedo is unable to tell a straightforward story of Indians smoking tobacco, but he adds the significant fact that the Negroes in the West Indies smoked and cultivated tobacco. Negroes, by the way were first allowed to come to America in 1501,—two years later, Ovando, the governor of Hispaniola complained that they joined with the Indians to make trouble. By 1545, "smoking had become fairly universal in America" (p. 127). It cannot be argued that half a century is too short a time for a new vice to become so widespread. Consider the case of banana culture. Oviedo says that the first bananas were introduced into America in 1516. Within twenty years, the fruit was universally cultivated, while the Spanish name platano has survived in a large number of derivatives in the Indian languages.