The Colored Regulars in the United States Army | Page 8

an American.
He was now a civilized slave, and had received his civilization from his
masters. He had separated himself very far from his brother slave in St.
Domingo. The Haytian Negro fought and won his freedom before he
had been civilized in slavery, and hence has never passed over the same
ground that his American fellow-servant has been compelled to
traverse.
Beside the slaves in the South, there were also several thousand "free
persons of color," as they were called, dwelling in such cities as
Richmond, Va., Charleston, S.C., and New Orleans, La. Some of these
had become quite wealthy and well-educated, forming a distinct class
of the population. They were called Creoles in Louisiana, and were
accorded certain privileges, although laws were carefully enacted to
keep alive the distinction between them and the whites. In Charleston
the so-called colored people set themselves up as a class, prided
themselves much upon their color and hair and in their sympathies
joined almost wholly with the master class. Representatives of their
class became slave-holders and were in full accord with the social
policy of the country. Nevertheless their presence was an
encouragement to the slave, and consequently was objected to by the
slave-holder. The free colored man became more and more disliked in
the South as the slave became more civilized. He was supposed by his

example to contribute to the discontent of the slave, and laws were
passed restricting his priveleges so as to induce him to leave. Between
1850 and 1860 this question reached a crisis and free colored people
from the South were to be seen taking up their homes in the Northern
States and in Canada. (Many of the people, especially from Charleston,
carried with them all their belittling prejudices, and after years of
sojourn under the sway of enlightened and liberal ideas, proved
themselves still incapable of learning the new way or forgetting the
old.)
There were, then, three very distinct classes of colored people in the
country, to wit: The slave in the South, the free colored people of the
South, and the free colored people of the North. These were also
sub-divided into several smaller classes. Slaves were divided into field
hands, house servants and city slaves. The free colored people of the
South had their classes based usually on color; the free colored people
of the North had their divisions caused by differences in religion,
differences as to place of birth, and numerous family conceits. So that
surveyed as a whole, it is extremely difficult to get anything like a
complete social map of these four millions as they existed at the
outbreak of the Civil War.
For a quarter of a century there had been a steady concentration of the
slave population within the cotton and cane-growing region, the
grain-growing States of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia having
become to a considerable extent breeding farms. Particularly was this
the case with the more intelligent and higher developed individual
slaves who appeared near the border line. The master felt that such
persons would soon make their escape by way of the "Underground
Railroad" or otherwise, and hence in order to prevent a total loss, would
follow the dictates of business prudence and sell his bright slave man to
Georgia. The Maryland or Virginia slave who showed suspicious
aspirations was usually checked by the threat, "I'll sell you to Georgia;"
and if the threat did not produce the desired reformation it was not long
before the ambitious slave found himself in the gang of that most
despised and most despicable of all creatures, the Georgia slave-trader.
Georgia and Canada were the two extremes of the slave's anticipation

during the last decade of his experience. These stood as his earthly
Heaven and Hell, the "Underground Railroad," with its agents,
conducting to one, and the odious slave-trader, driving men, women
and children, to the other. No Netherlander ever hated and feared the
devil more thoroughly than did the slaves of the border States hate and
fear these outrages on mankind, the kidnapping slave-traders of the
cotton and cane regions. I say kidnapping, for I have myself seen
persons in Georgia who had been kidnapped in Maryland. If the devil
was ever incarnate, I think it safe to look for him among those who
engaged in the slave-trade, whether in a foreign or domestic form.
Nothing is more striking in connection with the history of American
Slavery than the conduct of Great Britain on the same subject. So
inconsistent has this conduct been that it can be explained only by
regarding England as a conglomerate of two elements nearly equal in
strength, of directly opposite character, ruling alternately the affairs of
the nation. As a slave-trader and slave-holder England was perhaps
even worse than the United States. Under her rule