The Colored Regulars in the United States Army | Page 9

emancipation would have reached from seventeen to twenty millions, whereas the actual number emancipated was only 660,000. Had the blacks of the United States experienced the same treatment as did those of the British colonies, 1860 would have found among us less than 150,000 colored persons. In the United States were found ten colored persons for every slave imported, while in the British colonies only one was found for every three imported. Hence the claim that the American Negro is a new race, built up on this soil, rests upon an ample supply of facts. The American slave was born in our civilization, fed upon good American food, housed and clothed on a civilized plan, taught the arts and language of civilization, acquired necessarily ideas of law and liberty, and by 1860 was well on the road toward fitness for freedom. No lessons therefore drawn from the emancipation of British slaves in the West Indies are of any direct value to us, inasmuch as British slavery was not like American slavery, the British freedman was in no sense the equal of the American freedman, and the circumstances surrounding the emancipation of the British slave had nothing of the inspiring and ennobling character with those connected with the breaking of the American Negro's chains. Yet, superior as the American Negro was as a slave, he was very far below the standard of American citizenship as subsequent events conclusively proved. The best form of slavery, even though it may lead toward fitness for freedom, can never be regarded as a fit school in which to graduate citizens of so magnificent an empire as the United States.
The slave of 1860 was perhaps, all things considered, the best slave the world had ever seen, if we except those who served the Hebrews under the Mosaic statutes. While there was no such thing among them as legal marriage or legitimate childhood, yet slave "families" were recognized even on the auction block, and after emancipation legal family life was erected generally upon relationships which had been formed in slavery. Bishop Gaines, himself born a slave of slave parents, says: "The Negro had no civil rights under the codes of the Southern States. It was often the case, it is true, that the marriage ceremony was performed, and thousands of couples regarded it, and observed it as of binding force, and were as true to each other as if they had been lawfully married." * * * "The colored people generally," he says, "held their marriage (if such unauthorized union may be called marriage) sacred, even while they were slaves. Many instances will be recalled by the older people of the life-long fidelity which existed between the slave and his concubine" (Wife, T.G.S.)" ... the mother of his children. My own father and mother lived together over sixty years. I am the fourteenth child of that union, and I can truthfully affirm that no marriage, however made sacred by the sanction of law, was ever more congenial and beautiful. Thousands of like instances might be cited to the same effect. It will always be to the credit of the colored people that almost without exception, they adhered to their relations, illegal though they had been, and accepted gladly the new law which put the stamp of legitimacy upon their union and removed the brand of bastardy from the brows of their children."
Let us now sum up the qualifications that these people possessed in large degree, in order to determine their fitness for freedom, then so near at hand. They had acquired the English language, and the Christian religion, including the Christian idea of marriage, so entirely different in spirit and form from the African marriage. They had acquired the civilized methods of cooking their food, making and wearing clothes, sleeping in beds, and observing Sunday. They had acquired many of the useful arts and trades of civilization and had imbibed the tastes and feelings, to some extent, at least, of the country in which they lived. Becoming keen observers, shut out from books and newspapers, they listened attentively, learned more of law and politics than was generally supposed. They knew what the election of 1860 meant and were on tiptoe with expectation. Although the days of insurrection had passed and the slave of '59 was not ready to rise with the immortal John Brown, he had not lost his desire for freedom. The steady march of escaping slaves guided by the North star, with the refrain:
"I'm on my way to Canada, That cold but happy land; The dire effects of slavery I can no longer stand,"
proved that the desire to be free was becoming more extensive and absorbing as the slave advanced in intelligence.
It is necessary again to emphasize the fact that the American slaves were well