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INSTRUCTOR LITERATURE SERIES




The Story of Slavery


_By Booker T. Washington_
President of Tuskegee Institute; author of
"Up From Slavery," Etc.

_With Biographical Sketch_


PUBLISHED JOINTLY BY
F. A. OWEN PUB. CO., DANSVILLE, N. Y.

HALL & McCREARY, CHICAGO, ILL.


COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
F. A. OWEN PUBLISHING CO.




_The Story of Slavery_




BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

BY EMMETT J. SCOTT


Booker T. Washington, the author of the following sketch of slavery in
America, was himself born a slave, and the story of his life begins
where "The Story of Slavery" leaves off. He was born about 1858 or 1859
on a plantation near Hales Ford, Va., about twenty-five miles east of
the city of Roanoke, in a region which, now almost deserted, was in
slavery days a flourishing tobacco country. A few years ago he was
invited to speak at the annual fair at Roanoke, and took advantage of
the opportunity to drive out to the old plantation to visit again the
scene of his childhood. He met there several members of the Burroughs
family to which he had formerly belonged, and with them he went through
the old Burroughs house, which is standing, and talked over the old
days.

It was while he was living there that he was awakened one morning to
find his mother kneeling on the earth floor of the little cabin in which
they lived, praying that "Lincoln and his armies might be successful and
that one day she and her children might be free." It was here a little
later on, as he tells us in the book, "Up From Slavery," in which he has
related the story of his life, that he heard the announcement that he
and all the other slaves were free.

"I recall," he says, "that some man who seemed to be a stranger and who
was undoubtedly a United States official, made a little speech and then
read a rather long paper--the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After
the reading we were told that we were all free and could go where we
pleased.

"My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her
children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us
what it all meant; that this was the day for which she had so long been
praying, but fearing she would never live to see.

"For some minutes," he continues, "there was great rejoicing, and
thanksgiving and wild scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of
bitterness. In fact, there was pity among the slaves for our former
owners. The wild rejoicing of the emancipated <DW52> people lasted but
a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their
cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of
being free, of having charge of themselves and their children, of having
to plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of
them. To some it seemed, now that they were in actual possession of it,
freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find.
Gradually one by one, stealthily at first, the older slaves began to
wander back to the 'big house' to have whispered conversations with
their former owners as to their future."

Thus it was that freedom came to Washington and so it came, perhaps, to
some three and one-half millions of others on their plantations
throughout the South.

Shortly after the "surrender," as the Southern people say, young
Washington made a long journey across the mountains with his mother to
West Virginia where his stepfather was then living, and it was in Malden
he grew up to young manhood. Malden is situated in the mining region of
West Virginia, and after a time young Washington went to work in the
mines. It was while he was working down in the coal mines of West
Virginia that he one day overheard one of the miners reading from a
paper concerning a school at Hampton, Virginia, where a <DW64> in earnest
would be given a chance to work his way through school. He determined at
once that he would seek out and find that school. So it was that a few
months later he set out afoot across the mountain in the direction of
Richmond to find his way to Hampton Institute. In his remarkable
biography he has described how he made that journey; how he arrived
hungry and penniless in the city of Richmond; how he slept for several
nights under the sidewalk in Richmond until he was able to earn enough
money to reach the famous school of which he had read.

In this same biography he has told, also, of how the teacher in charge,
who was very doubtful about admitting him at first, finally, in place of
asking him any questions about what he had learned in school, set him to
work sweeping and dusting the schoolroom.

"I swept that recitation room three times," he said, "then I got a
dusting cloth and I dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the
walls, every bench, table and desk, I went over four times with my
dusting cloth. I had the feeling that my future depended upon the way I
dusted that room."

When he had finished the teacher came and looked very critically over
the results of his work. Then she said: "I guess you will do," and that
was his entrance examination. This rather peculiar entrance examination
illustrates the spirit of the institution in which Booker Washington
gained his first forward preparation for life.

At the time that young Washington entered Hampton Institute, General
Armstrong, the founder of the school, was engaged in a great and
interesting experiment. His purpose was to create a school which would
give the sons of the freedmen education in character as well as in
books. Booker Washington saw that this education was the thing above all
others that the masses of the <DW64> people needed at this time, and
realized better than any other of the graduates of the institution the
significance and bearing of the work that General Armstrong was trying
to do. He made up his mind then that he would go out into some part of
the South and establish a school which would do for other members of his
race what Hampton had done for him. His opportunity came when a call
came to Hampton for a man to take charge of a school at Tuskegee,
Alabama. It was thus in 1881 that the famous Tuskegee Institute came to
be started.

This school, which was started on July 4, 1881, in a little shanty
church, with one teacher and thirty students, has grown until it now has
a student body of 1600, with 165 teachers and officers, 103 buildings
and property to the value of $1,500,000.

In 1895 Mr. Washington was invited to speak at the Atlanta Cotton States
Exposition on <DW64>s Day. In that speech he made an appeal for peace
between the races, and formulated a program for mutual cooperation
between black and white which has been the basis of all his efforts
since that time.

From that time on his fame has grown steadily, both in this country and
abroad. In 1896 Harvard University conferred upon him the honorary
degree of Master of Arts for service in the education of his race. He
has received numerous other honors since that time and has spoken in
every state of the Union in favor of <DW64> education. A few years ago
when he went abroad he was invited to dinner by the King of Denmark. In
April, 1912, there was held under his leadership at Tuskegee an
international conference on the <DW64> to which representatives came from
many parts of Africa as well as the West Indies and South America. The
result of this was a plan to form a permanent international organization
to study the <DW64> problem in all parts of the world and hold meetings
triennially.

Mr. Washington is the author of several books in addition to his
autobiography, "Up From Slavery," which has been translated into every
civilized language in the world, including Japanese.

The most noted of these books are, "Working with the Hands," "The Story
of the <DW64>," in two volumes, "My Larger Education," and "The Man
Farthest Down," which is a record of a journey of observation and study
of the working and peasant peoples of Europe.

[Illustration: Booker T. Washington]

The Story of Slavery




I


It was one hot summer's day in the month of August 1619, as the story
goes, that a Dutch man-of-war entered the mouth of the James River, in
what is now the State of Virginia, and, coming in with the tide, dropped
anchor opposite the little settlement of Jamestown. Ships were rare
enough to be remembered in that day, even when there was nothing
especially remarkable about them, as there was about this one. But this
particular ship was so interesting at the time, and so important because
of what followed in the wake of its coming, that it has not been
forgotten to this day. The reason for this is that it brought the first
slaves to the first English settlement in the New World. It is with the
coming of these first African slaves to Jamestown that the story of
slavery, so far as our own country is concerned, begins.

Although the coming of the first slave ship to what is now the United
States is still remembered, the name of the ship and almost everything
else concerning the vessel and its strange merchandise has been
forgotten. Almost all that is known about it is told in the diary of
John Rolfe, who will be remembered as the man who married the Indian
girl, Pocahontas. He says, "A Dutch man-of-war that sold us twenty
Negars came to Jamestown late in August, 1619." An old record has
preserved some of the names of those first twenty slaves, and from other
sources it is known that the ship sailed from Flushing, Holland. But
that is almost all that is definitely known about the first slave ship
and the first slaves that were brought from Africa to the United States.

The first slaves landed in Virginia were not, by any means, the first
slaves that were brought to the New World. Fifty years before Columbus
landed on the island of San Salvador, the first African slaves were
brought from the West Coast of Africa to Spain, and we know from
historical references and records that <DW64> slavery had become firmly
established in Spain before Columbus made his first voyage. It was,
therefore, natural enough that the Spanish explorers and adventurers,
following close upon the heels of Columbus in search of gold, should
bring their <DW64> servants with them.

It seems likely, from all that we can learn, that a few <DW64>s were
sent out to the West Indies as early as 1501, only eleven years after
the discovery of America and one hundred and twenty years before the
first cargo of slaves was landed in Jamestown. Four years later, in a
letter dated September 15, 1505, written by King Ferdinand to one of his
officials in Hispaniola, which we now call Hayti, he says among other
things: "I will send you more <DW64> slaves as you request. I think there
be an hundred."

Thus early was <DW64> slavery introduced into the New World and what do
you suppose was the reason, or rather the excuse, for bringing black men
to America at this time?

It was to save from slavery the native Indians. A good priest by the
name of Las Casas, who accompanied the first Spanish explorers and
conquerors, found that the native people, the Indians, were fast dying
out under the cruel tasks put upon them by their Spanish conquerors.
Unaccustomed to labor, they could not endure the hardships of working in
the mines. The <DW64>s, on the contrary, had, in many cases, been slaves
in their own country, and had been accustomed to labor. At the same time
it was said that one <DW64> could do the work of four Indians. So it was
that this good man, out of pity for the enslaved Americans, proposed
that the black people of Africa should be brought over to take their
places.

Thus the traffic in African slaves began, and in the course of the next
three hundred years many millions of black people were carried across
the ocean and settled in slave colonies in the New World. They were
brought to America, first of all, to work in the mines, and afterwards
more of them were brought to do the almost equally difficult pioneer
work on the plantations. Thus, in all hard labor of clearing and
draining the land, building roads and opening up the New World to
cultivation and to civilization, the black man did his part.

It has been estimated that no less than 12,000,000 slaves were
transplanted from Africa to America to supply the demand for labor in
the West Indies, in South America and in the United States, during the
centuries that the white people of Europe were seeking to establish
their civilization in the Western World.

Perhaps as many as 12,000,000 more, who were taken in the wars and raids
in Africa, died on the way to the coast, or in the terrible "middle
passage," as the journey from the coast of Africa to that of America was
called. Many of those captured and sold in Africa, who did not die on
the high seas in the crowded and stifling hold of the ships into which
they were thrust, did not survive what was known as the "seasoning
process," after they were landed in America.

Roughly speaking, it is safe to say that not less than 24,000,000 human
beings were snatched from their homes in Africa and sold into slavery,
to help in building up the world in which we live today in America.

Although African slavery was introduced into America at first in order
to save from extinction the native people of the West Indies, who were
not strong enough to endure the hardships of slavery, it is sad to
recall that the slavery of the <DW64> did not serve to preserve the
Indian, for it was but a comparatively few years after the Spaniards
landed in the West Indies before nearly all the native tribes had been
swept away. There are today in the West Indies only a few remnants of
the Indians whom Columbus met when he first landed in America.

The black man, on the other hand, in spite of the hardships he has
endured, has not only survived but has greatly increased in numbers. So
greatly has the black man increased that in the West Indies today the
black population far outnumbers all other races represented among the
inhabitants. Altogether, it is estimated there are now about 24,591,000
<DW64>s in North and South America and the West Indies. Of this number
10,000,000 are in the United States.




II


The story of the first American voyage to Africa to obtain slaves of
which there is any definite record, is that of a certain Captain Smith,
commanding the ship, Rainbowe, and sailing from Boston. Captain Smith
had sailed to Madeira with a cargo of salt fish and staves and, on the
way home, he touched on the coast of Guinea for slaves. There happened
to be very few slaves for sale at the moment and on this account,
Captain Smith, together with the masters of some London slave ships
already on the ground, conspired together to pick a quarrel with some of
the natives, so as to have an excuse to attack their village and carry
off the prisoners made as slaves. Captain Smith's share of the booty was
two slaves with whom he returned to Boston.

It happened, however, that when he reached home he got into a quarrel
with the ship's owners over the proceeds of the voyage, and, in the
lawsuits which resulted, the story of the manner in which the slaves
were obtained was told in court. Thereupon one of the magistrates
charged Captain Smith with a "threefold offence--murder, man-stealing
and Sabboth breaking." He was acquitted of all three charges on the
ground that these crimes were committed in Africa, but, as a result of
the trial, the slaves were returned to their homes.

This story is interesting, for one reason because it shows that, in the
early days of the slave trade, the barter and sale of <DW64> slaves, so
long as it was conducted in an honest and orderly way, according to the
accepted customs and manners of trade, was not considered a wrong or
wicked business.

At first the slave traders purchased slaves only from the native chiefs.
These slaves were generally prisoners who had been taken in the tribal
wars. In some cases they were men or women who had been sold for debt.
There were, also, other ways in which one black man in Africa might hold
another in slavery.

Very soon, however, the ordinary sources of supply of slaves was not
sufficient to meet the demand of the American trade. Then traders became
less scrupulous. They began buying from any one who had a man or woman
for sale. This encouraged kidnapping. Not infrequently the man who
brought a gang of slaves to the coast to be sold would himself be
kidnapped and sold by other men before he could return home. Sometimes
the traders, after they had purchased a gang or a "coffle" of slaves, as
they were called, would invite the traders on board ship in order to
entertain them. Then, after they were under the influence of liquor,
they would put chains upon them and carry them away with the very slaves
the traders themselves a few hours before had sold.

As time went on, and the demand for slave labor increased, the men
engaged in this cruel traffic became hardened to its cruelty and the
West Coast of Africa became one vast hunting ground. Men and women were
tracked and hunted as if they were wild beasts. It grew so bad at length
that the conscience of the civilized world was aroused. Then, one by
one, the nations of the world began to prohibit the traffic. England,
which had formerly been one of the nations most deeply involved in this
evil business, now became the leader in the attempt to put a stop to it.

The importation of slaves was prohibited in the United States in 1808,
but that did not put an end to the importation of slaves.