Читать книгу The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 - Various - Страница 12

American Negro Slavery. By Ulrich Bonnell Phillips. A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as determined by the Plantation Regime. D. Appleton and Company, New York and London, 1918. Pp. 529.

This book is both more and less than a history of slavery in America. It transcends the limit of the average treatise in this field in that it shows how the institution influenced the economic history of America in all its ramifications. It falls far short of being a complete history of slavery for the reason of the neglect of many aspects by the author. The book is successful as a compilation or digest of the sources of the history of slavery cast in the mind of a man of southern birth and northern environment in manhood.

The author furnishes adequate background for this work in tracing the slave trade, beginning with the exploitation of Guinea and proceeding to a detailed consideration of the maritime traffic. Slavery as it existed in the West Indies is portrayed in his account of the sugar industry. In the continental colonies it appears in his treatment of the tobacco industry, rice culture and the interests of the northern colonies. He shows how the struggle for the rights of man resulted in a sort of reaction against slavery in the North and the so-called prohibition of the African slave trade.

In his discussion of the introduction of cotton and the domestic slave trade, there are few facts which cannot be obtained from several standard works. His treatment of types of plantations, with reference to their management, labor, social aspects and tendencies, is more informing. The contrast between town and country slaves, the discussion of free Negroes, slave crime and the force of the law, do not give us very much that is new. On the whole, however, the book is a valuable piece of research giving a more intensive treatment of economic slavery than any other single volume hitherto published.

On the other hand, the book falls far short of giving a complete history of the institution of slavery. In the first place, the book is too much of a commercial account. The slaves are mentioned as representing both persons and property, but this treatise lacks proportion in that it deals primarily with the slaves as property in the cold-blooded fashion that the southerners usually bartered them away. Very little is said about the blacks themselves, seemingly to give more space to the history of the whites, who profited by their labor, just as one would in writing a history of the New England fisheries say very little about the species figuring in the industry, but more about the life of the people participating in it. It is evident that although a southerner, Mr. Phillips has lived so far from the Negroes that he knows less about them than those who have periodically come into contact with them but on certain occasions have given the blacks serious study. This is evidenced by Mr. Phillips' own statement when he says in his preface, that "a generation of freedom has wrought less transformation in the bulk of the blacks than might casually be supposed." This failure to understand what the Negroes have thought and felt and done, in other words, the failure to fathom the Negro mind, constitutes a defect of the work.

Another neglected aspect of the book is the failure of the author to treat adequately the anti-slavery movement. It was not necessary for him to give an extensive treatment of abolition but it is impossible to set forth exactly what the institution was without giving sufficient space to this attitude of a militant minority toward it. It was certainly proper for the author to say more about the northerners and southerners who arrayed themselves in opposition to the institution. In his chapter on the economic views of slavery this aspect was mentioned but not properly amplified. Some references to it elsewhere, of course, appear in parts of the book but, considering the importance of this phase of the history of slavery in America, one can say it has been decidedly neglected. The author, as he says in his preface, avoided "polemic writings, for their fuel went so much to heat that their light upon the living conditions is faint." It was not necessary also to avoid the controversy in which these writers participated. No one will gainsay the fact that persons who engage in controversy cannot be depended upon to tell the truth, but if the slavery dispute largely influenced the history of the country, it should have adequate treatment in a history of this kind.

John H. B. Latrobe and His Times. By John E. Semmes. The Norman, Remington Company, Baltimore, Maryland. Pp. 595. Price $6.00.

This is an extensive biography of a man born in Philadelphia and, after some adventures elsewhere, transplanted to Baltimore, where he became one of the first citizens of the land. His career as a cadet at West Point, his study and practice of law, his business interests, his travels and connections with learned and humanitarian societies all bespeak the many-sidedness of a useful citizen. The work contains a Latrobe genealogy and a topical index. It is well illustrated and exhibits evidences of much effort on the part of the author.

The part of the book most interesting to students of Negro history, however, is the chapter on African colonization, a subject which engaged the attention of Latrobe for many years and for which he became an influential promoter in serving as corresponding secretary of the Maryland Colonization Society and as president of the American Colonization Society. Although only one chapter of the book is devoted to this aspect of Mr. Latrobe's biography, it figured as largely in his life as any other public interest. He said: "I cannot now recall in order all that I did for it. It was the one thing then, and has ever been the one thing outside of my lawyer's calling, to which I have devoted myself." His biographer says that he spent about one quarter of his working hours during ten years of his life in advocating colonization. Dr. Daniel C. Gilman, President of Johns Hopkins University, said at a meeting of the Maryland Historical Society held in Latrobe's memory that "probably his greatest distinction outside of his professional life was acquired in promoting the cause of African colonization in ante-bellum days."

The author, however, instead of informing the reader as to what Latrobe did for colonization, laments the failure of this enterprise and endeavors to show that colonization or segregation in some form must be the solution of the Negro problem. In the chapter mentioned above he refers to this important work of Latrobe, not to set forth what he actually accomplished in this field, but to give the author's views. He proceeds to quote Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln, and finally Horace Grady and Bishop H. M. Turner on colonization, with a view to convincing the reader that although Mr. Latrobe's effort at colonizing the Negroes in Africa failed, it must eventually be brought about since the two races will not happily live together and then the great work of Latrobe will stand out as an achievement rather than as a failure. This branching off into opinion rather than into a scientific treatment of facts renders the biography incomplete so far as it concerns one of the larger aspects of Latrobe's life. The reader must, therefore, go to the papers of Latrobe to trace his connection with colonization with a view to determining exactly how largely this interest figured in the life of a successful lawyer and business man and the extent to which he interested the people throughout the country. The public will, therefore, welcome a more scholarly biography of J. H. B. Latrobe.

The Mulatto in The United States. By Edward Byron Reuter. Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, Boston, 1918. Pp. 417. Price $2.50 net.

This is the first work to deal especially with the people of color and will, therefore, attract some attention. It is chiefly valuable for the discussion which it will arouse rather than for the information given. It is an unscientific compilation of facts collected from a few sources by a man who has devoted some time to the study of the Negro but just about enough to misunderstand the race. His chief shortcoming consists in his misinformation. For scientific purposes the book has no value.

In the beginning of the work there is a discussion of mixed blood races in the old world, concluding with a treatment of the same in the West Indies and America. Considering the mulatto the key to the race problem in America, Mr. Reuter undertakes to show the extent of race mixture, its nature and growth. He discusses the intermarriage of the races, unlawful polygamy, intermarriage with Indians, intermixture during slavery and concubinage of black women with white men. He seems to know nothing of the numerous facts easily accessible in various works, which show that during slavery there was also a concubinage of white women with black men. In the next place, the author treats the Negro of today, depending mainly on a few unreliable sources of information such as the proceedings of certain Negro conventions, a Negro newspaper and the few books specially devoted to Negro history. In this it appears that he does not know that the chief sources of Negro history are not books bearing such titles, for the history of the race has not yet been written.

Mr. Reuter's conclusions are fundamentally wrong for the two reasons that he does not know who the mulattoes are and, although taking cognizance of the fact that science has uprooted the idea of racial inferiority, he is loath to abandon the contention that the mulatto is superior to the Negro. For example, in his chapter on leading men of the Negro race, in which he specifies whether they are blacks or mulattoes, he has classified as mulattoes a large number of Negroes who have practically no evidences of white blood and are commonly referred to throughout the country as the blacks of the Negro race. The title of the book, therefore, should not be The Mulatto but The Negro. It would then establish nothing as it does. Upon the careers of these black persons he has supported his theories as to the superiority of the mulatto. This encourages him, therefore, to intimate that because of their proximity to the racial characteristics of the white race they are in some respects superior to the blacks. Here we have the return of the ante-bellum proslavery philosopher disguised as a scientific investigator.

The Anti-Slavery Movement in Kentucky. By Asa Earl Martin, Assistant Professor of American History, The Pennsylvania State College. The Standard Printing Company of Louisville, Kentucky, 1918. Pp. 165.

In this volume there is an effort to bring out something new in the history of slavery. The author is mindful of the tendency of most writers of the history of slavery to direct their attention to the radical movements associated with the names of the leading abolitionists. His effort is to treat that neglected aspect of slavery having to do with the work of the gradual emancipationists. "These men, unlike the followers of Garrison, who were restricted to the free States," said he, "were found in all parts of the Union. They embraced great numbers of leaders in politics, business and education, and while far more numerous in the free than in the slave States, they nevertheless included a large and respectable element in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri." He has in mind here, of course, the conservative slaveholders of the border States who had for a number of years felt that slavery was an economic evil of which the country should rid itself gradually by systematic efforts. Feeling that they contributed in the end a great deal to the downfall of the regime and in some respects exercised as much influence as the abolitionists, he has undertaken to set their story before the world.

The author begins with the first attack upon slavery, the early anti-slavery movement in Kentucky, the colonizationist idea, the work of the anti-slavery societies, and the efforts of the church to exterminate the evil. In the eighth and ninth chapters he treats more seriously the main question at issue, namely, exactly how men of that slave-holding commonwealth persistently endeavored to find a more rational means of escaping the baneful effects of the institution. His important contribution, therefore, is that abolition found little favor in Kentucky while gradual emancipation moved the hearts of men of both parties and even of slave-holders. How the struggle between these pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties culminated in 1849 in the defeat of the latter, is the concluding portion of the book. He shows that Kentucky exceeded most of the border slave States in permitting the freer and more extensive discussion of that question than any of the other commonwealths similarly situated.

Professor Martin's work, therefore, is a complement of Dr. I. E. McDougle's Slavery in Kentucky. Whereas Professor Martin deals primarily with the work of the gradual emancipationists, Dr. I. E. McDougle directs his attention largely to some other aspects of the question. Both of these works may be read with profit. In them the whole question has been adequately discussed and there will not soon be a need for further investigation in this field.