Читать книгу The Gift of Black Folk & The Souls of Black Folk (New Edition) - W. E. B. Du Bois - Страница 10

The day is past when historians glory in war. Rather, with all thoughtful men, they deplore the barbarism of mankind which has made war so large a part of human history. As long, however, as there are powerful men who are determined to have their way by brute force, and as long as these men can compel or persuade enough of their group, nation or race to support them even to the limit of destruction, rape, theft and murder, just so long these men will and must be opposed by force—moral force if possible, physical force in the extreme. The world has undoubtedly come to the place where it defends reluctantly such defensive war, but has no words of excuse for offensive war, for the initiation of the program of physical force.

There is, however, one further consideration: the man in the ranks has usually little chance to decide whether the war is defensive or offensive, righteous or wrong. He is called upon to put life and limb in jeopardy. He responds, sometimes willingly with uplifted soul and high resolve, persuaded that he is under Divine command; some times by compulsion and by the iron of discipline. In all cases, he has by every nation been given credit; and certainly the man who voluntarily lays down his life for a cause which he has been led to believe is righteous deserves public esteem, although the world may weep at his ignorance and blindness.

From the beginning, America was involved in war because it was born in a day of war. First, there were wars, mostly of aggression but partly of self-defense, against the Indians. Then there was a series of wars which were but colonial echoes of European brawls. Next, the United States fought to make itself independent of the economic suzerainty of England. After that came the conquest of Mexico and the war for the Union, which resolved itself in a war against slavery, and finally the Spanish War and the Great World War.

In all these wars the Negro has taken part. He cannot be blamed for them so far as they were unrighteous wars (and some of them were unrighteous), because he was not a leader: he was, for the most part, a common soldier in the ranks and did what he was told. Yet in the majority of cases he was not compelled to fight. He used his own judgment and he fought because he believed that by fighting for America he would gain the respect of the land and personal and spiritual freedom. His problem as a soldier was always peculiar: no matter for what America fought and no matter for what her enemies fought, the American Negro always fought for his own freedom and for the self-respect of his race. What ever the cause of war, therefore, his cause was peculiarly just. He appears, therefore, in American wars always with double motive—the desire to oppose the so-called enemy of his country along with his fellow white citizens, and before that, the motive of deserving well of those citizens and securing justice for his folk. In this way, he appears in the earliest times fighting with the whites against the Indians as well as with the Indians against the whites, and throughout the history of the West Indies and Central America as well as the southern United States, we find here and there groups of Negroes fighting with the whites. For instance: in Louisiana early in the eighteenth century when Governor Perier took office, the colony was very much afraid of a combination between the Choctaw Indians and the fierce Banbara Negroes who had begun to make common cause with them. To offset this, Perier armed a band of slaves in 1729 and sent them against the Indians. He says: “The Negroes executed their mission with as much promptitude as secrecy.” Later, in 1730, the Governor sent twenty white men and six Negroes to carry am munition to the Illinois settlement up the Mississippi River. Perier says fifteen Negroes “in whose hands we had put weapons performed prodigies of valor. If the blacks did not cost so much and if their labor was not so necessary to the colony it would be better to turn them into soldiers and to dismiss those we have who are so bad and so cowardly that they seem to have been manufactured purposely for this colony.” But this policy of using the Negroes against the Indians led the Indians to retaliate and seek alliance with the blacks and in August, 1730, the Natchez Indians and the Chickshaws conspired with the Negroes to revolt. The head of the revolt, Samba, with eight of his confederates, was executed before the conspiracy came to a head. In 1733, when Governor Bienville returned to power, he had an army consisting of 544 white men and 45 Negroes, the latter with free black officers.³⁷

In the colonial wars, which distracted America during the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, the Negro took comparatively small part because the institution of slavery was becoming more settled and the masters were afraid to let their slaves fight. Notwithstanding this, there were black Freedmen who voted and were enrolled in the militia and went to war, while some masters sent their slaves as laborers and servants. As early as 1652 a law of Massachu setts as to the militia required “Negro, Scotch men and Indians” to enroll in the militia. After ward the policy was changed and Negroes and Indians were excluded, but Negroes often acted as sentinels at meeting-house doors. At other times slaves ran away and enlisted as soldiers or as sailors, thus often gaining their liberty. The New York Gazette in 1760 advertises for a slave who is suspected of having enlisted “in the provincial service.” In 1763 the Boston Evening Post was looking for a Negro who “was a soldier last summer.” One mulatto in 1746 is advertised for in the Pennsylvania Gazette. He had threatened to go to the French and Indians and fight for them. And in the Maryland Gazette, 1755, gentlemen are warned that their slaves may run away to the French and Indians.³⁸