The
Conclusion of the Suppression
of the American Slave Trade by W.E.B. DuBois |
How the Question Arose. We have followed a chapter of history which is of peculiar interest to the sociologist. Here was a rich new land, the wealth of which was to be had in return for ordinary manual labor. Had the country been conceived of as existing primarily for the benefit of its actual inhabitants, it might have waited for natural increase or immigration to supply the needed hands; but both Europe and the earlier colonists themselves regarded this land as existing chiefly for the benefit of Europe, and as designed to be exploited, as rapidly and ruthlessly as possible, of the boundless wealth of its resources. This was the primary excuse for the rise of the African slave-trade to America.
The Moral Movement.
For the solution of this problem there were, roughly speaking, three classes of
efforts made during this timemoral, political, and economic:
that is to say, efforts which sought directly to raise the moral standard
of the nation; efforts which sought to stop the trade by legal enactment;
and efforts which sought to neutralize the economic advantages of
the slave-trade. There is always a certain glamour about the idea
of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong.
Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very
existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very
place where extraordinary moral strength is called for. This was the
case in the early history of the colonies; and experience proved that
an appeal to moral rectitude was unheard in Carolina when rice had
become a great crop, and in Massachusetts when the rum-slave traffic
was paying a profit of 100%. That the various abolition societies
and anti-slavery movements did heroic work in rousing the national
conscience is certainly true; unfortunately, however, these movements
were weakest at the most critical times. When, in 1774 and 1804, the
material advantages of the slave-trade and the institution of slavery
were least, it seemed possible that moral suasion might accomplish
the abolition of both. A fatal spirit of temporizing, however, seized
the nation at these points; and although the slave-trade was, largely
for political reasons, forbidden, slavery was left untouched. Beyond
this point, as years rolled by, it was found well-nigh impossible
to rouse the moral sense of the nation. Even in the matter of enforcing
its own laws and cooperating with the civilized world, a lethargy
seized the country, and it did not awake until slavery was about to
destroy it. Even then, after a long and earnest crusade, the national
sense of right did not rise to the entire abolition of slavery. It
was only a peculiar and almost fortuitous commingling of moral, political,
and economic motives that eventually crushed African slavery and its
handmaid, the slave-trade in America....
The
Lesson for Americans. It may be doubted if ever before have such political
mistakes as the slavery compromises of the Constitutional Convention
had such serious results, and yet, by a succession of unexpected accidents,
still left a nation in position to work out its destiny. No American
can study the connection of slavery with United States history, and
not devoutly pray that his country may never have a similar social
problem to solve, until it shows more capacity for such work than
it has shown in the past. It is neither profitable nor in accordance
with scientific truth to consider that whatever the constitutional
fathers did was right, or that slavery was a plague sent from God
and fated to be eliminated in due time. We must face the fact that
this problem arose principally from the cupidity and carelessness
of our ancestors. It was the plain duty of the colonies to crush the
trade and the system in its infancy: they preferred to enrich themselves
on its profits. It was the plain duty of a Revolution based upon "Liberty"
to take steps toward the abolition of slavery: it preferred promises
to straightforward action. It was the plain duty of the Constitutional
Convention, in founding a new nation, to compromise with a threatening
social evil only in case its settlement would thereby be postponed
to a more favorable time: this was not the case in the slavery and
the slave-trade compromises; there never was a time in the history
of America when the system had a slighter economic, political, and
moral justification than in 1787; and yet with this real, existent,
growing evil before their eyes, a bargain largely of dollars and cents
was allowed to open the highway that led straight to the Civil War.
Moreover, it was due to exceptional philanthropy on the part of their
descendants that that result included the abolition of slavery....
With
the faith of the nation broken at the very outset, the system of slavery
untouched, and twenty years’ reprise given to the slave-trade to feed
and foster it, there began, with 1787, that system of bargaining,
truckling, and compromising with a moral, political, and economic
monstrosity, which makes the history of our dealing with slavery in
the first half of the nineteenth century so discreditable to a great
people. Each generation sought
to shift its load upon the next, and the burden rolled on, until a
generation came which was both too weak and too strong to bear it
longer. One cannot, to be
sure, demand of whole nations exceptional moral foresight and heroism;
but a certain hard commonsense in facing the complicated phenomena
of political life must be expected in every progressive people.
In some respects we as a nation seem to lack this; we have
the somewhat inchoate idea that we are not destined to be harassed
with great social questions, and that even if we are, and failed to
answer them, the fault is with the question and not with us.
Consequently, we often congratulate ourselves more
on getting rid of a problem than on solving it. Such an attitude is
dangerous; we have and shall have, as other peoples have had, critical,
momentous, and pressing questions to answer. The riddle of the Sphinx
may be postponed, it may be evasively answered now; sometime it must
be fully answered.
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