Slavery
the state or condition of a slave, bondage. Slavery in the full sense of the term implies that the slave is the property or at the disposal of another, who has a right to employ or treat him as he pleases; but the system has been subjected to innumerable limitations and modifications. Slavery probably arose at an early period of the world's history out of the accident of capture in war. Savages, in place of massacring their captives, found it more profitable to keep them in servitude. All the ancient Oriental nations of whom we have any records, including the Jews, had their slaves. The Hebrews were authorized by their law to possess slaves, not only of other races, but of their own nation. The latter were generally insolvent debtors who had sold themselves through poverty, or thieves who lacked the means of making restitution; and the law dealt with them far more leniently than with stranger slaves.
They might be redeemed, and if not redeemed became free in the space of seven years from the beginning of their servitude; besides which there was every 50th year a general emancipation of native slaves.
Serfdom. A numerous class of the population of Europe known as serfs or villeins were in a state of what was almost tantamount to slavery during the early Middle Ages. In some cases this serf population consisted of an earlier race which had been subjugated by the conquerors; but there were also instances of persons from famine or other pressing cause, selling themselves into slavery, or even surrendering themselves to churches and monasteries for the sake of the beneits to be derived from the prayers of heir masters. Different as was the conlition of the serf in different countries Ind at different periods, his position was n the whole much more favorable than hat of the slave under the Roman law.
He had certain acknowledged rightsnd this was more particularly the case with the classes of serfs who were atached to the soil. In England, prior to SLAVERY the Norman Conquest, a large proportion of the population were in a servile position, either as domestic slaves or as cultivators of the land. The humblest was nearly a slave the theow; the other, the ceorl, an irremovable tiller of the ground.
In Scotland as in England serfdom disappeared by insensible degrees; but a remarkable form of it continued to survive down to the closing years of the 18th century. Colliers and salters were bound by the law, independent of paction, on entering to a coal work or salt mine, to perpetual service there; and in case of sale or alienation of the ground on which the works were situated, the right to their services passed without any express grant to the purchaser. The sons of the collier and salter could follow no occupation but that of their father.
Negro Slavery. - This form existed from the earliest times; the Carthaginians seem to have broug slaves from various parts of north Afbrought caravans of rica; but in this the negroes suffered no ans. more than other contemporary barbari- The negro slavery of modern times was a sequel to the discovery of America.
The first part of the New World in which negroes were extensively used was Haiti, in St. Domingo. The aboriginal population had at first been employed in the mines; but this sort of labor was found so fatal to their constitution that Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, the celebrated protector of the Indians, interceded with Charles for the substitution of African slaves as a stronger race. early as the beginning of the 16th century As a good many Africans were already in Hispaniola; the emperor accordingly in 1517 authorized a large importation of negroes from the establishments of the Portuguese on the coast of Guinea. Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman who engaged in the traffic, in which his countrymen soon largely participated, England having exported no fewer than 300,000 slaves from Africa between the years 1680 and 1700; and between 1700 and 1786 imported 610,000 into Jamaica alone. Most of the English slaving ships belonged first to Bristol, and from 1730 onward to Liverpool.
The slave trade was attended with extreme inhumanity. Legal restraints were, however, imposed in the various European settlements to protect the slaves from injury; protect ; in the British colonies courts were instituted to hear their complaints; their condition was to a certain extent ameliorated, and the flogging of women was prohibited. But while slavery was thus legalized in the British colonies, it was at the same time the law of England (as decided in 1772 by Lord Mansfield in the case of the negro Somerset) SLAVERY that as soon as a slave set his foot on English soil he became free; though, if he returned to his master's country, he could be reclaimed.
In 1787 a society for the suppression of the slave trade was formed in London, numbering Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp among its original members. The most active parliamentary leader in the cause was William Wilberforce, and Zachary Macauley was one of its most zealous friends. The Quakers were the only religious body who as such petitioned the House of Commons on the subject.
The United States abolished the slave trade immediately after Great Britain (1808), and the same was in the course of time done by the South American republics of Venezuela, Chile and Argentina, by Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and, during the Hundred Days Days after Napoleon's return from Elba, by France. Great Britain, at the peace, exerted her influence to induce other foreign powers to adopt a similar policy; and eventually nearly all the states of Europe have passed laws or entered into treaties prohibiting the traffic. The accession of Portugal and Spain to the principle of abolition was obtained by treaties of date 1815 and 1817; and by a convention concluded with Brazil in 1826 it was declared piratical for the subjects of that country to be engaged in the slave trade after 1830. By the conventions with France of 1831 and 1833, to which nearly all the maritime powers of Europe have since acceded, a mutual right of search was stipulated within certain seas, for the purpose of suppressing this traffic.
The provisions of these treaties were further extended in 1841 by the Quintuple Treaty between the five great European powers, subsequently ratified by all of them except France. The Ashburton treaty of 1842 with the United States provided for the maintenance by each country of a squadron on the African coast; and in 1845 a joint co-operation of the naval forces of England and France was substituted for the mutual right of search.
The steps that hindered or prepared the way for the final abolition of slavery in the United States in 1861-1865 are part of the history of the country. Here it may be noted that in 1800 there were in the United States 893,041 slaves; that Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey emancipated their slaves before 1840, most of them by gradual measures. The average value of slaves was about this period stated at $600.
The 3,953,760 slaves at the census of 1860 were in what were known as the SLAVS Southern States. Eminent leaders of public opinion from the earliest period of the national existence-such as Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Hamilton-regarded slavery as a great evil and inconsistent with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. The Society of Friends uniformly opposed slavery and agitated against it. The Presbyterian Church made six formal declarations against it between 1787 and 1836.
Mohammedanism recognizes the institution; Mohammed's own precepts insist on the kindly usage of the slave; and Moslem slavery is mainly domestic slavery, household slaves being on the whole well treated. But there is no more awful chapter in the history of human callousness and human misery than the story of the slave trade as carried on by "Arab" or Moslem slave traders. The main regions from which slaves were procured for the Moslem East were, or still are, the Sudan proper, the Egyptian Sudan, or Valley of the Upper Nile, Somaliland, and the borders of the Portuguese East African territory. English and other men-of-war were long employed in capturing slave dhows on the E. coast. In 1869 the Egyptian Khedive Ismail gave Sir Samuel Baker large powers for the suppression of the slave trade, a crusade carried on by Gordon Pasha. The Sultan of Zanzibar signed a treaty for the suppression of the trade in 1873.
By occupying Caucasia, Russia stopped an important supply for the Turkish harems; it also closed the slave markets of Khiva and Bokhara, and by crushing the Turkomans (Tekkes and others) freed at once 40,000 slaves. Cardinal Lavigerie, who became Archbishop Archbishop of Algiers in 1867, made the suppression of the slave trade and slavery his life work, and secured the help of many zealous fellow workers, men and women. In 1890 an international conference including Turkey, Persia, Zanzibar and the United States formulated an act for the purpose of repressing the slave trade. Slavery, except among semi-barbarous peoples, is now non-existent.