Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/404

 the moment caused future consequences to be wholly overlooked. Every means was made use of to get rid of this prohibition. Even Whitfield and Habersham, forgetful of their former scruples, strenuously pleaded with the trustees in favor of slavery, under the old pretense of propagating in that way the Christian religion. "Many of the poor slaves in America," wrote Habersham, "have already been made freemen of the heavenly Jerusalem." The Salzburgers for a long time had scruples, but were reassured by advice from Germany: "If you take slaves in faith, and with intent of conducting them to Christ, the action will not be a sin, but may prove a benediction." Thus, as usual, the religious sentiment and its most disinterested votaries were made tools of by avarice for the enslavement of mankind. Habersham, however, could hardly be included in this class. Having thrown off the missionary, and established a mercantile house at Savannah, the first, and for a long time the only one there, he was very anxious for exportable produce. The counselors of Georgia; — for the president was now so old as to be quite incapacitated for business — winked at violations of the law, and a considerable number of negroes had been already introduced from Carolina as hired servants, under indentures for life or a hundred years. The constant toast at Savannah was, "The one thing needful," by which was meant negroes. The leading men both at New Inverness and Ebenezer, who opposed the introduction of slavery, were traduced, threatened, and persecuted.

Thus beset, the trustees yielded at last, in 1150, on condition that all masters, under "a mulct of £5," should be obliged to compel their negroes "to attend at some time on the Lord's day for instruction in the Christian religion" — the origin, doubtless, of the peculiarly religious character of the negroes in and about Savannah.

By custom, or by statute, says Hildreth, whether legal or illegal, slavery existed as a fact in every one of the Anglo-American colonies. The soil and climate of New England made slaves of little value there except as domestic servants. In 1701, the town of Boston had instructed its representatives in the General Court to propose "putting a period to negroes being slaves." About the same time, Sewall, a judge of the Superior Court, aftewards chief-justice of Massachusetts, published "The Selling of Joseph," a pamphlet tending to a similar end. But these scruples seem to have been short-lived. With the increase of wealth and luxury, the number of slaves increased also. There were in Massachusetts in 1654, as appears by an official census, twenty-four hundred and forty-eight negro slaves over sixteen years of age, about a thousand of them in Boston — a greater proportion to the free inhabitants than is to be found at present in the city of Baltimore. Connecticut exceeded Massachusetts in the ratio of its slave population, and Rhode Island exceeded Connecticut. Newport, grown to be the second commercial town in New England, had a proportion of slaves larger than Boston. The harsh slave-laws in force in the more southern colonies were unknown, however, in New England. Slaves were regarded as possessing the same legal rights as apprentices; and masters, for abuse of their authority, were liable to indictment.