De l’influence de l’esclavage domestique sur les mœurs des maîtres et des esclaves dans les États-Un

CHAP. 9: > On the influence of domestic slavery on the morals of masters and slaves in the United States of America.

I have observed, in the second book of this work, that if one wishes to avoid numerous errors, one must distinguish between the power of which a law is composed and the description of a law's provisions. The elements of power that constitute a law are found in men or in things; they are facts whose existence anyone can verify by observation. The description of a law's provisions is the written statement of the material phenomenon that the law produces; this description may be incomplete, unfaithful, or entirely false. Sometimes the real phenomenon produced by the power we call law is less harmful than the one described; sometimes, on the contrary, the described phenomenon is less harmful than the real one. It is especially when judging the United States of America that it is important not to lose sight of this distinction; for nowhere is there a greater difference between the description of theories and the real state of society [168].

When the Anglo-Americans wished to fight for their independence, they felt the need to invoke principles of morality and justice that were favorable to the oppressed. They proclaimed, consequently, that all men are born free and equal, and that all have the right to resist oppression: these principles, which were necessary for them to justify their insurrection against the government of the mother country, became the foundation of most of the individual constitutions of the various States. But when the slaves, in their turn, wished to apply to their masters the principles that the latter had applied to the English government, the slaveholders found that these principles were not applicable. The slaves did not take up arms, like their masters, to make their maxims triumph: they appealed to the courts of justice to obtain their application. In the States where they were few in number, and where there was a large number of citizens who belonged neither to their class nor to that of the masters, they won their case, because they were judged by a neutral party. In the States, on the contrary, where nearly the entire population was divided into masters and slaves, the former being the judges, the latter were condemned. It was force, and not a philosophical description, that was the law [169].

Thus, although one finds in almost all the constitutions of the United States that all men are free and equal, and other similar maxims, one must not imagine that the real state of society is as it has been described by philosophers in the registers or books given the name of constitutions. These are false descriptions analogous to those I have spoken of elsewhere; they may be a source of pride for those who authored them or for those to whom they have been transmitted, but they have no influence on the fate of a large part of the population. The Anglo-Americans are divided into three very distinct classes, not counting those of the rich and the poor, the ignorant and the educated; these three classes are:

1. that of individuals of European race, born of free parents;
2. that of freedmen or their descendants born of Europeans and individuals of the Ethiopian race;
3. that of slaves. Each of them is in a position peculiar to itself.

European travelers, upon arriving in the United States, have been surprised to see that the real state of society did not correspond to the ideas they had formed of it by reading their declarations of principles; but, by examining the origin of these peoples and the circumstances in which they are placed, they have come to be convinced that they were wrong to have conceived overly optimistic hopes. "In frankly considering all these circumstances," says Fearon, "we should not be surprised to find that American theories are at least two centuries ahead of their practices [170]."

Two circumstances have contributed to establishing this discordance between a system that is the description of an imaginary social state, and the practice of the real state of society. When they formed their systems, the Americans considered themselves in their relations with the government of England by which they were oppressed. When they established their practices, they considered themselves in their mutual relations, and especially in their relations with the men of whom they were the oppressors, that is to say, with their slaves or the descendants of their slaves. On the other hand, the men who described the social state whose establishment they desired were philosophers more advanced than the population was; they consulted their own ideas far more than they consulted the social relations, prejudices, and habits of their compatriots. Now, it is these habits, these prejudices, and these relations that have made the law such as it exists [171].

I could have, in describing the moral effects that domestic slavery produces in the English colonies, explained those it produces in the United States of America, since these populations all have the same origin and were long subject to the same laws. But, for about half a century, there have been so many differences between the colonies subject to the English government and the republics of North America, that one could easily suppose that what is true for the one may not be true for the others. We will, moreover, have much better established the moral effects of slavery when we have explained what they are under all forms of government, and with all types of cultivation.

Domestic slavery once existed throughout almost the entire extent of the United States; but the number of slaves was not everywhere in the same proportion. In the northern States, they were few in number compared to the free men; there, they have been freed, and slavery has been declared illegal. In the southern States, on the contrary, the slaves were very numerous compared to the masters, and they have been kept in slavery, despite the declarations on the rights of man. All these States having adopted similar governments and principles, to what must we attribute the difference in their conduct? Must we think that the slaves of the north were more energetic men than the slaves of the south? Must we believe that the masters of the cold countries were more generous or less inclined to despotism than the masters of the hot countries? Neither of these two causes produced the phenomenon we observe here.

The slaves who existed in the northern States did not become free by their own strength: their freedom was restored to them without their having done anything to reclaim it. Nor was it by the generosity of their masters that they became free; it was by the action of men who belonged neither to the class of masters nor to that of slaves; these men, forming the most numerous part of the population, set all the rest in motion. In the southern States, there were almost no men who were not either slaves or masters; and the action of the one was paralyzed by that of the other. In America, as in all countries, the men who strive with the most energy for the destruction of slavery are not those who groan in servitude, and still less those who profit from domination; they are those who belong to neither of these two classes; those who have neither the cowardice, nor the brutishness, nor the ignorance of slaves, nor the pride, nor the idleness, nor the prejudices of masters.

We have previously seen that, in the part of the United States where slavery is established, it has the effect of debasing all industrial occupations; direct physical labor has become the exclusive lot of the slaves. The masters have considered worthy of them only the action of man upon other men; they have generally acted only as masters or as governors. Neither of these two kinds of action requires much physical exercise; the first does not demand great mental effort, nor sometimes does the second. Idleness has therefore been the lot of the Anglo-Americans of the south as well as that of the island colonists [172]. According to one traveler, a wealthy Virginia slaveholder's main occupation consists of satisfying his physical pleasures: eating, drinking, or sleeping are the only ways he knows how to employ his time. He rises for breakfast, then lies down on his bed and falls asleep. At noon, he drinks a kind of liquor; he dines at two or three o'clock, and after his meal, he goes back to bed. During his sleep, two slaves are employed to cool the air and to protect him from flies with a rush broom. Upon waking, he begins to drink again, and continues until evening, when he has supper [173]. A master and mistress, doing nothing for themselves and not even taking the trouble to care for their children, need a multitude of slaves, even when they do not enjoy a great fortune: some twenty are needed for the service of a house. Walking is a fatigue, especially for the women: thus, they do not go out on foot in any season of the year; the shortest errand is always made by carriage, and in this respect, their husbands are scarcely less lazy than they. The main diversion for the men is gambling, and sometimes hunting [174].

In Louisiana, where slaves are very numerous, the indolence and idleness of the women is extreme. They cannot bend down to pick up a scrap that has fallen from their nonchalant hands; they do not walk, says Robin, they drag themselves along; a slave must follow them, to spare them the fatigue of carrying their reticules. An excessive laziness is manifest even in their speech; their prosody is languid, their accents drawling; each syllable is prolonged as if an expiring voice were articulating its last sounds. One would say they regret not being able to cast upon their slaves the fatigue of thought and the labor of speech. Neither the novelty of objects nor unexpected events can draw them from their apathy; but if they experience a vexation, if their pride receives a slight wound, they awaken from their slumber and show in their vengeance the energy of despots [175].

The influence of slavery extends even to free persons who own no slaves, even to individuals of the working class; they are less enterprising, less robust, less enlightened, less fit to convert the wilderness into cultivated country, than are persons of the same class in the States where slavery is not permitted. The women of these latter States walk boldly before their wagons in their migrations; whereas in the countries where slaves exist, the farmers' wives go only on horseback, or drag themselves nonchalantly in the train of the baggage [176]. Thus, in these latter countries there is a much vaster expanse of uncultivated land than exists in the countries where slavery is abolished [177].

The Anglo-Americans, in their liaisons with their female slaves, are more reserved than are the English colonists; among them, opinion stigmatizes any individual who lives openly, not only with a female slave, but with a woman who bears any sign of African origin. But this severity of morals is more apparent than real; in the States where slavery is permitted, and particularly in Virginia, there exist multitudes of slaves who, by their color, betray the secret of their origin. The abuse that masters have made of their power in this regard has been such that a great number of slaves have lost even the shade that might have indicated their African origin [178]. The influence of slavery has extended even to the morals of a great number of ministers of religion; the proscription of the Jesuits not having reached the rich establishments that these religious had formed in some of these States, they have remained in possession of their lands and their female slaves. In a few generations, the descendants of these women, without ceasing to be slaves, have lost the features and color of the peoples of Africa, and have become as white as their masters [179].

In the State of Louisiana, liaisons between men of the master class and women of the slave class are not proscribed by opinion, as they are among the Anglo-Americans; thus, white men, married or single, openly associate with women of this class; this licentiousness of morals extends even into the countryside. For their part, the masters' wives encourage the prostitution of their female slaves with white men, either so that they might give them children of a finer kind, or to avoid the expense of their upkeep, or even to share in the profits of their trade. "Indulgence increases for female slaves," says Robin, "according to how well they can do without the master's help; the lady of the house, who is usually in charge of this care, sees from her apartment the lovers coming and going from her negress's quarters, and at night she is just as obliging in facilitating their entry. These are the same morals we observed at the Cape of Good Hope [180].

The abuse of force on female slaves influences the judgment that the public makes regarding the conduct of free women. Prostitution is not a vice that is stigmatized with the same severity as it is in most of the States of Europe. A woman who has publicly given herself over to it easily finds a position as a domestic servant, or even a husband if she so desires [181]. Such is the influence of slavery that, in the words of a philosophical traveler, where it is established, all moral dangers are common [182].The passion for gambling, which almost always develops in idleness along with the passion for physical enjoyments, has been carried to excess in the States where slaves have been most numerous. Attempts have been made to repress it by acts of the legislature; but, after having decreed penalties against gamblers, the legislators and magistrates were the first to mock their own decrees [183]. Gangs of slaves have sometimes been seen to form the stake of a bet at a horse race, passing for entire days from one group of drunken gamblers to another [184]. The slaveholders of the United States show, with regard to most of their slaves, the same vices we have observed in the English colonies. Not cultivating sugar cane, they do not need to demand the same labors of them; but, that aside, it is the same avarice, the same fears, the same cruelty, and the same pride. If they treat a certain number of their slaves a little better, it is because they themselves reside in the country, whereas the English possessors habitually reside in the mother country. A man can display his luxury in the slaves who populate the interior of his house, as in the horses he harnesses to his carriage. A rich American slaveholder sometimes does, in fact, insist on seeing around him only slaves who are well-fed and well-clothed [185]. They are living proof of his luxury and opulence; they are the measure of the consideration and respect he expects from his fellow citizens.

But the slaves who are attached to cultivation are treated differently, whatever the wealth of the individual to whom they are subject. The huts in which they are housed are formed of unsquared tree trunks, so poorly joined together that, during the night, the light spreads outside as if through a lantern. The furniture consists of a few crude wooden utensils: as for beds, slaves are supposed never to need them, and they sleep on the earth, or on a few dry leaves; those who belong to the most humane masters obtain, beyond what the others have, only a poor blanket. In the bad season, when the wind and rain pass through the tree trunks of which their miserable dwellings are formed, they have no other means of protecting themselves from the cold and damp during the night than to keep the fire constantly lit. Their food is analogous to their dwelling: they are distributed a little rice, corn, and dried fish; the masters have calculated the lowest price at which it is possible to sustain human existence, and the food they have granted them has been only the result of this calculation [186].

Slaves can be punished for two different causes: for not having conformed to the will or caprices of their possessors, or for having violated the police regulations to which they are subject. In the first case, it is the offended master or his delegate who himself determines the measure of the punishment; in the second, it is a police officer. The master does not have unlimited power over his slave: he is forbidden to kill him, under penalty of a fine of about one hundred pounds sterling if the homicide is premeditated, and under penalty of a fine of about fifty pounds sterling if the homicide is voluntary, but without premeditation. A fine of fourteen pounds is imposed on any slaveholder who, in punishing a man, woman, or child otherwise than by blows of the whip, rods, or straps, cuts out their tongue, their limbs, or inflicts other tortures upon them. The possessor whose slave has been crippled or cruelly beaten is presumed to be the author of the contravention, unless he affirms the contrary under oath [187]. Punishments are so common and so severe, even in the cities, that the cracking of whips and the cries of the victims do not even attract the attention of passers-by, and it is not rare to see slaves who kill themselves [188].

The penchant for cruelty that the exercise of arbitrary power gives to those who possess it is fortified by the fear that the despair of their victims inspires in them. To compel to work men from whom the fruit of it is ceaselessly snatched, one is obliged to resort to punishments; and, to prevent the vengeance that these punishments inspire the desire for, one is forced to resort to new cruelties. The Anglo-Americans have not yet been able to imagine other means of containing the enslaved population than brutification, division, and terror.

It is expressly forbidden for any slaveholder to develop the intellectual faculties of the individuals he possesses as property. He who was convicted of teaching one of his slaves to write would be punished with a fine seven times greater than the one he would incur for cutting off their hands or tongue. In the latter case, he would be condemned only to a fine of fourteen pounds; in the former, he would incur one of a hundred [189]. It is equally forbidden for any slaveholder to let them engage in any kind of trade for their own account, such a license being fit only to inspire in them a taste for liberty [190].

All assembly is forbidden to enslaved men; an individual of the master race who finds more than seven slaves together on a main road is required to administer blows of the whip to them, on the bare back, though he is not permitted to exceed the number of twenty blows for each. No individual of the slave race or of mixed blood may appear in the streets after nightfall without special permission. Delinquents, free or slave, are taken away by a military police that constantly patrols the streets, and punishes according to the circumstances [191]. A slave, unless he is blind or crippled, cannot appear in public with a cane or a stick, under penalty of twenty-five lashes; if he is attacked, he is forbidden to defend himself. The penalty of twenty-five lashes is inflicted on one who is found sleeping, without written permission, in a place that belongs neither to his possessor, nor to the one by whom he is immediately employed [192]. These precautions are not enough to reassure the masters; they believe themselves constantly threatened by an insurrection, and are usually armed with daggers [193]. The masters of Louisiana live in continual alarm; they are always spying, listening at the negroes' huts. The slightest veiled remark, a few more marked liaisons, redouble their fears and their espionage; during the night, they themselves conduct frequent patrols [194].

The act by which the Americans fixed the fines imposed on masters who slaughter their slaves, and on those who mutilate them otherwise than by blows of the whip, rods, and straps, declares, moreover, in the most formal manner, that cruelty is not only condemnable in men who call themselves Christians, but that it is odious in the eyes of all men who have any sentiment of virtue and humanity [195]. This kind of hypocrisy is not rare in countries where slaves exist: I will soon have occasion to cite other examples of it.

The continual violence committed upon enslaved individuals, whether in the interior of families or by police officers, depraves, almost from their birth, the individuals who belong to the master race. The existence of slavery among us, says an American philosopher, must doubtless have a baneful influence on the morals of the people. The only commerce that exists between a master and his slave is a continual exercise of the most violent passions: on one side, the most inflexible despotism; on the other, the most degrading submission. Our children witness these relations, and they learn to imitate them. The parent flies into a rage; the child watches him; he seizes each of the features of anger, assumes the same airs among the young slaves, and abandons himself to the most odious passions. Thus, nurtured, raised, and continually exercised in tyranny, he cannot but bear its characteristics. The man who, in the midst of such circumstances, can preserve gentle manners and pure morals, must be considered a prodigy [196].

The habit of arbitrariness and violence toward the enslaved population makes the masters violent, vindictive, and cruel toward one another. Quarrels are frequent among them; they usually end in a duel, and it is rare that one of the two combatants is not struck dead. Those that take place between men belonging to the lower ranks of society also have a degree of violence that they rarely have in countries where domestic slavery is unknown. The combatants, in their fury, seek to mutilate one another, to carry off one another's nose, to tear out one another's eyes or ears. The stronger of the two treats the weaker as a slave; and, in effect, there is no other difference between masters and slaves than force. Liberty and equality reign wherever this difference disappears [197].

Pride has always been, in all countries, one of the salient features of any aristocracy; and, as the division of the population into masters and slaves is the highest degree of the aristocratic system, nowhere is human pride more exalted than in countries where the laboring part of the population is considered the property of the idle who live off the products of its labor.

Enslaved persons are treated, in the United States, with as much contempt as the vilest objects; they are sold at the market like beasts. The trade in this kind of merchandise is no less honored than any other. The men, women, and children, exposed for sale, are stripped naked, and examined with the care one brings to the examination of a horse one wishes to acquire. Their mouths are forced open to examine their teeth; it is verified that they have good sight; they are turned over and over to see if they might not have some hidden defect. The women of the master race go themselves to this market to buy the individuals they need, and themselves perform, so as not to be deceived, all the verifications customary in such a circumstance; they do not even seem to be aware of the laws of modesty. In these sales, no regard is had for family ties: the husband is sold separately from the wife, the children separately from their mother, according as the convenience of the seller and the buyer demands [198].

The contempt that the men of the master race heap upon the slaves spreads to all individuals who carry in their veins a drop of the blood of the enslaved race. The slightest tint that announces that a person counts among his ancestors an individual of the Ethiopian species is enough to have him treated with the most profound contempt, on the part of the vilest man who cannot be reproached for such a stain. Even in the States where slavery is proscribed, the pride of whites, with regard to persons who have some tint of color, is as exalted as it can be. The purest morals, the most extensive and varied knowledge, the most upright judgment, the most active industry, the most honorably acquired wealth, cannot redeem the crime of being linked by blood to an oppressed race. Any person guilty of this crime is excluded without distinction from all places where individuals belonging to the race of oppressors gather. In theaters, persons of this caste are relegated to a particular gallery; they dare not even show themselves in the temples beside the whites who profess the same religion as they; if they wish to fulfill the duties prescribed by their faith, they must have churches built that are their own. A man who devotes himself by trade to rendering some kind of personal service must choose between the two castes; he who rendered a service to a person of color would, by that very fact, lose the custom he would have in the caste of whites. A white man, condemned for his crimes, would not eat at the table where a man of color was seated; in prisons, there must be a table for the criminals of each color. Finally, although acts of legislature proclaim indiscriminately that all men are equal, there are States where a man who otherwise fulfilled all the conditions required to be a citizen would not believe he could safely present himself in an assembly to exercise its rights, if he bore the slightest mark of African origin. Here again there is an immense difference between the powers that govern society, and the false descriptions to which the name of laws is given [199].

In the States where a great number of slaves exist, esteem being almost exclusively attached to the aristocracy of color, a white woman cannot lose status by the most vicious conduct, nor consequently lose anything of her pride; but also a woman who bears on her complexion the slightest nuance of African blood, however virtuous she may be, cannot emerge from her abasement. The wives of the masters of Louisiana are so proud of the nobility of their skin that it is difficult for us to form an idea of their pride.

"One of these," says Robin, "married and known for intrigues with men in high places, enters a grand ball one day. 'There is mixed blood here,' she cries out superbly. This remark runs through the ball; two quadroon young ladies are indeed noticed there, esteemed for the excellent education they had received, and even more for their decent conduct. They are warned, and they are obliged to slip away in haste, before the impudent woman whose society would have been for them a true defilement [200]."

The influence of slavery on the morals of the master class is not confined to the States where a great number of slaves exist; it is felt throughout the entire extent of the Union. The existence of slavery in the United States, says a traveler, produces the most perceptible effect on the national character; it gives brutality to the minds of the inhabitants of the south and west; it lowers the tone of sentiments of rectitude and humanity in all parts of the country, and contributes in an imperceptible manner to establishing the immense difference that exists between theory and practice [201].

Individuals born and raised in servitude have, in the United States, the morals they have in all countries. Kept in brutishness by the pride of the masters, having neither the means nor the desire to become educated, obliged to forbid themselves any exercise that would result in increasing their skill and their power, constrained to suffer injury and violence, knowing no authority that protects them, and defense being forbidden to them, most of their moral sentiments are extinguished or degraded; one cannot conceive what moral quality could be their own, unless it be the patience to suffer the vices of their masters.

The man who, for the first time, perceives a slave, says an English traveler, experiences a painful sensation; he sees before him a being for whom the laws of humanity are overturned, who has known of society only its injustices, who has experienced from his fellow men only a hard and atrocious egoism. The grovelling humility, the servile expressions with which a black man approaches a white man, strike the senses, not like the politeness of a French or Italian peasant, which gives grace to poverty, but with the indication of a broken soul. The sound of the whip is felt in the accents of his submission; his eye, which avoids mine, has drawn its fear from the gazes of the man under whom he works. Habit prevents the inhabitants of the country from making similar observations; and one must not hope that objects one has constantly before one's eyes will produce the same effect they cause when one observes them for the first time. But the individual who, seeing a slave for the first time in his life, looks at him with the same indifference as any other object that chance makes him encounter, may rejoice in the good fortune he has had to be born free, but in the depths of his soul he is a slave. As a moral being, he is even far beneath the black man; for, if the latter has lost the sentiment of liberty, it is through the tyranny that has been made to weigh upon him, and not through an insensibility that is natural to him [202].The moral effects of slavery in the United States of America, therefore, differ very little from what they are in the colonies subject to the English government. It must be said, however, that the slaves there are, in general, less poorly fed, less overwhelmed with fatigue, and treated with less cruelty: what proves this is the growth of the enslaved population. But, if they experience less harsh treatment, it must be attributed neither to the nature of slavery, nor to the nature of the government; it must be attributed to accidental circumstances. The first is a difference in the nature of the soil and consequently of the cultivation; the commodities that the Americans cultivate require less forced labor, and have a lesser value than those that are cultivated in Jamaica or in Guiana; the slaves who cultivate rice are burdened with less labor and are less poorly fed than those who cultivate sugar; those who cultivate wheat, like those of Russia or Poland, are obliged to work less, and are better fed than those who cultivate rice; finally, those who are assigned to guard herds, like those of the Arabs, are nearly on the same level as the masters.

The second circumstance that influences the effects of slavery is the residence of the masters on their properties; the best-treated slaves are always those who are attached to the personal service of the master's family. In our States of Europe, the lackeys who swarm in the houses of the great work less and are better housed, better clothed, and better fed than the workers who cultivate the land; in countries where slavery is admitted, the difference is greater still between the slaves attached to cultivation and those who are attached to the service of the house. But the proprietors of the English colonies almost all reside in the mother country; so that it is English servants who enjoy the advantages of domesticity, advantages which, among the Anglo-Americans of the south, are the share of the slaves.

Finally, the third circumstance that influences the effects of slavery is the action of the States that have proscribed it on those that have preserved it. This action, which is continuous, is all the stronger as the former are more numerous, more enlightened, more industrious, and richer. England, it is true, also acts upon its colonies to temper the effects of slavery; but the action it exercises has been felt only for a small number of years; and this action is partly paralyzed by the distance of the colonies, by the influence that the slave-owners exercise in the mother country, and by the nature of its government [203].