The record changer (Jan-Dec 1944)

The Record Changer, July 1944 Negro without any particular crime to his discredit: ". . . The Negro was tied to a tree and whipped with switches. When Souther' became fatigued with the labor of whipping, he called upon a Negro man of his and made him 'cob' Sam with a single. He also made a Negro woman of his help to 'cob' him. And, after 'cobbing' and whipping, he applied fire to the body of his slave, about his back, belly and private parts. He then caused him to be washed down with hot water in which pods of red pepper had been steeped. The Negro was also tied to a log, and to the bed-post, with ropes, which choked him, and he was kicked and stamped upon by Souther. This sort of punishment was continued and repeated until the Negro died under its affliction." Thus the mortality on the plantations soon became as high as that on the slave ships. Of 7,000 slaves sent to South Carolina between 1819 and 183 1, only 3,500 were still alive at the end of the twelve years.9 To prevent slaves from gaining enough knowledge to make resistance possible, laws were passed to forbid the teaching of any written language. In 18 16, Mexico ordered all literate Negroes to be killed; at once 600 of them were done to death. South Carolina sentenced literate Negroes to fifty strokes of the whip. Even in the North, literacy among Negroes was systematically kept below two per cent up to the time of the Civil War. Naturally, like everv healthy people, the Negroes rebelled against this sort of treatment instead of being kept from rebellion by it. The story of the "docile nigger" is as much of a myth as that other Southern fable of the well-meaning plantation patriarchy. Both stories are simultaneously denied by the hundred and thirty armed slave rebellions between 1670 and 1865. 10 Under the constant pressure of rebellion, the whole slave economy began to crumble. The New York revolt of 1672 "influenced Massachusetts to forbid further importation of slaves in 1 7 1 3 and led Pennsylvania, in August, 17 12, to place a high duty on slaves which effectively discouraged their importation." 11 The 1 740 Charleston revolt resulted in the prohibition law on the import of Africans which lasted until 1750. 12 "South Carolina itself passed laws in 1 740 for the purpose of lessening the danger. Slave importations were taxed and the funds so raised were designated for the importation of white Protestant settlers. At the same time, rather vague laws were passed, requiring better food and clothing for slaves and providing that they should not be worked over fourteen hours a day in winter or fifteen hours in summer." 13 From 1825 to 1832 there were slave revolts in Mexico which forced the Mexican Government in 1829 to abolish slavery. The result was that within a few months' time slave trading also dwindled across the border, in Virginia. Finally, in 1 83 1, the Nat Turner revolt followed and led to "an open and decisive break between the North and the South." 14 In the beginning, the slaves, asked to go to war against the North, fought poorly and sluggishly as soldiers will fight if they have nothing to fight for. The moment Congress declared all slaves in rebel territory to be free, the slaves deserted and immediately began to fight with almost miraculous valor on behalf of the North. Colonel T. W. Higginson declared that "it would have been madness to attempt with the bravest white troops what I successfully accomplished with the blacks." At the same time, the remaining Negroes in the South carried out a kind of primitive general strike, a gigantic sabotage, which finally broke the resistance of the slave-owning states. Lincoln himself said that but for the assistance given by the Negroes, the North might have lost. Yet, though the Civil War resulted in the abolition of slavery, it was not fought with that exclusive aim in mind. It was an economic struggle between the agricultural South and the industrial North, and — as in all economic struggles — the racial, religious and ideological issues were byproducts and not essentials of the battle. Thus the Negro problem in America, not unlike the Jewish problem in present-day Europe, was, and is, a sideline of the battle and not its main issue. Slavery requires the slaves to be ignorant so as to prevent them from trying to improve their status; ignorance will do for the primitive labor methods of agriculture on the plantation pattern, but it won't do for the higher needs of intelligence demanded by industrial labor. Thus, if industry was to find a labor supply, it had to break the plantation system and use the Negroes for its own needs. In order to educate them for their job, it had to abolish slavery. Thus slavery was abolished in the wake of an economic demand and not as result of some kindhearted abolitionist fancy. At the same time, the potential buying power of the freed Negro helped to increase the profits of the North's new consumer industries, and it was with this motive in mind that* many a stout businessman helped the 39