|
Chancellor William Harper of South Carolina
Comments on the Education of Slaves, 1852
Odium has been cast upon our legislation, on account of its
forbidding the elements of education to be communicated to
slaves. But, in truth, what injury is done to them by this? He
who works during the day with his hands, does not read in
intervals of leisure for his amusement, or the improvement of
his mind--or the exceptions are so very rare, as scarcely to
need the being provided for. Of the many slaves whom I have
known capable of reading, I have never known one to read
anything but the Bible, and this task they impose on themselves
as matter of duty.
Of all methods of religious instruction, however, this, of
reading for themselves, would be the most inefficient--their
comprehension is defective, and the employment is to them an
unusual and laborious one. There are but very few who do not
enjoy other means more effectual for religious instruction.
There is no place of worship opened for the white population,
from which they are excluded. I believe it a mistake, to say
that the instructions there given are not adapted to their
comprehension, or calculated to improve them. If they are given
as they ought to be--practically, and without pretension, and
are such as are generally intelligible to the free part of the
audience, comprehending all grades of intellectual
capacity,--they will not be unintelligible to slaves.
I doubt whether this be not better than instruction,
addressed specially to themselves--which they might look upon as
a device of the master's, to make them more obedient and
profitable to himself.. Their minds, generally, show a strong
religious tendency, and they are fond of assuming the office of
religious instructors to each other; and perhaps their religious
notions are not much more extravagant than those of a large
portion of the free population of our country. I am not sure
that there is a much smaller proportion of them, than of the
free population, who make some sort of religious profession. It
is certainly the master's interest that they should have proper
religious sentiments, and if he fails in his duty towards them,
we may be sure that the consequences will be visited not upon
them, but upon him.
If there were any chance of their elevating their rank and
condition in society, it might be matter of hardship, that they
should be debarred those rudiments of knowledge which open the
way to further attainments. But this they know cannot be, and
that further attainments would be useless to them. Of the evil
of this, I shall speak hereafter. A knowledge of reading,
writing, and the elements of arithmetic, is convenient and
important to the free laborer, who is the transactor of his own
affairs, and the guardian of his own interests--but of what use
would they he to the slave? These alone do not elevate the mind
of character, if such elevation were desirable
Pro-Slavery Arguments; As Maintained by the
Most Distinguished Writers of the Southern States, Containing
the Several Essays, on the Subject, of Chancellor Harper,
Governor Hammond, Sr. Simms, and professor Dew (Charleston:
Walker, Richards and Company, 1852), pp.36-38.
* * * *
*
|
|
William Harper Bio (1790-1847) |
William Harper (1790-1847, Class of 1808), first a lawyer, went on to
become a noted South Carolina judge and U.S. Senator. He was elected to
the lower house of the state legislature in 1828. That same year he was
elected a chancellor of the state and served until 1830, when he was
elected judge of the circuit court of appeals. He later resigned and
again became a chancellor, which he remained until his death.
Harper also served on the Board of Trustees of South Carolina
College.
The articulation of pro-slavery literature probably rests with South
Carolina Chancellor (or Chief Judge) William Harper, whose many
orations, legal decisions, and articles contributed immensely to the
legality of slavery in Southern culture.
* * * *
*
|
William
Harper's Apology (1837) |
|
Slavery was forced upon us by the most extremist
exigency of circumstances in a struggle for very existence. Without it,
it is doubtful whether a white man would now be existing on this
continent--certain that, if there were, they would be in a states of the
utmost destitution, weakness, and misery. I neither deprecate nor resent
the gift of slavery.
The Africans brought to us had been slaves in their
own country and only underwent a change of masters...that there are
great evils in a society where slavery exists, and that the institution
is liable to great abuse, I have already said. But the whole of human
life is a system of evils and compensations. The free laborer has few
real guarantees from society, while security is one of the compensations
of the slave's humble position. There have been fewer murders of slaves
than of parents, children, and apprentices in society where slavery does
not exist. The slave offers no temptation to the murderer, nor does he
really suffer injury from his master. Who but a driveling fanatic has
thought of the necessity of protecting domestic animals from the cruelty
of their owners?
...It is true that the slaved is driven to labor by
stripes (lashes); and if the object of punishment be to produce
obedience or reformation with the lest permanent inure, it is the best
method of punishment. Men claim that this intolerable. It is not
degrading to a slave, nor is tit felt to be so. Is it degrading to a
child?
Odium (hatred) has been cast upon our legislation on
account of its forbidding the elements of education to be communicated
to slaves. But in truth what injury has been done them by this? He who
works during the day with his hands does not read in intervals of
leisure for is amusement or the improvement of his mind--or the
exception is so rare as scarcely to need the being provided for. If
there were any chance of elevating their rank, the denial of the
rudiments of education might be a matter of hardship. But this they know
cannot be and that further attainments would be useless to them.
...Supposing finally that the abolitionists should
effect their purpose. What would be the result? The first and most
obvious effect would be to put an end to the cultivation of our great
Southern staple (cotton)...the cultivation of the great staple drops
cannot be carried on in any portion of our own country where there are
not slaves...Even if it were possible to procure laborers at all, what
planter would venture to carry on his operations? Imagine an extensive
rice or cotton plantation cultivated by free laborers who might perhaps
strike for an increase of wages at a season when the neglect of a few
days would insure the destruction of the whole crop. I need hardly say
that these staples cannot be produced to any extent where the proprietor
of the soil cultivates it with his own hands.
And what would be the effect of putting an end to the
cultivation of these staples and thus annihilating, at a blow,
two-thirds or three-fourths of our foreign commerce? Can any same mind
contemplate such a result without terror? Our slavery has not only given
existence to millions of slaves within our own territories; it has given
the means of subsistence, and therefore of existence to millions of free
men in our Confederate States, enabling them to send forth their swarms
to overspread the plains and forests of the West and appear as the
harbingers of civilization. Not only on our continent, but on the other
it has given existence (in textile mills) to hundreds of thousands and
the means of comfortable subsistence to millions. A distinguished
citizen of our state has lately stated that our great staple, cotton,
has contributed more than anything else of later times to the progress
of civilization. By enabling the poor to obtain cheap, and becoming
clothing, it has inspired a taste for comfort, the first stimulus to
civilization.
 |
Sources:
Chapter VI. "The Instruction of Negroes." In Edgar W.
Knight..
A Documentary History of Education in the South before 1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 1953
Chapter 10 "Up From Slavery: Educational and
other Rights of Negroes." In Edgar W. Knight and Clifton L. Hall. Readings
in American Educational History. New York Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Inc., 1951. Many states had laws prohibiting
the education of blacks; here black youngsters are turned away at the
school door |
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
 |
The Last Holiday: A Memoir
By Gil Scott Heron
Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng, Guardian |
* * * * *
|
Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost |
|
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update
10 January 2012
|
