When Columbus and the first Spaniards came, it was inevitable that Africans should be with them. But since there was no intention then of using them on a vast scale, only a few were brought in 1502. Since there were plenty of Indians, why bring in other labor? But as was said, Indian labor soon proved unsatisfactory.
The use of Negroes came about thus: Good Bishop Las Casas (1474-1566) seeing the Indians dying under the tasks imposed on them, suggested the Africans instead—a step that has made Las Casas go down in history as the father of the African slave trade. He lived to regret it bitterly. He said in his old age that had he known its consequences, “he wouldn’t have done it for the world.”6
Orders came to use Negroes instead. Herrera de Tordesillas (1559-1625) says “they were more useful. The work of one Negro was equal to that of four Indians.”7 That order was issued again ten years later. Africans became such a necessity that in 1540, when Charles V ordered their liberation, the command was ignored. Herrera tells of their great vitality as compared with the Indian. “They flourished in the Spanish Isles so well,” he says, “that they were thought to be nearly immortal as for some time no one had seen one die except by hanging. Like oranges they seemed to have found their natural soil.”8
The labor of the Africans now became the most important single factor in the development of the New World. On them fell the crude work. And more than a little of the skilled one. Some had brought with them their ancient skills in metals, weaving, carving and agriculture. And as a colony grew, so grew the call for them. Nations fought one another on the high seas to seize their cargo of Africans. The Dutch counted heavily on such captures for their colony of New Netherland (New York).
Louisiana Historical Quarterly quotes Dixon, an official of 1722,” It is absolutely necessary to send a great many Negroes here … Just as the islands of American were established by Negro slaves Louisiana will never be established until a sufficient number of them is sent.” (Vol. 1-3, p. 101. 1917-18)
Planters would say, “Negroes are the lifeblood of the plantations. Without them we could not exist.” Southern planters, quoting the Bible, called Africans “the one thing needful.” Others said, “They are the sinews and strength of the Western world; the lack of them, the great obstruction.” Peter Stuyvesant, Dutch governor of New York, said, “Everything is by God’s blessing in good condition and in consequence of the employment of Negro slaves.” Cotton Mather, New England divine, when presented with a Negro slave, said in his diary, December 13, 1706, that it was “a mighty smile from Heaven upon my family.” In 1724, Virginia petitioned the King to let them have more Negroes, they being especially needed for the settlement of two new counties.9 Patrick Henry declared that while he would not and could not justify slavery, he found Negroes a necessity. “I am drawn along,” he said, “by the general inconvencience of living without them.”10 In his address to the Virginia Convention, June 24, 1788, he deplored “the necessity of holding his fellow-men in bondage” but that “their manumission is incompatible with the felicity of the country.11 Thomas Jefferson and other humane slaveholders said much the same. James Parton, writing of the Negroes in the 1770’s, said, they were indispensable. “What a debt we owe to the jolly, amiable, indispensable Negro,”12 he said.
Georgia is a striking example of a colony that couldn’t get along without the African. Named for George II, it was founded in 1732 as a refuge for persecuted Protestants, the poor, and the unfortunate, among them some who had run afoul of the law. The first colonists, some 2,000 in number were pricipally English, German Lutherans, Italians, Swiss, Portuguese and Jews. Two of the principal conditions were no African slaves and no rum. One of its leaders, John Wesley, father of Methodism, and a great opponent of slavery, had said, “The slave trade is the execrable sum of all villainies.”
Another reason for barring Negroes is the following, by the Earl of Egmont, who said in his Journal (1738-39), “where there are Negroes, a white man despises work, saying, what, will you have me slave and work like a Negro?”
Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, a visitor in America, observed as late as 1795, or twelve years after the Revolution, “In a country abounding in slaves the white do not apply much to labour. Their ambition consists in buying Negroes; they buy them with the first sum of money they get and when they have two of them leave off working themselves.”13a
The sturdier whites of Georgia — Scotch Highlanders, and the Salzburgers as well as the clergy, opposed slavery and petitioned the trustees not to allow it. White servants were brought in but as Johnson says they were “a shiftless, saucy group, some filthy and infected with itch, they often deserted their masters to hang around the town to be fed from the common store. … The plague of idle, roguish servants increased daily. Their worthless character strengthened the demand for slaves. …”13b
Without Negroes, Georgia rapidly declined. Its 2,000 souls dwindled to six or seven hundred. The Earl of Egmont wrote, “The industrious went away because they found that without Negroes they could not subsist. … Numbers who have left the colony would return if Negroes were allowed and many from Carolina would do so, too. … If Negroes were allowed, the colony would people apace. …”13c
Twenty-nine years after its founding, Edmund Burke, celebrated English statesman, found the Georgians in “a famished condition.” He said, “They neglected their agriculture to hunt for gold and provoking the Indians by their unguarded behavior.” They found the climate too warm, he said, “the consequence of which was that the great part of their time, all the heat of the day, was spent in idleness.”13d
Another writer of that time said, “In spite of all endeavor to disguise this point it is as clear as light itself, that Negroes are as necessary to the cultivation of Georgia as axes, hoes, or any other utensil of agriculture.”
Matters got to a state where the colony either had to be abandoned or the African brought in. It had had three previous failures. Bringing in whites each time simply did not help. Even the staunchest opponents of slavery now gave in. In 1748, one of them, the Rev. Brozius, wrote the trustees, “Things are now in such a melancholy state I must humbly beseech Your Honours not to regard any more our, or our friends’ petition against slavery.”14
George Whitfield, most dynamic preacher of his time, a close associate of Wesley, and once a bitter opponent of slavery, also came out in favor of it. He saw how the neighboring colony of South Carolina was prospering thanks to the Africans. Proving from the Bible that slavery was approved by God, he said in a letter, March 22, 1751, “Hot countries cannot be cultivated without Negroes. What a flourishing country Georgia might have been had the use of them been permitted years ago! How many white people have been destroyed for want of them and how many thousands of pounds spent to no purpose at all.” (Reproduced in Tyerman, Life and Times of John Wesley. Vol. 2, p. 132. 1878). Whitfield, who had left the colony for England, returned to it, bought slaves, and even left them to his heirs in his will.
The Negroes, brought in, saved the once “drooping colony” so much so that twenty-five years later it was able to play a role of more than a little importance in the Revolution.
Another great advantage to Southern econnomy was that the slaves were not only capital and labor combined but they were a form of capital that could look to its own welfare. A strong healthy, intelligent slave was the finest currency. One such might fetch $2,000, or about five times that now. In 1785, Virginia valued her slaves at 6,370,400 pounds sterling, or $31,-292,000.15 According to Thomas Jefferson, she had 270,762 of them. The free population, of whom some were Negroes, was 296,852.
General Pinckney of South Carolina said at the National Convention in 1787 that “South Carolina has in one year exported to the amount of 600,000 pounds sterling, all of which was the fruit of the labor of the blacks.” And whenever the price of cotton, tobacco, and rice, rose so did the price of slaves. Slave-grown tobacco was once Virginia currency. At the first Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Southern slave states declared