FOOTNOTES:[9]In contradistinction to Aryanized Shemites or Chaldeans, known as Assyrians and Babylonians of the second epoch, and modern Kurdes.Ethnology and comparative philology everywhere discover similar bifurcations almost at the sources of ethnic life. These bifurcations are explained by natural growth and by the fusion of various tribes and nations. Thus Baktrya, Persia and Media present us with Aryas and Indo-Scythes or Aryanized Tartars. So, too, all primitive races divide and subdivide in the same manner within themselves. The Shemites divided into Chaldeans and Canaanites, and then into Arabs, Hebrews, etc. The Aryas divided first into two groups—the eastern, from which, in turn, sprang the Zend and Sanscrit-speaking Aryas or Iranians and Hindus—and the western group, ancestors of the various European races. Of these latter, one branch immigrated into Greece and Italy, there giving rise again to Ionians and Dorians, Italiots and Latins, and the Greek and Latin languages; while another formed the Gaels or Gadheals and Kimri, the Gadhealic and the Brizonec being the principal dialects. Then we have their offshoots—as Belgæ, Kimbro-Belgæ, Finnic-Belgæ, etc. So also the Slavic stem, split into Serb, Wendish, etc.
[9]In contradistinction to Aryanized Shemites or Chaldeans, known as Assyrians and Babylonians of the second epoch, and modern Kurdes.Ethnology and comparative philology everywhere discover similar bifurcations almost at the sources of ethnic life. These bifurcations are explained by natural growth and by the fusion of various tribes and nations. Thus Baktrya, Persia and Media present us with Aryas and Indo-Scythes or Aryanized Tartars. So, too, all primitive races divide and subdivide in the same manner within themselves. The Shemites divided into Chaldeans and Canaanites, and then into Arabs, Hebrews, etc. The Aryas divided first into two groups—the eastern, from which, in turn, sprang the Zend and Sanscrit-speaking Aryas or Iranians and Hindus—and the western group, ancestors of the various European races. Of these latter, one branch immigrated into Greece and Italy, there giving rise again to Ionians and Dorians, Italiots and Latins, and the Greek and Latin languages; while another formed the Gaels or Gadheals and Kimri, the Gadhealic and the Brizonec being the principal dialects. Then we have their offshoots—as Belgæ, Kimbro-Belgæ, Finnic-Belgæ, etc. So also the Slavic stem, split into Serb, Wendish, etc.
[9]In contradistinction to Aryanized Shemites or Chaldeans, known as Assyrians and Babylonians of the second epoch, and modern Kurdes.
Ethnology and comparative philology everywhere discover similar bifurcations almost at the sources of ethnic life. These bifurcations are explained by natural growth and by the fusion of various tribes and nations. Thus Baktrya, Persia and Media present us with Aryas and Indo-Scythes or Aryanized Tartars. So, too, all primitive races divide and subdivide in the same manner within themselves. The Shemites divided into Chaldeans and Canaanites, and then into Arabs, Hebrews, etc. The Aryas divided first into two groups—the eastern, from which, in turn, sprang the Zend and Sanscrit-speaking Aryas or Iranians and Hindus—and the western group, ancestors of the various European races. Of these latter, one branch immigrated into Greece and Italy, there giving rise again to Ionians and Dorians, Italiots and Latins, and the Greek and Latin languages; while another formed the Gaels or Gadheals and Kimri, the Gadhealic and the Brizonec being the principal dialects. Then we have their offshoots—as Belgæ, Kimbro-Belgæ, Finnic-Belgæ, etc. So also the Slavic stem, split into Serb, Wendish, etc.
VII.
ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
Rawlinson, Duncker, Oppert, M. von Niebuhr, etc.
The mighty empire of the Assyrians, which constitutes one of the first links in the chain of positive history, has hitherto been best known by the great catastrophes which finally closed its existence. The Hebrew Scriptures testify to the wealth, the luxury, and the military power of the Assyrians; but neither these nor the fragments in other ancient historical writers, dispel the obscurity enveloping the interior organism of that great antique people. Neither do the outlines of Babylonian history given by Herodotus afford much insight into the details of her social structure.
In that fore-world which history has not yet penetrated, the region between the Mediterranean sea and the head-waters and affluents of the Euphrates and the Tigris, formed the theatre of a tumultuous confusion of races, nations and civilizations, which has no parallel in the known history of mankind. Social and ethnic structures of the most heterogeneous kind covered those regions, with their various creeds, theocracies, municipalities monarchies and despotisms of every degree.
When, about fifteen centuriesB.C., history unveils the empire of the Assyrians or Ninevites, their dominion extended in a direct line from the head-waters of the Euphrates and Tigris to the mouths of those rivers; on the north-east, also, they ruled over Media (thus touching the Caspian), and from thence their dominion stretched across Armenia, southern Caucasus and Georgia, westward to the mouth of the river Halys (the modern Kizil-Ermak), in the Black Sea, and embraced also Palestine, Phœnicia and Kilikia. As the dynasty of Ninus once ruled over Lydia, it is probable that the Ninevite empire at one time extended over at least a part of Asia Minor, as far as the Egean Sea.
This great Assyrian empire rose on the ruins of Babylon, which was once her master, and which was also far superior to her in antiquity.
History has preserved the names of some of the races and tribes which may here at one time have dwelt side by side, but which were subsequently conquered and ruled by the more powerful nation. History, we say, has preserved some, and comparative philology is constantly disentangling others from the chaos of antique Mesopotamian ethnology.[10]
The Assyrian and Babylonian empires stand recorded in the history of humanity as having been the cradles of Eastern despotism and political slavery. How this terrible tyranny arose in Assyria there are no means of ascertaining. Doubtless there were a number of conspiring causes, just as many rills unite to form a powerful stream. In the history of Rome, fortunately we shall be able clearly to seize the genesis of her despotism, and exhibit the germ as well as the wreck of her social structure. Reasoning from all historic analogy, however, it may safely be asserted that Assyrian despotism was generated by war, while political bondage nursed and fostered domestic chattelhood. Evil ever reproducing its own substance and shadow!
The social and domestic economy of the Assyrians must, in its general features, have been similar to that of the Nabatheans and Hebrews. In the course oftime, domestic slavery may, to some extent, have been developed in both empires; but even in the last stages of their independent existence, it could not have reached that terrible point it attained after the loss of their autonomy. Assyria and Babylon fell by the blows of nations who were themselves subdued and politically enslaved. To the last, however, neither their lands nor cities were ever devastated or desolated. Their civilization remained in a flourishing condition to the last, and historically it stands asoriginal. But original civilizations are never germinated under the influence of domestic chattelhood. The plains of the Euphrates must have been the hive of a rural population whence the imperial armies were supplied, and these supplies could not have been in the form of chattels. In ancient cities, manufactures and industry were often carried on by slaves; but when domestic slavery established itself in the rural regions, the national forces soon became palsied.
The tribes and countries conquered by Assyria and Babylon were simply made tributary to their wealth and power. Prisoners of war were, in all likelihood, disposed of in the same manner as they were in Egypt, and as was the custom all over the ancient world, and indeed, for several centuries in Christendom—employed in the public works, in the cutting of those canals whose traces are still visible, or in raising walls, palaces and public edifices, all of which are now covered mountain high with the dust of ages. Thus Sargon (or Sargina), for example, employed prisoners of war in constructing the vast palaces of Khorsabad.
Assyrian and Babylonian history records repeated transportations of whole populations from one part of the empire to another. The condition of such captives on becoming colonists has already been explained in the section upon the "Hebrews." It would seem that the kings of Assyria and Babylon first inaugurated this mode of wholesale transportation, captivity and colonization. Thus Tiglath-Palassar deported the inhabitants of Damascus to Kur in Georgia; and Assardan sent off,en masse, Babylonians, Arkeans, Susianians, Elamites, Persians and Daheans (Tartars), some north and others south. All such transplantments begot destruction, desolation and the breaking up of homesteads; and thus fostered domestic slavery, facilitated its expansion, and increased its fatal influence over both the conquered and the conquerors. And finally, they prepared the soil for that poisonously luxuriant growth of slavery by which Mesopotamians and Syrians became the general bondmen of classical antiquity.
After the destruction of the Assyrian capital (Nineveh) by the revolted nations, Babylon became the centre of a new empire. The rule of Nabukudrussur (a Chaldean from Babylon), extended from the mountains of Armenia to the Arabian shores of the Red Sea, and to the Persian Gulf. This again is a record of perpetual war, and was, in all respects, a continuation of the Ninevitian period of desolation and captivity. Prisoners of war again filled the capital, and worked at the walls and palaces of Babylon. The rich valleys were no longer cultivated by free laborers, but were in the hands of large slaveholders, and tilled by their gangs of slaves.
Babylon fell, destroyed by war, combined with political and domestic slaveries, and she transmitted both diseases to her destroyers.
FOOTNOTES:[10]The philological analysis of the arrow-headed characters and inscriptions discovered in the ruins of Nineveh (Khorsabad) and of Babylon, and on various other spots of the ancient Persian empire, give us some idea of the various ethnic elements which composed the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Probability, founded on comparative philology, attributes the invention of the arrow-headed characters to a Tartar (Scythic) people or race. Transmitted, in all likelihood, from people to people; increased, fused in usage and application by various languages and dialects, these cuneiform characters—as used for Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian inscriptions—are now ethnically and philologically classified into two main divisions—the Anaryan and the Aryan. The Aryan comprises the Old Persian; the Anaryan of the Ninevite relics is the result of thirteen ethnic and philologic combinations, and was used by the five following peoples, all known to history. 1. Medo-Scythians; 2. Casdo-Scythians; 3. Susians; 4. Ancient Armenians; 5. Assyrians. The following are the thirteen combinations: 1. Pure hieroglyphs; 2. Hieratic signs—neither yet arrow-headed; 3. Old Scythic or Tartar arrow-heads; 4. New Tartar (new under Assyria); 5. Old Susian; 6. New Susian; 7. Old Armenian; 8. New Armenian; 9. Old Assyrian; 10. New Assyrian; 11. Old Babylonian; 12. New Babylonian; 13. Demotic Babylonian.—Oppert.
[10]The philological analysis of the arrow-headed characters and inscriptions discovered in the ruins of Nineveh (Khorsabad) and of Babylon, and on various other spots of the ancient Persian empire, give us some idea of the various ethnic elements which composed the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Probability, founded on comparative philology, attributes the invention of the arrow-headed characters to a Tartar (Scythic) people or race. Transmitted, in all likelihood, from people to people; increased, fused in usage and application by various languages and dialects, these cuneiform characters—as used for Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian inscriptions—are now ethnically and philologically classified into two main divisions—the Anaryan and the Aryan. The Aryan comprises the Old Persian; the Anaryan of the Ninevite relics is the result of thirteen ethnic and philologic combinations, and was used by the five following peoples, all known to history. 1. Medo-Scythians; 2. Casdo-Scythians; 3. Susians; 4. Ancient Armenians; 5. Assyrians. The following are the thirteen combinations: 1. Pure hieroglyphs; 2. Hieratic signs—neither yet arrow-headed; 3. Old Scythic or Tartar arrow-heads; 4. New Tartar (new under Assyria); 5. Old Susian; 6. New Susian; 7. Old Armenian; 8. New Armenian; 9. Old Assyrian; 10. New Assyrian; 11. Old Babylonian; 12. New Babylonian; 13. Demotic Babylonian.—Oppert.
[10]The philological analysis of the arrow-headed characters and inscriptions discovered in the ruins of Nineveh (Khorsabad) and of Babylon, and on various other spots of the ancient Persian empire, give us some idea of the various ethnic elements which composed the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Probability, founded on comparative philology, attributes the invention of the arrow-headed characters to a Tartar (Scythic) people or race. Transmitted, in all likelihood, from people to people; increased, fused in usage and application by various languages and dialects, these cuneiform characters—as used for Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian inscriptions—are now ethnically and philologically classified into two main divisions—the Anaryan and the Aryan. The Aryan comprises the Old Persian; the Anaryan of the Ninevite relics is the result of thirteen ethnic and philologic combinations, and was used by the five following peoples, all known to history. 1. Medo-Scythians; 2. Casdo-Scythians; 3. Susians; 4. Ancient Armenians; 5. Assyrians. The following are the thirteen combinations: 1. Pure hieroglyphs; 2. Hieratic signs—neither yet arrow-headed; 3. Old Scythic or Tartar arrow-heads; 4. New Tartar (new under Assyria); 5. Old Susian; 6. New Susian; 7. Old Armenian; 8. New Armenian; 9. Old Assyrian; 10. New Assyrian; 11. Old Babylonian; 12. New Babylonian; 13. Demotic Babylonian.—Oppert.
VIII.
MEDES AND PERSIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
Zend Avesta, Vendidad, Herodotus, Lassen, Pictet, Duncker, etc.
The Medes and Persians, or Zend-speaking Iranians, those destroyers of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, were a mighty branch of the great family of Aryas. The Iranians left the common home of the Aryas at a period so distant as to render useless every effort toward giving it possible or even probable chronology. They settled in regions called by them "Lands of Iran," which, up to the present day, constitute Persia. Some investigators assert that Iran-Persia was previously occupied by Tartars; but the earliest traditions preserved in the Zend, or ancient speech of Zarathustra, do not mention any struggles for supremacy between the races as having taken place.
The Zend Avesta, the oldest traditional record of the people of Iran, presents a picture of the primitive migrations and the social condition of the Iranians. It exhibits them as divided into three classes—priests, soldiers and farmers; though, as yet, there was no such thing as the circumscription of caste. It would seem that the fusion with the Tartars—the supposed aborigines of Iran—was complete, as the Zend Avestamakes no mention of any subjugated people or lower class. The warriors and the agriculturists stood on a perfect social equality. The book of tradition nowhere mentions serfdom, slavery, or property in man. This would seem to authorize the conclusion that among the early Iranians, property in man was unknown. Certainly, at all events, if even the forms of slavery were present, they were in such abeyance as to escape the attention of Zarathustra (Zoroaster), the great moralist and lawgiver of his people, who lived long after the epoch of the early wanderings, and when the Iranic nation formed a well-organized society on Iran's soil. Zarathustra considers agriculture as morally and socially the noblest human occupation; but he speaks of the generous labor of freemen, not the forced drudgery of slaves.
The Vendidad contains frequent allusions to the general occupations of life, and is especially minute regarding the details of husbandry—its wants, modes, products and implements. The farmer is to have at least a team of draught cattle, a harness and a whip; a plough, a hand-mill, and so forth; but there is no mention whatever of a slave as an agricultural requisite. The homestead of an Iranian consists of a habitation, a storehouse, a cellar, stables for horses, camels and cattle; but the records have no allusion to a cabin for the slaves. The Vendidad also describes how dogs—almost sacred to the Iranians—are to be posted to watch over the village and the herds; but nowhere says that they were to be used for watchingand hunting slaves. Various operatives and artisans are enumerated, but none of them as bond-servants or as working under compulsion.
The farmers, peasants and operatives of Media and Persia—so admired even by Xenophon and Plato—thus built up a vigorous state and society. After long centuries of existence, however, its strength was undermined by foreign conquests, by luxury, and by political and domestic slavery. A similar phenomenon will present itself again and again in the course of this investigation. When the Medes overthrew the Assyrian empire, they became infected with the dissolute customs of their former masters. The houses of the wealthier were filled with domestic slaves; though, as yet, slavery did not come in contact with agriculture or the industrial pursuits, and so spread like a blight over the land.
Domestic slavery, in the limited sense of household servitude, was doubtless ultimately introduced into Persia; but never was Persian held aschattelon his ancestral soil. Nor yet did despotism, or political slavery, exist in the governmental structure of the Iranians, who, led by Kyros (Cyrus), conquered the whole western Asiatic world. Kyros was only the first among his peers, and was all-powerful only as a leader and commander. He had not yet the despotic power of Xerxes and other and later scions of the Achæmenides; and to the last, even to the conquests by Alexander, the Iranic social structure was comparatively free from domestic slavery. Nor were thePersians and other Iranian tribes ever the absolute political slaves of their own kings.
The Persian conquerors of the Asiatic world found domestic slavery more or less developed wherever they penetrated. Positive information, however, is extremely scanty regarding the special social and political organization of the Persians after Kyros and under Dareios. The rule of the Achæmenides extended over about eighty millions of men, belonging to various races. The conquerors, in all cases, respected the civil and social organization and administration peculiar to the subjugated tribes or nations. In numerous instances, the sovereigns of conquered states became Persian satraps over lands they once ruled in their own right. As satraps they were possessed of oppressive authority, had the power of life and death, of forcing exactions and levying taxes. But, as the Persian kings were, to the last, strict observers of Zarathustra's precepts, agriculture always continued to be the most favored pursuit. The satraps were rewarded with strict reference to the degree in which agriculture flourished and the population grew and prospered in their respective satrapies.
During the long rule of the descendants of Dareios, comparative peace prevailed in the interior of the great empire, which swept from the Nile almost to the Indus. So that domestic slavery did not find its usual supplies from prisoners of war, or by the destruction of small properties and consequent domestic impoverishment—those terrible sequels of wars from whichFore-Asia had suffered almost uninterruptedly for many previous centuries.
For these and other reasons, domestic slavery under the Persian rule, although sheltered by political servitude, had but small growth and made but slow progress. It certainly did not desolate the lands with the blight and barrenness that afterward depopulated them under Roman rule.
The tribute paid by the subdued nations to the Persian kings and their court, included slaves—boys and girls—but in a limited number. The slave-traffic existed as of old; but, in all probability, the supply of the human merchandise was less plentiful. From political slaves, but not domestic chattels, it was that the armies were recruited which crossed the Hellespont and invaded Greece.
But, viewing the matter in the gross and scope of historical development, political slavery and the blighting effects of the oppressive despotism to which the Persians were long subjected, may be looked upon as the soil out of which grew the morbid and monstrous system of domestic slavery, just as external influences frequently develop and foster the germs of a chronic and fatal bodily disease.
IX.
ARYAS—HINDUS.
AUTHORITIES:
Lassen, Wilson, Weber, Max Müller, Pictet, Kuhn, etc.
The central region of Baktria was in all probability the cradle of the Aryas, the common progenitors of all the races and nations which now cover Europe. In times anterior to the great pre-historic division and separation of the Aryan races, they probably occupied the whole of the vast region stretching from the Hindu-Kush, the Belourtagh, to the river Oxus and the Caspian Sea. This, too, at a period of which it can only be said that time existed.
The antique Aryas led a pastoral life. The original signification of the words in the European languages denoting family and social relations, as well as the names of domestic and other animals, of grains and plants, of implements of husbandry and handicraft and the like, is elucidated by roots found in Sanscrit, which is supposed to have been the original language of the Aryas, or, at any rate, the one which most completely preserved the primitive impress of the Aryan character.
"Father" (in Sanscrit,pitri), signifies "the protecting one, or the protector;" "mother" (Sanscrit,matri), "she who regulates or sets in order;" "daughter"(duhitri), "the milking one;" "son" (sunu), "the begotten;" "sister" (vastri), "she who takes care,"—subauditur, of household matters—also, "the bearer of a new family;" "brother" (brhatri), "the helper, or carrier;" "youth" (yavan) "the defender." So also, "horse" (açva), signifies "swift, rapid;"[11]the name for the "bovine" genus, bull and cow (Sc.,go,gaus), "to sound inarticulately," likewise (ukshan) "fecundating," besides other names with other significations; the "ovine" genus, or sheep kind (avi), implies "the loved, protected," etc.; the "dog" ('cvan,kvan), means "the yelper, barker;" but he has also other names denoting his qualities, assucaka, "spy, informer,"krtagna, the "recognizing," or "grateful one," etc.; "goose," (hansa, from Sc.has), "to laugh." So the roots for the general names of grains and fruits are to be found in the Sanscrit; thus,ad, "to eat;"adas, "nourishment;"gr, "to devour," whencegaritra, "grain," "rice," etc. It may be noticed that derivatives from these and other roots became applied, in branch languages, to various special kinds of grain; thus, "oats," both in form and signification, is easily traced to a Sanscrit root. So, too, the names of many metals, trees, plants and wild animals, have their roots and descriptive meaning in the Aryan or Sanscrit language; and comparativephilology gives us the method of seizing the affiliations of form and of meaning.
Words of the character pointed one and their primitive significations—constituting the foundation of man's family and social existence—followed the various ethnic branches issuing from the Aryan and expanding over the ancient world.But no root, no name, no signification is to be found for a "servant" bearing the meaning of "slave" or "chattel,"or expressive of a deprivation of the rights of manhood or of human dignity. The primitive Aryan mode of life was naturally patriarchal or clan-like, and the above-mentioned words show that household and rural functions were performed by the members of the family. What has been already said in another division (see "Hebrews"), applies even more forcibly to the Aryas. The Sanscrit wordibha, signified "family," "household," "servants," butnever slaves or chattels. Both its sound and sense are still perfectly preserved in the Irishibh, which signifies "country," or "clan;"not enslaved men! The names of weapons, and other words relating to warfare, which may be traced back to the Aryan speech, prove that the Aryas warred with other tribes—perhaps with the Tartars; and all such foreign enemies were comprehended under the collective Sanscrit denomination ofbarbara,varvara, or "barbarians." But even here, where we should most look for it, no hint or trace of slavery can be found.
The attempt, historically, to endow certain humanfamilies or races with special fitness or capacity for freedom or slavery—or with a fatality toward the one or the other, or toward certain fixed social and political conditions—as well as the effort to divide the human family into distinct physiological or psychological races—all manifests a narrow appreciation of the course of human events; it evidences a very limited knowledge of positive history, and perhaps a still more limited philosophical comprehension of its spirit. If, however, such classifications had any scientific basis, assuredly the Aryas and the nations issuing from them had no natural, special propensity either to be slaves or slave-makers.
It win be hereafter pointed out, that among the various branches of the Aryas, or what are called Indo-Europeans, slavery was not a feature of their primitive life, but was the result of a long subsequent epoch of moral decay and degradation. It was at a comparatively late period of their history and under precisely the same conditions, that the Romans and Greeks began to enslave their own fellows. So was it with the Gaels or Celts, and so also with the Slavi. The Poles were free from serfdom till the thirteenth Christian century; the Russians only introduced it toward the close of the sixteenth—and in both cases after dissension, war, and desolation. The Teutons alone (Anglo-Saxons included), seen in the light of primitive history, had slavery in their household and in their national organism, and the slaves, too, of their own race and kin.
The Aryas descended the slopes of Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas, entering the region of the Five or of the Seven Rivers (Punjab), wandered along the river Jamuna, on the line between Attock and Delhi, successively spread over the whole region between the Indus and the Ganges—and here begins their historical existence as a people. In the course of this long march they conquered or drove before them—seemingly without any great trouble, at least in the first encounters, the aboriginal occupants of the Trans-Himalayan countries; and this, too, before they reached what may be called the threshold of history. Discords and wars early broke out among them, principally caused by the continual pressure of northern immigrants upon the possessors of the fertile countries in the south—caused, too, by the struggles for supremacy between families or dynasties, when the tents of the patriarchs had expanded into populous tribes, and almost into nations; and also by the struggles of classes created in the effort to subjugate the aboriginal inhabitants, especially those in the southern parts of India. All these wars took place at a very early epoch, and elude positive chronological division. Their history, as well as that of the primitive Aryan or Hindu mode of life, and their earliest spiritual conceptions, are pictured in the Vedas, which form the background of the whole Indian world.
The gray and venerable Vedaic age is now divided by critics into four periods: the Chhandas period,the Mantra period, the Brahmana period, and the Sutra period.
The Chhandas period exhibits the purest patriarchal and peaceful condition of the family. There were then no priests and no division of classes; the father offered up simple sacrifices to heaven, and the simple hymns and songs of the family resounded over the offering. If the household contained any captive of the aboriginal race, such a one, by renouncing his ancient customs and creed, and accepting the language, the faith and the law of the conqueror, retained life and comparative liberty. And, moreover, all ethnological investigations confirm the belief that the aborigines of India were of the negro, or what is commonly called African family. On this American continent the kidnapped and enslaved African has accepted both the creed and the language of his oppressor—but for him there is neither liberty nor law.
Not to enslave, but only to subdue—preserving, at least partially, the rights of the conquered—was the policy of the Aryas in their encounter with barbarians. And in the domestic wars of tribes and dynasties which yet dimly echo through the second or Mantra period, no traces of the enslavement of their conquered enemies are to be found. In general, the first two periods not only do not show any shadow ofslaveryin the domestic and social relations, but even the division intoclassesorcastesdoes not yet make its appearance. During the third or Brahmana period, the Vedas give an account of the terrible and bloodystruggle which ended in the social and religious victory of the Brahmas, or Brahmins, over the Kshatriyas, who had previously formed the ruling families.
The Brahmins now reorganized the religious and political structure of the Hindus. They divided society into four classes or castes: (it is to be noted here, however, that some modern exegetists assert that the true meaning of the Sanscrit wordVarna, for "caste," is not yet clearly apprehended). These four castes were: 1. The Brahmins; 2. The Kshatriyas; 3. The Vaisyas; 4. The Soudras, or Çudras. The first three correspond to the classification already mentioned as existing among the Iranians. The Çudras were the lowest and most degraded caste; still they were not enslaved, not the property of any other caste, not even of the Brahmins—those spiritual and political chiefs of the Hindus. The labors of agriculture ennobled even the hands of the Brahmin, and could not be performed by slaves nor under the compulsory terrors of a master or driver.
As the word Çudras is not Sanscrit, it is supposed that it was the ethnic name of the subdued aborigines of which the fourth caste was composed. The offspring of a Brahmin and a Çudra was considered of pure blood. The Brahminic law authorized the enslavement of persons belonging to all the interior castes, for debt. Slaves may also have been made in the wars with the southward retreating aborigines and others; and slaves may occasionally have been sold in the markets, but their number must have been veryinsignificant. Laws for the servitude of the Çudras—if such existed even—must very soon have fallen into disuse; for when Alexander brought Greece and Europe into contact with India, the astonished Greeks found scarcely any slavery then existing. Several of the Greek authors even assert that a positive law prohibited any kind of enslavement.
Budha, the great precursor of the Christ, was moved to tears, affected to inspiration, by the suffering and oppression which resulted from the division of society into castes, and by the misery of the poor, who were oppressed by the rich land-owner; but among the social and moral plagues, Budha and his disciples enumerate not human slavery. As far as the history of antiquity is known, Budha was the first whose religious teaching broke through the narrow conception of nationality, and taught universal emancipation and the brotherhood of all tribes and nations of men.
The oppression of the poor and of the landless, which then existed in India, exists there still. It was strengthened by the terrible Mahomedan and Mongol conquests, and by the iron rule of the British East India Company. But the imposition by the Mahomedans and Mongols of an oriental despotism over the Hindus did not implant domestic chattelhood, nor did the English tax-gatherers ever cause Hindu humanity to be exposed for sale in the markets or bazaars.
FOOTNOTES:[11]The Sanscrit has about one hundred and forty appellations for the "horse" (mare and colt included); and comparative philology demonstrates their primitive roots to be preserved in almost all European languages.
[11]The Sanscrit has about one hundred and forty appellations for the "horse" (mare and colt included); and comparative philology demonstrates their primitive roots to be preserved in almost all European languages.
[11]The Sanscrit has about one hundred and forty appellations for the "horse" (mare and colt included); and comparative philology demonstrates their primitive roots to be preserved in almost all European languages.
X.
CHINESE.
AUTHORITIES:
The Biots, Kaeuffer, Gutzlaff, etc.
China belongs to the present and to the remotest past of the Asiatic world. The historical existence of China and her civilization are at least coeval with that of Egypt and of Assyria, perhaps older than that of the Aryas.
Some geological investigators affirm that the table-land inclosed between the northern slopes of the Himalayas, the Kuenlun, the desert of Gobi—which is said to be older than the formation of the Himalayas—the Heavenly or Blue mountains, and the Altaï, was the first land which rose from the waters, and that therefore it was the first, and perhaps the only place in the north, where man appeared. This admitted, the probability is, that from that first human family issued a race bearing to-day various appellations, as the Yellow, the Altaïc, Turanian, Scythic, Finnic, Mongolian and Tartar—which is the last general denomination adopted by science, at least for the branches occupying central Asia, and reaching to the frontiers of Europe and the descendants of the Aryas. The first immigrants to China from the Kuenlun probably followed the current of the Yellowriver; and it seems that the aborigines retired before the invaders, or perhaps the new yellow settlers mixed with the primitive occupants. In the southern parts of China, in the mountains of the interior, are still found tribes of dark-colored men resembling the negroes or the Pacific islanders, and using notched characters similar to those used by the Malays.
Agriculture seems to have been the sacred occupation of these yellow-hued settlers along the banks of the Yellow river—as it was in the valley of the Nile, of the Euphrates, and on the plains of Iran. Everywhere the origin of agriculture is lost in the night of time, and Quain or Cain—that is, the kernel, the young, the generating, etc., the husbandman of the Scriptures—is many thousand years older than Abraham, the wandering and slave-holding patriarch. The oldest Chinese records show agriculture to have been the special occupation of the father of a family, of the chief of a clan, and then of the emperor of the entire nation. With his own hands he directs the plough—therefore the plough could not have been desecrated by the hands of a slave. And it was not. In the family, in the domestic as well as in the national life, slavery first dimly appears only about the thirteenth centuryB.C.
In the remotest time, labor was, as it is now, the basis, the cement and the soul of the Chinese social and political life and growth—and by labor I mean, intellectual and manual labor in its most varied departments and developments. No classes, no castes,existed in the old primitive times; and perhaps, during many thousand years, no dynasties. The best and ablest person was selected as the chief and ruler: all the offices or functions were obtained by intellectual faculty and by superiority of knowledge, but not inherited; and the same system prevailed throughout all the occupations and pursuits of life. No labor whatever was degraded or degrading; it was carried on by men free and equal, and in principle recognized as such.
In China, as everywhere else, slavery appeared as a disease in the social body. It was generated by war and crime. Prisoners of war and condemned criminals became, so to say, slaves of the state, which used them for public labors or hired them out to private individuals. The highest officers of state, persons over seventy years old, and children, could not be condemned to slavery, excepting children exposed or abandoned by their parents. Slaves hired by private individuals were only used as helps or servants in households and families. But most of the servants were always freemen—they are so now; and slaves never were used in agriculture or in the different handicrafts. The land being generally considered as the property of the state, or of the emperor, the sovereign divided, distributed it, under certain conditions and servitudes, for tribute in money or kind, etc. But slaves are not mentioned among the various objects enumerated as constituting the tribute. The increase of population generated poverty, and paupers sold and still sell themselves or their children into slavery. Repeateddomestic or internecine wars, recorded at a very distant historical epoch, were among the prominent agencies in increasing poverty. Impoverished persons and those deprived of their homes either sold themselves or became serfs attached to the soil, but not chattels. As serfs their legal condition and denomination is preserved in the books written about the twelfth centuryB.C., by Ma-tuan-lin—they are namedusurped familiesorusurpees. Even after the conquest by the Mantschou Tartars, chattelhood did not get hold of the political structure, nor did it absorb the agricultural and industrial domestic economy of the Chinese. With the exception of the reigning family, no social position or function is privileged as hereditary; and in the same way, accidental slavery was not transmitted to the children of the enslaved. Their condition was and is controlled and regulated by law, which watches over the property of the state. Among the numerous domestic wars there are never recorded any revolts of slaves—an evidence of their very limited number.
Over-population generated and generates the most terrible and varied oppressions and miseries; but all of them lose their sting when compared with chattelhood. Over-population and misery generated the so-called coolie-system, which in principle is based on voluntary indenture. The reckless cruelties and the numerous infamies characterizing the manner in which the coolie trade is carried on, is evidence of the utter moral degradation and depravity of the white civilized Christian traders, and the inefficiency of their respective governments.
The Chinese civilization is commonly looked down upon from the heights of narrow-minded presumption and ignorance. About three thousand yearsB.C., public schools existed in China, and a full scientific and material culture prevailed there. Chinese records (among them the Books of the Sehu Kings), going back, perhaps, as far as two thousand five hundred yearsB.C.—contain the most correct and detailed statistical accounts of tribute, and give most reliable geographical notions of China, and of the subdued and neighboring countries—notions superior in exactitude to all similar records transmitted from classical antiquity. The Chinese lived in houses, in orderly communities, were humanized, polished, familiar with the sciences, industries, and all kinds of refinements, at a time, and during countless centuries, when the races of northern Europe—prominently the Slavi, the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons included—did not, in all probability, even understand how to construct huts, and, as savages, roved about in the wilderness.
In a work written by Prince Tscheu-Kong, about one thousand one hundred yearsB.C., are given the most minute details of the then existing organization of the empire. The administrative mechanism of that distant epoch finds no equal in the whole history of governments or of nations. Several thousand years ago the empire was administered by six supreme state departments, each with perfectly defined attributes, each subdivided into special branches, with directors and all orders of lower officials and functionaries. Chinese civilization passed its periods of youth and maturity many thousand years ago; and its senility has not yet reached total decrepitude. It crumbles not to pieces even now in its comparatively disjointed and disorganized condition.
No one can consider China in any way a model social organism; but its duration is marvellous and unequalled in the history of the race. The absence of hereditary privilege and of chattelhood as social or religious institutions, accounts, among other reasons, for this unique phenomenon. With all its drawbacks and defects, this long-lived civilization, with its schools, its general intelligence, its thousands-of-years old routine, compares, in many respects, favorably with that in the Southern States calling itself Christian, which, having partly inherited the great European development, and receiving influences from the free sections of the Union, has, nevertheless, for the last thirty or forty years, turned on its own crooked tracks, and, now prohibits, under severe penalty, schools for the children of its field laborers, whom it keeps in bondage. It sighs also for a further extension of oligarchic privileges, and for the enslavement of all human labor: re-enslaves the free or expels them; legalizes and sanctifies the sum of all social villanies: whose last word is the Lynch law, and the reckless,lawless persecution of free speech and even of free thought; while assassination becomes more and more frequent.
In the most ancient Asiatic world, the primitive societies generally had analogous beginnings, whatever may have been the regions and climates cradling them, whatever the difference of time, epochs, or race-characteristics. Analogous events and conditions evoked similar developments in the primitive men. The manifestations of man's intellectual and physical activity were everywhere spontaneous: a transmission of the various rudiments of civilization cannot logically be admitted.
Osiris, Cain, Yao, were urged by like necessities, when they inaugurated agriculture in Egypt, in Euphratia, or along the valleys of the Yellow river. On the Nile, on the Euphrates, on the Ganges, on the Hoang-ho, man—red or black, white or yellow—observed nature, utilized even the inundations, regulated and embanked the beds of rivers, cut canals and trenches to irrigate the parched soil. Everywhere—and certainly without imitating each other—but urged by surrounding circumstances, man worked, toiled, constructed habitations with the materials at hand—stone in Egypt; bricks, plaster, wood, etc., in Babylonia and China; raised cities in rich and fertile plains, erected edifices, and invented characters and signs to fix and to transmit to others ideas, notions and facts. Whatever may have been the special nature and form of these characters, whether hieroglyphicsor phonetics, etc., undoubtedly they were original and not transmitted creations. These inventions arose at places separated by distances then almost impassable, by the same necessities and thoughts, by observation and imitation of nature, and by many other inner and outer promptings and circumstances. The rudiments of mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences, were created by this contact of man's mind with nature; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to admit that Egyptians or Chaldeans were the instructors of the Aryas or of the Chinese, orvice versa.
Of late an attempt has been made to justify American chattelhood by the fact that at the birth of Christ, half of the population of the Roman empire—about sixty millions—groaned under domestic slavery. This estimate may be below the true mark; but the humanity whose emancipation or redemption was to be accomplished, was not limited to the Roman world. For, from Iran and the Indus to the Kuenlun ridges, dwelt a population five or six times greater than that which populated the Roman empire, and that, too, almost unvisited by that terrible social plague which is now represented as being a divine blessing. Whatever may have been the other multiform social calamities which befell them—wars, massacres, destructions, impoverishments, and desolations—are, after all, but transient visitations; while American chattelhood, as devised by its apostles, eternally degrades both master and chattel.
XI.
GREEKS.
AUTHORITIES:
Polybius, Grote, O. Muller, Beckh, Curtius, Clinton, Finlay, etc.
At the foot of the Julian Alps, above the head of the Adriatic, the branch of the Aryas which peopled Greece separated from their brethren who wandered into Italy. Keeping to the coast of Adria, the seceders reached the mountainous gorges of Epirus and the plains of Thessaly. From the southern slopes of the Cambunian mountains and of Olympus, they, in course of time, spread over Greece and Peloponnesus. Such at least are the results of the most recent researches concerning the pioneers whose labors prepared that region for the part it afterward played in history. They cleared the forests, drained the marshes, cut canals to let out the stagnant waters in mountain-basins so common in Greece; they regulated the currents of rivers and streams, made the soil arable, and the region fit for man and for further culture. These primitive cultivators of the valleys of Greece, and builders of the Cyclopean structures, called themselves, or were called by others,Pelasgi(that is,those issuing from black soil, etc.), and are regarded as the earliest occupants of Hellenic soil. They were the first settlers, and most probably offshoots of the same original stem whose successive branches mingled withthe Pelasgi, or crowded them out and took their place in history as Achives, Hellenes, and Ionians—the last being considered been ancient as well as by modern writers as having been the autochthones of Attica and of other neighboring regions. To these Pelasgi and other primitive occupants, to their laborious pursuits and occupations, to their simple social structure, as well as to the essentially primitive social life of the Greeks, Herodotus refers—asserting that at the outset slavery was unknown in Greece, and especially in Attica.
The Pelasgian epoch was succeeded by what is commonly called the legendary or heroic age. In this Homeric epoch free yeomen or agriculturists own and till the soil; all the handicrafts and professions are free. Carpenters, smiths, leather-dressers, etc., were all freemen, and so also were the bards and "the leeches" (a highly esteemed class in primitive Greece). But wealth already began to accumulate, and the farms of the more fortunate were tilled by poor hired freemen called Thetes.
The geographical conformation of Greece furnished, as it still does, a natural incitement to war and piracy. Both formed prominent characteristics of the heroic times. Phœnician vessels visited the shores, and Phœnician settlements and factories were built at various points. These traffickers, perhaps, taught the Greeks that the feeble may be profitably enslaved by the strong, or at any rate they were the customers of the Greek pirate.
The general Greek word for slave explains the origin of slavery.Dmoosanddmoe, slave, go back todmaoordamao, to subdue, to subjugate, and so bear witness of war and violence either between individuals, or between clans, tribes, and districts, and then of incursions into distant lands. Slavery became an object of luxury, but not of social and economical necessity. It was confined to the dwelling of the chiefs and the sovereign; but did not invade the whole community. Leaders of freebooting expeditions seized every kind of booty, taking as many prisoners as they could on sea and on land. If the expedition or foray failed, the chief and his followers became, in their turn, prisoners and slaves. The prisoners were employed for domestic use within the precincts of the dwelling, as servants, shepherds, etc., or were sold or exchanged for others. The Phœnicians sold Asiatics or Libyans to Greeks and to Pontian barbarians, and received in exchange the prey made by Greeks in Greece or in Pontus. The Phœnicians occasionally kidnapped women and boys and sold them to Asiatics, Africans, and Celt-Iberians. Then, as everywhere throughout remotest and classical antiquity, many of the enslaved had previously belonged to the higher and even the highest conditions in their respective tribes, nations, or communities. So Eumæus, the swineherd of Ulysses immortalized by Homer, was the son of a chief of some island or district, who, having been kidnapped by Phœnicians, was sold to Laertes.In mediæval times, likewise, the prisoner taken on the battle-field and kept for ransom, if not for service, often was superior in birth and station to his keeper. No such social classifications, however, are intrinsic or normal, but only conditional, relative, and conventional, even when inherited. Logically they have the same signification and value in a well-graduated society, with its castles, palaces, charters and other privileges, as on plantations or among roving nomads and savage tribes. And thus, among the Southern slaves, descending from prisoners of war or from kidnapped Africans, there may be several of a purer aristocratic lineage than many of their drivers, even if the latter were F.F.V.
Enfranchisement, manumission, and ransom were largely practised in legendary Greece. The children of freemen by slave-women were free, and equal to those of legitimate birth. Most of the wars and expeditions during the heroic or Achivian piratical epoch, were made for the sake of kidnapping men and women, to sell or to exchange with the Phœnicians for various luxuries. Such was the general origin of slavery at the time when history throws its first rays on the Grecian world.
Many defend slavery on the plea that it softened and softens the results of wars and inroads; that prisoners, once slaughtered, are preserved for the sake of being sold into slavery. But already, during the so-called heroic age of Greece, wars and forays were made for the express purpose of getting captivesor for kidnapping. The robber or pirate was always sure to find a buyer for his booty, otherwise he would have had no inducement to act. And thus slavery, instead of softening war, was its very source. The Greeks of the heroic age were incited to make inroads and depredations by the facility and security they had of profitably disposing of their captives by selling them into slavery. The bloody drama played, many, many centuries ago, in Peloponnesus and Greece, on the Ionian and Egean seas, and among the islands of the Archipelago, is repeated to-day on both sides of the Atlantic—on African and on American shores and islands. The tribes in Africa war with each other, destroy and burn towns and villages, expressly and exclusively because they find customers for slaves among Christians, and among self-styled civilized, humanized white men. Thus much for the assertion that American slavery contributes to soften the fate of prisoners of war in Africa, and humanizes the savages. It bestializes them, together with their piratical purchasers and their Southern patrons. The analogy holds good here, at a distance of many thousand years and many thousand miles, among different social conditions, in a different civilization, and in the higher moral development of the white man.
New invasions successively rolled over the valleys of Hellas; they changed considerably the social condition of the populations, expelling or subduing many of the former occupants and yeomen. From the north, from Thessaly, poured Hellenes, Heraclides, and Dorians, west and south, principally into the Peloponnesus. Henceforth the whole Greek family was represented in history by two cardinal social, political, and intellectual currents, through the so-called Doric and Ionic races.
In Thessaly, serfdom—but not chattelhood—seems to have been anciently established. New-comers subdued the earlier tillers of the soil. The subdued becamevilleins, bondsmen,adscripti glebæ. Such dependent cultivators were the Thessalian Penestæ, who paid over to the landowners a certain proportion of the produce of the soil; furnished those retainers by which the families of the chiefs, or the more powerful, were surrounded, and served in war as their followers. But they could not be sold out of the country; they had a permanent tenure in the soil, and enjoyed family and village relations. Perhaps more than twenty centuries afterward, this was also the condition of the rustics all over western and mediæval Europe, and in some parts this condition even lasted down to our century—everywhere similar events generating emphatically analogous results and conditions. The holdings of the Thessalian Penestæ were protected by the state, whose subjects they were, and not chattels of the individual proprietors. The Thessalian and Doric invaders and conquerors imposed a similar yoke wherever they were victorious and finally settled. The last Doric and Heraclidic invasion, which culminated in the institutions and history of Sparta, subdued the former occupantsof Peloponnesus, some of whom were likewise of Doric origin. Of such origin, in considerable proportion, were the renowned Helots. So, also, in course of time, the descendants of the companions of Achilles became, in the north, serfs under certain conditions of a more liberal nature; while others, descending from the companions of Agamemnon and Menelaus, became Sparta's Helots.
The condition of the Helots, in many respects, was similar to that of the Penestæ of Thessaly. They could not be sold beyond the borders of the state, not even by the state itself, which apportioned them to citizens, reserving to itself the power of emancipation. They lived in the same villages which were once their own property, before conquest transformed the free yeomen or peasants into bondsmen. The state employed the Helots in the construction of public works. Their fate, however terrible it may have been, was altogether within the law, whereas other domestic slaves in Greece, just like those in the Southern States, depended upon the arbitrary will of individuals. The Spartan law had various provisions for the emancipation of the Helots. They served in the army and fought the great battles of the Lacedemonians. Will the South intrust their chattels with arms and drill them into military companies?
Sparta was the seat of an oligarchy, which owned the greater part of the lands of Laconia, and kept in dependency the other autochthonous tribes, which in some way or other escaped the fate of the Helots.Such were the Periokes, enjoying certain political and full civil rights. But, in the course of events, the oligarchy tried to violate those rights, and the Periokes joined Epaminondas against Sparta, facilitating its subjugation, just as, centuries afterward, they joined Flaminius and the Romans against their Spartan masters. In Lacedemonia, as in Attica, there existed small landholders, calledgamoriorgeomori, and others calledautougroi—rustics possessing petty patches of land, or farming small parcels owned by large proprietors. Just so in the South the large plantations are surrounded by poor whites, by "sand-hillers," etc., some of them owning small patches, generally of poorer soil; others altogether homeless and landless. Subsequently thesegeomori, etc.—poor, free populations and their homesteads—were almost wholly engulfed by large plantations and domestic slavery. This was the work of time, as in her great days scarcely any chattel was known in Sparta.
The landed oligarchy of our Southern plantations is in more than one respect analogous with that of Sparta. The city of Sparta itself was rather an agglomeration of spacious country habitations than resembling other great cities.
When the Dorians made Sparta the centre of their power, the lands of Laconia were divided into ten thousand equal lots for the ten thousand Spartan citizens. Undoubtedly the homesteads, cleared and owned by the first settlers and colonists in the South, were more equally divided than they are now; and theincrease in the extent of plantations on the one hand, and the decrease of the respectability of the poorer settlers and their transformation into "poor oppressed white men,"[12]on the other, were both effected by domestic slavery. At the time of Lycurgus—about four hundred years after the division—the above number of oligarchs was reduced to nine thousand; at the time of Herodotus—about four hundred years after Lycurgus—to eight thousand; and thus a reduction of one-tenth took place during each period of from three hundred to four hundred years. This was the time of the world-renowned Spartan poverty and virtue. But wars, conquests, etc., changed the character of the Spartans; luxury and wealth crept in, and with them came large estates and domestic slaves, the latter chiefly consisting of Greek prisoners of war. At the beginning of the first Peloponnesian war, Sparta may have had two hundred and twenty thousand Helots, and there were comparatively few domestic slaves in that number. The Peloponnesian war made the Spartans leaders of Greece, but filled Sparta with prisoners from other Greek states, and introduced wealth: from that war begins the decline of the Spartan spirit. The Helots and the impoverished poor whites successively became chattels. Sparta could only muster seven hundred citizens against Epaminondas at Leuctra. During the period between Herodotus and Aristotle the number of citizens was reduced to little above one thousand. At the Macedonian conquest,Sparta averaged fourteen chattels for every three freemen. One hundred years after Aristotle, under King Agis, about two hundred oligarchs constituting the body politic, the citizens of Sparta owned nearly all the lands of Laconia, and worked them by chattels.
This numerical reduction of citizens and deterioration of their historic character principally affected the military standing of Sparta. Causes so obvious as not to require explanation prevent at present a similar diminution of the number of Southern oligarchs, notwithstanding the existing numerical disproportion between them and the non-slaveholding whites, whose political freedom, to a rational appreciation, is rather nominal than real. The disease is the same—its workings alone are different. The sword was the soul of Spartan institutions: the pure and elevated conception of the American social structure rests not on physical but on intellectual and moral force; but its deterioration is visible in the new conception of slavery inaugurated and sustained by the militant oligarchs. The process of moral and intellectual decomposition in the South would be still more rapid but for the various influences from the Free States, which, like refreshing breezes, fan its fainting energies.
The sword, it is true, may have decimated whole Spartan communities; but such losses were supplied from the class of the Periokes and other freemen, and even sometimes from the Helots. Domestic slavery devoured the small estates, degraded the freemen, anddried up the sources of political renovation. Five thousand Spartans fought at Plateæ, which gives a total population of about forty thousand. The number of Helots owned by them at that time amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand. Subsequently, after the Peloponnesian and Macedonian wars, these Helots were transformed into chattels, and the degenerate Spartans attempted to transform the Periokes into Helots, but made them simply deadly enemies. Almost in proportion as the Spartan oligarchs increased in wealth and possessions, not only did the number of Helots and slaves increase, but military ardor decreased. At Leuctra, Sparta hired her cavalry; and soon after, Sparta, rich in Helots and chattels but poor in citizens, was forced passively to witness the curtailing of her frontiers by Philip of Macedon.
The Helots often revolted; and frequent conspiracies were discovered and subdued in terrible slaughter, when the oligarchs believed themselves again safe. The old laws of most of the American colonies, north and south, contain repeated regulations, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, concerning conspiracies, revolts, and tumults perpetrated by negroes; and this, too, several generations before the birth of active abolitionism. For not to abolitionism but to the love of liberty inborn in human nature—in the Spartan Helot as in the colored chattel of the Southern oligarch—are to be attributed the conspiracies continually fermenting among Southern slaves. At times the Spartans were obliged to asksuccor from the Athenians and other allies against their revolted Helots. To-day the Union is fully able to suppress servile revolts, but in some future time the South may vainly look in all quarters of the horizon for active allies. It may find some well-wishers among its interested northern sympathizers, but the chattels will have the sympathy of the civilized Christian and heathen world, besides finding allies among the free colored populations of the Antilles. Under England's fatherly and humane direction, these colored populations are being initiated into genuine Christian civilization, and make comparatively great strides and progress in material and political culture, in orderly life, in self-government, in the employment of the free press, and in debating their interests in legislative assemblies and cabinet councils. Ever since the establishment of American slavery on a social and religious basis, the mass of the white population in the South, and, above all, the great heroes, apostles, and combatants of the new political creed, are returning to barbarism—willingly and deliberately renouncing all genuine mental and moral culture. And thus the two extremes may meet in some future emergency—the colored inhabitant of the Antilles as a superior civilized being, will face the barbarized white oppressor in the South.
The Spartan Helot increased with a fecundity fearful for the oligarchs, who resorted to the horriblekryptea, or slaughter of unarmed Helots all over Laconia at a time appointed specially and secretly bythe ephors. This was the last resort to avert the danger, and more than once was it used during the brilliant epoch of Sparta.
In the South the chattels likewise increase very rapidly, but not rapidly enough to satisfy the breeders, planters, and slave-traders. All things considered, the colored enslaved population increases in a proportion by far more rapid than the white. After 1783 the blacks were estimated at between five and six hundred thousand: the census of 1860 will find them full four millions: and no wonder. Trafficking slave-breeders, as well as planters, organize breeding as systematically as cattle-raisers attend to their stock. In Virginia this is the principal pursuit, and the chief source of income from domestic husbandry. The breeders have small enclosures to gently exercise the young human stock like the breeders of valuable horses. In some States, principally in the cotton region, the colored chattels outnumber the whites; in others the respective numbers are nearly equal. About one hundred and fifty years ago, South Carolina, through the voice of her law-makers, referring to the increase in chattels, declared it an "afflicting providence of God that the white persons do not proportionably multiply." Nowadays South Carolina finds the affliction a blessing. Though her colored population already outnumbers the white, she is first in assaulting humanity by reopening the slave-trade.
Cotton is a plant indigenous to the old world—to Asia and Africa. Its culture by free labor may soonbecome very profitable in other regions of the globe. Sooner or later this will end the exclusive American monopoly of its production, and then the dead weight of chattelhood will press fearfully on the oligarchs in economical as in social ways, even if the chattels remain quiet: this is, however, impossible to suppose, on account of their continually increasing numbers. Already slaves are tortured, murdered, burnt and slaughtered at the first danger, even though it be imaginary. Now this is done individually, and, even according to Southern notions, illegally. When the profits from slave-labor shall dwindle, and the danger from great masses of chattels shall increase, self-preservation and fatality will force the slaveocracy into attempting to re-enact the Spartankrypteia: the cattle-breeder easily transforming himself into the butcher. Even now many of them are on the way to bringing this about, by exposing their old and unproductive field hands to perish from want and misery.
In the course of about four centuries, both during and after the Peloponnesian war, the Spartan oligarchy was enriched more and more by the spoils of victorious wars, and by the importation of slaves as war prisoners from other Greek and from barbarous nations. Then the difference between the rich and poor was more striking, and the eternal process of oppressing the poor, seizing upon their property, or buying them out, was busily and cheerfully pursued. Then Laconia was held by comparatively few Spartan slaveholders—but there were no more heroes ofThermopylæ. Citizens and freemen were a scarcity during the Augustan period; but slaves, the property of a few wealthy owners, actually covered Lacedemonia and Sparta. Domestic slavery undermined and destroyed the Spartan nation in precisely the same manner as it did others before and since. The enslaved Helots and Greeks, and many of the descendants of the enslavers, became, in their turn, slaves of the Romans, then of the Slavic invaders, afterward of the Crusaders, till finally all of them, masters and slaves, groaned under the yoke of the Osmanlis. The traveller can now scarcely find the few mouldering ruins of the once proud and enslaving city. Spartan history covers nearly a thousand years: and for centuries the destructive disease was at work. Some of its symptoms, in the course of half a century, are already highly developed in the South.
Piracy and kidnapping, which in Greece originated at a time when every man saw an enemy almost in his immediate neighbor, did not wholly cease when national relations became more normal and regular. When slavery began to permeate the domestic economy, piracy and the slave-traffic were of course more active. The Southern enslavers assert that their region is not yet supplied with the necessary number of chattels. They draw on piracy, kidnapping, and bloodshed in Africa. The almost incessant wars between the Greek neighboring tribes and nations encouraged slavery; and innocent citizens, going from one Greek state toanother, were often enslaved through enmity and greed. However, this savage custom became softened and finally abandoned when the mutual relations became more civilized and regulated; whereas free-men from free states of the Union are arrested and imprisoned in the so-called civilized slave-holding states, and in some cases they can be legally sold as slaves.
In Bœotia slaves were not numerous—being only occasionally made and used. Neither serfs, bond-men, nor chattels, were held in Elis, Locris, or by the Arcadians, Phocians, or Achæans, until the downfall of Greek dignity, liberty, and independence, under the Macedonian and Roman rule. The Phocians prohibited slavery by express legislation.
The Ionians in Attica boasted that they sprang from their native soil. They were therefore the primitive tillers and cultivators of their not over-fertile and rather rocky land, of about one hundred and ninety square miles. This land was divided more or less equally into small homesteads worked by yeomen, to whom chattels would have been a burden. Centuries after the heroic or legendary epoch, when Attica possessed wealthier landowners, Hesiod advises the agriculturists to work their lands by the free labor of the Thetes in preference to slave labor.
Athens became very early a commercial city, and perhaps piratical expeditions for the kidnapping of slaves were fitted out from the Piræus. At any rate, slavery, chattelhood, was especially, if not exclusively, fostered when commerce became more extensive. Athens was the seat and focus of domestic slavery. In the course of time almost all trades were carried on by slaves, as also mining, and finally, farming. But all this was the growth of the long process of centuries.
Debtors were enslaved; but Solon abolished this right of the creditor. He likewise abolished the custom of going about armed in the community. Generally it is a sign of a dangerous and very degraded state of society when men carry arms as a necessity. By a strange coincidence, since slavery has been proclaimed a moral and religious duty, the use of bowie-knives, revolvers, and rifles becomes more and more the order of the day in the South. Not against the slave, not against any foreign enemy, not even against the abolitionist, do the men of the South arm themselves, but it is against each other that they have recourse to armed assaults in their private and public intercourse. From the South the savage custom invades the North, and it has in some cases been forced on peaceful Northern members of Congress in self-defence against the assaults of their Southern colleagues.
The Ionic race had no serfs or Helots, either in Attica or elsewhere. But in Attica, as in other Greek communities, and indeed throughout the whole world, from among the primitive yeomen or peasants, emerged those who, more thrifty, more successful, or more brave, accumulated wealth in various ways. Suchwas one mode in which aristocracy originated. These yeomen growing richer, acquired more land, bought out smaller farmers, and could hire more field hands. Even before Solon the aim of the rich was to transform freeholders into tenants, but Solon stemmed this current for a long period of time.
Parents could sell their children into slavery; Solon reduced this right to such daughters as willingly submitted to seduction. A poor man could sell himself into slavery, and children exposed by their parents were enslaved by the public authorities.
War and traffic furnished the great supplies of slaves or chattels for the Athenians. Such chattels were from all nations and races, and the black slaves constituted an accidental and imperceptible minority. Witness Æsop telling the story of a rustic who bought a black slave and unsuccessfully tried to bleach or to whitewash it. If blacks had been common merchandise, the rustic would have been familiar with its nature. Slavery was transmitted from parents to children, if the prisoner of war was not ransomed or the slave not manumitted. But at any time a slave could receive or buy his freedom, and a chattel once liberated could not, under penalty of capital punishment, again be violently enslaved. In the South they begin to legislate for the re-enslavement of the liberated: the odium no longer falls on the individual but on the whole body politic. All over the ancient world the state watched over and protected the once enfranchised slave: the modern slave-holding polity expels him or legislates for his disfranchisement. In Athens, as all over Greece, the offspring of freemen and slave-women were free.
At first slaves performed domestic service, and afterward, when their number increased, they were employed in various trades. The state used them in public works, sometimes to row the ships. But the greatest number were employed to work the mills and mines of Attica. However, the state itself did not work the mines, but rented them generally without the slave labor; though private individuals rented them for a term of years, together with the slaves who worked them. Slowly chattelhood spread over the rural economy of Attica.
About the time of the Persian wars, rural property was still nearly equally divided among the citizens. Wealth was accumulated and represented in commerce, in various industries, and in the precious metals. But at that time slaves nowhere outnumbered the freemen. At the battle of Marathon the Athenians had ten thousandhoplitesor heavily armed able-bodied citizens; at Platea eight thousand; and in both battles nearly as manypeltastsor lightly-armed troops—poorer citizens, but not serfs, or retainers, or slaves. Before the invasion of Xerxes, the free population of Attica probably amounted to more than one hundred and twenty thousand of both sexes and all ages. The slave population is estimated at the utmost as sixty thousand.
Athens, like all the other Greek republics, colonizedother countries with the surplus of their free—mostly poor—population. Herodotus died in such an expedition. The Dorians very likely colonized Sicily, the Ionians Italy or Magna Grecia. Such colonizations relieved the over-populated mother-country, extended the Hellenic culture, but likewise, in more than one way, fostered and nursed slavery. The Greek colonists in Sicily and in Italy, conquering or pushing into the interior the aborigines of these lands, enslaved, kidnapped and sold them. Then the Greek cities warred with and enslaved each other. Such was the case between Sybaris and Crotona, or in Sicily between Syracuse, Girgentum, etc. The rich men of Athens bought more and more slaves, purchased the lands of the poor, substituted in various handicrafts their gangs of slave laborers for freemen, and exported the impoverished freemen.[13]The increase of large estates and chattels went hand in hand with the decrease of freemen and public spirit in Athens; and the same was the case in other large commercial cities of Greece.