The Journal of Negro History Volume III Part 35

[431] _Louisville Weekly Journal_, September 26, 1849.

[432] _Niles' Register_, May 9, 1849. Clay, Ca.s.sius, _Memoirs_, pp.

175-178. Collins, _History of Kentucky_, Vol. 1, p. 59.

[433] Clay endeavored in his plan to be fair to all parties concerned, not only the Negro but the slave owner as well, as is well evident in the following paragraph, in which he sought to show the justice of his scheme to the holders of Negroes in the State:

"That the system, will be attended with some sacrifices on the part of the slaveholders, which are to be regretted, need not be denied. What great and beneficent enterprise was ever accomplished without risk and sacrifice! But these sacrifices are distant, contingent, and inconsiderable. a.s.suming the year 1860 for the commencement of the system, all slaves born prior to that time would remain such during their lives, and the present loss of the slaveholder would be only the difference in value of the female slave whose offspring, if she had any, born after the first day of January, 1860, should be free at the age of twenty-five or should be slaves for life. In the meantime, if the right to remove or sell the slave out of the State should be exercised, that trifling loss would not be incurred. The slaveholder, after the commencement of the system, would lose the difference between the value of the slaves for life and slaves until the age of twenty-five years. He might also incur some inconsiderable expense in rearing from their birth the issue of those who were to be free at twenty-five, until they were old enough to be apprenticed out; but as it is probable that they would be most generally bound to him, he would receive some indemnity from their services until they attained their majority."

[434] Collins, _History of Kentucky_, Vol. 1, p. 58.

[435] _Niles' Register_, February 21, 1849.

[436] We know how Clay felt about this matter, for he referred to it at length in his speech in the Senate on February 20, 3850, in the debate on the Compromise resolutions. Speaking particularly of his letter of emanc.i.p.ation he declared: "I knew at the moment that I wrote that letter in New Orleans, as well as I know at this moment, that a majority of the people of Kentucky would not adopt my scheme, or probably any project whatever of gradual emanc.i.p.ation. Perfectly well did I know it; but I was anxious that, if any of my posterity, or any human being who comes after me, should have occasion to look into my sentiments, and ascertain what they were on this great inst.i.tution of slavery; to put them on record then; and ineffectual as I saw the project would be, I felt it was a duty which I owed to myself, to truth, to my country, and to my G.o.d, to record my sentiments. The State of Kentucky has decided as I antic.i.p.ated she would do. I regret it; but I acquiesce in her decision." --Colton, Reed & McKinley, _Works of Henry Clay_, Vol. 3, p. 353

[437] Collins, _History of Kentucky_, Vol. 1, p. 61.

[438] _Ibid._, Vol. 1, p. 83.

[439] Session Laws of 1863, p. 366.

[440] _Ibid._, 1856, Vol. 1, p. 50.

[441] _Maysville Eagle_, April 11, 1838.

BOOK REVIEWS

_The Negro in Literature and Art._ By BENJAMIN BRAWLEY. Duffield and Company, New York, 1918. Pp. 176. Price $1.25.

This is an effort to put in succinct form an estimate of the Negro's efforts in the creative world. The style of the book is largely biographical. The opening chapter deals with Negro genius. Then around such Negroes as Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W.

Chestnutt, W. E. B. DuBois, William Stanley Braithwaite, Meta Warrick Fuller, Henry O. Tanner, Frederick Dougla.s.s, and Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton are grouped most of the facts as to the achievements of the Negroes in art, literature, and science. In the appendix there is a dissertation on the Negro in American fiction. A helpful bibliography and a short index are also added.

This book is unique in that it is the first work devoted exclusively to this aspect of Negro history. It undertakes "to treat somewhat more thoroughly than has ever before been attempted the achievement of the Negro in the United States along literary and artistic lines, judging this by absolute rather than by partial or limited standards." The work is the result of studies begun by the author years ago and published in booklet form in 1910 as _The Negro in Literature and Art_. The substance of this treatise is found also in Professor Brawley's _A Short History of the American Negro_. Certain articles included therein have already been published in the _Springfield Republican_, _The Southern Workman_, and the _Dial_. The appearance of this work in the new form is justified by the author on the ground that the constantly increasing material in this field has so changed his viewpoint that the time seemed ripe for a more intensive review.

The purpose of the author is a lofty one. Here we see the effort to inform the public that there is among Negroes a growing scholars.h.i.+p which must be reckoned with in determining the thought of this country. It is to convince the public that the Negro mind is functioning along all lines of thought known to other races of achievement. The purpose, too, is to set forth to Negroes examples of successful men and women in this field to serve them as an incentive to contribute to thought. Professor Brawley has, therefore, written an interesting book which should attract all persons desiring to understand those forces at work in the Negro mind and the manner in which they have found expression.

C. G. WOODSON

_Negro Folk Songs._ By NATALIE CURTIS BURLIN. Book I. New York and Boston, G. Schirmer. Pp. 42. Price 50 cents.

The unique features of Natalie Curtis Burlin's notation of Negro folk-songs, collected in the South, are their complete truth to the original folk-song, spirit and letter. The spontaneous part-singing of groups of Negroes is a rare phenomenon in folk-music, for most simple people sing only a unisono melody. Mrs. Curtis Burlin, unlike most former collectors, has recorded not only the melody and words, but the whole _choral_ folk-song, as sung in the South, with all its different voices. To secure entire accuracy in so difficult a task, a phonograph was used and the work was mainly accomplished in all its wealth of octave at Hampton Inst.i.tute, Virginia, under the auspices of which the collection was undertaken and for the benefit of which the publications are made. Not content with a by-ear approximation only of the folk-song, Mrs. Burlin gave especial care to the notation of every nuance of Negro singing--organic and rhythmic. The changing nuance syncopations that give such expressive accent to the different solo verses sung by the Negro "leader" have all been caught and put upon paper. Doctor Talcott Williams, of the New York School of Journalism, says that the example of this reverent and scholarly work marks a new era in the collecting of Negro folk-music in this country.

The words of the songs--true folk-poems--have been noted in dialect with the same truth to Negro rendering as the music. Furthermore, the syllables stressed in the music are stressed in the written poem as well; for in the mind of the Negro authors, words and music were one spontaneous creation, and it is the _music_ that gives to the words the accent, instead of the words forming the basis of the accentuation of the music, as with us. This reproduction in verse of the original Negro rhythms which are full of unexpected emphasis and captivating syncopation forms a new departure in the manner of writing Negro poems and it is believed that modern poets and writers of vers libre will find interest in the richness and variety of Negro rhythms here shown.

Each song is prefaced by a few paragraphs of descriptive text and the dedications of the different records to men who have helped to advance the Negro summarize, in a sense, the progress of the race since emanc.i.p.ation.

The recording of Negro folk-songs was prefaced by Mrs. Burlin by a year's study of the native music of Africa. Doubleday, Page & Co. will bring out in the autumn her book ent.i.tled _Songs From the Dark Continent_, containing the results of careful study of native folk-lore and music told and sung by two African boys (one a Zulu and the other from the Ndan tribe) who had come directly to Hampton Inst.i.tute from the Dark Continent. This book plainly proves the relations.h.i.+p of American Negro music to its parent stem in Africa, and reveals the poetic as well as musical gifts latent in the black race.

_The Black Man's Part in the War._ By SIR H. H. JOHNSTON. Simpkin Marshall, London, 1917.

Taking into consideration that the United Kingdom now rules 50,000,000 of Africans who are well represented in the battle line by the thousands of Negroes fighting to make democracy safe in the world of the white man, from which the blacks are excluded, this sympathetic writer here endeavors to give these soldiers of color credit for their unselfish services. The highest tribute which he pays them is that their loyalty is incontestable. The writer, therefore, makes an appeal in behalf of safeguarding their interests and reasonably preserving their independence after the war. Having in mind the new alignments of trade, he sees the Africans as the producers of the tropical products which white men will need. Their future loyalty in the compet.i.tive commercial world after the war is also necessary to the salvation of the English people in the tropics and at home.

The writer believes too that to secure this necessary loyalty the natives must be given political recognition. The rights of the black man as a citizen of the empire must be affirmed wherever the territories have been under British rule long enough to acquire a very British tone in language, education and ideals. He hopes also that the present tendency of the natives of the late German possessions to prefer the rule of the British to that of their former masters may be further accentuated by the efforts of Englishmen to treat these natives with more consideration. The writer advocates also a fair division of land where the two races are brought into contact with each other as in Rhodesia.

To strengthen the claims he makes for the recognition of the black man the writer has well ill.u.s.trated his book with plates showing the advancement of Negroes to arouse interest in their behalf. The book is, of necessity, incomplete, as the war has not yet ended; but, on the whole, students of Negro life and history will find it profitable to read this broad enlightened working program for changing the white man's att.i.tude toward a large part of the human family which not only has done him no great wrong, but has borne his burdens when he has been about to fall beneath the load.

_History of the Civil War._ By JAMES FORD RHODES, LL.D., D.Litt.

McMillan Company, New York. 1861-1865. Pp. 454.

Mr. Rhodes has covered this ground in detail in his _History of the United States_ in seven volumes. But this work is not an abridgment of the three volumes of that history dealing with the Civil War. Since writing his first history he has had access to much new material and many valuable treatments of certain periods of the Civil War. He has, therefore, considered it necessary to bring out this new volume that he may show the bearing of these new facts on his grasp of this period of our history.

Influenced by the dominant thought of the present war, Mr. Rhodes treats such conditions as unpreparedness, the privations of the war, lack of tea and coffee, the lack of bread and meat, the difficulty of transportation, conscription, high prices, loans, high taxation, and consequent distress. The Negroes are necessarily mentioned in the discussion of slavery in the territories, the attempted slavery compromises, Lincoln's handling of the question, the effect on them of the movements of the armies, and the efforts at emanc.i.p.ation leading up to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Mention is also made of the conduct of the slaves who accompanied the Confederates and of those who followed and fought with the Union army.

Mr. Rhodes is here at his best, that is, when writing on the Civil War. But this seems to be mere chance. He writes a good history of the Civil War because he happens to be a Unionist, and no one has yet proved that the Union cause was wrong. He is after all an impressionable historian, accepting almost anything he picks up, but embellis.h.i.+ng it so well as to win the American public, whose scholars.h.i.+p has not yet performed the task of publis.h.i.+ng an authentic history of the Civil War from the viewpoint of treating the records scientifically. When Rhodes elsewhere takes up the Negro in the Reconstruction he shows his lack of ability as an historian in accepting almost everything which he has heard or read about the Negro and in branding, therefore, as mistakes and failures all of the efforts to elevate the Negro to the dignity of citizens.h.i.+p and to deal with him as a human being.

NOTES

William Bernard Hartgrove, one of the five members who partic.i.p.ated in the organization of the a.s.sociation for the Study of Negro Life and History in Chicago in 1915, died at Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the twenty-fourth of April. In his death the a.s.sociation lost a substantial supporter and friend. He was an unselfish, wide-awake and enterprising teacher, endeavoring always to be instrumental in the uplift of the Negro. During the last ten years of his life he devoted much of his time and means to the work of the National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People, serving the local branch most of that period as secretary. When the a.s.sociation for the Study of Negro Life and History was organized he was among the first to see its possibilities and to give it financial as well as moral support. He made himself useful in a.s.sisting the editor in his arduous duties during the days when the work was in the making. He contributed to the JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, moreover, a number of articles, among which are: _The Story of Maria Louise Moore and Fannie M. Richards_, _The Negro Soldier in the American Revolution_, and _The Story of Josiah Henson_.

Mention of the slave Archy in Miss Beasley's _Slavery in California_ has called forth from a relative of his the following short sketch:

Archy's mother was named Maria. Maria had four children: Archy, Candace, Pompey and Quitman. (I am the daughter of Candace.) At the time Charles A. Stoval took Archy to California, Maria with her other children were with Simeon Stoval, the father of Chas. A. Stoval.

Chas. A. Stoval had been graduated in medicine and had returned home to begin practice, but his health having failed him, he went to California, taking my Uncle Archy with him. My grandmother Maria heard through the relatives of Stoval of Archy during the time Stoval remained in California. But near the close of the Civil War, Chas. A.

Stoval returned to Mississippi and remained there until his death a few years later. After Stoval came back from California, my grandmother never heard any more of her son Archy, except when she once heard that he was with the Indians, who were treating him for some kind of sickness. Whether he died or whether this rumor was put out to keep the Stovals from trying to steal him and bring him back to Mississippi I have never been able to learn. My grandmother Maria continued to search for Archy, by writing several times to San Francisco, but without success. She died in 1884. Pompey and Quitman continued to live near Jackson, Miss., where Quitman died some time ago. Pompey was still alive when I last heard of him.

MRS. R. A. HUNT

_German East Africa_, by A. F. Calvert, has been published by Werner Laurie, London.

Messrs. Routledge, of London, will soon bring out a volume of _Select Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments Ill.u.s.trating the History of South Africa_.