Tertullian to Frederick Douglass, February 18, 1856

For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

THE ISLAND OF JAMAICA.

MESSERS. EDITORS:—As I find myself snugly ensconced in the "City of Elms," with some leisure moments before me, I have thought to profit by the opportunity to jot down a few ideas and transmit to you, which you may insert in one corner of your paper, if you deem them worthy of the room they will occupy therein.

As my mind for the past year has been running in a strong current towards the islands of the West Indian Archipelago, I will single one of them out as the text for my present reflections. It may be found situated between the 17 deg. 44 min., and 18 deg. 30 min. north lat.; and 76 deg. 12 min., and 78 deg. 25 min. west long., viz: Jamaica.

During a short sojourn in the Haytian capital the past summer, I made the acquaintance of a young colored man, a native of Jamaica, who had recently removed from his home to Hayti. He was employed by a company of Englishmen to superintend the culling of mahogany in the Hinche district of that empire, and the rafting of that precious wood down the Artibonite for foreign shipment. The young man exhibited considerable literary cultivation, but the biased propensities of his mind forbid me saying as much about his sound and comprehensive intelligence.

In conversing with him about the present condition of Jamaica, he adopted the reasoning of the prejudiced planters of that colony, and the pro-slavery apologists of this country in representing the island as going to waste in consequence of the idleness and vice of the emancipated negroes. He seemed to have no sympathy with the justice of emancipation; and from the sentiments he enunciated, he showed that he had been reared on the side of the cruel planters, although he was tinged with the proscribed hue. But there was one circumstance that he mentioned, that refuted at once the base imputation that his remarks casted upon the emancipated class of that island. He said that since January 1855, "5,000 of those worthless fellows straggled off from Jamaica, rather than go to work, as industrious men, for the planters."

Now, Messrs. Editors, you know that it is not an idle and vicious people, who thus leave the soil on which they are born. All history refutes such an idea. An able English philosopher, whose work on Human Progression has just been republished in this country, says, "The most advanced nations in the world will always be those who navigate most. . . . . The advanced nations are the goers; the less advanced are the stayers at home. Sloth and barbarism are essentially stationary; energy and civilization are essentially expansive, cosmopolitan and progressive." (See page 290, Boston edition.) [I would remark en passant, that in discussing his great theories, the philosopher has occasion to refer to "F. Douglass' slave narrative," as a standard text book of the slaveholder's religion.]

But to resume. Whatever may be the ruinous condition of the island of Jamaica, no intelligent man can ascribe the cause to the indolence and vice of the emancipated class, in the face of such a migration on their part.—But the real cause, Messrs. Editors, is only to be sought in the fact, that in the planters of Jamaica is to found the lordly and imperious disposition of the Southern slaveholders towards their slaves, combined with the arrogant monopoly of the English landlords. And there is no other alternative left the freed black man, but to be a peasant-slave, or migrate in large numbers. They have chosen the better alternative. Thus is the country robbed of its natural labors, and the imperious planters are left in possession of their desolate estates, struggling to make a factitious supply of laborers, by the introduction of re-captured Africans, Coolies and Chinamen, by a semi-system of slavery and slave-trafficking, which the British government ought to suppress.

But these foreign laborers soon learn how to detest the miserable and contemptible class of tyrannical planters, and when the period of their apprenticeships expires, the planters can no longer retain them in their service, and they either return to their native countries, or betake themselves to peddling, or some other independent occupation to obtain a precarious livelihood.—Thus by the infatuated blindness of the relentless planters, and the social defects of the tenure to property, that exist in all civilized governments—particularly that of Great Britain—the incentives to honest industry are taken away from the laborers of Jamaica and the island is precipitating to the verge of ruin. Then there is no wonder that the hardy and enterprising portion of them who wish to escape vice emigrate elsewhere to find a more inviting field for their labor. And by so doing, they accelerate the crisis of the planters' mournful but just destruction, in a pecuniary point of view.—Nor is this to be regretted.

Whilst visiting Philadelphia a few weeks since, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Campbell, an intelligent Jamaican, who assists Mr. Bassett in the supervision of the school lately vacated by Prof. Reason; and in conversing with him on the subject, he remarked, that he would thank God for that state of things, which the planters would call the complete ruin of Jamaica. He would regard such a crisis as the moment of her regeneration. Not until the planters are compelled to completely abandon the island bankrupt, and sacrifice their estates at any price, will its future prosperity commence. Then the exiled Jamaican laborers will return to their home, and with the earnings hoarded up elsewhere, possess themselves of the soil, and become an independent peasantry—each one owning and cultivating a small estate. Said he, "The heart of every Jamaican, wherever dispersed, whether on the isthmus, in California, or in distant Australia, is centered in Jamaica, and there he expects to return at some day."

These expectations of this talented Jamaica gentleman of color, would seem to be in process of verification, from the remarkable fact, published about a year since in all the newspapers of the country, from the Aspinwall Courier, and republished in England in the Anti-Slavery Reporter of last March. In order to refresh the memory of your readers, it may not be uninteresting to give an extract from the same here.

Says the Courier, speaking of the Jamaica negroes, as republished in other papers: "Between three and four hundred of these blacks have been at work for a month on the Panama Railway, and having finished their contract, had been paid, and were waiting at Aspinwall for an opportunity to return to Jamaica. Here they were, with money in the pockets, surrounded by every temptation to crime and dissipation, and enticed by liquor and gaming tables, and yet the most perfect good order and sobriety prevailing amongst them. They go" the Editor observes, "by scores to the stores, when, after selecting such articles as they require, and paying for the same, they return in the most orderly and peaceable way to their quarters."—The Courier contrasts this conduct with that of the same number of California passengers, or the same number of Irish laborers discharged from service with their pockets full of cash.—The contrast is very much in favor of the Negro. The Californian will fill the city with his noise, while the Irishman will leave all his money in the till of the liquor shop, and his body in the hospital. "It is a stubborn fact," says the Courier, "that the same number of men could not be selected from the same class of citizens in any country in Europe, with white skins, whose conduct, under like circumstances, would better entitle them to the respect of the community.

Now, Messrs. Editors, after such a vindication of the freed men of Jamaica, it is idle for anyone to prate longer about their indolence and vice. The ruin of Jamaica is attributed alone to the planters of that island, and the defective political system of the 19th century, not yet freed from the feudalism of the middle ages. We have not yet a system of legislation developed suitable to a community of free men; neither have we arrived at that integrity in the promulgation of the truths of Christianity by the church so necessary to curb the selfish heart of those who have power. Hence the tendency under these two baneful defects, for all communities to settle down into two classes, viz: masters and slaves, as Calhoun asserted, and the Richmond Enquirer now vindicates. But, thanks be to God! that they prospect in Jamaica, is, that the black man will turn the tables; and if all communities must so settle down in that island, the negro will be the master, and the decayed white planter the slave.

But the great length of this communication admonishes me to cease writing. If this finds favor with you, you shall hear from me again on this an kindred subjects.

TERTULLIAN.

NEW HAVEN, Ct., Feb. 18, 1856.