The Normans in European History

In consideration of much that appears in the numerous contributions to the discussion of the Negro Question, it must be noticeable that in recent years, there has been quite a broadening of the field, and that, from what was in the past, mainly a question of slavery or freedom, for one particular class of people, in one great country, we have advanced to a consideration of what may effect the entire world in that, which has been entitled by some: "The Conflict of Color," and by others not quite so pessimistic: "The Question of the Twentieth Century, the Question of Color." In such circumstances, an examination of the evolution of this question and a recital of some of the phases under which it has been brought up for discussion in the history of the United States, may tend to correct some misapprehensions and throw some additional light upon a subject, which, in spite of the efforts to suppress it, is continually forcing itself upon the attention of the world. While freely admitting the impossibility of discussing this subject, within any reasonable limits, without necessarily omitting mention of many publications, containing an amount of extremely valuable information, the aim of this work will be to trace the evolution of the question as it has appeared, in the expression of both whites and Negroes, in that country in which public opinion is said to exercise the greatest influence upon government. In undertaking such an examination it would be hardly necessary to make any very close scrutiny of the Colonial period, from the fact that while there was opinion that found expression in acts, statements and laws, the colonies, being under the control of Great Britain, were subjected to her policies and representative of her civilization. The extraordinary case therefore of a Massachusetts slave-owner, Maverick, who simply for breeding purposes, in 1636, forced an African woman of high rank, owned by him, to accept the embraces of a common young Negro was but a way of expressing contempt for the race. The Maryland Act of 1663, a far less coarse expression, involved all white women who failed to entertain it. In Stroud's "Sketch of the laws of Slavery," published in 1827, we find on page 2: "Section 2. And forasmuch as divers free born English women forgetful of their free condition, and to the disgrace of our nation do intermarry with Negro slaves" such "free born women ... shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband and all the issue of such free born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were."

Dettagli