UNITED STATES, March 7, 1792
Gentlemen of the Senate:
I submit to your consideration the report of the Secretary of State, which accompanies this, stating the reasons for extending the negotiation proposed at Madrid to the subject of commerce, and explaining, under the form of instructions to the commissioners lately appointed to that Court, the principles on which commercial arrangements with Spain might, if desired on her part, be acceded to on ours; and I have to request your decision whether you will advise and consent to the extension of the powers of the commissioners as proposed, and to the ratification of a treaty which shall conform to those instructions should they enter into such a one with that Court.
Go WASHINGTON.
March 7, 1792
The Secretary Of State having understood from communications with the commissioners of His Catholic Majesty, subsequent to that which he reported to the President on the end of December last, that though they considered the navigation of the Mississippi as the principal object of negotiation between the two countries, yet it was expected by their Court that the conferences would extend to all the matters which were under negotiation on the former occasion with Mr. Gardoqui, and particularly to some arrangements of commerce, is of opinion that to renew the conferences on this subject also, since they desire it, will be but friendly and respectful, and can lead to nothing without our own consent, and that to refuse it might obstruct the settlement of the questions of navigation and boundary, and therefore reports to the President of the United States the following observations and instructions to the commissioners of the United States appointed to negotiate with the Court of Spain a treaty or convention relative to the navigation of the Mississippi, which observations and instructions he is of opinion should be laid before the Senate of the United States, and their decision be desired whether they will advise and consent that a treaty be entered into by the commissioners of the United States with Spain conformably thereto.
After stating to our commissioners the foundation of our rights to navigate the Mississippi and to hold our southern boundary at the thirty-first degree of latitude, and that each of these is to be a sine qua non, it is proposed to add as follows:
On the former conferences on the navigation of the Mississippi, Spain chose to blend with it the subject of commerce, and accordingly specific propositions thereon passed between the negotiators. Her object then was to obtain our renunciation of the navigation and to hold out commercial arrangements perhaps as a lure to us. Perhaps, however, she might then, and may now, really set a value on commercial arrangements with us, and may receive them as a consideration for accommodating us in the navigation, or may wish for them to have the appearance of receiving a consideration. Commercial arrangements, if acceptable in themselves, will not be the less so if coupled with those relating to navigation and boundary. We have only to take care that they be acceptable in themselves.
There are two principles which may be proposed as the basis of a commercial treaty: First, that of exchanging the privileges of native citizens, or, second, those of the most favored nation.
First. With the nations holding important possessions in America we are ready to exchange the rights of native citizens, provided they be extended through the whole possessions of both parties; but the propositions of Spain made on the former occasion (a copy of which accompanies this) were that we should give their merchants, vessels, and productions the privileges of native merchants, vessels, and productions through the whole of our possessions, and they give the same to ours only in Spain and the Canaries. This is inadmissible, because unequal; and as we believe that Spain is not ripe for an equal exchange on this basis, we avoid proposing it.
Second. Though treaties which merely exchange the rights of the most favored nations are not without all inconvenience, yet they have their conveniences also. It is an important one that they leave each party free to make what internal regulations they please, and to give what preferences they find expedient to native merchants, vessels, and productions; and as we already have treaties on this basis with France, Holland, Sweden, and Prussia, the two former of which are perpetual, it will be but small additional embarrassment to extend it to Spain. On the contrary, we are sensible it is right to place that nation on the most favored footing, whether we have a treaty with them or not, and it can do us no harm to secure by treaty a reciprocation of the right.
Of the four treaties before mentioned, either the French or the Prussian might be taken as a model; but it would be useless to propose the Prussian, because we have already supposed that Spain would never consent to those articles which give to each party access to all the dominions of the other; and without this equivalent we would not agree to tie our own hands so materially in war as would be done by the twenty-third article, which renounces the right of fitting out privateers or of capturing merchant vessels. The French treaty, therefore, is proposed as the model. In this, however, the following changes are to be made:
We should be admitted to all the dominions of Spain to which any other foreign nation is or may be admitted.
Article 5, being an exemption from a particular duty in France, will of course be omitted as inapplicable to Spain.
Article 8 to be omitted as unnecessary with Morocco, and inefficacious and little honorable with any of the Barbary powers(1); but it may furnish occasion to sound Spain on the project of a convention of the powers at war with the Barbary States to keep up by rotation a constant cruise of a given force on their coasts till they shall be compelled to renounce forever and against all nations their predatory practices. Perhaps the infidelities of the Algerines to their treaty of peace with Spain, though the latter does not choose to break openly, may induce her to subsidize us to cruise against them with a given force.
Articles 9 and 10, concerning fisheries, to be omitted as inapplicable.
Article 11 (2). The first paragraph of this article respecting the droit d'aubaine to be omitted, that law being supposed peculiar to France.
Article 17, giving asylum in the ports of either to the armed vessels of the other with the prizes taken from the enemies of that other, must be qualified as it is in the nineteenth article of the Prussian treaty, as the stipulation in the latter part of the article that " no shelter or refuge shall be given in the ports of the one to such as shall have made prize on the subjects of the other of the parties" would forbid us, in case of a war between France and Spain, to give shelter in our ports to prizes made by the latter on the former, while the first part of the article would oblige us to shelter those made by the former on the latter-a very dangerous covenant, and which ought never to be repeated in any other instance.
Article 29. Consuls should be received at all the ports at which the vessels of either party may be received.
Article 30, concerning free ports in Europe and America, free ports in the Spanish possessions in America, and particularly at The Havannah, are more to be desired than expected. It cad therefore only be recommended to the best endeavors of the commissioners to obtain them. It will be something to obtain for our vessels, 'dour, etc., admission to those ports during their pleasure. In like manners if they could be prevailed on to reestablish our right of cutting logwood in the Bay of Campeachy on the footing on which it stood before the treaty of 1763, it would be desirable and not endanger to us any contest with the English, who by the revolution treaty are restrained to the southeastern parts of Yucatan.
Article 31. The act of ratification on our part may require a twelvemonth from the date of the treaty, as the Senate meets regularly but once a year, and to return it to Madrid for exchange may require four months more.
The treaty must not exceed years duration, except the clauses relating to boundary and the navigation of the Mississippi, which must be perpetual and final. Indeed, these two subjects had better be in a separate instrument
There might have been mentioned a third species of arrangement-that of making special agreements on every special subject of commerce, and of settling a tariff of duty to be paid on each side on every particular article; but this would require in our commissioners a very minute knowledge of our commerce, as it is impossible to foresee every proposition of this kind which might be brought into discussion and to prepare them for it by information and instruction from hence. Our commerce, too, is as yet rather in a course of experiment, and the channels in which it will ultimately flow are not sufficiently known to enable us to provide for it by special agreement; nor have the exigencies of our new Government as yet so far developed themselves as that we can know to what degree we may or must have recourse to commerce for the purposes of revenue. No common consideration, therefore, ought to induce us as yet to arrangements of this kind. Perhaps nothing should do it with any nation short of the privileges of natives in all their possessions, foreign and domestic.
It were to be wished, indeed, that some positively favorable stipulations respecting our grain, flour, and fish could be obtained, even on our giving reciprocal advantages to some of the commodities of Spain, say her wines and brandies; but,
First. If we quit the ground of the most favored nation as to certain articles for our convenience, Spain may insist on doing the same for other articles for her convenience, and thus our commissioners will get themselves on the ground of a treaty of detail, for which they will not be prepared.
Second. If we grant favor to the wines and brandies of Spain, then Portugal and France will demand the same; and in order to create an equivalent Portugal may lay a duty on our fish and grain, and France a prohibition on our whale oils, the removal of which will be proposed as an equivalent.
Thus much, however, as to grain and flour may be attempted. There has not long since been a considerable duty laid on them in Spain. This was while a treaty on the subject of commerce was pending between us and Spain, as that Court considers the matter. It is not generally thought right to change the state of things pending a treaty concerning them. On this consideration and on the motive of cultivating our friendship, perhaps the commissioners may induce them to restore this commodity to the footing on which it was on opening the conferences with Mr. Gardoqui, on the 26th day of July, 1785. If Spain says, " Do the same by your tonnage on our vessels," the answer may be that " Our foreign tonnage affects Spain very little and other nations very much; whereas the duty on flour in Spain affects us very much and other nations very little; consequently there would be no equality in reciprocal relinquishment, as there had been none in the reciprocal innovation; and Spain, by insisting on this, would in fact only be aiding the interests of her rival nations, to whom we should be forced to extend the same indulgence. " At the time of opening the conferences, too, we had as yet not erected any system, our Government itself being not yet erected. Innovation then was unavoidable on our parts if it be innovation to establish a system. We did it on fair and general ground, on ground favorable to Spain; but they had a system, and therefore innovation was avoidable on their part.
TH: JEFFERSON.
ARTICLES PROPOSED BY DON DIEGO GARDOQI TO BE INSERTED IN THE TREATY WITH THE UNITED STATES.
First. That all commercial regulations affecting each other shall be founded in perfect reciprocity. Spanish merchants shall enjoy all the commercial privileges of native merchants in the United States, and American merchants shall enjoy all the commercial privileges of native merchants in the Kingdom of Spain and in the Canaries and other islands belonging to and adjacent thereto. The same privileges shall extend to their respective vessels and merchandise consisting of the manufactures and products of their respective countries.
Second. Each party may establish consuls in the countries of the other (excepting such provinces in Spain into which none have heretofore been admitted, viz, Bilboa and Guipusca), with such powers and privileges as shall be ascertained by a particular convention.
Third. That the bona fide manufactures and productions of the United States (tobacco only excepted, which shall continue under its present regulations may be imported in American or Spanish vessels into any parts of His Majesty's European dominions and islands aforesaid in like manner as if they were the productions of Spain, and, on the other hand, that the bona fide manufactures and productions of His Majesty's dominions may be imported into the United States in Spanish or American vessels in like manner as if they were the manufactures and productions of the said States. And further, that all such duties and imposts as may mutually be thought necessary to lay on them by either party shall be ascertained and regulated on principles of exact reciprocity by a tariff, to be formed by a convention for that purpose, to be negotiated and made within one year after the exchange of the ratification of this treaty; and in the meantime that no other duties or imposts shall be exacted from each other's merchants and ships than such as may be payable by natives in like cases.
Fourth. That inasmuch as the United States, from not having mines of gold and silver, may often want supplies of specie for a circulating medium, His Catholic Majesty, as a proof of his good will, agrees to order the masts and timber which may from time to time be wanted for his royal navy to be purchased and paid for in specie in the United States, provided the said masts and timber shall be of equal quality and when brought to Spain shall not cost more than the like may there be had for from other countries.
Fifth. It is agreed that the articles commonly inserted in other treaties of commerce for mutual and reciprocal convenience shall be inserted in this, and that this treaty and every article and stipulation therein shall continue in full force for ______ years, to be computed from the day of the date hereof
From:http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/messages/gw015.htm
Thursday, June 26, 2008
jefferson on slavery
What's new?
.... It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. - To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. - Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of Superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious [1] experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present..- When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation.
We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad.
The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. [2] Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately [3] but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and show how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his style is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted indulgence to his slaves in this particular, took from them a certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. The same Cato, on a principle of oeconomy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old wagons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing else become useless. . . . The American slaves cannot enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose in the island Esculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like to become tedious. The emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such of them as should recover, and first declared that if any person chose to kill rather than expose them, it should be deemed homicide. The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is required against him as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction. Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right or wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago.
Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites. Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude and unshaken fidelity. The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, to optical classes, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the Senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different Species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them?
This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question `What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.
The particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that state?
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic, or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious pecularities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trarnple on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. - But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
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Notes
1. Crawford.
2. Jefferson's own note: The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar.
If Jefferson is referring to the banjo here, he is completely wrong: only the ukelele-banjo has the same tone intervals as the 4 higher strings of the guitar, however the guitar is tuned in E and the ukelele-banjo in B: other four string banjo's are tuned like a violin (GMW).
3. This misspelled reference to Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) illustrates how illogical Jefferson could become on race analysis. Considering that she was an African slave and largely self-taught, the marvel is her intellectual precocity not only as a poet, but as a fluent classicist and as a fascinating and brilliant conversationalist - all achieved before her death at the age of 31.
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Last update: 2005-11-7 time: 10:06 © 1994- 2008. All rights reserved.
University of Groningen Humanities Computing - American Studies
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/slavery.htm
.... It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. - To these objections, which are political, may be added others, which are physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that of colour. - Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of Superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious [1] experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present..- When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation.
We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad.
The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. [2] Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whately [3] but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and general philanthropy, and show how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his style is easy and familiar, except when he affects a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Augustan age especially, the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America. The two sexes were confined in separate apartments, because to raise a child cost the master more than to buy one. Cato, for a very restricted indulgence to his slaves in this particular, took from them a certain price. But in this country the slaves multiply as fast as the free inhabitants. Their situation and manners place the commerce between the two sexes almost without restraint. The same Cato, on a principle of oeconomy, always sold his sick and superannuated slaves. He gives it as a standing precept to a master visiting his farm, to sell his old oxen, old wagons, old tools, old and diseased servants, and every thing else become useless. . . . The American slaves cannot enumerate this among the injuries and insults they receive. It was the common practice to expose in the island Esculapius, in the Tyber, diseased slaves, whose cure was like to become tedious. The emperor Claudius, by an edict, gave freedom to such of them as should recover, and first declared that if any person chose to kill rather than expose them, it should be deemed homicide. The exposing them is a crime of which no instance has existed with us; and were it to be followed by death, it would be punished capitally. We are told of a certain Vedius Pollio, who, in the presence of Augustus, would have given a slave as food to his fish, for having broken a glass. With the Romans, the regular method of taking the evidence of their slaves was under torture. Here it has been thought better never to resort to their evidence. When a master was murdered, all his slaves, in the same house, or within hearing, were condemned to death. Here punishment falls on the guilty only, and as precise proof is required against him as against a freeman. Yet notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans, their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phaedrus, were slaves. But they were of the race of whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has produced the distinction. Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture, that nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience: and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave? And whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one, who has taken all from him, as he may slay one who would slay him? That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right or wrong, is neither new, nor peculiar to the colour of the blacks. Homer tells us it was so 2600 years ago.
Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites. Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude and unshaken fidelity. The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, to optical classes, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the Senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different Species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them?
This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question `What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.
The particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that state?
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic, or particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious pecularities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trarnple on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live and labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed. For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest. - But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1. Crawford.
2. Jefferson's own note: The instrument proper to them is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar.
If Jefferson is referring to the banjo here, he is completely wrong: only the ukelele-banjo has the same tone intervals as the 4 higher strings of the guitar, however the guitar is tuned in E and the ukelele-banjo in B: other four string banjo's are tuned like a violin (GMW).
3. This misspelled reference to Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) illustrates how illogical Jefferson could become on race analysis. Considering that she was an African slave and largely self-taught, the marvel is her intellectual precocity not only as a poet, but as a fluent classicist and as a fascinating and brilliant conversationalist - all achieved before her death at the age of 31.
Text preparedby GMW for From Revolution to Reconstruction - an .HTML project.
Last update: 2005-11-7 time: 10:06 © 1994- 2008. All rights reserved.
University of Groningen Humanities Computing - American Studies
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/slavery.htm
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Headquarters 50th ovd
Raleigh N.C.
Apr 14th 1865
Dear Sister, You will doubtless be anxious to hear from me by the tune this will arrive. So although I do not owe you a letter I will write. Events of immense importance have transpired within two weeks. Richmond has been taken. Lee's entire army surrendered to Grant and Johnston has fled from Sherman. We have entered Raleigh in triumph and feel very much elated with the prospect of a speedy end of the war by the subjugation of the Rebels. When that event transpires you may expect to see my familiar countenance once more at home. The 27th day of August now something more than four months distant is the day which if the United States govt is true to pledges will see me free from all obligations to do military service. You may look for me say the last day of August or the first of September and if I dont come then just keep on looking. Trees and every thing are n full leaf. Peaches are of considerable size so as to have sloughed off the old blossom and look like peaches. The weather is very warm almost too much so to march and yet if my conjectures are right we push in after Johnston tomorrow and will give neither him or ourselves any rest until the whole affair is settled. This is a very fine sandy country very unlike that nearer the seacoast as instead of Swamps we now have hills of tolerable size and fine rolling farms. The people in Raleigh approach nearer to being Union than any we have seen before since we left E. Tennessee. Holden is to continue the publication of the Raleigh Standard as a Union paper which it has always been at heart, & as far as possible openly. The army has burned some very fine houses in this march. I have learned that a number of our men who were taken prisoners. Starved and otherwise mistreated on escaping took an oath to destroy all the property they were able in Southern territory sparing the women and children only. Accordingly along the roadside far in advance or far in the rear as we marched along might be seen dense volumes of black smoke rising. Splendid houses superior to any in Sheffield very much finer than Mr. Parks for instance containing splendid pianos the property of planters owning thousands of acres of land and hundreds of Negroes were destroyed in this way. I must confess I was glad to see them burn in most instances where I knew the owners to have been original traitors.
Write soon Your Bro.
A.M.Weston Direct Headquarters 50th O.V.D. 3rd Brig. 2nd Div. 23rd A.G. Dept. of N.C.
Love to every body Keep on writing I'll be home in a few months
(Asa M. Weston enlisted on 8/11/62 as Sergeant in Company K, 50th Ohio Infantry, 3/4/65 promoted to Sgt Major, 4/22/65 promoted to 2nd Lt, 6/26/65 mustered out at Salisbury, NC)
From:http://www.civilwargazette.faithsite.com/content.asp?CID=86873
Raleigh N.C.
Apr 14th 1865
Dear Sister, You will doubtless be anxious to hear from me by the tune this will arrive. So although I do not owe you a letter I will write. Events of immense importance have transpired within two weeks. Richmond has been taken. Lee's entire army surrendered to Grant and Johnston has fled from Sherman. We have entered Raleigh in triumph and feel very much elated with the prospect of a speedy end of the war by the subjugation of the Rebels. When that event transpires you may expect to see my familiar countenance once more at home. The 27th day of August now something more than four months distant is the day which if the United States govt is true to pledges will see me free from all obligations to do military service. You may look for me say the last day of August or the first of September and if I dont come then just keep on looking. Trees and every thing are n full leaf. Peaches are of considerable size so as to have sloughed off the old blossom and look like peaches. The weather is very warm almost too much so to march and yet if my conjectures are right we push in after Johnston tomorrow and will give neither him or ourselves any rest until the whole affair is settled. This is a very fine sandy country very unlike that nearer the seacoast as instead of Swamps we now have hills of tolerable size and fine rolling farms. The people in Raleigh approach nearer to being Union than any we have seen before since we left E. Tennessee. Holden is to continue the publication of the Raleigh Standard as a Union paper which it has always been at heart, & as far as possible openly. The army has burned some very fine houses in this march. I have learned that a number of our men who were taken prisoners. Starved and otherwise mistreated on escaping took an oath to destroy all the property they were able in Southern territory sparing the women and children only. Accordingly along the roadside far in advance or far in the rear as we marched along might be seen dense volumes of black smoke rising. Splendid houses superior to any in Sheffield very much finer than Mr. Parks for instance containing splendid pianos the property of planters owning thousands of acres of land and hundreds of Negroes were destroyed in this way. I must confess I was glad to see them burn in most instances where I knew the owners to have been original traitors.
Write soon Your Bro.
A.M.Weston Direct Headquarters 50th O.V.D. 3rd Brig. 2nd Div. 23rd A.G. Dept. of N.C.
Love to every body Keep on writing I'll be home in a few months
(Asa M. Weston enlisted on 8/11/62 as Sergeant in Company K, 50th Ohio Infantry, 3/4/65 promoted to Sgt Major, 4/22/65 promoted to 2nd Lt, 6/26/65 mustered out at Salisbury, NC)
From:http://www.civilwargazette.faithsite.com/content.asp?CID=86873
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
June 6th 1916
We had to pack our kits, and proceed up the line, we passed through Bayencourt, and then in artillery formation to Sailly-au-bois, and from here we marched in single file along a very muddy road, where in places men sank knee deep in mud, at last we reached the ruined town of Hebuterne, 400yds from our front line, there are no civilians here as the place is subject to heavy fire every day, we were billeted in the cellars of an old farm house which was minus a wall and the roof.
I took a stroll round the place after tea and found it absolutely ruined a church at one end had been badly battered and the walls all smashed and the roof gone, one side of the tower standing only, but a noticeable fact was that a crufic [crucifix?] in a most conspicuous place remained untouched.
June 7th 1916
We left our billets and went to the edge of the village, moving undercover of the broken walls, then entered a communication trench called 'Yale Street' (of y sector y29) moved along this trench in daylight for 300yds and then we were only 100yds from our own front line, and 400yds from the enemy front line, this 'com' trench was in places only 3ft deep, and we were exposed to the enemy fire, and our own work was to deepen this trench to 7ft, also make it wide enough for two men to pass, no earth could be thrown on top, but had to be put in sandbags and passed down the trench.
Everything went well 'till 3o'clock in the afternoon when 'Jerry' started to strafe, and strafed us away from the work, and managed it without any casualties, during the time we were working we had to keep our equipment on, also rifles at hand, and leaving the trench we looked 'rum cutters' being covered with mud and clay, all around the place were 'gas alarms'. This day was the first time I had been close to the enemy lines, and the first time I had got as far as a Support trench.
June 8th 1916
We worked in Yale Street Trench again, also in trench 48 which was much deeper, and about 10am our artillery opened a heavy strafe on the enemy trenches, and in reply the Germans shelled us heavily, and there being no dug outs here we were compelled to stick it, and chance our luck, there were no casualties, but four men got buried and had to be dug out, they were badly shaken, later a shell dropped on the parapet above four men and one had his leg blown off, and the trench was wrecked and we were compelled to move down a little way.
June 9th 1916
We fell in at 8-30p.m and entered "Wood Street communication trench" and passed the old fire trench and went up "New Wood Street" which was only about 2 ft deep, then got on the top, passed our front line which was being held by "The Rifle Rangers", through a gap in the barbed wire, we were paced out so many paces per man as a digging task, and told to dig ourselves in as quickly as possible.
We worked hard for about 2 an hour when the Germans opened heavy machine gun fire on us and swept us like a blanket, and being only 100 yds from the enemy lines it proved very trying, we carried on, off and on, for : of an hour when, when he got more machine guns sweeping that sector, by this time my part of the trench was about 18" deep so I could lie in it.
The machine guns keep on sweeping and the enemy opened out a "miniweffer" (trench mortar) barrage, four of our rifles were laying on the ground about 4 ft away and these got a direct hit, that was the last I saw of my rifle, also blew the trench away and left us as it were on the open ground.
The man in front of me called for help and on going to him I found he had a piece of shrapnel in the left shoulder blade, this was Private Joe (Hurnival of Runcorn), also he was hit on the lower middle part of the back, many men at this time were calling for help, out of our Platoon we had three casualties L/Cpl Fineflow who was hit in the back and the pieces had pierced the lungs he was vomiting a lot of blood, and Pte Edward Coalthorpe (of Chester) who was hit in ribs and left arm, one man in No10 Platoon was also hit, Stretcher Bearer Mostan, he was serious as he was hit in the lower part of the stomach and between the legs, after we had got the wounded away we returned to billets, it was 6a.m.
June 10th 1916
We worked from 11 o'clock in the morning until 2-45 p.m. when we returned to our billets and fell in again at 8p.m. and worked on top in the same place as the night previous, and returned at 2 a.m, and we had one casualty, this being the Corporal Brooks who was hit in the right wrist, the centre of the wrist being blown clean out.
This night when a shell burst mud and stones flew all around and I had my knee cut through being struck with a stone. This was Whit Sunday morning.
http://www.first-world-war.co.uk/thediary.htm#06061916
We had to pack our kits, and proceed up the line, we passed through Bayencourt, and then in artillery formation to Sailly-au-bois, and from here we marched in single file along a very muddy road, where in places men sank knee deep in mud, at last we reached the ruined town of Hebuterne, 400yds from our front line, there are no civilians here as the place is subject to heavy fire every day, we were billeted in the cellars of an old farm house which was minus a wall and the roof.
I took a stroll round the place after tea and found it absolutely ruined a church at one end had been badly battered and the walls all smashed and the roof gone, one side of the tower standing only, but a noticeable fact was that a crufic [crucifix?] in a most conspicuous place remained untouched.
June 7th 1916
We left our billets and went to the edge of the village, moving undercover of the broken walls, then entered a communication trench called 'Yale Street' (of y sector y29) moved along this trench in daylight for 300yds and then we were only 100yds from our own front line, and 400yds from the enemy front line, this 'com' trench was in places only 3ft deep, and we were exposed to the enemy fire, and our own work was to deepen this trench to 7ft, also make it wide enough for two men to pass, no earth could be thrown on top, but had to be put in sandbags and passed down the trench.
Everything went well 'till 3o'clock in the afternoon when 'Jerry' started to strafe, and strafed us away from the work, and managed it without any casualties, during the time we were working we had to keep our equipment on, also rifles at hand, and leaving the trench we looked 'rum cutters' being covered with mud and clay, all around the place were 'gas alarms'. This day was the first time I had been close to the enemy lines, and the first time I had got as far as a Support trench.
June 8th 1916
We worked in Yale Street Trench again, also in trench 48 which was much deeper, and about 10am our artillery opened a heavy strafe on the enemy trenches, and in reply the Germans shelled us heavily, and there being no dug outs here we were compelled to stick it, and chance our luck, there were no casualties, but four men got buried and had to be dug out, they were badly shaken, later a shell dropped on the parapet above four men and one had his leg blown off, and the trench was wrecked and we were compelled to move down a little way.
June 9th 1916
We fell in at 8-30p.m and entered "Wood Street communication trench" and passed the old fire trench and went up "New Wood Street" which was only about 2 ft deep, then got on the top, passed our front line which was being held by "The Rifle Rangers", through a gap in the barbed wire, we were paced out so many paces per man as a digging task, and told to dig ourselves in as quickly as possible.
We worked hard for about 2 an hour when the Germans opened heavy machine gun fire on us and swept us like a blanket, and being only 100 yds from the enemy lines it proved very trying, we carried on, off and on, for : of an hour when, when he got more machine guns sweeping that sector, by this time my part of the trench was about 18" deep so I could lie in it.
The machine guns keep on sweeping and the enemy opened out a "miniweffer" (trench mortar) barrage, four of our rifles were laying on the ground about 4 ft away and these got a direct hit, that was the last I saw of my rifle, also blew the trench away and left us as it were on the open ground.
The man in front of me called for help and on going to him I found he had a piece of shrapnel in the left shoulder blade, this was Private Joe (Hurnival of Runcorn), also he was hit on the lower middle part of the back, many men at this time were calling for help, out of our Platoon we had three casualties L/Cpl Fineflow who was hit in the back and the pieces had pierced the lungs he was vomiting a lot of blood, and Pte Edward Coalthorpe (of Chester) who was hit in ribs and left arm, one man in No10 Platoon was also hit, Stretcher Bearer Mostan, he was serious as he was hit in the lower part of the stomach and between the legs, after we had got the wounded away we returned to billets, it was 6a.m.
June 10th 1916
We worked from 11 o'clock in the morning until 2-45 p.m. when we returned to our billets and fell in again at 8p.m. and worked on top in the same place as the night previous, and returned at 2 a.m, and we had one casualty, this being the Corporal Brooks who was hit in the right wrist, the centre of the wrist being blown clean out.
This night when a shell burst mud and stones flew all around and I had my knee cut through being struck with a stone. This was Whit Sunday morning.
http://www.first-world-war.co.uk/thediary.htm#06061916
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Diary of Rachel Cormany.
1863
June 1863
June 14, 1863
Read the R. Telescope & wrote letters this A.M.--P.M. went to S. School, took Cora along--she did pretty well--was in Bro. Hokes Bible class. How much better I feel to get out to religious gathering. Intend to go more. Mrs. Dulany was there with her little one too. I got such a good book to read. Some excitement about the rebels come. Evening the excitement pretty high.
June 15, 1863
Monday. This morning pretty early Gen Milroys wagon train (so we were told) came.l Contrabands2 on ahead coming as fast as they could on all & any kind of horses, their eyes fairly protruding with fear--teams coming at the same rate--some with the covers half off--some lost--men without hats or coats--some lost their coats as they were flying, one darky woman astride of a horse going what she could. There really was a real panic. All reported that the rebels were just on their heels. Soon things became more quiet--& all day government wagons & horses were passing through. For awhile before dark the excitement abated a little--but it was only like the calm before a great storm. At dusk or a little before the news came that the rebels were in Greencastle & that said town was on fire. Soon after some of the our guard came in reporting that they had a skirmish with them. Soon followed 100-200 cavalry men--the guard. Such a skedadling as their was among the women & children to get into the houses. All thought the Rebels had really come. The report now is that they will be here in an hour. If I could only hear of My Samuels safety--Many have packed nearly all of their packable goods--I have packed nothing. I do not think that we will be disturbed even should they come. I will trust in God even in the midst of flying shells--but of course shall seek the safest place possible in that case--which I hope will not come to us. I have just put my baby to sleep & will now sit at the front door awhile yet--then retire, knowing all will be well.
June 16, 1863
Retired at 11 oclock. All was very quiet, so we concluded that all those reports must be untrue about the Reb's being so near, or that they had struck off in some other direction. Mr. Plough took his horse away so as to be on the safe side. So Annie and I were all alone. At 11 1/2 I heard the clattering of horses hoofs. I hopped out of bed & ran to the front window & sure enough there the Greybacks were going by as fast as their horses could take them down to the Diamond. Next I heard the report of a gun then they came back faster if possible than they came in. But a short time after the whole body came. the front ones with their hands on the gun triggers ready to fire & calling out as they passed along that they would lay the town in ashes if fired on again. It took a long time for them all to pass, but I could not judge how many there were--not being accustomed to seeing troops in such a body--At 2 oclock A.M. all was quiet again save an occasional reb. riding past. We went to bed again & slept soundly until 5 the morning. All seemed quiet yet. We almost came to the conclusion that the reb's had left again leaving only a small guard who took things quite leasurely . Soon however they became more active. Were hunting up the contrabands & driving them off by droves. O! How it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly & look at such brutal deeds--I saw no men among the contrabands--all women & children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along--I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle. Some laughed & seemed not to care--but nearly all hung their heads. One woman was pleading wonderfully with her driver for her children--but all the sympathy she received from him was a rough "March along"--at which she would quicken her pace again. It is a query what they want with those little babies--whole families were taken. Of course when the mother was taken she would take her children. I suppose the men left thinking the women & children would not be disturbed. I cannot describe all the scenes--now--Noon--The Rebel horses with just enough men to take care of them & their teams, have just pased through town again on the retreat. Wonder what all this means. Just now the news came that the dismounted rebs are drawn up in line of battle out at McClures & expect a fight--so they sent their horses to the safe side of town in case a retreat is necessary. Some are walking or riding by every few minutes. The horses & wagons were taken back again. Evening--Had a good sleep this P.M. So had Pussy, & will retire trusting in God for safety.
June 17, 1863
Had quite a visiter last night. She came and aske whether I was Mrs Cormany. I told her I was. she then told me she was preacher Millers daughter, & that they had fled from the Reb's & she had no place to stay. So of course I told her I would keep her. I afterwards learned that she was a thief &c but I had promised to keep her so I put all little things out of reach, & frightened her by telling her I always had a loaded pistol near so I could shoot if anyone molested me. She acted quite strangely--before going to bed--wanted me to blow the light & get in bed & she after having shaken off her fleas would lock the door & come too--but I let her know that I lock my own door & that she is to get into bed--she slept all night & left early this morning. All was so quiet during the night that I veryly thought the Reb's had left--but they are still here. All forenoon they were carrying away mens clothing & darkeys. shortly after dinner their horses & wagons were taken on the retreat again. Yes Generals and all went. Saw Gen Jenkins,3 he is not a bad looking man--Some of the officers tipped their hats to us I answered it with a curl of the lip. I knew they did it to taunt us. The one after he had tipped his hat most graciously & received in answer a toss of the head & curl of the lip took a good laugh over it. There were a few real inteligent good looking men among them. What a pity that they are rebels. After the main body had passed the news came that our soldiers were coming & just then some 1/2 doz reb's flew past as fast as their horses could take them. we learned since that one of them fired Oaks warehouse & that he was very near being shot by the citizens.4 Among the last to leave were some with darkeys on their horses behind them. How glad we are they are gone--None of our Soldiers came.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-valley?id=FD1006&images=images/modeng/public/FD1006&data=/texts/english/civilwar/diaries&tag=public
1863
June 1863
June 14, 1863
Read the R. Telescope & wrote letters this A.M.--P.M. went to S. School, took Cora along--she did pretty well--was in Bro. Hokes Bible class. How much better I feel to get out to religious gathering. Intend to go more. Mrs. Dulany was there with her little one too. I got such a good book to read. Some excitement about the rebels come. Evening the excitement pretty high.
June 15, 1863
Monday. This morning pretty early Gen Milroys wagon train (so we were told) came.l Contrabands2 on ahead coming as fast as they could on all & any kind of horses, their eyes fairly protruding with fear--teams coming at the same rate--some with the covers half off--some lost--men without hats or coats--some lost their coats as they were flying, one darky woman astride of a horse going what she could. There really was a real panic. All reported that the rebels were just on their heels. Soon things became more quiet--& all day government wagons & horses were passing through. For awhile before dark the excitement abated a little--but it was only like the calm before a great storm. At dusk or a little before the news came that the rebels were in Greencastle & that said town was on fire. Soon after some of the our guard came in reporting that they had a skirmish with them. Soon followed 100-200 cavalry men--the guard. Such a skedadling as their was among the women & children to get into the houses. All thought the Rebels had really come. The report now is that they will be here in an hour. If I could only hear of My Samuels safety--Many have packed nearly all of their packable goods--I have packed nothing. I do not think that we will be disturbed even should they come. I will trust in God even in the midst of flying shells--but of course shall seek the safest place possible in that case--which I hope will not come to us. I have just put my baby to sleep & will now sit at the front door awhile yet--then retire, knowing all will be well.
June 16, 1863
Retired at 11 oclock. All was very quiet, so we concluded that all those reports must be untrue about the Reb's being so near, or that they had struck off in some other direction. Mr. Plough took his horse away so as to be on the safe side. So Annie and I were all alone. At 11 1/2 I heard the clattering of horses hoofs. I hopped out of bed & ran to the front window & sure enough there the Greybacks were going by as fast as their horses could take them down to the Diamond. Next I heard the report of a gun then they came back faster if possible than they came in. But a short time after the whole body came. the front ones with their hands on the gun triggers ready to fire & calling out as they passed along that they would lay the town in ashes if fired on again. It took a long time for them all to pass, but I could not judge how many there were--not being accustomed to seeing troops in such a body--At 2 oclock A.M. all was quiet again save an occasional reb. riding past. We went to bed again & slept soundly until 5 the morning. All seemed quiet yet. We almost came to the conclusion that the reb's had left again leaving only a small guard who took things quite leasurely . Soon however they became more active. Were hunting up the contrabands & driving them off by droves. O! How it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly & look at such brutal deeds--I saw no men among the contrabands--all women & children. Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along--I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle. Some laughed & seemed not to care--but nearly all hung their heads. One woman was pleading wonderfully with her driver for her children--but all the sympathy she received from him was a rough "March along"--at which she would quicken her pace again. It is a query what they want with those little babies--whole families were taken. Of course when the mother was taken she would take her children. I suppose the men left thinking the women & children would not be disturbed. I cannot describe all the scenes--now--Noon--The Rebel horses with just enough men to take care of them & their teams, have just pased through town again on the retreat. Wonder what all this means. Just now the news came that the dismounted rebs are drawn up in line of battle out at McClures & expect a fight--so they sent their horses to the safe side of town in case a retreat is necessary. Some are walking or riding by every few minutes. The horses & wagons were taken back again. Evening--Had a good sleep this P.M. So had Pussy, & will retire trusting in God for safety.
June 17, 1863
Had quite a visiter last night. She came and aske whether I was Mrs Cormany. I told her I was. she then told me she was preacher Millers daughter, & that they had fled from the Reb's & she had no place to stay. So of course I told her I would keep her. I afterwards learned that she was a thief &c but I had promised to keep her so I put all little things out of reach, & frightened her by telling her I always had a loaded pistol near so I could shoot if anyone molested me. She acted quite strangely--before going to bed--wanted me to blow the light & get in bed & she after having shaken off her fleas would lock the door & come too--but I let her know that I lock my own door & that she is to get into bed--she slept all night & left early this morning. All was so quiet during the night that I veryly thought the Reb's had left--but they are still here. All forenoon they were carrying away mens clothing & darkeys. shortly after dinner their horses & wagons were taken on the retreat again. Yes Generals and all went. Saw Gen Jenkins,3 he is not a bad looking man--Some of the officers tipped their hats to us I answered it with a curl of the lip. I knew they did it to taunt us. The one after he had tipped his hat most graciously & received in answer a toss of the head & curl of the lip took a good laugh over it. There were a few real inteligent good looking men among them. What a pity that they are rebels. After the main body had passed the news came that our soldiers were coming & just then some 1/2 doz reb's flew past as fast as their horses could take them. we learned since that one of them fired Oaks warehouse & that he was very near being shot by the citizens.4 Among the last to leave were some with darkeys on their horses behind them. How glad we are they are gone--None of our Soldiers came.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-valley?id=FD1006&images=images/modeng/public/FD1006&data=/texts/english/civilwar/diaries&tag=public
RIP Geo. Carlin
One of the most humorous social commentators is dead, George Carlin.
May he heckle and torture those in death he could not reach in life.
May he heckle and torture those in death he could not reach in life.
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