The Sugar Barons (27 page)

This egalitarian message was deeply unsettling to the majority of the planters, for whom the ‘heathenish, brutish’ state of the Africans constituted a justification for their slavery. Furthermore, as Ligon had discovered, they were unsure about the legality of enslaving Christians. In addition, unlike for the Jesuits, busy converting slaves on the French islands, the Protestant tradition demanded thorough instruction before conversion, which would lead to the slaves mastering English and therefore becoming more able to unite against them, as well as fostering attributes
of education and self-respect incompatible with slavery. They also greatly disapproved of the Quakers inviting blacks to their meetings: the occasions would surely be used by the slaves for plotting together.

Thus Fox and his followers were accused of teaching the slaves to rebel. In fact, the planters, at that time, had little to fear from the Quakers. Fox replied that this was a ‘most false Lye’, and that rebellion was ‘a thing we do utterly abhor and detest in and from our hearts’. Instead, he said, they were teaching them ‘to love their masters and mistresses, and to be faithful and diligent in their masters’ service and business, and that then their masters and overseers will love them and deal kindly and gently with them’. Although a tiny number of Quakers did free their slaves between 1674 and 1720, a great number more were themselves major slave holders and remained so.

Nonetheless, the Quakers, who railed against the materialistic, gaudy and decadent culture of the island, were intensely disliked and ruthlessly fined and persecuted by the Barbados authorities, mainly on the grounds of disrupting Anglican services, and refusing to bear arms in the militia. By the end of the century, most had recanted or emigrated to Pennsylvania.

A tiny number of other Christians did take up the challenge laid down by Fox. In 1673, an eminent Puritan theologian, Robert Baxter, published
A Christian Directory
, in which he called it a ‘cursed crime’ that the planters considered the slaves ‘equal to beasts’. But Baxter never visited the West Indies, and was not so concerned with the treatment of the slaves as with the fact that no one was trying to convert them – ‘reasonable Creatures, as well as you’ – to Christianity. He condemned as ‘one of the worst kinds of Thievery in the world’ the practice of those ‘who go as Pirats and catch up poor Negro’s or people of another Land, that never forfeited Life or Liberty, make them slaves, and sell them’, but allowed slavery for those ‘enemies’ captured in a ‘lawful’ war, those guilty of a crime, and those who, out of extreme necessity, sold themselves. But the ‘chief end’ of anyone buying slaves, he concluded, should be ‘to win them to Christ and save their souls … that they are Redeemed with them by Christ from the slavery of Satan, and may live with them in the liberty of the Saints in Glory’ – a distinction that, perhaps, might have been lost on an enslaved African working in the canefields or boiling-houses of Barbados.

The Anglican priest Morgan Godwyn lived in Barbados for some years during the late 1670s, and his book,
The Negro’s and Indians Advocate
, published in 1680, shows far more eye-witness experience of the chilling realities of African slavery in the West Indies. The wealth of the planters
was wholly dependent on the labour of the ‘Negroes’, he wrote, but they were starved, ‘tormented and whipt almost (and sometimes quite) to death’, ‘Their Bodies … are worn out in perpetual Toil for them … A Cruelty capable of no Palliation … other Inhumanities’, he went on to describe, ‘as their Emasculating and Beheading them, their choping off their Ears (which they usually cause the Wretches to broyl, and then compel to eat them themselves) their Amputations of Legs, and even Dissecting them alive’. All but the hardiest of their offspring died in infancy, he went on, as their mothers were ordered to leave them and return to work.

The ‘brutality’ of the ‘Negro’, he wrote, was a ‘fiction’. In fact, the Africans showed more ‘Discretion in management of Business’ than most of the whites. If the Africans were ‘beasts’, what about ‘those Debauches, that so frequently do make use of them for their unnatural Pleasures and Lusts?’ Indeed, it was the planters who ‘know no other God but Money, nor Religion but Profit’.

But, as with Fox and Baxter, the answer was not the abolition of slavery, but an improvement in the treatment of the slaves, and, most of all, their conversion to Christianity. Like Ligon before him, Godwyn failed to follow his arguments to their logical conclusion.

Thus, organised religion, so important to the abolition movement of the next century, failed to properly address, let alone end, the evil of slavery during the seventeenth century. It did not help that religion on the islands was moribund. Father Biet wrote of Barbados: ‘To tell the truth, they have almost no religion.’ At the end of the century, there were only 11 ministers for 20,000 Christians in Barbados, and even fewer in the other islands.

In London, the conversion of the slaves seemed to be self-evidently the right thing to do, and several governors were sent out with instructions to start this process. But although a few planters who returned to London with slaves had them baptised in England, on the islands the planters remained resolutely opposed. In 1680, the ‘Planters’ Committee’ of Barbados told the Lords of Trade and Plantations that ‘the conversion of their slaves to Christianity would not only destroy their property but endanger the island, inasmuch as converted negroes grow more perverse and intractable than others, and hence of less value for labour and sale’. They went on to argue that ‘The disproportion of the blacks to whites being great, the whites have no greater security than the diversity of the negroes’ languages, which would be destroyed by conversion in that it would be necessary to teach them all English.’

Morgan Godwyn’s book remains a shocking description of the practice of slavery, and its impact is increased by the rarity of its viewpoint at this
time. One other seventeenth-century tract, however, was even more vivid. Thomas Tyron was something of an eccentric; he would become rich writing self-help books, and was a great proponent of vegetarianism (and would number among his converts Benjamin Franklin). From a modest background, like Baxter he was a Dissenter, moving from Anabaptism to a more mystical faith based partly on the work of Jacob Boehme. For seven years in the 1660s he lived and worked in Bridgetown as a hat-maker. During this time, he had first-hand experience of slavery, and of its effect on both the slaves and their owners.

Most vividly, he put complaints into the mouth of an enslaved African. Slavery, says the ‘Negro’, is worse than death, starting with the horrors of the ‘Middle Passage’, where there were ‘so many and so close together, that we can hardly breathe, there are we in the hottest of Summer, and under that scorching Climate … suffocated, stewed and parboyled al-together in a Crowd, till we almost rot each other and our selves’. Once on the island, the work was relentless and sometimes fatally dangerous: ‘often-times we are forc’d to work so long at the Wind-Mills, until we become so Weary, Dull, Faint, Heavy and Sleepy, that we are as it were deprived of our natural Senses … we fall into danger, and oft times our Hands and Arms are crusht to pieces, and sometimes most part of our Bodies’. Appeals to the compassion or charity of the masters came to nothing, for ‘Interest has blinded their Eyes and stopt their Ears, and rendered their Hearts harder than Rocks of Adament.’ In turn, slavery had made the masters not only cruel, but corrupted by decadence: ‘our luxurious Masters stretch themselves on their soft Beds and Couches, they drink Wine in overflowing Bowls, and set their Brains a-float without either Rudder or Compass, in an Ocean of other strong and various Drinks, and vomit up their Shame and Filthiness … to gratifie their raging Lusts, sometimes take our Women …’

Tyron’s disgust and his sympathy for the enslaved leap off the page, but yet again, he fell short of calling for slavery itself to be abolished. Instead, like Henry Drax, he sought an improvement in the treatment and care of the slaves, not really for their sake, but for the efficiency of the industry, for the better production of sugar. For, he wrote, ‘there is no one commodity whatever, that doth so much encourage navigation, [and] advance the Kings Customs’. Tyron’s advice was in the end designed to help the planters, whose prosperity, he judged, was the prosperity of England.

Admittedly, a number of the Quakers did inch towards a condemnation of the institution of slavery, even if they never quite got there at this time. John Edmundson, who was with George Fox on his travels in the 1670s,
came close, but he ended up more concerned with the morals of the slaves – in particular their polygamy, which was tolerated by the planters. But in 1675 he did issue a warning to Governor Atkins, who had accused him, along with the other Quakers, of encouraging the slaves to revolt: if they did choose to rebel ‘and cut their Throats’, Edmundson replied, the fault was with the masters for ‘keeping them in Ignorance, and under Oppression … and starv[ing] them for want of Meat and Cloathes convenient’. In fact, Atkins was right to be worried: a large number of slaves had already been planning a rebellion for as long as three years. At the time of Atkins’s conversation with Edmundson, it was almost ready to be launched.

The rebellion had been prepared with such secrecy that even the ringleaders’ wives were unaware of it. Nonetheless, just eight days before the ‘damnable design’ was due to begin, the plot was discovered. A domestic slave by the name of Fortuna overhead an 18-year-old Coromantee slave discussing plans for the insurrection. It appears the young man baulked at the plan to kill the ‘Buccararoes or White Folks’. Fortuna, who believed ‘it was a great pity so good people as her Master and Mistress should be destroyed’, persuaded him to go with her to tell Judge Hall. Hall rushed to inform Governor Atkins, who immediately mobilised the militia, declared martial law and arrested the known conspirators.

Precise details are hard to come by: it is possible that Atkins, subsequently reporting the plot to London, may have exaggerated in order to secure help with expanding the militia. But it appears that the plot was communicated through a network of African-born (rather than Creole) Coromantee slaves on a number of plantations, and may have originated in the Speightstown area. The aim had been for ‘trumpets … of elephants teeth and gourdes to be sounded on several hills … in the dead of night … to give notice of their general rising’. Then cane-fields were to be torched, and the slaves were to ‘run in and cut their masters … throats in their respective plantations’. Ultimately all whites were to be killed ‘within a fortnight’, although one report suggested that it was planned to ‘spare the lives of the fairest and handsomest [white] women … to be converted to their own use’. An ‘ancient Gold-Coast Negro’ called Cuffee had been chosen as king, and was to be crowned on 12 June 1675. Already prepared was ‘a chair of state exquisitely wrought and carved after their mode’.

More than 100 slaves were examined by a summary court, and 17 found guilty straight away. Six were burned alive and 11 beheaded, their bodies dragged through the streets of Speightstown and then burned. A
report published in London the following year tells of how one of the leaders before he was burnt was called upon to give the names of others involved, which he appeared to be about to do. But another of the conspirators, ‘a sturdy Rogue, a Jew’s Negro’ called Tony, shouted to him, ‘Thou Fool, are there not enough of our Countrymen killed already? Are thou minded to kill them all?’ The slave remained silent, and an onlooker shouted out, ‘Tony, Sirrah, we shall see you fry bravely by and by’, to which Tony replied, ‘If you Roast me to day, you cannot Roast me to morrow.’

A further 25 were subsequently executed, and five hanged themselves in prison. The rest were either deported or sent back to their masters for a savage flogging. Fortuna was given her freedom, and the owners of the rebellious slaves killed were compensated for their ‘loss of property’.

The extensive nature of the plot caused huge alarm amongst the slaveowners of Barbados. The following year, new laws were passed that reinforced the militia, further restricted the movement of slaves, and banned the musical instruments that were to have been used for communication. The Quakers were also blamed for enabling the plotting of slaves from separate plantations, and ‘Negro’ attendance at Quaker meetings was banned.

None of these measures, however, prevented further scares. In 1683, a plot was uncovered that, surprisingly, used notes written in English to spread the word, and three years later, 10 slaves were executed after it emerged that some blacks might have united with Irish indentured servants in an effort to overthrow the planters.

The most carefully planned and widespread plot in the seventeenth century occurred in 1692. It was highly organised and was put together, for the first time, by Creole slaves: those born in Barbados and in theory ‘assimilated’ in the island’s system. Furthermore, the leaders were found to be from the elite, skilled enslaved workers – overseers, carpenters, blacksmiths, boilers
²⁷
– whose extra privileges, it had been hoped, would have divided them from the interest of the majority.

This leadership, which came from 21 different plantations, mainly in the St Michael, Christchurch and St George parishes, succeeded in identifying a moment of great weakness for the whites: the uprising was timed to take place shortly after the departure of much of the militia to Guadeloupe to fight the French. It was also able to achieve the difficult task of
persuading the downtrodden blacks of their own strength: plans were in place for the raising of four regiments of foot and two of horse, with officers named, from amongst the slaves. And the aim was more sophisticated than simply murdering all whites. The slaves, having secured their own plantations and, if necessary, helped out on neighbouring ones, were to proceed to Bridgetown to capture the arsenal, where an accomplice would be waiting to give them entry. A band of Irish co-conspirators was lined up to enter the town’s main fort laden with alcohol to get the garrison drunk, whereupon the fort would be stormed, and its guns used to command the harbour and town. Once the island was under their control, the slaves would set up their own government, with their own new governor. ‘The white women’, a report later outlined, ‘they were to make wives of the handsomest, Whores Cooks & Chambermaids of Others.’