CONCLUSION—NECESSITY OF SQUADRONS FOR PROTECTION OF COMMERCE AND CITIZENS ABROAD—FEVER IN BRAZIL, CUBA AND UNITED STATES—INFLUENCE OF RECAPTURED SLAVES RETURNING TO THE DIFFERENT REGIONS OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY—COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH AFRICA.
Where a nation has commerce, it has a dwelling-place—a scene of action and of traffic on the sea. It ought to find its government there also. The people have a right to be protected, and the government is bound to enforce that right wherever they go. If they visit foreign countries, they have a right to just treatment. The traveller—the merchant—the missionary—the person of whatever character, if an American citizen, can demand justice. The sea is no foreign territory. Where a merchant vessel bears its country’s flag, it covers its country’s territory. Government is instituted to be watchful for the interests and safety of its citizens. A navy is the organ through which it acts. People on shore see nothing of this kind of governmental protection. There is there no marching and drumming, or clearing the streets with horsemen or footmen, or feathers and trumpets. It is the merchant who is most directly benefited by naval protection; and yet all classes share in its advantages. The planter and the manufacturer are interested in safe and free commerce; our citizens generally avow that they are also interested, by the sensitiveness with which the rights of our flag are regarded. It is more politic to prevent wrong than to punish it; therefore we have police in our streets, and locks on our doors. The shores of civilized governments are the mutual boundaries of nations. Our government is disposed to show itself there, for there are its people, and there are their interests. The shores of savage lands are our confines with savages. Just as forts are required on the frontiers of the Camanches or Utahs, so are they at Ambriz or Sumatra. Cruisers are the nation’s fortresses abroad, employed for the benefit of her citizens, and the security of their commerce. It would be discreditable, as well as unsafe, to trust to a foreign power to keep down piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, or in the West Indies and in the China seas. As commerce extends, so does the necessity of its supervision and defence extend. The navy therefore requires augmentation, and for the reasons assigned in the late report of the Head of that Department, it may be inferred that it will have it, in reorganized and greatly improved efficiency.
On this subject, the following are extracts, in substance, from a lecture delivered on the evening of February 3d, 1854, before the New York Mercantile Library Association, by the Hon. Mr. Stanton, of Tennessee, the chairman of the judiciary committee of the U. S. House of Representatives, and for a long time chairman of the naval committee of that body:
“A strong naval power is the best promoter of commerce, and hence men engaged in commercial pursuits, cannot but feel an interest in the history of the rise and progress of that navy, to which the successes of their business undertakings are principally due. At a very early period, navies became an indispensable power in war. The later invention of ordnance, and the still more recent application of steam as a motive power to ships of war, render it at present a question of some difficulty, to predict the extent to which naval military power may hereafter arrive.
“What we have to do in times of peace, is to maintain our naval force in the highest state of efficiency of which it is capable, and ready to enter upon action at a moment’s warning. With the lessons of the British war before us, it cannot be possible that the recent experiments of Lieutenant Dahlgren at Washington, and the discoveries which have resulted from them, will fail to prove of high practical service. But with all our appliances or discoveries in this regard, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact, that we are behind other nations in all that concerns the structure of our ships.
“We must have machinery and all proper appliances, as well as the raw materials, for the construction of a naval power when required. We must have independent establishments on both sides of the continent, to protect our Pacific as well as our Atlantic coasts, which should be connected by a railroad stretching across the breadth of the country. The requirements of commerce, and the advances which it has been making in increasing the facilities for navigation, will force us into improvements in our naval power, in order to uphold our commerce.
“It may be safely presumed, that at the present state of our affairs, a moderate and efficient navy would be a great civilizing power; it would hover around the path of our ships, and by the very exhibition of its power suppress all attempts to molest them in their mission of peace and brotherhood across the seas. But in addition to this, our navy is even now aiding strenuously in the march of geographical discovery, and in enlarging our stock of scientific knowledge, and our familiarity with the facts of physical philosophy. When we consider the character of our institutions—when we consider that our great interests lie in the paths of peace—we must be impressed with the fact, that the contributions to science, and the civilizing influences of our navy, are one of the most powerful means by which we can uphold our interests, and carry out our institutions to the fullest development of which they are capable.
“Under all circumstances and all disadvantages, the navy has never, at any period of our history, failed to do honor to itself, and to shed lustre on the American character. From the Revolutionary war down to the late conquest of Mexico, in every case in which its co-operation was at all possible, it has given proofs of activity and power equal to the proud and commanding position we are to occupy among the nations of the earth. We have opportunities to supply the service with the means of moral and physical progress, to free it from the shackles of old forms, and suffer it to clothe itself with the panoply of modern science, and to be identified with the spread of civilization and enlightenment over the world. It will continue to be our pride and our boast, the worthy representative upon the ocean, of the genius, the skill, and the enterprise of our people—of the boundless resources of our growing country—of the power, and grandeur, and glory, as well as the justice and humanity of our free institutions.”
The legislatures of some states, the reports of some auxiliary colonization societies, the speeches of some distinguished senators and representatives in congress, the addresses of some colonization agents, have represented the great sacrifice of life and treasure in “unsuccessful efforts,” by the African squadron, for the extermination of the slave-trade, and proposed to withdraw it. Whereas, it has been shown that the African squadrons, instead of being useless, have rendered essential service. For much as colonization has accomplished, and effectual as Liberia is in suppressing the slave-traffic within her own jurisdiction, these means and these results have been established and secured by the presence and protection of the naval squadrons of Great Britain, France and the United States. And had no such assistance been rendered, the entire coast, where we now see legal trade and advancing civilization, would have been at this day, in spite of any efforts to colonize, or to establish legal commerce, the scene of unchecked, lawless slave-trade piracy.
Strange and frightful maladies have been engendered by the cruelties perpetrated within the hold of a slaver. If any disease affecting the human constitution were brought there, we may be sure that it would be nursed into mortal vigor in these receptacles of filth, corruption and despair. Crews have been known to die by the fruit of their own crime, and leave ships almost helpless. They have carried the scourge with them. The coast fever of Africa, bad enough where it has its birth, came in these vessels, and has assumed perhaps a permanent abode in the western regions of the world. No fairer sky or healthier climate were there on earth, than in the beautiful bay, and amid the grand and picturesque scenery of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. But it became a haunt of slavers, and the dead of Africa floated on the glittering waters, and were tumbled upon the sands of its harbor. The shipping found, in the hot summer of 1849, that death had come with the slavers. Thirty or forty vessels were lying idly at their anchors, for their crews had mostly perished. The pestilence swept along the coast of that empire with fearful malignity.
Cuba for the same crime met the same retribution. Cargoes of slaves were landed to die, and brought the source of their mortality ashore, vigorous and deadly. The fever settled there in the beginning of 1853, and came to our country, as summer approached, in merchant vessels from the West Indies. At New Orleans, Mobile, and other places it spread desolation, over which the country mourned. Let it be remembered that it is never even safe to disregard crime.
Civilized governments are now very generally united in measures for the suppression of the slave-trade. The coast of Africa itself is rapidly closing against it. The American and English colonies secure a vast extent of sea-coast against its revival. Christian missions, at many points, are inculcating the doctrines of divine truth, which, by its power upon the hearts of men, is the antagonist to such cruel unrighteousness.
The increase of commerce, and the advance of Christian civilization, will undoubtedly, at no distant date, render a naval force for the suppression of the African slave-trade unnecessary; but no power having extensive commerce ought ever to overlook the necessity of a naval force on that coast. The Secretary of the Navy, it is to be hoped, has, in his recent report, settled the question as to the continuance of the African squadron.
The increasing influence of Liberia and Cape Palmas will prove a powerful protection to their colored brethren everywhere. “With them Sierra Leone will unite in feeling and purposes. Their policy will always be the same. It must necessarily happen that a close political relationship in interests and feelings will unite them all in one system of action. Their policy will be that of uncompromising hostility to the slave-trade.
There are two aspects of this question well worthy of consideration:
The Liberians are freemen, recognized as having their proper standing among the nations of the world. The people of Sierra Leone are Englishmen, having the legal rights of that kingdom. Therefore, seizing the citizens of either the one or the other community in time of peace, and carrying them captive to be sold, amounts to the greatest crime which can be committed on the ocean.
Now as this may be surmised in the case of all slavers on that coast, the guilt of the slaver in the eye of national law becomes greater than before; and the peril greater. It may be presumed that if a case were established against any slave cargo, that it contained one of either of the above-mentioned description of persons, the consequences to the slavers, whatever their nation might be, would be much more serious than has hitherto been the case.
But a principle of higher justice ought long ago to have been kept in view, and acted upon. Let the caitiff have his “pound of flesh,” but “not one drop of blood.” If a man throttles another, or suffocates him for want of air, or stows eight hundred people in a ship’s hold, where he knows that one or two hundred in the “middle passage” will necessarily die, every such death is a murder, and each man aboard of such vessel who has any agency in procuring or forwarding this cargo, is a murderer. It has therefore been contrary to justice, that the perpetrators of such crimes should have been dismissed with impunity when captured. Such considerations ought to weigh with men in the future.
There has been already a commencement of a coasting trade, conducted by colored men. There is a Liberian man-of-war schooner, the “Lark,” Lieutenant-Commanding Cooper; and the English, after furnishing the schooner, have proffered the assistance of her navy officers to instruct the young aspirants of the republic, in the art of sailing the cruiser, and in the science of naval warfare. Captain Cooper will not take exception at the remark, that it is “the day of small things” with the Liberian navy. But his flag bears the star of hope to a vigorous young naval power.
A returning of recaptured slaves, instructed and civilized, to the lands which gave them birth, has taken place. Some hundreds passed by Lagos, and were assailed and plundered. Some hundreds passed by Badagry, and were welcomed with kind treatment. The one occurrence reminded them of African darkness, obduracy and crime; the other of the softening and elevating effects which Christianity strives to introduce. They have gone to establish Christian churches, and have established them there. Such things we are sure have been reported far in the interior, and Christianity now stands contrasted with Mohammedanism, as being the deliverer, while the latter is still the enslaver. The report must also have gone over the whole broad intertropical continent, that Christian nations have joined together for African deliverance; and that for purposes so high the race of Africa has returned from the west, and by imitation of western policy and religion, is establishing a restorative influence on their own shores.
There has thus been presented a view of Africa and of its progress, as far as its condition and advancement have had any relation to our country and its flag. How far its growth in civilization has been dependent on the efforts of America has been illustrated; and how essentially the naval interference of the United States has contributed to this end, has been made evident. It cannot escape notice that this progress must in the future depend on the same means and the same efforts. Our own national interests, being those of a commercial people, require the presence of a squadron. Under its protection commerce is secure, and is daily increasing in extent and value.
It is impossible to say how lucrative this commerce may ultimately become. That the whole African coast should assume the aspect of Liberia, is perhaps not an unreasonable expectation. That Liberia will continue to grow in wealth and influence, is not improbable. There is intelligence among its people, and wisdom and energy in its councils. There is no reason to believe that this will not continue. Its position makes it an agricultural community. Other lands must afford its manufactures and its traders. There will, therefore, ever be on its shores a fair field for American enterprise.
The reduction, or annihilation of the slave-trade, is opening the whole of these vast regions to science and legal commerce. Let America take her right share in them. It is throwing wide the portals of the continent for the entrance of Christian civilization. Let our country exert its full proportion of this influence; and thus recompense to Africa the wrongs inflicted upon her people, in which hitherto all nations have participated.
THE END.