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First printed in Great Britain in 2014 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd.
47 Church Street
Barnsley,
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright © Philip Kaplan 2014

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78346 287 2

eISBN 9781473831971

The right of Philip Kaplan to be identified as Author of this Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in England

By CPI Group (UK) Ltd. Croydon, CR0 4YY

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of

Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Family History, Pen
& Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Pen & Sword
Discovery, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe True
Crime, Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword Select, Pen
& Sword Military Classics, Leo Cooper, The Praetorian
Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and
Frontline Publishing.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

Pen & Sword Books Limited
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E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
Contents
THE UNEASE
A STATE OF WAR
THE FEW
CHANNEL CONVOY ATTACKS
HITTING THE RADAR CHAIN
THE HUNT MOVES TO ENGLAND
SCRAMBLE
The author is grateful to Margaret Mayhew, whose generous help,
suggestions, ideas and assistance were invaluable. Special thanks to the many
Battle of Britain participants for their kind contributions and assistance. A
special thank you too, to the following people for providing additional
photos, information, interviews, gifts and loans of personal memorabilia, as
well as other forms of assistance: Monique Agazarian, Tad Andersz, J.A.
Baker, Malcolm Bates, RAF Bentley Priory, Tony Bianchi, Harold Bird-
Wilson, Kazimierz Budzik, C.J. Bunney, John Burgess, Richard Bye,
Geoffrey Charters, Pat Collier, Richard Collier for his superb text, Jack
Currie, Alan C. Deere, R.F.T. Doe, Neville Duke, Gary Eastman, Richard
Erven, Gilly Fielder, Bob Fisher, Brian Forbes, Christopher Foxley-Norris,
Dave Glaser, Ella Freire, Joan Goodman, Barry Gregory, Stephen Grey,
Jonathan Grimwood, Tony Iacono, Lynn Johnson, Claire and Joe Kaplan,
Neal Kaplan, Brian Kingcome, Bud Knapp, Tadeusz Krzystek, Edith Kup,
Reg Mack, Eric Marsden, Mike Mathews, Tilly McMaster, Edward R.
Murrow, Lynn Newmark, John Newth, Michael O’Leary, Geoffrey Page,
Pauline Page, Keith Park, Horst Petzschler, Alan Reeves, Edward Reeves,
R.A. Reiss, Mark Ritchie, Andy Saunders, William L. Shirer, Mary Smith,
San Diego Aerospace Museum, Tangmere Military Aviation Museum, Peter
Townsend, Chris von Glahn, Ray Wagner, and Frank Wootton, The
Bundesarchiv, The Imperial War Museum, The U.S. National Archives and
Records Administration, The Royal Air Force Museum. Reaonable efforts
have been made to trace the copyright holders to use their material. The
author apologizes for any omissions. All reasonable efforts will be made to
correct such omissions in future editions of this work.
 The Unease

The key word of the age was ‘appeasement’. It was whispered through the
chancellories and conference chambers of the nineteen-thirties as insidiously
as the pop tunes of the day permeated the lives of the people: ‘Top Hat’,
‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’, ‘Love In Bloom’. It signified, in essence, a tacit
acceptance of naked aggression: that Adolf Hitler, Führer and Chancellor of
the Third Reich, should, at noon on March 7, 1936, send a handful of
battalions to occupy the 9,000 square miles of the demilitarized Rhineland in
defiance of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. This was a treaty, which was
designed to curb the militarism of Kaiser Wilhelm’s time, that still, after
seventeen years, rankled in so many German breasts.
Appeasement meant that Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Il Duce of Fascism,
whose goal was a new and glorious Roman Empire, could, with impunity, on
October 3, 1935, launch an unprovoked seven-month conquest of the ancient
kingdom of Ethiopia. Since the sanctions invoked by the 50-strong League of
Nations—another creation of Versailles—stopped short of oil, the Duce’s
brigandage went unopposed.
Never openly voiced, although silently acknowledged, was the realization
that World War Two would involve whoever opposed the dictators in a rain
of devastation from the air—and that the air forces of the uneasy allies,
Britain and France, were in no shape to counter that threat.
The much vaunted Royal Air Force, formed on April 1, 1918, had soon
stood revealed as the nine-day wonder that it was. A total of 184 squadrons
operational on Armistice Day had, by early 1920, whittled down to eighteen
—of which only three were based in England. Although 1925 saw the
creation of an Auxiliary Air Force, an officers-only Territorial Association of
wealthy amateurs, who made up ‘the finest flying club in the world’, and a
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, aimed at raising RAF strength from
29,000 to 90,000 in three years, had barely reached the drawing board stage
by June 1935.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
A David Low cartoon of 1940 captioned, ‘Ooo! See what that wicked Chamberlain makes
me do’. P
A Schneider Trophy race programme from 1931
Assembling the wings of the prototype Hawker Hurricane at Kingston, London, in 1935
Instructors and students of the London Air Squadron preparing for an afternoon’s flying in
their Avro Tudor aircraft

Behind this compound of stupidity, cowardice and petty self-interest lay a

genuine belief that Hitler and Mussolini, initially seen as bastions of order
and stability against the extreme left, were essentially responsible statesmen.
And, given enough territory they would, ultimately, prove quite amenable to
reason. (“Hitler”, Lord Lothian, a prominent appeaser among the Liberal
Party’s ranks, rationalized the Rhineland seizure, “is doing nothing more than
taking over his own back garden.”) Conveniently ignored were the truths that
the National Socialists had for three years worked as silently as termites in
timber, in flagrant defiance of Versailles, to create a standing army of
500,000 men, and a Luftwaffe of almost 2,000 aircraft. For Hitler’s freely-
avowed aim was Lebensraum (living space), a Reich whose frontiers would
soon extend beyond all normally accepted frontiers, and ultimately
Lebensraum would mean war.
RAF students and instructors and their DeHavilland Tiger Moth trainers.

All through the late nineteen-thirties, when the pipe of Stanley Baldwin
and the umbrella of his successor, Neville Chamberlain, symbolized security
for so many of the British, the RAF were striving to keep pace. On November
6, 1935, five weeks after Mussolini’s Ethiopian incursion, the first of
designer Sydney Camm’s Hawker Hurricane Mark Is, was airborne from
Brooklands airfield in Surrey, climbing to 15,000 feet with a top speed of 330
mph. Although 1,000 would be ordered, the first would not reach their
destined squadron, No. 111, until well into January 1938. On March 5, 1936,
two days before the Rhineland debacle, Reginald Joseph Mitchell’s little blue
monoplane fighter, already known as the Spitfire, soared triumphantly on its
own test flight, above the blue waters of the Solent at Eastleigh, Hampshire.
An initial 450 would be bespoken from Vickers-Supermarine; it would be
August 1938 before 19 Squadron at Duxford traded in their Gloster Gauntlets
for the first of these new machines.
Vickers manufacturing and assembly photos in the Castle Bromwich Spitfire plant during
the Second World War.
Final assembly of new Mark IX Spitfire fighters at the Castle Bromwich, Birmingham,
Spitfire plant in the Second World War. Castle Bromwich produced more than 11,500
Spitfires and Seafires during the war years.

Throughout 1936, the landmarks charting the way to the greatest air war
in history became increasingly apparent. On July 14, Air Marshal Sir Hugh
Caswall Tremenheere Dowding arrived at ‘the most singular place on earth’,
the 166-year-old Bentley Priory, perched on a hilltop at Stanmore,
Middlesex, to form the headquarters of the newly-created Fighter Command.
A remote and glacial widower, then aged fifty-four, Air Marshal Dowding,
invariably known as “Stuffy”, faced a task more formidable than any air
commander had ever known.
Four months later, the Condor Legion, 370 handpicked fliers, assembled
in Seville, bent on abetting General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist Armed
Forces in their struggle against the Republicans that marked the Spanish Civil
War. As Hitler saw it, this was an invaluable proving ground for his new
Luftwaffe, and the Führer was right; one up-and-coming ace, Leutnant Adolf
Galland, flew 280 missions over the hotly-contested Ebro River. Above all,
the campaign was an unparalleled boost to Luftwaffe morale; the tactical
successes of the Junkers 87 dive-bombers—the Stukas—conjured up a
chilling, if ultimately misleading, picture of twentieth century air power.
“The Stukas in Spain,” one historian noted, “spread fear far beyond it.”
As far, indeed, as Austria, where no voices were raised in protest between
February 12 and March 11, 1938, as Adolf Hitler achieved a bloodless
Anschluss (union) of that country with his Third Reich. As far, on the dark,
rainy Friday afternoon of August 5, as Czechoslovakia, when the code word
‘Diabolo’ brought Fighter Command, for the first time, to a state of war
readiness. At Biggin Hill, in Kent, pilots like Pete Brothers and Michael
Crossley, and others of No. 32 Squadron, sadly set to work with pots and
brushes, disfiguring their gleaming Gloster Gauntlets with drab green and
brown camouflage. Out went 32 Squadron’s crest, emblazoned on every
rudder, a “Hunting horn stringed in a broad white arrow.” Alongside them
worked the pilots of Squadron Leader Paddy Pritchett’s 79 Squadron, silently
obliterating their “Salamander salient in flames.”

In truth, the alarm was premature. Czechoslovakia’s western province, the

Sudetenland, with its large German-speaking minority, would, through the
complicity of Neville Chamberlain and France’s Edouard Daladier, be
“given” to Hitler through the mechanism of the September 29 Munich
conference, a last-ditch attempt to forestall the Führer marching in on
October 1. It was a conference from which the Czechs, from first to last, were
ostentatiously excluded. “It is peace in our time,” Chamberlain told the
cheering crowds at London’s Heston airport.
“This is my last territorial demand in Europe,” Hitler was to assure
Chamberlain and the world, a promise which at least one sceptic begged
leave to doubt. “This time it is different,” Chamberlain contradicted him,
baring his teeth in a complacent smile, “This time he has made his promises
to me.”
Rivetting a tail assembly for a Spitfire at Castle Bromwich
The Spitfire prototype in 1936

Postal commemoratives for the Spitfire

The Hawker Hurricane prototype in 1935.
 A State of War

The English love their country with a love / Steady and simple, wordless,
dignified; I think its sets their patriotism above / All others. We Americans
have pride. / We glory in our country’s short romance. We boast of it and
love it. Frenchmen when / The ultimate menace comes, will die for France /
Logically as they lived. But Englishmen Will serve day after day, obey the
law, / And do dull tasks that keep a nation strong. Once I remember in
London how I saw / Pale shabby people standing in a long line in the twilight
and the misty rain / To pay their tax. I then saw England plain.
—from The White Cliffs by Alice Duer Miller

The RAF was always rich in slang. Some of its idiom was both technical and
necessary: ‘angels’ always signified height, so that ‘bandits seventy-plus at
angels one-five’ signified ‘more than seventy German raiders approaching at
15,000 feet’. To ‘scramble’ was to take-off’, to ‘pancake’ was to land. But
many other phrases marked the idiosyncrasies of a highly individualistic
emergent service. And no pilot ever crashed a plane, he ‘pranged’ it. If events
went awry, they had ‘gone for a Burton’, in which case the pilot was never
put out or fed up, he was ‘browned off’ or ‘cheesed off’, and this mental
malaise likewise prevailed if he was called upon to ‘stooge’ (fly
uneventfully). If his performance was erratic, too slow, or ill-conceived, he
was admonished to ‘take your finger out’.
In the last resort, no man among them ever died in action; he ‘bought it’.
Thus, for all Dowding’s pilots, September 3, 1939, was always ‘the day
the balloon went up’, as indeed they did: 400 barrage balloons over London
alone and at least fifty over coastal ports like Dover, grey, motionless. Sixty-
five feet wide by twenty-five deep, linked by a perilous mesh of steel cable.
There they would remain moored for the nine long months of the Phoney
War or Sitzkrieg, while the pilots endured twenty-five degrees of frost in one
of the coldest winters of that century.

“We used to say ‘if pigs could fly’ / And now they do. / I saw one sailing in
the sky Some thousand feet above his sty, / A fat one too! / I scarcely could
believe my eyes, So just imagine my surprise / To see so corpulent a pig /
Inconsequently dance a jig Upon a cloud./ And, when elated by the show I
clapped my hands and called ‘Bravo!’ / He turned and bowed. /Then, all at
once, he seemed to flop / And dived behind a chimney-top / Out of my sight.
/ ‘He’s down’, thought I; but not at all, ‘Twas only pride that had the fall: /To
my delight / He rose quite gay and debonair, Resolved to go on dancing there
/ Both day and night. / So pigs can fly, /They really do, /This chap, though
anchored in the slime, / Could reach an altitude sublime—A pig, ‘tis true! / I
wish I knew / Just how not only pigs but men / Might rise to nobler heights
again /Right in the blue / And start anew!”—To A Barrage Balloon by May
Morton

On September 2, squadron after squadron recorded in its diary ‘We are ready
for anything,’ yet uneventful week succeeded uneventful week.
Despite this aerial stalemate, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding faced
a critical dilemma. By late September, when Lord Gort’s British
Expeditionary Force moved across the English Channel to France, four
Hurricane squadrons—Nos. 1, 73, 85, and 87—moved with them. By mid-
November, when a German invasion of the Low Countries was rumoured,
two more squadrons, the Gladiators of Nos. 607 and 615, were sent as back-
up. Against a planned minimum of forty-six squadrons, Dowding was left
with no more than thirty-five for home defence.
WAAFs at the launch of a barrage balloon near Garrison church, Portsmouth in 1940.
If pigs could fly
A balloon barrage near Buckingham Palace, London, in 1940
A Hawker Hurricane Mk 1 in 1940
Air Vice Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, head of RAF Fighter Command

Squadron Leader James ‘Ginger’ Lacey, achieved nineteen confirmed enemy aircraft shot
down during the Battle of Britain and a final tally of twenty-eight confirmed kills in the
Second World War.

For the pilots, these, as yet were high-level concerns. In this long spell of
enforced idleness, their preoccupations were as varied as the men themselves.
Acting Pilot Officer Richard Hillary, soon to join No. 603 (City of
Edinburgh) Squadron, arguably the most famous of all RAF ‘guinea pigs’,
was reflecting that the fighter plane pointed “to war as it ought to be, war
which is individual combat between two people … I shan’t get maimed:
either I shall get killed or I shall get a few pleasant putty medals and enjoy
being stared at in a night club.”
At Hedon Aero Club, outside Hull, Sergeant James ‘Ginger’ Lacey had
no such consoling convictions. Within weeks, he was slated to join No. 501
(County of Gloucester) Squadron at Filton, near Bristol, yet, as he recorded in
his diary, “The prospect of fighting in a war scared me stiff.” The irony was
palpable. In the battle to come, Lacey was to destroy more German aircraft—
eighteen, including the Heinkel that bombed Buckingham Palace on
September 13, 1940—than any other pilot.
Many still lamented the vanished grace-notes of peacetime. For Flying
Officer Al Deere, a phlegmatic New Zealander, life with No. 54 Squadron at
Hornchurch now added up to long hours at readiness, camping out in tents,
humping sandbags to build dispersal pens and blast protection bays alongside
civilians paid an hourly rate for the same job. At North Weald, twenty-year-
old Pilot Officer Barry Sutton, of No. 56 Squadron, thought wistfully of the
daily working parades, the leisurely leaves, the guest nights and the civilian
clothes that had gone. Now, as a combatant-to-be, Sutton promptly sought
out the Adjutant to make his will: £30 worth of belongings to his fiancée,
Sylvia, his leaky two-seater Austin Seven to his cousin John.

Here’s to you, as good as you are, / And here’s to me, as bad as I am; / But as
good as you are, and as bad as I am, / I am as good as you are, as bad as I am.
—Anon. Old Scottish toast
Flight Lieutenant Peter Townsend with his rigger and fitter in the Battle of Britain
The crew of the Heinkel He 111 bomber downed by Townsend, F/O Tiger Folkes, and Sgt.
James Hallowes, on 3 February 1940. It was the first enemy aircraft brought down on
British soil in the Second World War.

As 1939 yielded to 1940, Dowding’s was still a strangely disparate

Command, a bewildering mix of confident professionals and wet-behind-the-
ears novices. Pilot Officer ‘Johnnie’ Johnson, with No. 616 (South
Yorkshire) Squadron at Coltishall, Norfolk, would ultimately enter the battle
with no more than twenty-three flying hours on Spitfires in his log book. It
was the same for Flying Officer David Crook, later a notable flight
commander with No. 609 (West Riding) Squadron. Until December, 1939,
Crook and his fellow cadets passed each evening in the bar of the New Inn,
Gloucester, sweltering in their greatcoats. Their wingless tunics would have
betrayed their fledgling status to the world.
 At all levels, the thirst for action fought with soul-searching doubts. At
Acklington, on the northeast coast, the night of January 30, 1940, saw three
Flight Lieutenants of No. 43 Squadron, Peter Townsend, Caesar Hull, a
chunky South African, and John Simpson launch into a wild, near-hysterical
jig, La Cachita, a cross between a rumba and an apache dance, which sent
chairs and tables flying. Their manic elation was understandable: each man
had that day shot down the first three Heinkel bombers to crash on English
soil. They had killed and they had lived to tell the tale.

“I did two patrols today and on the first I got lost and almost toured France
trying to find the aerodrome, but having landed at a French aerodrome I
eventually got back. We didn’t see anything on either patrol but we thought
we had on the latter and I got so excited. I now have had six hours sleep in
forty-eight hours and haven’t washed for over thirty-six hours. My God, am I
tired … and I am up again at 3 a.m. tomorrow.”
—from the diary of Pilot Officer Denis Wissler, No. 17 Squadron

A privileged few—all of them triumphant survivors of the battle to come—

had early on fallen heavily for Reginald Mitchell’s Spitfire Mark I. For the
South African Flight Lieutenant Adolph ‘Sailor’ Malan, of 74 Squadron,
Hornchurch, exchanging their Hawker Furies for the Spitfire at the time of
Munich was “like changing over from Noah’s Ark to the Queen Mary.” Two
months later, at Duxford, 65 Squadron’s Pilot Officer Roland Robert
Stanford Tuck, a slim dandy given to monogrammed silk handkerchiefs, was
equally entranced. For Tuck, the Spitfire was “thirty feet of wicked beauty …
with practically no relation to any of the aircraft I’d flown previously.” So
eager was he to master this answer to a fighter pilot’s prayer that he patented
a private mnemonic—BTFCPUR (brakes, trim, flaps, contacts, petrol,
undercarriage, radiator)—which enabled him to start up a Spitfire
blindfolded.
Another convert was the legendary Flying Officer Douglas Bader, who
eight years earlier, after stunting in a Bulldog over Woodley Airfield, near
Reading, had had both legs amputated below the knee. Incredibly, in October
1939, the twenty-nine-year-old Bader became the first man with artificial legs
ever to pass a medical for General Duties, as flying was known. Posted to No.
19 Squadron, at Duxford, in February, 1940, Bader too, was soon enthralled
by the way the Spitfire handled, “like a highly-strung thoroughbred.”
Significantly, long before battle was joined, all three men, so at ease in
their Spitfires, were more and more coming to question the Fighter Command
Number 1 Attack, where fighters swung into line behind their leader, queuing
to deliver a three-second attack before swinging away, their underbellies a
sure target for a German rear gunner. For Malan, it was “pretty to watch and
excellent for drill purposes” but totally unsuited to a Spitfire’s maximum
speed of 355 mph. Tuck saw what he called the tight ‘guardsman’ formations
as counter-productive; pilots were too busy watching each other’s wing-tips
to keep their eyes peeled for enemy aircraft.
Bader, the most explosively outspoken of the three, presciently saw the
battles to come as they would eventuate, a whirling pattern of individual
dogfights with every man for himself. “The chap who’ll control the battle
will still be the chap who’s got the height and sun, same as the last war,” he
dogmatized, “That old slogan of Ball, Bishop and McCudden (three Royal
Flying Corps veterans, all of whom were awarded the Victoria Cross: Albert
Ball, William Avery Bishop, and James Byford McCudden): ‘Beware of the
Hun in the sun’ wasn’t just a funny rhyme. Those boys learned from
experience.”
These tactics would ultimately be proven right, although for months to
come many squadrons would continue to fly in the strange, tight formation
that the Luftwaffe called “the bunch of bananas.” Yet, what all three men
failed to ask themselves was one salient question: would the planes in which
to pursue these tactics be forthcoming from the assembly lines? In the four
months from January to April 1940, the Air Ministry was to produce 2,729
aircraft—but only 638 of them were the desperately needed fighters.
On May 10, 1940, Fighter Command’s salvation was at hand. At 5 a.m.
on that day, the sirens screamed from Lyon to Newcastle upon Tyne; the
code word René, René, René passed from army post to army post along the
Belgian frontier. Hitler had struck in the west against Belgium, France,
Holland, and tiny Luxembourg simultaneously. Two days earlier, a damning
House of Commons debate on Britain’s failure to wrest Norway—which
Hitler had attacked on April 9—from Germany’s grasp had toppled the
Chamberlain Government. On May 10, Winston Churchill, that longtime
prophet of aerial doom, became the new Premier.
It was now, to put an end to what he called “the muddle and scandal of
the (Air Ministry’s) aircraft production branch,” that Churchill appointed the
sixty-one-year-old Canadian newspaper tycoon, bustling, ruthless little
William Maxwell Aitken, first Baron Beaverbrook, to the newly-created
position, Minister of Aircraft Production.
From the first, “The Beaver” seemed to vie with Churchill as to how
many toes he could trample on; to him, the entire Air Staff were, to the bitter
end, “the bloody Air Marshals.” If Beaverbrook sought storage space he
snatched it from the Air Ministry without prior consultation, then padlocked
it. To make aircraft factory workers feel “important” he flashed messages
onto cinema screens recalling them to duty. To instil the same sense of
belonging into the nation’s housewives, he launched a personal campaign of
“Saucepans Into Spitfires,” beseeching them: “Send me your pots and pans,
send me your aluminium.” Whether a single Spitfire was created from the
resultant cornucopia remains dubious, but in those anxious days the
housewives knew a true sense of purpose.
Working from Stornaway House, St James’s Park, his London home,
rather than from the M.A.P. building on Millbank, Beaverbrook soon refused
to adhere to any appointments schedule; all took potluck, first come, first
served. Papers were piled on spare beds, typewriters were glimpsed in
bathrooms, and meals, at irregular intervals during a sixteen-hour day, were
delivered on trays. Often, in an office plastered with slogans—“Organisation
is the Enemy of Improvisation”—“It is a Long Way from Knowing to
Doing”—six officials were lined up before Beaverbrook’s desk at one time
with memos to present.
When he decided to merge the industrial complex of Lord Nuffield, the
“British Ford,” with the old-guard firm of Vickers-Armstrong, Beaverbrook
despatched a secretary to haul Nuffield out of bed at midnight and break the
news. Nuffield’s subsequent impassioned plea to Churchill fell on deaf ears.
“I cannot interfere with the manufacture of aircraft,” was Churchill’s firm
rejoinder.

Douglas Bader of 242 Squadron

Al Deere in 1990

Bader with Ginger Lacey, 1968.

27-victory ace Group Captain ‘Sailor’ Malan
Pilot Officer Al Deere (right)
R.J. Mitchell (centre, sitting), designer of the Spitfire, with Vickers test pilot Mutt
Summers (far left) and Spitfire test pilot Jeffrey Quill (far right).

Beaverbrook’s credo was aptly expressed in a letter to Sir Samuel Hoare,

soon en route as ambassador-extraordinary to Franco’s Spain: “I don’t care if
the middle classes lie sleepless in their beds, so long as the workers stay
active at their benches.” For what Beaverbrook sought to do, fearing the
massed might of Luftwaffe bombers, was to disrupt bomber production
deliberately for the sake of stockpiling fighters.
“I saw my reserves slipping away like sand in an hourglass,” Dowding
was to report later.” … without his (Beaverbrook’s) drive behind me I could
not have carried on in the battle.” And Beaverbrook’s figures spoke for
themselves. The 638-fighter output of the Phoney War was eclipsed almost
overnight. From May to August, the height of “The Beaver’s” war effort,
M.A.P., produced 1,875 fighters, and, thanks to the truculent persistence of
one chief, Trevor Westbrook, repaired 1,872. A past master of
cannibalisation, Westbrook saw to it that three damaged aircraft could ensure
one fit for service; if instruments were lacking, Westbrook’s solution was to
unabashedly pillage RAF depots.
It was not a programme achieved without the ‘blood, toil, tears and
sweat’ which were all that Churchill had offered the British. Robert Bruce
Lockhart, who looked in on one midnight meeting of Beaverbrook and his
department chiefs at Stornaway House, never forgot it. The exchanges were
as staccato as machine-gun fire.
“How many planes are you producing this week? Double it!”
Any protest produced a fearsome, “Why not?”
“Because I am short of mechanics.”
“How many do you need?”
“Thirty or forty.”
“Which figure do you mean?”
“Thirty.”
“You’ll have them on Monday. Double your figure.”
The urgency was appropriate. Across the Channel, within two weeks of
Hitler’s headlong blitzkrieg, a vast military disaster was in the making.
A Mk 1 Spitfire during the Battle of Britain.
The Few
RAF Hurricane pilots ready to go
Pilot Officer Bob Doe
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The slave
trade
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: The slave trade

Slavery and color

Author: Theodore D. Jervey

Release date: December 26, 2023 [eBook #72513]

Language: English

Original publication: Columbia: The State Company, 1925

Credits: Bob Taylor, Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
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by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLAVE

TRADE ***
 Wade Hampton, 1889
“The diffusion of the Negroes? It would deprive us of
much of our labor
and make it a little harder for the present generation, but
it would be
the salvation of the future.”
 THE
SLAVE TRADE
Slavery and Color

BY
THEODORE D. JERVEY

COLUMBIA, S. C.
THE STATE COMPANY
1925
 COPYRIGHT 1925
THE STATE COMPANY
 TO

A. S. SALLEY, JR.
Secretary of the Historical Commission
of South Carolina
whose friendship has stood the test of
time and whose exact knowledge, those
standing high among the scholars of
American history have recognized, this
book is dedicated.
 INTRODUCTORY

The following pages, from which an excerpt was published in

1913, under the title—The Railroad The Conqueror—constitute an
attempt to put within short compass the main causes of the shifting
sectionalism of the people of the United States.
The facts and assertions upon which this sketch is based have,
with others not included, been gathered and pondered for at least
sixteen years, during which period, much at times interwoven, has,
from time to time been cut, for fear that consideration of such might
lead the thoughts of the possible reader away from the main theme.
As to the workmanship few can see more clearly than the author,
how much better that could have been, had he who undertook it
been accommodated with more leisure and equipped with
scholarship and means. Yet it is doubtful if any one could have
approached the task and pursued it through the years which have
intervened between its inception and completion with a firmer
determination to present the truth and nothing but the truth, as the
writer saw and still sees it.
To publish what is herein set out, in this day of rampant
commercialism and often unconscious intolerance, requires character
and courage in a publisher.
On the other hand, submission to some, holding themselves out
as publishers and soliciting manuscripts, involves occasional risk, and
in this connection, the author feels that he would be lacking in
ordinary gratitude, did he not record the rescue of this manuscript,
in an earlier form, from the clutch of a publishing house, which
having obtained it on solicitation, for perusal and consideration, on
terms declined, held it for a year, in spite of repeated requests for its
return, replied to repeatedly, with untruthful assertions that it had
been sent back. Without any knowledge of or interest in the
contents, a stranger, to whose inquiries concerning local history, the
author, from time to time had replied, C. W. Lewis, Esq., residing in
the vicinity of the disreputable publishing house, upon request, by a
personal call, forced the delivery of the manuscript and returned it to
the author. Now complete it is submitted to the public without
further comment to speak for itself.
THE SLAVE TRADE
Slavery and Color
 CHAPTER I
In consideration of much that appears in the numerous
contributions to the discussion of the Negro Question, it must be
noticeable that in recent years, there has been quite a broadening of
the field, and that, from what was in the past, mainly a question of
slavery or freedom, for one particular class of people, in one great
country, we have advanced to a consideration of what may effect the
entire world in that, which has been entitled by some: “The Conflict
of Color,” and by others not quite so pessimistic: “The Question of
the Twentieth Century, the Question of Color.”
In such circumstances, an examination of the evolution of this
question and a recital of some of the phases under which it has
been brought up for discussion in the history of the United States,
may tend to correct some misapprehensions and throw some
additional light upon a subject, which, in spite of the efforts to
suppress it, is continually forcing itself upon the attention of the
world.
While freely admitting the impossibility of discussing this subject,
within any reasonable limits, without necessarily omitting mention of
many publications, containing an amount of extremely valuable
information, the aim of this work will be to trace the evolution of the
question as it has appeared, in the expression of both whites and
Negroes, in that country in which public opinion is said to exercise
the greatest influence upon government. In undertaking such an
examination it would be hardly necessary to make any very close
scrutiny of the Colonial period, from the fact that while there was
opinion that found expression in acts, statements and laws, the
colonies, being under the control of Great Britain, were subjected to
her policies and representative of her civilization. The extraordinary
case therefore of a Massachusetts slave-owner, Maverick, who simply
for breeding purposes, in 1636, forced an African woman of high
rank, owned by him, to accept the embraces of a common young
Negro[1] was but a way of expressing contempt for the race. The
Maryland Act of 1663, a far less coarse expression, involved all white
women who failed to entertain it. In Stroud’s “Sketch of the laws of
Slavery,” published in 1827, we find on page 2:
“Section 2. And forasmuch as divers free born English women
forgetful of their free condition, and to the disgrace of our nation do
intermarry with Negro slaves” such “free born women ... shall serve
the master of such slave during the life of her husband and all the
issue of such free born women, so married shall be slaves as their
fathers were.”

Yet despite these two striking illustrations at these early dates,

broadly speaking, we might claim that in British America “up to 1700
and perhaps beyond, the sentiment North and South concerning the
Negro or his enslavement differed but slightly; for while the South
Carolina Act of 1690 did provide severe regulations for Negro and
Indian slaves, a study of the statutes from 1698”[2] “and later of the
press, indicates a sentiment against the importation of Negroes,
which however was forced upon that province, as upon others, by
the British Government.”[3]
The Revolutionary war, which shook off this controlling force,
associated the States together, under the Articles of Confederation,
thus paving the way for that great experiment, the Constitutional
Federal Republic, which succeeded it.
It was in the deliberations of the great Convention, which framed
that “more perfect union”, that the Negro question really first arose,
as a matter of vital political concern; nor among all the questions
which confronted that extraordinary body, did there appear a graver
one, than that affecting the status of the colored people of the
Union.
This class represented, at that time, about one-fifth of the
population of the thirteen States, which it was the aim to unite, or
737,208 blacks as against 3,172,006 whites[4], and while of these
737,208 colored persons some 59,527 were free, in every one of the
thirteen States, except Massachusetts, there were slaves, and in only
one State, outside of New England, Pennsylvania, were free persons
of color more numerous than slaves.
In eight of the thirteen States the Negro slaves greatly
outnumbered the free persons of color; while in still another, with a
total of 5,572 colored persons, the colored freedmen exceeded the
slaves by only 54.
Under these conditions, it was not unnatural that the question
should have presented itself as one of slavery versus freedom, rather
than Negroes versus whites, and for the seventy years in which
slavery continued to exist, that fact served to obscure, to quite an
extent, the appreciation of the distinct question of color and race.
Yet by some, at an exceedingly early date, it was recognized, that
apart from the consideration of how they might be held, the mere
presence in the Republic of a large and growing number of people of
an inferior race, presented a serious problem.
When the consideration of the basis upon which Federal
representation should rest, and direct taxes be apportioned, was
reached, the framers of the Constitution found themselves,
therefore, confronted with a political question of the first magnitude,
in the existence of the slave trade.
What was the slave? A man or a chattel?
The question was precipitated by a clause in the report of the
committee of detail, presented by John Rutledge, of South Carolina,
Article 7, Section 4. “No tax or duty shall be laid by the Legislature
on articles exported from any State nor on the migration or
importation of such persons as the several States shall think proper
to admit, nor shall such migration or importation be prohibited.”[5]
In the light of what followed, of the existing legislation upon that
subject in the State of South Carolina, and the history of the
province and State, the introduction of the concluding clause of this
section by her most distinguished representative was unfortunate. It
gave rise to declarations concerning the State which not only do not
seem to have been absolutely borne out by the facts; but which the
actions and votes of her deputies themselves, to some extent
stultified; yet the State was nevertheless stamped with an
unenviable precedence in a matter in which she cast but one of the
seven votes, in a total of eleven, by which the final decision was
arrived at.
In the discussion which immediately arose upon the introduction
of the report, four views with regard to this clause found expression.
Luther Martin, of Maryland, a Representative from a State, which,
as will subsequently be shown, could have then been described as
the most complete slave State of the thirteen, had nevertheless the
discernment to realize the dangers of such a condition, and
proposed to alter the section, so as to allow a prohibition or tax on
the importation of slaves. He presented three grounds of objection
to the denial of such: “1. As five slaves are to be counted as three
free-men in the apportionment of Representatives, such a clause
would leave an encouragement of the traffic. 2. Slaves weakened
one part of the Union, which the other parts were bound to protect;
the privilege of importing them was, therefore, unreasonable. 3. It
was inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution and
dishonorable to the American character to have such features in the
Constitution.”
In defending the clause Mr. Rutledge was not conciliatory. He “did
not see how the importation of slaves could be encouraged by this
section. He was not apprehensive of insurrections and would readily
exempt the other States from their obligations to protect the
Southern States against them. Religion and humanity had nothing to
do with the question. Interest alone is the governing principle with
nations. The true question at present is whether the Southern States
shall or shall not be parties to the Union. If the Northern States
consult their interest they will not oppose the increase of slaves
which will increase the commodities of which they will become the
consumers.”
Mr. Ellsworth of Connecticut supported the clause in an argument
pitched upon the same utilitarian plane, but strengthened with what
was an assertion of the doctrine of States rights. He “was for leaving
the clause as it stands. Let every State import what it pleases. The
morality or wisdom of slavery are considerations belonging to the
States themselves. What enriches a part enriches the whole, and the
States are the best judges of their particular interests. The old
Confederation had not meddled with this point and he did not see
any greater necessity for bringing it within the policy of the new
one.”
Mr. Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, while upholding the view
of Mr. Rutledge, held out a hope of subsequent accord. He said
“South Carolina can never receive the plan, if it prohibits the slave
trade. In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress, that
State has expressly and watchfully excepted that of meddling with
the importation of Negroes. If the States be all left at liberty on the
subject, South Carolina may perhaps by degrees do of herself what
is wished, as Virginia and Maryland have already done.”[6]
Upon the following day the discussion was resumed.
Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, “was for leaving the clause as it
stands. He disapproved of the slave trade; yet as the States were
now possessed of the right to import slaves, as the public good did
not require it to be taken from them and as it was expedient to have
as few objections as possible to the proposed scheme of
Government, thought it best to leave the matter as we found it. He
observed that the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the
United States, and that the good sense of the several States would
probably by degrees complete it. He urged upon the Convention the
necessity of dispatching its business.”
Col. Mason, of Virginia, took very high ground. He declared: “This
infernal traffic originated in the avarice of the British merchants. The
British Government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to
put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing
States alone, but the whole Union. The evil of having slaves was
experienced during the late war. Had slaves been treated as they
might have been by the enemy, they would have proved dangerous
instruments in their hands. But their folly dealt by the slaves as it did
by the Tories. He mentioned the dangerous insurrections of the
slaves in Greece and Sicily, and the instructions given by Cromwell to
the commissioners sent to Virginia to arm the servants and slaves in
case other means of obtaining submission should fail. Maryland and
Virginia, he said, had already prohibited the importation of slaves
expressly. North Carolina had done the same in substance. All this
would be vain, if South Carolina and Georgia be at liberty to import.
The Western people are already calling out for slaves in their new
lands, and will fill that country with slaves, if they can be got
through South Carolina and Georgia. Slavery discourages arts and
manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.
They prevent the immigration of whites, who really enrich and
strengthen a country. They produce the most pernicious effect on
morals. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the
judgment of Heaven on a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or
punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable
chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by
national calamities. He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren
had, from a lust of gain, embarked in this nefarious traffic. As to the
States being in possession of the right to import, this was the case
with many other rights now to be properly given up. He held it
essential in every point of view that the General Government should
have power to prevent the increase of slavery.”
Mr. Ellsworth spoke again, and quite to the point: “As he had
never owned a slave, could not judge of the effect of slavery on
character. He said, however, that if it was to be considered in a
moral light, we ought to go further and free those already in the
country. As slaves also multiply so fast in Virginia and Maryland that
it is cheaper to raise than import them, whilst in the sickly swamps
foreign supplies are necessary. If we go no further than is urged we
shall be unjust to South Carolina and Georgia. Let us not
intermeddle. As population increases, poor laborers will be so plenty
as to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our
country. Provision is already made in Connecticut for abolishing it.
And the abolition has already taken place in Massachusetts. As to
the danger of insurrection from foreign influence that will become a
motive to kind treatment of the slaves.”
Mr. Charles Pinckney said: “If slavery be wrong it is justified by the
example of all the world. He cited the case of Greece, Rome and
other States; the sanction given by France, England, Holland and
other modern States. In all ages one half of mankind have been
slaves. If the Southern States were left alone they will probably of
themselves stop importation. He would himself, as a citizen of South
Carolina, vote for it. An attempt to take away the right, as proposed,
will produce serious objections to the Constitution which he wished
to see adopted.”
Gen. C. C. Pinckney “declared it to be his firm opinion that if
himself and all his colleagues were to sign the Constitution and use
their personal influence it would be of no avail towards obtaining the
assent of their constituents. South Carolina and Georgia cannot do
without slaves. As to Virginia, she will gain by stopping the
importations. Her slaves will rise in value and she has more than she
wants. It would be unequal to require South Carolina and Georgia to
confederate on such unequal terms. He said the royal assent before
the Revolution had never been refused to South Carolina as to
Virginia. He contended that the importation of Slaves would be for
the interest of the Whole Union. The more slaves the more produce
to employ the carrying trade. The more consumption also, and the
more of this the more of revenue for the common treasury. He
admitted it to be reasonable that slaves should be dutied like other
imports, but should consider a rejection of the clause as an exclusion
of South Carolina from the Union.”
Mr. Baldwin, of Georgia, “had conceived national objects alone to
be before the Convention, not such as like the present were of a
local nature. Georgia was decided on this point. That State has
always hitherto supposed a General Government to be the pursuit of
the central States who wished to have a vortex for everything—that
her distance would preclude her from equal advantage—and that
she could not prudently purchase it by yielding national powers.
From this it might be understood in what light she would view an
attempt to abridge her favorite prerogative. If left to herself she may
probably put a stop to the evil. As one ground for this conjecture he
took notice of the sect of which he said was a respectable class of
people who carried their ethics beyond the mere equality of men,
extending their humanity to the claims of the whole animal creation.”
Mr. Wilson, of Pennsylvania, “observed that if South Carolina and
Georgia were themselves disposed to get rid of the importation of
slaves in a short time, as had been suggested, they would never
refuse to unite because the importation might be prohibited. As the
section now stands all articles imported are to be taxed. Slaves alone
are exempt. This is in fact a bounty on that article.”
Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, “thought we had nothing to do with
the conduct of the States as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to
give any sanction to it.”
Mr. Dickinson, of Delaware, “considered it as inadmissible on every
principle of honor and safety that the importation of slaves should be
authorized to the States by the Constitution. The true question was
whether the national happiness would be promoted or impeded by
the importation, and the question ought to be left to the National
Government, not to the States particularly interested. If England and
France permit slavery, slaves are at the same time excluded from
both these kingdoms. Greece and Rome were made unhappy by
their slaves. He could not believe that the Southern States would
refuse to confederate on the account apprehended; especially as the
power was not likely to be immediately exercised by the General
Government.”
Mr. Williamson, of North Carolina, “stated the law of North
Carolina on the subject, to wit, that it did not directly prohibit the
importation of slaves. It imposed a duty of five pounds on each slave
imported from Africa. Ten pounds on each from elsewhere, and fifty
pounds on each from a State licensing manumission. He thought the
Southern States could not be members of the Union if the clause
should be rejected, and that it was wrong to force anything down
not absolutely necessary and which any State must disagree to.”
Mr. King, of Massachusetts, “thought the subject should be
considered in a political light only. If two States will not agree to the
Constitution as stated on one side, he could affirm with equal belief
on the other that great and equal opposition would be experienced
from the other States. He remarked on the exemption of slaves from
duty, while every other import was subjected to it, as an inequality
that could not fail to strike the commercial sagacity of the Northern
and Middle States.”
Mr. Langdon, of New Hampshire, “was strenuous for giving the
power to the General Government. He could not with a good
conscience leave it with the States who could then go on with the
traffic, without being restrained by the opinion here given that they
will themselves cease to import slaves.”
Gen. Pinckney, “thought himself bound to declare candidly that he
did not think South Carolina would stop her importation of slaves in
any short time, but only stop them occasionally as she now does. He
moved to commit the clause that slaves might be made liable to an
equal tax with other imports, which he thought right, and which
would remove one difficulty that had been started.”
Mr. Rutledge remarked: “If the Convention thinks that North
Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia will ever agree to the plan,
unless their right to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is
vain. The people of these States will never be such fools as to give
up so important an interest. He was strenuous against striking out
the section and seconded the motion of Gen. Pinckney for a
commitment.”
Mr. Gouverneur Morris, of Pennsylvania, “wished the whole subject
to be committed, including the clauses relating to taxes on exports,
and on a Navigation Act. These things may form a bargain among
the Northern and Southern States.”
 Mr. Butler, of South Carolina, declared, “that he would never agree
to the power of taxing exports.”
Mr. Sherman said: “It was better to let the Southern States import
slaves than to part with them, if they made that a sine qua non. He
was opposed to a tax on slaves imported as making the matter
worse, because it implied they were property. He acknowledged that
if the power of prohibiting the importation should be given to the
General Government that it would be exercised. He thought it would
be its duty to exercise the power.”
Mr. Reed, of Delaware, “was for the commitment provided the
clause concerning taxes on exports should also be committed.”
Mr. Sherman, observed: “that that clause had been agreed to and
therefore could not be committed.”
Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, “was for committing in order that some
middle ground, if possible, be found. He could never agree to the
clause as it stands. He would sooner risk the Constitution. He dwelt
on the dilemma to which the Constitution was exposed by agreeing
to the clause it would revolt the Quakers, the Methodists and many
others in the States having no slaves. On the other hand, two States
might be lost to the Union. Let us then,” he said, “try the chance of
a commitment.”[7]
On the question of committing, the vote was: New Hampshire, no;
Massachusetts, abstaining from voting; Connecticut, aye; New
Jersey, aye; Pennsylvania, no; Delaware, no; Maryland, aye; Virginia,
aye; North Carolina, aye; South Carolina, aye; Georgia, aye;[8] In a
total of eleven States at Convention seven ayes, three noes, one not
voting.
The clause having been referred to a committee consisting of
Messrs. Langdon, King, Johnson, Livingston, Clymer, Dickinson, L.
Martin, Madison, Williamson, C. C. Pinckney, and Baldwin, the
committee reported in favor of the clause, with an amendment
making it read: “The migration or importation of such persons as the
several States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be
prohibited by the Legislature prior to the year 1800, but a tax or
duty may be imposed on such migration or importation at a rate not
exceeding the average of the duties laid on imports.”[9]
Gen. Pinckney moved to strike out the words “the year 1800 and
to insert the words eighteen hundred and eight.”
Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts, seconded the motion. This action
brought from one, who up to that time does not appear to have
participated in the discussion, Mr. Madison, the declaration that:
“twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended
from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more
dishonorable to the national character than to say nothing about it in
the Constitution.”[10]
The reported clause had been referred to the committee against
the vote of New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Virginia
and New Jersey both opposed the amendment; but as it received
the vote of both New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which had not
voted for the commitment, it was supported by seven out of the
eleven States, the three New England States present and four of the
five Southern States, the three Middle States present, and one
Southern State, opposing.
While reasonable men must always be alive to the necessity of
compromise, and while also the great responsibilities of the situation
concerning this matter are apparent, yet this most important
discussion and vote establishes some facts, with regard to the
constitutional Union, which the honest historian cannot disregard.
First: The migration or importation of Negroes was prohibited in
spite of the declaration of the representatives of the three Southern
States, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, that some of the
Southern States could not accept the Constitution if it did.
Second: A tax upon the importation was imposed through the aid
of the vote of New England, whose representatives had warned the
Convention that it would be a recognition of slavery to tax
importation. The claim, therefore made, that South Carolina and
Georgia forced the recognition of the slave trade is not borne out by
the facts in the case. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut,
Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia followed the
suggestion of Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, and, abandoning
the principles for which they had contended, “formed a bargain” by
which the slave trade was surrendered for the recognition of slavery
by the Constitution.
Upon considering the discussion, although Ellsworth’s shrewd
criticism crippled, to some extent, the lofty flight of Mason of
Virginia, yet the speech of the latter puts him upon a higher plane of
statesmanship than that occupied by any deputy present. On the
other hand, no matter how high their reputations otherwise may
have been established, none descended to so low a plane as King, of
Massachusetts and Rutledge of South Carolina; while no individual
exhibited as much ignorance of the existing situation as he, who by
the temperance of his utterance and the influence of his high
personal character, most thoroughly mastered it.
Gen. C. C. Pinckney did not seem to know that South Carolina had
not been permitted by Great Britain to throw off the slave trade,
when, as a province, she sought to do so,[11] or that the sentiment
of the people of his State, even while he was speaking, had found
expression in an Act which prohibited the bringing into the State of
“any Negro slave contrary to the Act to regulate the recovery of
debts and prohibiting the importation of Negroes”[12] and which was
sufficiently strong even after the above compromise to negative, by
a vote of 93 to 40, Gillon’s attempt in the South Carolina Legislature
in 1788, to repeal the law prohibiting importation.[13] No severer
criticism of the General’s statesmanship on this point was ever
promulgated than that, thirty-four years later, which his devoted
brother, Gen. Thomas Pinckney, furnished, in some reflections,
published by him[14] without any thought of how positively they ran
counter to the dictum of his brother—“South Carolina and Georgia
cannot do without slaves”—he warned South Carolinians that Negro
artisans were taking the places of whites.
 But, turning from this discussion, it is of importance to consider
just how the Negro population of the United States was located at
the time of the adoption of the Constitution.
By the census taken in 1790 it was indicated that about six-
sevenths of the entire colored population of the thirteen States
constituting the Union, inhabited the four States of Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, of which about one-half
were found in Virginia, the population in the order of their numbers
being as follows: Virginia 305,493; Maryland 111,099; South
Carolina, 108,895; North Carolina, 105,547. The Negro population of
Georgia at that date was but slightly in excess of the Negro
population of New York, being only 29,662 to New York’s 25,978,
while in the region north of Maryland there were nearly three times
as many Negroes as in the region south of South Carolina.
Considering the percentage of blacks to whites in the different
sections, South Carolina had the greatest, with a colored population
rising as high as 44 per cent of the total. Virginia came second, with
a percentage of 41, Georgia was third, with 36; Maryland fourth,
with 35; North Carolina fifth, with 27; Delaware sixth, with 26; New
Jersey seventh, with 9; New York eighth, with 8; Rhode Island ninth,
with 7, and Pennsylvania tenth, with less than three per cent.
There is still another standpoint, however, from which this
population might be considered; that is with regard to the area of
the State containing the same, and considered in this light,
Maryland, with a Negro population in excess of that of South
Carolina, and with an area of only one-third, was the most distinct
Negro State of the Union. Delaware came second, and Virginia third.
In the two States of Maryland and Virginia, with a combined area of
79,124 square miles, there was considerably more than one-half of
the colored population of the United States, 416,572. In the region
to the south, embracing the three States of North Carolina, South
Carolina and Georgia, with an area of 143,040 square miles, there
were as yet but 244,104 Negroes, or about one-third of the number,
considered with regard to the area they inhabited, which makes very
obvious the contention of Ellsworth that the abrogation of the slave
trade would have operated as a distinct commercial benefit to
Maryland and Virginia, enabling them to supply to the region south
of them, at enhanced prices, the slaves they might raise for market.
Virginia, Maryland and Delaware then constituted at this time the
black belt, containing, as they did, four-sevenths of the colored
population of the Union, three-fourths of the remainder being in the
region below and one-fourth above.
In the first decade of the Constitution the density of this colored
population in Virginia and Maryland was actually increased; while, at
the same time, through an extraordinary accession to her white
population, in spite of great gains to the colored, South Carolina’s
colored percentage decreased, and it is on this account that what
happened in the next decade of the Constitution in South Carolina is
of so much importance. A consideration of these events will show,
that, in spite of the declaration of her great deputies, that “South
Carolina could not do without slaves,” and that her people “would
never be such fools as to give up so important an interest” as “their
right to import slaves,” they not only proposed to give up the right,
but strove earnestly to do so, and only after thirty years of
unavailing effort, accompanied by an ever increasing investment in
that class of property, did the strong minority, which had opposed it,
acquiesce in Calhoun’s most unwise view, that the blacks furnished
“the best substratum of population, upon which great and flourishing
Commonwealths may be most easily and safely reared.”[15]
Once it was accepted, the march was steadily on to disaster.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Phillips, American Negro Slavery, p. 361.
[2] Statutes of S. C., Vols. 2 & 7, pp. 153, 367, 370.
 [3] S. C. Gazette, Feb. 26, 1732, McCrady, S. C. under the
Royal Government, p. 378.
[4] Compendium of the Ninth Census of the United States, p.
13.
[5] Farrand. Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, p. 183.
[6] Farrand. Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, p. 364.
[7] Farrand. Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, pp. 369,
374.
[8] Ibid. p. 374.
[9] Ibid. p. 400.
Prof. Farrand renders “abst” absent, which the context
contradicts. King of Massachusetts, was put on the committee.
[10] Farrand. Records of the Federal Convention, Vol. 2, p. 415.
[11] S. C. Gazette, Feb. 19, 1732, Stat. S. C. Vol. 7, pp. 367-
370. McCrady, S. C. Under the Royal Government, p. 378.
[12] Stat. S. C. Vol. 7, p. 430.
[13] State Gazette, Jan. 28, 1788.
[14] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times, p. 130.
[15] Calhoun’s Correspondence, p. 369.
 CHAPTER II

Following Gillon’s unsuccessful attempt in 1788, to repeal the

existing law, the State of South Carolina, by successive enactments,
in spite of the implied sanction of the Constitution until 1808,
prohibited the importation of slaves[16] up to the year 1803. In that
year Governor James B. Richardson, in his annual message to the
General Assembly, indirectly suggested the repeal of such legislation.
The language of this message is so involved that, considered
without reference to its effect, it seems to indicate some sympathy
with the prohibition of the importation; but carefully considered, the
secret sympathy of this official with those he condemns is obvious.
The promptness with which it was seized upon by the opponents of
prohibition, and the arguments culled from it, indicate that it was the
opening wedge by which the defence against the black flood, was
split, to admit it in such volume, as to make subsequent efforts to
stop the flow almost useless.
That portion of the message which dealt with the importation of
Negro slaves reads as follows:
“All possible diligence and my best efforts have been used to carry
effectually into operation the law prohibiting the importation of
Negroes into the State, but it is with concern that I have here to
state to you, that it has been without success; whether it must be
attributed principally to the ill consequences that are apprehended
would result from carrying the law into operation by emancipating
the Negroes so brought in (a remedy deemed more mischievous
than the evil of their introduction in servitude) or whether the
interests of the citizens is so interwoven with that species of
property, that it prevents their aiding the law in answering the
salutary purposes, I will not presume to determine; but I am inclined
to believe both causes operate as preventatives; for those people
are continued to be brought into the State beyond the possibility of
prevention. In all laws intended for the general benefit, they should
be so calculated that their operation should be found equal in every
part of the State; where this is not the case it means that there is
some radical defect therein, or it is inimical to the interest of the
citizens; with this law such is the situation; for in the present state of
things, the citizens in the frontier and sea coast districts do
accumulate this property without the possibility of being detected,
while those of the interior and middle districts only experience the
operation of that law from their remote situation, etc.... This indeed
is a circumstance to be lamented, but such is the true state of our
situation and therefore becomes a subject worthy of your
consideration and one that I trust will engage your endeavors to
render equally energetic in every part of the State that law which
experience has proved partial in its operation and is oppressive upon
such citizens in the interior districts as hold it the object of desire to
augment their capital in the accumulation of such property.”[17]
This expression of opinion from the Governor brought up in the
House the appointment of “a committee to inquire whether any and
what amendments are necessary, to the Act entitled, ‘An Act to
prevent Negro slaves from being brought into or entering this
State’[18]; in the Senate a bill to permit their importation.”[19]
The leading opponent in the Senate of the bill to permit
importation was State Senator Robert Barnwell, at that time in his
forty-second year. He had served with credit in the Revolutionary
war, in the course of which he had been seriously wounded; had
been a delegate to the Continental Congress; and later a member of
Congress from the 2nd Congressional district of South Carolina, later
still he had been elected Speaker of the South Carolina House of
Representatives.[20] He is described by Edward Hooker as “a tall,
portly, well-built man of about sixty years—a man of singular gravity,
and possessed of great influence in the Senate. Said to be an
eminent orator and very religious character.”[21]
 A synopsis of Mr. Barnwell’s remarks on this occasion has been
preserved, although, as became more and more the custom with
regard to all utterances concerning slavery, in any way critical, much
was suppressed. The account reads as follows: “He maintained that
by the immense influx of these persons into the State, the value of
this species of property would be considerably diminished, insomuch
that he did believe Negroes would be soon not worth one half of
what they might be sold for. The value of the produce raised by their
labor would be in like manner depreciated. * * * The permission
given by the bill would lead to ruinous speculation. Everyone would
purchase Negroes. It was well known that those who dealt in this
property would sell it at a very long credit. Our citizens would
purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate crops and favorable
markets for making their payments and it would be found that South
Carolina would in a few years, if this trade continued open, be in the
same situation of debt, and subject to all the misfortunes which that
situation had produced as at the conclusion of the Revolutionary war.
The honorable member adduced in support of his opinion other
arguments still more cogent and impressive, which from reasons
very obvious, we decline making public.”[22]
The most prominent advocate of the bill was State Senator William
Smith, the schoolmate of Andrew Jackson, later judge, and, later
still, United States Senator, the most determined of Calhoun’s
political opponents in after years. He was a native of North Carolina,
of somewhat indefinite age, a reformed drunkard; but a man of
firmness and power, and also of pleasing appearance.[23]
The report of his remarks upon this occasion is brevity itself, but
sufficient to condemn him, as it is apparent that in a spirit of
pessimism he voted against his convictions. The report is: “Mr. Smith
said he would agree to put a stop to the importation of Negroes but
he believed it to be impossible. For this reason he would vote for the
bill.”[24] The House had meantime reported that “the laws
prohibiting the importation of Negroes can be so amended as to
prevent their introduction among us,” but a strong faction were for