Old Times in the Colonies. Charles Carleton Coffin
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and the French, who visited the North American shores, acquired the habit. Jules Nicot carried some of the dried leaves to France, and the plant became known to botanists as Nicot’s plant, or Nicotiana tabacum. Its introduction to France was about the year 1560, and it was soon in great demand. People not only smoked it but chewed it, and ground it into dust and snuffed it.
Ralph Lane carried some tobacco to London, in 1586, where it was used first as a medicine, but soon became a luxury, and was made fashionable by Sir Walter Raleigh. He and his friends often met at the Pied Bull tavern to smoke their pipes. King James I. hated tobacco, and wrote a book against its use. Pope Urban VIII., and Innocent XI. issued bulls against smoking. The priests of the Mohammedan religion cried out against it, and the sultan, Amuret IV., cut off the noses of those who used it. Vain the prohibition! The love for tobacco increased. All nations acquired the habit of smoking. The first settlers of Virginia grew rich through the cultivation of the plant. It became their exclusive occupation. The colony was founded upon it. Laws, customs, habits, social relations, the progress of the state, all were affected by it. Tobacco became the currency of the colony; all values were reckoned by it. Far-reaching has been its influence.
Through all past ages the strong have enslaved the weak. Prisoners taken in war were held as slaves. Barbaric people were reduced to bondage by those more civilized.
When Christopher Columbus landed on San Salvador and Cuba he was kindly treated by the Indians; but the men of Spain were cruel and enslaved them, compelling them to work in mines and in the cultivation of the sugar-cane. They gave them hard tasks, with little to eat; cut off their ears, noses, hands and feet upon the slightest provocation. Under such cruel treatment the Indians died in great numbers, and, to supply their places, expeditions were made to Mexico and South America. Vasquez D’ Allyon visited South Carolina in 1520 to obtain slaves, enticing the confiding Indians on board his ship, and carrying them to Cuba. The Indians were feeble, but the negroes of Africa were strong; and Bishop Las Casas, of Chiopia, in Mexico, who was a friend to the Indians, petitioned the emperor, Charles V., to permit the enslavement of negroes in Africa, instead of allowing the slavers to rob him of his flock. The emperor gave his consent, and the enslavement of negroes began.
Captain John Hawkins, of England, visited the West Indies, and the thought came to him that he might make it profitable to bring slaves from Africa. He returned to England, laid his plan before Sir Lionel Duchet, Sir Thomas Dodge, Mr. Gunnison, Mr. Winter, Mr. Bromfield, and other gentlemen, who joined in fitting out the ships Solomon, Swallow, and Jonas. Sir John sailed in December, 1562, to Tenerife, and from there to Sierra Leone, in Africa, where three hundred negroes were captured or purchased from the chiefs, taken to Cuba and sold. Captain Hawkins returned to England with a great quantity of gold, besides a cargo of hides, sugar, and ginger. It was so profitable a trade that the following year he sailed with four ships, and captured five hundred negroes. It is not probable that Captain Hawkins or any one else connected with the enterprise thought for a moment that it was wrong. They believed that they were God’s elect servants. The ships were becalmed in mid-ocean, and their water was running low; but Hawkins trusted in God to bring him and his cargo safe to Cuba. He wrote this in his journal: “For the space of eighteen days we were becalmed, which put us in such fear that many of our men despaired of reaching the Indies, but the Almighty God, who never suffers his elect to perish, sent us, on the 16th of February, the ordinary breeze, which never left us until we came to the Islands of Cannibals, called Dominica.”
In 1619 a Dutch vessel sailed up the James River with negroes stolen from Africa. They were sold to the settlers of Virginia, who were gathering rich harvests of tobacco. Little did the captain of that ship think what would be the outcome of that cargo of slaves — the misery, suffering, anguish, woe, and horrors; the death of myriads of human beings in the terrible passage across the sea, crowded into hot and stifling holds, panting for breath, dying of fever, thirst, hunger, confinement, homesickness; and when the terrific typhoons came on, to lighten the ship, the living and dead cast overboard to a multitude of ravenous sharks, ever following in the wake of the vessel, looking upward with hungry eyes for their expected prey!
The great artist, Turner, has pictured the horrible scene:
“Aloft, all hands! Strike the top-masts and belay!
Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds
Declare the Typhoon’s coming.
Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard
The dead and dying. Ne’er heed their chains.
Hope I hope! fallacious hope!
Where is thy market now?”
Little did Sir John Hawkins, or anybody else have any conception of what would one day be written upon the historic page of our country — the desolation of a great civil war, death upon the battle-field and in prison of half a million of men! We, even, do not comprehend what is to be the ultimate result of that sale of sixteen slaves. What part are the four millions of the African race to take in the future of our country? What will they yet do for Africa? Who knows but that they will be the means of canning a Christian civilization and Republican institutions to the continent where they had their origin?
In the “Story of Liberty” is an account of Ignatius Loyola, who founded the society of the Jesuits. He inspired others with his own lofty zeal. The members of the society went forth to convert the world, to thread the jungles of India, traverse the deserts of Africa and the steppes of Asia; uphold the Cross on the banks of the Amazon, and plant it upon the peaks of the Andes; to rear churches amidst the fertile vales of Mexico; make their home in a palace or the hut of a savage; brave every danger, suffer every hardship; endure every privation; to die of hunger, thirst, cold or heat, disease or violence; to labor without reward, except that which the Virgin Mary would extend to them, through their sacrifices to save souls from the clutches of the devil. They were to persuade men where persuasion was available; employ force where force was possible. It was their province to spy out the actions of men — meddle in all their affairs; fathom the secrets of human hearts; interfere in households, in cabinets, in halls of justice and legislation; set father against son, and son against father; stir up strife between husband and wife, mother and daughter. All earthly relations, all human considerations, all the ties which men deem sacred, were subordinated to the idea that baptism into the Church was of more value than anything else; that they were commanded by the Virgin to rescue men from perdition.
To bring about that end any means were justifiable. Each member was to watch every other member; report their faithfulness or unfaithfulness. They had one watchword — “Obedience.” With a zeal such as the world had never before witnessed, the Jesuits went forth upon their missions. Their history is interwoven with that of every action — a record of self-denial, hardship, suffering, martyrdom; of burning zeal, fiery energy, tireless activity, unquenchable ardor; of religious devotions, worldly wisdom, benevolence, and charity; deceit, falsehood, hypocrisy, cruelty, and despotism. If they have been charitable and kind, they have also blackened history by the darkest of crimes. If they have lifted men to higher and nobler lives, they have also sent myriads to prison, and burnt hundreds of thousands at the stake. Time has not quenched their zeal; and though three hundred and fifty years have passed since their organization, they are still making their power felt in every country, controlling the consciences and actions of men.
The tomahawk and scalping-knife, at the bidding of the Jesuits, will do bloody work from the Penobscot to the Ohio, and the lurid light of burning dwellings will illumine the midnight sky. Men, women, and children will pass through the gloomy wilderness, from their rained homes on the banks of the Merrimac and Connecticut to Quebec and Montreal, to be sold into slavery. The old and young, the strong and weak, will redden the snows of winter with their blood. It was the disappointment of Ignatius Loyola in love, and the firing of a cannon at Pampeluna that started this crimson stream.
In the “Story of Liberty” is a chapter about the man who split the Church in twain — Henry VIII. — who, through his love for Anne Boleyn, defied the Pope, and set up a church of his own, himself the head: it was in 1539. His daughter, Mary Tudor, did what she could to restore things as they had been before Henry established the Church of England; she burnt so many men and women who refused to accept the Pope as head of the Church, that she