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THE WELSH AND SLAVERY
By the mid 19th century, not many Welsh migrants lived in the Southern states, and in general, it could be said that the Welsh as a group were opposed to the institution of slavery. However, in the past, Welsh migrants had also been slave owners, such as Goronwy Owen and his descendants in the South, and famous Welshmen such as Henry Morton Stanley ended up fighting on the confederate side in the ensuing war. Not every Welsh person was an abolitionist, wanting to get rid of slavery immediately, but papers such as Y Cenhadwr were completely opposed to the institution, and often rallied against it in print. Much of the antagonism to slavery came from the chapel, with its emphasis on a Christian tradition of respect to all men. As late as 1861, with slave ships supposedly something of the distant past, the Welsh American Ben Chidlaw had witnessed such a boat with it's unfortunate cargo: Gwelais y llong "Cora." Braidd y gallwn gredu fod 705 o blant, gwyr a gwragedd wedi cael eu gwthio rhwng ei decks, eu dwyn o'u gwlad, ac ar eu ffordd i gaethwasanaeth bythol. Ond gwir oedd. Chidlaw himself was originally from Bala, but was a minister in Ohio, the state where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her powerful book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which had more than one translation into Welsh. Chidlaw went on to be a chaplain in the Northern army, as did many others such as Erasmus Jones, the first chaplain of a black regiment - by the end of the conflict, such regiments accounted for 10% of the North's armies. The status of slaves had changed completely by then, and even though the conflict started for many diverse reasons, the main objective swiftly became emancipation, which Lincoln declared in 1863. By the end of the war, the constitution itself had been changed to prohibit slavery once and for all. |
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