The Society of Jesus owned six plantations in the
seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which they relied
on to support their ministries. The estates totaled 12,000 acres on
four large properties in southern Prince Georges, Charles and St. Mary's
counties and two smaller estates on Maryland's eastern shore. These
estates were presented to them by the Lords Baltimore who were Catholic
and used slaves to work them. The slaves were gifts to the Jesuits from
wealthy Catholic familes to sustain the church.
The records of these plantations, Jesuit Plantation Project(JPP), form
part of the archives of the Jesuits and have been converted to an
electronic by students of American Studies department at Georgetown
University. The archives contain personal papers like the diaries of Br.
Mobberly who spent time on many of the plantations, Sale Contract of
272 Slaves in 1838, documents regarding plantation conditions, the
welfare and religious needs of the slaves, resources and a JPP
bibliography.
The sale of the slaves by the Jesuits had nothing to do with morals but
was a decision based on economics. They feared the devaluation of their
property, at a time in which the abolitionist movement was spreading.
The economy was no longer driven by slave labor and the slaves were
getting very costly to feed and clothed. They were also experiencing
difficulty with governing the slaves and thought they could make more
money by selling the slaves and employing tenant farmers.
My Butler family was among the 272 slaves sold
downriver to Louisiana plantation owners. According to the JPP site,
sixty-four negroes including the "Butler Breed" as they were designated on a Slave Transfer from St. Inagoes(sic) Plantation in St. Mary's County, were shipped to Louisiana on Ship #2.
Nace and Biby Butlers are my great-great-great grandparents.
The
Jesuits specialize in public relations for the Roman Catholic Church.
The Society of Jesus, founded by the military leader, Ignatius de
Loyola, continues its Counter-Reformation mission using psychological
warfare dissimulated through Georgetown and Fordham universities.
By
1776, over 7,000 black slaves worked on farms and ranches owned by the
Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen, an arm of the Jesuits.
By
the 1830s, many Southerners had shifted from, "Slavery is a necessary
evil," to "Slavery is a positive good." These Southerners, along with
the Jesuits exclaimed that the institution existed because it was "God’s
will," a Christian duty to lift the African out of barbarism while
still exerting control over his "animal passions."
To better
understand the origination of African slavery and the introduction of
slaves to Europe and the New World, one must study the history of
Portugal, the Knights Templar and Prince Henry the Navigator.
Henry the Navigator, was the third son born to Philippa of Lancaster, the sister of King Henry IV of England.
Prince
Henry the Navigator was an important figure in the early days of the
southwest European Empire. He was responsible for the early development
of European exploration, and African slave and maritime trade with other
continents.
On 25 May 1420, Henry the Navigator gained
appointment as the governor of the very rich "Military Order of Christ
(Ordem Militar de Cristo)," previously the "Royal Order of the Knights
of Our Lord Jesus Christ." The Military Order of Christ was the heritage
of the Knights Templar in Portugal, after the suppression of the
Templars in 1312. It was founded in 1319. These Knights were
international bankers and landlords, who eventually became slave
traders.
Prince Henry's actions against native people who were
not Christians were violent, and helped start a violent world trend. As
Sir Peter Russell remarks in his biography, "In Henryspeak, conversion
and enslavement were interchangeable terms." He saw his efforts almost
as a continuation of the Crusades.
Prince Henry's explorations
lead first to the discovery of a sea-route from Europe to Asia and
shortly thereafter to the expansion of slavery to Europe and the New
World. By 1444, the Portuguese had circumvented the Muslim land-based
trade routes across the western Sahara Desert, and slaves and gold began
arriving in Portugal. By 1452, the influx of gold permitted the minting
of Portugal's first gold cruzado coins.
Prince Henry died in
1460, almost 30 years before the southern tip of Africa was discovered,
but his exploits enabled the Europeans to find a sea-route to Asia, and
ended Western Europe's dependence on the Muslims for trade. By 1462, the
Portuguese had explored the coast of Africa as far as the present-day
nation of Sierra Leone.
The Order of Prince Henry the Navigator is an international Order of Knighthood created on June 2, 1960 by Portugal.
Membership
to the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator can be granted by the
President of Portugal, or as a result of suggestions made by his
Ministers, or following suggestion by the Council of the Order, known as
the "Grand Collar."
The Grand Collars of the Order of Prince
Henry the Navigator includes: Kings and Queens, Presidents of countries,
Jesuits and Knights of Malta.
In 1974, Cardinal Sean Patrick
O’Malley, who is a contender to become the next Pope, was named "Knight
Commander" of the Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique (The Order of Prince
Henry the Navigator).
Read the Blog: thegodpress.blogspot.com
My
name is Brother David Johnson, and my family originated in Cold Pepper,
Virginia, and many were Freeman and Prince Hall Masons here and abroad
by the time of the American Revolution---an error that I now see this
late in my life. My relatives do not realize that the Methodist minister
Prince Hall was a sell out, and sold his soul to the Luciferic Order of
Freemasonry that stemmed out of the Hellfire Club of England.
it's very difficult to read what's written at the very top of the home page but otherwise it's a wonderful resource!
David
Johnson, many were/are deceived about freemasonry, the elect would be
deceived, IF it were possible. I really enjoyed your imput on this page,
thank you for taking the time to share
Can
a man serve God faithfully and posess slaves?” Brother Joseph Mobberly,
S.J. asked in his diary in 1818. “Yes,” he answered. “Is it then lawful
to keep men in servitude? Yes.”
The Jesuits of the Maryland province had always relied on plantations
to support their ministries. The estates were extensive, totaling
12,000 acres on four large properties in Southern Prince Georges,
Charles and St. Mary’s counties, and two smaller estates on Maryland’s
Eastern Shore. In 1634, when the Jesuits arrived in Maryland, Lord
Baltimore awarded them quasi-estates in which they were permitted to
live off the rent of tenant farmers. However, as University Dean Hubert
Cloke explains, “The system was totally antiquated and romantic, not
related to reality, and they realized they were not going to make any
money.” So, the Jesuits turned to indentured servants, English men and
women who worked the land for set terms in return for the passage from
England to Maryland. But as working conditions improved in England, the
supply of indentured servants dropped and the Jesuits once again found a
new way to work the land. By the 1680s they relied upon a fully
developed slave system.
Compared to other plantation owners in the area, when it came to
slavery, “The Jesuits were no better or worse,” according to Cloke. Many
of the slaves had been gifts from wealthy Catholic families to sustain
the Church. The abolition of slavery was not an issue in the area until
the early nineteenth century, when Georgetown’s Jesuits became deeply
divided over the issue of slavery.
“But they were not conflicted in the way you would want,” Cloke said.
“They were conflicted over what to do about the threat of
abolitionists.”
In a generational divide, an older group of Jesuits, mostly European
born, felt a patriarchal connection to their slaves and were unwilling
to sell them. A younger, American-born group, a minority, felt that the
money invested in plantations should be spent on institutions in cities
like Philadelphia and New York with their rapidly growing Catholic
populations. It seems neither faction had any particular moral
quandaries with the six plantations and the nearly 300 slaves owned by
Georgetown’s and Maryland’s Jesuits.
This rift is just one of the things American Studies students learned
when history professors like Cloke and Emmett Curran introduced the
Jesuit Plantation Project into the American Studies curriculum in the
spring of 1996. The project involved students transcribing and
digitizing hundreds of documents from the Jesuit’s Maryland Province
Index recording the Georgetown’s Jesuits’ complicated relationship with
slavery.
With only two exceptions, all the higher-ranking Jesuits in the
province during the time were foreign-born and of the older faction.
Since only U.S. citizens had temporal jurisdiction, foreign Jesuits had
no authority over the Mission’s estates.
This meant that a younger group of American Jesuits, a minority,
controlled the destiny of the estates, and this group wanted to end
slave operations.
“They considered the plantations and slaves as a losing business
enterprise and thought the Society should rid itself of both plantations
and slaves,” Curran said.
Abolitionists presented an economic rather than moral problem for
these Jesuits. With a growing abolitionist presence in Maryland, some of
them feared a devaluation of their property, their slaves. Maryland was
a state in which slavery had a tenuous hold, the economy was no longer
driven by slave labor. According to reports, the general debt of the
mission was close to $32,000 by the 1830s, a large sum for the time.
“It was not a market for growing crops, but for growing slaves,” said
Cloke. The real money was to be made not from the work a slave could do
in Maryland, but from the hugely profitable business of selling the
slaves downriver.
In 1815, Brother Joseph Mobberly, S.J. wrote a letter to John Grassi,
S.J., the president of Georgetown College, listing three major reasons
to sell the slaves. He wrote, “It is better to sell for a time or get
your people free … Because we have their souls to answer for.” He then
went on to explain that the slaves had become more difficult to govern,
and he believed this to be the result of a growing abolitionist
movement. Finally, in an extensive table of expenses, he concluded that
the slaves should be sold because, “We shall make more and more to your
satisfaction.”
Brother Mobberly, who served as an overseer on one of the estates,
kept an extensive diary giving a bird’s eye view of the tension the
Jesuits felt surrounding the issue of slavery. His diary explores the
tension between Catholics, an already persecuted group, and the
Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and Methodists who were outspokenly
opposed to slavery. Mobberly, like other Jesuits, came to feel
threatened and saw the issue as a Catholic-Protestant conflict.
Involving everything from the Bible to Thomas Jefferson, Mobberly’s
diary defended slavery. He explained that Abraham owned slaves, and
wrote, “Abraham had God for his particular friend; and we do not read
that God ever reproached him for keeping men in servitude. Therefore, it
was lawful for him to possess them.”
At the same time, all Jesuits recognized certain basic rights for the
slaves. A report from the time demanded adequate fixed rations, half of
Saturday to themselves, and the promotion of morality and the
administration of the sacraments. However, the report also states that
for other slaves, “chastisement should not be inflicted in the house,
where the priests live.” In other words, it was acceptable for priests
to whip the slaves, just not in the priests’ quarters. Similarly, the
document stated that pregnant women should not be whipped.
St.
Thomas Manor: over 30 slaves, owned by Jesuit priests, worked on St.
Thomas Manor plantation before being sold in 1838. Courtesy Jesuit
Plantation Project
“[The Jesuits] did see themselves as different than non-Catholic
slaveholders in that they tried to provide for the spiritual welfare of
their slaves by allowing them access to the sacraments, such as
Eucharist and marriage,” said Sharon Leon, a student who worked on the
Jesuit Plantation Project. “Of course, his concern for the slaves was
primarily based on his concern for his own spiritual welfare.”
On one hand, Leon said, the Jesuits regarded the slaves as capital,
money that would better be invested elsewhere. On the other, there are
moments when the Jesuits recognized the slaves’ humanity. In these
cases, the issue of emancipation was still not addressed. A letter from
Father Francis Neale of St. Thomas Manor addressed a major problem
involving “his best Negro hand.” This slave was married to a woman on
another plantation, where they had three children. When the wife’s
master decided to sell the wife and children; Neale was in a quandary as
he could not afford to buy them. “I shall be obliged to sell our Man
and not to separate Man and Wife,” he concluded. He never set the man
free.
“The contradictions,” says Cloke, “they stop us in our tracks. We
operate under the assumptions that we are smarter, that we’d get it
right.”
But Cloke doubts this. Slavery as a system was enmeshed in all of the
U.S. A recent report on slavery’s legacy by Brown University points out
that before 1800, of the 10 million people to cross the Atlantic, 8.5
million of them were enslaved Africans. “Most Americans today think of
slavery as a Southern institution,” it states, “but slavery existed in
all 13 colonies and, for a time, in all 13 original states.” This
peculiar institution was deeply rooted in not just southern, but all of
American culture. In Maryland and Virginia, even some free blacks owned
slaves.
Early Georgetown students did not have a problem with the Jesuits’
connection to slavery. At the time, many students brought their slaves
with them to school, and the college was predominantly populated by
southerners.
“There is no way around it. The students voted with their feet in the
war,” Cloke said. Over 90 percent of students went on to fight for the
Confederacy in the Civil War.
“Georgetown has never not been a Southern school,” Cloke stated,
before pointing to the fact that Georgetown hailed itself as a
multicultural, international school from its inception. However, Cloke
continued, “Georgetown at the time was international because the
international students were children of slave traders from the West
Indies.”
Jesuits in the Americas have always had an ambivalent relationship
with slavery. Jesuits owned slaves in South America; the Catholic Church
didn’t outlaw slavery from its missions until 1843. However, the
Jesuits of Brazil were expelled from the country by the Spanish and
Portuguese empires because their priests were protecting Native Indians
from slave-hunters’ raids and undermining slavery. Maryland’s Jesuits,
Cloke said, were “a new organization. They had been suppressed and were
less revolutionary than their forbearers.”
At a basic level, the Jesuits did not want to create tension in an atmosphere where they were already outsiders.
“Catholics were persecuted, but at least by holding slaves they were
like everyone else,” Randall Bass, who worked with students on the
Jesuit Plantation Project, explained. “They were working to maintain
acceptance where it was hard.”
The
Maryland plantation: this map shows the Jesuit landholdings around the
Chesapeake Bay during the 18th and 19th centuries. Courtesy Jesuit
Plantation Project
Fidele de Grivel, a European Jesuit living in Maryland in the 1830s,
explained, “The Protestants have, up to now, appreciated us only because
of our large estates; if we sell them, they will consider us no better
than the Methodist preachers who crisscross the country to accumulate
money.” However, money was an issue that none of the Jesuits could
ignore.
Leon also points to the related issue of acculturation as practice
with which the Jesuits attempted to blend the priests into the life and
culture of their local community.
“It usually had good results,” Leon said. “In this case, the
unquestioning adoption of the culture and traditions of southern
Maryland’s farming communities allowed the Jesuits to pursue
slaveholding as a matter of economic necessity, rather than to
interrogate the practice and reject it as one that was morally bankrupt
and truly unjust.”
In the end, economics won out. Although by the mid 1830s, the
plantations were beginning to turn higher profits, this did not placate
the younger Jesuits, because the estates were still not seen as
sufficient to support the mission. These new Jesuits had no moral
quandaries selling their slaves downriver; the felt their investments
should be moved to urban centers such as New York or Philadelphia. So,
in 1838, at a time when the plantations were at their most profitable,
the Jesuits decided to sell their slaves to Louisiana’s ex-governor,
Henry Johnson, whose son was a Georgetown student.
Before the sale, the mission drafted “Conditions for Sale,” a set of
guidelines to protect their former slaves. They determined that the
slaves could only be sold to a plantation, rather than families, “so
that the purchasers may not separate them indiscriminately and sell
them.” In what reads like a bill of rights, the slaves were promised to
be kept with their families, and those with family on other plantations
were to be sold to those plantations. Those who were too old or sick to
be sold were to be provided for “as justice and charity demands.”
Finally, the slaves were guaranteed the right to practice religion. The
document also made a demand of the Maryland Jesuits, likely an addition
from the new school of Jesuits. The sale’s profit was not to pay off
debts or purchases, but “must be invested as Capital which fructifies,”
specifically educational centers in New York and Philadelphia.
After the sale, some Jesuits persisted in their interest in the
slaves’ well being. Father van de Velde wrote a letter to another Jesuit
after a visit to Louisiana and expressed his frustrations. He believed
that the slaves had been sold under the condition that they would be
able to continue their Christian practices and have “free exercise of
the Catholic religion and opportunity of practicing it.” Upon witnessing
a lack of Catholic Churches in the area, he went so far as to suggest
that the Province of Maryland contribute $1,000 to construct a church
near one of the plantations. In another letter, he wrote, “Justice as
well as charity require that their former masters should step in and aid
other well disposed persons to procure them a means of salvation.”
Curran believes that some of the older Jesuits listed their slaves on
the inventory, but warned them of the sale so that they could hide in
the woods when the officials came to transport them. Curran explained,
“The 1840 census shows a surprisingly large number of younger slaves
still on certain plantations, which supports the tradition that some
slaves hid themselves then returned to the plantations once the
provincial had left.”
With the sale, the Jesuits of Maryland made $115,000 and ended their
history as a large slaveholding institution. The money from the sale
was, as stipulated, invested in Xavier High School in New York and St.
Joseph’s in Philadelphia. Some of the funds also went to finance Fordham
University, completed in 1842, one year before the Catholic Church
banned slavery. “Much of the funding for these schools came from the
ignoble sales,” Cloke said. The schools became a perfect prediction of
apostolic interests when they were needed to educate the waves of Irish
immigrants to the U.S., where Catholics, due to their religion, would
otherwise have few good education options.
“It’s interesting,” Cloke continued, “The young Jesuits, the
modernizers were right on in terms of this trend, yet they were the most
retro in what they were willing to do to get there in terms of
slavery.”
While slavery seems like a distant memory for students at Georgetown
today, it would be loathe to forget how this shameful chapter in
Georgetown’s history shaped this and other Jesuit universities.
La-Cemeteries
is researching all of Louisiana’s deceased governors. One of the most
interesting is Henry Johnson, the 5th governor of Louisiana, who
purchased slaves for his plantaions and for the plantation of the 3rd
Louisiana governor Henry Thibodeaux.
We did not know that a son was attending Georgetown in 1838 as stated
in this article. We believe this son would have been about 9 years
old.
Is it possible to direct us to a resource that would have this son’s name?
This was a
very interesting article that I happened upon as I was researching my
Maternal Great-Grandfather’s history, trying to determine when his
family arrived in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. I knew the family worked
as farmers and thought they may have been slaves and then I discovered
this article about the Jesuits in St. Mary’s County. This may explain
why I can find him on the 1880 Federal Census as a 17-yo “laborer”
living with the Long family rather than his own Holt family in Chaptico,
St. Mary’s, Maryland. Thank you for this article and the history
lesson on Georgetown, as I was born in Washington, DC and had no idea of
Geogetown’s connection to this part of Maryland and slavery.
it's very difficult to read what's written at the very top of the home page but otherwise it's a wonderful resource!
By 1776, over 7,000 black slaves worked on farms and ranches owned by the Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergymen, an arm of the Jesuits.
By the 1830s, many Southerners had shifted from, "Slavery is a necessary evil," to "Slavery is a positive good." These Southerners, along with the Jesuits exclaimed that the institution existed because it was "God’s will," a Christian duty to lift the African out of barbarism while still exerting control over his "animal passions."
To better understand the origination of African slavery and the introduction of slaves to Europe and the New World, one must study the history of Portugal, the Knights Templar and Prince Henry the Navigator.
Henry the Navigator, was the third son born to Philippa of Lancaster, the sister of King Henry IV of England.
Prince Henry the Navigator was an important figure in the early days of the southwest European Empire. He was responsible for the early development of European exploration, and African slave and maritime trade with other continents.
On 25 May 1420, Henry the Navigator gained appointment as the governor of the very rich "Military Order of Christ (Ordem Militar de Cristo)," previously the "Royal Order of the Knights of Our Lord Jesus Christ." The Military Order of Christ was the heritage of the Knights Templar in Portugal, after the suppression of the Templars in 1312. It was founded in 1319. These Knights were international bankers and landlords, who eventually became slave traders.
Prince Henry's actions against native people who were not Christians were violent, and helped start a violent world trend. As Sir Peter Russell remarks in his biography, "In Henryspeak, conversion and enslavement were interchangeable terms." He saw his efforts almost as a continuation of the Crusades.
Prince Henry's explorations lead first to the discovery of a sea-route from Europe to Asia and shortly thereafter to the expansion of slavery to Europe and the New World. By 1444, the Portuguese had circumvented the Muslim land-based trade routes across the western Sahara Desert, and slaves and gold began arriving in Portugal. By 1452, the influx of gold permitted the minting of Portugal's first gold cruzado coins.
Prince Henry died in 1460, almost 30 years before the southern tip of Africa was discovered, but his exploits enabled the Europeans to find a sea-route to Asia, and ended Western Europe's dependence on the Muslims for trade. By 1462, the Portuguese had explored the coast of Africa as far as the present-day nation of Sierra Leone.
The Order of Prince Henry the Navigator is an international Order of Knighthood created on June 2, 1960 by Portugal.
Membership to the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator can be granted by the President of Portugal, or as a result of suggestions made by his Ministers, or following suggestion by the Council of the Order, known as the "Grand Collar."
The Grand Collars of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator includes: Kings and Queens, Presidents of countries, Jesuits and Knights of Malta.
In 1974, Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, who is a contender to become the next Pope, was named "Knight Commander" of the Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique (The Order of Prince Henry the Navigator).
Read the Blog: thegodpress.blogspot.com
My name is Brother David Johnson, and my family originated in Cold Pepper, Virginia, and many were Freeman and Prince Hall Masons here and abroad by the time of the American Revolution---an error that I now see this late in my life. My relatives do not realize that the Methodist minister Prince Hall was a sell out, and sold his soul to the Luciferic Order of Freemasonry that stemmed out of the Hellfire Club of England.