George Washington Williams: A Historian Ahead of His Time

George Washington Williams

F ew Americans today recognize the name George Washington Williams, and those who do likely remember him as the hero who first exposed King Leopold’s “benevolent enterprise” in the Congo as brutal imperialism . But before Williams travelled to Africa, he had established himself as an important figure inside the United States. His first book, History of the Negro Race in America (1882), stands as one of the most important contributions any American has made to the field of history.

Born the only child of free African American parents in Pennsylvania in 1848, Williams grew up with little education except “learning about Jesus,” as he later wrote. His father’s frequent absence and descent into alcoholism forced his mother to work, while Williams became “wicked and wild.” He wanted out, and the U.S. government offered him the chance when it allowed African Americans to enlist during the Civil War. Williams joined the Union Army at age fourteen and served in the Indian Wars before a gunshot wound to his chest forced him to leave the army at age eighteen.

Hearing a call to ministry, Williams enrolled in a theological institution in Newton, Massachusetts in 1870. Since Williams’s formal education had been minimal, the school assigned him to a five-year program. Instead, Williams completed the necessary requirements in four years and graduated alongside peers with degrees from Harvard. After graduation he became the pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, MA, replacing the famed abolitionist Leonard Grimes.

Over the next five years, however, Williams changed plans. He watched in horror as the South unfolded into chaos and former Confederates began to reclaim power. “The time has come when the Negro must do something,” he wrote in 1875. Determined to have a wider impact than he could from the pulpit, Williams retired from Twelfth Baptist and started a newspaper to give African Americans a voice in national affairs. He travelled throughout the North and South in search of funding for the paper but managed to produce only eight issues. So he turned from journalism to politics, winning election to the Ohio state legislature. Already, though, Williams had also turned to a field that occupied much of his free time: African American history.

George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America

George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America (Photo: Internet Archive)

But the sheer genius of this work extends far beyond these immediate political goals: Williams was a historian of the finest order. He recognized that while other historians “could pass unchallenged when disregarding largely the use of documents and citations of authorities, I would find myself challenged by many critics.” In preparation for such criticism, he conducted research for over seven years. With his independent analysis of sources and unique perspective, Williams came to a number of historical conclusions outside the mainstream of his era. But one hundred thirty years later, historians accept many of these out-of-place interpretations as the most accurate explanations of the past.

Many of Williams’s understandings of history were decades—even more than a century—ahead of their time. In Black Reconstruction in America , W. E. B. Du Bois celebrated how African Americans had created their own system of education in the South during Reconstruction; Williams had made the point fifty years earlier. In 1947, John Hope Franklin described the magnificence of West African kingdoms before Europeans started the Atlantic slave trade; Williams had presented the same view six decades before. In the 1960s historians approached a consensus that slavery had caused the Civil War; Williams had made the point eighty years earlier. In the 1960s some historians also began to blame both southern white supremacists and over-aggressive northerners for the failure of Reconstruction; Williams had made this point, too. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edmund Morgan highlighted the dependence of early colonial freedom on a foundation of slavery; Williams had recognized this paradox ninety years earlier. Historians began to highlight the importance of women and African Americans in the abolitionist movement a century after Williams had done so. Williams even indicted all of the United States—North and South—for the legacy of slavery, a point other historians popularized only in the 2000s. These interpretations, which George Washington Williams advanced in the 1880s, now represent the consensus among historians.

Williams’s work marks a pioneering achievement among American historians, and leading African American historians have identified it as such. Du Bois, writing forty years after Williams, described his predecessor as “the greatest historian of the race.” John Hope Franklin honored Williams with a biography that earned runner-up for a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and was the only biography Franklin ever wrote. Most historians, though, continue to see Williams’s History of the Negro Race simply as a primary source rather than as the landmark of American historical achievement that it is.

Williams searched for what he referred to as “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in history. Perhaps today’s underappreciation of his path-breaking work exposes yet another truth: that his critiques of American society remain valid.

Colin, An excellent article, well thought out and written. Thanks.

Thank you. This has given me a greater insight into the historian who wrote to King Leopold II of Belgium who presided over the horrendous genocide of 10 million Congolese people. My research started out with the question, why was Patrice Lamumba murdered. Writing from Cornwall England and getting to grips with with systemic racism in the UK and why a disproportionate number of black people have died in the UK of covid-19. We want to decolonise history and bring uncomfortable truths to light. http://www.black-history-bootleg.org

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George Washington Williams and the Origins of Anti-Imperialism

Initially supportive of Belgian King Leopold II’s claim to have created a “free state” of Congo, Williams changed his mind when he saw the horrors of empire.

Engraved portrait of George Washington Williams

Historian George Washington Williams died in the English coastal town of Blackpool in 1891, frustrated at a moral, political, and social catastrophe he had witnessed, one that would alter the Black radical tradition for good. Williams discovered, in his trips in the Belgian Congo, a problem that had not yet been named: imperialism. It was barbarism and cruelty thought to have been extinguished with the abolition of slavery. The “free state” of Congo was put to work for King Leopold II of Belgium. Children and old men had their hands cut off for the slightest infractions, an indigenous force founded by the king (the notorious Force Publique ) could, without reservation, destroy whole villages if they refused to work. All subjects of the Free State of Congo were forced to extract rubber from rubber figs. Only free in name, every Congolese citizen was effectively still a slave. Everybody was forced, with a labor tax by Leopold.

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When George Washington Williams saw this suffering up close, it was as if he was looking into a mirror, a mirror that showed a bygone age he risked his life to abolish. It looked like chattel slavery.

Empire was as old as hierarchical society itself. Settler colonialism was seen as a solution to the “social problem” of unruly unemployed workers at home in Europe. Steamships took settlers to European-carved “protectorates” to start life anew. In struggles for land and labor, racial segregation, backed by the powerful imperialist state, would soon follow. The barbarisms that were being reported, from the Nama and Herero genocides in present-day Namibia by the Germans to the concentration camps in South Africa by the English to the war crimes by the US in the Philippines, spurred a global movement which called itself “anti-imperialism.”

Williams, however, died before this movement began to take shape. He died before people identified as anti-imperialists, before the American novelist Mark Twain and his contemporaries founded the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1898. He died before the English social scientist J. A. Hobson wrote his influential study, Imperialism: A Study (1902), after witnessing horrors in the Second Boer War in South Africa in 1903.

Williams was a deeply Christian man. He was trained in theology and believed that God directly ruled the affairs of humanity. In his worldview, God tested the patience of humanity but ultimately pushed world affairs toward the arc of justice. The American civil war, which he ran away from home to join at the young age of fourteen, seemed to prove to Williams that behind the Union army—and the end of American slavery—there worked a divine hand. And there was good reason for his optimism: his own life story.

We would have never learned about Williams were it not for a graduate student in 1946, John Hope Franklin, uncovering his comprehensive history of Black America, one of the first of its kind.

During his childhood (in the US), most who shared Williams’ complexion had been condemned to a life of slavery. By his adulthood, during reconstruction, he had stints as a storekeeper for the internal revenue department, as secretary of the four-million-dollar fund to build the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, and served in the State Legislature of Ohio. At one time, Williams was considered for the position of ambassador of the United States to Haiti, a decision made by a Republican administration, but rescinded by Democrats. Williams’ patriotism never wavered, and his optimism was directed toward the improvement of the lot of Black peoples worldwide.

But just as he had come of age in a hopeful moment in American history, i.e., the Emancipation Proclamation, another process had been in motion beyond its shores. From 1800 to 1878, six and a half million square miles of Earth were added to the possessions of Europe. In 1800, that meant Europe owned 55% of the world’s landmass. By 1878, its shared increased to 67%. On the eve of World War I, that became 84% of the globe. Africa was a late target in this partitioning of the world, but by the second half of the nineteenth century, it too was becoming swallowed up by Europe.

In 1884, Bismark claimed southwest Africa, Togoland and the Cameroons, New Guinea and East Africa, Tanganyika within a year. The British had already claimed Egypt and were vying for control with the French in the north of the continent. Tunisia and Algeria were already under French control. Portugal, the oldest colonizer in Africa, had retained her centuries-old claims, and with the collapse of the Dutch East India Company, the British took over present-day South Africa, and shortly after introduced British settlers to the already established polis of the Dutch. This was a messy and dangerous process.

There is a persistent myth that, in 1885, the West African Conference of Berlin divided Africa among Europeans. But by then, the “scramble for Africa” was already well in motion. What the conference did is draw armistice lines for the empires that were now clearly in control of the continent. It was a way to ensure peace so that Europeans could establish “protectorates” over the land they already colonized, according to the late imperial historian George Shepperson.

In Berlin, the scramble for Africa was only recognized, formalized, legitimized, and intensified. Fifteen powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and the Ottoman Empire—had gathered in Berlin for two purposes: to recognize European claims to Africa and officially demarcate them on the map, and more importantly, to follow the US in recognizing King Leopold II’s personal claim to the Congo.

Leopold II insisted that designating a colony of his own and calling it the Congo Free State would help abolish slavery in Africa, spread Christianity to its natives, and open up the continent to free trade. Only few, like the first Black Protestant Episcopal Bishop, Theodore Holly, realized that what happened in the Berlin Conference instead was empires who “had come together to enact into law, national rapine, robbery and murder.”

Williams, typical of his time, thought that Leopold was a sincere king. As the historian Robin D. G Kelly puts it : “Scholars as diverse as George Washington Williams, Benjamin Brawley, and Rayford Logan understood imperialism a bearer of modernity for the colored world.” The American poet Hunt Hawkins, based out of Florida State University, demonstrates that Williams appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1884 to urge US recognition of King Leopold’s claim to the Congo. In addition, “he attended an Anti-Slavery Conference in Brussels and proposed to Leopold a scheme for bringing black Americans to work in the Congo.”

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Leopold was alarmed at the idea that Williams wanted to see the Congo for himself, even urging him to wait. But Williams went anyways. What he witnessed, according to the American journalist and historian Adam Hochschild, was so brutal that, in a confidential letter, Williams accused King Leopold of crimes against humanity, decades before the term would reappear in the Nuremberg trials and become recognized by international law. In an open letter to the King that shook the world, he accused Leopold of having a government which “had sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail.”

A month later, the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad followed the same trail that Williams took. His notebook, which made note of the numerous crimes he witnessed, provided the material for his timeless novel Heart of Darkness . Both of them had come back from the Congo, witnessing “the horror!, the horror!” of Leopold’s rule, and avowed a complete renunciation of Empire.

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george washington williams biography

George Washington Williams Biography

George Washington Williams

Enlisting at 14, Williams fought for the North in the Civil War. In 1874, he became the first Black person to graduate from the Newton Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Mass. A Baptist minister in Boston and Cincinnati, he later became a lawyer and was the first African American elected to the Ohio legislature. In 1882 Williams published History of the Negro Race in America, 1619–1880, making him the first major historian of African-American ancestry. At the end of his administration, President Chester A. Arthur appointed Williams minister to Haiti . But the new president, Grover Cleveland , cancelled the assignment. Williams attended an antislavery conference in Brussels in 1885, prompting the Belgian government to send him to the Congo , where he criticized Belgian atrocities.

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George Washington Williams

A biography.

George Washington Williams

Author: John Hope Franklin

Subjects General Interest > Biography, Letters, Memoirs , History > U.S. History , African American Studies and Black Diaspora

“[A]n informative and fascinating story of a ‘brilliant though flawed individual’ whose History of the Negro Race in America remains a landmark in African American history.” — Sage Race Relations Abstracts

“[A]n invaluable contribution to American Studies. . . .” — Saër Maty Bâ , European Journal of American Culture

“[T]his reprint of John Hope Franklin’s sympathetic and yet critical biography of the controversial life of George Washington Williams is indeed timely. . . . [It] is an important and engaging book. Franklin does not merely bring an important and largely ignored figure to our attention, but in exploring the historical opportunities and dilemmas for black American activist-intellectualism with warmth and a critical perspective, draws an insight into the historical emergence of Pan-Africanism and black American historiography, and contemporary understandings of the role of the intellectual within struggles for radical social transformation.” — Brett St. Louis , Ethnic and Racial Studies

“A major publishing event.” — Robert A. Hill , Chicago Tribune

“A superb biography.” — Denise Dennis , Philadelphia Inquirer

“Mr. Franklin’s quest . . . offers a unique view of the historian as detective as well as scholar. . . . Fascinating and engaging reading.” — Ira Berlin , New York Times Book Review

"[A]n exemplary, fascinating piece of scholarship. . . ." — Brian Ward , TLS

“An extraordinary accomplishment . . . a model biography. . . .” — John W. Blassingame

“In the historiography of African Americans, Williams stands not only as a pioneer, but as an author whose work has held its value. The conjunction of these two giants makes Franklin on Williams a work of enduring worth.” — Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol

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John Hope Franklin is James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University. His numerous publications include The Emancipation Proclamation , The Militant South , The Free Negro in North Carolina , Reconstruction After the Civil War , and A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Ante-bellum North . In 1997, his best-known book, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African-Americans, celebrated its 30th anniversary. Recently, Franklin was named chairman of the advisory board for One America, President Clinton’s Initiative on Race .

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Chester A. Arthur; George Bancroft; History of the Negro Race in America 1618- 1880 ; Newton Theological Seminary; Ohio State Legislature; Republican; S.S. McClure; Twelfth Street Baptist Church; Pastor; Union Baptist Church

Born on October 16, 1849, George Washington Williams was a soldier, a minister, a journalist, a politician, and a historian. He is best known for his political and historical writings. His most famous work was History of the Negro Race in America, 1618-1880 . Most of his works focused on race, politics, or war tactics. Williams was also the first African-American to be appointed to the Ohio State Legislature. In 1889, S.S. McClure, a well-known editor and publisher, commissioned him to write articles regarding the treatment of natives in the Congo under Belgian rule. He died shortly afterwards, on August 2, 1891, of tuberculosis.

George Washington Williams was born on October 16, 1849, to Thomas and Ellen Rouse Williams in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania. A year after his birth, Williams moved with his family to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where Thomas secured a job working on Pennsylvania canals. He soon fell into drinking and Ellen decided to move the family to Newcastle, Pennsylvania. Later, a sober Thomas moved to Newcastle to be with them, where he became a minister and a barber.

Williams' father was not concerned with his education and thought his son was becoming increasingly rebellious as a teenager. His parents placed him in a refuge house for undisciplined and unruly children that taught adolescents specific trades. It is assumed that Williams was sent there to become a barber. At the age of fourteen, however, Williams enlisted in the Union army to fight in the Civil War. Too young to meet the age requirements, he used false names. The names he registered under are not known for sure, but he is thought to have used the name William or Charles Steward. After the war had come to an end, Williams, thirsty for adventure, enlisted in the Mexican army to help the Mexicans fight the French colonists. He later enlisted in the United States army in 1867, serving only a year. His military experiences would later prove to be influential in creating such works as The Ethics of War , A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion , and The Constitutional Results of the War of the Rebellion .

Religion also influenced Williams' writing. After moving to St. Louis in 1868, his interest in the ministry began to grow. Although he had minimal if any academic training, he was able to enter the Newton Theological Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1870. While in school, Williams attended the Twelfth Street Baptist Church in Boston for which he eventually served as pastor and later wrote an 80-page history. A little over a year later he moved to Washington, DC and started a newspaper called The Commoner , directed to the African-American community. Other prominent African-Americans in the community, such as Frederick Douglass, funded the paper. In 1876, Williams gave up the paper to return to religion. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and became the pastor of the Union Baptist Church. Religion always seeped into Williams' writing. Williams addresses religion in various sections of his History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 .

In Cincinnati, Williams began to show interest in politics. Williams, a republican, ran for a seat on the Ohio legislature in 1877, but lost. However, in 1879 he ran again for the position and became the first African-American to serve in the Ohio legislature. He did encounter racism, and what popularity he did have from African-Americans quickly vanished in 1880 when Williams attempted to pass a bill regarding cemeteries in order to remedy the complaints of several wealthy citizens of Avondale, Ohio. Williams proposed that anyone living within a half- mile from the Colored American Cemetery could petition the Board of Health if they were convinced that the cemetery was a hindrance. In turn they could prohibit any more burials in that particular cemetery. Many people in the black community became enraged that he was assisting the wealthy white community to the detriment of the African-American community. His political career ended around this time, after having served only a year.

In 1883, shortly after his career as a politician, Williams' History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens was published. He had worked on the piece for seven years. In order to produce this historical account, Williams studied over 12,000 books, a thousand of which are mentioned in his historical account. It consists of two volumes, nine parts, and 60 chapters. It was perhaps one of the most definitive and extensive works chronicling the early life of African-Americans. It was this work that made him a person of recognition.

In 1885, President Chester Arthur took notice and appointed Williams to be a U.S. ambassador to Haiti, but he never took the position, because the following administration canceled it. His world travels, however, continued when, on a trip in Europe, he made the acquaintance of King Leopold of Belgium. The king sparked an interest in Williams for the Congo in Africa. He was later to make several visits there, and much to the dismay of the king, S.S. McClure, a well-known editor and publisher at the time, commissioned him to write articles on the treatment of the natives under Belgian rule. In 1890, Williams published two articles on Belgian rule in the Congo: An Open letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo and A Report Upon the Congo-State and Country to the President of the Republic of the United States .

Williams later traveled to other colonies in Africa controlled by Great Britain, Portugal and Egypt. Unfortunately, when he returned to England in the summer of 1891, he fell ill with tuberculosis and pleurisy. Williams died in Blackpool, England on the second of August at the age of 42. He left behind his wife, Sarah Sterett Williams, whom he had married 17 years earlier, and one son.

  • "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo." George Washington Williams . Ed. Franklin, John Hope. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985. (243-254).
  • "A Report Upon the Congo-State and Country to the President of the Republic of the United States." George Washington Williams. Franklin, John Hope. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985. (265-279).
  • "A Report on the Proposed Congo Railway." October 14, 1890. George Washington Williams . Franklin, John Hope. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985. (255- 63).
  • A History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865 , Preceded by a Review of the Military Services of Negroes in Ancient and Modern Times (London: Low, 1887; New York: Harper, 1888).
  • History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880; Negroes as slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens, Together with a Preliminary Consideration of the Unity of the Human Family; An Historical Sketch of Africa, and An Account of the Negro Governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia , 2 volumes (New York: Putnam's, 1883).
  • 1862— Emancipation Day —1884. The Negro as a Political Problem. Oration, by Hon., George W. Williams...at the Asbury Church, Washington, D.C., April 16, 1884 (Boston: Printed by A. Mudge, 1884).
  • The American Negro from 1776 to 1876. Oration Delivered July 4, 1876 at Avondale, Ohio (Cincinnati: Printed by R. Clarke, 1876).
  • Memorial Day. The Ethics of War. Oration by Col. George W. Williams, at Newton, Mass., May 30, 1884. Delivered before Charles Ward Post 62, G.A.R. (Newton, MA: Printed at the Office of the Graphic, 1884).
  • The Constitutional Results of the War of the Rebellion. An Oration. Memorial Day, May 30th, 1889, at Millbury, Mass. (Worcester, MA: Sanford & Davis, 1889).
  • Franklin, John Hope. George Washington Williams . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985.
  • "Documentary About the Life of George Washington Williams." George Washington Williams. 2004. 11 October 2004. < >http://www.georgewashingtonwilliams.org/gww_life.html>
  • "George Washington Williams." The Messenger Magazine Grand Rapids 13:3 (2003): 8.
  • McMurry, Linda O. "George Washington Williams." Gale Literary Databases: Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 1 : American Historians 1866-1912 . A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Clyde N. Wilson. The Gale Group, 1986.

For More Information:

  • "Documentary About the Life of George Washington Williams" George Washington Williams. 2004. 11 October 2004. < >http://www.georgewashingtonwilliams.org/gww_life.html>

Williams wrote A History of Negro Troops in The War of Rebellion based on the experiences of African American soldiers during the Civil War.

george washington williams biography

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(1890) george washington williams’s open letter to king leopold on the congo.

george washington williams biography

George Washington Williams, “An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II, King of the Belgians and Sovereign of the Independent State of Congo By Colonel, The Honorable Geo. W. Williams, of the United States of America,” 1890

Good and Great Friend,

I have the honour to submit for your Majesty’s consideration some reflections respecting the Independent State of Congo, based upon a careful study and inspection of the country and character of the personal Government you have established upon the African Continent.

It afforded me great pleasure to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me last year, of visiting your State in Africa; and how thoroughly I have been disenchanted, disappointed and disheartened, it is now my painful duty to make known to your Majesty in plain but respectful language. Every charge which I am about to bring against your Majesty’s personal Government in the Congo has been carefully investigated; a list of competent and veracious witnesses, documents, letters, official records and data has been faithfully prepared, which will be deposited with Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, until such time as an International Commission can be created with power to send for persons and papers, to administer oaths, and attest the truth or falsity of these charges.

There were instances in which Mr. HENRY M. STANLEY sent one white man, with four or five Zanzibar soldiers, to make treaties with native chiefs. The staple argument was that the white man’s heart had grown sick of the wars and rumours of war between one chief and another, between one village and another; that the white man was at peace with his black brother, and desired to “confederate all African tribes” for the general defense and public welfare. All the sleight-of- hand tricks had been carefully rehearsed, and he was now ready for his work. A number of electric batteries had been purchased in London, and when attached to the arm under the coat, communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the palm of the white brother’s hand, and when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand the black brother was greatly surprised to find his white brother so strong, that he nearly knocked him off his feet in giving him the hand of fellowship. When the native inquired about the disparity of strength between himself and his white brother, he was told that the white man could pull up trees and perform the most prodigious feats of strength. Next came the lens act. The white brother took from his pocket a cigar, carelessly bit off the end, held up his glass to the sun and complaisantly smoked his cigar to the great amazement and terror of his black brother. The white man explained his intimate relation to the sun, and declared that if he were to request him to burn up his black brother’s village it would be done. The third act was the gun trick. The white man took a percussion cap gun, tore the end of the paper which held the powder to the bullet, and poured the powder and paper into the gun, at the same time slipping the bullet into the sleeve of the left arm. A cap was placed upon the nipple of the gun, and the black brother was implored to step off ten yards and shoot at his white brother to demonstrate his statement that he was a spirit, and, therefore, could not be killed. After much begging the black brother aims the gun at his white brother, pulls the trigger, the gun is discharged, the white man stoops . . . and takes the bullet from his shoe!

By such means as these, too silly and disgusting to mention, and a few boxes of gin, whole villages have been signed away to your Majesty.

When I arrived in the Congo, I naturally sought for the results of the brilliant programme: “fostering care”, “benevolent enterprise”, an “honest and practical effort” to increase the knowledge of the natives “and secure their welfare”. 1 had never been able to conceive of Europeans, establishing a government in a tropical country, without building a hospital; and yet from the mouth of the Congo River to its head-waters, here at the seventh cataract, a distance of 1,448 miles, there is not a solitary hospital for Europeans, and only three sheds for sick Africans in the service of the State, not fit to be occupied by a horse. Sick sailors frequently die on board their vessels at Banana Point; and if it were not for the humanity of the Dutch Trading Company at that place—who have often opened their private hospital to the sick of other countries—many more might die. There is not a single chaplain in the employ of your Majesty’s Government to console the sick or bury the dead. Your white men sicken and die in their quarters or on the caravan road, and seldom have Christian burial. With few exceptions, the surgeons of your Majesty’s Government have been gentlemen of professional ability, devoted to duty, but usually left with few medical stores and no quarters in which to treat their patients. The African soldiers and labourers of your Majesty’s Government fare worse than the whites, because they have poorer quarters, quite as bad as those of the natives; and in the sheds, called hospitals, they languish upon a bed of bamboo poles without blankets, pillows or any food different from that served to them when well, rice and fish.

I was anxious to see to what extent the natives had “adopted the fostering care” of your Majesty’s “benevolent enterprise” (?), and I was doomed to bitter disappointment. Instead of the natives of the Congo “adopting the fostering care” of your Majesty’s Government, they everywhere complain that their land has been taken from them by force; that the Government is cruel and arbitrary, and declare that they neither love nor respect the Government and its flag. Your Majesty’s Government has sequestered their land, burned their towns, stolen their property, enslaved their women and children, and committed other crimes too numerous to mention in detail. It is natural that they everywhere shrink from “the fostering care” your Majesty’s Government so eagerly proffers them.

There has been, to my absolute knowledge, no “honest and practical effort made to increase their knowledge and secure their welfare.” Your Majesty’s Government has never spent one franc for educational purposes, nor instituted any practical system of industrialism. Indeed the most unpractical measures have been adopted against the natives in nearly every respect; and in the capital of your Majesty’s Government at Boma there is not a native employed. The labour system is radically unpractical; the soldiers and labourers of your Majesty’s Government are very largely imported from Zanzibar at a cost of £10 per capita, and from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Accra and Lagos at from £1 to £1/10 per capita. These recruits are transported under circumstances more cruel than cattle in European countries. They eat their rice twice a day by the use of their fingers; they often thirst for water when the season is dry; they are exposed to the heat and rain, and sleep upon the damp and filthy decks of the vessels often so closely crowded as to lie in human ordure. And, of course, many die.

Upon the arrival of the survivors in the Congo they are set to work as labourers at one shilling a day; as soldiers they are promised sixteen shillings per month, in English money, but are usually paid off in cheap handkerchiefs and poisonous gin. The cruel and unjust treatment to which these people are subjected breaks the spirits of many of them, makes them distrust and despise your Majesty’s Government. They are enemies, not patriots.

There are from sixty to seventy officers of the Belgian army in the service of your Majesty’s Government in the Congo of whom only about thirty are at their post; the other half are in Belgium on furlough. These officers draw double pay—as soldiers and as civilians. It is not my duty to criticise the unlawful and unconstitutional use of these officers coming into the service of this African State. Such criticism will come with more grace from some Belgian statesman, who may remember that there is no constitutional or organic relation subsisting between his Government and the purely personal and absolute monarchy your Majesty has established in Africa. But I take the liberty to say that many of these officers are too young and inexperienced to be entrusted with the difficult work of dealing with native races. They are ignorant of native character, lack wisdom, justice, fortitude and patience. They have estranged the natives from your Majesty’s Government, have sown the seed of discord between tribes and villages, and some of them have stained the uniform of the Belgian officer with murder, arson and robbery. Other officers have served the State faithfully, and deserve well of their Royal Master.

From these general observations I wish now to pass to specific charges against your Majesty’s Government.

FIRST.—Your Majesty’s Government is deficient in the moral military and financial strength, necessary to govern a territory o 1,508,000 square miles, 7,251 miles of navigation, and 31,694 square miles of lake surface. In the Lower Congo River there is but One post, in the cataract region one. From Leopoldville to N’Gombe, a distance of more than 300 miles, there is not a single soldier or civilian. Not one out of every twenty State-officials know the language of the natives, although they are constantly issuing laws, difficult even for Europeans, and expect the natives to comprehend and obey them. Cruelties of the most astounding character are practised by the natives, such as burying slaves alive in the grave of a dead chief, cutting off the heads of captured warriors in native combats, and no effort is put forth by your Majesty’s Government to prevent them. Between 800 and 1,000 slaves are sold to be eaten by the natives of the Congo State annually; and slave raids, accomplished by the most cruel and murderous agencies, are carried on within the territorial limits of your Majesty’s Government which is impotent. There are only 2,300 soldiers in the Congo.

SECOND.—Your Majesty’s Government has established nearly fifty posts, consisting of from two to eight mercenary slave-soldiers from the East Coast. There is no white commissioned officer at these posts; they are in charge of the black Zanzibar soldiers, and the State expects them not only to sustain themselves, but to raid enough to feed the garrisons where the white men are stationed. These piratical, buccaneering posts compel the natives to furnish them with fish, goats, fowls, and vegetables at the mouths of their muskets; and whenever the natives refuse to feed these vampires, they report to the main station and white officers come with an expeditionary force and burn away the homes of the natives. These black soldiers, many of whom are slaves, exercise the power of life and death. They are ignorant and cruel, because they do not comprehend the natives; they are imposed upon them by the State. They make no report as to the number of robberies they commit, or the number of lives they take; they are only required to subsist upon the natives and thus relieve your Majesty’s Government of the cost of feeding them. They are the greatest curse the country suffers now.

THIRD.—Your Majesty’s Government is guilty of violating its contracts made with its soldiers, mechanics and workmen, many of whom are subjects of other Governments. Their letters never reach home.

FOURTH.—The Courts of your Majesty’s Government are abortive, unjust, partial and delinquent. I have personally witnessed and examined their clumsy operations. The laws printed and circulated in Europe “for the Protection of the blacks” in the Congo, are a dead letter and a fraud. T have heard an officer of the Belgian Army pleading the cause of a white man of low degree who had been guilty of beating and stabbing a black man, and urging race distinctions and prejudices as good and sufficient reasons why his client should be adjudged innocent. I know of prisoners remaining in custody for six and ten months because they were not judged. T saw the white servant of the Governor-General, CAMILLE JANSSEN, detected in stealing a bottle of wine from a hotel table. A few hours later the Procurer-General searched his room and found many more stolen bottles of wine and other things, not the property of servants. No one can be prosecuted in the State of Congo without an order of the Governor-General, and as he refused to allow his servant to be arrested, nothing could be done. The black servants in the hotel, where the wine had been stolen, had been often accused and beaten for these thefts, and now they were glad to be vindicated. But to the surprise of every honest man, the thief was sheltered by the Governor General of your Majesty’s Government.

FIFTH—Your Majesty’s Government is excessively cruel to its prisoners, condemning them, for the slightest offences, to the chain gang, the like of which can not be seen in any other Government in the civilized or uncivilized world. Often these ox-chains eat into the necks of the prisoners and produce sores about which the flies circle, aggravating the running wound; so the prisoner is constantly worried. These poor creatures are frequently beaten with a dried piece of hippopotamus skin, called a “chicote”, and usually the blood flows at every stroke when well laid on. But the cruelties visited upon soldiers and workmen are not to be compared with the sufferings of the poor natives who, upon the slightest pretext, are thrust into the wretched prisons here in the Upper River. I cannot deal with the dimensions of these prisons in this letter, but will do so in my report to my Government.

SIXTH.—Women are imported into your Majesty’s Government for immoral purposes. They are introduced by two methods, viz., black men are dispatched to the Portuguese coast where they engage these women as mistresses of white men, who pay to the procurer a monthly sum. The other method is by capturing native women and condemning them to seven years’ servitude for some imaginary crime against the State with which the villages of these women are charged. The State then hires these woman out to the highest bidder, the officers having the first choice and then the men. Whenever children are born of such relations, the State maintains that the women being its property the child belongs to it also. Not long ago a Belgian trader had a child by a slave-woman of the State, and he tried to secure possession of it that he might educate it, but the Chief of the Station where he resided, refused to be moved by his entreaties. At length he appealed to the Governor-General, and he gave him the woman and thus the trader obtained the child also. This was, however, an unusual case of generosity and clemency; and there is only one post that I know of where there is not to be found children of the civil and military officers of your Majesty’s Government abandoned to degradation; white men bringing their own flesh and blood under the lash of a most cruel master, the State of Congo.

SEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is engaged in trade and commerce, competing with the organised trade companies of Belgium, England, France, Portugal and Holland. It taxes all trading companies and exempts its own goods from export-duty, and makes many of its officers ivory-traders, with the promise of a liberal commission upon all they can buy or get for the State. State soldiers patrol many villages forbidding the natives to trade with any person but a State official, and when the natives refuse to accept the price of the State, their goods are seized by the Government that promised them “protection”. When natives have persisted in trading with the trade-companies the State has punished their independence by burning the villages in the vicinity of the trading houses and driving the natives away.

EIGHTH.—Your Majesty’s Government has violated the General Act of the Conference of Berlin by firing upon native canoes; by confiscating the property of natives; by intimidating native traders, and preventing them from trading with white trading companies; by quartering troops in native villages when there is no war; by causing vessels bound from “Stanley-Pool” to “Stanley-Falls”, to break their journey and leave the Congo, ascend the Aruhwimi river to Basoko, to be visited and show their papers; by forbidding a mission steamer to fly its national flag without permission from a local Government; by permitting the natives to carry on the slave- trade, and by engaging in the wholesale and retail slave-trade itself.

NINTH.—-Your Majesty’s Government has been, and is now, guilty of waging unjust and cruel wars against natives, with the hope of securing slaves and women, to minister to the behests of the officers of your Government. In such slave-hunting raids one village is armed by the State against the other, and the force thus secured is incorporated with the regular troops. I have no adequate terms with which to depict to your Majesty the brutal acts of your soldiers upon such raids as these. The soldiers who open the combat are usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic Bangalas, who give no quarter to the aged grandmother or nursing child at the breast of its mother. There are instances in which they have brought the heads of their victims to their white officers on the expeditionary steamers, and afterwards eaten the bodies of slain children. In one war two Belgian Army officers saw, from the deck of their steamer, a native in a canoe some distance away. He was not a combatant and was ignorant of the conflict in progress upon the shore, some distance away. The officers made a wager of £5 that they could hit the native with their rifles. Three shots were fired and the native fell dead, pierced through the head, and the trade canoe was transformed into a funeral barge and floated silently down the river.

TENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government is engaged in the slave-trade, wholesale and retail. It buys and sells and steals slaves. Your Majesty’s Government gives £3 per head for able bodied slaves for military service. Officers at the chief stations get the men and receive the money when they are transferred to the State; but there are some middle-men who only get from twenty to twenty-five francs per head. Three hundred and sixteen slaves were sent down the river recently, and others are to follow. These poor natives are sent hundreds of miles away from their villages, to serve among other natives whose language they do not know. When these men run away a reward of 1,000 N’taka is offered. Not long ago such a recaptured slave was given one hundred “chikote” each day until he died. Three hundred N’taka—brassrod-—is the price the State pays for a slave, when bought from a native. The labour force at the stations of your Majesty’s Government in the Upper River is composed of slaves of all ages and both sexes.

ELEVENTH.—Your Majesty’s Government has concluded a contract with the Arab Governor at this place for the establishment of a line of military posts from the Seventh Cataract to Lake Tanganyika territory to which your Majesty has no more legal claim, than I have to be Commander-in-Chief of the Belgian army. For this work the Arab Governor is to receive five hundred stands of arms, five thousand kegs of powder, and £20,000 sterling, to he paid in several instalments. As I write, the news reaches me that these much- treasured and long-looked for materials of war are to be discharged at Basoko, and the Resident here is to be given the discretion as to the distribution of them. There is a feeling of deep discontent among the Arabs here, and they seem to feel that they are being trifled with. As to the significance of this move Europe and America can judge without any comment from me, especially England.

TWELFTH—The agents of your Majesty’s Government have misrepresented the Congo country and the Congo railway. Mr. H. M. STANLEY, the man who was your chief agent in setting up your authority in this country, has grossly misrepresented the character of the country. Instead of it being fertile and productive it is sterile and unproductive. The natives can scarcely subsist upon the vegetable life produced in some parts of the country. Nor will this condition of affairs change until the native shall have been taught by the European the dignity, utility and blessing of labour. There is no improvement among the natives, because there is an impassable gulf between them and your Majesty’s Government, a gulf which can never be bridged. HENRY M. STANLEY’S name produces a shudder among this simple folk when mentioned; they remember his broken promises, his copious profanity, his hot temper, his heavy blows, his severe and rigorous measures, by which they were mulcted of their lands. His last appearance in the Congo produced a profound sensation among them, when he led 500 Zanzibar soldiers with 300 camp followers on his way to relieve EMIN PASHA. They thought it meant complete subjugation, and they fled in confusion. But the only thing they found in the wake of his march was misery. No white man commanded his rear column, and his troops were allowed to straggle, sicken and die; and their bones were scattered over more than two hundred miles of territory.

CONCLUSIONS Against the deceit, fraud, robberies, arson, murder, slave-raiding, and general policy of cruelty of your Majesty’s Government to the natives, stands their record of unexampled patience, long-suffering and forgiving spirit, which put the boasted civilisation and professed religion of your Majesty’s Government to the blush. During thirteen years only one white man has lost his life by the hands of the natives, and only two white men have been killed in the Congo. Major Barttelot was shot by a Zanzibar soldier, and the captain of a Belgian trading-boat was the victim of his own rash and unjust treatment of a native chief.

All the crimes perpetrated in the Congo have been done in your name, and you must answer at the bar of Public Sentiment for the misgovernment of a people, whose lives and fortunes were entrusted to you by the august Conference of Berlin, 1884—1 885. I now appeal to the Powers which committed this infant State to your Majesty’s charge, and to the great States which gave it international being; and whose majestic law you have scorned and trampled upon, to call and create an International Commission to investigate the charges herein preferred in the name of Humanity, Commerce, Constitutional Government and Christian Civilisation.

I base this appeal upon the terms of Article 36 of Chapter VII of the General Act of the Conference of Berlin, in which that august assembly of Sovereign States reserved to themselves the right “to introduce into it later and by common accord the modifications or ameliorations, the utility of which may be demonstrated experience”.

I appeal to the Belgian people and to their Constitutional Government, so proud of its traditions, replete with the song and story of its champions of human liberty, and so jealous of its present position in the sisterhood of European States—to cleanse itself from the imputation of the crimes with which your Majesty’s personal State of Congo is polluted.

I appeal to Anti-Slavery Societies in all parts of Christendom, to Philanthropists, Christians, Statesmen, and to the great mass of people everywhere, to call upon the Governments of Europe, to hasten the close of the tragedy your Majesty’s unlimited Monarchy is enacting in the Congo.

I appeal to our Heavenly Father, whose service is perfect love, in witness of the purity of my motives and the integrity of my aims; and to history and mankind I appeal for the demonstration and vindication of the truthfulness of the charge I have herein briefly outlined.

And all this upon the word of honour of a gentleman, I subscribe myself your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant,

GEO. W. WILLIAMS

Stanley Falls, Central Africa, July 18th, 1890.

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