The Three Counties under the Dutch. 45 
than Europeans inclined to humane treatment of black 
slaves, and less able to recognize the latter as fellow 
human beings. Even the Indians, who occasionally came 
down into the town, were for once moved to laughter, 
as they looked on at the drilling of the South Ameri- 
can rangers. 
But despite the apparent wildness of the scheme a 
genuine attempt was being made to turn these negroes 
to higher purposes than any for which they had yet been 
used. Officially the inferiority of the negro, real and 
imaginary, was ignored. 
" It happened that two of the British soldiers, who were employed at 
the hospital, having been guilty of irregular condu6t, were ordered into 
confinement ; and, it being near, they were taken to the guard room of 
the Rangers, where, upon recovering their sober senses, they felt 
extremely shocked at their degraded situation in being prisoners under 
the bayonets of negroes, whom they had perhaps cuffed about as slaves, 
and were quite indignant on recollecting that the very men who were 
now put over them, even since their arrival in the colony, had toiled all 
day in the field, goaded as horses." 
But humane and charitable as this movement toward 
improving the condition of the negro undoubtedly was, 
it was in the method of its execution unwise in the 
extreme. Suddenly to decree that slaves, who had not 
only been mere savages in their native homes, but who, 
since they had been torn from these homes, had been 
systematically degraded into animals far below the stage 
of culture which on the average prevails among savages, 
should have equal rights of freedom and self-government 
with men who, if not of any great degree of refinement, 
had at least been moulded by centuries of civilization, 
was then as absurd and impracticable as was the similar 
attempt which, in after years, took the form of the 
