reds of slaves fled to the interior, where they
established an independent state, consisting of a cluster of fortified
villages. Establishing a rude form of administration and a primitive
adaptation of Christianity, they actually governed themselves. After
the Dutch had been fairly well beaten, the whites turned to make war
upon the villages. For fifty years the villages held out, until in
1697, Palmares, the last and most important of the fortresses,
capitulated.[47]

Bahia lived in a perpetual fear of Negro uprising, and well were her
fears grounded, for here the Negro was most assertive against his
mistreatment. The population of Bahia in the first decade of the
nineteenth century is estimated by Henderson as being in the
neighborhood of 110,000, two thirds of which was slave. Once let the
slave get a start and with such odds in his favor the masters had best
beware. For this reason, slaves were prevented as much as possible
from organizing. No bondman might go on the streets of Bahia after
evening vespers, save with a pass from his master.[48] Yet the slaves
did at times organize. In 1808, when John VI, the Portuguese king,
arrived in Bahia, the slaves boldly communicated with him, asking
that the punishment of one hundred and fifty lashes be abolished.[49]

A short time after this episode, matters came to a culmination. As was
usual at holiday time, slaves congregated in plazas, chose a chief for
the day, to whom they did homage. This was a customary feat, tolerated
by the authorities of the city. On this particular occasion, a friend
of Henderson noticed that a white man was being hanged in effigy. He
sniffed trouble. Only a few months later the Bahian authorities were
lucky, by timely arrests, to save the whole population from being
massacred by the enraged slaves in an impending insurrection, whose
purpose was nothing less than the wholesale slaughter of the entire
white population of the city, with the exception of the governor,
D'Arcos, whom the insurrectos were to raise as their prince. Already
they had murdered many whites in the outskirts of the city.[50]

Thus, in the Old South, flight was the leading form of resistance to
the institution of slavery; whereas in Brazil the more effective form
of resistance by organized uprising was more frequently attempted.

THE RACE PROBLEM

Before concluding the theme, it is imperative that we hurriedly skim
over the saddest and most serious by-product of United S